The Demon Child

The doorbell rang again, the sound of a bell toll echoing through the rooms and corridors of the house. Celestia's high heels drew a beat against the drawn out metallic note as they clacked onto the wooden floor. She had just gotten back from a long and tiring meeting, and she did not wish to have anything to do with anyone, but it also meant she was still properly dressed enough to answer the door and politely tell whoever she found there to leave her be or risk wishing they had done as much. She hadn't yet made it back to her room when she'd heard the sound. Had the doorbell rung a minute later, she would have had to send Luna instead.

The light outside assaulted her senses in the way only tired eyes and an even more tired mind can feel. It did not help matters that Luna kept the windows in the house partially shuttered at all times, casting its insides in a perpetual half gloom during the day. The world beyond the walls was much brighter. It was already evening by most stretches of the word, but it was late spring too, and the sky was still lit in the way it only is during those days. If she stared towards it, with its featureless expanse of cloudless blue, she could almost imagine herself falling into it.

She didn't stare towards the sky, though. She stared downwards, at the little girl standing on her porch.

Celestia's first thought was that she looked like she went to Crystal Prep. Celestia didn't know why she'd thought of that when the girl wasn't wearing anything close to Crystal Prep's uniform, save perhaps the fact that she knew she wasn't a student at CHS. Celestia knew all of her students, and remembered them all. Magical horses notwithstanding. The girl didn't look like a horse to her. But perhaps the reason Celestia pinned her as a Crystal Prep student was more simply the feeling she got from her. Celestia was always good at reading people like that.

The girl had salmon skin, ice-blue hair styled in a set of thick curls with a white ribbon keeping part of it in place, a scant few white freckles on her cheeks, and scarlet eyes that all the innocence of her expression and demeanour failed to touch. She wore a short sleeved pink and white blouse that may have been a school uniform, if not one Celestia recognised, a short frilly skirt that matched her top, short white socks and a pair of reddish shoes with a geometric pattern traced over them in a darker shade of red. She was looking up at Celestia while gyrating a little in place, causing her skirt to flare out slightly as it twirled one way and then the opposite one.

Between the dizziness born of the Sun stabbing her eyes and the tiredness from a long day of work, which caused her to see flickers of strange lights at the edges of her vision, it took Celestia a few seconds to realise the little girl was waiting for her to say something. Somewhat embarrassing when she had been doing the same. She frowned, narrowed her eyes, and when she finally spoke she infused her tone with all the artificial politeness she'd bred over decades of working with other people in highly formal contexts. "Is something the matter? Do you need help? Are you lost?" Those were not the questions that first came to her mind, but rather the ones she felt it was more proper to ask. If she'd had no filters, she wouldn't have been asking questions in the first place.

The little girl smiled at her. There was something about her looks Celestia could only describe as predatory, even as the girl stood with one of her legs bent forward to rest the tip of her shoe on the ground, wagging the heel side to side while she gently wrung her hands together behind herself. "My name is Cozy Glow," she said, answering a question Celestia hadn't asked but would have liked to. "I wanted to have a talk with you."

Inwardly, Celestia did whatever the inward equivalent of raising an eyebrow was. Outwardly, she maintained her poised expression, more out of sheer habit than deliberate effort. The child was starting to get on her nerves, for what could a child possibly want to talk about that might be worth her precious time? Still, nothing good would come from snapping at her. She played along with an even tone, and hoped things would be over soon. "What did you want to talk about?"

Cozy Glow smiled up at her. "I know it's hard. It always is when something like this happens." Celestia frowned, outwardly this time. Cozy continued. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm sorry for your loss."

Celestia flinched, though it was barely visible. Her tone wavered slightly when she next spoke. "I'm not sure what you're talking about. Or if you have the right person."

Cozy's response was candid and innocent. "I'm talking about your sister." Her smile widened as she swayed back and forth on her ankles. "You killed her."

For one moment, Celestia was falling. The blue sky filled her vision and her guts told her she was plummeting. Multicoloured sparks rose and crackled in the corners of her vision. Then the moment was over, and she landed in the ironclad stability of her logic and routines. She was alone on the porch, and the sky above was quickly growing dark. She shivered slightly from the cold. She turned around, and walked back into her house.