The air was damp, and still.
Heated to boiling by the summer sun, it was as though the atmosphere in the palace had decided that it was all far too much excitement for one day, and now lay in tepid pools strewn throughout the grand marble-lined halls.
Celestia could tell her pegasi guards were more sensitive to it than their unicorn counterparts, which was true to form. They were constantly flitting through the halls with their wings spread and flapping, trying to circulate the stale air, which refused to oblige their efforts and remained stubbornly, stuffily damp, and still.
Of course, the Princess of the Sun scarcely noticed the heat, registering it as a mere tick amongst thousands of other data points, both magical and not, that comprised the normal background noise of her senses. The ambient temperature lay just below the threshold where her animal hindbrain might command her body to start sweating, just to appear normal.
She let the immense doors of her chambers glide shut behind her, automatically locking with a clunk, clatter and then a shimmering snap of the normal sound-deadening spell across the heavy, engraved mahogany portal. The guards' armor contained a complimentary enchantment that would counter it, let them speak through the door. Otherwise, Celestia could relax, and relish the peace.
At the moment, the hearth was turned down, flickering orange flame but with no heat to accompany it. It still cast a darting, ebbing light over the room, making shadows dance. Celestia's mane and tail flowed deceptively through the clammy air, faintly shimmering; one's eye might slide off of it the longer they tried to peer into the individual strands. The ebb and flow of motion from fireplace and mane had the effect of making the room appear strangely busy to an outsider, when in fact, Celestia could not have felt more at ease.
Awaiting her, piled neatly at the edge of the carpet, was a stack of scrolls delivered by the royal scribes, each consisting of a slightly different shade of parchment denoting their myriad origins. These comprised the dregs, the things that fell between the cracks formed by her authority in the throne room and Court and the authority of the Regent Council, which ruled on routine matters in her stead. Neither important enough to appear in the former, nor unimportant enough to leave to the latter, they arrived at Celestia's chambers each evening. Eyeing the pile, Celestia imagined she could whittle the sundry scrolls down in an hour or so. An average night.
Celestia carefully gathered her hooves beneath her and settled onto the plush carpet, nestled a long, cylindrical golden pillow at her side to support her barrel, and unrolled the first scroll.
Routine, Celestia concluded, briefly scanning the neatly penned text. A request for a change to the weather schedule, to counter the warm weather and ensure adequate rainfall. Important enough to supercede the Council's authority, routine enough that it failed to warrant the pomp and circumstance of a herald, introduction and presentation in Court. She signed it with scarcely a thought, rolled it up, and set it aside with a practiced sweep of her barely visible golden field.
The next half-dozen scrolls passed in much the same way, one after the other forming a new pile at the opposite end of the carpet. Arriving at the bottom of the pile, however, Celestia noticed that two stood out from the rest. One had a yellow ribbon and a seal from the Canterlot Geographic Society, and the other had a purple ribbon, streaked with magenta, tied in a bow instead of a seal.
Twilight, Celestia thought. She frowned slightly, concerned briefly that there was something amiss, but the frown stayed only a moment before making way for a smile, as she divined the origin of the scroll. Twilight had been in Canterlot just a few days ago; no doubt she had cajoled the scribes into delivering her missive after her departure, knowing it would turn up in just this fashion, rather than sending it via Spike. And it would be just like Twilight to tie a bow, rather than use her seal; even taking on the mantle of Alicorn Princess had failed to change her humble nature, not that Celestia had expected it to.
Celestia, saving the best for last, unrolled the scroll from the Geographic Society instead, and was immediately confronted with an illustration of a reptile rather than the usual florid introduction.
"What...?" Celestia said out loud, blinking once in confusion. Then she unrolled the scroll the rest of the way, which quickly devolved into a desperate-seeming exposition about the plight of a rare salamander ... no, a newt. A newt that made its home on the Silkmane Estuary, near Manehattan. It had been sent for Royal Review by a senior researcher at the Society, one Morning Dew, a name which seemed vaguely familiar to the Princess.
Searching her expansive memory, she realized she'd met this now-aging unicorn on a couple of occasions, if only in passing. He was a stubborn, crotchety professor of ecology from the Manehattan Institute of Higher Education, where he held tenure. More than likely, he was using his association with the Geographic Society without their permission, but he knew they could scarcely do more than scold him for it. And in the meantime, his mission was accomplished, and his document had arrived in the Royal Chambers.
Celestia chuckled, admiring her little pony's tenacity. At once, she decided to reward his efforts with a thorough discovery of the scroll's contents, and used her magic to unlock the doors and send for another half-dozen scrolls and tomes from the archives. They arrived minutes later on a cart, bearing all manner of facts and figures about tidal displacement, environmental studies conducted by unicorns and journaled accounts by earth pony farmers, and a thousand other facts and figures.
One by one, Celestia unrolled, opened and arrayed the collection around her, and settled in to do some serious self-education. After all, if Dew had gone to these lengths for the sake of a mere newt, the least she could do would be to hear him out. Her own general knowledge on the subject was expansive, but out of date.
There was barely had time to dig into another scroll before Celestia felt a change in the air.
Something new was displacing those tepid puddles of warmth around the room, sending them scurrying for new places to settle. The shift in heat had surpassed her threshold for maintaining the appearance of normalcy in front of her subjects, and she felt the first beads of sweat on her coat.
Celestia allowed herself a quick glance to the other end of the carpet, where the scrolls she had already read had been meticulously, expertly stacked into the shape of a pony, without a sound made to betray the motion. Then she looked beyond, and her eyes roamed up the length of red, scaled tail that lay beside the faux-pony model, further up the brown-coated, sinuous torso attached to the tail, and then finally to the tan-skinned, white-tufted face above, and the glowing yellow eyes set in it, narrowed unmistakably with mischief and mirth. The scent of his spicy coat, tangy with hints of incense, arrived on the displaced air from his silent teleport a moment later.
Then Celestia turned back to the scrolls spread in front of her, expressionless.
"Not even a hello!?" Discord cried, almost instantly.
Celestia's eyes roamed over a table of estimated population figures for the little reptile. "Hello," she said, absently.
"Oh, come on! That's hardly a hello befitting your good friend, Discord." Motion swirled at the corner of her vision as Discord slinked out of the shadows, and stretched himself full-length across the front of the hearth, casting long, wobbling shadows over the opposing walls.
"You forgot to have a herald introduce you," Celestia observed mildly, still not allowing him the satisfaction of pulling her attention from the multitude of scrolls. "At the moment, you're just an intruder in my chambers."
"Me?" Discord gasped, clasping his lion's paw and avian talons to his chest. "Little old me, an intruder? Do I look like an intruder?” Discord paused, and looked thoughtful, tapping a claw to his chin. “I mean, I could…”
There was a flicker of light, and Discord had affected a woven black turtleneck, and a pair of elaborate looking goggles the likes of which Celestia had never seen, obviously the mockup of some tawdry moving-picture cat burglar. He was also hanging from the ceiling, limbs splayed in all directions, from a harness wrapped around his sinuous body. “Yes, that’s clearly why I’m here, Celestia; to steal all of your state secrets, and the Royal recipe for butter-tarts.”
He drifted over on his cable, which as far as Celestia could tell was not actually anchored to anything in the ceiling, and attempted to pluck up one of the scrolls in front of her while maintaining the impression of a spider.
Celestia looked up, unimpressed, and Discord held her gaze, while his claws lowered inch by inch to one of the scrolls. Without breaking eye contact, Celestia’s magic swarmed around the scroll in question and pulled it out of reach.
A slight narrowing of the eyes from both parties, and Discord began to reach for another scroll, claws outstretched.
This time, Celestia’s magic seized the cable from which Discord was dangling, and simply burned through it in an instant, dropping the draconequus to the floor with a loud thump and an awkward tangling of his mismatched limbs.
“Now, that wasn’t very sporting of you,” Discord complained, his absurd outfit disappearing with a flash.
“I have little taste for your contrivances,” Celestia replied mildly.
“Oh, you wound me, Celestia, you wound me gravely!" Discord rolled onto his back, and stuck his right hand to his forehead with such conviction, Celestia suspected adhesive might be involved. He remained there, affecting the most pathetic body language he could. “My only desire is to bring some measure of mirth and delight into this joyless, chaste life you lead!”
Celestia failed to dignify this with a reply, and after a few moments, Discord rolled his eyes and propped his chin upon his lion's paw, staring at the scrolls he’d tried to steal a moment ago, arrayed in front of the Solar Princess. "What is all that, anyway? It’s surely too hot to be dealing with anything of importance."
"There is a unique species of newt that lives on the banks of the Silkmane Estuary, just north of Manehattan," Celestia explained without looking up, reading it verbatim off of the scroll. "A new development is going to change the inflow of tide with new freight docks, threatening to dry out the habitat."
"You know, you needn't have bothered with the last bit," Discord said.
"Which bit was that?"
"The part about newts living on banks and whatever else, it was really quite droll."
"That was the first bit, in fact."
"It was the last bit that I listened to, that's what counts." Discord craned his neck, studying the talons on his other hand. "Is this really what you do all day?" he said, voice laced with annoyance. "A thousand years of paperwork, day in and day out? A warm, fine midsummer's eve, and this is your idea of fun? Is this what dear Twilight has to look forward to?"
Celestia's ear twitched. "Twilight has great work ahead of her, Discord."
"Oh, yes, I'm sure," Discord replied sardonically. He flopped onto his back, tail curled in an S-shape that neatly overshadowed the scroll that Celestia was reading, and conjured a nail file with a flicker of light and a snap of his fingers. "A great deal of banner-waving, appearing at parties, and, perhaps the best part, waving at everypony! Perhaps even while she smiles at the same time, if she hasn't lost the will to live by then. I'm sure she'll be absolutely thrilled by her long-term career prospects."
Celestia closed her eyes, taking a moment to suppress her growing discontent. It didn’t help that the heat of the room seemed much more cloying and confined with him present, transitioning from merely a nuisance to actually verging on discomfort. Her eyes reopened, fixed on Discord, who was now meticulously scraping his talons with the nail file.
Her ears twitched again at the faint, but intensely irritating scratching sounds, no doubt tuned precisely to put it into hooves-scraping-a-blackboard territory for maximum impact upon her calm.
"Did you come here merely to belittle Princess Twilight," Celestia replied coolly, "or was there some substantial contribution to this conversation that you wished to make?"
"If you must know, I came here to apologize to you." Discord used his nail file like a pointer, prodding it in the air in Celestia's general direction. "Fluttershy has been teaching me a great deal, and I thought I would be the bigger draconequus and offer you my...regrets, over that recent misunderstanding."
Celestia's head tipped fractionally to one side. "The misunderstanding that had Princess Luna and I wrapped in magical plant cocoons in the Everfree forest, courtesy of seeds that you planted?"
Discord looked thoughtful for a moment, as if making sure that this was the particular selection amongst his catalogue of misdeeds he wished to atone for, and then nodded brightly. "Yes, that's the one! In my defense, I thought that was a good idea at the time. And that was, what, twelve or thirteen hundred years ago? So, you can't really hold it against me, I think. Let bygones be bygones." Discord made a sailing motion with his newly manicured avian claws.
Celestia allowed herself a full, measure of a half-dozen heartbeats for that to linger, before she said, "I see," and returned her attention to the scrolls. Proposed development zones, acreages...
"Well?" Discord prompted.
Celestia looked up again, affecting disinterest. "Yes?"
"You're supposed to accept my apology," Discord explained, akin to speaking to a foal, his glowing yellow eyes narrowing slightly.
"That presumes a great deal, you know."
"I mean--"
"First, it presumes that it is incumbent upon me to accept your apology on its face, without taking the requisite time to consider the merits of granting such an acceptance." Celestia leveled her gaze at the confused-looking draconequus, and continued with her hooves neatly folded in front of her, suddenly holding Court in her own chambers. "It also presumes that you're entitled to an immediate reply, which you are not. Finally, the manner in which you offer this apology is notably informal, and does not--"
"Oh, Stars and Streams, Celestia!" Discord cried, leaping up from his reclined position. Giant fluffy balls of cotton appeared in his hands, and he jammed them into his ears desperately, clamping his forepaws over the white puffs once his head was thoroughly clogged. "Not listening! La la la, I can’t stand it! Augh, what happened to you?” He ripped his paws off of his ears and narrowed his eyes at her, stretching his claws out beseechingly. “Tell me, Celestia! I mean, really, what happened to you? I know it's been a thousand years, but, do you really expect me to believe that this is the Celestia that I know and--"
"Stop," Celestia said sharply, and her neatly folded hooves were under her in an instant, suddenly rising to her full, imposing height. "Just stop, right there."
Discord's jaw gaped, frozen mid-sentence. Slowly he closed it, and lowered his hands to his sides, staring Celestia down expectantly. The cotton was gone; indeed, he looked quite plain, but for his eyes. They almost dared her, defiant, threatening to continue at any moment, to keep saying those words, to say it out loud. The sticky heat of the summer air remained suspended between them like a thick blanket, making the room seem smaller than it really was.
"What happened to me, Discord, is that Luna and I founded a civilization," Celestia said firmly. "I want you to take a moment, a serious moment, and contemplate what that entails. Take a moment to consider the gravity of such an undertaking. The sheer force of will of, in fifteen hundred years, taking what was a ragtag group of pony tribes who were still uneasily finding their way with each other, that barely understood the merest fraction of the power inherent in their bond. The effort and energy required to mold them into a society, to found a nation, to guide and guard against challenges from within and without. Surely, even you can comprehend the magnitude of the effort that goes into such an act."
By the time she had finished speaking, Celestia's voice had risen but fractionally, but she might as well have been shouting at the top of her lungs. Adrenaline, an unpleasant and altogether unwelcome guest, began to numb her hooves slightly.
Discord folded his arms over his lithe chest, his head dropping slightly in displeasure. "I wasn't minimizing your accomplishments, you know," he replied frostily, "or slighting your magnificent Equestria."
"Oh, but you were," Celestia snapped, closing the distance by a step, heat swirling around her. "You know full well what happened to me. What happened to us. How dare you ask that question, how dare you imply that what my sister and I have done is worthy only of being discarded as a mere footnote, rather than something that has come to define the very core of my being and hers."
Celestia gestured with a hoof, at all the parchment and paper fanned in front of her across the floor. "Look around you, Discord! All of this is so I can make a decision on the fate of a species of newt that lives near Manehattan."
"Yes, and?"
"This is one tiny, fractional part of what goes into running a living, breathing society. One decision requires the consultation of thousands of pages of documents, of forecasts, of estimations and studies. Hundreds of ponies were involved in the work leading up to this moment, directly and indirectly. Thousands more will be affected after I make it, one way or the other."
"Yes, and?" Discord repeated, impatiently.
Celestia narrowed her eyes, venomously. "I don't think you understand what kind of disaster your cavalier attitude, what your profoundly short-sighted behaviour nearly led to the destruction of. On two occasions, no less!"
"It's not like everything didn't turn out just fine, in the end. Even pretty little Twilight got her crown." Discord smiled, cheerily, obviously not taking her seriously. Like he would take anything seriously, Celestia thought bitterly.
Silence and sauna filled the room around the deities for a moment. Celestia didn't immediately reply, unable to form a response that came close to sufficiently expressing her displeasure with his arrogance.
Discord straightened imperiously, chastened but unbowed, and seized the initiative in her fumbling. "Done?"
Ice filled her veins. "Get out," Celestia growled, and then turned back to her scrolls, turning her back on the Avatar of Chaos.
"I don't think I will," Discord said airily, gliding back around the room between Celestia and the hearth. "Now it's my turn."
"I said get out," Celestia repeated, angrily crumpling an irrelevant scroll with a puff of magic, hurling it in his direction. Her voice carried a sharp enough edge that anypony else in her company would have imagined a swift and rather toasty end for the party on the receiving end of it. Indeed, the already intense heat in the room seemed to rise as Celestia’s wings started to fan behind her, radiating.
Discord dealt with the inconsequential missile by way of making a hole appear for a moment in his midsection, simply letting the crushed parchment pass through him, ignoring her.
"Do you remember, way back when?" Discord continued, infuriatingly undeterred and unencumbered by any monarchical obligation to decorum. He pushed off with his hindlegs and began to float, his wings flapping lazily as he slid through the air on his back, swimming in nothing. "Do you remember? We were unbound, Celestia. Don't you remember what that felt like? Before all your time and effort got plowed into this…” Discord’s face took on an expression like he had smelled something overripe, “This nation of yours. The others remember it like it was yesterday. I know, because I do. I also know that in between these scrolls you bury yourself in, you remember it too. You always were the most level-headed of all of us."
Celestia attempted to ignore him in kind, and sat down heavily on her rug, pawing through a scroll on mitigation suggestions for the Estuary. She could make him get out, if she really wanted, but that would mean hurling open the mahogany doors and punting the insolent minor god out on a rather dramatic wave of telekinetic magic. It would be embarrassing beyond words, and rumours would circulate amongst the Guard. Of course, he knew that.
"You tried to keep us together, but it fell apart, little by little," he continued, infuriatingly. "It took, what, half a millenium? But one by one, you lost all of us except Luna. And even she went her own way, eventually." Discord sounded genuinely sad, for a moment, his backstroke faltering. "Even then, you were trying to mould us into something. I suppose you realized, after Sombra, Chrysalis, myself, the others, that there was just no way to do it with those so empowered. You realized that the rest of the ponies weren't ready. So, you came to them with Equestria."
"If you are wandering towards a point, I suggest you arrive at it quickly," Celestia raised her head, her gaze hardened and fixed on the slowly gliding Discord, her mane billowing behind her. "I have lost my patience with your retrospective, and I have work to do."
"You were right," Discord said finally, alighting on Philomena's stand, suddenly looking very small.
Celestia blinked and looked around briefly in confusion, not hearing what Discord said. She found Philomena scowling from a window ledge. Annoyed with having first been woken up by Discord's arrival, and now displaced from her roost, she shot a quick, reproachful look to Celestia. The Princess adopted an appropriately contrite expression, and Philomena took her leave with a flicker of amber off of the windowsill.
"What?" Celestia said, turning her attention back to Discord, who hadn't moved an inch from his perch. He had adopted Philomena’s size, if not her disposition; Celestia could have deposited Discord on her shoulder comfortably.
"I said, you were right," Discord said, putting his arms behind him, sheepishly. "We were foolish, arrogant, covetous, short-sighted, selfish, impulsive, and ultimately, pretty destructive.”
Celestia was struck dumb, blinking slowly.
“I was,” Discord continued, pursing his lips.
Slowly, Celestia’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, suddenly scooped out of comfortable waters. No words came out.
"Tirek went off the rails first, of course,” Discord barrelled onward, pacing back and forth on the perch. “You remember him. If it wasn't for Scorpio, he would have demolished your fledgling nation and taken it for himself, sucking the life right out of it, one pony at a time. Same for Chrysalis. Same for Sombra, though he just went off, formed the Crystal Empire, and ended up doing it to himself. Same for the rest. The same is even true..." Discord paused, sucking in a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment. "...for me."
"Why are you telling me this?" Celestia said, her voice almost as small as Discord's current stature.
Discord's gaze in her direction was brief, at once piercing and determined, before he looked away out the window. "Because your little rant about the impact of the decisions you make every day made me want to remind you of some of the decisions that you've made that have affected me personally over the years. Because Fluttershy told me that being a friend is about more than just doing the right things, but admitting when you did the wrong things. Because little Twilight and her merry band have inexplicably managed to educate me about what I should be doing with my time."
The draconequus frowned, straightening on Philomena's perch and slowly returning to his normal size. "I thought I was doing the right thing. I know they thought it was the right thing too. I understand now why you had to put me in your garden, to gather moss for a millennia."
Celestia watched as Discord stepped off of Philomena's perch, which miraculously, did not simply fold in half beneath his weight. "I thought I was doing the right thing. I was convinced of it, utterly!" Discord said, clenching paw and claws into fists. "That's how broken this power makes you. And none of us realized it until it was far, far too late. Except for you."
Bowing her head slightly, Celestia felt suddenly ashamed, as unpleasant memories sprang to mind. "I...there were times," she began thickly.
Discord just raised his great leonine paw, shaking his head. "I know," he said, morosely. "I don't need you to recount them all for me, I know. You were tempted. We were all tempted, but you didn't break. Not for a second."
Celestia's wings shifted uneasily, restlessly, on her back. She itched to haul him out of here, or to leave the premises herself. The conversation was now hurtling down a path that she felt wholly unprepared for this evening. Sweat itched on her coat, and the tepid air of the room made everything feel claustrophobic. This was something altogether new from Discord, and she didn’t have the mental preparation to deal with it.
"It was about the challenge," Discord continued. "It was about turning things upside down and seeing what came out the other side. Tirek and Sombra wanted the power for themselves, Chrysalis wanted all of her followers to have it, but not the will to use it, instead serving as mere conduits. Consuming it. The others had their own unique flavors of madness."
"And you?" Celestia said, raising a forehoof slightly. "Do you remember what yours was? Your madness?"
"I remember what mine is," Discord replied, his yellow eyes narrowing. "I want, I need to challenge the balance of things. To push the little ponies along with just a tiny bit of chaos," he held up two yellow, scaled fingers, pinched within a hairsbreadth of each other, "and make them realize that they could be so much more if they were willing to explore the power they have. To force them to use it."
Celestia nodded, slowly, then a smirk curled the corners of her lips despite her better judgement. "What about the chocolate rain, and cotton-candy clouds?"
Discord pirouetted his lion's paw in the air dismissively, pacing. "Sure, I got a bit whimsical with it, I was bored! I started small, innocently enough. You remember. It never seemed to have any effect. They were stuck in molasses, all of them! None of them were up to the challenge. They hid. Cowered, even. I had you to thank for that."
Celestia could see his jaw clench, and he bared his sharp teeth. "Imbalance is progress; equilibrium is stagnation,” he said, with forceful conviction. “Things change, or they stay the same. Tip it over, it's better every time, until you can't tip it over any more. The status quo wasn't good enough for what was out there."
"The status quo was what Luna and I wanted," Celestia said, quietly. "We told you it would be enough. We tried to explain it to you."
"And, I didn't listen," Discord said through clenched teeth, shaking his head. Celestia could see the pain in his expression, the creases around his eyes. He looked so familiar, yet so alien at the same time, seething. "I couldn't listen, I wouldn't listen! I didn't realize what you were doing, because I was so wrapped up in seeing chaos through to this world. All I knew was that it was boring. It was so, so boring! I couldn't see what you were trying to achieve. All I knew was that the ponies, that everything was going to be doing the same thing for centuries and I couldn't stand it."
Discord snapped his head around with a sudden, unsettlingly devilish grin, pointing at her with an avian talon. "You always were clever. I saw that from the start. I thought, 'mistaken, but clever'. That's why I stuck around, after the others left. But even I couldn't keep up with you. You wouldn't tell me what it was, but you had something else in mind all along."
"You were impulsive," Celestia said, and resisted the urge to squirm under his gaze. "I remember that, most certainly. I remember..." She stopped herself, and closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly. "What do you think I was trying to achieve?"
Discord held up a finger on his avian hand, and then padded across the carpet to the lone scroll laying at its edge, wrapped in purple silk. Delicately, he plucked it up, and Celestia felt a thrill of worry, as if Discord might destroy the scroll on a whim. However, he seemed to treat it with an odd reverence, placing it in the palm of his lion's paw, and holding it out to Celestia like an offering.
"This."
"I don't understand," Celestia said, though she was beginning to.
"Princess Twilight Sparkle," Discord said, as Celestia levitated the precious scroll out of his grasp. "The Magic of Friendship. You were sowing oats in a fertile field, even then. You knew that one day, there would be others with the talent and the smarts to figure out what we did, and you made sure that when they arrived, they would be...unencumbered by our mistakes, safe from a dangerous world and the desperate, primal desire to be selfish. The need to take control of it, to tame it so as to make it harmless via sheer power. You sweated the small stuff, for a thousand years, to make sure that they would grow up right." Discord gestured around, at the books and scrolls and reams of parchment laid upon on the carpet, unable to suppress a laugh. "Even now."
The scroll weighed next to nothing in her magic’s grasp. It was probably something relatively trivial but heartwarming, some copy of an account that had been written in their new Journal, Twilight's astronomical observations, some questions on the care and proverbial feeding of her beloved dragon assistant.
Celestia carefully laid the scroll aside, gazing down at it as it came to rest on a pillow. It seemed so innocent.
"Now I understand why you put me in a garden," Discord repeated, walking around her slowly. His tail made a hissing noise as the scales slithered across the carpet and met polished stone. "I understand why you defended Equestria, in concept and in practice, so fiercely. Why you spend hours looking at scrolls about…newts. I understand how my 'cavalier attitude', as you neatly put it, nearly derailed a plan that you've had in mind from the very beginning, two thousand years in the making."
Something had changed in Discord's voice. It was something that Celestia hadn't heard in a long time. Her expansive memory searched for her, her hindbrain retrieving it unbidden, and suddenly she knew where she'd heard that before.
It all came flooding back. Before the Castle of the Pony Sisters in Everfree, before Equestria was more than a word, there was all of them, working, experimenting, trying to understand new and unshackled powers, powers that defeated the Windigoes, that had demolished their previous home. Why had they left? What if they were to come back?
Famine and exposure had nearly claimed all of the tribes and extinguished their kind, but something otherworldly stopped it. In that cave, their leaders' aides and advisors had tapped into something primal, and even if their superiors took it for granted, ponies like Clover the Clever knew something was amiss.
In that instant, Celestia remembered Discord-who-was, lecturing with passion to their cabal, arguing fiercely into the night, carrying forward the torch of Clover’s great works. She saw him anew before her, and the bottom fell out of her heart.
"She's going to be the best of us," Discord continued, blissfully unaware of the memories unraveling in Celestia's mind. He folded his arms as he took a few steps forward, also gazing down at the scroll, and his nearness in the hot, cloying room seemed unbearable. "Even I can see that now. The others did too. They sensed the sea change of her, and her friends; the shift in the Stream. They all wanted that new font of power for themselves, or at least, to keep it from her. They realized that it would grow into something much more profound and…basic. Fundamental. One by one, they all came back, even me. And Twilight put us all in our places."
Tearing her eyes away, the Princess turned to her old friend, whose white-tufted muzzle inclined slightly, looking at her sidelong.
"I see now," Discord said finally, gaze level, his wings folding neatly on his back, "where you're taking us. Where we were going all along. It's where we refused to go those hundreds of years ago. We were, all of us -- save one inspired alicorn, and her faithful sister," he lifted a single finger on his lion's paw, "-- blind to it. I suspect now that's because most of us chose not to see it."
"And now, you do," Celestia said, tipping her muzzle back slightly, making her crown gleam in the flickering firelight.
"Yes," Discord said, nodding slowly. "Now, I see it. And it's a masterwork to rival the power of the Stream itself.” A wry smile broke on his muzzle, with a low chuckle. “It will make us all irrelevant, in the end, but I was wrong to oppose it. I was wrong fifteen hundred years ago, I was wrong again two years ago. I gave up everything I was to embody that power, to make it my own and then force it on everypony else. So did the others. They sold out to pursue the power they wielded, consumed themselves with it, but you didn't. You stayed the course."
"Is that what you came here to say?" Celestia said, quietly. "What was that about Twilight having little to look forward to except smiling and waving?"
"Yes, well," said the Avatar of Chaos, and then turned to the heatless fire, his tail slithering across carpet and marble. "I suppose that was just my goading you. I came to tell you that I apologize. I've been talking to Fluttershy quite a bit, and thinking quite a bit; I have a lot of time on my hooves, hands, whatever, these days." Lion and avian paws flexed, then meshed at the small of his long, sinuous back below his wings, kneading each other. "I'm sorry that I doubted you. I'm sorry I tried to impose my will on you, and yours. I was afraid. I suppose...I'm still afraid."
Celestia's heart turned, writhing in knots. "Of what?"
Discord's muzzle turned slightly, one yellow eye peering over his shoulder. "Irrelevance."
“That day is coming, no matter what,” Celestia said, sadly. “It's been too long, far too long, for the Stream to be shared by so few. We’re too vulnerable.” Celestia resisted the urge to close the distance, her hooves fidgeting on the edge of the carpet behind Discord, biting her lip. “Even Luna, Cadance and I will face that, one day. Even though I am afraid of it too, Discord, I will still welcome when that day comes.”
"Well, I'm not there yet," Discord chuckled darkly, looking back in the fire. His antler and crooked horn cast strange, flickering shadows across the ceiling, wringing his hands together. "Maybe one day. I don't quite trust them yet, Celestia, but..." Slowly, he turned around to face her, taking a deep breath.
He seemed otherworldly to Celestia, his stretched, amalgam form silhouetted by the light. It made her think of what he used to be. She missed it so. She missed all of them, but hardly any so much as he.
"But what?" she probed carefully, watching him cross the room at a snail's pace towards a window which looked out upon the moonlit spires of Canterlot. The window, though open, carried no breeze to cool the room. It seemed like a pointless gesture, but Celestia had left it open out of habit. Now, it gave Discord a chance to peer out onto the few glowing windows of Canterlot visible from so high up, and the tiny, mottled patches of light beyond in the valley, where villages like Ponyville lay in fitful slumber far below.
Discord smiled thinly, his eyes glowing in reflection on the half-open pane, yellow with their tiny red pupils. "I do trust you."
Celestia had to sit down, nearly crumpling her scrolls. "You do?" she said stupidly, not knowing what else to say.
I do trust you, he had said once. He’d used those words before, long ago.
Then, they had taken their places, and everything had changed.
She was sure he remembered now. It wasn't a trick, or a joke. Despite his insanity, which had grown entwined and enmeshed with his very soul in the years following his transformation, Celestia could see him as he once was. Clever, ineffable, impulsive and daring.
"Yes," Discord said quietly. "That's what I came here to say, most of all. That's what I'm most sorry for, Celestia; for failing to put my trust in you. I'll try not to make that mistake again."
Celestia struggled to keep her emotions in check, her hooves grinding at the carpet on either side of her in disbelief and hope mingling as one. Finally, perhaps, he really did understand why she defended her little ponies, then and now, as a treasure beyond compare. Why she scorned the others when they allowed themselves to let their newfound power -- and hunger for more of it -- dictate their actions. Why she couldn't let him demand that chaos drive the progress of Equestria instead of order.
It was like the miasma of his insanity, his perpetual drive, had parted for the sun to shine through, if only for a time.
"I appreciate that," Celestia said, though the words seemed hollow, colossally inadequate for the confession she'd just heard. Some profound moment of clarity had driven him to her chambers, tonight, and she desperately struggled to wrap her head around how to anchor it, to keep it from fleeing before the inevitable resurgence of the tide. "I've been waiting for a very, very long time, to hear you say that. I'd always wished..." Celestia trailed off, licking her lips and then biting them for good measure, shaking her head a little. She tasted salt, and she couldn’t be sure whether it was sweat or tears collecting on the end of her muzzle. Her chest grew tight, in a way it hadn't done in eons.
Discord chuckled, carrying on like he hadn't heard her. "I'd always wished that something good would come of us," he said, "when all we seemed to cause were more problems." He turned, finally grinning in humour again, in sharp contrast to her shattered countenance. "I've gotten my wish; I thought maybe I'd grant yours. For now, though, I'll let you get back to your newts."
Celestia watched as Discord crossed the room towards the heavy doors, and Celestia blinked as she realized he was choosing to take his leave by more conventional means, as opposed to his usual habit of simply flashing away. Absently, the thought crossed her mind of how confusing it would be for the guards if Discord were to emerge from her chambers without having entered it. Then, a strange sort of desperation took told, and she realized, much more basically, that he was leaving and suddenly she didn’t want him to.
It was at his closest approach, in front of her on the carpet, that she raised a hoof and caught his avian hand. The yellow, chitinous fingers clutched instinctively at the touch and he stopped stock-still on his path. It was another moment before he turned to look down at her, sitting on the carpet. She refused to take her gilded hoof away, and Celestia watched Discord's eyes dart between it and her fixed gaze a couple of times, wondering if her touch was real.
"I remember that something good did come of us,” Celestia said, with such subtle ferocity that it made even Discord blink. “Did you mean it, Discord? Tell me."
Discord was silent for a moment, and made to look away. Celestia pushed her hoof into his hand insistently, and then pulled, drawing his attention back to her.
"Look me in the eye,” Celestia said, fighting to keep the hope out of her voice, “and tell me that you mean it."
Discord straightened a little, and the lone, errant fang curled over his lips caught the flickering firelight. His tufted eyebrows screened the flames with each coarse strand, his ears glowing pink inside along with his bright, bottomless golden eyes. Sweat had formed in his short coat, lending it an otherworldly sheen.
Celestia gazed up, and waited for an eternity to end, while he formed his reply.
"I meant it, Celestia," Discord said at last. He took in a deep breath, and his fingers clutched around the shoe on her hoof. "Every word."
Celestia nodded, and pressed her other forehoof over the back of his hand, keeping it there. It was warm, warm despite the room, and she stared at it for a long time. "That wasn't my wish," she said, at last.
"Pardon?" Discord blinked, stacking his lion's hand over her second hoof, frowning.
"It wasn't my wish just to hear you say that you trust me, Discord," Celestia said, eyes fixed on the meeting of four limbs in front of her muzzle. She feared if she took her gaze away, it would cease to exist, and that thought was unbearable. "My wish was that we would all be able to trust each other. Every one of us. For over a thousand years, I've wished that we wouldn't be alone anymore."
Discord stayed standing for a moment, and then sank slowly to the carpet in front of her, kneeling on his hind legs to bring his gaze level with Celestia's. She kept hold of his hands as he did so, hovering in midair between them. His avian thumb-talon started to stroke over the back of her hoof. He was warm and making her warmer, but she didn’t care.
"We were a family," Celestia continued slowly, forcing the words out through a mouth suddenly full of cotton and salt. "I've missed you."
"I know," Discord said, though Celestia could hear the unease in his voice.
"I want it back. The debates, the research, the experiments, the late nights, the meals, the conversations." Celestia shook her head, looking away, the long-stored memories flowing. "We were a family, and I want it all back. It's a foal's wish. I know that I can never have it, but that doesn't stop me wishing for it. I ate dinner alone, at that table. Sitting there, eating, with all those empty seats, for so many years. I read alone, I studied alone, I..."
She bit off the next few words, perched on her tongue, before they could escape. I slept alone. She did not dare tread there first.
The draconequus remained silent for a long time, until she finally could bear to tear her eyes away from their mingling forelegs, and look to him directly. His gaze, askance in thought, returned to meet hers as he saw the movement in the corner of his eye. He looked uncertain, mouth working like he was picking his words like cherries from a tree, until at last he spoke again.
"You want it all back?" he said, and Celestia could hear the shaky hope and trepidation in his voice. She remembered the last time she'd heard that voice, when it still wore the body of a pony, tall and proud and slate grey to her white, when that voice was at her withers, time and again...
Celestia answered him by raising her right hoof, ensnared in avian talons, in front of her muzzle. Discord's other hand fell away, staying with her left hoof, and she stared at the union of his alien, gryphon-like talons and her gilded, alabaster foreleg.
Then she leaned forward, and kissed the back of his hand, slowly, letting her lips linger on the scales, her touch like brushing the petals of a flower. She took a breath through her mouth and nose, inhaling the spicy scent of him; agarwood and smoke. Then her muzzle retreated, letting her hoof drop again, looking up at him through her slowly shimmering, ever-changing mane.
She could see the apprehension slowly being replaced by a hopeful smile, his lone, awkward fang jutting a little more from his upper lip. The stifling heat of the room now seemed to wrap them both in a blanket, willing them closer together.
"I want it all back," Celestia insisted, barely keeping a foalish quiver out of her voice. She tensed her muscles on purpose, straightening her neck, pointing her horn skyward, pouring on regal discipline just to stay in the same precarious place. "I want it all back, and I've missed you."
Discord smiled helplessly, his eyes curling up at the corners, and then closing altogether. Nodding, still smiling, he brought her hoof to his lips, and kissed it, once, twice in kind, and then held it there in front of his crooked muzzle, like it was the most precious thing in his world, reacquainting himself with her scent.
"I've missed you too," Discord said, opening his eyes to look at her again, "and I trust you." His nostrils flared as he pulled in her rich flavor, tasted her scent with darting flickers of his forked tongue that came tantalizingly close to brushing her coat.
She let him keep touching her, and she realized she didn't want him to stop.
"I want this," Celestia said breathlessly, as much to herself as to him. She knew her voice was pleading, practically begging, and allowed it to be so, just this once, just so he'd keep going, to keep him here in this precious moment. She watched him kiss her hoof, and then slide the golden shoe from the end so he could kiss it a second time on the sensitive, bare frog, making her tail twitch.
"I trust you," Discord repeated, mid-kiss, and then planted his lips a third time, further up her leg. She didn't stop him as he worked his way up, one slow kiss at a time, cradling her foreleg against his chest. His lips were soft, aside from the fang pressing at her hide, but he was careful. He planted a kiss on the purple jewel of her peytral, and then four more along her neck while her bare hoof migrated to the back of his head, cradling beneath his incongruous antlers. At last, his muzzle rose to meet hers, and they remained suspended, yellow eyes meeting hers, searching.
She waited for a long moment, until she realized that in fact it was he who was waiting for her. There's still time, he was saying, with every fibre of his body.
Celestia closed the distance without further hesitation, and her lips met his, her eyes closing. She let out a shuddering breath through her nostrils as Discord's lips slid over hers, her head tilting almost automatically to one side, boldly deepening the kiss. She could feel his lion's paw at her withers and the base of her mane, while she worked her tongue around the fang and into the heat of his muzzle. His thinner tongue met hers, welcoming her, inviting her into his warmth like an old friend.
It was so familiar, yet so alien at the same time. His incense-like scent filled her nostrils, powerful this close, and she could feel his neck muscles arching in opposition to hers. Even with the warmth of the room, he radiated against her, and she craved to wrap herself in it. Slowly, their muzzles rocked to and fro, each taking the load in turn, warm wet muscle sliding and slithering in teasing arcs and grinding encouragement. Their lips parted periodically to gasp for more richly scented air, her musky scent soon joining the spice of his. Their tongues bridged the gap in these brief moments, warm and wet and sliding stickily against each other, a gentle duel of push and pull, like two fingers curling and pushing tip to tip, circling and dancing.
Their movements opened gradually as they grew familiar with one another, reacquainting themselves after eons apart. Each different, but the same. Discord grew bolder, and was the first to withdraw from the kiss while seizing her tongue between his lips, suckling on it almost obscenely, while Celestia moaned and pushed on in encouragement.
Soon, she demanded the same tribute in kind from Discord's tongue, devolving rapidly into an absurd, open-mouthed coiling and suckling between their muzzles, velvet and flesh meeting and grinding, muffling ignored grunts of pleasure from both. Celestia could feel saliva trickling down her chin and decided not to care, throwing her tongue deep into her lover's mouth, feeling his lips close, grasp, and suckle with noisy pops and slurps, each prompting delight.
A whine rose unbidden from Celestia's throat, and Discord answered it with a low growl of his own. His hands were roaming over her, and Celestia could feel them at the base of her neck, fiddling with the catch for her peytral. His talons soon worked it open, and it fell with a muffled clunk to the carpet. Celestia shrugged out of her shoes in kind, pushing them urgently aside along with the plate, with Discord aiding her in a moment's parting from their eager union of lips and tongue.
"Here," Discord began, picking up her breastplate and tossing it behind him with a clatter.
"Yes, just..." Celestia mumbled, hurriedly shoving the rest of her barding away, levitating her tiara off of her head and practically flinging it aside. Even though she was practically unclothed already, the feeling of her barding's weight leaving her made her feel particularly naked.
Then their lips met again with a hurried smacking, saliva stretching from the union in thin webs each time they parted for fleeting, panting breaths. It was messy, sloppy, careless hedonism the likes of which she had not felt for so many years. Celestia's coat prickled with sweat and the feel of avian and lion talons scraping across the coat on her barrel, her body arching into the delicious touch. The wet heat of the room surrounded them, seeming to grow more potent by the minute, all the more potent for the draconequus’ sinuous body pressing closer to hers.
Celestia responded by roaming with her hooves, clutching with the plush frogs at whatever she could, kneading with the relatively soft, cared-for edges, pressing under his wings and tracing the outline of his what passed for his ribs down his thin, sinuous body, cradling him to her, clutching urgently at his body, wanton and needy.
Frequently, his eyes would open to find hers gazing lidded into them, as though lying in wait for him, and she would open hers to find his ready to pounce in kind. At last, they broke from the kiss and pressed their foreheads together, Celestia planting kisses across the top of his muzzle, and up between his eyes, nuzzling urgently, inhaling his scent.
"I've missed you," she whispered hoarsely, verging on tears, while Discord nodded and pushed his head into the crook of her neck, cradling her close.
"Tell me what you want," Discord replied, his voice from what seemed like eons ago, suddenly in her ear.
"I want you," Celestia said, desperately clutching with her hooves.
"I know; tell me. Please."
Celestia nodded helplessly, her loins aching, her hindquarters soaked with more than just sweat. "I want you in me," she finally moaned, rolling on the carpet.
Discord rolled with her, as she turned onto her back, bringing his long, thin body arched over her like the sky, her whole world suddenly narrowing to his scent, the taste of his mouth on her lips, the feeling of his claws on her coat, his heat radiating upon her like the Sun itself. She bared her belly to him and splayed her hindlegs wide, while he hurriedly planted a series of kisses down her barrel and groin, lingering on the small pink nubs of her teats, before moving further.
She stared skyward for a time, and then shut her eyes tightly, losing herself to the sensations of his talons cupping either side of her sex, pushing open the swollen, tight seal of her mons to reveal her sopping pink labia, which winked frantically as the hot air of the room finally drifted against the swollen lips. Finally she allowed herself to look, opening her eyes and craning her head, just in time to see Discord's yellow eyes descend level with her teats, casting a faint glow across them. His paws cradled her hocks and thighs, pressing with a feather-light touch.
"Beautiful," she heard him say in an almost reverent whisper, and then his tongue was writhing across her.
The world ceased to make sense for a time.
She felt his lips seal around her jutting, taut clitoris, and Celestia tested the soundproofing spell's power with a shriek of pleasure, her bare hooves pinwheeling on either side of his antler and horn. The soft suckling noises filtered back to her as she grew more accustomed to the mindblowing pleasure radiating up her body from her cleft, Discord's agile tongue plying over every nook and cranny of her folds' exterior before even teasing at entering her body.
Celestia could feel a river running down her sex and over her tailhole from his ministrations, and his clawed fingers cupped at her rump, palms kneading over the muscular expanse of her starburst mark on either side of her. Finally, he wedged his muzzle a little lower, his whole lengthy body arched behind him, and then drove his tongue further, kissing her a second time far more deeply.
Her cry this time was strangled and shuddering, and the world went dark again as she shut her eyes, breathing as deeply as she could to try and stem the tide without avail. His tongue was swiftly followed by two of his talons; the thicker lion's fingers, with claws retracted, soft and thick but agile nonetheless, seeking out familiar terrain. When the two leading fingers found their mark, Celestia's mind exploded anew with ecstasy, her whole body tensing rhythmically, contracting, shuddering at the contact, aftershocks of spasm rippling up her haunches.
"Ahhh," Discord said, like he was uncovering treasure. Those fingers found that mark again, and again, curling upwards and then pressing in swift thrusts, making her mewl, shudder, and then swiftly careen over the edge into a mind-blowing climax, her sex squirting and leaking her juices like a faucet around his fingers. The base of her tail was soaked, not like it could get wet in this ethereal state, but soon a soggy spot formed as a puddle around the base of her rump. Where his fingers were not, his tongue was, and the two danced in practised unison around and over and through her, piercing her soul with delight.
She could feel her sex clutching at him, over and over, pleading without words for more, each fresh spasm producing a wave of pleasure all on its own. Gasps and shuddering, strangled cries worked their way erratically out of her throat, sometimes beseeching him to stop and sometimes demanding that he never, and still he kept fucking her with his beautiful, intolerable fingers. Beneath her, Celestia could feel her wings struggling to extend and flap and flex absurdly in her frenzied grinding against them.
His improbably long tongue coiled around her fat, gleaming clit, pulsing and alive with her frantic heartbeat, though it occasionally darted away to wiggle between his fingers, joining them deep within her heat. There, it would writhe powerfully, quickly, thin and sinuous where his fingers were muscular and intent, lashing her with pleasure.
The peaks blended, grew uncountable, and her body could take no more.
"Aah, ss-ssst-top..." Celestia finally managed earnestly, through chattering teeth, and mercifully, he instantly obliged. She kept breathing hard, with minor quakes wracking her hindlegs and forelegs alternately, little trembling shivers rippling through her body as aftershocks threatened to push her over again. Discord's glistening muzzle, tufty beard plastered to his chin, reappeared in her field of vision. He hovered over her and grinned, obnoxiously.
"How's that for a warmup?" he quipped, and then kissed her, sharing her slightly fishy, musky, sweet flavor, lapping along the inside of her lips. She met his tongue with hers again, pushing back with her muzzle urgently, nodding into the kiss encouragingly, her hooves stroking up either side of his head.
When she finally broke the kiss, she was still panting, but it was under control. Her eyes found his, and after an unspoken exchange, she felt Discord shift atop her, his long, arching body coming to rest between her thighs.
"I want to see," Celestia said to his collarbone, and he lifted and turned slightly, obliging her.
What had been a tight, invisible seam in his abdomen was now a thick-lipped, swollen genital slit, parted around a long, almost equine-like shaft. Crimson-pink near the blunt, elongated mushroom of a tip, it turned mottled brown just behind the medial ring, with a sparse weave of thick veins just barely catching the light. From the tip, the round hole of his urethra protruded, leaking precum; the intoxicating salt-scent of it greeted her a moment later, and she moaned her approval.
As she watched the mouth-watering organ slide back down between her legs, Discord's lion-hand, still soaked with her dew, cupped her chin. Dipping her head to suck on the thumb for a moment, she obliged his lifting her head to his gaze, and his golden eyes found hers once more. Celestia could feel his strange, rounded tip pressing against her body, finding its mark inch by inch, soon sliding over her wet, sloppy sex.
She let out a confirming gasp, his muzzle a hairsbreadth from hers, each sharing the steamy breath of the other. Their eyes fixed on one another’s, Discord's long body pushed up. His shaft slid against and through the slack lips of her sex, hardness suddenly filling her. Her hindlegs pinwheeled and then latched around his midsection, her forehooves hooking around his neck.
A sharp intake of breath accompanied her body’s involuntary shock at his entrance, silently shaking and clutching at him for a moment, not even breathing for a time. His muzzle fell to one side, and she felt him begin to move, his hips rocking in a smooth, circular motion to bring his shaft deeper within her. He was testing her boundaries, and the repeated, glorious fullness in her prompted an almost frantic exhalation and panting as Celestia suddenly remembered to breathe.
Involuntarily, Celestia clenched around him every other time he tried to push deeper, leading to a series of low grunts from the draconequus, and she felt his hands clutching at her sides much as her hooves clung to him. She pushed her snout over his shoulder and held him fast, while his hips continued his steady rolling movement, cramming more and more inside of her. Even her substantial, well-prepared depth soon gave out with a little more than half of Discord's length inside of her, and she let out a wheezing huff when his cock neared the limits of her sex.
Discord nodded a little in understanding, drew his hips back some, and began to focus on milking his shaft against her walls rather than going any deeper, letting out hoarse little groans behind her neck. She stayed arched up, twisting her muzzle to press it close to him without impaling him on her horn. She could hardly unwind herself from his shoulder with that proud flesh inside of her, letting him take her with a greedy suckling of her vaginal muscles, urging him on.
"Yes," Celestia breathed, mumbling almost incoherently. She buried her muzzle against his neck. "Yes, Discord, please. Please."
Discord nodded, squeezing around her, his sinuous body arched and tensing with his movements. She could feel him, every tense and twitch of that thin, lithe body working against her, moving to bring her pleasure as much as encourage his own, and she moaned loudly in delight at the mere thought, let alone the reality of what was unfolding around her. She hooked her forehooves around his wings and across his short, coarse mane for purchase and pressed back against him, grinding her teats against the coat of his midsection.
Celestia could feel him in turn slithering his tongue across the nape of her neck and nosing through her mane, sucking in her sweat-spiced scent with rich billows of warmth against her withers. They felt almost oiled, gliding against one another with the heat of the room surrounding them, enfolding around them, driving them on. She craved the feeling of it all the same, grinding her soaked body to his own, feeling him drip and rain, caring little.
Discord was careful not to move too deeply, keeping his pace steady but fervent, soon graduating to a rhythmic, wet thwuk-thwuk of his hips meeting her rump, lubricated by the waterfall of juices being spilled by her cleft across his slit and her rear. Celestia clutched, and every one of her muscles outlined his girth in bas-relief in her mind, the thickness stretching her almost too much to bear, but just right all the same. She needed to be overwhelmed a little. She wanted it.
Abruptly, her mind careened over a ledge she hadn't seen, and her body contorted anew, letting out a ragged cry of pleasure and delight over the draconequus' shoulder. She could feel her sex spasming again, desperately milking the shaft within her, and Discord grunted in surprise over her, his red-scaled tail lashing frantically.
He quickened his pace; Celestia could only imagine the sticky mess he was making down there, her juices leaking and coating everything between them and then some, mingling with his abundant precum, soaking her haunches. She trembled in a quick, savory climax, breathing through it into her lover's collarbone, her hooves grinding urgently on either side of his spine.
Her climax soon subsided, leaving her with Discord still fervently pressing himself home inside of her. She encouraged him with a knead of her thighs around him, and it wasn't but a dozen more eager rolls of his hips before she felt Discord clutch at her sides, his thrusts growing erratic, avian and lion claws digging into her coat dangerously. A pause, and then a lunge, and then a low, desperate groan suddenly graduated to a fervent, eager pace from him, jarring her a little with his need. Warmth suddenly blossomed inside of her, his body producing hard twitches of his length within her sex as he yielded to his climax, and she let out a satisfied groan as her renewed afterglow mingled with the deeply satisfying feeling of his essence spreading within her.
Celestia cupped and stroked him, her hooves around his body, nibbling and licking alternately at his shoulder while he spent himself within her. The thrills of pleasure were subdued now, but no less delicious, and the Princess savoured every quiver and twitch of his length, most of all relishing the feel of him against her, of him inside her, satisfying her like nothing else could.
His hips' movement soon stilled, and he was left panting against her shoulder. Slowly, he rose up over her, straddling her body, a grin that was blessedly neither arrogant nor obnoxious plastered on his face. Celestia's heart thrilled at the sight of that smile; it was perhaps the first truly honest thing she had seen from him since he'd returned. Her hindbrain brought forth a familiar memory of something similar from another age, and she found herself melting. His eyes were creased, but with delight, not sarcastic mirth. His grin was broad, genuine, no hint of his usual sarcasm. She froze that moment in her memory, setting it carefully along the other, and broke into a broad grin of her own.
"Oh, my dear Celestia," Discord said, rolling his neck back, his hands splaying across her barrel. His head tipped back down and he curled in an S to plant his muzzle onto hers again, kissing with the tip of his muzzle, popping quickly up again.
Celestia said nothing, just stroking his chest with one of her hooves in a lazy, random pattern, circling and dragging across his sweat-dampened coat slowly.
Discord's panting slowed, and then with a grimace from him, and a muffled grunt from her, he withdrew his softening length, soon disappearing into his rather sticky genital slit. Groaning with exhaustion, he slid off of her and nestled up to her side, while she rolled over to face him.
Celestia's telekinesis seized one of the larger, broader pillows from a place across the room, and dragged it over just in time for Discord to lay his cheek on it, and for Celestia to join him. The two began to explore one another, in the lazy, drowsy delight of their respective afterglows. Celestia relished the feel of those talons on her coat; she'd been wary of them, once upon a time. Now, for once, they felt right.
"Thank you," Celestia said, after a long time. She was almost afraid to speak.
"For what?" Discord replied lazily, his brows arching slightly.
"For trusting me. For taking this seriously."
"I think you know that I take my serious relationships seriously."
"You could have been playing pranks all evening. Shapeshifting, conjuring props. You didn't."
"It would have been tacky, and you never liked that sort of thing."
"I appreciate it." Celestia reached out with a hoof, tracing the line of his jaw. Discord turned his muzzle, and planted a kiss on the frog again, lingering for a moment.
Silence, save for the muted flicker and pop of the hearth, filled the musky air between them. Celestia closed her eyes, memorizing that scent of smoky incense, the feeling of Discord's warmth, of his lips against her hoof, nuzzling, lapping. Finally, he just held it against his muzzle almost possessively, grinning again at her around it before finally releasing it. She let it drift down along his long, thin chest, the frog stroking through his damp coat.
Surprised, but trying not to show it, Discord returned the gesture with his own claws, the yellow talons on his hand grazing over the side of her sweat-slick barrel. Each of them made a slow circuit on the other, feeling, stroking from intimate places to ordinary ones equally. It was just touch, familiarizing themselves with each other after over a millennia apart, but it felt as good as the sex had. Celestia could not remember when she had last been simply, wonderfully touched. She found herself growing intoxicatingly drowsy with the sensation.
"What now?" Discord said finally, nosing into the pillow a little as his claws roamed.
His voice brought her awareness back to the present. "In a little while, I'm going to go have a shower," Celestia said, surprising herself with the exhaustion in her voice. "Then, I'll probably go to bed."
"No, I mean," Discord fidgeted slightly, with a little chuckle. "Ah...what now?"
"Oh. That's up to you," Celestia replied lazily, shaking her head, her eyes following the path she was making on his coat. She watched each short, brown hair disappear beneath her hoof and pop up again on the other side. "I'm not going to worry about that either way. You know how it worked back then, I don't see why it can't work that way again."
Discord nodded slowly, giving a little shrug. "Fair enough. Listen, what you said earlier?"
"Mm?" Celestia tore her gaze away, back up to the draconequus' face.
"About relevance. You said you'd...welcome when that day came. When we’d cease to be, you know. Relevant." He looked uncharacteristically concerned. "Would you, really?"
"Yes," Celestia said, squishing her cheek into the pillow a little more, the weight of her head suddenly greater. "I would."
"Why?" Discord's eyes narrowed, skepticism showing in his voice. "Is that really what you're after?"
This is what passes for pillow talk between immortals, she mused.
"When that day comes, that will be the day when my little ponies can truly govern themselves," Celestia said, with quiet conviction. "The power of the Stream will be with everypony. The Magic of Friendship won't be a myth, or a story, an idea, or a power wielded by a select few. It will be everypony's power."
Her hoof paused on Discord's lower belly, and then dropped to the soft carpet with a thump. "When that day comes, Discord, be it ten or a hundred or another thousand years from now, I will know that they no longer require my protection, or my guidance. They will protect themselves."
"They'll be able to protect themselves," Discord countered, mildly. "But will they?"
Celestia nodded, her cheek sliding on the pillow slowly. "They will."
"Why?"
"Because they will have faith in each other. Just as Twilight and her friends have faith in each other." Celestia's muzzle broke into a broad smile. "They will wield a great power, along with the will and wherewithal to use it, as it ought be used; to take custodianship of this world and its power, as we have, for the good of all ponies."
"That's..." Discord shook his head, unable to suppress a small laugh, his talons squeezing on her chest. "That's very altruistic of you, to say nothing of optimism. I hope that they live up to your expectations."
"They are already surpassing my expectations, Discord. That they convinced you is proof enough of that." Celestia leaned forward, and stole a kiss from the draconequus, leaving him blinking and mute for a moment as she rose to all four hooves, and headed for the door to the bathroom. She hated to leave him there, but the feeling of the products of their lovemaking trickling down her flank was becoming onerous rather than enjoyable.
"This power," Discord called, as she met the threshold of the lavatory, "It's been tried before. Twice, in fact. Once by us, and once..."
"Yes, I know," Celestia said quickly, suppressing a pang of guilt.
"And the others...you want to take Equestria down that path. What makes you think ponies will succeed where they failed, mm?"
Celestia turned back, and her eyes swept across his recumbent form, stretched lazily across the carpet. She could feel his eyes on her, her naked body, unencumbered by her barding and crown; just Celestia. His eyes lidded appraisingly, and she found, surprisingly, that she didn’t mind all that much. She would have objected, even scolded him, a few hours ago. But, one thing about being a goddess was knowing that sometimes, things change.
However, her gaze didn't linger on him; instead, they strayed to the scroll at the side of the rug, tied meticulously with violet ribbon.
"Her," Celestia said, and then disappeared into the bathroom.
Discord was gone, when Celestia emerged, coat steaming from the water evaporating rapidly off of her coat, now taking full advantage of her intrinsic magic to make her life more convenient for a few minutes. She'd half expected him to disappear. What she hadn't expected was a note, scrawled on the back of irrelevant parchment with handwriting that looked achingly familiar. She lifted the parchment with her magic and studied it.
Dear Princess Celestia (isn't that how these things are supposed to start?), the letter began, and Celestia could practically hear Discord's sarcasm being ingrained with the ink. I enjoyed tonight. I'll consider your argument, but don't expect miracles. I, for one, would prefer to remain relevant. However, I see your point; I'll do what I can. You know where to find me.
- DM
Celestia nodded, checked to make sure the scroll contained no vital information on the opposite side, and then delivered it to the hearth with her magic. Despite the lack of outward heat, the thick paper instantly curled and burst into flames, disintegrating into a fine, irretrievable ash in moments.
She watched it burn with a pang of regret, of wistful longing. It had been a rare moment of clarity from him; Celestia suspected might not come again for a long time. It had, perhaps, been a poor decision to make love to him, an impulsive one. One not consulted, checked, double-checked, sent for review and vetted, unlike virtually every other decision she seemed to make these days. But, it did feel right.
Celestia contented herself with that feeling as she gathered the rest of the scrolls, including the vital ones concerning the distribution of newts, and carefully set them aside in two piles on her sideboard; one for the scribes to deliver in the morning, the other to continue her study.
One particular scroll levitated to her nightstand, as Celestia crawled into bed, drawing a thin sheet over herself. With long-awaited tug on the purple ribbon, she unfurled it and began to read.
Author's Note
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell -
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.
-- Unending Love, by Rabindranath Tagore, 1889.
