Princess Skyla placed her muzzle beside the mirror in front of her, hoping more than anything that the spell wouldn’t break. Sure, it’d be strange to learn that alicorn foals age differently than other ponies, instantly becoming full-fledged fillies or colts within months, but her secret was far darker than just that. Looking at the mirror, she thought, she could clearly see that she looked just like her mother, and almost like the real thing.

She was glad that she’d gotten to the room quickly enough, for Shining Armor and Princess Cadance could never bear to see what their daughter truly was. She had to time it just right, her visits to her room, or else someone would suspect. In fact, she was beginning to think that Father already did.

The inevitable moment passed when her magic began to overload, and she hated every second of it. Sure, being Skyla her entire life wasn’t the most desirable outcome for her, she had conflicting dreams, but it was certainly better than this. It was certainly better than looking in the mirror every day, seeing that smiling pony face that you’d want more than anything, but couldn’t keep with you. It was certainly better than having your façade shattered when you lost control, trying everything, everything to get it to come back, if only for a few minutes so that you could assure your assumed ‘parents’ that no harm was done.

Everything was better than being Haine.

“Turn me back!” the little filly yelled. “Please, turn me back! I’ll do anything!” But she knew that something here wasn’t correct. She wasn’t a filly. And no, she wasn’t a colt either. Such terms weren’t used with her kind. Changelings were changelings.

She looked back at the mirror, trying to concentrate her magic, staring angrily at the figure she’d become, what some would call her true self (though she refused to accept it). Yes, she still looked like her mother now, just not the one she wanted to have.

It wouldn’t have taken much change in the gene pool for her to have Cadance as a mother. After all, in this dysfunctional royal family, it didn’t take long for Haine to learn that Cadance was her aunt. Not too long ago, her family had been all ponies, with no other species in the mix. She’d never know her grandparents, but that was the least of her worries. The trouble had come when Cadance’s sister, Amore, had begun to fear that the royal regime was taking advantage of the only family she ever had. She’d decided that she wanted nothing more to do with Equestria and chose to venture elsewhere. Cadance pleaded with her to stay, dismissing Amore’s suspicions about Celestia as mere delusions.

Things would have been better if they would’ve ended that way, Haine couldn’t help but think. She was that close to being who she would’ve wanted to be. She could have known that her aunt and uncle would love her for who she was. But alas, that was not meant to be. Cadance and Shining would be destined to hate her. And it was all because of what Amore had chosen to do next.

After venturing through various lands beyond, Amore came across the Changeling Kingdom and began to unravel. As a matter of fact, Haine had been taught to see Amore as just somepony insignificant from the past who disappeared, lost in oblivion. But Haine knew better. She knew that Amore both was and wasn’t her mother.

That was the reason why she’d been born at the exact same moment that the real Skyla, the one that the changelings had taken and replaced with her. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, after all. Never mind that her magic was nowhere near experienced enough to keep a transformation long, or that her mother would much rather work on her plots than love and care for her as this kind did.

No, she told herself. Cadance is my mother. Chrysalis, no. Amore, maybe, if she was somehow forced to turn into Chrysalis with corrupting magic like the kind someponies think happened to Auntie Luna. In actuality, she didn’t have a clue what really did happen. All she knew is that once she became a part of pony culture, she just wished it didn’t.

Using the last bits of her magic that remained, Haine chose to recreate a different form. She saw herself as having a personality for every transformation: Skyla, the prim, proper little royal scholar, Haine, the changeling who was supposed to just go along with her fate, no matter how terrible she thought it was. But as she found that she was able to perform her magic properly, she finished the process, looked back to the mirror, and smiled in satisfaction. She treasured every moment she had as Asher.

Asher was a completely different form, one of her own creation and tailored to her exact tastes. She wasn’t the type to just let her fate control her. She was a successful transplant from one culture to another, a rebel but also peaceful. All she wanted to do was continue studying the way Cadance was teaching her as Skyla, but she could care less if she was a princess or not. She had finally become a pony now, and that was all that mattered. And, more importantly, she didn’t even have a trace of Chrysalis on her. Unlike Haine, who was basically a carbon copy of her not-so-beloved mother, Asher had bright red fur and a spiky black mane with little bits of orange dyed in to look like embers on a fireplace.

The whole thing about ashes was something that fascinated Haine in a strange way. When she was studying Fancy with her mother—Cadance, she hesitantly corrected herself—she’d been more than a bit disappointed when she’d found out what her name meant. But, then again, it made sense that Amore, a pony who wished to become a changeling, had a name that meant ‘love,’ and that Haine, a changeling who wished to become a pony, had a name that meant ‘hatred.’ But Haine herself wasn’t so fond of that, so she studied other languages in secret to find an alternate meaning, and it turned out that part of her name in one of them meant ‘ashes,’ which she much preferred. It gave her images of memories in front of a fire laughing with a true family.

And, more importantly, even something as hopeless as ashes can turn into a phoenix.

The next few minutes blurred for Haine as she realized too late that her last transformation into Asher had been too much. If the instability before was bad, this was even worse. She was so weak, she could barely keep her eyes open. She heard a knock at the door and wanted to scream. This was the absolute worst time for someone to come in. She tried to make a few moans in an attempt to drive the figure away, but those were in vain.

She was lifted from the ground. No, “lifted” would be too nice of a word. Rather, she was pulled, ripped, yanked, and other synonyms likewise in connotation. Before her eyes fell and she drooped into unconsciousness, she realized that the aura now surrounding her was a suspicious shade of magenta.

Suddenly, things had just gotten a billion times worse.

****

“Shining!” scolded Cadance. “You are not to behave this way around her!”

“But she kidnapped our daughter!” her husband protested. “And she’s a changeling! How the hay do you expect me to treat her?!”

“She’s not even full-grown yet! Did you see the way her magic shorted out? And, if she’s been receiving nourishment through our love for her, you likely aren’t helping matters!”

“Love is something you have to earn, and quite frankly, she hasn’t. Let’s just send a message to Celestia, get rid of her, and our problems are solved.”

“But she’s a child, Shining. She can be reformed. She just doesn’t know any better.”

“You know her mother, Cadance. She wasn’t exactly innocent. Remember, you could have died if she’d had her way. It wouldn’t surprise me if her daughter hadn’t been sent here to finish what she started.”

Haine, having woken up, flinched away from her uncle the best she could while inside his magical barrier.

“Get away from me!” she protested. “I know that if you’re going to touch me, it’s just going to be to hurt me!”

“Tone it down,” Cadance advised her husband. “The poor thing’s scared to death of you now.”

“Well, the fear is mutual, then,” Shining countered.

“Quiet now, she was only a pawn, and doesn’t need to be attacked to prove a point. It’s not exactly polite to shoot the messenger.”

At this point, Haine had broken into tears and could vaguely be heard uttering, “All I wanted was for you two to be my parents. That was the only reason I kept on doing this. I don’t want to go back. Please don’t take me back…”

“See, she never wanted to be a changeling. And she doesn’t want to hurt us.”

“How do I know that won’t change?”

Finally having reached the brink of annoyance, Cadance broke the spell her husband had placed, freeing Haine from its magical aura. She then came up and nuzzled the incredibly scared young changeling in an attempt to console her.

“Are you crazy?!” Shining retorted. “Now look what you’ve done!”

“We can find Skyla, fight off the changelings, and then have her live with us. If we care for her, she isn’t going to be the monster you think she is.”

“Okay, okay, now I’m starting to understand your logic. But how necessarily would we keep a you-know-what in our house without Celestia finding out?!”

“Ponies can turn into changelings permanently, why not the other way around? And besides, Shining, you ought to owe your niece, your flesh-and-blood kin, a favor.”

The room was silent for several minutes, the argument having receded into an awkward silence.

Ignoring the strange atmosphere, Cadance then asked, “So, now that we know that you’re not really Skyla, what exactly is your real name?”

“Oh, come on!” Shining growled. “I’m getting used to the idea of the changeling and all, but why ask her name now when there’s a twisted family tree that needs serious explanation?!”

“Um, sorry to interrupt, but my name’s Haine,” the third figure shyly introduced.

“We’re not calling you that,” Cadance quickly decided. “Changeling or not, it’s still a cruel name, and that’s that.”

“Well, I don’t like it too much either. I tend to call myself Asher instead.”

“Then that’s what we’ll call you,” concluded Cadance with a smile. “And, even though I think you’ve probably already heard this story, I should better explain before Shining explodes from confusion.”

She then gestured to her husband, now pacing around and muttering, “So if Asher is my niece, and Chrysalis is her mother, then…” He now started breaking down and yelling, “But really, my conclusion can’t be right. I mean, Twilight imprisoning me in an abandoned mine? That’d be ridiculous!”

“You and Twilight aren’t exactly the way all sibling relationships work,” Cadance explained. “Mine certainly didn’t end up that well.”

“So it’s true,” Shining sighed. “It really is true.” He calmly pondered this for a few minutes and let out a long “NOOOOOOOOOOO” that lasted for several seconds.

After all of this, he no longer paced and instead began to yell, “Chrysalis is my pegasister in law? Chrysalis is my pegasister-in-law. CHRYSALIS IS MY PEGASISTER-IN-LAW?!”

Cadance then sighed and smiled at watching her husband act in such a manner, finding strange amusement in this.

“I guess we’re going to need a lot more exposition.”

Author's Notes:

Sorry if this idea has been done before; I literally just found out that people had been coming up with a changeling princess for a while. But I'm trying my best not to copy anyone, so I hope people enjoy it nonetheless!

To all those writers out there, don't you just hate it when this happens? xD