They say Princess Cadance and Shining Armor are still searching for their missing daughter.
Lying on the floor of the missing Princess's ransacked room is an otherwise-unremarkable diary. Most of the pages have been torn out or rendered unreadable by debris and spilled ink, but a few are still legible.
Mother said I should write down my troubles, and that writing them will help me forget them in the moment and remember them later, and that perhaps the act of writing them out will help me determine the answer myself. She said it always helped her, when she was a filly, and that she had the notebooks full of doodled hearts to prove it.
I think she just wants to keep an eye on me, and that she doesn't quite know how to ask how I’m really doing. Perhaps she thinks that I wouldn't tell her the truth? Sugar Berry said that her mom does the same thing, but I don’t think it’s the same. Her mom isn’t a Princess, and she wasn’t born a...
A freak. Nopony says it but I’m sure they’re all thinking it. “What did YOU do over the summer, students?” “Oh, I just almost leveled the palace because I got a really bad cold and sneezed too hard. Your vacation to Las Pegasus sounds really fun, though!”
Father says it’s not my fault. He says it’s mostly his and Mother’s, that I’m the way that I am. Auntie Twilight’s still fretting about how any child of hers and Rarity’s could grow up to be as powerful as me, so I don’t think they’ve told them yet. Only Sunburst knows, and he’s… well… he’s Sunburst. Not quite friend material. And don’t get me wrong, Sugar Berry is great and fun and I’m glad she’s my friend, but she just doesn’t understand me. Not the way I need.
She says she’s a freak like me, so that’s got to count for something, even though being the only unicorn in a class full of crystal ponies isn’t quite the same thing. Still, at least she’s here, even if she doesn’t get it.
Mother says it’ll get easier with time, but she can’t really understand either. Sure, she was a teenage alicorn, and her whole “dealing with puberty when you’ve got the hormones of all three races driving you mad” talk was horrifying, but she’s still missing a big part of who I am.
Or, rather, who I’m not. I'm not her. I'm never going to be her. I was born different from all the crystal ponies I live around, and there's nopony who can tell me what I'm supposed to be doing with myself and my life.
Do I sign these things? Mother wasn’t specific enough. If I’m the only one reading them (and I doubt that very much. Why else would Mother have insisted on them?), then it shouldn’t matter. I know who I am.
It wasn’t Sugar Berry’s fault. Mother, I don’t know if you’re reading these still, but I don’t want you to be angry at her. You’re scary when you’re angry. Worse than Father, because your anger burns quiet, and burns longer.
We’d just learned about the changelings, okay? It’s an important part of the nation’s history, so of course we’d cover it. It was extremely awkward for me, as much as the rest of the past that involves you or Father is, and I got all sorts of weird looks from everypony once the lesson was complete. Sugar Berry was the only one who sat with me during lunch. She said it must’ve been hard, hearing it all again after everything you both must’ve told me firsthoof.
She then took out her notebook, and asked what they’d gotten wrong in the lecture. I… I didn’t tell her everything, before you ask, but I did tell her about how they’d gotten through the spells you and Father cast, and how they’d taken over the bridesmares. The little details you’ve shared me.
At least you tell me things. Father never wants to talk about it. I understand why, considering what both of you experienced, but it still frustrates me greatly.
We were walking home after class when she started talking about how it could’ve gone better. How the guard could have done more to protect against the threat of an invasion. How you could have stopped them, since you knew what you were up against and what monsters they truly were.
Father only heard the last part. You know he’s as protective of you as he is of me. I think Sugar Berry wants to join the guard some day, but I’m afraid for her chances now.
At least, while Father’s anger burns hot and loud, it burns out fairly quickly. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to say to Sugar Berry to comfort her tomorrow. If you do end up reading this, please take whatever Father tells you with a grain of salt. She didn’t mean what she said about you.
Do I even need to disguise this as a diary anymore? I know you’ve been reading the pages, even the ones I tear out. I don’t know how you find them, but you never fold them the same way after you’re done. I know you care. I know it’s because you love me.
Doesn’t mean I don’t hate it.
Sugar Berry’s training is going well, as is mine. She’s got this crazy fantasy in her head, about how she’ll be my right-hoof guard, and I’ll be her Princess of… something. We’re both not sure of what, though that isn’t stopping her from guessing! I think she just wants our story to end the same way yours did. I know she has feelings for me, though she has yet to tell me. She’s absolutely terrible at hiding it, and I would find out eventually regardless.
And it’s not like I don’t care about her too, because I do. I just feel like I need more than her dreams. You understand, right, Mother? I don’t want to stay in the palace and be a figurehead like you are. I want to see the world. There’s more to the Northern reaches of Equestria than just the Crystal Kingdom. There’s just got to be! The storms that howl and beat against the shield protecting us must be hiding so much. I want to see it all, and I don’t know if Sugar Berry wants that, too.
I’m sure she’d go along with me if I asked, but I don’t know if she’d be truly happy about it. I know you aren’t quite happy about it either, but at least you understand. Father does too, in his own way. That’s why he’s training Sugar Berry as hard as you’re training me. You just want us to be ready.
I hope I will be. It’ll just be a few months, right? When the worst of the storms subside would be the ideal time to go. I don’t want to wait another year.
I swear, she didn’t mean it and Father didn’t know how to tell her not to cast it.
She thought she’d perfected his shield spell, so no changeling could get in or out. Even after all this time, she’s still convinced that there may be more of them out there. Having those reformed - I hesitate to say “freaks,” but they’re certainly the strangest creatures I’ve met on diplomatic visits - insects train the guards about how to stop an invasion certainly didn’t help.
Sugar Berry just wants to keep me safe from anything that could threaten me. She cares about me, loves me, even, so much that she has been working on this in secret every second she could spare.
I’m just glad the nurses won’t let her in. They’re saying it’s for my own protection while I heal from the worst of the shattered bones, but I still feel guilty that I had to use my royal privilege to get some privacy.
I can hear her yelling at them now, in fact. Her voice is going hoarse. She hasn’t stopped. It’s been hours.
I don’t know how I’m going to tell her why it affected me. I know the nurses have said that she’s nothing but apologies, and frantically trying to figure out what went wrong with the spell.
Should I lie? Sugar Berry is my friend, and I’d hate to watch her lose herself in trying to find the error. She’s the best spellcaster I know, and for that I’m certain that she’d obsess over any perceived errors and unexplainable results. Past conversations with Sunburst and Auntie Twilight have taught me that much.
Father says that he’s glad his version of the spell was imperfect. I don’t know if that’s his way of dealing with what happened, or just the result of seeing his daughter in a crumpled heap against the palace wall. Thank the Northern Lights that I’m stronger than the average pony, or I’d be a stain on the otherwise-perfect crystal by now.
I’m surprised you haven’t visited, but I know you’re probably busy isolating this wing of the hospital. The list of ponies who know what I am is growing steadily longer, isn’t it? I wonder if Sunburst minds the company on that particular piece of metaphorical parchment.
Even with my alicorn durability, I’ll still take too long to heal all the way in time for the storms to weaken. I don’t want to wait another year. Everypony loves me here, but I still don’t quite fit in. You understand, right, Mother?
I’m not sure if you’ll read this. I don’t know how you found my last notes, but I’m leaving this in the hopes that whatever diary-tracking spell you must have locked onto me finds this piece of paper.
It’ll probably be the last one.
Don’t take this the wrong way, Mother. It isn’t because I don’t love you anymore, and I’m not in any danger, but Sugar Berry says that the other guard would be looking for her, and will probably piece together what happened soon. I don’t want them to have reason to be angry at you. You shouldn’t have to protect me. Father shouldn’t, either. Let them search. They won’t find me, or either of us, in this weather.
I had to take her, by the way, I truly did. You don’t, cannot, understand, and even I have trouble figuring out how best to explain it. Even after she attacked me, she still LOVED me. And she still loves me now. I can taste it, and she cannot lie to me about that. I needed her, and after she wakes up again, she’ll need me just as much. Yes, before you say anything (that I won’t be able to hear, Mother, this is a note, but I’ll picture it all the same), I know you taught me never to act on these instincts, but it was so easy. Terribly easy.
In any other story, I’d be a hero, wouldn’t I? I took the mare of my dreams, swept her off her hooves, and raced into the blizzards so we could be together. She won’t be a mare, after she wakes up. Not strictly a pony one, anyway, but not entirely a changeling. Enough unicorn to love me, and enough changeling to need me.
I could tell you about how the storm parted when I ran into it, how it always seems to weaken wherever we sleep. You’d laugh, but I finally figured out what I’m the Princess of. It was in my name the whole time. Funny how that works, isn’t it? A few traces of Equestrian magic must’ve decided my fate.
Princess isn’t quite the right word, though, is it? Queen. I’m a changeling Queen. I doubt your citizens will be as accepting as you’ve been, Mother. Sure, many of them will be willing to welcome me, especially after Thorax’s visits, but all of them?
Some will say I replaced the real Flurry Heart. That it was a coup planned by Chrysalis. Or maybe I must be Chrysalis herself, still feeding off of the Princess of Love after all this time.
I’ll ask Sugar Berry, the next time she stops dreaming and can talk again. She says she’s sorry, by the way, that she’s abandoned her post. She’s much less mad at me than she used to be, and she claims she understands why I took her. I don’t know how much of this is part of the reprogramming, and how much is genuine. I am terrified that someday, her love will sour. I don’t know what I’m doing, I really don’t, but…
Remember how you all found Thorax out here, somewhere? I’m hoping there are other changelings, still un-technicolored, still lost. I think I’ll try to give them a home. We’ll live in the neverending Northern storms together and build our own strange hive of sorts.
If I have need of you, I’ll contact you again, but for now it’s best if we stay apart, Mother. Try not to let any of your citizens wander too far into the storm, if you are able. I have a feeling my eventual hive will be hungry, and I can’t promise those lost in the hurricane will find their way out again.
