I was still watching Sweet Alyssum and Forsythia drown in each others' presence when Hammer Hoof walked up on us all.
He smirked lightly at the sight before him before sitting down beside me to my right.
"I take it that's Aly, then?" he remarked dryly.
I nodded while smiling broadly.
"And you three are all showing yourselves because..." Hammer pressed.
"Oh, well, Sweet Alyssum was preparing to attack me as an Earthpony, so I thought she would be put at ease seeing I was not one," I reasoned.
"And she's not in a disguise because?" Hammer continued.
"Oh shut up," Forsythia groaned at Hammer Hoof, then pulled away from and stared down at her mare. "Aly, why were you hiding away here? I was so worried you were going to do something rash when I couldn't come home."
"I was sure you would have razed half the city looking for me, my sweet," Forsythia cooed. "You have always been too protective of me."
"I tried, but then I saw someone else get chased down by a group of twenty guards, which resulted in them getting knocked unconscious and dragged away, and thought the better of it," Sweet Alyssum spoke up.
"I mean, I can handle a good couple without them getting the better of me, but twenty is too much even for me," she explained.
"Sounds like you spotted Crook get dragged off to jail then," Hammer Hoof realised. "He evaded the guards a couple of times before they finally got to him."
"How long have you been hiding in here for? We were in here just last night together with a couple of ponies; Princess Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Camellia, and Meadowsweet. Were you in this building then as well?" I wondered.
Aly broke away from Forsythia but still leaned into her.
"I was trailing behind as I spotted you all walking down the road, but I didn't dare reveal myself to the princess or Applejack. They don't know we're Changelings, and I'd prefer to keep it that way," Sweet Alyssum pointed out. "Our lives in Ponyville would get a whole lot more complicated if they found out."
"You know the princess is aware of us, right? She considers a brother of ours called Thorax to be her friend, and our sister Moonshine is studying pony magic in her palace," I revealed to the pair.
"And Camellia and Meadowsweet now know that we're Changelings," Forsythia added. "It was inevitable; they broke us out of the jail."
Sweet Alyssum shook her head at that. "I can't comprehend why the ponies would go through such lengths for us."
I focused on my disguise again and let my magic wash over me. "You should come with us to Camellia's house. We wanted to see her next, so you can ask her directly why she would stick her hoof out for us."
Aly let her own magic wash over her, and she soon stood as a cream coloured Unicorn with an orchid coloured mane and tail, her eyes a lighter pink still. Her cutiemark was a bundle of flowers laid out on an open sheet of paper.
Forsythia took on her Earthpony guise as well, and the four of us stared between one another a moment.
"I do still want to know what happened to our cart," Forsythia suggested calmly.
"It's in the corner near the entrance," Sweet Alyssum knew.
"I'll have you know, the way Forsythia spoke about you I thought you were more hotheaded like my clutchsister Blaze," I chuckled. "You're far calmer than I had imagined. And I like your disguise; you look cute as a Unicorn."
Aly smirked at that. "Thanks, Hatchling."
Forsythia gave her partner a friendly bop with her hoof. "That's Pearl, and she's so much more than she appears. I owe my freedom to her, and so do about a hundred of our family who were down there with me."
"I thought you said it was Camellia who was responsible?" Aly queried.
"I'm fine sharing the blame with her, really. Let's say it was Camellia doing the legwork; I've been pushed up on a pedestal enough already," I offered. "I really did nothing special."
"Which one of us got invited to visit a pony princess again?" Hammer Hoof / Burst pointed out. "We're not talking about any of this in front of my mare when we get to Hoofton. I'm going to have a hard enough time seeing you as my ward given you're running faster than I can follow on some of these things."
"Okay, well, as long as the cart is fine and my Aly is fine, I'm fine," Forsythia decided. "Do you want to walk home with the cart today or take the train home, Aly?"
"If we could take the train? I've been up all night and most of the day since the sun came up. I'm barely able to form coherent thoughts right now," Sweet Alyssum responded. "Tell me if I'm not making sense, will you Tia?"
"You're still making sense, my love," Forsythia spoke softly, leaning in to peck a kiss on the other's lips.
"In that case we really should go to Camellia's house. Burst and I stayed there for a few days and she even made space in one of the rooms for us to have a makeshift cocoon for me to heal in after I sprained my foreleg a second time," I suggested.
There was a double blink from the pair before me.
"She didn't tell me that back in the jail," Forsythia breathed out. "I think I'm going to have to have that long chat with her sooner rather than later."
"No time like the present, then," I pressed.
"Fine, let's see the pony," Aly agreed.
"Out the same way we came in, then?" Hammer Hoof realised. "Let's get going."
We all filed out of the side door to the warehouse again and made our way through the back alleys in the merchant's quarter again.
Aly and Forsythia walked side-by-side, barrel-to-barrel, leaning into one another as they walked. It was cute to see the smaller Unicorn lean into the larger Earthpony even knowing they were my Changeling siblings.
To be entirely fair to Aly, I was feeling the long night myself. And I'd had a nap in the jail before we escaped it. I could only imagine how tired Aly must feel what with having been on edge for whatever ponies might chance upon her in her hiding place.
It didn't take long before we arrived at Camellia's house again, and I carefully knocked on the front door.
The house was quiet, dark, seemingly empty.
"Do you think she might still be talking to some guards or something?" I wondered of Hammer Hoof, who shrugged in response.
"She's a pony, I'd imagine she'll be fine after a quick checkup," Burst reasoned.
"Let me try again, maybe she's taking a nap as well," I considered, and rapped my hoof on the door again.
Now there was some stumbling from inside, and I could hear the creaking of the staircase as somepony made their way down it.
The door creaked open and Camellia looked out with sleep-deprived eyes.
"Pearl?" she recognized, her eyes then scanning over the others. "Forsythia? And two others I don't recognize."
"I guess you never saw Hammer Hoof, who you know as Burst or Oval, or Sweet Alyssum," I realised. "May we come in, please?"
"Yes, of course," Camellia agreed, opening the door more and stepping aside for us. "I told you you're always welcome here, Pearl."
We all walked into her home and sat down in her living room, with Camellia briefly scanning outside her home before closing the door again.
She walked over and I could see the wobble in her path. We definitely woke her up.
"So, all of you?" Camellia wondered, looking pointedly at Hammer Hoof. "And now I see what you meant with preferring stallions, I guess."
"Yeah, all of us. Also, guess who we found at the cart storage?" I answered her, motioning to Sweet Alyssum. "Meet Forsythia's mare Sweet Alyssum."
Camellia gave a gentle nod in Sweet Alyssum's direction. "Nice to meet you. I'm genuinely happy to see you didn't get caught by the guards; Forsythia seemed very worried about that possibility."
Aly just looked like she couldn't take Camellia's words at face value, but nodded anyway.
"What brings you all here? It's not a social visit, I take it?" Camellia wondered.
"Honestly?" I started, "This is the only safe place I know about in Canterlot and we're all very tired from the past night, which might as well have been extended by the Tantabus' effects on Luna... Forsythia and Aly would have to travel back to Ponyville, and Burst and me to Hoofton, before we could find a place to call home again. I was wondering, if we're not imposing too much, if we could all rest here so we can get our strength back for the trips ahead of us?"
Camellia blinked slowly, and then looked over the group before her.
"Well, I took Oval and you in because the city was inherently unsafe for you without your transformation magic," she started. "I must admit that took me on a path I was not ready for, but..."
"Wait, roll that back a moment?" Sweet Alyssum piped up in surprise. "You took them in while they were out of their disguises?"
"Yeah, we got hit by that anti-transformation magic while on the train into the city. We tried to find our way to safety but Camellia was right there in front of us at some point and she, just, welcomed us in," I explained quickly.
Sweet Alyssum stared hard at Camellia. "And you're not a Changeling yourself. What's going on?"
"I guess I'm the curious sort," Camellia warded off. "Spotting a pair of scared Changelings deep within Canterlot, clearly on the run from something, I had to figure out what was going on. And Pearl quickly convinced me I had made the right decision to do so."
"I did nothing but be truthful about things. I keep saying that," I protested. "A lot of the prejudices between us is because both our sides are keeping secrets from one another."
"Because it helps us to survive," Aly defended. "Not telling the ponies who we are helps us to blend in with them."
"Right," I agreed, looking past Forsythia at Aly directly. "And yet, you constantly fear being detected by them. You constantly fear having to wage war with them because either our Queen or the pony Princesses decide enough is enough and force the issue. This is something I found in all of our family. I can't constantly live in fear. I need to solve this misunderstanding that exist between us."
"If you can't constantly live in fear, you were born into the wrong family, Hatchling," Aly scoffed.
Camellia took a step closer to Sweet Alyssum and shook her head.
"No, Pearl is right. We Ponies are constantly afraid of another attack upon our towns by you Changelings, spreading stories about how devastating it would be. How we would get abducted and bled dry by you. How our empire would fall if only we let you overpower us," she stated. "When Oval and Pearl explained to me that that fear is unfounded, that a lot of you already live among us in peace, and explained how she sees our future together, I had to rethink that. I had to rethink everything I knew about you."
"The idea of a future together, in peace and harmony, does have an allure to it," Forsythia sighed out longingly. "To not have to hide who we are, but be accepted among the Ponies? I just worry about how anypony could love us for who we are. How would we feed upon them?"
"Pinkie Pie," I stated simply, knowing the pair of them living in Ponyville would have had more than a casual run-in with her. "You know how she is; she shares her love freely in order to be friends with every pony she comes across. She met Blaze, Breeze, Burst, Moonshine, and myself over in Hollow Shades and was my first feed after hatching. If we can convince the Ponyfolk in general that we don't pose as much a threat to them as they may think, more of them might come around and share their friendship with us openly. We would be feeding on that latent energy which would be all around us, instead of having to seek out individual ponies to target."
Forsythia considered that. "It is true that she's a force of nature... but to walk openly among them?"
"Oh no, you can't do that just yet," Camellia warded off. "No, you should definitely remain in disguise and only show yourselves to a small group of friends, building acceptance for you and yours over time. There's too much fear at work right now, and I am rather done with that after that whole deal with the Tantabus just now, but I know my people. If you suddenly just walk into town without a disguise on they'll go off in a blind panic."
"And that's what I keep saying," Oval spoke, dropping her disguise. "The time spent with you and Meadowsweet to just convince you both that we won't bite you with our fangs; Pearl tried so hard, and I did my best to just sit around in the background not looking too threatening myself. But the fear is there that you would betray us at any moment. That guards might rush in. When they were at the door that one moment and Pearl and me were hiding in the kitchen, I thought that was it for us both."
"No, no... No, I couldn't betray my houseguests, no matter who or what they are," Camellia shook her head definitively. "All of you are safe here while you're under my roof. Please feel free to rest here for a few hours, Pearl and Oval know the room I had set up for you so you can do that... resin stuff, if you need to. If you can maintain your disguises while sleeping I can also offer you the couch here in the living room. I think we all need to get some rest in and think things over. I'm having trouble following the discussion as it is, and I'd much rather come at it with a clear head."
"You're a true friend, Camellia, thank you," I voiced as my concerns bled away.
"Sleep honestly sounds nice," Sweet Alyssum agreed. "I'll have to trust you to be genuine, then."
"Please do. I'll try my hardest to not betray that trust," Camellia spoke to her, a warm smile on her lips.