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// Chapter 14: The Meaning of Harmony 
// Story: True Chaos 
// by Woolytop 
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	Moonstruck wasn't sure where she'd landed. She barely took stock of her surroundings; It was a single-room cottage, plainly decorated with only a few pleasantries. The only window in the room was pointed away from the rising sun, so the entire cottage was dimly lit. Moonstruck sniffled. The place had a familiar, safe kind of scent.
She crawled onto the bed and curled up as tightly as she could. Tears began to flow down her cheeks. She cursed her curiosity. She cursed her persistence. She cursed every aspect of her personality which allowed her to be manipulated as such. The worst part about it all was that Auntie had told her Discord was not to be trusted. How could she have been so stupid?
“All I wanted was to see Equestria,” Moonstruck whispered to herself.
“Well, hey there li'l dragonfly.”
Moonstruck gasped and nearly flung herself into the ceiling, then immediately threw herself on the mare that spoke.
“Nana!” she cried, squeezing Lullaby tightly. A new pang of guilt washed over her. “I'm sorry I ran away, Nana. I didn't even think of how it would make you feel...”
“'T'ain't a thing, sprout. Yain't the first to fly the coop, and ya won't be the last.” The old pegasus stroked Moonstruck's mane with her hoof as she continued to cry, although much softer this time.
“Shhh... Shhh,” Lullaby cooed. “What's got my little filly so worked up?”
“I messed up bad, Nana,” Moonstruck choked out. Through hiccups, she described what had happened. How Prince Blueblood had made her question whether or not she was like Discord. How she confronted Discord, and how she made a deal with him.
“...and I can't believe how stupid I was. How easy it was for Discord to get me to do what he wanted.”
“Yer forgettin' somethin', Li'l Dragonfly,” Lullaby assured her. “Yer seven. Discord's been manipulating ponies older an' wiser than you since 'fore the princesses were princesses. Ya ain't got nothin' to feel bad about on that front.”
“But... but,” Moonstruck started.
“Shhh. Ya made a mistake. Tain't nothin' wrong with that,” Lullaby cut her off.
“I bet most ponies don't make mistakes that could destroy Equestria,” Moonstruck pouted.
“Well, ya always were unique. How'd you happen into my quarters, anyway?” Lullaby asked.
“I dunno. I gave my teleport spell a pretty vague destination. Guess I just got... lucky.” Moonstruck considered. She could have landed anywhere in the world. She could have ended up on the moon with an input like "anywhere but here". Yet, here she was, in the home of the one pony who could help her. Something clicked in her mind.
“Nana, do you still have that old fiddle?” Moonstruck asked.
“Hmm? Oh, I'm sure I have it somewhere...” Lullaby poked around in her home, and eventually produced a fiddle from under her bed.
“Do you think you could play that lullaby you always used to play for me? You don't have to sing it.” Moonstruck watched carefully as Lullaby dragged the bow across the fiddle's strings, each one vibrating violently as she rubbed them. They moved erratically, randomly. Chaoticly. Yet, confined to the fiddle itself, they stayed in place, and produced a beautiful...
“Harmony.” Moonstruck's eyes brightened as she watched her caretaker play. “Nana, I think I know how I'm going to fix this.” She threw her arms around Lullaby's neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Lullaby returned the hug with a single hoof. “Yer bigger every time I see ya. Glad this old mare could help, Moonstruck.”
Moonstruck broke away from the hug and snapped her fingers, and in a flash, was gone. Lullaby simply allowed a proud grin to adorn her face.
Moonstruck blinked as every horn in the room was pointed at her for the second time that day.
“Stand down,” Celestia ordered once again. This time they were in the Canterlot Tower, a small squadron of unicorn guards present, as well as the bearers of the Elements of Harmony.
“Aunt Celestia! I know how we can stop Discord!” Moonstruck exclaimed proudly.
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “I'm open to suggestions.”
“We're going to use the elements of harmony!” Moonstruck said.
You could almost hear the wind blow through the tower.
“That's not going to work this time,” Twilight said. “Since the leylines are down, we can't even open the door to get at the elements, let alone draw enough power to use them.”
“Hear me out,” Moonstruck said. She snapped her fingers, and in an instant the jewel-encrusted box that contained the elements was in her hands. She opened the box for Twilight to sort the necklaces to their respective owners. “When I say 'harmony', what do all of you think?”
“Consistency?” Rarity suggested.
“Organization?” Applejack guessed.
“Order. Lawfulness. Good,” Twilight said with a nod.
“You're wrong. Well, you're not. But you're not completely right either,” Moonstruck explained. “I'm a draconequus. Chaos is a part of my very being. Chaos is from which I was born. I went on my little journey, for a large part, to convince myself that this didn't make me inherently evil.” Moonstruck began to pace as she explained. She paused every so often and looked up at the stained glass windows. “I needed to see chaos for what it really was. 'Chaos' is only something that's out of your control.”
“What does any of this have to do with Harmony?” Twilight asked.
“Getting to that part. Order, meanwhile, is the opposite of chaos. 'Order' means things that are within control.” Moonstruck explained. “I spent a long time pondering over which of these was 'good' and which was 'bad'. I knew chaos wasn't bad. I'd seen it's effects benefit an entire culture, but at the time I didn't see how order could be 'bad' either, until last night when it was nearly forced upon me.”
Moonstruck smiled as she reached her conclusion. “Things cannot live in true chaos. Without a set of rules to go by, everything falls apart. Even draconequines follow certain rules. Things cannot, however, live in true order either. There would be no imagination. No art. No music,” she smiled, “no laughter. No magic. No kindness, or generosity.”
Moonstruck paused for a beat. “The Elements of Harmony aren't tools of order. They're exactly what they sound like; Tools of harmony. The balance between order and chaos in which all things lives. Chaos within order, order within chaos. That is the meaning of harmony.”
“This has been a great philosophy lesson,” Rainbow Dash suddenly piped up, “but how does it help?”
“I thought that would be the easy part,” Moonstruck said. “Since you can't activate the elements using order magic...”
“You want to try and activate them with chaos magic,” Twilight finished. “But how? We can't use chaos magic. Not without years of study and practice, anyway.”
“You know, I hadn't actually thought that far ahead,” Moonstruck admitted. At that moment, a guard burst into the hallway.
“Your highness! Discord's statue has gone missing!” he shouted.
“The seven of you had better find a way to make it work,” Celestia said gravely, “because we just ran out of time.”