The Roles We (Are Fated to) Play

by AltruistArtist

Rating: teen
Tags: Cozy Glow, Romance, Dark, Death, Twilight Sparkle, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance, Flurry Heart
Length: 14168

Princess Flurry Heart becomes infatuated with the filly imprisoned in the statue.

On Flurry Heart's twelfth birthday, Cadance tells her daughter she will never die.

Haunted by the loneliness of her young immortality, Flurry Heart finds unexpected solace in the only other pony who could possibly understand her — the filly preserved for eternity within the Gardens of Canterlot.

Flurry could not have forseen that an apparition of that filly would appear before her, and only her.

Something brought them together. Flurry intends to uncover what.

Written for the 4th Annual Cozy Glow Short Story Contest where it took second place!

Prompts used: Flurry Heart and Cozy Glow develop a strong friendship that turns into something more and Possessions.

Cover art illustrated by me.

Gracious reccomendation/review by:
TCC56

Rated "Really Good" by Ghost Mike

Rated "Why Haven't You Read These Yet?" by PaulAsaran

Published 2023-09-27 18:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2023-09-27 18:30:01 UTC

Forgiven (Unforgiven)

Princess Flurry Heart was twelve years old and she was never going to die.

As a natural born alicorn, she lacked precedence. Nothing like her existed in Equestria before she tumbled forth into the world, unfurling her overlarge wings to reveal a fluted horn atop her head, as innate to her anatomy as each of her four hooves. A host of shocked faces greeted her birth. Then, they smiled. Equestria had a new Princess. And it was good.

At the celebration of her most recent birthday, Flurry Heart blew out a decade and a fifth’s worth of candles with an eager, heaving breath and tore open a bevy of colorful wrapping paper, addressed by Auntie Twilight and her friends, Spike, Sunburst, and Starlight — all of whom had once gasped at the wings and horn sharing residence on her infant body.

Her final gift was given by her mother. As the gathering dispersed into a trickle of goodbyes and well-wishes, Princess Cadance took her daughter aside and told her with loving practicality that while her body would grow, time would bend to her stride. She would grow up, but she wouldn't age. She wouldn't develop wrinkles around her eyes like her grandmother. She would never lose the ability to run with ceaseless energy through the crystalline halls of the castle. This was known, because for the three other mares like Flurry and her mother, this was their reality.

Alicorns were immortal. And so must she be.

Flurry Heart heard her parents argue a total of three times growing up. That night was the fourth. Their voices were strident through the quartz-hewn walls of her bedroom. The pillow folded over her ears couldn’t deafen them; the curls of her mane were plastered to her neck with sweat.

“She’s old enough to understand! I cannot lie to my daughter.” Cadance’s voice was not designed for shouting. Yet she pushed the elevation of her kindly timbre to deliver one scathing rebuke after another to Shining Armor.

“But what if the lie is what you told her? Cady, we have no way of knowing yet if Flurry is immortal.”

There was an ungraceful pause. Flurry heard nothing but her own muffled breath beneath the blanket pressed to her snout.

“Celestia didn’t tell me until after I married you.” Cadance’s wild fury had resolved into implacable stone. “I won’t put Flurry through that grief.”

Silence. Shining Armor’s lack of response was more arresting than any of his anger.

Flurry wrenched the pillow from her ears. It was though the frigid north beyond the Crystal Empire had concentrated within her room, catching the moisture on her eyelashes. She let out a sob and her muscles seized in a paroxysm. Golden light ensconced her body. She teleported.

The moon made a full rotation above and below the trees as she burst brightly from midair and fell, horn over tail, into unfamiliar nighttime. Crickets and cicadas chirred a vigorous chorus in the surrounding teal-dark hedges. Flurry rose from the dusty ground and jolted at the unexpected weight on her back. Her blanket, too, had been claimed by her sudden displacement.

She wrapped it over her shoulders, slinking down the dirt path she was on like a lonely ghost. Flurry Heart had never been in Canterlot Gardens at night. She was able to place herself only when she caught a glimpse of bone-gray statuary in the distance. Even here, in her solitude, the fraught words of her parents intruded. Art was immortal. It captured a shape and held it in perpetuity. The statues dispersed between the hedgerows were perfect, imperishable bodies. The only difference between them and Flurry was their inability to move.

Flurry’s sluggish tread slowed as she approached the statue at the end of the path. It was deep within the labyrinthine bowels of the hedge maze; no other statues or souls were visible. Flurry didn’t flinch or gasp as her tired eyes rose to behold the amalgam of limbs shooting in haphazard directions. The marble effigy featured three distinct subjects, though this was difficult to perceive from a distance. Each creature was depicted in a state of compositional disorder, contorted to suggest a sudden arrest of motion.

Flurry Heart knew this statue.

A while back, Cadance led her on a pleasant walk through the gardens. They played chase and hide-n-seek through the maze. And then Cadance had stumbled upon the pedestal of this uncanny tripartite and her knees buckled, her wings unfurled to tremble, and her ears pressed tight to her temples.

“It's a tomb,” Flurry Heart said.

Cadance had flinched as her daughter approached, a haptic jerk of her withers as though expecting to be attacked from behind. “Of a sort.” Her nostrils flared with a tremulous intake of breath. “You understand that it's not a normal statue. These three creatures sought to destroy the beautiful Equestria you were able to grow up in. Their imprisonment was the only way to preserve it.”

“That’s why you were scared?” Flurry asked. She pressed the sole of her hoof flush to her mother’s elbow, the highest part of her she could reach.

Cadance’s expression ruckled. She raised a gold-shod hoof, indicating the snarling visage of the mare-like being whose leaping body was secured to the rest of the statue by a single pocked hoof. The shadow of her outstretched forelegs crossed the grim focus of Cadance’s stare.

“It was an unpleasant surprise to see her again. The former queen of the changelings. Chrysalis." Cadance whispered the name like an invective. “She did something… unforgivable to your father. And to me.”

Flurry knew that ‘unforgivable’ meant something you couldn’t speak about. She tried to look at the stone representation and see a changeling. Thorax visited the castle often for celebrations. Ocellus brought her a new book just last week. They were soft, intact, unfanged — so unlike Chrysalis. They had the eyes of ponies.

A centaur shared the pedestal with Chrysalis. Flurry supposed he fit the appearance of a monster. There were things that looked like him in the stories read to her as a filly and those beasts were always driven by malice.

She looked higher. And her heart erupted.

“Who is that?” Flurry Heart cried at the top of her vocal register.

Cadance winced, but was familiar with Flurry’s sudden idiosyncratic outbursts. “She’s… well, she was like the others. She was a bad pony.”

Flurry Heart shuddered. “She looks scared.”

Cadance hadn’t said anything in response. She tried to prod Flurry away from the haunting bulk of the statue, encouraging her into playing another game, but Flurry whimpered out a slew of questions – “How was she bad? She’s my age. Mom, I think she’s my age. What’s her name?” – none of which Cadance could answer.

In the swathing dark of Canterlot Gardens at night, Flurry still had no name for the filly rendered stone. But of all the places her dysregulated teleport could have taken her, in this moment of great distress, it was here, at the foot of this unnamed girl’s resting place.

Since she was in diapers, Flurry vacillated from place to place with her nascent magic, popping in and out of reality until her mother and father were stricken with dual migraines. Her random acts of displacement always led her to something intriguing — a mesmerizing toy, a delicious treat. Flurry Heart trusted there was meaning to her unconscious magic.

She rose to her full, insubstantial height and spread her large wings, allowing her blanket to slough off onto the gritty path. Flurry ascended with a gentle flap, eye level with the filly. Her coloring was indeterminable under the layer of stone. But the flat gray belied youthful, candy-sweet features. Freckles dotted her cheeks, just barely visible beneath the hooves reaching to clutch her own face in fright. And there was a ribbon tied in both her mane and tail. This of all things made Flurry’s stomach turn.

The filly was attached to the rest of the statue by a narrow join adhering her tail to the shoulder of the cowering centaur. She appeared to hover above the two other creatures, as though she could be plucked free with ease.

Flurry laid her hoof over the filly's. Pale pink on pale gray, they were the same size.

“Would you know what it's like?” Flurry's reedy voice echoed between the hedges.

There was no one to reply.

A banal yearning overtook her, then. Flurry let go of the stone filly’s hoof and let herself deliquesce to the ground like a falling leaf. She imagined what could be said of her maudlin state, were she not alone, how her mother might have coaxed her away from the statue once again, how her father might have deftly ruffled her mane and promised her an evening of free reign in the kitchen to concoct what she pleased. But none of that would have soothed the isolation.

Those were the comforts of dying ponies. She needed the nearness of a filly who had known youthful deathlessness in all its intimacy.

“If you ever wake up,” Flurry said, “I hope you tell me.”

—

The filly’s name was Cozy Glow.

Flurry Heart learned this a mere few days later. Heading home to the castle after a day of study with Sunburst, she crossed paths with a group of foals freshly departed from the Empire schoolhouse. All of them were rambunctious with energy pent up after a day’s learning, galloping in a circle, tossing a ball between them.

Flurry couldn’t name a single foal in the crowd, yet she leapt upon the scene with the guileless ferocity of a filly who believed herself to be among established friends. The foals flinched transiently at her insistence upon their game, but gradually realized who was among them. Murmurs of “It’s the Princess!” “Princess Flurry Heart!” “Let the Princess play!” washed the crowd. The ball quickly sailed her way, and she was hoofing it between them.

One member of her newfound company was a unicorn. The other was a pegasus. They had an obvious advantage in this extemporaneous game of keep away, an advantage Flurry herself, too, enjoyed. The unicorn laughed as he held the ball aloft in a spinning blue nimbus. Many short hooves scrabbled to reach it while the pegasus swooped to pull it effortlessly from his magical grasp.

“That’s not fair!” rose a disgruntled earth pony voice from the crowd. “You’re all cheating!”

“Not you though, Princess!” another earth pony exclaimed. “You’re doing great!”

Flurry giggled as she lifted into the air and careened into the pegasus filly. A moment fled by where their warm coats collided. Flurry’s vision filled with the pegasus’s amber-colored face and sparkling smile. The pegasus wrestled with her, her hind hooves catching Flurry’s barrel. Flurry grunted with the sweet soreness of equal competition. With a vigorous twist, she was able to claim the ball.

Caught in an elated updraft, Flurry ascended, hugging the ball tight to her chest. “I’ve got an idea!” she exclaimed. Her horn flooded with golden light and the surroundings flashed white, swept with the grand aura of her spell.

“New rules! No magic!” Flurry’s wings stalled midair and she dropped the short distance to the ground. She hefted the ball at the group and her legs splayed wide in a wild crouch. “We battle with our hooves and only our hooves. Now, who will I steal from first?”

The ball gave a desultory few bounces before rolling to a halt at the unmoving foals before her. Each wore an expression of blank stupor, quivering hooves held crooked in half-retreat.

The unicorn was the first to move. His neck twitched, one eye narrowing to a slit — the unconscious gesture of a pony attempting to access a spell. “Our magic is really gone,” he said in breathless disbelief.

“Just like what Tirek and Cozy Glow did…” murmured the pegasus filly, her wings hanging like a pair of shed skins.

Flurry Heart’s ears flinched backward. Some innate equine sense told her that was a fraught association.

“What a dreadfully dramatic thing to suggest!” Sunburst interjected. He hustled between the foals, approaching the pegasus. She shrunk beneath his scolding air, but was washed with relief when Sunburst reversed Flurry’s spell with the ease of an indrawn breath. The crowd murmured as their magical senses returned.

Sunburst eyed the pegasus. “Now, what’s your name, filly?”

“Um, Topaz Shine.”

“All right then, Topaz. I believe you owe your Princess an apology.”

Topaz turned her washed-out yellow eyes on Flurry, a discontent crease between her brows. Flurry had been so flush with the warmth of adrenaline and closeness when she careened into Topaz and tugged the ball from her hooves. There had been no distance between her and this filly. They were strangers now.

“I’m sor—”

“I’m sorry,” Flurry was able to say as Topaz’s lips parted. “It was my mistake.”

A languid, contrite smile lifted on Topaz’s face. “It’s okay, Princess. I shouldn’t have compared you to those monsters. I’m the one who should be sorry.” Her tail drooped and she took a step backward. “My friends and I will get out of your mane.”

And that’s what Flurry Heart was left with as Topaz and her friends shuffled away down the smooth crystal road. An apology, reversed. And the vacancy of her smile.

Sunburst’s fumbling hoof came down on Flurry’s shoulder. “Great Celestia, foals these days. They hear one tale of Equestrian villainy and are ready to accuse everypony of crimes against equinity. I’m sorry things turned out that way, Flurry. You had a good idea to make the game more fair.”

“It wasn’t a good idea. It scared them.” Flurry shook free from her tutor’s grasp. She slunk to the ground, her haunches curled beneath her. “Sunburst, who were they?”

“Er — the foals?”

“Tirek and Cozy Glow.”

When she uttered those names, Sunburst didn’t react with the same outrage. Instead, he crouched beside her, his starry cloak sweeping the ground.

“I suppose that means neither Cadance or Twilight ever told you. Oh dear — that task falls to me then, I suppose. I hope you’re prepared to hear something truly awful. I sincerely apologize if it gives you nightmares.”

First, the pair returned to the castle, away from the bustle of the crystal roads and the decent ponies Sunburst claimed would prefer not to be regaled with the transgressions of Equestria's most odious evildoers. And then, Sunburst told her a story. And it was truly awful.

—

A miniature sun coalesced and erupted in Canterlot Gardens. Flurry Heart burst forth from the golden halo of her teleportation spell, catching herself on tremulous legs. She hunched at the base of the statue in the crisp, violent daylight. There were tears in her eyes.

“You were an alicorn, once,” she gasped, a desperate unbottling of the flood thrashing in her head. “At least, you turned into one. But you must have felt…”

It was difficult to look at any part of the statue. The sight of Chrysalis’s snarl rattled her like a swift shake to the neck; Tirek’s cowering bulk was piteous. And Cozy — her eyes were lurid with terror.

“I don’t know Celestia and Luna like my Auntie Twilight does.” Flurry kicked up dust underhoof as she paced. “And I don’t trust them like her. They're ancient; they're not like me. They were the ones who chose to do this to you. I don’t understand why.”

She gained the temerity to lift her head and gaze up at the low view of Cozy Glow’s hooves. “The way Sunburst talked about you, it’s like you… weren’t a filly.”

Flurry’s belly connected with the dusty grit of the path as she lay prone, her pasterns tucked below her knees. “But what do I know? I don't know other fillies. Not like they seem to know each other in messy, wonderful ways. I'm like an object, a nice toy or gem. Something you can feel good about being next to. Not somepony you know. And that’s supposed to be my life forever? Who could love that pony forever?”

Clouds passed across the blithe blue sky. A pair of birds chased one another above the hedges. Flurry didn’t bother with so much as a perfunctory glance to her surroundings, to check if any passersby were within earshot. She knew she was alone.

Flurry rolled a pebble beneath her hoof and pressed down. It was rendered dust beneath her alicorn strength. “My mother has always said, 'to live in guilt is to deny yourself love.' I guess she would know that better than anypony. But, I am guilty. And I'm loved. Maybe too loved. No one is ever mad at me in a way that means anything. But if they were, I feel like I'd deserve it. I kind of want it. Anything but the smiles and reassurance. The ‘you didn’t know better’ and ‘you don’t need to apologize.’ I’ve done things wrong. And I feel like I’m the only one who can see it.”

Flurry licked her lips and made a confession. “Days after I was born, I destroyed an ancient relic of the Crystal Empire. I wiped our kingdom of its magical defenses in an instant. And I’m not in Tartarus. I’m not some lawn ornament. Because everyone who loves me said I was just a baby, and I didn’t know any better, and it was a mistake they were able to fix, so I was forgiven. They used a spell to temper my magic. I was taught how to control it. Nothing has happened since. But I think about it. I have never stopped thinking about it.

“There are monsters in Equestria. There are heroes. And there’s me. I don’t know what sort of thing I am.”

Flurry’s gaze fell as she deliberated on whether speaking further or remaining silent would be a greater relief — when she noticed another pony step forth from behind the pedestal of the horrid statue. She hadn’t seen this pony’s evident passage behind the hefty block of marble before they approached from the other side. How they got there was of little concern. Flurry Heart was staring into the lovely face of Cozy Glow, unconcealed by stone.

“Golly,” Cozy said, “you sure seem to have a lot of problems.”

The short bristles of Flurry’s pale pink coat lifted like budding grass. Random patches of her hide quivered, as though trying to shake a stubborn fly. Otherwise, she was still in the wake of Cozy’s sudden arrival, arrested by the companionable trance of her direct eye contact.

“I know,” Flurry replied. “I just don't tend to say them out loud.”

“Probably a good idea.” Cozy rocked back into a sitting position. “Never let anypony know what you're really thinking. It saves you a lot of trouble.”

Flurry Heart chuffed out a brief laugh. “I had a feeling you'd say something like that. Is that how you felt? When you were… You were just a filly. It bothered me, more than what you actually did, that you were a filly. I didn’t tell Sunburst that.”

“You sure seem to know a lot about me. What was it this ol’ Sunburst of yours told you, exactly?”

“That you did something unforgivable. You were determined to rid Equestria of its magic. You hated my Auntie Twilight and her friends. But you used to be a student at her school. You were sweet and helpful, but that was just an act to prevent everypony from seeing the real you. Somepony manipulative and spiteful and power hungry.”

Cozy Glow’s expression became vacant. “But that wasn’t the real me.” She affected a cherubic air, poised with one foreleg crooked beneath her chin. “I was cute, and lovable.”

Flurry Heart's next words left her mouth like a slow sigh. “I think so, too.”

An artist’s rendering of Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Chrysalis accompanied their mythos in the history book Sunburst read to her from. Flurry urged her expression into exquisite neutrality as she took in the image of the pink-coated filly with cherry-red eyes and powder-blue ringlets. Her mien and proportions were slightly off from that of the statue. The artist lent her a certain jagged wickedness befitting a tome entitled A Brief History of Equestrian Monsters. But she was still the most beautiful filly Flurry Heart had ever seen.

And to Flurry’s surprise, Cozy laughed. It was an inelegant sound, throaty and blunt. “Is that so, Princess? You’re not afraid I’ve enthralled you in another ruse?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Flurry Heart said outright, and for the worth of it, continued with, “I don’t hate you, either.”

Cozy Glow didn't respond. She didn't react. Her demeanor stilled utterly; the little eidolon became just as inert as the statue that bore her likeness.

“All I know about you is all the spooky history the adults and foals have recorded. None of it seemed to describe what was going on inside your head.” Flurry gazed upon her with insistence. “How did it feel to be an alicorn? What did you think about? Were you… lonely?”

Cozy Glow quivered. Her edges gave off a watery flicker, like light passing through a window. There was an abrupt withdrawal to her presence that made Flurry’s heart jump with the fear she somehow offended her. Before she could egress with an undeserved apology as Topaz had done, Flurry leapt to her hooves and asked, “If the real you wasn’t in that story, then how can I really know you?”

A wry grin jolted to Cozy’s face at the question. She regained corporeality, approaching Flurry with the look of a pony working out a particularly engaging puzzle. Flurry gaped at her proximity and Cozy passed a hoof over her eyes, the touch somehow familiar and sensationless.

“Why not start by asking the ponies who met me?” her voice brushed Flurry’s ear.

The hoof swept upward, Flurry opened her eyes, and she was in her bedroom. Her bed, her sparkling walls, her rose quartz chandelier. The verdant air of the Gardens was in her mouth.

“Flurry, dear? Dinner’s ready. It’s one of your favorites!” Cadance appeared in the doorway, her lips pulled back in a wide smile.

When Flurry Heart looked up, she caught her mother’s expression shift marginally. For a moment, she was convinced Cadance had seen, a shadow’s breadth beside her, the presence of another.

—

To Flurry, Twilight Sparkle had always been bigger than the whole world. These days, that wasn’t merely a product of admiration. As Flurry ran the length of Canterlot’s throne room, she beheld her beloved Auntie at the end of the hall upon her sovereign’s chair, the whole of the cosmos drifting through her indigo mane.

None of her presence’s gravitas deterred Flurry as she barreled to the foot of the throne, and without so much as a greeting, exclaimed, “Auntie Twilight! I need you to tell me about Cozy Glow!”

Twilight’s undisguised, gawking shock humbled her regal manner. The attending guards murmured under their breath and Twilight vaulted from her throne. Sweeping a broad wing over Flurry’s back, she swiftly teleported the two of them into her private library.

“Flurry! Cozy Glow?” Twilight sputtered before the magenta field of her magic had dissipated. “I mean — I’m always eager to see you. But what in Equestria would cause you to be interested in learning about her?”

Behind Twilight’s concerned face, Cozy Glow trod across the marble tiles of the library. She leaned against a bookshelf with a nonchalant air, running a hoof across the organized spines. “Lying would be smart. Ooh, tell her you have homework on Equestrian villains! She would love that!”

Twilight's eyes dropped to meet Flurry's. She extended a long, lavender primary feather to raise Flurry's chin. “What is it, Flurry?”

Flurry Heart ruffled her wings. “You knew her.”

Cozy’s brows dropped into a scowl.

Twilight dipped her head with a drawn out sigh. “I can only assume you had a lesson on her recently. Does Cadance or my brother know you’re here?”

“No!” Flurry blurted, much too loud. “Please don’t tell them. They have enough to worry about.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Everything seemed all right at your birthday party. What changed?”

“I think… Mom and Dad are coming to terms with me getting older. That’s all.”

With no amount of princessly reservation, Twilight pulled Flurry into an embrace. Her royal shoe pressed between Flurry’s wings and her exhaled breath ruffled the nape of Flurry’s neck.

As they parted, Twilight said, “Oh, Flurry. I think about your birth, sometimes.”

Still at the bookshelf, Cozy Glow jabbed a hoof toward her open mouth, her tongue extended in revulsion. Flurry’s equilibrium was thrown. “Uh — how so?”

Twilight was remarkably staid, unphased by her dalliance with the taboo. She regarded Flurry with a steady, sanguine warmth, the kind that made Flurry epitomize her Auntie as a hero.

“What I mean is: you’re the first alicorn to be born in Equestria. Sure, you never had to adjust to your role like I did, but you were never given a reason for it. We all ascended because of some great deed. Our purpose was made obvious to us as we acquired our wings or horn. But all you had to do was exist. And you existing is a miracle. I can only imagine the burden of that.”

On silent hoofsteps, Cozy Glow slunk into Flurry’s view, so close as to be blurry. “You’re shaking, featherbrain,” she scoffed.

“We don’t really need to talk about me,” Flurry told Twilight. She scraped the rough keratin of her hoof up and down her foreleg. “You’re right, I had a lesson from Sunburst on Cozy Glow. I’m supposed to interview you as part of my assignment.”

Cozy smiled. “Better.”

Twilight shook her head, the fluid cosmos of her mane nearly catching Flurry’s snout. The sentimental haze lifted from her eyes as she became galvanized by the prospect of academic discourse. “Right. Let’s have a seat by the fireplace. We can proceed from there.”

Washed by the cherry glow of the hearth, Twilight told an unerringly similar rendition of the story of Cozy Glow as Sunburst. Her delivery was didactic, almost patronizing in its tone of moral authority.

"I wish I had known then what I do now of her true intentions. If so, I could have prevented the damage she caused." Twilight's chin was elevated, her eyes closed. "There were things about her I should have been more concerned about. She would always ask… disturbing questions. Things like, 'What if your friend accuses you of trying to kill her?' and 'Is it possible to make friends without abiding by the Elements of Harmony?' I used to think she was just intellectually challenging me, that she was contrarian by nature. How wrong I was."

As Twilight continued through Cozy's history, her voice faded to background noise and Flurry’s attention wandered.

Cozy Glow sat by the fireplace, a flickering outline of faint gold cast upon her silhouette. Rather than basking in her namesake, she brooded with rounded shoulders. Her eyes were directed at the undulations of the flames, as though they contained something she was attempting to decipher.

Flurry extended a tentative hoof in her direction. It skimmed the thick ringlet of Cozy’s tail and she whirled, her crimson eyes as lurid as the fire. “I don’t want to hear this part,” she snarled, her ears abruptly plummeting.

“... and so, when the battle ended, the verdict of her punishment was entrusted to Celestia and Luna.” Twilight’s voice slid back into the forefront of Flurry’s consciousness. “I was in no place to question them. It was Discord’s idea, interring her, Tirek, and Chrysalis in stone. A fair imprisonment that allowed for the possibility of later appeal.”

Flurry jerked. “‘Later appeal?’ So that means — you could free her?”

Twilight’s expression soured. “Well, not at this moment. I don’t believe it’s the right time.”

Cozy Glow was no longer beside the hearth. She sat in the exact center of the fireplace amid the flame, perched upon the logs, unaffected by the blaze engulfing her. Lit from below, the shadows were pronounced on her sweet face. “It will never be the right time. Will it?”

Flurry was tossed into a whirl of hypothetical futures. She was a few decades older, a grown unaging mare, and Cozy was freed, still a filly, the gulf of time forever gaping between them. A thousand years passed, she was Equestria’s ruler, her mind altered by ancient wisdom, and she too refused to open the statue and free the monsters it preserved. It was tomorrow, and Flurry was throwing her forelegs around the adorable pink filly as the stone chipped from her coat, and Cozy would tell her—

“That's a sweet dream. Too bad it won’t ever come true.”

Cozy was out of the fire, returned to the plush rug. Her forelegs were crossed in bitter indignation.

Flurry’s coat refused to warm. She shivered. “Then what do we do? Can’t somepony help her? A teacher, a Princess. Somepony could be her personal tutor on friendship. You could…”

“But that’s the thing,” Twilight began. Her enunciations were crisp and deliberate when she said: “I don’t care about Cozy Glow.”

“What?” Flurry’s legs shot out. She canted forward as she stood, staring down her Auntie with incredulity. Cozy remained unmoved.

Twilight didn’t so much as flinch at her niece’s outburst. In fact, she was still. Contemplative, even. Her brows were knit and she was staring at Flurry with scholarly patience, as though waiting for her to come to a more rational conclusion.

When Flurry didn’t reach it, Twilight continued. “You’re right to be shocked. Because, that’s not like me, is it? You know I care for all ponies. I’m the Princess of Friendship. My title demands I be magnanimous.” Slowly, she stood on her long legs and began to pace. “But I feel none of those things for Cozy Glow. No compulsion toward understanding how she might be redeemed. It’s like my mind has decided she’s a puzzle I’m not interested in solving.”

Despite the obvious offense Cozy might have taken from this, she offered no rejoinder. She watched Twilight with a focused, almost curious expression.

“But the circumstances surrounding her… that I’m interested in. There's something I continue to think about, a theory I’m attempting to form.” Twilight paused. She stared into the depths of the library. Then, she met Flurry’s gaze anew. “The Tree of Harmony didn't cure her.”

Flurry shrunk, abashed. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

“Of course you don’t. These are the ramblings of my boggled mind.” Twilight’s horn lit. The susurration of her magical aura filled the space for a moment as her eyes closed in focus. They shot open shortly thereafter and a tome was propelled from its shelf, coming to halt below her snout. The pages turned at a rapid pace, until Twilight appeared to discover what she had been searching for.

“This is unpublished literature, so I ask you to bear with me. I’ve been developing a… well, let’s call it a pet theory, on the thaumaturgical permutations of Harmony and its effect on ponies since I became a princess. In my tenure as Equestria’s sole ruler, I’ve had the years, but not the time, to work on it. And sadly, it remains incomplete.”

“That sounds… complicated.”

Twilight caught herself. “Sorry, Flurry. Let me explain it in a way you’ll understand. The magic of Harmony is ancient, the very lifeblood of Equestria. It cannot be harnessed in a mechanical fashion like levitation or teleportation. It can only flow through a conduit when certain conditions are met. Thus, it’s a bit unpredictable. But, like the stubborn mare I am, I have been trying to identify a pattern to it.”

Twilight turned the book over, displaying a page rendered with a simple illustration of Twilight and the five other Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. A full-spectrum rainbow was emitting from their collective group. It crashed over the rearing shadowy silhouette of a pony Flurry knew from legend to be Nightmare Moon.

“Harmony magic has always performed two distinct capabilities. It can cure, or it can banish. It seems to banish what it perceives to be monsters — ah, creatures other than ponies. But for ponies, it can go either way.

“You see," she said in the tones of a lecturer, "our magic, when funneled into our darkest impulses, has the potentiality to turn us into monsters. For alicorns, this is most clearly observed, as we have the highest capacity for magic. Nightmare Moon, as an example, was a monster who was banished, but Luna was cured of her. The Pony of Shadows was sealed in Limbo, yet Stygian was the pony who was cured. And though it never came to pass, Starlight told me about a dream she had in which Celestia transformed into a malevolent being known as Daybreaker. There are always two identities at play. The pony, and the monster. A mare and her shadow.”

Flurry’s eyes flicked, finding that Cozy was beside her now. She stared determinedly up at Twilight, her coat cast a shade of dull puce. Flurry was between Cozy and the fire, Flurry’s frame preventing the light from reaching her.

“Harmony magic knows what to do. It knows when a monster ought to be banished or a pony is ready to be cured. From what I gather, this is affected by those who bear the Elements, if their intention is to seek friendship through reconciliation. My students were the ones conducting the magic of Harmony when they defeated Cozy Glow. If the theory tracks, the magic should have either banished her, or cured her of whatever internal magical force had caused her to behave as a monster. But… it didn’t do either. It didn’t perceive her as a monster, or a pony. For all I can gather, she’s an anomaly.”

Twilight shifted. “And then, there is the matter of how I regard her. My lack of concern. I understand why I don’t care to redeem Tirek or Chrysalis. They hurt ponies I love time and again. I had no sympathy for the Pony of Shadows, but I fought to save Stygian because I knew he deserved an apology for what had been done to him. Yet when Cozy Glow was before me, defeated and angry, I admit I asked her for her motive as… a formality. I didn’t protest when Luna caged her. I remember thinking, ‘this is right. This is deserved.’ But she was a filly. She is a filly — I must consciously remind myself. I am disturbed only by my lack of being disturbed.”

“It’s not like I wanted your pity,” Cozy’s voice hissed with asperity.

Flurry stared sidelong at her, unable to prevent herself from filling with the compassion Cozy disparaged. As she studied the unfitting creases under Cozy’s eyes, the depth of rage in her lowered brow, she wondered how her Auntie could have onced looked upon that same face and felt no pull to make that expression disappear.

Twilight had paused, her gaze directed at the rug. Shame was evident in every bend of her posture. “In any case, that’s all I’ve developed so far. There is an innate goodness in ponies. I believe this with everything I am. We crave friendship and community. But, it is equally true that some of us are unfit to live in Equestria. Those of us who turn toward violence and cruelty. And anypony who would dare to take magic from us is an enemy of mine."

Before Flurry could respond, a pink blur swept her vision. Cozy Glow, limbs spread wide, ascended before Twilight’s face. She beat her wings with the fury of the damned.

“Of course it's easy for you to decide who has a right to a life in Equestria! You, who has never had magic turned against her! I hate you Twilight. You fool — you hypocrite! You were the only one who could have prevented this but you didn't! I needed you to know the truth. That friendship is power. Magic is control. But of course the one who wields it never sees it that way!”

Cozy shrieked a plaintive howl, her lips rolled back from the gums of her blunt teeth. Twilight stared through her.

Flurry winced, her ears folding to block the noise. Her Auntie took notice.

“Are you all right, Flurry?” Twilight approached. Cozy dissipated under her stride. “I wouldn’t be shocked if this conversation unnerved you.”

Flurry murmured, “I’m not the one who’s upset.”

“What—?”

“I’m notupset!” she rephrased, putting on a placid smile. “I think you gave me a lot of good information for my assignment. Sunburst will probably be really pleased if I include the ideas from your theory!”

Twilight smiled, but her eyes narrowed. They stole a cursory flick about the room, yet never came to land upon the presence of the pink filly that had rematerialized at Flurry’s side. “You know what I’m saying,” she whispered. “Magic has been used to control you, too.”

Flurry’s heart thumped beneath her small ribs. “But, one last thing, Auntie. Could I borrow that book? Please? Just so I don’t forget anything.”

“Oh.” Twilight blinked. “You know I’m never one to deny lending a book. Just remember, it’s not fully finished.” She levitated the tome to Flurry who grasped it beneath one wing. “Your mom actually borrowed it once, while it was early in development. Maybe she’d be eager to take another look! But don’t let it get lost in your room. I’ll need it back, you know.”

Twilight ruffled Flurry’s curly mane. She laughed, a fragment of comfortable normalcy regained. Her Auntie loved her. And it was good.

Behind Twilight, Cozy wore a wide-eyed expression of some indeterminable emotion. She looked terrified of being touched in such a way. She looked as though she never had been.

—

Princess Cadance and Shining Armor were seated at opposite ends of the vast zircon dining table.

Until now, Flurry had never seen them in this arrangement. Yet, they maintained it with no indication of spoken agreement for the last several dinners. Flurry took her seat at her usual spot, the middle of the table, where her parents would have otherwise been across from her, side by side. Her neck was on a constant pivot throughout the meal as her mother and father took turns asking stiff, platitudinous questions about her tutelage and mood, all of which Flurry responded to with minimal detail. They did not address each other.

Cozy Glow sat across from her in her parents’ stead. She was easy to look at, and not just for the sake of her positionality at the table. The pellucid backdrop of the crystal castle suited her. Here, the lighting was soft, offering none of the scholastic harshness of Twilight’s library. Flurry wished she might meet her eyes, but Cozy’s stare remained affixed on Cadance throughout the meal she had no participation in.

Cadance ate with a delicacy befitting her royal station. Her teeth closed over the tongs of her fork without clicking and she sipped from a glass of red wine, the stem pinched gracefully in her magic. Flurry tried to imagine her mother taking the form of a monster the likes of Nightmare Moon. It seemed impossible that magic could warp her gentle sweetness into something so vicious.

After dinner, Flurry began a scrutinous study of Twilight’s book. She lay on her belly atop her plush bed covers, flipping the broad pages scrawled with her Auntie’s spidery horn writing. First, she reexamined what Twilight had personally shown her. Then, she turned to the first page. The entry there was dated to have been written more than a decade ago. Indeed, Twilight had been developing this work at a grinding pace.

It is understood that the thaumaturgical principles of Harmony act as a safeguard against chaos. The Tree of Harmony defines the borders of Equestrian soil, preventing wild magic from wreaking havoc on Equestrian citizens. Harmony magic flows not only through the land, but through all ponies. All of us have the potential to be conduits for it. Its power is magnified when we practice the unifying magic of friendship, compromise, and forgiveness.

I remain curious: what would result if a pony was cut off entirely from Harmony? What existence would they lead? Let’s entertain the idea that the magical identity known as Nightmare Moon occupied a separate body from Princess Luna, retaining her odious personality and ambitions. If there was no identity within her to salvage, could she ever acquire a right to life in Equestria? By what means could she achieve harmonious friendships with other ponies if her motives actively harmed them? What if she could not be redeemed? What if she was only ever perceived as a monster?

Just as the Tree of Harmony acts as a natural defense against chaos, I believe a theoretical equivalent exists within ponies. I propose an exchange theory of magical salvation: a “life for a life.” If a pony’s spirit is overcome with chaos, and they are compelled toward villainy, their magic funnels this discordant energy into an alter-ego. This allows for the satisfaction of justice without bringing direct harm to the original identity. The alter-ego is offered as an oblation to Harmony. It can be banished or eradicated. Its defeat preserves the original identity of the affected pony who can then be the recipient of redemption. Harmony is thus restored.

I hesitate to imagine how this theory can be manipulated.

“Auntie Twilight has so many great ideas but her writing is very… complicated.” Flurry turned the heavy cover of the tome over, allowing her eyes a brief reprieve. “I don't know if any of this will bring me closer to knowing you. Or helping you.”

She turned to seek out Cozy Glow. The pink filly’s back was turned. She had been apparently mesmerized by Flurry’s toy chest, a relic of her foalhood that was waning from her interest. Cozy didn’t touch any of its contents. She stared, unmoving, at the beautiful bejeweled playthings.

Flurry tried again to elicit conversation. “Cozy… are you okay?”

Cozy jerked. A thick curl shifted over her neck, revealing a shiny red eye pointed Flurry’s way.

“I’m sorry you had to hear my Auntie talk about you that way,” Flurry said. The naked quietness of her bedroom was enveloping. It lacked windows, untouched by the distant hum of a breeze. Sometimes, Flurry heard her breath echo off the walls. She sighed. It echoed. She continued, “I don’t know what I’d do if a pony said they didn’t care about me. I’d be hurt and confused. I’d wonder if I deserved it. And I’d feel, in that moment, like I wasn’t a pony at all—”

Cozy Glow was in front of her then, staring up at Flurry from the foot of her bed with recalcitrance. “Why are you doing this?”

Flurry leaned down. “What do you mean?”

A slow rictus formed on Cozy’s face. She grimaced without explanation for a long moment. “You heard what everypony’s told you. Mean ol’ Cozy Glow is a bad pony. She could even be a monster. It’s a good thing she was locked up in a statue. Deserved, according to Twilight.” She bit down, chomping off that last word like sinking teeth into flesh. “What do you get out of trying to know me?”

Flurry Heart’s hooves curled over the edge of the mattress. “Something pretty selfish, I guess.”

Cozy Glow smiled, her eyes tilting upward into her lowered brows. “You sound an awful lot like a princess, Princess.”

Flurry was unintimidated by her sardonic tone. “Don’t you want to be free, too?”

The shock that flashed on Cozy’s face gave Flurry fleeting triumph. She expected a hasty rejoinder, for Cozy to exclaim, “Of course I do! What a ridiculous question!”

It never came.

“Cozy?”

“Say, what do you think it means to have a life in Equestria?”

It was Flurry’s turn to be taken aback. “Uh — you live there?”

“No, featherbrain.” With a pegasus flutter, Cozy alighted beside Flurry on the bed. Flurry drew in a faint gasp, the covers twisting beneath her hooves as she accommodated space for Cozy to sit beside her. Cozy, of course, left no impression on the mattress. “I’m not talking about being in Equestria. Or having a house there, or a family, or a bunch of annoying friends. What does it mean to have a life there?”

Flurry couldn’t comprehend how Cozy’s list did not contain the answer. Of course she considered family and friends to be life-defining. The hollowness of her longing was like the space left behind by a missing organ.

Cozy must have grown bored with the tiresome, puzzled workings of Flurry's facial muscles, for she cut in. “I'm surprised you weren't quicker on the draw. Considering it was the very thing you were lamenting an excess of at the foot of my pitiful effigy.”

Cozy lifted, hovering before Flurry's face. The momentum of her wings evoked no disturbance in the air. Her eyes on Flurry's eyes, her snout was mere inches away.

“To have a life in Equestria is to be forgiven,” she said, a sepulchral edge to her saccharine voice.

She plummeted back to the mattress with a cavalier bounce. “And golly, if that’s not granted, well… you can be in Equestria, sure. You can survive there. But you can never have a life there.”

Cozy’s wings curled behind her back like a pair of senescing petals.

Flurry’s curiosity hit her like a wall. Tactless, she asked, “Is that something you learned while you were with Tirek and Chrysalis… or before?”

Cozy’s hoof came down hard. The blanket didn’t so much as shiver. “Don’t you dare imply anything about those two! You have no idea what they…” The tendons of her throat contracted.

“I wasn’t. I promise.” Flurry’s gaze crept the distance between them. If she extended her hoof, she would be just shy of contact with Cozy’s shoulder. “I was asking about your past. Before you joined the School of Friendship. You said those things like you’ve known them for a while.”

Cozy Glow blinked, her large crimson eyes bearing the same inscrutable distance as before when Flurry asked her something too identifying. She opened her mouth—

“Flurry Heart? Do you have a guest over?”

On instinct, Flurry Heart scrambled for Twilight's book, her magical stranglehold snapping the spine. Cadance pushed the broad door open, her face tilting into the room bearing an amicable smile.

“No, Mom. Sorry — I was reading to myself, actually.” Just as quickly as she assaulted the book, Flurry thrust it aside to the floor, turning her full attention to her mother. “It’s for an assignment Sunburst gave me.”

Unceasingly, Flurry’s mother arrived to kiss her goodnight. Shining Armor accompanied her if he wasn’t obligated to a late night in the barracks. But Cadance never missed it, not once. She came to the bed with a wry tilt to her brows. “Sunburst sure must have you working hard. I feel like you’ve hardly been at the castle all week.”

She rose onto the bed with a fluid grace, occupying the space left by the disappeared Cozy Glow. The warmth of her mother’s presence and closeness made Flurry draw nearer to her, resting her chin on her shoulder.

“Are you really that busy? Or are you trying to avoid being home?”

Flurry winced. Cadance received it as an answer. “Shining and I have had our disagreements before. We will overcome this one just the same.”

“I know.” Flurry's snout was muffled by her mother's rosy coat. “You'll be okay. It's more than that, though. It's… you said you didn't know you would live forever before you married Dad. If you did, would things have been different?”

Cadance's steady breathing cascaded off the walls. After a short, reflective silence, she spoke to Flurry with the same brutal candor she displayed at her birthday. “Nothing could make me stop wanting to love and be loved. I'd still want to be with your father until his final days. I'd still live with the knowledge of anticipated grief for every one of them.”

She swept a wing across Flurry's back, guiding her into repose on the mattress. Cadance's magic tugged the blankets up to Flurry's throat and set to work throughout the room, closing the light of the chandelier and replacing its harshness with a pink starscape of soft, luminous motes sent up from her horn to coalesce on the ceiling. The face of the Princess of Love became humbly domestic in the low light.

“And I wanted a daughter," Cadance whispered. She grinned as she brushed Flurry's mane from her forehead. Her eyes were cast in shadow. “I'm blessed you'll be with me for all of time. I'd have given everything to make it so, if it wasn't already true.”

She kissed Flurry Heart’s forehead, just shy of the base of her horn.

“Huh,” Cadance’s breath brushed Flurry’s temple. Her neck rose, her sight angled to the floor. “Where did you get that book?”

“Auntie Twilight gave it to me. It’s her own work,” Flurry murmured.

Cadance smiled and nodded, her eyes momentarily still fixated on the object lying past the edge of the mattress. The bedtime ritual complete, she left the room on a somnambulant trod. Flurry lay supine, her head engulfed by her pillow, watching the spherules of light pulsate in time to her heartbeat.

She turned to face Cozy Glow, lying opposite her, similarly tucked beneath the covers.

“I’ll die, you know,” she said without insinuation.

Flurry’s enervated silence made Cozy elaborate. “If I’m freed, I’ll stop being preserved. I’ll get old and die one day. If I’m not executed first.”

Flurry blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek, plummeting between the folds of her pillowcase. In lieu of that far more grim possibility, she turned to another that had nagged and chewed at her since the pink filly’s specter had come to bear at the foot of her stony internment. “Are you really here? Or have I just been imagining you?”

Cozy smiled, her teeth washed pink by the ambient light. “Is there a difference?”

Flurry smiled a little too, buoyed momentarily from worry, intoxicated by this more compelling mystery. “You disappear sometimes, though. Were you still there when my mom came in?”

“Yes. And it was nauseating.”

“What?” Flurry laughed. “Am I too old for my mom to kiss me goodnight?”

Cozy scoffed with a revulsed curl of her lip. “Bleh. Of course you are. Figures you'd be a true mama's-foal.”

Flurry’s expression of jollity waned. She propped a hoof beneath her chin. “Well, when did your mom stop kissing you goodnight?”

Cozy’s ears pinned. Her shoulders tensed. She didn’t answer.

A shiver, a magnetic pull tethered Flurry’s heart to the weary spiteful filly beside her. Again, she was judging the distance between them, whether it was an epoch, or the number of inches left unoccupied between their bodies on the mattress. Entranced by the act of beholding, Flurry felt with certainty that her next action would be easy.

With guileless tenderness, Flurry reached out and stroked through Cozy’s ringlets. The coils dragged and loosened under the path of her touch; her hoof came to rest in the furrow between her neck and shoulder. She was a solid shape, the structure of bone under her coat. Fine specks of magenta light reflected in Cozy’s wide open eyes. Her pupils were so large that Flurry could have stepped right through them.

“You should go to sleep, Flurry,” Cozy said in a hoarse murmur.

Then, she disappeared. Flurry’s hoof dropped to the mattress like a deadweight.

"That was the first time you said my name," she whispered.

No one replied.

As the blanket settled in the absence of her, and the pink nimbuses above faded one by one, Flurry wept with the private ferocity only a filly alone in the darkness of her room could inhabit. A truth impossible to disavow was that all ponies had a mother. This was brought to a sharp, aching relief when looking at the face of a filly. And each time Flurry saw Cozy, that fact hung about her like an uncut umbilical cord.

When Flurry woke the next morning, her eyelids cut with furrows of bruise-gray from restless sleep, she perched in the center of her floor, brought her wings aloft, and held in her mind the phrase: Cozy Glow’s mother.

She teleported and allowed her unconscious magic to work its reliable miracle.

—

The mare who answered the door of the stilt house on the edge of Hayseed Swamp bore no resemblance to Cozy Glow. At least, none that was immediately obvious from her physical features. She was a faint shade of waxen yellow, her mane a lank curtain of icy cyan. Her eyes were cinereous, like hearth ash. They stared wide at the unexpected visitor who had summoned her with a series of gentle knocks at her door. Nopony ever expected an alicorn princess to arrive at their stoop.

Her name was Lantern Light. Flurry Heart came to know this in the short amount of time she was welcomed inside and offered a drink. The tea that was provided was bitter and scalding, leaf mulch swirling in the lower depths of the cup.

“You seem a little young to be here on official royal business. I assume that means I’m not in trouble?” These were the first words spoken to Flurry after tea and introductions had been made. Lantern held herself in a shuffling, self-pitying way, crouching into a chair opposite Flurry. Her voice had the quality of a guttering candle.

“You’re okay.” Flurry swirled the tea between her hooves. Employing her magic seemed gauche; Lantern Light was an earth pony. “I’m actually here because… you have a daughter named Cozy Glow, right?”

An undisguised whimper jumped from Lantern’s throat. She brought her hooves to her limp mane, rubbing it between them. “Had a daughter. And, sorry. I haven’t heard that name in quite some time.”

“No, I’m sorry.” With a stilling breath, Flurry attempted to evoke the graceful conciliation she witnessed her mother use while holding court. “After what happened, I’m sure you miss her—”

“Miss her?” Lantern cut in with the incisive yet delicate chime of her voice. “I apologize, dear. But I am relieved to know she won’t be coming back to this house.”

The fidgety mare scurried from the chair, trotting across the creaking wood paneled floors as though something was after her. She seized a dry vegetal bundle from a basket in the kitchen between her teeth, primly dipping one end into the fireplace until it let off a curling slow smoke. Lantern dropped the smudging stick by a windowsill and turned to Flurry with a haunted glare.

“When the guardsponies arrived to tell me about her sentence to Tartarus… it was the first time in a while I felt safe here.” She teetered, briefly. “A mother should never have to say she is afraid of her own filly, but…”

Flurry squarely set the teacup down on the table beside her. A cursory glance about the small house revealed no glimpse of Cozy Glow, conspicuously absent since last night. Here of all places, Flurry expected to see her.

Lantern had returned to the chair and was sipping her tea with somber slowness. “In any case, she hasn’t been freed from that statue, has she?” She put a hoof to her chest, massaging. “Oh, Celestia. Please tell me that’s not why you’re here.”

“I’m here for an assignment,” Flurry said flatly, the ease of the lie sliding off her tongue. “It’s from my tutor. He’s asked me to write a report on Equestrian villains. I’ve been looking for ponies to interview who knew them.”

“Oh.” Lantern set down her cup with a misjudged clink on the saucer. “Well, you came to the right pony, then.”

Despite her initial shakiness, Lantern Light was surprisingly forthcoming. The account she provided Flurry was sharp and direct, as though energized somehow by regaling the sordid history of her daughter.

“There was always something off about her. She was good at being deceptive. I’d tell her one thing and she’d find some sneaky way to do another. She was just so wild. And… Let’s see, when was it? About one or two years before she left home? I swear, she changed.”

Flurry lifted a hoof in pause. “Wait — she left home?”

“Apparently she had gone to enroll in the School of Friendship.” Lantern shook her head in frank bewilderment. “I didn’t even know that’s where she had gone until the guards told me everything.”

“So you didn’t enroll her?” Once again, Flurry took in a cursory scope of the house. Rickety wood grain furniture. Creeping tendrils of potted plants in window sills. No pink coat or curly mane.

“I suppose I could have. But it evidently made no difference. Certainly she went there of her own will to carry out the very plan that caused her imprisonment. Such a frightening thought.” She took another sip of tea, holding her eyes closed.

“You said she changed.” Flurry attempted to coax further detail. “What does that mean?”

“She got worse. You know what it’s like to look at a Timberwolf or — or a monster and know they’re dangerous. You don’t need an exact explanation. That’s how I felt around her back then. Things would go missing or break around the house. Plants would be cut up or dead. She’d say something hurtful about another pony or me. And when I would confront her about these things, she would say it wasn’t her fault or that I misunderstood. But I knew she was lying to me! Just the look in her eye, her smile. Everything about her face…”

Lantern’s hoof quivered. Her voice was rife with the tones of a pony who believed they had been terribly wronged. “And then, oh Celestia, there was the event with her friend. She could have killed that filly.”

Sometime throughout the explanation, Flurry’s hooves had tucked below her barrel. She perched, exact and catlike on the chair, each muscle tensed. “What happened?”

“She was very close for a long time with a filly who lived in this town. I think her name was Lilypad. In any case, she and her family moved away a long time ago. Can't say I blamed them. After the move, they returned to town one day to visit a relative. And Cozy saw Lilypad again, right out there on the walkway. I was lucky to have been nearby. Oh, she was so lucky I was.” Lantern’s hoof once again was kneading her chest, the loose pale hide bunching over her collarbones. “Cozy nearly drowned her. Lilypad was in the water and she couldn’t reach the dock. She was screaming but Cozy was… she was leaning down, pushing her. Keeping her from getting back up. I think she was… She was trying to keep her head underwater.

“I was able to get that poor filly out, thank Celestia. She was sopping wet and I hurried her back to her parents, preventing Cozy from following. I didn’t let her in the house that night. I locked the door. I couldn’t sleep knowing a pony who could do something so awful was in the room next to me.”

The noise that left Lantern’s throat was a guttural squeak. She pulled her veiling mane about her shoulders and closed in on herself. “A few days after that,” she whispered, “she left.”

Flurry wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, questions swirling behind her teeth, when a distant clatter made her jump. Clamorous hoofsteps fled into the room. A pink coat sped by, curly mane bouncing.

“Mommy! When are we having breakfast?” The filly propping herself up on Lantern Light’s chair asked. Her head tilted in the wobbly way of a young foal, her fugacious attention pivoting about the room. She turned her eyes at Flurry. They were wide with blank regard. “Who’s that?”

“So sorry, Princess. She just woke up.” Lantern guided the filly to return all four hooves to the floor. “That’s Flurry Heart. The Princess of the Crystal Empire. Can you say ‘hi?’”

The filly stared at Flurry once more. A purple tuft of mane rose from her scalp like a ribbon. Flurry waved a tentative hoof.

“She’s shy,” Lantern excused.

“She’s… your daughter? Cozy’s little sister?”

“Well, technically.” Lantern’s mouth ruckled. “Half-sister. I remarried after, well, after everything. Oh, I was so lucky to have her at my age. She’s five. And her name is Flicker.”

Much like her mother, Flicker was an earth pony. Cozy’s father must have lent her traits her mother didn’t possess. Though Flicker, just like Cozy, was peach-pink; her short mane was a mess of curls. Her eyes were apricot, a shade off from crimson.

As though possessed by a sudden, chagrined need for absolution, Lantern sputtered, “I'll do better by her. I swear I will. Though I did well by her, too. And that didn't stop her from turning out so… wicked.”

Lantern wrapped a single hoof around Flicker’s neck and the little filly stumbled closer. In the slow act of observing them, the precise image of their forms attenuated in Flurry’s mind. She did not immediately process a new addition to their huddled pairing.

A pair of pink hooves were wrapped tight around Lantern’s throat. An acute throb twinged Flurry’s heart. Her eyes flicked upward to behold Cozy Glow hovering above her mother. She was weeping openly — wracked by full-body shivering sobs. Her snout was pressed so tight to the base of Lantern’s skull only her exposed gums and sealed shut eye were visible. She clung to her mother like the last gulp of air before asphyxiation.

Flurry Heart blinked. Cozy was gone, the sighting like a spurious afterimage.

“I hope you don’t mind me pausing our discussion,” Lantern said. “ I need to get her breakfast started.”

“Of course not,” Flurry mumbled distantly.

As Lantern drifted toward the kitchen, Flurry lowered from the chair and rose to the tips of her hooves, her neck twisting to investigate every open detail of the house. There were photo frames on the mantle beside her. One image featured Lantern Light and a clay-colored earth pony stallion. Lantern was holding a newborn foal — her mane was conspicuously purple. Another frame — another photo of Flicker as a toddler. There were no other images.

“You kind of look like her.”

Flurry started. Her attention spun to the little filly who had remained sitting on the rug below her. “What?”

Flicker’s eyes dropped. She hoofed a loose thread in the floorcloth, disrupting the careful work of some unknown weaver. “There’s a picture of her in the attic. That’s where Mom keeps her stuff. She doesn’t like when I go up there.”

With urgency, Flurry leaned down to Flicker and whispered, “Thank you.” Heedless of consequence, she teleported, envisioning the nebulous space above her, Cozy Glow held in her mind.

The attic was suffused by a redolent mire of mildew. Flurry staggered forth from her teleport, tripping over an assemblage of boxes and sealed crates. Her sudden arrival tossed up a cloud of dust. Particulate spun in the narrow slats of light allowed in by the poor roof paneling.

She coughed and ignited her horn. A pale golden glow washed the heaps of storage, providing her just enough light to dig through them. At every point in her scrambling search, she expected Cozy’s voice to twinge her ear, to protest, to offer any of her usual colorful commentary. It was as silent as a mausoleum.

Panting, Flurry withdrew a photo frame. A jagged crack was illuminated by her horn light, a lightning strike split down the center of an otherwise sweetly domestic image of three ponies: Lantern Light, an unknown pegasus stallion, and a young Cozy Glow. Her youthfulness in the photograph seemed a lifetime away. She was round-cheeked and smiling effortlessly.

Another photograph. This one represented Cozy nearer to the age Flurry knew her at. Cozy was smiling rascally with her tongue stuck out, her foreleg was outstretched to the corner of the frame; it was evident she had been holding the camera. Her other foreleg was wrapped around a sage-green filly with a mane the color of duckweed. If her complexion wasn’t conspicuous enough, her cutie mark was visible as incontrovertible proof: a notched circular leaf with a broad white flower. Lilypad was smiling with unambiguous delight, both hooves embracing Cozy’s middle. Of all the things Flurry could have felt, the first emotion that came to her was raw envy.

“What happened? If you were so close, how could you try to drown her?” Flurry asked aloud, searching the dark corners of the attic. There was no answer.

Flurry withdrew memento after memento, fragments of evidence that Cozy Glow had a family, that she had been real. An old chess set. A crayon illustrated card that read: Happy Birthday Mommy! An uncountable number of little crafts —puppets, sculptures, and hoof-sewn toys.

She made things. And they were discarded to the attic, rotting. Flurry's throat tightened.

And then, a book. A heavy hardbound book with a rich purple cover and the iconography of a golden horseshoe, a magenta gem set within. Flurry had grown up with a copy of her Auntie and her friends' Journal of Friendship. It had a fixed place on her shelf since she could remember. At her Auntie’s encouragement, Flurry started writing her own entries in it since she could hold a quill.

Flurry snapped the pages open. She turned to the back, knowing she would find the space where twenty odd pages had been left blank for the owner to record their own friendship lessons.

A single brief passage had been written there.

Dear Twilight Sparkle,

Nothing in this book has helped me.

There are no lessons about what to do when your mom won’t accept your apologies. Or if she stops talking to you. Or if she tells you she’s scared of you. I don’t know what to do. I'm the one who is scared. I’m angry. I'm alone.

My best friend is gone. She stopped talking to me. It's been more than a year and I don’t know what I did wrong. She never told me. We’ve never had a single argument. I love her, and she hides below the window when I knock on her door. But that was before her family moved away.

I don’t know anything about magic. But it feels like somepony put a spell on me. I barely know any unicorns. If somepony cursed me, I have no idea who it could be. Or why they would do something like this to me.

Friendship isn’t magic if it can do something so horrible. And none of these lessons are worth anything if your friend won’t even listen to you.

“The day after that, Lilypad visited the town.”

Flurry gasped out of the reverie. She dropped the book and the light from her horn flickered from the shock. It reignited and Cozy Glow stepped forth from the attic corner, opaque shadows rolling back from her face.

“It was the first time I saw her in six months. I’m not surprised I scared her when she saw me. I tried to hug her. She got startled and she slipped off the bridge. I reached for her the second she hit the water. I should have flown above her. I should have done any of the things I didn’t do. But I reached for her from the dock. She was hitting my hooves away and telling me I was a monster, that I pushed her in, but I kept reaching anyway. My mom showed up after that and she pulled Lilypad out. And Lily blamed me. She told me she hated me. And then Mom locked me out of the house. I sat outside and screamed until my throat stopped working but she never came to the door that night. And that is when I realized there was only one thing I could do. I would get rid of magic. I would destroy it. And maybe then I’d get rid of whatever curse was put on me. Because I used to be loved. I know I was! But one morning I woke up and everyone acted as though I was a monster. And when you're in that position, you see the world for what it really is. So I went to the school. I attended every lesson. I asked every question I could think of. I was sweet and helpful. I cried when I had to. I was liked only when I was on my best behavior. I gave and I gave and nopony ever did the same for me. For all that was taught about friendship, I wasn't shown it in return. Nopony made the effort to get close to me. I had to prove to Twilight that she was wrong about friendship. There was only one way to get everypony on my side and ensure I’d never be alone, or hated, or unforgiven. If I was Equestria’s Empress of Friendship, I’d never be powerless again. I would be friendship itself! But it didn’t work. Nothing worked.”

Cozy’s voice crescendoed to a splitting pitch. “So thank you for dragging me back here as a witness to one final testimony from my mother! I sure am glad to know I’ve been replaced and that to this day she still believes the worst of me! But you got all your answers, didn’t you, Flurry? Now you know that there is no point in ripping me out of that statue because I will never have a life in Equestria!”

Flurry Heart leapt at her. Cozy's stricken face was the last thing she saw before the world was ensconced in golden light.

Her hooves locked tight and unrelenting around the bellicose filly. Flurry tumbled through the grass, daylight blooming bright and green all around her.

The pair of them came to a skidding halt, pink limbs enmeshed. Flurry still hugged onto Cozy Glow with ferocity, her coat firm and real beneath her hooves.

She cried, “It's not fair! It isn't fair what happened to you and I'm sorry! Let me at least say I'm sorry!”

Flurry wept, her muzzle hot with tears under Cozy's ringlets. The body below her was motionless. Chest to chest, there was no push and ebb of breath. Cozy's hooves were limp. She was as lacking in temperature as the ground below.

Sniffing, Flurry receded. She stood on quivering legs, Cozy's Friendship Journal clutched under her wing. The accursed statue loomed above, Cozy's gray hind hooves hovering just within sight.

“No,” Cozy murmured, prone on her back under a cloudlessblue sky. “It is fair. That's the way of things. I'm not a good pony. And in a fair world, I lose.” She rose with a torpid effort, her teeth bared.“This is how it's been and this is how it always will be.”

Flurry tossed the journal to the dirt. “Twilight should see this. This is proof that something was done to you.”

Cozy coughed, a snagging laugh dredging up from her throat. “Don't you think I asked Twilight everything I wrote in that stupid book? She wouldn't do anything for me. She was just as scared as everypony else. Not even the Princess of Friendship could see past whatever it is that made everypony fear and hate me.”

“Then why can I?” Flurry demanded. “Why don’t I hate you? Why have I been able to see you all this time if you’re as unforgivable as you say you are?”

A lovely early morning breeze swept the Gardens. It lifted Flurry’s mane, the soft curls billowing about her face like an alicorn of old. “Why can’t I imagine a future without you in it?”

Cozy’s head lolled backward, her eyes trained on the sky. “Maybe you're just as cursed as I am.”

Flurry’s despair was as cold and hard as the statue above her.

“But we both know that isn't true,” Cozy continued. “You could walk into Canterlot and drive your horn through your beloved Auntie's chest and with her dying breath she would whisper, 'I forgive you.' In fact, I dare you. Do the worst thing you can possibly bring yourself to do and watch as nothing changes.”

Flurry Heart surprised both of them when she replied, “Fine.”

—

When Sunburst came to retrieve her for her daily lesson, Flurry was not there. He found her in the town square, standing imperious at the center of the rotunda, the Crystal Heart rotating serenely beside her. A violent light radiated from Flurry's electric blue eyes.

“Flurry? Is everything all right?” Sunburst's trot toward her was tentative. “You've never missed a magic lesson.”

Flurry did not reply. Her horn ignited with liquid undulations, a deep gold flame cresting toward the sharp point.

“Sweet Celestia, has your magic gone haywire again?” Sunburst ran to her and Flurry sidestepped, wings outstretched and menacing, like a bird of prey. “Flurry? What's going on? Talk to me!”

She refused. Flurry swept into the air, hovering above the town square. She angled her horn and she did the worst thing she was capable of.

With a single concentrated blast, Flurry Heart rendered the Crystal Heart a fine blue powder.

—

Cadance's hoof was on her shoulder. “Everything is okay now. The Heart was restored.”

Flurry’s coat still smelled like smoke and sediment. There was a lame neutrality in the aftermath. Sunburst had hurried to retrieve the restoration spell with orderly precision. Cadance escorted Flurry to her room as though it was her who needed safeguarding. Not even Cozy arrived to boast or congratulate her. There was only the enfeebled empty space in the middle of the floor.

Flurry recoiled from her mother’s conciliating touch, her shoulders rounded, hooves pressed deep into her mattress. “What’s my punishment?”

Cadance’s royal horseshoes clicked on the floor. “Flurry… I told you. Everything is all right. The Empire is safe. But please, tell me what’s going on.”

“Is it because I didn’t declare my plans? Because I didn’t laugh while I did it?” Flurry dragged herself toward her mother, fixing her with a manic stare. “I destroyed the Crystal Heart for a second time. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

“Of course. But, you matter more.”

Flurry slammed her hooves against her face. She beat into her forehead until Cadance was restraining her, demanding her to be still. Flurry cried out in hysterics, “How can it be right? A filly can be locked away like a monster? What does that make her? What does that make me?”

“Somepony very precious,” Cadance hushed, guiding Flurry to rest her head in her lap. She stroked her mane, carefully winding the curls around her horn. “I loved you before you were even born. The filly I knew you’d be — the love I felt was so powerful, so real it predated your existence. If such a thing were possible, I would have given my life for yours.”

A phrase intruded upon Flurry’s consciousness, rattling through her skull. ‘A life for a life’ — it had been written in Twilight’s book.

She angled her neck, searching for the brown leather cover on the floor. Smooth cyan tiles. No book.

“Where’s my book?” Flurry murmured. She reached out a hoof, withdrawing from her mother’s grasp. She slid to the floor, scrabbling under her bed. “Mom, do you see Twilight’s book in here?”

Cadance swept a perfunctory glance across the floor. “Oh, you have a book from Twilight?”

Flurry’s ears pricked. “I told you about it last night.”

“I must have forgotten.” Cadance approached and caressed Flurry’s face. “Sweetheart, please don’t change the subject. I want to know—”

“Mom, where’s my book?” Flurry’s voice rose in earnest panic, as though a fraught secret of hers had already been uncovered and gawked at. She backed away from her mother. “Did… did you take it?”

Cadance became very silent. Then her face became very sad. She gazed at her daughter with a recognizable tenderness in her violet eyes, looking the exact way she did when she comforted a bereaved pony in her court as they wept at the feet of the Princess of Love, pleading for relief from the loss of a loved one.

“I was scared when I first saw it with you,” Cadance admitted. “Almost as if it had followed me after all these years. That book… is one I know well.”

Her voice had taken on a tone unfamiliar to Flurry. “I always wanted to tell you. If you ever doubted how special you are, I always thought of telling you what I sacrificed so you could exist. I can never repay the cost of your birth, but I have you. And that's all I need to know.”

There was a stone in the center of Flurry’s stomach. “Mom, what are you saying?”

Cadance’s voice was faraway, a mare in a dream. “I devised a spell from Twilight's theory. It's all I had. There were no other theorems, no other magical cures in any book in Equestria. Because of course there wouldn't be. What I wanted went against all order, against Harmony.”

She stepped forward. Flurry stepped back.

“Flurry. My dear, incredible, beloved, Flurry. There is a reason you're the first alicorn born in Equestria. It isn't something any of us have ever been capable of. The magic of Harmony, it doesn’t… it doesn’t allow our bodies to bear children, especially not a child of our nature. When we are made, we are effectively reborn. We can't create life, because we are life, preserved. But I told you, I wanted a daughter.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I wanted a daughter.”

And then Cadance told her a story. And it was truly awful.

Flurry pictured her mother from over a decade ago, glowing with the joyful youth of a newlywed — only to be told by Celestia, her closest family, that her husband would be dust in the ground before the star of her soul ceased shining. How broken, how maudlin, how absolute her desperation must have been. How her grief certainly doubled when she felt the first twinges of pregnancy begin their course through her body, only to wake in sheets soaked in blood and evacuated tissue. Of course she shrieked through Equestria in search of answers, of a solution, of some other way. And what she found, however sordid, is what she clung to.

Of course Twilight - pragmatic, dependable Twilight - would have responded to her beloved sister-in-law's questions without suspicion. Of course she would have lent her that incomplete book without concern.

Flurry imagined how her mother appeared the night she cast the spell. How she must have deliquesced from bed with the silence of a ghost so as not to wake her husband. How she trod to the balcony on shaky hooves, the rendering of her spell turning in her mind. “A life for a life,” she must have whispered like an oath before sending a beam of magic heavenward until it disappeared in the froth of stars.

How uniquely elated she must have been when her belly grew and remained gravid. How her future must have expanded into infinity when her daughter left her body bearing her exact alicorn likeness.

Everypony was shocked. They called it a miracle. And it was good.

“I designed the spell so it would select a pony at random,” Cadance concluded with sterile sincerity. “Somepony I didn't know. Somepony I never met. I have always believed it killed them.”

Flurry thought of Nightmare Moon. She thought of how an alternate identity formed as a sacrificial lamb to Harmony. How the rendering of her mother’s spell may not have ended a pony’s life, but taken it. She whispered, "But what if it didn't…?"

“I have no way of knowing, I suppose. Twilight's theory demanded one life be given in sacrifice for another to be saved. A life for a life could mean anything.” She blinked, staring at her with wet eyes. “The only one that matters to me is yours.”

From behind Flurry Heart, a small form crept forth. She crossed the floor on imperceptible hoofsteps, her presence leaving no trace.

Cozy Glow came to her knees before Cadance, who did not acknowledge her. Her body collapsed as though pressed down by an impossible weight. She stared up at the alicorn she had never met, a true stranger, and gaped in horror, her jaw locked in an agonized snarl as an answer she never believed she'd receive made its full circuit of comprehension.

“You did it?”

A wheezing gasp rattled Cozy's throat before it was expelled as a wretched laugh. A sob. A scream.

“You did it… You did it. You did it. You did it! You did it! You did it! You did it! You did it! You did it! You did it! You did it! You did it! You did it!

"YOU DID IT!"

—

Canterlot Gardens was silent in the late evening. Even the crickets were hushed. It was noiseless, a vacuum, a space between spaces. The dusk skyline settling in the distant horizon was as gray as the statues.

Cadance wouldn't follow Flurry Heart here. It was the one location she could always disappear to.

Flurry hovered on languid wingbeats before the stony visage of Cozy Glow. Her throat was raw from the long, unceasing stretch of weeping that had preceded her arrival to this penumbral gravesite.

“If I was a normal alicorn,” she said, “I guess you’re what my magic would have turned me into. If I ever went bad.”

Cozy lingered behind her statue, a deep shadow cut below her visible eye. No light reflected from her pupil.

“Or, you were made to be seen that way, unable to be forgiven,” Flurry continued. “And you were always the same.”

"Is there a difference?"

Cozy remained suspended in the air, hind hooves dangling like a hanged corpse. Her wings were static, held outstretched but not flapping.

“At least now I know,” Flurry Heart brought her hoof to the statue’s, “why I’ve always been so alone.”

As she drew close to the wide-eyed stone filly that had inspired her limerence, she saw with exact clarity the similarity between their faces. The proximity to Chrysalis’s snarling form below her sparked uneasiness in her chest, but she remained unswayed from what she did next.

“This life was never mine to own.” Flurry’s horn swirled with lambent marigold light.

Cozy spoke, sudden and unconcealed worry entering her voice. “Flurry, what are you doing?”

"A life for a life," Flurry intoned, repeating the words uttered by her mother over a decade ago. Her magical senses parted the way for her, unfolding a clear path. The magic of Harmony twined around her horn. She guided its threads.

Flurry Heart brought her muzzle to Cozy’s and pressed her lips to insensate stone.

The statue opened for her. She stepped inside.

She fell asleep. She perished.

—

The filly who had been stone opened the eyes of the filly who was never going to die.

She gasped, taking a great swell of air into strange lungs. She was unused to being in an animate body. Each sensation was a marvel, a terror.

She turned and reached out a pale pink hoof in search of the filly who had been beside her who she could finally touch, only to find she was not there. She was that filly.

“Flurry…?” Flurry Heart said — Cozy Glow said through Flurry Heart's voice.

Her hooves, a shade of pale primrose, were familiar. She turned them over. She pushed them into the grass, the grass she had stared at for over a decade but could never feel the softness of.

“You wanted to know what it's like — being an alicorn?” Cozy Glow asked through Flurry Heart’s tremulous voice. Cozy’s affectations. Flurry’s tone.

A frisson crackled through Flurry’s nervous system. Cozy folded Flurry’s knees, dropping her body to the ground, brought low by the tremendous magnitude of her appétence, of her dread. Flurry Heart’s eyes spilled over with tears as Cozy beheld the statue.

“It’s everything,” Cozy Glow said.

And she was alone. The garden was silent. Everything was silent.

In the soft gray distance, the lofty spires of Canterlot Castle rose skyward like a crown. Cozy Glow gazed upon Equestria’s kingdom through the eyes of an alicorn.