Bits and piecesby Cackling MoronChapters#1#2#3#4#5#6#7#8#9#10#11#12#1Author's Note More of what no-one wanted or needed, delivered at random and out of nowhere. 1 == Four young ponies were watching one old human on a stepladder struggle with bunting. He was attempting to get it slung over the branch of a tree, and in trying to do this he was having very limited success. The old man had just the one of his original legs with the other being a replacement, a lot of brass framework strapped about his lower portions and about his waist and appeared to be swearing in a low voice and in a language only one of the ponies watching could understand. The old human thought he was being quiet enough that she wouldn't hear. He was not. She could. It was one of the reasons why she was smirking. "Are you sure you don't need help Mr Paul?" One of the watching ponies asked, cocking her head and setting the bow she wore waggling. "Just Paul, children. And no. I am fine," the old human grunted through gritted teeth, straining for reach and cursing himself for only having brought the small stepladder. "Are you suuure, Mr Paul?" Asked another of the watching ponies, this one with a horn and the perfect tone of voice for drawing out a word. None of the others could have pulled it off even half as perfectly. Well, maybe one of the others, but she was too busy smirking. Paul paused, his concentration fraying. He gritted his teeth harder, having been poised to just again attempt to loop the end of the bunting over the branch. "Very sure. And just Paul, children. I have told you." "If you say so, Mr Paul,” said the one of the ones with wings, the orangey one, and said quite deliberately, too. "Just Paul. Bloody kids have been round the house often enough to know my bloody name by now I swear to God. Least it’s not ‘Mr Cozy’ anymore. Just trying to rile me. Cozy's putting them up to it, I know she is..." "Dad doesn't want help, just leave him to it," said the smallest of the watching ponies, the one with the curly hair, the one who'd been smirking silently the whole time. "Do not call me that, Cozy," Paul said without turning around, preparing himself as he was for another bunting-toss. Cozy stuck her tongue out at him. "And do not stick your tongue out," Paul said. "But- how!" Cozy sputtered. Paul tossed the bunting and this time nailed it. Nailed it so perfectly in fact that Cozy could have sworn he'd wasted all his time up until this point just so he could do it and make her look bad. He then turned, grinning, and tapped his nose. "I know you, child." She gaped at him in annoyance for a moment before snapping her mouth shut. “Urgh, thinks he’s funny. Come on.” They wandered off and left him to his bunting and his hypocrisy of being annoyed at them failing to remember his name while he’d spent years merrily forgetting all of theirs. They moved to navigate the edge of the park the party was being set up in, for a party was being set up. It was one of Canterlot’s many, many (many) parks - place was riddled with the damn things, always just tucked around a corner in any space there was available. Big fan of green public areas the city planners, apparently - and it had been the spot that Paul had chosen for the event for reasons that he’d not revealed and likely weren’t that compelling. Cozy doubted he’d asked anyone if he could have a party here, but she also doubted anyone would have been able to talk him out of it either. And it was too late now regardless. He was dug in like a party tick. The bunting was only the latest part of it, balloons had already been pinned up. He was going all-out, by his standards. She and the others had pitched in to help with the balloons, as Paul lacked the lung capacity to do them himself. He’d tried because of course he’d never actually admit to not being able to do it, and Cozy had been content to let him try at first, but it had stopped being funny about a quarter of the way into the first balloon and she’d found she simply couldn’t let it continue. Despite his protests she had taken over, and her and the others had done the rest. There hadn’t been a lot he could have done about it. He’d been too out of breath. "This is better than your last birthday party,” Scootaloo said, and she wasn’t wrong but she didn’t know the half of it, either. “You should have seen the first one,” Cozy said dolefully, the mere memory unfortunate. “What did you do?” “Nothing! I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. It was just me and dad, and he doesn’t - he didn’t really get birthdays.” “How do you not get birthdays?” “I don’t know, he didn’t have them where he came from or something,” Not true, incidentally. It had just been a long, long time since they’d come up for Paul and he’d rather forgotten the procedure. He had got better after the first one, thankfully, and now had more-or-less got the proper hang of things. In his own way. Took him a few years. "He did buy the cake this time, right? And not make it himself? I just want to be sure,” Sweetie Belle said, deathly serious, her face grave. As someone with some level of experience when it came to rendering the edible inedible she had discovered in Paul a level of culinary failure she could only ever have aspired to. Briefly, the four of them remembered the cake he’d made. All four of them shuddered. Even now, years later, the flavour lingered somehow. “Yes, he did,” Cozy said. A collective sigh of relief was released. In all honesty Cozy was kind of floored by dad’s efforts. For a grumpy bastard with a (repeatedly, loudly, yearly) professed disdain for birthdays it really looked like he’d tried to make a proper go of hers this time. Then again, he always had, in his own way. Even the first year. He’d failed miserably, sure, but he’d obviously tried. He’d just got better at trying, his trying hadn’t ever stopped being a given. This year though really was a step up. Not at home in the dead garden with Paul’s ditch of cigarette butts that he’d refused to do anything with despite ostensibly having given up smoking, more guests (hopefully), more balloons, the introduction of bunting, outside catering meaning that the food was being done by someone other than Paul - all sorts of things. It was the culmination of bitter experience all coming together, brought to fruition by Paul’s determined efforts and the money he saved by being austere and frugal in his personal life. No guards this time, either, which, while not new generally, was still a nice change from the last party. Even when Cozy had first been allowed to go beyond the walls (supervised, as said, under the watchful eye of some trusted individual or other, sometimes Paul, sometimes someone else) there’d always been guards mysteriously close to wherever she happened to be going. They’d started out quite brazen, though later more towards plainclothes guards lurking conspicuously in crowds. A plainclothes guard was quite easy to spot, Cozy had learnt. They all wore the same trenchcoat over their armour and the same hat perched at the same jaunty angle. They were also commonly issued the same newspaper with eyeholes cut out, for peepin’. Made them stick out a bit. It was oddly comforting, in a way, that in a world that seemed always to be changing the ineptitude of the guards remained stubbornly consistent. Something to cling to. She was fairly sure it was the exact same trenchcoat, too, and they had to share it. Some of the stains had looked familiar. Kind of odd to think how that sort of thing might have, not all that long ago, made her angry. Now she saw the funny side of it. She wasn’t wholly sure why this might be, but there it was. Also helped that, at the last party, the guards had actually been alright. Hogged the bouncy castle but then they’d been the ones to bring it (it was their bouncy castle). They were certainly better at cutting loose and enjoying themselves at a child’s birthday party than they were at their actual jobs. Or so dad had said. Repeatedly. “Did you invite Twilight, in the end?” Sweetie Belle asked, bringing Cozy back to the moment. The question had been asked because, as they saw, some guests were starting to arrive. Cozy had been quite liberal with the invitations mainly because she could and so had been, distributing them to just about anyone in Canterlot she was on even vaguely friendly terms with. Paul had inexplicably encouraged her in this as well. The first couple knots of ponies she kind of recognised. They were nice enough. As for Twilight? There’d been some discussion among her and her friends in their meetings and correspondence prior to the party about whether Cozy should or not. Her friends had been all for it, Cozy had been more hesitant. In the end she’d gone with it and extended an invitation. "I did. I don't expect her to actually come, she's probably got better things to - oh, no, wait, there she is. And she brought all her friends too,” Cozy said, pointing. The other girls, with their history and familial connections, were elated and dashed over at once. Cozy was more reserved and did not dash anywhere, instead lingering, undecided. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Twilight, it was that the thought and sight of her reminded Cozy very strongly of that time she’d betrayed Twilight’s trust as part of a greater scheme to seize control and perhaps, inadvertently maybe, bring about semi-apocalyptic consequences, and being reminded of this made her guts twist. Was that guilt? It probably was. She wasn’t a fan. And having Twilight right there made it more difficult to shove into the back of her head where she normally kept it. The rest of them, Twilight’s friends, she could take or leave. Her contact had been limited and her opinions had been equally limited, mostly to how best to get them to do what she might have needed them to do, had she needed them to do anything. Though subsequently realising that this was the extent of her feelings about them had left her feeling… ...not great. So she did her best not to think about it. Paul chose this moment to wander over for some reason or other but quickly forgot that reason when he followed where Cozy was looking and spotted Twilight. “Oh God. It’s the small one. With other ones. Are they also princesses?” He asked, wincing. Cozy looked up at him sideways in mild despair. He knew at least one of them, he’d met Rainbow Dash before! Twice, at least! Cozy would worry about his memory but she knew it was less a case of forgetting things and more a case of not having paid attention to them in the first place. And also forgetting them anyway. “No, they’re not,” she said, deciding not to go any further into it. Paul nodded. “Hmph. That’s something, at least. Oh God, the pink one is coming this way.” Indeed she was. At a hop, no less, complete with springing sound. Best not to think too much about that. Both Paul and Cozy stayed rooted to the spot - escape was impossible. “Hello Cozy! Happy birthday!” Pinkie said. “Hello Pinkie. Thank you,” Cozy said. “Hello Paul!” Pinkie said, bouncing up to be at face-level when she said it. “...hello pink horse.” “I like your bunting!” “Hmph.” “Are those balloons?” Pinkie asked, pointing to a nearby bunch of balloons. Paul very slowly turned to look at them before very slowly turning back around to Pinkie again. She was waiting expectantly for an answer. Paul licked his lips. “...no,” he said. Pinkie looked genuinely taken aback. “Oh. What are they then?” She asked. Paul stared at her for a moment and then just walked off without saying anything, muttering to himself and shaking his head. “What are they?!” She called after him, now desperately curious. “They’re balloons. It’s uh, a language thing, don’t worry about it,” Cozy said quickly before buzzing off after Paul. “Oh. I thought they were balloons! Still got it, hah!” Pinkie said to herself, happy that particular mystery had been resolved and that her ability to identify balloons was still intact and hopping back into the mix of things. Cozy caught up with Paul in seconds. “That was pretty rude, dad,” she said, hovering along beside him. Paul could not have given less of a shit. So much so he didn’t even tell her not to call him dad, that’s how much of a not shit he gave. “Yeah yeah yeah, I’m sure she’s devastated. Oh God there’s so many horses here. Why did you have to be such a popular child?” Paul asked as he witnessed another gaggle of guests arriving, happily joining those already present. The rather modest park he’d picked was already started to get a bit crowded. “It’s not my fault I’m adorable,” Cozy said, giving a bobbing mid-air pirouette, a perfect landing with forehooves raised, a bounce of the curls and one of the wider, brighter smiles she could muster. Paul was unmoved. “Hah.” She landed standing and stuck her tongue out again and he barked out a laugh, grunting as he bent to pat her on the head and a pinch of the cheek. “Maybe just a little bit adorable,” he said. “Eurgh, it doesn’t work if you say it,” she said, fighting him off. The red on her cheeks was from the pinching. Both of them, somehow, despite him only having pinched one. “Exactly why I said it. Now off you go, do whatever it is you’re meant to do at these things. Have fun or whatever. I’m going to go and have a sit down, my leg is hurting,” he said, gripping the leg in question (his remaining leg) and wincing briefly. A ripple of concern passed over Cozy like a breeze worrying the surface of a modest puddle or small pond. “Are you okay?” She asked. Should she bring the chair to him? He waved her aside. “Fine, fine, fine. Just been upright too long. Prod me if you need anything,” he said, and with that wobbled off. Cozy watched him, concern continuing to ripple, albeit less so. “Alright…” As she sometimes did (but tried not to make too much of a habit of) Cozy did what Paul had said. Once she’d seen that he had found a place to settle down she hovered off to go and get some nibbles, and while acquiring nibbles (and squash, in tiny paper cups) she bumped into Twilight who was doing the same. Was this a coincidence? Had it been planned? Did it matter? Practically speaking, not really. “Oh! Hello Cozy,” Twilight said, genuinely not having noticed bumping into the birthday girl for a good second or two. She seemed in buoyant spirits. Cozy was less buoyant. “Princess,” she said, doing a teeny bow. “This is your party, Cozy! You don’t need to do that,” Twilight said. Not an especially big fan of the formality, especially not at someone’s party! Cozy had mostly been doing it just to stall for time and try to think of a topic of conversation to avoid an uncomfortable silence. Hanging around dad too much kind of made bowing uncomfortable, at least in theory, as a concept. If he had been capable of bowing he wouldn’t do it, and he would tell you at length as to why he wouldn’t. Cozy had been subjected to this, and despite her precautions some of it might have been absorbed. But he wasn’t watching. So it was fine. Rising from the bow and still not really having anything she felt she could talk about Cozy went with a great standby option: “Glad you could make it.” Twilight beamed. “Happy to be invited! Didn’t expect it. You know, sometimes I think you go out of your way to avoid me, Cozy!” She said in exuberant, jocular fashion, meaning this as a harmless joke, a light waft of humour. Hit a bit too close to home though. As previously mentioned, Cozy did indeed not really feel all that happy whenever Twilight was around, for reasons already elucidated upon. She didn’t go out of way to avoid Twilight, as the joke had said, but, on those uncommon occasions where their schedules lined up to put them in roughly the same place at roughly the same time, Cozy always seemed to slip away before actually bumping into Twilight. It was the gut twisting. The unavoidable attraction of dark thoughts relating to how this pony had trusted her and how she’d used that trust, used it, like it was just another component in a scheme, like a screwdriver, like a tool. Like it had no worth of value beyond what she could have used it to achieve. All that stuff. Cozy didn’t like it. And looking at Twilight just brought her mind to the simmer with it all. Grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and shoved her face into what it was she’d done, more so than anyone else somehow. Cozy tried to smile, but it was weak. She wasn’t as good at cracking them out on cue as she used to be. Out of practise. Not so much call anymore. “Ahah, hah, hah...yeah…” Twilight’s beam dimmed. “Have you...been avoiding me?” She asked, balanced on the knife edge between concern and being wounded. That she was so balanced was not secret, it was plain. Cozy winced. “No, no. Well, not on purpose. I…” This was pretty much the exact reason why she’d been reluctant to invite Twilight, this exact conversation. This had been the worst-case scenario and it was happening, right next to the cups of squash and beneath the bunting. What a nightmare. Oh well. Started now. Started so she’ll finish. “I feel bad about what I did to you and every time I see you I think about what I did to you and it makes me feel bad and so I’ve been avoiding thinking about it and trying to avoid you so I can avoid thinking about it,” she said, not pausing for breath once and ending the sentence panting. Twilight blinked. “Oh,” she said. Cozy continued, still not having fully finished: “And I know I shouldn’t be avoiding that sort of thing - or you, you’ve done nothing wrong and I kind of like you, actually - but that’s what I’ve been doing, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, but mostly sort of intentionally because it makes me feel bad and, uh, yeah. Something like that,” she said, shrugging helplessly and examining a patch of scrubbed grass by Twilight’s left forehoof. This forehoof then raised and placed itself (presumably at Twilight’s command, though who’s to say?) on Cozy’s shoulder, forcing her attention up again and getting her to actually look Twilight in the face. She was no-longer balanced on anything. She was now smiling comfortingly. “It’s okay. You don’t need to be sorry for the Tartarus thing anymore. I’ve forgiven you,” she said. Cozy grimaced. Eurgh. Details. Where one came a flood followed. “Wasn’t just that though, was it…” Her guilt was broader. It spread wide, like a shit blanket, smothering her whole world at times. At times no aspect of her life seemed free from it, all parts lying beneath the blanket, tainted. At times. This was one of those times. Twilight’s expression got more serious, a real talk expression. “Cozy, don’t - look, I’m not going to lie and say what you tried to do was fine because it wasn’t and we can’t pretend it was, but it failed. It failed and we can’t ignore it but we can’t let it be the only thing in your whole life or such a big thing in ours we have to stop everything every time we think about it. It’d only be bad now if you hadn’t learnt from it and hadn’t moved on. I’d say you’d learnt from it and I’d say you’d certainly moved on! Look at where you are now! Look at you!” Cozy didn’t wholly buy this line and felt it could perhaps have been delivered better, but could at least see where Twilight was coming from and had to be forgiving as it had plainly been given off the cuff. She managed most of a smile. “I guess,” she said. “We’ve all forgiven you, you just need to do it yourself now. It’s just a part of life now, just a part of you and not all of you. And it’s the past. You might be remembered for it, sure, but I know it won’t be the only thing you’re remembered for. Whole life ahead of you, Cozy! We’re all heading forward now. Together! Friendship, see? It’s magic!” Twilight’s grin was broad. Cozy bit back a wince. “Had to work that in there, huh?” She asked. Twilight’s blush was sudden and deep. “Well…” Hokey and goofy as it might have been, it had also been sincerely meant. Somehow though this only served to make it hokier and goofier still, which led to giggles. Who was to say who broke first? Twilight’s seemed the quicker to bubble up but Cozy’s proper giggles always had to work their way up through her via a winding route (possibly due to years of forced giggling, possibly not), so maybe they both really started at the same time? It hardly mattered, really. They both giggled. That was what mattered. They shared a good giggle over some goofy lines and some cups of squash. Neither could have hoped for a better way to both puncture the tension of the moment or end the conversation so comfortably. It really took the edge off. Cozy was able to relax a bit around Twilight after having vented her spleen and the world not having come crashing down, and Twilight was able to see Cozy relax a bit. They both felt the winner. “I’ll leave you to it,” Twilight said once the giggles had petered out. “But if you ever want to come talk to me about anything - anything! - don’t think twice, okay? You’re still you, Cozy, but you’re not who you were. You’ve grown.” More bromide, but well meant. Cozy squirmed at it all. “Bit taller I guess…” she muttered. Ignoring this, Twilight gave Cozy a friendly pat on the shoulder before, as she said she would, leaving her to it, wandering off to her own friends and leaving Cozy with the squash. Cozy had two cups to steady her nerves. Well that had been emotionally draining, if ultimately somewhat positive. And at her birthday party, too! Over thankfully. Could only get better from here, she was sure. An outbreak of bowing caught Cozy’s attention and she turned, eyes widening slightly when she saw, towering over the genuflecting crowd, Celestia. Cozy’s guts sank. A lot of her feelings were centered in her guts, she realised. They reacted strongly. Here, they reacted with the dread of another exhausting conversation incoming. One talk with one princess had been quite enough for one birthday as far as Cozy was concerned, but this did not stop Celestia from immediately homing in on Cozy the instant she made eye-contact She came over so suddenly and was just so tall that Cozy all at once had the overwhelming, terrifying sense that she must have done something wrong and found herself rooted to the spot, looking over to dad for help but finding him, unhelpfully, pretending to be asleep in his seat. Or actually asleep. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes. “Happy birthday, Cozy Glow,” Celestia said once within greeting range. That snapped Cozy out of it. “Thank you, Princess,” she said, giving another small bow. It was as said the done thing and felt more appropriate here than with Twilight somehow, even if dad would have scowled at her for doing it. She checked midway through that he was still pretending to be asleep and was silently glad to see that he was. “Oh, no need for that, Cozy! This is your party!” Celestia said. Bit late, but still. Celestia then produced a present from wherever it had been lurking and hovered it across to Cozy, who took it, surprised. Well-wrapped, the present had a kind of heft that suggested ‘book’ to Cozy who was therefore not wholly shocked when, on unwrapping, she found book. A cookery book, no less. That one did surprise her. “A...cookbook?” She asked, staring at the cover, at a loss. Celestia was still smiling though with the clear edge of one who is worried their gesture might not be landing the way it had been intended to land. “Well, I don’t know if it’s still true but I remember you saying that Paul’s efforts at dinner - while valiant - left something to be desired and so I felt that this might benefit you in an indirect sort of a way,” she said. Cozy looked at the cookbook again. “Oh. Right. I get it. Dad’s, uh, he’s still not great at cooking so you might be onto something there.” Cozy hadn’t starved to death yet, which was something, but dinner was still luck of the draw most nights. More hits than misses these days, true, but those misses… Blech. “I’m rather out of practise with buying presents, I’m afraid,” Celestia said, more quietly. “No, no, it’s good. Thank you.” A pause. This was not the first conversation that Cozy and Celestia had had since that time in that podunk town hall those few years back. They’d met a few more times since, during what Celestia would have been loathe to have labelled ‘check ins’ but which had been exactly that - quaint little meetings with tea and biscuits to gauge Cozy’s development, progress, attitude towards reform and also maybe just possibly keeping an eye out for signs of recidivism. Cozy had detested them at first, finding them by turns insulting, demeaning, condescending and intrusive but eventually coming to realise that Celestia had had to do something and at least this way it was on fairly neutral terms. Wasn’t like having someone hanging over her every day, scrutinizing everything she did. Cozy did enough of that to herself. Because if there was one thing that getting stuck with Paul had done it was give Cozy ample time, distance and context to fully appreciate the breadth of what it was she’d done and, in hindsight, she didn’t think her plan was as flawless as she once had. So, really, the occasional slightly awkward session with a princess was probably the least worst thing that could have happened. And, like everything else, they’d tailed off by now, Celestia (and, presumably, Luna and Twilight as well, though this was assumed more than known, given she only rarely saw the latter and never saw the former) apparently feeling sufficiently convinced that Cozy had improved beyond needing the checkups. Which was curiously uplifting to realise, Cozy felt. External validation isn’t necessary, but it can be quite nice sometimes. Paul continued to detest the meetings even now they’d stopped, obviously, and complained about them from time to time despite them not having happened for a good while, but this did not surprise Cozy. His dislike of authority wasn’t especially nuanced or complex. It was instead a constant, like the tides. “You didn’t need to come to this, Princess…” Cozy mumbled as the pause drew on and on. She was forever the one breaking silences, she felt. Everyone else just lacked the capacity to seize the initiative, it seemed. “Oh, well, no, I didn’t have to but I did want to! Once I heard it was happening, of course,” Celestia said, back to a full-warmth grade smile. “How did you hear about it?” Cozy asked. Really, she imagined not a lot went on - especially in Canterlot - without Celestia being at least vaguely aware, but the idea that she kept an alert eye on all the birthday parties seemed to be pushing it a bit. “Twilight told me,” Celestia said, pointing to Twilight who noticed being pointed at and waved, so Celestia waved back. That explained that. Celestia’s attention then returned to Cozy, who had the sudden impression she was being appraised from top to bottom. “To think that, only a few years ago, this,” Celestia said, gesturing to the party in a general sense. “Would have been completely unimaginable. When I see how much you’ve changed, and I think about what we nearly did…” That brought things to a screeching halt. What were you meant to say to something like that? Really, it wasn’t something Cozy liked to think about too much. She’d gone through a period when she’d kind of wanted to yell about it - at anyone who happened to be in yelling range, she hadn’t been fussy - but that had passed pretty quickly. She’d had enough quiet time on her own and with Paul to realise that dwelling on it wasn’t going to help anyone, and keeping herself facing forward was probably the best thing she could do. Honestly, Cozy was more surprised that Paul hadn’t yelled at Celestia more about it, given his performance back in that hall that one time. When he’d seen her in that cage and tried to fight every guard present. It had kind of set the bar for her. Suggested it was something he felt strongly about. So really, Cozy had expected the ranting to continue in their meetup sessions, but it hadn’t, he’d just been as laconic as he usually was with anyone who wasn’t Cozy. She kind of got the impression that he would just prefer to forget the princess existed and not waste time talking to her, even when she was right there. Which might explain why he was asleep... “Yeah, well. You didn’t. So, uh, thanks for that too. I guess,” Cozy said at length, stiffly. Cozy wasn’t entirely sure why she was thanking someone for not throwing her into a hole, but it was probably the polite thing to do and, well, everyone has a complicated time of life and no-one likes being shouted at and what good would that do anyway? Celestia seemed to appreciate the gesture, if nothing else, smiling. “How is Paul?” She asked, by way of switching onto a lighter subject. Cozy turned to look at him again. The only signs of life was that one arm that had previously been sitting in his lap was now dangling limply by his side, and he was snoring. “Asleep,” she said, turning back to Celestia. Who was now grinning just a little. “So I see. Do you still enjoy living with him?” “ ‘Enjoy’ is a strong word…” Celestia smiled. The day seemed to get just a touch warmer. “He cares about you a great deal. In his own way.” Cozy knew this already of course, but having it brought up by someone else felt oddly intrusive. Anyone outside of her and dad contemplating the nature of their relationship (and dad didn’t contemplate anything as far as she knew, so anyone outside of her, really) seemed wrong. Like no-one else should notice, or should be allowed to notice. But Celestia had Cozy in a box here. Couldn’t deny it, and couldn’t change the subject without drawing more attention to it. Bracketed, stuck. Forced into a reply. Cozy shifted uncomfortably. “...I know,” she said. To Cozy’s immense relief Celestia did not press this point and seemed happy enough with this answer. “I did ask if Luna wanted to come to your party as well. She declined, but I did ask,” she said, by way of moving on and keeping things flowing. It was so out of nowhere it did a pretty good job at this. “Oh,” said Cozy, utterly at a loss for how this was in any way a good idea on Celestia’s part. Celestia seemed to pick up on this and smiled. “You may find this difficult to believe, Cozy, but Luna has been taking a close interest in your wellbeing these last few years.” “Really?” She asked, genuinely surprised and wondering how worried she should be about that. “Close interest?” She repeated, sounding the words out and finding they really could come across quite a few different ways. Cozy was thinking the way they were meant here was in the ‘Looking for backsliding and an excuse to chuck out Paul and go with plan Tartarus again’ way. Again, Celestia seemed to pick up on this. It really was uncanny. A thousand years of practise will really sharpen you up, it looked like. “I will admit at first she was, ah, sceptical about the idea, but believe me when I say she was as genuinely happy as all of us to hear how you’ve been thriving in your, ah, unique environment. Doubly so since the removal of some of the...initial measures...” Those last two words made Celestia frown, as though they sat awkwardly on her tongue. Cozy was still having some trouble wrapping her heard around the idea of Princess ‘Put Cozy In The Hole At Once’ Luna having such an about-face. You’d have thought if that was the case she might have shown up sometime to say so, maybe say sorry? Apparently not. Maybe she was shy. “That’s a change,” Cozy said. “Yes, well, we all make mistakes, even princesses, and sometimes we realise that,” she said, adding quietly: “Sometimes more vividly than others.” There was a story there, but Cozy doubted there’d be time to get into it. “She says happy birthday,” Celestia then said, which derailed Cozy’s thinking anyway. “Huh. I say thanks?” Cozy said. Celestia nodded. “I’ll relay that to her.” There wasn’t a whole lot more of note following this. They had some idle, winding-down small talk on the subject of cake and bunting and then reached a mutual, friendly end to the conversation and both of them drifted away and back into the party. Cozy took the book over to a table to set it down so she wouldn’t have to lug it around with her. Scootaloo, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle just-so happened to be sat at this table. They were equally baffled by the choice of a cookbook as a present, though they did have to admit that - having experienced it themselves - any efforts to improve Paul’s cooking were to be seized with both hooves. How Celestia expected him to actually read the thing was an open question. The party continued. #2Author's Note Yeah, this probably makes sense. 2 == Eventually, the party stopped continuing. Paul only found out about this when Cozy woke him up, leaping into his lap without warning and causing him to jolt upright with a snort. “Hnh? What? Time for cake?” He asked, blinking blearily and sitting up straight, looking around. Time was, waking him up like that would have had him wake with a violent start and a wild-eyed moment when it looked like he expected someone to attack him and that he’d cold-cock them if they tried, Cozy knew, rather glad that he’d lost that habit. Showed that the possibility of mellowing out did actually exist. “No dad, you slept through that bit,” she said as Paul tried to rub some clarity into his eyes. “I keep saying stop call- wait, I slept through it? Ah bugger. Why didn’t you wake me up, Cozy?” He asked, closing and opening one eye and then other, peering down at her still sat in his lap. Cozy gave a teeny tiny shrug. “Thought you’d prefer to sleep. Mean, you’re not exactly a party pony - er, person - are you?” She asked. Paul frowned. Hard to argue with, but not impossible. “Well, no, but it was your birthday party! I should have been awake. Sorry, Cozy,” he said, genuinely annoyed with himself. He’d gone to some effort to try and make the day special for her, least he could do was stay awake! Cozy didn’t actually mind. “It’s okay. I saved you some cake,” she said, producing a paper plate on which was sat a slice of cake. Paul looked at it a moment. “I feel worse, now!” He then said, groaning and putting his face in his hands. When he looked up he looked more curious, and took in the now-deserted, debris-stripped section of park, all party products taken down and packed up in the bag he’d brought them in in the first place. All rubbish cleared, too. Like they’d never even been there. Nice of someone, he thought. Whoever they were. “Where’s everyone?” He asked. “Everyone’s gone home. Except for Swe- except for The Three,” Cozy said, catching herself. If she’d used their actual names then Paul wouldn’t have known who she was talking about. “They’re still in town. I’m going to go around to where they’re staying tomorrow, we’re going to do, well, stuff.” He did not need to know the specifics. Being a crusty fossil from another world he likely wouldn’t have understood them anyway even if they were fairly straight-forward things like “Hang out” and “Talk”. Wild concepts. Paul raised his eyebrows. “Hark at Cozy! Inviting herself to places without even telling me! She’ll be moving out next!” He said. She rolled her eyes but then put on a super-bright, cheery expression. “Sorry dad I’ll cancel. Is this when you break out the surprise present of a bell I wear around the house so you can keep track of when I use the bathroom?” Cozy asked with as much mock-sweetness as she could muster (which, being her, was a frankly dizzying amount). Paul had been all set to tell her off again for trying the dad trick and had been entirely unprepared for her crack about the bell. So instead of reprimanding her he just burst out laughing. It hadn’t been that good a line, Cozy felt, and she had been fully expecting him to throw one back at her and so this came as something of a surprise. He was so lost in it and so quickly that she herself quickly got the giggles, and giggles then graduated to full-blown laughter of her own. It was quite nice, all things considered. A nice moment. Less pleasantly the laughing did tail off into a rather nasty sounding hacking cough towards the end and while Cozy didn’t particularly enjoy that part Paul didn’t seem any the worse for wear because of it. “Oh you. Fun kid, you. You will at least tell me where it is before you go?” He asked, hammering a fist against his chest, eyes watering. “Yes, obviously,” Cozy said, this having been the plan all along. Paul nodded. “Good, good. I am still supposed to be keeping an eye on you,” he said, then adding tentatively:“Um, the party was okay, wasn’t it? You did have a good time?” This Paul asked with his usual brusqueness, the kind that always sat balanced on the knife-edge between straightforwardly businesslike and aggressively grumpy. But this time it wasn’t entirely earnest. This time it was forced. Most wouldn’t have been able to tell, but most were not Cozy, who had the benefit (such as it was) of living with him. Cozy could detect, through the deft application of her own excellent people-stroke-pony reading abilities coupled with her deepened understanding of how Paul functioned, an actual sliver of vulnerability. He genuinely cared what she thought about his efforts, and what she said would have a genuine impact on him, whether he’d actually admit it or not. Realising this and seeing this made her a bit uncomfortable. With anyone else she would have loved it, or at least would used to have loved it. With him it just felt unseemly, unfair. Weird. “It was great,” she said, smiling in a fashion calculated to be reassuring. The look of relief on Paul’s face was almost a tangible force, like a stiff breeze. “Ah, good, I’m glad. I worry about fuc- about messing these things up.” “Well it was definitely better than the first one,” she said. “Keeling over and dying would have been better than the first one,” Paul said, sourly. “You’re the one who said it…” Their mutual memories of that awful, underwhelming first birthday party held them in rapture for a moment before, unprompted and for reasons that weren’t wholly clear to her, Cozy shoved the plate of cake into Paul’s hand and then wrapped around his chest in a hug. Being on his lap made this pretty easy to do. Paul, surprised, got over it quickly and hugged her back, though being careful at the same time not to drop the cake. It was good cake! Or so the baker had assured him it would be. Even having grown a bit as she had and even with Paul never having been the beefiest of men even in his prime (and he was most certainly not in his prime), Cozy still got swallowed up in his arms. Not that she minded. She quite liked it there. Which was strange. Initially, giving Paul hugs had been something that Cozy had done quite deliberately and in quite over-the-top fashion, specifically because she’d known it annoyed him. They hadn’t meant a whole lot, but had been quite funny to administer. An audience had also been quite an important part, before. Them being over-the-top and in full view of others made Paul’s uncomfortableness with them the funnier, she’d thought. Somehow - and without her really noticing how or when - that had changed. He’d stopped being so obviously annoyed by them, and though he still grumbled he had become less reluctant in the hugging back. And while there had at first been no problem with others being around when Cozy inflicted these hugs - an awkward, amusing hug forced on a grumpy old man was funnier with an audience - now having people around to watch just felt… ... intrusive, somehow. That word again, but it fit, that’s how it felt. Like they were stepping on a moment that wasn’t theirs. Odd. Very odd. At length, the hug broke. “Alright, well, enough sitting around. Upsy-daisy,” Paul said as he heaved himself upright with a groan, Cozy hopping off his lap to better allow him to do this. Paul had dispensed with the stick these days, replacing it instead with that articulated, clockwork-driven metal frame he’d made for himself and which was secured around his one remaining leg and strapped about his waist and back. Cozy didn’t understand it, but it seemed to help him. Didn’t stop him limping, but she doubted there was anything that could, short of getting a few decades of his life back and going back in time to stop a few bad things from happening. Standing, Paul swayed in place briefly before promptly devouring the chunk of cake and then stomping over to the packed-up party products and hefting up the bag. He then turned back to look down at Cozy and pat his shoulder. “Come on birthday girl, hop up,” he said around the cake before swallowing. Cozy hesitated. Jumping onto his lap while they were just on their own was one thing, that was just an easy way of getting on his level when they talked. Flying up onto his shoulder to ride there - somewhere other ponies would see her - was something else. Hadn’t used to be, but was now. “I was too old for this three birthdays ago…” she mumbled. Really, she’d always been too old for this sort of thing, not that it had been something available to her prior to Paul showing up. At first the novelty of sitting on his shoulder as he pottered about had been quite intoxicating, but comparatively recently she’d become suddenly and curiously self-conscious about it and so had stopped doing it. Paul, who had complained about it when she’d done it, had found its absence saddening for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Even if she was starting to get a little too big for it, so what? “Indulge an old man?” He asked with an exaggerated lip-wobble. He’d stolen that trick from her and he wasn’t very good at it. Still quite effective though. “Urgh, fine.” And up Cozy went, reasoning that if she did then at least he’d stop with the lip. “Can’t resist the old man line! You’d feel guilty,” Paul said, chuffed, limping off with Cozy now settled on his shoulder. Not as easily as she used to, but still fairly easily. “You’re really overestimating your age. And my capacity for guilt,” Cozy said. “Heh, methinks she doth protest too much.” He had her dead to rights on that one, not that she’d admit it. The old man line had got her thinking though. Not about him being old - though that did worry her sometimes, even if she knew he would brush it off if she mentioned it - but rather how old he was. In the sense of, how old exactly was Paul? How many years? And when was his birthday? “When’s your birthday anyway?” She asked, apparently out of nowhere, surprising him. “Mine? Why’d you ask?” “Just wondering.” He scratched his chin and wobbled mid-step alarmingly for a moment, though the frame took the strain well enough that he kept going without particular issue, though Cozy had had to tighten her grip on his shoulder. “Hmph. Guess that figures. Can’t really say though. Calendars don’t line up and I lost track yonks ago. Doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “I’d say it matters. Or should matter. You could have a party,” Cozy said. They both had another laugh at that one. “Heh, cute. We could invite all my friends! Though I’d have to make some first. Or dig some up…” He trailed off, eyes glazing for a second, but then shook his head and carried on: “Nah, don’t worry about it. I am an age and getting older, and that’s all that matters.” “Hmm,” said Cozy. “‘Hmm’ she says,” Paul parroted. Cozy ignored this, so Paul went with something else: “Any idea what you want for dinner, birthday girl? Could try making that, uh, flatbread thing again.” “You mean pizza?” Cozy asked. Apparently they didn’t have it where he was from, or didn’t call it that if they did. Odd place, where Paul was from, if what he said was anything to go by. “Yeah, that’s the one,” he said. Cozy considered this. She had nothing against pizza in theory, but the memory of the last time he’d tried gave her pause. On the plus side she’d heard some very interesting new swear words, on the down side she had come out of it sans pizza and dinner had ended up being soup. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “Hmph,” he said. The rest of the walk home - or the limp home, rather - was undertaken in silence, the better to enjoy what remained of the day. A handful of ponies waved to Cozy who - feeling very prominent and exposed on her dad’s shoulder - waved back a little sheepishly. No-one waved at Paul, and he liked it that way. It wasn’t the longest walk from the park back to the house, but it felt longer than it might otherwise have done given their arrangement. Still, Cozy didn’t mind overmuch, beyond those few times anyone saw where she was. The rest of the time it wasn’t so bad. It was nice, in its way. And then they were home, back outside the walls. The anti-flying-away net might have been long-since removed but the walls remained, at Paul’s insistence. He had come to quite like the walls because they did a great job of keeping the world outside and away. Cozy pointed out - often and loudly - that they also ruined the view and were oppressive and entirely unnecessary but Paul was consistently unmoved by these arguments and adamant that she’d never wear him down on this issue. This she had taken as a challenge, and this was ongoing. Cozy waited for him to stoop his way through the gap where the gate through the wall used to have been. They’d offered to enlarge the gap to his actual height when Paul’s desire to retain the wall had been made apparent, but Paul hadn’t felt like talking to anyone that day and so it hadn’t happened, and he hadn’t felt like bringing it up again since. But he did still like to grumble about it. Once through, she then waited some more for him to limp his way across the garden and through the back door and into the kitchen directly, the route that Paul favoured for reasons that never made sense to Cozy. And there, sitting on the table, was a scroll on which was shining the royal seal. Cozy blinked. “What’s that?” She asked, fluttering down from his shoulder and landing by his feet. “Hmm? Oh, it’s another one of those bloody letters. Just chuck it,” Paul growled, looking over, his face wrinkling in distaste on seeing what it was she was talking about. How those things kept getting in he had no idea, especially after having nailed the letterbox shut. Cozy moved to the table and reared back the better to get a look, balancing with her hooves on the edge. Paul’s table remained human-sized by his own design, and Cozy’s increase in height only went so far. “Can I read it?” She asked, already reaching for the scroll. “Hmph,” Paul grunted, shrugging, moving off, unconcerned. Cozy didn’t need telling twice. Grabbing it she ripped off the seal with her teeth, unrolled it and started reading. A letter, it turned out, not from the palace as a vague, faceless entity but rather an actual bonafide letter from the hoof of Celestia herself. It was very polite, the letter, even as it fully acknowledged that Paul had not responded to any of the others and was unlikely to respond to this one either. Cozy scanned through it, eyes zipping over a lot of introductory bromide about how his toys were being enjoyed by all the children blah blah how much Cozy had seemed to thrive in his charge (Cozy, being the one reading, glossed over that particular part in self-conscious embarrassment, the day apparently being one for that sort of thing) yada yada and it then continued and got onto- “She’s offering you a job?” Cozy asked, baffled, looking up from the scroll. Quite a cushy job from the sound of things. “Oh, is that what they say? Makes sense,” Paul said, entirely unmoved, more interested in the teapot he was manhandling than the contents of the letter. “You didn’t read any of these?” Cozy asked, brandishing it. The letter didn’t specify how many had come before but from the sound of things it had been a few more than one. Paul shook his head and dropped in more teabags than most would have liked. “No, tossed them as soon as I got them - I see a crown on something I know it’s no good. But she ‘bumped into me’ while I was out and about one time and tried to offer me much the same. Like she goes out shopping, her and her bloody entourage…” As he moved to do things with the kettle, Cozy continued reading. “It’s like a Royal Commission or something. The Princess is offering - wow, this is where the budget’s going - offering a whole minor wing of the palace to work in, any equipment you’d need, materials…” It was a lot. An alarming amount. Depending on how much a ‘minor wing’ constituted. The palace was famously lousy with wings. Couldn’t throw a bread roll in the place without hitting half a dozen of the things. No wonder they had at least one spare going. Paul, frowning, kettle in hand, stumped over to read over her shoulder. He had about as much difficulty reading Mareain as he had in speaking it, so this didn’t help him a whole lot. “That so?” He asked. “That’s what it says here,” she said, pointing. Paul squinted at the line she was pointing at. This told him nothing that she hadn’t already said. “Whatever you’d need to teach others how to do what you do. Oh, Princess Twilight too would be there too, apparently? Sometimes? Guess she wants to help?” Cozy knew for a fact that Princess Twilight had at least one of Paul’s toys, and wouldn’t put it past her to own more. Seemed like the sort of thing that, if offered, she’d definitely want to at least check up on and get into the guts of. Paul frowned, scratching his head. “Twilight? That’s the…” “The small one,” Cozy said, again despairing of his utter inability to remember the name of any pony beyond her own. Hell, she was glad he remembered hers at all. “Right, right…” he said, absently. “Teaching, huh? In a palace? And with a princess. That’s a lot of effort all for me and my silly little toys. Well, good for them but it’s not happening.” He then returned to handling the kettle, filling it and setting to boil. Generally Paul preferred to watch his kettle boil, mostly out of spite. Cozy continued reading the letter, reading the letter and thinking (and also sitting down at the table). It was light on the details of what, exactly, they wanted Paul to do but the general gist that emerged from between the lines was that he would be continuing what he did now only not at home anymore, while also occasionally imparting the hows and whys and whats of the process onto any ponies who were willing to learn, hence why the palace was being offered as a location - something of a public service, kind of. And there were quite a lot who were willing to learn, apparently. Willing and eager, no less. Probably the sort who expressed this willingness and eagerness in letters to the princess, in hopes she might do something about it. The something she’d done about it having been, in the event, letters. And when that hadn’t worked, more letters. So far, despite well-known and widespread efforts, none had been able to replicate the things that Paul made. They’d copied them, sure, copying them had been easy, but the copies were not what he made and fell short in several key areas that continued to have the locals stumped. Paul’s quaint creations simply didn’t work the way anyone in Equestria understood. Some had come very close, but none ever managed it completely. Just missing something. Clockwork they got, that part wasn’t that confusing. Magic they also got, and magic to make things move was also not exactly unheard of. [But whatever magic that got them to do what they did the quite specific way they did it was another matter. It came from somewhere else and worked according to imported rules understood by only one man.] A man who abjectly refused to explain them, to the quiet frustration of all. They had ideas! Neat ideas! Things they thought they could make to spice up or improve life! Who and what couldn’t benefit from tireless mechanical servants? Think of the potential! But there was a hurdle, an obstacle, a locked door with a key held by someone determined to go to the grave holding it. Makes it all sound very serious, but that was how it was. People wanted to know. Cozy knew that her dad could do what he liked, he was an adult, even if she did find most of his decisions and the reasons behind them kind of stupid. Still, that wasn’t really what she was latching onto here. What she was latching onto here was what looked to be an opportunity to make his life a little less crushingly repetitive. This had been a mounting concern of hers lately. She left the house, he did not. Or, when he did, it was on sufferance and only ever done as quickly as possible, only ever to get food or some other sundry and come straight back. She also had friends, people she could vent to or talk with if she wanted to. The only living soul that Paul ever spoke to beyond clipped, grunting single-sentences was herself, and while Cozy knew this was still an improvement on how he’d lived for years prior to barging into his life she was starting to worry that maybe it was doing him more harm than good. Getting out - and having a reason to go out, something to force him to interact with the world - might not be the worst thing to happen to him. He might not like it, but it would be good for him, and so getting him to do it would in itself be good. And doing good things because they were good (and not just because you’re getting something tangible out of it), Cozy had learnt in the last couple of years, was good. Hadn’t quite worked out the mechanics of it yet, but it did consistently seem to be the case, much to her bewilderment. The answer was in reach, she felt, but only barely. She’d get it soon, she was sure, and it would all make sense. Soon. “I think you should do it,” she said, knowing before she’d even opened her mouth that it was unlikely to go down well. She was right. Paul, who had been pouring boiling water, nearly spilled some on himself and cursed as he slopped some onto the side instead, grabbing a nearby teatowel to quickly mop it up, looking over to Cozy in alarm. “What? No!” “It’d just be what you do now only somewhere else, with a bit of teaching on top. Why not?” She asked, reasonably enough. Paul mopped aggressively for a second or so, getting his thoughts in order, before tossing the now-sodden teatowel into the sink and limping over to snatch up the letter, the better to brandish it around. “For one thing I don’t work for anyone other than me - no-one tells me what to do, not anymore. For another I’m damn sure not teaching anyone else anything, least of all how to do what I do. The only one I’ve even considered teaching that to is you, and that’s only because you’re my d- because I can keep an eye on you.” He bit his tongue. Paul hated - hated! - even the suggestion of the idea that he might be starting to think of Cozy as his daughter, as that was not the nature of their relationship at all as far as he was concerned. It didn’t matter how long he’d been looking after her, he was just her caretaker, that was all. Nothing else, nothing more. If she wanted to keep calling him ‘dad’ in a fruitless attempt to manipulate him that was her lookout, he wasn’t falling for it! Even if she had kept it up for a good long while now! Also, she was a horse. He might sometimes have forgotten this but it remained indisputable, and he was certain that this was an insurmountable obstacle. For her part, Cozy found his continued, stubborn refusal to ever refer to her as anything other than ‘Cozy’ or ‘the child’ as either kind of funny or kind of sad. Right then though she just ignored it and focussed on the subject at hand (at hoof?). “But why not though? I thought you liked working. And this’d pay better. And you’d get to leave the house. And so what about teaching? Why is that bad? It’d probably be good for, you know, everypony! To know how to do what you do. They could do their own things! Not that toys aren’t good but maybe there’s more useful things?” She said, delicately. Paul looked at her flatly, his face set. This was a subject they’d briefly discussed before, and he knew that she knew his feelings on it. It had been back when she’d been trying to learn, before she’d decided to stop trying. It was why they’d only discussed it briefly and not touched on it since then - he’d been quite emphatic. “No. Because they’ll want me to make weapons and teach them how to make weapons. They always want to make weapons. Things that hurt people, or at the very least something to do their dirty work for them, whatever that’d look like around here. And I’m done with that. I’m not doing it,” he said. Cozy’s composure was beginning to fray a little in the face of his having decided that he’d figured it all out already, despite not having even read the damn letter. Or any of the damn letters before this one! “You don’t know that. And it’s not even true! That’s not true at all! They just want to know how to do what you do. It could be for anything! It could just be more toys! Or, uh, they want to see if they can use it to make farming equipment, I don’t know. Or anything! You don’t know!” She protested, getting increasingly annoyed the more she went on. Paul was unruffled. “I do know. This is the big one’s idea and I’ve been told what to do by enough pricks in crowns to know that they always want the same thing and that’s something they can use to stay on top and put more distance between them and everyone below. And if they say different they’ve just convinced themselves otherwise, that’s it. I’m not giving them the opportunity. They’re all the same.” “The Princesses aren’t that bad...” Cozy said, aware that this was another thing that Paul would not want to hear. She was right again, too, it wasn’t. He goggled at her and pointed in sheer, astonished disbelief. “You! You of all people! After what they did to you! After what they were going to do! You- ah, my but you’ve grown haven’t you?” He said, shaking his head but smiling. Small smile, but a smile all the same. He wasn’t sure whether to be proud or not of that, given the circumstances. Seemed a better bet to be proud, he reckoned, even if it did mean a softening stance on those who had titles, crowns and power, something he disapproved of on principle. Showed development, even if it was away from him - especially if it was away from him. Her own person. Showed that she was better than he was. Of course, he’d always known that she was better than he was by leaps and bounds, but it was nice to see it in action. Proved him right. He was stuck, she was moving on, growing. She’d surpass him, she was surpassing him. He might not have agreed, but that wasn’t the point. Hard for Paul to really wrap his head around it, ultimately, so he didn’t bother to think about it too hard. Just smiled and shook his head some more. Cozy was just kind of confused by what he’d said, and was looking down at herself. Second time in one day? Was she missing something? “Well, yeah. I have grown. That’s how it works,” she said, looking up again at Paul only to find him giving her the oddest look. She could not for the life of her work out what he was thinking. Didn’t last long though. He seemed to realise he was doing it just when she saw that he was, and so he stopped, snapping out of it and plunging right back into the swing of things: “I’m still not doing it.” “Oh come on, dad! How many years have you been here now? Have you ever seen them do anything like what you said they used to do where you’re from?” “No. Doesn’t matter. Still not doing it.” “Even if it helped ponies? People? Uh, just helped in general?” Cozy asked. She knew for a fact - having heard about it when he’d been trying to impart his particular skills onto her - that he was fully aware and rather liked the idea of having handy, magically-powered clockwork companions and contraptions available for mundane tasks and general problem-solving and that, when he’d been younger, he’d felt that it was definitely worth the time. Life could be better, he’d thought, and he could help with the making it better! Now though, not so much. That had been ground out of him by bastards. Hence the value he put in the advice that Cozy not let that happen to her. He’d had it happen to him. He wasn’t a fan. “It won’t. That’s not what it would be for. I know. It’d be some shiny toy for their poxy army, I know. And even if that’s not what I made for them that’s what they’d try and use it for. It’ll start out as the best of intentions and end up the way it always does, because that’s what happens. No, not doing it. That’s final, Cozy.” “But-” “Final. Done.” She gritted her teeth, considered pointing out that where he was wasn’t where he’d come from, considered pointing out all the things that he’d made that weren’t weapons like that thing that pulled the wagon and which lived in the shed and the toys and that walking frame and his damn leg but no, she could see it wouldn’t get her anywhere. There was a line in Paul’s head, she knew. On the one side him, knowing how to do things and on the other everyone else, who could not be trusted. Cozy was in there too, but she sat in a separate category he’d built off to one side that was distinct. Not that she was aware of this. And not that it mattered. It was done, like he’d said. “Fine,” she said. “Good,” he said, balling up the letter and tossing it into the bin in the corner. Cozy couldn’t muster the energy to be annoyed by that. His letter, after all. Paul resumed making tea. She watched him as he faffed with mugs and bags and spoons, watched him as he fished the teatowel out of the sink, wrung it out and hung it up. Watched him as he shuffled painfully the short distance from the side to the table - he always seemed to have more trouble with the shorter, between distances, she noticed - and watched him sit down. “She invited you to tea again as well. You personally, not with me this time, just the two of you,” Cozy said, eventually, breaking the silence, having read far enough into the letter to catch that detail. “Eurgh,” Paul groaned. The idea was about as appealing as dragging himself across broken glass to stick his head in a bucket of piss, even if the tea in the meetings before had been consistently quite nice. Paul didn’t like to admit that - and wouldn’t out loud - but it had been quite nice, the tea. Quality stuff. Damn royals and their taste for the finer things in life. And speaking of tea… “You want a cup?” Paul asked, belatedly, making to rise again. “I don’t like tea,” Cozy said. Again, he should have remembered this by now. “Oh, yes.” He said. Paul blew on his tea. His tea steamed. “Really doesn’t make sense you don’t want to teach anyone. It’d be useful. You like useful,” Cozy said. Paul was not surprised that him trying to put a stop to the conversation hadn’t held. He hung his head for a moment in exasperated exhaustion before replying. “There’s shades of useful, Cozy. The wrong people will get it if I put it out there for anyone and it’ll do more harm than good. If I hold onto it it can die along with me and the world will be all the better for it. Me dying shouldn’t be too long now anyway.” “Don’t say that,” Cozy said with enough actual venom and force that Paul couldn’t come up with a comeback and actually found himself quite cowed. It was quite unlike anything he’d heard from her. He just gawped, dumbstruck, as she blew out her nostrils and took a breath. “Don’t say that,” she repeated, more calmly this time. “Alright, Cozy, whatever you say,” he said, subdued. Where had that come from? The silence following this was a bit more awkward than their usual silence. This time neither of them had any idea what to put into it. Normally they both had an idea and were simply waiting for the other to crack first. This time, they were both at a loss. This time, Paul actually felt a need to fill the silence. It was the look on her face that did it, mostly. Couldn’t describe it but he didn’t like it, not one bit. Gave him a twitch. Had to shift the topic, get her fired up on something. Hopefully see a bit of a smile again. Or failing that, annoyance. Either would be better than that look, whatever that look was. “So, uh,” he started, clearing his throat, hands on his mug. “You’re, uh, meeting your friends, you say?” To Paul’s immense relief this seemed to perk her up a little. “Yeah. Sweetie- one of The Three’s sisters has a place in town she let them stay in, I was going to stay there too for a day or two or whatever. You know. Do kid things, have fun, those things you keep telling me to do.” Paul blinked. He’d had in his head that she’d just be going over for the day, as she sometimes did, as they sometimes did when they came to visit her. He hadn’t even considered that she might be staying anywhere other than their - than his - home. “Days plural?” He asked, moving for a casual sip of tea and singing his lips. “We’re not going to leave the city or anything, we’re not going away. We’re just hanging out. I can be fine out of your sight, you know. And I’m allowed now,” Cozy said, witheringly, though not unkindly. Paul sometimes forgot that she was indeed actually allowed out on her own now and opened his mouth and raised a finger and took a breath to correct her before he remembered. “True. And I know, it’s fine. You’re a smart child I just - um.” “You just what? Don’t trust me?” She asked, perhaps a touch more sharply than she might have meant to, just in the heat of the moment. Paul bit back on a wince. It had stung just the tiniest bit, hearing her say that and hearing her say it like that. How many years had it been now? “Hey, don’t say that. Of course I trust you. I mean, you lie to me a lot I’m pretty sure but I can tell - and that ‘dad’ stuff still isn’t getting you anywhere, I hope you know - but I definitely trust you can look after yourself. I just worry, that’s all. Am I allowed to do that?” He asked. “Yes, dad,” “Eurgh, child…” He grumbled, sipping again more carefully this time. “So am I allowed?” Cozy asked and Paul raised an eyebrow. “Do I have to give you permission?” He asked. “I don’t know. Do you want to?” “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” An impasse. “You probably should,” Cozy said after thinking on it for a second. She couldn’t be entirely sure why but it just felt like it was something that Paul should do. “I probably should, shouldn’t I?” Paul said. He also felt that it was something he should do, even though he couldn’t fathom why. Another impasse. “...so?” “You have my permission? Eurgh, I didn’t like the feel of that at all,” Paul said, grimacing. “You’re in authority, you’re going to have to accept that at some point,” Cozy said, picking her words carefully. Paul was, as she had predicted and hoped for, stony-faced at the mere suggestion of him being in authority. “No.” Cozy rolled her eyes. “And I’m the child…” She said under her breath. “Cheeky bloody girl. That’s gratitude for you. Let her go cavort with her bad influence friends and all I get is lip.” “Bad influence! They’re a bad influence? You-” This, as with the party, continued for some time. #3Author's Note If everyone in a story only ever made good decisions then most stories wouldn't happen. Though there is probably a limit somewhere. 3 == Rarity, cunning and savvy businesspony that she was, had wisely acquired a little pied à terre (sabot à terre?) in Canterlot, feeling that it was the sort of place that paid to have somewhere always available to stay if you just-so needed to be there. Smart lady. Canny lady. Sweetie Belle had managed to wheedle the usage of it out of her sister for their trip up for Cozy’s party and for a few days beyond, on the condition that it be left in exactly the condition in which it had been found. If, the next time Rarity should so happen to come up and stay, she discovered that it was not left in exactly the condition in which it was found, well... She had been very clear on the severe, gruesome consequences. She was generous, yes, but she was not without limits, and she herself had been a teenage girl once and so had some idea of what they were capable of. (Most of the really gruesome gruesomeness had just been for colour, really.) The girls had made a mess, obviously, but they’d made it in the way that most teenagers would, convinced that cleaning it up wouldn’t be that big of a deal and wouldn’t take very long anyway so why even worry about it. They had very much made themselves at home. Presently, as evening was making its slow and steady progress into night, the girls were settled or sprawled across the outrageously luxuriant sofa, engaged in the consumption of snacks and the viewing of films. The quality of these films was subjective. Sweetie Belle had been very clear that the film now finishing, which she’d picked, was a very good one. One of the best of recent years she’d go so far as to say. Scootaloo for one disagreed. “That was terrible,” she said. Sweetie Bell was mortally offended by what was plainly a false and hurtful statement. “You pick the next one, then!” “I will!” Scootaloo declared, slithering off the sofa and moving over to The Pile of films they’d been steadily working their way through. Once there she started digging. A few seconds after she started digging Sweetie slithered off after her to vet Scootaloo’s selections over her shoulder. Bickering followed. That left Applebloom and Cozy sat on the sofa. “Well I liked it,” Applebloom said, looking to Cozy for her take. “Hmm,” said Cozy, clearly not paying attention at all, her eyes fixed on a point some thirty or so feet beyond the wall of the room. Applebloom nudged Cozy, which woke her up to the fact she was being spoken to. “Something’ botherin’ you?” Applebloom asked. “Just thinking,” said Cozy. “‘bout what?” Cozy briefly weighed up her options on what to say here and, after a second or so, decided that honesty was the best policy. If nothing else her hesitation had made it unlikely anything less than honesty would work. But mostly, you know, it was good to be honest. “...dad, I guess.” Did sound pretty lame now she said it out loud, but none of the others thought so. Applebloom immediately shifted about on the sofa the better to look at Cozy face-on and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle paused their heated discussion on the merits of romance versus action to come over and lend moral support and a sympathetic ear. Cozy felt very much put on the spot. Supported and loved, yes, but also put on the spot. “Just kind of worried about him,” she said, shrugging helplessly. “Something wrong with him?” Scootaloo asked. “No. Yes. Maybe. No, I don’t think so.” This was not a clear answer. “...right.” Cozy squirmed some more. A benefit of having been unmoored and unattached had been that she’d never had to worry about explaining these sorts of knotty feelings to anyone, and also hadn’t had anyone to form knotty feelings about in the first place. She wouldn’t go back, obviously, but it was still a struggle sometimes. “I think he’s miserable,” she said, with some effort. “You only work that out now?” Scootaloo muttered to Sweetie, who stifled a giggle. Cozy let it slide. “How’d you figure?” Applebloom asked. “He tells me for one, but it’s that he then just doesn’t do anything about it. He never changes what he does. All he does is eat, sleep and work. That’s it!” Didn’t even smoke anymore to break up the monotony, or at least nowhere near as much as he used to. Just drank tea to punctuate his routine. Gallons of the stuff. He didn’t even seem to like it all that much, just did it out of habit. Like most of what he did - done because he did and had always done it, not because he actually felt much desire to. That was, as they say, the problem. And why did he have all those other teas in the cupboard if he only ever drank the cheap awful stuff? Where had it even come from, she’d never seen him go and get it? And now it just sat there anyway! It made no sense. “I just worry about him. I want him to be happy too, right? But he just makes it so hard! Still sleeping in the bath, still getting up and doing those toys every single day - even weekends!” This was true. When he wasn’t looking after Cozy in some fashion that was basically what he did from waking until evening. The house was full of the damn things. “How do those work, by the way?” Scootaloo asked. She had always been a little curious. “The toys? I don’t know. Well, I do a bit, but not really,” Cozy said, distracted by the question. This wasn’t the point of what she was trying to say. “Clockwork and magic. But not, like, the normal kind of magic. I don’t know. It’s all old stuff, all stuff from where he came from, which he hates,” she said, trying to get back onto the topic, such as it was, but then something in what she’d said tripped her up. Paul didn’t hate the sort of magic he worked with, per se, it was clearly just something he’d become intimately familiar with over his many years and which, as a result, had more than a few uncomfortable memories for him and also often found unstimulating. But it was all he knew and all he knew how to work with, and since all he did was work that was what he was stuck using, over and over again. Maybe that was the problem? Lack of variety? Paul had shown the same level of interest in learning some of the local magical techniques as he had in learning the names of her friends - which is to say, none. But maybe he was missing something that he could use? Something that’d make his toys and things impossible to misuse, maybe? Maybe different magic… Hmm. Wasn’t there that big glowy crystal heart thing up North? Something to do with love? Yeah, that was right. Love magic. Big on that, up North. Had that other princess and that was her whole deal. Cozy had quite let this slip her mind and it chose this moment, for whatever reason, to come wafting back in. It wasn’t something she’d really thought much about before - having given it a brief glossing over before dismissing it as broadly useless, at least to her at the time - but it had to be fairly benign stuff, if not actively benevolent, right? It had to be inherently (or as close to inherently as could be conceived) good magic, right? Or at least close enough to make no odds? She wasn’t an expert but it had to be worth a shot. It was love! How could anything suffused with love ever backfire or be used for something nefarious or brutal? Right? Right? Even he couldn’t argue against that! How could he? He didn’t know anything about it! But he would! Once she brought it to him and showed it to him and explained it to him! And it’d give him something to do. And maybe get him out the house. And also show him that she could at least try to give back to him as much as he constantly felt he needed to give to her. Yes! “I’ve got it!” She said out loud, sitting bolt upright. “That’s great! Got what?” Applebloom asked. “Love magic!” “...love magic?” “Yes! I just quickly go up North, catch the train, grab something about it - some book or something, or a brief lesson or whatever, enough that I can give him something useful - come back, wrap it up or figure out how to make it a present for him, hand it over, pow. Me giving back to him!” “Um…” “He might not be able to teach me anything but I can teach him something! And it’ll be practical so he can use it! He likes that sort of thing. Something he can figure out and grumble over. Give him something new to do! Maybe he’ll even have to go and ask someone else about it! Get him out the house! It’s brilliant. It’s perfect! And I’ll be back before he even knows!” The others shared looks. The worried kind. “Uh, are you sure that’s a good idea, Cozy?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Of course! The idea was, fairly obviously, not a good one. This should probably go without saying but it bears making very clear. It might have been so not good, in fact, that it was actually bad. Certainly, it didn’t really have any chance of succeeding for a number of reasons, and this was something Cozy herself would have realised pretty quickly had she just sat down to think it through. Even for a second! There wasn’t much danger of that happening though, unfortunately. This was because Cozy had gone so long without planning anything, without there being some scheme or other, without there being steps to follow for some payoff, that her mind had immediately latched onto this meagre morsel and was utterly refusing to let go, so happy to at last have something to work with. It was hard to go from the sort of person who meticulously plans - and very nearly executes! - a cunning scheme that managed to either fool, take out, subdue or otherwise negate some of the sharpest, most powerful ponies of the planet to the sort of person who...doesn’t do that. Particularly for one as young as her. Felt like life had taken a downgrade, no matter how much you know that isn’t the case. Even after a good few years now of not scheming, planning or plotting the framework was still in her mind, hungry, and apparently it hadn’t taken much to get it chugging back into life again. Just the proper motivation - a good deed, in this case - and click, all creaking back into motion. This idea was perfect! And she could make it work! Easily. Work of a moment. A mere trifle! And all with the purpose of giving her dad something good, in the hopes of maybe making him happy, or at the least showing what esteem she held him in. If anything it would have been the bad thing not to do the plan! Of course, that was all inside. On the outside, in ponies other than Cozy, doubt was prevalent. “Are you sure this is gonna work?” Applebloom asked. Why was everyone always trying to poke holes in perfection? “I told you, it’s flawless! Now, I told him I’d be here for two days at least, maybe three, and that’s plenty of time. Two days should be enough, really, so the third day is just a buffer, I’ll be back way before then,” she said, mostly muttering, mostly to herself and mostly while pacing a short circuit across the carpet. Doubts continued to fester in the others. “Have you ever been to the Crystal Empire?” Scootaloo asked. “I’ve read about it,” Cozy said, waving this irritating question aside with the swish of a hoof as she continued to pace a groove in the floor. “That’s not really-” But alas, too late. The die was cast inside her head. The plan had basically already succeeded, all that needed to happen was going through the motions, the tedious business of actually executing the plan despite it being so self-evidently perfect that it really should execute itself. Cozy was already getting herself ready to go. “I’ll be back! Two days! Three, tops! If dad shows up - when dad shows up, I know he’ll probably come here all worried like because I’ve forgotten my hat or whatever - just say I’m in the bathroom or something. If he asks when I’m planning on coming home say soon.” “He’s scary though…” Sweetie Belle said, fidgeting, saying what the others were thinking but hadn’t wished to say out loud. Cozy just rolled her eyes as she checked to see if she had enough to cover the cost of an impromptu train journey. She did. “Oh he’s not, he’s fine. Just tell him the bathroom thing, he’ll grunt and he’ll go away. It’ll be fine! I’ll be back soon anyway. Two days, tops! Watch me!” She said. “This is-” “Thanks guys!” And like that she was out the door. The others moved to watch her go but by the time they got there Cozy had already disappeared from view. This left the three of them standing in the open doorway, feeling as though someone had just laid a turd across their collective heads “This is going to go wrong, isn’t it?” Scootaloo asked. “Yep,” said Applebloom. “Are we going to get in trouble for it?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Probably,” said Applebloom. Scootaloo screwed her eyes shut and rubbed her face. “Urgh…” she groaned. “I think she’s gone weird since living with Mr Paul,” said Sweetie Belle, again voicing a shared opinion. They all nodded. He was indeed a bad influence. #4Before leaving to go and see her friends, Cozy had (at Paul’s insistence) written down the actual address she would be going to. The rationale for this (and the reason for Paul’s insistence) was that it might be necessary for him to go there for some reason. An emergency of some kind, say. That had been his line. Cozy had been willing to go along with this. It made some measure of sense, and seemed a small price to pay to be allowed to leave - though, of course, she could have left without doing it if she’d really wanted to, she could just tell that the idea of her going somewhere and him not knowing where made dad uncomfortable, and she didn’t like that. Thus. Address on a piece of paper. Sitting on the kitchen table. And Paul. Sat in the kitchen. Doing nothing. There was nothing he could be doing. Normally, on a normal day, he’d have made lunch for him and Cozy but, since she wasn’t around, he hadn’t. And so he’d walked from room to room instead, seeing if there was anything else that needed doing. There wasn’t. And so he’d gone back and had a cup of tea. This he chased with another cup of tea. Both had been thoroughly underwhelming. Perhaps he could work? It was generally what he did to fill those empty hours in his life when Cozy was either taken care of or otherwise not around. He just didn’t feel like it though, and besides if it was coming up on lunchtime it was too late to get started anyway. Too late in the day for work. So that was off the table. He stared into his mug angrily, as though it was somehow to blame for this. What did he normally do when Cozy wasn’t around, as she sometimes happened to be (or not to be)? Worked. But that was because those times she left she usually left earlier. Today she’d been laggardly and so it was now lunchtime and too late for work and all that, leaving him at a loose end. So what had he done before then, back before? Back when this house had been where it had been originally and he’d been living on his own? Back then, if he’d been at a loose end such as this with the long hours of the day looming ahead, what would he have done? Seemed a long time ago now. Paul had to actually think about it. What he got was that, back then, he likely would have smoked a bit and then gone to sleep, waking up early the next morning to start the whole thing over again. And again. Now that he saw it laid out like that it just made him cross, but he didn’t want to dwell on why. Cursing, he hauled himself upright, aggressively washed his mug and stalked off to do something. He would find something in the house to do and if he couldn’t he’d make something to do. To this end he clomped up the stairs, hoping that once he’d done that he would spot something there that could occupy his attention. Given that had already gone up earlier with this exact same plan in mind, he did not. He looked down. “Well. Least I can take the fucking frame off if I’m not going to be leaving the fucking house,” he said to himself. This would be the making something to do. Moving to the bathroom - where he continued to sleep, much to Cozy’s initial bemusement, amusement and latterly to her frustration and concern - he settled himself on the edge of the tub and set about unstrapping himself. “Ow. Ow ow ow. Ow,” he said, gritting his teeth. The frame he’d made was very practical and not wholly uncomfortable (even Paul wasn’t so openly masochistic as to make something for himself that would actively hurt him), but wearing it for an extended period of time was still more unpleasant than not wearing it. Even wearing it the relatively short period of time he’d been wearing it that day hadn’t been all that enjoyable. He wasn’t looking forward to removing his leg later, either. For now though just the frame. Didn’t really need it around the house anyway. There were walls to grab in an emergency, and it ate up time removing it. This was, of course, the main thing. And indeed time was eaten up. Just not all that much time. Still sitting on the tub, now sans frame, Paul sighed. “Well this is shit,” he said, rubbing his face, wondering whether a few days had elapsed yet. Probably not. He got up again - slightly more unsteady than he had been when he’d sat down - and set off in search of a window to close or something. Cozy was always leaving them open upstairs. Or she did sometimes. Had once. Didn’t matter, it’d be something to do. Pottering his way across the landing he passed by Cozy’s room and it’s almost perpetually ajar door, and there he paused, in the perfect position to see the stuff left scattered around inside. For a girl with such a reputation for meticulous planning she didn’t half hit like a bomb when it came to personal organisation. Supposedly - according to Cozy - some parents (which he wasn’t) or parental figures (which he wasn’t either) or caretakers of children (which he grudgingly admitted he now was) made it a point to go in and tidy the rooms of their children (she was not his child) and charges (she was this) when they saw them in such a state. As much as the mess annoyed Paul he found the idea distasteful. The thought of someone coming into his space and fiddling around? Not a fan. Hell, the reality had been bad enough those few times it had happened to him. It wouldn’t feel right to inflict it. If Cozy wanted to store things on the floor or over the back of chairs or hanging out of drawers rather than inside them, well, she could do it in her room if she felt the need. Outside her room was a different story on his watch, but inside it Paul would let her do as she felt best. That said, he could still see the mess, and it rankled himin the way that mess always rankled him. Standing there on the landing he frowned and shook his head. And then his eyes alighted on one piece of mess in particular. A hat, left carelessly atop a pile of things that were not hats. There it sat, forlorn, forgotten and alone. Not on Cozy’s head and in no position to be on her head anytime soon, even if she needed it. This would be the finding something to do. She had left without taking her hat. Clearly this constituted an emergency, albeit a minor one. It would be quickly rectified. He would take it to her. Simple. He did after all have the address. Swiping up the hat he returned downstairs, leaning heavily on the bannister all the way. Though of course, a flaw in having Cozy write the address down was that she had written it down in Mareain, and Paul had some difficulty in parsing what it was she’d written. The flaw on top of this flaw was that when he had finally worked out what it was she’d written, he hadn’t the foggiest fucking idea where it was. Paul had not spent the years since having his house dragged South learning the geography, local or otherwise. He knew how to get to maybe a handful of places, and none of the knowing involved remembering street names. He just knew where to go if he needed this or that. This presented issues now he wanted to get somewhere specific. Oh well. He’d figure something out. Hadn’t got this far in life without being able to make it up as he went along. Casting about for his now rather neglected walking stick and finding it in the last place he looked (as is the nature of looking for things) he struck out to find his d- His charge. His hatless, crafty ward. Cozy. Her. The child. Stick in one hand and hat in the other he hit the streets. He very quickly discovered that he had no idea what these streets were. The signs were, if not gibberish, as close to gibberish for him as to be completely useless. He held the note Cozy had written up against them for comparison but got nothing out of the experience. More time than he’d care to admit was spent in this manner, going up and down streets and around corners and getting quite thoroughly lost before finally gathering up the resolve to swallow his pride and actually ask someone. In the even, the first horse he saw. “You,” he said, pointing and limping over to some hapless citizen of Canterlot who’d frozen in place as having this big, gangling, hair, limping thing coming at you wasn’t the sort of thing you expected to happen when you just popped out for a pint of milk. “You. Where this?” This Paul asked while holding up the piece of paper in front of him. The poor sod was so blindsided by this turn of events that it took them longer than it should have done to realise they were just being asked directions. When they did, their relief was palpable. Directions were simple. It could have been much worse. A quick peer at the paper and a quick wrack of the brains and they said: “Uh, i-it’s just up the street, kind of. Go that way, go left, along there there’ll be a, uh, another street with like a kind of star and moon banner hanging over it? From one side to the other? It’s that one.” Paul took a second to parse and memorise this and then he nodded, pocketing the paper. “Thank you,” he said, nodding as well as speaking thanks. It was proper to be polite to strangers if you spoke to them first. If they spoke to you first fuck them, that’s on them, but if you made the first move you should be polite. “No problem?” The pony said, not sure how to phrase it and delivering it to Paul’s back anyway as he was immediately stumping off, heading the way he’d been directed, fist clutching a hat. The hat was of course a transparent excuse to show up and make sure Cozy was doing alright, but Paul hadn’t realised this consciously. In his head it was entirely reasonable what he was doing. Had anyone else done it, of course, he’d have seen through it in an instant and pointed it out to them, loudly. Since he was the one doing it, however, it was utterly without ulterior motive. Her head might get cold! What else had he been supposed to do? Walking up the street and taking a left Paul immediately spotted the moon-and-stars banner that the random horse had spoken of and made a beeline for it. To his satisfaction he saw that what Cozy had written on the piece of paper matched with the sign he could see naming the street. Now it was just a case of finding the right number! The numbers Paul could recognise, it was just the rest of the address that had been the issue, so now that he was on the right street actually finding the right building wasn’t all that hard. And he did find it and in short order, too, slipping in just as some other pony resident was slipping out and so the door was still open. “Um,” said the pony as he moved in past them. “Here to fix stove,” Paul said, not stopping, not looking back and heading straight up the stairs. “Oh. Um. Alright then,” said the pony, carrying on their way, fighting down the vague feeling they probably shouldn’t have accepted this answer so easily but feeling that it was now too late to do anything about it and also that that thing looked kind of scary whatever it was. Climbing the stairs was harder work than Paul had expected it to be and so his progress slowed a little, but not by a lot. Inside of ten minutes he was standing outside what he determined to be the right place, and after taking a moment to catch his breath he knocked. The door took longer to answer than he might have thought normal, but he put this down to childish shenanigans, and it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be or anything else to do. He fiddled with the hat and waited. At length the door opened, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Applebloom all standing there, looking tense and doing a bad job of hiding it. “Cozy forgot hat, head will get cold when-” Paul started, without preamble. He stopped, looking at the three of them all lined up, doing their best to hide their nervousness. It wasn’t enough. “Where is Cozy?” He asked, eyes narrowing. “She’s, ah - she’s in the bathroom!” Applebloom blurted, quickly remembering the line she’d been fed. Paul’s eyes narrowed further, the merest slits of suspicion now. He’d been good at spotting lies (typically by spotting them everywhere, agreeably, but still) even before living with Cozy, and Applebloom was not good at lying in the first place. “No. She is not. Where is she?” “She is! Honest!” Sweetie Belle interjected, leaping in to assist, achieving nothing. Paul’s suspicions remained. “No. That is line she uses when she is doing something she knows she should not do. I know this. She tell you to say that. Where is she?” He asked. “She- she…” Paul loomed, and then realised he was looming when the girls cowered, and so took an unsteady step backwards. So unsteady, in fact, it became two steps and a sway. “Girls,” he said, taking care to try and soften his voice - not the easiest at the best of times and infinitely harder for him when speaking Mareain. “Am not angry, just worried. I need look after Cozy, yes? If she is off, she might - might - where is Cozy?” The three of them exchanged meaningful looks. They were clearly weighing the option of grassing Cozy up against the option of denying the concerned questions of the scary alien - the scary alien who also happened to be their friend’s pseudo-father and caregiver and so who kind of maybe had a right to know where she was going on her harebrained, half-baked, possibly dangerous excursion. That Paul was stood right there and Cozy was far away (and had had her plan blown wide-open anyway, making trying to keep it secret moot) clinched it for them. “She’s going to the Crystal Empire,” Scootaloo said, her tone defeated, her shoulders sagging. Paul didn’t like this answer. He didn’t understand it, but he understood that he didn’t like it. “...the where?” Another exchanged look. “It’s…” How best to explain it to someone who didn’t even know your name by now? The exchanged look was more helpless this time, as none of them actually had any answers available even if they’d wanted to provide them. Then Sweetie Belle had an idea. “I think there’s a map book in here, I’ll go get it,” she said, dashing off and leaving Paul and the others standing around like sinking puddings. “You children having fun until my ch- the child - until Cozy run off?” Paul asked, mangling the question and biting his tongue. “Oh, uh, yeah,” Scootaloo said, bewildered, while Applebloom nodded. To the great relief of everyone concerned Sweetie Belle returned presently with the book she’d thought the place had possessed and, thankfully, had. A big, glossy, coffee-table type of book full of maps and other things to look pretty while it sat around taking up space. The three girls opened it up between them and flicked hurriedly, arriving at what seemed the best map available, an Equestrian overview of sorts, with only the slightest of nods to artistic license. Had a scale and everything. Fairly useful, very well done. “This horse land?” Paul asked, frowning. He’d managed to avoid all such maps until now. He hadn’t really wanted to know what the place looked like. All navigation prior to this point had been done on a local level when it had been done at all. “Equestria,” Applebloom said, helpfully, and he forgot this immediately as she pointed to the map. “We’re here, see? And the Crystal Empire is up here. Uh, there’s a train that goes, um, from…” She tailed off, as it was clear that Paul wasn’t really listening to her. He was just staring at the map with an utterly unreadable expression. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry, sad, upset - anything, really. He was clearly something, and that something was in all likelihood bad, but the exact flavour of bad was difficult to determine. He stared at the book silently for a moment longer before reaching out and, before they could do anything, ripping out the page with the map on it. The girls gasped. Sweetie winced. That was going to fall on her, she knew it. “I take this. Thank you,” Paul said, after the damage had been done, folding the ripped page and tucking it into his pocket before turning on his heel and leaving without another word. It was so sudden none of the girls really knew what to do, except Sweetie Belle, who was still mourning the damage to the book. “Are we in trouble now?” Scootaloo asked Applebloom, who shrugged. Scootaloo then looked to the rapidly-retreating paul. “Cozy’s not in trouble, is she? We’re not in trouble, are we?” She called after him. But he didn’t stop. Author's Note I cannot possibly see any further poor decisions being made on account of this initial poor decision having been uncovered. #5When Paul got back home he threw his stick into one corner, Cozy’s hat into another corner, surged upstairs to strap the frame back onto himself and then furiously started packing, approaching the task with more speed and aggression than was perhaps helpful. His mood was not improved by someone knocking at the door perhaps five minutes after he’d started doing this. At first he was content to ignore whoever they were, in the hopes they’d get the hint and go away. When the knocking persisted his foul mood got the better of him and he went to go and see who it was, perhaps so he could then yell at them. “Whoreson bast-” he snarled, stomping to the door with all the weight and force he could muster, flinging it open violently enough that the handle cracked the wood on the inside wall. It was the small princess again, the purple one. She’d flinched on having the door smashed open and was doing her best to reaffix her friendly smile. Paul’s smile was not friendly. It was non-existent. “You. Why here?” He said. “Oh, hello! Well, I was just in Canterlot again, you see, so I thought-” Paul had stopped caring before he’d even asked her the question and had walked off by this point to continue what he’d been doing before, leaving the door open behind him and leaving Twilight standing there stranded. “Can I - can I come in?” She asked, but Paul was already deep enough into the house that he didn’t even have to pretend not to have heard her. With him, a lack of response could have meant anything, really, so in this instance Twilight took it to mean yes and gingerly stepped inside. Once across the threshold (and having been conscientious enough to pull the door to, unsure if Paul might have wanted it open for some reason but unwilling to leave it wide open), she followed the noises. They led her to the kitchen. There she found Paul with a bag open on the table, shoving things into the bag. Most of a loaf of bread wrapped in paper. A water canteen. He slammed open a drawer looking for something but, judging from the stream of muttering that came out of him, not finding it. He stomped around some more, heading in Twilight’s direction. “Small one. Out of way. Busy,” he snapped, shoving past her and carrying on. “Um, don’t mean to interrupt but, ah, Is Cozy Glow around?” She asked, innocently enough. Her popping by had been entirely about maybe catching Cozy for talk anyway, just on the off-chance, just to catch up and all that, friendly-like. “Cozy is gone,” Paul grunted, continuing to look through drawers and continuing to mutter as whatever he was looking for continued to elude him. Had Twilight been able to understand him (and hear him, he was muttering under his breath after all) she would have learnt both some new rude words and also that Paul disliked it when Cozy moved things without telling him. Since she did not understand him though she got none of that. “Gone?” Twilight asked. Odd choice of words, but she put it down to the just-alluded-to language barrier. Maybe she’d stepped out for a second. Paul was glowering and scratching his chin, trying to think of where what he wanted might have ended up. “Went to friends. Then left. Don’t know why. North, they say. Crystal place. I go.” This one took Twilight a moment or two to properly digest. “The Crystal Empire?” “Hmph.” “Why?” She asked. Paul spared her a glare before limping off. He’d remembered a place to look. “Do not know. Children do not know. Or did not say. Did not ask. Does not matter. I go, find, bring back,” he said. “What?!” He ignored her. Couldn’t see a whole lot of point engaging further. He had things to do and not a lot of time to do them in, he had to go up north. He’d probably need a coat. He’d get that in a second, after checking this cupboard over here. “She just left?” “Hmph.” “Why?” “I tell you, I do not know. Friends not know. Does not matter.” “What are you going to do?” “Go. Find Cozy. Come back,” he said. A simple and direct plan. So simple and direct that it apparently couldn’t be accepted by the small one, who just goggled at him. “What? But you don’t - you don’t even know where she’ll be! The Crystal Empire is a big place!” Paul really doubted this. He’d seen the map, it didn’t look that big at all. What’s more it looked to be a single city, which did not really fit what his understanding of how an empire worked. But now wasn’t the time to poke holes. “Don’t care,” he said, rooting about in the cupboard and finally finding what it was he’d actually been looking for - a picture of Cozy he could use when he arrived, to help find her. He looked at the picture. He’d find her. Twilight was continuing to reel at these developments and their consequences. “I think there have been a lot of hasty decisions and we should slow things down, just take a minute to think. If Cozy’s gone to the Crystal Empire - if! - then she probably hasn’t even arrived yet. We can send a message ahead, we can tell Cadence! Then they’ll keep a look out for her. There’s no need-” Paul did not know who or what ‘Cadence’ was but, again, he didn’t care. He didn’t really want to hear anymore, either, as the sound of her voice was grating on his ears. “No. No messages, no help. My child. I find.” “But-!” “No,” he said. He was still looking at the picture. Much as before when Cozy had allowed her lust for a scheme to get the better of her judgement, here Paul was having his own moment of impairment. Where Cozy was blindsided by what appeared to be a canny and cunning scheme she could execute flawlessly just like in the good old days when she was given to scheming, Paul was taken entirely unawares by the thought-terminating terror of Cozy just upping and leaving. Had this been anything else, anything at all, he likely would have been able to think more calmly about it. If it had been some disaster, say, or some encroaching hostile force or the looming threat of physical harm. Those he had experience of and gave some sort of context, he could picture in his head the steps needed to get ahead, around and away from them. Those didn’t really move him all that much, and he could react at leisure. But this was different, and skipped merrily past everything to prod him right in some deep, vulnerable, animal portion of his brain, a portion that reacted instinctually and immediately. Everyone has those little weaknesses and soft spots that make them do the sorts of things that, if they saw someone else doing them, would have them calling that someone else a massive idiot. The problem is we rarely notice them in ourselves except in hindsight which is, rather by definition, too late. So rather than focusing on the flaws in his rapidly-forming plan, Paul was instead focusing solely on the sucking sense of dread he felt in the pit of his stomach and which was sending out icy, grasping feelers to fill every other inch of him. This was Cozy! The child! Gone! Somewhere! All on her own! Smart child, yes, but still just a child! The child he looked after! He’d comforted her when she’d had nightmares, for God’s sake! Or tried to! He’d let her get into the bathtub with him so she could get back to sleep easier, much against his better judgement! He’d painted her room with her! Twice, when she’d changed her mind on the colour! He’d tried to teach her the fami- the business! Told her about home! He hadn’t told anyone about home in years! Just her! And if something happened to her while she was out there… He faltered, brain fizzing, gut hitching at the thought. If something happened to her... ...well he’d probably get in trouble, that was it. If she did something dumb or if she got hurt he’d be the one catching it in the neck. That was why he had to go get her. Enlightened self-interest, story of his life. Just like everything else. Exactly like everything else. That, and he was really the only one he trusted to do it properly anyway. Had to be him, and had to be right this second. No time to waste. The longer spent dawdling the further away she’d get, the more trouble she could get into and the higher the chance of someone else sticking their oar in and fucking it up. Had to go now, right now. The small one was still burbling on about something but Paul had given up even trying to block it out and was now just letting it wash around him like the sound of the ocean surf. He was thinking about the journey ahead. Having looked at the map - and having listened to Cozy’s friends, albeit briefly - he’d seen and knew that this crystal place was North, and getting there commonly required a train journey. He was not going to go by train. For one, he wasn’t sitting around waiting for one to arrive, he didn’t have that sort of time to waste. For another, he bet he could go faster anyway, or if not faster, smarter. Could cut the corners a train could not. He had machines for that. The wagon-pulling machine would do fine in a pinch, it had the power, he knew it was up to the task. That part was fine. He could make that work. His mind wandered despite his attempts to keep it on the task at hand. It kept sliding on over into speculation about the why of why Cozy had apparently decided to just run away all of a sudden. Was she unhappy? Was she unhappy and had he just not noticed? Had it been obvious? If he’d been paying closer attention could he have done something about it? Could this have been avoided? Or was it something that he’d done that had made her run? Was this his fault in the first place? And if so, what was it that he’d done? He wracked his brains and thought of a wealth of things he’d done that looked to have annoyed her - which one was it? Or was it none of them? Or all of them together? Or was this what it had all been building up to? Had this been the goal from the very beginning? Her patience paying off, her taking a perfect opportunity to slip away and get started on another grand, meticulously planned (if ultimately rather poorly thought out) plan? Like the last time? Had she been pretending the whole time? That one got him to stop in his tracks. She wouldn’t do that, would she? No, not Cozy, she was better than that now - he’d seen it! Or had she really managed to get around him? Work him down? Fool him? No, no. He was better than that, he knew, and so was she. She was better than that. It wasn’t that. Not anymore, not again. She wouldn’t do that. Not his Cozy. It had to be his fault. Had to be. Something he’d done - or not done - that was it. This was his fault. And that was why - one of the many whys - it was up to him to go and get her back and fix it. “Are you alright, Paul?” Twilight asked, delicately, approaching him cautiously as one might approach something that might collapse on you if you moved too suddenly. He’d just been stood there for nearly a solid minute now, picture in hand. “Fine.” “You don’t look fine.” Damn tiny horses and their damn stupid questions and pointless statements about things he already knew full well. Paul’s patience, already taut, snapped, and he rounded on her. “Look at the brains on you! What you princess of? The blind-ding-lee obvious? No I am not fine! Cozy run off! The child, gone, fucking gone, left! My - the child my responsibility! If she hurt then - if she make mistake I will be blamed! My responsibility, my child, my responsibility. I have to look after Cozy! Keep safe. Look after. Is any of this getting through to you? Now get out of way.” That shut her up. Picture of Cozy clutched in one hand he raised the other and slowly, warningly, pointed at her. “I go. Me. No-one else. I go.” He then stalked back off to the kitchen, shoved the picture in the bag and stalked upstairs to find where he’d put his coat. He was sure he’d put it upstairs somewhere. He had. He came back down wearing it and headed past a still-stunned Twilight, through the kitchen and into the garden, thence across the garden and to the outbuilding. They’d brought that with them when they’d moved his house, too. As well they bloody should. Opening up the outbuilding revealed the dusty, disassembled wagon, a multitude of bits and pieces most of which he’d forgotten the original purpose of, and something underneath a sheet. Paul whipped the sheet aside and the wagon-pulling machine - long having stood idle - stirred. A quiet ticking starting and quickly building up to speed. “You. Machine. We’re going on a little trip.” Grunting and heaving he hauled it out into the open and gave it the once over. Still looked to be in reasonable condition. If there was at least one thing Paul could say about his own work it was that he made it to last. Of course, It hadn’t been designed to accommodate a rider but Paul was going to make it work. Lots of things could be made to do things they weren’t actually meant to do, what was another one? “Stretch your legs,” he said to the machine before going back inside for his bag. He had no idea what he needed to take, really, so had just grabbed what seemed appropriate. The picture was the important thing, that and the map. The water and bread were afterthoughts. He’d make the trip just fine, he was sure. Be back in time for dinner, Cozy tucked under one arm, safe and in one piece. Anything less was unacceptable. “Shut door behind you on way out,” Paul grunted to Twilight as he swiped the bag off the table. This jerked her out of whatever mind hole she’d fallen into and she trotted urgently after him. “Paul, I know you’re worried but this is really something you should maybe consider for a moment,” she said, trying to sound diplomatic, trying to find some way of reaching him before he did something rash. Too late, he was set. No turning back. “You consider,” he said, setting the bag across his shoulder so it hung comfortably and then, rather awkwardly, heaving himself onto the wagon-pulling machine. For a ticking clockwork contraption with no face and questionable sapience it did a pretty good job of conveying a sense of being hard done by. Took the weight though, and stayed balanced even Paul shifted himself about. “Good work, machine. Got a road ahead of us. Take a step,” he said. The machine obligingly took a step. Balance remained alright, not wobbling. This would work. “Alright, get going.” The machine did, starting at a trot. “Paul! Wait!” Twilight said, trotting alongside and increasingly frazzled. “Get in a ditch. You wait. I go.” And go he did, knocking the machine’s speed up a few notches and not waiting for her to reply and not looking back. Had he looked back, he would have seen her hesitating, vacillating, fretting and then, finally, leaping into the air and taking off for the palace as fast she could. But Paul wasn’t looking back, he was heading out and North as fast as he could make the machine go. Author's Note We all have our little emotional blindspots, I suppose, and they probably look real stupid to everyone else. #6Author's Note I had to look up the Crystal Palace (Crystal Castle? Crystal Edifice?) again because I’d forgotten what it looked like and it looked nothing like how I remembered. But then I also remembered that I didn’t really care and slavish attention to detail is for the birds. I am not a bird. Also: waffle waffle waffle talky talky talky. 6 == Arriving in the Crystal Empire, Cozy immediately wished she’d brought a hat as her head was cold. Oh well. If only she’d suddenly decided to come up during the summer months! Not that it was a problem. Cold was only a problem if you weren’t doing anything, and she had something to do. Fierce purpose would keep her warm in the absence of a hat! It had kept her going through worse before, albeit not for a while. Knowing which way to go was normally an issue somewhere you hadn’t ever been before, but fortunately for Cozy where she wanted to go this time was quite obvious, because it was quite big. She could see it immediately after having exited the station, the thing looming over everything else around it, being gaudy (not that gaudiness made it especially unique). Cozy headed that way. Had this been a trip of leisure rather than business (for a given value of business), she might have taken her time more and gloried in her surroundings a little bit. As free as she was now she didn’t exactly ever go that far afield, mostly yo-yoing between Ponyville and Canterlot for this or that reason and never really seeming to get the opportunity (or experience the desire) to go anywhere else. Could hardly go anywhere with dad - walking down the street was often too uncomfortable an experience for him, so something like this? Somewhere new? Unthinkable. He’d explained it once - or tried to explain it, once - when she had idly floated the idea of a holiday to him some time ago. Something about having been led by the nose across the land for years on end taking the shine off of going to places and meeting new people. Cozy hadn’t really understood it, and not long after that her freedom had increased to the point she could go see her friends unsupervised, and the idea of holidays had faded into the background. Such was life. None of which was really relevant then anyway. This wasn’t a holiday, this was a mission, a task! She wasn’t here to sightsee (as pleasant and novel as the sights she was seeing were), she was here to do something! And that something she had to do she had to do somewhere specific. Luckily, that somewhere just-so happened to be enormous, regal, crystalline, and hard to miss. The palace. And so to that she headed, buzzing low to the ground, face determined. And so it was that she soon arrived at her destination. It was a lot bigger when you were standing in front of it. Or, rather, standing a little way away from it staring up at the sheer, towering height of the bloody thing. Impressive stuff. Also, how the hell were you meant to actually get inside? After some wandering around (and after getting even closer still) she did finally find what looked like an entrance of sorts. There were guards, too, but that sort of thing was to be expected and they weren’t doing an awful lot. Just standing there looking neat and important. Cozy didn’t really pay them all that much attention, noting them much as she had the towers, say, or the door. The door was more important, in fact, and she went up to it. The thing was in proportion to the rest of the building, which is to say it was massive. Going up to the door and knocking had seemed much easier when the door in question hadn’t been towering over her. She wasn’t even sure now that knocking would actually do anything. Her hoof was only little, it wouldn’t produce sufficient resonance! Even launching herself through the air wouldn’t amount to much, she was sure, other than leaving a Cozy-shaped smear across the surface. Luckily, there was a bellpull. This wasn’t quite as intimidating, though she did have to reach up to grab the thing. It was, unsurprisingly, made of crystal, or at least the bit she grabbed was. She gave a heave and landed back on her hooves. Somewhere behind those big doors a bell rang. Nothing happened. Cozy kept on standing, waiting. She glanced at the guards and smiled nervously but they just kept on guarding, staring ahead, being unfriendly and broadly useless. She was all set to try ringing again when the door started opening, so quietly and so without warning that Cozy jumped. It didn’t open that far, just far enough to make you wonder why they didn’t put another, smaller door into the main door so you didn’t have to faff around with such a big door. Out from the crack which opened a pony emerged. Shining Armour. She didn’t know him personally, but she knew of him. From the look he was giving her this unfamiliar-familiarity was mutual. He didn’t look happy. “I know you,” he said. “Oh? I, heh - I don’t remember us meeting…?” Cozy had weighted this to fall equally heavily on either a joke or an honest statement, but it unfortunately landed on neither as he wasn’t in the mood for joking and wasn’t falling for the suggestion that maybe they’d bumped into one another once, as they hadn’t, and they both knew this and the normal polite pretending was out of the question. “I know of you,” he said. “Ah.” Many did. “You locked my sister in Tartarus.” Ah. Again. “Not...personally…” Cozy mumbled, feeling increasingly pinned in place and uncomfortable regretting more and more with every passing second having ever decided to do this incredibly stupid thing and come up here. This was not going to plan, already this was not going to plan. The plan had admittedly been quite fuzzy on the specific details of what was meant to happen at this part, but still. In retrospect that might have been a warning sign. It probably should have been a warning sign. Her planning abilities were rusty as anything, it was shocking. She blamed living with Paul. He’d really taken the edge off of her! She hadn’t needed to scrupulously plan any scheme (evil or otherwise) for years now! No wonder this was happening! “Why are you here?” He asked bluntly. “I was, uh, actually here to...maybe talk to...Princess Cadence…?” “What about?” “...love?” He stared at her, waiting for the other horseshoe to drop. But that really was basically it. “Right,” he said. He didn’t need to say ‘I don’t believe you’ with words, his face was saying it for him. “I know it’d be the sort of thing I’d say if I was lying to you, but that’s really why I’m here. I have a thing planned and needed to talk to her about love, and love magic and...yeah...” Out loud it sounded a bit threadbare. The cracks of doubt spiderwebbed further across Cozy. Shining Armour though relented, sagging a bit. “Alright, come in,” he said, stepping aside and flicking his head. Not one to question providence Cozy quickly nipped inside and soon found herself walking along beside him deeper into the castle, the doors closing behind them with a surprisingly soft and gentle ‘whumph’ for such a massive fucking set of doors. Conversation did not flow like a spring thaw. Once again feeling the need to be the one to fill the silence, Cozy cleared her throat and licked her lips and asked: “Do you usually answer the door personally?” He did not look when he answered. “Depends on who’s outside it.” “Oh,” she said. Special treatment didn’t necessarily imply positive treatment. “So do you check every time or…?” She ventured. “We knew it was you. Your arrival was noted.” “Ah,” she said, then the implication that her arrival was still something people kept an eye on sunk in. “Ah…” Shining Armour picked up on her deflating and moved in to clarify: “You’re not still under observation. Least not as far as I know. One of the guards just happened to recognise you - has a friend in Canterlot, see, knows you and your, ah, caregiver? Whatever he is, the alien - and mentioned it to another guard, who mentioned it to another guard as part of an anecdote, and I overheard.” “That’s very convoluted,” Cozy said, wrinkling her muzzle. Shining Armour shrugged. “That’s being in charge of guards. You listen, you hear things, you hear that Cozy Glow has come up to the Crystal Empire for what is possibly the first time and then you find her ringing the bell. So you go open the door to see why.” “In case she’s up to something?” She asked. “Possibly, though I doubt she is. Mostly I was just curious, and I could and so I did. Benefits of being in charge of guards. Does Cozy Glow tend to refer to herself in the third person?” He asked, looking down sideways at her. “No, this is a new experience for Cozy Glow. She’s finding it quite exotic and fresh,” she said. Shining Armour made a sound that might have been the distant cousin of a chuckle. Better than nothing. Here the chatting petered out, but on slightly more amiable terms and so the void that followed wasn’t as sucking and horrific as it might otherwise have been. Which was nice. Cozy took the opportunity while continuing to follow Shining wherever he was going to take in the decor. Grand would be the nice way of putting it. Overwhelming might be another, slightly less nice way. Tacky would be the unkind way of saying the same sort of thing. If you liked crystal, well, you were in luck. If you didn’t, well, you were out of luck. Basically. Dad would have hated it. He’d complain about the wasted space and the general opulent luxuriousness. He had a known dislike of opulent luxuriousness. For her part, Cozy felt it had its place in life. Where was the fun if you couldn’t splash with a little luxurious opulence or opulent luxury every now and then? And what better place for it than a whacking great castle? Certainly made life less drab. The silence, again, continued, now getting to the point where it started to get uncomfortable again. Cozy groaned inwardly. One day this would stop happening. One day. She felt she needed to address what was probably the elephant in the room, the elephant dragging itself along behind them and ruining the atmosphere. She cleared her throat some more and said: “I’m...sorry about locking your sister in a hole in the ground…” They stopped walking. Or, rather, Shining stopped walking and Cozy went another step and a half before following suit. When she turned she found him rubbing his face with his eyes screwed shut. “I know, I’m sorry. She has told me. She’s certainly decided to forgive you. Being the big brother might be making it just that bit harder for me to let go, even if I know I should. Sorry,” he said. “Shouldn’t really be apologising to me…” Shining Armour shook his head fiercely. “No, I should. I haven’t been the friendliest and that isn’t fair. Everyone I’ve heard talk about you since has only had nice things to say. By all accounts you really turned it around, really left all that behind and really came into your own as someone better,” he said, entirely oblivious to the shade it brought to Cozy’s cheeks. “I did let you in, after all, so that must mean something. But I was still not that nice. So let’s start over. Hello, I’m Shining Armour.” He thrust a hoof out at her. “Cozy Glow,” said Cozy Glow, shaking it. “And very nice it is to meet you, Cozy Glow. Now let’s go and find my wife. Should be just up ahead, if I’m right. If I’m wrong we’ve got more walking to do. This place, I swear...” Having been a fairly regular visitor to the castle in Canterlot, Cozy was used to the mind-bending size and layout that Equestrian castles seemed to all possess, having long-since given up trying to rationalise any of it. She just stuck to following Shining, and before too long got to where she’d wanted to go. “She should be just in here. I’ll go in and see if she’s awake.” “Uh, I’m not interrupting or anything am I? Mean, I can come back?” It’d be a huge ballache, but she’d hate to crash someone’s nap. Shining waved this off. “Don’t worry about it. Back in a second.” And away he went. Cozy stood and fretted. This was already not going exactly how she’d pictured it in her head, and that always made her anxious. Things could go wrong if they didn’t go exactly how she’d planned them. That was how they’d gone wrong that...other time. Try as she might to ward them off, thoughts of her past actions and terrible - though ultimately fortunate - failure bubbled up into her brain, filling the silence that had been left in Shining’s wake. Cozy stood and stewed, trying to think of something, anything else. Even when Shining came back and waved her in the thoughts persisted. It was only really when she entered and saw Princess Cadence that she got a better handle on herself again. She was here for a reason, damnit! There was a plan! Shining reappeared. “Alright, go in,” he said, holding the door. “Just like that?” Cozy asked. The lack of ceremony seemed jarring in such fancy surroundings. “You want me to announce you? I can do that. Did already tell her who it was but I can still give you a proper announcement, if you want,” Shining said. Cozy considered this. “...nah,” she said, post-consideration. “Good, because using my announcing voice really hurts my throat. Go on in.” “Right…” With no idea why she suddenly felt so nervous about all of this, Cozy went on in. It was some sort of sunroom or solarium or whatever. One of those rooms in a castle that existed to exist in and be bright and comfortable and opulent and all that. By those standards it was surprisingly restrained, though - by normal standards - that wasn’t saying much. Movement caught Cozy’s eye. Cadence, Princess Cadence, semi-reclined on a very comfortable looking couch-cum-sofa thing. She saw Cozy, smiled pleasantly, and waved her over. She fairly obviously had not been awake long and, again, Cozy felt bad for having interrupted someone’s nap. Still, too late now, no going back. She went over. “You wanted to speak to me?” Cadence asked once Cozy was within asking-range. No beating about the bush here, Cozy could respect that. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “About what?” How best to phrase this? “...love…?” Nailed it. Cadence blinked. “Well, I would be the pony to talk to about that, I suppose. And you’ve arrived at a perfect time, too, I am quite free,” she said, adding with a giggle: “I’m free!” Cozy did not get this. Cadence barely got it. Something had simply moved her to say it and this something could not have been denied. Strange, these rivers that run through the universe - who is to say from whence they flow? What thawing mountain snows feed them and to what mysterious seas they trickle? And stuff. “Well, uh, yeah,” Cozy said. “So would this be romance advice? Seems a long way to come, if so, but-” “No no, no, no. Nothing like that, no. No,” Cozy said, hurriedly, feeling an odd need to nip that in the bud right quick. “It’s more about, well, uh, it’s kind of a birthday thing, see? A present.” This was not what Cadence had expected, itself inside of a conversation she hadn’t been expecting to have with someone she hadn’t been expecting to see. Nothing about this was expected. She wasn’t sure where she stood, now, or where she was meant to be standing (or reclining, to be more accurate). “You came all the way up here for a birthday present?” She asked, tentatively. So tentatively that the first inkling that maybe this plan might have been cracked from the start crept into Cozy’s head. She shook it away. “Sort of, I guess? It’s important though,” she said. Important to her at least, maybe not important in some objective, cosmic sense. But who cared about that on a day-to-day basis? “This is a lot of effort for a birthday present,” Cadence said, still not really knowing what was going on but at least able to be certain about the effort involved. “Yes, well, it’s important, like I said. It’s kind of a thing for my dad, and, uh, I want to make sure I get it right, you know?” That made a fraction more sense for Cadence, given what (admittedly little) she knew about Cozy and her dad/caretaker/whatever. “Ah, I see, I understand now, yes. A birthday present for your dad, well, that’s certainly a loving matter, I’d say! And, uh, your dad, uh, Poll, wasn’t it?” She ventured, tentatively. “Paul.” Why was it no-one could ever get that right? Mean, he never got anyone else’s name right, sure, but his was hardly that complicated. Wasn’t even that many syllables to get confused about, just the one. Paul. Bam. About as straightforward as he himself was. “Ah yes, Paul, sorry. Still, it does seem an awfully long way to come,” Cadence said. “This is where the love magic is, isn’t it? And I had to get it right. This sort of thing doesn’t come very easily to me.” “Getting birthday presents?” “No. Well, yes. But I mean, you know, gestures. Nice gestures? Doing things for others? I don’t - not sure how to explain this…” Cozy thought to herself. She could just up and ask for what it was she wanted - even though she wasn’t entirely sure how best to phrase even that - but she had a feeling that this would just lead to more questions. Explaining her rationale behind the whole thing might help steer things in the proper direction, given Cadence more of an idea what this was all about. Probably just best to be honest about it upfront, really. Was going to come out eventually, surely. So, taking a breath, Cozy continued: “I used to, I don’t know - I used to look at ponies and things and they all sort of looked the same, really, just stuff you could get to do other stuff. Pieces that fitted together, components, I guess, in a machine I could get to do things for me. But it didn’t work, and it didn’t work because I didn’t actually understand. I don’t know.” She hated - hated! - talking about this. It was agony. She’d done quite enough of it already, she thought, imagined she’d put it behind her, that she wouldn’t need to go over all of it again. Apparently not. The things she did for her dad... “Dad has talked to me a lot about it and while a lot of what he said was, you know, stupid, some of it was right and he kind of had a point overall, somewhere in there. Or even if he doesn’t - and knowing dad he might not - listening to him has at least let me… think differently about what I did, who I was.” “Perspective?” Given the context of its delivery, Cozy was able to interpret this otherwise meaningless sentence fragment and she nodded, only somewhat glumly. “I suppose…” It was certainly one way of putting it. A fitting one. Time and a drastic change in circumstances had put a certain level of distance between her and what she’d done, and between where and who she’d been when she’d done them. Looking back now it was like looking at something someone else had done. Only it wasn’t someone else, it was her. She, as said, hated this. It was like recalling a time in her life when someone had pretended to be her, had worn her skin and done a host of stupid, short-sighted, selfish things in her name and nearly ruined the whole world. Like sitting back and watching a perfect imposter just make one mistake after another with her face, claiming to be her the whole while and with nothing she could do about it. But it hadn’t been someone else, it had been her. There was and had been no-one else, only ever her. Might not be what she’d do now, but it was something she had done. She had done it. And had chosen to do, thinking that she should. No getting away from that. It had not been an imposter, hadn’t been someone pretending. Just her. Only ever her. That’s mistakes for you. Always look nice and big and fat and obvious in hindsight, the kind of thing only an idiot would ever crash into. Never look like mistakes at the time, never when you’re coming up on them. Always either look like good ideas or else things that aren’t that big of a deal in the scheme of things, things that’ll slide, things that no-one’ll even notice if they go wrong and which they’ll surely appreciate if they go right. “Why are you here, Cozy Glow? And I mean, what did you come up here to do specifically?” Cadence asked, gently, coaxing Cozy out of whatever she’d sunk into. Cozy blinked and looked around. “Specifically?” She asked. “Yes. What did you imagine yourself doing once you’d arrived. What were you going to do?” “What, like, step-by-step?” “If you want.” “Well…” And so Cozy explained her plan. Or attempted to. In trying to explain it she very quickly realised it was one of those things where it sat perfectly comprehensibly in her head but wouldn’t bear translating into words that others might comprehend. Which is to say, while she could see the steps clearly, she couldn’t explain them clearly, and in trying to explain them clearly she started to lose her grasp on the plan. It wasn’t great. Started to make her wonder whether she’d ever even had a grasp to start with or whether she’d just imagined that it had held together. It had held together, hadn’t it? “-so I thought, hey, why not love magic, and-” “Love magic?” Cadence interjected, this part of Cozy’s stream of consciousness being something that she felt she at least knew a little about. Cozy, brought up short, blinked, and looked at Cadence askance. “That is kind of your deal, isn’t it?” She asked. “Well, yes, but it’s not really something you can just pick up and go away with,” Cadence said. Cozy blinked again. She felt that perhaps Cadence and her were coming at this from different angles, thinking about the same thing but upside-down and back-to-front. “Thought maybe you’d have a book on it or something? That I could… borrow… ?” Cozy suggested, though the further she got into her suggestion the less sure about its viability she became. The look on Cadence’s face undermined her confidence. “Oh, maybe, but they wouldn't really be a whole lot of use for anypony. Theoretically, maybe. Twilight probably has more books on it than I do anyway, you could have gone to her for books. But books wouldn’t get you near the subject in any way that was, ah, useful.” “...no?” Cadence shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought so. I could be wrong, but it’s not anything I would do,” she said. Cozy processed this information. She realised there wasn’t a whole lot she could actually do with it right at that moment. “...oh. Ah. Hmm. Well, a-anyway, the plan was, um, to come up here and-” She continued. The more Cozy spoke, the more obvious it became to her that this had been, from the start, a horrendous idea and a plan doomed to failure. How could she only see it now? How had she not spotted it a mile off, right at the start? Oh, was she out of practise. “-and I’d go back and he’d be none the wiser until I sprung his present on him, and by then it’d be too late for him to be mad at me. Fait accompli, you know? Heh. So, uh, yeah. That was the plan,” Cozy said, by way of somewhat clumpy conclusion. She then coughed and added, a little more quietly: “In hindsight this plan might have benefited from a bit more, uh, planning. Maybe.” “Maybe,” Cadence said. How embarrassing. Cozy sagged, flopping down onto her rear dejectedly. “I just wanted to do something for him. I don’t know why, and I didn’t know what, and so I jumped on the first thing that popped into my head. So this happened. Probably should have just baked a cake...” She mumbled. “Does he like cake?” Cadence asked. He had devoured that slice she’d given him after the part in pretty extravagant fashion, but maybe that was just because she’d given it to him and he didn’t want to make her feel bad? Maybe he’d only been interested in whether she liked the cake? More assumptions. Oops. Best rein that brain in. “...I don’t actually know. And I never asked. Urgh…” In fairness, how could anyone not? Paul was weird, but was he really that weird? “What does he like?” Cadence asked and Cozy looked up from staring at her hooves. “That’s the problem! He doesn’t like anything! Or says he doesn’t. And if I ever asked he’d just tell me not to bother. But I want to bother! I want to do something! Something to make him understand!” She said.The question had touched something of a sore spot for her. Cadence realised this, but didn’t as yet fully understand the nature of the spot. “Understand?” She asked, head tilting ever-so-slightly. “Yes!” “Understand what?” Cozy hadn’t noticed but she’d stood up again. “That I care about him! That I love him! That I’m not lying about either of those! I just want him to know! And to believe me! He doesn’t even have to love me back, I just want him to believe me! He - if it wasn’t for him-“ More had slipped out there than she’d intended and she shut her mouth and sat back down. Awkward silence predictably followed. It was the thread that sewed the patches of life together, or so it sometimes felt to Cozy. “He does love you.” Cozy snorted derisively. “How would you know, you’ve never even met him,” she said acidly. So acidly it dissolved the question mark at the end of the sentence. Cadence took it with grace. This was sensitive ground, after all. Some acid was to be expected. “No, but my aunt has. She says he puts up a front. Oh, he means all of what he says, she tells me, but he goes out of his way to say it the way he says it. But what he never plays up - what he never has to play up - is how much he’s come to love you, Cozy. It comes across in everything he does. Or so she tells me.” “That’s not true…” “Well like you said, I’ve never met him. But I believe my aunt. I also believe he may not be fully aware of it himself yet, or ignoring it. Otherwise I can’t think of why he wouldn’t have told you himself. He should have. For both of you.” Cozy couldn’t muster a response to this. It had been a busy, tiring day and her head was a bit of a mess. Nothing she’d planned had gone according to plan and instead there’d been whacking great, emotionally-exhausting conversations and a lot of going over old ground that she would have preferred not to have gone over. Really, she wanted to go home. Now that she had a home to go to. And immediately and unquestionably thought of it as home. “This whole thing was a stupid mistake,” she mumbled. “That’s a little unkind on yourself, Cozy. It might have been, ah, unlikely to succeed but it was hardly stupid. And what’s wrong with mistakes? A big part of life is mistakes - can’t be perfect every time, can we? Besides, as far as mistakes go this one is hardly the worst, and you made it for good reasons. It was heartfelt. That matters.” “Hmph.” Cozy didn’t even notice she’d made this noise, too busy with brooding on how good intentions were worthless if they didn’t achieve anything useful. Dad would have said as much! The failure was probably what hurt the most, though. She’d come up here to get something (something she couldn’t get, agreeably, but she hadn’t considered that at the time) and would now be going back with nothing. On top of which, her planning abilities had apparently atrophied into complete uselessness, something she had no idea how to feel about but which was certainly vexing. All in all, rubbish. Complete rubbish. “Happy belated birthday, by the way,” Cadence said, bringing Cozy back to the present with a bump. “Uh, thanks,” she said. Hadn’t expected that. How did Cadence even know? All that was left now was to head back before he found out, she supposed. Had she missed the last train? She hoped not, as getting back sooner rather than later would be ideal, because who knew how dad’d react if he found out what she’d done and she wasn’t back to keep a lid on it or explain it? What incredibly stupid thing he might do? How might he overreact? Cozy dreaded to think. #7Author's Note I'm sure if you looked at a map and traced a line with your finger none of this would make sense, but I'm not really going for inviolate accuracy here. I have the same relationship with accuracy that ancient historians did - it's nice if it's actually the proper amount or the right place, but what really matters is the feel of events. Which is to say, I glanced at the map and shrugged. It probably works. Ish. 7 == Once away from the city and out into the comparatively open countryside Paul was really able to open up and demonstrate (to the benefit of anyone who might have been watching, though no-one was) that, for all his faults, he could at least make a damn-fine wagon-pulling machine. Thing could really motor, even in a way it had never been meant to. And it was just as well the machine was speedy, because there was no stopping to rest on this trip. There was only the occasional bit of slowing when geography forced Paul to stop following the rail tracks (which was mostly what he was doing, figuring it the best way to keep heading in the right direction) and he had to consult the page he’d torn out or some sign or some landmark or something else until he was able to resume his beeline once more. Some of that, but certainly no stopping. There came a point, he saw, where the tracks looped wide to account for the geography but he just cut straight across and around and met up with them again before they hit the mountains, saving precious time and thence carrying onward to the whatever empire place that apparently lay beyond. Things stopped being green and started being barren. Then, some while after that, they started being frosty. Then, snow-blanketed. Paul was annoyed at the rather arbitrary way the landscape changed, as though themed by zone, but that was just how this place worked, he’d come to accept. That, and how small it bloody was, how close everything seemed to be. Not like home at all. Onward he pressed, urging his clockwork mount ever-faster. The snow got thicker and deeper. Paul had little first-hand experience with snow. He’d seen it once or twice, fleetingly, but never like this. He hadn’t known what to expect. His machine didn’t really know either and progress slowed to a crawl. Agitated, Paul opened up its insides and disengaged whatever safeties and regulators he could reach. Progress sped up again. Soon, amidst the snow, he found what seemed to be a worn track leading the way he needed to go. Progress sped up even more, to Paul’s satisfaction, and he pressed his machine even harder. The machine gave up the ghost just about when the crystal city first hove into view over a gentle rise. The strain of the non-stop pace, that it hadn’t been designed to be ridden the way Paul was riding it, the effect of the climate on its internals, having had its insides fiddled with - all of this added up, with the cumulative result being the machine juddering and shaking and struggling to crest what turned out to be the final hill and then suddenly and without warning collapsing just as it was starting to hurtle down the other side. Paul was catapulted through the air, flying a good dozen feet or so before hitting the track ahead and rolling over and over, momentum and gravity carrying him down the slope. For a few seconds he lay sprawled on his back at the bottom in a dip, utterly bewildered about what had just happened, staring at the sky. Then his wits came back and he sat up, wincing, and looked down to check the damage. Just a few scrapes, luckily, the heavier clothing having done a good job of protecting him from the impact. Though the plunging temperatures and biting wind chill from riding so fast made these few scrapes hurt far more than they looked like they should. Biting his tongue, Paul ignored them and stood up, having to give the frame around his good leg a whack to get it back into proper working alignment. It didn’t work exactly, but he at least got it straightened out enough to take his weight and let him hobble. He then cast his eye around for the machine, spotting it twitching and writhing in a furrow it had dug for itself in the frozen ground beside the track. He limped over. “Come on, get up,” he said, nudging the thing with his foot. And it did try to rise, it really did, but it was just too busted, making the most piteous whining, grinding sound as it’s shaky legs lifted it from the ground, but only for a second before it collapsed with a crunch and stopped moving entirely. “Fucking machine…” Paul grumbled, turning away in disgust and making a mental note to come back and get it once he was finished and had Cozy tucked safely and securely under his arm. Broken as it was, didn’t sit right with him to abandon it completely. But first things first. Had to finish getting to the city. Find Cozy. Finding where his bag had landed (and spilled its contents) he dug about in the snow for the one picture of Cozy he had and that he’d brought with him. It was one of her old wanted posters. Out of date, yes, but it was all he had and all he’d thought to grab before leaving. All the more recent pictures of her were in her room and featured her and her friends, usually, and he just hadn’t thought to grab one. They weren’t his, after all. Stupid move in retrospect, not having grabbed them. Stupider move not having taken any pictures of her himself. After this he’d take more pictures, he told himself. She’d already grown up so much, wouldn’t do to miss much more, would it? Poster in hand Paul turned and stumped along the track, towards the distant city. Or empire. Or whatever it was. The place where Cozy was. Wasn’t that far away in the scheme of things. His legs might have hurt but he could live with that. It wasn’t that much worse than normal. And keeping moving kept the cold away. And it wasn’t that far away. He finally arrived just as evening was moving into late evening, and most residents had gone home. Those few that were still in the streets gave Paul a wide berth, having never seen anything like him. He found their wide-eyed stares irritating, but he had other things to worry about than making a poor first impression. “Seen child?” He would ask loudly to any pony that strayed too close, holding the poster up. They ignored him. He growled. He’d start knocking on doors. See them ignore him then! His replacement leg and his frame were not working as smoothly as he might have liked. The clockwork and joints had not been made to function in this sort of cold or after that sort of spill, and his own joints weren’t really up to the task either, come to think of it. He forced his way through the stiffness of the former and the pain of the latter, staggering from door to door, hammering furiously. Those ponies that opened up - and not all of them did - found themselves confronted with a snow-speckled, panting, wild-eyed thing covered in bleeding scrapes and scratches looming over them, holding up a wanted poster of all things (a faded, out of date wanted poster to boot) and glaring like they owed him money. “Have you seen child?” The thing would ask in clumsy Mareain, thrusting the poster towards them. And, appropriately, the ponies would shake their heads fearfully and shut the door very quickly indeed, leaving the thing outside to grumble loudly and swear in a language they didn’t recognise. This repeated for some time. Late evening concluded. It got dark. Street lights came on, as if by magic (because they were magic).The streets became totally deserted and utterly quiet. Fresh snow was starting to fall. Paul did not stop. Were he of a clearer, more coherent frame of mind he might have realised that his approach needed a little tweaking, might have maybe reevaluated. Unfortunately for him he was cold, physically exhausted and mentally shattered. To him, what he was doing made perfect sense. He’d just go to every single door in the city. Process of elimination! Easy. Simple. Eminently possible. Just had to keep doing it. Which was why he kept doing it, just working his way further and further down the street knocking on doors, then down a side street, then just on and on, going to whichever door looked closest to the last one. He was getting slower though, and the burning that was filling just about every inch of his body was getting harder to ignore with every step, and every step was getting harder to take. Was the snow deeper here, or was it just more difficult for him to drag himself through it? Were his fingers slower to form a fist to knock on a door now, or were they always that distant and numb? Had the numbers on these doors been that blurry to start with? Difficult to tell, so mostly he just ignored it. Just had to keep going, had to find Cozy. She was around here somewhere. Had to be. Reaching a corner he limped to one of those magical lampposts and leant against it, wheezing. The cold air was not agreeing with his lungs, every gulp feeling like he was sucking down a handful of needles. Just his imagination though, he knew, nothing serious. Cold air was always like that. He’d been through worse. Taking a few more of these breaths he forced himself to stand under his own power again, set his face and staggered over to the nearest door he hadn’t tried yet, the first on the street. He’d do this whole street, too. Then the next. All of them. He had to. He knocked, waited, and a moment or two later he found himself again facing down with another pack of gormless, bewildered looking shiny ponies. He was too worn down to even really care about the way they were looking at him anymore. He just cared about if they’d seen Cozy or not. With supreme effort he raised the poster again, entirely crumpled in a shaking hand, and said through gritted teeth: “Where...is...daughter…” before keeling over sideways into the snow. #8Author's Note Tsch, such silly people. But at least it all worked out! Yay! As if I'd write anything depressing. Also, I did briefly consider - at the eleventh hour, no less - writing out another chapter that would have come in before this but then I thought that it wouldn't really contain anything not explained here and wouldn't have demonstrated anything that isn't demonstrated here. Was a close run thing though... 8 == In the Crystal Empire there was a hospital. It was also crystal. In the crystal hospital there was a room. In this room was the only human in the whole world. For something normally so big (at least by comparison to those around him) he looked awfully, terrifyingly small all of a sudden, swallowed by the bed they’d put him in and the covers they’d drawn over him. Two beds, actually, unclear how many blankets. Lots, apparently. In this crystal hospital, in this room, across these two beds and underneath this profusion of blankets, this unique specimen stirred. He’d stirred more than once since they’d found him - a promising sign, given the circumstances in which they’d found him - but so far the stirring hadn’t led to anything significant. This time it did. He stirred, he groaned, he rolled over and he opened his eyes. Normally, his reaction to opening his eyes onto a place he didn’t recognise would have been immediate anger and threat response, possibly breaking whatever was closest to hand. This time though his body ached too much for him to care, and by the time he’d acknowledged this the rest of his brain had been able to figure out that the room he was in was plainly some sort of hospital room. “Not dead yet, huh?” This finally got the attention of the others there with him. “You’re awake,” Twilight said with almost palpable relief. Paul squinted at her, still not quite with it, but then he recognised her and groaned, screwing his eyes shut. “Ugh, small one. Great. Why you? Where is Cozy?” “She-” “Dad!” Cozy came powering in from somewhere out of frame and through the air at full speed, blasting past Twilight and impacting on Paul hard enough to knock the beds back against the wall. Given that Paul was both an old man and an injured old man he reacted predictably to this. “Ow ow, child, ow, ow.” Cozy kept on hugging him regardless, remaining attached to where she’d latched. Twilight moved away a respectful distance, going and standing next to Cadence. Cadence was also present. She just wasn’t making herself especially obvious yet. Paul was so stricken with relief on finding Cozy whole and uninjured and (presumably) not in any trouble that, once he’d recovered from her landing on him, he unabashedly hugged her back. Didn’t even take issue with the dad thing, honestly hadn’t even noticed it enough that time to take issue with it. That she was here was enough. The two remained happily glued to one another for what wasn’t actually that long a time. Eventually, the hug loosened enough that they could actually look at one another, both smiling, Paul genuinely so for one of the very few times in his life, Cozy doing so with slightly watery, reddened eyes. A nice moment, really. Then Cozy’s smile went away and she whacked him in the chest, hard, right in a spot she could tell it would be noticed. Paul went ‘oof’, and after he went ‘oof’ he said: “What was that for?!” Cozy was most certainly not smiling now. “For being here! Nearly dying! What were you thinking?!” Paul wasn’t smiling anymore now either. Getting hoofed in the bruised ribs will have that effect, as will getting yelled at. “I was thinking I had to come and get you! So that’s what I did!” “Just going around showing my poster and yelling at ponies?!” “Yes!” “Why did you do that?!” “I thought you were in trouble! Or doing something that’d get you into trouble! You go running off all on your own without so much as a by-your-leave, getting your friends to give me the ‘She’s in the toilet’ story - what was I supposed to think?” “You weren’t supposed to know! It was a surprise! It was going to be fine!” “What was going to be fine? What were you doing? What were you thinking?!” “Should we step in?” Twilight asked quietly, still standing off to the side of the room, but Cadence (who she was directing this question towards) shook her head. “Let them get it out,” she said, sagely. There was the possibility she was an expert. Cozy fumed. “It was - it doesn’t matter! I had an idea and it turned out to be a bad one. But you weren’t meant to find out anyway! I was supposed to just come here and come back! You’d never know.” “Well I do know! I found out! And what the hell was I meant to do? Sit around? Thumb up my arse? I had to do something! It’s my job to look after you!” “I can look after myself! I’d have been fine! I am fine!” She had a point, she was fine, but Paul was not going to concede this. “You just as easily might not be! And I’m not - I can’t - I’m not going to let anything happen! Not when I can do something about it! Not to my child! My daughter! I don’t-” He cut himself off, feeling that he’d dug himself deep enough as it was, entirely unable to meet Cozy’s eye. He folded his arms and glowered and turned his head away. Cozy just looked stunned. That was honestly, genuinely the first time she had ever heard Paul refer to her as anything other than the child. She’d thought about it, considered how she might have felt when - if - the moment came. And it now had. Here of all places, with him like that, in the middle of a flaming argument. All those thoughts and comfortable conclusions about how she thought she’d feel when it finally slipped out seemed a long way away now, and pretty bloody useless. She sniffed, sniffled, and then buried herself into his chest and burst into tears. Not any particular type of tears, really, more just a general outpouring of the many and numerous emotions swirling about within her that had finally reached boiling point. Paul was somewhat taken aback with the small pony suddenly bawling on top of him and soaking through the thin, poorly-fitting gown they’d got him into, but he got over it pretty quickly and without even having to think about it too hard. What he felt he needed to do just slipped out. “Hey, shh, it’s okay, Cozy, it’s alright,” he said with a softness entirely at odds with how he’d been yelling moments before, putting his arms around her again and hauling her up so she settled better and rested more comfortably. Her crying didn’t stop, but it did become less forceful. “Damn horse. Ridiculous. Horse for a daughter. What the hell has my life become?” He said it, but there was no force behind it. Not much sense in trying to pretend otherwise at this point. It was out now, and he simply couldn’t find it in himself to deny it anymore. That it was ridiculous didn’t make it any less true. “Now?” Twilight asked, again looking to Cadence. “Now’s okay,” Cadence said, nodding. They moved in. Paul didn’t look at them or even move at all, in fact. “What?” He asked. “We’re glad you’re feeling better,” Cadence said. He did move then. His eyes moved, flicking to her and narrowing. “I do not know who you are,” he said. “That’s okay,” Cadence said, smiling and unfazed. This irritated Paul but before he could let it get to him too much Twilight piped up: “When you arrived, why didn’t you ask Cadence for help? Or ask her if she’d seen Cozy Glow?” She asked and Paul’s brow furrowed. “Who?” “Princess Cadence? Princess Mi Amore Cadenza? Her? Right here? Next to me?” Twilight said, which didn’t clarify much and, in fact, made things worse. That she was pointing at Cadence as she spoke should have helped, but Paul ignored her doing it and instead just squinted at Twilight some more. “...who?” Cozy was as ever staggered by her dad’s continued - and at this point, pretty obviously willful and malicious - ignorance of the land in which he lived, especially given that he’d met basically all of the Princesses at this point. More than once! Two of them were in the room! He was talking to one of them! And she was pointing at the other one! Who he’d just spoken to! “You’re not fooling anyone,” she said. He rolled his eyes. “Pffbt, princesses, princesses, princesses. All same anyway. No use. Could do myself.” “You nearly died!” Cozy pointed out, again, gritting her teeth in frustration when Paul rolled his eyes at her some more. “That is a bit much. Plenty healthy,” he said, grumbling in sotto voce: “Prefer to die than ask a bloody princess for help anyway.” This got him another whap from Cozy and he growled. “Stop hitting me, child!” “Stop being stupid, then!” “Stupid! Me, stupid! Says the child who snuck off up North thinking it was a good idea!” “Says the grown adult who thought wandering around in the snow without any idea where to go would work out fine!” “You-” Celestia and Luna walked in and Paul let his head fall back against the pillows in despair. “Shit, more of you. Like that other time, hmm? Big mess? Fine, fine, come in. Get in bed, why not? All get in. What does it matter?” Didn’t these princesses have anything better to do? Countries to run? Rulings to pass on down to those toiling beneath them? That sort of thing? He’d seen more of them then he’d seen some of the people he’d used to work for, Paul swore. “Kind of you to offer, Paul, but I don’t think we’d all fit,” Celestia said, all breezy. In an amusing twist that neither side were aware of, Celestia, Twilight and Luna had in fact all arrived five minutes before Paul had arrived. Unfortunately, since they hadn’t known this, they had gone immediately to Cadence to liaise and work out a plan of action, meanwhile Paul had shown up and started freezing to death. They’d just finished liaising and were about to start sending out the guards to sweep the streets for signs of Paul when some other guards who had not been briefed and who had no idea what was going on showed up with this strange, unconscious creature that had collapsed outside some citizen’s house and which they weren’t sure what to do with. Funny how these things work out sometimes. But that’s an aside. “Why you here?” Paul asked. “It’s a coincidence,” said Luna, flatly, earning herself a bemused sideways look from Celestia who’d plainly been under the impression that she was the sole provider of pithy commentary. She took it in her stride though. “Twilight came to us and informed us of what had happened and what you had decided to do and, with it being a time-sensitive issue, we came as fast as we could in the hopes we might be able to happily resolve the situation. And here we are. Ta-dah,” she said, smiling. Paul was not smiling, but that was hardly new. “Again I say, do you not have better things to do?” He asked. “Oh, any excuse to get out of the house, Paul, you know?” Celestia said, waving a breezy hoof. “Hmph.” Here the conversation died a death, as Paul was plainly several miles away from anything resembling the mood to talk and, with one half of the conversation not willing to participate, there wasn’t a whole lot any of the others could do. But this was fine. Most of those present knew Paul, and this did not come as a surprise to them. “We’ll leave you for now, let you rest,” Celestia said. “But we will be back,” Luna added. “Good-ee,” Paul said through gritted teeth. And out filed the princesses, one after another. Celestia brought up the rear, even giving Cozy a little wave goodbye which Cozy returned, to Paul’s low-grade annoyance. She shut the door on her way out, leaving just Cozy and Paul and a mildly uncomfortable silence. Once all the royalty had departed the room felt much more spacious. Cozy was still by Paul’s bedside, and Paul was (unsurprisingly, perhaps) still in bed. Hardly like he could have gone anywhere. Without any princesses or other authority figures to set himself against Paul felt marooned, now, particularly with Cozy there. He actually felt like an enormous idiot and also had absolutely no idea what to do or say next, which was an unusual enough situation for him to be genuinely unpleasant. He glanced sideways at her and found her staring at him. “...I am glad you’re safe, you know,” he said, unable to meet her eye. Cozy sighed and butted her head affectionately against his arm. “I know. Sorry if I scared you. I really didn’t think you’d find out, least not until it had happened. Better to get forgiveness, you know?” “Heh, smart child. Surprised you hadn’t already left to come back,” he said. It would have been just his luck to arrive and nearly freeze to death with her long gone. He deemed it a minor miracle that things had worked out the way they had. “Oh, I’d missed the last train and Princess Cadence was going to put me up somewhere and I was telling her it was fine I’d managed somehow and then Twilight and the others arrived and said you’d-” Paul cut in here, as he could kind of see where it was going. “I think I get it, Cozy,” he said. Then asking as a thought struck him: “Why did you come up here, anyway? No-one’s told me this. You just went off but you must have had a reason, right?” “It’s not important,” Cozy said sheepishly. “I’d say it was pretty bloody important! Definitely want to know now that you’re being all coy about it. Spit it out.” Cozy hesitated, chewed her lip a moment, tried giving him the Big Eyes in the hope it might soften him and cause him to relent, realised the Big Eyes weren’t working, sighed again and then very quickly blurted out: “Iwascominguptogetyouabirthdaypresent.” Paul squinted at her. He hadn’t got a word of that. “What? Slower, louder, actually separate,” he said, making a ‘stretch-it-out’ gesture with his fingers. Cozy, sour, sat unmoving for a moment. Then: “...I was trying to get you a birthday present,” she said, not loudly but at least slowly and clearly enough that Paul heard her this time. Not that hearing her made what she said actually come across as sensible to him. For a second he thought maybe he’d misheard her, but on being confident he hadn’t he was left bemused. “...a birthday present?” He asked. Cozy threw her hooves up. This again. “It was stupid, alright! I know it was stupid! I’ve been over this! More than once!” Paul was still wrestling with the answer he’d been given. He really couldn’t parse it. “...what on earth possessed you to try and get me a birthday present? From here?” “When I thought it up it seemed like a good idea!” Cozy protested. Paul was now laughing. Her vehement protesting just made it worse. “A birthday present! Hah! And for that she comes all the way here! Only Cozy! Only my Cozy!” He said, poking her between chuckles. She batted his hand away. “Alright! I know they say we can look back on these things and laugh but you’re not meant to start so soon!” The laughter was now enough to make his wounded ribs hurt, but not so much he minded. “Ahaha! Oh, to be inside your head even for a minute, child! Hah! Ahah!” “Everyone says my heart was in the right place! Be proud of me! And mistakes are part of growing up anyway! This is development! I’m maturing! These’ll be memories that’ll last a lifetime! Probably a friendship lesson in there too, probably! Be proud of me!” And the laughter was now enough he couldn’t reply, so he just grabbed her and hugged her. Cozy squeaked. #9Author's Note Most things are an excuse to talk to Celestia, really. Hell, most of the time I barely need the excuse. 9 == Paul was familiar enough now with the room they’d stuck him into to know when someone else was in there with him, even when they were trying to be quiet. Someone was in there with him right then, he knew. Even though they were trying to be quiet. They were very good at trying to be quiet, whoever they were, but Paul had slept lightly in enough unfamiliar places to be better at hearing those trying to be quiet. He opened an eye, saw the big white one, and closed the eye again promptly. Too late to pretend to be asleep though, she’d seen him open his eye and he’d seen she’d seen. And she’d just know anyway. She was like that. Point was, pointless. “You. Why are you here?” He asked, eyes still closed. The jig being up and there not being any further need to stay covert, Celestia walked over to the bed and sat down. Paul heard this. Hearing this was all he did. He didn’t move or open his eyes and he most certainly did not speak. But that was okay, Celestia had an opener ready: “It was very brave, what you did. Rash, perhaps, perhaps a bit more than rash, but brave all the same. Your heart was in the right place.” Paul grimaced and now opened his eyes - the intended effect of what she’d said, in fact, not that he realised it. He was just appalled by such saccharinity. Hearts? In right places? Bravery? Just about everything she’d said seemed calculated to make his skin crawl. “Eurgh. What does that mean? What is this?” He asked. “Just a talk,” Celestia said. “Bah, yes. But what is point? Why?” “You of all people should know that not everything has to have a point, Paul. Some things are for their own sake. And besides, I’d say we do have at least one or two things to talk about.” “I do not know what you are talking about,” Paul said as innocently as he could manage and with a surprisingly straight face, to boot. “Paul,” she said. It was all she needed to say. Paul threw his hands up. “Eurgh. Fine, fine Yes, I make stupid mistake, fine. Everyone tell me. I know, I know! Do not need you telling me also.” Now he knew how Cozy must have felt while he was out. And while he was awake. “I am less interested in what you did and more interested in why you did it,” Celestia said. “Why you so?” “Well, I don’t think you’d have gone riding up into the snow for just about anyone, would you?” She asked. Paul grimaced. “Hmph. No. But I am look after Cozy, yes? My re-spon-si-bil-ity, you said. I get in trouble if Cozy hurt, if Cozy do something bad. You tell me so. So, I go.” That had been a while ago now, the warning of trouble, and the teeth had long-since fallen out of that particular threat, what with Cozy having grown far beyond the pony she’d been when it had first been made. He knew this. She knew this. Everyone knew this. And that wasn’t even the point, it was an active attempt to avoid the point. Celestia knew this, too. “That’s not really why though, is it? You don’t care about getting in trouble, that much is obvious. You’ve told me as much. To my face, no less.” Loudly, too. Repeatedly. And with swearing, sometimes, though mostly just for colour. “Life difficult if get in trouble, difficult enough already,” Paul grumbled, acutely aware that his position was taking on water faster than his grumpy responses could bail it out. Celestia’s smile was the patient smile of someone who was also aware of this, and was content to let events take their natural course. “So, in pursuit of the easy life, you decided to try and track down a teenager somewhere you’d never been before, in the snow, nearly dying for your troubles? That does sound easier than just sitting back and letting yourself get punished, something you’ve admitted doesn’t phase you all that much…” She said, tapping a hoof to her chin and nodding sensibly. “You - “ Paul snarled, but caught himself and moderated his tone: “If I did not do, if I not get Cozy, you would try to put her in hole again.” Celestia’s expression got very hard very, very quickly. “We would never consider putting her in Tartarus again, and you know that,” she said without even a suggestion of a hint of the warmth all her words had had up until this point in the conversation. There was instead almost a tangible heat to them. All notion of carrying on with this line of argument evaporated from Paul’s head at once, like a puddle drying up in the sun but one which dried up instantly and sheepishly the moment it stopped being in the shade. He knew she was telling the truth, and he knew he couldn’t deny it, even to himself and certainly not out loud. He’d known it had been a dead end when he’d said, he just hadn’t quite grasped how much of a dead end until just then. “...I know,” he said. He could have apologised. He did not. Some of Celestia’s former warmth returned, and her face softened. “So if not for fear of the consequences, then what?” She asked. Paul looked so sour and so sullen that he could have probably curdled a pint of milk from across the room with a glance. Celestia was made of sterner stuff though, and so this just rolled off her without so much as a ripple. This was kind of the point in most conversations where Paul would have walked off had he not been bedridden. He was still giving it some serious thought regardless, but eventually decided he was too tired to try hopping away from her. “My daughter - no, not daughter, no, forget that, I did not say that fuck, fuck. Cozy is, she is - it had to be me, my responsibility. She is my responsibility,” he said, folding his arms crossly. Taking back what he’d said out loud hadn’t felt good. He’d had to do it, obviously, but it hadn’t felt good doing it. Not at all. “And you certainly do take your responsibility for her very seriously, Paul. Almost dying on her account! And you were willing to be imprisoned with her too, as I recall.” Couldn’t deny that. Paul glowered, arms still folded. “What you want me to say?” He asked, caving at last. He was so very tired. “Just to be honest.” “Honest? What about honest?” “About Cozy. You did call her your daughter.” Paul winced. “Nevermind. Slipped out. Mistake. Not daughter. Horse.” “You say that but I can tell you don’t mean that, and that you didn’t like saying it.” He had not liked denying it. Hadn’t expected not to like it but really hadn’t. Felt like he was doing wrong by Cozy by denying it, and this just irritated him. Horse for a daughter indeed... “Why would I talk to you about this? Not even talk to Cozy about this.” “Because I’m such a good listener,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Hah! Good listener! Sure, sure.” “It’s what they tell me,” she said, smile just as sweet and maybe a fraction of an inch wider than before. Paul continued to be sullen and sour with his arms folded, but he could tell this conversation wasn’t going to be going his way anytime soon. That there was a conversation at all told him he was already losing. He glared at her and she smiled back. He sighed. Talking was probably the best way of getting her to go away. “Fine, fine. If it make you go away, I talk. Damn horses,” he said, shifting about in bed and sitting up a bit straighter. Celestia said nothing, just starting up her famously good listening. Paul eyed her suspiciously for a moment before sighing again and then, after another moment to gather his thoughts, saying: “Do not tell Cozy this but I always had, ah, soft spot. For children, I mean. Do not know why. Did not see many because was always being moved, always working, but when I did I always tried to help, if they need help. Give some food or whatever, you know? Money. Felt I should. Others made fun of me for it, but that was okay. The children did not ask for what had happened to them, you know? I only saw the children who needed help, but that was the work, never peaceful where I was made to go. See children who lost things, always lost things. Lost parents, lost homes, lost - lost bits.” Celestia really was a good listener. The best kind of listener, in fact - the kind that sat there quietly and made you keep talking without even fully realising it, who got you to go into depth without feeling all that self-conscious about it. This was not a subject that Paul had really expected to get onto ever in his life with anyone, let alone get into, let alone with someone like her, and he realised only belatedly that he’d really wandered into a level of detail that was starting to make him remember some things he’d prefer remained forgotten. “Are you alright, Paul?” Celestia asked, as Paul appeared to have stalled. On hearing her he started and blinked, licking his lips. “Fine, fine. Nothing. All happened.” “If you’re-” “Nothing, nothing, fine. Do not distract me, was going somewhere, had point. Ah, you have child? Children?” He asked. A flicker passed across her face, and that it had been enough of a flicker to appear at all spoke volumes as to the feelings behind the flicker. Nothing of that slipped out though. Once the flicker disappeared it was like it had never happened at all. “Me? In a manner of speaking, but probably not in the way you’re asking.” Paul wasn’t in the mood to probe into that, and Celestia hadn’t expected him to anyway. “I do not. Did not. Helped children when I could but never saw them again, that was fine, just life. But now I - Cozy was tiny horse criminal, force her way into my life. I help her for a joke, at first, know she is using me, whatever. We talk, we talk. You saw what happened at end. Then she is stuck with me to look after her. And she is still tiny horse but she is also…” Paul tailed off. He frowned. “She is…” Paul groped the air in irritation, fishing for the right words. “Special child. Clever child. Funny child. Important. Does not need my help but needs, ah, help. Needed help. But not sort of help I used to give, you know? Not food or money or anything. Something else. Like, ah, stah-bil-a-tee, maybe? I do my best but I am just old man, do not think my best is that good. I try. Want her to - to - “ He frowned some more, swept his hands away from himself, like brushing away dust. “Do well, yes? Do well in life. Whatever she wants to do. If not stupid, ob-vi-ous-ly. But what makes child happy, I want her to do. Make friends, be happy, do better.” “Better than she was?” Celestia asked with calculated softness and delicacy. Meticulously planned attempts to gain power while also maybe inadvertently possibly destroying the world in the process set kind of a low bar. Anything would be an improvement over that, really. Paul knew this. He frowned some more, mostly at the obviousness of the softness and delicacy. “Yes, yes. Better than stupid Cozy from before, yes. Better than Cozy with stupid plans. But better than me, also. Better than old man made to look after her. Better, better. Child is very smart, can do very well. Hope she does.” Paul went quiet then, but not the sort of quiet of one who has finished talking, more the sort of quiet of one who has something else to say but is unsure of how to say it. It was written on his face. He’d halted, and Celestia gave him the time and space to get going again. He was staring at his hands. “I do - I do not think I will be around. To see her when she is happy, later. A little bit, I think, but I will be gone before too long, I think.” “The doctors say you’ll make a full recovery.” Paul grunted and waved this away. “Hmph. Full recovery to old, dying man is still old, dying man. I do not mind, knew I would not last long. Did not expect to last this long. Know others who did not last this long. Many others. Life was unkind, does not matter. It never mattered to me, much. Did not have anything that I would miss. But now - I worry, a little.” He swallowed loudly and was quiet again for a longer stretch than the last one. Then: “I think - I think about what Cozy might do, later, when she is older. Things a child does, yes? Things I think a child does. Things I would see her do. See her grow up. Have already seen her grow so much! More to go, more growing. See her leave my - leave our home, find place of her own. Get to see her find job! Something she cares about, maybe. Or project, or whatever. Something exciting for her. Something she cares about. Get to hear her talk and talk and talk about it and nod and pretend to understand. See how, uh, pash-on-nate she is about it. Things like that. Find, uh, other person, you know? Not, you know, a friend but, uh, special person. Maybe, maybe. My dau- my daughter get married, maybe? If she wants, if that makes her happy. Or not, whatever she wants, as long as she is happy. You know? Maybe get d-d-daughter of her own, maybe? Child? Maybe, if she wants, I don’t know. These things, these things - the things that happen in a life, you know? The things we go through on our own or - o-or wanted to go through but now - but now get to see our children go through, yes? You know? And I think - I think I will maybe not see them, with Cozy. That I will not be here to see them. And I do not like that. I w-want to see them.” Paul sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his arm. “Stupid. Selfish, stupid. Cozy will be fine, that is what matters. Cozy will be fine, happy. Smart child. Will be fine. Better than fine. Has friends, good friends. Smart child, do good. I am sure,” he said, sniffing again, nodding and then adding, as an afterthought: “Really should make will, hmm.” Then at least she could get the house. Had to have some scrap value in the building and the plot of land itself was probably worth something, so close to the big city and all that. Should set her up nicely when the time came, give her something to work with. “You should stop thinking about that so much, at least right now. You’re safe and you’ll be around for years yet, I’m sure of it. You’ll likely outlive us all, if you wanted to. You seem the sort,” Celestia said. “Hah, says you.” “Maybe stop worrying about what you might miss later and think more about what you get to enjoy with her right now?” She suggested, gently. Paul narrowed his eyes. “Do not try and inspire me, horse. It will not work,” he growled, settling back into the cushions and staring angrily at the ceiling. “Well, I’ll keep trying anyway. One day I might even get you to smile. That alone would be worth it.” He looked at her sideways and put particular effort into making his face as grumpy as possible as she sank deeper into the covers and shuffled lower in the bed. “Strange horse,” he grumbled. This was were there would usually be a pause in the conversation but Celestia had seen this coming and just carried right on, not letting the momentum die: “If it makes you feel any better I asked Cozy more-or-less the same sort of questions,” she said, and on a questioning look from Paul she continued: “About why she decided to go rushing off like she did, her motivations, that sort of thing. She was a lot more open about it than you were, but that’s hardly surprising.” This presumably having happened at some point while Paul was either asleep or indisposed. Not that it really mattered. It was unlikely she’d lie about it, and even if she was it still hardly mattered. It wasn’t a conversation he’d been involved in and it had happened elsewhere. “Because she is impulsive, silly child?” Paul suggested. “That might be one way of looking at it, though that seems a bit unkind to me. Much as with you her heart was in the right place, if perhaps her head was not. We’re all liable to make mistakes sometimes. Perhaps even more so when one we care about is concerned.” “Hmph.” “And I don’t know whether you know this or not but I think you need to hear it: Cozy does care about you, your wellbeing, and she does love you and wants you to keep being around.” “Yes yes yes, sure.” “It’s true. And it’s something that you should take seriously, Paul.” He did hate the habit of tacking a name onto the end of a sentence to make sure someone was paying attention. He did it to Cozy, specifically because he knew she probably hated it, too. Having it deployed against him was irritating. “Why?” He asked. He could guess why, but he wanted to hear whatever the horse reason apparently was. Something fluffy and stupid, he expected. Maybe something to do with friendship. Wouldn’t surprise him. Celestia certainly seemed happy to have been given the chance to keep talking. “Because she loves you and she is happier with you having been in her life and she is going to be happier with you staying in her life. And you should remember that you did that, and that’s important. Important to me, at least, though what matters to me really isn’t the issue here. Call me selfish though, but I’d prefer to have Cozy - and you, Paul - continue to be happy.” That particular line, the one about him having had some part in Cozy’s life improving, made Paul extremely uncomfortable for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom. He shifted in the bed, practically squirming. “Did not do anything, just was,” he said. “And that was enough.” He glared at her but she just smiled back at him and the smile was so genuine and warm he couldn’t really come up with anything to say in response, or at least nothing good. Anything he might have said just sort of dried up in the warmth. “Eurgh. Horses,” he mumbled, hunkering down again, annoyed that he wasn’t as annoyed as he should have been. All this mushy mumbo-jumbo made his head hurt. He hadn’t done anything special, he’d just done what he’d had to do, that was all. Anyone could have done that. Just because he was the one who had didn’t mean anything. There wasn’t anything special about him. Dying alone would have been simpler than all of this. Not an option now, of course. Would he have it back again, now? Given the choice somehow? Magically get the option to go back to how things were before Cozy had inserted herself into his affairs and his life? Would he take the chance to be able to leave quietly, like he’d planned? Like he’d been waiting for? ...no, he realised. He didn’t want that anymore. He most certainly had wanted it before. Had been rather looking forward to it, actually, as much as he might have been said to look forward to anything, but not anymore. Life without his Cozy seemed unbearably quiet and lonely, and for the first time in a while this actually mattered to him. Damn child. “Cozy sleeping?” He asked, glancing to the door of his room. “Yes,” Celestia said. Sleeping under a blanket on a bench just outside the room, in fact, with a direct eyeline from that spot through the door to Paul’s bed. They’d offered her all sorts of alternative accommodation - some just in comfier spots in the hospital itself - but she’d refused to be moved. Had there been anything to sleep on in his room she’d have been sleeping on that, but there wasn’t. She’d been the one to drag the bench in front of the door, too. If it could have fitted through the door it would have been in the room. And the only reason the door was closed now was because she was asleep and so hadn’t been able to stop Celestia doing it for her talk with Paul. “Hmph. Good. Sleep good,” Paul said, nodding. He’d been concerned about Cozy wearing herself out. Celestia nodded as well, she having shared these concerns. “It is. She’s had a tiring few days,” she said. “You are telling me!” Paul said with full-throated earnestness, getting a proper laugh out of Celestia in the process. So unexpected - and so pleasant, whatever he might have thought of her otherwise - was this that Paul didn’t even manage to fix her with a look of hostility. “I still do not like you,” he said afterwards, as if making up for this. “That’s okay, Paul. I like you,” Celestia said. “Hmph.” #10Author's Note See, in an ideal, sensible world they would have had this conversation back home and none of this other crap would have had to happen, but where's the fun in that? That's not dramatic! No-one nearly freezes that way! There's no heft in sensible! Also, uh, couple bits here referencing a crossover I did with this story here but which hasn't appeared yet. You, uh, don't need to know the details, but if you're confused about cubes or legs that'd be why. Hell, even if you had read it you might still be confused. I'm not known for being a particular clear wordman. 10 === Paul had murky dreams. Paul often had murky dreams. Sometimes in the murk he might spot something or someone he recognised, and sometimes something would lunge suddenly up through the murk and he’d wake up somewhere that it took him a few seconds to remember. This time, he woke up slowly without recognising anything. A distant prodding resolved itself into actual, immediate prodding, and he sleepily realised that he was, in fact, being prodded. In real life. By Cozy, as he saw. “...why are you prodding me?” He asked, peering sideways at her. She was little more than a blur but she was a blur that he could identify anywhere. “I’m trying to wake you up,” she said. “Well you succeeded.” “Did consider just pulling the curtains open but, uh, that might not have worked out so great, given, uh, you,” Cozy said as Pau gruntingly worked his way up in bed so he was sitting. “Wise,” he said, shifting the pillows behind him so he was fractionally more comfortable. Once he was properly settled and had stopped moving Cozy wheeled over one of those hospital trolley-tray things that typically have food put onto them so bedbound people can eat the food. On this tray there was food, fittingly. “Breakfast,” she said, simply. She wasn’t wrong either. It was breakfast. Paul blinked at it for a moment and then heaved himself up further in bed, squinting at how bright everything damn well was. “You work here now?” He asked. This got him some side-eye. “A nurse did bring some in earlier but you woke up and smacked the tray away and so she, uh, left the room. Quickly. I said I’d try this time. Say it was working out better, wouldn’t you?” “What?” He had absolutely no memory of that having happened. Even straining to remember yielded nothing, not even anything that he might have otherwise dismissed as a dream. Apparently he’d done it without even waking up, or at least without waking up enough to really notice. Paul then looked and saw the remains of the first breakfast, still on the floor, tray and all. Evidently they’d not felt like risking coming in to clean it up yet. He winced. “Eurgh. That’s just embarrassing. Uh, do you know which nurse it was so I can-” “I already found her and said you were sorry and that you didn’t mean it. She was okay with it, just think you frightened her, is all.” “Presumptuous, Cozy, but, ah, thank you. That - that hasn’t happened in a while…” “I know.” Paul sat in silence and felt guilty and angry for a bit, though not too long. It wouldn’t solve anything. Time was he wouldn’t have cared. That he cared now showed something, but he wasn’t sure what. “Could really go for a cigarette,” he said. He knew he’d been cutting down - rather successfully too, by all accounts - but if there was ever a time for a quick cheat one now seemed to be it. “I don’t think they let you do that in here,” Cozy said. Just a hunch on her part. “Pffbt, rules. Who cares about rules?” “Alright, I don’t think I will let you do that,” Cozy said, having subsequently learnt since meeting him that it was not an especially healthy habit. She’d learnt this from him, in fact. “Tiny bloody tyrant. To think I should raise such a spoilsport!” “Heh, ah, yeah…” Cozy said, a touch awkwardly, his choice of words there landing perhaps not as they might once have given what had recently been said vis their relationship. Paul realised this too, albeit far too late, and grimaced to himself. The banter stalled. “We probably need to...talk...don’t we?” Paul asked. “Probably,” said Cozy. He’d been afraid of that. Going by the way Cozy had spoken she was about as enthusiastic about the prospect as he was. He grimaced. “Eurgh. I already talked to the big one, that was enough for me for a lifetime.” “You talked to Celestia? Like, just the two of you?” Cozy asked. He’d presumably done it under sufferance but that it had been a significant enough conversation for him to mention to her was certainly something. “About what?” Paul shifted under the covers. “...you.” “Oh.” Cozy realised she probably should have seen that one coming. “Yeah she’s big on talking that one, and a ‘good listener’. Eurgh. It was torture,” Paul said, rubbing his face. “I bet talking about me was torture,” Cozy said, nodding and brimming with gravitas and mock-seriousness. Paul grinned despite his dread of what was coming up. “No, now, hey - good joke but no, let’s - let’s be serious about this, for once. Then we can never be serious about it again. But let’s try and be serious.” Cozy was also dreading what was coming up. “That sounds like more torture,” she said. “It will be, but it - eurgh - probably needs to happen. Come here,” he said, pushing the little bedside breakfast tray to one side and patting a spot on the bed onto which Cozy obligingly flew up and landed. Didn’t fit quite as comfortably as she might have done a couple years ago, but she still fit. “Right. Well. Um,” Paul said haltingly, licking his lips. He suddenly felt very parched, and the little jug of water on the tray was so far away now. Drinking would be a distraction anyway. Had to press forward. “We need to be...honest...with one another,” he said, every word an agonising effort. “Right.” A pause. “You first,” Cozy said. He’d been about to say that! “Damnit, Cozy, that’s - ! Fine. I - well, us, the both of us - you - “ Paul fumbled, bit his cheek, grunted, took a breath and tried over: “Thinking about it and about...these last few years and a few other things and - and talking about it with the big one, I - I’ve come to realise that - I’ve been - that I actually do l-l-love you, Cozy, as a - as a chi- as my - as m-my d-daughter, I think, and that’s - well - it’s just…” Paul briefly lost all capacity for speech and just mouthed vague noises into his lap, fiddling with his hands. “Fuck. This was much easier to talk about to the big one, fuck. She is a good listener...” He looked up at Cozy, hoping that maybe she’d pick this moment to step in and do her bit and let him off the hook, but no such luck. She was just staring at him with those big, big eyes. Staring expectantly. Oh well. Onwards. Too late now. Started so he’d finish. “And I know I’m not the best at doing whatever a f-f-father is supposed to be or be but I am - I am trying, or trying to try. I want - I want you to be happy, you see and - I’m trying. And I am also learning that a part of that is… appreciating that… I should at least try to keep myself vaguely intact, for your sake. Probably should have fucking listened when the other one told me so.” He wasn’t sure what point he was trying to make now, or how far he’d got in the points he’d need to make. His brains were scrambled and he’d moved from fiddling with his hands to fiddling with the bedsheets and was doing this vigorously enough that he was in danger of ripping them. “What I guess I’m trying to say - trying and failing - is that if you want to keep calling me d-dad then that’s - then that’d be okay, because maybe that’s what - what I’d like to be to you. Or you can just, you know, tell me to shove off. I don’t know.” This was all he could manage. He actually did succeed in ripping the bedsheets and so quickly stopped fiddling with them, instead just fiddling with his hands some more and looking at the various nicks and cuts he’d acquired over the last day or two, too terrified to look up to see how what he’d said had landed with Cozy. She wasn’t saying anything... “You go, you do your bit. You’re much better at this than I am,” he said. Still nothing. It was getting so bad that he risked a quick look up. He saw those big, big eyes again on the cusp of tears. His gut twisted. He’d screwed it up! He’d got it all wrong! Everything he’d meant to say had come out backwards! He’d fucked it up! Then she just hugged him again, especially tightly. Hurt less this time. Maybe he hadn’t made as much of a hash of it as he’d feared? The hug precluded anything else needing to be said for a bit. The two of them had been a lot more touchy-feely of late than they had anytime before, but this was to be expected, really, all things considered. Certainly, neither felt the least bit awkward about it or self-conscious or anything. It just seemed to come quite naturally now. At length the hug broke, Cozy being the one breaking it, and she sat back. She still wasn’t saying anything, and it was at this point that Paul realised she wasn’t actually going to. Cozy saw this realisation dawning and her smile took on a slightly different character. “That’s not fair! I can’t spill my guts and then you get away with a hug!” He said. “What are you going to do about it? You love me, dad,” she said, putting heavy, treacle-thick emphasis on the last part, complete with a smug-yet-loving smile plastered across her face. “You-!” There really wasn’t anything he could do, he realised. She had him dead to rights. “Clever bloody girl. Fine, fine. Keep it to yourself. I know I did my bit at least! Laid my damn soul bare for you, bah. Got years more of this to look forward to, I’m sure,” he grumbled. Cozy nodded. “Oh, years and years. And years.” “Wonderful. Well, I’m sick of sitting here, it’s about time I got out of this damn bed. Where did they put my leg?” He’d thought - hoped - that maybe the hospital staff or whoever had just tucked it around the side of the bed somewhere but now that he was looking he couldn’t see it. They hadn’t hidden it as a joke or something, had they? That had happened back home, once. Only once. That particular batch of work associates had very abruptly learnt the error of their ways and certainly learnt better than to take a chance on Paul seeing the funny side on any future jokes involving his leg. In their defence, had they picked any week other than the one in which they pulled the trick it likely would have gone down better. As it happened they’d caught him at a bad time. But such was life and that was by the by. Paul was no longer back where he’d come, those people were all dead now, and he was still sans leg, though at least he’d had a better week than the last time. “Well, looks like it’s hopping for me. They did leave a stick at least?” He started looking around again, this time for a stick, only to notice Cozy chewing her lip. “...what?” He asked. “I have bad news,” she said. “It’s leg-related.” “Oh. Great. What is it?” “When they found you in the snow - in the snow, dying, freezing to death after having made a stup-” “Yes yes Cozy, I get it. Get on with it.” “When they found you, your, uh, framey thing and your leg were both pretty beaten up and bent out of shape, and your leg was kind of full of snow, too. And dirt. And gravel. And then when they brought you here and had to, you know, start looking after you they had to take them off. But they didn’t really know how. So they kind of dismantled them. With extreme prejudice.” “So you’re saying they broke them.” “No, I’m saying you broke them, they had to take them off your unconscious body after they dug you out of a snowdrift. A snowdrift where you were dying. And I’m saying that they’re now a bit broken.” Paul stared at her. He couldn’t really find it in himself to be angry. He was upset, yes, and grumpy but then he was almost always grumpy so this wasn’t a huge change, leaving him mostly just upset, and mostly also just tired. Certainly too tired to waste the energy being loud and unhappy about it. Not worth the effort. It wasn’t even as if he was especially attached - hah - to his leg or anything like that. It wasn’t his first one, or even his second. He’d just managed to keep this particular leg going for a good while now and he’d got quietly fond of it, for all its failings. And even for him it was hard to be annoyed at the doctors and such for just doing their jobs. They’d done their best, he imagined, as most doctors he’d encountered in his life tried to do. Never worth getting all that upset at them. Just doing their jobs. He was so tired. He sighed. His shoulders slumped. “Well. It happens. There is a stick at least? Joking aside I’d really rather not hop.” “Better! There’s a replacement! Twilight found it when she went back to our house,” Cozy said, brightly. Paul did not share her brightness. His view was a dim one. “What was she doing in my house?” He asked. “...looking for a spare leg, I just told you.” “Hmph.” “Oh get over yourself, dad, she did a nice thing. It’s under a desk at the nurses station, I’ll go get it. Don’t go running off now,” she said. Thought she was funny, apparently. Paul crossed his arms and glowered. “Har-fucking-har.” Off Cozy went, flapping down from the bed and trotting out the door. In her absence, Paul leaned over and pulled the breakfast tray back over and started to pick away, not really concentrating on what it was he was eating - habit was that it didn’t really matter as long as it wouldn’t kill you. He stared into space and chewed, thinking about his leg and all the good times - well, times - they’d had together. Then he paused, and actually looked at what it was he was eating. He cocked his head, raised a cube of something that wasn’t meat up on his fork. “You’re very familiar…” he said to the cube, brow furrowed. Further rumination on this mysterious meaty-and-yet-not-meat cube was forestalled by the reappearance of Cozy, struggling her way back into the room with the spare leg. It wasn’t that it was heavy (though it wasn’t exactly light), it was more that it was awkwardly shaped. She’d had to kind of sling it over her back and kept having to shift to keep it from slipping off, much to her obvious frustration. The instant she was able to she slung it up onto the bed. “There!” She said, semi-breathlessly. Paul’s eyes fell upon the leg in blank confusion for a second. Then it clicked. “Oh, that one,” he said, setting his fork down and pushing the tray aside once more to reach over and grab the leg. “Thank you, Cozy,” he then said before setting about getting it secure and attached. Cozy, who’d seen him do this more times than she could count at this point, just stood back and let it happen. Though, as she watched him and this new, unfamiliar leg, a thought did occur to her: “Since when did you have a spare anyway? And since why does it look so much fancier than your other one? This one looks more like you made it out of actual parts and less like it was made out of the bits that were left over from making a better one. Why wasn’t this the one you used?” Paul paused for a moment and plainly thought about how best to answer this question. He then gave up thinking on how best to answer this question. “...I’ll tell you later,” he said, resuming. “Yeah, that’s not a weird thing to say.” “Later.” “Fine, fine. You not going to eat the rest of that?” Cozy asked, nodding to the partially-eaten breakfast still sitting on the trolley where she’d put it and where he’d pushed it away from the bed again. Paul paused. He’d forgotten about that. His memory really was getting a little spotty these days. He considered how best to play this. “We’ll eat and walk,” he said, grabbing the plate from the tray with one hand, some toast with the other and cramming it into his mouth as she strode semi-steadily out of the room. Cozy wondered if she should say anything about this - something pithy, perhaps - but decided there wasn’t much point, and instead grabbed the nearest blanket in her teeth and went after him. Once he remembered it was cold outside and that he was only wearing a flimsy gown he might want it. He wouldn’t admit to needing it, but if she had she could make him take it. Honestly. #11Author's Note On it goes. Again, I'm sure there's a definitive answer to where the crystal heart is but for the sake of this story it's in a place and people can go look at it if they want to, sure, why not. There's a line in my profile about canon being expendable! It's there for a reason! Ahem. Also, more references to the crossover. Don't worry about that. You can figure it out, I'm sure. Just sit back and relax. Let it wash over you. 11 === There wasn’t anywhere Paul wanted or needed to go once they left the hospital, he’d just wanted to be somewhere else other than that bed in that room. It didn’t take him long to avail himself of the blanket Cozy had brought, something which stoked no small amount of smugness in her as they’d walked along. Cozy had recommended the castle as a destination, specifically the Crystal Heart, figuring that since they were in with royalty then getting in and having a look wouldn’t be too difficult, regardless of whatever time they got there. Paul had no idea what a crystal heart was but couldn’t think of anywhere else to go so hadn’t argued. Thus. Back to the castle. Despite the fanciness of his spare leg, Paul wasn’t having the easiest time of it. He was so used to compensating for the various shortcomings and the general wear-and-tear of the other leg that the absence of any problems became in itself a problem, at least until he got a better feel for the thing. More than once he’d put lampposts and walls to good use when trying to compensate for a limp that wasn’t really there anymore. Got there in before too long though, and they were indeed let in without too much fuss, to Paul’s annoyance. He wasn’t sure what outcome wouldn’t have annoyed him, but the insinuation of preferential treatment rubbed him up the wrong way. The lavish opulence (by his standards) of the castle didn’t help either. “What is this thing anyway? Crystal whatever? Heart?” Paul asked as they made their way through the corridors. Cozy seemed to know the way. “It’s a heart,” she said. “Uhuh.” “Made of crystal.” Paul glared at the back of Cozy’s head, but Cozy didn’t care. “What will you horses think of next…” He muttered. As they neared the heart they learned that they weren’t actually that special as there were knots and handfuls of other ponies milling about, some plainly tourists, just taking in the castle and the heart and all that. Paul spotted at least one pony (there with their family, so it appeared) in a loud shirt thoroughly unsuited to the climate, using some sort of flashing device held to the eye to do… …something. Paul didn’t know what it was. But he didn’t appreciate it when the pony turned the flashing thing on him. “Eurgh, hell was that?” He asked, dazzled, hand raised too late. “Camera,” Cozy said. “You say that like it means something to me,” Paul said, blinking furiously to clear the blotch spoiling his vision. He was so fixated on doing this - not to mention still half-dazzled - that he failed to notice the approach of Celestia and Luna until they were basically standing right in front of him. By then he did notice. “Naturally. You again. And you,” he said, looking from Celestia to Luna. “We really must stop bumping into each other like this, Paul,” Celestia said. “Hmph. Give me the strength to make it home so I can lock my door and never have to see any of you ever again.” “What was that?” She asked, ear pricked. “Nothing, nothing. So you are here, hmm? Here? What a co-in-ci-dence,” said Paul, who did not believe in coincidences, or at least not when they involved irritating things happening to him. “Well, it is a lovely spot,” Celestia said, smiling up at the heart. The heart existed, doing whatever it was it did, heartily. Paul didn’t look at it. “Hmph.” “You’re looking well, Paul, all things considered,” Luna interjected. “Hmph.” “It is remarkable that a man of your years is able to recover so quickly,” She then added. Paul couldn’t tell if this was a compliment or a veiled jab or some combination of the two. “...yes,” he said, unsure of where to go with that. The conversation here faltered, as Paul wasn’t the only one unsure of where to go. In the awkward pause that followed Celestia looked down to her side, blinked, then looked around to her other side and behind her. “Where is Twilight?” She asked. “She is back there, correcting a tour guide,” Luna said, indicating with a flick of her head. She was not wrong, either. Twilight had apparently come out with the other princesses for their coincidental walk but had clearly got distracted by the pressing need to hold forth at length about something towards an increasingly beleaguered looking tour guide while the tour guide’s group looked on with mounting worry. “Oh dear. Do you think we should go and help them?” Celestia asked with concern. The tour guide did look as if they weren’t having an especially good time. Looked like they were having a significant emotional event, in fact. Paul - who had been chewing something over in his head - decided this was as good an opportunity to get something off his chest as any, given it was these two he needed to get it off at, so why not. Had to get Cozy out of the way first, and this presented an excellent opportunity. Leaning a little (only slightly unsteadily) he gave her a poke. “Go and talk to Twilight for a second, I’m going to talk to these two,” he said, pointing. Cozy was about to object to being asked to run along so the adults could talk when she double-took. She’d almost missed a key detail in what he’d just said to her. “You know her name?!” “I know all their names. Celestia, Luna, whatever. Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, Scootaloo, all of them, all the horse names.” Cozy’s face went through a journey that took in a whole range of emotions, none of which seemed fitting for the moment. Eventually, she settled on some combination of amazement and outrage. “...since when?!” “Shh. Go. I need to talk to them.” Cozy gaped, open-mouthed, for a second, but then the shock passed and she picked her jaw up. “I’m only going because I’m too stunned to do anything else,” she said. “Great, good. I won’t be a minute,” Paul said, shooing her away. Off Cozy went, to Luna and Celestia’s obvious bemusement, the two of them turning to watch her go before turning back to Paul again. Clearly he was ramping up, but for what they did not know. “Is something the matter, Paul?” Celestia asked. “I read letter you sent,” he said, without preamble. “Oh good! I was starting to think they were getting lost in transit.” “I threw them away.” “I know,” Celestia said, smiling. She’d just been playing polite. Paul didn’t really care. “Hmph. I read - well, Cozy read, read to me. Tells me what you offering,” he said. “And?” Celestia asked, the merest tinge of hope entering her tone. “I say no, of course.” The hope wafted away. “Oh.” “That before though. Before all this. I - maybe I change my mind.” The hope returned. “Oh!” Paul shrugged and made various non-committal gestures with his hands. “Cozy think it good for me. Good to get out of house, talk, whatever. Maybe. I don’t know. Bad teacher and do not want to teach, but if Cozy thinks is good maybe it is good. The, ah, the small one want to help too, yes?” He asked, inclining his head in Twilight’s direction. No reason to let them know he knew all their names, after all. (Meanwhile, Cozy had reached Twilight and had interceded on the tour guide’s behalf. What was being said was impossible to determine at the distance, however.) “Twilight was interested, yes,” said Celestia, head dipping. “Hmph. Acceptable. Small one is not so bad.” “Ah, I can only hope that one day you consider me not so bad, Paul, that’s high praise from you,” Celestia said, with Luna bewilderingly nodding in agreement alongside her, something that caught Paul entirely off-guard, wrong-footing him for a good two seconds. Did they actually care, or was this another veiled something-or-other? He wasn’t sure. Bounced back though, and got back into it: “Yes yes har har I am grumpy and not very nice, look…” His clunkiness with the language was making what was already difficult for him more difficult still. He’d have trouble finding the words in his native tongue. As it was, he did his best. “I want in writing. Nothing I teach to make or anything like it be used for fighting, yes? Or making, ah, making people do things. Only for helping, yes? In writing. Make it a law. You are in charge you can do that, yes?” Anything anyone in any position of authority said or promised or wrote down was, of course, utterly worthless and subject to change at the merest shifting of the wind or mood or fashion or just the sheer unbridled hell of it, obviously, but there wasn’t a lot else Paul felt he could do, and he felt he had to do something. “That doesn’t seem neces-” Luna started to say, but Celestia cut in (to Luna’s obvious minor irritation). “I am sure something can be arranged, Paul.” He nodded, then grimaced. The next bit was going to be hard. “I know - I know you are not as...bad...as I am used to, maybe. Not as bad as I think you are. I know that with this, what I do, you would not - probably not - do anything...that I would expect. Not like at home, maybe. Not like people in charge I am used to, maybe. But I need promise because...I just need it. But you are not so bad, I know,” he said, every word a grinding effort. “That’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me, Paul,” Celestia said, a hoof clutched to her chest. “Hmph,” said Paul, gearing up for the next bit which was going to be even harder. “I…” he started, swallowing, then pressing on - he’d been doing a lot of pressing on lately. It was exhausting: “I am sorry.” “Whatever for?” Luna asked, Celestia clearly still dealing with the shock. Paul swallowed. How to phrase this? “For being, ah, a bastard - not poh-lite. Being difficult. You try to help me, make life easier, whatever, I do not accept. All trying to move on in life, move forward. Cozy, you, others, trying to grow, get better. And I say this is good but I do not do it and that - and that is stupid. If I think it is good if, you know, Cozy try to do better in life then I should not say that I cannot do better. You know? I - ah, fuck, what am I even saying…” He wasn’t entirely sure. In this he had a similar problem to Cozy (although he didn’t know this, of course), where what he was attempting to convey made perfect, concise, crystal-clear sense in his head but was refusing to be readily translated outside of his head, a problem exacerbated for him by his inability to properly articulate himself. What he wanted to say - what he mostly had nailed down - was that it was pretty rich of him to be sitting there, encouraging Cozy to go off and be her best and move on in life, while he himself utterly refused to, with the excuse that ‘Oh, I’ll be dead soon anyway’ only getting him so far and not really being that much of an excuse in the first place, either. Never too late to not be acting like an idiot, something he knew, but which he had been abjectly rejecting as an option for himself. He knew entirely well how much of an idiot he was in those things he chose to do idiotically. He was old enough and ugly enough to be entirely aware and old enough not to care. When presented with a platter of options he’d choose the easy one that required the least effort and kept him exactly where he was, even over an equally-easy one that might make things just that tiny bit better. Fine when he’d been on his own, yes, but now that Cozy’s personal wellbeing was more-or-less hitched to his own, in many ways? That she apparently cared about him? That he had someone else in his life now and a someone who was just as concerned about him as he was about her? Sigh, no longer afforded the luxury of wallowing in his rut until that rut became his grave. So to speak. That was what he was trying to express. That was what made perfect sense in this head. He just couldn’t quite get it out. Alongside trying to actually, legitimately apologise to these two magical horses for… …being present at times when some of those opportunities for life-improvement had presented themselves. And for sometimes being… …involved in those opportunities. Ahem. Agreeably they had tried to stick his daughter in a hole in the ground that one time, but crucially that had been one time and they had only tried. After that they’d been fairly supportive. Hell, last year or so almost nothing but supportive. But it hadn’t started well. So no, he wasn’t going to forgive them outright, but he would give them the credit at least of immediately going for an alternative when one presented itself. Not actually looking for an alternative, but still… “Paul? Are you alright? You’re being unusually quiet, even for you,” Celestia said, gently, looking as though she was considering nudging him but then thinking better of it. Paul realised he had blanked out for a moment there, lost in thoughts that had got him absolutely nowhere while just silently staring at some fixed point in the middle-distance. He shook his head and gritted his teeth, back in the present. “If I want Cozy to be better I have to be better too. As - as father of her - as her father I need to be better. Whatever that means. And this thing you offer is probably good way, if she think so. So thank you. Yes. Yes.” Paul had hit his limit now and clammed up. He’d mostly got his point across though. Celestia and Luna understood a portion of what he’d meant, and they appreciated it. “Excellent. Thank you, Paul. I’ll have the details finalised on our return to Canterlot and somepony will be in contact with you,” Celestia said. “Hmph.” He was already regretting it, but it was too late now. “Paul,” Luna said, and his attention switched herwards. “Since we are talking and since Cozy Glow is presently otherwise engaged, there is something I have been meaning to ask you but have been unable to find the right moment to do so.” This seemed like a mouthful to Paul, and her delicate approach to whatever it was she was trying to talk about left him on-edge. What was she going for, here? “Hmm?” Unlike Celestia - who he had been ‘encouraged’ to meet with fairly regularly for a fairly lengthy period of time - Luna was still something of an unknown quantity to Paul, particularly given that he hadn’t seen her at all now for going on over a year or more. His initial, hostile impression didn’t help much either. Luna, having seized the reins of the conversation, now hesitated, but only briefly. “How is…” She started to ask, though she couldn’t seem to settle on how best to finish. Paul, at last clocking what she was driving at (far faster than even he himself expected), stepped in to assist: “Other-Cozy? Seem good, last I speak. Busy. Doing lots.” It had been a little while - life seemingly having got both of them in its icy grip - but the last time they’d spoken she’d seemed to have been in fine enough fettle. Luna nodded, accepting this answer. “That’s good, I am glad,” she said. “Does she - does she talk about her mother at all?” Her ‘mother’ in this instance being Luna. Or else some weirdo, other-dimensional version of Luna who had been the one who’d ended up as surrogate parental figure to Cozy in place of himself. Honestly, the whole thing had been the sort of event to give Paul a headache thinking about it, and he was from another dimension himself. Still. That Luna - this Luna, the one right in front of him talking to him - was asking at all did at least suggest this was something that had been weighing on her, for whatever reason. Paul wasn’t going to probe her motivations. He didn’t have the energy and, as always, he didn’t really care all that much. It was important to her somehow, he didn’t need to know why exactly. There were details, whether he knew them or not. “Little bit. It is not something that comes up all that much. If you want, you can talk to her sometime. Book is easy to use,” he said. The (magical) book in question being the means by which he spoke to the other-Cozy, a device she herself had made, impressive and accomplished girl that she was. Luna blinked, surprised by the offer or more likely surprised to find the offer coming from Paul. “Ah, perhaps. I would like that, actually. If it’s convenient for you? When is convenient for you?” She asked. “Anytime, anytime, it does not matter. No-one seems to care about coming into my life whenever they want, anyway…” “Well that’s nice. Isn’t this nice? This has been a most productive conversation, Paul, if I do say so myself. And to think, would any of this come about had Cozy not wanted to get you a birthday present?” Celestia asked. Or thought a little harder about getting him a birthday present, or decided on getting one from not quite so far afield, or any other one of a myriad other tiny differentiating factors that could have resulted in the whole mess not occurring in the first place. But that was all implied. Paul got that by implication. “Hmph. It seems to have worked out for the best,” he said. “It has worked out for the best,” Celestia said, emphatically. He wasn’t going to argue. With exquisite timing, Twilight and Cozy approached, talking as they did so. “ -I’m just saying, there are standards if you’re giving a tour. You shouldn’t be repeating things that anyone can just look up and find out aren’t true! It’s not-” Twilight was saying, as one who had been saying similar things for some time might say them. “Are you finished?” Cozy asked Paul, cutting across Twilight who was reduced to simmering silence, her opinions halted before they’d had a chance to fully empty themselves out across their audience. “Yes. We are finished,” Paul said. “Good. Work out whatever it is you needed to work out?” Cozy asked, looking from Paul to the other two, the three of them - the three ‘adults’ - sharing a moment of mutual, silent agreement. They had worked it out. “I think so, yes,” Paul said. “Great. What was it that I didn’t need to hear about?” Cozy then asked, directing her question explicitly at Luna and Celestia, knowing they could be relied upon to undermine Paul. “He admitted that you were right and also apologised to us,” Luna said. An adequate summary of events. “Ah, can see why he wanted me out of the way for that,” Cozy said, smirking back at him. He grimaced, thoroughly undermined. “Eurgh…” “He also said that he would agree to my proposal,” said Celestia. That one Cozy hadn’t expected. “The teaching thing?” “Yes, that.” “Ooh!” Twilight squeaked from the sidelines. “Fancy that…” Cozy said, now turning to Paul with a certain level of honest surprise. He shifted awkwardly. “You say is good for me, good for everyone, whatever. Good idea, maybe, I don’t know,” he said, on the edge of mumbling. “Is this just because I said I thought you should?” Cozy asked. “No. It is because you said you thought I should and I think you may be right,” Paul said. A subtle difference, but an important one. “Proud of you, dad,” Cozy said, pitching her tone perfectly to make it completely impossible to tell whether she was being heartfelt and sincere or just taking the piss. “Oh shush, child,” Paul said, then: “We go now. I am tired. Let us go, Cozy. Come on, I need to sit down.” “Said all you need to say? Sure you don’t want to keep talking? Maybe admit I was right about a few more things? I could probably remember some more,” Cozy said, trotting along after Paul who was already limping away. “Yes, yes, all done, finished now. All happy,” he said. “We’re very glad you’re happy, Paul,” Celestia said. “Yes yes, it-” Paul’s brain clicked. He stopped. He turned. “Wait. Wait…” he said. Celestia grinned. “How long…?” “Oh, about as long as you’ve known our names, if I had to guess,” she said. Paul raised a finger and then, slowly, cracked a smile. “Alright. That was alright, you’re alright. You got me,” he said. #12“No, you see, look: the line, yes? Need to be in a line, see? In a line, touching the line, like this? But not touching each other? Touching the line, not each other, yes? See?” As Paul said this, he indicated what he meant, pointing out the relevant portions on the etched metal plate on the worktop in front of him. To him it was obvious, blindingly obvious. It leapt at him with a single glance. To Plum Pudding, the pony he was presently attempting to explain it all to, it was less obvious. That, indeed, was sort of the problem. “Line?” Pudding asked, brows knotted. With far more patience than he might have ever imagined possessing, Paul didn’t so much as take a deep, steadying breath. “Yes, line. The metal line, see? One you do to start? First thing I tell you about? This line. Con-duc-tive line, connects, yes? So they must touch line. The, ah, symbols, yes? Order not matter, not really, but must touch line.” Technically the order did matter, but only for more complex stuff, so not at Pudding’s level. It would only serve to confuse the poor boy to tell him otherwise at this point. “Oh that line! I thought it was just, uh, a guideline. So it’s important?” Pudding asked. “Very, yes.” As Paul had explained to both pudding and the whole class at the very start, in fact. “So can I just scratch it out or…?” “No no, start over, must start over. Fresh plate, new.” “Oh…” That would put him behind the others in the class, Pudding knew, a thought which did not appeal. He was already lagging slightly, this would see that he was lagging severely. Paul knew this as well, and knew that it wouldn’t be helping either Pudding or himself. “I will do. Start over, do line, do these that you did, get you in right place so you are with the others. You understand now, yes? For going on? Going, ah, fore-ward?” He asked, fixing Pudding with a serious look, to make sure the boy knew this was an important question that he should say yes to. “Uh, yeah! I get it now. So when I add new ones they need to touch the line, and not touch each other?” Pudding asked. Paul relaxed his serious look and nodded. “Yes. Exactly. See? Smart boy,” he said, sitting back and wincing a little as he shifted his legs. Greater familiarity with the replacement leg meant that he didn’t need the frame or his stick anywhere as much as he used to, but that didn’t magically make him better either, and sitting for too long had a tendency to make him a little stiff. “Thanks, Mr Paul! And thanks for helping me out with the plate, too!” Pudding said, beaming. “Is no problem. ‘Mr Paul’? For the love of…” “Hmm?” “Nothing, is nothing. You get it now, all good. Ready for tomorrow. I will bring plate. You bring self, and remember what I say, yes? Maybe make note, yes?” Paul said, by way of gentle suggestion, pointing to the mostly-empty notebook that Pudding had produced and laid on the worktop and not touched since. Pudding seemed to draw a blank for a second, then noticed what it was Paul was pointing at. “Yeah! Notes! That’s a good idea,” he said, gleefully grabbing the notepad and pulling the pencil from behind his ear. This wasn’t what Paul had had in mind. “Maybe make note at home, yes?” Pudding, pencil poised, paused. “Home?” Paul gave the briefest glance around the workshop, hoping that this might remind Pudding that this was, in fact, Paul’s home they were in and now that his particular issue had been cleared up he might prefer to have it to himself again. It took him a second, but Pudding twigged it easily enough. “Oh, oh right, yeah. Home. I got it, I can do that,” he said, sweeping the notebook into a saddlebag and slinging the saddlebag over himself. “Good idea,” Paul said, his face bearing an expression that suggested he might be capable of smiling, should the situation warrant it. He then followed Pudding to the door and let him out, the pony, now brimming with energy, leaping gaily across the boundary and all-but skipping up the path. “See you next week, Mr Paul!” He called out. Paul, gritting his teeth, waved goodbye. “Next week, yes. See you,” he said. “Hi!” Pudding said to Cozy as he passed her, Cozy by absolute coincidence just-so happening to be returning home at this exact moment. That it was coming up on lunchtime might have had something to do with it. “Uh, hi,” Cozy replied, bemused, glancing back at him as he merrily made his way home and she herself continued to saunter up to Paul. “Who was that?” She asked, once she’d sauntered into question-asking range. “Pupil,” Paul said, turning around and heading back inside, Cozy following and closing the door behind her. “Ah, one of your new ones, huh? What was he doing here?” She asked. “I said to them they could come by if they had issues and he does so here he is. Or was. Only one who’s had to, so far at least,” Paul said. Having gone back inside he now realised he had no idea what it was he was meant to be doing, or even if he was meant to be doing anything at all. In lieu of certainty, he decided to go and make tea until he remembered something important he was probably supposed to be doing. Cozy hopped up onto one of the chairs by the kitchen table as Paul busied himself with tea-making paraphernalia. “Didn’t think you liked visitors.” “I don’t, but if they need help they need help.” “You like teaching, then?” “It…” Paul, holding a teapot, frowned and tried to think of how best to express his feelings on the matter. He didn’t like the job he’d accepted. He didn’t like that he now spent a good chunk of the week trudging up to the palace (castle, whatever) to slowly and clearly explain to a room full of horses how to do what he’d done for years. He didn’t like that he had Twi- the small one there acting as his de-facto assistant and also as an equally eager pupil. He didn’t like that all of those who’d come to learn treated him with a level of quiet respect and listened to what it was he had to tell him. But he didn’t dislike it either. In a lot of ways it reminded him of how he’d spent a not-inconsiderable amount of his life: imparting his quote-unquote ‘knowledge and wisdom’ onto a newer, younger generation. A generation brought before him to learn because he was the only in easy reach left to teach them, usually, though this time for slightly different reasons than the ones Paul was used to. And this time he wasn’t teaching them under duress, and wasn’t teaching them in the knowledge that what he was teaching was going to be put to use making the world a nastier place to be in. This was new, and strange, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet. Feeling good about it felt unseemly somehow, so he didn’t really feel anything about it yet. Maybe once they’d finished and gone off to go do something with what they’d learnt he’d feel something. Until then he would feel nothing, as he had considerable practise of doing. With all that being the case, Paul couldn’t really think of any good way of summing it up. So went with something that did the job as best as possible: “...takes me back.” “In a good way?” Paul swallowed and resumed making tea, dropping in a teabag. “In a way. Certainly it’s probably better than sitting around.” “It’s almost like my idea was right all along…” Cozy said, tapping her chin as though proposing something mysterious and unlikely, looking up at Paul sideways. Paul closed his eyes. “Eurgh…” “Go on, you can say it. You can say ‘You had the right idea, Cozy.’ Maybe even add in an ‘I’m sorry Cozy I’ll listen to you more in future’ or something like that, if you feel like it.” “You’re pushing it…” “Yes but you loooovvvveeee me, dad,” she said, and while she drew the word out purposefully to get under his skin she couldn’t deny that the truth of it warmed her heart just that little bit. And Paul couldn’t deny that part, either. Not now. “...it was a good idea, and I should have just said yes in the first place. Happy?” He asked. Cozy beamed, leaning back in her seat and stretching, like a cat in the sun. “Very happy.” “Good. Tea?” “I don’t-” “-don’t drink tea, right, I remember.” There followed the clinking of teaspoons and such, and while that was happening Cozy (still luxuriating in triumph) looked around and saw something out the window that made her double-take, hop down, and then move over for a proper look. “Uh, dad, your walking machine is outside,” she said, nose to the glass. “My what?” Paul asked. “Your walking machine. That thing that pulled the wagon that one time? Lives in the shed?” He blinked at her, brain chugging along. “...oh balls, I’d forgotten about that.” “Well it’s outside,” she said, pointing, tapping on the window. “Really?” He could not see it from his position and didn’t want to lumber over to check himself. “I wouldn’t be saying it was if it wasn’t. That’d be kind of a weird thing to do. How’d it get out of the shed? Can it open doors now?” Cozy asked. She was of course unaware of the impromptu use Paul had put it to not that long ago, which did rather raise the question of how she thought he’d got up North in the first place, but still. Twilight had known. Had she just not told her? Tsch. “No, it’s - I’ll deal with it.” Setting the steaming teacup aside, Paul headed out back through the kitchen door. He really had entirely forgotten that he’d left the thing where it had collapsed. He would have gone and got it otherwise. Instead, the poor bloody machine had instead apparently walked all the way home again, despite being - very obviously - in no condition to walk anywhere. Paul and the machine regarded one another across a patch of what might once have been grass (Paul’s horticultural ministrations once again proving to be anything but tender). “You found your way back?” Paul asked, somewhat dumbly, unable to bear the silence. The machine said nothing. It was built for several things, answering questions not being among them. It just continued to stand there, quivering slightly and rocking a little, quivering slightly more strongly when the rocking took its weight onto its left side, quivering slightly less again when it rocked back the other way. Hell, that it was standing at all was a miracle. Paul wasn’t sure what he was meant to do. Fix it, some part of his brain said, just take it aside and fix it. Turn it off and leave it for a project. Just fix it, like you’d fix anything else you’ve ever made. Simple. But for some reason he couldn’t move a muscle. He was rooted to the spot, staring at the machine. “I didn’t mean to forget you, you know. I had a lot on. H-had a lot on.” Again, the machine had no response to this. It could have no response to this. Paul knew that even if it could comprehend that it had been forgotten in a snowdrift (and, having built it, he knew that it couldn’t) it wouldn’t have cared either way, being what it was. Knowing this didn’t stop him from feeling an upsurge of guilt, a welling bubble that started low and small but quickly swelled upward and filled him out. How many broken machines had he seen in his time? He’d long ago lost count. And what made this one any different? Nothing, really, except perhaps why it had ended up broken, but so what? What did that matter? It didn’t. And yet… And quite without understanding why and with very little warning whatsoever he burst into tears. The machine had no response to this, either. It continued to have no response even when Paul lumbered over, collapsed to his knees, and embraced it, weeping the whole while. “I’m sorry!” Paul wailed. Cozy, who had been watching the proceedings through the window with a certain level of curiosity, was out the door the moment she saw him hit the ground. “Dad! What happened?” “Oh! Oh Cozy! Oh my girl! My girl!” Feeling her bump into his side Paul lunged, wrapping his arms around her. Cozy was enveloped. “Whoa!” What Paul said next was impossible to make out, an incoherent mess buried in sobs and seemingly directed at her, the machine, and the world in general all at once. After failing to wriggle free or even wriggle into a slightly better position Cozy was helpless but to ride it out. She looked to the walking machine but it was no help at all. Fairly quickly Paul managed to pull himself together, his grip on his daughter loosening enough she could shift around and his babblings stopping in favour of loud sniffing, his breathing getting nicely back under control. Didn’t let go of her, though. “What was that about? Are you okay now?” Cozy asked, slightly muffled. Who was she even meant to call in a situation like this? “I’m fine. Just - my life has gone in a very strange direction. Heh, life. I have a life!” He might have been able to work out the reasons for this unexpected outburst if he sat and thought about it, but he had no desire or intention of doing that. The reasons were there, carved beneath the surface by a lifetime of things he’d often prefer not to remember - they weren’t even especially deep beneath the surface, not really. He could, so to speak, see their outline, and was entirely aware that they were there. But he was going to leave them there. For now. “You certainly do have a life. Now. Thanks to me,” Cozy said, mostly joking, mostly to hide a certain level of internal disquiet at her dad’s unusual behaviour. Paul gave her a final squeeze before releasing her. “All thanks to you, Cozy, yes. Heh. Hah. Hahaha!” Also mostly a joke. With some effort Paul stood up again. “Doing my best. With my d-daughter. Yes, with my daughter. She’s a horse, but, you know, whatever.” “What was that last part, dad?” “Nothing, nothing…” “I am not interrupting, am I?” Luna asked, suddenly there, having managed to approach entirely unnoticed. Paul very nearly fell over sideways and Cozy jumped a very neat and very exact foot in the air. “Bloody hell! Oh, nearly gave me a fucking heart attack. She’s quiet, isn’t she? Blood and shit…” he took a few deep, steadying breaths, hand clutched to his chest. Then he straightened up. “Luna. Yes. Hello. Can I help you?” Luna looked from him to Cozy and back again and then clearly chose her next words with some level of care: “It was regarding that… item, we spoke about. The one which you said I would be able to use, if I so desired?” She asked, eyes again flicking to Cozy once or twice, not helping in making what she was saying sound any less suspicious. “Hmm? Item?” Paul asked, bemused. “Ah, item. Yes. Go go, inside. Is, ah, is in workshop, on top of shelf. Easy to see, big. Go do,” he said, waving her in. “Thank you, Paul,” she said, heading inside. Cozy, also bemused, looked after her and then to Paul. “Why is Princess Luna here? She in your class too and having problems? Today has been a day of odd arrivals…” “Oh, she’s here to use the book. Didn’t think she’d take me up on that, least not so soon,” Paul said, wiping his nose on the back of his hand and instantly regretting it and then patting himself down for a handy rag or similar. “Book?” Cozy asked. Paul realised, belatedly, that he’d let something slip that he’d have preferred not to have done. He froze. “...uh…” He was drawing a blank. He couldn’t deny it, could he? That he’d said it at all? No, that’d just make it worse. So what could he say instead? Play it off like a joke? Weird joke. No, that wouldn’t work. Shit, shit… “What book?” Cozy asked. “It’s…shit.” Shit. “How do you ‘use’ a book anyway?” Cozy asked, finding the choice of words here a little odd, on top of the whole thing being odd anyway. Paul squirmed a bit. “Uh, look, Cozy, there’s - there’s something I should probably tell you,” he said. “Oh? What?” There wasn’t really any good way of putting this, Paul knew, so he just decided to try and sum it up as quickly and as totally as possible - get it over with: “There was a thing a little while back where an, uh - where some other version of you from some other, ah, place, kind of swapped in somehow and…did some stuff…and, uh, well, she went back afterwards but she made this magic book or something so she and I could, you know, keep in touch and so that’s - that’s where the book came from. Yeah.” A crushing, all-annihilating silence greeted this garbled revelation. “Dad! What the fuck!” Cozy blurted. “Language!” Paul said, sternly, only to have his sternness wafted aside by Cozy’s hoof. “Oh no, you don’t get to make this me being in trouble! Something like that happened and you didn’t tell me?!” She seemed pretty willing to believe that such a thing could happen but then again things like that and stranger things besides happened all the time around Equestria, her dad wouldn’t make something like it up (he didn’t have the imagination needed to do so) and, importantly, he himself was from ‘some other place’ so there was precedence. Which meant that on the balance of things whether it had happened wasn’t the issue - that she was only finding out about it now rather was. “I was waiting for the right moment!” Paul protested, using force to cover up how feeble it was. Cozy was not fooled for a moment. She could recognise someone cornered. “The right moment?! When did this happen?” She asked. “...um…” “When?” “...couple years ago…” “A couple of years?!” Cozy legitimately got him to take a step backwards as she advanced on him. “I - I just thought you had enough to worry about, that’s all. Without having to wonder how, you know, other versions of you might be getting on. Other versions who might have…not been so…lucky at times…” The memory of that fucking hole under the mountain where they’d wanted to stick his little girl loomed and he found he couldn’t really bring himself to finish the sentence. He didn’t want to think about Cozy getting thrown in there, his or any other ones. Didn’t want to think about her being left in there for however long it had been or might have been. He really was getting soft in his old age. Or at least around certain someones. “What do you mean ‘swapped out’ anyway? How long did this last for?” Cozy asked. She had a lot of questions about this, and was stumbling over which ones to roll out first. Paul rubbed his face. Despite having had time to prepare answers to this he hadn’t, and didn’t have the energy to do it on the spot. “Honestly the details kind of confused me but she was here for a few days while you were, I don’t know, in limbo or something. You came back, didn’t remember any of it,” he said. “Did anyone else know?” Paul paused, hands still on his face. “Um, yeah. Maybe one or two people…” “Like…?” His hands dropped. “You know, just the princesses, maybe, and maybe someone else, I don’t know who noticed. But mainly the princesses. Turns out the, ah, the other-you got adopted by Luna. S’why she wants to use the book, I guess? So, uh, yeah.” “...wow.” This was a lot to take in and not at all what Cozy had expected on coming back home for lunch. She’d expected a sandwich, instead, this. What would the proper response be? Was there one? She was unsure. “Can I use the book?” She asked, after a few moments digesting it all. Paul hadn’t seen that one coming. In hindsight he probably should have. “Uh…I guess?” He couldn’t imagine this ending well, but at this point couldn’t imagine saying no ending well either, or even working for a moment. “Cool. Maybe I’ll do that later. Maybe I’ll do it and not tell you about it. Maybe I’ll do all sorts of cool, weird stuff and not tell you until years later. Can’t believe you didn’t tell me this happened.” Paul was actually too cowed by his daughter’s disapproval to have any comeback to this and could only stand sheepishly while she went back inside to make some lunch. That left him and the walking machine, the machine having waited obligingly while all of that had happened. “Well, let’s get you seen to then, eh?” Paul said, leading the walking machine back to the shed where it lived where he (delicately) deactivated it and partially disassembled it with what tools he had to hand (Paul always had tools to hand). This showed a bevy of issues both mundanely mechanical and esoterically otherwise and made it very clear to him that, yes, this was going to be a project, something that he’d be coming back to for a little while. But more pressingly he had a plate to redo and a daughter to placate - and still toys to make as well, couldn’t forget those. And more lessons to plan as well, for when his pupils had finished what he’d set out so far. And another agonising meeting with Celestia to discuss how it was progressing (though honestly he wasn’t hating the thought of having to spend time with her as much as he used to - he was comfortable in knowing that he could tolerate it and there would be good tea). Barely any time left for staring into space and waiting for the next day to happen until the next days stopped happening. How unexpected. He really did have a life. Fancy that. That had snuck up on him. This thought buoyed him and carried him all the way to the kitchen, where he found Cozy sat at the table eating a sandwich and pointedly ignoring him, and also found that his tea was now cold. He drank it anyway and ruffled Cozy’s hair, to her writhing annoyance. A life! Him! Of all people. Must have done something right somewhere to deserve that. Somehow still alive after all this time and finally actually living. Who’d have thought it? “So what you working on, anyway? Up in town, I mean,” He asked, sitting opposite her. He had a vague awareness that she had somehow managed to wrangle her way onto some sort of project or scheme or something, possibly by loudly correcting someone else involved and demonstrating her aptitude, possibly by some other means - he wasn’t entirely sure, he hadn’t been able to follow it when she’d laid it out for him the first time. He just knew that she had something going on and that she was, by all accounts, actually quite involved and excited. He also knew that he enjoyed the energised expression she got on her face when she talked about it. Cozy cocked an eyebrow. It wasn’t as if she was going to just forget that he’d forgotten to mention that whole thing with the dimensions and whatever, but the opportunity to maybe talk about what it was she’d got into was a tempting one. She really had latched onto an opportunity to set her brain onto something non-megalomaniacal, and dad was, if nothing else, a pretty good sounding board. “Do you care?” She asked. Paul was genuinely affronted! “I care a lot! Explain, daughter! Don’t miss out anything! I can take it!” He said, pulling his chair in closer to the table and lacing his fingers together to rest his chin on - a proper listening pose, he felt, and one that properly demonstrated his intention for listening. Slowly, Cozy grinned. “Well…” Paul understood very little of what followed, but he couldn’t fail to understand the relish with which Cozy held forth, or the energy which filled her as she spoke. It was delightful. Incomprehensible, but delightful. Author's Note No idea if that's an adequate way of wrapping things up here or not, but that's just how this particular episode of these guys ends in my head, so that's how it comes out. I feel they've progressed at least, and I've cunningly left the door open for the future, as is often my custom. I had fun, at least. And, uh, what else. Oh yeah. Deliberately vague on what it is Cozy is actually doing. Just to leave myself wiggle room, you understand. Not because I haven't decided or thought about it. Not at all. It's for your benefit, really. You imagine what you feel is best. Anyway, that's that. We're done. Pack it up.
#1Author's Note More of what no-one wanted or needed, delivered at random and out of nowhere. 1 == Four young ponies were watching one old human on a stepladder struggle with bunting. He was attempting to get it slung over the branch of a tree, and in trying to do this he was having very limited success. The old man had just the one of his original legs with the other being a replacement, a lot of brass framework strapped about his lower portions and about his waist and appeared to be swearing in a low voice and in a language only one of the ponies watching could understand. The old human thought he was being quiet enough that she wouldn't hear. He was not. She could. It was one of the reasons why she was smirking. "Are you sure you don't need help Mr Paul?" One of the watching ponies asked, cocking her head and setting the bow she wore waggling. "Just Paul, children. And no. I am fine," the old human grunted through gritted teeth, straining for reach and cursing himself for only having brought the small stepladder. "Are you suuure, Mr Paul?" Asked another of the watching ponies, this one with a horn and the perfect tone of voice for drawing out a word. None of the others could have pulled it off even half as perfectly. Well, maybe one of the others, but she was too busy smirking. Paul paused, his concentration fraying. He gritted his teeth harder, having been poised to just again attempt to loop the end of the bunting over the branch. "Very sure. And just Paul, children. I have told you." "If you say so, Mr Paul,” said the one of the ones with wings, the orangey one, and said quite deliberately, too. "Just Paul. Bloody kids have been round the house often enough to know my bloody name by now I swear to God. Least it’s not ‘Mr Cozy’ anymore. Just trying to rile me. Cozy's putting them up to it, I know she is..." "Dad doesn't want help, just leave him to it," said the smallest of the watching ponies, the one with the curly hair, the one who'd been smirking silently the whole time. "Do not call me that, Cozy," Paul said without turning around, preparing himself as he was for another bunting-toss. Cozy stuck her tongue out at him. "And do not stick your tongue out," Paul said. "But- how!" Cozy sputtered. Paul tossed the bunting and this time nailed it. Nailed it so perfectly in fact that Cozy could have sworn he'd wasted all his time up until this point just so he could do it and make her look bad. He then turned, grinning, and tapped his nose. "I know you, child." She gaped at him in annoyance for a moment before snapping her mouth shut. “Urgh, thinks he’s funny. Come on.” They wandered off and left him to his bunting and his hypocrisy of being annoyed at them failing to remember his name while he’d spent years merrily forgetting all of theirs. They moved to navigate the edge of the park the party was being set up in, for a party was being set up. It was one of Canterlot’s many, many (many) parks - place was riddled with the damn things, always just tucked around a corner in any space there was available. Big fan of green public areas the city planners, apparently - and it had been the spot that Paul had chosen for the event for reasons that he’d not revealed and likely weren’t that compelling. Cozy doubted he’d asked anyone if he could have a party here, but she also doubted anyone would have been able to talk him out of it either. And it was too late now regardless. He was dug in like a party tick. The bunting was only the latest part of it, balloons had already been pinned up. He was going all-out, by his standards. She and the others had pitched in to help with the balloons, as Paul lacked the lung capacity to do them himself. He’d tried because of course he’d never actually admit to not being able to do it, and Cozy had been content to let him try at first, but it had stopped being funny about a quarter of the way into the first balloon and she’d found she simply couldn’t let it continue. Despite his protests she had taken over, and her and the others had done the rest. There hadn’t been a lot he could have done about it. He’d been too out of breath. "This is better than your last birthday party,” Scootaloo said, and she wasn’t wrong but she didn’t know the half of it, either. “You should have seen the first one,” Cozy said dolefully, the mere memory unfortunate. “What did you do?” “Nothing! I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. It was just me and dad, and he doesn’t - he didn’t really get birthdays.” “How do you not get birthdays?” “I don’t know, he didn’t have them where he came from or something,” Not true, incidentally. It had just been a long, long time since they’d come up for Paul and he’d rather forgotten the procedure. He had got better after the first one, thankfully, and now had more-or-less got the proper hang of things. In his own way. Took him a few years. "He did buy the cake this time, right? And not make it himself? I just want to be sure,” Sweetie Belle said, deathly serious, her face grave. As someone with some level of experience when it came to rendering the edible inedible she had discovered in Paul a level of culinary failure she could only ever have aspired to. Briefly, the four of them remembered the cake he’d made. All four of them shuddered. Even now, years later, the flavour lingered somehow. “Yes, he did,” Cozy said. A collective sigh of relief was released. In all honesty Cozy was kind of floored by dad’s efforts. For a grumpy bastard with a (repeatedly, loudly, yearly) professed disdain for birthdays it really looked like he’d tried to make a proper go of hers this time. Then again, he always had, in his own way. Even the first year. He’d failed miserably, sure, but he’d obviously tried. He’d just got better at trying, his trying hadn’t ever stopped being a given. This year though really was a step up. Not at home in the dead garden with Paul’s ditch of cigarette butts that he’d refused to do anything with despite ostensibly having given up smoking, more guests (hopefully), more balloons, the introduction of bunting, outside catering meaning that the food was being done by someone other than Paul - all sorts of things. It was the culmination of bitter experience all coming together, brought to fruition by Paul’s determined efforts and the money he saved by being austere and frugal in his personal life. No guards this time, either, which, while not new generally, was still a nice change from the last party. Even when Cozy had first been allowed to go beyond the walls (supervised, as said, under the watchful eye of some trusted individual or other, sometimes Paul, sometimes someone else) there’d always been guards mysteriously close to wherever she happened to be going. They’d started out quite brazen, though later more towards plainclothes guards lurking conspicuously in crowds. A plainclothes guard was quite easy to spot, Cozy had learnt. They all wore the same trenchcoat over their armour and the same hat perched at the same jaunty angle. They were also commonly issued the same newspaper with eyeholes cut out, for peepin’. Made them stick out a bit. It was oddly comforting, in a way, that in a world that seemed always to be changing the ineptitude of the guards remained stubbornly consistent. Something to cling to. She was fairly sure it was the exact same trenchcoat, too, and they had to share it. Some of the stains had looked familiar. Kind of odd to think how that sort of thing might have, not all that long ago, made her angry. Now she saw the funny side of it. She wasn’t wholly sure why this might be, but there it was. Also helped that, at the last party, the guards had actually been alright. Hogged the bouncy castle but then they’d been the ones to bring it (it was their bouncy castle). They were certainly better at cutting loose and enjoying themselves at a child’s birthday party than they were at their actual jobs. Or so dad had said. Repeatedly. “Did you invite Twilight, in the end?” Sweetie Belle asked, bringing Cozy back to the moment. The question had been asked because, as they saw, some guests were starting to arrive. Cozy had been quite liberal with the invitations mainly because she could and so had been, distributing them to just about anyone in Canterlot she was on even vaguely friendly terms with. Paul had inexplicably encouraged her in this as well. The first couple knots of ponies she kind of recognised. They were nice enough. As for Twilight? There’d been some discussion among her and her friends in their meetings and correspondence prior to the party about whether Cozy should or not. Her friends had been all for it, Cozy had been more hesitant. In the end she’d gone with it and extended an invitation. "I did. I don't expect her to actually come, she's probably got better things to - oh, no, wait, there she is. And she brought all her friends too,” Cozy said, pointing. The other girls, with their history and familial connections, were elated and dashed over at once. Cozy was more reserved and did not dash anywhere, instead lingering, undecided. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Twilight, it was that the thought and sight of her reminded Cozy very strongly of that time she’d betrayed Twilight’s trust as part of a greater scheme to seize control and perhaps, inadvertently maybe, bring about semi-apocalyptic consequences, and being reminded of this made her guts twist. Was that guilt? It probably was. She wasn’t a fan. And having Twilight right there made it more difficult to shove into the back of her head where she normally kept it. The rest of them, Twilight’s friends, she could take or leave. Her contact had been limited and her opinions had been equally limited, mostly to how best to get them to do what she might have needed them to do, had she needed them to do anything. Though subsequently realising that this was the extent of her feelings about them had left her feeling… ...not great. So she did her best not to think about it. Paul chose this moment to wander over for some reason or other but quickly forgot that reason when he followed where Cozy was looking and spotted Twilight. “Oh God. It’s the small one. With other ones. Are they also princesses?” He asked, wincing. Cozy looked up at him sideways in mild despair. He knew at least one of them, he’d met Rainbow Dash before! Twice, at least! Cozy would worry about his memory but she knew it was less a case of forgetting things and more a case of not having paid attention to them in the first place. And also forgetting them anyway. “No, they’re not,” she said, deciding not to go any further into it. Paul nodded. “Hmph. That’s something, at least. Oh God, the pink one is coming this way.” Indeed she was. At a hop, no less, complete with springing sound. Best not to think too much about that. Both Paul and Cozy stayed rooted to the spot - escape was impossible. “Hello Cozy! Happy birthday!” Pinkie said. “Hello Pinkie. Thank you,” Cozy said. “Hello Paul!” Pinkie said, bouncing up to be at face-level when she said it. “...hello pink horse.” “I like your bunting!” “Hmph.” “Are those balloons?” Pinkie asked, pointing to a nearby bunch of balloons. Paul very slowly turned to look at them before very slowly turning back around to Pinkie again. She was waiting expectantly for an answer. Paul licked his lips. “...no,” he said. Pinkie looked genuinely taken aback. “Oh. What are they then?” She asked. Paul stared at her for a moment and then just walked off without saying anything, muttering to himself and shaking his head. “What are they?!” She called after him, now desperately curious. “They’re balloons. It’s uh, a language thing, don’t worry about it,” Cozy said quickly before buzzing off after Paul. “Oh. I thought they were balloons! Still got it, hah!” Pinkie said to herself, happy that particular mystery had been resolved and that her ability to identify balloons was still intact and hopping back into the mix of things. Cozy caught up with Paul in seconds. “That was pretty rude, dad,” she said, hovering along beside him. Paul could not have given less of a shit. So much so he didn’t even tell her not to call him dad, that’s how much of a not shit he gave. “Yeah yeah yeah, I’m sure she’s devastated. Oh God there’s so many horses here. Why did you have to be such a popular child?” Paul asked as he witnessed another gaggle of guests arriving, happily joining those already present. The rather modest park he’d picked was already started to get a bit crowded. “It’s not my fault I’m adorable,” Cozy said, giving a bobbing mid-air pirouette, a perfect landing with forehooves raised, a bounce of the curls and one of the wider, brighter smiles she could muster. Paul was unmoved. “Hah.” She landed standing and stuck her tongue out again and he barked out a laugh, grunting as he bent to pat her on the head and a pinch of the cheek. “Maybe just a little bit adorable,” he said. “Eurgh, it doesn’t work if you say it,” she said, fighting him off. The red on her cheeks was from the pinching. Both of them, somehow, despite him only having pinched one. “Exactly why I said it. Now off you go, do whatever it is you’re meant to do at these things. Have fun or whatever. I’m going to go and have a sit down, my leg is hurting,” he said, gripping the leg in question (his remaining leg) and wincing briefly. A ripple of concern passed over Cozy like a breeze worrying the surface of a modest puddle or small pond. “Are you okay?” She asked. Should she bring the chair to him? He waved her aside. “Fine, fine, fine. Just been upright too long. Prod me if you need anything,” he said, and with that wobbled off. Cozy watched him, concern continuing to ripple, albeit less so. “Alright…” As she sometimes did (but tried not to make too much of a habit of) Cozy did what Paul had said. Once she’d seen that he had found a place to settle down she hovered off to go and get some nibbles, and while acquiring nibbles (and squash, in tiny paper cups) she bumped into Twilight who was doing the same. Was this a coincidence? Had it been planned? Did it matter? Practically speaking, not really. “Oh! Hello Cozy,” Twilight said, genuinely not having noticed bumping into the birthday girl for a good second or two. She seemed in buoyant spirits. Cozy was less buoyant. “Princess,” she said, doing a teeny bow. “This is your party, Cozy! You don’t need to do that,” Twilight said. Not an especially big fan of the formality, especially not at someone’s party! Cozy had mostly been doing it just to stall for time and try to think of a topic of conversation to avoid an uncomfortable silence. Hanging around dad too much kind of made bowing uncomfortable, at least in theory, as a concept. If he had been capable of bowing he wouldn’t do it, and he would tell you at length as to why he wouldn’t. Cozy had been subjected to this, and despite her precautions some of it might have been absorbed. But he wasn’t watching. So it was fine. Rising from the bow and still not really having anything she felt she could talk about Cozy went with a great standby option: “Glad you could make it.” Twilight beamed. “Happy to be invited! Didn’t expect it. You know, sometimes I think you go out of your way to avoid me, Cozy!” She said in exuberant, jocular fashion, meaning this as a harmless joke, a light waft of humour. Hit a bit too close to home though. As previously mentioned, Cozy did indeed not really feel all that happy whenever Twilight was around, for reasons already elucidated upon. She didn’t go out of way to avoid Twilight, as the joke had said, but, on those uncommon occasions where their schedules lined up to put them in roughly the same place at roughly the same time, Cozy always seemed to slip away before actually bumping into Twilight. It was the gut twisting. The unavoidable attraction of dark thoughts relating to how this pony had trusted her and how she’d used that trust, used it, like it was just another component in a scheme, like a screwdriver, like a tool. Like it had no worth of value beyond what she could have used it to achieve. All that stuff. Cozy didn’t like it. And looking at Twilight just brought her mind to the simmer with it all. Grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and shoved her face into what it was she’d done, more so than anyone else somehow. Cozy tried to smile, but it was weak. She wasn’t as good at cracking them out on cue as she used to be. Out of practise. Not so much call anymore. “Ahah, hah, hah...yeah…” Twilight’s beam dimmed. “Have you...been avoiding me?” She asked, balanced on the knife edge between concern and being wounded. That she was so balanced was not secret, it was plain. Cozy winced. “No, no. Well, not on purpose. I…” This was pretty much the exact reason why she’d been reluctant to invite Twilight, this exact conversation. This had been the worst-case scenario and it was happening, right next to the cups of squash and beneath the bunting. What a nightmare. Oh well. Started now. Started so she’ll finish. “I feel bad about what I did to you and every time I see you I think about what I did to you and it makes me feel bad and so I’ve been avoiding thinking about it and trying to avoid you so I can avoid thinking about it,” she said, not pausing for breath once and ending the sentence panting. Twilight blinked. “Oh,” she said. Cozy continued, still not having fully finished: “And I know I shouldn’t be avoiding that sort of thing - or you, you’ve done nothing wrong and I kind of like you, actually - but that’s what I’ve been doing, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, but mostly sort of intentionally because it makes me feel bad and, uh, yeah. Something like that,” she said, shrugging helplessly and examining a patch of scrubbed grass by Twilight’s left forehoof. This forehoof then raised and placed itself (presumably at Twilight’s command, though who’s to say?) on Cozy’s shoulder, forcing her attention up again and getting her to actually look Twilight in the face. She was no-longer balanced on anything. She was now smiling comfortingly. “It’s okay. You don’t need to be sorry for the Tartarus thing anymore. I’ve forgiven you,” she said. Cozy grimaced. Eurgh. Details. Where one came a flood followed. “Wasn’t just that though, was it…” Her guilt was broader. It spread wide, like a shit blanket, smothering her whole world at times. At times no aspect of her life seemed free from it, all parts lying beneath the blanket, tainted. At times. This was one of those times. Twilight’s expression got more serious, a real talk expression. “Cozy, don’t - look, I’m not going to lie and say what you tried to do was fine because it wasn’t and we can’t pretend it was, but it failed. It failed and we can’t ignore it but we can’t let it be the only thing in your whole life or such a big thing in ours we have to stop everything every time we think about it. It’d only be bad now if you hadn’t learnt from it and hadn’t moved on. I’d say you’d learnt from it and I’d say you’d certainly moved on! Look at where you are now! Look at you!” Cozy didn’t wholly buy this line and felt it could perhaps have been delivered better, but could at least see where Twilight was coming from and had to be forgiving as it had plainly been given off the cuff. She managed most of a smile. “I guess,” she said. “We’ve all forgiven you, you just need to do it yourself now. It’s just a part of life now, just a part of you and not all of you. And it’s the past. You might be remembered for it, sure, but I know it won’t be the only thing you’re remembered for. Whole life ahead of you, Cozy! We’re all heading forward now. Together! Friendship, see? It’s magic!” Twilight’s grin was broad. Cozy bit back a wince. “Had to work that in there, huh?” She asked. Twilight’s blush was sudden and deep. “Well…” Hokey and goofy as it might have been, it had also been sincerely meant. Somehow though this only served to make it hokier and goofier still, which led to giggles. Who was to say who broke first? Twilight’s seemed the quicker to bubble up but Cozy’s proper giggles always had to work their way up through her via a winding route (possibly due to years of forced giggling, possibly not), so maybe they both really started at the same time? It hardly mattered, really. They both giggled. That was what mattered. They shared a good giggle over some goofy lines and some cups of squash. Neither could have hoped for a better way to both puncture the tension of the moment or end the conversation so comfortably. It really took the edge off. Cozy was able to relax a bit around Twilight after having vented her spleen and the world not having come crashing down, and Twilight was able to see Cozy relax a bit. They both felt the winner. “I’ll leave you to it,” Twilight said once the giggles had petered out. “But if you ever want to come talk to me about anything - anything! - don’t think twice, okay? You’re still you, Cozy, but you’re not who you were. You’ve grown.” More bromide, but well meant. Cozy squirmed at it all. “Bit taller I guess…” she muttered. Ignoring this, Twilight gave Cozy a friendly pat on the shoulder before, as she said she would, leaving her to it, wandering off to her own friends and leaving Cozy with the squash. Cozy had two cups to steady her nerves. Well that had been emotionally draining, if ultimately somewhat positive. And at her birthday party, too! Over thankfully. Could only get better from here, she was sure. An outbreak of bowing caught Cozy’s attention and she turned, eyes widening slightly when she saw, towering over the genuflecting crowd, Celestia. Cozy’s guts sank. A lot of her feelings were centered in her guts, she realised. They reacted strongly. Here, they reacted with the dread of another exhausting conversation incoming. One talk with one princess had been quite enough for one birthday as far as Cozy was concerned, but this did not stop Celestia from immediately homing in on Cozy the instant she made eye-contact She came over so suddenly and was just so tall that Cozy all at once had the overwhelming, terrifying sense that she must have done something wrong and found herself rooted to the spot, looking over to dad for help but finding him, unhelpfully, pretending to be asleep in his seat. Or actually asleep. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes. “Happy birthday, Cozy Glow,” Celestia said once within greeting range. That snapped Cozy out of it. “Thank you, Princess,” she said, giving another small bow. It was as said the done thing and felt more appropriate here than with Twilight somehow, even if dad would have scowled at her for doing it. She checked midway through that he was still pretending to be asleep and was silently glad to see that he was. “Oh, no need for that, Cozy! This is your party!” Celestia said. Bit late, but still. Celestia then produced a present from wherever it had been lurking and hovered it across to Cozy, who took it, surprised. Well-wrapped, the present had a kind of heft that suggested ‘book’ to Cozy who was therefore not wholly shocked when, on unwrapping, she found book. A cookery book, no less. That one did surprise her. “A...cookbook?” She asked, staring at the cover, at a loss. Celestia was still smiling though with the clear edge of one who is worried their gesture might not be landing the way it had been intended to land. “Well, I don’t know if it’s still true but I remember you saying that Paul’s efforts at dinner - while valiant - left something to be desired and so I felt that this might benefit you in an indirect sort of a way,” she said. Cozy looked at the cookbook again. “Oh. Right. I get it. Dad’s, uh, he’s still not great at cooking so you might be onto something there.” Cozy hadn’t starved to death yet, which was something, but dinner was still luck of the draw most nights. More hits than misses these days, true, but those misses… Blech. “I’m rather out of practise with buying presents, I’m afraid,” Celestia said, more quietly. “No, no, it’s good. Thank you.” A pause. This was not the first conversation that Cozy and Celestia had had since that time in that podunk town hall those few years back. They’d met a few more times since, during what Celestia would have been loathe to have labelled ‘check ins’ but which had been exactly that - quaint little meetings with tea and biscuits to gauge Cozy’s development, progress, attitude towards reform and also maybe just possibly keeping an eye out for signs of recidivism. Cozy had detested them at first, finding them by turns insulting, demeaning, condescending and intrusive but eventually coming to realise that Celestia had had to do something and at least this way it was on fairly neutral terms. Wasn’t like having someone hanging over her every day, scrutinizing everything she did. Cozy did enough of that to herself. Because if there was one thing that getting stuck with Paul had done it was give Cozy ample time, distance and context to fully appreciate the breadth of what it was she’d done and, in hindsight, she didn’t think her plan was as flawless as she once had. So, really, the occasional slightly awkward session with a princess was probably the least worst thing that could have happened. And, like everything else, they’d tailed off by now, Celestia (and, presumably, Luna and Twilight as well, though this was assumed more than known, given she only rarely saw the latter and never saw the former) apparently feeling sufficiently convinced that Cozy had improved beyond needing the checkups. Which was curiously uplifting to realise, Cozy felt. External validation isn’t necessary, but it can be quite nice sometimes. Paul continued to detest the meetings even now they’d stopped, obviously, and complained about them from time to time despite them not having happened for a good while, but this did not surprise Cozy. His dislike of authority wasn’t especially nuanced or complex. It was instead a constant, like the tides. “You didn’t need to come to this, Princess…” Cozy mumbled as the pause drew on and on. She was forever the one breaking silences, she felt. Everyone else just lacked the capacity to seize the initiative, it seemed. “Oh, well, no, I didn’t have to but I did want to! Once I heard it was happening, of course,” Celestia said, back to a full-warmth grade smile. “How did you hear about it?” Cozy asked. Really, she imagined not a lot went on - especially in Canterlot - without Celestia being at least vaguely aware, but the idea that she kept an alert eye on all the birthday parties seemed to be pushing it a bit. “Twilight told me,” Celestia said, pointing to Twilight who noticed being pointed at and waved, so Celestia waved back. That explained that. Celestia’s attention then returned to Cozy, who had the sudden impression she was being appraised from top to bottom. “To think that, only a few years ago, this,” Celestia said, gesturing to the party in a general sense. “Would have been completely unimaginable. When I see how much you’ve changed, and I think about what we nearly did…” That brought things to a screeching halt. What were you meant to say to something like that? Really, it wasn’t something Cozy liked to think about too much. She’d gone through a period when she’d kind of wanted to yell about it - at anyone who happened to be in yelling range, she hadn’t been fussy - but that had passed pretty quickly. She’d had enough quiet time on her own and with Paul to realise that dwelling on it wasn’t going to help anyone, and keeping herself facing forward was probably the best thing she could do. Honestly, Cozy was more surprised that Paul hadn’t yelled at Celestia more about it, given his performance back in that hall that one time. When he’d seen her in that cage and tried to fight every guard present. It had kind of set the bar for her. Suggested it was something he felt strongly about. So really, Cozy had expected the ranting to continue in their meetup sessions, but it hadn’t, he’d just been as laconic as he usually was with anyone who wasn’t Cozy. She kind of got the impression that he would just prefer to forget the princess existed and not waste time talking to her, even when she was right there. Which might explain why he was asleep... “Yeah, well. You didn’t. So, uh, thanks for that too. I guess,” Cozy said at length, stiffly. Cozy wasn’t entirely sure why she was thanking someone for not throwing her into a hole, but it was probably the polite thing to do and, well, everyone has a complicated time of life and no-one likes being shouted at and what good would that do anyway? Celestia seemed to appreciate the gesture, if nothing else, smiling. “How is Paul?” She asked, by way of switching onto a lighter subject. Cozy turned to look at him again. The only signs of life was that one arm that had previously been sitting in his lap was now dangling limply by his side, and he was snoring. “Asleep,” she said, turning back to Celestia. Who was now grinning just a little. “So I see. Do you still enjoy living with him?” “ ‘Enjoy’ is a strong word…” Celestia smiled. The day seemed to get just a touch warmer. “He cares about you a great deal. In his own way.” Cozy knew this already of course, but having it brought up by someone else felt oddly intrusive. Anyone outside of her and dad contemplating the nature of their relationship (and dad didn’t contemplate anything as far as she knew, so anyone outside of her, really) seemed wrong. Like no-one else should notice, or should be allowed to notice. But Celestia had Cozy in a box here. Couldn’t deny it, and couldn’t change the subject without drawing more attention to it. Bracketed, stuck. Forced into a reply. Cozy shifted uncomfortably. “...I know,” she said. To Cozy’s immense relief Celestia did not press this point and seemed happy enough with this answer. “I did ask if Luna wanted to come to your party as well. She declined, but I did ask,” she said, by way of moving on and keeping things flowing. It was so out of nowhere it did a pretty good job at this. “Oh,” said Cozy, utterly at a loss for how this was in any way a good idea on Celestia’s part. Celestia seemed to pick up on this and smiled. “You may find this difficult to believe, Cozy, but Luna has been taking a close interest in your wellbeing these last few years.” “Really?” She asked, genuinely surprised and wondering how worried she should be about that. “Close interest?” She repeated, sounding the words out and finding they really could come across quite a few different ways. Cozy was thinking the way they were meant here was in the ‘Looking for backsliding and an excuse to chuck out Paul and go with plan Tartarus again’ way. Again, Celestia seemed to pick up on this. It really was uncanny. A thousand years of practise will really sharpen you up, it looked like. “I will admit at first she was, ah, sceptical about the idea, but believe me when I say she was as genuinely happy as all of us to hear how you’ve been thriving in your, ah, unique environment. Doubly so since the removal of some of the...initial measures...” Those last two words made Celestia frown, as though they sat awkwardly on her tongue. Cozy was still having some trouble wrapping her heard around the idea of Princess ‘Put Cozy In The Hole At Once’ Luna having such an about-face. You’d have thought if that was the case she might have shown up sometime to say so, maybe say sorry? Apparently not. Maybe she was shy. “That’s a change,” Cozy said. “Yes, well, we all make mistakes, even princesses, and sometimes we realise that,” she said, adding quietly: “Sometimes more vividly than others.” There was a story there, but Cozy doubted there’d be time to get into it. “She says happy birthday,” Celestia then said, which derailed Cozy’s thinking anyway. “Huh. I say thanks?” Cozy said. Celestia nodded. “I’ll relay that to her.” There wasn’t a whole lot more of note following this. They had some idle, winding-down small talk on the subject of cake and bunting and then reached a mutual, friendly end to the conversation and both of them drifted away and back into the party. Cozy took the book over to a table to set it down so she wouldn’t have to lug it around with her. Scootaloo, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle just-so happened to be sat at this table. They were equally baffled by the choice of a cookbook as a present, though they did have to admit that - having experienced it themselves - any efforts to improve Paul’s cooking were to be seized with both hooves. How Celestia expected him to actually read the thing was an open question. The party continued.
#2Author's Note Yeah, this probably makes sense. 2 == Eventually, the party stopped continuing. Paul only found out about this when Cozy woke him up, leaping into his lap without warning and causing him to jolt upright with a snort. “Hnh? What? Time for cake?” He asked, blinking blearily and sitting up straight, looking around. Time was, waking him up like that would have had him wake with a violent start and a wild-eyed moment when it looked like he expected someone to attack him and that he’d cold-cock them if they tried, Cozy knew, rather glad that he’d lost that habit. Showed that the possibility of mellowing out did actually exist. “No dad, you slept through that bit,” she said as Paul tried to rub some clarity into his eyes. “I keep saying stop call- wait, I slept through it? Ah bugger. Why didn’t you wake me up, Cozy?” He asked, closing and opening one eye and then other, peering down at her still sat in his lap. Cozy gave a teeny tiny shrug. “Thought you’d prefer to sleep. Mean, you’re not exactly a party pony - er, person - are you?” She asked. Paul frowned. Hard to argue with, but not impossible. “Well, no, but it was your birthday party! I should have been awake. Sorry, Cozy,” he said, genuinely annoyed with himself. He’d gone to some effort to try and make the day special for her, least he could do was stay awake! Cozy didn’t actually mind. “It’s okay. I saved you some cake,” she said, producing a paper plate on which was sat a slice of cake. Paul looked at it a moment. “I feel worse, now!” He then said, groaning and putting his face in his hands. When he looked up he looked more curious, and took in the now-deserted, debris-stripped section of park, all party products taken down and packed up in the bag he’d brought them in in the first place. All rubbish cleared, too. Like they’d never even been there. Nice of someone, he thought. Whoever they were. “Where’s everyone?” He asked. “Everyone’s gone home. Except for Swe- except for The Three,” Cozy said, catching herself. If she’d used their actual names then Paul wouldn’t have known who she was talking about. “They’re still in town. I’m going to go around to where they’re staying tomorrow, we’re going to do, well, stuff.” He did not need to know the specifics. Being a crusty fossil from another world he likely wouldn’t have understood them anyway even if they were fairly straight-forward things like “Hang out” and “Talk”. Wild concepts. Paul raised his eyebrows. “Hark at Cozy! Inviting herself to places without even telling me! She’ll be moving out next!” He said. She rolled her eyes but then put on a super-bright, cheery expression. “Sorry dad I’ll cancel. Is this when you break out the surprise present of a bell I wear around the house so you can keep track of when I use the bathroom?” Cozy asked with as much mock-sweetness as she could muster (which, being her, was a frankly dizzying amount). Paul had been all set to tell her off again for trying the dad trick and had been entirely unprepared for her crack about the bell. So instead of reprimanding her he just burst out laughing. It hadn’t been that good a line, Cozy felt, and she had been fully expecting him to throw one back at her and so this came as something of a surprise. He was so lost in it and so quickly that she herself quickly got the giggles, and giggles then graduated to full-blown laughter of her own. It was quite nice, all things considered. A nice moment. Less pleasantly the laughing did tail off into a rather nasty sounding hacking cough towards the end and while Cozy didn’t particularly enjoy that part Paul didn’t seem any the worse for wear because of it. “Oh you. Fun kid, you. You will at least tell me where it is before you go?” He asked, hammering a fist against his chest, eyes watering. “Yes, obviously,” Cozy said, this having been the plan all along. Paul nodded. “Good, good. I am still supposed to be keeping an eye on you,” he said, then adding tentatively:“Um, the party was okay, wasn’t it? You did have a good time?” This Paul asked with his usual brusqueness, the kind that always sat balanced on the knife-edge between straightforwardly businesslike and aggressively grumpy. But this time it wasn’t entirely earnest. This time it was forced. Most wouldn’t have been able to tell, but most were not Cozy, who had the benefit (such as it was) of living with him. Cozy could detect, through the deft application of her own excellent people-stroke-pony reading abilities coupled with her deepened understanding of how Paul functioned, an actual sliver of vulnerability. He genuinely cared what she thought about his efforts, and what she said would have a genuine impact on him, whether he’d actually admit it or not. Realising this and seeing this made her a bit uncomfortable. With anyone else she would have loved it, or at least would used to have loved it. With him it just felt unseemly, unfair. Weird. “It was great,” she said, smiling in a fashion calculated to be reassuring. The look of relief on Paul’s face was almost a tangible force, like a stiff breeze. “Ah, good, I’m glad. I worry about fuc- about messing these things up.” “Well it was definitely better than the first one,” she said. “Keeling over and dying would have been better than the first one,” Paul said, sourly. “You’re the one who said it…” Their mutual memories of that awful, underwhelming first birthday party held them in rapture for a moment before, unprompted and for reasons that weren’t wholly clear to her, Cozy shoved the plate of cake into Paul’s hand and then wrapped around his chest in a hug. Being on his lap made this pretty easy to do. Paul, surprised, got over it quickly and hugged her back, though being careful at the same time not to drop the cake. It was good cake! Or so the baker had assured him it would be. Even having grown a bit as she had and even with Paul never having been the beefiest of men even in his prime (and he was most certainly not in his prime), Cozy still got swallowed up in his arms. Not that she minded. She quite liked it there. Which was strange. Initially, giving Paul hugs had been something that Cozy had done quite deliberately and in quite over-the-top fashion, specifically because she’d known it annoyed him. They hadn’t meant a whole lot, but had been quite funny to administer. An audience had also been quite an important part, before. Them being over-the-top and in full view of others made Paul’s uncomfortableness with them the funnier, she’d thought. Somehow - and without her really noticing how or when - that had changed. He’d stopped being so obviously annoyed by them, and though he still grumbled he had become less reluctant in the hugging back. And while there had at first been no problem with others being around when Cozy inflicted these hugs - an awkward, amusing hug forced on a grumpy old man was funnier with an audience - now having people around to watch just felt… ... intrusive, somehow. That word again, but it fit, that’s how it felt. Like they were stepping on a moment that wasn’t theirs. Odd. Very odd. At length, the hug broke. “Alright, well, enough sitting around. Upsy-daisy,” Paul said as he heaved himself upright with a groan, Cozy hopping off his lap to better allow him to do this. Paul had dispensed with the stick these days, replacing it instead with that articulated, clockwork-driven metal frame he’d made for himself and which was secured around his one remaining leg and strapped about his waist and back. Cozy didn’t understand it, but it seemed to help him. Didn’t stop him limping, but she doubted there was anything that could, short of getting a few decades of his life back and going back in time to stop a few bad things from happening. Standing, Paul swayed in place briefly before promptly devouring the chunk of cake and then stomping over to the packed-up party products and hefting up the bag. He then turned back to look down at Cozy and pat his shoulder. “Come on birthday girl, hop up,” he said around the cake before swallowing. Cozy hesitated. Jumping onto his lap while they were just on their own was one thing, that was just an easy way of getting on his level when they talked. Flying up onto his shoulder to ride there - somewhere other ponies would see her - was something else. Hadn’t used to be, but was now. “I was too old for this three birthdays ago…” she mumbled. Really, she’d always been too old for this sort of thing, not that it had been something available to her prior to Paul showing up. At first the novelty of sitting on his shoulder as he pottered about had been quite intoxicating, but comparatively recently she’d become suddenly and curiously self-conscious about it and so had stopped doing it. Paul, who had complained about it when she’d done it, had found its absence saddening for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Even if she was starting to get a little too big for it, so what? “Indulge an old man?” He asked with an exaggerated lip-wobble. He’d stolen that trick from her and he wasn’t very good at it. Still quite effective though. “Urgh, fine.” And up Cozy went, reasoning that if she did then at least he’d stop with the lip. “Can’t resist the old man line! You’d feel guilty,” Paul said, chuffed, limping off with Cozy now settled on his shoulder. Not as easily as she used to, but still fairly easily. “You’re really overestimating your age. And my capacity for guilt,” Cozy said. “Heh, methinks she doth protest too much.” He had her dead to rights on that one, not that she’d admit it. The old man line had got her thinking though. Not about him being old - though that did worry her sometimes, even if she knew he would brush it off if she mentioned it - but rather how old he was. In the sense of, how old exactly was Paul? How many years? And when was his birthday? “When’s your birthday anyway?” She asked, apparently out of nowhere, surprising him. “Mine? Why’d you ask?” “Just wondering.” He scratched his chin and wobbled mid-step alarmingly for a moment, though the frame took the strain well enough that he kept going without particular issue, though Cozy had had to tighten her grip on his shoulder. “Hmph. Guess that figures. Can’t really say though. Calendars don’t line up and I lost track yonks ago. Doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “I’d say it matters. Or should matter. You could have a party,” Cozy said. They both had another laugh at that one. “Heh, cute. We could invite all my friends! Though I’d have to make some first. Or dig some up…” He trailed off, eyes glazing for a second, but then shook his head and carried on: “Nah, don’t worry about it. I am an age and getting older, and that’s all that matters.” “Hmm,” said Cozy. “‘Hmm’ she says,” Paul parroted. Cozy ignored this, so Paul went with something else: “Any idea what you want for dinner, birthday girl? Could try making that, uh, flatbread thing again.” “You mean pizza?” Cozy asked. Apparently they didn’t have it where he was from, or didn’t call it that if they did. Odd place, where Paul was from, if what he said was anything to go by. “Yeah, that’s the one,” he said. Cozy considered this. She had nothing against pizza in theory, but the memory of the last time he’d tried gave her pause. On the plus side she’d heard some very interesting new swear words, on the down side she had come out of it sans pizza and dinner had ended up being soup. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “Hmph,” he said. The rest of the walk home - or the limp home, rather - was undertaken in silence, the better to enjoy what remained of the day. A handful of ponies waved to Cozy who - feeling very prominent and exposed on her dad’s shoulder - waved back a little sheepishly. No-one waved at Paul, and he liked it that way. It wasn’t the longest walk from the park back to the house, but it felt longer than it might otherwise have done given their arrangement. Still, Cozy didn’t mind overmuch, beyond those few times anyone saw where she was. The rest of the time it wasn’t so bad. It was nice, in its way. And then they were home, back outside the walls. The anti-flying-away net might have been long-since removed but the walls remained, at Paul’s insistence. He had come to quite like the walls because they did a great job of keeping the world outside and away. Cozy pointed out - often and loudly - that they also ruined the view and were oppressive and entirely unnecessary but Paul was consistently unmoved by these arguments and adamant that she’d never wear him down on this issue. This she had taken as a challenge, and this was ongoing. Cozy waited for him to stoop his way through the gap where the gate through the wall used to have been. They’d offered to enlarge the gap to his actual height when Paul’s desire to retain the wall had been made apparent, but Paul hadn’t felt like talking to anyone that day and so it hadn’t happened, and he hadn’t felt like bringing it up again since. But he did still like to grumble about it. Once through, she then waited some more for him to limp his way across the garden and through the back door and into the kitchen directly, the route that Paul favoured for reasons that never made sense to Cozy. And there, sitting on the table, was a scroll on which was shining the royal seal. Cozy blinked. “What’s that?” She asked, fluttering down from his shoulder and landing by his feet. “Hmm? Oh, it’s another one of those bloody letters. Just chuck it,” Paul growled, looking over, his face wrinkling in distaste on seeing what it was she was talking about. How those things kept getting in he had no idea, especially after having nailed the letterbox shut. Cozy moved to the table and reared back the better to get a look, balancing with her hooves on the edge. Paul’s table remained human-sized by his own design, and Cozy’s increase in height only went so far. “Can I read it?” She asked, already reaching for the scroll. “Hmph,” Paul grunted, shrugging, moving off, unconcerned. Cozy didn’t need telling twice. Grabbing it she ripped off the seal with her teeth, unrolled it and started reading. A letter, it turned out, not from the palace as a vague, faceless entity but rather an actual bonafide letter from the hoof of Celestia herself. It was very polite, the letter, even as it fully acknowledged that Paul had not responded to any of the others and was unlikely to respond to this one either. Cozy scanned through it, eyes zipping over a lot of introductory bromide about how his toys were being enjoyed by all the children blah blah how much Cozy had seemed to thrive in his charge (Cozy, being the one reading, glossed over that particular part in self-conscious embarrassment, the day apparently being one for that sort of thing) yada yada and it then continued and got onto- “She’s offering you a job?” Cozy asked, baffled, looking up from the scroll. Quite a cushy job from the sound of things. “Oh, is that what they say? Makes sense,” Paul said, entirely unmoved, more interested in the teapot he was manhandling than the contents of the letter. “You didn’t read any of these?” Cozy asked, brandishing it. The letter didn’t specify how many had come before but from the sound of things it had been a few more than one. Paul shook his head and dropped in more teabags than most would have liked. “No, tossed them as soon as I got them - I see a crown on something I know it’s no good. But she ‘bumped into me’ while I was out and about one time and tried to offer me much the same. Like she goes out shopping, her and her bloody entourage…” As he moved to do things with the kettle, Cozy continued reading. “It’s like a Royal Commission or something. The Princess is offering - wow, this is where the budget’s going - offering a whole minor wing of the palace to work in, any equipment you’d need, materials…” It was a lot. An alarming amount. Depending on how much a ‘minor wing’ constituted. The palace was famously lousy with wings. Couldn’t throw a bread roll in the place without hitting half a dozen of the things. No wonder they had at least one spare going. Paul, frowning, kettle in hand, stumped over to read over her shoulder. He had about as much difficulty reading Mareain as he had in speaking it, so this didn’t help him a whole lot. “That so?” He asked. “That’s what it says here,” she said, pointing. Paul squinted at the line she was pointing at. This told him nothing that she hadn’t already said. “Whatever you’d need to teach others how to do what you do. Oh, Princess Twilight too would be there too, apparently? Sometimes? Guess she wants to help?” Cozy knew for a fact that Princess Twilight had at least one of Paul’s toys, and wouldn’t put it past her to own more. Seemed like the sort of thing that, if offered, she’d definitely want to at least check up on and get into the guts of. Paul frowned, scratching his head. “Twilight? That’s the…” “The small one,” Cozy said, again despairing of his utter inability to remember the name of any pony beyond her own. Hell, she was glad he remembered hers at all. “Right, right…” he said, absently. “Teaching, huh? In a palace? And with a princess. That’s a lot of effort all for me and my silly little toys. Well, good for them but it’s not happening.” He then returned to handling the kettle, filling it and setting to boil. Generally Paul preferred to watch his kettle boil, mostly out of spite. Cozy continued reading the letter, reading the letter and thinking (and also sitting down at the table). It was light on the details of what, exactly, they wanted Paul to do but the general gist that emerged from between the lines was that he would be continuing what he did now only not at home anymore, while also occasionally imparting the hows and whys and whats of the process onto any ponies who were willing to learn, hence why the palace was being offered as a location - something of a public service, kind of. And there were quite a lot who were willing to learn, apparently. Willing and eager, no less. Probably the sort who expressed this willingness and eagerness in letters to the princess, in hopes she might do something about it. The something she’d done about it having been, in the event, letters. And when that hadn’t worked, more letters. So far, despite well-known and widespread efforts, none had been able to replicate the things that Paul made. They’d copied them, sure, copying them had been easy, but the copies were not what he made and fell short in several key areas that continued to have the locals stumped. Paul’s quaint creations simply didn’t work the way anyone in Equestria understood. Some had come very close, but none ever managed it completely. Just missing something. Clockwork they got, that part wasn’t that confusing. Magic they also got, and magic to make things move was also not exactly unheard of. [But whatever magic that got them to do what they did the quite specific way they did it was another matter. It came from somewhere else and worked according to imported rules understood by only one man.] A man who abjectly refused to explain them, to the quiet frustration of all. They had ideas! Neat ideas! Things they thought they could make to spice up or improve life! Who and what couldn’t benefit from tireless mechanical servants? Think of the potential! But there was a hurdle, an obstacle, a locked door with a key held by someone determined to go to the grave holding it. Makes it all sound very serious, but that was how it was. People wanted to know. Cozy knew that her dad could do what he liked, he was an adult, even if she did find most of his decisions and the reasons behind them kind of stupid. Still, that wasn’t really what she was latching onto here. What she was latching onto here was what looked to be an opportunity to make his life a little less crushingly repetitive. This had been a mounting concern of hers lately. She left the house, he did not. Or, when he did, it was on sufferance and only ever done as quickly as possible, only ever to get food or some other sundry and come straight back. She also had friends, people she could vent to or talk with if she wanted to. The only living soul that Paul ever spoke to beyond clipped, grunting single-sentences was herself, and while Cozy knew this was still an improvement on how he’d lived for years prior to barging into his life she was starting to worry that maybe it was doing him more harm than good. Getting out - and having a reason to go out, something to force him to interact with the world - might not be the worst thing to happen to him. He might not like it, but it would be good for him, and so getting him to do it would in itself be good. And doing good things because they were good (and not just because you’re getting something tangible out of it), Cozy had learnt in the last couple of years, was good. Hadn’t quite worked out the mechanics of it yet, but it did consistently seem to be the case, much to her bewilderment. The answer was in reach, she felt, but only barely. She’d get it soon, she was sure, and it would all make sense. Soon. “I think you should do it,” she said, knowing before she’d even opened her mouth that it was unlikely to go down well. She was right. Paul, who had been pouring boiling water, nearly spilled some on himself and cursed as he slopped some onto the side instead, grabbing a nearby teatowel to quickly mop it up, looking over to Cozy in alarm. “What? No!” “It’d just be what you do now only somewhere else, with a bit of teaching on top. Why not?” She asked, reasonably enough. Paul mopped aggressively for a second or so, getting his thoughts in order, before tossing the now-sodden teatowel into the sink and limping over to snatch up the letter, the better to brandish it around. “For one thing I don’t work for anyone other than me - no-one tells me what to do, not anymore. For another I’m damn sure not teaching anyone else anything, least of all how to do what I do. The only one I’ve even considered teaching that to is you, and that’s only because you’re my d- because I can keep an eye on you.” He bit his tongue. Paul hated - hated! - even the suggestion of the idea that he might be starting to think of Cozy as his daughter, as that was not the nature of their relationship at all as far as he was concerned. It didn’t matter how long he’d been looking after her, he was just her caretaker, that was all. Nothing else, nothing more. If she wanted to keep calling him ‘dad’ in a fruitless attempt to manipulate him that was her lookout, he wasn’t falling for it! Even if she had kept it up for a good long while now! Also, she was a horse. He might sometimes have forgotten this but it remained indisputable, and he was certain that this was an insurmountable obstacle. For her part, Cozy found his continued, stubborn refusal to ever refer to her as anything other than ‘Cozy’ or ‘the child’ as either kind of funny or kind of sad. Right then though she just ignored it and focussed on the subject at hand (at hoof?). “But why not though? I thought you liked working. And this’d pay better. And you’d get to leave the house. And so what about teaching? Why is that bad? It’d probably be good for, you know, everypony! To know how to do what you do. They could do their own things! Not that toys aren’t good but maybe there’s more useful things?” She said, delicately. Paul looked at her flatly, his face set. This was a subject they’d briefly discussed before, and he knew that she knew his feelings on it. It had been back when she’d been trying to learn, before she’d decided to stop trying. It was why they’d only discussed it briefly and not touched on it since then - he’d been quite emphatic. “No. Because they’ll want me to make weapons and teach them how to make weapons. They always want to make weapons. Things that hurt people, or at the very least something to do their dirty work for them, whatever that’d look like around here. And I’m done with that. I’m not doing it,” he said. Cozy’s composure was beginning to fray a little in the face of his having decided that he’d figured it all out already, despite not having even read the damn letter. Or any of the damn letters before this one! “You don’t know that. And it’s not even true! That’s not true at all! They just want to know how to do what you do. It could be for anything! It could just be more toys! Or, uh, they want to see if they can use it to make farming equipment, I don’t know. Or anything! You don’t know!” She protested, getting increasingly annoyed the more she went on. Paul was unruffled. “I do know. This is the big one’s idea and I’ve been told what to do by enough pricks in crowns to know that they always want the same thing and that’s something they can use to stay on top and put more distance between them and everyone below. And if they say different they’ve just convinced themselves otherwise, that’s it. I’m not giving them the opportunity. They’re all the same.” “The Princesses aren’t that bad...” Cozy said, aware that this was another thing that Paul would not want to hear. She was right again, too, it wasn’t. He goggled at her and pointed in sheer, astonished disbelief. “You! You of all people! After what they did to you! After what they were going to do! You- ah, my but you’ve grown haven’t you?” He said, shaking his head but smiling. Small smile, but a smile all the same. He wasn’t sure whether to be proud or not of that, given the circumstances. Seemed a better bet to be proud, he reckoned, even if it did mean a softening stance on those who had titles, crowns and power, something he disapproved of on principle. Showed development, even if it was away from him - especially if it was away from him. Her own person. Showed that she was better than he was. Of course, he’d always known that she was better than he was by leaps and bounds, but it was nice to see it in action. Proved him right. He was stuck, she was moving on, growing. She’d surpass him, she was surpassing him. He might not have agreed, but that wasn’t the point. Hard for Paul to really wrap his head around it, ultimately, so he didn’t bother to think about it too hard. Just smiled and shook his head some more. Cozy was just kind of confused by what he’d said, and was looking down at herself. Second time in one day? Was she missing something? “Well, yeah. I have grown. That’s how it works,” she said, looking up again at Paul only to find him giving her the oddest look. She could not for the life of her work out what he was thinking. Didn’t last long though. He seemed to realise he was doing it just when she saw that he was, and so he stopped, snapping out of it and plunging right back into the swing of things: “I’m still not doing it.” “Oh come on, dad! How many years have you been here now? Have you ever seen them do anything like what you said they used to do where you’re from?” “No. Doesn’t matter. Still not doing it.” “Even if it helped ponies? People? Uh, just helped in general?” Cozy asked. She knew for a fact - having heard about it when he’d been trying to impart his particular skills onto her - that he was fully aware and rather liked the idea of having handy, magically-powered clockwork companions and contraptions available for mundane tasks and general problem-solving and that, when he’d been younger, he’d felt that it was definitely worth the time. Life could be better, he’d thought, and he could help with the making it better! Now though, not so much. That had been ground out of him by bastards. Hence the value he put in the advice that Cozy not let that happen to her. He’d had it happen to him. He wasn’t a fan. “It won’t. That’s not what it would be for. I know. It’d be some shiny toy for their poxy army, I know. And even if that’s not what I made for them that’s what they’d try and use it for. It’ll start out as the best of intentions and end up the way it always does, because that’s what happens. No, not doing it. That’s final, Cozy.” “But-” “Final. Done.” She gritted her teeth, considered pointing out that where he was wasn’t where he’d come from, considered pointing out all the things that he’d made that weren’t weapons like that thing that pulled the wagon and which lived in the shed and the toys and that walking frame and his damn leg but no, she could see it wouldn’t get her anywhere. There was a line in Paul’s head, she knew. On the one side him, knowing how to do things and on the other everyone else, who could not be trusted. Cozy was in there too, but she sat in a separate category he’d built off to one side that was distinct. Not that she was aware of this. And not that it mattered. It was done, like he’d said. “Fine,” she said. “Good,” he said, balling up the letter and tossing it into the bin in the corner. Cozy couldn’t muster the energy to be annoyed by that. His letter, after all. Paul resumed making tea. She watched him as he faffed with mugs and bags and spoons, watched him as he fished the teatowel out of the sink, wrung it out and hung it up. Watched him as he shuffled painfully the short distance from the side to the table - he always seemed to have more trouble with the shorter, between distances, she noticed - and watched him sit down. “She invited you to tea again as well. You personally, not with me this time, just the two of you,” Cozy said, eventually, breaking the silence, having read far enough into the letter to catch that detail. “Eurgh,” Paul groaned. The idea was about as appealing as dragging himself across broken glass to stick his head in a bucket of piss, even if the tea in the meetings before had been consistently quite nice. Paul didn’t like to admit that - and wouldn’t out loud - but it had been quite nice, the tea. Quality stuff. Damn royals and their taste for the finer things in life. And speaking of tea… “You want a cup?” Paul asked, belatedly, making to rise again. “I don’t like tea,” Cozy said. Again, he should have remembered this by now. “Oh, yes.” He said. Paul blew on his tea. His tea steamed. “Really doesn’t make sense you don’t want to teach anyone. It’d be useful. You like useful,” Cozy said. Paul was not surprised that him trying to put a stop to the conversation hadn’t held. He hung his head for a moment in exasperated exhaustion before replying. “There’s shades of useful, Cozy. The wrong people will get it if I put it out there for anyone and it’ll do more harm than good. If I hold onto it it can die along with me and the world will be all the better for it. Me dying shouldn’t be too long now anyway.” “Don’t say that,” Cozy said with enough actual venom and force that Paul couldn’t come up with a comeback and actually found himself quite cowed. It was quite unlike anything he’d heard from her. He just gawped, dumbstruck, as she blew out her nostrils and took a breath. “Don’t say that,” she repeated, more calmly this time. “Alright, Cozy, whatever you say,” he said, subdued. Where had that come from? The silence following this was a bit more awkward than their usual silence. This time neither of them had any idea what to put into it. Normally they both had an idea and were simply waiting for the other to crack first. This time, they were both at a loss. This time, Paul actually felt a need to fill the silence. It was the look on her face that did it, mostly. Couldn’t describe it but he didn’t like it, not one bit. Gave him a twitch. Had to shift the topic, get her fired up on something. Hopefully see a bit of a smile again. Or failing that, annoyance. Either would be better than that look, whatever that look was. “So, uh,” he started, clearing his throat, hands on his mug. “You’re, uh, meeting your friends, you say?” To Paul’s immense relief this seemed to perk her up a little. “Yeah. Sweetie- one of The Three’s sisters has a place in town she let them stay in, I was going to stay there too for a day or two or whatever. You know. Do kid things, have fun, those things you keep telling me to do.” Paul blinked. He’d had in his head that she’d just be going over for the day, as she sometimes did, as they sometimes did when they came to visit her. He hadn’t even considered that she might be staying anywhere other than their - than his - home. “Days plural?” He asked, moving for a casual sip of tea and singing his lips. “We’re not going to leave the city or anything, we’re not going away. We’re just hanging out. I can be fine out of your sight, you know. And I’m allowed now,” Cozy said, witheringly, though not unkindly. Paul sometimes forgot that she was indeed actually allowed out on her own now and opened his mouth and raised a finger and took a breath to correct her before he remembered. “True. And I know, it’s fine. You’re a smart child I just - um.” “You just what? Don’t trust me?” She asked, perhaps a touch more sharply than she might have meant to, just in the heat of the moment. Paul bit back on a wince. It had stung just the tiniest bit, hearing her say that and hearing her say it like that. How many years had it been now? “Hey, don’t say that. Of course I trust you. I mean, you lie to me a lot I’m pretty sure but I can tell - and that ‘dad’ stuff still isn’t getting you anywhere, I hope you know - but I definitely trust you can look after yourself. I just worry, that’s all. Am I allowed to do that?” He asked. “Yes, dad,” “Eurgh, child…” He grumbled, sipping again more carefully this time. “So am I allowed?” Cozy asked and Paul raised an eyebrow. “Do I have to give you permission?” He asked. “I don’t know. Do you want to?” “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” An impasse. “You probably should,” Cozy said after thinking on it for a second. She couldn’t be entirely sure why but it just felt like it was something that Paul should do. “I probably should, shouldn’t I?” Paul said. He also felt that it was something he should do, even though he couldn’t fathom why. Another impasse. “...so?” “You have my permission? Eurgh, I didn’t like the feel of that at all,” Paul said, grimacing. “You’re in authority, you’re going to have to accept that at some point,” Cozy said, picking her words carefully. Paul was, as she had predicted and hoped for, stony-faced at the mere suggestion of him being in authority. “No.” Cozy rolled her eyes. “And I’m the child…” She said under her breath. “Cheeky bloody girl. That’s gratitude for you. Let her go cavort with her bad influence friends and all I get is lip.” “Bad influence! They’re a bad influence? You-” This, as with the party, continued for some time.
#3Author's Note If everyone in a story only ever made good decisions then most stories wouldn't happen. Though there is probably a limit somewhere. 3 == Rarity, cunning and savvy businesspony that she was, had wisely acquired a little pied à terre (sabot à terre?) in Canterlot, feeling that it was the sort of place that paid to have somewhere always available to stay if you just-so needed to be there. Smart lady. Canny lady. Sweetie Belle had managed to wheedle the usage of it out of her sister for their trip up for Cozy’s party and for a few days beyond, on the condition that it be left in exactly the condition in which it had been found. If, the next time Rarity should so happen to come up and stay, she discovered that it was not left in exactly the condition in which it was found, well... She had been very clear on the severe, gruesome consequences. She was generous, yes, but she was not without limits, and she herself had been a teenage girl once and so had some idea of what they were capable of. (Most of the really gruesome gruesomeness had just been for colour, really.) The girls had made a mess, obviously, but they’d made it in the way that most teenagers would, convinced that cleaning it up wouldn’t be that big of a deal and wouldn’t take very long anyway so why even worry about it. They had very much made themselves at home. Presently, as evening was making its slow and steady progress into night, the girls were settled or sprawled across the outrageously luxuriant sofa, engaged in the consumption of snacks and the viewing of films. The quality of these films was subjective. Sweetie Belle had been very clear that the film now finishing, which she’d picked, was a very good one. One of the best of recent years she’d go so far as to say. Scootaloo for one disagreed. “That was terrible,” she said. Sweetie Bell was mortally offended by what was plainly a false and hurtful statement. “You pick the next one, then!” “I will!” Scootaloo declared, slithering off the sofa and moving over to The Pile of films they’d been steadily working their way through. Once there she started digging. A few seconds after she started digging Sweetie slithered off after her to vet Scootaloo’s selections over her shoulder. Bickering followed. That left Applebloom and Cozy sat on the sofa. “Well I liked it,” Applebloom said, looking to Cozy for her take. “Hmm,” said Cozy, clearly not paying attention at all, her eyes fixed on a point some thirty or so feet beyond the wall of the room. Applebloom nudged Cozy, which woke her up to the fact she was being spoken to. “Something’ botherin’ you?” Applebloom asked. “Just thinking,” said Cozy. “‘bout what?” Cozy briefly weighed up her options on what to say here and, after a second or so, decided that honesty was the best policy. If nothing else her hesitation had made it unlikely anything less than honesty would work. But mostly, you know, it was good to be honest. “...dad, I guess.” Did sound pretty lame now she said it out loud, but none of the others thought so. Applebloom immediately shifted about on the sofa the better to look at Cozy face-on and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle paused their heated discussion on the merits of romance versus action to come over and lend moral support and a sympathetic ear. Cozy felt very much put on the spot. Supported and loved, yes, but also put on the spot. “Just kind of worried about him,” she said, shrugging helplessly. “Something wrong with him?” Scootaloo asked. “No. Yes. Maybe. No, I don’t think so.” This was not a clear answer. “...right.” Cozy squirmed some more. A benefit of having been unmoored and unattached had been that she’d never had to worry about explaining these sorts of knotty feelings to anyone, and also hadn’t had anyone to form knotty feelings about in the first place. She wouldn’t go back, obviously, but it was still a struggle sometimes. “I think he’s miserable,” she said, with some effort. “You only work that out now?” Scootaloo muttered to Sweetie, who stifled a giggle. Cozy let it slide. “How’d you figure?” Applebloom asked. “He tells me for one, but it’s that he then just doesn’t do anything about it. He never changes what he does. All he does is eat, sleep and work. That’s it!” Didn’t even smoke anymore to break up the monotony, or at least nowhere near as much as he used to. Just drank tea to punctuate his routine. Gallons of the stuff. He didn’t even seem to like it all that much, just did it out of habit. Like most of what he did - done because he did and had always done it, not because he actually felt much desire to. That was, as they say, the problem. And why did he have all those other teas in the cupboard if he only ever drank the cheap awful stuff? Where had it even come from, she’d never seen him go and get it? And now it just sat there anyway! It made no sense. “I just worry about him. I want him to be happy too, right? But he just makes it so hard! Still sleeping in the bath, still getting up and doing those toys every single day - even weekends!” This was true. When he wasn’t looking after Cozy in some fashion that was basically what he did from waking until evening. The house was full of the damn things. “How do those work, by the way?” Scootaloo asked. She had always been a little curious. “The toys? I don’t know. Well, I do a bit, but not really,” Cozy said, distracted by the question. This wasn’t the point of what she was trying to say. “Clockwork and magic. But not, like, the normal kind of magic. I don’t know. It’s all old stuff, all stuff from where he came from, which he hates,” she said, trying to get back onto the topic, such as it was, but then something in what she’d said tripped her up. Paul didn’t hate the sort of magic he worked with, per se, it was clearly just something he’d become intimately familiar with over his many years and which, as a result, had more than a few uncomfortable memories for him and also often found unstimulating. But it was all he knew and all he knew how to work with, and since all he did was work that was what he was stuck using, over and over again. Maybe that was the problem? Lack of variety? Paul had shown the same level of interest in learning some of the local magical techniques as he had in learning the names of her friends - which is to say, none. But maybe he was missing something that he could use? Something that’d make his toys and things impossible to misuse, maybe? Maybe different magic… Hmm. Wasn’t there that big glowy crystal heart thing up North? Something to do with love? Yeah, that was right. Love magic. Big on that, up North. Had that other princess and that was her whole deal. Cozy had quite let this slip her mind and it chose this moment, for whatever reason, to come wafting back in. It wasn’t something she’d really thought much about before - having given it a brief glossing over before dismissing it as broadly useless, at least to her at the time - but it had to be fairly benign stuff, if not actively benevolent, right? It had to be inherently (or as close to inherently as could be conceived) good magic, right? Or at least close enough to make no odds? She wasn’t an expert but it had to be worth a shot. It was love! How could anything suffused with love ever backfire or be used for something nefarious or brutal? Right? Right? Even he couldn’t argue against that! How could he? He didn’t know anything about it! But he would! Once she brought it to him and showed it to him and explained it to him! And it’d give him something to do. And maybe get him out the house. And also show him that she could at least try to give back to him as much as he constantly felt he needed to give to her. Yes! “I’ve got it!” She said out loud, sitting bolt upright. “That’s great! Got what?” Applebloom asked. “Love magic!” “...love magic?” “Yes! I just quickly go up North, catch the train, grab something about it - some book or something, or a brief lesson or whatever, enough that I can give him something useful - come back, wrap it up or figure out how to make it a present for him, hand it over, pow. Me giving back to him!” “Um…” “He might not be able to teach me anything but I can teach him something! And it’ll be practical so he can use it! He likes that sort of thing. Something he can figure out and grumble over. Give him something new to do! Maybe he’ll even have to go and ask someone else about it! Get him out the house! It’s brilliant. It’s perfect! And I’ll be back before he even knows!” The others shared looks. The worried kind. “Uh, are you sure that’s a good idea, Cozy?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Of course! The idea was, fairly obviously, not a good one. This should probably go without saying but it bears making very clear. It might have been so not good, in fact, that it was actually bad. Certainly, it didn’t really have any chance of succeeding for a number of reasons, and this was something Cozy herself would have realised pretty quickly had she just sat down to think it through. Even for a second! There wasn’t much danger of that happening though, unfortunately. This was because Cozy had gone so long without planning anything, without there being some scheme or other, without there being steps to follow for some payoff, that her mind had immediately latched onto this meagre morsel and was utterly refusing to let go, so happy to at last have something to work with. It was hard to go from the sort of person who meticulously plans - and very nearly executes! - a cunning scheme that managed to either fool, take out, subdue or otherwise negate some of the sharpest, most powerful ponies of the planet to the sort of person who...doesn’t do that. Particularly for one as young as her. Felt like life had taken a downgrade, no matter how much you know that isn’t the case. Even after a good few years now of not scheming, planning or plotting the framework was still in her mind, hungry, and apparently it hadn’t taken much to get it chugging back into life again. Just the proper motivation - a good deed, in this case - and click, all creaking back into motion. This idea was perfect! And she could make it work! Easily. Work of a moment. A mere trifle! And all with the purpose of giving her dad something good, in the hopes of maybe making him happy, or at the least showing what esteem she held him in. If anything it would have been the bad thing not to do the plan! Of course, that was all inside. On the outside, in ponies other than Cozy, doubt was prevalent. “Are you sure this is gonna work?” Applebloom asked. Why was everyone always trying to poke holes in perfection? “I told you, it’s flawless! Now, I told him I’d be here for two days at least, maybe three, and that’s plenty of time. Two days should be enough, really, so the third day is just a buffer, I’ll be back way before then,” she said, mostly muttering, mostly to herself and mostly while pacing a short circuit across the carpet. Doubts continued to fester in the others. “Have you ever been to the Crystal Empire?” Scootaloo asked. “I’ve read about it,” Cozy said, waving this irritating question aside with the swish of a hoof as she continued to pace a groove in the floor. “That’s not really-” But alas, too late. The die was cast inside her head. The plan had basically already succeeded, all that needed to happen was going through the motions, the tedious business of actually executing the plan despite it being so self-evidently perfect that it really should execute itself. Cozy was already getting herself ready to go. “I’ll be back! Two days! Three, tops! If dad shows up - when dad shows up, I know he’ll probably come here all worried like because I’ve forgotten my hat or whatever - just say I’m in the bathroom or something. If he asks when I’m planning on coming home say soon.” “He’s scary though…” Sweetie Belle said, fidgeting, saying what the others were thinking but hadn’t wished to say out loud. Cozy just rolled her eyes as she checked to see if she had enough to cover the cost of an impromptu train journey. She did. “Oh he’s not, he’s fine. Just tell him the bathroom thing, he’ll grunt and he’ll go away. It’ll be fine! I’ll be back soon anyway. Two days, tops! Watch me!” She said. “This is-” “Thanks guys!” And like that she was out the door. The others moved to watch her go but by the time they got there Cozy had already disappeared from view. This left the three of them standing in the open doorway, feeling as though someone had just laid a turd across their collective heads “This is going to go wrong, isn’t it?” Scootaloo asked. “Yep,” said Applebloom. “Are we going to get in trouble for it?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Probably,” said Applebloom. Scootaloo screwed her eyes shut and rubbed her face. “Urgh…” she groaned. “I think she’s gone weird since living with Mr Paul,” said Sweetie Belle, again voicing a shared opinion. They all nodded. He was indeed a bad influence.
#4Before leaving to go and see her friends, Cozy had (at Paul’s insistence) written down the actual address she would be going to. The rationale for this (and the reason for Paul’s insistence) was that it might be necessary for him to go there for some reason. An emergency of some kind, say. That had been his line. Cozy had been willing to go along with this. It made some measure of sense, and seemed a small price to pay to be allowed to leave - though, of course, she could have left without doing it if she’d really wanted to, she could just tell that the idea of her going somewhere and him not knowing where made dad uncomfortable, and she didn’t like that. Thus. Address on a piece of paper. Sitting on the kitchen table. And Paul. Sat in the kitchen. Doing nothing. There was nothing he could be doing. Normally, on a normal day, he’d have made lunch for him and Cozy but, since she wasn’t around, he hadn’t. And so he’d walked from room to room instead, seeing if there was anything else that needed doing. There wasn’t. And so he’d gone back and had a cup of tea. This he chased with another cup of tea. Both had been thoroughly underwhelming. Perhaps he could work? It was generally what he did to fill those empty hours in his life when Cozy was either taken care of or otherwise not around. He just didn’t feel like it though, and besides if it was coming up on lunchtime it was too late to get started anyway. Too late in the day for work. So that was off the table. He stared into his mug angrily, as though it was somehow to blame for this. What did he normally do when Cozy wasn’t around, as she sometimes happened to be (or not to be)? Worked. But that was because those times she left she usually left earlier. Today she’d been laggardly and so it was now lunchtime and too late for work and all that, leaving him at a loose end. So what had he done before then, back before? Back when this house had been where it had been originally and he’d been living on his own? Back then, if he’d been at a loose end such as this with the long hours of the day looming ahead, what would he have done? Seemed a long time ago now. Paul had to actually think about it. What he got was that, back then, he likely would have smoked a bit and then gone to sleep, waking up early the next morning to start the whole thing over again. And again. Now that he saw it laid out like that it just made him cross, but he didn’t want to dwell on why. Cursing, he hauled himself upright, aggressively washed his mug and stalked off to do something. He would find something in the house to do and if he couldn’t he’d make something to do. To this end he clomped up the stairs, hoping that once he’d done that he would spot something there that could occupy his attention. Given that had already gone up earlier with this exact same plan in mind, he did not. He looked down. “Well. Least I can take the fucking frame off if I’m not going to be leaving the fucking house,” he said to himself. This would be the making something to do. Moving to the bathroom - where he continued to sleep, much to Cozy’s initial bemusement, amusement and latterly to her frustration and concern - he settled himself on the edge of the tub and set about unstrapping himself. “Ow. Ow ow ow. Ow,” he said, gritting his teeth. The frame he’d made was very practical and not wholly uncomfortable (even Paul wasn’t so openly masochistic as to make something for himself that would actively hurt him), but wearing it for an extended period of time was still more unpleasant than not wearing it. Even wearing it the relatively short period of time he’d been wearing it that day hadn’t been all that enjoyable. He wasn’t looking forward to removing his leg later, either. For now though just the frame. Didn’t really need it around the house anyway. There were walls to grab in an emergency, and it ate up time removing it. This was, of course, the main thing. And indeed time was eaten up. Just not all that much time. Still sitting on the tub, now sans frame, Paul sighed. “Well this is shit,” he said, rubbing his face, wondering whether a few days had elapsed yet. Probably not. He got up again - slightly more unsteady than he had been when he’d sat down - and set off in search of a window to close or something. Cozy was always leaving them open upstairs. Or she did sometimes. Had once. Didn’t matter, it’d be something to do. Pottering his way across the landing he passed by Cozy’s room and it’s almost perpetually ajar door, and there he paused, in the perfect position to see the stuff left scattered around inside. For a girl with such a reputation for meticulous planning she didn’t half hit like a bomb when it came to personal organisation. Supposedly - according to Cozy - some parents (which he wasn’t) or parental figures (which he wasn’t either) or caretakers of children (which he grudgingly admitted he now was) made it a point to go in and tidy the rooms of their children (she was not his child) and charges (she was this) when they saw them in such a state. As much as the mess annoyed Paul he found the idea distasteful. The thought of someone coming into his space and fiddling around? Not a fan. Hell, the reality had been bad enough those few times it had happened to him. It wouldn’t feel right to inflict it. If Cozy wanted to store things on the floor or over the back of chairs or hanging out of drawers rather than inside them, well, she could do it in her room if she felt the need. Outside her room was a different story on his watch, but inside it Paul would let her do as she felt best. That said, he could still see the mess, and it rankled himin the way that mess always rankled him. Standing there on the landing he frowned and shook his head. And then his eyes alighted on one piece of mess in particular. A hat, left carelessly atop a pile of things that were not hats. There it sat, forlorn, forgotten and alone. Not on Cozy’s head and in no position to be on her head anytime soon, even if she needed it. This would be the finding something to do. She had left without taking her hat. Clearly this constituted an emergency, albeit a minor one. It would be quickly rectified. He would take it to her. Simple. He did after all have the address. Swiping up the hat he returned downstairs, leaning heavily on the bannister all the way. Though of course, a flaw in having Cozy write the address down was that she had written it down in Mareain, and Paul had some difficulty in parsing what it was she’d written. The flaw on top of this flaw was that when he had finally worked out what it was she’d written, he hadn’t the foggiest fucking idea where it was. Paul had not spent the years since having his house dragged South learning the geography, local or otherwise. He knew how to get to maybe a handful of places, and none of the knowing involved remembering street names. He just knew where to go if he needed this or that. This presented issues now he wanted to get somewhere specific. Oh well. He’d figure something out. Hadn’t got this far in life without being able to make it up as he went along. Casting about for his now rather neglected walking stick and finding it in the last place he looked (as is the nature of looking for things) he struck out to find his d- His charge. His hatless, crafty ward. Cozy. Her. The child. Stick in one hand and hat in the other he hit the streets. He very quickly discovered that he had no idea what these streets were. The signs were, if not gibberish, as close to gibberish for him as to be completely useless. He held the note Cozy had written up against them for comparison but got nothing out of the experience. More time than he’d care to admit was spent in this manner, going up and down streets and around corners and getting quite thoroughly lost before finally gathering up the resolve to swallow his pride and actually ask someone. In the even, the first horse he saw. “You,” he said, pointing and limping over to some hapless citizen of Canterlot who’d frozen in place as having this big, gangling, hair, limping thing coming at you wasn’t the sort of thing you expected to happen when you just popped out for a pint of milk. “You. Where this?” This Paul asked while holding up the piece of paper in front of him. The poor sod was so blindsided by this turn of events that it took them longer than it should have done to realise they were just being asked directions. When they did, their relief was palpable. Directions were simple. It could have been much worse. A quick peer at the paper and a quick wrack of the brains and they said: “Uh, i-it’s just up the street, kind of. Go that way, go left, along there there’ll be a, uh, another street with like a kind of star and moon banner hanging over it? From one side to the other? It’s that one.” Paul took a second to parse and memorise this and then he nodded, pocketing the paper. “Thank you,” he said, nodding as well as speaking thanks. It was proper to be polite to strangers if you spoke to them first. If they spoke to you first fuck them, that’s on them, but if you made the first move you should be polite. “No problem?” The pony said, not sure how to phrase it and delivering it to Paul’s back anyway as he was immediately stumping off, heading the way he’d been directed, fist clutching a hat. The hat was of course a transparent excuse to show up and make sure Cozy was doing alright, but Paul hadn’t realised this consciously. In his head it was entirely reasonable what he was doing. Had anyone else done it, of course, he’d have seen through it in an instant and pointed it out to them, loudly. Since he was the one doing it, however, it was utterly without ulterior motive. Her head might get cold! What else had he been supposed to do? Walking up the street and taking a left Paul immediately spotted the moon-and-stars banner that the random horse had spoken of and made a beeline for it. To his satisfaction he saw that what Cozy had written on the piece of paper matched with the sign he could see naming the street. Now it was just a case of finding the right number! The numbers Paul could recognise, it was just the rest of the address that had been the issue, so now that he was on the right street actually finding the right building wasn’t all that hard. And he did find it and in short order, too, slipping in just as some other pony resident was slipping out and so the door was still open. “Um,” said the pony as he moved in past them. “Here to fix stove,” Paul said, not stopping, not looking back and heading straight up the stairs. “Oh. Um. Alright then,” said the pony, carrying on their way, fighting down the vague feeling they probably shouldn’t have accepted this answer so easily but feeling that it was now too late to do anything about it and also that that thing looked kind of scary whatever it was. Climbing the stairs was harder work than Paul had expected it to be and so his progress slowed a little, but not by a lot. Inside of ten minutes he was standing outside what he determined to be the right place, and after taking a moment to catch his breath he knocked. The door took longer to answer than he might have thought normal, but he put this down to childish shenanigans, and it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be or anything else to do. He fiddled with the hat and waited. At length the door opened, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Applebloom all standing there, looking tense and doing a bad job of hiding it. “Cozy forgot hat, head will get cold when-” Paul started, without preamble. He stopped, looking at the three of them all lined up, doing their best to hide their nervousness. It wasn’t enough. “Where is Cozy?” He asked, eyes narrowing. “She’s, ah - she’s in the bathroom!” Applebloom blurted, quickly remembering the line she’d been fed. Paul’s eyes narrowed further, the merest slits of suspicion now. He’d been good at spotting lies (typically by spotting them everywhere, agreeably, but still) even before living with Cozy, and Applebloom was not good at lying in the first place. “No. She is not. Where is she?” “She is! Honest!” Sweetie Belle interjected, leaping in to assist, achieving nothing. Paul’s suspicions remained. “No. That is line she uses when she is doing something she knows she should not do. I know this. She tell you to say that. Where is she?” He asked. “She- she…” Paul loomed, and then realised he was looming when the girls cowered, and so took an unsteady step backwards. So unsteady, in fact, it became two steps and a sway. “Girls,” he said, taking care to try and soften his voice - not the easiest at the best of times and infinitely harder for him when speaking Mareain. “Am not angry, just worried. I need look after Cozy, yes? If she is off, she might - might - where is Cozy?” The three of them exchanged meaningful looks. They were clearly weighing the option of grassing Cozy up against the option of denying the concerned questions of the scary alien - the scary alien who also happened to be their friend’s pseudo-father and caregiver and so who kind of maybe had a right to know where she was going on her harebrained, half-baked, possibly dangerous excursion. That Paul was stood right there and Cozy was far away (and had had her plan blown wide-open anyway, making trying to keep it secret moot) clinched it for them. “She’s going to the Crystal Empire,” Scootaloo said, her tone defeated, her shoulders sagging. Paul didn’t like this answer. He didn’t understand it, but he understood that he didn’t like it. “...the where?” Another exchanged look. “It’s…” How best to explain it to someone who didn’t even know your name by now? The exchanged look was more helpless this time, as none of them actually had any answers available even if they’d wanted to provide them. Then Sweetie Belle had an idea. “I think there’s a map book in here, I’ll go get it,” she said, dashing off and leaving Paul and the others standing around like sinking puddings. “You children having fun until my ch- the child - until Cozy run off?” Paul asked, mangling the question and biting his tongue. “Oh, uh, yeah,” Scootaloo said, bewildered, while Applebloom nodded. To the great relief of everyone concerned Sweetie Belle returned presently with the book she’d thought the place had possessed and, thankfully, had. A big, glossy, coffee-table type of book full of maps and other things to look pretty while it sat around taking up space. The three girls opened it up between them and flicked hurriedly, arriving at what seemed the best map available, an Equestrian overview of sorts, with only the slightest of nods to artistic license. Had a scale and everything. Fairly useful, very well done. “This horse land?” Paul asked, frowning. He’d managed to avoid all such maps until now. He hadn’t really wanted to know what the place looked like. All navigation prior to this point had been done on a local level when it had been done at all. “Equestria,” Applebloom said, helpfully, and he forgot this immediately as she pointed to the map. “We’re here, see? And the Crystal Empire is up here. Uh, there’s a train that goes, um, from…” She tailed off, as it was clear that Paul wasn’t really listening to her. He was just staring at the map with an utterly unreadable expression. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry, sad, upset - anything, really. He was clearly something, and that something was in all likelihood bad, but the exact flavour of bad was difficult to determine. He stared at the book silently for a moment longer before reaching out and, before they could do anything, ripping out the page with the map on it. The girls gasped. Sweetie winced. That was going to fall on her, she knew it. “I take this. Thank you,” Paul said, after the damage had been done, folding the ripped page and tucking it into his pocket before turning on his heel and leaving without another word. It was so sudden none of the girls really knew what to do, except Sweetie Belle, who was still mourning the damage to the book. “Are we in trouble now?” Scootaloo asked Applebloom, who shrugged. Scootaloo then looked to the rapidly-retreating paul. “Cozy’s not in trouble, is she? We’re not in trouble, are we?” She called after him. But he didn’t stop. Author's Note I cannot possibly see any further poor decisions being made on account of this initial poor decision having been uncovered.
#5When Paul got back home he threw his stick into one corner, Cozy’s hat into another corner, surged upstairs to strap the frame back onto himself and then furiously started packing, approaching the task with more speed and aggression than was perhaps helpful. His mood was not improved by someone knocking at the door perhaps five minutes after he’d started doing this. At first he was content to ignore whoever they were, in the hopes they’d get the hint and go away. When the knocking persisted his foul mood got the better of him and he went to go and see who it was, perhaps so he could then yell at them. “Whoreson bast-” he snarled, stomping to the door with all the weight and force he could muster, flinging it open violently enough that the handle cracked the wood on the inside wall. It was the small princess again, the purple one. She’d flinched on having the door smashed open and was doing her best to reaffix her friendly smile. Paul’s smile was not friendly. It was non-existent. “You. Why here?” He said. “Oh, hello! Well, I was just in Canterlot again, you see, so I thought-” Paul had stopped caring before he’d even asked her the question and had walked off by this point to continue what he’d been doing before, leaving the door open behind him and leaving Twilight standing there stranded. “Can I - can I come in?” She asked, but Paul was already deep enough into the house that he didn’t even have to pretend not to have heard her. With him, a lack of response could have meant anything, really, so in this instance Twilight took it to mean yes and gingerly stepped inside. Once across the threshold (and having been conscientious enough to pull the door to, unsure if Paul might have wanted it open for some reason but unwilling to leave it wide open), she followed the noises. They led her to the kitchen. There she found Paul with a bag open on the table, shoving things into the bag. Most of a loaf of bread wrapped in paper. A water canteen. He slammed open a drawer looking for something but, judging from the stream of muttering that came out of him, not finding it. He stomped around some more, heading in Twilight’s direction. “Small one. Out of way. Busy,” he snapped, shoving past her and carrying on. “Um, don’t mean to interrupt but, ah, Is Cozy Glow around?” She asked, innocently enough. Her popping by had been entirely about maybe catching Cozy for talk anyway, just on the off-chance, just to catch up and all that, friendly-like. “Cozy is gone,” Paul grunted, continuing to look through drawers and continuing to mutter as whatever he was looking for continued to elude him. Had Twilight been able to understand him (and hear him, he was muttering under his breath after all) she would have learnt both some new rude words and also that Paul disliked it when Cozy moved things without telling him. Since she did not understand him though she got none of that. “Gone?” Twilight asked. Odd choice of words, but she put it down to the just-alluded-to language barrier. Maybe she’d stepped out for a second. Paul was glowering and scratching his chin, trying to think of where what he wanted might have ended up. “Went to friends. Then left. Don’t know why. North, they say. Crystal place. I go.” This one took Twilight a moment or two to properly digest. “The Crystal Empire?” “Hmph.” “Why?” She asked. Paul spared her a glare before limping off. He’d remembered a place to look. “Do not know. Children do not know. Or did not say. Did not ask. Does not matter. I go, find, bring back,” he said. “What?!” He ignored her. Couldn’t see a whole lot of point engaging further. He had things to do and not a lot of time to do them in, he had to go up north. He’d probably need a coat. He’d get that in a second, after checking this cupboard over here. “She just left?” “Hmph.” “Why?” “I tell you, I do not know. Friends not know. Does not matter.” “What are you going to do?” “Go. Find Cozy. Come back,” he said. A simple and direct plan. So simple and direct that it apparently couldn’t be accepted by the small one, who just goggled at him. “What? But you don’t - you don’t even know where she’ll be! The Crystal Empire is a big place!” Paul really doubted this. He’d seen the map, it didn’t look that big at all. What’s more it looked to be a single city, which did not really fit what his understanding of how an empire worked. But now wasn’t the time to poke holes. “Don’t care,” he said, rooting about in the cupboard and finally finding what it was he’d actually been looking for - a picture of Cozy he could use when he arrived, to help find her. He looked at the picture. He’d find her. Twilight was continuing to reel at these developments and their consequences. “I think there have been a lot of hasty decisions and we should slow things down, just take a minute to think. If Cozy’s gone to the Crystal Empire - if! - then she probably hasn’t even arrived yet. We can send a message ahead, we can tell Cadence! Then they’ll keep a look out for her. There’s no need-” Paul did not know who or what ‘Cadence’ was but, again, he didn’t care. He didn’t really want to hear anymore, either, as the sound of her voice was grating on his ears. “No. No messages, no help. My child. I find.” “But-!” “No,” he said. He was still looking at the picture. Much as before when Cozy had allowed her lust for a scheme to get the better of her judgement, here Paul was having his own moment of impairment. Where Cozy was blindsided by what appeared to be a canny and cunning scheme she could execute flawlessly just like in the good old days when she was given to scheming, Paul was taken entirely unawares by the thought-terminating terror of Cozy just upping and leaving. Had this been anything else, anything at all, he likely would have been able to think more calmly about it. If it had been some disaster, say, or some encroaching hostile force or the looming threat of physical harm. Those he had experience of and gave some sort of context, he could picture in his head the steps needed to get ahead, around and away from them. Those didn’t really move him all that much, and he could react at leisure. But this was different, and skipped merrily past everything to prod him right in some deep, vulnerable, animal portion of his brain, a portion that reacted instinctually and immediately. Everyone has those little weaknesses and soft spots that make them do the sorts of things that, if they saw someone else doing them, would have them calling that someone else a massive idiot. The problem is we rarely notice them in ourselves except in hindsight which is, rather by definition, too late. So rather than focusing on the flaws in his rapidly-forming plan, Paul was instead focusing solely on the sucking sense of dread he felt in the pit of his stomach and which was sending out icy, grasping feelers to fill every other inch of him. This was Cozy! The child! Gone! Somewhere! All on her own! Smart child, yes, but still just a child! The child he looked after! He’d comforted her when she’d had nightmares, for God’s sake! Or tried to! He’d let her get into the bathtub with him so she could get back to sleep easier, much against his better judgement! He’d painted her room with her! Twice, when she’d changed her mind on the colour! He’d tried to teach her the fami- the business! Told her about home! He hadn’t told anyone about home in years! Just her! And if something happened to her while she was out there… He faltered, brain fizzing, gut hitching at the thought. If something happened to her... ...well he’d probably get in trouble, that was it. If she did something dumb or if she got hurt he’d be the one catching it in the neck. That was why he had to go get her. Enlightened self-interest, story of his life. Just like everything else. Exactly like everything else. That, and he was really the only one he trusted to do it properly anyway. Had to be him, and had to be right this second. No time to waste. The longer spent dawdling the further away she’d get, the more trouble she could get into and the higher the chance of someone else sticking their oar in and fucking it up. Had to go now, right now. The small one was still burbling on about something but Paul had given up even trying to block it out and was now just letting it wash around him like the sound of the ocean surf. He was thinking about the journey ahead. Having looked at the map - and having listened to Cozy’s friends, albeit briefly - he’d seen and knew that this crystal place was North, and getting there commonly required a train journey. He was not going to go by train. For one, he wasn’t sitting around waiting for one to arrive, he didn’t have that sort of time to waste. For another, he bet he could go faster anyway, or if not faster, smarter. Could cut the corners a train could not. He had machines for that. The wagon-pulling machine would do fine in a pinch, it had the power, he knew it was up to the task. That part was fine. He could make that work. His mind wandered despite his attempts to keep it on the task at hand. It kept sliding on over into speculation about the why of why Cozy had apparently decided to just run away all of a sudden. Was she unhappy? Was she unhappy and had he just not noticed? Had it been obvious? If he’d been paying closer attention could he have done something about it? Could this have been avoided? Or was it something that he’d done that had made her run? Was this his fault in the first place? And if so, what was it that he’d done? He wracked his brains and thought of a wealth of things he’d done that looked to have annoyed her - which one was it? Or was it none of them? Or all of them together? Or was this what it had all been building up to? Had this been the goal from the very beginning? Her patience paying off, her taking a perfect opportunity to slip away and get started on another grand, meticulously planned (if ultimately rather poorly thought out) plan? Like the last time? Had she been pretending the whole time? That one got him to stop in his tracks. She wouldn’t do that, would she? No, not Cozy, she was better than that now - he’d seen it! Or had she really managed to get around him? Work him down? Fool him? No, no. He was better than that, he knew, and so was she. She was better than that. It wasn’t that. Not anymore, not again. She wouldn’t do that. Not his Cozy. It had to be his fault. Had to be. Something he’d done - or not done - that was it. This was his fault. And that was why - one of the many whys - it was up to him to go and get her back and fix it. “Are you alright, Paul?” Twilight asked, delicately, approaching him cautiously as one might approach something that might collapse on you if you moved too suddenly. He’d just been stood there for nearly a solid minute now, picture in hand. “Fine.” “You don’t look fine.” Damn tiny horses and their damn stupid questions and pointless statements about things he already knew full well. Paul’s patience, already taut, snapped, and he rounded on her. “Look at the brains on you! What you princess of? The blind-ding-lee obvious? No I am not fine! Cozy run off! The child, gone, fucking gone, left! My - the child my responsibility! If she hurt then - if she make mistake I will be blamed! My responsibility, my child, my responsibility. I have to look after Cozy! Keep safe. Look after. Is any of this getting through to you? Now get out of way.” That shut her up. Picture of Cozy clutched in one hand he raised the other and slowly, warningly, pointed at her. “I go. Me. No-one else. I go.” He then stalked back off to the kitchen, shoved the picture in the bag and stalked upstairs to find where he’d put his coat. He was sure he’d put it upstairs somewhere. He had. He came back down wearing it and headed past a still-stunned Twilight, through the kitchen and into the garden, thence across the garden and to the outbuilding. They’d brought that with them when they’d moved his house, too. As well they bloody should. Opening up the outbuilding revealed the dusty, disassembled wagon, a multitude of bits and pieces most of which he’d forgotten the original purpose of, and something underneath a sheet. Paul whipped the sheet aside and the wagon-pulling machine - long having stood idle - stirred. A quiet ticking starting and quickly building up to speed. “You. Machine. We’re going on a little trip.” Grunting and heaving he hauled it out into the open and gave it the once over. Still looked to be in reasonable condition. If there was at least one thing Paul could say about his own work it was that he made it to last. Of course, It hadn’t been designed to accommodate a rider but Paul was going to make it work. Lots of things could be made to do things they weren’t actually meant to do, what was another one? “Stretch your legs,” he said to the machine before going back inside for his bag. He had no idea what he needed to take, really, so had just grabbed what seemed appropriate. The picture was the important thing, that and the map. The water and bread were afterthoughts. He’d make the trip just fine, he was sure. Be back in time for dinner, Cozy tucked under one arm, safe and in one piece. Anything less was unacceptable. “Shut door behind you on way out,” Paul grunted to Twilight as he swiped the bag off the table. This jerked her out of whatever mind hole she’d fallen into and she trotted urgently after him. “Paul, I know you’re worried but this is really something you should maybe consider for a moment,” she said, trying to sound diplomatic, trying to find some way of reaching him before he did something rash. Too late, he was set. No turning back. “You consider,” he said, setting the bag across his shoulder so it hung comfortably and then, rather awkwardly, heaving himself onto the wagon-pulling machine. For a ticking clockwork contraption with no face and questionable sapience it did a pretty good job of conveying a sense of being hard done by. Took the weight though, and stayed balanced even Paul shifted himself about. “Good work, machine. Got a road ahead of us. Take a step,” he said. The machine obligingly took a step. Balance remained alright, not wobbling. This would work. “Alright, get going.” The machine did, starting at a trot. “Paul! Wait!” Twilight said, trotting alongside and increasingly frazzled. “Get in a ditch. You wait. I go.” And go he did, knocking the machine’s speed up a few notches and not waiting for her to reply and not looking back. Had he looked back, he would have seen her hesitating, vacillating, fretting and then, finally, leaping into the air and taking off for the palace as fast she could. But Paul wasn’t looking back, he was heading out and North as fast as he could make the machine go. Author's Note We all have our little emotional blindspots, I suppose, and they probably look real stupid to everyone else.
#6Author's Note I had to look up the Crystal Palace (Crystal Castle? Crystal Edifice?) again because I’d forgotten what it looked like and it looked nothing like how I remembered. But then I also remembered that I didn’t really care and slavish attention to detail is for the birds. I am not a bird. Also: waffle waffle waffle talky talky talky. 6 == Arriving in the Crystal Empire, Cozy immediately wished she’d brought a hat as her head was cold. Oh well. If only she’d suddenly decided to come up during the summer months! Not that it was a problem. Cold was only a problem if you weren’t doing anything, and she had something to do. Fierce purpose would keep her warm in the absence of a hat! It had kept her going through worse before, albeit not for a while. Knowing which way to go was normally an issue somewhere you hadn’t ever been before, but fortunately for Cozy where she wanted to go this time was quite obvious, because it was quite big. She could see it immediately after having exited the station, the thing looming over everything else around it, being gaudy (not that gaudiness made it especially unique). Cozy headed that way. Had this been a trip of leisure rather than business (for a given value of business), she might have taken her time more and gloried in her surroundings a little bit. As free as she was now she didn’t exactly ever go that far afield, mostly yo-yoing between Ponyville and Canterlot for this or that reason and never really seeming to get the opportunity (or experience the desire) to go anywhere else. Could hardly go anywhere with dad - walking down the street was often too uncomfortable an experience for him, so something like this? Somewhere new? Unthinkable. He’d explained it once - or tried to explain it, once - when she had idly floated the idea of a holiday to him some time ago. Something about having been led by the nose across the land for years on end taking the shine off of going to places and meeting new people. Cozy hadn’t really understood it, and not long after that her freedom had increased to the point she could go see her friends unsupervised, and the idea of holidays had faded into the background. Such was life. None of which was really relevant then anyway. This wasn’t a holiday, this was a mission, a task! She wasn’t here to sightsee (as pleasant and novel as the sights she was seeing were), she was here to do something! And that something she had to do she had to do somewhere specific. Luckily, that somewhere just-so happened to be enormous, regal, crystalline, and hard to miss. The palace. And so to that she headed, buzzing low to the ground, face determined. And so it was that she soon arrived at her destination. It was a lot bigger when you were standing in front of it. Or, rather, standing a little way away from it staring up at the sheer, towering height of the bloody thing. Impressive stuff. Also, how the hell were you meant to actually get inside? After some wandering around (and after getting even closer still) she did finally find what looked like an entrance of sorts. There were guards, too, but that sort of thing was to be expected and they weren’t doing an awful lot. Just standing there looking neat and important. Cozy didn’t really pay them all that much attention, noting them much as she had the towers, say, or the door. The door was more important, in fact, and she went up to it. The thing was in proportion to the rest of the building, which is to say it was massive. Going up to the door and knocking had seemed much easier when the door in question hadn’t been towering over her. She wasn’t even sure now that knocking would actually do anything. Her hoof was only little, it wouldn’t produce sufficient resonance! Even launching herself through the air wouldn’t amount to much, she was sure, other than leaving a Cozy-shaped smear across the surface. Luckily, there was a bellpull. This wasn’t quite as intimidating, though she did have to reach up to grab the thing. It was, unsurprisingly, made of crystal, or at least the bit she grabbed was. She gave a heave and landed back on her hooves. Somewhere behind those big doors a bell rang. Nothing happened. Cozy kept on standing, waiting. She glanced at the guards and smiled nervously but they just kept on guarding, staring ahead, being unfriendly and broadly useless. She was all set to try ringing again when the door started opening, so quietly and so without warning that Cozy jumped. It didn’t open that far, just far enough to make you wonder why they didn’t put another, smaller door into the main door so you didn’t have to faff around with such a big door. Out from the crack which opened a pony emerged. Shining Armour. She didn’t know him personally, but she knew of him. From the look he was giving her this unfamiliar-familiarity was mutual. He didn’t look happy. “I know you,” he said. “Oh? I, heh - I don’t remember us meeting…?” Cozy had weighted this to fall equally heavily on either a joke or an honest statement, but it unfortunately landed on neither as he wasn’t in the mood for joking and wasn’t falling for the suggestion that maybe they’d bumped into one another once, as they hadn’t, and they both knew this and the normal polite pretending was out of the question. “I know of you,” he said. “Ah.” Many did. “You locked my sister in Tartarus.” Ah. Again. “Not...personally…” Cozy mumbled, feeling increasingly pinned in place and uncomfortable regretting more and more with every passing second having ever decided to do this incredibly stupid thing and come up here. This was not going to plan, already this was not going to plan. The plan had admittedly been quite fuzzy on the specific details of what was meant to happen at this part, but still. In retrospect that might have been a warning sign. It probably should have been a warning sign. Her planning abilities were rusty as anything, it was shocking. She blamed living with Paul. He’d really taken the edge off of her! She hadn’t needed to scrupulously plan any scheme (evil or otherwise) for years now! No wonder this was happening! “Why are you here?” He asked bluntly. “I was, uh, actually here to...maybe talk to...Princess Cadence…?” “What about?” “...love?” He stared at her, waiting for the other horseshoe to drop. But that really was basically it. “Right,” he said. He didn’t need to say ‘I don’t believe you’ with words, his face was saying it for him. “I know it’d be the sort of thing I’d say if I was lying to you, but that’s really why I’m here. I have a thing planned and needed to talk to her about love, and love magic and...yeah...” Out loud it sounded a bit threadbare. The cracks of doubt spiderwebbed further across Cozy. Shining Armour though relented, sagging a bit. “Alright, come in,” he said, stepping aside and flicking his head. Not one to question providence Cozy quickly nipped inside and soon found herself walking along beside him deeper into the castle, the doors closing behind them with a surprisingly soft and gentle ‘whumph’ for such a massive fucking set of doors. Conversation did not flow like a spring thaw. Once again feeling the need to be the one to fill the silence, Cozy cleared her throat and licked her lips and asked: “Do you usually answer the door personally?” He did not look when he answered. “Depends on who’s outside it.” “Oh,” she said. Special treatment didn’t necessarily imply positive treatment. “So do you check every time or…?” She ventured. “We knew it was you. Your arrival was noted.” “Ah,” she said, then the implication that her arrival was still something people kept an eye on sunk in. “Ah…” Shining Armour picked up on her deflating and moved in to clarify: “You’re not still under observation. Least not as far as I know. One of the guards just happened to recognise you - has a friend in Canterlot, see, knows you and your, ah, caregiver? Whatever he is, the alien - and mentioned it to another guard, who mentioned it to another guard as part of an anecdote, and I overheard.” “That’s very convoluted,” Cozy said, wrinkling her muzzle. Shining Armour shrugged. “That’s being in charge of guards. You listen, you hear things, you hear that Cozy Glow has come up to the Crystal Empire for what is possibly the first time and then you find her ringing the bell. So you go open the door to see why.” “In case she’s up to something?” She asked. “Possibly, though I doubt she is. Mostly I was just curious, and I could and so I did. Benefits of being in charge of guards. Does Cozy Glow tend to refer to herself in the third person?” He asked, looking down sideways at her. “No, this is a new experience for Cozy Glow. She’s finding it quite exotic and fresh,” she said. Shining Armour made a sound that might have been the distant cousin of a chuckle. Better than nothing. Here the chatting petered out, but on slightly more amiable terms and so the void that followed wasn’t as sucking and horrific as it might otherwise have been. Which was nice. Cozy took the opportunity while continuing to follow Shining wherever he was going to take in the decor. Grand would be the nice way of putting it. Overwhelming might be another, slightly less nice way. Tacky would be the unkind way of saying the same sort of thing. If you liked crystal, well, you were in luck. If you didn’t, well, you were out of luck. Basically. Dad would have hated it. He’d complain about the wasted space and the general opulent luxuriousness. He had a known dislike of opulent luxuriousness. For her part, Cozy felt it had its place in life. Where was the fun if you couldn’t splash with a little luxurious opulence or opulent luxury every now and then? And what better place for it than a whacking great castle? Certainly made life less drab. The silence, again, continued, now getting to the point where it started to get uncomfortable again. Cozy groaned inwardly. One day this would stop happening. One day. She felt she needed to address what was probably the elephant in the room, the elephant dragging itself along behind them and ruining the atmosphere. She cleared her throat some more and said: “I’m...sorry about locking your sister in a hole in the ground…” They stopped walking. Or, rather, Shining stopped walking and Cozy went another step and a half before following suit. When she turned she found him rubbing his face with his eyes screwed shut. “I know, I’m sorry. She has told me. She’s certainly decided to forgive you. Being the big brother might be making it just that bit harder for me to let go, even if I know I should. Sorry,” he said. “Shouldn’t really be apologising to me…” Shining Armour shook his head fiercely. “No, I should. I haven’t been the friendliest and that isn’t fair. Everyone I’ve heard talk about you since has only had nice things to say. By all accounts you really turned it around, really left all that behind and really came into your own as someone better,” he said, entirely oblivious to the shade it brought to Cozy’s cheeks. “I did let you in, after all, so that must mean something. But I was still not that nice. So let’s start over. Hello, I’m Shining Armour.” He thrust a hoof out at her. “Cozy Glow,” said Cozy Glow, shaking it. “And very nice it is to meet you, Cozy Glow. Now let’s go and find my wife. Should be just up ahead, if I’m right. If I’m wrong we’ve got more walking to do. This place, I swear...” Having been a fairly regular visitor to the castle in Canterlot, Cozy was used to the mind-bending size and layout that Equestrian castles seemed to all possess, having long-since given up trying to rationalise any of it. She just stuck to following Shining, and before too long got to where she’d wanted to go. “She should be just in here. I’ll go in and see if she’s awake.” “Uh, I’m not interrupting or anything am I? Mean, I can come back?” It’d be a huge ballache, but she’d hate to crash someone’s nap. Shining waved this off. “Don’t worry about it. Back in a second.” And away he went. Cozy stood and fretted. This was already not going exactly how she’d pictured it in her head, and that always made her anxious. Things could go wrong if they didn’t go exactly how she’d planned them. That was how they’d gone wrong that...other time. Try as she might to ward them off, thoughts of her past actions and terrible - though ultimately fortunate - failure bubbled up into her brain, filling the silence that had been left in Shining’s wake. Cozy stood and stewed, trying to think of something, anything else. Even when Shining came back and waved her in the thoughts persisted. It was only really when she entered and saw Princess Cadence that she got a better handle on herself again. She was here for a reason, damnit! There was a plan! Shining reappeared. “Alright, go in,” he said, holding the door. “Just like that?” Cozy asked. The lack of ceremony seemed jarring in such fancy surroundings. “You want me to announce you? I can do that. Did already tell her who it was but I can still give you a proper announcement, if you want,” Shining said. Cozy considered this. “...nah,” she said, post-consideration. “Good, because using my announcing voice really hurts my throat. Go on in.” “Right…” With no idea why she suddenly felt so nervous about all of this, Cozy went on in. It was some sort of sunroom or solarium or whatever. One of those rooms in a castle that existed to exist in and be bright and comfortable and opulent and all that. By those standards it was surprisingly restrained, though - by normal standards - that wasn’t saying much. Movement caught Cozy’s eye. Cadence, Princess Cadence, semi-reclined on a very comfortable looking couch-cum-sofa thing. She saw Cozy, smiled pleasantly, and waved her over. She fairly obviously had not been awake long and, again, Cozy felt bad for having interrupted someone’s nap. Still, too late now, no going back. She went over. “You wanted to speak to me?” Cadence asked once Cozy was within asking-range. No beating about the bush here, Cozy could respect that. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “About what?” How best to phrase this? “...love…?” Nailed it. Cadence blinked. “Well, I would be the pony to talk to about that, I suppose. And you’ve arrived at a perfect time, too, I am quite free,” she said, adding with a giggle: “I’m free!” Cozy did not get this. Cadence barely got it. Something had simply moved her to say it and this something could not have been denied. Strange, these rivers that run through the universe - who is to say from whence they flow? What thawing mountain snows feed them and to what mysterious seas they trickle? And stuff. “Well, uh, yeah,” Cozy said. “So would this be romance advice? Seems a long way to come, if so, but-” “No no, no, no. Nothing like that, no. No,” Cozy said, hurriedly, feeling an odd need to nip that in the bud right quick. “It’s more about, well, uh, it’s kind of a birthday thing, see? A present.” This was not what Cadence had expected, itself inside of a conversation she hadn’t been expecting to have with someone she hadn’t been expecting to see. Nothing about this was expected. She wasn’t sure where she stood, now, or where she was meant to be standing (or reclining, to be more accurate). “You came all the way up here for a birthday present?” She asked, tentatively. So tentatively that the first inkling that maybe this plan might have been cracked from the start crept into Cozy’s head. She shook it away. “Sort of, I guess? It’s important though,” she said. Important to her at least, maybe not important in some objective, cosmic sense. But who cared about that on a day-to-day basis? “This is a lot of effort for a birthday present,” Cadence said, still not really knowing what was going on but at least able to be certain about the effort involved. “Yes, well, it’s important, like I said. It’s kind of a thing for my dad, and, uh, I want to make sure I get it right, you know?” That made a fraction more sense for Cadence, given what (admittedly little) she knew about Cozy and her dad/caretaker/whatever. “Ah, I see, I understand now, yes. A birthday present for your dad, well, that’s certainly a loving matter, I’d say! And, uh, your dad, uh, Poll, wasn’t it?” She ventured, tentatively. “Paul.” Why was it no-one could ever get that right? Mean, he never got anyone else’s name right, sure, but his was hardly that complicated. Wasn’t even that many syllables to get confused about, just the one. Paul. Bam. About as straightforward as he himself was. “Ah yes, Paul, sorry. Still, it does seem an awfully long way to come,” Cadence said. “This is where the love magic is, isn’t it? And I had to get it right. This sort of thing doesn’t come very easily to me.” “Getting birthday presents?” “No. Well, yes. But I mean, you know, gestures. Nice gestures? Doing things for others? I don’t - not sure how to explain this…” Cozy thought to herself. She could just up and ask for what it was she wanted - even though she wasn’t entirely sure how best to phrase even that - but she had a feeling that this would just lead to more questions. Explaining her rationale behind the whole thing might help steer things in the proper direction, given Cadence more of an idea what this was all about. Probably just best to be honest about it upfront, really. Was going to come out eventually, surely. So, taking a breath, Cozy continued: “I used to, I don’t know - I used to look at ponies and things and they all sort of looked the same, really, just stuff you could get to do other stuff. Pieces that fitted together, components, I guess, in a machine I could get to do things for me. But it didn’t work, and it didn’t work because I didn’t actually understand. I don’t know.” She hated - hated! - talking about this. It was agony. She’d done quite enough of it already, she thought, imagined she’d put it behind her, that she wouldn’t need to go over all of it again. Apparently not. The things she did for her dad... “Dad has talked to me a lot about it and while a lot of what he said was, you know, stupid, some of it was right and he kind of had a point overall, somewhere in there. Or even if he doesn’t - and knowing dad he might not - listening to him has at least let me… think differently about what I did, who I was.” “Perspective?” Given the context of its delivery, Cozy was able to interpret this otherwise meaningless sentence fragment and she nodded, only somewhat glumly. “I suppose…” It was certainly one way of putting it. A fitting one. Time and a drastic change in circumstances had put a certain level of distance between her and what she’d done, and between where and who she’d been when she’d done them. Looking back now it was like looking at something someone else had done. Only it wasn’t someone else, it was her. She, as said, hated this. It was like recalling a time in her life when someone had pretended to be her, had worn her skin and done a host of stupid, short-sighted, selfish things in her name and nearly ruined the whole world. Like sitting back and watching a perfect imposter just make one mistake after another with her face, claiming to be her the whole while and with nothing she could do about it. But it hadn’t been someone else, it had been her. There was and had been no-one else, only ever her. Might not be what she’d do now, but it was something she had done. She had done it. And had chosen to do, thinking that she should. No getting away from that. It had not been an imposter, hadn’t been someone pretending. Just her. Only ever her. That’s mistakes for you. Always look nice and big and fat and obvious in hindsight, the kind of thing only an idiot would ever crash into. Never look like mistakes at the time, never when you’re coming up on them. Always either look like good ideas or else things that aren’t that big of a deal in the scheme of things, things that’ll slide, things that no-one’ll even notice if they go wrong and which they’ll surely appreciate if they go right. “Why are you here, Cozy Glow? And I mean, what did you come up here to do specifically?” Cadence asked, gently, coaxing Cozy out of whatever she’d sunk into. Cozy blinked and looked around. “Specifically?” She asked. “Yes. What did you imagine yourself doing once you’d arrived. What were you going to do?” “What, like, step-by-step?” “If you want.” “Well…” And so Cozy explained her plan. Or attempted to. In trying to explain it she very quickly realised it was one of those things where it sat perfectly comprehensibly in her head but wouldn’t bear translating into words that others might comprehend. Which is to say, while she could see the steps clearly, she couldn’t explain them clearly, and in trying to explain them clearly she started to lose her grasp on the plan. It wasn’t great. Started to make her wonder whether she’d ever even had a grasp to start with or whether she’d just imagined that it had held together. It had held together, hadn’t it? “-so I thought, hey, why not love magic, and-” “Love magic?” Cadence interjected, this part of Cozy’s stream of consciousness being something that she felt she at least knew a little about. Cozy, brought up short, blinked, and looked at Cadence askance. “That is kind of your deal, isn’t it?” She asked. “Well, yes, but it’s not really something you can just pick up and go away with,” Cadence said. Cozy blinked again. She felt that perhaps Cadence and her were coming at this from different angles, thinking about the same thing but upside-down and back-to-front. “Thought maybe you’d have a book on it or something? That I could… borrow… ?” Cozy suggested, though the further she got into her suggestion the less sure about its viability she became. The look on Cadence’s face undermined her confidence. “Oh, maybe, but they wouldn't really be a whole lot of use for anypony. Theoretically, maybe. Twilight probably has more books on it than I do anyway, you could have gone to her for books. But books wouldn’t get you near the subject in any way that was, ah, useful.” “...no?” Cadence shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought so. I could be wrong, but it’s not anything I would do,” she said. Cozy processed this information. She realised there wasn’t a whole lot she could actually do with it right at that moment. “...oh. Ah. Hmm. Well, a-anyway, the plan was, um, to come up here and-” She continued. The more Cozy spoke, the more obvious it became to her that this had been, from the start, a horrendous idea and a plan doomed to failure. How could she only see it now? How had she not spotted it a mile off, right at the start? Oh, was she out of practise. “-and I’d go back and he’d be none the wiser until I sprung his present on him, and by then it’d be too late for him to be mad at me. Fait accompli, you know? Heh. So, uh, yeah. That was the plan,” Cozy said, by way of somewhat clumpy conclusion. She then coughed and added, a little more quietly: “In hindsight this plan might have benefited from a bit more, uh, planning. Maybe.” “Maybe,” Cadence said. How embarrassing. Cozy sagged, flopping down onto her rear dejectedly. “I just wanted to do something for him. I don’t know why, and I didn’t know what, and so I jumped on the first thing that popped into my head. So this happened. Probably should have just baked a cake...” She mumbled. “Does he like cake?” Cadence asked. He had devoured that slice she’d given him after the part in pretty extravagant fashion, but maybe that was just because she’d given it to him and he didn’t want to make her feel bad? Maybe he’d only been interested in whether she liked the cake? More assumptions. Oops. Best rein that brain in. “...I don’t actually know. And I never asked. Urgh…” In fairness, how could anyone not? Paul was weird, but was he really that weird? “What does he like?” Cadence asked and Cozy looked up from staring at her hooves. “That’s the problem! He doesn’t like anything! Or says he doesn’t. And if I ever asked he’d just tell me not to bother. But I want to bother! I want to do something! Something to make him understand!” She said.The question had touched something of a sore spot for her. Cadence realised this, but didn’t as yet fully understand the nature of the spot. “Understand?” She asked, head tilting ever-so-slightly. “Yes!” “Understand what?” Cozy hadn’t noticed but she’d stood up again. “That I care about him! That I love him! That I’m not lying about either of those! I just want him to know! And to believe me! He doesn’t even have to love me back, I just want him to believe me! He - if it wasn’t for him-“ More had slipped out there than she’d intended and she shut her mouth and sat back down. Awkward silence predictably followed. It was the thread that sewed the patches of life together, or so it sometimes felt to Cozy. “He does love you.” Cozy snorted derisively. “How would you know, you’ve never even met him,” she said acidly. So acidly it dissolved the question mark at the end of the sentence. Cadence took it with grace. This was sensitive ground, after all. Some acid was to be expected. “No, but my aunt has. She says he puts up a front. Oh, he means all of what he says, she tells me, but he goes out of his way to say it the way he says it. But what he never plays up - what he never has to play up - is how much he’s come to love you, Cozy. It comes across in everything he does. Or so she tells me.” “That’s not true…” “Well like you said, I’ve never met him. But I believe my aunt. I also believe he may not be fully aware of it himself yet, or ignoring it. Otherwise I can’t think of why he wouldn’t have told you himself. He should have. For both of you.” Cozy couldn’t muster a response to this. It had been a busy, tiring day and her head was a bit of a mess. Nothing she’d planned had gone according to plan and instead there’d been whacking great, emotionally-exhausting conversations and a lot of going over old ground that she would have preferred not to have gone over. Really, she wanted to go home. Now that she had a home to go to. And immediately and unquestionably thought of it as home. “This whole thing was a stupid mistake,” she mumbled. “That’s a little unkind on yourself, Cozy. It might have been, ah, unlikely to succeed but it was hardly stupid. And what’s wrong with mistakes? A big part of life is mistakes - can’t be perfect every time, can we? Besides, as far as mistakes go this one is hardly the worst, and you made it for good reasons. It was heartfelt. That matters.” “Hmph.” Cozy didn’t even notice she’d made this noise, too busy with brooding on how good intentions were worthless if they didn’t achieve anything useful. Dad would have said as much! The failure was probably what hurt the most, though. She’d come up here to get something (something she couldn’t get, agreeably, but she hadn’t considered that at the time) and would now be going back with nothing. On top of which, her planning abilities had apparently atrophied into complete uselessness, something she had no idea how to feel about but which was certainly vexing. All in all, rubbish. Complete rubbish. “Happy belated birthday, by the way,” Cadence said, bringing Cozy back to the present with a bump. “Uh, thanks,” she said. Hadn’t expected that. How did Cadence even know? All that was left now was to head back before he found out, she supposed. Had she missed the last train? She hoped not, as getting back sooner rather than later would be ideal, because who knew how dad’d react if he found out what she’d done and she wasn’t back to keep a lid on it or explain it? What incredibly stupid thing he might do? How might he overreact? Cozy dreaded to think.
#7Author's Note I'm sure if you looked at a map and traced a line with your finger none of this would make sense, but I'm not really going for inviolate accuracy here. I have the same relationship with accuracy that ancient historians did - it's nice if it's actually the proper amount or the right place, but what really matters is the feel of events. Which is to say, I glanced at the map and shrugged. It probably works. Ish. 7 == Once away from the city and out into the comparatively open countryside Paul was really able to open up and demonstrate (to the benefit of anyone who might have been watching, though no-one was) that, for all his faults, he could at least make a damn-fine wagon-pulling machine. Thing could really motor, even in a way it had never been meant to. And it was just as well the machine was speedy, because there was no stopping to rest on this trip. There was only the occasional bit of slowing when geography forced Paul to stop following the rail tracks (which was mostly what he was doing, figuring it the best way to keep heading in the right direction) and he had to consult the page he’d torn out or some sign or some landmark or something else until he was able to resume his beeline once more. Some of that, but certainly no stopping. There came a point, he saw, where the tracks looped wide to account for the geography but he just cut straight across and around and met up with them again before they hit the mountains, saving precious time and thence carrying onward to the whatever empire place that apparently lay beyond. Things stopped being green and started being barren. Then, some while after that, they started being frosty. Then, snow-blanketed. Paul was annoyed at the rather arbitrary way the landscape changed, as though themed by zone, but that was just how this place worked, he’d come to accept. That, and how small it bloody was, how close everything seemed to be. Not like home at all. Onward he pressed, urging his clockwork mount ever-faster. The snow got thicker and deeper. Paul had little first-hand experience with snow. He’d seen it once or twice, fleetingly, but never like this. He hadn’t known what to expect. His machine didn’t really know either and progress slowed to a crawl. Agitated, Paul opened up its insides and disengaged whatever safeties and regulators he could reach. Progress sped up again. Soon, amidst the snow, he found what seemed to be a worn track leading the way he needed to go. Progress sped up even more, to Paul’s satisfaction, and he pressed his machine even harder. The machine gave up the ghost just about when the crystal city first hove into view over a gentle rise. The strain of the non-stop pace, that it hadn’t been designed to be ridden the way Paul was riding it, the effect of the climate on its internals, having had its insides fiddled with - all of this added up, with the cumulative result being the machine juddering and shaking and struggling to crest what turned out to be the final hill and then suddenly and without warning collapsing just as it was starting to hurtle down the other side. Paul was catapulted through the air, flying a good dozen feet or so before hitting the track ahead and rolling over and over, momentum and gravity carrying him down the slope. For a few seconds he lay sprawled on his back at the bottom in a dip, utterly bewildered about what had just happened, staring at the sky. Then his wits came back and he sat up, wincing, and looked down to check the damage. Just a few scrapes, luckily, the heavier clothing having done a good job of protecting him from the impact. Though the plunging temperatures and biting wind chill from riding so fast made these few scrapes hurt far more than they looked like they should. Biting his tongue, Paul ignored them and stood up, having to give the frame around his good leg a whack to get it back into proper working alignment. It didn’t work exactly, but he at least got it straightened out enough to take his weight and let him hobble. He then cast his eye around for the machine, spotting it twitching and writhing in a furrow it had dug for itself in the frozen ground beside the track. He limped over. “Come on, get up,” he said, nudging the thing with his foot. And it did try to rise, it really did, but it was just too busted, making the most piteous whining, grinding sound as it’s shaky legs lifted it from the ground, but only for a second before it collapsed with a crunch and stopped moving entirely. “Fucking machine…” Paul grumbled, turning away in disgust and making a mental note to come back and get it once he was finished and had Cozy tucked safely and securely under his arm. Broken as it was, didn’t sit right with him to abandon it completely. But first things first. Had to finish getting to the city. Find Cozy. Finding where his bag had landed (and spilled its contents) he dug about in the snow for the one picture of Cozy he had and that he’d brought with him. It was one of her old wanted posters. Out of date, yes, but it was all he had and all he’d thought to grab before leaving. All the more recent pictures of her were in her room and featured her and her friends, usually, and he just hadn’t thought to grab one. They weren’t his, after all. Stupid move in retrospect, not having grabbed them. Stupider move not having taken any pictures of her himself. After this he’d take more pictures, he told himself. She’d already grown up so much, wouldn’t do to miss much more, would it? Poster in hand Paul turned and stumped along the track, towards the distant city. Or empire. Or whatever it was. The place where Cozy was. Wasn’t that far away in the scheme of things. His legs might have hurt but he could live with that. It wasn’t that much worse than normal. And keeping moving kept the cold away. And it wasn’t that far away. He finally arrived just as evening was moving into late evening, and most residents had gone home. Those few that were still in the streets gave Paul a wide berth, having never seen anything like him. He found their wide-eyed stares irritating, but he had other things to worry about than making a poor first impression. “Seen child?” He would ask loudly to any pony that strayed too close, holding the poster up. They ignored him. He growled. He’d start knocking on doors. See them ignore him then! His replacement leg and his frame were not working as smoothly as he might have liked. The clockwork and joints had not been made to function in this sort of cold or after that sort of spill, and his own joints weren’t really up to the task either, come to think of it. He forced his way through the stiffness of the former and the pain of the latter, staggering from door to door, hammering furiously. Those ponies that opened up - and not all of them did - found themselves confronted with a snow-speckled, panting, wild-eyed thing covered in bleeding scrapes and scratches looming over them, holding up a wanted poster of all things (a faded, out of date wanted poster to boot) and glaring like they owed him money. “Have you seen child?” The thing would ask in clumsy Mareain, thrusting the poster towards them. And, appropriately, the ponies would shake their heads fearfully and shut the door very quickly indeed, leaving the thing outside to grumble loudly and swear in a language they didn’t recognise. This repeated for some time. Late evening concluded. It got dark. Street lights came on, as if by magic (because they were magic).The streets became totally deserted and utterly quiet. Fresh snow was starting to fall. Paul did not stop. Were he of a clearer, more coherent frame of mind he might have realised that his approach needed a little tweaking, might have maybe reevaluated. Unfortunately for him he was cold, physically exhausted and mentally shattered. To him, what he was doing made perfect sense. He’d just go to every single door in the city. Process of elimination! Easy. Simple. Eminently possible. Just had to keep doing it. Which was why he kept doing it, just working his way further and further down the street knocking on doors, then down a side street, then just on and on, going to whichever door looked closest to the last one. He was getting slower though, and the burning that was filling just about every inch of his body was getting harder to ignore with every step, and every step was getting harder to take. Was the snow deeper here, or was it just more difficult for him to drag himself through it? Were his fingers slower to form a fist to knock on a door now, or were they always that distant and numb? Had the numbers on these doors been that blurry to start with? Difficult to tell, so mostly he just ignored it. Just had to keep going, had to find Cozy. She was around here somewhere. Had to be. Reaching a corner he limped to one of those magical lampposts and leant against it, wheezing. The cold air was not agreeing with his lungs, every gulp feeling like he was sucking down a handful of needles. Just his imagination though, he knew, nothing serious. Cold air was always like that. He’d been through worse. Taking a few more of these breaths he forced himself to stand under his own power again, set his face and staggered over to the nearest door he hadn’t tried yet, the first on the street. He’d do this whole street, too. Then the next. All of them. He had to. He knocked, waited, and a moment or two later he found himself again facing down with another pack of gormless, bewildered looking shiny ponies. He was too worn down to even really care about the way they were looking at him anymore. He just cared about if they’d seen Cozy or not. With supreme effort he raised the poster again, entirely crumpled in a shaking hand, and said through gritted teeth: “Where...is...daughter…” before keeling over sideways into the snow.
#8Author's Note Tsch, such silly people. But at least it all worked out! Yay! As if I'd write anything depressing. Also, I did briefly consider - at the eleventh hour, no less - writing out another chapter that would have come in before this but then I thought that it wouldn't really contain anything not explained here and wouldn't have demonstrated anything that isn't demonstrated here. Was a close run thing though... 8 == In the Crystal Empire there was a hospital. It was also crystal. In the crystal hospital there was a room. In this room was the only human in the whole world. For something normally so big (at least by comparison to those around him) he looked awfully, terrifyingly small all of a sudden, swallowed by the bed they’d put him in and the covers they’d drawn over him. Two beds, actually, unclear how many blankets. Lots, apparently. In this crystal hospital, in this room, across these two beds and underneath this profusion of blankets, this unique specimen stirred. He’d stirred more than once since they’d found him - a promising sign, given the circumstances in which they’d found him - but so far the stirring hadn’t led to anything significant. This time it did. He stirred, he groaned, he rolled over and he opened his eyes. Normally, his reaction to opening his eyes onto a place he didn’t recognise would have been immediate anger and threat response, possibly breaking whatever was closest to hand. This time though his body ached too much for him to care, and by the time he’d acknowledged this the rest of his brain had been able to figure out that the room he was in was plainly some sort of hospital room. “Not dead yet, huh?” This finally got the attention of the others there with him. “You’re awake,” Twilight said with almost palpable relief. Paul squinted at her, still not quite with it, but then he recognised her and groaned, screwing his eyes shut. “Ugh, small one. Great. Why you? Where is Cozy?” “She-” “Dad!” Cozy came powering in from somewhere out of frame and through the air at full speed, blasting past Twilight and impacting on Paul hard enough to knock the beds back against the wall. Given that Paul was both an old man and an injured old man he reacted predictably to this. “Ow ow, child, ow, ow.” Cozy kept on hugging him regardless, remaining attached to where she’d latched. Twilight moved away a respectful distance, going and standing next to Cadence. Cadence was also present. She just wasn’t making herself especially obvious yet. Paul was so stricken with relief on finding Cozy whole and uninjured and (presumably) not in any trouble that, once he’d recovered from her landing on him, he unabashedly hugged her back. Didn’t even take issue with the dad thing, honestly hadn’t even noticed it enough that time to take issue with it. That she was here was enough. The two remained happily glued to one another for what wasn’t actually that long a time. Eventually, the hug loosened enough that they could actually look at one another, both smiling, Paul genuinely so for one of the very few times in his life, Cozy doing so with slightly watery, reddened eyes. A nice moment, really. Then Cozy’s smile went away and she whacked him in the chest, hard, right in a spot she could tell it would be noticed. Paul went ‘oof’, and after he went ‘oof’ he said: “What was that for?!” Cozy was most certainly not smiling now. “For being here! Nearly dying! What were you thinking?!” Paul wasn’t smiling anymore now either. Getting hoofed in the bruised ribs will have that effect, as will getting yelled at. “I was thinking I had to come and get you! So that’s what I did!” “Just going around showing my poster and yelling at ponies?!” “Yes!” “Why did you do that?!” “I thought you were in trouble! Or doing something that’d get you into trouble! You go running off all on your own without so much as a by-your-leave, getting your friends to give me the ‘She’s in the toilet’ story - what was I supposed to think?” “You weren’t supposed to know! It was a surprise! It was going to be fine!” “What was going to be fine? What were you doing? What were you thinking?!” “Should we step in?” Twilight asked quietly, still standing off to the side of the room, but Cadence (who she was directing this question towards) shook her head. “Let them get it out,” she said, sagely. There was the possibility she was an expert. Cozy fumed. “It was - it doesn’t matter! I had an idea and it turned out to be a bad one. But you weren’t meant to find out anyway! I was supposed to just come here and come back! You’d never know.” “Well I do know! I found out! And what the hell was I meant to do? Sit around? Thumb up my arse? I had to do something! It’s my job to look after you!” “I can look after myself! I’d have been fine! I am fine!” She had a point, she was fine, but Paul was not going to concede this. “You just as easily might not be! And I’m not - I can’t - I’m not going to let anything happen! Not when I can do something about it! Not to my child! My daughter! I don’t-” He cut himself off, feeling that he’d dug himself deep enough as it was, entirely unable to meet Cozy’s eye. He folded his arms and glowered and turned his head away. Cozy just looked stunned. That was honestly, genuinely the first time she had ever heard Paul refer to her as anything other than the child. She’d thought about it, considered how she might have felt when - if - the moment came. And it now had. Here of all places, with him like that, in the middle of a flaming argument. All those thoughts and comfortable conclusions about how she thought she’d feel when it finally slipped out seemed a long way away now, and pretty bloody useless. She sniffed, sniffled, and then buried herself into his chest and burst into tears. Not any particular type of tears, really, more just a general outpouring of the many and numerous emotions swirling about within her that had finally reached boiling point. Paul was somewhat taken aback with the small pony suddenly bawling on top of him and soaking through the thin, poorly-fitting gown they’d got him into, but he got over it pretty quickly and without even having to think about it too hard. What he felt he needed to do just slipped out. “Hey, shh, it’s okay, Cozy, it’s alright,” he said with a softness entirely at odds with how he’d been yelling moments before, putting his arms around her again and hauling her up so she settled better and rested more comfortably. Her crying didn’t stop, but it did become less forceful. “Damn horse. Ridiculous. Horse for a daughter. What the hell has my life become?” He said it, but there was no force behind it. Not much sense in trying to pretend otherwise at this point. It was out now, and he simply couldn’t find it in himself to deny it anymore. That it was ridiculous didn’t make it any less true. “Now?” Twilight asked, again looking to Cadence. “Now’s okay,” Cadence said, nodding. They moved in. Paul didn’t look at them or even move at all, in fact. “What?” He asked. “We’re glad you’re feeling better,” Cadence said. He did move then. His eyes moved, flicking to her and narrowing. “I do not know who you are,” he said. “That’s okay,” Cadence said, smiling and unfazed. This irritated Paul but before he could let it get to him too much Twilight piped up: “When you arrived, why didn’t you ask Cadence for help? Or ask her if she’d seen Cozy Glow?” She asked and Paul’s brow furrowed. “Who?” “Princess Cadence? Princess Mi Amore Cadenza? Her? Right here? Next to me?” Twilight said, which didn’t clarify much and, in fact, made things worse. That she was pointing at Cadence as she spoke should have helped, but Paul ignored her doing it and instead just squinted at Twilight some more. “...who?” Cozy was as ever staggered by her dad’s continued - and at this point, pretty obviously willful and malicious - ignorance of the land in which he lived, especially given that he’d met basically all of the Princesses at this point. More than once! Two of them were in the room! He was talking to one of them! And she was pointing at the other one! Who he’d just spoken to! “You’re not fooling anyone,” she said. He rolled his eyes. “Pffbt, princesses, princesses, princesses. All same anyway. No use. Could do myself.” “You nearly died!” Cozy pointed out, again, gritting her teeth in frustration when Paul rolled his eyes at her some more. “That is a bit much. Plenty healthy,” he said, grumbling in sotto voce: “Prefer to die than ask a bloody princess for help anyway.” This got him another whap from Cozy and he growled. “Stop hitting me, child!” “Stop being stupid, then!” “Stupid! Me, stupid! Says the child who snuck off up North thinking it was a good idea!” “Says the grown adult who thought wandering around in the snow without any idea where to go would work out fine!” “You-” Celestia and Luna walked in and Paul let his head fall back against the pillows in despair. “Shit, more of you. Like that other time, hmm? Big mess? Fine, fine, come in. Get in bed, why not? All get in. What does it matter?” Didn’t these princesses have anything better to do? Countries to run? Rulings to pass on down to those toiling beneath them? That sort of thing? He’d seen more of them then he’d seen some of the people he’d used to work for, Paul swore. “Kind of you to offer, Paul, but I don’t think we’d all fit,” Celestia said, all breezy. In an amusing twist that neither side were aware of, Celestia, Twilight and Luna had in fact all arrived five minutes before Paul had arrived. Unfortunately, since they hadn’t known this, they had gone immediately to Cadence to liaise and work out a plan of action, meanwhile Paul had shown up and started freezing to death. They’d just finished liaising and were about to start sending out the guards to sweep the streets for signs of Paul when some other guards who had not been briefed and who had no idea what was going on showed up with this strange, unconscious creature that had collapsed outside some citizen’s house and which they weren’t sure what to do with. Funny how these things work out sometimes. But that’s an aside. “Why you here?” Paul asked. “It’s a coincidence,” said Luna, flatly, earning herself a bemused sideways look from Celestia who’d plainly been under the impression that she was the sole provider of pithy commentary. She took it in her stride though. “Twilight came to us and informed us of what had happened and what you had decided to do and, with it being a time-sensitive issue, we came as fast as we could in the hopes we might be able to happily resolve the situation. And here we are. Ta-dah,” she said, smiling. Paul was not smiling, but that was hardly new. “Again I say, do you not have better things to do?” He asked. “Oh, any excuse to get out of the house, Paul, you know?” Celestia said, waving a breezy hoof. “Hmph.” Here the conversation died a death, as Paul was plainly several miles away from anything resembling the mood to talk and, with one half of the conversation not willing to participate, there wasn’t a whole lot any of the others could do. But this was fine. Most of those present knew Paul, and this did not come as a surprise to them. “We’ll leave you for now, let you rest,” Celestia said. “But we will be back,” Luna added. “Good-ee,” Paul said through gritted teeth. And out filed the princesses, one after another. Celestia brought up the rear, even giving Cozy a little wave goodbye which Cozy returned, to Paul’s low-grade annoyance. She shut the door on her way out, leaving just Cozy and Paul and a mildly uncomfortable silence. Once all the royalty had departed the room felt much more spacious. Cozy was still by Paul’s bedside, and Paul was (unsurprisingly, perhaps) still in bed. Hardly like he could have gone anywhere. Without any princesses or other authority figures to set himself against Paul felt marooned, now, particularly with Cozy there. He actually felt like an enormous idiot and also had absolutely no idea what to do or say next, which was an unusual enough situation for him to be genuinely unpleasant. He glanced sideways at her and found her staring at him. “...I am glad you’re safe, you know,” he said, unable to meet her eye. Cozy sighed and butted her head affectionately against his arm. “I know. Sorry if I scared you. I really didn’t think you’d find out, least not until it had happened. Better to get forgiveness, you know?” “Heh, smart child. Surprised you hadn’t already left to come back,” he said. It would have been just his luck to arrive and nearly freeze to death with her long gone. He deemed it a minor miracle that things had worked out the way they had. “Oh, I’d missed the last train and Princess Cadence was going to put me up somewhere and I was telling her it was fine I’d managed somehow and then Twilight and the others arrived and said you’d-” Paul cut in here, as he could kind of see where it was going. “I think I get it, Cozy,” he said. Then asking as a thought struck him: “Why did you come up here, anyway? No-one’s told me this. You just went off but you must have had a reason, right?” “It’s not important,” Cozy said sheepishly. “I’d say it was pretty bloody important! Definitely want to know now that you’re being all coy about it. Spit it out.” Cozy hesitated, chewed her lip a moment, tried giving him the Big Eyes in the hope it might soften him and cause him to relent, realised the Big Eyes weren’t working, sighed again and then very quickly blurted out: “Iwascominguptogetyouabirthdaypresent.” Paul squinted at her. He hadn’t got a word of that. “What? Slower, louder, actually separate,” he said, making a ‘stretch-it-out’ gesture with his fingers. Cozy, sour, sat unmoving for a moment. Then: “...I was trying to get you a birthday present,” she said, not loudly but at least slowly and clearly enough that Paul heard her this time. Not that hearing her made what she said actually come across as sensible to him. For a second he thought maybe he’d misheard her, but on being confident he hadn’t he was left bemused. “...a birthday present?” He asked. Cozy threw her hooves up. This again. “It was stupid, alright! I know it was stupid! I’ve been over this! More than once!” Paul was still wrestling with the answer he’d been given. He really couldn’t parse it. “...what on earth possessed you to try and get me a birthday present? From here?” “When I thought it up it seemed like a good idea!” Cozy protested. Paul was now laughing. Her vehement protesting just made it worse. “A birthday present! Hah! And for that she comes all the way here! Only Cozy! Only my Cozy!” He said, poking her between chuckles. She batted his hand away. “Alright! I know they say we can look back on these things and laugh but you’re not meant to start so soon!” The laughter was now enough to make his wounded ribs hurt, but not so much he minded. “Ahaha! Oh, to be inside your head even for a minute, child! Hah! Ahah!” “Everyone says my heart was in the right place! Be proud of me! And mistakes are part of growing up anyway! This is development! I’m maturing! These’ll be memories that’ll last a lifetime! Probably a friendship lesson in there too, probably! Be proud of me!” And the laughter was now enough he couldn’t reply, so he just grabbed her and hugged her. Cozy squeaked.
#9Author's Note Most things are an excuse to talk to Celestia, really. Hell, most of the time I barely need the excuse. 9 == Paul was familiar enough now with the room they’d stuck him into to know when someone else was in there with him, even when they were trying to be quiet. Someone was in there with him right then, he knew. Even though they were trying to be quiet. They were very good at trying to be quiet, whoever they were, but Paul had slept lightly in enough unfamiliar places to be better at hearing those trying to be quiet. He opened an eye, saw the big white one, and closed the eye again promptly. Too late to pretend to be asleep though, she’d seen him open his eye and he’d seen she’d seen. And she’d just know anyway. She was like that. Point was, pointless. “You. Why are you here?” He asked, eyes still closed. The jig being up and there not being any further need to stay covert, Celestia walked over to the bed and sat down. Paul heard this. Hearing this was all he did. He didn’t move or open his eyes and he most certainly did not speak. But that was okay, Celestia had an opener ready: “It was very brave, what you did. Rash, perhaps, perhaps a bit more than rash, but brave all the same. Your heart was in the right place.” Paul grimaced and now opened his eyes - the intended effect of what she’d said, in fact, not that he realised it. He was just appalled by such saccharinity. Hearts? In right places? Bravery? Just about everything she’d said seemed calculated to make his skin crawl. “Eurgh. What does that mean? What is this?” He asked. “Just a talk,” Celestia said. “Bah, yes. But what is point? Why?” “You of all people should know that not everything has to have a point, Paul. Some things are for their own sake. And besides, I’d say we do have at least one or two things to talk about.” “I do not know what you are talking about,” Paul said as innocently as he could manage and with a surprisingly straight face, to boot. “Paul,” she said. It was all she needed to say. Paul threw his hands up. “Eurgh. Fine, fine Yes, I make stupid mistake, fine. Everyone tell me. I know, I know! Do not need you telling me also.” Now he knew how Cozy must have felt while he was out. And while he was awake. “I am less interested in what you did and more interested in why you did it,” Celestia said. “Why you so?” “Well, I don’t think you’d have gone riding up into the snow for just about anyone, would you?” She asked. Paul grimaced. “Hmph. No. But I am look after Cozy, yes? My re-spon-si-bil-ity, you said. I get in trouble if Cozy hurt, if Cozy do something bad. You tell me so. So, I go.” That had been a while ago now, the warning of trouble, and the teeth had long-since fallen out of that particular threat, what with Cozy having grown far beyond the pony she’d been when it had first been made. He knew this. She knew this. Everyone knew this. And that wasn’t even the point, it was an active attempt to avoid the point. Celestia knew this, too. “That’s not really why though, is it? You don’t care about getting in trouble, that much is obvious. You’ve told me as much. To my face, no less.” Loudly, too. Repeatedly. And with swearing, sometimes, though mostly just for colour. “Life difficult if get in trouble, difficult enough already,” Paul grumbled, acutely aware that his position was taking on water faster than his grumpy responses could bail it out. Celestia’s smile was the patient smile of someone who was also aware of this, and was content to let events take their natural course. “So, in pursuit of the easy life, you decided to try and track down a teenager somewhere you’d never been before, in the snow, nearly dying for your troubles? That does sound easier than just sitting back and letting yourself get punished, something you’ve admitted doesn’t phase you all that much…” She said, tapping a hoof to her chin and nodding sensibly. “You - “ Paul snarled, but caught himself and moderated his tone: “If I did not do, if I not get Cozy, you would try to put her in hole again.” Celestia’s expression got very hard very, very quickly. “We would never consider putting her in Tartarus again, and you know that,” she said without even a suggestion of a hint of the warmth all her words had had up until this point in the conversation. There was instead almost a tangible heat to them. All notion of carrying on with this line of argument evaporated from Paul’s head at once, like a puddle drying up in the sun but one which dried up instantly and sheepishly the moment it stopped being in the shade. He knew she was telling the truth, and he knew he couldn’t deny it, even to himself and certainly not out loud. He’d known it had been a dead end when he’d said, he just hadn’t quite grasped how much of a dead end until just then. “...I know,” he said. He could have apologised. He did not. Some of Celestia’s former warmth returned, and her face softened. “So if not for fear of the consequences, then what?” She asked. Paul looked so sour and so sullen that he could have probably curdled a pint of milk from across the room with a glance. Celestia was made of sterner stuff though, and so this just rolled off her without so much as a ripple. This was kind of the point in most conversations where Paul would have walked off had he not been bedridden. He was still giving it some serious thought regardless, but eventually decided he was too tired to try hopping away from her. “My daughter - no, not daughter, no, forget that, I did not say that fuck, fuck. Cozy is, she is - it had to be me, my responsibility. She is my responsibility,” he said, folding his arms crossly. Taking back what he’d said out loud hadn’t felt good. He’d had to do it, obviously, but it hadn’t felt good doing it. Not at all. “And you certainly do take your responsibility for her very seriously, Paul. Almost dying on her account! And you were willing to be imprisoned with her too, as I recall.” Couldn’t deny that. Paul glowered, arms still folded. “What you want me to say?” He asked, caving at last. He was so very tired. “Just to be honest.” “Honest? What about honest?” “About Cozy. You did call her your daughter.” Paul winced. “Nevermind. Slipped out. Mistake. Not daughter. Horse.” “You say that but I can tell you don’t mean that, and that you didn’t like saying it.” He had not liked denying it. Hadn’t expected not to like it but really hadn’t. Felt like he was doing wrong by Cozy by denying it, and this just irritated him. Horse for a daughter indeed... “Why would I talk to you about this? Not even talk to Cozy about this.” “Because I’m such a good listener,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Hah! Good listener! Sure, sure.” “It’s what they tell me,” she said, smile just as sweet and maybe a fraction of an inch wider than before. Paul continued to be sullen and sour with his arms folded, but he could tell this conversation wasn’t going to be going his way anytime soon. That there was a conversation at all told him he was already losing. He glared at her and she smiled back. He sighed. Talking was probably the best way of getting her to go away. “Fine, fine. If it make you go away, I talk. Damn horses,” he said, shifting about in bed and sitting up a bit straighter. Celestia said nothing, just starting up her famously good listening. Paul eyed her suspiciously for a moment before sighing again and then, after another moment to gather his thoughts, saying: “Do not tell Cozy this but I always had, ah, soft spot. For children, I mean. Do not know why. Did not see many because was always being moved, always working, but when I did I always tried to help, if they need help. Give some food or whatever, you know? Money. Felt I should. Others made fun of me for it, but that was okay. The children did not ask for what had happened to them, you know? I only saw the children who needed help, but that was the work, never peaceful where I was made to go. See children who lost things, always lost things. Lost parents, lost homes, lost - lost bits.” Celestia really was a good listener. The best kind of listener, in fact - the kind that sat there quietly and made you keep talking without even fully realising it, who got you to go into depth without feeling all that self-conscious about it. This was not a subject that Paul had really expected to get onto ever in his life with anyone, let alone get into, let alone with someone like her, and he realised only belatedly that he’d really wandered into a level of detail that was starting to make him remember some things he’d prefer remained forgotten. “Are you alright, Paul?” Celestia asked, as Paul appeared to have stalled. On hearing her he started and blinked, licking his lips. “Fine, fine. Nothing. All happened.” “If you’re-” “Nothing, nothing, fine. Do not distract me, was going somewhere, had point. Ah, you have child? Children?” He asked. A flicker passed across her face, and that it had been enough of a flicker to appear at all spoke volumes as to the feelings behind the flicker. Nothing of that slipped out though. Once the flicker disappeared it was like it had never happened at all. “Me? In a manner of speaking, but probably not in the way you’re asking.” Paul wasn’t in the mood to probe into that, and Celestia hadn’t expected him to anyway. “I do not. Did not. Helped children when I could but never saw them again, that was fine, just life. But now I - Cozy was tiny horse criminal, force her way into my life. I help her for a joke, at first, know she is using me, whatever. We talk, we talk. You saw what happened at end. Then she is stuck with me to look after her. And she is still tiny horse but she is also…” Paul tailed off. He frowned. “She is…” Paul groped the air in irritation, fishing for the right words. “Special child. Clever child. Funny child. Important. Does not need my help but needs, ah, help. Needed help. But not sort of help I used to give, you know? Not food or money or anything. Something else. Like, ah, stah-bil-a-tee, maybe? I do my best but I am just old man, do not think my best is that good. I try. Want her to - to - “ He frowned some more, swept his hands away from himself, like brushing away dust. “Do well, yes? Do well in life. Whatever she wants to do. If not stupid, ob-vi-ous-ly. But what makes child happy, I want her to do. Make friends, be happy, do better.” “Better than she was?” Celestia asked with calculated softness and delicacy. Meticulously planned attempts to gain power while also maybe inadvertently possibly destroying the world in the process set kind of a low bar. Anything would be an improvement over that, really. Paul knew this. He frowned some more, mostly at the obviousness of the softness and delicacy. “Yes, yes. Better than stupid Cozy from before, yes. Better than Cozy with stupid plans. But better than me, also. Better than old man made to look after her. Better, better. Child is very smart, can do very well. Hope she does.” Paul went quiet then, but not the sort of quiet of one who has finished talking, more the sort of quiet of one who has something else to say but is unsure of how to say it. It was written on his face. He’d halted, and Celestia gave him the time and space to get going again. He was staring at his hands. “I do - I do not think I will be around. To see her when she is happy, later. A little bit, I think, but I will be gone before too long, I think.” “The doctors say you’ll make a full recovery.” Paul grunted and waved this away. “Hmph. Full recovery to old, dying man is still old, dying man. I do not mind, knew I would not last long. Did not expect to last this long. Know others who did not last this long. Many others. Life was unkind, does not matter. It never mattered to me, much. Did not have anything that I would miss. But now - I worry, a little.” He swallowed loudly and was quiet again for a longer stretch than the last one. Then: “I think - I think about what Cozy might do, later, when she is older. Things a child does, yes? Things I think a child does. Things I would see her do. See her grow up. Have already seen her grow so much! More to go, more growing. See her leave my - leave our home, find place of her own. Get to see her find job! Something she cares about, maybe. Or project, or whatever. Something exciting for her. Something she cares about. Get to hear her talk and talk and talk about it and nod and pretend to understand. See how, uh, pash-on-nate she is about it. Things like that. Find, uh, other person, you know? Not, you know, a friend but, uh, special person. Maybe, maybe. My dau- my daughter get married, maybe? If she wants, if that makes her happy. Or not, whatever she wants, as long as she is happy. You know? Maybe get d-d-daughter of her own, maybe? Child? Maybe, if she wants, I don’t know. These things, these things - the things that happen in a life, you know? The things we go through on our own or - o-or wanted to go through but now - but now get to see our children go through, yes? You know? And I think - I think I will maybe not see them, with Cozy. That I will not be here to see them. And I do not like that. I w-want to see them.” Paul sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his arm. “Stupid. Selfish, stupid. Cozy will be fine, that is what matters. Cozy will be fine, happy. Smart child. Will be fine. Better than fine. Has friends, good friends. Smart child, do good. I am sure,” he said, sniffing again, nodding and then adding, as an afterthought: “Really should make will, hmm.” Then at least she could get the house. Had to have some scrap value in the building and the plot of land itself was probably worth something, so close to the big city and all that. Should set her up nicely when the time came, give her something to work with. “You should stop thinking about that so much, at least right now. You’re safe and you’ll be around for years yet, I’m sure of it. You’ll likely outlive us all, if you wanted to. You seem the sort,” Celestia said. “Hah, says you.” “Maybe stop worrying about what you might miss later and think more about what you get to enjoy with her right now?” She suggested, gently. Paul narrowed his eyes. “Do not try and inspire me, horse. It will not work,” he growled, settling back into the cushions and staring angrily at the ceiling. “Well, I’ll keep trying anyway. One day I might even get you to smile. That alone would be worth it.” He looked at her sideways and put particular effort into making his face as grumpy as possible as she sank deeper into the covers and shuffled lower in the bed. “Strange horse,” he grumbled. This was were there would usually be a pause in the conversation but Celestia had seen this coming and just carried right on, not letting the momentum die: “If it makes you feel any better I asked Cozy more-or-less the same sort of questions,” she said, and on a questioning look from Paul she continued: “About why she decided to go rushing off like she did, her motivations, that sort of thing. She was a lot more open about it than you were, but that’s hardly surprising.” This presumably having happened at some point while Paul was either asleep or indisposed. Not that it really mattered. It was unlikely she’d lie about it, and even if she was it still hardly mattered. It wasn’t a conversation he’d been involved in and it had happened elsewhere. “Because she is impulsive, silly child?” Paul suggested. “That might be one way of looking at it, though that seems a bit unkind to me. Much as with you her heart was in the right place, if perhaps her head was not. We’re all liable to make mistakes sometimes. Perhaps even more so when one we care about is concerned.” “Hmph.” “And I don’t know whether you know this or not but I think you need to hear it: Cozy does care about you, your wellbeing, and she does love you and wants you to keep being around.” “Yes yes yes, sure.” “It’s true. And it’s something that you should take seriously, Paul.” He did hate the habit of tacking a name onto the end of a sentence to make sure someone was paying attention. He did it to Cozy, specifically because he knew she probably hated it, too. Having it deployed against him was irritating. “Why?” He asked. He could guess why, but he wanted to hear whatever the horse reason apparently was. Something fluffy and stupid, he expected. Maybe something to do with friendship. Wouldn’t surprise him. Celestia certainly seemed happy to have been given the chance to keep talking. “Because she loves you and she is happier with you having been in her life and she is going to be happier with you staying in her life. And you should remember that you did that, and that’s important. Important to me, at least, though what matters to me really isn’t the issue here. Call me selfish though, but I’d prefer to have Cozy - and you, Paul - continue to be happy.” That particular line, the one about him having had some part in Cozy’s life improving, made Paul extremely uncomfortable for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom. He shifted in the bed, practically squirming. “Did not do anything, just was,” he said. “And that was enough.” He glared at her but she just smiled back at him and the smile was so genuine and warm he couldn’t really come up with anything to say in response, or at least nothing good. Anything he might have said just sort of dried up in the warmth. “Eurgh. Horses,” he mumbled, hunkering down again, annoyed that he wasn’t as annoyed as he should have been. All this mushy mumbo-jumbo made his head hurt. He hadn’t done anything special, he’d just done what he’d had to do, that was all. Anyone could have done that. Just because he was the one who had didn’t mean anything. There wasn’t anything special about him. Dying alone would have been simpler than all of this. Not an option now, of course. Would he have it back again, now? Given the choice somehow? Magically get the option to go back to how things were before Cozy had inserted herself into his affairs and his life? Would he take the chance to be able to leave quietly, like he’d planned? Like he’d been waiting for? ...no, he realised. He didn’t want that anymore. He most certainly had wanted it before. Had been rather looking forward to it, actually, as much as he might have been said to look forward to anything, but not anymore. Life without his Cozy seemed unbearably quiet and lonely, and for the first time in a while this actually mattered to him. Damn child. “Cozy sleeping?” He asked, glancing to the door of his room. “Yes,” Celestia said. Sleeping under a blanket on a bench just outside the room, in fact, with a direct eyeline from that spot through the door to Paul’s bed. They’d offered her all sorts of alternative accommodation - some just in comfier spots in the hospital itself - but she’d refused to be moved. Had there been anything to sleep on in his room she’d have been sleeping on that, but there wasn’t. She’d been the one to drag the bench in front of the door, too. If it could have fitted through the door it would have been in the room. And the only reason the door was closed now was because she was asleep and so hadn’t been able to stop Celestia doing it for her talk with Paul. “Hmph. Good. Sleep good,” Paul said, nodding. He’d been concerned about Cozy wearing herself out. Celestia nodded as well, she having shared these concerns. “It is. She’s had a tiring few days,” she said. “You are telling me!” Paul said with full-throated earnestness, getting a proper laugh out of Celestia in the process. So unexpected - and so pleasant, whatever he might have thought of her otherwise - was this that Paul didn’t even manage to fix her with a look of hostility. “I still do not like you,” he said afterwards, as if making up for this. “That’s okay, Paul. I like you,” Celestia said. “Hmph.”
#10Author's Note See, in an ideal, sensible world they would have had this conversation back home and none of this other crap would have had to happen, but where's the fun in that? That's not dramatic! No-one nearly freezes that way! There's no heft in sensible! Also, uh, couple bits here referencing a crossover I did with this story here but which hasn't appeared yet. You, uh, don't need to know the details, but if you're confused about cubes or legs that'd be why. Hell, even if you had read it you might still be confused. I'm not known for being a particular clear wordman. 10 === Paul had murky dreams. Paul often had murky dreams. Sometimes in the murk he might spot something or someone he recognised, and sometimes something would lunge suddenly up through the murk and he’d wake up somewhere that it took him a few seconds to remember. This time, he woke up slowly without recognising anything. A distant prodding resolved itself into actual, immediate prodding, and he sleepily realised that he was, in fact, being prodded. In real life. By Cozy, as he saw. “...why are you prodding me?” He asked, peering sideways at her. She was little more than a blur but she was a blur that he could identify anywhere. “I’m trying to wake you up,” she said. “Well you succeeded.” “Did consider just pulling the curtains open but, uh, that might not have worked out so great, given, uh, you,” Cozy said as Pau gruntingly worked his way up in bed so he was sitting. “Wise,” he said, shifting the pillows behind him so he was fractionally more comfortable. Once he was properly settled and had stopped moving Cozy wheeled over one of those hospital trolley-tray things that typically have food put onto them so bedbound people can eat the food. On this tray there was food, fittingly. “Breakfast,” she said, simply. She wasn’t wrong either. It was breakfast. Paul blinked at it for a moment and then heaved himself up further in bed, squinting at how bright everything damn well was. “You work here now?” He asked. This got him some side-eye. “A nurse did bring some in earlier but you woke up and smacked the tray away and so she, uh, left the room. Quickly. I said I’d try this time. Say it was working out better, wouldn’t you?” “What?” He had absolutely no memory of that having happened. Even straining to remember yielded nothing, not even anything that he might have otherwise dismissed as a dream. Apparently he’d done it without even waking up, or at least without waking up enough to really notice. Paul then looked and saw the remains of the first breakfast, still on the floor, tray and all. Evidently they’d not felt like risking coming in to clean it up yet. He winced. “Eurgh. That’s just embarrassing. Uh, do you know which nurse it was so I can-” “I already found her and said you were sorry and that you didn’t mean it. She was okay with it, just think you frightened her, is all.” “Presumptuous, Cozy, but, ah, thank you. That - that hasn’t happened in a while…” “I know.” Paul sat in silence and felt guilty and angry for a bit, though not too long. It wouldn’t solve anything. Time was he wouldn’t have cared. That he cared now showed something, but he wasn’t sure what. “Could really go for a cigarette,” he said. He knew he’d been cutting down - rather successfully too, by all accounts - but if there was ever a time for a quick cheat one now seemed to be it. “I don’t think they let you do that in here,” Cozy said. Just a hunch on her part. “Pffbt, rules. Who cares about rules?” “Alright, I don’t think I will let you do that,” Cozy said, having subsequently learnt since meeting him that it was not an especially healthy habit. She’d learnt this from him, in fact. “Tiny bloody tyrant. To think I should raise such a spoilsport!” “Heh, ah, yeah…” Cozy said, a touch awkwardly, his choice of words there landing perhaps not as they might once have given what had recently been said vis their relationship. Paul realised this too, albeit far too late, and grimaced to himself. The banter stalled. “We probably need to...talk...don’t we?” Paul asked. “Probably,” said Cozy. He’d been afraid of that. Going by the way Cozy had spoken she was about as enthusiastic about the prospect as he was. He grimaced. “Eurgh. I already talked to the big one, that was enough for me for a lifetime.” “You talked to Celestia? Like, just the two of you?” Cozy asked. He’d presumably done it under sufferance but that it had been a significant enough conversation for him to mention to her was certainly something. “About what?” Paul shifted under the covers. “...you.” “Oh.” Cozy realised she probably should have seen that one coming. “Yeah she’s big on talking that one, and a ‘good listener’. Eurgh. It was torture,” Paul said, rubbing his face. “I bet talking about me was torture,” Cozy said, nodding and brimming with gravitas and mock-seriousness. Paul grinned despite his dread of what was coming up. “No, now, hey - good joke but no, let’s - let’s be serious about this, for once. Then we can never be serious about it again. But let’s try and be serious.” Cozy was also dreading what was coming up. “That sounds like more torture,” she said. “It will be, but it - eurgh - probably needs to happen. Come here,” he said, pushing the little bedside breakfast tray to one side and patting a spot on the bed onto which Cozy obligingly flew up and landed. Didn’t fit quite as comfortably as she might have done a couple years ago, but she still fit. “Right. Well. Um,” Paul said haltingly, licking his lips. He suddenly felt very parched, and the little jug of water on the tray was so far away now. Drinking would be a distraction anyway. Had to press forward. “We need to be...honest...with one another,” he said, every word an agonising effort. “Right.” A pause. “You first,” Cozy said. He’d been about to say that! “Damnit, Cozy, that’s - ! Fine. I - well, us, the both of us - you - “ Paul fumbled, bit his cheek, grunted, took a breath and tried over: “Thinking about it and about...these last few years and a few other things and - and talking about it with the big one, I - I’ve come to realise that - I’ve been - that I actually do l-l-love you, Cozy, as a - as a chi- as my - as m-my d-daughter, I think, and that’s - well - it’s just…” Paul briefly lost all capacity for speech and just mouthed vague noises into his lap, fiddling with his hands. “Fuck. This was much easier to talk about to the big one, fuck. She is a good listener...” He looked up at Cozy, hoping that maybe she’d pick this moment to step in and do her bit and let him off the hook, but no such luck. She was just staring at him with those big, big eyes. Staring expectantly. Oh well. Onwards. Too late now. Started so he’d finish. “And I know I’m not the best at doing whatever a f-f-father is supposed to be or be but I am - I am trying, or trying to try. I want - I want you to be happy, you see and - I’m trying. And I am also learning that a part of that is… appreciating that… I should at least try to keep myself vaguely intact, for your sake. Probably should have fucking listened when the other one told me so.” He wasn’t sure what point he was trying to make now, or how far he’d got in the points he’d need to make. His brains were scrambled and he’d moved from fiddling with his hands to fiddling with the bedsheets and was doing this vigorously enough that he was in danger of ripping them. “What I guess I’m trying to say - trying and failing - is that if you want to keep calling me d-dad then that’s - then that’d be okay, because maybe that’s what - what I’d like to be to you. Or you can just, you know, tell me to shove off. I don’t know.” This was all he could manage. He actually did succeed in ripping the bedsheets and so quickly stopped fiddling with them, instead just fiddling with his hands some more and looking at the various nicks and cuts he’d acquired over the last day or two, too terrified to look up to see how what he’d said had landed with Cozy. She wasn’t saying anything... “You go, you do your bit. You’re much better at this than I am,” he said. Still nothing. It was getting so bad that he risked a quick look up. He saw those big, big eyes again on the cusp of tears. His gut twisted. He’d screwed it up! He’d got it all wrong! Everything he’d meant to say had come out backwards! He’d fucked it up! Then she just hugged him again, especially tightly. Hurt less this time. Maybe he hadn’t made as much of a hash of it as he’d feared? The hug precluded anything else needing to be said for a bit. The two of them had been a lot more touchy-feely of late than they had anytime before, but this was to be expected, really, all things considered. Certainly, neither felt the least bit awkward about it or self-conscious or anything. It just seemed to come quite naturally now. At length the hug broke, Cozy being the one breaking it, and she sat back. She still wasn’t saying anything, and it was at this point that Paul realised she wasn’t actually going to. Cozy saw this realisation dawning and her smile took on a slightly different character. “That’s not fair! I can’t spill my guts and then you get away with a hug!” He said. “What are you going to do about it? You love me, dad,” she said, putting heavy, treacle-thick emphasis on the last part, complete with a smug-yet-loving smile plastered across her face. “You-!” There really wasn’t anything he could do, he realised. She had him dead to rights. “Clever bloody girl. Fine, fine. Keep it to yourself. I know I did my bit at least! Laid my damn soul bare for you, bah. Got years more of this to look forward to, I’m sure,” he grumbled. Cozy nodded. “Oh, years and years. And years.” “Wonderful. Well, I’m sick of sitting here, it’s about time I got out of this damn bed. Where did they put my leg?” He’d thought - hoped - that maybe the hospital staff or whoever had just tucked it around the side of the bed somewhere but now that he was looking he couldn’t see it. They hadn’t hidden it as a joke or something, had they? That had happened back home, once. Only once. That particular batch of work associates had very abruptly learnt the error of their ways and certainly learnt better than to take a chance on Paul seeing the funny side on any future jokes involving his leg. In their defence, had they picked any week other than the one in which they pulled the trick it likely would have gone down better. As it happened they’d caught him at a bad time. But such was life and that was by the by. Paul was no longer back where he’d come, those people were all dead now, and he was still sans leg, though at least he’d had a better week than the last time. “Well, looks like it’s hopping for me. They did leave a stick at least?” He started looking around again, this time for a stick, only to notice Cozy chewing her lip. “...what?” He asked. “I have bad news,” she said. “It’s leg-related.” “Oh. Great. What is it?” “When they found you in the snow - in the snow, dying, freezing to death after having made a stup-” “Yes yes Cozy, I get it. Get on with it.” “When they found you, your, uh, framey thing and your leg were both pretty beaten up and bent out of shape, and your leg was kind of full of snow, too. And dirt. And gravel. And then when they brought you here and had to, you know, start looking after you they had to take them off. But they didn’t really know how. So they kind of dismantled them. With extreme prejudice.” “So you’re saying they broke them.” “No, I’m saying you broke them, they had to take them off your unconscious body after they dug you out of a snowdrift. A snowdrift where you were dying. And I’m saying that they’re now a bit broken.” Paul stared at her. He couldn’t really find it in himself to be angry. He was upset, yes, and grumpy but then he was almost always grumpy so this wasn’t a huge change, leaving him mostly just upset, and mostly also just tired. Certainly too tired to waste the energy being loud and unhappy about it. Not worth the effort. It wasn’t even as if he was especially attached - hah - to his leg or anything like that. It wasn’t his first one, or even his second. He’d just managed to keep this particular leg going for a good while now and he’d got quietly fond of it, for all its failings. And even for him it was hard to be annoyed at the doctors and such for just doing their jobs. They’d done their best, he imagined, as most doctors he’d encountered in his life tried to do. Never worth getting all that upset at them. Just doing their jobs. He was so tired. He sighed. His shoulders slumped. “Well. It happens. There is a stick at least? Joking aside I’d really rather not hop.” “Better! There’s a replacement! Twilight found it when she went back to our house,” Cozy said, brightly. Paul did not share her brightness. His view was a dim one. “What was she doing in my house?” He asked. “...looking for a spare leg, I just told you.” “Hmph.” “Oh get over yourself, dad, she did a nice thing. It’s under a desk at the nurses station, I’ll go get it. Don’t go running off now,” she said. Thought she was funny, apparently. Paul crossed his arms and glowered. “Har-fucking-har.” Off Cozy went, flapping down from the bed and trotting out the door. In her absence, Paul leaned over and pulled the breakfast tray back over and started to pick away, not really concentrating on what it was he was eating - habit was that it didn’t really matter as long as it wouldn’t kill you. He stared into space and chewed, thinking about his leg and all the good times - well, times - they’d had together. Then he paused, and actually looked at what it was he was eating. He cocked his head, raised a cube of something that wasn’t meat up on his fork. “You’re very familiar…” he said to the cube, brow furrowed. Further rumination on this mysterious meaty-and-yet-not-meat cube was forestalled by the reappearance of Cozy, struggling her way back into the room with the spare leg. It wasn’t that it was heavy (though it wasn’t exactly light), it was more that it was awkwardly shaped. She’d had to kind of sling it over her back and kept having to shift to keep it from slipping off, much to her obvious frustration. The instant she was able to she slung it up onto the bed. “There!” She said, semi-breathlessly. Paul’s eyes fell upon the leg in blank confusion for a second. Then it clicked. “Oh, that one,” he said, setting his fork down and pushing the tray aside once more to reach over and grab the leg. “Thank you, Cozy,” he then said before setting about getting it secure and attached. Cozy, who’d seen him do this more times than she could count at this point, just stood back and let it happen. Though, as she watched him and this new, unfamiliar leg, a thought did occur to her: “Since when did you have a spare anyway? And since why does it look so much fancier than your other one? This one looks more like you made it out of actual parts and less like it was made out of the bits that were left over from making a better one. Why wasn’t this the one you used?” Paul paused for a moment and plainly thought about how best to answer this question. He then gave up thinking on how best to answer this question. “...I’ll tell you later,” he said, resuming. “Yeah, that’s not a weird thing to say.” “Later.” “Fine, fine. You not going to eat the rest of that?” Cozy asked, nodding to the partially-eaten breakfast still sitting on the trolley where she’d put it and where he’d pushed it away from the bed again. Paul paused. He’d forgotten about that. His memory really was getting a little spotty these days. He considered how best to play this. “We’ll eat and walk,” he said, grabbing the plate from the tray with one hand, some toast with the other and cramming it into his mouth as she strode semi-steadily out of the room. Cozy wondered if she should say anything about this - something pithy, perhaps - but decided there wasn’t much point, and instead grabbed the nearest blanket in her teeth and went after him. Once he remembered it was cold outside and that he was only wearing a flimsy gown he might want it. He wouldn’t admit to needing it, but if she had she could make him take it. Honestly.
#11Author's Note On it goes. Again, I'm sure there's a definitive answer to where the crystal heart is but for the sake of this story it's in a place and people can go look at it if they want to, sure, why not. There's a line in my profile about canon being expendable! It's there for a reason! Ahem. Also, more references to the crossover. Don't worry about that. You can figure it out, I'm sure. Just sit back and relax. Let it wash over you. 11 === There wasn’t anywhere Paul wanted or needed to go once they left the hospital, he’d just wanted to be somewhere else other than that bed in that room. It didn’t take him long to avail himself of the blanket Cozy had brought, something which stoked no small amount of smugness in her as they’d walked along. Cozy had recommended the castle as a destination, specifically the Crystal Heart, figuring that since they were in with royalty then getting in and having a look wouldn’t be too difficult, regardless of whatever time they got there. Paul had no idea what a crystal heart was but couldn’t think of anywhere else to go so hadn’t argued. Thus. Back to the castle. Despite the fanciness of his spare leg, Paul wasn’t having the easiest time of it. He was so used to compensating for the various shortcomings and the general wear-and-tear of the other leg that the absence of any problems became in itself a problem, at least until he got a better feel for the thing. More than once he’d put lampposts and walls to good use when trying to compensate for a limp that wasn’t really there anymore. Got there in before too long though, and they were indeed let in without too much fuss, to Paul’s annoyance. He wasn’t sure what outcome wouldn’t have annoyed him, but the insinuation of preferential treatment rubbed him up the wrong way. The lavish opulence (by his standards) of the castle didn’t help either. “What is this thing anyway? Crystal whatever? Heart?” Paul asked as they made their way through the corridors. Cozy seemed to know the way. “It’s a heart,” she said. “Uhuh.” “Made of crystal.” Paul glared at the back of Cozy’s head, but Cozy didn’t care. “What will you horses think of next…” He muttered. As they neared the heart they learned that they weren’t actually that special as there were knots and handfuls of other ponies milling about, some plainly tourists, just taking in the castle and the heart and all that. Paul spotted at least one pony (there with their family, so it appeared) in a loud shirt thoroughly unsuited to the climate, using some sort of flashing device held to the eye to do… …something. Paul didn’t know what it was. But he didn’t appreciate it when the pony turned the flashing thing on him. “Eurgh, hell was that?” He asked, dazzled, hand raised too late. “Camera,” Cozy said. “You say that like it means something to me,” Paul said, blinking furiously to clear the blotch spoiling his vision. He was so fixated on doing this - not to mention still half-dazzled - that he failed to notice the approach of Celestia and Luna until they were basically standing right in front of him. By then he did notice. “Naturally. You again. And you,” he said, looking from Celestia to Luna. “We really must stop bumping into each other like this, Paul,” Celestia said. “Hmph. Give me the strength to make it home so I can lock my door and never have to see any of you ever again.” “What was that?” She asked, ear pricked. “Nothing, nothing. So you are here, hmm? Here? What a co-in-ci-dence,” said Paul, who did not believe in coincidences, or at least not when they involved irritating things happening to him. “Well, it is a lovely spot,” Celestia said, smiling up at the heart. The heart existed, doing whatever it was it did, heartily. Paul didn’t look at it. “Hmph.” “You’re looking well, Paul, all things considered,” Luna interjected. “Hmph.” “It is remarkable that a man of your years is able to recover so quickly,” She then added. Paul couldn’t tell if this was a compliment or a veiled jab or some combination of the two. “...yes,” he said, unsure of where to go with that. The conversation here faltered, as Paul wasn’t the only one unsure of where to go. In the awkward pause that followed Celestia looked down to her side, blinked, then looked around to her other side and behind her. “Where is Twilight?” She asked. “She is back there, correcting a tour guide,” Luna said, indicating with a flick of her head. She was not wrong, either. Twilight had apparently come out with the other princesses for their coincidental walk but had clearly got distracted by the pressing need to hold forth at length about something towards an increasingly beleaguered looking tour guide while the tour guide’s group looked on with mounting worry. “Oh dear. Do you think we should go and help them?” Celestia asked with concern. The tour guide did look as if they weren’t having an especially good time. Looked like they were having a significant emotional event, in fact. Paul - who had been chewing something over in his head - decided this was as good an opportunity to get something off his chest as any, given it was these two he needed to get it off at, so why not. Had to get Cozy out of the way first, and this presented an excellent opportunity. Leaning a little (only slightly unsteadily) he gave her a poke. “Go and talk to Twilight for a second, I’m going to talk to these two,” he said, pointing. Cozy was about to object to being asked to run along so the adults could talk when she double-took. She’d almost missed a key detail in what he’d just said to her. “You know her name?!” “I know all their names. Celestia, Luna, whatever. Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, Scootaloo, all of them, all the horse names.” Cozy’s face went through a journey that took in a whole range of emotions, none of which seemed fitting for the moment. Eventually, she settled on some combination of amazement and outrage. “...since when?!” “Shh. Go. I need to talk to them.” Cozy gaped, open-mouthed, for a second, but then the shock passed and she picked her jaw up. “I’m only going because I’m too stunned to do anything else,” she said. “Great, good. I won’t be a minute,” Paul said, shooing her away. Off Cozy went, to Luna and Celestia’s obvious bemusement, the two of them turning to watch her go before turning back to Paul again. Clearly he was ramping up, but for what they did not know. “Is something the matter, Paul?” Celestia asked. “I read letter you sent,” he said, without preamble. “Oh good! I was starting to think they were getting lost in transit.” “I threw them away.” “I know,” Celestia said, smiling. She’d just been playing polite. Paul didn’t really care. “Hmph. I read - well, Cozy read, read to me. Tells me what you offering,” he said. “And?” Celestia asked, the merest tinge of hope entering her tone. “I say no, of course.” The hope wafted away. “Oh.” “That before though. Before all this. I - maybe I change my mind.” The hope returned. “Oh!” Paul shrugged and made various non-committal gestures with his hands. “Cozy think it good for me. Good to get out of house, talk, whatever. Maybe. I don’t know. Bad teacher and do not want to teach, but if Cozy thinks is good maybe it is good. The, ah, the small one want to help too, yes?” He asked, inclining his head in Twilight’s direction. No reason to let them know he knew all their names, after all. (Meanwhile, Cozy had reached Twilight and had interceded on the tour guide’s behalf. What was being said was impossible to determine at the distance, however.) “Twilight was interested, yes,” said Celestia, head dipping. “Hmph. Acceptable. Small one is not so bad.” “Ah, I can only hope that one day you consider me not so bad, Paul, that’s high praise from you,” Celestia said, with Luna bewilderingly nodding in agreement alongside her, something that caught Paul entirely off-guard, wrong-footing him for a good two seconds. Did they actually care, or was this another veiled something-or-other? He wasn’t sure. Bounced back though, and got back into it: “Yes yes har har I am grumpy and not very nice, look…” His clunkiness with the language was making what was already difficult for him more difficult still. He’d have trouble finding the words in his native tongue. As it was, he did his best. “I want in writing. Nothing I teach to make or anything like it be used for fighting, yes? Or making, ah, making people do things. Only for helping, yes? In writing. Make it a law. You are in charge you can do that, yes?” Anything anyone in any position of authority said or promised or wrote down was, of course, utterly worthless and subject to change at the merest shifting of the wind or mood or fashion or just the sheer unbridled hell of it, obviously, but there wasn’t a lot else Paul felt he could do, and he felt he had to do something. “That doesn’t seem neces-” Luna started to say, but Celestia cut in (to Luna’s obvious minor irritation). “I am sure something can be arranged, Paul.” He nodded, then grimaced. The next bit was going to be hard. “I know - I know you are not as...bad...as I am used to, maybe. Not as bad as I think you are. I know that with this, what I do, you would not - probably not - do anything...that I would expect. Not like at home, maybe. Not like people in charge I am used to, maybe. But I need promise because...I just need it. But you are not so bad, I know,” he said, every word a grinding effort. “That’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me, Paul,” Celestia said, a hoof clutched to her chest. “Hmph,” said Paul, gearing up for the next bit which was going to be even harder. “I…” he started, swallowing, then pressing on - he’d been doing a lot of pressing on lately. It was exhausting: “I am sorry.” “Whatever for?” Luna asked, Celestia clearly still dealing with the shock. Paul swallowed. How to phrase this? “For being, ah, a bastard - not poh-lite. Being difficult. You try to help me, make life easier, whatever, I do not accept. All trying to move on in life, move forward. Cozy, you, others, trying to grow, get better. And I say this is good but I do not do it and that - and that is stupid. If I think it is good if, you know, Cozy try to do better in life then I should not say that I cannot do better. You know? I - ah, fuck, what am I even saying…” He wasn’t entirely sure. In this he had a similar problem to Cozy (although he didn’t know this, of course), where what he was attempting to convey made perfect, concise, crystal-clear sense in his head but was refusing to be readily translated outside of his head, a problem exacerbated for him by his inability to properly articulate himself. What he wanted to say - what he mostly had nailed down - was that it was pretty rich of him to be sitting there, encouraging Cozy to go off and be her best and move on in life, while he himself utterly refused to, with the excuse that ‘Oh, I’ll be dead soon anyway’ only getting him so far and not really being that much of an excuse in the first place, either. Never too late to not be acting like an idiot, something he knew, but which he had been abjectly rejecting as an option for himself. He knew entirely well how much of an idiot he was in those things he chose to do idiotically. He was old enough and ugly enough to be entirely aware and old enough not to care. When presented with a platter of options he’d choose the easy one that required the least effort and kept him exactly where he was, even over an equally-easy one that might make things just that tiny bit better. Fine when he’d been on his own, yes, but now that Cozy’s personal wellbeing was more-or-less hitched to his own, in many ways? That she apparently cared about him? That he had someone else in his life now and a someone who was just as concerned about him as he was about her? Sigh, no longer afforded the luxury of wallowing in his rut until that rut became his grave. So to speak. That was what he was trying to express. That was what made perfect sense in this head. He just couldn’t quite get it out. Alongside trying to actually, legitimately apologise to these two magical horses for… …being present at times when some of those opportunities for life-improvement had presented themselves. And for sometimes being… …involved in those opportunities. Ahem. Agreeably they had tried to stick his daughter in a hole in the ground that one time, but crucially that had been one time and they had only tried. After that they’d been fairly supportive. Hell, last year or so almost nothing but supportive. But it hadn’t started well. So no, he wasn’t going to forgive them outright, but he would give them the credit at least of immediately going for an alternative when one presented itself. Not actually looking for an alternative, but still… “Paul? Are you alright? You’re being unusually quiet, even for you,” Celestia said, gently, looking as though she was considering nudging him but then thinking better of it. Paul realised he had blanked out for a moment there, lost in thoughts that had got him absolutely nowhere while just silently staring at some fixed point in the middle-distance. He shook his head and gritted his teeth, back in the present. “If I want Cozy to be better I have to be better too. As - as father of her - as her father I need to be better. Whatever that means. And this thing you offer is probably good way, if she think so. So thank you. Yes. Yes.” Paul had hit his limit now and clammed up. He’d mostly got his point across though. Celestia and Luna understood a portion of what he’d meant, and they appreciated it. “Excellent. Thank you, Paul. I’ll have the details finalised on our return to Canterlot and somepony will be in contact with you,” Celestia said. “Hmph.” He was already regretting it, but it was too late now. “Paul,” Luna said, and his attention switched herwards. “Since we are talking and since Cozy Glow is presently otherwise engaged, there is something I have been meaning to ask you but have been unable to find the right moment to do so.” This seemed like a mouthful to Paul, and her delicate approach to whatever it was she was trying to talk about left him on-edge. What was she going for, here? “Hmm?” Unlike Celestia - who he had been ‘encouraged’ to meet with fairly regularly for a fairly lengthy period of time - Luna was still something of an unknown quantity to Paul, particularly given that he hadn’t seen her at all now for going on over a year or more. His initial, hostile impression didn’t help much either. Luna, having seized the reins of the conversation, now hesitated, but only briefly. “How is…” She started to ask, though she couldn’t seem to settle on how best to finish. Paul, at last clocking what she was driving at (far faster than even he himself expected), stepped in to assist: “Other-Cozy? Seem good, last I speak. Busy. Doing lots.” It had been a little while - life seemingly having got both of them in its icy grip - but the last time they’d spoken she’d seemed to have been in fine enough fettle. Luna nodded, accepting this answer. “That’s good, I am glad,” she said. “Does she - does she talk about her mother at all?” Her ‘mother’ in this instance being Luna. Or else some weirdo, other-dimensional version of Luna who had been the one who’d ended up as surrogate parental figure to Cozy in place of himself. Honestly, the whole thing had been the sort of event to give Paul a headache thinking about it, and he was from another dimension himself. Still. That Luna - this Luna, the one right in front of him talking to him - was asking at all did at least suggest this was something that had been weighing on her, for whatever reason. Paul wasn’t going to probe her motivations. He didn’t have the energy and, as always, he didn’t really care all that much. It was important to her somehow, he didn’t need to know why exactly. There were details, whether he knew them or not. “Little bit. It is not something that comes up all that much. If you want, you can talk to her sometime. Book is easy to use,” he said. The (magical) book in question being the means by which he spoke to the other-Cozy, a device she herself had made, impressive and accomplished girl that she was. Luna blinked, surprised by the offer or more likely surprised to find the offer coming from Paul. “Ah, perhaps. I would like that, actually. If it’s convenient for you? When is convenient for you?” She asked. “Anytime, anytime, it does not matter. No-one seems to care about coming into my life whenever they want, anyway…” “Well that’s nice. Isn’t this nice? This has been a most productive conversation, Paul, if I do say so myself. And to think, would any of this come about had Cozy not wanted to get you a birthday present?” Celestia asked. Or thought a little harder about getting him a birthday present, or decided on getting one from not quite so far afield, or any other one of a myriad other tiny differentiating factors that could have resulted in the whole mess not occurring in the first place. But that was all implied. Paul got that by implication. “Hmph. It seems to have worked out for the best,” he said. “It has worked out for the best,” Celestia said, emphatically. He wasn’t going to argue. With exquisite timing, Twilight and Cozy approached, talking as they did so. “ -I’m just saying, there are standards if you’re giving a tour. You shouldn’t be repeating things that anyone can just look up and find out aren’t true! It’s not-” Twilight was saying, as one who had been saying similar things for some time might say them. “Are you finished?” Cozy asked Paul, cutting across Twilight who was reduced to simmering silence, her opinions halted before they’d had a chance to fully empty themselves out across their audience. “Yes. We are finished,” Paul said. “Good. Work out whatever it is you needed to work out?” Cozy asked, looking from Paul to the other two, the three of them - the three ‘adults’ - sharing a moment of mutual, silent agreement. They had worked it out. “I think so, yes,” Paul said. “Great. What was it that I didn’t need to hear about?” Cozy then asked, directing her question explicitly at Luna and Celestia, knowing they could be relied upon to undermine Paul. “He admitted that you were right and also apologised to us,” Luna said. An adequate summary of events. “Ah, can see why he wanted me out of the way for that,” Cozy said, smirking back at him. He grimaced, thoroughly undermined. “Eurgh…” “He also said that he would agree to my proposal,” said Celestia. That one Cozy hadn’t expected. “The teaching thing?” “Yes, that.” “Ooh!” Twilight squeaked from the sidelines. “Fancy that…” Cozy said, now turning to Paul with a certain level of honest surprise. He shifted awkwardly. “You say is good for me, good for everyone, whatever. Good idea, maybe, I don’t know,” he said, on the edge of mumbling. “Is this just because I said I thought you should?” Cozy asked. “No. It is because you said you thought I should and I think you may be right,” Paul said. A subtle difference, but an important one. “Proud of you, dad,” Cozy said, pitching her tone perfectly to make it completely impossible to tell whether she was being heartfelt and sincere or just taking the piss. “Oh shush, child,” Paul said, then: “We go now. I am tired. Let us go, Cozy. Come on, I need to sit down.” “Said all you need to say? Sure you don’t want to keep talking? Maybe admit I was right about a few more things? I could probably remember some more,” Cozy said, trotting along after Paul who was already limping away. “Yes, yes, all done, finished now. All happy,” he said. “We’re very glad you’re happy, Paul,” Celestia said. “Yes yes, it-” Paul’s brain clicked. He stopped. He turned. “Wait. Wait…” he said. Celestia grinned. “How long…?” “Oh, about as long as you’ve known our names, if I had to guess,” she said. Paul raised a finger and then, slowly, cracked a smile. “Alright. That was alright, you’re alright. You got me,” he said.
#12“No, you see, look: the line, yes? Need to be in a line, see? In a line, touching the line, like this? But not touching each other? Touching the line, not each other, yes? See?” As Paul said this, he indicated what he meant, pointing out the relevant portions on the etched metal plate on the worktop in front of him. To him it was obvious, blindingly obvious. It leapt at him with a single glance. To Plum Pudding, the pony he was presently attempting to explain it all to, it was less obvious. That, indeed, was sort of the problem. “Line?” Pudding asked, brows knotted. With far more patience than he might have ever imagined possessing, Paul didn’t so much as take a deep, steadying breath. “Yes, line. The metal line, see? One you do to start? First thing I tell you about? This line. Con-duc-tive line, connects, yes? So they must touch line. The, ah, symbols, yes? Order not matter, not really, but must touch line.” Technically the order did matter, but only for more complex stuff, so not at Pudding’s level. It would only serve to confuse the poor boy to tell him otherwise at this point. “Oh that line! I thought it was just, uh, a guideline. So it’s important?” Pudding asked. “Very, yes.” As Paul had explained to both pudding and the whole class at the very start, in fact. “So can I just scratch it out or…?” “No no, start over, must start over. Fresh plate, new.” “Oh…” That would put him behind the others in the class, Pudding knew, a thought which did not appeal. He was already lagging slightly, this would see that he was lagging severely. Paul knew this as well, and knew that it wouldn’t be helping either Pudding or himself. “I will do. Start over, do line, do these that you did, get you in right place so you are with the others. You understand now, yes? For going on? Going, ah, fore-ward?” He asked, fixing Pudding with a serious look, to make sure the boy knew this was an important question that he should say yes to. “Uh, yeah! I get it now. So when I add new ones they need to touch the line, and not touch each other?” Pudding asked. Paul relaxed his serious look and nodded. “Yes. Exactly. See? Smart boy,” he said, sitting back and wincing a little as he shifted his legs. Greater familiarity with the replacement leg meant that he didn’t need the frame or his stick anywhere as much as he used to, but that didn’t magically make him better either, and sitting for too long had a tendency to make him a little stiff. “Thanks, Mr Paul! And thanks for helping me out with the plate, too!” Pudding said, beaming. “Is no problem. ‘Mr Paul’? For the love of…” “Hmm?” “Nothing, is nothing. You get it now, all good. Ready for tomorrow. I will bring plate. You bring self, and remember what I say, yes? Maybe make note, yes?” Paul said, by way of gentle suggestion, pointing to the mostly-empty notebook that Pudding had produced and laid on the worktop and not touched since. Pudding seemed to draw a blank for a second, then noticed what it was Paul was pointing at. “Yeah! Notes! That’s a good idea,” he said, gleefully grabbing the notepad and pulling the pencil from behind his ear. This wasn’t what Paul had had in mind. “Maybe make note at home, yes?” Pudding, pencil poised, paused. “Home?” Paul gave the briefest glance around the workshop, hoping that this might remind Pudding that this was, in fact, Paul’s home they were in and now that his particular issue had been cleared up he might prefer to have it to himself again. It took him a second, but Pudding twigged it easily enough. “Oh, oh right, yeah. Home. I got it, I can do that,” he said, sweeping the notebook into a saddlebag and slinging the saddlebag over himself. “Good idea,” Paul said, his face bearing an expression that suggested he might be capable of smiling, should the situation warrant it. He then followed Pudding to the door and let him out, the pony, now brimming with energy, leaping gaily across the boundary and all-but skipping up the path. “See you next week, Mr Paul!” He called out. Paul, gritting his teeth, waved goodbye. “Next week, yes. See you,” he said. “Hi!” Pudding said to Cozy as he passed her, Cozy by absolute coincidence just-so happening to be returning home at this exact moment. That it was coming up on lunchtime might have had something to do with it. “Uh, hi,” Cozy replied, bemused, glancing back at him as he merrily made his way home and she herself continued to saunter up to Paul. “Who was that?” She asked, once she’d sauntered into question-asking range. “Pupil,” Paul said, turning around and heading back inside, Cozy following and closing the door behind her. “Ah, one of your new ones, huh? What was he doing here?” She asked. “I said to them they could come by if they had issues and he does so here he is. Or was. Only one who’s had to, so far at least,” Paul said. Having gone back inside he now realised he had no idea what it was he was meant to be doing, or even if he was meant to be doing anything at all. In lieu of certainty, he decided to go and make tea until he remembered something important he was probably supposed to be doing. Cozy hopped up onto one of the chairs by the kitchen table as Paul busied himself with tea-making paraphernalia. “Didn’t think you liked visitors.” “I don’t, but if they need help they need help.” “You like teaching, then?” “It…” Paul, holding a teapot, frowned and tried to think of how best to express his feelings on the matter. He didn’t like the job he’d accepted. He didn’t like that he now spent a good chunk of the week trudging up to the palace (castle, whatever) to slowly and clearly explain to a room full of horses how to do what he’d done for years. He didn’t like that he had Twi- the small one there acting as his de-facto assistant and also as an equally eager pupil. He didn’t like that all of those who’d come to learn treated him with a level of quiet respect and listened to what it was he had to tell him. But he didn’t dislike it either. In a lot of ways it reminded him of how he’d spent a not-inconsiderable amount of his life: imparting his quote-unquote ‘knowledge and wisdom’ onto a newer, younger generation. A generation brought before him to learn because he was the only in easy reach left to teach them, usually, though this time for slightly different reasons than the ones Paul was used to. And this time he wasn’t teaching them under duress, and wasn’t teaching them in the knowledge that what he was teaching was going to be put to use making the world a nastier place to be in. This was new, and strange, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet. Feeling good about it felt unseemly somehow, so he didn’t really feel anything about it yet. Maybe once they’d finished and gone off to go do something with what they’d learnt he’d feel something. Until then he would feel nothing, as he had considerable practise of doing. With all that being the case, Paul couldn’t really think of any good way of summing it up. So went with something that did the job as best as possible: “...takes me back.” “In a good way?” Paul swallowed and resumed making tea, dropping in a teabag. “In a way. Certainly it’s probably better than sitting around.” “It’s almost like my idea was right all along…” Cozy said, tapping her chin as though proposing something mysterious and unlikely, looking up at Paul sideways. Paul closed his eyes. “Eurgh…” “Go on, you can say it. You can say ‘You had the right idea, Cozy.’ Maybe even add in an ‘I’m sorry Cozy I’ll listen to you more in future’ or something like that, if you feel like it.” “You’re pushing it…” “Yes but you loooovvvveeee me, dad,” she said, and while she drew the word out purposefully to get under his skin she couldn’t deny that the truth of it warmed her heart just that little bit. And Paul couldn’t deny that part, either. Not now. “...it was a good idea, and I should have just said yes in the first place. Happy?” He asked. Cozy beamed, leaning back in her seat and stretching, like a cat in the sun. “Very happy.” “Good. Tea?” “I don’t-” “-don’t drink tea, right, I remember.” There followed the clinking of teaspoons and such, and while that was happening Cozy (still luxuriating in triumph) looked around and saw something out the window that made her double-take, hop down, and then move over for a proper look. “Uh, dad, your walking machine is outside,” she said, nose to the glass. “My what?” Paul asked. “Your walking machine. That thing that pulled the wagon that one time? Lives in the shed?” He blinked at her, brain chugging along. “...oh balls, I’d forgotten about that.” “Well it’s outside,” she said, pointing, tapping on the window. “Really?” He could not see it from his position and didn’t want to lumber over to check himself. “I wouldn’t be saying it was if it wasn’t. That’d be kind of a weird thing to do. How’d it get out of the shed? Can it open doors now?” Cozy asked. She was of course unaware of the impromptu use Paul had put it to not that long ago, which did rather raise the question of how she thought he’d got up North in the first place, but still. Twilight had known. Had she just not told her? Tsch. “No, it’s - I’ll deal with it.” Setting the steaming teacup aside, Paul headed out back through the kitchen door. He really had entirely forgotten that he’d left the thing where it had collapsed. He would have gone and got it otherwise. Instead, the poor bloody machine had instead apparently walked all the way home again, despite being - very obviously - in no condition to walk anywhere. Paul and the machine regarded one another across a patch of what might once have been grass (Paul’s horticultural ministrations once again proving to be anything but tender). “You found your way back?” Paul asked, somewhat dumbly, unable to bear the silence. The machine said nothing. It was built for several things, answering questions not being among them. It just continued to stand there, quivering slightly and rocking a little, quivering slightly more strongly when the rocking took its weight onto its left side, quivering slightly less again when it rocked back the other way. Hell, that it was standing at all was a miracle. Paul wasn’t sure what he was meant to do. Fix it, some part of his brain said, just take it aside and fix it. Turn it off and leave it for a project. Just fix it, like you’d fix anything else you’ve ever made. Simple. But for some reason he couldn’t move a muscle. He was rooted to the spot, staring at the machine. “I didn’t mean to forget you, you know. I had a lot on. H-had a lot on.” Again, the machine had no response to this. It could have no response to this. Paul knew that even if it could comprehend that it had been forgotten in a snowdrift (and, having built it, he knew that it couldn’t) it wouldn’t have cared either way, being what it was. Knowing this didn’t stop him from feeling an upsurge of guilt, a welling bubble that started low and small but quickly swelled upward and filled him out. How many broken machines had he seen in his time? He’d long ago lost count. And what made this one any different? Nothing, really, except perhaps why it had ended up broken, but so what? What did that matter? It didn’t. And yet… And quite without understanding why and with very little warning whatsoever he burst into tears. The machine had no response to this, either. It continued to have no response even when Paul lumbered over, collapsed to his knees, and embraced it, weeping the whole while. “I’m sorry!” Paul wailed. Cozy, who had been watching the proceedings through the window with a certain level of curiosity, was out the door the moment she saw him hit the ground. “Dad! What happened?” “Oh! Oh Cozy! Oh my girl! My girl!” Feeling her bump into his side Paul lunged, wrapping his arms around her. Cozy was enveloped. “Whoa!” What Paul said next was impossible to make out, an incoherent mess buried in sobs and seemingly directed at her, the machine, and the world in general all at once. After failing to wriggle free or even wriggle into a slightly better position Cozy was helpless but to ride it out. She looked to the walking machine but it was no help at all. Fairly quickly Paul managed to pull himself together, his grip on his daughter loosening enough she could shift around and his babblings stopping in favour of loud sniffing, his breathing getting nicely back under control. Didn’t let go of her, though. “What was that about? Are you okay now?” Cozy asked, slightly muffled. Who was she even meant to call in a situation like this? “I’m fine. Just - my life has gone in a very strange direction. Heh, life. I have a life!” He might have been able to work out the reasons for this unexpected outburst if he sat and thought about it, but he had no desire or intention of doing that. The reasons were there, carved beneath the surface by a lifetime of things he’d often prefer not to remember - they weren’t even especially deep beneath the surface, not really. He could, so to speak, see their outline, and was entirely aware that they were there. But he was going to leave them there. For now. “You certainly do have a life. Now. Thanks to me,” Cozy said, mostly joking, mostly to hide a certain level of internal disquiet at her dad’s unusual behaviour. Paul gave her a final squeeze before releasing her. “All thanks to you, Cozy, yes. Heh. Hah. Hahaha!” Also mostly a joke. With some effort Paul stood up again. “Doing my best. With my d-daughter. Yes, with my daughter. She’s a horse, but, you know, whatever.” “What was that last part, dad?” “Nothing, nothing…” “I am not interrupting, am I?” Luna asked, suddenly there, having managed to approach entirely unnoticed. Paul very nearly fell over sideways and Cozy jumped a very neat and very exact foot in the air. “Bloody hell! Oh, nearly gave me a fucking heart attack. She’s quiet, isn’t she? Blood and shit…” he took a few deep, steadying breaths, hand clutched to his chest. Then he straightened up. “Luna. Yes. Hello. Can I help you?” Luna looked from him to Cozy and back again and then clearly chose her next words with some level of care: “It was regarding that… item, we spoke about. The one which you said I would be able to use, if I so desired?” She asked, eyes again flicking to Cozy once or twice, not helping in making what she was saying sound any less suspicious. “Hmm? Item?” Paul asked, bemused. “Ah, item. Yes. Go go, inside. Is, ah, is in workshop, on top of shelf. Easy to see, big. Go do,” he said, waving her in. “Thank you, Paul,” she said, heading inside. Cozy, also bemused, looked after her and then to Paul. “Why is Princess Luna here? She in your class too and having problems? Today has been a day of odd arrivals…” “Oh, she’s here to use the book. Didn’t think she’d take me up on that, least not so soon,” Paul said, wiping his nose on the back of his hand and instantly regretting it and then patting himself down for a handy rag or similar. “Book?” Cozy asked. Paul realised, belatedly, that he’d let something slip that he’d have preferred not to have done. He froze. “...uh…” He was drawing a blank. He couldn’t deny it, could he? That he’d said it at all? No, that’d just make it worse. So what could he say instead? Play it off like a joke? Weird joke. No, that wouldn’t work. Shit, shit… “What book?” Cozy asked. “It’s…shit.” Shit. “How do you ‘use’ a book anyway?” Cozy asked, finding the choice of words here a little odd, on top of the whole thing being odd anyway. Paul squirmed a bit. “Uh, look, Cozy, there’s - there’s something I should probably tell you,” he said. “Oh? What?” There wasn’t really any good way of putting this, Paul knew, so he just decided to try and sum it up as quickly and as totally as possible - get it over with: “There was a thing a little while back where an, uh - where some other version of you from some other, ah, place, kind of swapped in somehow and…did some stuff…and, uh, well, she went back afterwards but she made this magic book or something so she and I could, you know, keep in touch and so that’s - that’s where the book came from. Yeah.” A crushing, all-annihilating silence greeted this garbled revelation. “Dad! What the fuck!” Cozy blurted. “Language!” Paul said, sternly, only to have his sternness wafted aside by Cozy’s hoof. “Oh no, you don’t get to make this me being in trouble! Something like that happened and you didn’t tell me?!” She seemed pretty willing to believe that such a thing could happen but then again things like that and stranger things besides happened all the time around Equestria, her dad wouldn’t make something like it up (he didn’t have the imagination needed to do so) and, importantly, he himself was from ‘some other place’ so there was precedence. Which meant that on the balance of things whether it had happened wasn’t the issue - that she was only finding out about it now rather was. “I was waiting for the right moment!” Paul protested, using force to cover up how feeble it was. Cozy was not fooled for a moment. She could recognise someone cornered. “The right moment?! When did this happen?” She asked. “...um…” “When?” “...couple years ago…” “A couple of years?!” Cozy legitimately got him to take a step backwards as she advanced on him. “I - I just thought you had enough to worry about, that’s all. Without having to wonder how, you know, other versions of you might be getting on. Other versions who might have…not been so…lucky at times…” The memory of that fucking hole under the mountain where they’d wanted to stick his little girl loomed and he found he couldn’t really bring himself to finish the sentence. He didn’t want to think about Cozy getting thrown in there, his or any other ones. Didn’t want to think about her being left in there for however long it had been or might have been. He really was getting soft in his old age. Or at least around certain someones. “What do you mean ‘swapped out’ anyway? How long did this last for?” Cozy asked. She had a lot of questions about this, and was stumbling over which ones to roll out first. Paul rubbed his face. Despite having had time to prepare answers to this he hadn’t, and didn’t have the energy to do it on the spot. “Honestly the details kind of confused me but she was here for a few days while you were, I don’t know, in limbo or something. You came back, didn’t remember any of it,” he said. “Did anyone else know?” Paul paused, hands still on his face. “Um, yeah. Maybe one or two people…” “Like…?” His hands dropped. “You know, just the princesses, maybe, and maybe someone else, I don’t know who noticed. But mainly the princesses. Turns out the, ah, the other-you got adopted by Luna. S’why she wants to use the book, I guess? So, uh, yeah.” “...wow.” This was a lot to take in and not at all what Cozy had expected on coming back home for lunch. She’d expected a sandwich, instead, this. What would the proper response be? Was there one? She was unsure. “Can I use the book?” She asked, after a few moments digesting it all. Paul hadn’t seen that one coming. In hindsight he probably should have. “Uh…I guess?” He couldn’t imagine this ending well, but at this point couldn’t imagine saying no ending well either, or even working for a moment. “Cool. Maybe I’ll do that later. Maybe I’ll do it and not tell you about it. Maybe I’ll do all sorts of cool, weird stuff and not tell you until years later. Can’t believe you didn’t tell me this happened.” Paul was actually too cowed by his daughter’s disapproval to have any comeback to this and could only stand sheepishly while she went back inside to make some lunch. That left him and the walking machine, the machine having waited obligingly while all of that had happened. “Well, let’s get you seen to then, eh?” Paul said, leading the walking machine back to the shed where it lived where he (delicately) deactivated it and partially disassembled it with what tools he had to hand (Paul always had tools to hand). This showed a bevy of issues both mundanely mechanical and esoterically otherwise and made it very clear to him that, yes, this was going to be a project, something that he’d be coming back to for a little while. But more pressingly he had a plate to redo and a daughter to placate - and still toys to make as well, couldn’t forget those. And more lessons to plan as well, for when his pupils had finished what he’d set out so far. And another agonising meeting with Celestia to discuss how it was progressing (though honestly he wasn’t hating the thought of having to spend time with her as much as he used to - he was comfortable in knowing that he could tolerate it and there would be good tea). Barely any time left for staring into space and waiting for the next day to happen until the next days stopped happening. How unexpected. He really did have a life. Fancy that. That had snuck up on him. This thought buoyed him and carried him all the way to the kitchen, where he found Cozy sat at the table eating a sandwich and pointedly ignoring him, and also found that his tea was now cold. He drank it anyway and ruffled Cozy’s hair, to her writhing annoyance. A life! Him! Of all people. Must have done something right somewhere to deserve that. Somehow still alive after all this time and finally actually living. Who’d have thought it? “So what you working on, anyway? Up in town, I mean,” He asked, sitting opposite her. He had a vague awareness that she had somehow managed to wrangle her way onto some sort of project or scheme or something, possibly by loudly correcting someone else involved and demonstrating her aptitude, possibly by some other means - he wasn’t entirely sure, he hadn’t been able to follow it when she’d laid it out for him the first time. He just knew that she had something going on and that she was, by all accounts, actually quite involved and excited. He also knew that he enjoyed the energised expression she got on her face when she talked about it. Cozy cocked an eyebrow. It wasn’t as if she was going to just forget that he’d forgotten to mention that whole thing with the dimensions and whatever, but the opportunity to maybe talk about what it was she’d got into was a tempting one. She really had latched onto an opportunity to set her brain onto something non-megalomaniacal, and dad was, if nothing else, a pretty good sounding board. “Do you care?” She asked. Paul was genuinely affronted! “I care a lot! Explain, daughter! Don’t miss out anything! I can take it!” He said, pulling his chair in closer to the table and lacing his fingers together to rest his chin on - a proper listening pose, he felt, and one that properly demonstrated his intention for listening. Slowly, Cozy grinned. “Well…” Paul understood very little of what followed, but he couldn’t fail to understand the relish with which Cozy held forth, or the energy which filled her as she spoke. It was delightful. Incomprehensible, but delightful. Author's Note No idea if that's an adequate way of wrapping things up here or not, but that's just how this particular episode of these guys ends in my head, so that's how it comes out. I feel they've progressed at least, and I've cunningly left the door open for the future, as is often my custom. I had fun, at least. And, uh, what else. Oh yeah. Deliberately vague on what it is Cozy is actually doing. Just to leave myself wiggle room, you understand. Not because I haven't decided or thought about it. Not at all. It's for your benefit, really. You imagine what you feel is best. Anyway, that's that. We're done. Pack it up.
