The Demon Child

The doorbell rang, a bell toll echoing all throughout the empty halls and corridors of the house. Luna ignored it. Celestia would see to it, and whoever it was would be happier to see her sister than her. Celestia was the important one, after all. Luna's role was at best to fill in for her when she wasn't available.

Luna regarded her study. One could appropriately call it spartan, and evoke the right kind of image with the term alone. A grey carpet in the middle of the room. A lonely window with thick white curtains that reached halfway down to the floor. A cheap desk without any blemishes to show for its age. A wooden chair with the barest hint of a curve to its backrest. The few books she needed on hand for whatever she was working on, and an ever present dictionary. No other reading material or shelves to place it on. Books were for the living room, to impress guests when they walked in.

She liked her study. The uniform walls and evenly painted ceiling made it easy for her to get lost in it in the half light she kept it in. When she sat down at her desk to work and looked around, it was like being surrounded by an endless expanse of nothing as far as the eye could see. She found it rather helped her concentrate. It was a way to shunt off the world. Just her and her kingdom of emptiness. And concentrate is what she was doing at that moment, as even with her sister taking care of meetings there was still the matter of all the boring, menial, unimportant and yet indispensable paperwork that poor Celestia was too constantly busy to devote herself to.

So it was that Luna busied herself navigating a sea of paperwork, waiting for the moment her sister would wake her out of it to announce it was time to worry about dinner. But she was awoken a fair bit sooner than she would have thought, and by a voice she did not recognise to boot. A young voice, high and tinny and like a dagger stabbing through the air.

"How does it feel like to be dead?"

Luna stopped what she was doing, her pen hovering in perfect stillness above the paper. She turned towards the door, where the voice had come from. There stood a little girl framed by the unnatural light in the corridor, dressed in red and white and pink. Luna blinked once. She did not recognise the girl, and doubted she was a student at CHS, given she was familiar with most all of them at least superficially. Three questions rose up to her mind that she asked in calm succession. "Who are you? How did you get in here?" And, lastly, "What did you say?"

"I asked what it feels like." The girl stepped forward, and the light flowed with her into the room. "You know, being dead." One more step. "I'm Cozy Glow." As if that carried some greater meaning Luna should have been privy to. "The door was open. Someone must have left it that way."

Luna blinked again. Had something happened to Celestia? "Did you see my sister on the way in?"

Cozy chuckled. It was a sound as clear and cold as an unblemished glacier. "That's no fair, princess. I've answered three of your questions, and you still have not answered mine."

Luna's first instinct was to ask if Cozy was lost, but she figured another question wouldn't be the right move. There was something off about the girl. Maybe she was in shock. Maybe she was running away from something. It was worth being careful with. "I'm not sure I understood what you asked. Could you repeat again?" Luna tried to smile. She was aware the result wasn't good. Smiles were always her sister's thing.

Cozy tilted her head to a side, sending some of her light blue locks to brush against her shoulder. Her thin smile did not go beyond her lips, and her eyes were like embers burrowing into Luna. She sighed. "I asked you what it feels like to be dead."

Luna took in a deep breath. The room felt darker than before, even with the light streaming in behind Cozy. Perhaps the Sun had fallen outside. Little girls should not be talking about death, but perhaps she was too young to understand what she was saying. Though she didn't look that young. "But I'm not dead," Luna replied, choosing logic to try and untangle whatever it was the girl brought with her.

"Oh." Cozy looked surprised, for just a moment, but then she chuckled. "You don't even know it. You don't even see it. I'm sorry about that. But I can help you. I can show you." She turned around, making the hem of her skirt trail behind the rest of its length in her twirl. "Follow me!" she said, louder and more energetic than anything she'd said up to that point. Then she dashed out of the room, red shoes patting against the wooden floor in a quick rhythm that slowly drew away from the study.

Luna stood there, confused, for a few seconds. But then her sense won out and she gave chase after the girl down the corridors of her house. Her little legs wouldn't carry her too far, and it wouldn't be a challenge for Luna to catch up with her. It was best to look after Cozy and figure out what was going on with her, before she hurt someone or herself.