How does she keep getting my number?
The Dim Dark of the Everfree Forest Forest seemed to apply even in the brightest of times. As Neighboring Ponyville went alight with holiday Hearthswarming cheer, the Everfree seemed to darken with the light snow. Not many of the flakes found their way to the forest floor, but those that did soon melted into the light mud that caked the deep dark of the supernatural canopy. By all accounts it was a miserable place to be spending any time, least of all the holidays. Perhaps that was why Chrysalis found such solace here, it fit her fortunes after all. Driven from her Hive, her own changelings turned against her, and with that insufferable ivory mare finding her way into each of her hideouts, she'd barely had the chance to feed...
The thought of it snapped the Changeling Queen's head up. Rotating her neck all around her, Chrysalis's trained eyes squinted in the dark. Finding no traces of her tracker, she returned to the small Firefly lamp in front of her. How simple were the times when these little lamps lit every corner of her hive, instead of a barely present orange glow now. Scowling, the former Queen glanced down her chest to the Illuminated photos below. Dancing with colors, she had taken them just this morning before the snow had fallen. How despicably happy they all looked, celebrating as if her entire kingdom meant nothing to them. Filled with an unexplainable sudden anger she grasped the most recent images in her carapaced hooves and ripped them apart with a sickly green glow. Shivering, Chrysalis glanced to the still falling snowflakes from her clearing, and cursed her inability to make a fire. It wasn't just so she could burn the useless photos, or stay warm, but that smallest part of her wanted those miserable ponies to follow the smoke trail to her, just so she could speak to somecreature, anycreature that could speak back.
Grimacing, Chrysalis stamped a hoof down into the shredded print and snow, snuffing the loneliness out of her own emotions, leaving nothing but her anger and...amusement? She wasn't the least bit amused by the situation so where were those feelings coming fro... her. Whipping around with the practice only a changeling her age could accomplish, the silence of the clearing was soon filled with the light buzz of the Queen's wings, and soon, her own beckoning voice.
"I can smell your amusement almost as much as I can imagine your snickering, show yourself!"
Chrysalis's crooked horn sparked to life with an eery green glow. Combined with the light glow of the lantern, and the terrible camouflage of the offending party, it was enough to reveal the Changeling Queen's worst nightmare realized.
"Aww, I had thought you would hang those ones up on your Hearthswarming tree." Stepping forward into the late night glow of the clearing's light sources, the princess of the Sun herself stood only a pair of paces away from the only other creature that matched her height. Her ethereal mane still impossibly blowing in an empty wind, the alabaster alicorn wore her distinctive wide and playful smile.
Ok, Chrysalis admitted, staring into her counterpart's perfectly pink eyes, second worst nightmare. Not letting her stance up, the Changeling repeated the Question she'd already asked several times over in the past.
"How did you find me?"
Celestia had to restrain herself from a laugh at the familiarity of it all, there wasn't even an again this time, straight to the point as Celestia so often wished she could be too. Keeping her smile and playful teasing tone of voice, the sun princess took another step forward into her counterpart's horn glow.
"Oh p-kff, Is that how you greet all your favorite ponies?"
Chrysalis scrunched her muzzle as far up as her anatomy allowed and play voiced back, never letting her horn extinguish.
"You are not my favorite pony."
"Oh? And who is? Last time you told me you had no favorite ponies, only targets."
The Changeling Queen released her scrunch and morphed her expression to a flatline, neck lowered in pure lack of amusement she felt increasing in the Alicorn across from her.
"I...fine, I guess by virtue of being the only pony I don't want to turn inside out, you're my favorite."
Celestia feigned a slight shock and surprise at the revelation and took the opportunity to take yet another step forward. morphing her own expression into her rare smirk, the princess spoke again.
"Oh you have no idea how long I've waited to hear that, I'll have to make sure I tell Luna next time I see her, she'll be so jealous."
Chrysalis's eyes snapped open and her neck shot up, magic dispersing.
"You've been telling Luna about our little encounters? I thought you said this was just a you thing!" The Changeling Queen's expression dropped and her insect ears began to hum as they listened to the forest for approaching sounds. "There's a whole Royal Guard battalion waiting around us isn't there..."
While some concern shot through her mind, something she hoped Chrysalis felt to reassure her of her sincerity, Celestia made sure to diffuse the situation with a hearty laugh, closing the last of the distance between them.
"Of course not Chrysalis, that wouldn't be a very nice hearthswarming gift would it?"
The Changeling Queen's expression turned to perplexment at the sincerity and calm of Celestia's statement, while her meddlesome heart made note of how little space there was now between them.
"Hearthswarming... you came all this way on a holiday just to give me a gift? don't you actually have a nation to rule over?" Chrysalis's emotions ranged to superiority to hurt to confusion as she tried to decide what she wanted that question to mean. Before she could make up her mess of mind however, Celestia, ever the political charmer, simply deflected it with ignorance the changeling knew was a feint.
"Wow, it is certainly colder down here than I thought it would be. The ponyville weather team never fails I suppose..." The Alicorn's emotions ran a gambit of genuine concern suddenly. It was enough that Chrysalis's ears cocked in anticipation, completely forgetting her retorts in her counterpart's shimmering Mane and eyes.
"Are you sure you aren't cold? aren't changelings a little..."
"Exposed? Yes, but it's no worse than the other hardships I've had to endure these years, I am not queen for nothing."
Celestia smiled a soft and clean smile, trying to find Chrysalis's eyes where she had hidden them beneath her ragged silk hair. Oh how she sometimes wished she could be as tough both physically, and mentally.
"Well, that won't do for the holidays, how about a cozy fire?"
For not the first time in their brief exchange Chrysalis panicked and shot an eye through one of the many holes her starved mane had proliferated.
"Fire? No! Your accursed student and her wretched pupil will find me from the smoke!"
"Smoke? Why I'd never." Celestia sported a toothy grin as she lit her own bright yellow aura. There, suddenly off to the side, right in front of the log Chrysalis had been using as her bed, a large flame materialized in yellow aura.
The sudden brightness that filled the night was perhaps the only thing that could have ripped the changeling's gaze away from Celestia's ethereal eyes. Chrysalis's eyes went wide in both shock and wonder as the flames danced across her glassy eyes. It was like a natural instinct to turn towards its warmth and light, and it's clearly magical nature only enhanced its wonder. Gazing up as she rotated to find it, the Changeling queen vaguely noticed the complete lack of ash or smoke from it's ethereal glow. Before she could utter a word out in question or continued protest, her Alicorn companion pre-empted her.
"Being Princess of the Sun has it's perks." Celestia spoke up as she herself maneuvered to stay right alongside, smiling softly across, not down as she had so often to do. "What say you about some fireside Hearthswarming gifts then? I'd hate to come all this way and not give something away..."
Chrysalis grimaced down from her firelit high, but knew she wasn't going to be rid of the Alabaster Alicorn unless she entertained her little games like always. Rolling her eyes, she caught that glimpse of her counterpart's glistening mane and hitched, catching before she spoke again and suppressing all but her anger, as if Celestia could read her like she did others.
"Fine, but don't think I got you anything."
Celestia's smile softened yet more to a level she hadn't expressed for many in so long. When a breeze caught her changeling counterpart's riddled silk mane into her vision, she too had to catch her words before she tumbled them, but recovered as quickly as she had the practice to.
"Oh I wouldn't be so sure, maybe the gift was getting me away from Canterlot."
Chrysalis scoffed and stepped forward, partly out of a desire to increase the distance between her and the Alicorn, and partly to decrease the distance to the succulent heat of the fire.
"Why do even bother again? Was it something about that dumb draconequus and friendship tests?"
"Something like that." Celestia said, catching herself before revealing more and following the changeling's lead over her bed log, standing and feeling the warmth of the fire tingle her fur.
It was a moment before either moved again, embracing the atmosphere of the fire warmth and light snow silence. Chrysalis finally worked up the movement to turn her piercing eyes fully onto Celestia's impassive, impossibly flowing mane and eyes again. An idea worked up her mind and she spat out the words with no change in a hope they would not just break the silence but also this accursed chain of interventions.
"You... do realize I'm plotting revenge against your little student right? and all of her friends?"
To the Queen's surprise, the Princess simply shrugged and met the changeling's eyes with her own, shimmering against the contained, flickering fire.
"As if you wouldn't be, maybe it'll be a nice lesson for her and her friends in weeding out deception, I know Discord has been trying to test Twilight more and more recently, just like I have with you..."
Chrysalis was more confused now than anything, the alicorn had so little care for her evil schemes? She was performing her own on her? How could she have not noticed these tests before? She was certainly slipping, and it showed as her muzzle scrunched again to express the questions.
Celestia only gave another one of those insufferable smirks of hers and spun again, her horn shining again with the movement of a hidden item, her eyes never wandering from Chrysalis's.
"I know Twilight and her friends will come through, and I know you will too, after all, I'd make sure you both did should anything go wrong. Discord and I share much these days..."
Chrysalis glowered at Celestia's smug grin, and a few puzzle pieces fell into place among her mess of a mind.
"So that's how you keep finding me..."
"Well that, and the trail of love sappings isn't too hard to track to the one Changeling I know is out there." Celestia's smile faded into that motherly disappointment frown Chrysalis hated seeing. She was the Queen, not the grub-ling to be mothered anymore.
"You should really stop doing that by the way, it hurts me to see my little ponies and my little bug not get along."
Chrysalis chose to ignore that derogatory, senseless little nickname she disliked almost as much as the Chryssys, and instead shot back with her own best motherly concern expression.
"Well I can't well not eat, and you wouldn't want your "little bug" going hungry now would you?"
Chrysalis attempted to stick her neck out in exaggeration with her eyes shot and face wiggling, but opened them to find Celestia's face stripped of the sad smile and replaced instead with that insufferable, ever present, beautiful grin of hers.
"Of course not, maybe the little bug should look up instead?"
Chrysalis raised a silky brow at the shift, but followed the Alicorn's glowing horn upwards to what the princess was directing her to. There, held aloft between the two, was a pair of small, dark green leaves, held together by a little bushel of red spots. It was a pony tradition Chrysalis recognized all too well, but as her eyes went wide and darted back down her straightening neck to find Celestia's, the Queen found them closed, the Alicorn's own neck extended to hers.
If the changeling's optical receptors could have gone any wider they would have at the contact. Chrysalis was not unfamiliar with pony touch or even this beleaguered kissing ritual, she'd had to do it for that failed Canterlot gambit so many moons ago. But this, this was a whole new world. Celestia's lips were softer than anything the changeling Queen had felt before, and the silky smooth, careful way she had embraced her was an experience wholly foreign. But as Chrysalis felt the love flow through the air and into her nostrils, the strength to think beyond shock returned to her, and the little bug finally understood what that alabaster alicorn had been onto this whole time.
Not wasting a moment to feed as much as a moment to ensure her Celestial partner she was still in control, Chrysalis pressed her own, harder black mouth into Celestia's softer white. And as the warmth of the best love she'd felt in centuries flowed into her senses, joining the warmth of the fire to coat her inside and out, the changeling queen reminisced on the many encounters like this before. Maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't be remiss to more of these "interventions"...