After confirming among ourselves that Meadowsweet and I were presentable again after our crying fit, Burst motioned for the group further up ahead to come over.
"We still have two more cells to open up on this side. Tizzy wasn't among the first four, so she'll be in the last two on this side of the jail," she spoke to us both.
"Tizzy? Oh, right, the nervous one," I remembered. "So who all did you get?"
Oval pointed at a pair of ponies walking side by side, keeping some distance from the others. "A pair of Hatchlings from your world; Featherweight and Lighthoof. Apparently they both flew over here from the Hive as a pair of Pegasi trying to see who could get here first without using the train. Their race came to a sudden stop as they hit the barrier, and they were picked up off the ground and hauled off by the guards before they could recover from the shock."
"Ouch, I remember the feeling from the train," I spoke to Oval, then turned to Meadowsweet to explain. "That anti-transformation magic barrier feels like you've had a full meal and it suddenly wants to go back out of your mouth instead of staying in your stomach. It was very upsetting."
Meadowsweet made a face of disgust.
"I'm sorry to hear you had to go through that, Pearl," she spoke in earnest.
"And the other one?" I wondered, noting how different they looked to the rest of us Changelings.
Instead of fins which were a dark grey, theirs were a deep moss green. Their eyes were tinted a light yellow, and from what I could see peeking out from under his back carapace so were his wings.
They were seemingly chatting up a storm with Crook while they walked toward us.
"Glottis," Oval spat with about as much disgust as Meadowsweet had managed to show on her face earlier.
"I take it you don't like them, sis?" I reasoned from her reaction.
"Once in a while there's a bad egg among us, and someone comes out looking... different," Oval spoke with a strange kind of judgement to her voice. "Some are more aggressive than the rest of us, and are often tasked with soldier jobs even if they weren't born as soldiers. Others are less aggressive to the point of pacifism. Some are physically or mentally weaker, requiring the rest of us to take care of them. Some are natural born leaders. But they are oddities, one and all."
I raised my eyebrow at my sibling. "It's not like you to be this judgemental, Burst. Meadowsweet overcame her prejudices thanks to us, but now I'm learning you have some lingering ones we may have to work on together as well?"
"It's not a prejudice; it's a matter of survival," Burst protested.
"Do tell," I suggested, sitting down again to make it clear I was waiting for her to tell me the difference.
Meadowsweet sat down beside me, close enough that her fur brushed against my skin.
"Yes, please do tell me why I'm the silly one for judging you Changelings by your looks, but apparently it's fine for you to do it among yourselves," she added.
Oval looked increasingly more uncomfortable, pressed into this moment where she had only a short amount of time to explain herself before Glottis would get within hearing distance, and with the two of us not letting up.
"Glottis can see sounds, and hear smells," my clutch sister explained quickly, "but that's not all he can do. He's a strange kind of Changeling. Every Changeling is welcome among us, I told Pearl that. We all have our tasks to do in the Hive and the greater family, but Glottis' abilities are uncanny."
"What you're describing is synesthesia," I knew. "That's rare even back where I came from, but not unheard of. Certainly not something to discriminate against. There's more that you're not telling us; you had an almost visceral response to him. What aren't you saying?"
"He can tell when somepony gets sick before they have symptoms. He says they smell different," Oval whispered to us.
"Again, probably synesthesia. That's not weird," I pointed out.
"He knows when a pony gets pregnant before they do!" Oval tried again, waving her forelegs in the air as if to indicate how spooky it was.
"You're reminding me of the ponies from Ponyville when they described Zecora the zebra," I sighed. "I'm still not hearing a valid reason for your reaction."
"Zecora? She knows a lot about the plants growing in the Everfree Forest," Meadowsweet spoke with some adulation. "She always comes by the palace gardens when she visits Canterlot."
"The point I was making is that Oval shouldn't judge a book by its cover like that, given what we Changelings go through ourselves," I suggested to Meadowsweet.
"No, but it's not his looks I'm upset about, it's his magic," Burst tried again.
"Synesthesia isn't magic, sis," I sighed. "It's the pathways in their brains connecting strangely. It's not something Glottis can turn off or on or control if they do have it. It's just how they are. Are you really judging them for who they are?"
"No, but," Burst tried again, but at that point Glottis had walked up close enough that he could overhear her, so she shut up again just as quickly.
"Maybe we should talk about this at a later time. See what I mean for yourself," she huffed.
"Sure," I agreed. "You know I'm always willing to give somepony a chance."
"Oh, hi Pearl, how are you settling in in our world?" Glottis wondered as he approached us. "I hear Blaze, Breeze, and Burst took you in as one of their own?"
"I'm sincerely starting to reconsider given some recent events," Burst grumbled under her breath.
"It's a pleasure to meet you Glottis. I love your colours. You're the first Changeling I see who looks different from the norm, not counting the soldiers in the Hive where I hatched," I offered up.
"Yeah, I'm one of a few of us with different colours. Not every one of our siblings appreciates our uniqueness, so I'm happy to receive the compliment," he responded with a smile. "Your leg should be just fine by tomorrow if you don't put too much pressure on it today, by the way."
"See what I mean?" Burst hissed.
I pointedly ignored my clutchsister's reaction, instead opting to lift my right forehoof up and hold it out in the air between Glottis and myself.
"What clued you in on that, if I may ask?" I wondered.
"Hurt limbs tend to turn a soft shade of purple. The more hurt they are, the more red this becomes. Yours is almost blue again so it's almost healed up," Glottis explained.
"That sounds more like you can see auras than synesthesia," I considered.
"What's synesthesia?" Crook asked.
"It's when your brain mixes up what sense you're getting your information from. So you see sounds or hear smells or such. Seeing auras is different from that, I think. I listened to a few podcasts about that back home, where they claimed it had to do with our natural electromagnetic fields or something," I explained. "I don't have either, so I wouldn't know from personal experience."
"No, I can definitely see sounds as well; there's a ripple in the air when someone speaks," Glottis explained. "It's not like it helps me much; it's just ripples. I tried to figure out if I could hear across a distance by interpreting the rippling, but it's more difficult than it might sound."
"That makes sense," I accepted. "Sound is just a vibration of the air after all. You would've been so overwhelmed if you had been born on Earth... there's sounds everywhere."
"Oh, no... I try to stay out of our bigger hives or pony cities for that reason; way too much happening at once," my brother suggested. "It's calmer here; there's a spell which keeps the vibrations to a minimum. They're still there, but a lot weaker than I'm used to. I like the peace."
"According to Burst here, you can smell when someone gets sick too? That's an amazing ability. If you weren't in danger of getting overwhelmed by seeing sound waves, I'm sure you'd be an amazing doctor," I put forward to Glottis.
"Ah, I wish," he returned. "As I said; your leg has a colour to it which tells me you are recovering from something. I couldn't tell you what, though. You smell fine. Some diseases have a smell to them which I noticed when half the Southern Hive got the sniffles all of a sudden. I could smell the sickness spread and ran from it before I could get infected as well."
"That's cool too. I don't see why some of our family members have issues with something like that; you're an early warning system for disease outbreaks!" I laughed.
"Can you stop praising me? I'm not used to it," Glottis asked embarrassedly. "It's not really something I can control; it's just who I am. I don't deserve praise for that sort of stuff."
"Fine, fine. I just think it's cool that someone like you exists, is all," I agreed.
"For what it's worth, I think it's cool that you Hatchlings exist," he countered. "You come here from a strange world, having lived a life we can only guess at, and you somehow fit in just fine with the rest of us. You definitely sparked a wave of excitement when your name started to get passed around, Pearl. I heard you made a giant resin pearl which blocked off one of the lower passages after it rolled through half of the Hive?"
I blinked at imagining what that situation would have looked like.
"I don't have the best resin in the Hive; my soft resin dissolves after only a short hour. My hard resin is brittle enough that it won't stop anyone in their tracks. It sounds cool to me that you were able to make a perfect pearl with it on your first try," Glottis continued.
"No, no... No... I spat resin into one of the magic training holes and lost control of my magic, and afterwards there was a small pearl in the hole; look, I've got it as a necklace now," I pointed out, motioning at the resin pearl which had been dangling from my neck ever since it was given to me.
My brother peered down at my necklace, then grinned up at me.
"It sounds like your story has been embellished just as much as mine has," he realised. "Oh, that makes me feel a lot better about my own magic. I can see magic as well, so when I'm charging up my own magic, the whole world starts to vibrate. I got so nauseous from it when I was younger. The magic in this jail is nice and peaceful; the waves are small and regular. It's like the waves on a calm lake."
"I'm betting the anti-transformation magic out there wasn't as calm?" I realised.
Featherweight and Lighthoof finally joined our little group, but said nothing as they noticed our conversation was already ongoing.
"Oh, no... It knocked me out cold. I think I had a sensory overload from it," Glottis agreed, then addressed the other two Hatchlings. "Your sister here is much better behaved than you two. You should take a page out of her book."
I chuckled with some embarrassment. "Oh, trust me, I used to be far less social back home."
"What did you do back on Earth, Pearl?" one of the two of them asked me, and I realised she was a girl like me.
I had to think that question over. "I think I was an IT Consultant... that life feels like an age ago now, considering what all I've gone through here in Equestria."
"Yeah, I know what you mean," the same sister agreed. "I used to be a streamer, but was arrested and brought here after a chat with a fan. Turns out she wasn't who I thought she was..."
I raised an eyebrow at that. "So you got catfished, sister? I got picked up for spreading copyrighted material myself."
"There are a lot of you in the big hall we were told to wait in, I heard," she spoke again. "My name's Featherweight, on account of me being slimmer than most in my batch."
"I'm Lighthoof," the other spoke in a deeper voice. "I was a content creator like Feather. They got me for tax evasion even if I thought I marked my income correctly."
"I said he was like Al Capone; they got him on tax evasion as well," Featherweight suggested with a grin. "He's a rebel like that. Used to be a girl, like I used to be a guy. How about you, Pearl?"
"Formerly guy," I admitted. "I wouldn't want to go back to that now, though. I'm... stupidly comfortable as I am now."
"Oh, don't I know it," Featherweight agreed. "Lighthoof had some more trouble with it at first, but I helped him get over that. If you know what I mean."
She winked at me even as Lighthoof looked away, and I brought my right hoof up to poke my forehead next to where my horn protruded outward.
"Yes, I get what you mean. I heard you two were racing one another as Pegasi before hitting the barrier around Canterlot?" I tried, to get the conversation onto a different topic.
"Oh, yeah; we do well with Pegasi forms. I love flying, honestly; gets the blood pumping! But when we hit that barrier we were overcome with nausea and forgot that our Changeling wings move different, so we fell out of the sky," Featherweight explained in a rattle of words, eager to talk about it with someone.
"The guards picked us up and put us in different cells down here. I missed my bubby something fierce, I tell you," she finished, wrapping her forelegs around Lighthoof's neck and pecking a few quick kisses on his head.
Lighthoof just stood there taking it, glaring meekly at me. "Can you believe I used to be like her while going through high school?"
"And now you're mister mopeypants who desperately needs to be hugged and loved upon and brought to..." Featherweight started again.
I turned away from the pair and gave a nod to Glottis.
"Anyway," I spoke loudly to tune out Featherweight's babbling. "I'm happy to have met you, Glottis. Let's go see who else is stuck here, shall we?"
"She's a bit much," Meadowsweet coughed from beside me, getting up on her hooves as I did. "I'm glad you're calmer."
"I do my best," I joked at her with a chuckle.