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// Chapter 2 
// Story: Cockatrice+Chaos=Living statue? 
// by DragonKittey9 
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Cockatrice + Chaos = Living statue?
Chapter 2


Y’know, my Granny always told me to look on the bright side of life… Like when you’ve just been turned to stone by a evil monster… at least I wasn’t technically dead… I had plenty of dreams… most of them involved talking birds… but I certainly had no concept of time… but in my dreams one of the birds always gave me flowers… at least my dreams can be courteous… Maybe being turned to stone could teach me to be more patient, or maybe…umm… yeah that’s all the positive I could think of… sorry Granny, I really tried.
So yeah, being turned to stone isn’t the WORST possible thing… but it certainly isn’t the best. I don’t know how to describe it, like one of the weird surreal dreams that you can only remember like two or three parts and then some parts don’t make complete sense because it suddenly skips to like… ten minutes to the future and everything’s supposed to make sense even though you don’t have any idea what going on but you still act like you know what‘s going on, and even when you wanna explain it to someone once you wake up you suddenly forget the only few parts you remember… Haven’t you had a dream like that? No? Just me then…
Then all of a sudden “Poof!” I was awake. I was honestly baffled at first, but I soon found that I could move again. I got so excited, I began to test my wings, I could fly! Then I saw the most confusing thing of all. I was still stone.
“What?!” I said aloud, looking at my hooves. Wondering if they felt like my normal hooves, I found a nearby thorn bush and shoved my foreleg in.
Nothing, no pain, I felt it, but it didn’t hurt. A slow smile crept over my face and I probably started looking like a cheshire cat. I bolted upwards through the trees, and soon I was finally out of that retched Everfree forest! I didn’t care that the sky was Purple! I didn’t care that there was abnormal floating islands! And I certainly didn’t care about the checkered board grass! I was just happy to not be stone anymore! 
I flew around as fast as I could, going in circles, figure eights and anything else I could think of for as long as I could. I flew towards ponyville wanting to tell my friends that I was back, but I stopped in mid-flight for two reasons, one: I realized I could’ve been stone for hundreds of years, and two: There was a bright rainbow coming from the direction of ponyville that, for some reason, made me want to fly as fast as I could in the other direction. I followed my second instinct and flew away as fast as I could.
Flying into the Everfree forest was one of the last things I ever wanted to do and if I was in any other situation at the time, you’d have to tie me to Equestrias strongest stallions just to get me back in that forest, but I felt myself getting heavier and I began to loose altitude. I kept myself in the air as long as I could, but eventually I felt myself get much heavier and then I did the one thing you should never do in a cartoon… I looked down.
My stone body began to fall and my wings were uselessly flapping as fast as they could. I hit the ground with a large thud, leaving a pony-shaped hole for me to climb out of. 
“Owwww…” I whined, rubbing my head as I climbed out of the me-shaped hole.
“That was quite the fall” Said a mysterious voice from behind me.
I screamed like a filly and turned around to see the mysterious voice, and of course the only other living creature around me was a hawk… “Just GREAT!” I exclaimed angrily, “I’m going crazy! Now what am I gonna do?” at this question I glared angrily at the hawk as if he could reply to my question… and apparently he could.
The hawk looked sophisticated as he replied calmly, “If your saying your crazy because you heard me talk, I assure you you’re not crazy…” 
I couldn’t get the shocked words to come out of me… so I stared at him like an idiot.
He looked confused for a second and continued, “I saw you fall and I wanted to make sure you were okay…”
Still staring
“You fell pretty far…”
Staring…
He finally snapped and rose his voice, “Could you at least give some sign that you understand me?!”
I slowly nodded my head to indicate that I could hear him. My brain still couldn’t find any coherent words to form.
“Good,” He replied, “My name is Vincent and I want to know if you were hurt in that fall”
I shook my head left to right.
“Oh good! That’s a relief!” 
I nodded
“…Do you plan on just standing like a buffoon all day long?”
I sat down.
With an irritated groan he rubbed his temples with his wings.
After a very long awkward silence, my brain finally formed a sensible sentence. “Who in Equestria are you and why can I understand a talking hawk?!” I mean, being a living, talking statue I can handle, but talking birds?! That’s just unnatural!
“Like I previously stated, my name is Vincent, and I speak statue.” The hawk (Vincent) replied.
“What’s statue language?” I asked skeptically.
“It’s a language that birds use so they can talk to statues that where once living ponies.” Even though Vincent replied calmly, I could tell he was slightly irritated with my confusion.
“Ssssoooooo…” I said, trying to understand what was going on, “I’m speaking statue right now?”
“No, statues don’t speak statue” He answered.
“…What?”
“Statues  cannot speak statue, only birds.” he replied
“So what language am I speaking in right now then?” I asked, head hurting from all this fancy speak and confounding riddles.
“Your speaking whatever language you learned to speak when you were a little filly!” Vincent said irritably.
“So no fancy statue speak?” I asked, half disappointed I didn’t get super language powers along with my new stone body.
“No,” He sighed, his irritation showing more and more. 
At this point my brain randomly realized something, “Why are you not surprised that I am a talking statue?”
“Well,” Vincent  began, “After seeing everything else that happened, a moving statue is pretty normal.”
“Everything else?” I asked, I honestly had no idea what could be more odd than a talking hawk.
“Yes… Discord’s escape.” He replied, 
“Who’s Discord?” I asked as if I was a foal who kept asking her mother what every little thing was.
Vincent gave me a long look… I couldn’t tell if he was frustrated, or if he was trying to find a reason I wouldn’t know who Discord is. Then suddenly I could’ve sworn I saw a light bulb pop up above his head for a split second (But he didn’t believe me when I told him about it later) “You’ve been asleep for Twenty years! I forgot!” He exclaimed.
My eyes grew wide, “Twenty years?!” I asked,
Vincent nodded, “I was just a newborn hawk when you where turned to stone, but I remember bringing you flowers every year because my parents told me you where once living and I felt bad for you.” 
Aww, how nice…if he where a handsome stallion with dark eyes, a long, flowing mane, and bulging muscles but wasn’t afraid to talk about his feelings, and I wasn’t a statue, I’d blush. “So where is this Discord dude?” I asked.
“Oh he turned back into stone by the elements of harmony, and all his chaos is now gone…except for you of course.” Vincent answered,
“I’m chaos?” I questioned.
“No you buffoon, you just have chaos inside of you.” He retorted.
“Why didn’t it leave me?” I felt stupid having to ask so many questions, but I really had no clue about this whole “Discord” thingy.
“How would I know?” He asked, “I’m not an expert on Discord!”
“Then what are you an expert of?” I asked,
“Gardening!” Vincent answered, then quickly covered his beak and blushed embarrassed.
“That explains the flowers,” I commented,
Vincent just hid his face in his wings and mumbled something that sounded kinda like “Shut up,” but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t ‘cause I didn’t say anything that deserved that kind of rude behavior.
After a few minutes of deep breathing from Vincent, he finally lifted his head and spoke, “I’m assuming you wish to turn back to normal?”
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” I answered, then added in a mock voice of Vincent’s “That would a most sensible wish,”
Vincent sighed. Then flew over and rested in my back, “I heard the Canterlot libraries have a lot of information that could help you find a spell for this nasty cockatrice curse,” He said.
Well, can’t argue with a talking bird… but how am I supposed to get to Canterlot?