Of Love and Crystals

by Pnakotic

Chapter 2

The next morning Olive Branch stood outside of Twilight’s library, hesitantly he knocked on the door his head filled with all the possible ways this could go wrong. Maybe she’d go easy on him and let him leave with a warning or maybe… Olive Branch’s thought process was broken when a small purple dragon answered the door. “So you must be the changeling Twi’s been talking about for the past few days.” The dragon said.

“What gave it away?” Olive Branch asked surprised at how easily his façade was seen through.

“One: you don’t have a cutie mark, might wanna work on that. Two: I haven’t seen you around the library before and Ponyville is a pretty small town. Both those things considered it wasn’t too hard to figure out.” The dragon crossed his arms with a smug triumphant look on his face, “By the way the name’s Spike.”

“Well… nice to meet you Spike, by the way is Twilight around I’d like to talk to her, I feel like we got off on the wrong hoof yesterday and I’d like to apologize.”

“I figured you’d come and see her, she seemed pretty upset yesterday, changelings aren’t on the top of her favorite creature list – I should know I watched her write it. Anyway, she isn’t here right now, but you can wait inside until she comes back.” Spike stepped aside to allow Olive Branch inside.

Olive Branch gave Spike a skeptical look, “Are you sure that’s a good idea, I mean I’m not sure she’d be very happy with me being inside her house and all.”

Spike looked thoughtful for a moment before replying, “Nah, it is a public library after all, she probably won’t be too upset.” Only slightly reassured Olive Branch followed Spike inside, only to be awestruck by the amount of books crammed into the house-tree. While the changeling swarm did have a large collection of history, inscribed on large stone tablets, they lacked any writings on other subjects. Scanning the shelves Olive Branch saw books on philosophy, fiction, life improvement and even romance.

“You wouldn’t mind if I read a book while I waited would you?” Olive Branch asked enthusiastically.

“Of course not, as I said it is a public library after all and I’m pretty sure you count as part of the public.” Spike said dismissively as he went back to his chores around the library. Olive Branch looked through the shelves and spotted a book titled: The Relation between Magical Theory and Philosophy by Star Swirl the Bearded. Olive Branch picked up the book with his magic and sat down at a nearby table. The book was rather engaging (for a scholarly changeling such as himself) covering many of the thought processes of the era. It was very different from the texts he was used to; instead of a strict recount of the events of the past it covered the theory behind them. Olive Branch was fairly amused with the book, during his rather brief stay in Canterlot he had read mostly history books in an attempt to catch up with the time period; it was nice to expand his reading topics. The next thing he knew an hour had passed and Twilight had entered the room with a rather irate look on her face.

“I thought it was fairly clear that I didn’t want to talk to you.” Twilight said.

“Please just hear me out.” Olive Branch said with a pleading look on his face.

“Why should I? I doubt such courtesy would be given to me were I in your place either by you or your queen.” Twilight snapped at him.

“You’d be surprised, the queen is not as antagonistic as you think, and you don’t even know me how could you know how I’d act?” Olive Branch countered.

“Because you’re a changeling, all of you are cruel and manipulative jerks!” Twilight argued.

“We’re not all like that, very few of us are in fact. What you saw of us were acts of desperation, not malice, please let me at the very least apologize for you and your family’s poor treatment at our hooves.” Olive Branch begged.

“Why would I believe you to be sincere? It’s not like you give a damn about us ponies anyway, to you we’re just another meal to be eaten and thrown away.”

“That’s not true…” Olive Branch said meekly realizing the trap he’d fallen into.

“Oh really? Then tell me what would have happened if your invasion was successful, would not all my friends and I along with all of Canterlot be wrapped up in pods like Celestia was, waiting to be harvested like a crop?” Twilight said angrily. And there it was: the ugly truth; that was indeed what would have happened if the changelings had been victorious. Stallions, mares, foals none would have been spared a life of captivity.

“You’re right,” At Olive Branch’s admission Twilight’s glare intensified, “but nor could you possibly understand the desperation of the time. I saw it myself, all of us did, larvae dying from malnutrition, the young and the old alike collapsing from starvation. If something was not done soon than the entire swarm would have faced extinction, none knew this better than the queen. Believe me when I say she cares for her kin as much as Celestia cares for her ponies. Now, I will admit that our actions were overly drastic and again I apologize for the suffering you faced, but I will not tolerate you calling my queen and kin monsters for looking for food!” Olive Branch realized that he was shouting and quickly regained his composure.

Twilight’s anger subsided to a mix of empathy and regret, “I’m sorry… I hadn’t realized… I didn’t know how desperate your situation was.” Twilight tried to imagine being in Olive Branch’s place, tried to imagine watching her friends collapsing from hunger, the thought made her tremble. Next, she tried to imagine holding a foal as it crumbled in her hooves, Twilight shivered further. He was right she couldn’t imagine such suffering, such desperation. And now an entire race had come crawling back begging for the means to survive and Twilight had treated them worse than dirt. She couldn’t help but feel slightly ashamed of her somewhat hasty generalization. Twilight noticed tears had formed in her eyes, she also noticed that Olive Branch had put a comforting hoof on her shoulder, “I accept your apology and I hope you accept mine, I shouldn’t have acted so rudely before getting to know you… I should have listened to the princess.”

“Hey, hey… there was no harm done, I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I was just so tired of everypony passing judgment before even looking at things from my viewpoint.” Olive Branch said comfortingly, “Now I hope we can start over, my name is Olive Branch.” Olive Branch extended his hoof toward Twilight.

“Twilight Sparkle, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Twilight shook Olive Branch’s hoof sealing the introduction. Twilight voiced a question that had been running around in her head for a while, “I have to ask, why didn’t you come to us for help first, why all deception and aggression?”

Olive Branch sighed, “It shouldn’t have gone like that, but in short let me say that our previous interactions with ponies led us to believe that such diplomacy would merely be a waste of time.” Olive Branch continued to explain how the stone tablets had told of a cruel pony king named Sombra, who had spurned the changelings request for help and had, rather violently, expelled them from his realm.

At the mention of the stone tablets Twilight seemed to perk up, “So you’re saying all your history is written in stone, not in books or scrolls?”

“Yes and each tablet contains the queen’s recount of a hundred years’ time period, the library containing them all is massive, but unfortunately our knowledge is limited to only history whereas yours,” Olive Branch motioned to the bookshelves around him which covered a menagerie of subjects, “covers many fields.”

“Still it must be quite a sight, I would certainly like to see it one day.” Twilight said ecstatic with the prospect of the wealth of knowledge contained within such a library.

“I have no doubt that you will someday…”