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There was a cold emptiness to the Alicorn that she noticed.
Maybe it were beast-like instinct, built on skills of survival akin to a pony's intuition, built upon wisdom.
Chrysalis would assume instinct trumps intuition as she eyed up her opponent from behind tresses of deep, sea-green hair. The hunter carefully observes game in silence.
Celestia stood still as death, her stretches of mane and tail endlessly swelling and falling to the faintest of breezes. A great tree abundant with boughs of leaves, crowns of brambles full of foliage undulating in the wind, this came to mind for the Changeling, a sense of greatness and power in the peaceful conduct by which Celestia held herself. It was impressive.
Impressively sickening.
Chrysalis could do that too. Easily. With precise shifts of her weight, she lifted tall onto her stick-thin legs and held her head high. The sharp edges of her horn cut into the wind, tugging her mane away from her face in its heavy flowing. The cool of the wind slid past her throat and slipped through the holes of her limbs.
In a confident display, rose her speckled, emerald wings high to catch the breeze. A papery noise of fluttering came from them vibrating in the breeze. Surely, Chrysalis thought, she was outshining the pony princess with her own stance of regal air and conduct.
She feigned indifference, closing her eyes and allowing herself the confidence to smirk. If Celestia might turn and look, she would see Chrysalis exude strength and menace in her stance, highlighted by the ease of superiority in her face.
Minutes pass in the quiet ambiance, and Chrysalis grows impatient. Was Celestia looking?
She might be, so Chrysalis must hold this pose for a little longer to make the effect of awe last just a moment longer. After all, Celestia should be taking in the essence of what a true royal mare can be. Learn herself something useful for once.
...If Celestia was watching in amazement and adoration, it was very silent and hard to tell.
She opened an eye so slightly, and to Chrysalis' disappointment, Celestia had not moved at all. She stood at the knoll's edge, gazing to the east towards Canterlot still, having never even turned to Chrysalis.
The Changeling didn't need to sniff much to know the atmosphere of this scene between the two ponies. Celestia was distant emotionally, somewhere far away. It smelled dry, somehow painfully bland. This is the smell so similar to apathy.
"Inviting me here and doing nothing together is so much fun, Princess." Chrysalis broke the silence. "Considering how much I'm enjoying myself right now, I'm starting to think you really do like me." She rolled her eyes.
Celestia turned away from the mountain view to Chrysalis, her mischievous violet stare lined by dark mascara.
"I'm sorry, Chrissy." She smiled apologetically, so honest and open with her emotions. Chrysalis frowned anyway, hating the nickname since the day she first heard it. "I didn't mean for it to be so quiet, normally I hate the silences like this."
Wishing to rest her legs after standing for so long, Chrysalis knelt down to free her body of the ache of proper posture. She blew her mane out of her face as she hunched over onto her front legs.
"I'd say. I'd rather listen to your drone and sultry mutterings. That's how much I cannot stand the nothing of the past half an hour."
Celestia looked taken aback, and she turned to the sky. Chrysalis could never do that herself, but Celestia's thousands of years of practice allowed her to be able to chart the sun's position in the sky enough to measure it on looks alone.
"You're right, it has been half an hour."
Of course Chrysalis was right. She could keep track of time since hatching, since living in the hive meant not seeing the sky to gauge time for long periods at a time. She could easily roughly estimate how much Celestia was wasting her day with near-reliable accuracy.
"Is this what you invited me to? This torture of nothing and nopony?"
They were in a great, empty field of grass empty of trees. The verdant green of healthy grazing fields was a bit too bright and pastel for Chrysalis' liking, but the soft green shades were pleasant to Celestia's eyes. The clear air of the sky, unfettered by a haze of dust like in the Changeling's queendom, revealed shining blue lined with perfectly swirled cumulonimbus clouds.
This part of Equestria was too bright, too colourful, too much for Chrysalis' taste. The Alicorn Princess Celestia, in her multi-coloured physiology, embodied this more than anything, grinding at Chrysalis' irritation more.
"My apologies, Chrissy. I assumed you would prefer the peace and calm of this picnic." Celestia looked over with a smile. "My sister likes the quiet things, and you both seem very similar in temperament."
Oh right, the other pony princess. The darker one who also was green-eyed and thin. How is she related to Celestia? Certainly not by blood, Chrysalis thought.
"I suppose you could have named worse ponies," Chrysalis gagged "to compare the likes of us to. But no, I don't enjoy any kind of company of our enemies. We are not equals."
Celestia frowned ever so slightly, but not in hurt. Not in upset. Merely the relaxing release from the effort of a pleasant smile.
Like many, Chrysalis was offput by the secretive air Celestia protected herself in. Her expressions were always half hidden by mane, her face sometimes unreadable in its stoic design. Being a Changeling, however, allowed her to smell, taste the feelings that wafted from her. It was a stark contrast to the smell of dew water on plants, to the bitter dust of sand and dirt. An airy and light texture to the scents of emotions drew Changelings to their prey, to ponies who felt love.
But that scent of floral warmth, tinted with savoury richness which was so different to the heatless life a Changeling was used to, was nearly nothing to Chrysalis. As a Changeling queen, her senses were heightened for the hunt to feed her subjects, and even now, so close to Celestia, she felt nothing.
Celestia did not love her, and this for some reason made Chrysalis feel brittle. Physically outside and somewhere deep inside.
But she wouldn't have a reason to feel like this. Perhaps her pride was hurt that Celestia, all-loving and adored, would refuse to spare an ounce of consideration for her enemies. Especially the idea that she would withhold sympathies from Chrysalis, the Queen of the Changelings.
Chrysalis couldn't hide the twisted grimace on her face as she pulled away, ego recoiling in disgust at the thought of caring about how Celestia felt about her. It shouldn't matter to her. It never mattered to her.
Celestia's voice, the measured and matronly articulation befitting her breeding and status, never gave away how she was truly feeling, adding annoyance to annoyance.
"You're right, Chrysalis. We aren't equals in many ways."
Chrysalis huffed. Being correct wasn't enough to sooth the earlier mark cut into her pride.
Whatever Celestia was saying, Chrysalis heard the bothersome indifference, the impartiality, that comes from peace-loving and frail creatures like ponies. They hate conflict, they hate difficulty, so they hide from it with inoffensive words and obligated niceties so that they might never have to argue or fight ever. As the ruler of these pathetic foals, Celestia would embody this to its extreme in her diplomatic and mannered dialogue, seeking to never insult or insinuate or escalate.
"But I don't see why we can't be together like this, after what I did for just the two of us to take in some relaxation together."
There it was! A confession from Celestia herself that this was wholly her planning to get them alone together. Chrysalis was her target all along.
"Is this where you reveal yourself to attempt my assassination, Princess? Isolating us from allies and eyewitnesses, so that you might single-hoofedly eliminate me?" Chrysalis rose to her feet, towering above Celestia. "Because your manipulative subjects couldn't kill or change me themselves? Do you think you ponies can change a Changeling, you naive filly? And if you can't, you get rid of anything that does not please your utopia of mindless minions?"
Terror and condescension, which always worked for Chrysalis on her hive children, did nothing to rise Celestia's emotions in any visible way. Pearly purple eyes beheld the Changeling with such steadiness, they might as well have been like stone. The amount of control and discipline in the Alicorn's nature, laying there by Chrysalis' hooves without so much as a motion to defend herself physically, made Chrysalis tense in anger.
Celestia, perfect Celestia, unchallenged and worshipped by her ponies, who was porcelain perfection in flesh, was nothing like abandoned and betrayed Chrysalis. The buzz of emotions alight throughout Chrysalis' stick-like body, through every tendril and nerve by comparison, felt like lightning racing across her senses, the heat of frustration rising to her trembling ears.
Couldn't Celestia see it? The way Chrysalis was nearly shaking like a leaf in a storm. She probably noticed and was maintaining her calm even more intensely in response, trying to outdo Chrysalis by means of better control. Because she was more powerful than Chrysalis and she knew it. She could show it by sitting there and meeting eyes in silence.
No, Chrysalis can't fail to that voice of fears and prey survival. Because Celestia posed no threat to her.
After all,
What is a Princess to a Queen?
She heard herself, very distantly as if detached from her own body, laughing. Her fangs scraped along her dry lips as she cackled, the energy of adrenaline in her body having no outlet but her own voice, sputtering what amalgamated to laughter and giggling. Celestia, the prime pink pony of pathetic peons, making Chrysalis afraid? No, never. Chrysalis knew she was showing how unafraid she was by laughing at this gullible idealist before her.
What Chrysalis didn't realize was the burn of her anger rising up her jagged horn, sparks of faerie green climbing through indent and edge to the very tip of it all, her magic alighting the end with a darkly, feral glow that bit the air in sparks and motes. To this, Celestia finally rose, fully facing down the shorter pony with her shoulders squared.
She's finally meeting Chrysalis to push back at last, like a proper duel. Chrysalis needed to get in the first word to make sure Celestia and her unreadable face was willing to challenge her.
"You think you - O glorious Celestia - can look down on us!" The Changeling mare hissed to emphasize the acidity of sarcasm. "Neither of us have status or subjects. You're just as alone and pathetic as we!"
Celestia held her head high, the billow of her aurorian mane curtaining in waves around Chrysalis.
"I'm not a princess anymore. But I've never felt alone. And I won't let you feel alone either."
What.
The violent pulsating of magic died down from Chrysalis' horn slowly, fighting to keep bright. Her wide eyes couldn't have gotten any bigger.
Probably with the intent to psychologically torment Chrysalis further, Celestia did not repeat herself, instead letting the other stand in the silence left by her words.
"Alone".
Chrysalis' mouth, which was hanging ever so slightly open, closed with a soft click of teeth.
Yes, she was alone. But she never truly allowed herself to think of that loneliness for what it was. No, it wasn't loneliness. Loneliness and being alone are different things. She was not lonely, but she was alone. She had been alone ever since she was chased out from her own hive. Her own queendom that she raised and built and protected for so long.
She focused her gaze to Celestia's eyes, and finally recognized the emotion there within the purple gaze.
It was Celestia who was lonely.
That can't be right.
Chrysalis allowed her head to hang, eyes staring off into nothing as she began to mull over her thoughts.
"I won't let you feel alone."
What did Celestia mean? Chrysalis has felt so many things in the time she's been away from her children:
Angry, spiteful, bitter, envious, irate, defeated, frustrated
But never alone.
Is this just projection? The avoidant way ponies pressed their own shortcomings and discomforts onto outsiders, in order to avoid the aim of blame?
Chrysalis looked up, realizing how closely they stood together. She could feel Celestia's breath from here. This is the closest they had gotten the whole day.
Celestia, pale and slender, stood there as passive as ever. With her silence, allowed Chrysalis to speak first.
"...Why did you seek me out, Celestia."