Chapter 1: Why had she done it?
The sounding from the corridors died down after the bell rang and Starlight said on her seat to help everycreature, who would be in need for a guidance counsellor.
But as usual, not one foal was waiting for her, not one had a problem as dire to ask somepony for guidance.
So she had to wait and let her mind trailed off to strange thoughts with a cup of cocoa.
“Why had she...?”
Starlight's eyes darted to the one thing Twilight wouldn't hoof out to another creature in all eternity, or for the next few weeks, at least.
The Personal Friendship Assistant Badge.
Well Starlight wasn't keen enough to blame her for that, staying in a magic bubble who silenced her would do that, but after a while her anger boiled down a little bit and curiosity took place.
She tossed around in her bed since the banishing of Cosy Glow into Tartarus was complete and even dreamed of her past experiences with the little filly recently.
But none of her past experiences soothed her need for an explanation. Starlight sighed and shook her head to get rid of the thought, but it was to no avail.
It lingered and drifted like a small clutch of whipped cream in a half full cup of cocoa.
Starlight drunk it out and her allegory changed into one other, like a hook in her flesh of mind. She grumbled and jumped back onto her hooves.
She passed through the room, avoiding eye contact with the batch lazily laid on the desk.
It preyed on her mind almost as rotting as the filly had turned out and clutched finally around the question.
Why had she done it?
Starlight frowned and turned to the only thing that could answer that, her students records. She opened the huge cabinet of lists and forms.
Browsing through the mighty lists of Twilights overbearing need for organisation and overcomplicated register forms to finally unleashed the secrets of an unknown foe.
Cosy Glows records and personal file.
She pulled it out and unsurprisingly it was a blank statement of nothingness.
Starlight glanced over fabricated words, unwillingly reading through a few questions like:
Manehatten, certainly a lie.
* Why do you want study friendship?
To help other creatures and to be a good friend. Definitely a lie.
* Or how is you past experience with friendship?
None. Well that was eventually a true statement of hers, but Starlight would doubt it.
What was the true?
Her mind begged for an answer, an easy solution would be asking her, but why should she answer honestly?
A veritas spell would be the obvious solution, but to enter Tartarus was much easier as to leave it, even for a powerful unicorn like Starlight.
She would do it, if it would guarantee an answer, but Starlight doubt it.
She had to use the few things Cosy left of herself.
Maybe she should start from scratch. Her belongings.
Well that was a little bit pointless, she had a picture, a few puppets, a self made crown and a skull. Oh and her saddlebags, of course but it was nothing more than trinkets than real things to look over to understand the need for such strange actions.
It was almost as pointless as staring out of the window for an explanation. Starlight growled and pushed the things away from her desk in frustration.
A sound knock echoed through her little chamber and Starlight answered with an almost annoyed:
“Come in!”
A filly shrieked outside and opened the door very quickly. Green magic enlightened the handles and a small white unicorn stood in front of the entrance,
hesitant to enter. Starlight cleared her throat and brushed out an apology
“Sweetie Belle, please come in.
I'm sorry to yell at you, but...”
The small filly entered the room and looked around, clearly spotting the few trinkets of Cosy Glow and more hesitantly sighing.
She closed the gap between the door and the desk and started to babble around.
“I'm sorry to interrupt, but...
well I`m wondering...wondering...
Why had she done it?”
Starlight closed the door and brought forward a new cup of cocoa for her guest and one other for herself.
She cocked her head slightly and smiled gently to the one filly as puzzled as herself.
“So you didn't get it either, right?
I mean I was very awful too, but I had reasons to think that way.”
Starlight cleared her throat and shook her thoughts away, as she realised who she was talking too. A filly, not a mare!
Sweetie Belle nodded slowly and brushed over her mane with an unsteady hoof.
She sighed and started to whisper as sound as the wind.
“I...thought she was our friend, but she wasn't!
I thought she was just really bad at friendship, but she didn't get it in the first place!
I...thought I could understand her, but I was wrong!”
Starlight browsed through her words to find a good answer, but failed miserably and just could lift a hoof and put it down again.
“She had manipulated you.
It's an uneasy feeling and so...”
She sighed, but got louder in her next sentence.
“Frustrating! I mean, who is she after all of this?
She betrayed us. She just mistook friendship as a warped method of control and nopony asked why she would do that.
I don't get it either, Sweetie.”
The little filly shrieked first, but silenced herself quickly, as Starlight mumbled around.
She joined in the conversation with a squeak and surprised Starlight with it.
“I'm here for that, Starlight.
It's clutched onto my mind to see where she's coming from.
But even as one of her friends ugh I mean, former friends of course.
I don't really could lay a hoof on it.”
Sweetie jumped back onto her hooves and passed around in Starlight's office.
She tried to get a grip on her thoughts, but she got more and more frustrated, as she didn't could grip the filly in her mind.
“She was so friendly and helpless, but she played us, like this puppet.”
Sweetie kicked one of the puppets finally and sighed, as she realised, that her own sister was made into a puppet herself.
Starlight listened to to her final mumbling under bitten teeth.
“She manipulated everypony, but I'm so good in understanding ponies.
Why had she fooled me?
How could I know?”
Starlight cleared her throat and took a deep breath. She knocked on the desk and drove Sweetie's attention back to it.
“Well, that's a good question.
Why don't you start from the very first meeting with her and together we may be able to reveal the pony behind the strings.
I know many ways to ask for clues and you are determined to seek out the truth.
Let's do it together?”
Sweetie sighed and nodded. She grabbed the picture of the cute little filly and turned it around in her magic.
“Well it started as we heard a wailing outside of our clubhouse...”
The mare and her assistant relived their experiences with Cosy Glow together to reveal anything helpful.
Any little word who she was, what she did, what she said floated through both minds, but what stuck, was just an enigma.
She hadn't said, where she was from, she hadn't told anything about her past and even the explanations were so soaped, that it would be possible to wipe out mud stenches with them.
Nothing, nothing special, absolutely nothing besides eventually lies, obviously lies and questionable answers.
Starlight wasn't done with that and sent out messages to any huge town with a picture of the culprit.
It would be the first step to reach out for an answer.
An answer on that nagging question:
“Why had she done such a thing?”
Author's Note
I hope you enjoyed the first draft and I think for more but it's way too late for me,
so enjoy my work and feel free to comment.
Yours Lethrael
