//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: The First Lesson 
// by Midnightshadow 
//------------------------------//

        Grey. An endless expanse of grey. No wind blew, not any more. No stars shone, not in half a forever.

        "Tia?" Luna's voice was soft, wavering. Celestia looked down at her younger sister, and was suddenly struck by the improbability that Luna was still smaller than she. The years they both held, almost beyond count, hadn't changed that at all. Luna was still half-grown, would forever be half-grown.
        "Yes, dearest one?"
        "I'm scared."
        The eternal silence swallowed them once more. She wasn't sure for how long; a year, a minute, a century. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered any more.
        "I'm scared, Tia," Luna said again. Idly, Celestia wondered if she'd missed a whole conversation. That had happened once. Luna had been recounting her time within the moon, an untold eternity ago, and the recounting had taken as long as the imprisonment. It didn't matter, she'd had nothing else to do. They'd lain together after that for another thousand years, unmoving, as Celestia picked apart her memories and put the conversation back together. At the end, she'd just nodded and said, "That's nice."

        The world outside was grey. An endless expanse of grey. No wind blew, not any more. No stars shone, not in half a forever.

        Canterlot. That was it. "Canterlot," Celestia repeated, aloud.
        "What?"
        "I used to rule in Canterlot, and I had a... a what do you call it?"
        "Slave? Servant?"
        "Yeess," Celestia nodded, slowly, "that must be it. A slave. Her name was... Twinkle? Starbright? Comet Flare? She was very clever, for a pony."
        "Ponies were... like us, right? Only smaller, and weaker. And mortal."
        "Yes," Celestia's brow furrowed, "mortal."

        The world outside was grey. An endless expanse of grey. No wind blew, not any more. No stars shone, not in half a forever.

        It had been like that for a long time. Grey dust was all that remained of the world, now. Aeons ago, living creatures had moved across the land, shaping it according to their own whims. They had looked up into the blue, blue sky at a sun which, at the time, had been bright and yellow instead of huge and sickly red. In the night, they had slept under billions and billions of pinpricks of light - other stars, so very, very far away - and dreamed their little dreams of contentment.
        The universe had wound down, eventually. The old foes, time and entropy, had had their way with reality. From glorious, Realm-spanning heights, the fall had been harsh and total. Ponies had warped and changed, evolved and mutated and had moved on. Eventually, they became nothing but a footnote in history. They had moved back to the seas, abandoning the sky and land, and from there it was a short trip of a few million years into obscurity and extinction. With no ponies to toil the land and shape the weather, the ecosystems had collapsed. All life, everywhere, collapsed.
        As all life, everywhere, ceased, everything became dust. Everything, that is, except Celestia and Luna.

        "Where did we go wrong, sister?" Celestia mumbled.
        "What?" Luna answered. Between sentences, the bloated, dying sun had floated through the sky, to be replaced by utter darkness. There was no moon, it too had crumbled to dust an eternity ago.
        "Where did we go wrong? Was life not perfect for my little ponies? I gave them everything, I gave them order, and satisfaction, and purpose-"
        "What did you say?"
        "That I gave them everything?" Celestia blinked in surprise, Luna had answered immediately.
        "No, no, after that!"
        "I gave them a purpose in life, and satisfaction-"
        "No, you gave them order. Order, sister! Order!" Luna was intense now, her dull blue mane sparkled with life as the mare leaped to her hooves. She pranced around in a circle, stirring up the ever-present grey dust, "That's it! How could we forget? How?"
        Celestia watched, bemused, as Luna pranced away. The blue alicorn spread her wings and took to the air. She circled, then, and swooped low.
        "Come! Come sister!"
        "Where are you going? Luna, you foal, what are you doing?" Celestia sprang to her hooves. Unaccustomed to movement, as they had lain still for centuries, she stumbled before remembering the rhythm of it. Like a dream, Celestia followed her sister into the skies.

Maybe, she thought to herself, it was a dream. Maybe she had finally moved on, like her precious little ponies. Maybe immortality had ended, with time unwinding and running out as space itself shredded into pieces, with the firmament becoming unmade, the-
"It's not far, now!"
Luna's voice broke Celestia out of her reminiscing. An eternity ago, such a loss of concentration would have been fatal, for some pony who could die. Now, there were no other ponies to be wary of.
No other ponies.
Celestia blinked.
No, there were no other ponies. There was, however, something else.


***


The garden had been here, Celestia remembered. She could almost picture it. Hedges, she reminded herself. The green growing walls had been called hedges. A maze had been created, out of those hedges. A... a collection of walls you could lose yourself in. It had stood outside her palace, their palace - once Luna had returned, her younger sister had taken up the mantle of ruler. Celestia, herself, had been banished at least once to the sun for a thousand years. Celestia laughed, so long ago! She had forgotten.
She had forgotten he was still here.
The statue; a strange creature, an amalgam of parts, disparate animals brought together into one impossible being.
He had a name, she remembered.
Discord.

The statue seemed to split and shake as the ancient magics were undone. Seeming plaster fell in pieces, sloughing off, to reveal brightly coloured scales, feathers and fur. With a crack of thunder, the draconequus beneath burst forth into light and life.
Celestia cowered, then, for her magic had remained untested for millenia. This was the creature that had made her, and her sister, when the world was young. This was the creature which had threatened not only their rule, but their universe.
 Now, of course, there was nothing left to threaten.
Celestia screwed her eyes shut, shivering with fear.
"Celestia," the voice - she remembered the voice, "open your eyes, Celestia."
The white alicorn opened her eyes, looking up into the muzzle of her greatest enemy. It was ancient, and yet young. His eyes were bright, his breath moist, and his expression - kind.
"Discord?"
"You waited longer than I thought you would, daughter of mine. You both did."
"I- I don't understand, aren't you going to..."
"Fight you? Harass you? Cajole and threaten you? No, why would I?"
"We... we locked you up, didn't we? Don't you hate us?" Celestia looked over at Luna, who was dancing around the ex-statue as carefree as a filly.
"Ah, my children, do you really think me so petty? How can I hate my own flesh and blood? What is time, to creatures such as I, or you? A thousand years, a million, a billion? Truly, I had thought you would have learned at least something. I see I shall have to try again. Come then, your first lesson."

Discord snapped his claws together, and the world changed.

Dust danced and whirled in the sudden breeze, trees and shrubs burst forth from the ground turned suddenly green and verdant. They creaked and groaned as they grew, spouting candy, or clouds, or budding off houses that floated away into the sky. The sun turned from red to orange. Literally, to orange. An orange. it shrank and grew and burst into fireworks that lit the sky, and became stars.
"What... what are you doing?"
"Oh Celestia, my little pony, did you truly learn nothing? Perfect order leads to nothing. Literally nothing. An eternity of boredom. Without chaos, there can be no creation. That, my dear daughter, is your first lesson. Honestly, I am surprised it took you this long to work it out."
Celestia sank to her belly as tears ran down her muzzle. Strange little creatures gyred and gimbled past. In all her years, she could never create life, and yet to Discord it was foal's play. She had never managed to create bonafide life, only shape and mould it, and its absence had been pain unending for the countless, unnecessary years she had imposed on not only herself, but her sister, as they hid needlessly from their father. Now she understood her greatest folly and hubris. She had truly thought herself mistress of her realm. She had not been, she had merely been a custodian, and a poor one at that.
"What now?" Still Celestia feared. They had locked up the draconequus in stone for an eternity, had denied him his liberty, had taken from him his kingdom.
Discord smiled as he pulled the two alicorns closer, hugging them, "Ah, my daughters, now we do things my way. That shall be your second lesson."

As capricious as a butterfly, as forgiving and as forgetting as the most enlightened of masters, Discord himself put their transgressions behind him, in the past, and turned to the universe as it grew young and vibrant again.
Chaos destroys, it is true, but chaos is also the formative power behind all things. To his whim, Creation would dance as it had before and would now again.

And Celestia and Luna learned.