Now a shadow engraved into the Earth, what was Equestria is now gone. In its wake is a desert wasteland, where the most notable thing for miles is maybe an abnormally large tumbleweed or possibly a mountain of sand taller than the others.

Such a vast landscape of nothing but eroded materials and a foreign to-be-adapted environment (hence its short time existing) doesn't just happen over night, but for Cozy Glow, it sure feels that way.

Whilst there's little to no life remaining on the planet, Cozy Glow sure thrives. In fact, she can't exactly not thrive when she's got powers beyond what history has shown before that allow her to withstand brutal beatings or illness ranging from malnutrition to deadly diseases. In other words, her power makes her nearly immortal and unaffected by much physical harm.

How she came to be granted such an immense display of force is unknown. What is known, however, is that the super desert which she finds herself in was her doing.

Unlike her physical strength being at an all-time record, Cozy Glow can't bear the thoughts in her mind; her mind is overflowing with images too intense for numerous words to describe, to painful to even comprehend. It'd take days to fully wrap one's head over it all, but for Cozy Glow, she'd had about a week, and she's already lived each vivid thought currently coursing around her thinker.

The images that go through her consciousness are simply traumatizing. It's also unknown, yet known to be correlated to what led the world to become one massive blanket of dust over ancient sediment and what once was Equestria.

Cozy Glow is sitting atop of a sand dune, staring off into space, borderline oblivious to the sand storm. She continues to contemplate, slowly easing her mind out of the constant rabbit hole of deep regret and sorrow that is what she has done.

Eventually, she came too. Not that she had been asleep, duh, but she had been in a nested daydream, so deep in thought that if she hadn't dragged herself out with rich care for each scene in her brain, she could be lost in a tunnel of imaginary tears for all of eternity.

Cozy Glow scanned her surroundings, attempting to find anything to latch her eyes on. Nothing specific revealed itself; miles upon miles of pale, yellow ground, accompanied by the beaming sun.

Cozy Glow sighed. Yet another day of wandering aimlessly, knowing that the entire world she could explore was the same yellow ball all over.

Even if she decided to make something to latch on to, she didn't think it would do much good against the elements. At some point, whatever sand castle she could build, no matter how sturdy, would become one with the ground, and let alone it's not gonna change that fact that she's royally screwed from a social standpoint.

Yup, Cozy Glow's suffering from loneliness alongside symptoms of extreme guilt, dissatisfaction, anxiety about departure from her conscious mind, and a longing for something notable to come to being.

The fabulously frustrated filly sprung into the air, twirling around as she flew through the sand infested skies. It was the most she could do to pass the time, and honestly, who can blame her (if anyone were alive) when the only other option is to contemplate so hard you begin a cease the existence of a true consciousness?

Her enjoyment was pelted, literally and figuratively, as she quickly lost flight and glided down through thick wind into a deep ditch. Night was coming, and she was getting tired, particularly from the sand slapping her face.

In an instant, Cozy Glow summoned up a sand cave; where else to sleep here than a cave made entirely of sand? With her ultimate power reached, she could do anything she wanted abiding to the laws of physics and magic combined.

She snuggled in, though it wasn't remotely comfy. She then closed the opening, suspending the sand and making it more stable via magical force. She was buried in, ready to catch some rest. It's not like she was gonna miss anything by going to bed early.

Hibernation was a very real option at the moment. Sure, in her waking hours she could either decay or decay whilst moving and grooving to the rhythm of the wind. But in her sleep, maybe she could reach a more desired conclusion to her story. Maybe she could even sleep the rest of her miserable existence away, slowly killing herself whilst living out great lives in her mind, unable to choose when she awoke.

Oh, how she hoped...

She thought about this for about ten minutes before she finally fell into a nested, nested sleep... if you choose to believe so...

At the stroke of midnight...

It took a while for her to stir to a sitting position, but Cozy Glow eventually came to. She had been asleep for hours, but she had no recollective of her dreams, assuming she did have any. It would soon be hard to tell.

When Cozy Glow fully awoke, she shook off the grogginess and started to listen. What had awoke her was a noise, an unfamiliar sound that came from above her.

Again, the sound echoed. It was eerily silent excluding the sound, amplifying the horror of it. The sound was almost rhythmic... a steady rhythm of sound akin to...

Impossible, Cozy Glow assumed. She confidently told herself she was delusional, that she was a nut job. Isolation for a week had caused some insane kind of cabin fever, only her cabin was the size of the atmosphere and the isolation was indescribable.

The sound she heard completely shattered her current sense of, well, everything. She should be alone, shouldn't hear anything but her own voice and the sand, shouldn't smell anything but cold, crisp air, and definitely shouldn't feel anything but guilt and rough sand, not to mention taste nothing but literally nothing. However, the sound defied all of that.

It was a call. An unfamiliar but rhythmic and clear-as-day call that was still so alien as it was recognizable. It pulsed, but also didn't; the word pulse was an understatement but not in a sense that is pulsed rapidly, as it was some version of pushing that'd need a brand new words created to just describe it.

To put it simply, the sound gave off the impression of seeing new colors or inventing a twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet.

As for the source—whatever it may be—it was absolutely alive. And, there was no denying that of all points on the planet for it to visit, it being right above her couldn't be anything but the creature's own intent. Its intentions had her in mind. It sought out for her.

Cozy Glow didn't know if she could gander up the courage to burst thought the earth and face the potential threat. After about a minute, the pulsing stopped, and came with it a heavy thud, smacking the magically-suspended sand and causing it to collapse instantly.

Cozy's heart rate dropped. She, as powerful as she had been, was only a filly. In her situation, she couldn't help but be petrified at the event.

She listened a while longer, staring at the hole. With nothing else to do, she flung herself out the gap and into the night air.

Scarily quiet was the night. The winds had died down, so nothing could really cause and calamity. That was the least scary thing however.

Standing above her destroyed cave was... nothing. Zip. Nada. Whatever had been there was gone.

Cozy Glow looked around, expecting to see it meandering around. No such thing was spotted. It was just a quiet, dark and cold desert in Winter.

Cozy Glow sighed. It was a relief, though she hoped it were to be friendly. But it was scary nonetheless, since she calculated that about everything had died, exceptions being maybe around twenty ponies, molecular life, and some animals higher up on the food chain, Celestia-willing that they could find anything to eat in a desert so vast it puts the Sahara to shame.

She floated down to the ground—and screamed. Something grabbed her back leg, and it burned bad, yet also ached. It was another foreign experience, and the one dealing it could be assumed well by now.

Cozy Glow was yanked to the dune below her hooves, sprawling out her four legs on the sand, as a figure began to emerge above the crushed sand cave.

Still feeling the achy-burny sensation, Cozy Glow stared in utter disbelief at the creature before her. It, too, was foreign, only this being was truly and undeniably something completely dissociated with entirely natural evolution. It was almost mare-made, only the mare was the wisest mare ever, though that didn't make sense since it was a living thing.

Being most describable as a blur of greens and whites and dots or rainbow, the being stared down Cozy Glow with its own version of eyes.

Cozy Glow winced at both the sight before her and pain in her body. The tentacle-esc thing on her leg pulsed the same way the sound had earlier, of which has returned too.

The entity took note of Cozy Glow's discomfort and loosened their grip, but it still constantly burned (a vague understatement) even if not as bad. As well as doing so, the creature dissolved into a more understandable shape before Cozy's very own eyes. In a flash of fireworks and aurora lights, the entity changed shape into... a dazzling, white alicorn, with a giant horn, an impeccable wingspan, and no distinguishable features apart from the outline of its body, of which glowed as bright as a star in the next galaxy over.

Cozy Glow now stated in awe, not horror, though she could tell they weren't the most kind entity just from the pain she felt in her hooves specifically.

Then, a distant and surreal voice broke through Cozy's verbal expressions of emotion.

"...Hello, Cozy Glow..." it spoke mythically.

"Wh-wh-h-hi?" Cozy Glow responded, unsure of what words to use.

"...I mean you no harm..." it informed her. "I...we...want to help you."

Cozy Glow squirmed. "You can h-help me by letting me free," Cozy Glow groaned, attempting to sound rude but coming out cowardly.

A moment of nothing passed. Then the creature finally spoke again.

"...I cannot do that..." it told her.

"Golly, it sure hurts!" Cozy Glow said, a little aggressive. "Your weird tendrils are burning, or, something-ing to my legs."

"I know...however, I need you...where I can have to you...because you might run away..." it answered her pleas.

Cozy Glow sighed. "It hurts. I'm serious."

"...is this better?" It asked, making the stinging begin to extinguish in an instant.

"Y-yeah..." Cozy Glow told it.

The creature moved closer to her. "...Now, let's begin," it began. "I am going to help you...come to terms with your ordeal, as well...as allow you some leeway..."

"The fuck?" Cozy Glow asked. "What's leeway?"

"...I am going to give you an escape..." it answered dreamily.

Cozy Glow shivered, but unsure of why. She wanted to run before, but even though being held here against her will seemed bad, right now she was getting more curious towards what this thing truly wanted with her. Wether it wants to harvest her soul, punish her via launching her into a black hole, or shove her into a pocket dimension of psychological daydreams, she was gonna have to stick around and find out, and it was somewhat better than living in that one Beetlejuice scene for a millennium.

"Hit me," Cozy Glow said, wanting to know more.

"...we want you to find peace," it began. "If you find peace...there's a chance peaces will allow itself to you...depending on what you want."

"Okay... so how, exactly, as I going to find this peace?" She asked the entity.

"...you won't like how..." it said to her. It then stepped a bit closer to Cozy Glow. "I...have to adjust some things, and...put you in a foreign state," it informed her horrifically.

"Huh?" Cozy Glow questioned.

"Let me just..." it started.

Instantly, Cozy Glow felt an indescribable pain in her legs. The stinging was back—only now amplified to feeling like thick acid, electric bolts ramped to a trillion, and the burn of the sun all combined into a ball of horror.

The sensation stopped within nanoseconds of it beginning, the creature realizing the agony it inflicted was too server for her, but the devastation had settled in by then.

Cozy Glow was screaming like a banshee, crying and heaving at the same time, unable to bear the mere instance of the feeling she had just been witnessed to.

"...apologies, Cozy Glow...I'll numb the sensation, and then...I can begin to help you."

"FUCK. NO." Cozy Glow spat out. "My peace doesn't involve being subjected to unbearable torture! Fuck you and all your alien mumbo jumbo, I am NOT going to do this," she sternly yelled to the entity.

Without warning, the alien subjected Cozy Glow to more of the unfathomably harsh pain, as well as a hefty dose of... drowsiness!

"I'm not killing you..." it started to tell her, aware of how bad things seemed. "I'm rushing up...the process...due you your outburst."

Cozy Glow wailed, in constant perpetual agony not ended within nanoseconds like before, but began to grow too tired to scream and too weak to strain any longer.

In a last ditch effort to signal her disapproval of the predicament, Cozy Glow reached a hoof out. The entity now, finally, fully approached the all-mighty (now captive in an almost anesthesia-like state) filly and whispered, so enchantingly yet hauntingly, a few final prayers.

"You won't remember this...not until I bring you back, until we know if the fate of peace itself...has chosen you to be...allowed permanent and personal heaven away from the badlands you call...but not fondly...home. Until then... you will navigate to it...and you'll be happy when you come across it," the entity whispered.

Cozy Glow slowly closed her eyes, still touching their glowing, ghastly hoof.

"On behalf of all of us, I...well, what you know me as...the tree of harmony, apologize for...the pain you felt, yet we understand it may be...deserved. We shall see, Cozy Glow...we shall see."

That's when the entire universe vanished in a slow, hazy fade into the oblivion of unknown star territories, as Cozy Glow's consciousness ascended alike to a spirit, only this one on a guided path of some foreign kind, into the black sky in search of potential forgiveness for themself and from others.

The filly would eventually find herself, but in the dream like state it feels to be, it seems like she didn't exist until then. All she knows is that when she awoke, so to speak, she found a land all too familiar...

Author's Note

I am a newer author on the site but have been writing for two years I recall. I hope that this can grander some attention, as a lot of my stories never do. This is based off some books I like, and the story is already mapped out in my head. It won’t be unfathomably long, so I hope you stick around till the end.

Cozy Glow is my favorite character in the whole show, and I like to imagine the possibilities of her character when I go to bed at night. It helps me fall asleep, like a sort of escape or just a mental version of ASMR. So of course I threw her into the story, and I think I’ll stick to her as my main or possibly only interest when it comes to writing MLP FIM fanfics… but we’ll see.

Over and out.