Chapter 4. Matthew 5:44
Chapter 4
"But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,"—Matthew 5:44
That morning Fluttershy woke to the soft whiff-whiff-whiff-whiff-whiff of delicate wings beating. Opening her eyes, she looked up to see what appeared to be an off-white butterfly flapping about over her head.
"Oh, hello. Where did you come from?" she asked it. She hadn't seen any signs of insects either in the cabin or outside of it ever since she'd arrived. In fact, she'd been sure the weather had been too cold for them for quite some time now.
The butterfly ignored her question and flew higher until its wings almost brushed the ceiling. Then it flew toward the far end of the room before suddenly looping around and zooming toward Fluttershy like a bullet. The pony's eyes widened at this unexpected attack and she instinctively dodged to the side. The butterfly crashed into the headboard hard enough to rock the bed back on two legs a fraction before bouncing off and tumbling across the covers in a crumpled heap.
Fluttershy gasped. "Oh my goodness! Are you all right?" She reached out, intending to take the butterfly gently in her hooves when it suddenly shot back up into the air and snapped its wings open. The wings stretched out farther than they had earlier and it was then that Fluttershy realized it wasn't a real butterfly, but paper that had been folded up into the shape of one. The paper finished unfolding itself and floated slowly down onto the bed where it lay limp and lifeless.
As she studied the former piece of airborne origami, Fluttershy noticed it had writing on one side of it, and, after a moment's hesitation, she picked it up to read it.
Fluttershy,
Princess Twilight Sparkle has received your letter but is currently too busy to come help you. She will be sending a substitute in her place.
That was all. No signature. No information on the substitute, and no information about when or how he or she was supposed to arrive.
Fluttershy frowned at the letter. It didn't seem in-character for Twilight to write such a brief formal note. At the very least, Fluttershy had expected Twilight to express the same shock she herself had felt at the news that Applejack had been murdered by a member of her own family.
Well, maybe she really is just that busy and somepony else wrote this for her, Fluttershy thought. She wondered, if Twilight herself hadn't written the letter, who had. Had he or she had a part in its bizarre delivery as well?
Outside Discord clung to the side of the cabin, watching Fluttershy through the window. He had shrunk himself down to just a few inches long so that he could wedge himself between two logs and get somewhat out of the wind. He'd gotten some chuckles out of torpedoing that butterfly-shaped letter at her.
So that's the Element of Kindness's bearer, he thought, far from impressed with what he saw. It shouldn't take too long to make her realize that being nice gets you nowhere.
Carrying the letter in her mouth, Fluttershy trotted from the bedroom into the cabin's main room. Angel was sleeping in his basket near the fireplace, and the yarn and needles she'd brought for knitting were on the floor beside the couch. Stacked against one wall were the Apple family records. After giving up trying to make sense of them on her own, she'd arranged them in several neat stacks that were almost as tall as she was.
She moved to one of the windows to peer outside. The fields were now entirely white with snow. The orchard's bare branches resembled gnarled black hands clawing at the gray sky above as the wind blew them about. There was no sign of anypony as far as she could see. She took the letter out of her mouth to check it again, turning it over just to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Nope. No information about when her help was expected to arrive—
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
Fluttershy jumped at the unexpected knocking on the cabin door. She looked back out the window. Whoever was knocking must have been teleported right to the front door because there was still no sign of a trail leading to the cabin.
Trotting to the door, she reached out to open it, but a sudden uneasy feeling made her hesitate. She realized that the door didn't have a peephole on it like the one to her own cottage had. She hadn't really thought about it when she'd first moved into the cabin, but now she realized that the only way to know who was at the door was to open it up.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Who is that?" Fluttershy asked tentatively.
There was no answer.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door just a few inches so that she could peek out. Cold air leaked around the opening into the cabin, causing her to shiver. Seeing nothing, she pushed the door open just a little wider.
She could still see no sign of anypony, so she pushed the door open still wider, looking in both directions. All she saw was the empty landscape.
Maybe the wind was just making the door rattle, she thought. The knocking hadn't sounded like a door rattling but she couldn't think of any other explanation as to what would create the sound when there was no sign of any pony nearby.
Not wanting to let any more cold air in, she pushed the door shut, turned around...
And leaped backward with a squeak of shock.
Floating several feet off the floor, and leaning back with his hands behind his head was a ... well, Fluttershy wasn't quite sure what the creature was.
His head looked a bit like a pony's but his scruffy beard and the horn-and-antler combo on his skull gave him a slightly goat-like appearance. A long fang jutting down from one side of his mouth made him look even less pony-like. The furry brown body attached to that head was long and snake-like, and terminated in an equally long scaly tail. Two wings, one leathery and one feathered, were growing from the creature's back but he didn't seem to be using them to maintain his midair position. His four legs were all limbs of different animals: a lion and an eagle for the right and left front limbs respectively, something scaly for the right back leg, and something hoofed for the left back one.
As if to just top off his bizarre appearance, the creature had a collection of studs and rings through his ears, nose, nostril, both shaggy eyebrows, and the side of his mouth opposite his fang. There were also what appeared to be tattoos over most of his body. The most noticeable ones were several wasps scattered over his long neck on either side of his bristly black mane; a spiral pattern on his lion shoulder; two barbed loops on his eagle limb, one on the wrist and one around the biceps; and last though far from least, a large stylized dragon whose head emerged over one furry shoulder and whose long body wound around and around his own long one, giving him an almost striped appearance.
Fluttershy had been so stunned at the sight of this creature that had materialized in the cabin that she just stood there pressed against the door and gaping at him, taking in every strange detail. Her new visitor just grinned at her while she tried to find her voice.
Finally she managed to stammer out, "Wh-who ... wh-wh-what ... are you? How did—?"
"Who am I?" he replied, leaning forward so that he was now floating in a sitting position, and placing his eagle claw on his chest. "Discord. What am I? A draconequus, otherwise known as the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. You might have heard of me."
At the words "chaos and disharmony," Fluttershy suddenly remembered a frightening stained glass image she had seen many years ago of a creature that had looked very similar to this one. At the time, she had thought the image had just been made up to represent the abstract concepts of chaos and disharmony. She'd never expected that such a creature could actually be real. Now that it was standing, well, floating before her in the flesh she felt the familiar knot of fear rise in her throat.
She swallowed nervously. "Wha—what are you doing here?"
He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, making reproving clicking sounds with his tongue. "Now, is that any way to talk to your new aid?"
"New aid—?" Fluttershy's eyes widened. "You're Twilight's substitute?" When she'd thought about the substitute mentioned in Twilight's note she had vaguely been expecting some unicorn. Never had she expected Twilight to send her someone like this.
But then again, we're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, she thought. Maybe there's more to him than meets the eye. He must be all right if Twilight sent him. She lowered herself back onto all fours and took a few tentative steps toward him.
"It's nice to meet you, um, Discord," she said, smiling in spite of her nervousness. "I suppose you already know I'm Fluttershy." She pointed to the basket where her pet bunny was still sleeping. "That's Angel." She moved to the stacks of records. "This is what I need help with. You see—"
Before she could finish her sentence, Discord rolled himself about in a somersault so that he was floating on his stomach rather than his back, yawned, and snapped his talons. The many sheets of paper sailed into the air like a flock of birds. A second snap of his talons, and the papers had turned into bouncy balls that proceeded to ricochet all over the cabin.
Fluttershy let out a small surprised shriek. Angel jerked awake, stared at their newcomer, and promptly took cover under the couch.
"What did you do?" Fluttershy whisper-shouted at Discord, covering her head with her hooves in an attempt to protect it from the pelting balls.
Discord regarded the bouncy balls with a critical eye as they whizzed past him before he snapped his talons a third time. The bouncy balls turned into larger, less bouncy ones that settled on the floor in a layer that reached to Fluttershy's stomach.
She looked around at the sea of colorful balls, her brain still trying to adjust to the fact that mere seconds ago they had been sheets of information on the Apple family. "Um, could you change these back?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I could if I wanted to, but I don't feel like it."
Fluttershy's head shot up, shocked at his flippant attitude. "But I need those records back the way they were!" she said, flying up to him. "Twilight didn't send you here to—"
She felt the words die on her tongue as Discord smirked and arched one brow.
Fluttershy swallowed uneasily. "She did send you ... didn't she?"
"You said it, my dear. I didn't." He paused a moment, then added almost as an afterthought. "You know your detective skills really are pathetic."
His comment stung, but she had to admit that so far her attempts to solve Applejack's disappearance showed there might at least be some truth in what he said. And even if he wasn't the aid Twilight had sent, he did seem to know something about that aid. Maybe the gentle humble approach would soften him up a bit and he would share what he knew.
"I know they are," she said, referring to her detection skills. "That's why I contacted Twilight for help—but then I guess you already knew that because you mentioned an aid when you first got here. I suppose you were just playing a joke when you pretended you were that aid and you really fooled me." She forced out a quick soft little laugh. "Yes, you really fooled me. But can we put that aside now? I mean, finding out what happened to Applejack is really important to me and to some other ponies depending on me. So maybe you could just tell me when and how Twilight's substitute is supposed to get here and—"
At that moment Discord shut his eyes and hit his forehead with his palm. "Look, no one's coming to help you," he said, sounding annoyed for the first time.
"But I got a letter saying—"
Discord held up a hand, palm upward and two rolled-up sheets of paper appeared in it with a flash of light. "This look familiar?" he asked, letting them unroll with a flick of his wrist.
Fluttershy recognized both the letter she'd written and the one she'd gotten earlier. She looked up from them to meet his face, realization dawning on her. "Did you write this?"
"Bravo, Sherlock," he said sarcastically.
Exactly what he meant by that Fluttershy wasn't sure, but his tone of voice made her uneasy.
"And incidentally I didn't write it on Twilight Sparkle's orders," he added, tossing both notes into the air where they vanished in a flash of light. "She doesn't even know you wrote to her in the first place."
At those words Fluttershy felt the cold grip of fear tighten around her throat. Ever since Discord had appeared in the cabin, she hadn't been able to shake a vague but growing sense of uneasiness. Now at the news that her letter had never even reached its destination, that sense of unease went from slowly growing to rapidly erupting.
"What do you want with me?" she whispered, as she tried to fly backward to put more distance between them.
Before she'd moved back more than a few inches, he suddenly reached out and grabbed her by the wings, bringing her toward him until they were almost eyeball to eyeball.
"Aww, you mean you can't guess? Isn't the title 'Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony' a big enough clue for you?" he asked, using his free hand to make the gesture for quotation marks. "If you can't catch something that obvious, no wonder you haven't been able to find your friend's killer. You probably couldn't find your own tail if it grew out of your nose." And with that he brought his free hand up to her face and before she could so much as squeak in protest he had yanked something out of her nose.
Clapping her hooves over her muzzle, she gasped when she saw that he was now holding what appeared to be her tail in his hand.
"Hmm, extensions. What do you know?" he commented, glancing over at it.
Still keeping one hoof over her muzzle, Fluttershy felt behind her to see how many extensions he'd magicked off her tail. To her horror, she discovered he'd managed to take not just her extensions but her whole tail along with them.
Discord suddenly let go of her, letting her drop into the layer of balls on the floor. She scrambled up and fled to her room. In the back of her mind she knew this was probably a vain attempt to escape, but at the front of her mind all she could think of was putting as much distance between herself and the draconequus as possible. She saw Angel's long ears popping up out of the balls near the bedroom door before he jumped through it. She darted in right behind him and slammed the door shut. As she leaned against the door, she felt something brush her back legs and jumped with a squeak of fear. Looking down, she got another shock when she saw that her tail, extensions and all, was right back in its proper place.
In the main room, Discord chuckled as he heard Fluttershy's frightened squeak. Yes, this should be interesting, he thought to himself.
The next several days were hard ones for Fluttershy. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so powerless. She couldn't boot her new housemate out of the cabin because he could just teleport himself right back in. She couldn't take herself and Angel out because the snow storms were getting steadily worse, and for that same reason she couldn't count on anypony coming to help her. The most she could do was at least try to live with the draconequus, but that was proving to be far from easy. She tried being gentle with him and he ignored it. She tried to be firm with him and he laughed at her. At one point she even tried using the Stare on him, only to have him shrug it off like it was nothing.
Discord, on the other hoof, lost no opportunity to insult her, ridicule her, and wreak chaos in the cabin. One day, he even magically yanked the cabin off the ground and let it spin end over end. The balls he still hadn't turned back into papers rained all over the room like colorful hail and everything else in the cabin was crashing about as well.
"Discord! Stop!" Fluttershy cried out as she snatched Angel up to keep him from getting squashed by any falling items. Tucking the old bunny in the crook of one front leg, she flew over to where Discord was floating. The tattooed draconequus seemed completely impervious to the chaos around him, a fact that Fluttershy found quite annoying, and that also gave her the courage she hadn't been able to work up on her own.
"Put! This! Cabin! Down! Now!" she shouted, sticking her muzzle right in his pierced face. "Put it down, now! This instant!"
His shaggy eyebrows went up and for a second Fluttershy thought she saw a flash of surprise on his face. But then he let out a hearty chuckle.
"With pleasure!" He snapped his fingers and the cabin promptly came down with a crash. Not expecting him to put the cabin down so quickly, Fluttershy was slammed into the ceiling as it descended. She fell to the floor, instinctively wrapping her body around Angel to protect him. She tried to brace herself for smacking into the hard wood, not having time to slow her fall with her wings, and found herself landing in a huge pile of papers. Sitting up she saw that in addition to putting the house down, Discord seemed to have changed the records back.
She looked up at Discord to see him still up in the air, only this time he was actually beating his wings rather than just floating there. She felt her anger from earlier melt away at the realization that he'd listened to her.
"Thank you," she said softly. "Thank you for putting the cabin down and changing these back."
She reached toward some of the papers, only to have them all scuttle out of her reach like huge white cockroaches. She shut her eyes and softly but deeply breathed in and out. Of course he would do something like that.
When she opened her eyes, she saw him watching her with interest. She wanted to be both angry with him and patient with him, but all she could summon was a sort of weary frustration, as if her feelings knew that any other reaction would be useless.
"Discord," she said in a resigned voice. "I'm going to take Angel to my room, so... Could you please give us some alone time?" At this point she wasn't even sure why she bothered to tell him this. Maybe she still held a faint hope that he had a more considerate side buried somewhere in there.
Discord gave her a 'do-I-even-need-to-answer-that?'-look.
"Please," Fluttershy said as she stood up with Angel wrapped in one of her front legs. "Please just leave us alone." Head down she walked toward her room, expecting him to magically slam the door shut, but he did not. Going inside, she glanced back at him one more time. He had lowered himself enough to plant his back feet on the floor and was watching her with an unreadable expression. Then a smile twitched across his mouth and he raised his paw with the fingers together as if intending to snap them.
With a gasp, Fluttershy slammed the door shut. She sat there, quivering, waiting for the draconequus to snap her back into the main room, but several minutes went by and this did not happen.
Then Fluttershy felt Angel reach up to pat her face with a paw. His white coat didn't show aging as well as that of a darker colored rabbit would, but when she stroked it Fluttershy could tell it was much thinner than it had once been, and his once shiny eyes were now going cloudy. She didn't like to think about it often but she couldn't ignore the fact that her pet was nearing the end of his life. Now looking at her old bunny made her think of how Granny Smith had said she didn't have much longer to live, and thinking of that made her think about her task to find Applejack's killer.
Tears filled her eyes as she cuddled Angel close to her. "I don't know what to do, Angel," she whimpered as the tears spilled down her cheeks. "I just don't know what to do."
Angel pulled himself up higher on her shoulder and rubbed his head against her cheek, ignoring the tears that soaked his head and ears, and offering what comfort he could.
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Ohmygosh
This is awesome!
Awwww!! I love how Angel has calmed down over the years. And I'm glad you could keep Discord in character! (Which is not easy)
Wow.
Okay.
This... should be interesting.
Would these quotes be from the Bible?
6655886 If you mean the ones I start each chapter with, yes. *Chuckles* I was too lazy to come up with proper chapter titles so I decided to challenge myself to see if I could start each chapter with a verse that provides a bit of a hint as to what's in that particular chapter.