Double Diamond strolled down the main street of Hive Central. He radiated an aura of warmth and contentment, and every changeling he passed looked up from their work with a smile for him. A sunny nature like Double Diamond’s was a gift to a society of natural empaths.
“Hiya, Diamond!” called out Kevin, from his seat outside one of the cafes.
Double Diamond waved a hoof back at his brightly-hued friend, but did not slow his pace. He had business to attend to today.
In the six months since Double Diamond had journeyed north to live in Hive Central, he had put down more roots than he would have believed possible. He had bonded with the inhabitants of the burgeoning town, and formed friendships every bit as binding as those he had left behind in Our Town.
His days were a blur of laughter and joy, time spent socialising with friends and acquaintances, punctuated by the crystalline sharpness of his time on the slopes. The snow in the mountains around Hive Central was crisp and clean, and the skiing was among the best Double Diamond had ever experienced. The challenges presented by the sheer peaks were a thrill, and whenever anypony asked why he had moved here, they were the reason Double Diamond always cited. He loved to test his own capabilities.
But there was another reason, too, that Double Diamond had not shared with his new friends. A deeper, more subtle trial of Double Diamond’s skill, one that he had faced every day of his life — but never anywhere more than here.
From the very first day he had trotted into town, on a one-off visit for the Pan-Equestria Ski Cup tour, he had known something was different about this place. The way the changelings looked at him. The way they skirted around him, even though the ponies were happy to walk right beside him. The way they drew their hard-shelled hooves away from him as though he were dirty — though his coat was the same pristine white as always.
Somehow, though he hadn’t understood why, they had known. He had mingled with the ordinary ponies his entire life, and not one had ever suspected. Well, other than his little sister, of course — but she hardly counted. He had wanted her to know.
But without even a proper look at him, without exchanging a single word, every changeling knew instinctively what Double Diamond had hidden all his life.
That something about him was wrong.
From his earliest memories, Double Diamond had always been aware that he was different. While the other foals cried when they were hurt, and laughed when they were happy, Double Diamond experienced everything with the same icy cold expression. Utterly impassive to the world around him. When he fell down and scraped his knee, he had probed the wound, opened it wider with the safety scissors from his school-desk, just to watch the blood flow, crimson on white, down over his fetlock to the floor. It had been fascinating, that feeling. The pain, the throbbing of his own pulse. His own life, ebbing out on the ground.
But slowly, he had figured out that the others did not like this difference in him. When he offered his scissors to the filly beside him and proposed that they look at her blood, too, she had burst into tears. When he stared impassively at their playground games, the others became discomfited. When he took the class hamster home for the weekend and cut it open from stem to stern just to watch that little heart beating out its last…well, suffice to say that nopony had understood.
And so he learned to hide it. He kept his affliction, his uniqueness, tucked deep away inside him, and shared his true self only with the mute and the helpless. The insects, the bunnies his mother kept as pets, the deer he caught in the pit near his house. And later, when his talents grew, his little sister Snow Mitten.
After the regrettable ending to the incident with Snow Mitten and the freezer, Double Diamond had earned both his cutie mark and his parents’ undying hatred, and had been forced to remove himself from his home town. He had wandered alone for a few years, enjoying the anonymity a transient life gave him, and all the freedoms that it bought. And when he had stumbled upon a lavender unicorn mare in a city square, raging against cutie marks, friendship, and all excess of emotion, his curiosity had been piqued.
Our Town had been a charming interlude; a balm applied to the open wound of the charade Double Diamond had been forced since foalhood to maintain. In Our Town, the facade had finally dropped, and Starlight Glimmer, his saviour and messiah, had given him exactly what she had promised. A whole town of ponies just like him. As empty on the inside as he had always been.
But when she was gone, Double Diamond’s beautiful new friends became just like everypony else. They filled themselves up with emotion again, and Double Diamond was as alone as he had ever been.
So he had begun once more to travel, a journey that had ended here in Hive Central, a place more stuffed with emotion than anywhere Double Diamond had been before. It was the one thing Double Diamond relished more than his freedom; at long last, a real challenge.
With time, he had learned to simulate on a deeper level the emotions he had always mimicked, and then the changelings he met ceased to revile him. They had trusted him, welcomed him — probably even fed on him, he supposed.
Naturally, with a select few, he had returned the favour. The delicious crack of chitin beneath his hooves, the whimpering sobs and pleas for mercy. And sweetest of all, the light in those brightly-coloured compound eyes dimming and flickering out for the last time.
Today was a good day, and Double Diamond felt full of a cheer that was almost real as he trotted up the road, skis bouncing lightly on his back. He called out a greeting as he approached the familiar figure of his summer student.
Ocellus looked up, a smile spreading across her eager little face, and Double Diamond concentrated and sent out a pulse of soothing emotion. Ocellus visibly relaxed, and her smile became a little more placid.
“Hi, Diamond!” she chirped, and adjusted the wooly hat she wore. “I’m so ready for our lesson — I was out practising on the slopes all yesterday!”
“That’s great!” Double Diamond answered, and the enthusiasm he projected was, for once, almost entirely genuine. “I thought we’d go up to Featherfall Heights today, take the black route down.”
Paling a little, Ocellus’ ears tipped back as she hesitated. “Are you sure I’m ready?”
Double Diamond placed a comforting hoof on her shoulder, and tried very hard to feel like he imagined a sympathetic friend might feel. “You are,” he said. “You’ve come a long way since we started. You’re ready. Trust me.”
And, somehow, she did. It never got old — the sheer thrill of fooling the creatures most perfectly evolved to sniff out one such as himself.
But Ocellus was already nodding, the cheer returning to her face. “Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. I’ve worked, I’ve practised. I am ready.”
Smiling amenably down at her, Double Diamond let her lead the way onto the ski lift. “You’re going to do great.”
Working together, they loaded their skis into the holder, and took their places. Double Diamond smiled, and for once the smile was a real one. His student beamed up at him as the chair lift scooped them off their hooves.
“Just wait till I tell Gallus and Smoulder about this!” She chattered on brightly as the lift bore them up into the cold, clean mountain air. “They’ll be out of their minds with envy. Today is going to be great.”
Double Diamond looked sidelong at his skis and the concealed blades they held, but he kept his focus, and the emotions in his mind were all happiness and calm. “It will be, Ocellus. I’m sure it will.”
