Chapter 4
Perhaps the horses did graze. Perhaps they missed a turn on the road. Perhaps, in this strange world, technicolor horses required very little food. Or perhaps Shakti was simply, honestly, wrong.
The next town was not close. They walked for two full days before they saw any signs of civilization. About an hour before sunset, they found an abandoned farm by the road, long overgrown, the farmhouse so ruined it would not even offer them shelter for the night.
But that was enough. “We should get off the road,” Lorin said. “Everyone keep a rock on hand. We should see the locals, they shouldn’t see us.”
Going off road slowed their pace considerably, but it proved to be wise. Not a mile past the abandoned farm was one that still had tended crops and lights in the windows. Beyond that was a cluster of faint little cottages around a windmill. There was a sense, perhaps a sense, that they were growing close to a real town.
They began to discuss the best way to introduce themselves. Avery suggested one of them take the entire deer costume and simply knock on someone’s door. Lorin suggested listening outside someone’s window in the form of rocks until they got the lay of the land. Jaya suggested cornering someone where they couldn't run.
Those conversations abruptly stopped. The group abruptly stopped, and they all knew why. Avery said it first: “I smell food.”
She smelled rising bread, a doughy, yeasty smell. She smelled sizzling meat, steak on a grill. She could faintly taste spices and butter, milk and curry, vegetables and chips with dip. There was a hint that, perhaps after, there would be dessert. And since they were in a fantasy world that presumably didn’t have underage drinking laws, the smell promised she could have wine if she wanted.
No one answered Avery. Without another word, they all dived off the trail towards the source of the odor.
They were a pack. A swarm. The same instincts that told them how to walk on four legs told them how to sneak, to prowl. They crawled low across the forest until they got back to the road, turned into little rocks, and rolled across the open ground, confident that the unnatural motion would be invisible in the darkness. They crept through tall grass in the form of songbirds, and then became the grass itself.
By this means, they snuck up on one of the houses by the windmill, a decently sized rustic cottage with a small fenced-in yard. One of those colorful pony things was in the yard, a unicorn with a pink coat, thick glasses, and a wavey orange mane. Avery couldn’t distinguish the gender at a distance, and while she could tell it had some sort of tattoo on its haunches, the details of that escaped her as well.
It was playing with a dog.
“■■■■■■■!” With exaggerated motions, like a character on a children’s TV show, it threw a stick for its pet. The creature was a bright golden retriever, and a puppet too. It bounced along the ground with the unseen puppeteer’s swaying hands, a switch behind its mask making its jaw close around the stick.
“■■■■! ■■■■!” It barked, and brought the stick back.
All of them were staring, all of them enraptured, but they did not know what they were staring at. Where was the smell coming from?
“Do we eat the dog?” one bush whispered to another.
“Animals are scared of us,” another rock said. “If we show ourselves, that dog will freak out.”
“And there’s more than one house around here. If someone starts screaming, help will come for them, which is bad for us.”
“We wait,” Avery said. “We wait until everyone is asleep, then we can figure out what to do.”
It was torture, sitting there immobile as the trees. The ponies could see only bushes rustling in the night wind, but the changelings, they saw each other. A row of five figures, holding rocks in front of their faces like idiots. They had to wait, to ignore that wonderful smell, to pretend their stomachs didn't hurt and their muscles weren’t so weak for lack of nourishment.
But eventually, the pony put out the lantern it was using to see and went back inside. The wonderful smell faded, and the dog went back to its doghouse. One by one, the lights in the other cottages went out as well, until the only sound was the night animals.
Avery elected herself to go, creeping forward as a rock, facsimile held in front of her face though she knew she must be rolling end over end. The yard was fenced in, but the rest of the cottage was not, and one of the windows was open.
A rock could not peek over the window ledge, so Avery finally had to put it down. Rising on her back legs, she lifted one compound eye over the sill.
It was a bedroom. Small, with stone walls and two open doorframes that lead out of it. There were only two pieces of furniture, a large and finely lacquered chest of drawers, and rough-hewn bed considerably cruder construction, upon which rested a straw mattress. An unlit oil lamp sat on the floor next to the bed, which contained the sleeping unicorn.
An ugly songbird squeezed in through the open window, until, silent as death, she stood over the sleeping figure.
She removed the mask from his body, but he did not wake up. She took his horn, his hooves, his coat and tail. Yet somehow, impossibly, he did not wake up. The tattoo on his haunches depicted a windmill, and it was a separate prop from his coat, so she stole that as well. She took and took until nothing was left but a featureless torso.
Until he stood over himself.
With her mask on, when she saw through his eyes, she saw she’d never touched him. The blankets were not disturbed, he slept soundly. Physically, she’d only stared at him while he slept.
She let herself back out the window, assumed the unicorn’s form, and went to look for the dog. She thought she would have to play fetch with it, to replicate the actions she’d seen earlier that were acquainted with the wonderful smell, but she didn’t.
As soon as the dog saw her, she started to drool, that rich smell, that sweetness. “Here girl,” she called, knowing somehow that the dog was a girl. But what was its name? “Here, Missy! Come here.”
The dog bounded into her embrace, and she wrapped it up in a tight hug, an ecstatic shudder passing through her as she felt the first sustenance she’d known in days. Something flowed from the dog to her, an energy voraciously devoured. The beast sensed something was wrong; it tried to pull away.
So she barred her fangs, the fangs she still had, that she knew she still had. The mask fell away.
Without the mask and its stone eyes, she could see the dog’s grievous wounds, the chunks she’d torn out of the puppet’s milky-white torso. She saw the blood that existed only in metaphor.
She plunged her teeth into the dog’s ribcage, and ate its heart.
The others rushed forward without caution or subterfuge, drawn by the smell of a fresh kill. They found Avery standing over the hollow remains of a golden retriever, her changeling shell splattered.
“What happened?” Shakti asked.
“We eat love,” Avery said, breathless and panting. She replaced her fallen mask, turning back into the unicorn stallion. “The dog loved me.”
And she knew that if the dog did survive, it would never love again. That part of it was gone.
“Are there other pets around here?” Lorin asked. “I’m starving.”
“It’s farm country. There have got to be dogs,” Jaya said. “Let’s just, hit up every farm house with a doghouse outside it.”
“There’s not a lot of meat on a dog,” Avery warned. “God, I needed food, but that was more like a snack than a meal.”
“We’ll split up and check all the houses around here,” Cassidy said. “Everyone eats once before anyone eats twice, okay?”
They spoke for a time about the mechanics of how to find more dogs, more pets, who would hit which house. But then they heard sheets rustling, hay crackling, and the unicorn stallion came to his window.
“The box is the treasure,” Shakti said. They were at last all assembled, Avery, Cassidy, Lorin, Jaya, Shakti, all sitting around a common room table. A pizza sat in the table’s center, the box just to the left, and Lorin kept his toolbox underneath in case it was needed.
“That doesn’t fit the riddle,” Avery insisted. “It specified that to whoever opened the—”
“The box can’t be opened,” Shakti said. “You established that, right? It has no lid, no secret catches, no hidden way in. It’s a solid piece. I don’t know the full implications of saying that no one can have ‘the powers of every tribe and all the treasures in the world’, but that’s it. It’s unopenable.”
“You’re giving up,” Avery snapped, and Cassidy frowned with her.
“You said it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen, right?” Shakti suggested. “That you didn’t know art could be that beautiful. That makes it a treasure in its own right.” When Avery didn’t interrupt, he continued. “And I agree, by the way. That it’s the best piece I’ve ever seen. That could be in a gallery.”
“Fuck galleries,” Avery said. “I don’t give a shit about art galleries. They’re pretentious and half the art sucks.”
“You know what I mean,” Shakti said. “Come on, someone else back me up here.”
An uncomfortable silence passed around the table. Nobody spoke. A few people turned to stare at the box, or the floor.
“Okay,” Shakti lifted a hand. “Humor me. As a hypothetical, say this isn’t a riddle. There’s no prize, there’s no ‘solution,’ the writing on the top of the box is just something the creator thought sounded cool. But the box itself is a gift to you, you can put it on a shelf, you can enjoy it, you can admire it. You can stare into its glittering lights. Would that be so bad?”
Avery licked her lips, glanced down at the box, and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Right,” Shakti’s voice was smooth. “I’m sure whoever gave it to you intended it as—”
“No,” Avery cut him off, tone sharp. “Not ‘Yeah’ as in ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ ‘Yeah’ as in ‘yeah, it would be that bad.’ You know what this box makes me feel? This art? It makes me feel angry. Because looking at this box makes me feel warm and fuzzy and happy, and I don’t understand why. And those feelings don’t feel like they’re a part of me, they feel like they’re external. Like the box is magic. And as soon as it gets taken away, the feelings go too.”
Cassidy cut in: “The word you’re looking for is resentment.”
The table turned to stare at her. “What?” she asked. “I feel it too.”
“Me too,” Lorin said. “I couldn’t sleep after I saw that thing. I kept thinking about it.”
“We all feel that way,” Avery said. “Every one of us, the first time we saw it, we got all starry eyed and wonderful, and now we’re pissy about it. The only reason Shakti doesn’t feel it yet is because he just saw it for the first time.”
“I don’t feel that way,” Jaya said, visually unsettled. “This is taking art too seriously. You’re crazy.”
“I agree with Jaya,” Shakti said. “Maybe you should put the box away for a few days. Put it out of your mind.”
“No,” Avery said, standing and picking up the box. “No, fuck that. I just figured out how to open it.”
“What? How?” Shakti asked, frowning.
“What do you care?” Avery snapped. “I thought you said the box itself was the prize. There’s nothing in it, right? So I’m just going to open it and it’s an empty box.”
“You’re always kind of a bitch,” Jaya said. “You’re a really fake, manipulative person. I knew that when I became your friend. We all know. But you’re also usually a nice person. Like, actually sweet. This is bringing out a really ugly side of your personality I don’t like.”
“I don’t like it when people say I’m crazy. Particularly when they’re lying. I’ve seen it in your eyes.” She turned to the table. “Show of hands, who really wants whatever prize is in the box? Who really, really wants it?”
Cassidy and Lorin’s hands went up at once, no hesitation. Jaya followed a moment later. Shakti, only reluctantly, pressured by the group, lifted his hand as well.
“How do you open it?” he asked.
“You resent the box.”
Shakti was momentarily puzzled, unsure what Avery meant. Then she reached down into Lorin’s tool kit, and brought out the hammer.
She brought it down on the beautiful glass box, and it shattered into a thousand pieces.
Wind Roller was awoken in the night by his dog barking, and odd buzzing noises outside his window. Thinking she’d disturbed a nest of wasps, he got up to see what was wrong, peering out his window.
There in his yard were four changelings and a perfect doppelganger of himself. They were trilling to each other, buzzing, snapping, speaking in their alien insectile language. Panic rushed through him and his breath caught in his throat. All five turned to look straight at him.
He was paralyzed by fear. He should have ran, should have screamed, but he only stood there as his copy walked right up to the half-open window. He looked into his own eyes.
“We don’t mean you any harm,” his doppleganger said, with his voice, his intonations.
When he tried to speak, all that came out was a frightened croak. He tried to nod.
“We’re lost. Do you know where we can find a library? Or someone who knows a lot about magic?”
Tears welled up in his eyes. He shook his head, and managed to force the words out: “I don’t love anypony. I’m single and I don’t have family. I swear I don’t.”
His copy opened its jaw, and a sound came out like a swarm of wasps. The others answered in the same language, conferring among themselves.
“Go to sleep,” his doppleganger said, “and nothing will happen to you.”
Wind Rolling crawled into bed, and pretended to be asleep until the sun rose. It was only then that he dared to leave his house, and discovered his dog lying still in the grass.
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11567000
I was going to say "this story is totally unedited" but I was hoping you'd make one of your famous remarks and that would no longer be true. :D
Good to see you again, I've missed your comments.
11567050
I warn you, it's unedited, I'm planning this as I go, and overall it probably isn't going to be a flawless masterpiece, but...
Life has been hard for awhile, and it's been so long since I've written anything. I need to get back on that horse. Write something, publish it, and never look back.
And who knows? Maybe you'll enjoy it. I hope so!
11567099
It will have bright moments! But we need to get to the dark ones first.
11567159
i.chzbgr.com/full/6408687616/h90ACC2EC/doing-bad-things-is-fun
11567257
Frankly, the opening should have told you this isn't supposed to be a subtle story. :D
11567386
It's also my feelings on my sister's fiance! Didn't have to dig deep for that one.
11568087
Now to see if I can keep it up!
11568335
Three new chapters! I hope you enjoy where it's going. :)
11570910
I really like the jumping back and forth! It's a way to get some blatant foreshadowing!
I also find your story's version of transformative ability interesting. I also DM'd you in discord of course, ha. :-)
11571024
It looks like it goes much further than that, their disguise/transformation ability has been heavily nerfed like they can only transform into something they have rather than anything they know of meaning that they can both lose the ability to transform into someone and are limited by how much they can physically carry how many things (ch3) they can transform into
and as far as we've been shown the original has to be dead.(ch4) Then on top of everything else their disguises are imperfect (the eyes) and can be discovered from the original at a glance by anyone who knew them before whereas you'd normally have to figure that out by them not knowing things or behavior or some kind of test.And now I see there's been an extra 2 chapters since I read this earlier today.
ch3
Also can't manipulate size much, weirdly seems to change for inanimate objects like rocks and plants but not birds,
source must be dead seems further confirmed.(invalidated in ch4)Weirdly they can fly while disguised but not natively even though they have wings.
The puppet thing is always active not just after they are dead but no one has tried removing the skin from anything alive yet.
Abstraction seems to be confirmed.
ch4
They do have instincts from their new bodies.
They can take the identity of the living without harming them, abstraction confirmed.
Seems to be confirmed that the abstraction only allows one copy at any given time, looks like a friendly could just take and store the copy preventing anyone else from being able to duplicate them.
are known and aren't known for being friendly.
feeding can cause permanent harm.
Fascinating stuff thus far, especially the world through changeling eyes. I have to love the TF2 Spy logic of their disguises. (Paper masks would certainly be more convenient than holding a rock in front of your face.) And the glass box is a fascinating puzzle, teaching the changelings-to-be a very important lesson: Emotions are a tool. Use them or you'll be used.
11570773
(Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. The story updated such that I thought I'd better find time to deal with those and your comment rather than just your comment, and that ended up taking a bit.)
Would it, though? Hunger, whether because it hadn't actually been that long or because a previous energy acquisition system stopped working, is a pretty strong motivator, and it seems to me like it wouldn't take all that much tweaking, if any, to produce the behavior seen (as I'm remembering it, at least).
Chapter 2:
"the woods on the mountain side. They"
"the woods on the mountainside. They"?
...Huh.
Ahhhh. I was wondering if it might be something like that.
So, metaphor indeed -- but one made not by the narrator...
That said, hm. I wonder, why could they each not take all aspects of the deer? Possibly just a lack of knowledge of how, but it's also possible that changelings in this universe don't so much generate their own aspects as take those generated but no longer used by others, or something like that...
"as neatly as surgeons tools: screwdrivers"
"as neatly as surgeons' tools: screwdrivers"?
"a jewelers eyepiece"
"a jeweler's eyepiece"?
"and sharp as surgeons scalpels were"
"and sharp as surgeons' scalpels were"?
"She thought she’d tell him to stop wasting"
"She thought he'd tell her to stop wasting"?
Chapter 3:
Fascinating...
I do wonder, what is the difference in action between taking the aspect of the sapling for disguise, and physically taking it from the ground? It appears to be something they are not at this point conscious of doing...
Ah, and the rock transformation can be layered over the antlers, without the rock sprouting antlers, presumably.
Hmm. Okay, and we saw at the start of the first chapter that changelings and ponies can communicate in this universe, so presumably the difficulties shown here can be overcome somehow...
...Though we don't know if Avery then was transformed in part...
"am I fucking vampire?” Avery"
"am I a fucking vampire?” Avery"?
"on how to find the boxes manufacturer"
"on how to find the box's manufacturer"?
"This sortof soft, comfortable…"
"This sort of soft, comfortable…"?
Chapter 4:
"A rock could not peek over the window ledge"
I do wonder how that was represented in the metaphor.
"and rough-hewn bed considerably cruder"
"and a rough-hewn bed of considerably cruder"?
"that were acquainted with the wonderful"
"that were associated with the wonderful"?
Interesting; I wonder which pieces, and/or how much, would be sufficient to grant that knowledge of the dog?
"He should have ran, should have"
"He should have run, should have"?
"Wind Rolling crawled into bed"
"Wind Roller crawled into bed"?
11571022
Oh, hah, well, glad I could help. :D
And thanks. :)
11571025
Ah, sorry you've been having a hard time of things; I hope things improve.
And I've been enjoying the story so far. :)
(Sorry about the delay in getting to this, but the chapters came quickly and I got busy and distracted.)
11571179
"and are limited by how much they can physically carry how many things"
Are they, though? After all, they aren't actually physically carrying things at all, for the transformations.
11579324
I've got tons of stuff queued to get back to myself, no issue at all.
If it hasn't been that long it makes a lot more sense with the new drives being overwhelming but the way I read it they had been friends a long time.
Same with this as if this is shortly after and they're beginning to starve it makes a lot more since but it seemed to be implied that they had been friends a long time in which case they should have already long adapted.
A few chapters in i'm starting to think we're actually going to catch up to the start scene pretty quickly and it's only going to be a few days from now and we're going to find the pony at the start had only actually met them like the day before at most.
Aren't they? They appear to have to wear the items to transform and then keep up with them while not worn.
It seems to be an abstraction layer though, they don't appear to be fully physical items as they can be taken from living subjects without apparent harm yet they still seem to be items that can be transferred or lost and take up physical space.
11579932
Ah, thanks. :)
Aye, so much to read, so little time...
"If it hasn't been that long it makes a lot more sense with the new drives being overwhelming but the way I read it they had been friends a long time."
Well, even if the hunger hadn't increased, consider how appealing the prospect of that plan working could have been, in terms of future food supply.
"Same with this as if this is shortly after and they're beginning to starve it makes a lot more since but it seemed to be implied that they had been friends a long time in which case they should have already long adapted."
Yeah, but there are various possibilities regarding how well adapted. How sustainable is their food source? How secure is it? How much of their hunger does it sate?
"A few chapters in i'm starting to think we're actually going to catch up to the start scene pretty quickly and it's only going to be a few days from now and we're going to find the pony at the start had only actually met them like the day before at most."
That, I don't know, but I also recall having the impression it'd been longer.
"Aren't they? They appear to have to wear the items to transform and then keep up with them while not worn."
But the items don't actually exist as physical objects.
"It seems to be an abstraction layer though, they don't appear to be fully physical items as they can be taken from living subjects without apparent harm yet they still seem to be items that can be transferred or lost and take up physical space."
Transferred or lost, yes, but I don't read them as taking up physical space. The layer of metaphor in changeling perception in this universe seems to be quite strong.
I don't think I have ever read a take on changelings this creepy before.
Your previous stories pales compared to this, and the idea of being stuck in a shape like this? Good grief.
“You’re always kind of a bitch,” Jaya said. “You’re a really fake, manipulative person. I knew that when I became your friend. We all know. But you’re also usually a nice person. Like, actually sweet. This is bringing out a really ugly side of your personality I don’t like.”
Hmm, this could indicate that there already was a bit of changeling in Avery.
These changelings are super creepy. I love how you’ve described their abilities to, real horror movie monsters that ponies should be afraid of.