Arriving in the Crystal Empire, Cozy immediately wished she’d brought a hat as her head was cold. Oh well. If only she’d suddenly decided to come up during the summer months!
Not that it was a problem. Cold was only a problem if you weren’t doing anything, and she had something to do. Fierce purpose would keep her warm in the absence of a hat! It had kept her going through worse before, albeit not for a while.
Knowing which way to go was normally an issue somewhere you hadn’t ever been before, but fortunately for Cozy where she wanted to go this time was quite obvious, because it was quite big. She could see it immediately after having exited the station, the thing looming over everything else around it, being gaudy (not that gaudiness made it especially unique). Cozy headed that way.
Had this been a trip of leisure rather than business (for a given value of business), she might have taken her time more and gloried in her surroundings a little bit. As free as she was now she didn’t exactly ever go that far afield, mostly yo-yoing between Ponyville and Canterlot for this or that reason and never really seeming to get the opportunity (or experience the desire) to go anywhere else.
Could hardly go anywhere with dad - walking down the street was often too uncomfortable an experience for him, so something like this? Somewhere new? Unthinkable.
He’d explained it once - or tried to explain it, once - when she had idly floated the idea of a holiday to him some time ago. Something about having been led by the nose across the land for years on end taking the shine off of going to places and meeting new people. Cozy hadn’t really understood it, and not long after that her freedom had increased to the point she could go see her friends unsupervised, and the idea of holidays had faded into the background. Such was life.
None of which was really relevant then anyway. This wasn’t a holiday, this was a mission, a task! She wasn’t here to sightsee (as pleasant and novel as the sights she was seeing were), she was here to do something! And that something she had to do she had to do somewhere specific.
Luckily, that somewhere just-so happened to be enormous, regal, crystalline, and hard to miss. The palace. And so to that she headed, buzzing low to the ground, face determined.
And so it was that she soon arrived at her destination. It was a lot bigger when you were standing in front of it. Or, rather, standing a little way away from it staring up at the sheer, towering height of the bloody thing. Impressive stuff.
Also, how the hell were you meant to actually get inside?
After some wandering around (and after getting even closer still) she did finally find what looked like an entrance of sorts. There were guards, too, but that sort of thing was to be expected and they weren’t doing an awful lot. Just standing there looking neat and important. Cozy didn’t really pay them all that much attention, noting them much as she had the towers, say, or the door. The door was more important, in fact, and she went up to it. The thing was in proportion to the rest of the building, which is to say it was massive.
Going up to the door and knocking had seemed much easier when the door in question hadn’t been towering over her. She wasn’t even sure now that knocking would actually do anything. Her hoof was only little, it wouldn’t produce sufficient resonance! Even launching herself through the air wouldn’t amount to much, she was sure, other than leaving a Cozy-shaped smear across the surface.
Luckily, there was a bellpull. This wasn’t quite as intimidating, though she did have to reach up to grab the thing. It was, unsurprisingly, made of crystal, or at least the bit she grabbed was. She gave a heave and landed back on her hooves. Somewhere behind those big doors a bell rang.
Nothing happened. Cozy kept on standing, waiting. She glanced at the guards and smiled nervously but they just kept on guarding, staring ahead, being unfriendly and broadly useless.
She was all set to try ringing again when the door started opening, so quietly and so without warning that Cozy jumped. It didn’t open that far, just far enough to make you wonder why they didn’t put another, smaller door into the main door so you didn’t have to faff around with such a big door. Out from the crack which opened a pony emerged.
Shining Armour.
She didn’t know him personally, but she knew of him. From the look he was giving her this unfamiliar-familiarity was mutual. He didn’t look happy.
“I know you,” he said.
“Oh? I, heh - I don’t remember us meeting…?”
Cozy had weighted this to fall equally heavily on either a joke or an honest statement, but it unfortunately landed on neither as he wasn’t in the mood for joking and wasn’t falling for the suggestion that maybe they’d bumped into one another once, as they hadn’t, and they both knew this and the normal polite pretending was out of the question.
“I know of you,” he said.
“Ah.”
Many did.
“You locked my sister in Tartarus.”
Ah. Again.
“Not...personally…” Cozy mumbled, feeling increasingly pinned in place and uncomfortable regretting more and more with every passing second having ever decided to do this incredibly stupid thing and come up here.
This was not going to plan, already this was not going to plan. The plan had admittedly been quite fuzzy on the specific details of what was meant to happen at this part, but still.
In retrospect that might have been a warning sign. It probably should have been a warning sign.
Her planning abilities were rusty as anything, it was shocking. She blamed living with Paul. He’d really taken the edge off of her! She hadn’t needed to scrupulously plan any scheme (evil or otherwise) for years now! No wonder this was happening!
“Why are you here?” He asked bluntly.
“I was, uh, actually here to...maybe talk to...Princess Cadence…?”
“What about?”
“...love?”
He stared at her, waiting for the other horseshoe to drop. But that really was basically it.
“Right,” he said.
He didn’t need to say ‘I don’t believe you’ with words, his face was saying it for him.
“I know it’d be the sort of thing I’d say if I was lying to you, but that’s really why I’m here. I have a thing planned and needed to talk to her about love, and love magic and...yeah...”
Out loud it sounded a bit threadbare. The cracks of doubt spiderwebbed further across Cozy.
Shining Armour though relented, sagging a bit.
“Alright, come in,” he said, stepping aside and flicking his head. Not one to question providence Cozy quickly nipped inside and soon found herself walking along beside him deeper into the castle, the doors closing behind them with a surprisingly soft and gentle ‘whumph’ for such a massive fucking set of doors.
Conversation did not flow like a spring thaw. Once again feeling the need to be the one to fill the silence, Cozy cleared her throat and licked her lips and asked:
“Do you usually answer the door personally?”
He did not look when he answered.
“Depends on who’s outside it.”
“Oh,” she said.
Special treatment didn’t necessarily imply positive treatment.
“So do you check every time or…?” She ventured.
“We knew it was you. Your arrival was noted.”
“Ah,” she said, then the implication that her arrival was still something people kept an eye on sunk in. “Ah…”
Shining Armour picked up on her deflating and moved in to clarify:
“You’re not still under observation. Least not as far as I know. One of the guards just happened to recognise you - has a friend in Canterlot, see, knows you and your, ah, caregiver? Whatever he is, the alien - and mentioned it to another guard, who mentioned it to another guard as part of an anecdote, and I overheard.”
“That’s very convoluted,” Cozy said, wrinkling her muzzle. Shining Armour shrugged.
“That’s being in charge of guards. You listen, you hear things, you hear that Cozy Glow has come up to the Crystal Empire for what is possibly the first time and then you find her ringing the bell. So you go open the door to see why.”
“In case she’s up to something?” She asked.
“Possibly, though I doubt she is. Mostly I was just curious, and I could and so I did. Benefits of being in charge of guards. Does Cozy Glow tend to refer to herself in the third person?” He asked, looking down sideways at her.
“No, this is a new experience for Cozy Glow. She’s finding it quite exotic and fresh,” she said.
Shining Armour made a sound that might have been the distant cousin of a chuckle. Better than nothing.
Here the chatting petered out, but on slightly more amiable terms and so the void that followed wasn’t as sucking and horrific as it might otherwise have been. Which was nice. Cozy took the opportunity while continuing to follow Shining wherever he was going to take in the decor.
Grand would be the nice way of putting it. Overwhelming might be another, slightly less nice way. Tacky would be the unkind way of saying the same sort of thing. If you liked crystal, well, you were in luck. If you didn’t, well, you were out of luck. Basically.
Dad would have hated it. He’d complain about the wasted space and the general opulent luxuriousness. He had a known dislike of opulent luxuriousness. For her part, Cozy felt it had its place in life. Where was the fun if you couldn’t splash with a little luxurious opulence or opulent luxury every now and then? And what better place for it than a whacking great castle? Certainly made life less drab.
The silence, again, continued, now getting to the point where it started to get uncomfortable again. Cozy groaned inwardly. One day this would stop happening. One day.
She felt she needed to address what was probably the elephant in the room, the elephant dragging itself along behind them and ruining the atmosphere. She cleared her throat some more and said:
“I’m...sorry about locking your sister in a hole in the ground…”
They stopped walking. Or, rather, Shining stopped walking and Cozy went another step and a half before following suit. When she turned she found him rubbing his face with his eyes screwed shut.
“I know, I’m sorry. She has told me. She’s certainly decided to forgive you. Being the big brother might be making it just that bit harder for me to let go, even if I know I should. Sorry,” he said.
“Shouldn’t really be apologising to me…”
Shining Armour shook his head fiercely.
“No, I should. I haven’t been the friendliest and that isn’t fair. Everyone I’ve heard talk about you since has only had nice things to say. By all accounts you really turned it around, really left all that behind and really came into your own as someone better,” he said, entirely oblivious to the shade it brought to Cozy’s cheeks. “I did let you in, after all, so that must mean something. But I was still not that nice. So let’s start over. Hello, I’m Shining Armour.”
He thrust a hoof out at her.
“Cozy Glow,” said Cozy Glow, shaking it.
“And very nice it is to meet you, Cozy Glow. Now let’s go and find my wife. Should be just up ahead, if I’m right. If I’m wrong we’ve got more walking to do. This place, I swear...”
Having been a fairly regular visitor to the castle in Canterlot, Cozy was used to the mind-bending size and layout that Equestrian castles seemed to all possess, having long-since given up trying to rationalise any of it. She just stuck to following Shining, and before too long got to where she’d wanted to go.
“She should be just in here. I’ll go in and see if she’s awake.”
“Uh, I’m not interrupting or anything am I? Mean, I can come back?”
It’d be a huge ballache, but she’d hate to crash someone’s nap. Shining waved this off.
“Don’t worry about it. Back in a second.”
And away he went. Cozy stood and fretted. This was already not going exactly how she’d pictured it in her head, and that always made her anxious. Things could go wrong if they didn’t go exactly how she’d planned them. That was how they’d gone wrong that...other time.
Try as she might to ward them off, thoughts of her past actions and terrible - though ultimately fortunate - failure bubbled up into her brain, filling the silence that had been left in Shining’s wake. Cozy stood and stewed, trying to think of something, anything else. Even when Shining came back and waved her in the thoughts persisted. It was only really when she entered and saw Princess Cadence that she got a better handle on herself again.
She was here for a reason, damnit! There was a plan!
Shining reappeared.
“Alright, go in,” he said, holding the door.
“Just like that?” Cozy asked. The lack of ceremony seemed jarring in such fancy surroundings.
“You want me to announce you? I can do that. Did already tell her who it was but I can still give you a proper announcement, if you want,” Shining said.
Cozy considered this.
“...nah,” she said, post-consideration.
“Good, because using my announcing voice really hurts my throat. Go on in.”
“Right…”
With no idea why she suddenly felt so nervous about all of this, Cozy went on in.
It was some sort of sunroom or solarium or whatever. One of those rooms in a castle that existed to exist in and be bright and comfortable and opulent and all that. By those standards it was surprisingly restrained, though - by normal standards - that wasn’t saying much.
Movement caught Cozy’s eye. Cadence, Princess Cadence, semi-reclined on a very comfortable looking couch-cum-sofa thing. She saw Cozy, smiled pleasantly, and waved her over. She fairly obviously had not been awake long and, again, Cozy felt bad for having interrupted someone’s nap. Still, too late now, no going back. She went over.
“You wanted to speak to me?” Cadence asked once Cozy was within asking-range. No beating about the bush here, Cozy could respect that.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding.
“About what?”
How best to phrase this?
“...love…?”
Nailed it.
Cadence blinked.
“Well, I would be the pony to talk to about that, I suppose. And you’ve arrived at a perfect time, too, I am quite free,” she said, adding with a giggle: “I’m free!”
Cozy did not get this. Cadence barely got it. Something had simply moved her to say it and this something could not have been denied. Strange, these rivers that run through the universe - who is to say from whence they flow? What thawing mountain snows feed them and to what mysterious seas they trickle?
And stuff.
“Well, uh, yeah,” Cozy said.
“So would this be romance advice? Seems a long way to come, if so, but-”
“No no, no, no. Nothing like that, no. No,” Cozy said, hurriedly, feeling an odd need to nip that in the bud right quick. “It’s more about, well, uh, it’s kind of a birthday thing, see? A present.”
This was not what Cadence had expected, itself inside of a conversation she hadn’t been expecting to have with someone she hadn’t been expecting to see. Nothing about this was expected. She wasn’t sure where she stood, now, or where she was meant to be standing (or reclining, to be more accurate).
“You came all the way up here for a birthday present?” She asked, tentatively. So tentatively that the first inkling that maybe this plan might have been cracked from the start crept into Cozy’s head. She shook it away.
“Sort of, I guess? It’s important though,” she said.
Important to her at least, maybe not important in some objective, cosmic sense. But who cared about that on a day-to-day basis?
“This is a lot of effort for a birthday present,” Cadence said, still not really knowing what was going on but at least able to be certain about the effort involved.
“Yes, well, it’s important, like I said. It’s kind of a thing for my dad, and, uh, I want to make sure I get it right, you know?”
That made a fraction more sense for Cadence, given what (admittedly little) she knew about Cozy and her dad/caretaker/whatever.
“Ah, I see, I understand now, yes. A birthday present for your dad, well, that’s certainly a loving matter, I’d say! And, uh, your dad, uh, Poll, wasn’t it?” She ventured, tentatively.
“Paul.”
Why was it no-one could ever get that right? Mean, he never got anyone else’s name right, sure, but his was hardly that complicated. Wasn’t even that many syllables to get confused about, just the one. Paul. Bam. About as straightforward as he himself was.
“Ah yes, Paul, sorry. Still, it does seem an awfully long way to come,” Cadence said.
“This is where the love magic is, isn’t it? And I had to get it right. This sort of thing doesn’t come very easily to me.”
“Getting birthday presents?”
“No. Well, yes. But I mean, you know, gestures. Nice gestures? Doing things for others? I don’t - not sure how to explain this…”
Cozy thought to herself. She could just up and ask for what it was she wanted - even though she wasn’t entirely sure how best to phrase even that - but she had a feeling that this would just lead to more questions. Explaining her rationale behind the whole thing might help steer things in the proper direction, given Cadence more of an idea what this was all about.
Probably just best to be honest about it upfront, really. Was going to come out eventually, surely. So, taking a breath, Cozy continued:
“I used to, I don’t know - I used to look at ponies and things and they all sort of looked the same, really, just stuff you could get to do other stuff. Pieces that fitted together, components, I guess, in a machine I could get to do things for me. But it didn’t work, and it didn’t work because I didn’t actually understand. I don’t know.”
She hated - hated! - talking about this. It was agony. She’d done quite enough of it already, she thought, imagined she’d put it behind her, that she wouldn’t need to go over all of it again. Apparently not. The things she did for her dad...
“Dad has talked to me a lot about it and while a lot of what he said was, you know, stupid, some of it was right and he kind of had a point overall, somewhere in there. Or even if he doesn’t - and knowing dad he might not - listening to him has at least let me… think differently about what I did, who I was.”
“Perspective?”
Given the context of its delivery, Cozy was able to interpret this otherwise meaningless sentence fragment and she nodded, only somewhat glumly.
“I suppose…”
It was certainly one way of putting it. A fitting one. Time and a drastic change in circumstances had put a certain level of distance between her and what she’d done, and between where and who she’d been when she’d done them. Looking back now it was like looking at something someone else had done. Only it wasn’t someone else, it was her.
She, as said, hated this.
It was like recalling a time in her life when someone had pretended to be her, had worn her skin and done a host of stupid, short-sighted, selfish things in her name and nearly ruined the whole world. Like sitting back and watching a perfect imposter just make one mistake after another with her face, claiming to be her the whole while and with nothing she could do about it.
But it hadn’t been someone else, it had been her. There was and had been no-one else, only ever her. Might not be what she’d do now, but it was something she had done. She had done it. And had chosen to do, thinking that she should. No getting away from that. It had not been an imposter, hadn’t been someone pretending. Just her. Only ever her.
That’s mistakes for you. Always look nice and big and fat and obvious in hindsight, the kind of thing only an idiot would ever crash into. Never look like mistakes at the time, never when you’re coming up on them. Always either look like good ideas or else things that aren’t that big of a deal in the scheme of things, things that’ll slide, things that no-one’ll even notice if they go wrong and which they’ll surely appreciate if they go right.
“Why are you here, Cozy Glow? And I mean, what did you come up here to do specifically?” Cadence asked, gently, coaxing Cozy out of whatever she’d sunk into. Cozy blinked and looked around.
“Specifically?” She asked.
“Yes. What did you imagine yourself doing once you’d arrived. What were you going to do?”
“What, like, step-by-step?”
“If you want.”
“Well…”
And so Cozy explained her plan. Or attempted to.
In trying to explain it she very quickly realised it was one of those things where it sat perfectly comprehensibly in her head but wouldn’t bear translating into words that others might comprehend. Which is to say, while she could see the steps clearly, she couldn’t explain them clearly, and in trying to explain them clearly she started to lose her grasp on the plan.
It wasn’t great. Started to make her wonder whether she’d ever even had a grasp to start with or whether she’d just imagined that it had held together. It had held together, hadn’t it?
“-so I thought, hey, why not love magic, and-”
“Love magic?” Cadence interjected, this part of Cozy’s stream of consciousness being something that she felt she at least knew a little about. Cozy, brought up short, blinked, and looked at Cadence askance.
“That is kind of your deal, isn’t it?” She asked.
“Well, yes, but it’s not really something you can just pick up and go away with,” Cadence said. Cozy blinked again. She felt that perhaps Cadence and her were coming at this from different angles, thinking about the same thing but upside-down and back-to-front.
“Thought maybe you’d have a book on it or something? That I could… borrow… ?” Cozy suggested, though the further she got into her suggestion the less sure about its viability she became. The look on Cadence’s face undermined her confidence.
“Oh, maybe, but they wouldn't really be a whole lot of use for anypony. Theoretically, maybe. Twilight probably has more books on it than I do anyway, you could have gone to her for books. But books wouldn’t get you near the subject in any way that was, ah, useful.”
“...no?”
Cadence shook her head.
“I wouldn’t have thought so. I could be wrong, but it’s not anything I would do,” she said.
Cozy processed this information. She realised there wasn’t a whole lot she could actually do with it right at that moment.
“...oh. Ah. Hmm. Well, a-anyway, the plan was, um, to come up here and-”
She continued.
The more Cozy spoke, the more obvious it became to her that this had been, from the start, a horrendous idea and a plan doomed to failure. How could she only see it now? How had she not spotted it a mile off, right at the start? Oh, was she out of practise.
“-and I’d go back and he’d be none the wiser until I sprung his present on him, and by then it’d be too late for him to be mad at me. Fait accompli, you know? Heh. So, uh, yeah. That was the plan,” Cozy said, by way of somewhat clumpy conclusion. She then coughed and added, a little more quietly: “In hindsight this plan might have benefited from a bit more, uh, planning. Maybe.”
“Maybe,” Cadence said.
How embarrassing. Cozy sagged, flopping down onto her rear dejectedly.
“I just wanted to do something for him. I don’t know why, and I didn’t know what, and so I jumped on the first thing that popped into my head. So this happened. Probably should have just baked a cake...” She mumbled.
“Does he like cake?” Cadence asked.
He had devoured that slice she’d given him after the part in pretty extravagant fashion, but maybe that was just because she’d given it to him and he didn’t want to make her feel bad? Maybe he’d only been interested in whether she liked the cake?
More assumptions. Oops. Best rein that brain in.
“...I don’t actually know. And I never asked. Urgh…”
In fairness, how could anyone not? Paul was weird, but was he really that weird?
“What does he like?” Cadence asked and Cozy looked up from staring at her hooves.
“That’s the problem! He doesn’t like anything! Or says he doesn’t. And if I ever asked he’d just tell me not to bother. But I want to bother! I want to do something! Something to make him understand!” She said.The question had touched something of a sore spot for her. Cadence realised this, but didn’t as yet fully understand the nature of the spot.
“Understand?” She asked, head tilting ever-so-slightly.
“Yes!”
“Understand what?”
Cozy hadn’t noticed but she’d stood up again.
“That I care about him! That I love him! That I’m not lying about either of those! I just want him to know! And to believe me! He doesn’t even have to love me back, I just want him to believe me! He - if it wasn’t for him-“
More had slipped out there than she’d intended and she shut her mouth and sat back down.
Awkward silence predictably followed. It was the thread that sewed the patches of life together, or so it sometimes felt to Cozy.
“He does love you.”
Cozy snorted derisively.
“How would you know, you’ve never even met him,” she said acidly. So acidly it dissolved the question mark at the end of the sentence. Cadence took it with grace. This was sensitive ground, after all. Some acid was to be expected.
“No, but my aunt has. She says he puts up a front. Oh, he means all of what he says, she tells me, but he goes out of his way to say it the way he says it. But what he never plays up - what he never has to play up - is how much he’s come to love you, Cozy. It comes across in everything he does. Or so she tells me.”
“That’s not true…”
“Well like you said, I’ve never met him. But I believe my aunt. I also believe he may not be fully aware of it himself yet, or ignoring it. Otherwise I can’t think of why he wouldn’t have told you himself. He should have. For both of you.”
Cozy couldn’t muster a response to this. It had been a busy, tiring day and her head was a bit of a mess. Nothing she’d planned had gone according to plan and instead there’d been whacking great, emotionally-exhausting conversations and a lot of going over old ground that she would have preferred not to have gone over. Really, she wanted to go home.
Now that she had a home to go to. And immediately and unquestionably thought of it as home.
“This whole thing was a stupid mistake,” she mumbled.
“That’s a little unkind on yourself, Cozy. It might have been, ah, unlikely to succeed but it was hardly stupid. And what’s wrong with mistakes? A big part of life is mistakes - can’t be perfect every time, can we? Besides, as far as mistakes go this one is hardly the worst, and you made it for good reasons. It was heartfelt. That matters.”
“Hmph.”
Cozy didn’t even notice she’d made this noise, too busy with brooding on how good intentions were worthless if they didn’t achieve anything useful. Dad would have said as much!
The failure was probably what hurt the most, though. She’d come up here to get something (something she couldn’t get, agreeably, but she hadn’t considered that at the time) and would now be going back with nothing. On top of which, her planning abilities had apparently atrophied into complete uselessness, something she had no idea how to feel about but which was certainly vexing.
All in all, rubbish. Complete rubbish.
“Happy belated birthday, by the way,” Cadence said, bringing Cozy back to the present with a bump.
“Uh, thanks,” she said.
Hadn’t expected that. How did Cadence even know?
All that was left now was to head back before he found out, she supposed. Had she missed the last train? She hoped not, as getting back sooner rather than later would be ideal, because who knew how dad’d react if he found out what she’d done and she wasn’t back to keep a lid on it or explain it? What incredibly stupid thing he might do? How might he overreact?
Cozy dreaded to think.