Wandering

Among Aliens

Entry #5

1st of July

In hindsight, I would very much have liked to have experienced this moment at dawn. All in all, it would've been a lot more fitting. Sadly there's no dawn to be had this far north a week after midsummer. I had to make do with the unending light of the sun, as it wandered in and out of the clouds racing across the sky; to and fro behind peaks and slopes, peering out through passes and valleys like the ravengod's solitary eye. As with most things on this journey, however, it could have been a lot, lot worse.

Elytra sat mostly silent by my side as I got my spare cup up and started filling both mine and hers with porridge, a brightly colored spork in each. Why she was quiet, I could guess fairly easily. Odd as it was, she was quite apparently still embarrassed from telling me her name. While it wasn't as obvious as before, her cheeks were still a vivid dark red, and she was avoiding eye contact as far as she could.

Now I don't mind a quiet breakfast, but recent developments – my head hurt just thinking about it – had honestly put my brain into overdrive, and it was only a matter of time before the thoughts I'd been fermenting started spouting out of my mouth unbidden. In the interest of civil conversation, keeping quiet until that point was a very bad idea.

“I guess I don't need to ask why you're called changelings now, huh.”

I handed her the cup, and she took it carefully, cradling the green plastic as if it were a packet of eggs. Maybe that was just the way she held things with those hooves of hers, or maybe it was the first time she'd seen plastic or something. I couldn't tell.

For a second as I handed her the cup, though, our eyes met – and though she immediately turned hers away again, she couldn't help but start stammering back in response. “I- um, th-that is...” She stared at the ground, her blush intensifying again, but if the tone of her voice was any clue it seemed to be more out of shame than embarrassment. “I thought you knew already. I mean, everypony does.“

I stared intently at her until she met my eyes again. “But I'm not any pony, now am I? Listen, Elytra. Wherever this place is, I am way farther from home than you are. Half the laws of nature I know of seem to have kicked the bucket, and the other half have been downgraded to glorified suggestions. Obviously the Law of Conservation of Energy isn't worth the ink on the paper it's printed on here, if what you did back there is any proof.”

I sighed and took my spork in my hand, stirring the porridge a bit. “Okay, okay. That's probably a bit extreme, I guess. It's like, I could probably come up with an adequate explanation for how it could work and still follow most of the laws of physics if I had a few formulas and some time to spare. It's just...”

I trailed off, staring down into my breakfast. Elytra was giving me a concerned look, her blush finally gone for the most part. I shook my head. “Nevermind. Let's eat. And be careful, this stuff is hot.”

I ate in a glum mood, only somewhat dampened by Elytra's confused attempts at handling her spork. In the end she discarded the tool and thrust her snout into the cup, eating straight out of it like a very strange-looking dog.

I gave her a questioning look, and gulped down the half spoonful hot porridge in my mouth to avoid burning myself too badly. “What's up with that? Can't you just, like, transform and eat? I'd burn my face off if I even tried that.”

She looked up at me briefly, before resuming her meal. In a matter of seconds, she'd finished eating, and was licking the blueberry stains off her cheeks. “Inefficient. Use energy to gain the ability to use a slower method of acquiring energy? That wouldn't make sense.” She clacked her fangs and cocked her head at me. “Burn your face? What are your outer shells made of, if they're that vulnerable?”

I raised an eyebrow back at her. “Are we discussing biology now? Myskin is mostly organic carbon, just like the rest of my body and, I would assume, yours. Shit, right back at you. What the hell is your 'outer shell' made out of? I mean, I'm pretty thick-skinned for a human, but you make me look like a wussy 10-year old brat with a cold. Just how damn temperature-resistant are you guys, anyway?”

A look of confusion settled on her face for a second. “Carbon? Like the ponies? But that's...oh, wait. You have no fur! Now it makes sense.” I realized I had to ask more about these 'ponies' sometime, seeing how often they were mentioned. What were they, anyway? Prey? Domesticated? Or yet another sentient species? I shook my head slightly as she went on.

“Our outer shells can protect us from any temperature changes, as long as it doesn't exceed the quicksilver limit. In the cold we can usually stretch it a bit through circulation and keeping the shell warm, but if it goes too deep we'll freeze solid. Most kinds of fire exceeds the quicksilver limit as well, but other than that there's really not much that can harm us.”

I frowned. “Quicksilver limit?” Elytra nodded back at me as I resumed eating, as if the term was the most natural in the world. “The freezing and boiling points of quicksilver. Technically it's the 'liquid quicksilver limit', but nobody says that. Some two thirds of our outer shells are made out of elemental quicksilver.”

My eyes went wide at that statement, and I sputtered out the spoonful of porridge in my mouth. “Two thirds quicksilver!?” Gaping, I recalled my rather dramatic entrance into the camp yesterday, up to the part where I took a fair-sized bite of Chrysalis' body. I gripped my throat. “I ate...”

The calculations went through my head like a myriad of miniature fighter jets. Entirely useless, of course, as I had no numbers and no obvious clues to any of the needed data whatsoever. I looked up and stared Elytra in the eyes, and she heaved a sigh. “I don't know why everypony gets in such a fuss over it, really. Elemental quicksilver ingestion isn't that dangerous – even if you ate all the quicksilver in a changeling's body, you wouldn't be in much danger. Our shells aren't exactly thick, not that part of them anyway. You'd get more from eating fish.”

I kept staring for a few moments, until I decided it wasn't worth going on about. Clearly, she knew what she was talking about – natural, since it was probably a pretty big part of their biology. “Well, how should I know? I'm a physicist, not a chemist. Or a biologist for that matter.” Shaking away the small amounts of remaining panic, I resumed eating.

Elytra wouldn't let me eat in peace, however. She had finished her portion, and while she didn't seem up for seconds – not that there was any – she seemed to have worked off most of her embarrassment, and was more talkative than ever. “You? A master of the scientific arts? I thought you were a hunter.”

I rolled my eyes and swallowed, gesturing at her with the spork. “Not a master yet. I'm studying for a candidacy at the moment. Mastership comes after that.” I took another spoonful, and frowned at her. “You changelings must be fairly advanced, if you've got such detailed understanding of nature as that. How do you know so much about science, Elytra?”

She looked like she was going to speak up, but then her eyes widened and she clamped her mouth shut. I turned around, and saw Chrysalis gliding down toward us, only meters away. At the sight of her queen Elytra was all blushes again, and those matted blue lids snapped shut over her eyes. “We invented it, hunter,” Chrysalis crowed as she landed. Judging by her raspy voice, the night hadn't been kind to her. “We invented science, to help understand ourselves, and these monstrously illogical bodies we walk around in.”

She trotted up beside us, and fixated me with a stare. “And we taught the ponies our secrets when they asked, thinking we could finally get along with them after so many years of strife and conflict. Oh, they taught us things in return, I suppose, but precious few of those are things we can actually use. Changeling magic isn't unicorn magic, and we have no affinity for manipulating the weather, regardless of what the pegasi teach us about it."

"And economy? What use do we have ofeconomy?” Contempt filled her face as she kicked a pebble, and her eyes followed it as it soared through the air. “We transmute or conjure almost everything our society needs, and you cannot exactlytrade,” she intoned the word as if it was something unnatural, “for astral energy. A sovereign feeds and protects her subjects, and the subjects serve their sovereign. That is how we live, and there is no other way about it.” Staring off for a few more seconds, she heaved a sigh, and sat down on her haunches beside me.

I looked at her for a few moments before I continued eating, processing the information I'd received as I sloshed around the porridge in my mouth – there wasn't exactly much chewing involved, porridge being porridge – and after a few seconds of waiting, I looked at her expectantly. “So what happened? I guess you couldn't cope with them after all?”

Chrysalis gave me a glum look. “They panicked when they learned quicksilver was poisonous, and our shells full of it. They purged their cities before we had a chance to explain, and we were exiled from their lands, banned from ever returning.”

She smiled at me. “Ironically, the only ponies that have ever died from quicksilver poisoning were the guards responsible for that purge – and this was several centuries ago, mind you. To this day, they still don't know how to handle it properly.” I pondered this for a while as I ate, and Chrysalis turned to Elytra. “You must excuse me. I listened in for a bit.”

If anything, Elytra's blush deepened, and she fidgeted heavily as she replied. “I-it is your right, highness.”

Chrysalis nodded, and a few more moments passed before she spoke up again. “Henamed you?”

She sounded disbelieving, but her eyes only widened when Elytra started nodded profusely. “I-I gave it to him. It felt...right. He named himself, after all.” Her lids retracted, and for a brief second she stared into Chrysalis' emerald eyes with her own. “What choice did I have?” Chrysalis looked thoughtful at this, and diverted her eyes. Elytra noticed me looking at her after a few seconds, and once again her eyelids snapped shut, and she squirmed in embarrassment.

Another minute passed before I had finished eating, and I started putting the trangia back together – I needed to wash it, but that was a later issue. I found Chrysalis staring at me while I was reassembling it, and all she would say in answer was, “It is an interesting device.” It amuses me to think that a species that basically invented natural science in this world would consider a burner and a set of pots an 'interesting device', but hey, if there's one thing I've learned here, it's to never take things for granted. Maybe they don't have pots? I mean, I didn't know. Changelings don't exactly need to cook, do they?

Soon enough I had my things packed up again, and Chrysalis put a hoof to my shoulder. “Come, hunter. We need to speak of things.” I nodded assent – that we needed indeed – and she turned to Elytra. “Wake the swarm.” She popped up into the air immediately, and buzzed off to wake the rest of the camp. Chrysalis watched her go for a second or two, then eyed me. “Shall we?”

She draped her wing around my bare arm – I'd curled them up while eating – and started leading me toward the middle of the ever awakening camp. It was remarkably soft in texture; despite the lack of feathers, I might add. It felt like a blanket of silk. Transparent, green, living silk.

And despite myself, I couldn't help but wonder how much mercury was in them...