Nyx lay in bed, unable to sleep, listening to wind whipping through the branches of the library tree. The great tree itself was as sturdy as a boulder, but downburst gusts of wind thrashed the leaves fiercely just outside her window.
She turned over, opened an eye to glance at the window, but saw only stark blackness. The thickly overcast night sky shed no light even for her sensitive draconic eyes. As she looked there was a dull rumble of distant thunder, and the windows rattled sympathetically in their panes.
Thunder brought back bad memories for Nyx. She whimpered softly, turned away from the window and tried tucking her head under her wing, beneath her blanket. She channeled some magic into her horn, creating a soft glow. A few fat raindrops splashed against the window, followed by a dull roar of heavy rain outside.
Thunder rumbled, and the windows rattled again. Soon Nyx could hear water splashing where rivulets cascaded down the trunk of the great tree. Under the covers the black filly alicorn fidgeted, eyes open.
There was a louder rumble of thunder… It rumbled and rumbled and just kept on rumbling for several more long seconds. Just when Nyx thought it had stopped there was another roll of thunder and the windows rattled again. Then, after a few moments, they rattled again.
With a hoof Nyx threw back the covers and hopped out of bed. She brightened the light from her horn and made her way to Twilight’s room — only to find her bed was empty as well.
The windows lit up for an instant with a flash of lightning followed by a peal of thunder which died down to a dull rumble that rattled the glass yet again. Nyx hurried on, looking for her adoptive mother. There was a light in the kitchen, and there she found Spike and his pet phoenix, Peewee. Nyx called out, “Hey!”
“Hey Nyx,” Spike answered. “Peewee couldn’t sleep, so we’re just fixing a snack. Did the thunder wake you up too?”
Nyx nodded and said, her voice strained, “It… It just keeps rumbling and rumbling. Where’s Mama? She’s not in bed.”
“Oh, Twilight’s downstairs.” Spike glanced at the sandwich he was making and then asked, “You want something to eat?”
The filly shook her head. “No thanks. I’ll go downstairs too.” She trotted to the stairs — and jumped when a louder peal of thunder startled her — then she hurried down the stairs to the library proper, with its many book-burdened shelves.
There she found Twilight Sparkle at one of the reading tables along with her pet owl (and number two assistant), Owloysius. “Mama?” called Nyx, getting their attention. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Twilight looked up, blearily, and said, “Oh Nyx, you too? I guess nopony’s getting any sleep tonight. Come over here, sweetie!” Nyx hurried to Twilight’s side, and they nuzzled one another warmly. Nyx settled down on the floor by Twilight’s side.
Then a deep, almost sub-sonic rumble rattled the windows, and Nyx scooted closer, pressing her body against Twilight’s. The larger unicorn nosed at her again and said softly, “Still scared of thunderstorms?”
“No!” Nyx insisted. But then she lowered her head and said, “Maybe a little.”
“It’s okay, I understand,” Twilight said, truthfully. Magical lightning bolts had once been Nightmare Moon’s favorite weapon. Later, after Nyx had been resurrected from the remnants of Nightmare Moon’s armor, Twilight herself had found and rescued the scared and confused little filly from the depths of Everfree Forest — during a thunderstorm. It wasn’t the least surprising that thunder and lightning tended to upset her.
On this night the thunder was relentless, it just kept coming and coming, rumbling and rumbling, but at least it wasn’t close. There hadn’t been any earsplitting blasts near the tree, for which Twilight was thankful. She figured Nyx would be OK if the storm didn’t get any worse than this.
“Why do the windows keep making that noise?” Nyx wondered out loud.
Twilight sighed and explained, “It’s because I cast a growth spell on the tree and tried to make it bigger. And now all the windows are loose. I’ll have to get them fixed — caulked or shimmed or something, I guess.” Knowledgeable though she was, carpentry didn’t fall within her realm of experience.
Nyx looked distractedly at her front hooves for a moment, then came up with another question. “Why did the pegasuses make a storm to keep everypony awake at night?”
“Pegasi, dear,” Twilight corrected gently. “And they didn’t do it on purpose, I’m sure. According to the weather schedule we were supposed to have gentle, soaking rains tonight. But pegasus ponies can’t fly much at night; they can’t see in the dark, and it would be too dangerous. They can only set the clouds in motion and let them rain out overnight. Then if the storm becomes stronger than they planned, there’s nothing they can do to correct it until morning.”
Nyx nodded. She thought it over for a moment and said, “Why don’t they make the rain during daytime? Then they could fix it if something went wrong.”
Twilight smiled at Nyx. “You’re right, they could. But then lots of ponies would be unhappy because their plans for the day were ruined. It’s something ponies have always argued about.”
“Who?” asked Owloysius.
Twilight and Nyx both were unable to resist a quick grin whenever the owl asked his signature question. Twilight responded, “Who do you think? The weather teams always want to schedule rain for daytime when they have more control and it’s safer, but all the other ponies want rain to fall at night. Plus, Applejack and Carrot Top both say that rain at night makes plants grow better. Which I don’t think is scientific at all, but you just can’t argue with earth ponies about how to make plants grow.”
This sort of interchange was soothing in its familiarity, as Nyx’s natural inquisitiveness dovetailed with Twilight’s propensity to lecture. Even though the storm still rumbled, it no longer bothered Nyx. She felt safe with her mother by her side in the warm pool of lamp-light and the homely scent of books all around. Twilight and Owloysius settled down to reading again, and Nyx became quiet, laying her head between her front hooves and closing her eyes.
After a few minutes this interlude of tranquility was broken by Spike’s voice yelling from upstairs. “Twiliiight, help! There’s water coming in.”
Twilight muttered, “Oh no… I’d better go see about that.” Then she yelled towards the stairwell, “Coming!” She stood and went to tromp up the stairs, and Nyx followed — her sleepiness overcome by curiosity.
They found Spike trying to arrange dishrags and jars on the countertop to catch the water. “It’s dripping out of the cabinet,” he explained.
Twilight stood up on her hind legs, front hooves on the countertop, and magicked open the cabinet doors to peek inside. “I can see water running down the back of the cabinet. Oh no! All our spices…” Looking closer, most of them were in glass jars and were actually okay, but the rice, oats and salt in cardboard canisters were likely damaged. “I can’t even see how the water’s getting into the room; it’s just coming in at the top of the cabinet. I’ll have to move this stuff somewhere dry and stuff some rags in here to catch the water,” she said.
Nyx sat on her haunches watching, but found this situation a lot less entertaining than the gushing streams of water her imagination had conjured up. After a minute she quietly went back down the stairs to rejoin Owloysius and told him what happened.
Boom! Another peal of thunder dwindled to a low rumble, and the windows rattled again. Nyx sighed and once more lowered her head to the floor. “How long can this go on?” she wondered. “I’m not even scared anymore, I’m just tiiired.”
Owloysious nodded agreement with a soft “hoo…” From upstairs drifted the muffled voices of Spike and Twilight as they continued cleaning up the drips and looking around to see if there were any more.
“SKREEEEEAAHHHH!”
The piercing, inhuman (not to mention inequine) shriek startled Nyx and Owloysious, making them both jump and flap their wings in a moment of panic. The frightful sound had come from the back of the library, where stairs led down to the basement. The confused owl and alicorn fluttered into one another, then fell to the floor with a thump. Owloysious took to the air again and went flapping up the stairs while Nyx raced right behind him on all four hooves, crying out, “MAMAAA!” as she went.
Twilight ducked underneath Owloysious at the top of the stairs, then fell back on her haunches as she caught Nyx and hugged her with her front legs. “Nyx, what happened?”
The filly sobbed as she clutched at Twilight, “The ch-changeling made a awful scary noise.”
Twilight had once seen Nyx fight off a small army of monsters when she was defending Ponyville — as fully grown Queen Nyx, wielding all the powers of Nightmare Moon. Since then, however, Princess Luna had stripped away those dark powers, and Nyx had regressed to her current form. Maybe she would grow up to become a monster fighter again someday, as the blue shield of her cutie mark implied, but for now she was just a frightened filly clinging to her mother.
Twilight herself was hardly comfortable around the changeling, but she was the adult of the house, and she was responsible for it. “You stay up here!” she told Nyx. “I’ll go see what’s wrong with it.”
“Let me come with you!” Spike said.
She shot him a glance. “Are you sure?” He nodded and hopped on her back, and she started down the stairs. Although Twilight sometimes allowed the changeling a little freedom during the day whenever she was able to keep an eye on it, she’d barred the basement door at night. Now she unbarred the door and entered, cautiously, casting a beam of light from her horn into the gloom.
The spot of light revealed several newspapers scattered across the floor, some of them looking gnawed-upon. Twilight had been appalled when she learned the changeling was both able and willing to eat paper. She’d scrounged up a stack of old newspapers to try and appease the creature’s appetite and keep it from getting into her books.
A cat-like hiss prompted Twilight to direct her light upward, revealing the changeling crouched on top of her laboratory workbench. Its body was dull black, eyes a featureless blue giving little indication of where its gaze was directed, tattered-looking insectoid wings folded on its back, legs perforated like swiss cheese… It turned its head toward Twilight and hissed again between its long fangs.
Twilight flinched from the sight, and felt Spike’s blunt claws dig into her mane as he reflexively clutched more tightly at her, but Twilight was actually relieved to see that the changeling’s horn was still tightly wrapped in baling wire. Just like a unicorn, the changeling was unable to cast any magic while its horn was bound with a conductive material. The spiraling and crisscrossing strands of soft iron wire would be quite difficult to remove without using magic or tools. Thus deprived of magic, the changeling wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it looked. Twilight had only removed the wire a few times when performing tests on the creature, and then only when she had other ponies present to help monitor and guard it.
She cast her light around the rest of the room. The candles she usually kept down here were missing. Candles had been disappearing, one or two at a time, ever since the changeling had arrived. She was sure it had been stealing them, but for what purpose she never knew.
A deep rumble of thunder filtered down from above, and the changeling grumbled in an almost comically annoyed — but completely unintelligible — manner.
Twilight turned her light to The Nest. She didn’t know what else to call the structure the changeling had been constructing in the corner of the room, incorporating rags, feathers, chewed up paper, and some sort of yellow-green resin that it hawked up. A pool of dark liquid was spreading around the base of the nest.
That was new. She walked over to the pool and lowered her muzzle to sniff at it. “Careful, Twilight!” Spike warned. The changeling hissed again and then chattered incoherently, staring at the pool. It could have been a warning, or it might have been angry.
Twilight frowned and sniffed again, then cautiously dipped a hoof in the liquid. “I think it’s rainwater. We have another leak down here.”
“Baaaaaad…” hissed the changeling, as it tried to scoot backward on the workbench, until its tail bumped into the wall.
Twilight looked up at the creature and said, “It’s not poison, Skitterskee. It’s not acid. It’s just water. You can come down from there.” The changeling shook its head, then crouched low with ears drooping and its head against the tabletop. Twilight sighed and then said, “Spike? Would you go upstairs and fetch a spare blanket, please?”
“Gladly,” he answered, as he hopped off her back and went up the stairs to the less dark, dank and creepy parts of the tree.
Twilight looked to the changeling again and said, “Skitters… I’m going to take you up to the reading room, okay? Please walk with me, so I don’t have to magic you up there. Okay? Please?”
Skitterskee seemed to think it over, scuffing at the tabletop with a hoof. There was another rumble of thunder. The changeling scooted over to the edge of the table and peered at the floor, then hopped down and skittered over to Twilight’s side.
Twilight tried not to flinch in response to the changeling’s proximity, but then her nose wrinkled with disgust. That smell — an acrid, repulsive reek — she recognized from the battle at Canterlot, and again when the changeling had first been brought to the library. Her best guess was that the odor was a defensive mechanism something like a skunk’s scent, but released unconsciously whenever the changeling was afraid. “Come along…” she muttered, and she climbed the stairs with Skitterskee slinking along. Even though the changeling was about the same size as the unicorn pony, its cowering posture made it seem smaller beside her.
Twilight ordered the changeling to sit at one of the reading tables and be quiet and for goodness sake not chew on any books, to which it responded only by cringing and continuing to look miserable. Spike came down the stairs with a blanket, which Twilight levitated and draped over the changeling’s body and pulled snug around it. “There!” she said. “Just like a cocoon, huh?”
Skitterskee grumbled.
“Well then,” Twilight continued, “I’ll just go clean up the mess in the basement while you rest here.” She turned and started to leave, but something caught her hind leg. She looked and saw the changeling clutching at her leg with both of its front hooves and gazing up at her with a pleading expression — or maybe the expression was just her imagination; those changeling eyes always looked so blank.
Twilight paused uncertainly. For a moment she wished Fluttershy was there. She would have known what to do. She wouldn’t care what Skitterskee was, or what it looked like, or smelled like. Twilight sighed and her horn flared with magic as she pried the changeling loose. She said, “You’ll be okay here, Skitters. I’ll be right downstairs, and Spike will be here to keep an eye on you. Okay?” It reluctantly nodded, and Twilight returned to the basement.
Spike squinted at the changeling and said. “You heard that? I’ll be keeping both eyes on you, bug.” To underscore the message he pointed at his eyes with a couple of clawed fingers, then at the changeling, which merely retreated into its blanket.
Another pair of draconic eyes were focused on the changeling. Crouched on the stairwell, peeking down around the curve of the steps, was Nyx. From her semi-concealed perch she watched the changeling, and she watched Spike watching the changeling. The windows rattled just a little, but the thunder was finally waning and moving off into the distance.
The changeling suddenly gave a small whine and started pawing at its horn, scuffing at the iron wire with the edge of its hoof, trying to dislodge it. “Hey, cut that out!” yelled Spike. “Don’t make me call Twilight back up here!” The changeling stopped what it was doing and ducked back under the blanket.
Nyx slowly, quietly descended the stairs and approached. “What happened?” she asked.
“There’s water coming into the basement,” Spike explained, “Twi’s cleaning it up. And the changeling is acting weird, as usual.” He glanced at the blanket which had begun shuddering rhythmically. “Oh for pity’s sake… What’s it doing now?”
Nyx watched for a few moments and then said, “Can’t you tell? It’s crying.”
Spike blinked. “What? You’re nuts. It’s a monster. Monsters don’t cry.”
Nyx totally missed the irony of a fire-breathing dragon calling a changeling a monster. Instead she answered, “Sometimes they do. I was a monster once. I had my own palace and servants and all the power in the world. But I missed my mama, and I missed my home, and my friends, and sometimes, when nopony could see me, I cried.”
Spike fidgeted and looked down at his feet. “Yeah, maybe so,” he admitted. “But this thing is still dangerous.”
“Just don’t be mean to it, okay?” Nyx glanced at the windows, and at the stairs. “I think the thunder’s just about quit. I’m goin’ back to bed.”
He nodded. “Okay, Nyx. Good night! Don’t let the bedbugs bite!”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “Thanks for that image, Spike!”
She stirred from her slumber, gradually realizing she wasn’t in bed. She lifted her head and looked blearily at the surface she’d just been drooling on: pages now ruined with ink splotched where her saliva had wet it. In front of her was an open book. She guessed she must have fallen asleep while trying to study and take notes.
It wasn’t really surprising. The way things had been going, she never could seem to catch up on her sleep. There was simply too much to do, trying to keep up with her ever-expanding responsibilities. And then there’d been the storm, and water getting into the house. It had been a long night. She sighed and blearily looked across the table — at herself.
“Buh?”
Her duplicate looked up from the book she was reading and said, “Oh, you’re awake! How are you feeling, Skitters?”
“Skitters?” She looked down at herself: a glance at her black, perforated forelegs, then she shrieked and jumped back from the table, as if she could jump away from what she’d seen. “AAAAH! WHAT?”
Across the table, the lavender-colored unicorn jumped to her feet. “Oh no, no! It’s happened again, hasn’t it?”
The changeling, sitting awkwardly on its rump, was still gawping at its own legs and belly. “This can’t… I don’t… This doesn’t make sense, I’m not a changeling!”
Twilight spoke urgently to the creature, “Please don’t panic! I can explain this. I know this is going to be hard for you to accept, but hear me out! You aren’t really Twilight Sparkle. You’re Skitterskee. I was doing an experiment to test the limits of your transformational magic, and I accidentally gave you a big boost of magic power. So… When you transformed, you not only copied my appearance, voice and mannerisms, but also my personality and memories, everything. So, now you think you’re me!”
Skitterskee’s jaw hung open as the wheels turned in her head. “But what? How is that even possible? I can’t be a changeling! It… It doesn’t work that way.”
Twilight moved closer and put a reassuring hoof on Skitterskee’s shoulder. “Don’t worry! It’s totally temporary. I was able to get your body back to normal, but I guess the mental effect will take a while to wear off. I’m sure you’ll revert to your real personality after a few hours, tops.
“But, but, but…” Skitters examined herself again, frantically, as if expecting to find some obvious visible clue to her real identity. “This is crazy. I can remember everything about my pony past, my pony family, my pony friends…”
“I know, I know. It’s just a side-effect of the spell. When they’re cut off from the hive, changeling workers are only semi-intelligent — about as smart as a dog, really — so my personality has completely overwhelmed yours. Give it a while and the confusion will pass, and the spell will run its course and you’ll go back to normal. I promise!”
“Oh… okay, I’ll try.” She forced herself to settle back down onto the floor, with her legs tucked under her. Her heart was still pounding, transparent wings flitting anxiously, her breathing heavy, but she tried to will herself to be calm. She said, “I can’t believe it, I can’t. This is… so very, very weird…”
“Huh. You’re telling me?” said Twilight. She went back to her place at the other side of the table and resumed reading from a slim book.
Skitterskee’s mind flailed helplessly. What was the last thing she remembered? It was all starting to seem like a jumble. “What if somepony comes in looking for a book? And where are Nyx and Spike?”
Twilight answered, “Well, Nyx is in school for the day, so she won’t be back for a while. Spike went to get a couple of things in town, he’ll be back soon. I guess if somepony starts to come in, you could duck back into the basement.”
Skitters frowned and said, “Hey, I remember sending Spike to town.” She frowned and added, “but I don’t remember any experiment.”
“You remember sending Spike to town yesterday, not today,” Twilight explained. “Apparently you didn’t get my short-term memory. And of course you’ll lose all of it when you go back to normal. Your little changeling mind can’t hold onto it.”
Skitterskee frowned for a moment and then stomped her hoof. “No! This doesn’t make sense. If I have all of your memories, I’d at least remember planning an experiment like that, and setting it up.”
Twilight tsked. “Like I said, short-term memory is the first to go. Maybe it’s already starting to wear off.”
Skitterskee squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and rubbed the top of her puzzle with a porous pastern. Then she shook her head and said, “I wouldn’t do something like that on the spur of the moment, on a whim. It would have to be planned out in detail. Why can’t I remember?”
Twilight glared for a moment, then her horn lit up with emerald scintillations and she said, “I’m sure if you think back, you can remember planning the experiment.”
Skitterskee blinked. “What? No, I…” Her voice trailed off, and a green glimmer flickered in her eyes. Then she said softly, “I… I can remember planning the experiment.”
Twilight nodded, her horn still enveloped in green sparkles. “You can remember when I brought you up here, and removed the wire from your horn, and cast the spell. Can’t you?”
Dully, Skitterskee repeated, “I can remember when you brought me up here, and removed the wire from my horn, and cast the spell.”
Twilight smiled and let the magic fade. “I’m glad it’s coming back to you.”
Skitterskee shuddered, closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, as if shaking away cobwebs. Then she said, “I… I don’t think I want to change back. I like being you.”
Twilight stared at her for a few moments, then came around the table again and gave the changeling an awkward hug, and said, “I know you’re confused, and I’m sorry. I never would have cast that spell if I’d known it was going to do this to you. But you know, even if we could make the spell last longer, it just wouldn’t work for you to live as my duplicate.”
“I… I guess you’re right.”
Twilight asked, “Are you gonna be okay now? Maybe you could read something to take your mind off it. I’ll be right here.”
Skitterskee nodded. “Okay. That’s a good idea.” Reading always calmed her — or so her fraudulent memories were telling her. She looked to the shelves and levitated over an old favorite, Chimeric Creatures: A History of Morphogenic Spells. It seemed appropriate. She listlessly flipped through the book, but was unable to concentrate. Maybe the transformation didn’t make me as intelligent as the real Twilight Sparkle, she thought to herself. Or maybe I’m just too upset to focus.
She couldn’t resist glancing across the table at Twilight Sparkle. The scene was weirdly fascinating. It feels like looking at myself from outside, Skitterskee thought. Her gaze wandered across Twilight’s tail and cutie mark, her mane with it’s distinctive pink stripe, her horn sparkling with a soft emerald aura of magic as she flipped through the pages of a slim blue volume. Something seemed subtly wrong about this, but the changeling couldn’t quite put her hoof on it.
Skitterskee recognized that book, though. She said, “Why… are you reading my journal?”
Twilight looked up and said, “I think you mean my journal. I’m just reviewing my notes, gathering my thoughts. I’ve got to prepare a report on you for Princess Celestia, after all.”
“That’s right, I remember… I wonder what’ll happen to me after I send… I mean, after you send that report?”
Twilight put down the journal on the table, and stared at it pensively. “That’ll be up to the princess. You can’t stay with me forever, and I doubt she’d just turn you loose in Equestria.”
Skitterskee groaned. “She’ll probably lock me away in a dungeon. Or banish me. Or lock me in a dungeon in the place she banished me to.” Her voice grew more stressed as she imagined more and more dire outcomes. “She might even send me to Tartarus — I’m a monster, after all!”
“Yeah…” said Twilight, although she winced at the changeling’s last comment. “Can’t have hideous, evil, love-sucking monsters running around causing havoc.” She sighed and said, “I know I’m going to regret this, but… You’re weird and creepy, Skitters, but I don’t think you’re really that dangerous. I could let you escape.”
Skitterskee gasped. “No! Wait. You wouldn’t really betray the princess like that, would you?”
Twilight fixed a penetrating stare on her double. “Would I? What do you think?”
Skitterskee looked at her front hooves and pondered for a moment. Without looking up she said, “I used to practically worship Princess Celestia. Or you did, I mean. Heh, it’s crazy even trying to talk about this. But anyhow, ever since what happened with Nyx, things haven’t been the same. And then I saw Celestia defeated by the changeling queen. Now I know my teacher — your teacher, sorry — isn’t infallible, isn’t all-powerful. I guess the faithful student lost some of her faith, huh?”
Twilight nodded somberly. “I guess I did. Anyhow, I’ve already got everything I need for my report, and you’ll never have a better chance to get away than right now, before Spike gets back. With my knowledge of Ponyville in your head, you can fool everypony long enough to slip away. I’ll tell them you tricked me. Princess Celestia will be disappointed, but… after all, it’s not like she hasn’t ever been fooled by a changeling. I don’t think she’ll come down too hard on me.”
Skitterskee stood, looked toward the front door of the library, and gulped, trepidation painted in her face and posture.
Twilight came over and gently nosed at her and said, “If you’re going, you better do it before either of us chickens out. Unless you fancy an extended stay in Tartarus, that is.”
Skitterskee’s eyes went wide, and she trotted over to the door, opening it with her magic, and peeked out. She balked. “I… I can’t go out there looking like this! But I don’t remember how to transform.”
Twilight Sparkle sighed. “Hold still, I’ll try to give you a boost.” She cast another spell, and for an instant Skitterskee was enveloped in cold green flames, causing her to jump. As he hooves came to rest once more on the wooden floor, she once more wore the guise of a lavender unicorn. Twilight nodded, satisfied, and told her, “Just act natural and nopony will suspect anything until you’re out of town.”
“But… Where will I go?”
“I’m sure you’ll know where to find other changelings as soon as the spell wears off and you get your own memories back.”
Skitterskee peeked out the door again, then glanced back. “Thanks for giving me a chance, Twilight,” she said.
“Good luck, Skitters!” Twilight replied, waving a hoof. “I hope you find where you belong.” Then Skitterskee ducked out through the door and was gone.
After the door slammed, ‘Twilight’ went back to the reading table and grinned as she levitated the journal again with her green glow of magic. “Dear Queen Chrysalis,” she mused out loud, “I learned an important lesson today about how gullible some ponies can be.”