Even Changelings Get The Blues

by horizon

1. Seeing Red

"What bugs me," the rancher says, "is with everything she's accused of, she's still claimin' to be an expert on love."

His words are the faded maroon of suspicion, but there's a subtle thread of green running through them. And with that, Chester allows himself a smile. This recruitment is going to be a success, even if he hasn't quite figured out how yet.

"Oh, it's no claim, sir," Chester says brightly, trying to ignore the itching of the still-stiff suit which was bought specially for this mission. "What her detractors won't tell you is the simple truth. The Holy Mother has attained multiple siddhis"—he often tests the waters with that term; given the stirrings of creamsicle-orange now surrounding the rancher, he'll dial back the foreign words to avoid further confusion—"on her path to enlightenment. Demonstrable magical powers which serve as proof of her transcendence and wisdom."

That topic always goes in one of three directions, and unfortunately Chester's current prospect takes the baser path. The rancher's enormous outline fades into the greedy desire of amber as he chuckles, opening his front door a little wider. "An' I suppose for a generous donation she'll teach me everything she knows?" he says, passing it off as a joke but with no lilac in it.

Most of the Holy Mother's other devotees would leap at that base interest—it's enough to get the prospect in their ashram door—but because Chester can tell the difference, he has always held himself to a higher standard. The Holy Mother already has enough troubles; the least he can do is bring her prospects primed with a sincere desire for enlightenment.

So he laughs and pivots. "Oh, naturally. But men like us, we know that there's more important things in life than magic tricks."

The rancher considers for a moment, hints of green returning to his outline amid a broader stirring of violet. (Esau hadn't been kidding about the intensity of his colors—it's trivial to read the subtleties.) Then he laughs back, touches the brim of his Stetson, and throws wide his door. "Pretty bold claim, son. But I happen to appreciate that. C'mon in and gimme the pitch."

Chester thanks him and walks into the front room of the spacious, ostentatiously decorated mansion. "Once you see the Holy Mother yourself, sir, you won't need one," he says earnestly. "I've seen it over and over again: She's one of those women whose intensity takes you by surprise and sets your life on another path entirely."

He punctuates that with a sweeping gesture to give him a chance to discreetly get his bearings. He's standing next to several display cases with historical artifacts, the closest of which is a rusted metal gate sign reading "Rancho Bronco", and there are a number of large animal heads mounted on the front wall before the decorations turn to more typical pictures. Some of the heads are game animals, but the one over the door is a bull with massive, wide horns. Chester notes the details in case of small talk.

Speaking of which, he had expected a response. Chester glances back at his prospect for confirmation and pauses, alarmed. The colors around the rancher have retreated behind obscuring gray as he crosses meaty flannel-covered arms over his giant brick of a chest.

Most prospects, even the skeptical ones, respond well to his sincerity once they've got any green to them—but there's something else going on here, and this is a catch he can't afford to lose. It's time to change tactics and play International Superspy Chet Land.

Chester stands up a little straighter and pictures himself adjusting the imaginary bow-tie on his perfectly tailored tuxedo. Like the titular spy in the novels, he is suave, and he can say anything the situation demands. The real Chester hates lying—there's just no substitute for having your earnestness rewarded by the blue shades of a genuine connection—but the Holy Mother's needs come first, and this is one of those prospects whose problems won't come to light without some finesse.

"Take me, for example." Time to improvise and fish for secrets. "I used to read incel forums," he lies, carefully monitoring the edge of the rancher's form for color shifts. No hint of a reaction, other than the man's lips tightening amid his thick beard, so Chester discards the angle and pivots. "My relationship with my mother was always a little bit fraught." That lie finds no traction either, and the rancher's gray is fading along with Chester's hopes. He'll need a hit fast or his window of opportunity will close. "And it's easy to be dubious when love hasn't worked out for you," he desperately guesses. Ah—and there's a tinge of (yellow-tinted) green flaring out again. Bingo.

Chester smoothly merges that angle into his patter as if it had been the case all along, and turns to pace as he talks. It means briefly taking his focus off the rancher, but now that he has a hint, he needs to do a deep dive of the room for further context.

"I had never had a special someone, and I never thought I would." His lips are on autopilot as his eyes flit between the pictures on the walls. An ornately framed portrait photo of the man himself (in the exact same Stetson he's wearing now), high front and center, hanging under the broad second-floor balcony and laying claim to the room and its contents. "I always struggled with doubts—was I important enough to be loved?" Group shots on the sides of the stairs, bland chunks of men in identical suits and dully colored ties, politicians and agricultural executives. "I had all the friends I needed, so why weren't relationships working out?" And—ah, there, down at eye level on the side walls, a boy and girl in identical cap and gown, possibly secondary school, possibly university. They've got the rancher's broad nose, thin lips and round face. "Why couldn't I find a partner who knew how important family was?"

Chester has been glancing back at the rancher between sentences, and that green has been building up to a healthy glow as guess after guess connects. The man shifts his stance, still saying nothing but once again listening intently.

Still, Chester hesitates. The central piece remains missing from the puzzle, and he needs more time. "But in my third year at, ah…" He looks at the school colors in the children's portraits, and makes an educated guess. "Crystal Prep." He's rewarded by an immediate flare of violet. "When I met the Holy Mother. It's a great school, by the way. Have you ever been?"

The rancher barks a laugh, striding in and clapping a meaty arm down around his shoulders. "Have I, boy?" he violet-says, and Chester smiles back up to ignite a connection. "I fund their entire dang ag track. That's my name on the greenhouse."

"It's so great to meet a fellow alumnus, sir!" Chester enthuses, hoping he's not forced to back that blatant lie up with specifics. His lifetime at the ashram has left him more well-read and well-traveled than most people assume, but he's way out on a limb already.

Chester has lucked out this time, though. "Don't you 'sir' me," the rancher says, his pleasant surprise settling to the deep blue of rapport as he grabs Chester's hand and squeezes to the point of pain. "You call me Anton."

"Of course, s—Anton." That was a huge get, but Chester's already scanning the walls again in search of his real prize. And he realizes what he's been missing—or, more accurately, what is missing. There's a son and a daughter, but there are no family photos.

On closer examination, there are discolored rectangular patches on the wall where pictures once hung. Some spots are still blank; some are partially concealed with individual portrait photos of the children. And with that realization, Chester barely even needs the feedback of Anton's colors any more. There's a literal hole in his life, love spoiled and curdled and ripped out, and its absence left to fester. (That explains the yellow. He'll have to account for that to stay on track.)

Now, to coax that yearning into a green bonfire.

"It's the easiest thing in the world to love," Chester says, keeping his eyes locked to his target and intently surveying the edges of Anton's form at the corner of his vision. "And the hardest thing in the world to keep it from going wrong. True love is pure, and right, and oh so easy to get taken advantage of." He leaves behind the fiction that this is about him—borrowing random scraps of the Holy Mother's teachings, or imagined shared grievances, whatever best ignites Anton's need. "Men like us, we find someone worth committing to, and we give ourselves entirely. And we should! That's the only way to find fulfillment. But the real trick, the secret nobody considers"—and he winds up an epiphany bomb, anticipating that moment of surprise in Anton's reception—"is that finding the perfect partner isn't about understanding your partner. It's about understanding you."

"What d'ya mean?" Anton violet-says, right on cue.

"We can't control other people," Chester says. "Other people are messy. They lie, they cheat"—whoops, there's that yellow flaring up, walk it back—"they're poor matches sometimes despite our best efforts. But if you know what you are putting into a relationship, you have a grade-A, ironclad guarantee of what you're attracting. The Holy Mother showed me how to find someone genuine, just by being a better me."

Oh, yes, there's that beautiful color. "An' it worked?" Anton green-says, his need vibrant like a freshly mown lawn. And Chester nearly misses that he's talking himself into a corner.

He laughs knowingly. "A little too well!" he says. "I realized my true calling was helping the world understand how much good the Holy Mother's higher love could do. That's why I'm here. But the week I was thinking about that decision"—he flings more lies in, big ones, logs in the bonfire—"my ex-girlfriend called me to apologize, and I got two proposals out of nowhere, one of which the Holy Mother's teachings helped me realize was a very bad idea, and one of which would have been perfect, if only I had still wanted it."

Anton's holding back tears now, he needs this so much. And as they walk through the mansion, out to the back porch, and around the broad expanse of Rancho Bronco, he breaks down and tells the whole story of the failed marriage. Chester listens politely, making sympathetic noises, letting that yellow play out and burn itself out. He'll be pure green when he reaches the Holy Mother, desperate for anything. And she'll fix him.

Won't she?

Chester suppresses that traitorous thought the instant it pops up. Of course she will. (If he didn't trust her implicitly, he wouldn't play superspy for her.) He's not blind; he's seen the troubles nobody talks about at the ashram. But all those lawsuits were failed people mired in their imperfections, not ready for her truths. He's seen the baseness of their emotions with his own eyes—the muddy yellow of their accusations of fraud, the red-shouts of the few who stormed in to confront her.

This whole trip, he reminds himself, is only about how much Anton is hurting. Everything Chester had to make up to get him to the Holy Mother's doorstep is ultimately meaningless against how important it is to repair those deep wounds. And sure, he had overheard the Holy Mother mentioning how much difference Anton's money could make to their bottom line, but she was just being pragmatic. Truth has many enemies, and enemies are expensive—

Chester's thoughts are interrupted by a very red expletive from Anton, and fear briefly surges as he assumes he blew his cover story in a moment of distraction. Then Anton follows it up with an equally red "It's her!" as he stops in his tracks and hustles back toward the barn they just passed.

An even greater panic seizes Chester's throat for a moment—but Anton is clearly focused on some other distraction which has nothing to do with the Holy Mother. With that established, he tries to set aside his own thoughts and return to the moment. "I'm sorry," Chester says, glancing around them as he jogs to keep up. Dirt road, pastures full of colorless cows, storage sheds, parked tractor, barn. Nothing seems amiss. "Who?"

Anton gestures toward the distant forest as he jogs. "Crazy damn girl keeps leading a wolfpack to my property line!" he red-says.

Chester looks again. Under the trees, there are indeed some patches of color. Not emotional color—flesh and fur. There's a small ice-blue-skinned human form crouched provocatively at the treeline, and some larger outlines in the brush behind her that look vaguely predatory. But he can barely make her out at this distance, which makes emotional state tough to gauge. (He'd guess something purplish mixed with red or brown. Or maybe he's just seeing things in the shadows.)

"I've scared them off five, six times already, but they're fixin' to go after the herd," Anton continues, his red turning darker and uglier. "At this point, not sure whether to put a bullet in her or the wolves first."

"I'm sorry," Chester says, "what?"

An entirely new panic manifests as he pictures himself a witness to a murder, but he's not certain what he can do aside from following Anton and maybe trying to calm him down. That panic explodes as Anton swings open the barn door and lunges for a rifle-sized case labeled "Winchester" just inside the doorway. But Anton's colors spike into shocked peach for a moment, against a backdrop of blazing red—and he slams the case shut again, empty-handed.

There's a trilling yip in the distance, sharp and attention-demanding, and Chester reflexively glances over. The girl has stood up and stepped forward out of the shadows, giving him a clearer glimpse. She's compact and wiry, all lean muscle, though with curves to her torso that put her at Chester's age, right at the cusp of adulthood. She's half-covered in rough-edged, patchwork clothing—animal skins?—and barefoot.

She is also holding up a brown-black object, long and thin, her arm pumping to make it dance—and Chester's still not quite certain whether he's seeing her edges shift to the puce of a victory taunt, or whether the obvious context is making him assume it.

Anton cuts loose with a string of expletives, of which "bitch" is the kindest, and starts fumbling at the holster at his hip. "Thief! I'll kill you!" he red-screams, and if that green was a bonfire earlier, now his colors seethe like a forest fire, unstoppable and life-threatening.

Chester turns to Anton, raising his hands placatingly. "Uh," he stammers through a panic quickly threatening to overwhelm him, "m-maybe you shouldn't do anything hasty, s-sir, we can, uh, call the police—"

Then, behind his back, the girl shouts her reply to the rancher, and Chester nearly leaps out of his skin:

Try.

The word is ridiculously clear and crisp despite the distance, as if she had snuck right up to his ear, and the puce color of it blazes inside his head, the explosion of a sensory grenade. But he spins around and she hasn't moved.

He's still reeling when Anton bellows incoherently. The rancher draws an oversized pistol, his other hand coming up to brace the bottom of the handle. There are several loud, sharp cracks, and the gun leaps in Anton's hands, and there are one or two distant puffs of fragmenting bark from tree trunks at the forest's edge, none close to her.

Chester bolts for the safety of the barn.

The next minute or two is a blur. He cowers in a corner. Even though Chester can't see any color in them, the nearby cows are clearly as agitated as he is, lowing and stamping and crowding into the far corners of their stalls. He remains in his hiding place as he hears Anton come inside, waiting for the swearing and sounds of firearm reloading to subside, and makes damn well certain that the rancher's red isn't nearly as incandescent before he risks standing up again.

And when Anton ushers him into a huge pickup truck and drives them over to the treeline, there's no trace of the mystery girl—except for a number of muddy wolf-paw prints and one set of barefoot footprints left mockingly on the bank of Canter Creek, leading deeper into the trees.

Author's Note:

This is a fully written novel, 120K words in 25 chapters! Starting with Chapter 3, they will be posted Sundays and Wednesdays.

Chapter 2, "Awful At Smartphones", is posting Friday, Aug. 2! We'll meet the Holy Mother, and introduce some familiar characters who light the afterburners on Chester's adventure...

Comments

[horizon]

First comment reserved for spoiler-free author's notes!

I've discussed the motivation for the novel already, introduced its protagonist, and introduced the Embers. Tl;dr: This is, first and foremost, a story about being something other than what people see you as, and about finding yourself as you find other people who understand. Of course, sometimes you've got to save the world along the way.

At 120K words, this is by no small margin the longest thing I've ever written, and I'm excited to finally bring it to the world. It's the capstone novel of the Other Me short stories — "Administrative Angel," "Devil May Care," and "Fang and Flame" — and a direct followup to "Fang and Flame", with Chester running face-first into the fallout from that story's climactic confrontation. (The other two just set up some cameos and Easter eggs.) I do recommend you read F&F first, or at least skim the Cliff's notes, but the novel was written to stand alone.

If you'd like to binge it all at once, the dead-tree version of the series, The Other Me, will be available starting in late August 2024, debuting at the Everfree NW fanfic bookstore!

EDIT, Sept 2024: The Other Me is now available for online order via Ponyfeather Publishing!

[Sugar Spoon]

Hoho I shall be watching this one with interest. I love it when a fic is fully completed before being posted.

[horizon]

11963683
Oh, absolutely! It's heartbreaking to read a great longfic, get deeply into it, and then suddenly slam into the place the author stopped. For a story of this size, I wanted to make the promise of completion to readers up front.

The other benefit is to the author. Unless you rigidly outline the whole thing start to finish and then stick rigidly to your plan, early chapters can become a straitjacket as you realize where the story always needed to go. I made major edits to the first few chapters near the very end of the process to bring the whole thing in line with the grand vision, and I'm glad I left myself that freedom.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Chester.
Chester.
As opposed to Thorax.

You son of a sub-mariner, you got me in the long description. Though it does present the question of what Esau's analogue might be named. Seta?

She's one of those women whose intensity takes you by surprise and sets your life on another path entirely.

This isn't necessarily a good thing.

Ah, masking as shapeshifting. And the first glimpse of human Ember! I'm going to enjoy this story. I already knew I was, but this will have many layers to sink my teeth into. Eagerly looking forward to more.

[Aragon]

Oh my fucking god it's Chester because it's like. Thorax. God dammit I only got it now.

Anyway! To reply to the earlier comments first -- I agree that writing a longfic in one go before posting anything is the way to go, because that way you get to both write it and edit it and make sure it works without tripping yourself up in the long run, and also you make sure that there's enough meat in your own bones to get to the finish line. The one big drawback of this system, though, is that it tends to produce stories that work very well as a whole, which means a lot of readers will not check it out until it's all finished.

That last part is possibly the biggest irony in all of this, isn't it? It produces better stories, it's better for both readers and writers, and thus, it only gets good results in the long run. Genuinely nightmarish that all the authorial effort is rewarded with diminishing returns until the whole thing is up. It's why I often just post the entire story in one go and forget about it; i do not have the mental fortitude to put up with that.

All this to say, dear god, this is already very good and I am going to fight in the fucking trenches to make sure this fic gets the recognition it deserves, dammit. I'm going to annoy so many people until they read this, swear to god. I don't even particularly care for Thorax or Ember -- they're great characters, i just never really minded much -- and I still got hooked just on the start! Admittedly I knew I would, cause I like your writing, and the best way to learn to give a shit about a character is to have a good writer write it. But, yknow. Still.

So! Dear God at the absolute start I made a point of going in blind, and I wasn't sure if we were meant to find what Chester was doing was good or bad. I assumed bad! He very clearly fishes for emotional weaknesses and then takes advantage of them, lying to earn a position of power over poor Anton over there. But, still, the pacing of the scene is just right at making you both get Chester, and want him to succeed, and also be extremely uncomfortable with what he's doing.

In a good way, I mean. I was uncomfortable in that "I gotta keep reading" way, y'know. The way it builds up makes a good job of drawing Chester's personality by contrast -- here's what he hates doing, here's why and how he's good at it, figure it out. I am ashamed to admit I didn't instantly get who the Holy Mother is until I stopped to think about it for a second; I take that as a testament of the story's construction being good enough to work as original fiction. The fact that there are established characters it can fall back on can be, yknow, forgotten. Story works as it is already.

That's a weird praise to give? But it is unmistakably praise: sometimes a fic is so good it doesn't feel like a fic. When I'm reading something like this, and I think "Oh I would just check this out if it were a book", that's when you know you've struck gold.

I'm not usually one to follow stories weekly! I'm bad at keeping up with stuff. But god dammit I'm going to try with this one. The start is promising enough I'm confident it'll be worth it.

[Sunny]

11963726
Having assisted with some pre-reading in the final editorial pass, it is of horizon quality for sure. You will want to keep up with this one even if you are busy going JUDGE JUDGE JUDGE

11963718
On the other hand I've read the entire book and JUST NOW got that thanks to you. Then again there's a lot of puns in this I missed until horizon pointed them out~! Suffice to say, basically everything in this is intentional. Have fun guessing :)

[RBDash47]

11963718
motherfucker.

I spent weeks copyediting the novel and laying out the book and every so often I'd think "hmm wonder why 'Chester'? how'd he pick that, I'll have to ask him next time we talk" and kept forgetting to ask.

motherfucker.

Anyway yes Blues is very good you will all enjoy it!

[horizon]

Re "Chester":
I'm tickled that I'm hitting people between the eyes before they even start the story. I'm even more tickled that I managed to sneak it by some readers and get to hit them with it in hindsight. This is always why I wanted to post the online version a little at a time — give readers time to unpack things in the comments, speculate, point out little Easter eggs, and add to the overall experience!

11963718
Re Esau:
I will hold my tongue on this one for now I suspect it will hit as his role in the story becomes clear. His first major appearance is in Chapter 7, though there will be further teasers before then!

11963799 11963795
The vote of confidence is very much appreciated! I hope you enjoy getting to watch the discussions unfold.

11963726
Knowing what you're going through with your judge studies, you making an effort to fit reading this into your schedule is the most fantastic compliment I could receive. Don't get me wrong, sending readers my way is amazing, but you going out of your way to reserve a bit of brainspace for Blues is the real sign I rate!

(Have I thanked you yet for hooking me up with Evelili for the cover art?)

But, still, the pacing of the scene is just right at making you both get Chester, and want him to succeed, and also be extremely uncomfortable with what he's doing.

I can't tell you how nice this is to hear, because having your protagonist do bad things in Chapter 1 is definitely a high-wire act.

At least one of my prereaders said that the religious recruitment scene was actively uncomfortable to read. I'm sure some readers are going to bounce off there, despite my efforts to get that balance right and keep Chester sympathetic. (It gets better quickly.) But it's so crucial for establishing who Chester is, and who his environment has forced him to be — and what it means to be a changeling in a Pedestria where a certain leader still rules with an iron fist.

There's so much scaffolding to build. (And as you noted, it's not optional: since I'm taking a niche character and then going further niche on the other side of the mirror portal, I'm trying to fundamentally approach this like original fiction, meaning I can't just use the "Thorax walked into a building" shorthand, I need to paint a full picture so readers can compare and contrast with the canon character they know.)

In a way, the chapter is a reflection not just of the changeling experience but of the author's job. I've got a foot in the door and I've got to pull out every trick in the book to build rapport and convince you of the rewards for committing. The techniques of salesmanship are inherently a bit dark-pattern; the line between a mutually beneficial deal and a flashy con job basically come down to intentions and follow-through.

So the other thing I'm trying to do early is show my hand a bit — and signal that this will reward your time. A risky opening, well-executed, is a sign that the performer's putting their whole damn back into the show. I have to trust the audience to see the subtle signs of finesse here, picking up on things I never explain (like the stealth pun of Chester, and on the entire dang conceit of his color-sight, which is calibrated so carefully that the paper book has an appendix with the color key), and visibly throw a whole bunch of balls in the air that I'm promising will land later.

(Seriously, it's hard to hold my tongue on the number of things I just established with this chapter that later become not just relevant but crucial.)

Which is all mostly to say that it's a good feeling to see you talking about the details, and that I get exactly what you're saying with the weird praise, and I'm taking it very much in its intended spirit. If what you're seeing is convincing you of the craft, then I've done the job I set out to do!

[Scyphi]

OR--"If Thorax was a religious missionary...and also human."

That's immediately what I first thought of when first meeting Chester, at least.

All right, I'll bite, see where this goes for a bit.

[horizon]

11964020
Very much intended! My challenge was: what do Chrysalis' changelings look like in a world without magic? What does a group look like which is obsessed with harvesting love, when love isn't a tangible thing? A group centralized around a single dominating leader, which interacts regularly with society and yet holds itself apart from it? Things kind of took shape from there...

Thank you for reading!