It's been a couple months since Nightmare Night, and Ocellus, the lost changeling drone, has just about gotten used to life hiding in the Everfree Forest at the edge of Ponyville. She's still trying to figure out everything about her new home - something made harder by the fact that only the colt Snails knows her true nature - but she's trying her best!
A Lunaverse story, a follow-up to The 'Ling from Another World. All you really need to know is that changelings haven't reformed in the Lunaverse yet.
Ocellus dreamed of cold ash and sand…of ceaseless wind that drove before it walls of poison and lightning and death. She dreamed of a dark sky hidden by darker clouds, of faded stars, twin shattered moons, and an ugly, cold sun with flames that barely burned a dull orange-brown. She dreamed of a world with drying seas and petrified forests. A world of mutant monsters that hungered for flesh roaming the landscape…the packs of cannibalistic dune-runners, the terrible burrowing worms, the sinister lurking hexarachnids.
And she dreamed of the Hive – the Last Hive, its spires standing resolute against the wind and the ash and the mutants, its edifices crumbling but intact, it’s tunnels beneath the structure stretching for miles and serving as a refuge for the changelings that called it home...
And then she was awake. Consciousness was always quick to come to a changeling, or at least the knowledge that one was no longer really asleep. The body tended to get moving a little faster than the brain, though, so Ocellus’ first conscious thought this morning was that she was gnawing on and licking at the outer edge of her sleeping pod. It didn’t taste good...not that her growling stomach cared that much.
Guess I’m hungry in more than one way this morning, she thought as she stopped chewing on her own bed, or what a pony would have roughly termed as one, anyway. The pod was more of a bowl, with an upper shell that closed down on Ocellus while she slept as an extra layer of protection. She hoisted the shell open and slipped out, stretching her limbs, rotating her joints, and opening her elytra as far as they would open naturally to extend her wings and let them buzz around a little, resisting the urge to shiver at the cold outside her sleeping pod. She was in complete darkness, so she couldn’t see a thing, but the almond-shaped chamber she was in had been regurgitated and molded by Ocellus herself, and she knew it like she knew the back of her hooves. She didn’t even think twice about retrieving her scarf, a gift from Snails, from where it hung on one wall, then trotting forward to the flap of dirt and dead leaves bound together by calcified changeling ooze. From within the chamber, had it had any light, it would have been obvious in appearance, but from the other side it blended in perfectly with the dirt around it, making it look like the tunnel that led to Ocellus’ burrow was really a dead end.
Ocellus crawled the two dozen or so feet from her burrow to the tunnel’s exit, pausing just beneath the fallen log that concealed it and listening - while also doing her best to not shiver again. The days had been getting colder as something that her friend Snails called “winter” approached. Already it was as cold as a night on her home world would be, and Snails has said it might get even colder...
After several long minutes of hearing nothing, though, she lifted the log...then let out a gasp of fright and ducked back down into the tunnel, that shiver she’d been fighting back finally coming to the fore at what she’d seen. Slowly, cautiously, she lifted the log again and peeked out.
White.
Everything was white.
Ocellus crawled from the tunnel with a great amount of trepidation, staring at the forest around her. She realized she had been mistaken: not everything was white; rather, it was more like something white and cold had fallen on everything, covering it to a depth of several inches. Ocellus gingerly scooped some of the stuff up off the ground, looking at it closely, and realized she was looking at ice crystals, countless tiny little specks of powdery frost that has blanketed everything. A tentative lick confirmed that it was ice. Powdered ice. But how...? Ocellus glanced up, but saw only a pale gray sky, no sign of who or what had dumped all this powdered ice everywhere, nor how it had been accomplished.
A chill breeze chose that moment to blow, breaking Ocellus from her reverie and scattering the powder she held. The changeling drone shivered again, and looked around. Apart from the white covering, everything else looked the same. Whatever had happened to the Everfree Forest, it was at least still the same forest she had gone to sleep in. She hadn’t somehow slipped from one world to another like she had months ago after a portal had opened up beneath her on Protea and deposited her in Equestria.
She could ask Snails later for more details. In the meantime, her body flashed green, and she took on what Snails had dubbed her “fillyform”, herself as a blue-coated, pink-maned unicorn filly named Sprite (Snails had chosen the name). Since her fillyform was similar in size and mass to her true form, the Sprite body was easy to maintain, and grew a little bit easier as she continued to practice wearing it. More to the point, it was covered in a pelt of hair and had more body fat than her true form - even though it was almost as lanky as Snails - and so offered better protection against the cold than her true form, even with the scarf. Thus shifted, Ocellus set off to find a meal.
---
There weren’t a lot of organic things that a changeling wouldn’t eat when hungry enough, but compared to her home world of Protea, even the winterized Everfree Forest was a cornucopia to Ocellus. Dead leaves, buried roots, even twigs and tree branches could sate her physical hunger.
But that didn’t mean that they tasted good, and even after only three or so months living in Equestria, Ocellus had grown a little spoiled. Her first thought had been to plug two holes with one ejecta and go to Ponyville for both her solid food need and her gnawing hunger for love, but Ocellus faced a number of issues on that front. First, she didn’t have any of the small metal disks, the money, that ponies exchanged for goods and services, and still hadn’t figured out how to procure any for herself other than theft. Snails’ own supply came from an allowance supplied by his parents, and that allowance wasn’t enough to give a meaningful portion to Ocellus. Second, skipping the “money” step and simply stealing what she wanted had proven to be disastrous, to say the least. A certain brown-coated, black-maned pegasus colt was no longer welcome in several of Ponyville’s establishments as a result. She might have been able to steal more effectively if she assumed a smaller form, like a squirrel or something, but shrinking down to so small a size was taxing on her magic - and her magic was created from her love reserves. It wouldn’t make much sense to satisfy one hunger by increasing another.
So instead, Ocellus hunted through the Everfree Forest for something palatable. Berries had been her preferred solid food, but none had grown in recent weeks. Pine needles weren’t so bad, but they weren’t very filling, either. There was some mistletoe here and there, which wasn’t bad, but not enough to make a meal out of. There had to be something tasty around...
Come on in the water’s fine... Please oh please don’t decline...
Ocellus blinked. She knew that tune, had heard it not long after accidentally ending up in this world. Chewing on a few pine needles as she followed the sound, she soon found herself standing by the edge of a forty-foot wide river that ran from the Everfree into Ponyville.
Come and dance on the river’s bed ... Come on in and join the dead...
Ocellus listened patiently, enjoying the music since she knew it wouldn't work on her. After several long minutes, a green-scaled equine head poked out of the water from near the middle of the river, followed by two more. Their singing didn’t stop, and in fact increased in volume, but Ocellus only smiled. “Still won’t work,” she said.
The singing stopped, and the three sirens’ eyes - one had red eyes, another yellow, and a third teal - narrowed. Finally the red-eyed one rose a little more fully out of the water, snarling with a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth. “Okay, what is it this time?!” She demanded. “Another music critic? Another know-it-all scholar? Another bug?”
“Another yellow pegasus too cute to eat?” Asked the one with teal eyes, his somewhat more angular and broader build making his gender easy to discern, at least to a changeling like Ocellus.
“She was!” The red-eyed siren objected. “All doe-eyed and fluttering...I have standards!”
“Right, for her you have standards,” the yellow-eyed siren spoke up as she too rose from the water. “Anything else you gobble down, but the first chance in months we get to eat something with real meat on its bones...”
Narrow red eyes glared back at the yellow-eyed siren. “I also have brains. If we'd eaten her half the forest would be after us.”
Ocellus sat down, giggling a little at the exchange, though she made sure to keep well clear of the edge of the river. “Actually we've met before,” she said, letting her fillyform disguise disappear in a flash of green flames. She had first met the sirens not long after arriving in Equestria, but before her first meeting with ponies. They had tried to hypnotize and eat her, but something about her being a changeling meant that their siren song didn't work on her. “I was just disguised as a pony because I don't get as cold out here in it.” She took that opportunity to shift back into her fillyform.
The three sirens looked her over, then almost as one rolled their eyes. “Right. Mystery solved.” Teal-eyes said. “Shame. You look crunchy.”
Ocellus didn't hold their desire to eat her against them, at least not as long as they didn't have the ability to back up their desires. If she were hungry enough she'd probably eat them herself, after all. She did, however, let her tongue shift back to her natural changeling one, and stuck it out of her mouth a little, tasting the air. Her tongue was what she used to eat emotions, and she could taste that these three were frustrated...but she could also taste their cameraderie. It wasn't love, she couldn't live off of it, but it was tasty...and so would be their satisfaction from getting a meal...and those tastes mixed with the right solid food tastes might...
“Thay,” she said, then remembered her tongue. She slipped it back into her mouth and changed it back to a pony one. “Say,” she tried again. “If I were to help you get something to eat, would you let me eat some of your emotions? It wouldn't hurt, I'd just sit nearby with my tongue out.” She had, last time they'd met, brought up her dietary requirements with them, not that they'd seemed to care.
The three sirens had been discussing something among themselves - probably trying to come up with some way to lure Ocellus into the water - but stopped at her suggestion. “Hey...” Teal-eyes said. “That could actually work! We don't follow the river into Ponyville since the ponies would strike back, but you can change your shape, so you could lure a pony into the forest and - ”
Ocellus let out an un-equine hiss at that, prompting startled growls from the sirens in return. Ocellus shifted back to changeling form so that she could have her fangs and let her wings buzz angrily, which prompted the sirens to bunch up and undulate around one another, lips curled back to expose their sharp teeth and fins stirring the river water. The threat displays between the predators continued for several moments before it was clear that neither were going to attack. Flicking her tongue back out, Ocellus tasted concern and unease but not aggression from the sirens. She'd startled, but not scared, them.
“No,” Ocellus objected at length, stamping a hoof, still annoyed at the suggestion she threaten her food. But she tucked her wings away and lifted her ear-fins, trying to look a little amicable - while also trying to ignore the cold that her carapace just wasn't good at keeping out. She fought back a shiver. “Ponyville is where I get all the l-love I need. If ponies start disappearing f-from it and they start feeling fear instead of love, then where w-will I eat?”
The sirens' undulations slowed, and they hid their teeth from plain view, backing down themselves. “Alright. Fine.” Yellow-eyes said. “So what was your plan, then?”
“You can only h-hunt up and down for stuff n-near the river, I'm g-guessing,” Ocellus said. Food territories re-established between them, she shifted back to her fillyform, grateful for the pelt and the body fat. She took a moment to re-tie her scarf around her neck, since it had gotten loose from the shape-shifting she'd done. “Probably mostly squirrels and raccoons and turkeys, right?” At the sirens' nods, Ocellus leaned forward. “What if I could get you a boar?”
It really didn't make much sense for an aquatic species to be able to salivate, but Ocellus was pretty sure she saw drool in the mouth of the red-eyed siren. “Ohhh, it's been awhile since we had red meat,” she said.
“But where will you get a boar?” The yellow-eyed siren asked.
Ocellus nodded her head upriver and to the north. “One of the streams that feeds into the river - too shallow for you to swim up - a few miles up it, there's this boar's territory. He chased me around not long after I got here. I could get him to chase me downstream and to the river, close enough for your song to snare it.”
The sirens looked to one another. Teal-eyes held up a hoof as the three dived beneath the water, but kept the hoof up and out of it, letting Ocellus know that they were still there. Probably they wanted a private conversation. Most likely they were discussing some way of getting Ocellus to also end up in the water, where they'd have an advantage - even if Ocellus shifted into a siren form herself, she wasn't familiar with swimming at all, while they were.
But, one of them would point out that even if Ocellus didn't end up in the river, if she got the boar close enough to hear their song, they'd get that instead. The boar Ocellus was thinking of was actually nearly as large as her, very territorial, and her every attempt to communicate with it had failed, so she was pretty sure it wasn't a fellow intelligent creature.
The worst-case scenario was Ocellus somehow messed up and the boar got her. The best-case scenario was that both Ocellus and the boar ended up in the river. In any event there was no threat to them, and so no reason not to agree. Ocellus wasn't surprised, then, when after just a minute or so beneath the water, the sirens came back up, nodding as one. The red-eyed one detached from the other two and swam up as close to the shore of the river as she could while still leaving herself deep enough to swim away quickly. She had to use her two pony-like legs to lift herself out of the water instead of being able to float, then held forward one of them. “We have a deal.”
Ocellus grinned, recognizing the gesture as one Snails had taught her. She trotted forward and into the river just a bit, biting back a gasp at how cold the water was - how did the sirens stand it? - and tapped her hoof against the siren's own. “Deal,” she said. “Oh, by the way, my name's Ocellus. What's yours?”
The siren rolled her eyes as she pushed herself back into deeper water. “Years we've been in this forest and finally something asks us. Allegro Gleam,” she said.
“Cantata Gloom,” the yellow-eyed siren added.
“Chorus Glow,” finished the teal-eyed one.
Ocellus stepped back out of the water, shaking her hooves to try and get the wetness off. “From what I hear you try and eat anything that could ask,” she pointed out.
Cantata waved her hooves at Ocellus. “Details. Now shoo! Get us a big fat pig!”
---
Ocellus had learned, from practical experience, that boars were temperamental, territorial, and dangerous. She'd watched the particular one she was hunting scare off a small pack of wolves all by itself that had gotten too close to what it considered its territory. It had only failed in goring one of them because it had spotted Ocellus - at that point in time, still starving from lack of love - and given chase to her, nearly catching her before she'd been able to work up the strength to get lift from her wings and fly out of reach.
But that was only a few weeks after she'd been stranded in Equestria, when her love reserves had been running low, when the gnawing void of hunger had felt like it was trying to consume her body. Now, with her daily trips into Ponyville in disguise, feeding on the plentiful love of ponies...Ocellus had never been this full back on Protea. She was still stingy with her magic, just in case, but every now and then she allowed herself an indulgence.
Thus, getting the boar to chase her to the river had been as simple as changing her fillyform to have pegasus wings - and no horn, just in case some pony was wandering the Everfree and spotted her - finding the boar, and throwing a rock at it. It had not like that, squealing with rage that she didn't even need her tongue to taste and giving chase. Ocellus took to the air and flew off, staying close to the ground so that the boar could see her. In order to make sure it didn't lose interest and remained furious, she would occasionally throw something else at it, but she never let herself get within reach of its tusks or hooves.
It made an awful racket, so Ocellus didn't have to worry about making sure the sirens knew she was coming. After about ten minutes of chase, the siren's song began. Ocellus stopped her flight and landed in a nearby tree at that, watching as the song worked its magic over the boar - she'd never seen it do so before, after all. At first it hadn't looked like it was working, but gradually the boar's anger began to abate, its squeals becoming less and less insistent. Flicking out her changeling tongue, Ocellus could taste the emotions draining from the boar's limited, animal psyche as it began walking to the river. It wasn't at all dissimilar to what would happen if she completely drained a creature of emotion, actually, right up to the boar not even hesitating, as Ocellus watched, to step into the freezing-cold water where the sirens waited by the shore in water barely deep enough for them to swim in, teeth glistening, definitely drooling, circling around the boar and getting into a kill position.
The sirens, to their credit, struck fast, not drawing out the boar's end - they were hungry, not sadists, and besides they needed to act quickly once they stopped singing their hypnotic song. Teeth flashed, bit down, and tore open vital arteries and veins before they darted back into deeper water, since the boar could still be dangerous even as it died. Ocellus made sure to keep her tongue firmly like a pony's and her mouth clamped tightly shut until it was over. As good as the sirens' immediate predatory satisfaction would taste, she didn't want to also catch the last emotions of the boar.
But it was over quickly. Ocellus hopped down from the tree, resuming her unicorn shape as she did so, but shifted her tongue to its changeling form and tentatively tasted the air as the sirens swam back up. The boar's emotions were gone...but the sirens were filled with satisfaction, anticipation, and happiness that only increased tenfold as the sirens dug in.
She'd prepared for this. Keeping her changeling tongue, she found a nearby bush with a few dead leaves still stuck to it and dug in. And she discovered that she was right: the emotional satisfaction of the sirens overwhelmed the taste of the dead leaves and twigs she ate, making them far more palatable. She let out a slight contented hiss as she ate her fill of solid food, then returned to near the sirens, tongue lapping up their ambient emotions. The sirens eyed her approach as they ate, but she kept well clear of their kill - she could eat meat, but it tasted bad so without the perpetual undernourishment of Protea she'd resolved to avoid it - so they didn't have a repeat predator standoff, and once it was clear she wasn't going to try and grab a bite they mostly ignored her.
Eventually, the boar only a quarter eaten, the sirens relented. “Oh, that hit the spot,” Chorus intoned, putting a hoof to his stomach and letting out a loud belch. “No feathers, no bones taking up most of the body, leftovers that'll last for weeks...”
“Especially in this cold,” Allegro confirmed, grabbing the “leftovers” and pulling them into deeper water.
“Weee was achin',” Cantata sang as she lay back in the water, lazily swishing her tail so the current didn't carry her away. “Forrr some bacon...iiit's a big pig...and we were all big pigs too. Hoy!”
“Kinda' wish we'd had some crunch to go with it,” Allegro noted, eyeing Ocellus.
Ocellus grinned. “I'd shift into a fish before I died,” she said.
Allegro blanched at that, one hoof going to her mouth, and Chorus and Cantata looked a little queasy as well at the thought of eating a fish. For some bizarre reason, none of the three could stomach the taste of seafood - they'd mentioned that the first time Ocellus had met them. “Not right after we ate!” She insisted.
Ocellus giggled, and she felt a familiar, welcome feeling spreading through her. Cameraderie. Allegro, Chorus, and Cantata weren’t really all that different from changelings, motivated by hunger as they were. It could get lonely in the Everfree Forest, being the only changeling in it, and the three sirens also had a perspective on ponies and other creatures that was perhaps a little closer to Ocellus’ own. She would never eat a pony...physically, anyway. At least not as long as there were other options. But they were food nonetheless, to her, and to the sirens.
She bit back a hiss at that last thought. Ponies were her food, not theirs. As long as the sirens were in the Everfree, they’d be a threat to that food...but Ocellus was just one changeling, and the sirens never left each others’ side...
“We should do this again sometime,” Cantata ventured, swimming closer to Ocellus. “The Everfree is huge. There’s boars and bears and wolves and manticores...”
“And Steven,” Allegro said, red eyes flashing as she licked her lips.
“C’mon, no, I like him,” Chorus said. “Only way I get some guy talk.”
“Okay, we’ll leave Steven alone,” Cantata continued. “But stick with us, bug, and we’ll never go hungry again.”
“And we’ll leave the ponies alone,” Allegro offered. “Especially the cute pegasus.”
Ocellus’ ear-fins rose in interest. That was certainly a solution to her problem. Recognized food territories and mutual aid. The sirens could even tell her who this “Steven” was. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Every few weeks? I don’t get hungry for solid food that often, and I want to leave room for some pony food.” She paused a moment at the sly, predatory grins from the sirens. “I meant stuff like cake and sweets!” She objected.
“Blegh. You’ll get fat,” Chorus said.
“Changelings dream of getting fat,” Ocellus countered.
“More for us one day, maybe,” Allegro said. “And yeah, every three weeks or so. We digest slow, especially this time of year, and we don’t want to over-hunt the forest. We can snack on squrrels or whatever in the meantime.”
Ocellus nodded. “Okay. See you later!” There was an extra bit of spring to the faux-unicorn’s step as she trotted from the river and headed for Ponyville. With one hunger satisfied, it was time to deal with another.
To eat love every day would have been impossible gluttony on Protea. The podlings - the old or punished changelings who had been forever placed in hibernation pods that slowly and safely siphoned the love from them for the rest of the hive to feed on - just didn’t produce enough love for everyling else to consume it as they pleased. As a worker drone who had mostly been tasked with construction and repairs, a job in which almost any changeling could have replaced her, Ocellus’ rations of love had been particularly scarce. One uninterrupted hour among the podlings per five day period, that was it. It was barely subsistence level, just enough for her to have the strength to do her job and make it to her next feeding period. She had hated it, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it. Even the Queen and her hive lords occasionally went hungry, so of course the drones would.
Here in Equestria, at least in the town of Ponyville, it was... different.
As Ocellus trotted into town, careful to come from the direction of another nearby pony settlement called Hoofington, she made sure to pull her scarf up over her muzzle, hiding her mouth completely. She also struggled to stop herself from shivering again. It was actually colder in Ponyville than in the Everfree, which Ocellus didn't understand. Hadn't Snails told her that ponies controlled the weather through pegasus magic? Why would the ponies want it to be colder? She couldn't understand it. She briefly considered taking on a pegasus form, since their natural magic, which she could emulate when disguised as one, made them all but proof against extremes of heat and cold. An earth pony would have been good as well, due to their more robust builds and natural toughness that made them deal with the cold better, even if they still felt it.
But her fillyform's chosen tribe was unicorn, and the unicorn filly Sprite was starting to be recognized around Ponyville on the weekends (a term that had taken some explaining from Snails, given that Ocellus hadn't even known what a week was. Changelings didn't count weeks or months on Protea). She'd initially made Sprite a unicorn simply because Snails had been in front of her when she'd picked it, and she'd wanted to model it off of him. Since then, she'd put in some appearances as Sprite around the town, slowly inventing the filly even as she learned more about the ponies...who was easiest to stalk and discretely feed on, mostly, but she also wanted to learn more about the world that she lived in now. So she didn't want to abandon Sprite for another form, at least not on the weekends, when Sprite could appear in town without anypony wondering what she wasn't doing in school (whatever that was, she still hadn't really asked Snails).
Ocellus-as-Sprite quickened her trot into town as another breeze swept across currently snow-covered farmlands of Ponyville and tried to chill her down to her shifted bones. Once within the confines of Ponyville's town proper, the buildings at least provided some protection against the cold wind...but she still found herself shivering and pining for the warm confines of the Last Hive, where the body heat of innumerable changelings kept the tunnels and passages sweltering, the warmth of changelings pressed tight together after hours working above ground...
“Oh! Excuse me,” said a voice. Ocellus jumped a little, glancing up. Without realizing it, she’d pressed herself against a pony, seeking warmth. This pony was a white-coated, purple-maned unicorn mare, clad in winter boots for the snow and a thick winter cape.
“S-sorry!” Ocellus stuttered, fighting back yet more shivers. “M-my mistake...”
“Think nothing of it, dear,” the unicorn said, eyes darting over her. “My word, surely you have more than just a scarf for this cold?”
Ocellus made sure her scarf was covering her mouth, then took a moment to flick out her changeling tongue beneath it. The tang of concern and pity reached her senses. “I l-left my s-s-stuff back in Hoofington, didn’t think it w-was that c-cold...” she said, no longer hiding her shivers.
The unicorn’s eyes widened. “All the way from Hoofington? With only that old scarf? No, I won’t hear of it.” The unicorn’s horn lit up with a blue glow, and she swung her own cloak off of herself and over Ocellus, tucking it carefully around the disguised changeling. “That will do for now, but you simply must come with me back to my boutique. I’m certain I can throw something together for you from my extra material. It might not end up being my most fashionable work, but you can’t be traipsing about Ponyville in this weather with no winter clothes!”
Ocellus fell in beside the unicorn as she set off, though she couldn’t keep her concern from rising. “I d-didn’t bring any m-m-money with me...I was just here t-to see my f-friend Snails, stay the w-weekend with him...”
“Shutterbug’s little colt? He does seem like a decent sort, though I worry a bit about his hobbies, and that he might not have the proper hygiene one might hope for in a pony who spends so much time in the dirt looking for bugs. Still, colts will be colts.” She looked down to Ocellus. “Oh, but where are my manners? I am Rarity, my little filly. Who might you be?”
“Sprite,” Ocellus answered, only hesitating a moment, not long enough to be noticed. She flicked out her tongue again, and tasted Rarity’s concern still, but now Rarity also tasted of congeniality...and beneath that a vague hint of anticipation? Over what? Ocellus might have been a little concerned, but she tasted no hostility or aggression, so it probably wouldn’t end badly.
In just a few minutes the two had reached a large, circular building done up in purples, with a ostentatious design that put it a little at-odds with the rustic aesthetic of most of Ponyville. Ocellus hesitated outside the door when Rarity opened it - a sign that said “out to lunch” was hanging from it - even though she could feel the warmth eminating from the place.
“Welcome to Rarity’s Boutique,” the unicorn said as she entered, “where everything is chic, unique, and magnifique!”
Ocellus only knew what one of those words meant, but she didn’t miss that the interior of the building was blessedly warm...which was the only appealing thing about it to her. Pony buildings were, by and large, strange, built in straight lines or perfect curves that bothered her changeling sensibilities. Halls should be ovular, not rectangular, she thought. Interior chambers should be shaped according to their purpose and need, expanded as necesssary, not built in a box shape and then repurposed as needed. And the walls were all too smooth, no ripple patterns on them at all from continuously added and molded layers of ejecta ooze that had solidified. And no holes! Changelings always built things so that there would be holes in them, holes were just too useful: as cubbies, as shortcuts, as ways to easily spread messages throughout the hive...buildings just looked wrong without holes.
But Ocellus-as-Sprite lowered her scarf, as would be expected, and put on an impressed look. While the walls and ceiling and floor were unnerving, the contents of the building were certainly pleasing to the eyes, pony clothing in various styles that suggested warmth from the cold of winter, although some of the clothing seemed to sacrifice that protection in order to instead draw attention to the wearer’s body.
“I don’t have any money...” Sprite repeated as Rarity took her winter cloak back and hung it behind the store’s counter. Ocellus froze a moment at the sight of something else on the counter, a small, somewhat rotund white-furred creature with a big bushy tail. The creature eyed Ocellus for a few moments, sizing her up, before glancing to Rarity and letting out a soft but insistent mrrow sound.
“Oh, pish-posh, darling, ‘tis the season and all that,” Rarity said, running a hoof gently across the white ball of fur, who seemed to enjoy the attention. A pet, then, Ocellus reasoned. An absolutely pony concept that changelings has no equivalent for and Ocellus still didn’t understand, except that they weren’t to be eaten. “As I said, I have extra material on hoof, a bit of a mix-up on the part of my supplier. It fell off the back of his truck, as it were. And I do so rarely get to put something together for young fillies, but with my new boutique in Canterlot opening next year I’ll certainly want the practice. Nobility with excess spending money and all that, their foals are rarely skyclad this time of year.”
As she had spoken - Ocellus only understanding a little of what she was saying - Rarity led “Sprite” over to a platform set before a series of mirrors, and took out a long strip of marked cloth that she began to use to do...something that involved holding it against her body at various angles. Ocellus has to fight back against hissing in annoyance, in particular when the marked strip was wrapped around her neck, and again at her croup. “What are you doing?” She finally asked, hoping to get her nervousness under control. The fact that the white-furred creature had accompanied Rarity over and was staring at Ocellus didn’t help.
“Taking your measurements, of course,” Rarity said. “This might be something of a charity case but that is no reason for you to look like you’re wearing your big sister’s hoof-me-down.” She used telekinesis to float a note pad over to herself and take down some notes. “How old are you, if you don’t mind?”
“Fourteen,” Ocellus answered, deciding to use her real age, which wasn’t much more than Snails’ - provided Protean and Equestrian years were the same length, anyway. Ocellus was pretty sure they were.
Rarity’s brow raised a little. “Well, a bit older than I thought. Not to worry, plenty of time left for a growth spurt, darling, but even if there’s not much more than a few inches coming your way there’s nothing wrong with it. There are certain advantages to remaining petite, and it would certainly fit your name.”
“...okay?” Ocellus answered. What was “petite”, what were the advantages, and why did it fit the name Sprite? And her height was perfectly normal for a fourteen-year-old changeling drone!
The unicorn chuckled a little as she turned around, trotting over to and behind the counter and opening a door there. “Now be a dear and just wait a moment. I'll be back presently with some material and we can get to work. I won’t be a minute, and you can keep an eye on Opalescence.” With that, she disappeared behind the doors.
Ocellus watched her go, then let out a yelp when she felt something brush against her leg. She leapt away and looked down, and saw the creature, Opalescence she guessed, had come up to her and had started to rub against her. The creature, for its part, was staring at Ocellus like it had a low opinion of Ocellus’ intelligence. The changeling turned her tongue back to normal and tasted the air, and was met with a combination of curiosity, boredom, and a smug sense of self-satisfaction, like it knew that it, a tiny fat ball of fur, had been able to startle the much larger “pony”.
Ocellus frowned at that. Glancing at the door to Rarity’s back room and confirming it was closed, she turned back to Opalescence and sloughed off her fillyform for a moment, giving a full changeling threat-hiss at the creature before transforming back.
Opalescence only let out a slight sniffing sound and started licking one front paw, then cleaning her face, totally unimpressed. Ocellus even confirmed the lack of concern with her tongue.
“...okay, I think I like you,” Ocellus said as she trotted back up to the creature. Opalescence came forward as well and started rubbing against Ocellus once more. The changeling lowered her hoof onto the creature and started petting it the way she’d seen Rarity doing. It was...surprisingly soothing. Opalescence was soft and warm, letting out a kind of continuous low buzz or growl or something that Ocellus could tell was affectionate and vaguely reminded Ocellus of the distant buzzing of changeling wings in one of the Hive’s grand conclave chambers, or the crèche where the podlings and larvae and nymphs were kept.
Snails had told her not to eat pets, but Ocellus assumed he meant physically. Ocellus didn’t see an issue with sampling some of Opalescence’s emotions. Possessiveness was a little tangy, but curiosity was pleasant if a bit hard to pin down, and the smugness that permeated Opalescence’s being was smooth and sweet and filling, if not particularly nutritious. Opalescence didn’t seem to mind Ocellus’ changeling tongue sticking from her fillyform’s mouth, and in fact made to bat at it, but Ocellus was able to keep it out of reach easily enough. The creature’s amusement was literally palpable and tasty, too.
Ocellus heard Rarity open her back room’s door, and quickly shifted her tongue back to a pony one. Rarity was carrying a large amount of green cloth in her telekinesis, as well as a roll of what looked like bundled up white fur. “Now then, Sprite,” she said, trotting up to the filly and comparing the cloth to Ocellus, “green would not ordinarily be your color, but I think this shade would blend rather fetchingly with your mane and go with the red of your scarf as well. It is quite a lovely scarf, by the way, reminds me of a line I had several seasons ago, though it looks like it’s been trimmed down to foal-size by a...well, I’m sure the pony was well-meaning.”
Ocellus glances down at her scarf. “Snails gave it to me,” she said.
“Oh he did, did he?” Rarity asked, sounding quite surprised and intrigued, and she smiled in a curious, knowing way. “Well! I see that my little sister Sweetie Belle is right, Snails is quite the gentlecolt once one gets past his particular...peccadilloes.” She leaned a little closer to Ocellus, whispering conspiratorially now. “And between you, me, and Opalescence, I can tell already that despite his looks now, he’ll grow up into quite the dashing young stallion, just you wait.”
Ocellus had no idea what Rarity was talking about. But she nodded and smiled as well, figuring that was what was expected, and Rarity withdrew and tittered to herself while she looked over her procured materials, levitating a book full of blank paper and a pencil to her side and starting to draw. Opalescence, meanwhile, settled down nearby, closing her eyes and looking like she was going to go to sleep in the middle of the floor. “Now let me think, what would be best...sleeves for the arms would be perhaps a tad complicated for our ‘budget’, so we’ll need to make the mantle a little heavy so that the cape is weighed down at the shoulder, easy enough with the wool trim we’ll be adding. I could probably add a hood easily enough, and wouldn’t you just look simply darling in it...yes, I think we’ll do that...I’m certain we could find some spare buttons for the clasp, brass I think...”
She had turned from Ocellus, continuing to mumble to herself. Ocellus changed her tongue to its changeling form once again, chancing a taste of the air...and had to keep from letting out a low, throaty growl at the flavor that reached her.
Filling and nutritious, sharp like cinnamon, warm like bread fresh from the oven with butter melted into the dough already...or that was how Ocellus would have attempted to describe it to Snails, and would have done it no justice.
Love. Rarity was filled with love, a love for the work she was doing. It was one of the most common sorts of love that Ocellus had encountered in Ponyville, but its abundance did nothing to reduce its taste, it’s texture...it’s necessity. Ocellus has come here looking to snack on sympathy and, as an unexpected bonus, get a winter cape to fight off the cold. But now she found herself grinning with a predatory glee that would not have looked out of place on her new siren comrades. She pulled her scarf over her mouth and started advancing on Rarity, her tongue lolling out completely from her mouth as she started lapping up the love Rarity was giving off, careful to only take a bit at a time so she wouldn’t notice...it was so good...
But then there was a deep, awful-sounding growl, followed by a threatening, almost changeling hiss, and the next thing Ocellus knew was pain as sharp claws raked across her right front leg. She let out a yelp of pain and only barely kept herself from hissing as she stumbled away. Opalescence had awoken from her nap, it seemed, and was now standing between the changeling and Rarity, with her fur on end, eyes wide, ears folded back.
Save for a lack of extended tongue, it looked a lot like Ocellus’ own threat display, the one she was desperately holding in check as Rarity turned around in fright as well. Ocellus has enough time to turn her tongue back to its pony form and pull down her scarf, at least.
“Opalescence!” Rarity exclaimed, setting down everything in her aura and turning its blue glow to picking up the creature, who was still growling low at Ocellus. “What’s gotten into you?” She looked to Ocellus, who let her fright show but shook her head as though she didn’t understand.
“I wanted to see what you were drawing,” Ocellus lied. “Maybe I startled her?”
“Well that’s hardly an excuse,” Rarity said, turning Opalescence around. “Bad kitty! There’s no need to be so rude to our guest. Mommy’s going to have to put you in another room now.”
Opalescence didn’t seem to care much, though she did settle down a little. Rarity was careful to carry the “kitty” at a distance from Ocellus. The two creatures’ eyes never left one anothers in that time. Once the “kitty” was safely behind a door, Rarity came over to Ocellus. “Are you alright, darling? Did she scratch you?”
“No,” Ocellus lied, showing her attacked leg - she’d quickly used her magic to shift the wounds away for now, though it wasn’t real healing and she’d need to bring the cuts back and let them heal naturally if she didn’t want to constantly expend magic to keep them away. They were small cuts, at least, easy to hide. As soon as she left Rarity’s, she could stop hiding them.
“Fair enough. I do apologize, she’s normally a very friendly cat. You must have startled her quite a bit. Or perhaps she misinterpreted you coming up on me while my back was turned. Thought you were going to attack her mommy. She can be quite protective.”
That seemed very likely to Ocellus, the most reasonable explanation. Ocellus’ mind stuck on another point that Rarity had said, though, as the white unicorn went back to her sketching. “Wait, she’s a pony?” She asked.
Rarity paused, looking at Ocellus in confusion. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”
“You said you were her mother...”
Rarity stared a moment more, before bursting out laughing. Ocellus didn’t get it what was funny, and nor did she get an answer. But at least the unicorn’s amusement added a wonderful flavor to the love that Ocellus lapped up, without interruption this time, over the next several hours.
Ocellus’ natural instinct was to drink her fill of love from Rarity quickly, taking everything that the unicorn possibly had to offer and leaving Rarity as a catatonic shell of a pony who would be extremely pliable to Ocellus’ suggestion, easy to lead back to Ocellus’ burrow. Once there, Ocellus could put Rarity in a hibernation pod, or leave her out as a door guard or other servant, and feed on the pony’s (admittedly much reduced) love every day for as long as she could keep Rarity alive (not easy - creatures under changeling thrall tended to barely eat, even when ordered, and would eventually starve).
But that would be bad for a number of reasons:
First, ponies would wonder what happened to Rarity. Ocellus was of course capable of transforming into the unicorn and fooling Ponyville for a time, but she doubted she could hold up under long-term scrutiny, and the gain of love from an enthralled Rarity wouldn’t equal the loss from impersonating her for an extended period without abducting additional ponies to feed on, which only compounded the problem.
Second, the solid food requirements of keeping a pony alive would be prohibitive. Ocellus could eat anything organic in a pinch, and only needed to eat every few weeks. Ponies, even an enthralled one, were by comparison extremely picky while also being voracious eaters.
Third, there was no need to take such a risk: love in Ponyville was plentiful, the town a bottomless cornucopia of love for a single changeling drone. So why risk exposing herself? She hadn’t known gnawing, consuming, driving hunger for months now, meaning her current feeding strategy was working just fine.
Fourth, a catatonic creature could occasionally “snap” back, some external or internal stimuli restoring their senses, and they tended to be quite cross - and quite dangerous - when that happened, feeling rage and hate that could badly poison a changeling caught unawares, especially if the changeling was feeding at the time.
Fifth, an enthralled creature had no ability to perform specialized tasks, or really any tasks more complicated than basic physical labor or guard duty. Ocellus wouldn’t get her cloak if she drained Rarity.
And sixth: Snails had told her that it was just wrong, something that shouldn’t be done on an intrinsic level. Or at least the broad strokes of draining ponies in general when she'd described the process to him. Ocellus wasn’t certain if that was true given that there were upsides to it, but then again reasons one thru five carried enough negative repercussions that they were more than sufficient.
So instead, as Rarity worked on her winter cape, Ocellus lapped up love slowly, just a bit at a time, keeping her actions hidden from the unicorn due to a combination of positioning and using her scarf to hide her changeling tongue. It became almost a game, finding openings where she could steal a few quick sips without being noticed, and making sure to not take too much at once lest she harm Rarity. The game became harder when Rarity asked her to keep her scarf down while indoors, as it wasn’t “ladylike”, whatever that meant. But Ocellus complied anyway, since it would make Rarity less suspicious.
Changelings were never full, but by the time Rarity was finished with her cape, Ocellus had at least almost completely restored her love reserves to where they had been before going to sleep last night...though keeping the Opalescence-scratches hidden was a slow drain. She was...what was the word Snails had used...peckish. But not hungry. Not starving.
Her thoughts on that were cast aside as Rarity threw the new winter cape over her. Deep pine green, with a trim of fluffy wool around its edges and a mantle of still more wool, it was surprisingly heavy, but also instantly warming. It’s edge was about an inch above her hooves, and brass buttons closed its front.
“Now isn’t this the most fetching thing you’ve ever worn?” Rarity asked as she had Ocellus turn in front of her mirrors, inspecting her work. “And it should help with the winter that the Weather Patrol has brewed for us this year - honestly I do trust them to know their jobs, but is a mild winter really that much to ask for? I should think not. Try the hood, darling.”
Ocellus complied, pulling the hood of the cape over her head as far as it would go, but after a moment Rarity clucked a little in disapproval. “No, not like that, dear, not unless you want to look like some sort of, admittedly fabulously attired, highway rapscallion. No, a lady should always keep her face visible when she wears a hood.” Her telekinesis reached out and pulled the hood back. “There!” she let out a little squeal. “Oh, you look simply precious! If you had a basket of matches, I’d buy the lot!”
Ocellus looked at her own reflection for aid, but got nothing from the mirror other than a glance at what Sprite looked like when Ocellus was confused. She looked back to Rarity. “Basket of matches?” She asked.
Rarity’s head tilted to the side. “Don’t know that one? Just as well, I suppose, it’s rather dark for a Hearth’s Warming tale, though at least the ending is happy.”
Not many of the stories Ocellus knew had happy endings. Most of them were cautionary tales of changelings who were foolish enough to disregard the rules of the Hive or the orders of the Queen or a Hive Lord. They tended to have endings involving being eaten by a hexarachnid or chasme or tatzelwurm or other mutant monster of Protea, or dying alone of starvation or exposure, or something else. The only stories with happy ends were those about Queen Chrysalis saving the Hive from some great threat.
But pony stories had happy endings. Ocellus put on a smile for Rarity’s benefit. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. After a few moments, she remembered something else she was expected to do. “Thank you very much for the cape, miss Rarity.”
“Oh you’re quite welcome,” Rarity replied, though she stifled a yawn as she did, and she sat down on her haunches. Creative energy had left her, it seemed...and now the fact that she’d been fed on by a changeling for hours was catching up with her, even if she didn’t know it. Ocellus mentally bit herself. She’d been too gluttonous. It was nothing that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t fix for Rarity, but Ocellus shouldn’t have eaten so much, no matter how good the opportunity was.
“Always happy to lend a helping hoof to a foal in need,” Rarity continued after another yawn. “I was hardly going to let you freeze. As well, as I said, it was good practice for me. I might turn that into the first of a line...” her face darkened a little. “Oh dear. Speaking of lines, as wonderfully distracting as making that was from the hustle and bustle of the season...”
Her horn glowed blue, and Ocellus saw her remove the “Out to Lunch” sign from her door and unlock it. Instantly it opened, and Ocellus had to bite back a startled hiss and an urge to shift into something small so she could run and hide as more than a dozen ponies poured in through the door. “How big was your lunch?” One, a red-maned earth pony Ocellus remembered was named Roseluck, demanded.
Rarity laughed nervously, hiding her tiredness. “Apologies, apologies, one and all, I was caught up with another matter. But thank you for your patience, and welcome to Rarity’s Boutique, where everything is chic, unique, and magnifique! Hours will be extended due to the delay.” She turned to Ocellus. “You’d best run along, darling. It was a pleasure meeting you, miss Sprite.”
Ocellus couldn’t stop herself from licking her lips, though at least she had the presence of mind to make sure her tongue was a pony one. “Nice to meet you too, miss Rarity,” she said, and left as Rarity drifted off towards the first customer who needed help, with less spring than she’d had when she and Ocellus had entered her boutique. Yes, the unicorn was definitely going to sleep deeply tonight, and for longer than was usual for her.
As she left Rarity’s Boutique and stepped out into Ponyville, Ocellus once again put her mental fangs to use on her mental image of her own throat (and ignored the anatomical impossibility of the act). A wave of drowsiness sweeping over Ponyville was the last thing that Ocellus needed. It would reveal her presence, or at least run the risk of doing so if anypony started trying to investigate why it was happening. This was why she’d been restricting herself to small nibbles of love from a bunch of ponies, not getting her entire daily dose of love from one pony. It was a stupid mistake, one she couldn’t make again.
She also took a moment to look down at her leg, letting go of the magic hiding the wound there. She hissed slightly in pain as beneath her fake fur, the flesh opened up in four small lines, and red pony blood started slowly seeping out. It was a superficial, unimportant wound for the most part, even if it would translate over to her true form, the only form in which it would heal. It would scab by the end of the day, be gone but for a few pale marks on her carapace by the week’s end, but that wasn’t the problem.
No, the problem was what happened when Ocellus ducked into an alley so no pony could see her, and shook her hoof a little, scattering a couple drops of blood into the snow. Detached from the rest of her body and no longer subject to changeling magic, the blood reverted to its natural color: an almost fluorescent, bright green.
Ocellus shook her head, shifting away the wound again and then licking her leg free of blood, then - after double-checking that nopony was watching - doing the same for the changeling blood on the ground, ignoring the taste of dirt mixed with snow and the cobblestone beneath.
She really wanted to eat Opalescence now. But Snails had told her that pets weren’t to be eaten, and Rarity would probably miss her, and really it had probably been Ocellus’ fault for disregarding the larval foal anyway (if that was what she was, Ocellus was starting to think she may have made a mistake there). So Opalescence would get away with this, and Ocellus would just have to learn to be more careful, and less gluttonous.
At least she wasn’t as cold. The cape was heavy enough that the wind didn’t even cut through it while it was buttoned up, and she could feel how her body heat was trapped by the cloth and wool, barely radiating out. Coupled with putting her scarf to use for its original purpose and keeping her hood up, and she was actually warm, or something like it.
That, at least, put a spring in Ocellus’ step as she trotted from the alley, looking for other ponies to snack on to keep the slow love drain of her leg wound to a minimum.
---
Romantic love from the Cakes. Familial love from the Apple family. Love for the town from Ivory Scroll. Young love from Tootsie Flute and Truffle Shuffle. Matured, deep, abiding love from Lemongrass and Greenhooves. Love for her craft from Vinyl Scratch. Over the past few months, Ocellus had become a connoisseur of love, sampling more varieties than she’d ever known existed or could exist. Yet in spite of the vast cornucopia before her, Ocellus couldn’t even begin to pick a favorite. They were all delicious, all nutritious, all worth the effort of maneuvering into a position to feed on them, even if it was only a few nibbles at a time.
It wasn’t hard, it just required the right words, the right timing. Mrs. Cake was eight months pregnant, three more to go, and both were eager to tell a young foal about how they’d met and fell for each other. The Apple clan were glad to tell stories about each other, the things they used to get up to as foals. Ivory Scroll was always eager to extol the virtues of the town she was mayor for to a pony who claimed to be from Hoofington. Truffle Shuffle and Tootsie Flute were even easier than that, especially the latter; the filly unicorn was absolutely infatuated with everything the earth pony colt said or did. And great gouts of love came off of Vinyl Scratch when she was mixing, recording, or playing her music, which she was always happy to do for an attentive audience.
A bit of love here, a small sip of love there. Never too much lest she start to have a negative effect on the pony she was feeding from, but she had so many options for the small bits of love, so many targets, so much prey, that those small nibbles added up…
As she trotted through the town, tongue safely beneath her scarf drinking down the love she encountered, she started hearing music. It wasn’t unusual, ponies seemed to sing and dance a lot...but this music was different. Somehow it got under her skin...the sound wouldn’t leave her ears...it seemed perfect, somehow, perfect notes, a perfect tune, just waiting for words to accompany it...
“This thing...called love “I can’t...get enough of it “This thing...called love “I’ll sink...my fangs in it “I’m so ready! “Tasty little thing called love...”
Ocellus had never sung a single word in her life, but now she was. Nopony seemed to notice, or care, it was like they had become oblivious to Ocellus, no matter what she did - even if she stood right next to them and sang about her fangs. Even Ocellus herself only vaguely had a sense that this was a bad idea, most of her was far too caught up in the moment.
This was especially true when she realized that she could see herself, her real form, alongside her, looking just as happy, dancing the way she was dancing - until true-Ocellus slung one foreleg around Ocellus-as-Sprite’s withers and pointed out a couple of old ponies down the street just walking together, close enough that they were always touching.
Ocellus-as-Sprite fell into step behind them, true-Ocellus prancing beside her, and both still sang.
“This thing(this thing)called love(called love) “Its scent(so good)it drives me wild “Its taste(so sweet)on my tongue(so nice) “Fills me up each and every night “And I like it! “Tastylittlethingcalledlove...”
True-Ocellus slipped away from Ocellus-as-Sprite and over to the window of Bon Bon’s Bon Bon’s, where the cream earth pony proprietor and her mint-green marefriend we’re taking a moment to themselves.
“Come see these ponies… “Lookin’ deep in each others’ eyes “I’ll slide right on by… “Take a little sip and then move “To the next in line.”
Ocellus-as-Sprite had gone inside and drank from them, then followed true-Ocellus down the line of ponies. Friends, family, lovers, they were all her prey…until Ocellus-as-Sprite realized how nearly open she was being and dashed back outside, true-Ocellus following with a disappointed look. Ocellus-as-Sprite tried to get control of herself...
“I gotta be cool...relax...be hip And leave no tracks I’ll take a bit here...not much I can’t fill up ‘til I burst inside!” “But I’m hungry!” “Tastylittlethingcalledlove...”
True-Ocellus continued to cavort around Ocellus-as-Sprite, guiding the disguised changeling to prey after prey, her movements only slightly more subdued than the dancing figment of an undisguised changeling that only she could see. It wasn’t long before the two found themselves at Sugarcube Corner, where there was love aplenty from the Cakes, Pinkie Pie, Tootsie Flute and Truffle Shuffle and so many more to feed on…
Then both true-Ocellus and Ocellus-as-Sprite noticed a thin, shy looking pegasus colt, Featherweight, looking at the latter. Not strangely, but with a bit of a blush and a nervous glance away when both Ocelli noticed him...and both could taste the attraction.
The changeling shared a hoof-bump with the figment of her imagination, then true-Ocellus slid up to Featherweight and leaned against him, hooves tapping the floor rhythmically while Ocellus-as-Sprite tried her best casual saunter, eyes never leaving Featherweight’s.
“I gotta be cool...relax...be hip And leave no tracks I’ll take this colt here...eat up. But the taste that I’m gettin’ might drive me wild. I’m still hungry(I’m always hungry)! “Tastylittlethingcalledlove...”
All Ocellus-as-Sprite did was put one hoof to Featherweight’s cheek, and the colt let out a slight eep, a sigh, and then fainted contentedly away. True-Ocellus looked to Ocellus-as-Sprite, both shrugged, drank their full, then moved on.
“This thing called love “I can’t get enough of it “This thing called love “I’ll sink my fangs in it “I’m so ready! “Tastylittlethingcalledlove...”
The changeling in disguise and the figment doppelgänger of her true form danced from Sugarcube Corner, out into the street, the former’s movements still only a little more furtive than the latter’s as nopony else seemed to notice, making them that much easier to prey upon.
“Tasty little thing called love(yum yum)! “Tasty little thing called love(delish)! “Tasty little thing called love(piquant)! “Tasty little thing called love(divine)! “Tasty little thing called love(scrumptious)! “Tasty little thing called love(toothsome)! “Tasty little thing called love(so rich)! “Tasty little thing called love(luscious)! “Tasty little thing called love(tasty)!”
“What was that, deary?” an elderly green earth pony asked.
Ocellus froze, eyes going wide. “Uh...” she intoned, staring at the pony. Granny Smith, she thought the name was. The earth pony looked at her expectantly. Ocellus, for her part, looked herself over, confirming she was still in her fillyform, then looked around and confirmed that there was no sign of her changeling form, the...whatever it was that she had just spent the past two minutes and forty-five seconds dancing and singing with. "What, uh...how much...was I just...singing...? And dancing? What happened?!”
“Well how should Ah know?” Granny Smith asked, scoffing and hobbling off to resume doing whatever she had been doing before encountering a singing, dancing, weirdo-freak. “That's between you and your song, Ah ain't got time to help ya with whatever's goin' on. Hearth's Warming shopping still needs doing!”
Ocellus continued to stare blankly straight ahead, waiting for somepony to pounce on her as a monster who was slowly draining the town of love. But it didn't happen. Ponies continued to trot around, completely oblivious to the song and dance and...where had that music come from? There had been musical accompaniment! Very well performed musical accompaniment, and some backup vocals beyond even her figment doppelgänger! Which, also, what?!
Still nothing happened, however, and the sun was continuing its descent, and the night was getting colder. Finally, Ocellus shook her head. “Nopony noticed. Don't do it again,” she admonished herself. “Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it...”
---
“This thing...called love...“
“Hey! Sprite!“
Ocellus leapt at the sound of her assumed name, glancing up and forward and grateful for whatever it was that broke her from quietly singing that song (Changelings didn't dance! Where had the dance choreography come from?!) that had sent her gallivanting around Ponyville without a care. Her mood improved considerably when she saw who it was, and a genuine smile appeared on her pony face. “Snails!“ She exclaimed, galloping forward to meet the one pony who knew what she really was where he waited for her. Snails trotted forward himself, and wrapped his hooves around her when she was close enough, a hug, as the gesture was called. It felt awkward but it tasted warm and sweet, so Ocellus accepted it for several long moments before pulling away. “How was your week?” She asked.
Snails shrugged beneath his own winter clothing, a red jacket with a yellow scarf and a fuzzy hat with a hole in it for his horn. “Just the usual stuff,” he said. “I wish you could come to school, then you and me could hang out more, and you come come to recess with Snips and Rumble and everypony else.”
On the one hoof, that sounded potentially delicious; on the other... “I don’t have parents to enroll me,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, I know,” Snails said, scuffing his hoof in the snow. It was only over the weekend that he got to see Ocellus in her Sprite form that he had seen her create and helped her name; during the weekdays, Ocellus took on a variety of different forms to feed throughout Ponyville, all of them adults so as to avoid questions about why there was a filly or colt wandering around town instead of in school. She avoided Snails during that time as well, since apparently it would be considered strange and weird for an adult pony to spend a significant amount of time with a foal as friends.
“So are you ready?” Snails asked after a moment. “Got everything memorized?”
Ocellus nodded, and stood up a little straighter like she was giving a report to a Hive Lord. She started listing out the personal details for Sprite that the two had created. “Sprite, born on June 15th, 986 NLE. Mother is Cream Soda, father is Shaken Cola. Place of residence is - “
“Okay, okay, I believe you,” Snails said, holding up his hooves. “You don’t have to tell me, anyway, you have to tell Twilight Sparkle.”
Sprite fell into a more neutral stance as the two trotted off, heading towards Golden Oaks Library. “What if she asks why I don’t have a Hoofington library card?” She asked.
Snails thought. “You could just say you lost it,” he said. “Or you don’t have one but you need these books for your school project.” The “school project” was the made-up reason for why Sprite was coming to Ponyville from Hoofington. Officially, Hoofington’s teacher Skitch-Sketch had given her class an ongoing, year-long assignment to do on whatever they chose. Sprite has chosen insects. She had met Snails during the Ingathering festival in the fall when the two towns had gotten together to celebrate, and recognized his expertise on bugs, and so he was now helping her with her project on the weekends.
It probably wouldn’t hold up to close scrutiny, but it sounded perfectly plausible and so wouldn’t be closely scrutinized. That was the theory, anyway. Whether it was true, well...
“Hello!” Twilight’s voice called as the two entered the library. “Welcome to Golden Oaks!” She was a purple unicorn seated behind the library’s desk, a book of her own opened before her.
Ocellus swallowed. She’d tried to get a library card before, while disguised as an adult pony...but though she could speak Equestrian well enough, reading and writing in it were a different matter, and at the time she hadn’t known Equestiran months either. Twilight had grown suspicious of “Shooting Star”, and Ocellus had dashed from the library.
But there was no way for Twilight to connect Ocellus-as-Sprite to Shooting Star (part of the reason she had gone in disguise in the first place, it had been a trial run), so she pushed down her trepidation and came up to the desk with Snails. “H-hello,” she said, affecting a demure personality that she knew put ponies at ease and in a mind to help her. “I’d like to apply for a library card, please.”
“Oh! Of course!” Twilight exclaimed happily, moving aside her book. Her horn lit up with a lavender glow, and she levitated a piece of paper up from beneath the library desk, even as an inkwell and a pen appeared with two small pops of magic.
Ocellus couldn’t keep her eyes from widening a bit. Ponies were so very free and casual with their magic compared to changelings. Even Queen Chrysalis didn’t use telekinesis this much, let alone teleporting.
“Just fill out this form,” Twilight said. “Make sure to fill everything out correctly. Will you need help drawing your cutie mark, or...?”
“Oh,” Ocellus said, uncovering her flank. “I don’t have one yet.” She hadn’t known about them when creating Sprite, and wasn’t sure she wanted to pick one just in case she chose something she couldn’t emulate well. Fortunately her fillyform still looked young enough that this wasn’t unusual; Snails had been an early bloomer himself and had many friends who were still blank-flanks.
She actually liked the concept behilnd them, and wished changelings earned cutie marks. It would certainly make organizing the Hive easier.
Twilight, meanwhile, still wore a pleasant smile. “No problem! Just make sure to update your information when you do get one. I’ll leave you to it, but let me know if you need help with anything else, okay?”
Ocellus nodded, and got to work filling out the form while Twilight went back to her book. The changeling drone needed a little help from Snails to write down all the information, mostly with regards to spelling. Cream Soda and Shaken Cola were two real ponies in Hoofington that Ocellus had scouted out a week ago (Hoofington was about six hours’ trot away, but Ocellus could shift into a pegasus form to cut that down a fair bit by flying), with a real address; Ocellus would just have to head into Hoofington to steal their mail a few times until her library card arrived.
When she was done, Twilight looked over her form. She squinted at the shakey horn-writing, and Ocellus felt a small surge of panic that her spelling and writing had been too awful to read and there was no way a pony would be this bad and the only possible conclusion was that she wasn’t a pony, she was some kind of shapeshifter monster trying to get a library card in order to further her own knowledge of ponies so she could blend in better...
...but that didn’t happen. Twilight produced a stamp and pressed it to Ocellus’ form, then got out a tiny card emblazoned with an image of Golden Oaks and wrote Sprite’s name and a date on the back. “Okay, here’s your temporary card,” she said. “It expires in one month,” she indicated a date at the top, “and you can only take out two books with it. Your real card will be mailed to your address in two to three weeks. Okay?”
Ocellus nodded. “Thank you very much, Miss Twilight,” she said, as was expected, taking the card in her hooves and tucking it into her cape, where Rarity had included an inner pocket.
“Since it’s Saturday our hours are extended to nine o’clock. Have fun!”
“We will, Miss Twilight,” Snails said. As Twilight once again turned to her own book, Snails looked to Ocellus. “So where do you want to start?” He asked.
Ocellus thought, and realized that she didn’t really know where to begin. She’d been so focused on getting a library card, what to do with it had escaped her mind... “You pick something,” she said.
Snails brightened. “All right! I know just the thing.”
---
“I know a changeling named Pedipalp,” Ocellus remarked, looking at the close-up drawing of an insect in the book that Snails had chosen for them to read.
“Really?” Snails asked. The two were sitting side-by-side near the library’s fireplace, a large entomological encyclopedia open before them. Ponies really took their cutie marks seriously, Ocellus should have known. Of course Snails would choose a book on bugs, when she gave him the choice.
“Mmm-hmm. He’s one of the guards for the Central Hive’s main entrance.” She grinned a little. “His fangs grew in weird. The middle of his mouth rather than the sides.” She glanced around, making sure Twilight wasn’t nearby, then shifted her mouth to have the bucktooth fangs of Pedipalp, giving a broad grin.
Snails burst out laughing as Ocellus shifted back quickly, in case Twilight came to investigate. The colt got his laughter under control quickly as well. “Snips has teeth like that,” Snails said, naming his best friend. “Not as big, though. He says he has a donkey in his family tree somewhere. Is Pedipalp related to any donkeys?”
“I don’t think so,” Ocellus said. Actually she was certain no changeling was related to anything on this world, but a flat negative didn’t seem like the right thing to say to Snails. She shifted around a little; she was sitting on some library-provided pillows, her cape now loosely draped over her rather than buttoned up. Between the cape and the fireplace, the temperature was finally decent, if a bit dry. Snails had taken off his own jacket as well, though he left it folded nearby rather than over him.
Ocellus turned back to the entomological encyclopedia. “Okay, um...pedipalps of spiders have the same se...segment...segmentation as the legs, but the tarsus - I know a Tarsus too - is undivided, and the pretarsus has no lateral claws. Pedipalps contain sensitive chemical...dee-tehk-torss, and fuh...function as taste and smell organs...like the organs on the legs? What?”
Snails nodded. “Yup. Spiders smell and taste with their feet, sort of.”
Ocellus thought of the terrible, flying hexarachnids of Protea, the greatest predators of changelings. Hundreds of changelings died to them every year. The idea of them smelling with their feet...made them a little less scary. But only a little. “That’s weird,” she decided.
Snails shrugged. “Spiders think smelling with noses is weird. I’ve asked. Actually they just think noses are weird.”
“They are,” Ocellus confirmed. Her natural changeing form didn’t have nostrils, she smelled by inhaling through her mouth, and not nearly as well as a pony. She poked a hoof to Sprite’s muzzle. “I can sort of see the use...but it also keeps filling up with phlegm or something in the cold...”
Snails bit back another laugh. “It’s called snot,” he provided.
“What’s it do?”
He shrugged. “Be snot. It’s gross. I wish I could just shift it away like you.”
Ocellus could understand the envy. She shifted a little more under her cape, then looked to Snails. “How are you not cold?” She asked.
Snails grinned, tapping a hoof to his chest. “My mom and dad and sis are all pegasi! So I’m really good in the cold.”
“Really?”
Snails looked down. “Well, I can tough it out. Nopony else in my family would need to spend money on a fireplace if not for me, at least not all the time. So I just bundle up. But then sometimes my mom or dad or Raindrops gets mad at me for not telling how cold I am...usually ‘cause I got sick ‘cause of the cold. But I don’t want to be a burden.”
Ocellus found herself lightly biting her assumed form’s lip at that. She...she knew what that was like. At least a little, anyway...the Everfree wasn’t as cold as Ponyville...yet...and it hadn’t yet really penetrated down to her burrow...but it would. Snails promised her that it would start getting warmer eventually...but that was still months away. How was she going to deal with the cold?
Snails looked at Ocellus. “What are you doing about the cold?” He asked. “In your burrow, I mean.”
Ocellus started. She was surprised, sometimes, at how good ponies were at guessing what other ponies were thinking, even if Ocellus wasn’t really a pony. She had no explanation for it. “I can manage,” she answered. “I could dig it deeper. If this world is like Protea, then it gets hotter the deeper you go.”
Snails tilted his head. “Wouldn’t you have to go really deep for that? Like, miles and miles?”
Ocellus hunkered down and pulled her cape closer around her. “Maybe,” she said. She honestly didn’t know. And, truth be told, it probably didn’t matter. After just a few dozen feet at most she’d encounter bedrock that she couldn’t burrow through on her own in any kind of timely manner. She could shift to something better at digging, but the cost in magic - in love - would be prohibitive.
“You could build a chimney,” Snails suggested.
“Ooze melts under high temperatures,” Ocellus responded.
“Well...it doesn’t have to be built out of ooze. My fireplace is made out of bricks and stone.”
Ocellus sighed. “I know a little masonry. Not enough to build anything, just to repair stuff.”
Snails brightened as he stood. “We’re in a library, right? We could get you a book on masonry! Or we could ask Miss Twilight if she knows any spells to just make a fireplace. I’ve seen her make doors and statues and chalkboards and zippers and moustaches.”
Ocellus blinked at that, looking back to Snails. “Seriously?” She asked. She had never heard of that kind of power before, the ability to just create material on the fly - at least, not permanently, and presuming one didn’t count a changeling’s ability to create matter from magic as part of a disguise (and that, too, only temporarily).
“Yeah! She and miss Trixie are the two best unicorns in all of Equestria with magic! I bet she knows something that can help.”
Ocellus got up at that, following Snails from the fireplace (and mourning the loss of heat) and over to where Twilight was still behind her desk, a new book now open in front of her. Several ponies had come and gone since Snails and Ocellus had arrived, but none had bothered the two foals.
Once they explained the situation to Twilight - loosely, anyway (“my room gets cold at night”) - the unicorn took a few moments to consider. “Well, I don’t think it would be very safe to just magically create a new chimney for your house,” she said. “Not to mention that - no offense - even a very talented unicorn wouldn’t be able to just magically create an entire chimney from nothing. It would be easier to transmute something like a chimney that’s there already, but even then most wouldn’t have the talent or skill...I might be able to if I read up on construction, but I can’t leave the library...”
Ocellus held back a sigh of relief at the fact that apparently Equestrian unicorns weren’t all of them Queen-like in their magical ability, even if Twilight seemed to be. “I don’t need an entire chimney,” she said. She also didn’t want one, the last thing she needed was for her burrow to melt. “Just something to keep me warm. It doesn’t have to be as hot as a fire.”
Twilight purses her lips as she thought. “Well,” she said, “there are some basic heating spells. I have a scarf that makes me retain all body heat, and Trixie’s cape does the same. But those are difficult to enchant...I’m not very good at enchanting objects. Plus you need another enchantment then to ensure that the pony doesn’t overheat, and that’s even harder. Magically and physically speaking it’s easier to heat something up than cool it down...”
She smiled then when something came to her. “Oh! But there is a spell I know that just heats something to about the temperature of boiling water. You could cast it on a rock or piece of metal, something solid. Put it under your bed covers...” she trailed off, looking down at Ocellus. “Oh, but...it’s nearly impossible to learn, unless you have a special talent related to fire or heat. Or magic, of course.”
Ocellus stared a moment, unsure of how to tell the unicorn that, as a changeling, she did not have and could never develop a cutie mark, but nevertheless could probably with practice learn any spell by watching and mimicking the pony who was casting it. “Can we try?” She asked.
“Me too?” Snails asked.
Twilight brightened. “Of course!” She came around from the other side of the desk. “Let’s give it a shot...”
Twilight had been an attentive teacher for Ocellus and Snails, if a bit of a verbose one. Ocellus didn’t know what a thauma or alveo or cornumuscula were and didn’t think she needed to know, since those organs which apparently helped control unicorn spell casting had nothing to do with her own ability and only existed in her own body if she let them. But on the other hoof, when Twilight had produced a small book of spells for foals, Ocellus had found it quite intriguing. Following the steps in the book describing how to cast the warming enchantment had allowed Ocellus to quickly grasp what was supposed to be happening, and after about an hour of effort and guidance she’d managed to heat up a procured paperweight to a little above pony body temperature. A larger stone conjured by Twilight, and massing about half as much as Ocellus’ fillyform, took another hour after that, but she managed it.
“That’s incredible, Sprite!” Twilight exclaimed. “I never would have thought a little filly could have learned this spell!”
Ocellus smiled, trotting up to the rock and putting her hooves on it, feeling it’s warmth...and taking advantage of the fact that she was facing away from Twilight to grab a bite of happiness and satisfaction with just a hint of love for a job well done. She needed it - for her, love was magic and magic was love, and to cast this spell had tapped deeply into her love reserves. She was now back to where she had been before leaving Rarity’s boutique. “How long will it stay warm?” She asked.
Twilight tapped a hoof to her chin as she came over, Ocellus quickly hiding her changeling tongue. The real unicorn’s horn lit up as she examined it. “It’s already cooling down,” she said. “I’d say...an hour? More if it’s properly insulated under a blanket with you. It won’t last all night, but I’m sure it’ll make up for a room that’s just a little chilly.”
Ocellus chewed on her pony lip, good feeling from having cast the spell gone. That was...not good. She didn’t have a room that was a little chilly, she had a burrow that was going to literally freeze if it got too much colder. Her sleeping pod was a good insulator, but not against the slow encroachment of winter. And casting it cost so much love/magic...she’d had a hefty surplus today from her gluttonous feeding on Rarity. She wouldn’t have that most days.
Sure, the spell would become a little easier over time as she familiarized herself with it...but she wasn’t a unicorn, she could just look like one. She would never develop the reflexive ease with any magic spell that a pony could. The spell would become easier, but never easy.
But Twilight wouldn’t expect that. So Ocellus smiled and nodded and tried to look happy, while she looked over to Snails, who was still struggling with a paperweight held in his own telekinetic aura. “Any luck?” She asked.
Snails let out a long sigh as he dropped the paperweight. “No,” he answered, poking the paperweight with his hoof. He was smiling, though. “I didn’t really think I could. My special talent doesn’t have anything to do with heat. But I wanted to try!”
Twilight offered a sage nod. “Sometimes foals who haven’t discovered their special talents yet can display a surprising ability to cast a wide variety of spells...but usually not. And you have found your special talent, Snails. Maybe if you had been able to really stretch what a ‘firefly’ is...”
Snails looked up. “Fireflies don’t really create fire. There is a hive of cinderflies in the Everfree Forest, but there’s a colony of giant water beetles that make sure they don’t burn down the forest.”
Twilight and Ocellus stared a moment, each having their own set of concerns for their homes at the knowledge of magical fire bugs living relatively nearby, before Twilight broke the silence. “How could a bunch of tiny bugs hold off elemental pests?” She asked.
“Oh, not normal giant water beetles,” Snails clarified. “I meant giant beetles, made of water. Though I did learn about them from a giant water beetle. A normal giant water beetle. She said they were nice.”
That was about as much explanation as they were likely to be comfortable with. On confirming that there was no immediate threat of her burrow melting - though honestly it would have been a much better problem to deal with than it freezing - Ocellus looked back to Twilight. “Thank you very much for helping us,” she said, as was expected. “I’ll make sure to practice this spell as often as I can.” Left unsaid was that the practice could only come on days when she’d gorged herself on love.
Twilight beamed, then looked at the clock. “You’ve got about an hour before the library closes,” she said. “Just make sure to have your final selections ready before then.” She used magic to get rid of the stone she’d summoned, plus the paperweight when Snails offered it to her. She looked to Ocellus. “On Tuesdays I have an open tutoring session with some of the unicorn foals in town on how to use their magic - Snails shows up sometimes - and I’ve been talking with Hoofington’s librarian and he’s been interested in doing the same. You could join Emeral when he starts it up this Spring.”
Ocellus kept enough of her wits about her to react with a smile and a nod...but inwardly she felt panic. The librarian in Hoofington spoke to Twilight? Or sent her letters, at least? But what if Twilight mentioned Sprite? What if Emeral asked Cream Soda and Shaken Cola about the daughter they didn’t have? What if...
Twilight was already trotting back to her desk, while Snails made his way over to Ocellus. “So what do you want to do now?” He asked. “I guess you probably need to learn more Equestrian history. But there’s also this really cool book series by A.K. Yearling that you might like - “
”She’s gonna ask somepony in Hoofington about me!” Ocellus hissed. A real hiss, too - in her panic, she couldn’t stop herself from shifting her vocal chords back to their changeling form so that she could inflect properly. Her tongue, too. She could taste her own dread. It tasted like soggy peas.
Snails’ head tilted to the side a little as he took that in. “She is?” He asked.
“She said she talks to the librarian there.” Several plans pushed their way through her mind. Actually masquerade as the Hoofington ponies’ daughter for a little bit? Not likely. She could get the two ponies to go along with it if she drained all their love to enthrall them, but other ponies would notice their catatonia, and also there was the small problem of them having to somehow explain a hitherto unseen fourteen-year-old filly. Replace Emeral? More doable, especially if she arranged for an “accident” after a few days. One missing and/or found dead pony would not immediately lead to searches for a mysterious changeling, and certainly not as far as Ponyville...but then again, so soon after she spoke to Twilight? Would she suspect anything? Also she had no idea what Emeral looked like nor if he had any defenses or guardians, like the larval foal Rarity had (which actually a “kitty” probably was not a pony larva given that she’d seen no others in town but whatever that wasn’t important right now). So that was probably out...
Snails was looking pointedly at Ocellus. “You can’t eat ponies, Ocellus,” he said firmly.
Ocellus really needed to look into the telepathy that ponies seemed to possess just by looking at each others’ faces. She hadn’t been able to access it herself yet. “I could...” she pointed out.
“Well, then, you shouldn’t,” Snails corrected himself. “It’s wrong. And besides, I don’t think Emeral knows every foal in Hoofington. It’s bigger than Ponyville, and I know Twilight doesn’t know every foal here. And Twilight might not even mention you. So just don’t worry about it.”
“But what if somepony finds out?” Sprite asked. “That Sprite isn’t a real pony?”
Snails grinned. “Then you won’t get to be Sprite anymore, but you’re still Ocellus. So you could just be somepony else if you really have to be.”
Ocellus let out a long sigh. That was true, but...she liked Sprite. Or at least the effort she was putting in to creating her, and she didn’t want to see it go to waste. However, Snails was probably right. He had a tendency to be right about these sorts of things. He wasn’t very quick or clever - though on Nightmare Night he had managed to think up a way to trick Ocellus into revealing herself - but he was insightful in his own way, and his simple solutions were often the best. If he had been a changeling he would been considered a very good drone.
Well, except for the fact that he’d probably try and make friends with a hexarachnid and subsequently get eaten, anyway. Ocellus shook that thought from her head, and looked to Snails. “Promise?” She asked.
Snails thought. “Well, I mean, I can’t promise that Twilight won’t mention you or Emeral won’t look into you,” he said, “but I do promise I’ll keep helping you, no matter what!”
Ocellus nodded. It would have to do. After a moment, she leaned in and hugged Snails. Hugs were weird and intimate and constricting, but ponies liked them as signs of affection, and repeated signs of affection made ponies like you more. And...and also, she wanted to make sure that Snails knew she liked him helping her, since that way he’d keep helping her.
Also it was an easy way to a snack. Snails returned the hug and Ocellus grabbed a bite of the affection, but only a little. She didn’t even have to hide it from him, Snails had said he didn’t mind if she fed on him occasionally...though she didn’t do it too much. She didn’t want to hurt him.
“It’ll be okay,” Snails said as he withdrew, chuckling a little at the sight of Sprite with Ocellus’ tongue sticking out. She grabbed a last sip of mirth, then turned it back. “Though I do think we need to let other ponies know about you sooner or later anyway. If we just explain what’s going on...”
“That I’m a predator who’s been feeding on ponies for months?” Ocellus asked.
“Maybe we don’t say it like that...”
Ocellus grimaced. A changeling did not reveal its true form to non-changelings unless she was getting ready to feed. That was some kind of basic, fundamental, driving instinct in her, one that no changeling had been able to feel on Protea for millennia and yet nevertheless something she knew to be fundamentally true. It would be bad, bad, bad. Snails kept trying to convince her...they’d even had a fight over it, and Ocellus had avoided Snails that weekend, until the possibility that he might reveal her out of spite occurred to her and she’d come back and apologized.
Snails still brought it up occasionally, and as always, Ocellus deflected. “Not yet,” she lied. “Maybe over the summer...when I’m more used to living in Equestria.”
“Okay...” Snails intoned. She didn’t need her changeling tongue to taste his doubt. But he pushed forward. “So what do you want to read?”
Ocellus chewed her pony lip, looking at Snails pointedly. “You pick,” she said, wanting to give him a victory. She...didn’t like seeing him disappointed. Because disappointment tasted bad, of course. That was the reason.
---
Ocellus and Snails had parted ways after the library had closed, Ocellus going back to her burrow, and discovering that she had been wrong earlier, when she’d worried that the colder weather of Ponyville might spread to the Everfree Forest. It turned out that hadn’t happened. It couldn’t have.
Because even Ponyville wasn’t this cold.
The Sun had long since gone down, and a cloudless sky allowed a bright and full silver moon and countless stars to illuminate the forest. To a pony, the night was just bright enough to see by, maybe even read by. But just in case, Ocellus shifted her eyes to her natural changeling ones, and just like that the Everfree Forest seemed to light up as though a noonday sun shown brightly in the sky.
It did not, however, do anything for the temperature. She had shifted into a pegasus form, but just like with a unicorn, she could only emulate their magic - she was not a real pegasus. As such, though the freeze abated a little, it did not go away. She still shivered, even with weather-magic warming her, even under her new cape.
She hurried through the forest, as quick as her hooves could carry her to her burrow, and climbed inside. The tunnel was freezing, too, and the little trap door partially frozen in place. She had to tug it open and crawl inside carefully, then gave herself her natural horn and lit up her burrow with green light.
Everything was fine, nothing had moved. But a thin layer of rime coated her sleeping pod, and the whole chamber, while warmer than outside in the Everfree itself, was still literally below freezing. She could see her breath when she exhaled.
Ocellus shook her head. There was a large, relatively flat rock that she sometimes used as a table in her burrow; she lifted it with telekinesis and put it into her sleeping pod, then climbed in as well. She shifted her horn to that of a unicorn, and began casting the warming spell on the rock. It was all she had, and it had to be enough, she thought, even as she wrapped her cape tightly around herself and fought back more shivers. She could get a big meal tomorrow, go into Ponyville early as Sprite and meet up with Snails and his friends and spend all day eating the love of different ponies. But right now, she needed to make it through the night.
So she cast the warming spell she’d learned from Twilight, and pressed herself against the rock. It was at first very cold, but gradually the rock warmed. Slowly it’s temperature rose, and soon Ocellus had cast her cape over it so that she could press her own body against it. It was a rock, so it was hard and unyielding, but it was warm. Not as warm as it could be, not as warm as she wanted...but warm. So she sloughed off her disguise, and bit back a hiss at the cold that was no longer kept at bay. She all but hugged the warm rock to her carapace, and closed her eyes, and tried to sleep...
---
Sprite rushed down the stairs from her warm, warm room, and joined her family at the table. It was dinner time, and dinner was the best meal of the day. The young unicorn found herself looking at a vast spread of food. There were bowls of happiness and plates of interest, cups of desire and spreads of kindness, a basket full of serenity and plates heaping with surprise. A nearby tray held freshly carved admiration and a saucer was used to hold a thin helping of trust. All of it was organized around a centerpiece of the most delicious portion of love Sprite had ever seen.
Sprite dug in. “This is great!” She exclaimed, looking to her paternal antecedent, Shaken Cola, as she shoved a huge helping of ecstasy into her mouth. “Where did you find so much food?”
“Equestria, of course,” Shaken Cola responded. He wasn’t eating. “Where else?”
“Eat it all up, Sprite,” her maternal figure, Cream Soda, said, in a voice that was familiar to Sprite. “Eat it all.”
Sprite did, drinking dry the cups of amazement and licking clean the plate of confidence. She ate all the awe there was at the table and then moved on to the anticipation. She crunched down on acceptance and chewed thoughtfully on joy.
“And the distraction,” Cream Soda said, holding the plate forward. “Try the distraction, Sprite.”
She didn’t even hesitate. She dove in, ripping, tearing, licking, biting, chewing, swallowing, and repeating. She gorged herself. Her tongue sought out every last morsel. She ate and ate and ate and...
...and...
Sprite looked, and saw her parents staring at her. Her brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins, too. Hundreds of thousands of them. Staring at her. Hungrily.
They wanted her food.
Sprite stood upon the table and and glared at her family. “This is my food!” She roared. “You can’t have it! It’s mine!” She punctuated her point by biting down on optimism and swallowing it whole. She leapt backwards and landed on the love and bit into that. “Mine!”
Her family stared. “Eat,” Cream Soda said, in the voice that wasn’t her own but was familiar to Sprite. “Eat it all. Grow fat. There’s plenty for us,” Cream Soda moved out of the way, and Sprite saw a new table, already surrounded by her family, her family already eating there too. They bit and ripped and tore and licked and savored drank and swallowed and repeated. Their meal looked and smelled delicious to Sprite, and she badly wanted to join them at their table. There was so much there, they might even share their meal with her.
Their meal was ponies.
And her family...weren’t. They were hideous monsters of black chitin and giant blue eyes and great fangs and covered with holes.
And her mother wasn’t Cream Soda, she was taller and stronger and more hideous and beautiful at the same time, and she sat at the head of the other table and looked at Ocellus with green, slit eyes, and she licked her teeth. And she started eating too, eyes never leaving Sprite’s as she tore into flesh and lapped at blood...
And her mother wasn’t eating some random pony. She was eating something real with orange fur and teal hair and a cutie mark of a snail -
“No!” Sprite exclaimed as she tried to leap from her table, tried to run for her mother...her Queen. But her hooves were stiff, locked in place, and she saw ice and rime around them, holding her back, crawling up her as her Queen kept eating...
---
”Zzznailzzz!” Ocellus cried out as she shot awake, eyes wide, horn glowing bright green. In her panic she instinctively leapt up, and then cried out at the pain that caused, and not just from hitting her head. Every joint was stiff, her fetlocks, her knees and hocks, her neck and jaw. And she was shivering, fiercely shivering. She realized she was cold, chilled straight through...not just her carapace, but beneath. Cold was everything now...
Letting out a cry of frustration, Ocellus wrapped magic around herself and shifted into her pegasus-Sprite body. Relief was...moderate. It was better than before... but it wasn’t good enough. She put a hoof to her rock, but found it to be cold as ice - the warming enchantment had faded completely. Worse, changelings had pretty good internal clocks, and could tell that she’d only gotten a couple hours of sleep at most. And the drain on her love/magic to even get this much...
Ocellus was going to freeze. She felt tears in her eyes as she realized this. She was going to freeze...or starve as she used too much magic to heat this stupid rock to barely pony body temperature. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow night, but...
Ocellus hissed to herself. “No,” she insisted, then started talking to herself in the simplistic language of Protean, the natural language of changelings. She needed to focus. “Untrue. Unable unlive plus-unwarm. Protea unwarm, allhive warm. Solution extant. Find.”
She crawled out from her sleeping pod, dragging the useless rock with her, and thought. “Why allhive warm? Deep heat. Planet core warm. Unanswer here. Unable dig deep. Maybe...build fire vent? Take time, risk melting burrow. Unanswer now. Other cause allhive warmth...”
Ocellus trailed off. She knew the answer. “Allhive. Allhive keep allhive warm, warmth from occupants.” She took in a deep breath and let it out. “Body heat,” she said in Equestrian, a much more expressive language. The Hive was kept warm through a combination of geothermal energy and body heat.
Something she had been trying to emulate with the dumb rock! Ocellus glared a the rock, and stamped a hoof against it. “Come on!” She exclaimed. She grew a unicorn horn and cast the warming spell again, pouring more magic into it this time. She wanted to heat up more, she willed it to start glowing red!
But she wasn’t a unicorn any more than she was a pegasus. By the time she was done, she’d depleted enough magic/love to not only undo her gains from Rarity, but to undo what she’d taken from the previous day as well. It was by no means starvation...but she was hungry for love again. Very hungry.
And the rock, meanwhile, was still only pony-body temperature to the touch.
Ocellus let out a furious hiss, or started to. Instead, she sneezed, a pony process by which she suddenly and involuntarily and violently expelled a great amount of air from her body through her mouth...and her nose. Her snot-filled, gross nose, which had snot follow the air out so that it ran down her muzzle.
“Eugh...” Ocellus groaned, disgusted. Pony bodies were gross sometimes. She briefly became a changeling again, since the ejecta was easier to get off of her carapace, then turned back into a pegasus and thought...
She was cold, and tired, and hungry. She needed a solution to the problem...and after a few shivering minutes, she came up with one. It was dangerous. It was probably stupid. But it would keep her warm, and feed her, and give her a place to sleep...
She set out for Ponyville again.
---
Ponies locked their doors and closed their windows at night. But they didn’t do anything for their chimneys. The one leading into Snails’ house was too small for Ocellus or Sprite, but with a fair bit of extra magic she simply transformed into Opalescence and dropped down, doing her best to ignore the soot and ash. The logs in the fireplace were still smoldering, but Ocellus avoided them easily enough and landed in the darkness of Snails’ living room, looking around while taking a few moments to soak in the blessed warmth of the house.
Nopony was nearby; the house had been dark from the outside, which Ocellus had learned meant that either nopony was home or else everypony was asleep. Either would suit her purposes for tonight, though the latter was her hope. The changeling resumed her natural form, and tried to ignore the pang of hunger that hit her as she did. Shifting into a form much larger or smaller than her true one was taxing on her love/magic reserves. But she had been Opalescence for only a few moments. She’d be fine.
Ocellus took a cautious step forward, then another. She moved with all the patience she could muster, slowly, carefully, lest she make too much noise. As soon as she was near a wall, she climbed up onto it instead, her changeling hooves easily grabbing on and letting her crawl as though it were horizontal ground - and the wall made less noise, too.
From the living room to the stairs; then up those stairs and to the master bedroom. She’d been in Snails’ house before, as Sprite. She knew where his parents slept. They didn’t lock their door.
Ocellus crept in, crawling along the ceiling now. Shutterbug and Dewdrops slept together in a single bed, curled around each other beneath thick covers. Moonlight shined in through the window and illuminated the two, fast asleep directly beneath her as she lurked in the shadows of the ceiling.
Asleep. Good. Yes. They wouldn’t resist her that way. Wouldn’t notice or think to notice as Ocellus extended her tongue, tasting the air...tasting their emotion. Sifting. Feeling. This wasn’t Nightmare Night, when she had been so starved that she couldn’t control what emotions she ate. This wasn’t her grabbing a nibble of what was freely available. The changeling drone’s tongue sought out, tasted, and found their love...and took it.
A little at first. She didn’t want the two pegasi to notice, to feel it and to wake up. But as she took more love, their sleep grew deeper, and her gulps became larger, and oh it was so good, the love the two felt for each other, for their children.
But she stopped herself, stopped gorging on love after a few minutes. She’d replenished herself a fair bit, put herself back to where she’d been when she left Rarity’s. She was still hungry...but she had other meals.
Ocellus moved from the room, less cautious leaving than entering - the two pegasi would sleep deeply tonight. She next made her way over to Raindrops’ room. Opened the door. Slinked inside. Raindrops was unconscious as well, sprawled on her back beneath her bedsheets, an open book that she must have been reading lying across her chest. She snored softly.
Ocellus drank down love from Raindrops, just as she had her parents. The pegasus never noticed, never reacted save towards the end when she let out a particularly strained snore and rolled over onto her side. Like her parents, her sleep would be long and deep tonight. And she had been a particularly lucious meal, making up for all the bites and nibbles of love through Ponyville she’d drank down, the love she’d lost into the heating spells and more.
Ocellus slipped from Raindrops’ room. She had made good her losses. She had ensured that three of the four who lived here would sleep in. She should have retreated to some corner, maybe their basement or attic, and slept. But...
...but she was still hungry. Changelings were always hungry, and Snails was just down the hall...
....just through his door...
...just beneath where she perched on the ceiling...just laying there, curled onto his side beneath extra layers of covers that his sister and parents didn’t have, didn’t need because they were true pegasi. Lying there beneath her, so unaware, so peaceful, so full of love...
Ocellus’ tongue was out, she was tasting his love but not eating it, when Snails shivered a little. She froze, staring. He was...he was still cold, even with those extra layers. Not freezing, not remotely what Ocellus had felt, but still...like what she’d felt. They were both cold...
And Ocellus remembered her dream. Her family - other changelings - eating ponies. Her Queen, never breaking eye contact with Ocellus, as she bit into Snails’ flesh...
Ocellus’ tongue snapped back into her mouth, and she was still for several long moments. Finally, she crawled down from the ceiling, and shut Snails’ door, then went over to his bedside. Shifting into her Sprite form (since even if he knew what she really looked like, she presumed the natural pony instinct to seeing a predator on waking up was to scream), she leaned in close and poked him with one hoof. “Snails,” she whispered. “Snails, wake up.”
Snails stirred a little. “Huh...?” He asked, eyes slowly fluttering open. They widened when he spotted Ocellus in the moonlight his window let in. “What’s going on? Why are you here?” He whispered, sitting up.
Ocellus paused, trying to come up with an answer, even as she changed back to her true form. “I...I’m cold,” she settled on at last. “I’m cold and that heating spell is no good, I think you’re right, I need to build a chimney, but I can’t do that tonight, so I need to sleep somewhere until I can...” she took in a deep breath and shook her head. “And I ate some love from your parents and sister, more than just a nibble, but they’ll be fine, they’ll just probably sleep ‘til noon tomorrow unless somepony goes and wakes them up if it’s really important. And I’m sorry.” She looked back to Snails. “Can I...can I sleep here tonight?”
Snails stared at Ocellus, blinking a few times, then yawning. “Okay,” he said easily. He looked pointedly at Ocellus. “But don’t eat that much love from ponies again! Tomorrow’s Sunday so it’s okay to sleep in. But what if my sister or mom or dad had needed to get to work early?”
Ocellus nodded. “I promise,” she said. She meant it, to...probably. Unless she got really hungry again...but only if it was really hungry. She wouldn’t be as gluttonous again, not like she was today. Not like she had been in the dream...her, or the rest of her kind. She didn’t need to be in Equestria, not while she was the only changeling here.
Snails nodded at that, then looked around. “Okay, I can lock my room’s door just in case...and I think I have some clean spare sheets...hey!” Snails barely kept his voice down at the last, as Ocellus hopped up onto his bed and slid under the covers, pressing right up against the colt. “What are you doing?” He asked
Ocellus turned around, looking as Snails mere inches from her face. “Body heat,” she said. “You’re cold too. I could tell. This way neither of us will be.”
Snails shifted a little under the covers. “Um...but...I mean, I guess me and Snips share the bed when he stays over or when I go to his house...”
Ocellus tasted a multitude of emotions, chief among them embarrassment. She considered sampling them more deeply to figure out what Snails was so nervous about...but then the image of the Queen eating Snails came into her mind again. “Do you...want me to sleep somewhere else?”
“No, just, um...” Snails shifted a little, maneuvering oddly beneath the covers, until he’d apparently moved a sheet between him and Ocellus so that they weren’t directly touching. “There. That’s better.”
Ocellus didn’t get why, but the sheet was thin and she could already feel herself warming up. “Okay,” she said, deciding to ask about it tomorrow. Snails’ horn glowed and the lock to his bedroom clicked. “Thank you very much, Snails,” she said, as was expected. And she even meant those words, too.
“You’re welcome. G’night.” He rolled over so he was facing away from her.
Ocellus found herself...oddly disappointed in that. She didn’t know why. But she rolled over herself - though she kept her back against Snails’ own - and closed her eyes.
Her dream that night featured no changelings besides her. Snails was with her too. They were sitting on top of a giant Opalescence, the sun shown brightly in the sky, and it was warm. A spread of food lay before the two of them, pony food, but baked so that it somehow tasted of emotions. And Ocellus dreamed that she and Snails sampled them all, Ocellus learning pony tastes like it was the first time, and Snails getting to taste emotions. They ate all day long, and the food never ran out.
All in all, it was a pretty good dream to end her day with.
