My Little Draconequus: Wishing is Chaos

by taterforlife

Discord, Part 1 of 2: What's in a Name

I have no birthday.

At least, I don’t believe I do. The question of how I came into existence is quite the brainteaser. Nopony or otherwise has ever been able to solve the mystery.

What I do know is that I started out small. I was a kid, just like everypony else was. I know because I remember gradually growing into my own consciousness.

But was I born like any other creature is, with parents? With a family?

No. I don’t think I was.

I’ve never seen another one like me. Not until now, of course. As far as anypony knows, I was the first.

And for the longest time, I’ve been the only one.

And that’s only one of the questions I’ve yet to answer. For if I had no parents, then how did I get here? There are multiple theories on my so-called ‘origins’. I’m sure Twilight Falafel has read of most of them, if not all. And guess what? They were all written by ponies.

What a surprise.

Some say I came from another universe—according to them, when a Mommy Draconequus and a Daddy Draconequus love each other very much, they enjoy booting their offspring off into other worlds so they can become someone else’s problem.

Others say I was borne by a mare, one that was unfaithful to her husband and, as a consequence, paid for her sin through me. And, just like in the aforementioned theory, threw me away for the timberwolves to munch on.

I could list a dozen or two more, but it doesn’t matter, because I think they’re all wrong. Something tells me that I never had parents, never had any family. I really am the only one there ever was.

I was a non-spontaneous event that came into existence out of nothing. Nothing but magic.

And what does magic do? The answer is easy: it does magical things. And what’s more magical than making a handsome being such as myself come out of nowhere? And from that magic, came my own magic. In that way, I was like any average unicorn foal. I came into being with magic in tow, and I couldn’t control it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Ah, no, you need more context before I get into the real nitty-gritty. Oh, you’re in for a real ride, I tell you.

Notice earlier that I referred to myself as a non-spontaneous event. It’s certainly not a phrase most expect to hear from me, of all creatures. But it’s what I believe to be true; the truth about why I’m here, and why I’m the only creature with chaos magic. The theorists do too, and they’d be idiots to disagree. And that truth is this: I am very, very, very old, and while nopony, including myself, knows for sure exactly how old I am, historians and myself believe that I was born shortly after the events of the first Hearth’s Warming.

The story the ponies tell of Hearth’s Warming is simple and short in context. ‘Once upon a time, Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns were divided into tribes that hated each other and refused to cooperate, inspiring an eternal winter caused by those pesky little Windigos. But luckily, before everypony turned to ice cubes, three royal supervisors realized that they didn’t actually want to strangle each other to death, because death was unpleasant, and that conveniently inspired a random spell that melted all the snow, calling it the “Fire of Friendship”. Because apparently, giving cheesy names to random spells that save the world is something ponies are rather fond of doing. The end.’

Anywho, while I can’t say just how accurate the story is, it’s definitely a sugary version of it, because it seems to imply that after that horrible winter melted away, thanks to the mere cooperation of three royal advisors, that all the pony tribes got along just great, and in turn made everything hunky-dory between them.

I can tell you from experience that this isn’t true.

I was young once. I experienced Equestria when it was just barely older than I was. I saw the ponies. I saw how they acted.

Ponies back then were much different from the ponies of today.

Think about it. The three tribes had lived for years as separate societies, teaching their young that their tribe was the best pony there was. Earth Ponies thought they were the strongest due to their ability to survive without wings or raw magic. Pegasi saw themselves as literal angels on earth, dominating the sky with the power of manipulating the weather. Unicorns believed they were the top dogs, blessed with special magic that only they could directly manipulate, making them superior over all.

They had common goals but didn’t know how to work together. And most ponies would argue that this changed as soon as winter ended. But here’s the problem with that buffoonery: Equestria did not have a population of six ponies. Puddinghead and Thunderclap and Lady Gaga or whatever their names were, along with their advisors, were not the only ones to inhabit the land. They had thousands and thousands of ponies with them. And just because six of them knew how to get along, did not mean that the rest magically learned to do so as well.

Just like those royal brats and their corny advisors had, they all needed a common goal. They need a problem to solve, a problem that would force them to come together and use their individual strengths to make up for their weaknesses. They needed problems to solve that didn’t come from other ponies.

And that’s when I came into the picture.

Because you can’t have chaos without harmony, nor harmony without chaos.

You’re welcome.

As far as I can remember, I have always been a roamer. I never stayed in one place. I had no one to guide me, and no one to tell me where to go or what to do.

I didn’t even have a name.

My mind was as blank a slate as they got. I remember looking all around, at the trees and the grass and nature and whatnot, and while I didn’t have the language to think about it all, I remember the feeling.

Everything seemed so big then. I started out as such a tiny little thing. I had forelocks that hung just above my eyes, with tiny stubs for horns. My proportions weren’t nearly as mind-boggling as they are now. I also walked on four legs rather than two. I didn’t have as long a spine back then, so my back didn’t hurt walking that way.

I enjoyed chasing bugs and rolling in the grass. I liked climbing trees like a gecko and peeking out of the canopy of the forest, gazing at the sky, especially at night. I liked rubbing myself against flowers, because they smelled so good. Swimming. I really loved to swim. Even back then, I loved to bother other creatures I ran into. They tended not to stick around when I found water. I gave them quite a soak whenever I did. Have you ever splashed birds as they pecked in the grass? Their angry faces are hilarious.

I must have gained self-awareness slowly over the summer, because that’s when my memories begin. And I was fine in the beginning. There was plenty to eat and drink, and I enjoyed myself in my own ignorance. I felt free.

But I had no idea that I had magic until winter came.

The happiest times of my childhood were over by then. It didn’t last very long.

Not nearly long enough.

For someone who enjoys change as much as I do, I didn’t understand it when I was shiny and new. The air changed, and I didn’t know why. It felt different. It made my teeth chatter and my skin sting until it was so numb that I couldn’t feel it anymore. Later, I would learn the term for this was cold.

The land was bare and I couldn’t find anything living. There were no huffy little angry birds for me to bother, no bugs to chase, and no squirrels to steal nuts from. Old nests and beehives became husks of the past, with no eggs or honey for me to pilfer for.

But what scared me most of all, oddly enough, were the trees. They actually scared me. Can you imagine? Me, afraid of wood without cover. It confused me. I liked how the leaves had changed color, because it was beautiful to me. But when they all fell off and began to disintegrate, I grew afraid. All I had known were trees with leaves, and grass that covered every inch of the ground. And it was all leaving me.

Yeah. For even me, my first taste of true change was scary. But this was yet another thing I realized years later, after gaining the gift of language. Those changes had scared me because I had thought the world was coming to an end.

I thought death was coming for me, and I didn’t even realize it.

Snow eventually came down. At first it delighted me. It was soft and it wasn’t rain nor thunder, but something I could mold into whatever I wished. I drank it, I licked the icicles. I remember one day, I even made the classic mistake of getting my little tongue stuck on an icicle. I remember laughing at myself while trying to tug it away.

I don’t recommend laughing when getting your tongue stuck to an icicle. It’s rather painful.

But my joy with it quickly passed when I began to starve.

I remember nights where I had grown so hungry and cold that I had trouble sleeping. I did what I could to keep myself warm, but the stinging cold tends to be unrelenting.

All I could do to survive was forage and keep on walking. I don’t know how long I walked, or what direction I went. Was Equestria just much smaller then, and I eventually came upon it? Or did I just manage to avoid ponies until the day I found them?

I don’t know. But I really don’t care either.

But I do remember when it happened. The day was gray, the ground soggy with slush from a big snowstorm that had occurred the day before. I remember how hard it was to walk that day, because every time I took a step I seemed to sink into it, only to tug my paw out of the ground with a wet popping sound. Once again, it seems like something I should have enjoyed, but when one’s ribs are beginning to show as your stomach roars with hunger, finding food is the only thing that seems to matter.

Now I know what you’re thinking. But Discord, can’t you eat things that aren’t really food? Like glass and paper?

The answer is yes. But I can only do that with my magic. And as I’ve said, I didn’t even know it existed yet. But more on that later.

The sun began to sink back towards the skyline and already I was shivering. The fact that I was so short and surrounded in frozen hard snow didn’t help either. But I wanted to make more ground. I was exhausted, but determined to keep going, because the more I traveled, the more likely I was to find something new--something that would hopefully help me in such a predicament.

And, as always, I was right. The first change I noticed was when I checked the sky again, trying to gauge just how much time had passed. As much as I wanted to keep going, I was feeling weak and I needed to find somewhere dry (or drier, at least) to rest before it got too dark. The sky was a deep purple and the stars began to appear. But as I looked at the stars, I realized that their light wasn’t as twinkly as they usually were. I checked the moon, and it was full, so it wasn’t as if a lack of moonlight was making them look brighter.

I lowered my head and at first, I thought I had seen a star on the ground. I reached for it, only to find I couldn’t grab it. I then realized that it wasn’t just some tiny thing sitting on the surface of the ground. It was something far, far away. Something that glowed. Something that wasn’t natural.

Once again I grew frightened, but can you blame me? I’d never seen pony-made light before. I was only used to the world as it naturally was. However, my nose, as sharp and as sensitive as noses come, started picking up the slightest traces of scents. Scents that my roaring stomach seemed to appreciate, for my hunger pangs grew even more painful to the point where I couldn’t move for a moment. But once they died down, something in me began to move as fast as I could, despite the mucky ground and my weak little stringy body.

As I got closer, I could see objects rising towards the sky. They weren’t rocks, and they weren’t trees, but they were made of wood and straw, things I was familiar with. And the light, oh the light! It was like starlight, but it wasn’t at the same time. It was yellow, and warm, and dare I say, even a bit comforting. It was a light that was easy on the eyes, a light that beckoned me and told me to come, come towards the warmth, come and find the source of the delicious smells, come and take the world in, for I knew less of the world than I was even aware of.

But that soon changed as I came closer and caught movemery ahead. I stopped in my tracks. I’m not sure to this day exactly what it was I was expecting. Of course I suspected something lived there, but my hunger had kept me in a ravenous fog. I hadn’t even stopped to wonder what might have lived there.

Their mouths were stretched upward in expressions I wasn’t familiar with, their eyes reflecting the warm light. Their furry bodies came in a plethora of colors of all different hues, with hair that swayed from their heads and their hinds as they trotted across cobblestones. But the oddest thing of all was the pictures. Many of them had pictures on their sides, on both of their sides! Pictures of things I had seen, like clouds and plants and animals, and things I had yet to discover, like playing cards and bouncing balls and slices of strawberry shortcake. All the bigger ones had one, while only some of the smaller ones did.

A shadow passed over me and I looked up, and noticed a black dot far above me against the moon until it landed in town on the cobblestones. Then I noticed a few more, and they looked just like all the others in the little town, only they had wings. Fascinated by this, I looked more closely at the creatures, ducking behind a building as I drew closer. Horns. Some of the four-legged things had horns! I remember my claw reaching for one of my own as I stared at them.

One in peculiar had caught my eye, one that had some sort of sack strapped about him, with a baggy looking cloth material stuffed over his head. “Extra extra, read all about it!” it had yelled.

And that pony’s horn began to glow, and I gasped as a newspaper floated out of the bag. I had never seen magic before, and I had been so baffled by it that I fell over. But I scrambled back on my four legs, just so I could watch the thing ignite his horn with magic again.

Had I known the word to describe it at the time, I think I would have called it beautiful.

“Extra extra, read all about it! Starswirl sets out to look for Alicorns to look over the new Equestria! Read all about it, only one bit each!”

I had absolutely no idea what he was saying, but I was enthralled by it. So many sounds, made with so many shapes of his mouth! His voice young and youthful and full of vigor, so loud that it seemed to rip through the very air itself! And then I realized that all the ponies had been making those sounds. And they all sounded so very different from one another. No two voices sounded the same, even if their coats or their manes or their eyes were the same color! It was like music, like song, like nothing I had ever heard before.

The other ponies seemed enthralled by his voice as well. Especially when he said that one particular word, Alicorns.

Yep. The Princesses didn’t even have to be around yet to cause a fuss.

“Excuse me, did you say Alicorns?” an older stallion asked.

A mare beside him, her hair in a tight bonnet, looked just as baffled. “And that Starswirl was looking for them?”

“Sure did!” the newspaper pony said, his voice still as loud as ever, flicking his eyes around to catch the eyes of his fellow pony . “Starswirl’s lookin’ for ‘em as we speak!” Ponies of all types started to gather the more he spoke. “Says that they’d be best to lead Equestria, seein’ that they represent Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns.”

A nearby Unicorn pushed his eyebrows together. “I say, I disagree with that. Isn’t it obvious that that Alicorns should lead us because they’re powerful magic wielders? A leader can’t protect us without magic, of course. Why do you think there are so many of us Unicorns in the guard?”

A Pegasus mare blew a raspberry at him. “What? You’re kidding! Alicorns have wings that are at least three times more powerful than a Pegasus’, making them swifter and stronger than anypony else! It’s their wings that make them the best, not magic!”

The older stallion who had first spoken with the newspaper pony cleared his throat. “Need I remind you all that we Earth Ponies get along just fine without wings or horns? An Alicorn with tied wings and a broken horn would still be more powerful than any Unicorn and Pegusus combined. It’s their relationship with the magic of the land and their natural brute strength that makes them the best to lead, and nothing more!”

The argument just picked up from there, with more ponies joining in on the debate.

“Have you SEEN their wings? They’re supposed to be huge! They’d be able to respond to an emergency from miles away by flying there in five seconds flat!”

“Which isn’t even necessary if they can teleport, and besides, flying itself can’t solve a problem! But there’s a magic spell for everything!”

“If there’s some fancy spell for everythin’, then how come you still need us Earth Ponies to tend to the soil for food? Magic is nothin' without hard work!”

“Liar!”

“Why I oughta--”

“How dare you insult the sky’s chosen ones?!?”

“I oughta knock you ten ways to--”

“Don’t make me conjure up a spell on--”

“Don’t tempt me to bring out a stormcloud--”

And on and on and on they went, until all of the crowd was fighting and arguing. Well, all except for the newspony. He just stood there, tentatively waving his newspaper. “Um, extra extra?”

Pretty soon, it seemed like every one of the creatures in town had joined in on the argument.

Now, logic would say that it would have made the most sense for me to sneak past the crowd and go towards the abandoned carts that had been laden with food. The fight was certainly proving to distract ponies enough on its own, and I could have easily crawled away without catching any wandering eyes.

But I was struck by the utter excitement of the events unraveling before me. They yelled over one another until their faces were red with exertion, the veins in their eyes popping. They stomped on the ground, some of them throwing down a hat or cane or whatever else they had to highlight whatever point it was they tried to make. Pegasi are better! No, no, no, it’s the Unicorns, the Unicorns! No, it’s the Earth Ponies that do it best!

Ponies started getting into fights, with Pegasi getting their wings tugged at and Earth Ponies stung with mild offensive spells. Unicorns battled against canes like swords while other ponies got a-rumblin’ and a-tumblin’, rolling over the ground as they tried beating each other up. The newspony shook in his horseshoes as he watched the calamity unfold.

The beautiful, exciting, amusing drama of it all!

A chuckle left my throat. It was my first laugh in months. “Heh…”

Another pony showered his adversary in spit as he screamed at him, and I began to laugh even more. “Hah! Hahaha!”

Things got more and more intense and before I knew it, I was bowled over in laughter, clutching my hungry stomach. Tears ran down my eyes. Though I still desperately needed food, feelings of amusement and joy coursed through my blood and I welcomed it like an old friend. I felt excited, perhaps even thrilled. I felt alive.

But I have always had a tendency to bark in laughter when amused, and I hadn’t made any effort to keep quiet about it. The ponies soon took notice of it and paused in their fighting. After all, who would dare laugh in such a serious situation? And seeing as to how I was laughing so hard that my throat was hurting, it didn’t take them long to find little old me.

Well… That, and the fact that I began to glow. I didn’t even notice it at first. I was too busy hugging my legs to my chest and giggling.

And then the newspapers began to glow as well.

“Huh…?” The newspony cautiously poked at his supply.

I stopped my laughing as soon as I noticed the echoes of my own voice, alone and unaccompanied. Realizing that I had made a mistake, I slowly opened one of my eyes.

The ponies gasped as they stared at my one red iris, surrounded in a pool of yellow sclera. Because that color combination is most definitely the most evil of them all, am I right?

Pffft.

Either way, they seemed to think I was something to fear.

“What is that thing…?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Is it a dragon?!?”

“But dragons don’t normally look like…whatever this thing is! And it’s glowing!”

“Um, guys?” It was the newspaper pony.

“It could still be a new breed!”

“Um, guys, is paper supposed to fold itself?” Nopony really liked paying attention to that poor newspaper fellow.

“But even if it is a new breed, a new breed of what?”

Suddenly, the newspaper pony screamed and broke through the crowd. “GANGWAY! WATCH OUT!” he cried as a giant newspaper rocket flew behind him, magical fire bursting from its paper-made turbo engine.

My eyes grew as I looked down on the rocket, thinking it completely beautiful. The screams of the ponies were also quite amusing as they scattered from the booming, zooming paper-made space missile. What had made THAT happen? One of the horned ones, perhaps? Could they make more?

Because that’s what I wanted: more of the planes. More of those silly, random, fantastic little planes causing all the little hoofed things to trollop about, screaming as they wondered what in the world was going on.

And then the most curious thing happened. I had gotten taller. At least, that’s what I had believed before I finally realized I was floating and that something… some vast, mysterious, but exciting something, was radiating from my body and causing me to float. The magic itself was radiating from my floating sphere and landing right on the scatter of newspapers the pony had left behind.

I watched in awe as the paper began to fold itself. More rockets were folded and thrown into the air, but it wasn’t just rockets, oh no, not just those! There were paper airplanes with air missiles, hot air balloons, fat blimps! There was even a flying paper mache motorcycle. And they all began chasing the ponies.

And bumping into things.

And making those things explode.

Sometimes it exploded into confetti. Other times, it just went into flames. They caused damage everywhere, hitting buildings and causing them to crumble upon impact. To make matters more interesting, the magic used the new available materials to add to the paper machinery, making them bigger and badder than ever before. The rocket had wooden wings after crashing into a bench. The motorcycle used wheels off of a broken cart to make it careen around the ground in style, burning smoke as it made its tracks.

I was astounded and unable to look away.

Beautiful. So beautiful…

Soon I noticed that the planes and other origami objects began moving as one towards a particularly eye-catching building. Its walls were made of what looked like polished marble, with lovely columns all around. But the magical paper objects had made that all go away as they plummeted into walls and made the glorious architectural work of art go boom-boom.

Most ponies screamed, saying things like “nooooo!” and “not the courthouse!”, until the house fell apart and crashed to the ground, along with all the papercraft, now too tattered and torn to go on destroying things. They shoved their hooves into their ears as the crash made the ground rumble.

I began to laugh again. The sound was pure music to me, pure mad and utter music. I clapped my paw and claw together in my amusement as I chewed on a small square of poundcake, sending bits of food to the ground as I laughed with my mouth wide open.

I clapped again, and the second my palms touched, a concentric ring of magic radiated from my hands. I shook as it seemed to pull and break itself away from my tiny little serpentine body. The surge of power from my clap grew larger and it shook the entire town, making the pavement crack and fill itself with thorny weeds and spikes. It shook buildings and made a few smaller homes fall and crash to the ground, making more ponies shriek as they recognized their own houses crumbling and being destroyed.

Once the magic had dissipated from my palm, the electric, joyous feelings that had been flowing through my body seemed to wink out, and I fell to the ground, no longer able to fly. My chest slapped against the broken pavement. I heard a rib crack as it did so. I screamed in pain.

The fun was definitely over.

I didn’t have the words to think it, but I knew instinctively what had happened. My body glowing and floating out of nowhere. The paper planes and motorcycles and blimps come to life. The explosions. The magical quake.

It had been me.

That power, that magic…It was me.

And I wasn’t the only one that recognized this. I straightened my neck and desperately tried to move, but my cracked rib protested my movement. I cried out, tears gathering in my eyes. I held my side before I looked up and saw them.

The eyes of the ponies flashed as they glared at me. Their gazes seemed to pierce through my body and send chills down my spine. They were not happy.

Nope. Not happy at all.

“It was that thing…”

“It’s no thing, it’s a demon!”

“Look what it did to our town! Our beautiful town!”

A foal cried into his mother’s chest, and I felt a very keen sense of dread in my stomach.

Ponies turned to each other, Pegasi and Earth Ponies and Unicorns alike. Something seemed to pass between them, an understanding of some sort. They now had a common enemy, something to fight besides themselves.

I gulped and tried to crawl away as quietly as possible. I did my best not to pay attention to the ponies that began picking up wooden planks, bricks, torches. One farmer pony still had his trusty ol’ pitchfork with him.

They sent the children to the back with some of the other ponies to watch them as they began to form a crowd and make their way towards me.

My ribs were searing in pain, but the fierce looks in the eyes of the hoofed quadrupeds scared me. I had found them happy and smiling and now I was going to leave them as they looked like demons coming to rip me limb from limb.

There was no way I was going to be able to run away with my broken rib, but I had to ignore the pain. Run, my instincts told me. Run far far away and for the love of all that is good and pure, run!

My speed was pathetic, to say the least. I was in deep doo-doo as the ponies made some sort of battle grunt and began to chase after me. My tail whipped out from behind me and grabbed one last cupcake to stuff in my mouth before I ran into an awkward gait, the pain in my side making tears run down my face. A small, squeaky cry left my throat as I ran as fast as I could.

But those ponies were even faster. And I was hurt. And I…I had magic, didn’t I?

Yeah…

Yeah, I had magic!

I froze to a stop and turned back to face the crowd of angry ponies. With all the courage I could muster, I stopped them in their tracks with an upraised palm. I knew I had to look the part, so I tried showing my teeth and gave off a squeaky little growl.

I sounded like the runt in a litter of puppies, but it was the best I could do, okay? I’m pretty sure even a mare somewhere cooed, thinking that I was cute, before her husband hastily reminded her of what I had done.

Well, so much for killing with cuteness.

The lead pony, an Earth Pony with a gallon hat and a giant mustache, sneered at me. He bore a jacket with a shiny badge that boasted the title that I know now had said, ‘MAYOR’.

I raised the other palm of my hand above me and my message rang clear throughout the crowd.

They all gasped in unison while a stallion announced the obvious. “He’s gonna-!”

I didn’t let him finish. I smiled in triumph, the tips of my little baby canines showing, as I smacked my palms together in one glorious clap that was sure to bring the magic out and come to my protection!

All was still when it was over. Nothing changed. Nothing pulsed through my body, nothing glowed purple. Nothing levitated from the sky, and no explosions came to pass.

It seemed that my magic had left me. I wondered if perhaps it was all the magic I ever had.

But I didn’t wonder for too long before some of the stallions snickered at my lack of success and began to slowly plod towards me.

I gulped, and the glorious taste of sugar in my mouth suddenly turned sour. I felt sick. Sick and in pain from my broken rib.

But the body is resilient in fight-or-flight mode, and with fight as no longer an option, I had to settle for flight.

I ignored the pain once again as I turned around and zoomed off.

The ground shook from beneath me as I sped away. It felt like an earthquake while standing at the fault lines. My stomach clenched and my heart pounded so hard that I thought it was trying to bust out of its cavity.

But do you know what the worst part of it was? The sound of the hooves pounding against the ground. Dozens of pairs of hooves, pounding in unison, making a single uniform sound. It was so simple, and yet it told me without looking just how much bigger and stronger than they were than me. Faster, too. I had gotten a head start, but it wasn’t much. I knew it wouldn’t be long before they caught up to me.

I heard them shouting to one another, but it was jibberish to me. They must have been strategizing, because the land around us was flat and they wanted to trap me. My right ear twitched as some of the pounding grew closer and I turned. Some of the ponies had caught up, parallel with me and smirking my way.

I yelped in alarm and tried to veer the opposite way to lose them. Surely that would catch them off guard?

Yeeeeeeeeah, no. I ran straight into a stallion’s chest. A very muscular one, actually. It felt like running into a brick wall, and the impact of it made me want to retch. But I swallowed and kept it down, jumping back before the stallion could reach me.

I turned to run a different direction, and found myself surrounded by very, very angry stallions.

They slowly began to approach me.

I’m not proud of it, but I was a child. I wasn’t the amazing and talented Discord back then. I definitely wasn’t anything to thuse ponies. To them, I was a monster.

Their weapons gleamed by the fire of their torches as they came closer, their teeth clenched and their eyes bright with malicious intent. I shook so hard that I was sure I was going to crack before they even hit me.

The mayor raised a pitchfork, its prongs gleaming like murderous diamonds with the moon as its backdrop. Mental images ran through my head of it breaking my skin, my body, my everything. I remember the stallion’s face going blurry in my vision. I mewed at the stallion, as if pleading for one last chance to make things right. A chance of redemption.

Ponies didn’t believe in redemption back then. Especially not the pitchfork pony. He raised it as high as he could without falling over before it began to fly in my direction.

The rest happened so fast that the memory is hard to grasp. I know that I squealed and raised my paw and claw over my face (as if that would help), but then…

Something surged through me and seemed to propel up my chest and through my arms. I saw something flash behind my eyelids and I opened them just as the purple light began to fade.

The pitchfork had broken against the bubble shield that surrounded me, its once proud prongs now broken to pieces as if just mere toothpicks.

“Heh?” The mayor said, gazing at the bubble. A unicorn next to him gasped.

“A magical barrier? That’s a really complicated spell!”

“Can ya get it to go away?” an Earth Pony grunted, this one with a shovel. “He ate part of my stock, and that was after he ruined the town. I want to bash that thing’s head in!”

The Unicorn’s horn began to glow, but I didn’t give him the time to try a spell on me. All I know was that stuff in my body had come back, and it was actually doing something helpful. I backed up and found that the bubble moved with me when I did. I couldn’t fly with it when I tried a small hop on my legs, but it rolled as I moved, always keeping me right in its center.

With my life still intact, I broke for it and rushed towards the stallions. Their hooves made dust clouds as they got out of my way.

Well, most of them, anyway. One of them wasn’t very bright and just stared in horror as I plowed right over him, smacking him into the ground as I literally rolled over him.

It makes me laugh to think about it now; he got what he rightly deserved, thankyouverymuch. But I didn’t laugh then.

I just ran and ran and ran. I heard the ponies protest to my escape, but the Unicorn wasn’t able to counter the spell. The adrenaline kept me going long after the sounds of Equestrians left my ears.

Not only did I run, but I plowed into things. I slammed into a tree and broke it in half. I ran into a frozen stream and cracked the ice, but the bubble floated and I didn’t touch a drop of it. I ran for so long that by the time I stopped, I was in a brand new stretch of land that I didn’t recognize.

But I didn’t care. I was safe. I was safe.

Then everything went black and I collapsed to the ground.

I dreamed.

I dreamed of so many things, things I had never even known before. Shapes and colorful mists danced as mismatched creatures with misshapen bodies floated across a landscape of nonsense. The sky was the ground and the ground was the sky and the air itself was thick with purple static.

And I was the star as I took hold of the static, wrapping it all around me as I floated in midair. I manipulated all that surrounded me to my liking, which changed every few seconds with just a snap of my fingers and tail. I giggled as I hopped across clouds, turning them into assorted objects as I bounded into them. A balloon, a cheese wheel, a bird house. Nothing stayed the same as I attended to my own whims.

I heard the sound of galloping hooves and I stopped, landing headfirst into a cloud. I pulled my head out of its fluff before staring at the ground above, only to see those horrible, terrifying, wonderful, interesting quadrupeds. Ghost ponies galloped above me without acknowledging my presence.

Magic pulsed from them as it did from me, but it was different from mine. Whereas mine looked like multiple vortexes of whirling shapes and shadows, theirs was white and sparkling. Unicorn horns glowed while the Earth Ponies pulsed magic with each hoofbeat against the grass. The Pegasi flew above them with glittering wings of light.

It was so bright, far too bright. It hurt to look, and yet I couldn’t stop gazing at it.

I began to follow them. What were these creatures? What were those sounds that they made from their mouths? How did they make towns and create food that wasn’t from the forest? What were those symbols on their flanks? What powers did they hold, and why was it so different from mine? And which was the more powerful of the two—theirs, or mine?

My magic followed suit, rushing over me in a single propulsion as it rushed towards them. The violet rush of magic was on their tails, but I began to fall behind. I pumped my legs for as far as they would go, but I grew too exhausted to continue the chase.

Both the creatures and my own magic left me alone on a blank canvas. I tried reaching for my magic as I let out a long, single whine, begging for it to come back, for the running creatures back, for anything to come back and keep me company…

I woke up. Had someone been watching they probably would have laughed at me. I jumped like a coiled spring as I gasped and looked all around me.

I found myself exactly where I had been when I collapsed the night before. The ponies hadn’t found me. I was still alive.

Visions of my dream overtook my senses and I remembered how it felt to have all that magic, allowing me to create such things that I had never even imagined before. As terrified as I had been, that magic had felt so natural to me, so right. It had made me feel invincible and powerful and happy.

For I had never truly lived until I had discovered that magic. I had merely existed. But at that moment, I decided that it was time for me to live.

And in order to do that, I had to get my magic. And to get my magic, I had to go find those creatures again.

The magic was where the ponies were, I was sure of it. If I wanted it back, I would have to put on my big boy pants and find them once more.

It was the first big decision I had ever made as I licked my wounds and got on my feet. I was in new territory, and I was determined to find more of those creatures. I had to. It was either that or die trying.

I picked a random direction and set forth to find the magic.

It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.

In those days, villages were growing in number, but still far enough apart that it took about a day’s walk to get from one town to the next. This can go even faster if one crosses such a distance by running for his life for half that length. Hence, I found the next village in only a few hours.

More accurately, I found the schoolhouse first.

It was a lot like the one you’d find in most rural towns today: a small, red clapboard building with big windows and a perky little white roof with a bell and rope perched at the tippity top.

It was on the outskirts of town, surrounded in open fields intended for the kiddies to romp around in for recess.

I stumbled upon it as I emerged from an acre of bare apple trees, my stomach rumbling once more as I recalled the taste of cupcake on my tongue. I regarded the building with a sense of unease as I glanced at the building. Where was everyone? Were the creatures inside?

Perhaps it was best if I took a peek.

Slithering on my stomach, I crept up to the window, my tiny little heart thumping in my chest. My curiosity was too strong to stay away, but I smoothed down my mane in an attempt to hide. I didn’t want to risk a single stray hair to be seen.

Can you imagine? Me, trying not to take risks. Oh, the irony of it all!

Very carefully, I lifted my haunches and peeked between the marigolds in the hanging flower box and into the window.

I’m sure you can imagine what I saw. Rows of desks, filled with tiny little quadrupeds, some with pictures on their flanks, some without. An adult female sat in front of a chalkboard with a smile on her face, pointing to a series of symbols on the board.

I watched in awe as the little ones spoke with each point of her hoof to a symbol. What were they doing? Was she the alpha of the group, and they her minions? Was she taking all the small ones to create a group of rebels to overthrow the town? Why were they all talking in unison, and why were they so happy about it?

“A, B, C, D…”

My imagination got away from me before I figured out that they were simply naming the symbols for the teacher. But I wondered what the significance of the symbols were. What made them so important?

I was enchanted by the scene before me, and I found myself unable to tear away. I watched as they moved on with their lessons, writing and drawing on white squares with colored pieces of what looked like sticks of dried clay. They sang songs, read from the square things with even more white squares in them, and played with objects around the room. One even had what looked like a bear, but wasn’t. That was fascinating to me. It looked just like one, and yet, the student just took it and hugged it to her chest! It wasn’t alive!

Hours passed by until I heard the sound of the bell. I sprang away before I could be found, ducking behind a tree with a thick trunk, perfect for hiding.

And by evening, they were gone. Some of them lingered and played, but as the sun started going down, all of them, even the adult, had left and headed towards town.

I watched their alpha lock the door with a key. She was the last to leave.

When the coast was clear, I approached the door, looking around to make sure I was alone. I tried opening it. I didn’t know what a key was or what it was for then, but when the door didn’t budge, I easily figured it out. My claw was all I needed to get inside.

And that one discovery changed my life and opened my world more than I ever imagined. I discovered books. Models of animals to play with. Wooden chunks so perfect in shape and proportion that I could stack them up and make them into structures just like the buildings in the villages.

But one toy alluded me, and I didn’t know what to do with it. It was wooden, and in the shape of the creatures that made it—ponies. But it wasn’t like the little miniature figures of animals I had seen, or the dolls, or any of that. These were attached to a wooden cross with strings fastened at its edges. I tried my best to figure it out on that first night in the school. I wrapped myself around it, I hung it from the ceiling, I even tried throwing it across the room to see if the device could fly. By dawn, I had grown frustrated with the dumb thing and had kicked it across the room.

But overall, it was the books that had enchanted me the most. I had made a delightful mess that night as I took all of them off the shelf and flipped through every single one of them.

Don’t tell Twilight, but secretly…I get it. Yes, yes, uggggh, I know. I hate having something in common with her too. While I will never be the egghead that she is, I do admit that learning the old-school way has its… merits. Because of the books I read growing up, I learned to talk, categorize, reason. It’s how I learned to develop as a sentient being with a penchant for magic.

Learning to read by yourself is tricky of course, but I was trickier. The school had books with more than one copy available, and sometimes the ponies would go to the shelf in the morning and find that one or two were mysteriously ‘missing’, unable to find them.

Little did they know that I was giggling under the window, books clutched to my chest. I always had a plan, you see. The teacher had a habit of showing her students the books she’d be reading to them over the week, and I quickly learned that, if the book had a twin, maybe even a triplet, I could snatch one for myself the night before and follow along with the teacher in my hiding spot the following day.

I always returned them, of course, and there were so many books that most didn’t even notice them when they were gone. I was just that good of a thief, I suppose.

But I was an even better learner. I learned the language much faster than most young foals did. It was the first true sign of my genius. After a week, I had already figured out that the symbols in the books were ‘letters’, found in a simple ordered system known as the ‘alphabet’.

Of course, I had a lot of free time at night, and that practice helped speed things along.

Oh, I remember those nights, scrunched against the corner of the room, a single candle lit and not a stick more, in fear of anypony seeing the light. I’d have a box of graham crackers open, eating only as many as I could without anypony noticing. I snarfed them down whenever I had the chance.

One night I was flipping through a book that named objects and animals through the alphabet. I wanted to be able to name as many things as possible, as it was the easiest way to start. Smart as I was, I still had quite a few things to touch on.

“Rrrrr…roooo…ccck. Rock,” I whispered. “Rock.” My eyes switched from the page to a small pebble on the floor. I leaned over and picked it up. “Rock,” I repeated. “Rocky rock, rockity sprockity rocky rock rock. Rock.”

Well, that was the end of that particularly fascinating page. I flipped to the next one.

The pages had pictures to accompany the words, and I was surprised to find a drawing of the very creatures I had been studying. I gasped. Finally, I had a word for these things!

P’s were a bit difficult for me. When I first tried them, I ended up spitting most of the time. It was funny at first, but I soon lost patience. Needless to say, I was a bit disheartened to find out these things also started with a P.

“Pbbbbbbbb.” Nope, more spittle. I shook my head. Honestly, why did stupid letter have to be so complicated? It looked like a mouth with its tongue hanging out, of all things! Why didn’t it involve spit if that was all I was getting out of it?

I had to look at the next letter and go from there. O. Po. Then an N….

“Poooonie. Ponwy. Pohhhh…neee. Po-ny. Pony.”

Pony. The word rang a bell. Yes! That had to be it! For every morning, without fail, the teacher would greet all her students personally as they came in, asking them questions, laughing with each one, exchanging stories, all that meaningless riff-raff, you know. And then, once all of them were seated and ready for the day, she greeted them all again, but as a whole.

“Good morning, my little ponies,” she always said. So she was calling them by what they literally were to themselves. Ponies. They were ponies.

I said this to myself the next day as I took my standard hiding place near the window. I heard her greet them as they always did.

“Good morning, my little ponies!”

They always wished her a good morning back (“Good morning, Miss Spring!”), but I didn’t chant it with them. Instead, I just copied the teacher.

“Good morning, my little ponies…” I whispered. “Good morning, ponies…”

I always imagined them saying it back to me.

It was wishful thinking on my part.

I stayed in Gaittysburg for about, oh, I’d say a month, give or take a week or two.

Remember that toy I was telling you about, the one with the crossed sticks and strings? I had long learned that it was called a puppet (found, ironically, on the same page as pony in the alphabet book), but I still couldn’t figure it out. I had a picture of it in the book, but there were no instructions on how to use the thing. I didn’t even know how to properly hold it, and I kept getting the strings mixed up and knotted.

I was learning that I grew frustrated rather quickly, especially when things didn’t go my way. Surprising, no?

Anyways, to make an already long story short, I pretty much got fed up with it and kicked it across the room. Except that I had really lousy aim back then, so I ended up kicking the candle instead.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I watched with widening eyes as the wooden puppet bounced off my leg and made a short arc in the air. The arc was way too short from the very beginning, and the light from the candle reflected off the polished wood. The light grew brighter, and brighter, until fwoosh!

It spread like storm clouds across the sky, except the sky was a wooden floor on the ground and it was a lot more beautiful. I had seen small forest fires before back when I lived amongst the trees and the wild countryside, but I never got too close. This time I didn’t have a choice. The candle hadn’t been far from me when it got knocked over, and I had never thought to just stop and watch it. I never knew how lovely and exciting fire could be.

In fact, maybe there should be more fire. It was so pretty, surely the loss of a single building and a few toys and books wouldn’t be too big a cost for such a lovely sight? Oh sure, I’d miss the yoyo, the stuffed animals, and the stories I had learned to read with, but this fire was really something. And besides, the puppet was impossible! It needed a lesson, it deserved to burn.

And ponies love beautiful things, did they not? The fillies plucked beautiful things right out of the ground nearly every day during their outside time, tucking them into their pretty little manes and braiding them into each other’s tails. And almost all the ponies made art with their crayons and markers and paints each day. And those things were nothing compared to this! And if I could appreciate it, then so would they.

Oh, I was such a romantic back then.

Embers landed on my fur, but the pain seemed to escape me. In fact, the embers seemed to be pulling themselves towards me, as if we were having a family reunion and pulling each other in for a hug. My fur glowed with it, but it tickled rather than burned, and I giggled. It felt pleasant.

I began to levitate and I gasped. The magic! It was back! But… if the magic was there, then where were the ponies? The magic came with the ponies. That’s what the dream had shown me. I couldn’t have the magic without them.

But I didn’t have much time to wonder before I noticed the familiar purple hues mix with the hot red and yellow flames of the fire. It whirled in gorgeous swirls until every bit of it was ensconced in magic.

The fire stopped spreading at that point, but instead seemed to keep its flames together in one spot, and tendrils of fire snaked towards me. Yet, the fire never burned me as it should have. Instead, it poked, it prodded.

“Hee hee, s-stop! That tickles!” I was crying in laughter before I felt heat around my wrists. The flames had swirled around my arms and pulled me in and I found myself surrounded in a ring of magical fire.

My instincts kicked in and I suddenly remembered that fire was not supposed to be fun. I felt the heat on my face, I smelled the smoke through my nostrils. I knew it wasn’t exactly a good thing to be surrounded in an all-consuming fire.

But the stuff still didn’t hurt me. In fact, it seemed to have formed arms and a head, somehow. And it never burned me.

It just…tickled with me. Played with me. As if it were a friend.

It went on for a minute or two as I laughed, begging for it to stop the playful torture as its fiery fingers licked at my belly, my neck, my foot, my tail, and my ears. I had completely forgotten about the situation until I heard the familiar sound of stamping hooves outside the building.

“I scanned the building with my horn, there’s something weird in there!”

“I don’t care; let’s get this fire out and help whoever’s in there! This is my town and I aim to keep it a safe one!”

An authoritative voice boomed over the sound of the flames as the fire seemed to stop teasing me and froze. I peeked over and saw the shadows of ponies. I stepped through the flames, biting down my lip to keep myself from laughing with contact from the fire as I went through the door.

Just like that. All those weeks of hiding, and I had seen a grand entrance. After all, I was already exposed. But now that I had their magic with me, I thought they’d certainly accept me.

The crowd of ponies had buckets in their mouths as one from across the way pumped at a well, filling a line of ponies waiting for their buckets to be filled. One Unicorn with a nice suit on gave off an authoritative sort of air to him as he directed the crowds.

“Pegasi, you take to the skies and pour them from there! Earth Ponies and Unicorns, you stay on the ground and pour as much water onto the building that we—“

“No!”

The crowd stopped and looked my way, gasps echoing throughout as they stared at me.

I didn’t let it stop me, of course.

“There’s no need to stop the fire. It’s a good thing! I like it! And I think if you ponies just give it a chance, then you will too! And it’s all thanks to the magic you gave me!”

I stepped forward, reaching out towards the primly-dressed Unicorn, who I assumed was the mayor. “Come on, I can—“

“You!” the mayor shrieked. “It’s…It’s that thing! That thing that Mayor Spurs described to us! The creature that destroyed Gaittysburg with magic! It…it can talk?”

Well, that was a bit insulting. I gave him a pathetic squeak of a growl. “Yes I can! I just hadn’t learned until a few weeks ago from watching the lessons at the school! At least, I think it was a few weeks. I can’t remember. A week is…” I held up a few fingers. “1, 2, 3… 7 days, right? Hey, how come you do that, anyway? Seems kinda stupid to me. Why don’t you just go with it, huh?”

A random pony from the crowd screamed. “It can’t just talk, it’s intelligent! Oh my goodness, Mayor, do something! Before it ruins our town next!”

“I did not ruin that town! It was your magic! It likes me and it wants to have some fun!” I countered, glaring at the mare who spoke against me. “Maybe if you did something cool with it every once in a while, it wouldn’t come to me every time it got bored! Like it did with the fire!”

I turned and pointed to it. “It’s not a burning fire, it’s a tickling fire! And it’s beautiful!” I spread my arms and they glowed, and the fire grew in size. “You should appreciate it! It’s my friend!”

“Fire is…your friend…?” The mayor gulped. “What are you…?”

I gaped at him. “That’s all you want to know? I’m showing you the coolest thing ever, showing you something crazy beautiful, and you just want to know what I—“

A shadow flew by in my periphery and I saw the Pegasi flying overhead as they poured buckets of silver sprinkling water over the flames. The fire had burned a hole into the roof, and they were killing it. I could hear it sizzling and it felt like screaming in my ears. They were hurting it, they were trying to kill my friend.

“Hey, no! Stop!” I screamed, and I flew up to stop them. “Leave it alone! That’s MY fire!”

I bulleted towards a Pegasus and head-butted him to the side, throwing him off course as I got drenched in water. An Earth Pony caught the Pegasus with his back before he could crash to the ground.

I turned to the crowd. “And to think, I was actually trying to share it with you! I thought sharing was a good thing! That’s what Mrs. Spring says, anyway!” I scanned the crowd and quickly found the schoolteacher. “Hey, you! Hi! That’s what you tell your class every day, right?”

Her eyes widened. “You…You know who I am?”

“Call me an unofficial student of yours. It’s because of you and your teaching that I learned to read and talk. So to thank you, I’ll forgive you for saying such horrible things about my fire, and let you take a crack at it first!”

I flew down and took her hoof before a warm body slammed into me and sent me to the ground, hard. “Hey! Stay away from my wife, you…you… monster!”

My body pounded against the dirt, shards of gray granite jabbing into my skin. Tears came to my face as I trembled. He had thrown me into a particularly rocky patch of ground, and it stabbed my side and made it red. “Ugh…!”

I pressed my teeth together in pain and anger. Once again, they were trying to fight me, when I had done nothing. All I had done was play with fire…

FWOOSH!

More screams penetrated my ears as I struggled to get up. Light flashed before my eyes and I gaped as I saw the fire lash out at the stallion who struck me.

It was moving a fiery arm towards him, and the stallion screamed and tried to turn tail. But the fire was too quick; it reached the tip of his tail before it began to burn.

And the stallion wasn’t laughing. Apparently, this fire only seemed to have a love for tickling me. I had thought it was protecting me.

“Oh, fire, don’t worry about it,” I said, speaking to it casually. “He’s not worth it, he’s just stupid. No need to burn him to cind—“

It wasn’t listening to me. It suddenly spread in the grass, leaving flames in its wake as it chased after the stallion and circled around all the ponies. It wasn’t listening; it wasn’t tickling anything. It was acting like a normal fire.

My so-called ‘friend’ had decided to protect me in the most brutal way it could.

But like any other creature, I don’t particularly love the smell of burnt hair, and death certainly isn’t fun. I definitely hadn’t put ‘watch a pony be burned alive’ on my bucket list. I tried to stop it.

“Stop! Fire! No!”

The sensation of the magic within me started to fade, and I tried to get it to come back. I waved my arms and tail, clapped my hands, and snapped my fingers. None of it worked; nothing happened.

But the ponies were far more prepared than I was. Mrs. Spring’s husband ran to the well and jumped down below, escaping the fire before it could burn him to a crisp. The others had buckets ready before it could even begin to chase anyone else. More Pegasi appeared and took it down from up high, and as I tried desperately to bring the magic back, they got rid of it.

In a matter of minutes, the schoolhouse was in ashen ruins, the ground burnt black and bald. It amazed me how differently it looked after one single incident. I barely recognized it anymore.

“I don’t understand…” I said to myself. “I don’t understand! The ponies are right there!” I scowled in frustration, my tiny fists balled against the dirt as I sat on the ground. “They’re right there, so why did the magic leave me? Why does it leave?”

“I don’t know, but we’re awfully glad it did.”

I froze and turned towards the voice. It was him. Mrs. Spring’s husband. Water dripped down his forelocks and his burnt stub of a tail. He must have gotten out of the well, perhaps by a Unicorn’s spell. I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. He was the biggest, tallest stallion of the group.

Of all the stallions my so-called ‘teacher’ had to marry, it had to be that one.

I should have ran. Should have picked my sorry tail up and ran like the wind. But this stallion, this ginormous draft pony who looked ready to gore me, held me captive. I was a skinny little rod baby and he was a hulking mass of muscle and hoof. I missed my fire more than ever at that moment.

Mrs. Spring was behind him, looking terrified as he stared me down. “Be careful, Burly Brawn! That thing said he watched me and my class for weeks without me noticing, and now look what it’s done!” She looked back at the pile of rubble from behind me. “My school is gone!”

But he ignored her. Because in those days, who cared what mares had to say? They just had to sit there and look pretty.

Not that I cared too much. She taught me so much, and she didn’t even care. And to think that I had liked her before she had found out about me. That she was one of my little ponies.

She was not.

“So you think that it’s our magic that did this, boy? Is that it?”

I gulped and said nothing.

“…You are a boy, right?”

“I…” I hesitated. “I think so? I don’t have to sit down to pee.”

The stallion suddenly blushed, and I’m pretty sure somepony laughed, but what did I know? The teacher hadn’t put that kind of reading material the classroom; not even a single encyclopedia. That was the only way I could tell the difference.

Burly put a hoof to my chest and pushed me back down to the ground. “You think this is funny? You think this is a game?”

“I’m not laughing!”

“Oh, so now you’re a wise-donkey, too, eh?” He pressed down harder against me. “Stop fooling around and tell us… What are you and what are you doing here, spying on our wives, our kids, and setting things on fire? Are you the thing that destroyed Gaittysburg?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I cried. “What’s a Gaittysburg? A type of sandwich or something? Because if you haven’t noticed the the ribs trying to poke through my stomach, I could really use more food!”

His eyes seemed to blaze fire as he grit his teeth and screamed at me, sending a shower of spit my way. “There was a town, just a coupla days walk from here! It got demolished a few months ago by some weird monster thing that caused mayhem with just the flap of his hand! Was that you?”

He slipped his hoof up my chest and pressed down on my neck. My head pounded against the ground and he pushed against my throat, making it hard to breathe.

“Were you planning on doing to us what you did to them?” he asked me in a low, blood-curdling voice. “Planning on doing that to my wife?”

I tried to speak but breathing was a bit more important to me, and he was making it harder for me to do it. “Ahhh…guh…” I wrapped my fingers around his hoof and tried to move it away, but he overpowered me by a mile, and my vision was growing hazy.

More ponies screamed from behind.

“Yeah, that’s right, Burly! Show it who’s boss!”

“Yeah, that thing’s got no magic now! Get it while it’s weak!”

“Throw it in a cage!”

“Toss it in the lake!”

“You go, Burl!”

The cheers made him smile in the most grotesque way possible. It made me wonder for a moment exactly why a sweet little thing like Mrs. Springs was into such a brute like him. He just looked like a giant hunk of meat to me. And I thought ponies were vegetarians!

“You can’t hide a second time, boy. You say it’s our magic that did this, but it was you. It was you. You’re the one that caused all this…this…this craziness!” He pressed down harder on my throat, hard enough to bruise.

I wiggled my legs and tried twisting the rest of my body away, desperately trying to think of an escape plan. All right, so I couldn’t push his hoof off my neck, and he was too big and strong for me to hit or push away from me. My tail wasn’t long enough yet to twist around him, and my claws broke easily from my lack of nutrition; scratching him would end up in broken nails.

I bit my lip. Come on, come on! Think, think! Or you’ll do that thing where you stop breathing and don’t come back!

Despite my situation, it reminded me of one day where the foals had found a dead frog and asked the teacher what was wrong with it. She had tried explaining what death was as gently as she could without revealing too many of the scary little details. She told the kids that he had been too dry and thirsty, and didn’t survive, because frogs needed water to keep them wet and alive.

Water… I smacked my mouth. It was dry from the fire but not completely so. That gave me an idea.

“I just…” I croaked, my lungs still aching for air. “need…t’say…” I closed my mouth and moved my tongue around.

“What?” he snarled. “Go on, give us your dying words.”

I spat on him, right on the eye.

There’s a benefit to being seen as foreign and extremely dangerous. Because when you are, everything you do is threatening. Every part of you is regarded as poison upon contact.

So when my glop of glorious, sticky saliva splashed into his open eyes, he reared up on his back legs in a scream. “Ahhh! Sweet Tartarus, he got me! He got me!” He continued screaming in a panic as he ran in little circles. "I've been spat on by a monster! Get some hot water, get some disinfectant, get some iodine!"

The other ponies rushed to Burly Brawn, trying to figure out what had happened. It was a good distraction, and I wasted no time in scrambling up and running off. I didn’t pause to tell them it was only spit.

I wasn’t chased that time. Word of my first bout with ponies had spread over Equestria, and all were on the alert. But their discovery of me was too fresh; they didn’t know anything about my small little noodle-self. So I think they must have been too afraid to chase after me. Too afraid of the unknown to bother looking for me.

But I was upset, nonetheless. I had started of thinking of that little school as a home of sorts, and it had been destroyed by a fire that only I had appreciated. The ponies hadn’t understood it, and my so-called ‘teacher’ hadn’t even cared that she had made history by assisting a brand new species in learning how to talk and read.

Even worse was that I had lost the magic again; it had stayed with the ponies. Was it because I had gotten exposed, and the magic knew I’d have to go?

I didn’t know, but my craving for pony society was stronger than it was before. I wasn’t just an animal anymore; I had grown into a sapient being, capable of learning things and going above and beyond the scope of my animal instincts.

And I wanted it. I wanted the magic, I wanted the knowledge, I wanted it all.

I was Twilight Sparkle before there even was a Twilight Sparkle. Only better.

And I was better because, unlike our sparkly, sappy little Friendship Princess, I didn’t need a Princess Celestia to goad me into new places outside of my comfort zone.

No. Two bad experiences with ponies was nothing. I thought that if there was one town with a school, then there were others, too. And I would find them.

And the ponies would give me their magic. And they would see just what I could do with it, and accept me into their world.

This, my friends, was the dream of my childhood, and I chased it down with every fiber of my being.

I chased it down just as much as the ponies chased me. And trust me, there were a lot of those.

Let’s have a little time-skip, shall we?

Because there’s not much to tell for the next few years of my life. It became a (sadly) predictable pattern of life for me. I’d find a new town of ponies to sneak in to learn as much as I could and pony-watch. I stole food from ponies who didn’t notice, including scraps I’d find in the trash and forgotten crumbs littered on the street corners.

I listened in on lectures in classrooms from outside of windows and inside of chimneys and pipes. I snuck into them at night and studied the books and played with the toys. I even found another old-fashioned puppet in the forth or fifth town I visited, I can’t remember when. I managed to go hidden for so long in that particular one that I even mastered using the puppet, and it became my favorite toy. I liked controlling it; I liked being its master. It did as I pleased, and it existed to make me happy.

But the happiest I could get was still pretty miserable. I still couldn’t figure out how to get the magic from the ponies back; it came at random moments, but I could never seem to keep a hold of it for long. And when it did come, it usually got me in trouble.

And if you hadn’t caught on already, the trouble was usually BIG trouble. As in, I would suddenly have the power of a thousand Unicorns and I’d do something to the ponies that would not only expose me, but get me run out of town.

But I’ll give it one thing: I always did enjoy the magic’s antics before I’d get threatened with the torches and pitchforks. It always did something different to the numerous towns I visited.

Once, I stubbed my toe in Neigh Orleans as I tried catching some frogs, and turned the rivers into diet soda as the clouds rained mint candies that made it fizz. It grew so intense that it washed over the entire town and left everypony in a sticky, fizzy mess.

During my last day in Appleloosa, I grew angry after watching a family of four waste a perfectly good loaf of bread on a couple of stupid birds instead of throwing it away where I could get it, and I smacked a tree in frustration. As a result, the tree sprouted giant bowling balls that smacked to the cobblestones and endlessly rolled after ponies until everyone was hit.

Things like this happened no matter what town I was in. The Great Jello Earthquake of Las Pegasus, the Bad Manecut Epidemic in Manehattan, the Mexican Jumping Bean Infestation that took Mareyland by storm…

I caused all of them, and ponies were the ones to end it. For all the different tricks that were pulled, the mobs were always the same thing. Boring, right?

No. Not boring. You know what it was for me? Terrifying. Each and every time they found me and shared a good laugh after every freak accident. They always looked at me with the purest, most bitter hatred I had ever known.

Nopony knew who I was or how I came to exist, but I grew famous over those short few years. More and more ponies could claim to have seen me because they had been part of a mob to chase me out of town.

But they didn’t just chase me. Ohoho, nonono. Had they all been just mere chases, then perhaps I wouldn’t have had such bitterness towards ponykind at the end of the day.

But you won’t find the truth of those mobs in books written about me. After all, it doesn’t matter what kind of trouble I caused; ponies don’t like to read about baby creatures getting stabbed and jabbed and beaten by other ponies. No, they just talk about what I did wrong, and how they merely chased me out or tried to catch me so they could ‘turn me in for the better of ponykind’.

They are filthy, disgusting liars. Ponies were nothing but violent brutes back then. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I had pitchforks scar my skin or a torch singe my fur. Kitchen pans were slammed into my face. Ponies spat at me and threatened to torture me, to hurt me, to make me into their fireplace carpet.

But I was a star athlete, and I almost always outran them when I wasn't too seriously injured. It always ended with my shaking at the bones and my face covered in tears and snot, but I usually made do.

And my magic saved me many times when I thought I was done for. It didn’t always happen, but upon contemplation, I found the answer for its sporadic appearances years later. I’d tell you, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise~.

For now, all you need to know is that there were times where I was sure I was going to get caught, only for my magic to come in and put my pursuers in a pickle, giving me a chance to escape. (And I mean that both figuratively and literally. One mob truly found themselves inside of a pickle before they could stab me with their pikes. I smelled brine for days after I escaped.)

But nothing came close to as lethal as the last chase I faced before I finally made it to the Neighyan Rainforest at twelve years old.

After all, this mob was made of guards.

Royal guards, to be precise.

Oh, the joy.

Out of all the cities I had visited, Canterlot was my favorite.

Take note that his was before Sunny and Moony came into play, as Starswirl the Snotbearded was still out and about looking for the Alicorns at the time. Back then, Canterlot was a much darker, danker place.

It was fabulous.

The place smelled like rotten horseshoes and dungbeetle dinners, and the stallions even more so. To go without at least one scar on your body was considered an anomaly in a town such as early Canterlot. Filth was on every streetcorner, garbage on every sidewalk and flying with the wind. It was incredibly easy for me to find something to eat in the trash whenever my thieving schemes didn’t work out.

One thing that didn’t change was that the city was huge. The first time I saw it, it had been two years since my first winter, and the cold season was approaching yet again, and fast. I was shivering as I first saw the towers rising above the trees. The city’s built up against a mountain, so I had to do quite a bit of climbing, but despite my weak body from poor nutrition, I was still incredibly agile. I got up there pretty easily.

Now, by that the time, I had grown incredibly famous. Wanted posters, plastered with my face, were seen all around Equestria wherever I went. And as the days passed by, so did the reward money.

I never worried too much about them catching me, though. Legends of my incredible feats were powerful enough to keep ponies from actively looking for me. Even if it sounded exaggerated, ponies didn’t doubt the stories. My magical abilities were not to be questioned by them. I was the only one that ever did that.

But I wasn’t very much closer to answers about that said magic. I had grown more adept at what seemed like every subject the ponies had to offer except for magic. It was frustrating. I had no control over it, and only it decided when to appear and what it would do.

But the ponies were able to do whatever they wanted with their magic, and as far as I knew, they weren’t sharing their secrets with me. I would have to steal it from them, just as I did with everything else they had. I just needed to find a good source. Books on magic were scarce. Starswirl the Snotbearded hadn’t published any of his books yet, and libraries weren’t much of a priority back then. Everypony was too busy trying to survive and find better ways of life, just like I was.

Canterlot, I found, was just the source I needed.

Because despite all the tattoo parlors, scum-filled bars, and gang hideaways, Canterlot was still the political center of Equestria. Starswirl had lived there, along with Clover the Clever and all those other important ponies needed to make life go round and round and all that jazz.

This included the School for Gifted Unicorns, right in the center of town.

It wasn’t hard to find once I figured out which alleys were best to travel by. That was another good thing about the town. It didn’t have as many as Manehattan did, true, but the ones in Manehattan were almost always filled with questionable characters.

In Canterlot, most of those said characters had no problem making themselves known. They only hid in alleyways if they needed some peace and quiet. None of them were extremely dangerous criminals; the worst thing that happened most days were gang rivalries and thieves stealing off of haycarts, but as long as you didn’t join a gang or fraternize with the police too much, you could live there without much trouble. They only went after you if you went after them first. Let them be and you could live in their city without constantly looking over your withers.

So the alleyways in Canterlot were a lot emptier, and that was a blessing in itself. I could go all around town at night and go unseen as I slithered to and fro, going whatever direction I pleased. I still hadn’t grown very much, so I was small enough to follow the shadows and keep myself from being exposed easily. My quiet feet alone were enough to keep me under the radar.

I found the School for Gifted Unicorns about a week after arriving there, once I got a general feel for the alleyways. And it was there that I stayed.

You may be asking yourself why in the world one of the most important schools in Equestria was located in an extremely unethical city such as that of old Canterlot. But if you know your history, you’ll know that back then, it was mostly Earth Ponies and Pegasi that acted as the guards for Canterlot. They needed more Unicorns. And since both defensive and offensive spells are more complex that most other spells, then why not put it in a town where better police was needed?

The school was an utter goldmine for information on magic. The place had ginormous pipes for me to squeeze and hide in, so I didn’t have to hide behind windows to listen in on lectures. Since part of the school was also a dormitory, I didn’t even need to go far in looking for food. There were often enough leftovers that I could steal from the kitchens without anypony noticing when I went out of the vents at the dead of night. The school was a paradise.

I was there for so long. Two years. And for a while, I had begun to think that this was the home I was looking for.

It gave me everything. The food was delicious and I finally started gaining weight that actually stayed on me. I had top-of-the-line instructors teaching me all about Unicorn magic without knowing it. And through there, I finally gained the tools I needed to practice magic.

Because that was where I finally learned about myself.

I’ll always remember that day. The class was Magic of the World, which expanded upon all forms of magic, not just that of Unicorns. It wasn’t my favorite class, as it was less about spells and more on just basic information, and I sometimes skipped it. But on that particular day, I was bored, and nothing good was playing on the record-player in the teacher’s lounge. So I settled for Mr. Globe Trotter's class instead.

He had a rather nice ceiling pipe that gave me a perfect view of the board. I settled in comfortably, laying down an extra pillow I had taken from a custodian closet, and waited as all the pretty little Unicorns trickled in and took their seats. I stifled in a yawn. Hopefully, at least, he’d teach something worth knowing.

“Okay, class. Today, we’re going to discuss something a little off-schedule, because it’s important and warrants your attention. I want you to take a look at something, and tell me if you recognize it. Look at it good and well, all right? You guys see a lot of these in Canterlot, and I want you to study it before raising your hooves. I’m sure you’ve all seen this one, but everypony pretty much has without really studying it. You ready?”

They chanted in unison that they were, and he then taped a poster over the board.

It was my wanted poster.

I gasped. But I was lucky, because the rest of the class did too, and none of them did as he said. They spoke out right away, the little loudmouths. They were great.

“That’s the mysterious magical creature that’s been found everywhere in Equestria!”

“Nopony knows what it is!”

“And nopony knows what it wants!”

“But it’s magic is terrible!”

“It’s bad!”

“It’s evil!”

“It’s kinda cute if you squint a little!”

See? Great kids. Especially that last one.

“Class, class! Calm down! Stop shouting, raise your hooves!” Mr. Globe said, and all mouths went shut. “Good! Now, I’m going to ask you again to really look at this poster.” He tapped on it again. “Look at the creature on it and think—think, not scream at the top of your lungs—about what you know about it. Ask yourselves questions. Here, I’ll give you a hint.”

His horn lit up and levitated a piece of chalk. I found myself staring at his glowing horn, wishing I could do something so simple whenever I pleased. Even when talking about the most important subject of all—me—I still preferred the sight of magic to my own wanted poster.

My, how I’ve changed.

He started to write as he spoke. “Ask yourselves what the creature could possibly resemble. We’ve got a full illustration of this guy, legs, tail, and all, right here.” He gestured towards my picture again. “Because while we may not know what he is, we can make inferences on what he could possibly be. Can anypony tell me why that is?”

Because we all have common ancestors, obviously. Duh. I leaned on my claw, already feeling exasperated. Though I don’t know where THAT will get any of you. I’m nothing like any other creature, you know. I’m unique that way. I’m not a zoo animal.

A Unicorn gave him the same answer and I rolled my eyes. I could have answered that ten times faster than him, tops!

But of course, nopony praised me for that. “Good job, Hoofdini! That’s right, we all have a common ancestor. So while this guy might not be a pony or a griffon, or a dragon or a centaur, or anything we know of, he could share common features with them. And by doing that, we can learn more about him.”

Stop calling me ‘this guy’. I’m right here!

He stopped writing. “So, what do you see?”

This time they really looked at it. I shook my head as I watched. I found it such a shame that I was so much smarter than them, and I hadn’t even needed to enroll in the school. I found myself wondering why magic decided to stick with creatures like this when I was so much better than them.

Hooves slowly rose back up.

“Yes, Stardust?”

“He’s got a leg that kinda looks like a dragon’s.”

No duh, Spurlock. I rolled my eyes again.

“Yes!” Mr. Globe smiled as if she had made the discovery of the century. “Good job! Anypony else? Yes, Hazy Smoke?”

“One of his horns looks like a deer antler!”

“Yes, that’s right! What else?”

I’ll spare you all the details of the entire conversation, because it was idiotic and you can probably already guess what else they said. A tail like a snake, the paw of a lion, a claw like an eagle’s…

They had most of the basics down, until Mr. Globe seemed satisfied enough to finally end the name-the-animal game. “Okay, you guys got it. But you guys all forgot one thing.”

He levitated his pointer and jabbed the thing straight into the illustration’s face. I winced as if he had struck me.

“His head. What do you think of that? It’s a bit of an odd-shape, isn’t it?”

I smiled. I liked my odd head.

“Now,” he continued, “wouldn’t you say, that in a way, it resembles the head of a pony?”

Silence.

I stared at Mr. Globe as if he had struck me with a lightning bolt straight from his horn. A head like a pony? I was nothing like a pony! If I were like a pony, then I would have had my magic as constantly as they had! If I were like a pony, if I were more like a Unicorn, then I would have had fewer problems!

The ponies stared at him in the same way, but it was more out of offense than wonder. They were quick to refute his premise.

“No way!”

“That thing destroys stuff wherever it goes! His magic is dangerous!”

“It’s bad for us, we’re nothing like it!”

“How could you even say such a thing, Mr. Globe?”

“Because it’s true,” Globe Trotter said. “Tell me, have you been keeping track of the Equestrian Journal of Biology and Magic like I’ve been asking you to? Did you read this month’s issue? It came out a week ago.”

I myself had heard of the journal, but never read them. I would have, but I wasn’t interested. I was mostly reading magical articles those days, and that particular one was mostly about magic in its connection to anatomy. I didn’t interest me.

And by their lack of answers, it seemed the class wasn’t very interested either. I quietly snickered at them. They were in one of the most prestigious programs Equestria had to offer, and they didn’t even do what they were supposed to! I loved it.

Mr. Globe did not. “I see. And you must not be keeping up with any of the other journals for your other classes, either, because it’s big news right now in Equestria. There's nothing in the newspaper about it yet, but there will be soon. We’ve got info on this creature now. Evidence that’s scientifically accurate. As accurate as science can get, that is.”

I felt a spark of fear in my chest at his news. I was going to be in the newspaper? Oh no. I would have to hide. Stay even lower on the radar than usual. I’d have to stock up on food all at once so I could survive without leaving the pipes more than I had to. I’d need to stay hidden in said pipes for a while before I could risk leaving. News would undoubtedly bolster attention, and they might—

“What kind of news?” one Unicorn chirped. “And how’d they get it?”

Globe Trotter smiled and I turned my attention back to the class. “Big news, class. Big, big news. News that could change the world.”

News that could change the world.

Did that mean I could change the world?

He really had my unfocused attention now. My face was practically embedded into the grille of the vent. It was a foolish thing for me to do, as somepony could have seen me. But I guess Lady Luck was into me that day, because nopony caught me, and I was able to listen to them without being caught.

Mr. Globe took his chalk again and wrote again on the board. “Simply put, DNA samples, kids. It’s that easy. But nopony had ever thought to try to collect them before Clover the Clever decided to pursue the project.”

I felt my heart jump into my throat in silent shock. I was growing well-versed in science back then, and I knew enough about DNA to get an idea of what it meant. What I didn’t know, however, was how they got it, and what they wanted it for. Who knew what the ponies were capable of, if they had a piece of me? They would know more about myself than I did. Unthinkable.

Hooves shot up in the air but Globe Trotter brushed them away. “Now now, I know you all must have a million questions, but just hold on for a while and wait until the I’m finished. In fact, I can already guess what your top question is: how did we obtain his DNA? Easy.”

He pulled a giant map over his chalkboard, revealing the entire layout of Equestria and its borders. He struck at a section of the map with a resounding tap. “Gaittysburg!” He pointed somewhere else. “Neigh Orleans!” Tap tap tap! “Appleloosa, Mareyland, Manehattan! These are several of the many towns where our little vegabond’s been spotted. These were the obvious places to go to find any evidence of his presence in these places. And evidence was found.”

“What kind of evidence?!?” a pony asked, sitting at the edge of his seat. He wasn’t the only one. I’ve always been a very interesting guy, and these ponies looked like they were about to pee their pants with excitement.

(Not that any of them wore pants, but you get the point.)

“I was getting to that, Bunson Burner, no questions until I’m done, remember? Anyway, you all know how this has typically gone over the past few years. The creature would be spotted, and the town would chase him out, typically with weapons of some sort for defense.”

I snorted quietly at that. And offense. A ghost ache from the last place a shovel struck me suddenly felt sore. I rubbed it. Don’t forget that side of the story, mister.

“This is where we found a lot of our DNA. Anything the creature touched made ponies afraid to use them, even if trustworthy Unicorns confirmed there was nothing wrong with them afterward. They saw the items as bad omens and hardly used them. They were more than willing to give them to Clover for her research, and she spent months collecting bits and pieces. But, some samples are better than others, and it wasn’t until she reached Gaittysburg that she managed to get a sample of the creature’s skin cells, found on an old puppet that was found in a fire the creature had left.”

Thaaaaaaaat’s right. The puppet I had played with, the one that had knocked over the candle? It had somehow survived the fire. I don’t know if the fire had known that I'd liked it and didn’t touch it, but the toy had survived. And sompony had saved it for evidence and put it in storage.

That was the second time that puppet got me in trouble. How aggravating it was to find that out! It felt like I was its puppet, rather than its master. And it wasn’t even alive.

And for a fraction of a moment, I felt… betrayed. I had loved that toy; I had worked so hard to learn to use it, and once I had, I had loved playing with it. But it had given me problems even when I thought it was gone forever. I felt powerless.

But I am powerless. That’s why I’m here. That’s why—

“Not only that, but she did a magical survey of the area, and she looked over pieces of shrapnel and found some of his saliva. This was an accurate assumption before she tested it; a stallion from Gaittysburg claims that the creature spat on him in defense on the night the schoolhouse was burnt down. Two big finds in one tiny town. Kids.” He turned around and faced the class. His voice took on a tone that he was about to say something groundbreaking, and I refocused on him. My heart beated even faster as my ears perked towards him.

“Clover has looked into all the samples of the DNA, and she has made some incredible discoveries in her research. We said earlier that he resembled many different creatures, including the possibility that he was part pony. But while his DNA did show to have similar characteristics to the DNA of many other creatures, including ponies, he is a creature all on his own. He has NO common ancestors that we know of. His DNA was a complete contradiction of itself. While he shared some segments that resembled other creatures, he also had some nucleic acids that we have never seen before in any other organism on the planet. He has organic matter that is nothing the likes of which we have ever seen before. We don’t even have a name for some of the DNA he holds in his body.”

My claws seemed to dig into the bottom of the pipes. I was shaking.

The likes of which we have never seen before…

“But that isn’t even the beginning of it, guys. Because in the samples of his skin and saliva, Clover discovered something else that we’ve never seen before. Because there’s no question that this organism has magic. We’ve all heard the stories, right?”

They nodded in unison, but I stopped shaking and turned rigid.

This organism has magic. Wait, I had magic? But the ponies were supposed to have the magic, right? I never had it alone. I only ever saw it when I was around ponies. It wasn’t mine until it let me take it from them. I couldn't be its source!

But if the DNA revealed it, then… was it possible I was wrong?

“So, before I go on, I have a question for one of you. Bunson Burner,” he turned to the pony in question, “tell me. What’s the main purpose of all pony magic? Something that the magic of all three pony types share in common?”

It was a question so easy that it startled ol’ Bunson Burner. Practically any pony, dead or alive, knew the answer to that one.

“Oh, well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” the young stallion said as he adjusted his glasses. “Our magic’s main purpose is to provide and maintain harmony. That’s why ponies, as a species, struggled so much during the winter before all three tribes came together. We argued and created so much dissent that our magic wasn’t as powerful as it is when ponies get along.”

Mr. Glove nodded. “An excellent explanation, Bunson. That is correct. Most of you know this. But what you don’t know is that this creature…”

He tapped his hoof against my wanted poster again. “This creature, who has been known to make ordinary objects sentient and turn nightmares of the imagination into reality, has magic that directly defies our very own magic. For his, my little ponies... is powered by chaos and disharmony.”

Chaos and disharmony.

Something stirred within me; something seemed to click the second he muttered those two epic words. The first one, this chaos, was new to me, but it sounded so… familiar. As familiar as my reflection in a mirror or the palm of my paw.

I felt a rush in my blood, a familiar feeling to that of magic, and I grew afraid.

Nonono, not now!

The class was anything but quiet now, as the news of my magic had caused quite the ruckus amongst the students. I felt an odd compulsion to stay there, to remain at the end of the pipe and watch through the vent and enjoy the confusion and excitement the ponies seemed to radiate from their bodies. It felt good to be there. Their colliding voices, their protests and shouts and questions, sounded like an orchestra to my ears.

I had no idea why I always felt so thrilled by such things, but every time I did, something bad happened, so I fought the urge to stay and ran off as fast as I could. Their noise covered the sound of my light steps against the metal of the shafts, keeping them light enough not to pound against it too loudly. They didn’t suspect a thing.

I needed to know one thing, and for that to happen, I needed a book. More specifically, a dictionary.

Twilight would be so proud. Can you see my eyes rolling right now?

Hmm, anyway, pretty much every room in that place had some sort of dictionary, so I dropped into the emptiest classroom I could find that was far enough away from anypony else, and I scuttled to the bookshelf.

I was in luck; the dictionary in there was huge, and it was a basic word dictionary, rather than one catered to Unicorn magic. I grabbed it and turned to the C’s. If it wasn’t there, I’d check the K’s next. I had no idea how the word was spelled.

When I finally found it, I was beside myself with excitement. Just looking at the spelling of it seemed delicious. C-H. A silent H! That made no sense whatsoever. It sounded nothing like the word nachos, minus the N. It was a word all on its own, beginning with the harsh, sharp sound of a K, only to end in the smooth sounds of vowels and the hiss of a single S. Why throw the H in there at all, if not to confuse readers? It was perfect already, and I didn’t even know what it meant yet.

In anticipation, I finally read the definition.

Chaos: Complete disorder and confusion.

Everything was becoming clearer for me. There wasn’t just a single lightbulb lighting up in my mind; this discovery was so huge that I felt like I was a lightbulb, flashing and dancing, lighting up everything in the past and present. I got it. I understood.

I had a good idea of what disharmony meant, since I knew what harmony was. Ponies, especially Unicorns studying magic, preached about it all the time. But I looked it up anyway, out of curiosity. I had never thought of there being a word for the opposite of such a huge concept. I thought if I looked that up too, then perhaps I’d understand even more about myself.

Disharmony: Lack of harmony or agreement.

I nodded. I thought as much, but it wasn’t a lot. I needed more. I needed synonyms. A thesauraus!

I looked for one and growled in dissatisfaction as I saw no thesauraus. I threw myself back into the pipe in search of one. This was harder to find, and it took what seemed like hours before I found an old, seemingly abandoned classroom with a bookshelf full of dust.

I coughed as I swiped the spines of the books to clear off the dust. I was at the end of my patience, and getting hungry. I was hoping to find at least a small thesaurus before I went to look for dinner in the kitchens.

As luck would have it, I found a bright yellow one at the bottom of the first shelf. I grabbed it and looked up synonyms.

There were so many glorious words that meant the same thing, but felt different all the same as I said them. I whispered them all aloud as I looked them up. “Chaos: disorder, disarray, disorganization…Well, those aren’t new, those are kinda boring…Hmm…Le’see here…Bedlam, pandemonium, havoc....Oooh, baby, now we’re talkin’!”

I looked up those words as well, but they weren’t much different from chaos. But at least a lot of them sounded as cool as chaos! Though I couldn’t help but prefer that one over all the others.

Next was disharmony, and it was in those words that I was the most fruitful of all.

Disharmony: Discord, friction, strife

Discord… Discord…

That word tasted as delicious on my tongue as chaos did. More exciting than simply disharmony or friction and strife. Those sounded completely and utterly boring to me. Disharmony was one word with three more letters attached to its front, friction made me think of its scientific definition, and strife was just that one word used in poetry a lot when the author was lazy and couldn’t think of anything good enough to rhyme with life that still made sense.

I turned to the dictionary.

Discord: disagreement between ponies. Lack or agreement of harmony between things.

Now that was interesting. This definition was the only one I had found so far that specifically mentioned problems between ponies.

I had a sudden flashback and remembered the first time I used magic, back in Gaittysburg. The Unicorns, the Earth Ponies, and the Pegasi. They had argued over which one of the tribes were best, and I had stayed and listened. I had loved the turmoil it had caused, and in turn, I had added to the mayhem.

Just like I had wanted to stay near the classroom to hear the ponies’ excitement over the teacher’s news about me.

It wasn’t just that I enjoyed excitement in general, nor the fact that I loved everything out of the ordinary. I loved drama, I loved problems that led to other problems, I loved passionate arguments and the faces ponies made when they were completely furious with one another. It made creatures act so much differently than they usually did. It made everything seem upside down and uncertain and unusual, and sometimes, even unreal.

It made things go from dull and ordinary, to crazy and extraordinary.

Discord was chaos, but chaos was not just discord, if the definition was to be taken for the truth. It was so many different things, but I had unknowingly developed my own taste for chaos, and discordance was my favorite flavor.

I finally had an identity.

I dropped the book in wonder at my own thoughts. I had never thought of myself as having an identity that could be described in any real, concrete way. I had only ever seen myself as just what I saw and felt, but I never knew who or what I was.

I was beginning to finally see it, now. A part of it, anyway.

I heard the book land on the floor and I cringed. I was in a remote part of the school, but I had to be quiet if I wanted to stay safe. I waited for a moment before I let myself relax. I reached to pick the book back up.

I noticed a bent piece of paper was sticking out of the dictionary, and out of curiosity, I looked at it. It was nothing special; just an old worksheet, it looked like, one for vocabulary.

And there was no name on the thing! Ha! Some genius that student had been. I snickered. What an amateur. You have to have a name if anypony is going to give you any credit!

As soon as I thought this, I saw a flare in my peripheral vision, and I nearly panicked. Was my magic acting up again?

I felt something slim and smooth form between my fingers, only for something liquid to fall against my fingers. I lifted it up and saw it was a quill, dripping with ink.

It wasn’t chaotic at all, but the magic was telling me something. No, wait; my magic was telling me something. I had interpreted my dream wrong; this was my magic. Not theirs. And it wanted me to write.

I looked at the empty, unwritten space where a name was supposed to be written.

Before I realized it, my hand had moved with the quill in the grip of my fingers. I wrote across it, ink splashing across the signature it left behind.

Name: Discord

“Discord…” I whispered. “Discord…”

I walked to the dusty podium at the front of the room and gazed at the desks. I imagined ponies sitting there, eyes on me.

“Hello, my little ponies. Oh, what is my name, you ask? Good question!”

I smiled ear to ear as I showed the imaginary class my shiny little canines.

“You can call me Discord. Discord, the magic chaos boy. Yeah. That’s me.”

I finally had a name.