Confessions of a changeling.

I had buzzed along through the forest staring blankly ahead. I had no destination and no objective, other than leaving my forbidden love behind me. I flew until my wings could barely twitch, and set off walking. I didn't know where I was headed. As I walked, I heard a faint conversation taking place somewhere ahead of me.

"Thanks fer lettin' us go with ya to tha forest, Twilight!" She sounded quite young. Ten maybe. No older than twelve.

"It was no problem, girls. Just promise you won't stray too far from me next time, okay?" This mare was much older. Somewhere in her early twenties. She was answered by a chorus of yeses. By now they were fairly close, if volume was anything to go by. I raised my head from the path I had been following and stopped. A mare and a trio of fillies were before me. The mare at the head of the group was a light purple unicorn. There was an orange pegasus filly, a white unicorn filly, and a yellow earth filly cowering behind her.

"T-Twilight?!" The little unicorn stuttered. The mare spread her legs to get in a ready stance.

"Don't worry, Sweetie Bell. I won't let it hurt you." She reassured the filly. The act in itself was actually quite the show. Such a willing sacrifice for the sake of a few little fillies. But I wasn't there to do anything to them.

"Don't waste your breath." I said harshly.
"If I wanted anything from you, I would've taken up a disguise or jumped you from the bushes or something. But, as it is, I've got something I'm going through right now, and I am in no mood to injure anything." With that said, I began to move around them, giving a wide berth by straying just off the edge of the dirt road we shared. I had gotten nearly parallel to them when I was suddenly consumed in a magical field and hoisted into the air.

"Woah, there. Where do you think you're going?" Asked the mare.

"I'm not entirely sure. I'm just wandering around trying to forget about what's happened to me." I said. The purple unicorn cocked her head to one side, an eyebrow raised in a mix of surprise and confusion.

"Huh?" She stared at me for a minute or two, the gears in her head turning slowly as she gazed upon me. Eventually something clicked, and she leveled her head.

"Oh. I see what you're trying to do. Well, just so you know, it's not going to work!" She said with a proud smile. She must've thought I was using the PST 5. She was actually kind of cute the way she prided herself for such fast thinking, and a chuckle escaped me when I thought about it.

"Actually, if I wanted to jump you, I could've done it while you were pondering my statement. After all, it only takes a drop of doubt or hesitation to weaken a spell." I corrected.
"Not only that, but Tactic 5 is generally used in emergency situations only." The mare was again puzzled by my words.

"What? No it isn't! I should know about its use and preferability in select situations! I've studied it!" She shouted indignantly. Now that was a laugh! 'She should know'?!

"How should you know that? From 'A Pony's Guide to The Changeling Menace'?" I snickered.
"Bitch please, that book is the laughing stock of every changeling tribe in the Everfree!"

"What?"

"It's a total joke. The changeling that 'divulged' the information the book is based on was telling his captors complete BS! The only truth in that book is the one sentence that pertains to the various tribes and gangs scattered across Equestria, and that was vague at best." I explained. The mare was absolutely dumbfounded.

"But... But I studied it extensively..." She muttered. Her eyes gained a horrified glaze, and soon I was deposited in an ungraceful heap on the ground. I picked myself up and dusted off the fine layer of dirt that collected on me, gazing towards the group of ponies as I did so. The mare, at this point, was so downtrodden and shocked that she was zoned out, staring at some point on the ground before her.

"Twilight?!" The little pegasus voiced the concerns of all of the fillies present. I tried my best to explain what was happening.

"Uh, yeah. I think I kinda... destroyed her mind." I said. The fillies looked at me in horror.

"What?!" They squealed in terror.

"Apparently she thought that book was legit, so she took everything in it literally and spent forever reading it. And, taking this into account, when I told her that book was fake, she kinda snapped. Guess she couldn't believe that all that effort was wasted." I explained. To drive my point home, I came up to her and lightly jabbed her in the side with a hoof. As expected, she didn't register a thing.

"Is she gonna be alright?" The young unicorn asked.

"Yeah. Set her up with some hard cider and a box of tissues, and she'll be fine in no more than an hour." I replied. I looked around and turned back to the fillies.

"In the mean time, we need to get her back to her house. Or back into town, at the very least. This place isn't exactly a park, you know." I said. With that, I situated the mare onto my back and took off in the direction that she was headed earlier, the fillies trailing closely behind.

"I assume you were headed back into town, right?" I asked. I twisted my head around and looked back to them.

"Yeah." The earth filly confirmed with a nod. I nodded to myself and continued on the path into town.

After ten minutes of walking along, the forest started to become more and more sparsely grown. A few more minutes and we'd be out of the forest entirely.

"Hold on a sec." I said. I came to a stop and summoned the flames that would grant me a disguise. I let the flames dance around and spread, feeling the familiar tingle as flesh and fur grew on my exoskeleton and was rooted to it. After the magic show was over, I had a set of wings and a coat of fur.

"Wow!" A trio of amazed voices came from behind me. I turned around.

"Oh, right. I forgot you were there." I said. The fillies ran up to me bouncing around with giddiness.

"That was amazing, mister!" The small unicorn said.

"Yeah! That was almost as cool as seeing one of Rainbow's practices!" The pegasus exclaimed.

"How' ya do that?!" Asked the earth filly. I chuckled at her and turned back around.

"I'll explain on the way to town." I replied. And once again, I was off, the fillies trailing behind with glee as I recounted the workings of changeling magic.

"It's a special kind of transfiguration magic, exclusive to changelings. The spell creates flesh, bone, and fur in the image the caster wishes, and grants the desired properties of the new body as well." The fillies exchanged confused looks.

"It does what now?" The earth filly asked.

"Grants properties. In other words, it makes the kind of body I want." I explained.

"The 'kind' of body?" One of the others asked.

"Yeah. Think of it like this: if I wanted to look like a pegasus, I'd need the body of a pegasus. The bones would need to be a pegasus's, and the body would need wings. Otherwise, I'd be more like a flightless pegasus or an earth pony with incorrect bone structure. If I can't fly, the purpose of the spell is no longer met." I explained. The fillies pondered my words.

"So, if the spell didn't make your body how it needed to be, you'd have to do it yourself." The diminutive unicorn said.

"Yes. That's the gist of it." I confirmed.

"Twilight would die to hear this." The orange filly said.

"Well if I'm still around when she wakes up, I'll tell her too." I said. And I probably would stick around for a while. I mean, it's not like I had anything to do now that Fluttershy hated me...

XXX

A bell sounded as I opened the door to Golden Oaks Library with Twilight lying comatose on my back and three fillies crowding behind me.

"Just a second!" A voice rang out. It belonged to a young male, and from what I was told by the fillies that I was with, I assumed it belonged to Spike. I gently slid Twilight off of me and looked around. The library was just as the fillies described it: big, round, and made of wood. A small purple reptile descended the staircase on the opposite side of the room.

"Welcome to Golden Oaks. Can I help you find anyth-" The dragonling had started to recite a standard greeting, but stopped when he saw Twilight lying on the ground. I started to speak immediately.

"We should get her some strong drink. Do you have any hard cider or ApplejackDaniels or something?" The young reptile nodded and rushed to the kitchen, returning momentarily with an unmarked bottle in one hand and a glass in another.

"Let's get her to bed." I said. Spike nodded and walked over to the staircase. I dragged Twilight to the base of the stairs and paused. I looked to the fillies standing by the door.

"You've all been a great help, but I can handle it from here." I said. The group took the hint and left after saying goodbye and good luck. With that, I started to drag Twilight up the stairs to her bedroom. Once at the top, Spike guided me to her bed. I laid her on it and brought a glass to her lips, coercing her to drink.
Twilight slowly regained life. Halfway through her second glass, her eyes suddenly shrank and she jumped.

"Ah! What?! Where?! Wait... Huh?" She sputtered.

"It's alright, miss Sparkle. You're back in your room at the library. You've been out for a little over an hour, and the fillies have gotten home safely." I said gently. She blinked and looked at me in confusion.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"Zigzag. We met in the forest, remember?" She tilted her head in thought.

"Met in the..." Her eyes grew wide and she gasped.

"EEEEK!" She jumped up and quickly enveloped me in her purple aura.

"Hey! What the frick! Put me down!" I shouted.

"No way! You'll probably try to suck out my guts or something!" She said. I gave her the harshest stare I could, and she shied away.

"What?" She asked. I stared a hole through her head.

"Are you fucking kidding me? 'Suck out' your guts? Really?" You could hear the disappointment in my voice. She noticed, and gave a little blush of embarrassment.

"W-well, what would you do then?" I sighed and brought a hoof to my chin.

"If I tagged you as a food source, I would probably be screwed. There's nothing I could do at this point. In real life, I'll leave and probably never come back. Maybe I'll become a bard and travel to distant lands and write songs about how fucked I am. If I ever get out of wallowing in self-pity, that is." I floated there for a second before speaking up again.

"And, by the way, I think I've more than proved that I don't want to extract from you. I mean, I've exposed myself to you twice. Well, technically once, but only if you count the fact that you were out of it for the last hour." Twilight seemed more than curious by this fact, and plopped her hindquarters down on the floor so she could think.

"So, if you're not going to 'extract' from me, as you put it, why are you here?" She asked.

"I should think that's obvious. I'm helping you. Or, at least, I was until you came to. Now I'm trying to have a conversation in a civilized manner. And you can see that this's turned out just as well as back in the Everfree." That seemed to shut her up, surprisingly. She sat there and thought, and I floated in her magic, each looking at the other in silence. We looked at each other with piercing gazes: she had an acute sense of curiosity, and I was feeling slightly weary over the whole events of the day. I gave a reserved sigh and broke the figurative ice.

"Well, miss Sparkle, as fun as it is to sit here and stare at each other, I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass on it. I would prefer to be left alone right now, so if you could just put me down I'll be out of your mane." Twilight didn't make a move.

"You're not gonna let me go, are you?" I asked. I already knew the answer, but reiteration never hurt anyone.

"SPIKE! Take a letter!" She shouted. A second later, the purple dragon from earlier stumbled up the stairs. Twilight didn't even bother to check on him, choosing rather to go into a monologue for him to dictate.

"Dear Princess Celestia..."

Fuck.