Celestia hummed as she daintily plucked the stems of flowers. She planned to weave them into her flowing pink mane after she untangled a few pesky knots. They were simple breezielocks, the ones that one could expect when living in a state of constant adventure where little princesses could not stop to brush their manes. Oh, how Celestia longed to stand in front of a glistening smooth mirror with her old golden brush and stroke her mane to shining perfection. All the comforts of the castle that her and Luna left behind were now the stuff of Celestia's greatest wishes. When she laid her head down at night, it was thoughts of feather-stuffed pillows, sumptuous meals, and her dolls with their fine houses and lacy gowns danced in her dreams. Every day she woke, she found herself hugging the quilts they carried close to their chest and longing for the dolls she had left behind — why had she not thought to bring one with her? As foalish as her dolls were, and as much as she needed to grow up, she longed to hold them again and stroke their gorgeous ringlets.
Luna did not suffice. Her mane was short, she always squirmed, and anything that was deemed too fillyish was discarded. Celestia's little sister wanted to scramble and canter off to the latest rowdy romp. Luna was the poorest substitute for her dolls that Celestia could have had, and she longed for that kind of closeness to be in her life again.
However, there was always a flower or two where one knew a patch of sunshine could be found, if somepony knew where to look. So it was there that Celestia spent time alone — when she bothered to separate herself from her sister and best friend at all. She busied herself with picking flowers in the vast meadow the three of them had stopped at, barely north of the vast desert in many of the bedtime stories her parents used to tell her before they left. Now, Celestia had no crown to wear, which she pined for along with other small luxuries of her princesshood now left in an enchanted forest. Things like clean floors, shining windows, and orderly gardens with the most brilliant of flowers, so she wouldn't have to settle for anything. Constant comfort would replace even the thought of cold.
She always dreamed of places like that, where glass would separate her from the storms of the world and ponies would smile at her. She had longed to finally get a chance to meet ponies long before her and Luna left their Everfree home behind them to venture into the greater wilds. Celestia, the markless filly, wished not to be marked with dirt each time she slept. She did not want to have to scrub herself in a stream each morning at the exact moment she dragged herself from her blankets. Having to worry if water would be conjured in some places only added to her woes.
She wanted — privately, behind pleasant smiles or thoughtful glances at their only map — all the things that Luna hadn't cared for. The bright filly just wanted a light to guide her to a road in a world that didn't always match up with the map she held. Celestia wanted no more verdant valleys, dense forests, quiet ash-plains, and seas of grasslands. What Celestia wanted was for all the color in her life to be distilled into the great collections of jewelry that used to be the stuff of her daydreams.
Something was missing, it was always something missing, and never anything she could name. Celestia had a hollow feeling with a smile for a balm, and she only knew that she could not confide it in anypony — even if she had the words to speak it.
She made do in a world that had dulled light within her, or at least made that inner brightness into something blinding. It felt like she was at the end of a storybook with no conclusion at all, only to wake up at page one over and over again. All the change she was so hungry for never happened, not when she only ever woke up with her mane a little longer, that feeling a smidge stronger, and still herself.
But Celestia made do. For Luna.
She picked flowers and played pretend.
Princesses played pretend.
Princesses smiled.
Celestia was not entirely sure of what she was doing to herself, just that she must follow the map, go somewhere, and always look after Luna. Celestia must change, and this is what she would change into. She would tear every weed from herself to have that kind of final perfection, to be as pretty as the flowers she admired. Today, Celestia was a filly ripping out flowers in an empty meadow to make a futile effort in crafting a crown to reassure herself of something missing.
Something, and only that. To stick anything more after 'something' was to start a spiral simmering at the back of her mind, one devoid of the optimism she tried to exude for everypony else. There should be no clue as to what that something was, only that it might be there.
Princesses don't yank flowers from their roots.
Princesses don't get dirty.
Princesses always smile.
Princesses don't break their own rules.
Princesses put others above themselves.
Princesses are graceful and will defend their kingdoms.
Princesses have a kingdom to defend.
Princesses do not ask questions, they give answers.
Princesses tell themselves the rules over and over again.
Princesses follow those rules.
And there was a whole host of them; all of those rules were parable-like commandments she would assert about things like manners to help remind Luna that mud was very yucky. Or, she would bring one up about how Luna had to always stay no more than six steps away from Celestia when it was dark. Yes, it was mostly for Celestia's sake, since Luna had been gifted with their mother's night-touched eyes and dual vision — but she could never tell Luna that. The elder believed every one of her little orders in some way.
Luna didn't listen much, but not out of spite. Luna simply wasn't afraid...
...of something that she might not have been missing.
Luna wasn't the one who stood in meadows with their legs covered in dirt because she hurt flowers on purpose. Except, what lay in front of Celestia were not much of flowers anymore, as two magenta eyes could plainly see.
It was amid this uncharacteristic brooding that Celestia heard the sound of fluttering. At first, she thought of the lightest curtains on a warm summer day, but when she turned around, she was faced with anything but that. Flying her way were dozens of butterflies of all colors and sizes. Each beautiful bug was soaring into the vividly cloudless sky and back again. The cascading wave of pink mane was like a nest hosting many birds, and it had swept up all the flowers Celestia had picked with their flight.
From a short distance across a bed, now flower-less, Celestia could see the wave of a paw. It was certainly not Luna, who only ever had two ways to approach her sister. The first was to sneak up on her totally, and the second was to bound over to her elder sister as noisily as possible, screaming 'Tia!' and grinning. What Celestia saw was a snaggle-toothed grin peering above long stalks of green meadow-grass.
Celestia smiled only a little bit wider — after all, she was still a princess, she had to smile. At least this time, she knew it was real.
If only for a moment.
When Discord thought of Celestia, he could only think of two things before her face. The first was the color pink. Before he met her, the only place he had ever seen pink was in the sky. That was the kind of pink he knew that he would never be able to touch; no creature could. Not even his kind could work the sky, and yet somehow the color of it managed to be distilled into her mane and tail. The second thing that made Discord think of Celestia was butterflies. At first, he wasn't sure why — butterflies were silly, uncomplicated things. Discord loved butterflies when they were bright and zany; it was the only thing that saved them from being boring due to their delicacy.
Celestia was nothing like a butterfly. She looked delicate, but could hold a smile longer than his mother could whenever he chewed with his mouth open. Discord liked that kind of delicacy, the kind that wasn't the same as what Celestia had explained was fragility. According to these peculiar sisters, fragility was what happened when a pretty little thing was too weak for its own good. This was why inspecting a butterfly could turn into accidentally crushing its wings and de-powdering the poor creature far too fast. To be fragile was to be shy and simpering, and Celestia was like a puddle, if puddles could be perfect enough to scoop starlight from when the sun went down.
In fact, Discord was sure that Celestia was the only thing in his whole life that was more perfect than true. That was why the idea of her being anything like a butterfly was downright bothersome. Butterflies were nature's poets, their buffoons for scraps of fun and flew like a song. Celestia could sing better than any frog Discord had ever scooped from a swamp. Unlike a frog, Discord also did not wish to gulp down Celestia — she was too big, too nice, and kept him from feeling the ugly thoughts that picked at his head when he wandered alone. Frogs were fun to play with before feasting on, Celestia was beyond fun to look at, and she always had the best reactions when he showed her that he could lick his eyeballs. Luna had just giggled like nothing but laughs would ever leave her again.
Butterflies made him think of Celestia because of the way he started feeling around her. A funny, fluttery feeling overtook him the more he was around her. This affliction showed no sign of being cured, and despite the pleasant fluffiness it created, he had to wonder how long it would last. No matter how nice the feeling could be, Discord felt more than just butterflies and a happy firelight warmth. Knots he had no idea how to begin to untie — a kind of ultimate chaos — were lurking at the bottom of his stomach. Even amid all the confusion these feelings brought, Discord knew two things. The first was that he wanted to keep Celestia as close as possible no matter what, the way his dad said to treat the draconequui other than kin who were favorites. Secondly, he knew that even undoing one of those knots would let loose a whole flood of feelings ickier — and worse, maybe even mushier — than any of the things he'd ever felt before.
That was how Discord figured out that the feelings he had Celestia were the heaviest butterflies in all of the wilds that they had seen. If he had snapped them out of his stomach, he didn't think that he would be able to pick a single one up. Even if these feelings were only as big as a pebble, they were buried deep enough to wind him up with their weight, and he knew he'd never be able to skip them away from him. Maybe for the better... and maybe for the not-so-better.
As far as Discord knew, draconequui did not have words for these kinds of feelings. Or maybe he had simply never been old enough to know them. Perhaps they were too long, or too hard to say. Maybe they were the kinds of words that sounded like sneezes unless you listened very carefully, and he just hadn't realized that they had been spoken around him before. Either way, he was sick with something, and telling his bestest friend ever would only spoil the one thing he wasn't sure he wanted to change.
Celestia was delicate, sure. That was apparently a standard for all princesses who were not Luna, as told to him straight from the mouth of Celestia herself. Unlike any butterfly or even the weirdest of bugs he found, Celestia was by far the most complicated thing in his life. As much as Discord hated big-messy-thought-stealing-dig-a-hole-and-wait-on-them kind of feelings that came with the word complicated, Celestia was his hoard and he would like to be her dragon — even if he had never met a dragon before, at least not up close. Just like the stomach-fluffing flutters, Discord had a rabble of other buzzing, messy feelings about Celestia — and these ones came from just watching her. She wasn't like her sister, not in the slightest, where Luna was nothing but the worst kind of puzzle to figure out (and he'd honestly given up with her, having fun was more important). Discord had started to get the feeling that Celestia was saddest when she smiled, most tired in the quiet, and so many other pretty swell contradictions.
She made less sense than anyone ever could have, and he wanted to be her bestest-most-special-super-duper-closest friend (if there was another word for that he would maybe even say it) to her. Just for that. They had their cheer in common, the social hunger that Luna was barren of. He craved talking with her when they weren't saying anything, and with no other talking-creatures around (except Luna) they would talk until their throats were sore sometimes. Discord wanted to sit the closest with her at meal-times, and when Celestia wasn't around Luna asked him if he had anything else to talk about other than her sister — those kinds of moods would come over him, like a fit or fever. So how could he be anything but sick?
For all her little dents, Celestia surely wasn't suffering from the same thing. Though, Discord liked to think that maybe she could feel the better parts, the fuzziest parts of the feelings he had too. Better yet, he liked to imagine the weird cave (she called them castles) she lived in before her travels had one of those tiny dead trees. In it, she would have all the words to spell out the exact best parts of what they surely shared a little of...
...and then all his daydreams ended there, for he could not imagine what could possibly come next.
Discord had nothing to share with Celestia, who he caught the slightest dents in. She was no less pretty for having them, even if those could be annoying. Being with Celestia was like being found because she never wanted to leave you alone.
So, he shared butterflies with her, and wanted her to like them as much as he did her.
