There are few places in this world I truly love. Mount Eris, Rainbow Falls, my pocket dimension, and Fluttershy’s Cottage. And speaking of her cottage, it’s Hearthwarming Eve, and we’re finishing up decorations today.
I wake up with her in me. I’m a blanket, wrapped snugly around her while she sleeps. As the sun comes into our bedroom, she stirs and yawns. Nuzzling into my plush fibers, she yawns, “Morning, Discord.”
“Good morning, Happy Hearthswarming,” I say, flapping for effect. My love shivers in the cold morning air.
“Happy Hearthswarming.”
I won’t bore you with the details of how we spend the morning in bed, but soon enough, it is crystal clear neither of us are going to get any more sleeping done, and so we decide to start the day. I take care of cooking breakfast while Fluttershy deals with her animal friends. It’s a lot of work caring for so many different kinds of animals, so I get a good whole hour to make breakfast for the two of us.
I start with some butter in a skillet, melt it, and then add flour. Then, once it is hot and melted, I crack in six eggs and throw on some breadcrumbs. While I waited to flip this, I cut the bread into two hearty black slices and start them in the toaster. Very good. I savor the smell of hot rye grain. This gives me just enough time to fill up a pot with water and pour in some buckwheat grains, and then set it on the stovetop. And when I turn back to the skillet, the eggs are starting to bubble, so one flick of the handle from me and they obligingly flip over. I dust on more breadcrumbs and add a layer of pepperjack cheese. I grab the teapot and swish it. Hearing it nearly empty, I put in a new bag and fill up the kettle before also setting the kettle down on the hot stove. If it were just me, I would happily microwave a cup. It soon begins to boil and the kettle makes its screeching whistle, so I pour in the boiling water to the pot and let the tea brew. It’s a special tea, a rich black blend grown on the slopes of Mount Eris and mixed with special Ponyville local herbs, giving it not only a bracing base flavor, but notes of dandelion, thistle, flax, and pennyroyal. Only the best for my Fluttershy.
Me, I don’t need to eat, really, I could be just as happy with soggy cold fries and curdling buttermilk, it’s the social aspect that counts. Learning the value of good food prepared properly and then shared courteously is part of the price of interacting with mortals so much. They don’t much appreciate animated gravy boats or drinking the glass containing the chocolate milk before throwing it away into a mini nuclear explosion. There is a simple joy in a decent meal done right. I’m making it sound like a bad thing. How chaotic.
It’s not much longer before everything is ready. I put the things into the dishes and leave the cookware very precise instructions to sort themselves out under the running hot water. And as I get to the table, Fluttershy appears. She pulls out a seat for me and I make her chair walk itself back for her. “For you,” I say, handing over her eggs, toast, and tea. The buckwheat kasha is for me.
“Thanks,” she says, digging in. Then she squeaks. “These are great, Discord, truly!”
“Only the best for my Fluttershy. I know you hate the taste of chaos, so I made it all by limb to… --- or -- order.” Order is my least favorite word, it’s so orderly, just passing it through my body makes my chaos crackle in dismay uncomfortably, giving me the bizarre urge to be earnest and make my bed with perfect hospital corners. No! I will not! And just for that I’m going to throw something colorful in with the whites next laundry day.
“Thank you for cooking without using your chaos magic, it really does mean a lot to me.”
I reply, “Oh, it’s nothing just something I like doing for my wife. You’re so kind to everypony and everycreature that there’s scarcely a chance to show some kindness to you.”
I don’t care what Twilight says about how it should or would be, chaos not having any chemical trace, and all that, if Fluttershy says she can tell and she likes it better when I cook for her without chaos in the ingredients, I cook for her without chaos, and I like it.
“But truly it must be so much more work to do it all without magic.”
“You can taste the difference, so that matters to me.” I grin at her.
We don’t talk much during the meal. I whittle away the hot kasha in my bowl, carefully matching the pace Fluttershy moves through her breakfast. I cannot help but stare at her lips and feel the urge to kiss her. I am so thankful ponies do not chew cud. I sip at my tea gradually.
“Now, I said cooking without chaos.”
“But you didn’t say cleaning…” She gets me so well.
I curl my tail into a coil before the kitchen wall and then widen it. “I’m afraid not.”
She smiles and claps. “I didn’t know I was getting a show with breakfast. I hope you don’t mind dirtying the water.” She watches the soapy water swoop down from its big glob in the air to scrub itself on the cookware below. In a normal kitchen, it’s normal to clean by putting water down in a basin and lowering dishes into it, but it sometimes works the opposite around here. “Would you like more?”
“Yes, please,” I say, and she slides her leftover half slice of black rye bread with breaded fried egg on it. I will over her spent dishes to dirty down the water while casually finishing off these and the last of my tea.
She’s leaning back and has that contemplative look. “Let’s see… Let’s see… What needs to be done today?”
“We already are…”
She gasps, “That’s it!” Now my wife looks at me. “Discord, if I get the tree stand, can you go get the tree?”
“Can I?” She ignores the joke.
“It’s either that or hanging the inside decorations.”
“Tree it is!” I never get the holly, tinsel, wreaths, and stockings right. It’s her one bit of chaotic to exceed my own. I finish my breakfast and quickly clean my crockery. I kiss her and get out the door.
The town tree lot is nearly empty, all the less to deal with. A few words and a few bits and a dowdy spruce is mine for the taking. Too bad it’s too big to carry for just one draconequus. Oh wait, she said get, not carry. I touch a branch and like that I’m a tree. I take my leave and start to hop home. I sing, “Discord the spruce tree, had to hurry on to home, it was the holidays with Fluttershy and they liked to be alone. Jumping through the snow, because I’m a spruce, ponies stare at me, the snow’s taking my leaves, hopping up the hill to Fluttershy is a pain in the sap!” I am so not a musician.
I hop in on my trunk, taking care to not drop too many needles. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk! I thud against the hardwood floor.
“Fluttershy, I’m hoooomeeee!”
“What in the world?” I hear my beloved ask, presently flying down the stairs on her soft wings. She lands on the rug in front of the couch and points to the corner by the hearth. “You can park it right over there, mister tree.” I have to turn around to see the base she has picked out. With a quick series of woody clomps, I jump into position and give up my wooden host to return to my draconequus form.
Fluttershy is less than impressed. “Look at the mess, Discord. My floors, and all the needles you dropped!”
“Oh, Fluttershy, you forget…” I snap my lion’s paw and the wood mends itself while the needles gather themselves into a floating hand and finger walk themselves out through the open door before.
She shrugs at me. “Honestly, dear, when have I ever failed to clean up after myself?” She starts tapping her hoof deliberately on the floor. I smile wide. “Don’t answer that.” I know what she wants to say, but she’s going to let it go in the spirit of the holiday. She can’t give an exhaustive list, but there’ve been more than a few memorable occasions I’ve left errant chaos lying around she can name. I’m proud that there’s a list of forbidden chaoses I’m not allowed to do anymore. I’m also partially ashamed the list isn’t as long as that Skippy guy’s.
She says, “Can you go get a sheet for the base of the tree, please while I get the lights ready?”
“Of course, dearest.”
She walks back upstairs when I go into the kitchen and then into our little storage room. I open up a quaint door next to the washing machine. I’m greeted with a selection of cozy towels and linens. They all smell sweetly like grass and fresh cotton, like her. I take my time to peruse the selection. I’d never let anypony but Fluttershy know, but I like soft and fluffy things. Angel Bunny excepted. Not even Opalescence likes Angel Bunny. I don’t think even Angel Bunny likes Angel Bunny. I have to pick just the right spread cover for the tree. I run my hands over them, enjoying the various satins, silks, and cottons of the sheets at our disposal. I settle on a nice and airy cotton squipper with just enough embroidered texture to give some grip and hold to it. I rub it into my face and take a sniff, it’s fresh enough now, but with a quick burst of chaos sending the dirt to a little pocket dimension, it’s now perfectly clean. I imbue it with a bit of the eau ancien de le chaos, licorice, and wrap it around myself, giving it a twirl that makes it flutter.
I walk back into the front room with it and wrap it nicely around the base of the tree stand, getting plenty of coverage. The tree is starting to look very homely, very cozy. I’m looking forward to curling up under it when it’s all done and swiping cattily at Angel Bunny when he tries to nap under it.
I hear a thud from upstairs. A few seconds later, Fluttershy calls, “Discord, dear, you come here?” I bet it’s the lights, she always has trouble with the lights. I had to rescue her from them last year when she got all tangled up, well, after a minute of laughing. Not that I haven’t seen her tangled up at other times.
“Coming, Fluttershy,” I answer as a I snake up the stairs of her cottage. Arriving upstairs, I see her with a tangle of multicolor lights. “At least you’re free this time.”
She holds them up, smiling wryly. “Can you help untangle these, please? They’re just too much, and you know how I am weak and helpless.” She giggles and nuzzles into me as a I coil around her, taking the lights in my forelimbs. She’s right, these lights are a hopeless tangle, it will take many boring hours to untangle all these lights ourselves.
So we don’t.
I will some chaos into them, and the strings of tree lights become skinny snakes that slither apart. One of them climbs up into Fluttershy’s pink mane and dangles over her snoot. Figures. Even chaos critters love Fluttershy. No, it’s not an affliction unique to me. I smile as the light snakes line up in a row before us, and with a clap, they fall again inanimate.
“Voila, my dear.” I kiss her on the cheek and she blushes again. My lips feel a wrinkle and I fight back a scowl. That definitely was not there before. She gets up to plug them in. Fluttershy used to get up in a single motion, now she has to help herself up with a hoof first. I coil up and bounce in the shape of a spring. “Let me get them.”
She puts her hoof back. She sighs, “Oh, Discord.” It’s nothing for me to float over to each unmade connection and push them in paw to claw. I soon have all the connections made and she’s gazing along it. I flutter back over to her side and look down from the ceiling, taking a seat on the gently oscillating fan. “How sad, more lights are burned out this year.”
She doesn’t need to ask, it’s a brief moment for me to teleport to where the spare bulbs are and blink back in a puff of smoke and windings. I imbue the lights with chaos and they jump out of the box like little conical acrobats with my grinning face on them. They join hands and skip over to Fluttershy, bowing before the Pegasus. One light steps forward and asks, “How may we be of service, ma’am?”
She’s taken aback by this. “Ma’am, please, just Fluttershy, or Missus Discord if you please,” she says. I blush in all the red lights, sparking them spontaneously. Hearing her call herself Mrs. Discord never gets old. “If it’s not too much trouble, Mister Hearthswarming Lights, sir, could you please check which one of you can replace the burnt out bulbs?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Discord. C’mon, troops!” We organize us into eight by five deep platoons and march in lockstep to the strings of lights. The lead me sets two other me on unscrewing a dark light while a fourth me waits to jump in the empty socket. The process is quick and I conjure a little stretcher to carry the fallen light off the field as its replacement locks into place with a green incandescence burning in its plastic body.
The other lights fan out and find their marks. The miniature me bulb battalion had their work cut out for them. They set about in squads and began to unscrew the old bulbs. “Sorry about the bulbs, Fluttershy.”
“It’s okay, it happens.”
“It’s not something I ever much thought about.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Well, to be fair, Hearthswarming wasn’t a thing back before you were turned into a statue.”
I remember when I helped invent this holiday. Help is not entirely the right word, after all, I almost froze all ponykind to death in a trolling induced windigo blizzard. And for my ingenuity, the universe trolled me back by making it a holiday about all things warm and caring.
“I suppose that’s true.” There’s something about the dark and snowy part of the year that makes me morosely contemplative. I stop myself from pursuing dark subjects further, lest I kill the mood.
The bulbs have built a little pile of burned out fellows. Fluttershy scoops them up in a dustpan while the Discord bulbs finish their task. It’s not long before every single socket is filled with a freshly bright and shining bulb. I form a likeness of my face out of the replacements and say, “All done, Fluttershy.” I float it over the box and let it disintegrate into a rain of bulbs as I reconstitute into my draconequus form.
“Shall we put this on the tree?”
“Let’s.”
We have to carefully keep the wires unwound and untangled as we transport them downstairs to where the Hearthswarming tree is. It is a difficult and delicate task, such that not even Angel Bunny dares get in the way. Fluttershy holds the loops of lights while I prepare to wrap them around the tree.
I turn myself into a little monkey and grasp the wires in my feet. “This’ll get us in the swing of things.” Fluttershy laughs out loud as I jump into the lowest branches and swing from branch to branch, trailing the lights behind me. It isn’t long before I have swung up the whole tree and wrap a final coil of light around the top just to make sure it stays. And then, leaping from the tree, I land in Fluttershy’s mane. “I hope you didn’t mind that particular bit of monkey business.”
“Not at all,” Fluttershy laughs, plugging in the lights with me still in her mane. I extend my tail to turn off the room lights so we can get a better view. The tree lights up gloriously with red, orange, blue, and green in the gathering dark.
She hugs me. “It’s perfect.”
“Not quite yet,” I say. I stroke her mane and squeeze her back. I summon a little snow from outside and state fix it so it doesn’t melt. Then I place it on top of the tree and place an animated likeness of myself on it. “Now it’s perfect.” My wife giggles. “That’s not all he does,” I say smugly, “he also tells jokes.”
The snow star me says, “I’ve got a joke for you. Why are rabbit lovers so quiet?”
“I don’t know. Why?” Fluttershy asks.
“Because they have cotton balls!” laughs snow star Discord.
Fluttershy giggles before fixing him with a pointed look. “That was a little spicy, do you have material fit for polite company? We will be entertaining Flurry Heart when she visits.”
He answers, “Oh, dreadfully sorry, highbrow it is. Very well then. Three philosophers are sharing a meal at a restaurant. The waitress comes up to them and asks if they’d like refills on their drinks. One says he thinks not and vanishes into this air. One of them says he thinks so and turns into a cup of coffee. The waitress is alarmed and asks the third philosopher if the other two are okay or not, to which the third philosopher answers yes. The waitress wants to know which is it, to which the philosopher replies they’re family so it’s all relative.”
Fluttershy chuckles, “That’s better, thank you. Can you do anything else?”
“I can juggle!” He flexes his arms and hurls bits of snow between his points in the air. Fluttershy claps and snow star Discord mimics a bow.
“More dance, less song,” I say, muting him. “So, anything else left to do?”
Fluttershy pauses and thinks. “Well, there’s one thing left to do, but it’s going to take a long time, and we can’t get it done today.”
“And what’s that?” She is trying to surprise me, but my chaos senses are tingling.
“I need you to spend the rest of Hearthswarming with me, Eve and Day.”
She kisses me gently and I gladly return it. I can never get enough of her kisses. Imagine us with mistletoe. “Gladly. Eggnog?” I generate two glasses and a bottle out of the air. She takes one and I pour for us. We clink our glasses together in a toast.
“Happy Hearthswarming, Discord,” Fluttershy sighs happily, leaning into me as she drinks her eggnog.
“Happy Hearthswarming, Fluttershy,” I say back, wrapping around her as I drink the glass and give her the eggnog
Author's Note
Thank you for reading. Happy Hearthswarming!
E-rated fluff isn't exactly my thing and I was really worried it wasn't going to work out. Fortunately, once I started imagining Discord trying to imaging Fluttershy, things just sorta wrote themselves. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. As always, comments are appreciated.
Kalash93
