JUL 18 Saturday.

I move my hoof as Entropy demands more scratches from me, and I spoil her for a minute before going back to the book in front of me.

It's been a week now and things still feel odd, but I guess it feels like that every time something big happens in life. After Celestia asked me to go home and rest I spent the rest of the day writing a much more detailed report on what happened, and it included some of the things I lied about.

I didn't mention anything about me knowing about Changelings before meeting Cricket and Cicada. After I sent the report Entropy came back with a response, and I still remember it.

Dear Shade. Thank you for sending this to me, it could prove very useful.

I don't have much time to go into detail, but things are happening and measures are being discussed and taken. I know you have many questions about what is planned, but rest assured it's not as bad as it all seems and that things are being done.

I'd also like to thank you for both the improved illusion detection spell and the other spell you gave me, both may save many lives. And just to reiterate, I WILL keep my promise to you.

I don't know what you won't tell me, but I know you gave me something that would raise the very questions you don't want to answer. And I see why you did it, to help others. So when we next meet I will ask, but I will keep my promise and never demand an answer from you.

With all that's happening right now our next meeting will have to wait, I know it's a long time to have something like this unaddressed, and I'm sorry for that. I'll send a letter with our next meeting in a few weeks, I wish you the best and please stay safe.

Celestia.

Her letter was both a relief and yet another source of concern, but I'm used to worrying about so many things. A changeling war, me revealing things I've never wanted to and all the regular stresses of life. God this entire situation was a disaster, but I'm trying to see some good.

She's right that not completely knowing if she'll keep her promise or not for weeks will suck, but it does give me time to work through my feelings and calm down. I said it before but going back to regular life after all that happened gives me a feeling of whiplash, it all goes from everything happening at once to basically nothing happening.

And the worst part is I can't really do anything more in this situation. It now involves wars and politics, and the consequences are massive. To be blunt I'm not needed right now, there are ponies better suited for all this and they should be the ones to do it.

But that leaves me in this weird limbo, I can't help but I really want to, I can't help anypony with something like this I simply don't know how to do so. In the end I found my solution in some advice Celestia gave me a while ago, I'm not alone. I don't need to do everything and the world won't fall apart without me.

So the best thing I can really do right now is just continue on with my life, and keep going as I was before all of this. It's a far from satisfying thing for me, but I don't have much of a choice. I sigh a little as I move another book to the side and stand up from the small table.

I'm spending some of my day off reading at the library, I still have so much to learn, and maybe I always will. But it feels nice to improve, so I decided to stop there for the day and get home before it gets dark so I can work on a few things. Entropy is under her illusion spell right now and sits on my back as I start walking home from the library.

I've decided to keep Entropy with me at all times when I'm able to, just to be safe. I'm still a little jumpy after everything that's happened and find myself checking if I'm being followed every once in a while, but nothing has happened, yet. When I arrive at my front door I see Daisy's door and smile slightly.

My mood has not been the best this past week, and my friends noticed it. Unlike last time I was in a bad mood I decided to be truthful with them and tell them I've been in a bad mood recently. So I've been to three game nights this past week and they keep checking on me, it's something I'm very thankful for. They did ask about what happened to make my mood so bad, but I didn't tell them anything, and they were kind enough to respect that and simply try to cheer me up.

I sit down at one of my desks in my workroom with a few pots and some seeds. This past week I've kept myself busy and active so my thoughts don't overwhelm me, the upside is I've made progress in pretty much everything I train. And that includes the Spine Leaf Vine.

When I started it was a fast-growing, decently strong vine with small needles all throughout its leaves and stem. I've gotten the plant to grow even more needles and increased their size some as well. And now that it's closer to what I wanted I've been trying to improve the plant even further.

The Spine Leaf Vine was made from a combination of the Spine Leaf and the Gripping Vine, both grow quickly and have useful traits to combine. Now I want to breed the Spine Leaf Vine with the Companion Vine, I hope to improve the Spine Leaf Vine's ability to gather and absorb life magic to boost its growth even more.

But the Companion Vine has been surprisingly resistant to interbreeding with other plants. I can still do it, it's just harder than it should be for such a change. I've been trying for two days now but I still haven't gotten a new plant worth cultivating and improving, but I'll get it eventually.

Once my magic is nearly drained I stop and spend a few minutes cleaning up before moving on to the next thing I want to do. Changelings are going to be more involved with ponies in some way from now on, and that brings my mind to the one thing I might be able to help with during this situation.

I can invent spells to help in different ways, my first thoughts are about ways to combat changelings but I realize that's not my only option. We now have changelings that are at least willing to be friendly with ponies, so beyond ways to fight changelings I can also make ways to help them.

My knowledge of them may be limited but I can guess at a few things that would help them, and by far the most helpful would be some way to more efficiently collect emotions for food. But that brings up a question, what do changelings actually eat?

They could absorb the different emotional magic affinities that ponies give off, but it could also be the emotions themselves. And I'm not sure how to even test that, if emotions do come from ponies and it isn't just magic then I can't think of an easy way to distinguish them.

I might be able to test it in some way but it would take a long time to figure out and I feel like it would be easier to just ask a changeling at my earliest opportunity, or maybe Celestia will have asked the changelings that and she can tell me. Either way that could take a while, so in the meantime I'll just make other useful things, and the next thing that comes to mind is a modification to the illusion detection spell.

The original spell has clear limits on what it can do so it doesn't waste magic because it's normally placed on a bracelet. But the spell being placed on small jewelry and small gems makes it weak, but now I have a reason to make something more powerful.

I plan to make a version of the spell that can be used on larger gems and detect illusions in an area while being able to break past most protections. The original spell is a good starting place to make something like this but it will still take time to properly finish it.

I drew up some ideas and kept thinking of other ideas that could help with the changeling situation. As a start changelings seem similar to insects in some way and might share some of their problems. I sit there for a while and try to think of different problems and solutions.

I end up with a few ideas but most of them are more guesses than anything, I simply don't know enough about changelings to help them that much, but I'll give it more thought. Moving on from helping changelings and ponies, how can I help fight changelings? Well, I do have an idea, but once again I don't know if it would be of much use.

The emotional shield blocks all emotional magic, and I know that changelings use that as a sense to view the world around them. So what would happen if I made the shield block out all incoming emotional magics and then put that shield on a changeling?

Would it disorientate them? Or even incapacitate them? And that's once again the problem, my lack of information, I simply don't know how useful this spell would be. But it still seems worthwhile to make the spell, even if it doesn't do anything to changelings it can still be used to keep them from absorbing emotional magic if it turns out that they do feed on that.

As I'm thinking about how I could use the ideas I've come up with and how I could go about making them into spells I'm interrupted by a knock at my door. I look at the door and put down my notebook before walking over to the door, Entropy is in my bedroom and she knows to not show herself when others are around, I crack open the door a little before opening it all the way.

"Hey, Shade." I was happily greeted by Daisy, who seemed to be in a good mood.

I smile at her, my friends keep checking in on me every day or two, not that I mind it's a nice thing to know they care about me. "Hello to you too. To what do I owe the pleasure?" I ask with a smile. Honestly without them trying to cheer me up my mood would be much worse right now.

"Well Blaz saw you moping around the library and I came to see how you are doing today." She's used that exact same excuse to check on me the last three times, at this point she's just fucking with me.

"Oh really? I even tried to avoid him this time, how did he see me?" I joke with her as she keeps her smile. "I'm doing fine Daisy, much better than most of this week. Thank you for asking." I'm less joking with those words, it does mean a lot that they try to make me happy and feel better.

Her smile gets even bigger. "Good, you don't look cute when you're sad. Tell me if you want to talk, ok?" She switches from joking to a kind reminder in an instant.

I nod, she's not the one I need to talk to but it still helps to have her offer. "I will, I promise." I stay there for a moment, a little awkward, but then an idea strikes me. "Hey, do you have any plans right now?"

She shakes her head. "Nope, what are you thinking? Wait it doesn't matter, count me in." I chuckle at that.

"Well, I remember you enjoying some of the fish I cooked a long time ago, and I need to make dinner, and you've just agreed to help me," I say with a smile as I turn off the shield around my apartment and walk away from the door.

She seems a little stunned, but after a moment her smile returns and she follows me in while closing the door behind her. "Shade Evergreen, are you asking me on a date? That's highly inappropriate." Her tone is uptight and she's obviously joking with me again.

So I respond with a deadpan stare that lingers too long, before smiling like I'm about to agree. After a moment I drop the look and just laugh at her expression. "Come on, I'm going to teach you how to make fish, if that's fine with you?" I ask, I probably should have asked that before telling her what we were doing.

She looks uncertain for a moment before nodding. "I do remember enjoying it last time, and while I might be a little squeamish there is only one way to fix that, experience. So let's do this, chef." I smile back at her, oh this will be fun.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :D

This chapter was inspired by something I've noticed a lot in my life. Have you ever had something big happen and when it's over it feels like nothings really different? It's that odd feeling you get when you think something should be happening or should have changed, but it just doesn't and things continue for the most part like normal.

I wanted to use this as a chance to capture that feeling, not sure how well I did but I tried and that's what got me into writing in the first place. Trying new shit even if I have no idea what the fuck I am doing.

If you've read all of that then thanks for listening to my small rant and have a nice day. :}