“Ouch!” I yelp as my body is flung onto what I think is concrete.

In any case, it’s hard and uncomfortable, and I think I’ve just scraped more than one of my limbs. I squinch my eyes shut and try to conjure up a batch of tears, the same way I always used to do when I was a really little filly and fell on the playground. If I managed to cry hard enough, sometimes my parents would buy me ice cream.

“Are you okay?” asks Twilight’s friend, Sunny Sunshine or whatever her name is. She sounds almost like she’s trying to hold back a laugh. Maybe she thinks I’m too old to cry about something like scraping a foreleg.

I stop crying.

“Yeah, I’m—” I’m about to say I’m fine, but then I open my eyes and see my hooves. Only, they’re not hooves anymore. They’re claws, or hands, or something like that, and they don’t belong on my body. I let out a long, loud scream.

“Cozy Glow! You can’t do that! You’ll cause a scene,” Twilight’s friend cries, panic in her voice. I look up at her and see that she’s not a pony anymore, either. What she is, I have no idea, but she’s tall and she’s lost her horn and she’s standing on her back legs. I sincerely hope I don’t look like her, but judging by everything I can see of myself without a mirror, we look the exact same. I start to scream even louder.

Twilight’s friend claps her hand over my mouth. “Cozy Glow, you have to stop screaming. I brought you here because there’s someone I want you to meet. But if you keep screaming, it’ll be no problem at all to turn around and take you right back to Equestria.”

And turn you back to stone. The unspoken ending to her sentence makes my stomach churn. I nod and make a silent vow not to scream again, no matter what it takes. I’ll do anything not to return to my horrible, suffocating statue prison.

“I know. It must have been awful to be a statue,” Twilight’s friend says sympathetically.

I don’t remember saying that out loud. Did I say that out loud?

“Whoops. Sorry,” Sunny Sunshine says as she removes her hand from my face. “Anyway, I need you to be on your best behavior. You think you can handle that?”

“I do,” I reply, nodding slowly.

“Good. Now, I have the address of our destination written down in the Notes app on my phone. I was thinking we could just walk there, but now that I think about it, you’re probably not used to those legs yet.” She frowns and taps her chin. “You know what, I’ll call an Uber.”

Twilight’s friend tells me that the thing that takes us to our destination is called a car, and I don’t like it one bit. It’s tiny and cramped and it smells weird, and on top of that I don’t understand how turning a wheel and pushing some pedals can make something move. I’m glad when the car stops and we can finally get out.

Twilight’s friend gives some money to the creature sitting in the front seat of the car, and then we emerge in front of a small white cottage with a garden of roses in front of it. I can’t help but think of my mom. Roses were her favorites. We used to grow them, too, back when she was still alive.

I reach out to touch one of the flowers, but Twilight’s friend grabs my hand. “Don’t take that, Cozy. It’s not yours.”

“I wasn’t going to take it,” I protest.

Twilight’s friend takes her hand off of mine. “I know you weren’t. I’m sorry, Cozy.”

Golly, she sure changed her mind about that quickly. Nopony has ever believed me right away like that. I swear, it’s like she can see what’s going on in my head.

Twilight’s friend walks up to the door and I follow her, even though I’m still a little unsteady on these new legs of mine. She knocks on the door and a cheery voice from inside the house calls, “Coming!”

My stomach jumps. I know that voice.

I laugh inwardly at myself. Don’t be an idiot, Cozy Glow, I tell myself. There’s no way that—

But then the door opens, and suddenly I’m face-to-face with my mom.

No. There is no way this can be happening. Everypony told me that both of my parents died in an accident. A magic spell gone wrong. I’ve heard the story a hundred times. My mom tried a teleportation spell on herself and my dad, but she wasn’t experienced enough, and it killed them—except it didn’t kill them, because my mom is standing right here in front of me.

She’s not my mom the way I’m used to seeing her, of course. She’s a weird tall creature like me. But her wavy fuchsia hair, sunburst yellow skin, and radiant smile are unmistakable. How? How is this happening? Why did everypony lie to me, and tell me she was dead?

“Mom?” I ask.

“Cozy!” she cries, scooping me up in a hug. She knows my name! It is her! I hug her back and inhale her floral perfume, the one I thought I would never smell again. I used to wear one of her sweaters all the time after she (allegedly) died, because it smelled like her perfume, until I wore it so much that it didn’t smell like her anymore. I hated myself after that. I worried I would forget what she smelled like. “I thought you were at the library to work on a school project?”

I shake my head no, not knowing or caring where she got that idea. “I missed you so much, Mom. Is Dad here?”

Twilight’s friend bites her lip and interrupts. “Mrs. Glow, I’m Sunset Shimmer from Canterlot High School, and I’m so sorry, but this Cozy isn’t—”

“He’s in the kitchen, making dinner,” my mom replies, apparently not hearing Sunset. “We’re having pancakes tonight.”

“Dad makes the best pancakes!” I cry happily. I tried more than once to use his recipe to make pancakes of my own, but they were never as good. After my fifth attempt, I cried and cried because I would never get to have good pancakes again. And now we’re having them for dinner. I’m still not sure exactly what’s going on, but I’m so happy right now, I could cry.

My mom gestures for Sunset Shimmer to come inside, and the two of us step into the house. Sunset has an uneasy look on her face, but I ignore it, instead choosing to follow the scent of pancakes until I find my dad in the kitchen, where I wrap my arms around him and give him a big hug.

“What a greeting, Cozy Glow,” he replied, patting my curls. “Do pancakes sound good for dinner?”

“They sound amazing,” I reply. “Oh! And then maybe after dinner, we could play a game of chess. I’ve gotten so much better in the past few years. I might be able to beat you. I even have my cutie mark in chess now, you know.”

“Cutie mark?”

I giggle. “You know, back from when we lived in Equestria. When we were all ponies. You weren’t around when I got my cutie mark, but that’s okay. We can still throw a late cute-ceañera party. Ooh, do you think Mom would make her famous chocolate cake?”

My dad chuckles and pats my curls again. “You have quite the imagination, Cozy Glow. And yes, of course we can play a game of chess after dinner.”

Suddenly I have a burst of inspiration. “Oh, and I scraped my foreleg. I mean, arm, or whatever. It really hurts. Can we go out for ice cream tomorrow?”

My mom walks into the kitchen. “I don’t see why not. But Cozy, Sunset Shimmer has something important to tell us. I think we need to listen, okay?”

“Okay,” I agree amiably. I’d agree to anything my mom asked of me right now. I’m just so happy to have her back.

Sunset opens her mouth, but before she can get a word out, the front door creaks open and a face even more familiar than my parents’ faces peeks into the house.

My heart skips a beat. Something isn’t right.

Standing in the doorway is…well…me. Or, at least, a girl who looks exactly like me. She’s carrying a stack of books in her arms and has a bewildered look on her face.

“What’s going on?” she asks in my voice.

Sunset smiles. “Cozy Glow, meet Cozy Glow. I was hoping the two of you could talk about—”

“What’s happening?” my mom interrupts. “Why are there two Cozies?”

I’m wondering the same thing.

“You see,” Sunset explains, “the Cozy I brought over is the Cozy of my world. She’s not actually your daughter. This Cozy Glow is the Cozy of your world. They look the exact same and share a lot of the same mannerisms, but they’re different people. I know it’s really confusing, but I can try to explain it to you with some diagrams that my friend Twilight Sparkle made…”

I’m not listening. I can’t. My brain went blank after “She’s not actually your daughter.”

My mom and dad aren’t mine. They parent the Cozy of this world. Not the Cozy of Equestria. A.k.a. me.

My parents really are dead.

And I will not be the Cozy eating those pancakes.

My stomach starts churning again. I feel like I’m losing my mom and dad for a second time. I inhale a deep breath and run out of the house as fast as I can on these weird tall legs. Sunset runs after me, and because she’s more used to the weird tall legs, she catches up to me in no time at all.

“Cozy, I’m so sorry. I should’ve explained things to you beforehand.”

“You’re right,” I reply. “You should’ve. But you didn’t.”

I inhale another deep breath and my chest floods with envy for the Cozy who still has the parents, who still has roses and pancakes and chess and ice cream when she scrapes her limbs. For the Cozy who isn’t me.

I turn to Sunset. “Take me back to Equestria. And turn me back to stone. I don’t care.” I feel tears, real tears, forming in my eyes. “But I am not staying in that house one minute longer.”

Sunset looks down at the sidewalk. “Right. I’ll call another cab.”

And we stand there, in silence, until the car comes.

Author's Note

Originally this story was going to end here, but judging by all of the feedback I got (which includes both the comments from other Fimfiction users and the comments from the family members that I forced to read my story ), it needed another chapter. So I added one.