Notebook for Queen Ophrys - Page 1
Woodchuck
“Let’s see,” Woodchuck uttered to himself, as he stopped in front of a crystalline two-story house. He extended a hoof just above his forehead and squinted at the sign on the door. “I think that sign says ‘23’.”
All the strikingly bright reflections from the pink-and-blue walls made his eyes hurt. It was, without doubt, a far cry from the torch-lit cave layouts of his hive, but it didn’t mean that he could bail out in his role of gem courier.
Honestly, it was less exciting than an infil, he thought as he trotted towards the door, sighing. Still, the Queens needed a method to bring the emotion gems back to the hive to feed the ’lings back home, and the humble gem courier was that method.
When he trotted up the stairs to the entrance, he knocked exactly four times, paused for precisely two seconds, and knocked two times more.
“Coming!” a cheery voice called. Woodchuck could hear the faint hoofsteps as she trotted towards the door.
Although Woodchuck saw cerise irides look through the slit in the door, in his empathy sense, there was only a pony-shaped void amongst the ambient Crystal Empire pink. Relief coursed through his veins. He didn’t want to accidentally meet an actual pony in her own abode; he wouldn’t know what to do.
“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” the voice hissed through the door.
“None, ’cause it’s too busy gorging himself on food to care,” Woodchuck whispered back.
“Ping?”
They briefly exchanged short messages to each other through the hivelink, confirming their identities. Any changeling could have worn their forms, and it was negligibly harder to steal memories. Impossible to fake a ping, though.
Confident that she wasn’t going to be assassinated in her own home, either by Queen Epi’s changelings, pitchfork-wielding ponies or otherwise, Dusk Glow opened the door wide. “Come in, Woodchuck. I’ve been waiting for you all week,” she said, and she started to amble leisurely through the dark corridor. Her persimmon-coloured mane, visible even in the near-darkness, bobbed up and down against her head with each step.
Woodchuck trotted not too far behind the charcoal pegasus. “I know, Dusk Glow. Queen Drosera’s scaled back the couriers ’cause of the invasion.” Suddenly, Dusk took a sharp right turn and pushed the door open. “Hey, wait up!”
The lounge was conservative in size, totalling about five pony-lengths from one side to the other. Its pitch-black curtains, hanging from the far wall, were closed tight, leaving the room pitch-black. Or it would have been if the lantern, placed dead-center on the coffee table, didn’t bathe the entire room in a bright amber glow.
A teapot and two porcelain cups filled with a reddish-brown liquid sat in the centre of the room. Dusk was already grabbing hold of a cup with her pinions before settling on a two-cushioned couch on the left wall. It was dyed a bright red, like fierce embers.
Woodchuck rested on the couch opposite her, similar but in a light turquoise instead. The coffee table formed a barrier between them.
The pegasus mare slowly sipped from her cup, glancing expectantly at him. “C’mon, take a sip. Pu-erh tea,” she eventually said, placing the cup back on the table.
Tentatively, he levitated the drink towards himself, blew gently across the surface to cool it, and took a tentative sip from the mug. Its taste was reminiscent of earthy soil but in an oddly positive way.
Maybe this meeting wouldn’t be so bad.
That was until he spotted a mahogany chest hidden in the corner, between the turquoise couch and the curtains. Painted on it was Dusk Glow’s cutie mark, a shimmering sword superimposed over a dense, silver-grey dusk. Actually, the cutie mark was on the coffee table as well, mostly obscured by the lantern.
How full of herself must she be to flaunt her cutie mark everywhere? Woodchuck wondered while plopping the cup down. “So, what’s with your cutie mark on the chest?” he asked, while Dusk was shuffling her legs to fit snugly into the cushions.
She stopped to swivel around to the chest, a container whose size made it the most significant piece of furniture in the room. Her ears were perked up. “Oh, that? You know, it’s a pony thing,” Dusk replied matter-of-factly.
Woodchuck found himself recoiling from the statement. By reflex, a scowl appeared on his eyes, and a frown was forming on his lips. Shaking his head, he immediately changed his expression to a poker face, hoping that Dusk didn’t notice. “I didn’t know that.”
“Only infils learn these kinds of things,” Dusk replied.
He could’ve sworn that there was smugness in her face as she said that. But whatever hint or trace of it there was had left. Nonetheless, a feeling of envy started to boil from deep within Woodchuck’s barrel.
In the hive, infiltrators were infamous for their thinly-veiled condescending attitude towards the other roles. On some level, it was understandable: they had far more drilling and training on pony customs and culture, they had to be physically fit and maintain their disguises even in the most life-threatening of injuries, they had to gather intelligence for the hive, and in addition to that, almost all were emotion collectors…
And here he was, having been dealt an unfair hoof. Why couldn’t he be born as an infil instead? He stared at the ground with a barely hidden glower, deep in his frustration.
“I can sense it, you know.”
Woodchuck kept his tone even. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“No, I know what this is about,” Dusk said, resolve in her tone. She walked across to Woodchuck’s couch, meandering past the coffee table. A colour on his empathy sense he hadn’t seen before—the greyish turquoise of chagrin—emanated from Dusk, as she took the cushion beside him.
For what felt like an hour, she glanced around the room, keeping her gaze away from Woodchuck’s. The perfunctory tick-tock of the clock above and their breaths were the only sounds that could be heard. Steam wafted slowly from their teacups, illuminated by the warm glow of the lantern sitting beside them.
As for Woodchuck, he merely stared daggers at the porcelain teacups, as though they had wronged him in the past. But the feeling of resentment faded bit by bit with each passing breath.
With a sigh, Dusk finally said, “Woodchuck. You’re jealous of us infiltrators, right?”
He heaved a frustrated sigh and nodded.
“Well,” she continued, “what if I told you that our lives aren’t as glamorous as you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sure, we gather emotion for the hive. Sure, we live with ponies. Sure, our jobs are important, and it’s fun mingling with constant emotion-leakers.”
Woodchuck glowered at the pegasus and quipped, “By Luna, thanks for conf—”
Dusk held a hoof up to his muzzle. “Wait, I’m not done yet.” She forced out a sigh, gradual and heavy. “Chuck, who deals with the nymphs?” she asked.
Every changeling knew the answer to this by heart. He blurted, “The caretakers.”
“Who maintains the hive?”
This time, he rolled his eyes. Where was she going by treating him like a nymph? “The workers.”
“And who delivers the emotion gems back home?”
“Couriers, like me.” He paused for a moment to regather his thoughts. “So what? Other ’lings have other roles as part of the hive, but that doesn’t change the fact that infils get to live a more exciting lifestyle. And they get to act all holier-than-thou about it to boot.”
She got up from her seat, and her legs walked back to the other side of the coffee table. Dusk kept her body facing away from him. “Ya maggot, don’t you get it? Without everyling chipping in back home, doing their bit to keep the hive running, there simply won’t be a hive. And although it may not be as exciting I think that’s pretty important.” She leant down slightly to pick up the teacup again.
“So what about your mingling with ‘constant emotion-leakers’?” Woodchuck asked, his simmer fading away.
Dusk took a sip from her tea before sitting down. “I was gonna get to that. Okay, I know what everyling back at the hive says: it’s fun living with them, their emotions taste better fresh, you should be jealous, yadda-yadda-yadda. Yeah, they’re perks to the job. But it’s not a fun job.” Woodchuck eyed her incredulously. Without missing a beat, Dusk said, “Tell me. How was the train?”
“Well, it was a bit nerve-racking, but I made sure I didn’t show it. No doubt you infils are more used to this kind of stuff; you get much more practice, after all.”
“Nah, you’re the one who’s gonna get used to it, unlike me. Believe it or not, the pitchfork ponies want ’lings like me on the gallows.” Dusk took another sip from her tea. “And there’s a certain Queen Epi who’s hungry for some griffon buffet.”
“That bugbrain wants you infils rooted out?” Taking the hint, Woodchuck brought his cup towards himself as well.
“Yeah. How spectacularly she failed in the wedding, and she’s still got the gall to plant her ’lings everywhere. I’ve seen some of her infils hiding right here in the Empire of Crystal. And don’t forget that they’ve got empathy sense as well. They’ll be confronting me pretty damn soon.
“Of course, with you travelling in public in these weekly trips, they’ll notice you eventually as well, but at least for the other six days you’re nice and comfy in your little maggot crib.” She spat the last two words like scathing acid.
Woodchuck involuntarily bit his lip. His magic flickered, spilling a few drops of the tea that he had been drinking on the carpet, creating a faint stain barely discernable—even less so, in the lantern’s light. Deliberately, he returned the cup to the centre, this time taking more care to keep it steady.
She sighed. “Sorry, I got carried away. To be frank, I’d rather be meting out those emotion gems to hungry nymphs in the nursery than risk my life out here.”
His incredulous glare from before had returned. “Really? But that’s so…”—his eyes prowled around the room as he searched for the word—“routine.”
“Ya think so? I suppose it’s easy to glorify us scared shitless in the Canterlot incident when all you see is the hero’s welcome,” Dusk said.
“Scared shitless? But you infils killed, like, a quarter of Epi’s ’lings out there without losing your disguises!”
His surprise was met with a deadpan. “Ya reckon? That’s not impressive when you consider that Pinkie Pie could knock out twenty in a minute,” Dusk said, before taking a long drink. The cup clinked on the table, empty. “With a party cannon, I might add.”
“Hm?” he replied, grasping the teapot’s handle in his magic and refilling Dusk’s cup.
“Yeah, we infils are terrible at fighting. Queen Bossy—er, Drossy even chewed us out afterwards about it. Said that we’re pitiful whelps.” She blew on her tea before taking another sip. “You’re incredibly lucky you get Ophie. We just get shit thrown at us whenever we screw up. Count your blessings some time, Chucky.”
“Dusk Glow, you just called me Chucky.”
“It’s Dusky, ya grub. I’d think now that we’re friends, that means nicknames as well, wouldn’t it?” Dusk said, a sly smile growing on her face.
Woodchuck felt that her statement warranted a light-hearted snort. “Let me guess: another pony thing?”
Dusk chuckled. “As a matter of fact, yes. Spreading the word ‘friendship’ like jam on bread.”
“Tartarus, you even adopted their lingo now.”
“Jam? Yeah, you should try that sometime; next week I’ll get you a jar. I know you’ll puke it out but the taste’s worth it.” After rising from her couch, Dusk returned the teacup to the table, taking a quick glance at the clock. She carefully trod the brief distance to the chest. “Hmm, I think it’s time for you to head back. I’ll get the gems.”
With a hefty tug, Dusk awkwardly pulled the wooden lid up, holding the pull in her mouth. The pegasus then stuck her head into the container, groping for something in the darkness. Before Woodchuck could offer help, a stammered “I got it!” was heard.
She fumbled her way out of the chest, the handle of a large hessian saddlebag clenched in her teeth. As Dusk released her hold, Woodchuck heaved the bag onto his withers with his telekinesis, and immediately the weight forced his barrel to hunch lightly. He never knew emotion gems to be this heavy.
Deciding not to delay his leave any longer, Woodchuck walked past the door and into the corridor. His slower speed gave him the opportunity to notice the details of the hallway. Although it was dim, though not too dim for his eyes, there were other doors that he could have sworn were slightly brighter. Before he could mull over it further, Dusk prodded his haunches with a hoof, eliciting a dirty look from Woodchuck as he resumed his gait.
“So I’ll see you around next week?” Dusk said, as Woodchuck stepped onto the stairway and made his way down the steps.
He stopped just shy of the bottom, and he turned his head to face her. “Yeah. I’ll be doing this job for a while.”
“M’kay. Well, see ya,” she said, waiting at the door.
A small smile tugged on his lips. He let it. “See ya.”
The door gently creaked shut.
Author's Note
My first dialogue-focussed story. It was originally going to be about hiding in alleys and staying low—you know, secret changeling agent furtively retrieving emotion gems, trying not to catch the attention of the Crystal Empire guards. The whole shebang.
However, as I was writing it, it gradually transformed into a slice-of-life about dissatisfaction with one’s role in life and Pu-erh tea (there’s no special symbolism in this—I just liked the name 
). Interesting how things develop.
Anyway, tell me what you think!
