Accidental Sunshine (7) (Patreon)

Grey-17 stood in the shadows of oversized trees, with two ponies she barely knew facing her. Others watched from further away, though they pretended not to. She had just caused an obvious scene by crashing in front of everyone.

But not enough for those armored ponies to show up with weapons and kill her. The longer she spent here, the more convinced she was that ponies were awful at detecting infiltration. If she could stay hidden, how much better could real hunters do? Otic would probably have them filling whole casks with love by now.

"Ditzy?" The earth pony nudged her. "Spaced out for a second there." She looked directly at her eyes, then away again, one ear folding over. Whatever she noticed there, it wasn't good.

She forced a smile. That usually stopped the ponies from probing any deeper. It did this time too. "Sorry. I'm just... happy that you're my friends. Most creatures would laugh at me."

She eyed the path behind her, and the obvious trail she'd left in the garden leading to her crash. "I guess it makes sense. There's a lot to laugh at. I've never been very good at flying."

Lyra wrapped her leg around Ditzy's neck in the gesture ponies called a hug. It wasn't very much love compared to Time Turner's relief at her survival—but it was still just for her. Ponies had so much love for each other she never had to steal it. They were always happy to share.

"Being a little clumsy does not mean ponies are going to laugh at you," she said. "Not if they're worth caring about, anyway."

"Forgetting skills and losing coordination is... another side effect of what happened, right?" asked the earth pony. "This is to be expected. Don't worry, I'll have a word with Daisy for you about these flowers. With my help, we should have the park ready for spring again in no time!"

Lyra released her shoulder. "Everypony is thrilled you're out, Ditzy. So... we wanted to get together tonight. Vinyl and Octavia's place. You'd hear it happening even if we didn't invite you, but..."

"You know how Time Turner can get," the earth pony added. "Head buried in his work, and next thing you know it's sunrise. We'd never see him outside the lab if it wasn't for you."

"Oh." She nodded, as though that explanation meant something. “Get together” was one of those phrases ponies seemed to use. They had hundreds of them, maybe even thousands—all subtle variations of how ponies could be close to each other and what they might be doing.

One day she might even figure out why members of different broods would want to spend so much time together. But all that came from wider holes in her knowledge—how did prey creatures even live? They ate solid things for their whole lives, not just when they were very young. They somehow produced love and other emotions, instead of consuming them. And they usually wanted to kill bugs when they found them.

"I've already talked to Vinyl on your behalf," the earth pony continued. "Don't be afraid, she's going to tone down her music tonight. If you prefer, we could even persuade her to use a few recordings of Octavia's last concert instead. Keep things nice and calm for you during your recovery."

She shifted nervously, folding her wings. The longer they waited here, the more ponies gathered near her accident, staring at the damage she'd done. Every bug instinct she had told her the same thing: it was time to go.

"What's a concert? I don't think I've ever been to one of those before."

Her “friends” shared a look. The unicorn sighed. "If you forgot, you'll just have to go to some more! Make new exciting memories! And maybe dig up some of the old ones."

Something echoed from overhead, loudly enough that Grey-17 jumped. Her wings opened but not fast enough to catch her. Pony wings just didn't move fast enough for that.

It came from the tower, exactly where she had just been. But the sound was... unlike anything she'd ever heard before. Not words, yet organized. They varied in tone, some low and others high, some fast and others slow. Each one like a piece of metal struck by something hard.

Her mouth fell open, and she stared, utterly dumbfounded. Flying burrows were strange, but even they were not so thoroughly outside the context of her reality. Bugs could fly, and burrows could be dug, so why not both?

The sound did not last forever. Though it felt like it was eternal, the reality couldn't be more than a few seconds. Silence returned, and ponies all around them went about their lives as though nothing had happened.

"That's... the most amazing thing I've ever heard!" she said, pointing up at the tower. Her tower, at least for now. She was living inside it! "What was that?"

The ponies laughed. It might come at her ignorance, but somehow it didn't feel quite so venomous as the ones she remembered from the hive.

"You mean music?" Lyra finally asked. "I believe Octavia helped compose that little melody. Ponies were sick of the old sound—just not interesting enough. She gives him a new one every year or so."

She beamed, opening both wings in her excitement. "That was amazing. How do we make it play again?"

"We wait until tomorrow," the earth pony said. "Or come to the party tonight. Vinyl and Octavia's place. If you don't remember where it is, just listen. You'll hear it."

[hr]

Grey-17 spent a few more minutes outside with the two. But they had places to go, and so did she. She had to do something important, or else her time with ponies would eventually make her explode. Maybe even literally.

"Carrying too much love is incredibly dangerous," Otic taught, on one of their very last lessons together. Before that, the idea of Grey-17 ever even becoming a hunter was never considered seriously enough to be addressed. Too much magic? Not a risk.

"You can have too much of anything. Too much water, and you drown. Too much heat, and you burn. Too much love, and you're poisoned. Even if you're on extended assignment, and won't be returning your harvest to the swarm for months, you must store it."

The mechanism wasn't terribly complicated. She wandered around the back of Time Turner's building, where he threw away lots of different things into a metal box instead of a rubbish burrow. She saw exactly what she wanted poking out near the top—a bottle made from the clear hard stuff that ponies put in their walls to see outside.

Grey-17 didn't have to understand how “glass” was made to know it would work for her. A little trip down to the river running past the workshop, and the foul-smelling residue within was gone. She carried it inside, trotting past the lab before Time Turner could look her way and notice.

She hurried up the steps, as much as any creature could hurry up such an exhausting route. Time Turner was right, it would be much better to fly through the balcony. But after her recent accident, she wasn't going to try now, certainly not with something fragile in her mouth.

Once upstairs, she shut the door carefully, then did the same with the cloth over her windows. Even up this high, ponies might fly past and see her. She couldn't take the risk.

Only when she was sure about the dark did she finally release the transformation, the same one she'd been holding since the ponies first discovered her. Days? Had to be weeks by now, thanks to her time in the hospital.

The tower bedroom felt a little bigger at that size, but also smaller. Her buzzing wings could lift her again, up into the rafters where wooden rods spun and moved to their steady rhythm, and a thin wood wall separated her section from the majority of the tower's open space.

She peered over the wall, at a room clogged with gears, rods, and spinning metal. That explained the constant rumble of noise through there, without any corresponding emotion from a living creature. And those tall metal things hanging there must be where the music came from!

She didn't go in there now, no matter how curious she was. She had a different purpose.

Bugs made other creatures unhappy, enough that they would kill one if they were ever caught. She could never let that happen. But if she didn't get rid of all the extra love she was carrying, it would poison her.

She knew how, the same way she knew lots of bug things. It still took some concentration, holding her mouth over the bottle she'd taken and letting her body convulse. Soon she felt it moving up her throat, burning all the way. It hurt, albeit less than much she had suffered in the last few weeks.

Liquid dribbled into the bottle—slowly at first, vomited in brief spasms. Grey-17 kept going, until her stomach was almost empty and the bottle was nearly full.

She finally released it, licking a few drops from her lips. The queen had a different word for this faintly pink, luminous liquid... glamour.

As much as I've eaten in a year, she thought, nudging the glass. With so much glamour, another dozen members of Grey brood might still be alive. She had hunted all that in a few weeks?

Yet her task wasn't done yet—she needed to seal it, or else it would boil away in the air. She searched for something organic in the room with her, and soon found it. Time Turner had brought a bowl of fruit up here, with a variety of different things inside. She didn't know their names, but none mattered. She picked one, and started chewing.

Minutes later, the process was complete, and she hacked up a mouthful of slime, which she could catch in her magic and carefully levitate over the bottle, corking it.

All that remained was finding somewhere to hide it. That food could sustain her if hunting went badly—and would probably earn her a name all on its own, if she brought it back to the swarm. But she wasn't ready to leave yet!

She flew all the way up to the rafters, so high that dust and spiderwebs covered everything. She found an open spot on a beam, and used a little more slime to hold the bottle down.

She landed, feeling immensely satisfied—and faintly hungry. She'd almost forgotten what it was like!

Yet this was far from the deprivation of her trip, or even the constant pain of living in the struggling swarm. It would take days before she felt like that.

Something jostled and moved in the stairwell, making steady progress up the ramp. A pony was coming!

Not very quickly, the tower made that hard. But if they made it to the top before she changed back...

Grey-17 whimpered, darting back and forth across the room. She hadn't had to think about transformation in all these weeks, did she even still remember how to change into her disguise?

"Ditzy?" Time Turner asked. His voice was already close, much more than she realized. She was so distracted dealing with all that food that she didn't notice. "I heard you had an accident. Some ponies saw you fall from your tower, is everything okay?"

She opened her mouth to reply, then stopped herself. She wouldn't sound like the mare she was supposed to be—she couldn't even answer!

She whimpered, buzzing across the room so fast she smacked into one of the boxes, knocking it off the other. Its contents spilled onto the floor, scattering in front of her. There were books inside, metal things, folded cloth.

"Ditzy?" asked Time Turner, tapping loudly on the door. "Please, may I come in? It sounds like you may need some help."

She moaned, shoving the contents off her, and her eyes caught on something.

What ponies called a “picture” a colorful, frozen image captured by magic onto paper. Only this one showed Ditzy Do, posing with some ponies on a cloud.

It wasn't as good as the real thing, even a dead version. But it was close enough. Green magic enveloped her, and she was a pony again.