Princess Twilight Sparkle stirred with a hiss of the satin sheets of their bed.
The night air was peaceful and still.
What had awakened her?
Their bedchamber was dark. It was the middle of the night, several hours away from when Celestia's morning routine would begin and the golden light of her dawn would signal Luna's time to depart the night sky. For now though, the sister of darkness soared high in the stratosphere, serene and beautiful. The stars twinkled gently as Luna worked her aristry. Their tranquility was smooth and sweet, as tenderly loving of all her slumbering children as the soft light of the moon.
Their wedding bed was large, a bit ostentatious by her standards but necessary to provide for her changeling wife's massive form. Chrysalis was easily three times the size of most any other pony. They had fallen asleep together as they usually did, spooning, with Twilight's back pressed against Chrysalis' barrel. The monarch loved to hold her. At first it felt a bit unusual, almost like being treated as some kind of travel pillow or stuffed animal. Now though... being in the embrace of those long limbs, held so tightly to that barrel, feeling that little golden band around her wife's neck... it was as comforting as being curled up between her parents when she was a foal and every bit as loving.
She felt that her wife was awake. The black chitin of her body gave a shudder as her flanks shifted.
Nuts. Twilight had hoped she hadn't awoken her.
Chrysalis whispered to her. "Are you allright..?"
Twilight turned her head slightly. She only had to adjust her gaze marginally to meet her wife's. Chrysalis often liked to crane her long neck down to rest her head on Twilight, that or just curl around her completely like some manner of obsidian-armored watchdog. The forest-green of her eyelids had drawn back, exposing her snake-like eyes. In the dark, the dual-irises had a soft glow to them, much like the bio-luminescent fungi native to the deep caverns beneath Ponyville. Her antennae had perked up into their alert crown-like shape, like a cockatiel, signalling that she was in contact with the hive mind, ready to summon their private army of changelings to her wife's defense...
She nestled back against the barrel of her much larger wife, tugging at one of her hoofs and nodded sheepishly.
"I like this. I feel... safe"
Chrysalis chirped at that. It was a pleasant, prideful noise. She was by FAR the more aggressive of the pair, very quick to be both Twilight's sword and shield- whether she asked her to or not. Twilight didn't mind. It was just part of who she was... the mare she loved. "You ARE..."
Chrysalis' hindlegs drew up, tucking Twilight close and forming a nest for her tiny lavender treasure. "If anything were to ever happen to you... if some creature were... fool enough... to harm you... take you from me..."
Twilight smirked. Chrysalis' days of 'villainy' were FAR behind her but she still had a flair for melodrama that put Rarity to shame. At times, it was like being married to one of Spike's comic-book characters. "You'd destroy them?"
"Oh I don't think it would JUST be them, my love... No." Here it goes, thought Twilight. "If that were to happen, I would be beside myself... Inconsolable... I would summon, not just the hive, no. Nothing less than the full fury of the swarm.... changelings, thousands... thousands of thousands from all over the world... Our number would blacken the sky. We would shred the very light from their world. All would be darkness as we descended upon them without mercy... everything they had known... everything that had ever known THEM... ALL of it... and they would be eradicated from existence... nothing left breathing would know their name..."
Twilight sighed lovingly. A tirade like that would've concerned her years ago as the demented ravings of a dangerous psychopath. Now though, she took it as just part of her wife's charm.
"My evil overlord..." She tugged on one of Chrysalis' hoofs, pulling the pitted, jagged limb about her barrel like a blanket.
Chrysalis chittered as a small laugh quavered in her throat. Tenderly, she kissed the crown of her wife's indigo mane. "I prefer to think of it as ...just... how I love you." She shrugged. "It's a madness, perhaps..." Her head lay to rest on the bed. The antennae that made up her 'crown' relaxed. The black tines with their luminous blue tips lay flat against her skull, disappearing into the mass of tattered cobwebs and silken strands that was her icy blue mane.
"Maybe so..."
Twilight sighed happily. The still of the night, the peace of Luna's starry sky sending a soft light into their bedchamber, it was the magic of the night- their night.
"I was thinking..."
"Hmn...?" The great changeling queen's serpentine eye crept open again. The heavy lid struggled against sleep and the comforting warmth of her lavender lover-pony body-pillow hugged against her barrel.
"That music... when you humm as we lay down..."
"Mnnmhmmm.... yes...?"
"It just made me think back to when I was a little filly."
"Oh?" Chysalis often hummed to herself when they drifted off together. It was a part of her routine. Just as a dog might find it's bed, nose about here and there, circle three times before laying down, so too, did the changeling queen have HER routine. Every night they had together, after she finished releasing the hive mind to it's rest she would lay down on her back with a flop and stretch out her long, spidery limbs. She'd fold back her antennae, give up a great fanged yawn and then roll to her side, letting gravity and the sinking of their VERY plush matress do their magic in 'helping' Twilight into her forelimbs. She would snuggle her lavender lover, nuzzle her, kiss her head, two to three more snuggles depending upon how their day had gone, and then, she would purr in the cricket-like chirping of her kind.
Sometimes, however, she would humm. It was a sweet, strange little tune, somewhere between the ramblings of music without memory and the pleasant, carefree peace of youth...
Twilight chuckled as nostalgia crept in from the corners of her memory. She held one of the sleepy changeling monarch's hoofs, examining it. She turned the pitted limb about, studying all the holes, the crags and divots.
"It's funny. How we can see things so differently as we get older. Our perspective shifts as we grow, learn about the world. We only ever have so many pieces of the puzzle, you know?"
"Mmnnmnm... The tragedy of the lifespan of a finite creature..." Chrysalis' voice was tinged with the hissing of slumber, fighting it off to remain awake for her beloved.
"yeah..."
She often marveled at the eerie beauty of her wife's body. When she was angry, spiraling into one of her comically theatrical fits of fury she could be a terrifying sight. Shouting and raving, promising doom to all who opposed her, she was a fanged, ferocious force of destruction. At times like this when they lay together in their marriage-bed, she was something else entirely. In the cool stillness of the silvery midnight moonlight, her chitinous body resembled something more akin to volcanic rock, glass even...a beautiful beach of andisol. It was comforting to Twilight, in the way only her bizarre alien anatomy could be.
"When I was a filly... so long ago... " Twilight began listing. "Before Celestia took me in... before we discovered The Elements... before I became an alicorn... a princess... Before the Pillars returned... and we discovered that WE had been The Elements all along... back then, I didn't understand...."
She trailed off, her thoughts sifting through another time, another tune- sung to her SO very long ago. It was mired in the fog of so many years, words without form. Though the song had been reduced to the faded, worn haze of runes carved into the eroded stone of ancient totems still, their music and it's gentle kiss remained. A lovely shade of pigment in her memory... The tune remained.
"I used to have these nightmares..."
"Hmmn?" Chrysalis stirred at that, clutching Twilight just the slightest fraction tighter. It made her smile. She was so protective....
"Well, I say 'nightmares'... At the time, maybe. They were more like... dreams I just couldn't understand- images, scenes, pictures in a hallway of ...time... Bizarre creatures and sounds. It was very frightening to a little foal"
Chrysalis chittered, clutching her tighter yet. Twilight felt her soft kiss once more on her crown and again on the tip of her horn. "My poor lilac..."
"Sometimes, I would wake up from those dreams, just so scared. I would cry and my parents would come and hold me..." The warm blankets of youthful remembrance embraced the corners of her memory. "My mother would hug me, wiping away my tears with her nightshawl. My father, he would be floating a baseball bat around in his magic... Sometimes, Shining Armor might be with them, floating a toy sword around in his magic..." She chuckled and dropped her voice an octave, puffing up her barrel. "Where is it, Twily? Where's the monster?"
Chrysalis tenderly stroked her mane and smiled. "A good brother..."
"He was..." Twilight shifted about with a giggle, recalling her elder sibling. Even back then, he had always been the protector of ponies, so brave, valiant.
She pressed her body back into her wife and ooched about, searching for her cozy spot. Chrysalis shifted her flanks to better accomodate her tiny rump in the creche of her much larger form.
"Then... there were these other times... When I..." She tilted her head a bit, forehead bunching with the creases of filtering through thoughts, dreams, illusions half-recalled. "I only ....maybe I only thought I woke up..."
She felt Chrysalis' chitinous plates shift about as they did when she was genuinely concerned. "You 'thought'?"
"Yes..." Twilight gave the pitted black chitin of her wife's hoof a kiss before pulling it to her barrel, hugging it close. Chrysalis reciprocated, tugging her wife to her closer still, warm, protective. "Sometimes... There was this mare who would appear... when I was scared. I would wake up from those dreams- or so I thought, maybe- and she would be there. I would start to cry and she would always shush me... so sweetly... like my mother... and then, she would sing to me."
"Strange mares appearing in bed with my wife?" Chrysalis smirked. She clutched Twilight to her barrel possessively and craned her long neck to let her elongated fangs rake into Twilights mane. "Mnnnmmm... sounds like I need to be on the lookout. Be careful, now. I AM the 'jealous type' you know."
Twilight chuckled. "I don't think you need to worry about her, honey." She wiggled her plot, rubbing her body against Chrysalis playfully. "She would sing this song to me... It was...it sounded so sad... but also, so peaceful... comforting... I couldn't understand the words then... I can't recall them now. She'd stroke my mane and kiss my forehead. Her voice was like nothing I'd ever heard before or would ever hear again... like the voice of the world itself, maybe... magic, speaking to me. She would tell me everything was okay and just kept... singing to me. She would hold me, sing to me, until I fell back asleep..."
The memories played out as pictures, paintings in a hallway, dimly lit but still familiar. "When the sun would come up she'd be gone. I tried telling my parents about her of course but they said she was just a dream, something I'd imagined. She was my imaginary friend, as far as my family was concerned. As I got older, the dreams seemed to come less often and the whole mess was just dismissed as a childhood pretend... one of those things..."
Chrysalis gave up a small yawn. A trilling chirp crept up her throat, tickling the back of Twilight's head.
"I used to think they were right... but you know... now that I'm older... I think... maybe it was The Tree."
"The tree?"
"The Tree of Harmony. I think... maybe it was trying to tell me things. I mean... we've always been the real Elements, all along. The stones were just that... stones. Maybe The Tree knew that I was The Element of Magic... the reincarnation of sorcery, before I did... and in some kind of clumsy way... it was trying to talk with me."
Chrysalis nuzzled against her. There was a tinge of laughter, incredulity in her multi-tonal voice. "A tree was talking to you...?"
"The Tree of Harmony, Chryssi... I dunno... I think maybe it was trying to communicate and... well, it's a tree. It just didn't know how. It tried showing me things, things that had been... things that would be again, images... creatures that had been on this world long ago... I mean... how does a tree know what to say to a little foal?"
Chrysalis seemed to ponder on this. Twilight felt the shifting about of her chitinous plates that indicated she was thinking deep thoughts, mulling over something new or strange to her.
"Maybe it had realized I was out there- that all of us were... The Elements... and it knew it wasn't alone anymore. It wanted to talk and just didn't know how. The Tree didn't mean to scare me like that. Maybe it didn't know what to do when I would wake up and cry... trees don't do that, cry.... At least I don't think they do... Maybe it realized that it was scaring me and did what it saw other parents do, tried to comfort a baby."
"Maybe..." Chrysalis nipped at the violet and fuschia trails in Twilight's mane, sleepily preening through their luster. It felt good. The light pressure, tugging it's way through her scalp soothed the tensions of late night soul-searching. The chirping in her wife's barrel, that unique, cricket-like song, it was always so peaceful. "Your life has been one of many peculiarities..."
"Yeah... Ahn-" Twilight was interrupted as Chrysalis' fangs nipped into the downy frames of her alicorn wings. A good preening was always so relaxing, getting those errant feathers in place, smoothing out vanes, lightly moistening the afterfeather and downy barbs... but when Chrysalis did it, the act was something SO much more... She felt her wings stretching reflexively in response to the attention. Those long fangs, so sharp, gliding so carefully through to the skin at the base of every row of feathers... and Chrysalis was good- SO good at it. Twilight had no idea how old her wife really was but she was willing to bet that in her extremely long lifetime, she had amassed more experience in preening and massage than anypony on the planet. She was an expert and right now, she was giving her every bit of skill to Twilight.
Well, at least as much as she was able to muster, being half-asleep as she was...
Twilight gave a small groan of pleasure. The way her wife held her, her entire body wrapping around her... The chitinous shield of her exoskeleton was so cool and soothing but nestled like this in her nethers, the warmest and most intimate part of her was also just warm enough to be cozy.. So protective, so loving- Hugged like this, she was like an armored blanket.
"Sometimes... I wonder about that song. You know? Those words... the images it showed me in the dreams... the mare who came to sing to me. I asked her once where they came from... What they meant. She told me that it was a song from long ago... from creatures that used to walk the world but 'had squandered their time in the sun'. It was a song about life. It was about love... and loss... and how when you love someone... you'll do anything to see that pony... safe... happy... throughout their life."
Twilight felt her wife's breathing growing steady, relaxing again. The rhythmic beating of her twin hearts was falling into a calm, steady pulse. That stable metronome... the cool chitin of her body... the chittering, calming purr of her thorax... sometimes it would seem that her alien anatomy was practically designed to calm her nerves and put her at rest.
"Chrysalis...?"
"...beloved...?"
"Does any of this make sense...?"
The changeling's deep, smooth disharmonious voice was swimming in the waters of drowsiness. "I think... it makes sense to YOU... if not the YOU... whom you were..."
Twilight's brow bunched at the sleepy, somewhat cryptic response. "Wha...?"
Chrysalis gave her an affectionate squeeze and yawned. The exhalation trailed off into a long chittering vibration of her jaws. The rasping of her fangs against the chitin of her lips was another one of the many sounds which were so unique to her. To other ponies, maybe it was disquieting. To Twilight though, here, like this, it was just one more thing that enchanted her about her bug-horse, her wife.
"mnhmnmmf... no more talkie..." Chrysalis playfully bopped Twilight on the top of her head with the side of her pitted hoof, causing her to give up a sleepy chuckle. The pitted black obsidian of her long limbs quivered in the final stretch before casting off the tethers of the waking world and drifting back to whence she had came. "..ss'seepin'time..."
Twilight chuckled. Her eyes HAD grown heavy again. Laying here with Chrysalis, she couldn't help it. She gave out a yawn she'd felt creeping up for some time and stretched. Every muscle grew tense and the rumbling of the blood in her ears drove away all sound for just a moment. Yes. Time enough to ponder the universe in the morning.
Sufficiently prepped for a return visit to slumber, she ooched and wiggled her rump against the cusp of her wife's body. There were FAR worse fates she could imagine than being married to someone who was effectively a full-body version of the mythical pillow that was always cool on both sides. The golden wedding ring around her neck tucked safely to her barrel, she drew Chrysalis' forelimbs together over her and gave one hoof a soft kiss. That stretch really did take the last ounce of energy out of her. Her lavender lips parted clumsily as consciousness faded from her grasp. "Mnnm...l'ff... you..."
Chrysalis squeezed her and nuzzled into her soft indigo mane. The gesture was simple but it carried with it such tenderness, such affection... something so much more than words could express. It was a love that had existed for FAR longer than her little lilac would ever understand.
Through the creeping fog of slumber, Chrysalis's soft black lips parted. Her voice gave up one, final sleepy whisper before slipping off to join Twilight in dreaming...
"It... was... 'Greensleeves'..."
---fin---
Author's Note
I hope y'all enjoyed everypony. My wife gave it her approval and a cuddly thumbs-up so I hope y'all feel the same.
This will likely set the tone for a series of stories between these two gals. Focusing on their two worlds being so different but so perfectly suited the series will establish my own take on the origins of their world and their species, the place of the immortals in history and the cyclical nature of events.
Lotsa lore and lotsa love. <3
Love yourselves and love one another. Ave Discord.
