The little foal’s mother seems surprised to say the least when I am led into the small shop occupying the lower floor of her house. Along one wall is a row of shelves, filled with everything from fabric and buttons to half-finished soft toys. I become fixated on one row full of little bears, all with buttons for eyes and little pink noses. One even has a star pattern on its coat, like an Ursa bear. Each one looks faultless regardless of how close it is to completion. These are works of art, definitely.

I force myself to tear my eyes away from the amazing crafts and look back at the blue mare sitting on a rocking chair in the corner. Her pastel orange mane contrasts with her fur, but matches the soft lighting and cosy atmosphere of the room. On her face is a look of pleasant surprise, although I can tell that she’s uneasy being in the same room as me.

“Queen Moonlight, what an honour to see you,” she says politely.

“Thank you,” I reply.

“Is there anything I could help you with?”

“I was wondering about these.” I look back at the shelf and admire a small grey pegasus toy with bright green eyes and a similar colour mane. “There’s a filly I know whose birthday is in a couple of days, and I wanted to get her a little something to celebrate.”

“Would that be Princess Cozy Glow?” She smiles and picks up one of the hoof made invitations with her teeth. “Berry here has barely stopped talking about the party.”

I laugh a little. “It’s nothing much, but I’m sure the foals will all enjoy it.”

“So, did you have anything in mind?” She stands up and draws my attention to the other shelf, filled with completed products each with a little hoofwritten price label. Everything is very quaint, and it reminds me a bit of my old days as a Lunar Guard, particularly in Canterlot.

“I didn’t,” I admit. “Cozy will be turning twelve though, if that helps any.” Actually, she’ll be one thousand and twenty five, but technically everypony who was in the Crystal Empire when it disappeared is over a thousand years old, so I’m just going to pretend nothing has changed. Now, what would Cozy like? She reads comic books filled with violence, gore and death. She swears a lot. She’s a tough little cookie and never does as she’s told. But she’s also got a very sweet side. I don’t exactly want to encourage Demon Filly, I want to bring out the best of her. Make her say something along the lines of, “Gee, thanks for embarrassing me on my birthday! But this is pretty adorable.”

My eyes fall on a light green teddy bear with a stitched face. Its yellow eyes stare back at me with a kindhearted expression. It has a little bow on its head, similar to the ribbons Cozy wears in her mane. Perfect. I look at the price tag. Most ordinary ponies wouldn’t have this sort of money to splash out on a birthday gift, but I’m only getting her one of them, and I have a fair amount of money to spend.

Or I would, if I’d thought to bring my purse with me. This is just great.

“Could I reserve this one and pick it up tomorrow?” I ask her.

“Of course!” She takes it off of the shelf carefully and smiles at it. “I made this one three weeks ago. It’s made of faux fur, and there is different stuffing in the arms and legs to what I used for the body and head so they can be moved at the joints. The ribbon is some of the finest I could afford, too. It’s nice to know this one will be going to such a special pony.” She places the teddy in a gift box on the shop’s counter, seals the lid and writes on the label, For Cozy Glow on her special day. Cozy is going to either hate me for getting something so innocent and little-girly, or her face will glow brighter than Celestia’s sun. I sincerely hope it is the latter.

I smile at the mare. “I can tell you put a lot of effort into making these.”

“Why, thank you. I’ve been making these since I was about six or seven years old. Sewing is my special talent, you see.” She looks down at her cutie mark, and I see it clearly for the first time: a reel of thread and a sewing needle side by side. “I used to work as a seamstress, but making these to brighten up foals’ lives is my passion.”

“That’s impressive.”

She laughs. “Not really, compared to what some other ponies have done. Not many ponies would have the inner strength to do what you did. I don’t think I know anypony who could change King Sombra for the better like that in a matter of weeks.”

“Change him? I didn’t change him. He was always like that. All I had to do was convince everypony.”

“And that in itself is a huge task. Your Majesty, you have no idea how important you are.”

“As far as I can see, I’m just a regular pony like everyone else here.”

“Oh,” she scoffs, “there are all of us, the ‘regular’ ponies, and then there are the ponies who shine and you, my dear, are certainly one of them. And as long as you and King Sombra keep on shining, I know that the Crystal Empire is in good hooves.”

Right. Everypony’s looking up to me again. Sunbutt probably loves all of this attention, but I can’t handle it. At some point I’m going to have to let all of these ponies know that I’m not who they think I am just so they don’t start worshipping me. I’m just a bat pony who uses dark magic. Nothing else. Everything that makes me ‘special’ is purely down to circumstances.

“Thank you,” I say anyway, smiling.

She gives me a hug and a warm smile, then allows me to leave. Berry stays behind with her mother, and I trot back to the castle, distracting myself from the burden I’ve found on my shoulders with thoughts of watching Cozy opening her present in two days’ time.

On the big day, we go about as usual in the morning, but the moment the clock strikes noon the plan arranged between myself, Sombra, the foals and the guards being asked to help supervise the party is put into action. Skywalker goes to the kitchen to help out with preparing all of the food and baking the cake (he actually insisted); and the rest of us sit down for a light lunch. Cozy notices the smaller portion sizes, naturally.

“Gee, I thought we were all supposed to pig out and fill our faces when we celebrate something,” she grumbles. “What did I do to deserve this on my one thousand and twenty-fifth birthday? It’s an important milestone, you know!”

“You’ve done plenty to deserve this, Cozy,” I say. “Reading books that aren’t age-appropriate, nearly setting the place on fire no less than seven times since you arrived here, being incredibly rude and foul-mouthed, refusing to be nice to me. I’m treating you the same way to teach you a lesson.”

“Gosh. Servant of Nightmare Moon indeed. This is just plain cruel, you know?”

“Stop complaining. We can lock you up in the dungeon and leave you there for a week with no food at all if you would prefer that,” Sombra tells her off.

“If it means I don’t have to hear your voices again for the whole of that week, it’s worth it.”

“Ouch,” I say.

“Eh, you asked for it.”

We eat the rest of our lunch in silence, then Wishbone takes her out to go ‘dress shopping.’ Wish will probably buy her an outfit or two, but really it’s just a distraction so we have a few hours to get everything ready.

The moment we’re sure that the two of them are gone, we get to sorting out the dining room and the throne room: removing ornaments and anything that could be ruined by a group of foals running around, and replacing them with bunches of multicoloured balloons and banners reading ‘Happy Birthday!’ Sombra and I have a list of the party games the foals will get to take part in, and Hope has already sorted out prizes. There will be all the usual games: musical chairs, pass the parcel, a pinata, pin-the-tail-on-the-pony, everything that foals like to do at birthday parties. All of the decorations are in the colours of the rainbow, or else pastel pink and blue. I’ve got a bad feeling that she’ll end up hating it, but her friends and classmates were the ones who organised all of this, so she can’t take it out on me.

Apparently, Sombra and Hope have a couple of presents set to one side for her, although I have no idea what they decided to buy. I feel slightly guilty for being so indecisive over what to buy her, but they know her better than I do. All I have to do is hope that she appreciates the fact that I went and bought her something.

By the time Wish and Cozy are back from their shopping trip, everything is ready, and everypony is waiting in the throne room. I go to greet them as they head to the lounge, and as I approach them I wipe all of the emotion from my face.

“Cozy,” I say sternly.

“Gee, harsh. What is it now?”

“Sombra and I need to have a little chat with you in the throne room.” I spread my wings and scowl at her. “Come on, he’s been waiting for you.”

She gulps and says nothing, following me gingerly. All the time, I walk with my head up high in the air, not looking at her and not speaking. When we reach the throne room, two guards open the doors, and the three of us walk inside. The doors slam shut behind us, and the room is in pure darkness.

“S-Sombra?” she asks, her voice shaking. “What’s wrong? M-Moonlight said you want-ted to t-t-talk.”

“Yes. I wanted to say a few things to you.” His voice comes from the other end of the throne room and echoes a few times.

There is silence for a few seconds, then somepony giggles.

“Gee, what’s so funny?” Cozy asks snarkily.

Sombra casts a spell, and the shadows he used to cover the torches and the windows disappear. He grins, as do all of the foals and the guards on duty. He says to her, “Yes, I wanted to wish you a happy birthday, and tell you that we have spent the last few days planning this little celebration for you.”

“Surprise!” the foals chant.

“Oh Celestia. Oh my Celestia.” She turns to face me and roars, “You scared me! Nopony’s allowed to do that! For Sunbutt’s sake, stop laughing!”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” I guffaw.

“Well, this explains a lot. Nopony talks to me for a week, everypony sneaks around the castle and acts really suspicious, and I’m left thinking something really bad has happened. Well done, you’ve got what you want and scared me out of my skin.” Despite the tone of her voice, I can tell she’s impressed.

“So, what do we do now?” She spins around on the spot, looking at everything that we’ve prepared. “Pin the tail on the pony, or four corners?”

Your suggestion? I ask Sombra through telepathy.

“Four corners,” he answers. “And the first pony to lose…” He gives a menacing grin and jokes, “Has to do the washing up as punishment.”

“Good one,” Cozy replies, and the games begin.

The foals begin running in all directions, and Sombra and I each take it in turns to close our eyes and call out a random group of ponies to be eliminated from the game. Sombra, naturally, keeps trying to read my mind to work out who I’m going to choose, and trying to make me change my mind, presumably to make Cozy the winner. She survives to the sixth round, at least. In the end, there are only two foals left: Lucky the bat pony and a little green colt with a sea blue mane. I close my eyes, and when the pitter-patter of hooves on the floor and the shouting from the rest of the group stops, I say, “Anypony in the blue corner is out.”

I open my eyes, and find that the colt is in the corner with the large blue poster I stuck there before the party. Lucky does a little victory loop in the air, and her prize is a large bar of chocolate for her to sink her fangs into. The sweetest part is that she opens it and breaks it into three similar sized pieces, giving one to Cozy and another to the colt. My heart simply melts at the sight.

The next game is pin-the-tail-on-the-pony, which another little colt wins, and after that Cozy bludgeons the pinata into tiny pieces. The sight is adorable in its own strange way, and afterwards there’s a full minute of screaming and grabbing packets of sweets off the floor. I never really had much of this as a foal, since I lived all the way out in Hollow Shades, and she probably hasn’t experienced this many times either. A couple of times she sees me smiling at her and says, “Gee, what are you looking at? It’s not the best party in the world,” but I know she thinks otherwise.

An hour later, we finally manage to get all of the foals settled around the huge dining table, munching away on sandwiches and popcorn and different snacks. They’re all adorable, but a lot of hard work too. Not everypony likes listening to instructions, and there was one time that Sombra had to remind everypony that he and I are in charge by transforming into his Umbrum form. Most of them weren’t frightened, thankfully, but it got their attention pretty quickly.

I sit down at the table next to Sombra, pick up a cucumber sandwich with dark magic and take a bite. It’s good. No, amazing. The kitchen staff can make anything taste brilliant, somehow. I wonder how they do it. Not magic, since none of them are unicorns or bat ponies, save Skywalker, and they haven’t been taught any dark magic as far as I’m aware. It’s more likely down to experience.

“Do you think Cozy Glow enjoyed herself?” Sombra asks me.

“Definitely.”

“Gosh, I have ears,” she mumbles after swallowing a mouthful of popcorn. “But yeah, as far as parties go, this wasn’t half bad. Thanks!”

“Now, once everypony’s had enough to eat, we can open a couple of presents.”

Her ears point upwards. “Presents? Golly, I didn’t really expect that. I mean, pretty much everypony thinks of presents when they hear the word ‘birthday’, but I didn’t realise I’d be getting much. I wasn’t really expecting a party either.”

“Golly, I’m not heartless,” I mimic her.

“Gee, stop it. You’re annoying me now. Let me finish my popcorn.”

“I haven’t got all night. I’ve got boring grown-up stuff to talk about, in case you didn’t realise.”

She rolls her eyes, and starts talking to Lucky, who I have decided is the cutest little foal here tonight. She wriggles her ears and wags her tail when she’s excited, and I can see my younger self in her quite a bit. Sociable and outgoing when she’s part of a group, but she’s probably really introverted when nopony else is around.

Eventually the group finish eating, and Sombra gently taps his fork against the side of his wine glass. (All of the foals had fruit juice or water, but a few adults decided that they wanted something a little stronger.) Everypony turns towards us.

“It’s time for the birthday filly to open a few of her gifts,” I announce. I look at Skywalker. Using his magic, he picks up a large square box wrapped neatly in silver foil and places it on the table in front of Cozy. She rips the paper apart with a mad glint in her eye, then her face takes on a look of surprise at the contents of the parcel.

“Wow, now this is a nice chess set.” She takes out a couple of the chess pieces, which are made of metal, not wood. From what I can tell, the metals used are quite cheap, but the intricate details on each piece are astounding. “Thank you.”

“I’ve been meaning to find somepony else to play chess with for a while,” Skywalker grins before glancing at Hanzal. “I was getting a bit bored after beating this one seven times in a row.”

“Hey!” Hanzal objects, much to everypony’s amusement.

“Are you challenging me?” Cozy questions, smirking.

“Ah, the million-bit question, ma’am.”

“Challenge accepted. When everypony else is gone, we can find out whether you’re as good as you say you are.”

The Colonel gives a nod as a smile appears on his face. After a brief hug between both of them, the bat pony turns at the doors and proceeds to walk towards them; he stops, however, he gives me a quick glance. Then, a salute comes from him, which I reciprocate without thinking twice.

Immediately, I watch as he opens the heavy crystal-made doors and leaves the room.

Hope fetches the next gift box. It’s poorly wrapped, but Cozy couldn’t care less. Her eyes are on the prize, and the moment the present is in front of her she tears apart the wrapping paper and opens the lid of the box. Inside is a collection of fresh reading material for her - hopefully something more suitable for a twelve-year-old.

“Ooh! Nice,” Cozy exclaims. She wouldn’t admit it if I asked her, but she’s an absolute bookworm.

Wish ended up buying Cozy a few outfits after all, so I look at Sombra, waiting for him to give her something. However, he just looks at me with a slightly cryptic smile.

Uh, are you not going to give her anything?

Later, my love. It would probably be best to wait until the rest of the foals have left before she sees her present.

I place my gift in front of her. She’s slightly confused by the size of the box, but I give her a wink and she opens it. I watch as her jaw drops when she sees what I bought for her.

“Gosh. It’s… it’s almost exactly the same as the one I lost,” she breathes.

“Do you like it?” I ask slowly.

“I know this has been said too many times, but I have to. I don’t like it, I love it. How did you know exactly what my old teddy bear looked like?”

“Lucky guess,” I tell her truthfully.

“Yeah, right. Everypony knows you can read minds and walk in dreams.”

I stay quiet and decide to let her think what she wants to think.

“Wow! Berry, it’s got your mum’s signature on its foot. She… she made this… for me?”

I say, “Well, she made it a few weeks ago, but I found it in her shop after Berry and Lucky pointed me in the right direction.”

Suddenly, Lucky finds herself engulfed in a huge hug, then Cozy turns to Berry and does the same to her. Foals are amazing. They’re noisy, rude, good at making a mess and terrible at listening to instructions, but they’re so sweet at the same time.

“Aww, Cozy, it was nothing.” Lucky blushes a little.

“Gee, give yourself some credit. All of you. Seriously, this means tons to me.” Cozy jumps out of her seat and hovers over to me and Sombra to give both of us a hug. She then whispers in my ear, “Just don’t go back to being like a bossy mother after this. I prefer the fun, silly version of you.”

“I’ll try,” I whisper back.

Wish, Hope and Hanzal lead all of the other foals out of the room, leaving Cozy, Sombra and I alone together. Cozy goes to follow the others, but Sombra closes the door with magic before she can leave. He then picks up a stack of papers from the desk in the corner, as well as a quill and ink pot. He places all three on the table in front of the two of us.

“Cozy, could you come and look at this for just a moment?” he asks. I look at the first page and I have to hold my tongue as I read the line at the top.

Sighing, she flies over to us, and drags the papers across the table towards her. Then, she almost falls out of the air and gasps. “Gee.”

“Do you like your present?” he says.

“Gee, I-” Tears well up in her eyes. “Guess I really am part of the family now.”

“Once you and Moonlight have signed these papers, you are.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. He smiles sheepishly.

“I probably should have given you some notice, my love, but I wanted to see your reaction to this as well. It is my opinion that Cozy Glow has been around us for long enough and helped us enough times that she deserves some special recognition. We should stop looking down on her and start including her in our lives. I thought that the best way of showing her that we care would be to officially make her a part of the Crystal Empire’s Royal Family.”

“You mean, by adopting her?” I say. The words hang in the air for a moment, making me sound a lot harsher than I intended.

Cozy looks at me. “Well, you don’t have to. If you’d rather things stay the way they are. I can keep out of the way, burn a few more books about Sunbutt. Stay with Radiant Hope and Wishbone all the time and listen to them talking about nonsense…”

“Oh, Cozy, don’t make me cry.”

“Too bad. If I’m crying, I’m going to make you cry too, Mum.” She stops herself and lifts a hoof to her mouth. “I, uh, didn’t mean to say that, but uh, do I keep on calling you two Moonlight and Sombra, or…” She sighs. “Buck that, I’m calling you Mum now.”

I give up and allow the first tears to fall. “Cozy, you little rat. Wait for me to sign this first.” I pick up the quill, dip it in the ink and sign all of the right pieces of paperwork with my name.

“Now, Cozy, all you have to do is write your name on the line here and it’s official,” Sombra tells her, pointing to a line on the first sheet.

She scribbles her name down as quickly as possible, then spits the quill out of her mouth. “By the way, Sombra, you and I were friends at the orphanage, so I’m still going to call you Sombra. But Mum, you are and always will be Mum.”

Sombra tells her, “Oh, and there is another part to the gift. A little reminder of the fact that we are a family.” He holds up a patchwork quilt and drapes it over Cozy.

We share a group hug, and as we sit there crying and laughing, I realise exactly how much this means to me. We all just signed a legal document, so it’s written in stone.

For the first time in over a thousand years, I have a family. A husband, a mother in Equestria and a daughter of my own.

For the first time in years, I feel complete.

Oh my goodness, it feels so great to be back! I can write, I can edit what I've written with my proofreader, I can transfer everything across to Fimfiction automatically without having to rewrite everything I've written on one device again on another computer just so that I can post it on here. It feels great not to have to go through all of that any more.

But I'm not here to talk about all of that nonsense. I'm here to ramble about:

The writing of A Cozy Celebration.

I knew I wanted to write a chapter about a birthday party from quite early on in this project, a good six or seven months ago now. Originally, it was going to be Sombra's birthday, but after some shenanigans with making sure that I keep all of the dates as accurate as possible, (Bronie312 can confirm that I almost had a fit once because I'd made Sombra older than he was supposed to be due to a maths error ) I realised that the date I had chosen for Cozy's birthday was creeping closer on the calendar in the story and, as she's still a foal, I thought that it would be ideal to have a chapter focused around her birthday.

Oh, scratch that. Two chapters. It turned out that there was so much that I could expand on here that one chapter dedicated to Cozy's birthday simply wasn't enough. That spoilt little filly is hogging just under 6500 words of this story on her little celebration by Fimfiction's calculations.

Bronie thought of the title, and I liked it because as well has having the play-on-words, it symbolises what the chapter is about as well. A celebration of something small, with just a few family and friends. But at the same time, because it was for Cozy, a lot of extra effort went into it. Good, because I could tell that the pacing in some of the previous chapters was getting a little on the hasty side.

You don't say.

Seriously, Moonlight? Did you just break the fourth wall so that you could come and annoy me? It's taken long enough to sort out the mess that Sombra made.

Please be aware that I can still hear you, Angel.

Alright. You can stop now. Leave me alone so I can get this finished.

I'll be back later to have a little chat about the next chapter. Does it have to be about Celestia?

Go away, Moody Moonlight, and let me finish this.

How about you try to be a bit nicer to my wife and-

Angel.exe closed the connection.

Right, back to what we're actually talking about here. So, where was I? Oh, I was going to talk about why these chapters turned out to be so long in the end.

I guess some of that was because I wanted to show some of the struggles of change and the evolving bond between Moonlight and Cozy. They argue a lot - mainly because I wanted to show Cozy's sheer inability to follow the rules from the moment I decided to include her in Sombra's Bat - and there isn't much of a mother-daughter relationship because they don't spend enough time together in the ways that count. Then again, when they are spending quality time with each other, they're adorable. In these chapters I wanted to try and bring to light as much as possible Moonlight's guilt over not being that wonderful caring mother that she wants to be. *wink wink nudge nudge potential future stories here*

Another way that I wanted to show change is the way that Moonlight has to adapt to accommodate the other foals. Not only have things changed from when she and most of the others were foals to the present day and Lucky's foalhood, but she's also in a pretty alien environment here. Hollow Shades and the Everfree Village have been cut off from the rest of the world pretty much since bat ponies first appeared in Equestria (thanks Grogar!) and Moonlight didn't really get to experience foals' parties. The sort of partying she knew of was the sort where a bunch of off-duty Lunar Guards go on a pub crawl around Canterlot and end up with their wages being cut the next day for drunk and disorderly behaviour.

You can't tell me you haven't imagined it.

But anyways, because of the story's unusual circumstances she's been forced to adapt in more ways than one, as have Sombra, Cozy and the others. Then again, they rose to the challenge, and ended up enjoying themselves. Plus that sweet scene at the end...

I only thought of that as I was approaching the end of this chapter, actually. There's a slight nagging doubt in me that says it'll feel like it's just been tacked on at the end, but I tried to make the final part of the chapter flow as smoothly as possible, and Bronie liked the idea, so I'm hoping that the rest of you do as well.

Ramble over. By the sounds of things, I've got an angry cast to deal with.

I wouldn't say anything if the script wasn't terrible.

I am unhappy with the role that you have given to Moonlight. She should not have to suffer such an ordeal.

Gee, it's taking for ever for the plot to unfold!

*sigh* I'll be there in a minute, you lot. Zip it before you spoil the entire series.

Well, what really happens at the end of Fire and Shadows is-

Shut up, Sunbutt! *facehoof* Ugh, this is going to be a long day. Somepony stick the kettle on, I need a cuppa.

~ Angel