A Changeling's Christmas Catastrophe

by AizakkuHorooee

Chapter XIX - Instincts

Wha... where am I?

Oh yeah, I was last at the vet, and I’m still here.

My... my bed feels so sticky... especially where my upper legs are!

And... no... pain?!?

Uh... Where is everybody?

Jon?

Sophie?!?

Carve?!?

Oh, there’s one of the vets.

“Oh hey, Carina! Glad to see you’re up. A few of your friends want to see you.”

“Ugh... bring ‘em in.”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“A little light-headed, but other than that, I feel okay.”

“Okay good. Glad to see you doing significantly better.”

“Yeah. I must’ve released my egg.”

“Sure did, Carina.”

Suddenly, I realize something doesn’t seem to be near me: my egg.

“Um, where is it?”

“Oh, it’s in the incubator. It should be ready to hatch by this afternoon. More specifically, seven hours at-”

“Um, WHAT?!?”

“The egg is in the incubator. In seven to eleven hours, it should hatch.”

I get up and angrily walk to the front edge of the bed.

“...Where is the incubator? I... need... my... egg...”

“Take it easy, Carina. The reason you got lightheaded is the same reason we had to put your egg in the-”

“I don’t care what’s going on! Give me my egg, or I will have to retrieve it myself!”

“I know you want the egg, but it has to go through the same process e-”

“You don’t get it! Changelings literally need love to survive! Incubators can’t be a substitute because pre-birth is a changeling’s most crucial time of survival!”

“Look, if you want it so bad, I’ll have your visitors g-”

I jump off the bed and run out the door.

Hey... Carina... wait up!!

“No!”

I run through the halls and look for an empty room. Each intersection, I pause and go right or left depending on there I am. As I look back a few times, the vet is coming in behind me. After a little while though, I start getting a migraine, so I stop and sit down a second. As soon as I start massaging my forehead the vet tackles me.

“Gotcha! Now, are you going to come back to your room?”

“No! That egg needs me! It’ll die from malnutrition without my love!”

“The egg should be just fine! You’ll get to see it when it hatches!”

“It needs me NOW!!!”

Out of a fit of rage, I send the vet yards away from me through levitation. I instantly get up and resume running aimlessly throughout the vet for an empty room. As I find myself in a new hall, I can smell heat coming from one of the rooms. I try to track the scent, but almost immediately, I have to lay down from my lightheadedness. I begin my second attempt to massage my forehead, which eases the feeling of lightheadedness some.

I snap back to my instincts and begin tracking the scent again. After about a minute, I find a room with a container atop a cart that’s located near the door. The majority of the container is a small glass dome, one that has an egg in it...

An egg?!? Is this what the vet was talking about? The incubator?

How... how do I get to the egg? I don’t see any buttons.

I hang my head and accidentally hit my horn onto the dome, which budges to the force.

I gasp.

“That’s all I need to do? Just lift the dome? I can pull that off in a second!”

I lift the dome via levitation and float the egg over to my chest.

“Oh! How it feels so refreshing to see it’s okay! I sure hope I’m not too...”

I collapse onto the floor from sudden exhaustion, though I did see this coming a bit. I safely land the egg in front of me, and as a result, it obscures my vision by about a quarter of my field of view. It’s the last thing I see before I close my eyes.

;=;

That vet seems to be taking quite a long time getting back to us. Jon and Sophie are especially concerned after the four of us hear some ruckus going on in the main hallway.

Jon, Sophie, Aita and I all agree to see what’s going on.

“Any idea where Mom is?”

The rest of us shake our heads at Aita.

“After the ruckus, I’d have no idea,” Jon answers.

Suddenly, I smell heat. But this heat is somewhat familiar. It smells... like... the kind of heat in a nursery hive.

“Wait a minute. I might know where we should be going. We have to follow the scent.”

“What scent?” Sophie asks me.

Aita starts to sniff the air too.

“Hey, I smell something too. I’m going to follow Carve.”

So, Aita and I lead the way to the source of the heated scent, and the result is finding Carina in a near empty room. She’s sprawled on the floor with the egg in front of her face. Behind her is a cart that holds... um... something.

“Um, why is Carina unconscious in front of an incubator?” Jon asks.

“Yeah, that’s really confusing,” I agree.

Jon walks over to Carina, kneels down, and feels her forehead.

“Whoa. She’s as cold as she’s ever been.”

“Is it frostbite worthy?” Sophie asks.

Jon simply nods.

“I’ll call for help. I know someone who could get here within the next few minutes,”

“Carve... we could just get one of the ve-” Sophie starts.

“No... If Carina has to attend this egg out of her room, one of the vets clearly had to’ve moved it while she was asleep. I don’t think the vets know very much about changelings if they thought they had to separate an egg from its mother in any situation, especially when placed in the emotionless equivalent to a nursery hive. I’m going to get someONE I trust.”

“Right behind you Carve.”

Within moments, Jon gives me a sheet of paper that has already been written on. And sure enough, it’s a letter to Chrysalis. I nod and send it off to the hive for Chrysalis to receive.