Sweetie Belle felt happiness all around her. She was happy, that was true too, but she'd never felt such a sense of place and belonging before, that she could just reach out and touch the ground with her hoof and know that she was home. The chitters and whispering mandibles in the darkness rang like music in her ears. Faint wisps of honey and sugar mingling together in her nose, she loved those too. She smelled happy. Heard happy. And even though it was dark, always there was the sensation of something glowing at the periphery, a warm, golden gleam.

There were other pieces of the dream-puzzle. Sweetie drifted from one to the other. The damp, underground caverns of her brothers and sisters. But then she was sitting in a desk at school, surrounded by her friends and classmates, all who were staring and pointing at her. She was out of place, a glittering black chitin carapace seated amongst the normal rainbow of foals. Miss Cheerilee was trying to calm the class, shushing them and surfing through the wriggling bodies like a board atop a wave of surf. Sweetie Belle opened her mouth to speak, but only the sound of scrabbling claws and supersonic squeals came out.

Then she was at breakfast, or at least at the breakfast table. Rarity was over the stove, making something in the steaming pan, humming to herself as she flitted about from task to task, wearing her fanciful purple apron. Rarity continued her humming as she carried a plate of breakfast over to Sweetie at the table. She smiled sweetly at her sister.

When Sweetie looked down to her plate, yellow, suspecting egg-yolks, instead she found a pool of sweet, syrupy honey.

Looking up at Rarity, she found her sister covered in the same, dripping down her face and mane and collecting on the floor in a golden waterfall.

Then she woke up.

She was next to her in bed. The name took a moment in Sweetie's head. Junebug. Chrysalis. Mother. Her. Sweetie wondered why all the words felt the same. She snuggled up against Junebug and nuzzled into her chest and moaned quietly.

Junebug was waking up as well, though she seemed decidedly more present than Sweetie. There was a firmer outline to her shape, where the air blurred and melted, but Sweetie was starting to see just her, just Her, the voice that surrounded her own inside her head, ringing in ears and on the background of the wind.

Junebug smiled and nuzzled up against Sweetie Belle, sprinkling the scent of honeysuckle around the bed.

"I had a dream," Sweetie Belle said. Her form was mostly locked into its changeling veneer, black and reflective, with little patches of her previous cream-colour popping up in the places where the holes would have been, and a few holes too, she was coming along nicely.

Junebug gave Sweetie Belle a kiss on her forehead and nodded. But she didn't say anything. Just waited for Sweetie to continue.

"It feels like everything is changing," Sweetie Belle said. She sat up a little in her bed and looked around her room. The decorations were the same they'd been yesterday, the same the day before that, probably the same since Rarity had helped her redecorate her room on her last birthday, when Sweetie had chosen the pink-purple wallpaper to match her mane, picked the posters of sparkling stars and gems, and the one picture of herself in a big group hug with Applebloom and Scootaloo, the three of them laughing and posing for the camera.

Sweetie Belle stared at the picture for a while, most particularly at herself. She felt like she knew the third pony in the picture, but she couldn't quite place their name.

As though it was a separate entity set out to distract her, Sweetie's special place began to leak, a soft, slow trickle of whitish-gold fluid that gave her tiny pussy a soft sheen and wetted the inside of her legs.

It tingled when she moved. When Sweetie Belle shifted and sat up further, inbetween her legs tingled, and she squealed and tested with a hoof between. It pulled away wet and sticky, and Sweetie Belle's face felt flushed and hot.

Junebug was still smiling as she gave Sweetie a hug and another kiss on her forehead.

"Everything changes," Junebug said, her voice soft and reassuring. "But change is normal. Most ponies change slowly, but in the right circumstance, change can happen much more rapidly. It can be overwhelming... but you're here with me, and I promise nothing bad will happen to you anymore. You're very safe here."

"I feel safe," Sweetie said. She leaned against Junebug and nuzzled, pressing her mane into Junebug's chest. "But I'm still kinda scared. I feel like Rarity is going to want to know what happened..."

"And she'll find out, in time," Junebug said. She patted Sweetie Belle's mane and smiled as the tiny changeling-foal tilted her head back and cooed. "Rarity is your sister, and even though you're growing into a princess of your own, there's no reason to leave family behind. Everypony will have a place in the hive once it's completed."

Sweetie Belle didn't know how to think of 'the hive', but she knew she liked the word. She pictured thousands of ponies packed into narrow corridors, shuffling past and brushing their bodies and shifting and melting into each other, until all the ponies were just a stream of colours, one giant rainbow river swirling into itself. Sweetie Belle felt like a pebble in the center of the giant waterflow, and the more she let go of her purchase and let herself fall into the current, the better it felt. The water was golden, like honey.

Sweetie Belle moaned and squirmed on the bed as Junebug traced her hooves lightly over Sweetie's body. There was no particular attention, just the sensation of hoof on skin, on carapace, as Sweetie was beginning to become used to calling it. She just knew it as herself—when Junebug touched her, her 'self', everything was lightning and sizzling flowers. Sweetie wondered if she could swallow a rainbow.

Junebug grinned sweetly as she patted with soft presses at Sweetie's sex. Her new sex, the new piece of her that had grown overnight, and all the rest of her that would continue growing. Growth. Junebug could have wept just watching the grass grow. It felt that special, seeing Sweetie Belle like this.

A slimy stream of the white-gold liquid from between Sweetie's legs lingered on Junebug's hoof as she drew it away. She smiled as she studied the slow drip, the sinuous tremble of the tiny strand as it hovered, connecting her hoof to Sweetie Belle's transforming sex. Junebug extended her tongue and licked the tip of her hoof, and Sweetie shuddered as though a tongue had run directly along her slit. Well, her slit, she was still getting used to it, but there was also...

She had one now. Like Junebug's. Chrysalis'. She thought of it like a thumb at first. Then she touched it, and shivered, and realized there was more to anything that grew thereabouts, as much as there was to her underage pussy the days prior, a whole world of experiences she'd somehow let slip under her nose. Sweetie tested her new piece with a tentative touch of her own, and shrieked as the surprising jolt of tickled nerve-endings howled to her brain, how the new thing twitched and jumped and leaked a little more of the goop like it had gone off just from the tap of her hoof. Sweetie felt the tiny surge inside her, an emptying, a whole body-tense that made her squeeze out just a little more of that sticky stuff below. She tested a bit of it with her own hoof, tongue extended tentatively. When she drew back into her mouth, the taste was again implacable, but could perhaps be described as a blended medley of every summer flower by scent alone.

"Do you know what this is?" Junebug asked. She traced her hoof lightly along the miniature length of Sweetie's new appendage, fit right above her little slit.

Sweetie Belle shuddered the way she was getting used to at new sensations, they would flood and overwhelm and she would just close her eyes and float along for the ride. Junebug's hooves felt like little bolts of lightning each time they touched, and Sweetie Belle felt a brewing inside, like the juices that were welling up in her body she could feel before they came out. She was full up and wanted to let it all out.

Oh. She'd been asked a question.

Sweetie nodded, mostly following along besides the thrill of her new body overtaking at every other moment.

"It's my... because I'm gonna be a princess, right?"

Junebug's smile was as warm as the summer breeze. She hugged Sweetie, a soft, motherly hug, and Sweetie felt the comfort of her home place emanating from the heat of bodies together, from her own chest and centering to her heart-throb's desire. Junebug was always like flowers, like a bundle and bouquet of flowers.

"We're going to include your sister in today's play-time... after the fact, that is."

Junebug stroked up Sweetie's shaft, daring it to engorge, swell bigger and begin to secrete Sweetie's new special juices. Sure enough, the shudder came with a tiny dollop of the clear-gold liquid, and Junebug wiped it off with her hoof, then tested the taste with her long, languid tongue, outstretched like a snake flicking at the air to taste the traces of aroma. The taste on her lips brought her smile brighter, and she hummed approvingly at Sweetie Belle next to her.

"This is very good," Junebug said. She batted her eyelashes and winked at Sweetie Belle, then licked the last of the goop off her hoof. "I can tell you're going to be a very special princess. You'll have so many brothers and sisters to take care of."

Sweetie Belle was starting to get hot from inside again. She knew this feeling, was beginning to no longer require an introduction, but it was still like visiting a friend you'd just met, their place and customs were strange and exotic even if they only differed slightly. Sweetie Belle felt herself tripping across old knowledge, things she'd maybe never known or forgotten before she was born. Her hooves moved to Junebug's, both, wrapped around, helping her move up and down the growing length of Sweetie's new member. The touch was close, it was joining them together. Sweetie's hooves moved up and down too, and she fell back onto the bed, spreading wide, showing off to her bedroom and the world what Junebug had given her in her sleep. It felt like unwrapping a new present between your legs.

Junebug's teeth glimmered like stars in the night, peeking out over her lip with her slither, snake-like tongue between them. She stared like solid iron into Sweetie's eyes as she lowered her head, opened her mouth, and took the tip of Sweetie's ovipositor inbetween her lips. She closed her eyes and began to wrap her tongue, circling from the base of Sweetie's tiny dong and lapping gently at her dripping slit underneath. Sweetie was a mess of moans and thrashing, all the while feeling something grow inside her, a mix of all the muddled emotions and days past that had happened so fast, almost overnight, she could barely reach out and touch them...

She knew some things and knew a lot more of nothing. She knew she was here with Junebug, and that was the right thing to do. She knew that she was changing, into a changeling-foal, and that was right too, because Junebug was helping her, and had explained how all the changelings were scared and frightened and everypony picked on them, and how they just needed help finding a home. Sweetie was beginning to understand she was special, because her special somepony had picked her, and that meant she was going to have a lot to do every day from now on, she couldn't just lay in bed and feel funny and fuzzy and let Junebug get her all hot and slippery...

But that was part of the plan too, and Sweetie could hear it in her head, Junebug's voice coming through invisible ears, patting her and comforting and letting her know that this was right, and everything was alright. They were going to let Rarity in today. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

"Ohhhh..." Sweetie Belle moaned with volume, the stirrings of a head full of fog and little sparks. She was swelling still, had never noticed a part of her change so suddenly like this, and yet her carapace was shifting too, blinking back and forth between cream-coloured foal and crystalline black before either had a time to notice the other. Sweetie would open her eyes and find the world split into a thousand crystals, each of them with Junebug's motherly stare and sympathetic sucking noises filling the space. Then she would blink and go back to the world of before, her uncertainties and each day moving like a slow taffy pulled along the rim of the sunset. Everything felt much more real now, like she was painting with colours instead of just greys and blacks. Even though her outside was dark, her insides felt a million colours, ones she didn't even know the names of yet.

The rainbow ended in gold.

"Please," Sweetie Belle gasped. "I can't take anymore, it feels so full, please..."

"You'll be full of many things in the days to come," Junebug crooned with her tongue still slathered around Sweetie's pseudo-cock. "The egg inside you has helped you change, and now the change from you will help your sister. Soon, finally, your family will grow together again."

"Rarity," Sweetie repeated, muttered with hot breath against her own chest. "I miss her."

"She's still here for you. We're going to help bring her home."

"I love you," Sweetie gasped. She reached out for Junebug's face, her soft, delicate mouth, the tracing of lips over the petals of flowers. Junebug continued her slurping, looked up at Sweetie with a devilish grin and her tongue slathering the length of Sweetie's shaft. She winked, then moved at last, leaving a long trail of her spit between tongue and the tip of Sweetie's new appendage, bringing it with her as the kiss commenced, sucking up the last of Sweetie's desperate breaths and drowning the repeat of 'I love you's on her struggling tongue.

Sweetie thrashed and ground herself against the bed, up against Junebug between her legs, squeezed her legs together and squealed as she felt the force of an explosion building up inside her. Squeezed again, and moaned hot and heavy into Junebug's mouth as the kiss went on.

It broke, like shattered glass, and Sweetie panted with her mouth hanging open.

"I love you too, my sweet thing." Junebug kissed Sweetie on the tip of her muzzle, and Sweetie found a hidden giggle even amongst the thrush and weeds of arousal. "But our day is just starting. Come. Breakfast will happen downstairs. Your sister is still asleep, thanks to the sweet scent of flowers drifting in from her bedroom window."

Sweetie managed to sit up, even though she felt like her entire body was melting from the waist down.

"I just didn't know how everything was gonna happen. I'm a bit scared."

Junebug leaned in and gave Sweetie a long, soft kiss.

"It's alright to be scared, my sweet. Just remember that no harm will come to you as long as we're together. You are my special somepony, after all."

Sweetie hugged Junebug very tightly for a while. Then she got help wiping up her leaky bits and went downstairs to the kitchen.

Downstairs, Sweetie Belle felt she had forgotten how well stocked the kitchen was. Maybe she had never noticed it in the first place. It was a bit like Junebug, that Rarity could either be playing purposely oblivious about her little sister's sudden intense privacy... or she was just genuinely unable to tell what was going on, and that would be better, surely. Sweetie felt less worried already. Junebug would help make everything all right.

Junebug, who, after darting around the kitchen like it was her vacation home, had begun preparing a small breakfast stir-fry of grass and flowers. The petals and stalks crinkled and cracked as they met the heat of the pan, and the petals curled up on themselves, like a pony wrapping itself in a shawl away from the prying eyes of the outside.

When Junebug turned her head to Sweetie, she found the little foal sitting at the table neatly, her hooves folded, awaiting her next instruction. Junebug wondered how she'd managed to follow the familiar scent of flowers to such a special pony.

"Is this what we're making for breakfast?" Sweetie asked. She craned her neck up at the table to catch sight of the stovetop, which was hissing and sizzling as Junebug attended to her stir-fry. The greens would glow and temper, some becoming brown and gold as the moisture boiled out. Junebug had a small bottle of water which she would pour into the pan every now and then, tossing up giant clouds of steam and making the inside of the kitchen look like a sauna for a few seconds. Sweetie giggled when a big cloud blew past the table.

Junebug nodded.

"It is, my dear. Only a few more minutes and we'll be ready to add our special ingredient."

Sweetie felt a lump in her throat, which she swallowed stubbornly, refusing to allow it around for long. If she was nervous, that was okay. She was starting to get used to nervous.

Between flips of the pan, Junebug smiled at Sweetie and gestured with an outstretched hoof between the filly-foal's legs.

Sweetie caught herself staring back at Junebug, her face flushed and warm. She sunk her head, looking between her own legs again, still getting a sense of the little protrusion that had grown, how it still swelled and throbbed and urged for attention the same way her slit was getting used to doing. Sweetie just knew hot, and the feeling of nothing touching was getting hard to bear. Maybe if she just rubbed a little...

"Ahh!"

It was there again, that new lightning. Sweetie kept her hoof moving through the shower of fire, and was rewarded with a coupled series of jolts, each one linking into the next as her hoof rubbed and stroked both her slit and her new ovipositor, which was beginning to stand up enthusiastically as she rubbed. Junebug locked her eyes on the little filly's ministrations and watched, staring hungrily and licking her lips as Sweetie's slit began to secrete a healthy helping of her normal juices, coupled with clear-gold trickles of her new fluid, that would pour properly from the tip of her changeling-cock, once it was nice and hard and had received enough attention.

Junebug wanted to get to that right away. Her mouth sank down on Sweetie's shaft like she was swallowing a popsicle, and Sweetie's moan rang through the kitchen. Little drops of filly-juice were trickling down the wooden seat and onto the floor, resulting in the beginnings of a miniature pool of Sweetie's arousal. Her shaft was getting harder, almost standing up all the way now, and all of her insides felt full and funny, like that thing inside her, it was a whole bunch of thing, needed to come out, she needed to explode like she'd never exploded before... Sweetie's hips moved back and forth over and over, begging for more touch, more hoof, more mouth, more of anything that would get the sticky sweetness inside her out. Junebug's tongue was heaven, slipping and slurping and jerking her member until it was ready to burst.

"Please," Sweetie begged again, repeating her performance from upstairs with twice as much enthusiasm. "Please, I'm all hot, and... sticky..."

Sure enough, when Junebug popped off the tip of Sweetie's almost-cock with a sexy slurping noise, she left a long trail of saliva, wrapping around Sweetie's cock like the spiral of an ice cream swirl. Junebug ran one of her hooves up and down Sweetie's slit and in circles around her little love button, all while sizing up the dimensions of the brand-new appendage that would be putting in a lot of work as the day's went by. A princess's life was luxurious, certainly, but in times of strife, there was a great deal to be done before the hive was ready to grow again.

"Hah.... ahh, unh..." Sweetie's words became mumbles, her body communicating in its little shivers and jerks at Junebug's touch. Her shaft was engorged, swelling, twitching with a little drip of moisture at the tip, begging for her Queen's attention. Anything, touch it, play with it, please let the feeling come and swallow her up like the voices of the insects...

It was easy to touch her. Junebug was feeling the familiarity of her actions, the birthing cycles that had been reborn anew over generations. Her mouth would have done fine, her hooves, any part of her coat and mane... but she wanted it inside her, to drag Sweetie to the edge of her new heirarchy and then set her free in the golden swimming pool.

Her own sex was sopping wet as she lowered it over Sweetie's shaft, dragging the head across her lips to coat it up with extra moisture, let the thing slip inside her like a whisper in the night.

"Ahhh!"

Sweetie let out her cry openly, apparently no longer concerned about her older sister's hearing through rooms. Likely she had forgotten the sleeping scent as well. She didn't remember anything except what she was supposed to do, and then she forgot that. Her hips bucked upwards frantically, slamming herself inside Junebug's hot, wet walls, sliding the head of her member along the sides and shivering as the pleasureful jolts ran through her body.

Junebug didn't seem concerned either. The breakfast stir fry was warming on the lowest setting, waiting just for the final ingredient to be added. Junebug reached down with a hoof and rubbed against Sweetie's slit, her nub, the base of her shaft, rubbing and squeezing and coaxing out the drops of jelly that were welling up waiting to be expelled. Sweetie looked uncomfortable, she was so stuffed up, she'd been waiting all night to let it out. Junebug grinned and worked her hips up and down, raising her soft, white butt and resting just for a moment with the tip of Sweetie's ovipositor inside her, before sliding back down slowly, enjoying the slithery wetness of every inch that went inside her, until all of Sweetie's new organ was swallowed up, and the poor little filly squealing and bucking like she was possessed. Junebug remembered, vaguely, what her early seasons had been like, when she was ready to become Queen. It all seemed so very far away, but at once, just in the distance.

"I feel... funny..." Sweetie said. It was the best she could manage to describe the feelings, and something sitting on the top of her head, a crown she couldn't see or feel, but was there regardless. She felt a future sight in the back of her mind, a space where she was high, and mighty, and sitting on the throne of a thousand loving drones that would carry her into the darkness. She was full up with brothers and sisters, or she was one of them, and they were full of her, it was all sticky and soft for everything else.

Junebug ran a hoof through Sweetie's mane as it blinked in and out of shape.

"When you're ready, you can let it out," Junebug said, her voice gentle and coaxing. "You can let it all out, we'll make sure not to waste a drop..."

"Ohhh, ohhhh, I think it's coming... something's coming out—ahh!"

Junebug couldn't help but let herself ride just a second longer, to feel the first pulse of Sweetie's shaft as it seized and fired a shot of sticky royal jelly out the tip of Sweetie's makeshift cock. Junebug wanted to let all of the stuff out inside her, to drink it in through her walls and lick her hoof for the leftover bits—but there was breakfast to prepare, and premium ingredients needed to be handled with great care.

Sweetie threw her head back and howled as she came. Junebug pulled off only at the last moment, minus her own little extra squeeze, and grabbed the pan of stir-fry. She held it in front of Sweetie's throbbing member, the last thick pulse and swell before, finally—yes. That was it.

"Good girl," Junebug cooed, rubbing a hoof along Sweetie's back. "Let it all out."

Sweetie's hips shook and rattled the chair on the kitchen floor, her filly-pussy dripping all over the kitchen, the rest of her focused as her entire body tensed and squirted out the gooey, sticky, delicious substance that would go in to her sister's stir-fry. She felt herself like a honey-bottle, slowly and methodically squeezing the jelly out, each time another spurt escaped, her whole body shuddered, as though her nerve-endings were tangled together all around the shape of her new cock. She liked thinking of it that way, even though she knew it was different, all these things were different and complicated, but she didn't have to think about those now, she was cumming, so hard...

Junebug coaxed Sweetie's shaft with her hooves until the final drops had been rung out. She licked the head off with her wriggly tongue, and coaxed another shiver from Sweetie as she cleaned off the last drips of shiny liquid.

With a quick stir, the jelly mixed with the greens and flowers, and the whole dish took on a new appearance, fancy and shiny and very much like something Rarity would enjoy the look of. That was Sweetie's help inside there. That was for her sister.

"Hah..." Sweetie was still gasping for breath. It felt like the air was made of jelly.

"You did very well for your first time," Junebug said. She patted Sweetie on the head, and Sweetie managed a weak grin and tiny giggle. "This will help your sister understand our world much better."

"Rarity... will she be happy to play with us soon?" Sweetie placed a hoof absentmindedly between her legs and diddled with her limp shaft, prodding it back into little bursts of life with the tingly tickles that went along with it. Sweetie imagined she could spend a lot of time learning to play with it.

Junebug had already set the stir-fry out onto an ornate plate, and was pouring a glass of orange juice to go along with it. A golden glow plate.

Junebug smiled as she readied the tray in front of Sweetie.

"I think she'll be our best new playmate from now on," she said.

'Junebug let Sweetie take the breakfast in. She waited ten minutes, then introduced herself as Sweetie's new friend, and Rarity couldn't have been happier to see her. Every few words, she'd stop to take a bite of her breakfast, and made sure to tell Sweetie Belle how delicious it was.

She didn't notice her mane, sparkling, and the tiny hint of black shimmer that peaked out underneath her own white coat.

Maybe after breakfast.

Author's Note

As always, tremendous thanks to our patrons for supporting us: Sorden, carcinoGeneticist, Jake, David Griffin, and infernap42. Y'all are the best. <3