The wind howled as the cottage door slammed open and rain drove horizontally into the hallway. Fluttershy ran into the house carrying Tank the tortoise while Discord pushed the door shut against the wind and pushed down the latch.
"Whew!" said the draconequus. "Now that's what I call weather! As it should be. The Pegasi should take days off more often."
Fluttershy set Tank down on the ground gently and began to towel off her mane and tail. She had agreed to pet-sit Rainbow Dash's tortoise while she and the other weather-working pegasi went on a few days sabbatical. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna had agreed that for a few days each month, the weather should be allowed to revert to its normal state so Mother Nature could let off steam. Sometimes that meant a regular sunny day, sometimes it meant a full on rainstorm with occassional thunder and lightning, depending on Nature's mood. It seemed she was having an off day.
Fluttershy began to dry off Tank's shell with the towel.
Discord dropped down to all fours and shook himself dry like a dog. He sprayed water everywhere in the process, soaking the couch, cushions and other soft furnishings in Fluttershy's home, as well as the walls and floor.
"Oh, dear," murmured Fluttershy.
"Whassat?" said Discord, tilting his head and tapping his left ear so that water fell out of the right, along with a startled fish.
"I...think it's suddenly become as wet in here as it is outside."
"Oh, sorry Flutters."He snapped his fingers and everything became dry again. Fluttershy wondered why he simply hadn't done that to dry himself off in the first place.
She began removing her boots while Tank slowly made his way to a warm corner. Very slowly.
Discord removed a stopwatch from an invisible pocket in time and studied it making tutting noises for a whole 5 minutes while Tank took his time choosing a spot to rest. Finally the tortoise flopped down on an old cat bed Fluttershy kept under a corner table in case she ever had to take in a stray.
Discord snorted.
"Why does Rainbow Dash have such a boring pet anyway?"
"Tortoises aren't boring!" Fluttershy said. "There's lots of interesting things about them."
"Oh, really? Name one."
"Well for one thing he's pretty...big."
"He's not that big."
"He's a good size for his species."
"Sure," said Discord, folding his arms and looking rather unimpressed. "For his species."
"And tortoises live a long time!"
"Not as long as me."
"Well, nothing lives as long as you do."
"Exactly! And since I've lived so long, I'm pretty sure I would know what constitutes a boring animal, and that's a boring animal."
Tank began to snore.
"Besides, they get a LOT bigger on those islands off the coast of Equinedor."
"You've been to the Gallopagos?" said Fluttershy excitedly, her eyes lighting up when she recognized the geographical location.
"Well, yes. But it wasn't always called the Gallopagos. That's just some name ponies gave the islands when they were later rediscovered by Clydes Dalewin. They didn't actually have a name when I first discovered them."
"You were the first person to see the islands?" She had that look in her eye. A look he found irresistable.
"I was. Oh, Fluttershy. You don't want to hear THAT boring old story?"
"I do!"
"It might take a while."
"It's raining outside and I don't have to go anywhere!"
"I might not remember everything...accurately."
"Tell it as well as you can remember it!"
"I dunno..."
"Please, tell me! It sounds exciting!"
He fluffed up his chest feathers proudly. He couldn't help but feel rather pleased at the idea of her being interested in things he had to say.
"Well," he said, picking her up with his tail and setting her on the sofa. "Where to begin?" He draped a soft throw over her and tucked it in at the sides.
Fluttershy snuggled down into the sofa. The rain continued to drum down hard on the roof.
Discord stroked his beard for a few seconds then said “The Islands: the first time I went there I was taking a break from exploring the Amarezon jungle. Of course like the Gallopagos it wasn’t called the Amarezon back then, that’s just a name ponies gave it because they have this ridiculous obsession with naming everything. Names are arbitrary things. They don’t actually mean anything, they’re just a way to try and control and categorize everything. ”
Fluttershy knew he was starting to go off on one of his tangents, so she gently tried steering him back to the subject of the Gallopagos.
“Um…the islands?” she asked.
“Ah, yes! When I first flew over the islands they weren’t much more than dull, grey volcanic rock. Of course, volcanic activity meant that Mother Nature had already started work on the archipelago. So I flew down and perched on a cliff and had a chat with her. Of course “chat” is another one of those arbitrary words, as we weren’t really chatting or talking per se. We were communicating, but I don’t use my voice when I “speak” to Mother Nature it’s more of a…”
“Discord?”
“Oh, right! Sorry, you know all this already. Yeah, so I had a “chat” --for want of a better word-- with Mother Nature, and we got to talking about what she had done with the place. The island I was currently sitting on was covered with birds, but they were all so boring looking. Brown and dull with grey feet. Nature was moaning about how she had made all these birds but none of them wanted to mate and make more birds on their own. Seriously though, they were dull beyond belief. If there were Birds of Paradise on that island the brown birds would have been bullied and beaten up for their lunch money instantly. So of course they weren’t interested in each other. Would you be interested in a dull, brown pony with grey feet?”
“Well it…”
“Nah, of course you wouldn’t,” he said quickly before she could finish her sentence. “So there was nothing exciting going on in the bird dating scene on that particular island. Naturally they weren’t feeling the mood. So I suggested changing something about them to Nature.”
'Well I suppose, if you must' she sighed at me.
" 'They need some colour for one thing', I said to her.
"'They already have colour, they’re brown'.
“'Brown’s a boring colour.'
"'May I remind you that part of your body is brown?'
“I told her my body was more of a rusty, purplish shade. Then I set to work on the birdies. At first I thought I might give them crests and tall legs but they were still that horrid shade of brown. If Rarity saw those birds before I got hold of them she’d faint, come to with the smelling salts and declare those turkeys a fashion faux pas. I tried making their legs really stumpy and short, and though this looked hilarious they still looked rather dull. No, they definitely needed some colour. So I gave them blue feet.”
“Sula nebouxii!” Fluttershy exclaimed.
“What?”
“Sula nebouxii- The Blue-Footed Booby Bird. You made them?”
“Oh, you ponies and your attempts to name and classify everything. The taxonomists really should quit right now because they will never be ahead.”
“But you did make the Booby Bird?”
“Well, as I said, it was a joint project between Nature and Yours Truly. But I haven’t finished where I was going with the birds. Sure, I gave them blue feet, which Nature thought made them look unbelievably silly and I thought made them look adorable, but the birds seemed to have other ideas with regards to the colour of their feet. They wouldn’t stop pecking at them. Whenever a fellow bird would walk past his companions would all start pecking at his feet furiously as if those webbed toes were shouting ‘yo’ momma’ jokes at them.
“'Nice going,’ Mother Nature told me. ‘They’re going to eat each other and then we’ll never get chicks out of them.’”
Discord removed a hanky from a busty corset that had suddenly materialized on his chest and started dabbing his eyes. “She never really had much faith in me, the Old Girl.”
Fluttershy was about to reach out with a hoof to comfort him when he suddenly appeared behind the sofa she was sitting on in a burst of light. “But she underestimated me! I was going to make sure those birds started getting romantic one way or another. I just had to come up with a way. They seemed absolutely obsessed with the blue colour of their feet, so I knew I had to use that somehow. The trouble was they were too busy pecking at each other to get down to some lovin’. However, on that dull, grey rock of an island blue was the most interesting thing going, so I did what I could to get their attention, and that was to turn myself blue.”
“Oh! But didn’t they start pecking you?”
“Oh they tried, but I floated above them and they couldn’t reach me. They weren’t able to fly yet at that stage in their evolution, though they were adept swimmers. I flew back and forth and they followed my path with their heads. It was almost like conducting an orchestra. Anyway, on they kept, swaying back and forth. I did this for hours. It was hard work, and all Nature could say at the time was ‘well this is fascinating.’ I told her it wasn’t like her first attempt was any better. And besides, I made her eat her words later on.”
Discord appeared at the other side of the sofa in another flash of light. It occured to the pegasus that Discord very rarely kept still. Even in his sleep she had seen his leg or talon twitching as if some pent up force was trying to break through his physical body. At times she wanted to hug him or stroke his mane to comfort him from whatever he might be dreaming about, but she decided against it in case she disturbed him.
He sat down on the floor in front of Fluttershy and leaned back on his elbows, casually crossing his goat hoof over his lizard leg.
“So,” he continued. “After hours of swaying I decided to take a break. I changed back to my glorious rusty-purple bod and sat down on a rock near a hot spring, where I dipped my feet in for a bit. The warm water made me feel sleepy, so I decided to nap on the warm rocks for a bit. I woke up when I heard Mother Nature shouting ‘Look at them, son! They look even more ridiculous than they did before.’ The birds were still swaying back and forth, but they were lifting their feet in the process. Each had a partner in front of them and every time a foot left the ground the watching bird would sway in time with it. The higher the foot was lifted the more a bird would sway. They were enraptured. And that was when the cuddling and cosying started.”
“They started mating?”
“That they did, Fluttershy. The blue feet were just SO attractive to them.The squacking and loving on that island went on for days. I was a veritable pim...”
Fluttershy raised an eyebrow.
“I was a veritable Cupid, Fluttershy; A veritable Cupid. Anyway, Mother Nature said to me,’I must say, Son, you do think up the most complicated ways for animals to procreate.’ I asked her if that was a challenge and she told me no. She’d started out with eggs for the Booby Birds and they’d hatched and grown to adulthood, but until I had given them blue feet they had stopped there. She seemed quite smug about the fact that I had only added to her design rather than made something from scratch. So I said, "Mom, you may not have laid down a gauntlet, but challenge accepted anyway."
At this, Fluttershy shook her head and smiled.
"I thought this was about tortoises?"
"I'm getting to that! Such impatience, Fluttershy. I'm beginning to like that about you. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Everyone always asks, 'what came first, the tortoise or the egg'? Well I can tell you for certain here and now, it was always the egg."
"I thought the saying was 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?'"
"No, Fluttershy. The tortoise definitely came before the chicken."
Fluttershy tried not to roll her eyes and smile.
"Yup! I created tortoise eggs. I told Nature that her islands looked boring and static. So I was going to make things that looked like islands but could move around. But I had to start with eggs to prove to her that I could do it better.
" 'Oh, and no magic,' she told me. 'I want to see you raise those eggs the way your "walking islands" are going to.'
"The Old Girl drives a hard bargain, I can tell you. However, I wasn't about to let her show me up. I put three enormous eggs in front of her to show I was serious about this. 'Okay,' she said to me. 'Now what?'
" 'What do you mean, "now what?" ' I said.
" 'Are you going to incubate them? Keep them warm?' "
"I told her of course I was. Did she think I was an idiot? I immediately fluffed up my feathers and curled myself around the eggs.
" 'So,' said Nature. 'How big are these walking islands of yours going to be?'
" 'The size of a rhinoceros, and just as heavy.'
" 'Hmm,' she said. 'Won't that present a problem?'
" 'Such as?'
" 'Oh, nothing. I'm sure it's not important.'"
"What did she mean by that?" asked Fluttershy.
"Oh, I found out. Anyway, as I was saying, the eggs were pretty open to the elements without a parent, so I sat on them for days. A few of the booby birds came by to try to peck at them (I'd made the mistake of initially making the eggs blue, which I quickly corrected by smearing some volcanic dust on them) and one day a hungry skua flew over, but he changed his mind when I snapped at him and pulled off some of his tail feathers in the process. No one touched my babies. NO ONE."
Fluttershy noticed Discord's feathered body floofing up with what seemed like indignance.
Discord noticed her watching him intently.
"I had to prove her wrong, you see," he said.
"Hmmm."
"Anyway, one day I was sitting on the eggs, when a huge seal popped out of the water and started to sun itself on the rock nearby. I told it to shoo, but it just looked at me and yawned, the miscreant. Day after day it would snooze among the booby birds. Then one day, while it was snoring it rolled over in its sleep and landed on me and the eggs. I felt one crunch. I was so angry I actually rolled the seal off the rock into the water, where it woke up in shock as it hit the water. If I had been allowed to use magic I would have done a lot worse.
"I went back to check the eggs, and that's when I remembered what Mother Nature had said about how big I wanted these things to be. If a fully grown animal sat on these eggs the weight would have crushed them. Stupid logic! I looked sadly at the cracked egg. It was doomed. I had to make sure I succeeded with the other two. However, there was no way I was going to relent on the size of these things- I wanted my walking islands to be big! What was the point in tiny islands? But how was I supposed to keep them warm?"
"You buried them," said Fluttershy.
"Who is telling this story? Me or Gelding Durrell? Anyway, yes. You are right, Flutters. I ended up burying them in the volcanic ash to keep them toasty warm. 110 days later they dug their way to the surface and lo and behold, my walking islands were now walking. Obviously they weren't fully grown yet, but I did set about gloating to Nature. 'Now what?' she asked me. 'That's your job!' I said, and I went to poke things with sticks, by which I meant I visited some of the other islands and decided to have a lot more fun with the local wildlife. 150 days of sitting on a pair of eggs had made me stir crazy and I needed to unleash some pent up chaos magic, so I turned iguanas into swirlly psychedelic colours, then I made sure they knew how to swim. I made sure the same bird on different islands had a different beak every single time, I made a type of dandelion grow into the size of a tree. Mother Nature looked after the tortoises. I left before I could see them grow up, but I can assure you their boring personalities are down to her, not me."
"So all the strange adaptations on the Gallopagos are your doing?"
"Natch! What do you think happened? Stuff just appeared? I did it a lot, but especially on islands, because they seem so bare and boring."
She looked skeptical. He supposed he couldn't blame her. He was forever telling her stories where something was half true and the other half was pure fantasy and he knew she often took his tales with a grain of salt.
"So are you still doing this, going out there and making new adaptations with Mother Nature, I mean?"
“Well, she and I still hang, of course, but we aren’t as close as we used to be. I think she’s under a lot of stress, and probably doesn’t want to deal with a rebellious son at the moment on top of everything else.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be Flutters,” he said, laughing. “Adaptive radiation really isn’t my thing anymore anyway; Gotta keep things fresh up here in the old noggin’.” He pointed to his head. “Tortoises are still boring creatures though.”
Tank burped in his sleep.
“Yet you sat on the eggs until they hatched.”
“What was I supposed to do? Just let them die? That would have been even more boring. Death is the most boring thing there is because nothing else happens afterwards.”
“I’ll die someday.”
“So you keep reminding me with your selfish mortality. And you won’t even let me extend your lifespan by just a teensy, tiny little bit. Do you know how bored I’m going to be when you’re gone?”
Fluttershy smiled. Discord had a way of saying things to her without actually saying them.
“You cared about those eggs.”
“Bah. If you say so. ‘Care’ is another one of those arbitrary words.”
"I know you do, Mister," she said. Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
He looked startled. "What was that for?"
"Thank you."
"I still don't understand what you're thanking me for?"
"For making life interesting," she said, and walked into the kitchen to boil the kettle for some tea.
He watched her as she hummed to herself, getting out the cups and saucers and slicing up some vegetables for Tank. His paw touched the side of his face where she had kissed him.
"Likewise."
Author's Note
"Gelding Durrell" is a ponified "Gerald Durrell." I don't know how famous Durrell is in America, but here in the UK he was very well known. His most famous book being My Family and Other Animals, which if you like humorous nature writing is well worth reading.
