The Prompt: A new life
Streams were flowing uphill, waterfalls falling up.
Birds crowded into underground warrens and rabbits climbed into trees.
Tulip blossoms were stuck in the ground with their bulbs pointing toward a checkerboard sky, windows swung open like doors and doors slid upward like windows, any attempt at drinking ended in the glass being drank and the liquid suspended in midair, and Discord could not even crack a smile as the citizens of Ponyville struggled to go about their day.
It all felt so… empty.
He would give anything for a softspoken scolding, a stern look with a half-hidden smile just behind it, and the promise of a mad tea party or ice skating on the clouds as soon as he’d set things right.
And he knew it wasn’t coming.
As he coiled into a tree to watch his handiwork with an air of boredom, a few ponies looked up - many wearing black bands of mourning on a foreleg - but none dared approach. Not when Fluttershy wouldn’t be coming to scold and tease and cajole him into some semblance of good behavior.
It wasn’t fair.
For now, everyone else seemed willing to let him have his fit, and that too was annoying - almost a reproach in itself. But after all, it wasn’t the first time he’d shown such pique over her mortality; thirty years ago, a day many of these ponies surely remembered, he had turned Canterlot Castle on its ear, raging at Celestia over how he’d so often been seen as selfish and yet her darling, her precious Twilight Sparkle, had been granted an alicorn’s longevity while Fluttershy’s gentle hooves and dainty wings grew stiff and painful with arthritis and her pink and yellow faded to gray and white.
Celestia had done nothing to stop him, said nothing in her own defense - she’d only gazed at him with great, sad eyes as she absorbed the abuse. In the end her silent sorrow had reminded him too strongly of Fluttershy for his rampage to continue, and he’d left, and no one had spoken of it again until a few apprehensive whispers in the hours after the pegasus’ death.
Twilight had been present, vibrant as ever, and it wasn’t fair.
Finally he fled, going to the empty spaces out of town, and curled up in the strangely unsatisfactory chaos to be alone with his grief.
***
"Um… Mister Discord?"
A dainty snout was bumping against his, waking him from the slumber he’d fallen into at some point. He opted to ignore it, eyes remaining closed and ears tipping back just a bit.
"Mister Discord, um… I know you’re very upset, but, um. I would really appreciate it if you would at least put the flowers back, and then we can talk about the rest later."
Something in the soft, piping voice stirred him, and he dared a peek.
Large blue-green eyes gazed back at him from a white face; for a single confused moment he thought he was staring at her ghost, and he jerked back with a snort.
No, of course not. It was only one of her great-grandfoals, a blankflanked pegasus filly not quite old enough to fly, and he pulled further back in disappointment.
"Why?"
The foal stared at him a moment before lowering her head, wheat-gold mane inherited from her great-grandfather falling across her face.
"Um. Well I… I like the flowers… and Grammyshy always said you were nice about those things, and… um… I know you’re very upset, but I would really like my flowers back, please."
She peeked up with a tiny but winning smile, and he could only stare. So like Fluttershy it stung and soothed all at once, and he couldn’t even remember the little brat’s name.
He’d never paid much attention to her family; that they made her happy was all he cared about where they were concerned.
"Oh." He folded his arms, trying to think of something clever to say. Somehow words failed him under that soft blue-green gaze, and he found himself nodding instead. "I… suppose one reversal won’t hurt."
"Thank you."
Just the barest whisper. So like Fluttershy.
"I… you’re… welcome?" He faltered a moment. "Which one are you, anyway?"
"Oh! Um… Posie Petals, Mister Discord." She considered a moment. "I… um. I planted yellow ones. And pink."
"She’d like that," he muttered, more to himself than anything. Posie Petals smiled again and nodded.
"You would know right Mister Discord? You knew her a long time."
"Not so long."
"Oh. Well… oh."
She looked aside, scuffing a forehoof against the earth, and he sighed.
"Oh, I… don’t look so long in the face. Here."
He clapped his paw and talons together sharply, reversing his changes. Droplets of water from a transformed weeping willow, the feathers shed from flying fish, and drifting paper snowflakes all transformed as the spell ended, yellow and pink and blue-green butterflies (it would have been her birthday soon, he remembered) swarming around them.
With, he realized, a few petals in the mix.
The foal giggled with delight, placing one dainty hoof on his lion paw.
So like Fluttershy. How had he never seen it?
One pink butterfly landed on his antler, and Discord sighed.
One life was over, one part of his life with it.
Perhaps this new little life wasn’t so bad.
"Well, my dear," he said as he levitated the filly, smiling a bit as her little wings flittered and buzzed, "why don’t you show me those flowers?"