Home is where... (Changeling Islands, Discord)

[Blueblood]

She had faced the full power of alicorn Princesses without batting an eye.  The cutthroat politics of inter-Hive integration were to her but a breeze of gauzy wings.  Even the harsh prospects of defeat and its consequences had been endured.

 

So why was she so nervous now?

 

*A mother shivers more under the judgment of her children than anything else.*  That's why she'd done all she had done, after all.  Invasion, deception, infiltration, attempted conquest and attempted courtship - all for the prosperity of her changelings, her children.  Even being swatted away by the Power of Love had not been as painful as being abandoned by her children under the leadership of that pastel, treasonous-!

 

No, no, no bad bad thoughts.  She needed to put on her best face.  If she was to convince this latest lost son to stay... 

For now, she was keeping her "Island Queen" guise, fixing her smile in the mirror as she waited appointment with one particular guest.  Rat, a lost changeling raised by ponies.  Would his heritage prove strong, prove strong enough to bring him home to her?

 

A mother could only hope...

[RexDraco]

Rat had never known other Changelings. He had never known a hive. Where he was born it was unknown, and what he was capable of was limited. It had only been recently that he has started to travel from port to port across Equestria with a desire to share the art he had learned through the example of a kind, older pony. The glass sculptures his friend had once shared with ponies had always made them so happy. Driven by an unknown instinct he too wanted ponies to be happy, his hunger searching for a distraction through the sea of emotions, unable to pluck them from the apart from the twisted cables that had knotted about as he grew without knowing who, or what, he was. Changelings were never a topic of common day, so figuring out what it was you were meant to do became a blur in daily life. He had been a prize, his egg a toy for his father to collect. He did not know he was a trophy that filled his father’s reputation with points. Rewarded by the abject ignorance of what Changelings were and could be -- Ratan suffered.

 

Even his name was a symbol of the precious jewel he was inside of his father’s glass case. More a keep than a father, but to Rat the one that fed him and gave him shelter, who taught him words and showed him the many faces ponies had -- there was no other alike. He was a father, but arriving on this island he saw things quite differently. This one who greeted all the ponies, was not like a pony. They were not a father and had a very different sense to them. It was truly a spectacle. While Rat could dictate if a situation was safe or dangerous he was far from capable of knowing a charlatan from a soothsayer. He was a goofy little goober with hardly the sense to realize that he perhaps found something amazing!

 

Entering the room Rat could not help but feel a sense of -- confusion.

 

Being removed from his nest as an egg he had next to no connection to Changeling kind, let alone having ever seen one! He perked his ears and lowered his head as he stepped in. As soon as he was inside the green-furred pony trotted excitedly. He did wonder why the queen of this island wanted to see him. Perhaps she knew of his glass blowing and wished a piece?! That would mean she has seen his goods! This made him excited! He bounded forward and parted his jaws, but closed it, his cut up tongue rather embarrassing. His anger and hunger often getting the better of his temper! He had to bite down on his tongue to keep the feelings at bay. She seemed -- tense. His head canted to the side as he slowly approached. His brows furrowed a bit before he stood tall.

 

“Ah-lo!” he greeted, swollen tongue and large teeth making speech difficult. “Ah am Rat! Pleashed tu mahke ahquantaince.” He bowed his head.

 

Despite his irregularities he seemed healthy. Not a fantastic sense of energy off him, but at least he wasn’t starving. He did not know to take his pony form from place, it would leave the mistress to take the lead. He seemed an impressionable young lad though. He was likely still rather young, having been away from the nest for so long. Though it could be sense, if the queen was so capable. He was a soldier, his blades dull and barbs venomless.

[Blueblood]

Chrysalis could tell instantly that poor Rat had no idea, none, of what he was about to get into.  Fully raised by ponies, without the slightest sense of how to be a changeling.  Even talking through holes, something that many of her kind adapted to simultaneously with words, was absent!  The low-level glamour that any infiltrator applied just to make them more appealing, that was gone too.  Any appeal Ratan had was purely of his own self, which was there, no doubt, in it's own way.  The Queen couldn't be sure if that was her own bias, though, towards her children.

 

"Ah, as am I.  I don't know if you've been told my name yet, but there's a very important question I wanted to ask you right off the bat."  Deep breath, Chryssie, you can do this.  She approached the young stallion, the little disarmed soldier, carefully, with softness in her voice and tenderness in her smile.  "Do you... remember your mother at all?"

[RexDraco]

Rat had managed for a time being just a pony, but it has been no easy task. It was great luck of company that his acceptance was accommodated prior to his learning to hold such a form. Though for Ratan, who had been so far from what it meant to be a pony, being so different he more clung to his guise than display it. Instead of putting out the illusion of this pony he had taken the form of, instead of replacing him: the little emerald bug had become him. It was the closest he came to having a place, a place he would have had naturally were he part of a hive. It was no minor feat he survived for so long. Despite his meager attempts it was that soldier's instinct that kept him fighting. It gave hope that lay beneath the shadow of a pony he wore was a Changeling.

 

The gold faced earth pony smiled. She seemed a nice mare, a pony he could trust! But let it not be said Rat wasn't gullible, for pulling wool over the youngling's eyes was as easy as pronouncing his name! Rat! It seemed an insulting term, but the endearing moniker was one provided him of his neighbors who bought longer saw threat in what they viewed as a clumsy, wholesome lad. While it was, at first, a bit unsettling he had taken the old pony's workshop, they also figured him the glass Maker's apprentice of sorts. It came natural for the ponies to see him as a pony. To see him as a little rat taking residence in an empty hovel, making it his own…

 

The question gave the disguised insect cause to deflate, but he quickly bounded back and perked up. “Nou ma’m!” He presented. “Hatched bah mah fathur in Mayhatnan.” Hatched.

 

Despite everything about him seeming pony he used words like hatched, or made buzzing noises only a larva would for its mother's recognition. While he wore the colors of a pony, beneath, was a soldier who hadn't been taken care of. Treated like a drone his life was kept filled by tiny glass shards he collected to make pieces of art to sell to neglectful ponies who gave him a quarter of the appreciation he deserved. By what Chrysalis could perhaps sense was he was either from another clutch or an aberration. To truly inspect the missing or altered parts she would need to get him to remove his disguise, through a mother's heart could break at the sight alone.

 

Rat tilted his head. “Ahh you mah mudder?” An innocent question, given her question, yet one that showed ponies had failed to raise one of her own, that they could not show a Changeling what they needed.

It was all the more affirmation that what became of Thorax was vile and traitorous. It made them sick, their hive a wasteful and backwards progressing collective that was better off hidden in the wastes. Progress required change but it also needed a species to become stronger… Rat? There was still a chance. An aberration he was, but not yet was he a better carapaced menace that had turned his back on the old ways. He simply… did not know them.

[Blueblood]

The clicks and buzzes Chrysalis heard would have been nonsense to the ears of a pony, but to Chrysalis, they were as full of meaning as the cries of a child.  She knew them too well, in fact; the sounds of a soldier starved of his rations.  How long had she let the Hive languish in that state?  No longer than she had to, that was her only comfort.  The urge to satiate that distress was demonstrably strong enough to overthrow kingdoms entrenched for millennia, for what were thrones and dominations to a mother with a hungry grub or foal?  A lesson she had almost learned too late.

 

Not too late for little Rat, though, Thank Faust!  Not too late.  Her eyes widened, and nearly welled up with tears at the 'lings question.  "Y-yes!  Yes, I am your mother!"  She took three rapid steps forward to hold Rat by the withers, tight but tenderly, in an embrace that would still let her see into his eyes.  "Do you... know how to do this?"  And she dropped her guise, changing fur for chitin, round pupils for slitted, but the expression and attitude changed not a whit.

[RexDraco]

There weren't many roles to be found in a hive of thousands. There were those who hunted for the hearth and those who protected their home from the dangers that often befell such a predatory forces. Living among one's prey was always fraught with danger. Extermination was often a worry and hunger was a threat. It left their strain aggressive and wont for war. One could suppose why Thorax chose the path he did. The threat of extinction seemed a good reason to make friends with your enemy. Tactics needed to change for rushing to a cause over and over, failing each time and still proceeding with the premeditated actions was a sure sign of insanity. And what mother wouldn't go mad seeing her brood suffer in hunger? These days there was no shortage of happiness and harmony. Plenty for Changelings to feast upon.

 

Her answer caused him to jump, pony ears pricking at the swell of thoughts in his head. A mother?! He had one? Father had always told him he had no mother, that he had no family. In truth he had not! All he knew was father and the words he spoke. He was saved, his father said, from being sold to a worse fate. The story always changed though. Some days a storm washed his egg to his father's door. He was fished from the sewers or stolen from a farm, mistook for a chicken egg. Ratan was not unaware of how other ponies lived together. When he tried to play with others his age, parents would pull them away, mothers and fathers alike. His father would just laugh at their words. While in his youth he did not understand them, as he grew up the jagged words cut like glass on the skin.

 

Feeling her hold him was an indescribable feeling, a sensation that made his carapaced tighten. A mother's love for her child was different than a father's it was also love and very different from Rat’s father. The little lost bug let out a shuddering exhale, his barrel rumbling with a soft purring set of clicks. Such a gentle hug! Not like when his father rubbed his hoof through his mane so roughly. At her question he would nod and dissipate his disguise. Before her sat a scrawny, starving bug with poison pinions devoid of venom. His horn was broken, unable to cast and wings so stunted in their growth he would never be able to fly.

 

To many he would be a burden.

 

Looking upon the Queen… her dark carapace and healthy weight. Her beautiful sea green membrane and full sized wings. Her twisted horn and silken tresses. Rat didn't even have a full fin. His fin short and tapered, webbing torn and unhealthy. Those eyes, which should be a burning red, are a pale shade of pink, though twas more a result of his partial albinism, even so... he was a mess, and sat there, bared before a mother.

[Blueblood]

Chrysalis, having embraced her lost son, now stepped back to survey the damage.  She had braced herself internally for the sight, determined not to show upon her face even the slightest sign of dismay, a hard thing for a loving mother, but necessary to not wreck her poor little nymph.

 

Rat's condition was... well, not the absolute worst she'd seen.  True, malnourishment had cost him most of his soldierly capabilities, which even now could probably not recover, but at least his form was symmetrical!  One of her more prominent followers, Kahz, had his chitin warped from the lack of love he'd been forced to stomach, as it were.  *Please Faust, this shall be the last generation of changelings to ever suffer like this.*

 

With effort, she managed to smile at him.  "Welcome home, Rat.  It's been... far, far too long."

[RexDraco]

His lower canines grew like tusks from his lower jaw and pressed to his muzzle. As a result of the tusks his lips has come to shape oddly around them giving them a feline-like curl, that gave him a soft grinning expression. With every breath he took: it would create a whistling noise and ever more so when he giggled. And giggle-whistle he did! He could not help it as the buggy mare looked him over with her most curious eyes and his face smooshed in her fore feelers. It was all very new to the young  insect. It was very strange, and exciting, to meet somepony just like him. He had been told he was the only one ever, the only Rat. And while that sentiment was indeed true: he was not the only of what Rat was. His dark pink eyes welled with tears as the female welcomed him home. He had a home away from home…

 

Manehatten has always been his home. It was loud, a little dirty and easy to get lost as a tourist, but as he got older much of the romantic mystic of having everything conveniently at one's hooves was undermined by the overwhelming noise pollution and overcrowdedness of a smaller and smaller space as ponies and travellers all vied for their own place, their own piece of home away from home. Rat, you see, was still much a believer in faerie tales. He believed that making wishes on stars came true for good ponies. He could not imagine that a princess could never find her prince. And now Rat… well Rat he was not an orphan after all. It had all just been waiting for him.

 

A home that had a mother!

 

A whorling buzz rumbled from his belly. A cry of a larvae forgotten to be cared for… a foal crying for its mother, as a pony would say. His eyes finally squeezed close, cheeks pinching up his smiling mandible as his heart struggled to remain caged in his chest as it beat and sang. Tears rushed from his eyes and down his cheeks, the rivulets of tears running over the Queen's forefeelers if they still held squished his softer cheeks. It was a pure, foalish happiness only a Rat was capable of. His jaws parted, his tattered antennae twitched as he listened to his thoughts before finally speaking them.

 

“Nah ah Rat ome, wah do he do for muther?” It was a simple question, a pure and loyal one.

 

What could Rat do, now that he was home, for his dear mother?

[Blueblood]

What mother isn't happy to see a child come home?  What mother isn't moved by loyalty shown, even after so long away?  *I had spent so long trying to conquer a home for us, that I never went out to look for the lost nymphs the home was for.*  Never again, for sure.  Chrysalis was not going to betray little Rat; he was a symbol of why she traded her kingdom for an island paradise.

 

"Just... stay with me."  She smiled down on the buzzing 'ling.  "I will teach you how not to be hungry again.  You've noticed how you don't feel hungry when you make ponies love you?  That's what we do here."  A rather... optimistic view of their lives here, given the still somewhat-sinister intentions of some of her subjects, but hey!  That was a problem for a different day.  Today was a day of reunion.