Thorax was making his usual patrol through the main level of the hive, making sure everyling was doing alright, and that there were no accidental ‘bursts’ of love. They were usually rare, but ever since Ocellus had told him about the time it had happened to her in the dormitory at Princess Twilight’s school, he wanted to be careful, especially with changelings around the same age as her who were having their first mating season.

It was also his opportunity to check on his elder broodmate, Pharynx, who, as always, had chosen to guard the main corridor down to the nursery pools.

“Still holding up, Pharynx? Nice and focused now?” Thorax asked, with a hint of teasing in his tone of voice.

“Don’t pretend like I wasn’t before, Thorax,” Pharynx replied. “Besides, if you didn’t ask me to hold off, instead of being one of the first to deposit my clutch in the pools, I would have been focused on the first day.”

“But you did wait, and for that I am very grateful… And I’m certain our special guest is too,” Thorax told him.

“Hmph,” was his brother’s only reply.

Thorax let out a soft sigh.

“Still don’t think this was a good idea?” Thorax asked him.

“I honestly didn’t know what to think when you first mentioned this idea three weeks ago. At first I was convinced it was a prank of some kind… But then he actually showed up. I still don’t know, Thorax. This is a special time for the hive, it always has been. If he’s not completely safe here, if anything happens to him… It could mean problems with Equestria,” Pharynx replied.

“I don’t see any reason to believe he’s not safe, especially now that he’s incubating. I did my very best to give him the clearest expectations of what he’s in for. The fact that he wanted to experience this? Yeah, I’ll be honest, I don’t completely understand it either, Pharynx, but you can’t deny that he was loving every second of it. You could taste it all the way out here in the main corridor. Wait… That’s not it, is it? Aw, is my elder broodmate embarrassed?” Thorax teased.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pharynx immediately told him.

“Oh don’t I? That is it. I was wondering what’s been eating at you the last few hours. So what annoys you more, Pharynx? That the swarm’s most gruff and no-nonsense warrior loved putting his clutch into a willing pony, or the possibility that he loved it more than you did?”

Pharynx could only grumble as his cheeks tinted pink and he continued staring straight ahead, rather than give his brother the satisfaction of glaring at him.

“I’m only teasing, Pharynx. And I meant it when I said thank you. I know you didn’t want to leave your post for ten minutes, but I hope it’s going to mean amazing things for the survival rate this season,” Thorax told him.

“I hope so too.”

Sandbar awoke suddenly with a gasp, and took in his surroundings as his senses returned. He was laying on his side, and he felt a familiar pair of forelegs embracing him from behind.

“Mom, dad, he’s waking up,” he heard Ocellus’ voice right next to him. “You’re okay, Sandbar.”

The colt reached up and put his right hoof on Ocellus’, who was holding him just below his neck with her right leg, and cradling his head with her left.

“Wh… Whoa…” Sandbar said just above a whisper, as the feeling in his body returned.

“Here, drink this,” he heard Spiracle say as Ocellus gently raised his head up a little more, and a small wooden bowl was put to his lips. When he opened his mouth, the bowl was tipped towards him, and a green liquid trickled into his mouth. As it flowed over his tongue, he realized it tasted like sour apple candy, as he swallowed once, twice, then a third time before the bowl was empty, and it was pulled away. Sandbar noticed how Ocellus and her parents had maintained their ‘pre-Metamorphosis’ appearances.

“How long have I been out?” Sandbar asked quietly, finding he was laying on a bed of leaves, grass, and moss in the center of the burrow.

“Just over six hours,” Carapace told him. “Are you feeling okay?”

Sandbar nodded, and continued to take slow, steady breaths. He looked up and saw the orange tint of sunset in the burrow’s opening. When he heard a crinkle as he moved his hind legs, he glanced down and saw that while he was out, Ocellus and her parents had unpacked his boxes of ageplay supplies, and gotten him taped snugly into a diaper.

“My… My heart is pounding… No, wait…” he said, as he let go of Ocellus’ hoof and put it on his chest.

No, his heart wasn’t pounding, his resting heartbeat was just… More pronounced… And there was something… More…

The eggs.

Sandbar laid there on his side as he concentrated inward, slowly moving his right hoof down his chest, across his lungs, down past his rib cage…

There.

He felt the gentle pulsating in his stomach. It wasn’t in sync with his heartbeat, and it took him a moment to realize that the eggs were pulsating in response to his heart. Keeping his right hoof where it was, he went lower still with his left, almost down to the waistband of his diaper, and he felt the second group of eggs in his colon, pulsing along with the first group. He was content to lay there for a moment and just take in the new, surreal sensation.

“Wow… Wow, they’re really inside me…” Sandbar said, a smile appearing on his face.

“Yep,” Spiracle told him. “They’ve had plenty of time to attach to the lining of your stomach and colon, so now you’ll be able to eat and drink to your heart’s content… And also to their content, as well. Rest assured that you’ll be eating for more than yourself now.”

“Just so you know, Sandbar,” Carapace continued. “We’ll continue to ‘look the part’ for you, as everyling else who comes to help hopefully will, but the ‘rough’ part is over, at least for now. You’ve got your eggs to nurture now, so consider yourself officially in the care of the Changeling Kingdom. Apart from anyling who comes to help with your ageplay, one of the three of us will always be here with you, whether you’re sleeping, getting fed, or getting changed.”

Sandbar felt a warm tint in his cheeks when he heard the words ‘your eggs’. He let himself roll over from his left side onto his back, keeping his front hooves over where the eggs were inside him, as Ocellus snuggled up next to him.

“So, a pretty good start to your little fantasy?” Ocellus asked, gently placing her front hooves next to her feedmate’s on his body so she could feel the eggs too.

“Is it ever. It’s like a dream I hope I don’t wake up from,” Sandbar told her, smiling at her.

“Don’t worry, you won’t,” Ocellus said as she nuzzled him.

“Sandbar, can you walk? Maybe Ocellus can show you some more of the hive. Dinner won’t be ready for another half hour or so,” Spiracle suggested.

“Yeah, you’ll definitely want to take advantage while you can,” Ocellus agreed, getting up.

Part of Sandbar didn’t want to take his hooves off of where the eggs were inside him, but he also thought of what Soothing Care told him about hoping he wouldn’t burn out on ageplay. So he carefully rolled over, and got up on his hooves, and followed his feedmate out of the burrow out to the main corridors, his diaper crinkling with every step.

“So where are your little brother and sister? Lumbar and Axilla, right?” Sandbar asked, noting how he hadn’t seen the youngest members of her brood yet.

“They’re with all the other grubs. At the beginning of mating season, a group of mature changelings are selected to be the first to lay their egg clutches in the nursery pools, then they gather up the grubs, and go on what is essentially a two-month camping trip several miles away from the central hive. They’re taught some survival skills, like cooking, finding shelter, and in some cases, hunting.”

“That sounds like a big job, keeping track of all those youngsters,” Sandbar offered.

“Not if you think like a changeling. Pheromones do a wonderful job at keeping them all grouped together.”

Ocellus took him around the outer corridors of the hive, showing him the Feelings Forum, the Crafting Cavern, and the Cooking Circle. One of their last stops was up top, to the throne room.

“Ah, Sandbar, you’re awake! Are you feeling okay?” Thorax asked when he saw them come up from the lower levels.

The colt nodded.

“I know I’m only a few hours in, but yes. So far, it’s everything I could have hoped for. I’ll try not to be a broken record for the next few weeks, but really, truly, thank you for giving me this opportunity, Thorax,” Sandbar told him.

“I was just showing him around while dinner was being cooked,” Ocellus told the hive leader.

“Well, I don’t think you need to worry about Sandbar being seen as a foreign presence anymore. With those eggs, he’s one of us now. In fact, I think the only place he wouldn’t be able to get to is the nursery pools, and that’s mostly because of Pharynx. He’s understandably overprotective of them, even from an incubator,” Thorax explained.

“No worries, I certainly don’t want to step on any hooves,” Sandbar replied. He looked like he wanted to say more, but then his stomach began to rumble.

“Wow, that hunger pang came on fast,” the pony commented.

“Yeah, you’d best get used to that,” Thorax replied. “Hope your parents have dinner ready, Ocellus.”

Ocellus nodded, and took Sandbar back downstairs. They completed their lap of the outer corridors, and as they came back around towards their burrow, Sandbar spotted a dark cyan changeling standing vigilantly next to a wide corridor that went further down underground.

“That leads down to the nursery pools,” Ocellus told him.

“Ah, so that means I’ve already gotten familiar with you. It was Pharynx, right? Say, you were pretty good back there…” Sandbar told him, a knowing smirk on his face as he got a light tint in the changeling’s cheeks for his efforts.

“Hmph. Keep moving, grub, while you still can,” Pharynx replied.

Ocellus lead Sandbar further down the passageway, and the colt leaned in once he was confident they were out of earshot.

“I was just teasing him,” Sandbar whispered. “I didn’t think he’d threaten me.”

Ocellus giggled lightly.

“Oh, that wasn’t a threat, it was more a statement of fact,” Ocellus told him. “Once the eggs begin to grow, moving around like this is going to eventually take more effort than it’s worth.”

“O-Oh…” Sandbar said.

“But don’t worry, that’s what you have us for,” Ocellus reassured him. “That’s half the reason Thorax wanted you to bring so much of your ageplay stuff; it’ll make keeping you safe and comfortable that much easier.”

“And the other half is because some changelings here can’t wait to taste how much I love it?” The pony asked.

“You got it.”

By the time the feedmates returned to their burrow, Carapace and Spiracle had made a steaming pot of cabbage soup, and in Sandbar’s case, the ageplay was about to begin, as his dinner was a sizable bowl of mashed greens that the three changelings took turns feeding him bite by bite.

“So Thorax warned me that I was going to be eating a lot more. Any idea how much more?” Sandbar asked in between two spoonfuls.

“Well, probably not a lot more in the opening days. By next week, you’ll definitely notice the increase. Maybe try not to think of it as eating more, but eating more often,” Spiracle explained. “After all, your stomach is only so big, and as the weeks pass, your eggs are going to take up more and more of that available space.”

Your eggs.

Gosh he loved hearing those words.

When dinner was finished, he immediately let out a big yawn, which surprised him after being out for almost half the day already.

“You can try and fight it, but I’d wager you’ll be passed out in under thirty minutes,” Carapace told him.

“That’ll be your bed, Sandbar, right there in the middle of the room,” Spiracle pointed to where he had woken up a bit ago. “So you can be easily spotted and tended to.”

“I just want to try and get my thoughts about today written down before I fall asleep,” Sandbar said, going over to where his saddlebag had been placed, next to the stacked packages of diapers.

“As for the rest of us, we’ll be sleeping in shifts. One of us will always be awake to tend to you,” Ocellus told him.

Sandbar was given a small portable lantern just before the large one on the tree was extinguished. He opened up his blank journal, and grabbed his quill, and unscrewed the lid on his inkwell.

Day 1

How to begin? First off, I’m hoping that this first entry is completely unnecessary, and that I remember this day with clarity for the rest of my life.

So long story short, Thorax, Ocellus and her brood decided to indulge this curiosity of mine that came out of nowhere, I arrived at the Changeling Hive during mating season, and within minutes I was rutted by four changelings, quite thoroughly I might add, and it was beyond amazing, even as I was blacking out from it.

I wish I could make the slightest bit of sense of my sudden interest in this oviposition stuff. It wasn’t anywhere close to being ‘in my face’ as ageplay was, with our headmare being babied up on stage for a Kinks and Fetishes class.

So I think for now, I’ll stay on a relatively safe limb and say it’s because of my feelings for Ocellus. I love her more than anything or anycreature else, and I guess if I want to know everything there is on loving a changeling, I want to get as close as I can to being a changeling. Right now, as I write this, my body is incubating a dozen changeling eggs, maybe more, and Ocellus’ family tells me that they could be the strongest of the upcoming generation because of their growing conditions.

I’m absolutely thrilled to have this experience, and right now I consider myself the luckiest colt in the world. But Thorax tells me that it’s not so much painful as it is intense, so I have a feeling that the hard part isn’t quite here yet.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Author's Note

Four updates in four nights!

And super-special thanks to Mix-up, whose input and idea-bouncing helped me heavily expand a later portion of this story!

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy! More to come!