Of course it was Burst coming up to check up on us, or me in particular, and it was clear where she first thought to check for me by her surprised outcry.
"Pearl? Wait, where did you go off to?" my clutchsister called out in that baritone of her stallion disguise.
I had to shake my head at her confusion and smiled at Camellia.
"I should probably go to her before she gets too concerned," I suggested.
"Just keep in mind what I told you, Pearl. He's probably not the right pony to explain things like this to you," Camellia warned.
I rolled off her bed and gave her a nod.
"I'll be sure to watch my step, Camellia. Thank you, again, for caring so much about me. You're a good friend and this, what we discussed right now, won't leave this room. You have my promise," I spoke to her, noting she seemed somewhat more at ease at my last statement.
I then turned for the door and opened it with my mouth given I was an Earthpony, finding Oval out on the landing as expected.
"Pearl!" he decried, "You had me worried there for a moment, what were you doing in Camellia's bedroom?"
"Oh, girl stuff," I offered with a smile and a shrug. "You wouldn't be interested in that sort of thing, Hammer."
Burst scrunched up his nose at my dismissive words.
"Oh, har-har. Here I thought you were abducted from our midst or something," he threw back.
"I was literally one room over from where you last saw me," I pointed out, motioning behind me and spotting Camellia walking up to us.
"Where would she be abducted off to?" the Unicorn wondered. "You two have been championing this idea that we should all coexist, don't tell me you're getting cold hooves on that now?"
"That's not what I meant," Hammer Hoof protested, then shook his head. "Well, since you both are awake, maybe you want to come downstairs as well? Forsythia and Sweet Alyssum are planning to leave with the first light since they have to haul their cart back to Ponyville."
"Oh, that makes sense, actually. It is somewhat of a walk if they don't take the train," Camellia realised. "I should prepare us all some breakfast, excuse me Pearl?"
I stepped aside to let Camellia squeeze past me and watched her quickly descend down the staircase. I reflected on how she said she wasn't a good mother, but here she was thinking about making breakfast before her guests left.
And she had taken care of Oval and me for the past week on top of that. I was sure she would have done fine raising a child, even without the father in the picture.
Hammer Hoof stared at me.
"So, girl stuff?" he prodded.
"Yep," I agreed, then walked down the stairs as well.
"Hey, no, I... damn it," Oval called out from behind me as I just walked away from him.
I heard him following behind me as I got to the bottom of the stairs and walked into the living room.
Forsythia and Sweet Alyssum were both seated on the couch, snuggled up against one another. I reflected on how much smaller Sweet Alyssum's Unicorn form looked compared to the sturdy Earthpony form of her mare.
She was supposedly the more fiery one of the two, but in a small package, while Forsythia was more of a gentle giant.
"Morning," I spoke to them, and sat down at the coffeetable.
Applejack had just about just all the apples Camellia had in the house to make her pies with the other day, but I was kind of craving one right now.
"Good morning Pearl," Forsythia spoke warmly. "How did you sleep?"
"Well enough, thank you for asking. How about you both?" I inquired as Hammer Hoof dropped his rump down on my left side and side-eyed me.
"I definitely needed that, thank you for showing me some ponies can be trusted," Sweet Alyssum replied.
"Well, Camellia is just that special," I chuckled, remembering what I had overheard. "I wouldn't just trust anypony, but she has proven herself to be a good friend to us."
"Ah? You wouldn't just trust anypony?" Aly pressed. "From what Burst and Forsythia have told me you've just about trusted everypony you've come across since Hatching."
There was a snide undertone to her words. She was clearly calling me out on this.
"To be entirely fair, the ponies I have encountered so far have all been ones I knew to be trustworthy, with the exception of Meadowsweet who was brought into the loop by Camellia while I was asleep, and our jailer," I pointed out.
"I had no option but to trust Camellia when she came across us out in the streets," I continued while staring straight at Aly. "She took us in without having needed to; on her own initiative, I might add. And it was fortunate that I could convince Deadbolt or we would have still been locked up down there. I wouldn't have just trusted him had I met him out in the streets or anything, but I had no choice."
There was a tense moment of Sweet Alyssum just staring me down as I looked right back at her, but then her expression softened.
"Well, don't make a habit of it," she huffed.
Forsythia leaned her head down to peck a kiss on top of her mare's head.
"We worry too much, I'm sure. A lot can go wrong in a short span of time, so we just want to make sure you're aware of the risks before leaving you," she offered in a kind tone.
"Yes, I heard you were planning on leaving with the first light?" I brought up.
"It's a bit of a walk down to Ponyville. If I didn't have to bring our cart back home with us, we would have taken the train so we could have left at a later time," Forsythia explained.
"How much of a difference would it be?" I wondered, having seen Ponyville off in the distance while escaping Canterlot.
"It's about two, two-and-a-half hours walk depending on whether Aly can keep up with me. It's twenty minutes by train," Forsythia explained.
"That's a big difference. Would a Pegasus fly the distance faster?" I considered.
"Well, yeah, but do you see a Pegasus among us?" Aly scoffed. "I'm the only Unicorn among you three Earthponies."
"I guess I don't count?" Camellia wondered as she walked in with a tray of sandwiches held in the air by her magic.
"You're a true Unicorn, not a Changeling," Aly mumbled. "I didn't consider it important to note you are what you are."
"Well, in that case I'm the only Pony among you four Changelings," Camellia turned the conversation on Aly. "Sandwiches anyone?"
She lowered the tray down to the coffee table and sat down near us.
"Well, yes, but," Aly started, only to get shushed by Forsythia.
"Breakfast does sound lovely, thank you for being so kind as to prepare it for us Mel," she spoke with a smile aimed at our host.
"Least I could do to send you and your mare off properly," the Unicorn replied with as much of a smile. "I'm sure I didn't get a chance to say it yesterday because we were all dead on our hooves, but I'm glad to finally meet you Aly. May I call you Aly? Syth here has been praising you into the clouds every time we talked out on the market."
"Huh, yeah, Aly is fine," Sweet Alyssum replied, using her magic to hover a couple of sandwiches over to Forsythia and herself. "She doesn't talk about you ponies in Canterlot half as much when back home."
Forsythia shrugged at that.
"You weren't interested unless it had to do with how many sales I made that day," she pointed out before taking a bite out of the sandwich floating in front of her.
"There's that to consider," I brought up, watching Hammer Hoof beside me grab a sandwich as well.
"What's that Pearl?" Camellia wondered.
"I'm saying that our races haven't come together over the past years because of a lack of interest to: We were forced to come together as a group to overcome the situation we were in, but would we have sought one another out if there hadn't been some dark force holding the city hostage?" I explained my reasoning.
"Would we have sought out allies on the other side of the proverbial fence if we didn't have to reveal ourselves? I mean that in both ways; would a Unicorn like Camellia have sought out our Hive without fearing for her life? Would any of us have just revealed ourselves to her and gone Hey, I'm a Changeling, let's talk?" I listed, looking at Sweet Alyssum in particular.
"We can't very well build bridges to start trusting one another if nopony puts their first hoof forward," I concluded, then finally reached for a nearby sandwich and pulled it toward myself with my front teeth.
"That's fair to say," Forsythia agreed. "I know Aly and me would have never shown our true selves if we'd had the choice."
"Right," Burst agreed. "The same goes for me. I would have happily lived my life in Hoofton without anypony finding out about me. At least, anypony other than Pinkie Pie and Starlight Glimmer."
"When did you meet Pinkie Pie and Starlight Glimmer?" Aly wondered, genuinely surprised.
"Half a year ago, back in Hollow Shades," he answered. "Blaze, Breeze, Pearl, and myself were visiting the spa there to..."
"Of course Pearl was there," Sweet Alyssum groaned, dipping her head down.
As she did, the sandwiches she was holding onto with her magic similarily dipped down a bit just as Forsythia tried to take another bite from her sandwich, making the Earthpony bite down on empty air.
"Hey, my sandwich," she protested weakly. It was too cute of a moment.
"That's what I've been saying for the past few days; there's something about Pearl," Burst grumbled.
"I'm pretty sure Princess Twilight Sparkle agrees with you on that, but it's not like I'm doing anything on purpose. I was sent here against my will, and have mostly just been going through the motions trying to find my place here in this world of yours," I complained. "Not my fault that we bumped into two problematic situations in a year's time."
"Half a year, Pearl," Hammer Hoof corrected me. "You landed in the middle of our Queen building up to another invasion, which you helped to stop in the first few days after your Hatching, and..."
"No, stop, don't tell me she was responsible for that as well?" Sweet Alyssum interjected.
"Not directly, no," I warded off. "Pinkie Pie and Starlight Glimmer did most of it."
"Oh, so that was where they went off to together back then," Forsythia realised. "I had seen them board the train in Ponyville and thought it was weird to see the both of them together like that."
Camellia's head turned from left to right, to left, to right, trying to look at each of us in turn as we spoke.
"As I said; they found us in the spa in Hollow Shades," Hammer Hoof reiterated. "They came off the train we used as a cover."
"You hijack trains more often, then?" Camellia wondered, seeing an opportunity to join in the conversation.
"Well, no, not hijack necessarily," Hammer protested. "Mostly we get near to a station and then board it before it leaves, or we pretend we just arrived with one and disappear into the crowds."
"Yeah, we don't usually stop the train in the middle of a field. Yesterday definitely was a special case," Forsythia added before reaching for the last bite of her sandwich.
Sweet Alyssum pulled the sandwich out of Forsythia's reach, eliciting a soft whimper from the big girl, and stared up at her accusingly.
"You stopped a train? When did that happen?" she demanded.
"Technically it was Camellia who stopped it," I clarified to get Forsythia off the hook. "Forsythia and I just boarded it once it had stopped moving. As did a whole bunch of our siblings who boarded the mail wagon at the back."
"Squeezed ourselves in, more like," Burst grumbled. "There was hardly any room for us all, but we managed to close the door before the train got going again."
Sweet Alyssum just looked at each of us in turn, then finally gave Forsythia the last bite of her sandwich.
"I'm starting to think I'm worried about the wrong thing; we shouldn't worry about what could happen to Pearl, but about what harm Pearl could do to our world," Aly voiced her concern.