The Demon Child

Celestia stumbled inside and closed the door behind herself, shivering from the cold and bringing her manicured hands to her mouth to breathe on them and warm them up. As the walls of her home cut her off from the darkness outside and the warmth of the corridor began to seep into her flesh, she became aware of how the lights were already on before she'd entered. Not just the one closest to her either, but all the way down the corridor as well. That was unusual. She was not so forgetful as to have left them on as she'd gone outside. A touch confused, she turned off the one near the front door and walked towards the next.

Then she heard a sound. It was like boxes tumbling, that indistinct noise of soft things falling somewhere in the house. Nothing had broken that she could hear, but she needed to go check on what it was regardless. She turned down the side of the house the sound had seemed to come from, and was surprised to find more lights already turned on leading the way. She took each step deliberately, eyes and ears alert for anything around her.

There was another sound, still muffled. Something running, and maybe hitting something else. Had a cat sneaked into the house? Some other animal seeking shelter, drawn in by the warmth of her home? She wouldn't toss it outside to the cold if it was a stray, but she couldn't have it running unsupervised around the place. The sounds had come from downstairs, the cellar, where she kept food and old things and all manners of occasionally useful school supplies.

The door was unsurprisingly and unsettlingly open, and she could already see the light behind it as she walked down the steps towards it. She rested her hand carefully on the handle, and as if trying to catch someone in the act she waited a second, then flung the door open all the way. The room before her was illuminated, but all was still, and nothing was amiss. There was no intruder, animal or human, and not even a sign something had fallen somewhere.

But it was not exactly a tidy room, and there were blind spots where a cat could be hiding, or behind which there may be a pile of fallen books or clothes she couldn't see yet. She walked down the final step into the cellar and closed the door behind herself. She breathed slowly, regretted not wearing something more to contend with the coldness of the room, and set about looking around to make sure it really was as empty as it seemed.

She checked behind every pile of forgotten stuff from long gone moments in her life, and looked over every shelf to make sure no animal was hiding among those things she wished to preserve out of instinct, but cared not to display and be reminded of in her daily life. Once or twice she even stopped for a second, to look at this or that fragment of her past and reminisce briefly about the moment she'd shed it. It was never more than a passing thought, though.

She found nothing that shouldn't have been there. She wondered if she hadn't misheard, if the sounds hadn't come from somewhere else in the house or maybe from outside. That still wouldn't explain the lights. And there was a feeling, like static in the air surging over her body, telling her something was there. Unsatisfied with a lack of answers, she gave one more sweeping look to the mausoleum of her memories, and finally noticed something. There was a puddle on the floor. Water, though not exactly clear. A growing puddle.

She tracked it with her eyes, then moved towards it when she found its farthest edge hidden behind a shelf. She followed it, careful not to step foot in it and ruin her red shoes or wet her stockings. She found a crack in the wall, and hints of something metallic inside the wall once she leaned in to get a better look. Water was flowing out, like from a broken pipe on the other side. The flow grew stronger as she stared at it, no longer a trickle but a pour.

Celestia stood stunned as the puddle widened and spread beneath her shoes, then leaned forward into action. She first tried to halt the flow with her hands, but found it impossible. The water simply slipped through her fingers, and a moment later it was coming in strong enough to push her hands away. She took a step back, whipping her hands to clean them and thinking of what to do. In the time it took her, the puddle had hit the edges of the room, and the water level began to rise.

Celestia stumbled back, as if at that point it still mattered where she was compared to the water, and frantically began to look around. There had to be something she could plug the leak with, anything. But nothing she saw would work. No souvenir from one of her many vacations, no toy from her youth nor folder of old useless paperwork could properly stop the flow of water from the wound in the wall. There were a few wooden things, half broken and half carved by woodworms, but even if she'd had a proper panel or plank she couldn't hope to nail it into solid concrete.

The water was up to her ankles, and seeping higher along her stockings. Her shoes were probably ruined, but that was the least of her worries at that point. She didn't even much care for the stuff there, it was there for a reason even if it would still hurt once she saw it all ruined. Some of the food would need to be tossed too, but that was no big issue either, and what was inside the old, boxy freezer may come out okay. Although... She was just in time to dash towards the wall and pull the plug before the water level reached the socket. She breathed a sigh of relief.

A bell tolled somewhere overhead. Losing the stuff there wasn't her main worry. It wasn't even the cost that troubled her, though that would be annoying. It was the time. The time it would take to sort through it all and fix everything once the situation was resolved. She could feel the water eating away at her future as it rose, halfway to her knees by then. And if it kept rising and got to the ground floor, and ruined everything there too? Celestia almost felt herself passing out at the thought.

The water was reaching past the bottom of the door. In a bout of worry she waded through it, and after a brief moment of deliberation threw open the door. She did not like the way the water poured itself onto the first step, wetting the much better kept and properly painted walls outside the cellar, but the door opened inwards and she did not want to risk getting stuck if the water rose too high.

She stood there, sweating from nervousness, looking up at the staircase and wondering what to do. There was probably a switch somewhere, or a valve, something she could shut off to make the water stop. There had to be. But she didn't even know where to look for that, much less what to look for. With how long it would take her, it would be easier to just call someone. Maybe a plumber. But by the time anyone got there, her house could be in ruin. But what else could she do?

A bell tolled again. She turned back towards the rising tide. A few things had taken to floating above the water. Old clothes she hadn't worn in decades slowly getting drenched. Old papers now illegible as the ink spread through them. Wooden trinkets and wintertime baubles and other knick-knacks that had once meant something to her. And the stray sealed bag of chips or crackers, which she kept down there because it was cold and, usually, dry.

And something else came carried by the current, as the water reached past her knees. It was a boat, or at least something like a boat, tiny and thin and like something a child would fold out of paper. With its curved shape and tall mast it looked like an upside-down scythe, and within it there was space for only one person, and a small one at that. There was a girl inside the boat, a little girl with red eyes and blue hair that Celestia recognised, but couldn't recall ever seeing before.

Cozy Glow wore all black, and a thin red headband over her hair. A top that ended just slightly above her waist and clung to her body, with long sleeves that hooked onto her middle fingers. Pants that matched the colour and texture and did the same on her naked feet. Her nails were sharp and painted black, and she ran them against the side of her boat. She lounged on it like a cat, looking at Celestia like she was a bird stripped of her feathers while drifting lazily towards her. "Life's tough for a murderer, is it not?"

Celestia stared at her, understanding the words but not their meaning. The water was still rising, but it seemed to have slowed down somewhat as its height approached that of the crack in the wall. "What do you want?" she asked. It was not the only question on her mind, and not even the most important. It was just the first to have made it out.

Cozy burst into laughter, and it was immediately clear she was laughing at Celestia more than at the question itself. "Wouldn't you like to know?" she finally said when she calmed down from her giggling fit, and her smile was as cruel as it was genuine. "Aren't you cold? Cold and wet down here in this damp little cellar, full of nothing but waste?"

The bell tolled again. The water was halfway to Celestia's thighs, up a few steps on the stairs leading down into the room, but it had stopped rising altogether. It seemed reaching the crack it was pouring out of had done it. Celestia was cold. She shivered, and hugged herself for warmth. It still wasn't enough. "What are you doing here?"

"Just helping along." Cozy rolled onto her back, with her head dangling out of the boat, curls just barely not touching the filthy water, arms resting along the upper edge of the hull. "You should start a fire."

Celestia looked at her, and blinked. She mouthed something. Not anything clear, but the intent of the question was apparent.

"To warm yourself," Cozy replied. "To burn the water away. Start a fire. You deserve it."

Celestia nodded at that. The bell above tolled again. Start a fire. She turned and walked back up the steps, and fire walked with her. And in the darkness of the cellar, Cozy Glow smiled.