Green, vertically slit eyes opened and looked around with what seemed like detached curiosity. This lasted all of two seconds before they widened noticeably and their owner's head jolted backwards in surprise.

"Woah! That was weird." Aang muttered as he shook his head from within a circle of cooling wax that at one point had been candles.

"You saw something. Didn't you?"

Aang pinched the bridge of his nose before shaking his head vigorously to clear it. When he looked up at Zuko, it was with excitement in his once again brown eyes.

"I think I saw him! I think I saw your uncle!"

Zuko was all but on top of him in the blink of an eye. "You saw him? Where? W-Why? Was he in the spirit world?"

The questions came hard and fast, surprising Aang with his sudden desperation and attracting the notice of the three other teens who had been waiting or lounging nearby.

Aang rubbed at the tattooed markings on his forehead, the feeling that something was missing from atop his head was making his scalp itch in a way not too dissimilarly to the itching of the tattoos he had recieved for completing his mastery of the air element a hundred years ago yet less than one from his own perspective.

"I don't think he was in the spirit world. It was only a couple of seconds, but I think I saw houses in the distance and some weird birds I've never even heard of."

"Really?" Katara perked up with interest, "What did they look like?"

"Umm... four long legs, and tail, wings and head like an ostrich-horse, but without the beak."

"What about the houses? Where is he?"

Aang shook his head. "The village looked a little like Makapu village, but the houses were all different colors, plus there was a river and grassy hills like we saw around Gaoling," he said as he tried to remember as much of the vision as he could. "Ummm... It also had a few weird looking buildings, maybe if I draw them we might be able to find out more."

Zuko threw up his hands and stormed away. They had made an important step to finding his uncle, he knew, but he simply could not help but still feel frustrated.

Aang, Sokka and Katara looked at each other and then at Toph, who was sitting nearby digging a finger in her ear. Sokka sighed and volunteered to go hunt down some parchment while Katara moved in on the newly vacated camp fire to begin preparing their meal.

Aang groaned and flopped onto his back as he tried to imprint as much of the vision as he could into his memory, knowing that Zuko would never leave this alone as long as his uncle was missing. On the up side, he guessed, this meant that he had a VERY motivated coach for learning the arts of firebending.

Using a gust of wind to blow a couple of the sheets of parchment that had been left over from their poster making efforts from when they had still been looking for Appa towards himself, Aang pulled himself to a sitting position and looked around. When he did not see any convenient rocks or trees to lean against, he stood and with a frown of concentration and several sharp moves, he made himself a low table with his 'terrible', as Toph called them, earthbending skills.

He set the sheets on his new table and groaned as he realised he had forgotten the charcoal stick he would need. A few minutes of searching and a weary trek to Appa's saddlebags and back provided him with with the necessary tools.

On the parchment, one strange house at a time, a village started to form, one that was otherworldly for more reasons than Aang would ever have dreamed of.

The tapping of hooves on stone grew quiet as the stone floor of the cave gave way to well cultivated moss. The near absolute darkness that served as a deterrent to unknowing visitors gave way to the soft shine of filtered sunlight, guided downwards through spell-drilled holes and a carefully placed and maintained system of lenses and mirrors.

The sounds of trickling water and the buzzing of wings brought the first true smile to the weary traveller in weeks. Home. Exactly a hundred paces later, the tunnel finally gave way to the Great Cavern.

Filled with scintillating multihued light, the Cavern was hundreds of paces across, the air kept far more moist than the hot, dry Badlands by a pair of cleverly engineered waterfalls on opposite sides of the vast space. The light was focussed on a low gem encrusted ziggurat that sat in the centre, of the room, of the hive and as most would say, of their very existence. The light that reflected from the ziggurat in a kaleidoscopic array of colors that would have shocked any pony who had somehow managed to get this far, for it came in such great contrast to the near unvarying black carapace that was the changeling's natural form.

Several drones, all young soldiers, raced in her direction as she exited the tunnel, rapidly relieving her of the now emptied water skins and the dusty protective cloak that had been provided to her by the outpost at the edge of their territory.

The thrum of murmurs redoubled as the hive at large realised just who had finally arrived. Sure, several of them had known and had been following her journey home through the hive mind with the avidness that could only come from boredom, or in the case of a couple of the younger soldiers, attraction.

Heeding the summons her cargo merited, the harvester made for the entrance to the ziggurat and the elders that resided within. Inside, the brighter reflected colors of the the crystals outside were muted to a comfortably dim glow, the throne room was a spacious hall, with nine low pads arranged in a horseshoe pattern in the center room before the low platform which held what was known to changelings only as the Rainbow Throne.

Each of these pads held the eldest and theoretically the wisest of the changeling race, three for each of the castes; Harvester, Soldier, and the Cogitators, many of whom lined the edges of the room where the hive mind was strongest and so their abilities at their most useful.

Roulette did her best to walk with more grace as she felt the eyes of the eldest and most respected minds of the hive, their headfins the longest and leg holes the most numerous, and those of her queen upon her. She did her best to ignore the Cogitators, whose minds almost constantly whispered and argued in this room and to focus on Chrysalis without staring at her.

Once the most beautiful of all the changelings, the queen's carapace was now cracked in several places while healing poultices now covered portions of her barrel and flank. Across her back, a significant portion of one side of her thoraxic mound, the protective shell under which she would normally keep her wings, was torn completely off and the wing underneath catastrophically damaged. For this generation at least, the Queen would never fly again in her own form.

"Welcome home, daughter." Roulette's nose rose slightly with pride at the term endearment from her queen. "Our sympathy for the loss of your sister harvester, and our congratulations on a most excellent job done. Your contribution to the rebuilding of the hive is greatly, greatly appreciated."

"Given your success with what has now become a very dangerous town to operate in, we will be sending you back when you have properly rested. Be aware that your brothers and sisters have been either ordered home or to lay as low as possible. The cogitators will have more up to date information for you when the time comes."

Chrysalis smiled indulgently as she waved her hoof at Roulette negligently. "Go on, then. Enjoy your rest, you have earned it well."

Roulette bowed herself out, knowing the Queen's personal enjoyment of Canterlotish affectations, her head not rising until she had cleared Chrysalis' line of sight. Yes, it was slightly demeaning, especially in a hive such as this where every changeling was just as important as the next.

Freed of her burden of the last several weeks of travelling at last, Roulette took a deep breath of the lovely humid air of the hive and flitted away for a long deserved rest, and maybe a hooficure while she was at it. Hive knows she certainly earned it, and it was something she had become rather accustomed to on her latest assignment.

She was rather pleased, actually, it was not often that one was sent to the same town two times in a row, even if they had performed spectacularly. If she was lucky, maybe she would even be allowed to become a long-term harvester/infiltrator and not have to make the gruelling trip back and forth between the Badlands and Equestria herself, leaving the delivery of her harvest to one of her juniors.

Several projected thoughts later, her hooficure was booked along with a long missed carapace wax and polish and she spread her wings to fly towards the chain of burrows that provided those services.

Iroh leaned back in the surprisingly comfortable wooden chair that had finally been custom made and delivered by Davenport, that charming stallion who for some reason sold seats and quills. Not that the latter had been of much use to Iroh as his own writing style was firmly grounded in brushes and ink.

Speaking of which, said stallion was just now sitting at one of the tables in his tea house discussing the finer points of upholstery with quite possibly the single most troublesome female of any species that Iroh had ever come across. The always immaculately coiffed white mare had been an excellent customer if it wasn't for her insistence on bothering him about his clothes.

Iroh smiled slightly as the background murmur of happy conversations washed over him. He realized that for the first time in a long time, he was becoming truly content. Not the carefree persona he tended to wear around his nephew but that this place had a way of washing away his anxieties; he felt like he could be happy doing this one thing for the rest of his life.

For a moment, he thought that was odd. While he had always had many interests, and quite enjoyed partaking in all of them, here almost all of them seemed to melt away into what he would call guilty pleasures or distractions. Yes, he was happy to go coach Spike in his firebending skills, play a game or two of Pai Sho or the local game called Checkers with locals such as Mayor Mare, Time Turner, Octavia and Twilight Sparkle, or even indulge in a wonderful scented hot bath at the spa, but nothing seemed to call to him so much as the happily bubbling pots in which he brewed his teas.

Perhaps this was the meaning to those ponies' Cutie Marks he reflected. It wasn't so much a talent, he reflected, as it was a calling. An indication what that pony had found that they wanted to do with their lives. He wondered for a moment if the ponies needed to practice to become good with their talents or if their skill came naturally too.

Iroh's musings were interrupted by the jingling of the bell over his door, a sound that he was more and more coming to equate with happiness and good conversation.

Yes, maybe this was something he could quite happily do for the rest of his life.

Author's Notes:

Still not dead!

Also, yes, yes the changeling hive is more than slightly inspired by the Minbari from Babylon 5, even if Chrysallis behaves a little too much like Lord Refa.

And we finally have an answer as to what happened to Roulette, probably going to be a few people unhappy with that.