An infant cried alone in the woods. The wind rustled branches from above, dislodging a large leaf. As it fell through the air a gentle breeze propelled it forward into the baby’s wicker basket. It landed atop the thick blanket that covered the child, and through this warm coating the baby poked playfully at the leaf, watching it shift. Her soft cheeks dried and while those strong pangs of hunger still ravaged her stomach, she laughed in the dark.
It was a soft, sweet laugh that found itself quietly echoed through the tall trees. Nearby, a small head poked up from the foliage. Arthur Bunny looked out across the open ground and caught sight of the basket. He raised his head higher, poking his tall ears up to catch even the slightest noise. There was that lovely laughter, and the small breeze, but if he listened closely, he could just hear the soft wingbeats and chatter of a hundred tiny voices not too far away.
He turned and ducked back into the warren. His three children looked expectantly up at him. He walked over, and tapped the large face of the pocket watch embedded in the wall. It was getting rather late, the children should have been asleep by now.
“Come on now, children,” he said, sitting down slowly and beckoning them over with a crooked ear, “Do you want to hear a bedtime story?”
Xander and, with a few moments passage, Alice, came bounding over to their father’s side, eager to stay up just a little bit later tonight. And for a story too. Ana poked her head around the corner, still cleaning up from dinner with their little Angel crawling up her shoulder.
“Tonight is a special night,” he began slowly, “And you are very lucky to see it. Have I ever told you about the fairies of the forest?”
The two young kittens shook their heads solemnly. They opened their tired eyes wide and waited for him to speak again.
“When the summer winds blow gentle, and the sky shines with grace,
The forest fairies fly through the trees with their fairy dust in lace,
And even though their wings be small, their bodies delicate,
Without fail they flit once a year to make it home not late,
For it is said amongst the trees, and in the calm night air,
If they dally for a moment, they’ll never reach it there,
“When your mother and I were barely your age, the forest fairies came through our home town, and we children invented that rhyme based on the stories. The fairies might only come once a year, but the stories last forever. Stories of - “
“Dad?” said one of the young faces, both ears pointing in opposite directions and eyebrows furrowed.
“Xander?” Arthur reached out a paw and gently rubbed his son on the head.
“Did uncle Charlie help you and mum with the rhyme?”
“I suppose he did. He was a little bit older than us though, he might have been on the guard. You see, the fairies aren’t very big, only about the size of my paw. So when they came through our village, we organised a guard of the bigger bunnies, like uncle Charlie, to protect them.
“Not to protect them from the dogs or birds, most animals knew the fairies were magical, but from the breeze. These fairies are so small and light that we had to build a wall of leaves on both sides of them, to make sure the wind wouldn’t push them off course. And then we built a big spinning wheel to blow air behind them. It was quite a sight, wasn’t it dear?”
Ana meekly replied, “It was.”
Arthur paused to let Alice crawl up onto his leg, and felt her soft white fur rub up against his. It was warm down here in the burrow, even though it might be bitter above. In the silence he could still hear the baby laughing, but that was for later in the story. He knew he only had so much time, but he was sure he could be forgiven for indulging his inner storyteller.
“And when the fairies came that year, they spoke to the village council on their way. They said they carried fairy dust along the breeze back to their home, which you could only get to through a magical portal.”
Ana came fully around the corner, with Angel atop her back.
“It wasn’t really fairy dust, children,” she said softly, “It was pollen; what bees and butterflies eat. But it is the closest thing we have to fairy dust.”
Arthur nodded.
“The portal, that’s real. And every year they come from the very edge of the Big Forest with their little bags loaded with pollen to go back home. And guess what? You are so lucky because if you listen closely...”
He paused, and the burrow fell silent. Arthur looked at Xander’s eagerly outstretched ears and Alice straining to extend hers higher than they would usually go. There was a gurgling from outside, but in the still night it was almost drowned out by the high-pitch voices that grew louder with every passing moment.
Arthur bent down and whispered lovingly, “You can hear them.”
This time Alice spoke, her large blue eyes staring right into his from below, “Daddy, can we go make a leaf wall for the fairies?”
“Not tonight, no. But, I’ll tell you a secret. Little bunnies who go to bed on Fairy Night might wake up to find a little bit of fairy dust under their pillows.”
“You heard your father, off to bed, children,” Ana said while pulling Angel off herself and putting the young kitten in a makeshift cot made from twisted roots and autumn leaves. Arthur tucked in Xander and Alice, kissing them on the forehead before returning to the main room. From there, he heard Xander roll over in his bed and quietly whisper to Alice, “What happened to uncle Charlie? We don’t see him anymore.”
He walked over to the crib, and nuzzled against Angel Bunny’s small soft head for a moment. Then he reached a paw and rubbed it across Ana’s shoulder. Ana spoke up.
“When we were quiet earlier, was that a baby I heard?”
“I hoped you would. You always did notice the small details, dear.”
“Is it another bunny?” Her expression was somewhat optimistic, with raised eyebrows and the touch of a smile on her lips.
“It’s a filly, dear. Someone left her here in the forest,” he whispered. Even through the dirt wall surrounding the burrow, the chirpy voices of the fairies grew louder, and he could smell them now. They smelt like grass in spring.
Ana clutched her chest, anxious and worried.
“What can we do to help her?”
Arthur pondered this for a moment. He looked up into his thinking space, staring at the clockface. After a moment, he looked back down and gave off a smile.
“I wonder if the fairies still grant wishes.”
The sound of grass being threshed woke Xander. The soft, constant rustling roused him, and he would have gone back to sleep, had he not woken to the sight of the entire forest slipping past him. He tried to sit up in his bed, only to feel it buck and sag underneath him. He lay back down, quickly. Above him were the stars, leaves of the forest, and strange creatures with insect wings and curling antennae but the body of a pony. They looked quite frightening.
His father’s voice comforted the young bunny, like it always did. He seemed to be talking to one of the creatures, but Xander only guessed this from the high voice of the second speaker. No bunny he knew spoke quite like that.
“For the final time,” called the high voice from somewhere to Xander’s left, “It’s Breezies, not fairies!”
Then his father spoke, that deep and knowing tone easily recognisable, “You are known as fairies in the stories at least. It sounds more fantastical.”
“Well, we aren’t fantasy,” came the annoyed response. However, once Xander had taken the care to sit up properly on his small bed, he begged to differ. The entire scene could only be described as magical.
Bright lights lit up the forest behind him as a trail of hundreds of the little glowing creatures sped behind and infront of him. The light seemed to leave rainbow contrails through the forest, and if Xander looked up, he could see the bright full moon above him, showered in specks of the entire spectrum. The smells that filled his nose reminded him of spring, of flowers littering the ground like snow, of the time of year when you ran through the forest, laughing and taking in the landscape.
What were these insects, with their magical levitation and wondrous scent? Then realization struck him. These were the fairies his father had spoken of. The moment he knew, he saw the small pouches resting against the flanks of the fairies, no doubts filled with the magic fairy dust; pollen. He wondered what they used it for. They were so small it could have been food for them.
Xander looked below his bed, and saw his sister sleeping peacefully just below him. Under normal circumstances he’d leave her be, but this was an exception.
“Alice!” he called out over the wind, cupping a paw around his mouth as much to protect his voice from the breeze tearing it away as to project it down to her bed.
“Alice, wake up! It’s the fairies!”
She stirred in her bed, rubbed a tired eye and rolled over onto her other side. He tried again.
“Alice, we’re flying with the fairies!”
This time she took notice, trying to sit up in the same way he did and realising the bed tilted drastically. Xander supposed they were kept up using a form of magic, but he couldn’t see the caster. From what his father had told him, the one who cast the spell glowed with an aura.
He looked around. All of the fairies were glowing in unison. Who knew such tiny creatures could lift so much. As he looked forward, he realised they were lifting far more than he had originally thought. In front of him was a giant wicker basket, but he couldn’t see what was inside. Probably something valuable if the fairies, or Breezies, he heard the annoyed one call them, had carried it all the way here.
He smelt his father and mother before he saw them, although he already knew they were there. Just to his left, and forwards quite a way, they kept pace with the Breezies on the ground. They were moving rather slowly, thankfully, because Xander wasn’t sure how long they would be travelling for.
“Dad!” Xander yelled, although he felt foolish for doing so afterwards. Despite the breeze behind them, and the constant chatter of the Breezies, it was still pretty quiet. It was only Alice’s bed rubbing against the tall grass and the gentle swoosh of his parent’s leaps that made the greatest noise.
His father turned to look at him, slowing down until they were level with each other. Arthur had to look up to see his son at first, but word spread amongst the Breezies and Xander found his bed switching places with Alice’s. She gasped when the shadow above her moved away, for she could see the stars at last. Xander now eye to eye with his father.
“Dad, where are we going?” he asked, scratching his ear. Looking at the trees around him, he wasn’t even sure where they were now, let alone what direction they were travelling.
His father looked across at him, a broad smile stretching from ear to ear.
“I don’t know! East, Xander, east!”
Xander nodded his response, then lay back down in bed. He pulled his blanket tight over his body, making sure the brisk night air didn’t come too close. He wondered what was in the wicker basket; was it food for the bunnies? And why were they leaving their home? Older than his sister, he was wise enough to know it was important, and he wasn’t afraid. If anything, Xander looked forward to what he might see when he woke up the following morning. It would be an alien sky.
He turned over in bed, and closed his eyes, seeing the dull gleam of the Breezies through his dark lids. Then, he fell asleep.
As soon as he woke, Xander was greeted with what he had expected; a sky so different to his it was hard to believe this part of the world connected to the Big Forest. It was as if they had crossed a great chasm in his sleep, and now flew over land no bunny had ever set foot. For one thing, there were trees, but they were shorter than those of the Big Forest, and the branches were closer together. They sparsely decorated the landscape which was otherwise littered with tan stones the size of Xander’s paw.
He smelt burning wood in the distance, and for a minute panicked. Then he remembered how far from the Big Forest they must be, and calmed himself just before his breath was taken away.
Above the processional line of Breezies, more creatures flew. They looked like Breezies, but were easily thirty times larger, and they didn’t have antenna. Thier wings were feathered, like a bird, but the similarities ended there. They looked like the harpies his father had told him about in stories. Huge, vicious killers who had the body of a pony but the head and wings of a falcon. He shivered when he heard the tales, but seeing the harpies up close, he couldn’t help but admire them.
The way they flew looked natural, a tall feat for the combination of two creatures. At a distance, they even looked graceful and co-ordinated, with precisely timed wingbeats. Perhaps these weren’t harpies at all. Whatever they were, from down below, they certainly looked magnificent.
He followed one of them in his vision, a small blue one that almost blended into the sky, only visible from the brightly hued mane that marked it out like a miniature rainbow shooting across the sky. It flew darting across the sky, until it disappeared behind a cloud.
Xander looked again. That was no ordinary cloud. From his low vantage point, and the top of his sightline cut off by Alice’s floating bed, he could see the tips of spires jutting over the edge. Rooftops of white cloud poked out, and even more of the harpy-creatures flew about. It looked to be their giant warren, burrowed out from the air itself.
The scent of burning wood became more potent, drawing his attention to the road ahead. It looked to Xander that the cause of the smell was a cabin, not too far to the side of the Breezies. Just as the house came fully into view, revealing the smoke exiting from a hole in the roof, the bed stopped moving. It settled to the ground with muffled crunching heard from the stones underneath, and Xander pulled off his blanket and sat up. His father came hopping over just as Alice’s bed landed, and the wicker basket similarly floated back to the ground, his mother clambering out the top as it did so. One of the Breezies stopped for a moment, and floated gently down.
“Thank you for taking us this far,” Xander’s father said, extending a paw. The Breezie gently took it with a small hoof and tickled his thumb.
“It’s very tiring having to carry you around, so don’t expect it again next time!” sighed the Breezie, and he recognised her tone as the annoyed one from the previous night.
“No, naturally. Again thank you, I know how we have inconvenienced you, but I promise to make it up to you one day,” Arthur said, using his second paw to clamp onto the Breezie’s hoof and shake it gently.
“Of course,” huffed the Breezie, rubbing it’s tired eyes, “Sure you will.”
The small creature rejoined the others, and Xander watched them float away on the breeze. They really were the fairies his father spoke of. Kind, if a little short-tempered, and absolutely magical. The whole Bunny family stared at them as they left. Xander laughed as one tickled his outstretched ears as it passed, and he called out to them as the last one slowly moved on.
“Thank you for everything!”
Ana took Angel off her back, and took a few nervous steps towards Arthur, her ears twitching.
“What do we do now?”
With Alice still asleep, Xander bounded up to the one thing of interest, the wicker basket. He’d seen cabins before, there used to be an abandoned one near the warren where he and Alice would fool around in. They weren’t near the warren anymore, but Xander could curb his interest regarding the building while indulging his other curiosity. He pulled himself onto the pads of his back feet and peered over the lip of the basket. Strange noises came from inside, and he could immediately see why. Underneath a blanket not unlike his own, a huge head slept noisily. It was a pony’s head, yellow with light pink hair entangled in the large seams of the basket.
Maybe it was a harpy too, and they’d come to bring it back home. Xander tried lifting a corner of the blanket to see if it had wings, but his father pulled him away from the basket.
He smiled a serious smile and said, “I know you must be tired, but we have to bring this baby to a good home. Do you want to do that with me?”
Xander looked pointedly at the cabin, “We could take it there.”
“That’s a good idea! Perhaps they will know of a family for her,” Arthur said while rubbing Xander on the head with a curled paw. Xander tucked down his ears and smiled. He knew full well his father had had the same idea, but that wasn’t going to lower his spirits. Not when they were in the full blows of an adventure.
His father circled the basket, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. When he had come full circle, he clapped his hands together and announced loudly, “Well, we had better get busy pushing!”
Heavy footsteps came closer to the door. Ana ducked lower under the folds of the blanket, but her husband put his paw behind her. He gave her a supportive smile, and she returned it. She grabbed his other paw and squeezed it as the footsteps drew closer. They stopped, and the brass handle of the door turned to the side, creaking. Ana drew in a deep breath, and held it tightly within her chest. The door opened, revealing a tall creature that Ana recognised as a pegasus.
The white pegasus looked at the basket, and Ana saw his eyes widen at the sight of the baby inside. Alice and Xander crawled out from under the blanket also, looking up at the pegasus. He only looked more surprised.
“Harvest, there’s a baby at the door!”
Ana was shocked at the volume, and tried to cover her ears, releasing the pent-up breath as she did so. Thankfully, the pegasus stopped shouting, and bent down to pick up the basket. The baby opened it’s eyes slowly as it finally woke up, and looked into the startled eyes of the white pegasus. She made a gurgling noise that ended somewhat raspy, prompting the pegasus to turn and shut the door, bringing the Bunny family and the baby inside. Ana knew that look in the pegasus’s eyes. The look of a worried parent. She’d seen it echoed by Arthur, and reflected back at her from the watch face in their old house. Even now, in this unfamiliar locale, she took comfort in the fact that at least something was the same.
There on the small armchair that the basket had been laid, all four of them climbed out and sat nearby, where they could feel the heat of a crackling fire. Ana’s nostrils tickled with the overpowering scent of ash. The pegasus left, casting a confused face with muscles taut with thought. They all waited, but soon the pegasus had returned with another blue pony. They looked at the basket, and the bunnies, and a soft, sad smile cracked across the lips of both of them. Ana could see a small tear stream from the white pegasus’ face, and saw it splash on the ground a moment later.
Fluttershy leaned across the table, almost falling off her stool. Ana wrapped up the story the other’s had begun, and began wiping off the benchtop. Xander stood to one side, holding a small mug of chocolate between two large white paws, and Arthur stooped over his project, a small wooden boat which he occasionally chipped small pieces off of with a tiny chisel.
“What happened then?” Fluttershy asked, mindful of the low roof in the wood-walled warren. It was built to fit a younger, smaller Fluttershy, but could accommodate her with some squeezing.
Arthur pushed his glasses further up his sweaty nose. It wasn’t too warm, summer had only just broken, but the finesse required for his hobby took a lot out of an ageing rabbit.
“Well, Harvest and Clouded Eyes had recently suffered a loss of their own - their newborn had died the year before,” he answered cautiously, and Fluttershy could see him evaluating her response out of the corner of his eye. After all these years, he still protected her.
“That’s horrible,” she said quietly. He nodded and pried loose a tiny sliver of wood from his carving.
“It sometimes happens. I wonder why he didn’t ever tell you?”
Fluttershy looked away, “I wasn’t at home a lot of the time, so it’s probably my fault.”
Ana said from across the room, “Are you sure you’re alright Fluttershy?”
She nodded.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, thinking about her words. Her eyebrows were scrunched in close, and raised upwards. She continued, accentuating each word, “I’m just thinking about all the maybes. All the what-ifs. But I shouldn’t have my head in the ground, it’s been ages since I’ve seen you all.”
“Shame about Angels illness,” commented Xander, “she would have liked to see the old stallion buried.”
“Oh I know, but it’s very serious. I’ve tried feeding her hot soup, taking her temperature, but it’s always through the roof.”
Xander smiled, as did Arthur, though the older rabbit said nothing.
“I’m guessing she got the soup before the thermometer.”
Arthur lay down his chisel, and stepped away from the boat. It was nowhere near finished yet, but the tiny detail could be seen in the rough carving. The mast was still a conical splinter, but some of the rigging and deck railing was visible. The entire construction could sit comfortably on the side of a horseshoe; even for Arthur it was small. He came around the table to Fluttershy, and hopped atop the table, staring her in the eyes with those calm, gentle eyes. Fluttershy felt more comfortable when he was around.
“Can I tell you another story? This one’s a short one, I promise,” Arthur said, chuckling. Fluttershy giggled and nodded silently.
“When I was a young bunny, my father told me this story. It’s about this child - stories like this are always about children, he used to say - this child who was born to no-one. One day, however, it was found by fairies, who took pity on it. They used their magic to give it a family, but they misfired the spell. Oh, the family found the baby, but when the fairies returned home, they found another child in their village. Instead of giving a loveless family a baby, they had swapped it for another!
"The fairies desperately tried to bring it back, so they searched across all of the Big Forest and beyond. Unfortunately, by the time they found the family, both babies had grown up. My father, he called the child a - ,” he paused and scratched his chin. Fluttershy took the opportunity to politely sip her hot chocolate, replacing the mug with a small clink on the table.
“There’s no bunny word you would understand for what my father called the child,” Arthur said. Fluttershy went to object, but he continued speaking, waving a paw to dismiss her concerns.
“It has nothing to do with language,” he said, “I’m fully aware you speak fluent bunny, look at me; here we are. No, it’s a problem of meaning. You see, in the Big Forest, before we moved away, we hadn’t heard of many of the pony races of Equestria. Xander told you about how he mistook pegasi for the harpies I would tell him about. So my father, when he told the story of the child who had been accidentally swapped by fairies, he would call the baby a changeling.”
The word, to an individual who did not speak bunny, sounded like a mixture between a chirrup and a gnash of the teeth. Fluttershy paused for a moment, pushed herself back into her seat. She supposed words changed meaning over time, and surely Changelings must have had their namesake, or at least in the bunny language. Arthur wasn't finished, he only had a few more words to say.
"We used to call you a changeling, Fluttershy."
She raised a hoof to cover her giggle. "You did? I suppose I am, a bit."
The shadows cast by the setting sun sunk over Fluttershy's eyes, and she blinked. Arthur hopped off the table and began walking to the door.
"Angel will be wanting you," he said, giving her a small package as she left. "You had better be getting back."
She nodded and turned to leave. She put the gift in her bags, and turned back to face the small bunny family.
"I'll be back soon. Thank you so much for having me!"
Xander gave her leg a hug. "Anytime, changeling."
She turned and left.
Author's Note
I hope you enjoyed this story! If so, leave a comment, I love those. If you have any writing suggestions to make, please do, I am always open to new advice and feedback on my stories.
The FTP competition which this story was written gave the prompt:
"One of the Mane Six is a Changeling"
I hope after reading this story, that prompt and my interpretation makes sense to you. If so, tell me what you liked, what you didn't like, and most importantly, how I can improve for next time.
Thanks for reading!
Bonus quest for completionists: There are actually two changelings in the story. Can you find the second one?
