She was cold, when she should not have been. And she didn't truly understand why.
Her own sensorium was something of a mystery to her: a riddle which began when she'd first considered (silently, because Harem was sure it was the sort of thing she couldn't ask him about) the exact assortment she'd been gifted. Vision, yes -- but where were her eyes, exactly? Most of her sight lines seemed to originate from her front cover, but a moment of focus (in this context, possibly a bad word) let her sort of peer out of the corner of her spine, and it was possible to get a rather darkened view of whatever she was resting on. And hearing seemed to be done with her whole body, or at least the entire volume.
There was definitely some degree of tactile array. She could always tell when he was holding her, and with which limb: other than in their extreme care and practiced gentleness, the talons and paw were nothing alike. Smell... she'd certainly picked up a whiff here and there, although a book with no lungs didn't understand how any of that air was getting in. But she couldn't taste. Having a sense of taste seemed to require a mouth. Then again, so did talking, and that just raised more questions.
There were those who would have said she had four out of five, and they would have been wrong, Five senses were just the surface.
She probably didn't possess feel: a sapient's ability to recognize when one of their own species was performing magic. She was a book which could think. As far as she knew, there were no others, and she didn't seem to have any magic of her own. It didn't give her much of anything to pick up on. There were times when she did spot when he was about to do something, but that was as much recognizing a certain set to the mismatched shoulders as anything else.
(There was only her.)
(She had been animated for a purpose.)
Having an athlete within her pages gave her a rough idea of what proprioception was: the capacity for registering the position and movements of one's body. She could certainly tell when her covers were being shifted, or if she'd been picked up. There was also a very special sensation attached to having her pages ruffled. It tickled.
But to have a sense for the thermal...
It had been autumn when she'd been -- born. It was nearly winter now.
(Only a few moons.)
(She hadn't really had the chance to be alive at all.)
And she hadn't really felt particularly warm at any point. She wasn't entirely sure what warmth was like. The closest association she'd been able to form was with what she felt when he held her -- but that was more towards something deeper inside. Comfort, perhaps. Wasn't comfort supposed to be warming?
But it had been autumn. It was nearly winter, and she hadn't been particularly cold, either. She'd shivered a few times, vibrating upon his palm, but... that had been from nerves. Worries, concerns, and that certainly would have given her any number of reasons for repeating the action over the last several days. But...
She didn't want to look around. At the most, she wanted to look at him. To know he was there, and she was protected. But she had some kind of sensorium, and she didn't seem to be capable of turning it off.
If she didn't look at him, or the -- thing...
(Something in her seemed to have access to just about every word which had ever existed. With the half-breathing, slow-pulsing arrangement of limbs and serrated teeth in front of them, there were only two which applied. 'Thing' was the lesser.)
...then there was stone. Stone for the floor, stone walls and ceiling, and every last one of those terms was granting just a little too much formality.
She wanted to think of it as being deep within a cave system. It wasn't a floor: it was the lowest point which the water had carved out. Those weren't rough columns: just the places where stalactites and stalagmites had met, except much less thinned in the center. There were no true pits dug out to trap the unwary, because a pit would have applied intent. It was just the millennia-old work of a long-departed river, and a river couldn't think.
(She could think.)
(She couldn't seem to stop.)
Except that it was all a lie. It hadn't been water. She hardly ever heard water dripping. Something had deliberately carved this place out of the earth, if 'earth' even still applied.
She wanted to hear the water. It would have been something she could try to focus upon. A sensory aspect which wasn't everything else.
There was stone, and there were places where it seemed to sag. Nothing ever quite appeared to be on the verge of collapse: the world was too solid for that. Solid to the point where all of the colors seemed to have collapsed into themselves.
The... air was too solid...
...but the stone sagged. It was as if the walls were trying to press in on the world. Exert gravity from above, and she could feel it on her front cover, she couldn't stop feeling it --
-- there was light, here and there. In the places where there wasn't, he rather considerately made some. Unless he was talking to a -- thing -- which couldn't stand to have any illumination at all, and those were sometimes found in the brightest areas. It made them curl up somewhat, it made parts of their bodies quiver and Harem had spent a lot of time over the last few days in watching that. If she used most of her attention on trying to identify the nature of the parts which were quivering, then maybe she could take away something from that within herself which kept registering the howls.
His light was normal. The light in the caves, light where she could never find a source... she'd initially been wondering why it existed at all. Because wasn't it worse, to hear all the sounds in the dark (and 'sounds' was usually as specific as she wished to be) and not know what was making them? To have no idea how close it was, or if you could move fast enough to get away? And she couldn't move at all, not beyond a shifting of her covers or, with some effort, a flip to a given page. If he ever put her down for very long, if any of them moved...
But then she'd realized the light was worse. It showed you where the walls were, how the stone sagged and the floor extruded small spikes. It let you see how there was nothing soft in all of the echoing world, because sometimes there were echoes and you couldn't tell how close anything was, not on sound. And that was why the light existed. To make it all that much worse.
The light, when it came from the air in the caves, was harsh. It almost could have rasped the edges from stone, and instead only served to make them sharper. And in those places where there was light, it was always enough to get an idea of what was in the area. To try and make some evaluation of the scope and the power, so you could think about exactly how close it was to killing you.
There were smells. Some of them were based in decay. Others made her long for it.
If she concentrated on a noise off in the distance, the most frequent and constant sound, it was possible to imagine that there was a dog barking. It was a sound which occurred in triplicate, and it ended in the gnashing of giant fangs. Sometimes she could hear wet things being rendered by those horrible teeth. A few of them resulted in audible liquid spurts.
They only stayed for a few hours each day, and that was because of her. (She lost track of time when they were in the caves, was always surprised to see that it was the same day when he brought her out. Shocked to discover that Sun and Moon still existed.) There was only so long she could bear to remain, even within his protection. Because there were times when he held her, others where she had to be put down for a while and the resting place he created... it would start as something smooth. But if they remained in any one part of the caves long enough for the weight to notice them, while he asked his questions of yet another potential --
-- there was a word for that, and she didn't want to use it --
-- then it wouldn't matter. It could be a table, or a cushion, or even a cloud which he'd arranged for her to rest upon. All it truly gave her was a means of knowing when they'd been there for too long, because it would begin to warp.
He'd made a cloud for her, and then the caves had provided the spikes.
(He'd gotten her out. Healed her back cover, which had been quick because she'd screamed before the vapor shards had gotten all the way through. He'd looked so guilty...)
He didn't put her down for very long now. He'd kept checking on the nature of the resting surface. It was a distraction: one he'd found a rather simple means of solving. And all the time, the longer they stayed...
Was the air cold? He never seemed to even recognize temperature unless he desired it: judging by his reactions was just about impossible. But some of the things in the caves... they shivered. They shook, and it was never from fear. Most of them only understood fear as something to be relished. Fear was a partial proof of their existence, because it was the smallest degree of what they had been created to bring. Fear was the prelude.
But some of the things in the caves had been there for a very long time. And with Harem, after only a few hours...
She was alive.
(She didn't understand how.)
(She'd barely lived.)
And if you were alive, even without blood or organs or anything she understood to be real... then it felt as if there was something at the core. Something warm. And it appeared to be that which the caves sought. The stone pulled at it, constantly. It tried to take the core away from her, and just recognizing that seemed to be enough to let her fight back. To keep it from winning. But after a few hours, she could feel it trying to leech something more than heat away, the cold was always at the edges of her being, trying to work deeper and if she ever truly rested, if she lost awareness of what was happening for even a single instant...
...the caves were cold.
The caves tried to take the warmth of all within, for the stone had none of its own.
And no matter how much they took, it could never be enough.
She'd tried to tell him about it. He'd looked confused, then uncomfortable, and had ultimately adopted an expression which had been described in her pages: that of the student who'd skimmed a subject because they didn't see how the material would ever apply to them. And ever since, he'd considerately warmed the area, wherever they went.
It didn't help. The air was warmer. The true cold lurked beyond. And whenever it tried to become more intense, the thing made a sound. It was a little like a howl, something like a roar, and very much like all the screams of agony it longed to create once again.
Discord adjusted thick-framed glasses, then peered over the top of them. (One of the other options was lowering the glasses, then adjusting his eyes. He didn't do it too often because the weight of the orbs pressed the frame into his snout.) Looked down at the notepad, and jotted a few more things upon it.
"Interesting," he mused. "Most of my interviewees would have gone with 'dinner'." Thoughtfully, "Some of them even recognized it as an event instead of an activity. Now, regarding sharing said activity, instead of using the event to create it --"
It had been more than a week: close to two, now. (Surfacing let her discover what time was again.) There were ways in which that could be seen as her fault: she could only stay so long, and he didn't want to leave her behind. The process never would have been so stretched out if not for her.
"Discord --"
The thing made another sound. Letters curled up inside her and became tight balls of protective, aching punctuation.
"Hush, Harem," he gently chided. "A potential suitor is talking."
Nearly two weeks of trying to tell him. Almost two weeks of being dismissed. And all of it was time in which the cold kept trying to take her, continually attempting to steal what she barely possessed...
"-- THIS IS WRONG!"
The shout never could have hurt the thing. (They'd visited a few who hated sound towards the beginning: he'd given up on them rather quickly.) But parts of it twitched. One long segment slammed against the stone, and the surface it touched...
It pulled back, and did so as sound swelled, heightened, reached beyond the pitches which Harem could somehow hear. There was just a vibration at the end of it, something which shook her covers. A tremble, and the slow drip of ichor from a hundred tiny wounds.
Discord blinked at her, where she rested in his lap. (For the longest interviews, it was the safest place.) Then he manifested several extra pairs of eyes, because doing it with two just wasn't enough.
"I'll get that," he told the thing, and snapped his talons. The wounds began to heal, and it was possible to watch the process because all the snap had done was start it. When you were in the caves, the stone fought back.
"We can't!" Harem protested, because there was a chance that he was hearing her -- no, he just about always heard: it was getting him to listen which formed the bulk of the problem. "We --"
He laid a talon against her front cover. Shushing her. He kept doing that, most of them had taken place when she'd felt there was something important to say, it was cold all the time in the caves and she was sick of it --
"If you'll pardon me for a moment?" Discord's eye count returned to normal, leaving him glaring at her with the usual amount of red. "Apparently my research assistant would like to have what she sees as a rather urgent word."
The thing made another sound. The concept of language met the noise, took a near-fatal wound, and looked for a quiet corner in which to die.
"As you wish," Discord irritably decided. "In that case, I supposed we'd better have privacy."
The talons snapped. A very large cone of glass dropped over Discord, along with the plush, fast-rotting armchair he was sitting in. (He'd decided that a very plush armchair was mandated for conducting interviews. The rotting was the caves.) A much smaller version fell into his lap, and also over Harem.
He looked down at her again.
" ?"
She stared up at him. His lips were moving, but it was Discord and that didn't always mean anything significant...
"It's wrong!" she urgently declared. "I've been trying to tell you for -- it's just wrong, we have to stop, this isn't --"
He squinted. After a moment, his eyes squeezed themselves out from behind the lids and boggled at her.
The talons snapped again. The smaller cone vanished.
"Cone Of Silence," he muttered. "Extremely effective. And apparently best used in quantities of one. We have privacy, Harem." A talon jabbed in a vaguely outwards direction. "That one is incapable of reading my lips, and... well, with you, not exactly a problem. Now what is so important that you simply have to interrupt one of the most crucial potential suitors --"
"Suitor?" She hadn't known her voice could reach that high a pitch. It seemed to be doing something to the movement of Discord's ears: they were pulling back, and quickly sought safety at the back of his head.
There had been a second word suitable for describing the resident of this particular cave. Harem used it.
"Monster! You can't believe..." Desperate now, all the desperation she'd felt throughout the eternal timeless cold compressed into frantic sentences. "...not for her, not for somepony you care about! How could you believe she'd want any of this? They're monsters!"
He cleared his throat. The clearing crew put the debris in a small bucket off to the side, then evaporated: the bucket remained. "Harem --"
"-- and I know there's been a fashion for monsters lately," she rushed on. "Monster mares, they call them. But that's the heart of it: mares. They can have fish tails or maybe their head comes off or they've got arms, but there's something pony about them at the core. Something the reader can use for a point of connection, to help pick a favorite. Because it's a monster body, but it's built on a pony base, and there's always a soul. If you have a soul, then there's something in you which can be loved."
Do I have a --
"-- I understand that you're upset, but we've been at this for days now, we're just about finished --"
"-- and whatever they have, it's nothing like a pony! It's all rage and blood, except where it's hate and ichor and tentacles! Even the ones who have pony shapes don't have pony hearts: just a void where the heart should be!"
"Oh, I already rejected those," he assured her. "Easiest ones to drop from the list, actually. They just didn't have what it took --"
"-- nothing here can care! It doesn't matter what their bodies are, because that's what makes a monster!"
This time, it was his torso which pulled away. It left her trying to look at him on an angle, and the very chair seemed to be tipping backwards.
"Fluttershy cares!" Harem pressed on. "It's most of what you've told me about her! She cares about her animals, her friends, about you! She cares so much that it hurts her! And nothing here can care, nothing. Nothing except you! And that's why you're not a monster --"
His jaw dropped. Then it dropped off. It thudded against her spine, and then it was back in its normal place. Slightly open and hanging.
"-- but these things are! Every last one of them! They would never care about her, because they can't! And you care about her, you do, and you can't want this for Fluttershy, not for somepony you care about --"
-- and then his talon was against her front cover again.
"Oh, dear..." Discord mused, with his eyebrows quirking against each other. And as he regarded her, the crooked features began to twist again.
There was no change, not on the level chaos so often dictated. No transformation. It was the simple warping required to accommodate the worst smile in the world.
"Is that it?" he asked, and she heard the little chuckle lurking at the back of the disharmonics. "That's been your concern this whole time? Oh, Harem..."
The chuckle became a laugh, and the laughter got louder. Bounced off the interior of the cone, made the glass shake, forced the rotting chair to fall apart that much more quickly.
"...who said this was about Fluttershy?"
He snapped his talons, and the laughter ended in the same instant which saw the cone vanish.
"But I appreciate your concern," he casually added. "We'll talk more when we're back under Sun." And returned his attention to the monster. "Thank you for waiting. Not that you had anywhere to go -- at least for now. So. What would be your ideal vision of a second date?"
It made a sound. The stone funneled it away from the outside world, so that there might still be a world at all.
Discord rolled his eyes.
"Yes, yes," he irritably decided. "Go with your most natural strengths. Always a consideration."
The sound was made again, only louder.
"However, in your case, I feel I should remind you that trying to very literally flip the planet over is what got you in here. Also, we were talking about the ocean earlier. She's never been there, which is why I keep subtly hinting that a beach date might be something to think about. I suspect it would lose something when all of the sand starts falling into the sky."
The walls shook. Harem tried to compress her own pages, and the cold crept ever closer. Discord created a new quill.
A random scrawl of ink was added to the paper. It was something which contained no meaning at all, because he just seemed to feel that ink was expected. As were glasses, and armchairs. And monsters.
There were always monsters, if you knew how to look.
If you knew where to look.
In a place nopony swore by. Only at.
Harem shivered.
(She'd been animated for a purpose.)
(And when that purpose ended...)
"Doing it under Moon's light?" He made another non-note. "Interesting..."