Tales of a Changebug Cuddle Merchant
I. Who is this Deviously Handsome Fellow
The Legend of the Lone Changeling
or
That time a backwater group of podunk leafsniffers kicked me out of my own hive
Mother always told me to be on the lookout for signs. They're everywhere, she would say.
Like when I was hatched, for example. When I popped into the world with a shock of the most exquisite, thick, beautiful hair known to Changebug, it was a sign that I was destined to be ridiculously attractive. Possibly the most attractive changeling to ever exist.
(Actually, Mom said she should've known my meant I would be a pain in the flank endearingly difficult little bugling, on account of how it took four hours to get all of the egg gunk and hatchling gloop out of my gloriously lush locks. It was apparently so bad, she named me Gloop to get revenge.)
But anyway, signs.
They're supposed to point you in the right direction. They tell you which path leads where. Super helpful, unless you can't read your sense of direction is so amazing that you definitely always know where you're going.
That's not even a lie. I can point to the eastern horizon in my sleep. I can fly towards the eastern horizon while snoozing, too. (When the hive's gotta move, the hive's gotta move, and the Queen basically never takes anybugling's sleep schedule into account when she calls for a Swarm. Kinda inconsiderate of her, but she's got the power flanks, she makes the rules.)
I wasn't anybugling important in the hive, just a regular old (deviously handsome) worker drone. I built sleeping pods: pods for grandbugs, pods for newly-mated lovebugs, and lots of pods for lil wee larvae-faces babylings. The newly-hatched changelings may have looked like cuteness made incarnate and tiny, but holy hayfever were those bugs destructive. They ate through their nursing pod on the daily.
I loved littlelings, really. I would have been a nannybug, but none of the other nurser changelings would let me near the eggs. Whatever. I got to help watch over some of the older littlelings, and boy oh boy did they love to hear me tell stories.
That's one thing I kind of envied about those mushy pony types. They seemed to all love stories--not just the small ones. There were ponies whose entire job was to sit around and come up with stories to tell. What a life!
So there I was building pods, right? Super easy process: I just chomped down on the nearest plant, thought about my undying devotion for the Queen as I chewed a bit, and then spat out the worship-infused pulp. After I repeated that about seven hundred times, all it took was a bit of mindless prodding to shape the mountain of gunk into a proper pod. Easy peasey.
Well, I was only on my four hundred and sixty-first chew when one of my scout buddies (couldn't tell who it was, everybuggy without hair kind of looks the same) buzzed into the clearing, with five Stingers right behind him.
The Stingers were odd enough--not every hive has 'em, because they're a total pain in the carapace to nurse while they're littlelings. A changeling colony has to be really stable just to be able to raise a single Stinger. My hive only ever had one, because the only thing they're really good for is fighting. Fighting, and looking really surly and intimidating. The only thing taller than a Stinger is a Queen.
And sure enough, behind the scout and the five Stingers flew what could only be a Queen. And it was most definitely not our Queen.
Me and my two worker buddies--it was either Glick and Pratch or Retch and Flick, can't remember--nearly knocked over our pods in shock. I didn't know if I should run/hide/scream for our own Queen or repeatedly throw myself at the nearest Stinger until it squashed me.
Luckily, I didn't have to worry, because when my scout buddy saw that we were spitting out the pod pulp and flexing our fighting muscles, he shook his head.
"Peace offering for a Merger," he called, before buzzing off towards the Royal Pod.
One of the worker drones beside me scratched his head. "Why did they send their Queen as an emissary?"
"I dunno, Glick," I replied, shrugging. (I knew it must have been him because nobuggy else I worked with knew what the word 'emissary' meant).
"A merger would really be something, though," he continued.
"Yep," I agreed. "Yep it would."
We went back to chomping pulp, then, and I didn't think much of it until it was feeding time.
The first thing I noticed was that the Queen from earlier was sitting next to our Queen, and the foreign Stingers were surrounding the two of them equally, though I did see our hive's Stinger eyeing the others kind of suspiciously. They kept pretty quiet as feeding time stretched on. I noticed a few of my hivemates shooting curious looks at the two Queens, but our Queen seemed thoroughly unbothered by the whole thing, so we figured there wasn't anything to get too curious about.
I did wonder if the Queen had brought any workers from her hive. Was I really sitting next to Fletch? Or was it some complete stranger that I had never seen before? I really wished my mandatory nametag idea had taken off. If only my hivemates had recognized a good idea when they saw one.
Regardless, I was fully enjoying my meal of wild fruits, siphoned love, and mindless obedience, and was about to sidle on over to the littlelings for story time when our Queen lifted her wings and hissed.
We turned to face her, settling down instantly.
"I have a guest tonight," our Queen began, her words slipping through the air like pure liquid love. I closed my eyes and bathed in the magnificence of her voice, letting her words wash over me.
"Queen Chrysalis' hive has suffered much, these past moons."
Queen who? There was only one Queen on the feeding grounds that night, and her name was Queen Perfection or something. I actually never needed to know her name. She was just the Queen.
She was also still talking.
"I have decided to extend a wing of companionship to Queen Chrysalis. Her remaining drones will join your ranks, to work by your side and gather strength from our great Hive. Together, we will grow strong!"
We all buzzed our wings excitedly in response. Sure, the merge was only temporary. Having two Queens in a single hive would wind up causing problems sooner or later. When the hive got too big, or the Queens got too flighty, they would either fight for supremacy or split the hive and go their separate ways. But in the meantime, we would suddenly be a much bigger group with more bugs to do more bug things.
There was a new flavor in the hive mood that evening. It tasted like a sparkling blend of curiosity, hope, and excitement.
A hive merger meant new littlelings, so before I started podcrafting the next day, I buzzed on over to the nursery to meet the new ones. For a hive with five Stingers, there was sure to be at least a hundred hatchlings--maybe sixty or seventy, if what the Queen said about Chrysalis's hive suffering was right.
Six.
There were six young changelings. None of them hatchlings--they all were older, with a hooffull of moons on them, and all were in that awkward stage where they were about to start flying but still hadn't quite mastered walking. It sounded like they had talking down pat, though.
But there were only six of them! No hatchlings. No eggs. No nurse bugs, either. Only a tired, dull-chitined elderbug, who looked at me with haunted eyes when I landed in the nursery.
"Is this all?" I asked, looking at the six scrawny changelings tripping over the other, much healthier looking children from our hive.
He just nodded. One of our nursebugs shot him a sympathetic look. She waved me over when he wasn't watching.
"They have five Stingers!" I whispered furiously. "Five! And no hatchlings?"
The Nursebug (Froop? Lorp?) heaved a sigh. "They lost them. They used to have hundreds at a time, but then their Queen called for a Swarm."
I frowned. "Why didn't they bring the eggs with them when the migrated?"
Leaning in closer, she whispered, "They were a Fighter Hive." She glanced around nervously, but the old bugger was staring dejectedly at the younglings as they bounced around. "I heard they attacked a pony city. The Queen, Chrysalis, hasn't been able to lay since."
The taste of horror seeped into the air as I stared at her.
It was a sign.
I thought attacking a pony city and losing an entire clutch of eggs was horrifying. Boy, did I have another think coming, because when I arrived at the pod construction site, Glick and Pratch/Retch and Flick were talking with somebuggy else.
He was tall. His chitin was polished so shiny it reflected the blue of the sky. His fangs were pearly-white and super-pointy.
And his hair was the thickest, most wavy, whitest mop of hair I had ever seen in my life. Holy hotshot that isn't fair why couldn't my hair be a cool color like white, blue doesn't even stand out that much ughhh.
"Hey, Gloop!" he called cheerfully. I thought his smile looked fake, like he was only grinning to show off his stupid perfect teeth.
"Uh, hi?" I replied.
He bounced over and slapped me on the back. "Flick here was telling me that you were probably over at the nursery, checking on the young ones. That's really nice of you, so I figured I'd do you a favor by helping out with your podcrafting today." He chuckled. "I've always wanted to be a builderbug, but the old hive wouldn't let me."
"Oh. Thanks, then." I tried to smile at him, but he just seemed so fake! Who in their right mind would want to be a worker drone when they looked like they got a slurp of Stinger syrup while still in a nursery pod? Nope, something was not right.
Plus, when I settled down to get to work, I discovered he had already built all of the hatchling pods I was supposed to take care of. I got stuck making boring repairs to some of the older pods so that the changelings from the new hive would have someplace to sleep.
It was another sign.
It might not have been the hundred extra faces I was expecting, but the six new littlelings loved stories as much as the ones from our hive did, so when they surrounded me at feeding time, I was all too happy to settle in for the Legend of the Lone Changeling.
It's one of the oldest ghost stories in the colony. As legend has it, there was once a worker drone who dreamt of pony princesses. Every night, he was plagued by visions of prancing fillies whose manes and tails gleamed with every color of the rainbow.
It got so bad, he even started seeing ponies. He saw one in the moon at night, and in the sun in the mornings, and he would sit for hours on end in the dark, staring at the starlit sky. He would whisper to them as he worked, and swore they talked back.
He didn't sleep much as the years went by, just stared with glossy eyes at the moon and hummed foreign songs under his breath. He was haunted. His hive called it Ponyfever, at it eventually got so bad that they decided to kick him out.
They went to his pod to mark him for exile, but he was already gone--disappeared into the dark of night! They say he wanders around Equestria to this day, without a Queen or any hivemates to his name. And nobuggy knows if he really left the hive on his own, or if one of the pony princesses snatched him up into the sky. But he was never seen again.
As expected, the story had the littlelings hooked, and even that blasted whitehaired bugger wandered over to listen. He didn't seem super interested, but he sat quietly and didn't disturb the flow of the story, so I couldn't really ask him to go away. Besides, we were supposed to be hivemates. It wasn't really his fault he was born with an insufferable face personality everything.
The next morning, when I plodded over to the pod site, Mister Perfect Fangs was already hard at work. I tried to squirm in next to him to get started on another pod, but he turned around too suddenly, nearly tripped over me, and spat a huge glob of sculptor pulp all over my face and into my glorious, glorious hair.
I packed up and left right then and there. Mother always told me to watch for signs, after all, and there were definitely plenty of them surrounding me, all of them pointing out. I had outgrown the hive. It had a new devilishly handsome changebug, and there's only so much shampoo in a colony.
It was time I took my hair to better places. I decided I would seek my fortune elsewhere.
My fellow worker drones were super sad, of course. Retch even teared up a bit. The Queen was there for my sendoff, too. Plus that Chrysalis and her team of Stingers. One of them patted me on the back. It was a great time. Really.
And that's how I wound up on a dirt road to nowhere, all alone, with nothing but empty road ahead of me.
For once, the air tasted like nothing.
I guess that was a sign that anything was possible.
