I’ll Never Forget You
I don’t know what I am…
I don’t look the same as everyone else…
Am I…really evil, like they said?
A small, strange creature sat hunched over a puddle. He sobbed harder with every “plop” his tears made in the puddle. Some ponies walked down the dimly lit street, but turned and ran as they gazed upon him. He was hideous. His body parts were all belonging to different creatures; it was no wonder everyone was intimidated. He couldn’t make any friends. Nopony could bear to be near him, much less speak or share any memories with him. He sat there for another moment, but then looked up at the night sky. A single bright star sat in the empty dark sky, twinkling and bringing a memory to the disfigured creature. He remembered something he had spent his few years on Equestria trying to forget.
“My mother?” he thought aloud, trying to uncover the rest of the buried memory.
“My mother; She used to tell me that the first star of the night could grant me any wish I may have!” he said excitedly, but he looked back down at the puddle as he remembered what had become of his mother.
She left. I remember now. I was only a few years old. She always seemed unhappy with me…but she would try to hide it. I knew the whole time…I knew something wasn’t right. Before she left, she’d gone out to meet someone, but when she returned she was in tears. I tried to comfort her…but she pushed me away and dried her eyes. “Son, mommy is going to leave for a while, but she’ll try her best to be back soon!” When I heard her say that, I knew she was lying. I shouted “You’re leaving forever, aren’t you! Why can’t you just tell me! You’re my mommy!” What she said next, played over and over in my head ever since. “You are NOT my child! You’re…you’re a monster! Do you know how horrible you make me look? Everypony stopped talking to me because you scare them all away! You’re a mistake that should have never happened! You’ve made my life so…chaotic…my life has been complete DISCORD!” She screamed, as she galloped out into the pouring rain, leaving me in our small one room ‘home’.
He looked back up at the star, then angrily stomped the puddle with his feet, splashing a young couple who then gave him a dirty look as they galloped far from him.
“You ponies are all the same, aren’t you?” he muttered as they stopped farther up the street to look back in disgust at the hideous THING. He looked back at his wings, trying to stretch them, not succeeding.
“Why don’t my wings work yet? I should be able to fly by now! Bahh I’ll just walk some more…” he said in disappointment, walking towards an open gate containing a garden. He laid back into a thorny bush, and sighed, making himself ‘comfortable’ enough to sleep there for the night.
He awoke to a filly much smaller than him hovering over him, examining him in confusion. He sat up and looked into the filly’s eyes. She laughed, as she lowered to the ground, making him feel giant in comparison. He looked down at her in annoyance. “Oh, are you here to make fun of me, too?”
The dark-coated filly stopped giggling to answer, “Make fun of you? Why would I do that? I guess you look a bit silly…” His face turned red as he bent down and picked her up. “I look SILLY?” She pulled his fingers off of her, using her magic horn, and sat herself back down on the ground. “Well, you WERE sleeping in a bush full of thorns!” He blinked a few times, taken aback by her response. “You…don’t think my body is weird?” he asked curiously. “No. I think you look like…those abstract paintings made by the artist ponies! I love those! Besides, you don’t look like everypony else, and you’re unique!” She smiled at him, flying up to pat his head with her hoof. He felt the sides of his mouth pulling upwards into an awkward smile. He looked back at her, realizing he never asked the filly’s name. She had a dark body with short hair that reminded him of the night sky. “What is your name?” she asked, playing with his long tail. He turned to look at her and decided to tell the truth. “I…don’t really have a name. I’ve been called a few things before, but I suppose you could call me…Discord. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s the coolest sounding thing I’ve been called.” She set his tail down gently and flew back up to his eye level, looking sadly into his eyes. She stared for a moment until she closed her eyes and recited something she had probably heard or read before. “Discord. Noun. A lack of concord or harmony between ponies or things, strife, dispute, war…” she opened her eyes back to look at him before hugging him. He stared in disbelief for a moment, but then closed his eyes. “I knew I was a monster…but-“ The filly backed off and put her hoof on his mouth, “No. Don’t believe everything ponies say to you! Who said you were a monster?!” she huffed as she looked around, narrowing her gaze as if to look for the accuser. He opened his eyes and said quietly, “My own mother.” The filly froze in place, then turned to look at Discord. She glided over to sit next to him on the thorns, but used her horn to make a small intricate nest, where she could sit but not get poked. They sat in silence for a few minutes until Discord looked over and asked “What is your name?” She looked over, surprised at the sudden change of tone in his voice. “Luna.” Discord smiled weakly and opened his mouth to say something but then a voice called the filly’s name. “Luna! Come, sister, we need to be on time for school!” Luna stood up, nodded at Discord, jumping off of the bush to see her big sister standing across the garden waiting. “I’ll see you later!” she smiled as she ran towards the familiar young mare. Discord watched her and her sister run down a path towards where he assumed the school would be. He looked down at the nest she had made, admiring the skill she had in making such a complicated design. “I think you look like…those abstract paintings made by the artist ponies! I love those!” He chuckled as he whispered “I like your name better, Luna.”
Nightfall seemed to come a lot quicker this night. Discord found himself surrounded by failed attempts at making nests of the thorn bush. “Why can’t I make these as well as she did?” he asked himself as he accidentally poked his thumb with one of the thorns. It stuck in his skin, and when he tried to remove it, he cried out in pain.
“Are you alright?” Luna said as she trotted over to him. Her voice had surprised him so much that he jumped and gasped, then remembered how to breathe when he saw her. “Luna! You startled me! I-I’m alright. I just seemed to have gotten a thorn in my thumb, but I can’t remove it.” She used her magic to pull his hand down to her, and gently pluck the thorn from his skin. “Is that better?” She asked, smiling at him again. “Yes, thank you, but…how did you do that? Your horn glowed and you somehow moved things without using your hooves!” She looked at him and then asked what he thought to be an unrelated question, “You don’t go to school, do you?” He remembered earlier, that she had to go to school, but he had never been there. “No. What’s it like?” She tilted her head and said “Well that makes sense! You haven’t learned magic! Lots of fillies have horns and can use magic with them! In school we learn how to fly or do magic, and lots of other stuff. Like, how to get our cutiemarks, and ancient Equestrian creatures! Today I learned about these two ponies who are supposed to be chosen to rule over Equestria! A lot of things we learn in school are boring, though.” She said, shrugging her shoulders. “But I think you should go to school with me! That way, you can learn magic, and how to fly!” Discord thought about it and decided he would start tomorrow. Luna told him she had to be in bed soon, so she’d better go back home, but she’d meet him in the morning for school with supplies. He wondered what things he would need for school, and tried to picture what exactly school would look like.
He woke up to a high pitched “ding” sound from a bell. “Morning!” Luna said, moving the bell away from Discord’s half-asleep face and into a backpack. Discord looked down into the bag, grabbing each and every object, guessing what they were used for. “What is this stuff?” he said as he put it all back inside, moving the zippers on the backpack, interested in these foreign concepts. “These are all of your supplies for school today, now c’mon, before we’re late! I told my sis I’d catch up with her before school started!” she pushed him forward until they started walking along the path to school. She slipped his backpack onto him as they neared the building. It was a small red structure, a bit disappointing for Discord, but it was still a new feeling for him. He smiled as they approached the front playground. Young ponies played with colored balls, tossing them back and forth. Others played on the equipment, and a few gathered ponies told stories. But all fell silent when they saw Discord and Luna. Some ponies ran and hid behind bushes and anything they could find to shield them from the scary creature. Others started to call him names, shouting “Monster!” and many more names he was all too familiar with. A white mare with long flowing hair colored with blues and greens and pinks came out of the building and shouted “Everypony! School is starting, please take your seats!” All of the ponies walked inside, as the mare shut the door, telling them she would be in shortly. “Luna! I do not wish for you to be around such unpleasant company! You mustn’t be caught around this monster, or I will be forced to discipline you. You have a duty now as Princess Luna: Bringer of Night.” Luna stomped her tiny hoof in the dirt and shouted “Celestia, he’s not a monster! You don’t know him! If you’re gonna treat my friend like this, I don’t want to be a Princess!” Celestia closed her eyes and formed an animation of events she said he would cause. Discord looked at them, feeling tears forming in his eyes, hearing his mother’s voice calling him a monster over and over. He gently dropped his school bag and ran away, sobbing until he collapsed onto the ground in the garden. Luna continued to call after him, telling him to come back. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Luna. Everyone was right about me…” He surrounded himself with his failed nests of thorns, and decided to try magic. He didn’t know how, but he closed his eyes and concentrated on making an enclosure of thorns around him. He squinted his eyes as all the negative thoughts entered his mind, tears flowed down his face as his horns glowed brightly, shooting a light into the sky above him. He not only surrounded himself in thorns, but a thick layer of stone, to assure Luna he would never hurt her. The light above him glowed with beautiful colors, as ponies all over Equestria watched the colors, they created a sphere in the night sky, later to be named “The Moon”, after Luna had discovered what it was.
Many years had passed, ponies traveled through the streets and towns as if nothing had changed, except one. A mare with long dark flowing hair resembling the night sky was walking through an abandoned garden towards a thorn-covered statue of a creature she once knew. She came here every year, to remember the friend she had long ago. Luna touched her hoof to the creature trapped in stone, “I’ll never forget you, Discord.” she looked down as a single tear fell onto the thorns. The beautiful grown mare turned away, walking back home, but she did not see that where her tear had fallen, a small rose blossomed.