“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” - Patrick Rothfuss
This story is a sequel to A Changeling Path
Cyclotorna was a changeling infiltrator who spent years living among ponies in secret and siphoning their love away.
Now, after the reformation and being freed from Chrysalis, Cyclotorna returns to Whinnyapolis with the hope that a life built on lies can be saved by truth.
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There's an interesting statement to unpack...
In any case, most intriguing premise. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.
This is going to be painful - but good.
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I've been reading Changeling of the Guard lately and some of Idol's mannerisms rubbed off on me, I suppose.
A part of me was kinda wondering if we’d ever hear about Cyclotorna again after his brief appearance in A Changeling Path. Pleasantly surprised to see him again!
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As an FYI, that comment was like 50% of the reason this got written.
A very heartfelt story so far. I absolutely adore this.
As soon as Cyclotorna noted that Black Rock was a hot-head I saw everything else coming. At least Ivory is willing to give things a shot.
So was Rock charged with assault or not? He literally punched someone for the crime of coming into his office, and probably told the police as much.
Good to see Ivory's willing to mend the bridge. We'll see how other parts of Arche's old life feel about the revelation.
Cyclotorna might not entirely be Arche, but it’s pretty likely that a fair bit of his real personality bled into Arche since he wasn’t trying to impersonate anyone, just create his own legend. So I’m hoping that there’s a lot of build off of, even if it’s only little things, like favorite foods or books or whatever.
aaaaaaa thank you so much!
I just read your most recent quarterly update, and I'm very happy to hear that you're invested in finishing this story! Admittedly, I'd been wondering about its present status for a while, but it never seemed like my place to pry.
Best of luck!
I had to reread the first two chapters since it's been so long, but I'm glad I did. This was a nice little vignette about the aftermath of a relationship ruined by a secret and then repaired. Also racism I guess.
Thanks for finishing this!
Yeah, but...kintsukuroi. Sometimes something is made better by it having been broken and then repaired.
That's more than I manage...I originally did cursive, then just devolved into my first and last name written quickly but at least distinct, but over time even that devolved into some kind of hieratic symbol that I think roughly resembles the Egyptian hieroglyphs for "bone-idle".
It's too bad that things didn't work out between the two of them, but it's understandable why. And yeah, this might not be a storybook happy ending, but it is a happy ending.
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And actually, this was part of the original outline. Making that analogy in the end as everything reached a happily ever after. But when I got there, it just... it didn't feel right. It was too easy. Too packaged. That's why the epilogue got rewritten to the current form.
The idea that changelings didn't necessary need to impersonate a preexisting pony — and, instead, could craft their own identities for themselves — has been around for quite a while. To think of a few examples off the top of my head, A Novel Tale's changelings applied it thoroughly, Body and Mind's Pincer used it to become a stage performer, and it was even sorta canonized in Season 6 when Thorax and Spike devised the former's Crystal Hoof guise more or less on the fly.
And, well… as many a fanfiction reader and writer can attest, one of the potential pitfalls of making an OC is that you might wind up making it a self-insert. Given this chapter's talk of the Chrysalis-era changelings not having room to be themselves, it was nice to see Cy fully realize that he'd crafted not just an "identity", but an identity… if that makes any sense.
Dang, thanks for the thanks! Not sure how much credit I can take for that, though; unless there's something else I'm forgetting, you'd already talked about wanting to finish the story in one of your quarterly updates, so I just turned around and commented that I was looking forward to seeing it continue. Either way, glad to hear I helped!
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I really enjoyed the note the epilogue ended on, but when I read through it the first time around, I definitely got the sense that it'd been revised with a more bittersweet slant than initially intended. It did strike me as slightly odd that, after the previous three chapters culminated in a turning-of-the-corner, and just as it looked like they might manage to stay together, the epilogue "pulled in the reins" the way it did.
That being said, the way things turned out was perfectly reasonable and (from a storytelling perspective) effective, so I'm not complaining in the slightest. Kudos, and congrats on finally finishing this story! 'Twas well worth the wait.
Well, I wish we had a longer story that got into the trials that these two went through until the break up. That would probably make this ending digestible instead of leaving a small hole of sadness.
Regardless, I am glad we got a sequel! Nice story, Wordsmith!
Oh, the angst.
This was an ending worth reaching.
Ah bittersweet endings. Made me smile and sad at the same time. But, I suppose that life is full of it.