Twilight sneezed.
“Gesundheit,” her book said.
“Thanks, but keep it down. Spike hasn’t left—”
Said dragon jogged down into the library’s entrance room, a gym bag slung over his shoulder. “Did you call me, Twilight?”
“Not at all,” she said with a smile. “Have fun tonight.”
He snorted and flicked a claw against his atrociously bright blue shirt. “You don’t have ‘fun’ at the Ponyville Monthly Bowling Spectacular. You either roll to win or not at all, and Big Mac and I both have our eyes on the trophy this time!”
Twilight giggled. “I’ll make sure we have a space cleared for it when you get back. Good luck!” Spike shut the door behind him, and Twilight walked over to lock it. She watched him head out of sight before turning back to her book. “Okay, we’re clear.”
Two black hooves rose out of her book’s pages, and they pulled the rest of the changeling out with them. He stretched out his legs one by one. “There we go. So much better.”
“Don’t you guys always say you’re comfortable in there?” Twilight asked as she pulled several books off the shelves.
“Yeah, but there’s nothing like terra firma under your hooves.” The changeling rolled his neck. “And having full range of your muscles again. What’s taking you so long with this one? It’s only three hundred pages.”
“Hey, this book has some of the most vivid descriptive writing I’ve read in years! Forgive me for savoring it and sending you all the love you could ever want.”
He chuckled as she set the books down. “Apology accepted. Okay bugs, front and center! We’ve got things to talk about.”
Five more changelings pulled themselves out, and Twilight summoned a wrinkled sheet of parchment. “Stormy Night, here.” Twilight checked off the changeling sitting next to her and moved down the list. “Cliffhanger, could you watch the windows please? Thank you.” She checked him off, and Semicolon as he flitted around in the air. “Tense Shift, check. Viewpoint, check. And Subject Agreement.”
The last one raised a hoof. “Can I change my name?”
Twilight rolled her eyes, and the rest of the room groaned. “Do you want to go back to Hanging Clause again? Or Conjunction Function?”
“Or Red Herring,” Stormy Night said under his breath.
“I heard that!” Subject snapped.
Semicolon landed, stretching out his wings. “Dude, you’re kinda ruining the point of having a name if you keep changing it every week.”
“Excuse me for wanting to explore my individuality! Why don’t we all just go back to the Hive, huh? I’m sure Mommy Chrissy will be more than happy to tell us what we should be called.” He thrust a hoof at Twilight. “She didn’t get to choose her name, but you don’t hear her complaining about it. You know why?”
Stormy Night shook his head. “Leave the ponies out of this. We’ve got more important things to talk about.”
“Hang on, he’s on to something,” Viewpoint said. “Haven’t you guys been paying attention to the books we hide in? There’s a whole world out there for us to identify with. We don’t have to be stuck wearing labels of stuff on the page instead of what that stuff means.”
“We can discuss this later,” Twilight said.
“That we can,” Stormy agreed.
Semicolon shot him a look. “And the favorite speaks up right on cue! Just because you’re the one that spends every night on her nightstand—”
“My sleeping arrangements are none of your concern!” Twilight snapped. “Or are none of you wondering where Parenthetical is tonight?” She let the uneasy silence linger a moment longer. “He’s okay, but we need to talk about this little prank you all keep pulling. Fooling ponies by deliberately taking the form of the wrong words or letters is unacceptable.”
Cliffhanger looked up from his upside-down position over the window. “Are you still on about the Sweetie Belle thing? I said I wouldn’t do it again!”
“You haven’t, and thank you for that, but I still get ponies complaining about finding typos on every other page or so. A couple of days ago, Sassaflash came in and told me how entire pages in her book mysteriously mirrored each other. She took the liberty of sending it back to the publisher in Canterlot—and Parenthetical along with it.”
Semicolon leapt to his feet. “You said he was okay! Canterlot is as far from okay for changelings as it can get, you foolish mare!”
Stormy stomped, the sharp echo silencing the others from joining in. “He is okay. He got out of the book and took a disguise. I’ve seen his letter to Twilight.”
She nodded. “I can show it to you all after we’re done here, but there’s not much more we can do right now. I’ve sent off a pouch of bits for train fare, so he’ll be home in a day or two. What we have to worry about, what we’re here for tonight, is making sure this never happens again.”
“But it gets boring in there,” Cliffhanger said. “I mean, I guess it’s cool and all being in a book, but there’s only so many times you can read yourself before you’re ready to come home.”
“Yeah,” Tense Shift said, “and they don’t bring us back for weeks! When all you get to see for days and days is the same pony’s face staring at you, you want to trip them up every now and then. It’s fun. Some of them even say the wrong word a few times just to hear it out loud.”
Twilight levitated another page and a quill. “Shorter due dates,” she said while making a note. “This is good. If stopping you guys from going stir-crazy keeps you safe from discovery, I’m all for it. And there’s always Spike, you know. If we let him in on this little secret, you would all have a lot more leeway around the library.”
Every opaque blue eye turned to Stormy Night, who fidgeted in place. “I don’t know. I like the kid, but he gives you some deniability. If an angry mob comes down on your head and they believe he doesn’t know anything about us—”
“If I was worried about an angry mob, I wouldn’t have helped you in the first place.” Twilight smiled and touched his hoof. “Maybe the way changelings and Equestria can have peace is to prove it one pony at a time. We’re friends, aren’t we?” She glared at Semicolon as he coughed More! More! into his hoof. “We’ll put a pin in telling Spike. You can trust him, but if you’re not ready, I won’t force you into it.”
Subject Agreement raised his hoof again. “Could we get a pool table maybe? Even if we tell the guy, there’s not a whole lot to do around here.”
Twilight made another note. “I don’t know about a pool table, but I’m sure Pinkie Pie has some games I could borrow. Do you guys have anything specific in mind you’d like to try?”
“Pool,” Subject insisted. “It’s fun, and I’m pretty good at it.”
“I’m sure you are, but the expense—wait, what? How are you good at it?”
“He’s lying!” Viewpoint said, bumping shoulders with Subject. “Twenty bits says I can take you down. You’re nothing!”
Cliffhanger snorted. “Yeah, I remember all that pool you guys never played on all the tables that the Hive didn’t have. What are you two going on about?”
“Well put,” Twilight said, turning to Stormy Night. “What are they talking about? Can you play pool?”
His mouth moved silently for a moment. “N-No, I never tried before. When in the world did you two have a chance to play pony games?”
Semicolon pointed outside. “The Davenport guy. He’s got a pool table in his basement.”
Every other soul in the room drew a sharp breath, Twilight included. Unlike the others, she did not look away from Semicolon’s carefree smile, most likely because it was a physical impossibility for her to follow the others’ example and look at herself. She recalled the records in her head, and Mr. Davenport had indeed checked out a book with Semicolon, and the two self-professed pool players.
The blue eyes staring back at her eventually lost their mirthful luster. Their owner tossed glances around the room, but he was wise enough not to open his mouth again.
Twilight prowled forward. “How. Exactly. Do you know what a pony keeps in their basement?”
Semicolon backed away. “Uh... we, um, get bored. You know how it goes. We get bored and then, uh, we listen to things?”
“How. Exactly! Do you know?!” The five changelings in front of her shrank under her scream, leaving her to answer her own question with the only explanation. “You get out of the books.” She staggered back, falling to her haunches. “You all get out of the books. Why? What are you trying to do by getting out of the books?”
Subject Agreement rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s... it’s fun. I like looking through the houses. Each one is different.”
Viewpoint nodded. “I like the paintings. Roseluck has an awesome one of the night sky. You’d think flowers with her, but she surprised me.”
“You all do,” Cliffhanger said. “I mean, ponies are all the same. Sort of. But you’re all different too. Carrot pony has a rubber duck collection. And you don’t have a single one here!”
“I steal socks,” Tense Shift said. “Just one per house. Sometimes I throw it away. Sometimes I hide it somewhere else in the house.”
Stormy Night groaned, pulling at his face with a hoof. “Do you fools want all of Equestria to know we’re here? All it takes is one, just one of you to get spotted, and then comes the uproar. We’ve got a good thing going here! Why are you trying to screw it all up?”
“Oh gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.” Cliffhanger scoffed. “It’s not like we’re all trained infiltrators that have already spent all our lives under constant threat of discovery from the outside world. We clearly don’t know how to stay hidden.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Considering a little filly sniffed you out, you don’t have much right to brag.”
Semicolon smirked. “It’s not like any other ponies make a habit of staying up until three in the morning, you know. All the other mares in town don’t have Stormy to keep them company.” He dove into his book, narrowly dodging the bolt Twilight shot at him.
“Oh, you can’t hide from me!” Twilight jumped after him, her horn sparkling with magic as she vanished from sight amid the open pages.
“Whoa!” Viewpoint pointed after her. “She can do it too?!”
Stormy shrugged, smiling. “You’d be surprised what she can do.”
A flash of violet energy burst from the pages, followed by a changeling that smashed into the nearby shelves and sent a cascade of books tumbling down on top of him. “She’s crazy! Get her off me!”
The smile vanished from Stormy’s face. “Oh, crap.”
Twilight materialized in front of them all in another flash of magic. “If the lot of you are serious about exploring Equestria,” she said, advancing towards the cowering changeling, “the least you can do is learn some basic decency. So here’s a new rule: you will never talk about a mare’s bedroom or her nightly activities again! You will never talk about my personal affairs again! If you do, you are...” Twilight studied the creature at the end of her accusing hoof. “You are a different changeling.”
“No he’s not!” Stormy blurted. “That’s Semicolon, all right. I think he gets the message, Twilight. Can we get back to business now?”
“No, Semicolon’s eyes are bigger.” Twilight looked over Stormy’s face. “I’ve been living with you for months. You think I can’t tell the difference by now? Semi has big eyes, your ears are a little closer together, I know how to spot you all. So who is this?”
The changeling pulled his hooves away from his face. “I... I’m nobody. I’m nobody! They-they said you could help us, but I didn’t sign up for this! Please leave me alone!”
Twilight backed away from him. She turned, and Semicolon’s head stuck out of his book with a nervous grin. He was the only changeling that could meet her gaze as she swept her eyes across the room. Even Stormy wouldn’t look at her. “How many more don’t I know about?”
Stormy Night jerked his head, signalling behind her.
Twilight turned, and three more changeling heads were poking out of books next to her usual company. She spun a circle, gaping at all ten of them. Eleven when she counted Parenthetical’s return. “Are you changelings or rabbits?”
Cliffhanger’s yelped, flying off the wall. “He’s coming back! Everyone hide! Dragon boy’s running back!”
Stormy Night and Twilight drowned each other out shouting orders, but the changelings were gone before their sentences finished. They hurriedly threw all the books back on the shelves, the door’s knob rattling just as they finished. Twilight shoved him towards his hiding spot.
“Twi! Open up!” Spike banged on the door.
She took a pained look at the misorganized shelf she and Stormy had replaced. Another bang snapped her out of it, and she flung the door open.
Spike leaned against the door frame, bent over at his waist with one claw clutching his heaving chest, and the other holding a scroll out to her. “Letter... Celestia! Take it!”
Twilight gasped. “Is there an emergency? Is she okay? What’s going on?!”
“D-Dunno.” He tried to breathe, but a coughing fit racked his body. “Ci... cider frame up next. Gotta get back.”
The scroll dropped to Twilight’s hooves, and she watched him run off, slack-jawed and disbelieving. “Cider...?” Her hoof scraped the letter inside, and she closed the door behind it. And then she slumped against the wall and sank down to the floor. Her head spun round and round, and she clutched at it to try and keep it still.
Hoofsteps approached. “There are more comfortable places to take a nap than on the floor, you know,” Stormy said.
She shook her head. “Don’t start with me right now. Why didn’t you tell me we had more? How long have they even been here?”
“A couple weeks.” He sat next to her. “I spotted them sneaking by the library one night while you were asleep. They couldn’t believe their ears when I told them about what we did here.”
Twilight pushed herself up. “And why didn’t you tell me?”
“They were starving! I had to hook them up with the others and make sure they got sent off. I’m not even sure if they want to stay full time.” He risked a smile at her. “They may not want to after you the way you handled that poor guy.”
She kept silent until the offending grin faded away. “If we’re going to make this work, we need to trust each other. No more secrets. I can’t protect you if I don’t even know how many of you there are.”
He nodded. “Sounds fair.”
“And I want to tell Spike tomorrow. All of this goes up in smoke if just one pony wakes up in the middle of the night to find a changeling prowling around their house, and every escape plan I’ve prepared for you would be easier with his help. And the more we have to cover for, the more help we need.”
Stormy stared at her for a long, quiet moment before nodding again. “I trust you.”
“Good.” Twilight finally cracked a smile of her own and flicked him with her tail. “Just tell Tense Shift to stay away from my sock drawer. I keep them folded exactly how I like them, so I know who to come for if anything looks askew.”
“Noted,” Stormy said, picking up the scroll for her. “I’ll be sure to rummage around in there the next time I need to put the fear of the Queens in him.”
Twilight laughed, opening the letter. “Then here’s to a fresh start for this thing of ours, whatever it is.”
My dearest Twilight,
Your friend Parenthetical wishes me to tell you, “I effed up.”
You. Here. Noon. Sharp.
Princess Celestia
Spike later wondered why the front door seemed to have a head sized bulge in it, but Twilight was too busy hiding and trembling under her covers to answer. His new trophy proved quite adept at banging it back into place regardless.