//------------------------------// // Show You The World In My Eyes // Story: The King Who Would Be Man // by alarajrogers //------------------------------// Fluttershy looked hard at Discord.  "What were you thinking? You can't turn children into puppies!  Even if they want to be puppies!" "Whyever not? One time in the old days, I dropped in on a class full of them and took them with me to explore an ant hill, and a coral reef, and the moon, and they loved it. It was a delightful science lesson that permanently imprinted on their little minds  vitally important information like how boring anthills would be if you had to live there, and all of them were utterly thrilled.  Well, except for the little orange colt with the ridiculously curly mane who kept whining. If I recall correctly his name was Carrot or something like that but he really struck me as more of an Arnold so that's what I called him." "Well, ok, maybe they did have fun, but how did their parents feel about it?" "Who cares? I was there for the children.  Children are so delightfully chaotic, Flutterbug, they actually enjoy my games.  Well, as long as their misguided parents haven't taught them to run away screaming as soon as they see me, but I would never harm a child.  They're far too much fun."  He grinned. "Your little pals will return to pony form when the moon rises, or Twilight frees them, whichever comes first.  I told them when I gave them the spell that I could undo it or Princess Luna could any time they wanted to get out of it, and that it would only last until nightfall in any case, but that they weren't to tell their Aunt Twilight that because we were playing a wonderful prank on her and I had permission from Princess Celestia." Fluttershy looked at him askance.  "You seriously had permission from Princess Celestia?" she asked skeptically. "Some time ago Celestia asked me to offer her student my advice and guidance in her magic studies.  Which of course was perfectly appropriate, because I am approximately several hundred times more knowledgeable about how magic works than Celestia and Luna put together, and besides, Sparky is just so much fun to tease.  She's so serious!  Don't you just want to chuck her under her little chin, and pinch her cheeks, and turn her mane vermilion and neon green polka dotted?" "I thought you didn't like her." "Perish the thought! I love my little Sparkiepoo!  Why, when she gets that 'grr' face on like she seriously does want to turn me into a cake and eat me, it is so adorable! Reminds me of Celestia.  Or... actually, it reminds me of quite a few overly serious, pompous, stuffed shirt, nauseatingly noble and ethical creatures I've met in my life... you know, I can never resist that type.  Something about the absolute certainty of somepony's own righteousness... they're just irresistable.  I absolutely have to come in and shake up their whole worldview.  Puncture their balloon of smug superiority and pie them in the face, as it were." He sighed.  "Of course, they're never nearly as interested in me as I am in them, so I'd imagine Twilight doesn't like me very much, but she voluntarily seeks me out and asks for my help, which is better than... I usually get." "Did Princess Celestia really tell you you could turn fillies into puppies as a test for Twilight?" "Well, no, but Celestia knows perfectly well I don't perform when I'm micro-managed, so we actually haven't discussed the content of my exercises for Twilight at all. But really!  The fillies wanted to try being puppies, I wanted to turn them into puppies, Twilight wants to learn how to really analyze and take apart hostile magic, Celestia wants me to teach her without actually fighting her, it's win-win all around! A bit of harmless chaos, fun for everyone, and it all goes back to normal at nighttime even if Sparkleberry can't figure out my spell, which, really, she should not have needed anywhere near so many hints to do. Maybe the poor dear's under too much stress. Celestia can be quite a slave driver, you know." Fluttershy sighed. The mariachi cherries, which had gone silent while Twilight was here, picked up a peppy tune again.  "Just... be careful, okay? Doing that kind of thing is, I mean I guess it's okay if no one is getting hurt and the kids agree to it, but it's so upsetting when anything seems like it might even be a little bit threatening to foals, so you've got to be careful so ponies don't get really, really mad at you." He sighed.  "I suppose if I'm trying to be reformed, I have to actually care if ponies get really, really mad at me?" "Yes. You do." She cleared her own plate and Angel Bunny's, since Discord had eaten his.  "Oh, don't do your tedious washing up now, Fluttershy.  I've been asking all day if we can play a game!" "How about I save the washing up for later and we talk for a little while?  I'm not feeling much like playing a game right now." "Ugh, talking? Haven't we been talking all day?" "It's just..." She sat down next to him again.  "I've known you for a couple of months, but I really don't know anything about you. I've made a couple of guesses, but who knows if they're right or wrong? So... I'd like to learn more about you." "I'm the god of chaos. What's more to know?" "No, you're not," Fluttershy said.  "Well, I mean, maybe yes you are, but it's not like... it's not like you're not somepony.  With a history, and thoughts and feelings of your own.  I mean, you're immortal, you can do pretty much anything, you like to cause chaos, but... there's a lot more to learn about somepony than their hobbies and abilities." "I suppose." "Like, I didn't know you liked children!  You never like things that are cute." "Oh, I don't like children because they're cute, Fluttershy. I like them because they are tiny little monstrous balls of pure concentrated chaos that all the rest of you think are cute.  Why, you voluntarily give birth to them, and feed them, and let them live in your houses, when in fact they are almost as good as I am at causing disharmony, radical personality changes and total nonsensical chaos and they don't even need magic to do it. Of course, you folks usually spend all your time trying to knock that out of them and make them grow up into staid, stable, boring members of society, but at least while they are little they will do things like make a pie out of mud and then try to eat it, or draw all over the walls, or cover themselves completely with foal powder and then remove their diapers on the floor and run naked through their parents' dinner party. And as I said earlier, they generally appreciate my talents far more than their parents do. Admittedly, they're complete idiots, but you can't have everything." "I guess they can be pretty chaotic sometimes." "Sometimes? Try all the time! You remember that little stunt I pulled on you and your friends, well, of course you do. But that trick doesn't work on children, and do you know why? They're much too chaotic for my magic to be able to make them into the opposite of what they are, because that's going to happen anyway. Take the sweetest, most loving baby filly you can imagine. Now deprive her of her nap, and you'll have a shrieking banshee on your hands who hates everyone. Or, imagine the nastiest little bully you've ever met, some bad little colt who sticks fillies' manes in inkwells and shakes down littler foals for their lunch bits and ties cans to dogs' tails. Let the right stallion come along to play a game of kickball with him and take him out for ice cream, and he'll magically transform into an adorable little sweetheart doting on his daddy figure. The very nature of children is that their nature constantly changes." "I never really thought of it that way," Fluttershy said. "I'm surprised you didn't, after it was the Cutie Mark Crusaders that let me out of that dreadful statue the first time." He leaned back against the cloud, tipping his head upside down over the side, as a glass of chocolate milk manifested in midair, tipped over and poured its contents down his now-open mouth. As soon as the glass was empty, it sprouted butterfly wings and flew off. "Want some?" "Maybe later." "You’re missing out." He sat back up. "And the best part about children, the absolute most wonderful thing, is that when I rile them up with sugar and chaos and get them to the point where they're refusing to nap and bouncing off walls and just starting in with the annoying whines... I get to hand them back to their parents so I don't have to deal with any of the annoying parts! Everything about them is a win!" "Oh, so I guess you weren't thinking about having any of your own, then." Discord snorted. "Oh good gracious no. Besides, I couldn't even if I wanted to." "Oh." Fluttershy felt a sudden surge of pity for him as she realized the likely reason for that. "Oh... I'm so sorry.  You're... I guess you're like a mule, only worse?" "What?" He stared at her as if the thought never occurred to him. "Well, when a pony and a donkey fall in love and get married, their babies are mules, and when mules grow up they can't have any children of their own without magical help. I guess... they call you a draconequus, so I thought maybe you look like that because you're half pony and half dragon? And then the chaos added on the other parts or something? So you're like a mule, except so much that even magic couldn't help you?" He was still staring at her.  "Where do you get these ideas? No, I am not the result of a mommy pony and a daddy dragon loving each other very much, thank you." "Then... then are you the last of your kind? I mean... no one has ever heard of a draconequus that wasn't you, so..." Discord shook his head.  "No. Not the last of my kind, either." He'd gone much stiller than usual. Plainly something was bothering him. She didn't want to rub his face in something that bothered him, but if she didn't know what it was bothering him, she wouldn't be able to help him with it. "There... there are others? So you... do you have a family?" He looked straight ahead, not meeting her eyes. "Had." "Oh, Discord! I'm so sorry... did something happen to them?" "Oh, no, nothing happened to them." His tone turned bitter.  "They're all perfectly fine. But if I took it into my head to go back to the ancestral manse for a bit of the comforts of hearth and home... well, the best case scenario I could expect would be to be rapidly re-introduced to the pavement outside, end first. They decided that I don't have family anymore.  Not me." "Oh... I'm so sorry..." She was not going to cry for him.  It would just embarrass him.  She was not going to cry.  Fluttershy snuggled next to him, putting a forelimb around him and nuzzling him again.  "That's so cruel.  They shouldn't do that to you." "Yes, well, tell them that." "Can I? Could you take me there so I can tell them they should give you another chance?" He sighed.  "No, Flutterling.  No, I can't, and you can't, and they wouldn't listen to you anyway." "But that's so mean!" A horrible thought occurred to her.  "Are they... are they all chaotic, like you?" Had her attempt to reform him driven a wedge between him and his family? Had she made them reject him, because he wasn't chaotic enough for them anymore? But he snorted.  "Oh, I could only wish." He shook his head.  "Some of them... could be entertainingly fun, on occasion, but most of them are dreadfully dull, dull, dull with a capital D U L L. No sense of humor what-so-EVER." "So... is that why you can't have children? Because... because your family rejected you, so the other draconequuses did too?" "Oh, you're still on that, Fluttershy?  No no no.  I could never have had children, not that I'd ever have wanted to, because... we just don't. We're immortal.  Why would we need to have children?  On the rare occasions when we feel we need to fill out the ranks, we select a mortal we consider promising and elevate them to our plane of existence.  Transform them into one of us." He considered.  "Well, there was the one time those two decided to take the form of mortals – not ponies, it was a different species – and live among them, and they actually did manage to have a child, but we executed them and we have no idea if the child's going to turn out to have any magic at all." "You executed them? For having a child?" "For living among mortals as if they themselves were mortals, while still using their powers, actually." Fluttershy went cold.  "Discord... isn't that exactly what you're doing right now?" Discord chuckled darkly.  "It's different for me, Flutterbug. They've told me not to come home. They're not going to kill me for refusing to return when they're the ones that threw me out." He sighed.  "At least I don't think so." "They can't! That would... that would just be wrong! How could they tell you you're not allowed to come home and be with your own kind but you're also not allowed to be friends with anypony else, unless you stop using your powers, when they're so much a part of you? I mean, would any of them want to do that?" "Oh, I don't know, Glory runs around pretending she has no powers all the time. And Isis never tells any of her mortal coltfriends what she really is. And most of the others don't actually spend any time with mortals anyway." "Are they your sisters? Glory and Isis?" He looked at her for the first time since the conversation had turned to his family. "You're... getting the wrong idea." "I... wrong idea?" "We're all family.  All the... beings like me. We're not... it's not like you mortals, with a mother and a father.  We're spirits. Glory and Isis are... yes, you could call them my sisters. Especially Isis, she's treated me like a little brother for, oh, billions of years.  But Glory and I were... well, once we were rather closer than that, in ways that generally speaking are not brotherly and sisterly, if you get my drift." "Glory was your... special somepony?  Or special draconequus, I guess?" "I think she manifests as a dragon, actually. We don't all look the same. My form represents Chaos. Isis... she'd be whatever the species she appeared to happened to be. She's... more like the Spirit of Motherhood. Well, and the Spirit of Love since what happened to the actual Spirit of Love, and you know what, I think this conversation has officially ended because I'm not talking about her." "About the Spirit of Love or about Isis?" He stood up. "Fluttershy, how would you like to see something nopony but Celestia and Luna have ever seen before?" "Uh – like what?" This was not the first time Discord had ever abruptly changed the subject, but it was the first time it seemed to Fluttershy that he was doing it for emotional reasons than because he'd simply gotten bored. "Like something amazing!  That only they have ever seen!  Don't worry, it's not a scary something." She wasn't entirely sure Discord actually knew what she would find scary, but he sounded so enthusiastic, and she wanted to cheer him up after accidentally getting him onto a topic that seemed to hurt him so much. "I... ok? I guess?" And then suddenly everything was dark, and there were stars all around her, and she was falling, and when she beat her wings nothing happened.  She was still falling.  Fluttershy screamed. "Fluttershy, Fluttershy, don't be scared.  It's all right, no harm will come to you as long as I'm with you." "I'm falling!" Fluttershy screamed.  "Discord, please, help me!" "You're not falling." "I am! My wings aren't working, I'm still falling, help me!" And then there were oddly shaped limbs around her, holding her. "You're safe, Fluttershy.  Look down." She looked down at the blue and white ball far under her hooves.  "What... what is that?  Where are we?" "That is your world.  We're in the space between the moon and the planet. There's no gravity here, that's why you feel as if you're falling." He let go of her.  She beat her wings frantically.  She wasn't moving anywhere... but she still felt that she was falling.  "No, I am falling, I am! Why don't my wings work, WHY CAN'T I FLY?" "Oh... of course. A flighted creature expects to be able to not fall.  I should have realized." He snapped his fingers, and she suddenly felt the weight of air filling her wings again, felt that when she beat them she could hover.  "Is that better?" "Yes... yes, much better.  Thank you." She looked down again.  "That's... the whole world?  It looks like... a toy.  A children's ball." "Yes, it does, doesn't it?" She looked over at Discord.  His wings weren't beating; he was effortlessly floating in mid-air.  His lion's paw was stroking her mane, almost unconsciously, as if he didn't quite realize he was doing it.  It was soft, much softer than a pony's hoof. "Look up," he said, and she did. "The Moon!  It's... it's so big!" "Indeed it is.  We're much closer to it than we are when we're on your planet." "But... but the Sun is so tiny! How can that be?" "It's not tiny at all.  The Sun is enormous.  It's just very, very far away." "But if it's so far away how does Princess Celestia..." "She doesn't." Discord smirked.  "The sun doesn't go around the planet, and Celestia doesn't move it.  What she does is to move the planet.  Now, Luna really does move the moon; moons go around planets, that's why they are moons.  And she helps a bit with the planet-moving, during the night, but... it's rather jerky and uneven.  There are places on your planet where life is barely holding on, where nopony can live because it jerks back and forth between day and night too unevenly, because the planet doesn't rotate smoothly. Celestia and Luna spin it, and since Luna has the moon to manage, she doesn't do so well with the planet. That's why generally Celestia has to raise the sun... Luna can't maintain the momentum on her own, unless she really concentrates." "I... really? That doesn't... that doesn't make any sense! If Princess Celestia is just moving the planet, how could that make the sun rise?" "It doesn't. The sun just appears to rise as she turns your part of the world to face it. What they really need is a third alicorn to help out with it to smooth out the rotation... a Princess of the Twilight, as it were." His smirk grew wider. "Of course they do have a third, but... planetary rotation isn't really where her special talents lie.  So, technically, I suppose what they need is a fourth alicorn." He shook his head.  "Dear me, I never thought I'd be saying that." Fluttershy looked down at her world.  "It's so small, Discord.  It looks... so fragile. Like it's made of glass.  It looks so easy to... to break it." "Yes," he said.  "It is, you know.  Shockingly easy.  Which is, I suppose, what you and your friends are for.  To make sure no one breaks it." "Is Equestria right below us?" "Yes, I suppose you've seen maps of the continents and oceans. We're above Equestria." "Where do your people live down there?" He snorted again.  "We don't.  We live in an entirely separate realm, a Continuum of our own, and we travel to any of the worlds we wish, when we wish.  All those stars out there?" He waved his eagle talon. "Those are suns, like yours, but so far away they appear as tiny dots of light.  And many, many of them have worlds of their own. And I've been to most of them. Maybe someday I'll take you to one of them. And Sparkypoo, I'm sure she'd appreciate the perspective." "Do all those worlds have ponies like us on them?" Discord laughed.  "None of them do, Fluttershy.  You're quite unique.  Some worlds have creatures that look a great deal like you, with significantly less color variation, but they're dumb animals and they have no magic whatsoever.  Very, very few worlds have beings with magical powers on them at all, let alone the level of power you ponies can wield. On most worlds, the creatures that live there are nothing at all like you ponies.  But many of those worlds do have thinking, feeling beings, like you ponies are.  They might look more like animals than ponies to you... but I'm sure you'd make friends with them anyway." She grinned.  "Yeah, I bet I would." And then suddenly they were standing outside her house. The sun was going down and night was falling. "Well?" Discord was bouncing up and down, which, at his size, looked utterly ridiculous.  "What did you think?" "I... I liked seeing it. It was... it was so tiny and fragile looking, but... so beautiful.  But why is it blue, Discord?  Shouldn't the world be green?  Or was that the sky?" "No, that was the oceans. The brown parts were the land you walk on.  That high up you can't see very much of the green." "But there was so much ocean!  I didn't know the world had so much ocean in it!" "Well, now you do." He leaned down into her face.  "And you know what else?" "What?" He plucked at her muzzle. There was no pain, but she was stunned to see her nose in Discord's eagle talon.  "I've got your nose!" Fluttershy put her hooves to her face in dismay and shock.  There was no blood, no pain, no rawness... it was as if she were made of clay and he'd just plucked off the tip of her muzzle.  "Discord! Give that back!" "You're going to have to catch me!" He took a few half-dancing steps backward, and then began running, backward, waving her nose in his talon.  "I've got Fluttershy's noooose! I've got Fluttershy's noooose!" Fluttershy launched herself at him, infuriated.  "It isn't funny, Discord, give me back my nose!" He launched himself into the air, flying upward.  "It is so! It's totally hilarious!  Oh, Fluttershy, you should see what you look like without a nose!" The ground beneath her feet turned into a giant mirror; she could still feel grass and dirt under her hooves, but when she looked at it, it was a mirror. Her face looked freakish, a smooth depression in her muzzle where her nose ought to be. "I need my nose!" "Oh, fine, here you go!" He snapped his fingers.  Now she had a rabbit nose perched on top of her muzzle. "My own nose!" Fluttershy launched herself into the air after him.  She wasn't a very good flyer... but she was very, very motivated, and Discord was laughing too hard to fly very fast, so she collided into him and knocked him into the ground within moments. Within another few moments, she was sprawled across his chest, pinning his eagle talon with her front hooves and his lion's limb with the other so he couldn't move either of his forelimbs. He had stretched the talon out as far as it would go, holding her nose away from her. "Give me back my nose!" "But you look so adorable with the bunny nose—" She leaned her face into his, which, given that she was stretched across his chest trying to pin his limbs, involved some contortion and actually hurt her neck, but she needed to do it to deliver The Stare. "Discord. My own nose. NOW. Or I will... I'll eat yours!" "I'll bet it tastes like chicken," Discord said, still laughing. "NOSE. NOW!!" "Oh, oh, very well.  You did catch me, after all." He snapped the talon holding the nose, and the nose reappeared on her muzzle, exactly where it belonged.  And then Fluttershy started laughing because the whole situation was so completely ridiculous. Here she was, lying on top of the spirit of chaos, the dread danger that had terrorized all Equestria for so many years, pinning him to the ground because he'd stolen her nose. And both of them were laughing hysterically. After a few minutes, the laughter wound down, and Fluttershy realized that the position she was in was more than slightly awkward.  She blushed. "Oh... oh dear..." "Is this the part where the comedy turns into a romance, and we start kissing passionately and pledging to love each other for all eternity?" Discord asked, still chuckling. "Because if it isn't, you might want to get off of me before the readers get the wrong idea." Fluttershy yelped and leapt off him.  "I, uh, no!  Discord, I'm your friend, but I don't—" He sat up and clasped his paw and talon over his heart, with an exaggeratedly sad expression on his face. "Friendzoned again! Oh, why am I perpetually doomed to pine after mares from afar, never to be anyone's special somepony? Maybe I ought to take some tips from those pick-up artists..." "I—I'm sorry, but I just don't—" Discord started laughing raucously.  "Oh, my dear Fluttershy!  Oh, that was almost as funny as getting your nose was. Oh, my dear." He got to his feet and patted her head with his lion paw. "Relax. We're just friends, and I am more than delighted to keep it that way. I'm just teasing you." Fluttershy sighed, relieved. It could completely wreck a friendship if one pony started to have romantic feelings and the other didn't, and that was not how she saw her friend the Spirit of Chaos. She looked up.  The moon had risen.  "I guess the Cutie Mark Crusaders are themselves again?" "Oh, that happened a few hours ago. Twilight figured it out as soon as she got back. All they needed was to have their older sisters –or older sister figure in Scoot's case – kiss them to turn them back into ponies. That nonsense about true love being one true love is perpetually laughable; anyone who really could love only one person in their entire existence would have a much harsher and more painful existence than even those who love no one. Even without my chaotic modifications, the spell never depended on romantic love; it's just a foolish social convention that made anyone ever think it did." He sighed.  "And to think I used to be able to come up with challenging puzzles. Maybe I'll get Scootaloo to turn herself into a giant chicken." "...Why Scootaloo?" "Well, she has wings, silly. How can you be a giant chicken if you don't have any wings?" "That... isn't really a good idea, Discord. It's, uh, it's kinda mean." "I suppose so. I'd have to come up with something interesting for her friends to turn themselves into, or they'd feel left out. You never know, maybe they'll get their cutie marks in Chaos magic." "I don't think they really want to get their cutie marks in Chaos magic." "But the poor little things are desperate, Fluttershy. They tried being garbage collectors.  How desperate do you have to be to try to find out whether your special life talent relies in garbage collecting?" "It's... it's hard, when you don't know what it is you're really good at, or where you're going to go with your life." "I suppose. Never a problem I had, so I can't relate." He opened the door to the house and eeled in, lowering his head almost to the floor and snaking it forward and up again.  "I must do something about your door." "I guess you always knew what you were good at?" He turned back toward her, smiling, but there wasn't any actual happiness in his smile. "I've always known what I was for, Flutterbug. The part that took me time to figure out was that no one actually wants what I'm for, however badly they need it. Including those that made me to do what I do. They recognized they needed it, they made me to do it, and then they decided they really didn't like it." "That's not always true... your chaos is really funny sometimes, and everyone likes to laugh." "But I'm not just Chaos, Fluttershy." His cloud had melted into a puddle while they were out; he snapped his fingers and reformed it into a cloud again so he could sit on it, although this time it was purple, which probably meant it was going to rain grape juice. "I'm Discord. I'm disharmony. I'm argument, and conflict. I upend the normal order of things, I challenge the status quo, I afflict the comfortable and poke the afflicted. I test, I question, I turn your beliefs upside down and shake them to see what dark things you might have hidden inside. I push the button and erase your master tape. I am your brain on a frying pan, I'm every secret you had brought to light and written with letters of fire across the sky.  I sold the emperor his new clothes. I'm the one who'll be the villain you can rally against when you need to become a hero." "But you're more than that, I can tell. You can be a friend. I've seen it.  You don't have to be nothing but disharmony.  You can be chaos that's good chaos." He sighed.  "I know," he said, "but do you know how unbelievably rare it is that anyone is willing to accept 'good chaos' when I offer it? People don't like to make friends with the guy who makes a point of arguing with them and poking them in their weak spots, even if my goal was to make them stronger. And... friendship often gets in the way of what I'm trying to do, anyway. I spent a thousand years training my perfect enemy to stand up against me, and because she'd once considered me a friend, she refused to do what she was supposed to do and instead she turned me into stone." "You mean Princess Celestia?  She considered you a friend once?" He smiled sardonically. "For whatever good it did either of us, which is to say, none whatsoever. But look at the time!" Discord leapt off the couch. "Speaking of Celestia, I absolutely must go have a conversation with her before she falls all the way asleep and becomes a complete crankypants." "I thought you were avoiding Princess Celestia." "I'm avoiding annoying Princess Celestia. Most of the time. With entertaining exceptions. But I do have to go have a conversation with her, oh, and then I simply must turn some owls into chickens, because do you have any idea how stuck-up owls are about the fact that they can see in the dark? Besides if I don't turn somepony into a chicken it's likely to sneak out behind my back and happen while I'm trying to do something boring, which, by the way, is why no one should try to get me to do things that are boring, because if I'm bored and daydreaming about giant chickens, well let's just say I need to be careful what I daydream about and get the ya-yas out of my system in a controlled way or the result could be complete, uncontrolled chaos." He stopped in the middle of his rant. "Which, why am I avoiding that anyway?" "Because you're reformed and you want to have friends?" "Oh, yes! I almost forgot. Thank you for the reminder, Fluttershy. Isn't it your bedtime?" "In a little while, yes." "Well, I won't be here when you go to bed, because I'll be conversing with Celly Belle and possibly some chickens that used to be owls, so so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night! I'll see you in the morning!" Fluttershy gave him a hug. This time he didn't even make a face. "Good night, Discord. Please don't annoy the princess too much, and turn the owls back when they're sick of being chickens?" "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick my eye in a cupcake.  Wait, that doesn't rhyme. Perhaps I should stick my eye in a pie?" She gave him a brief nuzzle.  "And can you put that cloud back outside?" "Well, I don't want to waste the grape juice. How about I put it in Applejack's bathtub? Then she can mix it with some apple juice and make grapple!" "Or how about you make a whole lot of pitchers in the apple orchard and make it rain into them, and then Applejack won't have a problem taking her shower in the morning?" "Ugh, really?" "Yes, really," Fluttershy said firmly. "All right, fine." He snapped his talons and the cloud disappeared. "See you tomorrow, Fluttershy." And then he disappeared as well, in a flash of light.