Smolder blinked at the sun that hit her eyes. She rolled over, waiting for a blind or some kind of covering to hide the sun. She grumbled as she felt the morning heat ooze over her scales, her body basking in the summer sun. "Five more minutes." She yawned as she reached a claw near her bed and felt no clock, nothing but sand. She jolted awake and looked around the sandy beach that she was marooned on, all she saw was a pristine white beach and some palm trees in the distance. She breathed out and pinched herself, wondering if she was dreaming since Principal Twilight always talked about checking for illusions and the like.

She winced in pain as she found out that she wasn't dreaming. She was in the middle of nowhere and she couldn't see where Ocellus was.

"'Cel, where are you?" Her cry echoed through the beach bouncing off the trees and coming straight back to the dragon. She sat there and waited to see if Ocellus would jump out and surprise her. She sat and waited as long as she could, her claws digging into the sand in worry.

"Okay, what would Professor Dash do in this situation." She breathed out and tried to remember what her Wilderness 101 class told her. "Fire, check." She chuckled, the thought of ever running out of fire a ludicrous idea. "Shelter, food, water." She could eat rocks if she had to and if she could find a tree or a cave she could survive somewhat. Water was her first concern. Well, besides Ocellus.

She ran a claw through her spines and tramped off towards the middle of the island. She could only hope that a tropical island like this had a spring of water or a river somewhere. And maybe she would be lucky and find Ocellus. "Think happy thoughts, Smolder, maybe that could draw her towards you. . ." She could only hope.

***

Ocellus shot up in fear, unsure of what was going on. The last thing she remembered was falling out of the airship and a crash of water. Warm water, but still a hard fall into the depths. She glanced around and was confused for a moment.

She was in a small hut, a thatched roof of reeds shading her from the tropical sun, covered by a fine blanket. It was an unfamiliar but safe seeming place. She carefully looked around to gather her bearings. Weapons adorned the wall, sharp knives of black stone, unlit torches, rudimentary armor that looked ornate and pretty with long swoops of cloth dyed dark red. She quietly tried to remember what she had to do in this situation and came up with nothing. She was just sitting there admiring the weapons when a creature that she had heard only briefly mentioned. A kirin, with a long swirling horn walked in and glanced at the young changeling.

Quickly bowing, the kirin smiled at Ocellus, and spoke to her quietly. "Looks like the remedy that the Trickster suggested when last she came works on others like her." The kirin flicked her tail and clicked her tongue in thought. "Though she never mentioned that you could change your bodies without illusions."

Ocellus spoke up her voice wavering. "Uh, I'm sorry, but I don't know where I am and who you are talking about."

The kirin blushed in surprise, her face matching the tufts of fur on her body, deep red. "Sorry, outsiders are rare here on Kamani, the last one was washed up during the time of my ancestors. So I was just surprised that another god came to the island. . .my name is Petal Spring and I am one of the kahuna. Particularly a kahuna that uses herbs to heal."

Ocellus stared at her. "A doctor?"

Petal Spring shrugged and shook her head, red mane cascading over her purple coat. "I don't believe so, but outsider terms for things can be difficult to translate." She picked up a bottle of deep pink liquid and turned back to the young changeling. "Here, liquified mana for you. Helps with your healing."

Ocellus opened the bottle and was assailed by the purest smell of love that she had felt in a while, the only time this taste of love was equaled was in the Crystal Empire- and that was the stronghold of love in the eyes of Changelings now. Wherever Cadenza was, love bloomed and blossomed easily. She took a small sip and remembered her hazy thoughts. "Ah, that's wonderful. But, um, I have a slight question. I kind of fell here with a friend of mine. A dragon. Did you see her?"

The purple and red kirin shook her head. "I wasn't the one who found you. A hunting party stumbled upon you when they were gathering food for the tribe, but they told the chief that you were alone."

Ocellus shivered in worry since the last stable memory was of the pair of them being together, and then nothing. "Ah, that's. . .unfortunate." She controlled her emotions of fear and locked them away in her mind since any kind of uncontrolled large emotion could be detrimental to finding Smolder now. She opened her senses of taste and smell to the maximum for a brief moment and was washed in the sheer wonder of the world. She could feel kirin share their emotions freely, fully seeing them as a striped color- balance of light and dark emotion tones, fear and joy, love and hate in equal measure. She would have spent days studying the odd feeling of balance and noted to herself to ask Principal Twilight about how magical forms influenced emotions. Because she remembered for a brief moment, that kirins were dual creatures- a mirror of opposites with the nirik mania balancing out kirin aloofness.

She breathed slowly, centering herself in her mind and sorted each emotion that she could feel by creature and started extending her range ever so slowly. Chrysalis had bred her children and, by extension, her to be emotional hunters. Eking out an existence by taking any emotion that they could. She could differentiate the slightest hint of emotion in a mile easily, but focusing increased her range with the cost of mental strain.

She smelled worry and fear and the smallest hint of love for her a few miles away and she snapped back to reality. She knew that Smolder, while in an unfamiliar land, was still alive and presumably well. Ocellus felt a feeling of joy in her insides at that thought. It was strange but she didn't mind it.

"Ah, you were talking to the gods it seems because I had tried to break your focus and could not." The kirin bowed and opened the curtain. "I would invite you to see the chieftain but I don't want to impose."

Ocellus held out her leg. "Wait, I was just trying to find my friend." She slid slowly out of the bed, letting the thin sheet buch up over her as she stumbled to her feet. "I would like to meet them. I mean as a goodwill ambassador of sorts."

***

Ember smiled as warmly as she could to the dragon that was currently biting her head off about some silly task that she usually delegated to some other dragon. It was Ember's job to lead, not serve random orphans their meals of jewels. She didn't mind doing it, its just that there were more Dragon Lord things to do. Like not have the seven tribes devolve into civil war again. It wasn't hard for them to do that, the agreements were all based on blood ties. And distrust had been ingrained into dragons ever since Discord got bored one day and accidentally caused the fall of the tribes. He said sorry to Ember personally once in the last few months, but no amount of friendship caused her to look at that amalgam of creatures as fully good.

Especially not since his meddling nearly two thousand years ago inadvertently caused her job to be harder.

In particular, juggling the seven tribes of dragons was nigh impossible.

A reddish orange dragon grinned as he walked up to her and bowed, his sharp spines dulled slightly with age. Ember grumbled to herself as she was staring directly at Garble and Smolder's father, Acheron. Leader of the Pride Dragons and a rather conniving snake for Ember.

"Greetings, Lady. Now may I please continue with my speech that was so cut off from yesterday? Or shall I just hit the big picture topics since you seem so preoccupied with whatever gender issue you have." He smiled ever so tightly at that barbed statement.

"You know I am outside of that season, Acheron." She tapped a claw on the obsidian throne that she filled, the size almost dwarfing her due to her father's own size. She had a throne to fill and all the tribes slightly detested her for taking up a spot that should have been their right. "But what was it again? Drought? War? Famine? Death? I thought I gave you distinct mining and gem maintenance rights for the Spine."

Acheron blinked. He had sent in a copy of his speech as a formality since that was the way of things. He never expected the daughter of Dragon Lord Torch to read his proposal- her father hated reading, the letters were too small and dainty for him. "Yes, well, there's been some rather odd smuggling operations on the Spine. Some interlopers from outside. Something about an Empire of the East or something. I rarely pay attention to these things."

Ember's spines perked up. She had heard whispers of the Storm King in her periphery, the satyr king a thorn in many kingdom's sides. "Tell me exactly what these outsiders want of us?"

Acheron bowed. "They say they don't want jewels. Metals are more their thing. Something about platinum and any anti-magical metals that we have. I say we should not take their offer, but its rather generous and word gets around so the other six might be more amenable to the offer of friendship."

Ember growled. "Outsiders like that don't need a response."

Thorax, who was carefully hidden in the crowd, knew that Ember was putting on an act as her title demanded, but the thought of him crossing her- especially when she was mad and focused like her body language and the taste of her emotions radiating off the azure vibria, that made him nervous. And he often had sex with her, notwithstanding. She was kind of terrifying when she got going and that was what some ponies- like Twilight's friend Rainbow- found "hot". He didn't exactly know what temperature had to do with fear and delight, but he wouldn't argue semantics.

***

Ocellus walked through the village of kirin, feeling rather exposed with the tens, possibly a few hundred kirin staring at her. Some looked worried and confused, the small ones looking excited- larvae, or quickly correcting herself, foals tended to be rather excitable in cases such as this. Ocellus felt her wings buzz in nervousness as she walked ever closer to the large, thatched hut that was surrounded by kirin dressed in bits of leather and reeds. The sharp pointed spears glinting somewhat in the sun. Ornate tattoos decorated the stallions, she quickly surmised, from size and from what she could tell between their legs. She blushed since she was rather too curious for her own good, cursing that she had agreed to read Headmare Twilight's detailed notes on biology for extra credit.

Silence reigned as the group of kirin stared daggers into her soul.

Suddenly, the silence broke with a beating of loud drums coming from inside the thatched hut and a lithe figure walked out, dressed in a large birdlike headdress, feathers from a menagerie of birds covered what seemed to be the kirin leader in a rainbow cloak.

The drumming grew louder as the figure began to sing in long, high tones. The changeling found it eerie as she couldn't translate the words as the group of warriors surrounded their leader, spears swirling in rhythm with the loud drums that disorientated Ocellus, their toneless rhythm a heartbeat to the dance. Ocellus didn't want to look as the warriors contorted their bodies and faces into large, unsettling smiles and those that weren't grinning were howling in a mix of mock rage. Ocellus could tell at least this might be a ritual due to the excitement on the air, the taste of sweet courage and practiced steps.

The leader's curved horn lit up and Ocellus could taste the mana on the tip of her tongue as she watched the kirin pull out a pair of obsidian blades, their edge serrated and sharper than glass. The swords floated right in front of Ocellus and she prayed to whatever creature these kirin worshipped as they passed right around her head.

"You pass." A husky female voice came from under the headdress in what amounted to common tongue. "Welcome to Mauna Mele, child of the Trickster. I am the rangatira of this slice of Mother Earth, you may call me Sky Dancer." The chieftain of the tribe carefully bowed and took off her headdress.

Ocellus nodded carefully and started to look up from the small patch of ground that she had trained her eyes on out of a mix of nerves and fear and looked directly into her host's eyes. Her milk white, blind eyes. "Oh. um. I didn't expect you to be. . .uh, blind?"

The old mare laughed. "You could not expect what you did not know." Sky Dancer nodded, her faded grey mane and pale blue scales a sign of her advanced age. "And no, while my age hints that I might know a lot about your mother who passed this way- that was before I was born, back generations ago when the first few rangatiras of this isle of Kamani landed in their small boats, back when the gods walked the earth far more readily than they do now." Sky Dancer smiled and beckoned Ocellus into the hut. "Go on ahead child and give me a moment to talk to a few of my clan. While I am not afraid of you, it doesn't mean all have the same view."

Ocellus carefully nodded and walked into the hut, looking downward as she passed the large, imposing kirin warriors.

Sky Dancer waited until the young changeling's hoofsteps faded away and quickly wove a sound dampening spell upon the entrance of the hut, letting the sound from outside not get close to the new outsider's sensitive ears. She breathed out and turned to Petal Spring and bowed. "This spawn of the Trickster has a different hue in her magic, the touch foreign and odd to the jagged cliffs of darkness that the worst of all possible enemies has."

Petal Spring nodded and shrugged. "Well, its not like I hadn't run some tests of my own. This blue one seems interesting, different and so very quiet compared to Chysalis' poisoned tongue and honeyed barbs. And Sky Dancer? Good job. She may be a young changeling, but it seems like she bought your little "rangatira" fake out. If I didn't know better, I'd almost say you were a chief." The red and purple kirin smiled as she levitated the cloak of feathers over and caressed it gently. The cloak was the sign of the chief of the kirin, a holdover from generations of kirin who had come before, each chief adding a layer of feathers. Petal Spring picked out a crow feather and looked at it, the deep, dark black shimmering in the daylight. The layer of feathers she had added herself when she had become the chief. "Deception doesn't become us, sadly. Kirin are all about loud bravado and not much on plans." She ran a hoof through her mane. "Thank goodness this Ocellus was knocked out when I found her else I'd have had to go with Plan B. And that involved death."

The old kirin bowed and nodded. "Should I continue this ruse? I mean I wasn't born to rule and it feels odd."

Petal Spring laughed and smiled. "I would hope so, else what would you think a Changeling who was expressly lied to would do to our little slice of paradise? She'd call her mother and the mass of writhing mindless things and our wonderful place would lose our color, the emotions of us drained, the artifacts we hold taken and used for nefarious purposes. So I'll play this role of Kahuna and you play yours. . " The kirin stretched and felt a flicker of rage that she had stored in the deepest part of her soul. She could felt her rage bubbling up ever so slowly when she looked at the blue changeling, the only thing that stopped her from becoming a nirik were her breathing exercises and focusing on things outside of herself. Petal Spring glanced at the surrounding warriors and nodded approvingly- each had trained for this moment. "From this moment forward, I allow each of you to use your rage and righteous fury to find any other outsiders and deal with them permanently; and if they say they aren't a changeling. . .don't believe them. They lie."

***

Smolder groaned as she rubbed her bruised face. She thought trying to get her bearings in this jungle island would be easy- just follow water and she'd get somewhere fast. She forgot that there were animals. Angry animals that didn't like seeing a dragon of any shape or size. She grimaced as she felt her shoulder ache from a particularly bad fall. If Ocellus was here, she would have been more focused and less frazzled. But she wasn't, so the Changeling's book smarts of what not to do in wilderness situations were thrown right out.

At least Ocellus hadn't heard her scream when she had grabbed a particularly large vine and realized moments later that it wasn't a vine at all, just a pissed off snake that eyed her as a meal instead.

"This is great. Just great. If the others saw me right now, I bet Gallus would be laughing his beak off. Yona might be at least backhoofedly give some kind of bad compliment. And Sandbar might be crying a corner somewhere about wanting to go home. Silverstream would have befriended the snake with some stupid hippogriff story. . ." Smolder picked up a medium sized stone and tossed it into the jungle in sheer anger at being alone.

It wasn't like she was sad or anything, it just felt odd and wrong to be alone.

"Damn it." She sat and looked up at the starts, slightly visible through the breaks in the canopy. And she realized that she was kind of cold. It wasn't often she was stuck out in nature for so long- especially an environment with no hot lava streams to sit and relax in. Dragons were kind of cold blooded and she had a terrible day.

She noticed a small cave in the underbrush and she rolled her eyes as a smarter part of herself shot images of what could be in the unknown cave system. Cave bears or more snakes. Or actual ponies. Would be odd, but there were hints of fires in the area. The young dragon sighed. Whatever. It wasn't like the jungle was any safer than a cave.

She got up and stretched, her back popping as she did so, and walked cautiously, if a tad bit quickly to the mouth of the cave.

Author's Note

Here's something new, if short. Will try to update more frequently than a year lol.