The two gods stood together, looking down silently into cacophonous oblivion.
Discord’s pocket realm always looked like this: an irregular lump of grassy earth, a little house atop it, and madness in every direction beyond it. But it wasn’t completely mad now, not quite. Twilight had seen the same patterns of light refract repeatedly in what passed for the sky, identical swarms of squeaking winged pigs flit in and out of existence at precisely the same points. It was disorder, yes, but organized, unconsciously automated — a favorite song pressed into the grooves of a crackling, degrading record.
“I’m okay,” Discord said suddenly. “By the way.”
“No, you’re not,” Twilight softly replied.
“I mean I’m not… unbalanced,” he added, slitting his words through the corner of a wry smirk. “Not dangerous. So you can relax, your Highness, if you remember how.”
Twilight nodded. She didn’t relax. Discord knew better than to ask her to. “That wasn’t why I came to visit you.”
“Yes it was. A little bit.”
“I was worried about you. Interpret that however you want.”
“I will, thank you. Are you okay?”
Twilight stared down into the abyss. The air felt like summer here, sticky and still, and for a moment she thought she saw Ponyville unfurl itself beneath her like an unbeaten rug — its modernizing outskirts lumpy with half-finished construction, its fields bloated with pastel-colored fruit crossbred to be healthier and more filling. The town sagged with age, and sparkled with fresh life. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense right now.
“How did…” she started to ask. “Was it…”
“It was,” Discord answered. “She was okay too.”
Twilight sighed and shut her eyes. This wasn’t the first time she’d experienced this. It wouldn’t be the last. She’d spent so much time thinking, planning, armoring herself against the inevitable, and somehow this time hurt in ways she’d never thought to prepare for.
“There’s nothing we could’ve done,” Twilight said, stealing the words right from Discord’s mouth — retrieving them from a rut she’d mechanically carved through her thoughts. “Time passes, ponies die, and we… I can’t do anything to stop that.”
“And even if you could,” Discord replied, “you wouldn’t.”
“Because it wouldn’t be natural.”
“Nope.”
“Wouldn’t be right.”
“Not the same thing.”
There went the pigs again — a baker’s dozen, all twenty-six wings and fifty-two hooves flailing. Repetitive perpetual motion. Like déjà vu.
“You had this same talk with Celestia, didn’t you?” Twilight asked.
“I was indisposed most of her time,” Discord answered, again through a smirk. “Your mentor wasn’t the reflective sort anyway. Things tended to reflect off of her.”
“And onto me.”
“Not just you. No need to be egoistic.”
“I’d hate to intrude on your territory.”
Discord’s smile blossomed into a chuckle. Then he sighed, turned his gaze toward the kaleidoscopic horizon, and waited for Twilight to admit why she’d really sought him out after learning that Fluttershy had passed.
“How are you okay?” she finally snapped.
“By which you mean, why are you not?” was his sedate reply. Discord’s reply. Sedate. Of all the times he hadn’t made sense, this one somehow infuriated her the most.
“You loved her. I loved her. And now she’s gone, and you’re calm, and I’m… how? How are you okay?”
Discord shrugged. “Misfortune.”
“What?”
“Once is misfortune,” he clarified. “Twice is coincidence. And three times…”
Is a pattern. Is undeniable. Is inevitable.
“You were okay after Applejack,” Discord went on. “Upset, of course, but… okay. She was the first. Maybe she’d be the last. No way of knowing for sure, right? And then Rainbow Dash…”
“Stop.”
“Just bad luck. Maybe the others would stick around. Maybe the natural rules would be wrong. Maybe tomorrow will never come if you just…”
“Stop…”
Tears blurred her vision — smeared the colors of this fake world into an ungodly mess. This was irrational. She knew better than to think this way. She’d known better through the deaths of two dear, irreplaceable friends.
But this was the third. Now it was a pattern. Now she couldn’t lie to herself anymore about Pinkie Pie, and Rarity, and anypony else she would love for centuries, millennia, eons…
“Would you like to know how I’m really okay, Twilight?”
Twilight wiped her face. She looked at Discord, and saw Fluttershy shining in his eyes — calm, caring, eternally kind.
“Because I remember her,” he said. “And memory is where all creatures live, even when they’re alive. Friendship, affection, adoration, love… all grown from seeds planted in the past, blooming in the present as they stretch towards the future. So the way I see it, the way she helped me see it, Fluttershy isn’t gone. She’s just not growing anymore. And that’s as worthy of mourning as anything ever has been, but all those blooms, an endless gorgeous field of them… still there, as long as I am. Because we grew them together.”
“I’m supposed to move on,” Twilight muttered. “To grieve, and then…”
Discord scoffed. “Moving on is for mortals. Our job is to stay behind.”
“To keep things balanced? Harmony and chaos?”
Discord paused a moment before responding. “Do you know the origin of that word? Chaos?
“Ancient Peneia?”
“With a bit of Prench thrown in for flavor. Do you know what it meant, back then?”
Twilight recalled a book she’d read once — shuddered as the memory of who’d let her borrow it sprouted violet and white in her mind. “Chasm. Void. Nothing.”
“And everything,” Discord said. “An empty space, to inevitably be filled. Potential. Change.”
Twilight followed Discord’s gaze, and saw the pigs once more — and this time, finally, she saw the formation they made together, the bulbous wings and segmented body and curling antennae mimicked by flailing hooves. A butterfly. Metamorphosis. Organized disorder.
“Never took you for a romantic,” Twilight couldn’t help but say.
“More of a semantic, really,” Discord shot back. “But I’ll accept your compliment.”
Then they fell silent and watched infinity spool out around them, and they stood together as they mourned.
