//------------------------------// // Welcome to the family, sis // Story: My Sister, Cozy Glow // by Mica //------------------------------// There wasn’t much explainin’ to do, really. I told ‘em where I went, what I bought. I used the money Ma and Pa gave me for room service—not like I stole anything. “I’m Spur, not Cozy Glow,” I said. “And now I don’t look like her, so now you can’t say I’m like her anymore.” It was quiet for half-an-hour. It was like me talking to the empty hotel room all over again. “Well?” I said. “Say…say somethin’, one of you!” Ma and Pa sat on the bed silently, looking out the window with the curtains drawn. I flew in front of Ma’s face, but she shooed me away. “I’m sorry, Ma, I—” Maybe they’re lousy parents, but they’re still my parents. I had…feelings. Ma and Pa not talkin’ to me…gives me…feelings. I’ll bet Cozy Glow never had feelings for Ma and Pa. That’s what the paper says. And nopony can get inside Cozy’s head. I guess, I know just about as much as they do. I tried to get them to talk. “Here Pa, I got a fridge magnet for you at the souvenir shop.” He didn’t say a word. Then again, Pa doesn’t say much to begin with. “Here’s a coffee pot for you, Ma. See? It has a picture of Bitsburgh on it. Somethin’ you can remember the trip by.” Ma didn’t say nothing either. Yeah. I’m no good at hiding feelings. “Well, if y’all aren’t gonna say nothing…” I said out loud, “I’m leavin’.” I went to the bathroom and put on the dress that I had bought. I brushed my new gentle wavy mane and tail. As I brushed…I sighed deeply. It was a nice sigh, like a sigh of relief. But not all the air came out. I went back out into the room, wearing the navy-blue dress. I hovered behind Ma and Pa. Ma turned around. She must’ve heard the fabric rubbing against the sheets. She finally said something. “Spur…is that you?” She’d seen my new mane for over half-an-hour. “Course it is, Ma.” Y’know, I wouldn’t be surprised if her memory’s going. She just shook her head. “No, Spur. That’s not you.” “Yes it is, Ma. This is who I am.” She kept shaking her head. “No Spur. That dress, that mane, that tail—that’s not you.” “You’re wrong. This is me, Ma! Not that spittin’ image of the most evil pony in Equestrian history.” “…y’mean your sister?” I didn’t answer. Even Pa spoke. “It’s Spur, honey.” She shook her head. “No, no…is this real? Is this real?” She turned to Pa. “This, is a dream isn’t it? Just like…just like, that night, when Spur punched me. That…that was a dream too, right? And that night, Cozy came in, with the blood on her hooves…” Then the rest was some mumbo-jumbo that I couldn’t hear. The last thing, I don’t remember. There were so many times Cozy Glow walked in with blood on her hooves. “This has to be a dream,” Ma said. She looked at Pa, he didn’t say nothing, but he looked worried that Ma was smiling. “It is a dream, isn’t it? I’m right, right?” I blinked a couple of times myself wearing that beautiful blue dress. I’d have been so pissed if that was all a fucking dream. “This a’int a fucking dream, Ma. All my life, you’ve been glued to Cozy Glow—doin’ her ugly mane, huggin’ that ugly filly, with that ugly smile of hers lookin’ into the camera—and the only time you ever talked to me was when you were throwin’ all your frustrations with her on me! “Well guess what!? Now you cain’t! She’s gone! Gone, ya hear!? And now, you’re acting all delusional ‘cause you know, now ya gotta tilt yer chin, look up, and face me!” Ma shook her head so hard, I thought her neck was gonna snap. That’d be the day. I make Ma so pissed, she’d snap her neck and she’d kill herself outta her own misery. It’s kinda funny. Actually. Ma got hysterical. She started flailing her legs all over the place, cryin’, “No Spur! That’s NOT you! That’s NOT you! NO! NO!” Pa and I held her down and stopped from breaking the cheap pictures on the hotel wall. Just to calm her down, I told her that she was right—that real life is a dream, and our dreams at night are real life. I used to think that when I was a little foal. Especially those days when I’d go home from school after getting bullied, and I’d walk down the long muddy driveway to our house on a rainy day, cause my feathers were soaked and I couldn’t fly. Those days, at night I dreamt of being an alicorn. Cozy would saw off the horn from a unicorn and stick it on my head, and we’d be princesses so we could banish all the bullies to Tartarus, and then we could leave our parents, and get outta the crummy bayou, and live in a castle. But ever since my sister got turned to gravel, I have nightmares most of the time. So I don’t think that anymore. Not that real life is much better than my dreams. Real life sucks pretty badly too. Ma calmed down after I gave her a tranquilizer and a shot of liquor in one of the shot glasses I got from the souvenir shop. The three of us ponies were lying in a big pile on the bed, my head resting on Ma’s underside. It was quiet again. No sound. I heard nothing. “Golly…” I mumbled. “Yes?” Ma quickly said. I didn’t answer. After a few minutes of it being quiet, Ma spoke. “I’m…I’m sorry you been feelin’ so lonely…Spur. We…we just got caught up by all the press. We should’ve spent more time with ya. In fact, we will.” “You promise?” “Of course, Spur.” “I love you, Ma.” “I love you too…Spur.” We hugged. And then when Ma let go, she took a look at me in my new dress. Thank Celestia she didn’t go hysterical again. Ma was clean outta tranquilizers. “You like my new mane style, Ma?” I asked. Ma tapped a few strands with her hoof. The waves swayed for less than a second and that was it. “They don’t bounce,” I said what Ma was probably sayin’ to herself. “They don’t.” “How ‘bout my dress?” I turned around on the bed to show her. “You like it?” “You…you look…you look…lovely, Spur.” “You don’t really think that do ya?” Then I added, “You don’t have to answer that.” “I wasn’t going to.” We all went out for dinner that night to make us feel better. I wore my new dress and we took a pegasus taxi to the nicest restaurant in town. Even though it was really cold that evening, I didn’t cover up my new mane with a cap. I didn’t feel like it. The waitress complimented to Ma how pretty her foal was. “Thank you,” I said. Y’know, the funny thing about that dress that I bought is that it stains real easily. I really like that dress, but I’m a messy eater and I really liked the marinara pasta at the restaurant. And the color. It fades in the light. The light in the restaurant was kinda bright, and by the time we went back to the hotel room, the sparkly blue color had lost its shininess. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me. But that makes me even more frightened. The next morning was our last full day in Bitsburgh. I got Ma and Pa to bring me to the memorial dedication so I wouldn’t feel lonely again. They even let me say something at the podium after their speech. “Thank you, Ma and Pa. My name is Spur. I wanna talk about...my sister, Cozy Glow.” I saw the reporters’ eyes widen. They started taking a lot of notes on their pads and they were looking at me. It was kind of nice. I smiled for their cameras. I didn’t have any speech prepared, so I just told ‘em a story. I told them a story about when I was eleven, and a couple of foals at school cornered me in the cafeteria and tried to cut off my wings like that “Cupcakes” graphic novel that someone snuck into school. But that’s not the important part. I remember later that night, I was in my room, there was a big storm, and our lights were out—it happens every time a big storm hits, which is once a week. I was cryin’ my eyes out, ‘cause I wasn’t allowed to cry at dinner. I remember my sister flew into my room. She lit a candle so there’d be some light. “It’s okay, sis,” she said to me. “Tomorrow, we’ll make them pay. I’ll kill them. I’ll drown them in the water, and so that way they’ll pay for what they did to us pegasi. “And then, we’ll go. We’ll FLY! We’ll FLY outta this bayou, and we’ll go someplace far away. Like a mountain. We should go to a mountain.” “How about a lake?” I remember I said. “With a meadow, with flowers all round it!” I cut it out from an ad we got in our junk mail. I put it somewhere, and then it went missing. “Nah. I like a mountain better,” Cozy said. She liked the cold a lot. “Okay then. A mountain it is.” I smiled. Cozy smiled back at me. “Tomorrow?” I asked. “Tomorrow,” she said back. Just hearin’ hear say the word “tomorrow,” I just felt so damn happy. We didn’t actually kill them and escape the bayou, but I hoped it. That night, I hoped it, I hoped it real badly. And that felt good. Cozy Glow was always there during sad nights. During these nastiest, stormiest, scariest, shittiest nights…she was always there. And she smiled. And she’s still there. I said to the crowd, “Even with all the terrible things that they said she’s done…it’s those sad nights that make me miss my sister, Cozy Glow, a lot.” Everycreature was silent. Then they got mad. They started yelling. And screaming at me. The idiots. The fucking idiots. They don’t get it. It’s like the only thing they heard out of my speech was “my sister, Cozy Glow.” I tried to stop the crowd from getting mad. “But…but Ma and Pa love her, and they miss her even more! Don’t y’all, Ma? Pa?” I looked at Ma and Pa. They didn’t say nothin’. Those cowards. Those fucking cowards. But they rescued me. The mob got louder and more angry every second, and Ma and Pa pulled me out before they could get to me. I ran, Ma ran, Pa ran. Pa shielded me from the hecklers. He pulled me real close, my face covered by his warm, untrimmed fur. It smelled like roses—I was surprised. I think he hugged Ma, and her perfume rubbed off on him. I don’t think I’d ever been so close to Pa. For so long. He a’int the easiest to get close to. It was several minutes like that. I couldn’t see, but we must’ve galloped a few hundred yards. Ma leaned in where Pa was covering me. I could feel their warmth all around me. And the rose perfume. On both sides. Ma whispered to me as I cried. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.” I tried to caress Ma’s cheek, but the spot where I punched her was still healing. She winced, and I guess it was only then that she realized that night was real and she wasn’t dreaming. Ma yelled at me for touching the painful spot and told me never to do that again. I was planning on tellin’ her sorry, but then I didn’t. The sounds of the mob—without looking at them, it just sounded like mad screaming. Like that time Cozy burnt that bully who called me a birdbrain and went missing cause Cozy—my sister, Cozy Glow—took her away and she went missin’ for so long that they pronounced that bully dead, so that’s why she pushed her into the fire. And the mad screaming of the mob made me feel like I was the one that had pushed them into the fire. Welcome to the family, sis. I heard my sister’s voice while I was trying to sleep that night. I think if Ma and Pa hadn’t rescued me from the mob, I’m sure they would’ve beat me up and burnt me on a stake. But maybe that’s just it. They didn’t wanna be responsible for killing me. Not directly responsible of course, they’d be indirectly responsible—but that was exactly what my sister was so damn good at. And then everypony would start seein’ tight wound curls in Ma and Pa’s mane. The next morning I saw the paper, and they were talking about how I “Romanticized Cozy’s Genocidal Actions, Antagonized Own Parents in Shocking Public Speech.” I was on the front page, instead of Ma and Pa. They got a picture of me smiling, with my new dress, my new mane…before I told ‘em that story that made them mad. Maybe my words are like poison. Maybe when I exhale, the air that come out make other ponies mad or sick. Maybe it’s magic. Pegasus pony magic. Or Cozy-Glow-sister magic. I don’t know, I don’t know. “I don’t know…” I said out loud. Oh golly, you don’t? Well, I do, sis! Ma wasn’t actually mad at me that morning. She looked happy when I woke up and breakfast had been delivered to our room. It wasn’t a couple hours till we had to catch the train back home, and she poured me a glass of orange juice and said, “Mornin’ sweetie. You should try one of their croissants. They’re heavenly.” She did say one thing. As I was eating the croissants that were still warm from the oven. “It’s mighty dangerous for you to speak the truth, Spur. No beauty makeover’s ever gonna change that.” “Ma, you don’t hate Cozy, do ya?” I asked. “Course not.” She refilled my orange juice glass. “Then, you lied to the press.” Ma was quiet. “You love Cozy Glow, and you miss—” Ma shushed me. My mane was still the loose wavy style, but I wish I could’ve changed it back. ‘Cause that’s what everycreature sees anyway. I started feeling sick looking at that navy-blue dress I bought. Guess it wasn’t the same dress, ‘cause the color wasn’t the same, ‘cause it faded—remember how I was saying the color fades real easy? Ma said to keep the dress, and she’d give it to my distant cousin Diamante in Manehattan. I remember her. I used to play with her when I was little foal, but she moved only a year or two after my sister was born. Haven’t heard from her in ages. “How is she doing?” I asked Ma. “She’s doin’ well. She’s workin’ in her pa’s company.” “What company?” “A real estate firm.” “Didn’t Pa wanna start a real estate firm?” “Y’can’t start a real estate firm in the stinkin’ bayou, Spur.” Ma paused. “We couldn’t get outta there, was the problem. An’ now it’s too late to move—Pa’s gettin’ old, I’m gettin’ old, yer gettin’ old, and yer sis—” “She ain’t getting any older,” I said. Ma sighed. “Course not.” I don’t think you stop living when you die. You just go somewhere else, where you don’t get any older. I don’t know why I just thought of that. “Well, that’s the last bag,” Pa said. He was packing. Ma was back to her cheery self. “Goodness, look at the time. We should be headin’ out,” Ma said. “All right.” We went home on one of those newer fast trains where the windows don’t open. I sat in the train—it wasn’t a sleeper car—blinking, trying to see if this was a dream and I would wake up already. I was sitting in that train headed back to the bayou for about another hour, and I was just feelin’ so sad that I was trapped and I couldn’t get out.