A minute's trot down a sandy path off one side of the road to Salt Lick City lay a tiny inlet of Hooveser Lake. There, next to a herd of gray-white boulders wading about its entrance, were a little strip of sand on one side of the inlet, the beginning of a sunset, and four ponies.
"You be careful, Pound Cake!" Mrs. Cake called out into the wind coming off the lake, towards where a little pegasus colt bounded from one boulder to another. He was headed for the farthest and tallest one that stood guard out in the cold, deep water. He could have already zoomed there and back three times with thirty flaps of his wings. But colts must jump on boulders. They must vault up every stone staircase like a gymnast, then stand on its top and score themselves—another perfect 10!—before leaping off to the next event.
Pumpkin stood near the water's edge, aiming her horn down. The sand at her hooves swirled around like foaming cider being stirred in a mug, hissing softly as it spun.
"Can you make a castle?" Mr. Cake asked. She bit her upper lip and concentrated on the sand. It hurried together into a tall round silo that stretched up like a growing flower, then unfurled at the top and sprouted battlements.
"That's great! How about a whale?"
A million grains of sand spilled over the tower's walls and reconvened in a lump at the bottom. They conferred with each other a moment, then spread out into a big domed forehead and a broad flat tail which slowly undulated back and forth. Mr. Cake leaned down to look into its big smiling eyes, and it winked, a piece of its eyelid crumbling away.
"Terrific!"
A spray of sand rained down on the whale like a hundred harpoons, eroding its smile down to a nervous pucker. Pound stood before them, panting, legs splayed from the impact of landing.
"Mom! Dad!” He swung his head once to each side, his pupils flicking back behind him, toward the lake. His ears were flat against his head. “It's Discord! Run!" He bounded back into the air. The whale crumbled away further in the wake from his takeoff.
"Come on," Mr. Cake said to Pumpkin with a smile. "Run!" He bounded after Pound, laughing. Pumpkin frowned at the whale, and grains of sand shifted until its pocked face was smooth again. Then she galloped back toward the road after her father.
He stopped a hundred hooflengths up the sandy path, grinning and breathing hard. Pumpkin pulled up beside him and looked up at him.
Pound banked back and around him like a swallow. "Don't stop! Where's Mom?"
"I'm not so—whew!—so young as I used to be," Mr. Cake said. "I can't keep up with you kids anymore. Never could, now that I mention it. Come on, let's go back and protect your mother from Discord."
Pound buzzed past him on a beeline for his mother. She was still standing on the beach, shaking her head at Pound and smiling, when Mr. Cake caught up with them again.
"It's not safe!" Pound was saying. "He's right there, behind that big rock!" He glanced back and forth between his parents and the granite patriarch.
"Sure he is, lump," Mr. Cake said. "He's probably just here to watch the sunset."
"He isn't."
"Oh? What's he doing?"
"Standing. Grinning. He winked at me." Pound shuddered.
"Well, there's no law against that. And we have four brave defenders of Equestria here. He can't possibly hurt you."
Pound looked dubiously out towards the boulder. "He can't?"
"I promise." He nudged Pound back towards the boulders. "Now go and play while there is still light."
The little pegasus looked at the big boulder again. "He really can't hurt me?"
"Absolutely not. I forbid it."
"Well... okay." He took a few steps forward, neck stretched out in front of him, sniffing.
"What an imagination," Mr. Cake said to his wife.
This time it was a giant crouching sand-frog hit by the spray from Pound's landing.
"Come look! You gotta come see him!" Pound said.
Pumpkin glared at him, then bent forward towards her sculpture. "I'm sorry, Croakers. He's a colt. No, they aren't very smart."
"See who?" Mr. Cake asked.
"Discord!"
"Discord again? Why would I want to see Discord?"
"He said you didn't believe me. Said you wouldn't come look. I told him he was a mean old liar liar mane on fire."
Mr. Cake squinted at the boulder, purple in the fading light. "I would, lump, but I don't think I could even get out there without taking a swim. That deep water's pretty cold."
"But, you hafta! Prove he's wrong. Wipe that nasty grin off his face!"
"I'm a little tired, son. Let's see Discord some other day."
Pound stood, uncharacteristically quiet, studying his father.
"You don’t believe me."
Mr. Cake bent down to get a closer look at Pound. The colt looked back into his eyes, unblinking, peering closely as if he were looking at his father for the first time.
"Now, Pound, I didn't say that," Mr. Cake said slowly, trying to work it out for himself as he spoke. "I believe you think you saw Discord. Or maybe you didn’t, at first, but all this running and playing was so exciting and real that you talked yourself into it." He reached out and tried to ruffle Pound's mane with one hoof, but the colt bent away from him.
Pound lowered his head and snorted. "I'm not stupid. I didn't see some twisted old tree. He talked to me."
Mr. Cake grinned stupidly at Pound, hoping the tension would somehow dissolve into a joke, but Pound just picked at a few strands of ragged shore grass with one hoof.
"Well—well, would you look at the time," Mr. Cake finally said. "We'll have to hurry to get to the ice cream parlor before they close."
"Ice cream!" Pumpkin shouted, and jumped up and pawed at the air.
Pound kicked a pebble into the water. "He said you wouldn't believe me."
"Now, Pound," Mrs. Cake said.
Mr. Cake tried grinning again, gave up, and began leading the way back to town. Pound and Pumpkin trailed behind the adults, Pumpkin skipping and singing a kind of song about the relative merits of frogs and brothers. Pound kept glancing back towards the water.
"You're awfully quiet today, Pound," Mr. Cake said after the third verse.
"You promised me he couldn't hurt me," Pound said. "You promised, and you didn’t even know he was really there."
"Well, he didn't hurt you," Mr. Cake said.
"He said it'd change me. Finding out I can be right, and you and Mom and the whole rest of the world wrong."
Mr. Cake smiled at Mrs. Cake. "Such an imagination." Mrs. Cake only frowned thoughtfully.
"He said it'd make me special," Pound said in a flat voice.
"You're special alright," his sister taunted.
"Pumpkin! We'll have none of that," Mrs. Cake said. She stopped and looked back, but instead of squabbling foals she saw only Pound's brown eyes staring back at her.
Pumpkin kept after him all the way home, but Pound ignored her, looking down, trudging as silently and steadily as a draft horse.
"Look at that," Mr. Cake said to his wife. "Our little colt may be growing up."
Or maybe he just wasn't feeling well. At the ice cream parlor, he ate only one scoop, even though it was peppermint chip.
mfw
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i dont get it, someone willing to explain?
When I read the name of the story this came in mind:
3654469
He found out that sometimes you're right and no one will believe you. That upset him.
3654653
3654469
Not just nobody, but your parents/loved ones. Who are supposed to believe you and listen and be there.
Fun fact, and related, but on Sesame Street, Snuffleupagus was originally going to be Big Bird's imaginary friend who nobody else can see, and nobody else would've believed Big Bird about him, but didn't want to give kids the message that sometimes you can tell the truth about big things and have your parents not believe you so to not bother saying anything at all.
3654921
The more proximate reason was child molestation and abuse, specifically. Good times.
And then they made an AIDS muppet for Africa.
static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120319190611/muppet/images/2/28/Kami.jpg
3654653
More than that, Discord framed it for him that sometimes "he can be right, even when the whole world says he's wrong". That may be true but I think Discord is deliberately encouraging it along with the idea that he's 'special' to encourage a kind of self-confidence that allows him to flout societal conventions with ease... not necessarily a good thing, perhaps even a dangerous one, depending on how he develops.
3655303
Granted, AIDS is so common in Africa that you may get it despite never so much as kissing someone. Poor health standards don't do well against something that can spread through almost any bodily fluid.
3655944
HIV has to get into your bloodstream; ingesting the HIV virus is insufficient. Yes, technically speaking you can get it from ingestion, but in practicality it is very unlikely unless you have open wounds in your mouth. No one has ever demonstrably gotten HIV from contaminated drinking water to the best of my knowledge - HIV doesn't do well outside of the human body.
HIV is only really transmitted in a very limited number of ways - mostly, blood, sexual fluids, and breast milk, meaning needles, sex, and birth/nursing are the major vectors. Healthcare workers have to worry about some other bodily fluids they might be exposed to, but that's about it.
You can also get HIV via blood/organ transplants but that's very rare nowadays because we screen for it - it pretty much only happens in countries with lower medical standards, though it CAN happen.
In Africa, the major vector is sex, followed by birth/nursing.
3655545
Abortion is perfectly legitimate, because no one has the right to staple themselves to another human being and act like a parasite off of their body, especially not without their consent.
It is different in a rather fundamental way from what was presented there.
3656010
Huh. The more you know. That said, the birth/nursing one is something that young kids would know about, so maybe that's the idea. Making an AIDS Muppet probably makes plenty of sense, but it does look really weird from this side of the Atlantic.
3656023
Well when 25% of your population is HIV positive, it is kind of inevitable that it has to be addressed.
Sometimes it's the little evils, the subtle ones that fly under the royal radar, that are the most satisfying. Especially when they're directed at a little colt with a talent for crushing things underhoof.
3654469 Discord taught Pound that sometimes he knows the truth and everyone else is blind to it. While this is true, it's misleading, because usually, when you think you know the truth but everyone else disagrees with you, you're wrong. He also taught him that he can't trust his parents completely, which is also true, but maybe a harmful truth to someone very young. He has made him special by making him into a pony who can hold onto his own belief even when everyone else says he's wrong. This isn't evil; it's chaotic. Chaos is disruption, and it can be for good or evil or neither of those. Attila the Hun, Jesus, Mohammed, Copernicus, Newton, Hitler, Einstein, and Martin Luther King all caused chaos.
3656717 >>>because usually, when you think you know the truth but everyone else disagrees with you, you're wrong.>>>
That all depends upon your rational basis and evidence.
If you have overwhelming support for your opinion while the rest remain stolid in their support for something with no evidence or evidence that contradicts their belief, then it is more likely the majority is wrong.
By the way, I am always right.
3654921 >>>Not just nobody, but your parents/loved ones. Who are supposed to believe you and listen and be there.>>>
Anyone who has siblings knows that this ain't true!
Again, Discord's plans would fail with me!
I AM UNTOUCHABLE!!
I wish that I had enough artistic talent to whip out sketches of any quality within any reasonable time, because this story deserves fan art — specifically this picture ponified, with Calvin as Pound and Hobbes as Discord.
3656855 Discord's plans would fail with me!
Only because you've already done his work for him.
3657041 No, they should quit being manic-depressive and thinking the world is out to get them.
Because it's actually out to get ME!!
3662619 No, you mean me. I mean, I'm out to get you. I'm out to get everyone.
3662974 Feh, I've fought flesh-eating bacteria tougher than you!
I've had endotoxin INJECTED INTO MY VEINS JUST BECAUSE!!!
Nothing less than the universe attacking me in all its cosmic fury can even make me break a sweat!
3665513
Er... Sorry?
3729885 That sounds like something CS Lewis would say. It's an interesting point, but even if LeGuin thought that's what her story was about, I don't think that's what made the story famous. That's too abstract to compete for our attention with images of an abused child.
963193
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
And then about 17 more stanzas.
3732780
alas, twas not my darling lenore
twas an orangutan
an orangutan and nothing more
I really liked this. You told a story, and you gave us something to think about.
Pound Cake = A Wiggin. Only time will tell which one.
Hot damn, dude. Now I've got three versions of Discord running around in my head, depending on when I fork from canon.
...that is such a very Discord thing to do. Just a few words, and the seed of so much chaos is sown...
4074775
There are infinite Discords, silly.
3656717
4074775
Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder!
oh wait, that's for that other show...
Yeah, Discord made the kid grow up a little, just in a rather mean-spirited way. Sort of like busting the Santa myth, but aimed at his parents.
But Pound shouldn't have been so freaked out over it.
Surely, he's seen Discord at the shop with Fluttershy & the rest of the Mane 6. So what if he's popping in next to the Cakes on their vacation?
Also, the parents shouldn't have been so dismissive of Discord showing up--they know he's got that ability and will often use it.
In fact, this would only qualify for a TZ type fic if Discord's reform never happened. Here, this is like Jack (the weird neighbor from down the street) Nicholson showing up while the family's on a cross-country trip. Still, a fun story.
And yes, Bad Horse, I'll call you "Shirley" if I want to
3654469 Discord made it so that only Pound would see him while telling him his parents wouldn't believe him. This was all just a ruse to show Pound that people will ignore the truth, even if there is or isn't any evidence that says otherwise.
7207832 Oh. I thought it might be something like that. Though I'm putting these comments at chapters though I feel they may stack up on the main page. Sorry if so.
I'm a bit confused: did Discord being there have any direct negative consequences?