Inflorescence

by Reptilicus

Blazing in scarlet battalions

Small white shafts of sunlight drifted through the canopy of the large gnarled cedar trees. Very little light ever made it past the canopy, as the trees that made up this particular hill of the Everfree Forest were in a constant eternal fight for nourishment. Their branches and boughs twisting and wrapping across and into each other over the centuries. World's oldest roughhousing, and perhaps it's most beautiful. It was always dark in the forest due to the canopy, and the tiny shafts of light that trickled down to the moist and mossy ground found themselves in a very alien world. A world of vines, thorns, brambles, mildew and rotting leaves. What few places on the ground were untouched by the nocturnal plantlife were flat and lifeless, made up of old shale and limestone deposits that glistened with a green light at the sunlight bounced off of them at just the right angle to make them glimmer in the darkness. Any creature finding itself this deep in the forest would most likely marvel at the stillness and quiet. It was an old place, ancient and wise. Few creatures lived in this part of the forest, and for the most part it had not had visitors in many an age. But every year like clockwork, it had a very loyal visitor. A small yellow pegasus, the winged horses of the sky. She fit into the scenery well, being very quiet herself, making hardly a sound as she made her way as carefully as possible through the roots and thickets.

In the forest was a small patch where the limestone jutted cruelly out of the soil, making it impossible for the large plantlife to cluster around. The lack of trees and opening in the canopy allowed a large pool of sun to make its way through the darkness, illuminating a patch of the ground below. Thick amounts of crabgrass grew at this spot, dotted with tiny periwinkle flowers. In the center sat a stunning prize, a rare bloom that almost never grew this far south in the forest. It was one of the last of its species. A sky blue flowering herb known as the Pyrola Lunata Borealis. Sometimes known as the PLB or "pleb plant" for slang. Not a very dignified name for such a rare plant that bloomed only once per year, but it couldn't really feel shame. Nobody had called it the "pleb plant" in decades. Also it couldn't feel shame because it was a plant. Plants can't really feel shame, no matter how hard one might try to embarrass one. They have feelings, however. And this plant felt particularly happy as it's yearly visitor drew near. With the sort of nimble reflexes of a cat, the yellow pony stepped out into the sunlight, the beams providing luminescence to her thin body and yellow coat of short hairs, her mane of long pink strands that nearly hid her face from the world. She approached the plant and as cautiously as she could, pulled out a small tin can from the rucksack strapped to her side. It's lid, punctured by many small holes. Gently she tilted the can, showering the flower in a sprinkle of fresh water. A welcome change from the drizzle of rain that it normally feasted from.

And there the two sat, happy as can be. With no way to express it in a way that could transcend the limitations of their species. The pony simply smiled to herself, a small understated grin as she watched the flower seem to stand upright, swaying in the wind as it absorbed the water. The flower could not smile back, but that was fine. Flowers didn't need to smile. Flowers had learned long ago that the mouth was a primitive hole and phased it out. They had other ways of expressing themselves. And so, with a quiet crackle of leaves, the plant rose to its full height as the multiple blue buds along its stem began to open, their fragile undersides flashing a deep red series of stripes. Deep purple stamens uncurled like springs, exposing themselves to the light, exiting from the center of each bud. It's tightly curled fronds began to unfold as well, the dozens of tiny packed leaves unfurling to reveal bright yellow veins, rivaling the sun with their glory. Small clouds of yellow pollen began to exit from the blooms and, carried by the wind, took flight into the breeze and were sent up out through the large hole in the canopy in the hopes that perhaps one day they too could land and become beautiful flowers of their own.

Once per year this happened. And only once. And every year this same pony would make the trek deep into the foreboding dark woods to watch this event. And every year she was always delighted to watch. To feel at one with nature as the forest sang it's quiet song to her, drinking in the beauty that surrounded her as the small fluffy pods of pollen swirled around the clearing, up into the sky like a sparkling tornado. And as every year, the pony who was a mare of very few words, decided to write down her thoughts of the enchanting event in the old book she always brought with her on these trips. A battered and wrinkled tome that was simply titled:

"Fluttershy's Diary"

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"March 13th, Year of Corvus 412

This year I didn't forget to borrow Applejack's camera so I could snap a photo of the Pyrola. I did forget to bring my water bottle along, though. Silly me, always forgetting something important. The Pyrola blooming was beautiful as it always is. I wish I could convince other ponies to come this deep into the forest with me, but I know they'd probably think I'm crazy. But at the very least with the help of Applejack I now have a photo of it in bloom. It really is breathtaking, that something so beautiful and delicate sits way out in the middle of nowhere, almost entirely unappreciated by the world. I wish I could bloom like this flower. Or knew more about it's origins. It's so different and mysterious from the other plants out here.

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since the last time I watched it happen. So much has happened in the last year. The dragon migration, the crystal empire being found, Discord coming back, and even sillier, Discord becoming a close friend of mine. We've been to the moon and under the ocean and back again in such a short while. Applejack's farm is making money for the first time in so long. I'm so happy for her. Dash has started looking over Scootaloo practically full-time. Her hooves are always full with that girl. Rarity's fashion line has grown in popularity so much. Just a year ago she was a complete unknown in fashion circles. Now she has fashion shows in Canterlot! Even Princess Celestia sometimes has Rarity make dresses for her! I'm so proud. It's been a year of blessings. For all of us.

Now that I think about it, it's been almost exactly a year since Twilight first appeared in town. I was so scared of her back then. I was so scared of alot of things back then. This year has been good for me too. To think that a year ago when I first met that fussy librarian I was frightened of my own shadow. I've gotten over so many social phobias thanks to her and Rarity. Twilight was one of the first ponies to ever have any real faith in me, even when I didn't believe in myself. She always just wanted me to try my best. Speaking of Twilight, she's still getting used to being an Alicorn now. It's been a very strange experience for all of us, seeing our new best friend suddenly grow two new limbs overnight. It seems like the whole world is watching our little town now that we've all sort of become celebrities. Especially with Twilight still living here. I'm still not sure if it's a good thing or not, all this attention.

Well, the sun is starting to dip a bit below what I consider comfortable. And I would not want to be in this forest once it get's dark. So I'm going to head home with my new photograph. It's time to feed Angel, anyway. I promise we will talk again soon, diary!

as always,
Fluttershy

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Fluttershy rolled her eyes as she entered through the small round door of her cottage only to see that her copper flask was still hanging by the doorknob. She had hung it there specifically to make sure she wouldn't forget it on her way out, but had managed to ignore it entirely after waking up and traveling anyway. Something always went wrong on these little trips, nothing was ever just perfect. But this year was far better because now she had a photo of the flower. Something she was very proud of.

Her cottage sat on the outskirts of the small village known as Ponyville. Right on the edge of the Everfree Forest next to a small river that emptied out into the lake in the park. The cottage itself had at one point been a grassy hill. But with a few bits spent and some hard work, she had turned it into a perfect home, with a roof covered in moss and grass that sometimes bloomed into flowers when spring came. A small cobblestone pathway led from the front door of her cottage, twisted around her vegetable garden and towards the river, becoming a small wooden bridge so that ponies could cross without getting wet. Few knew that under this bridge was a secret tunnel to Fluttershy's basement. In her younger years, it had been placed there as an "escape hatch" of sorts, in case the skittish mare ever felt the need to flee from danger inside of her own house. She had never needed to use it as such, and now the basement tunnel simply served as a quick way of getting to the shaded water under the bridge so she could feed the fish.

A large willow tree covered in birdhouses and bird-feeders sat on the far end of the bridge, and most days was teaming with all sorts of flying creatures. Birds, bats, bugs, sometimes even tiny wyverns would nest up in these facilities and Fluttershy would happily tend to their needs, bringing them food or at times just conversing with them. She had a remarkable talent at caring for animals, and a strange magical ability to communicate directly with them. Her special talent she had earned as a young filly. This had only supported her passion for caring for birds and beasts and now her home served as a sort of cross between a zoo and an animal nursery. Her knowledge of botany and herbal remedies only punctuated this further, as many ponies in town would bring their sick or injured animals to her home so she could nurse them back to health. In a way, Fluttershy's passion had made her into the unofficial town veterinarian, and she didn't mind one bit.

There was a loud series of thuds at the stairwell to the loft that drew Fluttershy's attention away from the flask hanging on the doorknob. On the bottom stair sat a small white fluffy bunny. Normally small white fluffy bunnies were associated with cuteness and having a gentle demeanor. Angel was not like other white fluffy bunnies. He was very grumpy and demanding and generally in an unpleasant mood. With a small squeak of anger and a kick at the wall, the rabbit pointed aggressively at his mouth making small rasping noises.

"Oh, Angel I know you're hungry!" Fluttershy cooed at the frowning rabbit. "How about I make us a big squash salad? I know you like squash."

Angel sneered as hard as he possibly could to convey as much displeasure as his adorable facial features were capable of. Truth be told, he absolutely loved squash and was more than happy to gobble down loads of it. But he wasn't going to let his owner know that. He was the king of this household and he needed to keep Fluttershy on a short leash. So with a nod and a growl, the rabbit hopped up onto his personal stool at the dinner table and waited impatiently for his dinner to arrive.

A few of the other animals that lived in Fluttershy's home woke up at the sounds of dinner being prepared and began to emerge from their various hidey-holes around the room. The two fieldmice who lived in the ceiling beams skittered down to the table. A turtle who enjoyed living between the floorboards hauled himself out through a knothole and slowly crawled to the table leg, his beaky face twisted into an eager hungry smile. The loud toucan who lived in the attic, the brown lop who lived under the couch, and the bumblebee who lived in the peanut butter jar on the bookshelf had all soon joined the others at the table, ready for dinner.

Each hungry creature was given a small wooden bowl of diced squash and tomato that they dug into greedily. Daintily Fluttershy nibbled on her dinner as well. Her only guests were wild animals but that shouldn't mean she should not have proper table manners. Which was more than could be said for the guest who was about to visit her.

"Hellooo Fluttershy!" came a deep and cheery voice from outside. There was a loud snap and a flash of white sparkles and Fluttershy's wooden door had rolled itself up like a scroll, defying the very laws of physics as the rolled up door turned on its side and rested against the frame.

At one point in history, Discord had been the most feared creature on the planet. An evil trickster god with a childish sense of humor who loved chaos and pandemonium. He spent thousands upon thousands of years this way, bullying those weaker than him and laughing at his own jokes. Meeting Fluttershy had changed all that. In a brief moment of self-reflection, the omniscient goofball had come to realize he enjoyed hanging out with those of like-minded interests who could laugh at his jokes without him needing to force them. Of course this didn't necessarily grant him good manners, which proved obvious as he came strolling into the cottage, looking as he always did. A strange chimera with the body of a feathered snake, a bearded face similar to that of a goat, and a long bright red dragon-like tail that stuck up comically in the air as he sauntered in through the doorway.

"I say, my dear, I smell something cooking! Squash if I'm not mistaken. And I'm never mistaken. I keep records!"

Fluttershy frowned in the direction of her guest as he coyly materialized a green and purple striped barstool out of thin air and sat down at the table amongst all the animals, crossing his lion legs in a very relaxed fashion. She wouldn't admit it, but the entrance was rather welcome as it gave her someone to converse with.

"Discord, I thought we agreed you were going to send me letters before you showed up for tea. Or dinner. Or any visits, really."

"We did not agree! We discussed. And I agreed with myself later when I thought how boring and predictable it would be if I simply let ponies know ahead of time before I barge into their houses. Surely this is much more fun?"

Fluttershy sighed, trying to hide a smile as she placed a plate of strained boiled squash in front of Discord. And in the true fashion of a being that loved random chaos, he was soon drinking the vegetables out of the plate with a very curly straw, making loud satisfied slurping and honking noises.

"I must say this is quite exquisite. Much better than the garbage they serve me down in Canterlot at least. You'd think with all her money that Celestia could afford to hire someone more qualified than a blind hobo for a chef."

"Why are you visiting me on this lovely evening, Discord?" Fluttershy asked, eager to change the topic. She disliked hearing Discord badmouth ponies she liked. Although having been trapped in stone for thousands of years by ponies had left him with a bit of a bitter streak.

"Oh I was just passing by. Celestia wanted me out of the castle for a while. Apparently I annoy her while she's trying to do parliamentary business. Can you imagine? Me? Annoying! The old girl's lucky I don't turn her into a weasel and force her to do tricks for my amusement! I could open up a theme park based around a singing and dancing rodent."

"Please don't say things like that, Discord." Fluttershy pleaded. "It always makes me so worried you might do something."

"Oh PFFT. Come now, Shy. Running an entire kingdom under an iron-clad doctrine of pain and suffering is such a pain in the rear. Even if I wanted to take over again, I think I'm simply too lethargic these days to bother. And of course even if I decided I felt like being BIG BAD DISCORD again, now I have four alicorns to contend with as opposed to the usual two. Goody goody gumdrops."

"OH! I wish you could have seen her coronation!" Fluttershy chirped, eager yet again to change the subject to a happier one.

"Wish? My dear I was there the entire time, sitting on a cloud and watching with amusement from above. It was quite an interesting little spectacle until the chorus started chanting 'BEHOLD BEHOLD THE PRINCESS TWILIGHT COMETH', then I couldn't stop laughing!"

"What was funny about it?"

"Oh it's just soooooo serious and melodramatic." Discord ranted, rolling his eyes so hard they fell out of his head and into the squash with a loud splat. "Over nothing! You ponies put so much stock in your species and subspecies when it means so little. It's not as if Twilight and uh...whats the other one's name again? Candy? Cantaloupe? Constantinople?"

"Cadence."

"Thank you. It's not as if Twilight and Cadence are even pureblood alicorns anyway. All Celestia did was a simple spell to change their species around a bit. Why even I could do that."

With that, Discord's tongue reached into his plate to retrieve his eyeballs, and plopped them back into his sockets. He raised his eagle-like foreleg and snapped the talon tipped fingers. There was a blinding flash of light and then Fluttershy discovered she had grown a stubby unicorn horn right in the center of her forehead. Now she too, was an alicorn.

"Oh NO! Oh my goodness! Change it back! Change it back!" Fluttershy squealed in panic.

"Oh fine!" Discord mumbled and settled the matter with another magical snap of his fingers. "But as you can see, changing from one species to another is not that fancy of a trick. Any magical being with a bit of training could do it. Have to be careful of course, don't want to accidentally change someone into a creature that barely has a consciousness. Like an amoeba or a moose. Things get very..... creepy that way."

"I don't think the purpose of the celebration is that Twilight became an alicorn, Discord. It's that she had accomplished enough to be crowned a princess. She's done so much good for the land and even fixed an old forgotten spell and created new magic! That's so exciting!"

"Yes yes, old stuff. So she invented some new magic and got promoted. Whoop dee darn doo. Why, I've invented so many new spells and so much magic I can scarcely keep track of it all!"

"But most of your magic is....um....well.....not very nice." Fluttershy whispered, hoping not to offend her houseguest.

"So? I invented it didn't I? Are my years of sweat and toil meaningless? Where's my medal? Where's my coronation? Where's my half-hour tv special about saving a tree? Where's my beautiful pink ballroom gown, hmm?"

With a snap of his fingers and another flash of flight, Discord had transformed himself into an elegant although very gangly grey stallion, keeping his familiar snaggle tooth and beady red eyes. On his forehead sat several dozen unicorn horns of various sizes and shapes and all over his body sat a massive display of various pegasus wings, all in different lengths and colors, flapping wildly. He had managed to make himself look even sillier than normal.

"Behold behold, I say! The princess Discord cometh!" And with that he began to dance in place, singing loudly to himself. "Go Discord! Go Discord! It's your coronation! Go Discord!"

As much as Fluttershy hated to encourage this sort of childish behavior, the show Discord was performing was just too amusing and she burst into a fit of quiet giggles at the act he was putting on. Satisfied he had finally gotten Fluttershy to laugh, Discord transformed back into his usual, slightly less ridiculous form, and sat down at the table.

"But I digress, enough about my mockery at your silly customs, my dear. What have YOU been up to? What's new in the life of little miss Fluttershy? Find any new animals? Find any keys for that box, yet? Teach Angel Bunny how to play fetch? Or how not to be a scoundrel?"

"No....nothing nearly so exciting. But I did just come back from my yearly visit to see the Pyrola Lunata Borealis. It's a very special flower I found out in the forest and I finally got to take a picture of it while it was in bloom. I also collected some xylaria fungus and bottlecap mushrooms."

"That flower name....." Discord minced, raising a shaggy grey eyebrow. "....sounds familiar. May I see this photo, if you'd be so kind?"

Before waiting for an answer, he had snapped his fingers causing the photo to slide out from between the dog-eared pages of Fluttershy's journal, hovering in front of him as he stroked his beard and squinted at it thoughtfully.

"A HMMMM. You know, Fluttershy....if memory serves me right I believe Celestia had something to do with the very notion of this flower. I think it was a....gift or something. Named after her gothic emotionally-stunted sister or something. But it's been so long now and when it happened was during a time when my thoughts were still nothing but unbridled rage at being trapped in stone. So I can't really recall exactly what happened or why this flower has it's name. I'm sure at least one of the four princesses would know. Or else they wouldn't be very good princesses now would they!"

Discord flipped the photo over to see if anything of interest was on the back.

"But, still. It's a very pretty little trinket is it not? Never seen one with my own two eyes. Or any number of eyes depending on my mood. Something this special deserves to be displayed I think. Rather than going to waste in your dusty little diary."

With a snap of his fingers the tiny black and white photo had disappeared and now on the wall sat the very picture Fluttershy had taken earlier. Only now it was in full color, and massive, framed in glass and hanging handsomely on her wall.

"Ah much better. Lends some ambiance to this cluttered menagerie of vermin you call a home I think!"

Fluttershy's jaw dropped at seeing the photo, now a work of art, adorning her kitchen wall. "Oh my goodness. It's....it's beautiful. Thank you so much Discord."

"Think of it as a gift for putting up with me this evening! And for not biting my head off over that whole...tree of harmony thing. Now if you'll excuse me...." the old chimera began, drawing back the feathery skin on his eagle leg to reveal 14 different types of watches. "But I believe it's getting a bit late for me to be out and about. Celestia has a curfew on me now. Can you believe the nerve of that woman? Me? Discord? The spirit of CHAOS? A curfew? What am I? Some adolescent trying to spray graffiti on the town walls? Honestly."

"She just can't trust you like I can, Discord." Fluttershy said with a grin, giving Discord a warm hug around a section of his snake body that she hoped was his torso. "She'll come around eventually. If you give her a reason to."

"Yes hopefully." Discord sighed and gave Fluttershy a small affectionate pat on the head. "I'm quite tired of all these rules and regulations and....ugh....laws. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night feeling nauseous that I'm surrounded by such things. Anyway, ta ta. Ciao. Toodle-oo. Alvederzane and etc."

And with a small spark of light, and a swoosh of the wind, the cranky trickster god was gone, leaving Fluttershy alone with her animals whom began eating their dinner now that the somewhat frightening guest had taken leave. Fluttershy sat down at the table, enjoying her squash. But a new errant thought was buzzing around her mind. She was a timid pony, but curious. And Discord's words had begun a small fire in her brain.

Had Celestia truly created a flower? A whole new biological species of plants? And if she did, then why? Why was it so unique and different to other flowers? And so rare? Fluttershy knew the only way to find answers would be to ask the Princess of Canterlot herself. But the only way to get a meeting with Celestia would be through invitation. And the only pony who could get Fluttershy the invitation or information she wanted was the very pony who made her feel the most timid to be around.

Twilight Sparkle.

Comments

[ColdGoldLazarus]

I love how you've characterized Discord here. Honestly much better than in canon.