Cozy Glow woke up far earlier than she was supposed to. She knew this because when she woke up, the world was dark.
She stretched her forelegs above her head and rolled over. Something kept niggling in the back of her mind, and she eventually clambered out of her bed.
Twilight Velvet’s bed was empty.
Cozy Glow raced into the main room and ran through the kitchen. It was a tiny space, but she still somehow hoped that Twilight Velvet was hiding somewhere in it. She ran to the window, but all she could see was the dark forest surrounding the cabin.
When Twilight Velvet finally appeared, pushing the front door open with her hip, it felt like Cozy Glow had been waiting hours, not minutes.
“Cozy! What are you doing up?”
“Where did you go?” Cozy Glow demanded, but instead of sounding angry, her voice cracked.
“Oh, Cozy - Cozy, it’s alright, come here,” Twilight Velvet soothed her, and set her bags aside so that she could gather Cozy Glow into a hug. Despite every instinct screaming to stop, Cozy Glow wound herself tightly into Twilight Velvet’s forelegs, shaking. “I didn’t go away, I was right out front. Bubbles brought us more supplies.”
“Who’s Bubbles?” Cozy Glow sniffled, her face in Twilight Velvet’s shoulder.
“She’s a mailmare from Ponyville. She and I became very familiar when I was writing letters to Twilight in Ponyville.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Cozy Glow noted that Twilight Velvet didn’t come from Ponyville.
“I have to get the last bag so Bubbles can go home. Can you wait here for a moment? I’ll just be right out there, you can watch me from the door. Then we can put the food away together.” Twilight Velvet leaned back, and when Cozy Glow pulled away to look up at her, Twilight Velvet brushed away her sleep-mussed curls from her face. “And then we can go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” Cozy Glow whispered, and when Twilight Velvet pulled away to open the door, she gave her nose a surreptitious wipe with her hoof.
When Twilight Velvet opened the door, it wasn’t the mailmare who greeted her. “Hello, Mom.”
The world seemed to slow down as Cozy Glow recognized Twilight Sparkle standing in front of her mother.
“Once I figured out that you’d have to be getting supplies from somewhere, it didn’t take very long to track down your magical signature, Mom.” Twilight Sparkle’s voice was thick with accusation. She took a step forward as if to push into the cabin, but Twilight Velvet’s foreleg darted out to block her.
“That’s as far as you go, sweetheart,” Twilight Velvet’s voice was calm, but firm, and Cozy Glow thought it sounded kind of like when she talked to the bear.
“You have to be joking,” Twilight Sparkle hissed, and her ears flattened in unmasked anger. “You’ve been locked up with her for a week, Mom! You have to know by now how dangerous she is! I’m here to save you!”
“And I appreciate your concern, Twi, but I don’t need to be rescued. She’s only a filly, Twilight, she’s -”
“She’s not a regular filly, Mom! She’s far more dangerous! She almost destroyed the School of Friendship, she tried to take over Ponyville -”
“She succeeded at neither of those things, and you still tried to turn her to stone.”
Twilight Sparkle’s gaze narrowed as she looked at Twilight Velvet more closely. “Has she corrupted your mind, Mom?”
“Corrupted - listen to yourself! She’s a filly. She’s no older than those, what, the Cutie Mark Crusaders you told me about?”
“Cozy Glow is not a charming country bumpkin figuring out what her Cutie Mark will be, she is a dangerous maniac who -”
“ - who isn’t even old enough to go grocery shopping, are you listening to yourself? If she is dangerous, it is only due to the adults around her who have shirked their duties to teach her otherwise!”
“Are you implying that my School of Friendship has created Cozy Glow?”
“I’m saying that you did nothing to prevent those things from happening, then blamed it on the pony who had the least power in the situation!”
Twilight Sparkle’s eyelid twitched, and she took in a very deep, slow breath, purposefully trying to calm herself as she glared at her mother. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“I’d be happy to repeat myself.”
Twilight Sparkle’s eyelid twitched a little harder. “Mom, she is a dangerous criminal, and at the very least she needs to be held accountable for what she did. Running away with her was - it was bad, Mom, but I told everyone that you just got caught up in the moment because you’re such a loving parent. You simply didn’t realize how bad everything she did was, because she tricked you. So we can go back to Canterlot, put her in the dungeon, figure everything out. Maybe she doesn’t have to be turned to stone, but there has to be some kind of, of, I don’t know. Punishment, Mom.”
“Is the point of the punishment to rehabilitate her, Twi? Or is it to make you feel better that the ‘bad guy’ has been made to suffer? Because I don’t think I agree with the latter, and I think if you thought about it, you wouldn’t either.” Twilight Velvet’s voice softened near the end, and she reached out to touch Twilight Sparkle’s shoulder. “You’re under so much pressure, Twi. You don’t have to be the horn of justice all the time. Sometimes, ponies just need a second chance.”
Twilight Sparkle’s expression softened, although her eyelid still twitched. “I don’t think so, Mom. She’s -”
But Twilight Velvet would never know what Cozy was, because it was at that moment that Cozy Glow beaned Twilight Sparkle from behind with a two-by-four.
“COZY!” Twilight Velvet gasped.
“I know you said that violence is never the answer, but I think we can agree that this was an exception to that rule, right?” Cozy Glow tossed the board aside.
“It most certainly was not!” Twilight Velvet barked, then knelt down to tend to Twilight Sparkle. Sparkle groaned, and her eyelids fluttered. “Twi, sweetie, are you alright?”
“I’m going to turn her to stone, then use her as gravel to pave my garden,” Twilight Sparkle growled, her voice thin and reedy. “Just point me at her.”
Twilight Velvet frowned down at Twilight Sparkle, then frowned up at Cozy Glow, who shrugged. “Cozy Glow, you are grounded.”
“What!”
“Twi, I’m sorry darling. But I can’t let you take us anywhere.” With a swish of her horn and a grunt of effort, a portal opened up in the center of the room; on the other side stood a confused Nurse Redheart and her clinic. “Nurse, we have a patient for you, sorry for the trouble.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Twilight Sparkle growled even as Twilight Velvet lifted her with her magic and gently deposited her into a waiting hospital bed on the other side of the portal.
“I’m sorry, Twi. I hope you’ll forgive me,” and as Twilight Sparkle began yelling, Twilight Velvet abruptly closed the portal.
The room was quiet for a moment. Cozy Glow felt pressed to break the silence.
“Well, uh, at least being grounded in a log cabin won’t be a big cha-”
“You have five minutes to gather anything you want to bring with you.” Twilight Velvet was already moving through the kitchen, throwing items into a bag.
“What? But we just took care of Twilight Sparkle!”
Twilight Velvet fixed her with a long look.
Cozy Glow sighed. “I don’t suppose you have any other heavily isolated family cabins to retreat to, huh?”
“No, but I have a few ideas. Go pack. I’ll pick one by the time you’re done.”
For the next five minutes, the cabin was a glowing dot of light in the forest as the two ponies within hurriedly packed up whatever they could carry. It glowed a little brighter, lit from within by powerful unicorn magic, and then suddenly blinked out entirely.
Twilight Velvet and Cozy Glow were on the run again.