//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Pain // Story: Love you again? // by Cynthrey //------------------------------// “... and then Applebloom said: ‘when cows fly’, you should have seen her face when a whole flock appeared or should say flock of cows passing over her head! It was priceless!” Discord laughed happily on the sofa of Fluttershy. "Oh, Discord," the yellow pegasus laughed softly as she heard the antics of the draconequs. Despite his childish, mischievous and playful attitude, Discord had all the appearance of an adult, his face was elongated and thin with large dark circles in his reptilian red eyes, his cheekbones marked and a short white goatee beard, was considerably tall, fact measured a head more than Bull Biceps or Big Macintosh that each measured 1.80m-1.90m. He was also very thin which only made him look taller still. His way of dressing highlighted his title of god of chaos -as if his appearance didn’t reveal it enough- he always dressed combining the old and formal with the contemporary and informal. No matter how you saw Discord was an errant shooting and his follies, although sometimes they went something far, they were never made with evil, that wasn’t his nature and Fluttershy knew it, that's why he was one of the few who gave him all their confidence or at least most of it, on occasion he could be a little... controlling and concerned only about his affairs no matter what it did to somebody else. “Maybe next time you should come with me, it would be fun to go joking around with you,” said floating in front of the girl with a naughty smile. “It would be lovely, Discord, but I'm not good at jokes... unless the target is me,” she whispered at the end. "But you could ask Pinkie or Rainbow, their third names are practically Joker, well it would be fourth name in Pinkie’s case.” “I would prefer it to be with you,” Discord frowned. “You can’t live only with me, you need to interact with others.” Discord turned away annoyed, didn’t need anyone more than Fluttershy. Because the stubbornness of the lord of chaos, Fluttershy placed a hand on his face and forced him to look towards her. “Please, even for once try, please.” “All right,” after a sigh he accepted reluctantly. “I'll try,” he couldn’t say ‘no’ to Fluttershy, he loved her too much for that. He loved her too much. He could never hurt her, when Tirek's was a terrible mistake and he wouldn’t repeat it again. He had betrayed the ONLY person who cared for him, he would never stumble on the same stone again. With that thought he devoted himself to enjoy the touch of the hand of his beloved Fluttershy against his face like a cat when they caress him. But his enjoyment didn’t last long. When he was just beginning to feel comfortable a pressure in his chest was present. If he couldn’t breathe, it was as if his heart had been completely pierced by a stake the thickness of his arm. "GAGH!" he shouted, falling to the floor and pressing reflexively to his chest where the pain was present. "Discord!" Fluttershy hurried to check what happened to her friend. "A-Are those pains again?" she asked, terrified. “Re-relax... I-I'm fine,” he lied, he didn’t want to see her worried but the pain only intensified. Now he couldn’t really breathe, couldn’t even make a sound of agony and had bet that his blood stopped flowing in his veins for a moment. He was sweating as if had run a marathon without distorting reality, the view was clouded a few seconds, he couldn’t think of anything. He was about to faint when the pain, as he started, stopped. When he regained his breath, he was sitting on the sofa and could hear the uproar that the altered Fluttershy was making from the kitchen. “Something for the pain! Something for the pain! Something for the pain!...” she repeated over and over while browsing the section of medicinal foods in a cookbook. “To be someone who speaks whispering you know how to make a big noise. The pegasus calmed down a little when he turned around and saw his friend standing there at the entrance to the kitchen. “You're fine!” she flew to hug him but being careful to not be ‘too rude’, after separating she spoke agitated “I was so worried. For a moment you almost lost consciousness. I didn’t know what to do.” “And you thought about giving me to eat some medicinal recipe? Nah, it wouldn’t have served much.” She looked at him somewhat confused until she remembered that Discord was also feeding on sheets of books. He had once mentioned that magazines and comics were like French fries or a snack while best-sellers used to know how only royalty chefs could prepare. In fact Twilight bewitched all the books in her library so that each time he tried to eat a leaf it taste worse than, in Discord's words, manure. “I actually thought prepare one of the recipes...” was interrupted. The seconds passed and Fluttershy still didn’t speak. After that pause uncomfortable her slight voice was present. “Discord I'm worried,” he just looked at her with disbelief. “Those pains, since you've had them for several weeks and the more time goes by they get worse this isn’t normal...” “~Of course, since I’m SO normal it is obvious that something is terribly wrong~,” he interrupted mockingly. “Oh my! I'm sorry I didn’t mean to offend you or anything!” “Haha! Calm down,” he tapped the naive one in the head. “I’m a being that emerged from chaos, probably all this increase in harmony in Equestria should be making me allergic. I just have to put some mountains on upside down, turn a couple of boring things into something more fun and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to finally figure out what happens if you use fertilizer in a timberwolf. Well I better go now, before I get another allergy attack. Bye.” Before Fluttershy could do or say anything, Discord was already at the door and then off to Everfree. "See you soon," she said farewell faintly. The Everfree Forest was reputed to be unnatural and creepy, full of beings that assured you of a last hour of life from the first moment you set foot in this territory. Anyone would say that it would be necessary to be lacking in judgment to venture there alone and without some protection, but there was someone who still saw his home, or one of them, in this forest and right now he needed to look for something in the Castle of the Two Sisters. Several minutes later... The sun was close to hiding. Discord rested under a tree in Everfree watching a wild crop poisonous jokes around him, and while, he thought about his situation. He hated to lie to Fluttershy but he had no choice, he didn’t know what to do but there was something that at this point he did know: what was causing those pains in the chest. They started right after he betrayed the girls for Tirek, when he realized how much he cared about Fluttershy, although at the time it was very light and he thought it was due that he was somewhat weak after his magic was taken away from him but now he had it clear: that damn pain only began when he thought about how happy Fluttershy made he. Every time that girl made him throb it came like thunder after the lightning. If they had increased in quantity and severity it was because more and more he felt his heart jump out of his chest when he was that shy yellow pegasus, along with his thoughts about her. But what did that mean? He wondered as he tore a poison joke off the ground. Maybe because love was like a synchronicity, a harmony between two hearts and he was a being born of chaos he couldn’t similar that emotion and rejected or faced in a very bad way. If it was that then, couldn’t he love Fluttershy? The flower in his hand withered quickly with that thought. Bigger was his anger when he noticed that he had thought his feelings for Fluttershy weren’t possible and the blessed pain didn’t make an appearance. With the increase of his fury the life of the tree behind him and some of the flowers around him ended. If each time he expressed his feelings meant that he was going to suffer then he was in a dilemma: he could forget his feelings for Fluttershy and forget to love anyone in general or follow his heart until it stopped and provoke the girl an eternal sense of guilt for be the indirect cause of his death. By the time his thought was over there wasn’t a single living plant left in more than 3 meters around, the same ground already seemed somewhat more like desert sand. “AAAHG! By Exodo!” he shouted to the sky. “Would you mind telling me what your brilliant idea is, Almighty Lord?! Why the hell did you allow me to be create if my existence has to be so miserable?” there was no response, as expected. “At least you could have given me a finite life but nooo, I have to spend the rest of eternity without being able to love nobody if I want to keep my skin intact. Agh!” he let himself fall in frustration on the dead floor covering his face with one hand. “A tip: The next time you believe a universe try to be a little fairer, okay?” Until the sun went down he didn’t do anything, he just lay there, thinking about it, he had literally put all his thoughts on a wheel and kept it spinning for the last half hour -it's not that it has solved much, honestly-. Anyone would have accepted the reality but, he was the God of Chaos, to the reality he broke it, he twisted it, he doubled everything because he didn’t accept it. The problem on this occasion is that he didn’t know how he could alter this and it wasn’t that he hadn’t tried, he thought that if he altered his form everything would be fixed but it was like melting a glacier using matches: useless and a complete waste of time, even he were transformed into an alicorn or an earthly he would still be a draconequs, the living manifestation of chaos and disharmony, born from it. He was interrupted from his existential philosophy by his stomach that demanded to be filled immediately. As he wasn’t in the mood for a salad of dry poisonous jokes -and going back to Fluttershy's cabin wasn’t a good option- maybe he could do some shopping at the Castle of the Two Sisters, its old books weren’t thrilled by Twilight so he would have no problem eating about 200 or 300 pages. Well, don’t leave for later what you want to do now, with a simple snap he was transported to the deteriorated entrance of the ancient castle, but before he could put a foot in its devastated interior something caught his attention: A white light shone in the background from a corridor with something very close to it projecting a shadow in it. Before he could do anything the shadow moved down the corridor following the light. “I always wanted to go to a ghost hunt,” he said to nobody specifically with a mischievous smile while taking from a random place a butterfly net big enough for an adult man to enter without problems. And walking on tiptoes foolishly followed the light through the corridors, turning in this corner, continuing through that section, in short, chasing it for a few minutes without having even an idea of ​​what he was pursuing, although is not like Discord was famous for follow the common logic. Soon he was in the library of the ruins. “Well, for something I came here at the beginning” he threw his net and started to check the shelves closest to the exit. “I'll hunt ghosts another day.” He barely noticed that the light had also stopped in the same place just a little more inside the library, he didn’t even give importance to what he was doing whoever were who were projecting the shadow. He had his affairs and Mr. Little Light had its, period. He was about to bite a page when... “... it... here…,” he heard and ignored. “... it has to be here…,” this time it was more audible, it seemed to be a female voice. “... it has to be here...,” he was almost sure who that voice belonged to, and now that he paid more attention, her owner seemed to be recording the books. “... it has to...,” she broke off. At this point Discord was more curious than hungry, he was just going to ask what was her looking for so hard when a book fell, or rather was thrown, in his direction. It was a very old book, seemingly older than the same castle where it resided, the edges of the lapel were covered with gold and precious stones that had miraculously remained intact despite the passage of centuries. A very appetizing delicacy for the draconequs. Miss Wanderer could wait a little longer, first she needed to see if that beauty tasted as good as it looked. He tore up a page with enthusiasm and with it he put it in his mouth, how great his surprise at noticing the taste. “PUAGH! What a disgust!” he coughed and spat several times. “Not only does it tastes worse than Twilight’s books but I almost choked,” the truth is that since it entered his mouth had left a terrible feeling of suffocation and sore throat almost as if it had been sanded. “Who's there?” She discovered him. That day only improved and improved, note the sarcasm. He listened to her footsteps approaching and soon she was next to him. “Oh, it's you, Discord” she sighed quietly. “Hello, Celestia.”