//------------------------------//
// Something Found 
// Story: Past Skies 
// by Ice Star 
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When Discord thought of Celestia, he could only think of two things before her face. The first was the color pink. Before he met her, the only place he had ever seen pink was in the sky. That was the kind of pink he knew that he would never be able to touch; no creature could. Not even his kind could work the sky, and yet somehow the color of it managed to be distilled into her mane and tail. The second thing that made Discord think of Celestia was butterflies. At first, he wasn't sure why — butterflies were silly, uncomplicated things. Discord loved butterflies when they were bright and zany; it was the only thing that saved them from being boring due to their delicacy. 

Celestia was nothing like a butterfly. She looked delicate, but could hold a smile longer than his mother could whenever he chewed with his mouth open. Discord liked that kind of delicacy, the kind that wasn't the same as what Celestia had explained was fragility. According to these peculiar sisters, fragility was what happened when a pretty little thing was too weak for its own good. This was why inspecting a butterfly could turn into accidentally crushing its wings and de-powdering the poor creature far too fast. To be fragile was to be shy and simpering, and Celestia was like a puddle, if puddles could be perfect enough to scoop starlight from when the sun went down. 

In fact, Discord was sure that Celestia was the only thing in his whole life that was more perfect than true. That was why the idea of her being anything like a butterfly was downright bothersome. Butterflies were nature's poets, their buffoons for scraps of fun and flew like a song. Celestia could sing better than any frog Discord had ever scooped from a swamp. Unlike a frog, Discord also did not wish to gulp down Celestia — she was too big, too nice, and kept him from feeling the ugly thoughts that picked at his head when he wandered alone. Frogs were fun to play with before feasting on, Celestia was beyond fun to look at, and she always had the best reactions when he showed her that he could lick his eyeballs. Luna had just giggled like nothing but laughs would ever leave her again. 

Butterflies made him think of Celestia because of the way he started feeling around her. A funny, fluttery feeling overtook him the more he was around her. This affliction showed no sign of being cured, and despite the pleasant fluffiness it created, he had to wonder how long it would last. No matter how nice the feeling could be, Discord felt more than just butterflies and a happy firelight warmth. Knots he had no idea how to begin to untie — a kind of ultimate chaos — were lurking at the bottom of his stomach. Even amid all the confusion these feelings brought, Discord knew two things. The first was that he wanted to keep Celestia as close as possible no matter what, the way his dad said to treat the draconequui other than kin who were favorites. Secondly, he knew that even undoing one of those knots would let loose a whole flood of feelings ickier — and worse, maybe even mushier — than any of the things he'd ever felt before. 

That was how Discord figured out that the feelings he had Celestia were the heaviest butterflies in all of the wilds that they had seen. If he had snapped them out of his stomach, he didn't think that he would be able to pick a single one up. Even if these feelings were only as big as a pebble, they were buried deep enough to wind him up with their weight, and he knew he'd never be able to skip them away from him. Maybe for the better... and maybe for the not-so-better. 

As far as Discord knew, draconequui did not have words for these kinds of feelings. Or maybe he had simply never been old enough to know them. Perhaps they were too long, or too hard to say. Maybe they were the kinds of words that sounded like sneezes unless you listened very carefully, and he just hadn't realized that they had been spoken around him before. Either way, he was sick with something, and telling his bestest friend ever would only spoil the one thing he wasn't sure he wanted to change. 

Celestia was delicate, sure. That was apparently a standard for all princesses who were not Luna, as told to him straight from the mouth of Celestia herself. Unlike any butterfly or even the weirdest of bugs he found, Celestia was by far the most complicated thing in his life. As much as Discord hated big-messy-thought-stealing-dig-a-hole-and-wait-on-them kind of feelings that came with the word complicated, Celestia was his hoard and he would like to be her dragon — even if he had never met a dragon before, at least not up close. Just like the stomach-fluffing flutters, Discord had a rabble of other buzzing, messy feelings about Celestia — and these ones came from just watching her. She wasn't like her sister, not in the slightest, where Luna was nothing but the worst kind of puzzle to figure out (and he'd honestly given up with her, having fun was more important). Discord had started to get the feeling that Celestia was saddest when she smiled, most tired in the quiet, and so many other pretty swell contradictions. 

She made less sense than anyone ever could have, and he wanted to be her bestest-most-special-super-duper-closest friend (if there was another word for that he would maybe even say it) to her. Just for that. They had their cheer in common, the social hunger that Luna was barren of. He craved talking with her when they weren't saying anything, and with no other talking-creatures around (except Luna) they would talk until their throats were sore sometimes. Discord wanted to sit the closest with her at meal-times, and when Celestia wasn't around Luna asked him if he had anything else to talk about other than her sister — those kinds of moods would come over him, like a fit or fever. So how could he be anything but sick? 

For all her little dents, Celestia surely wasn't suffering from the same thing. Though, Discord liked to think that maybe she could feel the better parts, the fuzziest parts of the feelings he had too. Better yet, he liked to imagine the weird cave (she called them castles) she lived in before her travels had one of those tiny dead trees. In it, she would have all the words to spell out the exact best parts of what they surely shared a little of...

...and then all his daydreams ended there, for he could not imagine what could possibly come next. 

Discord had nothing to share with Celestia, who he caught the slightest dents in. She was no less pretty for having them, even if those could be annoying. Being with Celestia was like being found because she never wanted to leave you alone. 

So, he shared butterflies with her, and wanted her to like them as much as he did her.