Glimmer & Glow

by Yosh-E-O

Chapter 12 - The Road To Feelings

“It was really swell of Princess Celestia to give us all those bits!” cheered Cozy Glow as she fluttered alongside Trixie and Starlight. “The ‘Road To Friendship’ is just gosh golly delightful!”

Trixie gave a forlorn glance towards her periwinkle-colored colleague.
“She doesn’t know,” she whispered.

“No,” replied Starlight without moving her mouth.

“Aren’t you going to tell her?” the blue Unicorn tried to ask as unnoticeably as possible.

“No,” Starlight grumbled as some of her teeth showed through her muzzel.

“Hey!” flapped Cozy between the pair. “What’s with being so gosh darn quiet all of a sudden. You wouldn’t be telling secrets or saying things about me behind my back, would you?”

Trixie gave a cheesy smile as Starlight answered.
“Trixie was just reminding me of how I overspent our bits during our previous ‘Road To Friendship’ adventure,” she said nervously. “I, well, never feel comfortable when my past gets brought up. Especially when it’s a mistake that seems really silly in hindsight.”

Cozy fluttered silently before she spoke again.
“Ponies remind you of the bad things you did?” she asked. “That’s not very friendly.”

“You’re telling me!” quipped Trixie. “The reputation I got after I was humiliated by Twilight made my magic show a joke and I had to take a job working on a rock farm in order to make ends meet.”

Cozy gasped.
“That sounds horrible!” she proclaimed. “So was this before, or after, the whole thing with the Alicorn Amulet?”

Trixie looked to Starlight who returned her a look that said, ‘All yours, Trix!’.

The illusionist sighed upon putting herself into such a position.
“Before,” she replied. “It’s how Trixie got so angry that she used every possible saved bit to buy that accursed artifact so I could humiliate Twilight just as she had humiliated me!”

Cozy looked to Starlight.
“That doesn’t sound like a good way to share your feelings,” she said. “It’s just like how you felt when Twilight took Our Town away from you.”

Starlight smiled.
“You know,” she added. “It’s because of these negative ways of acting on our feelings that helped Trixie and I become friends in the first place.”

“Golly!” chimed Cozy. “So being bad made you all peachy good?”

“Not quite,” nodded Starlight. “It was our choice to make better decisions based on our actions that allowed us to build our magical friendship.”

“And magical it is!” boasted Trixie. “There’s nothing Trixie and her great and powerful assistant can’t do!”

“Except share a cozy wagon together,” added the pink Pegasus. “Right?”

Starlight had noticed how perceptive Cozy Glow was when it came to information. There were often few, if any, details that slipped past her. It was for this reason that she had Trixie distract Cozy while Celestia laid down the rules for the ‘Road To Friendship’ effort to save the little Pegasus from an eternity in Tartarus.

***

“That little Ring Of Regression you have is quite impressive,” noted Celestia as Starlight started her mental flashback to the day before. “I believe I can place a tracking spell on it that will allow me to know the moment it is used along with if you were to ever have it taken off.”

“Anything to help Cozy have a second chance,” pleaded starlight. “I truly think she only needs to learn the proper way to express her emotions in order to become a positive part of pony society.”

PFEW

“Done,” said Celestia after she enchanted the ring that was now around Starlight’s horn. “If it is removed it will not only alert me but also trigger it’s effect on the one wearing along with the one removing it.”

“Basically making it impossible for any pony to make a get away, right?” Starlight more stated in confirmation than asked.

Celestia gave a gentle nod.
“You’ll also be magically linked to Cozy Glow throughout this mission,” she stated calm yet firmly. “Should she travel a distance greater than the eye can see away from you the magic of the ring will activate and you both will be brought back to Canterlot for judgment.”

“I understand,” assured Starlight. “However I know it will not come to that.”

Celestia smiled.
“I have a good feeling as well,” she said calmly. “I’ll inform Twilight and Cadence of our agreement and make sure you are provided the necessary bits to manage this mission.”

Starlight bowed.
“Thank you, Princess Celestia,” she said as humbly as she could.

***

“We did learn a lot from that little, umm, experience,” replied Trixie. “However it did not keep us from being great and powerful friends.”

“Do you remember that time I totally blew off Twilight to be your assistant for that super scary magic trick?” Starlight asked playfully.

“Yeah,” she chuckled. “She was so mad at you because you put her in such an awkward position with Princess Celestia.”

Starlight looked to see if Cozy was still flying close by.
“Then you went way over-the-top and made it seem like you only made friends with me to get back at Twilight,” she said with a wink.

Trixie noticed the wink and winked back.
“Right,” she said humbly. “It’s the first time Trixie realized how much having friendship meant to her.”

Cozy continued to flap about but was definitely taking in all the pair had to share in which she had never heard about before.

“My emotions were everywhere,” added Starlight. “I was upset because Twilight didn’t trust me and I was angry that you only wanted to be my friend to get back at Twilight.”

“Golly!” exclaimed Cozy. “Head mare Twilight doesn’t sound like she’s the Princess Of Friendship she is all cracked up to be, huh?”

“You’d think,” replied both Starlight and Trixie in unison.

There was a pause as the two looked at each other.

“However,” continued Starlight. “It’s knowing the Princess Of Friendship can make mistakes, too, in which allows us to know no pony’s perfect and we all have lessons to learn.”

“Great point, Starlight,” beamed Trixie. “Trixie definitely does feel a bit better when the high-and-mighty Princess Of Friendship gets pancake all over her face.”

“Pancake?” baffled Starlight.

Trixie seemed to glow as she put a hoof to her chest.
“The great and powerful Trixie might have overheard a conversation from a certain pink pony who just might have mentioned Twilight falling asleep in a plate of pancakes during a pancake breakfast,” she stated.

Cozy Glow flew back alongside Trixie.
“You really aren’t that friendly towards head mare Twilight,” she stated. “Does that mean you secretly are just waiting to get back at her? Perhaps with Starlight?”

“No!” the pair of Unicorns replied.

The pink filly gave a really pouty face.
“Gosh,” she pouted. “That wasn’t very friendly either.”

Starlight sighed.
“Sorry, Cozy,” she apologized. “Emotions are hard things to control and, well, we’re just as much on an adventure to discover the power of emotion in friendship as you are.”

“For real?” wondered the curly-haired Pegasus. “So we’re all being tested?”

“You might say that,” replied Trixie.

Cozy grew concerned.
“Is helping me putting you two in danger?” she asked.

There was a very awkward silence except for some uncomfortable gasps and chuckles from the two Unicorns.

“I see,” said Cozy. “You must really care about me to put yourselves in danger to help gee-golly me.”

“Who said anything about being in danger?” Starlight inquired while doing her best to smile towards the filly. “We’ve totally got this!”

“You know,” added the little Pegasus as she smiled a bit. “I think things would have been different if you were Princess Celestia’s student who became the Element Of Magic and crowned Princess Of Friendship.”

Starlight blushed.
“Well…,” she nervously replied. “If I was then you wouldn’t be here, right?”

Cozy thought about what Starlight said for a moment.
“Gosh…,” she thought aloud. “So you’re saying, despite how bad your life was and despite the mean nasty stuff I did to you and every creature at the school of friendship, you’d prefer the you that you are now instead of being the Princess Of Friendship?”

Starlight felt like she was genuinely making progress.
“That’s right, cozy!” she confidently replied. “I’d have never met Trixie, learned all I have learned, and, most importantly, wouldn’t have you as a sister.”

Cozy felt tears forming in her green eyes.
“Sister…,” she sniffled. “You really mean it?”

“Uh-huh,” assured the periwinkle-colored Unicorn.

“I…,” Cozy struggled to say. “I love you, Starlight.”

Starlight beamed as she shared a hug with Cozy Glow.
“And I love you, too,” she replied in a caring tone.

Comments

[OmniFox]

I always thought of them as a mother and child kind of relationship.

[wayward_pony]

Aww, that's really sweet. Loving the callbacks to the series peppered throughout this story.

Reading this is a bit like being there, in that we've all done things we regret and there are people we admire we still harbor a bit of resentment towards... it's a pretty human thing to do, and sharing it is as therapeutic to Starlight and Trixie as it must be to Cozy to be trusted with these types of things that would make a pony so very vulnerable. Very much enjoying the playful banter.

There are a few tiny grammatical errors, but the one that stuck out the most is pretty common and consistent with the dialogue in the show.

I do hope they un-evil Cozy Glow in the coming seasons, as her being sent off feels like one of the biggest injustices in the whole series... though if they ever caught Queen Chrysalis (whom I hope is never redeemed) she'd end up in the same place at least. The crimes are pretty comparable, it's just... a filly, ya know.