Five ponies filed into the room. Twilight conjured five chairs while Sombra turned around his desk chair and sat to face his examiners.
“Hello,” Twilight greeted. “I trust you’re all prepared for your first friendship test?”
“I believe I am.” Sombra scanned the line of faces before him. “But where is my kindness instructor?”
Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash, unsure how to safely answer, looked to Twilight.
“She and Discord are on their honeymoon,” she deadpanned.
Sombra was prepared to maintain a face of neutrality for just about any answer but that. His eyes bulged. “B-but… So they have gotten married? And nopony even bothered to tell me? Aren’t friends supposed to tell friends about such important concerns as that?”
Applejack crossed her hooves. “Yes. But you ain’t our friend. Not yet, anyhow.”
“That’s why we’re here right now!” Pinkie Pie stood on her chair, enthused by her own thought. “If you pass our exam, then maybe you could be our newest friend!”
Sombra did not seem to find the idea as exciting as Pinkie Pie did.
“Well, shall we begin?” Twilight asked. “We’ll each pose one question related to our respective elements, and I’ll also ask a kindness question on Fluttershy’s behalf. That’s just six questions. If you answer them correctly, I will allow you to spend a little chaperoned time every day in other parts of the castle. But you must get all the questions correct.”
The stallion sat hunched in his chair, arms folded across his chest, but he looked up to glower at Twilight and managed a nod. “I understand.”
“Excellent! We’ll start with the Element of Magic. What role does magic play in friendships?”
“Magic allows friends to see past their differences and bring out the very best in each other.” Sombra nearly spat out the final words, and he kept his gaze on the floor.
Twilight’s eyebrows rose. “And?”
A visible sigh. “And when they bring out the best in each other, magic helps them achieve anything they set their jolly little minds to.”
The mares exchanged looks that varied from skeptical to worried. Rarity’s question was next. “What is the simplest and most meaningful way one can offer generosity toward one’s friends?”
“Time. You can give of your time. Since you mortals only have so little time available to you, every minute matters.” Sombra scowled.
Applejack, too, was scowling. “If you and a friend are havin’ a disagreement, the best way to solve it is to be honest about what?”
Sombra now looked up, still avoiding meeting anypony’s eyes, and gesticulated stiffly with a hoof. “I might have said it’s to be honest about who’s in the wrong, but I recall being taught that the answer is to be honest about your true intentions.”
Her scowl deepening further, Applejack noted that the conflict in which she and Sombra had long been engaged didn’t feel any closer to being solved by his answer. It was correct, at least, but it carried all the foul flavor of dishonesty.
“Alright now, riddle me this,” challenged Rainbow Dash. “If you were our friend and I offered you total freedom right now in exchange for helping me pull the greatest prank ponykind’s ever seen on Twilight, what would you do?”
Sombra rolled his eyes. “I would tell you no out of loyalty to our other friends and the agreement I made with them.”
Rainbow Dash nodded. “Good enough for me! Your turn, Pinkie!”
The mare broke into a grin. “Alrighty! So tell me: what do you get when you cross a rhetorical question with a joke?”
Sombra’s eyebrows furrowed and he stared at Pinkie Pie in uncertain silence.
“Exactly!” she exulted, and burst out laughing.
Sombra continued to stare.
Abruptly, Pinkie Pie’s laughter ceased. She frowned and squinted at the stallion. “You’re supposed to be laughing too,” she hissed.
“I didn’t think it was funny.”
Pinkie Pie pointed her hoof at her eyes, then at Sombra’s. Then she looked over to Twilight with open concern.
“One last question. Please impress me. Let’s say your friend has been having a difficult time lately. You believe you know exactly what to do to get them through it, but when you offer, they reject your help. What’s the kindest thing you can do for your friend at that point?”
Sombra stood up, knocking his chair backward with a clatter. “You carry out your plan anyway. She can’t see what’s best for her in the midst of her trouble, but she’ll be thankful once she’s rescued!”
At once the expressions of five mares darkened from skepticism to disbelief and anger. Twilight shook her head. “I’ve heard enough. Your answers to all of our questions were correct but bad, and your answer to Fluttershy’s was completely wrong. Ask her to walk you through the correct answer next time she visits you. In the meantime, you’ll be locked up in this room for a while yet, so I suggest you use all your time alone to improve your attitude!” The mares all trudged out, Twilight last of all. “Goodbye, Sombra. I’ll see you tomorrow for some remedial friendship work.”
And the door was shut. He was alone, and he was fuming. What did it matter that incompetent imbecile of a princess didn’t allow him to pass? The assessment was rigged from the start, and anyway, he had more pressing concerns. His Fluttershy was wed to that beast, and they had kept it from him so he couldn’t whisk her away to safety! She was his! She had sought him out, she wanted him! Not that hideous stain on Equestria, but him, her lover, her cherisher, her master!
Surely that monster had stolen her against her will, and he was having his sick way with her even now on that disgraceful sham of a honeymoon! And how could she resist when he could overpower her with just a single filthy talon? Discord saw how Fluttershy recognized the danger he posed and tried to distance herself, and he was enraged with jealousy, so he forced her into twisted servitude! Sombra was certain of it. And he was certain that as soon as Discord brought Fluttershy back, she would want him to waste not a moment in freeing her.
Sombra flung the dampener off his horn (catching it in his magic before it could crash against the wall and alert the guards) and began to practice his new spells. They had to be flawless. For her.
The sun sank low in the hazy, tangerine sky, just kissing the surface of the vast turquoise sea. Deliciously hypnotic was the rhythmic lapping of the waves caressing the beach. Fluttershy arranged herself more snugly on top of her mate in their gently-swaying hammock. In the distance, a Parasaurolophus bugled.
This is unbelievable, she thought.
“Unbelievable” is just one of the many perks of having the Lord of Chaos for a mate, Discord replied.
“One?” And what are some of the others?
Oh, little things, he stroked her mane, like this. With a snap, a tray of petit-fours appeared, adorned with ferns and exotic early flowers.
Fluttershy daintily popped one of the treats into her mouth, then fed one to her mate.
“There might also be a little of this,” Discord went on, purring the words aloud to feel Fluttershy shiver against him. He leaned down to kiss her snout and ran his hands slow and savory down her sides. And sometimes, there could even be things like this. He sat himself more upright in the hammock, bringing Fluttershy up with him, and a little velvet box appeared in his hands.
What’s this? Fluttershy took the box in her hooves, but let Discord open it for her.
A gift. A symbol of our relationship for you to wear, if you like.
Inside the box was a necklace with a spherical glass pendant about the size of a robin’s egg. Fluttershy looked closer and saw that something inside the glass was swirling as if alive. Gently, she lifted up the necklace and peered at the pendant as closely as the focus of her eyes would allow.
“It almost looks like a little shoal of fish!”
“That’s because it is.”
“But… How?”
“This is an ‘eternal ecosystem’ necklace. It was fashioned by skilled craftsfolk of a species that went extinct in a far-away dimension. The nobility among those people would give these necklaces as gifts and heirlooms to their loved ones as a symbol of their everlasting and ever-evolving love. We draconequui found a few hundred of these necklaces among the rubble of their lost civilization. It was a shame to leave them there, so we took them and adopted them into our own culture. They’re rather hard to come by since there are so few of them. We could make more with our magic, of course, but that would be against the spirit of the thing.”
“So how did you get one?”
Though Fluttershy was still looking at the necklace and not at Discord, she could tell he rolled his eyes. “Unbeknownst to me, Lady Ilmatar had reserved one for me when I was still King for the day I eventually found my soulmate. She presented it to me to give to you the first time I went back to The Center, back when you were still carrying the foals.” Noticing that Fluttershy was going cross-eyed scrutinizing the pendant, Discord conjured a magnifying glass.
Fluttershy peered through it, then gasped. “There are little plants, too! And shrimps! And… an eel? You mean to tell me they’ve been alive for—how long, again?”
Discord chuckled. “Longer than the pony race has existed. But no, those specific individuals in there probably haven’t been alive that long. It’s a whole, miniature, self-contained ecosystem. Creatures are born and die and are continually shifting and adapting. The magic of it is that they all seem to have some kind of genetic immunity to inbreeding, so they can evolve forever without degenerating into extinction. I’m told that the community inside the pendant develops to reflect the state of its wearer over time, though I’ve never paid close enough attention to observe that phenomenon myself.”
It’s so beautiful, Fluttershy thought to him. Could you help me put it on?
He did so, and Fluttershy felt a strange sensation of warmth radiating from where the pendant sat over her chest. It was as if she could feel all the passion and adoration of all the mysterious beings who had worn this very pendant before her, and all the pleasure and excitement of the creatures inside who were delighted to have a new owner at last. The ugly scar of dark magic which was already fading from her neck seemed to quail beneath the intensity of all that love.
I’ll love you for as long as that little ecosystem is alive, murmured Discord through their connection.
And I’ll love you for as long as this little ecosystem is alive,echoed Fluttershy, touching the pendant.
Or as long as you’re alive, thought Discord, but he didn’t send that thought to Fluttershy. Instead, he stuffed a petit-four in his mouth and offered another to his mate, which she happily took.
“Ouch!” Fluttershy’s hooves rose to her lips as the water brimming in her eyes threatened to spill over.
“What’s wrong?” Swiftly, Discord flipped her around so she was facing him and he could better examine her.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” She smiled behind her hooves, and the pain still sparkled in her eyes.
“It’s not nothing. Let me see.” Discord gently moved Fluttershy’s hooves down and was startled to see a bead of blood forming on her lower lip.
Fluttershy, somehow, looked apologetic. “It’s silly. I’ve been biting myself an awful lot recently, like I keep forgetting the size of my own fangs.” She licked away her blood with a grimace.
Discord squinted and, after getting her permission, examined Fluttershy’s teeth. “Are you certain they haven’t just grown a little longer? They look longer to me.”
She waved his hands away and closed her mouth. “But that wouldn’t make sense! The last time my fangs grew was years ago, when I was… in captivity. And then they shrank back down. Why would they grow again now?”
Discord shrugged. “It was just a thought.”
Fluttershy ran her tongue over her teeth, considering. Then her lips curled up in a timid smile. “All the better to… bite you with?” She giggled. How funny it was to see him flush like that!
“Uh, well, I mean...” He stammered.
She leaned in close to his neck. “It’s not going to hurt you, is it?” She whispered against his fur. “You’re not going to bleed or anything?”
“N-no, of course not!”
“Well, then.”
The stars were peeking out of the darkness above them, strange, ancient constellations no pony had ever witnessed before, and somewhere off in the woods, two giant lizards bugled a duet.
They lingered in bed as the bright, young sun arose. It was finally their last morning here, and thus the last morning they could cuddle the hours away without the interruption of eight little hooves scrambling for attention.
Fluttershy blinked into the ray of sunlight slanting in through the window. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw a few long Titanosaur necks poking above the tree canopy in the distance. She could also make out, from somewhere underneath their treehouse, the squeaking calls of the rodent-like animals that Discord had informed her would survive the coming extinction event and go on to evolve into the first equines, among other things. She had wondered what it would be like to communicate with them, but eventually thought better of it. What could she even say to them? “Your world is coming to an end, but don’t worry, your kind will survive and come out of it looking like me”? If Fluttershy herself ever heard anything like that from the mouth of a strange, gaudy creature she’d never seen before, she’d be more than a little distraght.
So she stayed in bed, soaking in the sounds of an ancient, vibrant world and leaning a little closer into the warmth of her mate. In response, Discord rolled in toward her to drape an arm across her middle. This gave Fluttershy something new to look at.
"Discord?”
“Mm?”
It still hasn’t healed, she told him.
What hasn’t healed, dearest?
Fluttershy softly touched his neck. The, um, bite marks.
Oh, it’s healed, he assured her, contentedly burying his face in her mane. It’s just a little scar now.
Can’t you heal the scar, though?
Sure. I just don’t want to. Discord squeezed her, hoping to get her eyes—and her mind, too—off the twin marks.
No such luck. Why not? I think you should.
Discord released her and sat up to conjure a hand-mirror and inspect himself. Because I like it. It’s something of yours I can carry with me anywhere.
I thought that’s what our thought connection was for.
Yes, but this scar is something others can see too!
Fluttershy pouted. I don’t think I want others to see that! You know Fio and Corey will ask about it.
So what? Discord whirled around, knocking Fluttershy onto her back and standing over her on all fours. There was a jubilant, predatory gleam in his eye. I’ll just tell them Daddy got in a fight with a ferocious beast… and won!
Giggling despite herself, Fluttershy kicked him off. Then a look of fear crossed her face. What about our friends? They’ll surely notice!
Discord nuzzled under her chin. I’ll just say it was from you.
“No!” She pushed him away again as her face reddened. The thought was so embarrassing that she unconsciously pulled her mane forward to veil her face.
“And why not? They heard my accidental declaration at the Torrent of Becoming! They’re all big girls, and we’re married—well, sort of.” He hugged his preemptively-mortified sort-of wife into his side. “I say there’s no shame in it!”
Fluttershy gave him a stern look as she selected her words.
But Discord anticipated her plea and interrupted it. You get a necklace to wear, and I wanna wear this scar. It’s only fair.
Those aren’t quite the same things. Fluttershy crossed her arms. But Discord wiggled his eyebrows in an exaggerated wave pattern, and Fluttershy just couldn’t stay serious. She laughed and gave him a shove so that he fell back into the mattress. Fine! But I don’t have to be enthused about it!
Don’t worry, he smiled from beneath her, I just want this one bite scar. I’ll heal all the others over completely.
Others?
Others. Then his eyes grew pleading and he pouted. Unless you mean that night was a one-time-only thing?
Fluttershy crinkled her nose in mock annoyance and hopped out of the bed. “It wasn’t. But it’s not happening again now.”
They went to the kitchen, where Fluttershy prepared their tea and Discord worked on breakfast. Some mornings he simply conjured the food or had it come to them in some elaborate, entertaining way, but this was the last day of their honeymoon, and it was a time for doing everything as slowly as possible. It meant there was more time for him to blow her kisses or for her to casually bump her hips against him as she walked by.
They ate on their treehouse deck that overlooked the sea. The water was cool and subdued, not yet glittering with the ecstatic brilliance of the intense midday sunlight. One last time, they felt the ground-shaking steps of the Titanosaurs moving through the forest, listened to the bleats and blasts of the Parasaurolophuses, watched the dynamic wheeling of the Pteranodons in the sea breezes.
I almost don’t want to leave, Fluttershy mused.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting anxious to see our little mongrels again.
Yes! I’ve felt that way every day. It’s hard to believe we’ve managed to keep away a whole month.
A month to us, maybe, but just a couple days to them. We left them Monday morning, and I’ll have us back in present-day Canterlot on the following Sunday evening.
I wonder if they’ve driven Spike and the others crazy yet, Fluttershy giggled. Then she frowned. I wonder how things went with… the assessment.
I’m sure Twilight’s got everything handled. How about one last dip in the sea, there? It’s no good worrying about all that in the final hours of our honeymoon!
As a response, Fluttershy set down her empty teacup, climbed up onto the deck railing, and spread her wings. Discord was beside her right away, and together, they soared down through the humid, ancient sky.
At the appointed time and in the appointed place, several things happened all at once. Discord and Fluttershy appeared in the castle courtyard, a party cannon sprayed confetti in their faces, five mares plus a dragon shouted “SURPRISE!”, and two five-year-olds shouted “MOMMY, DADDY!”
Needless to say, the reunion was sweet. And noisy. There were probably a few desserts involved, but Fluttershy could hardly remember in the chaos of it all. What she did remember was Fio’s pointing hoof and those fateful words: “Daddy got hurt!” Twelve grown-up eyes instantly trained on Discord’s neck and widened in understanding.
To Fluttershy’s horror, all Discord could manage by way of justification was a whimpering “Daddy was attacked… by a… a ferocious… beast…”
The gathering had erupted in a fit of hysteric laughter. Discord looked stunned, no less red than Fluttershy herself. I didn’t think it would happen like this, he complained, smiling sheepishly at his mate.
Fluttershy leveled her gaze on him. You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.