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Changeling Amnesia1,863 words
Princess Twilight Sparkle1,684 words
The pegasus with a blank face2,085 words
The unicorn with a foal's heart2,792 words
The pony with a life of attention1,876 words
The pitied pegasus2,038 words
The mare who never cries1,588 words
The showpony2,122 words
Princess Resolution2,363 words

Princess Resolution

Twilight closed the diary, and looked at the sleeping changeling on the couch. She looked nothing like the vicious bugs she and her friends fought during the royal wedding. But the princess knew she was one. If she wouldn’t have had left the hive thanks to her talent, she would’ve stayed loyal to them and helped them during the invasion. In that case Twilight would have already reported her to the guards. But this wasn’t the case.

On one hoof, Amnesia stole other ponies lives, and through replacing them she fed off of their friends, families and everypony she could. But on the other hoof, those ponies weren’t feeling satisfied with their lives. They were, as Amnesia said, too weak to change anything; and that’s where the changeling lend them her helping hoof. Amnesia might not have been perfect, but she never truly stole anypony’s life; they gave it to her, knowing the consequences, knowing what it would cost them and everypony around them.

Despite the consequences, they agreed to her terms. Twilight was unsure of Amnesia’s innocence, but according to her diary, she wasn’t guilty either.

“Finished reading?” Migraine asked, holding a tray with cups of coffee on it.

“Yes.”

“Coffee?” the psychologist offered and Twilight accepted. “What did you find?”

“A lot of things,” she replied. “But not what I was looking for.”

“You were looking for a proof that she was guilty,” Migraine said, taking a seat in an armchair. “And yet found none.”

“But I didn’t find proof that she was innocent either!”

“What counts as innocence, Princess Twilight?” the stallion asked, taking a sip from his coffee. “She’s a changeling; you can’t just expect her to make friends out of the blue. They evolved this way for a reason. At least she didn’t kidnap anypony against their will, and forced them into a cave, so she could live their life.”

“That may be true, but she still could’ve tried to make friends!”

“Put yourself in her horseshoes for a second: she was trying to hide from her hive and live a life. This way she got the best of two worlds. Or do you think that the changeling queen would’ve just let one of her subjects roam openly in Equestria? Until the royal wedding nopony even knew changelings existed; and the queen would’ve certainly made sure it stayed that way no matter what.”

Twilight lowered her head; Migraine had a point. Not only that, the psychologist proved another valid fact: that Twilight was still unable to feel empathy towards the changeling. She was lying there, waiting for somepony to help her, and Twilight was still trying to ignore her calls for help.

“I have searched Amnesia’s saddlebag, and found a letter,” Migraine said suddenly. “It was addressed to me, but after I read it, I thought maybe you would wish to see it too. I don’t know when she wrote it, but I think that hardly matters now.”

He held out a folded piece of paper, and Twilight took it with her magic. She slowly unfolded it, and took a look at the letter; she immediately noticed the way the letter was written. The letters were nothing like the ones in the diary; these were written with shaking hooves; it was full of smudges and corrections, but the most important part of it was still legible.

Dear Migraine!

We fear that we’re close to an end. We don’t know what kind of end that might be, but we know it’s the end of everything. We should’ve known sooner. We should’ve known better.

‘Amnesia’ never existed. The moment she accidentally stole the memories of Fizzler, a changeling that used to prank her in the hive, she stopped existing. Amnesia only lived a short life, and when she made that poor decision of getting revenge on Fizzler, she paid a heavy price for it; her decisions were no more hers alone.

From that point, everything was a downward spiral; a tragic ending more and more inevitable by every passing moment. And now we realize what foolish decisions we made. Because when we thought that Amnesia ended, that she had disappeared beneath the abundance of memories we have gathered from more and more ponies, we were mistaken.

She was the one pushing us to gather more and more memories; the one trying to make it so crowded, that inevitably we were all crying for help. She knew we were weak alone, but when she pulled us here together, we started working towards the same end. Her end.

She wanted to die for so long, wanted to disappear, but we wouldn’t let her. We were stronger, but she was smarter. And when we finally knew what she was trying to do, it was too late. She mixed us, those so many little ponies into one. So many different lives, but all with the same aim in the end: to forget it all.

We wish it could’ve been better. We wish it could’ve gone in another way. But a changeling is a changeling; they manipulate, whether you want them or not. But we are not changelings; and along with Amnesia, we now all want the same.

Find a way to erase it. To erase it all. We want to disappear. To forget and never be reminded. We want Amnesia.

We want her, to have a second chance.

“What could this mean?” Twilight asked.

“To be honest? Not sure,” Migraine replied. “My best theory, to be honest, is that Amnesia herself was a weak changeling. When she accidentally stole the memories of this ‘Fizzler’, the influence of his memories practically suppressed Amnesia's own thoughts and decisions. From that moment Amnesia' s true personality tried to manipulate everything to the point where she could end it all. Fizzler probably wanted to feed on ponies, so Amnesia steered his intentions towards an end, where she could gather enough ponies with the same intention; gather enough personalities that every other aim becomes irrelevant, except the one to end it all.”

Twilight was sitting in the Canterlot library’s forbidden wing. As a princess, she now had access to all the spells that were ever recorded, but were barely ever used. She hadn’t thought of a way to explain it to the other princesses yet, but right now there was an innocent creature in pain; after reading the letter she was sure Amnesia was innocent.

Or is she? She thought suddenly.

She stopped reading the book for a second. The letter stated that changelings were manipulative, whether they wanted it or not. So if she was manipulated, then Amnesia was not innocent. But how can one tell, if someone, who practiced lying and deceiving during their whole life, is actually telling the truth?

No spell could prove it; and she couldn’t think of anything that might have helped. She decided she’d learn the memory erasing spell first, and then question Amnesia. That is, if anything comes into her mind until then.

She turned another couple of pages, and found a spell that did exactly what she needed it to do. She wrote down all she needed, then tucked her notes into her saddlebag, and took flight to return to Migraine.

The living room was still quiet; the changling was sound asleep, and Migraine was sitting in his armchair, reading some newspapers. Suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the window; Migraine carefully stood up, took a peek from behind the drawn curtains, then opened the window.

“I could’ve let you in through the door,” he said to the purple alicorn.

“I know, but it was a bit faster this way,” Twilight replied. “I still have some questions for her; for Amnesia.”

“I’ll try to wake her up,” Migraine replied, locking the window.

Twilight took out her parchment, and read the instructions for the spell once more. She read it during her flight there over and over again, just to make sure she understood it perfectly. Just when she finished, Migraine announced that Amnesia was ready.

“Amnesia, I wanted to ask you something,” Twilight started. “Starting off with why you were trying to manipulate me?”

“So, you’ve seen through it all,” the changeling said, adding a weak chuckle. “But you still can’t figure it out yourself?”

“I know you pushed everypony in your head to get more and more memories inside; I know you wanted it all to be erased; but I think they were the ones holding you back from going over a limit, from stealing somepony’s life, instead of accepting when they offered it.”

“True; they were holding me back. But tell me princess, do you know what it’s like being locked up in your own head?” she asked, looking at Twilight with a blank stare. “I tried to give that stupid Fizzler nightmares, and I ended up knowing all he knew! I never asked for this, I never wanted any of this, and the first client that I should’ve had was myself!”

“You were trying to manipulate me into thinking you were innocent!” Twilight accused.

“Because I am! I never asked for this ability, I never even learned to control it!” the changeling started crying. “All I ever wanted was to leave it all behind, but every minute in the past year I was tortured by memories I never asked for! Could you ever know what it’s like?”

“No. I couldn’t.” Twilight replied after a short pause.

“I’m not sure I want to know any of the things I’ve done!” Amnesia cried out. “I’ll accept my past is gone; I don’t think I can go back, to live the way it was before, but I don’t bemoan the life I’ve lost!”

“Because you never had it,” Twilight whispered. “I’ll... help you.”

A calm expression crawled on the face of the changeling; she closed her eyes, and smiled.

“I need you to remain still; I’ve never done this spell before, and I can’t say I would like to practice it,” the princess warned.

“Whatever you do, know that we are thankful,” Amnesia replied.

After it was done, Twilight sat down in an armchair, rubbing her forehead. Her head hurt, especially her horn; that spell was fairly exhausting. She let out a heavy sigh, trying to collect her confused thoughts. Her spell was nothing like Amnesia’s talent; she simply erased memories, she never got a glimpse of what truly went on in the changeling’s head.

The changeling lay on the couch, limp as a rag-doll. Twilight now understood why Amnesia continuously referred to her clients as ‘drooling empty shells’; the saliva from her mouth was pouring like a small waterfall.

“Will she be alright?” she asked Migraine.

“Your work ends here; mine has just started,” the stallion replied.

“How will she ever recover?”

“If your spell’s effect is similar to Amnesia’s spell, I’d say that in two days she’ll be fine. The memories of the basic functions, like eating, drinking, sleeping, moving and talking require little effort to re-learn. Speaking is a somewhat basic thing too, so she’ll be remembering how to do that in less than a week. From then on, however, things get difficult.”

“Difficult?” Twilight inquired. “How so?”

“Usually that’s the point when patients learn that they were someponies before, and they somehow forgot it all.” Migraine explained. “In most cases a little fake detective work, some newspaper clippings of disappeared ponies will establish the fact in them that it’s mostly hopeless; with giving them something else to keep them occupied they will forgot about it pretty soon. But in her case...”

“You’re unsure what will happen, because she’s a changeling,” Twilight concluded, and the stallion nodded.

“She will question more than just who she was. She’ll ask what she was, and why can’t she go outside. It will be pretty difficult.”

“Who will help her through that time?” the purple alicorn asked.

“I will,” Migraine answered. “I’m the only thing that she has from her past.”

Twilight slowly nodded. She grabbed her things, and headed for the door. One last question popped into her head.

“Doctor?”

“Yes, princess?” He asked, already standing over the now unconscious changeling. One of his hooves was holding a napkin, and he was already cleaning up the changeling’s drool.

“You love her, don’t you?” Twilight asked.

“She never noticed,” Migraine replied after a long pause. “No matter how many times we met, she never mentioned it, and I was too cowardly to tell her. Maybe, just maybe now I’ll have a second chance too.”

Twilight shook her head; she couldn’t believe what she heard, or what she just did. She left the house through the door, heading for the palace. She wanted it all behind her, wanted to forget that she needed to explain it all to the princesses.

But most of all, she wanted a second chance. Being a princess put huge replonsibilities on her shoulders. Plus now everypony knew her face; and they all wanted to give a princess special treatment. But in her case, even Amnesia couldn’t have helped; she was one of the four alicorns; fat chance of giving her to any backwater village’s caring nurse.

She took flight; the skies already turned pink, orange and red around her, as the sun started disappearing on the horizon. She looked down to the streets of Canterlot; ponies were coming and going, doing their everyday business. Twilight wished she could have lived her ordinary life in Ponyville again. She wanted to befriend new ponies, wanted to have fun with them, wanted to feel the stress of not being able to finish something until a deadline, to feel the anger for having her plans ruined.

She wanted to feel alive again, even if it meant giving up everything she ever remembered.

Author's Note:

Whew, that took longer than expected. Well, I'll be gone for a little vacation; good thing I already finished the next story I'm gonna post. I think Kelly and I'll have some time to review it... hopefully. Until then, I hope y'all enjoyed reading my work as much as I enjoyed working on it. I'll try to improve my writing style in the future; having such a beautiful and talented lady at my side, like my dearest Kelly, will only benefit that. So, prepare that during this autumn, I will probably be back with another work of fiction. Maybe Leftovers, maybe something else. Definitely changeling related.

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