The sight was amusing at least, Princess Twilight had to admit. She sat there enjoying it for a moment longer, then cleared her throat, making Starlight jump. The unicorn looked down at the teacup that had been hovering an inch from her mouth for the last few minutes, then hurriedly took a sip and set it back on the table.
“Something on your mind?” asked Twilight gently, raising an eyebrow.
“No! Yes. I just...” Starlight let out a sigh, looking off to the side. “It's been a few weeks, but I can't stop thinking about Tirek, Chrysalis and Cozy Glow.”
“Ah.” Twilight followed Starlight's gaze, to the window that faced the Royal Gardens. The statue wasn't visible from this vantage, but they both knew it was there. “Still upset you weren't able to win Chrysalis over, even at the very end?”
“Well, yes, but that's not what I've been thinking about. It's more about Cozy Glow.” Starlight chewed her lip nervously for a moment, then met Twilight's eyes.
“Did... did Celestia, Luna and Discord kill a child? It's just... that was basically a public execution, wasn't it?”
Twilight laughed, heartily and definitely sincerely. “No, no, no, Starlight, of course not! All three of them are just fine. Why, we could go out there right now and turn them back, and they'd barely even know anything had happened.”
“Yes, but... we're not going to, right?”
“Well, no, they're going to stay stone forever.”
“Right, so... they're all dead, then. Even Cozy Glow. Functionally, there's no difference between being turned to stone forever and being dead.”
“Ah, but there is.” Twilight raised a hoof to emphasize her point. “You see, as I said, we could just bring them back at any time. It would be rather trivial to do so, in fact. Whereas if they were dead, we couldn't, and they'd truly be gone forever.”
“But... they are gone forever, because no one's ever going to free them. You just said so yourself. I mean, they're just going to sit out there until their statue erodes naturally over time, or it gets destroyed in an accident, something like that.”
“Starlight, that's not—“
“Sorry, I'm just having trouble telling the difference,” Starlight interrupted with an angry shake of her head. “As far as I know, you had the statue that was actually them completely smashed and scattered across Equestria, and the one out there is just a duplicate. No one would ever know the difference. And hey, that's safer, right? No chance of them ever escaping that way.”
“I think... you don't understand what you're saying.” Twilight spoke slowly, her eyes flat and emotionless.
“Okay, let me put it like this.” Starlight jabbed a hoof at Twilight. “You said being turned to stone by that cockatrice was just like falling asleep, right? And the Princesses said the same thing about the misfortune malachite that Tempest Shadow used. No time passes, you basically just blink and suddenly things are different.”
“That's right,” said Twilight warily.
“So as far as those three are concerned, they just fell asleep.”
“That's right!” said Twilight, this time much more enthusiastically.
“So Cozy Glow just went to sleep... and never woke up. Which is exactly how we describe death when explaining it to foals!”
“Starlight, I feel like you're... purposefully misinterpreting what I'm trying to tell you.”
“Okay, then help me understand. Answer a few questions for me,” challenged Starlight, leaning forward on the table. “What is Cozy Glow going to do when she grows up?”
“What... what do you mean?”
“I mean what is her career going to be when she's an adult? What is she going to do for a living? What will her passion be?” Twilight didn't answer, and Starlight waved a hoof dismissively. “Okay, forget that. What new hobbies and talents will she discover over the course of her life? Will she ever get a pet? Will she ever find love? Raise a family? Retire to a nice little cottage out in the country, with a pile of grandfoals around to brighten up her days, maybe take up knitting?”
“Starlight—“
“Oh, wait!” Starlight put her hooves to her face in faux shock. “I already know the answers to all of those questions! The answers are all nothing because Cozy was killed before she even started puberty!”
“You're really going to keep going with this, aren't you?” asked Twilight quietly. “I gave you a perfectly acceptable rationalization, and you're just refusing to take it.”
“Stop trying to act like it doesn't matter!” Starlight banged a hoof on the table, then swept it over to point at the garden. “That's not a statue of Cozy Glow out there, that's her gravestone! They killed a child!”
Twilight sat there for a moment, head down, one hoof rubbing her temple. Finally, she looked up, glaring at Starlight with narrowed eyes.
“Shut your mouth already, you fool,” she hissed.
“What—“
Twilight's horn glowed, magenta light sweeping around the room—including across Starlight, who flinched as her skin tingled.
“Okay, we got lucky,” said Twilight, breathing a sigh of relief. “I don't think she's listening in or watching us right now. It's important to check for both. She can read lips, you know. Learned that the hard way.”
“W-who?”
“Celestia, of course.”
“Celestia is spying on you?!”
“Naturally.” Twilight shrugged. “She always has. And she has twice the reason to now that I've taken over for her as Princess of all Equestria.”
“But...” Starlight gaped at Twilight. “But I thought she trusted you to rule on your own.”
“'Trust but verify', one of her many mottoes. Celestia's always been very thorough and cautious. Close to paranoid, in fact. Why do you think she was so quick to lock those three in stone for eternity when the option was presented to her?”
“About that—“
Twilight suddenly pushed herself back from the table, getting up to pace back and forth.
“Starlight, I've known Celestia nearly all my life. She was my teacher from the moment I was old enough to go to school until the day she sent me to Ponyville, and she kept teaching me and has been my close friend ever since. My point is, I know her, better than I know anypony else in the world. Better than my own family members, in fact. And do you know what I saw on her face when she turned those three villains to stone?”
Twilight stopped pacing to put her forehooves on the table and loom over Starlight.
“I saw bloodlust. I saw her anger, and her desire for vengeance. I saw that she was going to punish anyone and everyone who had done her wrong that day, along with anyone else who caught her eye. Someone was going to pay for what she'd been through, and I decided I wasn't going to be included on that bill. So I sat back and I said nothing, and I've said nothing ever since, and if you're smart you'll stop saying anything before she hears you.”
“You're... okay with what happened?” asked Starlight, stunned.
“Of course not! I had the greatest friendship speech ever ready to go! There's no way those three would have been able to resist it. Even if they had, they were completely helpless and at our mercy. We could have used the Bewitching Bell to take away their magic, or had Discord take their wings and horns and had you take Cozy's cutie mark so she couldn't manipulate ponies anymore...
“All only temporarily, of course. Because then I could have actually sat down with some villains and changed their minds! I would have actually had time to discuss things with them and persuade them and ultimately win them over to my side, to show them what friendship is like. Which is something I've never been able to do before. With you, sure, I managed to change your mind, but you were like two seconds away from completing your plan and I had to rush. With these three, I could have reformed them at my leisure, given them a thorough and complete understanding of friendship. I could have fixed them.”
Twilight sat back down in her chair and sighed. “But... before I could say anything, Celestia started talking. And I saw her face, so... I just sat back and stayed safe. I did the same thing the first time Cozy Glow's plan was foiled. Why do you think I let a little filly, my best student, my one failure, the only person I've never been able to teach about friendship, be taken away to Tartarus?”
“I... I can't believe this,” said Starlight after a long moment of silence. “You had the opportunity to start your rule of Equestria in your own way. To show everyone that we don't simply defeat our enemies, we turn them into friends. To prove that no one is ever so far gone they're hopeless. And you passed on it because... you're scared of Celestia?”
Twilight nodded. “We may both be alicorns, but she still has a thousand years or so on me. And remember, she sent her own sister to the moon for a thousand years. No matter how much she might respect and care for me, if I had tried to say anything there would be four figures on that statue right now.”
“But...” Nearly at a loss for words, Starlight tried one more time. “But what about friendship? What about all the things you taught me about how friendship is magic? You just ignored all of that because of Celestia?”
Twilight let out a snort. “Trust me, the magic of friendship has nothing to do with what Celestia, Luna and Discord did to those three.”
“I just... can't believe this,” Starlight repeated.
“Well, I like to think of it as Celestia's final lesson for me. If you want to make an omelet, you need to break a few eggs. If you want to rule a kingdom...” Twilight took a sip of her tea and shrugged. “Sometimes you need to break an elementary school student.”