The Little Seapony

The kingdom of Equestria is ruled equally by three distinguished dignitaries. The kind and wise Princess Celestia rules the day. The noble and strict Princess Luna rules the night. And last, but not in any way least, Prince Discord rules over something very peculiar indeed. He rules over chaos. Now, you may think that chaos can’t be ruled over. It is chaos after all – untameable and unpredictable. However, Discord is also a very untamable and unpredictable type of pony. For one thing, he isn’t a pony. He is a legendary draconequus. It is his duty to travel the kingdom, making sure that there is enough chaos in every pony’s life to allow them to grow and learn, but not so much that they became overwhelmed.

The kingdom was not always like this. Indeed, Discord used to be quite a hoof-ful for the two sisters. Although he wanted to do well, he was often bored with his duties, and when Discord got bored he tended to add quite a bit more chaos to the lives of the ponies than was necessary. Most of the time it was small things that, although annoying for the ponies involved, usually didn’t cause any lasting harm. The one exception to that was when he decided it would be fun to convince a certain stallion that he was a bold knight on a quest from the princesses to save a fair mare from a wicked dragon. Unfortunately, the nearest dragon lived in a library and was a much respected citizen of Equestria with nary an unkind word to be said of him. The fool stallion’s addled mind, however, quickly turned this mild mannered dragon into a ferocious, fire-breathing monster who lived not by eating jewels like most dragons, but on ponyflesh! The head librarian, who was a studious no nonsense purple mare that would never dream of being a damsel in distress, suddenly became the fair mare that the dragon had kidnapped. This eventually led to several ponies being injured by the stallion saying they were “cohorts of the monster!” (not to mention the dragon, himself, who had to go to the hospital for severe puncture wounds) and a burned down library.

Although Discord had found this to be extremely entertaining, the other ponies disagreed with him. Not least of whom was Princess Celestia, who was in charge of Discord. “Dealing with chaos is a privilege,” Celestia told him. “You should be grateful I haven’t imprisoned you in stone by now with the way you go about terrorizing ponies! That is not what your position is for! As punishment I am stripping you of your powers and sending you to Ponyshell Island until you learn that ponies are not there merely for you to entertain yourself with. They have emotions and desires that you need to respect.” She forced a magic dampening arm cuff on him that only she could take off and then teleported him to the edge of a very small, very boring island town.

The first thing he had to deal with when he arrived on the island was how he was going to get food. No longer could he simply conjure up food whenever he was hungry. He thought of getting a job, but he soon discovered that that was nearly impossible. Nopony wanted to hire the infamous banished draconquues even if his powers were gone. They didn’t believe that he could be trusted. Discord thought they were probably right. Having a job meant a strict schedule and hard work, and he wasn’t good at either of those things. In order to earn money for food, he had to resort to collecting the pony shaped seashells the Island was famous for and selling them in town. This didn’t earn him much, but it was enough to get by on. Eventually he saved enough to buy a fishing rod and he started selling fish in town too. The fish he caught, however, were always shaped funny for some reason and had a strange smell to them so not many ponies bought them. He didn’t see why not. They might look weird, but they still tasted delicious.

Finding a place to live was also difficult. Although he eventually earned enough money that he could afford rent on a room, nopony wanted to lease one to him. He was forced to live in a cave on a beach outside of town. He didn’t really mind. The cave was dry and cool, and he was away from all those annoying, prejudice ponies. Once a bit of furniture was added to it, it became quite homey, indeed. He could survive a few days here, he thought. At least until Princess Celestia cooled off and allowed him to come back to the castle. She was never one to stay angry long, so he just had to wait until she came to get him.

Days turned into weeks, and Princess Celestia never came. Without his magic Discord became very bored and very frustrated. It was the same thing every day. Wake up. Collect seashells. Fish. Eat. Sleep. It was driving him insane. He was also, although he would never admit it, very lonely. He would go to town once a week to sell his wares and buy groceries, but besides polite business conversation, nopony would ever talk to him. Although he had never really had any friends per se, he at least had the Princesses to talk to.  Not to mention, he was starting to get really tired of eating fish. Princess Celestia must have been very angry with him. He needed to find a way to get back into her good graces.

While he pondered all of this sitting on a rock on what he called the front porch of his cave, a very pink pony washed up onto shore. Curious, he walked over to the mare and nudged her with his foot. She didn’t move. Was she dead? He wondered. He reached down and turned her over so that she was facing him and realized she was still breathing, just unconscious. He had never seen her in town. She was so very pink he felt that he would have remembered her if he had. She must have come from far away, Discord reasoned. That island was the only land for hundreds of miles. Not knowing what else to do, he picked her up and brought her into his cave.