Queen Chrysalis's Stomping Ground

Queen Chrysalis's Stomping Grounds

Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings and traveling purveyor of fine kitchenware, let loose a sigh as she trodded through the swampy muck of the Everfree forest. She'd been wending her way through the woods for the past three days, after the unfortunate misunderstanding at Canterlot Castle. It's just not fair, she thought. It wasn't her fault that she had a rare and very potent form of Tourette's syndrome! But no matter whose fault it really was, she was doomed to a life of unrequited love and subsequent sexual frustration. "Conswarn it," she muttered under her breath. "Dang blaz it."

She'd been so close! After putting so much effort into suppressing her affliction to maintain her cover in Canterlot, she felt ripped off. All she'd managed to do was cop a feel of Shining Armor's lower back (her hoof-eye coordination was notoriously poor). And the stomachs of three royal guards. And, in a moment of frustration, the leg of a coffee table. She hadn't thought her plan through enough - she wasn't quite clear on what she would do once she was wed to Shining Armor. She would have released Cadence, that much was certain, but what would follow was decidedly uncertain. Though what little semblance of a plan she'd had was shattered, she resolved to send a lovely basket of flowers and a fine wheel of cheese to the happily wed couple.

Passing under a lofty larch tree, she spied, much to her surprise, a pony's hindquarters protruding from a bush. With a muffled cry of success, the pony lurched backward out of the hedge, a plant clenched firmly in its hooves. She landed square on her back. Chrysalis leaned over the pony, a look of concern etched on her face. "Are you alright?" She almost said.

Shrub Grasper lay on the ground, the mighty and terrible Changeling Queen towering over her. "I'll devour your eyeballs," the Queen offered. Shrub Grasper gasped in shock and trembled, tears pooling in her eyes. "No, please! I have so much to live for!" A sad smile lifted the corners of the Queen's mouth. "Quarter-pounder with cheese, and in with a gammy leg," she said, running a caring hoof through the terrified pony's mane. "Riki tiki tavi, mongoose is gone." Gathering all her remaining strength, Shrub Grasper shoved the prized plant into the Queen's hoof, rolled sideways into an upright position, and fled into the underbrush. The Queen sighed and took a bite out of the shrub. It was just another day at the office.

* * *

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Chrysalis was taking a break on the edge of a dinky little glade in the middle of the Everfree. She'd eaten the rest of the shrub for lunch, and supplemented it by sucking dried cheese out of an oven mitt she'd found. She was about to start in on some particularly tasty grass (Changelings weren't supposed to eat grass but it was great soul food) when motion in her peripheral vision alerted her to a foreign presence.

There, but several hundred meters in front of her, an earth pony was gallivanting gaily through the sunny meadow! "Tee hee," he giggled. "Wahoo," he appended to his last. "Yippee," he concatenated to the growing list of things he'd said. Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings and collector of fine Belgian Trappist ales, was struck breathless, incontinent and bankrupt. Even at such a range, his boyish goods were readily apparent. His eyes glinted merrily like the very finest of rhinestones, and his long, golden locks of mane flowed out behind him like the contents of a burst sewage pipe. Jackpot, Chrysalis thought, popping a Smint into her mouth. After taking a second to tizzy-up her mane, she trundled out into the meadow.

Rapid Getaway was bouncing his way through the meadow, as he was wont to do on sunny afternoons, when a strange yet alluring Swiss-cheese pony shot out from the treeline to his left. "Vote Ron Paul," she blathered lamely. An icy cold gripped his heart. "Run away! RUN AWAY!" he shrieked, dropping the two halves of the coconut he'd been carrying. "Fuckbiscuits," Chrysalis whined as she reached the middle of the meadow, watching him disappear into the woods. Another missed opportunity! "What a maroon," she lamented, flopping into the grass in despair. After wallowing in misery for a good quarter of an hour, she was roused from her anguish by a strange rustling in the grass, which seemed to be coming toward her.

"Shit, I love coconut," mumbled the Disability Fairy, emerging from a tuft of grass. Chrysalis, reaching out a hoof, grasped the fairy. Somehow. "Oh, Jesus," gushed the fairy. "I should have god damned known, shouldn't I?" He considered his captor for a moment. "Say, you wanna swap your Tourette's for something else?" Chrysalis, not trusting herself to speak the right reply, nodded vigorously. "Okay then," said the fairy, taking his fedora off and reaching into it. He pulled out a piece of paper and, after reading it for a second, waved his magic wand. "You now have a crippling phobia of filing cabinets! Congratulations!" Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings and three-times tennis champion of Phillydelphia, let out an evil laugh. Nothing would stop her now, short of a filing cabinet.

* * *

It was a cold morning. Partridge Herder shivered as he patrolled along the perimeter of the Everfree forest. One of his beloved partridges had gone missing in the night, and it was up to him to track it down. There was something wrong with the forest this morning. It smelled... musky. He laughed nervously at his own anxiety. It wasn't like anything was waiting in the forest to molest him or anything! That was just crazy.

He sniffed the air again. Now he smelled... peppermint? A twig snapped behind him. Whirling around, he found himself face to face with Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings and Manehatten Chef of the Year. "Daaaaamn, you fine," she whispered. Faced with such a terror, Partridge vacated his bladder and fell onto his side. Chrysalis leaned in closer.

"Kissy kissy."