Not for the first time, Silverstream wondered what changelings did all day.
The majority of a hippogriff’s time -- or a pony’s time, for that matter -- was spent perpetuating their own existence. Hippogriffs needed food, which necessitated jobs like fishing and chores like cooking. Cooking in turn required the cleaning of dishes, which took even more time. Hippogriffs needed shelter, so on land they were loggers or bricklayers, and in the sea they were masons or coral weavers, and of course, every hippogriff had to sweep and mop and otherwise keep their dwelling hygienic.
Changelings, though, did not eat. They were passively sustained by the love of those around them. Changelings did not build homes; their hive grew from the earth like a living thing, ever changing, ever shifting, sustained in a symbiotic relationship with their natural transmutation. It didn’t even have to be cleaned, though this was not because of magic so much as because changelings didn’t mind sitting in the dirt. Most of their rooms had bare dirt floors.
They didn’t even have jobs. They didn’t wear clothes, they didn’t make toys, they didn’t forge iron, or shape clay. To the extent they had any physical possessions, they acquired them through theft or trade from other civilizations.
So what did they do all day? Did they all have a lot of hobbies? Did they spend their time “making love” in whatever way asexual shapeshifters prefer?
There were plenty of things Ocellus could be doing. That she could have been doing, at that moment in time. The two of them had the whole school to themselves. She could have studied in the library. She could have tended the fireplace. She could have made snowlings out in the courtyard.
But, instead, she continued to sit and look at Silverstream. Quietly.
They were in the common room of the student’s dorm in the School of Friendship, two gifts rattling around in a box far too large for them. Decorations covered every wall, and a festooned tree rested in the corner, but there were no other creatures to appreciate them. By the time the other students got back, the season would be over. Outside, the wind howled. Snow piled up against the windows. A fire crackled in the hearth, keeping the room barely habitable.
There were no gifts under the tree. They both thought, well, Silverstream had thought. Silverstream had believed Ocellus wouldn’t be staying over the break, so of course, she should open Ocellus’s gift early. While they were both still there. Perhaps Ocellus had believed the same thing, or perhaps not, but she acted like she did.
And Twilight had left Silverstream a hearth’s warming dinner. Spike’s cooking, no doubt. It was under a tray lid, with a note that read “You’re free to come by the castle if you like!” in bright pink characters.
But Silverstream didn’t want to go to the castle, and she definitely didn’t feel like eating while Ocellus stared at her.
So she decided to indulge her curiosity. To ask what it was changelings did all day. And yet, somehow.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?”
No sooner had the words left her beak than Silverstream felt they were subject to misinterpretation. That perhaps, due to a poor choice of words, a slip of the tongue, Ocellus might take her innocent curiosity as irritation.
Which it wasn’t. Ocellus hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Oh, yeah,” Ocellus rose from her chair at once. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. I’ll uh, go for a walk. Hit up the music room. Swing by if you want company.”
The music room? Ocellus played an instrument? Silverstream didn’t know that, had never seen it before, and a thousand enthusiastic questions entered her head.
“That’s great! I didn’t know you played an instrument.” She spoke too fast and couldn’t slow down, sweet like old toffee and bright like plastic flowers. “Of course, I’ve heard you sing. And I know you study music theory. You’re probably great at it. I love music. I should listen to you play sometime.”
But it didn’t come out right.
Ocellus left before she could fix it.
Not for the first time, Ocellus wondered how ponies were so strong.
She counted hippogriffs as ponies. For that matter, she counted griffons and yaks as ‘ponies’. They were all the same to a shapeshifter, and they were so resilient.
Her emotions overflowed: her love of her hive, her love of her friends, fear, and anxiety, and a need to prove herself. When she suffered a serious setback, she cried. When the path ahead was dark and twisting, she was consumed by despair. Of course, she had help. At home, her hivemates would hug her and lift her up, and at school, her friends would do the same, and she would get through it all.
But she needed those hugs, that love. She couldn’t suck it up, she couldn’t bury her pain, couldn’t swallow her feelings and soldier on. All her friends could do that: Gallus particularly, Smolder though she’d never admit it, Yona, Sandbar, and yes, Silverstream. They were all so tough.
Even if they didn’t always see themselves that way.
She’d flown to the music room, less out of a desire to use her wings, and more to avoid the long echoes of her hooves on the school’s stone floors. Despite its festive colors, the building had a sinister air when it was abandoned. Small sounds carried far against the hard walls, and the snow piled up against the windows blocked what little moonlight their was, casting the halls into near total darkness. The classrooms were full of ghosts.
The music room at least had a fireplace, and Ocellus had a roaring blaze going, though she didn’t bother lighting any of the lamps. She was practicing not with any one instrument, but with the room as a whole, lighting her horn and raising her voice and seeing if the instruments would respond of their own accord.
“Three months of winter coolness, and awesome holidays.” She sang the first verse of the winter wrapup song, eyeing the instruments for a sign of spontaneous musical accompaniment. A guitar plucked a few of the correct notes, though in a rather half-hearted fashion.
“We’ve kept our hoofsies warm at home, time off from work to play.” Silverstream’s voice echoed from up the hall, and the guitar self-animated into the accompanying performance, plucking clear notes as Silverstream sang.
Ponies and their magic.
Of course, this provided ample warning of Silverstream’s approach, and Ocellus was facing the door when she entered. “Oh, hey,” she waved a hoof, pose stiff. “I didn’t uh… I thought you’d want the evening to, uh…”
“No no no no,” Silverstream’s usual bubbly enthusiasm was there, upbeat, cheerful, happy for everyone and everything and pipes and Tuesdays. Yet, it had an undeniably brittle character. “I just thought, earlier, you know, I might have. I mean. I think I came across wrong. Really, it’s very nice. What you’re doing. Really, super. Great!”
“Oh, it’s… fine.” Ocellus kicked the ground with a hoof. There were a thousand things she could say. That she couldn’t say. Shouldn’t say. Not unless invited. Not unless she was allowed to admit she knew what they both knew she knew.
She looked away. So did Silverstream.
“There’s something I’ve never told you,” Ocellus blurted out, the words emerging with sudden force. “That I’ve never told any of our friends. I mean, I assume you know. There are things that… you know. We just know our friends know. But the fact that they haven’t told us makes it awkward. Because we feel like; you know. It’s private? So even though I know you know I’m telling you now.”
Silverstream stared, her expression blank, and Ocellus deeply wished she knew what was going on inside her friend’s head, but all she could do was press on: “In the old days, before Queen Chrysalis’s defeat, I was trained to kidnap and replace ponies, to seduce their loved ones, to drain the love from their bodies. I never did, and I mean, I wasn’t special that way. Every changeling was trained that way. But I was too, and, yeah. I’ve never told any of you.”
“Oh.” Silverstream rose from the ground, flapping her wings idly. “I mean, I guess I already knew that? Like I figured that.”
“Yup,” Ocellus looked at the ground, hoping against hope for a positive outcome. “But it still would have been, I mean.”
“I know what you mean, Ocellus,” Silverstream said, and the rebuke in her tone was not subtle.
Silverstream didn’t know how she kept messing things up.
Ocellus was trying to be nice. No, she was being nice—she was going terribly out of her way to try and support her friend, and Silverstream wanted to show her gratitude, but somehow it came out wrong.
“Well,” Ocellus said, turning away, “I can get back to practicing if you want some time alone.”
It came out like that.
“No,” Silverstream lifted a talon, forcing cheer back into her voice. “No, no. I came here because, I mean. I wanted to talk. If you want to talk. And thank you for sharing that. I know how deeply personal that is for you. I remember your nightmare in the caves under the school. But it’s, like, hard for me to picture you that way?”
She settled back down to the ground, closer to Ocellus now: “Maybe this is like, a stereotype? Tell me if it is. But I always pictured changeling agents as like, these femme fatale characters? Sharp flanks and a slinky red dress.” She assumed an affectation, her voice becoming gruff, deeper. “She was a dame with eyes you could lose yourself in. Long legs, tail like a waterfall, wings that made a stallion want to rise up to heaven. But something told me she was trouble, a gut instinct that something here wasn’t right.”
“What?” Ocellus giggled. “Are you a noir detective now?”
“I said it was a stereotype!” The changeling's laugh had a palpable effect on Silverstream’s mood. She felt her muscles relaxing. The knowledge that she hadn’t spited her friend was soothing like cool water on a hot day. “But that’s how I picture it. It’s like, from books and movies and stuff.”
“Well that is,” Ocellus picked her words carefully, “very inaccurate. Though, I was trained to do all that.”
“What? No, really?”
“Sure,” Ocellus shrugged. “I know how to be a mare in a slinky red dress. How to be seductive. How to be dangerous. How to communicate with, um, body language. I can tango.”
“No way. Ocellus, I love you, but you are a shy and awkward nerd. If you’re a femme fatale, I’m Princess Celestia.”
Ocellus made no deliberate decision to rise to the challenge, the same way she made no conscious decision of what form she would assume. She didn’t willfully take note of Silverstream’s likes and dislikes, which creatures drew her eye and which didn’t. She simply knew, driven by instinct. The moment swept her away.
Not a hippogriff -- a unicorn for the xenophile, tall, athletic, her mane and tail in an angular cut reminiscent of Commander Tempest. This creature Ocellus made was ever so faintly older than Silverstream, though if that was a matter of years or maturity was left ambiguous. Her coat was gray, her mane and tail shock white, and she wore eye-shadow that was pink like the depths of a flower. It framed her eyes, which did not match her coat, but were a rich and malicious red.
She felt the reaction before she saw it. Consciously, oh, consciously perhaps Silverstream derided petty trickery, knew that it was still the faint and gentle ladybug before her, but at that crude level, the level that Ocellus could taste, there was victory: surprise, alarm, fear, admiration. No lust, but what did that matter? If Silverstream was not attracted to mares, then she could know in her heart of hearts that if she was gay, this creature would own her.
A fraction of a second later, her eyes widened. The instant of greatest distraction. Ocellus gripped Silverstream’s talons, and swept her up and off the floor, controlling her utterly with such ease and grace, an iron grip in a velvet glove.
She dipped Silverstream low over the floor, supporting her back, posing her like a sculpture. There they stood, frozen in time, until behind them the guitar came to life of its own accord and a latin riff echoed through the empty music room.
The notes of the guitar carried long and slow through the empty stone halls of that dark school. In the sound’s wake, candles lit themselves, warmth filled the air, light and life returning to that place that had known their absence. Silverstream’s fear, alarm, surprise all faded as she rested in Ocellus’s arms, blowing away like a cloud of dust, but the admiration remained, and with it was something new.
Excitement.
Silverstream flowed like water out of Ocellus’s grip, elegantly twisting her limbs, her spine. She did not need to push off the ground to rise to stand, nor use her wings, nor extricate herself from Ocellus’s grasp. Smoke could not have risen so effortlessly. And as Ocellus’s magic could but inspire the guitar to a handful of notes, so did Silverstream, ponies and their magic, make it burst into song.
Guitar notes carried behind them, at first lazy, drifting through the air, but in time faster, building towards something grand, and when Silverstream whirled where she stood, she met Ocellus’s eyes.
Silverstream struck first, took a step faster than Ocellus thought possible, and it was only just that she matched the movement in time—but she did. They both stared at each other, judging the others movements, weighing what would happen next.
A tango is the work of intimacy, two dancers in flawless harmony. But could Ocellus be sure? They stood there for several seconds, waiting, listening to guitar and its building tempo.
Ocellus put her other hoof forward, and Silverstream matched the step. How could they not be hesitant, knowing that one mistake would shatter the moment, end their sublime joy? But she moved again, and Silverstream matched her just the same, and with every step after that, they gained confidence, rising to match the music.
Then Silverstream halted her motion with a hoof, leaving their legs intertwined, side by side, hips and flanks together. The guitar halted, just long enough for Ocellus to hear Silverstream’s breath, and that hippogriffs eyes said, begin.
The guitar, brass horns, a güiro struck up those unmistakable notes, a gail of warm music to overcome the cold air outside, a torrent flamenco. They separated, came together again, and every lamp in the room flared as they drew near, the very air made bright with their presence. Hooves clapped like castanets, the music that required no instrument, fruit of a wild passion.
Each explored the other. Ocellus had only ever known Silverstream as energetic, but on that floor, she moved with the lightness of air, and her eyes sparkled like the scales of a fish. She was water and wind and current and storm, and her body twisted around Ocellus, guiding her this way and that.
And if Ocellus could not read Silverstream’s mind, could not know with certainty what she sought in her explorations, she suspected. Silverstream was curious about this creature, whose dance was domination and control, and whose smile was the shine on the edge of a knife.
When Silverstream wrapped her tail around Ocellus’s leg, it was her delight to watch Ocellus pivot about that point, pulling her along in a dance quick and close. When Ocellus lifted Silverstream’s head with a hoof, it was with joy she saw Silverstream arch her back and slip her hind leg high over Ocellus’s shoulders for balance, the two of them transformed into a statue. And when Silverstream released her balance, and tumbled backwards, it was not because she slipped.
It was an instruction to catch her.
Ocellus did, like they’d practiced together for years, and as the music reached its crescendo, she lifted Silverstream high off the ground. She floated there, held tight in Ocellus’s grip, with wings spread but not a hint of flight
The horn played its last note, the guitar its last riff, and Silverstream laughed.
Trying not to pant for breath, to show how her heart was racing, Silverstream slid down to the floor. “Wow, that was amazing. I have never seen this side of you before. You have this smoldering sexual intensity. I’m very seduced.”
“What the heck!?” Ocellus’s tone was outraged, slighted in a way that didn’t really fit the mature character she had created. In a green flash, she reverted to her natural form.
“Oh, sorry,” Silverstream put a talon to her chest, though her apology was transparently feigned. “Was that too forward? I do just think of you as a friend.”
“What? No!” Ocellus stalked forward, considerably less intimidating in a shape that only came up to Silverstream’s chest. “You can dance. You can really really dance.”
“Thanks.” Silverstream gave her a bright, obvious smile. The feeling radiated through her from talon to tail, a warm electricity she hadn’t realized was gone. “You can really really dance, too. Not fake really really dancing. Really really really dancing.”
“No, I imitate. I dance like a creature that is naturally gifted at mimicking body shape and movement, that has watched a bunch of recordings of tangos. I dance like a changeling that had two weeks of dance instruction as part of her general education. You,” she pointed an accusative hoof, “dance fluidly, and naturally, and gracefully. You dance to create beauty. You dance like a creature that wins dancing contests.”
“Okay, first.” Silverstream counted off on a talon, her smile only brightening. “You are good, and if that dancing was the result of only two weeks of training, you’re remarkably gifted. Which is unfair, since you’re already the straight-A student scholar wizard shapeshifter in the group. You can’t be good at everything Ocellus, pick a lane.”
Her changeling friend began to speak, but Silverstream cut her off, lifting her next talon. “Second, don’t say you ‘imitate’ like that somehow makes it not count. You went from being a shy nerd to being a femme fatale super spy, and it is the coolest thing you’ve ever done. I know, I know, you probably don’t like doing that, because you’re a super honest and open creature, and you don’t like the ‘old days’ in the changeling hive, and I get it. But admit it was cool. Just admit it. I’m reeling.”
But she never let a good reel interrupt her meter, which was why she lifted a third talon before Ocellus could interrupt. “And third, I dance like a creature that wins dancing contests because I am a creature that wins dancing contests. I’ve told you like, a lot of times that dancing is a big part of hippogriff culture. There wasn’t a lot to do underwater. I have a lot of practice.”
“Well…” Ocellus struggled. “Yeah, but I didn’t know you were… I mean…”
“Good at things?” Silverstream lifted an eyebrow, though her tone was playful.
“Uh…” Ocellus rubbed the back of her head. “I wouldn’t… put it that way.”
“Because you’re too polite to say you think I’m a ditz?” Silverstream giggled, continuing before Ocellus could protest. “I’m happy. I’m a happy creature. I like life and being alive and everything in this beautiful world. I don’t know why everycreature thinks that means I’m dumb, but they do, and I’m used to it.”
“Well, now I feel like I’ve been really dismissive.” Ocellus furrowed her eyes, turning to look up at the taller creature. “Are you sure you’re not offended?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” She said it with so much breath, so much verve. “And you haven’t been dismissive. You’ve been… nice. You’re missing Hearth’s Warming Eve in the hive just for me.”
“And you’re missing the Three Days of Freedom.” Ocellus hesitated, then pressed on. “Didn’t you say that involves dancing? Are there contests? Do you… win? Every year?”
Like a gust of cold air, the feeling of warmth fled Silverstream’s body. The blazing fireplace seemed further away than it had been a moment ago, and her smile faltered. “There are contests. I don’t win every year, but you know. Some years.”
The stillness returned between them, the distance, the awkwardness. They both started to look away, Ocellus’ eyes drifting hesitantly.
But Silverstream caught them.
“Ocellus?” she asked, and it was only when she had the changeling’s eyes that she continued. “How much do you… um. Why did you stay over the break this year? I mean, why specifically?”
Ocellus froze like a deer, body stiff, eyes wide.
She couldn’t lie. Not only would it be deeply disrespectful, antithetical to her honest nature, it would be obvious. Silverstream already knew what Ocellus knew, the question made it clear that she knew. They were dancing around something they both already understood. It made the most sense, that Ocellus should tell the truth.
But she couldn’t do that either.
So she said, “I stayed to keep you company,” which was not the truth, but it was at least a truth.
“You’ve never done that before.”
Privacy was a strange concept. In the hive, surrounded by snooping, gossipy drama queens with the power to taste emotions, keeping secrets was nearly impossible. Even if Ocellus didn’t wear her feelings on her shell, there would have been no event in her life that was wholly her own. Everything she did, some changeling saw, or felt, or tasted, and they talked. She liked it that way. That was how her hive supported her, when she was not as strong as Silverstream.
But ponies, they weren’t like that. When she first interacted with ponies and tried to gossip with them like she did her hivemates, it went wrong. Ponies didn’t want to hear about who they were crushing on, or what they did and didn’t love. They didn’t like the idea that she knew them, because they’d been seen by some changeling somewhere long ago. They felt violated and hurt, and that in turn made Ocellus think of the old days, when all changelings did was violate and hurt.
It was important to let ponies have their secrets. So she said: “You’ve never stayed over before yourself.”
Oh, to be a telepath instead of merely an empath. Ocellus could feel the sudden note of affection from Silverstream directed towards her, she could hear her laugh, but what was the cause of it? Why did her evasion produce such an unexpected reaction? And perhaps Silverstream saw the confusion on her face, because she spoke first: “It’s a really good thing Thorax reformed the changeling hive, because in the old days, you’d have starved to death. You’re a terrible liar.”
“Thank you,” Ocellus said, and she meant it. “You said I can’t be good at everything, right? I’m happy being a terrible liar.”
“Doesn’t count,” Silverstream grinned. “But I appreciate the sentiment. Can you just…” She cleared her throat. “Like, what do you…”
She fell silent, and Ocellus did not finish the question for her. Finally, Silverstream said: “You seem worried about me.”
“I know what you’re feeling,” Ocellus said, “but that’s not the same thing as knowing you. Creatures are more than a collection of emotions. They have beliefs, thoughts, desires, willpower, character. The need to be a good daughter, the quiet conviction to do what’s right, these things aren’t feelings I can sense, but they can totally define a creature. So I don’t really know what’s going on in your head. I don’t.”
She scuffed the floor with a hoof: “But if I was feeling what you were feeling right now, I’d be crying.”
“Really?” Silverstream’s reaction was one of surprise more than offense, an eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, I can be kind of a wimp.”
“First you think you can’t really really dance, then you think you’re a wimp, why are you being so hard on yourself today?” And again, they both looked away, but it was only momentary, and they both laughed that awkward laugh.
“Well,” Ocellus said, “if you want to be distracted, or just uh, less awkward company, we could go play a board game or something? Oh, or go explore the empty classrooms. They were kind of cool and creepy.”
“No. No.” Silverstream spread her wings and zipped around the room, though she wasn’t regarding anything in particular -- she fiddled with this, touched that. “When you wanted to list two traits you couldn’t sense, you picked ‘the need to be a good daughter’ and ‘the conviction to do what’s right’.”
“I can’t magically sense those,” Ocellus said. “But I know you. Sort of.”
“Dancing aside,” Silverstream agreed. Then she landed. Facing away from Ocellus. She took a breath.
“Ocellus, what do I… smell like, right now, to you? Not smell, but, I don’t know. Your magical changeling senses. I know you’re feeling anxious, but as my friend, please give me a straight answer.”
A long silence.
“You smell like rotting meat,” Ocellus finally spoke, voice ever so quiet. “You smell like a relationship that’s dead but its carcass hangs around. You smell like toxicity. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to spy on you. I really didn’t. But it’s pungent. If it was a smell, you’d reek. And I know it’s not… you. It’s not that your…”
“And you put the rest together?”
But that was a bridge too far. Despite the earnest request, despite her desire to be a good friend, Ocellus found the words stuck in her throat. It wasn’t her place to say it.
So Silverstream said it for her: “My parents are getting divorced.”
They returned to the common room. Silverstream made herself a mug of hot cocoa from the supplies Twilight had left. Ocellus did the same, then poured the cocoa into a hot water bottle she tucked under her wing covers, claiming it felt more ‘festive’ that way.
“They don’t blame me,” Silverstream said, pacing around the room as Ocellus sat on one of the couches. “Quite the opposite. They’re tripping over themselves not to blame me. Always telling me it’s not my fault, we still love you, and I’m like, yeah, I know it’s not my fault. I can hear you two snapping at each other like two angry eels after I’m in bed.”
A tense breath escaped her, her course random, back and forth across that overly decorated holiday gift box. “Seaquestria was… it’s not the ocean. Seaquestria is not synonymous with ‘the ocean’. The ocean is huge, but it’s also full of krakens, and deep ones and great old ones and killer squid, and… you know. Wow. Surface creatures have no idea how many horrible things are in the ocean, do they? It’s a dark realm where the sun does not shine populated entirely by nightmares. But I’m getting off track.”
“Sip your cocoa?” Ocellus suggested, and Silverstream did. It helped, or at least, gave her pause so she could feel her heart pounding in her chest.
“Right.” She let out her breath. “Seaquestria is a small settlement in a sheltered bay and series of underwater caverns. The key word being small. The survivors, the ones who hid from the Storm King, we were. Are. Were. A small, close-knit community. Small enough that you can’t leave someone and not see them again. A hippogriff can’t, say, divorce their awful barracuda of a wife and avoid her after. They’d see each other in the main cavern, in the old pools, their friends would meet, there would be gossip. So much small town gossip.”
“Because among ponies,” Ocellus said, with an odd inflection to her voice, like she was reciting something from a textbook, “gossip is bad.”
“It meant divorce wasn’t really a thing. Not because there were laws against it, it was just… easier. To stay together.” She hung her head. “Even if you both know you’re bad for each other.”
“So it’s not either of their faults?” Ocellus asked. “They were just… stuck together?”
“Oh, they were stuck together, but it’s a hundred percent my mom’s fault,” Silverstream snapped, the pace of her stalking increasing. “That fish is a nutcase. I mean, I’m high energy. You know that right?”
“It has come up,” Ocellus agreed, dry.
“Well, picture that, only with this like, sort-of mean inflection, and not picking up that the other hippogriff is tired and just wants some quiet, and just wearing them—wearing them down until.” Her talon hit one of the end tables, eliciting a loud bang, and the rattle of a loose drawer.
Reflexively, she turned to look at Ocellus to see if she’d given offense, but her friend was sitting on the couch as serene as ever. Stiff, Silverstream gestured to take in the room. “When there was nowhere to go, they… I don’t know. I remember them fighting. But I guess they hid it. Or kept a lid on it or something. But after the Storm King’s defeat, when there was more space. When my mom got like that, my dad would just go, ‘okay, see you’ and fly off. And she said not to ignore her, so he’d fly faster, and it just boiled over. It was never good, but it got worse so quickly.”
“It sounds like you’re on your dad’s side.”
“I’m on nopony’s side!” It was so rare for Silverstream to express anger that the snarl felt foreign in her throat. She stumbled back as though struck by her own words, checking Ocellus’s face, checking herself, taking a moment to recover. “I’m my own creature. I’m nopony’s sidekick, and I’m not a prize they have to split between them when they’re deciding who gets the furniture. My mom is a lunatic, so yes, it’s her fault but that doesn’t mean I’m cheering when my dad gets in a good burn. Because even if he’s right, they’re still my parents, and they’re still fighting.”
She slumped to the couch. “And I didn’t want to go home this year. Twilight said I could stay.”
“Maybe it’s… I mean. Not foregone?” Ocellus hesitantly tapped her hooves together. “Things smell… you smell. Pretty far gone. But Princess Cadence could, I mean. Do you think, um… there’s any chance they’ll save it?
“I hope not.”
Ocellus blinked. She narrowed her eyes, less out of suspicion than in an attempt to clear them, peering at Silverstream across from her. “That’s not true. You love your parents. You want them to be together.”
“Oh, so there are limits to what you can sense.” Silverstream laughed, and for the second time that evening, Ocellus had no idea why. “Ocellus, I do love my mother, but that doesn’t mean she’s a good parent. And, I want my parents to be together in a happy marriage, and given who they are, that means I don’t want them to be together. Because that’s not going to happen; it’s a fantasy. My dad’s great. If I was still a little kid, I’d want him to be the one who raised me. And as an adult, I want to visit him at home without dealing with… other things. This is good. This is a good thing, even if I didn’t want to be home during it.”
Ocellus blinked, her wing cases shifting behind her, hot water bottle and all. “How do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Be happy all the time. You’re always so,” Ocellus struggled for words, “upbeat, and cheerful, and determined to see the good side in everycreature. And don’t say it’s innate. I can feel how sad and upset you are right now.”
“I want to be happy, so I choose to be happy.” She spread her wings, a bright smile touching her face. “When I say I like Tuesdays, it’s because good things happen on Tuesdays. I’ve had a lot of Tuesdays that were fun and worth remembering. And yeah, sometimes I’m a lot, and I know sometimes I come across as uh…”
“You’re the one who said ‘ditz’,” Ocellus hid a small smile. “I said ‘really really good at dancing’.”
“Well, I know I come across that way. But, so what? You like me. Everycreature else likes me. I’m not here to impress you. Just to enjoy your company.”
“I wish I could see things that way.” Ocellus pawed at the couch cushions, voice quiet. “When I get sad, or upset, I… I always have to lean on my friends, or the hive. I can’t deal with it on my own.”
“I was in a nasty mood earlier this evening. You cheered me up.” Silverstream’s tone softened, becoming warm and encouraging. “That’s leaning on my friends. And I know that you can act confident, Ms. Femme Fatale.”
Ocellus blew out a breath. “That’s pretending.”
“Like I’m not pretending?”
Ocellus blinked, once, twice. She turned to look at Silverstream head on. Her insectile eyes, lacking clear irises, were two deep pools of blue in her face. Silverstream could see her own reflection. “But you are actually happy, right?”
Silverstream sipped her cocoa. It was, she reflected, a pretty deep question. Meaningful and stuff.
She knew she was upset, even when she didn’t know. Even when she didn’t feel what she felt. She’d heard herself snap at Ocellus earlier, felt the desire to pace around the room now. Those things, she imagined, were the things that Ocellus could sense, if she acted on them or not. At that level, no, she was mad and disappointed.
But that wasn’t the question Ocellus was asking.
She thought about other foals, other chicks, who’d gone through terrible things and withdrawn from the world. About children who raged and screamed and took out their anger on every creature around them. And then she thought about her home. Growing up.
She thought about being raised her to be able to deal with difficulty well. To be happy even when life wasn’t perfect. To dance and not be embarrassed, to be bubbly without worrying what others would think.
And she thought about her friends.
Finally, she said: “I don’t know! That’s like, that’s deep. That’s mind games, Ocellus. I think I’m happy. But maybe we should hang out a little longer, you know!” She smiled. “Just to be safe.”
“That sounds good,” Ocellus said. “Happy Hearth's Warming, Silverstream.”
When the rest of their friends got back from break, it was as though nothing was wrong.
Because nothing was wrong. Despite a few bumps in the road, everycreature was going to be okay.
