By the time we made it to Hammer and Celery's home, it was clear that this Margery Pie had disturbed the hornet's nest already.
Hammer Hoof pushed the door open and walked in ahead of me, then immediately turned to the right into the living room adjacent to the entry hall.
He left it unsaid, but I walked in after him and closed the door behind myself nonetheless.
"Oh look, he's finally made it home," a feminine voice called out coldly. "And he's brought his mistress with him. The audacity!"
"Shut it, Mag," Hammer grumbled. "You're making assumptions again and I told you before I'm not entertaining those."
I followed him into the living room where I found the earthpony mare from before seated on a couch, giving me the death glare through those thin-rimmed glasses of hers.
"What? Am I wearing something of yours?" I bit to her, following my sibling's example of not even pretending to be nice toward her.
"I certainly would hope not," Margery Pie huffed as if the thought alone was unimaginable to her.
Given her off-white coat had a purple hue to it and mine a green one, I could imagine we would certainly not wear the same colour outfits.
"Margery just told me she saw you walk here from the train station with another mare in tow," another voice spoke up. "Can you honestly say she wasn't right about it?"
Hammer took a step aside so I could see the other couch in the room on which a light green earthpony mare was seated.
"No, she was right about me coming over here with a young mare," my sibling admitted. "Pearl, meet Celery. Celery, meet Pearl."
I looked my sibling's partner over for a moment.
Her mane flowed down the left side of her neck somewhat like Twilight Sparkle's mane from the show but it was a deeper green from her coat.
She had a light application of makeup on, nothing more than to emphasize her natural beauty.
She was smartly dressed in a lovely patterned sundress from under which I could just spot a slightly bent piece of celery depicted on her flank.
Her hooves were smooth and clearly reflected the light as if she had applied a layer of laquer over it.
"Hi, I guess..." I mumbled as the awkward teenager I was supposed to be.
"He likes them young, doesn't he?" Margery piped up.
"Oh, go find a pond and swim in it," I snorted at her, actually feeling bothered by her comment.
"Why are you still here, Mag?" Hammer inquired. "If you have to know; Pearl is a cousin of mine and her parents asked me to take care of her for a few months while they work some things out between themselves. There, are you happy now?"
"Well, I never," Margery decried in mock shock.
"I'm sure you haven't," I returned to her as sarcastically as I could.
"Pearl, leave it to me," my cousin suggested.
Celery looked me over and I tried my hardest to look like I was a teenager who was in this situation against her will and wasn't sure how to take it. It wasn't too far from how I actually felt, so there was that.
"You could have sent me a letter or something," she offered to her partner. "I wasn't expecting somepony to stay with us. It's rather sudden."
"Oh, great, nopony wants me around," I muttered dejectedly to keep up the act.
"They dropped her into my lap, Celly... I would have loved some forewarning myself, but you know what my family is like; you don't hear from them for ages and then they suddenly show up on our doorstep asking to spend a night or two," Hammer complained. "I don't like it any more than you do, but we can't blame it on the kid."
Knowing what I did about us Changelings, I considered how true Oval's words must be; I could just imagine any one of our family members needing a place to stay overnight and fabricating a familiarity with her so they could crash here.
I looked around the room for a moment now Hammer had drawn the attention to himself again and noticed how there were a surprising amount of fake luxury items spread around.
Even with my untrained eye I could see how Celery had tried to go for an upperclass style without wanting, or being able, to spend too much money on it.
Her obvious friendship with this 'Mag' Pie fitted in with this attempt to break into the upper layer of Hoofton's society.
I suddenly put two and two together; Magpie. A notoriously loud bird who stereotypically gets attracted by shiny trinkets just like the ones placed around the room we were in.
Or, probably more true in this case, somepony who talks too much and too loud about topics she should probably keep quiet about.
Pony names were sometimes deceptively simple to figure out.
Celery Stalk let out a long sigh and pushed up from the couch she was seated on.
"What did you say her name was? Pearl?" she asked, the tone of her voice losing its earlier sharpness.
"You can't possibly," Magpie started, but Celery shook her head at her.
"Thank you for informing me my husband was on his way home, Margery. I'll see you at the club tomorrow?" the green earthpony told her guest.
While not immediately showing her the door, the intent of her words was clear enough to all in the room.
"Well, I can see when I'm not wanted," Margery Pie scoffed.
"Oh, can you?" Hammer Hoof wondered, raising his eyebrow at her. "You certainly don't show it since you keep coming back here."
Marge very dramatically got up on her own hooves and started in my direction, then stopped directly in front of me and looked down upon me past the tip of her nose through those thin rimmed glasses of hers as if I had done her wrong.
"Excuse me," she stated.
"Why should I?" I retorted defiantly.
"Pearl, we /want/ her to leave," Hammer reminded me. "Would you step aside please?"
"Sure," I agreed, staring right back at Margery Pie's eyes. "I will because you asked me nicely."
I took a step to my right so I stood closer to Celery and Hammer, making sure that Margery could not get between us three, and motioned with my left forehoof toward the entryway.
"There you go, see how easy that was?" I had to add to kick Marge's ego down another notch.
Margery Pie huffed again and strode out with her head held high as if she had not just been the target of several digs at her person.
The rest of us kept quiet until the door closed behind her, but then there was a deep sigh from Celery.
"She's from your family, alright," she remarked. "Pearl, was it? Let's not make that a habit if you're staying here for a while. You don't need to draw Marge's ire as well; Hammer here is doing a good enough job of that already."
I turned my head to look at her, confused at the sudden openness from this mare.
"She came for me first," I protested matter-of-factly.
"You can't deny that, dear," Hammer Hoof added in my defense. "We have had a long train ride behind us from Vanhoover, with a holdup at Canterlot, so we're both a little out of it. I'm sure Pearl will mellow down if we give her some time to herself."
"Hammer, dear, first explain something to me; why did I receive your travel bag by post two days ago?" Celery wondered, turning upon her partner.
"Ah, that would be the holdup in Canterlot. There was a Changeling attack, would you believe it?" he started, his tone of voice rising as he dramatized the events. "I had already put my bag on the train, but Pearl was still on the platform. The trains departed to get to safety when the attack happened, with my bag on board! You should have seen it; hordes of them swarming the palace!"
"There were a handful of them testing the city's defenses," I corrected him. "Then everypony lost their minds and locked the place down."
Hammer narrowed his eyes at me.
"Shush, let me paint myself as the hero that I am," he chided me. "There were hordes of them swarming the palace, and they broke into the station, and I had to drag Pearl to safety..."
"Hero? In your dreams, perhaps. You mean you complained loudly about being shoved into another pony's home and told to stay out of sight while the guards combed the streets looking for where the Changelings had ran off to," I corrected him in a tone of voice as if I was getting bored with it all.
"That sounds more like my Hamm, yes," Celery chuckled at me, then turned around and pressed a kiss on my cousin's lips. "Whatever truly happened, I'm glad you're back home again."
Hammer kissed his wife back, and I could just sense the love between them radiating out from them.
It felt good, and I realised I was feeding off them as if I was breathing in secondhand smoke.
I had to remember myself what my guise was about, and turned away in mock disgust. "Ew."
"Oh, just wait until you find your own very special somepony, Pearl," Hammer threw my way.
Celery turned back to face me and shook her head.
"Don't mind him, dear," she suggested in a kind voice. "Now, as Hammer Hoof must have told you before; I'm Celery Stalk. You're welcome in my home as long as you follow a few ground rules."
I mentally steeled myself. Considering the way she presented herself, the decorations in the living room, and her friendship with Mag, I was fearing the worst.
"We don't do titles here. No miss, madam, or any of that stuff. I'm not miss Stalk. Call me Celery and nothing but," she stated and I blinked in response.
"Consider yourself at home as long as you stay under our roof, but please leave things where, and as, you find them. If you break something, I expect you to replace it," Celery warned.
"You're not the first of Hammer's many friends or relatives who have dropped by in the past, and I expect the same from any of you," she pointed out. "There's a guest room upstairs, first door on the left. There are two beds in there; you can pick one for yourself and get settled, but keep in mind you might share the room with another if somepony new comes by."
I blinked a few more times, then tilted my head slightly. "What, is this like a halfway house or something?"
"Our family prides itself on its hospitality, Pearl," Celery Stalk impressed upon me. "As long as you behave yourself and help with the chores, you can stay here for as long as you need."
"I told you she was an amazing mare, didn't I?" Hammer spoke with a big grin plastered on his face.
Celery smiled warmly at the obvious compliment from her partner.
"You should go up the stairs and unpack, Pearl. Celery and I have some things to discuss and preparations to make before dinner," my cousin suggested.
I didn't expect to be so warmly received, even if Oval had tried to convince me that Celery was the best mare in all of Equestria and so on and so forth. I just thought she had laid it on a bit thick because of her love for her.
Now I was basically just given a place to rest at, for an undetermined amount of time, by somepony who seemed to be less interested in who I was and where I came from than I had expected given Oval's worry about my background story.
I half-turned back to the entry hallway.
"Up the stairs and..." I started.
"First door on the left. Second door on the left is a washroom. Our bedroom is the first door on the right, and the nursery is the second door on the right. I would appreciate it if you didn't go into either of those two rooms," Celery explained.
"Yes ma'am," I said on autopilot, then felt my ears and tail droop as I corrected myself. "I mean, yes Celery. I'll stick to the doors on the left side."
I quickly trotted off to find the stairs, while hearing Hammer Hoof chuckle behind me.
"Give her a few days to get used to us and she'll open up more," he suggested to his wife.
The staircase was in the entry hallway, but I had not seen it as it was laid out with the bottom of it toward the back of the house, suggesting the landing upstairs was above the front door.
I clambered up it, hearing the pair of them converse with themselves downstairs.
Once I got to the top of the stairs I noticed the landing bend to the right, and immediately spotted a door around the corner. This was the first door on the left, which would be the guest room I would be staying in for the foreseeable future.
I looked further past the staircase opening to the wider space beyond and saw another door on the left past where the railing ended; the washroom.
Opposite the washroom was the door to Hammer and Celery's bedroom, which would be located directly above the living room if I could judge the layout of the place correctly. Further on the right was another door for the nursery.
I opened the door to the guest room, which opened counter-clockwise inward, made my way inside, and looked around.
The room was spacious, but sparsely decorated as if it was solely used to receive guests and nothing else.
Directly to the left of the doorway, past where the door was now sat flush against the wall, was a rectangular window overlooking the road outside. It was set slightly ajar on a hook to let some fresh air in.
The room extended toward the right, with a single unmade bed in either far corner.
Each of these beds had its own low dresser with four drawers stood perpendicular at the footend, the backs of these dressers was placed against the wall they stood against.
A small table lamp and a stack of folded bedsheets had been placed on each of these dressers and I got the idea that I had just walked in to a hotel room.
I walked on over to the bed on the right side, placed my saddlebags next to the dresser, and then considered my next steps.
Making the bed was probably easier if I could use my Changeling magic, but that would mean drawing the blinds and closing the door, so I first lit the lamp on the dresser to have some light to work with.
I closed the door, drew the blinds, and let my magic wash over me to drop my earthpony disguise.
Now I had a chance to use magic, sorting the sheets and putting them on the bed in the right order was child's play. If I had to do this with just my mouth and hooves, it would have probably cost me way more effort than it did now.
After I had the bed made I focused on my saddlebags and pulled out the assortment of random items I put it in back at the Hive.
A small plush pony was quickly moved to the bed. I would have to remind myself that I supposedly had some deep emotional attachment to it.
I pulled a small number of outfits out of the bags, sorting them into the various drawers of the dresser. Considering the state of the house downstairs, I kept a simple but stylish dress out and instead laid it on the bed for me to slip into before I would go down again for dinner.
The few shells I had managed to find in the Hive were placed in a grouping on the dresser near the lamp, an attempt to emphasize I had either grown up near the ocean or had an affinity for it given my cutiemark.
I was glad none of them had broken during my wild run through Canterlot, nor during the transport of the bag to Hoofton's train station.
Finally, then, I got to the bottom of the bag and found a note I was sure I had not placed in it myself.
Pulling it up into the light revealed a few short sentences written on it in pencil.
"I saw you in Canterlot. I know what you are. I have your address. You can't hide forever."