The Human-turned-Changeling Pearl and her adoptive clutch-sister Oval leave the safety of their hive to venture deeper into the pony lands of Equestria.
First stop: Canterlot, where unforeseen circumstances cause a delay the pair of Changelings can't afford...
The train cart jerked as it started to get pulled away from the station platform at Hollow Shades, and I felt an odd mix of emotions pass over me as I looked at the forest swallowing the last visual remnants of the town. Soon enough there were only trees passing by the window at increasing speed, and I let my yellow eyes wander to the Earthpony stallion sat across from me.
Oval peered back at me with his auburn eyes from under the overhang of his red mane, dislodging the reading glasses from his snout until they fell down to dangle around his neck. He put the folder he had taken from the station down beside him and raised an eyebrow my way.
"What's wrong, Pearl?" he asked, and I gave a light shake of my head, barely enough to set my green mane in motion.
"Feeling like I'm turning a new leaf, I guess," I remarked. "I feel like I'm leaving part of myself behind, a bit of budding homesickness perhaps?"
"I feel like that every time I leave Hoofton," Oval suggested with a smile. "It's fine, really. We can visit any time you want once you've settled in with us."
"That's not what I mean," I returned with a light furrowing of my brow. "You know I can't visit where I want to visit for a while yet."
"Ah, yes, that," Oval realized, giving a glance at the window beside us. "We can't let my mare know about that, but she'll probably welcome you into our home without too many questions."
"I'm not sure I'm following," I started, but Oval's right hoof raised up to shush me.
"Let me finish," he demanded in a soft tone of voice. "I mean she will fire off a few questions, expect answers from the both of us, but as long as you're friendly with her she will accept you for who you are, and leave our secrets at rest."
I stared at him, not knowing where he was going with this.
"Once my mare is satisfied you're not going to upset my relationship with her, we can take trips around Hoofton and I can teach you what I know," Oval continued unabated. "We'll meet with your friends in Ponyville in a year's time, and I hope I can help you to hone your skills before that time. With help from Breeze, Blaze, and the rest, I'm sure you can manage to find a way to return home without issue."
"Yeah, I had thought about that as well," I agreed. "I am going to need a lot of training before I'm ready to tackle that issue."
"As soon as you feel you're ready, my earlier statement still applies; we can go visit it any time you like," Oval repeated. "I'd personally love to see it myself some time."
I thought back at the portal through which I entered into the realm of Equestria and the world beyond it where I now had a criminal record. If nothing had been done about it, I was facing unemployment, potential homelessness, and had nothing left to my name, especially if I had basically disappeared off the radar for a whole year. If I did return at some point, I would have to overcome those issues in turn, possibly while dragging Oval or some other friend along for the ride.
Oval leaned in a bit. "Your ears are drooping."
"If I stop to think about it all, it's still overwhelming," I replied in a whisper. "I'm going to need to find solutions to so many problems, and help my abducted siblings do the same."
"Who knows? In a year's time they may seek you out and have the solution laid out for you? I heard say there were some smart foals among them," Oval suggested with a wink. "You can't carry all that weight on your own shoulders. You'll have to accept you have to spread it around some. Trust an Earthpony on that."
I chuckled weakly at the obvious attempt at a joke, giving her a nod. "Thanks. How long is the trip to Canterlot?"
"About an hour or two," Oval returned, leaning back on his seat. "We'll have to switch trains there but may be able to get something to eat before it leaves. The trip from Canterlot to Hoofton is a lot longer, with a few stops along the way, but there are no stops before we reach Canterlot."
"Define a lot longer?" I repeated while settling on my own seat.
"I keep forgetting to time it. I think it's about three hours? Three-and-a-half?" Oval muttered uneasily. "It's long enough that I forget when I left Canterlot by the time I arrive at Hoofton, or vice-versa."
"Three hours and fourty minutes from Canterlot to Hoofton," another pony remarked, and I looked up to see the conductor standing in the aisle between seats. "Baltimare's an hour past that on the same line. May I see your tickets please?"
"Oh, thank you," I replied, using my mouth to pull my ticket from the bag sat next to me on the seat and offering it to the Unicorn stallion in his blue uniform.
He quickly scanned it and snapped a hole in it with a small device, then turned to Oval who was still digging through his own bag.
"Sir? Your ticket please?" the conductor pressed, and Oval groaned in return.
"I know it's in here somewhere," my travelling companion mumbled with his face half-buried in the bag.
"Didn't you put it in your coat pocket?" I remembered, motioning to the brown overcoat folded up on Oval's other side. "I thought I saw you slip it in there because you didn't want to open your bag on the platform?"
Oval brought her head up, frowned at me, then reached for his coat. "I'm sure I put it in the bag, Pearl," he mumbled as he checked the pockets. "Oh, here it is... huh. You're right."
The ticket was quickly checked and a hole punched out by the conductor, who failed to remark about Oval's difficulty in finding his ticket due to sheer professionalism.
We waited for the stallion to continue on his path through the train before I just had to jab at Oval to release some tension.
"I see why Blaze thinks you should be supervised in your daily life," I suggested. "Is dementia a thing in this world? Are there other ponies who are as forgetful as you, 'cousin'?"
"Watch it, Pearl," Oval warned me with a snort. "I could just leave you in Canterlot to fend for yourself, or convince my mare to let you cook your own meals while you stay with us."
"I might burn the house down trying to cook for myself," I reminded him. "I am not sure your mare would want to take that risk. What was her name again?"
"Celery Stalk," Oval repeated for the fifth time today. "She's the most wonderful unicorn you'll ever meet."
"So her family are the Stalk family, then? Like how Pinkie Pie is from the Pie family?" I tried, pony genealogy still being somewhat of a mystery to me.
"No, hers is an offshoot from the Seed family. Her mother, Celery Seed, married to Sugar Stalk, who was himself part of the Cane family. I actually met his mother Candy Cane before she died," Oval listed.
"...and that makes sense to you, does it?" I tried, finding it exceptionally difficult to figure out how that family tree stuck together.
"It took me a while to accept it for what it is," Oval offered back with a shrug. "The best thing to do is not to overthink it. It makes sense to my mare, so I accept it as part of who she is."
I closed my eyes and reached up to rub with my forehoof at my temple for a moment. "I've known families back home who were so entwined that someone's uncle was their stepdad as well, but this just makes my head spin."
"Doesn't help you figure your own family tree out, does it?" Oval suggested calmly.
"Not really. I mean, if you're Hammer Hoof, and I'm Pearl... how do I relate to the Hoof family?" I wondered out loud.
"We could say you came from a far-away town somewhere only Blaze knows of. What was that one she mentioned before? Tall Tale?" Oval pondered. "I think that's over on the West Coast. Most of my mare's family has stuck to the East Coast, so they would not know the first thing about towns around there."
"Tall Tale sounds fitting," I remarked flatly, opening my eyes to look over at him again.
"If I remember correctly it's near a beach on either the Northern Lunar Ocean or Southern Lunar Ocean," Oval mumbled to himself. "We should find a map in Canterlot."
"I've always wanted to live near a beach, and now you're telling me that Pearl grew up near one? I'm getting jealous of my own guise," I chuckled weakly, leaning a bit closer to the window as the train sped out of the woods and the view opened up.
Oval turned his head as well, motioning out into the distance with his left forehoof. "There's a second set of tracks over there, leading to Manehattan. They will merge with ours shortly before we pass the Neighagra Falls. Sometimes you can catch the smoke rising from the other trains, but the ponies made sure the schedules differ enough that they're not in danger of crashing into us."
"Considering we still have half a day left in trains, I really don't want to consider crashing," I mumbled, shirking up a bit closer to the window so I could get a better view.
The train I was in lumbered on in the direction of Canterlot while I observed the lands to the North of our tracks, and it only took half an hour before I could see the Neighagra Falls in the distance. Our train rushed through a station positioned nearest to the falls without stopping, and soon they were behind us as the tracks turned away from them to lead us further South-Southwest on an almost straight path to Canterlot.
"You did say there were no stops before we would reach Canterlot," I remarked to Oval while falling back into a comfortable position on my seat. "Does any train stop at that station?"
"I think the line between Canterlot and Manehattan does. It's a tourist spot and very crowded in mid-summer," Oval explained. "You noticed Hollow Shades is a tourist location as well thanks to its secluded nature and the hot springs, right?"
"Yeah, I got that notion while in town," I agreed.
"For some reason the ponies don't want to connect the two with a direct line," Oval shrugged. "This one goes between Canterlot and Fillydelphia, but we can't take a train to Hoofton from Fillydelphia. We need to take the one between Canterlot and Baltimare instead. There's another line to Fillydelphia, coming from Canterlot, but it doesn't go through Hollow Shades."
"It's as confusing as the transportation back home," I remarked with a sigh. "You'd need a Master's Degree to figure out what line went where."
"Yeah, don't get me started. I travel across Equestria 'for work'," Oval suggested with a wink, knowing I had seen the great collection of donated items which our Changeling family had brought to the Hive, "so I take this line a lot. The transfer time from one train to another in Fillydelphia is just not worth it. The atmosphere in Canterlot is also vastly different from that in Fillydelphia."
"Vastly different in a good way, I expect?" I pressed, and Oval smiled at me.
"You'll see. I've come to enjoy my short stays there ever since we had that... thing," he coughed uneasily. "I'm glad we're not doing another one of those."
"So am I," I agreed. "I'm kinda curious about Canterlot, really. That show from back home did show it a few times, from various angles, but it was only enough to whet my appetite. I want to see more."
"Maybe we can take a longer trip there in the future? There's too many guards there to risk an accident, so I would want to see you handling the crowds in Hoofton or Baltimare first," Oval explained.
"That's fair," I agreed. "Are we there yet?"
"I think we're half an hour out," Oval pondered, looking between the left- and right-side windows to check our location. "You're not getting bored, are you?"
"Tired, more like it. I may need to take a nap on the way to Hoofton," I suggested. "Having left Hollow Shades, I guess the pressure of being in charge of organizing certain things has left me. It kind of forced me to keep my wits about me more. Now there's just the trip up ahead, I'm coming down from that rush."
"Or you're just getting hungry," Oval smirked. "If you can hold out to Canterlot we can figure out which it is and sort things out. We'll get a snack, a map, get our stories straight for my mare, and hop on the next train when you're ready for it, okay?"
"Sure," I agreed with a wry smile. "I don't think it's hunger, though."
"Pearl, you haven't felt it yet," Oval reminded me. "Not truly. Our group kept you fed while the others starved."
"I know, I know," I agreed, letting myself fall sideways on the seat I was on. "I told you I would let you know if I started to feel hungry."
"You should be feeling hungry, by all accounts. Did you even take from the lines this morning?" Oval wondered, not reassured by my casual reply.
"Yes, like every morning since you guys taught me how," I replied lazily, pulling my hooves up to my barrel. "I'm not saying I don't feel a bit of a pit growing in my tummy, but it's no worse than what I've been used to."
Oval stared at me. "You're not seriously trying to get some sleep, are you? We'll be in Canterlot in a matter of minutes!"
I frowned at him. "I told you I was feeling sleepy."
"And I told you to try and hold on to Canterlot," Oval bounced back, slipping off his seat so he could poke a hoof at my side. "Go on, push up."
"I'll tell Blaze on you," I mumbled defiantly, but his continued prodding forced me to sit upright again.
"We most likely won't see her for a year at best," Oval remarked. "I'll take the chance you'll have forgotten about this by then if that means I don't have to carry you out of the train on my back."
"You're a bother, cousin," I grumbled, trying to shake off the drowsiness I was feeling.
"I'm just looking after you, Pearl. You don't want to miss out on seeing Canterlot with your own eyes," he chuckled, moving onto the seat next to me. "I know a restaurant which I'm sure you will enjoy eating at."
I let myself sink sideways against his larger form and sighed. "Here's hoping they have this world's equivalent to coffee..."
Oval raised an eyebrow, turning his head to look down at me. "What's that?"
"Coffee? It's ground-up brown beans which contain caffeine. Perfect for staying awake on," I explained meekly. "One of the many things I'm pining for, although I think I kicked my cigarette addiction by now; rarely think about the things anymore."
"Addiction... sounds like those salt bars they have in the Southern Pony towns," Oval thought out loud.
"Or our hunger?" I suggested, peering up at him.
"Yes," Oval agreed with a wry smile. "But then all kinds of food or drinks are an addiction. We'd die without the love we take in, as you should know by now."
"A necessity," I mumbled.
"As is staying awake, Pearl," Oval chuckled, giving me a nudge with his elbow.
I grumbled at the nudge, but straightened my back and forelegs again. "Yes, yes, how much longer?"
Oval brought his right hoof up to point through the window at the tall mountain which quickly drew near. "We'll go through a tunnel in a moment, but are very nearly there."
I gave a slow nod. "Can't wait."
It did not take too long before the tunnel's darkness took possession of the train, and we sat in silence while waiting for it to pull into the station past it.
Just as the train started to slow down, and the unmistakable screeching of the brakes were heard, a blue flash passed through the cart, and I felt a spell of nausea hit me. It quickly took possession of me, and I noticed Oval was straining to keep his composure as well in what little light we had from the cart's lamps.
"What was that?" I asked, feeling worse with every breath.
"I have no idea," Oval returned in worry, stepping down from the seat and taking a few strained steps through the cart. "Some magic spell?"
My vision blurred and I felt like I was about to puke, all thought of holding my guise leaving me in favor of holding down my liquid breakfast. The green flash of my Changeling magic soon passed over me as I lost control of my guise, and Oval snapped to in surprise.
"Pearl, focus!" he all-but shouted at me.
Sitting on the seat as my Changeling self, I felt the nauseousness pull away again until I could actually focus on my guise again. The green flash moved over me as I returned to my Earthpony appearance, but the queasy feeling that had tried to overtake me before came back just as strongly not a moment later! I lost control again in mere seconds, much to Oval's distress!
I stared down at my grey bug-like hooves and licked around my fangs. "I can't hold my guise," I realized out loud, while a flash of green passed over Oval as well.
I looked up to see her going through the same motion of restoring it, then having it falter again.
"Whatever that spell was, it was aimed at us," she realized at once. "I can't keep my guise any more than you can, and I have a few years of experience on you."
I gave a slow nod as daylight returned to us, the train finally reaching the other end of the tunnel.
"I get physically ill when I try to hold it," I told her, even as her green magic left her horn for her to gather her belongings from the seat opposite mine.
"We can't stay on the train," Oval decided with great haste behind her words. "We have no option other than slip off before it hits the station; there are too many guards in this city. Get your stuff and follow me quickly!"
I slipped off the seat I was on as well, used my magic to lift my bag onto the blue chitin covering my back, and ran after Oval as she made for the back exit of the traincart.
We slipped out of the last traincart as the locomotive rolled into the station, and jumped off into the shadows beside the station platform, our bags falling around us in the bushes. As the train came to a stop, the Canterlot Royal Guards moving in to check its contents, the two Changelings they were searching for were huddled together in the bushes beside the station, desperately hoping nopony would spot them...
Oval and me lay huddled up between our bags in the undergrowth of some bushes planted next to Canterlot's train station while we listened to the sound of armed guards walking to and fro on the platform so close to us we could easily touch it with a hoof from our current position.
My heart was racing in my throat from fear of getting discovered, and I had buried myself in against my Changeling sister for comfort. Oval held on to me for much the same reason, I suspected, but we were as quiet as we could be so as not to draw attention to ourselves.
The train was emptied, checked by the Royal Guard, and then turned around for the return trip. After the passengers had boarded, it quickly sped past us to disappear into the tunnel in which that strange magic spell had been placed. It picked up speed far too quickly for us to hop on board, Oval shaking her head at me as I motioned at it.
Not half an hour passed before the next train pulled past us into the station, and the events repeated; passengers and cargo were checked by the Royal Guards, the train was turned about, and new passengers were let on before it pulled out of the station again.
And all the while we were huddled up like grey stones in the plants we had rolled into, not seeing a way out until the business would slow down.
I could not stifle a yawn, and Oval gave a nod to me as if to suggest I should try to get some sleep considering how tired I had been on the train. "I'll keep an eye out," she whispered at me. "You're going to need all the energy you can get once night falls."
Even through the fear and the noise, I managed to fall into a restless slumber against my sibling, too tired to fight it. When I woke up again, it was to the lighting of lamps on the street a few steps beyond the bushes as twilight settled over the land.
Oval's blue bug eyes moved slightly as she caught me stirring, and I knew they settled upon me even if we had no pupils to indicate such. She quickly shook her head as I opened my mouth to speak, and I closed it slowly while looking around. From what I could see past her insectoid body, there were quite a few ponies out on the street, and I caught a pegasus flying over to a nearby lamppost with a lit wick to set the lamp alight.
If we remained still, we could be mistaken for just a couple of rocks placed in amidst the plants, I expected, and few ponies who glanced our way by accident repeated the act. It slowly but surely settled my immediate fears of being noticed and captured by them, and I noticed Oval's breathing was far calmer than it had been shortly after we crashed into our current position.
A few hooffalls up above us drew my attention to the station platform just in time to see a halberd swing through the air as the guard holding it turned away from us. His armoured hooves made slow but deliberate steps away from the edge of the platform, and Oval finally let out a sigh I had not been aware she was holding.
"That guard had been standing there for way too long," she whispered at me.
"I didn't even notice them until they moved just now," I whispered back.
"That's why I shook my head earlier; he would have heard us. What was it you wanted to say, Pearl?" Oval explained.
"How long did I sleep for?" I asked.
"Half the day. I made sure you did not snore," she returned. "You really needed it. You think you're ready to go for a run? We don't have long before another guard will move to stand up there, and they stay there like statues for far too long to chance not being seen. They will soon carry torches with them, and we can't hide from that."
"But what about the crowds?" I asked, motioning at the ponies on the street.
"They don't carry weapons on them. We need to run fast and I need you to stay on my tail as close as you can. No matter what turn I take, take it with me. If I jump into a building, follow. Don't pause, don't think, just follow," Oval pressed.
"I think I can do that, Burst," I agreed. "Do we take the bags along?"
"If we leave them here, they will be found. If we take them along, they may slow us down," Oval pondered. "Take them anyway. If we're getting pursued we can throw them at the guards."
"When do we go?" I asked, reaching out for my bag with my mind, ready to let my magic grab hold of it.
"Now," Oval decided, letting go of me and rolling away, her magic erupting from her horn and grabbing her own bag as she rolled into a standing position.
I followed her lead, and we were soon running down the small slope to the street below, barrelling through the carefully tended bushes we had been hiding in.
We must have been quite a sight for the inhabitants of the city as we came bursting out of the bushes, our green magic flaring around us to make sure our bags followed; a pair of Changelings, out in the open as if we had no fear of being caught.
The resulting panic sent the ponies fleeing in all directions, but I kept my focus on Oval's rear end and followed a hooffall behind it. I barely took note of the buildings as we rushed by them, the sound of ponies crying out in panic lost to my ears, and we weaved our way deeper into the city as fast as we could.
Oval appeared to know which way to go, even if she must have been making decisions on the fly as to whether to turn left, right, go under something, over other things, and - indeed - suddenly through an open window into a building!
I flew through it after her, kicked some dirty dishes off the kitchen cabinet beyond with my left back hoof as I made a wider turn than Oval, and we barely managed to avoid trampling a foal playing with their toys in the house's living room as we raced through it.
Oval sped out the door, through a group of ponies who were only just starting to respond to the chaos following in our wake, and through a back alley. My bag caught on something as I rushed after her, and I let go of it as instructed; nothing it held was as important as getting to safety.
Oval dove into a hole in the ground, and I not a moment after, setting my hooves down in some of the most foul-smelling water I had ever come across. As I sped through the tubular cavern after Oval, trying my best to keep up what with the sudden slippery ground, my mind made the connection I rather wish it had not; sewers.
We continued through the sewers underneath Canterlot until Oval shot up through an open manhole, her bag inches behind her. I jumped up to follow, but had to buzz my wings to get enough momentum to reach the pavement above. As I managed to set my hooves down on the stones, I stopped to find Oval directly in front of me, her bag set to her left. Beyond her stood a unicorn, horn charged with yellow magic, blocking our way.
"We're not your enemy," Oval spoke, her own magic doused and her pose one that clearly attempted to convey she was not ready to pounce upon the unicorn.
I lowered my head slightly as well, mimicking Oval's pose in an attempt to show the unicorn there was nothing to fear.
"You're really not catching us at our best," Oval continued as the unicorn remained silent.
"You're changelings," the other finally stated, narrowing her purple eyes set under her yellow mane.
"Can't change that," Oval agreed, taking a careful step back to me. "We can't allow ourselves to be captured. Please get out of our way?"
The unicorn gave a quick look past her purple flank on which a white flower sat as her cutiemark. Her yellow tail flicked as the sound of guards rushing down the streets drew nearer.
"Back down?" I whispered to Oval, mentally steeling myself to head back down into the sewers again.
The unicorn turned back to face us again, her eyes meeting mine for a brief moment, and then her magic doused. "Follow me, quickly," she spoke, turning tail and running off into the street to our right.
Oval grabbed her bag with her teeth, then gave chase, with me close on her tail.
The unicorn led us down the street, then opened the door to a house and remained standing in front of it. "In here, there's a door under the stairs, get in there, close it, and be quiet."
Oval and I rushed past her, and Oval's magic pulled the door under the stairs open for us to rush into a cabinet filled to the brim with spices and assorted dried plants. She pulled the door closed again behind me, and we sat in the darkness of the cramped room listening to the sounds of heavy hooffalls drawing nearer.
The front door to the house closed with a soft click, dampening the sound even more than the cabinet door already had, but we could still hear the sound of a dozen guards as they came ever closer.
I swallowed strongly as they came to a sudden halt, and we could hear a male voice speaking in a demanding tone of voice. The twin doors between us kept us from hearing what was said, but it was met with the sound of the unicorn's voice. The two voices had a conversation which we could only guess at, and then the male voice spoke up again in a clear command. The hooffalls continued immediately after, now drawing away from our location.
I felt Oval's breath on me as she sighed out in relief, and leaned in to give her a soft nuzzle. That could have ended much worse for us. With the guards now drawing away, we were no longer in immediate danger... unless that unicorn turned out to have a hidden agenda.
Oval and I, sat in the storage cabinet under the stairs of a Canterlot pony's home, could only wait in darkness as we heard the front door to the house open, and somepony walking in at a casual pace.
The door clicked close again after them, then clicked again as a lock was put in place.
The sound of hooves falling gently on the wooden floor of the house drew near, and a yellow glow lit up the door's handle before it was gently pulled open to reveal the unicorn mare looking in at us.
"So... you're changelings," she started, finding Oval and me huddled together, our adrenaline still rushing through our forms, "but you're not here to fight? Colour me curious."
Oval and I just stared up at her, realizing her purple eyes were going over our forms as if she had never had a moment to truly see one of us in the flesh, so to speak.
"My name's Camellia, and I welcome you to my house as long as you don't intend to bite my head off or anything like that," the unicorn continued as neither Oval nor me spoke up.
I brought my tongue out to lick around my fangs, knowing full well they looked more dangerous than they really were. "I don't want to bite anyone's head off," I mumbled.
"Well, that's good, then," Camellia offered with a weak smile. "Are you two going to keep sitting around in my pantry, or can I get you to join me in my living room? The blinds are closed for the night, so nopony outside can see you."
Oval swallowed strongly next to me, and then gave me a soft nudge. "I think she's as safe as anypony can be for us right now, Pearl."
"Yeah," I agreed, pushing myself away from my sibling and onto my four hooves to carefully walk out past the unicorn. "My name's Pearl, and that's Oval," I introduced ourselves to our host, giving the room I entered a good look.
Several soft chairs were set around a low coffeetable, while a large cabinet held books on botany and flower arrangements. It was something the unicorns' cutiemark had already made me expect to find, but I still smiled at seeing them. I slowly paced around the coffee table to one chair in particular, one set with its back to a wall on which a painting of a lush flowerbed in full bloom had been placed.
A low thud behind me indicated Oval having placed her bag on the floor, and I looked up to see her still standing halfway in the doorway to the pantry, eye-to-eye with the unicorn.
"Why?" Oval asked with a frown clear on her face. "You must have been here during our attack a few years back? Why risk it?"
The unicorn mare named Camellia gave a soft shrug. "I take things at face value. You could have ran through me. The two of you could have overpowered me. We could have stood in the streets fighting with tooth and hoof and magic until the guards had caught up to you," she started, closing the door behind Oval with her magic as she finally moved out enough to allow it.
"Instead," Camellia continued, "you withdrew your own magic, set your bag down, and backed away. You said you did not want to fight, and I had no reason to doubt you given your actions."
Oval carefully made for a different chair than the one I had moved to sit on, keeping one eye on the unicorn at all times as she moved, and Camellia made a point of taking a seat as centered in our view as possible. Both Oval and Camellia were acting as if they walked on eggshells, and I could see the tension in their muscles even as they spoke as potential friends. They were both still ready to respond if the situation turned sour.
With the three of us seated in our respective seats, I felt my fear subside slowly but surely. I realized the same must be true for the others, as an uncomfortable silence settled on the room we were in.
Camellia's eyes flicked between Oval and me, and I was sure she was drinking in every little inch of our appearances. We were so vastly different from the ponies when we could not use our magic to mimic them, what with our sleek grey skins and chitin plates, the big blue eyes on our sharp faces, and our fin-like mane and tail alternatives. I was sure the pony took notice of the holes which marred Oval's legs, fins, and wings, compared to mine which were still unaffected by the effects of our species' hunger for love.
"So," I finally started, which caused Camellia to jerk in surprise. "am I right thinking you're a botanist?"
The unicorn relaxed again at the question, and gave a nod. "Florist, but I dabble in botany in my own time. I have a small garden in the back, but you will be seen if you go there."
"I noticed your cutiemark and the books," I explained. "You've been looking us over since we got here, so I am sure you noticed we don't have cutiemarks ourselves."
"Yeah, I did," Camellia agreed.
"Our species doesn't get them," I pre-empted her.
"I see," Camellia answered with a nod.
"We could overtake you whenever we want to," Oval mumbled while looking at the wood floor in front of her seat. "You have no idea who you invited into your home."
Camellia tensed up hearing that, focusing her eyes on Oval again.
"We won't," I quickly added. "We will honour our host's trust in us, won't we sis?"
"Well, yes," Oval mumbled, her blue eyes meeting mine. "But we're going to need to figure out where to go from here. Before you get too hungry and lose control."
"Lose control?" Camellia asked, and I could sense the air around us becoming charged with magical energy even if her horn was not lit with it yet.
"Oh, well, short lesson about our species: We feed on love. That's what we need to survive," I explained. "I'm relatively new to this myself, and I still need to learn to deal with this hunger. I fed this morning, but Oval makes it seem like I might turn into the Hulk if I don't get fed before long."
"What's a hulk?" Oval asked, but I shook my head at her.
"Not important right now," I decided, keeping my focus on Camellia. "I don't know if we would have made it to a safe place in this city on our own, Camellia. Thank you for your help. I will do my utter best to not betray your trust, and I am sure Oval will as well. If there are any questions you have, please let us know?"
The unicorn fidgeted a bit on her chair, looking between us with a mixture of fear and trepidation. "I'm not sure I know where to start," she spoke honestly. "You look so much different from us..."
"We're not supposed to reveal ourselves to ponies," Oval brought up. "There was some kind of spell in the railway tunnel which made us lose our guises, or we would have looked just like you."
"We could have looked like your twin if not for that spell," I suggested with a smile, but Camellia winced as she looked in my direction. "Oh, right, fangs," I realized. "I'm trying to make a joke here, is all. Attempting to lighten the mood?"
"Yes, the fangs," the unicorn agreed. "I keep fighting the urge to flee."
"I don't think we can do anything to stop you feeling that," I sighed. "That has to come from you. We're not going to do anything to you. We're not the dangerous ones here; we're just trying to stay out of harm's way. We weren't even supposed to stop here for longer than an hour or so?"
"Two hours," Oval corrected me. "We only came here to take a train to Baltimare. I live close by there."
"You live near Baltimare?" Camellia asked as if she had some difficulty believing it.
"A lot of our siblings live in pony towns, Camellia. We're not as dangerous as ponies make us out to be. We just live among you without harming any of you," I explained. "There's a few who are supposed to live here in Canterlot as well, although I don't know if that spell...?" My voice trailed off as I spotted realisation hit Oval's face.
"...if that spell hit them, they would not be able to hold their guises either." she gasped, shaking her head in growing terror. "There's no telling how many of them were outed. We've had dozens of family members pass through here recently thanks to Canterlot being a travel hub. Any one of them could have gotten noticed by accident. Most likely one of the hatchlings, but it could have just as easily been one of our more experienced siblings..."
"Wait, you're saying there are dozens of Changelings in Canterlot at this very moment?" Camellia caught up, watching the both of us nod in her direction. "That explains why the guards have been on high alert for the past weeks."
"How many weeks?" Oval demanded. "How long have they been mobilized?"
"Three, four? They suddenly rushed through the streets one day and closed off all the gates, set up checkpoints, and started to harass anypony trying to go in or out of the city," Camellia answered. "It led to delivery problems for a lot of businesses here."
"You think Blaze made it through?" I asked of Oval, knowing Blaze having left the Hive a few weeks before us - headed for Vanhoover to meet with her circus troupe.
"If Blaze were here, we would have heard of her already," Oval chuckled half-heartedly. "Nothing can hold Blaze captured against her will for long."
Camellia, the purple-coated unicorn with her yellow mane and tail, sat peering between Oval and me as we tried to figure out which of our siblings left prior to Canterlot suddenly going on lockdown. No word of it had reached us in the Hive near Hollow Shades, so the guards must have intercepted any of our siblings who might have grown wise about it up to now. Before we knew what we were doing, we were listing the hatchlings we had seen leave in the past weeks to one another, trying to deduct which of them might have been the instigator thanks to having trouble holding their respective guises.
"Breeze is coming this way soon as well, isn't she?" I realized in growing horror, and Oval frowned deeply at my words.
"Unless we can get word out to steer clear of this place, yes," Oval agreed. "She was planning to go West as well, and most train lines heading there pass through Canterlot."
"I'm hearing so many names from you two," Camellia spoke up suddenly, catching us by surprise. We had almost forgotten she was there with us. "And you seem genuinely upset at the thought of something having happened to them."
"Well, yeah, they're family," I answered. "You care about your family as well, don't you?"
"I'm just surprised by it. I didn't expect changelings to have feelings like that," Camellia explained, and Oval let out a deep sigh.
"We're not too different," Oval stated bruskly. "I've been married to one of the most beautiful pony mares you can imagine. I care about her deeply. There are so many of us integrated in pony society that it would cripple your government if we were to suddenly all disappear at once. We have the same feelings you have, but we just look different from you. There's so many false preconceptions about us that we are forced to hide from you instead of coming out in the open. It drives me mad that I can't just be myself in front of my own mare because she would run from me in terror..."
Camellia's face blanked at the sudden stream of words from Oval, spat out by my sister in growing frustration at the situation.
"Keep calm, Burst," I warned, motioning at the closed blinds. "Shouting draws attention."
"Who's Burst?" the unicorn asked, and I nodded at Oval.
"Names are finnicky things," I chuckled. "You need to realise that we can take on the identities of a great many different ponies, at will. We change names as often as you change clothing."
"Doesn't that get confusing?" Camellia wondered, which actually made me laugh.
Her innocent question could have come from me not half a year ago, and I was reminded of how naive I had been back then. How alien Changelings had been to me. I had been turned into a Changeling, and had been forced to live with them day after day, and still it had taken me months to get comfortable enough among my siblings to identify them even from a distance, no matter the guise they had taken on.
Before that time, the thought of changing names, changing looks, and the huge amount of siblings running around without clear indication of a pattern made me as confused as this unicorn mare must be feeling right now. And she was only faced with Oval and me. Forget a whole Hive of changelings.
"Believe me or not, but it was confusing for me in the beginning as well," I told Camellia. "I'm not actually native to this place, but when I woke up as a newly hatched Changeling, my life was turned upside-down and I had to learn about all the new rules and things unique to our species. That took me a few months, so don't worry if you don't understand something after just a few minutes with us."
"She still doesn't know everything she needs to," Oval added.
"Oh, thank you for that," I snorted in her direction.
The unicorn mare looked utterly out of her depths, her ears drooping and her face a mixture of various emotions as she tried to make sense of it all.
"You wouldn't have tea in the house, would you?" I asked of her. "I think we could all use something to drink, and preparing it may give you some time to sort your thoughts out about us?"
"Tea? Yeah, I have tea," Camellia agreed, slipping off her seat and onto her hooves. "Do you have any preference?"
"Something calming, like a white tea?" I suggested. "Take your time preparing it, we won't go anywhere."
"If you've got a Summer Meadow mix, I'd love that," Oval piped up as Camellia walked off in the direction of the kitchen. "It's my mare's favourite."
After the unicorn left us for the kitchen and we could hear her rummage about, I put my attention back on my sister. "We're going to need to figure out how to get around this spell, don't we?"
"All magic dissipates eventually," Oval remarked quietly. "It's just a matter of time."
"But you've mentioned your mare too often since we got here," I suggested. "I've come to know you in these past months, Burst. Sure, you talk about your mare from time to time, but not this often. You're agitated as well. You're thinking we won't make it out of here, aren't you?"
"We're stuck in a random pony's house in the middle of the pony capital, with pony guards roaming the streets looking for us specifically. We have no idea how many of our siblings are stuck in their dungeons, we don't know what they know or what spells they have to identify us, and we can't reach out to anyone outside of town to keep others from arriving here," Oval listed. "I've never been this deep in the shit before, and I've been infiltrating their society for decades now."
"You mean this is worse than that open magic battle between Blaze and Moonshine over in the spa?" I asked, "Or when our Queen caught all of us and was ready to pretty much take our heads for going in against her? Or when we were trying to get small groups of Hatchlings out of the communal halls and watch each of them break down when they realized there was no way they could go back to their old lives?"
Oval let out a deep sigh at hearing me list it all. "It's been an eventful year, hasn't it?"
"We have the support of one of the pony princesses," I told her. "Sure, she's over in Ponyville, but I'm sure she will come over and try to help us if she becomes aware of the situation here. If I know Twilight Sparkle, she can't let this go on without her meddling in it."
"I did mention not being able to get a word out, right?" Oval coughed. "I mean, we're safe now, at this moment, but what if this unicorn turns on us? What if we get spotted by a guard? Until we get around this spell they put on us, we'll stand out like a lone tree in a grassy field."
"I'm surprised you got a few decades of experience on me but I'm the one trying to think our way out of this while you're giving in to your fears," I suggested calmly. "I mean, I get it; I know you're afraid that everything you've built up so far will come crashing down if we make the wrong move. You mentioned it a few times when we were dealing with the impending invasion. But we stopped that. We stuck together as a clutch and convinced our Queen to give us a chance. We convinced Starlight Glimmer to be our friend, for Moonshine to study with Twilight Sparkle... we can just do this one pony at a time."
I noticed a shadow in the doorway between the living room and where the kitchen was, but kept it to myself. If Camellia wanted to listen in, let her. She took a giant risk taking us in, and I was giving her the benefit of the doubt as well. Trust had to come from both directions if it was to work.
"You're forgetting that they're all spread out across Equestria now," Oval protested. "With Blaze in Vanhoover and Breeze back at the Hive, there's not much of a clutch to speak of."
"I'm here, aren't I? You guys adopted me into your clutch for a reason. I'm not going anywhere. No matter what happens, I will be there for you, Burst," I entrusted to her. "We can try and find out what happened to our siblings who were here in the city once we figure out how to get around that stupid spell, and maybe we can find out how to get the ponies' trust so they may let the rest of our family go, but let's take it one step at a time? Let's keep ourselves from getting overwhelmed by things?"
The shadow at the doorway moved as the boiling water made the kettle whistle, and I could hear it being picked up and water poured out while Oval tried to collect her thoughts.
"I think that's the reason it worked out," she finally said in a half-whisper. "You're taking things as they come. One thing at a time. The rest of us, we just... Breeze is so random, Blaze far too hot headed... and I just get overwhelmed by things. You helped us stay on track, keep focus on the important things."
"If I don't focus on one problem at a time, I'd get overwhelmed as much as you would, sis," I sighed. "I mean, remember how we met; I was tossed into a different world, into a different life, completely unable to change my situation. I was forced to adapt to it. You've seen how it affected the other hatchlings; we simply weren't given a choice but to adapt at such a fast pace. When they were finally given time to deal with their emotions, they broke down. No exceptions. They swallowed it, but cried in their sleep, or cried openly. They blamed us, shouted angrily, kicked about themselves, blew parts of the hive up from their errant magic releasing thanks to their anger. None of it was pretty."
Oval gave a thoughtful nod at that.
"You think I'm doing any better, sis? I'm held up solely by your acceptance of me. By being included in your clutch and the plans you had. By your love. But it's still a fucked-up situation, if you pardon my French," I continued. "If I let it all wash over me, I'll break down just as much as the other hatchlings have."
A tray floated in-between Oval and me and landed on the coffee table, a trio of teacups filled with steamy hot liquid on it, together with a small bowl filled with assorted cookies. As the yellow glow of the unicorn's magic receded from it, Oval and I turned our attention to our host standing a short distance away, noting the wet fur underneath her purple eyes.
"I'm sorry, I've been listening in from the other room," Camellia spoke softly. "I don't understand it all, but I get you're in it to help your family out. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know? Family is everything to me as well and you sound like good people, no matter what you look like on the outside."
While slowly sipping at the tea Camellia set down for us, and nibbling on the cookies, Oval and I tried our best to get the unicorn mare up to speed as quick as she was able to absorb it. The idea that there were thousands of Changelings living in the pony lands unbeknownst to their neighbours was something that she clearly had some difficulty with, even if Oval stressed the different array of jobs and relationships they held were beneficial to pony society as a whole.
The idea that a smaller number of Changelings were now prevented from returning to those lives because of the anti-transformation spell which held Canterlot in its grasp, caused a grimace on the pony's face. The realization that others like us were now forced by it to hide away, lest they be captured and incarcerated in Canterlot Castle's dungeons, was truly upsetting to the unicorn pony. Family meant everything to her, and hearing about the potentially large amount of families which would be torn apart by the effects of the spell made her all the more determined to help us out.
While she was a unicorn herself, she had no idea what kind of spell could have been used to take our guises away from us, as her magic had been largely used for her job as a florist or her attempts to branch out to the greater field of botany. She knew just what was needed for plants to grow big and strong, for flowers to last for weeks and months even after their stems were cut, and how to splice different plants together in order to create a new species which had the benefits from both parent species and none of the weaknesses.
We briefly talked about how we thought Changeling magic worked compared to Unicorn magic, and how we could sense the energy patterns at times, but Camellia was entirely out of her league in that respect. It just didn't connect, and she was not going to be of any help in that area.
As a unicorn, and an employed resident of Canterlot, she was open to gathering supplies for us during daytime, and figuring out of there were others who might be able to help us out where she could not. Oval stressed to no end that Camellia had to be very careful, considering the way we were being viewed by ponies in general. Camellia acknowledged each of Oval's fears and did her best to silence them, but it was clear she was worried about the consequences as well.
As the evening went on and the three of us started to yawn, Camellia led us up to the first floor and into a messy room which smelled like dirt. Her magic quickly moved her botany experiments out of the way until there was ample room on the floor, and a set of sheets flew in after so she could lay out a rudimentary bed for us. As the unicorn retreated to her own room, Oval and I made ourselves comfortable and were soon fast asleep.
The next day arrived with the sight of Camellia standing in the doorway watching Oval and me sleep. I blinked my eyes open to see her standing there, an odd look on her face, and tried to connect her facial expression with an emotion. Failing that, I wurmed my way out of Oval's hold and stood up from the ground.
Camellia took a step back as I approached her, motioning for me to join her in the hallway. She closed the door to the other room behind me with her magic, and sat down in the small hallway. I followed her example, but moved my forehooves up to rub some sleep out of my eyes once I had sat down opposite her.
"Apart from your looks, you sleep like my nieces do," Camellia suggested. "There is a lot of love and trust there, between you two, something far removed from the angry mob I saw descend upon my city a few years back."
"That was a mistake," I told her directly, my feelings about it only having grown stronger over the past months due to my conversations with Blaze and others while in the hive outpost. "Our Queen has been having the same problems with understanding you ponies as you have had with understanding us. There has never been a proper dialogue between our species; All that exist are the preconceptions which just stack up on top of one another with no hope of being put to rest. Oval and other siblings of mine have been trying to fix that for decades now while living among you; trying to play the Devil's advocate, so to speak."
"And this situation we're dealing with now is destroying their work, isn't it?" Camellia realised far more quickly than I had expected her to. "We're faced with you being unable to hide among us, unable to do your work, and with ponies who let their fears of your outward appearance get the better of them?"
"Pretty much," I agreed. "We were just on our way to Oval's home in Hoofton, a place where she has a job and a life as a pony stallion. She has a wife there, friends, and is part of a larger pony community there. But we can't go there now, looking like our true selves; nopony would accept us. As they taught us where I come from; individuals may be smart and willing to listen to alternative viewpoints, but groups are dumb. If a group starts to panic, there's no easy way to make them listen to reason again."
Camellia closed her eyes and sat in silence with me for a moment. I could hear Oval's slow breathing from the other side of the door to my left - my clutchsister clearly still fast asleep.
"You have an aura around you of someone who is to be trusted," the Unicorn opposite me finally spoke up. "If you had not come up out of the sewer when you did, I would have released my magic onto your sister and called for the guards. I don't feel like I can trust her as much as you."
"I do? Er... well, thanks for not doing that, I guess?" I stumbled. "I'm not really sure what to do with that?"
"I might know somepony who is ready to listen, but they need to meet you. Without your sister Oval present. Would that be a problem?" Camellia asked directly.
"I don't think it's a problem, but we're kind of confined to your home right now," I pointed out. "I can't go elsewhere to meet with them, and Burst is going to be in the house here as well."
"I'm not sure I can get their name right; Oval, Burst, you seem to be mixing them up as much as I do in my head," the unicorn stated with a wry smile. "If you can convince them to stay out of sight until my friend is ready to meet with them as well, I can get you in contact with someone who has access to the palace and may be able to find out whether they're holding your family there or not."
"I can't promise all of my family are as trustworthy as I seem to be, Camellia," I mumbled. "They do mean a lot to me, though. We told you yesterday how important it is for us to be able to feed. Stuck in a prison cell without the ability to feed, we'll go feral... we won't be able to feed if we can't mimic a pony's looks. All of this can go wrong so quickly by inaction as well as by taking the wrong action..."
"There are some plants which require live food, like the dionaea muscipula, but that does not make them any less precious than the harmless blooming flowers I work with on a daily basis," the unicorn offered up. "I've been thinking of you along those lines; you look similar to us, but you just need a different diet. As long as I respect your diet, we can co-exist, true?"
I gave her a slow nod. "I had not thought of it that way yet, but that sounds like a good analogy. I'm pretty sure we're insects, though, not plants. Have you seen our wings yet?"
With that I turned my back on her a little and brought my wings out from under the chitin covering my back so Camellia could have a look at them.
"I saw them on the others during the attack," Camellia agreed, but still leaned in to get a better look at my wings as I kept them still for her. "I think you're right; those are insect wings as far as I can judge. Now I'm feeling like I should not have mentioned the flytrap as an example of a flesh-eating plant."
"Meh, I'm big enough not to get swallowed by one," I chuckled with a wink. "I'm fine with a little humorous jabbing at my expense, please don't worry about offending me."
The unicorn pulled back from me with a careful smile. "This is what I meant; everything about you tells me I should trust you. It's the only reason I've even thought of inviting my friend here to meet you. Your sister there? There's something off about the way she acts; she just feels wrong somehow."
"I can't comment on that, really. Burst has done so much for me over the past half year that I can't but trust her," I sighed. "Our family is a complicated one, especially thanks to the problems we have with feeding and getting others to trust us when we can look like anyone else we meet. Some of my family members throw themselves at that role of the evil antagonist; they like scaring others while trying to take from them what they can. They don't care about what they leave behind. But there's a growing group of us who are invested in long-term relationships. Who don't want fast food, but want to nurture our crops, if I can use a botanical term."
"And you're one of those," Camellia stated as a fact more than a question.
"Well, no... I'm not from here. It's complicated, but I do want to go back eventually. I don't belong here with the rest of you. Oval is the one who wants to get things working right. She wants so badly to return to her mare and have a long life together with them," I explained while looking over to the closed door between my sibling and us.
"You may not get the right vibe from her, but she can't help that. She really wants to figure out how to bring ponies and changelings together on friendly terms. She wants this to work out. And this situation here, the potential for this to turn into a war between our species," I paused to shake my head at the idea. "The thought alone is tearing her up inside."
The unicorn reached up with her left foreleg to brush some hair out of her eyes, letting my words work on her mind. "Nopony I know wants a war. It could do such harm," she finally emitted in a worried tone of voice.
"None of the changelings I know want one either," I told her. "We almost had a war half a year ago, and it's only thanks to Oval that we managed to stop it before it started. Our Queen was about ready to take Equestria by force, which would have done irrepairable damage to all of us. There would have been no coming back from that for centuries. Oval and her sisters recruited me to try and get our Queen to change her mind."
"Given that there was no war half a year ago, I take it you succeeded?" Camellia deducted with a wry smile. She was really not liking the topic, and I could not blame her.
"You'd think that, but no; I failed," I told her honestly, much to her surprise. "We had this big plan to get our Queen to listen to me, an outsider who could bring a fresh voice to the table, but when it came to me to talk to her, I became overwhelmed by her pheromones. I was completely out of it; didn't know who I was or where I was, only that I wanted to do everything I could to keep my Queen happy so I would continue to smell that precious smell of hers. The only reason we eventually succeeded was because of two ponies which we had managed to sneak in with us. Starlight Glimmer and Pinkie Pie managed to..."
"Pinkie Pie?" Camellia interrupted with a start. "I know her; she's friends with the Princess Twilight Sparkle, isn't she?"
"Er, yeah. I think Pinkie is friends with everypony, including Oval and me, but you're right," I agreed.
"Yeah, I know her and her sister Maud Pie. Maud studied geology at the same school where I studied botany," Camellia explained calmly.
"No kidding?" I replied in honest surprise. "I haven't met Maud myself, but Pinkie is definitely a friend of mine. I'm glad to hear you know her as well!"
"Pinkie is a good judge of character. I have to wonder, though; what would you have looked like if that spell had not taken your magic away?" Camellia asked out of the blue, and I folded my wings back under my chitin as I straightened up again.
"Well, er," I started carefully. "I do have a look which is kind of my... identity... I mean, I'm called Pearl because of a bit of a stupid story. I didn't quite mimic anypony in particular, but I would have sat here as an teenage earthpony mare with a light grey coat, a light aquamarine mane and tail with lighter green highlights, bordering on grey... deep yellow eyes, with a cutiemark of a brown conch shell with a pearl in front of it."
The unicorn mare's eyes scanned over me as if she was trying to imagine it as an overlay over my insectoid current form, the corners of her mouth rising slowly. "I can see that," she finally spoke to me. "I can see your words coming out of somepony like that, yes. Almost like a fresh cucumber sandwich. Is that what you feel like on the inside? Past the dark skin and sharp fangs?"
"I don't know, I haven't really gone through any other guises for any length of time to get used to them as much as that one. I guess it's as much my identity as anything else right now? I would feel more comfortable looking like that right now, than I do sitting here bared to you and anypony else who may see me, if that's what you're asking?" I returned, reaching up with my left hoof to rub at my left cheek.
"I dunno, I... I haven't really spoken with anyone about it yet. My clutch have all been in this thing longer than I have, and they each have their own guises to fall back on. Blaze and Burst have pretty permanent ones, but Breeze skips between them like she has no attachment to them whatsoever," I rambled. "Pinkie just accepted me for who I am, no matter what I looked like when she met me. I don't think Starlight wants to talk about it in depth since we remind her of a bad period in her past, but she appeared accepting of us as well."
The unicorn's purple eyes flitted across me again, and I was starting to get a little uncomfortable as I realized just how much information I was giving her, and the way in which she got me to spill it. What was she thinking, exactly? Where was she going with it? If Camellia ended up not being trustworthy, I would have given her so much information that she could ruin me and all other Changelings roaming through Equestria.
I was starting to feel nauseous again, but this time not due to some magic spell keeping me from taking on a pony guise. This time it was due to the full weight of the situation finally coming down on me like the hammer I evaded for over half a year now.
Camellia noticed the change in me, and her ears flattened. I started to become aware of a draft pulling in her direction and realized she was charging herself with the ambient magic surrounding us. It made me feel weary and defensive as there seemed no reason for her to do so.
"What are you doing?" she spoke carefully to me, as if something about me was as startling as what she was doing herself, and stood up to take a step back away from me.
"I should ask you the same question," I returned to her, hearing the sharpness of my Changeling voice hiss the words at her. Just my appearance was enough to make anypony worried, but the voice did not help in the least bit to calm them down when they were already on edge.
"I tried to help, invited you into my home," Camellia muttered, her horn starting to glow with a soft yellow light as if she was building up a magical charge in it.
I took a step back when I recalled the fight between Blaze and my Hatchling 'brother' on the mountaintop; there was a minimum distance between two fighters which I needed to maintain if I wanted to have any hope at all to dodge an incoming attack.
"You've been asking a lot of questions. How do I know I can trust you?" I voiced my own unease to her, feeling the muscles around my resin glands twitch. My body was ready to meet the challenge of a potential fight, even if my mind was trying its best to try and find the right words to prevent it from happening.
Both Camellia and I were struggling with our rising fears, and it was clear on her face as much as it should on my own. We had been so comfortable not a minute before, chatting as friends, and now we were standing ready to give the other a beating they would remember for a long time to come. And there was no reason for it...
A dollop of resin leaked out of my resin glands onto my tongue and I swallowed it down quickly, knowing my body would just digest it. "Please, stop this. We need trust between us, not this," I voiced my concern in a hiss through the space between my fangs.
Camellia's eyes were scanning over me, even as she continued to back away from me, but her facial expression told me enough; there no longer was any trust behind them. The pony was faced with a creature which had plagued her nightmares ever since her city had been attacked by a vast army of them, and while she had tried to give me the benefit of the doubt before, there was just no way we were going to overcome that in just a single night and couple of chats.
I felt terrified at the prospect of Camellia doing something she might regret later on. She had the upper hoof in this; she could have the guards come down upon us in force by just the smallest of actions. All she needed to do was reveal us to her neighbours, and I feared this would start when she would release the magical charge from her horn...
As the pair of us stood facing off against one another, waiting to see who would take the initiative, there came a sudden click to my left. The door to the room Oval and I had been sleeping in swung open not a moment after, and I barely caught a glimpse of my sister's blue eyes from my peripheral vision.
The thought of having to face off against two Changelings sent Camellia over the edge, and yellow lightning burst from her horn! I responded in almost the same second by shooting green resin out of my mouth, but I was thrown backwards by the sheer ferocity of her magical attack!
Unfortunately for me, behind me was a flight of stairs leading down, and I quickly realized that her magic spell had been intended to paralyze me when my wings refused to come out from under my chitin plating. With no way to slow my descent, I hit the wooden floorpanels in front of the staircase with enough force that I blacked out on impact, even as more sparks of magic flew across the landing above...
There was the strange sensation of floating. Floating in a dark void in which a low thumping sound reverberated in a familiar rhythm. Every thump came with a disorienting blurring of my vision, as if I could not properly focus on the world around me while hearing the sound at the same time.
Even with me drifting in what was essentially a pitch black void, there was the hint of a dark blue light surrounding me even if there was little it could illuminate. I could faintly see the outlines of my own form, which only disoriented me more as I put my focus on it.
Rather than my Changeling self, I appeared to be Human once more, with human arms and human legs drifting uselessly through the void. Strangely enough I had no control over my limbs, even when I tried to focus on moving them. All that did was increase the blurring of my view and make me feel nauseous.
I slowly became aware of another form near me, but could not focus enough on the blue shape to recognize them. The thumping sound and blurry vision just drowned out all details of the form, other than the general shape of a winged pony drawing slowly nearer to me as if they were able to walk in this strange realm where I was stuck drifting without any control whatsoever.
A soothing female voice spoke to me in a maternal tone, but the words sounded like utter gibberish to me. The intonation made it sound like a question, then a statement, but all I heard were guttural sounds. Guttural sounds uttered by a most beautiful voice, but no less useless than my limbs were to me in this strange place.
Another question was uttered while the thumping grew ever louder. The blue figure before me slowly started to pull away, even as they started to move their hooves as if walking forward. As they did, a blue light erupted from their forehead, enclosing a large horn protruding from their head. The more they pulled away, the more their motions seemed to indicate they were trying to counteract it by first walking, then running, and finally spreading their wings in an attempt to fly closer. What magic they attempted to manifest, fell away without form or substance; I was clearly utterly beyond their grasp.
One final guttural sound was voiced as if from a far-away place as the figure disappeared from sight altogether, and a wave of nausea and pain washed over me to replace the dreamlike state I had been in.
I blinked my Changeling eyes open to the unexpected green tone of soft resin surrounding me. The thumping continued to hit me in its rhythmic pattern, now accompanied by a spark of pain on the back of my head.
It took me a moment to realize the thumping was actually my heartbeat, pumping blood to what must be a wound, and that strange realm I had been just moments before could have well been a fever-dream.
I tentatively moved my Changeling limbs, noting that my front right leg felt stiff as if it was held by harder resin than that which I was floating in. It gave me flashbacks to limping through the outpost's hallways after the first playfight I'd had as a Changeling had gone sour.
It had just about been the one and only reason I had been goaded into helping my siblings with their plans to stave off a Changeling attack on Equestria, thanks to my hurt leg having taken me out of the regular Changeling training sequence. The time they had spent with me while my sprained leg healed had given them the opportunity to fill me in on the state of affairs which would otherwise not have been possible.
The fact my leg was feeling stuck yet again made me think there was more wrong with it than I had initially considered. It was very clearly a weakness I would have to keep in mind from now on.
There was a pain in my back as I tried to stretch my wings out in the resin, but I blamed it on the thickness of the resin and the flimsiness of my insectoid wings. They were probably bending in an odd way as I tried to get them out from under my chitin shield. Probably.
Having come to terms with being a Changeling again, who was clearly suffering from a weak right leg and a headwound, I tried to move my attention outward - beyond the confines of my own situation. The resin pod I was stuck in was dangling from the ceiling of the room Burst and I had slept in just the night before, with Camellia's botanic items still haphazardly put away so as to create room for us.
I attempted to swing my pod by moving my lower legs through the resin, as I had when I first woke up in one back at the Changeling hive outpost, but it did not give way at all. I could potentially cut my way out of the pod with my fangs, but the pain in the back of my head made me think it was better to stay where I was. For all I knew the pod was filled by a Matron's healing resin, after all.
After settling into the idea of waiting until someone could fill me in on what was going on, knowing I was about as safe as I could be while in a resin pod, I just let my thoughts drift.
Not all of it made sense to me, not the least of which the odd way in which Camellia's behaviour had changed just before I woke up in this pod. We had been talking on a friendly level, or as friendly as a pony and Changeling could, and then suddenly there was that buildup of tension coming out of nowhere!
The attack was unwarranted, and I was obviously no match for her magical abilities. I remembered flying backward down the flight of stairs... and then waking up in the pod. The floaty fever dream was most likely induced by the way my head had hit the floor below. I would be utterly amazed if I had not ended up with a concussion from it.
This was what a concussion felt like, right? The painful thumping of my heartbeat, the way my memories were seeming a little more jumbled than usual, the way I felt like I was drifting in-and-out of consciousness even while I was thinking things to myself?
I honestly had no reference for it, and I was prone to overthinking things.
It took an undeterminable amount of time before the door to the room opened and Oval wandered in, her bug eyes giving me a good looking over before she opened her mouth.
"How long have you been awake for?" I heard her speak through the layer of resin, which was not unlike hearing someone on the edge of a swimming pool speak to you while you were yourself submerged in the water.
There was no way for me to answer her while I was stuck in my resin pod, of course, so I just raised an eyebrow at her.
"Ah, right. Well, I had to put you in there so you would stop struggling; you were still trying to fight back even as Camellia and I moved you up here," Oval revealed. "The fight's over, and Camellia is downstairs. Why did you have to attack her?"
Wait, Camellia thought I was the one attacking her?? I slowly moved my head side-to-side in the resin to protest, but Burst's eyes narrowed slightly at my response.
"She said you just became ever more agitated while you were talking to her, and she had to defend herself so you would not feed off her," Oval continued. "I don't know you as someone who would risk everything like this. Blaze, perhaps, but not you. You've shown yourself to be more levelheaded than me and my sisters, so this makes no sense to me!"
I shook my head more, even if it made the pain and dizziness spike up from my movement.
"Well, you'll have a chance to explain yourself once you're healed, okay? Camellia has sent for a friend of hers who might be able to help us out where she can't herself, so your fight with her doesn't appear to have caused too much harm," Oval muttered. "You should get some sleep; you've been out for most of the day and the sun has gone down a few minutes ago. That's why I came up, actually; to get some sleep myself."
I watched as Oval closed the bedroom door and laid herself down on the ground between my pod and the door. Her back was turned to the door as if she trusted our host to not rush in during the night, and she was facing me with a small amount of distrust.
Obviously Camellia's experience of the fight had been different from mine. To me, Camellia had seemed to be the agitator; having forced me to defend myself against her. Yet Camellia had spun that around as if I had made the first move? It made no sense, but thinking about it too much made the pain in my head rise to the point where my vision became blurry again.
I took a page from Burst's book and closed my eyes to get some more rest. The pod would heal me as long as I was in it, so I would just have to wait until Oval thought I had recovered enough so I could be let out again.
The green glow of my resin pod and the, near-black, blue glow of the strange void I had been in before, bled through one another as I had more fever dreams during the night. At one point I woke to find Oval had gone again, but I had not seen her leave the room. The whole thing was just one disorienting moment after the next.
When I finally started to make sense of things again, I realized I had been staring at the worried face of Oval for more than a few seconds, my sister having moved to stand right in front of me at some point in the recent past. She was looking at me as if she had asked a question, her forehooves placed on the pod's exterior wall so she could keep herself standing upright on her back legs to get on an even height with me.
I blinked a few times, then shrugged noncommittally in an attempt to make my sister aware that I had only just regained consciousness again.
Oval sighed in worry, her breath barely fogging up the resin between us. "I asked if you were still in pain, Pearl. Your wound has healed to the point where I'm not sure my resin will do much of anything for it anymore, but I'm not sure you should come out if you're still in pain. I'm not a Matron, so I'm not sure if I'm judging it right."
I thought about it a moment, realizing the pain had lessened to nothing more but a background nuisance. It was still there, but it was no longer causing me nausea or blurriness.
I shook my head in the resin, a bit stronger than I probably had in the previous day when Oval had asked me about my fight with our pony host, and immediately regretted it as the nausea returned with a vengeance. I must have visibly winced, as Oval prodded my pod with her right hoof while staring me down with a frown.
"Please don't lie about your health, Pearl," she chided me.
I shook my head again, slightly slower this time.
"Hmm, if you're sure you're ready to come out," my Changeling sibling responded in a questioning tone? After another slow nod from me, she appeared to make a decision in my favour and leaned forward while preparing me for what was to come; "Okay, try to keep your weight off your right hoof there. I'll cut you an opening and try to support you where needed."
I gave another nod as Oval sank her fangs into my pod and dragged them down as she let herself sink down until she was on all fours again. The resin around me washed out of the gashes her fangs had made, splashing over her, but she barely seemed to mind.
I breathed out the resin from my lungs so the air could replace it, then opened my mouth and gave a quick cut sideways wih my fangs pressed against the wall in front of me. With the two cuts Oval's fangs had made, the slice I gave it made the resin wall before me fall forward so there was a large gap for me to escape out through.
Keeping Oval's warning in mind, I landed on my left foreleg more than my right as I fell out onto the now wet wooden floor, and immediately found my sister standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me for extra support, her breath landing on my wet back.
"Thanks, but I could've cut myself out, you know?" I mumbled back to Oval, shivering a bit to the cooler air of the room outside the resin pod I had just left. Her body was slightly warmer than the ambient temperature, but mine had been sitting still for too long and simply needed to adjust.
"Sure, but it would have taken too long; Camellia's friend is waiting for us downstairs, which is really the only reason I'm willing to pull you out of this right now," Burst responded flatly, giving a slight nudge with her right shoulder to mine. "My resin doesn't have the best healing abilities, especially not compared to Matron, so it would have been better for you to stay in there for a few more days."
"How long have I been in there now?" I asked, letting my chin come to a rest on Burst's chitin backplating.
"A day-and-half now, it's just past lunchtime," my sister replied calmly, reaching up a hoof to my flank to rub some resin off. "There's probably still some sandwiches left if you feel like eating?"
I sighed longingly at the idea, but then moved my head away from Oval's back to look down at the hard resin covering my right foreleg. It was a situation I had been in before, and I knew how bothersome such a cast could be when trying to go places. "I'll have to stumble down the stairs, I guess, but I could definitely do with a sandwich or two."
"I didn't want to take the chance by not encasing your leg, considering your luck with that particular one," Oval pointed out in a half-joke, detaching herself from me to look back past our forms at the cast as well. "We could chip the resin off later today so you can check whether it's fine, but let's go down first. You'll have to meet Meadowsweet."
"Meadowsweet?" I replied in surprise as Oval turned around fully and then walked past me to get to the door, even if we were both still dripping with green resin.
"You'll see," Burst spoke enigmatically, pulling the door open for me and nudging her head at it.
As I limped down the stairs of Camellia's pony home, I could hear the voice of our host speaking with another. Since the staircase had no door between it, the front door of the house, nor the living room, and was factually placed within the living room's four walls, I could set my eyes upon the other pony before I had fully descended it.
An Earthpony with a pink coat sat on the couch near Camellia, her flank speckled with little white flowers collected in a cluster. Her dark green mane was bundled up in a knot on the back of her head which sat at equal distance from both of her ears, while her green tail had been trimmed to a short tuft. I could just hear Rarity's voice from an episode so many seasons back "Short tails are in this year" reverbing through my head at seeing this.
With the thumping of my resin-cast leg on the steps, it was impossible to approach the new pony and our host Camellia without drawing attention to myself. Before I had descended the final few steps to reach the ground level of the building, their eyes had already landed upon my grey Changeling appearance and that of my sister waiting patiently at the foot of the stairs until I had joined her.
Burst took the first step into the open space of the living room and nudged her head back in my direction. "It's against my better judgement, but I have woken Pearl so the two of you can meet. I'm not sure if there's another moment for it, considering what you said about your work schedule, Meadowsweet?"
The new pony looked straight past Oval at myself, and I tried to produce my best non-threatening fanged smile as a response, hobbling after my sibling as I did.
"That stuff will evaporate over time, right Oval?" Camellia asked pointedly, a slight undertone of worry to her voice, while Meadowsweet and I shared a moment of silent observation between ourselves.
The Earthpony's keen yellow eyes peered at my own blue ones, quickly darted sideways as if to do a comparison between me and Burst, and then back to me again. Finally, then, her ears perked up and she reciprocated my smile.
"Every flower has it's own little identifying marker," Meadowsweet started in kind of an odd way of introducing herself. "While families of them may appear the same at a distance, a closer observation often helps to make one realize from which root they stem."
I felt the world shift as I involuntarily tilted my head ever-so-slightly to the right, and had to spread my legs out a bit wider to not feel like I was losing balance. I was sure to attribute it to the problem which also gave me a headache rather than suppose the world actually did shift. Thanks to the nauseating effects of my ailment, I produced a fairly educated "Er, wah?" in response to Meadowsweet's words.
"Camellia and I were speaking, while the two of you were upstairs, about her issues keeping the two of you apart," Meadowsweet explained. "While you two definitely look to be from the same family, much like the flowers in a field, there's enough differences between you to make you unique to one another."
Oval sat herself down on her rear, and used her new position to extend her right hoof in my direction. "It's the cast, isn't it? I should spit some resin on my own leg so we look the same again."
Camellia groaned at Oval's attempt at a joke, and I from a bout of nausea. "You ponies don't have something like an aspirin in here, do you?" I inquired, sitting down as well.
"How about I make you some tea with Meadowsweet?" Camellia returned, slipping off the couch she was on.
The other pony raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. "Why do I have to help making tea? You're the Unicorn here; just use your magic."
"I meant with the herb," Camellia muttered as she walked past her friend and to the kitchen. "It should clear her head."
"Oh, in that case I'd love to have a cup of myself, for me as well," the Earthpony called after her, before turning back to face me with a glint in her eyes.
"I've been the butt of quite a few jokes since she arrived," Oval entrusted to me from the sidelines. "She's a tricky one."
"So are you two, if I can make an observation, Oval," Meadowsweet returned with a more solemn tone to her voice. "And the other members of your family, in so far I have seen them or heard of them."
Oval spoke up again, drawing my attention to her. "Meadowsweet says there's a small hundred of our siblings down in the Canterlot dungeons. None of them are able to transform themselves, and some of them are close to starving after having been there for weeks now."
"They are certainly not behaving as civil as the both of you," the Earthpony offered her observation. "Snarling, kicking, biting... few of them go willingly."
"I can't imagine why anyone would be upset when dragged into a dungeon," I remarked dryly. "Have there been any more sightings of that shadow?"
"What shadow?" Burst wondered, but Meadowsweet startled ever-so-slightly.
"When Camellia and I were talking the other day, shortly before we started to become agitated, there was this shadow drifting between us. You must have seen it as you came charging out of the room, Oval?" I explained.
"No?" I heard my sister return with some reluctance. "All I saw was you and our host preparing to kill each other, so I jumped in as best I could."
"I've heard talk of a shadow before," Meadowsweet let out. "Ponies in this city have been acting up, not just the Changelings who once hid among us. Others as well."
"Oh, right, Meadowsweet did explain how this whole hunt for Changelings in Canterlot got started," Burst remembered. "Apparently one of our siblings was goaded into attacking a guard in broad daylight, was knocked on her ass, and ended up forced to reveal herself. That made them mobilize the guards en masse, and led to them deploying the spell which hit us while we were in the train."
"But, that doesn't make sense," I returned, trying to wrap my head around this. "No Changeling who was born in this world, nor any who were brought here against their will and went through our crashcourse would do such a thing. There's no gain in attacking ponies; even our Queen saw that!"
"And yet, you and Camellia were caught fighting just a few days ago," Burst reminded me. "The way Meadowsweet explains it is that ponies are basically losing their heads over the littlest of things."
"Is there anything you remember about that shadow, Pearl, was it?" Meadowsweet asked carefully.
"Yeah, don't ask where I got the name from. I guess there was... a queasiness," I remembered. "Camellia and I were just talking about regular things when I started to feel as if I was trying to transform, you know what I mean, Burst?"
My Changeling sister gave a slow nod. "I know the feeling, yes. But you weren't trying to transform?"
"I had no reason to; I know there's this spell which basically stops us from transforming, and there was nothing in the conversation leading up to it," I explained.
"I've heard say there's this sense of fear," Meadowsweet mumbled softer. "Something like the feeling of being watched, a sense of paranoia perhaps, before somepony lashes out at others around them."
"Paranoia is a good word for it," I agreed with a very slow and careful nod. "I was starting to believe that Camellia was attempting to lead Burst and me into a trap, that she was silently plotting to capture us and give us to the guards. Or that her charging of her magic was to kill me there, and then. No matter how much I tried to reason against it."
"And here I thought you were going to tear into me with your fangs, finish what we started when we last invaded Canterlot," a returning Camellia interjected into the conversation while levitating four cups of tea to the coffeetable near us.
While placing the cups around a plate with a few sandwiches left upon it, she added with a smirk, "I felt mortally afraid that you two would gang up on me, especially with Oval sleeping in the room so close to us."
"I could barely dodge her paralysis spell when I came charging out," Burst chuckled awkwardly. "You're a good shot, Camellia."
"Hmm, yes, but while we can laugh about it now; there's something entirely too awkward about this situation," the Unicorn suggested, slipping back on the couch next to her Earthpony friend.
"Well, you're not alone in this," Meadowsweet stated. "I'll put my feelers out while I'm at work in the Royal Gardens, see if I can't bring it to the attention of a few of my friends who work in the palace interior."
"Nothing too overt, I hope?" Oval asked worriedly. "We have no way to blend in, and my sister's leg needs healing. We're as stuck here in this house as our family members are down in the dungeons."
Camellia coughed while her eyebrows lowered in a frown and her ears flattened slightly and Burst ducked her head down an inch in response.
"Not that this isn't a very nice place to be stuck in, with very nice ponies who make very nice sandwiches, and Pearl you really should try some of these," she quickly rambled, then took a sandwich off the plate and all-but forced me to take a bite from it.
To be fair to Camellia and Burst both; it was a good sandwich! Between two slices of wholegrain bread rested lettuce, a few flowers I could not immediately recognize, and a light sauce like a mayonnaise or such. The whole thing was as rich in taste as a similar sandwich with an egg in it instead had been on Earth, except for the flower which just made the egg seem like a poor replacement.
While I did not particularly need the nutrition, what with my Changeling physiology expecting a different kind of food to nourish me, it was definitely a good sandwich, and I eagerly devoured it.
"The poor thing must need extra vitamins to help her heal," Meadowsweet remarked, looking at me with clear pity.
"Not really, we just need to get in touch with a Matron," Oval chuckled bemusedly, pushing a second sandwich in my face once I finished the first. "Our species can heal most wounds over time. Most that remains is a bit of scar tissue here or there."
"Lucky you," Camellia snorted jealously. "If we break a leg or a horn or a wing or such, we can end up crippled for life."
"Yeah, well," I threw back with a half-filled mouth, spilling some bread around me, "we're insects and you're mammals. I started out as a mammal, but hey, here I am. These are some good sandwiches, by the way."
"We're not exactly insects," Oval muttered back with a frown. "There are some really dumb insects out there."
"Like mosquitos," Meadowsweet realized with a grin. "Instead of draining blood, you drain love."
"Please don't go there," Oval whined half-heartedly.
"Too late!" the Earthpony returned in clear amusement, and much to Oval's chagrin.
All Camellia and I could do was share a glance between us while I finished my sandwich.
With the joking left aside, my sister Oval, our Unicorn hostess Camellia, and her Earthpony friend Meadowsweet filled me in on some more topics of interest, all the while feeding me more sandwiches until the tray they had been on was left empty on the table. And let's not forget the cups of tea I was forced to consume as well, drawn as it was from the Earthpony's namesake plant, which slowly but surely got rid of my headache as I took in more of it.
From the initial scare a few weeks back, and the occasional freak outburst from one or the other, life in Canterlot had basically just resumed the way it had always done. Businesses and their patrons had quickly adapted to the patrols and extra security checks, and the ponies who had once had dealings with the Changelings had... not reacted well.
Some homes, occupied by Changelings only a few short weeks ago, had already been put up for sale, or in the worst cases had already switched owners. Businesses who had once employed our kind had distanced themselves from us to the point of open hostility towards the very idea of having once employed a Changeling.
It did not matter that our family members had integrated in all levels of pony society; every level had its own overnight disdain for the ones exposed by the activation of the spell now covering all of Canterlot. None of our kin could transform anymore, and all ended up in the dungeon.
As far as the ponies knew, through hearsay or having witnessed it themselves, we were the only two free Changelings left in the city, and we would be unable to avoid being seen in case we needed to get out of the city on short notice.
Meadowsweet's idea to bring the shadow to the attention of some more learned pony friends of hers who may have access to the princesses or the books in the palace library was seen by all of us as the best start right now. Camellia would try to get a message through to a friend of her from Ponyville; Roseluck, who was also active in the Florist business.
It was really our best hope to reach Starlight Glimmer and Moonshine. Through them, perhaps, Princess Twilight Sparkle and friends could help us figure this thing out.
"And I thought I had staved off the worst when we stopped the invasion last year," I had sighed out as I felt the weight of this new situation settle on me.
The problem with lunchtime was that it had all come and gone too quickly, and both Camellia and Meadowsweet had to return to their respective jobs for another few hours. Thus leaving Burst and me by ourselves.
We lounged a bit in the living room until Oval brought up the resin mess we had left upstairs, and I limped back after her to help her clean up. It took us almost an hour for Oval to bite chunks out of my pod and me to mop them into a pile in a corner, and by the time we were finished, we were as splattered by it as we had when I came out of the pod earlier in the day.
Exhausted from the work, I collapsed to the floor with a wet sound and sighed out as my thoughts came back to me again. Oval dropped down in front of me, green goop dripping off her as well, and carefully positioned her head in such a way for her crooked horn to gently bump into mine.
"How are you holding up, Pearl?" she asked, genuinely concerned for my well-being.
I looked up at her blue eyes inches away from mine, and sighed out deeply. My forceful exhumation of air sent splatters of green resin from the tip of my nose to hit Oval in the face, but she barely flinched from it.
"What are we going to do, Burst?" I asked, not at all sure I liked the potential paths my mind had been exploring while we had been cleaning the room. With my hurt head, and resincast leg, I was once again delivered fully into the hooves of others. My future was reliant on others making the right decisions around me, and two of those others were ponies who could potentially get me thrown into a dungeon by simply revealing to the wrong pony where it was that we were located.
"Now we wait for our host to come back," Oval returned with a weak smile, "and hope she has better news for us."
"If worse comes to worst," I started, staring into those blue eyes of hers, "you know I can't run. You could make it out of the city and get to Ponyville or the hive if you're not bogged down by me, but I'm kind of stuck here. And that scares me more than anything else."
"Yeah, I might be able to escape on my own," Oval pondered, but then immediately dismissed the notion, "but you told me the other day that you would not leave me alone, that you would stick with me while the rest of our clutch was spread so thinly across Equestria. I can't forgive myself if I leave you now, now you need my support the most. Whatever happens, happens. We just have to trust that Camellia and Meadowsweet get the word out to the right ponies, Pearl."
I stared into her blue eyes while we both lay on the floor with our horns touching, and realized once again how deeply the four of us had bonded over the past half year; Blaze, Breeze, Burst, and me had truly become sisters in all the ways that entailed. Here Burst was, on the floor with me to give me the support I needed, even if I knew the weight of our situation was weighing her down as well. This was what sisters did for one another; whichever one was stronger at the time would help the other stay upright.
I could not hold back the tears of relief at realizing the unbridled truth in her words; she would not abandon me, just as I would not abandon her in her time of need. They had adopted me into their clutch, and that meant I had a family to back me up even in the darkest of times. I could only hope those of our kind stuck in the dungeons could find solace among each other in a similar vein.
Oval's eyes filled with water as well at seeing me cry, and our foreheads met as she leaned in a bit closer. As she did, her crooked horn slid along mine and I found it was an oddly comfortable feeling, counter-balancing the topics we were discussing. There was something intimate about it, especially with our heads so close together that I could kiss her if I wanted to, but I did not feel the desire to.
Between our sisterly bond, and the knowledge of her mare waiting for her in Hoofton, there was only that odd sensation of two kindred souls sharing a moment. The comfort came from the shared burden, knowing that I did not stand alone in this, and that we had beaten the odds once before already.
A thought occured to me, and I frowned lightly while pressing back more tears. "Why would a botanist need a paralysis spell?"
"Huh?" Oval returned as if I had broken through her own thoughts.
"I mean, is there just some standard set of spells these ponies learn in school before they branch out in more specific directions?" I continued, blinking away the remaining moist from my eyes.
"Like I would know," Oval chuckled, blinking her tears away as well. "You should ask Starlight Glimmer if we ever make it to Ponyville."
"So, why did you lay down with me like this, Burst?" I asked, moving my own head to slide my horn a little along my sister's now. "I mean, you never did this in the hive. I never saw anyone else do it there."
"I don't know," Oval responded with a smirk. "I've seen unicorns do it from time to time, and since you've got a welt healing on the back of your head, I guess I thought it the safest way to make physical contact? Just so you know I'm here with you?"
"Well, it's... oddly comfortable," I told her.
"Isn't it? I'm surprised by it as well," Oval chuckled. "Remember, I'm usually an Earthpony, so I don't have to deal with having a horn in my daily life."
"I guess I'm more comfortable as an Earthpony as well," I pondered. "Not being able to take on my guise makes me feel like my identity was stolen away from me. I really don't like the feeling."
"Yeah," Oval agreed. "My own guise blindsided me as well. It's strange how attached we can get to these identities."
"All four of us except for Breeze, right?" I noted.
"Breeze has a small collection of favourite looks as well, but she has no room to settle. She keeps mimicking young foals, so she is at greater risk of being outed," Oval explained with a frown, as if she was not entirely happy with it. "I think she's just looking for a family to settle in with. I kinda joked around adopting her once or twice."
"Because Celery and you can't have kids of your own?" I blurted out, and Oval closed her eyes with a sad hum.
"Yeah, we're going to have to go for adoption anyway... there's no other choice," she agreed, looking glum.
"I'm sorry, I think my brain-to-mouth filter got damaged when I fell down the stairs," I quickly apologized to her, reaching forward with my left foreleg to bump against her right. "I didn't mean to make you sad."
"No, it's okay," Burst deflected. "As you told the ponies earlier; we're insects and they're mammals. We're just hopelessly incompatible with them. It's a fact of life."
"Well, I guess that prevents the accidental outing of one of our kind when they get a half-Changeling child," I tried to swing the conversation. "I mean, can you imagine them changing into other foals while at daycare? Suddenly getting picked up by unsuspecting pony parents?"
The idea of a changeling child growing up in pony society must have been so preposterous that Oval actually let out a genuine burst of laughter, which forced us to break contact between our foreheads and horns respectively, lest I wanted to get headbutted by her.
As she came down again from her laughing fit a few breaths later, she quickly got more serious again however. "I really hope Camellia can get a message through to Ponyville. Word needs to get out so our other siblings won't end up stuck here as well."
"Twilight Sparkle and her group of friends can do so much more than we can do on our own," I agreed. "We really need their help right now."
"Especially if we need to gain entry into the palace somehow to get to our other siblings," Oval pointed out.
"Yeah... we can't let them stew there. We got our Queen to change her mind, so we should be able to do the same thing to the pony Princesses, no?" I reasoned.
"Heh, you still nearly drowned in her pheromones, though," Burst chuckled.
"Yeah, yeah," I snorted defiantly. "So we're just going to have to stay here chatting until Camellia comes home with more news, then?"
Oval's smile faded, and it took her a while before she responded to my question with one of her own; "How's the hunger, Pearl?"
"After several sandwiches, you mean?" I retorted.
"You know which hunger I mean," Burst bounced back.
"Still manageable? Barely noticeable, really?" I responded awkwardly, not really sure how else to answer the question. "I mean, the resin at home sustained us just fine, and I've been sleeping in the pod, but I still feel as full as I did when we first arrived here. Almost no difference from how I felt while hiding in the bushes with you after our trainride."
"I've noticed that as well," Oval started. "I haven't felt hungry yet either, Pearl. Peckish, yes, but I wake up feeling like I've eaten a full meal every time. It's almost similar to what I feel when at home in Hoofton thanks to Celery sustaining me."
"Camellia watched us sleep together during our first night here. She said we looked adorable; like two of her nieces cuddling together," I offered up. "Is it possible she's sharing her love with us without realizing it?"
"I guess that's possible," Oval agreed. "I had been wondering if there had been some kind of ambient love hanging over Canterlot or something, but that would not make sense with the reports of spreading paranoia. It's a bit creepy to hear we're being watched by a pony while we sleep, but if that fills us up with love at the same time, I'm all for it."
"Yeah," I agreed, although there was a nagging feeling growing in the back of my head. It was most likely the effects of the herbal tea wearing off, I reasoned, and tried not to focus on it too much.
Oval eventually felt I had rested for long enough, and motioned for me to join her to a room across the hall. It turned out to be a bathroom with a bathtub in it which she could have rested comfortable in even while in her bulky Earthpony guise. Our two slim changeling bodies fit in it together with ease.
Oval made a point of helping to clean me, especially where it concerned the back of my head, and I felt the pain of her dabbing at the place the open wound had been. While the skin had healed over the spot, it was clear there was still some damage underneath it and I would be sore for days or weeks to come.
My sister made sure to clean me of any blood and resin residue sticking to my body, and mentioned once more how this was the second time I had damaged my right foreleg. She kindly suggested I should be called 'Limpy' from now on, but a few splashes of water to her face made her agree never to bring that suggestion up again, and especially not around our other siblings.
With the both of us glisteningly clean from our bath, Oval moved into the room we had left before to take a nap, having been awake for far longer than I. She suggested I should wait in the living room downstairs for Camellia to return.
I managed to traverse the flight of stairs again with some difficulty, but made it down without tripping by simply taking it slow. Left to my own devices, I naturally limped over to the books on botany and skimmed over the various titles. I was happy to find a book in there which I knew from the show; "Supernaturals: Natural Remedies and Cure-alls That Are Simply Super".
I pulled it from its place on the shelf and placed it on the coffee table, sitting down near enough to it on the floor. I idly leafed through it, but the cures I was looking for were not found in the book. None of these herbs could mend a welt on the back of a Changeling's head, or help me deal with the nausea from what I was sure to be a concussion.
I did find a bone-strengthening elixer halfway down the book, and gave a glance down at my hurt leg, but I quickly reminded myself that I was effectively an insect, and not a pony, so my bones were most likely made from chitin or some other such material. I did not have the faintest idea whether the potion described in the book would do anything for me at all. Most of Changeling medicine was based on our resin, from what I had seen so far, the material being pretty much a cure-all for anything.
Need a building material? Use resin. Need to feed? Resin. Glue something in place? Resin. Everything could be done with resin, even if the composition of it changed depending on what it needed to do.
I put the book back on its shelf and pulled out another one; "The Genealogy of Grass", it was called, and I took a long hard look at the cover.
"You got to be kidding me..." I sighed out while putting it back on its spot. Reading about the various grasses and the way they had evolved over the years would be as interesting to me as going out and actually watching it grow.
I plucked another book from its place and smiled as the cover had a far more interesting title; "Carnivorous Plants and their Feeding Habits".
I licked my tongue around my fangs as I opened the book to a random page and spotted a drawing of what looked to be a typical pitcher plant like the ones from back home. Given Camellia's plant analogy shortly before our fight, I was eager to read up on the local carnivorous flora. It also helped to make sure not to run into any which, according to thickly printed warnings, either emitted 'an intoxicating smell which will lure even ponies to their doom', had the ability to shoot 'toxic darts at any warm body of sufficient size', or had 'nimble vines' which could reach out and ensnare any who may come too close.
And those were just the non-magical plants. There was another tome on the shelf which was entirely dedicated to magical plantlife. I leafed through it until I found the Zap-Apples I knew were harvested by the Apple Family in Ponyville and smiled noticing the book's author had failed to convince the Apples to reveal the exact rituals associated with them. It was better for that to stay their family's secret, I reasoned.
Going from one book to another, skipping past the boring sections and focusing just on the interesting plants, I barely noticed time passing by as fast as Rainbow Dash on her way to get some cider, and my reading was soon interrupted by the front door opening.
I quickly dove down behind the coffee table, hoping to be able to hide from whomever may peer into the house from the outside, and only dared to look up over the table's edge again after I heard the door had closed again.
My eyes settled on a purple unicorn dressed in a blue hoodie, her yellow mane sticking out from underneath it. I quickly scouted her flank to spot the white flower on it and recognized her as our host Camellia.
I brought my left forehoof up to give a wave with. "Hi Camellia, welcome home!"
The unicorn lowered her hood to her whithers and focused her eyes on me. "You're not Oval," she realized after a brief moment.
"Ah, no, I'm the one you accidentally tossed down the stairs," I chuckled, lifting my right leg up to show off the cast on it. "Oval's upstairs, taking a quick nap."
Camellia gave a quick glance up the stairs, then turned her head to face me again. "Good to hear she's getting some rest. How is your leg doing, Pearl?"
"I guess I'm doing pretty okay," I answered with a smile. "The headache has been back for a while now, and I still feel a bit dizzy if I move too fast. But it's nothing that won't heal over time."
"Do you want me to make you some fresh tea?" Camellia asked while using her magic to levitate a bag over from beside the door. She quickly upended it over the coffee table and a baker's dozen worth of apples rolled out onto the table!
She promptly caught them with her magic, stacking them into a neat little pyramid near the center of the table. "I brought some apples home, given how you went through those sandwiches like you needed to breathe them."
"I only did so because Oval pushed them into my face," I protested, but sent my Changeling magic out to grab hold of one of the apples and awkwardly pull it from the stack. "On another note, did you get the message sent out yet?"
Camellia laughed at my eagerness to take an apple, and she gave a nod while folding her bag up with her magic. "Yeah, I'm sure I can trust Roseluck to deliver it to the right pony."
Her eyes fell on the book I had dropped on the table while diving for cover. "I see you've made yourself familiar with my books?"
I was temporarily distracted while bringing the apple I was holding closer to my snout. I drew air in through my nose and sank my teeth into the soft skin of the fruit, the sweet smell filling my nostrils like a badly missed friend. "It's been a while since I last had one of these," I mumbled with my mouth full, savoring the taste on my tongue while some of its juice leaked down my chin.
"Nothing beats a fresh apple," the unicorn spoke softly, walking closer to the table while the folded bag moved itself into the pantry without her paying much attention at where it went. Her magic doused again after she closed the pantry door, and she sat down opposite me on the floor while watching me eat.
"I'm sorry if I stare," she mumbled quietly after a moment, her eyes turning away from me while her cheeks darkened slightly behind her fur.
I swallowed the bite I had just taken and smiled in Camellia's direction, the droplet of applejuice dripping down from my chin. "No, it's fine; I'm not bothered by it."
"Are you sure? I have the feeling all I've done these past days is stare at you both and bombard you with a million questions," Camellia offered up, using her magic to levitate a tissue over to dry the spot on the table between us where the droplet had fallen.
"I've been lucky to have been stuck in that pod for a while; you haven't overwhelmed me yet with your questions," I joked, putting the half-eaten apple on the tissue as Camellia left it on the table in front of me. "As long as I can ask you things in return, I don't mind you asking me about whatever it is you might want to know. Oval may be better at explaining things about our race, but I've gotten quite knowledgeable in a short amount of time."
"There you go again," the unicorn pointed out, narrowing her eyes a little. "You both keep mentioning how you're apparently new to things, even if I have the feeling you're both about the same ages. What's up with that?"
"You had to ask," I chuckled darkly. "I guess we have been overly hinting at it, even in the short amount I have been speaking with you. I'm a bit of a visitor to this world, if you can believe that? It's actually kind of fitting for me to be a visitor to Equestria in this manner on top of that; I wouldn't have fitted in well anyway, not knowing enough about your local customs and historic events."
Camellia flicked her tail behind her as she tried to arrive at the truth of my words. "So, if you're not from this world," she started, leaving the actual question unsaid.
"It's a place called Earth. I can speak at length about it, but I don't want to tire you," I suggested calmly. "There are good things about it, and bad things, just like any other place. Suffice it to say I ended up visiting by accident, and now can't return home until I sort things out here. Oval's plan was for us to settle at her mare's place so I would have a relatively safe place to stay at until we figure out how to get me back home, and she has taken it upon herself to teach me everything I need to know to survive here. I was actually doing pretty well with it until that spell hit us."
"And now you're stuck in my house," Camellia mumbled. "It would drive me insane not to be able to go outside."
"Did I mention I was stuck healing in a pod for a while?" I pointed out again, dipping my head down to take another bite from my apple.
"Ah, true; you did sleep for most of the day," the unicorn realized. "I guess I'm just still surprised at how similar you are to us. If it wasn't for your appearance, I could accept you as another unicorn."
"I tend to pose as an Earthpony, actually," I chuckled quietly. "Thanks for the compliment, though. I did notice the same thing myself; we Changelings, as well as you Ponies, don't differ much from others I met back home. All of us have our crosses to bear, but you go about your daily life in much the same way we used to back home. Sure, there's a difference in appearance, and some technology here is different from what I'm used to... Oh, and we don't have magic of any kind back home, so that's something new I've been having some trouble with..."
"You're doing fine with that apple, and I haven't seen either of you struggle with your magic yet," I heard Camellia comment, and I widened my smile at her.
"Again with the compliments! You should stop it or you'll get another friend out of this," I joked. "Nah, Oval wouldn't have more trouble with her magic than with the rest. She was born here, in this world, so has been a Changeling all her life. I've only been here for half a year now, give or take a month."
"I would like for us to be friends, if such a thing is possible," Camellia spoke softly, placing her right hoof on the table and sliding it to me. "From what all you two have been telling me, I would very much like to be friends and give you a safe place to stay at whenever you visit here."
I looked down at Camellia's hoof on the table and lifted my own right leg with some issue due to its weakness. It settled on the table as well, and I slid it past the apple until it bumped into the unicorn's.
"I would love to take you up on that offer again in the future, if we manage to get out of this unscathed," I told her. "The more friends I have, the merrier."
Camellia broke into a happy smile as she stared across the table at her newly made friend; me, and I could feel a sense of fulfillment settling over me. It was not as strong as the blast Pinkie Pie sent at me half a year ago, but it was most definitely love which I felt. Love which was replenishing my lost energy from having to heal my wounds.
Yes, pony friends could sustain a Changeling like me, just as well as a proper pony relationship might. And Camellia didn't even seem to notice I was feeding off her right now, the process just a natural thing my body seemed to do when faced with this emotion. If I could get a group of friends around me over in Hoofton, I could easily survive without going hungry.
Was this the big secret our family of infiltrators had found out? The one thing which drew them away from the hives and into singular pony guises which slowly but surely built up a history of their own? The thing which Blaze and Burst clung to out of a strong sense of needing to maintain these identities of themselves?
I could definitely see the benefits over making all the ponies our effective love-slaves. Draining them dry would be no less stupid than draining a well in a desert. We'd have a feast, and then slowly starve to death after.
Right now, where I was sitting, I was oddly comfortable. I was still faced with the prospect of having to figure a way out of this whole mess... but with friends like Camellia doing the legwork, there was a rising hope within me that we'd get out of it relatively unscathed.
