//------------------------------//
// TOPSY TURVY DAY: 2 
// Story: A Year Of Holidays 
// by alarajrogers 
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As soon as they were alone at the cottage, Discord dropped the act. His forelegs went around Fluttershy, pulling her in tightly as he collapsed to the ground in a pile of coils. "Shy, Shy, I can't do this," he whispered in her ear, hugging her so closely and tightly she could barely breathe. "I can't, I can't keep going back—"

"Shh. Don't think about it right now. Right now you're out, and you're free," Fluttershy said, pushing free of him just enough that she could breathe, and then ducking under his arm so she could come behind him and hug him, pulling his shoulders back against her chest with her hooves. Discord whimpered. "It's all right. Right now it's all right."

"But I'm going to have to go back," Discord said, the anguish in his voice coming out as a whine. "I have to keep putting myself back there – I can't do it, I can't keep doing this. I can't bear it, Fluttershy, I can't. It's so cold and I can't feel anything and it's dark and unless somepony is talking to me I never know what's real—"

"Breathe," Fluttershy instructed. Discord did, huge, heaving breaths. "It's horrible, I know. I wish there was something I could do—"

"If I told you I wanted to run away, would you go with me?"

"No. We've talked about this, Discord. I can't be your only friend; I can't be your everything, and if we ran away together that's what would happen. You need to stick this out. I know, I can't even begin to imagine how horrible it feels to be stone and still be awake and aware... but you agreed with this. You consented to this. If you go back on it now... I don't want to see you end up being sentenced for longer, or have your parole days taken away. And there's five alicorns now, plus Sunset Shimmer. Not that Flurry Heart would be very useful but..."

"I know, I know," he said, shuddering. "I'm a match for two alicorns easily. Three starts to stretch it. I don't know if I could take on all four of them, and if Twilight's theory is correct and Sunset's an alicorn too, I'm pretty sure I can't fight off all five. And... and I don't even want to. I don't want to fight them, Fluttershy. They're my friends now. But... but I can't stand this. How am I supposed to make it through six more years?"

"Let's not worry about that now," Fluttershy said. "You've been stone for three months. It's time for you to feel things, don't you think? Don't worry about the future right now; we have to focus on washing off the past."

He smiled weakly. "Right. So. Bath?"

With a gentle smile, Fluttershy led him outside, to the hot spring. He'd made it for her, on his second parole, and then when he'd been in stone Fluttershy had asked Pinkie's sister Maud to verify that it was structurally sound and would continue to function as a hot spring. Where Maud had found problems, Twilight had reinforced it; chaos magic was good for doing difficult or impossible things easily, but not for keeping them that way. So now she had a fully stable heated pond all year round. It was designed to spill hot water from the spring pool into two lower pools, one in the middle where the water would cool and turn tepid, and the bottom one, fed by her little creek, which would be actively cool. 

Discord lowered himself into the hot water with a moan. Fluttershy put waterproof, oilproof gloves on her forehooves, rubbed them in a jar of salve, and began rubbing Discord's shoulders and neck, hovering above the water – she had a hard time with the heat of the hot spring herself. The salve was made with poison joke and sufficient hot pepper oil that a pony would be in agony, so it was important that she not get any on her hooves. Discord gasped, knees buckling and back arching. "Oh chaos, please..."

"Is this hurting your skin?" Fluttershy asked, trying to be careful.

"Yes. Agonizing. Don't stop, whatever you do. Ohh. Please -- please, I need..."

He didn't say what he needed, but Fluttershy knew. When he came out of stone, Discord needed to feel. Intense sensation, pleasant or painful or both, woke up his nervous system and reminded him that he was alive and not stone. Unleashing his magic could accomplish the same effect, probably better in fact, but he couldn't do that on release anymore. Even for Topsy Turvy Day, he still had to wait for the actual day to come to cut fully loose with his magic. On the other celebrations, he was allowed to participate and help, but there wasn't really an opportunity for him to go all-out with his magic. Which meant he needed to get reminded that he was alive some other way.

Once Fluttershy was done massaging the salve into his coat, she flew up, dragged a cloud over that she'd asked Rainbow to leave with her yesterday, and kicked it into releasing a lightning bolt. It hit the water, jolting Discord and making all of his fur stand on end. He flopped over into the water, while Fluttershy coaxed the cloud into raining over her hot spring. Discord came up out of the water and lay on his back, floating, an expression of apparent bliss as his front was soaked with cold rain even as his back floated in steaming hot water.

Fluttershy landed in the tepid pool. "That wasn't too much, was it?"

"If I say no, that it felt great, would that keep you from giving me more of a massage?"

Fluttershy smiled. "No. I'll massage you as long as you like. Although... at some point... we might want to go inside and, um, some other parts of your body might like a massage too..."

Discord rolled onto his side – a feat no other creature could probably manage while floating on top of the water – to look at her with a fake-sultry expression, batting his suddenly overlong eyelashes. "Oh, Fluttershy, how forward of you to make such a suggestion! You grow bolder every season, madame!" A sensuous grin crept across his face. "I like it."

Fluttershy giggled nervously, embarrassed by herself. After four years of having her special someone only available for twelve days a year, she'd learned not to let her own shyness make her waste time in being too embarrassed to admit what she wanted... but she had never yet learned how to make the embarrassment go away. "Well, um, life is short, and, and, things."

"Very profound." Discord laid back on the water again. "I want beer salad with pie crust pierogies and chocolate covered glass."

"That's a little beyond my cooking ability, but I did make fresh bread. And scones."

"Those things are good too." He stood up and abruptly dove from the upper hot pool into the lower tepid one, splashing Fluttershy thoroughly and making her shriek. Underwater, he twined around her barrel and came up, standing so she was held in a coil above the water. "Have we ever done it underwater, Fluttershy?"

"Um... I'm not sure this pool would be deep enough..."

"Easily fixed." He waved a paw, and the sky turned black and star-filled, and the pool deepened, so that now he was much lower in it and her hooves were dangling in the water. "A little privacy, a little depth, and here we go."

When Fluttershy looked straight ahead, she could still see that her garden was full of light, but it was dimmed by a wavering haze of gray over everything, that like fog, was invisible close up but turned thick further away. "Can anypony walk in through the privacy shield?"

"It wouldn't be a very good privacy shield if they could, would it? Don't worry, I'm projecting an illusion onto the surface. It'll look like there's nopony in the pool and it's choked with algae and weeds."

"But everypony who comes to visit me knows it's really not."

"They still can't get through the shield. It's just that the pool will look sufficiently unappetizing that most won't try."

"Mmm." So ponies who did happen to walk into her back yard wouldn't see her and Discord, and they wouldn't see a big dark dome that made it clear that she and Discord were up to something they wanted privacy for. Good enough. "In that case..."

She caught his muzzle in her forehooves and kissed him, lightly, on the lips. He returned and deepened it, pulling her close, tongue in her mouth and twining around hers. Her hindlegs went around his neck and his paws to her hips as he bore them both down into the water. With Discord's tongue blocking her ability to breathe through her mouth anyway, the sudden presence of gills breathing the warm water was a relief, not a strange and startling effect. 

Discord might need to be able to feel, but Fluttershy had needs too, and most of the year Discord wasn't there to help her with them. She needed this as much as he did.



Afterward, the two of them floated lazily on their backs on top of the water, air breathers again, with Fluttershy's fresh bread and scones on a floating tray beside them, and cups of mint and orange tea bobbing gently in the ripples of the pool without turning over or getting pool water in them. Discord had curled himself into a three-quarters circle so that Fluttershy could rest her head on his chest and her hind hooves on his tail. She used her wings to keep herself floating, with very slow, gentle beats against the water's surface, and enjoyed the sensation of Discord's warmth under her head and his fur against her cheek. Cuddling after sex was almost better than sex itself, like a rush of unbearable sweetness through her veins, and the combination of the warm sun and the tepid water made her feel practically boneless, completely relaxed and somewhat exhausted. 

A thought occurred to her, and she giggled. "Share the joke?" Discord asked.

"Oh, it's nothing... I was just thinking how much easier it is to clean up if we make love underwater."

Discord snorted. "You would think about that. I almost regret that part of it. Washes all the scents off."

Fluttershy giggled again. "But Discord, what fun is there in making scents?"

Discord's tail abruptly coiled around her hind hooves and dragged her under the water. She shrieked, once, and then the water closed over her head – and the tail released her, allowing her to use her wings to swim back to the surface. She glared at him, shoving her wet mane back off her face, as he laughed.

"Oh, Flutters, that was an awful, awful joke. You really had that dunking coming."

"Did I? Hmm?" She focused all of her attention on his eyes, holding them in her gaze. "Then perhaps you have something coming to you too." Fluttershy waved a wing menacingly as she floated closer and closer to him.

"Now, Fluttershy, there's no need to be hasty," he said quickly. "You don't want to do anything you might regret."

"Will I regret it?" She didn't take her gaze away. Training herself against Discord had taught her that there were powers in her gaze beyond the Stare. If she needed to paralyze an opponent with regret for all of their mistakes, if she needed to make some creature, capable of remorse but who felt it rarely, drown in guilt, she could still do that. But if all she wanted to do was make someone who trusted her unable to escape her intent, now she could do that. Again she waved her wing, closer to his vulnerable neck this time. "Or will you?"

Discord tried to pull his head away, and failed. "I'm wise to your tricks, dearest. You think you can tickle me without even touching me?"

"Oh, of course not." She smiled fiercely. "I'm sure you're not imagining my feathers lightly brushing your neck at all. There's nothing about the way my wing draws closer and closer to your sensitive skin that makes you think about being tickled, of course not. That would be silly. Why, I'm sure the thought of feathers against the hollow of your throat, so light and teasing and maddening it makes you writhe and gasp with laughter, has never crossed your mind. Not even once." She feinted forward with the wing. A giggle burst out of Discord, his body convulsing away from her as if she'd actually brushed him with her implements of tickle torture. Pinkie had taught her this one – the art of Zen Tickle, which Pinkie had discovered was effective against toddling foals, where all Pinkie needed to do was wave her hooves in a tickle-threatening manner toward their necks and they'd start laughing. Discord wasn't a foal – but he was very imaginative, and very sensitive when he came out of stone, and Fluttershy had both her gaze and two limbs covered in feathers. Discord had fingers, which worked on practically everypony else, but Discord's fingers on Fluttershy didn't produce a ticklish reaction.

As soon as he laughed, Fluttershy brought both wings into play, fluttering them at him in a manner that would certainly have been extremely ticklish if she'd actually been touching him, and he laughed and squirmed as if she actually was. When she finally did reach him – which was hard, because he was wiggling and thrashing in the water, but as long as she kept his gaze in hers he couldn't get away – she began kissing him on the neck, lightly enough that it would tickle too. She didn't stop until he managed to grab her, pull her close, and capture her mouth with his, preventing her from tickle-kissing him any longer.

This time he made her mane and tail like tentacles, like Mane-iac from the Power Ponies, except that she could feel sensation in the hair-tentacles as if they were wings and hooves. Fluttershy giggled. He might be resisting her tickling and trying to stop her, but he couldn't stop his true desires manifesting with his magic. She pinned his limbs down against the surface of the water with some of her hair tendrils, and tickled him mercilessly with the others. Discord laughed, and thrashed, and writhed, and demanded she stop in between bursts of hysterical laughter, but his magic kept him floating on the surface of the water and if he wanted Fluttershy to stop, it was his magic giving her mane and tail animation. He could stop this if he wanted to.

For their second round (or technically third or fourth – the underwater sex had lasted quite a while and had wrung more than one climax out of both of them), Fluttershy was in complete control. Discord, she knew, wanted to feel, wanted to abandon himself to unpredictability and loss of control, aspects of chaos he loved to feel almost as much as he loved to inflict them on others. She preferred loss of control herself, the illusion that she wasn't making any of this happen, but she'd had her turn – Discord pushing her underwater and giving her gills so he could take her at the bottom of the pool had been as dominant as she'd wanted from him. Now she was returning the favor. And she couldn't say she didn't love every minute of it.



The rest of the morning and some of the afternoon disappeared this way, bouts of exotic and exciting sex followed by snuggling and snacks followed by more sex and so on, with backrubs and wing preening and mane grooming for both and hoofrubs for her and paw massages for him interspersed. The venue moved from the pools to the living room, where Discord's favorite couch still stood, to the grassy lawn, up into the branches of the tree, and finally the bedroom before they'd had enough of each other that they could focus on anything else.

Eventually, though, the real world could no longer be denied. Discord genuinely wanted his day to go well, and if that meant some degree of planning with Pinkie had to happen, he was resigned to it. And the unnatural silence of the house outside the bedroom was bothering Fluttershy. "I should check on Soft Heart, see how she's doing with the animals."

"I'm sure she's doing fine."

"Yes, but I don't want to impose on her..."

Discord sighed. "My dear, if you'd been apprenticed to an older pony who was teaching you to care for animals, and she had asked you to take in her animals for three days so she could help her special somepony put on a public event... would you have considered that imposing? If she came and checked up on you incessantly, would you take that as care, or as an indication that she didn't think you were good enough?"

Fluttershy sagged slightly, back into the bed, the tension that had been building to force her out of it running out of her. "You're right, of course, but... I just worry. The last time I only had her watch them for the one day."

"Yes, and I remember how enthusiastically she told you that she could manage the whole three days next time, and I remember begging you to take her up on it." He lifted his head off the pillow to look down at her. "I need you. Your animals get you almost every day. I have only twelve, all year."

"I know... but you're going to go work with Pinkie, right?"

"And is there a reason why you'd be avoiding Pinkie?"

"Of course not, it's just... you don't really need me to be there with you, do you?"

He ran a paw through her mane, gently. "Shy, I need you all the time. What part of only twelve days are you not getting?" He floated up into the air, coming into a sitting position with a pout on his face. "Or are you saying you need a break from me?"

Fluttershy sat up as well. "No! It's just... when you and Pinkie plan together... I feel like I don't have anything to contribute and maybe I'm just in the way, or at the very least, I'm useless."

"You're never useless." The pout turned into a soft smile. "Neither chaos nor parties are your particular specialty, it's true, but the holiday is supposed to be fun for all ponies, not just the ones with an inherent love for chaos. Perhaps Pinkie and I need someone with significantly more, mmm, low-key ideas for fun to rein us in, for the sake of the rest of Equestria's shy types."

"You've never taken my advice before."

He shrugged. "Just because I'm in stone doesn't mean I can't think about things I could do better."

She flapped up and hugged him. "Thank you."

"For...?"

"Thinking about the things you could do better. And thinking about including ponies like me."

He nuzzled his head against hers before drawing back reluctantly. "Well. We'd better go visit Pinkie before we lose any more time."



"So! I let all the food vendors know about the we have to sell each other's food thing, and we're going to do a Secret Sinterklauss kind of thing, except not because it's not Hearth's Warming but you know what I mean, to draw each other's names at random! We haven't done the drawing yet because I know you like to be there when something's going to be random! Rarity is making checkerboard banners but I told her they can't be square checkerboards, they have to be kind of warped up and down, so she's doing this weird thing where they're flat pieces of cloth but she cut them into shapes so they look like they're hills and valleys even though they're not. Rainbow's team is clearing the clouds—"

"There's going to be a surprise thunderstorm," Discord said.

"No, they're scheduling a sunny day—"

"I'm not stating a speculation, I'm stating a fact.  There will be a surprise thunderstorm. I want random umbrellas hidden in strange but easy to find places and some rainproof tents. Is Trixie available?"

"Haven't checked yet. Do you want her doing the entertainment?"

"Give her a large rainproof tent, but she doesn't get to start her show until the rain starts."

"Um, Discord." Fluttershy tapped his lion arm with her hoof, gently. "If ponies expect it to be sunny, they won't be dressed for rain."

"That's why there will be random umbrellas and rain-proof tents. Why, do you think any of them are going to show up in paper clothing?"

"Well, no, but... sudden thunderstorms are scary... and a tent isn't that much protection..."

Discord sighed. "The weather can't be predictable on Topsy-Turvy Day, Fluttershy."

"But what if we had a big underground ballroom, with dancing and snacks, that you get to in weird ways? Like jumping down a rain barrel! Or climbing into a box! Then Fluttershy could go around in the early morning and tell ponies that if they're scared of thunder and lightning, where they can go if there's bad weather, and then they think they're going into some kind of underground shelter but it's a fancy ballroom?" Pinkie was practically bouncing.

"Why not a dance club? We could get what's-her-name, the DJ who always wears sunglasses."

"DJ-PON3, except her real name is Vinyl Scratch, but see, a dance club is dark. And an underground shelter is dark. But an underground ballroom? That's brightly lit and has a lot of space? Nopony would expect anything like that! Anyway, ponies who are scared of thunder might not like the loud noise of a dance club, either."

Fluttershy nodded vigorously. "I think Pinkie is right. A ballroom would be better."

"Only if I can have giant mice for waiters."

"Real mice? The mice don't like being that big, Discord. If you have to do real ones, use rats instead. Rats enjoy being taller than they used to be, and once you make them pony sized, ponies can't really tell the difference between rats and mice."

"I was going to just make constructs, but if you know some rats who'd like to do it..."

"I think so. I'll ask them when we get home."

"But I don't want all the ponies crowding into the ballroom to get out of the rain. I want most of them to go to the tents."

"The tents will be easier to get to," Fluttershy said. "I'll just make sure ponies know that there's an option to take shelter underground; most ponies would rather be in the open air, in a tent, than underground. Only the ones who are really scared of the thunder and lightning will want to go underground." She didn't point out that she was an expert on the subject with personal experience; both Discord and Pinkie knew that. She wished he wouldn't insist on rain, but she knew better than to think she could talk him out of it; making sure there were safe places for ponies like her was the best she'd get out of him.

"We need a band if we're going to have a ballroom, though! Do you have anyone in mind or can I pick?"

Discord made a face. "You're going to want someone boring because it's a ballroom, right?"

"You weren't there at the first Gala we went to, that's right!"

"Yes, I was having a slight case of being stone. What does that have to do with—"

"I don't pick boring party bands, Discord. Don't worry, I'll find somepony with some pep and pizzazz!"

"That sounds painful. Make sure they're properly medicated."

"Um, actually, I, um, I know a few bands..."

"You do? Fluttershy? You know some bands?" Pinkie had bounced over the table and was staring at Fluttershy, in her face, practically eyeball to eyeball. Fluttershy shrank back slightly. "That's great! You can totally pick the band if you want!"

Fluttershy nodded. "The Ponytones don't do ballroom style, but I've met a few other musicians while I was performing with them... There's this one band that does a fusion of courtly and jazz. It's really interesting."

Discord's eyebrows went up. "A fusion of courtly and jazz? Now that I'd like to hear."

The door swung open, and Twilight entered. "Hi, everypony! And Discord! How are the plans going?"

"Everything is copacetic!" Pinkie said gleefully.

"Just swell," Discord said grandly.

"So, then you wouldn't mind sharing them with me, right?" The parchment and quill floated in front of her, seeming to oscillate slightly with her eagerness.

"Now Twilight, we've discussed this." Discord draped a forelimb, and half of his upper body, over Twilight's withers, curling around her. "When we tell you what's going on for Topsy-Turvy Day, you start trying to organize it. And make checklists. And draw up agendas."

"I promise! No agendas this time!"

"And no checklists?"

"Well, one or two checklists to help things go more smoothly in the background—"

"No. Pinkie is an experienced party planner and I've done this three times without blowing anything up, yet. I'm afraid I have to put my foot down, Twilight." He placed his dragon foot on the ground, with the rest of him still levitating, so he looked as if he were impossibly balanced on it, most of his body horizontal on top of the vertical leg. "You cannot pin our creative vision to paper without killing it, like a cruel lepidopterist. And we all know you won't be able to resist the temptation to write everything down and make plans around it. So—" He straightened up, going back to an upright position and two legs. "Expect the unexpected. That's all I'll tell you."

Twilight sighed. "I have to tell Mayor Mare something."

"Tell her we've got everything under control!" Pinkie said. "Or tell you what, you can tell her that I'll come by later and brief her on what she needs to know!"

"Okay, I'll do that," Twilight said, and proceeded to sit down at the table.

"Um, Twilight, I think Discord just said—"

"Oh, don't worry about it," Discord said, and snapped his talon. "Let's move on. I've done bouncing, slides, gravity and giant crabs. Can I do an Everfree theme here? Giant rampaging animals that turn out to be friendly and give ponies rides?"

"That might be a little scary," Fluttershy said.

"Ahem!" Pinkie pointed at Twilight, whose face was scrunched. "I thought we didn't want Twilight here for the planning because it is supposed to be a surprise!"

"She can't hear anything," Discord said. "I put her in a Cone of Silence. It'll wear off the moment she walks out the door."

"But what if Twilight can lip read?"

Discord's lips moved. A second later his voice said, "I'll just implement bad Neighponese dubbing and everything will be fine." The voice continued for a second after his mouth stopped moving.

Twilight sighed and said something, but no one could hear her. "Discord, I think you at least need to tell her that she's in a Cone of Silence," Fluttershy said.

"She'll figure it out."

Twilight rolled her eyes, got up, and went to the door. She stepped through it, then back. "Discord, the polite thing to do would have been to ask me to leave."

"The polite thing to do would have been to not sit down at the table at our planning session after we told you we wanted the plans to be a surprise to you too," Discord said sharply.

"He's got a point, Twilight. You wouldn't've done that to me." Pinkie frowned at her.

Twilight sighed. "I just really want to know what to expect!"

"Bunnies," Discord said.

Fluttershy blinked. "What?" she asked, at the same time as Twilight said the same thing.

"Bunnies," Discord repeated. "Giant rampaging bunnies. 20-head-tall clones of Angel with the same personality. No carrot will be safe."

"That... doesn't sound like a good idea."

"He's joking, Twilight. That's not what we're planning."

"Good try, Fluttershy, but she's onto us. The almighty Princess wants to know what to expect, and who are we peons to disobey? We can admit it."

"But we're not really doing giant bunnies."

"Yes, yes, of course we're not." He winked at Fluttershy theatrically.

"I get it, I get it. None of you want to tell me."

Pinkie bounced over to Twilight, cupped a hoof to her ear, and said in a very loud whisper, "It's really guinea pigs!"

Discord slapped his forehead. "Oh, Pinkie, why did you have to go and tell her?"



After a disgruntled Twilight finally left, the planning session continued. Discord couldn't be budged on the plan to fill Ponyville with large, scary animals that were actually friendly, but he did agree that firstly, they'd all be constructs – Fluttershy trusted her personal friends and she trusted that she could tame animals she didn't know well, but she didn't know every single animal in the Everfree and she couldn't be everywhere – and secondly, that they'd all have cartoonishly cute faces and frilly bows or ribbons or other markers that they were tame and not threatening. 

Rarity came by with prototypes for the banners. They were white, silky, elegant, and kept having unexpected animations play on them. Fluttershy did a double-take when one of the white banner prototypes filled with bubbling blue from the bottom, whereupon beautiful, colorful tropical fish swam by, and one's tail accidentally caught the edge of the banner, pulling the blue color with it as it swam until after the fish had swum off the banner it was white again. Discord laughed uproariously. "Rarity! I had no idea you had a sense of whimsy!"

Rarity smiled. "Well, I admit, I took consultation from my sister and her friends as to what sort of 'silly' imagery I could employ, but the truth is, I've been studying how to do animation spellwork on cloth for nearly a year now."

"You liked the dress I gave you last year that much, hmm?" In the spirit of Topsy Turvy Day, last year Discord had gifted Rarity with a beautiful dress, in the general style she would have made for herself, which had an animation of shining glittering gems moving around the dress in slow concentric circles. It had taken the entire day before Rarity had noticed the animated small dragon that kept running around on the dress eating the gems, then getting a tummyache and vomiting them back up. She'd been horrified, but had eventually taken the prank in the spirit of the day.

"To be entirely honest, I made adjustments and gave it to Pinkie, who wears it at parties."

"I don't know what you did to it but no matter how much frosting or soda pop I get all over it, it always stays clean! And foals love the little dragon running around eating the gems! It's like my best party dress ever! No offense, Rarity, yours are prettier, but Discord's is funnier."

"But, I swore to myself that day that I would get my revenge by learning how to do those animations myself, and putting them on your banners!" Rarity gave him a sharp-edged smile. Fluttershy wasn't sure if she was joking or not.

"How is that revenge? This is hilarious."

Rarity's smile turned into the sugary sweet grin of the noblemare who's backstabbing you, politely. "Well, I suppose you'll just have to find out, won't you?"

Discord grinned. "Challenge accepted. Do your worst, my dear. But don't forget, while you're making these banners, that you have to make yourself a dress!"

"Oh, I haven't forgotten."



Finally arrangements were made. Pinkie set off to notify everyone who needed to be notified of their roles in the preparations, and Fluttershy took Discord to dinner. She'd gotten the cooperation of Harry, several birds, a Canterlot restaurant that specialized in unusual salads, and Scootaloo to go pick up the salads for her while she and Discord were at the planning session with Pinkie. The young pegasus still couldn't get any significant height, but with the assistance of what was, essentially, the front wheel and handlebars of a scooter without the back end, she could fly a pony-height above the ground at nearly the speed Dash could manage, as long as she stayed on the roads. She no longer needed the body or back wheel of a scooter; she could get her hooves off the ground as long as she was still touching something that touched the ground, and could go higher unassisted for five minutes or so if she had to. So she had a job as a courier now, carrying small packages that needed to be transported quickly over great distances between areas that had roads. 

The "restaurant" was actually a treehouse – not a house that was a tree, like Fluttershy's own, but a house in a tree, made partly from wood by the Crusaders and partly from cloud by Rainbow and Fluttershy herself, that Fluttershy had had built within the actual Everfree. She used it as a base of operations so she didn't have to travel in the Everfree at night or in bad weather, but could go deep into the woods to attend to injured animals and not have to worry about being able to make it home before dark. Harry sat on one of the lower branches and serenaded them with a guitar – badly, but Discord had a fondness for really terrible, discordant music that suited his name, and the amazing thing about a guitar-playing bear was not that he played well but that he could play at all. The birds served as their waiters, bringing them their salads, teapot, water refills, and Discord's sparkling lemongrassade. 

Discord chuckled. "This is a nice little place you have here, Fluttershy, but it's a little sparse. Would you like me to spruce it up for you? Give you some furniture?"

They were sitting on cloud cushions. Clouds from outside the Everfree didn't maintain their cohesion long within the Everfree, usually, but Fluttershy had gotten Twilight to cast a spell that would fix the clouds in their current forms for a few months. They couldn't be used to make rain that way, but then, that rarely worked inside the Everfree in any case. There was also a cloud bed, large enough for a bear, or a draconequus, to snuggle comfortably with a pegasus and still leave room for plenty of small critters. Angel, getting on in years, never came with Fluttershy on these trips anymore; he managed the household while she was away, and now she had her apprentice Soft Heart to help her as well. There wasn't any other furniture, though there were several waterproof saddlebags leaning up against the walls with medical supplies, and several jars of salves and potions.

"No, I'm deliberately leaving it fairly empty so it's not attractive to thieves or vagrants when I'm not here."

"I could make you a security system."

"I wouldn't want to hurt anypony..."

"I could make you a security system that makes every pony but your friends and yourself feel uneasy and creeped out by the area and want to leave it alone, but has no effect on animals unless they have harmful intent."

"Would – would that last after... well, after?"

"I've been practicing." The reminder of where he was going after this holiday didn't seem to upset Discord; he leaned forward, expression intent. "It's an effort to make chaos magic that will last any length of time, let alone after I've been stoned by Harmony; one of its effects is to try to purge my magic. But I've found that if my intent with a certain spell is to do something that benefits someone besides myself, it'll last while I'm in stone. I'm quite sure she's doing that on purpose because she's trying to use the repeated stonings as an opportunity to brainwash me, but better than her have tried and it's not as if I need her approval to want to protect my friends."

"She?" Fluttershy blinked. "Princess Celestia?"

"No, no, Celestia's got nothing to do with it. Harmony. Technically I suppose that, being a tree, she's both male and female, or possibly neither; every Tree of Harmony I've ever seen has propagated from a cutting, not a seed. But come on, don't you think she seems feminine?"

"I... suppose?"

"She's been trying to turn me since I was a colt," Discord said. "I'm sure she thinks she can condition me to be selfless and harmonious by letting spells with a greater harmonic component to them, or at least a harmonic intent, stick around when all my other spells disperse. But let her. I like being able to do things for my friends that will last at least until the next time I get out; that doesn't mean I've gone over to the side of harmony."

Fluttershy let him ramble. She knew Discord was the spirit of Disharmony as well as Chaos, that his magic and his sense of identity were tied to conflict and strife. She didn't like those things, and tried to encourage him in performing acts of "harmonic chaos", chaos intended to be harmless or beneficial. Fireworks rather than explosions had been Pinkie's analogy for it. But she also knew he couldn't be pushed on the matter too hard. Sometimes she feared that trying as hard as she had to push him toward the side of good, in that first year that she'd known him, had led to the backlash of him siding with Tirek. He had thousands of years of identifying himself with Disharmony, and even someone who loved change as much as he did would resist what seemed like a fundamental change to who he was.

"A security system would be nice, as long as I can add new friends," Fluttershy said. "What do you think of the salad?"

"Where did you find a restaurant that would put bits of stained glass in the salad?"

Fluttershy smiled. "I said it was for an unusual magical creature who can eat glass. They're in Canterlot – Salad Days, they're called. Do you like it?"

"Mm." He said this while stuffing his mouth full of salad. There wasn't just stained glass in it; there were radishes, carrots, jelly beans, crunchy locust shells from locusts who'd molted, bananas, cheese, hard-boiled unfertilized pigeon egg, dark chocolate bits, and cornbread croutons soaked in minced garlic. Fluttershy couldn't imagine wanting to eat anything like that herself, but she knew that Discord liked variety more than he liked any specific kind of food. "Did you go to a lot of trouble to get this made?"

"Oh, no, no. It's not hard for me to get to Canterlot, I mean, since I started flying with Twilight my speed and stamina's improved a lot." Rainbow Dash had nagged Twilight constantly to go flying, but the truth was, Twilight was too pragmatic; she wanted to know how to fly to get places, and was willing to do some combat training, but she had no interest in learning to maximize her speed or do stunts, and she found her own lack of ability in comparison to Rainbow Dash's embarrassing. Fluttershy had offered to fly with her instead because even a pony with brand-new wings was probably better than Fluttershy. But as they'd gone on many leisurely, pleasant flights together talking about areas of mutual interest – mostly, the biology of magical plants and animals – Fluttershy had found herself capable of staying in the air longer and going faster than ever before. She'd really just needed a friend to fly with who she'd felt secure wouldn't judge her for being bad at flying.

"It's quite delicious, my dear. But I think I enjoyed the salads you made for me a bit better. These croutons are a trifle, well... evenly sized. Your home-baked croutons were always lumpy and variable in size and texture. Also, I think these greens were magically grown in a greenhouse to have an even consistency. The ones from your garden are much wilder-tasting."

"Oh, um, well, it's only a week since Winter Wrap-Up so nothing's growing in my garden yet."

"Of course, of course."

"But you know what we could do, your garden – I mean the garden you stay in – I mean, Twilight's garden is above freezing year round, and not all of it's packed into slow-time bubbles over the winter, and salad greens like cool weather. I could grow salad greens all winter so that I'd have something ready for you by Topsy-Turvy Day."

He looked down, an expression she couldn't quite read on his face – he was smiling, slightly, but it looked wry and sad. "We're already planning what we'll do when I get out of prison a year from now?"

"I'm sorry..."

"No. No, I'm sorry. You're trying your best, what with the romantic candlelit dinner. You even trained your birds to wait on us. Garcon!" He tapped his water glass, and a cardinal flew over. "A little glass of water please?" The cardinal chirped, and flew off. "I shouldn't be bringing the mood down like this."

She laid her hoof on his paw. "It's all right. I'm here for you. It's okay to be unhappy. I can't imagine how many times you must feel really unhappy and – and not be able to talk to me about it, so if you need to talk about it now, feel free."

"But I don't," he said. "Because talking never fixes anything." He stood up, almost bumping into the cardinal returning with his water, and waved his paw expansively. Half of the treehouse disappeared, along with the tree and everything else, to be replaced by a night sky full of stars covered with a clear, thick, crystalline floor. Fluttershy gasped slightly, and startled again when she felt a paw on her withers. "My dear Fluttershy, will you do me the honor of joining me in a dance?"

"I, um, I'd be happy to but we don't really have any music... I mean there's Harry but it's not really dance music..."

The air filled with the sounds of a violin. Fluttershy found that she was suddenly dressed in a beautiful ballroom gown... as was Discord, though hers was teal and lacy, whereas his consisted of overlapping silken panels that changed color as the moonlight struck them in different places. Fluttershy giggled. "You, um, you actually look nice in that dress," she said. She'd been raised to think that stallions in dresses just looked ridiculous, but she'd learned to recognize that as a prejudice to overcome in her years of being with Discord, and besides, Discord wasn't a stallion. The iridescent silk clinging to and flaring around his tall, slender body made him look more serpentine than usual, not like he was trying to dress like a mare for laughs. Pony dresses might fall in a train down to the ground and completely cover the back of a mare, but you'd still be able to see that she had legs when you looked at her front-wise, because pony dresses never impeded the motion of the forehooves. Discord's dress completely concealed his legs, to the point where if he'd removed them and was just levitating, Fluttershy wouldn't be able to tell. 

"Of course I do. I look fantastic in everything," Discord said, smiling, and took her hoof in his paw. "Shall we?"

His magic made her float upward until she was standing on her hind legs easily, without any balance issue at all. The dress Discord had just given her had morphed around her so it now went around her belly and the front of her forelegs as well as down her back, but it ballooned outward at the bottom like she was perched on an umbrella, so the dress didn't get in the way of her hind legs. Fluttershy had danced this way with Discord many times, so she wasn't surprised. He preferred two-legged dancing to four-legged dancing, and it was very hard to make the two work together, so generally she went up on two legs to dance with him.

She laid her head against the iridescent silk covering his belly fur, feeling his warmth through the fabric, and closed her eyes, letting Discord lead, letting him guide her body through a dance that was far faster and more complex than any she would ever have danced on her own, but all she needed to do was match him. 

Tomorrow would be busy. Discord and Pinkie would be all over Ponyville getting ready, and this time, her friends would be heavily involved, since they were doing it in Ponyville this year. Tonight, she held onto her lover and let him spin her through a dance, trying to pretend this was really a carefree dance between lovers and not Discord's desperate attempt to distract himself from thinking about the future.



Notes and credits:
Yes, I still have a fetish for tickling characters played by John de Lancie, but Zen Tickle was actually invented to use on babies and small children. Sinterklauss is an immortal reindeer who brings presents to the young creatures of Neighropa on Yule to fuel the annual ritual of positive emotions and harmony that recharges the reindeer's equivalent of the Crystal Heart, the Yule Log -- a pillar cut from Yggdrasil, the World Tree at the North Pole, a former Tree of Harmony that Mayhem killed. Sinterklauss actually does not visit Equestria, but the legend of the gift-giving reindeer still exists, albeit associated with Equestria's own celebration of Hearth's Warming rather than Yule. "Bunnies" was inspired because I just read a fanfic about Anyanka from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a cold war with Q.