Wordiness, Worthiness, and Woodworking-ness
Pharynx was on the far side of the yard when Sandbar found him. The old drone was crouched between two piles of wood, one being a haphazard pile of barely organized logs and the other a neat stack of uniformly-lengthened planks with their bark shorn off by a pair of expert fangs. A chunk presently gripped between Pharynx’s forelimbs had come from the former pile and was in the process of being trimmed by his incisors to be worthy of the latter.
Sandbar stood off to the side as he waited anxiously for an opportunity to interrupt, but Pharynx ended up being the one who took initiative.
“Got business in Changeling Grotto, horse?” He set the unfinished log down and straightened up.
Sandbar nodded, hoping his shaggy mane was obstructive enough to hide his apprehension. Principal Glimmer had warned him ahead of time that this old war veteran, this “Pharynx,” was a saltier dog than most. What she hadn’t warned him was that Pharynx still had the predatory fangs of a Changeling that was still pre-metamorphosis. Obviously the conceit of Changelings (shoot, the entire conceit of Sandbar’s visit) was that appearances were as malleable as mindsets. But if that was the case, what did those teeth say about the type of creature who had the option of gentler features but kept monstrous ones anyway?
As if reading Sandbar's mind, Pharynx prompted a hoop of blue fire to appear around himself before sweeping it upward to leave a slightly softer looking creature. Emphasis on “slightly.” Because while the offending fangs were gone, Pharynx still had his harsh, stress-ringed eyes and dark muted colors. Colors that didn’t match the new pastel stylings of the other Changedlings, like Thorax or-
“Ocellus,” Sandbar blurted embarrassingly. Pharynx snorted in detached amusement.
“I’m afraid not, horse. Celly is clear on the other side of Equestria, attending some boarding school. The bug you’re looking at is about as far away from her as it gets. ‘Specially if we’re talking about temperament.”
Sandbar nodded sheepishly. When he didn’t say anything else, Pharynx’s expression hardened even further.
“Say horse, I don’t see a horn in that mop of yours. Stands to reason you didn’t poof here on your own. You lost?”
“Nuh.” Sandbar was trying hard to find his voice. “Principal Glimmer sent me with her magic. Said I should ask around for the red and black Changeling who lived on the edge of the territory.”
Pharynx made a couple of coughing noises that took Sandbar a moment to recognize as laughter. “Glimglam wasn’t keen on hitting up the hive herself huh? Don’t really blame her. Most ponies who meet me don’t much care to meet me again if they can help it.” Either Sandbar was going crazy, or the old drone’s predatory fangs had somehow come back. “Ya dig?”
“I uh… I dig.”
Pharynx rolled his pupiless eyes and surprised Sandbar with a friendly clap on the back. “I’m just blowing smoke up your plot, horse. Thanks to these creaky joints, my days of scrapping are over.” More dry cough-laughing. “Don’t be blabbing that to Glimglam, though. Prob’ly hasn’t occurred to her that I don’t really wanna see her again either.”
Sandbar nodded like a sock puppet.
“So you got a name, or am I still gonna have to call you ‘horse’?”
“I’m Sandbar.”
“Well then come out with it, Sandbar. An aging worker bee like me hasn’t got all day to listen to your ‘ums’ and ‘ers.’ What’s your mama want outta me?”
“P-Principal Glimmer is not my mom!” Sandbar stammered. He nearly cringed at how pathetically defensive his outburst had sounded, but instead he chose to just go for broke. “And she didn’t send me on her own. I was the one who asked her to send me to you because I have questions about a friend of mine!!”
Shaking at the knees, Sandbar dropped his head and shut his eyes against the blood audibly pounding in his ears. He wasn’t normally a hot-tempered pony. In fact, he was very much the opposite. He took life as it came, nodded or hummed along to whatever was said to him, and always felt guilty if something he said or did ended up making waves. It was his casual “Typhon-may-care” attitude that actually got him sent to the School of Friendship in the first place. His parents had been hoping the classes would teach him some passion. What happened instead was that he developed a comfortable, brother-sister bond with his similarly passive classmate Ocellus. How poetic that she recently had an out of character outburst too. Caused by Sandbar’s insensitive questioning, no less.
“Hey. Hey colt, straighten up. If you came all the way here, you gotta have the stallionhood to at least look me in the eye.” Sandbar felt a cold chitinous hoof under his chin. It tilted his head up to see Pharynx’s weathered but clearly concerned face. “I was just foaling with you. My kind can taste when another creature has something heavy on their mind. I was tryin’ to cut the tension, but this old guardbug isn’t much of a comedian.”
Sandbar wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Alright, listen” Pharynx continued, releasing the colt’s chin. “I’m gonna go inside and fetch something edible for us to talk over. When I come back, you and I are gonna mulligan this whole conversation. Ya dig?”
Sandbar sighed thankfully and forced a smile. “I dig.”
“Water is all I got to offer,” Pharynx grunted as he set the pitcher down. “Don’t exactly keep physical food stocked up ‘round here, and we only break out the fruit cocktails at weddings or pupation parties. Sugar goes to our heads the same way hard cider goes to you mammal-types’s. So I’m told, anyway. Live straightedge myself.”
Sandbar nodded gratefully and took a gulp from his cup. “I remember at the School’s first Hearth’s Warming party I offered Ocellus some wassle, and she got all antsy even though she wouldn’t say why. Definitely makes sense now, though. You’re a nice stallion, Mister Pharynx.”
“Drone,” the old Changeling huffed correctively. “And keep your opinion on my niceness to yourself, horse. Got a reputation to maintain with the neighborhood grubs. ‘Nuff about me, though. I’m not interesting. Come off it and tell me what you wanna know about Celly.”
Sandbar downed his water cup and wiped some stray dribbles from his mouth. “Right,” he said uneasily. “I guess I should start at the beginning. See, Ocellus and I both board at the School Of Friendship-“
“Yeah, I gathered that. Gonna need you to fast forward a bit, colt. Celly’s been away for nearly three years now. Only popped back in that one time to convince the hive we needed to risk our thoraxes in a war against our old queen and her two goons. What I’m saying is, get to the point and tell me why you pulled me away from my woodworking.”
“Heh heh. Funny you should mention your old queen,” Sandbar said. “Because that’s kinda where it all started. See, Professor Pinkie gave our class an extra credit assignment to share a story from when we were younger with a classmate, and I felt like Ocellus could keep a secret so I told her my own foalhood secret where I shoplifted an orange my mom wouldn’t buy for-”
Pharynx slammed a forelimb down on the table with surprising force for a creature his age. “Get to the point!” he repeated.
“I asked her what life was like when she was little and Chrysalis was still incharge of the hive,” Sandbar blurted. His cheeks were burning with shame as he continued. “In hindsight that was a really careless thing to want to know, but I was just so curious and I didn’t expect her to actually shove me down before stomping away but that’s exactly what happened and I.. I…” Sandbar tried and failed to hide his trembling lower lip behind his water cup. “I’d never seen Ocellus so angry. At anyone or anything. Especially not at me.”
Pharynx frowned knowingly, but took a few moments to weigh what he planned on saying next.
“I felt awful about the whole thing,” Sandbar insisted to no one in particular, “so I asked Counselor Lulamoon for advice and she sent me to Principal Glimmer and Principal Glimmer sent me to you, and now… now here I am hoping you’re the one who can tell me how to make things right. I messed up, Mister Pharynx. And I need someone in the know to tell me what nerve I touched and how I can fix it. ”
The old drone blew out heavily and tapped the water pitcher apprehensively. Straightedged lifestyle aside, he was sorely tempted to break out some of the previously mentioned sugar water so he could experience some of that “liquid courage” he’d heard so much about.
He eventually decided against it. Levelheadedness was more important than easiness when it came to talking about past sins.
“Listen… Sandbar, right? That’s your name?” The colt nodded. “Okay. Sandbar, what did Glim... Ahem! What did Starlight tell you about me before she sent you over? She mention anything about who I am, how she and I met, or the things I’ve done in my life?”
“She uh... she told me your colors and that you were a ‘saltier dog than most.’ I think those were her exact words. The... the way you called Ocellus by a nickname made me figure you were her uncle or something.”
“Ha. You really don’t know anything about Changelings, do you? We’re all half-siblings. Spawns of the Queen and her consorts. At least, we used to be. Since Thorax took over, we’ve been trying out the pony way of doing things. Ya know, small units where a drone and a worker get committed so they can raise clutches together.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen Ocellus’s parents at PTA conferences. They seemed nice.”
“Her surrogate parents.” Pharynx corrected. This was a good segway into presenting the tags on Ocellus’s emotional baggage. “Listen, I’m telling you this in confidence colt, but... Celly is actually part of Chrysalis's brood.”
“Ocellus’s mom is Chrysalis?! But… she...”
Sandbar’s mind raced. The fact someone as demure as Ocellus was birthed by one of Equus’s most infamous megalomaniacs was awful to hear, but realistically she couldn’t have come from anywhere else. Sandbar knew nothing of King Thorax outside of current events lessons from social studies class, but he definitely remembered the Harmony Rebellion that overthrew the old queen only happened like five years ago. And Ocellus was of course much older than that.
“After Chrys got kicked out, the social order was haywire for a few months.” Pharynx recounted. He was shrugging like he didn’t care even though it was pretty obvious he did. “Like I said, our hive is a little less than a generation into a big transition. The shift didn’t go smoothly for a lot of us, Celly especially. But since I was her old C.O., I managed to hook her up with Tarsi and Membrane, two softer touches I knew would take care of her during those rough times. Turns out the three of ‘em hung together even after things settled down.”
“Her C.O.?” Sandbar asked tentatively.
“Commanding Officer. Seriously doubt Starlight knew this when she sent you to me, but I used to train and discipline the youth corps back in the old days. Celly’s clutch was one of the last ones I reared.”
“Reared for… what?”
“For the Siege on Canterlot of course. Probably the blackest mark in the hive’s history. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who actually made peace with us flying in and pillaging the place. Celly certainly never did.”
Sandbar’s jaw dropped. Ocellus being Chrysalis’s offspring was uncomfortable, but understandable. Never in a million moons though would Sandbar have ever imagined that his shy ladybug classmate who snorted when she laughed and doodled butterflies in her worksheet margins and blew bubbles in her milk to get smiles in the lunchroom, never would he ever have guessed she’d once been a child soldier.
“Am… Did she… Mister Pharynx, please, did Ocellus ever kill anypony? Am I friends with a murderer??”
“Deep breaths, colt. Calm down. Even back when she looked like this…” Another sweeping hoop of fire turned Pharynx into an uncanny likeness of what must’ve been pre-metamorphed Ocellus. The affectation was black, emaciated, and full of leg holes just like the Changelings in the old newspaper clippings Sandbar had seen from that frightful day. And yet the scarlet wings and fragile-looking head fin were unmistakable.
“Even when she looked like this,” Pharynx repeated in a voice similar to Ocellus’s if she’d been gargling broken glass, “a knock-kneed nymph like her didn’t have the moxie to hurt anypony. I was able to see that right away.” Another sweep returned Pharynx to his casual form and he felt a twinge of amusement at how pale and utterly disturbed Sandbar had been at the display. Scaring ponies was a hobby Pharynx had never expected to indulge in again. Love may have been the healthier choice for consumption, but Fear was the old drone’s favorite taste.
His least favorite taste however, was Sadness. And that was predictably replacing Sandbar’s initial shock. So many sad revelations about a classmate he thought he knew. “No wonder she hates me,” Sandbar sighed. “I’d hate me too if I was in her horseshoes. Having old wounds poked and prodded til they finally split open at the seams.”
“Buck up, colt. For what it’s worth, I gave Celly the lightest job we had during the siege: Her station was the outskirts of the city and her orders were to hiss at any fleeing ponies so they turned back around. Hopefully to run in the direction of the fighter pods.”
“And what happened to those ponies after that?”
“Oh for Faust’s sake colt, whaddya want me to say? That my squad didn’t drain everyone we came across til they passed out? That we didn’t treat that raid like the feeding frenzy that it was? If you were hoping to be softballed, you came to the wrong bug. You wanted to know why your mate got her membranes twisted at your questioning, and now ya do.”
Sandbar wanted to leave. He wanted so badly to go back to his dorm, curl up under the blankets of his bunk and sleep for days and weeks and months. But Starlight had only poofed him to Changeling Grotto as a one-way trip. Pharynx was supposed to be the one who poofed him back after their talk was done, and there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in Tartarus that Sandbar was going to ask the unrepentant war veteran for any favors right now.
Never ceasing to surprise, Pharynx blew out a melancholy sigh and picked up the piece of wood he’d been stripping when Sandbar first walked in.
“Look colt, I’m not the best with metaphors, but hear me out. Changelings… we can be anything we wanna be. And some of us, (not me of course, but some of us) don’t like thinking about the times we chose to be baddies. You ask a dragon why he ate your pearl necklace, he’ll excuse it as biology. You ask a cockatrice why they rock-ified every plant in your garden, they’ll squawk about needing to scratch the petrification itch. My folk though? We have zero excuses for brawling with ponies like we did. Nothing biological about a bunch of shapeshifters rioting in broad daylight.
Listen, the Siege of Canterlot was a disgrace. Even a proud fighter like me hated how much collateral we caused. But it did teach a valuable lesson, I think.”
Pharynx held up the unfinished piece of wood. The left side was gnarled, bark-covered, and completely unrecognizable as a workable piece of lumber. But its right end was perfect. Smooth and ready for any carpentry project it would be put towards. “It’s not the things we were that mattered, Sandbar. It’s the things we did. This chunk here is made of wood. So are all the others in my finished stack over there. But they’re all gonna go on to be different things. One might be a doorstop. Another’ll be a chair leg. Shoot, one might even become a spear.”
“That piece still has bark on it though.”
“So it does. And it’ll need outside help to shed that bark to finally be able to take on that job it’s destined for. That’s where I come in.” Pharynx’s fangs returned, but this time Sandbar felt no fear at the sight of them. Only satisfaction when the old Changeling finished gnawing at the log’s other half and presented the finished work.
“So… what’s that piece gonna be?” Sandbar ventured as casually as he could.
“Suggest something.”
“Um… maybe… maybe that tree over there could use… could use a birdhouse. You uh… you dig?”
To Sandbar’s inexpressible relief, the old drone smiled warmly. “I dig,” he confirmed. “And while I work on that, I’d say you got your own piece of wood who needs your help shedding her own bark.”
“I what now? Oh shoot! We’re still talking in metaphors. My bad.”
“At ease, colt. Go ahead and give Celly my love after you two patch things up. And if you really wanna make her giggle, tell her Tempest and I are coming up on our first anne. Don’t worry, she’ll know what it means.”
Sandbar peered past Pharynx’s shoulder and into the small home on the other side of the yard. Was there actually somepony in there? He hadn’t been looking. So many things today had gone on without his notice, but at the very least he seemed to be catching up to them, one by one.
“I suppose I outta poof you home now,” Pharynx ventured as he set down his finished piece of lumber and picked up another uncut log. “So I can get back to work.”
“What’s that one gonna be?” Sandbar asked eagerly.
“What am I, a fortune teller? Nopony has the answer to everything, colt. Not even me.” An aura began igniting around Pharynx’s horn. “Tend to your own squad, private. While I tend to mine.”
“Sir, yes sir!” Sandbar jokingly saluted as teleportation magic swirled around him.
“Okay, just for that. I’m making this into a carving of you so Tempest can paint a clown face on it.”
The sound of Sandbar’s politely mocking laughter echoed across the yard long after he vanished, and even longer in the old Changeling’s head as he sat back down and resumed his work.
Author's Note
The episode To Change A Changeling blew me away when I first saw it. Pharynx's plight was very clearly meant to evoke a hardened Vietnam War veteran trying to adjust to peacetime life amid his hippie neighbors. He had my sympathy the entire runtime, and I was surprised the other Changelings seemed to be so wholeheartedly committed to touchy-feely foppishness. It was almost as if they were over-correcting for past actions.
Pharynx isn't a hero. Not in canon, and certainly not in this fic. But he doesn't mince words and he really does care about those younger and more innocent than himself. This includes Sandbar and Ocellus. A lot of entries in my Snippet Series feature a cynic and an idealist interacting and pulling one another a little bit towards more moderate thinking. So one featuring Pharynx was a long time coming.
If the School of Friendship hadn't been deserted in these waning evening hours, the blinding flash of Sandbar's re-appearance in the main campus courtyard might've scared someone. Ditto for his yelp of distress as he splashed down into the cold, slimy water of the unoccupied goose pond.
Pharynx had remarkable teleporting range, but apparently not very good aim. Or maybe the old drone actually had perfect aim and Sandbar's soggy slog to dry land was something being distantly laughed at right now. Whatever. Sandbar gave a full-body shake as he tried to discern which direction the dorms were. His heart rate was up, and it wouldn't be going back down until he found and talked to Ocellus.
Several minutes later, Sandbar was pushing as hard as he could on the door to the female dorms, and when it didn't budge he wrapped his hoof around the handle and began pulling instead.
"A sweaty colt struggling to get into the girls' building after hours? Not a good look, ya know."
Sandbar spun around to see Principal Glimmer, her lips pursed in an attempt to hide her obvious amusement.
"I'm trying to find Ocellus,” he insisted.
"Oh? How come?"
Sandbar tilted his head in confusion. "How come? To... to apologize. For what I told you about earlier today. How do you not remember?"
Starlight started to stammer something, then looked away in bashful defeat. "Drat," she murmured in a voice that wasn't her own. "Guess I shoulda gone with Trixie instead, huh?" A hoop of blue flame swept over Ocellus, her expression somehow even more morose now that it was on her actual face. To say Sandbar was caught off-guard would be an understatement, but he tried to push on anyway.
"Look Ocellus, I'm super sorr-"
"No, I'm sorry!" Ocellus's apology came out as a shrill squeak, she was so unaccustomed to yelling. Her posture carried traces of the flailing, helpless anger that had compelled her to shove Sandbar down and hiss at him earlier, but now it was directed inwards, at herself. "You didn't do anything wrong," the Changedling insisted. "But I... I did."
"Oh jeez, don't be-"
"Lemme finish!" Ocellus's breathing was haggard and heavy. She wasn't a brave bug, but she had to be right now. Just for as long as it took to do what Starlight had encouraged of her. "You asked about me Sandbar, and I owe it to you to deliver. So... here you go."
Bowing her head, Ocellus prompted another hoop, this one green instead of blue, to ignite and sweep over her. And after its job was done, she stood with her eyes scrunched shut for a moment, letting half-forgotten discomforts come back one by one. Her dried tongue raked reflexively over the shameful incisors jutting brutishly out from her jaw once again. She felt phantom numbness in a dozen re-opened leg holes and an even emptier cramp deep down in her stomach. 'Old Hunger' was what the hive had termed the chronic ache that none of them ever hoped to feel again. It was a cold, gnawing knot whose gravity pulled in stray scraps of emotion from anypony near, whether its carrier wanted to or not. And the loose threads now spooling off of Sandbar tasted like...
Polite embarrassment?
Ocellus opened her eyes and through their aching lenses saw Sandbar sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.
“The big reveal doesn't have as much oomph the second time ya see it," he confessed.
"W-what?"
"Oh jeez, Pharynx even got your old voice right too."
Several expressions took turns occupying Ocellus's regressed features. First befuddlement, then realization, then finally feeble, girlish pouting. "Principal Glimmer dropped a line to lieutenant Pharynx?!" she sputtered. "That's so uncool!" Sandbar bit back laughter at how mismatched that raspy drawl was with its owner's impotent complaints. He eventually managed to nod, still not trusting himself to open his mouth. With a defeated sigh, Ocellus ditched her shame and returned to her regular ladybug body. "Well, I hope you at least appreciate what I was trying to do by showing you that."
"I do." Sandbar reached up and laid a conciliatory hoof on Ocellus's shoulder. "Believe me, I know how bad you wanna leave the past where it belongs. Pharynx told me everything."
"Everything?" Ocellus looked more guilty than offended, which was at least back in character for her. "Drat," she said for the second time. "You... won't tell anycreature about the Crying Place, right?"
"The what?"
"You know, the hovel Pharynx used to tuck me away in after each day of boot camp so no one... would see... Oh. Maybe he didn't tell you everything." The Changedling looked away in obvious embarrassment.
"Uh, never mind that, Ocellus. I'm down with forgetting that you even brought that up. Because listen, what you used to look like... that wasn't what I was curious about."
Ocellus cocked her head. "No? Then what was?"
"Well, the whole point of Professor Pie's assignment was for us to find a classmate we didn't know too well and try to fix that. Since you're the one always getting talked over whenever we're in a room with the rest of our friends, I just... I dunno. I wanted to try being your listener for a little while. You seem like a nice nymph, but I really don't know a thing about you. Not your favorite color, or what stuffed animals you had when you were- oh shoot, well maybe not stuffed animals because you probably didn't have any, but maybe some other things like..." Sandbar was floundering. "Buck me, I bet this all sounds really lame now that I'm saying out loud, huh?"
Ocellus shifted from one hoof to another, something similar to a flattered smile teasing the sides of her mouth.
"Purple," she said shyly. "My favorite color is purple. You're the first one who's ever asked."
"Aha, there we go!" Sandbar made an exaggerated display of puffing out his chest fluff. "There's that bark peeling away!"
Ocellus giggled, then frowned. "Bark?"
"Oh. Just something that Pharynx said. Not really important. But that reminds me of something else: he told me to tell you that he and Tempest are almost at their first ann-nay, whatever that means."
Ocellus made a squeeing noise and bounced in place excitedly. "Oh-ho-ho! So he did end up writing to her. I just knew they would get along. I mean wow. A whole twelve moons in a row as mates. Warms me up to just think about it."
"I didn't know you were such a mushy romantic, Ocellus."
"Hmph. You said yourself that you don't know anything about me, buster!" To Sandbar's surprise, the Changedling opted to lean forward and nuzzle him affectionately. "But I'm happy to hear you wanna learn.”
Credit to u/Aneelta on the MLP subreddit
"Whoa, whoa!" Sandbar frantically pushed Ocellus back and looked up at her and Yona's room. With his horrible luck, the latter had just seen that exchange and was barreling down the stairs this very moment, Tartarus-bent on reclaiming her man. "I'm taken!" Sandbar announced, as much to Ocellus as to the imaginary stampeding Yona.
"Yeah yeah," Ocellus sighed. "I know. I can taste that you’re not into me like that. For the record, I'm not into you like that either. I was just hungry. Spent a lot of energy crying into Starlight's lap this afternoon."
Sandbar wasn't sure what to say to that, so he decided to pull the plug on this talk while it still felt like he was ahead.
"Well, it’s been a long day for me too," he declared, not exactly lying. "And my bed's definitely calling me."
"Not as loud as your shower is, I hope. No offense, but you smell like pond water."
Sandbar harrumphed at something or someone Ocellus suspected wasn't her, then turned to trot away. She strained her empath sense to hold onto the colt’s presence as long as possible before he turned the corner and was out of sight.
Ocellus felt full and light at the same time. It was a new feeling, one that made her relaxed and sleepy in a way that was different than simple exhaustion. She hoped the odd emotion stuck around. And if it didn't, she hoped it at least came back the next time she sat down next to Sandbar in social studies class.
"Good night Sandbar," the Changedling whispered. "...friend." Then she slid the dormitory door to the side, stepped in, and let it ease shut behind her.
Author's Note
Prequel story!
ESemper Hive
Years before her enrollment at the School of Magic, Ocellus spent her larval stage in the Changeling Grotto Junior Military Academy.
Casketbase77 ·
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