"You have got to be kidding me."
Princess Luna shook her head, trying to process what she just heard... Discord is on earth: I knew that already. Discord is a human: knew that too. Discord is falling in love with Katrina: how the hay did that happen? Luna, to say the least, was confused. How could she have fallen in love with Discord? Of all ponies! I have to talk to my sister about this... Not wanting to take the time to walk or fly there, Luna's horn lit with magic and she teleported right outside Celestia's door with a loud pop.
Luna pushed open the door, "Sister?" she said, "I have urgent news I wish to speak to you about."
"Luna? Come in, come in, sister! Don't be a stranger!"
Luna stepped gracefully into the room, Celestia was clearly taking Discord's banishment well. The sun princess was humming merrily to a tune only she knew to herself in the mirror, and using her magic to run a brush through her pastel rainbow hair, while a second brush did her tail and a third did her coat.
"You seem in a good mood."
"I slept well last night, it was good to have some peace and quiet for a while and I caught up on some very much needed beauty rest." She smiled happily to herself. "Now, there was something you wanted to tell me about?"
"I was taking my daily respite in the gardens this afternoon, when I once again had a dream about the Earth moon. In-"
Celestia eyed her suspiciously. "Don't you ever get tired of just sitting there watching them? There just boring humans that do nothing but beat each other up. You know they have no idea either one of us even exists, anyway."
Luna rolled her eyes."I find the humans interesting, sometimes. But in this dream there was a girl talking to the moon. I recall having told you about her before,"
"Katrina right?"
Luna stomped her hoof on the marble floor. " DO YOU WANT TO HEAR WHAT WE HAVE TO SAY OR NOT? IT IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE THAT WE TELL YOU THIS BUT IF YOU DO NOT LET US SPEAK, THAN WE CAN HARDLY BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR YOUR IGNORANCE!" she made full use of the Royal Canterlot voice.
"Yeesh, sorry Lulu. Go on then, tell me what has you tail in a twist."
Luna sighed, her sister had this irritating habit to either take everything completely seriously or blowing it off. It really depended on the day. "Yes, her name is Katrina. She was talking to me, which is to say, the moon, and happened to mention a certain fun-loving draconequus friend of ours."
All three hair brushes dropped out of midair; she was having such a nice day. "What did she say?"
"Apparently he's much better at playing a human than we thought. Katrina thinks that he's just another human, and he must have had enough magic left to cast a spell on her because she seems to think she's in love with him!"
"In love? With Discord? Nonsense!"
"That's what she said. Is it possible he had enough residual magic to enchant her?"
"It's possible." Celestia's face became hard and unreadable. "It seems I'll need to bring him back early, but it will take me a few hours to prepare the spell needed to create a portal between the worlds long enough to bring him back. I'm sure he'll be all too eager to return and get back to his precious chaos, knowing him. He probably only put the spell on her in the first place to use her for a cover story, he is evil after all."
"I just hope she is ok." Luna said. she stared down at her hooves, "If she really is under a spell, I shall make sure he regrets putting it there for a long time."
"If it's a spell, and there is that possibility, than it'll release her the second that the portal closes behind us."
"Please prepare your magic, sister, we have no time to waste."
Celestia nodded and walked over to her bookshelf to research the appropriate spell that she would need. Luna walked to her room to try and get back to sleep. She tried not to think too hard about the danger that she thought Katrina was in, she needed to be fully rested if she was going to be any help to Celestia.
"Do not worry, Katrina. We'll be there soon."
Katrina opened her eyes slowly, sunlight streamed through the uncovered windows alerting her to the fact that it was time for the day to start. Katrina sat up and stretched. She breathed deeply of the fresh air, it smelled like muffins. Wait. Since when does it smell like muffins? Katrina stood and followed to smell to the kitchen. What she saw caused her to gape in surprise.
"Good morning, Katrina! Sleep well?" Discord was not only up and about, but baking!
"Ye-yeah I did. What's going on? Doesn't you leg hurt?"
"I am a very, very fast healer, always have been. When I came downstairs I saw you were still asleep, so I decided to make us some breakfast."
"You only hurt it a couple of nights ago!"
"Like I said, I'm a fast healer. I made muffins!"
"You made muffins?"
"Is that ok?"
Katrina smiled, despite her mild confusion. "Yeah, it's great! I love muffins!"
"Me too, hence why I'm making them. Besides, I have something that I promised to tell you about yesterday, and I intend to tell you." Discord looked as if he was not entirely sure if he should tell her, but he promised and not even Discord would dare break a pinkie promise, not even on an entirely different planet. Discord set a large plate of blueberry muffins down on the table
"Oh I get it, the muffins are a bribe. What is it that I should be mad at you for that warrants muffins?"
. He took a deep breath to stay calm and began to tell his secret. "The thing is, Katrina-"
"You can call me Katie." She mumbled, the way she said it reminded Discord of the element of kindness.
"What?"
"I mean if you want to, you can. I remember that I used to have friends in town, they always called me Katie."
"It's a nice name, I like it. Of course I like Katrina too... But anyway back to my story. First of all the reason you found me in the forest; it wasn't because I was pranked or tricked into going in there. I was teleported, from a different planet. I figured you deserve to know that."
"So you're an alien? That's cool..."
He laughed, "No, I'm not an alien. It is pretty cool I guess that I'm from across space somewhere, but I'm not here on vacation, I was banished here. I got bored, so I caused trouble and they sent me here for a time-out, so to speak. The reason I smiled when I found out how old you were, is because I'm pretty old myself. I was happy to find out that you were too, because it's nice to meet people you have stuff in common with. The difference is, that I'm thousands of years old, not hundreds." Discord wasn't smiling anymore, he could only imagine what she was thinking right now.
"Thousands, huh?" Katrina thought for a moment, before smiling herself. "You know, your looking good for a thousand years old."
"I seem to recall saying something similar to you."
"I seem to recall the same."
They both laughed.
"You aren't mad at me for keeping any of this from you then?" Discord asked.
"Not really, I understand why you wouldn't want to tell me something like that, you were worried about what I would think. I don't think any differently of you except that, I'm happy that your telling me the truth now, rather than me finding out anyway later. Now, lets eat these muffins! They look fantastic!"
They both ate their fill of muffins and put the rest in a plastic bag to stay fresh. Discord still looked a little concerned but Katie knew how to fix that.
"You want to go somewhere fun?"
Discord looked up from the book he had begun to read. "What do you mean?"
"You still look sad, so I had an idea. Do you want to go somewhere, really, really fun?"
"Umm.. sure?"
Katie smiled gleefully and grabbed him by the arm, dragging him to the front door. "Stay here one second." She left but came bag momentarily with a large yellow parcel in her hands. "Hold this, I'm going to turn into a wolf again to get us there faster." Discord slung the package over his shoulder with a strap on the side and a brief flash later Katie was a wolf. After Discord climbed on her back and held on tight she raced off into the forest. She was somehow running faster than she had the day before and she didn't slow until they came to a large river. She motioned for him to get off and in another flash she was a human again.
"Come on!" she laughed and grabbed his wrist again.
They ran up the river until they came to where it was gushing out of the side of a mountain from some unknown source above. Katie took the package and pulled hard on a cord coming off of the side. It inflated instantly into a small yellow raft. Discord had a feeling he knew where this was going. Katie pushed the raft into the water and tied it to a tree on the shore.
"This is the only place in the entire forest that absolutely no other humans know about. I used to do this all the time!"
She sat down inside and motioned for Discord to do the same. He stepped carefully into the raft and sat down next to Katie. Discord was more concerned about the safety of the raft than where he put his hand down, and for a split second his hand rested on top of hers and they both blushed bright pink.
"Are you ready?" Katrina asked. She smiled brightly and Discord couldn't help but smile too.
"As I'll ever be!" He replied.
Katie untied the boat from the cord and the small craft shot off down the river. In no time at all they were both soaking wet and having the time of their lives at it. They laughed, screamed and laughed some more, as the raft lurched left and right following the violent current. The raft finally came to rest in a lake where the river let out. After the thrilling ride, they settled down a bit and had a picnic lunch. Katie had thought to bring a couple thermoses of chocolate milk and the rest of the muffins. They spent the entire day out in the meadow, cracking jokes, telling stories, and feasting on muffins, unaware of how cold it had gotten towards the end of the day. By the time they got back to the house, it was so cold that they decided to curl up together in a blanket by the fireplace.
"This was a great day." Discord laughed, "We should do that again some time."
"I would love to." Katie sighed, she had to catch her breath from laughing so much.
Discord folded his hands and twiddled his thumbs wrestling with something in his mind. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. "Hey Katie?"
"Hmm?"
"There's actually something else I should tell you too."
"What's that then?" Katie snuggled close to Discord reveling in the shared warmth under the blanket.
"Another reason why I smiled. I was just so happy when I found out that you could live as long as me, because... well... I really like being around you, Katie. More than that, I really like you, and I think, I mean, I know that, well..." Discord groaned in frustration. "Of all the times to be at a loss for words, it had to be now! My entire life I never shut up, and now I can't think of what to say."
Katrina laughed, but she knew what he was trying to get at. She turned her face up to look him in the eyes and smiled. "I love you too." She said.
Discord felt as if the entire earth had been lifted off of his shoulders, he even felt like he was floating. Without even thinking, he put his hand on her cheek and kissed her. And wow, what a kiss. Katie felt like there were millions of fireworks going of in her brain, in a million different colors and shapes. Nothing else mattered in the whole world except her and Discord, and that heck of a kiss. She was sad when it ended, but ageless or not, she had to breathe sometime. For a short while they just looked into each others eyes and tried to catch their breaths. Discord had never felt so alive in his entire life. All he could think about was how wonderful this one moment was, and how the next moment after that was even better. He was in love, and not even his common sense had anything to say about it. Sense never let him have any fun anyway, so he was glad when it shut up and took the back seat. They fell asleep on the couch, still wrapped in each others arms. Nothing mattered now, he had Katie. He didn't care about Equestria, or not having to be a human anymore. He didn't even care about getting his chaos back. Granted, it would be really, really nice to have his chaos back, but if he had to leave Katie for that to happen, then he couldn't care less about having it.
And Celestia would just have to deal with it.
Author's note:
Oh noes! Celestia is coming to get Discord back!
What does this mean for his new relationship with Katrina?
How does Luna know so much about Katrina?
What is it in Katrina's old room that she's so scared of finding?
How would the pony sisters react if they found out the love between out heroes was real and not a spell?
What is the average wing-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Find out the answer to all of these questions, except maybe the last one, when the adventure continues in the next chapter of:
Star-crossed!