by Europa
"Um... Chryssy, is that what I think it is?"
"Of course it is. How else did you think we were going to have a nymph?"
"I thought we were just going to, I don't know, genetically engineer it based on tissue samples from the two of us. How is that even possible?"
"Have a little faith in the shapeshifter! And don't tell me this isn't more exciting..."
"Um... you know what, I'm okay with this."
***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***
Chrysalis pranced happily into the crystal castle, finding Twilight in her bedroom hunched over a workstation. "What does it say, what does it say?"
Her alicorn wife looked over her shoulder and smiled, tears in her eyes. Her magic flared to life and moved a small strip over to Chrysalis's sight. Her multi-irised eyes narrowed at it, reading the bright blue color on it. Then, connecting the dots, her eyes lit up and she looked at Twilight. "So you're..."
Twilight nodded, a grin splitting her face. "I am!" The pony got out of her seat and flew towards Chrysalis, hugging her around the thorax. "I am, I am!"
"We're going to be parents," Chrysalis breathed, staring off into the distance. "I'm going to have a nymph..."
"Well, foal," Twilight said. "I'm the one carrying it, so it'll be a pony." She pulled away and shrugged, her grin never diminishing. "Dual species pairings are weird like that."
"WHO CARES?!" Chrysalis bellowed in the Royal Badlands Voice. "We're going to be mothers! We need to let everyling know!" She said giddily, already preparing a fire ring around them.
"No teleports!" Twilight warned.
Chrysalis let her magic peter out with a frown. "Right, right, of course. Still gonna let everyling know."
Twilight rolled her eyes. "You do that, Chryssy." Her eyes bugged out and turned a rather pleasant shade of green. "Bathroom!" She galloped out as fast as she could, leaving Chrysalis to do a happy dance on her own.
***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***
Twilight was getting rather clingy in her sleep, two months into her eleven month gestation period.
Eleven months! Changeling gestation was similar in length, but only the first three months were spent inside the womb; after that the egg was layed and hatched eight months later. Chrysalis didn't envy Twilight for carrying around a child for nearly a year.
Twilight was a little clingy, not that Chrysalis minded; she quite enjoyed being her snuggle bug. They laid together on the pony's bed, Chrysalis behind her with her forelegs wrapped around Twily's barrel, which now had a barely noticeable bulge.
She couldn't help but smile, a joyful tingle throughout her limbs. The slight bulge. Her child, her foal. While the excitement and raw joy wasn't as overwhelming as it had been two months ago, it still made her heart flutter. She'd never had her own child. She was expected to raise someling to succeed her as queen, but she was always set on something else. Finding food for her subject, developing a counterspell to the latest of revelation magics, putting together military strategies with her Swarm Commander to take over Equestria. Children were the farthest thing from her mind, especially given how much changeling queens were instinctively protective of their young. After all, as an entire subspecies of the changeling race, they had to be.
Queen Chrysalis licked along the nape of Twilight's neck and bit down gently with her fangs, rousing the pretty purple pony princess. Twilight shuffled in her forelegs and turned her head around, eyes half open as a smile developed on her face. "Morning, Chryssy."
"Morning, love. It's time to get up."
Twilight nodded and began to long process of rousing herself, swinging herself off the bed with grace. Chrysalis for her part simply began to buzz her wings, lifting into the air and onto the ground. "So, what's on the agenda today?" she asked.
Moving over to her desk, Twilight picked up a notepad in her hoof. "Some paperwork, then we go to the hospital for a checkup, I have a meeting with Mayor Mare and you have a meeting with the mayor of Trottingham, after that free time, then I need to hold Dusk Court, then we're free for the rest of the night."
"Great! Now - " Twilight's stomach grumbled. " - now how about we go see if Spike's up yet making breakfast?"
Twily hummed. "Hmm, he probably is. Oh, I hope he's making pancakes. Though I was thinking I could, um, use some of your slime as syrup instead? Oh, and some blackberries!"
Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. Outside of their bedroom activities, Twilight never asked to drink changeling slime. Was she alright?
***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***
Queen Chrysalis knew she was not welcome in Canterlot, not by the populace. While officially the Unified Changeling Swarm had made peace with Equestria, she knew that the citizens would never forget what she had done, nor did she wish for them to. There was mutual dislike, especially by the Royal Guard. Her army had kicked their flanks, and they knew it. Now that they had a stable, bountiful source of love, they could do it again with even greater ease, so they responded instead with glares and polluting the air with as much dislike and hate as they could.
She hated being in Canterlot, but since Twilight was going to the castle, she was going to go with her.
Twilight, now halfway into her pregnancy, was very obvious about it. While she ate... well, enough for two, her cravings never became too outlandish. Though she had regressed into becoming a nervous wreck whenever Celestia asked something of her. Good thing Chrysalis was around to pull her out of it. And then of course, her stomach's bulge was impossible to miss.
Royal Guards remained out of sight, following Twilight, while Chrysalis could smell her own Imperial Guards doing the same to her under disguise. Citizens looked at them warily, some bowing, some whispering to each other as they passed.
Chrysalis, for her part, jumped around and bared her fangs at any of the ponies who looked at them funny. This had the side effect of constantly clearing away crowds, until the next street's crowd came into view, where she could repeat the process.
Her beloved, of course, was rather nonplussed about this. She could taste the non-plussedness in the air. "Chryssy, I appreciate the concern, but any reason you're acting like a guard dog?"
"Excuse me for trying to keep you safe," she growled. A pegasus moved a mouth to her saddlebags and pulled out... what was that?! Chrysalis wrapped herself in green fire and inferno-dashed over to the pony, towering over her with her fangs bared and horn lit. "What do you think you're looking at?!" The pegasus zipped away, her camera clattering to the ground. Nodding to herself, she inferno-dashed back to Twilight. "You see?"
"Chryssy." Twilight stopped and magically pulled Chrysalis into a hug. "I know you're worried about me and the foal, but could you please tone it down? They're just curious, nopony's going to try and hurt me. Even if they did, I have Abselv's Reactionary Aegis cast and several of your own wards on me. Please, you're scaring everypony."
Her ears lowered, thoroughly scolded. To think that she, Queen Chrysalis the Green, was being chastised by a pony. "I'm sorry," she muttered, tightening the hug. "But this is our first child, I'm worried. I want everything to go right for our little colt... I'm sorry for being overprotective," she breathed.
"It's okay."
***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***
At first Chrysalis had been the one with the most worries about the child, but as the days ticked on and the weeks flowed by into month nine, her stomach swelling, Twilight began to do what she did best.
Panicking.
Twilight, now flightless for three months, paced back and forth along the castle worriedly. "What if he doesn't orient properly to come out? What if he wraps the umbilical cord around his neck? What if he's teased at school for having famous parents? What if he never makes friends like I didn't until it was almost too late? What if he's deformed and is inhibited for the rest of his life?" Twilight froze as if paralyzed, then wheeled on Chrysalis. "WHAT IF HE'S STILLBORN?!"
Chrysalis fire-portaled the short distance to her and placed her perforated hooves on her wife's shoulders. "Twilight, Twilight. Relax, you're going to be fine."
"How do you know that?!" she demanded with tears in her eyes. The emotional sensors in Chrysalis's ears were going haywire around Twilight. "Changelings can't predict pregnancies, nopony can!" She began hyperventilating, her ears flopping wildly. "Everything's going to go wrong and it'll all be my - "
Slap!
It wasn't often that Chrysalis did anything to physically hurt Twilight anymore - outside of bed - but this warranted it. Twilight's head snapped around and her breath caught in her throat, pupils shrinking. "Right," the pony breathed. "Right, I needed that. Thank you."
Chrysalis lit up her horn and shot a ray at Twilight's hooves, building up a cocoon from the ground up. It went up to Twilight's neck, the density low enough not to put any undue pressure on Twilight's stomach and their unborn foal. Twilight gave a little 'whoa!' as she rolled onto her back. Chrysalis telekinetically scooped the cocoon up, sat on her rump, and brought it to her lap. "Twilight, tell me what's wrong."
Then the dam broke. "I'm just so worried about having a foal because up until recently motherhood never even crossed my mind and I'm so worried about doing things wrong because my motherhood books didn't help and if the books didn't help then it must be so tough and I'm going to fail and he's going to hate me and grow up to be a delinquent and I'm so ugly and I feel so heavy and I have to pee all the time and eat all the time and eat the grossest things and we haven't had sex in months because you're afraid of hurting me and the foal but it feels like it's because you think I'm ugly even though I know that's not the case and I'm worried about how much the actual birth is going to hurt because ponies' heads are so big compared to their bodies and lactating is so uncomfortable - "
Twilight spilled on and on, Chrysalis listening as intently as she could to the high-speed vent. Eventually Twilight slowed down, and she took the cue to lean down and nuzzle the pony. "I know, Twilight. I know how much you're worried; changeling, remember?" That got a grin out of the pony. "I'm not going to say your worries are without merit, because most of them are." With a flick of magic she dispelled the cocoon and held Twilight in her hooves, running one over her greatly enlarged stomach just in time to feel a kick. "But they won't be as bad as you think, because you have Spike to go to, your friends, your fellow princesses, and me."
Twilight nodded, slightly teary eyed. "Thank you. Thank you, you're right."
***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***
"Um... Chryssy?"
"Mmm, what is it? I was sleeping."
"Chryssy, I think the foal is coming."
"That's nice... wait, what?! We're going!"
"No fire portals!"
"Buck! Right! Okay, get on my shell!"
***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-***
It only took a small amount of suggestion magic to get the doctors to let Chrysalis stay with Twilight during the birth. The smell was sharp, Twilight's breathing was frantic and her grip was tight, not to mention that her screams were agonizing. Oh how Chrysalis wished she could do something to ease her beloved's pain. The minutes ticked on into the night, the doctors and nurses and Chrysalis all shouting and whispering encouragements at Twilight.
The last pushes came and went, ending with Twilight reclining and gasping for air as it was finished.
One of the ponies - Doctor Stable - snipped the umbilical cord with magic and said aloud, "Time of birth, three fifty seven in the morning, October seventeenth. Congratulations Missus Sparkle, Missus Bladequeen, it's a colt."
Chrysalis caught the first sight of their son and went silent, her jaw gently dropping. He looked so small, squishy. His pale, glacier blue coat was matted with various bodily fluids from his mother. Both of his ears were flat against his skull, the tiny wisps of turquoise mane - just like her own - also slick with liquid. His tail was very short, letting her easily see the dock of said tail. He was an earth pony, laying on his hooves by Twilight's hind legs, small purple eyes flicking this way and that curiously.
Twilight shifted and gently - oh so gently - moved her hooves to bring their son to her head.
The others smiled. "We'll just leave you two alone for a bit," said that Redheart pony as they filed out.
Twilight had started murmuring. "Oh my son, oh my son you're here," she said breathlessly, sticking out her tongue to lick at his face. "You're here, you're here." She kept licking, going all across his body and cleaning him.
Chrysalis remained quiet, walking around to get a better view of their son nuzzling against Twilight as she groomed him from where she laid. She came closer and leaned her muzzle towards the small pony. The colt turned away from Twilight and towards her, sniffing. He made a little motion towards her with his hooves, and successfully belly-flopped. Chrysalis's breath caught in her throat, but he didn't start crying. Instead, he waved a hoof around, sniffed her scent, then stuck it out and punched her in the muzzle.
She wasn't really hurt - carapace, after all - but she backed up and blinked from the shock, then grinned. "He's violent, I like it."
"I'm a mother," Twilight whispered, shellshocked as she lay on the wrinkled white sheets. Chrysalis looked at her; her fur was matted with sweat and her mane was bedraggled to the point where it had none of its regular shape at all visible.
Twilight had never seemed more beautiful.
Slowly, their son moved in his flopping-attempting-to-walk motion down Twilight's body. He clamped down on skin and began to suckle one of Twilight's teats for milk.
"So, you think the name's good?" Twilight asked. Chrysalis just nodded, continuing to look at their son as he nursed peacefully. Their little pony.
"Chryssy, are you... crying?"
"No!" she said, raising a hoof to wipe her eyes. "T-There's just... there's just a raincloud in my eyes!"
Their darling little Veridian Light.