//------------------------------//
// The Feral Child 1 of 2 
// Story: The Last Draconequus 
// by alarajrogers 
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An earth pony trudged down a packed dirt road, pulling a cart full of apples. His focus appeared to be entirely on the road in front of him, ignoring the trees around either side of the road except possibly to occasionally note the beauty of the autumn leaves. He was thus completely unaware of the creature hiding high in one of the trees, well above the pony's head.

The creature gazed down at his prey, his stomach rumbling, saliva dripping slightly from his fang as he drew in the scent of delicious food below. He watched the pony with unblinking yellow eyes, tail swishing slightly, claws flexing in anticipation. Soon. Soon the pony would be in position, and then the creature would feed, and the stupid pony would be utterly helpless to prevent it. Sharp teeth glittered in the creature's grin. Just a little more. He would tear into the delicious red flesh, bathe in the sweet juices as they flowed over his chin and down his throat, and the poor foolish stallion below wouldn't have a chance to stop him.

And then the pony was in the perfect spot for the creature to take his prey. Now!

The creature leapt, small mismatched wings beating the air as he dove, and plunged into the apples, claws digging and hoof kicking until he was completely buried under luscious fruit. His prey was his, and the stallion pulling the cart to market would be none the wiser. 

For a moment the cart stopped. "Tarnation! What was – Did Ah just hear something? What was that?"

Hidden deep under the pile of apples, the small, foal-sized creature went perfectly still, his yellow eyes mostly slitted so that they wouldn't be visible, apples piled all over his body and his snout to conceal him. The stallion unhooked himself from the cart, wandered around the back of it and looked it over, but the creature did not move, and the stallion couldn't, in the end, see anything amiss. He returned to the front of the cart and hooked himself up again, and then began to pull, the squeaking of the wheels and the clopping of his hooves against the dirt road masking any sounds the creature might make.

Now it was time to feast.

Discord gorged himself on apples, tearing into the sweet crunchy flesh of them, using claw and talon and teeth to shred the delectable apple meat off the core, which he then left at the bottom of the cart so the pony would know he'd been robbed after he got to the market and unpacked his apples. He hadn't eaten all day, and apples were yummy.

But then he caught another scent besides apple, as he came up for air. The rich, somewhat unpleasant scent of cow manure. Discord grinned to himself. Oh no, he wasn't going to stuff himself completely on apples. Not when there was other delicious prey to be had.

He jumped free of the cart after eating a lot of apples (he couldn't count, so numbers, for him, consisted of none, one, a few, a lot and a whole lot) and flew up into one of the trees. Again the stallion stopped and inspected his cart, but Discord had left his apple cores at the bottom, where the stallion wouldn't find them until he unpacked, and he didn't look up, and if he had he likely wouldn't have seen Discord anyway. The young draconequus's body was all different colors, but they were all dark or earth-toned colors, not the bright pastels of ponies, so he tended to blend into natural environments like trees. And his shape was so unusual, ponies tended not to be able to recognize that they were looking at an animal when they saw him; they'd make out a body part or two but because they couldn't see how those parts made a cohesive whole, they assumed it was just tree branches and they were imagining animal shapes. Discord had been living like this for a few years now, and had developed a very low opinion of pony intelligence.

After the pony was gone, trundling down the road with a whole lot of apples in his cart and a lot of apple cores buried at the bottom, Discord jumped back down out of the tree into the forest. He still wasn't a strong flyer but he was far more adept with trees than a pegasus; with his front claws and his dragon paw and his prehensile tail, he was an excellent climber, so all his small wings ever needed to be able to do was to get him a little extra lift up or a smooth descent down. As long as he stayed in the forest, he was quite safe.

Unfortunately for him, some of what he needed to survive wasn't in the forest.

Discord had learned the hard way that a diet of nothing but fruit and leaves and roots made him weak and ill. He remembered, dimly, his mommy insisting to him that he needed to drink milk to keep strong, that draconequui couldn't live on only vegetables like ponies could. The forest didn't have milk, or eggs, or butter or cheese or yogurt or any of the other wonderful things ponies made out of milk. It had animals, and during the first winter after he'd been abandoned, Discord had learned that dead animals tasted good and would satisfy the same cravings that milk and eggs did, as long as he got to them very shortly after they died and then stuck them in a fire. If he didn't stick them in a fire, they might be too chewy or they might taste like they were starting to go bad, and if he didn't get to them quickly enough, the flies and worms would and then even sticking them in a fire couldn't make them taste good. 

He had also learned, however, that animals would not obligingly die for him shortly before he arrived on scene, and that he couldn't actually bring himself to kill any of them. His mommy had told him that he was the best draconequus ever because he had never ever eaten an animal or killed one to eat, and even though she had gone somewhere and left him, Discord wanted to make her proud of him so that when she came back for him she would still love him. It had been a few years, and he hadn't been able to keep himself completely pure; during the first winter, before he'd met his only friend and tamed it for his pet, before he'd learned where animals stashed their food supplies and before he'd learned how to steal food from ponies, he had starved. Eating dead animals had been his only option if he'd wanted to live through the winter. But he'd still never killed any, and as long as he could steal food from ponies he could avoid trying to find already-dead animals to eat. As tasty as they were when he got them at just the right moment and then burned them in exactly the right way, there were so many different ways that that could go wrong and make them taste gross that they just weren't worth looking for.

It had been a few years by now, but Discord hadn't given up hope yet that his mommy would come back for him someday. If she and all the other draconequui had teleported to a new place like she'd said they were going to, maybe it was really hard for her to get enough magic to teleport back. Maybe she was working on it, and as soon as she had the right spells she would come for him. In the meantime, he had no one to take care of him, so he'd had to learn to take care of himself.

The first year had been bad, very bad. The ritual had been in autumn, and it hadn't taken long before the cold had set in. Discord had hidden in caves for shelter, and frequently been driven out and often nearly killed by the creatures that had already claimed those caves for homes. The fruit and leaves he'd been surviving on went away, and the snow fell, and he had nearly frozen. He'd dug himself holes in the ground to be his den, but the snow had fallen in them and blocked his ability to breathe until he dug back out, which involved exposing his den to snow and therefore ruining it. Day after day, he'd suffered growling agony in his belly, because there'd been no plants to eat; he had tried chewing on trees, he had tried eating the piles of dead leaves that had fallen, he had tried eating bushes and grass and vines, and most of it just made him sick. 

Two things had saved him. First had been the discovery of the dead squirrel, frozen. He'd only tried to eat it because by that time he had been so hungry that he had tried to eat absolutely anything new he could get his paws on, in hopes that this would turn out to be food, because the worst that could happen was that he'd be poisoned and die and if the alternative was starving to death, he didn't think that was something to be too afraid of to try it anymore. It had been frozen and he couldn't chew it, so he'd brought it to one of the burrows he'd dug and gnawed at it until his body heat thawed it, whereupon it had turned out to be delicious.

The second thing had been his pet, fire. 

During a warm break in the winter weather, when a storm of rain rather than snow had fallen, lightning had struck a tree and set a fallen branch on fire. Discord had watched from a cave, where he'd actually managed to intimidate the owner of the den into leaving it to him by running into the cave on two legs waving a big stick, leading the fox who had previously inhabited the cave to flee. The rain from the storm had fallen on the burning branch, making it sizzle. To Discord, it had sounded like a cry of pain. The fire dancing on the branch was so beautiful, constantly moving and shifting and changing. He'd seen fires before,  when he'd lived with his mommy, but that had been before the ritual, before he'd had magic of his own and before he'd been as powerfully drawn to the unusual as he was now. When he'd lived with mommy, he'd avoided fires because his mommy had told him to and because they could burn him. But now that he'd been left alone, the fire had drawn him with its beauty and strangeness. It looked alive, but it wasn't a thing like a plant or an animal or a rock. It wasn't even a thing like water. It was a thing like air, or sunlight, and he had never seen a creature made of such a substance.

He'd run out into the rain and retrieved the burning branch, carrying it in his eagle talon and bringing it into his cave.

The fox had left behind a pile of leaves it must have been using for additional warmth, like a blanket; at least that was what Discord had been using it for. It turned out the fire loved the pile of leaves. Discord had clapped his paws with delight as his new pet had gone from weak and sad, sputtering and hissing in pain, to large and healthy and roaring with joy as it devoured the leaf pile. The cold rain had raged outside, but in his cave, Discord had been dry, and truly warm for the first time in months.

No other creatures would come into the cave as long as Discord kept Fire alive. He learned through trial and error that it liked to eat the same kinds of foods he liked to eat, plus more foods that other animals would eat like branches and bark and twigs. But it didn't like rocks or gems. This surprised Discord a little bit because dragons ate gems and dragons breathed fire, so he would have thought Fire would also like gems or rocks, but apparently not. Fire also didn't like to eat dirt. It did, however, like to eat Discord's fingers and tail. It was a very rude and ungrateful pet, but it was the only creature that wouldn't run away from Discord in fear, and it did take care of him in exchange for his care for it – it kept him warm and it kept other creatures away from his cave – so he loved it anyway.

It was so beautiful. All the different colors, constantly changing and flickering, constantly moving. It was a thing that wasn't like anything else. Discord liked to watch water and wind because they were always moving and changing too, and you couldn't guess exactly what they were going to do next, but water and wind weren't really living creatures because they didn't eat and poop and need to breathe, like Fire did. Fire needed air as much as Discord himself did, and when it breathed out too much of its smoke and made Discord cough and feel sick, it got weak and sputtered, so he had to learn what to feed it that wouldn't make it all smoky. Fire ate foods that animals ate, and pooped out gray ash, which smelled and tasted bitter and yucky but somehow not quite as gross as the poop that other animals made. Fire was obviously alive, and while it was a cranky, hungry friend who would eat him if he let it, it was a generous friend as well. The roots that he dug out of the frozen ground and then couldn't eat would turn soft and delicious when he put them in Fire and let Fire eat their outsides for a little while. The same happened with frozen dead animals. He'd scare other creatures away from a recent kill, or locate some poor critter that had frozen to death, and lay it in Fire, and Fire would feed on the fur and the skin, and then Discord would pull the dead creature out with a stick and the insides of it would be warm and juicy and so much tastier than if he hadn't fed it to Fire.

Then there had been a snowstorm so fierce and harsh and windy that the winds had blown the snow into Discord's cave and smothered Fire. He'd done everything he could to protect his friend, but it hadn't been enough. Fire had ended up covered with water and snow, and when Discord had dug it out, Fire had been gone completely... nothing left but the ashes of its last meal. He had cried then, as bitterly as he'd cried the night his mommy had disappeared. His only friend was dead and he hadn't been able to save it.

Without Fire to cook roots and dead animals for him, Discord had starved again. He'd been driven to the point of making traps, digging holes and lining them with vines tied to sticks in such a way that if a creature would fall in the hole, it would end up tied up in vines and the hole would be blocked in by a door made of woven sticks, to try to catch living animals. He'd caught a squirrel that way, and giggled at the squirrel's frantic squeaks and desperate struggles. It was funny, watching the little creature wiggle around in fear, watching it try and fail to free itself, and he'd watched it some time before remembering that actually he'd wanted to eat it. So he had pulled it out of the trap, his talon around its neck, watching it scrabble and shriek in fear, and thought about swiping his claws across its neck and killing it so he could feed.

He couldn't do it.

He had held the squirrel for some time, trying to nerve himself to kill it. Feeling how desperately, how funnily it struggled, how alive it was, how interesting it was in its terror. How it tried as hard as it could to bite him or scratch him or free itself from his talon's grip, how helpless it was in his grasp. How easy it would be for him to make its life end, to make it stop moving forever. How much the thought of doing that hurt.

Discord loved watching the little creature's terrified struggles, but when it came to ending them, to making it die and stop struggling and stop being afraid and stop doing anything ever again... the thought had filled him with a kind of horror that his young mind couldn't truly interpret. All he knew was that he didn't want things to stop moving. The squirrel was funny. He didn't want to make it stop squeaking and wiggling and making him laugh. The thought of turning it from a struggling, frightened, moving squirrel to a still lump of meat like the ones he found and ate made him sick, and he wanted to cry at the thought.

In the end, he had let the squirrel go.

He did kill a few times that winter. When he found animals at a kill, and drove them away by throwing rocks or waving sticks, usually the animal's prey was quite dead, and being freshly killed, it was reasonably tasty even without Fire to cook it for him. But sometimes he found creatures still alive, bleeding, whimpering in agony, and he hadn't known what to do. He had no way of helping them, of making them stay alive and get better. They had big bleeding holes in them from the teeth or claws of the predator that had attacked them, and they were breathing raggedly and making noises of pain and he couldn't help them, he couldn't make the blood stop and make them be alive and okay. Their fear wasn't funny the way the fear of the living, unhurt squirrel in his trap had been; their fear just made him hurt inside, because he had no way to make them not die, and the only way he could make them stop suffering from their dying was to use his claws to end their lives, so they turned into unmoving, unfeeling meat and they wouldn't cry in pain anymore.

When he did that, he cried and he felt sick and he hated himself. But he still ate the animals he'd mercy-killed, because he was starving to death and if he didn't eat them, the creature that had given them the original fatal blow would have anyway.

Spring hadn't come soon enough.

When it had gotten warmer and things began to grow again, Discord had explored, ranging farther from the mountaintop that had become his home. On the other side of the mountain, in a rich river valley, he'd found a settlement of ponies. And ponies, it turned out, had an endless supply of good things to eat.

Ponies fascinated and irritated Discord in equal measure. He watched the earth ponies plowing and seeding and weeding their fields, and it felt all wrong. Things weren't supposed to grow in straight lines! They weren't supposed to grow all by themselves, with no other plants besides their species to be around them! Things were supposed to be all mixed up, willy-nilly, and grow wherever they wanted to! He saw a strange kind of energy flow under the dirt, something he'd never seen before (or felt, or heard; to be honest he could not really describe what sense he was perceiving the flow with, because it seemed to be all of them, and none of them), coming down from the mountain and going into the dirt the earth ponies tended, and it made the plants grow fast and juicy... but on the mountain, the loss of the energy made the plants Discord had been feeding on grow weakly, if at all. He could see, now, why there had been so little for him to eat in the winter. The things that grew in his home, on the mountaintop, were mostly not food, because the energy that made food things grow was being pulled down the mountain and into the earth pony farms, and he hated them for that. 

At the same time, though... ponies made such delicious things. From picture books his mommy had read him once upon a time, Discord knew the draconequus words for things like cookies and pies and cakes, but if he'd ever had a chance to eat such things it had been so long ago that he didn't remember. The first time Discord stole a fruit pie out of a pony's window and ate it had been utter bliss, a deliciousness he'd never experienced before in his life. Not quite as yummy as he remembered chocolate milk being, but it was warm, which chocolate milk was not, and it was lots of different flavors and textures put together, and the apples inside it had turned mushy and the grapes had turned dry and tiny and then gotten all plump again from the moisture inside and there had been something like crunchy bread but sweet all around it and it had just been the most delightful and contradictory food he'd ever had. Ponies also made foods that kept well, like bread that was soft and warm with a chewy outside the first day, and crunchy with a moderately soft inside the second day, and all crunchy the third day, except that if he dipped it in water it got soft again. He could steal lots of bread and hide it in a bag he hung high in a tree, where even the occasional wandering bear couldn't get at it, and snack on it while he was hunting for food during the day.

And ponies worked with cows and chickens. The smell of cow manure meant a dairy farm. And that meant milk, and all the tasty things ponies made out of milk.

Discord couldn't wait.

The main problem with dairy farms was that cows needed a lot of wide open grassy land to graze on. Discord could hide almost perfectly in forests, but it was much harder for him to hide on open land. Usually, he would wait until nightfall to approach a dairy farm. As he got close to this one, however, he saw that he could adopt a different strategy. While there were flat, empty grazing lands full of grass and cows eating the grass, chatting with each other in accented Pony full of "don'cha know" and "you betcha" and "all righty", there was also a cornfield, and the cornfield ran right up to the back of the barn. 

First things first. Discord flew up to the top of a cornstalk, pried it open with his claws, pulled out the corn cob inside, and then commanded the leaves to husk themselves back around the empty space, grinning. He did this with a few more corncobs, and then a few more, until he had a lot. He then dug a hole, told the hole to be the same hole as the one he had near his den, and dropped the corn cobs into it. Corn wasn't so yummy if you didn't feed it to Fire first, but if you stuck a stick through it and balanced it over Fire, or if you stole a clay pot from ponies and you filled it with water and you put it into Fire and then you put the corn inside, then corn turned sweet and delicious. By now, Discord had learned how to use his magic to summon his friend back from the dead any time he wanted to, so he had a den up on the mountain, where he kept Fire going all the time, even when he wasn't there. Other animals who might sneak inside to steal the food Discord was hoarding in there were scared of Fire, and after multiple mishaps involving his entire food hoard burning to ash while he was gone, and a couple of instances of setting the forest on fire and having to hide in a burrow while pegasi towed clouds into place and unicorns cast fire suppression spells and earth ponies hauled buckets of water up the mountain, he had learned how to make a cage for Fire out of carefully placed rocks, so it could safely burn even when he wasn't there to tend it. Every day, Discord came down from the mountain to find food in the ponies' valley, and either he ate it then and there, or he sent it back to his den via his magic. He could make doors connect to other doors and holes connect to other holes, so he'd dig holes, connect them to the holes dug in his den, and stash his loot in them. Then he'd return in the evening, feed Fire, get Fire to cook foods for him if they were tastier that way, and eat, usually after snacking all day on some of what he found.

After stashing some corn, Discord snuck through the cornfield up to the barn. The doors on this side were of course locked; on the other side the doors would be open to let the cows go back and forth, but cows, while plainly a lot dumber than ponies, were not so dumb that they couldn't raise an alert when they saw a strange creature prowling near their door. Cows were to ponies what Fire was to Discord, except that cows were smarter than Fire and could at least talk, even if everything they had to say was completely inane. Discord had tried to approach some and make friends, once upon a time, but it turned out that he couldn't speak pony even though he could understand it, and they couldn't speak draconequus, and they weren't prepared to even let him try to struggle through in bad pony speech without lowing, loudly, for help. This was more or less the same reaction he got out of ponies as well, except that ponies would often directly attack him personally, attempting to kick him or hit him with shovels or pitchforks. 

So he'd given up trying to make friends and ask for what he wanted. Now he just took it. With his magic, ponies couldn't stop him.

He focused on the wall. The door was a door; it had a job, to let things in or out, and when it was locked it was very interested in not letting anything in or out, so it was hard to make it do anything else. But the wall was just a wall and could be convinced to be something else. 

Discord let his eyes glaze over slightly, looking not at the thing in front of him but at the patterns that described it. Just like the energy that he could see/hear/feel running under the dirt, summoned by the earth ponies to feed the plants, he could see/hear/feel patterns that lay under the surface of the world, like when a book described something and then had a picture of it, where the picture was the thing and the patterns were the description. Except that when he changed the description, the picture changed as well.

The thing in front of him was a wall. It was made of wood. Wood was hard. Wood could burn. Wood was thick and solid. Wood used to be alive and now it wasn't. All the pieces of wood stuck to each other so they wouldn't get out of the way if you hit them. Discord reached out with his magic and tweaked the pattern so that instead of the properties of wood, the wall had the properties of strings, and they were loose and hanging down, except the wall would still look like wood and feel like wood and turn back into regular wood when his magic wore off in a few minutes, and it would never look like strings but it would be strings and he could run right through it.

Then he took a deep breath. It was important to believe, heart and soul, in his own magic, or he could jinx it. If he worried about the possibility that the spell might not have worked, that the wood would still be wood and not strings, then the spell wouldn’t work and the wood would be wood and he would definitely hurt himself, whereas if he just pretended as hard as he could that there was no way he could have failed, it would probably work and he wouldn't hurt himself. Before he could let himself get scared of the possibility of hitting hard wood, Discord flung himself forward at the barn wall, and through it. Like a curtain of strings. It had worked.

And now he was in the dairy barn.

This side of the dairy barn, where the cows didn't live, was cold. There was a pony working in here, churning butter. She hadn't seen him come in; she was wholly focused on her work. Discord ignored her as soon as he recognized that she hadn't seen him, and focused on what was on the shelves all over the barn. There were bottles and bottles of milk, cheeses wrapped in wax, giant bricks of butter. Nirvana.

The floor of the barn was stone, not dirt. He couldn't dig a hole to make a connection to his den. On the other hand, there were lots and lots of rough-woven burlap sacks hanging from shelves. Carefully weaving through the shelves so as not to attract the attention of the pony churning the butter, Discord grabbed one of the sacks and then began filling it with delicious things. Cheese and butter first, to cushion the milk bottles so they wouldn't clank. Then milk. Lots of it. He drank two bottles right there and replaced the empties on the shelf, then devoured half of a cheese brick, then washed that down with another whole bottle of milk. For the first time all day he felt genuinely full, stuffed even. He wanted to leave the cold barn, take a nap in the sunshine and enjoy his victory over hunger, but he also wanted to be able to drink more milk later, so he filled the bag with as many bottles as he could. When they clanked together despite his best efforts to cushion them with cheese and butter, he focused on the pattern of the clanking sound and changed it to the sound of a cowbell.

Carefully he crept out of the barn, shifting something inside himself so that all his limbs would work like his lion paw and pad soundlessly. Discord could make any of his mismatched body parts synchronize its pattern to a different part, making it behave like that part, so he could temporarily make all his limbs act like lion paws, or goat hooves, or whichever limb he needed them all to behave like. They didn't look or feel any different, they just changed their properties. He'd discovered that particular power a year after the ritual had changed him and given him all the different body parts, and he found it very useful, especially at times like this. The pony churning the butter didn't notice a thing as Discord retreated with his bag.

He didn't want to go as far as his mountain. In theory he thought maybe he could dig a hole big enough that he could crawl through it to go directly back home; in practice he didn't have any holes in his den big enough to allow him to do that. He dug a hole large enough for his bags, stuffed the milk and cheese and butter in so it would be there in his den when he needed it, and then flew up to the roof of the barn, so he could take a look around. Sadly, he saw no sun-warmed rocks anywhere; he'd have to go all the way back up to his mountain for that. But there was a second barn that seemed to serve as a storehouse for hay, stacks and bales of it, sweet-scented clover hay and delicate lavender hay and rich timothy hay and mint hay and sun-smelling fescue hay. Ponies ate hay, as did cows; Discord didn't except in emergencies, but he liked to sleep in it. And after stuffing himself with apples, cheese and milk, he wanted a nap.

The upper window of the second barn was open, allowing the sun to radiate in and warm the hay, and allowing Discord to fly in easily. He spent several minutes playing in the hay, diving down deep inside it like he was digging a tunnel and then coming up, pretending he was a dolphin and the hay was the ocean, or just tossing the hay in the air and letting it rain back down all over him. Haystacks were fun. But he was tired from his long trip down the mountain and the hours he'd spent hunting alongside the road, trying to find a farm or a pony carrying food, and now he was warm and full. So after wrecking one of the haystacks completely and turning a tied-up bale into a shapeless fun haystack for playing in, he curled up on top of the stack that used to be a bale and fell asleep.






He woke up suddenly to the sound of pony voices.

"...this mess! Little varmint must've gotten in here, too!"

"You think it's the same creature that hit the Quench's farm a couple of weeks ago?"

"Dunno, but some critter's been gettin' into the Delicious family's crops as well, and old Belle Hereford says she saw some long lean varmint messin' around with the Cream family's barn. I think it's the same critter. Old Belle says it looks like some kinda lizard, but big, like a dog."

They were talking about him. Discord didn't know any of the ponies' names, but pony names tended to be meaningful words in their language. The Quench family was probably the one that had the apples and the grapes and all the bottles and bottles of cider and grape juice in their storehouse. His mouth watered, remembering that one. They were the suppliers of his favorite pies, too, the ones that were frosted on top and made with apples and dried grapes. And the Cream family was probably the other dairy farm he'd hit, the one where he'd had to run like crazy because some stupid elderly cow had seen him and started lowing for help, and one of his milk jugs had broken and spilled everywhere and gotten the butter sopping wet, so instead of saving the butter to eat he'd ended up covering himself in it because it was half melted from being soaked in milk anyway, and he'd had loads of fun flying up trees and then sliding down them because when he was totally covered in butter he'd slide on anything. It had been kind of scary when he'd been spotted, but also exhilarating and fun and totally hilarious in the end, even if he'd lost a milk jug in the course of the adventure. He grinned broadly to himself, remembering. Little Sister had had lots of fun with the butter too, though he'd had to be careful about cleaning it off her because her cloth body couldn't handle getting wet as well as his could, and if the butter had dried on her it would make her fur crunchy and nasty and not nice to sleep on for a pillow anymore.

He sat up, looking down at the ponies. It was much dimmer in the barn than it had been before. Belatedly he realized they had closed the window he'd flown in. Well, that would make getting out of here fun. There were three of them, two mares and a stallion, peering around at the mess he'd made of the first haystack. His grin got broader. The barn floor was now completely covered with a thick layer of hay, much better suited for playing and romping on than the hard stone had been. Stupid ponies couldn't see what an improvement he'd made. All they cared about was that it was a mess. 

Then the mare who hadn't spoken yet looked up, and met his eyes for a long terrifying second before shouting. "Th-the critter! It, it's up there!"

They all looked up.  And then the stallion charged at him. "I'll chase him down from there! White, you get the net! Sharp—"

"I'm already on it, Brick!" The yellow mare, the one who'd been talking about his exploits, grabbed up a pitchfork in her forehooves and lifted it so she could clamp down on it with her teeth, while the small white mare who'd been the first to see Discord ran to the wall of the barn to grab a net, and the large orange stallion began bucking the haystack Discord was sitting on top of, sending the hay scattering and dislodging the little draconequus from his perch. Startled, Discord fell backward, but caught himself with his wings and flew up toward the rafters of the barn, catching onto them and pulling himself up. He laughed at the ponies beneath him. Try getting me up here, earth ponies! You haven't got wings, you can't even climb, how're you gonna get me now?

He found out a moment later as the orange stallion gave a powerful buck to a support pillar, making the rafters shake. Discord lost his grip and fell, only managing to catch himself with his tail at the last possible moment. White leapt into the air, a large net on a pole held in her forehooves, and almost managed to snag Discord in the net; he had to let his tail release the rafter and let himself drop to avoid it. As he fell, Sharp swung at him with her pitchfork, forcing him to dodge backward, wings flapping desperately. And then he felt something tighten around his dragon leg and yank him. He whipped his head around to see Brick, the stallion, reared up on hind hooves, holding a rope in his forehooves; a rope that was now lassoed around Discord's leg.

Discord flapped his wings as hard as he could and kicked wildly. It didn't help. Brick fell down to four legs again, unbalanced by Discord's struggles, but he'd gotten his teeth around the lasso and now Discord couldn't get free. The stallion yanked with his head, pulled with one hoof, and Discord went flying into the support pillar, crashing against it hard and falling to the ground.

He had no time to try to orient himself before he saw sharp tines aiming down at him. With a yelp, Discord rolled, dodging the pitchfork. Sharp raised it again in her forehooves and Discord swung his tail around at one of her back hooves, wrapping around her leg and pulling the way Brick's lasso had just pulled him. It worked wonderfully. Ponies weren't designed to balance well on their hind legs, so she went crashing to the floor, falling on the rope and holding it in place so Brick couldn't reel Discord in. The moment of respite allowed Discord to grab the rope in his own teeth and bite through it, freeing himself.

White was coming at him with her net spread wide. Discord went low to the ground, almost flat against it, and charged under her, weaving through her legs and making her unbalance and fall over. He raced forward, directly into Brick, who slammed his hooves down in an attempt to stomp on Discord. The draconequus barely managed to dodge, yelping in fear. He rolled, and ran full speed for the barn door.

Sharp was ahead of him, pitchfork aiming at him again. This time, Discord let her slam the pitchfork down toward his tail, and grabbed the handle of it with his tail just before she could stab the tines into it, pulling it free from her and flinging it away. As she reared back in startlement, he leapt, using his wings and his back legs to get lift, and landed on her face. She screamed, shaking her head wildly in an attempt to dislodge him. Discord took a quick opportunity to lean down into her face, make googly eyes directly into hers, and lick her nose with his long slurpy tongue. Then he leapt off her again, leaving her screaming and wiping at her face frantically with her forehooves, and flew.

The lasso landed around his neck this time. Discord twisted his body around as Brick pulled him in and went with the motion, flying directly at Brick. Brick got his forehooves up to defend himself against Discord, but this was a mistake, because with Discord's wings and extremely flexible body, it took only a small motion on his part to point himself downward so that instead of flying directly at Brick's face, he hit Brick's now-exposed belly, knocking the stallion on his backside. He grabbed the stallion's head with his talon, pushed it back, shoved his own muzzle up against the stallion's vulnerable neck, and used his nose and tongue to tickle his assailant on the neck. Brick shrieked, thrashing his hooves, but on his back he had limited freedom of motion and Discord got the stallion's forehooves pinned easily with his lion paw and his tail.

"Brick! Hold it off, I'll save ya!" Sharp shouted, which was Discord's cue to go. He bit through the rope again – his neck was flexible enough that lassoing him around his neck did not in fact prevent him from getting his teeth into position around the rope – and flew straight up, so that when Sharp charged at him with her pitchfork, she tripped over Brick and the pitchfork went flying into a bale of hay. Discord giggled at the sight.

Pausing to laugh rather than put all of his effort into flight was nearly his undoing. White's net landed around him, pulling him down and dragging him. Discord struggled frantically against the net for a moment, trying to claw and bite it, but it was tangled around too many of his body parts and his thrashing was making it worse. White successfully pulled him to the ground. "Got him!"

"All right, I'm ending this!" Sharp yelled. She'd lost her pitchfork, but acquired a shovel, and she was running at him with it in her mouth, eyes red with rage, and Discord was trapped in a net and couldn't get away from the shovel. He screamed in terror, and the ropes of the net turned into slippery strands of pasta, which broke easily under his struggles. As Sharp swung her shovel down at his head, Discord charged forward again, under her, dodging another brutal buck from Brick, and straight at the wall. Be strings be strings be strings! The wall responded to his power, parting around him like the strings it wasn't, and he was outside and free, laughing hysterically as he ran.

The ponies inside charged out of the barn and around the side, since Discord had escaped through a wall that didn't even have a door in it. "Get him!"

Most things that ponies could do, Discord could do better. But he was well aware that when it came to raw speed, earth ponies' longer, stronger, more even legs were a lot faster than his were. So he ran for the cornfield and dove into it, dodging through the rows. The ponies couldn't see his long, low body underneath their own cornstalks, and while occasionally a rustle tipped them off as to where he was, by the time they thundered over there with their big, clunky, powerful bodies, Discord would already be somewhere else. Only a little while after retreating back into the forest, Discord heard them give up in disgust, and giggled quietly to himself. Ponies were stupid. Once again, he'd won.






Back at his den, he caroled to his friends, "I'm home! Did you miss me?"

Fire burned sullenly, sulking, but leapt up in happiness and gratitude as soon as Discord fed it some twigs. "I've got a couple more nice logs for you if you're good," he told Fire. "I just want you to boil some water for me so I can make some nice corn, ok?" Fire jumped up and down, obviously eager for the task. Discord grabbed one of the clay pots he'd stolen from ponies, took it outside to the stream that ran near his den, and filled it with cool water, then brought it back. "Here you go, Fire. Make it nice and hot for me, and I'll feed you the corncobs when I'm done."

As Fire worked on boiling the water, Discord went to the back of his cave, to a rock ledge where his best friend, his most precious possession, lived. He'd transformed a large boulder into a crystal dome, impervious to fire and resistant to water, to cover her, to protect her from the weather and his other friend Fire. Discord lifted the dome and pulled out a stuffed animal. "Hi, Little Sister! Did you miss me?"

Little Sister's mismatched felt eyes shifted, coming to life as they moved to focus on him. "Discord! I'm so glad you're home!" she said. "Did you get something good to eat?"

"Oh, yeah, great stuff. I got cheese and milk and corn on the cob! And butter for the corn, too!"

"Can we play with the butter again? Can we, can we?"

"Not tonight, but I'll go back tomorrow and get lots more butter and then we can." He grinned. He was still mad at the dairy ponies for attacking him, and exhilarated at his victory in escaping them. His narrow escape had left him too worn out to play much tonight, but tomorrow, he planned to hit them again, to pay them back for attacking him like that. He didn't need more milk and cheese, he wouldn't for some time given all he'd taken, but he could always use extra butter for a toy, so he planned to take a lot of their butter tomorrow.

Discord had found Little Sister discarded on a trash heap, several seasons ago. She'd been a pink unicorn pony, the size of a small pillow, with fluffy, fur-like cloth covering her that had once been soft and silky, but the weather had turned her fur ratted and crunchy and unpleasant. Animals had torn her up, ripping off her eyes, biting her horn in half, and tearing away the whole back half of her body, legs, flank, tail and all.

Discord's magic couldn't make something out of nothing (not yet... he was pretty sure it was possible, and he was working on it, but he did have limits.) And since he didn't often have dealings with cloth, as he didn't wear clothes, his imagination as to what he could do with cloth had been limited. So instead of just trying to make stuff up and stick it on her to repair her, Discord had snuck down further into the valley than he usually went, into the town, at night, and had broken into the tailor's shop to steal fabric. Then he'd repaired the stuffed pony, his own way. Whatever mean pony foal had abandoned her and left her behind on a trash heap didn't deserve her anymore, and she didn't deserve to have to be a pony anymore. He'd decided to make her into a draconequus like him and then she could be his little sister.

One green felt circle and one yellow cotton ellipse had made her eyes, with a sparkly bit of silver shiny fabric for one pupil and a skinny purple rectangle for the other. He'd made her a long tail like his out of black leather, but he hadn't had enough leather to make the tail as long as he wanted, so he had interspersed it with white silk and now her tail looked like the coat of a zebra. A fluffy orange pompom made the end of her tail. He'd transformed an animal bone to be her horn, and then decided that if she was going to be his little sister she needed two, so he'd made a stick into an antler. One back leg had been shaped more or less like a rabbit's, except elongated, made of purple cotton. The other had been a monkey paw, complete with thumbs, made of plaid wool with the green felt he'd used on her eye serving as the color of her palm and fingers. Her front legs had been intact and he wasn't going to amputate one of her pony legs just to make her less symmetrical, so he'd just taken bright blue satin ribbon and wound it around one of her legs to destroy the symmetry. Unlike him, both of her wings were feathered, because he'd made them from the feathers of dead birds that he'd collected all through a hard winter, in all different colors and sizes, and some of them he'd made into different and interesting colors because none of the birds had been peacocks, for instance, and for her primary feathers he'd used some he'd plucked from his own wing so she would really be related to him.

Since she was a little draconequus, of course she didn't have a name yet because she hadn't yet identified her Principle. Discord felt himself to be practically a grownup; he had his own name, his own Principle – the Principle of Chaos and Disharmony – and he could take care of himself. Little Sister was littler than he was and needed him to take care of her, so she didn't have her Principle yet, thus her name was just Little Sister. He had considered the possibility of giving her a cutie mark, because from the stitching it looked like she had had one before it had been ripped off her, but she wasn't a pony anymore, she was a draconequus. Ponies got cutie marks, draconequui got Principles, and she was really too young for either one. It would probably be one that was related to his, though. Other draconequui who weren't him had had symmetrical bodies, straightforward chimerae of pony and dragon. Like his mother, with her beautiful white fur and rich red mane on her pony-shaped head, and the white unicorn horn on her forehead, and her lovely red and gold dragon wings and paws and tail. Discord liked the asymmetry of his own body, though, so he had decided that his Little Sister would not just be a draconequus but specifically a draconequus like him, with a wonderful fun mixed-up body that had all kinds of different animals in it just like he did.

He had cleaned her and made her fluffy and soft again, and whenever he wanted to play with her, he used his magic to bring her to life. Fire was his first friend, but Little Sister was his best friend.

She fluttered all around him – he had gotten creative with her wings, so even though they were made of feathers, they were shaped like butterfly wings, making her a slow, weak flyer but absolutely adorable when she flew. "Tell me all about your day! Did you have fun? Was it exciting?"

"Oh, yeah, really exciting!" He began to regale her with the story of his adventures, from finding the stallion pulling the apple cart up through his daring escape from the dairy ponies. She laughed, and clapped her forehooves at the good parts, and shared some of his cheese with him (he made an opening in the back of her mouth, and turned the cheese into stuffing as she swallowed it, because if cheese rotted inside her she would smell bad and rats might try to rip her open, but if he turned it into stuffing then she could share his cheese and it wouldn't hurt her.) 

As he leaned back against the wall, enjoying the warmth of Fire and munching on his now cooked and buttered corn, Little Sister landed on his shoulder and snuggled against his neck. "Discord, could I have some more decorations on my fur?"

He looked down at her. "What's wrong with your fur? I think you look fine."

"But I don't have enough colors."

"You have a lot of colors. You have as many colors as I do."

"But I'm a girl. I need more colors. You're a boy! Didn't you ever notice how the girl ponies have so many pretty colors?"

"I think their word is 'filly', not 'girl'. And I never noticed. It looked to me like the mares and the stallions all have the same kinds of colors."

"Uh-uh." Little Sister shook her head vigorously. "The girls are prettier, and I'm a girl. I want more colors!"

Discord sighed. "I don't have any more cloth laying around... the rats got it." His eyes fell on the burlap sack he'd used to carry the milk and cheese. "Hey, what about this?"

"Well, that's just light brown. That's not pretty."

"My paw is light brown!"

Little Sister rolled her felt eyes. "Duh, you're a boy, big brother," she said. "You can be handsome, not pretty."

"Oh, fine, it's scritchy anyway." He concentrated on the burlap sack. "You haven't got any yellow except for the one eye, would you like some yellow?"

"Sure! Yellow is nice and sunny! And lots of flowers are yellow!"

"Okay, then, yellow coming right up." He focused his magic on the rough-woven cloth, reached out to the patterns around it, and altered its properties. Light brown to yellow. Rough weave to soft and smooth like a flower petal. Then flower petal, a living thing that would decay and rot, to non-living thing that would stay feeling like a flower petal forever. Finally, he made it separate into lots and lots of random shapes, and tossed the shapes in the air. "Fly, Little Sister!"

Little Sister flew into the cloud of random yellow shapes, laughing as they landed on her. Wherever a shape fell on her body, Discord's magic fused it into place, so by the time all the yellow cloth had fallen, she was covered with soft yellow splotches. "Yay! I'm so colorful now!" She hugged him with her tiny soft forelimbs, which were too small to go all the way around his neck. "Thank you, Discord! I love you!"

He reached his lion paw up to her and pressed her body against his neck. "I love you too, Little Sister." He yawned. "But I'm getting tired. I've done a lot of transformation magic today. And a lot of flying! I bet my wings are gonna be super strong if I keep doing all this flying."

"Yeah! You'll be the best flyer ever!"

"Uh-huh. But now I wanna go to sleep."

Little Sister pouted. "We hardly even got to play. I wanted to be explorers!"

"Tomorrow we can be explorers," Discord promised. "And also play with butter."

"Yay!"

He picked her off his neck and laid her down on the stone floor. "I'm gonna get up early tomorrow so I can go get food quickly, and then I can come home early and we can play all afternoon, does that sound good?"

"That sounds great," Little Sister said. "I can't wait!"

"Me neither." Discord curled his body up on the leaves he kept scattered all over his floor for softness, and lay his head down on Little Sister. With a thought, he made Fire burn low so it would still be alive in the morning when he woke up to feed it again. "Good night, Little Sister," he said, adjusting his head on his pillowy stuffed friend.

"Good night, Discord."

He withdrew his magic, letting her de-animate and go to sleep for the night, since he figured it wouldn't be comfortable for her to be alive and awake with his head resting on her all night. Then he curled his lion paw around her head, laid his talon on top of her tail, and went to sleep holding his best friend.