His chitin is cyan today, like mine, but his eyes are hibiscus red, and there’s the biggest thing about him, the thing that drives me and King Thorax and Pharynx and the rest of the hive completely insane: his holes.
I can hear Smolder cackling right now. Her sense of humor has ruined me.
No, but, there’s something really wrong with me. Or is it him?
Hyaline, cyan and hibiscus and moth-eaten, sits across from me, frowning. “What am I here for, Professor?”
I smile at him professionally. “I just wanted to—”
“You haven’t been talking to many of your own kind lately, have you?” Hyaline asks.
Frustrating. He’s correct. I bet my…my….
“Can I ask you a question?” I smile at him, more genuinely, smaller and unsure. “What am I feeling right now?”
Hyaline regards me with suspicion before saying, “You’re upset. The same kind of upset that everybuggy back home feels in their gut when they look at me.”
“And why do you think that is?” I ask.
Hyaline’s wings let out a quiet chirp. He asks, “Why do you think that is?”
Smolder’s arms are wrapped around me, holding me close to her like a stuffed animal as we recline in our giant plush loveseat. I’m ashamed to admit that this is the place I belong most in the world. Not in any library or ancient ruins.
Cozy. Safe. Happy.
My dragon’s arms are warm and comforting and the sheer love I feel with every hug from her will never change. I never want it to.
“What’s wrong?” she whispers in my ear.
Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I just can’t figure one of my students out and it’s eating away at me because his parents and my monarch both want me to figure out why he’s so sulky and not even Pharynx can get through to him, like he always does the more rebellious kids.
Smolder has enough on her plate. She’s got Ember demanding that she be ready to be her aide at the annual Convocation of the Creatures next week and she has Coco wanting notes on their most recent collaboration and she’s taking the SoF buckball team to nationals at the end of the month. Plus, she’s on her period.
I need to talk to her with nothing but questions.
“Do you think something’s wrong?” I ask.
“If you’re asking that, then there’s definitely something wrong,” she says.
I fidget. “Why does asking about your own mental state mean that something’s wrong?”
She gives me a squeeze. “Because your elytra are twitching.”
“Fuck,” I sigh.
“Whoah!” Smolder chuckles. “ Language, missy.”
“It’s Hyaline,” I say.
“Again?” she asks. “Did he get into another fight?”
I hang my head. “I think I might hate him.”
“Why?”
“That’s a good question.” I climb off of her lap and turn to face her. “It’s the holes.”
Smolder snorts.
“I’m going to murder you,” I say.
That only gets her to laugh wholeheartedly.
I cover my eyes. “Am I a bad teacher?”
“Nope,” she says.
“Am I a bad changeling?” I ask.
“That’s a more serious question,” she says. “Does Hyaline make you feel like a bad changeling?”
“Tell me about your holes,” I say to him.
Hyaline’s eyes widen. “Professor—”
“You know which ones!” I bark.
Hyaline’s eyes have a spark of mirth to them, though his mouth stays in that semi-permanent frown he always has.
A good sign, maybe?
“Do they look familiar to you?” he asks. He raises a leg, showing off how perforated it is, like a wheel of cheese.
“That’s an obvious question,” I say.
I hate looking at them. I hate looking at them. I hate looking at them. I can’t look away.
“I like them,” he says. “Other creatures don’t.”
I’m unsure what to say other than, “I can see why.”
He shoots me a look. “Is the goal of this school to learn about the merits of friendship, or is it to learn how to be friends with anyone?”
“The former,” I say. “There’s debate about the latter. I’m on the side that asserts there are some creatures who you may never be friends with.”
“You’ve said that in class,” he said. “If there are some creatures I will never be friends with, but I’m supposed to understand and value and seek out friendship, then I should be looking for creatures who understand me, right?”
I nod.
“Then it doesn’t matter how many creatures don’t understand me, right?” he asks.
“You still haven’t explained yourself,” I say.
“Why do you want to know?” he asks.
“King Thorax—”
“Why?” he interrupts.
“Your parents—”
“Professor!” he cries. “Why?”
“Because they freak me out!” The words leave my mouth before I can think about not saying them, and they come out louder than I expected—bursting out of me in a scream.
My first instinct is to apologize, to placate him or run away or—or something, but Hyaline isn’t afraid. I don’t feel any fear coming from him.
My breathing comes in heaves. He watches me with a completely neutral expression. His father was an infiltrator. He must have had lessons.
“My parents have nightmares about starvation,” he says. “My older sister can’t sleep unless she exhausts herself, so she runs around the hive all day doing every job she can find so she just passes out as soon as she lies down.”
“I have nightmares,” I say. “We all do. Did. You shouldn’t. Your clutch was the first one outside of Chrysalis. You’re the same age as my siblings.”
“I’ve heard that a thousand times,” he says. “I look like how you all do in your nightmares.”
I scoff. “Easy there, horror show.”
Hyaline glares at me. “This is how I want to look. This is what I feel like. What’s so wrong with that?”
I shake my head. “That’s all fine, but the hive—”
“You all went too far,” he says. “When ponies see me, when other creatures see me, they’re all scared. How can you not see how just—there’s a single change in how I am compared to the rest of you and they’re all scared, even though Chrysalis is petrified and everycreature loves Thorax. What would happen if my chitin was black? Do you think I’d just be getting into yelling matches with my classmates? And none of you, not Thorax, not you, not my parents, not anyone in the hive is asking why. You’re all so love-drunk you haven’t seen the price we pay to get it.”
I change forms. My chitin darkens into an ocean blue. My legs and wings feel lighter; the holes.
Smolder tilts her head.
“Do I look scary?” I ask.
“No,” she says.
“Why?”
“You’re my wife,” she says.
“And if I were a stranger?”
“I guess you might freak me out,” she says.
“Why?”
“You look like how you do in those plays,” she says. “Those stuffy ones that Professor Rarity made us watch in school? The ones that were supposed to be about her and her friends kicking bug butt but were actually about all the evil stuff your warriors got up to in Canterlot, away from the palace.”
I run my tongue over my fangs. “Hmm.”
“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Did I say something upsetting?”
“No,” I say. “No, just…I wonder what might happen if I looked like this more often. Would other creatures have a problem with me? Like they do Hyaline?”
“I’d set ‘em on fire,” Smolder says. She opens her arms, beckoning me to the warmth of her lap.
I walk to her, lie across her legs like a cat. “What do you think?”
“Hyaline’s a good kid,” she says. “And he has a couple of friends.”
“He doesn’t have five or more,” I mutter.
“Not everyone needs five or more,” she whispers. She scritches my neck, which makes me purr. “You know what I think?”
“What?” I ask.
“I think you look awesome,” she says. “From a design perspective, you look really, really awesome. You look like a sweet thing that’s been destroyed a little bit, but it’s the good kind of destruction. You’re better for it. You have the literal holes in your heart on display for the world to see, and it makes you look strong. You’re like a mountain with some chunks taken out of it. You’re all jagged and stuff but the rock is still smooth. You’re still grand. I’d still climb you.”
“You’re stupid,” I say.
“You don’t mean that,” she says.
“How do you know?”
“Your elytra are twitching.”
“Do you think I’m a good changeling?” I ask.
And Smolder takes a moment to think, which is incredibly rare.
Then she leans forward and kisses my temple. “I think you’re a changeling, and that’s good enough for me.”
The taste of her love is clean, pure, satisfying, every synonym I can’t think of right now. I’m lucky to have her. Someone who can look at me and see me, no matter what I look like.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“Language,” she whispers back.
“I think I like Hyaline,” I say.
“He’s a good kid,” she says. “He has things figured out.”
“Not all of them.” I yawn. I lie my head on the seat’s leg rest. “But I can help him with some of the things.”
“And he’ll help you?” she asks.
“I was going to leave that part unsaid,” I say. “But yes.”
Before I close my eyes, I change forms again, and I’m greeted with Smolder humming delightedly.
“I wanted to be cyan again,” I explain.
“It’s a good color,” she says, stroking my butt. “It’s my second favorite part about you, actually.”
“What’s the first?” I ask.
Smolder snickers. “Your holes.”
At the beginning of class, a few mornings later, I enter as a mouse, surveying everyone, seeing Hyaline in the back with his friends.
And then I shift, and when everycreature sees me, their jaws drop.
“Um, is that Chrysalis?” one of the griffons, Gush, asks. He looks to his best friend—a pink hippogriff named Seaflower, who shrugs at him with their wings.
“That’s Ocellus, birdbrain,” the changeling sitting behind them says.
“It is?” Seaflower asks.
“She looks evil,” Gush says.
“No she doesn’t!” a pony across the row says.
“She kind of does,” says another changeling.
“Fifteenth golden rule of social etiquette according to Rarity Unicorn,” I say.
The class straightens up and quiets down.
“If someone is present for a conversation, do not talk about them as if they aren’t there,” Gush stammers with a blush. “Sorry, professor.”
I smile. “You’re in school, Gush. You’re learning, you recognized when you were wrong, and you apologized. You’re forgiven, and I’m very proud.”
An orange unicorn from the middle section raises her hoof. “Can I ask a question, professor?”
I know what the question is, and everycreature else does, as well.
“Why do you look like that?”
I take a deep breath, and exhale slow.
I look towards the back, to where Hyaline is, cyan like mine usually are, holes like mine used to be.
I look down at myself, obsidian chitin and punctured like swiss cheese.
I look up, at the waiting faces of the class, and at the awestruck look on Hyaline.
“Today I’m going to be talking about a lot of different things. I’m going to talk to you about changelings, and about mistakes, and ignorance. I’m going to talk about judgment, misconceptions and vindication. But I’m mainly going to talk about feelings. As a changeling, I know a lot about those, and I know about how your own feelings and others’ feelings can get tangled and frayed, and I know about how they can tie you up so bad that you can no longer lift your head and see the world around you for what it is. I’m going to tell you all something.”
Hyaline leans forward. I make sure to look at him, to look directly at him.
“It hurts to be wrong,” I say, “but it’s cruel to be wrong and to continue to be wrong. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s good to apologize. What you owe your friends the most is to recognize when your feelings are getting in the way of doing what is right, to turn yourself back around, and change.”
I look around, at the rest of the class, and I start my lecture.
“I used to look like this, not that long ago. This appearance reminds me of the worst days of my life, but it’s a part of who I am…”
And I continue and I talk and I teach, and I realize something wonderful.
I’ve learned something new.
One is the very obvious thing.
Two is that the holes make me feel about ten pounds lighter, which kind of makes me feel nice. Pretty, even.
Holes.
Hah.
Okay, maybe it’s kind of funny.
Author's Note
written for the Quills and Sofas Speedwriting server changeling contest uhhhh, a few months ago?
(i got 2nd place!)
the prompt was love-drunk
