As early morning came and the orange sun had risen to gold over the horizon, Peach Blossom quickly made her way from her house to the barn with a plate of peach slices and toast over her back, a cup of juice in her hoof, and purpose in her stride. Scampering into the building, she found Habeas sitting upon his bed of hay, yawning as he too began to awaken.

With a smile on her face, Peach Blossom approached him. Setting down the plate and cup, she told him to eat. Habeas asked if it was her meal she was sharing, to which she replied that her mother made this course specifically for him. Without further argument, Habeas set to eating the food as his hunger gripped his weary mind, sensing with some surprise that there was love made in this food as much as the last one he devoured.

"So that mare's really your mother?" he asked the filly, after finishing the peach slices.

"Yeah," sighed Peach Blossom, anxiously pushing a pebble around on the dirt floor. "She can be a bit, erm... strict at times, but she's the best mother I could ever ask for."

"She tried to stab me with a pitchfork," Habeas mentioned with a hint of unease at the end of his sentence, taking another, hurried bite from the toast, scattering crumbs about on the barn floor. "It's going to probably take me some time to see her the way you do."

"Once again, I'm super, super sorry about what happened last night," she apologized, looking down to his injured leg. "I hope your leg's doing better."

"Well, I put it in a new cast," he said, lifting the broken limb and revealing the new gooey substance that had hardened around it. "So long as she doesn't try killing me again, I think it will be fine and heal back perfectly."

Peach Blossom let out a very small chuckle at how he phrased it, silencing herself right after. Seeing that he was done eating, she gathered his plate and cup up and turned to the doorway. "Well, I gotta get to school now. I guess I'll see you later, Mr. Brittle. Have a good day."

"And you as well," he said back. Peach Blossom smiled and finally left, knowing well that her friend would be fine now.

As the door creaked close, Habeas took in a deep breath as he got comfortable where he was. He didn't mention to the filly the fact that her mother was the same armored individual who put him into this sorry state in the first place. He had little idea of how she would act upon this information, and he certainly had no wish to cause a scene that would provoke yet more ire from the fearsome mare.

Exhaling a deep breath, he lied his head back down and tried to rest.

Persica returned home in a short time after bringing her daughter to the school in Canterlot. When she snuck into the barn, silent as a mouse, she could see Habeas was still there and sound asleep upon the bed of hay; dreaming happily by the look of the cheerful visage painted on his still face. To say she was disappointed about this creature deciding to remain here would have been a drastic understatement.

Huffing in annoyance, she walked up to his sleeping side and knocked a hoof against his chip-horned head twice. Groaning, Habeas's eyes opened up and he groggily lifted his cranium. When his sight caught the shape of the mare with the wide-brimmed hat over her head and a scar over her eye looming above him, he let out a frightened yelp.

"A-are you here to... kill me?" were the first words to come out of his quivering mouth. Persica rolled her eyes.

"I'm not going to kill you," she calmly said. "So stop the sniveling." He did as she said, but his face still looked worried for a few moments more.

"What do you want of me?" he asked next as the seconds passed them by, feeling more like hours of foreboding silence to the changeling.

"What I'm here to do is put you to work, changeling. If you're going to stay and recover from your wounds, you'll pull your weight around here the rest of us."

"I don't know if I'll be able to do that," he sadly said. His eyes drifted to his broken leg and stayed there. "My leg's still... pretty hurt."

"Yes, I know it's hurt. That doesn't make the rest of you useless," stiffly replied Persica. "You've still got three more to walk on, and the magic your kind possesses is still usable. I'm not going to be able to keep an eye on you all day with chores to be done, so you're going to do them whether you like it or not, creature."

"My name is Habeas Brittle," Habeas said, mirroring a response he gave to her the night before.

Persica appeared unmoved. "I still don't care."

Quiet was sure to settle in again like a blanket of fog, until a question popped into the changeling's head. "What's your name?" he asked. "Peach Blossom only told me that you're her mother."

Persica thought for moment whether or not a revelation such as this was appropriate. Eventually she shrugged upon seeing no harm in it. "My name is Prunus Persica. Just call me Persica, though."

"O-okay, Miss Persica." Habeas began to rise to his three good hooves and stretched them out. Motioning to the door, Persica waited for Habeas to move to it. Fearing she was of the impatient sort, he complied to her silent order as quickly as he could muster. When Habeas's limping shape passed her, Persica went behind him and they both walked together, exiting the barn and heading in the direction of the grove of peach trees upon the mare's directing. The wind ruffled the leaves of the great plants, which Habeas looked up into curiously.

In the trees, hanging from their branches, were a great many peaches. Some were large, others small, and a few were green and covered in thick fizz - clearly not yet ripe. Stopping when he was close enough, he examined all the fruits for a good minute until he heard Persica place something on the grass beside him. Spinning his head, he could see that she had put a big, pony-sized wicker basket there.

Persica fixed her hat and looked at the changeling in a commanding way. "The first thing you'll do is collect the peaches from some of these trees, and put them into this basket," she spoke to him, pointing to the tree and then it. "And only pick the ripe ones. Grab enough until the basket's full, and that will be good."

Habeas, placing a good hoof on the large wicker object, looked around for a ladder he could use or some other object of that ilk, and spotted none. "How'm I going to do that?" he questioned.

To this, she shifted him a grumpy sideways glance. "Your magic."

"Oh, right," Habeas laughed heartily to himself at his forgetfulness, which the mare did not share with him; instead opting to keep her stony expression. It awkwardly died down after but a few seconds and the changeling began to move forward, toward the tree. As he prepared his mind, Persica walked to a wooden chair she had also brought nearby and sat down in it. Lifting a small cylindrical glass containing some form of juice, she slurped up some of its delectable contents through its straw and put her eyes back upon Habeas.

His horn beginning to glow a pale shade of green, the changeling grabbed at a single peach closest to him in a halo of energy bearing a similar color. It was weak, but after a few seconds of pulling and twisting, he finally wretched the fruit from the branch by its stem. Letting it slowly drift to the ground as the sound of rustling leaves died down, he plopped it into the basket. Looking back up to the tree, he used his power to pull down another, and then another, setting each one he grabbed neatly into the basket.

"How'm I doing?" anxiously asked he after several minutes drifted by, plucking another one of the fruits with his magic.

"Meh. Keep going," halfheartedly responded Persica. Undeterred by what he clearly saw was a minor taunt meant to discourage him, he went on with the harvesting. The basket in front of him was filled with around twenty peaches by the time he finished with picking all the ripe ones.

"I'm done with this tree!" he grinned merrily. Humming, he turned around in time to see that Persica had left her chair and was now standing directly in front of him. Habeas practically jumped when he saw her sour, glaring face an inch away from his own. The look of abhorrence in her eye was like a knife placed at his throat.

"M-Miss Persica, I can... I can understand that you don't like me, but please can you stop being so... vehement about it?" he inquired.

"Don't worry about that. Just seeing that jolly grin of yours makes me want you to know what will happen if you decide to betray me and trample over the hospitality my daughter and I are giving you," she growled, poking her strong hoof against his chest with enough force to cause Habeas to almost step back from its suddenness. "You so much as think to harm my daughter, and I'll make you wish you were never born. And when I do, I won't kill you right off. I'll take my time with your demise, that I promise you..."

"I... am not like that. I'll never be like that," he adamantly responded, regaining his composure. "To not be like that was the very reason I left my hive. I don't care if I'm called a traitor by my kin for it. I don't give a rat's flank if they take the time to send some form of 'assassin', or something else of that kind for me! I just want you to believe me."

"Huh. You sound sincere," Persica said again, almost convinced by the pitch of her tone. "But, then again, you can never tell with changelings. Don't think I don't know how masterful your kind is at lying and manipulating others..."

Habeas cleared his throat. "Miss Persica, there is a question I really want to ask you. I know you're that knight-thing that attacked me on the road a few nights ago. So why'd you do it? Why did you attack me when I was just trotting along and minding my own business? I would have passed by this house, and that would have been that. I would have never even met you or your daughter had you not decided to maim me as you so harshly did."

Persica's eyelids closed for a second before she murmured something, and soon began to walk off from the indentured changeling, back to her chair. "I could tell you why. And I would so very much like to. But I won't," was all she ended up muttering. Grabbing her drink in her hoof, she took a slurping sip from the straw and sat down as she had done prior. "Now get back to work. There are still plenty of peaches that need picking."

"As you command, mon capitaine," Habeas sardonically spoke with an equally-sarcastic salute, though he had to lean his body against the tree to perform it with his good hoof. With a confident swagger in his lame strut, he picked the basket up by its handle in his fanged mouth and set off to the next tree. As he began to cheerfully harvest the fruit from it like he performed with the last one, Persica watched him very closely from under the brim of her hat, noting the almost disgusting levels of sunny optimism he continued to express while his harvest went on.

Changelings by their very nature were evil and cruel beings who only found joy in the suffering of others. Yet, as she could see so far, there truly was something different about this particular one. He was merry, cooperative, and the fact that he had not yet harmed her daughter still scraped at her brain like a blunt scalpel. She simply could not find the will to believe this, but from what had been put in front of her face in the last day alone, it seemed as though only time would tell whether or not this changeling truly was as despicable as the rest of its kind.