> Exiles
>  by Coyote de La Mancha
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> About Five and Nine
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Oh, Luuunaaaa… where arrrrt thooouuuuu…”
Again, there was that tell-tale giggling. Tia spun around, hoping to catch her little sister sneaking up on her. The unicorn blazed her horn for extra illumination, dispelling any shadows her sister might have been hiding in.
And yet again, nothing but soil, stones, and a few trees.
“’Twas Brillig, and the slithy toves did gire and gimble in the wabe…” muttered one of the trees.
“Sshhhh. If thou cannot be helpful, be still.”
“Mimsy were the borogoves.”
She glared at the speech tree, and it lapsed into a sullen silence.
Tia concentrated, straining her ears. It was a dangerous game, though an important one. Teaching the skills of stealth and cunning were paramount to a child’s survival. In the long run, a foal would be more likely to reach maturity after a childhood playing hide and seek. Of course, that assumed nothing happened to them while playing. Which was also a risk, however calculated.
Then again, Luna was powerful in her own right, and not just considering her tender age. For like Tia, she had magic far beyond that which other ponies possessed. At least, beyond those Tia recalled from before their nomad life together, or the few they’d met since the walled place had fallen, years agone.
Another giggle. Tia spun in circles, the giggling becoming more uncontrolled. Eyes narrowing in her smile, she suddenly reversed direction, thinking to catch her sister in mid-flight. Instead, all she got was dizzier. She staggered, shaking her pink mane to clear her head. More giggling.
A terrible suspicion occurred to her. “Luna?” She shuddered, despite the day’s heat. The clearing's pattern still felt stable, at least for the moment. But nothing stayed so for long. Complacency brought death.
She glanced around again. Everything, every tree and branch and stone, was as it had been. Tia had memorized the clearing and its surrounding areas before they’d started playing, as was her custom. But then again, sameness was not to be trusted overlong. And there were some speaking folk who could change shape, and hunted other speakers. “Luna, sweetheart, come out.” Her voice was unsteady, her mind envisioning the worst. “Thou wins. Just be—oof!”
“Gothee!”
Part of her own shadow had leapt out from where it was cast by the sun of the moment (a reddish cube, with a dark shape wriggling on its surface) and tackled her from beneath, raising her up with its wings and then bearing her to the ground. Laughing now, the little shadow rolled with her in the leaves, its blue mane gathering as many leaves as Tia’s pink one. It seized her mane in its little teeth, growling and snarling as it pulled and tugged.
“Grrr… Rowr…”
“Yea, my fay, I’m got,” Tia laughed with relief as she came to rest on her back, her younger sister straddling her in triumph. “Lo, I am conquered. The day… is thine.”
“Yay!” Forehooves and wings upraised in triumph, the little pegasus crowed her victory to the trees around them.
“Mome raths,” muttered the same tree, frowning. “Outgrabe.”
Without warning, a stone outcropping nearby burst asunder, the beast emerging from its essence roaring with new life. It shook itself, thorned tentacles writhing unevenly and matted fur shivering in the light. Then it stared at them hungrily with its seven mismatched eyes, whiffling their scents eagerly, razor sharp incisors gleaming.
“Rabbit!” screamed Luna.
Instantly, Tia rolled over, protecting her sister as she fired. A ray of blue and silver magic erupted from her horn, burning into the newly-born monster even as it was forced back. It howled, gargling slightly, slime dripping from its broken antlers as it prepared to renew its attack.
The area’s time of pattern was obviously at an end. Tia cursed herself for not feeling the change when it began. It would be a flux realm again, for however long. The flux might last a few moments, or a lifetime. Tia’s eyes narrowed. Then again, if she couldn’t end this quickly and escape, it would definitely last more than either of their lifetimes.
It leapt at them, massive hind limbs hurtling it forward as it burbled, blood and bile flowing freely from its mouth and nose. Its claws scraped against Tia’s hastily thrown up yellow globe of energy, its tentacles curling around it and the sisters within, scratching and squeezing against the barrier. Drawing upon her few years of experience, Tia remained calm. The most important thing was to get them both out of the flux, before it could start affecting them. There would be time for fear later.
Then, there was a sensation for which Tia had no words. It was like sliding, yet it was not. She was herself, yet not, for there was an Otherness to it all. There was no light nor sound. It lasted only a moment, yet that moment was endless and without awareness of time.
The monster glared about itself, gurgling, dying as its own organs tore at one another, trying vainly to find where its meal had gone. Meanwhile, a nearby tree grew to immense proportions with a terrible creaking, groaning sound. It grabbed up the giant beast with a many-flanged branch, and savagely sank teeth of wood and bark into its ribs. The rabbit howled and screamed in agony and terror, flailing and clawing blindly, tentacles tearing at its hunter in vain. And all the while, the newly-transformed murder tree continued chewing it, with its powerful, blunt maw. Finally, either through its injuries or its own treacherous metabolism, the rabbit shuddered and was still.
“Jabberwock,” the tree growled through a mouthful of gore. Meanwhile, ice and snow began to swirl around it in a sudden, furious wind.





“What...was that?”
“A rabbit,” Luna answered, belabouring the obvious. “Didst not see how it leapt?”
“Yes, of course,” answered Tia, a little cross. “I mean, what happened? How did...” she peered at her sister, head cocked to one side. “Didst thou take me with thee?”
“I... I'm sorry,” said Luna, starting to tear up. “I had no time to ask thee, I was afraid...”
“No, no,” Tia shook her head, lying down to better make eye contact with the little filly. “I'm not angry, dearest. Merely amazed. Walking as thou dost, first in dreams, an' lately in shadow. Likely, thoud'st save us both.”
“Thee hath greater magic,” Luna sniffled. “Fire, and light of all colours. Thy shields keep us safe, and thou feels the patterns as they weave, strong or weak. I dare not e'en fly as I would, lest I be caught. So I hide.” She looked down miserably. “And I run away.”
“And glad I am,” nodded Tia. She booped her sibling on the nose playfuly as she added, “And my sense for patterns helped us little just now, I think.”
“I distracted thee.”
“Nay, the fault was mine. 'Twas thou who saved us... Luna?” The unicorn frowned as her sister, crying more, just started shaking her head furiously. Tia tried to put her forelegs around her, but Luna pushed her away. “Luna, what ails thee?”
“I don't know!”
“But--”
Sobbing now, “I don't know!”
Tia looked furtively about them both, completely at a loss. Pattern was strong here, and would resist flux a little when it came. There was no sign of magic, nor of speaking folk who might be affecting the foal. This had to be something from within, somehow. Certainly, Luna had been possessed by melancholy moods before, but never like this.
“Luna, it's alright,” she tried. “The rabbit is far behind. We're safe.”
“It's n-not that,” Luna sobbed. “I just feel... I just c-can't stop...”
“Then don't stop,” said Tia, drawing her into a gentle embrace. “Just let me be with thee.”
“C-can't...”
“Shhh. It's all right,” Tia said, feeling more helpless by the second. “If thou cannot stop, then fight it not. I will be with thee for as long as thou needs.”
Eventually, the terrible sadness released Luna from its hold. The sun had departed or become something else, and the canopy shielded them from whatever the evening sky might hold, for however long. Exhausted, the younger filly looked wistfully around them, and the shadows that dusk had brought.
“Art sure I was not born of shadow?” she asked at last. “Sometimes, when I walk between them, I feel as if I could just be them if I wanted.” She reached out towards the darkness beneath some bushes. “Spread out, like small water in a bigger pool.” She sighed, looking away. “Perhaps it would be better. I could not feel such sadness, then.”
“No!” Tia gathered her up and hugged her fiercely. “Don’t ever do that,” she whispered through her own frightened tears. “Don’t speak it! Thou’rt no shadow, thou’rt my sister, I saw thee born! Please,” she wept. “Please, don’t. My dear, my beloved. When thou speak’st thus, thou makes my heart hurt!”
Luna hugged back. “Nay, I’d never leave thee, fay! I love thee, I’m thy shadow.”
But Tia held her away a little then to look at her with a desperate intensity, smoothing out her little blue mane. “Nay, my fay. The world hath shadows enow. Pray, be my sister, instead.”
Luna frowned in childish deliberation. “An' that thou saw me born,” she’d said carefully, “I cannot be any shadow.” Then she smiled. “For thy memory is awesome.”
Tia held her again, fearful to let her go, even as Luna hugged back.
“But wilt thou tell me of that day?” Luna yawned into her big sister’s pink mane.
“Yea,” promised Tia with a loving smile, still holding her. “And of my own birth, if thou wish it. And of our mother, and our father, and I shall teach thee the songs they sang to us both. But one question, first.”
“Mmm?”
“If fortune divides us, e’en as I search for thee, wilt thou return to me?”
“I promise.” She nuzzled into Tia, sliding down into her lap as she added, “If thou doth but dream, I shall find thee, so thou shalt know how much I love thee.”
Tia snuggled the filly, relaxing at last. “Well then,” she whispered, “I shall sing lullabies to thee in my dreams, so thou canst hear me.”
Luna smiled as she drifted off to sleep, safe and warm in her sister’s embrace. 
“Agreed,” she murmured.
> About Nine and Fourteen
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It had always been just the two sisters, ever since Luna was a weanling. Their father had been born to parents; their mother had emerged from a stream. Both had died long ago. Seasons and days were the whim of chance; the weather even more so. Suns, moons, stars... they might give warmth or take it, be any colour or none. Some made faces. One had tried to eat the sisters with a giant, purple tongue, but they'd hid beneath an outcropping of rock and it eventually went away.
So, though time did pass, it was impossible to say how long. What was time, anyway? An endless struggle to survive. Find the places where pattern was dominant, at least for a time. Feed, rest, perhaps fight for your life. Then flee the coming of the flux again, before it changed you, or something it changed tried to kill you.
Then there were the speaking folk, ponies and others. Sometimes they might be friendly. Sometimes they might not. Some speaking folk preyed on each other as much as other things preyed on them; in a world where nothing lasts and your own friends could become monsters tomorrow, some embraced hatred as the best way to survive.
Yet despite this, a group of ponies had once tried to build a place to stay. A foolish act, and doomed to failure. Just the same, it was hard for the sisters to think ill of them, for their parents had been among them. It might have been that these ponies had simply hoped too well. Or, perhaps they thought they had found a place where pattern would rule forever. And in their defence, it did last a long, long time. Long enough that Tia was born, learned to speak, and saw her sister come into the world. They built walls, these ponies. They planted vegetables, grew them, harvested them. They stored water. They made friends outside their own small herds and watched their foals play together. But inevitably, stability had given way to flux.





Screaming.
Everypony was screaming. 
Families of pegasi were flailing in the air, trying to escape, to get above canopy again, above the treacherous clouds. But the rain was falling now: green, heavy with slime, sticking and slicking every surface. The winged folk fell, crying out to the god that was killing them, their wings glued and useless. Some of them died when they hit the ground. Others were able to slow their descent, only to be snapped up by barbed tongues from the faces suddenly grown on the settlement’s walls. 
Unicorns slipped as they ran, crying out to their families, gathering their loved ones under multichromatic shields. Some of the younger ones tried to teleport, not knowing the dangers of the flux. The lucky ones died quickly; the less fortunate lived for terrible moments, twisted, broken, or even fused horribly with their closest kin. 
Darting between the other ponies, small groups of earth ponies simply made for the walls, trusting in their own stone-like strength to help them survive. But while a few were able to crash through, most of them found that the wooden boundary they’d come to rely upon for so long had become their enemy, eagerly devouring them as soon as they got close enough. Even from beyond the walls, the sounds of anguish could be heard as escapees encountered further horrors in the fluxing wilderness beyond.
And through it all, there were the changes.
Mothers were turning and finding their foals trying to run with legs suddenly half their previous size, or dragging manes and tails three times their own length… or in one case, actually splitting open and attacking their mother with tentacles tipped with claws. Grown ponies would suddenly shudder, bursting into monsters and attacking their former friends with abandon… or perhaps simply shimmer into smoke, or music, or a flock of butterflies. Some would dance, others would laugh or sing uncontrollably. All would ultimately die.
And all the while, the plots of vegetables they had been raising were uprooting themselves, chanting in a bizarre unison as they cavorted and slid about in the green slime from above.
“Luna!”
Tia looked about frantically, trying to ignore the screams. Mama had trusted her to watch her baby sister. She was just here. Yet, somehow, Tia had lost her. She ran, barely trusting her telekinesis to help her avoid spilling in the muck. She fled the monsters, trying not to think about anything but the weanling she loved. 
Tia felt the pain even as she found her. A tiny pair of blue eyes stared up at her with perfect trust as she felt herself change—
**Tia?**
--fangs stabbing out from her gums and claws from her hooves as she reached for the tiny—
**Tia, stop. Stop doing this to thyself.**
Tia blinked, looking away from the helpless weanling to the blue filly standing nearby. She had spoken without speaking, her silent voice more real than anything around them.
Tia’s misshapen mouth worked to form her name. “Loonah?”
Luna walked to her, a running beast moving through her seamlessly as she did. 
**Tia, this is not real. It never happened. Not like this. This is a dream, and thou canst end it if thou tries.**
With a frightened cry, Tia jackknifed awake. In an instant, Luna was there, holding her, comforting her, shushing her hyperventillated gasps. Tia clung to her, buried her muzzle in the younger filly’s mane and her scent.
“It’s alright,” Luna said again and again. “I’m fine. Thou saved me. I’m fine.”
“I was… I turned into…”
“Nay. ‘Twas only a fear, not a memory.”
In time, Tia’s breathing returned to normal, and the two sisters considered one another.
“How long?” Luna asked at last.
“A while,” Tia admitted.
Luna looked at her older sister, thinking. It had been a long time since Tia had been with her during her sadness, when Luna had confessed her temptation to join with shadow. But Luna was a big girl now. She had gotten very good at hiding such things, at smiling when she wanted to weep. It had never occurred to her that Tia would be hiding her own pains.
“Is’t ever the same dream?” she asked.
“Mostly. Sometimes I see Mama and Papa; sometimes, like tonight, I do not.” She shuddered. “But it always has the same ending.”
“Thou changest.”
A nod.
“And thou…”
Tia winced. “Please, don’t.”
“Shhhh.” Luna cuddled closer. “Let me be here for thee, as thou hast for me. There. ’Tis but a dream. An’ ‘tis a fear, I think, not a desire.”
Tia held her tightly. “Never!”
“Then, what is thy fear? Ever, thou hast been the stronger of us both.” She pondered for a moment. “It is thyself that thou fearest, I think. Yet, we both know that thou art no monster. And thou wouldst never harm me. So, what is it that drives these dreams?”
“I don’t know! I just… Luna, what if I do? What if I do hurt thee? What if—”
“What if there are no more suns that warm us?” Luna broke in gently. “What if there are no more patterns to find, and we are lost in flux forever? Should we live thus, ever in fear of what might be? Nay. We must live, my fay. Not merely survive.” She drew the young mare’s face towards her own. “There is always love, and where there is love there is hope. So love, and live.”
Tia blinked, and cocked her head as she considered her sister. “Thou art so young,” she said at last. “How didst thou get so wise?”
“I had the best teacher.” They embraced again, and then Luna rose. “When thou hast this dream again, I will join thee. I was wrong to urge thee to end it, I think. We shall face it together, and thus let nightmare be slain.”





Over time, the sisters came to agree on a shape for their hope. 
At first, Tia was reluctant to share her thoughts with Luna. Yet, it seemed wrong not to. Did she not have the right to know what might lay in their path? Of course she did. And the late night when Tia broached the subject, she found that Luna had been thinking along similar lines. They did not know how or when, but all their hopes and ambitions revolved around one being. The ultimate predator. The architect of their world and their woes.
Without the Lord of All, there was hope to break the cycle, create something new. Something ponies and other thinking folk could rely on. Something like the walled place where they were born. So plants could be grown on purpose, and friends live near each other. So thinking folk of all kinds could stop being prey. So there could be peace. Moments like when they were playing tag as little fillies, but lasting forever.
It was a small hope, vague, and not well-informed. But with their ever-growing power, and their resentment of the eternal contest betwixt pattern and flux, it suited them both. 
They called it the Idea.
> About Twelve and Sixteen
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were only two kinds of people in their reality: the sisters, and everypony else. Sometimes, they would meet with another herd. Seeing two fillies alone in the world, the herd’s leader would oft invite them to join. And, after a while, Tia was old enough that she was fertile. Sometimes a stallion or two would ask her for her hoof in marriage... usually offering to adopt Luna into his family as well, though sometimes not.
Tia always declined such offers. Luna would not have blamed her, though the thought of joining another herd frankly scared her a little. But Tia simply had no interest in other herds, nor in mating, nor in marriage. She was never cruel, and she always thanked them for their kindness. The stallions who’d asked were always disappointed, often even angry. But in the end, the sisters were always left alone again, to travel in their own way.
It was just after Luna had reached her menarche that, for the first time, she found herself courted. Caught by surprise and mortally embarrassed, Luna managed to stammer out a demurement that only endeared her to the young stallion even further. When his herd moved on, he went with them, taking one last look back over his shoulder. Luna kept her face buried in Tia’s mane until he was gone.
A few days later, the sisters had to kill a herd of five adult stallions. 
The earth ponies were physically very powerful; that was to be expected, all the stone-eaters were. But against the sisters they were simply outmatched. Long ago, Tia and Luna had come to realize that other ponies – other speaking folk in general, for that matter – simply could not do what they did. So, while it was a grim chore, it was not a difficult one.
Afterwards, Tia cast about in the pattern realm where they had battled. It was nice and woodsy, and the breeze was cool. She looked at her sister, who, in turn, was looking at the piles of ash which remained of their would-be foes.
Tia cocked her head. “Art well?” she ventured.
“It’s just...” Luna shook her head. “So pointless. So needless. All of this.”
“I know.”
“We weren’t food. We weren’t enemies. They just...”
“Yes.”
Luna collapsed onto the ground, sighing deeply.
“Mayhap…” she sighed. “Mayhap it is beyond us.”
Tia frowned. “What is?”
“All of it. Living. Making anything better. Even the Idea.” She looked up at Tia miserably, struggling against her tears. “It’s always been like this. And I think it always shall. We run, we eat, we get killed. And that’s all we can do. There is nothing else. There is no hope.” Her voice straining, she wept, “We’re only born so we can die!”
“Nay!” Tia knelt beside her, embracing her fiercely. “Sweetheart, nay!”
Luna said nothing, her tears giving way to sobs.
Tia also lapsed into silence. Over the years, Luna’s sadnesses had become increasingly rarer, yet also more powerful. There was no spell nor power to battle such a foe. So, lacking any better idea, Tia spooned against her sister, forelegs around her, letting her feel her presence.
“My poor fay.” Tia kissed the back of Luna’s head gently. “How I do love thee.”
Shoulders shaking, Luna squeezed Tia’s forelegs with her own.
Time passed, and the sunlight shifted slowly from a red to a bluish colour, and then even more gradually to a pale green. Eventually, Luna’s choked breathing mellowed into the occasional inhaling shudder.
“Art hungry?” Tia asked at last. “The trees here bear fruit. It’s been a long time since we had something sweet.”
A shrug. Tia again glanced at the trees. There was of course no way for Tia to know ahead of time how they might taste, but they certainly seemed worth investigating.  
“I have had several offers to join one herd or another over time,” Tia observed. “And recently, thou hast as well. Though he admitted thou art still young and he was willing to wait for thee, it remains: thou art marriageable now. And certainly beautiful.”
“Thou art the beautiful one. I vanish in shadow.”
“And thou art vibrant when in light,” Tia pointed out. “Thou puts the very stars to shame. You know...” her throat closed up a little. She cleared it, and tried again. “You know, if ever thou didst wish to marry,” Tia made herself say at last, “I would never hold thee back.”
Luna looked at Tia sharply. Then she shook her little head as she rose and trotted up to a likely looking tree. “Nay. I could never leave thee. Who would have my heart must love thee as well. Or I marry her not.” She looked the tree up and down, then gave it a sharp kick.
“How doth the little crocodile,” it objected.
“Sorry,” she said, trotting to another tree. A pity, too; its fruits looked ripe and juicy. Oh, well. Blossoms were also yummy.
Tia blinked, looked back at her sister with a quizzical smile. “She?”
Luna nodded, unperturbed. “I shall marry a mare,” she announced. This time, when she kicked, there were no words. She inclined her head to her sister, then nodded towards the tree.
“And have no little ones?” Tia teased as she walked over and touched her horn to the tree’s trunk, dispelling any poison it might have held. “But I had so hoped to be an aunt...”
“Thou shalt be, and I a mother.” Luna gave a child’s broad smile. “We shall have many little fillies, she and I.” As she made this pronouncement, something small and furry with a great fluffy tail started nibbling on the speaking tree’s fruit. 
“Oh? But how shall the two of you have foals?”
When the tree winced and muttered something about shining scales, Luna hopped over and chased the furry thing away, ignoring its chittering curses. Then she nonchalantly bounded back to the edible tree, giving her sister a shrug. 
“Somepony will come along,” Luna said. She took a large mouthful of the juicy, green leaves and the pink blossom they surrounded, speaking thickly through her chewing, “New life oft comesh from the ground, or the water, or a shtorm.”
Tia nodded, and took a dainty bite of another blossom. “True. Or you could find foundlings, such as we were.”
“Ekshactly. All will be well. We shall be a large and beaufiful herd. We three, and our many daughtersh.”
“Oh, but what if thou meets again yon handsome stallion who first declared his love for thee?” Tia’s eyes shone merrily. “Surely thou woudst not shatter his noble heart?”
Luna swallowed and made a face. “Stallions are funny looking.”
The unicorn’s eyebrows rose. “‘Funny looking’?”
Luna nodded primly. “Funny looking. Stallions have blocky shoulders.”
Her sister nodded slowly, bemused. “I... suppose they do...”
“And they have those things. I have seen them mate sometimes, in their dreams. They look silly.”
Tia continued nodding, becoming more amused by the second. “Yes, I am given to understand that all stallions have such things as thou dost describe...”
Luna lay down in the soft grass beneath the tree she’d been grazing on. “Mares can be so beautiful,” she sighed dreamily. “Lovely eyes and graceful limbs, soft curves and supple strength.” She stretched her legs and wings luxuriously as she sighed again, then shook her head in pity. “Stallions have tiny butts.”
Tia made a sound, her shouders shaking.
“Tia?” the pegasus asked innocently, “Didst sneeze?”
Tia shook her head, shoulders shaking harder.
Luna was up again in an instant. “Art unwell? Oh, dear one, say ‘tis not so! How mine heart would crack if...” she stopped, studying her sister with new suspicion. “Art thou laughing at me?”
“No,” Tia managed, in a voice much higher than usual.
“Surely, thou woudst never betray the faith of thy poor baby sister, by making such sport?”
“Nay.” This time, the voice was higher still.
“Then surely thou art not mocking me, even as I pour my very heart out to thee...”
“Never,” Tia squeaked.
“Thou... art!” Luna gave a little noise of outrage, one hoof over her heart, eyes twinkling with mirth despite her look of outrage. “Thou mocks thine own baby sister, this innocent little filly, who hath looked up to thee since she was but a weanling. Breaking her itty bitty little heart. Mocking her superior taste in butts. For shame!” She stamped her little hoof on the ground, lower lip jutting out. “For very, very shame!”
Tia struggled bravely to regain composure. For a few seconds, she nearly succeeded. But then, Luna leaned way, way in, taking up the unicorn’s entire view while bulging her eyes out as big as possible, saying very distinctly,
“Tiny butts.”
“Phphphbbbbbt...!”
So much for composure. What began as a stream quickly became a torrent of helpless laughter. The two rolled on the ground, giggling and laughing. There would be a moment of relative calm in their storming mirth, when they would prop themselves up on their elbows... and then they would make eye contact, and the squall of laughter would once again render them helpless. Finally, the time came when their mirth was all but spent. While Luna’s chuckles subsided, Tia eyed her from a near crouch, her eyes full of mischief.
“Ha!” Tia leaped out and grabbed her little sister, biting her mane.
“Eeep!”
With a squeal, Luna launched her counterattack. Soon they were both laughing again and wrestling in earnest. In physical matters, Luna was by far the more dangerous of the two, and had been since her last growth spurt. Tia was distinctly unused to this. With both greater strength and an extra pair of limbs, Luna quickly gained the upper hoof. Yet almost immediately after, she found herself suspended in a golden bubble, while Tia leasurely stood again, humming contentedly to herself.
“Tia!” her voice was tinny and muffled as she pounded on the shield. “Tia, thou cheat! ‘Tis not fair!” Yet, while Tia brushed stray grass out from her coat and trotted over to the edible tree, the pegasus gave a sly smile as the sphere drifted into the trees’ shade.
“Aha!”
“Aaaaack!”
Bursting out from the shadows to one side, Luna grabbed Tia in a flying tackle, carrying her away from the clearing and into the bushes. The shrubbery rustled violently as the wrestle game gave way to a tickle fight. Eventually, both sisters rolled out again, helpless with laughter.
Finally, the giggles ran their course. “This has been a mixed day,” Tia observed, still smiling.
“It has,” agreed Luna.
“Still,” Tia smiled, “at least things are not so bad that we cannot laugh at stallions’ tiny butts.”
Luna smiled back, and there was only a little sadness in it. “That is true.”
> About Fifteen and Seventeen
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two sisters were very cautious in their dealings with all forms of life, and they were wise beyond their years. Still, there was still only the two of them, and they were still quite young. So it was they relied more upon their power to survive, where other herds relied upon their numbers to grant a variety of skills, as well as mixed generations to grant experience. Indeed, there was only one speaking creature the sisters knew of who had magic such as theirs, and that one surpassed even their abilities in every way. Speaking folk mentioned his name only in whispers. Ponies in the walled place had even prayed to the Lord of All, giving daily thanks for sparing them from flux’s wrath until the very day they’d died.
Tia and Luna found the creature in the only way one could find anyone or anything in their world: by accident. Normally, the sisters avoided the flux as much as possible.  The more intelligent and strong-willed one was, the longer flux seemed to take in changing one... but that was nothing to rely upon. Nothing about flux was reliable. So Tia would guide them through the shortest routes possible between pattern realms, as quickly as possible. They would run and fly through flux, sometimes for long periods, dodging the strange transforming creatures and plants along the way.
But one day, Tia stopped. She looked about herself, wearing her frown of concentration.
“Tia?”
“This way.”
“Tia?” Luna looked around, uncertainly. “Where are we going?”
“There is a pattern nearby. A strong one.”
“A realm?”
“No. Something else.”
Luna followed her sister, trying to control her trepidation. Tia was leading them deeper into flux, not away. Though it had never happened before, it occurred to Luna that flux might confuse even her older sister’s senses. It was a terrifying thought. Still, she resolved that whatever lay ahead, they would face it together.
They broke out of the foliage, and found themselves at a cliff overlooking a vast, rolling plain. This was deeper into flux than either of them had ever ventured. The ground was multicoloured, bright, and writhing. Winged creatures flew through the air, some of them plainly meant only to crawl. Suns and moons hummed and sang overhead as they danced and occasionally ate one another. For a moment, Bluish fluid seeped from the ground, collected into pools, and then rained upwards into the sky, vanishing into the aether. 
Then the plain itself surged, became something living and foul, a vast mass of greyish semi-liquid flesh as far as the eye could see. It covered itself with eyes and mouths, even as misshapen creatures of all kinds formed themselves from its mass, flying or crawling frantically away. Some lost their balance, falling back into the fleshplain. Others were snared by tongues, tentacles, or other limbs which sprouted from the gibbering mass. All of these were devoured by the very source of their life, save for those few which soared upwards out of reach, or reached the tree line and vanished.
“Luna,” whispered Tia as she looked up, “we have found our enemy.”
“Nay.” Luna’s voice was small as she looked down. “We behold the world.”
Above the madness, dancing to its uneven tempo, was the serpentine form of its lord and master. The being some said had created the very world, and all within it.
Discord.
They had never seen anything like what contorted in the air before them. Discord was a being of monstrous appearance, a random hodge-podge of asymmetrical form. Yet, what else would such a one have been? Up until then, there had been two words for predators in the sisters’ language, depending on how the beast hunted. If it leapt upon its prey, it was a rabbit; if it stalked and chased, it was a wolf. There were so many variances in form and structure, there was no point in further distinction.
But what the sisters looked upon that day was neither class of predator, and yet both. One leg was for leaping and climbing, the other for running and giving chase. Its mismatched wings should not have allowed for flight, its uneven teeth should not have allowed it to feed. Yet it flew without care. And it fed, if it fed at all, very well indeed. Its very existence was a testament to its unconcern towards the very rules of survival. The monster laughed at all expectations, even those of flux itself, for it refused to be altered by the madness it danced in. This was Discord. And all of reality, even flux and pattern, were both prey and plaything to one so powerful and strange.
“Tia, we must withdraw,” Luna whispered. “The Idea is folly. He is too great.”
“Nay,” growled Tia. “This is the creator of all our pain, and the maker of every injustice ever suffered throughout the world. We must find a way.”
“Then we must find it later!” Luna hissed. “Tia... Tia, we are deep in flux.” She grabbed Tia’s shoulder, turned her to face her. “We must leave, ere we are overtaken!”
Tia hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. We withdraw.”
Even as they began their retreat back into the brush, the fleshplain receded into itself, resolving into a landscape of rolling hills covered with purple grass. Rivers flowed between the hills, filled with a chunky orange substance. Meanwhile, all around the sisters, the plants themselves rustled and grew, grasping at the two ponies hungrily.
There was no way to hide now. There was only the hope of a quick escape. Luna faded into the shadows, and the carnivorous plants swiped at her ineffectually, even as she gazed at them with narrowed blue eyes. Tia burned several of the murder trees into cinders in an instant, holding the others at bay with a shield of gold.
“Luna, get out of here!”
“No!”
“I’ll catch up!”
“I’ll not leave thee here!” Frantically, Luna looked around them. The entire copse had animated, and the plants were attacking not only the sisters but one another. Among all the other random things going on throughout the realm, Discord might not have seen them even now. But even as Tia blazed her way through the vegetation, trying to carve a way to retreat, they kept surrounding her, their numbers seemingly infinite. Her shields seemed impenetrable, but for how long in a place such as this? Going back as they’d come was plainly impossible. And if the realm was stable enough to allow for safe teleporting, Tia would have done so, either taking Luna with her or trusting her to follow through shadow.
Luna glanced skyward. Flying would be an even greater danger, plunging upwards into a mass of flux-spawned creatures and hungering faces. And carrying Tia, her abilities to avoid combat would be nonexistent.
Luna had never shadow-stepped with Tia since she was a small child. But then, as now, death was on the line.
Tia would just have to forgive her.
Suddenly, there were no more shadows. Every tree and bush gave off a weird glow as it burst into a brown flame which gave no heat. Luna crouched, exposed, wings spread and ready to flee. Tia glanced outwards to the plain, and her horn started to flash with the power of her will.
There was a snap. A burst of white light. The sisters found themselves suspended before the monstrous Lord of All. Tia’s eyes narrowed as she focused her most powerful spell of destruction at her enemy. But her attack simply melted, gushing into the ground like water, seeping into the newly-checkered soil and vanishing.
They were suspended in mid-air like ripe fruit, ready to be plucked and tasted at the leisure of their captor.
“Lokkentrett gollawop shinnagritt,” Discord observed. “Bzm.”
The monstrosity reached forward with claw and paw, lifting the tops of their skulls open as easily as a foal lifting a flat stone to see what dwelt beneath.
“Bzm, bzm, bzm. Geeblefitz. Grs aroogat hmmm, nice. Very nice. I especially like the conjugations you’ve put together.” It closed their heads again and they simply sealed; seamless, bloodless, painless.
“So. Hello girls. I’m Discord.” The madness in the creature’s smile was not comforting. “Welcome to my dance.”
Tia frowned. “Your... dance?” Well, she thought, at least we can move again.
“Absolutely, my dear... er...”
“Tia,” she supplied.
“Tia. Yes.” A wave of dismissal. “Suitably boring. Anyway.” Discord addressed both of them again. “Yes. My dance. You see girls, what you seem to perceive as some kind of struggle between pattern and flux is actually all that is real in our world. It’s the only thing that matters, if even it does. I like to call it the Dance of True Chaos.”
Something rainbow-coloured and fishlike paused in its flight to study the three of them quizzically. Then, it blew a large pinkish bubble before winking out of existence with an audible pop! The bubble continued on its merry way, humming to itself.
“Everything is possible in flux, you know,” Discord went on. “Even pattern. So, pattern gets belched forth every now and then, and little pockets of it develop. Sometimes they last a little while, sometimes they last longer. Meantime, so does life: another pattern, though far more interesting, since it contains so much flux within it.”
At that moment, a miniature version of Discord appeared on the creature’s shoulder, wearing red horns.
“Why art even speaking to these ponies?” it demanded.
“They interest me,” Discord answered.
Another duplicate appeared on Discord’s other shoulder, this one with a ring of light hovering over its head.
“And well they should,” it nodded. “They withstood the heart of flux, and even now are unaffected. How many creatures can do that? If that kind of uniqueness isn’t interesting, what is?”
The first duplicate frowned. “So? We don’t need these stupid ponies, we don’t need anyone! We’re Discord! They’re toys! Playthings!” A leer. “Let’s see how many ways we can take them apart!”
“Oh, let’s be nice to them,” suggested the second duplicate. “When was the last time we really talked to anyone?”
“No! blast them into bits!”
Discord glanced over at the two sisters, who were staring at him, wide-eyed. “Moral dilemmas,” he shrugged. “You know I hate them.”
“Blast them now! Blast them now!” raged the horned duplicate.
“Thou stay out of this,” the other admonished. “Discord doesn’t have to blast thee now.”
“But I demand Discord blast me now!” the horned duplicate shrieked. “So blast me now!”
Discord glanced at the horned duplicate with eyes bursting into flame. The blaze surged out, consuming the duplicate in fire, reducing it down to a blackened skeleton.
“Oh, um,” blinked the other duplicate, backing away slightly. “That’ll work, I guess...”
More flame, and it, too, was reduced to charred bone.
A biped with three arms and a gold bracelet frowned up at them all from his assortment of clay tablets. “Is this wackadoodle really necessary?”
“Sorry,” Discord called down, brushing the ash from its shoulders. “Internal monologue.”
The biped went back to his tablets and began pressing marks into them, muttering about not being able to file any exemptions without a form. Beside him, a shapeless spawn made disappointed noises. Suddenly, his bracelet made a small, chiming sound. “Ah,” he said, crumbling into geometric pieces, “time for my break.” 
Discord turned his attention back to the ponies. “Anyway, where were we?”
Tia made her mouth work. “The... dance,” she managed.
“Oh, yes. That,” smiled Discord. “My one true love: chaos itself.” Behind the Lord of All, a series of large sundials fell from the sky, landing on a huge, barren tree. Immediately, they began to melt. 
“But, why?” Luna asked. “Why this dance of yours at all? Why... any of this?” She gestured around them both. “Thy power is obvious, thy dominion without question. So, why force the dance on the rest of us? Canst not leave speaking folk in peace?”
“Leave you in peace?” Discord smiled incredulously. “Oh, my dear... eh...”
“Luna.”
“Loo-nah?” A frown. “Ugh. How terribly awkward.”
Despite the danger, Luna heard herself exclaim, “That happens to be my name, thou wretch! How dare thee!” even as her mind screamed at her in horror, What art thou doing thou brainless git, he’ll kill you both...!
It was then that the creature did the last thing they would ever have expected.
Discord... laughed.
“Oh, you girls are just adorable!” Discord cackled. “Wretch indeed! The Lord of all Chaos, a wretch! Oh, how marvellous. And as for leaving you be...” the creature leaned in uncomfortably close, madness dancing in red-on-yellow eyes. “Did I not just explain how, in sooth, all life as you girls know it owes itself to flux? That without flux, there would be none? Not thee, nor thy sister? Oh, Lulu,” Discord looked at her fondly.
“Luna.”
“...I do believe the world is far more interesting with thee still within it.” The creature looked sideways at Tia with a calculating eye, one claw stroking its beard. “Hmmm. Not so sure about thy sibling, however.”
Tia, meanwhile, had been studying the creature intently. “Nay, Discord. Though we owe our lives to thee, so too do we owe thee the deaths of all we once held dear.” Her eyes showed neither fear nor hatred as she said earnestly and with great dignity, “We remember both these debts. And we shall repay both, in full. Thou hast my word.”
Discord’s laughter howled, and marshmallow clouds shifted colour and curled away from them as it began to rain something brown and sweet-smelling, killing the grass below.
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” he crowed. “Better than I could have ever hoped for!”
Then, a snap of Discord’s claws. There was a burst of light, and the sisters were someplace entirely else. Slightly sticky from the brown rain, granted. But also unharmed.
Tia glanced around. “Pattern,” she said, “but weak. Canst shadow-walk us both?”
Luna glanced at her in surprise. “Of course.”
Soon they were in a different place of almost absolute darkness, sinking quickly into a mire. As one, the two of them illuminated the area in blue and pink. Luna grabbed Tia and hovered upward, while Tia surrounded them both in a hemisphere of impenetrable force.
They were hovering over a thick swamp. There was greenish mud up to their hips from when they’d first arrived. The sky was not hidden by the canopy, but it possessed no visible suns, moons, or stars. Tia nodded. “Good. This should last a while. And I think Discord knows not where we are now.”
“I am glad. Truly. Shall thy shield rest upon the muck for a moment?”
“It can.”
“Good.” Luna stopped flying, the globe of light landing in the mud below with a splat. “Now.” Luna grabbed Tia by the shoulders, demanding, “Art gone completely mad?!”
Tia arched an eyebrow. “Art thou?”
“I did not threaten Discord!”
“No, thou sniped at it. And,” she added, “it seemed to like it.”
Luna considered this, settling back onto four hooves and sitting down. “He... did, didn’t he?”
Tia nodded. “It did. And it liked my threats, as well, if only for their novelty. They amused it. Further, while Discord was sensing us, I think it did not know we also were sensing it. I can tell you this: it has a stable pattern. The strongest I have ever felt.”
“Yet he dwells deep in a realm of flux. And recall, he claims that his power fuels chaos itself.”
“The place where it dwells is in flux, yes,” she considered. “But I think it feeds on the dance it spoke of, and with the power it gains, it controls the world around itself. As it said, whenever flux threatens to be overcome by pattern, Discord feeds the flux again. I think it harvests that dance of chaos. Like the gardens within the walled place where we were born. And somehow, Discord remains itself, e’en in the centre of it all. Eternal. Unchanged.”
Luna frowned, nodding. “Then his power is great, indeed.”
“Yet not endless.”
“No. Certainly not.”
“So, now is thy turn to speak. Tell me, does Discord dream?”
“Oh, yes,” the pegasus affirmed. “He dreams.”
“Of what?”
“That which he cannot have,” Luna smiled grimly. “True surprise.”
Tia nodded. “Thus it has pattern in its power, and in its mind as well.” Tia returned the smile. “An’ that it dreams, thou canst find it again at leisure. An’ as it has pattern…”
“He has limits,” finished Luna. “And anyone with limits can fall.”
“Luna, the Idea! We can do this!” Tia could barely contain her excitement. In the trees, unseen things fluttered and slithered away, startled by the sudden noise.
“Yes, he can be overthrown,” agreed Luna. “But where best to do it? In pattern, or in flux?”
Tia considered this. “In pattern, Discord is slightly less powerful. And we, slightly more.”
“Yet in flux, all things are possible. Even two ponies casting down the Lord of all Chaos.”
Tia nodded. “In flux then.” She smiled. “A true surprise. And without Discord’s power continuing the flux, the world...” She practically shook with excitement. “Pattern will take hold, flux fading. The world will ultimately become a pattern realm. What our parents and their allies dreamed, we can make real. Not just for a few. For everyone!”
Luna was quiet, however, matching Tia’s elation with a pensive look. “He shall never be defeated,” she mused at last. “We must accept that, from the beginning. Else we cannot succeed.”
Tia frowned in puzzlement, but remained silent. 
“E’en in his overthrow, he will be pleased,” Luna explained. “Even amused. It will be novel for him. A respite from endless, timeless boredom is no defeat. And as his power must be vast indeed, to remain as himself in his chaos dance for so long... “
Tia nodded again, understanding. “We must see that Discord will be willing to be overthrown, and then see that it remains powerless afterwards.”
“Yea. We dare not seek his destruction.”
“Agreed. Not only is trying to kill Discord too dangerous--”
“--but no world should be born from death,” Luna finished.
“Exactly. So, we must bind Discord, instead. Force a greater pattern upon it. An’ that its power flows from chaos, once pattern is more ascendant than flux, the dance will be all but gone. Discord’s own prison should keep it too weak to break free.”
“Yes. But how can we do this? Thy most powerful spells melted at his whim.”
Tia sighed. “I know not” she admitted. “At least, not yet. We are still young. Perhaps when we are older, we shall have the power. Perhaps there is an ally, a third yet to join us, we might yet find.”
“Mayhap.”
“Thy future wife, mayhap?”
Despite herself, Luna smiled. “Mayhap.”
Travelling further into the swamp, they found a suitable place to rest, and Tia cast her usual shields to protect them both. It was customary for Tia to take first watch, though tonight Luna seemed more inclined towards introspection than rest. She simply lay there, quiet and still, staring into the night. After a time, Tia considered her sister anew. “Luna?”
“Mmm?”
“Thou keepest calling Discord ‘he.’ Such a one surely predates all sex. Why thinkest Discord as male?”
Luna contemplated the night before them. “Didst not notice his posterior?”
Tia felt one ear go flat in her confusion. “Its... wings?”
Luna’s face was completely deadpan as she continued to look ahead. “Nay,” she shook her head slightly. “Discord has a tiny butt.”
Tia groaned, placing her hoof on her forehead. “Of course he does.”
Luna cocked an eyebrow at her sister. “Art well?”
But the sister of light only shook her head, as if in pain. “Please, I beseech thee. Stop talking.”
And in the darkness, Luna chuckled.
> After They Rested
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

What had seemed obvious and optimistically simple upon their first glance seemed much less so once they had slept. After breaking their fast, the sisters traversed the swamp, talking and speculating. What if they never found their third? What if this was as strong as they would ever be? What if Discord could never be overcome by might, but only by trickery? Could they somehow trick him into binding himself? They continued discussing the possibilities as best they could, trying to come up with a plan.
The murk gave way to a dark and tangled wood, with a thousand eyes peering at them as they walked. In a way, this was comforting; after all, pattern that could support so much life could also support them, however long as it lasted. On the other hoof, it was unlikely that all these eyes belonged to herbivores.
So really, the wolves’ attack was inevitable and a surprise to no one. Obviously formed from murder trees, they stalked and leapt at the sisters, wooden fangs snapping and claws of sharp bark rending at them. Still, there were only a few of them.
Tia’s magic blasted one into glowing ash even as Luna spun in mid-air, deflecting another into the path of Tia’s magic to also be reduced to cinders. A globe of gold ensnared two more, reducing itself to a quarter of its initial size in an instant, crushing the wolves with a terrible crackling sound. Another, leaping at Luna, snapped at the air when its prey simply faded into the shadows. It collided with one of its fellows, and both were crushed by a glowing sphere slamming down upon them both with a meteor’s force. For an instant, Luna was back on the ground, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. Then, she was gone again, two more wolves colliding with one another where she had just been. A burst of sizzling light from Tia’s horn, and the dazed predators were no more.
The remaining wolves fled into the shadows from whence they’d come. Celestia reduced their comrades’ bodies to ash as a matter of course, and the sisters continued their journey.
“’Tis so hot here,” Luna sighed at last. “How I miss the snow.”
“Little food grows in the cold,” Tia pointed out. “Besides, remember the frozen stones we had to traverse last…”
“…and the Cold Ones who dwelt there. Yes, I remember,” Luna nodded. “Ithaqua was a powerful foe, though we did escape him and his people’s hunger, all. Yet even then, we weren’t always sweating.” She made a face. “I wasn’t always sweating. Thou seems at ease with this swelter.”
“I suppose it is warm,” Tia admitted. “Though for me, ‘tis the endless canopy that is dreary.” She sighed. “Oh, what I would trade for a sunbeam to lie in, or…”
Her voice trailed away as they broke into a clearing, well-lit and cheerful. The stones which ringed the place were many-coloured and glittering in the bright sun, the lake they surrounded cool and inviting.
The sisters looked at the water. Then at one another. Then at the lake again. Then around themselves.
No illusion.
No ambush.
After an instant’s silent conference, they retreated beck to the forest’s shadow.
…and burst out again, running at full speed, leaping from the massive stones and up over the waters below. Luna twirled and looped happily as Tia arched gracefully into the air, the many colours of her magic trailing behind her.
“Wa-HOOOOOOOOO!”
They both struck the water at about the same time, diving down, eyes open, grinning at one another even as they searched for threats from below. The waters were deep, deeper than they could see. But though schools of fish and other things darted away from them, nothing came forth, and the flash of Tia’s horn revealed nothing in the stygian darkness but pale and harmless things, swimming down away from the light.
They resurfaced laughing, splashing one another as they swam about.
“Race you,” Tia offered.
Luna shook her mane. “Hm-mm.”
Tia tsked. “No sense of fun, this one.”
“Wings are for flight,” Luna yawned, “ill-suited for swimming.”
“So fly underwater.”
“Thee first.”
Tia blew a raspberry at her while backstroking.
Luna fluttered with her wings half in the water, deluging her sister.
“Ack!” 
A flash of bluish-green, and Tia sent a wave larger than either of them at Luna. Luna leapt over it, hovering as she shook the water from her feathers and coat. The fact that this, also, pelted Tia liberally was of course pure coincidence.
“Cheater,” Tia laughed.
“Oh, thou shouldst talk,” Luna said, rolling her eyes. “Thee an’ thy bubbles!”
Tia gave an indignant sound. “They are not ‘bubbles,’” she protested. “They are spheres. Elegant globes of magic and wonder.”
“Oh, poof!” Luna dismissed the idea with a wave. “Whenever thou art about to lose, thou blowest bubbles with thy mind. Horn bubbles,” she scoffed. 
“Horn bubbles?”
“Horn bubbles,” Luna confirmed, eyes closed in great dignity.
Poip!
“Hey!” Luna’s voice came faintly from within the sphere of light. “Tia!”
Beneath her, Tia contentedly floated on her back. Taking in a half-mouthful of water, she blew bubbles at her sister.
Then, she blinked.
The sphere of light was empty.
“Luna?” Tia cast about her as she tread water. Had her sister entered shadow in broad sunlight? Or, more likely, had she entered dream while bound within magic? Either way, this was wonderful! Never before had Luna done either one. Nothing could get past Tia’s shields, not since they were both very young. But now, today, Luna had!
Well, however she escaped, she must show me how she did it, Tia thought. Her heart soared, even as excitement surged within her mind. It seemed they were both still growing in power, after all. They could continue training one another, strengthening one another, until they were ready. The Idea was again a reality within their grasp. But today, they would celebrate Luna’s victory.
She paused, her look becoming calculating. Of course, first I must deal with however she plans to pounce me. 
Yet, even as Tia began to glance downward to the shadows below, Luna burst up through the water next to her, her eyes serious. 
“Wolf.”
In a flash of light, the sisters were at the shore again. Dry wings and dry coats, Tia having refused to take even the water with them, just in case the lake itself was an enemy.
The lagoon’s surface broke as the creature flailed up into the sunlight. Its pale orange chitin covered massive, multi-segmented limbs ending in pincers capable of rending a pony in half. Its roar was one of a predator denied, having stalked from its lair hoping for sweet morsels from above. Its eyes were black, soulless, and ravenous, its cavernous mouth filled with rows of massive, flexing, extending fangs.
For an instant, the sisters stared at it, wide-eyed. 
“Race you,” said Luna quietly.
They vanished into the forest.





“…so, should we encounter such a place again, I shall shield the depths, across the space of the lake,” mused Tia as they walked. “E’en if something breaks past my bubble, however unlikely that may be, I should sense it. And thus we can still respond, forewarned.”
“Thy ‘bubble’?”
Tia shrugged, smiling.
Luna smiled back. “Canst blow a bubble so large?”
Tia nodded. “I’m sure of it. Especially with thee aiding my practice. And speaking of,” she looked at her sister fondly, “How didst leave thy confines so readily? T’were no shadows to walk.”
“I became shadow. No,” she added hastily at Tia’s stricken look, “I did not merge with it. Nor would I. I just… was.” Her look became pensive as she considered. “I have no words for what I did. But between shadow and dream, there was I. I was both. Yet I was none, for I was still Luna. And I walked between.” Hesitantly, she looked to her sister, only to see Tia smiling at her, eyes full of love.
“Thou truly art a wonder, my fay.”
Luna returned her smile, and they nuzzled while they walked.
After a time, Luna giggled. “Poor wolf,” she said. 
Tia’s eyebrows went up. “Poor wolf?”
“Didst see its face? So close to having two juicy ponies, and yet denied. Poor thing.”
Tia’s eyebrows rose even higher.
“Oh, lookest not so strange,” Luna chided good-naturedly. “This has been a great day. On a day such as today, I love all the world. E’en a wolf, wet an’ snappy though it might be.” She paused, then added, “E’en thy bubbles do I love, now that they can hold me not.”
Tia looked at her slyly. “And my bubbles love thee back, an’ scheme to ensnare thee anew.”
“Oh, poor, foolish bubbles. Doomed to disappointment.”
With a thought, Tia cast another sphere around her sister, this time keeping her eyes upon her. Luna simply dissolved before her eyes, even as she reformed next to her, beaming.
“My poor, poor bubbles,” agreed Tia happily. “Their time hath come an’ gone.”
Luna pranced ahead a little. “It has, indeed.”





It was some time later when Luna’s walking slowed, frowning in puzzlement.
“Luna?”
Luna’s ears shifted, trying to catch a sound that only her mind could hear. “What… what is that?”
She looked about them then, her eyes lighting quickly on a shape deep in the shadows. “It… looks like some kind of tree. With fruit? Nay,” She took a step towards it. “Nay, they… sing.”
“Luna, wait, don’t go near it!”
“But they’re calling. Can’st hear them?”
“I can a little now, aye. But so do spine traps, and betimes murder trees! That doesn’t make it safe!”
“But… those things don’t dream. These do.”
“Only that we know of. Stay clear!”
Yet, cautiously, the young pegasus continued her approach.
“Luna?” Tia reluctantly followed her sister towards the crystalline tree. Its pattern was amazingly strong, yet there was something of flux pulsing within it, as well. That made it hard to read, which Tia trusted not. 
Yet, as she got a closer look, some of her concerns were lessened. One of the few things a pony could rely on in life was that the less symmetrical a thing might seem, the more dangerous it likely was. And the tree’s six jewels, hanging like fruit, seemed almost deliberate, both in form and placement. Indeed, nothing about them seemed haphazard, though their symmetry was not a perfect one. 
Each gem was a different colour, and each gave a different, silent note. Tia could hear them in her mind more clearly now, blending with the deep-felt thrummmm of the tree itself to create a chord of purest harmony.
Luna looked over one shoulder back to her sister, her eyes and smile brilliant with joy. 
“They’re dreaming about us!”
> Epilogue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It hadn’t been much of a battle. Really, it hadn’t been a battle at all. And that had suited the two sisters perfectly. 
They had confronted Discord with every sign of anger and arrogance, keeping any strategy hidden from their expressions. Amidst floating islands in a purple sky and fragments of unknowable shapes along a checkered countryside, they had challenged him in the depths of his own domain. They’d kept no secrets from him, save for one detail.
Predictably, Discord had laughed at them both. “You should see yourselves right now!” he’d guffawed. “The expressions on your faces! So intense! So sure of yourselves!”
And, the plan had worked. Never suspecting that what they had was not a weapon of death but of transformation, Discord had not even bothered trying to defend himself. Thus, the immortal had himself been transformed. The self-proclaimed Lord of all Chaos was now but a stone semblance of his former self, caught in mid-laughter.
For an instant, they’d even dared to relax.
Then, pain had struck them down.
The rule of chaos had been broken. The dance had been interrupted, its master silenced. The waves of flux echoed out from his sudden stillness, then surged back along the lines of connection their magic had used, from static Discord, through static Elements, and ultimately into the living wielders of those self-same talismans. Luna screamed as she felt her living patterns pulse and flow; symbolism, intent and motion blurring and becoming one. Desperately, she fought against the changes being wrought against her. Yet even as she did, the flux reached deep within her, pulling in all directions. Memories. Imaginings. All she was and could have been, all she longed to be and all she might yet have become. Her own thoughts, and others’ thoughts of her, crushing against her mind.
There was too much vision to see, too much sound to hear, too much texture to touch. It was all. Everything, everywhere, drowning her in herself and the world. She was losing herself within the infinity of what might be, losing what it was to be Luna.
Then, somehow, she heard the voice. Even if her ears and mind could somehow forget that voice, her heart never would.
“Luna!” Tia gasped from an unfathomable distance. Luna managed to see, within her mind, her sister within the flux they had released. She saw Tia curled within it, even as she, herself was being crushed by it. It was like fighting a sky or an angry sea, save that the flux tore at her from within as well as without.
“Luna!” She cried again. “Luna, don’t fight it!”
“Tia?” Luna managed.
“Trust me!” 
Reaching across the flux that united them both, Tia’s magic caressed Luna’s mind with her own. Luna recognized the memory that Tia shared with her, for all that it was never hers.
Tightness. Relief for a moment, then stress again. Crushing. Crushing. Again, again, worse every time. More, then even more, then finally… an explosive release. The sudden light, the sound. The cold. The vividness of every sense. The overwhelming newness. The first breath.
Life.
There was no time for hesitation. Luna focused her will on channeling and riding the flux’s currents rather than fighting them, allowing it to curl her into herself as Tia had. Rather than trying to keep the powerful magic out, she lovingly gathered it in. She guided it, not to change her into something else, but to become part of her, integrating it into herself. 
They had always shared a bond of birth. But this time they were being born together, even as they gave birth to themselves.
A small eternity later, it was over. They lay on the ground beside one another, gasping. The terrible light was fading from their eyes and their minds. They opened their eyes to regard one another, each one somehow holding the other’s hoof. They smiled, and, unsteadily, helped each other up.
“Oh, sister of my heart and friend to my soul,” Luna shook her head with a rueful smile. “Where would we be without thy memory?”
“Why am I so unbalanced?” Tia wondered. “I feel as if I... what!?” she broke off, craning her neck to see her wings splaying out instinctively.
Luna reached out to steady her. “Easy. I don’t understand either, but give thyself time. And no need to illuminate us, the sky is yet light.”
Tia cocked an eyebrow. “’Tis not my magic which illumines thus, my fay.”
Luna glanced around.
“Do this,” Tia advised, sweeping her hoof upwards to her forehead.
Luna mimicked her, eyes growing wide as her hoof touched something new. “Is… is that…”
“Aye,” Tia smiled. “It seems we again have much to learn from one another.”
Suddenly, the ground quaked with rage. Luna quickly lifted Tia above the tremoring landscape. The small peak of land upon which Discord’s throne had rested jutted up violently, becoming a massive monolith of stone. Tia caught the statue in her magic as it was tossed into the air, keeping it from harm. Above them, clouds rolled back, some dissolving, others shifting into varying shades of white, black and grey. The sky faded, becoming a strange shade of pale blue. Beneath them, ripples of magical effect could be seen spreading out in all directions, the ground transforming into various shades of green, places of fierce activity now becoming still.
From many of these places, a variety of speaking folk began to cautiously emerge.
There was a sky-splitting crack! and the newly-born mountain fractured towards the top, water gushing downward from its cavernous wound, threatening to drown everything below it. There was no time to think. Tia fired out a long, continuous blast of arcing light from where Luna held her. Her magic etched along the ground for miles, fusing it, burning trenches into the earth for the water to run along. The trenches carried the cascading water to sea even as the tremors began to subside, the mountain ceased its growth, the lands and newly-born rivers subsided. 
The sisters landed on a mountain ledge, looking out at the revealed landscape. Luna was exhilarated at being so high, though the clouds were yet higher. Tia was less ecstatic, though she was certainly glad to see the world’s new marvels. What they’d expected to take a generation or more had unfolded before them in a few minutes. Not to mention their own rebirth. And now, they had survived them both. The smile they shared was part victory, part relief.
Below them, both sisters could see speaking folk of all kinds. They were in the open now, stretched out over the land. Most were finding others of their own kind and fleeing in various directions, glad to get away from the epicentre of what must have seemed to be the most massive flux of all time. Some ran, some jumped into the water and swam, others flew. 
Beside the massive finger of stone, a rainbow formed in the mist of its waterfall. And as it formed, ponies began to assemble. Earth ponies and unicorns came from forests and hills and plains. Pegasi, while a few flew along the land, mostly came circled from hidden places above the clouds. Luna glanced at them with quiet yearning, wondering what life had been like in the sky. Then she looked down again, brows furrowing. Never had she nor her sister imagined there were so many of their own kind, hiding and fighting across the world. And now, they were all gathering at the base of the mountain upon which the two sisters stood.
Then, Luna blinked, eyes widening. She glanced at Tia, saw her own confusion and anxiety mirrored in her sister’s expression. Each of them stared, puzzlement giving way to mild horror. They backed away from the ledge as one, both poised with one hoof raised, uncertain whether to flee.
“Are they...” Luna met her sister’s gaze again.
Tia finished her sister’s question. “…Bowing?”