Letters to the Princess

Cozy Glow slumped to the ground, her wings dragging in the dirt. “Fine,” she said. “You win. I’m ready.”

“You mean it?” Flurry said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “You want to go home?”

“I’m ready to…try,” Cozy said weakly, extending her forehooves towards Flurry. “I’m tired. I’m done. You’ve outlasted me, and I can’t do it any more. So…do it. Clap me in irons or whatever you’ve had planned this whole time.”

Flurry gave a disbelieving, horrified little laugh. “You knew I was faking?”

“You didn’t know I was faking?” Cozy asked. “The changeling throne shard was a loan. I sent it back to Chrysalis years ago.”

“Years?” Flurry whispered, appalled.

Miserably, Cozy nodded. “After…after Best Friend. I decided that if you wanted to try again, I’d…well, I’d let you have your magic, that’s all. I didn’t want you to have to fight again, after that.”

There was something in Flurry’s throat. A lump big as an apple. And tears in her eyes. Best Friend had died before the first three years of her imprisonment were over. Almost eight years ago.

Cozy Glow ran a weary hoof over her forehead. “But it’s time to end the charade, isn’t it? I’m done. I’ve not even killed anyone in the last ten years. Not since I caught you. I faked it a couple of times. Had a couple of them shipped to an island and left there. I chased them off till they stopped coming, and now I leave your little goons alone and they leave me alone. They dig a lot of trenches, and my guys shoot some arrows over the top every once in a while to keep up appearances.”

“Why?” Flurry asked, not even knowing what she was referring to. Why any of this.

Cozy stared at her as though the answer should be blindingly obvious. “I had what I wanted.”

“And…what did you want?”

For the first time, a spark kindled in those red eyes. “For everypony to leave me the buck alone. To live without princesses breathing down my neck. To have my own place, where I made the calls. And…” her voice tailed off into a whisper. “…You.”

“You wanted me?”

“Always.” A hoof skimming her jawline. A soft, sad, smile. No longer a mockery, but the real thing. “Right from the start.”

Part of Flurry wanted to ask why again. But she knew why. She knew she would never know why. Perhaps, after all this time, the why of it no longer mattered.

Cozy interpreted her silence differently. “Flurry, I…I’m a mess. I always was, but after Mama…I don’t blame you, if you don’t forgive me. If you put me in the dungeons under the palace. I deserve it. But maybe you could visit me, once in a while. You could have your turn at taunting me, right?” She laughed weakly.

Can you forgive me?

Flurry looked sadly at her hooves. The hooves that had healed and harmed and taken lives, just like Cozy’s. She looked back into those soft red eyes, and she managed half a smile. “Maybe it’s not so much about forgiveness. Maybe it’s about…moving on. Letting go.”

A single, tremulous nod. “I could do that now, I think. I could let go.”

For the first time in what felt like a century, Flurry Heart smiled and meant it. “Me too. So maybe we skip the dungeon for now.”

“Really?” Cozy asked, blinking. “I thought you’d…that was why I held off, the last two or three years. I wanted a bit more time with you before I faced up to it. A couple more chess matches. What about your family?”

Even now, it was family, rather than aunt. The one name that haunted Cozy would remain unspoken.

“Maybe, so far as they know, I get loose. I fight you one last time…and only one of us makes it out.” Flurry kept her eyes on Cozy’s. Watching every minute play of emotion over that face now that the mask was finally down. “And you and me go away somewhere quiet. I know a little shack on a mountain somewhere. It’s nice there. Peaceful.”

“You can do it for real, if you want.” Cozy’s voice was a hoarse undertone. “I won’t fight back.”

“No.” Flurry surged upwards, slamming her hooves down hard enough to splinter stone. Princesses, it felt good to do that again. To know that she could. “Nopony’s dying today. Come on. What do you say, Cozy? Yes or no?”

Slowly, Cozy Glow rose to her hooves. Where Flurry had been full of speed and fire, she moved slowly. A mare emerging at last from her uncanny foalishness. A mortal finally grown old. She raised her hoof, and she placed it gently atop Flurry’s. “Yes,” she said simply, and the world was right once more.

Flurry’s broken heart was pounding. There was a tidal wave inside her, fighting to be set free. She wrapped her forelegs tight around Cozy Glow, and buried her face in those greying curls.

And hundreds of miles away, in the Crystal Empire, Princess Cadence looked up in horror to see light flaring from the Heart’s tower. A teacup trembled in her hoof, fell, and shattered. She leapt from the window and teleported midair, and when she skidded to a halt beside the Heart, she saw the impossible.

The Heart, after years of barely managing to stay lit, was blazing. It was whole. Healthy. The barrier of the shield that kept out the snow was brilliant once more. Even the old crack, the tiny one that had appeared after Flurry’s first stumble.

It was healed. No longer cut off from the alicorn it was linked so closely to.

It was healed.