Delivery Bug
Thorax spent some more time in the cave with Twilight, periodically stepping out to gather more of the materials needed for his tea. Twilight found herself fading in and out of consciousness during those times, her body eager for some actual sleep now that the symptoms were decreased. She still felt like absolute garbage, but at least now she could think clearly and had a modest amount of control over her own body and its waste disposal functions.
In the interim, Thorax answered a few basic questions Twilight had; how he made his tea, where she could find food, if there were other reliable sources of water nearby. Pretty much anything her foggy mind could think of that would be of help to her in surviving this blasted wasteland. Thorax had not disappointed her, answering each of her questions in remarkable detail.
It was still strange to Twilight, thinking about just how much the changeling was helping her. What did he stand to gain? What was his end goal? Was he just being friendly, or was there some ulterior motive she hadn’t yet been able to decipher? More than once had she tried to form words to ask these questions, but her own weakness had, more often than not, left her unable to finish her questions in any way Thorax could understand.
Eventually, though, what little strength she had began to fade, and she fell into a light, restless slumber. She wasn’t sure how long she was out for, but when she awoke, she found that the fire had long since burned down to little more than smoldering lumps of charred wood, and the glow coming from beyond the cave mouth had darkened considerably. The various supplies that Thorax had brought were leaned up against the far wall from Twilight, neatly arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
Slowly, and still struggling with the putrid feelings in her gut, Twilight sat up on her haunches and looked around some more, searching for Thorax. But there was no sign of him in the cave. Twilight swallowed heavily, a bead of anxiety forming in her heart. “T-thorax?” she called out before falling into a coughing fit. Her throat was dry. She needed water.
Moving quickly, she dropped a few planks of wood from her stockpile onto the fire pit and lit it ablaze with a spark of magic from her horn. As the warmth and light of the rapidly swelling blaze filled the cavern, Twilight staggered over to the pool in the back, bringing along the chiseled bowl.
In short order, she had some water set to boil, giving her some time to look around and figure out what was happening. Cautiously, she dragged herself over to the edge of the cave and peered outside. The sun had set some time ago, and the moon had risen to bathe the world in its pale glow.
Twilight licked her lips. “Thorax? Are you out there?” she called out again, putting as much power into her voice as she could manage.
Nothing answered her, though, save for the distant hooting of a desert owl.
Twilight stood still for several moments before deciding to head back inside, her stomach gurgling in protest. She was still sick, after all. Sighing, she set herself down in front of the fire, her eyes locked onto the blaze.
Had Thorax left her? She supposed it made sense. He wasn’t going to be around all the time. He had a home, after all. A ‘Hive’ as he had called it if she was remembering correctly. Considering those other changelings she had seen him with the first time they had met, it seemed likely that he was their subordinate. If so, then him heading back home was probably for the best.
Though that still left the question of why he had bothered to help her in the first place. She didn’t exactly have anything to offer him in turn, save for boundless gratitude at having saved her life. He may have done it twice, actually, helping tend to her injury and keep it from getting infected.
Her hoof drifted to hover over where the gash in her barrel had been, and she winced as phantom pains tingled along her side. She still remembered with an odd mixture of disgust and fascination how the resin had felt against her fur. She had eventually pulled it off like a bandage when her injury had healed, not wanting the extra weight while trudging through the desert.
With a sigh, Twilight took the bowl of now-boiling water and set it down on the cave floor until it cooled. When she was sure it wouldn’t burn her mouth, she drank it down with greedy gulps. Her whole body came alive as the life-giving liquid swam down her throat, and she felt a palpable wave of disappointment when she swallowed the last drop.
“Back on my own,” she thought with her ears drooping. She could already feel the loneliness scratching away at the back of her head, but she was quick to shake it off. She couldn’t afford to count on Thorax coming back. She had to fend for herself, at least for now.
But for the moment, with her symptoms still less than pleasant, Twilight eventually settled down under her blankets and closed her eyes, hoping to get a good night’s rest. When she woke up, she’d try her hoof at making some of that tea. It didn’t seem too hard…
A few days passed, with very little progress being made. Twilight’s stomach rot persisted, proving itself quite a formidable disease. Luckily, she was able to make enough of the soothing tea to ease her symptoms enough to use her time productively.
Namely, she managed to purify plenty of water and fill up not only her canteen but also make the equivalent of filled water pots. The process had been as simple as wandering just far enough from her cave to bring back some large stones before hollowing them out with her magic and filling them, bit by bit, with boiled water from Thorax’s bowl. She also made a bigger bowl to help speed things along.
Now, three full pots, each enough to hold roughly a gallon of water, sat lined up against the back wall of the cave. The process of making them and filling them had been long, tedious, and tiring, but at least now she had a reliable means of storing safe-to-drink water, and an easy place to quickly fill her waterskin for whenever she was healthy enough to resume her forays into the desert.
But all the while, she couldn’t stop thinking about Thorax. She was more curious than anything about the changeling, but she was also exceedingly grateful for his aid. She owed all of the progress she had just made to his efforts to help her. Every time she drank down some of his tea, she silently thanked him, and every time she lay down to try and sleep through her now mild fever, she hoped he was doing well.
After a few days, Twilight was pulled out of her slumber by the sound of hooves scraping along the stone floor of the cave she had called home since coming to the badlands. She peeled open one eye, able to tell from the lighting that it was mid to late morning. What caught her attention more, though, was the changeling that walked into sight from around the corner. Something resembling saddlebags made out of the same mucus he had used to bind her wounds hung off of his sides, and Twilight’s eyes bulged at the sight of plants through the transparent green sides of the pouches.
Thorax turned to her and jumped in surprise when he saw she was awake. “Oh! Uh, good morning,” he greeted timidly, lifting a hoof to wave. “How are you feeling?”
Twilight blinked in surprise and slowly sat up. She groaned when her stomach gurgled and churned in protest from the movement, and her body shivered somewhat. She still had a fever, albeit much reduced. Rubbing at her eye to dispel the sand that had clumped there, she gave Thorax a relieved and questioning glance. “Thorax? Is that you?” she asked dryly.
Thorax grinned and nodded. “Uh-hu!” he said before pulling off his saddlebags and setting them down not far away. “You’re looking a little better, but I bet you’re pretty hungry, aren’t you?”
Twilight’s eyes again fell on the bags, and her stomach let out a much different type of growl. She instinctively licked her lips and leaned forward like an eager dog when showed its favorite treat. “Is that food?” she asked.
Thorax pulled open the pouches and levitated out a collection of mosses, leaves, and plant stems that, to Twilight’s partially-starved stomach, looked like a royal banquet. He turned to face her with a sheepish grin. “I kinda figured you were an herbivore when I saw your flat teeth, so I thought I’d bring you some of the older plants from the Hive’s storage.”
Twilight’s eyes went wide, her mouth starting to water in anticipation. It all looked so good! Another eager growl from her stomach prevented Twilight from giving voice to any questions. Thorax levitated over the plant matter, and in short order, Twilight snatched them out of the air and began to greedily wolf down everything she could. She might have blushed from the frantic, almost savage sounds she was making as she ate, but right then, she just didn’t care. She was eating food. Actual food.
When there was none left to consume, she leaned back against the cave wall and let out a long, relieved sigh. She absently took a swig from her waterskin before turning to Thorax, who was currently sitting on his haunches, staring at her with a small, shy smile. She smiled back. “Thank you, Thorax. I owe you.”
Thorax chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “Y-yeah, you’re uh, you’re welcome.”
Twilight’s smile slowly shrank as the immediate need for sustenance faded away. Carefully, she adjusted herself before speaking up. “So… why are you helping me?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow.
Thorax seemed genuinely surprised by the question. He blinked at her in confusion. “Huh?”
She gestured vaguely at him. “It’s just that, the first time we met, I got the impression we’d never see each other again, and we only met for a short time. I thought I was all on my own out here…” she looked down, her ears folding back. “It’s been pretty hard for me to get by each day… and if it weren’t for you coming to help me a few days ago, I… I probably would have died by now. I’m really grateful, I want to make that clear. I just…”
She lifted her eyes to look at him again, her expression pleading. “I just don’t understand… why are you helping me so much? What made you decide to come back?”
Thorax was quiet for several seconds. He shifted on his haunches before letting out a tired sigh of his own. “Honestly? ...It’s because you’re the first creature aside from my brother to ever be nice to me,” he eventually said in a quiet, despondent voice.
Twilight’s eyes widened. “What? Really? But you seem so nice.”
“Yeah, that’s kinda the problem,” Thorax replied with a sad shake of his head. “The other drones pick on me all the time. They have since I was a grub. I’ve always been friendly, and that makes me easy to bully and push around. Even my own brother isn’t all that nice to me...”
He looked up at Twilight and pointed at her. “But then I bumped into you, and after you calmed down enough to stop attacking me, you were… actually really nice. Scared, sure, but nice. You didn’t insult me, you didn’t call me names, you didn’t push me around...” his lips curled up into a small smile. “I’d never had someone treat me like that before, and… it felt really good. And then I saw those lights you were making in the sky at night, and I thought you might need help. And, well… here I am.”
Twilight stared at him for a few seconds, her mind reeling. Then, slowly but surely, her smile returned with gusto. “Well… thank you very much, Thorax. I appreciate it more than I can describe.”
Thorax’s wings buzzed briefly on his back, his lips peeling back into a happy grin that put his sharp teeth on display. Twilight briefly cringed, and the drone was quick to close his mouth so she didn’t have to see them. Thorax then rose to his hooves and trotted closer. “So, uh… where are you from?” he asked.
Twilight paused for a second, briefly caught off guard. “Oh, uh… do you know about Equestria?” she asked after a second.
Thorax nodded. “Only by name. The Queen talked about it from time to time, but I was never told anything significant. All I know is it’s north of here, and it’s where ponies live,” he explained before settling down on his haunches on the other side of the darkened fireplace from her. “So, uh, what’s it like?”
Twilight was still for a second before an enormous grin slowly began to spread on her face. She was not able to restrain the excited squeal that slid past her lips as she clapped her hooves in front of her face.
Thorax got a bewildered look on his face. “Uh… wha? What’s so funny?”
“I’m making first contact with another race!” Twilight squealed, cursing her sickness for hindering her energy. “Oh, wow, I can write so many essays on this! And my letter to Princess Celestia! I’m going to need, like, uh, twelve pages, at least, to talk about all of this! Oh, I’m so excited!”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Thorax noted, nodding slowly at the air above the vibrating unicorn. “I mean, I can see your excitement. It’s very… yellow.”
“And I have so many questions!” Twilight enthused ecstatically. “I wish I had a notebook! There’s so much for me to learn!”
Thorax chuckled in amusement before gesturing at her with a hoof. “Well, I asked you about your home first.”
Twilight took a deep breath in a bid to quiet her scholarly excitement for the moment. It worked, albeit only somewhat. She nodded and leaned back before beginning. “Well, Equestria is a vast land, and very diverse. There are forests, mountains, open grasslands, deserts, jungles, and even an open tundra at the northern border.”
“I’ve never seen a forest before,” Thorax noted, settling down and looking almost like an enthralled foal listening to a bedtime story. “Or a grassland, or a jungle, and I’ve only ever seen mountains from far away.”
Twilight’s smile grew.
For the next several hours, Twilight regaled Thorax with everything she knew about the geography and the culture of Equestria, although she did keep a few things close to her chest, such as the nation’s defenses. Shining Armor would roast her alive if she let that kind of information slip.
Thorax listened to every word with rapt attention, his eyes wide with awe, and Twilight occasionally giggled. She could practically see the gears turning in his head as he struggled to imagine what she was describing. He seemed to have a particularly hard time wrapping his head around the ideas of the jungle and the ocean. Water for as far as the eye could see in every direction? It seemed all but impossible to him.
When she began talking about the culture, Thorax seemed disbelieving at first. He just didn’t seem to grasp that yes, it was possible for a land as peaceful as Equestria to exist. It was honestly somewhat sad to see. The more Twilight talked about Equestria, and of Ponyville, and the more she saw Thorax’s growing wonder and disbelief, the more she realized that the life of a changeling drone must have been horrible in comparison.
Eventually, though, the conversation had to come to an end. Thorax glanced over towards the light streaming in through the mouth of the cave. His eyes widened, and he abruptly shot up to his hooves. “Oh. Hives! Is it this late already?!” he exclaimed, galloping over to look outside.
Twilight rose to follow him, although her pace was significantly slower than his. “Is something wrong?” she asked, glancing outside as well. If she had to crack a guess, she’d say it was maybe an hour before noon.
Thorax nodded. “Yeah, I’m supposed to be back at the Hive and reporting to my brother before noon,” he said, cantering for the entrance. “I’m sorry, I wish I could stay and talk more, but I need to get back.”
Twilight’s ears drooped, but she nodded in understanding. “Oh… I see,” she muttered in disappointment. After a second, she leaned forward to call after him. “Can you come back sometime soon? I’d love to keep talking with you!”
Thorax looked back at her as he went, flashing her a friendly grin. “I was already planning on it!” he called out. “I’ll see you then!”
“Yeah!” Twilight lifted a hoof to wave. “Take care, Thorax!”
“You, too!” he replied, waving in response. Then, with a quick buzz of his wings, Thorax rose into the air and out of sight.
Twilight lowered her hoof to the ground, the silence creeping in on her. But in spite of the quiet, she was able to smile.
Even in this barren wasteland, it seemed the magic of friendship had plenty of room to grow. And as long as she was here, she would do her best to make sure it did.
With a mild spring in her step, Twilight turned around and made her way back to the fireplace, eager to make some more of Thorax’s fantastic tea.
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Such cute adorkableness! Nice to see how Thorax and Twi mix together. Looking forward to future chapters and their relationship.
If Thorax wants to have something to report so as to not get in complete shit for being late, that broken down wagon would be a good bet.
I mean, it makes sense. "I found a wagon that was clearly attacked by something and abandoned. I had a look around anyway to make sure that the owners weren't still hiding out somewhere, but the only tracks I could find were maybe over a week old and heading away from the badlands."
Uh... Twilight? Aren't you going to ask something about this?
Yay for discretion!
What an unexpected and lovely birthday gift. Thank you for writing.
nice work
Only a week or two? Buddy, your faster at updating your stories than I am.
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Huh, now that you mention it, the one story you have posted is one I have in my curiosity bin.
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Considering Thorax has been on this new scout duty for at least a couple of days now, it's possible he's already reported that in, or something like it.
It's also possible other changelings have already found this and made it known to the rest of the hive. It has been at least a week since the attack on the caravan, and I've gotten the impression the changelings are generally thorough in gathering all the new developments in the region as they come up.
Otherwise it's a good idea.
Too bad it'd only work once. 
A delightful chapter, although it portends the other shoe to drop. What nasty fate will hit Twilight and Thorax next?
And then Twilight died suddenly and became a zomblarg that ate Thorax' brainz. Because everyone loves unexpected twists!
Awww thorax your such a nice dude 😍
Wow even with being in an unknown she's still get excited to learn a lot of new things
Oh my God she really doesn't want to be alone I feel bad for her and I also feel bad for thorax
Aww this was a really nice conversation between thorax and Twilight knowing that these two sort of have in common with each other being alone in this Badlands and Twilight really don't want to see him to go but unfortunately he has to because you know he's on a schedule but again this was really nice
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Not to be rude, but could you condense your thoughts for each chapter into a single comment? It's kinda spammy if you drop multiple comments on one chapter that aren't replies to other people.
I like this a lot. I really hope Thorax is doing some actual patroling on the side!