The Queen of Canterlot

Shining was the son they’d always dreamed of. Literally, perhaps, if the legend that changelings were mildly telepathic was true. He was polite and obedient, doted on his little sister, got straight A’s in school, and his first puppy crush was on a young Princess Cadence, who seemed to like him as well. He often spoke of dreams to join the royal guard, and he got his cutie mark -- a shield and three stars -- at the appropriate age for colts to get such things.

“Are you… sure?” Velvet asked him. “That you want a cutecenera for this, I mean?”

“Well, yeah,” Shining Armor said, staring up at Velvet with a blank expression -- like he had no idea what she was talking about. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“We love you for who you are,” Velvet said, looking him in the eye. “You don’t have to pretend. You never had to pretend. You will always be my child.”

Shining told her he loved her too and that everything was fine, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. He shied away from her gaze, and asked if he could have a cutecenera like the other colts. And if sometimes the family found traces of changeling slime in the bathtub, or shed carapace parts after days Shining was sick, they never acknowledged them.

When Shining was fourteen and Twilight eight, the family went to see an adventure movie, The Isles of Glass. The primary antagonist was Wilted Flower, a changeling queen played by a unicorn in shellface who had a wicked plan to seduce the hero, poison his bride, and steal his kingdom. Though the movie was family friendly, the villainess certainly invoked the classical trope: the evil whore.

Twilight loved the movie and pattered the whole way home about the action scenes and the technical inaccuracies in the on-screen spellcasting. As they turned the corner back onto the street, Velvet found an excuse to come to Shining’s side and whisper: “I’m sorry, we should have left early.”

“Why?” Shining said. Then after a moment he added: “It’s fine. It’s a silly foals movie. Wilted Flower isn’t even a changeling name.”

That night, after everypony else was in bed, Shining took the dog tags down from the peg where they hung beside his bed. Though the metal had somewhat corroded and the writing faint, the letters stamped into the tags were still legible: CHRYSALIS, DOB: 22-43-61, CASTE: R, CID: 433-212-434-112. He slipped them over his neck, and tip-hooved into the second floor bathroom that he and Twilight shared.

He shut the door. He pulled the blinds on the windows. He stuffed towels under the door and in every other crack. And when he transformed from Shining Armor back into a changeling, not a hint of the characteristic green flash escaped the room.

“Hello,” Chrysalis said, but she said it in Shining’s voice, because that was the only voice she knew how to make. “Hello,” she tried again, and the voice that resulted was certainly feminine, but it was the voice of a mare she knew from school, who she knew would not appreciate having her identity stolen.

She knew that a changeling's natural voice sounded nothing like a pony’s natural voice. The words of vespid emerged not from their throats, but from the sides of their torsos, created by the drumming of tymbals and elytra rubbing against their shells. A changeling’s speech could be asymmetric, the left and right sides of their body producing distinct words, which had specific and subtle cultural connotations. Their poetry was reputed to be beautiful, their songs hauntingly alien and melodious.

But Chrysalis didn’t speak a word of vespid. She assumed she must have been able to once, before she lost her birth family, but the memories were distant and clouded. She had a pony’s conception of what might sound hauntingly alien and melodious.

A multi-tonal voice, made of numerous pony voices layered over each other. And under those layers, at the core of it all, a deep voice, feminine but mature. A reminder that ponies were ruled by princesses, but changelings were ruled by queens. As the final touch, she relaxed her dorsal vents just slightly, so the sound would be imperfect, the insectile scraping audible under it all.

It was powerful, and if the voice of Chrysalis was not unlike the voice of Wilted Flower, if it too had notes of evil whore, then it could be nothing but parallel evolution. After all, the movie was made by ponies, and ponies too had a ponies conception of what was hauntingly alien.

“Hello Canterlot,” Chrysalis said, and the words were so smooth, so rich in power and malice, that an observer could have described them as a purr. It was a voice that could with equal ease seduce a princess or threaten a hero with death. Hers was the sound of an engine rumbling, the distant growl of a predator that raises the hairs on the backs of ponies necks.

It was too much. She turned back into Shining Armor, and then Shining Armor went to bed.