After a long, tiring weekend of having fun at the latest Daring Do convention in Los Pegasus, Maxilla wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and go torpid for a few days to process the emotional energy she’d harvested from the attendees. More specifically, her very own fans cultivated from an extensive career in writing fanfiction for Daring Do, Star Trot, Power Ponies and a few original stories here and there.
By her estimates, she’d gotten enough to last until the next convention with plenty to spare, so she could ease off on the leeching for a few months and enjoy her hard-earned bits instead. And if there was one thing ponies knew how to do well, it was finding ways to enjoy life. Seriously, the hive could do with a few spas and candy stores.
Ponies had changelings beaten when it came to personal quarters, too. Over the course of a year, Max had earned enough to buy a house at the edge of the forest. Although far smaller than the average pony’s, it had a dry, cosy basement and was far enough away from town that few ponies came by, which meant a lower chance of somepony stumbling upon her true form at home. Plenty of escape routes, too, if things really got out of hoof.
Max hummed a tune as she trotted along the leafy path to her house, looking just like any regular earth pony chewing on a lump of caramel toffee with a lopsided smile. The warm rays of the evening sun felt pretty good, too. Autumn had turned most of the woods into a bright blaze of reds, yellows and oranges, and she found herself visualising a few new settings for her next story. Daring Do could use an adventure in the dragonlands or someplace equally fiery. Heck, maybe a nice trip to Tartarus itself could spice things up a bit.
Hmm. Daring Do and the Blackrock Spire…
Her smile turned into a grin at the mental image of a deranged dragon cultist atop a volcano, attempting to dig out Daring’s beating heart with his bare claws.
Once inside her house, she went straight to her study to jot down the idea before it slipped from her mind. With that out of the way, she then took her bulging saddlebags full of Daring Do merchandise down into the basement, through a trapdoor hidden beneath a rug in the living room. Save for some strategically-placed colonies of luminescent mushrooms growing on secreted smears of resin, she kept no lighting down there to discourage exploration from unexpected visitors. In comparison to changelings, ponies had terrible low-light vision. Unicorns could make their own light, but two out of three was better than nothing.
Max had posters lining the walls and rows and rows of shelves stacked with her growing collection of comics, novels and toys. Within a few minutes, she had her new collectibles arranged nicely with their peers, and she unceremoniously flopped onto her bed and crawled under the covers. She sighed contentedly and savoured the fullness within; changelings didn’t feel sated very often, and not for long once they got back to the hive for redistribution.
She grinned into her pillow and chuckled as she thought of everyone back at the hive.
Guys, eat your hearts out!
They were probably starving, too. Served them right for kicking her out.
As Max closed her eyes and sank closer and closer to torpor, she allowed her pony disguise to melt away in heatless flames to conserve energy.
“Coolest. Thing. Ever!” a squeaky voice whispered.
Max came crashing back into the waking world with so much force that she had a coughing fit. Upon clearing her airways, she flung the covers off and leaped onto all fours to scan the basement. But she saw nothing out of the ordinary. No pony hiding amongst the sparse furniture or under the stairs. Nothing. Not even the sound of breathing, but that might’ve been due to her distractingly loud heart pounding away in her chest.
Cursing herself for letting her guard down, she tuned up her sixth sense and felt waves of adoration, curiosity and a hint of nervousness radiating from a point just above her. Glancing upwards, she saw a pair of pinkish-red, glowing eyes just a few tail-lengths away, staring right at her.
“Hello!”
“T’chaak!” she swore as she fired a stun spell at the intruder.
With a high-pitched squeal, it zipped to one side and evaded the green bolt of magic. “Hey, what’s the big deal?”
You are!
Max hissed and swiped both forelegs in the air, flinging wads of sticky resin from her glands at the intruder. They struck it in the tail and wing, effectively pinning it to the ceiling.
A dozen thoughts whirled through her mind as she charged up a spell to discombobulate her snared home invader. Most involved the various methods she had at her disposal for disrupting memory recall and the necessary steps of getting the pony out of her house and dumping it far, far away without drawing unwanted attention. And, in the worst-case scenario, preparing to flee and cover her tracks if it still managed to bring law enforcement down upon her. Powered-up with love or not, she had no desire to tangle with the police or royal guards.
At least, that was until she saw that the pony was just a little colt. He had an ashen-grey coat, cloudy-grey hair, a blank flank, webbed wings, exceedingly fluffy ears, and he wore a cap that more or less shared his colour scheme, with the words ‘Top Edge’ embroidered onto it.
A thestral. Or batpony, as some called them.
She rarely saw one of those. Stealthy guys by most accounts, and she guessed it explained how he’d gotten so close without her knowing. Apparently, he could see in the dark just like her.
“Uh, can you let me down?” he asked.
Max blinked a couple of times and glared at the colt. “No!”
“Why not?” He tilted his head, then glanced at the green wads of sticky resin and made a face as he tried to wriggle free. “These are gross. Cool, but gross.”
“You broke into my house!”
He blinked innocently and pointed upstairs. “But the window was open.”
She stomped a hoof on the bed. “That’s not an invitation!”
After giving it a moment’s thought, the colt shrugged. “Well, you weren’t in, so how was I supposed to ask?”
“I—uh…”
Max’s supply of words dried up.
Whilst fumbling for an appropriate response, she realised that the colt had shown practically zero signs of fear or distress. Not a good sign. Did he have backup? Was this just some elaborate scheme to distract her whilst the grownups prepared a proper ambush?
Casting a scowl at him, she zipped up the stairs and made a quick survey of the surrounding woodland from behind her curtained windows. Nothing. Aside from the negligible pings of simple-minded critters scurrying or flapping around outside, the colt was the only sentient creature within fifty yards of her house.
After checking that all the locks were secure and bolting shut the windows that weren’t, she went back downstairs and found him still hanging rather patiently, gawking at her collection with unadulterated, sugary-sweet wonder. There was a hint of something almost resembling changeling hunger in there, too, and she instinctively positioned herself between him and her stuff just in case.
“Okay, let’s try this again. What the heck do you think you’re doing in my house?” she asked with a frown.
He grinned at her. “Just wanted to say hi.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That can’t be all. Nopony just says ‘hi’ to a changeling.”
Her eyes then widened as she realised that their entire exchange had occurred with her wearing her natural form, right down to the raspy voice and black chitin. At that point, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the colt burst into flames and revealed himself as Femur, Scrape or one of her other dumb siblings and started laughing at her, but the fact that she could taste and absorb his emotions threw that whole theory out the window.
Since no other useful idea presented itself, she said the first thing that came into her head.
“What’s your name?”
“Top Edge,” he answered without taking his eyes off her collection.
Max flicked her eyes up to the words on his cap. “Huh. I should’ve guessed.”
She then placed herself squarely in his line of sight and locked eyes with him. “You’re awfully comfortable with this whole situation. Aren’t you the tiniest bit concerned that I’m a changeling? Heck, do you even know what I am?”
“Yeah. You’re one of the bug ponies that can look like anypony and eat love and stuff. Ma and Pa say that you’re all scary and dangerous, but that’s what makes you the coolest badflank writer ever!” He paused for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, then shook his head and added, “Well, second to AK Yearling, anyway, because she made Daring Do in the first place. I’m your biggest fan, Miss Sunny Spring!”
Sunny Spring. Her equine form.
He actually thinks I’m the real deal? Wow. Ponies really are stupid.
Then, she remembered how she’d ended up living alone in the first place and realised that maybe changelings shouldn’t be calling beetles black.
Still, despite having well-stocked reserves of energy, Max felt her appetite clawing its way up in anticipation of shattering his delusion, that she wasn’t actually the same entity as Sunny Spring the earth pony author. Well, she technically was, but given the reputation of changelings, he really should’ve guessed that she’d replaced the non-existent original instead of thinking that they were one and the same. There was no way he could know that for sure, and she almost salivated at the thought of inspiring some real terror in him. The more rational part of her insisted that it was only going to increase the likelihood of discovery in exchange for a short, cheap thrill, but his utter lack of self-preservation in the face of totally obvious danger annoyed her beyond reason.
Besides, that’ll teach him to come snooping into her basement!
“Bad news, little colt. Miss Sunny Spring isn’t here anymore.” With bared fangs and a toothy grin, she leaped up, clung to the ceiling and prowled around him like an upside-down cat, buzzing her wings ominously. “I’ve taken her far away, never to be found again. And you’re next in line to disappear…”
Top Edge’s pupils shrank, and she felt a bit of fear trickling out from him as he recoiled from her, but a cloud of smug certainty soon plugged up that leak. He shook his head and grinned at her. “Naaah, can’t be. I know you wrote all those stories. You always transform into Valiant Dawn and Daring Do and all the other guys when you write, and—”
Max nearly fell from the ceiling. “Wait, wha—hang on! When did you even see that?”
He put on a crafty smile as he mimed crawling upside-down with his free limbs. “You’re sneaky, but I’m sneaky too. I can always find you in the cave next to the river, under the huge broken pine in the woods, and in the room upstairs. You also like writing in the café and in the park, but you don’t turn into the heroes there because I guess you don’t want other ponies to see you.”
“The heck?” She recoiled from him, shaking her head. “Have… have you been stalking me?”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard, eyes drifting over to her shelf of custom plush toys. “Also, you like taking Daring Do and smooshing her muzzle together with Valiant’s and—”
“All right, all right, I believe you. Shut up!” she hissed as she felt hot blood rushing to her wings.
Holy guacamole, this little grub’s a monster.
If anyone at the hive ever got wind of how he had been stalking her for who knew how long, she’d never hear the end of it. Apparently, not starving all the time had a side effect of dulling her senses until she couldn’t even notice some dumb colt following her around like a parasite, even into her most personal spaces. She felt dirty and… somewhat violated.
Horse apples, is this what changeling victims feel like?
She gagged and took a moment to steady herself before returning her gaze to Top Edge. He had his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he picked at the sticky resin with a bony wing-finger, like an archaeologist attempting to clean dirt off some priceless treasure.
When he noticed her staring, he gave her a hopeful grin and asked, “So, can you teach me how to write awesome stories like you?”
“Heck no!” she growled. “Get out of my house already!”
He glanced at his gummed-up wing and tail. “Umm…”
Max snorted and spat saliva onto the lumps of resin. They stretched with his weight and dissolved into watery slime, and he deftly caught air with his freed wings before hitting the basement floor. But instead of zipping up the stairs and disappearing like she’d hoped, he simply planted his rump on the floor and looked at her like a puppy waiting for a treat.
Her eye twitched.
“I write stories too, and my friends all say I’m pretty good.” Top Edge bit his lip and rubbed the back of his neck as a little redness worked its way into his cheeks and ears. “But I know I’ll be even better if you teach me!”
Max toyed with the idea of keeping him captive the traditional way, but without one of her siblings to act as his doppelganger, that would quickly lead to a search party and a whole lot of unwanted attention once his parents missed him. She could replace him herself and feed on his parents, but trading her freedom and independence for school was an indignity reserved only for the most inexperienced or dim-witted of changelings. And she sure as hay had no intention of abandoning everything she’d worked on for something so trivial; she was an artist, for crying out loud!
She dropped from the ceiling, landed heavily on the floorboards and pointed up the stairs with a hoof. “Exit’s that way. Get lost, kid.”
His smile faltered. “But—”
“I’ve got no time to foalsit stupid grubs like you. Get out!” She stomped on the floor, drawing a startled gasp from him.
Tears welled up in his eyes, and Max felt her chest tighten up for some reason as he sidled past her and plodded up the stairs with his ears, wings and tail all drooping. Halfway up, he paused in mid-stride and wiped his eyes.
“I th—thought you were cool, but you’re… you’re just a big, mean jerk!” he said between sniffles.
“Tell it to somepony who cares.” Then, Max narrowed her eyes and added, “Actually, don’t. ’Cause if you snitch on me, I’ll do to your parents what Doctor Caballeron did to Daring’s uncle.”
Top Edge gasped, and a shockwave of sour-yellow fear struck Max as he bolted up the stairs. A moment later, he shouted down, “Fine, be that way! I will become the bestest writer ever and write more better stories than you ever could. And I won’t let you read any of them!”
Silence filled the basement as the sound of his fluttering wings faded away.
Max simply stared at the floor. Something felt off.
The heck is wrong with me?
She grimaced and massaged her chest when a twinge of stray emotions jabbed something important beneath her ribcage. Even the memory of his watery eyes and sniffling dug claws into her organs, and each passing minute sapped her energy. Not enough to put her in any danger, but definitely enough to count as a significant leak that would’ve relegated her to menial labour in the hive until she got herself sorted out. Wasteful, inefficient changelings didn’t make for good infiltrators or harvesters.
Despite her attempts to block it, she couldn’t stop burning energy just to feel uncomfortable about what she’d said to him. By the looks of things, he’d probably infected her with something nasty…
Max rose shakily onto all fours and sifted through her books, hoping to find something to distract her enough to ease off the discomfort, but nothing looked all that interesting all of a sudden. Even the latest adventure that she’d only read twice couldn’t take her mind off the colt. She probably should’ve just humoured him the same as she did for most of her fans, even if he’d made her look like a really incompetent changeling.
Can’t believe I got frazzled enough to turn away free food…
Yes, that was incredibly stupid of her. Definitely the reason for the emotional leakage, and not because she felt bad for Top Edge or anything.
“Uh… Miss Spring?”
Max blinked and turned to look at the stairs. Top Edge’s upside-down face peeped at her from the trapdoor entrance; his eyes looked a little red as he murmured, “The door and windows are all locked, and I’m too big to fit in the chimney. Can you let me out?”
Max brought a hoof to her face, then buzzed her wings and flitted over to him. He retreated to a respectful distance behind the living room’s couch when she reached the trapdoor, blasting her with another wave of black, bitter-sour reproach.
Grimacing internally, she schooled her face into a sheepish smile and said, “Look, kid, I’ve changed my mind. You can stay for a bit.”
Top Edge’s eyes widened, and his ears perked up. “Really?”
“Yeah. Just quit stalking me, okay?”
“Oh, okay. I can do that!” He nodded vigorously, and a sliver of gratitude and some of his former awe emanated from him once more.
Max suppressed a sigh of relief as the sharp discomfort in her chest subsided.
Ooh, that’s much better. Now what?
Just then, Top Edge’s stomach solved her predicament by growling rather loudly.
“Hungry?”
He nodded. “Breakfast would be nice.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t helped yourself to my food already.”
Top Edge tilted his head. “Why? Stealing is wrong.”
But apparently trespassing and stalking are completely okay…
“Whatever.” She trotted towards the kitchen without bothering to turn on any of the lights, since they both could see in the dark. “Come on, I’m sure I’ve got something you could munch on.”
“Yay, thanks!”
A minute later, Max found herself sitting at the table with Top Edge, watching in morbid fascination as he devoured a mango with equal parts bestial ferocity and clinical precision. Once he had the mango seed scandalously naked, he dropped it back into his bowl and moved on to savaging a slice of watermelon, ripping out great chunks of flesh as red juice dribbled from the corners of his mouth. She wasn’t sure whether his delighted face made the whole thing cute or disturbing.
Yikes. No wonder some ponies get skittish around these guys.
Admittedly, she didn’t have a whole lot of table manners to begin with, but at least she knew better than to make her meal look like a re-enactment of the Draco-Griff Wars. Not to mention the risk of choking…
“Sho, whishh ish yor favorish bookf?” he asked through a mouthful of watermelon.
“You might want to swallow before talking,” she said.
He gulped down the remains and showed her his gaping, empty mouth. “There, all gone. You talk like my Ma. I don’t know why everypony gets worried when I can do both, honestly. I have a big mouth.”
Max kept a straight face. I’ll bet you do.
It took her a moment to get her train of thought back on track to his question. She saw no harm in entertaining him for a while – might as well take a sip of his emotions for all her trouble.
"The Griffon’s Goblet is my favourite,” she said. “It’s not the smartest one in the series, but Daring has a far greater range of emotions than usual in it. It’s nice to see her exploring her relationship with Whiplash and…” – her eyelids slid down halfway – “you don’t really care about all that, do you?”
Top Edge stuck out his tongue and made a face. “Bleh, so much icky kissing. I liked The Wispy Mountain’s Coal better. Doomwing was the coolest bad guy ever!”
Max’s eye twitched at the mention of AK Yearling’s edgiest, least imaginative and objectively worst villain ever. But Top Edge was radiating so much adoration for the fictional half-dragon-half-pony, that she suppressed her grimace as he blathered on and on about Doomwing’s awesomely tragic past and totally badflank ability to turn into shadows and summon the dead. Typical necromancer stuff; he even had black robes and a skull-face.
She tried bringing up the merits of Daring Do’s better nemeses, but it all pretty much fell on deaf ears. Eventually, she just gave up and listened whilst occasionally murmuring some half-hearted affirmatives whenever he got extra-excited about recounting his favourite character’s traits.
Past the twentieth minute, though, she decided to redirect their conversation for the sake of her sanity. Her fake smile could only take so much abuse.
“You know, I still don’t get why you’re not afraid of me,” she pondered aloud.
Top Edge shrugged. “I don’t get why everypony’s so afraid of you guys. You look a bit weird, but everything you can do is so cool! Why don’t you just try going out? Without a disguise, I mean.”
“Are you kidding me?” She snorted and shook her head. “Sorry, kid, but you don’t know squat about what changelings have gone through. I know my history. A few queens tried being nice to ponies once upon a time, but all they got was fear and rejection. That, and a whole lot of pointy spears coming their way. You don’t know what it’s like to be driven away from your home, out into a barren wastela—” She stopped in mid-sentence and frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Top Edge’s enthusiasm had completely evaporated. He had taken on a drooping posture with his ears laid back, and his pinkish eyes gazed at her with such intensity that she thought she might lose herself in their liquid depths. He had the haunted look of somepony five times his age who had endured ceaseless indignity and hardship, and she could only soak in the torrent of sympathy pouring from him as he whispered, “I know what it’s like.”
Max stared at him.
Were thestrals outcasts even amongst their fellow ponies? Did they get shunned for their more predatory appearances or unconventional feeding habits? It made sense, she supposed. From what she’d seen, ponies had a tendency to marginalise anyone who didn’t fit the norm, even for things as inane as the amount of spare bits they had lying around. She listened intently as he opened his mouth to elaborate; if thestrals really had it as bad as changelings, they could be useful allies against their fellow equines under the right circumstances. She needed to know more.
“There was this one time I skipped hoofball practice, and then my classmates made fun of me because I played awful in the match,” Top Edge said with a wistful sigh.
Max felt an eye twitch. Again. “That’s actually your own fault… what’s your point?”
“They said mean things to me.”
“Ugh.” Max brought a hoof to her face so hard that she winced from the impact. “Oh wow, you totally had me there for a moment. You have absolutely no idea how different we are.”
Top Edge shrugged and gave her a toothy grin. “I have fangs, you have fangs. How different can we be?”
In spite of the stupidity of it all, she sniggered. “Heh. Can’t argue with that logic. Say, does your family know you’re here with me?”
“Nah. Ma and Pa let me do what I want so long as I get back home by sunrise.” He leaned closer and whispered, “I think they got tired of foalsitting after doing it for Cutting Edge and Bleeding Edge.”
“Eh?”
“My big brothers.”
Oh.
Max snorted. “They used up all the love first, huh? Typical.”
Pinnacle of creativity in name choice, too.
“I guess. And then there’s my big sister—”
“Let me guess: Sharp Edge?” Max smirked at him with half-lidded eyes. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Nope!”
“I can’t be far off,” she huffed. “Razor Edge? Or, how about Slicing Edge?”
Top Edge shook his head and grinned at her. “Batsy.”
Max blinked, then nodded slowly. “Okay, I honestly didn’t see that one coming.”
“Batsy is special.”
Bit of an accent on that last word, but she decided not to press for details. She had other things to worry about, like how she was supposed to get him to leave without creating a scene.
“Uh, Miss Spring?”
Max broke off her train of thought and grumbled, “Eh?”
“When you said you’d changed your mind, does that mean you will teach me how to make good stories like yours?” he asked.
She felt her mouth flattening into a thin line. “Well…”
“Could I just show you my character, please?” He took off his cap, fished a scrap of paper out from it and thrust it before her eyes. “Tell me how to make him awesomer!”
It took her a moment to glean the details from the drawing’s haphazard mixture of coloured pencils and crayons, but Max’s blood ran cold when she beheld the subject’s pitch-black coat, red pupils that bled purple fire, eldritch wings composed of bones and shadows, with a mane and tail of smoke and blue cinders. A curved horn sprouted from the stallion’s head, its tip aglow with intertwined blue and teal magic. He also had spiny projections coming out of his limbs that seemed to serve no practical purpose other than potential self-mutilation. And scars. So many jagged scars. Especially the one streaking over an eye, down to the base of his lower jaw.
Max bit her lip.
On one hoof, she had no time to school a beginner like him in the basics of character design, let alone writing in general. But on the other hoof, she could not let him unleash that abomination into the world of Daring Do. Just looking at it made her subcutaneous tissue crawl.
“Uh, I suppose it could use some work…” she murmured.
Top Edge’s face fell as he slowly put his cap back on. “You don’t like him.”
Hayseed, please don’t cry again.
With a deep sigh, Max squared her shoulders and locked eyes with him. “Well, let’s start with the basics. Your character needs a bit of tweaking. What’s his name?”
“Shadow Hawk!”
Top Edge lowered his voice down to what he must’ve considered a deep and ominous tone, but to Max sounded about as menacing as a squirrel’s chittering. Ten times more likely to give her a toothache, though.
He skulked around the table like a wolf, growling, “Nightmare Moon was supposed to give her Children of the Night eternal paradise, but Princess Celestia, The Great Usurer, banished her because she couldn’t stand having somepony more powerful than her around. For a thousand years, our kind hid from the harsh sun, shunted by the rest of Equestria because of how awesomely terrifying we look.”
Max raised an eye ridge as he spread his wings and bared his fangs in emphasis.
“The sun-lovers wanted her forgotten, but Shadow Hawk’s Ma and Pa fought to prepare the way for Nightmare Moon’s return. They kept star charts and books that everypony else tried to burn. They protected their village from stupid sun-lovers. Then, ten years ago, he was born on the night of a blue moon. You know what that means, right?”
She shrugged. “Educate me.”
“It means that Shadow Hawk is the atavar of—”
“I think you mean avatar,” she interjected.
Top Edge pouted at her for a moment, then huffed and continued, “Avatar of the Night. Dark magic lives inside him, waiting to destroy everything it touches. It broke out of him once, and there was wailing and mashing of teeth. He still has the scar from that, and one day, he’s going to use his powers to save Daring Do!”
Max sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it whistle out. Top Edge deserved his name, all right. At least he had some flair for drama.
“Kid, maybe you should try something a little more… low-key for your debut on the fanfiction scene.” She engulfed herself in green flames and transformed into her closest approximation Shadow Hawk, resisting the urge to gag as she did so. “Because if you want this guy to be your main character, he is not going to do you any favours in the long run.”
Top Edge’s ears flattened. “Why not? He already looks super powerful and awesome!”
“Exactly.” She swept a hoof over her form. “You’ve made him way too special.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked, frowning at her as he clambered back onto his chair. “Ma says that everypony is special anyway.”
“I’ll bet she did, but she’s only told you half the story,” Max said without missing a beat. She then leaned closer and whispered, “You wanna know a grown-up secret?”
He nodded.
“Nopony is special,” she said flatly.
“But—”
“Nopony!” she growled with a stallion’s deep voice, thumping a hoof on the table with enough heavy finality to make the plates and cups clink around. “Not even the princesses. Because deep down, we’re all pathetic grubs crawling around under the hot sun just hoping to make it to the next day, and there’s nothing we love seeing more than somepony else making it through life – finding happiness is an optional bonus – despite being just as pathetic as we are.”
“But—”
“Sorry, kid. You’re not special, I’m not special, everypony is not special.”
Top Edge frowned. “But that sounds… sad and boring.”
Max grinned as she reverted to changeling form. “And that’s the whole secret. We’re all totally not special in our own special way, and that’s what everypony likes to see and read about.”
He squinted at her, shifting his angle from one side to another as if looking for a hole in her head where her brain might’ve leaked out of. After a moment, he shook his head and threw both fore hooves up into the air. “That doesn’t make any sense at all!”
“Oh, trust me. It will once you get to my age.”
Maybe sooner if your life starts sucking badly enough, she added internally.
“But until then, you’ll just have to take my word for it.” She raised a hoof and reached across the table. “So… do you trust me? You’ll need to if you want my help. Otherwise, I’ll leave you to figure everything out on your own; no hard feelings.”
Top Edge stared at the table for a moment or two, biting his lip. He then shifted his gaze here and there around the kitchen, as if he might find answers in her pots and pans. Then, he finally locked eyes with her, sighed and flapped forward to bump hooves with her. “Okay. I don’t get it yet, but I want you to teach me.”
And he meant it. Max could feel his trust wrapping around her like a tendril – something that she could exploit to draw love and adoration from him. Also, annoyingly enough, something that could cause a substantial amount of pain if she abused it. She wasn’t sure in which direction the pain would go, though.
Weird. It’s not supposed to be a two-way deal.
Still, it was an investment worth cultivating, so she filed that away for later consideration. She didn’t even mind accidentally burning up some energy to toss a genuine smile his way as she got up from her chair and trotted out of the kitchen. “Come on; let’s see if we can’t turn your Shadow Hawk into somepony a little more relatable. Follow me.”
Max led him into her study, which had a full-sized body mirror that she normally used for crafting her own characters, using herself as the model. After double-checking that all the windows and door were covered and locked, she turned herself into Shadow Hawk and began the arduous process of debating with Top Edge on the merits of each physical characteristic as she swapped one for another in gouts of green flame. Despite his trust, he took a lot of convincing before giving any sort of consent to swap each overblown, edgy trait for something a little more reasonable. Eventually, though, she managed to get him to ditch the worst offenders, namely the ghostly bone-wings – sparing him all the world’s stupid wingboner jokes in the process – the ethereal mane and tail, the pointless body spines and most of the garish scars.
“Now, this is a guy you can work with,” she said in a young stallion’s voice, filled with grim satisfaction.
In the mirror stood a light-purple, male thestral of medium stature, with reddish-purple wings and greyish-blue, messy hair. His lightning-blue eyes combined with his half-formed grin and submissive posture hinted at something primordial just waiting to be unleashed, in accordance with Top Edge’s vision of his past. A little scar marred the coat on his chest, close to his heart, and he had a broken sword for a cutie mark. All in all, a much more approachable character than what they started off with, and even though he wasn’t exactly up to Max's standards, she decided it was best to let Top Edge have a little of his namesake in the character. Just a bit.
“Okay, he still looks pretty cool,” Top Edge said as he trotted in a circle around her, eyeing every minute detail with pulses of awe and satisfaction. “Let’s do his backstory next!”
Max glanced at the clock and switched back into her natural form. She then patted him on the head and said, “That’s enough work for one night. It’s getting late for me, and you’d better not spend too much time in a stranger’s house. Get permission from your Ma and Pa – just leave out the fact that I’m a changeling, ’kay? – and maybe we can continue this another time. Deal?”
A huge smile lit up his face, and his wings fluttered like mad as he cried, “Deal!”
Max inclined her head towards the door. “Come on, I’ll see you out.”
As they trotted into the living room, Top Edge tugged on her tail and asked, “Hey, have you ever tried writing about yourself? I think it would be cool if you teamed up with Daring Do! She’s never had a changeling sidekick before.”
Max snorted. “A self-insert? Hah! Like that’s ever going to happen. Who’d want to read about some changeling posing as a fanfiction author, anyway?”
Cold air washed over them when she opened the front door, carrying in a few stray leaves from the forest. A shaft of moonlight illuminated the path from her house to the town, but despite her ability to see in the dark, the surrounding trees somehow felt like they harboured hidden dangers for the colt.
Max swallowed and lowered herself to speak with him muzzle to muzzle. “Look, I know you think that changelings are cool, but trust me when I say that you should not cosy up to every single one of us. It won’t end well for you.”
He tilted his head. “Are you sure? I mean, you were nasty at first, but you turned out pretty nice.”
Not because I like you. Nope.
Because I’ll get to feed on you all by myself. Yes.
Sure…
She blocked out the annoying thoughts, then placed a hoof on his shoulder and hardened her voice. “You got lucky with me, but the next changeling you meet will probably stuff you into a cocoon, and you will never see your parents again. You get me? Many of us are bad like Doctor Caballeron, and most are even worse because we won’t monologue.”
“I… okay.” He nodded. “I’ll be careful around changelings.”
“Secret password between us is ‘fluffy grub’,” she said with a wink. “Don’t ever share it with anyone else. And if the pony or changeling who looks like me doesn’t know it, then get the heck away as fast as you can and never come back. Got it?”
“Never?” He gave her a crestfallen shake of the head. “As in, I can’t ever see you again? But I just got to know you!”
“Sheesh, it’s not the end of the world,” she muttered.
Top Edge didn’t look convinced. He just stared at the floor in silence, as if searching for the right words to say at a funeral or something. She could taste a bit of sadness and loneliness wafting from him, too.
“Argh, just… I’ll be right back,” Max said as she flitted back down into the basement.
She went straight to her shelf of custom toys and singled out the especially fine Daring Do plushie in her complete outfit which she’d gotten from her first convention – the one that Top Edge had been eyeing with great interest earlier. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it off the shelf and flew back up.
This is awful. I have no self-control.
“Here,” she said gruffly as she presented it to a wide-eyed Top Edge. “Something for you to remember me by if for some reason we can’t meet again.”
He gasped and hugged it tightly whilst doing a little pirouette. “Awesome! Thanks, Miss Sunny Spring!”
“My real name is Maxilla. But… just call me Max.”
“Okay. Thanks, Max!” Top Edge took a step outside, then trotted right back in and stopped in front of her.
She raised an eye ridge. “What?”
“Uh, could you turn into Daring Do for a bit?” He fluttered his wings and gave her a sheepish smile. “I always wanted to… give her a hug.”
“Sure, why not?” She did as requested and grunted as he leaped up hugged her neck with a surprising amount of strength.
“Okay, now change back!” he cried.
“Why?”
“Because I want to hug you too, duh!”
Max rolled her eyes, but obeyed. “Whatever, just—hnnggghh!”
Pure, sweet affection slammed into her as he squeezed her neck and rubbed his fluffy chest against hers like the world’s cutest vice. Unlike the love and adoration that ponies had given to her whilst disguised, this one felt… genuine. Painfully so. She grimaced as she sheer amount of energy merged with her already substantial reserves and threatened to split her in halves, and she had to redirect and disperse a major portion of it just to avoid discovering what the changeling equivalent of throwing up would look or feel like.
Hayseed, that idiot Thorax might’ve been on to something…
Max gingerly patted Top Edge on the back and wheezed, “Okay, buddy, I think that’s all I can take for now. Please let me go.”
“Bye, Max! See you soon!”
She swayed in the wind and held onto the doorframe to keep from crumpling to a heap on the floor, and when she next looked up, Top Edge was little more than a dark shape fluttering in the night sky, humming Daring Do’s theme song. A moment later, he dipped below the treetops and vanished from sight. It took her a few minutes to stop staring, after which she locked the door and just shambled down into her basement to crawl back into bed.
The clock ticked away incessantly. Though safely curled up beneath the covers, sleep came very, very slowly. Max kind of missed his company already, and she couldn’t help worrying about his safety even though he had already proven himself a very stealthy little stalker. And although she had plenty of acquaintances, none of them came close to him in terms of emotional output-to-effort ratio, and his casual acceptance of her nature had felt… pleasantly liberating in a way that she couldn’t quite wrap her head around.
After what might’ve been hours of staring at the ceiling, she finally felt herself succumbing to sleep. That was when her brain finally caught up with events and everything clicked into place.
Max sat bolt upright and gasped.
Celestia’s flank on a stick, I think I just made a friend!
Author's Note
Entry for the 2016 Bat ponies and Thestrals competition.
