Letters to the Princess

by Shaslan

Chapter 4: Second Date

The Crystal Faire was beautiful. Cozy Glow didn’t know what she had expected — crystals, probably — but she had never been to the Crystal Empire before, and she could never have predicted just how many crystals there would be.

The buildings were crystal. The roads. The lights. The decorations. Even the ponies themselves. Everything was multifaceted and perfectly carved, and glowed with that subtle, unearthly light that spoke of a special kind of magic — one that was not really magic at all, not in the hated Equestrian sense.

In fact, nothing was like Equestria at all, and that was wonderful. No parochial Canterlot streets. No dour white buildings with staid purple rooves. Just — crystal, in every hue imaginable. A profusion of colour. And — it took her longer to notice this one — nopony was staring. Not one pony gave her a second glance. They didn’t look, or linger, or mutter to their companions about her. Nopony pointed! She supposed she was less notorious all the way up here. Or that ponies simply cared less. Her crimes had not been against the crystal ponies, after all.

Just all the rest of them.

Whatever the reason, it felt amazing — and the company didn’t hurt either.

Flurry Heart strode along at her side, beaming. Not a prim princess smile, but a real, genuine grin. The kind that said this is fun, and it’s fun because of you.

That smile made Cozy’s heart do backflips.

Flurry Heart noticed her looking, and the smile somehow grew impossibly wider. “Come on! I want to show you the bandstand; the music is incredible!”

---

The room was impossibly empty, with all of Cozy’s things packed away in boxes. The blue crystal of the walls glittered in the sunlight just as prettily as it always did, but Flurry couldn’t see the beauty in it today.

She wished she had somepony to talk about it with. She wished Cozy would talk about it with her. But Cozy Glow, for all her bravado, seemed to harbour an utter horror for being vulnerable with somepony. As soon as the topic of emotions was raised, she clammed up tighter than a Manehattan oyster.

Flurry had tried to find someone else to talk it through with her. Cadence, sensing everything Flurry felt through the tumultuous year she had spent with Cozy, was positively gagging for a frank mother-daughter discussion. The idea of discussing her love life with her mother — of being reduced to one of the little love problems that Cadence solved all day, every day — was horrifying.

So no — Cadence was not an option. Shining was little better. They were basically the same two-headed creature; ‘no secrets’ was one of the core tenets of their marriage, as a younger Flurry had learned the hard way. Secret ice cream with Mommy was not a good way to break Daddy’s guard training regiment diet rules, because it never stayed a secret for long.

Auntie Tia was the obvious secondary choice, but Flurry knew that because of the whole matchmaking thing, the family involvement — anything she told Celestia would find its way into one of those pink letters with the flowery perfume and the ridiculously long signature: Princess Celestia, Ruler of the Day, Diarch of Equestria, Princeps Solaris, Sol Invictus, The Sun Eternal, etc, etc.

Celestia was out. Luna, too. There was a family rumour that she’d had a husband, once. A child, maybe, a millennium ago. But only once. And their loss had supposedly been what began the chain of events culminating in Nightmare Moon.

Flurry Heart shuddered at just the thought of it. Auntie Lu was not a good person to talk relationships with.

That left Auntie Twily, but — given how many of the nightmares Cozy never liked to talk about seemed to feature her — it didn’t seem like a good idea either. Since Cozy moved in, Flurry had heard the words Twilight Sparkle spoken in accents of utter loathing by her sleeping girlfriend far too often for comfort.

The final option, then, was her cousin. She had stolen away from Cozy’s flat in Canterlot, disguised as she always was for their visits — a princess was expected to stay in the castle — to visit the little bakery where Lustre lived with her wife.

Unfortunately, her cousin had been little use. Lustre was simple, straightforward. Sweet. Hers had been an uncomplicated love story. Auntie Tia had thrust Little Cheese into her path and the two of them had taken one look and fallen head-over-tail for each other. In their case, the road to true love had run very smooth indeed.

It wasn’t that easy for Flurry, and Lustre hadn’t seemed to grasp that.

“Can’t you just…talk to her about the way you’re both feeling?” she had said, from over the top of a book on some obscure magical arcana.

“No,” Flurry had snapped. When one’s girlfriend was as prickly as a porcupine — with more baggage than the luggage car of the Canterlot express — it wasn’t as easy as just talking about your feelings. Not to mention that Cozy was also one of the best lawyers in the nation and impossible to pin down in an argument.

Lustre was not so easily cowed. “But have you tried?”

“Yes!” Flurry snarled, stomping her hoof so hard the marble tiles of Lustre’s study splintered into a powdery crater.

There was a pause while they both examined the damage.

“Everything okay?” Little Cheese stuck her head through the door, hooves still dusted with flour from the bakery downstairs. “I heard a bang.”

“We’re fine,” said Lustre Dawn at the same time as Flurry flushed and mumbled an apology.

She ought to have better control over all three of her magics by now. She wasn’t a teenager any more. There was no longer any excuse. But every time, her emotions just got away with her —

—Which was exactly the problem. Flurry Heart had emotions coming out of her ears, and Cozy Glow sometimes seemed to have none at all. For all their similarities in personality and life experience, in emotional terms they were worlds apart.

So much so that sometimes they just seemed worlds apart full stop.

“I’ll pay for the damage,” promised Flurry, already turning to flee past Little Cheese, her face puce. “I’ll send a stonemason, a really good one.”

“Flurry, wait; we weren’t done talking abou—”

But Flurry was already gone.

---

Cozy Glow laughed, the noise of it rising like music over the instruments of the band, and she felt the hooves of her partner warm in her own. The two of them spun like leaves in a stream, whirling around and away — but always, always coming back together.

“I knew those all dance lessons would come in handy!” Flurry quipped in one brief, frenetic interchange before the other dancers whipped them away from each other once more.

Cozy docey-doed with her new partner, and the next, and the next — one more loop and she was at the head of the row again, nose to nose with Flurry once more.

“Princess training was good for something after all, huh?”

“Oh, no!” giggled Flurry. “All I learned in Princess training was Canterlot court dances!”

Then she was gone again, and Cozy had to wait for the next pass to hear the rest of the sentence, tripping over her own hooves and those of the strangers she was partnering with equal frequency.

“My dance lessons didn’t cover ceilidh dancing! This was all picked up from Uncle Sunburst!”

Cozy Glow looked into those big aquamarine eyes, and not even the mention of the stallion married to her worst enemy was enough to ruin her mood.

She grinned. “Well, he did a good job!”

Finally, abruptly, the dance ended, all of the dancers halting at once without any signal that Cozy could see. The music continued unabated, and Flurry and Cozy stumbled on a few steps more before collapsing in a heap of laughter.

The next dance began just as abruptly, and they had to scramble to avoid the tromping hooves. Apparently not even being royalty was enough to warrant a moment’s halt to the festivities on the day of the Crystal Faire.

That was not to say that the two of them were blending in. Ponies were staring; had stared the whole way through the dance. But the stares weren’t the sort Cozy was used to. Instead of recognition followed by fear or hatred, there was no recognition here. Just awe, that the Princess had brought a date.

By Luna’s tail-hair, anonymity was great.

“Let’s go!” Flurry’s earth pony stamina was on full display as she hopped back up, ready to go again. “Next stop, the crystal ewes! You’ll love them!”

---

“I think I’ve got everything.” Cozy’s voice was flat. Emotionless. The voice she used when she was feeling the most — not that she ever shared what those emotions might be.

Not with Flurry.

“Right,” Flurry said, her voice wobbling. What she wouldn’t give for that cool tone Cozy had. For the detachment. But while she could don her princess face for the public, pretend that all was well when the people needed her — when it was just the two of them, pretending she felt nothing was about as effective as if she were to try and raise the sun.

“If that’s all, then…” Cozy turned toward the balcony, and Flurry Heart felt the world quake beneath her hooves.

She had known it was coming, she had instigated it, but now it was here — oh, Faust, she thought she might die.

Ask her not to go, that small, insistent voice at the back of her mind screamed. Beg her not to leave us. Make her stay. Tell her, tell her you lo—

No.

That path was closed to them now. It would remain closed, until Cozy wanted to change. Begging and pleading would not change that.

But why, then, did Flurry’s heart feel like it might shatter into a thousand pieces?

Cozy spread her wings in readiness, and the staccato rhythm of Flurry’s heart spiked and faltered. No, no, please don’t go, it can’t end like this! Her eyes were filling with tears and her mouth opened, despite her pride, despite her resolve, ready to say —

“Oh. Look at that.” Cozy swung away from the open balcony doors, toward the bookshelf. “I forgot about my treatises on the Ecklihoof case.”

The world, which had been spinning wildly around Flurry Heart, abruptly stabilised. A stay of execution. A reprieve.

A few more precious minutes.

“You can take the volumes on Empire Law, too,” she offered, her voice cracking slightly on the final word. The leather-bound set had been a birthday gift from one lover to another, eight short months ago. It seemed like a lifetime now.

A snort of laughter, the face unreadable. “I shan’t need them. After all, I’m never coming back here, am I?”

Her tone was light, careless. And it ripped out Flurry’s heart all over again.

She sniffed hard, and then a sudden pounding on the door made them both jump.

“W-what is it?” Flurry stammered, ears pinned back as she watched Cozy take a leisurely trot towards the antechamber, where she would not be visible from the door.

Just as she had every time someone came for Flurry over the past twelve months. She was a secret. Flurry’s little secret. Nopony knew that they were together, knew anything beyond that single date arranged under the auspices of Auntie Tia. Flurry supposed that people must have guessed — at any rate, her mother must be able to feel the emotions she was emitting. But her parents had never spoken of it to her, and she had never raised the subject either.

She was too afraid of what they would think of Cozy when they met her properly. Or worse, what Cozy would think of them.

She didn’t know how Cozy felt about being a secret. She had no idea. Cozy never answered when she asked. And that was the entire problem, really. Cozy never answered when she asked.

“Princess?” A voice called, muffled by the closed door.

---

Cozy Glow stood at the edge of the pen, the exhilaration of the dance and a second heart beating against her own slowly fading away. In the pen’s centre, Flurry Heart sat surrounded by a heaving, bleating heap of tiny crystalline sheep, each baaing plaintively for her attention.

Fondling the little pink one currently cradled against her chest, Flurry looked up, eyes bright. “Aren’t they the cutest?”

With a little start, Cozy gave her a reflexive nod. The lamb was cute. It was small and soft and pink, and its eyes were a rich liquid brown.

Funny. Cozy had almost expected those eyes to be red.

"Oh, Alphie, look at those eyes! Isn’t she the cutest?”

“Well, hello there, you little scamp. Where’d Audie pick you up?”

“I found her hiding round the back of the woodshed. Can you believe it?”

"I sure can’t! What’re you doing all the way out here, kiddo? Where’re your parents?”

“Golly, mister, I…I don’t know. I’m lost, you see.”

“Oh, sweetheart! You poor little lamb.”

“Not to worry, angel. Audie and me’ll help you find your folks. Where did you see them last?”

“I…I…they’re gone, mister.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no, don’t cry! Oh, you poor thing. Come here, that’s right. Alphie, you don’t think she means they’re—?”

“Are your parents…are they dead, angel?”

“Mmhm. Yeah. I’m…I’m all on my own.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. It’s — it’s alright. It will get better. You can stay with us. For as long as you like. How about that?”

“Really? Golly, missus! I’d — I’d like that more than anything.”

Audie and Alphie. Two unicorns, just like her parents. One pink-furred, one blue. Both of them oozing with all that hated magic that Cozy herself would never possess. Just like her parents. Cozy had chosen them carefully. Had watched them for weeks. And not long after that first meeting, they were, just like her parents, dead.

Their blood had been as red as her eyes.

“Cozy?”

She looked up sharply.

Flurry was holding the odious little pink sheep out to her, smiling hopefully.

You poor little lamb.

“Don’t you want to hold one?”

Cozy looked down at it. Cute. As simple as that. Not weaponised like her own cuteness had been. This creature was all but brainless. There was nothing hiding behind its blank brown eyes.

“I promise she won’t bite!”

Cozy shoved the bile of her past back down where it belonged and forced a smile onto her face. Just like Doctor Healing Word said. I make my own fate — I am not controlled by hate.

She took the repulsive animal in her hooves and held it gingerly. Kept the mask in place, kept the smile on, and tried not to think about how easy it would be to break that fragile little neck. How good it would feel, to perform the simple action of pushing those vertebrae just a little further than they would naturally go. The relief that would provide, after decades of denial.

“Aw! She matches your fur!” Flurry clopped her hooves together in delight. “Let’s take a photo!”

---

“Princess!” The call came again, insistent.

A sigh, and then Flurry lit her horn to wrench the door open. “Now’s not a good time, Lamplight.”

The blue-armoured guard gave her an apologetic dip of the head. “It’s just — are you feeling alright, Princess?”

Flurry Heart narrowed her eyes at him. Had he been eavesdropping? Surely not. Nopony would dare.

“What do you mean?”

He flushed. “It’s the Crystal Heart, your Highness.”

At those words, Flurry’s blood turned to ice. “What?”

He took a step closer, just over the boundary of her room, and lowered his voice, even though there was nopony around. “It’s just — well, you know the shakes over the last few months? The glitches?”

Compressing her lips, Flurry gave him a tight nod.

How could she forget? The last five months had been among the worst of her life. Not just because of the problems with Cozy — but also because of the issues the Heart had experienced. Shivering in place, its natural levitation faltering, its magical output lessening, sometimes even stopping, seemingly at random; it was all a recipe for disaster for the Empire. This had been the worst year in living memory for their territory. The snows had claimed back almost a full ninety feet from where the boundary had been last year.

And Flurry knew exactly whose fault it was. Exactly where the blame lay. Not with the crystal ponies. Nor even with Cadence. They were all as content as ever. As loving.

Ever since Flurry Heart turned twelve and got her (worryingly late) cutie mark, the Heart had been tied closer to her than to her mother. She was its Princess. Sunburst thought that in a sense it had even created her, its enormous magical output granting her alicornhood ascension while still in the womb. For reasons known only to itself, the Heart had tied their fortunes together, bound itself to her.

And now she was failing it. Because of Cozy, she was jeopardising everything. That was why she was trying — trying to break it off. Before things got even worse. Before it was too late.

“What is it, Lamplight?” she asked again, her voice quavery with fear. “What’s happened?”

He leaned in even closer, and his voice was a terrified whisper. “Princess, there’s…there’s a crack.”

---

“Here it is. The Crystal Heart.”

It thrummed as they approach, pulsing brighter and brighter the closer Flurry got. Cozy could feel the raw magical energy, the power of it, rolling off in waves. Once she would have looked at an object like that and viewed it only as potential. Potential for destruction, for dominion, for unleashing some of the agony she felt on the world outside her aching skull. But now — now she still saw all that, of course. Doctor Healing Word was a therapist, not a miracle-worker. She saw all that potential, but she also saw other things. The way the heart warmed the Crystal Empire, helped the crops to grow. The way it improved life for the faceless masses. And most importantly, the way it made Flurry Heart smile.

“Does it do that for everyone?”

Flurry glanced over at her, and smiled. “No. Not even my mom. Just me.” She shook out her long curls and reached out a hoof for the Heart. “And that’s not all. Watch this.”

As she neared it, the Heart began to hum audibly. Cozy’s fur stood on end as she felt the magic emanating off the thing ramp up. If it were fire it would be burning white-hot, and even a pegasus could feel it. You didn’t need a horn to recognise an artefact powerful enough to change the fabric of the world.

As Flurry’s skin brushed against the Heart, it began to sing. A high, thready warble, not quite a voice and not quite music — but sweetly and achingly beautiful. A song just for the princess.

Cozy Glow thought she understood, then, why Flurry Heart was not princess ‘of’ anything. Love, Friendship, Sun, Moon. Her title was simpler; Princess of the Crystal Empire. Because that’s exactly what she was.

She watched as the Crystal Heart sang for this beautiful girl, this ineffable creature with her razor-sharp intelligence and almost cruel sense of humour — this girl had somehow fallen for Cozy, of all people, and she thought that she could see a future with her.

A beautiful future, full of hope as radiant as a summer sunrise.

And for once, when Cozy Glow smiled, it was real.

---

Flurry Heart stood beside the open Prench windows, the wind ruffling her mane. Cozy Glow stalked toward her from the bedchamber, the last pair of saddlebags slung haphazardly over her back. She smiled, and it was mocking. Hollow. Her eyes were empty.

“Is this the end, then?”

Lowering her eyelids so that Cozy would not be able to read the pain there, Flurry nodded. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

Cozy Glow bowed, low and servile, with a smile as sharp as a razor blade. “Then I suppose this is goodbye, Princess.”

What Flurry wouldn’t give to see that smile wiped away — to see its softer counterpart, the genuine one. The one that lit up those hard red eyes, like chips of ruby, that melted the anger there.

In her mind’s eye she saw again the Cozy of yesterday — on their first date, startled by their genuine connection, shocked to be put into check after so long unbeaten in chess. On their second date, with the sun on her mane and a shimmering little sheep in her forelegs. A reluctant smile that became a real one. On their third date, their fifth and their twentieth — on the morning after she first slept over, all rumpled ringlets and sheepish grin.

Cozy Glow, the mare who Flurry loved. Cozy Glow, the mare who was sometimes so far away she might as well be on the moon. Cozy Glow, who had — once or twice — hinted at the demons she struggled with, the impulses she tried to keep in check. Cozy Glow, who had drained her mother of magic, who her parents would hate.

Cozy Glow, who drew back so far into her shell at the first sign of rejection that she would likely never come back out again.

Cozy Glow.

The mare had many faces, many masks. And she wore them so well, with such practised ease, that sometimes Flurry feared she would never find the real face beneath.

But she loved her.

She was jerked back into the present — to the Cozy Glow before her now — as the other mare brushed past, spreading her wings as she neared the balcony’s edge.

“Wait,” Flurry said, hardly knowing what she was doing.

Instantly, like a timberwolf scenting blood, Cozy swung back. Red eyes gleaming as she waited to hear what Flurry would say next.

Irrational, stupid hope surged in Flurry’s heart and she reached out a hoof.

“Maybe — maybe it’s not the end,” she whispered, and Cozy took a step forward.

“No?” The word was careful. Cautious. Even now, she wore her indifference like armour.

The little spark that had kindled in Flurry’s breast began to flicker and die. How could she ever trust Cozy? How could she ever build a future with her? If she wouldn’t open up, not even to Flurry, then what hope was there?

But even though she had never spoken the words aloud, though Cozy had never so much as hinted at the possibility that it was returned, Flurry Heart loved her. She loved her fierce, spiky, sharp-edged little Cozy, and she would not shut that door forever. Not yet.

“I — maybe it doesn’t have to be the end,” she whispered again.

Cozy Glow took another pace forward, her shoulderblades moving fluidly beneath the dusky apricot of her coat, and now she resembled nothing so much as a tiger stalking its prey. “Then what is it, Princess?” She wielded the word like a weapon. Like an insult.

Flurry Heart fell back a step. She had heard Princess said in that tone before. Dripping with derision. Princess Twilight Sparkle. ‘Princess’. As though no one could be less deserving than the aunt who Flurry sometimes thought she loved more than her own parents. The aunt whom she had not seen in eleven months, because of the way Flurry’s shields snapped down whenever her name came up in conversation — the memory of those fifteen years encased in stone as fresh as if they were yesterday.

If she made her relationship with Cozy public, she would likely never see her Aunt Twily again.

In the face of those staring red eyes, her willpower ebbed away. The words that finally dripped off her tongue were slow. Hesitant. “Maybe…maybe this could just be…a break.”

Any remnants of mercy, of hope, evaporated from Cozy’s expression in an instant. The shutters slammed closed, and she was once more the merciless creature Flurry had met that first day in the chess club. She looked at that cold, icy mare, and she could almost see in her the child that had toppled a kingdom.

“A break?”

Her heart beating far too hard, Flurry began to stammer. “I-I— I just thought that maybe we could—”

“Don’t bother,” Cozy spat. “I know exactly what you mean.”

The vitriol there was enough to make Flurry rear back a little, but Cozy pressed on, implacable.

“You don’t have the courage to break up with me properly so you’re dialling it back. You just want a break — right? I thought you were a lot of things, Flurry, but I didn’t think you were a coward.”

Coward. Coward? That did it. That was — that was the last straw. Flurry Heart spread her wings and drew herself up to her full height to look down her nose at the little pegasus. If this was how Cozy wanted them to part, so be it. If there was anyone here who was a coward, it wasn’t Flurry.

“I just wanted space! You’re the one who’s running from your feelings.”

Cozy scoffed. “Oh excuse me, Princess Cadence, I think I mistook you for your daughter there.”

“It’s healthy to talk to your partner about your feelings, Cozy!”

“Like I said, Princess Cadence.”

“It’s been a year! Why won’t you let me in?”

For a moment real pain flashed in Cozy’s eyes, real vulnerability — and if she had cried then, if she had apologised or smiled or said anything even halfway real, Flurry would have forgiven her everything. She would have fallen back into Cozy’s embrace and never sought again to extricate herself.

But Cozy Glow did none of those things.

Instead, she sneered. She sneered and she closed back up, and despite their height difference and the crown Flurry wore, she somehow managed to make Flurry feel like the smallest pony in the world.

“Because I don’t want to.”

Flurry Heart gasped with the hurt of it, her wings flying up to cover her mouth, stumbling backward. Because that was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? Cozy Glow did nothing she didn’t want to do. And fundamentally, she did not want to share herself with Flurry. Not enough to keep her.

With a dismissive flip of her own wing, Cozy Glow turned away and leapt to the balcony’s edge. “If you’ve ever had enough space, you know where to find me.”

She smirked down at Flurry, crumpled on the floor, and then she simply spread her wings and let the breeze take her.

Once that little pink speck in the sky had dwindled to nothing, Flurry Heart finally began to cry. Cozy Glow had been drifting away for a long time; always just out of reach. And now she was finally gone.

Light as a dandelion seed, she floated out of Flurry Heart’s life.

Comments

[Shaslan]

11186471

11006058

At long last, your patience is rewarded. Thank you for waiting!

[Undome Tinwe]

Ouch. That was beautiful and painful. These two really do the tragic romance oh-so-well, don't they? Loved this chapter, and can't wait for more!

[Starlight Nova]

What is that thing inside the Crystal Heart?

[Biglulu]

Nice to see this updated, and sad that Cozy would have the happiness she wants if only she let herself. Looking forward to more.