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What You Are to Me; attn: Chrysalis
Topic Started: Thu Feb 13, 2014 2:23 pm (2,549 Views)
Fethur
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"Home sweet home." Callie sighed as she landed before a lighthouse outside of Manehattan. Razma had flown ahead to deal with some obligation of her own, but Callie just needed to get the last of her belongings from here. She didn't own much, but whatever she had was precious. She walked through the burned cottage frame for no other reason than to give it a farewell, stopping at the spot her parents had died. She knew she was probably never coming back here again. The past was finally best left dead.

She moved to the lighthouse and quickly climbed the spiral steps to a maintenance room just beneath the walkview where the light was held. A ladder in the center led to a trapdoor to the balcony, but here was where Callie called home. Buried behind rusted gears and oil slicks and burnt patches of wax from candles was a flat blanket mat, torn and dusty, in a corner. She sat on that bed as she rummaged through cardboard boxes just behind it.

Callie threw her feather cloak down over an old rocking chair and a book ear-marked on the 5th chapter. The spine was faded but Callie knew the text by heart: For The Butterflies. It was her favorite story as a child, and the protagonist was her namesake. "If nothing ever changed," her father had said, holding her close in his lap in that rocker one stormy night. He'd stayed up here often to maintain the lighthouse in bad weather, and Callie found herself joining him like a moth to flames.

"If nothing ever changed, we'd have no butterflies," he read from the book, tapping her nose. "'When they're mad and mean, they turn into moths' he said to Callophrys, tapping her on the nose like so! 'But when all they feel is love and hope, they turn into butterflies.'"

Callie sighed loudly, looking at her wings. She was no butterfly. She packed the book anyway though, in a small saddlebag. It was all she needed to fit her life in.

"I'm not a butterfly..." She said aloud in a grumpy tone as she ransacked a cardboard box for photographs.
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Queen Chrysalis
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"No, you're not. But you are so much more." The voice was melodic and sweet, and she practically purred at the final syllable as she watched Callophrys from the shadows opposite the chair. She had spotted the changeling girl as she had left Canterlot with a gryphon. How fortuitous indeed to have run into a solution to her own problems so soon.

She made no effort to disguise herself as she laid down and attended to a plushie she was toying with. A stuffed caterpillar. How cute. She held out with an arched brow. "Yours, I presume?" She smiled knowingly. "It's so good to see you again, Callophrys."
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Fethur
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"I--"

Well, wasn't that worthy of a blue screen. She stumbled backward over herself as the voice's owner came to view. Like a deer in headlights, she stared wildly at Chrysalis, taking in everything about her. The green mane, the holes, the black crown.. The crown. She only stared agape at the plushie, eventually taking it and hugging it close to herself as if insulted that she had touched it.

"Wha--..t... You're a changeling... You're... What are you... What are you doing here?! Don't you know better than to scare the crap out of someone?!?" That defensive mechanism worked well. "How did you get here?! Who are you...? What are you doing in my house...???"
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Queen Chrysalis
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"My..my..." She pouted her lip, flattened her ears, and stood to move a tender step toward Callophrys. Her voice was barely above a whisper, and all the more fragile in the long silence since Callie had yelled. "...the world's been so cruel to you, hasn't it? So unfair."

She again moved closer, bringing the plushie close to herself to stare at it with a sigh instead of the changeling child before her. "Yes, I can feel how it's chipped away at your emotions until this is all that's left. Ponies has roughed all your edges, haven't they? I'm so sorry I ever left you with them."
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Fethur
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"..." Callie's guard broke. She couldn't even wrap her head around this. This wasn't normal. The proper reaction to her shouting was for the other to threaten her, then for her to see how close she could skirt to death without meeting it. That's how this worked. Not like this. Not... it wasn't even pity, was it? It was something else. Pure, raw, perfect understanding... from another changeling.

She wanted to deny that the world had tried desperately to claw and rip her down to her inner fiber but it was... true. She was nothing of the child who once pounced about the flower fields around the cottage and lighthouse. Nothing of the filly who flew down to the shoreline off the cliffs to count how many times the waves licked at the shore, or find hermit crabs in the sand. Everything she once was, the very child that once held that plushie Chrysalis now held, was dead. She could feel every pin and dagger buried deep inside what remained of a now fractured and bleeding personality.

And then it dawned on her. Those words... "Left me... with... them...?"
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Queen Chrysalis
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"How rude of me; I've yet to introduce myself." Chrysalis tossed the doll aside and bowed low and graceful, pulling one hoof back in an elegant sweep. "I am Chrysalis, Queen and progenitor of changelings. Former princess of Maretania - oh, but you've likely not heard of it. It was wiped off your pretty maps by a princess you've never met, and a King I've yet to best."

She laughed a little as she got up again to her full height, adjusting the crown upon her limp strands. Ah, Horizon. Yes, she'd not yet finished her revenge. But he could wait while she dealt with a new idea. Her magic played with a lock of Callie's mane as she pulled and tucked it behind the girl's ear.

"And you," she smiled sickeningly sweet. "You're my daughter. One of many. But one of few to survive. And I've missed you dearly... Princess."
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Fethur
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"You're my mother." It was more of a shocked question, but she was too stunned to say it properly. She simply stared wildly at the changeling and tried her best to rewind and play that back in her head. She had a mother. A biological mother. And sisters? What other family? A kingdom? She was a... princess? What did princesses do? How did they act? She had a mother?!

Callophrys glared. "You're my MOTHER?" She stomped her hoof. "YOU are MY mother. Then why was I raised by ponies? Why was I-- Why did you leave me here? You have... You have no right to expect me to give a fuck about anything you say to me....! I... I don't believe you! You're... stay away from me!"

She sprinted, running past Chrysalis and out of the lighthouse into the flower fields beyond the gate and stopped, hyperventilating. She focused on a flower, watching it bend in the wind, until her vision wasn't blurred anymore. Even out here, she felt too confined. Everything was closing in on her and spiraling inward farther and farther until breathing was impossible. She tried to will herself to concentrate on anything else but the rapid-firing of her thoughts and emotions.

Anything. Anything else. But all her memories, all her thoughts, everything was negative. Everything was sad or frustrating or stressful or frightening. She held her hooves on either side of her head as if moving them would cause her brain to swell. Panting hard, she tried to think of something happy. Something happy. Last Call and Razma. Sol Oriens. But if Sol didn't accept her... if she lost that too... she finally had something to lose.

All her thoughts made everything exponentially worse until finally she collapsed into a panic attack and blacked out.
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Queen Chrysalis
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She let Callie pass her without so much as flinching, and as the girl finally passed out from anxiety, the queen simply walked to her with a smile, wrapped her in warm green magic, and rested her on her back to walk through the fields to the cliff side, where she sat. She rested Callie's head against her side and stroked back her mane affectionately as the poor thing rested from the attack.

"This world really has taken so much from you, hasn't it, my child?" She sighed, staring up at the moon and allowing herself a moment of quiet reflection and sincerity. She sang a lullaby as Callophrys slept.



"Rest little princess
Sleep take thee away, into a dream
That's so splendid

Do not feel threatened
For here I will stay
Here right beside you
In lovelight

I wish, sweet child
To show you the way
To survive the pain and
The Sorrow

Forgive me my daughter
That life has a way
Of killing your trust and
Your pleasure

Hush now dear child
it must be this way
to weary of life and
Deceptions

Rest now my daughter
For soon you'll away
into the dark and
cold night

Or stay here, my treasure
And I'll take thee away, into a world
of acceptance

Awaken, my child
There's still time to say
That you'll stay here with me
in the Shadows"


She finished the lullaby with a final stroke of her hoof against Callie's mane, and sighed softly, speaking to herself more than the girl. "We are but destined to be hated, my daughter. Your denial of me only further serves that curse. But if you want love, you need only first accept it."
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Fethur
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She was awake... awake for most of it. It sounded so... familiar. She'd been roused somewhere between sleep and waking to the familiar tune being sung to her before... before seeing a bright light during stormy hours. Of ocean waves forming the cadence. That voice... right there... that singing voice was haunting her dreams since she was a child. And the moment she heard it, she remembered that voice. A child never really forgets their mother's voice.

She opened her eyes as Chrysalis finished and sat up. How long had she been out? It couldn't be more than twenty minutes. She rubbed her eyes, feeling more calm now that her emotions were spent. She stared down the cliff at the ocean and frowned, shaking.

"You just want to... hurt me like everyone else... right? Like everyone else. You abandoned me here. So why even come back...?"
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Queen Chrysalis
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"Because you mean much to me~ Leaving you was not part of my plan, but I thought you would be... safer. Happier. Equestria is not a safe place for non-ponies, as you've seen. I thought if you could join them, they would not see that in you. But they did." Chrysalis sighed. "It was my mistake. And hurt you? Never. Why, I'm here to guide you."

She sighed. "I've no need to ever hurt my own child. I only wish to rescue you from your... position. If you disbelieve me, then I will leave without hesitation. Is that your wish?"
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