In a very unexpected and unlikely sequence of events, Cozy Glow - recently revealed backstabber extraordinaire - had escaped. Who would have thunk it?
Certainly, none who’d been marching her off to Tartarus. Even after all she’d done there was still that tiniest sliver of misjudging, of underestimating. After all, while a prodigious planner of schemes (and plans) she was only little, and what could a little filly do while under guard?
Slip away the instant attention dropped for a split-second, that’s what.
Luna had been her main concern, obviously. Almost Cozy’s sole concern, in fact, with the guards a mere afterthought, so much set-dressing.
The guards always left something to be desired, really. If Cozy had been in charge - and, one day, she probably would be, all things going as they should - she was going to have a look over the entry requirements.
Or instate some, probably.
But yes, Luna. The main obstacle to escape. Considerable, not insurmountable.
For all her power and experience she wasn’t infallible, and all it took was a glance away at just the right time, and the wherewithal to exploit it. After that, not so difficult. Not for Cozy!
Because, really, nothing was ever truly difficult. Some things were just complicated, and all complicated things were made up of simple steps. Lay them out, and nothing was that hard. Maybe that was just her, though. Thinking on it, yes, probably just her. Who else could have done any of the things she’d done? Who?!
No-one!
Still, all that being said the escape hadn’t been exactly smooth. Flawless in the planning, perhaps a touch rushed in the execution. It had been sloppy, basically. But it had worked, so there was that.
More through luck than judgement, agreeably, judgement having run pretty thin once things had really started picking up steam and once she’d started moving faster than she’d planned for. Thinking ahead? Second to none. Thinking on her hooves? Not a whole lot of experience.
Worked though. Idiots!
Far away now, out of all their clutches. Slithering down culverts and scooching under hedges and hiding in branches and behind bushes and all the while slipping further and further away. Get some distance, get some breathing room, start planning on how to come back from all of this.
It wasn’t over! Nothing was over. You don’t just turn it off.
Anything you could walk away from wasn’t the end, and there was always a way back. Just had to find one. There was always at least one. Didn’t matter if it was small, didn’t matter how much work it would take. She’d find it, and she’d make it work!
Soon though, soon.
Things were still mostly unsettled. Always looking over her shoulder. Even with the natty all-concealing, wing-and-ringlet-hiding cloak she’d managed to cobble together in the brief time she’d had available she was still jumpy, just in case someone looked that bit too closely.
Keeping on the move, keeping to the smaller outlying villages and hamlets. Smaller was better. More remote, quieter, less connected. Lesser chance of recognition. Still a chance, but lesser.
Venturing into them was what you might call a calculated risk, but she had to. She’d proven rather inept at foraging in the wilderness, so finding food was something of a constant and pressing concern.
And it was while on the prowl for unattended snacks through some podunk, dot-on-the-map village that something caught her eye, something she hadn’t seen before, certainly nothing she recognised or had even ever heard about.
A thing. Something.
Lanky, bearded, not really shaped like anything she could immediately bring to mind. And tall, too. Tall even sitting down, as this one was, perched on a stool behind a high worktop and visible through the glass front of what looked to be a shop, fiddling with something metal.
Despite the danger in lingering or, worse, making her presence known, Cozy felt it was at least worth a look. Could be something useful, after all, and at this point anything useful would be good. Could be the time to start pushing back, to stop running!
And so, checking that nopony was watching, she slunk across the dirt road and slunk through the door, which was still open. A bell rang which did make her flinch, but she pushed through it.
The thing - whatever it was - did not look up, concentration instead remaining on the partially dismantled object he was fiddling with. Some sort of mechanical object. Looked like a toy more than anything else, really, at least from where Cozy was standing.
“I am closed, come back tomorrow,” he said, waving something at her. Not a hoof. Not sharp enough for a claw. She vaguely recalled monkeys having hands. Looked about right.
“Whatcha doin’?” Cozy asked, going for bright, always a good start. Everyone - adults particularly - always softened up at that. Though she also did make sure to hang near the door, just in case the thing did happen to recognise her.
“I open in the morning,” he said again, but as it rapidly became clear that she wasn’t going to get the message and leave he sighed, grumbled, rolled his shoulders and said: “Fixing.”
“Ooh,” she said obligingly, giving a wide-eyed look around.
The whole room was lined with the things in rows along shelves. Some were more pony-shaped, others more like him. Broadly similar, none were quite alike. Impressive visually if nothing else.
“Did you make all these?” She asked, returning her attention to him. Stupid question, really, but an ingratiating one, and that had been the idea. Opening for a bit of a self-pat on the back, good opener.
“Yes,” he said, bluntly.
Nothing further. She tried a small array of cute looks but none of them got a response but he still wasn’t looking at her. Aggravating.
Time to be direct. Time to be bold!
Taking a breath she stepped into the shop proper and let the door swing closed. If she did need to run quick, it wouldn’t be too hard, but still. A risk.
“What are you? If you don’t mind me asking. I’ve never seen anything like you,” she asked.
And he sighed again, this time like someone who’d been asked this question more than he might have liked.
“I am a human, I am not from around here, I arrived via a workplace mishap. My name is Paul. No, I will not eat you. Hello.”
This sounded like a practised statement and came out a lot more fluidly than anything else he’d said up to this point, albeit more slowly and carefully, too.
“Pall?” Cozy said, the name sounding odd and even feeling odd in her mouth.
“No. Paul,” he said.
When he’d spoken more slowly and with greater deliberation his diction had been far more clear, but he also plainly resented the extra effort involved, so he’d almost immediately reverted back smaller snippets.
“Pall? Bearer?”
Kind of a stab in the dark there from Cozy, but she really couldn’t think of anything else.
“Just Paul. Understand? Maybe I am not clear. Your language is difficult. I learn, but slow. Not talk much anyway, not many talk to me.”
“Oh gosh, you don’t speak Mareain?”
He was doing a pretty good job of butchering it, she had to admit. Still, at least he seemed to understand it well enough, shaking his head at her question and briefly muttering something she absolutely did not understand at all.
“Hmph. Little. Not much. English, not this. This I try to learn, learn enough. To get by,” he then said.
And then he eyed her, looking at her properly from the first time she entered. She froze, but not obviously enough to give anything away she hoped, and whatever spike of panic she felt stayed entirely on the inside.
Thankfully, no immediate look of recognition or blind hatred crossed his features, so that was a positive sign. Instead he mostly looked curious.
“Most children here I have seen already, you are new. Who are you?” He asked.
Seems Cozy was perhaps more off her game than she might have initially thought because she hadn’t actually thought far enough ahead to have a fake name ready and prepared. Mostly lately she’d just been avoiding all attention from anypony, so it hadn’t come up.
Now though she felt like a prize fool, and rather than making a rushed, bad choice that she might have swift cause to regret she just decided to gloss over it completely.
Could work in a pinch.
“Whatcha say you were doing again? Fixing something?” She asked, all chirpy.
She nodded to the thing he had in front of him that he had been working on and he spared her a second longer before glancing down.
“Yes. Broken,” he said.
“What are they? I mean, they look like super-cool toys but they look...different.”
Seemed a good way of steering the conversation the way she wanted to and also away from her in general.
“Hmph,” Paul said, making some sort of forceful adjustment that made the thing go suddenly rigid, after which he set it upright on the workbench. Cozy had a proper, close-up look.
It was perhaps the length of one of her legs, perhaps just a touch shorter, and was one of the ones shaped much like he was, though rounded and made of metal as seen, all jointed and articulated. There was a quiet ticking sounded that was more obvious now he’d taken his hand away.
“I make them. Toys, yes? Little horses, little men. Clockwork and magic, you see? Work together, makes them move. Tell them to do something, they do it. Jump,” he said, directing the last word right at the thing.
The little toy jumped obligingly and then went limp and fell over, leading to another small burst of muttering from Paul who again set about with his screwdriver before starting to really get to work on the insides with something that let off little trails of smoke anytime he touched it into the innards, the toy twitching in the most unsettling fashion with every jab he made.
Cozy moved in closer, straining on her hindlegs to peer up and over the worksurface. No bad thing, looking tiny and helpless. Most tended to dismiss you the more it looked like you were struggling. Or, better, they’d do things for you! Paul, however, offered no help at all and didn’t appear to care how tiny and helpless she looked, to her mild chagrin.
Still, worse things had happened.
“They’ll do anything you tell them?” She asked.
“There are limits. Toys, yes? For children. Not do anything dangerous. Bad for children. No sharp edges, either. I make sure.”
Now he mentioned it they did look very kid-friendly. Almost bulbous in places. The toy’s leg gave a particularly violent twitch as Paul stuck one of his tools deep inside, triggering a crackling, hissing sound and a small spurt of sparks.
“How did you say you got there again?” Cozy asked, just to keep things moving.
“Accident. Magical accident,” Paul said.
Could be interesting. Worthy of followup, at least.
“Oh! What happened?” She asked.
Paul just shook his head.
“I do not know. Explosion, I do not know. I do not know about magic.”
She blinked at him and then looked to the many and varied magical, mechanical horses and humans lining the room. Every so often one would twitch or shift and some even seemed to be interacting with one another, though that always stopped whenever she noticed.
“But don’t these run on magic?” She asked. Paul waved a hand and glowered. Cozy got the impression this was the longest conversation he’d had with anyone in some time, and the effort was plainly starting to annoy him. Not that she cared overmuch.
“Little bit. I have practical understanding, not theo-ret-ical. Or did. Things work differently here. Much of what I used to be able to do is beyond me, sadly. Or not sadly, depending. Most of the - ah - “ He flexed a hand here, searching for a word which turned out to be: “Mechanics still work enough. So toys.”
Cozy felt she was starting to pick at a particular thread here, and kept tugging, just to see where it led.
“So, where you came from, you used to do something like this, but not this?”
Paul nodded.
“I did not always make toys. Used to make - other things.”
There’s been a pause there, a moment’s hesitation. Slight, but Cozy had picked up on it. Definitely a thread. And she could see where it was going, too - it was written all over his face, through every inch of him!
“Dangerous things?” She asked, sweetly, like she’d never normally even imagine such a concept and had probably just heard the idea in passing from an adult.
Paul paused and then gently laid down the toy.
“What makes you say dangerous?”
Brief scamble for an answer, eyes darting around and under, then:
“Uh, your - your leg. Sorry! That’s probably really rude of me but, well, you say it like that and you have that, I don’t know, I just assumed…”
He looked down at his leg. Or rather, where most of his left leg used to be. The replacement was sat nearby, leaning against the small set of drawers some of his tools lived in, him having removed it earlier on account of the thing being generally rather uncomfortable to have on for long periods, despite him having made it himself.
In point of fact he had indeed lost his original leg owing to the dangerous nature of his previous occupation, his work having put him in very much the wrong place at the wrong time. But there was no way a child should have known or even guessed at that as far as he was concerned.
Then again, kids made odd deductive leaps sometimes, and often thought in ways that adults didn’t. They really could surprise you, odd little spurts of cutting wisdom when you least expected it, at least in his limited experience. He grunted.
“Hmph. That is big assumption to make.”
“Sorry. Was I wrong?” She asked innocently, sweetly.
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“You are very advanced for your age,” he said.
“You really think so?” Head cocked, lashes fluttering.
He stared at her, hard. Not a crack or hint of anything other than total honesty. Still though, something nagged at him. Nothing to be done about it, though. He shrugged.
“Hmph. Should you be going off home? It is late. Dark soon.”
“Oh I don’t have a home.”
That got him to raise an eyebrow.
“No home? A child? I should find the boss, put you into capable and caring hands. Hooves. Whichever. She would know what to do with you,” he said, making to rise from the stool, reaching for his leg.
For the merest flicker of a moment a look of absolute dread threatening to spread across Cozy’s face, but she clamped down on it almost as soon as it had started. Had he not been watching her as closely as he had been, he likely would have missed it completely.
“I-I mean that I don’t have a home here! It’s a village over, not far. Heh. I have to wait for the next wagon out. Which is soon. So yeah I should probably - probably go. Told mum and dad I’d be back before dark so yeah, yeah.”
He stared at her a little longer but her look of beatific innocence and light did not waver. At length he just decided to go along with it. Not his problem. Settling his weight back down again and picking up the toy once more he set about continuing where he’d left off.
“Hmph. As you say.”
Stupid mistake. Stupid, stupid! Cozy chewed the inside of her cheek to keep from growling at herself. Stupid!
She then swallowed this and smiled again.
“You open in the morning, right?” She asked.
He waved a hand, done with looking at her and pretty clearly done with talking, too.
“Yes yes, in the morning. Suspicious child. Go, go, away.”
And so she did, making sure (again) that the street was clear before she left then immediately hustling somewhere tucked out of the way to gather her thoughts.
This did change things, this was a development. Nothing she could immediately put to use, but clearly valuable enough to not be worth passing over, no. New! Different! She could do something with this, even if she wasn’t wholly sure what yet.
Her initial schedule had been to move on in the morning, but a small delay could be adjusted for. Just to get a better handle on what this ‘Pall’ was about, what he did, what he could do, and what what he did could do for her.
Better to have something and not need it than need something and not have it.
Already she could start to see a few seed ideas taking root. Early days, very early days, but with just the right coaxing and loving care and attention they’d grow to be something quite magnificent. Back on top on in no time!
And, failing that, smart kid that she was, she could probably figure out some way to use these weird mechanical things for revenge. Not something subtle, but something that would hopefully express the depths of her fully justified frustrations towards everypony and everything that had ruined her perfect plans. Just some simple, direct revenge.
Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
She grinned to herself and stifled a small cackle. Not bad. Not bad at all!