> Letters to the Princess
>  by Shaslan
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Letters
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Cozy Glow, 

Our chess game was…rather fun, wouldn’t you say? A pity that I had to leave Canterlot before our second match. I feel quite sure I could have beaten you twice. Your overconfidence is a real weakness, you know. 

Let me know if you ever get a court case in the Crystal Empire; I’d adore a rematch. Maybe I could even help you learn a thing or two about the game. 

Sincerely, 
Princess Flurry Heart. 





Dear Princess Flurry,

If overconfidence is a weakness, you seem a little at risk of weakness yourself. Don’t be so sure that you’ll catch me off-guard next time. 

Another game sounds…great. It’s refreshing to meet a real challenger at last. There isn’t much call for Canterlot-trained lawyers up in the northern wastes, but…if you’re ever in town again, let me know?

I hope you will.

Kind regards
Love from
Yours sincerely

Cozy Glow





Cozy, 

I’m going to level with you — I was really pleased you wrote back. Really pleased. I wasn’t sure you would. Making friends doesn’t come easily to me. 

I’ll be in Canterlot again in three weeks. Prince Blueblood is trying to change the terms of our grain import agreement and somepony has to beat some sense into him. 

I want to see you again. How about that rematch? I might even be able to shake my guards for a couple of hours, if I take a roundabout route to the chess club.

Sincerely, 
Flurry. 





Dear Flurry Heart, 

I’m looking forward to it. I know a thing or two about giving guards the slip — I’ll lend you a hoof. 

Cozy Glow. 





Cozy,

I can’t wait. I’ll be done at the palace around four. We can meet by the lake in the gardens; with any luck my guards will think I’m going to stay there, and we can abscond. 



 

I’ll be there. 

—Cozy. 





To Cozy Glow,

I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I missed our game today. I didn’t mean to — stars know I was looking forward to it more than anything else on this blasted trip. 

Buck, I wanted to —
I wish I hadn’t 

I wish I could blame it all on Prince Blueblood — you must have met him often enough at the Canterlot high society things, so you’ll know full well what a horrible bore he can be — but I can’t lay all the fault at his hooves. I was getting somewhere in the negotiations, so I kept going. If I’d stopped pushing he would have buoyed himself back up into his usual self-righteous outrage by the next time we met. So I had to stay — even though I knew that you’d be waiting. 

This grain import deal; it’s really important for the Empire. Some years the Crystal Heart’s influence expands by a couple of meters and pushes the ice back — but some years it doesn’t. We just don’t have the land to grow everything we need. We’re reliant on Equestria. And little details like Blueblood’s new tariff can have a huge impact on the ponies back home. 

I really am sorry. I hope we can have another game some time soon?

Yours faithfully,
Flurry Heart. 





Flurry Heart, 

I waited there for hours. You made me feel like an idiot. It…it was idiotic of me. A second date with the Princess of the Crystal Empire? What was I thinking? As if somepony like me could ever be…friends with somepony like you. 





Dear Princess Flurry Heart,

I quite understand; I know full well how busy you must be as a member of the royal family. A chess game with a lowly lawyer can hardly be classed as important state business. 

I wish you all the best with your grain import treaty. 

Sincerely, 

Cozy Glow. 





Cozy —

Please, don’t let this — let’s not end it here. I do want to see you again. Not as state business, as my business. 

I’m sorry I didn’t come. Words can’t tell you how sorry I am. I’m — it’s like they’re just waiting for me to mess up. Everypony’s watching out for it, all the time. Watching me. 

That’s why I…that’s why I have to try so hard.  

It’s just that I have so many ponies depending on me all the time. And Mom always wants more — is your mother like that? Every time I adjust to the newest part of the load and find my feet again there’s another bit dumped on the top. 

Sometimes it’s enough to make me want to scream. 

Yours regretfully, 
Flurry.





Princess — 

You’re under pressure, are you? A nation watching you, counting on you. 

Well, imagine the world watching you. Waiting for you to screw up again. Knowing that you’re evil. Utterly certain that a villain is who you really are. 

Let’s not kid ourselves. What could a princess and a pony with my — with my history ever have in common? This was a stupid idea from the start. 

Cozy Glow.





Cozy — 

I know you got my last letter. I know because I wrote to Raven Inkwell and had her check with the Postmaster General at the Canterlot mailing office, and she checked with the mailpony who delivers your post. 

Come on. You’re making me feel like a stalker, here. We had…a connection. Give me another chance. I won’t mess up again. 

Yours hopefully, 
Flurry Heart. 





Oh, well I am Flim, and he is Flam
And we’re Canterlot’s finest musical telegram
We’re here to tell you: “How sorry I am!”

Excuse the Princess sock puppet, 
And my brother’s hoof up it,
Not to mention that dangling button eye
You said you’d fix that, Flim!
Well, I said I’d at least try —

Princess Flurry Heart didn’t mean it
She gave us thirty gold bits to help you see it,
So forgive her — “Oh please forgive me!”
Forgive her — “I’m Sock-Princess Flurry!”

And of course, remember this isn’t spam
It’s a fantastical, funtastasical, unbelievable, 
Canterlot Singing Telegram 
Brought to you by Flim, and Flam!





To Miss Cozy Glow — 

You are formally invited to attend the Crystal Faire as a personal guest of Her Serene Highness, Princess Flurry Heart of the Crystal Empire.

Attendance is not optional. 





Flurry — 

For stars’ sake, don’t you think sending the invite with an armed escort was a little much? You win — I’ll see you next week. 

Cozy.
> Chapter 2: Nerves
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cozy Glow’s heart drummed a staccato rhythm that kept tempo with the rumble of the sleepers beneath the train. The invitation in her saddlebag seemed almost to burn with a tangible heat. It was bizarre. As brutally worded as if it were from a dictator — somepony like Empress Cozy Glow, had her rule lasted longer than a few hours — and without any of the flowery softness that Cozy expected a princess to veil her meaning in. They were all so…so sickeningly good. Friendship, love, sunshine, starlight — blah blah blah. 

But Flurry Heart…she was different. 

Or — Cozy had thought she was different. That first game in the grandmasters’ clubroom, with the fire crackling beside them, sending strange shadows flickering over Flurry’s smooth pink fur. The electrifying  thunk of pieces on the chessboard. The thrill of actually being bested in a game. Of having to actually think how to take down her opponent, instead of the solution being as obvious as the muzzle on her face.

It had all seemed so…so real. So much realer than Cozy had expected, when she first agreed to the match. A couple of hours with royalty, to see the precious niece of Twilight Sparkle up close and personal. Cozy had fully anticipated being able to judge Flurry as false and arbitrarily cruel as all the other princesses were.

She had been shocked when that was not the case. And so when Flurry had written to her, she had responded. When Flurry had asked for a rematch, she had agreed — she had been eager for it. When she looked at Flurry, she had seen an equal. Somepony who understood what it was like to always be the cleverest pony in the room. Who was used to being scrutinised and stared at and treated like a freak. 

She had thought she had found a kindred spirit at last. 

Those were the thoughts that were swirling round her head the day she waited by the lake in the gardens of Canterlot Palace. Far too close to the primary residence of Twilight Sparkle, her erstwhile jailor, arch-nemesis and the last pony on Equus she wanted to meet — but she had been willing to take the risk, to meet Flurry again. 

Excitement, dread, fear, and hunger swirled in her belly in equal mixture, and she alternated between wanting laugh in excitement or to hurt something. Extremes of emotion were not good for her — Doctor Healing Word was insistent on the importance of calm for someone with Cozy Glow’s condition — but at that moment she didn’t care. She just wanted to see Flurry Heart again. To match wits with her, to spar with her. To gain points and lose them in the subtle, deadly combat of their conversation. 

Her pulse thudded in her temples and in her throat as she paced the path beside the lake, again and again, in an agony of suspense. But she kept pacing, and kept pacing…and still Flurry Heart did not appear. 

She tried to make excuses — it was a big lake, after all, or perhaps Flurry was still trying to give her guards the slip — but the sun dipped lower in the sky, and still the Princess did not come. 

Cozy Glow’s pacing faltered and slowed until finally she simply sat at the water’s edge, staring blankly across it.

When finally the sun began to shimmer with the magic that meant Princess Twilight Sparkle had it in her grasp, Cozy Glow knew that it was time to go. Princess Twilight was out and about — she could be in the gardens right now — and at that moment a chance meeting with her was something Cozy would rather die than endure.

She fled, and all the half-imagined hopes and wishes had splintered into nothingness as she went. 

For weeks, she had brooded on it. Examined it from every possible angle, like it was a piece of casework. Taken it down piece by piece and built it back up again in her mind.

Torn up half a dozen furious letters to the princess and dodged as many of her royal admirer’s emissaries as she possibly could. 

But now she was back. Doing it all over again — in the exact same position, all nerves and fear and that persistent urge to kick somepony — rattling along on the train to the Crystal Empire. A lump rose in her throat. Why was she doing this again? Why was she putting herself through it for the second time? It — it wouldn’t end any differently. It couldn’t. There was no way somepony like Flurry would be interested in a pony like her — somepony with such beauty, such power, and such immunity to what other ponies thought — in short, a Princess. With all the connotations that word carried. There was no explanation for Flurry’s behaviour. Her persistence. It could all only be some sort of sick joke. 

What waited for Cozy at the other end of this train line? A hopeful smile and two soft blue eyes — or a court full of nobles ready to laugh at their monarch’s vicious joke? 

What was she, after all? Cozy Glow, the biggest pariah in Canterlot. A joke. A pony whom no one had ever quite believed was reformed. A two-bit lawyer — the best in Canterlot, sure, but a trained sheep could be better than those mulish idiots in the city. Cozy spent her days doing work she could have done in her sleep; divorces and litigation and corporate mergers. Wasting her abilities away. She was a chess player, a grandmaster — whom none of the other masters would play against any more. They didn’t like to lose. A champion with no opponents. A nonentity. 

A…a failure.

There it was again. That word. The one she always came back to, no matter how high she climbed or how much progress she made with Doctor Healing Word. The one that had echoed in her mind even when she drained the magic from the world. Even when she drank in enough magical power to bend the whole universe to her will. 

Failure. 

It dogged her hoofsteps and haunted her dreams. All it took was one little wobble — one little shake — 

— And Cozy was right back in her parents’ study, thousands of magical treatises and scrolls stacked high against the walls, watching them both glare down at her, their horns alight with the glow of their magic. 

“What a pity,” said her father, narrowing his eyes, red like her own. “Not a drop of magic in you.”

“I had hoped for something,” her mother remarked, looking at the foal as though it were a slug that had crawled in from the garden. “Despite the…well. Those.” She gestured languidly at Cozy Glow’s small, stubby wings. 

Her father snorted. “Quite. They say blood will out — and you and I, sweet one, hail from two of the most powerful magical bloodlines in all of Equestria. But you would hardly know this one was our child at all.”

Cozy Glow’s pupils contracted as she looked from one to the other, her skin drawn tightly over her thin little face. “I’ve — I’ve been trying,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. “Sometimes I almost think I can feel it—”

“—Quiet, now,” her father rebuked her. “Good foals should be seen and not heard, remember.”

Her mother was already turning away. “I think it’s been a waste. There’s no point having the tutors come any more. We’re just throwing good money after bad.”

The foal ducked her head, blue ringlets falling over her eyes.

“Our child was meant to go to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.” The disgust in her father’s tone was evident. “Not…flitter around like a bird.” He shot her a glance, and spoke to the nursemaid. “Take her back to her chambers.”

Cozy Glow wanted to scream. To cry and beg — to smash the delicate glass vials and the thalamic crystals until they listened — but it never did any good. 

“Don’t worry,” her mother answered. “We’ll just try again. Two hundred years of deliberate marriages and good breeding practices don’t end here. What are the odds we would get a second  pegasus?”

Her father guffawed, and something inside Cozy Glow, some last little thread, frayed and finally snapped. 

Everything had started there. The fire, the screams, the smell of burning flesh — how good it had all felt. How free it had made her. Then the search for some way — some chance of draining the hated magic from the world. 

A way to make certain that nopony could ever make her feel like that again.

All to escape her greatest and first fear. Failure. 

What if this would just be another? And…how could it be anything else? Flurry Heart was an alicorn. A living embodiment of magic. How could she ever care about a…a pegasus? No — not just a pegasus. Care about somepony as fundamentally broken as Cozy knew that she was. 

But…the image of Flurry’s sweet blue eyes kept coming back to her. The way her devious smile could change her whole face into something like Cozy’s own. The things she had said. The way she had played, only half her attention on the board, the other half focused on Cozy herself. The way she had smiled when she knocked down Cozy’s solar princess piece. 

What if this time, it really was different? 

Hope was a persistent little bastard. Despite Cozy’s best efforts, it simply refused to die. She couldn’t help it; she hoped — or she wanted to hope — that it could be different. The thought of it was unshakeable, and it was that little nagging thought had gotten her onto the Crystal Express. 

The train whistle sounded, and the engine groaned. The view of the snow outside Cozy’s window abruptly ceased and became green and vibrant again. The train was pulling into the station — 

— And there, on the platform, flanked by guards in shining silver armour, was a familiar pink-and-blue head of curls, and a hopeful, nervous smile.
> Chapter 3: Interference
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I just…I don’t understand it. I don’t understand her.”

Flurry Heart did her best to ignore the anguished whispers from the far end of the table, and kept her gaze fixed firmly on her book. It didn’t matter that she had read the same paragraph on the Neighmann Hypothesis three times over without really taking any of it in. Anything was better than looking up right now. 

“Come on, Cadie,” Shining Armour murmured. “She just needs her space, that’s all.” It was the sixth or seventh time he’d said it, but to his credit, there was still as much love in his tone as before. 

Flurry Heart grimaced involuntarily, and then hastily schooled her face into a more neutral expression of concentration. If her parents figured out she was listening there would be hell to pay — hell in this case being another endless conversation about her emotions. Hopefully she was just distant enough that they wouldn’t be able to make out her features clearly. The formal dining hall was vast, and the crystal table stretched seemingly endlessly down the cavernous room. On a feast day, it could hold nearly two hundred ponies. Today it held only three, and Flurry Heart, pleading a period of intense study, had placed herself carefully at the farthest end. Cadence and Shining Armour were mere pinpricks of colour at the opposite end of the room. A normal pony wouldn’t have been able to hear their whispered conversation.

Unfortunately for Flurry Heart, alicorn hearing was exceptionally good.

“But it isn’t right,” Cadence insisted. “I’m her mother! She should share these things with me. On top of that, I’m the alicorn of love! I am quite literally the embodiment of romance. Why wouldn’t she ask my advice?”

“Cadie, be reasonable—” began Shining, but he was cut short. 

“—Shining, what if she doesn’t trust me? What if she doesn’t trust either of us?” There was a tone of dawning horror in Cadence’s voice. “What if that’s the reason she won’t tell us? Oh, Celestia, have we failed as parents?”

“Of course we haven’t!” Shining’s rebuttal was just a little too loud, and Cadence hastily shushed him.

“Shhhh, she’ll hear us!”

“Sorry,” he whispered, suitably abashed. 

Cadence fidgeted, the fabric of her dress rustling audibly. Flurry didn’t look up, but she knew that her mother would be twisting her hooves over one another in that classic I have a difficult daughter ritual that had become so common in recent years. “Though maybe that would be best. If she heard us, we could just have it out. Get it all out in the open. D’you think that would be emotionally healthier?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” For the first time, a touch of weariness tinged Shining’s voice. “Are you sure about all this?”

Cadence’s tone became aggrieved. “I know what I feel, Shining. I know what everypony feels. And Flurry — our sweet, lonely little Flurry, who has never shown any interest in anypony, mare or stallion or anycreature in between — who I thought must be aromantic or just…addicted to being alone — she’s in love. And you expect me to just…back off? Not ask her about it? You must be out of your mind!” The dress rustled again as she leaned forward to tap a hoof on the table. “No, Shining, trust me. Flurry needs my help. She needs us to be there for her.”

Flurry felt her cheeks flaming, and clenched her eyes shut for a second before glaring furiously at her book again. 

The use of aromatic plants for ectoparasite treatment is a field of growing interest. Several species of birds regularly introduce aromatic herbs into their nests putatively to —

“I really think we should just let her work things out by herself,” Shining insisted. “If she needed us, she’d ask. She knows we love her and we’re always here.”

— reduce parasites. The behaviour is most often seen in cavity nesting birds and after nest building has finished. The Greater Crystal Grebe is often observed to—

“But does she know?” said Cadence plaintively, and Flurry Heart’s right eyelid began to twitch. 

— observed to decorate its nest with snow-sage. For decades this was thought by Equestrian orthinologists to be for aesthetic purposes, a part of the Greater Crystal Grebe’s elaborate mating rituals, but more recent Crystal Empire studies have suggested that the practice actually serves a medicinal purpose. The implications of this, of course, are manifold —

“She used to tell me everything,” Cadence lamented. “She used to toddle up to me whenever she saw me, and tell me that the yellow block was her favourite, or that she liked the swings best out of everything in the playground. And she even told me difficult things — remember when she ate ten of Pinkie’s greenglo cookies and was so sick that the guards thought they’d found evidence of another changeling invasion?”

Flurry Heart’s eyes skimmed unseeingly over the text while her right eyelid twitched to a rhythm so fast she could have danced the salsa to it. 

The memory earned her mother a chuckle from Shining Armour. “Yeah, I remember. And what about the time she had to go potty and couldn’t find the bathroom, so she used a potted plant—”

“—And told Nanny it was a cat!” Cadence laughed. “You see what I mean? She shared everything with us. Even the difficult parts. But now, when she’s feeling so…so strongly for someone, and I don’t even know the species of the creature that will be our child-in-law…”

Oh, for Celestia’s sake. Flurry Heart’s hoof came down on her page a little harder than she meant it to, and she shut her head and shook her eyes. It was time to get out of here. Even Neighmann couldn’t distract her from this; and besides, bird courtship rituals didn’t feel like a great topic right now either.

She didn’t want to think about it. Any of it. It was all so…so new, so weird. And if she thought of all that, Celestia only knew what kind of spike in her emotional state it would cause. Cadence would be all over it like a…a fly on a dungheap. 

The analogy felt ungenerous, and while Flurry didn’t want to be…churlish, there didn’t exactly seem to be much alternative at times like these. Cadence had jumped down her throat about relationships and love every time their paths had crossed for the past week, and Flurry had been forced to conclude that the only option was to ensure that their paths crossed as little as possible. 

At the far end of the room, Cadence was still lamenting the loss of her daughter’s foalhood. “What went wrong, Shining? What did we do wrong?”

Air puffed out from Flurry’s nostrils, just a little too hard, and she carefully shut her book. No sudden movements. It was time to make a move. Her plate was still full, but hopefully her parents were too far away to make it out. Who knew, they might even be wrapped up enough in their conversation and their parental desperation to not notice her sneaking out. 

Silently, Flurry slipped down from her chair and turned towards the double doors behind her. She rotated her ears backward, listening for any change, and then froze.

The hall was suddenly completely silent. 

“Flurry, are you going already?” Shining’s voice was suddenly shockingly loud in the gigantic hall, and there was a note of forced joviality there that only added to the hollow, echoing feel of it all. 

She had been caught. 

There was a pause, and Flurry slowly, reluctantly turned back. 

“Don’t you want pudding?” Cadence’s tone was as brittle as her husband’s, and Flurry felt an abrupt pang of guilt. They…they were overbearing, but they only wanted the best for her, after all. They evidently didn’t care who it was, or even what it was — clearly they were more desperate on her behalf than she had felt even at her lowest — they just wanted to know.

But then Flurry looked at her mother’s eager, hungry smile, visible even from the far end of the hall, and steeled herself. No. Cadence didn’t need to know who exactly was on that train from Canterlot. That was Flurry’s business. Just because her mother could spy on all of her emotions didn’t mean that she was entitled to be told all of her thoughts. 

“No,” she said aloud, fully aware that she was turning down far more than dessert. “I’m not really hungry today, Mom.”

“Chef will be disappointed,” Cadence answered, weakly. She knew when she was beaten. “Gorpone Ramsay sent the nougat recipe over to him specially.”

“Maybe you could save it for this evening?” Flurry was already backing away, forming the beginnings of a spell in her mind’s eye. She wouldn’t be back in time for dinner — possibly not even for breakfast tomorrow — but they didn’t need to know that, either.

“I will.” Half-rising from her chair, Cadence reached a hoof after her errant daughter. “Sweetie, are you sure that I can’t—?”

Sensing that a helping hoof was about to be offered and the forbidden topic openly broached, Flurry swung into action. “—No, that’s okay, Mom! Sorry, I gotta go—!” Before the sentence was even finished she released the teleportation spell and the familiar crack of displaced air punctuated her exit for her. 





Her favourite guards flanking her — the ones that she siphoned off some of her allowance to in return for a solemn oath not to answer any of her parents’ subtle probing — Flurry waited on the platform, running an anxious hoof over her mane one last time. 

Would she be here? Had she come? Or would all of this; the hope and the waiting and the avoidance — would it all have been for nothing? 

No. She had to trust in her. The pony on the train. Flurry had to believe in her -- believe in something, or what was the point of any of this?

She would be here. She had to be.

A familiar toot sounded, rousing Flurry from her thoughts, and she looked up just in time to see the train pulling into the station. Her heart seemed to thump at a million miles a minute as she strained forward to see, her eyes flickering over each train window in turn as she searched for that one particular face —

— And then, suddenly, she found what she was looking for, and Flurry’s face split into an involuntary, infectious smile. 

The carriage doors opened, and one by one, the passengers disembarked. And Flurry Heart, Princess of the Crystal Empire, daughter of the Empress and the High Prince, the champion of champions and the vanquisher of evil, the fifth-most powerful being in existence, waited, her heart beating quicker than a schoolfilly’s and the silliest of grins spreading over her regal countenance. Ready to speak the most inconsequential and the most important words she would ever utter.

“Hey! I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”
> Chapter 4: Second Date
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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

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

Just all the rest of them. 

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

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

That smile made Cozy’s heart do backflips. 

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a pause while they both examined the damage. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Flurry was already gone. 



 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

Not with Flurry. 

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

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

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

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

No.

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

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

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

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

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

A few more precious minutes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, sweetheart! You poor little lamb.”

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

“I…I…they’re gone, mister.”

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

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

“Mmhm. Yeah. I’m…I’m all on my own.”

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

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

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

Their blood had been as red as her eyes. 

“Cozy?” 

She looked up sharply. 

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

You poor little lamb.

“Don’t you want to hold one?”

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

“I promise she won’t bite!”

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

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

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





“Princess!” The call came again, insistent.  

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

Compressing her lips, Flurry gave him a tight nod. 

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

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

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

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

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

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





“Here it is. The Crystal Heart.”

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

“Does it do that for everyone?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

“Is this the end, then?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cozy Glow. 

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

But she loved her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A break?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like I said, Princess Cadence.”

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

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

But Cozy Glow did none of those things. 

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

“Because I don’t want to.”

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

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

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

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

Light as a dandelion seed, she floated out of Flurry Heart’s life.
> Chapter 5: Epistolary Evidence
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Excerpt 14990 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Princess Twilight Sparkle to Rarity, early 1025 CE. 

Rarity!

You’ll never guess what Spike and I have found! We’ve been finishing our cataloguing of the palace library vaults — poor Spike has had to transition to a nocturnal schedule to match the only free time I seem to have — and anyway, Vault 128 was where we found it. Just lying on a shelf, like it was rubbish! 

It’s an unpublished treatise on the life of Clover the Clever, written by a contemporary source and —this is the bit you’ll love — there’s a chapter on fashion in the High Celestial era! There are some sketches, and even to my eye the clothes look beautiful. I’m so excited to see what you think of them! 

Can you come to Canterlot on Friday? Well, I know you can. I already checked your schedule with Coco Pommel and she says you’re scheduled to look at the new spring collection in the afternoon. So I’ve cleared my schedule for the evening — not without difficulty! — and I thought we could spend some time looking at the drawings together. Maybe you’ll even find something there to inspire your summer collection. 

Books and fashion — could there be a better recipe for a date?

From your faithful friend (or should I stop saying friend, now? I’m so used to signing our letters that way it’s hard to stop!)
Twilight Sparkle

P.S. Sweetie Belle popped into the palace to say hi yesterday, and she sends her love! You’ll also probably get it in her letter to you, as well. I told her you’re always complaining of her neglect. She said it was — and I quote — ‘the usual Rarity dramatics’ — but I told her that it was a royal command that she write to you more. Studying at the Royal Conservatory of Voice and Woodwind is no excuse for slovenly correspondence, right? So hopefully you’ll see some results on that front. Never let it be said that Princess Twilight Sparkle doesn’t look out for her marefriend’s interests. 





Excerpt from All She Had to Give: The Unauthorised Tell-All Biography of Lady Rarity, Element of Generosity, published in Canterlot by Shimmersong Press, 1040 CE.

“Please, Cozy.” Rarity’s voice trembled, and her shimmering blue eyes filled with compassionate tears. “Put the crystal down.”

The filly stared back at her, red eyes wide and pupils dilated, her gaze blank. The energy crystal she held in both hooves trembled, but only slightly. 

“Please,” whispered Rarity. “I only want to talk.”

The villain Cozy Glow took a half-step backward, her hoof skittering without purchase against the mound of rubble and broken marble on which she stood. She sucked in a breath and righted herself, and then shut her eyes for a moment. 

Without those hellish red eyes gazing back at her, the monster vanished, and for a second Rarity could see only a frightened little foal. But then Cozy released the breath she held, and the gleaming red orbs of her irises stared out again at the beautiful Rarity. 

“Why should I?” she asked, and her voice was utterly empty. Devoid of emotion; more like a ghost than a child. 

Rarity waited until she had eye contact, and then smiled a small, tremulous smile. “Because I want to help you, darling. I just want to help.”

**

These lines are just an imagining of the way that fateful day in the bank might have played out, but one thing is for certain. It was pure luck that Lady Rarity was there that afternoon, and pure luck that the hardened child criminal Cozy Glow happened to listen to her. It is all but certain that she would have simply killed anyone else. And, this author asks, what might have become of Equestria if Lady Rarity had not intervened? Might we not all now be bowing down before the throne of Empress Cozy Glow?





Excerpt 23001 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Journal entry by Cozy Glow during her internment in the dungeons of Canterlot Palace, 1020 CE. 

A journal. A feelings journal. Can you imagine anything more inane? Anything soppier, more useless, more Twilight Sparkle?

Well, alright, Princess. You asked for it. You gave me a journal, and here are my feelings. 

I hate you. 

I hate you so much I could scream with it. I hate you hotter than fire, colder than ice, I hate you so much that I think I hate you even more than my parents — and if you had ever met them you would know how much hate for you I must have boiling in my veins for that to even be possible.

I loathe you no matter which of my prisons I am in. The one with the bars and the locked door where I pace around and around, or the vault with Tirek and Chrysalis where I cannot move at all. 

Every time you catch me, every time you give up and light your horn to freeze me anew, every time I look into your big purple eyes like floating pools of purple shit, I hate you more. Every time I think surely, surely I have reached the point of maximum saturation, that there can be no more hate my body can hold, you do something new that proves me wrong. 

Every time I hear that fizz of magic when you come down to my basement and break the stone shell again, my eyes open a little slower. Every time, the granite takes a little longer to crack. My limbs are a little stiffer, my hooves a little heavier. Like the stone is permeating deeper and deeper, and one day not even you will be able to unfreeze me. 

And every time, you flinch away when you look into my eyes. Just like my parents did, the first time they looked into those big red blobs. The colour of blood, they used to tell me. The colour of sin. Of failure. Of no magic. 

What is it with ponies and red? 

And then you open with whatever banality you spent the past god-knows-how-many months cooking up, the latest magic solution to cure my big bad evilness, and it all begins all over again. Another day. Another night. Who can tell how much time has passed, down in the vaults beneath Canterlot Castle? The only pony I see is you, and you never age. 

I mean, don’t get me wrong. You’re sloppy and you’re stupid, and no matter how much you tighten your security system there’s always some hole left ripe for exploitation by an enterprising little foal with a burning hatred for your company and boundless time on her hooves. So yeah, I’ve escaped plenty of times. And the world outside changes, so I know time is passing. Every time the streets of Canterlot are a little less familiar to me. 

But your tracker spell is the one thing I’ve never managed to rid myself of, and so it’s only ever a matter of time before you show up with that miserable look on your face and freeze me again. 

I fucking hate you, Twilight Sparkle. If emotions could kill — if hate was as powerful as your shitty friendship laser — you’d be dead thirty thousand times over. I wish Chrysalis and Tirek and I had a magical death rainbow like you. I wish I’d stabbed myself in the throat before I let myself get captured. I wish you’d just put me out of my misery and kill me, instead of keeping me lingering in this shitty half-life purgatory.  I wish a lot of things. 

So there you go, Twilight, bestie, princess-turned-therapist. There’s a lot of feelings for you to read over and try to figure out. Enjoy this first entry in Cozy Glow’s feelings journal, because there will never be another. I know exactly what’s going to happen next. I’m going to pass you this book, and you’re going to dash right off to your library to read and annotate and sweat about it. And by the time you’re back, I’ll be gone. That’s right, Twilight, I cracked it again. Turns out even the most sophisticated spell matrix isn’t much good if you only slap it over the door, and not the sewage pipe. Golly, who would have guessed?

Ta-ta now. 





Excerpt from the Canterlot Courier, CHAOS IN CANTERLOT: COZY GLOW ESCAPES AND HERO BEARER RARITY SAVES THE DAY, Friday 18th March, 1025 CE.

Citizens visiting the Canterlot Building Society this morning were in for the shock of their lives when faced with the dastardly villain Cozy Glow, who has once again slipped the bonds of her captivity and burst out into the streets of our fair capitol. 

Wielding a magical gemfire crystal stolen from the Royal Armouries, the pint-sized murderer burst into the Canterlot Building Society, firing wildly with her stolen weapon. She lost no time in terrorising the bank tellers and their customers, all unarmed innocents, and even the Building Society’s dedicated security mare was not enough to stop her. Less than ten minutes after entering the building, Cozy Glow had fifteen hostages and was overseeing the emptying of the vault full of golden bits into her saddlebags. 

As concerned passersby watched the flashes of gemfire through the windows, alarm grew. The Royal Guard were summoned, and, of course, the word spread. Our very own Fresh Scoop was first on the scene.

Captain Whitehoof stated that she had: “No comment, Scoop, let me do my damn job.” 

But Private Little Vineyard had another tale to tell. “This is the second time this year. This b****y maniac needs to be locked up for good and the key thrown away. Princess Twilight is keen on rehabbing them but some villains are just bad to the bone.”

You heard it here first, readers. Cozy Glow: bad to the bone, the official view of the Royal Guards.

But the terror was not yet over for those inside. When the brave Captain Whitehoof led a charge toward the doors, the reprehensible filly put the gun to the head of local resident Ol’ Timbo, who had been visiting the Building Society to withdraw his weekly pension. After she threatened to murder the ninety-six-year-old Mr. Ol’ Timbo in cold blood, Captain Whitehoof had no choice but to back off. 

“Blood-chillin’ it were,” the brave Mr. Timbo told our reporter Fresh Scoop. “This sweet lil’ filly, younger than me great-granddaughter, all cutesy and tiny — she puts a gun to me head and says you’d better back off, or golly, I think me hoof might just slip and his brains would make a big mess on the floor. Blood-chillin’ to hear a child talkin’ like that, it were. I’ve had a long life and it’ll be no surprise to me when my time comes, Celestia knows, but even so, all I could think were I don’t want to meet me end just yet, not like this. And thank Princess Luna I didn’t that’s all I can say, because it were a gosh-darned close call.”

The situation was growing more dire. The guards were facing off with a megalomaniac, and she had innocent ponies at her mercy. Onlookers began to fear the worst. Witnesses say that Captain Whitehoof sent messengers to the palace calling the Elements of Harmony to assemble, ready to re-imprison Cozy Glow in stone. But as luck would have it, the impasse ended when one of Equestria’s greatest heroes happened upon the scene herself. 

Hope dawned, and hope had a glorious purple mane and its name was Lady Rarity.

The Bearers of the Elements of Generosity was en route for a luxurious meal at Chez Magnifique with her dear friend Princess Twilight Sparkle, but when she saw the emergency unfolding, she lost no time in taking the reins. 

With no regard for her own safety, the heroic Lady Rarity burst through the double doors of the bank, ready to tackle the vile Cozy Glow with no weapon but her own hooves. 

“I definitely feared the worst,” said eyewitness Donut Joe. “I mean, we all did. Lady Rarity going in there alone and facing down that awful little sh*t? We thought Cozy Glow might kill her, and then where would we all be? Equestria would be down the pan without the Elements.”

Imagine the surprise of humble Mr. Donut, then, when the doors opened to reveal all fifteen of the hostages — every one unharmed. Lady Rarity had sacrificed herself to save them all. She had traded herself in to the villainous child in order to save the people of Canterlot. 

A Code Rainbow was announced, and the city went into lockdown. Civilians were ordered to take shelter at home, and it was only through raw courage and a cunning disguise as a trash can that Fresh Scoop was able to remain on the scene. 

Before long Princess Twilight Sparkle and the other Bearers arrived — Lady Fluttershy, Lady Rainbow Dash, Lady Applejack and Lady Pinkie Pie. They carried with them the Elements, but without Lady Rarity there to wield the sixth no action could be taken. 

What followed was a tense seventy-minute standoff between the heroes of Equestria and the scoundrel Cozy Glow. From his vantage point in a nearby bin Fresh Scoop’s keen ears struggled to make out what was being said, but he observed Princess Twilight Sparkle pacing back and forth, growing more and more agitated. His own fear grew in direct proportion — something that can frighten an alicorn must be enough to terrify the rest of Equestria. What must Poor Lady Rarity have experienced in there? What terrible battle must have elapsed?

Until the fair unicorn chooses to break her silence, we may never know, but one thing is certain. 

Before the seventieth minute since Lady Rarity’s entrance had elapsed, she emerged from the Canterlot Building Society. In her magic, she carried the gemfire crystal, wrested from Cozy Glow in the course of their fight. But remarkably, she was unharmed, her white fur unblemished. And more shockingly still, beside her, without chains or restraints, walked the demon foal, the creature of nightmares, the murderer Cozy Glow. 

A few words were exchanged with the Princess, with the guards, and then, after the discussion ended, Lady Rarity simply walked away, the deadly child padding at her side as tame as any dog. 

What feats of magic or persuasion must Lady Rarity be capable of, to master this creature? Lady Fluttershy may have faced down dragons, but between the two of them, the Canterlot Courier would place its bits on Lady Rarity to vanquish the more dangerous beast. 

Fresh Scoop unfortunately became stuck in the trash can that had so recently sheltered him, and lost the trail, but reports suggest that Lady Rarity boarded a train with Cozy Glow and travelled north to destinations unknown. Where are they going? What comes next for this ill-matched pair when they reach their destination? And most importantly of all, what happened in the Canterlot Building Society?

Rest assured, the Canterlot Courier will be the first newspaper to get the scoop. Read the full interviews with eyewitnesses Ol’ Timbo and Donut Joe on page six.





From the private records of Lady Rarity, entitled Letter 3 from Cozy Glow, roughly 1025 CE.
 

To Rarity,

Doctor Healing Word says writing out my feelings will…help, somehow. But I can’t even look at a journal without being eleven again, back in that dungeon beneath Canterlot castle. Write down your feelings, Cozy Glow, she says, lavender and pink and sugary goodness. Write down your feelings and we can talk about them. Conversation is the first step to friendship. 

If there’s one thing Twilight Sparkle taught me, it’s that friendship does not come easily to a prisoner and her jailor. 

But then again, for me, friendship does not come at all. 

So — journals are a no. I’m sure you understand. But I suppose a letter to you couldn’t hurt. It’s not like you don’t know all this anyway. I’m pretty sure the doc tells you everything I say in there. You’re the one signing his cheques, so it makes sense. 

I don’t hate therapy. Therapy is safe. I understand it. The doc is there to listen, and he’s paid to do it. There’s no false expectations, no ambiguity. We all get something out of it. He’s not pretending to listen, with some bizarre ulterior motive behind the kindness. 

Not like her. 

She only wanted me to reform so I would fit in her round hole, smooth out my awkward square edges. My sharp bits and my inconvenient parts. Just like my parents, really. Mashing a pegasus-shaped block at the unicorn-shaped hole, over and over and over, just in case it would fit this time around. 

So my feelings. My feelings, generally, are shit. I feel like shit, I make others feel like shit. Or when I’m not feeling like shit, I’m feeling empty. There’s bad and there’s less bad. That’s all. When I hit things, when I cut things, I feel less empty, less shit. I miss cutting things. Would it be so bad, to let me have a knife? I wouldn’t use it on you. I pinkie promise. 

Maybe on the doc. Maybe. Next time he asks me to share my nonexistent feelings and wants me to elaborate on shit or empty, whichever one of the two it is. 

But probably not. He wouldn’t come again if I did, no matter how much you paid him, and who then would I be able to try and push to their limit. You’re no fun to do that with, you see. When I say something crass or cruel, you don’t look frightened or shocked. You just look…sad. And that doesn’t make me feel less empty. Doesn’t make me laugh. Just pushes me all the way back down into the deepest recesses of shit. 

So I guess I won’t cut anypony, anymore. Out of the two ponies here in this mountain wasteland, there’s nopony I find expendable.

What does that say about me now? Am I changing, the way you say I am? 

Every day you shine a little brighter, darling. 

I suppose I certainly never found anypony not expendable, before. 





Excerpt 16453 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Lady Rarity to Princess Twilight Sparkle, late 1025 CE. 

Hello, Twilight, darling.

First of all, before anything else, I want to thank you for your patience. It can’t have been easy, the last few months. You’ve been so marvellously patient. If I had been in your horseshoes — waiting for you with no clear end in sight for a reason I didn’t quite understand — I would have been half mad with anxiety by now. 

But then again, patience has never been my strong suit.  Do you recall when you were writing that paper on those funny moths that fly toward the moon? You had invited me for an afternoon of quiet reading and somehow I thought that you meant…well, that we’d begin with reading and then segue into other, ahem, activities. I was quite, quite wrong.

The thing is, Twilight…

Gosh, I’ve never been any good at this part. The painful part.

The thing is — it’s been a marvellous little exploration, darling, but I’m afraid I can’t go on with it any longer. Cozy Glow….well, she has to be my first priority now. I know you’re trying, I know you are, but I still see you…tense up whenever I mention her. 

You’re the Princess of Friendship, but not even you can forgive everything. And you shouldn’t have to force yourself.

I think it will be better this way. We always worked better as friends, didn’t we?

I’ll miss you, truly I will. It hurts me more than you know to break this wonderful little piece of happiness off. This little patch of sunlight in my life. 

But this is what I have to do. It’s the right thing to do. And I know that with time, you’ll agree. 

I think I’m the first good thing that has happened to this poor foal in a long time. Years and years. This is something only I can do for her. A gift only I can give her. 

A second chance. 

I’m the Element of Generosity, and I think that perhaps this was the reason Harmony chose me all along.

I’ll…I’ll be skipping the next few Council of Friendship meetings. I think it will be better for us both.  

Regretfully,
Rarity.





Excerpt 16454 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Princess Twilight Sparkle to Lady Rarity, late 1025 CE. 

Please, Rarity, don’t do this. The only reason I’m not there right now breaking down your door is because you said space and solitude are part of Cozy Glow’s therapeutic process, and I’m — I’m trying to respect that. 

I can learn to get along with her. I can. You’ve managed it — somehow! — and I am the Princess of friendship. I can do it. Please, have a little faith in me.

I’ve written dozens of drafts of this letter, but no matter how many times I rework them they all come out the same. Please don’t give up on us. Please give me a chance. I can be better. I will be better. To keep you, I would do anything. I wasted too many years thinking of you as my friend Rarity, without ever really seeing what we could be. I wish that I had done things differently. Seen it all clearer. 

Don’t leave me, Rarity. I think I might love you. I cant lose you. Not yet. 

From your faithful marefriend,
Twilight Sparkle.





Excerpt 16454 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Lady Rarity to Princess Twilight Sparkle, late 1025 CE. 

Dear Twilight, 

Thank you for your letter, darling. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t shed a few tears over it. More than once. 

I appreciate you not coming in person. I think that would be very painful for all of us. You see, believe it or not, the last letter — it was me trying to be…gentle. To spare you a few of the harder truths about how things have changed for me the last few months. 

But in truth, there’s more than just the issue of your feelings for Cozy. There’s also her feelings about you to take into account. And they…they aren’t good. 

I never fully realised the extent of what you were doing with her.  I thought she was stone most of the time — that the breakouts were freak accidents. But…she tells me that you kept her down there for weeks at a time. Doing experiments, she says. You were trying to…to help her, I suppose. I’m sure your intentions were good — they must have been — but she views you as a jailor, Twilight. A monster. 

And to be honest with you, after hearing the things she has told me, I’m not sure I can entirely blame her. She was conscious, the whole time. Even in the stone. Especially in the stone. Knowing that you did that…that you resealed her, knowing that she would be alert…Twilight, I don’t think what we had can really come back from that; do you? 

That’s not to say that we can’t still be friends. I know you were doing it for the good of Equestria — that it was what you had to do. But more than that? 

I don’t think I have it in me. 

So…let’s have some perspective, dear. It was only five months. The last six, when I’ve been up here in the mountains — I don’t think they truly count. So it was only five months, really. And we’ve been friends for fourteen years. We can weather this storm. With time, Cozy will learn to forgive you, at least a little, and then things can go back to the way they have always been. The six of us, all equal, all closer than sisters. One big family. 

I’m sorry I can’t give you more. 

Rarity. 





Excerpt 16454 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Princess Twilight Sparkle to Lady Rarity, late 1025 CE. 

Dear Rarity,

I would try to justify my actions. To tell you that I spent those fifteen years genuinely, truly trying to save her. To rehabilitate her. But it wouldn’t be true. I had so many crises that demanded my attention — you were there for many of them, as Generosity — to say nothing of the actual demands of ruling a kingdom. It wasn’t possible to devote as much time to my reformation work as I would have liked.

But my methods did work. I unfroze Chrysalis, and I talked to her. I worked with her. She responded, Rarity. So did Tirek. It took subjective months — years for me — but I made it happen. I got through to them. I became, after a fashion, their friend. 

Cozy Glow never opened up. She never even tried. 

I am…I am sorry, if her claims of being conscious were actually true. She started telling me that around the seventh year, but given that I had worked on and off with Tirek and Chrysalis for four years and they’d never mentioned anything along those lines, I thought it was just another lie. 

She lies a lot, your new daughter. It comes to her as naturally as breathing. 

I wonder how much time I spent with her, unfrozen. Perhaps longer even than the six months you’ve had with her. It must say something about me, that you have succeeded where I have failed. 

But then again, you always were the better mare. 

But you are right. Of course, you’re right. You’re a mother now. She must come first, no matter what I think. No matter what I want — oh please, Rarity, don’t do this— She must come first, and I must respect your choice. I will lay Rarity, my girlfriend, to rest, and I will I look forward to greeting you again as Rarity, my friend. 

But I will say this last thing to you as the mare who was once your…your partner. It has been a privilege to love you to know this side of you. I will never forget our time together, our five months of spring. I will never forget what we had. 

From your faithful friend,
Twilight Sparkle.





From the private records of Lady Rarity, excerpt from Journal 38, roughly 1025 CE.

Sometimes I wonder if I am doing the right thing. I wake up in the night, gasping, reaching for — for somepony who is no longer there. Is it Sweetie, is it Opalescence? Is it Twilight? I don’t know. 

Our time together was so brief, but at the time…I was so happy. She used to leave me waiting outside her library, she used to leave me waiting outside her court, she used to leave me waiting for hours at restaurants before she turned up, pencils in her mane and ink smudges on her nose, apologising in that sweet, breathless way of hers. 

I was her friend for years, and her lover for only five months, but now that it’s gone…I don’t know. Will I ever be able to look at her as I once did, without pain?

And then there is the third layer that covers her in my view, now. The way Cozy views her. 

A tormentor, a captor. A monster. 

I have not seen Twilight since our Canterlot in summer, the day before I was walking to meet her at our favourite restaurant and happened to take the route that leads past Canterlot Building Society. If I hadn’t heard the shots fired. If I hadn’t ventured inside and seen those eyes. 

Big and crimson and furious and terrified. The same eyes that watch me now when I wake in the night, gasping and reaching for the ghost of a future that can never be. Circled by shadows, never sleeping. Those same eyes, angry and frightened all at once. 

I ask her why she struggles to sleep. The answer is chilling in its simplicity.

“Because when I wake up, I might be stone again.”

I ask her about her life before. About her parents. 

Those answers are not simple, but they are no less chilling. This foal has suffered more than anyone knows. The pain in those crimson eyes is real, no matter what Twilight thinks.

I look into those eyes, at that child, and certainty comes. It was worth it, to sacrifice that tiny, precious part of my own life. I am doing the right thing. I am saving a life.

I am the only one who can. 





From the private records of Lady Rarity, Letter to Princess Mi Amore Cadenza from Lady Rarity, Hearths Warming 1025 CE.

To Cadence —

Happy Hearthswarming, darling, and give my love to dear Shining Armour and that precious little angel of yours. It’s been almost three years since I last saw Flurry, and she must be — hmm, fourteen now? My goodness, how time flies. It’s been far too long, and we must remedy that one of these days. I expect that sweet Flurry is no longer as small as she was when I last saw her, but no less sweet. 

I wanted to thank you for the loan of your mountain cottage. I can see why you and Shining Armour spent your honeymoon here — and why the honeymoon was so long! It’s cold up here, and when the sun does come out it’s frightfully humid — does nothing for my mane, I can tell you — but good heavens, it is beautiful. 

That little project of mine is still ongoing, and it’s progressing…well. Yes. Quite well. I know a little something of what it is to be a parent, now, and I must say, I don’t know how you and Shining Armour have managed as well as you have. Teenagers are…well, they are difficult. This one perhaps a little more than usual, granted, but still, I finally understand what all my poor friends who welcomed their bundles of joy years ago are talking about.

That isn’t the reason I’m writing, though I am very grateful for the advice you gave me in your last letter. The conversation about her birth family was…harrowing, to say the least, and I appreciated the pointers. And recommending Doctor Healing Word was a stroke of genius. He’s worked wonders, I swear. 

Anyway. 

The real reason I am writing is dear Twilight. I’m not sure if she has written to you or Shining Armour lately, but you may have picked up that she is dealing with a…with rather disappointing news of a personal nature. I…I truly hate to see my friends suffering, and I think that you might be able to ease her spirits. 

Sunburst, Flurry’s godfather. He and Twilight got on rather wonderfully when I saw them together in Ponyville a few years ago. They both adore reading, and science, and magic, and then of course there is the love of darling Flurry as a common subject too. I’d bet they will be able to talk for hours on the subject of obscure magical arcana. Twilight…she needs somepony like that in her life right now. A — a little distraction, if you catch my drift.

I wonder if you might pass on the invitation to the Sparkle family Hearthswarming that you so kindly sent me to Sunburst instead? Perhaps you could seat him next to Twilight at dinner? 

Thank you for your help, Cadence darling. It truly does mean the world to me. 

A very merry Hearthswarming to you and your family. Give Flurry a kiss from her Auntie Rarity for me.

Love,
Rarity

P. S. Please do ignore the watermarks on this paper. And the mascara. I was…it was raining while I was writing it. And it made a terrible mess of my makeup. Got it all over the paper. Terribly silly of me. Terribly silly.
> Chapter 6: Alone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flurry Heart gazed up at the stars, and wondered. 

Where is she right now? Is she…is she looking up, too?

Her eyes drifted towards Sirius, the wolf star. The one Cozy Glow had pointed out to her, once. 

My dad was an astronomer. 

He was? It had been the first detail about her birth parents that Cozy had ever shared. 

He used to tell me that if I didn’t watch out, that Sirius would come down and eat me up. Swallow me whole, feathers and all. 

Flurry Heart had sat up, eyes wide. That’s — that’s horrible, Cozy. 

And Cozy Glow had looked at her, one corner of her mouth quirked in a sardonic smile, and shrugged. Yeah.

And she had never mentioned him again. 

What had Cozy gone through, when she was a child? What had she suffered? And why wouldn’t she trust Flurry with it? Why wouldn’t she let her help? 

Flurry had stewed on it for months, had tried in a thousand different ways to ask her marefriend; obliquely and otherwise. But Cozy Glow had shrugged and smiled and changed the subject. It was like trying to pin down a cloud. Impossible. 

That was the way everything had been, really. She was charming in the day to day, and happy to talk about anything so long as it was in the present. So long as it wasn’t real. Cozy Glow was sharp and fierce and beautiful, and she was the most emotionally distant pony Flurry Heart had ever met. 

It was easy, to lie here in the soft grass, her ever-present guards at a discreet distance as she stared up at the stars, and obsess over Cozy Glow’s flaws. She had so many of them. 

But that didn’t change the fact that Flurry Heart felt her absence like a physical pain, like a phantom limb. That her ghost was beside her right now, whispering caustic commentary into her ear, jibes and jokes and things that no one but the two of them could ever understand. 

Cozy Glow was a canker, a poison, and Flurry Heart missed her with all of her soul.
> Chapter 7: Reunion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Cozy,

It’s been six months, just like we said. Six months of space, of thinking time. I’ve thought a lot, and — and I can’t see any way around it. 

So this is me promising that this time, it won’t end. I’m ready now, to commit — and to introduce you to my parents. Heck, you can be crowned Princess Consort next week if you want to. Okay, that might be rushing it a bit, but you see my point, right?

I want to try again. How about a game of chess, to talk it over? Just like old times. 

Stars, I hope you’re not away on one of those mountain retreats or anything. I — this was a difficult letter to draft. I think this might be like the eighth, actually? Anyway — can you write back?

I can’t wait to hear from you. 

Yours hopefully, 
Flurry.





Flurry —

Have you any idea how long you’ve kept me waiting? How long I — how many letters I wrote you? I mean sure, I burned them all, but shouldn’t you have known? What good is being a demi-goddess if you can’t read my mind once in a while?

I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much. 

I’ll meet you anywhere you want. I’ll play chess, I’ll play anything you like. I’ll let you win. I won’t even put up a fight. 

I’ll face Cadenza for you. Shining Armour. Celestia, Luna, the whole Sun and Night Courts at once, if that’s what it takes. Maybe…maybe even Twilight Sparkle. Maybe not. But when I think about the possibility of getting you back it makes me feel pretty damn brave. 

I’ve missed you. 

—Cozy. 





To the Princess —

Your proposal is amenable. The old spot? Friday.

—Cozy.





As she watched the train with her daughter pulling away, Cadence’s lips thinned to a narrow line. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it. There must be another way to heal the Heart.”

“There isn’t, Cady.” From his customary place beside her, Shining Armour shook his head. “We’ve tried everything. The heart wants what the heart wants — and our Flurry is in love. She can’t help that.”

“But to gamble the Empire on it—!” 

“It’s not about the Empire. This is about Flurry. What she needs.”

Cadence’s eyes still followed the train, fright oozing from her every pore. “But if she gets this wrong, if it gets worse, it could mean—”

“—It might not get worse,” he interrupted, still gentle. “We need to trust our daughter, Cady. She’s a grown mare, and she’s been frightened away from relationships her whole adult life, for the sake of the Heart. This is the first time she’s ever even come close, and we have to encourage it.”

At the sound of that name, Cadence let out a soft moan. “But why did it have to be her? Of all the ponies in Equestria.”

Shining Armour worked his jaw. “I don’t like it either, but for whatever reason, Cozy Glow is the first pony that has broken through those walls. It’s either encourage Flurry to mend things with her, or we watch the Heart crack in two. Watch our daughter crack in two.”

“I know, I know,” Cadence said impatiently, turning to look him in the eyes for the first time. “What do you think I’ve been feeling from her for the past six months? I know exactly how much this is hurting her. But perhaps with time — she might have healed.”

Shining shook his head. His daughter was like him. She loved hard — and she would love but once. Once her heart was lost, there was no going back.

Exactly like it had been with him and Cady, all those years ago.

“She wouldn’t have healed. Nor would the Heart. If it hadn’t broken, it would have withered and died either way. Just slower.”

Cadence lowered her gaze, defeated. “And the Empire with it.”

“And the Empire with it.” He nodded. 

They both knew what was on the line here. 

“This is our only option.”





Flurry gazed into the eyes of the mare she loved, and she felt the cracks in her heart healing just as surely as the cracks in the Crystal Heart must be healing too. 

“I love you,” she whispered, and this time there was no hesitation.
> Chapter 8: The Perfect Team
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The windigo screamed, and Flurry pumped her wings frantically as she ramped up to meet it. One heartbeat, two, then one final frantic flap and she collided with its face, slamming both her forehooves into it and looping away with another bone-crunching kick from her hind legs. The windigo might not have bone, but it could certainly feel pain, and the high-pitched scream that summoned the storm took on a new pitch of pain.

It lashed out with a gout of frostbreath, and Flurry Heart ducked and wove through the sky, a crazy pattern of spirals to evade it. The windigo followed, screeching in fury, fixated on her. And Cozy Glow, spear at the ready, saw her chance and took it. 

She dove at the Windigo, blade outstretched, and the enchanted blade pierced the ethereal skin. Raw, elemental force rushed out, a blast of freezing air so cold it froze her hair in place, but she kept her wings beating even as ice crystals sheared and fell from them with every flap. 

The windigo screamed anew and wheeled on her, and Cozy disengaged and dove away. The icy fangs snapped shut on empty air, and then she was looping around to join up with Flurry. 

With the ease of long practice, the two of them moved almost as one, soaring through two counterpoints of a complex swirling manoeuvre, working their pegasi skill to turn the windigo’s own storm against it. It squalled and thrashed, teeth coming within inches of them — but alternating jabs from Flurry’s sword and Cozy’s spear kept it turning in midair, impotent and enraged.

As she looked through the windigo’s semi-transparent body at her mare friend, Cozy Glow felt a surge of fierce pride. Of possessiveness. Look at this mare, this beautiful mare. She’s strong and fierce and beautiful, and she wants to be with me. Me. 

“Now, Cozy!” Flurry swooped in close and dealt the beast a sky-shattering punch that split the air like a thunderbolt. 

Cozy felt another pulse of — of affection, of love, maybe — and she obeyed, swooping in to deliver the final blow. Flurry was…she was incredible. She had to know all sorts of crazy fire spells that would solve this particular problem, but she was sticking to just her flight and super-strength. Perhaps she had noticed that when she wielded her more powerful magic, Cozy became twitchier. Edgier. A little closer to…to something. Powerful magic users and Cozy Glow did not mesh well, and Flurry Heart was kind enough to adapt.

Was it possible to be grateful for something and resent it at the same time?

The windigo was reeling and Cozy was swooping in to finish it off. This monster had all but wiped out one of the Crystal Empire’s outlying villages. Destroyed their crops, killed two ponies. It was a monster, and it would not change its ways. 

It was, as Flurry had suggested, the perfect outlet. A way to work off some steam. 

A way to use those violent urges, as she had said, productively.

Cozy Glow had cleared it with Doctor Healing Word. Everyone agreed. It might help her, to find a way to release her pent-up aggression. And it would be productive. Only Rarity had hesitated, but when pressed, even she had agreed that it was, without a doubt, productive. 

The mission statement was clear. Drive the monster away. And if you can’t….well. 

But when the moment came — when she hovered there, her spear poised above its eye, Cozy Glow faltered. She had not taken a life in twenty years. Not since she was thirteen years old. 

She looked into the snow-swirl eye of the monster that thrashed beneath her, and she found that she could not cross that line again. No matter how healthy it might be. How productive it was. If she did it again, there would be no going back. 

The windigo lashed its long, sinuous neck, and Cozy was thrown loose. For one terrible, endless second she plummeted, end over end — and then the windigo was upon her, sharp fangs fastening on her leg, shaking her like a dog shakes a rabbit —

— And then Flurry Heart lit her horn at last, and the world flared into golden light.

The windigo shrilled out one final, desperate scream, but the golden light pierced it and punctured it, and the storm and the windigo that made it were blasted from existence in one single, horrifying surge of raw magic. 

That same light caught her, and then lowered her gently to the floor. Winked out of existence as soon as the task was accomplished. Flurry knew she would not like to be held in a magical grip a moment longer than necessary. Cozy had not told her about precisely the disciplinary methods her parents used to use on her, but she thought Flurry might have grasped some of it, nonetheless.

Cozy Glow lay on the snow, and tried to understand what she had just seen. 

Flurry Heart had killed. Flurry Heart had killed a living being right in front of her, as though it was nothing. Cozy Glow remembered how it felt. The look on her father’s face. The light as it left her mother’s eyes. She remembered, and she rolled sideways and vomited a mess of steaming green vegetable matter into the snow. 

Still shaking, she looked at Flurry, so effortlessly graceful as she alighted beside her. “You — you killed that thing like you’ve done it before.”

Flurry Heart lifted one wing and let it fall again. Careless. Casual. “I have.”

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. She tried once more; no sound came out. On the third try, when her voice finally came, it sounded very small and far away. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a reason I suggested this as a way to work out some of our tension.” Flurry attempted a smile, but it was an abortive effort. “I’ve done it before.”

Her heart thundering in her chest, Cozy Glow struggled to her hooves. “You said — you said we were going to drive it off — you said a healthy outlet, not — not—”

More vomit. Her breakfast spewed onto the ground alongside her lunch. 

Didn’t Flurry know her at all? Who she was? What she had done? Didn’t she understand that — that she couldn’t — that she mustn’t —

“I need to go home,” she whispered, and her mouth tasted of bile. “I need to see Doctor Healing Word.”

She hunched over in the snow, trying to drive the images from her mind. The smell. The blood. The flash of a blade, and the sweet cleansing touch of the flames. 

No. No. I’m not that pony any more. I’m better. I’m recovered. Just like Doctor Healing Word says. I make my own fate — I am not controlled by hate. I’m better. I am.

“I’ll teleport us home in — in a minute, Cozy.” Flurry Heart was venturing a little closer, and Cozy reared back, hoof outstretched to ward her off.

Don’t come near me. I — I’m a — I was a monster. I might — I don’t know what I might do. Even though I’m better now. I am. 

“But I wanted to show you this…so you could understand.”

“Understand what?” Cozy choked out. “You did this — for me? You’ve been out here k-ki-killing monsters to — to prove some sick point?”

“No!” Flurry said, eyes widening. “No — to show you who I was.”

“Who you were?” 

She had gone insane. The princess had gone insane. She had gone to the very brink of sanity, and she was pulling Cozy there too. The smell, the blood, the blade, the fire — no, no, no. I’m better I’m better I’m better.

“You asked me, on our first date, about the Sombrites.”

Finally, the flashing images in Cozy’s head stuttered. The screams faded — just for a second — into the background, and her ears pricked up. 

She remembered that conversation. I know what it’s like to be the smartest pony in the room. In every room. She remembered the way the firelight danced on Flurry Heart’s shining curls, burnishing them. Turning them golden and red, like fire themselves.

She remembered that first checkmate.

Flurry took her by the hoof and drew her away from the mess she had made on the pristine white snow. Seated herself on the ground at a safe distance. Helplessly, Cozy let herself be pulled along. 

“When I was twelve, I was…going through some stuff. Puberty, especially alicorn puberty, is no joke. All those uncontrollable bursts of magic that I’d work so hard to control were back, and worse than ever. I’d break a throne by sitting down, I’d make a jungle sprout in the middle of the castle when I sneezed…I once turned half the court into crystal ewes by accident.” 

Flurry Heart looked miserable, but Cozy smiled. The image of all those stuffy ponies turned into little fluffy sheep, Cadence and Shining Armour totally out of their depth as their court baa-ed and bleated around them. 

“And the Crystal Heart was just making everything worse. Amplifying it. My mom was at her wits end. She tried to tell me to study, to feel, to talk it out with a therapist, but it wasn’t working. I just felt…stifled. Lost. Angry.” 

Her voice was cold on that last word, and Cozy’s smile faded.

“And then the Sombrites happen. I say that like they came out of nowhere, but it wasn’t like that. They were…our ponies. My people. And they were saying all this…crazy stuff. That Sombra hadn’t been evil. That we’d unjustly exiled him. That my mom and Aunt Twilight were wrong.” She ran a hoof through her dishevelled mane. “And they were gathering support. People who were dissatisfied with the way things were, who wanted power, wanted the land reclamation to go faster, wanted to shake things up — they were all suddenly congregating under one banner.” Another pause. “The Sombrites.”

Though she rolled onto her side to face Flurry more fully, Cozy kept her lips sealed. She hadn’t heard Flurry talk this way in a long time, and she wanted to hear her out. 

Flurry’s eyes were very far away. “And then they started using mind control magic.”

“They had this leader — his name was Shadowhame, or that was what he was calling himself. Nopony’s actually born with a name like that, are they?” A hollow little laugh. “Shadowhame claimed to be Sombra’s son, or something. Whoever he really was, he had some of Sombra’s spells. He knew the magic. And he used his supporters to round people up, and then he’d cast Sombra’s spell on them. Hundreds of obedient servants, out of nowhere. Hundreds of soldiers.”

“My parents were talking about a battle, maybe calling in Aunt Twi and Auntie Tia. But I didn’t want to wait. Didn’t want to let more people get caught by him. So I snuck out at night. Went to find him.” She gave a heavy sigh. “I wanted to fight him. Duel him, like Aunt Twilight duelled Tirek. I wanted…I wanted to be a hero. Can you believe that?”

Cozy Glow imagined a tiny little Flurry Heart, earnest and desperate, wings spread as she pled for peace. So different from the twelve-year-old she had been.“Yeah, I can believe that.”

“I was pretty good at invisibility spells, and for once, my magic was working the way I wanted. No misfires, no malfunctions. Just…I’d want it, and it’d be done. I could feel the power of the Heart, pumping into me. The hope of the crystal ponies that we’d save them and this would be over.” 

“I found him, in the end. In the middle of another mind control spell on a bunch of innocent ponies. They were terrified.”

Cozy Glow scooted a little closer. The official version of the story that she had read before had been…very different to this. No mind control. No pre-teen princess single-hoofedly trying to save the world. 

“What happened?”

Another shrug. “We fought. I’d thought it would be easy — emotions were running so high in the Empire, and I was so pumped up on power I didn’t see how I could lose.”

“I know how that feels.” Cozy thought of the rush of stolen magic, the way the horn had felt on her forehead. The way she could see the leylines all around her, see just how to pull and pinch and make the world fall into place. 

“But it wasn’t like duelling with my tutors or my dad. He was…Shadowhame was…vicious. He didn’t hold back, so nor did I.” She looked at her hooves, and her voice grew very quiet. “I thought if I killed him the others would be freed.”

Cozy Glow sucked in a breath. A killer. Flurry Heart was a killer. Just like me.

“I was wrong.” In those three words was all the agony of a lifetime, and Cozy finally reached out to press a hoof to that of her marefriend. 

“There was a reason Auntie Tia chose you for me. And it wasn’t just the…the cleverness stuff. It was…this, too.”

Her mouth dry, Cozy nodded. She would have given her life rather than interrupt the story now. 

“So I…I killed him. Shadowhame. I blasted him out of existence, just like I did that windigo. And when it didn’t work, when I couldn’t free the enslaved and Shadowhame’s lieutenants were stepping in to continue the mind control spell he’d been performing when I interrupted…” she shook her head. “I banished them. I had…the haziest image in my head of this spell I’d read about in Aunt Twilight’s library. Starswirl’s shadow realm spell. She praised me when she found me reading it. Said I was like her when she was a foal.”

Cozy jerked her head from left to right in a silent denial. She could imagine no one less like Princess Twilight Sparkle than the mare before her. Twilight Sparkle was a liar. A jailor. Flurry Heart was…real and raw and kind. In a way the Princess of Canterlot would never understand.

“Anyway, I pictured this spell. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked. It sent them all away. All of them. Shadowhame’s body, his followers…and the mind-controlled ponies. Even the victims that they were still in the process of converting.” She looked down. “All of them. A thousand years, gone.”

Very slowly, Cozy Glow let out a breath. “I’m…sorry, Flurry. I didn’t know.”

Her lips compressing, Flurry Heart swallowed. “No one does. No one knows it happened…like that. About Shadowhame, or that I did it on my own. Mom told everyone she had given me her blessing, showed me the spell.”

“They’re all—” liars, she had been about to say. All the princesses are liars. But this was Flurry’s mother, and Flurry was a princess, too. “They’re all the same,” she finished, a little lamely. 

“Maybe.” Flurry shrugged. She lowered her eyes again. “After that, I got…worse, if anything. My mom could feel all these emotions roiling in me, all this guilt and pain and hate, and she just…she didn’t know what to do. So she pointed me at her problems, and let me vent.”

“Vent?”

“I hunted the windigos almost to extinction. Just like this one here. Fought them one by one until the few that were left stopped coming back. After that it was rogue dragons, the chimaeras, the cerberi, the wights, the basilisks…everything that moved, that bothered the Crystal Empire, I fought. I killed them and I hunted them and chased them out of our borders.”

Cozy Glow pressed her hoof against Flurry’s foreleg. 

And Flurry looked at the ground, and whispered the last of her sins as though it was the greatest of them all. "I killed the last six kelpies in the world.”

“Kelpies?” Cozy shook her head. “I thought they were a myth.”

“They are now. Aunt Luna hunted most of them down a few thousand years ago, but there were…well, there were six of them left. Aunt Twilight sent me there. She had spared them, but…they were taking foals from a town down south, and they weren’t receptive to her friendship ambassadors. So she sent me in to solve the problem.”

Lives, snuffed out by the hoof that Cozy now held. Lives, snuffed out by her own. They were no different, and that was…something. But she had looked up to Flurry. She had believed her to be better. She had wanted to be better for her. 

All of the rage and pain that boiled inside her, and she had kept it in — because Flurry was better, and she would be horrified if she saw the monstrous mess that was the true Cozy. 

But all along, Flurry had been doing exactly the same thing.

Helplessly, Cozy Glow clutched her marefriend’s hoof. She wanted her mother. She wanted her doctor. She wanted Flurry.

“What’s…what’s your point here?”

If Flurry thought that opening up would persuade Cozy to do the same, she would be disappointed.

“My point is…” Flurry sighed. “How many lives have you taken, Cozy?”

Cozy Glow’s blood ran cold. How many lives have you taken? How many ponies have you killed? How many times had she been asked that question, by hungry reporters or high-society Canterlot ponies desperate for a thrill?

Their eyes all lit with the same dark hunger. Waiting for her to name a number, so they could gasp and ride the delicious thrill of being terrified. Being in the same room as a monster. What a story to tell their friends, their grandfoals. 

“Why?” Her voice was bitter. She knew exactly why she was being asked. 

“How many?”

She looked up into Flurry’s eyes, ready to see that same hunger, and she found only sadness. 

“Seven.” The number was pulled out of her before she could stop it. 

Seven ponies. 

“Exactly.” Flurry Heart could not see the faces, could not hear the litany of the dead. “My point is, Cozy, that I’ve taken…a lot more lives than you have. I’ve ended species. I stopped keeping a toll of individuals a long time ago. I try to be better now, but — when a problem comes, my first instinct is to use violence to solve it.”

“It was different. Those weren’t…”

They weren’t ponies.

“Is it not murder, just because it’s not a pony? They were still sentient, most of them. And I still did it.”

“Why?” Cozy asked again, but this time it was not an accusation. This time it was the same question ponies had hurled at her all of her life. Why did you do it?

A shrug that was horribly, achingly familiar. She had seen that emptiness before. Seen it in the mirror. “Because I was angry. I was angry and out of control, and it seemed like a problem I could solve. Why did you do it?”

A familiar phrase. And for the first time in her life, Cozy answered that question honestly. No deflection, no dissimulation. “Because I was…angry. It seemed…it was the only way I could fix it. The only way to feel better.”

“And since then?”

“I…try…to be better.”

“Do you see?” Flurry asked, and Cozy began to think that she did. “We’re not so different, you and I.”
> Chapter 9: Fractured
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Are you sure about this?”

Flurry gave Cozy a rather tight smile. “As sure as I’ll ever be.”

A lie, of course. An obvious one, that Cozy would no doubt see through. But it hardly mattered. Flurry would never be sure about introducing her marefriend to her parents. She would never be ready. But they had broken up once already because she had been afraid to commit — because Cozy had been afraid to be open — and she was not going to let them make that same mistake twice. 

So she squared her shoulders and adjusted the neckline of Cozy’s dress — with her hoof, never with her magic. Cozy’s wings came up to embrace her, and just for a second, she let herself bask in that feathery embrace. And then, side by side, they marched towards the double doors that the guards swung open for them.

Marched in to meet their fate.

“Ah.” Her father’s voice, measured and steady as always. “Here they are, Cady.”

The Princess of the Crystal Empire turned her head, her carefully coiled mane spilling across her shoulders. Her mouth turned up at one corner — she was making an effort, just as she had promised — and she stood to greet them.

“Hello, sweetheart.” Her gaze moved from one mare to the other and the warmth in her gaze cooled. “Welcome to our home, Cozy Glow.”

“Hello,” said Cozy Glow, in her lawyer voice. Perfectly neutral. Entirely unobjectionable. “Thank you for inviting me.”

Shining Armour gestured to the table, impeccably laid out and set for four, and they all trooped towards it. Flurry Heart took her seat, trying to control the pounding of her heart, and to quiet the little voice that kept whispering over and over — how the hell am I going to get through tonight?

There had been a letter from Auntie Tia, of course. There were always letters from Auntie Tia. She seemed to think that just because she had introduced two ponies, it gave them a right to interfere for the rest of their lives. And beyond. Flurry had heard that some of her clients were sixth-generation — including both sets of her own grandparents. Twilight and Cadence, two unicorns powerful enough to live through the ascension spell, both born within a decade of Luna’s predicted return: there was no way that wasn’t deliberate. Flurry herself was probably the product of Celestia only knew how many centuries of plotting. 

The thought of it made her shiver. 

But on this occasion, she had at least read the letter to its end. Facing this, she felt she needed all the advice she could get. 

To my favourite grand-niece,

I hear from your mother that certain plans are afoot. A dinner is planned. 

The initial merging of the families is a terribly important occasion in any relationship, and an excellent indicator of future gatherings. Usually I would advise that it take place much sooner in a relationship’s timeline, possibly even at my offices, but I know that you and Cozy Glow wanted to take things at your own pace. And a meeting with Cadence and myself at the same time might prove too much for Cozy Glow’s particular antipathy towards royalty. 

That said, I think (and have advised Cadence as such) that it’s better that Rarity not attend this particular dinner. She and Cozy Glow are naturally very close, but it can tend to make them a little overprotective of one another. I think it’s best to get Cozy Glow herself a little more comfortable with your parents before we bring Rarity into the mix. I was very glad to hear that your own formal introduction to Rarity at her home in Canterlot went well. 

For this meeting I would advise you to stay calm and ensure the others do too. Cadence, naturally, will read your feelings and follow your lead, and Shining Armour will do the same. Keep conversation light and inconsequential. Avoid topics you know will be controversial. This should simply be the groundwork for a deeper connection going forward. 

Best of luck, Flurry dear. I know you have the skills to make today go smoothly. 

All my love,
Auntie Tia (Princess Celestia, Ruler of the Day, etc)

Flurry had read the letter so many times that the folds had deepened into crevices and the ink had begun to fade, but the contents were no more revelatory than they had been the first time. Keep things calm was one of those things that was terribly easy to say and almost impossible to do. 

Chairs screeched as the underbutlers helped tuck them in. Flurry moved naturally, accustomed to the ceremony, but she saw Cozy flinch at the near-silent appearance of a stallion behind her and cursed her own failure to forewarn her marefriend. 

“Red or white wine?” the butler asked, her voice obsequiously lowered. 

Flurry saw the look in Cozy Glow’s eyes as she looked at the clear crystal jug of dark red liquid and hastily interposed. “We’ll both have white, thank you, Elderflower.”

Shining Armour coughed politely. “So…tell us about your work, Cozy Glow.”

Cozy swallowed, her throat bobbing, and took a large gulp of white wine. “Well. I’m a lawyer.”

A small laugh. “Yes, Flurry mentioned it.”

“I saw one of your cases in the Canterlot paper last week,” Shining said. “The Vanderhoof divorce?”

“Oh, that.” Cozy straightened in her chair, suddenly confident again, and waved a hoof. “Foal’s play. They’re both idiots with more money than sense.”

Shining’s smile wilted. “Horseshoe Vanderhoof is a close friend, actually.”

Cozy Glow all but put her muzzle into her glass. Then finally offered a strained smile. “Right. Like I said.”

His expression morphing into a frown, Shining exchanged a glance with Cadence. 

Flurry leapt in with some preprepared pleasantries about the weather, and the conversation limped onwards. Cozy kept lifting the glass of white wine to her lips, sipping whenever there was a pause. 

“And what about your work, Mom?” Flurry said at last, a little desperately. “Solved any big relationship problems lately?”

Cadence shot her a look, almost as though to say, none as big as this, but Flurry resolutely ignored whatever hidden message that glance contained. Cozy was the mare she had chosen, for better or for worse, and Cadence would just have to get used to it. 

“Well, yes, actually,” conceded Cadence at last. “There was a really funny one last week.”

“Tell us,” Flurry enthused, and Shining murmured agreement.

“I was flying over the north end last week when I felt this absolute tumult of emotion. I landed, and I find a wedding party in the park, in absolute chaos because both grooms are missing.”

“Both grooms?” laughed Flurry Heart. “Did they both get cold hooves?”

“That’s what I wondered,” Cadence smiled. “So I went looking for them. It took half an hour, a scroll to Twilight and finally a casting of Clover the Clever’s finding spell, but eventually I found one of them wandering around by the fountains, and the other halfway down mane street.” 

“Were they running away?” Cozy asked, her voice dry. 

Her eyes flicking from her daughter to the mare at her side, Cadence seemed to make an effort not to flinch. Like she’d forgotten it wasn’t just her and Flurry. “N-no. They were actually both looking for the other, under the impression the other had run away.” Her delivery was muted, flat, the humour gone. 

“How funny,” said Cozy Glow, unsmiling. 

Flurry Heart felt her stomach begin to roil. Either the cabbage soup was disagreeing with her, or things were going really wrong. 

Cadence was making her discomfort too obvious, and Cozy was reacting to it with her usual defence — spiky edges and pointed barbs.

“It is!” she said brightly, her voice too high. “It’s really funny, Mom.” 

She glared at Cadence, and tried to channel her thoughts into emotions that her empath mother would be able to read. I really want you two to get on. Be nice to her. But translating that to an emotion was harder than she had expected, and the best she could manage was a sort of anxious yearning. She was so used to trying to tamp down her emotions so they wouldn’t be read that doing the opposite felt unnatural. 

“Actually,” Cozy Glow said, her voice filling the sudden silence as a casual smirk spread across her muzzle, “We’ve been thinking of doing that.”

Cadence paused, the flow of her story forgotten. “Doing what?”

“Getting married.”

Cadence turned pale, and Cozy Glow’s smile took on a tinge of satisfaction. Shining Armour looked at Flurry, eyes wide, and though she and Cozy had never discussed this before, had never broached the topic, Flurry felt her traitorous heart skip a beat or two. 

Married. 

She imagined Cozy Glow in white, a real smile on her face, that rarest and most precious of moments, and something inside her thrummed. 

Wouldn’t that be something?

“Well,” said Cadence stiffly. “Maybe that’s something to discuss another time.”

With a smile that showed her dimples, Cozy took a huge gulp of wine. 

“T-tell us more about work, Mom?” Flurry managed to squeak, wishing Cozy’s chair was close enough for her to physically touch her marefriend. 

“Oh yes,” said Cozy Glow at once. “It’s a fascinating world you inhabit, Princess.”

Oh no. That title was always a weapon on her tongue. 

“Luckily for me, I don’t do it alone.  Being a crystal princess is a difficult job.” Cadence spoke sharply, but then softened her expression to smile at Flurry. “But we’re all very proud of Flurry.”

Another sip of her wine and a toss of her mane, and Cozy affected a careless laugh. “When I’m a crystal princess—” 

It was too much. Too far. Cadence’s hoof came down on the table with an impact like a cannonshot. “—You will never marry my daughter.”

For one long second, Cozy Glow stared at her. Then her eyelids lowered, hooding her gaze, and she smiled. A dangerous smile. “Ah. There it is.”

“Mom,” hissed Flurry. 

“It’s okay, Flurry,” chuckled Cozy, in that horrible empty voice. “It’s good to get all our feelings out in the open, right?”

“Feelings,” spat Cadence. “As though you know the meaning of the word, you — you husk—”

“—Mom!” cried Flurry. It was all going wrong. “You promised!”

“But I can feel her, Flurry Heart,” Cadence said, and there were tears in her eyes. “And she’s so empty. Everything good, everything normal is so muted I can hardly hear it, and all that’s left is…is…possessiveness, and pride, and fear—”

“—Shut up!” snarled Cozy Glow, all traces of laughter gone. “Shut up, Princess, if you know what’s good for you—”

“—And hate!” cried Cadence. “She hates me, can’t you feel it? She hates Twilight! She hates all of us!”

“Cady, wait,” tried Shining Armour, but it was far too late. 

Cozy Glow was on her feet, wings spread wide, head lowered like a wild animal at bay. “I do hate you. I do. What is there to love, about you jumped-up magic junkies? Sticking a crown on your head doesn’t make you good or moral or right but you’re all convinced—”

“—She’s a monster, Flurry! You can’t marry her—!”

“—Cozy, stop it! Mom! Stop it!”

“—Look, we all need to just take a breather here—”

“—That the sun shines out of your stupid royal asses! But you’re all twisted freaks who can get away with anything because ponies are morons who think magical power equals goodness and you’re too powerful to say no to!”

Cozy Glow’s torrent of vitriol ran on longer than all the other voices, her face transformed into a mask of hatred. When she finally stopped, her flanks were heaving, and Flurry Heart’s cheeks were wet with tears. All of her worst nightmares had come true. Everything had gone wrong.

Finally, Cozy Glow looked into Flurry’s eyes, and whatever she saw there was enough to send her running from the room at a full gallop.