Hearth's Warming Eve dinner

Last Hearth’s Warming Eve, I tried to undo the curls in my hair.

I tried every possible gadget, every possible potion, sitting for hours behind my bedroom mirror. I pulled so hard with my mane brush that my scalp stung. And yet the curls still sprung back. I even tried a chemical imported from some Canterlot beauty spa that was supposed to straighten manes, guaranteed. My mane just got curlier. As if it was mad at me or something.

“How long you gonna stay in there, sugarplum?” Ma called. “Uncle Banyan’s gonna arrive any moment!”

“I’m not done yet!” I yelled back.

I didn’t say “in a minute” because I thought it’d take way more than a minute. I thought I was going to sob for a real long time, seeing myself in the mirror with those thick curls that flop up and down when I walk. But no tears came out. I ended up laughing it off.

It just seemed so silly. I had spent every single afternoon for a whole month trying to make those curls go away. And they just stayed there, as if nothing ever happened.

My mother—I call her “Ma”—has a straight mane. A thick, straight mane that she combs to her left. Sometimes to her right. Ma can choose where she wants it. Right or left. My mane does the choosing for me. And it chooses a whole bunch of directions that are neither left or right: sideways, up, loop-de-loop, you name it. My friend Biscuit has a straight mane too. My father—I call him “Pa”—doesn’t have a curly mane either. My grandmother has maybe a wavy mane. Maybe. But it’s not in natural roller curls like Spur.

The only other pony in my family with a curly mane was my little sister.

Ma always got so frustrated with our curly manes when we were little foals. While my little sister was still going to the local school here in the bayou, Ma would wake her up for school first, at six-thirty in the morning. And she’d do my little sister’s mane and tail. It must have took her a really long time for her to finish, because Ma wouldn’t wake me up to do my mane and tail until eight o’clock.

But Ma always got so frustrated when she did my mane. Sometimes she’d snap at me and yell, “GODDAMN THESE CURLS! I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS!” So I’ve always thought that Ma hated my curly mane more than my little sister’s curly mane.

I heard a knock at the front door. Uncle Banyan had arrived for Hearth’s Warming. With my wings I flapped out my room. With my still curly mane.

“Happy Hearth’s Warming, brother!” Ma said, and they hugged.

All the family comes back down to the bayou for Hearth’s Warming. Sure, it’s a little warmer down here than up in, say, Ponyville or Manehattan. But we still have Hearth’s Warming with all the fixings. The tree, the stockings by the fire, and the holiday punch.

Pretty much all my family are earth ponies. Aunt Sumac and her foals are unicorns. I’m only one of four pegasi in the whole bayou. We have a little tradition where we get the clouds together and give the whole bayou a little dusting of snow. It’s really a ten-pony job, so it takes us a long time and we work up a huge sweat, and the snow melts in a few hours—but what’s Hearth’s Warming Eve without a little snow?

With snow on the ground, we have a big and fancy feast in the house. We cook up the traditional grits cake, sweet potatoes, and peach cobbler. Ma makes the best peach cobbler you ever tasted. We grow the peaches ourselves in the backyard.

Since I’m almost a full-grown pony and Ma’s getting older, Ma started sharing some of her secret recipe with me. Just some of it. The peach filling needs just a touch of blackstrap molasses plus Ma’s secret ingredient which I’m not gonna tell you.

Everypony on Hearth’s Warming Eve talks about the cobbler. Even that year when our peach harvest got ruined and we had to serve apple cobbler, everypony talked about that. “Apple? What happened to the peach cobbler?” “Where’d the apples come from? Sweet Apple Acres?” “I noticed yer peach trees outside are gone. Looks like it got struck by lightning or somethin’.”

That was the year we sent my little sister off to Ponyville.

Nopony talked about the cobbler this year. And this year we served peach cobbler. “Y’know, Spur made the filling this year,” Ma said. I blushed a little.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Pa said, since nopony had said anything for a few seconds.

“I think Spur’s definitely got the baker’s touch,” Ma added. “Must’ve learned it from me, not like…” she stopped suddenly.

Ma, Pa, and I giggled a little to try to make it less awkward. There were only three audible voices in the room. But I swore I could’ve heard a fourth.

Oh golly! What lovely peaches! Growing right in our backyard!

Ha! Just kidding! Die! Die! Die, peach tree!

CRACKLE-KABOOM!

Die!

“Erm.” I could hear Ma clear her throat. “Well.”

All the chairs at the table were filled, except for next to me, there was one empty chair. That’s where I heard the fourth voice come from.

This was the first Hearth’s Warming Eve without my little sister.

I could’ve brought my pet Bloofy and had him sit at the empty chair. But Bloofy’s awful scared of crowds, even if it’s just family. He’d probably go into full destruction mode and tear apart the whole house. Not to mention ruin Ma’s peach cobbler. And my filling.

But honestly, Bloofy at the dinner table would be a lot like my little sister when she was sitting at the dinner table. It wouldn’t be that different, really. I’ve seen my sister go into full destruction mode a few times.

More than a few times.

The whole dinner table was still dead silent. Ma’s started talking a little awkwardly. “Erm…don’t…don’t y’all bother with manners, now, just…just…everypony grab a slice, help yourselves!”

The sound of chewing was louder than the sound of voices at the table. There was warm peach cobbler smell all throughout the room. I used to love that sweet smell.

It smelt sour this year. Not sour like sour cream on a baked potato. Sour like sour faces. And cold. It was so dang cold. I turned to the empty chair.

It’s ‘cause I’m not here by your side, sis.

I kept you warm.

Golly, didn’t you ever realize that, sister?

Well now you shall freeze.

Now that I’m gone.

I started regretting doing the snowfall over the bayou.

My relatives sitting at the table were staring at Ma and Pa and me. At Ma and Pa with concern. At me with…curiosity.

“So you’re an only child now. That’s no fair, now you don’t have to share your toys with anypony,” my 4-year-old cousin, who doesn’t know any better, said that to me.

It got quiet again, but I saw my cousin’s mother nudged him and whispered to him not say that kind of thing anymore.

“When’s the statue comin’ in?” Uncle Banyan asked.

“The appeal failed,” Ma said. “Princess Twilight said it’d be too risky to bring her home, in case she were to be freed by some renegade magic in the future. So, they…they took a hammer and a gravel-making machine and they…erm…well…she’s scattered across the Everfree Forest now.”

“Oh, I see. Just as well,” Uncle Banyan said.

“We shouldn’t say such things while they’re in mourning,” Aunt Sumac scolded her husband. She turned to Ma and Pa and me. “I’m…I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “She was…”

Ma started sobbing over her slice of peach cobbler. I know it wasn’t the case, but I kept thinking that it was my filling that was the problem. Did I add too much sugar? Did I burn it?

“We’re not in denial, you know,” Pa said. “Our daughter was an evil villain who nearly destroyed all of Equestria. Twice. Our daughter deserved her punishment.”

When Pa said “our daughter” I flinched a little. It took me ten seconds to figure out he wasn’t actually talking about me.

“But doesn’t mean we loved her any less,” Ma said. “We…we just wish we could’ve helped her.”

“You don’t help her by sending her away,” Aunt Sumac said, with a look of contempt.

“Didn’t you see the early signs?” Uncle Willow chimed in.

“I call it neglect,” Uncle Banyan said. “Neglect and a lack of care for that little foal.”

“Villains are created, not born, that’s what I always say.”

“I disagree. And in any case, I’m sure they tried their hardest to set things right.”

“Maybe they didn’t intend to neglect her.”

“But they still neglected her.”

“DON’T YOU TELL US HOW TO RAISE OUR FOALS!” Pa suddenly shouted. Pa’s a stallion of few words. Except when he’s angry. Or when he’s horny. Ma told me the latter part recently now that I’m old enough to understand.

Everypony was silent from shock. Except for me. I was giggling to myself. I was thinking about the “or when he’s horny” joke.

Uncle Banyan glanced at me briefly. Maybe he was looking at my curly mane. And noticing how much it looks like my sister’s.

“Do you think your sister was neglected, Spur?” Uncle Banyan asked me.

“Don’t you be talking to my daughter like that!”

“I’m already fourteen, Ma!” I said. “I’m almost a grown pony! I have my own opinions!”

Ma got surprisingly quiet after that. I guess I must’ve been real mad ‘cause Ma implied I wasn’t a grown pony. And cause of that, I looked mad at Ma. And she got scared of me.

Just like she got scared of my little sister.

I cleared my throat. “Erm…well, Uncle Banyan…I will always remember Cozy Glow as my little sister. I wasn’t there when she did those horrible things that got her sent to Tartarus, and then turned to…” I paused. “I love my sister, and I know my sister loved me, but I don’t know if she loved Ma and Pa. But I don’t know if Ma and Pa could’ve done anything more than what they already did to make my sister love them.”

“You love your sister? Even though she’s got an evil mind?”

“She wasn’t evil to me.”

“Selfish of you to say,” Uncle Banyan said. “What about all the other creatures your sister hurt? Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“Watch it!” Ma admonished her brother.

I started tearing up. I moved away from the peach cobbler so that my filling wouldn’t be ruined. “I don’t like to think my sister’s got an evil mind.”

“Why not?” Uncle Banyan asked.

“Cause it makes me scared that my mind’s just as evil like hers!” The tears were flowing out. Big time.

Uncle Banyan was quiet. He just nodded a little. I noticed he hadn’t eaten more than a few bites of my peach cobbler. Of course I’m almost a grown pony and I can think logically, but that childish part of me was still thinking that he hated me, so he refused to eat my peach cobbler filling.

I should’ve added a little more sugar. Did I remember to add the secret ingredient? I think I forgot that. My little sister forgot that too when she made the cobbler. She forgot a lot of things.

Oh, golly! I think I burned the filling!

Oh, you mean the stove shouldn’t be at high? Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Ma. I’m soooo sorry! Boo-hoo boo-hoo!

Golly, is that smoke?

Golly! Is that fire!?

C’mon sis, I guess we better leave and let the grown ups deal with the flames.

If they can get out, that is.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I excused myself early from dinner, even though Ma said I’m old enough to stay up late and join the grownups for cards and eggnog after dinner. In any case, nopony was in the mood for cards and eggnog after the argument that transpired at dinner.

Even with my bedroom door shut and the lights out, I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t stop staring at my bedroom mirror. My mane. It was so dang obvious that I could see it even in the dim moonlight. Those curls. They made me nervous. They made me nervous, but it was like one of those things where it was so frightening that I was too scared to even look away from it.

Oh golly, you’re just the best sister! I like you a lot!

Wanna be friends, sis?

Wanna be friends?

Finally, I got the courage to lie down in my bed and shut my eyes. It wasn’t much better. You know, I see the image of my little sister when close my eyes. Even if I close them for a second, to blink. It’s been like that ever since she got sent away to Ponyville. So, every night, for about two years.

That’s why can I never get to sleep. I see her face. I see her face with fire all around it. The fire’s so hot, it melts her face turns it to liquid, and she flows away into the abyss below. It’s like a nightmare.

But a few minutes later, she’s gone. And I breathe a sigh of relief.

Except now when I close my eyes, I see stone. I see her face, turned to stone. And her face doesn’t melt away because stone doesn’t melt in fire. She just…stays there. Smiling at me.

She does look like me. Sometimes I think I’m the one that got turned to stone.

Ma had to wake me up in the morning, so I guess I must’ve slept a good few hours that night. When Ma walked into my room, she thought I had swamp fever. I guess I looked pretty terrible, even though I had slept.

“You don’t look yourself at all dear,” she said.

I was still half asleep. “Really?” I paused. “I don’t look like myself? Is my mane still curly?”

Ma looked puzzled. “Of course dear.”

“And my tail?”

“Of course, my little mint chocolate.” And she kissed me on the cheek. I’m mint chocolate, and my sister was swiss roll.

I sank my face into the pillow and wrapped myself real tight under the blankets and I refused to let myself free.

“Spur…do you love me?” Ma asked. She didn’t look like she slept much either.

“Well…of course I do, Ma.”

“Did I…give you all the love and care and attention that a foal deserves?” Sounds like something Uncle Banyan would say.

“Of course, Ma.”

“What about your sister?”

Come on Spur. We’re gonna kill Ma, aren’t we, sis? We’re gonna kill Ma and all the earth ponies. Aren’t we, sis?

“Like I said last night at dinner. I…I don’t know,” I said.

“Spur…did you miss your sister?”

“When?”

“When we sent her off to the School of Friendship in Ponyville.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I didn’t miss her,” I said. “Cozy Glow was always there.” She still is.

“Where?” Ma asked.

I closed my eyes and buried my face in the pillow again.

Oh golly, sis! You’re just like me, you know that? You’re just like me.

Whether you like or not.

“Do you think I look like my sister, Ma?”

She paused for a second. “I think you’re beautiful just the way you are.”

“So I do look like my sister?”

“Your sister had an ugly heart. It didn’t matter whether she was beautiful or not.”

I was shocked. “So you think my sister was more pretty than me!?”

Ma’s eyes went all lovey-dovey. “Of…of course not, sweetie! I…” Ma hugged me tight. “Of course you’re more beautiful honey. Of course you are.”

“Nopony will wanna be my friend,” I said with my cheek pressed against Ma’s fur. “School’s gonna start soon, Ma, and they’re just gonna look at me, and they’re gonna see a monster!”

It was bad enough when the news got out that my sister got sent to Tartarus. My classmates would all sit a desk away from me. Whenever I smiled at them to say hi, they got so frightened. I wonder if it’s cause my smile looks like the smile they saw in the photo in the news. I’d bump into my classmates by accident and they’d give me their lunch money even though I didn’t want it. I tried to chase them down to give it back, but I couldn’t. They’d say, “Take it! Take it! Just go away and stop chasing us!”

“That’s their problem,” Ma said. “Not yours. They think you’re like your sister, but you’re nothing like her. You aren’t, sweetie.”

It got quiet for a while.

“Even if you are,” Ma added, “You have the power to make your own decisions. C’mon sweetie, your cousins are waiting for you so they can open their presents. I made ya pancakes.”

That perked me up. I flapped my wings and flew off my bed and almost touching the ceiling. I just love Ma’s pancakes. I hope she’ll teach me the recipe for the batter someday.

“You’re gonna be just fine, sweetie,” Ma said as we were going down the hallway.

“I just hope I don’t become like my little sister,” I repeated.

“So do I,” I heard Ma mutter to herself.

Kayaking

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We have a two-seater kayak. It has a custom paint job on it. One half is colored mint green and brown, and the other half is colored pale blue and peach. My little sister and I used to take out the kayak a lot. We were cooped up in the house a lot as foals when we weren’t at school. And kayaking was one of the few ways we got out, and Ma and Pa approved ‘cause they thought it’d be a nice non-violent way for me and my sister to spend time together in nature.

Ma and Pa never went kayaking with my sister. They can’t swim—only wild swamp ponies know how to swim—and I have wings so I can save myself if Cozy tipped over the kayak or did something naughty liked that.

That never happened. My sister would never do that kind of thing to me in any case.

I remember starting when I was nine and she was five, we’d take the kayak and paddle out to a secret spot on the bayou where Ma and Pa couldn’t watch us. We didn’t have just one secret spot. The swamp forest is so thick in the summer that you could be fifty yards away and be invisible.

Invisible. That’s it. My sister and I were invisible.

I sharpened a little branch against a rock to give to my sister. She stabbed a few little swamp creatures ‘cause she secretly liked to do that. She never really caused that much harm—her aim was pretty bad, she missed half of the time. And it wasn’t a secret, really. Ma and Pa told her to stop stabbing swamp creatures, and she promised, but the secret was that she didn’t actually promise.

I pwomise Mommy. Boo-hoo! I pwomise I’ll never do it again!

You too, Daddy. I pwomise I’ll never do it again!

You too, sis. I promise pwomise I’ll never do it again!

Now I apologized, do you wanna be friends again?

Sis?

Mommy?

Daddy?

So that was her secret. I told my sister about my secrets too. My secret crushes. When I was nine I used to have a huge crush on a colt at my school. He was named Lotus Paradise, and he was just as handsome as his name sounds. I’ve had crushes on colts since I was in kindergarten—about my sister’s age at the time.

I also asked my sister: “Do you have a crush on any colt at school?”

“No.”

“Do you like any colt outside school?”

“No.”

“Even as a friend? C’mon, this is kayak time. You can tell me, I promise I won’t tell.”

“No.”

“There any fillies you like?”

“No.”

“Do…do you like anypony?”

“No.”

“Do you like me?”

“No.”

And then I remember real clearly what I said after that. “But you can’t not be friends with anypony, Cozy. You’ll never be successful just depending on yourself. You gotta have friends to help you out, because they may be good at things that you aren’t good at. Only if you make friends, then you’ll be powerful.”

I was nine. I didn’t know a word better than “powerful,” like “influencer” or “popular.” I just had to tell her the word…“powerful.”

I hate my nine-year-old self.

“Like how do you make friends?” my sister asked.

“Well, you could say hi to somepony—make sure you smile—and then say something nice to them. And then maybe…ask them something like…‘wanna be friends’?”

“‘Wanna pee…fwiends?’”

“Yeah. Like that. You try.”

“Erm…hi sis.” She smiled a little crooked. “Your mane looks as nice as mine. Waaaa…nabe…fweinds?”

“Ya almost got it.” I spoke real slow for her. “Wa…nna…be…friends…”

“Wanna…be…friends…wanna be friends…wanna be friends?”

“Yes. You got it.”

“Wanna be friends? Wanna be friends?”

“Sure, Cozy. Of course I’ll be your friend.”

“Wanna be friends?

“Wanna be friends?”

She wouldn’t stop saying that the whole afternoon on the kayak.

Now that I can’t go kayaking in the bayou with my sister anymore, I go out kayaking with Biscuit and Bloofy. We went out a few days after Hearth’s Warming, when all the family had gone on back to their homes.

“When’s he coming over?” Ma asked me in the kitchen.

“After his dance lessons. I’ll go out to the pier and wait for him.”

“It’s mighty chilly, hon. Why don’t ya finish yer lunch, and then wait inside till he gets here?”

We were eating Hearth’s Warming leftovers for the third day in a row. I was starting to get sick of my own peach cobbler filling. “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m gonna be outside anyway.”

That day, Ma and Pa were reframing some old pictures of my little sister. And I couldn’t stand the sounds of them crying all morning. Not that I hate crying. It’s just…I kinda wanted to leave. I wasn’t even crying that much, and it made me feel like I was different. I peeped into my sister’s room, where Ma and Pa were, and I caught a glimpse of a picture of my sister that they were looking at. And I remember I was just thinking to myself, that a’int her. That smiling little swiss-roll foal with the curly mane and the cute violet knit cap and hoof covers, hugging a plush dolly like it’s her best friend—that a’int her. I didn’t say that to Ma and Pa. Because I know that’ll hurt their feelings.

But I wanted to say it.

Does that I mean I want to hurt Ma and Pa’s feelings?

So anyway I hovered outside around the backyard in the damp cold all by myself, waiting for Biscuit to arrive from his dance lessons.

Our flat backyard has a little gravel embankment to prevent it from eroding into the bayou water. Maybe there’s a part of her that’s keeping our backyard nice and flat. All right, I know it’s unlikely, since the Everfree Forest is so far away, but…it a’int that far. Somepony could’ve carried a piece of gravel—or even a fraction of a piece—from the Everfree, to Ponyville, onto the train, to Hayseed Junction. And I’ve walked plenty of times from home to Hayseed Junction.

I picked up one of the pieces of gravel on the embankment. Not the one that sort of looked like my sister. The one that sort of felt like my sister. It was rough and jagged round the corners, but soaked in the water so that it sort of glistened in the light. It kind of looked like a gem, but only if you were stupid enough not to realize it was just a thin coat of water.

A lot of ponies are stupid.

I took the piece of gravel and I dropped it into the water. It went plosh, into the water. Just like that. I was hearing my sister’s voice in my head again—I hear her most often when I’m alone—but when the rock fell into the water, it just turned into a muffled glub glub glub.

I stared at the water for a while, then I picked up another piece of gravel. And the whole process started again.

“Whatcha doing?” Biscuit said.

I got shocked by his voice. I quickly put down the gravel. “You…you finished your dance lessons?”

“Yeah. Whatcha doing?”

Guess I couldn’t get round that question. “I…I’m skippin’ stones.”

“Here. Lemme try. Hee…YAH!” He took the piece of gravel and he kicked it real hard, like a buckball, with his strong earth pony legs. I winced. The gravel skipped across the water, hitting the surface a good seven or eight times. I winced every time.

“You…you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“C’mon. It’s just a piece of gravel.”

“Just.”

I guess my sister’s fate ain’t that different from what happens when we all die. I never really thought about it until…well, recently, but, well…it’s true, ain’t it? It’s like the wild swamp pony carcasses that you see floating in the bayou water sometimes. You paddle by there one day, and the body’s floating in the water. The next day, they’re bugs eating at the flesh. Soon it’s just a bunch of bone hanging by a fallen tree branch. Soon it’s just little…bits in the ground…that you’d step on never thinking it was a dead pony.

No matter how kind I am. No matter how evil I am. I’m gonna be a piece of gravel someday. So will Biscuit. So will Bloofy.

Just like my sister.

“Hello? Spur? You there…?” Biscuit waved a hoof over my face.

“Nothing,” I said, picking up another piece of gravel from the embankment. “I was just staring at you.”

Biscuit didn’t blush, instead he gave me a confused look. “Hmm…kay?”

“What?” I said.

“Erm…well…?”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah.”

We both laughed.

“Ready to go?” I said.

“Sure.”

Bloofy purred in agreement.

We left the shore around two o’clock that afternoon. Inside the kayak, I sat on my tail and covered my mane with a thick knit cap. I liked that a lot. I could stare at my reflection in the water and feel like not my sister for a moment. Until my super springy mane started poking out the cap. That always happens when I wear hats.

It was a cold and rainy winter day. I’d never gone kayaking in the winter before. Biscuit brought a raincoat and some galoshes, but the wind with the rain still made his mane a little wet. The rainwater seeped right through my knit cap. Clearing the sky would’ve been too much work for just me.

But it didn’t really matter, in any case. My mane is just as curly when it’s drenched by rain.

I paddled us to one of the hidden places where my sister and I used to share our secrets. All the trees were barren in the winter and the forest exposed, so it wasn’t like when I went kayaking with Cozy.

We weren’t invisible.

I packed some food for me, Bloofy, and Biscuit to eat. We drank hot tea and we ate, well, biscuits. The real bland kind that Bloofy can also eat.

“This cookie is gross,” Biscuit said. “There’s like, zero sugar.”

“Well, give yours to Bloofy. I’m sure he don’t mind your saliva.” Biscuit gave Bloofy a few bites. Bloofy smiled.

“I think he likes you,” I said. I gestured a little, with a smile, and Biscuit pet his fur.

“Heh, he sure does. Even after the whole…”

“Oh, don’t you worry about it. Sure, you took Bloofy against my wishes…and he ended up destroying half of Appaloosa because of you…”

“…because of me?” Biscuit said. “Bloofy deserves at least some of the credit.”

“Well how was I supposed to know he’d go into full tornado mode like that?”

Biscuit looked pretty angry. “I don’t know, maybe you should’ve figured that out before you decided to keep such a dangerous creature as your pet!”

Bloofy smiled at Biscuit again. He obviously can’t understand a word we’re saying. That’s why I giggled.

“Well, Biscuit,” I said, “I’m gonna turn a blind eye to the Appaloosa fair incident ‘cause Princess Twilight agreed to foot the bill using her royal entertainment allowance. Plus, the fact I’m taking you out kayaking in the winter, when the water’s nice and the bugs aren’t out…I’m just gonna say, you owe me. Big time,” I teased.

Biscuit calmed down. “Like, owe you what?”

“Nothin’. I’m just saying if I need a favor from you sometime, you better say yes.”

Biscuit chuckled. “Okay, Spur. Whatever you say.”

Biscuit was quiet for a bit. He’s afraid of something. I think it’s my mane. I remind him of my evil younger sister. I poured myself some hot tea—I closed my eyes to smell the aroma—and I saw her again. In stone. Frozen at that smile. I shivered.

“I like your…hat,” Biscuit said.

“Please…don’t remind me.” A bit of my curly mane was staring to poke out. I pulled the knit cap down a little lower. Biscuit likes my mane. He thinks my curly mane looks cute, and his friends at school make fun of him for that. “The Cozy Glow mane,” they call it.

I got a little annoyed because I already told Biscuit to stop complementing my mane. I don’t even feel right if he compliments the color. I told him already. Anything about my mane is off limits.

I started paddling towards the shore. “Biscuit…you don’t think I’m evil, do you?”

“No.”

“Well you know how they stare at my mane. And how much I look like…”

“You’re a different pony. It matters what’s on the inside, not on the outside.”

But it’s not just the outside. I hear my sister’s voice inside me.

Wanna be friends? Wanna be friends?

Wait. That was me. That was my voice. I taught her to say that.

“Are you…afraid of me?” I said out loud.

“Course not, why’d you think that? We’re friends.”

“Come on. Th-there must’ve been at least one time you were scared of me.”

“No, not at all.”

I insisted, and Biscuit finally admitted something. “Well…there was that one time you didn’t want me to leave your house cause you wanted to keep playing buckball with me. And they way you screamed 'don't go'…it sounded a little scary.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You…you’re kind of cute when you get mad, actually.” He blushed.

Biscuit’s the only pony at school that still talks to me as a friend. There are ponies that do actually talk to me at school and not just give me their lunch money, but they always ask me about my sister. How is she doing in Tartarus. What gonna happen to her now she’s turned to stone. Whether she ever behaved violently at home. Whether she was ever abused.

Biscuit’s not like that. I remember the day the news got out that my sister got sent to Tartarus, and everypony from parents to teachers to students asked me about her.

Biscuit was the only who asked me, “And how are you feeling, Spur?”

I don’t know why he’s the only one who still talks to me like a friend. Maybe he knows something that other ponies don’t. Like, some…fundamental truth or whatever. I never asked him.

We paddled back home to the pier. I tied up the kayak, and I lifted Biscuit and Bloofy off the boat with my wings.

“Look, Spur, I’m can’t imagine what it’s like dealing with your sister gone, after all those horrible things she did. You must have a lotta mixed emotions. If you ever wanna talk about it…”

I sighed. “You…you wanna come inside?” I opened the back door to our house. I let the warm air from the fire flow out.

“Erm…sure.” It was already 4 o’clock. “I’ll have to leave before dark though—the road back’s pretty lonely, and—”

“Well, you can stay over if you like.”

“I…I don’t think your Ma would let me—”

“Well…Cozy Glow’s old room is empty,” I said. “We’re using it as storage, but I guess you could stay in her room if it’s awkward or whatever.”

“Oh yeah. Guess it works out then.” He stepped inside. I shut the door behind him.

Biscuit’s really cute. I like him a lot. I’m not sure if Biscuit likes me too. I wouldn’t mind one bit if he did.

Sleeping together

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Biscuit stayed the night after kayaking. After we went inside, he took a shower, and Ma put an extra place setting at the dinner table.

“What, this again?” I said when I saw the salad on the table.

Ma apologized. “Just…a habit. So used to makin’ it.”

Biscuit waited for Pa and to arrive before he started eating. “Th-thank you so much for dinner,” he said to Ma.

“Aw, no problem, sugarcube,” she said. “Yer always welcome at our place.”

“In a minute, you’re gonna wish you didn’t thank her,” I whispered to Biscuit, pointing to the salad. It was supposed to be a joke. But he just frowned at me.

As I predicted, Biscuit took one bite of the salad and he spit it right out. “YUCK! WHAT IS THIS DISGUS—oh, sorry. I mean…it’s all…right…” he apologized to Ma.

It’s Ma’s raw onion grass and cattail salad. It’s very bitter—Ma puts a little light dressing on it, but it doesn’t cover up anything. The cattails leave this aftertaste in your mouth, and it makes you feel like gagging. Then the onion grass is so pungent your sinuses become inflamed and your tears flow out, and it kinda looks like you’re crying. I’ve eaten it a bunch of times, and after a lot of practice I’m able to eat a whole plate without gagging or crying.

Raw onion grass and cattail salad was my sister’s favorite food.

Completely raw, with very light dressing, that’s how my sister liked it. When she was as young as four, she’d gobble up two or three plates of the salad quite happily. She’d tell Ma and Pa that everypony at school made fun of her for liking such a nasty dish, and she felt left out. Ma and Pa didn’t want her to feel left out, so we all ate the same thing along with her. My sister would finish her plate first, and she’d just watch the rest of us finish before she got seconds. It’d be silent. Except for the sound of me, Ma, and Pa gagging and crying.

And I remembered my sister would smile a little.

Nowadays, Ma, Pa, and I can get through one whole plate of the salad in about ten minutes, without gagging or crying. It almost feels like a normal family dinner now. Small talk and everything.

“How was kayaking?” Pa asked me and Biscuit.

“It was a little chilly,” Biscuit said. “But Spur packed some hot tea so it was fine.”

“And the biscuits,” I added. “Don’t forget the biscuits, Biscuit.”

He went along with the pun. “Biscuit!? You call those things biscuits!? Those biscuits are a mockery to my name!” he teased.

Ma and Pa thought it was funny too. I heard four voices laughing in the room.

And for a moment, just for a moment, when I closed my eyes as I was laughing…I did not see my sister. For a moment, all I saw was darkness. And when I opened my eyes, I turned to my right and I expected to see my sister, but I saw Biscuit instead.

Ma and Pa had just finished reframing my sister’s old pictures. They talked about how they found some pictures of my sister as a newborn foal. There was even one with me holdin’ her. “You were holding your sister while flying in the air, and your sister was pullin’ on your little neck scarf with her mouth. It was the cutest dang thing.” Ma asked if I wanted to see it. I said maybe later.

I was only four, but I remember that photo real well. I thought my sister was trying to choke me.

I was hungry, so I managed to eat a few more bites of the salad than Biscuit. Biscuit pushed his plate away pretty early on.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it hon’,” Ma said to Biscuit. “Nopony really likes it that much.”

I still had some leftover biscuits from kayaking—the really bland kind with no sugar.

“You want a cookie?” I said, offering one on my wing. Biscuit happily ate six of them. “Thank you,” he said to me.

“So you like the biscuits now?” I asked.

“They’re pretty tasty,” Biscuit admitted.

Ma and Pa went to bed early. They were tired from reframing my sister’s pictures. Biscuit and I stayed up and played some board games. Then we listened to music—outside in the backyard so the Ma and Pa wouldn’t get woken up.

It was dark, and I forgot to bring a lantern. On the way back inside, a piece of gravel made Biscuit trip and fall. I cussed at the gravel and threw it into the lake. Hard. It skipped about eight or nine times across the water.

“Hey, that was a pretty good shot,” Biscuit said.

Ma had set up my sister’s room as a guest room for Biscuit. She hid all my sister’s reframed pictures in a solid oak cabinet inside the bedroom, so that the guests wouldn’t see it. Biscuit happened to open the cabinet, probably not knowing what was in there, and his face looked like he’d seen a ghost. He slammed the cabinet door shut.

The most evil pony in all of Equestrian history. Smiling at you, 50 times over. Enough to give anypony a heart attack.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I just…” Biscuit sat down on the guest bed. We changed the mattress after my sister left for Ponyville. Cozy liked a very firm mattress, but most of our guests don’t want that.

I sat beside him, close enough that our flanks touched. “You’re trembling,” I said.

“I know.”

I took my wing and caressed it up his back. Biscuit smiled.

“Ya still scared?”

“A little.” He was still trembling.

“Maybe you’ll be a little less scared if ya…if ya come and sleep in my room.”

“Erm…I…well…sure.” Biscuit’s voice got real quiet.

I really wanted him to sleep with me. I wasn’t planning on having sex with him or anything, but if we could just…lie in bed together. That’s what I really wanted. And I got it.

And all I did was take Biscuit kayaking (on the day that Ma and Pa were reframing pictures so that they would get tried and go to bed early so that we wouldn’t be disturbed), make Biscuit gag on the cattail salad so that he’d start to like my bland biscuits, and force him to walk into Cozy Glow’s room and open that cabinet and get so damn scared that he’s got no choice but to sleep with me.

Oh golly, you’re a master of manipulation too! You’re just like me, sis. Whether you like it or not.

“Who’re you talking to?” Biscuit asked.

“Cozy Glow.”

Biscuit didn’t respond.

“I hear her voice in my head sometimes,” I explained.

“Like…in your head? Actually?”

“Yeah. It gets annoyin’ sometimes, cause her voice keeps me up at night.”

“How much do you sleep a night?”

“Like…four or five hours.”

“Four or five hours!?”

“Yeah. So?”

He placed his hoof over my mane. I think he was about to compliment it, but then he stopped himself. “Spur, h-have you thought about seein’ a therapist?”

“YES!” I yelled. I slapped his hoof away, hard, so that it hit his eye.

“What the hay was that for!?”

“I’m just dang tired of that question,” I said, turning away from him.

I used to have a therapist.

Princess Twilight paid for a therapist to counsel me and the whole family. She appointed her personally. Starlight Glimmer, formerly the guidance counselor at the School of Friendship. Ma and Pa declined the offer. They sorta blame Princess Twilight for my sister being gone. And having the same pony that executed your daughter appointing you a therapist…I can see why they didn’t want that.

I, however, saw Ms. Glimmer for several sessions. Ma and Pa were okay with me seeing her, but I didn’t like her. She was just like the other ponies at school. She kept asking me about my sister. I think Ms. Glimmer wished to counsel my sister, and hopefully reform her. And since my sister was executed…I was just the next best thing. The next best thing to who she wanted.

When I told her about my problems, she tried to compare it to her own past experiences with evil. As if we were the exact same pony. I told her about that time on the kayak, when I taught my sister how to make friends. And I remember she said to me, “There’s nothing we can do to change the past, but our guilt will get in the way of learning from our mistakes and moving past it.” And then as a comparison, she told me the story about how her late mother used to complain about how everything in society was so unfair, and that was the reason why she started her equality village.

That just made me feel worse. Why? Cause Ms. Glimmer’s done a lot of bad things in her past. And the things she said made me think that I did something wrong, when it was my sister’s that did the wrong.

I felt like Ms. Glimmer was counseling my sister. I was sitting in the room with her, and yet I felt like she wasn’t talking to me. I felt alone when I was with her.

Alone. That’s how I feel many times. Alone and useless.

I was never any good at farmwork, cause I didn’t have strong earth pony bones like Ma and Pa. And I wasn’t classy like the unicorns at school, all I had was a cheap linen neck scarf and a stupid curly mane that drove my mother crazy every morning. And I wasn’t smart either: my sister could beat me at a game of chess by the time she was four.

Ma and Pa were too polite to say. But I could always tell they were disappointed by me. Both their pegasus daughters, actually. For different reasons.

It’s a lonely life out here on the bayou. Not just for me, for everypony. Every house is separated by either a murky swamp or a long winding road. You could scream in the loudest Royal Canterlot voice and not be heard by anypony. You could saw the horn off of one of your unicorn friends and nopony but you would hear the horrid screams of pain coming from your wood shed.

My sister was seven. She was curious to see if she could become an alicorn.

She was tired of being a pegasus too.

…and then if I take the sawed off horn and I put to my head, maybe then we won’t be pegasi anymore. And Ma and Pa will start liking me and you.

She said she’d try it out on herself first. And if it worked, then she’d do it for me and let me become an alicorn too. So I unlocked the toolshed for her. And I gave her saw.

I even wished her luck.

“Spur?” Biscuit said, breaking the long silence that I had spent thinking to myself.

“Yeah?”

“Actually, I think…I can feel her in here too.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Her spirit,” Biscuit said. “I can feel Cozy Glow’s spirit in here too. If I listen hard…I can almost hear her. Talkin’ to me and everythin’. It’s real spooky.”

“Maybe I’m not that crazy, huh?” I teased.

“Guess not,” Biscuit said.

Now…I had Biscuit. And I wasn’t alone anymore.

We got up from my sister’s bed and headed to my room, which is just across from the hall. Biscuit turned off the light, but he stopped at the doorway.

“Spur?”

“Yeah?”

“Do ya feel like you taught her how to be evil?”

I thought about the unicorn sawing incident. “Perhaps.”

“Not intentionally of course,” Biscuit quickly added.

“Right.”

“But maybe you enabled her evil actions.”

I do tell that to myself a lot.

But it sounds a million times worse when it’s coming from another pony.

I got mad. “Me!? Enabled her!?” I screamed.

“I’m just saying, Spur, I’m not tryin’ to judge ya, but—”

“Damn right you aren’t!” Every time some says they’re not mad, or they’re not trying to judge you, it means they actually are.

“Cozy must’ve picked up something from her upbringing. How else did she learn to torture other ponies like that?”

“She was born that way.” That’s what I’ve always told my classmates at school that ask. Doesn’t mean I think it’s true. It’s just easy to say. It’s one sentence. And they don’t ask any annoying followup questions so then they’ll go away and not bother me.

Biscuit scoffed a little. Staying up late always make you a little cocky. “You can’t be born evil. That’s crazy.”

I guess I was already ticked off that night when Biscuit asked me that therapist question. “Oh, so little foals can be born to love, but they can’t be born to hate!? What kinda logic is that!?”

“Logical or not, it’s true, a’int it!?”

“So now you’re sayin’ it’s my fault!?”

“No, what I’m sayin’ is…well…but…well, how else did she become the most evil pony in all of Equestria at the age of ten!?”

I was tearing up in the darkness. “OH, WOW, you think we’re so damn CLEVER!? You think, Ma, Pa, and I…you think we KNOW the reason!? You think, if we’d KNOWN the reason all along, you think we’d have been STUPID enough to let her get to that point!? HUH!?”

It was silent.

I heard Biscuit whimper once.

Only once.

I flew towards him and I hugged him. I hugged him so hard, he fell to the floor. I just kept apologizing and apologizing to him. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Biscuit. I’m so so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, I—”

I shushed him with my hoof. “My turn to apologize.”

I kissed him. Right in the lips. He didn’t even look that shocked. I think it was already after one o’clock, and we were both too exhausted to care. It was a chilly night and his body was warm and his lips were even warmer that that’s all that mattered.

We went into my bedroom. I had some candles lying around, so I lit them. To set the mood. Biscuit and I climbed into bed together. There’s plenty of space on my mattress, but we scooched in real close, and we cuddled each other.

Now I am fourteen. And I’ve known Biscuit for a long time. So it’s not like this came out of the blue or anythin’.

We slept together that night. Actually slept together. Which means...sleep, plus...other things.

“You comfy?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

We kissed again. I closed my eyes. And for a moment, again, all I saw was darkness. All I heard was silence. And when I opened my eyes, all I saw was my bed, the pillows, the sheets, and Biscuit.

“I’m very comfy,” I said.

Biscuit smiled. “You were very cute when you got mad like that just now.”

“You want me to do it again?” I suggested.

I should tell you the story of how I got my spur-shaped cutie mark. Actually, no. Actually…maybe some other time.

Demons

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Ma found out.

I was in the heat of the moment and everything, and well, I thought I could control myself and all, but Biscuit felt so nice, and well, my yelling got a bit too loud, and well, Ma got woken up.

I a’int gonna say much about it. I’ll just say that Biscuit “finished” when Ma opened the door. Well, Ma opened the door, and Biscuit was about to “finish,” so he had no choice to “finish” in front of Ma.

He was still moaning when Ma yelled “SPUR! YOU GET OUTTA THAT BED THIS INSTANT!”

Pa dragged Biscuit out of there faster than he could say “bye, Spur.” Ma dressed Biscuit’s wounds (just two small scrapes, and that was only cause he didn’t keep still like I told him to) and his parents came to get him. Pa kept me inside my room. I wasn’t allowed to say “bye” to him.

I haven’t gotten a bigger talking to in my whole life. Ma sat me down at the empty dinner table at two o’clock in the morning. I thought it was gonna wait till morning, but Ma insisted. She turned on one small lamp. Ma stared at me from across the table, like a hawk. Pa was too tired to deal with me, apparently, cause he was fast asleep on the couch.

“What is this!? Hmm!?” Ma quizzed me.

“A riding crop,” I answered correctly. I could still see a few strands of Biscuit’s fur caught in the leather.

“And what is this!?”

I think I answered Ma, but I answered so quietly that I couldn’t even hear myself. I forced some of my mane to uncurl so I could cover my face.

I explained the whole situation to Ma. At least she bothered to listen. “It was part of the whole thing, Ma. He wanted me to hurt him like that.”

“He wanted it?” Ma was in disbelief. “Oh Celestia, even yer sister came up with better excuses!”

I didn’t expect it. I mean, I thought Ma would be mad about me sleeping with him, but…cause I hurt him? That’s what she was mad about? Ma didn’t say anything that night about the fact I slept with Biscuit.

Or about the fact that she might have a grandchild.

“Why is this about my sister?” I said.

“You damn right know the reason, missy.”

I felt like throwing up. I got worried about being pregnant. Of course my sister never worried about being pregnant.

"This isn’t about her, MA!” I yelled. “I’M! NOT! MY SISTER!”

“Oh really? Cause yer actin’ just like her right now!”

We woke up Pa for a moment cause of our shouting. He opened a single eye. Then he closed it again.

I curled up into a ball and cried until I was gasping for breath. Gasping so bad, that I thought I was gonna choke to death. I wasn’t crying cause of what Ma said. It was two in the morning, and everypony says crazy things when they’re sleep deprived.

I was crying cause of what Cozy was saying.

A master of manipulation.

A master of torture.

You’re just like me, sis. Whether you like it or not.

“No I’m not…no I’m not…” I mumbled back to her. I felt the tears soaking into my fur.

I saw her again when I closed my eyes. Her stone face in the fire, refusing to melt away. Just smiling at me. That smile.

You’re even better than me, sis. I’m sitting here in Tartarus, sis, but YOU. You have great potential for evil. Even more than me. I’m surprised you can’t even see it. You ARE the embodiment of evil.

I’m working on a plan to escape. Wanna be friends once I get out?

Send my love to Ma and Pa. Sincerely…

“No I can’t, Cozy! I won’t!” My eyes were closed and I was so dang tired I thought it was Cozy’s hoof touching me, back from the dead.

I slapped it away. Hard.

“AAARGH!” I heard a high pitch scream. And then some really loud crying. Like pain. Like death. It sounded a lot like death.

Then, I opened my eyes. “Cozy…?”

I heard Ma’s voice say, “What’d you do that for!?”

“What?” I said.

“What in hell are you doing!?” Ma said, then she winced from the pain in her jaw.

See? What did I tell ya? You're a master.

“I thought you were my sister," I said to Ma.

“Your what!?”

“I heard her talkin’ to me in my head and I got mad at her, so I…and then I…” I trailed off, only cause I realized how insane I was sounding. It made perfect sense when her voice was in my head. It didn’t make any sense when I said it out.

It made me feel even more lonely. Cause it’s like everything that makes sense to me doesn’t make sense to anypony else.

Ma was massaging the spot where I punched her, and she was wincing. And Ma is not a scaredy-cat when it comes to pain. I guess I hit her pretty hard. If I had hit my sister with that much force, I think I’d have fractured her jaw.

I just wanted her to stop talking to me.

“I a’int hearing an apology, missy,” she said.

I had to spit it out before I hesitated again. “I know you’ll think I’m crazy and it doesn’t make any sense but I hear voices in my head Ma!”

Ma froze. “Voices!?”

“Yeah, okay? I hear my sister’s voice in my head. Now she’s in stone, but she still talks to me. And I can never get the hell to sleep cause she just keeps tauntin’ me all night long. And I thought if I punched her in the jaw then she’d shut up, so I punched her, but she wasn’t actually there, so instead I punched…” I trailed off again.

I was insane. Actually insane.

Ma just groaned and covered her bloodshot eyes with her hooves. The bruise I gave Ma was getting bigger by the minute. All I heard was her just whispering to herself “Oh, Celestia oh Celestia oh for the love of sweet Celestia.”

I wondered if Ma was gonna force me to see Ms. Glimmer.

“So…you say…you hear…voices!?” Ma said.

“Yes, Ma.”

“You hear your sister’s voice? In yer head?”

“Yes.”

“Every day?”

“Yes.”

“Even at night?”

“Yes.”

It was silent.

“Ma, I—”

“I believe you, okay hun?” she said, with very little sincerity. “It’s just…”

“What?”

“Just…I had to give birth to the two of y’all, HAVEN’T I SUFFERED ENOUGH!? And ya just gotta…ya just gotta…THROW this little THING about voices in your head, just to drive me to INSANITY, don’t you, ya little…ya little…”

That was the night Ma called her own daughter a bitch.

I felt sick to my stomach. I wondered if that was the “morning sickness" that I heard about.

Ma never called my sister a bitch. She was always too scared to scold my sister. The unicorn sawing incident, the stabbing of the animals, setting the house on fire by cooking peach cobbler and leaving it inside at high and adding a little extra butter—Ma knew about all those. She was too scared to scold my sister. So Ma’d always vent out her frustration on me. I was the one who got all the scolding. If I did something a little wrong—like I forgot to take out the garbage for the wild swamp ponies to pick up, she’d make that as an excuse to dump all her frustration with my sister on me. She’d yell at me. And she’d yell at me.

It took me a while to realize that. As a younger foal I always thought that Ma loved my sister and she hated me.

But I’m fourteen years old, and you know, I can stand up for myself now. Even though I was seething with anger, I acted all polite like a grown mare, and I said, “Ma, I promise, I’m tellin’ ya the truth about the voices in my head. And, well, Ma, I just felt quite insulted when you called me—”

“Just GO TO YOUR ROOM, COZY! I’M DANG SICK AN’ TIRED OF YER BULLSHIT!”

I did not go to my room.

“I’m not Cozy Glow,” I whispered. But it was silent enough that Ma could hear from across the table.

Ma was trembling silently. With this mortified look on her face. All the color gone.

Like stone. Pale gray stone.

Ma and I didn’t speak that morning, except when I asked Ma how her wound was, and she answered my question by taking off the bandage and showing me how red and inflamed it was. Even I felt sick looking at it. Being selfish like I am, I was worried again that that was something that happened if you were pregnant.

I wasn’t pregnant.

“It’s that bad, huh?” I said to Ma. And I chuckled a little at the end. For some horrible reason that I don’t wanna even try to think about.

“I’m sorry I hit ya, Ma,” I said. And it occurred to me that I hadn’t even said sorry to Ma.

Ma didn’t say nothing back.

And I found myself staring at my front hooves, thinking about how…about how powerful they were. They were trembling, and I was terrified. But I got this adrenaline rush from being terrified. Kind of like when you’re about to start a flying race. And you finish ahead of everypony else.

Oh golly sis! You won? You beat me?

I spent the morning outside, kicking pieces of gravel into the water until my legs got so tired I could barely walk back inside.

I didn’t hear my sister’s voice for a solid seven hours after that.

Ma felt better by supper time. She was packing our bags for our trip. Dinner was already prepared. Creamy potato soup, succotash, fried okra, and beignets and coffee for dessert.

“The gravel embankment’s eroding quite a bit,” Pa said, looking outside. “Was there a storm recently?”

“I was kicking some of the pieces of gravel,” I said.

“How many did you kick?”

“Like, maybe…a hundred.” More like a thousand, actually.

Pa gave me a look. But he didn’t ask me anything. “Well, you better stop doing that. Otherwise we’re gonna have to rebuild the embankment.”

“Okay, Pa.”

The thing I remember the most from supper was that Ma said at the table that the wound I gave her was doing much better.

“I still love you dear,” she said.

That’s doesn’t mean anything to me. “Well, you loved my sister too, didn’t ya, Ma?”

“But I love you more than her, sugarcube.”

“Why?”

Ma couldn’t really explain it, even though she tried. She looked into my eyes and took many deep breaths but all she said was, “I…I just do.”

I flew onto Ma’s lap. Just like old times. Except I’m almost Ma’s height and weight now. And she hugged me and I hugged her back.

Ma and I kept hugging. And Ma didn’t say nothing, I didn’t say nothing. It was silent, except for our out of sync breathing. We didn’t even smile or look at each other. But I knew she felt what I was feeling.

I stared at my hooves while I was hugging Ma, and I didn’t feel as much terrified as I felt…confused. What I did the night before, I couldn’t believe that it was me. I still don’t believe it. It makes more sense in my head if I imagine that I was another pony that night, when I yelled at Ma and hit her so hard I almost fractured her skull.

Or maybe like a demon. A demon entered me. And changed me. But then after the night ended, it left. And I were the same again.

I wonder if my sister felt like that a lot. Like, there’d be some demon that’d go inside her and change her. And then she’d fall asleep in Ma’s lap and wake up the next morning and she’d go back to being just an innocent little foal again.

Or maybe it doesn’t work that way, because she was the demon.

Ma stroked my mane affectionately. I could see the curls bounce in front of my face, like a mass of floppy springs. It was silent for a while.

“You always hated my mane, didn’t you?” I finally whispered to Ma.

“No, my little mint chocolate,” Ma said out loud. “You’ve got the prettiest mane in all of Equestria.”

"Then...when you got me ready for school in morning when I was a foal...you were just ventin' your frustration with Cozy out on me, weren't you?"

"I love your mane, dear. Your sister's too. It's just..."

"My sister didn't love you," I said.

Ma gazed down to the floor. I guess she finally realized.

That evening after supper, Ma and I sat on the dining chair, and Ma whispered a really pretty lullaby in my ear which I didn’t hear all of because I fell asleep.

Cozy Glow is still alive. No matter how hard Twilight tried: to zap her, to petrify her, to pulverize her…they lost that battle. She’s still alive. She’ll always be a part of our family.

And sometimes I wonder if it’s really all bad.

A city of pegasi

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Ma packed my bag for me. She washed and hug dry my winter cap, my hoof gloves, my winter jacket, and three of my neck scarves. She packed my toothbrush, that perfume I got from Uncle Willow for Hearth’s Warming, and my bath soap.

Enough stuff for a four-night trip to Bitsburgh in the dead of winter. So it wasn’t like a choice whether I could leave or not.

Ma and Pa had an interview with the Post-Gazette newspaper about raising Cozy Glow, then a meeting with some Equestria diplomats about future world peace. After a few a more interviews, they were going to give a speech at a memorial dedication for the creatures who valiantly fought against my sister. I heard them practicing their speech in the study room. With the door shut. Their voices were kinda muffled, but I could hear everything from the living room. Ma and Pa wrote it in all in that fancy speak. You know what I mean.

“Though we understand, our paternal love cannot assuage the guilt we face for the millions of lives she put on the line…we condemn her cruel actions, and our lives remain tortured by constant regret. Wondering if we let her slip the surly bonds of youth and touch the face of Shadows…or even perhaps, we were the ones who set her loose.”

I think ponies like to talk in fancy when they don’t really believe what they’re sayin’. The fanciness covers up the reality of it.

Nopony wanted my interview. The press didn’t wanna hear me give a speech. And, Ma and Pa forbade me. Said I wasn’t old enough. Fourteen isn’t old enough to give a public speech.

But ten is old enough to destroy Equestria and get executed.

You know how I was sayin’ I used to think Ma loved my sister and hated me? Actually, I don’t think the second part’s entirely untrue. You know what I did during those five days in Bitsburgh? I sat all day in the hotel room while Ma and Pa went gettin’ all fondled by the press. (Of course, I went out and explored the town on my own, but that’s beside the point.)

So I wasn’t even sure why Ma and Pa wanted me to go with them. Ma looked so excited when she was packing my bag. “I’ll pack your purple jacket, so then we’ll be matchin’! How ‘bout that, sugarcube?”

“Matching for what? I’m gon’ be in hotel room most of the time,” I said. I rolled my eyes for Ma to see.

“What’s wrong, sugarcube? You love getting away from the bayou, don’t ya?”

Maybe part of it was that Ma wanted me to get away from Biscuit. Like they don’t trust me to stay at home by myself. I am already fourteen. Well, since I’m already fourteen I guess if I stayed home, I could break out and go to Biscuit’s house and sleep with him again, huh?

Nah, I’m joking.

Just a little.

His bits of fur were still on my riding crop. I put a few strands in a plastic bag and slipped it in while Ma was checking if my knit cap was dry or not.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetie,” Ma said when she came back. “Pa and I are gonna do just fine with the press on our own. You won’t have to worry ‘bout all the stress bein’ in front of the camera. Especially at your age, sweetie.”

And Ma always tells me I’m supposed to be all humble like a fine grown mare, but to hell with that ‘cause she obviously doesn’t believe it herself. I know I could’ve given a damn better speech and what Ma and Pa could ever do. I’ve known my sister just as long as Ma and Pa have, after all.

You know who she wrote to when she was in Ponyville? Me. She wrote to me, and not Ma and Pa. She even sent it by registered post so that I could go pick it up myself and Ma and Pa wouldn’t see it. I'm not even gonna share those letters with you. They're still secret.

Well, actually my sister did write to Ma and Pa, cause she had to, but that was 10 lines of word salad and lies.

Hi Mommy and Daddy.

How are you?

I am doing fine.

I made some friends today.

They’re called the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

They’re very nice.

They taught me friendship.

I miss you Mommy oh so much. I miss you Daddy oh so much.

But don’t worry about me.

I’ll have everything under control before you know it.

After we finished packing and washed all the dishes from supper, we took the 9 o’clock evening train to Ponyville, then changed to the train to Canterlot, then took the 11:30 overnight train to Bitsburgh. We were in one of those sleeper cabins. They have double and quadruple cabins. We chose the quadruple cabin, “Built with comfort in mind, perfect for a family of four ponies.” There were four bunks. Two on each side. I took a top bunk, since I’m a pegasus. The other top bunk was empty, and we left the curtain open.

I stared at the empty bed for a while. I drank a little too much coffee at supper and I was still awake. I could hear Ma and Pa fast asleep below. So I started preening my feathers in the darkness. I get bits of fluff caught in my wings, and cause of my brown coat, it all shows.

My sister and I used to preen each other’s feathers. Ma and Pa were never invited, of course.

It was something us pegasi did. That the earth ponies or unicorns could never do.

Of course, there was my sister’s voice in the background, coming from the empty bunk. She sang me a lullaby she learned from Professor Fluttershy at the School of Friendship.

Hush now, quiet now,

It’s time to lay your sleepy heads.

Hush now, quiet now,

It’s time to go to bed.

After I finished preening all my feathers, I felt really sleepy. I rest my head on the pillow, the train was gently rocking, my sister kept singing the lullaby, the train kept rocking, my sister kept singing, the train, my sister, the train…and I fell fast asleep.

I didn’t wake up until the train arrived at 8 o’clock that morning.

I saw pegasi everywhere in Bitsburgh. At the train platform that morning, I counted at least thirty winged ponies. There’s hills everywhere. Deep river valleys, rocky cliffs. The earth ponies who first arrived here considered it uninhabitable, cause it was too steep for them to walk. So the pegasi came here instead.

My sister always wanted to go to Cloudsdale, the city of pegasi. But Ma and Pa said we were too young to visit Cloudsdale on our own, and we weren’t good enough fliers to qualify for Junior Speedsters Camp.

I’ve never been to Cloudsdale myself. But I think Bitsburgh is pretty close to what Cloudsdale would look like. I loved it. The air was fresh. And there’s so many places where you can just hover over the edge of a cliff and you feel like you’re floating somewhere high up in the sky.

As a pegasus, I loved Bitsburgh.

Ma and Pa hated it.

They couldn’t fly, so we took the incline railway up, but there was still a very long and steep walk up to our hotel. Ma and Pa kept slipping on the ice walking up the hill. After about five minutes, Ma got so tired walking and slipping, she collapsed to the ground, and she just wouldn’t budge.

“Ma, you all right?” I asked.

“I…I can’t…”

“Come on, Ma, just a bit more to go.”

“Oh, Celestia, be nice to your Ma for once!” Ma yelled. Her voice croaked a little.

“I’m sorry—”

“No, no, I’m sorry too honey, I didn’t mean to snap at ya, I’m just…” she stopped talking and started huffing. I could see Ma hadn’t slept well on the train. She had deep bags under her eyes. Pa offered a helping hoof. Ma didn’t even look at Pa. She just stared at the icy ground in a daze.

And I just remember thinkin’ how old Ma looked. How tired she looked. A feeble, decrepit, flightless mud pony.

That was how my sister used to describe Ma.

I’m not a full grown mare, so I’m still not strong enough to lift Ma or Pa up the hill. Luckily, there was a pegasus couple chatting outside. They saw us struggling, and they called to us, “Hey! You all need some help there!?” they shouted across the street.

“Yeah! Just trying to help my Ma and Pa up this hill!” I shouted back.

Pa got mad at me later that day for shouting that out loud. Something about his pride. I honestly think he a’int got no pride to lose.

Considering his younger daughter’s the most evil villain in all of Equestria.

I a’int got no pride to lose either.

The two pegasi, a stallion and a mare, came over. I lifted the luggage and the two pegasi lifted Ma and Pa up the hill. We flew up slowly.

The pegasus mare asked me my name. “I’m Spur,” I said.

“That accent—where you visiting from?”

“The bayou round Hayseed Junction.”

They didn’t know where that was.

“Between Appaloosa and Ponyville. Real flat, swampy.”

“Oh. Well, we’ve lived here in Bitsburgh all our lives,” the pegasus couple said. “Beautiful place. But pity about your parents—you’re the only one with wings? I was thinking you might be adopted or something.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah. You’d fit right in here.”

“She’s not,” Pa quickly cut in. “She’s our foal.”

“Of course, sir.”

“No offense.”

“My sister’s a pegasus too,” I added.

“Oh. Well I guess it’s more common than you’d think,” the pegasus stallion said to his wife.

“Well, it isn’t,” I said.

“Beg pardon?”

“We’re not. I mean…” I shouldn’t have said it. “I mean…our family’s not that common. Our family is pretty rare.”

Not many families give birth to a child villain that terrorizes all of Equestria, I wanted to say, but didn’t. It didn't seem like the right time for humor.

We were about two-thirds the way up the hill. “Thank you so much.” I should have said it sooner.

“Oh, no problem, sweetheart. This place just isn’t built for earth ponies, huh?” the pegasus mare chuckled.

“Yeah!” And I found myself chuckling along with her. Two pegasi. Laughing together. I laughed until it hurt my stomach.

With guilt.

Ma was clinging onto the pegasus mare, huffing and grunting. At first I thought Ma was just catching her breath from the walking.

“Don’t worry,” I said to her. “We’re almost at the top.”

Ma didn’t answer. That’s when I realized Ma was out of breath was sobbing. Even Pa was tryin’ to hold back a few tears. There they were, clinging onto the hooves of two pegasi helping them get up a road that’s too steep for them to climb.

And they were so sad. Even once we got into the hotel, Ma and Pa didn’t feel like going out.

“You okay, Pa?” I asked.

Pa didn’t say nothing.

“You okay, Ma?” I asked.

“…I’ll get over it,” Ma said.

We stayed in one of those fancy five-star hotels at the top of the biggest hill with panoramic views and all that. I’m pretty sure the bathroom was bigger than our living room at home. The people at the Post-Gazette paid for it. Ma and Pa liked it, even Pa admitted it was real pretty. Of course you’d think it were pretty if you didn’t have to stay in it all day.

There was a king size bed and a single sofa bed, where I slept that night.

The next morning, there was a huge breakfast buffet downstairs, with an omelet bar, made to order pancakes, and at least ten kinds of fresh cut fruit with a chocolate fountain, and twice as many kinds of coffees and teas. Ma and Pa had to rush through the buffet cause they had to leave early for all their…interviews. They took two plates to go.

“You’re leavin’ now?” I remember I said.

“Don’t worry, sugarcube,” Ma said, smiling. “You can get some more time to enjoy this lovely buffet. You won’t even know we’re gone.”

I looked at the hordes of fresh fruit on the table and the giant chocolate fountain, and I started feeling sick. I didn’t eat much.

The first day, I didn’t go out to town. I flew off the balcony a few times, but that doesn’t count. I sat in the room, read a few books, then read them again. I wrote a letter to Biscuit, but then I didn’t send it. I went to the hotel gym and I only lifted half of Ma’s weight and I couldn’t take it no more.

Ma and Pa were probably with the Post-Gazette right about now. Sitting at the chair, with some famous reporter.

What would I have said if it were me? What was it like growing up with your sister, Cozy Glow?

“She was my sister,” I spoke to the ceiling while lying in bed in the hotel room. “And she treated me very nicely.”

Why did she treat me nicely? “Well, I’m not sure why. She hurt Ma and Pa a few times. And some ponies at school. And a few wild critters. But never me.”

What’s my best guess why? “Maybe, maybe…cause I was a pegasus. There were only two other pegasi in the whole town, and, we never really met them, so…it was like it was just us two pegasi.

“Do you know what it’s like being one of only four pegasi in your whole town? Let me tell you. When I was in kindergarten and I was the only pegasus in the whole class, they used to make fun of me. My sister not as much, cause they knew that she’d snap at them faster than a cragadile jaw.”

I talked to a crystal light fixture on the ceiling. After I stared at it long enough, it kind of looked like a pony’s face.

“They called me birdbrain. Even the teacher called me birdbrain when I colored outside of the lines, but that was only because I was forced to hold crayons with my teeth like all the earth ponies in the class, even though I’m better with my wings. If I used my wings, I didn’t color out of the lines.

“I hated when they called me birdbrain. It made me feel…”

I stopped speaking out loud.

I stuck my face into the pillow, and I just started sobbing. Alone. In silence. I couldn’t hear my sister’s voice. I did hear this high-pitch squirming. A few minutes later I realized it was me making that noise. It sounded like I sounded when I was a little foal. No more than five or six.

And that moment, I kind of wished that my sister’s voice was there. To comfort me.

I called room service and ordered a large pizza and an extra-large slice of chocolate cake for lunch.

I threw up most of it.

Ma and Pa came back to the hotel quite late. They went straight to bed, so I couldn’t even ask them how the interviews went. They said, “in the morning, sweetie,” with a smile on their face that looked like they just had such a good time, but I never asked them the next morning. I didn’t feel like it.

I couldn’t sleep again that night, so I started preening my feathers again in the dark. I got white fluff caught in my feathers. From rolling around the bed all day with nothing to do.

I started to get a little hungry, so I called for room service again, and a minute later a serving pony knocked at my door.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, can I get some decaf black tea and cakes?” I said.

“For how many?”

“For two.”

I don’t know why I said that. I guess I had the memory stuck in my head of me and my sister preening each others’ feathers. But it was a nice memory. It was real nice, actually. She was real good at preening my feathers. She’d pluck out the bits of fluff in my wings, put them in a little pile on the bed. And then she’d sweep them away into the trash.

Now you’re perfect, sis.

Now, you’re even more beautiful of a pegasus.

You have every right to use your wings. I won’t let the earth ponies and unicorns hurt you like that.

I’ll protect you.

I'll kill them for you.

I wish the bad memories of my sister would leave. And let the nice ones get stuck in my head and keep me awake.

So there was another knock on the door, and I ended up with a tray of tea and cakes for two. It on the sofa bed. It on one of those fancy silver trays and everything. I ate half of the orange cakes and a couple macarons, and when I woke up the next morning the rest was gone.

Mmmm!

That was delicious, sis.

Thank you, sis.

(Ma ate it in the morning while I was still asleep.)

I'm Spur

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I stopped hearing my sister’s voice after my second night in Bitsburgh.

I remember Ma and Pa left early in the morning. I got woken up, and it was dark, but I heard some voices. I didn’t hear what they were saying cause I was half asleep, but I just remember trying to say “fuck off” but it just came out like a little mumble “mmmph.” I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. When I woke up again, the sun was out and I was alone.

I ordered breakfast in my room and I read the paper that they delivered to the room every morning. I saw the story on the front page about Ma and Pa’s interview.

“Post-Gazette: ‘Did you ever love your daughter?’”

And Ma said to the reporter, “‘We didn’t love her. We never did. No sane pony would deign to loving such a conniving little devil that our daughter was.’”

I said “liar” to the newspaper, and I was waiting to hear my sister’s voice call Ma a liar…but I turned the page, and all I heard was the crinkling of paper.

That was the moment when I realized my sister’s voice was gone.

I dunno why it went away. If I knew the reason, I’d die a happy mare. Like I was tellin’ Biscuit, if I had known, d’you think I’d be in this state?

It was temporary.

She did come back. Eventually. But for the rest of the time I was in Bitsburgh, I didn’t hear my sister’s voice, or see her in my vision.

After I finished my breakfast of dry toast and orange juice, I went down to the buffet and got myself an omelet. I was working up an appetite, flying around the hotel lobby so many times. For a while, I just sat in front of the water feature in the hotel lobby.

The cool water flowed out and trickled down a little waterfall, and then when I closed my eyes the flaming image of my sister was extinguished. It was dark, except for a faint golden glow from the sun coming through the windows of the hotel lobby. Just the sound of falling water. Nothing else. The bellhop asked me if I was all right—“never better,” I said.

I left the hotel and flew around the neigh-borhood. There was a salon a few blocks from the hotel. There wasn’t anypony else but me, so the boss came out to do my mane.

“Mornin’,” I said.

“Good morning, miss. How can I help you?”

“I want a…” the salon was silent. It was just the sound of the wind outside. Not a word.

“I want my mane and tail restyled,” I finished my sentence.

“And how would you like them restyled, miss?”

I showed her a picture of Biscuit’s mane and tail. I cut it out from the school paper back in the bayou, from when he was running the bake sale for the local Bayou Preservation Fund. I remember, I kinda caught him by surprise with that photo, and he sorta winked at me 'cause of the camera flash.

I’m the photographer for the school paper. A year ago, I knew nothing about cameras—I didn’t even know how to load film properly without ruining it in the light. I think the only reason my classmates voted for me was so that I wouldn’t show up in any of their publicity photos.

The stylist took the picture from me. “I like it a lot,” I said to the stylist. Him. I like him a lot.

“So you want it short?” the stylist asked.

“No, not that short…maybe about this long,” I marked with my hoof.

“Do you want it center parted, like in the picture?”

“Maybe…I’m not sure. Maybe like…swept to one side.

“Which side?”

“The left. I want it to go to the left.”

“Okay, so…do…do you want your mane in a single flat layer, like in the picture, or more layered?”

“Not flat. No. Layered.”

“So…you don’t like anything about the mane in this picture?”

“Maybe I don’t.” I felt a little pain inside when I said that. And it made me feel good that I felt that pain. “But I like it.” Biscuit’s a good sport. I’ve called him “my bitch” before, and he was fine with that.

But…that doesn’t really count cause I said it in the heat of passion.

“Then, what do you like about the picture?” the stylist pony asked.

“I like…erm…”

“Perhaps you like the sort of more random, wet look, compared to what you have?”

“Yes, yes definitely!” Wet. Yes, wet.

Reminds me of Biscuit in more ways than one.

So, she mixed a bunch of potions together and put it in my mane. It had to sit for an hour. Nopony else was in the salon. It was quiet. I heard the sound of the clock ticking on the wall.

“It’s quiet,” I said out loud.

“Oh, we’re usually much busier, I assure you,” the stylist pony quickly said while she was sweeping up the floor.

“No, that was a compliment.”

I closed my eyes, and I let my ears droop so that they were covered.

Dark.

Silence.

Dark.

I created my own picture. I imagined myself kayaking in the bayou with Biscuit. Except in the summer, so the trees have leaves and it’s private. There’s a little breeze, and his mane twitches on his head. I like his mane. It’s the second cutest part of his body. The first cutest part I’m not gonna tell you, because Biscuit gets mad when I call it “cute.” Hehe.

When I opened my eyes a few minutes later, my curls weren’t as tightly wound anymore. It was working.

“It’s working,” I said out loud.

“Yes, of course it is,” the stylist pony said.

“What did you use?”

She showed me the product. It was the exactly the same thing I used at home before Hearth’s Warming. The potion from the Canterlot beauty spa that was “guaranteed to straighten manes.” Why didn’t it work the first time? I dunno. Maybe I followed the directions wrong? Maybe…I didn’t shake the bottle before opening? Oh, wait I did. I’m pretty sure I did that.

I dunno. If I knew the reason why, you think I’d be in this state?

After 90 minutes, the tight curls in my mane and tail turned into soft waves. The stylist pony rinsed the stuff off, then she gave me a shampoo and a blow dry.

My mane and tail were short and wavy, and the green color made it look like leaves hanging from a willow tree. I swept my mane to the left side, and I combed a little sideways fringe. It followed my directions.

I paid the stylist and thanked her. “You’re more than welcome,” she replied. “It looks great, miss…miss…”

“I’m Spur,” I said. “I’m…” and then I realized that I didn’t need to add a second sentence. It was silent for a few seconds.

“You were going to say something?”

“No, not at all.”

“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Spur. I hope you enjoyed your experience.”

“I did. Thank you.” And then I left.

I had lunch at a cheap diner (I was damn tired of fancy room service food). I sat at the milkshake counter, next to this colt who said I was cute. He wasn’t cute lookin’ at all compared to Biscuit, but before I told him I had a coltfriend already (Okay, he never said I was his coltfriend, but it makes me feel nicer if I call him my coltfriend), I told him my name.

“My name is Spur. I’m visitin’ from the bayou, near Hayseed Junction.”

And then I ordered a large vanilla milkshake and licked the cherry on top for him to see. I got a good laugh out of that.

Guess who’s gonna be standing with his flanks twitching and his hind legs crossed tonight.

After lunch, I went into the boutique next door. Even after spending 40 Bits at the mane stylist, I had enough Bits to buy the nicest dress in the shop. Ma and Pa gave me a lot of Bits to spend cause I’d be by myself in the hotel room and room service is expensive. A huge bag of Bits.

I remember when my sister left for Ponyville, Ma and Pa didn’t give her Bits. They got her pillows, a cup, and a real nice dress. It was a baby blue chiffon dress, with a white lace trim. They were supposed to have yearly dances at the School of Friendship, and Ma and Pa wanted her to wear it for those events. They had to order it by mail cause there a’int any dress shops in bayou (Actually, I don’t think there are any shops, period). My sister loved it. Even when Ma and Pa weren’t around she said she loved it, so I don’t think she was lyin'. “It’s such a lovely dress, don’t you think so sis?” I remember she said.

She actually did look real pretty in it. “It’s such a pity they didn’t get you one, sis,” my sister said. “Golly, if I saw my sister got a dress and I didn’t, why, I’d be just so mad.”

I was pretty jealous. I wanted a dress too. I told Ma and Pa that I wanted a nice dress, and they said they’d get me one at Hearth’s Warming. That year, I opened up my present and you know what dress I got? The exact same dress that they got my sister. Blue chiffon, with a white lace, but in my size. I didn’t say thank you to Ma and Pa. I threw it into my sister’s room, which was empty cause my sister was in Tartarus, I shut the door, and I didn’t even touch the door handle for at least a week. I also didn’t sleep for two weeks.

The dress store in Bitsburgh had a dress I really liked. Navy blue silk with a black collar. It was on the clearance rack. It was my size, in a pegasus cut, and 50% off.

I ended up not getting it. The salespony didn’t want me to buy it. She tried to push a more expensive pink chiffon dress. Except for the color, it looked almost exactly like the one Ma and Pa got my sister.

“It suits you beautifully, miss,” the mare said as I was lookin’ in the mirror.

“I know it does,” I said.

“Will you take this dress?”

“No.”

“But I thought you said it suited you.”

It did suit me. That was the scary part.

I didn’t answer her. I looked at myself in the mirror. I turned to my left, to the right. My new mane was gettin’ rigid. Maybe it was just my eyes—but the curls were staring to come back.

“It flows very nicely,” the salespony said.

I was startin’ to hear little noises again. I barely heard it mixed with the sound of the heating vents, but it was there. It was a little hissing in my head. Like a vessel bursting.

I stared at the mirror even longer. I felt my scalp pinching, like the curls were gonna come back. The hissing turned into a whisper. And then…words.

Gggg…

Ssss…

Oh, golllll…

I ripped the dress in half before Cozy could finish the word.

I blinked a couple times. I felt awake. Like I was dreaming. And I just woke up.

I looked in the mirror again. There was my dark brown fur, my cutie mark, my new wet-look mane and tail. And below me…the dress. My sister’s dress—no, the dress shop’s dress. It lay lifeless on the cold floor. Not just ripped in half, but in unrecognizable shreds. I guess I tore it into shreds. I saw the bite marks.

I didn’t say sorry. I actually felt real happy that afternoon. I was tryin’ not to laugh.

I paid for the damaged dress. I dug up a stack of Bits from my bag, and heard it clink on the counter. It was silent again, thank Celestia.

I took the shreds of the dress, I flew to the Panther Hollow Bridge, and tossed it into the lake below. It wasn’t heavy. I didn’t even see it splash.

My wings felt light again, and I hovered a couple inches higher from the ground.

I went to a bookstore and bought some new books for me to read. And then, I actually found the same navy-blue dress that I wanted at another boutique. The salespony was much nicer than the last one, and I got for even cheaper. He wrapped it up and put it in a large bag for me. I put everything in that large bag, and I flew back to the hotel.

I made sure to get back before sunset—but I was too late. My wings almost tensed up completely when I opened the door and saw Ma and Pa’s faces right behind the door.

Glaring at me.

Ma and Pa took turns glaring at different parts of me. Pa first glared at my mane. Ma first glared at the shopping bag hanging on my right foreleg.

“You have a lotta explainin’ to do, Spur.”

Welcome to the family, sis

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There wasn’t much explainin’ to do, really. I told ‘em where I went, what I bought. I used the money Ma and Pa gave me for room service—not like I stole anything.

“I’m Spur, not Cozy Glow,” I said. “And now I don’t look like her, so now you can’t say I’m like her anymore.”

It was quiet for half-an-hour. It was like me talking to the empty hotel room all over again.

“Well?” I said. “Say…say somethin’, one of you!”

Ma and Pa sat on the bed silently, looking out the window with the curtains drawn.

I flew in front of Ma’s face, but she shooed me away.

“I’m sorry, Ma, I—” Maybe they’re lousy parents, but they’re still my parents. I had…feelings. Ma and Pa not talkin’ to me…gives me…feelings. I’ll bet Cozy Glow never had feelings for Ma and Pa. That’s what the paper says. And nopony can get inside Cozy’s head. I guess, I know just about as much as they do.

I tried to get them to talk. “Here Pa, I got a fridge magnet for you at the souvenir shop.”

He didn’t say a word. Then again, Pa doesn’t say much to begin with.

“Here’s a coffee pot for you, Ma. See? It has a picture of Bitsburgh on it. Somethin’ you can remember the trip by.”

Ma didn’t say nothing either.

Yeah. I’m no good at hiding feelings.

“Well, if y’all aren’t gonna say nothing…” I said out loud, “I’m leavin’.”

I went to the bathroom and put on the dress that I had bought. I brushed my new gentle wavy mane and tail. As I brushed…I sighed deeply. It was a nice sigh, like a sigh of relief.

But not all the air came out.

I went back out into the room, wearing the navy-blue dress. I hovered behind Ma and Pa. Ma turned around. She must’ve heard the fabric rubbing against the sheets.

She finally said something. “Spur…is that you?”

She’d seen my new mane for over half-an-hour. “Course it is, Ma.” Y’know, I wouldn’t be surprised if her memory’s going.

She just shook her head. “No, Spur. That’s not you.”

“Yes it is, Ma. This is who I am.”

She kept shaking her head. “No Spur. That dress, that mane, that tail—that’s not you.”

“You’re wrong. This is me, Ma! Not that spittin’ image of the most evil pony in Equestrian history.”

“…y’mean your sister?”

I didn’t answer.

Even Pa spoke. “It’s Spur, honey.”

She shook her head. “No, no…is this real? Is this real?” She turned to Pa. “This, is a dream isn’t it? Just like…just like, that night, when Spur punched me. That…that was a dream too, right? And that night, Cozy came in, with the blood on her hooves…” Then the rest was some mumbo-jumbo that I couldn’t hear.

The last thing, I don’t remember. There were so many times Cozy Glow walked in with blood on her hooves.

“This has to be a dream,” Ma said. She looked at Pa, he didn’t say nothing, but he looked worried that Ma was smiling. “It is a dream, isn’t it? I’m right, right?”

I blinked a couple of times myself wearing that beautiful blue dress. I’d have been so pissed if that was all a fucking dream.

“This a’int a fucking dream, Ma. All my life, you’ve been glued to Cozy Glow—doin’ her ugly mane, huggin’ that ugly filly, with that ugly smile of hers lookin’ into the camera—and the only time you ever talked to me was when you were throwin’ all your frustrations with her on me!

“Well guess what!? Now you cain’t! She’s gone! Gone, ya hear!? And now, you’re acting all delusional ‘cause you know, now ya gotta tilt yer chin, look up, and face me!”

Ma shook her head so hard, I thought her neck was gonna snap. That’d be the day. I make Ma so pissed, she’d snap her neck and she’d kill herself outta her own misery.

It’s kinda funny. Actually.

Ma got hysterical. She started flailing her legs all over the place, cryin’, “No Spur! That’s NOT you! That’s NOT you! NO! NO!” Pa and I held her down and stopped from breaking the cheap pictures on the hotel wall. Just to calm her down, I told her that she was right—that real life is a dream, and our dreams at night are real life.

I used to think that when I was a little foal. Especially those days when I’d go home from school after getting bullied, and I’d walk down the long muddy driveway to our house on a rainy day, cause my feathers were soaked and I couldn’t fly. Those days, at night I dreamt of being an alicorn. Cozy would saw off the horn from a unicorn and stick it on my head, and we’d be princesses so we could banish all the bullies to Tartarus, and then we could leave our parents, and get outta the crummy bayou, and live in a castle.

But ever since my sister got turned to gravel, I have nightmares most of the time. So I don’t think that anymore. Not that real life is much better than my dreams.

Real life sucks pretty badly too.

Ma calmed down after I gave her a tranquilizer and a shot of liquor in one of the shot glasses I got from the souvenir shop. The three of us ponies were lying in a big pile on the bed, my head resting on Ma’s underside. It was quiet again.

No sound. I heard nothing.

“Golly…” I mumbled.

“Yes?” Ma quickly said.

I didn’t answer.

After a few minutes of it being quiet, Ma spoke. “I’m…I’m sorry you been feelin’ so lonely…Spur. We…we just got caught up by all the press. We should’ve spent more time with ya. In fact, we will.”

“You promise?”

“Of course, Spur.”

“I love you, Ma.”

“I love you too…Spur.”

We hugged. And then when Ma let go, she took a look at me in my new dress. Thank Celestia she didn’t go hysterical again.

Ma was clean outta tranquilizers.

“You like my new mane style, Ma?” I asked.

Ma tapped a few strands with her hoof. The waves swayed for less than a second and that was it.

“They don’t bounce,” I said what Ma was probably sayin’ to herself.

“They don’t.”

“How ‘bout my dress?” I turned around on the bed to show her. “You like it?”

“You…you look…you look…lovely, Spur.”

“You don’t really think that do ya?” Then I added, “You don’t have to answer that.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

We all went out for dinner that night to make us feel better. I wore my new dress and we took a pegasus taxi to the nicest restaurant in town. Even though it was really cold that evening, I didn’t cover up my new mane with a cap. I didn’t feel like it. The waitress complimented to Ma how pretty her foal was.

“Thank you,” I said.

Y’know, the funny thing about that dress that I bought is that it stains real easily. I really like that dress, but I’m a messy eater and I really liked the marinara pasta at the restaurant. And the color. It fades in the light. The light in the restaurant was kinda bright, and by the time we went back to the hotel room, the sparkly blue color had lost its shininess. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me. But that makes me even more frightened.

The next morning was our last full day in Bitsburgh. I got Ma and Pa to bring me to the memorial dedication so I wouldn’t feel lonely again. They even let me say something at the podium after their speech.

“Thank you, Ma and Pa. My name is Spur. I wanna talk about...my sister, Cozy Glow.”

I saw the reporters’ eyes widen. They started taking a lot of notes on their pads and they were looking at me. It was kind of nice. I smiled for their cameras.

I didn’t have any speech prepared, so I just told ‘em a story.

I told them a story about when I was eleven, and a couple of foals at school cornered me in the cafeteria and tried to cut off my wings like that “Cupcakes” graphic novel that someone snuck into school. But that’s not the important part. I remember later that night, I was in my room, there was a big storm, and our lights were out—it happens every time a big storm hits, which is once a week. I was cryin’ my eyes out, ‘cause I wasn’t allowed to cry at dinner.

I remember my sister flew into my room. She lit a candle so there’d be some light.

“It’s okay, sis,” she said to me. “Tomorrow, we’ll make them pay. I’ll kill them. I’ll drown them in the water, and so that way they’ll pay for what they did to us pegasi.

“And then, we’ll go. We’ll FLY! We’ll FLY outta this bayou, and we’ll go someplace far away. Like a mountain. We should go to a mountain.”

“How about a lake?” I remember I said. “With a meadow, with flowers all round it!” I cut it out from an ad we got in our junk mail. I put it somewhere, and then it went missing.

“Nah. I like a mountain better,” Cozy said. She liked the cold a lot.

“Okay then. A mountain it is.” I smiled.

Cozy smiled back at me.

“Tomorrow?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said back.

Just hearin’ hear say the word “tomorrow,” I just felt so damn happy. We didn’t actually kill them and escape the bayou, but I hoped it. That night, I hoped it, I hoped it real badly. And that felt good.

Cozy Glow was always there during sad nights. During these nastiest, stormiest, scariest, shittiest nights…she was always there. And she smiled.

And she’s still there.

I said to the crowd, “Even with all the terrible things that they said she’s done…it’s those sad nights that make me miss my sister, Cozy Glow, a lot.”

Everycreature was silent.

Then they got mad. They started yelling. And screaming at me.

The idiots.

The fucking idiots.

They don’t get it. It’s like the only thing they heard out of my speech was “my sister, Cozy Glow.”

I tried to stop the crowd from getting mad. “But…but Ma and Pa love her, and they miss her even more! Don’t y’all, Ma? Pa?” I looked at Ma and Pa. They didn’t say nothin’.

Those cowards.

Those fucking cowards.

But they rescued me. The mob got louder and more angry every second, and Ma and Pa pulled me out before they could get to me. I ran, Ma ran, Pa ran. Pa shielded me from the hecklers. He pulled me real close, my face covered by his warm, untrimmed fur.

It smelled like roses—I was surprised. I think he hugged Ma, and her perfume rubbed off on him. I don’t think I’d ever been so close to Pa. For so long. He a’int the easiest to get close to.

It was several minutes like that. I couldn’t see, but we must’ve galloped a few hundred yards.

Ma leaned in where Pa was covering me. I could feel their warmth all around me. And the rose perfume. On both sides. Ma whispered to me as I cried. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.”

I tried to caress Ma’s cheek, but the spot where I punched her was still healing. She winced, and I guess it was only then that she realized that night was real and she wasn’t dreaming. Ma yelled at me for touching the painful spot and told me never to do that again.

I was planning on tellin’ her sorry, but then I didn’t.

The sounds of the mob—without looking at them, it just sounded like mad screaming. Like that time Cozy burnt that bully who called me a birdbrain and went missing cause Cozy—my sister, Cozy Glow—took her away and she went missin’ for so long that they pronounced that bully dead, so that’s why she pushed her into the fire.

And the mad screaming of the mob made me feel like I was the one that had pushed them into the fire.

Welcome to the family, sis.

I heard my sister’s voice while I was trying to sleep that night.

I think if Ma and Pa hadn’t rescued me from the mob, I’m sure they would’ve beat me up and burnt me on a stake. But maybe that’s just it. They didn’t wanna be responsible for killing me. Not directly responsible of course, they’d be indirectly responsible—but that was exactly what my sister was so damn good at.

And then everypony would start seein’ tight wound curls in Ma and Pa’s mane.

The next morning I saw the paper, and they were talking about how I “Romanticized Cozy’s Genocidal Actions, Antagonized Own Parents in Shocking Public Speech.” I was on the front page, instead of Ma and Pa. They got a picture of me smiling, with my new dress, my new mane…before I told ‘em that story that made them mad.

Maybe my words are like poison. Maybe when I exhale, the air that come out make other ponies mad or sick. Maybe it’s magic. Pegasus pony magic. Or Cozy-Glow-sister magic. I don’t know, I don’t know.

“I don’t know…” I said out loud.

Oh golly, you don’t? Well, I do, sis!

Ma wasn’t actually mad at me that morning. She looked happy when I woke up and breakfast had been delivered to our room. It wasn’t a couple hours till we had to catch the train back home, and she poured me a glass of orange juice and said, “Mornin’ sweetie. You should try one of their croissants. They’re heavenly.”

She did say one thing. As I was eating the croissants that were still warm from the oven. “It’s mighty dangerous for you to speak the truth, Spur. No beauty makeover’s ever gonna change that.”

“Ma, you don’t hate Cozy, do ya?” I asked.

“Course not.” She refilled my orange juice glass.

“Then, you lied to the press.”

Ma was quiet.

“You love Cozy Glow, and you miss—”

Ma shushed me.

My mane was still the loose wavy style, but I wish I could’ve changed it back. ‘Cause that’s what everycreature sees anyway. I started feeling sick looking at that navy-blue dress I bought. Guess it wasn’t the same dress, ‘cause the color wasn’t the same, ‘cause it faded—remember how I was saying the color fades real easy?

Ma said to keep the dress, and she’d give it to my distant cousin Diamante in Manehattan. I remember her. I used to play with her when I was little foal, but she moved only a year or two after my sister was born. Haven’t heard from her in ages.

“How is she doing?” I asked Ma.

“She’s doin’ well. She’s workin’ in her pa’s company.”

“What company?”

“A real estate firm.”

“Didn’t Pa wanna start a real estate firm?”

“Y’can’t start a real estate firm in the stinkin’ bayou, Spur.” Ma paused. “We couldn’t get outta there, was the problem. An’ now it’s too late to move—Pa’s gettin’ old, I’m gettin’ old, yer gettin’ old, and yer sis—”

“She ain’t getting any older,” I said.

Ma sighed. “Course not.” I don’t think you stop living when you die. You just go somewhere else, where you don’t get any older.

I don’t know why I just thought of that.

“Well, that’s the last bag,” Pa said. He was packing.

Ma was back to her cheery self. “Goodness, look at the time. We should be headin’ out,” Ma said.

“All right.”

We went home on one of those newer fast trains where the windows don’t open. I sat in the train—it wasn’t a sleeper car—blinking, trying to see if this was a dream and I would wake up already.

I was sitting in that train headed back to the bayou for about another hour, and I was just feelin’ so sad that I was trapped and I couldn’t get out.

Back from the dead (APRIL FOOLS GAG CHAPTER)

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A/N: This is a bonus gag chapter written for April Fools. It is not connected with the rest of the story. You may skip this chapter if you wish, but you're missing out on a good laugh.

Ma was out of hummus to eat for breakfast. She told me to go to Costco to get some. Biscuit went with me, since he has the membership card, but my family doesn’t. It was early in the morning, so Costco was quite empty. We went to the shelves where they sell hummus.

“What’s this pink stuff in a tub?” I pointed.

Biscuit read the label. “It’s hummus. ‘Lemon-beet’ flavored hummus.”

Pink hummus!? Pink!? Who the hay ever thought of a thing like that!? I still can’t wrap my head around it.

“And what about that blue one? Lemme guess, blueberry hummus?”

“Nope. It’s…organic ‘blue corn’ flavored hummus.”

“Ugh. I don’t get why they make food in weird colors,” I said. “It puts me off. I expect my hummus to be like what everyone expects Asians to be: yellow, rich, and originally from some God-awful place where they don’t speak English.”

Biscuit got mad at me. “Hey, that was offensive to our Asian readers!”

“Don’t worry, Biscuit, you’re allowed to make racist jokes about your own race,” I said.

“But you’re not Asian, Spur. Your eyes are too big to be Asian.”

“Kirins are Asian, aren’t they? They have big eyes.”

“Wait…I guess you’re right. So you could be Asian.” Biscuit paused. "But wait, you can't be Asian, you don't have the coronavirus. All Asians have the coronavirus, right?"

"Well, duh, obviously," I said.

I looked to see if there was any regular hummus yet. They always have a lot of the weird flavors, but the normal flavors that everyone wants is always out of stock.

“So are you gonna get the regular hummus?”

“Yep.” I took it off the shelf and put it in my cart.

Actually, I can’t really eat hummus that often to begin with. You see, hummus has a lot of fiber and weird microbes in it that like to grow in my tummy, and if I eat it too often, eventually it…

“OH HORSE SHIT!” Biscuit screamed.

Yeah, that’s exactly what happens.

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“Oh shit, look! Is that who I think it is?”

I peeked around the corner of aisle 9. I quickly pulled my head back.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was my sister! My sister, Cozy Glow, back from the dead, standing behind the Costco free sample stand!

“What the fuck is she doing here!?” Biscuit whispered to me.

“I dunno, but…it looks like she’s behind one of those free sample booths.”

“Well, I dunno…are you sure it’s her?”

“I’m pretty sure, I mean, I know my sister pretty well (at least I think I do). But…there’s a small chance it a’int her.”

“Well, maybe we should go closer and take a look.”

So after we took a few real deep breaths, Biscuit and I approached her, taking silent hoofsteps. She was looking at the curls in her mane. It took a while for us to get her attention.

“Oh golly! I didn’t notice you two there. Wanna be friends? As a gesture of riendship, would you like to try some gluten-free, cruelty-free, organic tendies?”

Yep. It’s her, all right.

I was too stunned to speak, so Biscuit talked instead. “Cozy Glow! What the hell are you doin’ here!? You’re supposed to be petrified!”

“Nah, the magical stone prison that Celestia put us in lost its hardness and we were all able to wriggle free. I mean, no surprise right? Trust an old hag like Celestia to not be able to keep it hard…” she snickered. “…if you catch my drift.”

“Aw come on Cozy Glow, now you just offended all our elderly readers!” Biscuit said.

“So, like…everyone over 25?”

“No, and that’s even more offensive!” Biscuit yelled at my sister.

“Okay Zoomer.” My sister rolled her eyes.

I turned back to my sister. “Can we please get back to main topic…what’re you doin’ here!? Are you just…free?” I’ve never used the word “free” to mean a bad thing. Oh well, a first time for everything. Don’t Biscuit and I know that.

“Nah, they sent us all back to Tartarus,” my sister said. “But I got enough Good Boy Points that Celestia put me on parole. She gave me this job at Costco.”

I looked at my sister’s Costco uniform, and the free samples with the toothpicks stabbed in them. “This…is your job?” I asked again.

“Yep.”

Biscuit blinked several times. “Wait. So lemme get this straight,” he said. “Cozy Glow, you are probably the most dangerous pony in Equestria.”

“Well, if you choose such flattery,” Cozy replied with a smirk.

“And Celestia entrusted you…to give out food?”

“Yep.”

“‘Cruelty-free’ food, moreover?”

“Yep.”

“And you are giving out these…‘cruelty-free’ tendies…to young foals and their families…in a Costco.”

“Yep.”

Biscuit facehoofed.

“Maybe my sister’s right,” I thought out loud. “Maybe Princess Celestia is an old hag with Alzheimer’s.”

My sister practically begged us to try one of her free samples. “I’ve been sitting here for two hours and I still haven’t gotten a nibble. It’s like that night in Tartarus when I slept with Tirek. Ugh. What a prude.”

Of course, Biscuit and I were skeptical. The samples were right there, in open containers. What if my sister poisoned them, as a way to get back at us?

“I promise, I just took the tendies out of the bag and microwaved them,” my sister said. To convince us, she asked me to point to any free sample on the table, and she ate it herself. She was totally fine after five whole minutes. “There. Now do you believe me? Now, try one, pwease…?”

So I swallowed a nervous lump in my throat and took a tendie and ate it.

I immediately felt pain in my throat. I opened my mouth, but I was too frightened to speak. No! No! This can’t be happening! I watch my sister stare at me from behind the free sample stand, that evil smile on her face.

Oh fuck, she must be laughin’ to high heaven in her mind right now. Haha. Hahahaha! HAHAHAHAHAAA!

Wait.

Wait a sec.

My breathing was perfectly fine. I was totally 100% conscious. There was just…something in my mouth. Something…bitter and rough. Something like…paper.

I took the paper out of my mouth.

“What does it say?” Biscuit leaned close as I unfolded it.

…

april fools boii~

Queasy feeling

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I sat in my sister’s desk at school.

On our first day back at school, we did this volunteer thing where the older students like me went to read picture books to the kindergartener foals. And we were sitting on the kindergarten desks, and I sat in my sister’s desk. I knew it was hers. There was a sticker with her name on it, and it didn’t get peeled off all the way so I could still read half of it.

zy Gl

I sure as hell didn’t wanna go back to school. And you bet your life I put up a fight, but Ma kept tellin’ me I had to. Actually, the Sunday before school started, I had this really bad tummy ache. I guess I ate some bad snack mix on the train or something, or maybe Ma washed the fruit in tap water again instead of boiled.

I thought Ma would let me stay home. She didn’t. “You might as well make use of that bodyguard the Princess sent you, honey,” she said.

You heard that right. Princess Twilight sent an armed guard from Canterlot to escort me ‘round school and make sure nothin’ happened to me. Oh, she’s so nice. Everypony just stood 20 feet away from me instead of the usual 10 feet. At that distance, you can still see them trembling or glaring at me, but you can’t see the little beads of sweat running down their faces.

And nopony wants to sit with you at lunch when you’ve gotta have this golden-armored freak stand silently next to you and watch your every move. And she just had to send a pegasus guard didn’t they? I’m the only pegasus in my grade—everypony must’ve thought she was my damn aunt or somethin’.

Honestly? I felt sick. Ma gave me some stomach medicine to take if I felt queasy during the day. I did feel queasy when some of the ponies at school started staring at me. I took three mini-cups of the stomach medicine, but it didn’t help none.

Now, reading to the kindergarteners was fine. They didn’t talk shit about me. Maybe they saw my new straight mane and they didn’t make the connection. Or they didn’t even see the newspaper. You see, there ain’t no kindergarteners that read the paper. They don’t like the paper. They’re like Bloofy. You know, while I was unpacking on Sunday, I threw the newspaper onto the bed, where Bloofy was sitting. Ma said she was gonna frame the newspaper up ‘cause she was so damn proud that I got onto the news and gave that “lovely speech” to everypony (Was she kidding? Was she kidding? Please tell me she was kidding.).

Now, you know what Bloofy did? He looked at the picture of me on the cover page, and the headline “Romanticized Cozy’s Genocidal Actions, Antagonized Own Parents in Shocking Public Speech”, and then he bit into the paper and tore it up into little shreds.

I was so proud of Bloofy. I used the bits as kindling for the fireplace and Ma didn’t even know.

My kindergarten reading buddy at school was a little colt named Cream Drop. He kind of looked like Biscuit, with his short blue mane. He wanted me to read “The Princess of Friendship” to him. Cream Drop had no idea who I was, especially ‘cause I changed my mane style. He did ask me why there was this mare with a spear and golden armor standing next to me, and I told him she was my bodyguard, and he just said, “OK.” Apparently in his comic books, everypony has a bodyguard, so it’s totally normal.

I opened the cover of the book and I started reading to Cream Drop.

Princess Twilight Sparkle used to be an ordinary unicorn. Then, she got wings and became an alicorn. Now, she is our beloved Supreme Leader of Equestria.

“How do you say that word?” he pointed.

“A…li…corn.”

“Ay…ay…lee…corn.”

“No, a…lih…corn,” I said.

“A…leeeee…con. Did I say it right?” Cream Drop asked.

I told him “Yeah,” even though he said it wrong, so that he’d stop sayin’ that word.

There were two pages with a picture of Twilight pursuing a helpless little filly.

Twilight plays tag with her niece Flurry Heart. Whee! Whee! Look at her go!

I used to play a game like that with my sister when she was a foal. I’d cover myself in a white blanket with two holes for my eyes and another two for my wings. I’d pretend I was a flying ghost and I’d chase my sister around her room. We used to do it so much that my sister knew every single place she could hide, and I knew every single place to look. Ma wouldn’t let us play outside of my sister’s room, so we got tired of it after a while.

Flurry Heart loves playing chase with her aunt Sparkle. They play chase in aunt Sparkle’s throne room. It makes them both very happy. They stopped playing after they got tired.

Princess Twilight copied our game. I know it. I feel it.

I felt like throwing up again, and I was out of stomach medicine. I didn’t want to read the book anymore. I closed it, but then Cream Drop opened it up back to where I stopped, so I kept reading.

Princess Twilight Sparkle has taught many creatures about friendship. She even turned evil ponies into good ponies. Starlight Glimmer used to be evil. Then Princess Twilight taught her about friendship. Then, Starlight Glimmer became good. Now, she is one of Princess Twilight’s best friends.

The picture was Princess Twilight with her filthy ancient gold crown on, hugging Ms. Glimmer’s soft, not-stone body. I shut the book even though there were quite a few pages left. I started crying.

“Are you okay, Spur?” Cream Drop asked.

I paused. “Yeah.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, no,” I said. “It’s just, I don’t really like Princess Twilight.”

“Oh,” Cream Drop said. “I don’t like my big brother. I had a pony doll named Azalea, but Big Brother took it and broke it because he said it’s wrong for colts to play with dolls and that it’s better if he got rid of it for me.” He looked at me. “Is that why you don’t like Princess Twilight?”

I wonder what my sister would look like as doll. Dainty hooves, sugar-sweet blue curls, round peachy eyes, a silk ribbon in her mane, tied into a bow.

Then…little peach shards of plastic.

Evil or not, my sister was pretty. She was the prettiest pony I ever met.

Maybe that’s why Princess Twilight crushed her into pieces. That overgrown, sour-faced, purple horse just couldn’t stand how much prettier my sister looked compared to her.

“Yeah. Sort of,” I answered Cream Drop’s question.

I saw Biscuit at school several times that day, but he didn’t talk to me. He hung out with his colt friends at school. I saw Biscuit come into math class late, and he sat in the back and I waved to him, and he shook his head and gave me that same look that he had after he took a bite of Ma’s raw onion grass and cattail salad.

My blush went away after half a second. My smile, half a second after that. Then the queasy feeling came back when I saw him talking with his colt friends.

I wrote him a note to meet me behind the shop class barn at 4pm, after school. I must’ve waited for forty-five minutes in the cold rain. I told my bodyguard to scram, though I wished I hadn’t ‘cause I’m pretty sure she had a hot drink or something in her saddlebag. The roof stuck out, so that there was about two feet of shelter, but I still got cold.

Finally, when it was almost dark, Biscuit showed up. He ran so fast, he almost charged into me, and I had to brake him with my hooves.

He was panting. “Spur, I—” He had this look on his face. And I knew it wasn’t a good look, it was the kind of look he got when he was gonna say something bad. I just knew, you know, from his face.

You really get to know somepony after you’ve made love to them.

So, I pulled him close to me, his fur dragging against the mud and grass, and I shut him up with a long, wet kiss. He felt even better than when I left him.

He was the one who broke the kiss. “I’m sorry Spur, I couldn’t talk to you while I was at school. It’s just…it’s not safe, in front of my friends, you understand?”

“I do,” I said. Even though I didn’t. I kind of felt like slapping him. I hate his friends.

You know how I met Biscuit? Remember I was eleven, and I was about to get my wings cut off by this gang of colts in the cafeteria? Well, they were actually gonna do it, until one of them yelled, “Hey! Stop it, man! What are we doing to her? This is just plain cruel!”

That pony was Biscuit.

Biscuit still talks to them. I dunno why. He says they were just being stupid and that he’ll make sure they won’t do it again. Which I guess isn’t a bad idea. As long as he’s still friends with them, he’ll convince them not to hurt me ever again. It’s a practical solution.

It still makes me feel sick, though. Sometimes Biscuit smiles at me, and his smile looks just like the smile of that colt who was holding the hacksaw that day.

“Everypony’s read the news ‘bout what happened to you at Bitsburgh…my colt friends, they said their parents said that you’re a monster, a criminal, and a pre-vert.”

“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t actually hear any of Biscuit’s friends say that. Just somehow, looking at their faces, I kind of knew they said that.

Though I promise I haven’t made love to any of them. Eww.

“I was scared, ‘cause…my friends said they’d disown me if they saw me with you. Mom and Dad’s saying they’ll throw me outta the house if I talk to you.”

“Yet you still came,” I said.

He folded up the note I had given him, and tucked it nicely in his saddlebag. “Yeah. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” I said. “So you’ll…?”

He gazed deep into my eyes. “Yes, yes, of course, Spur.”

I pulled him towards me by his collar. “You better call me ‘Master,’ or you’re askin’ for a WHIPPIN’!”

Biscuit just snickered and shuddered at the same time.

The rain stopped, and it was totally dark by now. We went inside the barn, which was completely empty, and we had a quickie in the hayloft. Well, a two-hour “quickie.” To make up for the long time we hadn’t seen each other.

Biscuit smiled at me when I put antiseptic on his wounds. So he must’ve liked it. I told him to roll over, and he accidentally sat on a sharp rock on the hayloft floor. I pulled it out of him, and he screamed so loud the old barn started shaking. I poured some antiseptic over the cut.

“OWW! OWWW! THE PAIN! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!”

I put my hoof over his mouth, just so that he could hear what I had to say. When he stopped screaming, I realized that I was crying myself.

“Biscuit…I…am I…evil like my sister?”

I stopped pouring antiseptic over him. “No, Spur, you’re not evil. If you were evil, you wouldn’t be disinfecting my wounds.”

“But I hurt you, when me made love, and now when I—”

“No, Spur. You’re different, you’re a very pretty and kind—OWWW! FUCK!”

Don’t look at me. He needed a little more antiseptic. Didn’t want that thing getting infected, now.

It was only one minute, but it felt like an eternity to me (and my eardrums). After the little bottle was finally finished, I hugged him. I hugged him real tight.

He was whimpering. Panting, and whimpering, like a little foal. I cradled him.

“Okay…I’m all right…” Biscuit said after a while. “You…you can let go now.” He let go himself.

I didn’t really want him to let go. I knew it was getting late and eventually I’d have to go home. And Ma and Pa would probably yell at me again for comin’ home late. You see, if I’m only missing for a few hours, they’ll get mad and yell at me. If I’m missing for a few days, then they’ll hug me and cry and say how much they miss me. The second option’s not as bad, I guess, but I can’t stand being with Ma and Pa. You know how sick I felt when Ma poured that glass of orange juice for me that last morning in the hotel in Bitsburgh?

I’d rather be missing forever. Then I won’t have to face Ma and Pa anymore.

I picked up the stone that injured Biscuit. You couldn’t see Biscuit’s blood in the dark inside the barn, but I think there was a few drops. In the dark, it looked gray. It looked like a gray piece of gravel.

Then, Princess Twilight taught her about friendship. Then, Starlight Glimmer became good. Now, she is one of Princess Twilight’s best friends.

Why isn’t my sister one of Princess Twilight’s best friends?

“I gotta go,” I thought out loud.

“What?” Biscuit said.

“I gotta go see Princess Twilight. Give her a piece of my mind.”

“In Canterlot?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, maybe you could go next weekend.”

“No, no. We gotta go now, tonight. It’s too dangerous to be here. I can’t stay here.” Somethin’ in the bayou air that made me sick. The cold damp. You know that queasy feeling I’d been having? I don’t think it was the food. It was something about being in this place. Seein’ the faces of everypony at school, it made me shudder. I knew that face. I knew that face, but I couldn’t remember where or when I saw it.

Then I remembered, my sister had that kind of face before she’d kill one of those animals in the bayou.

She used to stab ‘em. And hang ‘em by their legs and skin ‘em. Like a piece of meat.

“What about your ma and pa?” Biscuit asked. “And Bloofy.”

“Ma and Pa don’t gotta know nothin’,” I said. Ma and Pa will be fine. “And considering your…ahem…track record with handlin’ Bloofy, I think it’s best he stay here. Ma and Pa’ll take care of him.”

Biscuit didn’t really like that I said that, but I kissed him and he shut up.

“I a’int bringin’ Bloofy, ‘cause you’re the better pet for me,” I whispered into Biscuit’s ear. I pat his head. “So, will you go with me?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I…I dunno, Spur, it seems a little crazy, us just goin’ out, without tellin’ our parents.”

“You don’t understand, Biscuit. We’re not just goin’ out. We’re gonna FLY. Your pops already threatened to throw you outta the house, didn’t they? I’ll grab you, Biscuit, and I’ll flap my wings and I’ll pull you up into the sky, and we’re gonna FLY away from this place, to that far away city up on a mountain. Not tomorrow. Tonight.”

Biscuit suddenly became quiet.

“What?” I said.

“You kinda sounded like your sister when you said that.”

I folded up my wings. They popped out ‘cause they were wanting to “FLY” so bad.

“It’s not a bad thing, you know.” Biscuit could’ve been blushing, but I couldn’t really see in the dark inside the barn. “You know I like when you get mad. Actually…I think the evil in your sister is what makes you good.”

I closed my eyes. My sister was there again.

We’ll FLY! We’ll FLY outta this bayou, and we’ll go someplace far away.

I could hear her wings fluttering up and down. This big smile on her face. Maybe it was her usual evil smile, but I didn’t feel queasy when I saw it this time.

Usually I’d be mad to see my sister’s face, but I wasn’t mad no more. More like, I felt alone. Tortured by the press. Disowned by my friends. And I had to face the music alone ‘cause my sister decided to bail out on me.

I think, whether my sister realized it or not, that was the most evil thing that she ever did.

Nah. I like a mountain better, sis. Let’s FLY!

“Shall we go?” I asked both of them.

“Sure, but…can we at least stop by my house and pack a few things?” Biscuit asked.

I’d never been to Biscuit’s house. “Sure,” I said.

We walked out of the barn. The full moon was enough light for us to find our way back onto the main road, that’s next to a pond. I took the blood-covered piece of gravel, and I bucked it so hard that I skipped it across the water twenty times.

Roadside shop killing

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I remember killing somepony that night.

I didn’t kill Biscuit. I know that ‘cause he was alive the next morning.

Biscuit and I had made love. I remember that. We made love at a little roadside coach stop along the path heading to Canterlot.

We'd been flying the whole night. Well, I flew, and Biscuit walked behind. I tried carryin' him as I flew, like I promised I would, but I almost passed out from exhaustion.

I didn’t sleep the whole night. I slapped myself to keep myself awake. We went down this long, muddy dirt track through the bayou that was supposed to go to Canterlot. At least I think it goes to Canterlot. Canterlot was too far away for me to see.

Biscuit was an idiot. He went to his house and instead of packing food or Bits, he just packed a compass, a watch, and a canteen of water. He said that he’d learned about what plants to eat from some wilderness survival camp he went to last summer.

Of course, he forgot that it was the dead of winter, and most of the green leaves for eating had turned brown. I was starving. The queasy feeling was gone, and now I was just hungry. Real hungry.

Biscuit dug up a few roots from the side of the road for me. He told me they were safe, but how the hay can you tell in the dark!? They were real bitter, and they had a bunch of tough fibers in them. I’d rather eat my sister’s favorite raw onion grass and cattail salad, any day. Ten to one, the food Biscuit gave me was poisonous, ‘cause I spit out half of it, and they made me even hungrier.

I remember I picked up the pace. I flew twice as fast as I had before. Biscuit was galloping behind. I thought he wouldn’t be able to catch up with me, but he was pretty damn fast, actually. I must’ve gotten winded, because I was feelin’ all woozy and I was moaning—or maybe Biscuit was moaning. Our moans sound pretty similar.

It was nice goin’ so fast, actually. I kept thinking about how I’d get to Canterlot sooner and how I’d be able teach Princess Twilight a lesson sooner, and that made me fly even faster. The sky was purple with some black sticks that I guess were trees. If I flew fast enough, the purple shapes blurred together and it kinda looked like Princess Twilight. And she’d look at me. And glare at me.

And I’d fly even faster.

I felt a blow to my head—Biscuit told me the next morning that I'd flown smack right into a tree branch—but it didn’t even hurt. No headache, no pain. At least initially.

But after that, everything got fuzzy. Princess Twilight appeared for a bit in the blurriness. My sister, too. I puked—but I’d already been puking for a while before I hit my head. My ears were ringin' at a really annoyingly high pitch.

Golly,

You’re such a nutjob, sis.

Admit it.

You’re going to actually go and kill the Princess, aren’t you?

But not before Princess Twilight destroys you.

Oh wait. Ha! She's already destroyed you!

I hovered above the same spot for a bit—more than a bit, cause during that period of time, it started to rain, stopped raining, and then started raining again. It was dark, but there was rain falling so I know that I was flying upright. I heard galloping—it was getting closer and closer.

I heard a colt’s voice—now I know it was Biscuit, but at the time I didn’t remember. “Oh Celestia! Are you all right, Spur!? Calm down, Spur, calm down. M-maybe we should sleep in the woods, Spur. Or at least slow down. Save some energy—you can’t face the Princess like this.”

I snapped when the ringing in my ears got worse. “We’re not dawdling! We’re flyin’ away now and if ya love me, erm…erm…Bi…Bi…Bis…Bi-Bitch…you’ll come with me!” I remember I said.

My head did not hurt at all. Just sayin’. It was just real dark and I had puked a lot, and that’s why I was delirious.

Some stuff that I don’t remember happened after that. Then, I remember leaning onto the colt—Biscuit—for support as we walked into the little roadside coach shop on the way to Canterlot. It was pouring rain—I was also crying, I think? My wings were too soaked to fly, and I felt the curls in my mane starting to come back. Damn. I remember the stylist pony tellin’ me not to go out too soon, or else that straightening chemical would wash off.

Guess I went out too soon.

But the Princess.

I was going to see the Princess.

I had to go and fly and see the Princess.

I remembered that much, even after I hit my head.

There were so many flashes of lightning. And then the thunder would rumble, and the ringing in my ears would get worse.

The door to the shop was padlocked. I’m not sure how we got in. I remember hitting my head again—against something flat and hard—and it didn’t hurt either.

The ringing in my ears got a little better. Or at least it wasn’t as high-pitched. But my vision got even worse. I walked a few steps into the shop and I fell ‘cause I thought the black square on the checkerboard floor was a hole.

“Spur…? You all right?” I heard the colt’s voice. (Biscuit’s voice.)

“D-did I h-h-hit my h-h-head?”

“Yeah, you did. Twice.”

I turned outside. I pulled on the colt’s leg and I said, “C’mon, c’mon, we gotta go now, we gotta fly…”

“No, Spur, I can’t fly, I a'int a pegasus.”

I squinted. There was a red blob in front of me. He didn’t have wings. “Oh. Okay.”

“Spur, come inside, quick. You gotta rest, sweetheart. You’re severely dehydrated and I think you also got a concussion.” He tried to pull me in a little further inside. But he tripped on a soup can, and he fell on top of me.

“Bi…Biscuit!?” I finally remembered.

“…Spur.”

And that’s when we made love on the floor of the shop. No whips. No riding crops. No “master,” no “slave.”

Just…love.

I didn’t scold him when he finished before I did. I remember feelin’ my left flank on the cold floor, and watching a little millipede crawl across my snout. The floor of the shop wasn’t much less gross than the muddy road outside. But it didn’t matter. It felt so nice that I forgot about…what’s her name?

“I love you, Spur,” Biscuit said my name. “Spur.” My head still wasn’t hurtin’.

“Spur…” he said again. My eyes got dizzy, and that’s when his words became all stretched out.

“Sssssppppurrrr…”

His voice echoed so much, it was like that moment was gonna last forever. And I smiled.

Then the door rattled. And another pony came in. I guess he was the shop owner.

I heard a stallion’s voice. “Hello! Who’s in here!?”

The sky was dark blue—I guess it was almost morning—and he found us lying in the back. He didn’t turn on the light. He just guessed from the outline of my mane and shouted,

“Cozyglow! AAARGH! It’s Cozyglow!” The voice spoke so fast, I didn’t even blink.

And finally, that’s when my head started hurting.

And, oh, did it hurt. Like my skull being stabbed by a giant alicorn horn, and being pelted with pieces of sharp gravel. At the same time.

The ringing in my ears. Oh, the ringing.

Golly.

Golly!

GOLLY!!!

GOOOLLLLLY!!!

I saw the stallion pull out something shiny. A little thin blade of moonlight reflected on the surface, and even that was enough for my eyes to hurt.

It was enough for me to yell, “HE’S GOT A MACHETE!”

And that’s when it all got blurry again. A lot of…black. And dark blue sky. At first, I thought Princess Luna was there, and this was all a dream.

If it was, I didn’t wake up.

Red…there was also a lot of red. Red fur, and red—and…voices. Talking. My ears were ringing real loudly the whole time, so whatever sounded like whispering was actually talking. And whatever sounded like talking was probably yelling.

Somepony was talking—or yelling, I guess. Yelling at me, or yelling at somepony else? I’m not sure. I didn’t hear ‘em call my name. “Ssss…” something. “Ssss…STOP IT!”

“Ssss…STOP! NO!”

“Ssss…WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU!”

“Ssss…NO!!!”

“NO!!!”

The next thing I remember was me standing in the pouring rain, grabbing the right front leg of a full-grown stallion and dragging him across the mud down to the flooded riverbank. There must’ve been some other pony dragging on the other side, ‘cause the body was moving in a straight line. I stepped into so many puddles. It was only when the lightning flashed that I realized that some of the puddles were red.

“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” I kept yelling.

There were so many slash marks on the stallion I thought he had red fur. His left eye was dug out by some sort of spoon. There was dried puke in his mouth.

It didn’t make me sick, or even make me sad. Not one bit. All I was worried about was the horrible pain in my head.

I heard something fall out of the stallion’s saddlebag as we dragged him. I picked it up. It reflected a little blade of moonlight, just like the one I saw in the dark.

It was just a gold watch and chain.

I bucked it into the river so that nopony would see. Then I kept dragging. I stopped when I felt a strong current about to push my hind leg down the river.

“Throw 'im in! Quickly!” I yelled.

The lightning flashed, and I, and the other pony that was dragging with me, let go.

I remember cussing because the stallion floated down the river instead of sinking.

But after that, it was over.

And I don’t remember anymore.

I really don’t. Which is different from my sister. The thing about my sister is that she always remembered every single detail of how she hurt somepony. I know, because she’d send me those secret letters. She sent me one letter about how she went and imprisoned Ms. Glimmer.

…following the threat which was enforced by casual asphyxiation, The Target (Starlight Glimmer) was kindly escorted into the grandiose room in the lower level of the school, located precisely 70 feet west from the staircase adjacent to the Guidance Counselor Office (see attached scale floor plans for clarification). The Target did not seem to take a liking to me dragging her down the staircase, but a kick to the upper right quadrant of her flank with a spiked horseshoe proved effective in causing distress. The Target admonished me for my impertinence and violent actions, to which I shouted words regarding her evil past, comparing her evil spirit to my own, and it caused her to cry profusely.

Golly, aren’t words the most peculiar thing, sis? They don’t hurt at all. Exhaled air doesn’t really feel like anything. Yet it can induce trauma more severe than the sharpest machete.

Golly, isn’t that peculiar, sis?

Following The Target’s possession by the orb of light…

One letter had fifteen pages of paper, double-sided, in her best hoof-writing.

Ma and Pa got different letters. One-page letters. She’d send ‘em on the special stamped parchment that I guess they give the prisoners down in Tartarus.

I dont remember anything, Mommy. I realy don’t.

I tink I got a boo-boo on my head and that turnd me bad

All I remembr was a flash of light, a lot lot lot of pain and then the next thing I remembr, Ms. Glimer was stuck in that orb.

I’m so so sorry, Mommy

I wish I could learn from my mistakes, I really do, but unforchunately I cant because I don’t remember what I did.

Isn’t that sad and inconvenient?

After they got that letter, Ma and Pa sent my sister a care package with her favorite treats in it. They tore up the letters that Princess Twilight had sent them earlier on.

I saved all of my sister’s letters. Sometimes I copy from them. My sister used a lot of big words, which is good for those essay papers we have to do at school.

After disposin' of the stallion’s body, I remember walking, not flying, back into the roadside store with another pony—I guess it had to be Biscuit. We stole a few tubs of ice cream from the freezer. I don’t really eat ice cream, especially in the winter. But I really wanted to eat the ice cream. I ate so many tubs, I lost count. Biscuit gave me a jar of pickles and I ate all that too.

I don’t remember what flavor ice cream it was. It tasted like food. And considering how hungry I was from not eating nothing that night but poisonous roots…that was good enough for me.

I think it was mint chocolate flavor. That’s what I heard Biscuit whispering to me. I was mumbling some things—I couldn’t hear what I was saying because my ears were ringing and I was dizzy. But whatever I said to him, he answered me by whispering, “Mint chocolate. Mint chocolate.”

His whisper sounded like Ma tucking me in at night. Ma would put me to bed after she put my sister to bed. It would always be late, since it took forever to put my sister to bed. I’d always ask Ma if she could tell me another bedtime story, and she’d pat my head and tell me,

“No, mint chocolate. Mommy’s tired. Go to bed, mint chocolate. Go to sleep, mint chocolate.”

I don’t really like the name “mint chocolate,” actually.

The ringing in my ears made up some more voices for me.

You get it?

You’re mint chocolate,

And I’m swiss roll!

Golly, mint chocolate ice cream goes so well with swiss roll, doesn’t it, sis?

It doesn’t go together, actually. It tastes horrible.

Eating the ice cream and pickles made me feel better. And that’s when Biscuit and I made love, again. Biscuit didn’t want to this time round, though. But I was his master, so he had to. He did not seem to take a liking to my demands, but a kick to the upper right quadrant of his flank proved effective at causing obedience. He admonished me for my cold-heartedness, to which I shouted words regarding the ills of his masochism, comparing his sexual proclivities to my own, and it caused him to cry profusely.

And it didn’t feel…peculiar…at all. It didn't feel anything, actually. All I felt was the horrible pain in my head.

He pushed himself away from me, and he said, “NO! NO! STOP IT!”

Was he talking to me? I’m pretty sure he was.

The sun rose. Light came into the windows, and then I could finally see.

There was some of the dead stallion’s blood on my hooves and it had clotted and it wouldn’t come out of my fur. Also Biscuit’s fur, but you couldn’t see the blood cause his fur happens to be the same color.

“It was shiny…I really thought it was a machete,” I remember I said. “I thought he was gon’ kill us.”

No sound except for my ears ringing. At an even more annoyingly high pitch.

“Tell me I’m not my sister, please, I’m beggin’ you.” I knelt before Biscuit like the way you kneel in front of royalty. Biscuit’s body kind of looked like Princess Twilight if my mind was blurred enough.

“Please, Biscuit. Please…! Tell me they’re wrong, and you’re right. Tell me that I haven’t become Cozy Glow.”

Biscuit kept shaking his head while he looked away from my bloody hooves. “N-n-no. I give up! It’s true! They’re all correct! You’re Cozy Glow! You’ve become just as evil and sadistic as her!”

Biscuit stopped holding my hoof, and that’s when I fainted.

Half-confession

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I got to the Royal Castle in Canterlot one day later. I almost didn't arrive, but like my sister, I didn't let a few dead ponies get in the way of my goal.

I guess.

I was waiting for my turn at the Castle's medical center.

“Spur? Nurse Nightingale will see you now.”

Nurse Nightingale reminds me of Ma, except she doesn’t try to feed you the moment you lay eyes upon her. Ma, she’ll give you hugs and kisses, wipe the blood off yer hooves and give you a plate of your favorite food and then tell you everything is all right. At least that’s what it was like with me and my sister.

But the reason I’m tellin’ you this is cause I started having cravings for onion grass.

Raw onion grass and cattail salad. There wasn’t anything on the side of the road I could pick—if I remember what Biscuit said two nights before then, what I saw was garlic, not onion grass. When I got to Canterlot that morning, I found a restaurant that served something like it. That is, after I scraped off the sugar from the leaves and took away the ketchup.

It tasted like the bayou. Bitter. Muddy. A hint of…animal. Swamp pony, maybe. I can see why my sister liked it. I swear, if I had eaten three or four plates, I could’ve felt like I was in the bayou forever.

Before this all happened.

I was Nurse Nightingale’s 1:30 appointment. Fifth appointment of the day. There were a few other ponies in the waiting room, but I was the last one to get called, so I was alone in the waiting room.

Biscuit couldn’t be there.

I remember I flew outta my chair and towards the door that goes to the exam rooms, but Nurse Nightingale didn’t move yet. And I was so damn tired, so I just sat there on the floor, my wings hanging down, and I looked up. And I remember the Nurse looked down at me, then she looked at my name on the clipboard—“Spur”—she scribbled a few things on the form that I couldn’t read, and she just said, “Well, how you doin’ today, hun?”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“Well, don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of you.” I wonder if that was a lie as well.

She took me into the exam room at the end of the hall. “So, what brings you to Canterlot Castle today?”

“I have an appointment with Princess Twilight.”

I scheduled an appointment with the guard at the front gate. At first, he half-looked at me and rattled off on how Her Majesty was real busy and how it could take up to 14 days before I could see her. Then he went into the back room to talk with his supervisor.

He came back out, a totally different look on his face, and he said I could see the Princess “as soon as she gets out from her meeting, this afternoon at 2:15 sharp.” Then he wiped some sweat off his brow and told me I had to complete an exam at the Castle’s medical center.

Nurse Nightingale sat me down on the exam table, and began pushing my legs and wings around. “How old are you, sweetie? Sixteen?”

“Fourteen.” My birthday was actually a day ago, but I forgot.

“Aw, you’re still young, sweetie!” She chuckled. “I remember when I was fourteen. Sittin’ in class, half the time thinkin’ ‘bout clothes, the other half thinkin’ about boys.” Then she went on about this long story about meeting her high school sweetheart, and how he became her husband comin’ on ten years.

I couldn’t listen to it without thinkin’ about that little shop on the side of the road. Two nights before.

Finally the Nurse stopped talking, while she listened to my heart. I’m pretty sure I’d fail the test—I thought I was gonna pass out—but she said, “Hmm. Beautiful. Lemme just check your wings…oh where did I put that pegasus examination form…?”

She opened up a drawer and used her unicorn magic to look through the papers. She clipped the extra two pages onto her clipboard. “My daughter’s turns nine, this year, y’know? I think you’ll like her. She’s kinda quiet, like you.”

Quiet? Since when did I ever become quiet? My mind’s noisy as hell. If hell is noisy—I a’int too sure myself.

Golly!

A friend, sis!

A friend! Go to her, and ask her! It’s easy!

What, you already forgot? But you were the one who taught me!

Repeat after me!

Wanna be fwiends?

I never asked that question to Biscuit, you know. Never seemed to be an appropriate moment to ask. I guess that means Biscuit and I were never friends to begin with. But maybe I should ask him. “Wanna be friends?”

Oh, now I wanna ask him. Now, when his body’s floated 200 miles down the river with a big gash in his belly, along with the dead shopkeeper. That…that’s just great.

I won’t ask.

I won’t ask him.

So then we’ll never be friends.

“I a’int that quiet,” I told Nurse Nightingale. “Feelin’ lonesome, is all.”

Lonesome? But I thought I was your fwiend!

The Nurse patted me on the back. To check my spinal cord. “Well, maybe it a’int my place to say this, but you oughta get yourself a coltfriend, sweetie. That’ll keep you from bein’ lonesome.”

“I…I had a coltfriend. We…we broke up.” Well, it was half true.

I had a coltfriend.

Biscuit lost a lot of blood, you know. Slowly. The last time I made love with him, before I hit him too hard, and he…there was that look on his face, you know…his eyes rolled back. At first I thought it was cause he liked it—my eyes roll back when I like it.

It’s true! They’re all correct! You’re Cozy Glow! You’ve become just as evil and sadistic as her!

I guess those were his dying words. Cause after I fainted and I woke up, I saw him there, his blood all over the shop floor, covering the shopkeeper’s dried blood. Then next thing I know, I was dragging his body out, with that sharp pain still in my head. He was real heavy. Heavier than the shopkeeper, since it was just me dragging him. And all I was thinking was, “Are we at the river yet?”

Cause you can’t think about what you did. You can't cry about it. You don’t have the time. You just gotta keep dragging him. And cleaning. Cleaning. I had so much to clean, I wasn’t even thinking about Biscuit.

I felt very little. I still feel very little. I hate myself for that.

That’s good though, right? It’s good I feel that way, right?

I kept listening to my brain playin’ that last hit, over and over again.

Smack.

Listening. I’ve had enough of listening.

Nurse Nightingale stuck something in my ear, and that’s when I snapped out of it.

“I’M SORRY!”

One of the lights in the exam room had gone out while I was “away.”

“Sorry for what?” Nurse Nightingale asked.

I paused. “I…erm…I’m sorry for…bein’ quiet.”

“Oh. No need to apologize hun. I’m just doin’ my exam here.” She chuckled. “Well, everything looks normal there.”

“Where?”

“Up here.” She pointed. It took me a while to figure out she was pointing to my ears.

Then, she told me to tilt my head back. “What’s…what’s this bruise here? On your neck?”

Ma always said, you can be anything you want to be in the afterlife. She was trying to encourage me and my sister to do our chores and take over the farm after she and Pa died. “Now, you work. And if you work hard now, later you’ll be taken away and duly rewarded.”

I wonder what Biscuit decided to be. Maybe a rodeo pony. I think he’d like that.

I wanted to be a fashion designer. I liked those dresses that I tried on in Bitsburgh. I guess it’d be nice if I could make some of my own. I had a note written out and everything. With all the reasons why I did it, and why I thought it’d be the best thing for Equestria.

I’m a responsible pony, you know. And I wanted to do the responsible thing.

And then I got to the part of the note, where I apologize to Biscuit, and say “Goodbye” to all the important ones in my life. Goodbye, Ma. Goodbye, Pa. Goodbye, Bloofy. Goodbye…and then I didn’t know what name to put.

So I couldn’t finish the note.

I decided to tell Nurse Nightingale about the hanging. Just not everything that happened before that. Sort of like a half-confession, I guess. “I almost kicked the stool, but then I thought about my unborn child…an’ I couldn’t do that to her. Or him. I don’t even know which one yet.”

Nurse Nightingale stopped adjusting her scope. “You…you’re pregnant?”

“I…I am.”

She shook her head and sighed. “So young, honey. You sure?”

“I’m positive. I’ve been gettin’ cravings, and queasy feelings—oh please don’t tell Ma!” I grabbed at the nurse’s hoof. “She’s going to kill me!”

She reread the notes on her clipboard. “Look honey, I don’t know what to tell you, but from the examination I just did, you’ve only just started puberty. It’s highly unlikely that you could get pregnant. But we can check easily enough.”

I lay on my back on the exam table. She fired up her horn into a light pink glow. She started from my head, and moved down by body. Then she stopped when she reached my belly. Probably for less than minute. But from the number beads of sweat that fell, I’d say it must’ve been a month or two.

Hello, sis.

One bead of sweat fell.

Remember me?

Four beads of sweat.

Golly, of course you do!

Seven beads of sweat.

I’m here, right inside of you!

C’mon sis, don’t you miss me?

Come out!

The light! The light!

I squinted. I moved my flank a little, and the paper liner on the exam table made a loud noise.

“Nope.”

“What?”

“You’re not pregnant,” the Nurse said.

Then I got the queasy feeling again. “But, but, the cravings, and the—”

“Look I don’t know what to tell ya sweetheart. I’ve done this test a million times. Whatever cravings or queasy feelings you’re having, it’s not because you’re pregnant.”

“Then…who is it?”

“Who’s what?”

“In my head.”

Then Nurse Nightingale gave me a look. And she picked up her pencil and clipboard again. Like she was maybe gonna stab me with it, but she didn’t actually. She put the pencil back down.

HA!

HAHAHAAA!

Golly, sis, I had you fooled for so long, didn’t I?

Sure, it was a little drastic of me. But how else would I have stopped you from kicking the bucket?

That’s no way to increase the body count. Don’t you agree?

I’ll bet that my sister became an alicorn in the afterlife. You know, I realized something. She never wanted to kill anypony with her bare hooves. Sure, she killed a few swamp ponies with arrows when she was young, but she never really wanted that. She wanted to be an alicorn. She wanted to sit up in a high and mighty throne in a castle, and just kill ponies with a few soft strokes of her quill pen.

And now, there she is. Sitting up there in my head, on her throne. Looking down at me.

But why hasn’t she written my name with her quill pen yet?

Golly, sis! Why the long face? Aren’t you glad I saved your life?

How many so far…two? Only two dead? Golly, what an embarrassment to the family name! Look when I summoned those Windigoes. I mean, at least a thousand ponies must have died from hypothermia alone! How humiliating it must be for you to be so sorely beat by your younger sister!

But now you have the homefield advantage, sis, so you’ve got no excuse.

Do you, now?

“Spur? You okay? Wake up!”

I screamed. I thought I was lying on the exam table, but I guess I was on the floor because it was cold. I stayed curled up in a ball while Nurse Nightingale checked my pulse and shined a light in my eyes. “Phew. Good. Thank heavens, it’s nothing serious. Come on. Gitup. Breathe, hun. It’s okay.”

“I…I’m sorry,” I heard myself mumble.

“Sorry for what dear? Everything is just fine.” Nurse Nightingale helped me up, and that’s when I remembered I was still in the exam room. She gave me a popsicle—I guess she does like to feed everypony. “Well, it’s 2:10—when’s your appointment? 2:15? Where’s the Princess meeting you again?”

“The…the guard said the Reading Room.”

“Oh, that’s not too far. I’ll walk ya there. Come on. Just one more thing…” she took an opaque plastic hair cap and slipped over my head. “You never know with these royal guards sometimes. They’ll shoot arrows at ya first, then ask questions later.”

“You…you know?”

The nurse smiled. “Of course I do. You don’t think I read the news? But you give me one good reason why I should be worried that you’re Cozy Glow’s big sister.”

I saw Biscuit and the shopkeeper’s bodies when I blinked.

“I…I can’t.” I faked a smile.

I left the other half of my confession for Princess Twilight.

The One

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For a long time, I thought that Biscuit was “the One.”

I’ll tell you about the first time I thought Biscuit was the One. It was before he and I really met. Almost two years ago, maybe. Cozy had just gone off to the School of Friendship in Ponyville, and back then, Ma and Pa and I had done a good job keeping her secrets inside the four walls of our house.

Since all the foals in the bayou go to the same school, I knew Biscuit, and he knew me. We knew we existed.

But he hung out with his crowd, and I hung out…with my crowd.

Gosh, I didn’t realize that until now. I had friends back then. Before the news spread about Cozy gettin’ sent to Tartarus. I had friends.

I don’t remember their names. I don’t remember anything. The part in my head where I’m supposed to remember them…feels like there’s a scar there.

But anyway, that year, it happened that I didn’t have a date for the school dance, and neither did Biscuit. So he asked me out, and I said yes, so then we both had a date for the dance and then we could go.

It wasn’t cause we were friends or anything.

I couldn’t dance for the life of me, and since Biscuit took dance lessons and all, I remember that night, he came to my house and he taught me a few dance moves before we went. It was the most awkward thing, ‘cause at that time we’d barely even said a sentence to each other. He gave me a bunch of roses ‘cause that’s what you’re supposed to do to be all gentleman-like to yer date. He gave me a little smile, and he said in an unbroken voice, “Howdy, Spur.” And we practiced dancing in the living room, to this cheesy music with a real strong beat so that I wouldn’t mess up.

Bam. Bam. Bam. Step. Step. Step. Right on it.

Cozy was comin’ home for the school holiday in a few days. Ma was gettin’ things ready for her return, laying out her stuff in the living room in this weird pyramid shape. I have no idea why she did that. It was like the first thing you see when you open the door and walk in is that queer-shaped pyramid of all of Cozy’s things.

And it was a tall pyramid. Not a very steady pyramid, so one little wrong step and you might knock a few things off. I remember, Biscuit was teaching me the foxtrot—at one quarter speed—and I’d almost gotten it, so I thought, but then I tripped over and fell on one of Cozy’s hair curlers that was part of the pyramid.

Damn, I hated those hair curlers. Hideous color. Cozy had the perfect sky blue mane color, and then she picks the worst traffic-cone-orange hair curlers to go with ‘em. They’re bright. Almost fluorescent. And you stare at them, and your eyes start watering, even if you a’int sad. And wherever it rolls off to, your eyes follow. And if it goes too far (and you a’int a unicorn), you run off and try to pick it up, but the room’s so big and the curler’s so small, so you run forever and ever until your head hits the wall.

It hypnotizes you.

At the time, Cozy hadn’t even gone to Tartarus yet, so I didn’t hear no voices. But I remember, after I tripped over her hair curler, I just sat there, on the floor, bawling my eyes out. Not sure how old I thought I was.

Biscuit, bein’ the kind gentleman he had to be, stretched out his hoof, and he said, “It’s all right, Spur. You’re dancing just fine. I could’ve tripped over that curler too.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure, it was right next to me. I could’ve fallen. Just like you.”

And I remember looking up into his eyes, and seeing his smile and his outstretched hoof, and I felt like in less than an hour, he knew more about my sister than I did.

He helped me stand back up, and we didn’t start dancing just yet. There was a silence for a while. The hair curler was still rolling on the floor. And Biscuit was following it with his eyes. Just like me. Funny thing, I wasn’t even surprised that he was so entranced by Cozy—Cozy’s hair curler.

“Gosh, it’s bright, a’int it?” he said. “That orange.”

“It is.”

Then Ma came in, and picked up the hair curler as she was sweeping the floor. And she didn’t even flinch. “What you two starin’ for like that?” she said. And Biscuit was the first to snap out of it, and he said, “Oh, nothin’ ma’am.”

I don’t think I stopped staring. Even after Ma put the hair curler back into the drawer, three weeks later when the holiday ended and Cozy went back to Ponyville.

Biscuit…never heard the voices. He pretended to, but he didn’t really. He never saw my sister’s face on the back of his eyelids. Cozy watched him, sure. She looked down…or up…from wherever she is now, and she watched him. Maybe even whispered half a word to him. But she never went into his head.

And that’s why he a’int “the One.” And since he’s dead, no use fantasizing he is “the One.”

He liked it. That’s what I don’t get. If Cozy didn’t get to his head, why didn’t he stop Cozy from gettin’ to my head?

I hit him, and he just told me to keep going. And he smiled when I hit him, or least I really wanted to see it like it was a smile. Huh. Maybe he never liked it to begin with. Maybe he never smiled. Maybe it was just a little nervous chuckle that my eyes turned into laughter. And his eyes rolling back when I hit him…that was him leanin’ his head back for air. And when he screamed “OOHH!” it was really “OUCH!”

Mind control does that to ya.

No. That can’t explain it all, though. All the things he said to me, I’m pretty damn sure were the words he actually said. How do I hear “I can almost hear her spirit” if it’s actually “I could never hear her speak”? Impossible. Biscuit…he understood me. He really did. He could’ve been “the One.” I wish he were “the One.” A pretty sexy One. A sweet One. The One, that stretched out his hoof when Cozy’s hair curler tripped me up—and he pulled me back up to standing. And we danced real well that night, actually. I forgot to tell y’all that.

I mean, that’s just the one thing that Cozy would make me do. Heck, if I were Cozy, and I was controllin’ Spur’s mind, that’s what I’d do. Make me kill the one pony who was gonna set me free.

“The One.”

But the real reason why I know that Biscuit a’int “the One” is cause now I know who is. It’s the purple alicorn princess with the golden crown. She’s the One.

I have to settle for Her Majesty. Instead of Biscuit.

“Her Majesty will see you now.”

I pulled down the opaque hair cap that Nurse Nightingale had given me, and I stepped into the Reading Room of the Canterlot Castle.

I’ll tell you this, she sure didn’t look like a royal princess. Sure, she had the crown and her royal shoes, but the rest of her body was all covered in dirt and…hayburger sauce, I think?

Her “reading room” was more like a dump. It was filled with open books and papers all over the tables and floor. There was a rolling bulletin board with push-pin holes everywhere. There were bookshelves with rolling whiteboard walls, all covered in notes and doodles.

I saw the guards roll their eyes when they looked in, but Princess Twilight can’t always have been like this. I remember in those books about Princess Twilight that I read to the foals, there were photos of her library. Thousands of books, nicely sorted in alphabetical order and subject. Princess Twilight prided herself in her organization skills. It’s how she has become the efficient ruler that she is today.

Even the Princess’s mane didn’t look “efficient.” Hair was stickin’ out in all directions, almost like a big, poofy, curly bird’s nest. Her eyes were bugged out, looking at her notes on the board. She threw some papers in the air and didn’t even read them.

She didn’t look like herself. She looked more like…more like…more like me, I guess. Like the me that I must’ve looked like to everypony else: crumpled up into a ball, thrown into the nuthouse, then chewed up and spit out.

“Princess Twilight.” I knelt. Just. My head started splitting as I neared the ground.

“Spur. Good to see you,” she said. Or at least I think she said that. Her volume was all over the place. “I…I’m sorry I didn’t schedule this appointment sooner with you and your family. With all my royal duties…I haven’t had the time.”

Princess Twilight’s back was turned to me. I could see what she was lookin’ at, on the bulletin board. There were three pictures of my sister. One of them of her smiling. One of them of her as an alicorn. One of them of her petrified. And they were all surrounded by index cards with notes scribbled in slanted lines. Judging by the bags in the Princess’s eyes, I’m pretty sure she’d been looking at those photos for weeks.

“You haven’t had time for what?” I asked.

“For…for you. No, no, for…me. No, no, erm…” then she didn’t finish her sentence. She still was lookin’ at those photos. Mostly at the picture of my sister smiling. That one had a gloss to it.

Silence for a few minutes.

“Princess?” I asked. “I…I hope I’m not takin’ up your time…”

Princess Twilight shook her head, with her jaw loose. “Oh goodness! Where are my manners? Take a seat, Spur. Let me just finish, erm…this thing that I’m doing and…then we can chat.”

I sat down at the table, filled with open textbooks. And more little photos of my sister. Finally, Princess Twilight turned away from the bulletin board. She blinked a few times. She sat in the chair right next to me.

“Why do you keep lookin’ at photos of Cozy Glow?” I asked.

“Oh, I…I haven’t looking at them all day,” the Princess said, without that Royal accent in her voice. “Only for the past hour.”

“The past hour? I thought the guard said you were in a meeting.”

“I…I forgot to go,” she mumbled.

She forgot her meeting. That doesn’t happen too often, does it? I tried to remember if I read anything about that in that picture book. I don’t think so.

“I. Erm. Well.” The Princess took a deep breath. “Spur, I…I heard from Starlight that you cancelled therapy with her. What happened?”

“Oh, I just…I didn’t really get much out of my sessions with her. She talked about…unrelated things. It was like…she didn’t understand me.”

“Starlight is an excellent therapist, but sometimes…” she paused. “Sometimes it’s impossible to understand the struggles somepony goes through without going through it yourself. Did you want to reschedule with somepony else?”

“Erm…” I smiled for Her Majesty. “…thank you, Princess. But that’s not why I’m here.”

Don’t do it.

Don’t do it!

I didn’t listen. She couldn’t stop me, even if she wanted to. I’d made it so far.

I crumpled up the hair cap and I threw it on the floor. My curls got pulled, and they bounced up and down a few times.

“Princess Twilight…I committed a crime.”

“…and even after I threw their bodies down the river, Cozy’s voice still just keeps talkin’ to me, in my head. Even right up until today, when I came to see you…Your Majesty.” I finished my story.

Princess Twilight had already started crying.

“I…I’m sorry, Princess!”

Princess Twilight stood up from her chair and walked in a circle around the room. She was looking down at the floor. Silent. I could hear her heavy breathing.

I looked at the mess of books in the room to distract myself. Heck, she’s the Ruler of Equestria, she can do anything she wants to me. I thought, maybe she’ll send me to a rehabilitation camp. Where they’ll monitor my activities and strap me down to a table while powerful unicorns try to exorcise the voice from my head.

Or, maybe she’ll send me to Tartarus. I guess that won’t be so bad. My sister did all right there. I mean, readin’ her letters…she was her usual, evil self. Maybe I’ll get petrified. That’s not so…

“P-Princess Twilight? How much trouble am I in? Am I…am I just like my sister? I am, a’int I? I am, right? Are you gonna turn me to stone, too?”

She still hadn’t said anything. I kept thinking up more things. Maybe she’ll publicly execute me, and sterilize Ma and Pa. Stop the rot. Maybe she’ll zap me into Limbo, and make everypony forget it ever happened.

“I…I’m real real sorry, Princess Twilight. For what it’s worth. Maybe you don’t understand, these voices I hear, and what it does to me, but I—”

“No,” she finally said something. “I do. I do understand, Spur.” She looked up from the ground, and I saw…she had a gentle smile on her face.

Cozy smiled like that once. I remember because it was the only time she smiled like that. We were on the kayak together, and we’d gotten stuck in some brambles in a shallow part of the swamp.

A wild timberwolf was comin’ for us. The kayak was stuck. And the forest was too thick to fly up. And the timberwolf roared so loud, it unwrapped the curls in our manes. And we were huggin’ each other real tight as the timberwolf charged, and I blurted out, “I love you, Cozy!”

Cozy smiled at me. Like she understood.

Luckily, the timberwolf didn’t hurt us and we never saw it again.

And I never saw that gentle smile again, either.

The Princess had that same gentle smile on her face. “Spur, you…your story has put my mind so much at peace.”

I stopped blinking, to make sure I wasn’t still daydreaming. “W-what did you say!?”

I saw the Princess walk back to the bulletin board, with Cozy’s photos on it. I could hear her alicorn lungs panting. Her eyes bugged out even more, and one of the hairs in her mane popped out into a little curl. I’ll bet that’s how I looked to Nurse Nightingale in the exam room.

The Princess stumbled forward while she tried to get a closer look. She took a wrong step, and she crumpled one of the pages in her precious book, with the pointy end of her metal shoe.

And that’s when I realized.

“You hear the voices too, don’t you?” I said.

She paused. She looked down at the crinkled page of the book, like she’d done somethin’ awful.

“And her face.” The Princess teared up. She started sobbing like crazy, actually. “Those curls. Staring at me—”

“—and smiling at ya,” I finished her sentence.

She wiped her eyes with the torn book page. “I tried every spell documented in my library. Exorcism spells, friendship spells, cleansing spells. None of them worked. I tried other ways to get rid of her, but it—”

“That’s why you turned my sister to gravel.”

The Princess’s breath was shaking worse than mine. “I’m…I’m sorry. I wish I told the truth sooner.”

And then there I was, fifteen year filly from the bayou in Hayseed Junction, hugging the Ruler of Equestria while we both bawled our eyes out on the marble floor of the castle. Her hoof, without her golden shoe, touching my back. My hoof, rubbing against her back. I was so close to her, I could smell the tears mixed with the gold of her crown. Ma and Pa wouldn’t have believed it if I told ‘em.

Heck, I’m not sure I believe it myself.

But I dunno why I was cryin’ with her, really. I hate secrets. I know, because I’ve kept a bunch. And I hate every one I’ve kept. What kind of Princess keeps a secret like that, and not tell even her Harmony gang and Ms. Glimmer? A Princess of Friendship? Even if, even if, her whole day is a waking nightmare, where Cozy’s sittin’ in her cage, twiddling with a little remote control, and she says,

You better not tell, Princess. Golly, what sort of a ruler would you be if word got out that you, the most powerful pony in Equestria, succumbed to such a simple mind control spell?

What does that make you? A useless unicorn, snout in a book.

Cause that’s what you really are, isn’t it?

It shows, you know.

It really shows. You think you’re so good at Friendship, but really it’s just a mental exercise for you, isn’t it? A protocol to be studied in a book. A logical puzzle with others’ emotions.

Golly, I wish we were friends. Cause…we’re not that unlike each other…are we, Princess?

I heard it all. Princess Twilight pulled my ear closer to hers. And I listened.

Yeah, that’s pretty damn scary.

Y'know, the worst secret is the kind of secret that nopony knows. Nopony knows it, cause they don’t even believe it. Hearing voices. An evil foal wriggling outta their stone prison and slipping into your ears. Why don’t they believe it? Cause they’re scared of it? They’re scared of the voices? The pain?

Was Biscuit scared? Maybe he was. Maybe he let me hit him cause he was too scared.

He shouldn’t have kept that a secret. He should’ve talked to me. Damn him.

Yeah. That’s why Biscuit a’int “the One.” He kept secrets. And secrets a’int good.

The Princess let go from our hug. She wiped her tears and cleared her throat.

“Spur…I can’t overlook the crimes you have committed. You’ll have to atone for them, one way or another. But…now’s not the time for that. I read Nurse Nightingale’s medical report. You need rest. We both need rest. How would you like to stay here for a few weeks?”

“Thank you, your Highness.” This time when I knelt, it didn’t hurt.

She pushed my chin up. “Please, call me Twilight.”

“Twilight, am I…am I gonna be like one of your students? Kinda like Ms. Glimmer was?”

Princess Twilight smiled and shook her head. “No. I’m not asking you to be my student. I’m asking you to be my friend.”

The next few hours, I felt like I had woken up from a dream.

Not a dream, really. I was awake. And even when I was asleep, most of the time I didn’t feel like I had rested.

I actually napped on a pile of Twilight’s books for three solid hours. Then when I woke up, I was suddenly really hungry. I had some leftover raw onion grass from earlier that day, I took one bite, and I don’t remember where I put the rest of it. I must’ve thrown it away or something. I forgot.

Twilight ordered some dinner sent up to the room. For a princess who lives in a fancy castle, she really loves her hayburgers. They’re pretty good (I’m pretty sure they give her extra toppings since she’s the Princess), but they a’int my favorite.

I kinda miss Ma’s cooking actually. Her peach cobbler, her green bean casserole, her beignets dusted in sugar.

First time I’ve missed home in fifteen years.

Twilight lit a fire in her room when outside got to, well, twilight. And then she started reorganizing her books with her bare hooves. I did the “A-F” books, since they were on high shelves.

Fear: The Anathema of Friendship was the last book I had to put on the shelf. I flipped through a few pages of it, and I probably sucked in a couple pounds of dust. It hadn’t been touched in a while.

I don’t need the book, really. I think I understand fear. It a’int living your worst nightmare. It’s almost living your worst nightmare. Fear is when you’re close enough to your worst nightmare that you can see it, at the bottom of the pit. And then when the fear gets bigger, you slowly fall deep, deep, deep, closer to it. And the fear is you wondering when you’re gonna hit it.

Unless somepony’s in the pit with you. And you pull each other up.

Actually, I never even asked my sister if she heard any voices. I only started hearing the voice after Cozy got turned to gravel, so…I had no reason to ask her. Yeah. I wonder if my sister heard the voices. And nopony came to pull her up.

Damn.

That changes everything, doesn’t it?

I finished shelving the last book in the room. I took longer than I should have. I guess I didn’t want the night to end—it was almost 3am. Twilight escorted me to one of the guest rooms in the castle.

Before I went to bed, I asked her. “Twilight…who did you kill?”

She looked round. The hallway was empty. “Almost killed. And it was…”

And that’s the last secret I’m ever gonna keep. From then on, I swore to myself, I a’int gonna tell any secret to anypony. No more.

What my sister felt

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Twilight thinks that we’re not really ponies. We’re all just a mist.

In the morning, Twilight and I do friendship classes. Fun arts and crafts, joint venting. That’s what they do at the friendship school, anyway—how those things are supposed to teach ya friendship, beats me. And the students pay a ridiculous amount of Bits to go there.

If Twilight just wants a friend to shoot the breeze with, she should say so. She doesn’t have to cover it up with “friendship magic” bull.

I don’t think I realize how tired I’ve gotten. I guess I had been so pumped on adrenaline. But these past months, I’ve just been in the castle. Since I’ve started staying at the castle, I’ve heard the voices a lot less. The air’s fresher up here than in the bayou. I look out my window in the morning, and the streets are sparkling clean. All the leaves neatly swept up to the side. Mud and still water quickly mopped up. Sometimes I think there’s some sort of “good magic aura” in the air in Canterlot that just calms any evil spirits. I think that’s why it's chosen as Equestria's capital.

I sleep a lot more. Maybe cause the mattresses here in the castle are made of pegasus clouds and the sheets are like 1 million thread count or somethin’. And it’s pretty calm sleep. I can still feel the demon spirit in me, but there’s not as much words.

oll

egasu

lly go

ath

Fragments of words.

I must sleep like 13 hours total every day. Y’see, after lunch, Twilight and I take a nap. Cozy used to hate naps, did I ever tell ya? ‘Cause it was the one time of day that Ma kept her in her room against her will. “Mandated disruption of the diurnal circadian rhythm,” she used to call it.

So when I’m sleepy in the afternoon and I take a nap, I smile.

After we wake up from our naps, whenever that is, Twilight starts working on a new curing spell. There’s nothing like it in the books, so she says that she’s gotta make a whole new spell from scratch. And even though she’s failed so many times, her finding me has “emboldened” her to try again.

So like, she sits me down. And I just watch as she tries to crack the magical curse that’s overcome us. She writes on the blackboard. Sticks tabs in her reference books. If she’s got questions, she’ll ask me. I figure she thinks just cause she’s a princess, she’s the leader of my “reformation” so to speak, but really, she and I are both in the same boat.

I a’int mad at her, though. It’s her way of coping. The papers have been told that Twilight’s taken a “professional leave of absence.” She’s left Spike and Shining Armor in charge of all her royal duties. They’re the only ones she trusts with her secret. Spike checks on us in our secure wing of the castle twice a day to make sure we’re okay. If one of us goes so crazy that someone could get killed, or worse, Spike is supposed to touch us with this magical amulet.

Twilight told me it’s really an injector filled with an instant-acting sedative, but made to look like an amulet. Spike just thinks it’s magic.

Nopony else knows about Twilight’s voices. Not even her five best friends. “I don’t want them to know. First they’ll feel so bad for me, and then they’ll also feel so bad that all their efforts to conquer the Legion of Doom are now just…wasted.”

“Aw c’mon Twilight,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know ‘em, but if they’re really yer best friends…I sure as hell don’t think they’re gonna react that way.”

Twilight nodded. “I know. I know. But if I know I would make them feel bad if I told them, and that that would make me feel bad, that means I still feel compassion for somepony else. I still have empathy. And Cozy hasn’t eaten away all the good in my brain yet.” She had tears in her eyes.

“You just don’t wanna tell ‘em your secret, do ya?” I said.

“No.”

She told me her secret, though.

Maybe she’s my best friend, then?

Or maybe she just doesn’t have that much compassion for me.

I think Twilight likes to teach me lessons ‘cause she wants to remind herself that she’s still the same smart pony she once was. Just like I speak a lot. In the bathtub, I’ll just speak into the empty bathroom. It’s weird, I know, but I think that my accent is going away. Maybe it’s ‘cause I’ve been away from home for so long.

My sister never had a country accent.

“Page 85…right.” Twilight asked me as she read from her book. “You said you see…an orange fire in these dreams slash hallucinations?”

“Yeah orange.”

“Strange, I usually see more of a crimson or violet. I remember reading somewhere that the color spectra observed correlates with the stage of progression of the possession magic.” If this is how smart Twilight is when she’s sick, I can’t imagine how smart she used to be.

She started flipping through another book. “Let’s see…index, index, oh where the fuck is that entry…ah, page 852. Correlation between flame color observed in somnolescent hallucinations and magical mist possession. Aha. Abstract…aha, aHA. BINGO. This is cutting edge, I tell you, Spur. Cutting edge. This wasn’t even here in last year’s edition. This is fresh off the presses!”

Then again, I can’t tell the difference between a “Four-E-Hay” Transform and gibberish comin’ outta a madpony.

Twilight still scribbles notes, but this time it’s all neatly contained in a big spiral bound notebook. Her diagrams are still real messy. And when she hallucinates, she twitches sometimes, and it messes up her arrows on the chalkboard.

They go in zigzags instead of from point A to B.

It don’t matter that we’re still hearing voices now, though. There’s gonna be a big day. A cure day, she calls it. Twilight’s gonna put the perfect curing spell in a little amulet, and point it at ourselves. We may have a few failed cure days if the spell doesn’t work out. But eventually there’ll be a real Cure Day. Where everything will be okay forever.

Twilight’s studyin’ something she calls Mist Theory to try to reason with our plight. Everypony’s just a mist, basically. And most of the time, the same mist stays in the same body. When you die, the mist leaves you, and dissolves back into the air. It might stay the same, or it might mix into a new mist, and it flows into a new little foal. But sometimes, another mist can go into you while you’re still alive. And when that happens, the new mist infects you, until it overpowers or covers up the old mist completely.

It could be a good mist that infects you. Or a bad mist. It’s whatever is floating in the wind, or it could be more targeted. Twilight said the books aren’t too clear on that part.

I’m trying to remember. When Cozy was a yearling, there wasn’t any wind. It was summer in the bayou. The bugs were loud, the air was humid, and there was…

…frozen mist over the water.

I think Biscuit’s mist went into the air. And someday he’ll come back to me, in a different body. Maybe he’ll go into Feather Bangs’s body or somethin’. Heh. Or maybe his mist will break apart into a few pieces. And there’ll be somepony to kayak with me. And there’ll be somepony else to kiss and cuddle with me. And maybe then I’ll be all better and I won’t try to kill him, or him, this time.

Cozy the spirit is like an evil mist that infected me and Twilight. Just like it infected my kid sister at some point. Some event made our mist fragile, so says Twilight, which caused it to infect us. And the infection’s just gettin’ worse and worse. Like a brain disease when you’re old and you slowly forget things.

It’s not my fault that I’m violent and angry. It’s the magic’s fault. And Twilight believes me. I confessed to a violent crime but all I got was mandated treatment an’ a comfy bedroom that’s bigger than my whole house in bayou. There’s a cure day comin’ up. There’s gonna be a big spell that’ll zap this evil mist outta me, and everything will be okay forever.

I should be happy.

Why am I not happy?

Twilight still hasn’t told me when the cure day will be. “In a month, at the latest,” and that was two months ago. Her spiral bound notebook is only half-filled up, out of the 500 pages.

Notebooks don’t make me happy.

Y’know what does make me happy? Sometimes these days, when I wake up in my room in Twilight’s castle, and the sun’s shinin’ through my window, I forget that I killed Biscuit, and I think that he’s alive somewhere, and that right now I’m just on a little vacation, and then I’ll come back to the bayou and see him again.

Maybe that’s not a real cure, like Twilight wants.

But I’m fine with that.

Sometimes the moment after I wake up, I don’t even know what all the damn fuss is about.

Cozy the spirit gave Twilight a real bad dream the other night. In the dream, Twilight’s manuscript bled so much, it flooded her whole castle in dark black ink, and drowned her in thick fluid. She was screaming and choking when I came into her room. Her horn was smoking. Blankets, bedsheets, they were flyin’ all over the place. Luckily she had moved all the breakable china into a big metal safe where she couldn’t knock it over during her hysteria.

“Talk to her, Twilight, talk to Cozy!” I grabbed her cheeks and I shook her head. Her eyes flopped around in the sockets.

“NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

It was late, and I guess she didn’t have the energy to deal with the spirit. So I took the plastic chamber pot and I filled it with cold water, and I poured it over her head. It was dark, and I was kinda in a hurry, so I didn’t stop to check if there was anything in it. I couldn’t tell. Maybe there was a trace of scat in there? Or some piss? I’m not sure. But I filled it up with cold water.

And after about three or four pours, that seemed to calm her down. There were big, floppy bags under her eyes. After she stopped screaming, her head just kinda fell like a soaked bowling ball onto the pillow.

She had no more to give. She couldn’t fight no more. The evil mist sucked every last drop outta her.

“You okay, Twilight?”

And she smiled at me, with a mix of piss and water and scat dripping from her mane, and she said, “Yes, Spur, I’m okay. Calm. Peaceful.” She sighed. “Finally. Finally, no more.” She was almost giggling.

She squinted her eyes, and I swear some of the piss could’ve gotten in her eye.

She grabbed my hooves and pulled me close to her wet chest. It was damp and cold. “I understand now, Spur. The spell…that’s taken us…I understand it. I’ve had a breakthrough at the very least. I must write this down.” She ran off to her dresser to look for her 500-page notebook.

She smelled awful.

If that’s how Twilight looks and smells when she does understand…

I think she looked prettier when she didn’t understand.

I remember one day, after our nap, I asked Twilight what she thinks my sister felt. When she got turned into stone.

“What…what did it look like?” I asked. “You were there. Yer friends were there. Celestia and Luna and Discord were there. I wasn’t.”

Twilight blinked. And sighed. “Your sister looked…scared. As she got petrified. More scared than I’d even seen her. It was…strange.”

My sister had two mists in her, just like us.

You see, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Discord didn’t really kill Cozy. They just petrified the body it was in. My sister’s body. And the mists boiled off.

First, the evil mist boiled off. “Cozy”, the spirit. It boiled off first. And for a few seconds, there was just one life mist in the body.

My real sister. Maybe that was the only seconds that anypony ever got to see my real sister.

And then the last gaps in the stone sealed shut.

“Why d’you think she looked scared?” I asked Twilight.

“Who wouldn’t be scared?”

“She went in pain?”

“I…I don’t know.”

She hurt me, sis.

She hurt me.

Do what is right.

Make her feel my pain!

Stop.

Stop talkin’.

eel

pai

ake h

urt me s

She stopped talkin'.

Was she lyin’ or tellin’ the truth? Was Twilight lyin’ to me? How would I know? How would I know the truth?

This was gonna be my decision.

I swallowed a lump. “Do it. To me.”

“Do what?”

“Petrify me. Then maybe the mist of Cozy will boil off from me. And then unpetrify me.”

Twilight paced around, looking into space. “Spur, this is incredibly risky. I’m not sure if I'm able to reverse the petrification. It's really supposed to be a permanent spell, so it's intentionally designed to be extremely difficult to reverse. It's a very complex spell, and I haven't done it in so long. I don't have the Elements of Harmony with me.”

“If it a’int reversible, it a’int. Just try it. On me.”

“If I can't reverse it, you'll be trapped for a thousand years. Unless we get Fluttershy to bring a cockatrice, but I'll only do that as an absolute last resort..." she stopped pacing. "Do you understand that, Spur? Spur…if you don’t come back…”

“We’ve been doin’ this fer two whole months. Therapy. Lessons. Friendship. Friendship lessons. Math and logic equations. Writing notes. Way too much writing notes. An’ nothing’s happening. We gotta take a chance. We gotta do somethin’. We gotta act.”

“You must persevere, Spur. I’m going to figure out the cure spell soon, I know it. You just have to believe.”

“What if the cure day never comes? Not fer a thousand years or more?”

Twilight paused. I know she’s secretly scared of that. If that day never comes. And unlike me, she's gonna have to actually live those thousand years, never seein' that day.

Did I tell ya that Twilight has another fake amulet? An injector filled with cyanide, but disguised to look like an amulet.

She tried to cover her fear. “I-I know it’s hard f-for you, S-Spur, it’s hard for me too. I-I hear the voices too, I know what you’re going through—”

“No.”

The Princess stopped pacing.

I just told. A Princess. That she’s wrong. The Princess. Of Equestria.

And I wasn’t scared one bit.

Maybe it’s the “Cozy” inside me. That makes me fearless to authority.

I was proud of myself. Actually I was.

“No, Twilight. Y’ don’t know what I’m goin’ through. Maybe y’know some of it, but you sure as hell don’t know all of it. Havin’ the whole world turn their back on you, just cause of yer sister? Before you came along, I didn’t have anypony who’d help me, other than the pony I fuckin' killed 'cause of this stupid demon in me!

“Meanwhile, you got all these ponies who’ll bend over backwards to support ya—Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Ms. Glimmer, Trixie, Sunset, Cadence, Celestia, Luna…ALL of ‘em? And you won’t tell any of ‘em? Just ‘cause of yer damned pride, ya wanna keep it a secret!? Just ‘cause yer afraid!?

“Well, I’m not afraid, Twilight. I’m not afraid of dying. If I wanna get better, it’s gotta matter. I gotta be willing to lose it all. That’s the difference between you an’ me.”

I wanna tell the whole world the truth. I wanna stand up on the roof an’ tell the whole world that I killed him.

Twilight sat low till the tip of her horn was lower than my head. She let her legs collapse to the floor. She let her hoof touch mine.

She’s my friend. As much as I hate her. I think I care about her so much, that’s why I hate her fer bein’ this way.

“Spur…if you don’t come back…I’ll lose a friend.”

“I jus’ wanna know how my sister went. That’s all.”

If I don’t come back…

Bloofy won’t miss me. And Ma and Pa’ll take care of him.

Biscuit won’t miss me. He’s dead.

Ma and Pa…

I spoke again. “And if I come out of it alive, then you can put the spell in an amulet, and I can do it to you too.”

Twilight held her breath.

“You should know the secret too, Twilight. You should know what happened to yer worst enemy.”

Twilight sighed, her heavy crownless head hung low. Then she growled. She shook her head violently, trying to get it outta her head. Another relapse was comin’ along.

“Let me get a glass of water,” was the last thing she said.

She left me alone in the library for a few minutes. She came back in with...not water, but a cup of cold tea and a little plate of peach jelly biscuits from the castle kitchen. She pushed the plate to me and motioned like she wanted me to eat one.

I pushed the plate back. “Just get on with it.”

So she did it. She pushed the peach biscuits out of frying range, and pointed her horn at me.

The beam of light travels pretty slow, y’know. I know light travels pretty damn fast, but it must’ve been a full second before the end of the beam traveled across the library and reached me.

Enough time for me to swallow the lump in my throat.

Kayaking, pt. 2

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Being in stone was just like being asleep. And while I was "asleep," I had "dreams."

I dreamt my sister and I were in the kayak again.

The water was still. It was dark, like night, but there weren’t any stars out. Just a faint, blue glow all around the ceiling and the walls. The walls were pitch black stone, with a tint of blue cause of the light.

We were in a cave.

Not the biggest cave I could possibly imagine, but it was pretty damn big. Big enough that it echoed every time you made a noise.

I chipped a piece off from the wall. I dropped it into the water. I could hear the noise it made as it fell in and made little ripples.

The air was heavy, being so far underground. I had to squeeze my belly in just to push air out. And I had to open my mouth real wide to take the air in. And it would settle, in the bottom of my lungs. Like a warm, fuzzy lead pillow.

I was holding the paddle. I took us to a corner of the cave, where the blue glow was a little brighter.

There was a pale gray filly sittin’ across from me on the kayak. Her mane wrapped in gray, barely blue curls. Her wings flopped to the side, barely folded in properly. Bags under her eyes. She looked deader than Biscuit’s corpse when I dragged him to the river. But she was alive.

“Sister? Is that you?”

The gray filly nodded.

She took a big breath in. Her mouth opened. It went small, it went big, and then somewhere in the middle. Like she wanted to say at least a couple sentences to me.

“S…s…sp…Spur,” was all that actually came out. Her voice croaked, like a little old frog.

I never really remembered how my sister used to sob, you know. Not cry, sob. Took me a while to figure out what was happening to her. She breathed more shallowly. She blinked faster. And tears came out. For real. It felt real—

—did it?

“T-tell me this a’int a trick, sis. I…wanna believe you, I really do. But after all that’s happened…tell me something. Tell me somethin’ so I know that it’s really you.”

She told me nothing. She leaned forward, almost overboard. She dipped her head in the water, no more than a few seconds. She came back up. After all the extra water drained from her head…

…the curls in her mane settled flat. And they stayed flat.

Yes. It’s her. My real sister. Before the voices came to get her.

There was a little good part of her. Even as the demon got bigger and bigger. When we sat in the kayak together in the bayou, when we sent her off to Ponyville, even when she was in Tartarus. She’s always been here. A little piece of the real her, not possessed by the demon.

“When were you engulfed by this…demon?” I asked her.

She immediately frowned. “En…engull…” She looked at me confused.

“Surrounded.”

“Surrr…oou…” she leaned forward and studied my mouth movements. She still couldn’t get it. The demon must’ve destroyed her brain. Destroyed her brain to the point she’d forgotten words, sentences.

She pointed her hoof at me and said, “S…S…Spur.” She smiled. That word she remembered.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“S…S…Sister.”

“Yeah.”

“Long. Long time.”

“Yeah.”

“Alone.” She pointed to herself.

How long had it been? Could be ten, even eleven years. Whenever the evil mist first infected her. “I’m sorry, sis.”

“Sorry.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” she said again.

“You are sorry? For what?”

“Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

She pointed her hoof at me. Hard. “Sorry.”

“I am sorry.”

“SORRY!!!” She yelled at me so loud until the walls of the cave began to rattle.

She was crying. Cryin’ alone.

Alone.

I stopped using the word sorry.

Tell you the truth, I don’t think I ever had kayak time with my real sister. I’d been kayaking with an impostor for the past ten years.

This was my first kayak time with my real sister.

My sister was trapped in the cave, and the cave was called Cozy Glow.

Alone.

“You,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“You! YOU!!!” she yelled. “You you you you you NO!!!” Each “you” had a different pitch, a different volume. Each one feeling like a different emotion.

What I think is that she tried to call out for me in my dreams, Spur, Spur, Spur, but every word that came outta her mouth got garbled by the demon into scary words. Evil words. So that’s why I heard the demon.

What would I have heard from the demon instead? As my sister was tryin’ to call out my name.

Spur! Spur! Spur!

Spr! Sr! Pu!

Ggl! Js. Pr.

Kll! Just Plee.

Kill! Just like me.

I sighed. “I’m sor—I mean, I wanna talk to ya. I wanna get to know ya better. Yer my sister, after all.”

My sister reached behind her and opened up a basket she’d loaded on the kayak. She brought provisions. She opened up a thermos and drank whatever was inside it. I was thirsty, and I almost reached for Cozy’s thermos, but then she pointed to another one next to me.

I opened up the thermos and I drank.

It was sweet. Like water. I always knew water was sweet. But one time a couple years back, I fell into the water while kayaking with Cozy in the bayou. And I got a taste of the mud in the icky bayou water. And the demon laughed at me.
And so for a while I thought water wasn't sweet anymore.

In the basket, next to where Cozy's thermos went, there were tea cakes too. Swiss rolls. Rolled up tightly, like my sister’s mane. There was a little plate of them, and I almost grabbed one at the same time as my sister, and we almost touched hooves—but we missed by about half a second.

We chewed at the same time. Held the cake in the same way.

Sis could barely bite through the soft cake, so she took tiny bites, and little crumbs fell out as she ate. And then the cake got stuck in her throat, but she still shoved more into her mouth. It was really good cake.

We did not talk, but it felt like a hundred thousand words were being spoken.

I leaned forward for a hug. To try to patch things up. And she sat there and stared at me for a minute, and then she washed her tears off with a splash of water and scooched towards me. I pulled my body close to hers, and it actually felt nice. She hadn’t cut her belly fur in a while. It was thick. And soft. Like a little foal’s fur.

I heard a quiet little whimper of happiness. I realized it was me.

I was so close to her body, that I saw the split ends in her mane.

My sister started wheezing.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked my sister.

“Mmm.”

She picked up the paddle (she was barely strong enough to lift it), and she steered us toward a tiny skylight in the ceiling of the cave.

The hole was too small for me to fit through. Barely 9 inches wide, if I had to guess. Only a pony as thin, tiny, and scrawny as my real sister would fit through.

“Yes,” she said, looking down at her body, and then up at the hole. “Yes yes yes, yes.” She faced me and smiled.

She’d been starving herself so that she’d be tiny enough to fit through the hole.

Fog from the outside was pouring into the cave.

With the last bit of strength she had left in her, my sister smiled, she flapped her wings,

And she flew into the light. And I watched her fly until her colors blended in with the fog.

And she was one with the mist. That great, big, blended mist up in the sky.

That’s when the air suddenly got real thick. First it was like breathing through water. Then a second later, it was like breathing through molasses. Then it was like tar.

"Sis? Sis?" I could barely whisper out. My muscles got so weak I couldn't hold the paddle up no more.

I gave up and let myself go faint. I closed my eyes and I felt my head fall back. It was about to hit the solid wood of the kayak real hard...

THUMP

...and I blacked out before the terrible blow in the back of my head could even start to hurt.

“Spur, are you okay?”

"Ugh...where am I?" I saw the plate of peach biscuits on the table, still uneaten. And that's how I knew I was back in the castle with Twilight.

My head didn’t hurt. The pain was in another world. I realized I was on my back. I stood back up. “Yeah. What hap—”

“I reversed the spell. I thought it couldn’t be done, but…by simply reciting the lines of the spell backward, while using a reflector shield to prismatically split the sun into six beams of light…it was analogous to the Elements of Harmony! And it freed you!”

Freed.

Twilight was bouncing on her hooves like some hyper kid in a candy store. “I mean, Spur, isn’t that incredible!?”

How free my sister must feel. In the sky mist. Flying, in the air, through the air, with the air.

She is the air now. Like a whiff of vanilla swiss roll cake.

I took a bite of the peach biscuits. They were just…odd. The peach flavor tasted artificial, the cookie dough was like cardboard, obviously factory made.

When I get back home, I’m gonna make a nice plate of peach biscuits. It can’t be that different from peach cobbler. Just tweak the dough to more of like a shortbread.

“How are they?” Twilight asked me.

“They taste like crap,” I joked. “Some time, you can come on down to the bayou, and I’ll make you some that’re a million times better. I promise ya."

“Okay.” Twilight giggled back. “Maybe someday. When we’re finally cured.”

“I’ll look forward to someday.” Any ol’ someday’s fine by me. Someday could be tomorrow. Or five years from now. That’s fine.

I like the ground I’m standin’ on. I’m not ready to fly yet.

Not forever, at least.

“Tell me, Spur, what happened?” Twilight helped herself to a biscuit and we sat down at the table in the library. “Tell me all about what happened when you started to get petrified. Did it hurt? What did you feel? I’ll take notes, and then tomorrow I’ll prepare the amulet.”

“Well, first, when the beam of light hit me…” We talked all night round that table. And as I was sittin’ I swear I could feel the seat rock.

Like we were floating on a kayak in the water.

Better

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Two summers later

Back home at the bayou, Ma, Pa, and I spent all morning digging two graves in our backyard, putting no bodies in them, and then filling them back up again with dirt.

The left grave was for my sister. The right grave was for Biscuit.

Biscuit’s mom is talking to us again. She said “Howdy” to us when she came to the funeral today. She came over to drop a few things of Biscuit’s into the empty grave: a picture of him at his dance recital, some of his buckball cards, and the old saddlebag he went to school with.

In Cozy’s empty and unmarked grave, Ma dropped some of Cozy’s orange hair curlers into the dirt. Ma asked me if I wanted to keep them.

“No, I don’t need it,” I whispered as soft as I could. I touched my head with my hoof. “She’s up here.”

We filled up the graves, and I fell to the ground and I cried. I cried a lot, okay?

I’m proud. I’m proud that I can still cry. For real. I’m gonna write it down in my diary. “Today, at Biscuit and Cozy’s funeral, I cried. I cried and I felt it.” And on the day I lose all the feeling in my heart, I’ll remember that time I cried for my dead best friends.

I wept over Biscuit’s grave—but my hoof felt the sharpness of a chipped-off piece of rock. And I didn’t push it away.

I was crying for Cozy, too.

Before that day, I had made a little wooden podium and a couple of wooden benches. I chopped the wood, sanded the boards, hammered it together, all by myself. Pa, Ma, Biscuit’s ma, and Twilight sat on the benches, and I stood at the podium and gave a eulogy of sorts. Twilight came alone. She requested no guards, no advisors, none of that. Twilight took off her crown and sat in the back row so that Ma and Pa could see, Biscuit’s ma smiled as she cried, Ma leaned on Pa's shoulder, and it was real nice.

I’d given a speech in Bitsbrugh of course, but I didn’t recycle that speech. I wrote a new speech.

You never think that you’re gonna kill somepony. You hear news about brothers killin’ each other, mothers killin’ their sons, husbands killin’ their wives, and you think, never me. That’ll never be me.

Until it happens to ya.

Biscuit was the only one who stood by me. We loved each other. But I liked to hurt him. I liked to hurt him bad. Why he accepted me for being that way, why he might’ve enjoyed it, I don’t know. Was it just the demon inside me that loved to do those things to him?

Then, did I really love him at all?

Did I really love Biscuit with my real heart?

I don't think so. 'Cause real love would never end in such a horrible way. Biscuit deserved real love. And now he’ll never get a chance, because of what I did.

What the demon did.

“But none of that matters right now.” I looked straight into Biscuit’s ma’s eyes as I said that. “Whether it’s a demon or not a’int the point. ‘Cause no demon can change or ease the pain that you’re sufferin’ right now.”

For a while, I’d tried to think about the times I was talkin’ to my real sister. The non-possessed version of her. I tried to catalog the times she was able to poke outta the stone prison that the demon was trappin’ her in. I thought about that dream where I kayaked with my sister. In the cave. And I tried to think if there was any times Cozy was like that filly in the cave.

And I racked my brain for many days, tryin’ to come up with a whole list of times I could talk about. I couldn’t come up with any good ones. Real ones, I guess. When she was only yea tall and hugged me and squeaked “I luv yu, Spur”, did she mean it? Or was it just the demon that took over Sis that was talking?

I don’t really know my real sister that well. I know the demon much better.

I wish I could’ve gotten to know my real sister. What kind of things did she like? What were her favorite toys? What was her favorite color? Some things about her are like the demon. I know she likes kayaking. I know she likes teacakes. She has courage, and a strong resolve. But other things…I don’t know. She had a kind heart. I think. But nopony ever got the chance to see somepony that was for sure the real her.

Whether it's real, or demon, or neither, one thing that I’m damn sure of is that: There were happy memories. And there were sad ones. And we should think about the happy memories, and not worry about where they might’ve come from.

And that’s the gist of what I said. And Ma, Pa, Biscuit’s ma, and Twilight listened to my every word, their eyes almost glazed over. Were there only four ponies? It felt like many more.

It felt like there were four more ponies listening to me than the hundreds of ponies in Bitsburgh that time.

And at the end of my speech, Biscuit’s Ma hugged me. She actually hugged me. “That was lovely, Spur. Thank you.”

“Gol—I mean, thank you, ma’am,” I said.

Can I tell y’all a secret?

I’m not cured.

I’m just better.

The demon’s still there in my head. It just a’int as bad anymore. I haven’t heard any voices for seven weeks and counting. Sometimes something triggers it, and it’ll come back for a day. But then it’ll go away quickly so I don’t worry about it no more.

I keep this a secret from everypony. It’s just…everypony gets so unsettled when you say you’re “better”. It’s outta sight, outta mind, but it’s still there. It’s always there.

It’s kinda like Bloofy. It’s been years an’ years since he last blew up into a giant tornado. Now he’s older, the most damage he’ll do is chase a ball of yarn round the top of the dresser and drop it on the floor. But he’s still physically capable of turning into a tornado. He still could. But he’s “better” though.

Everypony’s scared of the word “better.” Cause “better” means that it’s still there. Hangin’ in the corner of yer eye. Something so so tiny that you almost don’t notice.

But it could balloon up into something bigger and more horrible than you could ever imagine.

That scares a lotta folks. It don’t scare me. Maybe it’s just ‘cause I’m the one who knows it’s better. I’m the one who’s aware. I’m the one who’s in control. So isn’t that what I really wanted all this time?

But if I ever see you one day, don’t you get scared. If ya ever stop by our house down in the bayou, jus’ give us a knock! We always love us some guests. I’ll cook ya up a nice peach cobbler. You don’t have to eat the onion salad. And don’t ya worry, I’ve got Cozy the Evil Spirit under control.

Why’ve you ever gotta worry about what's goin’ on in other ponies' heads? First of all, is it any of your damn business? And second of all, when did somepony else's thoughts ever hurt ya? It’s only actions that hurt.

Words.

Slaps.

Stabs.

Fucks.

Can I tell y’all another secret?

Princess Twilight’s cured. You should see the four page special in the Canterlot Journal from just two months ago. It starts on the front, and ends right next to the quarter-page SaddleSuds dish soap advertisement. It’s such a nicely written article—I couldn’t have done it better myself. “Equestria saved from near anarchy, as Her Majesty Princess Twilight is cured from magical curse placed on Her by evil restless spirit of Cozy Glow.”

I’m telling ya, Princess Twilight is cured.

Biscuit’s ma and Twilight joined us in the house for brunch. It was barely noon, and the bugs were screeching. It was gonna be a hot one today.

I whipped up a batch of peach biscuits for us. I know, heating up the oven in the summer makes the whole house stinkin’ hot, but damn it, I just couldn’t wait till winter to bake some. I made it all from scratch. Ma doesn’t even have a recipe. I wrote up all the measurements myself. I took the sugar cookie dough that my sister used to really like, added a little more flour to make it crumblier, and mixed it in with finely chopped peaches in sugar. And since it’s summer now, I used fresh peaches, picked straight from our back garden. They’re sweeter this year.

Ma and Pa are kinda glad that I’ve decided to stay here in the bayou and take over the farm. Most fillies and colts my age end up goin' off to the big city like Canterlot or Manehattan to work in some fancy government job or an academic position. And then the farms in the bayou get abandoned and overgrown once their parents get too old. I always thought that was kinda sad.

“So you’re stayin’ here on the farm, huh?” Biscuit’s ma asked me as I pulled the baking sheet out of the oven.

I chuckled. “Well, yeah. After a whole year o’ hangin’ round Canterlot, I think I've had enough of the big city. But I guess I’m different than most ponies my age, I'm sure that Bisc—

“Bloofy…” I tried to fix my mistake.

“It’s okay,” Biscuit’s ma said. “Sometimes I forget too.”

After pausing for a while, I decided to say, “I like it when I forget.”

Biscuit’s ma smiled. “Me too.”

Ma’s changing out a lot of the old furniture. We don’t invite anypony over for Hearth’s Warming no more, so Ma changed out the large dining table for a smaller round table with four chairs. We brought the front porch rocking chair over for Twilight to sit. It was a tight squeeze.

‘Course, Ma and Pa were head over heels ecstatic to have the ruler of Equestria at our home. Think of the story they'll get to tell their neighbors on market day this comin' Wednesday.

“Well, Princess, it’s a mighty honor to have you here in our humble home! Won’t you have some more sweet tea?” Ma was sweatin’ an’ all nervous. She might’ve looked scared, but trust me, she couldn’t have been happier.

Finally, our house is now the talk of the town. The good kinda talk. ‘Cause Princess Twilight is a personal friend of ours. And she comes to visit our home.

Let’s see, Aunt Sumac bought us one of those new window-box air conditioners, imported from Manehattan. She’s retired and living off her savings, so I don’t know how the hay she afforded one. Uncle Banyan got us a brand new microwave oven with twelve power levels.

The same ponies who used to hate us now love us. It’s strange. Maybe they didn’t really hate us back then.

Or maybe they don’t really like us now.

In any case, they’re not welcome at our home for Hearth’s Warming no more.

Ma came back with another pitcher of ice cold sweet tea. Pa turned the knob on the air conditioner to the right, and it hummed a different note.

HRRMMMMHHH…

“Maybe you’d like a little extra cushion on that rockin’ chair, Princess?” Pa said.

Twilight raised her bare hoof. “Oh, don’t worry—”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all!” Ma cut in. “Spur, go get her that cushion that you and I sewed up yesterday. The nice one with the lilies on ‘em.”

I took glances back at Twilight as I ran upstairs to get the cushion. Her mouth was moving like she was chatting with Ma and Pa. Smiling.

Twilight's eyes were just a teeny little bloodshot. Very, very mildly. Nopony would notice it, except for me.

Down here at bayou, any princess comin’ to our town is an occasion. We don’t see much of the central government round here. I think, okay, I think, if all the Equestrian government were to fall, for some reason or another, we at the bayou will be livin’ just the same. Okay, maybe our mail will be late, but it’s late anyway. And the labor inspector won’t come by the sawmill every three months.

But the peach trees’ll still grow.

And I’ll take out my kayak on a cool Sunday mornin’.

But all that a’int relevant one bit, ‘cause like I’m tellin’ ya, Princess Twilight is cured. You know, they had a whole hootenanny of a parade up in Canterlot to celebrate. Did I tell ya they had real gold leaf confetti?

Princess Twilight's eyes were just dry, that's why they looked bloodshot.

I'm tellin' ya, the Princess is cured.

And I don’t mind that I’m not cured. ‘Cause there’s some things ‘bout the demon I like. Sometimes I get dreams about Biscuit. I kiss him and slap him to death, but not all the way to death so that I can do it again. And they’re dreams, so they don’t hurt no one, and Biscuit’s already dead so they never really come true. I just wake up all warm an’ fuzzy.

Upstairs in the attic is Ma’s sewing room. That’s where the chair cushion was. Ma’s taken on some sewing as a way to make extra Bits. She can make cushions, dresses, saddlebags, and even stuffed toys.

A lot of Cozy's stuff is stored in a chest, in the storage cabinet in the attic. You know, like the unfinished part where the roof slopes an' it gets real real low. It’s not the best way to keep stuff in this hot humid weather. I think there’s some spiderwebs and mold growing inside, but I haven’t opened the chest to look and check.

Ma and Pa only had one child.

Their other child was taken from them. When exactly, they don’t know. They don’t know when the demon came. Or when did it smother her brain enough to totally convert her from good to evil. Was it when she was a little infant in the crib? Babies are easier to smother I guess. Or maybe the demon was evil enough to wait till she was a little older?

So that there would be something to take away from her.

I got the cushion, went back down the attic stairs, gave the cushion to Ma, and Ma tied it to the back of the rocking chair, right at the curve in Twilight’s spine. “There. That should be much better now.”

“You were right,” Twilight said as she munched through my biscuits. “Your peach biscuits are so much better than storebought. You know, Spike and I still try to bake together whenever the both of us have time. Maybe you could share with us the recipe?”

“Oh, sure thing.”

She turned to Ma. “The quality of your peaches is most excellent. The castle’s suppliers in Appleloosa pale in comparison. Perhaps we could buy a small allotment of your harvest for our castle kitchens. We can offer you 80 Bits per carton.”

Pa’s eyes widened. “Why, that’s too generous of ya, Princess! We’d be honored to! And no need for you to pay, your patronage of our farm is more than enough fer us—”

“No, no, I insist. I’m just a pony after all. And I should pay you a fair price.”

"Well, in any case, it'd be an honor, Princess."

“No problem. Just my way of saying thank you. I enjoyed your company very much.”

Ma bowed and blushed a little. “Oh, why, that’s mighty kind of ya to say, Princess.”

“Not at all! I hope we can see more of each other in the future. Wanna be fr—”

The Princess stopped talking. All of a sudden.

Twilight was breathin’ heavy. But only I could hear ‘cause I knew to listen for it.

I never told ya this, but I feel a certain…kindred with Twilight.

As far as I’m concerned, Twilight’s part of the family.

Our family.

The Cozy family.

I may have lost a kid sister,

But I gained a big sister.

And we’re both better.

(You can be cured and still be better too. Remember what I told ya? Princess Twilight is—

The whole table was silent for a few minutes.

Then Twilight shook the film of sweat off her head. “I’m so sorry. It must be the bayou heat,” she lied. She was sitting right next to the air conditioner.

She’s cured.

I tried to hide the smirk creepin’ up my face.

“That would be wonderful, Princess,” Pa broke the awkward silence. “We can probably send ya a carton of peaches a week during the peak season.”

And then Twilight started chattin’ with Pa about the paperwork for the purchase order.

The demon took my sister. Little by little, it ate through every last morsel of her brain. Until there was nothin’ left to bury. Nothin’ but soulless gravel. And I don’t wanna be like her.

I wanna be the first pony that successfully lived with this demon. Not the first pony to be cured from it, nor the first pony to fight it away. But to live with it. To coexist with it. And to be the goodest pony I can be, living with it.

So then when it comes time for me to be buried, you can bet damn sure that it’ll still be me sittin’ at the bottom of the grave.

I actually sorta like that.

All this time, I’ve wanted to find the reason. The reason for me to live, as Cozy Glow’s sister.

So every day, I’ll wake up and I’ll try to straighten the curls in my mane.

And I’ll smile.

My Sister, Cozy Glow

by Mica

Hearth's Warming Eve dinner

Kayaking

Sleeping together

Demons

A city of pegasi

I'm Spur

Welcome to the family, sis

Back from the dead (APRIL FOOLS GAG CHAPTER)

Queasy feeling

Roadside shop killing

Half-confession

The One

What my sister felt

Kayaking, pt. 2

Better