Changeling Theory

No matter how hard Starlight tried, she still couldn’t sleep. She tried to for the first few minutes, but the cold silence of the night bore down on her. It was the sort of cold silence that made her beg for, Come on, any! noise whatsoever.

When twenty minutes went by, she lay still in her bed, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. She listened for that noise she longed for. A thump, a chitter, the rustling of mice in the wall — anything to tell her that time was still passing. Then she heard it. Well, she didn’t hear it perse, morso the lack of it. Starlight realized the very thing she longed to hear during those twenty minutes of tossing and turning was the soothing metronome of her sundial clock.

Igniting the candle on her nightstand with her horn, she floated it up to the clock’s face, its sleek golden surface glistening beneath its light. The small hand was stuck on twelve, and the long hand that imitated a gnomon at thirty-two. Starlight almost let out an insane chuckle at the irony. She had found Lemongrass’s corpse around that time.

Starlight walked down the hall to her office. Normally, she slept in her bedroom at the Castle of Friendship, but because of yesterday’s events, she had a lot on her work plate. She thought it was good to have a second bedroom at the school. A change in the environment sometimes helped with her insomnia. Sometimes. Not tonight.

Starlight pushed her office door open and blinked in surprise when she saw Trixie behind her desk. The blue unicorn didn’t seem to notice her, as her attention pertained to the quill scrawling words onto parchment. What surprised Starlight more than seeing Trixie in her office, was that Trixie was wearing glasses.

“Are you still grading papers?” Starlight spoke up.

Trixie perked her head up, and Starlight could see the thin black rims of the glasses through the candlelight on the desk. She looked surprised at first, but it quickly dissipated, replaced by grouchy anger. “What in Equestria are you doing up this late?”

“I… um…” Starlight shook the sundial clock in the air for Trixie to see. “I needed the space to fix my clock.” She looked down at the floor guiltily. She hadn’t intended on running into Trixie. The only reason that Starlight was able to toss and turn in bed for twenty minutes was that Trixie convinced her that she needed to sleep and, “...No arguing about it! I’ll finish grading the papers.”

“Well, you’re supposed to be asleep,” Trixie said, and she sighed. Her horn ignited, the glasses floating off her face and folding in the air. “Although, I guess I’m glad you’re awake. I totally need a break.”

She set the glasses down and placed her forehead at the edge of the desk with a huff. Starlight came around and got a good look at the spectacles. “Since when did you start wearing glasses?”

“Trixie obtained them last week,” she said tiredly, forehead still placed against the desk’s edge. “She needs them for reading and writing.” She lifted her head from the table. “I tried to tell the doctor that the Great and Powerful Trixie—” She threw both of her forelegs in the air. “—doesn’t need anything belittling as specs to study her spells, but he changed my mind when he told me to read a magazine out loud.”

“Well, I think they look good on you!” Starlight added.

“Hm-mm,” Trixie hummed and stood up, veering around the desk. “I’ll go make us some tea.”

Starlight started working on her sundial clock. She got the tool kit from her supply closet on the shelf above the chest labeled “FROM THORAX” and used a screwdriver to remove the face, revealing all the toothed gears, springs, and everything else that made time move forward. She was loosening one of the cogs when Trixie set a cup of tea over a saucer onto the desk.

“Thanks,” Starlight said without looking up.

“You should drink,” Trixie said. “I took the liberty of putting a couple of ice cubes in there, so it’ll be the perfect temperature.”

Starlight downed the tea in two quick gulps. It was warm and minty, and if her mind wasn’t hazed with everything in the universe, she would have given herself the chance to enjoy it.

She set the cup back down on the saucer with an audible clack and resumed tinkering with the inside of the sundial clock. The cog she removed was chipped and had to be replaced. Starlight got up from her pillow and walked back over to the supply closet.

“Why don’t you sleep and let Trixie fix the clock?” Trixie called.

Starlight ignored her, sliding out a drawer labeled “cogs” and trying to match the right one with the chipped version. She found it, shut the drawer, and went back to her desk.

She could tell that Trixie was staring, so picking her screwdriver back up, she said, “You wouldn’t know how to fix it.” Okay, ouch, rude, Starlight thought. She raised her head up and said, “I’m sorry Trixie, I’m tired, and —-”

“The Industrious and Tinkering Trixie knows how to repair clocks!” Starlight could tell that Trixie didn’t even say it out of the offense. It was out of the pure, simple acknowledgment that she knew how to do something.

Starlight went back to tinkering. “That may be so, but I’d like to work on this myself if that’s fine.”

Trixie huffed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Starlight stopped. She didn’t have to think about what it was because it was perfectly embedded into her brain. She didn’t say anything to Trixie and continued screwing in the fresh cog.

Trixie cleared her throat. “Trixie spoke to someone earlier today.”

“That’s nice,” Starlight said, only absentmindedly paying attention.

“He said he was a private investigator of some sort — yadda yadda yadda, and he asked Trixie for her details of the events or whatever.” Trixie took a sip from her tea and continued. “So she told him about your episode.”

“The meltdown I had after blowing up the coffee maker?”

“Bingo. He asked Trixie what you said during your little spat, and I told him about how you thought you saw me.”

Starlight set the screwdriver down and focused her magic onto a small knob on the back of the sundial clock. A clicking sound emitted as she began winding it. “So what did he think?”

“He said that it’s possible that the trauma was causing your memory to go all over the place and such and such. He also said that it’s possible you created the event in your mind.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.” She picked the screwdriver back up in her magic when a powerful wave washed over her, and the screwdriver fell from midair. Starlight had the sudden urge to kneel over and pass out. Her eyes landed on the dregs at the bottom of her empty teacup.

“Trixie, did you give me sleeptight tea?”

“I told you to sleep,” came Trixie’s stern voice from beside her, gently pushing Starlight down to the floor where her head made contact with another pillow. “Now sleep.”

“Ugh,” Starlight grunted. “I hate you so much.”

“The love is mutual.”

Starlight sluggishly rolled onto her back, settling herself over the cushions. “Where did this pillow come from?” Her voice came out slurred.

“You have spares, Starlight.”

“Oh.” Starlight’s eyelids felt heavy, and with that heaviness came the urge to close them. She fought to keep her eyes open. Maybe if she stayed awake long enough, the spell would wear off. Yes, she could wait for it to wear off and promptly berate Trixie when she was able to stand on two hooves again — the other two of which will be smashing her skull in…

It hit like a second blast with a shockwave even more damaging. There was another one of those thoughts. She had several of them since Lemongrass’s death.

For some reason, the urge to look into that empty cranium for any brain residue had been compelling. She had just as quickly staved that thought off, brushing it off as a moment of insanity. Now, Starlight questioned if it was more than just a moment because she had similar thoughts after her brush-up with Ocellus earlier today.

It came in the form of a thought, followed by a whisper. As Starlight gently caressed Ocellus’s smooth parka while she cried in the classroom, Starlight had the thought… Ocellus… Do you know anything about Lemongrass’s death?

Then there it was in the back of her mind. It was so deep in the abyss that it still had a lot of climbing to do to reach the forefront. Yet, it was still the loudest whisper she ever heard.

Why would there be anything wrong with that?

Starlight chalked it down to her own thoughts trying to manipulate her. There was no reason for her to have such a thought because she wasn’t the kind of pony to have it. In fact, there was no reason for said thought to even exist. So why was she suddenly fine thinking that the murderer might be a student at the school?

Ocellus somehow knew that it was Lemongrass that was dead. She knew that it was death pertaining to a friend and not just an unfortunate accident that pertained to a bodily injury. It was the death and death of a very specific friend. Not Silverstream, not Gallus, and not Yona, Sandbar, nor Smolder. It was Lemongrass and specifically Lemongrass who was dead.

Starlight stared beyond where Trixie sat next to her, into the dark corner of the room. It was there she saw it. There, in that corner, stood the silhouette of a pony that only she could see. And she knew that she, and only she could see it. There was no indication other than her own intuition to tell her otherwise.

Starlight’s head settled into the pillow, and darkness swept over her. But the image was plastered in her brain. She knew what the silhouette of the pony was and why only she could see it because there would be no logical reason for it to be there. Standing in the corner with a smile not deranged, but sinister, was her. Starlight Glimmer.

~•~

It was like a dream, but not really. Starlight woke up outside, the cold biting her body. She was trudging through the snow, each step taking extraordinary effort.

“Puny pony body…” she muttered with a voice that wasn’t her own. It was raspy, like the voice of an older pony with a throat disease.

With the realization that the voice wasn’t hers also came the realization that the body itself wasn’t hers. If this were a dream, it was one that she couldn’t take control of. It could have been that the sleeptight tea was having a deep effect on her mind, which would explain how real everything felt. The sore muscles, the cold bite of the icy wind, all the way to the sharp, quesy hunger in her stomach.

The hunger was the worst. It was the sort where absolutely anything sounded appetizing. She imagined a nice salad dinner, thinking that the forced changes in thought would shift the cold environment into a warm restaurant. Starlight didn’t get that, but she did hear a noise.

She lifted her head up, ears flickering in the direction the noise had emanated, and her legs carried her toward a house. Starlight cut through the front yard and veered around to its side, arriving behind a deteriorated mulberry bush with thick enough brimble to hide a pony from sight if no one stood too close.

She peered out toward a group of colts congregated beside one of the bridges that overlapped the frozen river that coursed Ponyville’s outskirts. Starlight immediately recognized the bi-colored blue and yellow mane of Skedaddle, a unicorn colt who was backed up against the bridge’s wall. She also recognized the gray coat and black mane that belonged to Rumble, who had two other ponies she didn’t know at his side.

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” Rumble said. She was only able to faintly hear his voice through the wind.

“N-no! I don’t want to do it.” Skedaddle shivered against the bridge’s wall, huddled up in a way that would guarantee placebo-defense.

“Pathetic,” Starlight muttered. She was baffled by the words that came out of her mouth. Did she really just say that?

“Who’s gonna see us? No one is going to be out in all this snow.”

What does he mean? Starlight thought. Dream or not, she’d like to be in control of her own body if it meant preventing hijinks.

“I’m not going to do it!” Skedaddle yelled, some ferocity seeping into his voice. He took a step toward the three foals in front of him. Starlight registered the trio and understood immediately that he couldn’t take them all on. Sure, Skedaddle was taller than Rumble, but Rumble was broader and a lead defender in Ponyville’s Little League Hoofball team. The other two, well, one looked as if he could bench press an abnormal amount of weight for his age, and the other looked like he had won every single fight in his life by sitting on his opponent.

Rumble wasn’t shaken by Skedaddle’s change in demeanor. In fact, his grin grew wider. “All you have to do is steal a few apples from Sweet Apples Acres,” he said. “Nopony will notice. Hey, nopony will miss them, either.”

“S-somepony will figure us out,” Skedaddle stuttered.

“How? There’s literally a million of them. How is anypony going to notice?”

“No!” Skedaddle yelled. “I’m not gonna do it!”

“What are you?” Rumble jabbed a hoof into the taller foal’s chest. “A wuss?” A wuss. He said it in that same childish way only an immature foal could say it. A wuss.

“No, I’m not!” Skedaddle slapped Rumble’s hoof away. The smaller foal looked startled for a moment, but his smile returned quickly.

“You’re a wuss!” he chanted, followed by a laugh. “You’re a wuss! Wussy, wussy, wussy…”

The other foals joined in. Starlight would have jumped in and broken up the disagreement if she could. Her body remained still, and for the first time she noticed how still she was. She had been hunkered behind the mulberry the entire time, not budging for a moment. Not even shivering against the cold. She could feel the soft beating of her heart in her chest. It was calm. An irritating calm. The sort of calm Starlight didn’t trust. Her stomach growled in lustful hunger.

An audible smack echoed through the wind and the chanting cut off. Rumble stumbled backward, holding a hoof over his nose and dripping cherry splotches onto the snow. The other two foals were on Skedaddle before he could even attempt to run away.

The fat one held him down, while the muscular one kicked his stomach. Rumble beat his head in, ensuring that the taller foal had a nose bleed much worse than his. When the three foals were satisfied, the fat one finally let him go.

“Let’s get outta here,” Rumble said, making a head motion for the other two foals to follow.

The trio walked away, and Rumble scuttled back into the wall. He curled into a little ball and began to sob.

Starlight stepped through the mulberry bush and began making wide gaits through the snow toward Skedaddle, and as she got closer, the snow got thinner. By the time she reached him, the snow was only about shin height.

Skedaddle didn’t seem to notice the mare towering over him, nor did Starlight think he would care. He continued to bawl with his hooves over his head.

“You’re pathetic,” she said. Starlight could hear the raspy voice a little clearer now and realized how threatening it sounded.

Skedaddle broke from his sobbing and looked up at Starlight. Blood covered the entirety of his upper lip, coursing down to his chin and smearing across his cheeks. His right eyelid had a slight squint to it, and Starlight could catch onto the vague hints of a black eye forming.

“Leave me alone, lady,” he said.

“Ponies are a weak race. You are nothing but sub-lifeforms. Eliminating you would be easy.”

Skedaddle's head jolted back, both eyes as wide as either would allow. He stood up, wiping the blood on his face onto his forehoof. “I’m gonna go,” he said.

He took a step back toward town and stopped. He turned his head back to Starlight, whatever body Starlight was in, and continued forward. Then she leapt.

Starlight wanted to scream. All she could think was, No, no, what are you doing! She bit down on a lock of Skedaddle’s mane and dragged him through the snow, toward the frozen river. Every time he made the faints of screams, Starlight would give him a hard tug, then would come the ripping sound of hair follicles being torn from his scalp.

Time lost its sense of awareness after that. The moment they were on the ice, her body took Skedaddle’s head into both of its hooves and slammed down hard. A loud crack sound emitted from where his head landed, and Starlight couldn’t tell if it came from the ice itself or his skull. She didn’t want to know.

Starlight was now on top of the foal, who was squirming beneath her. She promptly wrapped both hooves around his head and slammed it down again, again, again, and Snap! Skedaddle’s horn went skittering across the ice, and she still didn’t stop.

Stop, stop it already! Can’t you see you’re killing him! Starlight tried to shout. And her body responded.

It stopped a large puddle of blood now formed over the ice. Starlight could feel the muscle strains of a devious smirk crossing her face. “So, you’re watching.”

Starlight hoped for a minute that someone was witnessing the crime taking place but then realized that the body she was in somehow heard her.

Please stop this, she tried.

Her body responded with a deep chortle. “The pony race is pathetic. I should have wiped you all out when I had the chance. Now that I have you here, you get to bear witness to my resurgence.”

What do you mean? Starlight responded.

A bright green glow flashed across her vision, and Starlight felt better. When the light dissipated, there were two curved mandibles rowed with ghastly teeth extruding from just below her eyes.

Starlight wanted to scream, partly because a vague realization of what was about to happen resonated in the back of her mind, but mostly because this proved that Trixie’s theory was true — that the killer was a changeling.

The changeling posing as some uncanny creature reached a spider leg-like appendage toward Skedaddle’s corpse and flipped it over. Starlight could see his face in perfect clarity. There was a large dent in his forehead where it had been bashed in, and his mug was completely unrecognizable due to the amount of blood that covered it.

The creature reached down, taking his head into both of its mandibles. A disgusting, wet cracking sound emitted, and the contours of his skull smashed inward no easier than a melon taken to with a sledgehammer would explode. His right eyeball popped out of its socket, dangling over his check, and Starlight had the faint glimpse of brain matter spilling out like toothpaste before —

She was spared the remaining details of seeing the inside of Skedaddle’s head as she was literally slapped awake by Trixie. Starlight jolted upright from her spot on the floor and did the only thing that would make sense to somepony that just witnessed a horrible atrocity with no control over whether they could look away: she screamed.

It started at a low pitch, but it built up into even more intense vibrations. Then she screamed again, and again until her screaming died down into quiet sobs.

The sundial clock’s ticking echoed throughout the room.