Sweet rolls!
Among the many eccentric enterprises Cecily and I had undertaken over the years, making me smuggle a brittle mixture of sugar and stickiness must have been the worst. Well, maybe not. Some of her other ideas like jogging or schools had a more immaterial nature, and even if I couldn’t possibly pack them into my satchel I had to bear them anyway. For me it was just a pile of pony nonsense, but then again, I never had Cecily’s courage to act, or to fight for what I believed was just. She was a dreamer, so maybe there was method in her madness.
So I carried that damned sweet roll.
The things we do for our companions, really.
The flight to the base of the Spire didn’t take long. In the buzzing sea of nearly identical changelings Cecily pointed at some familiar faces from Blackstone, our cluster of origin to which we had been allocated after leaving the nymphery. As our first mentors, they taught us the basics about the Hive life, the importance of the Queen, and the meaning of colorful eyes and compound names in our society.
Ezui-Kolka was an old but fair-minded Thinker who organized the daily matters of Blackstone. Alongside her stood Saro-Morran, a Worker of yellow eyes tasked with digging up coal to which our cluster owed its name. With his tremendous strength and nonexistent will to work hard, his usefulness depended greatly on the third changeling who came along. Piro-Ammon, or Big Bro Piro as Cecily used to call him was a Feeder responsible for transporting love energy from the surface, a nutriment which our species wasn’t able to produce on our own. Sometimes he could be gone for days, but whenever he came back he always shared a fresh portion of anecdotes about the ponies much to the cluster’s merriment.
“Salutations, younglings!” Kolka said, greeting us with a smile as honest as the wrinkles marking her forehead. “It seems like it was only yesterday when you came around Blackstone and turned our lives upside down, yet here you are, about to take a step into adulthood! Now, whoever you’ll choose to become, and to whichever cluster the ancestors will lead you next, we want you to know that we are proud of you!”
Morran nodded. “Aye, so we be. ‘Course it would be even better if ye lasses became Workers and stayed with us. The cluster could use some able—ouch! Ye treacherous blowfish! Why would you do that?”
“To thwart your ingenious plan, of course,” Ammon said. “You’re not convincing our drones to become Workers just so you could spend your days scouting underground rivers.”
“I wasn’t—I was just—It’s a viable option to them, methinks!”
“Thank you all for being with us tonight,” Cecily said. “We’re not going to disappoint you, or the rest of the cluster, and we will definitely drop by you, if just for a short while!”
The much expected torrent of hugs and words of comfort felt like we were saying our farewells to each other, which was true from a certain point of view. We were free to return to Blackstone after the Ceremony—we pretty much had to, to gather all our stuff—but associating ourselves with one place or one group wasn’t a changeling way. I imagine a pony would have a hard time understanding our customs, but it was in our nature to develop ourselves by seeking new opportunities in different parts of the Hive. We could stay at any cluster for as long as we wished, but we didn’t feel any remorse leaving it. In the end, even Blackstone was just a cluster of origin for us.
Same goes with relationships. If what Cecily told me about pony families was true, then their younglings depended on the adults, which in turn was making the younglings obliged to maintain a relationship with whom they called their parents. Since we didn’t have parents like they did, neither Kolka nor anyling else expected us to stay around Blackstone just because we were raised there. Taking in a young drone for mentoring was a duty and a privilege, but was not based on some artificially inflated emotional bond between the two individuals.
Yeah, a pony would never get that.
The bottom line was, we did not have homes like ponies did. The entire Hive was our home.
“Break a leg!” Ammon said.
I replied with a frown. “How is that relevant?”
“Oh, it’s just a pony phrase I learned when I was at a place they call Bridleway. It means wishing someone good luck when they are about to perform on stage.”
“But wouldn’t a broken leg reduce their capabilities to perform?”
“Ponies,” he said, shrugging.
Kolka turned her gaze to the ceiling. “What strange creatures they are. I’m afraid we’ll never fully understand them,” she said, then turned to the rest of us. “You two, give us some space. And you two, step forth! No silliness now!”
Cecily and I approached. Kolka put her hooves on our foreheads, closed her eyes, and spoke a blessing barely audible in the noise produced by all other drones and their closest acquaintances.
“May the spirits of those who came before guide you in your decisions. May they help you become what you are meant to be. Seek their advice, and pay attention to the signs they grant you with,” she said and smiled. “And please, try to not break your legs.”
We nodded in unison. “Thank you, Ezui.”
“The Worker Caste be the best!” Morran shouted, but his enthusiasm was quickly dosed by a swift retribution from the Thinker. “Ouch! Oh, come on, that hurts! I think ye fractured me bone! I mean—cricks and cringes, ye’ve got all o’ them! Nay mining tomorrow, I say!”
Kolka bared her fangs in a venomous smile. “We’ll see about that, sailor-boy,” she said, then turned to us. “Good luck, younglings! We will stay here and beseech the ancestors in your cause!”
Cecily and I joined the procession of drones. With the Spire behind our backs we passed under a set of seven ornamented archways and followed a tunnel further underground. The sounds of the Hive gradually subsided and made way for a mystical ambiance only appropriate in hallowed places. Along that change came a minor shift in temperature from pleasant to tolerable. After a while of bumping into each other in the dark, the tunnel opened to a wide vestibule which paled in comparison to what came after.
The Hall of Names was best described as an underground amphitheater, the levels of which were carved back into the rock. To maintain the stability of subsequent floors, pillars or even entire sections of solid rock had been left intact, creating an illusion of a twisted labyrinth to whoever ventured down the vein-like paths leading from the open center of the Hall to its more secluded parts. Above the center, embedded within the ceiling, a giant chunk of polished luminite glowed with a steady rotation of its seven hues, as if to remind us about the seven castes which constituted our society.
Silver, the color of the Thinkers flooded the cave, providing excellent illumination of the walls all over the Hall. As far as the eye could see, the walls were covered with names of the changelings who had undergone the Ceremony of Names since the beginning of our race. Some of the names had been carved into stone with primitive tools, others written in coal or chalk. Nowadays, the most popular choice was to write your name with a dye corresponding with your caste, but I heard stories of old and unfrequented nooks of the Hall where changeling names were written in blood. Whether the donor of such dye was willing or not was a question I wanted to leave unanswered.
As I pondered over the years of history gazing upon me, Cecily pulled me to the ground.
“What are you—”
“Shh!”
I wanted to protest, but Cecily put a hoof on my mouth and nodded towards the entrance. The nervous whispering of my fellow drones subsided. In the near absolute silence which fell upon the Hall, a single set of hooves was heard.
Queen Chrysalis was a true paragon of our kind. She was tall and had slender physique, and from the pointy tip of her gnarled horn to the underside of her hooves she held the posture of an imposing leader we obeyed as much as admired. Like us, she had black carapace and shear wings, but her cerulean eyes were of a more complex constitution and resembled those of a pony. It were the eyes and the mane which changed from one Queen Chrysalis to another the most, because despite their similarities, no two had ever looked exactly the same. There was always a variation in the number and allocation of holes in their legs, the shape of the wings, or the tendency towards a specific hairdo. This one had her mane short and thinning because of her age, almost completely white where once a deep shade of azure shined, but her moves remained sure and controlled, if somewhat uneven whenever she stepped on her front left hoof.
As the Queen reached the edge of the vestibule, she said something to Lilo-Krennet, a slightly older Speaker left in charge of the Hall. He acknowledged her words, bowed, and followed her as she took the stairs to the bottom of the cave. It took only a moment for us drones to dash to the rock-cut railings. We were all eager to see if what we just realized was actually happening, but when the Queen stopped at the massive onyx doors her destination was indisputable.
“Look! It’s opening!” a drone next to me said. “Queen Chrysalis is going to the Hall of Queens!”
The Queen’s horn flashed blue against the Maker’s orange of the Hall, and the doors opened before her. I always thought of them as the entrance to an underground tomb because they weren’t placed vertically, nor were they fixed in the floor. I guess I wasn’t far since the Queens went there only twice in their lives: to gain wisdom necessary to lead the Hive, and to relinquish it as well as themselves.
When Queen Chrysalis took a step inside and disappeared in the darkness beyond the threshold, I turned to Cecily. “That means the next Queen—”
“The next Queen is one of us,” a male-sounding drone behind me said. “Oh, that’s exciting! Perhaps we should already start bowing to each other, just in case?”
I shook my head. “What I meant was that the next Queen may be one of us. There was once a Queen who spent three whole cycles inside, seventy-eighth, I think. During that time there were two groups of drones like us, but the seventy-ninth Queen emerged from the latter.”
The drone rolled his eyes. “Way to ruin the fun, nerd. I bet you’ll be the most boring Thinker ever.”
Cecily took an angry step forward and put a firm hoof to his chest. “Well, at least she can spell Thinker!”
“So can I! T-I-N-K-E-R. See?”
“You’re so—”
“You’re so right!” I said. “It really was a boring historical fact indeed. Erm, please excuse us.”
I took Cecily to the side to prevent any and all verbal assault which would undoubtedly occur. I had no idea if a drone could be kicked off their own Ceremony for inappropriate behavior, but I wasn’t too keen on finding out. At the same time I didn’t want anyling in my vicinity to disrespect the ancestors, as the longer I stayed in the Hall the more I was convinced that they were looking down at me from their names written in stone. It was creepy, and I felt it had something to do with the questionable contents of my satchel.
“I appreciate the gesture, but he was not worth the effort,” I said. “Everything okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Hardly. It looked like you were going to massacre that moron.”
The luminite ceiling shifted to deep red, the color of the Feeders.
Cecily sighed. “It’s really happening, right?” she said, her voice lacking its usual upbeat note. “It’s the day we’ve been waiting for. Up to this moment we were just kids, but after we dedicate ourselves to a single path nothing will be the same. No one will treat us as younglings anymore, and we’ll have responsibilities to our clusters and to the Hive. And this is great, we'll be finally free to live our lives to the fullest. I mean, this is a time of great changes, we’re even getting a new Queen—”
“Spit it out already!”
“Do you think we could still be friends after that?”
Only the solemn ambiance kept me from bursting out into laughter. “You’re stupid, you! Of all things, you’re worrying about that?”
“Please, Iqqel. This is very important to me.”
Cecily shuffled her hooves, then unstuck her stare from the ground. Her eyes were focused on me like never before, and her expression was that of a frightened changeling who just realized she found herself on the brink. When Cecily took my hoof in her own, I could feel her body trembling. I guess it finally got to her how important the Ceremony of Names was, as she looked like she was about to ask questions the answers to which would then give value to her life. Cecily was serious, and if she was serious then I could only respond in kind.
“Among all the things to change, this is the one that never will,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll go to Whitefalls again, you and I. You'll be telling me about the ponies, and I’ll keep grumbling how silly they are just to see you smile. Tonight, whether you choose to become a Nari, Keki, or Lili—it doesn’t matter, because I will stand beside you and I will always be your friend. Always.”
It seemed that my words brought her serenity she yearned. She was no longer trembling as she embraced me. “Thank you, Iqqy,” she said. “I needed that more than you think. I know that I seem relaxed, but there’s always a lot going inside my head, and talking to you helped me deal with myself, discover what I really want from life, you know what I mean?”
“Well, not entirely, but I’m glad I could be of assistance—oh, hello!”
“It’s just that with you around I—”
“Salutations, drone,” a Speaker of violet eyes said. “My name is Lilo-Skallit and I will be your confessor tonight. Are you ready to begin?”
Cecily let go of my hoof and smiled, her face now taking an alluring shade of blue. A pony would never take notice of that, because to them we all looked the same, but to me Cecily was the most good-looking changeling in the Hive, and I somewhat quite strongly appreciated that she was consistently choosing to spend her time with me. She looked great regardless of the illumination she was washed with, so I put a mental note to compliment her on that later. I intended to do it right away, but the sudden rush of adrenaline induced by the changeling in ceremonial robes took over my muscles and made me look up at him.
“I am ready.”