I walked downstairs and approached the living room, and I could smell the sweet scent of a tea drifting through the air.
As I rounded the corner, I could spot three teacups filled with a brown-tinted liquid in them on the low table set up between the pair of couches, but there was no teapot in sight.
Hammer Hoof had taken up a spot on the couch beside Celery Stalk, and the pair of them were leaning in against one another like the married couple they were.
"Welcome back, Pearl," Celery offered up to me. "Did you have trouble finding what you were looking for? It took you longer than I expected."
I walked up to the empty couch opposite them and sat down on it, placing the rolled up paper at my forehooves so I could answer her.
"No, I just thought I'd close the window now the sun is setting," I answered truthfully. "It took me a moment to figure out the latch."
"So why did you want to show Celery your portrait now? Couldn't it wait until daytime tomorrow? Wouldn't it be better to see it in Celestia's sun rather than the light from these lamps?" Hammer Hoof wondered.
He motioned his left hoof around as if to bring attention to the lamps they had turned on now it was steadily getting too dark to see without them on.
Camellia's home back in Canterlot had been lit with various lamps and candles casting a soft red glow around them. The lamps in this room cast a similar glow as if they held flames flickering inside them, but the light coming from them was a pale blue rather than an orange.
I could only guess at whether they were electric or magical in nature.
"Well, Celery and I were talking about the train ride over here and..." I started, but then stopped as Celery scraped her throat.
She had an odd expression on her face and I could see her barely shaking her head sideways while she motioned with her eyes toward Hammer as if to indicate I shouldn't inform him about our conversation.
"About what?" Hammer asked, confused as to why I fell silent.
He was not the only one who was confused at it; I wondered what it was that Celery didn't want me to tell Hammer, but this was not the moment to ask.
"About art, dear. You know, drawings, sculpting, writing, the sort of thing you claim to know a thing or two about but really should leave to the experts?" Celery explained with a clear dig at Hammer's expense. "Pearl said somepony had drawn her a portrait in the train?"
"Yes, I was there," my cousin agreed. "I was there for the drawing part, I mean. In the train. Supposed to be some really advanced style called 'hump the rail' or something."
"I am sure that you have misheard that, dear," Celery put to him with a warm smile playing on her lips.
I observed the interaction between the pair of them, noting that Hammer just let Celery belittle him like that. Allowed her to challenge his intelligence and treat him like he didn't know certain things, without defending himself.
With Celery having revealed that she knew more than she let on, and just let him think she wasn't aware, I realised all three of us were playing roles right now.
Oval was playing the role of the earthpony Hammer Hoof, I was playing the role of the earthpony Pearly Shells, and Celery Stalk was playing the role of the strong-willed wife of Hammer Hoof, the wife who certainly didn't know everything but still thought she knew better than her partner.
It was a bit sobering to consider that their marriage was based on the both of them keeping up appearances around one another. I would have loved to dig into that more, but I had other things to occupy my mind right now.
I put my focus on the rolled up piece of paper I had brought down with me, and gently pushed the hairband off it with my left forehoof.
Brushing it open with my right forehoof, I could see the intricately detailed pencil sketch of my own face appear before me again.
I couldn't help but marvel at the insane detail on it, even if it had been drawn in a moving train.
Celery craned her neck to try and look at what I was doing from where she sat across the room.
"Oh, that does look intricate," she noticed even from that angle.
I very carefully put it between my hooves and lifted it up for her to get a better look at it.
"Oh yes, even from this distance I can see that a lot of work went into it," Celery realised in awe. "I'll have to swing by the store tomorrow to get you a frame to put it in before you accidentally damage it while unrolling it to show it to somepony."
"You don't have to, really," I warded off. "You have already welcomed me in your home and made dinner and everything... even my own parents wouldn't have done that for somepony they barely know."
"I told you, Pearl; we want you to feel at home while you're here. It's honestly not a problem," the other mare pressed.
"I'm already surprised the two of you are speaking so amicably to one another," Hammer remarked, looking between us. "She was all bad news and thunderstorms on the road here; not happy with the situation at all, and who could blame her?"
"I'm sure she was just tired from the long train ride. She was fairly chipper when she joined me at the dinner table after her nap already," Celery suggested to her husband. "Pearl will feel a lot better after a decent night's rest."
"Yeah, I was just tired when we arrived here," I agreed with her. "I probably shouldn't make it too late tonight."
"Do you have everything you need to rest tonight, Pearl?" Celery wondered. "I'll put some towels ready in the washroom for you so you can have a bath tomorrow. You can use my soaps for now but do let me know if you need me to pick something up for you from the store, okay?"
There being a bath available for me to use was music to my ears. Camellia's house had been homely and all, but the last time I had a bath had been at the Hollow Shades hot spring the day before I left for Canterlot.
So much had happened in the past few days that I sorely needed to have another bath to soak in to calm my nerves and wash away my worries.
"You should drink your tea before it gets cold," Hammer spoke up, pulling me out of my thoughts.
"Huh? Oh, yes, thank you for making it," I offered back with a thankful smile.
I first rolled up the intricate pencil sketch with my forehooves again, so I wouldn't spill tea on it and damage the work the young foal from the train had put into it.
The hairband had been tied around it with unicorn magic before, and I had no hope of doing as good a job at it without, but I did what I could to loop it around the paper nonetheless.
"Do you need to check in at work tomorrow, Hammer dear?" Celery wondered of her husband, leaving me to my own troubles for the moment.
"Yeah, I'll be out the door at eight," he agreed. "You have your club at ten?"
"Yes, so I will be walking over by half past nine. That would leave you alone in the house until I come back from the shops around three in the afternoon, Pearl," she listed. "If you'd want to take a bath by yourself during that time, please feel free to. I'm not expecting any visitors or deliveries, so you shouldn't be disturbed by anypony."
I gave a thoughtful nod at that. Between half past nine and three would give me five and a half hours to myself. Plenty of time to take a long bath in and figure out what I was going to do with myself.
I leaned over to grab the cup of tea between my forehooves and brought it up to my lips to sip at.
It had cooled down to the point where I could still feel the warmth coming off it but it did not burn my tongue as I tasted it.
The tea had a rich flavour to it, a hint of something sweet mixed in with its natural bitterness, but I couldn't identify what had been used for it.
"The kitchen is just opposite the dining room in case you get hungry. You do know how to make breakfast or lunch for yourself, don't you?" Celery wondered with concern. "I'd hate to leave you by yourself if not; I can skip on the club for a week."
"Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself," I wafted away the worry with a flick of my tail against the backrest of the couch. "This tea is lovely, by the way."
"I'll let Honeysuckle Blossom know tomorrow; it's a new mix from her company which she asked the club to try out for her," Celery suggested with a smile. "I hope she'll roll it out as a new flavour in her tea store so I might buy more of it in the future."
"She does that often, does she?" I wondered before taking another sip of my tea.
"Frequent enough that we have a small collection of her mixtures in the pantry. If you want to make yourself some, do be careful with the stove? Don't burn the house down," Celery joked. "One kitchen fire since we moved in was enough for me."
"That was not my fault; the top log fell off the stack and rolled out of the oven," Hammer Hoof protested.
"Now, Pearl, there are wood logs for the stove stacked up on the lower shelves in the pantry. Don't use too much of the wood if you're just making tea, but it's there to be used for cooking." my cousin explained to me. "There's a box of kindling on the shelf above, but the flint is in the drawer closest to the stove."
"Oh, okay, so you're using a wood burning stove then?" I mused.
"Yes, why?" Celery wondered, and I realised from her surprise that it might be one of the more common things to find in pony society.
I really hadn't paid attention to what stove Camellia had at her place, or the oven Applejack had baked the pies in, and back in the Hive I had mostly just been drinking from the resin veins so there had not been a need for me to use a stove.
Thinking back to what I remembered of the show, I could remember Fluttershy's cottage having a wood burning stove, and maybe I saw one at Rarity's place during one episode, but I couldn't say for sure on the latter.
"Well, there's your lamps here. And I overheard some unicorns in Canterlot talk about magical heating stones," I replied with a helpless shrug. "I'm not sure how they would make those work for us earthponies, but they were debating it like it was the next best thing."
"Hah, unicorns and their magic," Celery laughed. "They do come up with some interesting ideas at times. Like these lamps we use here; they use a magic stone as well, but they give off no heat. We can touch them with our hooves to turn them on or off without danger of getting burned."
I gave a silent nod at having it confirmed there was no electricity at work, at least not in the case of these lamps. I took a final sip to finish my tea and placed the cup before me on the table again.
"Can I be excused now? I'm still feeling tired from the journey, and I am having some trouble keeping my focus," I requested. "I should really go to bed."
"By all means. I hope you get a good night's rest, Pearl dear. Perhaps we'll see one another in the morning, but feel free to sleep in a little later if you need to," Celery Stalk remarked with a smile.
"We won't go into your room unless you're awake; you should consider that your personal room while you stay here, unless somepony else drops by unannounced," Hammer added. "You won't find me invading your privacy again, but you didn't wake up from me knocking on the door and dinner was ready..."
"I'll make sure to not take a nap before dinner again," I trusted to them. "Goodnight."
I picked up my portrait from the couch and walked off for the staircase again, returning to the guest room before long.
The curtains were still drawn and the room had not cooled down too much now the window was closed, making me happy that I had taken that precaution.
After putting my portrait back on the cabinet, I lay down in bed and fell into a restless slumber.
I dreamt about a pony inquisition hunting down rogue changelings in a comical fashion reminiscent of old cartoons.
Twirling mustaches, threatening letters, and slapstick comedy scenes drifted through my subconscious mind as I slept.
At some point in the middle of the night I woke up with a start, rolled out of bed, and rushed to the window to check whether it was still closed.
It was still closed, locked, and the world outside of it was calm and dark.
I carefully walked over to the spacious washroom to do my business before returning to bed, and could hear snoring from the first door on the right.
Whether it was Hammer or Celery, I didn't know, but one of them was clearly dreaming about using a chainsaw to cut the wood logs I had been told about and was outputting the sound of that dream for all to hear.
Once I returned to my own bed, I was out like a light again within mere moments and did not wake until the sun had already risen up to its highest point in the sky.
I ambled down to the only clock I knew of; a grandfather clock set in the hallway downstairs, finding it just minutes to noon, then dragged my tired self back up again to take that bath I had been promised.
After struggling to figure out why the bathtub only filled with cold water, I remembered what Hammer had told me just the previous day about the pipes and the wood stove in the kitchen downstairs and put two and two together.
I once more bouldered down the staircase, entered the kitchen, and had a good, long look at the wood stove and the pipes running past it.
It was obvious, now I looked at it, that the wood stove did not just service the kitchen and meal prep, but that it also doubled as a heater for the water leading up into the washroom upstairs as one of them ran right up alongside the stovepipe.
With great effort I managed to put a log in the stove and light it, and not myself, on fire.
When I got back to the washroom, I was happy to find the warmth from the stovepipe also heated up the bathtub somewhat, and I just let the warm water fill up the tub properly.
I finally closed the door to the bathroom and, not seeing any way anypony from outside could look into the bathroom, dropped my disguise again.
I clambered into the bath and sighed happily as the water enclosed me in its warm embrace as it had done when Blaze, Breeze, and Burst had taken me to the hot springs in Hollow Shades.
After we had taken care of the threat of 'another failed invasion', as Blaze had put it so succinctly, we had taken a few more trips to the hot springs for the heck of it, but nothing beat the first time I went there with them.
With little Breeze and I splashing water around, having a moment of peace, before all hell broke loose when we tried to leave again.
The memories of that day, my first meeting with Pinkie Pie, the way she overloaded my senses with that burst of undiluted love and acceptance for me even as I stood naked before her as the changeling I now was, it sent a shiver down my dark grey insectoid body.
That love had been so genuine, so pure, and nothing since had given me that feeling. Our siblings could barely manage to share their love in such a way that we could feed off one another; it was the whole reason why they had sought out the ponies to feed on.
Starlight Glimmer, Camellia, Meadowsweet, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, nor Deadlock had been able to fill me with the same amounts of love which Pinkie had.
And now, a full six or maybe even seven months since having met that pink pony, I was finally starting to feel it; That slow creep of the hunger setting in.
That pit in the depths of my stomach, gnawing at me.
I thoroughly checked my legs for signs of the holes my siblings had, but couldn't find even the smallest dimple on them. They were still four unmarred, smooth, hatchling limbs.
I wondered where the first hole would form and if I would be able to tell while disguised as an earthpony. Would I know unless I dropped my disguise for another bath like this?
Perhaps I would have to ask Oval to look for those holes if we would get a moment to ourselves, just to make sure I wasn't imagining the hunger pang I was now feeling.
I let myself droop down until my head disappeared under the surface of the water, and let that awkward thrumming of the water blocking my eardrums fill my head so I would stop thinking for the moment.
A door downstairs opened and closed, and I could hear hooffalls against the floorboards.
I let out a long sigh through my nose as I pushed up into an upright position. So much for my alone time.
I shook my head to get the water out of my ear canals, then let my magic do its thing before I'd run the risk of the green flash being spotted by Celery coming up the stairs.
Now being a wet earthpony rather than a changeling, I pulled the plug on the tub and hauled myself out of it before grabbing hold of one of the towels which had been laid out for me by my host.
I meticulously dried myself as those hooffalls which had wandered through the house downstairs started to come up, perhaps prompted to by the sound of water draining through the pipes.
"I'll be right out," I called out to Celery to ward off the most obvious question she could ask. "I honestly haven't been awake for that long yet."
I could hear the hooves stop outside the bathroom door, but it remained eerily quiet beyond that.
"Celery?" I wondered, stopping my attempts to dry myself.
The doorknob jiggled for a moment as the owner of the hooves I had heard walking around tried to open the bathroom door, and I was instantly glad I had locked it.
I put my towel down and took a few steps toward the door.
"I said I'll be right out," I called out through it again, but I could hear the quiver in my voice as I was starting to feel unsure whether it was Celery on the other side.
The front door downstairs opened and closed, and the sound of something heavy dropping to the ground followed shortly after.
"Pearl, I'm home," Celery's voice broke the silence.
The bathroom door creaked as some weight pushed against it from the other side.
"I know what you are," a feminine voice hissed through the door, sending a cold shiver down my back.
They then turned away from the door and I could hear them run into the guest room, closing the door behind them.
"Everything okay up there?" Celery wondered in surprise at the sound of somepony rushing through the hallway upstairs.
I dared to unlock the bathroom door and hurried for the guest room as well.
"I'm not sure, stay down there," I shouted as I burst through the guest room door and looked around for the source of the other hooffalls.
The window was pushed open and I moved to look out through it, just barely spotting somepony lowering themselves down the trellis put up against the side of an adjacent building before they ran off.
There was a choice here; follow them to try and figure out what was going on, or let them keep the upper hoof and wait for them to potentially break into the house again.
No, that was no real choice, and contrary to what I had told Burst the day before, there was no way I could wait for her to take the lead on this. Not while I could still catch up to the intruder if I acted now.
"I'll have to be right back," I shouted in the direction of the staircase and Celery downstairs, then leapt out of the window myself...