Wandering

Sis Mundo Meo

Entry #11

2nd of July, 8:59

Airspace, unknown location

4060m ASL, clear skies

Temperature 17º C, Wind Speed 11 m/s N

When I opened my eyes again and realized that the storm had vanished, the first thought I had was that somehow, my luck had been with me for once and I had managed to get my hands on a weather-changing magic orb.

Like all good dreams it shattered the very next second, however, when I looked down. While the clouds were most definitely gone, I had a fairly vivid memory of what the Lake Vale had looked like from above, and I could very easily tell that was not where I was now.

If nothing else, then because even as large as the lake was, it was not an actual ocean.

“Great, just great,” I groaned as I looked around, running my eyes over the distant coastline far below me. I didn't get very far in that endeavor, though, before I got a hoof jammed into my ribs.

“Youidiot!”

I could only agree to that sentiment. Chrysalis was wide-eyed and breathing hard, and radiating fear like a herd of zebras cornered by a lion. It seemed a bit excessive to me, but then again I was probably a lot more jaded to random things happening around me than she was, after these last two days.

Elytra was still an ever-present little weight on top of my head, and all things said she was taking this a lot better than the queen was. Her emotions were a healthy mixture of surprise, confusion and fear, but there was considerably less of the third than the two others. “What happened? Where are we?” Her voice was tiny, but managed to get across despite the wind.

I was just about to tell her I had no idea, when Chrysalis jabbed her hoof into my ribs again – and this time, it hurt. “Thisidiot has doomed us all! The swarm is gone! The hives, too! There is nothing!NOTHING!” She yelled straight into my ear, and I saw faint traces of violet pooling around her menacing eyes. “Do you know how it feels, Hunter? To have the world destroyed before your eyes, have every single life you know cut off and disappear?YOU JUST MADE IT HAPPEN, MARTIN WINTER! THEY ARE NO LONGER IN THIS WORLD!”

Her frantic screams would've echoed like mad if we had been anywhere but suspended in midair, but even then I had to cover my ears to stop them from ringing like a city full of clock towers. I tore my eyes away from her, and ended up looking at something I hadn't expected at all. Something so impossible that the words I were going to say caught in my throat on their way up, and forced me into a violent coughing fit for several seconds.

The sight had not disappeared when it ended, however, and I kept staring at it; eventually, Chrysalis took notice of my undivided attention – and the fact that it was not on her – and demanded an answer. “What are you staring at!? Stop ignoring me!”

I simply raised my finger and pointed down, tracing the familiar silhouette of the island far below us. “You're wrong, Chrysalis.” I looked back at her, and fixed her eyes with a stare. “It's not that they are gone from this world...”

I raised my eyes toward the distant coastline, and sure enough, I found just what I was looking for. “They never were in this world to begin with. I'm back.” I let out a short, barking laugh, and stared at the wide berth of the fjärd with wide open eyes. “This is my world, Chrysalis. And I know exactly where we are.”

-/-/-/

It was a rather different approach than I was used to, all things said. Rather than the ten-kilometer stretch of narrow, meandering road through the forest separating the little coastal village from the highway – a road that I've traveled several times every summer since I was just a year old, and know every turn of – I was coming in hot from above, spearing through the Baltic air from the east. Of course, I wasn't stupid enough to just drop straight down to my target; even if this lazy little community was just starting to come to life at this time of year, it was still summer. The house was empty at the moment – all the families were elsewhere – but that didn't mean our neighbors would show us the same fortuitous courtesy. If someone caught a glimpse of me dropping out of the sky, there would be big, big trouble indeed; and that was without accounting for my two decidedly non-human companions.

Instead, I opted for us to land in the forest close to Notvarpen at the south end of the fjärd. Making sure there were no boats around to spot us, we made the last bit of the descent in a reasonably sharp dive, and came to ground on the ridge of a rocky esker. I immediately recognized where we were, and sat down on the ground, eying my companions.

This was going to be hard.

“Listen up, you two. I have no idea how we wound up here, but I'm not going to waste this opportunity if I can help it. This means we'll be heading into the middle of a human settlement, however, and well...” I glanced at Chrysalis' quadruped, winged, pitch-black form, and shook my head. “We can't look like this when we're doing that.”

Chrysalis gave me a confused look at first, and then rolled her eyes. “Do you think I'm stupid, Hunter? I have worn more faces and bodies than I can count. I am achangeling, remember? This is what we do. How about, hm.” Green fire enveloped her body for a moment, and before I could even react she had taken on avery familiar form, and one that would fit right in. Disturbingly well, even.

Chrysalis was now a perfect copy of my sister Freja, in the exact outfit she'd worn when I had last seen her. The digging was obvious enough, now – there was no way she could've gotten that image from anywhere but my memories. Still, there wasn't much time to argue, and I looked to Elytra's hovering form with an expectant look in my eyes.

Surprisingly enough she didn't opt to pull another familiar face out of my memories; I suppose she noticed my disapproval at Chrysalis' choice of form. Instead the green fire simply made her a larger version of her present fairy-like body, although the black-green color scheme was swapped for a more human palette of tan skin and bright red hair. Before the fire disappeared from the rest of her body, however, her cheeks flared up a bright red, and the flames roared up again. Finally they came to rest, and Elytra emerged from within the dying sparks clad in a tight, green-black tracksuit that covered her from hand to toe.

I assumed that's what she forgot on her first try, and seeing how human she apparently was becoming already, thatwould have been quite embarrassing. I even found myself staring at her chest for a few seconds – it wasn't all too large, but the tightness of her outfit made the obvious lack of anything else underneath it a bit more obvious than I'd usually prefer.

“Right,” I said as I whipped my head away in an attempt to stop any further thoughts in that direction. “That'll do. Follow me.” The girls stumbled after me in their new forms at first, clearly unused to only having a single pair of legs to work with at first, but Elytra seemed to be getting the hang of it faster than Freja-Chrysalis. Quite soon I realized the cause of this, however, and I slapped myself in the face for forgetting that little detail that would've been so painfully obvious two days ago.

“A word, Elytra. Humans don't have wings. Unless they're in a very tacky costume, I suppose, but that's neither here nor there. Take them off. That goes for mine, too.”

Elytra sighed and gave me a pleading look, but complied. I grunted slightly as I felt my weight multiply, since the antigravity spell disappeared along with the wings on my back; however, it was hardly like this was the first time I carried this burden without help. Slightly heavier on my feet I resumed our trek through the forest, the girls stumbling on best they could behind me.

Eventually we came clear of the fir and pine of the forest, and the small, rocky path we'd followed became first a wider, sandy path, and then after crossing one of the many murky streams that crisscrossed the landscape, a stark mat of ash-black asphalt road. The girls were visibly impressed by this, and I gestured at an old, beat-up red Volvo standing at this road's end. “That's a car, or automobile if you want to be technical. They can be pretty sturdy, but most of them are just made to drive on roads like this. I'm guessing you know what an internal combustion engine is, but in case you don't...” I tried to find a simple term that explained things in a concise enough manner that I wouldn't have to rant on all day about it. “Explosion-powered, I guess?”

Freja-Chrysalis rolled her eyes – of course she knew what an internal combustion engine was, what was I thinking – and tapped her foot against the unfamiliar surface, testing it. “Well, certainly even the simplest warrior hiveling would understand that explanation, I give you credit for that much.” She regarded the old, box-like car with for a second, and then dismissed it without a second thought.

That was surprisingly easy to tell, now that I'd grown a bit more used to the strange changeling senses I shared with Elytra. With no other changelings around, there wasn't any background noise either; nothing to disturb the empathic signals that constantly kept swirling around Chrysalis, giving intricate details every time she felt something – which obviously was all the time. Every emotion was so much clearer than before, with nothing else to muddle the frequency, so to speak. This close, with her only a meter away, I thought could almost hear her thoughts word for word – preposterous, of course, but I had rejected ideas before only to be proven wrong seconds later – and for several seconds I did nothing but stand and stare into her still vivid green eyes.

Somehow, somewhere I could swear I was hearing something–

“Martin!”

My attention snapped back to reality at Chrysalis' call, and I found her staring at me with an irritated look. Abashed at having been so lost in thought, I spun on my heel and set off along the sun-parched tarmac without a word.

The tail end of the sandy beach soon became a stretch of rocks and boulders, and the slight curve of the road led us into the sparse landscape that was so typical for this type of sand-dominated soil. Thorny bushes and fir trees were scattered across the roadside, with a long thicket of blueberry bushes covering the seaward roadside to our right, and small slant-roofed houses spread out across the other.

We kept on following the road northward – Strandvägen, 'the beach road', as if the name could make the location more obvious than it already was – and though the left hand side stayed largely uniform in its spotty spread of mostly red cabins, the blueberry thicket on the other soon gave way to yet another beach, which soon became someone's lush green backyard, then a wide path with a brown mat of trampled needles, and before finally settling in as entirely dominated by houses; just at the point where the left hand side gave way to forest and undergrowth.

It's a curious place, this village. If my father had been walking with us, I could've pointed to any of the houses we passed and asked him who lived there, and he would probably have given me a long list of names, followed by a concise summary of how we're related to them – or failing that, who in this family married into which other family in the village and when, where they live during the rest of the year, when he's expecting them to come up here this summer, what boat they have and whether there are any good tennis players in the family.

Quite honestly, I don't even know the address of the house we were heading to, much less any obscure details about the other residents. Not that it'd be much help finding it, or would ever need any. There aren't exactly a lot of street signs in this place; and besides, I've known this place by heart since I was just a toddler. Change is slow and rare, and frankly the biggest differences from year to year are usually where the winter storms have hit the hardest and knocked down trees left and right.

All in all, it quite suits my definition of a summer getaway. In most ways, itmade that definition.

This was a place that had been my haven for all the three decades I've been alive. Now, I was walking up the last hill, settling my eyes on the black timbers that we repainted two years ago, and for a moment trying not to think about two shapeshifters I had in tow or the fact that I had been soaring through the air using a power I barely understood only minutes ago.

Naturally, it was a futile effort.

We finally came to the hill's crest, and both of my companions sported looks of surprise when I motioned for them to follow me through the opening of the mashed-up green fence that marked our land. “This is the clan house,” I said with a gesture toward the green-roofed cabin, “My summer villa. There's nobody here at the moment, but we stayed over midsummer, so everything is opened up for the season. We'll be safe here. Come on.”

I started down the narrow, rock-lined path down the hill, and behind me my companions followed with considerable caution. Chrysalis was mostly afraid of my assumption of this place being empty being wrong, and running into more humans as a result; she could blend in with ponies easily enough, but even with the knowledge she'd absorbed on my species from me so far she'd be hard pressed to actually impersonate one, much less a family member.

Elytra was in an entirely different seat – as a member of the Scholar caste, she had never actually spent that much time outside the hives before, the expedition to Canterlot being her first major outside assignment in the field. At the same time, her scholarly oaths drew her to explore this new opportunity, and learn as much of it as she could. Inexperience and an instinctive fear for the unknown, coupled with an equal desire toknow, pulled her back and pushed her forward in a teetering dance of the mind, and it was all I could do to not get caught up in its flows myself.

Clamping up the porch I fished up the hidden key from its usual spot, and pushed the old wooden door against its frame to let it turn all the way around. With aclick the old lock finally gave, and I swung the green-black door wide open, gesturing to my guests. “Ladies first.”

Naturally, none of them got the reference. They hadn't had time to digthat deep into my head, after all.

The first ten minutes of our unexpected stay was filled with the same as every other visit; dumping my luggage on the floor in the long hall, checking the kitchen, making sure the electricity was on, checking the water, the lot. I didn't bother with climbing up to the loft and turning on the boiler, even though I did feel an urge to take a shower now that I had the opportunity to. My head was full of questions, and before I could comfort my body, I had to comfort my mind.

While the fridge didn't have much to offer – we always made sure to eat everything that could spoil before leaving the place – I found a big box of popsicles in the freezer, and grabbed a bunch of them before closing it shut. On a whim I thrust my hand up on the shelf above the kitchen sofa where we always keep sweets, and found a bag of marshmallows and half a bar of Marabou chocolate. Taking my bounty in a firm grip I waltzed out of the kitchen, humming a tune I didn't know the words to.

All the while, the girls had been sitting quietly around the long hall's big table, obviously unused to a human posture as they struggled to get themselves comfortable in the dark, wooden chairs. I knew that exercise wouldn't keep them busy for long, however, and I was honestly surprised it took them as long as it did to speak up. With the popsicles at my side and the candy on top of the big wooden chest we used to store old newspapers in, I set to work with the best mental exercise known to man: making a fire.

I had almost finished fanning the flames to life in the ancient cast iron fireplace in the other side of the long hall when Chrysalis cleared her throat in her best imitation of a polite conversation opener, but on the inside I could plainly sense her radiating impatience and irritation like an angry cat.

“Martin. Why exactly are we here?” I was about to answer with something noncommital about strange magical orbs when she groaned in frustration and went on. “You know that's not what I meant. Why are wehere, in this,house of yours? Why are you just sitting on your knees making fire, instead of trying to find a solution to our problem? Stars, Martin, why aren't wedoing anything?”

I turned around for a moment and frowned at her, but even with a changeling under her skin my sister's look of disapproval didn't look any different than usual. She hadn't crossed her arms yet, but at the rate she was going I was pretty sure it was going to happen sooner or later. I gave a long sigh, and turned my attention back toward the fire. If I knew the changeling queen's mind right – which I did, unless my empathic senses were running haywire for some reason – she wasn't finished yet. So I kept pumping the bellows at the red-hot flames, quickening their progress towards becoming a decently usable coal bed as much as I could manage.

“Um. Martin.” Naturally, I had once again managed to forget about Elytra. Honestly, how a man can forget about someone he shares his own mind with, I don't know either. That's just how it was. “I don't understand this either. I mean, I know that you're troubled by something, but what does that have to do with lighting a fire? Or any of this?” She let out a worried sigh, and I felt a pang of sadness from the young changeling. “I thought I had finally started to understand you,” she murmured, as if talking to herself.

I kept my gaze on the flames, but I put the bellows down and seated myself on an old, smooth log stool. “I needed some time to think. That's why we're here.” I could easily sense neither changeling was satisfied in the least with that sort of vague answer, so I went on. “How did we turn uphere? Dimensions aside, this place is far southeast of Sarek, and we spent all of yesterday flying southwest.” I grabbed a poker from the wooden bucket at my side, and started breaking the half-burnt logs up into smaller coals. “Besides, Chrysalis. You said this wasour problem. And maybe, for you and Elytra, that's true. But...”

I turned around, and looked the surprised changeling queen straight in the eyes. She had never expected this, that much was clear on her face – and my other set of senses told the same story, with even more clarity. “If I'm honest with you, this little world-jumping issue isn't a problem for me. I'mhome. No matter how I got back, I'mhome. I even have the luck to be in a place I know fairly well. I could take one of the bikes in the shed, be at the train station in an hour or two, and in another four I'd be home at my parents' house. Everything that'd be left of this strange journey would be my confused expedition party asking me how the hell I wound up down here when they eventually get out of Sarek, my own fucked-up memories...”

I sighed, and directed an angry stare at my backpack. “A strange, magical crystal that nobody knows anything about, oh, and a pair of shapeshifting aliens. Those last two, right there at the end,those are my problem right now. And I'm trying my bloody damn best to figure out what to do about it. What to do with you guys. What to do with the Mercury Star. What to do with all...this.”

I gave another angry sigh, and spun around to face the fire again. Another small thought made itself known, however, and I grunted. “I also need a hairbrush. Badly. I would never have thought flying was that...windy.”

Naturally, I should've kept that last part to myself. A word of advice to you guys? Keep the girls out of your head if you can, but more importantly keep them out of what'son it.

“Your mane is so...I really like it.” Elytra purred happily as she took another stroke with the brush she'd produced from practically nowhere – that was probably a standard changeling spell,transmute hairbrush or something – and I hissed painfully as the not-at-all delicate movements tortured my skull. I tried to keep my focus on the bellows and the fire, ignoring as much as I could of Elytra sitting on the wooden floor behind me and doing her best to tear my scalp off.

Obviously, it didn't go too well. The smug feeling radiating from Chrysalis, who had claimed one of the big lounge chairs facing the fireplace, did nothing to help.

“It's not a bloody– AAAJ! Fans jävla– Is this your idea of revenge? I tell you the truth and just because you don't like it you try tearing my bloody head off with a stick? Is that it? I had better ideas than this when I waseight! Blood and death! Why do girlsalways want to mess with my bloody hair? Not even being a differentspecies makes it any better – if anything, it only makes it evenworse because youIDIOTS HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO BRUSH A HUMAN'S BLOODY HAIR!”

At some point during my angry rant the torture had stopped, and I whipped my head around wielding a murderous expression. Elytra was staring at me with a hurt, wide-eyed look, but Chrysalis didn't have a single shred of emotion about her. “Are you quite finished?”

I hissed, and after a second's thought grabbed the hairbrush in Elytra's hand. “Give me that!” With a startled squeak, she let it go. I gathered the gold-blonde mess of hair over my shoulder, working it through stroke for stroke with the brush in one hand and a firm grip on the whole mass in the other to keep it from tearing my scalp off. “Just because I wear it in a ponytail doesn't make it horsehair, you bloody...” I grumbled on as I slowly made my way through the knots and tangles one by one, matching the fire's roar with my sizzling rage.

And on the hearthstone's blackened edge, three popsicles were melting away, forgotten by all but the fire.