One changeling is sent far from the swarm, hurt and stranded; forced to listen and unable to act as terrible events take place that will change her future forever.
When everything she knows is lost, she'll have to find her own path. She will confront the demons of her past, the harsh realities of the present, and the uncertainty of her future.
Season 2 based story.
Follows the prequel "In the Shadow of a Special Day", which is not required to understand the story.
Rated T for mild to moderate violence and minor obscenities. Dark, but not a shock fic.
Cover art is "Changeling Angst" by the-ghostcat-pir8nin at Deviantart.
Chapters (12)
cant wait for the next chapter when is it?
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Ok, you've given us a good setup for another story in the "Shadow" verse. It makes sense that with all the fighting and confusion going on, there could have been stragglers that for one reason or another, didn't make it back to the changeling rally point after the attempted invasion failed. You lay out a pretty reasonable structure for the hivemind that the Swarm shares, and I can deal with the concept that a species that has that many insectile traits might also be a functionally exoskeletal creature as well. It's a pity to see that Silk's not only alone, but she's just found out that everything she believed about her Queen has been flawed from the beginning, and that she's just been thrown away.
So, as a Scout, she should have a bit more autonomy in the first place, so it will be interesting to see where she decides to take things from here. Of course, the first test is going to be surviving the upcoming pony encounter. Getting treatment for her injuries is going to be tricky; I suspect that using the transformative magic can only take things so far, hopefully, any bleeding will be in pony-colored blood after the fact, though it will be interesting to see what color any bloody bandages turn once they are away from the body. for any length of time.
I'll be looking forward to seeing where you take this next.
Poor her, the last of her kind.
Well, that was unpleasant. Had to delete a disruptive post from a parasprite.
If anypony has any constructive criticism, or wants to point out any small flaws such as spelling, grammar, the apparent forgetting of a word, then they're more than welcome to tell me, and I'll take their post into account.
*looks at still unitalicized ItSoaSD*... most of the time. Procrastination! *starts working on second chapter*
yes
Well, I'm really glad I watched you after reading ItSoaSD. This looks Excellent!
So on she went for hours, walking toward where the swamp. A little lost rowboat out at sea, looking desperate for safe harbor. Then, the Queen began to dream.
Where the swamp what?
And that's the only grammar or spelling error I can find right now. Good job!
623423 I'm glad you like it.
And thank you for catching that error.
figures Fluttershy finds her lol cant wait for the next chapter
This is quite well written. I'm looking forward to the next chapter.
Very emotional POV of silky. Great chapter.
" go to be even later than her"
go to bed
"She made her way to the chicken coop, expecting to hear them crow" <-- missing full stop
"She dashed towards the noise as she She was very worried tried calling out to her."
Missing sentence.
"She was very worried tried"
missing connector - and tried
"Fluttershy carefully flew down next to the poor thing, walking down a slick muddy slope sounding like a poor idea to her."
as walking ... sounded like
I'd advise proof-reading once more.
640426 Well, that first one wasn't an error if
Fluttershy: awake 0530-2130
Applejack: awake 0400-2200
If I'm using a comparative, Applejack would "wake up even earlier and go to bed even later than her". No error there. It may be missing a "than her" or a semicolon, but that depends on the flow of the sentence.
Ok, I can accept that Fluttershy is a logical pony to have come across Silk. She was in a stream, and the only logical points where she could have come into the Ponyville area are by Fluttershy's cottage, or over on the far side of the Sweet Apple Acres orchards. Her transformation seems to be pretty complete, even if she did severely tax her reserves to manage it. I suppose it's a good thing that she needs very little energy to hold a transformation once it's in place.
I know that with Fluttershy, her compassion would override any suspicions she might have (even allowing for just coming back from being in Canterlot during the invasion attempt) so Silk has lucked out and gotten a mostly free pass on what would have likely been a lot of suspicion from the Mane Case members, at least for now. I'm sure that Twilight won't take too long to twig to the fact that something's amiss with Fluttershy's new patient, but at least your orphaned changeling ought to have a chance to prove herself non-threatening first. And if she hasn't had much actual experience with ponykind before now, I suppose that her view of her Queen is about to take another hit. Good work, I'll be looking forward to the next chapter.
cant wait for next chapter. really good story
640531
He means that you're missing the d in bed.
The very simple x-ray that Twilight had (a little unnervingly) happily built her for her for her animals showed a pair of full cracks running on a gently curved perpendicular to the direction of bone, but an odd, spiderweb-shaped series of fairly harmless, hairline surface cracks.
I dont know, this sentence is just confusing. And there's two for hers
She sat up, even though as she did so, she felt a strong dizziness. Silk wouldn't let something so trivial keep her down, though.
I would leave out the though in the second sentence. It just seems to work better without it.
So there were a few more mistakes in this chapter. I guess that's the price we pay for fast updates, so, whatever.
You still rock.
640928 Ah, thanks for the clarification. *a few seconds later* Alrighty, I just handled those, thanks.
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Sleep? What sleep? I DON'T NEED SLEE-zzzzzzzzz 
But hey, I'm not that prideful, so here goes: next time I write a chapter, does anypony want to take a first look at it and list out the errors he or she sees?
641470
Sure! I'm pretty much gooing to do that anyway.
641470 sure, I would like the opportunity to try that
Next chapter has been handed off to the above two volunteer proofreaders. And let me tell you: it's a DOOZIE!... stop shaking, Pinkie, it's not that kind of doozie. But it IS literally twice as long as the last two chapters.
Wow, Pinkie made sense for once!
Interesting chapter. 
Great job with keeping everypony spot on
yay new chapter cant wait for the next
So, Silk's gotten her Fluttershy-guided tour of Ponyville, and has had a run-in wilth the rest of the Mane Cast now. All the encounters were pretty well worked out, and certainly fit well into giving Silk a look at a typical day in the town. It was actually amusing to see things through the slightly distorted lens of her viewpoint, and watch her trying to figure out how to intercept all the awkward questions that kept being asked about her background. I was a little curious as to why Silk was being quite as closed off with sampling the emotions around her, though. It would seem to me that since she's noticed that there seems to be a bit of ambient love around that can be picked up without the need for a full on feeding, that she'd be at least testing as she moved around town to see if what she'd encountered was an effect localized to Fluttershy's cottage, or if it was occurring elsewhere in town. On the other hoof, I suppose that she was simply absorbing on the go, and what she was picking up wasn't strong enough to warrant mention, though I would imagine that she might notice the effects after a full day out.
The party was a nice touch as well, loved the conversation with Pinkie that took Silk's worldview basically pulled it inside out on her. Gotta love the Pink One, Discord would approve of her, if he weren't busy being garden sculpture art right now. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/discord.png
And I see that Silk's now got a countdown on the time she's got for finding a way to deal with everything. Three weeks sounds like a long time, but she's got a ton of problems to overcome, and a lot of choices to make as well. I'll be looking forward to the next installment.
Wow. Dystopian hive mind led by a cold, unfeeling tyrant. If that doesn't reach rock-farm levels of anitfun, nothing does.
A most enjoyable read. I hope Silk thinks and/or learns of something along the line of innkeeping soon. Looking forward to more.
Methinks bad things start happening (again) soon.
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*Evil Laugh*
748612
Oh noes!
There was misused irony when refering to the smell of shampoo and i protest this mistake.
749983 Eh, that's debatable. The fake thinks something smells fake? One could interpret that as irony, but not necessarily. In the interest of not pulling anypony out of the story, I'll remove the word, since it doesn't really take away anything from the story.
750014
coincidentally would be a good replacement
A few missed capitalizations of Silk's name, but other than that, excellent chapter. Poor dear, she's trying to be a hive of one. She just doesn't know how else to live. Here's hoping the Mane Six can show her a new way.
750202 The two unruly lowercase letters in question have been smitten for their treachery, and not the romantic definition of "smitten", either, I'm talking the past participle of "smite".
Damn, that's pretty sad.
D'awwww, Silky's suffering separation anxiety. Honestly, I'm sort of surprised that she manages to go from place to place and isn't trying to talk the ears off of every single pony she gets near, just to get rid of some of the silence in her head. I guess that's a side effect of being a scout, she's used to silences. Still, all things considered she's settling in reasonably well, and beginning to be accepted by the ponies. And she's learning valuable lessons about how to live in a community of ponies instead of a swarm.
Of course, there's still a deadline hanging over her head. What she's doing now is likely to play a huge part in how things play out when the countdown runs out.
I'll be looking forward to the next installment.
755863 Yeah, I'd have to say the only other class that wouldn't wind up turning this story from "dark" to "grimdark" would be the scavenger class, and those changelings had some serious issues of their own. And you did hit the nail on the head there: scout class members working in other races' territories didn't hear the thoughts of the swarm as loudly or as intimately as others, and at those ranges it would be more of a typically incoherent noise of moderate volume off in the distance. But in a way it's worse: that noise is a scout's link to their home, a guiding light, as a warmly lit window in the distance on a dark and moonless night; without it, a scout would feel utterly lost and alone, unsure of whom to trust or where to turn.
But I've said enough for now. We're going to hear all about it and more eventually.
After reading Twilight zapping away Silk's disguise, and Applejack calling her a monster, my only thought was...
Dear Twilight and Applejack,
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To quote a turian: YOU PONIES ARE ALL RACIST!
781300 Darn it, have to reply. Curse my love of Mass Effect.
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Silk did not intentionally infiltrate.
781395 Can't think of reply!
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781395
to quote a certain griffin who leads pirates
ahem
"why are all ponies so racist?"
I think the eyes belong to Gilda?
Golden eyes. Gilda or Night-guard.
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782012 Cerberus, Diamond Dog, Minotaur, Ursa! Yay naming things!
Actually, the only thing mentioned so far that isn't a possibility (or rather, isn't something I'll rule out for the readers) is the Ursa (too big and glowy). As for what happened, and what's watching Dash? We'll see.
Also, I may have just developed a phobia of Mayor McCheese.
782069 Has to be the night guard. Twilight Told Celestia, Celestia tells Luna, and Luna wants REVENGE!
"I'll admit, little sister, I'm somewhat envious of you because of that."
This showed up between two paragraphs in the first section. If I had to guess, I'd say you left it in there by accident.
Also, that textual regurgitation on the origin of the Everfree was, frankly, painful. There's introducing information, and then there's expodumping with all the grace of an ACME anvil dropped from thirty thousand feet. Just mentioning how Twilight had the poor thing in a jar with no light source would've been enough. Maybe have one of the princesses ruminate on the origin of the forest later. Just not what you did.
Okay, that stuff aside, this was a fantastic chapter. I'm definitely looking forward to more, my criticisms aside.
Poor changeling.
785827 *sigh* this is what happens when I read by highlighting to keep track of progress in other stories and get into the bad habbit of CTRL-Cing everything. Apparently I edited in a mistake while I was editing one out.
Will fix immidiately.
Also, I decided to take you up on your suggestion. The exposition did seem rather forced in that context.
785963 Glad I could help with the misapplied copypasta. The tweaked exposition seems much better, too.
Are you going to continue this story?
866506 Yup, working on it now, actually.
Storm knocked out power for a week, and add that to the "omg" size of this chapter... well, it'll probably be up in the next day or two.