Pearl's Travels 1: Hollow Shades

by Makitk

06

I asked Breeze to teach me about foals, as Oval had instructed me to, and sat through a few basic explanations about the differences between adult ponies and their foal versions.

It quickly became clear I needed a lot more training before I could pull a regular foal off, but when Breeze taught me about teens and their subtle differences with proper adults I reckoned I found my personal niche; it was far easier to do than going full foal size, but still a welcome change from the adult forms Oval had taught me.

When the tall alicorn mare decreed it was time for us to go to the next room, I thanked Breeze wholeheartedly, and left her in good spirits.

Our group of hatchlings moved on to the next room to find a number of changelings standing around a set of tables and buckets. We sort of naturally dispersed to each of the tables, and I gave the Changeling I approached a light smile.

"Hi, so what's the next thing to learn?" I asked, to which they spat a ball of green goop onto the table.

"Resin control," my Changeling brother suggested, motioning at the ball of green on the table.

"Oh, okay," I responded, watching him poke at it with his hooves until the ball resembled a square block.

"We can form a variety of resin types; soft, hard, quick-drying or nutrient-filled," the Changeling explained quickly. "You don't want to make the mistake of firing a nutrient-filled ball of watery resin at somepony when you want to disable them with a quickly-drying spat instead."

I shook my head at that. "No, I guess not."

"Now, you have resin glands in the back of your mouth," my brother pointed out. "If you don't control them, you'll spit normally." He spat some regular spit in the bucket beside him as an example. "Don't spit at me or the table until you get your resin glands working."

I gave a quick nod. "I can see how that would be a bad thing, yeah."

The Changeling pushed the bucket up my way and motioned at it. "If you spit normally, you won't feel them at all."

I waited for the next sentence to come, but he just stood looking at me expectantly, so I carefully aimed and spat at the bucket.

"Good. Now, to activate your resin glands you'll need to tighten your muscles a little," brother explained. "They're not quite in the back of your throat, mind; you're all making that mistake and end up choking on your spittle."

As if to illustrate his point, one of my fellow hatchlings doubled over coughing a little further in the room, and my brother frowned at hearing it.

"Okay, so the muscles are not in the back of the throat, but in the back of our mouth?" I asked, motioning my right forehoof to my cheek.

"That's what I said," he returned. "You're not going to get it right the first time anyway, so forget that. Just try finding the right muscles first."

I sat down and focused on my mouth. My tongue was the obvious biggest muscle there. It was a lot longer than my human tongue had been thanks to slight elongation of my muzzle, but there had been so many things that were new to me that I'd found no issue speaking with it.

Further back were the muscles that let me swallow, of course. They were little different from how they had been while I was still a human. But there was a twitch in my mouth just in front of my throat as I let my focus drift. On either side of my throat opening.

I tentatively let my attention drift to that area, trying to evoke another twitch, and homing in on the muscles as they did. These were muscles which my human self did not have.

I opened my eyes as I heard the sound of the bucket being pushed closer to me, and my Changeling brother nodded at it. "If you found the muscles, try spitting in the bucket while triggering them."

I gave a silent nod in return, opening my mouth a little while I tried to get those muscles to respond on command. All around me I heard spitting, coughing, berating... but I tried to tune them out and focused.

I spat at the next twitch of those muscles, feeling the weird sensation of something spraying into my mouth from the back of it, and leaking out of my mouth to drip into the bucket!

I stared at it, spitting more just to get my mouth empty again, watching the green goop collect at the bottom where clear spittle had been before.

The other Changeling leaned in to look at it before smirking at me. "Clear your mouth or it will harden and lock your jaw shut."

I took their warning by heart and licked around my mouth to get all the goop out of the corners of it, spitting it out into the bucket. Soon enough the resin started to crystalize and I was spitting out little crunchy bits before long.

"Okay, so that's the quick-hardening resin," the Changeling in front of me suggested. "Remember how that felt?"

I shook my head a bit, continuing to spit out a few last bits of crystalized resin. From the sounds around me, the other hatchlings were having as much of a spittle-fest as I was having.

"I told you you wouldn't get it right on the first try. Well, if you get the urge to spray it again, remember to open your mouth a bit more," brother berated me.

I opened my mouth further than I had before and tried again; focusing on the sensation of my new muscles as they sprayed the resin out. It was not that these strange new muscles were difficult to control; there was a clear sensation of their limitations when I felt them contract. It was just that my brain was still coping with the fact I had them in the first place!

Under the watchful, and demeaning, eyes of my Changeling brother, I proceeded to spit a mostly random collection of resin blobs at the bucket between us. With every glob that passed my lips, I became more aware of how the muscles felt when I spat this or that type of resin, and soon I dared to try and control what type I released, aided by some factor of luck.

Once my tutor noticed I was aiming to spit the same type of resin in the bucket a few times in a row, he started making demands of me; "Loosen your muscles to spit out the soft resin."

I tried to comply, spitting out what looked most like green lemonade, much to my brother's satisfaction.

"You haven't created any hard resin yet," he noted. "You'll need to tighten your muscles and release your resin from your glands so it builds up a ball inside, then loosen the muscles to propel them outward."

I tightened my resin glands as much as I could, then tried spitting some resin. I could feel the area which held my resin glands expand as the muscles held themselves closed in front of them, but then released the tension as instructed.

A pair of crystalized blobs rolled weakly out into my mouth, and I had to spit them out once they passed my resin control muscles. My brother looked like he was expecting it and shook his head.

"You do need to keep up the pressure behind them, or they'll be useless," he scoffed.

"Well, you didn't tell me that, now did you?" I threw back, getting majorly annoyed by him by this point.

Surprisingly, the Changeling before me smiled up at my retort and reached a hoof up to poke me in the chest. "That's what I wanted to hear; get annoyed. Get angry. You can push more resin out that way. Puff your cheeks out."

I stared at him a moment, but then let out a snort. "I don't get half of this to begin with, and I've been made to feel inferior in the past three rooms. You're not making me feel at home or anything."

"I'm not here to make you feel at home," the other responded calmly. "I'm here to teach you how to use your resin glands so you can at least pretend you were born into our Hive."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Well, I can spit four kinds of resin now, even if you tell me I don't put enough power behind my spitting. Can you at least tell me what they're all used for so I don't make an ass of myself and this Hive everyone's on about?"

My brother grinned his fangs bare. "No, really; keep that up. The more you can push back against us, the better; you're going to need to defend yourself out there, and we're far from the biggest bullies around."

I reached up to poke him in the chest now, giving him a decent push back. "Shut it, will you? Just tell me what the resin's used for."

Still grinning, the Changeling spat a blob of wet resin at the almost-full bucket. "Nutrients; they're what you bring back from your travels and fill hatchling pods with. Good healing properties; spit it on a wound to have it heal faster. Be careful not to feed others this; it has the potency to turn one into us, as you have already experienced."

I stared at him for a moment, then sat down on my haunches. "Wait, you mean this is like the nectar bees produce?"

My brother shrugged idly at that. "In a way, I guess. But our 'honey' is not for other species to consume. Really; don't do it unless you're told to by our Queen."

I struck a cross over my chest with my left forehoof. "I promise not to."

My Changeling brother spat a new blob at the bucket, and I realized it was quickly crystalizing where it landed. "Quick-hardening resin. Use it to immobilize someone. Mostly prey. It fills holes as well. Most of the Hive is made from it."

"Check," I returned.

Another spat. This time it was a soft blob that bounced once before it rolled to a stop on top of the layer of crystalizing resin. "Our softer resin is like rubber, if you need an example; It's good for protecting things and storing things in. We use it as an inside lining to the hatchling pods or to make beds with."

"Beds?" I wondered. "I thought you slept in the pods?"

"Only if we need to heal; it takes too much time and energy to build a pod," the other explained. "Just spitting a layer of soft resin down is usually enough. It's also one of the two resin types which decomposes over time in air. The harder resin types tend to stay solid unless submerged in water."

"Water breaks down our resin?" I asked, confusion about how a Hive made out of the stuff would stay whole in a rainstorm.

"No, but it softens it over time until it breaks down like the other types," my brother reiterated. "It takes a few days, but it does keep our siblings busy over at the Hive."

I made a mental note not to build a resin house myself.

"And the fourth type?" I asked.

"The fourth type is the hard resin. You can use it as a weapon if you want, but it's often easier to just knock prey unconscious with a good blow." he stated. "Also, you can use it as rudimentary building bricks, although you'll need to fill in the gaps between them with quick-hardening resin if you want it to stay in place."

"Okay, so we have two types that pretty much do the same thing?" I suggested, rubbing my left hoof on the side of my head.

"I guess so, yeah. But the quick-hardening resin is easier to spray on moving targets," my brother chuckled. "Now let me get a new bucket and you can show me how well you control your resin glands."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You're asking a bit much here."

"Oh, I didn't think you would be up to the task in the first place," my brother sneered half-jokingly. "After all, you were not born in our Hive."

"I know, I know, I'm a second-rate citizen here. Blow me," I scoffed.

Picking up the bucket's handle with his mouth, my brother set his wings in motion and flew off to a set of other Changelings off near a small pool of water. A couple of empty buckets were stacked near them, and brother picked one up after dropping our old bucket in the pool.

I ran past my new knowledge while he flew back with the new bucket, intending to show that Changeling I was worth more than his valuations of me.

Comments

[tsaukpaetra]

Dude seems to be trying to build up determination...

[Makitk]

7449073
Their old or new name?