When your kids are home-schooled and your best friend/roommate writes code on his laptop for a living, it’s logical to assume that they would spend a large portion of their time inside the apartment where they live. So to find Selene sitting just outside the apartment door eating veggie pizza and playing a game on her phone was odd, to say the least.

“See, Uncle Nick and Little Sis are being weird,” she replied when I asked why, exactly, she was out here. “Oh, and the pizza guy hasn’t come out yet.” The almost eleven-year-old disguised alicorn immediately went back to her game.

Nervous, I opened the door – which was strangely unlocked – and peered inside. “Did you know about this?” I asked my adoptive daughter.

She bent around and looked into the open doorway. “Ewww, that’s gross!”

“Well, it certainly looks like something out of a sci-fi movie…” I commented.

Every last square inch of the apartment was covered in a thick layer of binding gel, far more than I would have ever guessed two changelings could have produced in an afternoon. Nick and Klika were both dangling from hammocks made from the same green, gelatinous material. In the center of the room, there hung a large cocoon within which I could see the still outline of a man; his uniform was piled up on the counter. The floor was covered with partially empty pizza boxes and boxes of… candy hearts?

From where he hung, Nick threw something at me, which I reflexively caught with my magic. It was another box of the candies, this one unopened. “Bro… you gotta try those…” he half spoke, half moaned.

“Oh… Daddy, they’re so… tasty…” Klika called out in a similar tone.

“Hehehehe… and they let you taste food again… real food…” Nick said, this time a full on moan of pleasure. “I haven’t had pizza… this good… in three years…” He shoved a slice of pizza in his mouth. “So… hungry…”

“Why… is the room pink… and wiggly… and stuff?” Klika asked, despite the fact that the room was caked in green slime. Klika rolled out of her hammock and flopped onto the floor below. When she stood, I could see that her stomach was distended from over-eating and binding gel was continuously flowing from her holes and spilling onto the floor.

I eyed the box that Nick had given me. It looked like any other mass-produced Valentine’s Day candy, but it was obvious that Nick and Klika were tripping hard. Selene called out from her spot in the hallway, “It’s the candy. I dunno why they’re doing that; the candy tastes just fine to me.”

Without really thinking, I opened the box and popped a few in my mouth. Rather than the sugary taste I remembered from when I was human, or the ashy taste of foods other than meat, the candy hearts tasted something like love, but without any of the magic gain that I normally feel when I feed.

Within seconds, a feeling of euphoria descends upon me. I feel great, I feel wonderful, I feel… lethargic and hungry enough to eat Celestia herself. I barely notice my human skin burn away as I dive for the pizza. My arms and legs feel funny and start to drip green goo. I have to try three times to grab the food because my vision has gone all wibbly-wobbly. At the same time, I start feeding on the captured pizza man – high on changeling venom – in the cocoon. I giggle slightly as I eat.

Selene, still peering in from the doorway, said, “I don’t get it…”

Author's Notes:

*Ding* Have a mini-chapter. Just a little something I came up with based on the idea "What would happen if a changeling ate a mass-produced, edible representation of love?" Alien Catnip, that's what. It works something like a mild hybrid of weed and LSD, makes changelings involuntarily revert to their true form, and continuously excrete binding gel. It's also not addictive and relatively harmless, but definitely not something to take in the company of humans.

Oh, and this:

It's completely relevant.