//------------------------------//
// 12. Special (the Cakes, Discord) 
// Story: The Twilight Zone 
// by Bad Horse 
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A minute's trot down a sandy path off one side of the road to Salt Lick City lay a tiny inlet of Hooveser Lake. There, next to a herd of gray-white boulders wading about its entrance, were a little strip of sand on one side of the inlet, the beginning of a sunset, and four ponies.

"You be careful, Pound Cake!" Mrs. Cake called out into the wind coming off the lake, towards where a little pegasus colt bounded from one boulder to another. He was headed for the farthest and tallest one that stood guard out in the cold, deep water. He could have already zoomed there and back three times with thirty flaps of his wings. But colts must jump on boulders. They must vault up every stone staircase like a gymnast, then stand on its top and score themselves—another perfect 10!—before leaping off to the next event.

Pumpkin stood near the water's edge, aiming her horn down. The sand at her hooves swirled around like foaming cider being stirred in a mug, hissing softly as it spun.

"Can you make a castle?" Mr. Cake asked. She bit her upper lip and concentrated on the sand. It hurried together into a tall round silo that stretched up like a growing flower, then unfurled at the top and sprouted battlements.

"That's great! How about a whale?"

A million grains of sand spilled over the tower's walls and reconvened in a lump at the bottom. They conferred with each other a moment, then spread out into a big domed forehead and a broad flat tail which slowly undulated back and forth. Mr. Cake leaned down to look into its big smiling eyes, and it winked, a piece of its eyelid crumbling away.

"Terrific!"

A spray of sand rained down on the whale like a hundred harpoons, eroding its smile down to a nervous pucker. Pound stood before them, panting, legs splayed from the impact of landing.

"Mom! Dad!” He swung his head once to each side, his pupils flicking back behind him, toward the lake. His ears were flat against his head. “It's Discord! Run!" He bounded back into the air. The whale crumbled away further in the wake from his takeoff.

"Come on," Mr. Cake said to Pumpkin with a smile. "Run!" He bounded after Pound, laughing. Pumpkin frowned at the whale, and grains of sand shifted until its pocked face was smooth again. Then she galloped back toward the road after her father.

He stopped a hundred hooflengths up the sandy path, grinning and breathing hard. Pumpkin pulled up beside him and looked up at him.

Pound banked back and around him like a swallow. "Don't stop! Where's Mom?"

"I'm not so—whew!—so young as I used to be," Mr. Cake said. "I can't keep up with you kids anymore. Never could, now that I mention it. Come on, let's go back and protect your mother from Discord."

Pound buzzed past him on a beeline for his mother. She was still standing on the beach, shaking her head at Pound and smiling, when Mr. Cake caught up with them again.

"It's not safe!" Pound was saying. "He's right there, behind that big rock!" He glanced back and forth between his parents and the granite patriarch.

"Sure he is, lump," Mr. Cake said. "He's probably just here to watch the sunset."

"He isn't."

"Oh? What's he doing?"

"Standing. Grinning. He winked at me." Pound shuddered.

"Well, there's no law against that. And we have four brave defenders of Equestria here. He can't possibly hurt you."

Pound looked dubiously out towards the boulder. "He can't?"

"I promise." He nudged Pound back towards the boulders. "Now go and play while there is still light."

The little pegasus looked at the big boulder again. "He really can't hurt me?"

"Absolutely not. I forbid it."

"Well... okay." He took a few steps forward, neck stretched out in front of him, sniffing.

"What an imagination," Mr. Cake said to his wife.





This time it was a giant crouching sand-frog hit by the spray from Pound's landing. 

"Come look! You gotta come see him!" Pound said.

Pumpkin glared at him, then bent forward towards her sculpture. "I'm sorry, Croakers. He's a colt. No, they aren't very smart."

"See who?" Mr. Cake asked.

"Discord!"

"Discord again? Why would I want to see Discord?"

"He said you didn't believe me. Said you wouldn't come look. I told him he was a mean old liar liar mane on fire."

Mr. Cake squinted at the boulder, purple in the fading light. "I would, lump, but I don't think I could even get out there without taking a swim. That deep water's pretty cold."

"But, you hafta! Prove he's wrong. Wipe that nasty grin off his face!"

"I'm a little tired, son. Let's see Discord some other day."

Pound stood, uncharacteristically quiet, studying his father.

"You don’t believe me."

Mr. Cake bent down to get a closer look at Pound. The colt looked back into his eyes, unblinking, peering closely as if he were looking at his father for the first time.

"Now, Pound, I didn't say that," Mr. Cake said slowly, trying to work it out for himself as he spoke. "I believe you think you saw Discord. Or maybe you didn’t, at first, but all this running and playing was so exciting and real that you talked yourself into it." He reached out and tried to ruffle Pound's mane with one hoof, but the colt bent away from him.

Pound lowered his head and snorted. "I'm not stupid. I didn't see some twisted old tree. He talked to me."

Mr. Cake grinned stupidly at Pound, hoping the tension would somehow dissolve into a joke, but Pound just picked at a few strands of ragged shore grass with one hoof.

"Well—well, would you look at the time," Mr. Cake finally said. "We'll have to hurry to get to the ice cream parlor before they close."

"Ice cream!" Pumpkin shouted, and jumped up and pawed at the air.

Pound kicked a pebble into the water. "He said you wouldn't believe me."

"Now, Pound," Mrs. Cake said.

Mr. Cake tried grinning again, gave up, and began leading the way back to town. Pound and Pumpkin trailed behind the adults, Pumpkin skipping and singing a kind of song about the relative merits of frogs and brothers. Pound kept glancing back towards the water.

"You're awfully quiet today, Pound," Mr. Cake said after the third verse.

"You promised me he couldn't hurt me," Pound said. "You promised, and you didn’t even know he was really there."

"Well, he didn't hurt you," Mr. Cake said.

"He said it'd change me. Finding out I can be right, and you and Mom and the whole rest of the world wrong."

Mr. Cake smiled at Mrs. Cake. "Such an imagination." Mrs. Cake only frowned thoughtfully.

"He said it'd make me special," Pound said in a flat voice.

"You're special alright," his sister taunted.

"Pumpkin! We'll have none of that," Mrs. Cake said. She stopped and looked back, but instead of squabbling foals she saw only Pound's brown eyes staring back at her.

Pumpkin kept after him all the way home, but Pound ignored her, looking down, trudging as silently and steadily as a draft horse.

"Look at that," Mr. Cake said to his wife. "Our little colt may be growing up."

Or maybe he just wasn't feeling well. At the ice cream parlor, he ate only one scoop, even though it was peppermint chip.