The whole cottage resonated with a brontean din. After a few moments of composing herself where she lay startled and fallen off her settee, Fluttershy got to her hooves and opened the front door. Standing there at her threshold was a rather unamused Discord, his mismatched arms crossed, his mismatched eyes squinted and his wizened brow furrowed, looking for all the world like the oldest possible petulant child. Chaperoning him was Twilight Sparkle, who smiled as though she could not dare to let the expression slip away. She had more than a few hairs out of place.
“Heeey there, Fluttershy,” Twilight said with a fragrant hint of mania on her breath, “Listen, I know I said that I could handle Discord for the week, but to tell you the truth, he just missed you too much to stay at the library!”
Fluttershy swallowed as meekly as she could, knowing to only a partial extent what overwhelming experiences those shuddering eyes must have betrayed. But glancing at Discord and the way his nostrils flared as he snorted, the pegasus' expression softened and she turned to Twilight with adjusted confidence. “Oh, it's no trouble at all, Twilight. Discord is fairly high-maintenance, and I'd be delighted to take him off your hooves.”
The draconequus clicked his tongue testily. “I'm right here, you know.”
“And now I'm no~ot,” chimed Twilight cheerily even as she was trotting away at a brisk pace. That left Discord standing on Fluttershy's doormat, evidently expecting something from the mare.
“Um...”
He sighed. “Aren't you going to invite me in?” he asked with sarcastic underscoring.
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Discord, would you please come inside?” Without hesitation, he lifted his feet and floated past her, not even bothering to flap his mismatched wings. It seemed more like he was making the cottage move to surround him. “Now, how have things been with Twilight?”
Discord groaned and flopped backwards onto the settee, sinking in about a foot deeper than would be expected from anyone else. His snout poked out from the depths of the cushioning, and he spoke in a belabored tone. “Absolutely terrible. That mare has no sense of humor, not a single nerve devoted to fun!”
Fluttershy, deciding to give him his space, sat across the table in an armchair usually reserved for larger animals and dappled with bits of shed fur to back up that claim. “Twilight has plenty of good humor in her, Discord. I think you just have a different sense of humor than she does.”
Discord 'sat up,' bending at a right angle somewhere along the upper half of his serpentine neck. “She has no appreciation for my tastes, then. Does that work?” He sighed under Fluttershy's encouraging gaze, grumbling into his own scrappy beard. “...Weeell, I may have turned her tail into snakes and filmed her running in circles.”
There was still that silent, oppressive, kind look. He inspected his lion paw, unsheathing the small, sharp claws one by one and blowing on them.
“...And I translated the early readers' section into a mentally infectious language. No casualties. The details of such an anomaly would bore you, trust me.” He looked over at her with one eye.
That gentle smile still lay unwavering.
“I melted her bed, but I promise, that's all!” He practically pleaded for her to say something. Fluttershy acquiesced.
“Discord, I'm not mad, just disappointed. You've been so good lately, why would you want to act out like this?” She flew over to him, sitting beside his perked head. In response, he sat up straighter, cracking a few of his numerous joints, then slumped back down slightly, resting one arm over the back of the settee. He hemmed and hawed for a few seconds until he reached a conclusion he was willing to share.
“I honestly don't know, my dear Fluttershy. I've had no debts to pay, no scores to settle, I'm happy as an earth pony in m—”
Fluttershy glared at him with a sudden and strong ferocity.
“...Mmmorning sunshine,” he strangled out. Fluttershy smiled again, which left him coughing. “Never mind. In any case, life has been pretty easy. So I implore you to believe me when I say that I really didn't have a reason for creating a five-inch louse and setting its sights on that poofball pony across town.” He held up his hands defensively. “I put her fur back, I swear. Not that she was very grateful... You know, I really don't think she—”
Fluttershy interrupted him by putting her hoof on his arm. “Discord, please understand that I want to help you. If we can figure out why you're having these behavioral problems, it would make everypony happier.”
Discord scoffed. “Everypony? Well what about my happiness? I'm not a pony, after all.”
The mare removed her hoof. “Of course you'll be happier, of course.”
A silence hung in the air. During this, Fluttershy formed a question which dripped down, marinated and salivated until it was on the tip of her tongue. She opened her mouth, and —
“Out with it already, what do you want to know?” Discord snapped.
“Um, I was just wondering, if you're not a pony, then what are you?”
He sighed. “Didn't Celestia teach her star pupil anything that she, in turn, could teach you? I'm a draconequus.”
Fluttershy continued. “But what is a draconequus? You're the only one anypony has ever heard of.”
He sat up a bit straighter still. “Nonsense, fustian and ballyhoo. Not a single mention of any other draconequi?”
“Not a single one. Discord, what are you?”
He paused. “...Fluttershy, that's a question I cannot answer, not for all the rice in Chollimea.”
“Where's that?”
“Never mind,” Discord dismissed, “I don't know, just forget it.” He sank back into the cushions again, leaving the lower half of his body hanging out upon the floor with his upper half submerged in a crease in folded fabric.
Fluttershy carefully got up from where she sat and flew to her bookshelf, browsing through the titles with her head tilted to the side. One of the advantages of flight was never needing a ladder to reach the highest shelf, and from the highest shelf, wedged between two hefty tomes, she retrieved a thin paperback bound in greyish-red cloth. The cover was a large lidless eye, its pupil emptied out and refilled with a silver question mark. She fluttered back down to Discord and alit beside him.
“Discord, this is a guide to hypnotic therapy.”
He poked his eyes alone out from the crevice in which he lay. “Yes?”
“I've personally never had to use it before, not for any of my animals, but I've heard that it can be extremely helpful for accessing forgotten dreams, old memories, things that might be useful to know. Do you think you might like to try it out?”
Discord grunted. “I don't see why not, although it can't possibly work any better than your in-house Stare. And we know that doesn't work.” He pried himself out of the cushions by stepping on his own tail like a foot-lever and turned to face the pegasus. “Alright then, what do I have to do?”
Fluttershy skimmed through the passages she had read before. “Oh, it's very simple. I put you into a trance state, almost like a waking sleep, then I talk to y— Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself.” She took a deep breath in and out, then removed the weighted paper pendulum from the inside cover. “Look into my eyes, Discord. This isn't the Stare. Look at me.”
He rolled his own eyes and relaxed into a position where he could face her at her level with minimal muscle tension. “I'm looking,” he said.
Fluttershy held the paper pendulum by its string and set it swinging between her face and his. Her gaze did not shiver in the slightest as the pendulum swung. Inside the obscuring folds of paper, the metal washer glowed gently. “Look into my eyes. Your eyelids are feeling heavy. Very heavy.”
He snorted. “Oh, so cliché. Are you going to break out the... the...” he yawned a gaping yawn. “...the pinwheel next...?”
Fluttershy went on. “You're sleepy. You're sleepier than you've ever been.” She drew out her words. “You feel like you might just want to take a nap. Just go to sleep right here and now. Just... go... to... sleep.”
With that, Discord's eyes fell like shutters, and though he did not snore as was characteristic, it was fairly certain he was asleep. Fluttershy giggled quietly and turned the page in the book. “Okay, on the count of three, you're going to go into a trance, where you can hear me and respond, but you remain asleep. One, two three.”
Discord's eyes opened, their pupils shrunken to infinitesimal points and letting be around them a sea of uninhabited gold. Fluttershy caught herself looking too long, even though he couldn't be aware of it, and glanced back at the book. Perhaps this was her chance at finding some truths even Twilight could not have approached.
“Okay, Discord, I want you to answer some questions, okay?”
He said nothing.
“What is your name?”
In a low drone, he said, “Discord.”
Fluttershy frowned a bit. “Is that your full name?”
“Yes,” was the response. Fluttershy thought a bit.
“What was your birth name?” She said, changing her angle.
The sound of sputtering gas was almost audible in the stillness of the room as Discord thought unthinkingly. After ten tense seconds, he replied, “Jonathan,” in that uncanny tone.
Fluttershy covered her mouth at the unexpected answer. “Y-your birth name?” She squeaked out.
No response. It had been made evident, it seemed. In the lull, Fluttershy decided she should be writing this down, and after fetching a pencil and pad she continued. “H-how old are you?”
A quivering kink worked its way up Discord's neck from his uneven shoulders, stopping at the base of his head with a click. “It's been too long,” was what he seemed to say after that, and he sounded ancient.
Fluttershy wrote tepidly and then replied. “Okay, I want you to go back to the earliest memory you have. Describe to me what you're experiencing.”
Nothing happened for several seconds. Fluttershy was about to repeat herself. A flash of light then suddenly spread out from Discord's lopsided, vacant eyes, enveloping the room and its two occupants. And then there was emptiness.
I am.
I am small.
I am in a room.
I am in a room with glass walls and a floor of mucky dirt and shredded leaves. There is a hollow log composed of some absurdly indestructible material nearby. Half of the room is water, and it gets deeper farther away from me. The yellow sun overhead is soothingly warm but unbearably bright.
Somewhere near me, but somewhere I can't get to, there are others like me. No, I can't get to them. I don't think they know I know about them. I don't think they know anything.
I walk around. I feel very, very small. Something about this doesn't seem quite right, but it's all I know.
I walk up to one of these glass walls. It is impenetrable and thick, and it distorts the air behind it. I put my hands up to the glass. My hands... my hands match. Four widely spaced fingers, or toes, I suppose. My reflection in this glass is strange. I am perfectly even, in structure if not in coloration. I'm some shade of... brown? Red? I can't quite tell. My eyes are small, my face is short and my body is so small. I do not have wings or horns or hair, just smooth, moist skin. When I breathe it feels wet. This is weird.
The world beyond the glass wall is murky and shadowed.
There! There's something moving out there! A gigantic thing, a terrifying thing! I run back to where I was, back and hide in the unnatural log. My head is beginning to hurt from the brightness of the light. The huge thing, it's a creature, a monster of some kind, it's coming towards me. I peek out from the log as the monstrous thing puts its face against the glass. Its face alone, easily three times as tall as I am from nose to tail. Oh, I have a tail. It's a rather long, attractive tail, lightly speckled.
The beast has an unusually flat face. It wears glasses over wide eyes, a nose like a beak, a thin mouth. I don't like it very much. But it seems familiar.
Out of nowhere, there's something on the ground. A creature smaller than me. It's a bug, a... Oh, a cricket, what fun! It's no contest, of course. I pounce on the cricket and... I bite into it. Oh wow, yes! The cricket is quite crunchy, quite crunchy indeed.
I think the thing outside the wall must have given that meal to me. I look up at it to say thanks... oh, my eyes are all wrong. I have to turn my head to see right. And the thing seems to be amazed that I'm looking right at it. It backs away. Is it afraid? No, how could it be afraid of me? It's gigantic, and I'm tiny.
I look through the glass but I only see a few glowing rectangles. One of the glass walls shows me a painted picture of a forest of some kind. It makes me feel peaceful. The other two walls show me other rooms like mine, very far away. Some are higher up and some are lower down. Each of the other rooms has its own sun. There are others like me, other... others in those rooms. Are they family? Friends? Are they captive like me? I can't get to them. The sky seems to be open, but if I go too close to the sun I'll burn, and the walls are too slippery for me to climb.
The... the thing walks back this way. It's making noises. Well, something is making noises. ...Music, it's making music, and I like it. The song's got a good strong melody, very exciting and brash. I swing my head, trying to keep time. The thing looks at me like it's seeing me for the first time. It makes a little box appear from nowhere and puts it up above the glass wall, and the music gets really loud, and I tap my toes.
The thing smiles a toothy, carnivorous smile. It makes another object appear in its hand now, a marker, and it's writing something on a sticker, I think. Oh, it stuck the sticker onto the outside of the glass wall.
I couldn't read it then... but now it says “Johnny B. Goode.” I guess the thing just named me. Rather odd name, don't you think? I wonder what could have prompted that.
The thing snaps its fingers. In the blink of an eye, the sun switches off, replaced by what I think might be the moon. The moon is pale white and blurry. The moon is much less bright, which is nice, but it's also a lot colder, which is not at all pleasant. I see that the other rooms have their suns going out one by one as the thing moves along beside them. I go and burrow into the muck and mud inside the log that does not rot so I can stay warm.
The huge thing there, it can make food and objects appear from thin air. It can change the temperature instantly. It's so powerful, it can turn day into night with a snap.
That kind of power...
That power is awe-striking.
I fear it.
I envy it.
I want it for my own.
The flash of light receded, and Fluttershy and Discord were exactly where they had been upon the settee. After a beat or two, Discord stood to all fours and began scuttling on the floor. He was apparently still in a trance of some kind.
Fluttershy shook her head, clearing it of mental cobwebs. “Um, Discord, that was... um... what are you doing?”
Discord scurried along the ground like a prisoner of gravity. His long body, fully extended, was curving in slow, slow arcs. As he met the wall, he turned and walked up along its surface, knocking paintings to the floor. His back half was still on the ground by the time his arms were clinging to the ceiling. Fluttershy watched him, still in shock.
“Discord, are you okay? Discord?” She flew up to see his face, but was met with blank eyes with pinpoint foci. The draconequus continued at an angle across the ceiling until he descended another wall and came to rest with his head under a table. Fluttershy hurriedly got the book to him and flipped to the back.
“Um, okay, I'm going to count to three, and when I reached three, you'll wake up out of your trance, okay? Okay. One... two... three.”
Discord blinked, and his pupils engorged until they were back to their uneven sizes.
“Oh hello, Flutt—OW!” He yelped, banging his head against the underside of the table. “What was that for?”
“I'm so sorry, so sorry!” She rushed to see if he was injured, but he shooed her away with his talons.
“Not you, the blasted table. Who built this cruddy thing?!”
Fluttershy grimaced. “...The Cutie Mark Crusaders...?” She offered.
“Well they did a good job at making it harder than rock! How do you do that to wood?”
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Um, Discord... do you remember anything that just happened? That whole, um, earliest-memory thing?”
Discord stopped rubbing the cartoonish lump on his head and looked at Fluttershy lengthily. “...Yes. I remember.”
“And does it help you understand why you were, um, acting out?”
He pushed the lump back into his skull with a single finger press. “...Yes, it does.”
Fluttershy giggled. “Then I think we were successful.”
Discord chuckled a bit, then poked Fluttershy in the chest. “Listen, Fluttershy, you're my friend, right?” The pegasus nodded, mostly confidently. “Please, do not tell anyone about that. It's... it's not a good memory at all.”
Fluttershy shook Discord's hand. “I won't tell anyone, I promise.”
He sighed. “Thank you so much, I owe you one. But don't expect me to fulfill that.”
Again, the mare giggled. “Sure thing, 'Johnny.'”
A vein pulsed in Discord's forehead.
The birds outside scattered as the cottage shook with the force of his yell.
“Don't call me that!”
