Wandering

Negotiating

Entry #2

(Presumably)1st of July

Looking at my clock, I realized time had completely outrun me during my mad dash down the mountain. It was just past midnight – which meant that either I had spent just above 2 hours running and snow-skating like a madman, or somehow managed to hit relativistic speed on foot without the clock noticing. Both of these were relatively insane prospects, but seeing how things in general had changed in that direction as well, I wasn't even going to bother trying to make a better explanation at the moment. I had other things to worry about. Namely, the black, talking, lemon-flavored swiss-cheese alien staring in my face, and her horde.

“Well,” I said, backing as she kept moving closer to me, “at least that excludes the possibility of excessive spying or abduction on your part. Honestly, that would've sucked.”

I cast my eyes about for a bit – the swarm was still around, but not quite as oppressive as it had been. Several of its ranks had returned to the ground, leaving only a minor force in the air above me. It was obviously an improvement, but it still felt pretty damn threatening. While they were probably pretty lightweight, if their sleek bodies and the way I floored their leader was any clue to their density, they were stillvery large for airborne creatures. Their wings were buzzing like a hummingbird's, but their bodies were the size of a wolf.Flying wolves, with canines like a sabertooth.

Doing my best to ignore the swarm, I stared back at the alien in front of me and drew my spare knife. “So, cheeseling. I'm about ten million dunnometers and probably a few hours off from my team's camp, and the weather is positively fucking with me. You happen to have an explanation for that, or do I have to let Mister Sharp here do the talking?”

She stopped walking when I drew my knife, but that was about as far as that got me. She wasn't about to get intimidated. If anything, her eyes went from intent and curious to disapproving.

She was probably trying to save face after the rather embarrassing display she'd put on a few seconds earlier, and I'd say she was doing it pretty well. Recovering that fast, she could be a real hard-ass. Metaphorically at least – I mean, seeing as the rest of her was pretty soft and cheese-y, I don't think her ass would be much different.

“Mister Sharp,” she began. She raised a foreleg – and probably an eyebrow too, but the lack of contrast made it hard to see – and pointed at my knife. “Really. You name your weapon like some classical era hero aspirant, and the best you can come up with isMister Sharp? I suppose the one lying over there is calledSir Pointy? I was about to compliment your courage, but I'm starting to doubt its existence, what with your lack of naming sense.”

Subtle threats and smartassing evidently didn't work on her, and she'd made the mistake of both letting her ownand her minions' guards down, so I moved to the next part in my repertoire: plain threats.

While she was talking I'd strapped my pack off my back with my free hand, letting it drop to the ground unceremoniously. She blinked, and in a moment I closed the short distance separating us and snaked my arm around her slim neck, holding the knife close to her throat with the other. As a finishing blow, I put my forehead to hers, connecting just below the base of her strange, curved horn, and landed some heavy-duty one-liners straight to her face.

“Here's a tip: don't be a smartass when the guy in front of you has a knife and you don't. Besides, I like lemons. Is your head as soft and cheesy as your body, or is that just your sad excuse of a one-liner sense?”

The look on her face changed from smugness to surprise mixed with fear as I talked – she hadn't even realized what was happening before I had her. Her eyes darted around, as if trying to find a way out, but I wasn't going to let that happen. I nudged the knife a bit, and tightened my grip on her neck. “Don't even try, cheesecake. Now answer my question. Where the fuck am I?”

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but her tearing up hadn't been one of them. I don't know why, but it made me feel bad. Very bad. I could hardly show a change of heart now, though, so I kept my face hard – though I moved my head back slightly, and lightened my grip a bit.

She was sobbing slightly, but nothing too much. Her crying was mostly silent, coming in small bursts of violet liquid while she talked. “I- I don't know! S-somewhere in the Icemarks north of Equestria, on a love-forsaken mo-mountain in the middle of nothing – it probably doesn't even have a name! I just got dumped here too, thanks to those pesky Equestrians, and I haven't even been able to get hold of atenth of my swarm! Do you know how impossible it is to keep track of where you're going when you're knocked out and sent flying for half a day?”

I realized my grip had loosened significantly when she was halfway through her rant. For a brief second I thought she had used some sort of mind control on me, but when I eyed her again the explanation became obvious. She hadshrunk. Not much, but she was perhaps a decimeter shorter, and most of her already slim body had started to thin up even further.

I looked at the drops of violet liquid that hung suspended from the edge of her cheeks, and felt an idea spring up in my mind. A fairly strange one, sure, but today that was pretty much the norm for how things went.

In lack of free hands, I opened my mouth and licked the colorful tears from her face.

For the second time in a very short time, my sense of taste was assaulted by an alien substance. However, it was most definitely the first time in my life that I'd ingested a liquified emotion. Even though I had no knowledge whatsoever on the creature before me, it was impossible to mistake the feeling for anything else. It wasn't even a taste – my tastebuds were just crudely used as a docking bay for the massive dropship ofabsolute adoration that slammed into my head like a hammer. It wasn't a drug or any sort of stimulus – it justwas. One second I was curious and determined to find out the truth of things, atop of my many layers of caution, pumping adrenaline and my mostly discarded rational limits; the next, there was nothing butlove. Love waseverything, everywhere.

Thankfully this tear-induced high only lasted a few seconds, and since it had also rendered me largely immobilized, the alien didn't get out of my grip. If anything, her body felt like it was going slack – her cheeks were slightly reddened, as if she was embarrassed. Not that that was very strange, seeing as I'd spent a considerable amount of time with my tongue lolling over her face – hell, I was embarrassed too.

What ithad done to me, however, was completely wash away what little of my battle fury I had left. Fighting spirit had been replaced by rationality, and suddenly the situation felt extremely awkward – not to mention the fact that I now felt extremely uncomfortable about threatening her.

I'd gone soft.

I loosed my grip on her throat, and stepped back a bit. After some thought, I removed the knife. I wouldn't be able to do anything with it now, anyway. There wasn't a single shred of adrenaline in my system now, and all I could think of when I looked at her pretty much amounted to “scared little girl”. Sure, she'd been pompous and dangerous a minute ago, maybe, but that was irrelevant now; after all, rationality isn't rational in the least.

It was time to negotiate. But first, I had to get some kind of grip on what I was dealing with.

“So,” I started tentatively, looking her in the eye. Her expression hadn't changed much, which hopefully meant that she wasn't going to try and sic her minions on me or try anything else. “You're a sentient quadruped. You don't appear to have any level of tool usage, or any hands to use them with. However, you speak perfect English.” I let my eyes wander over the rest of her body, analyzing it as I slowly realized just how strange this creature actually was.

“You've got multiple holes in your flesh, but they don't seem to be wounds.” A thought came to mind, and a quick look confirmed it. “Instead, they seem to form naturally in places where you've been... bitten.”

I sheathed my knife, and ran my hand over the deep green scales covering her back area, where her wings connected to her body. They were small. Way too small. I wasn't sure if they'd just shrunk more than the rest of her had, but I was fairly certain they'd been too small before too.

“You can fly despite your body being much too large for the wings and weight you need to carry, and your body has the weirdest consistency I've ever seen in any living creature.”

I let go of her with both hands, and started stroking my beard. It usually helped me think. “To top it off, you shrink when you cry, and your tears appear to be some sort of secreted emotion. Do you haveany idea just how impossible a creature you are? I've read my share of science fiction, but damn, you take the prize. Honestly, what the hell are you?”

Her legs were limp when I let go of her, and she sunk down to the ground. She looked rather pitiful, lying there like some plush animal that'd been designed by a bipolar eight-year old kid with a thing for insects and then abandoned in the forest.

She let out a small, joyless chuckle. “You're calling me impossible already. You haven't even seen me transform yet, and you can already tell what a completejoke the Changelings are?” She sighed heavily, and let her head fall to the ground as well. She splayed out her legs and rolled over to the side, completely vulnerable. It was unbelievable – I had just let her go, and now it was like she was asking me to take her again, threaten her, even kill her?

She looked me in the eyes, and her voice regained some of the harshness it'd had before. “And to top it off, you're what? Some dressed-up yeti with a patchwork spear and a carving knife. I crossed horns with Celestia herself – I dueled her, I defeated the ruler of thesun! – and here I am, at the mercy of some lost snowman without magic, who's too afraid to even dare finish me off because I'm such afreak.”

I stared at her, my mouth hanging open in disbelief. Was shetaunting me? I couldn't believe my ears, but her apparent disappointment in my lack of reaction told me she'd actuallywanted me to kill her.

Something was very, very wrong here, and I was pretty sure I was the reason for it.

She wasn't finished, apparently. She wasn't looking at me anymore, but instead around at the swarm surrounding us – who now appeared to have become completely oblivious to our existence. They just milled around slowly, seemingly confused about where they were. “It's probably too late for the others, but I thought at least I could do something for the ones I found. They were so brave for me... and all I gave them back was false hope and an early grave. They're going to just stand there, walk around a bit, for weeks and weeks not knowing what's going on. Slowly fading away until they're so light they'll be scattered by the winds.”

Her voice was growing weaker and weaker as she spoke, and suddenly I felt a sense of urgency. She was going to die, and with that I would be left alone in the wilderness with a bunch of lobotomized aliens around me. The prospect was disheartening.

Yet, she went on. “I could save them. I could save them. I could save them...” Her murmurs faded until they were almost inaudible, and her eyelids fluttered dangerously.

At that moment, somewhere deep in my heart, I couldn't help but admire the spirit of this Changeling, that cared so much for her minions, loved them so much seemed to think them her children, who was willing to sacrifice everything she was for their sake.

I felt for her, and the feeling was adoration itself as I had felt it only moments ago.

As the last sparks of her lifeforce went out, something else came and fanned her fires back to life. One second she was a crumpling, dying mess on the ground; the next, her eyes opened wide, glistening with life.

Life, energy and surprise.

“Oh!” Her exclamation was rather quiet, but that only served to emphasize it more. She blinked a few times, and then shot a confused stare at me. Slowly, confusion changed to clarity in her eyes as she seemed to understand whatever it was had happened. “Oh, my. I certainly hadn't expectedthat...”