We Always Hurt the Ones We Love
One year after the failed invasion of Canterlot. That’s how long it took for changelings to even dare to come out of hiding.
Ponies had been mistrustful at first, and rightfully so. Changelings are a sort of… vampire, or at the very least, vampire-ish. Vampire-esque?
Compounded with their less than full-equine appearance, it was easy to see why the populace at large back then – and still to this day, for that matter – were a little reticent to accept changelings into mainstream society. It took countless pleas and petitions on their behalf from the government to make even the small amount of headway we have. I remember one of the first positive things I’d ever heard about a changeling had been off of a flier somepony had stuck onto my door.
“They only want your love!” was what it said.
And it was true. For centuries their kind had lived in the shadows, feeding off ambient love in the air, sometimes daring to take the shape of somepony and assuming their lives for an afternoon so they could feed off their victim’s loved ones. It was deceitful, but harmless, for the most part. Just a little bit of love, a psychic energy that Equestrians have in spades. We have an entire Empire to the North that produces the stuff as their main export, in fact. They send it in waves over the land like radio signals – love, literally in the air.
Chrysallis was gone. Killed by whatever magic Shining Armor and the princess had used to turn her and her children out of Canterlot. With no leader they were aimless, but most importantly, harmless. She was their ambition, the thing that spurred them to cruelty. Changelings may look odd, but deep down they’re creatures of passion and love.
Who could hate somepony that only wants to be loved?
“Honey,” my wife said to me as she placed a hoof on my side and gently shook me. Her voice always made the hairs on the back of my neck vibrate in a pleasant way. It reminded me of the tickle you get in your throat from humming. “It’s time to get up. You have work today.”
“No I don’t,” I replied testily. I rolled over, opening my mouth in a yawn so mighty it made my jaw click.
“Yes, you do,” she giggled. I love her giggle. There was something sexual in the innocence of her giggle. Though, to be fair, there was something sexual in everything she did, at least from my perspective. “Now you get up, Blue Bevel, and get to work. The weekend doesn’t start until tomorrow.”
I felt her get out of bed and heard the sharp click of her hooves against the hardwood floors. I’m a carpenter by trade and by Mark. I put those floors in myself.
I yawned again. She was right. I would have to get up. So I did. Twenty minutes later I was washed, dried, and ready to go. When I went downstairs I found my wife standing in front of the stove, the dark green magic of her horn gripping the pan as she watched the eggs sizzle.
The sunlight filtered in through the window, contrasting with the beautiful onyx of her carapace. I traced the outline of her body with my eyes. My wife was slender, but she still had curves enough to turn anypony’s head. I stared at her flank as she wiggled side to side in a little dance as she cooked my breakfast. She was humming some romantic nothing we’d heard on the radio.
“Oh, there we are,” she moaned suddenly. Her tiny, pink tongue darted out of her mouth, wetting her dark black lips. She turned her head and shot a look over her shoulder, her wings buzzing excitedly, communicating an insectoid signal that had been lost on me until she’d explained its meaning months into our courtship.
“Breakfast for you,” she said as the pan levitated off the fire and deposited its contents onto a plate. “And breakfast for me,” she added as she licked her lips again. “Let’s keep it light, though, okay, honey? I don’t want you to be late.”
I nodded and sat down with my wife. I looked into her eyes as I ate, thinking aloud in my head how much I loved her and how beautiful she was to me. Suddenly she reached forward and grabbed my hoof, concern clear on her face in those big, beautiful, icy-blue eyes of hers.
“Honey, you’ve got bags under your eyes,” she said with concern. “Did you not sleep at all? I didn’t keep you up too late last night, did I?”
“I enjoyed every second of it,” I told her.
“That’s not the point. You need your sleep, baby. Maybe I could just… pretend to be you? I could change and go to work for you and nopony would be the wiser. Then you could stay and get some sleep.”
I laughed. Louder than I intended to. “Do you know what a dovetail is? How about the difference between a box nail and a finishing nail?”
She frowned. Cutely. Everything she did, she did cutely.
“You’d be surprised how well I could fake being you if I really tried,” she said, intensifying her frown’s cuteness until it was a fully-fledge adorable-pout.
An adorapout.
“Even still, I’ll be fine,” I assured her.
She didn’t look convinced, but whatever. I pulled back my hoof and picked up the knife and fork with my fetlocks. I stabbed the fork into the eggs, piercing the yolk until it oozed out like yellow blood. I tore into the wounded egg with my knife, slicing it to ribbons.
The knife was sharp. As I ate my eggs, I couldn’t stop staring at it. I traced the outlines of the thing with my eyes. The edge was straight and thin – as knives were – and sloped gently, like the soft curve of my wife’s rear, before tapering at the end into a sharp little point.
So sharp.
It wouldn’t even hurt, it was so sharp. I could stick it into my throat, right up to the grip, wouldn’t feel a thing. If I stuck it in sideways it would get the artery, maybe cut the esophagus, the vocal chords, all of it. It wouldn’t even hurt.
The hiss of something being sliced filled the air. I looked up from the knife. My wife was reading a newspaper. She had a pair of scissors floating in the grip of her magic, cutting out coupons for Barnyard Bargains.
That was a good price for oat bran cereal. The good stuff. The one with the cartoon goat dressed up like a mayor that ‘votes for oats’. I love that goat that votes for oats.
I finished my eggs, kissed my wife goodbye, and headed for the door.
* * *
“You look like shit.”
I took a bite of my sandwich, ignoring the idiot of a best friend sitting next to me at the benches next to the food cart. He was an earth pony, like me, but sometimes he was such a prick it made me think he might’ve been a pegasus that had just lost his wings somehow.
“I’m just tired,” I told him. My sandwich was good. Toasted bread, crisp, moist lettuce, juicy tomato.
“Why so tired?”
I took another bite, unsure what to say. Not the truth. Never that. But he was my best friend, so also never a lie.
“Wife kept me up.” That was true. But not really. We’d had sex and gone to bed early. We always have sex and go to bed early.
Sex makes me tired.
“Must be tiring having to keep that little lady of yours fed all the time,” he chuckled. I didn’t have to be a changeling to sense the nasty thoughts probably cropping up in his mind. Dirty though he was, at least he wasn’t one of those bigots that hated changelings. “Maybe I should get a nice little changeling wifey. Trade in the nag I got now for something sleek and black. It’d sure cut down on the grocery bills. Cilia got any sisters?”
“A few hundred,” I said with a shrug. I took a bite.
He whistled, whether it was because he was impressed or because he was being wolfish, I couldn’t tell. “I banged twins once,” he lied as he stuffed burrito into his mouth. Wolfish. “Can’t imagine what it’d be like to have a two-hundredsome.”
A loud, rumbling, grating sound filled the air. It was deep, like the roar of rocks tumbling down a mountainside, and powerful enough to rattle my teeth in my skull.
The source of the noise turned out to be a wheat thresher. Our job for the day had taken us to the outer edge of town, near some farms, and one of the farmers had started up his thresher. He hadn’t gotten the memo about it being lunchtime.
The machine was huge, some complicated-looking minotaur-made thing that belched smoke and noise. The steel was painted a bright orange that gleamed in the sun. It ran on oil, I think. I wasn’t a farmer, or a mechanic. It looked expensive, but the way it tore through the wheat being pitched into it by the farmer and his assistant made it seem worth whatever the cost was.
The thing had a big spinning drum on it, made of blades that rotated so quickly that it was hard to even tell it was spinning. It just looked like a single, solid drum, it spun so fast. Everything that went in got chopped up, coming out the top of the machine in bits tossed into a giant container.
I wondered if those blades could cut bone. What would I look like coming out the top of the machine, sprayed everywhere like confetti? Would that ruin the wheat, I wonder? I imagine they could just wash it. That way the farmer wouldn’t lose any bits. He could just rinse me out of his machine and down a drain.
“Finish your sandwich and let’s go!” my best friend said as he clapped his hoof against my back. He had to shout directly into my ear to be heard. It hurt. “That machine is loud as shit and that patio ain’t going to build itself!”
* * *
That night I dreamed about the thresher.
It wasn’t orange in my dream. It was black. The color of my wife’s carapace.
In the dream I was a giant, or the thresher was smaller. Either could’ve been true.
I did something to the thresher that, were I awake, I definitely would not have enjoyed. But something about the act in the dream felt wonderful, orgasmic even. The danger, the pain, the feel of something vital and life-sustaining leaving my body in enormous spurts. My consciousness faded in the dream. I was dying, but I was glad to die. It felt wonderful.
When I woke up I was on my back and felt something wet around my cock. I panicked for a moment, wondering if maybe it hadn’t been a dream. I threw off the covers and Cilia was between my legs, her mouth over my dick.
Sucking, slurping, licking.
Changelings aren’t hard all over. They have a strong exoskeleton, like all insectoid creatures, but they aren’t hard everywhere.
The feel of her soft, plump lips sliding lovingly over my erection was beyond expression. She hummed as she went, trilling by vibrating some vocal organ that her species had that ponies didn’t. It was meant to aid in communication with the rest of her hive, but it could also allow a changeling to give mind-erasingly powerful hummers.
She trilled as she bobbed her head faster and faster. The vibration filled my entire groin, tickling my balls pleasurably. She was mindful of her fangs, always mindful, but the feel of sharp, dangerous teeth so close to my sex was always present. It was exciting. Terrifying.
“You came in your sleep, baby,” she said as she pulled me out of her mouth. She coyly batted my cock against the side of her face, smiling cutely as she slapped herself with my sex organ. “It made such a mess that I had to clean it up for you.” She stuck her tongue out, circling the flare of my dick. “What a good provider you are, making me breakfast in bed.”
She popped one of my testicles into her mouth and trilled again.
I laid my head back on the pillow, closed my eyes, and tried not to think about the horrific dream that had made me cum all over our sheets.
* * *
The little plastic chairs in the recreation center were uncomfortable, but you wouldn’t tell from the smiles of the stallions and mares sitting all around me. All smiles. Smiles, smiles, smiles.
Smiles for miles.
“My darling wife is so attentive,” one mare said. She was a pegasus. I didn’t care enough to notice more. “She’s so loving. So attentive. I’ve never had a pony lover that even cared half as much about making me happy.”
“Damn right,” a big unicorn said from the punch table. He stomped a hoof loudly on the cheap, scuffed linoleum and took a swig from one of the dinky little plastic cups. I think the cups were made from the same plastic as the chairs.
I wondered what it would be like to sit in one of those cups.
“It’s so difficult, though,” another unicorn near the front of the room interjected. “There’s still so many ponies that treat changelings different from other ponies. They’re just the same as we are. Maybe better!”
There was a general hum of agreement that didn’t sound like words, but the tone of the hum sound agreeable. It was like changeling noises. Messages without words. Just a noise that everypony made at each other and understood instinctually.
Though wasn’t that what words were? No, that wasn’t instinctual. Was it? Learned behavior, I think. I’m no linguist, at any rate. I make patios.
“They’re so ignorant!” an earth pony exclaimed. “And you just can’t tell who might secretly be a speciesist! Why, when I came out to my parents and said ‘Mom and dad, I’m dating a changeling,’ you should have seen the tantrum they threw! It’s nopony’s business but mine who I choose to love!”
Everypony trilled at one another in agreement.
“That’s why I’m so glad I found this support group for ponies in changeling relationships!” the same earth pony proclaimed. “It’s fantastic to finally be amongst civilized, intelligent ponies that understand how magical a pony-changeling romance can be!”
Trill! Trill, trill! Callooh callay!
“What about you, friend?” the mare sitting next to me asked. She had a smile as wide as a mile – happy as can be was this pony.
I was holding a cup. I didn’t remember getting one, but I had one. I took a sip.
Cherry. From concentrate.
“I love my wife.”
Everypony went, “Awwwwwww~!” That wasn’t a trill. It was an awwwwwww. But same thing. I think.
“I haven’t been sleeping good,” I added. “Well,” I corrected.
Equish is important. Lots of rules. Things about stuff. Fragments and punctuations; grammar. Like building a house.
I think, anyway. I’m no linguist. I make patios.
Everypony went quiet. No trill? What a thrill. I felt giddy, but I don’t know why.
“I think I’m really tired.”
I looked around. Everypony in the room was staring. Their smiles were dead. They’d died on the faces of the ponies looking at me, curled up and fallen to the ground like a dead bug drying out in the summer sun.
“I’m tired, too,” that pegasus mare from earlier said. Her head hung low, but I could see just enough of her face to notice the heavy, dark rings under her eyes. “I thought it was just me…”
The rest of the support group began looking around nervously. Nopony had brought their changeling significant other with them today.
“I thought about killing myself on the way here…” the stallion with the judgmental parents admitted. He was shivering. “And this morning… and last night… and the day before…”
They all looked around again and found that we were alone. We were alone together.
Probably.
They began to trill again. It was a new trill. It was sad, and painful.
“I love my wife,” I repeated. It was true. I loved her with all my heart.
They trilled in agreement. They loved their wives and husbands, fillyfriends and coltfriends. We loved our changelings.
Trill, trill... What a thrill...
“I’m very tired.” I think I said. It could’ve been anyone, but it was maybe me.
I’m no linguist. I make patios.
* * *
“These fucking things,” the big unicorn from the meeting growled. He banged a hoof against the bar angrily. “We trusted them, and look at where it got us.”
He was keeping quiet. We were in a bar – a public place. There were ears in the walls and eyeballs on the shelves.
“We don’t know that it’s our changelings,” I explained as I drank my beer.
“The fuck else could it be?” he hissed. He banged his hoof against the bar again. “What do we even know about them? They eat love? The fuck does that mean?”
“That they eat love.”
”How? How are they eating love? In fact, don’t even think about that. Think about this instead for a second. They’re feeding off us. Taking something away to sustain themselves, like how griffons take meat off of cows and pigs and bunnies. You’re going to sit there and tell me that taking something from us – from our minds and hearts – isn’t going to hurt us?”
I chugged my beer. Nursing beers was for college girls and freshponies.
“Nopony ever complained about weirdly sexual dreams or thoughts of hurting themselves over the thousands of years changelings lived among us in secret.”
“That’s the thing,” he insisted. He banged his hoof. “For thousands of years, they were taking love out of the air, ambient stuff that wasn’t directed at anypony.”
“Except when they were disguising themselves as somepony else,” I pointed out. The beer wasn’t helping my sleepiness, but it did make me feel like I was thinking clearer, so I had some more.
“And when they did that they were feeding on love meant for somepony else!” he said in triumph, his thesis proven. “You don’t know what happens when they’re feeding on love directed at them. Who knows what kind of magical feedback there is? What could that be doing to the psychic tether that lets them feed on us? We’re the first ponies who’ve ever tried to love a changeling for who they are, instead of who they could pretend to be! We’re the canaries in the kinky interspecies-sex coal mine!”
“What do you know about changeling magic?” I asked with a huff. I had more head-clear-fuel. I better was sharper already thinking.
“Hello?” He tapped his horn. “I’m a unicorn. I know magic.”
“Princess Twilight Sparkle knows more about magic, and she said we should co-exist with changelings.”
“Princess Twilight knows dick about dick!” he snapped.
A few of the other patrons looked up at the outburst. He lowered his head, trying to hide inside his mug.
“She’s not doing serious research on changelings. She already thinks she knows everything she needs to.”
“What about Princess Cadance?” I suggested. “She’s the alicorn of Love itself. Nopony knows more about love magic than she does.”
“It’ll be a cold day in Tartarus before she looks into changeling magic,” he snorted. “And I don’t blame her. Chrysallis fucked her stallion in her body. I’d be mad, too.”
“So what’re you going to do about it?”
He banged his hoof on the bar. The mug lifted to his lips and he stared into the amber liquid. There were tears in the corners of the big unicorn’s eyes. The tears spilled out, running into the deep bags under his eyes and collecting there like a clogged gutter.
“I love my marefriend…” he said.
His voice was like brittle glass.
* * *
I’d been dreaming. I couldn’t remember what it was I was dreaming. Just that I was.
Then I was awake. Awake to the sensation of something heavy on me, pressing down with all its weight.
It was still dark out, and in the pitch blackness of the night I could only make out the silhouette of my wife as she ground her soft, moist snatch into my lap.
“I’m sorry, love,” the shadow atop me whined pitifully. “I know you said you’re tired, but I’m so hungry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I used to go months without a meal, now I can’t even go a day. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
She sounded desperate. In pain.
I’d asked her if we could skip our nightly screw, because I was tired. My wife loved me, so of course she let me turn in early.
She loved me and I sent her to bed without supper. Grounded her from my dick.
“I spoil you,” I said. I reached up, towards the writhing, horny mass of darkness. My hoof touched her cheek, and I stroked her jaw, tracing a line down her neck, down her chest, down her belly, to the place where our bodies were touching. She was soft here. Soft and wet.
“Can I?” she asked with a shudder as I manipulated her.
“I love you, anything you want to take from me you can.”
She trilled in excitement. In lust? Probably in lust. I’m no entomosexuologist. I make patios.
She lit her horn, casting an eerie green light over us both, giving me a clear view of her face. She looked half-crazed with lust. Tears streaking down her face in what I could only guess was frustration, or maybe relief that I was going to give her what she wanted.
“Who do you want me to be?” she asked as she rubbed her pussy against my already rigid shaft.
Soft against hard. A reversal of the rest of our bodies, almost like we were made for one another.
“I could be anypony you want, you know that,” she continued. Her slit rubbed up and down my length. I was being basted in her juices – made more delicious. Like what griffons do to a roasting pig. “I could be Fleur dis Lee. Or one of the Princesses? Do you want to fuck Sapphire Shores? What about the mare down the street with the big ass? I know you like big asses. Who do you want to stick your cock into?”
She was such a sweet girl. So demure. She blushed at the word ‘titmouse’ most of the day. But in bed she talked like a sailor with a purse full of bits.
“You offer that every night,” I told her, “and every night I tell you who I want. Just be you. You’re who I love.”
I felt a splash of something warm flood over my crotch. She came just from my assurances that I loved her.
She mewled like a cat as she reared up and shoved me inside herself. Admittedly, I might’ve made a somewhat animalistic sound as well.
She bounced up and down at a maddening pace. There was no tenderness, only passion and energy as she fucked us together with every ounce of strength in her body.
The squeak of springs and creak of wood was drowned out by the wet slapping of her hard carapace against my fleshy thighs, and the suckling of my shaft pounding in and out of her tight, wet pussy.
I wasn’t worried about the bed breaking. We’d broken our first bed frame three times before I finally just built one from scratch with my own two hooves. It was sturdy enough to hold the mythical two-hundredsome that my idiot of a best friend had fantasized about.
Still, she was testing the very limits of my carpentry skills as she rode me like a possessed mare.
“You’re so hard,” she cooed raggedly. Her voice had a strong, echoed quality as she trilled and shrieked. “It feels so big inside me!”
“Did you shapeshift yourself smaller?” I asked through grit teeth.
“Do you want me to?” she asked excitedly. She got even tighter.
My mouth opened wordlessly. I gasped in pain. It felt so good.
She screamed as I came inside her. She shuddered, shaking, panting, wheezing, spilling her own fluids onto the bed.
It was another full minute before I could pull out of her. She flopped onto her side of the mattress, leaving me in the wet spot. This was why I always had my shower in the morning instead of before bed.
She cuddled up next to me, nuzzling into my neck.
“I love you so much,” she told me. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I was just so hungry… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I stared at the ceiling. My crotch hurt. But I was happy.
“I love you,” I replied. “It’s okay. You can be as hungry as often as you want. I’m here for you.”
She giggled cutely. She did everything cutely. Even when she had a river of jizz dribbling out of her cunt, she dribbled cutely.
“You spoil me,” she said, booping my nose. Cutely. “We’re so good for each other.”
“I love you,” I repeated.
“I love you,” she echoed back.
That night I dreamed about fucking a wheat thresher again.
* * *
Author's Note
Love takes work. Love takes sacrifice.
Sometimes things we love aren't good for us. Love doesn't always make us better.
I hope you enjoyed the story. I hope you'll join me next time.
Please be excited.
