Author's Note
This is something of a lost chapter for "Grief is the Price We Pay," and would've roughly fitted into the first few chapters of it's latter half had it been included in the original story. I had hemmed and hawed for years afterwards about adapting it into a separate fic but couldn't figure out a good way to get it to stand on its own. Then I figured, "to hay with it," and just write it as-is, mostly (but not quite) as it had originally been planned.
This means that, yes, some additional context for "Grief" is sort of required, but for those who haven't read "Grief," all you really need to know is that the events of "The Times They're a Changeling" went differently so that Twilight and gang chose NOT to trust Thorax and had him banished. Spike, refusing to abandon him a second time, chose to follow Thorax into banishment, leading them to eventually come to Vanhoover and assume new identities working in a bookshop, effectively in hiding. It is here that this fic takes place.
For those of you who HAVE read "Grief," this would take place not long after the chapter "Contact Information."
She Had it Coming Though
Spike found it surprising sometimes just how much he’d adjusted to the idea of living in Vanhoover. There had been a time when every time he woke up he’d half expect to see the thatched-roofed cottages of Ponyville outside his and Thorax’s window instead of the more urban Vanhoover skyline, but now he barely batted an eye at it. He supposed it was a good thing that they had been able to settle here as effectively as they had, given the troubling (and in Thorax’s case, deeply discriminatory) circumstances that drove them here, hiding behind new identities. In fact, they were extremely lucky to stay here as employees and lodgers at Fly Leaf’s Books and Stationery for the now nearly four moons straight (sometimes leaving them worrying if they were pushing their luck), so Spike certainly wasn’t going to complain to the adaptation. It proved how good a place it was to be.
However, today when Spike got up from his usual sleeping spot on the window seat and stole a peak between the window curtains, he saw a Vanhoover that looked a bit different from normal. Not because the city was settling into the cooler autumn season but because it’d decked itself out in festive decorations for one holiday in particular.
Spike couldn’t help but grin slightly before poking his head back into the room. “So today’s Nightmare Night,” he observed aloud as he began preparing for the day.
“Yeah, I noticed,” Thorax replied from within the bathroom, having already been up for nearly an hour. The changeling continued brushing his teeth for a second before stopping to examine one of his fangs for any missed spots. “You know, I’m still a little unclear on just how this holiday works,” he added before resuming his brushing.
“Well, the story is that tonight’s the night Nightmare Moon comes and haunts Equestria, seeking to devour anypony that didn’t disguise themselves or offer her some kind of peace offering.” Spike explained, slipping on the white shirt and navy blue sweater vest that’d become his standard attire. “These days, usually candy.”
“Yes, but wasn’t Nightmare Moon defeated some years ago now?” Thorax remarked before spitting out his mouthful of toothpaste into the sink.
“Oh, not only that, but the whole haunting and devouring thing was completely bunk anyway—it was never actually true,” Spike added with a snicker. “But that’s not the point, the point is that it all gives everyone an excuse to dress up in crazy costumes and go around getting free candy, playing spooky games, and so on.”
Thorax harrumphed as he exited the bathroom again, his dark chitin clean and gossamer wings sparkling. “I’m still not sure I get it,” he admitted as he did so.
“Basically, expect a lot of ponies to be dressed in costumes all throughout today,” Spike summarized with a grin.
Thorax stopped to envision that for a second. “Okay, I think I can manage that,” he said, seeming to understand. He then furrowed his brow. “Should…I wear one of these costumes too?”
“Maybe later this evening, after business in the shop winds down,” Spike said as he put on a bowtie. “I know Fly Leaf wants to keep us open late to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, so we’ll see.” He gave Thorax a smirk. “For now, I know this pony named Thornton you can dress up as instead.”
Thorax chuckled. “Oh, well, I can do that.” With a flash of magical flames, Thorax transformed from his normal changeling self into a dark grey unicorn stallion with a pale cyan mane, vivid ice-blue eyes, and a cutie mark of a pair of books—the identity he’d assumed so to hide he was a changeling.
Spike gave him a thumbs-up before putting on a pair of false eyeglasses himself, completely his own disguise. “And I’ll go as this handsome dragon named Spark,” he concluded smugly.
Thorax used his disguised hoof to smother another chuckle before sighing. “Though it’d be nice if we didn’t have to use these disguises at all anymore and just be ourselves,” he admitted with a hint of solemnity.
“I know,” Spike said, giving his withers a comforting pat, “I do too. But so long as Twilight and the rest are still out there trying to hunt you down…”
“I know, I know, it’s safer to stay in hiding,” Thorax finished with a weary nod of his head, like a disobedient student hearing a reprimand one time too many. He proceeded to put on the blue hoodie he’d started wearing with the cooler weather. “Still…maybe someday…”
“Maybe someday,” Spike agreed before motioning the way out of the room they both shared. “Anyway, Fly’s probably has breakfast ready and is wondering where we’re at.”
“Yeah, probably,” Thorax admitted as he followed him into the hallway and down the stairs leading to the lower floors where the shop they worked in began. “It seemed like she wanted to get a head start on that earlier than usual this morning.”
“Huh,” Spike hummed as they passed the second floor and continued on down towards the first. “Did that cut into that…gweejoe fu…ballet…thing you two have been doing in the mornings?”
“Guizhou fa,” Thorax corrected pointedly, “And you know it’s a martial art, not ballet.”
Spike rolled his eyes behind his false eyeglasses. “Sure looks like ballet,” he retorted as they arrived at the bottom floor and main sales area of the shop.
“You haven’t seen Miss Fly when she really gets into it,” Thorax stressed with his own roll of his eyes. “But no, it didn’t cut into it too much, despite Miss Fly having us wrap up a couple of minutes early.”
“She must have something special planned then,” Spike thought aloud as they crossed the shop’s sales floor and pushed through the pair of batwing doors leading into the kitchen at the back of the building. “It’s probably her idea of…”
“BOO!”
“GAH!” Spike and Thorax both shrieked as a monstrous face abruptly pressed its way into their personal space, scaring them enough that Spike pressed himself into Thorax’s side while Thorax reflexively lit his horn, ready to cast a defensive spell.
But then the face flipped itself upwards, revealing underneath the pumpkin orange form of their boss, Fly Leaf, who let out a quick cackle. “Sorry, sorry,” the earth pony chuckled as she pulled off the mask and shook the tangles out of her wavy vermillion mane. “I was just putting the finishing touches on my Nightmare Night costume, heard you both coming, and couldn’t resist.”
Spike let out a forced chuckle while attempting to still his beating heart. “Yeah, well, you got us pretty good, Fly,” he gasped, shaking himself of the last of the adrenaline that had flooded his veins.
“Please don’t make a habit of it,” Thorax pleaded, extinguishing his horn and likewise shuddering off the last of the startled rush from the scare.
“Oh, don’t worry, Thornton,” Fly said as she put the mask—big enough that it’d cover most of her body when worn—back down on the half of the kitchen table she’d been using to touch it up. “This is for later tonight anyway, for the trick-or-treaters that’ll come a-knocking after closing.”
“So we’ll still keep the door open for them, huh?” Spike asked to confirm as they all sat down at the table to have breakfast.
“That’s been my tradition, at least,” Fly confirmed as she passed a plate of egg muffin sandwiches over to them. “Most of the shops on this street do that, partly since a lot of them double as private residences like mine. And you can bet those foals are going to try and knock regardless, so might as well pander them a bit, right?”
“Will we also need costumes then?” Thorax asked as he only nibbled at his serving of breakfast—as a changeling, the solid food didn’t really do anything for him, but Fly Leaf wasn’t to know that. Fortunately, she’d become largely resigned to his apparent picky eating by now.
“Only if you want to, but of course, there’s more to the Nightmare Night festivities than just the dressing up anyway.” Fly Leaf made a sly smirk. “I’m rather partial to scary pranks myself.”
“Yeah, kinda got that impression, Fly,” Spike replied sarcastically, his heartrate still rather elevated thanks to the spooking earlier.
“Oh, Spark, don’t be like that!” Fly said, chuckling. “I could see the pair of you being pretty good prankers yourself.”
Thorax furrowed his disguise’s brow in distaste. “No thank you,” he assured. “That seems…mean-spirited.”
“Aw, well, suit yourself,” Fly said, waving it aside as she finally got around to helping herself to an egg muffin sandwich too. “There’re plenty of other Nightmare Night activities to try too.” She then thumped a hoof on the table. “Speaking of, you both better eat up! I’ve got a lot of plans to make this place absolutely spook-tacular, and we’ll need to get started on that as soon as we can if we want the big stuff in place before we open!”
Fly Leaf was always big on decorating her shop for special events, partly for the fun of it, and partly because her competitors did it, so she would too. But Nightmare Night proved to be even more noteworthy than what Spike and Thorax were previously accustomed to, and they spent the time before opening putting up what seemed like as many Nightmare Night-themed decorations Fly Leaf could justify squeezing into the store without disrupting the ability of customers to come in and shop.
Both Spike and Thorax privately agreed it seemed a bit much. But once the usual array of customers started coming in, it quickly became apparent that the effort paid off as many of the customers lauded the decorations. Some even called their shop the best decorated on the block, which was precisely what Fly Leaf wanted to hear. Nevertheless, she continued to fret about it, making further tweaks and additions throughout the day.
Otherwise, the work day was mostly normal at Fly Leaf’s Books and Stationery, still consisting of the usual customers looking for the usual products and needing the usual help to find them. The exception was that while some of their customers were still dressed in their usual attire, the rest came in fully decked out in Nightmare Night costumes either because they were on their way to some Nightmare Night celebration, or just because. One had even hurried in so to buy something to make an emergency repair on their costume. This mixed with Fly Leaf’s decorations made for a continuous reminder that today was definitely Nightmare Night and got Thorax wondering how he might be able to get in on this celebrating.
“It depends on what exactly you want to do,” Spike admitted when Thorax asked about it during a brief lull in activity. He hemmed and hawed for a moment, fiddling with one of the items from the shelf he was tidying up. “I…suppose…we could ask Fly Leaf if we could slip away tonight to go to a Nightmare Night party. Heck, she’d probably even suggest what one to go to, but…”
“…but that seems rather public considering we’re supposed to be…you know…not drawing attention to ourselves,” Thorax relented, foreseeing the imminent misgivings.
Spike nodded. “And I think we might’ve been pushing our luck a bit with that lately.”
“I was actually thinking of something I could just do here and on my own anyway,” Thorax said, and watched a customer dressed as some kind of witch pass by them. “I suppose the simplest way would be to come up with a costume for myself.”
Fly, working at the nearby front desk, must’ve overheard parts of their conversation. “If you two are looking for quick and easy costumes, I’ve put a few on display to sell,” she suggested, pointing at a stand that’d been set up in-between the shop’s front door and display window.
Thorax glanced in the stand’s direction but frowned at how they didn’t seem as impressive as the many he’d seen others wear today. “Thank you, Miss Fly, but I think I’d rather come up with something different instead.”
Fly just shrugged, indifferent. “Suit yourself, Thornton.”
Nevertheless, Thorax gave the matter more thought as the day wore on, studying the costumes of the customers as they came and went. Many of them were quite clever, and some Thorax thought he wouldn’t mind doing himself…if the customer he saw wearing it hadn’t already beaten him to it. Others, however, seemed too much of a stretch for his tastes. So in all, Thorax got a good idea of what costumes he wouldn’t want to do, but nothing much on what he would.
Eventually the work day wound down as their normal time for closing drew close. Since they were keeping the door open for trick-or-treaters though, this disrupted the normal closing routine since they were still technically open. Nevertheless, some closing prep still needed to be done, and to that end, Fly Leaf and Spike sat down at the front desk to work on the day’s budgeting while Thorax continued manning the cash register. Fortunately, most customers were leaving of their own volition, aware the shop normally closed at this time anyway and apparently weren’t willing to press their luck, so soon the last customer was exiting the shop.
“All right then,” Fly Leaf said once this happened. “You might as well go ahead and lock up the cash register for the night, Thornton. I doubt we’ll be getting any more actual customers from here on out now, just trick-or-treaters.” Silence then fell for a moment as Thornton did so while she and Spike wrapped up with the budgeting. But then Fly Leaf glanced up and out the shop’s front window in time to catch sight of someone approaching and breathed a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I figured she was going to show up sometime today.”
Spike and Thorax both looked up to see the mare now arriving at their front door, recognizing her immediately. “Oh,” Spike said with a grumble, “Letterpress.”
The yellow earth pony mare in question let herself into their shop with her usual smug and entitled attitude, like she owned the place. She didn’t actually, of course, she owned a shop of her own a block up the street of them, but that shop sold the same sort of products and that made her competition. And Letterpress not only knew that, she liked to remind them constantly of it by flaunting anything and everything she felt she had a leg up on them at. As a result, it was hard to not engage in a sort of continuous but unspoken rivalry with the somewhat tubby mare, if just because her ostentatious ego deserved taking down a peg or two.
Nevertheless, whenever she stepped through their door as she’d just done, none of them ever relished it. Fly Leaf only tolerated it at best in an attempt to be civil, while Thorax found her pride and penchant for gloating distasteful, and Spike just straight up didn’t like her. So her presence here and now wasn’t exactly a cause for celebration. No doubt all of their faces readily showed it. But Letterpress, as she always did, paid no attention to that fact.
“A pleasure as always, Fly Leaf,” Letterpress greeted with the usual fake politeness.
“Hello, Letterpress,” Fly Leaf responded back with sigh. She wasn’t really trying to conceal her displeasure. “What brings you here today?”
“Oh, I was just interested to see what you’ve done with the place for the holiday,” Letterpress said as she began taking in the Nightmare Night decorations they’d set up. “You have such interesting tastes in décor compared to me, Fly.”
As they all knew she was more interested in seeing if there was anything she could brag about doing better, Spike openly scoffed that remark, rolling his eyes. Even Fly leaned her head wearily on one hoof. Thorax, meanwhile, was confused as to why she’d care even if she was being genuine, as unlike so many other ponies that’d passed through their door today, Letterpress wore no costume at all. In fact, all she wore was one of her customary striped sweaters she seemed to love so much, one that bore orange stripes fitting for the time of year but otherwise didn’t really have anything to do with Nightmare Night.
In any case, it was only a moment of surveying the shop’s interior before Letterpress found the first of what would certainly be many things to jeer. “I note you don’t seem to have any of the new autumn stock from HorseyCollins on display, Fly,” she observed smugly. “A pity, considering they are top sellers.”
“Blame the manufacturer,” Fly Leaf retorted flatly. “The shipment is late to arrive for reasons they haven’t bothered explaining to me. Hopefully it should be here by the end of the week though.”
“Well, my shop received our shipment on time,” Letterpress couldn’t help but gloat, running a confident hoof through her jet black mane. “And they have been all selling fast, allowing me to turn quite a profit.”
She then went to go examine a different item in the shop. Seeing Fly Leaf let out a repressed huff, Spike leaned closer. “Now if there was ever a mare who deserved a Nightmare Night prank getting pulled on her…” he jabbed a claw in Letterpress’s direction.
Fly harrumphed. “Don’t I wish.”
Letterpress’s thinly-veiled ridiculing only continued from there, eventually focusing fully on the decorations for the holiday once she ran out of obvious jabs at Fly’s wares. “They’re very homey looking,” she observed about some of the streamers painstakingly hung around the shop’s ceiling. “But homey is hardly a look that ever belongs in a shop, particularly as it seems so…inexpensive. Customers, after all, prefer seeing quality in the places they shop at, and if they see quality, they expect quality.”
“Uh-huh,” Fly grunted on automatic. It was clear she had stopped paying close attention sometime after the third or fourth criticism Letterpress had leveled.
“You should come and see the decorations I have in my shop!” Letterpress then declared, phrasing it as if it was meant to be a helpful offer, but they all knew was really just an attempt to show off how much better she thought her shop was in comparison. “I was able to get these wonderful decorations professionally set up by Décor and Sons. You know, that high-end and very exclusive interior decorator business downtown that is very hard to book appointments for?”
“Sure, Letterpress,” Fly again responded mostly on automatic. Clearly, she had resorted to the tactic of just nodding along until Letterpress finally wore herself out and left.
However Spike, as he often did when left in Letterpress’s presence for too long, couldn’t keep his peace any longer. “You know, there’s a lot more ponies who appreciate the creativity and uniqueness of homemade decorations than you give credit for, Letterpress,” he remarked pointedly, glaring at her over the rim of his false eyeglasses. “Makes it feel more personalized rather than just some generic mass-produced thing that anybody could get out of a catalog.”
“Spark,” Thorax hissed in his direction, knowing him arguing with Letterpress generally never ended well.
But of course Letterpress couldn’t pass up the bait. “Oh, what would you know about décor, Spark?” she said, dismissing the dragon’s comments altogether. “For that matter, what would you know about Nightmare Night? As it’s a pony holiday, do they even have Nightmare Night in the Dragon Lands you originated from?”
Spike visibly fumed at the subtly racist remark, so Fly Leaf interjected. “Let’s leave my employees out of this, Letterpress, they’re just doing their jobs as they were asked to do,” she reminded the other mare firmly.
“Besides, you seem quite underdressed for someone so big on taking Nightmare Night to the max,” Spike nonetheless added before anyone could stop him.
Letterpress was unfazed by the criticism though. “Oh, you mean those ghastly costumes all these silly ponies are out wearing?” she scoffed, taking her lack of costume as a point of praise instead of fault. “That is a practice more for little foals without their marks rather than grown adults with more important tasks, not to mention classier tastes.” She then shrugged and waved a hoof at all three of them, “Though I suppose I must give all three of you credit in that regard, since you’re all dressed in your normal attire as per usual. Even if Spark looks more like he is trying to dress up as something he’s not with that outfit.”
That got Spike to fall quiet, considering Letterpress was more right about that statement than she knew and hopefully would ever know.
But now Fly Leaf was starting to get into the spirit of pushing back on Letterpress. “That may be so, but there’s also no fun in all of that,” she countered aloud. “And what’s the point of life if there’s no fun to it?” She then motioned to the stand she had set up between the front entrance and the display window. “But I assume that means you didn’t take the initiative to try and sell some Nightmare Night costumes like I have.”
Letterpress glanced at the stand disparagingly. “Yes, I did see you had that out,” she relented, trotting over to glance through the selection. “But it is barely worth examining at all, as few of these costumes are anything to get excited about. I’ve seen more elaborate costumes from a five-year-old than these. And look at this!” she selected a costume from near the back of the selection, “A changeling costume that hardly looks like any changeling at all!”
Thorax slightly jumped at hearing this and turned to see the costume Letterpress had held up with her hoof. Sure enough, even from within its packaging, Thorax could tell the costume was designed in the loose shape of a changeling, though it attempted to focus on the more frightful aspects of changeling physiology. Nevertheless, as a real changeling, the thought of it hit rather close to home for him.
It must’ve pushed a button for Spike as well, because he scoffed at Letterpress’s denunciation of the costume. “And what would you know about changelings, Letterpress?”
“I’ll have you know, Spark, that I was there in Canterlot the day the changelings attempted their little invasion,” Letterpress stressed sternly enough that, for once, it was clear she was being genuine. “Fortunately, I had managed to find enough shelter to escape the worst of it, but I was still witness to the whole thing, and I saw live changelings up close. As such, I can definitely tell the difference between the real thing and a cheap fake like these costumes.” She shuddered to herself. “Not that I relish it—they are terrifying creatures, after all. I had nightmares about those things for moons afterwards.”
“Well, at least the invasion was swiftly thwarted and everyone recovered,’ Fly Leaf pointed out.
“Yes, but I still would never wish to encounter another changeling ever again,” Letterpress declared with another shudder. “And that is probably for the better anyway because, I swear, I would probably freak out if I ever did.”
By this point, Thorax was looking rather glum about Letterpress’s negative experience with his species, realizing just how much further things had to go before dissenting changelings like himself could work past such stigmas. To say nothing of the mention of the Canterlot invasion bringing back a lot of unsavory memories that he didn’t care to relive, particularly unbidden like this. When Fly Leaf started to ask how and why Letterpress had been in Canterlot in the first place, Thorax was sorely tempted to try and object, wanting to veer away from that subject and onto…pretty much anything else, really. But he couldn’t think of a way to do so without also raising questions about why he wanted that. So he reluctantly bit back his protests and kept quiet, trying to distract himself by going back to what he’d been working on before Letterpress arrived.
In so doing though, he caught sight of Spike looking at him, having an eager grin on his face and looking like he had gotten an idea.
And a potentially questionable one at that.
Realizing what that idea could only be, Thorax frowned and mouthed out a firm “no” at the dragon.
Spike responded by assuming a pleading position.
Thorax reacted by again mouthing “no” back at him, this time with as much added emphasis he could muster without actually speaking.
That seemed to get Spike to back down as he turned back to wrapping up the bookkeeping. However as Letterpress, who’d begun regaling them with her experiences during the Canterlot invasion, hit a brief lull in her story, Spike closed the accounting book and used that chance to speak with Fly Leaf. “Fly, I’m going to go put this back then work on something else for a second,” he explained quickly as he scooped up the book in question. “Can I borrow Thornton so he can help?”
“Yeah, sure, go ahead,” Fly said before side-glancing at Letterpress already gearing up for the next part of her tale. “You probably aren’t going to miss much here anyway.”
Satisfied, Spike motioned for Thorax to follow him. Thorax relented, but the second they were past the batwing doors and in the privacy of the kitchen did he face down Spike. “No,” he preemptively stressed, already knowing what Spike was about to say.
Spike wasn’t going to back down, though. “Oh c’mon!” he begged. “It’s too perfect an opportunity! It’s Nightmare Night, Letterpress just admitted she’s terrified of changelings, and I happen to know one!”
“It’s still no!” Thorax repeated as they crossed the kitchen and into an adjoining hallway doubling as Fly’s makeshift stock room. “Not only would it be mean and deceitful, to say nothing of how it’s promoting changeling stereotypes I’d rather change, it’d be unbelievably risky! We should be avoiding any circumstances that could potentially reveal our true identities, not putting them out on display like that for any pony, let alone Letterpress!” He waved an incredulous hoof at the little dragon. “In fact, you’re normally the first to remind me of that!”
“Yeah, but this is different!” Spike said as they entered a room that was half living room and half Fly Leaf’s office, returning the accounting book to its proper spot. “With it being Nightmare Night, we could totally come up with a scenario where she can just get a glimpse of you undisguised in a controlled environment, where she wouldn’t be able to put two with two on who you are, and then while she’s busy freaking out, sneak you out so to switch back and act like nothing…”
“Balani devoveo, no!” Thorax stressed once again. “And I mean it! That’s it! End of story! Finalis!”
“But it’d just…”
“No!”
“It’d only take…”
“I’m not doing it, Spike!”
Spike frowned, dejected. “It’d make for the perfect Nightmare Night prank, though,” he mumbled, disappointed. “And it’s Letterpress—I know you’d love to knock her down a peg just as much as I would.”
“It’s true that I find Letterpress disagreeable,” Thorax agreed. “But I commented just this morning that I do not like the idea of these…Nightmare Night pranks…and even without the risk of discovery, it is just not something I’m interested in doing, at least not without some actual justification for it besides mere petty revenge. So I will stand my ground on this, Spike.”
Spike breathed a long sigh, clearly disappointed, but he conceded the argument. “All right, fine, I suppose it wouldn’t be right to make you do it anyway,” he relented. “Not when you clearly don’t want to.”
“Darn straight!” Thorax concluded, pleased that they had that settled.
They then proceeded to go back out front where they found Letterpress still in the middle of her Canterlot invasion story, appearing unaware that they had left the front desk at all. Thankfully, though, it was only a couple of minutes later before she began to wrap it up.
“…all said, I suppose it could’ve been much worse,” she concluded. “Unlike some, I managed to escape the whole affair unscathed, as did my business interests, and ultimately that’s what mattered most.”
“Of course,” Fly Leaf deadpanned, not really agreeing.
“But that’s why I singled this out at all,” Letterpress continued, looping back around to the changeling costume that got them on this topic, holding it up. “This excuse of a costume does not even begin to do justice for the sheer terror of being in front of a real live changeling.”
“It’s not supposed to, Letterpress,” Fly Leaf reminded. “Going for perfect realism wasn’t the point.”
“Your point is not mypoint!” Letterpress said, waving the costume around. “No matter who is wearing it or what their intentions were while wearing it, no one is going to ever seriously look like a changeling in this, barely even a crude mockery! I’d like to see someone make even a passable impression of a changeling while wearing this!”
“I think Thornton could probably do a good changeling impression,” Spike abruptly offered.
Thorax whipped around to shoot Spike an annoyed look, frustrated the dragon still hadn’t given up, but he was interrupted by Letterpress suddenly bursting out in laughter. “Thornton?!” she declared, incredulous. “Don’t be ridiculous, Thornton couldn’t even begin to match a changeling’s level of intimidation!” She waved a hoof at him. “He’s too timid, too quiet, his colors wouldn’t match, and he looks like a light breeze would be enough to tip him over! A real changeling would wipe the floor with him!”
Thorax, taken aback, attempted to formulate some kind of counter. “Well, now…” he sputtered, “Not…not that I’d know, of course, but…I’d think a changeling would rely more on the ability to shapeshift and disguise than physical strength anyway, so…”
“Oh, please,” Letterpress dismissed, unconvinced. She held up the costume again. “Even if you yourself were all that, I doubt you could even successfully put on this costume, let alone shapeshift! That would require a level of skill and intellect I doubt you have. No, if you were a changeling, Thornton, I could only see you as a very bad one, so it’s probably for the better that you aren’t. Hay, I imagine whatever the changeling deity is, assuming they even have one, would only look in utter revulsion at the mere thought of you as a changeling!”
Apparently finding that funny, she then chuckled to herself for a moment. The others didn’t join in. Spike, in fact, reflexively hissed and, knowing full well that changelings do have a deity and how much it meant to them, glanced warily in Thorax’s direction. Even Fly Leaf, who couldn’t have known how impactful Letterpress’s ridicule actually was for him, side-glanced back at him in concern too.
Thorax, meanwhile, had gone very, very, still.
“Anyway,” Letterpress went on, chucking the costume carelessly back onto its stand, “I think I’ve made my point well enough. Your attempts at decorating for Nightmare Night are cute, Fly Leaf, but they simply do not compare to the much more tasteful decorations at my shop.” She then brightened as if she had just gotten an idea but more likely she’d deliberately planned for this from the start. “In fact, why don’t you accompany me back to my shop for a bit so I can show you myself?”
Fly, turning her attention back on Letterpress with a long exhale through her nose, looking like she very much wanted to decline. But she also knew the stubborn mare wasn’t going to just give up the matter either. She glanced at the clock. “…Fine, I suppose I can spare fifteen or so minutes to go look at your shop,” she relented, stepping out from behind the front desk and accompanying Letterpress to the door. “But just real quick, Letterpress, I don’t want to take too long with this. I’ve got my own plans for Nightmare Night and they don’t include your shop.” She looked back at Spike and Thorax. “You two stay here and ride herd. Keep the door unlocked and open for any trick-or-treaters that arrive and give them some candy. I’ve got a bowl of it in the kitchen. Hopefully I’ll be back before then, though.”
“Got it, Fly,” Spike said, giving her a sympathetic wave as Letterpress dragged her out the door and on up the street outside. He then turned back to Thorax, wincing once more. The disguised changeling had started to tremble slightly and his breathing had elevated. It was clear Letterpress’s comments had deeply offended him. Spike looked him over for a moment longer before sliding closer and making a faint grin. “So…I’m guessing you changed your mind about that prank?”
“Oh, she’s going down,” Thorax vowed with uncharacteristic venom.
Naturally, going to view Letterpress’s shop ended up taking far longer than fifteen minutes, much to Fly Leaf’s dismay. But once started, Letterpress wouldn’t shut up about all the many ways her decorations were better, and how that, in turn, somehow made the whole shop better than Fly’s. Fly was admittedly less than impressed though, as she personally found Letterpress’s decorations rather bland and generic. Rather than point it out and end up spurring Letterpress on though, she kept it to herself in hopes that would help speed this along. It didn’t though, and it wasn’t until just after sunset that she started her way back to her own shop.
Even though she shouldn’t need to now, Letterpress was accompanying her, no doubt as an excuse to try and get in a few final jabs, and had continued babbling on to Fly as they walked back down the street.
“Anyway, I know you do try your hardest to try and match my shop’s level of quality, Fly,” she was saying as they drew near Fly’s shop. “But, to be honest, you would probably be happier just settling for second or even third best. Probably not worth the effort, even.”
“I still like my chances, Letterpress,” Fly responded curtly, ready for this whole…interaction…to be over already.
Letterpress shrugged. “Suit yourself, I suppose. I was just voicing my honest opinion anyway.”
“Speaking of your honest opinion,” Fly continued, “did you have to be so mean to Thornton earlier?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You didn’t exactly hold back on your criticisms towards him.”
“Well, he was the one that had insinuated he could mimic a changeling, a simply preposterous idea. The stallion simply does not have that capability, no matter what tools you gave him to do it.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to judge him, Letterpress. He’s often surprised me, so he could just as easily surprise you.”
“Perhaps in other affairs, but trust me, Fly, even if you gave him the best changeling costume in the world, he would probably still find a way to ruin the effect, you know?”
“You seem awfully certain of that.”
“Well, have you ever encountered a changeling, Fly Leaf?”
“Not in the sort of circumstances you have, at least.”
“Exactly. I’ve seen the real thing. I can tell the difference between the real and a fake. So I know Thornton would’ve only fallen well short of the real thing. It’s better that he just doesn’t try, and I told him as such, so to save him that humiliation.”
Fly rolled her eyes, weary. “Whatever the case, you were rather rude to him. And as he’s my employee, I feel obligated to step up in his defense regardless.”
“Oh, you worry too much, Fly,” Letterpress dismissed, amused. “You’ll see. We’ll have all laughed it off by the end of the night. No lasting harm was done at all, I promise you that.”
But when they arrived at Fly Leaf’s Books and Stationery, they unexpectedly found it eerily dark except for a faint green glow just barely visible through the front window. It overall gave them the appearance the shop had closed for the night.
This made Fly frown. “That’s odd,” she muttered to herself as both mares slowed their pace in hesitation. “Spark and Thornton shouldn’t have locked up for the night. We’re supposed to be handing out candy to trick-or-treaters.”
“Well…perhaps they decided to…slack off instead?” Letterpress attempted to suggest, but even she sounded uncertain.
They shared concerned glances briefly before silently deciding the only way to find out was to continue. They approached the shop’s front door, finding it unlocked, but the blind pulled all the way down, obstructing their view inside. Fly’s frown deepened as she, somewhat cautiously, pushed the door open. Letterpress huddled nervously at Fly’s side when they heard the shop’s bell ring as the door opened.
Inside, they found all of the lights off. A series of glistening, pony-sized, cocoons hung in a cluster from the center of the room’s ceiling, each producing a faint magical glow of green light. Dark shapes were faintly visible inside suggesting they were not empty. On the floor before the front desk lay Spark, eyeglasses askew and seemingly unconscious, while a fully undisguised changeling was working on the beginning of another cocoon to seal him within. That changeling stopped immediately upon the entry of the two mares however, letting out a dangerous hiss and showing it’s long alien tongue and sharp fangs as it stalked towards them, ready to pounce. It focused its attention on specifically Letterpress, glaring at her, and uttered a cryptic phrase in the changeling tongue: “Valde crassa es!”
It got no further than that before Letterpress, having gone white as a sheet, let out a bloodcurdling shriek and spun around to gallop away in terror, accidentally knocking Fly Leaf into a nearby shrub in her haste. She then raced up the street shouting about there being a changeling. Fly Leaf, meanwhile, needed a hasty second to extradite herself from the shrub before looking into the shop once again. But by that time, the changeling had already been replaced by Thornton, smugly smirking. Spark had also sat up from where he’d been laying on the floor, a similar smirk on his own face.
Fly needed only a second to process the scene before she understood what had happened and a big grin of her own burst upon her face. “I don’t know how you did this but you two are SO getting raises!” she declared in amusement before, shutting the shop door behind her, she ran after Letterpress to make sure the other mare didn’t do anything too rash.
Because Letterpress was a heavier mare than Fly and not as fit, it wasn’t long before she caught up with her, but Letterpress refused to slow down until she’d burst through the door of the police station and began shouting about the apparent changeling that’d taken over Fly’s shop. This announcement, however, was met with extreme skepticism by the police force on duty. They apparently heard claims like this fairly regularly on Nightmare Night due to the nature of the holiday, and thus would sooner dismiss it as a false alarm. Fly Leaf standing to one side and looking on throughout the whole exchange, trying not to laugh, probably didn’t help. But Letterpress refused to settle down until some officer heeded her demands to at least go and investigate, and two officers eventually agreed to humor her by accompanying them back to Fly’s shop.
“And you’re sure you didn’t just mistake some Nightmare Night decoration as this so-called changeling?” one of the officers questioned as they walked, still highly skeptical.
“I was in that shop just an hour earlier—I saw all of the decorations in there!” Letterpress continued to insist. “There were no changeling decorations!” she motioned to Fly Leaf, still trying not to laugh. “It’s Fly’s shop and her decorations, she can tell you that, right Fly?”
“That’s right,” Fly admitted through a suppressed giggle. “No changeling decorations, except for that changeling costume I had for sale. You remember that, Letterpress?”
Letterpress immediately swatted away that notion. “Oh, it was no costume, this was a real flesh and blood changeling! I would swear my life on it!”
“Sure ma’am,” the officer said unconvinced, nodding his head on automatic.
“But why would any changeling take over a brick-and-mortar stationery shop?” the second officer asked, likewise skeptical.
“I don’t know!” Letterpress declared. “I don’t pretend to know how their demented brains work!” Her eyes then bulged. “What if this is just the start of a new invasion? Shouldn’t we summon the royal guard?”
“Oh please no,” the first officer said with a sigh. “We just had all those meddling crystal guards up here a couple of moons ago, poking their snouts into everything and getting in the way of us doing our jobs. No one is eager for a repeat of that, so let’s not go calling in anyone until we’re sure there really is a threat.”
“There is,” Letterpress kept insisting.
But when they arrived at the shop they found it brightly lit and welcoming. When stepping through the front door, they found the shop’s front room completely normal, brightly lit, gaily decorated for the holiday, and not a sign of any changeling cocoons. The only sign of a “changeling” in fact was Spark trying to help Thornton into the very changeling costume Letterpress had been ridiculing earlier, Thornton apparently having trouble squeezing himself into the unconvincing costume. They both looked up idly at the arrival of the others, completely without alarm.
“Oh hey, Fly,” Spark greeted with a wave, not even acknowledging the flabbergasted Letterpress. “You were gone longer than expected. But I guess that was okay, you haven’t really missed much here.” He made a show of noticing the two police officers also peering into the shop. “Who’s this you’ve brought with you?”
Letterpress, meanwhile, was anxiously scanning every nook and cranny of the room. “But…but…” she stuttered, confused. “He-he must be hiding somewhere! Everybody start searching!”
“Searching for what though?” Spark asked, acting confused. “There’s nobody here but us.”
“And one scary changeling!” Thornton said in a joking tone, motioning to his costume before playfully striking a scary pose. “Rawr!” He then looked Letterpress right in the eye. “Pretty convincing, right Miss Letterpress?”
“What? What are you talking about? I told you before that…” Letterpress then cut herself short, pupils shrinking as she realized all at once that she’d been pranked.
“Yeah, I think we’ve seen enough,” the first police officer concluded at that moment, seeing it was a false alarm as suspected. He patted Letterpress on the withers. “Look, ma’am, since it’s a holiday and it was clearly a misunderstanding, we’ll let you off easy, but let me just remind you that making false police reports is a misdemeanor, so let’s try not to make a habit of it, hmm?” he then tipped his cap at them as he and his partner left again. “You all have a good night!”
Letterpress meanwhile hadn’t moved, the gears in her head about to spin off their mountings as she processed what happened. “You…you…” she stuttered aloud.
“Anyway,” Fly said, now taking charge and gently nudging Letterpress back out the door, “I think this has been enough excitement and you’ve got your own shop to get back to. You have a good night, Letterpress.”
“Bye!” Spark and Thornton both coyly added, playfully waving goodbye.
Letterpress by that point finally found her anger again and started to explode. “I’ll get you for this humiliation!” she proceeded to vow. “I’ll be back with a lawyer so to sue you all for every cent you’re worth!”
“Yeah, that’s nice, Letterpress, good luck with that,” Fly replied dismissively before shutting the door in her face.
They found out later that Letterpress did indeed try to make good on her threat to sue, only to find there was no lawyer in town willing to take her case. Apparently they all thought there wasn’t really enough of one to waste the time and money taking it to court. The fact that even Letterpress had to admit that no one had made her report the prank to the police didn’t help since that technically removed responsibility off of Fly and crew, further compounded by the fact that no charges were pressed anyway. So she decided to “punish” them instead by choosing not to visit Fly’s shop anymore, so to deprive them of her presence and input on things.
This was considered an additionally big win for them.
As such, Fly made good on her promise to give Spike and Thorax raises, which they saw straightaway with their next paychecks. Surprisingly though, other than to voice how impressed she was by it, Fly didn’t speak with them much about the prank. She didn’t even ask how they’d pulled it off, claiming she didn’t want the “intrigue” of it ruined by knowing how it worked. Which suited Spike and Thorax just fine, because that meant it was easier to hide how much bleach-blended cleaner they had to use so to dispose of four changeling cocoons and how Thorax’s throat was sore from the strain of producing said cocoons, among other things.
The one thing Fly Leaf did remark on though was to note how realistic they had rendered the supposedly attacking changeling. “I assume you were the one who played that part, Thornton,” she remarked to him a couple days later, “seeing it was obviously Spark playing the victim and all.”
“It was,” Thorax admitted, who saw no harm in doing that much.
“Well, you did so very, very convincingly,” Fly praised with a grin.
Thorax made a simple shrug. “What can I say, Miss Fly?” he said, making a small, but proud, grin to himself. “I take my Nightmare Night costumes seriously.”
