Fractal
Flurry Heart narrowed her eyes and squinted at the rock before her. It didn’t look like an especially flammable or destructible rock. It had the countenance of a rock that had hitherto spent its rocky life being neither flammable nor broken asunder and intended to keep up the good habits. It was, in short, perfect for what she needed.
She flapped up off the ground in the Royal Gardens to get a better look at it. When she glanced round at her dad, he gave her an encouraging smile. “Breathe in and out, Flurry,” Shining Armour said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Flurry breathed in and out. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready. I’m totally ready. Born ready.” She’d use magic on the rock in a perfect and controlled way, and nothing would go wrong or explode. This time.
Her tongue stuck out one side of her mouth as the eleven-year-old alicorn tapped into her magic. Flurry summoned it up around her horn, a glimmer of yellow quickly building into a seething golden maelstrom, and grasped the rock. She focused hard on lifting it right up off the ground, the whole pony-sized mass of it, and squinted and strained and poured in magic, careful to maintain her grip, to not let it slip, to keep the direction and speed even. It slowly began to wobble up off the ground. An inch, and then another, and then a third, and stars above, she was doing it.
“Look!” she exclaimed, a laugh escaping her. “I’m doing it! Dad, look!”
“I see it, Flurry.” Dad sounded pleased, though when he spoke a second later, a nervous note had entered his voice. “Er, wind your magic in a little. Breathe in, breathe out, keep it controlled—”
Flurry Heart realised that the yellow glow of her magic was now practically flaming around the rock, seething wildly and bright beyond what it really ought to be. With a yelp, she tried to control and limit it all, wind the magic back in, reduce the intensity, stop it before it—
She saw a shield flash up before her, and the second after, there was a blinding flash of light and a dismayingly familiar exploding-rock sound.
When the smoke and light cleared away, Flurry Heart saw fragments of burning rock spread out over a wide area of garden, with a few bits of flaming shrapnel stuck in the crystalline trunks of the remaining trees, having hacked in a fresh batch of scars. The wind blowing through their branches sounded a lot like grumbling. She’d kept the Royal Gardeners busy, lately.
The shield flickered away. Flurry stared at a piece of smouldering rock that had pattered against the shield and landed on the ground under her hooves, and she was aware of her dad cantering up to her. “Flurry? Are you alright?”
There was a hot lump in her throat and her vision blurred briefly, and Flurry alighted on the ground and kicked the rock. Hard. “No.”
Her dad’s forehoof came down and tousled her mane, which Flurry sullenly accepted. “It’s okay, Flurry. Practise makes perfect. When I was your age, I couldn’t —”
“But I’ve been practising!” Flurry hunted about for another bit of rock to kick, and finding none, elected to slump down onto her hindquarters and pout at the world. “You’ve been helping me, and Mom’s been helping me, and, and Auntie Twilight taught me some breathing exercises and gave me tips for remaining focused, and, and so did Aunties Celestia and Luna and … and everypony! And I’m trying, and I can’t! I just want to use my magic!”
She stamped her forehoof on the ground several times to enunciate, and when she finished, she breathed deeply and rubbed her hoof across her eyes. “And I thought I had it that time as well.”
Dad patted her on the withers. She didn’t turn around to look. “You’re improving every time, even if you don’t feel like you are,” he said gently. “Do you want to try again?”
Flurry Heart shook her head. “No.”
Dad sighed. “Do you want some time to yourself in the gardens?”
Flurry Heart nodded.
“Alright. Remember that Auntie Twilight and her friends are coming up later today, to meet with your mom about affairs of state. That’ll make you feel better.”
It probably would, but Flurry Heart’s bad mood wasn’t inclined to give an inch. She stayed where she was, and soon, she heard Dad’s hoofsteps heading back towards the palace.
“Stupid rocks,” she muttered to herself, getting up on her hooves and looking around at the garden. The battered crystal trees and their glittering leaves chimed in the breeze. From around, the songs of birds who’d long since learned to hide behind the trunks and only re-emerge when Flurry was done practising her magic began to fill the air.
She glanced down at the ground and saw a fallen leaf. Dad and Mom had expressly forbidden her from trying to practise with anything that could produce shrapnel when they weren’t around. A leaf would probably be fine, and her sourness was curdling into pique. She’d show her magic and the leaf who was boss.
“Stupid magic as well,” she said to the empty garden as she subjected the leaf to the usual hard scrutiny. “Alicorns are meant to be the magicalest. What’s the point if I can’t do it? I can’t be a lousy alicorn. I can’t.”
Thus resolved, she summoned her magic, and as the birds hurriedly ceased singing and positioned themselves behind trunks, Flurry grasped the leaf.
The leaf said, “Excuse you.”
Flurry yelped a high C, leapt a foot into the air, and without much in the way of conscious thought, put a beam of magic right through the leaf. It vanished amidst a golden-tinted and thunderous explosion, and it and several square feet of the surrounding garden were reduced to a few fragments in a smoking crater.
Some of said leaf fragments grew little arms and claws to pull themselves back together, and a couple grew bright red-yellow eyes, and the whole of the leaf reassembled and reshaped itself, growing taller, longer, serpentine. The little arms and claws bundled themselves together to become bigger, mismatched limbs, and eventually, the creature’s long, goaty head looked down at Flurry with a peevish expression. “The youth of today. Honestly,” he said.
Flurry had the impression she ought to be screaming and/or fleeing and/or putting a few more magical blasts right through the creature, but something about him rang familiar, and he wasn’t doing anything that evil right that instant. “You’re …” she ventured, hunting for a name. “You’re …?”
“Discord, Spirit of Chaos, draconequus at large, and a poor sleepy elder who was most uncouthly awoken from their nap. Well, I say ‘nap’. Others might say ‘Lying in wait for Twilight Sparkle and her friends so I could prank them by jumping up unexpectedly and pulling scary faces and shouting ‘Bwooga’ a lot’ but never mind those hypothetical others. What woe is the world coming to?” He wiped away a theatrical tear, even as he leaned down closer to Flurry’s face, and he squinted. “Hmm, it’s been a while since I’ve been up here. And I say, I think I recognise you now. Horns, wings, small size, all clues. You’re Flurry-something, correct?”
“Yeah,” said Flurry carefully, taking in Discord’s face, from the prongs of his antler to the white tuft of hair jutting from his chin. Stories came to her then, of many of the adventures her mom and dad and Auntie Twilight and her friends had had. Discord came up a lot. “Flurry Heart. How do you know me?”
“Well, generally speaking, everyone knows the princesses. Hard to not,” Discord replied airily. “And specifically, I’ve had occasion to dandle you on whatever knees I grew for the purpose, make silly faces at you, and sing you songs. You might have been three the last time? Good songs too. Some of my very rudest limericks, and I’d have taught you all of them if Fluttershy hadn’t yelled at me to stop.”
Flurry dredged up the dimmest memory of that, and grinned. “I think I remember.”
“Glad you do! Having left an impression’s always a lovely compliment.” Discord floated up into the air and cut long, lazy S-shapes through it, one claw tugging thoughtfully at his goatee. “Speaking of impressions, I notice one in the ground where a rock used to be. Couldn’t help but witness a lot of that.”
The gloom returned to Flurry. “Kinda wish you hadn’t.”
“Don’t fuss about it. That rock probably well and truly deserved it. Why, the reports of its sins against its rock colleagues turned my hair whiter than it already was.” Discord still looked thoughtful. “Still though, this seems like a problem with your magic control. If I were to offer you a hand, claw, appendage, thingumy with that, would you keep word of my planned prank on the down-low?”
“I’ve had lots of help already.” Flurry’s hoof itched for a rock to kick. “From Dad and Mom and all my aunties. They’ve taught me exercises, tricks they use, meditation stuff, everything! I’m trying to focus, and I don’t think I can control my breathing anymore without fainting! I’ve tried everything they said!”
“Hmm.” Discord frowned. Then he seemed to realise something, and smiled and nodded. “That’s the problem.”
Flurry blinked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Disciplined unicorns and made alicorns, all of them. All of them growing into and having to assert control over their new power, every last one. Control worked for them, so no wonder they’ll try to impart it.” His red-yellow eyes glittered. “It mightn’t work for you.”
“What? Why not?”
“Look at you. A born alicorn. You’re not coming into your full magical power. And trust this, coming from someone of pure Chaos. It’s all already right there. Deeper than your thoughts, deep as your bones. You were born ready fit for purpose. Literally so.”
Flurry frowned up at him, and then glanced back round the garden. “But then what do I do?”
“Your magic knows what it’s about, deep-down, if you’ll just let it free. Try not focusing it. It just chafes, and gets confused, and erupts at any outlet it’s got. Don’t try to wrap it in iron bands of control or anything. Just … let it out. Let it flow. Feel, don’t think. Innate things don’t need honing. They just need intention.”
Flurry opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “That … that honestly sounds … well, dumb. Look what I’ve done to the garden. Again and again because I keep losing control. What if I do something even worse?”
Discord shrugged so hard his arms fell off, and he had to quickly dip down to the ground to retrieve them. “A lot of my great ideas sound dumb, granted. Maybe it’s something in my inflection. Maybe I should wear a labcoat more so I look and sound smarter. And you know, that’s a fair question. Here’s mine. Is my method at least worth trying?”
Silence then in the gardens, as Flurry Heart thought it through.
Discord looked like the absolute epitome of a being you ought not to trust. Both looked, and in a lot of the stories she’d heard, was. But in a lot of those same stories, he pulled through in the end. Auntie Twilight and all her friends were much too smart to be friends with someone who was really wicked, who couldn’t be relied on in the end.
Things could go wrong. But then again, they’d been going wrong so far, and if there was any chance for it to finally, at last, miraculously go right…
“Also, if you try my method, everypony else might come into the garden any moment and find me being unambiguously helpful,” Discord said. His grin sharpened. “Won’t they be shocked?”
Flurry Heart made her decision. “If something starts going wrong or exploding or whatever,” she said slowly, firmly, as a princess ought to, “do you promise you’ll step in?”
“On what I understand my word and honour to be, anything in the vein of an explosion or adverse event will be reduced to something much more fun and chaotic and, most saliently, harmless. Budgies. I’m thinking a flock of budgies.”
Flurry nodded grimly, and when her gaze fell back down away from Discord, a rock stood waiting.
She glanced suspiciously up at Discord. Discord whistled innocently. “Glacial erratic,” he said blithely. “You know how glaciers can sneak up like that. Ask your mother all about it.”
Flurry squinted at the rock. She breathed in—
—and then she stopped. She frowned. Above her, Discord made an encouraging motion.
“To heck with all that,” Flurry said, and she just lifted the rock.
No forethought, no breathing, just the deed. Magic built up and flashed forth from her horn in an eye’s blink, and as it passed through, it almost seemed to sing. It sounded like snowflakes tumbling, like the cheery roar of a burning hearth, like winter winds and bonfires and jangling icicles all at once, like the whole of the world tumbling in through her ear.
And when it passed the instant after, she found she was levitating the rock. It hovered in the air in a casual sort of way. With a flicker of thought, she floated it one way, then the other. It tumbled where she directed it, and when it flew through the air in the perfect figure-of-eight she wanted and didn’t explode into flaming shrapnel once, she giggled with pure delight.
“Born ready,” said Discord, grinning down at Equestria’s newest princess. “Egads, they’re going to be beyond shocked.”
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That actually makes some sense.
9644667
You mean the description? ... Yeah.
The description did make me go
at first, though.
I wonder how the title relates...
9644667
Discord'd be appalled to hear that.
9644676
Between you and me, the title's what comes of a frantic cognitive effort to unify together concepts like snowflakes and chaos and flurries and suchlike. The post-writing haze of Iron Author might not have been the best title-spawning time, but I'll stick with it.
9644687
OMG. This is awesome!
Wanting everyone's reactions, but the implied reactions are great too!
Lol at the limericks!
9644738
Discord's the best foalminder.
I sense story opportunities from said foal minding :p
9644751
Rest assured, there's stories aplenty from it. Some of which could be half-tempting to write.
9644766
Lol, fair
Great story (since I forgot on my first comment)!
He's just practicing for foals of his own. Seven months along and his figure is still fantastic.
Ok, this was just a wonderful little story.
Discord and Flurry would be proud.
9644933
He'd be the best and most terrifying doting mother in all Creation.
9644937
Thank you!
9645312
Even gurgling ape-creatures can sometimes live up to their good example.
Flurry's first response to something threatening is to try and kill it with a beam of magic. Love it!
9645510
She's a filly with her priorities straight.
Amazing how well you can write someone in-character that doesn’t even really exist yet in terms of personality.
Bravo.
9645863
Writing the characterless characters in-character takes a certain eldritch knack. Glad it's appreciated.
I’m going to say something that I’d probably regret.
Sequel please
9646080
If inspiration ever strikes, I'd certainly be willing to write one.
9646090
Yay
What, I can't see what the outcome of all this is? Oh Come On!
Great read. Love the interactions between characters. Especially Discord being a mentor figure.
And can we get the lyrics Discord sang to Flurry
Well that was cute.
All the wizardly advice in the world won't do a lick of good for a born sorcerer, apparently.
To be honest, I was expecting a few more explosions at the end, though.
And the title is because she found order from chaos, isn't it.
9646778
'Wizards trying to teach a sorceress' is such a wonderfully accurate description of the problem Flurry had
Discord is second best pony
Only one better is Derpy
I for one like it... A way for Flurry and Discord to be friendly with each other, as Discord teach Flurry, and who knows what could happen in the future, maybe we will see a alicorn of chaos or something...
This was a great read! Congrats on the honorable mention. :)
I ended up favouriting this one-shot.
Through the light hearted fluff, I think there is a lesson to be learned:
Sometimes, just do it.
Why do I get the feeling Discord's sicced an especially erratic glacier on Cadence before?
In any case, this was the first story I read when the Iron Author submissions went live, and I absolutely loved it. (It helped that the EFNW closing ceremonies had a big gap of dead air since that chairty auction ran long.) Fantastic interaction and an entirely believable situation for Flurry to find herself in. Thank you for it.
(And it's kind of funny; you managed to find a way to write about a character that doesn't really have a defined personality in the show despite the rules forbidding that. Discord would no doubt be proud.)
Great little short.
What a lovely little story. Discord is a surprisingly good mentor when he wants to be.
After a few minutes of floating the rock. Flurry had a huge grin on her face, this in turn had a slight smile on Discords face, said smile got even larger when Flurry sat the rock down and leapt at Discord and hugged the stuffing out of him (literally) repeatedly saying "Thank you" over and over again.
Sorry couldn't resist
9646676
Rest assured, it'd be deid exciting. And filled with explosions, depending on how responsible of a mentor Discord's feeling.
9646772
Glad you like it! And alas, if only there were words sufficiently rude to do the limericks justice.
9646778
Glad you found it cute!
...I'm going to retroactively claim that as the reason. Retroactive title meanings still count, I'm sure.
9646832
My editor drew the same comparison as well. Great minds think alike, or something to that effect.
9647324
They're both excellent beings in their respective species categories, no denying that.
9647412
Glad you like it! And 'Alicorn of chaos'. There's a prospectto send a shiver down Celestia's spine.
9647527
Thank you very much! Flattered to have gotten it. There was an abundance of good stories floating around in the aftermath of Iron Author, and I'm delighted mine placed as high as it did.
9647687
A decent approach, on occasion. Definitely the sort of lesson Discord would cheerfully impart.
9647952
"Look, there was already a snowball fight going on in her palace gardens. I just escalated, is all."
Glad it livened up a quiet patch of the con, and that you liked it so much! That last paragraph's true as well, now you mention it. One can only ever hope (and often dread) to earn Discord's approval.
9647981
Thank you!
9648186
Glad you approve! And aye, he's not too bad at it, when he makes the effort and it seems like fun.
9648458
Definitely the sort of scene that would've immediately followed.
9648626
And you just know Flutters would be very proud of Discord for helping Flurry too! 
Haha glad you liked that
would love sequel or continuation.
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/474643182102118401/499382970658979870/Shooting_approved.png
9648760
If inspiration for continuation ever occurs, I'd be happy to write one.
9648782
Discord makes flurry heart his Apprentice,
flurry heart becomes the princess of Chaos.
9648821
got a perfect name for the story a flurry of Chaos.
Sooo. You're saying the chaos of panic got you to write this little gem? Discord and I are very pleased indeed.
9648626
It's not just the magic I'd want to see. In fact, this isn't the first time Iv'e read where Discord was the culprit behind teaching a filly magical control. What I want happening is more along the lines of reactions to what has transpired, especially on the part of Flurry's family.
This was a nice little slice of life that did exactly what it set out to do. I would have liked the ending to run a little longer, but it's not horribly lacking as is.
For the sake of parallelism I think this should be "nor", unless, you specifically want "flammable or broken asunder" to be one unit rather than separate parts.
Is Discord nonbinary?
9648849
That'd work!
9649111
Combined terror and time is one dickens of a motivator, as well as sagacious draconequii.
9649397
There'd be a whole spectrum of reactions there, I'd imagine. Everything from Hurrah, our daughter's learning to Hang on, that's not how magic works to Discord's acting helpful, oh god, what's he planning now, and all points in-between.
9649816
Glad you liked it, and much obliged for the 'nor' correction, which has been fixed. As for Discord, I roll with him regarding 'binary' as one of these funny three-syllable words which happens to other beings.
In the comics Cadance even says she thinks her daughter will be the princess of explosions, so this checks out.
9650678
Haven't read the comics, but accidentally aligning with their canon's excellent.
9650678
I havent read th comics, but I have to make this joke
"Flurry Heart like BIG BOOM"
Nice one. I like unusual character combinations and dynamics, and if there's one thing you can always count on Discord for, it's bringing something unusual to the table.
9651795
Glad you approve! It's hard to go wrong with hurling Discord at any character or situation. Guaranteed unusual fun, no matter what.
Great, now I ship Discord and Flurry Heart. An appropriately aged Flurry, of course, but the point remains they are ADORABLE in my mind.
9651967
I'd personally roll with him being to chaotic to settle, but all-too gleeful to vet potential dates for her. They need to be fun enough, after all, and sufficiently tolerant of a little chaos.
Not a bad ship, with appropriate ages all round.
9652303
Now I totally want to see a fic where Discord's vetting a potential boyfriend of the Princess of Chaos.
Makes sense. Wizards having been trying to teach a sorcerer.