Chapters “It’s certainly nice to have friends,” Discord thought as he meandered about Ponyville. “It was nice of my friend Fluttershy to take care of me while I was sick. I’m now going to go and enjoy the hospitality of my friends the Apples. Surely they will enjoy extending their down-home hospitality to me!”
As Discord entered Sweet Apple Acres, he saw Big Macintosh pulling a cart full of apples.
“Well, those certainly look tasty!” Discord said. “May I try one?”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac responded.
Big Macintosh unloaded the cart, then went back towards the orchard to procure more apples.
“What in tarnation is Discord doing sitting there by the barn, eating all them apples?” Applejack demanded as she and Granny Smith came back from the orchard with their own carts loaded with apples.
“Now darlin’, we need to be nice to the…well, whatever he is,” Granny Smith said. “He ain’t never had friends before, and he don’t quite understand that friendship is a give and take sorta thing. We need to be patient with him.”
“Well, my patience with him is already worn thin,” Applejack said. “Maybe you should talk to him, Granny. He might take the criticism better comin’ from the matriarch of Sweet Apple Acres.”
Applejack unloaded her cart and went back to the orchard while Granny went to have a chat with Discord.
“Hello, Ms. Apple!” Discord said in a lilting voice. “I must say, these apples of yours are quite splendid! They’re just at the peak of ripeness!”
“Well, I’m glad you like them,” Granny Smith said. “You see, young fella, I’m not tryin’ to put a damper on your enthusiasm for our apples, no sir. It’s just that we do need a fair number of them apples to make our cider, and our pies and cobblers and candy apples to sell at the Harvest Festival.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” Discord groaned. “How obnoxious of me to sit here eating up your apples when they are the source of your income. I’d like to make it up to you.”
“Well, there’s plenty of ways you can help,” Granny said. “You can help us harvest. You can help with juicing the apples for cider or cutting them up for baking, canning, and drying. You can bag up the seeds for next year’s planting, or you can take the cores and peels to the compost pile. You could also help us sell our goodies at the fair. In return, I’ll give you a whole passel of apple goodies to enjoy.”
“Ms. Apple, you’ve got yourself a deal!” Discord declared. “Why, it is my greatest wish in all the Universe to do great good, and you can’t get gooder than apples! I’ll help you peel them and cut them and crush them and puree them, and whatever else you may want me to do.”
“The only thing else I want you to do, Sonny, is to call me Granny Smith. Ms. Apple is so dang formal, I feel like I’m being summoned for some reason or another.”
“It’s a deal, Granny Smith,” Discord declared, shaking Granny’s hoof exuberantly. “Now, you just point me in the right direction, and I’ll get started straightaway!”
A Magical and Quixotic Crop
Come springtime, Discord helped the Apple Family plow the previously unused land and plant the seeds. Applejack told him that it would be at least a couple of years before the trees were able to bear fruit. Discord was impatient by nature, and he was eager to see what kinds of fruit the trees from his magical seeds would bear. He mixed up a magic fertilizer using the discarded apple cores and peels and spread it over the ground where the trees would grow.
“I want to see the fruits of my labor this year, not a couple years from now!” he chortled as he sprinkled the fertilizer. “More importantly, I want to taste the fruits of my labor! It will be glorious!”
Summer came, and the apple saplings grew surprisingly fast.
“There’s something strange about these trees,” Applejack remarked to Big Macintosh as the pair was tending to the orchard one day. “Look at the yellow sparkly leaves. These are a new kind of tree. I don’t know if it’s mutation or magic. Maybe I better ask Twilight Sparkle.”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac agreed.
Twilight Sparkle examined the trees curiously.
“These trees have been magically altered,” she decreed. “I can’t see anything wrong in them. They seem like perfectly nice trees. However, they are magical, and quite quixotic. No two of them are alike. Hmm…magical and quixotic. I think that maybe we’d better have a chat with Discord.”
Discord freely admitted to having sprinkled the seeds with Surprise Dust and the ground with Magical Growth Formula.
“You see,” he said, “I thought that the only thing that could make your apples even better and more exciting to your customers would be to give them magic properties. Why, look how quickly the trees grow! Just wait till fall, when the fruit is on the branches. It won’t be the same old yellow and red and green, it will be all colors of the rainbow!”
“Well, I guess there ain’t no harm done,” Applejack said. “I just wish you would have asked me first, Discord.”
“Yes, but if I had, do you think you would have agree to allow me to jazz up your orchard? You tend to be a bit traditional, dear Applejack.”
“I think I probably would have agreed to one bag of seeds,” Applejack said. “Well, what’s done is done, and you didn’t mean no harm. But in the future, when it’s someone else’s property, y’all need to ask them first before going and making big changes to things.”
“I will keep that in mind,” Discord said. “Dear me, I hope I haven’t mucked things up for you, particularly after you were all so kind to me and treated me like a member of your family.”
Discord proved to be a great help to the family. His horn made an excellent corer, and his claw was the perfect peeler and slicer. He was strong and fast, and the family was able to squeeze the cider twice as quickly with his help. Even Applejack had to admit that she was impressed.
“Discord, we got everything done in double time this year!” she declared. “Heck, if we had double the apples, we could make double the profits! Don’t y’all think so, Big Mac?”
“Eeyup,” Big Macintosh agreed.
“Well, there is some empty land up on the North Forty,” Granny Smith said. “Discord, if we can depend on your help during the coming years, I see no reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and plant there. That many more apples would have been overwhelming in the past, but you, my friend, are a slicing, dicing, squashing machine! Can we count on you?”
“Granny, you certainly can!” Discord promised. “I will core and slice and dice and smash each and every apple to perfection. Your family will harvest the rewards—and so will I!”
Discord raised his glass of cider in a toast. His heart was full of joy, and his mind was full of ideas. He genuinely wanted to help the friends who had done so much to make him feel like he was a part of their family.
The next day, Discord took the bags of apple seeds to the barn. He opened the bags.
“I love apples, indeed I do!” he said. “But they only come in three colors. That gets a little boring. I think that the only thing that could make the apples better would be if they came in as many colors as there are in the rainbow, and more! Oh, I am a genius!”
Discord sprinkled the seeds with his Magic Surprise Dust.
“Even I don’t know how these will turn out,” he chuckled gleefully. “Oh, I do love surprises! I think the Apple family will too, when their rainbow colored apples bring in more gold than a simple Golden Delicious ever could!”
Fall and harvest time rolled around once more. Discord again helped the Apple family with the harvest and with the making of cider and baked goods. The eagerly awaited magic apples were harvested along with the others.
The apples came in an assortment of colors. There were lovely lavender apples, heavenly heliotrope apples, beautiful turquoise apples, divine apples which sparkled like diamonds and quartz crystals, rainbow-colored apples, and, of course, the ordinary red, green and yellow apples that everyone loved.
Discord decided that it was best if he tasted the unusual apples first to make sure that they were good enough for others to eat.
“Sometimes a thing can be pretty on the outside, but awful on the inside,” he reasoned.
Fortunately, all of the apples were delicious, though the magic apples did taste somewhat different than the ordinary apples. The lavender apples had a lavender flavor, and Rarity thought that their juice might be suitable for creating a new line of perfume. The heliotrope apples tasted a bit like candied violets, while the turquoise apples tasted like cotton candy or jellybeans.
The diamond apples tasted like flavored sugar sprinkles, and it was decided that they would be best used blended with other apples as an enhancer for the desserts. The rainbow apples were a fun novelty, having a different flavor for each colored stripe.
The Apple family was not angry with Discord for his experiment, but it was agreed that the ordinary apples should make up the bulk of the harvest. Thus, the Apples learned that sometimes trying new things resulted in positive changes, while Discord learned that the best things are not always the most impressive to look at, and that he should always ask before casting spells on things that belong to others.
