Hearth's Warming Eve
Whirring Cogs had his wing around Lavender Dream’s barrel as they made their way home in the gently falling snow. The Hearth’s Warming Eve celebrations had been marvelous, but the evening was getting a bit too chilly despite the bright and cheery lanterns that lit the street. Lavender snuggled up close to her husband with a contented smile on her face. Following close behind was Dandelion Dreams with her wife, Summer Storm; her husband, Sunrise Blaze; and their three foals. Next came Sky Fern and her marefriend, Green Hoof, accompanied by Forest Breeze who was home for the holidays from his House Path posting.
They were all looking forward to some hot chocolate around the fireplace to warm up again, but regretting that the night’s festivities were almost over. Fern also was sad to have to part with Green Hoof as the mare had to leave early in the morning to attend a family gathering in Ponyville. The group paused outside Green’s home as Fern gave her an appropriate farewell, and then continued on to Cogs’ and Lavender’s home. Cogs headed straight for the kitchen to start working on the hot chocolate while Dandelion went to stoke the fire. Forest and Fern joined Cogs in the kitchen to check on the progress of the roast dinner that they had helped prepare earlier, while Summer and Sunrise settled into chairs while keeping a close eye on the foals who were hungrily eyeing the presents under the tree. Lavender hung back at the entry to sweep out the snow that the ponies had not successfully stamped off their hooves on the porch. As she was about to close the door though, she noticed two strangers approaching, and she paused to find out what they wanted.
The first was a unicorn mare, pale blue of coat and with a bright blue mane and tail. She was very tall and lean of build, and bundled-up well against the cold. Her companion was a pegasus stallion with a tan coat and a red and white striped mane and tail. Aside from a scarf, he was unclothed, which was typical of cold-tolerant pegasi. The mare seemed a little nervous while the stallion appeared to be calm. They stopped a pace away from the doorway, remaining silent until the stallion gave his companion a nudge.
“May… may I talk to Whirring Cogs, please?”
“I don’t see why not,” Lavender replied. “Who may I say is calling?”
“My name is Crystal Path, and this is my husband, Cloud Thumper.”
“Is this about an emergency job? Cogs and Dandelion are on a holiday break at the moment.”
“No. This is… personal.”
“I see. Come in and wait here, please.”
Lavender let them in the door then closed it before heading to the kitchen. She found Cogs spooning cocoa into mugs while milk was warming on the stove. “Cogs, dear, do you know a mare named Crystal Path?”
Cogs frowned. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Why?”
“She’s at the door, asking to talk with you about a personal matter.”
“Okay, I’ll see what she wants. Forest, watch the milk for me while I’m away.”
“Okay, Dad,” the stallion replied.
Cogs headed to the door accompanied by Lavender. He gave the mare a smile and asked, “Hi, I’m Whirring Cogs. You asked to see me?”
The mare looked even more nervous than before. “Umm… yes. I needed to see you to bring some closure between you and me.”
“Do I know you?” the puzzled pegasus asked. He now realized that he was facing a changeling in disguise, but he was a little confused as to which type.
“Probably. Maybe if I gave you my full title. I am Princess Crystal Path.”
Cogs’ eyes opened wide in recognition. “The changeling princess adopted by Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor when you were a nymph.”
Crystal nodded. “Yes, a blue changeling. We’re related.”
Cogs smiled. “I’ve heard a little about you from Twilight. You’re not here to ask me to help start a new Blue Hive, are you? If so, I’m afraid that I will have to disappoint you.”
The mare shook her head. “No, I don’t intend to start a hive for a long while, and I have no intention of bothering you about it when I do. No, I came today to put one last demon behind me.”
The pegasus changeling raised an eyebrow in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”
“Did Aunt Twilight tell you how they found me?”
“Just general details. After the battle to defeat Nightmare Chrysalis, you were found at her base. Presumably Chrysalis was going to raise a new generation of queens to take over Equis.”
“Yeah, that’s the story that everypony was told, anyway.”
“Oh? What didn’t Twilight tell me?”
“Auntie Twilight was merely protecting me. You of course know how the new Avatars of Harmony defeated Nightmare Chrysalis?”
Cogs smirked. “My son is one of them, so I got to hear the details of that encounter.”
“Not all of the details.”
“Forest kept something from me? I find that hard to believe.”
“It was at the request of the Princesses. That nymph might have been persecuted otherwise.”
“A nymph is too young to have been corrupted. What was so different about you?”
“It has to do with how Chrysalis was defeated. Officially, she was destroyed, but Harmony doesn’t do that. It brings balance or cleanses the person.”
“Just as Princess Luna was redeemed?” Cogs asked as suspicion stirred within him.
“Exactly. After Chrysalis was cleansed of the Nightmare, Harmony kept working on her, regressing her until she was innocent nymph once more.”
Cogs stiffened and he scowled. “Get out.”
“Please – I need to talk to you about–”
“I don’t care,” Cogs interrupted. “I said to get out of my home!”
Lavender said, “Cogs – what’s wrong?”
“Don’t you know who this is, Lavender? She’s Queen Chrysalis!”
“No, I’m not!” Crystal protested.
“Why are you still in my house? I said to leave!”
Cogs flared his wings and advanced on the disguised queen in spite of knowing that he was grossly outmatched. Crystal flinched back, but Thumper stepped between them.
“Keep your hooves off Crystal, Mr. Cogs.”
“Who in Tartarus are you?” Cogs demanded.
“I’m Crystal’s husband.”
“Husband? Why would you want to marry a murderous bitch like her?”
“I didn’t. I married a peaceful and beautiful mare. She is not Chrysalis.”
“Not Chrysalis? Not Chrysalis?!” Magic green fire flared around Cogs, and moments later he stood there in natural changeling form. “Look at me! What am I?” he asked fiercely.
“A blue changeling,” Thumper replied calmly.
“A blue changeling harvester! Do you know how many harvesters survived Chrysalis’ madness? Two! Out of the hundreds of harvesters peacefully gathering love, only two of us lived after being used as unwilling arrow fodder when she invaded Canterlot. Those of us who weren’t slain by the Royal Guards and by any citizens who managed to fight us, were killed when we were hurled out of the city. I barely survived thanks to Lavender. For the longest time, I thought that I was the only one who had. So why were we used as soldiers? Because that mad queen thought we were weak and worthless! Do you really think I want anything to do with that monster?” Cogs pointed accusingly at Crystal.
“No, I don’t, and neither would I, but as I said, Crystal is not Chrysalis. That nymph started with a clean slate with no memories of her previous life, and she has never been anything but a model citizen. I know her intimately and she is not and never has been that mad queen since her rebirth.”
“A likely story!” Cogs snarled. He glared at Crystal and growled, “Change! Change into your real form and let everypony see you as you really are!”
By now, the shouting had attracted the attention of everyone in the house, and Crystal had quite an audience. She had been quivering in distress ever since Cogs had started ranting, but she was determined to carry out her self-imposed task. She did as Cogs asked and transformed into her natural form.
Cogs was caught by surprise. Expecting to see the cruel and harsh lines of his former Queen, instead he saw a Princess shaped by love and friendship. The words that he had intended to say, instead got caught in his throat as he stared at the beautiful regal changeling.
Crystal said softly, “Auntie Twilight told me to tell you to remember when an Equestrian Princess discovered one of the invaders hiding in White Tail Village. Who had more reason to hate?”
The harvester changeling’s ire was dampened as he remembered the day when Twilight had found him and almost killed him before realizing his remorse at being part of the invasion. That had led to a far greater understanding between changelings and ponies to the point where the former could walk around undisguised nowadays without fear of reprisal. One moment of understanding. One moment of forgiveness. He had said that he could never repay Twilight’s kindness, but today, perhaps he could. His magic flared again and Cogs was a pegasus once more.
“I... I do not forgive Chrysalis, and I never will. But I believe you when you say she is gone.” Cogs drew a deep, shuddering breath and firmed his will. “We were both born out of Queen Chrysalis, and in a way that makes us siblings, I suppose.”
“Family, at least,” Crystal replied.
Cogs mouth turned up in a half-smile. “Yes, and Hearth’s Warming is all about family, isn’t it?”
“It’s one reason why I chose today to approach you.”
Cogs nodded and he was quiet for a long moment while he thought. Eventually he asked, “Do you like hot chocolate?”
“I love hot chocolate – especially with marshmallows.”
“Of course. Forest – please get out two more mugs. I believe Crystal and I have a lot of catching up to do. Things might be a bit strange for a while, but I think we can work things out.” He led the visitors into the living room. “Sit down and make yourselves comfortable. Then I will introduce you to the rest of our family.”
Crystal’s happy smile lit up the room.
# # # # # # # # # #
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Goldfur · 9.6k words · 80 6 · 2.2k views
- Goldfur · 3.9k words · 78 5 · 1.2k views
- Alden MacManx · 112k words · 73 4 · 2k views
- Airy Words · 2.6k words · 94 3 · 2.9k views
- AlaskaIsCold · 47k words · 131 6 · 2.6k views
- AlaskaIsCold · 9.9k words · 63 5 · 1.3k views
- AlaskaIsCold · 12k words · 115 3 · 2.7k views
- Goldfur · 217k words · 278 17 · 4.5k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.198 seconds
Total duration
710 users online
1,281,693 hits today, 2,818,023 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I'm just curious, but how did Dandy manage to split off Sunset from herself? Did I miss a story somewhere?
Indeed. As far as I was aware, Sunset and Dandy were the same pony, Sunset brought to life by Dandy's shapeshifting ability.
Stories like this never fail to bring up the HATE inside me. And I'm thankful for that, even if in the end I cannot give anything but dislike to the stories in question.
GLHF.
8630802
8630809
I wondered if anyone would notice that, and the answer is in a story that I have never gotten around to writing, but there's a clue in the final chapter of "Growing Up Dandy".
8630826
Oh, now you have me curious....
Time for me to do a little research. "Grabs my copy of 'Change of Heart' from the bookshelf and looks'
Oh, you sneaky... (the content enclosed here is like Radiance Point when he is extremely inspIREd)
and furthermore.... (launches into another tirade)
I envy your skill, friend. Well done indeed!
Tail HIGH! (damn QSRO's...)
8630814
You actually did the same thing to me. I'm curious as to what you think this fic did wrong.
You also had kinda told me you'd explain your reasoning when I told you to do so in my fic.
8630951
*checks his story folders*
Ah, yes. I simply forgot to write that reply. Manual labor coupled with 12+ hours of work aren't exactly conductive to remembering hobby related things. Also, as English is my 3rd language, writing anything is kind of a chore that likely takes a few times longer to do than for an average native speaker.
Now to the question(s) itself:
1) It's not about 'what did this fic do wrong'. It's about a particular pet peeve of mine. Namely 'forced personality rewrite' of any kind. (For the record - I do not make a difference between it and 'reborn without some memories', 'heavily memory editing' and so forth). Seeing it on a character that I do care about can only bring out hate in me (It's often worse than death of a character imao) In such case everything else (Grammar, premise, characterization, overall writing skill) is completely irrelevant.
**I'll add a second part of the answer after a dinner, about 30 minutes later I think
8630986
I see. OK.
8630992
finishing a first part: I usually search for stories through character tags. I do expect for the tagged character to appear in the story in person as their actual selves AND play a significant role in it. It's one of the reasons why we have limited number of character tags and/or group tags (mane 6 or dazzlings). (Stories that fail in this regard do aggravate me, and often warrant a dislike just on wasting my time.) Would this story not have a 'Queen Chrysalis' tag, I would neither read it nor given it a dislike.
As for your story, I'll write my answer in the comments there. It may be a bit overdue, but I don't think that it belongs here anyway.
8631025
I'm sad to say you're setting up yourself to be disappointed. These are fanfics, they are made by fans. Usually their interpretation varies but the show inherently limits what a character can do/how they react.
If you expect the characters at their "maximum Canon-Ness" don't read fanfics.
Don't take this the wrong way but that's how it goes. I mean if we're being technical then all fanfics need to slap the "Alternative Universe" tag on them.
8631025
I also had similar reservations in the past about fanfics, fanon, Canon, and originality. I'm opposed to some ideas like "hive-mind" and while I still am I've learned to ignore it and focus on having fun. Life's too short for me to bitch about someone having different tastes from me. My energy is precious.
8630826
It's quasi isn't it?
Wait, you made a Chrysalis-Nyx?
Oh yes. A very tolerant attitude there, Cogsie
Welp, that was nice and fuzzy
Nice little extra Christmas present. And I'd just re-read the old stories :-)
8631025
You do have a point about the tags. I was tossing up whether to include the Chrysalis tag because, although technically correct, she isn't the same person anymore. However, that's the nature of fanfics. You are entitled to dislike that kind of treatment. However, I reserve an actual down-vote to badly written stories, not pet hates. Obviously you haven't read the previous stories where Chrysalis was very much in character despite my mentioning that this story is a sequel to those events. I have removed the Chrysalis tag now. Sorry about wasting your time.
8631119
You had to go back and re-read it though, didn't you?
8631547
Yes
8631649
Same here. So, is Quasi taking on the role of Dandy, or Sunset? I'm betting on Dandy myself.
8631544
You can't please everypony, unfortunately. Sometimes you just have to dodge the 'punches' as fast as a Wonderbolt can...
8631799
The name is Quazi. As for whom Quazi replaces... one of these days I'm going to write that story.
8631799
Be interesting. Hell they might have not even needed help to breed.
8631948
We'll be here, waiting patiently as usual.
8630986
Isn't what happened in this series less like "reborn without some memories" and more akin to, say, rewinding a tape and recording over it?
All in all, not a bad story--just not one of your better one. Still, I give it a thumbs-up.
TBH, I was hoping that the resolution didn't happen so quickly--that Whirling didn't get reminded about Twilight's lesson until at least a dozen or so chapters later. It would've been more fun to see what sort of problems the characters would be faced with until he recalled his debt to Twilight. After all, pendulums swing and always go to their extremes. It's often hard to get them to stop at that "happy medium" and settle down.
8630814
Seeing as how this is a sequel, that should have driven you to read the previous stories in order to attain the setting of the story and understand the characters involved. Had you done that, you would have known the background to the change in Chrysalis' character, or rather the new character that has grown from from what Chrysalis was; there was no "personality rewrite" involved, it was a virtual reincarnation into an altogether new character. Knowing that, you would have been able to go into this story without your senseless bigoted hate, vomiting your asinine and unwanted opinions about.
As Goldfur stated, and as stated by many of the site moderators in the past, a down-vote should be based on flaws such as poor writing and dramatically changing the essence of a character and other such things as opposed to personal opinion and dislikes.
In short, if you don't like the story then GTFO.
8631948
Considering the similarities between the persona that Quazi originally presented to Cogs and Sunset Blaze, replacing Sunset would be my guess. But maybe they take turns or something? Could certainly make some grand entertainment in the form of some sort of "Who Am I Today" game, lol.
8638176
Close enough.
8636997
I tried to leave the impression that Cogs still needed to work through some things with her. However, it was supposed to be Christmas short about family, not a long story about soul searching - I already did that in "Conversations in a Canterlot Cafe".
8631544
Thanks for your understanding in regards to the character tag. Though there's surely no need to apologize in this case - after all I spent more than 10 times more time writing comments to the story than actually reading it.
And for the record - I surely never disputed Chrysalis tag in the prequels to this story, merely to this one.
Again, GLHF with your writing
8632720
*shrugs* that's kinda semantics imao. And I said "and so forth".
8638168
*Sigh*
First of all, keywords are, and I quote you "altogether new character". That's exactly my point. It doesn't matter if you call it reincarnation or whatever - it's not Chrysalis anymore.
As for sequel/prequel thing - well, these days I tend to deliberately look for some spoilers and/or start with latest chapters if I have significant doubts that a story would be to my liking. For example I have only read a first half of latest chapter of "Past Sins" before dropping it for good.
As for ratings - If I have a stong dislike to a story after reading at least a part of it - I give it a dislike (and vice versa). It's that simple. And while it often is caused by bad writing (imao, obviously), I see absolutely no point reserving my negative ratings to badly written stories exclusively. And as I don't care about most of the stories - I neither read nor rate them. You have different opinion on the matter? I'm happy for ya, but it doesn't change anything for anyone else.
8638707
I suppose seeing as the literal point of the story is that the character in question is _not_ Chrysalis, I can see why that would be a point of dispute.
Carry on, sir.
8638340
Understood. I can certainly understand your desire to making it as short as possible, but this sort of encounter with those characters just begs for a longer drama.
As I said, it's not a bad story, and I still like it. I just can't rate it as a great story.
At least I still have your "Orbital Maneuvers" to dive into for now.
Cute.
I only just managed to get around to reading this, but that was just so heartwarming!
Indeed, a scary demon to face... but seeing the truth was really more than any words could describe in this case.
Wonderful
Regardless of what others might think, I liked it. It was kinda short and bare, but, is how things go sometimes.
What the hell is going on the story is all over the place where is the missing pieces i dont understand. I went from the story that ended with summer and dandelion getting married to this where suddenly Dandelion is now 2 ponies? And is there a separate story for all the stuff on the side like the first changeling Twilight met and then the new element bearers? Im so confused
8810387
Have you not read the rest of this series? There's loads of other stories like the Cogs Life series and the Chrysalis Resurgent trilogy. They all come before this one.
Why cant I UPcheck this more than ONCE??????????
8630802
She didn't actually.
I though Dandelion Dreams and Sunset Blaze were the same pony.
9156454
They are... or were.
The answer to that conundrum is a hint at the end of "Growing Up Dandy".
9156744
I was going to ask that very question. Good to see my hypothesis confirmed so swiftly. This is a fun series.
Off to read more of it... got to get all the fiery details!
so much love,
this story has so much meaning behind it.
Wat whaaat?!
Both Sunset Blaze and Dandy at the same time?
I'm guessing that Fiery Blaze did more than roommate with the happy couple/trio.
9510260
Congratulations! You figured it out without me having to explain it.
9510589
Awesome!
I'll just take thid moment to say thag I have enjoyed your stories immensely, and I'm off to read the coffee shop story as soon as a get some free time.
Or is there a recommend order of reading?
9513685
Go to my front page and I have the stories listed in chronological order.
9513698
Thanks.
Good story. Really need to catch up on the other ones.
Funny thing, I actually read this story before reading Growing Up Dandy. Once I did though, I remembered this passage and was momentarily confused since Dandelion Dreams and Sunrise Blaze are one and the same. That last bit in the story, though, has me thinking that Sunset Blaze must have become a part of their herd and assumed the form of either Dandy or Sunrise. If this is right, is there a story where this is specified? Also, which one did the changeling assume the form of? I'd think the changeling became Dandelion Dreams since she mentioned maybe preferring her male alter ego but not sure.
I was also curious if Summer was the one who birthed all of their foals or if at least one was foaled by Dandelion.