//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Nerves // Story: Letters to the Princess // by Shaslan //------------------------------// Cozy Glow’s heart drummed a staccato rhythm that kept tempo with the rumble of the sleepers beneath the train. The invitation in her saddlebag seemed almost to burn with a tangible heat. It was bizarre. As brutally worded as if it were from a dictator — somepony like Empress Cozy Glow, had her rule lasted longer than a few hours — and without any of the flowery softness that Cozy expected a princess to veil her meaning in. They were all so…so sickeningly good. Friendship, love, sunshine, starlight — blah blah blah. But Flurry Heart…she was different. Or — Cozy had thought she was different. That first game in the grandmasters’ clubroom, with the fire crackling beside them, sending strange shadows flickering over Flurry’s smooth pink fur. The electrifying thunk of pieces on the chessboard. The thrill of actually being bested in a game. Of having to actually think how to take down her opponent, instead of the solution being as obvious as the muzzle on her face. It had all seemed so…so real. So much realer than Cozy had expected, when she first agreed to the match. A couple of hours with royalty, to see the precious niece of Twilight Sparkle up close and personal. Cozy had fully anticipated being able to judge Flurry as false and arbitrarily cruel as all the other princesses were. She had been shocked when that was not the case. And so when Flurry had written to her, she had responded. When Flurry had asked for a rematch, she had agreed — she had been eager for it. When she looked at Flurry, she had seen an equal. Somepony who understood what it was like to always be the cleverest pony in the room. Who was used to being scrutinised and stared at and treated like a freak. She had thought she had found a kindred spirit at last. Those were the thoughts that were swirling round her head the day she waited by the lake in the gardens of Canterlot Palace. Far too close to the primary residence of Twilight Sparkle, her erstwhile jailor, arch-nemesis and the last pony on Equus she wanted to meet — but she had been willing to take the risk, to meet Flurry again. Excitement, dread, fear, and hunger swirled in her belly in equal mixture, and she alternated between wanting laugh in excitement or to hurt something. Extremes of emotion were not good for her — Doctor Healing Word was insistent on the importance of calm for someone with Cozy Glow’s condition — but at that moment she didn’t care. She just wanted to see Flurry Heart again. To match wits with her, to spar with her. To gain points and lose them in the subtle, deadly combat of their conversation. Her pulse thudded in her temples and in her throat as she paced the path beside the lake, again and again, in an agony of suspense. But she kept pacing, and kept pacing…and still Flurry Heart did not appear. She tried to make excuses — it was a big lake, after all, or perhaps Flurry was still trying to give her guards the slip — but the sun dipped lower in the sky, and still the Princess did not come. Cozy Glow’s pacing faltered and slowed until finally she simply sat at the water’s edge, staring blankly across it. When finally the sun began to shimmer with the magic that meant Princess Twilight Sparkle had it in her grasp, Cozy Glow knew that it was time to go. Princess Twilight was out and about — she could be in the gardens right now — and at that moment a chance meeting with her was something Cozy would rather die than endure. She fled, and all the half-imagined hopes and wishes had splintered into nothingness as she went. For weeks, she had brooded on it. Examined it from every possible angle, like it was a piece of casework. Taken it down piece by piece and built it back up again in her mind. Torn up half a dozen furious letters to the princess and dodged as many of her royal admirer’s emissaries as she possibly could. But now she was back. Doing it all over again — in the exact same position, all nerves and fear and that persistent urge to kick somepony — rattling along on the train to the Crystal Empire. A lump rose in her throat. Why was she doing this again? Why was she putting herself through it for the second time? It — it wouldn’t end any differently. It couldn’t. There was no way somepony like Flurry would be interested in a pony like her — somepony with such beauty, such power, and such immunity to what other ponies thought — in short, a Princess. With all the connotations that word carried. There was no explanation for Flurry’s behaviour. Her persistence. It could all only be some sort of sick joke. What waited for Cozy at the other end of this train line? A hopeful smile and two soft blue eyes — or a court full of nobles ready to laugh at their monarch’s vicious joke? What was she, after all? Cozy Glow, the biggest pariah in Canterlot. A joke. A pony whom no one had ever quite believed was reformed. A two-bit lawyer — the best in Canterlot, sure, but a trained sheep could be better than those mulish idiots in the city. Cozy spent her days doing work she could have done in her sleep; divorces and litigation and corporate mergers. Wasting her abilities away. She was a chess player, a grandmaster — whom none of the other masters would play against any more. They didn’t like to lose. A champion with no opponents. A nonentity. A…a failure. There it was again. That word. The one she always came back to, no matter how high she climbed or how much progress she made with Doctor Healing Word. The one that had echoed in her mind even when she drained the magic from the world. Even when she drank in enough magical power to bend the whole universe to her will. Failure. It dogged her hoofsteps and haunted her dreams. All it took was one little wobble — one little shake — — And Cozy was right back in her parents’ study, thousands of magical treatises and scrolls stacked high against the walls, watching them both glare down at her, their horns alight with the glow of their magic. “What a pity,” said her father, narrowing his eyes, red like her own. “Not a drop of magic in you.” “I had hoped for something,” her mother remarked, looking at the foal as though it were a slug that had crawled in from the garden. “Despite the…well. Those.” She gestured languidly at Cozy Glow’s small, stubby wings. Her father snorted. “Quite. They say blood will out — and you and I, sweet one, hail from two of the most powerful magical bloodlines in all of Equestria. But you would hardly know this one was our child at all.” Cozy Glow’s pupils contracted as she looked from one to the other, her skin drawn tightly over her thin little face. “I’ve — I’ve been trying,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. “Sometimes I almost think I can feel it—” “—Quiet, now,” her father rebuked her. “Good foals should be seen and not heard, remember.” Her mother was already turning away. “I think it’s been a waste. There’s no point having the tutors come any more. We’re just throwing good money after bad.” The foal ducked her head, blue ringlets falling over her eyes. “Our child was meant to go to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.” The disgust in her father’s tone was evident. “Not…flitter around like a bird.” He shot her a glance, and spoke to the nursemaid. “Take her back to her chambers.” Cozy Glow wanted to scream. To cry and beg — to smash the delicate glass vials and the thalamic crystals until they listened — but it never did any good. “Don’t worry,” her mother answered. “We’ll just try again. Two hundred years of deliberate marriages and good breeding practices don’t end here. What are the odds we would get a second pegasus?” Her father guffawed, and something inside Cozy Glow, some last little thread, frayed and finally snapped. Everything had started there. The fire, the screams, the smell of burning flesh — how good it had all felt. How free it had made her. Then the search for some way — some chance of draining the hated magic from the world. A way to make certain that nopony could ever make her feel like that again. All to escape her greatest and first fear. Failure. What if this would just be another? And…how could it be anything else? Flurry Heart was an alicorn. A living embodiment of magic. How could she ever care about a…a pegasus? No — not just a pegasus. Care about somepony as fundamentally broken as Cozy knew that she was. But…the image of Flurry’s sweet blue eyes kept coming back to her. The way her devious smile could change her whole face into something like Cozy’s own. The things she had said. The way she had played, only half her attention on the board, the other half focused on Cozy herself. The way she had smiled when she knocked down Cozy’s solar princess piece. What if this time, it really was different? Hope was a persistent little bastard. Despite Cozy’s best efforts, it simply refused to die. She couldn’t help it; she hoped — or she wanted to hope — that it could be different. The thought of it was unshakeable, and it was that little nagging thought had gotten her onto the Crystal Express. The train whistle sounded, and the engine groaned. The view of the snow outside Cozy’s window abruptly ceased and became green and vibrant again. The train was pulling into the station — — And there, on the platform, flanked by guards in shining silver armour, was a familiar pink-and-blue head of curls, and a hopeful, nervous smile.