Horny stuff
Chapter 6. - Horny stuff
For the first time since being in the cave, Moon Lantern actually woke up before Archive did. He considered this to be some kind of achievement, but then again, Archive had a pretty rough day yesterday. Even then she woke up almost as soon Lantern got his hooves under himself.
“Good morning Lantern!” she said blearily while she stretched her limbs.
“To you as well, sleepyhead.” smiled Lantern in his triumph over the nymph.
“What’s with the stupid grin?” asked him Archive after stifling a yawn.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just in a good mood. How are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling good too. A couple more hours and my chitin hardens to the point where I can stand again, but until then you should try to light the fire.”
“Oh, that reminds me, wanna see something neat?” asked Lantern with a childish glee in his voice.
“What is it?”
Lantern’s grin widened even more and Archive wondered what it could be that had him so excited.
“Check this out!”
Lantern turned to the fireplace in the dark and sat on his haunches. He lifted his good hoof up to his chest and started rubbing it in a quick motion until a quiet crackling sound could be heard and a couple small arcs of electricity enveloped his hoof. He then thrust his hoof into the fireplace quickly, and with a spark, an unburnt piece of wood caught fire. The small flame almost flickered out when he held another piece of wood above it with his mouth, but it eventually lit and started to spread, flooding their surroundings with a warm orange light from the flames.
When he finished his little trick, he turned back to Archive and smiled.
“Ta-daaaa...” and his mouth stayed open in surprise.
“Um, Lantern? Do I have something on my face?”
Lantern snapped out of it but his eyes kept switching between looking into hers and her horn for a few seconds more than she was comfortable with.
Archive blushed a bit under his stare.
“WHAT?” asked Archive a bit heatedly.
“Is your horn supposed to look like that?”
A slight panic took hold of Archive as she started to freak out.
“W-ww-what’s wrong with it? Did it not heal properly? Is it deformed? Oh no. It’s deformed right? I knew I should’ve slept with my head propped up. How can I look anyling in the eye with a distorted h-ho-hoooorn!?” she crumbled like a wall hit by a speeding train.
“No, no, no! It’s just...not how it used to look like when I saw you in Canterlot, before it broke.”
That seemed to calm the nymph down a bit, when suddenly a thought hit her and she stopped dead and stared blankly ahead. She slowly turned her gaze at Lantern and then up towards her horn. She raised her hoof up to it unsteadily to touch and feel the magical appendage. The front curve was the same as before, same size too, but when she moved her hoof to the backside and run it along its length she felt a small, crescent shaped hole in it.
Her face lit up like the sun, and Lantern could swear he heard a faint ‘sqeee’ sound escape the maw of the nymph. Her elated grin showed Lantern her sharp canines in all their glory and he ventured a guess “Is that a good thing?”
“It’s so AWESOME!” Archive answered excitedly.
Lantern was feeling like he was left out of a joke and only got there to see a bunch of howling lunatics rolling around the floor.
“I don’t get it,” he stated with a baffled expression, then continued “how’s having a piece missing from your horn ‘awesome’?”
“Oh, right. That’s another thing you don’t know about us. Well, to us the concept of vanity doesn’t really mean anything, except for our horns. A larger than average horn is considered to be something to be proud of…”
Lantern thought to himself “Yeah, I know how that feels.” and used his hoof to hide a giggle.
Archive continued on without noticing Lantern’s little laugh “...but having an exotic shaped horn is the sign of a talented and successful changeling, and it’s an exclusive characteristic of Sirens. They are the only ones to have horns like this, and it’s kind of a status symbol to have more holes and bands than others. They use it as a ranking system among themselves.
“So is it like the Guard’s military ranks?” inquired Lantern.
“Not really, no. A better Siren who has more holes and bands on their horn can’t give orders to ‘lower’ ranking Sirens. They are all equals, but more experienced Sirens are respected accordingly. They usually give tips and share their techniques with less experienced Sirens so they can get better hauls on their gathering missions, and thus helping the hive collect even more food than they could on their own.”
“That sounds very admirable. So the best Siren makes the most nectar and she’s also the de facto teacher of the others too.”
“Actually, the top Siren is not of my generation. She’s the daughter of the previous Queen and the older sister/nursemaid of Queen Lilith. She cannot produce nectar, so when she returns from a trip, she either feeds the grubs directly from her reserves or transfers the energy she collected to the Queen, who then converts it into nectar to be stored. She’s the oldest changeling, save for the resin-encased Queens, and I’m sure she’s one of the few Chrysalis couldn’t sway with her control of the hivemind. If anyling, she’s the one to be still next to the Queen. They’re very close to each other.”
Lantern saw that Archive started to slip into depression again, and desperately tried to get her to steer her train of thought in another direction.
“You know this makes me wonder, does your new horn makes you a Siren then?”
“W-what?” asked Archive with a surprised, high pitched voice.
“The hole in your horn. Does it mean you’ll be promoted to be a Siren?”
“I-I’m not sure. As far as I know, this has never happened before. A Nymph getting a hole on her horn is unprecedented.”
“Hmmm, interesting. Anyway, I’m just glad it’s not some kind of problem. It looks kinda cool too, it suits you well.” said Lantern with a sincere smile on his face.
Archive blushed at the pegasus’ compliment and said “Thank you.”
Lantern picked up a piece of wood and put the end of it into the fire, then scooped up the little bowl Archive made from her resin and deposited it on his head like a helmet. It wasn’t as good as his old Guard’s helmet, but if he kept his ears down it would stay on just fine. He turned to Archive and snapped to attention, even saluting curtly for added effect. The nymph giggled at him.
“I’ll go get some water from the pool and have a look around a little further down that tunnel. Will you be alright until I get back?”
She nodded.
“If anything happens, just shout and I’ll come running back.”
With that Lantern took the makeshift torch into his mouth and turned to leave when Archive suddenly said:
“Lantern! Be careful.”
With a nod of his own, Lantern made his way into the darkness.
Stats
Page generated in 0.028 seconds
Total duration
679 users online
883,360 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I love how the new cover art is basically HEY GUYS THERE'S TOTALLY A CHANGELING SEE THERE IT IS HAVE A GREAT BIG ARROW IN CASE YOU MISSED THE CHANGELING IN THE COVER ART
UPDATE!
media3.giphy.com/media/X10azJgFl8bXq/200_s.gif
6934278 Not sure if you're being a dick...I might need another bigass arrow to point it out! xD
Just joking...also, I'd hate to put an arrow pointing to your comment, people might think it's important!
Ok, now it's me, who's being a dick!
6934377 aha, missed the stone tablets on my way here!
6934390 Not into that, but I hear there's good ones out there! Granted, much of them are clops, but I imagine that wouldn't be a problem for you!
6742506 i read that in sweetie bots voice
Glorious update, hehehehe~
This is just an amazingly cute story. I really like the banter between Lantern and Archive as it bounces between lighthearted, sarcastic, teasing, flirty and every combination of the above.
Also, as someone who enjoys seeing others' headcanons of changelings, I have to say I like yours, especially the part about how changelings evolve with each new queen.
Looking forward to reading more of this. Until the next chapter, here's an upvote!
And consider me another
stalker- follower of your work....
6934655 I feel honored! I'm glad you're enjoying my ramblings!
too big a gap between updates.
6935593 Welcome to the real world, where people WORK first, so they can enjoy their HOBBIES from the money they make!
Pay attention to the order of the words in caps!
I didn't plan for it to take so long, just had no time.
Thanks for commenting though!
6935623 So the chapter updates; three weeks later, I have only the vaguest recollection of what the cover pic looked like.
I did not notice the pic change because too much time passed between updates for the purposes of remembering what the pic looked like. Now does my comment make a bit more sense?
At least you do update, there's hundreds of stories in my watch list that never update at all.
6935640 Well, the only change was the hole...I must admit that if someone else would make any change to a cover, it would be lost on me too. I hardly ever look at the covers after the first look, and more often than not the covers hardly has anything to do with the actual story!
It really is a minute change, but if you're interested, I can upload it to my dA Scraps.
great story! you have my up voteanda new follower here! kudos to you on your fine story!looking forward for the next chapter and updates!
Love the story, but disappointed by the lack of proper grammar.
I will admit I got really excited at the chapter title till I remembered this is rated teen