Sugarcube Corner
Nothing
by Ezn
There's a rumbling in my stomach as I enter the town. It's a deep, ominous sound, but for now it's just a sound, and I am thankful for that. There's still time before the real rumbling starts.
I take the air in with a long, deep sniff. I smell flowers on the breeze, sweat on the backs of ponies and a faint scent of manure, which I wrinkle my nose at. I take a few more sniffs, and then the real scents start flooding in. The scents of food.
There's a particularly strong whiff of the stuff coming from an inviting, whimsical building. A sign identifies it as "Sugarcube Corner" as I trot inside, taking more brief sniffs of the air. The smell is good – some days I can almost delude myself into feeding on it alone.
Some days. Almost.
"Welcome to Sugarcube Corner, dearie, what can I get for you today?" asks a cheery voice from behind the counter, which I identify as belonging to a plump, pleasant-smelling mare.
"Just a... milkshake, please," I ask, producing some bits from my saddlebag. "Chocolate."
The mare takes my money with a smile. "Coming up!" she says. "You can take a seat now, if you don't mind."
I don't, and I sit down at the table nearest the counter, waiting for my milkshake. My forehooves drum against the table's wooden surface absently.
"What's wrong with your eye?" a young voice chirps.
I look down, surprised, to see a yellow filly blinking up at me. Ah, to be young and curious.
"Oh, nothing too serious," I reply, patting the patch over my left eye. "Just have to wait for it to heal from a corrective operation for a few days, and then I'll take the patch off and see better than ever."
The filly cocks her head for a moment, but then nods and seems satisfied with my answer.
"Sunrise, stop annoying that poor stallion and come over... here..."
I look up at the filly's mother as she says this, and see the last pony I ever expected to see again. Of course, I manage to hide the surprise from my face and the subtle glint of recognition from my eye.
She doesn't hide anything. I can see that quite plainly.
"Do you love me?" she asked, her purple irises quivering.
"Yes," I replied, running a grey hoof through her blonde mane, "with every one of my three hearts."
She pouted. "Psh, show-off! Making me feel inadequate, with just one sorry little heart."
Guilt rose in my chest.
"Honey?" she asked.
"...Don't, dear," I implored her. "Don't ever feel that way. I can sense your love, you know." And I meant it.
I blink myself back into the present as she speaks. "S-Sunrise, darling, why don't you ask Mrs Cake if you can go upstairs and visit Auntie Pinkie?" She sounds almost nonchalant.
"Yay!" The filly gallops off in a hurry, and I'm left staring at Lily Blossom, eye to eyes.
"You didn't change the eyepatch," she says. "I'd recognise that eyepatch anywhere."
"Don't worry, it's only temporary," I told her, rubbing the black fabric over my eye. "Just until my eye heals."
Her worry-creased face deflated into a relieved smile. "No matter how many eyes you have, I still love you just the same."
She was telling the truth.
I try to feign ignorance, even though I've stared silently at her far too long for that to have any hope of working. "Madame, I have no idea what you're talking about."
Lily Blossom just raises an eyebrow. "I can see it in your good eye too... even if it's green now. And in your movements. The way you looked up at me... only you lurch around like that."
I sigh.
"Relax, darling," she said to me. "You always look so tense."
"I just want to know why." Lily's face turns from triumphant to fragile in an instant. "Why did you leave?"
The sweet, sweet smell drifted further and further away from my snout as I reached the city limits. I took one last, longing sniff, but it had grown almost faint enough to blend in with the flowers and the trees. I knew I would never smell it again.
It's been long enough. I was rash back then. Now I don't feel anything except hunger. Still, I think she deserves to know why I did what I did. So I lean in close and beckon for her to do the same.
"The day before I left the hive on my first hunt, my instructor told me something," I whisper, speaking as if I'm disinterestedly giving a dull lecture. "He saw my fascination with the outside world and my optimism and enthusiasm for the journey I was about to embark on – an enthusiasm not found in most changelings – and said that it was important for me to remember that our race is one of pretenders."
I see the beginnings of tears in Lily's eyes, but she makes no protestations, so I continue. "'We feed on love because we cannot generate it,' he told me."
"Thank you for the advice, sir," I said back to the old changeling, dotted with more holes than any other in our hive, "but I shall make it my task to test your hypothesis out in the world."
The old master chuckled. Had I been a younger changeling, he may have had me disciplined for backtalk, but I was one of his favourites, and I imagined some small part of him hoped I would be right.
"Even then, I felt he must be incorrect, and when I met you, I thought I knew for certain that he was wrong."
Lily smiles hopefully, but I hold up a forehoof to stop her from speaking. I may be an uncaring, unfeeling beast, but I don't need to go about giving her false hope.
"You loved me, Lily, and I knew that it was for me, not somepony I was impersonating. I took the form of someone long dead, and our romance was real, between you and me. Your love for me had the most delicious smell I've ever encountered."
"Lily, there's something I haven't told you about me..."
Lily frowns. "I don't care about what you are! You know that! You told me, and I accepted it. Doesn't that count for anything?"
"What you are on the outside isn't important to me," she said. "The father of my child was a pony through and through, and yet he was not half the stallion you are. I love you for what's on the inside."
I sigh. "Lily, I was hungry. For months and months you were the only thing in my world, and everyday I would smell that delicious love but know that I could not feed on it. To do so would have been sacrilege. And to feed on the love of others, as I'd done before... it disgusted me."
Lily's expression is blank. I can tell she's thinking hard, but she has no idea what's coming.
"So instead of feeding on your love for me, or on the love of other ponies for each other, I tried something else. I fed on my love for you."
"And?" Lily forces out.
I take a deep, long sniff of the air. "When you loved me, your love smelt like the most delicious of meals – the most nutritious, sustaining feast. Like the smell of a cake made specially for you on your birthday, mixed in with the first proper meal after a long, long journey. It felt as if one bite would last me a lifetime. Of course, I couldn't let myself take even one bite."
Lily lets me continue.
"The love I smell right now... it has a comforting, stable scent. Like the smell of a familiar place, or a fresh bale of hay for breakfast. It is the smell of the mature, sustaining love that the husband and wife who own this shop have for each other – a love that has brought new lives into the world."
Lily bites her lip. She wants me to get to the point.
"The love I had for you, Lily," I say, "had no smell. At first, I imagined that that was simply because it was an everpresent part of me I'd gotten so used to the smell of that I didn't even notice it. After all, one doesn't generally smell one's own scent, unless it's particularly foul. So, undeterred by the love's lack of a smell, I set about feeding on it."
I pause, perhaps for too long, but open my mouth again before Lily can open hers.
"I lied about how I lost my eye," I say. "There was no accident at the factory. I just didn't want you to know the truth. In fact, I lied about even losing my eye at all."
I flip up my eyepatch, and Lily stares at the solid blue of my real left eye in horror. "But – can't you just –"
"The day I tried to feed on my love for you, I lost the ability to disguise that eye."
I lay crippled on the ground, a pain pounding through my temples and the taste of bile strong on my tongue. It felt like somepony was rubbing my left eyelid with a hot coal.
I reached up to touch the skin around it. It felt hard and unyielding, just as it had during my days in the hive. In horror, I surveyed my reflection in a nearby puddle, worried that I had lost my pony form entirely.
With my reflection came momentary relief, followed by panic. I still looked like a pony, but the skin around my left eye had returned to its natural appearance. I tried to change it, but in vain. I'd known it would be impossible the moment I glimpsed my reflection.
"But why?" Lily asks, her eyes big and hopeful. She still hasn't connected all the dots.
I know that this is the part that's going to hurt her the most. I try to be dry and factual about it. "Love is a kind of magic," I say. "When I feed on love, I feed on magic, and in the unexpected absence of love, a changeling might accidentally feed on other types of magic."
Realisation is slowly dawning across Lily's features.
"I couldn't feed on my love for you because there was none. I couldn't love you."
"I love you for what's on the inside."
Lily just buries her head in her forehooves and cries.
I sit and watch, not moving to comfort her because there's nothing inside of me.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- SumPony · 5.1k words · 14 0 · 932 views
- Mirage Duane Mic Jr · 2.9k words · 10 1 · 587 views
- That One Guy · 3.8k words · 41 0 · 1.2k views
- StormDancer · 4.8k words · 79 0 · 1.8k views
- The Dapper Changeling · 13k words · 164 3 · 4k views
- Brosparkles · 1.9k words · 58 1 · 2k views
- Ezn · 4.9k words · 79 3 · 2.4k views
- destinedjagold · 32k words · 49 7 · 2.4k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.143 seconds
Total duration
775 users online
663,499 hits today, 2,156,967 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Very nice, the last line is like that of something from Stephen King, specifically, 11/22/63.
Unfortunately, this is just one of those elements of the show that I just can't suspend my disbelief for. Characters just don't make sense when you removed 'love' from them in this way, and the motivations just crumble.
Nice idea though!
-Scott
Oh my GAWD.
Bravo, sir. Bravo.
Hmm. Looks good. Will read.
I feel like I'm missing parts of it but it's good so I'll give it thumbs up
This is... why... so messed up... that's just...
No...
omg, I don't even...
He could've just...
Why?
1446659
I haven't really read any Stephen King, but perhaps I should change that. Thanks!
1446774
I can understand that reaction. The changelings have always been a source of what? for me as well. I mean, the idea of "feeding on love" just raises all kinds of questions that were never answered. Thanks anyway.
1447826
That's the reaction I was going for. Thanks for reading.
After reading:
Not bad. Not really amazing but well written and expressed.
I only have 2 complaints:
1: use of the old English "smelt".
2: Tragedy tag. What happened was not really a tragedy. If, for instance, feeding on his own love is what stopped him from being able to feel love any longer, that would be a tragedy.
Unless you are implying that he does not generate love but he CAN feel it? After all, leaving someone because you feel you are not good enough for them is sort of an act of love. If he couldn't feel he wouldn't care. That would be kind of tragic.
1449067
Thanks for reading!
I'm not American, so I spell words like this.
That is what I was meaning to imply. He could still sense Lily's love for him, but realised he was unable to love her back. This story's kind of about the oddness that comes with the abstract concept of love having a semi-physical manifestation.
1449085
Hmm. that's not what I meant, but then if that's the case, I would not consider that a tragedy.
What I meant is if he could feel love, the emotion, towards Lily, but because he does not "emit" it as a form of magic and cannot feed on it, he does not believe it is there. Because if he didn't love her, why would he leave her? If you can't feel positive emotions toward somepony, you can't really feel negative ones like guilt either.
1448653 You really should, he's a great author. King and Koontz are the masters of suspense and horror. I've started to develop a kind of poetic pose in my writing after reading The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers. You should check them out, they are insanly talented.
Wonderful, rarely a good one shot like this that really stabs you in the heart.
1449720
Koontz used to be interesting, now he's too much about empowerment and preachy to boot.
King's writing has always been exceptional but has a very interesting curve of how messed up the stuff in his stories is throughout his career depending on his personal life as well as drug use. The Talisman, which he wrote wit Peter Straub is one of my favorite books by far.
1450364 Yeah, I'm reading a Koontz right now, 77 Shadow Street, and while its creep factor is high, its characters a dull. My favorite novel is at a three way tie between The Things They Carried, The Road, and The Yellow Birds.
1451551
Xenogenesis, The Talisman, and Quest for the Fallen Star.
1451562 Sci-fi guy huh? Yeah, I used to be into that stuff when I was younger, but now I prep for zombies.
cdn.inprnt.com/media/prints/1433/full.jpg
Great story, Ezn! I think this is a pretty admirable exploration of how changelings differ from ponies on an emotional level.
A couple minor suggestions with regard to a couple minor things in the text itself: "She lets me continue." Maybe something like "Lily shifts her weight from her left to her right forehoof, watching my face intently. I lift my nose and test the air, ignoring the sickly-sweet scent of the confections all around the shop, the soapy, yeasty scents wafting out of the kitchen where Mr. Cake is mopping up some spilled batter, and the sweet, earthy scent of my milkshake. Eliminate all those purely chemical, physical scents and what remains is..." There are a couple other spots where more descriptive language would add to the story, but I think you do a good job of showing and not telling throughout most of it.
Can you tell that I like the idea of different kinds of love having different qualities of scent?
Anway, why the present tense? It didn't seem to add anything to the story and is, IMO, a little distracting.
Otherwise, I really liked this one. Again, a pretty interesting exploration into the character of a changeling; As I don't know if I can get my head into the motivations of a character devoid of the capacity for love, some of what he does strikes me as a little odd and unclear. (eg. "Still, I think she deserves to know why I did what I did." Why? If you truly have no feelings for her, why even bother? What are his actual motivations for thinking that?)
Ouch. That one hurt. Good fic.
1452704>>1449105
I just wanted to say thank you for these two comments. I've been thinking about what you guys said over the past day or so, and I've come to some realisations about the way I wrote this story and the way I write in general that will hopefully help me to improve.
This is amazing. One of my biggest weak points writing-wise has always been description. I had a nagging feeling that there should have been more description in this story, that I was really missing out on opportunities to describe smells, but my brain derped and refused to come up with anything even nearly like this. Thank you again.
I don't really have a solid reason for that other than a personal like for first-person present-tense storytelling. It kinda felt right at the time, and I suppose I could argue that it helps to differentiate the present from the protagonist's memories (a bit of a weak excuse, though).
Well...
I wanted the above quote to be a possible interpretation of the story, but not necessarily the definitive one, because I'm basically in love with ambiguity. Whether ambiguity is a good thing here, I'm no longer certain – one man's ambiguity is another's "you were too weak and indecisive to commit to a proper ending", and I think I may have used ambiguity purely for its own sake here, rather than to really benefit the story.
Once again, thank you both for your thought-provoking comments.
Yowch... poor Lily... but what a way to end a story!
Definitely a more "realistic" take on the changelings, as realistic as anything based on a cartoon show about pastel colored ponies can be, than most authors seem to take. When I read those final few sentences and then it just ended... they kind of resonated in my head. Perhaps being that the show and so many of the fanfics on this site try to end on a happy, everything is sunshine and rainbows note, this ending just stuck out to me so much more... it completely broke my expectations.
My only critique would be that I was never quite sure when the dialogue was in the present or a flashback, I assumed that the italics would be flashbacks but there were times I was sure it was a flashbacks but it was plain text and times when they were clearly talking in the present and then a line of dialogue was in italics but then they responded to it as if it was present tense. Make this a little clearer and is a ten outa ten in my book.
Aww, how sad.
Well written; bravo, good sir! A good example of gothic short stories (with considerably less dying alone in the rain). Many others have commented about some king fellow, so your work must be amazing to earn comparisons to royalty!
I believe the ending's ambiguity is best for this situation. Saps like me can have their hope, and nihilists can have their existential crises.
Nice. That was well worth reading.
1459771
Some stories want happy endings. Others really, really don't. I try to make everything fit.
Thanks for the kind words! I'll give it another read-through and see about that italics confusion. I was fairly certain I'd made everything italic that needed to be, but it's entirely possible I managed to derp hard somewhere.
1463774
Hmm... point.
Thank you!
I like this take on Changelings. Not full on, foal-killing evil, but still incapable of love. Usually the only points on the scale are "evil incarnate" and "misunderstood good guys," this actually strikes a very interesting balance.
1449105
You took the words right out of my mouth. If he was clearly an indifferent monster that only wanted to feed for his own self gain, then why not continue to fool her rather than leave her? To me, it shows that he really did care for Lily as he didn't want to be dishonest with her anymore. He may not be sure if he loved her yet, but he at least cared for her with putting himself at risk. That alone can leave for him to learn to return the feelings. It just might take him more time to figure this out, since it's new for changelings to reason with themselves then just following the hive.
How can a changeling try feeding on love they themselves they think they are supposed to have? He thought he didn't have any, but maybe its just not physically possible for him to feed on his own emotion so it has no smell or taste. That is like us trying to use energy in our body to make more energy... you just can't feed yourself, you'll starve. Maybe the poor changeling is so starved he's not thinking as he should.
Still a good written little fic though.
Dang. Wish I'd read this when the contest was active. I didn't have the time then, but I suppose better late than never. Wonderful, woeful tale. Another for the favorites list.
5080242
Actually, I did read this, but I didn't remember it because I rated it poorly. The entire concept was lost on me back then.
Granted, you've added a significant number of words since then, I still kind of feel bad, now that I've had time for the full impact of the story to settle on me. I should have scored this much higher, and certainly placed less weight on the prompt. Sorry about that.
5238057 how trhe hell you read every buckibg story i read
WHAT THE HELL
5325532
Great minds thinks alike? idk. I didn't realize this was happening
5325661 welll that does make sense and if so want to help me to read my story to help figureout whats wrong with it cause Meester is so cryptic in the way he tells me what i need to have done
5325765
... I'm afraid to ask. I mean, I could look at it, but I warn you, I have a sharper tongue than I realize sometimes.
ex. The grammar and punctuation alone in that post makes me cringe.
1451620 Team up with me and my clan and we will be invincible!
1473593 Don't know if your still monitoring this, but based on your story and how changelings operate in it, I have to challenge the ending. The way its written, the changeling does in fact love Lilly. What his body was trying to do was live off a by-product of his body. A example would be us trying to live while breathing the Carbon DI-oxide we breath out. His body has already absorbed the magic in the love he received, which is what he inherently feeds on, and was trying to send out what was left. It seems that any other magic would not be nourishing/(maybe)poison to changelings, hence the trouble he had. also note that he did, in his own words, send out his love to Lilly, he just couldn't feed on it.
Thought on this?
7601362
In brief: yeah, you're right. This is something I realised a while after I finished the story.
7611407 thanks for replying! Sorry to completely ruin the ending you planned, I tend to pick out the smallest details and call them out. Great read anyway!
this seemed like a harmless little story. sweet, short, simple
it was not.
but i love it even more !