Discord and the Tree of Chaos
To Fan of Most Everything
Admiral Biscuit
All of Ponyville was decorated for Hearth’s Warming. Trees were festooned with garland, wreaths hung from doors, candles gleamed in every window, and the Crystal Castle glittered under a fresh coat of castle polish.
Even the Tree of Harmony was decorated. The Mane 6 and Starlight (with Trixie as a plus-one) had hung ornaments from every single branch.
Spike was there, too.
The ~~six~~ ~~seven~~ eight of them—nine of them—all took a step back to admire their hoofiwork. And hornwork, since there was a fair bit of unicorn magic involved in decorating the tree. Actually, it had been mostly done with unicorn magic, except for putting the non-denominational angel on the top of the tree.
Applejack did that, with the help of an extension ladder she’d bought from Flim and Flam.
Pinkie Pie brought hot chocolate and cookies forth from her hammerspace, and Fluttershy and Rainbow flew around the tree, summoning snow. Everypony agreed that Twilight ought to stay on the ground; she wasn’t really cut out for weather work, especially not weather underground.
For just a moment, everything was perfect. In the soft glow of the lights on the tree—it had faerie lights on it, too—troubles just melted away much like the marshmallows floating in the hot chocolate, which were melting like ice would in the hot tub at the spa. If ponies were allowed to bring ice into the spa any more, that is.
It was like all the ponies were in a magical place full of rainbows and sunshine and friendship.
🌲🌲🌲
Which they actually were. But unlike the Equestria outside, for the moment there weren’t any monsters in the Tree of Harmony’s Crystal Cavern.
Only for a moment, though, because this was a Tuesday.
With a quiet pop not unlike Minty bursting her bubblegum bubble in S6E4, Discord arrived.
Minty did not.
Discord was wearing socks, though. Four of them, since he’s nominally a quadruped, although since he’s also Discord, he had two on one of his hind legs (the hooved one [obviously, a sock would have torn on his dragon-foot’s hind toe]), one on his leonine paw, and one on his . . . tail.
He also, in the spirit of the season, had a Charlie Brown Christmas Christmas Tree Christmas Tree-shaped ornament hanging from his antler.
And a cup of hot chocolate which he’d gotten from Pinkie Pie both before he entered and after he entered, and which continued to waver in and out of the present as anything would in such a temporally unstable superposition.
“Oh, hello Discord,” Fluttershy said softly. “We were just decorating the Tree of Harmony for Hearth’s Warming. Alone.”
“Without you,” Rainbow added unnecessarily.
“I wouldn’t want to interrupt you girls—and Spike,” Discord replied, despite just having done that. “I can see that you’re busy without little old me.”
“We didn’t invite you for a re—” Rainbow began, only to be interrupted by a hoof shoved into her mouth: Rarity was quicker on the uptake this time.
“What Rainbow means to say, darling, is that we just wanted to spend a moment away from the hustle and bustle of the streets above to honor the Tree of Harmony.”
“Yes, yes, it’s very nice.” Discord reached out as if to touch the tree, then thought better of it. All four of his socks suddenly switched locations, and the cup of hot chocolate collapsed into a very small singularity, to be reborn a moment later as a hot chocolate cup, which promptly melted and spilled all the marsh onto the ground. The mallow continued floating in the air like a sweet, angry stormcloud, then began to rain candy corn, much to everyone’s disgust. Even Discord’s—a draconequus has standards, after all.
“The tree is pretty, too.” With a snap of his fingers, the candy corn turned into a candy corn throne, which was hardly an improvement. “Even I must admit that.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “I’m too full of Hearth’s Warming Spirit to even be suspicious of your motivation.”
“It’s probably the egg nog, sugarcube.”
“You have egg nog?”
“But of course! ‘Tis the season!” Starlight Glimmer levitated a jug of Eierpunsch’s finest nog in front of Discord.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie also made a Great and Powerful fruitcake.”
Discord looked at her expectantly.
“Which is currently being used as a wheel clock on Trixie’s Great and Powerful wagon.”
“Cheer up, Trix, not everypony can master my granny’s dark matter batter. At least your attempt didn’t turn into a Fruitcake elemental.”
“Indeed.” The throne vanished, to be briefly replaced by a very confused Pomeranian wearing a saddle, before shifting again into exactly 3n + 1 copies of the Ponyville Express. “I hate this holiday.”
“What don’t ya hate?” Applejack looked around at the other mares.
And Spike.
“Ah mean . . . nah, there ain’t a better way to put it.”
“It’s the orderliness of Hearth’s Warming Eve.” Discord pointed a talon towards the Tree of Harmony. “All around Equestria, all you ponies have to have everything in perfect order. Why, it’s more constraining than a wedding! And I don’t dare disturb it or else Fluttershy will make me sleep on the couch.”
“Discord, all ponies love order and predictability,” Twilight lectured.
“Speak for yourself, Princess.” Pinkie pulled a string of popcorn out of her mane and gave it to Starlight, who began munching on it. “Small amounts of chaos, suitably mixed, are the spice of life.”
“She gets it.” Discord crossed his arms. “Every single day, in your supposedly orderly little world, you have tiny bits of chaos creeping in. Monster attacks. Misplaced mane brushes. The Cutie Mark Crusaders. Bartering at market—and what about bits? How do they work?
“All I’m asking for is just some teeny, tiny little chaos for the holiday. Is that too much to ask for?”
“Nopony wants that,” Twilight insisted. “It’s practically against the law. In fact, if I can assemble a quorum of Princesses in the next couple of days, it could be actually against the law.”
Applejack held up a hoof to shush her, then turned to face Discord. “Ah’ll tell ya what, sugarcube. You make a promise that you won’t do anything foalish afore the holiday, and Ah promise we’ll give you a chaotic Hearth’s Warming tree of your very own.”
Discord raised an eyebrow. “I would have expected such an offer to come from the pink one.”
Pinkie and Starlight Glimmer exchanged an awkward glance.
“The weird pink one.”
Rainbow crossed her forelegs. “Still not specific enough.”
Applejack ignored her silly friends. “Have we got a deal?”
“Very well.” Discord stuck his paw—now sockless—forward. “I shall wait with baited breath.”
That pronouncement uttered, he shoved a pawful of worms in his mouth, and vanished in a puff of smoke.
❄❄❄
There are a rather limited number of ways to wrap a tree to make it look like anything besides a tree. The only other thing that tends to be tree-shaped is a floor lamp.
Had Applejack been more of a troll, she might have wrapped a floor lamp as a present for Discord. Claimed it was a light tree, or something like that, and since light behaves both like a particle and a wave, that might have been chaotic enough, and would have fulfilled the words of the oath without actually fulfilling the promise.
[Pinkie Pie would have done that; Applejack was a mare of her word.]
Discord opened the present with relish. Also with mayo.
None of the ponies present would ever again mention the method by which Discord opened the tree; there were things that mortal minds were not meant to see or hear or taste.
It was a simple fruit tree, but it was no ordinary simple fruit tree. Not that that was obvious, since it was the middle of winter, and simple fruit trees and no ordinary simple fruit trees look basically identical.
A true tree connoisseur would of course have immediately observed that this was no ordinary simple fruit tree, but since Discord’s talents lay more towards the chaos direction and less towards simple tree husbandry, he failed to observe anything extraordinary.
He did wait in eager antici-
pation for the tree to explode, or really to do anything out of the ordinary, but it didn’t. It was a tree, and trees don’t explode.
Incidentally, Pinkie also waited for the tree to explode, since she’d had a hoof in making it.
After the tree continuously failed to explode for a full five minutes—which to an eager draconequus waiting for a bit of chaos is quite a bit of patience—he cocked an eyebrow at Applejack, who sat there with a smug look on her face.
The next ten minutes (roughly) were best left undescribed, but at the end of it the tree still hadn’t exploded, and Discord finally folded.
“You cannot tell a lie,” he said. “Ipso facto, barba non facit philosophum. This must be a chaos tree.”
Applejack nodded.
“I can detect no chaos magic from it.”
Applejack nodded again.
“Mind . . . blown.” He held both his paw and fore-talon up to his head in the universal gesture of ‘mind blown,’ said “pfffff!” and then his head exploded into a cloud of glitter. Applejack, who’d seen Autumn Blaze do just that, wasn’t impressed with Discord’s explody shenanigans.
Mere moments later, he was back to normal, this time dressed in knickers and knee-high to a grasshopper. He looked up at Applejack pleadingly. “What sort of chaos tree is this?”
Applejack’s look got smugger. “Why, it’s an omni-fruit tree.”
“Omnifruit?”
Applejack’s expression got still yet even more smugger, and she stood up on a soapbox that had been conveniently placed in the living room of the Crystal Castle. “Many fruit trees are produced by grafting parts of one tree unto another tree’s trunk.” [This is true.]
“Like me!” Discord observed quite unnecessarily.
“Exactly like you. Except that nopony can stick another Discord unto the stump of the first . . . okay, bad example; please set down Spike and put yourself back together properly.
“While ponies might reject additional limbs on their bodies—”
“I didn’t,” Twilight remarked.
“—consarn it, let me have my lecture without interruptions.”
“Sorry.”
“While most non-draconequuseses and non-princesseses can’t tolerate extra limbs just stuck on willy-nilly, a tree don’t care. With some good old-fashioned Earth Pony magic me ‘n Pinkie provided, and four . . . ah, six friends to help gather shoots, it’s quite possible to make a fruit tree that grows dozens of different kinds of fruit. [This is also true.]
Discord rested a claw thoughtfully on his chin and leaned forwards. “Dozens, you say?”
“Dozens.” Applejack’s expression finally got so smug, it slipped off. Fortunately, she was wearing a slightly smaller smug look under the first.
“And since we’re great and powerful magical ponies—especially Trixie, who claims to be greater and magicaler, why not add flowers too?”
“I also helped,” Derpy added.
A small tear formed at the corner of Discord’s eye, switched to his other eye, and then flew up, up, and away. “You mean. . . .”
Applejack petted the tree’s trunk. “This bad boy can grow so many fruits.
“You never know what might grow from it next,” Twilight added.
“Nopony does,” Fluttershy whispered.
Discord stretched his arms out, wide enough to engulf the whole group, even Trixie, who was Starlight Glimmer’s plus-one. “Aww, you girls are so thoughtful. Truely, this is the best Hearth’s Warming gift ever!”
Behind them, unnoticed, the tree finally exploded.
Just a little bit.
Author's Note
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