“Hi, I’m uh, here for the Changeling Surrogacy Program?”

Aurora looked down at the brilliantly iridescent changeling sitting behind the counter, feeling a little nervous. The changeling looked up at him through pink, bedazzled cat-eye glasses and smiled professionally before opening up a drawer and pulling a large file folder out onto her desk.

“Did you have an appointment?” she asked, her voice slightly nasally.

Aurora looked at the busy office behind her, watching changelings of all sorts of colors flitter to and fro with stacks of paperwork and briefcases, dodging in and out of cubicles and around filing cabinets with ease. Despite his nerves, none of them had looked at him when he announced his presence, and he felt a sense of relief trickle down his back.

Looking back at the secretary, he cleared his throat before answering “No, actually, I’m here to sign up.”

“Excellent,” she exclaimed, her smile turning to a beam. “Our Repopulation department is always happy to welcome new ponies to the program.” She ruffled through the file folder and pulled out a small stack of forms, quickly shuffled them together, and handed them across to the nervous pegasus. “I’ll start by having you read through and fill out these forms.”

Aurora nodded, picked up a pen, and began to skim down the stretches of legalese before him.

As he signed and jotted details down, the changeling spoke. “May I ask how you heard of our program? As I’m sure you understand it’s a little difficult to advertise.”

Aurora chuckled, his nerves easing as time went on. “My husband is a contributor for the program, actually.” He flipped to the next page and began to initial on a dozen different lines. “It was him who told me about it.”

“Oh, how delightful! It may be a bit out of line for me to say it but I do always appreciate hearing when ponies have married us changelings. That’s the true sign of creature unity in Equestria, to me at least.” She beamed at Aurora through her sparkly glasses.

“I’m certainly happy with it, and so is he. I think that’s it,” he added, flipping through the pages one last time. “So how exactly does the, uhm, procedure, work?” He looked down on the counter and spotted a name plate. “Ommatidia?”

She bent down for a moment before coming up with a different set of papers, handing it across with yet another professional smile. “It’s all detailed in here. First you book an appointment at least a week away. So we have time to notify the contributors, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Then you come in on your appointed day and time, and we set you up in a lovely special room. There, all the contributors that are there take their turns depositing their eggs. After that, the required incubation period is seven days, and they can be laid.”

Aurora’s eyes glazed over for a moment as he quickly got caught up in the idea of what she described, but he shook his head and cleared his mind. There would be no need for fantasizing after this next week, he thought.

“There is a period of care the surrogate must take before we collect the new changelings to deliver them to a hive, of course. Just to make sure they are stable and healthy.”

“Yes, I read that in the form there.” He paused for a moment, biting his lip, before continuing. “How many contributors are there?”

“Well, quite a few show up to each session, but it’s a first-come-first-serve, take-a-number style for them. And as I’m sure you also read, at any point the surrogate may end the session. So the exact number is ‘as many as you want to handle’, I suppose.”

“Mhm,” Aurora nodded. “Great.”

“So,” Ommatidia said, filing everything away before pulling out a binder from underneath the counter and laying it flat before her. “When would you like to come in?”

“As soon as possible,” Aurora said, finally fully relaxed.

Next Chapter: Eggstravaganza Estimated time remaining: 40 Minutes