Only Chapter (Do Not Read!)
High upon an ivory tower, Princess Celestia was tapping her hoof with the slightest impatience. While her expression was one of pleasant calm, she was beginning to think that three and a half seconds was just a smidge long of a wait. Discord had said he would be arriving at noon, not three seconds past noon. As much as she knew that was a very Twilight Sparkle thing to think, it was better off not to dwell on that for two reasons. The first was that Twilight had to learn it from somewhere, and the second was that her time was never her own. She did want a lunch date, but she didn’t want a late one.
But speak of the demon (er, draconquus) and he shall appear. One lion’s paw wrapped around her withers not a second later, slinking under her mane. Then, the rest of the draconequus popped right into being, and Princess Celestia allowed herself to blink in mild surprise.
“Celly!” he hissed, his grin looming in the corner of her eye. “Why are you pouting?”
She had to puff up her checks — and absolutely not in any visible way — to resist reacting to his stage whisper. Discord always wanted a reaction. “Luna is the one who pouts, Dissy. I do not pout. Now, what do you have to say about being late, mister?”
The stink-eye she gave him was absolutely terrible, and she couldn’t help but smile as she did it.
“I’m not late in Draconequus Standard Time,” he huffed, placing his claw to his chest in a self-important gesture. “Your clocks are just mean.”
Celestia offered no reaction to the pocket watch he plucked from non-existence under her wing. “It does seem that you’ve never been late using Draconequus Standard Time. I suppose there’s no reason for that?”
Discord whistled innocently, moving to hook his claw the picnic basket clutched in her magic. “Well, let’s not worry your pretty little head about tardiness anymore!”
Before Princess Celestia could protest, Discord raked his claw into the air and the glowing blue edges of a Chaosville gateway emerged.
…
Princess Celestia hummed as she plucked a few stray winged teeth and dust bunnies from the whirling locks of her mane. She set the picnic basket down upon Discord’s quaint non-euclidean kitchen counter when it scurried over to her on all its tiny legs. The hundreds of them shuffled dutifully, stepping over slime from the Smooze. Over in the kitchen corner, the Smooze was shuffling about in a bed by the icebox covered in pictures of Dissy, Fluttershy, the Smooze, and herself. It gurgled happily upon seeing her.
Celestia smiled back, waving at the silly little jello creature. “Good afternoon, little Smoozie-Woozie. Somepony looks like they’ll be up for a game of fetch on the lake of islands later, hm?”
The reply she received was another delighted slime-squeal, and nearby Discord was snickering while a little end table scuttled over to Celestia and lapped at the legs of the princess with its drawers. Instead of starting, her eyes merely widened slightly — and only because the sensation was unexpected, not the sight. There was little to nothing in Discord’s realm or powers that could startle her any longer. How quickly she returned to appearing pleasantly unfazed was testament enough to that.
“Ah, here you are then,” said the princess, slipping out of her shoes. The little table lapped them up so that the Smooze wouldn’t slurp everything up. With a quick flash of magic, her weighty necklace joined them. Only the crown she could never bear to part with still sat atop her head.
The senses of the Smooze were dull things, and they would not be able to sense her lovely crown so high up her head. The eyeless goo merely rubbed at Princess Celestia’s bare legs with a display of affection that had her suppressing a shudder as she smiled wider.
“Yes, yes. I understand that you’re very happy to see me, little one. I’m afraid we’ll have to play together later. Lunch doesn’t prepare itself, even in this little nook of chaos.” Celestia smiled and nudged the Smooze ineffectively with her leg.
At first, this gesture did nothing, but there was little that could be done to manage a magically impervious being. She was used to prodding at the slimeball and nudging the oblivious little thing every time it couldn’t grasp her intent. Really, she could not understand how the Smooze responded so hazily to speech but possessed little to no sense of anything in its world but ponies, Alicorns, and Discord.
Eventually, something registered in the creature when Princess Celestia poked it sharply enough. She withdrew a slime-covered hoof — the Smooze merely twitched, gurgled, and did its jiggly slide of a gait into the next room. As soon as it slithered across that threshold, the hall warped and twisted so that the room she peered into was no longer Discord’s topsy-turvy sitting room. Instead, the one that rippled into existence was one she recognized as the Smooze’s playroom. The floor was carpeted with an obnoxious array of colored little plastic bricks which she would never dare to step on without wearing her boots. She had tried to talk to Discord about proper interior design and the array of fun patterns that carpets came in, but he did not listen.
Sighing, she lit up her horn and a blink of golden magic brought her into the dining room. The sight was dizzying. The wallpaper was one hypnotic spiral and various picture frames were dotted along it in the most uneven spirals. No two frames were alike. Occasionally, they were hung straightly, but most were askew. Inside were a variety of things from framed napkins, smudges of dirt, portraits of friends, stamp collections, and half-eaten menus.
The table was shaped like a puzzle piece, with the rounded ends sticking out. Upon each of those, a few items had been placed: a vase of normal sunflowers from Celestia, a napkin dispenser that squeaked when napkins were pulled out (from Pinkie Pie), and a spice rack. Of course, the spice rack also contained utterly unappetizing options like multiple ‘flavors’ of glitter, sand, and a type of dust that always made her sneeze. Every chair around the table was unique, ranging from sturdy wooden chairs, cushy armchairs, and even a high-chair where the Smooze’s metal dog-dish was placed.
Celestia peered over at that dish and saw that it was filled with milk and beans. Lots of beans.
An awful groaning sound echoed through all of the distorted hallways and momentarily made everything on the walls jangle like a junkyard desperately tumbling in on itself. Celestia did her best to stand absolutely still until it came to a stop. She knew better than to interfere with the sound of Discord moving his house around. When it was done, a sudden smell wafted inside from the other side of the dining room — that told her that Discord must have moved the kitchen across from her, so their lunch would be easier to carry.
Well, she thought, it’d have been a touch nicer if he could have done that from the start.
When she was certain the house was totally still, Celestia trotted inside to follow the funky smell and to see what awaited her. Today Discord decided to arrange the kitchen so that a counter piled high with cutting boards run across the length of the room — or at least most of it. The ends had been left unimpeded, this way one could run around either end unobstructed. On the other side of the oval room was a line of iceboxes, their chilling spells humming loudly. Only one oven broke up the row, and it was neither placed towards one end nor completely in the middle. Rows of cabinets were on the ceiling, angled above the large counter with their doors on the underside, so that whatever was within would just fall out onto the counter below. Every cupboard door was a different size and color, yet none of them were labeled. There were no windows; the only light came from firefly lanterns crammed intermittently on top of iceboxes along with other things that were stored precariously out of reach — pots, pans, and knives.
This was one of the safer kitchen arrangements of Discord’s whims. Celestia sighed, letting the kitchen’s thick neon shag carpet tickle her forehooves.
At first, Princess Celestia thought she had detected the source of the smell. There was a pitcher left out on the counter. Trotting over to it revealed the contents to be lemon wedges floating in hoof sanitizer. The mouth of the pitcher and the presence of cups told her that Discord had been having more than his fair share throughout the day.
Another careful look around the kitchen made the source visible. Upon the stove was a pot, its lid still on tight and the slightest of fires burning dim and blue beneath it. Celestia made her way to the pot and whipped off the lid in one elegant gesture, only to be greeted with a smell so overpowering she risked gagging. Her composure slipped, mortification crossed her features and she had to take two large steps away out of the line of the smell’s ability to affect her. Within the pot was chicken meat — something any equine was instinctively revolted by — but it was what the drumsticks were cooking in that disturbed her so.
No pharmacy in either of the Western continents would allow anypony to buy that much cough syrup at once.
She replaced the lid immediately and then turned down the flame. There would be nothing good about making herself sick before lunch even started.
“Dissy, are we going to cook?” she called out to the empty kitchen. Even the echo of her voice sounded unusual to her ears.
The soap dispenser by the sink made a belching noise and pushed out a spurt of ketchup.
…
Discord pulled a tray of boneless donuts out of the oven. Celestia breathed a sigh of relief. The last time they had lunch together, he had not deboned the donuts they had and she had bit into quite the surprise. Where he had gotten such horrific pastries escaped her, she hadn’t realized that donuts could ever have bones at all. Apparently, diamond dogs were quite fond of them — and she was no diamond dog!
Celestia gave an instinctual shiver of disgust when she saw the tray come to rest on the cooling rack. Even the flight of Discord’s oven mitts back to their resting place did nothing to cheer her up.
“Don’t worry, my sunshine,” Discord said, snickering. “These ones are for Smoozie and me.”
As if it could sense its name, Celestia detected the distinctive sound that the Smooze made. In the next room over, there was a wiggly, reverberating noise.
All she could do was sigh — it was a grateful sound. She rarely had time for extended lunches off or royal duties. She used her telekinesis to pull the specially enchanted scrunchie that she was wearing to keep her mane away from her face — outside of her magic and the occasional, unexpected touch of others, no ordinary enchantments or objects could properly grip her mane and tail. The heat of pizza rose up to brush her muzzle as she dunked each slice in layers of frothing chocolate. Before any of the slices could harden, she whipped her magic behind her to the counter and plopped slices of fresh strawberries and fruits onto the pizza the way griffins added pepperoni.
“Are you sure little Smoozie-Woozie is big enough to start having some of our food?”
“Oh, definitely,” Discord said, conjuring a row of glass jars from the cabinets with a few well-timed snaps. “He’s getting smoozier by the day.”
“What does that even mean?” Celestia muttered.
She turned away from her finished pizzas. The shapes of fruit encased in chocolate stared up at her in an eyeless, uneven, and bizarrely solemn way. She could make out what most of the chunks were. She also got a perfect view of Discord pouring energy drinks into the glass jars — which were now filled with pickles.
…
The breezie bread was the most normal thing on the table. Gobs of butter were running off the plate, dribbling sprinkles along with it. The Brumbralian snack food was just too average compared to the rest of the spread at the table.
The centerpiece was a marshmallow mountain with a curious array of crab legs sticking out of its quivering form (and presumably, whole cooked crabs buried within). Hard candies like peppermint were embedded in the sticky substance alongside onion rings. In its shadow, a bowl of wedding soup overflowing with gummy worms awaited further sampling. The chicken cooked in cough syrup left sticky trails everywhere. Discord was currently holding a drumstick curled in his tail and taking ferocious bites out of one of the many pieces prepared in his special recipe.
The Smooze’s bowl had been filled with big helpings of barbeque sauce, melted candy corn, garlic, newspaper clippings, mushrooms, and trout heads that Discord insisted were actually scrumptious stew substitutes. (Celestia neglected to try any, but she was very polite about it, so it was okay to decline the flavor-of-the-week entree.)
Beans visibly still lingered within the fishy mess; some clung to the eyes and gaping mouths of the severed fish heads. Barbeque drizzled off the dairy-soaked beans as they were forced to absorb and fester in their new Tartarus that the Smooze picked and slurped at with mild disinterest.
There was a tutt-tutt noise made as Celestia tried to remind every creature of their manners. She had been picking through a dish of noodles, whipped cream, jello, Brussel sprouts, and bits of Cocoa 'Splosion cereal.
It needed… something to help the flavor along, that was for sure.
Princess Celestia put down her fork. “Excuse me, Dissy dear, have you seen the salt?” she asked.
“Did… Did the Smooze eat it?” Discord asked, immediately bringing a claw over to the spice rack. “I can’t seem to find it anywhere… hrm, now where did I last have this pesky thing?”
A slice of breezie bread slipped off of its plate and into dribblings of its own buttery sprinkle mess.
“Oh!” Discord gasped, right as Celestia was about to ask if they might have left it in the kitchen. One snap of his fingers later and a lit bulb — the fancy, hydro-thaumic kind — began to float above his head. “I think the salt might be chilling out!”
“Chilling out?” Celestia questioned. Her brow furrowed and she resisted the urge to push her tiara back into its proper place, even if it was just for a moment. She watched as he plucked the light bulb from the air while his paw drummed on the table. He crushed it in his claw and sprinkled the remains on his meal.
“Yes, yes!” Discord said, nodding between bites of cough syrup-flavored chicken and fruity chocolate pizza. “The salt is in the fridge, with all sorts of other goodies.”
Nodding quietly, Celestia murmured an excuse into her napkin before folding it and getting up. She trotted back into the kitchen and began opening iceboxes until she saw what looked like a salt shaker in one, right next to a dark-colored plastic container, the kind leftovers were put in. Curious as to what could be in such a dark container, she looked to see if there was a label anywhere.
On the top of the container, she found a single piece of pasted-on paper, with sloppy writing entirely characteristic of Discord: dead dove: do NOT eat. The lack of capitalization was something Princess Celestia recognized as so utterly in-character for her beau. Surely this was a prank, though? Discord was an omnivore, yet, she had yet to hear of him eating doves. And who did he need to leave a label for when they lived separately? She was not one to rummage through his fridge and Fluttershy had never been to Chaosville. Cautiously, Celestia used her forehoof to nudge open the lid of the little container no bigger than two sandwiches stacked atop one another—
—only to have a torrent of live doves fly out, directly in her face.
“Disc—AGH, feathers—ord!” Celestia shrieked.
Author's Note
This story has been in the works since 2021. Thank you to my partner for pulling various suggestions from r/StupidFood.
