Changeling Drabble

Hope drew close to her father's bedside, his faint condition worsening despite his warm smile and reassurances everything would be 'just fine'. Tears stung her eyes as they flowed freely, her father's hand weakly raising to brush them from her cheek. The very moment she felt his touch on her cheek she clasped the hand dearly, her tears only increasing in intensity. Weakly the man pulled her close, she buried her face in his chest and allowed her sorrow to soak his shirt.

Once allowed to run it's course her emotions waned slightly, granting her the clarity to speak again aside from a frequent sniffling. Her father was beyond the help of the rustic pony medicine, soon to expire from an ailment that defied any cure. This was her last chance, any day now could be his last. Her heavy heart bore a secret, a horrifying, damning secret, one whose revelation might cause her father to shun her in his final moments.

Such an ending would destroy the girl, yet leave the secret unspoken would surely be the greatest regret of her life. There was no other option, yet still she hesitated, as one would with any task certain to bring pain.

Her father was not blind to her inner struggle, as she stared at his chest she mouthed words and false starts, biting her lips and squeaking out small noises.

"Hope, my little girl," he reassures with a soft voice, in his final moments incapable of feeling anything but pride for his young girl. "You can tell me anything. I could never stop loving you."

Perhaps he had expected a tale of illicit love, or of a secret crime.

Instead, a cold fire gently burned away at the stool his daughter sat upon, burning away at her coat and hair and leaving behind black shell and raven hair. A satyr he'd never seen before now hold his hand in his final moments, grasping it so tightly her thin, sharp nails dug into his skin.

"D-dad, [Anon], I met Hope on her adventure three years ago. She... She never made it. I'm sorry."

Silence follows.

Deathly silence.

---

Her eyes shut, her ruby red lip bit so firmly it nearly drew blood, she felt the tears well up anew.

Until she heard the shout of indignation from the bed.

"What?!"

She cast aside her gaze, unable to face her father. His weak grasp grew strong and vice like, with a new vigor he raised himself for the first time in days to face her properly. Cold and accusing, he demanded further explanation, with a nigh breathless "Why?"

"Because I knew how much she meant to you, after you lost your wife so young. I, it was the least l could do, to come home in her stead and keep an old man company. A-and maybe l grew to love you as well, the kind and gener-"

But she was cut short in her tender admission, no such feelings of warmth were reciprocated by the man to whom she confessed. Instead she only received a curt, angry response that wounded her to the core.

"Are you serious?!"

Indifferent, incredulous disbelief. The exact response she had feared, praying against hope for a heartfelt 'l love you too like my own daughter'. No love was given to her in her true form, much as had always been the case. Half changeling, half alien, never truly fitting in. She rose from the seat to quietly exit, meaning to leave the ungrateful man alone in his final hours.

Instead she was yanked back down onto the stool with an unexpected, youthful vigor. The old man threw his sheets back, leaping out of the bed like a spry young man and staring down the girl with an intense, fuming fury.

Her jaw dropped as he burst into flame, self immolating in the same cold fire. His pale skin crisped to a healthier tan, his legs blackened and pinpricks decayed into baseball sized holes. Still smoldering with the magic of transformation, his voice now robust and healthy, he grabbed the befuddled girl at the shoulders and cried out in frustration, partially to himself as well as her.

"Three years! I've been pretending to be a sick old man for three years, just so his daughter could say goodbye!"

---

Disbelief reigned on the girl's face, twisted in the shock of confusion until rage set in and her face bore a deep snarl. She shoved him back, breaking his grip on her and rose to her full height, barely an inch shorter, with her wings fully flared for effect.

"And who the hell asked you too? This was MY moment, this was MY love! Who the hell do you think you are to cheat me of this?"

Wings tightly protected beneath their small shell, shoulders pulled back and ready to fight he spreads his arms wide, eagerly inviting her to throw a punch.

"Who the hell do I think -I- am? Oh, nobody, certainly not the changeling trying to bring home the myriad feast of emotions that a young woman emits while watching her beloved father pass. No, I’m just the sorry jackass that brings home the fake crocodile tears of his half sister!"

She grits her teeth and balls her fists, turning away from her deceiver and stamping the stool hard enough to splinter it's leg. Before it topples over she gives it a mighty kick, sending it flying across the bedroom.

"How do you think I feel? This was a golden, no, fucking platinum setup! A dying father ready to open his heart with all the pride and love owed to his daughter adventuring in his footsteps? That could solely feed the hive for a year!"

"Then what was your little 'oh by the way I’m a changeling' diversion there?"

He sidestepped into her field of vision, her back still turned, gesturing at the smashed stool where she'd sat.

"You know mom loves bittersweet! It's her favorite, bar none. If he -you, fuck you- had taken that bait, that 'I love you too stranger who's cared for me in my last days' that would have tickled Mom for months! Shit, it probably would have went in her private recollection."

Her arms tightly crossed, she faces him with an equally tight neutral expression. He mirrors her, almost a perfect reflection.

"Yeah. Mine too."

Terse silence.

"Nice acting though."

"Thanks, you too."

--------

Chrysalis's dark, mirthful laughter echoed loudly out her cavern and through the tunnels, carrying over even the endless murmur of nearly one hundred drones.

"You can't be serious, you kids can't be serious. You each wasted years on this case, thinking you had struck gold when you were each nibbling on each other's bait?"

Two shamed satyrlings clasped their wrists and studied their own hooves, driving mother into another fit of laughter. Wiping tears from the corners of her eyes she recollected herself, holding back a few straggling giggles to attempt to console the wayward children.

"Don't feel too bad, I suppose this is hardly your fault. Satyr and Anon are such a limited pool of targets to choose from, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. I do regret making more than one of you."

It was a casual, offbeat slight. Chrysalis had meant nothing by it, but the satyrlings felt as though they'd been scythed down in spirit if not in body. Reigning as failures in this hive, coming home without hardly any love to give and being forced to drink from the pool more than their fare share, there was no greater shame. The boy was content to stew in his own failure and redouble his efforts in the coming year, although the girl felt it necessary to stand her ground and attempt to shift blame. She spoke out of turn, her voice meek and nearly unheard.

"So why did you, Queen?"

The Queen, unused to even talking with much of her hive much less being questioned back, tool a second to ponder the question, gently rubbing a hoof in circles around the armrest of her wicked lounge.

"Before you were born, the hive was starving. My plans had failed, my gambit to seize enough love to carry us for a century had failed. Our hive was dry, so few of us were left. And then, they came. Anon, so many Anon. They had no idea, no reservations, they were feasted on so easily."

The boy, the firstborn of he new age, gently nudged his half sister, whispering a quiet 'yeah'.

-------

Chrysalis didn't appreciation the boy's addition to her story, calling him out rather than continuing.

"Oh, well if you remember so keenly then, please, tell your errant sister word for word my exact thoughts."

Stiff with fright, the boy stammers a few false starts before sinking into a proper sentence.

"The uh, Anon, are generally all very lonely. That's what brings most of them here. They latch onto the first scrap of affection they can find, and hold on dearly no matter how sour the relationship turns."

The Queen smiled, settling down into the soft pillows of her lounge and speaking proudly over her two favored children.

"Yes, lonely kissless virgin autists, each and every one of them. They'll marry the first person they kiss and be too insecure to leave until long after they're drained dry of any emotion. They're such easy targets, I fed my children in surplus after a few short years, and wound up creating a handful of you little satyrlings."

This piqued the attention of the children, who only just now came to forget the fear that they'd been summoned to the Queens chamber to be eaten alive. They lost their poses of shame, opening up with curiosity and even daring to take a half step forward.

"More?" They started in unison, the males voice fading to allow the girl to continue. "There're more than just the two of us in the hive?"

Chrysalis sighed, having accidentally let that little gem slip yet not deeming it important enough to hold over their heads.

"Yes, I had one more. A lot of changeling are raised 'wild', so to speak. They grow up thinking they're pony, then all of a sudden puberty hits, they molt off their coats and grow holes where there weren't before. After that it's up to them to follow the faint pheromones on the breezes back to the hive. Some never make it back, some take their time."

The boy posed the next question, one that vexed the girl as well.

"But you stuck with us. Why wouldn't you have stayed with her?"

-----

Fully reclined, the Queen stared at the ceiling, the dark twisting roots of her home. Her face lost any emotion, her lips tight. Too late to change the subject, she regretted once more brazenly lowering her defenses and was grateful that it was merely her children here instead of an invading army.

Not just any children either, not to imply that she didn't love her rank and file dearly. But these two, these special satyrlings, they had different hearts than the rest. Perhaps they would understand what the others couldn't, or perhaps they would only see her as weak. Either way, no lies came easily to her tongue.

Why hadn't she raised her youngest direct child to maturity? Why slip away, feigning death as was her specialty disengagement, long before the man was left a bitter husk? To retreat so shamefully from her duty both to her hive at home and to the young child in the arms of the Anon?

Because he was different, somehow. Her ancient stony heart couldn't have predicted it, and it certainly couldn't have even conceived the notion were possible. But when he held her, when they spoke at length, when they danced long into the hours of the evening and slept until well after the sun rose, she felt something strange. So long had she taken love, stolen it away and taken it by force, she felt for the first time the alien sensation of actually generating it herself.

And when she held that young child in her arms, the little girl that took after him so closely, that odd sensation in her heart turned so bitter and painful that she couldn't believe there wasn't a knife in her side. Knowing that she and her little girl would leave him didn't bring the giggle into her heart as it always had, nothing brought her joy that could compare to staying with him and drinking deeply, and killing him in the process.

Gradually she let the truth slip, grimly spilling her darkest secret.

"Because I don't know how to stay with someone without hurting them."