Changing Love

After Rarity was resuscitated and the others had gained their composure, Twilight turned her attention to Cadence.

“Princess, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but are you CRAZY?” exclaimed the purple alicorn.

“I know what it looks like Twilight, but the changeling in that glass box is completely harmless,” began Cadence “I learned in my incarceration that changelings are given their commands from their queen primarily through telepathy. The queen will send out a signal that carries instructions using her magic. The changelings then receive the signal and they are forced to obey that command.”

“I don’t quite understand how that plays into anything we have discussed,” said Twilight.

“After the wedding, I went to the outer reaches of Equestria and found one of the changelings that we had blasted. I brought him here and trapped him in that very box. Since then, I have been trying to use my magic to transmit commands like Chrysalis did. Finally, after quite a while, I was able to successfully open the telepathic link between me and the changeling.”

“That’s fascinating princess, but how is this changeling supposed to help ponies find true love?” queried Twilight.

“Don’t you see Twilight? Since I am the princess of love, I am quite skilled at finding traces of love between two ponies that they themselves would never see. I can command the changeling to transform into the special somepony of whoever enters the glass box with it, giving the pony in the box a close-up look at their potential love.”

Twilight took quite a while to absorb and process everything she had just heard. On one hand, she had learned just what changelings were capable of and the deception they could create during the wedding. On the other hand, Twilight had known Cadence for almost her entire life and she trusted her sister-in-law very much.

Twilight broke out of her trance, took a deep breath, and spoke “Cadence, I would like to be the first to go in.”

“Are you sure Twilight? I would hate to make you do something that you are so uncomfortable with,” said Cadence as a concerned look crawled across her face.

Twilight looked her former foal-sitter straight in the eye and said “I’m ready.”

Twilight slowly approached the intimidating glass box. The closer she got to it, the larger it seemed. Finally, she stood at the door to the box. She composed herself, pulled the door open, stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

Once she was completely closed inside the cube, Cadence reached for a nearby rope that was tied to a peg on the wall.

“I feel that we should allow her some privacy with such as serious matter,” said Cadence as released the rope, causing a large curtain to fall upon the box.

Inside, Twilight felt her heart skip when she saw the shadow of the curtain fall upon the box, leaving no light source save for a single light hanging from the roof of the box. However, her eyes were focused directly in front of her. Standing only a few paces away, directly in front of her, was Cadence’s changeling. Merely looking at it brought back a slew of bad memories from the events preceding the wedding. Slowly, she began to move to the side, trying to distance herself from the creature. As she moved, the changeling’s eyes followed her, but it did not move. It seemed that Cadence was right about having the Changeling under her control.

Suddenly, an odd scent assaulted the purple princess’ nose, causing her vision to become blurred and her legs to become weak. Through her blurred vision she could see that the changeling had started to transform, then her knees gave way and she collapsed.

When she next opened her eyes, she could feel herself being picked up. Someone had helped her back on to her hooves. At first, she didn’t see anyone, but as she turned around she saw a face she had seen several times before. The familiar face greeted her with a warm smile. Twilight’s eyes shifted from the maroon coat, to the smiling flowers adorning her flank, to the kind face of Cheerilee.

“Cheer- Cheerilee?” gasped Twilight.

In that instant, something clicked inside Twilight’s mind. How could she have not seen it before? Cheerilee had been extremely kind to her ever since she had moved to Ponyville. She reached out to Twilight immediately and proved to be quite the friend. Twilight especially loved it when Cheerilee would stop by the library, alone or with her class, to browse the collection of books and chat with Twilight. In these conversations they had found that they had a lot of things in common. Now, here she was, or at least the image of her, staring her in the face. Twilight mind was split into three fragments at this point: the first part was mentally kicking itself for not thinking of Cheerilee sooner, the second part was jumping at the prospect of being Cheerilee’s special somepony, and the third, smallest part was amazed at how well Cadence’s new method of love-spreading worked, it was almost too perfect.

Twilight tore her eyes away from the beautiful mug of Cheerilee and made her way to the door of the box. As she turned she saw the changeling transform back and stand stock-still out of the corner of her eye. The image bothered her slightly, but she was far too focused on the experience that she had just had and what she was going to do next. She swung the door open and stepped out of the box and out from under the curtain with new vision and new determination.

When Twilight reappeared from under the curtain, she heard a collective sigh of relief. She looked up to see all of her friends and her brother with relieved smiles on their faces and Cadence with a strange smug smile. Twilight didn’t have the chance to look around too much before she was barraged with questions and comments.

“Are ya all right, sugarcube?”

“I’m sooo glad you came out, Twilight, I was super-duper worried about you!”

“Did you fight the changeling? How tough was it? I bet I could finish it off.”

“I’m glad you didn’t get hurt by the creature.”

“Did you see your love, Twilight? Who was it darling?”

“Girls! Let me breathe a little,” exclaimed Twilight “No, Rainbow, I did not fight the changeling and I wouldn’t recommend doing so, I did find my love and I’ll get to that in a second. As to whether I’m alright or not, I’m fine now girls. Earlier though I smelled something really odd  and my vision became blurry and my legs became weak.”

Cadence snapped her head forward and stared at Twilight intensely, concern etching her face.

“You smelled something?” queried the princess of love.

“Yeah, it was really odd, it happened as the changeling was changing,” replied Twilight before Cadence could say anything more “at any rate it was probably nothing, so who wants to go next?”

“OOO ME, ME!” squealed the pink party pony.

Pinkie made her way towards the curtain before turning around.

“Hey Twilight, you never told us who your love was,” said Pinkie, a small pout forming on her face.

“Man Pinkie, you are pretty sharp at times,” said the lavender alicorn, “I bet there are some times where you could even match wits with me or my love Cheerilee.”

All of the ponies collectively gasped.