Cycles
Mors
Previous ChapterNext ChapterEverything felt so numb.
They'd given Cozy medicine for the pain. Bottles of foul tasting syrups and dusty pills. At first she refused any of them, and she'd remained curled up in bed, as if it were her whole body still made of stone and just just her left wing and hoof. Half her lungs, and almost her heart.
Eventually she'd relented. The pain got to her after the third day. In its absence, she sometimes missed the pain before remembering its intense fire. Raw and angry, seething the way a wound ought to but without any means to dress it, to stitch it up.
She preferred feeling numb.
She lay on her side on a bed too small for such a tiny filly. She was pretty sure it wasn't a bedroom, though it was at least big enough to be one. Someone had fit bars over the window. It was a temporary placement she could probably kick out if she had the strength. The guard outside would probably barge in if she tried.
The rest of the room had little furniture save for her bed, though she had plenty of other smaller things. Books stacked beside the bed, mostly. Novels, philosophy textbooks, a journal without a pencil or quill that had but a single entry.
There was also the book with that darned six pointed star on the cover discarded in the corner, its spine pressed flat until it had broken. It had rest there for days, unmoved from its hateful little corner.
Cozy pushed herself upright, and slouched over the edge of her bed. With a deep inhale she straightened herself up then pushed herself off the bed, three hooves and a rock falling onto polished stone.
"Mister guard, can I come out?" she asked, her voice dripping like sour honey. She knocked on her cell's solid, heavy wood door. High up, about an adult pony's eye-level, was a small, barred window. They'd cut it out and put a cover on the far side, so they could watch and communicate with her when they deemed it convenient. "I'm so bored in here."
"You know I can't do that," the guard on the far side responded, his voice muffled by the wood. She recognised the voice as one of the few non-ponies on staff A feather-brained moron that messed with her plans years ago.
"Come on, Gallus, it'll be just like old times!" Her giggle came out like a hiccough. "I can break stuff and you can fix it."
The latch on the window clicked and a beady blue eye stared down at her. "I'm not playing this game with you, Cozy. If you're bored, read a book. You got plenty."
Cozy blew a raspberry. "I've read them all. I need enrichment. I need space. This treatment is inequine!"
The eye rolled. "If you need another book, I'll get you one during shift change. Until then—" Gallus' eye disappeared for a moment. "Oh, Princess Flurry Heart. What are you doing here?"
Tilting her head, Cozy's smile fell away. She glowered up at the door window, craning her neck and even rising up on her rear hooves to try and see what was happening. All rather fruitless, in the end.
"I wanted to say hi," a voice on the other side said. Tiny and high-pitched, it had to belong to someone as young as her.
They hadn't said how long Cozy had been petrified, but that gave her an idea. Flurry Heart was only a baby when she was locked away from the world.
"Well, you've said it!" Gallus said. His voice sounded unusually cheerful for a griffin, at least at first. "Now I suggest you scram, young lady. You're not supposed to be here."
There was an indignant huff on the far side. "I can't say hi through a door, silly! And I brought something to do."
Cozy grinned again, and thudded a hoof on the door. "Let her in!" Cozy said. "It'll give me something to do, and someone to mess with that isn't you."
Gallus growled. "You know I can't do that—Princess, what are you—"
The door knob glowed for a moment, magic's tell-tale twinkle surrounding it. A few clicks rattled it, followed by a thunk as the door opened.
Cozy scurried back and she stared at the intruder to her little space. A filly, her age, with fuchsia curls that wrapped under her chin. Her horn extinguished, and she had a box under one wing.
Flurry smiled back at Gallus.
Gallus muttered something obscene under his breath. "Guess I can't stop you," he then said. "She can't leave though. I really can't let that happen."
"I understand!" Flurry nodded, then turned back to Cozy Glow as she pushed the door closed with a thought. "Hi! I'm Princess Flurry Heart."
The novelty-driven glee in Cozy's heart ebbed away. She hadn't expected someone to just barge into her space, even if she didn't officially own it. Years of practice let the smile remain, but she so wanted Flurry out.
"I know," Cozy said. "You know who I am."
"Cozy Glow, yes." Flurry gently placed her box down beside her, then pushed it forward between them.
She must have been a smart filly if she knew how to pick locks and she knew Cozy's name. She must have been stupid to walk right into danger with a smile, even if Cozy couldn't do much. Cozy had to admire the oxymoronic existence.
Flurry pushed the box forward with a hoof. The front bore an image of some mountain or other and had a small sticker at the top left boasting that it had over one-thousand pieces. "I brought a puzzle to do! You like puzzles, right?"
"Not those kinds," Cozy said. "They seem boring."
Flurry tilted her head. "Oh. Well, you don't mind if I put it together while we hang out, right?"
"Well I—"
Flurry opened the box and spilled the puzzle pieces on the floor. Cozy gawped at the imposition, then looked up at the door to see Gallus' gaze laughing at her.
Huffing, Cozy made her way back to her bed and sat on it again, then watched Flurry sort through he pieces and flip them over to their printed sides.
Maybe stupid wasn't the right word, but Cozy was out of synonyms. Maybe she should ask for a thesaurus.
"How are you?" Flurry asked. She didn't look up from the pieces, picking out one, then comparing it to another. She shuffled them around under hoof, making a hissing sound as the cardboard g over the stone.
Cozy shook her head. "What?"
"Mom says it's polite to ask how ponies are." Flurry smiled up at Cozy a moment. "How are you?"
Cozy's jaw hung open for a moment. She had no real idea how to answer that at first, but after running through a few ideas in a half second, she eventually settled on a half-muttered, "I'm fine."
Flurry nodded, then smiled as she got the first two pieces to match. A corner and the start of an edge. "You're supposed to ask me next."
"I'm not interested in playing this—"
"Ask me." The hooves stopped still, and Flurry looked up with a smile. Frosty blue eyes as unfathomably deep as a frozen lake bore into Cozy's.
Something about them scared Cozy, but she found herself drawn in by something else.
Cozy swallowed. "How are you?"
"I'm good!" Flurry said with a giggle, and went back to matching her pieces. "I love coming down to Equestria. Canterlot is a bit boring, but I love my Auntie Twilight." She then cringed. "Um. Sorry. I know you don't like her."
Cozy rolled her eyes. "I did ask," she said with an ironic chuckle. "Why are you here?"
Flurry shrugged. "I wanted to hang out!" she said. "I don't really know a lot of fillies my age, at least not ones that think I'm super-duper special and that. Everyone is so nice, but it all feels so fake."
She matched another few pieces together in quick order, eventually finishing up a single side, matching one edge of the landscape on the box lid.
That wasn't what Cozy expected Flurry to do. She'd anticipated the filly to just pick pieces at random, make the most interesting thing first. She'd have guessed the mountain top, or the moon in the corner.
"Uh-huh." Cozy cleared her throat. "Why here, though. I know I'm the very peak of cuteness but—"
"What's my name?" Flurry asked.
A croak floated out of Cozy's throat. "Flurry Heart?"
"Gallus." Flurry looked back at the door. "What's my name?"
The guard's eye squinted. "Her Royal Highness Princess Flurry Heart."
"See?" Flurry threw a hoof up at Gallus. "He says the whole thing, and you don't!"
That made Cozy snort. "That's your reasoning? I don't care for your stupid family's titles?"
"They're not stupid," Flurry snapped. "And… Well, kind of. I didn't actually know what you'd call me." She giggled and covered her mouth with a hoof. "Turns out I was right, though!"
"What kind of asinine logic is that!?" Cozy scoffed.
"It makes sense!" Flurry stuck her tongue out, then stuck her head back down, focusing on the puzzle again. "Do you even know what 'asinine' means?"
"Do you?"
"'Something extremely stupid or foolish,'" Flurry answered. When Cozy fell silent, she looked back up. "Did I mention Twilight is my aunt?"
Another scoff, and Cozy mentally started to check out. Flurry was just getting on her nerves, first intruding into the only space she had left in the world, and then clearly trying to get a rise out of her. She wasn't interested in indulging this spoiled brat anymore.
"Do you get much news in here?" Flurry asked. "I noticed all your books are kind of old."
Cozy shook her head, then answered. "No. They say it's not smart or healthy or whatever excuse they cooked up that day."
"Want me to tell you something new?"
Oh sweet heavens, did Cozy want that. "Yes."
"Tell you what, then." Flurry extended a wing and brushed a few puzzle pieces Cozy's way, leaving space for her to sit down and sort through them. "Help me with the puzzle, and I'll tell you some news! Anything you want."
Cozy blinked, then shuffled down off the bed. "Fine," she said. She glanced up at Gallus watching them. She wondered how much he really cared that Flurry might be messing with her aunt's plans.
She looked for a piece with a flat edge. She figured out at least a little of what Flurry was doing. They were the easiest, and it gave a frame to work with, from the outside in. She may as well start there. Of course, the sky corner piece was mostly a generic dark blue. Half the remaining edge pieces were the same, block colour.
Oh it was going to be a tedious.
"How is Equestria doing?" Cozy asked. "I see it's not collapsed."
Flurry snickered. "That's a little mean. It's doing well. I think it's mostly the same, but there's a lot of other creatures than you probably remember." Flurry got two corners down. "My babysitter is a changeling. Mom tries really hard not to be weird about it."
"Well she was ponynapped and imprisoned by Chrysalis," Cozy said with a giggle. "Changelings are pretty weird, though."
"That's also mean." Flurry hummed, rifling through more pieces. She'd put together the bottom edge of a lake at the edge of the image, but one piece seemed to elude her. Cozy actually checked briefly through her pieces, a thought that surprised her.
"How are those bugs, anyway?" Cozy asked. "Have they fallen apart without their precious Queen?"
"Nope!" Flurry moved onto the thicker part of her pile, all the fill-pieces that made up the rest of the image. "They actually have a few new hives. They got another in the Crystal Empire they're really proud of. It looks real cool, but I don't like thinking it's made out of spit."
Cozy grimaced at the thought. "Gross."
"Right?" Flurry paused, then looked at Cozy again. "Okay, you're right. They're pretty weird."
"I'm always right." Finally, Cozy found a piece that matched her corner. The first in a line leading across the top edge. To her surprise, it felt kind of good to get that first pair, and she dove in to find the next piece. "What about the School of Friendship? Surely that shut down."
"That's still around, too!" Flurry's brows knit together in increasing exasperation. "Some of Antie Twilight's friends' sisters are attending now. I liked spending time with them when I'm down here, but that keeps them busier nowadays."
Cozy mirrored Flurry's expression. Was she talking about the fillies she thought she was? "You mean those Cutie Mark cretins?"
Flurry jerked a hoof in Cozy's direction. "Mean! And yes." Flurry came close to Cozy, checking the ground around the other filly. "Why, do you know them?"
"Not really," Cozy answered. "So… nothing really changed while I was gone?"
The princess shrugged. "I don't think so. Not for the worst anyway."
Cozy went still. She knew, deep down, the world wouldn't really care that she had been locked up. Oh, sure, there may be a handful of ponies she managed to scar with her plans, and she'd read about the ponies that protested the imprisonment of a filly, but no one had been waiting for her when she'd awoken, cold and hurt and incomplete.
She reached over to her left leg with her good hoof. "Did no one miss me?"
Flurry paused her search then, her face close to Cozy's. "I'm sure someone did," she said. "Everyone is missed by someone."
Cozy felt numb again. Not numb in the sense she didn't feel pain, but was acutely aware of how little she felt. "No, no one did." She shuffled back until her petrified wing met the bedframe. She wanted to curl back up again.
The other filly stared at her a few moments, her cavernous gaze giving away no indication of the thoughts behind her eyes. "Okay…" She muttered, then looked over just behind Cozy.
She lurched forward, and Cozy flinched their bodies touched. Warmth and softness pressed to Cozy's chest, and the strong scent of wood and spice filled her nostrils.
She had to voice to protest. No will, either. She just let Flurry do what she wanted.
She scooted back, something hissing on the floor, only to get plucked up by a wing. Another edge piece, the one Flurry was missing, presented to Cozy.
"Maybe you're just the missing piece in someone else's life."
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