Finally Celestia’s letter arrived, and after spending a day getting over the impotent rage she felt from reading it, Chrysalis came to a new decision.
The pod was distinctly off color. It should have been a healthy green; instead it had gone some kind of murky purple. That said, the pony hadn’t been harmed, sleeping with a large grin on its face until it was dragged through the cocoon’s membrane and out into the open air of the little cell in the depths of the hive.
“Owww,” Cherry Berry moaned, staggering on her hooves, choking and coughing up bits of the fluid that contained prisoners within the pods. “Ooooh, my head.”
“Hibernation hangover,” the guard said matter-of-factly. “It passes off soon. You probably won’t be hungry for a while, though.”
“I was having a beautiful dream!” Cherry groaned. “I was having the loveliest dream in the world, and you woke me up!” (15)
“Changeling cocoons are designed to give prisoners the illusion of their greatest love,” the guard said. “Waste not, want not.”
“Really?” Caught between horror and curiosity, Cherry Berry chose curiosity. “So…er… did I feed you well, then?”
“I wasn’t your guard,” the guard said, pointing to a lump in the corner. “She was.”
Cherry Berry decided she could have lived a long, happy life without seeing a nearly spherical changeling. It looked at her, gave a little wave with a hoof, and burped.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/327551/2/changeling-space-program/chapter-2-my-names-not-jebediah