Author's Note

I'm so wonderful at updating this fic. I say this despite not updating in a solid two months or more.

Knowledge and Learning

He should’ve felt thankful for the pastel bunch but in truth, he really couldn’t care less about them unless they were getting ready to grind him into chitinous changeling paste, he shuddered at that thought as he silently listened to the the pony he over heard as being Cherilee, apparently a teacher if the mentioning of students was heard correctly. He guessed he landed near a pretty big village, he still thinks village because any city he’s infiltrated has the thinnest of forest surrounding it or nothing at all. Somewhat inconvenient for hiding but ah well.

Soon enough he heard hooves leaving and fading away, him slinking out from under the blanket he was under and stretching a bit with a wince before he moved into Zecora’s potion/main room, starting to curiously rifle through her stuff, actually sniffing around at some things before he heard her clearing her throat and could practically feel the dry stare she was directing at him. He turned around and curiously tilted his head at her. “Have anything for split hooves?” He grinned sheepishly. The gunk on his back glowing a faint yellow, showing a half-lie, and giving Zecora an even more disapproving stare.

“And maybe something to heal faster with?” He reiterated as he noticed the look and the goo changing colors, the goo shifting back to a bland kind of gray. Leaving Zecora to simply nod in satisfaction.

“Patient you must be, for you have slept longer than what’s exactly good for you. I wasn’t exactly clear in just how long you’ve slept but that was mostly for safety reasons… When you fell asleep on my back you did not wake for many moons, I nearly thought you were going to be bug fertilizer for quite sometime but you somehow kept your breath.”

“O-Oh. How long have I been asleep since then?”

“Well. Since you spent every ounce of energy, both emotional and physical on walking around in the Everfree like a buffoon, as well as used self-emotional-cannibalism to keep yourself walking I can safely say that you’ve been out for a couple months, a few weeks in the woods, and a month in a half in my hut, spoon feeding a changeling with healing brew with artificial love made from a potion is a lot harder than it looks. That silver tongue your kind is famous for should be famous for lack of work it does for liquids.”

“Hehe yeeeeaah… Long forked tongues aren’t good for drinking things, especially with my kind’s jaw shape, snakes have it down though at least but it’s something a changeling has to learn to do… Do I talk too much?”

Zecora listened intensely to the words, finding herself a bit fascinated with her guest, but also utterly blindsided by his words. “Not at all, it’s really interesting to hear you speak truthfully, learning from an old species that has nearly nothing written about it is quite a treat.”

He took this as a compliment. “Thank you then.”

“I will change the bandages on your hoof soon, don’t walk on it.” She nodded in acknowledgement to his thanks but went to another room to get the paste for his hoof, coming back a couple minutes later with her preparing the tools needed to do the small task with the paste, she tilted her head curiously at seeing her guest staring out one of the windows, seeming to be in thought. “I’ve got the paste for your hoof.”

“Can you teach me how to brew the potion you made, or do what you do in general?” He blurted out. While she was away he took the chance to look outside the window and study the ground and the things around Zecora’s hut as to try and get a sense of how she even found half the stuff she did and made it as such. He wanted to learn it, it could be helpful to the hive, if he had one to go back to that is.

He was surprisingly okay with this thought, he figured if Zecora could teach him how to make the potion then he wouldn’t have to feed off of ponies, that would mean no more fighting, and he was more than okay with this, especially after the events of the Canterlot wedding completely shattering the mental shackles he had been under. As he came to terms she had appeared, and he took to the opportunity to ask her for help. He turned to her and held out his split hoof, smiling a bit.

She was once again blindsided, by the question, the honesty behind it, and just how generally friendly he was being. She hardly expected that of a changeling with how her kin’s story had worded their kind. She hummed a bit while she took his offered hoof and carefully took the paintbrush in her mouth to dip it into the paste before applying it to the inside of the split, afterwards taking her time with her free hoof to busy it with scooping out a bigger blob of the gray paste, before applying it to the split hoof and filling the gap with it before she bandaged it. Now she had time to think about his question… And she was drawing a complete blank.

Servonix had taken the silent time to watch her work, the numbing effects of the paste slowly setting into the limb as she worked and finished working. He saw her blank out a bit and carefully booped her, marveling briefly at the softness he felt before he grinned sheepishly at her deadpan expression. “Hi.”

On one hoof he’s one of the changelings who attacked Canterlot, on the other, she had no idea why he did considering his personality, she was nursing him back to health and he’s shown nothing but respect, kindness, and curiosity, he was intelligent unlike how autonomous and monster-like her kin’s stories made changelings seem. But when she considered teaching him she also had thought of how she tried to teach the adolescent Applebloom, and how much of a disaster that had been, but at the same kind, his kind were made to adapt so she had to ask first.

“Do your kind have any similarities to a cutiemark?” She asked with a slight tilt of her head.

“No, we’re made to adapt to any situation, before the invasion I was ordered to a cook… I was mediocre at it at best. Same with when I was ordered to run a library, but that’s cause my hive’s queen didn’t know how any of that worked so the information didn’t send over the hivemind link and I was ordered to simply go with it. With it gone, I can actually learn something for myself, so technically my mind’s a fresh slate to work off of.”

Zecora hummed a bit in thought, she heard hivemind being mentioned so now she guessed she had her answer for the attack, and found herself in a spot where she couldn’t exactly deny him the teaching, she could but that wouldn’t do any good, and if she didn’t then ponies might get hurt from a changeling’s appetite once he was healed a set free, and maybe he might go to feed other changelings and keep them at bay, although he’d have to come to her for a certain key ingredient to the potion, and that was a pegasus feather, not too hard to get but with the amount of potion that had to be made and the fact a certain six residents will not take the fact a freeroaming changeling is in the Everfree lightly by any means then she’d have to collect that ingredient in bulk herself. Something she can live with doing.

And so she nodded, a small smile at having a new and much less volatile student working with her and potentially helping her. “I will teach you the ways of a shaman Servonix. It would do no good to deny you this pleasure. You will read a couple books while you heal however before you do any potion making or ingredient gathering.” She smiled a bit broader at her guest and newly appointed student, and had to bring a hoof up to stifle a chuckle at seeing his expression. Happy changeling faces apparently were kind of goofy looking in an endearing way. “I will bring them to you after you get back to bed. It has been a tiring day, but a good one for learning to say in the least. Cherilee was right in that regards today.” At that she moved away and lightly trotted to go get the two herbal books in question, ears flicking as she heard Servonix walk back to the bedroom she had let him stay in while she got him back up to health.

He was more than ecstatic at having the chance to actually learn something without his queen there to try and supply him with info, his queen was a tyrant that was for sure, and sadly only educated in war rather than anything else. He only knew how to fight, doesn’t mean he liked to though.

He slid himself under the covers, eager to read but also the tiniest bit bored with having to do so, that however was overruled by his want for the facts so long as the books kept interest.