When she first looked into the pool, she saw a monster staring back at her.
Its short, well-trimmed fur was the disconcerting color of peachy raw flesh. Even and uniform, it brought to mind visceral images of a lumbering, pulsating, oozing creature devouring and absorbing anything and everything into its heaving girth. Growing and growing as it consumed more and more, until there was nothing left but the monster.
Its long fluffy ears were perked, listening for the sounds of trouble and prey alike. Swiveling around in every direction to keep it constantly informed of the subtle sounds of intruders.
Long, curled hair made its way out from the top of its head in the form of heavy crashing blue waves. Raging and thrashing and full of wrath, almost promising a slow drowning in their unfathomable depths as they foamed and rolled.
Two blood red eyes stared into her own, deep and dark and full of inviting secrets that could never be told. Shadowy and mysterious, there would never be an answer to the mystery of their cold fire's conception. What would lay behind those portals, if she could only dare to look?
Two white-dimpled cheeks paved the way for a rounded snout at the narrow bridge of its face. Closed to the world, hiding sharp, jagged teeth that promised tearing, and gnashing, and chomping, and biting, and-
As she stared into the pool, waiting for something nopony would ever know, the monster's mouth slowly opened.
And smiled at her.
Smiled her smile at her.
Short, bubbling peals of laughter slipped out of that cute little smile staring back at her, and her vision suddenly narrowed as the expression of rare joy momentarily overtook her. The howling, shrieking sounds bounced off the quiet cave's walls; and quickly came to a stop as the night's otherwise silent spell was broken.
When she looked into the pool again, her own face stared back at her.
A face with peach-colored fur, fluffy ears, long curled hair, two red eyes, white-dimpled cheeks, and unfortunately blunt teeth hiding behind a small smile.
Cozy Glow was known to embellish, sometimes.
"Golly," She spoke quietly, being careful not to disturb the night's quiet much more than she already had. "I wasn't too sure about trusting anything that came out of Sandbar's mouth, but I guess he was right!"
A careful hoofstep echoed loudly in the cave's enormity, and she leaned closer to the still pool's edge. A tentative hoof cautiously made its way to the surface of the mirror-like reflection, and it suddenly shattered under the force of the many ripples echoing out from where her hoof had made slight contact.
When the pool settled again, the reflection was no longer wearing the small smile that had never made its way to her face.
But she let one form anyway.
The distant prayer formed on her lips almost automatically, nearly tugged out of her by the strange force that the otherwordly pool commanded.
"And into her own reflection she stared..."
The words sounded so foreign on her lips, despite the practice she had put into memorizing them. They didn't sound the same as they had in her room, though. Here, standing in front of the very pool they referenced, they sounded powerful.
"Yearning for one whose reflection she shared..."
The inaudible rhythm bounced around heavily in her skull, rattling her brains and body alike. The formless magic in the air began to coalesce into an unseen form, just beyond her awareness. It felt impatient. Hungry.
"And solemnly sweared not to be scared..."
The short poem's meaningless lines had never made sense in retrospect. She had never been scared of anything in her entire life. Not since the life she had left behind, and not since the fear she had gutted and buried. But as an iridescent glimmer began to shine almost unnoticeably in the pool, she began to understand why any other pony would have feared what came next.
"At the prospect of being doubly mared."
Her lips tingled as the last of the lyric left her, and she began to feel an urge that she had never felt before. An urge that nopony had ever felt before. Something completely unique, something never known.
Something never meant.
Stepping into the pool, it wasn't nearly as slow or wet as she had expected. It was as if she had simply opened a door, and taken a quick step outside it to the world beyond.
Her world rotated around her, and her hoof made contact with the ground as she had left it.
And her opened eyes came to rest once more upon their reflection.
A reflection that stood with a very real presence where she had been standing mere moments ago. A reflection that stood with a look of awe, as it rested upon its own reflection made very real in front of it.
One reflection with its back to the pool, and one reflection with its back to the wall.
"Golly," Her voice broke the suffocating silence, as the reflection they both stared into suddenly spoke. "It's like looking into a cute little mirror."
An identical smile formed on two sets of dimpled cheeks, and an insincere giggle cut into the air with twice as much power as it normally would have.
Four guarded eyes laced with sweet syrupy affection locked onto their pairs, and rhythmic hoofsteps echoed into the cave as the reflections simultaneously broke from their position. A tensed hoof came to rest snugly against its cautious clone, and another giggle that neither of them believed broke the quiet.
"You're really.. me, huh?" Two voices crashed harshly on each other, with their measured tones and flat affectation clashing perfectly against the other. There was no differing level, no pitched harmony; just the same exact sentence layered on top of itself.
The same cake layer. The same fabric overlay. The same apple growing from the same stem. The same shield bashing uselessly against itself. The same sword grinding hotly against a pretender.
The same thought process.
Two quirked smiles slowly formed below two sets of shadowed eyes. Two twin gazes found themselves over the other's withers at the same time, searching for something the other hoped to see instead.
One pair found a rock just behind her.
The other pair found nothing.
The four eyes found each other in the middle at the exact same time, and they both took a single, solitary second to formulate a plan. The reflection strained to its edge as the subtle muscles in one lopsided smile loosened imperceptibly.
The reflection broke.
Two ponies quickly shoved their hooves in opposite directions, catching them both off balance for a mere moment as the two sets hobbled on unsteady hooves. One reflection recovered faster, and lowered her head as she tried to dash forward and shove the other out of her way.
The other reflection recovered just quickly enough to rear up and swing her hooves around the other's neck as they tried to dash past to reach the rock she had seen behind her.
Her momentum quickly stalled, and her hooves flew out from under her as a pair of surprisingly strong hooves found their way around her windpipe. She gasped out a strangled cry as a victorious shout rang out from below her, and she topped over onto the body of her reflection.
With her own body writhing below her, she could only bring her own hooves up to the grasping hooves encircling her neck as they found a solid place to begin squeezing roughly. She gasped out in pain as she tried desperately to pry the crushing force off of her throat.
Her back hooves scrabbled for purchase between their clones on either side of them, before they raised to slam themselves down on top of her own.
Her body was trapped completely within the grip of itself, and a broken giggle from underneath her raised to fill the air. Her wings fluttered uselessly against the soft chest rising erratically beneath her, and she choked back a scream that would never have come out otherwise.
With her air and her options running out, she took a desperate stab in the dark as she raised a hoof above her head and brought it down roughly on the side of her body below her.
A strangled cry came from a mouth not her own as she felt the skin tear jaggedly from the point of impact, and the grip around her neck loosened. With the small amount of room afforded to her, she brought her head up as far as she could, and roughly brought it back down onto her parallel's face.
Pain exploded in her head, and her vision fuzzed over for a moment as she felt something give in the surface under her. Air came as a sudden relief, and she tore her way out of her captor's grip onto unsteady hooves quickly freed from a duplicate's pin.
Her head swam from the air deprivation, though she could still make out the lumped form of the rock on the ground ahead of her. A fast end to the conflict. Her swaying hooves carried her a few lengths, before a feral scream drowned the rising hope in her chest, and a heavy weight fell onto her from behind.
She toppled roughly onto the ground as her double fell onto her back, and familiar hooves found their way back around her neck as suddenly sharp teeth dug viciously into her ear. Spittle and something worse stained the ground below her as she cried out from the pain of having her head knocked against the cold stone floor.
The blunt edges of teeth somehow tore red marks into her ear, dripping a hot mixture of blood and spit onto the ground. Grasping hooves tried desperately to find a hold on her neck, though they were met with no resistance. Her teeth ground against each other roughly as the swaying head above her periodically pushed her face into the cold floor of the cave.
She tried to gather her hooves under her to lift herself up, or to bat the grip at her neck away; but they simply slid out from under her every time she tried. As her double's voice snarled furiously through the flesh of her ear, she began to feel a hot feeling bunching up in her chest.
It was familiar, though it wasn't something she had felt in a long time. It rose and spread throughout her body, filling her limbs with a vigor she had thought lost to her. Hooves planted themselves solidly into the ground below her, and her body gradually lifted through her own doubled weight.
It felt like heat and rage and death and murder.
It felt like her father.
A bestial howl that didn't sound like her tore its way out from her lips, and she reared up onto her hooves with sudden strength. Her clone hung woodenly from her back, teeth still sunk into her ear, as she stood on wobbly hooves; before she let them slip under her, and came roughly crashing backwards onto the ground.
Her head rung from the impact, and her ear stung bitterly wherever there was an open bite-mark, but the hooves around her neck had once again loosed their grip. She fought against their weak and pathetic grasps, and found her own hooves under her again.
She didn't waste time trying to spot the rock through the haze of swirling greys and pulsing reds, she just dashed forward and roughly swept her hooves along the ground ahead of her. Her hoof bashed painfully against an unsteady surface, and she cried out in a broken mix of victory and pain as she quickly hefted the small, yet heavy object into her hooves.
She could feel a presence creeping up behind her, and a real smile made its way to her face as she reared up once more and swung the rock out behind her. If the sharp noise that echoed out into the cave wasn't indication enough, the splatter of fluid on her face and the dull vibration that rang through her trembling hooves would be telling on their own.
She felt some of it on her lips, and she darted her tongue out to taste it. The taste of heady iron filled her mouth, and she hummed appreciatively for the disgusting flavor. Whatever she felt about it, it was just one of the many benefits to winning, and she should savor it nonetheless.
But it wasn't done yet, the pale blob cluttering up her blurry vision was still moving.
She clutched the warm rock to her chest as she made her way forward awkwardly standing on her back hooves. A pained whimper battered desperately at her burning ear, but she ignored it. She knew that if she had lost the scuffle, her own whimpers would have been discarded.
As she drew closer, she allowed her hooves to collapse under her, and carry her onto the body of her reflection. She could feel something warm seep into her fur from where she had torn into her reflection's skin earlier, but she ignored that too.
She focused instead on resting her head gently on her chest, and listening to the fluttering heartbeat and shallow breaths within. She closed her eyes and let out a quiet sigh. It was so fragile, so serene and soft. She could so easily just put the rock down, and leave her double to rest and recover here. She would probably find her way out into the world and make her own life for herself somewhere, far away from her and her responsibilities and plans.
She would be happy. She would have a life she had never known.
Her eyes opened slowly, and she rested a hoof against her double's chest as she brought herself upright. Her vision was clearing up now, and she could see the off-colored bruise coloring one side of her face. It was beginning to swell up, coloring an ugly purple and red, forcefully closing one of her eyes.
Her own impassive gaze picked out the various cuts and bruises and scrapes adorning her other's face. The rounded edge of her muzzle was bent to the left slightly, and blood was bubbling out from one nostril. Her one good eye was still slightly open, and she could see the plea in it without even looking. It was all so ugly. Not cute at all.
Not lovable.
The rock felt heavier than it had a moment ago as she raised it above her head, and a single solitary tear leaked from the corner of her double's good eye as it stared directly into her own. A trembling frown laced with pain and fear cut a clear contrast to one set solidly with apathy.
Neither of them blinked.
"I'm real."
She didn't stop to consider how the words hung in the air as she brought the rock down hard on the side of her double's head. Blood splashed messily onto both of their faces as the jagged edge of the rock cut a messy path through her flesh before stopping suddenly with an audible crack as it met bone.
She hadn't brought it down with enough force to crush the skull, nor did she think she was capable of that. It wasn't necessary either way, though.
Her trembling hooves weakly pushed the rock aside so she could get a better look at her handiwork. The heavy noise of the blood-splattered rock making contact with the floor rung endlessly through the pounding in her ears. She brought her steadier hoof up to brush aside a red-soaked mane-curl, and she stared blankly down at a glassy, half-closed eye.
She could feel the head tilt brokenly to the side a little as she pushed herself down the body a little. She lowered her head down to her double's chest, and closed her eyes as she struggled to listen though her own heavy breaths.
Nothing.
She brought her head up to stare down at her own corpse on the ground. Her once-beautiful and immaculate curls were messy and untied, and much of her mane was quickly becoming soaked with blood as it leaked out to pool around her head.
She was tired of looking at it.
She rolled herself onto unsteady hooves and slowly came to stand at the side of her cooling body. She regarded the form on the ground with thinly-veiled disgust for a moment, before she brought her head down to its side and pushed as hard as her neck would allow.
The body flopped bonelessly onto its side as she rolled it closer to the still waters of the Mirror Pool a few hoof-lengths away. Her double's blood made an uneven trail, pooling in certain spots as she occasionally stopped for breath; leaving the red spatters looking somewhat like a broken pen trail.
Eventually she stood, panting, at the side of the pool with her body next to her. She could feel the drying blood spattered unevenly on her face, staining her fur with the irreparable memories of her frenzied struggle against her clone.
She took one last deep breath, before lowering her head to push the dead dopple into the pool.
The pool rippled deeply, though not as much as it should've. Instead of any sort of splash, the body simply stuck into the water; as if it was somehow gelatinous. The mirror's reality distorted heavily around the reflection of the body floating on its surface, before the corpse gradually began to sink.
And then, nothing. The body dipped beneath the surface of the water, and the pool was suddenly still again.
Cozy Glow stood there, at the side of the pool, heaving great breaths that burned in her lungs. The cave around her was once more silent, and there would be no more sudden attacks from behind accompanied by her own voice screaming bloody murder.
Her eyes felt heavy, and her own cuts and bruises stung in the stagnant underground air. She nearly turned around to begin making her way out of the cave, but she was struck with a sudden inexplicable urge. There was just a feeling in her chest, pushing and compelling her to perform some unknown action.
She took one last deep breath, and let the feeling wash over her.
She leaned over, and looked into the pool.
She saw the blood stained face of a monster looking back at her.
And it smiled at her.
As she smiled back.