Chapter 6: The Bereaved
Cheerilee was really happy when school began that year.
There were new things to learn, new games to play, new friends to make. She always liked that about a new year at school, it would never be the same as the last year, things would always change and there was always fun to be had. She liked learning, and she had never found class work boring. At the same time, she also really liked the other kids, and the last three years she had never failed to have fun at recess and after school.
This year, her motivations were a bit different.
Before this year, school had been fun but so had home, with a Daddy who loved her and a Mommy who was always merry and willing to talk to her. But now, Daddy was gone forever, and Mommy was always sad. She wasn't mean to her kids, the way some mothers got when things went bad, but she wasn't really there all the time. She would sit on the couch and ignore the chores, ignore Raspberry and herself, and do -- well, not much of anything.
Sometimes Mommy would try to read, but Cheerilee noticed that often when she had a book in her hooves she wouldn't even turn the pages, just hold it -- sometimes drop it unnoticed after a while. Sometimes she would just sit and stare out into space. Sometimes she would cry, especially when she looked at her picture of Daddy that she had always kept with her. And sometimes -- and this was the worst -- she would drink and drink and drink, and she'd get all giggly and silly, but Cheerilee could feel that there was something wrong with the way Mommy laughed then, as if she was really trying to cry but the liquor was somehow changing the tears into empty laughter. Then Mommy would sleep and sleep, and when she woke up she would be all cranky.
Cheerilee felt sorry for Mommy, and she helped out a lot at home. She did the chores Mommy couldn't do, or didn't want to do, and she did them pretty well -- she was a smart filly, and often all she needed was for Mommy to explain them to her. She even learned to cook -- Mommy thought that was dangerous, but Cheerilee knew fire was dangerous, and she was careful, so she only nearly burned down the kitchen once, and she caught that and dashed it out with water before it did more than singe a spot on the floor. By now, Mommy was taking Cheerilee's help for granted.
It seemed, now, almost as if Cheerilee was becoming a mommy herself. Raspberry needed watching, and Mommy wasn't paying attention to anypony -- or anything -- any more. When Cheerilee got home from school, half the time Raspberry was hungry, often she was dirty, sometimes she was hurt. It wasn't that Mommy was hurting her, Mommy just was letting her wander around the house, and three-year-old energy and curiosity was doing that all by itself. Fortunately, Raspberry seemed to have just enough common sense not to hurt herself too bad, but Cheerilee worried sometimes.
***
Once things got really bad. Cheerilee came home to find Raspberry nowhere around and Mommy asleep on the couch, a bad smell and several empty bottles lying around her, some spilled and the floor all messy. Cheerilee tried to wake Mommy but she was sleeping so deeply that all she would do was mumble and turn over when she shook her. Cheerilee searched all around the neighborhood, then the town, and some ponies said they'd seen her wandering across the bridge to the south, just an hour ago.
This was only the thin northern fringe of the Everfree, nothing like the hell that had claimed ... mustn't think about that! ... but it was nowhere for a three-year-old foal; the colts at school sometimes dared one another to go into this part of the forest. They went in groups and ran back out at the first few sinister noises. Little Raspberry had wandered in alone.
Cheerilee should have gotten help from town, but she was utterly terrified that if she didn't go in and get her little sister now, she would never see her again -- her daddy had gone off and she'd never seen him again, not even his body, as they'd shut him in the box and warned everypony that they didn't want to see him. She didn't want to lose her baby sister too. She was Raspberry's big sister, it was her job to keep her safe!
So the nine-year-old filly galloped across the bridge and went into the Everfree, wandering through the fringes -- how far could Raspberry have gotten on her little legs? -- and kept calling out. "Raspberry! Berryshine! Where are you?"
Finally, when it was quite late in the afternoon, she heard her sister's answering cry "Cheerilee! Here!"
Cheerilee sobbed in relief and galloped to meet her sister. But when she rounded a bend on what must have been a deer trail, and she could finally see Raspberry, she was surprised to find her riding on the back of a pony she vaguely knew from school. He was a lanky red Earth Pony colt, two years younger then Cheerilee herself, but already an inch taller. He was said to be very strong for his age.
"This yours?" he asked with a smile, jerking his chin to indicate his small purple burden.
That burden was hopping up and down with excitement at the sight of her big sister
"Cheery! Cheery!" cried Raspberry, almost tumbling off the red colt's back, only to be caught by one strong foreleg and set down on the ground between them.
"Raspberry!" said Cheerilee, "You scared all of us! Let's get you home!" She started to turn away, then remembered her manners. "Thank you for finding my sister," she said to the colt. What was his name ... "Mick?"
"Mac," he replied. "Little Mac. Where you going?"
"I have to go back home," she said. "And I'm Cheerilee."
"Ah know," replied Mac. "Where you going?"
She wondered if he were stupid. His voice was very deliberate and slow. "As I said," she said very slowly and carefully, "I am going home, because it is getting late." She again began to turn.
"Not that way." Mac said calmly.
"What?" asked Cheerilee.
"Not the way to Ponyville," Mac explained. "Deeper into the forest, that way."
"Oh," said Cheerilee with a sudden chill down her spine. The Sun was very low now, almost invisible through the dense forest. It was getting dark, a bit cooler, and strange noises were beginning to sound from somewhere which must have been uncomfortably close. "Um, which way to Ponyville?"
"Too far," he said. "Getting dark. Follow me." And he turned and started to walk in a steady trot in the opposite direction.
"Wait!" cried Cheerilee, in what was almost a terrified squeal. Immediately she felt ashamed -- she was two years older than him, a big filly, but she was reacting like a foal. She scooped up Raspberry, putting her little sister on top of her back, and cantered after Mac's retreating tail. She realized that Mac had a long, decisive stride, deceptive in the slowness of its motions, that covered a lot of ground with surprising speed.
Mac paused and looked back. "We want to get out of here," he said. "Night's coming." He waited until she had caught up, then resumed his measured but efficient progress.
"Where are we going?" she demanded.
"Home," he said. "Safe at home."
She vaguely remembered now that he was some kind of Apple. But that told her little -- there were Apples all through these parts.
"Where's your home?" she asked.
"Sweet Apple Acres," he said with a broad smile. "There's pie." By the sound of it, pie was one of his most favorite things in the world. "They'll prolly share."
With good reason, as Cheerilee and Raspberry found when they finally got out of that haunted forest, Mac dead calm, and Cheerilee trying not to start at every birdcall. There was pie -- apple pie, of course. Very good apple pie. And they did share.
She was almost sorry when the meal was over and Mac's father escorted them home.
***
There was some trouble afterward because Mommy had finally awoken after Cheerilee left, and run frantically around looking for both her children, having apparently not remembered that Cheerilee had gone in search of Raspberry. She made such a commotion that one neighbor said he'd call in the magistrate to check to see that the children were being properly taken care of, and that made Cheerilee's Mom even more upset.
"They'll take you away!" Mommy sobbed hysterically. "You and your little sister! You're all I have left of Falcon, I can't let that happen, what am I going to do?" The last word trailed off into a wail, and then Mommy got up, made for the liquor cabinet.
"No!" said Cheerilee, so loudly and clearly that her mother stopped in her tracks and turned in surprise. "Mommy, if you do that then you'll be all messy when the magistrate comes, and then you won't look very good for him, right?"
Slowly, Mommy nodded. "But what can I do?" she asked, more calmly this time, looking at Cheerilee.
"We'll clean up," said Cheerilee. "Bathe Raspberry. I'll bathe me. First I'll clean the living room, though."
Mommy nodded and took Raspberry up for her bath. Cheerilee put the empty bottles in a bag -- after a moment's thought, shoved the bottles under the house out back where nopony would see them, she could put them in the regular trash pickup another time, but not right now when some nosy magistrate might see them. She went back inside, got a mop and bucket and some soap flakes, and carefully scrubbed the floor around the couch until very little of the bad smell remained. Then she went all through the house, tidying up, making it look as if it had been well-tended by her mother.
After all this, she was smelly too, and so she also took a bath. And then it was late, so she went right to bed, and was still a bit tired when it was time to get up to go to school.
But when the magistrate did come, Mommy was completely sober. She told the lady a story of how she'd been sick that afternoon, and fallen asleep, and Raspberry had just wandered off while she was sick, and things like that just happen from time to time, especially when one is a recent widow whose husband fell in the service of the Realm, and she was very sorry but nothing like this would ever happen again. Cheerilee was surprised at just how well her mother could lie. The magistrate left with tears in her eyes, and there was no more talk of taking the Punch fillies away from their home.
Afterward, Mommy got drunk again, as if to make up for lost time. It was okay. Raspberry knew not to wander off again -- Cheerilee had explained to her exactly what might happen (and perhaps embellished the truth a little with a tale of the magistrate feeding bad little fillies to timberwolves). And Cheerilee simply made sure to come right home from school and do all the chores.
I'm strong, Cheerilee told herself. Mommy's weak right now, so I'll have to be strong until she's better. I can be strong.
I'm smart, too. Daddy always said I was smart, and I can always figure out what to do.
I have to, now. Someone has to be strong and smart, and that's me, now.
***
School, by contrast, was play, the play that she no longer had time for at home. She could learn new things and show off what she knew -- she risked the resentment of the other children when she did that, but soon discovered that she could avoid it and instead win their admiration by helping them with their work. She took to helping them regularly, and after a while the teacher noticed this and started using her as a kind of unofficial aide in the classroom.
Equestria had not yet been cursed with a fully-centralized education system complete with teacher's unions, and so learning was still more important than procedure. Cheerilee's help was welcome, and she learned even more herself in the process, things she might never have learned by merely reading and taking tests. She learned to handle other ponies -- her fellow colts and fillies, to be true -- but other ponies nonetheless. And she discovered she was a natural leader, at least in a school setting.
She got to play enough at school, though. There was before-school, and recess, and if she was clever with her chores she could even play a little bit after-school with her friends. She made a good friend about this time, a filly named Ivory Scroll, who even though two years older was impressed with Cheerilee's intelligence and willingness to work hard. Ivory Scroll introduced her to many other older children: Ivory was a popular filly herself, so her friendship meant theirs as well.
And she sometimes played with the colt who had rescued her from the Everfree, Little Mac who was bigger than her. He didn't talk much, but what he said made good sense; she had long since realized that, far from being stupid, he was easily as smart as herself -- he was just a bit shy, and not over fond of idle words.
Looking up at him one day as they stood talking together near the back of the playground, she asked "Why do they call you Little Mac, anyway? You're the biggest seven-year-old I've ever seen."
"Had a great-granduncle Mac. He's Big Mac," Little Mac explained. "Big pony. Ah look like he did."
"Oh, I see," said Cheerilee. "Did he ... ?"
"Eeyup," confirmed Little Mac. He had a peculiar way of saying yes and no. "Year ago." His ears drooped for a moment.
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Cheerilee very sincerely. "I ... last summer ... my Dad died." She had started saying 'Mom' and 'Dad' instead of 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' because she often hung out with the bigger fillies now, and only little fillies said 'Mommy' and 'Daddy', she'd discovered. "On a mission for the Realm ... he was very brave ..." She could speak no more, her eyes were watering, and she feared she was going to start crying in front of a little colt.
"Ah know," said her younger friend. "Folks at home talked about it."
"You never said anything --" she got out.
"Figgered yuh didn't want to talk 'bout it," he explained.
"I don't. I --," she managed to say before she started to cry for real, and she was horribly embarrassed by it.
To her surprise, not-so-little Mac gently, very gently bumped her. Her head sunk into his shoulder and she cried unashamedly, glad that his action was shielding her from the view of any other Ponies.
It was over quickly, and she pulled away, embarrassed for another reason. The older fillies, Ivory Scroll's friends, were already talking about colt-friends and special someponies, and she didn't want anypony to think that Mac was hers. She really liked him, of course, but thinking about colts that way was icky, and anyway he was two years younger than her -- an insuperable social distance in such matters.
"Thank you," she said. "You're a real friend."
"Glad to oblige," Mac replied.
"But they really shouldn't call you Little Mac," she continued, "You're too big for that. Would you mind if I called you Big Mac?"
"Eenope," said Big Mac. "Don't mind at all."
So, that afternoon and by Blackcherry Lee Punch, was Macintosh Apple renamed.
***
Hoofington in autumn was a glory of leaves: red, brown and yellow, making a carpet across the roads, on which the Earth Pony's hooves made soft scuffing sounds. Children were just getting out of school, and as she passed the place they took no notice of the gray-coated, blue-maned mare with the compass for a cutie mark. She was an adult, and hence entirely out of their social world.
For her own part, Princess Ceymi was mildly-interested watching the colts and fillies laugh and tumble and play. So small, she thought. So innocent. They're sheltered by their parents, only vaguely aware that there are dangers out in the world, predators that would eat them -- one way or another. She could feel their bright little emotions sparkling between them, catching the side-scatter of love and friendship not directed at herself. They think they're safe. They're unafraid.
She felt vaguely resentful. Her own innocence was long gone, she had lost the last shreds of it two months ago. And she would never again be unafraid, though she was determined never again to let her fear master her. Was this just part of growing up, even though she had been full-grown for decades now? Was all life just one long process of growing up by having one's illusions pared away, until there was nothing left but cold Reality?
It was an interesting philosophical question. She'd have to find an interesting Pony philosopher some day with whom to discuss it. Maybe he or she would even love whichever Mask Ceymi was using at that time. That would be nice. Dinner and good dinner conversation, all in the same encounter. Life didn't get any better than that.
Talking to most lings about it would have been useless. They would have simply gaped at her, as she were asking about the smell of sunlight or the taste of an algebraic equation. Come to think of it, most of them wouldn't have even known what was an algebraic equation. She might as well attempt conversation with the tunnel walls -- they'd be equally as entertaining.
There was one Changeling who would have fully understood, but of course she had passed right through innocence into -- guilt? Anti-innocence? Whatever it was, it made her cruel, and Ceymi knew far better now, than to open any portion of her heart to her Queen.
Which isn't how it's supposed to be, she thought with vague disquiet. She's the center of the Hive. She's supposed to be the center of my world. How can I distrust that?
But how can I trust it?
That was one paradox about which she would never speak to any Pony philosopher, unless she meant to kill him right after, and philosophers were too precious to ever kill. She'd learned that painfully enough, when ... she winced at the memory, and only through decades of experience did she prevent herself from showing it through her Mask. She was still having nightmares in which ... his ... form figured far too greatly, sometimes dying, sometimes accusing her of betraying him, sometimes just standing there.
Sometimes simply loving her, and those were the worst. Worse even than the ones where he somehow Shifted from his normal form to his mutilated corpse, as if he had somehow acquired Changeling powers. The ones where he simply loved her were the worst, because from those she would awaken, crying over what she had lost. Then she would lash herself with scorn for her weakness.
She was a predator, he had been prey. It was that simple. It should be that simple.
Why wasn't it that simple?
So deep was her reverie that two small forms actually colllided with her before she even noticed.
They were two unicorn fillies, around six and four respectively. She blinked with surprise, because they looked very similar -- both of them light blue, with bluish-white hair so fine and white that they it looked almost ethereal.
"Mixie! Pixie!" scolded a rather solid-looking stallion, upon whose back a third child was riding, identical in appearance to her two obvious sisters, but a mere foal, a year or so in apparent age. His coloration was similar to that of the three little fillies, just darker, with a dark blue coat and ligher blue mane. Ceymi would have automatically assumed him to be the father of the trio, were it not for the fact that he was no unicorn, but instead an Earth Pony.
The older two of the fillies looked at the stallion, then up at Ceymi.
"I'm sorry, lady," said the oldest, the one around six, "but you weren't watching where you were going either and you could have hurted us, which is bad, right?" She screwed up her face in thought. "So you should really be sorry too, and couldn't you get in trouble for knocking around little fillies like me?"
The four-year-old simply looked at her and said "I'm so sorry!" and burst out crying. A Pony might have been fooled by this, but Ceymi noticed her casting the occasional sly looks at both Ceymi herself and her father, as if judging the effect of the performance.
The foal on the stallion's back simply said "Ugly," to Ceymi and then blew her a raspberry
"Trixie!" said the stallion sternly. "No! You're being a bad little filly!"
The foal burst out crying.
"Sorry, ma'am," the stallion said, "but my three daughters are going through an -- uh -- difficult phase. All of them. At the same time," he muttered.
"It's all right," said Ceymi -- who was being Starry Eyes -- chuckling. "No harm was done. It was actually rather amusing."
She wasn't lying. Running into these three little brats had shaken her mind out of rather dark channels.
"Well, I'm Gorlois Lunar Spark," the stallion said. "And these are Mixie, Pixie and Trixie Lulamoon, from the oldest to the youngest."
"Three children," commented Starry Eyes. "Must be difficult."
"Five, actually," said Gorlois, looking a bit harried. "And my wife's expecting a sixth." Now he looked almost desperate.
"Oh, my!" Starry Eyes laughed. "That must be a bit difficult at times."
"Tell me about it," the stallion said. Then he laughed. "But I love them all very much. Wouldn't trade any of `em for a million bits."
"Two," commented the eldest one, Mixie. "I'm worth at leasttwo million."
"So you are, sweetie!" said Gorlois, grabbing her and rubbing her mane, despite his offspring's protests.
"I'm Starry Eyes," Ceymi said, smiling at Gorlois.
"Are you new to town?" he asked her.
"No," she explained. "I grew up here. Daughter of Misty Dawn and Gray Oak. I'm just on the road a lot."
"Well," Gorlois said. "I've got to get these three little angels home." Two of the little angels clustered around his legs, while the littlest one, Trixie, gave Starry Eyes a decidedly dirty look from atop his back.
"And I'm looking forward to coming home again. Haven't seen my parents since March."
"Well then I'll let you go see them," said Gorlois, smiling to her. "Maybe we'll meet again."
"Perhaps," agreed Starry Eyes, while privately thinking to herself that those were the three nastiest little fillies she'd met in a long time. Ceymi also thought that, given his situation, the chance of getting much in the way of love directed at her by him was fairly low, and she did not want to play either doppleganger or three's-a-crowd with his wife in the home town of one of her most useful Masks. Cultivating a good identity took a certain sophistication; that was what separated professional from shoddy Infiltrating.
What was more, she didn't want to have to be around those three little brats again.
She made her way from the east to the west side of town, somewhat lightened of heart by the encounter, and glad that maternity within The Hive was far less demanding in terms of obligations than parenthood among Ponies. She truly did not envy Gorlois his lot in life, even though he seemed to love his family, and was probably well-loved in return -- when they weren't literally riding him, as the tiniest of those three little terrors was doing. For some reason Pony fathers were especially easy to manipulate by their fillies -- it didn't work the same for Pony mothers, or for colts. In over two decades of Infiltration, she'd never quite figured out the reason why that was the case, merely noticed the reality of the principle.
She could have taken a more direct route -- the house in question sat right on the edge of the Everfree -- but she judged it better to enter from the main road and then walk through town than to slip out of the Everfree like the inequine thing she was in truth. Part of the craft of Infiltration is to behave as normally as possible save when one ws forced to behave abnormally to survive, and she was here establishing that a perfectly normal Pony matching the physical description of Starry Eyes was walking through town as would anypony, rather than stalking in out of a hell-forest.
A train chuffed by as she did so; a freight headed southeast toward Manechester and the coastal cities beyond. Those were getting more and more common every time she came back here. One day, the webwork of rails would link the whole land, and it would be harder and harder for creatures lurking in the shadows outside Pony firelights to remain undetected. This might someday be a problem -- hopefully, if it did it would happen long after her own time.
There stood the familiar house, a large, rambling wooden cabin surrounded by a rail fence, seeming to be a part of the forest behind it. She saw a familiar pony in the front yard -- light blue coat, curly golden mane -- bending to scythe away the excess growth of the lawn. Her Mask's mother -- Misty Dawn.
Starry Eyes smiled happily, in a mood which was utterly unfeigned. because it was shared by her true self. She stepped over slowly and stealthily -- quite in character for this identity. Quite in character for Misty's identity, this failed to work.
Misty looked up, caught sight of her. The older mare's still-pretty face lit up in utter joy.
"Starry!" she cried, running over to her and catching her in a warm embrace. "It's so good to see you!"
Love -- pure and utterly sincere maternal love -- flooded into Ceymi. Its volume was so great that she needed open herself just a little to tap it, such a little drain that its effects would be unnoticeable to the Pony. When with Starry's parents, Ceymi never needed to take a great portion of their love, since even a tiny portion was more than filling. There was no harm, no danger either to herself or to anypony else.
Sometimes she wished that she could always live like this, maybe not with them forever, because that would be strange for a full-grown mare -- but with somepony or someponies who could love her like that, so that she could be safe and fed forever. She'd entertained fantasies about it -- she was smart and strong, she could easily enhance their own lives as well, so that they would give to one another and nopony need suffer. There would only be love and friendship, mutual happiness, benefit to all ...
Misty broke off the hug, ran over to the front door, opened it, called inside. "Gray!" she shouted. "Gray, come out here! Our filly's come back home!"
If only that were possible. But there was no way the thousands of hungry lings in the Hive -- not one in a hundred possessing the mental capacity for real Infiltration rather than mere Shifting -- could live like that. It was all the Hive could do to get enough surplus love to keep the pool sufficiently full for mere survival, and slow reproductive expansion. There was no way that everyling could be as talented as herself, and it was unthinkable to let the less talented lings simply perish.
Ceymi could not live like this forever. She could never really be free. She had too many responsibilities.
She was loyal to her Hive. She could not be other. It was who she was.
Gray Oak came out, moving a bit slowly -- he needs to take better care of himself, she thought with some concern -- and his gray, silver-eyed face, framed within untidy brown hair, was broadly beaming at her.
"Starry," he said, laughing. "Dear little Starry." He hugged her, and more love flooded into her.
No, she thought as the parents of the mare she had found dead in the Everfree so long ago led her into their home, I can't live like this forever. Changelings can't live like this all the time -- we're not made to live like this, it's not our way. The strong few in the Hive must Infiltrate to feed the weak many, even as the weak many must sum their labors in the service of the strong few. That is the way of a Hive.
But right now, I really need this to heal. I'll spend some time here, where I am safe and warm and loved, where I don't have to hide save by being Starry Eyes, getting love from the ones I -- care about, she told herself, only care about. The thought of returning love opened her mind's eye to a nightmare of ion arcs and exploding steam and cooked flesh who used to be somepony special to her, and she swore she would never let that happen again.
I need rest. I need healing. I need my family.
And, as she sat on the living room couch and drank fruit juice and told the parents of Starry Eyes the carefully-edited version of her recent travels, prepared to tell them the from-Starry-Eyes'-imagined-point-of-view version of the strange disappearance of her old friend Thermal Soar (whom her parents had long ago figured out that their daughter really loved), she did not pause to reflect on the fact that a true Changeling has no family, no friends, outside her Hive.
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*missing quotation mark
You may or may not have intended this, but I find it worth noting that Ceymi was pondering the idea of illusions just before bumping into Trixie's family, considering who Trixie turns out to be in your stories.
On a less serious note...
"Dinner and good dinner conversation, all in the same encounter. Life didn't get any better than that."
Miss Ceymi, I am intrigued. How does one manage to have a dinner conversation without also having a dinner?
4223510
That's an extremely good point! My original idea was just that, since Trixie had actually already been born, it was just too funny to imagine a toddler-age Trixie bumping into Ceymi not to do the scene, given that the Lulamoons live in Hoofington according to the version of Trixie's family I'm showing here. I thought she was adorably obonoxious, and I tried to keep her two older sisters in character for the Pony POVerse too, keeping in mind their immaturity at his point. .
Well, let's just say that if you enjoy your conversation with Ceymi enough, you are her dinner. And Ceymi knows exactly how to be likeable to Ponies.
Though that doesn't mean she's going to really hurt you. She's also competent enough to feed without damaging.
That was interesting read. Sometimes very strange, especially with that cthulhu crossovering. I liked overall that little references like that one with manticores.
4234126
I'm glad you liked it.
The Mythos got folded by Alex Warlorn into his Cosmic lore and I happily used it, as I'm a long-standing Mythos fan.
The manticore reference ... heh ... have you read Phoenix_Dragon's Without a Hive, from which I expanded upon the character of Princess Ceymi for this story? You really should, both because Ceymi's reaction is retrospectively ironic, and because it's a great story. Really great, maybe the best thing anyone's ever written about a Changeling.
4234218
Yeah I actually pointed that one because its ironic.
But I wouldn't say without a hive is best thing with changeling as main character, its interesting because of plot and idea but sometimes lack of that kind of addictive writing style. Its good piece of fanfic artwork though.
But anyway say do Gray Oak was reference to Gary Oak or it just coincidence?
4234278
The name comes straight from Phoenix_Dragon's story. Ceymi, her identity as Starry Eyes, and her identity's parents are Phoenix_Dragon's creation, not my own.
4234278
I'm really happy to hear you like my writing style. Though Phoenix_Dragon has a good style too, extremely lucid and logical. He also does excellent characterization, and even more to the point character development. This story I wrote is about, in part, Ceymi developing in the opposite direction than her son Nictis would -- under the malign influence of Chrysalis.
Thank you! I get so tired of Chrysalis redemption stories for that exact reason, she's unrepentant (and kinda dumb).
Anyway, I was hoping if you wrote a changeling story it would be different. A speculative fiction debate between two ponies arguing back and forth about if and how ponies and changelings could be reconciled. One side of the debate would be a cynic pointing out examples from changeling history and making the case that changelings could never fit in because of their fundamentally alien attitude towards other sapients and maybe point out a few writings of long past changelings to prove his point while the other is an idealist with ideas about how to reconcile ponies and changelings.
4323358
Paradise, through Goldie (aka, later, as "Granny") Pie -- Pinkie's grandmother -- tries to persuade Ceymi of just this point. Ceymi is terrified by it -- not because Paradise is hostile, but because its message is so seductive toward her. Proof of its seductiveness is this thought she has right before the end of the story
but then she thinks this
In other words, she can see how she could live like this -- with her cunning she could probably even hide from her Queen -- but she can't see how her whole Hive could live like this. And she won't abandon her own people.
In the end the Changelings are reconciled with and accepted into the other Three Kinds of Equestria. But it doesn't happen in Ceymi's time.
4324029
I'm not sure I understand.
I wanted a story exploring how alien the changelings are to the ponies and whether that would allow true peace.
I don't get where the benevolent Eldritch abomination comes in or how it only relates to a single queen.
4423711
Ceymi's loyalty to Chrysalis and even more so to the Hive, coupled with her upbringing, prevent her from grasping that true symbiosis is possible. It's not easy, though -- and in Ceymi's case it would require rebelling against Chrysalis, as Chrysalis is not willing to contemplate any course save conquest.
Ironically, in the future, one of the forces which drives the other Changelings to seek peaceful symbiosis with Equestria is Chrysalis -- or to be precise, her megalomaniacal desire to first become High Queen of the Changelings, and then of the whole Earth. This gives the other Hives the choice of subjugation by Chrysalis, or alliance with Equestria.
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Ceymi fears Paradise because it tempts her with her own happiest fantasy -- being able to live at peace and unafraid with the Ponies. Ceymi is certain that this is not possible because she assumes that the Changelings must remain secret and (correctly) assumes that most Changelings are incapable of long-term Infiltration.
The seduction of Paradise for the Changelings should be obvious when one considers that I got the idea for the Daughters of Paradise from Ask Fluffle Puff. Paradise offers a world of love, and the Changelings would make ideal symbionts with the Ponies of Paradise, if the World That Was Lost could be restored.
This would mean, however, accepting the predominance of Paradise. And Queen Chrysalis is not about to accept the predominance of anyone, anypony or anything save for herself. Even the other Changeling Queens, if they knew of Paradise, would suspect its motivations, and Chrysalis is a psychopath, by both Changeling and Pony standards.
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Well, all my stories so far are strongly connected (the weakest connections probably being with An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses which is explicit AU though based on Shadow Wars continuity, as should be obvious from the fact that Luna's flirting with Twilight during the whole thing) and Substitute Mentor (which is mostly set in two alternate Equestria Girls universes, though the frame with the Pony versions of Celestia, Luna and Twilight is Shadow Wars continuity). But yes, I've been thinking about writing stories set in between Collateral Damage and Nightmares Are Tragic (Luna's Return from Exile). I've also been thinking about doing stories about Ceymi set both before and after this one.
Here's the thing. Ceymi's not actually my OC. She's Phoenix_Dragon's, from Without a Hive. I wrote Collateral Damage in part because it seemed obvious to me that Ceymi had once had a very, very bad experience involving her seduction by Pony culture. It also seemed obvious to me that Ceymi was the Noble Top Enforcer to Chrysalis' Big Bad, and that this created a certain tension between the two characters. Chrysalis, essentially, cuts Ceymi these orders because she's trying to avert what she perceives as Ceymi's possible future Heel-Face Turn.
What makes the situation even more tragic is that Ceymi wasn't actually contemplating such a turn. If she had been left to her own devices she would have continued simply wandering Equestria, collecting love for the Hive, and enjoying her little vacations with Starry Eyes' Hoofington family and with Thermal Soar in Appleloosa. Ceymi is actually more loyal to the Hive than is Chrysalis, something Chrysalis cannot grasp.
Which means that all the suffering in this story was, essentially, pointless.
Anyhow, unless I made this very incompatible with Without a Hive, Ceymi's future is constrained. In a very bad way. Her past isn't so constrained, though, nor is her future between now and her fate in Without a Hive. Though note: while Starry Eyes is an explorer, she's not a swashbuckling adventurer -- Ceymi is an extremely pragmatic sort of ling who doesn't take pointless risks for their own sake. (The irony of her Starry Eyes Mask is that Ceymi really is an explorer, but the territory she's exploring for real is Equestria -- her real home is deep in the Palomino, where it shades into the Badlands).
I know exactly who is Chrysalis' wayward daughter, and what's going to happen to her.
The other obvious source of stories originating from this is canon-filling the 19 years between this story and Nightmares Are Tragic, in Ponyville. I set up the basic situations for several important characters who are minor in the show, but very important to themselves and each other: in particular, for Strawberry, Cheerilee, Berryshine and Big Mac. By the end of Collaterla DamageStrawberry's going mad. Cheerilee is subbing for her as effective "parent". Cheerilee's also met and befriended two characters who are going to be important in her life: Ivory Scroll and Big Mac. Berryshine is going to have to grow up with her elder sister as her main positive role model
Now we know some things from a combination of canon and fanon. Though I'm obviously Toy Shipping them, Big Mac and Cheerilee do not succeed in getting together; on the other hand they remember one another fondly in adulthood, as is obvious from "Hearts and Hooves Day." Strawberry's nowhere to be seen two decades later, but Pina Colada (who is much younger than her two half-sisters) must have come from somewhere. Berryshine becomes both an alcoholic and a single mother from a very early age (neither of which sound good).
I'm actually working on a story set six years later, in which Big Mac and Cheerilee are the main teenaged characters, supported by Ivory Scroll, Apple Fritter and Greenshoot (Golden Harvest's eldest brother, around Ivory Scroll's age) in which among other thing the teenagers are watching a group of children -- Applejack, Berryshine, and Landscape and Golden Harvest Carrot, who are the ones who originally used that old clubhouse AJ later gave to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. If you've followed my stories, I've referenced Landscape once or twice -- he's somepony very important to Applejack's backstory.
I may wind up writing and publishing this fic too. I think it has some interesting character possibilities.
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Then I look forward to your stories.
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Yep. That was Goldie ("Granny") Pie. Channeling Paradise.
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The nickname came from her father. She loved her father -- that's why she's gone by that name her whole subsequent life.
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Why nonsense! And as soon as he gets back from this mission alive, he's got a cure for cancer to share with everypony!
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Part of my reason for writing the story was to show off my Chrysalis. She's flat-out evil, for precisely the same reason that the Night Shadows are evil: she believes that the increased security which comes from domination is better than the increased payoff of cooperating in indefinitely-iterated positive-sum games. (This is how Fluttershy would put it in the future, and Fluttershy's analysis here would be quite relevant if at this point she understood Chrysalis, which she doesn't because at this point Fluttershy is a year-old foal).
Chrysalis fought her way to leadership among the Changelings of the Hive she was forced to join (it's a long story) at a time when they were cowering in terror before the outside world, and assumes that the solution is to make the outside world cower in terror before them. And, to implement this policy, the Changelings themselves have to cower in terror before herself. She considers the notion of leadership through felt-love or cooperation
She's actually a very non-traditional Changeling. To begin with, like Fluttershy, she's only half-Changeling, but in her case the Changeling attributes manifested earlier. Her base form, unlike Fluttershy's, is clearly Changeling (though she spent most of her early life apparently a Zebra). She has the aggressiveness of her Zebra genes and upbringing, which is part of the problem: the traditional Changeling solution of hiding in the shadows and scavenging up what food-love happens to be available is far too passive for her. She wants to conquer.
Chrysalis is a classic example of the outsider who joins a nation and becomes a revolutionary dictator. Some examples of the same sort of person in Human history include Napoleon Buonaparte (Corsican who became the Emperor of France), Iosif ("Stalin") Dzhugashvili (Georgian who became the dictator of Russia) and Adolf Hitler (Austrian who became the dictator of Germany). Such outsiders are not bound by the traditions of their adopted home, and hence often rule in a very extreme fashion. Where their new home's traditions stand in their way, they may kick them aside or trample them beneath.
Although some of the events of her origin were not under her control and damaged her sense of morality, others were under her control, and given different choices she might have become a very different Changeling. Indeed, she might have become the Mirror-Chrysalis, whose concept of eusociality embraces all sapient life, and whose innovation was to become the source of rather than the obstacle to the Reconciliation in her world. (That world's Chrysalis is the Element of Love, while that world's Cadance is Lust or Destructive Love).
My Chrysalis doesn't (at this point) hate her own Changelings, though she is utterly ruthless in doing what she feels she must to retain control of them and keep their loyalty. The whole exercise with Thermal Soar was about keeping her dominance over Ceymi as much as it was about keeping the secret of the Hive's existence: indeed, the way Chrysalis went about it (as Ceymi realizes) was unnecessarily risky and violent. Chrysalis was rationalizing: she wanted to harm Equestria and used this as an excuse to do so. This is the same sort of thinking that, two decades from now, will lead to the attack on Canterlot.
The scene where Chrysalis kills Thermal is very much anti-erotic, even though there's a certain degree of sexual explicitness. Some people have said that I should rate the story "M" for this. I think "Teen-Sex-Gore" works just fine.
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And of course this symbiosis event DOESN'T EXIST YET.
Bloody hell, this is dark.