"First of all," Fluttershy says, and Discord can smell the sigh she's refusing to puff out, the non-aroma of it stronger than the grape-soda scent of the green sky above, "I'm not your queen."
"Yes, Your Majesty." The three dozen or so aquamarine mushrooms bow their little caps, poking up through the stubby purple grass where Discord has unrolled the checker-board tablecloth for his and Fluttershy's picnic.
The mushrooms' response leaves Discord oddly torn. Of the tiny Discords that run continually screaming and gibbering and dancing the polka throughout the length and breadth of what he's been calling his body for the past several millennia, half are cheering, but the other half have fallen uncharacteristically quiet.
Fluttershy's sigh wells up even higher, but once again, it doesn't emerge. "If you have to call me something, you could call me 'Your Ladyship.'" She turns a smile so dazzling toward Discord that all his tiny interior selves stop whatever they're doing—or not doing—and simultaneously swoon. "I'm married to the Lord of Chaos, after all."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the mushrooms say, bobbing once more in unison.
That's when the sigh comes, but it isn't tectonic: this is Fluttershy, after all. It still makes large portions of Discord's variegated hide itch in rather unpleasant ways, however. He knows that she barely puts up with his endless shenanigans: why does his realm have to go out of its way to remind her how much she really despises him?
Maybe he can salvage the situation, though. "Mushrooms," he says, trying to roll his eyes in a humorous fashion and not at all sure he's succeeding. "Personally, I've never found a one that I would consider a 'fun guy.' Nothing but silly sigh bins, the whole troop of them."
The smile that curls across her muzzle would be enough to smooth his more ruffled sections all on its own, but that she actually puts a hoof to her mouth and giggles makes molten gouts of love flood through him, overwhelming his shrieking inner selves and sucking them down into a maelstrom of pyroclastic hearts and blazing flower petals. "Now, Discord," she says, and as much as he wants to be gasping for air to either fight or encourage the inferno within—he can see the advantages to both approaches—he merely smiles at her. "Not all our friends can be Pinkie Pie."
A large percentage of his surviving inner selves begin flashing the semaphore flags for crisis averted! Discord does his best to ignore them and puts a claw to his chin. "You know, Pinkie being a giant mushroom would explain so much..."
She cuddles against him with another giggle, and an even larger deluge of love bursts through every barrier the tiny Discords have managed to construct, their drowning gurgles mixed with infatuated sighs.
"I love you," she says then, and it shocks him every bit as much as it does every time she says it. She can't mean it, but, well, she can't be lying, either: this is Fluttershy, after all.
The splendid chaos of the paradox that continually churns between them leaves him so breathless, he's unsure if she can even hear it when he murmurs, "Love you, too," in return.
"I wasn't upset." Fluttershy's been upset more than a few times in her life, so she's almost entirely sure that what she felt earlier with the mushrooms wasn't that. "I was..."
But as much as she wants to smile at him from her chair in the front room of her cottage and watch him, sprawled across the sofa, smile back, as much as she wants to forget everything that isn't fun and frolic in their lives and pretend she's completely fine, she knows she can't. She could never lie to him. "I was being stupid," she mutters.
Discord blinks. "Among the veritable plethora of objects, creatures, ideas, and sandwiches that I would consider stupid, my dear, you never have and never will number." His body stretches so he can lean forward without leaving his reclining position. "Which means it has to be something other than that."
Sweet bubbles of love start fizzing through her with an intensity that both frightens her and relieves every fear she's ever had. Discord tries constantly to make her happy, after all, even though she knows he should be with a princess or a goddess or somecreature as awesome and wonderful as he is. So she forces her confession out: "I felt like I was being disrespectful to Twilight."
He blinks several more times, Fluttershy's face heating up. "Disrespectful," he repeats. "Because those mush-headed mushrooms kept calling you 'Your Majesty'?"
She wants to curl up and hide behind her mane, but she won't let herself. He needs to know the sad and sorry truth about her. "It's just—" She pulls in a breath. "'Your Majesty' is how you address a queen, but I'm not a queen! I'm not even a princess! Twilight's the princess, and she works so hard to keep the whole world running! For those mushrooms to put me above her, it's just...just..."
Just me being stupid, she very carefully doesn't say out loud. Even though she knows that they're both thinking it.
How he keeps steam from blasting out through his horns, Discord doesn't know.
Except that he does know. Ever since Fluttershy came seeping into his life like the most velvety of miasmic vapors, he's found himself able to do all kinds of things he'd never before even thought about doing.
Like restraining himself from storming back to his realm and clamping little iron masks on the pesky stinkhorns who upset her in the first place. That's the sort of thing, he's learned over the years, that just upsets her more, and if there's one thing he's completely sure about, it's that he's always one stupid mistake away from losing her forever. So he tries to think of something else, musing aloud, "Well, we could round the mushrooms up, take them to Canterlot, and see if they'll apologize to Twilight."
Fluttershy brightens at this, and Discord just wants to melt into a puddle at her hooves, swirl her into a whirlpool of love, comfort her and tell her everything is going to be better than it's ever been before.
But because the mere thought of lying to her makes him feel like he's got a necktie stapled to his chest and a desk job he needs to report to, he has to clear his throat instead. "Of course, mushrooms don't really seem to know what's going on even at the best of times. As far as I've been able to tell, only two things really grab their attention: the foulest, most redolent sort of carrion, and the sweetest, most beautiful sort of ponies.
She partially dims and partially doesn't; his inner Discords start lambasting him for bringing up carrion, and he hurries on before Fluttershy can denounce him as unworthy of her further attention and demand that he leave. "So how about," he says, all his interior Discords now shouting their usual contradictory advice, "we turn this entire situation around and look at it from another angle." He twists his neck till his head's upside down. "And by 'we,' I mean 'me,' of course. This is the sort of maneuver only a professional should attempt."
Her giggle tells him that he's earned another moment of grace. "You're right," she says, then she flaps up, performs a quick barrel roll, and settles back into her chair. "I prefer to keep my amateur standing anyway."
And even Twilight throwing the wrong switch on her control device and causing the sun to go supernova wouldn't have been able to stop him from slithering forward to touch a kiss to her hoof.
His kisses tingle through every square inch of her, and that's just when he's kissing her hoof. When he actually takes her in his arms and their lips meet...
She shivers, and Discord pulls away, barely stops himself from sucking his ears into his head in case she starts screaming.
Fluttershy manages to find her voice before Discord, straightening, can narrow his eyes disdainfully at her. "We can invite Twilight over," she says, not letting herself think, trying to be more spontaneous the way she knows he likes, "go out to the same spot where we had the picnic today, and then the mushrooms can call her 'Your Majesty'!"
The problem with this plan strikes her immediately, and she can't keep her ears from falling. "Except that won't be right, either. She's a princess, not a queen..."
"Pish tosh!" he says. He snaps his talons, and a mint-green mushroom cap appears on his head. "As one who has duly usurped a spot in the Chaos Fungoid Collective, I hereby declare that we've elected Twilight Sparkle to be our queen! Hooray!" Confetti flies upward when he waves his paws and claws at the ceiling, and he sings, "For she's a folly jude gallow, for she's a folly jude gallow, for she's a folly jude gallow, which nopony can deny!"
Wanting to get caught up on the moment, Fluttershy still can't stop herself from asking, "Can...can you do that? Just say that you've elected somepony queen?"
He arches an eyebrow. "How else would one do it?"
She can feel sweat dampening the frogs of her hooves. "Well? Shouldn't there be a campaign? With speeches and balloons and straw hats that say Twilight for Mushroom Queen across the front?"
Everything about Discord freezes, and Fluttershy catches her breath. Is this it? Has she finally proven herself unworthy of his attentions? Is he about to denounce her and leave her to the horrible, fear-filled life that held her captive until he came and—
"My luscious, beautiful, wonderful darling," he says, his voice all deep and rumbly. "Have I told you lately how much I love you?"
It shocks her every time he says it, and when he slips forward again, takes her hoof in the soft fur of his lion paw once more, and raises it to his lips, his eyes never looking away from hers, she's not sure if she's still breathing. "Love you, too," she manages to squeak so quietly and incoherently, she's completely unsure if he actually hears it.
All his interior Discords are waving their semaphore flags more frantically than ever, but Discord again tries to ignore them, tries to soak in the sensation of his various parts touching her various parts. He knows he can't, though, can't allow himself to wallow too deeply in her glorious quagmire. She's a pony of action, after all, a pony who knows what she wants and goes after it, a pony of deep convictions and even deeper principles—
A pony who has to be kept slightly off-balance so she doesn't think too closely about her unusual relationship with him and decide it's all been a dreadful mistake.
So he pulls a straw hat from the air, a straw hat that says Fluttershy for Mushroom Queen across the front. "Of course, for it to be a proper campaign, Twilight would need a worthy opponent, wouldn't she?"
Fluttershy's eyes go wide. "Me?"
"Well?" Discord spreads his paws. It's like he's walking a tightrope, and he loves every instant of it. "It'll mean so much more if Twilight truly earns the title, won't it? And the mushrooms have already called you 'Your Majesty.' If that's not a nomination, I don't know what is!"
All sound everywhere seems to cease, Discord not sure if he's still upright or if he's begun to fall. That he's a fool goes without saying, so if he's overstepped himself finally, it's no more than he deserves. If she retreats or screams or begins to lambaste him, it'll be exactly—
"Do you..." She's quivering, but it doesn't appear to be one of her terrified quivers or one of her outraged ones, either. Instead—and he looks twice to make sure—she seems to be quivering with excitement. "Do you think I really have a chance?"
And Discord lets himself explode, Fluttershy for Mushroom Queen posters and banners spattering everywhere around her front room.
This is crazy! she keeps telling herself, watching the twenty-five thousand watermelon-sized gray balloons with the words Fluttershy for Mushroom Queen drift away into the early evening.
Into the twilight, she realizes, and she can't stop a giggle.
"Yes," Discord says beside her, and he makes a sniffling noise. "Quite a stirring sight, our unstoppable armada, isn't it?"
It strikes her as a silly question, and she giggles, leaning against him. "You're the best campaign manager ever."
His arm moves above her, and one of his claws strokes her mane as gently as a butterfly momentarily alighting. "You're the perfect candidate: the perfect everything, actually."
Her face heats up, she and turns her head to brush her cheek along the cool fur of his midsection. But as content as she'd be standing here with him for the rest of the sunset, she knows that she needs to keep moving, needs to keep up with him so he won't get bored with her. So... "Should we tell Twilight about the election now?"
"Tell her?" He glances down from the rising balloons. "As your campaign manager, I'd advise against it. Things'll go much easier for us if she remains in the dark."
Fluttershy tries to stop the little frown from pulling at her snout, but it seeps out anyway. "It's just—" Not wanting to risk him taking offense and leaving, she scrambles for a way to put it that might appeal to him. "Imagine the look on her face when she finds out she's been nominated to be Queen of the Mushrooms."
Discord blinks, and that impish, magical smile stretches out from his mouth, spreads away and up and down to somehow touch his entire body. "You are, as always, absolutely right, my dear." He raises his lion paw, his pads poised to snap. "To Canterlot!"
Fluttershy insists that they wait for Twilight to be done with dinner before they appear inside her suite of rooms atop the palace.
Of course, she also insists that they appear outside her suite and knock on the door, but Discord risks her frown and suggests how much easier it'll be on the guards if they let themselves in. "Besides," he points out, floating on his back like a dirigible moored to the castle's highest flagpole, "doesn't Twilight say you can come visit her anytime you need to?"
Cuddled against his chest, Fluttershy sighs and nods, and Discord finds himself hoping that Twilight orders extra dessert. He almost even reaches up to stroke Fluttershy's mane, but he stops himself. That couldn't possibly be well received.
"Twilight's so dedicated," Fluttershy's saying. "She needs her quiet time." Her smile spreads into a thing more sly than shy. "Maybe even as much as you need your wild time."
"Me?" he begins. But his attempt at denial puffs away as she starts slinking inch by inch from his chest out along his neck. Simultaneously frozen and boiling, he can only watch as she stretches the last inch to give him a kiss that encompasses the entire range of sensation from the brush of a breeze to the blast of a volcano.
Then nothing in the entire cosmos would be able to keep him from wrapping his arms around her. "We'll dance," he murmurs, popping out a second set of lips so he can talk and kiss at the same time, "along the glittering tail of every comet from here to the edge of the universe, the stars and their whirling planets providing their inimitable music to accompany our steps."
"Yes, yes, yes," she says, but then she's pulling away. "First, though, we really ought to let Twilight know about the queen of the mushrooms election."
The contradiction inherent in her ability to both cut him off and not cut him off makes him love her all the more. A quick glance through the membranes of reality shows him that Twilight's just finishing her supper, thanking the steward and skipping dessert, so Discord drifts himself and Fluttershy down into Twilight's rooms like the gentlest of autumn leaves.
"The queen of the what?" Twilight asks, and Fluttershy has to smile when the tall and stately alicorn before her seems to shift for an instant into the slightly pudgy, slightly befuddled unicorn who inadvertently and marvelously upended Fluttershy's life all those years ago.
Giggling, Fluttershy's about to repeat the question—"How would you like to become the queen of the mushrooms?"—but Discord clears his throat.
"Really," he says, his eyebrows turning into little arrows to point at Twilight's dinner plate, suspended in the hornglow of the steward: the sour, coppery scent of the steward's confusion touches Fluttershy's heart, but even her gentlest smile doesn't seem to put him at his ease. That the plate he's holding appears to be covered with the mostly eaten remains of a mushroom stroganoff could explain some of his nervousness, she decides, as Discord goes on: "Devouring your constituency might be a bit difficult on your image."
Twilight looks from Discord to Fluttershy, then rises gracefully from the table. "This sounds like something we should probably discuss in the parlor over cookies." She nods to the steward. "We have chocolate chip, you said, Purser?"
"Ma'am?" The steward gives a little jump, and his ears fold back as if he's only just suddenly remembered where he is. "I mean, yes, ma'am! Shall...shall I bring some up for you and your...guests?"
Fluttershy nods. "Thank you."
Discord opens his mouth, but Twilight cocks her head before he can get anything out: "We might have some of Spike's molybdenum chip cookies left if you'd prefer those, Discord."
His long neck draws back, his eyes opening wide, and Fluttershy's stomach clenches a little, afraid that he might say something mean or rude or nasty. But instead, he strokes his beard and says, "Well, if you're offering..."
And it's really very nice, the next half hour or so, sitting in Twilight's cozy parlor nibbling cookies—though Discord sounds like he's smashing metal plates together every time he takes a bite. Fluttershy tells Twilight what happened with the mushrooms earlier, and Discord very helpfully sprouts replicas of the entire cluster from his arm so Twilight can get a better idea of the overall situation. He provides other visual and audio effects as the story goes along, too—the murmuring of the mushroom delegates as they consider their options, for instance, and two different bursts of confetti when they settle on Twilight and Fluttershy as the candidates.
"Or course," Fluttershy feels obliged to say after Discord has turned most of his cookies into two different factions of mushrooms that march around Twilight's coffee table decked out in Twilight for Mushroom Queen and Fluttershy for Mushroom Queen paraphernalia, "some of those things didn't actually happen." She blows Discord a kiss; he smiles and waggles his eagle talons at her. "But still," she goes on, turning to address Twilight again, "you're very much in the running to become Queen of the Mushrooms, and I thought we ought to let you know."
Which sounds really odd, she realizes, hearing herself say it, and a thought suddenly pops into her head.
This is her life now, married to Discord. Full of things like mushroom elections and birds singing colors and comets with their tails all decked out for dancing, the impossible and the silly and the always exciting: she will never know a boring or scary moment again. Because he'll be there beside her for reasons she doubts she'll ever understand.
Twilight's nodding. Twilight's nodded several times during Fluttershy's recitation, but she hasn't said anything. Fluttershy doesn't know if that's good or bad.
Taking a cookie in her hornglow, Twilight turns it back and forth as if making sure it hasn't got any mushrooms on it. "Honestly? I'm stretched pretty thin right now just covering my regular princess duties here in Equestria."
"Well," Discord says, taking a crackling crunch from one of his non-marching cookies, "if you keep up with the baked goods like this, thinness won't be a problem for long."
Fluttershy aims half-closed eyes at him.
He shrugs. "I'm just saying that these are very good cookies." He holds his up, the metal fragments shiny, and a little glowing halo appears above it. "Don't you think that these are very good cookies, my dearest, most wonderful darling?"
Trying not to smile, she fails. She looks back at Twilight with an apology on her lips—
But Twilight's smiling, too, smiling in a way that Fluttershy doesn't think she's ever seen Twilight smile before. It makes Fluttershy think of somepony watching a soap bubble drift by, happy and amazed at how delicate it is but sorry and a little sad that she'll never be able to touch it...
Then Twilight shakes her head, waves traveling through her dark, starry mane. "My point is that I really don't think I'm the best creature to become Queen of the Mushrooms." She sighs. "As honored as I am to be nominated, it'd be best for all involved if I withdraw from the race."
"Withdraw?" Fluttershy doesn't want her ears to perk up, but they do anyway. "How can you say that? You're the princess! You should be the queen!"
"Should be?" Twilight shakes her head again. "I never asked to be a princess, y'know, Fluttershy. And, well, destiny works in mysterious ways." She reaches out a hoof, almost twice the size of Fluttershy's, and touches Fluttershy's fetlock. "For all of us."
Pulling in a shaky breath, Fluttershy glances at Discord, sitting clenched on the end of the sofa like a firecracker about to go off. "Then, if I'm the only one running, I...I guess I'll have to be—"
"Queen of the Mushrooms!" Discord shouts, then he's scooping her into his arms, streamers of light bursting everywhere, whistles and cheers and little fungoid 'hoorays' filling the air.
The party back in his realm afterwards redefines the word, Discord thinks, with mushrooms of every shape, size, and toxicity dancing and yodeling, wearing gowns and tuxedoes as they bow to their new queen. Pinkie Pie would definitely be proud.
Which is an odd thing for him to think, he realizes, all his inner Discords are too busy toasting each other while applying butter and jam to stop him from realizing things. Why should he care a thing about Pinkie Pie?
The reason, of course, is yellow, bewinged, drowsing snuggled against his side, and looking absolutely adorable in her new jewel-encrusted mushroom cap crown. She's not asleep right now, though, her smile and her gaze focused on the mushrooms doing a gavotte or something in the purple grass just past his outstretched tail, so he asks what he knows he should've asked last night when this party began. "Were we wrong not to have invited Pinkie and the others?"
Fluttershy lolls her head thrillingly along his hide and gazes up at him with those incredible, turquoise-scented eyes. "This party belongs to the mushrooms. When we get back to Ponyville, we'll let the others know about us becoming king and queen and see if Pinkie wants to throw us a—"
"Us?" Discord knows he should keep quiet and just bask in her presence, but, well, she's the one who brought up the whole thing about titles in the first place. "Perhaps I'm thinking about the way royalty works among rubber bands and paper clips, but with you being the queen and me being your consort, wouldn't I only reach up to 'prince' in the grand scheme of things?"
She reaches out a hoof and begins tracing sweet, slow circles across his chest. "My first royal act will be to proclaim you now and always to be my king. Because I love you."
Nothing about her changes that Discord can detect with any of the twelve or thirteen senses he regularly employs. But all his inner Discords turn as one to stare at her as if they've never noticed her before. And for a moment, for one brief, beautiful, fleeting moment, he can almost feel that she might just actually mean it.
Discord's staring down at her like he has no idea who she is, and despite the warmth radiating from his body, pressing against her, a shiver starts building inside her.
But then he smiles. "I love you, too," he says; he bends in that incredible boneless way of his, kisses her—
And for a moment, for one brief, beautiful, fleeting moment, she can almost feel that he might just actually mean it.
