Colibri stood, looked in the mirror, and then adjusted her pith helmet to a rakish angle. Real adventurers wore pith helmets. Adventurers like Daring Do. Daring Do, who was her hero and could do no wrong. Daring Do, who was perfect in every way.
Even if both of Colibri’s parents hated her and said she gave a bad name to archaeologists everywhere. Colibri wanted to be just like her.
She studied herself in the mirror, examining her potential to be a great adventurer. In the mirror, she saw a unicorn with a shimmering blue pelt, a blue-green mane, and bright magenta eyes. Her cutie mark was a hummingbird, and her special talent was flight, which was odd for a unicorn. The pith helmet had to have a hole bored through it to allow for her horn.
“Colibri is a terrible name for an adventurer,” she said to herself. “I should call myself something worthy of Daring Do. Like… I dunno…” She fell silent and began to think, knowing that she had precious little time. Daring Do was going to be at the museum today, and Colibri was going to stand in line so she could meet her idol. “I should be close to Daring. Real close. Like… Courage! C is right next to D!”
She beamed at herself, looking pleased. She was a young filly, on the cusp of young adulthood. She was bright, she thought herself adventurous, and as a flying unicorn, she believed she was well suited to being an adventurer.
Her parents were gone, off on some dig somewhere. They had left her in the care of the butler, who was currently on vacation she believed. He had simply gone out the front door and had not returned. Colibri was not worried. She was a big filly and could look after herself. She had stopped the fire in the kitchen before there was any real damage.
She had her canvas saddlebags, her action harness with D rings, clips, as well as lanyards for attaching all manner of things, and her pith helmet, set at a proper rakish angle. She was good to go.
Colibri strolled through downtown Equistar, a city in the grand empire of Saddle Arabia, the place were her parents were assigned to work by the Royal Academy of Science back home in Equestria. The day was hot, but not too hot, not by local standards anyway, and Colibri was glad for her pith helmet. Equines of all kinds lived here. The horses of Saddle Arabia, the ponies of Equestria, and the zebras from the Sea of Grass. She moved through the crowded streets, mostly unnoticed, her eyes darting from side to side as she took in everything she could. She loved this city.
She continued her way to the museum, darting and weaving between crowds, tempted to fly but remaining on the ground. Summoning her hummingbird wings was useful, but it altered her metabolism considerably, and she had to eat a great deal of food, sweets in particular, to keep the spell going. Her wings allowed her to hover, to dart, to flit, and to fly very very fast, very much like a hummingbird. She was the only unicorn to ever graduate pegasus flight camp. She had even received a special medal of commendation from Spitfire, the leader of the Wonderbolts, recognising her marvelous flight abilities. Every year at least one pony in flight camp received that medal, and Colibri had worked very, very hard to make sure it had been her on her graduating year.
There was a large crowd of equines all around the museum. Colibri began to wonder how she was going to get inside. The line was very long. Her lip protruded in a pout of disappointment, she had been very careful to get here early, and her efforts were for naught.
This calls for an adventurous swear she thought to herself.
“Oh… fudge!” she swore, causing an older mare to turn around and glare at her with one raised eyebrow and a very disapproving look. Colibri immediately felt just awful about what she had done and hung her head in shame. “Oh drats, that didn’t go well at all,” she muttered to herself, feeling very cross and let down by her own behaviour.
She stood, waiting in line, her lip still protruding, feeling rather let down by her own appalling behaviour. Her first real attempt at swearing hadn’t gone nearly as well as she had hoped. She wanted shock and surprise. She received disappointment and dismay. Adventurers were supposed to swear. Already, she felt like a failure.
She stood, slumped in shame, unsure if she was fit to meet Daring Do.
Suddenly, there was a commotion in the crowd, shouts and screams happening all around her. Ponies began to panic, horses began to holler, and the zebras began to zigzag as they all tried to get away. There was a ruckus, and Colibri found herself in the middle of it all.
Ahuizotl appeared, charging through the crowd, running away with a package grasped in the hand at the end of his tail. He snarled and growled, causing the crowd to disperse. He was charging right at Colibri.
“OH FARTS!” Colibri swore, using the worst F-word she could think of. She nearly swooned from her own vulgarity, and felt light headed as she tried to scramble away from the rampaging Ahuizotl.
Daring Do zipped past, flying after Ahuizotl in hot pursuit.
Colibri could not believe her luck. Here was her chance to make a difference.
“Hey, move aside dimwit!”
“Yeah, get out of our way dumdum!”
“Scram stinkbrain!”
Oh no Colibri thought to herself. The heckling hyenas! Ahuizotl’s horrible heckling hench animals!
They they were, larger than life, the horrible heckling hyenas.
“Your mother’s cooking is so bad that even I wouldn’t eat it!”
Oh that was just uncalled for!
Colibri summoned her wings and took off after Daring Do, determined to help her hero out of this terrible trouble that had just happened.
She buzzed over the crowds, her legs tucked against her body tightly, her wings an incandescent blur of movement. As she flew over the crowd, her wake caused hats to fly away, and even one wig. Alas, Colibri had no time to stop and apologise. There was a villain to help stop. She flew around lamp posts, in between streetside stalls, around corners, easily keeping up with Daring Do and the arch fiend Ahuizotl. This was much easier than she thought it was going to be.
And then, everything went horribly wrong.
Ahuizotl lifted the cover off of a sewer entrance, waved, and then disappeared down the hole. Daring Do tucked in her wings and shot down the hole, disappearing as well. Colibri landed near the hole and peered inside.
“No!” she protested. In all of the books she had read about Daring Do, Daring Do had never crawled through a sewer. Didn’t she know what was in a sewer? There was a terrible stink rising from the hole. Colibri stomped her hooves on the street and nearly cried from frustration.
There was poop in sewers!
“Oh this is awful! Adventurers don’t crawl through… through… -ugh- the horribleness that is down there in the hole!” she exclaimed.
Still, Daring Do had gone down the hole.
“Well Courage, time to embrace your new identity!” she said to herself.
Courage dropped down the hole and landed with a splash.
“OH YUCK! THE WATER IS LUMPY!”
Courage unsummoned her wings. She couldn’t fly down here. She ignited her horn, needing light, and began to follow after the sounds she heard from somewhere up ahead. She was walking knee deep in lumpy water. She was not pleased at all with her current situation. The smell was awful, just awful. She could hear the squeaking of what she just knew was rats.
She followed the twisting passages and went down what she hoped was the right forks. In no time at all, she was hopelessly lost. She heard shouting ahead, angry shouting, and a ferocious growl. She hurried onward, trying to keep up with the sounds in the distance.
She slipped and fell, actually submerging in the water, and when she finally was able to stand again, she began to cry. She spat the horrible liquid out of her mouth, and began to sob as she continued forward, now completely filthy from hoof to ear, and she had tasted it. Life just wasn’t fair.
The darkened passages forked ahead, and she went down the left path. Eventually, she reached a raised platform where there was no sewage. She climbed out and shook herself off, still crying and utterly traumatised from her experience.
“Is something there?” a voice inquired.
Cold fear crept through Courage. The simple truth was, she was anything but brave. She sniffled and tried to stop crying, straining her ears to hear the voice again.
“Please don’t hurt me, I don’t mean any harm,” the voice begged.
“Hello?” Courage called.
“Really, I am harmless, I think I am dying, I came down here because all the equines up above were so afraid of me,” the voice replied.
Courage stumbled ahead, and, in the distance, tucked away in a dark corner, there was a small black insectoid figure.
OH GROSS! BUGS! she thought to herself. She was terrified of bugs. She had a genuine phobia. She felt panic began to ripple through her body.
“What are you?” Courage asked, prancing in place, utterly terrified of what she saw.
“I am a changeling,” the creature responded.
“What is a changeling? You look like a bug!” Courage stated.
“I am a bug, but please don’t squash me, I beg you!” the bug pleaded.
“You said you are dying?” Courage asked.
“I think I am. I am so weak I cannot move. My kind feed on love. And nothing loves me. I came down here to die,” the bug admitted.
“That’s… awful,” Courage muttered. “I don’t want you to die. I never actually squash bugs, usually I lift them up very carefully and take them outside. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“I need to feed,” the bug replied.
“How do I feed you?” Courage asked.
“I need love,” the bug stated, his voice very weak.
“Um,” Courage murmured.
Courage pondered her next move. The bug was horrendously icky ucky, but it was also dying, and Courage was a good pony that didn’t actually want anything to die. This was not a good day for her. She had witnessed a crime, crawled into a sewer, been dunked in sewage, and now, she was about to hug a bug. This day just couldn’t get any worse.
“I am covered in sewage,” Courage confessed.
“So am I,” the bug replied.
Courage came forward, close enough to the bug to really get a good look. It was almost like a pony, just a little bit smaller than she was, insectoid, it had wings, and a little unicorn-like horn. She felt immense pity for it. Its eyes were dim and almost lifeless.
Courage closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was going to be yucky. She settled down upon her haunches, extended her forelegs, and gave the bug a hug. She squeezed and hummed to make a pleasant inviting sound, just like her mother did.
The bug twitched in her embrace.
She squeezed a little more and then rubbed her cheek against the bug’s horrible face for good measure. The bug made an odd chittering sound and she could feel it vibrate in her embrace.
Courage realised it was a boy bug. And boys… boys were icky. Ugh, this day just couldn’t get any worse. She could feel two chitinous forelegs wrap around her body and she tried to hold back her shudders of revulsion.
“I feel so much better… I feel alive… Oh thank you very much!” the bug said in gratitude. “I thought I was going to die.”
“I have to go catch a villain and catch up to my idol, Daring Do,” Courage said.
“Take me with you!” the bug begged. “You have so much love… I don’t want to die. I just started to live. I broke free of the hivemind and ran away. I want to see the world.”
“Hmm,” Courage murmured. “I could use a companion. What is your name?”
“I don’t have a name,” the bug replied.
“Well, then, I shall have to name you,” Courage said thoughtfully.
The bug looked at her hopefully.
“How about Loyal? You can be my Loyal companion!” Courage chirped.
“Loyal. I can be Loyal,” the bug, now Loyal, replied.
“Well then,” Courage said, giving Loyal one more extra squeezy hug, “let’s go catch us a bad guy! He’s a monster called Ahuizotl and he isn’t very nice at all.’”
Loyal squeezed his new friend back and nodded, ready to begin the adventure.
Courage and her new faithful companion Loyal trudged through the sewer, trying to find the source of the noises up ahead. It sounded like there was a fight. There was angry swearing, grunting, the occasional scream, and then there was diabolical laughter.
Courage didn’t like the diabolical laughter. She wished it would stop. It made her want to have a wee. Which really was a difficult thing really, considering what she was standing in, she could in fact have a wee and it would make very little difference. Except that it wouldn’t be very brave.
Loyal stayed close, every step getting a little stronger, the shine coming back to his bulbous insectoid eyes. Sometimes, a hug was all you needed to get you going again, especially if you were a changeling. The difficulty was, most ponies didn’t hug bugs. The pony-changeling hug was a rare occurrence, probably because most changelings tried to feed on love by force. Had they simply asked…
“I’ve seen better plots in a cemetery!”
“Oh no!” Courage exclaimed to Loyal. “The heckling hyenas have joined their evil master, Ahuizotl! We have to rescue her, the heckling hyenas never say anything nice!”
“Hey, why did the pegasus cross the road?”
Meanies! Courage fumed internally.
“Because everybody knows pegasi taste like chicken!”
Oh no! They wouldn’t!
“I bet she’s all stringy. I say we slow roast roast her.”
Oh no! They would!
There was the sound of a scuffle somewhere ahead in the many forking tunnels.
“Hurry Loyal!” Courage urged.
The pair slogged through the river of muck as quickly as they could, the sound growing closer and closer. The soupy goop was moving faster now, having really picked up speed. Courage’s horn gave off a blue glow while Loyal’s horn gave off a green glow, lighting the way ahead with a blue-green light.
“I have a very hard shell. I am durable in a fight, but I am a worker drone. Not a soldier. I don’t know how much use I will be,” Loyal said as they hurried forward.
“I have my zapper,” Courage said. “And I learned a few spells from my mother. A sticky spell and a greasy spell.”
“You hit like a girl!”
“Yeah! A girl with a salad bowl on her head!”
“I am going to do something very unladylike to them!” Courage shouted.
The duo rounded a corner and saw sunlight up ahead. There was also a crowd of several heckling hyenas and a very battered looking Daring Do, who wobbled about unsteadily. One wing looked broken.There was no sign of Ahuizotl.
“Here! Take this!” Daring Do instructed as she threw a small bundle to Courage. “Get this to Dr. Biscotti in the city of Galloping Gulf, down along the coast!”
The heckling hyenas snarled and growled, seeing their prize fly through the air. Courage caught it with her magic. Daring Do lunged at them and began to pummel them with her forehooves.
Courage summoned her wings and charged ahead, hoping she could clear the melee fracas. Loyal surged ahead of her and slammed into a the pack of hyenas like a battering ram. They flew apart like bowling pins before a bowling ball.
“I don’t remember being this strong before,” Loyal said in surprise.
“Good luck!” Daring Do said. “Remember, Dr. Biscotti in Galloping Gulf!”
Courage lept from the sewer pipe, a heckling hyena hot on her heels. There was a one hundred foot drop down a cliff to a sewage lagoon far below. She flew away, but the heckling hyena did not, and he fell downward, yelping as he fell.
Courage winced, knowing that the poor hyena was going to get a really big booboo.
Loyal buzzed along beside her, and Courage could hear Daring Do dealing with the last few heckling hyenas behind her. Courage stuffed the package into her saddlebag and soared skywards, already beginning to feel a bit peckish. There was no way she could fly to the coast, and she really needed a bath or a shower. She was stinky and so was Loyal.
The house was just as she left it and the carefully flew down the halls, trying not to touch anything with her filthy hooves. Loyal buzzed behind her, hovering.
“I am going to take a shower. You can take one too when I am done. Do you eat actual food as well as love Loyal?”
“I don’t need food, but I can eat it. I don’t get very much energy from it though,” Loyal responded in tired voice. “I don’t understand why you are being so nice to me.”
“Because,” Courage responded. “I would want somepo- well, I would want whomever found me in the sewer almost dead to be nice to me and save me, so how could I not do it for you?”
Loyal’s eyes glowed brighter for a moment, and his wings buzzed a little louder. “You are very kind,” Loyal gushed. “Thank you.”
“Something just happened. I saw your eyes flash. What was that?” Courage asked.
“I felt a burst of love,” Loyal answered.
“Oh,” Courage gasped, a faint blush hidden behind her pelt. “I try to be nice to every single thing I meet. It just seems right. I suppose I would even be nice to the heckling hyenas if they gave me a chance. I am going to take a shower now before I die from embarrassment.”
The unicorn filly paused for a moment and then spoke: “Loyal, you can be my moral compass so I will never become lost.”
Courage slipped off to the shower, thinking about her own profound words.
The train had very few passengers. Courage sat with her pith helmet beside her. She had tried to clean it as best as she could, using magic. It still had a peculiar aroma. Loyal sat in the seat across from her, covered in a cloak that covered him completely and a hood that covered his head. He looked almost like a pony. Loyal had mentioned the ability to change his appearance, but he wasn’t strong enough just yet.
They had showered and fled the house before anything might have found them.
Galloping Gulf was a city on the edge of the Saddle Arabian empire, and it was considered one of the great harbours of the world. The train would take them there in just a few days. It just felt proper, riding a train, going on a good adventure, riding in unparalleled comfort and dignity. This was certainly better than stomping through a sewer. Anything was better than stomping through a sewer. Stomping through a jungle was on the to do list and stomping through a foreign library looking for clues seemed like a good idea, but might be considered slightly rude.
Yes Courage thought to herself, adventurers belong on trains. Something just feels right about adventuring and trains.
Daring Do after all, even though she was a pegasus, had all of her best adventures and even some of her biggest fights on trains. One Daring Do book started when Daring Do boarded a train, and ended when she had disembarked, the entire novel taking place entirely on the train, and a great mystery had been resolved. A priceless treasure had been recovered. They had been burning mummies in place of coal. Mummies! Priceless artifacts that belonged in a museum. Daring Do had found and saved the priceless mummy of Trottencommon the Secondyfifth.
Courage hoped that there would be no fights on this train. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that just yet. That might spoil the mood.
“So tell me about yourself Loyal,” Courage said in a low curious voice.
“Like what?” Loyal replied.
“Like, everything,” Courage answered.
“One day, I just woke up. I don’t know what happened, or how it happened, but I lost my connection to the hivemind. The shared mind we all have. We all share memories and experiences. We don’t need to spend as much time learning as other species, because we have entire lifetimes of experiences that we pass on to each new generation, the memories of every other changeling that has come before. Hard to remember them all though. So the necessary experiences come as we need them, when the situation demands them. Otherwise, it just stays in the mind of the hive-mother.”
“Do go on.”
“It was just gone. And then my hive mates realised that I was no longer connected and they tried to turn me into hive wax. I had to escape. I didn’t want to be hive wax. I didn’t want what made me as a creature used to contribute to the next generation. I had to subdue my former hive mates and escape. I came to the city. I was not made welcome. Many tried to hurt me. And then you came along.”
“I am sorry that my kind tried to hurt you,” Courage apologised.
“Well, my kind and your kind have been enemies for a long time. They were right to hate me. We’ve done bad things to them,” Loyal sighed.
“You shouldn’t be hated for what you are. You can’t help that you are a changeling. You shouldn’t have to pay for what they have done. That is just wrong,” Colibri said, feeling more like herself rather than her new hard boiled persona. “I am really very sorry for how my kind reacted. We ponies are known for our tolerance. They should’ve known better.”
“One pony was tolerant and did do the right thing,” Loyal replied.
Colibri blushed, and this one was visible through her pelt. She meeped in embarrassment.
“My kind will probably never stop looking for me. They came for me once again in the city. And I doubt your kind will ever allow me to live in peace,” Loyal mumbled, his voice low and sad.
“I will keep you safe if I can. From the other bugs and ponies. You’re my friend. You are my only friend. Other ponies think I am really weird. They’re not very tolerant of me. I have big dreams and everypony laughs at them. My parents laugh at me all the time and tell me I am going through a phase, and that I will grow out of it. I keep getting told I need to grow up and take life seriously. Unicorns are supposed to be prim and proper and little unicorn fillies don’t go on adventures,” Colibri said bitterly.
“I know one unicorn filly that waded through a river of unmentionable filth in a sewer, found a near dead changeling, and then Daring Do asked her to take a package to Dr. Biscotti. That sounds like an adventure,” Loyal pointed out.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Colibri replied, perking up. “Thanks Loyal.”
The changeling once again felt a strong surge of power flow though him, stronger than any feeling ever before when he had fed off of the love of others. He did not know that that love directed towards him was a much stronger force than leaching away love directed at another.
The simple love of friendship was a powerful force, and Loyal was ignorant of its properties.
The second and third day on the train were mostly just plain boring. Colibri and Loyal where getting to know one another quite well. They had passed the time talking and sharing stories about their lives.
The changeling no longer needed his cloak. He took the appearance of a custard yellow pegasus with a dark orange mane. The cloak was carefully folded and tucked into a saddlebag. The pair ate together in the dining car, slept near one another with their chairs reclined backwards, and over the short period of time became very close. Colibri entrusted Loyal with her secrets, and Loyal discovered that he had a reliable source of food that he did not feel guilty about feeding off of. Love was being offered, not taken.
The train pulled into Galloping Gulf and the passengers began to disembark.
Courage wore her now battered looking pith helmet and began to make her way through the crowd, Loyal behind her in his pegasus form. Courage realised she had no way of knowing where to find Dr. Biscotti, and this city was huge. Impossibly large. She didn’t even know where to begin looking for Dr. Biscotti.
The city was vast and stretched from horizon to horizon.
