Letters to the Princess

The tales that reached Equestria and the Crystal Empire came slowly. Fragmented. Fractured. Tales of a monster that bathed in blood, who slaughtered dissenters and crushed any that would threaten her newfound throne.

A monster who would skip into each new settlement or camp she conquered giggling like a little filly, and ask “Who wants to be my friend?”

And it was in those half-legends that Flurry Heart found again the love that she had thought was lost.

“It must be exaggerated,” she said, for the thousandth time. “There’s no way she’d do that. She wouldn’t.”

“You have no idea what she’s capable of,” Cadence replied, her voice terse from the throne beside her. “Now could we please get back to the matter at hoof? The Neighpalese ambassadors are going to be here any minute and we need to be ready.”

“She made a promise. To Rarity.” Cozy Glow did not break her promises. And she especially did not break promises to her mother.

“And Rarity died.” Cadence was capable of being merciless, when she had to be. “I felt that girl’s emotions, Flurry, and the ones for her mother were such a twisted, mangled mess of…horror that losing her could have made her do anything at all.”

As she had so often before, Flurry quashed the instinct to ask what Cozy’s emotions for her had been, all that time ago. That way lay only pain.

“But we have to do something,” she said. “If it is her, if it’s not — either way we can’t leave the ponies of the northern wastes without any help at all.”

Cadence looked harried. “I don’t know what we can do. Twilight asked me to handle it, but she asks me to handle everything north of Manehattan, and I can’t go off wandering the wilderness for months at a time.”

“Aunt Twilight asked you because she knows you have a spare.”

Her mother pursed her lips. “If it comes to that, she has two. Auntie Tia and Luna don’t seem to do anything anymore outside of their little hobbies. Gardening and matchmaking — as if I’m not managing Equestria’s romantic needs, on top of everything else.”

“Auntie Tia isn’t trying to step on your horseshoes, Mum.” Another well-trodden discussion.

“Either way, you’re not going.” Cadence shook her head in flat refusal. “It's too dangerous.”

“She’s…she’s my problem. I…made her like this. I helped to do it.”

“Flurry, no. You cannot blame yourself for the actions of a…a monster like her.”

“She’s not a monster, Mum.”

The doors opened, and two serene-looking donkeys in the orange robes of the Neigpalese court approached. Cadence sat up straighter, pasting a smile of welcome onto her face, and Flurry leaned in close to get in the last word.

“I’ll be picking my soldiers tonight.”