//------------------------------//
// Settling in, part 2 
// Story: Iridescence 
// by Serpent_Underscore 
//------------------------------//

16 miles southeast of Indian Springs, Nevada: Sunday January 22nd, 1995

Nerium sat undisguised in the moving vehicle, his expression vacant as he watched the endless desert landscape pass by outside. Beside him sat several of the humans he had now been working with through the night and into the morning.

They had left the roads some time ago and were now driving deep into the trackless wastes in search of one of his comrades. In a way, the desolate surroundings reminded him of the Badlands back home. It wasn't the most pleasant recollection, and only served to increase his deepening sense of unease as they traveled farther and farther from civilization.

Four days alone in the desert with no shelter and nothing to drink was far from a death sentence for one of his kind, but it wasn't something they could shrug off without problems either. And if that changeling was injured to begin with...

Nerium could still recall his own first moments in this world, with the spell's backlash having transformed his limbs into live snakes. According to the humans, they had found one changeling burnt to a crisp inside its crater, and several inexplicably-placed objects in other craters. 

He strongly suspected that the objects were changelings that had been transfigured to the extent that they couldn't reverse the changes on their own, but he hadn't encountered any examples yet to confirm that suspicion, and there was still far too much searching left to be done before he could accompany the humans back to the place where the recovered objects were being kept.

Most of the changelings they had found so far had suffered either partial transfiguration, which was easily fixed, magical burns of varying severity, which were less easily treated, or in one case, an inability to speak in anything but Breezy so long as all four hooves were touching the ground. That last one was downright baffling, but fairly inconsequential and probably something the Healer caste could correct in time.

He could feel one of the humans- no, Adkins' emotions shift a few moments before he looked up from the tracking device and spoke. "We're getting close. Harris, slow down a little and keep an eye out."

"Roger that."

Stifling a yawn, Adkins turned to Nerium. "Ready to do your thing ambassador?"

"At this point I'm starting to think that I sound a bit like I'm reading from a script, but yes." Nerium admitted with a faint smile. It felt... unusual to say the least to interact with another race without a disguise, or to find that he actually meant it when he expressed himself in front of them.

There was still an element of wariness between them, but that was to be expected. For his part, Nerium found their emotional state of mind more compelling evidence of their goodwill than any amount of words or promises on their part. 

A convincing actor could mask the outer signs of betrayal under a pretense of friendship and trustworthiness, but they could do nothing to mask their inner emotional state- probably the reason why changelings tended to be brutally honest amongst themselves, despite the front they presented to the outside world. There was simply no point in trying to lie or obfuscate the truth when the one you were speaking with could read your intentions like a book.

The humans he was with had a great deal of curiosity blended with caution, even suspicion in more than a few cases, but no overt hostility or duplicitous thinking. In fact, many of them had slowly been having their suspicions eroded by a sense of guarded optimism as they spent more time working alongside Nerium to find his people.

Of course, there was the possibility that their far-distant commander had hidden ill intent toward the changelings and could order his reluctant men to imprison them or worse once they had all been gathered in one spot and accounted for, or that the human's friendly stance could sour as they learned more about them, but he'd cross that bridge once he came to it. 

For now, cooperating and finding his comrades was the only viable option he had, regardless of whether the humans turned out to be friendly or treacherous.

Nerium felt the van slow to a stop and he shifted in his seat to see what was in front of them. Harris motioned toward a small dark shape in the distance. "Over there. I don't see it moving, but I also don't see a crater nearby, which means it must have wandered over here under its own power before collapsing. Not the most encouraging sign, but at least we know it wasn't dead on arrival like some of our others."

"I'll go take a look." Nerium said, opening the sliding door. "When I give the signal, bring the van to us." And with that the changeling took off into the air. It was still chilly outside, the cold of the night having not yet been driven away by the inferno of the desert sun. Sparse shrubs and rock passed below Nerium in silence as he made his way toward the unmoving changeling. 

He landed a few paces away from the other changeling's unmoving form and approached warily. With a small start, Nerium realized he knew this particular changeling. She was one of the Warrior caste working under him, Lavender Daze if he recalled correctly. He could see her chitinous barrel rise and fall steadily and he let out a sigh of relief. She was alive.

Nerium shook her gently to rouse her. As her startled eyes snapped open he backed away a pace to give her room. "Settle down soldier, you're safe here. Are you hurt?"

"Thirsty." Lavender Daze rasped, then added, "Can't transform. Woke up in a crater a few days ago and found that my entire barrel decided it wanted to be a mouth, sapped most of my magic reserves trying to convince it otherwise." She shuddered, "Ribcages should not open up like toothy flower petals or try to bite your hooves off. Can't fly either- crushed my wings against a boulder by accident while trying to avoid getting eaten by myself. Been wandering on hoof since then trying to find any signs of water or civilization."

"Can you stand?" Nerium asked, "I came here with some locals from this world who can help us. You don't need to worry about a disguise, they already know what we both are. Try to conserve your magic for now."

Lavender raised an eyebrow at that as she lifted her head to try and see who he was talking about, and her eyes settled on the van in the distance. "Locals huh? I take it they're not changelings?" When Nerium nodded, she gave a tired sigh. "Risky if you ask me. Can't really bring myself to care at the moment so long as they have water though. Besides, I trust you."

The changeling staggered to her feet. Nerium moved alongside her and tried to help support her weight as she tried to stand unsteadily. A burst of green sparks flew from his horn into the air, signaling the van to approach. As it drew closer, Nerium spoke quietly. "Their knowledge of us is limited. Try to avoid divulging any information that would be seen in a negative light."

The van came to a stop in front of them and sat idling. One of the humans opened the door for the pair and offered to help Lavender up into the van. She hesitated as she craned her head to look up at the man's face, but agreed.

Once inside, she collapsed on one of the seats. "Water?" she asked hopefully.

"Here you go," one of the men said, handing over a bottle of water which he opened for her. "I've gotta say that I'm impressed that you managed to hold out for four days in the desert without any water or shelter."

Nerium barked a short, bitter laugh, "We're hardy creatures. We've had to be in order to survive."

"Can't say that I disagree there," the man replied, watching Lavender Daze greedily downing the contents of the bottle with a look of rapture on her face. "Careful, you should try to pace yourself rather than drink too much at once."

Lavender fixed the man with a flat stare.

"When treating dehydration in humans at least, it's not a good idea to just let them gorge themselves on too much water all at one time or they might get sick and vomit," he said.

"I know." Lavender sighed, "The same goes for changelings too. It's just a little hard to stop yourself when you're as parched as I am."

"At least we got to you before your condition got worse. My name's Mitchell Kinnison by the way."

"Lavender Daze. Thank you for your help Kinnison," she said, before stopping and giving him an odd look. "What?"

"Nothing," Kinnison said. "It's just that you seem to be taking this a lot better than some of the other changelings we've located so far. They tend to be a lot more agitated, even after Nerium has a talk with them."

Lavender chuckled weakly. "Oh believe me, I'd normally be more than a little freaked out right now. It's just that I'm too exhausted at the moment to care. Commander Nerium vouched for you, that's all I need to know for now. That and the fact that I'm not sensing any immediate ill-intent from you guys."

Harris spoke up as he started turning the van around. "We're going to be tracking another changeling now, so get settled in for the next hour or two. It doesn't look like you're in need of emergency medical care, so we don't need to head back to base right away."

"We still have a few search teams that haven't been paired up with a changeling partner yet," he said, "but since you're not in any condition to act as an ambassador between us and the other changelings that have no clue what's going on yet, we won't be needing to meet up with one of the other teams to transfer you."

Nerium explained, "We've been having a changeling go ahead of the search teams to give the others forewarning so they don't panic at being pursued by a mysterious group of humans and do anything... rash. Once they've been appraised of the situation and have had their questions answered, we've been pairing the changelings off with a different search group in order to try and find everyling that made it through the rift as quickly as possible."

Lavender Daze took another sip of water. "Okay. Speaking of answering questions, mind telling me why exactly these 'humans' are looking for us and why we're working alongside them?" she paused as she glanced around at her present company. "No offense or anything. We just tend to be cautious and secretive, especially when dealing with new things."

Adkins spoke up, "It's best if we started from the beginning. Four days ago we were supervising the first activation of the Kenfield Array. It's an experimental device that was meant to try and tap into the latent magical field of the planet and open a portal to another world. As far as we've been able to piece together, at around the same time that we were doing our test, Queen Chrysalis was creating her own unstable transdimensional portal."

"After talking to some of your spellcrafters, our current theory was that neither one would have actually worked on their own, but the activation of the Kenfield Array at that exact instant provided an 'anchor' that your portal spell was able to latch on to in order to complete its transfer." Adkins said, "The odds of your spell and our device latching onto each other at the same moment in time are astronomically low, but when you're dealing with an infinite multiverse..."

Nerium tuned out the conversation as he tried to get a small amount of sleep before they reached their next location. 'How many more of us are left?' he wondered to himself before drifting off.





Omaha Nebraska: Sunday January 23, 1995.

One of the downsides to being a night watchman is that you have entirely too much time to think by yourself. While boring at the best of times, tonight my shift seemed to stretch on for weeks on end as I worried about the potential problems that could arise back home.

What if Kerri set Nicole's place on fire during the night despite her precautions? What if Nicole's presence wasn't enough to satisfy her and she left the house anyways while Nicole was asleep? Had anyone seen Kerri on the way to Nicole's house?

I also found time to worry about the future, how I'd raise Kerrigan, what I'd do if she turned out to have a completely alien mentality from humanity, what would happen if she was similar to humans in her thoughts and needs, and ended up stunted socially because she wasn't able to interact with kids her own age, what challenges I might face as she grew up.

My footsteps were soft as I patrolled the darkened and empty high school. Worrying about things I couldn't control was pointless. In the end, all I could do was take things one step at a time, use my best judgement, and hope I was making the right decisions. Knowing that still didn't make my shift pass any faster however, and I found myself counting the minutes until 8:00 AM when I'd be able to check out and go home.

After I was done with work, the first thing I did was head directly to Nicole's house. My anxiety lessened when I saw that it was still all in one piece. I parked the car outside and knocked on the door.

After a few moments Nicole opened it and let me in. The first thing I noticed was the tired and slightly bloodshot look in her eyes, and the second was Kerri gleefully running up to my feet and trilling. "Rough night?" I asked tentatively as I reached down to pick Kerrigan up.

"You know your theory that her species might be ambush predators? I think she's definitely convinced me that that's the case." Nicole's expression was tired, but there was a certain wry amusement in her tone. "After I put everything away, she decided to take a nap. Just as I was starting to get settled in, I glanced over to where she was and noticed that she wasn't there anymore. I got up to look for her, but at that very moment she dropped down from the ceiling onto my head and scared me half to death."

Nicole smiled. "For the rest of the night she played that game with me. Stay in one spot until I was convinced she was asleep, then vanish and stalk me as soon as I took my eyes off of her. Sometimes she'd jump out from a hiding spot to bat at my ankles, other times she'd drop down from the ceiling on me. One time I managed to catch her in the act as she was sneaking up on me, and she fell all over herself trying to turn around and run to a new hiding spot."

"That sounds... eventful," I said. "What happened when you had to go to sleep?"

Nicole laughed. "Sleep is for the weak. Sleep makes you an easy target. It was only after she tired herself out and curled up next to me that I got any rest at all. And then of course I needed to wake up to feed her in the middle of the night. I'm telling you Shaun, I think I finally understand what new parents mean when they say that they miss being able to sleep all night." Her smile turned mischievous. "And now that you're here, you can be the one to change her diaper. I need to get ready for work now."