"Wow," Fluttershy said, her eyes widened in awe at her friend Discord. "Is that really true?"
Discord was laying down half curled up beside her precariously holding a fancy glass of grape juice between his talons. The shade of the tree keeping them cool in the midsummer afternoon heat. He looked into the wide eyes of his pony friend. "Now my dear Fluttershy, why in the world of Equestria would I ever lie to you?" He took a sip from his glass, "of course it’s true, what you call real is simply an illusion."
Fluttershy rested her head on Discord’s lion paw in the grass. She wondered what the world really was, what she really was. "Can you teach me to see through it?"
Discords eyes widened and he looked down at her. "Teach you?"
Fluttershy got up and started walking away. "Yes, or maybe," she lowered her head a little, "I'd just like to try and see is all." She turned back to face him and sat down.
"Hmmm..." Discord thought, he took another sip of his juice then stopped half sip, looked at his glass, then promptly dumped its contents on the ground. "Very well then," he said getting up, "but it won't be easy." He made a roundabout Fluttershy looking her over, smiled for just a moment then went back to his normal composure. "You think you have what it takes?"
"Oh, I don't know, I think I do."
"Really..." Discord put his empty wine glass on the ground. "Very well then, the lessons begin now, and your first lesson is in perception. Pick up the wineglass." A blade of grass grew into a lawn chair and he laid down on it in the comfortable S like shape.
Fluttershy was confused. "This will be easy," she thought, "it’s just a glass." As she expected she picked it up with ease and looked at Discord, who without looking told her to put it down and do it again. She put it down and tried picking it up again but couldn’t.
Still without looking, Discord made a suggestion. "Try flapping your wings."
She tried. She held it and tried flapping her wings, harder and hard but it would not lift off the ground. She did not give up. She wanted to show him she had what it took so she kept flapping her wings. She flapped harder and harder until the inevitable happened - the glass broke. The ground started to fall beneath her, and discord with it. That’s when she saw she hadn’t just lifted the glass, she had lifted a huge piece of the earth with her and now she was as high as the clouds.
"Resplendent work!" Discord proclaimed, he was floating near her on his blade of grass. "You know, I never doubted you for a second."
A smash came from below as the ground hit the ground.
"What just happened?" Fluttershy asked.
"Well from the looks of it I’d say the ground went skydiving without a properly packed parachute."
"Um...that’s not what I meant."
Discord got off hit grass and it slithered away like a snake. "First you picked it up, which made you think it was easy. On the second go you had the same expectation, however the glass was one with the ground, so in performing the task you lifted the whole ground. In not noticing you lifted it higher and higher."
Fluttershy seemed confused, "you haven’t thought me anything."
"Oh, fine." Discord snapped his fingers and they were back on the ground. Fluttershy found herself suddenly sitting in a desk in the middle of a grassy field, and Discord was in front of her writing on a chalkboard. He turned and spoke over her head. "Welcome class, it looks like we’re all here, stay quiet in your seats while I take attendance."
Fluttershy tried getting out of her seat but a seatbelt appeared and buckled her in. "Uhhh...Discord I-"
In a flash discord turned around. "What did I say about being quiet miss..." he looked briefly at a piece of paper and mumbled ‘which one are you’ to himself, "Fluttershy. If you must talk then feel free to whisper to the other students."
Fluttershy looked to her side, there was a small Discord about her size in a desk to her left, and another to her right. In fact there were many. Behind her there were five rows of desks with Discords sitting at them. Each seemed to be preoccupied either hard at word, writing scribbly lines, or talking silently to another.
"Hello." The one to her right said while she was looking back.
She turned to him. "Discord?"
"No," he said, "my name is Record. What’s yours?"
Fluttershy was confused. Record had Discord’s voice. "I’m Fluttershy."
Before her sentence was finished, Record had taken out a notepad and jotted down ‘Yellow one is Fluttershy’ on it.
"Alright everyone." Discord said from up front. "Today we have a new student in class, would you like to introduce yourself miss..." he pulled the piece of paper back up, but before he could say her name-
"Fluttershy," Record said, "her name is Fluttershy."
"Yes yes, whatever," Discord said, "would you like to introduce yourself to the class Fluttershy?"
She sank in her desk a bit. "No thanks..." she mumbled.
"Very well, on with the lesson." Discord drew an apple on the board, which then turned into an apple and fell off. He grabbed it while it was falling and held it up for the class to see. "What is this?" He asked the class.
"An apple," they all responded in near unison.
"Whatever you want to think." Discord said putting the 'apple' on Fluttershy's desk.
She looked at it.
"Well Fluttershy go on, tell us what it is." Discord said.
She picked it up. It didn't feel like an apple, in fact, it felt like a rock. "It's hard like a rock."
"That's a common misperception," Discord said to the class, "rocks you see are actually very soft and only tense up when touched." He stepped back to the chalkboard. "So do trees." Discord drew a clock on the board, "well would you look at the time," he took the clock off the board and threw it like a frisbee. "Time sure does fly when you’re learning."
Fluttershy looked to the distant sun. It was setting on the horizon.
"One moment," Discord said pulling out a jack and suddenly wearing a construction. He went between Fluttershy and the horizon and placed the jack on the ground and pushed the jack handle down a few times and the sun went up a little higher in the sky. "Alright," he said going back to the front of the class. "Lets wrap this up before I need to do that again, lets talk about magic. Now, some magic spells do nothing more than change another’s perception, if only momentarily. For example..." Discord pulled out a book from behind his back that hadn't been there before and flipped to a page. "Ah, a little something called the want it need it spell makes others perception of an object to their absolute liking, and thus they chase it down to fulfill their felt needs." He slammed the book closed in his arms. "A felt perception. On the other hoof if you move the clouds like a pegasus," he said pointing to the sky, "then that’s not changing perception, but rather reality. YES!" He said with excitement. "That’s the word. Reality and perception are very different. You can never really think in reality, only view your own take on it. A perception of reality. In fact, I didn’t really move the sun back into the sky. That’s just your perception of what I did. I changed your perception, and thus I changed your reality, but if I had changed reality I would of also changed your perception." Discord took the remainder of the ‘apple’ off Fluttershy’s desk and raised it over his head. "Class dismissed." He threw it on the ground and it blew into a puff of smoke. Discord was gone, so was the chalkboard, and so were the desks.
It was night now, and Fluttershy was standing up alone in the middle of a grassy field. On the ground in front of her was a piece of paper. She picked it up and recognized it almost immediately. It was Record’s notes. They read:
Yellow one is Fluttershy
Rocks and trees are soft
Perception is how we view reality
Reality can change perception
If your perception is changed then your reality is changed
Your perception is your reality
Perceptions can’t be trusted
Reality is a lie
Fluttershy looked up from the notes to the sea of stars above. Doors had opened for exploration, but perhaps those doors were never closed at all. She wondered what the world really was now.
If she really did know... She would want to unknow.
