Black Queen
Eighteen Months Ago
Eight-year-old Cozy Glow shivered beneath the desk in her daddy’s study with all the lights turned off.
The Sun had not risen. The Moon was still high in the sky, but the dappled markings of the Mare in the Moon were gone. Word had quickly spread throughout the land as to the reason: Nightmare Moon wasn’t just some old pony’s tale. She was real. And she was back. And she ate foals. If Cozy knew one thing about Nightmare Moon, it was that.
Uncle Fork came into the study – Daddy’s study, it didn’t matter if Uncle Fork used it sometimes, it was still her daddy’s – and flipped on the light. Cozy Glow let out a yelp. Her wings started beating rapidly to give her extra speed as she rushed over. Some distant part of her noted that she was flying, truly flying and not merely gliding or hovering, for the first time.
Her Uncle Fork held out his hooves to grab her. She instead rushed past him and turned the light back off.
“Uncle!” Cozy hissed as she landed, giving her wings a break. “Keep the lights off!”
Her uncle didn’t seem to hear her. “Cozy, we have to go.” His voice was a little higher-pitched than normal. His eyes wider.
Cozy avoided his hoof when he tried to grab her, and ran back to under the desk. When Uncle Fork came over and looked under, he found her sitting with all the candy she could find in the estate piled under the desk – as well as the game. The chess game that she and Daddy would finish when he got back from Abyssinia.
It didn’t matter that it had been more than a year. He was coming back.
Uncle Fork looked over her hidey-hole. “What – what is all this?”
“Candy,” Cozy explained. “In case Nightmare Moon comes. If she finds me, I can give her candy. Then she’ll leave me alone.”
Uncle Fork opened his mouth, but put his hoof to it, stopping himself from shouting. He took in a deep breath through his nostrils and let it out slowly and carefully. “That’s very clever, Cozy,” he finally said, his voice still higher than normal, “but we have to go.”
Cozy shook her head. “Nightmare Moon is free.”
“That’s why we have to go.” Uncle Fork reached out and grasped Cozy about her barrel, tugging. She squirmed. “We have to go to Canterlot, now.”
Cozy almost stopped squirming at that. She flared her wings to get Uncle Fork’s hoof off of her and scooted back under the desk, looking at her uncle pointedly.
Uncle Fork looked back. “Cozy, you’re very smart for your age,” he said, “so I’ll be honest. Nopony knows where Princess Celestia is. There’s rumors she’s been sealed in the Sun the same way that she sealed Nightmare Moon into the moon. She might not come back for a very long time.”
“A thousand years. Same as Nightmare Moon.”
“Exactly,” Uncle Fork said, “and if Nightmare Moon could do that to Princess Celestia…we need to go to Canterlot. I’ve been discussing things with a few friends, and we’ve decided that we need to make sure that Nightmare Moon doesn’t do anything to Fillydelphia.”
Cozy Glow stared. What did her uncle mean by that? He wasn’t planning on fighting Nightmare Moon, that much was obvious. He was just a normal pegasus. So why go to Canterlot, why go to Nightmare Moon…unless…
“Uncle Fork, you want to side with Nightmare Moon?!”
Uncle Fork shifted. Cozy had a feeling that none of Uncle Fork’s friends had said it so loudly or obviously. They’d probably avoided talking directly about the issue. But at the same time, Cozy had guessed correctly.
He reached under the desk again, trying to grab her. “Equestria can’t be run by just a single pony, not even Nightmare Moon! If we act quickly, we can make sure that we stay safe, that you stay safe.”
“But she eats foals!” Cozy struggled to avoid her uncle, but he grabbed her and started dragging her out.
“That’s just an old mare’s tale!”
“So was Nightmare Moon!”
Cozy kicked, and bit the desk’s leg to avoid being pulled out. Her uncle’s plan made sense, except for one thing: bringing Cozy with him. She didn’t need to go to Canterlot, she wouldn’t be useful there with all the adult ponies pledging their loyalty to Nightmare Moon…except, her mile-a-minute thoughts raced, if Nightmare Moon did eat foals. Maybe then she’d be a delectable meal.
Daddy had always said that she was so cute she was lucky he didn’t gobble her up. Daddy had only been joking, of course, Cozy knew that.
Nightmare Moon wouldn’t be joking.
“It’ll be fine!” Her uncle called. “But I’m not one of the richest ponies in Fillydelphia, you are, so you need to – ” Her uncle pulled hard, and she was yanked from beneath the desk. She flared her wings as she went. One of them knocked the chess board. She heard a piece fall over.
Cozy screamed.
Uncle Fork dropped her in shock at the sound, and she rushed to the chess board, eyes wide. The white king had fallen over, but she knew where it was supposed to be exactly, in check by a black rook. She put it back, then whirled around on her uncle.
There was a flash from the windows before either pony could speak, the brightest light that Cozy had ever seen, although somehow it didn’t hurt her eyes. Both ponies looked out the window, and saw the Moon in the sky – descending towards the horizon at incredible speed, passing out of sight.
At the opposite end of the sky, the horizon began to lighten at the same time, the dark of the night melting away. After just another few seconds, the Sun rose, bright and brilliant.
Uncle Fork glanced down to Cozy, who was back under the desk. “Stay here,” he said, galloping out of the room.
Nightmare Moon had been defeated. Six ponies, one of whom was Princess Celestia’s personal protégé Twilight Sparkle, had discovered the Elements of Harmony and used them to cleanse her of evil magic, restoring Princess Luna within. Princess Celestia had returned from wherever Nightmare Moon had sent her, and Princess Luna had once more become the Shepherd of the Moon and a Princess of Equestria.
According to the papers, Princess Luna had been restored by Twilight Sparkle realizing that the powers of the Elements of Harmony could be realized and unlocked only one way: by channeling the Magic of Friendship.
Which, Cozy Glow realized, was the same magic that had supposedly banished the windigos back during the first Hearth’s Warming Eve. Cozy Glow had always thought that the Magic of Friendship had just been an old mare’s tale. And windigos, too.
Of course, she’d also thought the same thing about Nightmare Moon.
Uncle Fork had asked Cozy Glow to not tell anypony about his and his friends’ plans to swear fealty to Nightmare Moon. He’d only wanted to be safe and to keep Cozy safe, but since Princess Celestia was back, nopony ever needed to know. Cozy Glow had decided that, all things considered, her Uncle Fork was right. He’d just been playing this safe.
And once she’d had time to think, she realized that he wasn’t really going to feed her to Nightmare Moon. Because if he did, then he’d never get any of Daddy’s money once she came of age. Not that he was going to anyway, since her daddy would be back from Abyssinia soon.
Besides. Letting ponies know that her Uncle Fork had been planning on swearing fealty to Nightmare Moon wouldn’t do Cozy any favors at school. She might lose friends. And if the Magic of Friendship was real…
Not that she was likely to need it anytime soon.
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Its almost like Fork is partially and unintentionally teaching her to be the manipulator she would end up being.
Uncle Fork's a real slimeball. Please tell me he gets kicked in the face.
How old do you picture Cozy to be in the present, in human terms anyway? I just wonder because she seems a bit young in this chapter compared to the earlier chapters. I recognise that this is two years ago and that she's under a lot of stress which might regress her but I'd like to see what you think. My personal feelings are that Cozy normally acts younger than she is to make others underestimate her and although she's not an adult by any stretch of the imagination she may be in her early to mid teens.
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I mean...at the risk of being snarky, the first paragraph in the chapter opens up with “eight-year-old Cozy Glow”.
My thought process is that Cozy in Season 8 is twelve, and then each season of MLP is about six months long, except the first three which instead take place over the course of 1 year (with the Summer Sun Celebration of Season 4’s opening being exactly one year after Season 1’s first episode).
So Cozy is 11 in Season 6, 10 in Season 4, and somewhere between 8 and 9 for Seasons 1-3.
(I pegged Cozy at 12 in Season 8 because I have a thing of comparing cutie marks to puberty, and between 10-12 is when most girls start puberty).
Always nice to see other perspectives on world-shaking events.
Well, Uncle Fork is the perfect role model.
I would say that Cozy is a kind of sociopath, or somewhere on that kind of spectrum where she doesn't quite think like others do in the ways of empathy or self-importance, but there were several points where I felt if someone were able to break down why her plans weren't going to work in forms of logic instead of the empathetic FRIENDSHIP ways that she might have moved on to something more productive.