Two figures sat under the tree at the top of the hill over Paradise Estate. It was the same tree under which they had enjoyed so many picnics together, and they had in fact brought a basket. But the foods were long finished, and their attention was now wholly upon one another.
One was a beautiful young mare, with the sweet seductive curves of a maiden in her teens. Her coat was a pinkish-white so pale as to be almost pure white; her mane a delicate shade of pink that caught the sunlight and seemed to split it into a pastel rainbow. Or was that the true color of her hair? Sometimes, as she turned her head, her mane flowed strangely, as if it were not Pony hair at all, but something far more ethereal, answering to laws not of this spacetime; from time to time, stray lights sparkled within those pastel-rainbow tresses.
She was large; her legs long and her build very graceful. Her head was that of a Unicorn, her horn exceptionally sharp and long, but folded at her side were feathery Pegasus wings. She was an Alicorn; a creature almost unknown outside of certain ancient and debatable tales. There was only one other Alicorn known to exist upon the Earth: her Sister, who was not upon the hill with her.
Her companion was not a Pony at all.
His body was long and thin; slightly slimmer than her own barrel despite his overall greater size. He was more than twice her length, measured nose to tail. His gray head was something like that of a horse and something like that of a dragon, though the two mismatched horns springing from his brow belonged to neither; one being vaguely cervid and the other vaguely caprid. A black mane was fuzzy on top and continued, crest-like, down the back of his neck. Bushy black eyebrows emphasized red-pupiled yellow eyes, which should from their coloration alone have been baneful, but instead regarded the mare with extreme adoration.
His body was dark brown, and from it sprang six mismatched limbs -- four legs and a pair of wings. One forelimb was that of a Lion, equipped with opposable dewclaw; the other a vulturine leg terminating in talons. One wing would have seemed natural on a Dragon, the other on a Pegasus. One hind limb was equine, the other saurian. His long, red-scaled muscular tail was that of a Dragon's, with pink spines and pinkish-white tip.
All in all he was surpassingly ugly, a hideously-asymmetrical chimera, the product of no sane biological development. This made it all the more amazing that the breathtakingly-beautiful pinkish-white mare, about which he lay loosely coiled, gazed with her lovely great purple eyes upon his bizarre form and face with a look of the utmost adoration and purest love.
Such were Celly, daughter of Mimic; and Dissy, son of Shady; two of the last denizens of Paradise Estate in its last long golden afternoon, before night fell forever on the ancient steading which had outlasted most Earthly civilizations in its nearly three and a half millennia of existence. The Estate had seen hordes of monsters break against its material and magical defenses; watched a great civilization rise and reach its zenith in an Age of Wonders; survived the Cataclysm which had twisted the Heavens, shook the Earth and sent walls of water racing against every coastline in the world, as mountain ranges split and volcanoes vomited fire and ash into the shockwave-scourged skies. The Estate had stood while the seas slowly rose and the deserts and jungles crept northward in the long global summer which had come after; stood while the soul-freezing Windigoes howled in the far North, and the great gleaming children of the Lady of the Ice, unstoppable as they roared down the valleys, smashing stone beneath their mighty bulks, spread fingered feet to crush their victims, when the snows fell farther and farther southward.
Yet the Estate would soon succumb, to a menace its maker the Moochick had never envisioned, and whose identity would have surprised both of the two young lovers who sat on the hill, speaking soft affectionate words and envisioning a bright shared future. The Estate would fall, to become but a mythic memory, on a world already well-layered with legends. Twenty-five hundred years would pass, and naught but an oddly-regular hill would remain. But today the walls still stood, and the two who looked down upon its timeless majesty had thoughts only of love.
They had known each other all their so far still short lives, always been companions and close friends. In the last few years, their friendship had begun growing, changing into something far more mysterious and frightening, just as their bodies had been growing and changing. They had always run and played and even wrestled together; Dissy and Celly and her sister Lulu; one would have imagined Celly's form no secret to him, especially since he wore no clothes at all, and she rarely anything beyond the tail-bow universal to all females on the Estate.
Sometmes, of course, they tried on various costumes -- a mare named Masequerade, who had departed the Estate just before their births, had left behind closets full of them from many lands and eras. There were the cloaks and coastals, chitons and himations of the Crystal Empire; the symbol-embroidered cotton tunics and gowns of the Earth Ponies from the Lithic Hegemony; the fanciful feathered coats and dresses worn by the highborn Unicorns of the Heartspire; the kimonos and sashes of Neigh-Pon and brocades of Chi-Neigh across the Cruel Ocean far to the west; the furs and leathers of the barbaric Taurans who dwelt in the forests across the Stormy Sea to the east, dominated and preyed upon by the still more-barbaric Dragons and High Griffons.
These had been the games of little fillies and colts, for that was what they had been. Dissy had thought the Sisters adorable, especially when Celly donned the brocade-gown of an Imperatrix of the Crystal Empire, and Lulu the armor of an Imperial Guard recruited from grim Derecho to the far north, and they had played Celly's Princess Game of knightly quests and noble purposes. Dissy had always known that one day Celly would really be some sort of Princess, and Lulu her loyal Lady of War, and he their Companion in whatever they wanted of him. The Estate was a matriarchal culture, and Dissy was completely willing to follow the lead of his two favorite Sisters, fight whatever Monsters they sent him against.
He was still willing to follow their lead, but now the game had grown more complex, had deepened. Celly's legs had grown long and her once-fillyish form rounded into new curves, and sometimes she would walk a certain way; there would be something in the flow of her mane or the twitch of her tail that seemed to convey to him a whole language whose words were strange but promised delights beyond his imagination. She would glance at him and he would feel himself drowning in her great purple eyes, and he would wonder Can she possibly mean that? Can she possibly mean me? The very thought seemed beyond belief
For he knew he was ugly. The mares of Paradise Estate were used to him, but he knew how Pony stallions were supposed to look, and he knew that he was no proper Pony stallion. He was a Monster, and he had marked the gasps of horror, the involuntary twitch of hooves or wings, the paramagnetic emanations from horns, of Ponies from outside the Estate when they saw him uncloaked. As a colt he had once journeyed to the Crystal City disguised as a malformed servant, but his size was now such that only magical transformations would serve to hide his true form, and those, of course, were noticeable by other mages.
He was so happy to be accepted by the others at the Estate. He had true friends there: Celly and Lulu, of course, but also some of the older mares, the emmortals who had dwelt there for three and a half millennia, who had walked with The Megan Herself. Surprise, who despite her vast age and experience was still very, very silly, often willing to play with him; brave Firefly, who had taught him the moves of close combat; shy Posey, whom he never pranked and toward whom he felt very protective. Applejack, who was just so plain nice that it was impossible not to love her. His mother, Shady, whom he loved dearly. And though she sometimes frightened him, he knew that his teacher, wise Wind Whistler, cared about him; and he admired her calm courage and incomparable intelligence.
These were the Ponies who actually liked him. Dissy was a strange being, creative and mischievous, always bubbling with notions for some new creation, fun game or practical joke. He never hurt anypony -- he would have hated to hurt anypony -- but he knew he sometimes scared Ponies. He was big and strong, and he possessed powerful magics of conjuring and transformation. Others sometimes saw an implicit threat he never meant to make. Mimic, the mother of Celly and Lulu and the wearer of the Golden Horseshoes, had never really trusted him. Likewise Galaxy and Starry. The others were not as obvious about it, but they clearly found his power dangerous. Even Wind Whistler sometimes looked at him oddly, as if he were only waiting to strike.
He knew the reasons why. His strange conception, by no known sire. Celly and Lulu had been conceived the same way, but they were lovely, despite the oddness of having both horns and wings. He was a hideous Monster, not a Pony but something else -- what that old tale from the Library of the Crystal Empire had called a "draconequus." He must have been named after the legend, for his full name -- "Discord," which he never used -- had been the name of the creature in that story book. He knew the meaning of "draconequus" -- it was Old Amareican for "dragon horse" -- and it fit some of his features, if not his full chimeric oddity.
That creature had been playful, like him, but its concept of "play" had been cruel and sadistic -- he knew he was not like that, but he was not sure how he could prove this to anypony. How could he prove that his heart was good, when he wore the semblance of a Monster? That made him only love those who accepted him anyway -- his mother Mimic; his best friends Celly and Lulu; his friends Surprise and Firefly, Posey and Applejack -- all the more.
No, he was not and could not be Discord, the Twister from the old myth. He had been named after that being, but he was not the same. He was good, he knew unselfish love, he never wanted to hurt Ponies, only to play with and befriend them. He brought joy, rather than sorrow, and as he grew he knew that he would bring even more joy to Ponykind, for that was what was within his soul. He had no Mark, for he was not a Pony in his form, only in his heart, but if he had one it would have been hearts and smiley-faces. He'd designed one once -- a smiling face in a heart in an eight-pointed arrow -- and shown it to Celly and Lulu. They'd laughed in happiness, rather than mockery, and hugged him. Between him and them, he was sure, would never be anything less than the strongest friendship.
And more, where Celly was concerned. Impossibly, amazingly and wondrously more.
The past two weeks ... their lives had become a special Paradise within the general Paradise that was their Estate. One day Celly had invited him to come walking in the woods with her. That was something he often did with one or both of the Sisters, when they had time from their studies and their projects.
It was important to study and to work, for the Ponies of Paradise Estate were an elite, the Undying who had the privilege and bore the burden of life immortal, of the long history of Ponykind that might otherwise be forgot, that long-dead Mare Memory of Dream Castle had charged them with carrying forward for the future ages, that Ponies should remember their past glories and never again be reduced to the levels of the brute beasts that had been their most remote ancestors.
Three times Ponykind had fallen: to Tirek the Annihilator, to the Cataclysm, and to the Windigoes -- and three times the Ponies of Paradise Estate had fought the good fight, raising the Ponies once again to their deserved high estate. On they would fight, until the hopes of Mare Memory, of Sundreamer and Moondreamer, of Starlight and Bright Eyes, might be achieved, and the true Destiny of Ponies, of expansion into Space and a mastery of Magic so great that nothing might ever blot them out again, had been achieved.
And then, perhaps, the Undying Ponies might rest, for all Ponykind would have surpassed even them in knowledge and power, and the future of all Ponykind be bright forever. The Ponies of the Estate might then pass their torch to others, and simply enjoy their lives in the bright noontide they would bring their race.
Such was the dream, and such the purpose, that had carried them forward through three and a half weary millennia, century after century of keeping the flame of Knowledge alight, of battling Evil, of working subtly from the shadows to shelter and tend the precious growths of Civilization where ever it might be found. Some doubted that they would ever win -- that their goal might be truly achievable. Every century or so, one of them would leave and make short but merry lives beyond the Veil. Others kept on fighting the good fight, for it was their only fight, and their highest ideal. And so it had been for thirty-five centuries.
But Celly had not come to speak to him of high and noble purposes, and the truth was that Dissy did not wholly exult in their ideals. It all seemed too distant and serious: all he wanted to do was laugh and dance and play with his friends. Celly's smile and Lulu's laughter, Firefly's guffaws and Surprise's pounce and Applejack's broad grin, Posey's quiet grace and his mother Shady's constant love, these were things infinitely more precious to him then noble goals, even though they sounded wonderful when Wind Whistler spoke of them in that cool scholarly voice, beneath which, somehow, ancient battle-trumpets faintly sounded.
Her Sister had not been present on that occasion, which was unsurprising as it had been in late morning, and Lulu was snoring soundly curled up in her lavender sheets, the blue of her coat so lovely against them. Her tongue lolled as she slept; she drooled slightly; and Dissy chuckled to himself as they passed her room and he glanced in, for this was so very like Lulu. She was so fierce and so intense when awake, and so adorable whether waking or sleeping, a cute filly who had always been his best friend, the little sister of his heart if not Shady's womb. He loved her and would always hope to protect her from the stray insults of the world; he knew this with utter certainty.
Celly also glanced in at her Sister, and her gaze seemed to Dissy to be somehow troubled: something he noted but was not sure he should discuss. Celly and Lulu sometimes quarreled, and it was unwise to get between them when this happened, though they invariably mended these disputes. The affection between the Sisters was unbreakable, and though there were occasional explosions, always they came together again, their love re-igniting in a warm and steady glow in whose radiance Dissy happily basked. Such had been the case since they came into his life when he was but a year old, eighteen years ago, and such would always be the case. Why should it ever change?
Celly remained troubled as they walked through the building, but she closed her eyes and smiled in sheer joy when the warm golden sunlight bathed her, striking sparks from her mane and caressing her long limbs in a manner that made Dissy suddenly breathless. She laughed aloud as she galloped out from the estate, her hooves seeming to fly over the sward, as if she were airborne without the use of wings or flightfield. Dissy followed in his own manner, twisting through the air beside her, his own mode of locomotion as always almost purely based on his flightfield. He glided sinuously enough, but he was well aware that his awkward form could not begin to compare with the pure glory that was Celestia.
Now they were past the clear ground and climbing into the hills. They were approaching the edges of the Veil, but they no longer recked of such limits. Their power had grown apace since their childhood, and it would be a foolish and likely a short-lived Monster that dared molest both of them in league. They were approaching their adult prime, and their knowledge of their own bodies told them at a deep level that this prime might last for centuries, maybe millennia. This was not the gift of the Rainbow -- indeed, that ancient artifact was harmful to Dissy. It was a power from within them, older and greater than the Rainbow, something they also knew by instinct, though they as yet knew not its source.
They felt like young gods, which was in point of fact the truth, and the world was opening itself before them as their destined playground. They knew not yet of what that play might consist, though the simplest and yet sweetest possibility was beginning to suggest themselves to both of them -- though as yet they had been too shy to speak its name, let alone attempt it between them. And if both of them had a strange sensation that they had in fact done all this once before, at the Dawning over five thousand years past, they dismissed this as absurd impossibility. For they knew they were young, and their lives just beginning, certainly not turning to a fate decided in the remotest antiquity.
Celestia led and Dissy followed; this had always been their way and was becoming even more the case as new desires formed in their hearts. She cut into the woods, darting daintily along the way that went between the trees, glancing back from time to time to smile winningly back at her pursuer, and as she leapt over fallen logs or clumps of underbrush, her pink tail and the lighter-pink rump beneath, half-concealed by her tail-bow, bounced in a manner most distracting to his peace of mind. He knew that she was doing this on purpose, and she knew that he knew, and their mutual awareness only excited him further.
He was playing her game, and even in his youthful innocence, he suspected that hers was the longer one. But he could no more cease the pursuit than he could cease the breath in his body or the beating of his heart; only a being not of flesh but stone could ignore her challenge, the implications of the fact that she was careful to stay just in sight of him, rather than draw ahead in the woods where she had all the advantage of running rather than flying in such close terrain. And, as her tail went up in sheer exuberance, as he caught a tantalizing glimpse of soft shadowed charms, he was very aware that Celly had chosen to play this game with him and him alone, without waking her sleeping Sister.
She darted back and forth through the wooded hills, eventually angling back toward Paradise Estate, and Dissy began to fear that she was truly teasing him, and would prance back in through the front gates with he still following her, in utter humiliation. But then she deliberately cut out of the woods and took her time coming up the slope of a hill, letting him cut across the void of the valley. And he marked her many mocking glances back at him, and put on a bust of speed, and so did she, so that when he finally caught her they were almost at the hilltop.
She laughed merrily as he clutched her with his forepaws and coiled his long self around her, and as they fell on the hillside, he as always cushioned the shock with his muscular draconic body, as he wished in the very depths of his soul to cushion her from every shock she might encounter. They rolled a bit, and he wound up with his head on top, she on her back with him tenderly coiled all around her. And though he had won the game, though he had caught her, when he looked down into the fathomless purple pools of her eyes, he knew that he was the one taken captive.
They gazed at each other a long time, afraid to say anything, and then, still-silent, she stretched up her lovely neck, and half-closing her long-lashed eyes, she kissed him on the lips. And at that kiss he felt as if stars were exploding, spraying forth daughter elements as glistening dust, in great waves which heterodyned with and disrupted each the stately Order of the other's density peaks, and from that mingling of Fusion and Disorder forming new concentrations of mass which fell together to form new stars, and fertile worlds from which sprang new Life. He reeled before sensations undreamt of in this Earthly existence, and so did she, but neither broke that kiss for what seemed an eternity of rapture.
"What ... what was that?" he gasped.
"That was Love," she said softly. "I've been waiting such a long time to show you. I don't think you quite understood me the last time round." She seemed almost dazed, in some supernal state of mind whose nature he dared not guess. "That's what you want, isn't it? That's why you followed me. That's why you've always followed me."
And something in him suspected that she was talking about more than just this race to the hill. But he dared not dwell too deeply upon this, for when he did he saw something Monstrous, something like a great serpent coiled about the world, something that had always been watching him, and which he very much did not want to have watching at this magical moment.
"Love?" he asked in wonder. "You ... love me?"
She snorted right into his face, and then began kissing his chin, trailing little kisses down under his neck and at the angle of his jaw. Dissy gasped in pleased surprise, and she drew back, smiling happily up at him, a perfectly normal Celly, the filly he had known almost all his life, save for the fact that she was behaving in such wise as she only ever had before in his wildest hopeful daydreams.
Celly kissed him one more time, right on his nose, then drew back again, resting comfortably in his coils. She looked at him almost in exasperation.
"Silly colt," she said fondly. "Of course I love you. Why do you think I brought you here? Why do you think I let you catch me?"
When he fully grasped what she had said, he gasped again.
She took that as a signal to kiss him again, and in that kiss all his questions, all his fears fled. Celly loved him. All was right with his world. All would be right with his world forever, as long as Celly loved him. And they were both Undying.
That long wonderful day they spent lying on the hillside together, beneath their special tree, the one which had shaded so many of their picnics. Kissing, and cuddling, and talking about everything and nothing, sense and nonsense, delerious in their shared happiness. She was a dear warm burden in his coils, one of which he never wanted to be rid, but to keep safe forever and ever.
She did not invite him to mate with her that day, nor did he ask for it. She was Celly, she was magical and special to him, she had always been, beauty beyond compare, within and without. This was her game, her dance with him, and he was content to let her set the rules, pace out the measure. They were in no hurry; they were both Undying, and long millennia of love stretched forth before their young anticipation.
Only on the way back, as they bathed together in Dream River, washing off the sweat of the day, and the mingled sweat of their shared love, with a terribly innocent self-awareness, for they did not fully grasp that while their scent would reveal that they had been keeping company, it would also reveal that they had not actually done much more, did it occur to him to ask her the obvious question.
"Celly," he asked, "What did you mean by 'the last time round?' You never told me you loved me -- not this way -- before. Did you?"
"Of course not," replied Celly. "Silly Dissy. This is the first time I've ever told anypony I loved them this way." Her eyes, purple and luminous in the light of the lowering Sun, shone with utterly honest affection. "You're the first I've ever loved this way."
Which was quite true, in more than one meaning of "you" and "I," but Dissy did not yet appreciate the nuances. Nor did she.
When they returned, Luna was already awake, reading a book by magelight in the library. She looked at them rather crossly.
"Where were you two?" she asked, her blue eyes narrowing. "I woke up and I was lonely. Did you go somewhere together?"
"Not far," said Celestia quite truthfully. "We had a picnic up on the hill -- you know, the one on which we always do -- under the tree."
Dissy marveled at the calm way in which she said it. He wanted to shout aloud his joy, paint the ceilings, sing happy songs -- but Celly had told him they should wait for the right time to let the others know. He did not want to disappoint his beloved with his all-too-frequent lack of self-control, which had been the bane of his life since foalhood.
So he remained silent.