Dream A Little Dream Of Me

by horizon

Bonus content: Skywriter's (prose) "final solution"

Author's Note:

This was Skywriter's write-up of the full timeline reconstruction he did in order to write the winning entry ("Coy to the bitter end, I see"). I saved it here for historical interest of readers hoping to dig more deeply into the original story's mysteries.

(Cached from https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27914367/Pony%20Island-final%20solution.txt)

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This entry, clearly of the "Changeling Littlemoth" camp of stories, is predicated on the non-canon (but IMO supportable) idea that while changelings feed and are nourished by love, they react to hate as a noxious, painful force. Readers who have prepared a detailed timeline will doubtless pick this series of events apart as containing temporal incontinuities; hell, Rosetta admits as much in the closer. That said, here is a rough sequence of events as I saw them:

For an unspecified but considerable period of time, a hiveless changeling (archaically referred to as "The Protean" by Rosetta) has been feeding off minotaur bull U Low Kene while wearing the form of his mate, Palei Hantu (whom the changeling personally killed, it seems). "Feeding off love" includes having the sexs with him. Lacking foresight and a clear understanding of social mores, the creature branches out to other bulls, little realizing that this would create in U Low Kene such a toxic atmosphere of betrayal and hatred that she'd simply be forced out, much as you or I would flee a room full of ammonia fumes. Running blindly for a society she hasn't yet poisoned, the changeling scales the wall, disguises herself as a pony, rushes to an empty guard post and throws an abandoned spear (missing the throw) at U Low Kene to try and drive away his noxious presence.

The colony isn't perfect for her; there is a low undercurrent of unpalatable anxiousness and hate, stemming from the general societal disquiet (a pair of hate-eating sirens, Adagio and Sonata, have been sustaining themselves in the harbor for some time). Trying to hold all this mess together is a paragon couple of ponies, a success story for racial intermixing: Littlemoth (a bat pony) and Dawn Patrol (a pegasus). Dawn Patrol particularly sees their mixed unity as something greater even than romance; he sees it as one of the cornerstones of the mixed colony, part of the glue that holds their shaky little society together.

Littlemoth is quietly unhappy at being made into a social construct. Also, her fellow bat pony Moonstruck is *super super hot*. She still puts on a big show of being Dawn Patrol's filly, but something has to be done about this itch. But should anyone find out--especially D.P. or that prejudiced old scow Peridot who would crow to wake the dawn at the failure of mixed relationships--it would practically destroy the colony. But how best to cover the tracks of her infidelity? Littlemoth does not know...

...until, in a darkened alley near the wall, she stumbles across the changeling, and espies her doing incriminatingly changeling-y things, like a casual shapeshift. Wheels turn in Littlemoth's mind. She confronts the bugpony but offers not to rat her out, in exchange for a deal...

"I need an alibi. I need you to be *me*. For one night. While I... fulfil some needs. You can even feed upon my darling D.P. for a bit."

Hiss, hiss, spit. "But what of horrible old trader pony? She hates so strong. We can feel her poison. We hates it! Stupid fat hobbit pony, her hate *burns* us! Just like the bull did!"

"Let me make one thing clear. I know you have a nasty habit of trying to kill creatures that make you feel this way. You are *not* to hurt Peridot. No matter how much she 'burns' you. Do you promise?"

Hiss, hiss, spit. "We promises."

"Good. I can see absolutely nothing wrong with this plan."

Unfortunately, Adagio happens. The changeling can feel her pensively swimming around out in the harbor. This read does not clarify whether our changeling and Adagio came to some kind of agreement or not. Clearly, our changeling hated the hate coming off Peridot and wanted to get rid of her in the most direct way possible, not thinking of consequences; Adagio, who is a bit smarter than our changeling, recognizes that while killing Peridot would deprive her of a little food, it would be a match dropped in a powderkeg of the unstable colony. Sort of how you sacrifice a little edible fish to put on your hook to catch a much bigger fish with it. I frankly do not know if they agreed on this plan. It seems likely--especially because Adagio is functionally double-crossing the much slower changeling, and that is totally her style--but I do not have the scene in my head.

Anyhow, by hook or crook, Changeling!Littlemoth breaks away from Dawn Patrol and adopts the face of another unicorn (not sure who, but someone Peridot trusts). "Hello!" says the changeling. "We are a totally normal unicorn, yes we are, precious. Come see this totally not-made-up thing we found on the dock! It involves race hate! You like race hate, do you not?"

"Why yes, I *love* race hate!" says Peridot. "Take me there!"

On arriving at the docks (shortly after tripping over the inebriate Tommyrum), Peridot gets sung at by Adagio, who basically coerces the old mare into suicide (Sirens make ponies *want* things, canonically, and while they are never this evil in canon it seems reasonable that she could make Peridot *want* the deep dark quiet of the water; Peridot's entry is grayed out because her mind is not her own at the time).

In the morning, Hotspur barges in to Moonstruck's place and says, "Hey, I think Peridot's dead!"

Whereupon Littlemoth has two thoughts: "Holy horseapples, somepony's witnessing me with Moonstruck!" and "*HOLY HORSEAPPLES THAT FSCKING CHANGELING PROMISED SHE WOULDN'T DO ANYTHING STUPID!*" She rushes out in a panic and confronts "herself," full of rage and bitterness now. The changeling reacts exactly as she always does when presented with a noxious stimulus: she kills the source of it and hides the body. The trail of blood is getting longer, though, and the social order is falling apart. The changeling's only hope right now is to keep pretending to be Littlemoth and escape the island entirely on one of the boats, which are never coming because Dawn Patrol has been helpfully driving them away from the island for fear that news of the Lunar Rebellion will destroy the colony.

On the last night before all hell breaks loose, opium-addicted historian Nostalgia makes one last communication with his estranged off-again-on-again Lunar Secret Agent wifehorse, Rosetta. They dream-write to one another, penning a letter and reading it repeatedly and profoundly over and over again until it cannot help making its way into their dreams. It is how they have always communicated, though they have not done so in many years. He coyly suggests that maybe a Nightmare should look into the situation here, *do you maybe know one (wink wink)*. (Unbeknownst to Nostalgia, Rosetta has been watching for some time.) He knows in his heart of hearts that the colony is doomed. Sunspot, who interprets *literally everything* as an act of war, is preparing a press-gang to take on the minotaurs in what eventually turns out to be a total suicide mission (when all they were actually doing was waiting for Palei Hantu!) and Nostalgia doesn't want any part of it. He makes his last confessions to Rosetta (racism, homosexual indiscretions, etc.) She dream-writes to him one last time, assuring him that yes, she knew it all along. She can't send help, as such; she's half a world away, and right now the Inquisition has a lot of stuff on its plate. Also, um, she secretly supported Nightmare Moon during the rebellion and it would be *awfully awfully problematic* if this fact were to ever come up. So she stamps the whole thing "Case Closed" rather than make a big fuss that would put her in the spotlight. Nostalgia, his last communication complete, overdoses on opium and passes away before the morning comes.

So then, the stupid butthole Sunspot basically rounds up everyone left alive in the colony and sics them on the minotaur camp. It is a Pyrrhic victory for the minotaurs; basicaly all ponies and many minotaurs die, and the colony is destroyed. This is all as Rosetta predicted; what she didn't count on (and does not in fact know) is that Dawn Patrol would evade the press-gang and escape down the coast with his lovely "Littlemoth," little realizing that she's a shapeshifty bug thing. He dies some time thereafter, either remaining ignorant to the end and just plain being sucked dry, or by realizing the horrid betrayal and shortly thereafter getting killed by our changeling, repeating the same cycle over and over and over again.

Survivors: Rosetta (half a world away), Changeling Infiltrator (there really is no justice), and the two sirens (who go on to star in Rainbow Rocks, woo!)

Casualties: Absolutely everyfsckingpony else.

So, yeah. Pretty dark.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Good to see this out of Limbo, even if it includes my woefully misguided guess. Thanks for putting it up.

[Skywriter]

8539746
Seconded! Glad to see this hit the light of day again.

[Retiredwriter]

Well U Low Ken did make a point that his only intent was to kill the changing. So he might have waited for it and Dawn Patrol to make a run for it knowing that is what it would probably try to do.