"I don't ever grow any bigger," Cozy said. "I'm stuck as a foal forever."
Luna sighed. "I tried. Really I did."
"Well, you didn't try hard enough!"
"All I knew was, I was being sucked through a magic portal to the moon. I didn't have time to think it all out carefully. But I knew one thing. I didn't want to lose my only daughter. I wanted to preserve you, freeze you in time, so when I came back from the moon a thousand years later, I could unfreeze you and be your mother again."
"Ha. Freeze me in time? You got it half right. Now if only you could unfreeze me."
Luna hung her head. "I'm sorry, Cozy."
"Sorry doesn't do me any good. So use that wonderful alicorn magic of yours and fix me."
"Every day, I try to find a way. Really, I do."
"But even if you do fix me, that still won't make up for a thousand years without a mother."
Luna groaned. "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to find a way to make it all better. Because you owe me."
Luna scratched her head. "I wonder, how did you survive during those thousand years? How did you make do?"
Cozy sniffed. "I don't want to talk about it. Those were terrible times."
Cozy Glow said, "I don't want to clean a chimney!"
A large, bulky stallion colored coal black said, "But you're naturally perfect for it. As a pegasus, you have two built in feather dusters on your shoulders. All you have to do is go up the chimney." He shoved Cozy Glow into the fireplace, and pointed a poker at her. "So what'll it be? Go up the chimney, or try to get out the other way, through the fireplace? Because I know which choice will get you poked full of holes."
Cozy retreated far enough up the chimney that the stallion couldn't reach her. "I hate you."
"You shouldn't hate me. Because I'm the pony who's bothered to find you a way to earn enough gruel to live, and a place to sleep at night."
"Well I'm not going to clean this chimney, so there!" Cozy Glow sulked in the narrow, dark space.
Beneath her, she heard a sound like pieces of wood being knocked around, and banging into each other.
A little later, she heard a match striking, and paper crackling as it caught fire.
The stallion said, "Go all the way up the chimney so the old dirt and soot get caught in your wings, or choke to death on smoke. It's all the same to me."
Luna said, "I'm so proud of you! Earning a living on your own, even though you're just a pegasus, not an alicorn or unicorn."
"I hate you."
Cozy Glow stood on a platform behind two carnival barkers. Her wings were featherless, plucked like a chicken's.
"Come one, come all!" a mustached unicorn said.
"Hit the pegasus with a tennis ball, and win a prize!" another unicorn said next to him. Both unicorns had red manes, with gray stripes.
"Pay two bits to see the amazing flightless pegasus, the only one in the all the land! An amazing, horrifying freak."
"Pay two more bits for a tennis ball, and if you knock her off the platform, you win a valuable prize!"
Cozy Glow looked at her own wings. Each was painted with a large bulls eye pattern, as if being featherless wasn't humiliation enough.
A blue and white unicorn mare approached the barkers' booth. "I'd like--"
"You looked at the pegasus!" the first barker said. "You owe us two bits!"
"But I--"
"Pay up the two bits, or we'll take you to court for cheating us. But if you pay four bits, you get a tennis ball, and you can throw it at the amazing featherless pegasus to win back all four bits and a valuable prize besides!"
"Um, I guess?" The mare paid the four bits, and the brothers gave her a tennis ball.
The mare levitated the tennis ball, tossing it at Cozy Glow.
Cozy Glow dodged just in time, so the ball arced past her. "Ha!" she said. "Unicorns are stupid!"
The mare gritted her teeth. "Give me another tennis ball. I want to knock the sassy smile off that stupid pegasus face."
"As you wish. More bits, please."
Cozy Glow ran back and forth, getting bruised only a couple times as tennis balls bounced and bounced again and again.
After the fairgrounds closed for the night, Cozy Glow looked down sadly at the two barkers. "Please let me down?" she said.
"Sure, little missy." The first barker levitated a cage up onto the platform. "Just hop inside your bedroom."
Cozy gave the barkers a sad look. "Why don't I ever get to run around and play like other little foals?"
The second barker grinned nastily. "Because you would probably try to run away, you ungrateful little filly."
"Maybe I'd be more grateful if you didn't pluck my wings so I can't fly."
The first barker pushed Cozy into the cage, and slammed the door shut. "I think the snack shack has some leftover day old hay fries for you."
"I hate you so much. Someday, my mother is coming back to save me, and you'll get what's coming to you."
"Ha!" the barker laughed. "You've been saying that for years, and nothing ever happens."
Cozy tried to do the arithmetic in her head. "Someday," she whispered to herself, "only nine hundred and ninety-three more years. And then you'll be blasted by a super alicorn death ray, and blown to bits. No, blown half to bits, so while you're dying the rest of the way you'll have time to be sorry you were so mean to me."
"I'm so sorry!" Luna said. "How could I have been such a bad mother?"
"What, how could you have left me all alone for a thousand years? Yeah how could you?"
"No, that's not what I meant. I meant, how could I have turned into Nightmare Moon and rebelled against my sister, and not have taken any time first to teach my own daughter the basic nightmare skills? There are a lot of ways to get vengenance on your enemies, and I didn't teach you any of them."
Cozy Glow cried. "I was so sad. I was all alone and helpless." She gave her mother a pathetic look. "So if someday you get banished to the moon for another thousand years, what could I ever do to protect myself?"
Luna took a minute to think. "For starters, my little Cozy, you need to work with what you've got. You don't have a horn to blast your enemies with death rays. But you do have a very, very cute and innocent looking face."
"What good is that?"
Luna smiled. "I have a lot of experience dealing with nobles. Let me teach you about politics, and how to trick other ponies into doing whatever you want them to."
"Golly! Do you think I could really do that?"
"Let's give it a try," Luna said.
