The service bell rang as Pinkie Pie pushed open the door to Sugarcube Corner, struggling to fit a large rectangular frame through the door. She managed to finally fit it through and then hopped up the stairs past the kitchen in her peculiar way. She gently opened the door to her room and trotted towards the little wooden box that was bathed in afternoon sunlight. She set the square frame against her dresser and carefully pushed her door closed so as not to attract the attention of the Cakes, who should be closing up shop right about now.
She walked over to the wooden box and gently lifted the lid, revealing a small wooden carving inside. She picked it up slowly and set it down gingerly on a nearby stool.She raised a hoof to tap the wooden totem but stopped midway as she heard the stairs creaking as somepony approached her room.
She tip-hoofed carefully to the door and placed her ear in the middle of the wooden surface. She just barely heard a faint *tap*-*tap*tap*-*tap*tap* coming from the other side and pushed the handle down excitedly. Standing on the other side of the door was none other than Applejack, a scroll clutched in her mouth.
She led Applejack in to the room and silently closed the door behind her as Applejack spat out the scroll and began breaking the seal. "Ya'll should've seen the look on Spike's face when he delivered this! He looked about as confused as a rattlesnake in a barrel!"
Pinkie raised her eyebrow in an inquisitive manner. "So, you don't feel bad about lying to Spike?"
Applejack huffed indignantly and waved a dismissive hoof. "I don't lie. I just... didn't tell him the truth. Besides, it's our letter, and none a' his business any way ya' look at it."
Pinkie resumed smiling and sighed wearily. "Yeah I guess. But the whole 'sneaking around' stuff is losing its charm pretty fast, am I right? It's like, if I don't tell someone I'm gonna burst!" To further punctuate her exclamation, she set off a hidden blast of confetti that exploded somewhere behind her.
Applejack 'tsked and brushed the colorful paper pieces from the letter. "We'll tell 'em all, when the time is right. But you know what'll happen if Twilight finds out any time soon."
Pinkie gave a confirmatory nod. "I know, she's going all out! You can't even kick a rock without hitting one of her matrix-crystal thingies! And whenever she steps out of her library, she's muttering to herself with her face in some book! Well... more so than usual, I mean."
Applejack sighed and flattened out the scroll on the floor with her hoof. "Well, let's see what the Princess has to say, and we'll figure out what to do from there."
Pinkie nodded emphatically and trotted over to look at the letter laid flat on the floorboards. The Princess' flowing script came up to meet them with a slight orange tint in the ink.
Dear Applejack and Pinkie Pie,
As you probably know full well by now, I am aware of that little stunt you pulled last week. Do not be alarmed if somepony other than yourselves happens upon this letter, for as you will see, I have very carefully attuned the ink I used to your own personal essences. You won't believe how difficult it was to lock on to just two of the Elements for the spell, but I'm sure that's a conversation more suited for Twilight's taste as I'm sure you'll agree. Anyways, to put your minds at ease, I am simply informing you that I do not plan to reveal the information of Discord's whereabouts unless given your full consent. I am taking a very large risk in trusting you both in the respect that you know exactly what you are doing. No doubt, Twilight is fervently searching for him as we speak, but I have a few assignments that might put her mind elsewhere and give you two some respite. Although I do trust both of your judgments, I will still require you to bring Discord to Canterlot as soon as you can for an evaluation. Hopefully whatever you are doing to him has finally brought out the good within him that I had been searching for all those years he was imprisoned in the royal gardens, because I have some very important plans for him if he is willing to comply. As for your reply letter, simply attach it to the inside of this letter, break open the seal and pour the contents on top of the two letters. Then simply set it on fire and it should return to me as intended.
Your Princess and friend,
---Celestia
Pinkie finished reading the letter and clapped her hooves together happily. "Great! That takes care of that! We'll go see the Princess in Canterlot some day this week, and then we'll figure it all out from there! Wow, it feels good to have a plan!"
Applejack got up and searched for some writing supplies on Pinkie's cluttered desk across the room. "You got that right! I'll start that reply letter now, how's next Thursday?" Applejack turned casually towards the large covered rectangle resting against the dresser and poked a hoof in its direction. "Say, whatcha' got there?"
Pinkie approached the totem on the stool and tapped it in the secret code she and Applejack established. "It's a present for our little friend!"
After tapping the totem, it vibrated violently for a split second and then lit up to display two asymmetrical yellow eyes. A disembodied voice echoed through the room, seemingly from nowhere. "You rang?"
Pinkie nodded ecstatically and pranced over to the covered rectangular frame. "I got you a super special 'haven't destroyed anypony's life in three days' present! I haggled it from my new painter friend Black Easel for a hooffull of beads and a poem about a flower!" She grabbed the canvas covering and pulled it away to reveal a large painting about a pony and a half high and two ponies long. The immaculate white canvas was splattered with an array of different shades of blue red and orange in seemingly random splatters and streaks. Applejack frowned deeply and tilted her head to the side at the 'modern art' that the fancy ponies seemed to be all about these days.
The little yellow eyes lit up, coupled with an elated gasp. "Oh my stars! I love it! Look at how the blue accentuates the fragility of society across the powerful strokes of the red establishment of government! And the orange, so brash and intrusive! I feel so naughty just looking at it!" Applejack tried tilting her head to the other side, but found none of whatever Discord was seeing in this painting. In fact, she used the word 'painting' very loosely. If asked before hand, she would have guessed a couple of mischievous foals had been throwing paint at each other and the canvas got in the way. "Oh, Pinkie Pie, you've outdone yourself! I'm making this the center piece of my sitting room!"
Before Applejack could ask the obvious question, the painting began to rattle in its frame until it was sucked into a space no bigger than a coin before disappearing into the totem. She trotted over to the totem and stared into the hole in space that was torn open right in front of her. Inside, she could see a cozy little sitting room, complete with a lush looking green couch, which Discord sat upon, and numerous other furniture arranged tastefully and stylishly around the area of the sunken pit surrounded by curving light brown walls, one of which bore the painting that Pinkie had brought. "Huh, I guess I was expectin' somethin' a little more chaotic."
Discord chuckled lightly and snapped his fingers. "Oh, you're just looking at it from the wrong angle." Immediately, the room turned a full 90 degrees as the walls and furniture began to elongate and stretch into blank nothingness behind them. It happened so fast that Applejack had to look away before the spectacle started to hurt her eyes.
Applejack walked back to the writing desk, shaking off all the strange things which she had just witnessed. She rolled up their reply letter in the original and turned around to face Pinkie. "Alright, where's the fireplace?"
"I don't have a fireplace! Just use the fire-pit!"
Applejack looked around, not seeing anything. As she turned back to the center of the room, she saw an inexplicable ring of bricks with a metal bowl in the center that had not been there a second ago. She then looked up at the ceiling to see that it was perfectly flat with no smoke holes. "We can't burn this in here! How are we gonna' vent the smoke? Wait, have you been usin' this thing without a ventilation hole?"
In response, Pinkie simply tilted her head and kept smiling in the same fashion as usual. Applejack sighed and walked over to the left-most wall where the window was set, sighing as she opened it up. Hopefully, they wouldn't die of smoke inhalation before the letter was sent.
After placing the rolled up letters in the charred fire pit, Applejack took the enlarged seal that the letter came with and bit one end of it. She then carefully pinched her hooves together on the opposite end and tore open the seal, making sure not to let any of the strange green liquid inside escape into her mouth. After sufficiently soaking the letters, she took out a box of matches from her saddlebags, lit one of them, and threw it into the pit, praying to Celestia it would work. After a few anxious seconds of waiting, the parchment began to burn around the edges before igniting into a bright green fire that covered the entire scroll without burning it further. After a few more anticipating seconds, the fire around the scroll flickered out before imploding into a tiny ball of green fire that shot out of the open window like a flaming sparrow. Surprisingly enough, Applejack knew exactly what a burning sparrow looked like, after having seen one fly out of her barn on a completely different occasion in which it was on fire. For some reason, that barn was fairly prone to disaster.
Applejack wafted the familiar draconic scent away from her nose while looking back at an ecstatic Pinkie. "Wow! That just might be cooler than when Spike does it! We gotta' get the Princess to send secret letters more often!"
Applejack snickered at Pinkie's enthusiasm and walked over to Discord's totem. "Hey, fella. You get all that from the letter?"
Discord's eyes made an indignant little noise and turned a 360. "Are you implying that I was reading over your shoulder? Because that's a very rude thing to do!"
Applejack stared at him, her mouth set in a hard line. He sighed and rolled his eyes again. "Okay, Thursday's good for me as well. Thanks for asking before sending the letter off, by the way."
Applejack ignored his cynicism and raised an eyebrow at him. "You're not afraid to go up b'fore the Princess? Not even a little anxious?"
"Oh no. In fact, Celest' has been rather polite ever since... oh, I'd say about eight hundred years after my initial imprisonment. Of course her ramblings about 'friendship this' and 'yadda yadda harmony that' got a tad irritating after about three hundred years or so, but she at least kept my statue clean when she wasn't there trying to bore me to death with one of your friendship adventures." His eyes quickly shrunk in an almost apologetic fashion before adding, "No offense to you, of course."
Applejack smiled, an action which was reflected deep within herself. It seemed, for now at least, that she had made the right decision in allowing Discord clemency. After all, if she were in Discord's horseshoes, she would definitely not feel too comfortable standing trial before the powerful entity that had imprisoned her thousands of years ago, who was also the mentor of the pony whose friends had the capacity to turn her to stone at the twitch of a tail. Of course, if the past was any indicator, Discord was much too complex to fully understand. But if Applejack had learned anything from the past, it was that trusting her instincts usually had good results...
...usually.
"Ya' know what, Discord? I think we're gonna' be A-okay."
Pinkie bounded up next to her and draped a leg over her shoulder. "And how!"
Discord let loose an overly amused chuckle at the two mares before him. "Oh, come now, we can't end it like this! How heart-warming and cliche! Where's the intrigue? The unanswered questions? The ambiguously spinning top!"
"Oh dagnabit, just shut up and bring it in for a group hug!"
Discord sighed and sullenly removed himself from the totem. He sat on the floor, his arms folded as he draped his draconic tail over the two friends. "Fine, have it your way."
~*~THE END~*~