Principle of Chaos

"Mommy, are we there yet?"

Madonna sighed. It was at least the seventeenth time the child had asked, though at some point she had stopped keeping careful count. "You will know it when we're there, child."

"What'll it look like? I bet there'll be big rocks! And, and runens! All over the place!"

"Do you mean runes, or ruins?"

"Mommy, I'm thirsty. Can I have some chocolate milk?"

"Did you remember to keep your cup?"

The child shook his head. "I lost it."

"I told you to hang onto that cup. I don't have an infinite supply of magic, child."

"But what if you did? Then it could rain chocolate milk! And we could swim in lakes made of chocolate milk! And also you could make us lots and lots of houses, Mommy! When I grow up I am going to have an infit supply of magic. And I'll make you lots of houses and we won't ever have to walk anywhere because there'll be wheels on the grass! And they'll roll all by themselves, uphill!"

"Yes, I'm certain that will happen," Madonna, the Principle of Motherhood, said, her heart turning over in sudden grief. He would never grow up.

If the ritual succeeded, the draconequui would ascend to a new plane of existence, to become pure magic. Which, in a sense, meant her son would have an infinite supply of magic, as would she, as would all the remaining few of her race. But all the other draconequui were full-grown adults, with established Principles identifying their true natures. Her son was too young to have a Principle yet. He would be the Principle of Childhood, for when they ascended and left their bodies behind, they would be eternally unchanging. He would never be an adult. He would never have any Principle other than his age.

Please, why did it have to be now? she whispered to herself. Couldn't he have had more time...

But she knew better. The ponies had driven them from their homes, again and again, had pushed them into a region too small to support many of them. The only reason she'd been permitted to have her child at all was that she was the Principle of Motherhood, and no draconequus would interfere with another's exercise of their Principle. She had had five children, but each had grown to adulthood before she'd been permitted to have another, and she was the only one left reproducing at all.

The way of Harmony had come to them too late. They were a chimerical species, like the griffins and the pegasi, with the heads and torsos of ponies and the legs and lower bodies of dragons. Being part pony, part dragon, they were obligate omnivores, who needed animal protein or careful mixtures of legumes in their diet to survive. They were not as magically powerful as unicorns – their magic could be incredibly powerful, but required careful rituals to invoke – nor as ferocious as dragons, and unlike dragons they could not eat gems, nor survive fire. For thousands of years, their intelligence, ability to walk as bipeds and use their talons for tool use, and capacity for predation had made them dominant, and they had cruelly used the other species of the world for food. But the dragons were tougher and crueler, and the ponies were more magical and could work in close harmony with one another. Once the pony races united, the fall of the draconequus race was inevitable.

Even as recently as the childhood of her last son, the one who was now the Principle of Speed, they had still eaten the flesh of other beings, even as they'd been struggling toward an understanding of Harmony with other species. Now they eschewed meat eating as the horror that it was, but it was too late. The ponies treated them as monsters and drove them away, fearing them as predators... which would not have been so terrible if the ponies hadn't also been expanding, their territory growing steadily across the land. The draconequui could get what they needed non-lethally from milk and unfertilized eggs, but no cow would sell them milk, and generally speaking any attempt to get one to do so was met with the cow calling in pony assistance. Nor would chickens tolerate their presence. For a time they'd been able to peacefully work with goats, as the ponies had driven them into the mountains where the goats lived, but then one day some foolish youngster had killed and eaten a goat, and now the goats would not help either. And as nomads, constantly being forced from their homes, they could not farm the legumes they needed, and besides, the earth ponies had sucked much of the natural magic of the earth away into themselves, so food simply wouldn't grow in lands too near to ponies unless earth ponies grew it.

They were starving.

"Mommy, I'm sorry I forgot my cup. Can you make me a new cup? I promise I won't lose it!"

"That's what you said about the last one."

"But I double promise! I promise promise promise! Pleeeeeeeease...."

She sighed. "All right." She couldn't refuse the child his food. He was the only pure draconequus, the only one never tainted by eating the flesh of other creatures. She had fed him on her own milk as long as she could, and when it had dried, she had learned to conjure cow's milk for him, and then to sweeten it with sugar and chocolate because their lives were so hard and there was so little joy in this world for a draconequus child. She remembered her own childhood, with a home, and three meals a day, and a town full of her own kind, remembered toys and books and games and playmates. Her child had none of that. Like any child, he was adaptable; he didn't know what he had missed, so he made his own fun, and enjoyed it. But she knew what he was missing, and her heart had always hurt that she couldn't give him a childhood like her own.

A draconequus could only perform spontaneous magic in alignment with their Principle. She could conjure milk for her son, but not for herself, or her people. She was starving, but she made sure he would never be hungry.

She knelt down and grasped grass with her talons, weaving it into a shape like a cup. With a wave of her talons, the shape transformed, becoming a cup for her child to drink from. Then she got up and walked to the stream they walked alongside, dipped the cup in and filled it with water.

"Mommy, how come you need to turn water into milk? How come you can't turn grass into milk? Or clouds? Or rocks? Or air?"

"Things must become like things, child," she said. "Magic has limits. I cannot simply make a cup appear out of air for you, nor can I make a rock into a liquid you can drink."

"That's stupid. When I grow up I will make all the rocks into liquids we can drink! And then no one will ever be thirsty even when the water tastes yucky!"

"I'm sure you will."

"Could you turn the whole stream into chocolate milk, Mommy? But then what would the fish swim in? I guess fish can't breathe chocolate milk. I don't want to be a fish, because all fish ever get to drink is what they breathe and if all I ever got to drink was air I'd be thirsty all the time! And besides they never get to have chocolate milk. When I grow up I will have a fish for a pet and I will use magic and my fish will be able to swim in the chocolate milk!"

"Here." She finished her conjuration, breathing hard, and passed him the cup. He gulped down the chocolate milk eagerly. "Don't lose your cup this time."

"I won't!" He promptly dropped the cup. "Hey, hey, there are shiny rocks over here! Shiny rocks! Mommy, are they gems? Could we dig them out and give them to dragons and the dragons would give us more food for you?"

"No, those aren't gems. They're just shiny."

"They're pretty. Can I dig them out? I want to give them to you, Mommy."

"I don't actually want any shiny rocks, and besides, we have to get to the ritual circle."

"How much longer is it gonna be? My feet hurt."

"Not much farther."

"Okay!" He ran ahead.

"Child! Your cup!" He ignored her, in hot pursuit of something imaginary. Madonna sighed and picked up the cup. It was best if she carried it anyway.

She followed her son up the mountain, and stopped, troubled, by the edge of a forest. Where had he gone? "Child! Where are you?" He was so small. Dragons would rarely attempt to eat a full-grown draconequus, but children weren't safe. Even griffins might occasionally try to grab and devour a child. "Child!"

"Yarr!" He leapt out of a tree, onto her back. She shrieked, and he clambered up her back and curled around her neck, laughing. "I scared you, mommy!"

"Did you just jump out of a tree?"

"I was flying!" He jumped off her back. "Look, Mommy, look, I can fly!" He scrambled up a tree, digging his talons in, and then jumped off a branch, flapping his tiny dragon-like wings frantically. It wasn't so much flying as it was semi-controlled falling, and her heart was in her throat with fear, but his shrieks were of joy and excitement and he laughed as he landed. "Did you see? Did you see?"

"Child. Do not jump out of trees! You're not a strong flyer yet!"

"But I'm gonna get stronger! When I grow up I'm going to fly to the sun!"

He would never grow up.

He would never be a strong flyer.

He would be a child god for all eternity, but the flesh that allowed him to run and jump and fly would be gone. She choked back tears. It was selfish, selfish of her to want more time for him to grow in this world, when her people were starving and there were so few of them left and they needed this, they needed to leave this world and the weaknesses of their flesh behind.

"Come, child. We have to get to the top of the mountain before sunset."

As she trudged, he scampered after her, going four-legged for speed. "Mommy, how come we're half pony and half dragon but not any of the other animals?"

"That's just the way it is, child."

"But I want to have feathers like a griffin or a pegasus!"

"Your wings are dragon wings. They don't have feathers."

"But I want feathers."

"What you want doesn't matter to what is reality. You must learn to live with what you have."

"Nuh-uh! When I grow up I'm going to have feathers! And I'm going to fly to the sun and the moon!"

"Let's keep going. We have a while yet."

"I want to be all the animals. Except fish."

"Mm-hmm."

"Mommy, look, I found a magic wand!"

"That's a stick."

"It's a magic wand! I cast a spell on you, tree! Now you're a house! Oh, I'm such a lovely house with so many rooms! Come live in me, I grew you some furniture! Okay, I'm going to live in you, but did you remember to grow me a cup? Yes, lots and lots of cups!"

"Child, get out of the tree, we have quite some distance to walk still."

"But my feet hurt."

"Climb on my back then."

He jumped out of the tree again and flew onto her back. "I'm a pegasus! I have feathers! I'm going to fly miles and miles and miles!"

"I'm sure you will."

"Mommy, you're a boat. Yarr! I'm the pirate king! I'm sailing the ocean looking for me treasure!"

"Child, stop all that shifting around, you're going to fall off my back and then where will you be?"

"On the ground." He considered. "Unless I fall upside down. Then I would be in the sky."

"Please just shush. You're giving mommy a headache."

He shushed for approximately thirty seconds, then leapt off her back and scampered toward the stream. "Mommy! Mommy, I see fish!"

"Yes. Yes, there are fish." Her mouth watered. Way of Harmony. It was evil to eat the flesh of living creatures. But oh, oh if she could only have that fish in her talon, she wouldn't even need to cook it, oh the sweet taste of fish, so tender... She gritted her teeth. She would not give into the hunger. She had to be an example for her son. Way of Harmony.

"Can I have one for a pet, Mommy? Can I?"

Madonna stared at him. Even by her child's standards, that was a ridiculous request. "No, you can't have one for a pet. How would you even carry it?"

"In my cup!"

"And then what would happen when you wanted chocolate milk?"

His face fell. "Oh. Right." Then he brightened. "But what if I had two cups, Mommy?"

"NO YOU CANNOT HAVE A FISH FOR A PET."

"Can I have two cups anyway?"

"NO!"

"Can I have some more chocolate milk?"

"NO—oh, yes, yes you can." Again she dipped the water, again she conjured the milk. She was growing weaker. Magic on a stomach half-empty and filled only with berries and boiled roots and not nearly enough of them.

He drank it all in two big gulps, getting a considerable quantity of it all over his face. And then he hugged her leg. "I love you, Mommy."

"I love you too, child. Now let's get up the mountain."

****

By the time they reached the ritual place, she was exhausted. Her child seemed to have boundless energy, despite the long walk. "Look, runens! And big rocks! Just like I thought! I'm very smart, Mommy."

"Yes, you are."

"Gracious of you to join us, Madonna," Mastery, the Principle of Control, said. All the other draconequui were already there, and apparently had been there for some time. Of course, none of them had had to drag a child up the mountain.

Thanks, the Principle of Gratitude, expressed the sentiment sincerely. "We all know how difficult it is for you, burdened with the child. We do appreciate your efforts in getting here before sunset. There should be plenty of time for the ritual."

"More than enough, I'd say," her older son, Hermes, the Principle of Speed, said. "Let's get started!"

"Come, child," Madonna said, and pulled her little boy forward. "Hold my hand."

He sat between Madonna and his older brother, holding hands, as Mastery began the chant.

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"Oh, for..." Madonna stood, breaking the ritual circle. "Excuse me, I apologize." She guided her son over to some scrubby bushes.

As he did his business, his eye caught on an outcropping of quartz. "Mommy! What is that? Is that glass? Glass is growing out of the mountain, Mommy!"

"That isn't glass, that's a type of stone."

"Is it a gem?"

"Yes, but not a powerful one."

"I'm going to dig it out!" He pulled free of her and ran to the quartz outcropping.

"Child!" She could feel the disapproving eyes of the other draconequui on her. The survival of their species was at stake, and her son was trying to dig up rocks. "This is serious! Come back to the circle!"

"But it's booooooring."

"But it must be done. You have to be part of the ritual. You don't want to be shunned, do you?"

Once, draconequui had put their criminals in prisons. They had no space for prisons, now, and no need. Any draconequus who committed a crime so terrible that he or she could not remain part of their society was shunned, denied food or shelter or companionship by other draconequui. It was usually a sentence of death; the world had become a very, very hostile place for a lone draconequus. "No!"

She hated threatening him with that, but it was the survival of all of them at stake. "Then you must sit with me in the ritual."

Madonna led him back to the ritual circle. "If we can begin again, without interruptions," Mastery said snippily.

They held hands. They began the chant again. The little boy didn't know the words to the chant, so he mouthed along at first, but at some point apparently got bored with doing that and started singing, loudly. How he could hold a song in his head against the rhythm of the chant Madonna didn't know, but his song disrupted their rhythm and made it impossible to hold the chant. "Madonna, quiet your child now."

"Child, you can't sing here!"

"But I'm booooored!"

"You still can't sing. Here." She got up and found a rock and a stick by the stream bed and brought them back. "Draw pictures in the dirt with these." He wouldn't be holding hands, but she could hold hands with Hermes and then they could take the child's hands when the ritual had reached the point where the circle absolutely had to close.

For several minutes they chanted. Madonna felt the power building along the lines, felt the runes fire with magical energy.

And then, "Mommy! Look what I drew! I drew a picture of you, Mommy!"

The power fizzled. The ritual was broken. "Child, now is not the time!" Madonna shouted, aware of the disapproving eyes of every other member of the draconequus race glaring at her.

Her child's eyes filled with tears. "But mommy, I drew it for you..."

"You can't disturb Mommy during the ritual, child!"

"The ritual is boring! I hate the ritual! Dumb boring ritual!" The child kicked the rock... and it hit Tinker, the Principle of Invention, in the chest, because of course they were in a circle and any direction he might kick the rock could have potentially hit another draconequus.

"Ow!" Tinker stood up furiously. "Madonna, I am going to build a cage for that boy if you can't restrain him!"

"I'm sorry! I know he didn't mean it!" She grabbed her son. "Child! Apologize to Tinker right now!"

"I'm sorry, Tinker," the boy said contritely. "I didn't mean to kick the rock at you. It was an accident."

"Well, you had better be more careful, child!" Tinker snapped.

The child's face clouded with anger. "Well, maybe if you weren't all doing a dumb boring ritual I wouldn't have to be more careful!"

"Child! Be quiet right now!" Madonna snapped.

"I'm bored! I'm bored! I'm bored and I hate this stupid ritual and when I grow up I will blow up all the rituals ever and there will never be another dumb boring ritual! I hate it I hate it I hate it!"

"Silence him or I will," Mastery said coldly.

Madonna shuddered as the implication hit her. With the future of their species at stake... Mastery might seriously be threatening to kill her child for disrupting the ritual. "Child. Come here. You don't have to be part of the dumb boring ritual. Mommy will call you when you get to the part you need to be in. You can play."

"Oh, okay!" And just like that the temper tantrum storm cleared from his face and he smiled brightly again like the sun. "Whee! I'm a cat, I'm chasing mice!"

She let him run around, playing pretend games, as she rejoined the ritual. They had to start all over again, of course; the disruption had fizzled the magic, and they had to build it all over again.

Again she lost herself in the chant, swaying between Hermes and Fidelis, the Principle of Loyalty. Again she felt the power build, rising up within her, within the runes, within the lines, building, building toward apotheosis, toward the point where she would call her son to her and they would all—

"Mommy! I caught a squirrel! Can I have him for a pet?"

If any of the other draconequui had been the Principle of Killing With Your Eyeballs, she and her son would both be dead now, Madonna thought. "No, you can't!"

"Madonna—" Mastery said coldly.

"Listen." She removed the squirrel from his paws, released the terrified thing, and conjured him another cup of chocolate milk, with a mild sedative in it. Perhaps he would nap. In any case it should quiet his boundless energy and let him sit still long enough for the ritual to take place. "Drink this, child, and sit still. Right there on that rock over there."

"But I'm gonna get bored."

"Then look up at the clouds. Aren't they beautiful? What do you imagine they could be?"

"That one looks like a bunny rabbit!"

"Madonna."

She turned. It was Mastery, and Postulate, the Principle of Logic. "I'm so sorry. I'm going to try to get him to lay down for a while and –"

"It isn't necessary," Postulate said softly.

"Madonna... your son has clearly identified his Principle," Mastery said. "He has broken the rhythm of the ritual, several times."

"His fancies conform to no logic," Postulate said. "They never have."

"He obeys no rules. He disrupts every pattern he touches. We have identified your son as the Principle of Chaos and Disharmony, and the name we grant him is Discord."

Madonna stared. "...What?" Had it been so long since there had been other children? Her boy was a rambunctious, imaginative, hyperactive child, but that was normal, many boys and girls his age behaved this way, or had in the days when there had been other children of this age. "He's not! He's just being a child!"

"Hermes was not this disruptive," Mastery said sternly. "Vector was not this disruptive. Channel was not this disruptive. You have had many children, Madonna. Only this one brings this much chaos."

"I don't wanna be Discord," the boy piped up, obviously paying much more attention to the conversation than was good for him. "I wanna be the Principle of Fun! Then I would get to have fun all the time!"

"This behavior is normal for children! Why can't you remember what it was like when there were more of them?" Madonna demanded. "Yes, not all children are as wild as he is, but that doesn't make him abnormal! It doesn't make him the Principle of Chaos! How can you even assign a child a principle? He's much too young!"

"I could call myself Funnest! I would use my magic to make everything fun! Then there wouldn't be any boring rituals!"

"If he ascends he will never grow older," Postulate said. "That principle which he represents now, he will represent for all time among the ascended."

"The ruling stands," Mastery said. "He is Discord. And we do not need to take Chaos and Disharmony into our ranks when we ascend."

"Or I could be the Principle of Flying and then I would be the best flyer ever and I would get to have feathers like a pegasus. I could call myself Feathery!"

"You are not serious. You... you're saying you won't let him ascend with the rest of us?"

"We cannot," Postulate said, sadly. "The power of the ascension depends on Harmony. He is Disharmony. He has proven it by disrupting the ritual over and over."

"He's doing that because he's a small child and he wants attention!"

"It doesn't matter why he's doing it, the fact remains that he is doing it," Mastery said. "He may not ascend with us."

"Then neither will I!" Madonna shouted. "If you're going to shun my son you can shun me too! I won't ascend without him!"

"Mommy? Mommy, are they going to shun me? Mommy, I don't wanna get shunned!"

She gathered him up in her arms. "No, sweet one, no one will shun you."

"He cannot ascend," Mastery said.

"But you must," Postulate said. "Without the Principle of Motherhood we will lack the ability to generate life. A godhead must contain within it the Principle of Motherhood. If you don't ascend with us, Madonna, you doom us all."

"Choose," Mastery said. "We understand that you are the Principle of Motherhood, but you have four other draconequus children who are now grown. Will you betray their ascension to save the boy Discord? Will you destroy your entire race for the sake of your youngest son?"

Madonna's eyes filled with tears, as her son began to wail. Discord plainly understood entirely too much of this conversation, despite his age. "Mommy, I don't want to get shunned," he sobbed, clinging to her. "Don't leave me, Mommy, don't leave me."

Hatred welled in her heart for Mastery, who couldn't seem to remember what ordinary children were like, who was essentially condemning her son to death for being a rambunctious little boy. But his Principle was Control. If she refused him directly, he could force her with his magic.

So she would have to lie.

"I won't ever leave you, child," she said, hugging him. "No one will shun you. But the ritual is too boring for you, you know that. I want you to lay down and take a nap, okay? As soon as we come to the right part, I'll wake you up and you can join us."

"O-okay."

She gave him another cup of drugged chocolate milk and rocked him until he was asleep, then laid him on the rock. "All right. I'm ready," she said harshly. "I'll do my duty."

"You know you can't wake him up to join us," Postulate said gently.

"I know that if I hadn't told him I would, the disruption he's caused thus far would be the least of our worries," she said. "He'll sleep."

Until she woke him up to join them. Because at some point the ritual would have built to the point where nothing could disrupt it, where only Mastery leaving the pattern could break it. She was lying, but not to her son.

She kissed his forehead. Sleep, Discord. I'll wake you when it's time to join us. I don't care what Mastery says. You're my son. I won't leave you.

She returned, and the ritual began again.

Again the power built. Again she felt it surge inside her as they chanted, the magic roiling inside her, wild and chaotic, ready to be tamed by her Principle and transformed into her. As all of them would transform. They would join together, a single overmind comprised of many minds, many principles, continuous and still separate, containing within them everything that every living draconequus was. They would be gods, creatures of pure magic.

Madonna wanted it. An end to the hunger, the constant struggles, the fear. An end to the helplessness. But not without her son. He deserved this as much as they did. Hadn't he suffered? Hadn't he been born alone, no playmates his own age, no toys but what he could find in their travels, no stability, no safety? Didn't he deserve what they would take for themselves? She hadn't borne him into this world to abandon him, regardless of what Mastery said his Principle was.

And what if it was Chaos and Disharmony? If that was truly his nature – for Mastery and Postulate had never been wrong before, when they had agreed on the identification of a child's Principle – then that was part of draconequus nature and deserved to be part of their Harmony. Sometimes Disharmony was valuable. How could one dissent against dangerous ideas without disharmony? She wasn't convinced that that was truly her son's Principle, but even if it was, didn't they need it?

As the magic built to the point where it was visible, where all of them began to glow and Mastery was obscured by ever-brightening light, Madonna broke ranks.

"Mother! What are you doing?" Hermes called to her, but although he was the Principle of Speed, he had not been prepared to break the circle, and his fear of doing so held him in place.

Madonna ran to where she'd laid Discord. "Wake up, child – Discord! Wake up, it's time!"

"Whu- m—Mommy? Why're you glowing?" he asked sleepily.

"Discord, it's time! We have to rejoin the ritual! Come on!"

She grabbed his paw in her talons and pulled. He staggered along with her for a moment and then pulled back. "Mommy! Mommy, everyone's on fire!"

"They're not on fire. Come on!" She pulled him up to the circle and grabbed Fidelis' hand. "Discord, take Hermes' hand! Join the circle!"

Discord pulled away completely, wrenching his forelimb out of Madonna's grasp. "No! No! Everyone's on fire, it's going to burn me! No, mommy, no!"

"We're not on fire!"

"Yes you are yes you are it's going to burn me! No no no!"

Mastery was screaming something but Madonna couldn't hear him. The ritual was off-balance, the circle wasn't closed. Discord needed to be in it but if she broke out again to grab him, the energy would break loose and who knew what it would do? "Discord! Listen to me for once in your life, child! If you don't take my hand now, we'll all leave without you! Do you want to be alone?"

He whimpered, torn between the terror of the glow surrounding his people and the terror of being abandoned by them. Madonna reached toward him as far as she could without breaking the circle. "It's a teleport, Discord, we're going to another world, we're not burning, but you have to join us or we're going to leave you! You have to trust mommy, now!"

She saw him swallow, saw him nod his little head resolutely. "O-okay..."

He ran forward and reached for her hand... and at the very second he touched her, the ritual completed.

The last thing Madonna saw was the energies backlashing through her little boy, twisting his small body in ways the laws of physics, reason and magic should have made incomprehensible. She screamed, and then –

****

The moment Discord touched Mommy's hand, she dissolved in an explosion of light, and then there was pain. Horrible, horrible pain, like someone was pulling his body to pieces and twisting all the pieces as they did so. Discord screamed in agony, falling backward, collapsing to the ground.

He didn't know how long he lay there, only semi-conscious, whimpering for his mommy. All he knew was that his mommy didn't come.

When the pain abated, when he was able to get up, he stumbled, falling back down again almost immediately, because his body was all wrong and had no balance anymore. He looked at his forelimbs in wonder. He didn't have dragon-like forelimbs anymore, and they didn't even match. One looked like a lion paw or something and the other was like a griffin's talon. When he managed to stagger to his feet, his legs were all wrong. One of them had just changed color so it didn't match the rest of him anymore, but the other one was a goat leg.

Discord laughed. "I am gonna be all the animals!" he said triumphantly. "Mommy, look! Look at me!"

But she wasn't there.

He looked around the ritual circle. The ground was cold, the sun had set and the moon had risen. There were strange shadows and shapes everywhere, but every time he ran to one (or stumbled, because he couldn't seem to make his body work well enough to run anymore) to see if his Mommy was in the shadow, there was nothing there.

"Mommy!" he called. "Mommy... Mommy, where are you?"

She'd promised she wouldn't leave him. She'd told him if he took her hand he could go with her, wherever they were going. He had touched her hand. If they already left then she'd come back for him. He knew Mommy wouldn't leave him. Mommy loved him. Mommy always kept her promises to him.

"Mommy?"

"Mommy, where are you?"

"Mommy, I'm thirsty, I want some chocolate milk, Mommy, where are you?"

"Mommy... did you leave me?"

"Mommy, I'm all alone, where are you? Mommy?"

"Don't leave me, Mommy, don't leave me, please don't leave me, please..."

"MOMMY!"

****

If there had been any predators on the mountaintop that night, any creatures who might have heard an abandoned child's cries, the history of Equestria might have been very different.

If there had been any creature at all who might have heard the child's screams and taken pity on him, that also might have made things very different.

But there was neither one. The boy was completely alone.

When he cried himself to sleep at last, no one, for good or ill, disturbed him from it.

The Feral Child 1 of 2

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An earth pony trudged down a packed dirt road, pulling a cart full of apples. His focus appeared to be entirely on the road in front of him, ignoring the trees around either side of the road except possibly to occasionally note the beauty of the autumn leaves. He was thus completely unaware of the creature hiding high in one of the trees, well above the pony's head.

The creature gazed down at his prey, his stomach rumbling, saliva dripping slightly from his fang as he drew in the scent of delicious food below. He watched the pony with unblinking yellow eyes, tail swishing slightly, claws flexing in anticipation. Soon. Soon the pony would be in position, and then the creature would feed, and the stupid pony would be utterly helpless to prevent it. Sharp teeth glittered in the creature's grin. Just a little more. He would tear into the delicious red flesh, bathe in the sweet juices as they flowed over his chin and down his throat, and the poor foolish stallion below wouldn't have a chance to stop him.

And then the pony was in the perfect spot for the creature to take his prey. Now!

The creature leapt, small mismatched wings beating the air as he dove, and plunged into the apples, claws digging and hoof kicking until he was completely buried under luscious fruit. His prey was his, and the stallion pulling the cart to market would be none the wiser.

For a moment the cart stopped. "Tarnation! What was – Did Ah just hear something? What was that?"

Hidden deep under the pile of apples, the small, foal-sized creature went perfectly still, his yellow eyes mostly slitted so that they wouldn't be visible, apples piled all over his body and his snout to conceal him. The stallion unhooked himself from the cart, wandered around the back of it and looked it over, but the creature did not move, and the stallion couldn't, in the end, see anything amiss. He returned to the front of the cart and hooked himself up again, and then began to pull, the squeaking of the wheels and the clopping of his hooves against the dirt road masking any sounds the creature might make.

Now it was time to feast.

Discord gorged himself on apples, tearing into the sweet crunchy flesh of them, using claw and talon and teeth to shred the delectable apple meat off the core, which he then left at the bottom of the cart so the pony would know he'd been robbed after he got to the market and unpacked his apples. He hadn't eaten all day, and apples were yummy.

But then he caught another scent besides apple, as he came up for air. The rich, somewhat unpleasant scent of cow manure. Discord grinned to himself. Oh no, he wasn't going to stuff himself completely on apples. Not when there was other delicious prey to be had.

He jumped free of the cart after eating a lot of apples (he couldn't count, so numbers, for him, consisted of none, one, a few, a lot and a whole lot) and flew up into one of the trees. Again the stallion stopped and inspected his cart, but Discord had left his apple cores at the bottom, where the stallion wouldn't find them until he unpacked, and he didn't look up, and if he had he likely wouldn't have seen Discord anyway. The young draconequus's body was all different colors, but they were all dark or earth-toned colors, not the bright pastels of ponies, so he tended to blend into natural environments like trees. And his shape was so unusual, ponies tended not to be able to recognize that they were looking at an animal when they saw him; they'd make out a body part or two but because they couldn't see how those parts made a cohesive whole, they assumed it was just tree branches and they were imagining animal shapes. Discord had been living like this for a few years now, and had developed a very low opinion of pony intelligence.

After the pony was gone, trundling down the road with a whole lot of apples in his cart and a lot of apple cores buried at the bottom, Discord jumped back down out of the tree into the forest. He still wasn't a strong flyer but he was far more adept with trees than a pegasus; with his front claws and his dragon paw and his prehensile tail, he was an excellent climber, so all his small wings ever needed to be able to do was to get him a little extra lift up or a smooth descent down. As long as he stayed in the forest, he was quite safe.

Unfortunately for him, some of what he needed to survive wasn't in the forest.

Discord had learned the hard way that a diet of nothing but fruit and leaves and roots made him weak and ill. He remembered, dimly, his mommy insisting to him that he needed to drink milk to keep strong, that draconequui couldn't live on only vegetables like ponies could. The forest didn't have milk, or eggs, or butter or cheese or yogurt or any of the other wonderful things ponies made out of milk. It had animals, and during the first winter after he'd been abandoned, Discord had learned that dead animals tasted good and would satisfy the same cravings that milk and eggs did, as long as he got to them very shortly after they died and then stuck them in a fire. If he didn't stick them in a fire, they might be too chewy or they might taste like they were starting to go bad, and if he didn't get to them quickly enough, the flies and worms would and then even sticking them in a fire couldn't make them taste good.

He had also learned, however, that animals would not obligingly die for him shortly before he arrived on scene, and that he couldn't actually bring himself to kill any of them. His mommy had told him that he was the best draconequus ever because he had never ever eaten an animal or killed one to eat, and even though she had gone somewhere and left him, Discord wanted to make her proud of him so that when she came back for him she would still love him. It had been a few years, and he hadn't been able to keep himself completely pure; during the first winter, before he'd met his only friend and tamed it for his pet, before he'd learned where animals stashed their food supplies and before he'd learned how to steal food from ponies, he had starved. Eating dead animals had been his only option if he'd wanted to live through the winter. But he'd still never killed any, and as long as he could steal food from ponies he could avoid trying to find already-dead animals to eat. As tasty as they were when he got them at just the right moment and then burned them in exactly the right way, there were so many different ways that that could go wrong and make them taste gross that they just weren't worth looking for.

It had been a few years by now, but Discord hadn't given up hope yet that his mommy would come back for him someday. If she and all the other draconequui had teleported to a new place like she'd said they were going to, maybe it was really hard for her to get enough magic to teleport back. Maybe she was working on it, and as soon as she had the right spells she would come for him. In the meantime, he had no one to take care of him, so he'd had to learn to take care of himself.

The first year had been bad, very bad. The ritual had been in autumn, and it hadn't taken long before the cold had set in. Discord had hidden in caves for shelter, and frequently been driven out and often nearly killed by the creatures that had already claimed those caves for homes. The fruit and leaves he'd been surviving on went away, and the snow fell, and he had nearly frozen. He'd dug himself holes in the ground to be his den, but the snow had fallen in them and blocked his ability to breathe until he dug back out, which involved exposing his den to snow and therefore ruining it. Day after day, he'd suffered growling agony in his belly, because there'd been no plants to eat; he had tried chewing on trees, he had tried eating the piles of dead leaves that had fallen, he had tried eating bushes and grass and vines, and most of it just made him sick.

Two things had saved him. First had been the discovery of the dead squirrel, frozen. He'd only tried to eat it because by that time he had been so hungry that he had tried to eat absolutely anything new he could get his paws on, in hopes that this would turn out to be food, because the worst that could happen was that he'd be poisoned and die and if the alternative was starving to death, he didn't think that was something to be too afraid of to try it anymore. It had been frozen and he couldn't chew it, so he'd brought it to one of the burrows he'd dug and gnawed at it until his body heat thawed it, whereupon it had turned out to be delicious.

The second thing had been his pet, fire.

During a warm break in the winter weather, when a storm of rain rather than snow had fallen, lightning had struck a tree and set a fallen branch on fire. Discord had watched from a cave, where he'd actually managed to intimidate the owner of the den into leaving it to him by running into the cave on two legs waving a big stick, leading the fox who had previously inhabited the cave to flee. The rain from the storm had fallen on the burning branch, making it sizzle. To Discord, it had sounded like a cry of pain. The fire dancing on the branch was so beautiful, constantly moving and shifting and changing. He'd seen fires before, when he'd lived with his mommy, but that had been before the ritual, before he'd had magic of his own and before he'd been as powerfully drawn to the unusual as he was now. When he'd lived with mommy, he'd avoided fires because his mommy had told him to and because they could burn him. But now that he'd been left alone, the fire had drawn him with its beauty and strangeness. It looked alive, but it wasn't a thing like a plant or an animal or a rock. It wasn't even a thing like water. It was a thing like air, or sunlight, and he had never seen a creature made of such a substance.

He'd run out into the rain and retrieved the burning branch, carrying it in his eagle talon and bringing it into his cave.

The fox had left behind a pile of leaves it must have been using for additional warmth, like a blanket; at least that was what Discord had been using it for. It turned out the fire loved the pile of leaves. Discord had clapped his paws with delight as his new pet had gone from weak and sad, sputtering and hissing in pain, to large and healthy and roaring with joy as it devoured the leaf pile. The cold rain had raged outside, but in his cave, Discord had been dry, and truly warm for the first time in months.

No other creatures would come into the cave as long as Discord kept Fire alive. He learned through trial and error that it liked to eat the same kinds of foods he liked to eat, plus more foods that other animals would eat like branches and bark and twigs. But it didn't like rocks or gems. This surprised Discord a little bit because dragons ate gems and dragons breathed fire, so he would have thought Fire would also like gems or rocks, but apparently not. Fire also didn't like to eat dirt. It did, however, like to eat Discord's fingers and tail. It was a very rude and ungrateful pet, but it was the only creature that wouldn't run away from Discord in fear, and it did take care of him in exchange for his care for it – it kept him warm and it kept other creatures away from his cave – so he loved it anyway.

It was so beautiful. All the different colors, constantly changing and flickering, constantly moving. It was a thing that wasn't like anything else. Discord liked to watch water and wind because they were always moving and changing too, and you couldn't guess exactly what they were going to do next, but water and wind weren't really living creatures because they didn't eat and poop and need to breathe, like Fire did. Fire needed air as much as Discord himself did, and when it breathed out too much of its smoke and made Discord cough and feel sick, it got weak and sputtered, so he had to learn what to feed it that wouldn't make it all smoky. Fire ate foods that animals ate, and pooped out gray ash, which smelled and tasted bitter and yucky but somehow not quite as gross as the poop that other animals made. Fire was obviously alive, and while it was a cranky, hungry friend who would eat him if he let it, it was a generous friend as well. The roots that he dug out of the frozen ground and then couldn't eat would turn soft and delicious when he put them in Fire and let Fire eat their outsides for a little while. The same happened with frozen dead animals. He'd scare other creatures away from a recent kill, or locate some poor critter that had frozen to death, and lay it in Fire, and Fire would feed on the fur and the skin, and then Discord would pull the dead creature out with a stick and the insides of it would be warm and juicy and so much tastier than if he hadn't fed it to Fire.

Then there had been a snowstorm so fierce and harsh and windy that the winds had blown the snow into Discord's cave and smothered Fire. He'd done everything he could to protect his friend, but it hadn't been enough. Fire had ended up covered with water and snow, and when Discord had dug it out, Fire had been gone completely... nothing left but the ashes of its last meal. He had cried then, as bitterly as he'd cried the night his mommy had disappeared. His only friend was dead and he hadn't been able to save it.

Without Fire to cook roots and dead animals for him, Discord had starved again. He'd been driven to the point of making traps, digging holes and lining them with vines tied to sticks in such a way that if a creature would fall in the hole, it would end up tied up in vines and the hole would be blocked in by a door made of woven sticks, to try to catch living animals. He'd caught a squirrel that way, and giggled at the squirrel's frantic squeaks and desperate struggles. It was funny, watching the little creature wiggle around in fear, watching it try and fail to free itself, and he'd watched it some time before remembering that actually he'd wanted to eat it. So he had pulled it out of the trap, his talon around its neck, watching it scrabble and shriek in fear, and thought about swiping his claws across its neck and killing it so he could feed.

He couldn't do it.

He had held the squirrel for some time, trying to nerve himself to kill it. Feeling how desperately, how funnily it struggled, how alive it was, how interesting it was in its terror. How it tried as hard as it could to bite him or scratch him or free itself from his talon's grip, how helpless it was in his grasp. How easy it would be for him to make its life end, to make it stop moving forever. How much the thought of doing that hurt.

Discord loved watching the little creature's terrified struggles, but when it came to ending them, to making it die and stop struggling and stop being afraid and stop doing anything ever again... the thought had filled him with a kind of horror that his young mind couldn't truly interpret. All he knew was that he didn't want things to stop moving. The squirrel was funny. He didn't want to make it stop squeaking and wiggling and making him laugh. The thought of turning it from a struggling, frightened, moving squirrel to a still lump of meat like the ones he found and ate made him sick, and he wanted to cry at the thought.

In the end, he had let the squirrel go.

He did kill a few times that winter. When he found animals at a kill, and drove them away by throwing rocks or waving sticks, usually the animal's prey was quite dead, and being freshly killed, it was reasonably tasty even without Fire to cook it for him. But sometimes he found creatures still alive, bleeding, whimpering in agony, and he hadn't known what to do. He had no way of helping them, of making them stay alive and get better. They had big bleeding holes in them from the teeth or claws of the predator that had attacked them, and they were breathing raggedly and making noises of pain and he couldn't help them, he couldn't make the blood stop and make them be alive and okay. Their fear wasn't funny the way the fear of the living, unhurt squirrel in his trap had been; their fear just made him hurt inside, because he had no way to make them not die, and the only way he could make them stop suffering from their dying was to use his claws to end their lives, so they turned into unmoving, unfeeling meat and they wouldn't cry in pain anymore.

When he did that, he cried and he felt sick and he hated himself. But he still ate the animals he'd mercy-killed, because he was starving to death and if he didn't eat them, the creature that had given them the original fatal blow would have anyway.

Spring hadn't come soon enough.

When it had gotten warmer and things began to grow again, Discord had explored, ranging farther from the mountaintop that had become his home. On the other side of the mountain, in a rich river valley, he'd found a settlement of ponies. And ponies, it turned out, had an endless supply of good things to eat.

Ponies fascinated and irritated Discord in equal measure. He watched the earth ponies plowing and seeding and weeding their fields, and it felt all wrong. Things weren't supposed to grow in straight lines! They weren't supposed to grow all by themselves, with no other plants besides their species to be around them! Things were supposed to be all mixed up, willy-nilly, and grow wherever they wanted to! He saw a strange kind of energy flow under the dirt, something he'd never seen before (or felt, or heard; to be honest he could not really describe what sense he was perceiving the flow with, because it seemed to be all of them, and none of them), coming down from the mountain and going into the dirt the earth ponies tended, and it made the plants grow fast and juicy... but on the mountain, the loss of the energy made the plants Discord had been feeding on grow weakly, if at all. He could see, now, why there had been so little for him to eat in the winter. The things that grew in his home, on the mountaintop, were mostly not food, because the energy that made food things grow was being pulled down the mountain and into the earth pony farms, and he hated them for that.

At the same time, though... ponies made such delicious things. From picture books his mommy had read him once upon a time, Discord knew the draconequus words for things like cookies and pies and cakes, but if he'd ever had a chance to eat such things it had been so long ago that he didn't remember. The first time Discord stole a fruit pie out of a pony's window and ate it had been utter bliss, a deliciousness he'd never experienced before in his life. Not quite as yummy as he remembered chocolate milk being, but it was warm, which chocolate milk was not, and it was lots of different flavors and textures put together, and the apples inside it had turned mushy and the grapes had turned dry and tiny and then gotten all plump again from the moisture inside and there had been something like crunchy bread but sweet all around it and it had just been the most delightful and contradictory food he'd ever had. Ponies also made foods that kept well, like bread that was soft and warm with a chewy outside the first day, and crunchy with a moderately soft inside the second day, and all crunchy the third day, except that if he dipped it in water it got soft again. He could steal lots of bread and hide it in a bag he hung high in a tree, where even the occasional wandering bear couldn't get at it, and snack on it while he was hunting for food during the day.

And ponies worked with cows and chickens. The smell of cow manure meant a dairy farm. And that meant milk, and all the tasty things ponies made out of milk.

Discord couldn't wait.

The main problem with dairy farms was that cows needed a lot of wide open grassy land to graze on. Discord could hide almost perfectly in forests, but it was much harder for him to hide on open land. Usually, he would wait until nightfall to approach a dairy farm. As he got close to this one, however, he saw that he could adopt a different strategy. While there were flat, empty grazing lands full of grass and cows eating the grass, chatting with each other in accented Pony full of "don'cha know" and "you betcha" and "all righty", there was also a cornfield, and the cornfield ran right up to the back of the barn.

First things first. Discord flew up to the top of a cornstalk, pried it open with his claws, pulled out the corn cob inside, and then commanded the leaves to husk themselves back around the empty space, grinning. He did this with a few more corncobs, and then a few more, until he had a lot. He then dug a hole, told the hole to be the same hole as the one he had near his den, and dropped the corn cobs into it. Corn wasn't so yummy if you didn't feed it to Fire first, but if you stuck a stick through it and balanced it over Fire, or if you stole a clay pot from ponies and you filled it with water and you put it into Fire and then you put the corn inside, then corn turned sweet and delicious. By now, Discord had learned how to use his magic to summon his friend back from the dead any time he wanted to, so he had a den up on the mountain, where he kept Fire going all the time, even when he wasn't there. Other animals who might sneak inside to steal the food Discord was hoarding in there were scared of Fire, and after multiple mishaps involving his entire food hoard burning to ash while he was gone, and a couple of instances of setting the forest on fire and having to hide in a burrow while pegasi towed clouds into place and unicorns cast fire suppression spells and earth ponies hauled buckets of water up the mountain, he had learned how to make a cage for Fire out of carefully placed rocks, so it could safely burn even when he wasn't there to tend it. Every day, Discord came down from the mountain to find food in the ponies' valley, and either he ate it then and there, or he sent it back to his den via his magic. He could make doors connect to other doors and holes connect to other holes, so he'd dig holes, connect them to the holes dug in his den, and stash his loot in them. Then he'd return in the evening, feed Fire, get Fire to cook foods for him if they were tastier that way, and eat, usually after snacking all day on some of what he found.

After stashing some corn, Discord snuck through the cornfield up to the barn. The doors on this side were of course locked; on the other side the doors would be open to let the cows go back and forth, but cows, while plainly a lot dumber than ponies, were not so dumb that they couldn't raise an alert when they saw a strange creature prowling near their door. Cows were to ponies what Fire was to Discord, except that cows were smarter than Fire and could at least talk, even if everything they had to say was completely inane. Discord had tried to approach some and make friends, once upon a time, but it turned out that he couldn't speak pony even though he could understand it, and they couldn't speak draconequus, and they weren't prepared to even let him try to struggle through in bad pony speech without lowing, loudly, for help. This was more or less the same reaction he got out of ponies as well, except that ponies would often directly attack him personally, attempting to kick him or hit him with shovels or pitchforks.

So he'd given up trying to make friends and ask for what he wanted. Now he just took it. With his magic, ponies couldn't stop him.

He focused on the wall. The door was a door; it had a job, to let things in or out, and when it was locked it was very interested in not letting anything in or out, so it was hard to make it do anything else. But the wall was just a wall and could be convinced to be something else.

Discord let his eyes glaze over slightly, looking not at the thing in front of him but at the patterns that described it. Just like the energy that he could see/hear/feel running under the dirt, summoned by the earth ponies to feed the plants, he could see/hear/feel patterns that lay under the surface of the world, like when a book described something and then had a picture of it, where the picture was the thing and the patterns were the description. Except that when he changed the description, the picture changed as well.

The thing in front of him was a wall. It was made of wood. Wood was hard. Wood could burn. Wood was thick and solid. Wood used to be alive and now it wasn't. All the pieces of wood stuck to each other so they wouldn't get out of the way if you hit them. Discord reached out with his magic and tweaked the pattern so that instead of the properties of wood, the wall had the properties of strings, and they were loose and hanging down, except the wall would still look like wood and feel like wood and turn back into regular wood when his magic wore off in a few minutes, and it would never look like strings but it would be strings and he could run right through it.

Then he took a deep breath. It was important to believe, heart and soul, in his own magic, or he could jinx it. If he worried about the possibility that the spell might not have worked, that the wood would still be wood and not strings, then the spell wouldn’t work and the wood would be wood and he would definitely hurt himself, whereas if he just pretended as hard as he could that there was no way he could have failed, it would probably work and he wouldn't hurt himself. Before he could let himself get scared of the possibility of hitting hard wood, Discord flung himself forward at the barn wall, and through it. Like a curtain of strings. It had worked.

And now he was in the dairy barn.

This side of the dairy barn, where the cows didn't live, was cold. There was a pony working in here, churning butter. She hadn't seen him come in; she was wholly focused on her work. Discord ignored her as soon as he recognized that she hadn't seen him, and focused on what was on the shelves all over the barn. There were bottles and bottles of milk, cheeses wrapped in wax, giant bricks of butter. Nirvana.

The floor of the barn was stone, not dirt. He couldn't dig a hole to make a connection to his den. On the other hand, there were lots and lots of rough-woven burlap sacks hanging from shelves. Carefully weaving through the shelves so as not to attract the attention of the pony churning the butter, Discord grabbed one of the sacks and then began filling it with delicious things. Cheese and butter first, to cushion the milk bottles so they wouldn't clank. Then milk. Lots of it. He drank two bottles right there and replaced the empties on the shelf, then devoured half of a cheese brick, then washed that down with another whole bottle of milk. For the first time all day he felt genuinely full, stuffed even. He wanted to leave the cold barn, take a nap in the sunshine and enjoy his victory over hunger, but he also wanted to be able to drink more milk later, so he filled the bag with as many bottles as he could. When they clanked together despite his best efforts to cushion them with cheese and butter, he focused on the pattern of the clanking sound and changed it to the sound of a cowbell.

Carefully he crept out of the barn, shifting something inside himself so that all his limbs would work like his lion paw and pad soundlessly. Discord could make any of his mismatched body parts synchronize its pattern to a different part, making it behave like that part, so he could temporarily make all his limbs act like lion paws, or goat hooves, or whichever limb he needed them all to behave like. They didn't look or feel any different, they just changed their properties. He'd discovered that particular power a year after the ritual had changed him and given him all the different body parts, and he found it very useful, especially at times like this. The pony churning the butter didn't notice a thing as Discord retreated with his bag.

He didn't want to go as far as his mountain. In theory he thought maybe he could dig a hole big enough that he could crawl through it to go directly back home; in practice he didn't have any holes in his den big enough to allow him to do that. He dug a hole large enough for his bags, stuffed the milk and cheese and butter in so it would be there in his den when he needed it, and then flew up to the roof of the barn, so he could take a look around. Sadly, he saw no sun-warmed rocks anywhere; he'd have to go all the way back up to his mountain for that. But there was a second barn that seemed to serve as a storehouse for hay, stacks and bales of it, sweet-scented clover hay and delicate lavender hay and rich timothy hay and mint hay and sun-smelling fescue hay. Ponies ate hay, as did cows; Discord didn't except in emergencies, but he liked to sleep in it. And after stuffing himself with apples, cheese and milk, he wanted a nap.

The upper window of the second barn was open, allowing the sun to radiate in and warm the hay, and allowing Discord to fly in easily. He spent several minutes playing in the hay, diving down deep inside it like he was digging a tunnel and then coming up, pretending he was a dolphin and the hay was the ocean, or just tossing the hay in the air and letting it rain back down all over him. Haystacks were fun. But he was tired from his long trip down the mountain and the hours he'd spent hunting alongside the road, trying to find a farm or a pony carrying food, and now he was warm and full. So after wrecking one of the haystacks completely and turning a tied-up bale into a shapeless fun haystack for playing in, he curled up on top of the stack that used to be a bale and fell asleep.

He woke up suddenly to the sound of pony voices.

"...this mess! Little varmint must've gotten in here, too!"

"You think it's the same creature that hit the Quench's farm a couple of weeks ago?"

"Dunno, but some critter's been gettin' into the Delicious family's crops as well, and old Belle Hereford says she saw some long lean varmint messin' around with the Cream family's barn. I think it's the same critter. Old Belle says it looks like some kinda lizard, but big, like a dog."

They were talking about him. Discord didn't know any of the ponies' names, but pony names tended to be meaningful words in their language. The Quench family was probably the one that had the apples and the grapes and all the bottles and bottles of cider and grape juice in their storehouse. His mouth watered, remembering that one. They were the suppliers of his favorite pies, too, the ones that were frosted on top and made with apples and dried grapes. And the Cream family was probably the other dairy farm he'd hit, the one where he'd had to run like crazy because some stupid elderly cow had seen him and started lowing for help, and one of his milk jugs had broken and spilled everywhere and gotten the butter sopping wet, so instead of saving the butter to eat he'd ended up covering himself in it because it was half melted from being soaked in milk anyway, and he'd had loads of fun flying up trees and then sliding down them because when he was totally covered in butter he'd slide on anything. It had been kind of scary when he'd been spotted, but also exhilarating and fun and totally hilarious in the end, even if he'd lost a milk jug in the course of the adventure. He grinned broadly to himself, remembering. Little Sister had had lots of fun with the butter too, though he'd had to be careful about cleaning it off her because her cloth body couldn't handle getting wet as well as his could, and if the butter had dried on her it would make her fur crunchy and nasty and not nice to sleep on for a pillow anymore.

He sat up, looking down at the ponies. It was much dimmer in the barn than it had been before. Belatedly he realized they had closed the window he'd flown in. Well, that would make getting out of here fun. There were three of them, two mares and a stallion, peering around at the mess he'd made of the first haystack. His grin got broader. The barn floor was now completely covered with a thick layer of hay, much better suited for playing and romping on than the hard stone had been. Stupid ponies couldn't see what an improvement he'd made. All they cared about was that it was a mess.

Then the mare who hadn't spoken yet looked up, and met his eyes for a long terrifying second before shouting. "Th-the critter! It, it's up there!"

They all looked up. And then the stallion charged at him. "I'll chase him down from there! White, you get the net! Sharp—"

"I'm already on it, Brick!" The yellow mare, the one who'd been talking about his exploits, grabbed up a pitchfork in her forehooves and lifted it so she could clamp down on it with her teeth, while the small white mare who'd been the first to see Discord ran to the wall of the barn to grab a net, and the large orange stallion began bucking the haystack Discord was sitting on top of, sending the hay scattering and dislodging the little draconequus from his perch. Startled, Discord fell backward, but caught himself with his wings and flew up toward the rafters of the barn, catching onto them and pulling himself up. He laughed at the ponies beneath him. Try getting me up here, earth ponies! You haven't got wings, you can't even climb, how're you gonna get me now?

He found out a moment later as the orange stallion gave a powerful buck to a support pillar, making the rafters shake. Discord lost his grip and fell, only managing to catch himself with his tail at the last possible moment. White leapt into the air, a large net on a pole held in her forehooves, and almost managed to snag Discord in the net; he had to let his tail release the rafter and let himself drop to avoid it. As he fell, Sharp swung at him with her pitchfork, forcing him to dodge backward, wings flapping desperately. And then he felt something tighten around his dragon leg and yank him. He whipped his head around to see Brick, the stallion, reared up on hind hooves, holding a rope in his forehooves; a rope that was now lassoed around Discord's leg.

Discord flapped his wings as hard as he could and kicked wildly. It didn't help. Brick fell down to four legs again, unbalanced by Discord's struggles, but he'd gotten his teeth around the lasso and now Discord couldn't get free. The stallion yanked with his head, pulled with one hoof, and Discord went flying into the support pillar, crashing against it hard and falling to the ground.

He had no time to try to orient himself before he saw sharp tines aiming down at him. With a yelp, Discord rolled, dodging the pitchfork. Sharp raised it again in her forehooves and Discord swung his tail around at one of her back hooves, wrapping around her leg and pulling the way Brick's lasso had just pulled him. It worked wonderfully. Ponies weren't designed to balance well on their hind legs, so she went crashing to the floor, falling on the rope and holding it in place so Brick couldn't reel Discord in. The moment of respite allowed Discord to grab the rope in his own teeth and bite through it, freeing himself.

White was coming at him with her net spread wide. Discord went low to the ground, almost flat against it, and charged under her, weaving through her legs and making her unbalance and fall over. He raced forward, directly into Brick, who slammed his hooves down in an attempt to stomp on Discord. The draconequus barely managed to dodge, yelping in fear. He rolled, and ran full speed for the barn door.

Sharp was ahead of him, pitchfork aiming at him again. This time, Discord let her slam the pitchfork down toward his tail, and grabbed the handle of it with his tail just before she could stab the tines into it, pulling it free from her and flinging it away. As she reared back in startlement, he leapt, using his wings and his back legs to get lift, and landed on her face. She screamed, shaking her head wildly in an attempt to dislodge him. Discord took a quick opportunity to lean down into her face, make googly eyes directly into hers, and lick her nose with his long slurpy tongue. Then he leapt off her again, leaving her screaming and wiping at her face frantically with her forehooves, and flew.

The lasso landed around his neck this time. Discord twisted his body around as Brick pulled him in and went with the motion, flying directly at Brick. Brick got his forehooves up to defend himself against Discord, but this was a mistake, because with Discord's wings and extremely flexible body, it took only a small motion on his part to point himself downward so that instead of flying directly at Brick's face, he hit Brick's now-exposed belly, knocking the stallion on his backside. He grabbed the stallion's head with his talon, pushed it back, shoved his own muzzle up against the stallion's vulnerable neck, and used his nose and tongue to tickle his assailant on the neck. Brick shrieked, thrashing his hooves, but on his back he had limited freedom of motion and Discord got the stallion's forehooves pinned easily with his lion paw and his tail.

"Brick! Hold it off, I'll save ya!" Sharp shouted, which was Discord's cue to go. He bit through the rope again – his neck was flexible enough that lassoing him around his neck did not in fact prevent him from getting his teeth into position around the rope – and flew straight up, so that when Sharp charged at him with her pitchfork, she tripped over Brick and the pitchfork went flying into a bale of hay. Discord giggled at the sight.

Pausing to laugh rather than put all of his effort into flight was nearly his undoing. White's net landed around him, pulling him down and dragging him. Discord struggled frantically against the net for a moment, trying to claw and bite it, but it was tangled around too many of his body parts and his thrashing was making it worse. White successfully pulled him to the ground. "Got him!"

"All right, I'm ending this!" Sharp yelled. She'd lost her pitchfork, but acquired a shovel, and she was running at him with it in her mouth, eyes red with rage, and Discord was trapped in a net and couldn't get away from the shovel. He screamed in terror, and the ropes of the net turned into slippery strands of pasta, which broke easily under his struggles. As Sharp swung her shovel down at his head, Discord charged forward again, under her, dodging another brutal buck from Brick, and straight at the wall. Be strings be strings be strings! The wall responded to his power, parting around him like the strings it wasn't, and he was outside and free, laughing hysterically as he ran.

The ponies inside charged out of the barn and around the side, since Discord had escaped through a wall that didn't even have a door in it. "Get him!"

Most things that ponies could do, Discord could do better. But he was well aware that when it came to raw speed, earth ponies' longer, stronger, more even legs were a lot faster than his were. So he ran for the cornfield and dove into it, dodging through the rows. The ponies couldn't see his long, low body underneath their own cornstalks, and while occasionally a rustle tipped them off as to where he was, by the time they thundered over there with their big, clunky, powerful bodies, Discord would already be somewhere else. Only a little while after retreating back into the forest, Discord heard them give up in disgust, and giggled quietly to himself. Ponies were stupid. Once again, he'd won.

Back at his den, he caroled to his friends, "I'm home! Did you miss me?"

Fire burned sullenly, sulking, but leapt up in happiness and gratitude as soon as Discord fed it some twigs. "I've got a couple more nice logs for you if you're good," he told Fire. "I just want you to boil some water for me so I can make some nice corn, ok?" Fire jumped up and down, obviously eager for the task. Discord grabbed one of the clay pots he'd stolen from ponies, took it outside to the stream that ran near his den, and filled it with cool water, then brought it back. "Here you go, Fire. Make it nice and hot for me, and I'll feed you the corncobs when I'm done."

As Fire worked on boiling the water, Discord went to the back of his cave, to a rock ledge where his best friend, his most precious possession, lived. He'd transformed a large boulder into a crystal dome, impervious to fire and resistant to water, to cover her, to protect her from the weather and his other friend Fire. Discord lifted the dome and pulled out a stuffed animal. "Hi, Little Sister! Did you miss me?"

Little Sister's mismatched felt eyes shifted, coming to life as they moved to focus on him. "Discord! I'm so glad you're home!" she said. "Did you get something good to eat?"

"Oh, yeah, great stuff. I got cheese and milk and corn on the cob! And butter for the corn, too!"

"Can we play with the butter again? Can we, can we?"

"Not tonight, but I'll go back tomorrow and get lots more butter and then we can." He grinned. He was still mad at the dairy ponies for attacking him, and exhilarated at his victory in escaping them. His narrow escape had left him too worn out to play much tonight, but tomorrow, he planned to hit them again, to pay them back for attacking him like that. He didn't need more milk and cheese, he wouldn't for some time given all he'd taken, but he could always use extra butter for a toy, so he planned to take a lot of their butter tomorrow.

Discord had found Little Sister discarded on a trash heap, several seasons ago. She'd been a pink unicorn pony, the size of a small pillow, with fluffy, fur-like cloth covering her that had once been soft and silky, but the weather had turned her fur ratted and crunchy and unpleasant. Animals had torn her up, ripping off her eyes, biting her horn in half, and tearing away the whole back half of her body, legs, flank, tail and all.

Discord's magic couldn't make something out of nothing (not yet... he was pretty sure it was possible, and he was working on it, but he did have limits.) And since he didn't often have dealings with cloth, as he didn't wear clothes, his imagination as to what he could do with cloth had been limited. So instead of just trying to make stuff up and stick it on her to repair her, Discord had snuck down further into the valley than he usually went, into the town, at night, and had broken into the tailor's shop to steal fabric. Then he'd repaired the stuffed pony, his own way. Whatever mean pony foal had abandoned her and left her behind on a trash heap didn't deserve her anymore, and she didn't deserve to have to be a pony anymore. He'd decided to make her into a draconequus like him and then she could be his little sister.

One green felt circle and one yellow cotton ellipse had made her eyes, with a sparkly bit of silver shiny fabric for one pupil and a skinny purple rectangle for the other. He'd made her a long tail like his out of black leather, but he hadn't had enough leather to make the tail as long as he wanted, so he had interspersed it with white silk and now her tail looked like the coat of a zebra. A fluffy orange pompom made the end of her tail. He'd transformed an animal bone to be her horn, and then decided that if she was going to be his little sister she needed two, so he'd made a stick into an antler. One back leg had been shaped more or less like a rabbit's, except elongated, made of purple cotton. The other had been a monkey paw, complete with thumbs, made of plaid wool with the green felt he'd used on her eye serving as the color of her palm and fingers. Her front legs had been intact and he wasn't going to amputate one of her pony legs just to make her less symmetrical, so he'd just taken bright blue satin ribbon and wound it around one of her legs to destroy the symmetry. Unlike him, both of her wings were feathered, because he'd made them from the feathers of dead birds that he'd collected all through a hard winter, in all different colors and sizes, and some of them he'd made into different and interesting colors because none of the birds had been peacocks, for instance, and for her primary feathers he'd used some he'd plucked from his own wing so she would really be related to him.

Since she was a little draconequus, of course she didn't have a name yet because she hadn't yet identified her Principle. Discord felt himself to be practically a grownup; he had his own name, his own Principle – the Principle of Chaos and Disharmony – and he could take care of himself. Little Sister was littler than he was and needed him to take care of her, so she didn't have her Principle yet, thus her name was just Little Sister. He had considered the possibility of giving her a cutie mark, because from the stitching it looked like she had had one before it had been ripped off her, but she wasn't a pony anymore, she was a draconequus. Ponies got cutie marks, draconequui got Principles, and she was really too young for either one. It would probably be one that was related to his, though. Other draconequui who weren't him had had symmetrical bodies, straightforward chimerae of pony and dragon. Like his mother, with her beautiful white fur and rich red mane on her pony-shaped head, and the white unicorn horn on her forehead, and her lovely red and gold dragon wings and paws and tail. Discord liked the asymmetry of his own body, though, so he had decided that his Little Sister would not just be a draconequus but specifically a draconequus like him, with a wonderful fun mixed-up body that had all kinds of different animals in it just like he did.

He had cleaned her and made her fluffy and soft again, and whenever he wanted to play with her, he used his magic to bring her to life. Fire was his first friend, but Little Sister was his best friend.

She fluttered all around him – he had gotten creative with her wings, so even though they were made of feathers, they were shaped like butterfly wings, making her a slow, weak flyer but absolutely adorable when she flew. "Tell me all about your day! Did you have fun? Was it exciting?"

"Oh, yeah, really exciting!" He began to regale her with the story of his adventures, from finding the stallion pulling the apple cart up through his daring escape from the dairy ponies. She laughed, and clapped her forehooves at the good parts, and shared some of his cheese with him (he made an opening in the back of her mouth, and turned the cheese into stuffing as she swallowed it, because if cheese rotted inside her she would smell bad and rats might try to rip her open, but if he turned it into stuffing then she could share his cheese and it wouldn't hurt her.)

As he leaned back against the wall, enjoying the warmth of Fire and munching on his now cooked and buttered corn, Little Sister landed on his shoulder and snuggled against his neck. "Discord, could I have some more decorations on my fur?"

He looked down at her. "What's wrong with your fur? I think you look fine."

"But I don't have enough colors."

"You have a lot of colors. You have as many colors as I do."

"But I'm a girl. I need more colors. You're a boy! Didn't you ever notice how the girl ponies have so many pretty colors?"

"I think their word is 'filly', not 'girl'. And I never noticed. It looked to me like the mares and the stallions all have the same kinds of colors."

"Uh-uh." Little Sister shook her head vigorously. "The girls are prettier, and I'm a girl. I want more colors!"

Discord sighed. "I don't have any more cloth laying around... the rats got it." His eyes fell on the burlap sack he'd used to carry the milk and cheese. "Hey, what about this?"

"Well, that's just light brown. That's not pretty."

"My paw is light brown!"

Little Sister rolled her felt eyes. "Duh, you're a boy, big brother," she said. "You can be handsome, not pretty."

"Oh, fine, it's scritchy anyway." He concentrated on the burlap sack. "You haven't got any yellow except for the one eye, would you like some yellow?"

"Sure! Yellow is nice and sunny! And lots of flowers are yellow!"

"Okay, then, yellow coming right up." He focused his magic on the rough-woven cloth, reached out to the patterns around it, and altered its properties. Light brown to yellow. Rough weave to soft and smooth like a flower petal. Then flower petal, a living thing that would decay and rot, to non-living thing that would stay feeling like a flower petal forever. Finally, he made it separate into lots and lots of random shapes, and tossed the shapes in the air. "Fly, Little Sister!"

Little Sister flew into the cloud of random yellow shapes, laughing as they landed on her. Wherever a shape fell on her body, Discord's magic fused it into place, so by the time all the yellow cloth had fallen, she was covered with soft yellow splotches. "Yay! I'm so colorful now!" She hugged him with her tiny soft forelimbs, which were too small to go all the way around his neck. "Thank you, Discord! I love you!"

He reached his lion paw up to her and pressed her body against his neck. "I love you too, Little Sister." He yawned. "But I'm getting tired. I've done a lot of transformation magic today. And a lot of flying! I bet my wings are gonna be super strong if I keep doing all this flying."

"Yeah! You'll be the best flyer ever!"

"Uh-huh. But now I wanna go to sleep."

Little Sister pouted. "We hardly even got to play. I wanted to be explorers!"

"Tomorrow we can be explorers," Discord promised. "And also play with butter."

"Yay!"

He picked her off his neck and laid her down on the stone floor. "I'm gonna get up early tomorrow so I can go get food quickly, and then I can come home early and we can play all afternoon, does that sound good?"

"That sounds great," Little Sister said. "I can't wait!"

"Me neither." Discord curled his body up on the leaves he kept scattered all over his floor for softness, and lay his head down on Little Sister. With a thought, he made Fire burn low so it would still be alive in the morning when he woke up to feed it again. "Good night, Little Sister," he said, adjusting his head on his pillowy stuffed friend.

"Good night, Discord."

He withdrew his magic, letting her de-animate and go to sleep for the night, since he figured it wouldn't be comfortable for her to be alive and awake with his head resting on her all night. Then he curled his lion paw around her head, laid his talon on top of her tail, and went to sleep holding his best friend.

Author's Notes:

The joke about the apples was probably funnier and more startling back before Fluttershy became a fruit vampire in canon. C'est la vie.

Yes, cows in my version of ancient Equestria spoke Minnesota Nice. :-)

Adults, looking back on their lives, can recognize that "fire" and "my stuffed animal that I used magic to pretend was alive" do not actually count as friends. Small children have less perspective on the matter.

It is not clear how old Discord is in this chapter because he can't count and he's terrible at keeping track of time (the dyscalculia won't last once he gets some education, but he'll never learn to keep track of time well), so he has no idea, but I am imagining that he was about 5 when the other draconequui vanished and that now he is about 8. or at least, in human terms. In terms of size, he is bigger than the equivalently-aged pony foal, but his legs are actually shorter so on four legs he's not tall so much as he's long.

Not that it's important, but the dairy farm Discord stole from belongs to the Cheddar family. So, White Cheddar, Sharp Cheddar, and either Brick Cheddar or Cheddar Brick, I'm not sure which. :-) Also, Discord does not know the word for raisin.

Ponies were not as humane to non-speaking animals in old Equestria as they are in modern Equestria; yes, those ponies might have killed Discord if they'd managed to stab him with the pitchfork. They are seeing him as something like a sharp-toothed wild pest the size of a dog with a freaky lizard tail and also he can fly; most creatures would be totally freaked by something like that in their barn. Discord has plainly already begun a long and illustrious career of creating what he sees as harmless chaos for ponies who want him dead because of it. Also a long and illustrious career of overconfidence being his downfall.

The second half of this chapter should be out fairly shortly. I'm rotating through my incompletes now, and this chapter ended up running long, so I broke it in half.

The Feral Child 2 of 2

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Normally Discord spent a significant portion of his mornings goofing off before settling down to the serious business of finding food. Today, however, he had a mission. Go early, get something fun to play with, and spend his afternoon with Little Sister. Also, get back at those ponies who had nearly skewered him with a pitchfork.

First were morning chores. Normally he put these off until after noon, since normally his first few hours of wakefulness were spent playing, but he had stuff to do today. He took the water from his corn last night, now cooled, and brought it to the back of the cave, in the cool dark region where sunlight never penetrated and even Fire's light and heat rarely reached. In that area he had a large wooden crate, which he had packed with dirt and clay all along the inside walls and used his powers to make it harden like his ceramic pots. He'd then filled it with water and borne down on the water with all of his willpower to make it turn to ice, and hollowed out the center of the ice to make a place to keep his milk jugs. Discord carefully poured the water in, turning it to ice as it fell, lining the hollow in his icebox with it to replenish what might have melted yesterday.

He removed a milk jug from the icebox. From a second wooden crate lined with homemade ceramic, one that did not contain ice, he took out a cheese brick, a butter stick, and an ear of corn. He kept short-lived perishable food like his milk in the icebox, somewhat longer-lived food in the second crate where rats and bugs couldn't get in at it, and food that could last a very long time in jars, such as dried fruit, or the tree nuts that were the only food he could usually find in his own forest.

Half a stick of butter went into a pot, which he sat on Fire. With his talon he sliced corn kernels off two cobs and let them fall into the pot, then fed the cobs to Fire. He put a lid -- oversized, none of Discord's lids fit his pots since he stole all his cookware or fished it out of the garbage, but it was close enough -- on the pot, then balanced a ceramic bowl carefully on top of the slightly rounded lid. Again he used his talon, this time shaving his cheddar cheese brick and letting the shavings fill the bowl.

By the time the corn kernels in the pot were done exploding into fluffy popcorn, the cheese in the bowl had melted into goo. Discord took his popcorn off of Fire, dumped in a bunch of nuts, dried grapes and dried apples from a jar, stirred with a smooth stick he'd peeled the bark off of, and poured the melted cheese on top of the mixture. He then ate the cheesy popcorn, nut and fruit mix with his paws, directly out of the pot, being careful not to touch the hot ceramic, and washed it down with milk.

He set the dirtied pots outside his cave for the bugs and the animals to eat them clean. Discord never bothered to clean anything; whatever the bugs didn't get, he'd bake to carbon smears by putting the pots directly in Fire later on, and if there ever got to be so much ash buildup on his pots that it was affecting the taste of his food, he'd use his powers to turn the ash into ceramic and re-glaze the inside of the pot. He washed himself frequently because he loved to play in water and he loved the different funny smells of the soaps he stole from ponies and playing with soap bubbles was a lot of fun, and he washed Little Sister when she got dirty, but he never washed anything else.

As his last task before leaving, he picked up Little Sister, brushed off the dirt from the ground she'd acquired by being his pillow, and snuggled her against his cheek. "Goodbye, Little Sister," he said. "I'm gonna go get some butter so we can play!"

He didn't animate her, so she didn't respond. Carefully, so as not to disturb her sleep, he put her back on her shelf and re-covered her with her protective crystal dome.

Then, with a full belly and a spring in his step, he headed out of the cave, to go down the mountain and steal from ponies.

Very quickly he remembered why he didn't usually eat breakfast before going on his adventures. After gorging himself on cheesy popcorn, he found he had much less stamina than usual; he acquired a stitch in his side after only a few minutes of vigorous trotting. This wouldn't do at all.

Discord went to the stream that ran near his cave and began walking through it, hopping from rock to rock, splashing into the stream and letting the cool water run over his feet to invigorate himself. He was slower this way, but slower was better with the muscle cramps in his side; the important thing was to go slower in a way that wouldn't bore him, because if he just tried going slower on the path, he'd get bored and try to speed up.

Soon he reached where the stream ran into the river, which gave him a great idea. A few minutes trotting by the banks of the river brought him to the large fallen oak he remembered from his last trip to the river; the tree had toppled into the river some time ago, and the top half of it, where there had been branches, was mostly worn away, but the bottom half was still a fairly firm tree trunk. Discord focused his magic on it, telling parts of the wood to rot and turn goopy, then to liquefy and run off, until he had carved away a section of tree trunk about the length of his body and hollowed it out. More magic forced the ends to grow together and bend up, until the tree trunk was an impromptu, lumpy, uneven canoe. Discord pushed the canoe out into the river, first walking and then swimming behind it, until it had enough clearance that he could pull himself into it.

The first two times he tried, he capsized the canoe, flipping it over with himself underneath. This was annoying as heck. Discord could breathe under water, but every time he changed from water to air or vice versa, there was a moment of gasping panic as his body tried to shift from one type of oxygenation organ to another, and going from one to the other always made him feel like there was something around his neck choking him in the moments before his gills opened up or closed off. He didn't want to simply stay underwater, though, because the current was fast and unpredictable in places, and he could easily get caught and smashed into a rock. If he was in a canoe, his canoe would smash into the rock, not him, and his distance vision was a lot better above water, so he'd have better luck seeing the rock in time and paddling away from it. The third time, he got in by throwing one arm and his tail over the side of the canoe first and then kicking with the arm and leg that were still underwater, until the canoe flipped, and he beat his wings and twisted his body just enough to fall into the canoe instead of being pulled over the side into the water again.

The canoe was just wide enough that if Discord held onto its sides in the front, with his arms, he could dangle his legs off either side of the canoe into the water and kick, and this was how he paddled. Occasionally when he had a current to fight he would let his tail fall into the water on one side of the canoe or the other, and use it to provide extra power.

This lasted until his canoe got caught by the rapids, at which point Discord needed to keep all his limbs inside the canoe and braced against it just to make sure he wasn't thrown out of it. The canoe was flung through the water at high speed, smashing against rocks hard enough to punch holes in it, then spinning off again through the rushing water. Discord frantically focused his magic on the canoe, making the holes seal over, which didn't prevent him from being thoroughly soaked with cold river water or keep the water level inside the canoe from rising every time it happened. Sometimes as they approached an underwater rock Discord would flap his wings desperately, lifting the canoe just enough to clear the rock, and this kept him from losing the entire bottom of his canoe at once, but mostly he was unable to do anything except ride it out as the rapids bounced his canoe off rock after rock, lifted him up and down, and spun him with great force. Discord's heart beat wildly with a mixture of exhilaration and terror, and his paws clung to the canoe so tightly the knuckles under the fur of his lion paw had gone white.

And then he saw the waterfall up ahead.

"Oh poop--"

He barely had time to scream before what felt like a wall of water slammed down on him. Even with gills open Discord wasn't going to be able to breathe in this, and what he'd seen before going over the edge and being sucked under the water was that the ground was very very very very far below him. For a few moments he thrashed, trying uselessly to swim to the edge of the falling mass of water, before it struck him how little that was going to help him. He was falling, and if the water driving him down with its weight didn't crush him when he hit the ground, gravity itself would.

Up is down, up is down, up is down! It was several seconds before the magic clicked; falling to his death wasn't good for his concentration. Then the world inverted, and Discord, his canoe, and some quantity of the water from the waterfall arced in the opposite direction, falling away from the waterfall. As they burst out of the mass of water, Discord could see again. Above him, the ground, green grass and gray rocks and silver water up above his head. Below him, endless, bottomless blue sky, and he was falling down into it, falling forever.

Discord screamed, and screamed, thrashing his limbs and beating his sopping wet wings in too uncoordinated and chaotic a fashion to get any lift at all, as he fell into the infinite well of the sky. Okay, okay, go back, down is down, let down be down!

This time the water and the canoe did not come with him; they continued to fall upward into the sky. Only Discord himself started falling back to the ground again. The world spun around him, sky returning to up, land returning to down, and now his plunge was decidedly not bottomless. There was a very visible and very finite end to it, rushing toward him.

For just a few moments, he decided that down was sideways. This was somehow even worse than the bottomless sky; as he fell perpendicular to ground and sky, he realized that he was plunging toward the horizon, a thin line where sky and earth met, and it seemed to him that the narrow meeting of the two must mean that if he were to fall into it, it would squash him, turn him into a line as narrow as the horizon itself. No. He made down up again, fell enough into the sky to gain altitude, and then reversed it, high enough from the ground that by now, after multiple reversals and a commensurate lessening of his panic, he could actually get his wings under control. They were small, and asymmetrical, and he wasn't a strong flier, so all his frantic wingbeats were doing were slowing his descent and allowing him to change his direction to "forward and down" rather than straight down, but that was enough. Discord aimed himself at a cloud, and plowed into it, sliding across its puffy soft surface fast and hard enough that he'd have fallen off the edge if he hadn't been digging in with claws and tail and hoof, as hard as he could, while he slid.

He came to a stop with his head hanging off the edge of the cloud, but enough of the rest of his body on it that he was able to safely sit up, and then fall backward against the cloud, lying on it. For a few moments he panted. And then he began to laugh.

"That was awesome! I gotta tell Little Sister about this! That was like the best stunt ever!"

With survival guaranteed, the adrenaline of his fear converted to exhilaration, and he laughed and laughed in delight at the rush his experience had just given him. The last few times he'd decided to ride the river, he had caught up with it much further down the mountain, below the waterfall; this was the first time he'd dealt with the rapids, and while he'd technically known there was a waterfall, having seen it from below, he hadn't really been thinking about it when he'd decided to canoe down the river from close to home. Now he had survived the rapids, and the waterfall, and he was up on a cloud, just like a pegasus!

Which, of course, begged the question of how he was going to get down.

Discord knew he wasn't good enough at flying to safely descend on wingpower. But he was very exposed up here. The occasional dragons that hunted in the mountains left ponies alone, but they'd make off with goats or deer if they could, so Discord was fairly certain that they'd take him for prey if they saw him. Also, ponies hated and feared him, and he was up where pegasi could easily see him if there were any around. He couldn't afford to stay on a cloud; plus there wasn't any food up here and he couldn't control the cloud's direction.

The cloud reminded him of the canoe; he was floating on the air in a cloud the same way he'd floated on a canoe in the water. And the canoe had sunk deeper into the water when it had acquired holes in it and the water had flowed in. Maybe he could punch holes in the cloud and let air in?

He soon discovered it didn't work like that. He could punch a hole in the cloud with his tail, but that didn't seem to change the aerodynamics of the cloud at all. This was going to take using his magic.

First he tried making the cloud sink like a rock would. Very quickly he decided this was a bad idea, as he and his cloud plummeted rapidly, fast enough that even though he released the spell in seconds, the cloud continued to fall for another second or two before regaining its buoyancy. Then he tried making the cloud behave like a feather, which made him quite dizzy as the light wind pushing his cloud down into the valley flung and spun the cloud the way it would a feather. Eventually he hit on the way floating balloons would slowly lose their floatation property and sink to the ground, and drained "floatness" out of the cloud for the next twenty minutes until it finally drifted to Earth... at which point, having lost all of its floatness, it went flaccid and flat the way an actual balloon would.

Discord laughed for a solid five minutes at the flat cloud on the ground. Every time he thought he had it under control and he could move on toward his target, he noticed something else silly and disconcerting about the cloud being flat, like that it had wrinkles in it or there were lumps in it where it draped over rocks, and he'd start laughing hysterically again. Finally, though, the hilarity of a flat cloud wore off, and he was able to move on, only occasionally giggling to himself as he remembered the cloud.

There were no convenient produce carts rolling down the road for Discord to stow away on. He waited for what seemed like a very long time, but only ponies, unhindered by carts, walked the road. This was disappointing. Discord knew from experience that some days, ponies just didn't go to the market, but he couldn't tell why not; it wasn't the weather, ponies never went to market on rainy days but they also had days they didn't go when it was perfectly nice, like today. He wondered if somepony ran around to all the farms every morning to tell the ponies whether it was a market day or not.

Still, it wasn't much of a hardship for him to run from branch to branch through the trees that lined the road, staying out of pony sight. Since he'd cut his trip time down from the mountain by a good bit with his river-and-cloud adventure, and barely used his paws for any of it, he was in good shape for tree-traveling. His wings ached a little, but deep inside tree cover he was too big to use them much anyway; he could barely even spread them with the branches so thick around him, which was excellent because it meant that even pegasi couldn't get in at him. It wasn't impossible for ponies to climb trees, but it was very difficult for them. He, on the other paw, could live in a tree if he wanted to.

Before long he reached the farm with all the butter, the one he'd hit yesterday. He snuck in the same way he had last time. Once again, there was the yellow pony who'd kept trying to kill him, churning butter. Once again, she didn't notice him. She did keep lifting her head and looking around, this time, but she was looking at the windows and doors. Discord had come through the wall again, and was hiding back in the racks where the butter was stored.

He reached out to the shelf, and stopped. There was an aura there, brighter and more colorful than the energy flows he saw beneath the earth, though he couldn't have said exactly what color it was. Discord peered at it intently, focusing into it, trying to see the pattern and understand it.

There was a piece that said "make a loud noise". And there was a piece that made a boundary, and there was a piece that said what that boundary should be shaped like. His eyes went back and forth, reading the magic and comparing it to reality. The boundary was designed to go around the shelves. And there was a piece that looked for the boundary to be touched on its outside, and another piece that linked that to the loud noise, and then a piece that said "except if this" and that went to a piece that was checking for something. He inspected that piece more closely. Oh. It was checking for pony-ness.

The structure assembled itself in Discord's head. It was an alarm. The boundary went all around the shelves, making an invisible wall of magic. If anything that wasn't a pony touched the outside of that boundary, the loud noise would sound. Clever, clever ponies. They thought they'd beaten him. He couldn't make himself be a pony, so he couldn't touch the wall without setting it off.

However, it wasn't designed to keep out magic, only paws. And it wasn't designed to be triggered if something that wasn't a pony touched it from the other side.

Grinning, Discord pointed a claw at the butter sticks and made them have legness. And with legness came what usually came with legness, movingness. The butter sticks grew little legs and milled about for a bit before Discord gave them a focus -- come to me. Then they walked to the edge of the shelves, jumped, and stumbled through the barrier and into his paws. He made all the butter on the shelf jump off and walk to him. Then he made some burlap sacks that were hanging on a post across the room start flapping themselves and flying to him. The pony churning the butter was looking down at her work intently and didn't notice a thing. Even when she looked up, she was still looking at windows and doors, not at the sacks hanging on the wall. Discord stuffed several sacks full of butter and crept back out of the barn, going through the wall again directly into the cornfield. He dug a hole to connect to his hole in his cave and made all the butter walk through, out of the sacks, to the other side. He then tied the sacks around his middle so he'd have them available for the rest of the thieving he planned to do today.

First things first, though. How could he possibly enjoy his triumph over the stupid ponies if they never saw his achievement until after he was gone?

He snuck back into the barn. Carefully he gauged the distance to the rafters. It would be hard to fly up there under his own power, but if he made his up into down, he'd fall most of the way and could easily break his fall with his wings. That would work.

With a small snicker, he poked the boundary with his tail. And then inverted his up and down and plunged toward the ceiling as a loud whooping alarm went off. He wrapped himself around a rafter, twining his tail around it, and flipped his down back to down so he could look down at the chaos that was about to ensue, rather than craning his head up. The butter churning pony was running up and down the aisles, shouting for her relatives, looking for evidence of Discord's presence. When she found the row with the missing butter, she stared so hard Discord thought her eyes would pop out of her head.

This was going to be hilarious.

He reached out and animated the cheese bricks on the shelf behind the pony. As they began leaping off the shelves, she turned in startlement, and then stared in horror. And then she ran.

When she came back to the barn with her two relatives, they began frantically attempting to catch the cheese. Meanwhile, Discord animated the milk jugs on another row, making them jump. Of course, being glass jugs, most of them broke, spilling the milk everywhere, so he pulled milk up into small liquid twisters, like whirlpools of milk floating in air. The white pony ran headlong into one, slipped and fell, and started screaming hysterically.

And then she looked up.

Discord waved at her, grinning. He concentrated, turned the roof over his head into strings, inverted his gravity, and let himself fall into the air, through the roof. Falling into the sky was still just as terrifying as it had been this morning, but this time Discord knew what to expect; he reverted his gravity as soon as he thought he was up high enough that his small wings could get him down to the tree cover. Underneath him and behind him, he saw the three earth ponies charging through their fields, searching for him, but while they were scanning the skies, they weren't looking high enough. Falling into the sky was much, much faster than a typical pegasus launch, and Discord had reverted himself when he was well above the level the pegasi usually flew at, figuring he needed lots and lots of runway to make it down to the tops of the trees. The only reason Discord could see them was that when he chose to, he could shift his eyes so they could see far, far away. It was similar to the way he could make his limbs sync to each other and let three of them adopt the properties of the fourth, so he could make them all behave like the goat leg when he needed to run fast up a hill, or all behave like the dragon leg when he needed to climb rocks, and so on. His talon came from an eagle, and eagles could see at great distances – he knew this, not because he had been taught it, but because when he looked at eagles with his magic and saw the properties they had, the chief property of their eyes was in seeing well at a long distance. So Discord was using eagle vision to look down, and they merely had pony vision, and earth pony vision at that. They could see him if they looked straight up, but they didn't seem to want to. And the noontime sun was high enough that Discord's shadow on the ground was only the tiniest of dots, as the light shone almost straight down around him.

Once he was safely in the trees, he traveled from tree to tree along the roadside again, looking for a specific farm. The trees started thinning out, too widely spaced for him to just jump from branch to branch, but not too far for him to fly from one tree to another. His wings were getting very, very sore, but he imagined how strong and powerful they'd be and how good he would be at flying after he'd exercised them this hard. Before long the oaks and maples of the roadside woods had turned into apple trees.

Apple trees weren't good cover for him, but if he was right about which farm this was, if he followed the apple trees in away from the road he should encounter a vineyard, and that would offer him almost as much protection as the cornfield had. As he snuck through the orchard, he giggled to himself, remembering the total chaos as the three ponies had run frantically around their dairy storage shelves. And they'd even put a magical ward in place, too! Now that he thought about it, he wondered how they'd pulled that one off. No earth pony he'd ever met could cast complicated magic like that; generally, only unicorns could. But from listening to the earth ponies grumble about the unicorns, Discord would have thought they'd have sold their own mothers before admitting to a unicorn that they needed help. Wow, he must have really gotten to them. He snickered. Not that any unicorn's magic was a match for his. They could weave all the complicated spells they wanted, and Discord would still find a way around them, because he was smarter than ponies.

He found the vineyard, and dropped to the ground, sneaking through the vines. They were hung on wooden trellises staked deep into the ground, but when he clambered over the trellises, the vine growth was thick enough that most of him was hidden. Other times, he made the vines bend out of his way and the trellis itself become strings for a moment, or acquire the properties of cloud or water or something else that Discord could slip through easily. The grapes themselves were delicious. Discord had eaten about a dozen apples on his way in, without storing any, but he could always make room for grapes.

This wasn't a dairy farm, so he didn't need to worry about cows. Given the pony propensity for naming themselves after their talents, this farm, which appeared to specialize in making delicious apple cider and grape juice, was probably the one the pony had been referring to when he talked about the Quench farm. They made a lot of tasty food out of their apples and grapes as well. It was the storehouse for those treats that Discord was headed for now.

The layout of the farm consisted of the farmers' home; a barn, which mostly contained their tools, as well as haystacks – no matter what farmers grew for profit, they always set aside some land to grow grass for hay, since it appeared to be the main staple of the pony diet; a brewery, where they squished the fruits and turned them into delicious drinks, spoiled weird drinks that tasted kind of bad and made Discord's head spin, and totally awful sour liquid that wasn't even a drink, though sometimes he smelled that ponies mixed it with oil and put a little bit of it on their salads; a place attached to the brewery where they put the drinks (and the yucky stuff) into bottles; and a large cellar that stretched under all the buildings and served as a storehouse for everything yummy. The farmers were all out working in the field today, none of them in the brewery or the bottling place, which was good. Discord couldn't tell what bottles were what, because they didn't have labels yet, and if he pulled the corks out or took the lids off he wouldn't be able to get them back on, and besides there were a lot more bottles down in the cellar. With no one in the brewery or the bottling plant, it was a good bet that probably no one was in the storehouse either.

There were two ways to get from the bottling plant down to the cellar. There was a pair of double doors, locked, which Discord knew from the last time he'd been here led to a ramp down into the storehouse. And there was a large basket, made of metal lattice and lined with woven straw, attached to a rope and pulley contraption, which would go straight down. The basket was not large enough for a pony, but could easily accommodate Discord if he curled up. It was also totally unlocked. He grabbed the rope, figured out which side did what, used his magic to release the catch holding the rope, and used his paws to lower himself by tugging on the part of the rope that made the basket go down.

The cellar was cold. Discord shivered, hugging himself. He didn't like the cold. But the reward for enduring it was right in front of him. Racks and racks of labeled bottles. While Discord couldn't read the labels, he'd learned through trial and error to recognize them. The ones with blocky lines and simple pictures of apples or grapes were the ones for him. The ones with fancy, curly lines on them were the ones that would make his head feel funny and make the world go all spinny if he drank them. And the ones with blocky lines but no pictures were the nasty stuff. Discord collected as many of the nice apple and grape bottles as he could fit in his bags while still leaving room for treats, and added one of the fancy label ones, because sometimes it was fun to drink a little bit of that stuff and get all silly and dizzy and then fall asleep. Not much, because it didn't taste good, but the effects were fun enough to make him overlook the taste once in a while. He didn't take any of the nasty ones. Why did ponies even have bottles of nasty sour liquid that no one would want to drink?

On exploring deeper into the cellar, he found the treats. Jars of dried up grapes and dried flakes of apple. Jars of hay flakes with sugar and the dried fruits – which kept forever, and was the only way Discord could stand to eat hay, otherwise the most boring food in existence. Jars containing mixtures of nuts and dried fruit, a delicious snack that satisfied the same cravings in him that meat did. Jars of canned fruit, juicy-looking and floating in liquid inside glass. He took as many of the jars as he could carry and stuffed them into his bags.

Now he was heavily laden, to the point where he was almost not quite strong enough to carry all these things. The tight-packed earth of the storage cellar was too dense for him to dig a hole, though, so carrying them up and out was the only way. He piled his bags in the basket, tried to hoist himself up with the pulley, realized too late that it was too heavy, and was stymied for a few minutes. If he made up into down, then all his fragile bottles would fall to the top of the shaft and smash. He couldn't simply use telekinesis to lift the basket – unlike the unicorns he saw in the town, Discord couldn't just make things move without any other effect. He could alter the properties of objects, he could make up into down, but he couldn't easily pick things up and move them with his magic the way unicorns could, even if he could make them grow legs and move themselves.

But of course, that was the obvious answer. Discord made the pulley want to turn itself, bringing it to life the way he animated Little Sister, though with a lot less personality. It rotated, squeaking, and brought him up to the top rapidly. The bottling plant was still empty. Discord found that he couldn't easily move all of his bags without the glass items banging against each other and making a lot of noise, so he decided on a more careful strategy.

First he snuck back out to the vineyard and dug a hole, connecting it magically with the hole in his cave. Then he went back, and with great caution, keeping himself as flat to the ground as possible, ears perked up for any sound of approaching hooves, he carried each bag separately, one at a time, and stuffed them down the hole. By the time he was done, his hole was actually full, which was weird because on the cave side it was huge. That implied that Discord had stolen so many yummy things today, he'd actually filled the entire hole. He grinned happily.

Now there was only one thing left to do. This was the dangerous part, but Discord would never forgive himself if he didn't take the risk.

He crept close to the farmhouse. The delicious smell of a yummy pie wafted through the air. Discord went through the wall of the farmhouse and hid hurriedly under a kitchen table. There was an elderly pony bustling around, cleaning up after herself. She'd left the pie on the counter. Discord waited patiently, tail swishing like a cat, until she was washing one of her pots, the sound of metal pots and pans clattering in her basin as she scrubbed them. This made enough noise that he felt safe enough. He darted out, grabbed the pie off the counter, and went under the table.

The old pony turned faster than Discord expected. "What in tarn—What the hay is that?" She grabbed a broom and started poking under the table with it, but by this time, Discord had crawled into the far corner, just out of her reach. That wasn't going to last, he knew, so hurriedly he focused on the wall and made it something he could go through, again.

He was a short distance from the farmhouse when the elderly pony stuck her head out the window and started shouting. "Everypony listen up! Some big weird varmint just snuck into the house and grabbed the pie! All of you better see if you can find it before it gets away!"

At this point Discord recognized the part of his plan that was not perfectly well thought out. Inverting his gravity while holding the pie would probably cause the pie to fall out of its plate, and might result in him losing it entirely. Running on two legs would more or less ensure the ponies could catch him – he was much slower that way – but he couldn't run on four legs and still hold his pie in his paws. And with the way his wings ached, there was no way he was going to get any height on a takeoff from ground level before they found him.

This called for a new strategy. Discord wrapped his tail around the pie. He found that it was actually more pleasant to carry this way – the pie was hot enough that it had been uncomfortably warm in his paws, but his tail could take the heat just fine. Now, he had two options. Hide in the vineyard and hope they didn't find him, or run as fast as he could for the woods.

Hiding was boring, and if they caught him, he'd have little opportunity to get away. Running allowed him to taunt them with how awesome he was, stealing their pie right under their muzzles and getting away with it in front of them. So running it was. He shifted his paws so they'd all work like the lion paw and ran, flat-out, making a beeline for the trees near the roadside.

Of course the ponies saw him. "There he is!" Discord glanced back at them, and swallowed. Ponies were some of the fastest creatures in the world. They were gaining on him and would plainly intercept him before he made it to the trees. Changing his direction at random wouldn't help very much, because what he gained in confusion he'd lose in having to cover more distance. Time to try something.

Discord focused hard on the ground beneath his feet. Be like ice, be like ice! He didn't want it cold, just smooth and slippery, but he couldn't keep his focus tight enough, and the ground actually iced over, turning as smooth and slick as a pond in winter. Discord was prepared for the change, and his lion paws, with their soft padding, were well equipped for sliding, so the moment the ground turned to ice, he stopped running and let momentum push him forward. He shifted his dragon leg back to its own properties and used it to kick, while the other three feet all behaved like lion paws and let him skid forward.

Ponies, neither so well equipped for skating nor as prepared to expect it, slipped, skidded, and fell behind him, the fastest and closest ones only losing their footing that much faster. Discord laughed at them tauntingly. If he wasn't genuinely worried about what would happen if they caught up with him, he might have stopped to giggle hysterically, because the sight of ponies slipping and falling, trying to get up and then having all four hooves skid out from under them in opposite directions, was incredibly funny. "Thanks for the pie, ponies!" he yelled back at them as he skated away, knowing they couldn't understand him – he understood pony reasonably well, but no pony he'd encountered seemed to realize that the draconequus tongue was even a language.

By the time the magic faded and the ponies were able to renew their pursuit, Discord had made it to the trees, where his small wings were sufficient to get him up high enough that ponies couldn't hope to climb after him, or even see him in the tree cover. He heard them bucking trees a distance away from where he was, shouting to each other about trying to knock "that varmint" onto the ground, but they had no idea how fast he could move through the high branches, and oak trees weren't nearly as responsive to bucking as apple trees anyway. As much as he wanted to laugh at them, he kept it to a muffled snicker until he was far enough away that there wasn't any real chance of them catching him.

Then he sat down in the oak tree he was currently perched in, tail wrapped around the branch for security, and proceeded to eat half the pie then and there.

With a belly full of pie and other treats, he couldn't face making the trek home without a nap. He dropped the rest of the pie on the ground below the tree and stretched out to sleep on a tree branch, tail still twined around it and paws wrapped around it, claws dug into the bark.

By the time he finally got home, he was very, very sore, and considered putting off his butter play date with Little Sister until tomorrow. But he had promised.

"Little Sister!" He lifted the dome off her and gathered her up in his arms, his power reaching out to her to wake her up. "I'm back!"

"Discord!" Her eyes came to life, focusing on him. "Yay! I'm so happy! Did you get butter?"

"Tons of it! And milk, and cheese, and fruit, and juice!" He opened one of the bottles of grape juice and chugged half of it. "Wanna play?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" She clapped her paws together.

The thought occurred to Discord that he didn't actually need to smear butter all over everything – if he could turn the ground to ice, couldn't he just give trees and rocks the trait of "slippery"? But he felt that peculiar hollowness he got when he was running low on magic, and his head hurt a little, so he didn't want to push it. If he used up all his magic, what would keep Little Sister alive?

He warmed the butter up by putting it in the pot and setting it over Fire, and then added some leaves and twigs and other fast-burning materials to Fire to get it woken up too. The ache in his magic eased some as Fire roared to life; he couldn't feel it unless he'd been really pushing himself to his limits, but when he was depleted like this, he could feel that Fire burning things filled his magic back up a little, the same way it made him warm. What he needed was mushy butter, not liquid butter, so it only took a minute or two, and then he took the butter and, with Little Sister's help, spread it all over the trunk of a nearby tree, one that had a smooth bark to begin with. Flying up to the top of the tree was too hard with the way his wings ached, so he climbed up his mountainside a bit for some height, then jumped and flew into the top of the tree, then climbed down to where the branches ended, smeared himself and Little Sister with butter, and slid.

It was more fun to butter the smooth rock that ran down the side of the mountain, near the riverbank, but that took even more butter. Discord and Little Sister shrieked as they slid a good distance down the mountain. Then Discord climbed, and Little Sister flew, back up to the top of the buttery slide and did it again.

By the time they were done playing, Discord was completely worn out, almost too tired to wash himself and Little Sister. The cold water of the stream made him shiver uncontrollably. I should try to get some blankets, he thought. Stealing something right out of one of the farmhouses? Now that would be an amazing trick. Dimly he remembered having a house, a long long time ago, where his mommy used to give him warm baths in a tub full of funny suds to play with. Maybe he would dig himself a tub and use his magic to line it with ceramic so he could fill one up with warm water and soak in it. The only problem was how long it took Fire to heat up even one jug of water; it would take forever to fill the tub. Hmm. What if he dug it so there was room for a second Fire underneath it? Then he could have a plug and let all the water out when it got dirty and it would pour into the dirt and put the second Fire out, because he didn't need two Fires to be his friend. On the other hand that was a lot of work, and certainly not worth undertaking really, really soon. Probably all he need to do was steal some blankets to sleep under or dry off with, and he'd be fine.

He made Little Sister fly in circles above Fire, high enough that no spark would catch on her but low enough to warm her, to make her dry off, while he himself laid on his pile of leaves near Fire and let the blaze warm him. Every so often he would stretch and spread his wings so that Fire could warm them too, because that made the ache feel a little better. Afterward he cuddled up with her, even though she was still a little damp. "This was a really good day, wasn't it, Little Sister?"

"Can we play again tomorrow?" Little Sister asked.

Discord grinned. "I have enough food to last for weeks. We can play as much as we want."

"Yay," Little Sister said sleepily.

There was only so much he could play with Little Sister before getting bored, though. Without the need to go down and find food every day, Discord explored the forest, used up most of his butter playing games, experimented with learning how to canoe better and not crash into quite so many rocks, practiced his flying, and even essayed an attempt at building an earth-sheltered tub with room for a fire underneath it before getting bored and leaving the project half-finished. He found animals, and played with them – catching and releasing them like a large cat; putting them on wooden boats and setting them in the stream to see if they would try to swim; making round, ball-shaped cages for them and putting them inside so he could roll them around... it was lots of fun, and the terrified chittering of the little creatures made him laugh, but he'd learned the hard way years ago that playing with the same animal for too long might make it so scared it would die just from being scared, and he didn't want that, so he always let them go before long. He animated sticks and pretended they were mages having a duel. Usually a unicorn vs. a draconequus. Usually the draconequus won.

Boredom set in. He had enough food that he could go for another month without getting more, but he would run out of milk and butter soon – milk because it would go bad if he held onto it too long and butter because he'd used most of it playing. Besides, he wanted a blanket, and maybe new nice soaps. And life wasn't very exciting when he wasn't testing his wits and skills against the dumb ponies. So it was back to the dairy farm he went.

Once again he approached the barn through the cornfield. Once again he snuck in by making the wall into strings. It was almost becoming a routine. He found the exact same magical trap he'd found last time, set to detect if something that wasn't a pony touched it, and laughed to himself. Ponies were so stupid. This hadn't worked on him the first time, why did they think it would work again?

He made a milk jug jump off the shelf, and caught it before it could break, setting it down beside him. Another, and another—

And then magic blazed to life all around him, a spell he hadn't seen before grabbing him and pinning him down, as the alarm shrieked. Discord thrashed wildly, trying to break the magic's grip. No. He needed to understand what the magic was trying to do so he could come up with a clever way to escape it.

When he read the spell, he felt despair for a moment, before beginning to struggle even harder. The spell was triggered when something passed through the barrier without passing the pony check at the same time. Let it happen three times, and the spell would set off, performing a pony check on everything in the dairy and locking it in place so it couldn't move. So when three milk jugs had gone through the barrier without three instances of pony hooves doing so as well, the spell had triggered, locking the milk jugs and Discord into position so they couldn't get up. Anything that wasn't a pony.

"Caught it!" he heard the big stallion, Brick, shout. "Worked like a charm! Just like they said it would."

The yellow mare, Sharp, trotted up to the stallion. "Ugly thing, isn't it?"

Discord hissed, trying to back away, though the spell holding him tight wouldn't let him do more than raise his back end and lower his front. I can understand you, stupid ponies, he thought angrily. You're really rude, you know that?

"So what do you wanna do? It's held pretty tight there, we could probably bash its skull in with a good strong buck," Brick said. Discord's eyes went wide. He'd seen them trying to kill him the last time, but never actually heard ponies admit outright that that was what they were trying to do.

"No," he pleaded in the ponies' own language, or what he could manage of it anyway. "No, don't! I'm sorry!"

They didn't seem to even register that he was talking. Of course not. Ashamed, Discord admitted to himself that he wasn't even sure another draconequus would be able to understand him anymore. When he'd been transformed that night, he'd acquired a tongue three times longer than what he'd had before, and forked, and his mouth had a fang sticking out of it, and he hadn't been able to talk to any real living draconequus, or any other creature either, since it had happened. Little Sister didn't count, since it was his magic making her talk. His speech even in his own language was slurred, thick-tongued, and he suspected he was pronouncing a lot of it wrong. Pony speech, which he'd never formally learned and just picked up from listening to ponies, was nearly impossible; he simply didn't know how to make the sounds they made, not anymore, if he ever had. So they behaved as if he was making animal noises. "Well, it's a nasty lookin' critter, and a smart'un too; I wouldn't want to try to tame that thing. But I heard those unicorns talking yesterday. Seems as you can sell exotic animals to the circus and they'll pay good hard bits."

"Kick in its head and we can sell its pelt," Brick offered.

"Too small and too many weird shapes. Is that even all one pelt? I can't figure who'd wanna buy that to make a fur coat."

His muscles weren't doing him any good against the magic holding him in place. And he'd already tried inverting gravity; his mane hung straight up when he did and he felt himself to be upside down, but the field still held him. What if he used his own magic against it? Magic wasn't a thing, like a wall he could make into strings or a field he could make into ice. But magic was a rule, like gravity. He could make gravity invert; could he make magic invert?

The third mare, White, arrived. "Oh earth below what is that thing?"

"It's the critter we nearly trapped in the barn a week ago," Brick said.

White rolled her eyes. "I ain't stupid. But that don't answer the question. You ever seen a critter like that ever before?"

"Nope."

No. He couldn't just invert the magic. Gravity was a very, very simple rule – things fell toward the place gravity pointed at. Point gravity somewhere else and things would fall a different way. The magic was much more complicated. Discord attacked it from every angle he could think of, trying to make the magic be like something else, but it all tied together.

"Looks kinda like a picture I saw in a book once," Sharp said. "Think it was called a wyvern."

"Yeah, but a wyvern's like a little dragon. That thing – that thing's got a dragon tail, but I don't think we can rightly call it a dragon," Brick said.

"Well, whatever. Why don't we find out if we can sell it?"

"I'd feel safer if it was dead."

"I'm for that," White said. "We're in the business of sellin' milk and dairy, not weird exotic critters. How're we even supposed to keep it caged up while we find somepony to buy it? That spell won't last forever."

Wait. He was going about this wrong. Discord panted, terrified but thinking faster than he'd ever before in his life. The magic did have one simple place it pointed – to ponies. Be a pony, and the magic didn't care about you.

Discord couldn't literally make himself into a pony. But he could make the magic think he was a pony, the same way he could make a wall act like it was made of strings when to anyone's eyes it was plainly still a wall. He focused his magic, fear sharpening rather than scattering him. I'm a pony, I'm a pony, you think I'm a pony!

"Well," Sharp said, reluctantly, "I suppose, if you think it's best, we can—"

The magic released him, convinced of his ponyness, and Discord took off like an arrow.

"What the—"

"Tarnation! The spell ran out!"

"It's gettin' away!"

He'd run right under Brick's legs. The stallion didn't even have the presence of mind to buck until all of Discord but his tail was clear, so the hard kick caught his tail and flung it upward, making Discord yelp in pain, but doing no other damage. The three ponies turned themselves around and began chasing after Discord, and as fast as he was moving he knew he still couldn't outrun ponies.

He could turn the ground to ice again, but the idea of doing the same thing he'd done last time made him uneasy. Doing the same thing he'd done last time had just almost gotten him killed, and if he couldn't get away, it still might. Discord's preference was for always doing different things if he could anyway, and this just seemed to reinforce that that was the smart thing to do. So what could he do? He didn't think he could invert gravity on those ponies without touching them or being nearer to them than he wanted to be. Anything they might have done to prepare for ice would be something they could use for any kind of slippery. Inverting his own gravity was how he'd gotten away last time from this farm specifically, so that was suspect as well.

He could make a solid wall take on the property of a thing that wasn't solid. Could he make empty air take on the property of being a wall?

Discord turned his head – they were gaining on him, uncomfortably close – and lashed at the air with his magic. Be a wall!

And White, who was in the lead, hit it head-on.

Discord grinned savagely, but kept running, no breath to spare for laughter. Behind him he heard Sharp break off the chase to attend to her fallen family. Unfortunately, the only reason Brick had been behind White in the first place was that he hadn't gotten himself turned around and launched as quickly. He was actually faster than the two mares. And the wall had only lasted a second, and he hadn't stopped to take care of White like Sharp had.

Well. The ground couldn't be slippery, but what if it was squishy and sticky? Be marshmallow, Discord commanded the earth behind him, and Brick abruptly landed hard on something that squashed under his hooves, and collapsed, and was sticky enough that he couldn't easily pull free. He tumbled to the ground as well, to be caught in the marshmallow, swearing at Discord angrily as he tried to pull himself free. This time Discord did snicker at him, stopping to look for a moment, before turning back to his escape and continuing to run as fast as his legs and lungs would support.

He was completely out of breath by the time he got to the tree line. And he had no milk or butter to show for himself. And he was too shaken and scared, not to mention exhausted from his run, to try stealing anything else today. He wanted to go home and cuddle Little Sister and take his nap there, where he'd be safe.

"...and they said they were going to kill me!" Discord told Little Sister, outraged. "Can you believe that?"

"Ponies are horrible!" Little Sister agreed. "I'm so glad you fixed me so I don't have to be a pony anymore, big brother!"

"I'm gonna show them," Discord said, clenching his paws into fists, almost snarling. "I'm going to go back and get revenge. I'm going to take everything in that dairy farm."

"Don't do that! If they almost killed you, you should stay far away from them!" Little Sister was agitated. "You have to stay safe!"

"Uh-uh. Now that I know their trick, I can fix them good. I'm going to look for magic and I'm going to break any magic I can find, same way I broke the spell they had on me," Discord said. "They thought they could fool me by hiding a spell under their spell. Well, now I know what they do and I'm gonna look for all the spells! It doesn't matter if they put eleventy bazillion spells inside each other, I'm gonna find them all and break them all. And then you know what?"

"I don't like this," Little Sister moaned.

"I'm gonna take all the milk jugs I want and then make the rest of the jugs turn to sugar. And the milk will go right through the sugar and dissolve it and spill all over everything and it will all be ruined and ponies will never get to drink it, because if they wanna kill me just because I want some milk, then okay! We'll play that game. I can play rough, too. I can ruin all their milk. And I can make all their cheese and butter run away into the forest and then the birds and the little critters will get to eat it and that's better than ponies eating it!"

"But what if they catch you?"

"I told you they won't catch me. I know their trick now! I'll go late in the day when they're all inside eating their dinner, and I'll ruin everything they have. And then I'm gonna go back to that other farm, with the pies, and eat their pie, and leave the pie tin right there so they can see I did it."

"But what if they catch you? They didn't use magic to try to catch you, the last time, they just almost did it by chasing you!"

"Well, if they chase me, I'll make the ground into melty chocolate. Good luck running on that, ponies!"

"That sounds like a lot of magic," Little Sister said uncertainly. "What if you run out?"

"Ha! Me run out? I'm getting better and better all the time!" Discord bragged. "And whenever ponies start running around all crazy because I took their stuff or I made something turn weird, and they get upset and they yell? That just makes me stronger!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, I noticed it that day I did the really big haul. So I can't possibly run out of magic, because if they're mad at me and chasing me, that just gives me more magic!" He rubbed his paws together. "I am totally gonna wreck their whole night. Serves them right. Kill me! I didn't even hurt any of them, why do they want to kill me just because I took some food? It's not like they'd give it to me if I asked! What am I supposed to do, starve?"

"It's totally unfair," Little Sister said, nodding. "Ponies are so mean to you, Discord. But I'm so worried! We have plenty of food – can't you stay here and play for a long time until they forget about you? They almost caught you!"

"I can't do that. Then they'll think they can walk all over me! They think I'm an animal, Little Sister. They can't even tell that I'm talking to them!" Tears of frustration welled in his eyes. Was it so much to expect that ponies would at least recognize him as a talking-animal, rather than a speechless beast? Draconequui had always known that ponies were talking-animals, and the Way of Harmony said that you couldn't kill any kind of animal but especially not a talking-animal.

Of course, what good had the Way of Harmony done his mommy and any of the others? They'd still had to go somewhere far away and leave Discord behind...

He swallowed. He wasn't going to cry about that. Not anymore. It had happened three whole winters ago, and he was a lot bigger now and could take care of himself. And someday mommy would find her way back from wherever that place was that she'd gone, right? And he wanted to be able to tell her he had followed the Way of Harmony when she came back. But ponies talked about Harmony a lot and yet they wanted to kill him! That was just wrong.

No, they needed to learn a lesson. And Discord was very, very eager to teach them.

He was the Principle of Chaos, right? Well. He was going to open up a whole jar of chaos on their flanks. Just wait.

It was hard to wait. His strategy was to attack them when they were eating dinner, which for some reason was always right around sunset. How boring. Why did they even want to eat at the same time every day? But that meant he couldn't leave until late in the day. Normally this would suit him fine – he could spend the day playing with Little Sister, or exploring, or any of the other things he usually did. But right now, he was much too focused on his plans for revenge to have fun doing anything else.

As hard as he tried to wait, he ended up getting there early anyway, when the ponies were still working in the fields. Well. He could be patient. Discord hid in the cornfield and settled down to wait.

And wait.

This was unbelievably boring. Playing with an anthill he found alleviated a tiny fraction of the boredom, but not nearly enough. Twice, he almost decided to go prematurely, while they were still in the fields, just because he was so bored.

But finally sunset fell, and the dinner bell rang, and the ponies headed into the farmhouse. And Discord snuck up to the dairy barn.

He inspected for spells. Carefully. There were ones on the doors – apparently they hadn't yet figured out that he kept coming through the walls – and there were ones on the floor, and ones on the shelf. It didn't look as if there was actually anything new. If they were getting a unicorn to come help them, maybe he or she hadn't been able to come today. And anyway if they thought he was a mere animal, they wouldn't think he'd come back for revenge. That was a thing only talking-animals did, because only talking-animals had long enough memories to contemplate responding to an insult a day after it happened.

Discord focused on the properties of each of the spells in turn and warped them. Now instead of looking for anything that wasn't a pony, the spell that had frozen him would look for anything that was a pony. And the wards on the shelves would trigger only if they were touched by ponies. His hack job on the spells wouldn't last long, but it didn't need to. Discord animated all the food in the dairy barn. There was far, far more of it than he could possibly eat before it spoiled, so he gathered the milk and butter he wanted to take, then made the milk jugs all gather together in one place and fly into each other in a small tornado, which rapidly became a whirling hurricane of glass and milk. It was actually hard to stop; by the time he was done smashing all the milk jugs Discord was exhausted, but there was one more thing to do. Spitefully he gave the butter sticks wingness. "Hah, butterflies!" he laughed, using the pony word, since that joke didn't work in his own language. Then he made them hurl themselves like locusts at the outside of the dairy barn, splattering it completely with butter.

Then Brick came out of the farmhouse, apparently drawn by the sound, and charged at Discord with a shout of fury. If he hadn't yelled like that, Discord might have been taken completely by surprise. As it was, he barely dodged the charge.

He heightened the slipperiness of the butter and milk everywhere, making Brick fall and skid into the pile of broken glass. Well, that was an ow. Before Discord could decide whether this called for reluctant sympathy or schadenfreude, Brick flung his lasso. In the dark, Discord hadn't seen it. He yelped as it snagged around his neck, and shrieked as Brick swung him around, flinging him at the side of the dairy too fast for Discord to use his magic to compensate. The blow stunned him, and Brick was easily able to pull him close.

"Ugly thing, aren't you," Brick said. "Welp, better take care of you before Sharp gets out here."

He lifted his foreleg – which required that he drop the lasso – and that was the only thing that saved Discord's life. As soon as the lasso was dropped, Discord was able to twist his body so the hoof slammed down on his bat wing instead of his head. Discord screamed, convulsed like a snake, and raked his claws against Brick's side, making the pony rear up in pain. When he reared, Discord swung his tail against the pony's back leg, hard, knocking Brick over. He bit through the rope, the same way as he'd done the last time Brick had lassoed him, and ran.

"Oh no you don't! You ain't gettin' away this time!"

Brick got to his hooves and gave chase. But it was nighttime. Discord's damaged wing wasn't truly a bat wing, it was a batpony wing, and batponies had night vision. Just as he'd been able to shift his vision to the properties of an eagle's eyes, when he was up high, he could shift it to the properties of a batpony's eyes, and see in the dark. With an injured pony who couldn't see chasing an injured small draconequus who could, in a cornfield, the outcome was never really in doubt. Discord disappeared into the cornfield and left his tormenter behind him.

No night predators challenged Discord on his way home. The mountains were home to bobcats and bears, but they'd all learned to keep their distance from a creature who smelled like ashes and flame, and if any hadn't, they'd have learned why Discord smelled like that. He could summon Fire anytime he wanted to. He'd never had to kill a predator – they always backed away the moment he summoned Fire. As long as he gave their lairs a wide berth and didn't challenge them, they recognized him as too dangerous to try to eat. This was good, because his wing really hurt and he had strained his magic to its limits. If anything had attacked him, he was irritable enough, pumped up on enough adrenaline, and magic-depleted enough that he'd probably have tried to rip and bite it with claws and teeth instead of using his magic.

Little Sister was very upset. "I told you it wasn't safe, big brother!" she wailed. "Now look at your poor wing!"

Discord hissed at her as she approached it. "Don't touch it!"

"It looks like it hurts a lot."

"Yes, how did you figure that out?" Discord snarled, and withdrew his magic from Little Sister, letting her fall to the floor of the cave. He hurt too much to deal with her right now. The wing was broken, he thought, and he didn't know how to use his magic to fix a broken wing.

Well, now was the time to learn, apparently.

He got no sleep that night. Pain kept him awake, pain and his desperate magical experiments to make his wing heal. Making it acquire the property of unbrokenness worked for a few minutes, but just like all of Discord's magic, it didn't stay. He thought he could see a way to make his magic permanent, but doing it would use up all his magic, and he didn't know how long he'd have to wait before he got it back, and what if it didn't work? Trying to make it grow unbroken was as successful as all his other experiments with using magic to make things grow, which is to say it didn't work at all. Giving it the toughness of a dragon wing didn't help because it was already broken. It hurt too much to move it, so he couldn't piece it back together to make the bones stay right.

By morning it had healed, somewhat. Discord didn't realize how absurdly fast this was – his burns from Fire had healed at a similar rate. It ached, and he couldn't use it, but the bone was starting to knit together and the extreme pain had faded. His magic hadn't fully replenished itself, since he'd been experimenting with it all night, but he had enough to bring Little Sister to life.

"Your poor wing," she said sadly, perched on his shoulder and looking down at it. "Well, at least you did get plenty of milk and butter, so you don't have to go back anytime soon, right?"

"Right," Discord agreed. "I could stay here for a month and not go back."

"Yay! I love it when you stay home and play with me!"

"Sure." He forced a smile. "We'll play together a lot!"

But it nagged at him. His pride was hurt as badly as his wing had been. The stupid pony had almost killed him. Again. For the third time. And they got closer each time. And if he didn't go back, they'd think they won, and that infuriated him. The whole point to destroying everything in their dairy barn was to make them realize how much better he was than they were and how dumb they were for fighting him. It hardly proved the point if they almost killed him, and managed to chase him off for a month.

He had to go back. But every time he went back they got closer to killing him. Discord was seriously frightened. What if he did wait a month, until his supplies ran out, and he went back and they were still on the alert for him? What if he didn't manage to get away next time? They'd broken his wing. And it really, really hurt.

The other farm, he thought. The Quench farm. The ponies at the dairy farm knew about him hitting the Quench farm because that was how he'd learned its name, when they'd mentioned it. All the other places he had hit in the past, and the farmers taking their carts to market... he had no idea if the dairy ponies knew any of those other ponies, but they knew about the Quench farm and what happened on it, at least to the extent of knowing that Discord had gone after it. He'd hit there, where so far the worst he'd suffered was nearly being hit with a broom. That would prove that he wasn't unbowed, that he wasn't out of the game. And then he'd take a while off to go through his stores.

He waited a day, playing with Little Sister, letting his wing heal some more. And then he headed for the farm, early enough that the ponies would be in the fields, late enough that there would be yummy things.

In the dim cellar where all the juice and canned fruit were stored, he brought bottles and bottles of the stuff to life, giving them the properties of balloons so they would float, and tiny wings so they could fly. They piled themselves into the dumbwaiter shaft and flew up it, so Discord didn't even need to haul the stuff up. There was too much of it to use his trick with the hole, so he had all the things hide themselves in a bale of hay, where he'd come back for them tonight after the ponies went inside.

And now for pie. This time he found one sitting on a windowsill, cooling. In fact it was cold by now, but he didn't care; it was pie. He grabbed it, hid behind the hay bale, and started devouring it.

He was less than a quarter through the pie when he suddenly felt overwhelmingly sleepy. Funny, the need to nap usually didn't hit him this hard unless he overate by a lot, and a quarter of a pie was nothing, particularly since he had gotten up early enough that he hadn't had any real breakfast, just a pawful of nuts and dried fruit. Discord burrowed into the hay bale. So tired. He brought the pie with him. He'd eat it later, after his nap. He was so sleepy he was actually feeling dizzy, and barely had time to cover himself with hay before sleep took him.

Barking woke him up.

He was groggy, thick-headed. That never happened. Discord was always quick to awaken, even after a nap was cut short. And the sound of barking dogs frightened him, but when he tried to wake up to deal with the threat, he could barely move. Get up, come on, get up! he cajoled himself, but try as he might, he couldn't overcome the terrible sleepiness that still had hold of him.

Then something bit his tail.

Discord screamed. The pain brought him fully alert, but he was still dizzy, the world spinning around him. The teeth in his tail pulled, and he was being dragged out of the hay bale by a growling dog. "Good boy! You found it!" one of the farmer ponies, a blue stallion, said.

"What is that thing?"

"Don't rightly know but it's definitely the critter that's been wreaking havoc."

Discord tried to pull his tail free, but the dog's teeth were well secure. It hurt, terribly, and yet he was still dizzy, and weak, and felt far from alert. The sun had still been high in the sky when he'd gotten here, though on the afternoon side. Now it had descended a quarter of the sky, indicating late afternoon. Discord took a lot of naps, but rarely for this long, and never in potentially hostile conditions like this. A horrible thought occurred to him. None of this was normal for him. Had the pie been poisoned? A sleeping potion in it?

He was surrounded by ponies. Terrified, Discord struggled with the dog, weakly, and then started to cry, from fear and pain. He looked up at the ring of ponies around him. "Please, it hurts, stop, please," he begged. "Stop, dog, you're hurting me, please let go..."

The dog did not let go. "You send them unicorn trappers their message?"

"Sent Apple Berry to go get 'em. She's fast."

"Cheddars wanted to kill the thing."

"That's dumb, it was the unicorns they hired to trap it who wanted to buy it. I think they're takin' it too personal. It's just a dumb animal." The pony who was speaking, a pale green mare, kicked Discord – not very hard, considering how hard ponies could kick, but it hit him in the ribs and made him double over and gasp.

No. No, he wasn't going to lose this way. His head was swirling and he could barely concentrate on anything and he was in so much pain but if he didn't do this, he might die. Discord inverted his gravity, and fell down into the sky. For a few moments the dog followed him, yelping in shock, before it let go of his tail and fell back to the ground, its gravity still oriented normally.

The problem here was that his wing still ached terribly from being broken two days ago. While Discord healed from injury faster than any other creature around, two days was not enough to have his wing back at full strength. So now he was free of the dog, and the ponies, but he was falling into the sky and if he reverted his gravity he'd have to fly on the bad wing.

What he really needed was distance from the ponies. He remembered making the horizon his gravity-point, and how terrifying that had been. No, he couldn't do that. But as he looked up at the ground, he caught a glimpse, upside down, of his mountain. That was where he should point gravity. That was where he should fall toward. Home.

He shifted his focus, flipped as gravity changed around him. For a little while it seemed to work fine; the mountain loomed, far in the distance, and he was falling toward it, fast. But he hadn't compensated for how the forest rose up on foothills before the mountain began, or the size of some of the trees. Discord had only a moment of warning to change his gravity back to the ground before he slammed into the top of a very tall tree. Ribs cracked, and he gasped with pain, before falling down the trunk of the tree, hitting what felt like every branch along the way. When he hit the ground, the combination of the pain, the shock of his injuries, and the drugged pie made him black out.

He was only out for a short while, but it was long enough that sunset was beginning, the sky changing color and the sun huge and orange on the horizon. Why did it look like that when it dropped low, he wondered? Were the unicorns who moved it responsible for that? And why did they always move it in the same direction, and at the same pace? If he was the one moving the sun he'd make it go fast, or do loop-de-loops.

Everything hurt. His tail was still bleeding, and he couldn't move on all fours because the arm his talon was attached to had broken, and a branch had torn a nasty gash along the side of his goat hip. It was bleeding too. There was nothing he could use to bandage himself here; he had to get home. Discord tried to lift into the air, but his wings, while not broken anymore, ached horribly and wouldn't give him lift. Here in the thick of the forest, he didn't dare use his gravity inversion trick; he'd hit tree branches again. So flight was out. He had to make it home on two legs, one of them injured.

For what seemed like hours, Discord limped up the mountain, occasionally forced to go to three legs by the steepness of the incline. He was crying with pain before he'd even gotten halfway there, and he had to stop several times to rest. Stupid ponies. Stupid ponies. He'd just wanted to eat. It seemed like he could still hear the barking of dogs, far away. The thought that maybe he wasn't hearing things, maybe there actually were dogs, spurred him with fear. The sleeping potion hadn't worked its way out of his system yet; he was still dizzy, and groggy, and when he stumbled and fell in the dirt it took all the willpower he had to force himself to get back up and not just go to sleep right there.

He needed his home. He needed his stream to wash his dirty wounds in, because he'd acquired many, many small injuries while his mommy was still with him and she had always washed them carefully, telling him that if he let dirt in them, tiny magical animals that lived in the dirt, so small he couldn't see them, would get into his blood and make him sick. He needed clean cloth to use as bandages to keep the tiny animals out after he washed himself, and make the bleeding stop. He needed milk. He needed to snuggle Little Sister, and sleep in his own bed of straw and leaves, safe in his cave. He couldn't stop and sleep here. He had to get home so he could have those things and then he could sleep. Discord reminded himself of this, over and over, as he staggered up the mountain, trailing blood from his tail. It hurt so much; the bite was on the underside, so if he didn't keep it lifted or turned the injury would drag against the ground, but the bite made it hurt too much to keep it lifted or turned, so no matter what he did the pain got worse.

By the time he got back to his cave, night had fallen, and he still felt sick and dizzy. Honestly, Discord didn't even want to take the time to wash himself, but his mommy had been very stern about the little animals, and having had fleas, as well as having been bitten by horseflies and mosquitos and spiders on occasions, not to mention the time he'd napped on an ant hill... well, Discord was well aware of how annoying tiny animals that he could see were on his skin. The thought of tiny animals he couldn't see biting him on the inside of his body, where his blood was, was scary and gross enough that he forced himself to wash up and bandage himself. Then he grabbed Little Sister and without even bothering to wake her, dropped to the floor, curled around her, and fell asleep. Food could wait until tomorrow.

Dogs were barking.

This time Discord woke quickly, terror shooting through him. That sounded close. Why were there dogs so close?

He heard a pony voice. "Must be in this cave. The trail leads here."

"Smells like smoke. You think some ponies were camping in there?"

"Could've been deer. They don't do fire much, but they'll light up a campfire to chase off bears and bobcats on occasion."

They were right outside his cave.

Discord shrank back, trembling. His cave wasn't designed as a place he could rapidly escape from; it was a shelter. He'd never imagined he'd have to escape from it. It extended fairly far into the back, twists and turns that would stymie a pony... but not a dog, and the further back he went, the narrower the passages were and the harder it would be for him to get past ponies or dogs blocking him in. He was injured, and his magic wasn't back at full strength yet, and he was still dizzy... and ponies were right outside his cave, with dogs. What could he do?

Well. If running wasn't an option, then he needed to scare them away. They smelled Fire's smoke? Let them get a taste of his friend up close and personal.

Discord snapped his lion paw, making the rocks that caged Fire roll themselves away and the leaves on the floor of his sanctuary line themselves up , making a path for Fire to eat its way out of the cave. And then he pushed some power into Fire, making it jump onto the leaves.

He stood well behind Fire, holding Little Sister tightly with his wing wrapped around her so she'd be safe, as he heard the shouts of the ponies. "What the buck--!" "Where'd that fire come from?" "It's coming out of the cave mouth! Get back!"

"Be very quiet, Little Sister," Discord whispered, animating her. "There's ponies with dogs right outside the cave."

"Oh no!" Little Sister whimpered... quietly. "What are we going to do, Discord?"

"I'm chasing them off with Fire, see?"

"Oh, that's clever!"

Outside he heard "Get that water from the stream and send it over here! This thing's gonna spread if we don't put it out pronto!"

What? No! He couldn't let them put Fire out! Fire was his friend, Fire was protecting him! He reached out with his magic but couldn't stretch far enough to find the water. "Stay here, Little Sister," Discord said, putting her on her stone shelf but leaving her animated, as he limped toward the front of the cave and peered carefully out. In the light of Fire, the ponies were shadows at first, but then he saw the glowing lights in different colors, near their heads, and shrank back again. They were unicorns. They had magic too. Discord's strongest weapon was now cancelled out.

On the other hand he'd never seen a unicorn do this. Now that he could see the water they were dumping on Fire, he could change it. Fire hated water, but liked to drink the bad-tasting stuff that made Discord's head feel funny, sometimes, especially when it tasted really really bad and was kind of clear-colored rather than red. Discord focused and made the water into the bad-tasting stuff that Fire liked. Fire roared in appreciation and charged forward, following the path of the liquid to reach out to the pile of wood Discord had gathered for its food.

"What the—" "Stop! Stop, that's alcohol! It turned into alcohol!" "Sweet sun and sky, what kind of magic does this thing have?"

And then one of the unicorns started ripping clods of dirt out of the ground, and gravel, and dumping them on Fire. It was as deadly to Fire as the water had been. Terrified, Discord watched them choke his friend to death with dirt, and could do nothing.

He could bring back Fire. He focused on that. Fire wasn't dead forever. There was no more food for Fire in here, not unless he dug through his pantry and set his own food on fire, so he couldn't use it to defend himself, but he could bring it back once the ponies were gone. He just had to make sure they didn't catch him.

Discord climbed up the wall, hanging onto the rocks up above the ponies' heads. The strange and alien landscape of a cave, with stalactites hanging down like bunches of tentacles or curtains, was normal to him after living here for years, and he'd clambered all over it, delighting in how weird and different it was from the world outside the cave entrance. With one limb out of commission and another injured, it was much harder than it usually was, but by the time the unicorns had finished killing Fire and had entered the cave, Discord was clinging to a batch of stalactites, claws dug into the limestone.

"You think the creature started that fire?"

"It's certainly bollixed up the dogs. They can't smell a sun-bringing thing."

"Hay, look at this! There are crates of food back here!"

Discord bit his lip as one of the unicorns dragged his pantry and his icebox out into the light. "How long has this thing been stealing food from ponies?"

"It's got magic and it's smart enough to put food in crates, so who knows? Could have been a long time."

"Are we sure it's not a dragon? Wyverns are not smart enough to do this."

"Might be a baby dragon, but dragons still count as animals, so it shouldn't change the price."

There were three of them. All three were unicorn stallions. In the dimness of the cave Discord couldn't make out the exact colors of their coats and manes, but they all had fairly dim and naturalistic colors, browns and beiges. They had bulging saddlebags, and the only one whose cutie mark Discord could make out had a picture of a cage on his flank.

Discord started to hyperventilate, and forced himself to stop before they could hear him breathing. Go away. I'm not here. Go away. Unlike the things in the real world that would change to take on the new properties he demanded they take, pony minds were impervious to him. The dogs sniffed around the room, finding his small supply of cloth for bandages and fixing Little Sister, and his pots and pans, and the rest of his food.

"You think the critter left somehow?"

"If it's got magic, it's possible. The Cheddars said they saw it go through a wall, and old Granny Quench never saw it get past her after she drove it under a table, but then it turned up outside. So it could have gone through the wall, maybe."

"Better check outside then." The pony who was speaking started to withdraw to the opening of the cave, and Discord breathed a small sigh of relief. They were going to leave. It would all be all right.

Then one of the ponies said, "Hey, what's this?" and levitated Little Sister.

Discord's eyes went wide. Little Sister was still animated by his magic, just pretending to be a mere stuffed animal, so he could feel her tremble with fear. "Look at that! The thing found a toy!"

"It's in good shape for an animal's toy. Most critters would rip something like this to bits."

"Weird looking thing though. You gotta wonder about the kid who'd play with something as creepy as this. What is it? It's like it's a pony, but with a dragon tail, and the back legs are all different animals."

"Can't imagine my foals would want something like this."

"Naah, let the dogs have it. They've been good dogs, give 'em something to play with."

Fury and terror swept across Discord. Without thinking about it, without considering his own safety, he flung more power at Little Sister. As the unicorn tossed her toward the floor, Discord's power buoyed her wings, so she could flap her way up to him where she'd be safe.

"What the—" "The toy just--!" "Oh, buck, it's over our heads!"

Power yanked Discord down from his perch. He yelped with pain as the unicorn's telekinesis threw him against the wall. Still clutching Little Sister with his good paw, Discord made the unicorn's saddlebags flap themselves, fly up off his back, and hit him in the face, while Discord backed against the wall, growling.

"What is that thing?"

"Definitely not a wyvern."

"Look, it's a half-pony half-dragon thing with mixed up legs, just like the toy!"

"Oh, horsefeathers, I know what it is now. My pop told me about them, back when there were a lot more of them around and we had to hunt them and kill them so they wouldn't kill foals for food. It's a draconequus."

"Hay, I remember learning about them too, but I thought they were extinct!"

"I never heard they were all mixed up like that though," the pony who'd identified Discord's species said. "Wish he was still alive so I could ask him. I thought they were just pony-dragon things, like griffins are eagle-lion things."

"No, there's ordinary pony-dragon things living in this faraway eastern country called Neighpon," the third unicorn said. "They're called kirings or something like that."

"Look at him, holding his toy like he's a pony. You think he knows what we're here for?"

"He's a smart animal, but that's all he is. Probably he thinks we're here to kill him. Be careful. This one looks like a cub, but watch out – they're really dangerous. They used to kill ponies all the time, back when my pop was hunting them."

Discord shook his head. That wasn't true. None of that could be true. Mommy had told him about the Way of Harmony, that the draconequui had vowed not to kill animals for food, or for any reason but self defense. If draconequui were killing ponies all the time, back when this one's father was hunting them, it was probably because he'd been hunting and killing them! It was self defense! Draconequui weren't dangerous animals. Ponies were dangerous animals!

"What are you going to do, big brother?" Little Sister whimpered fearfully. "They're blocking the way out the door!"

And he didn't think his magic could, in fact, make it so he could go through the cave wall. Rock didn't respond to his power nearly as well as anything else did.

One of the unicorns advanced on him, a force bubble glowing around the pony so that Discord couldn't attack him. "Easy now boy. We're just here to trap you and sell you. Nopony's gonna kill you," he said in a crooning voice, as if he was trying to lull Discord into trusting him, as if being trapped and sold didn't sound every bit as horrible as being killed did. A glowing rope rose from the pony's saddlebags and came toward Discord. "Just be easy. I can see you're wounded. I don't want to hurt you."

Discord waited until the rope was close enough that it was almost touching him, and then focused on it hard, making it take on the properties of a chain of flowers. As soon as the pony wrapped it around Discord's neck, Discord lunged forward, and it broke easily.

He tried to run deeper into the cave. He was familiar with the twists and turns at the back of the cave – the ponies were not, and climbing over stalagmites and eroded piles of dirt might slow them down. But as soon as he bolted, the magic of all three unicorns grabbed at him, pulling him back. He tried inverting the magic so it would push him, but there were three different magical fields and he couldn't invert them all and when he tried just one it felt like he was going to be torn apart.

There was nothing else he could do. The dogs were barking frantically, and he knew if he was to have any hope at all he couldn't spare an arm for Little Sister, but if he dropped her the dogs would take her. Magic was doing him no good against three unicorns; he didn't need it. He threw all the power he had into Little Sister, focusing on permanency. His will bore down on his toy friend to make her so she could live without him, so she could fly away to safety and then if he got free he could find her again but at least she would be safe and she wouldn't need his magic to keep her alive anymore. Everything he had drained into the spell, and he felt something click, a change in the shape of the magic, and now livingness was a property she had and not a property he had temporarily imposed on her. "Fly, Little Sister!" he screamed, throwing her into the air as the unicorns pulled him into their midst. "Fly free! Go, run!"

She hovered above him. "I can't leave you here, big brother!"

"Go! I'll get free and come find you! Just fly away and go someplace safe!"

And then one of the unicorns had some kind of terrible smelling cloth and was using magic to wrap it around Discord's muzzle. He lashed out with his claws, ripping it, but then one of the unicorns yanked his paws down onto the ground, and the sudden pain in his talon arm as the unicorn's magic pulled it roughly made him scream. The pieces of the cloth he'd torn came back and plastered themselves over his nostrils and mouth, and when he opened his mouth to get fresh air, one of them flew in and made him gag. His tongue and throat were going numb. Discord choked, and the piece of cloth came back out of his mouth, but then unicorn magic pinned his muzzle closed and fastened a strap around it, while there was still a bad-smelling thing on his nose and he couldn't breathe except through the bad-smelling cloth and he was getting dizzier and dizzier and the world was going dark. On his back on the ground, Discord writhed, trying to get his dragon paw or tail or the wingclaw on his bat wing into position to yank the thing off his face, but against three unicorns, all their magic bearing down on him and holding him to the ground, he was helpless. The last thing he saw, up above his head, was Little Sister flying away, flapping with her butterfly-like wings out toward the cave entrance. He could hear her crying, but she was doing as he said, she was flying away. She'd be safe.

Then everything went dark.

The Caged Beast

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Author's Notes:

So if you've been following my other stories you already know this, but if you don't: this chapter contains fairly brutal physical child abuse and mistreatment of animals, at the same time.

What was to be the fourth chapter turned waaaay too long, so I've split it into two. Yes, that means there's going to be two chapters of Discord being a prisoner of the circus. I tried to end this one on a high note, despite various awful things having occurred over the course of the chapter.

A lot of general inspiration was drawn from the novel "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen, though nothing explicit was taken from the book.

I have achieved my goal of getting this chapter out before 1 year elapsed time since the last one. In future it should be a lot less than a year before the next one comes out.

He woke up slowly, groggily. Everything ached, especially his head. From the bouncing, jostling feeling of the surface he was laying on, he had to be in a cart or a wagon that was moving. Discord rubbed his eyes, and when that didn't enable him to see any better, tried switching his vision to batpony style so he could see in the dark.

Something around his neck shocked him, like when he'd slunk along the fuzzy carpet in the boutique where he'd stolen material for Little Sister and then touched the metal doorknob. Except worse, and it felt like it was tightening around his neck, like he couldn't breathe. The sensation passed, but his vision wasn't any better. It was still completely dark.

Discord tried looking at the properties of the world. That worked, and didn't hurt, but they were fuzzy, and when he tried to bring them into closer focus, or touch them, the shock and the tightening happened again. Exhausted and dispirited by the painful reactions, he lay, passively letting his eyes acclimate to the darkness while he peered around with his magic vision, being careful not to try to tightly focus on anything.

He was lying on a properties: once-alive, wooden, solid, stiff, rubbed with chemicals that closed all of the wood's pores and made it smoother. Around him was a properties: iron (magic resistant), cylindrical, thin, vertical, lots of them ranged around him in a rectangle, and above him another sheet of wood much like the one he was lying on. A cage, with bars. Weak point: one side of the cage had hinges and was not driven into the wood or welded to the bars of the corner sides, and there was some sort of mechanism holding it closed, and then a padlock looped through that mechanism. That was the door.

The cage was tied down to the wooden floor of a wagon. There were other living things in here in other cages. It was too dark to see with his eyes, but with his magic Discord was able to make out that one of them was a bear, one of them was a manticore, and there were several dogs and many, many rats, and beyond that point Discord could make out that there were more animals but not what they were.

As for himself, his injuries hadn't finished healing, and they should have. They were bandaged. With his teeth, Discord promptly ripped the bandages off, assuming that they were the reason his wounds hadn't healed yet. There was a thing around his neck – with his paws, he could make out that it was a collar, but his magical vision could barely see it as anything but a dim fuzzy cloud of obscured properties. He felt at it with his lion paw. Leather, but with a metal mesh on the inside, so it was really two strips of leather sewn together to enclose the metal. Probably iron, because it was messing up his magic. There were crystals spaced at regular intervals, set within the mesh. There was a buckle, and Discord fumbled at it for several minutes before coming to the conclusion that it was a sufficiently complicated lock that he'd actually need to pick it.

He tested the bars of his cage. Strong – too strong for him to bend without magic. By now he had figured out that it was the collar around his neck that was blocking him. Every time he tried to actively use magic, it shocked him and constricted. It did the same if he tried to pull it up or down, or tear at it. When he tried to use magic directly on the collar, figuring that he could endure the pain for a second or two if it let him shut the collar down, he found that magic simply drained into it and did nothing. So he'd definitely need to pick the lock. But right now, his talons were slightly numb, and fumbly, and he didn't have any tools anyway. This was probably more complicated than his talon alone could handle; he'd need a pin or a stiff wire.

The ponies who had captured him said they were going to sell him. Discord drew in on himself, shivering. Ponies didn't eat meat, or approve of those who did, from what he'd seen. He dimly remembered his mother telling him about the Way of Harmony, that the ponies followed and the draconequui had converted to, that forbade the eating of meat, and how if they didn't eat meat eventually the ponies would forgive them and share their lands with them. So probably whoever bought him wasn't going to want to eat him. And at some point – maybe it was the fight with the Cheddars, he was too groggy to remember – somepony had pointed out that his small body and mismatched limbs meant that his pelt would be worthless. So they probably didn't want to skin him either. But they thought he was an animal – the ponies who'd captured him had been very clear on that – so he wasn't being sold to be a galley slave on a ship or some such thing from stories he distantly recalled his mother reading him from books, when they'd been able to get books.

What did ponies use animals for? Well, chickens laid eggs. Discord couldn't lay eggs, at least not to the best of his knowledge. Girl draconequui could lay eggs, but he was a boy. Maybe they'd mixed him up with a girl? Or maybe it was something else they wanted him for. Pigs hunted truffles, disposed of garbage and provided security. Cats hunted rats and mice. Dogs protected their owners from larger animals and dangerous ponies. Was that what they wanted? Did they think Discord was like a dog or something, and they could train him to catch intruders, the way the dog back at the Quench farm had caught him?

If they wanted something like that from him, Discord had to laugh. There was no way he was going to do anything like that. If they tried to make him work on a farm, he'd just steal food and run away. As hard as he thought, Discord couldn't come up with anything that ponies might actually want him for that he wouldn't be able to easily get away from. He just had to wait until he felt better, and had more light, and then he could get this collar off, turn the wooden roof of his cage into paper, and just push through it. Or make it bread, and eat it first. He was too queasy to feel hungry right now, but part of his mind was always analyzing for opportunities to get food.

What he really wanted now was water, but he didn't have any, and if he had, it would probably have spilled all over with the way this wagon was shaking and bouncing. He tried squeezing his head through the bars, but they were too closely set. He tried picking the hinges of the cage door, but couldn't manage that any better than he'd done at picking the lock on his collar. He tried bending the door at the bottom or top, where it didn't actually fasten to the ceiling or the floor of his cage, to see if he could make enough clearance to squeeze through. The answer was no.

With nothing else he could do, Discord lay in his cage and daydreamed of what he'd do once he escaped.

At some point he must have drifted off to sleep, because the sudden stopping of the cart he was on, followed by loud banging noises and pony voices, woke him. Discord jumped to all fours – the cage wasn't big enough for him to stand on his hind legs – and peered out into the darkness. A bright, square light appeared, making Discord squint, and then the outline of a pony against the light. "Whew! That's rancid," the stallion said. "You guys'll be happy to get out of this stinky wagon, won't you. Not that the menagerie smells much better but at least there's some air for ya."

Discord had noticed the smell being very strong, but not bad. It just smelled like a lot of animals close together. Sure, there was the smell of urine and feces from multiple species, but Discord had never found such smells particularly offensive. The stallion started hauling cages out of the wagon, one or two at a time, by lifting the cages onto something rather like a wheelbarrow, except flat-bottomed, yoking himself to it on the far side, and wheeling it out of the wagon. When it was Discord's turn, his cage was large enough that he was taken by himself. The stallion pulled his cage, on the cart, out of the wagon and into bright sunlight.

Wooden planks had been hastily laid down on grass to create a makeshift flooring, which was covered with hay and animal detritus. Nearby, the grass turned into paved stone, wide, flat bricks more floor-like than road-like. There were brightly colored tents all around, including one very close by sitting on the paved stone. A different stallion, another earth pony, with a brown mane and a pink coat, took the cart. As the first stallion, gold-maned and blue-bodied in the light, yoked himself to a different empty flatbottomed cart and trotted up the wooden ramp into the back of the wagon, the second stallion pulled Discord into the nearby tent.

His nose wrinkled. This was not an improvement over the animal smell of the wagon. Ammonia, a smell that concentrated everything bad about the scent of urine and removed everything good, was everywhere. The paved stone floor shone wetly, but the ammonia smell was overpowering. There were animal cages on racks, and animal cages standing by themselves. Discord saw two lions, pacing in separate cages; a group of monkeys, chattering at each other; large, wild pigs snuffling at a trough in their cage; a bear; many birds... At some point he stopped cataloguing, and just looked around himself with wide eyes, taking it all in. There were a lot of animals here.

They pulled up in front of a larger cage, one that was big enough for Discord to stand in. The stallion unyoked himself, lifted Discord's cage, and set it down in front of the bigger cage. Then he yoked himself again and trotted off with the cart.

For a while nothing happened. Discord could see earth ponies carrying in cages and emptying them into larger cages, all over the menagerie, and he wondered why they weren't doing that for him. The large cage had a water trough in it, and he wanted water badly. Also, he wanted to be able to stand up. Also, the moment this cage opened, he had plans to bolt for it if there was any possibility of doing so successfully.

He heard various snippets of conversation from the pony workers. Apparently they had just arrived here the day before, themselves. The place they were appeared to be a town called Whitetail Junction, and they were supposed to be doing a show tonight. This was, in fact, a circus. Discord had heard of them, but never seen one before. The buildings were tents so they could be folded up and put on wagons after the circus was ready to leave; it traveled from town to town putting on performances, some of which involved animals.

Discord reached through the bars of the cage with his eagle talon and poked idly at the padlock. No, that was probably going to need a wire to pick, too. He hadn't had to pick locks since two winters ago; nowadays his magic was powerful enough that he could go through walls. Except, apparently, right now, with this collar on. Well. He'd gotten pretty good at it before he'd stopped needing to do it, so hopefully he'd still be able to.

A green unicorn mare with a purple mane trotted over to his cage. "What in the name of all the gods are you?" she asked in a cranky tone. "Oh, never mind. If you're trainable it looks like you could run through some really interesting routines, and if you're not, you'll be a great one for the freak show. Definitely more interesting looking than the two headed dog."

"I am not a freak!" Discord protested... and winced when he heard himself. It didn't sound like he was speaking pony, even though he was trying to. It sounded like he was making animal noises that roughly fit the pattern of what he was trying to say. He'd been far too long out of practice speaking to anyone but himself and Little Sister.

The unicorn took no notice of him. She used her telekinesis to open the large cage and levitate Discord's smaller cage into it. Then she undid the padlock on his small cage and swung the door open. Discord clenched his paws in frustration. There had been no opportunity to try to escape.

Well, if he couldn't escape, he could do the next best thing. Discord stretched and stood up. The mare was still watching him. "Huh. Bipedal. None of those mixed-up body parts look like a monkey's, but you've definitely got some monkey-like features."

She was talking about him as if he couldn't even understand her, as if he wasn't even there. And, he realized, as far as she knew, he couldn't. They thought he was an animal. Which meant, hopefully, that they wouldn't expect him to try to pick the locks. He glared at the unicorn, then ambled over to the water trough. There was of course no cup, but Discord had drunk water directly from streams and rivers often enough that it didn't bother him to just stick his muzzle in the water and lap.

"We're going to have to put you through your paces later, see just what you can do. I've never heard anything about how to train a draconequus," the mare said. Discord turned his head and glared at her again. Oh no. They were not going to "train" him. He was getting out of here, at the earliest possible opportunity.

As soon as she was gone, he explored his cage. It was large enough that he could even fly a little bit – no higher than a low tree branch would have been, but without being able to change gravity he couldn't fly much higher than that anyway. There was the water trough, and there was the smaller cage he'd been brought here in, and there was absolutely nothing else in the cage. It was built the same way the smaller one was – strong iron bars fastened into the wide planks of plywood that formed the ceiling and the floor. The side with the door wasn't all door the way the smaller cage was, but its construction was similar – hinges on one side, a padlock on the other holding it shut. He found no weaknesses, no give in any of the bars. This was going to require some thought.

It wasn't a good idea to try to escape now, in daylight, with so many ponies around. Discord paced in his cage, occasionally flying a bit. This was sooo boring. There was nothing to eat, nothing to play with, nothing to do but pace and watch the ponies unloading and securing more animals.

They hadn't taken the smaller cage he'd been transported in. Sometime around the twenty zillionth pace around his cage, Discord realized that the hinges, and more importantly the hinge pins, of the small cage were now accessible to him – they were on the outside of the cage, and now so was he. With some effort he rotated the cage, dragging it so that its open door was facing the back wall of the larger cage confining him. A bit of work with teeth and talon, and he had a hinge pin. He didn't think it would be slim enough to do the lockpicking he needed, but it might give him the leverage he needed to pry apart and disassemble the hinges of his larger cage. He couldn't risk losing it, so he plucked enough fur from his thick middle coat to twist into a kind of string, and then he tied the metal bar to the shaft of one of the primaries on his pegasus wing. The operation was awkward – even for him, it was hard to bend his arms and wing in such a way that he could use both paws to tie something to a feather – but he got it done. Nopony paid attention; they were still moving animals around.

Eventually the unicorn mare returned with an earth stallion. This one was white with an orange mane. "Funny looking thing," the stallion said. "What does he eat?"

The unicorn snorted. "Tartarus take me if I know. I was going to ask you."

"Well, what is he?"

"The trappers who sold him said he was a draconequus. They're exotic, nearly extinct."

"Huh. My gran used to talk about them. Said they'd eat me if I was bad."

Discord fumed silently. Draconequui didn't eat ponies! They hadn't even eaten meat!

"Well, it's got a lion leg and an eagle talon, like a griffin, and griffins eat meat, don't they?"

"Fish, I think," the stallion said. "We'll try that. If he's part cat he should love it."

Discord sneered at them. Oh, no, he wasn't going to eat fish. Fish were alive.

The ponies left. When the unicorn returned, she had a bucket full of fish, which she tossed into Discord's cage. "Go on, you freaky critter, eat up!"

In response Discord picked up one of the fish and flung it at her.

She caught the fish in her magic and scowled. "I see your teeth there, critter. I know you're a meat eater. You don't get to be picky like some noblemare's pampered housecat here. You eat what you get and that's all that you get." The mare walked off. Discord was able to get a good look at the picture on her flank for the first time. It showed a chair and a whip. Discord couldn't see what those could possibly have to do with each other.

One of the fish wasn't even fully dead. Discord put it in his water trough. The rest he played with, tossing them in the air to catch again, or to slap hard with a different fish to send them flying. He managed to get up to juggling two fish before they fell. Fish didn't bounce, as it turned out, but they made a very satisfying splat noise when they hit the bars of his cage.

Eventually he looked up and realized he had an audience – three of the earth ponies that had been unloading were standing around his cage, watching his attempts to juggle. The one with the gold mane and the blue coat, who'd unloaded him from the wagon, was one of them. The other two were ponies Discord hadn't paid any attention to, a gray stallion with a red mane and a yellow stallion who also had a red mane, but a lighter shade of red.

"Wow," the gray pony said. "You think Whipcrack knows it can do this?"

"Naah," the blue one said. "She doesn't know anything about the creature. You know Mr. Thunder Roll bought it because it was a novelty."

"I'll show you a novelty," Discord growled, more for his own benefit since by now he'd figured out that the ponies didn't understand that he was speaking, let alone what he was saying. He lined up a shot through the bars and expertly beaned the blue stallion in the forehead with a fish.

"Aggressive," the yellow one said.

"But talented!" the gray one said. "Whipcrack's gonna love this thing."

Sullenly Discord retreated behind the small cage, where they couldn't see him as well. He'd been juggling for his own entertainment, not theirs.

The stallions left. Discord checked his water trough. The fish was swimming sluggishly. It was the length of his head, covered with pretty iridescent silver scales. "You can be my friend," he said to the fish. "Fire's gone, and Little Sister—" He choked up for a moment, a tightness in his chest and throat, and prickling in his eyes. "Little Sister's safe, but she's gone too. So you can be my new friend."

The naming of a pet was a complicated endeavor. When Discord was young he'd have just named the creature something like Fishy or Swimmy, but that seemed utterly childish to him now. "I'll name you River," he said. "Because you look like the kind of fish that would swim in the river. And you're kind of silvery and sparkly like a river."

His stomach growled, but there was nothing to eat except the dead fish. For a moment, Discord considered it. He hadn't killed those fish; would it really do any harm to eat them now that they were already dead? But the unicorn mare and the white earth stallion thought that he was a creature that ate fish. If they gave him fish and he ate it, then they would continue to give him fish. He had to refuse the fish if he ever wanted them to give him something different, and if he didn't refuse, they would kill more fish to feed to him. That wasn't okay.

He could see the sun setting through the clear mesh windows in the tent by the time the unicorn mare showed up again. "You need a name," she said. "Let's go with Mixup."

"Let's not," Discord said. "My name is Discord."

She ignored him, as he'd known she would. "Let's see what you can do, critter. The guys tell me they saw you juggling fish. Are you trained for juggling?" She rolled three small balls into the cage and guided them with her magic over to him.

Discord picked one up and bit it. It was rubber and nasty-tasting, but the look of irritation on the unicorn's face was worth it. "No, you idiot, that's not food! You were supposed to eat the fish! What kind of creature won't eat fish, but will eat a rubber ball?"

"The kind that doesn't eat fish," Discord said.

"Let's see if you know what to do with a hoop." She levitated a tall, round hoop into the cage, holding it about a pony's head height off the ground. "Jump! Jump, Mixup!"

Discord leisurely groomed his fur.

She presented him with several more tasks she wanted him to perform, and used nearly every synonym for the commands that Discord knew. Discord ostentatiously ignored or disobeyed all of them, enjoying the look of total frustration on the mare's face.

"Well. You're talented, but whoever trained you must have used such a weird command vocabulary that I'm probably gonna have to retrain you from scratch. Still, I guess it means you're trainable."

"Not to you I'm not," Discord muttered.

"And I see Little Mister Prissypants didn't find the cuisine to his liking. Well, you're not getting ham steaks, that's for sure. You can eat the fish or you can starve, whichever you prefer."

Discord glared at her. I'm going to escape. And then I'm going to find your stores of pony food, and I'm going to eat them all, and what I don't eat, I'll throw at the wall.

"We'll start training tomorrow morning. I'm gonna have to make it clear to Thunder Roll that he's not getting a return on investment quickly. Though I guess you could be a draw in the freak tent, no matter what." She left. Discord watched her go, seething. "I am not a freak," he repeated, snarling the words, but quietly. "I'm not. I'm a draconequus. If you've never seen something like me before, that's not my fault, that's just because you're stupid."

A pegasus came through and quenched the oil lamps hanging from the tent poles, throwing the animal tent into darkness. Discord peered out at the moon, still very low on the horizon.

First things first. He tested how narrow the bars really were by sticking his head straight up, so his antlers hung down at his side and his whole body was a single angular line. Carefully he shuffled to the edge of the cage and bent his neck, holding it at a sharp angle and pushing at the space between the bars. A bit of wiggling gave his small antler clearance, and then his head started squeezing through. The goat horn presented difficulties, but he managed to work it through. Then his dragon foot, which was too long, but if he went on tiptoe with it so it was vertical, he could work it through. The bar got stuck on his hip; he had to use his tail to wrap around the bar and pull himself. The other side of his body came out much more smoothly.

And now he was out. He crawled around the edge of his cage to the water trough. "I'm sorry, River," he whispered. "I don't have a cup to carry you in, or I'd take you out of here." He had to do something, though. River had been nearly dead when Discord had put him in the water; the ponies here obviously had less than no regard for his welfare, considering that they'd tried to feed him to Discord. "I tell you what, I'll find something and I'll get you out of here too."

Quietly he went on all fours past the various cages. Some of the animals made alerting sounds, but nopony came to investigate, so Discord was clear. Soon he reached the tent flaps, which had been tied tightly on the outside. Discord couldn't get at the ties with his claws, but it didn't matter, because there was enough give at the bottom that he could pull up the flap and squeeze himself underneath it.

Directly outside the tent there was a stack of buckets. Discord grinned. A bucket could certainly hold River and some of his water. Nopony seemed to be around, so he trotted over to the buckets. They were stacked fairly high. Discord frowned. If he pulled one from the bottom where it was easy to reach, others were likely to come tumbling down. He had to get one from the top, without gravity assistance because he still couldn't get his collar off. Discord flapped his wings as hard as he could, and finally got up to the top of the bucket stack.

He grabbed a bucket. He tried to be careful in lifting it off the stack, but his flight ability failed him; as he pulled it free, he didn't yet quite have clearance, and it struck another bucket beneath it. To his simultaneous horror and delight, the entire pile came crashing down.

Yikes. That was hilarious but it was going to draw a ton of attention; he had to do this as fast as possible. Running on all fours, dragging the bucket with his tail looped around the handle, he ran back toward the animal tent—

--straight into a net that was flung on him.

"How did I know it would be the draconequus?" the unicorn mare from before said tiredly. She levitated him without difficulty while he was still thrashing in the net. "Come on, boy. You're going back to your cage, and I'm going to figure out how you got out of it in the first place."

She tossed him back into the cage and inspected it carefully. "Still locked... no holes... hinges in good shape... oh crap, did you get yourself through the bars somehow? I didn't realize how skinny you are." She sighed. "All right, we'll move you to a different cage in the morning. In the meantime—"

Discord scrabbled at the wooden floor to stop himself from being pulled, but it didn't help. The telekinetic grip was inexorable. Within moments, he was stuffed back into the small cage, which was locked. "That should keep you from running off tonight."

She left. Discord tried to push the cage open; one of the hinges was unpinned, surely this couldn't be too hard. It didn't work. The cage was too small; pushing the door as hard as he could on the unpinned corner didn't give it enough clearance for him to squeeze through. Well, there was more than one way to catch a cat. He got both his talon and his lion paw out through the bars, and started working on the second hinge. It was much, much harder than unpinning the first hinge had been, because he couldn't see what he was doing and he didn't have his full range of motion. The moon was shining down through the mesh skylights at the top of the tent, rather than through the mesh windows on the east side, by the time he got it out.

He was so hungry, and exhausted, and his paws hurt. Once he got the door unhinged and open, all he did was stagger out and throw himself down on the wooden floor. It was hard and uncomfortable, unlike the bed he'd lined with leaves back in his cave, but he'd slept on worse and he was so very tired. The lack of food was gnawing at him, the temptation to eat one of the fish growing, but no. If he ate one, they'd never stop feeding him fish. He had to hold out. For River's sake. These were River's family lying dead all around him. He couldn't eat his friend's family even if he hadn't been the one that killed them.

Discord checked on his fish. River had pepped up some and was swimming more freely in the water trough. It wasn't really deep enough for him, but it was enough to keep him alive. "Don't worry, River. They'll probably give me more water in the morning."

He curled up by his water trough, close to his new friend, and tried not to think about Little Sister. He didn't have her to cuddle, so he curled tightly enough that he could cuddle his own tail, and let himself fall into sleep.

Loud noises woke him. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, barely visible except as a pink lightening of the sky. There were ponies, mostly the earth pony workers but also the unicorn mare, in front of his cage.

"...got out of his carry cage and I want to know how," the unicorn was saying angrily. "This thing is a nuisance. Mr. Thunder wasted his money, in my opinion."

"We'll have to have somepony keeping an eye on him," one of the earth ponies said. "'Least until he settles down."

"Got the new cage open for him," another one said. "Any time you're ready, Miss Whipcrack."

Magic grasped Discord again. He saved his strength, waiting until the moment he was out of his cage, to start struggling, thrashing with all his strength. For a moment, he felt the magic on him lose its grip, and he fell, but the unicorn – Whipcrack, apparently – grabbed him again. His swishing tail hit a couple of ponies, but sadly neither of them were Whipcrack, so it didn't lessen the pull on him any. He beat his wings frantically but couldn't pull up out of her grip either.

She more or less threw him into a cage that had bars in a grid pattern rather than straight up and down, making the gaps between them too small for Discord to squeeze through. He landed hard, but used his tail to propel himself forward toward the door at full speed, trying to jump through it before it closed. He failed, and slammed muzzle first into the bars of the door, yelping at the sudden pain in his nose and mouth. Several of the ponies laughed.

Two of them pulled his water trough out of the old cage. "Huh, look at this. He was saving a fish in here," one of them said. "Maybe he only eats them when they're fresh?"

And then they dumped the water out onto the tent floor. River hit the stone tiles and flopped. "River!" Discord screamed, throwing himself at the bars again, trying to force himself through a gap that was entirely too small. "River!"

"Look at that, he's reaching for the fish," one of them said.

Whipcrack nodded. "Animals get very territorial over their food," she said. "We might as well give it to him." River squirmed on the stone, gills flaring as he gasped for water. "It should still be fresh enough if it's just been killed. Let me put it out of its misery."

And she stomped on River's head, crushing it.

Discord screamed. Whipcrack's magic lifted River's body and tossed it into his cell. He ran to his friend, but could tell immediately that River was dead. The fish's little body was still jerking and twisting slightly, as if he were alive, but his head was crushed flat and bleeding fish blood.

He bared his teeth and snarled at Whipcrack. "Oh, you don't like me taking your kill?" Whipcrack said. "Grow up, it's still perfectly edible. Eat it!"

Rage and grief overwhelmed him. She'd murdered his friend and now she was insisting that he eat the dead body? He could barely see through a haze of red. For a moment, just a moment, he felt his usual strength, the magic coursing within him, eager to be used, and he turned it outward. Hurt her! Make her sink into the ground!

The ground obligingly turned into thick mud. All the ponies standing around sank into it, shouting in surprise. Most of them sank only as deep as their fetlock, though one particularly large and bulky earth stallion sank in up to his knee.

And then Discord's collar simultaneously choked, shocked and burned him. He tried to scream, but he couldn't breathe. Discord fell backward, clawing at his neck, trying to pull the collar away.

"Oh, that was you, was it?" Whipcrack said, and he heard her breathing hard, rage in her voice. "Thought it would be funny to use that freaky magic the trappers told Thunder Roll about? You need to learn a lesson, right now, you disgusting beast." Her magic grabbed him while he was still choking, and flung him hard to what was now stone tile again, except tile that was smashed up and broken from the efforts of ponies to pull themselves free of it. Stone had neatly crumbled in a circle around Whipcrack's hooves, but was broken far more extensively and severely from the struggles of the earth ponies. Here on the tile himself, Discord could see that two ponies were engaged in smashing the stone tile around the big pony who'd sunk to his knees, and two other ponies were trying to haul him up and out with a rope.

Something struck him hard, just as the pain of the collar was starting to let up and let him breathe again. All the breath was knocked out of him by the blow. He tried to scream, again, and again didn't have the breath to do it with. Discord looked up to see a whip suspended in Whipcrack's magic, right before it slashed down and struck him again. This time he managed to scream.

"You! Don't! Use! Magic! To! Harm! Ponies!" she shouted, punctuating every word with another blow. Discord couldn't get away; her magic held him pinned down on the tiles.

"You killed my friend!" he shouted back at her, willing her to understand. "You killed River! He didn't do anything to you! He was just a fish, and you killed him!"

She showed no sign of understanding. "Don't you snarl at me!" she shouted again, in a flurry of blows that left him gasping, struggling to breathe through the intense pain and the impacts knocking the wind out of him, over and over. He tried to curl up smaller so she couldn't hit as much of him. "Any time you use your magic, you will be punished! If the collar isn't enough to restrain you, maybe the memory of this whipping will! Do you understand? Do you understand?"

"Yes, yes, I understand!" he screamed, but she didn't recognize that as speech either, and just kept asking him if he understood, over and over, and repeating that he would be beaten for using his magic, as she kept whipping him. He stopped trying to communicate with her, recognizing that it wasn't doing him any good, and wailed, "Mommy!" instead. Maybe if his mother hadn't been able to find him, maybe she would hear him if he screamed hard enough. Maybe she would finally come back and save him.

Finally Whipcrack stopped beating him. Her magic picked him up and tossed him back in his cell, hard. "Feed him in 20 minutes. I don't want him to start associating food and punishment," she said, and walked off, her hooves clacking on the now-uneven stone tile. "Oh, and get somepony to clean up this floor. We don't need Whitetail Junction suing us to replace the stone tiles in their town arena."

Discord curled up around River's poor destroyed body, and sobbed. "I'm sorry, River," he whispered to the fish. I should have tried harder to escape last night. I shouldn't have stopped just because I was tired. I should have realized that if they tried to feed me your family as food then they wouldn't have any respect for your life either. I should have known I had to save you. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

He hated the ponies. He hated them so much. Every part of his body hurt, and he couldn't stop crying, and he was scared, but he wasn't going to let any of that cow him. He was going to get out, and he was going to make that unicorn pay for killing River and beating him. They had no right to do this to him. Or to River. No right.

Some time later, one of the earth ponies came by and started tossing fish in through the gaps in the bars. It took Discord a few moments to realize what was happening. When he did, he snarled again, limped over to where the fish were piling up, and started throwing them back through the gaps in the bars, out onto the tile. The earth pony glared at him.

"Whipcrack says this is your dinner, you stupid creature. You're not getting anything else!" Discord managed to hit the pony in the face with the fish. "All right, that's it! Starve if you want to!" The stallion gathered up the fish that had fallen on the ground and put them back in his cart, carrying them over to the cage of one of the big cats and tossing them in over there. Discord went back to his vigil over River's body, and started to cry again. He was so hungry, and he had no way to bury River or return him to flowing water or even immolate him in Fire. The smell of his friend's dead body was growing more and more enticing as his hunger grew, but his disgust at the thought of eating what had been his only friend here in this terrible place remained strong. But if he just tossed River's body out of his cage, River would be fed to another creature, maybe one of those big cats, and Discord couldn't bear that idea, either. The ponies thought River was food. He wasn't going to do anything to let them think they were right.

"Refusing to eat, you said?"

Discord opened an eye. There was an earth stallion in front of the cage, but he was less brutally muscular than the others he was talking to, built more like a unicorn than they were – a little taller, a lot more slender – and he wore saddlebags, a vest, and a cravat around his neck. He was cream-colored, with a mane the color of a robin's egg, and Discord couldn't see his cutie mark with his saddlebags in the way.

"He just keeps throwing the fish out of the cage," the blue earth pony from before said.

"And he had a fish in his water trough, and since Whipcrack killed the fish before giving it to him, he's been holding onto it, but not eating it?"

"Uh-huh," a copper-colored earth stallion said.

The stallion with the saddlebags sighed deeply. "Whipcrack has never been willing to recognize that animals have feelings like ponies do," he said. "We know the creature is a magic user, and fairly intelligent for an animal – probably on the level of one of the great apes. Which Whipcrack has never worked with, and Gaia preserve us, I hope she never tries to."

"Mr. Whisper, that's nice and all, but we just need to know what we oughta be feeding the thing," the blue pony said.

"Well, let's find out, shall we?" He trotted up to the cage, pulled his saddlebags off with his teeth, and laid them down at his feet. Then he unzipped one of the bags, reached down, and came up with an apple in his hoof. Suddenly Discord's eyes were riveted to him. "Look at that! He's showing interest in the apple."

"But Miss Whipcrack said he had teeth like a meat eater."

"Let's see." He offered the apple through the bars. Discord snatched it and devoured it, including the core. He was too hungry to waste any part of it.

Whisper, if that was his name, turned to the other ponies. "Try pig slops. See if he'll eat those. Occasionally offer him different meats – chicken, pork, squirrel – and occasionally give him a live animal, such as a chicken. My guess is that he doesn't recognize fish as food; he might at one point have been raised as a pet in a household where there was an aquarium or a koi pond, and he was trained to consider fish part of the family. Given the magical outburst and the screeching Whipcrack told me about, and the fact that he had the fish in his water trough... I think he was attempting to keep it as a pet."

"But he's an animal, Mr. Whisper. How the hay would he know to keep a pet?"

"He's a smart animal. I've seen parrots and apes befriend and tend smaller animals, and while with the parrots the behavior is usually shown to other birds, similar birds such as parakeets and budgies, and could be misplaced parental behavior... I've seen apes care for lizards and rabbits. I'm fairly sure apes are clear on the concept that those are not their offspring."

"I'm not an animal!" If this Whisper was able to recognize that Discord was smart enough to have a pet, maybe he could actually understand that Discord was a talking creature, like a pony. "I can talk! I'm like a pony! Let me out!"

"Listen to him chatter," Whisper said, smiling fondly. "It almost sounds like he's talking."

"I am talking!"

"Well, thank you kindly for coming by and checking on him, Mr. Whisper," the blue pony said. "Miss Whipcrack's sometimes pretty stern with the critters, but if the draconequus dies before Mr. Thunder's had a chance to get a return on his investment... well, let's just say a lot of us would be looking for a new job, and some of us might be doing it with a broken leg or two."

"No problem. It's my job, after all," the cream-colored stallion said. "They don't call me Faun Whisper because I like to chat up young deer quietly, after all." He laughed.

The ponies left. Discord slumped down in his cage, feeling defeated. Even the pony who acknowledged that he was a "smart animal" still thought he was an animal, and couldn't recognize that he was speaking. To be fair, Discord wasn't speaking pony – he could understand the language fluently, but it was very hard for him to speak in it, and he couldn't do it unless he thought carefully about what he wanted to say. But come on, the draconequus language should at least sound like a language!

Except that it was Discord speaking it, and he couldn't make his tongue behave itself properly anymore.

He had to face facts. He hadn't wanted to admit this to himself for the longest time... but he'd forgotten how to talk. Since Mommy and the other draconequui had disappeared, he'd had no one to talk to, and the changes to his body made sounds that he made come out wrong. Not only did his forked tongue misbehave and fail to make the sounds he wanted, but his fluid sounds came out like bird noises sometimes and cat noises other times, and he couldn't even make half the solid sounds ponies made anymore.

For the longest time, he hadn't cared, because it wasn't like ponies were going to listen to him anyway. But now he knew what the price was for his inability to speak pony and the fact that the sounds he made came out like animal noises even when he was speaking draconequus. Which meant he had to learn to speak pony, and speak it right, if he ever wanted them to recognize that he was a talking creature.

Two of the earth pony workers came over, carrying a bucket on a pole yoked between them. They set it down, opened a tiny door that Discord hadn't noticed on one side of his cage, and slid an empty water trough with a divider in the center into his cage. Part of the trough still stuck out on the side they had inserted it on. One of them dragged over a hose and inserted it into Discord's cage, while the other turned it on. Cold water quickly filled the half of the trough that wasn't sticking out of the cage. Then they dumped the contents of the bucket into the part of the trough that was sticking out. There seemed to be a slope to the bottom so that the stuff went down into the part of that half of the trough that was in Discord's cage.

Discord sniffed at the unappetizing... stuff. He couldn't even tell what it was. Some kind of sludge, containing thoroughly melted bread goo, vegetable peels, apple cores, flower stems, grass, musty-smelling hay, the leafy tops of carrots, the strings at the ends of string beans, and mushy, bruised fruit. It didn't seem to have any dead animals in it, though, and he was hungry enough not to care that it wasn't particularly appetizing; he couldn't see anything in it that he couldn't eat, so he started eating. At first he pulled pieces out of the slop with his paws and put them in his mouth, but quickly realized it would take him forever to eat it that way, and besides, it was wet and gooey. He stuck his mouth in the slop and used his hands to shovel it toward his mouth, pushing it in as fast as he could chew. It wasn't great, but it wasn't as disgusting as it looked. When he had eaten all of it, he licked his muzzle and paws clean, then drank from the water trough to wash it all down.

River was starting to stink, a lot. Discord didn't know what to do about that. He didn't want to just toss his friend's body on the floor to be fed to other animals, but what else could he do?

The floor of this cage wasn't wood; it was the stone tiles. They had left him nothing he could relieve himself in, and while he'd been peeing through the bars of the cage, he couldn't stick his tail out through one of the holes to let the solid waste drop out. The idea of just pooping in his cage where he'd have to smell it was gross, though.

Discord couldn't get his entire tail through the gaps in the bars, but he could get some of it through. He fished around until he managed to get his tail around the handle of the bucket. By contorting himself with his tail pressed up against the bars and his eagle talon stretched back behind him to hold the bucket up to the cage, he managed to poop outward through a gap in the bars and into the bucket. Then he let down the bucket so it was next to the cage, went and got River's body, and put it in the bucket with the poop. Poop would get buried or flushed, not eaten, and that way River would also get buried or be returned to the water, and nothing would eat him. It was the best he could do for his friend.

He wasn't going to make any more friends, he vowed to himself. He could have gotten away if he hadn't had to go back for River, and his exhaustion and his failure to act when he had the chance had gotten River killed. He was bad for friends because he couldn't take care of them, and they were bad for him because they'd drag him down. So he couldn't have any, not until he was free again.

He napped as well as he could during the day. When night finally came, he set out to escape, once more. Everything still hurt from the whipping this morning, but that just made escape more vital.

All the cages had the same kinds of hinge pins. A quarter of the night went by, judging from the position of the moon, before Discord had one of the pins out. This cage had three hinges, not two. The hinge in the middle was even harder because Discord couldn't reach it; he had to fly up to it and then cling tightly to the bars with his tail and dragon foot while he used his talon and paw to work the pin out.

Once it was done, though, the door to the cage pivoted just enough that he could push open the lower corner and slip through the gap he created. This time he had no friend to go back for, nothing to hold him back. He slunk toward the tent opening, and...

...there was an earth pony there, playing cards with himself.

Discord hid in the shadows, considering how to get past the earth pony. Maybe he could just wait here until the pony left to relieve himself, but what if he never did that? He remembered now one of the earth ponies saying that somepony had to keep an eye on him, this morning. Had there been a guard stationed at the tent entrance all day long? He hadn't looked.

Well. Time for a new plan. Discord slunk back between two cages. The manticore growled and rustled in its sleep; the bear simply snored. The tent fabric was made of rough, strong fabric, similar to burlap but more tightly woven. When Discord tried to shred it with his claws, it didn't shred. Instead his claws caught on it. That was irritating, but after he extricated his claws, he had another plan.

He used his claws to pull the fabric inward, where he could get a good grip on it with his teeth, particularly his single fang. After a lot of biting, tearing, and carefully aiming his fang downward, he had a small hole. He forced his tail through the hole, and dragged downward as hard as he could, while pulling inward. In tiny increments, the hole ripped. As soon as it was large enough for him to grasp both edges with his paw and talon, he did so, then pressed his dragon foot against it while he held tightly to both sides. Under pressure, the fabric tore. The sound frightened him – what if the guard pony heard? – but he'd chosen his spot well. The snoring of the bear masked the sound of the ripping.

As soon as the fabric had a large enough hole in it that he could squeeze through, he was gone.

Fresh air! That didn't stink like dozens of animals in cages! Discord trotted across the stone tiles of the arena, making a beeline for what appeared to be bushes a short distance away. The woods were too far away, along the far end of the stone arena, but the bushes demarcated a much closer edge. As soon as he could get into the bushes, he could hide where ponies couldn't possibly find him. Then he'd need to steal something sharp enough that it could cut metal, to get this collar off, and then he'd be free.

A spotlight suddenly turned to fix on him. Startled, Discord flapped his wings and scuttled out of the light, but the damage was done.

What seemed like a dozen ponies poured out of small tents staked in the grass out beyond the edge of the stone tiles, chasing after him. Discord ran, ducking into another tent, where two mares taking off elaborate makeup jobs screamed. He scooted out of there as fast as he could, into another tent, where he ran over a sleeping griffin. The griffin squawked and grabbed Discord by the leg. He kicked wildly and smacked the griffin with his tail several times before the other chimera let go. Out of that tent, and nearly into a net that a group of earth ponies were running with. He dodged sideways, barely avoiding the net, and ran for the bushes again.

In the moonlight, and the light of the bright magical spotlights, everything was shadows if he wasn't directly in the punishing light. He didn't see the shadow of the pegasus descending onto him until the pony was very nearly on top of him, and at that point there was no more time to dodge. Discord shrieked as pony legs wrapped around his small body, pinning his wings to his back. The pegasus climbed back into the air, holding tightly despite Discord's struggles.

Well. If the pegasus holding him thought Discord was going to stop resisting just because they were up in the air, he or she had another think coming. Discord curled around and bit one of the legs holding him, hard. The pegasus screamed and dropped him. Discord's own wings unfurled and flapped wildly, barely controlling his descent as he fell. He skidded on stone tile and ran for another tent.

He never made it. A magical field tightened around him, and he was lifted into the air, still struggling.

A large, fat pegasus who didn't look flightworthy waddled toward him. "Whipcrack! Tartarus take it, this is the second night you've nearly let my draconequus get away!"

Discord turned, frantically, to see Whipcrack scowling, her horn lit. "Sorry, sir. He's a very clever beast, this one."

"Well, you need to teach him who's boss!" The pegasus had a long black cane strapped to his side. He reared up slightly, flapping his wings, and grasped the cane. "I paid much too much for that creature for you to just let him go like that!"

"Sir, we didn't let him go. He keeps breaking out of his cage."

"'Course he does! Look at those clever little fingers! Like a monkey paw, those are, but with claws! You know how much trouble the monkeys give us!"

"Yes, sir, but we can't very well put a mitten on him; he'd just claw through it."

"Not a mitten, Whipcrack. Wires! Wire those clever little fingers together! And snip those claws while you're at it. We can't declaw him – he's got to look ferocious for the rubes – but we can cut them down to size! Put him on the ground and hold him."

"Yes, sir." Once again Discord was pinned against the stone tiles.

His breathing was ragged with terror. "Don't," he said, in his very best pony. "Don't, please..."

They took no notice. "You!" the pegasus said, and kicked Discord, making him yelp. "You are worth far too much money for me to allow you to behave this way! Let me teach you a lesson, little beast – no creature escapes Yellowtail and Thunder's Amazing Circus! No creature!" He lifted his cane and brought it down on Discord's back.

The whip had been bad enough, but this was far more horrible, hitting with such force that Discord thought his ribs might be breaking. He screamed, and tried to scrabble away, but Whipcrack's magic held him to the ground as the pegasus struck him again and again with the cane.

It took only a few blows before Discord was sobbing, once again curling in on himself to try to minimize the damage. The pegasus hit him several times after that, before finally putting the cane away, panting. "There we go. Hopefully some punishment will train him to stop trying to run away. Whipcrack, I expect to see that assessment of what tricks he can do, tomorrow, and no more of this horsepuckey that he won't cooperate. Animals don't get to tell us that they won't cooperate."

"Yes, Mr. Thunder."

"And don't let him run away again! Wires, that's the way to go!"

Back in the tent, Whipcrack bound Discord's paws in front of him, his legs behind him, and stretched him out on the ground, fastened between two tent pegs at the front corner. She grabbed his pegasus wing and held it, despite his frantic attempts to flap it, pinning his bat wing to his back at the same time. Then she took a scissor and chopped away half his feathers. It didn't hurt, but it terrified him, and he screamed and wailed, struggling against his bonds and against her magic.

Then she straightened the digits on his talon, wrapped a thin gold wire around each one individually, and then looped another wire through the individual wrappings, pulling it tight and winding it around his talons so he couldn't spread them apart. She clipped the nails on his talons, then pushed down on his lion paw hard enough that the claws came out against his will and clipped them. And then she wired together the digits on his lion paw, the same as she'd done to his talon.

By the time she was done wiring and clipping, Discord was exhausted from his struggles, panting. He lay limply, no longer fighting back. The worst was over, he was sure. The fat pegasus – Thunder, apparently, or some ponies had referred to him as Thunder Roll – had just said to wire his paws and clip his claws.

Then Whipcrack pulled out her whip, and Discord started screaming and struggling again.

"You got me in trouble with my boss," she said coldly. "You made me look bad. Animals do not make Whipcrack look bad, do you understand me?" The whip slashed down. "Do you understand me?"

Why was she even asking? She wouldn't even listen when he said yes; she didn't even believe he could talk. With all his strength, Discord pulled at his bonds, trying to escape, but she'd tied him tightly. His goat leg slipped free, which freed his dragon leg as well, but Whipcrack just grabbed his tail with her magic and held it down as she beat him, and no matter how hard he kicked and pushed at the stone below him, he couldn't get free.

Finally she flung him back into his cage – which had been repaired, the door no longer hanging off its hinge. "You'd better be ready to do some tricks tomorrow because I have just about had it with you. Try one more stunt like this and you'll think what you got tonight was sweet mercy."

Alone in the cage, Discord cried. Mommy? Mommy, I really need you. Please, Mommy, please come back and save me, please...

The tricks they wanted him to do were insultingly stupid. Sit. Lie down. Beg. Like he was a dog.

Discord hurt all over. He'd only been bleeding in one or two places, and those had scabbed over by morning, but his body was mottled with bruises under his coat, some of them dark enough to be visible on his arms or neck. And he wanted to punish Whipcrack for what she'd done to him. So when she gave him instructions, all he did was glare at her.

"Can't believe something this smart hasn't had any training," Whipcrack muttered. "All right. Let's take it from the top. Sit!"

He didn't – until her magic pushed him into a sitting position. "Very good. You get a treat!" The "treat" consisted of a very small, not very sweet cookie, ironically in the shape of a dog.

Over and over, for what felt like hours. "Sit!" Magic shoving him into place, and then the cookie. "Good boy!" What was she praising him for? She was the one doing all the work.

Finally, she tried "Sit!" without making him do it. So he didn't. He just glared at her.

"Oh, for the love of – this thing's an idiot!" Whipcrack threw up her hooves in frustration. "How long does it take to understand 'sit', for the sake of all?"

That made him angry. He wasn't an idiot just because he didn't want to perform for somepony who'd killed his fish, beaten him twice, and wired his digits together. His paws really hurt, and his attempts to undo the wires with his teeth had just gotten him shocked. Staring at her insolently, he did a somersault.

She blinked at him. "Well... that's not exactly 'sitting', but that's as close as we've come to anything," she said. "Roll over, boy!"

He stood up on his hind legs and jumped.

"Sit!"

He lay down and pretended to be dead – complete with tongue lolling out of mouth and eyes open but rolled back in his head.

Whipcrack stared at him. "There's no consistency. You aren't working off remapped commands. You... you know exactly what I'm telling you to do and you're just not doing it, are you?"

Discord grinned at her insolently... a grin he lost almost immediately as she pulled out her whip. "Well, then, if you understand the commands, try this. Sit!"

He did nothing – and got a whiplash across his back. Discord yelped.

"Sit!"

Discord backed away. He was in his cage and couldn't go very far; Whipcrack didn't seem to be afraid of him attacking her, with her magic, but she was very concerned with him escaping, so she had gone into his cage to try to train him. He certainly couldn't get out of range of her magic within the cell; she lashed him again, from behind, making him bolt forward toward her again with a cry.

"We can do this all day, Mixup. Sit!"

Discord tried to fly, despite the pain in his wings from the beatings last night, hoping he could get some altitude and escape the whip that way – his cage was a good bit taller than the unicorn was. But his clipped wing wouldn't generate any lift, and the whip lashing across the other wing made him recognize the futility of trying to escape this. He couldn't fight Whipcrack; she'd just keep hitting him every time he defied her.

The next time she told him to sit, he sat. Sullenly and with bad grace, but he did it.

He let a few days go by before the next escape attempt. Everything hurt and he needed to heal.

Whipcrack was pleased with how well his "training" was coming along. The slops he'd been fed had been reduced greatly, barely enough to keep him going, but they'd been replaced by fruit and cookie treats when he obeyed her commands. She hadn't realized yet that she could give him extremely complex commands, because she refused to recognize that he was sapient, but now that he was cooperating at least the commands weren't insultingly stupid anymore. Bit by bit, she'd gotten him to balance on a ball. It wasn't hard; despite having a goat hoof and a dragon paw, Discord was amazingly good at balancing on things. She had him attempting to juggle, though he still could only manage two balls at a time. He could jump through a hoop as high as a pony's head, and if the hoop was higher, he could grab it with his paws and flip himself through it. He could not only somersault, but do pawstands, with only his lion paw holding him up.

She still hit him with the whip occasionally, when he remembered how much he hated her and he got sullen and didn't want to keep performing. For the most part, though, it was horrifyingly easy to forget his hatred and his desire to be uncooperative. She praised him when he did the tricks correctly, and no one had ever praised him for anything since Mommy had disappeared – well, Little Sister had, but she didn't count. No one who wasn't animated by his own magic, anyway. And she gave him food that was much yummier than the slops had ever been, and he actually enjoyed the challenge of using his body to perform stunts, the more complicated and difficult, the better. The wires around his digits didn't even hurt so much anymore.

Four days after his wings and claws had been clipped, he recognized that he was in danger of forgetting why he wanted to escape so badly, which made it vital to get away. He was afraid – the bruises had mostly healed, but the memory of pain was still very, very vivid. But that just made it more important to not get caught.

At night, he used his teeth to carefully, carefully unwind the wires around his talons. He used his talons to remove the wires on his lion paw, and then went straight to the door... only to discover that something had been done to the hinge pins that made them impossible for him to remove. They were completely coated with slippery grease, and even his claws slid right off them.

All right, next strategy. He carefully felt out the buckle on his collar. It was locked with a very tiny padlock, and his hinge pin from the small cage was too big to pick that... but the wires that had been around his paws were just the right size. With total concentration, Discord worked at the padlock on his collar for more than half the night. He'd never picked such a tiny lock, and being unable to use his eyes, given that the thing was positioned around his neck and even he couldn't bend far enough to see it, made it very difficult and frustrating... but the joy that thrilled through him when he finally, finally, heard and felt the "click" and was able to pull the padlock open made it all worth it.

With the padlock removed, Discord was able to unbuckle the collar and remove it. He shook his head, trying to feel his magic again. It felt... kind of numb, actually. Not completely numb, like it had with the collar on, but stiff and hard to use. So he was going to have to be careful. He needed to avoid using magic for anything that wasn't easy, if he could possibly help it.

Making iron bars into spaghetti or strings was hard. Iron wanted to be tough and strong. But as Discord focused on them, he found a way that they wanted to be bendy. If they were red hot, they would normally be bendy, so all he had to do was take the bendiness of red hot and push it onto them when they were cold.

Even with bendiness, it took all his strength to push the bars apart. Since the cage was a grid, he had to push some bars up and down, and others left and right, and he had to push hard. Iron was strong even when it was bendy. False dawn was lighting the sky by the time he got a hole big enough to climb through. He was very tired – obviously he hadn't slept all night, and the physical exertion of bending the bars had been grueling – but he wasted no time leaping through the hole.

There was no time to spare to work on the tent itself carefully, but he didn't think he had the strength yet to make it turn like paper or strings. Instead, he went to where it was held down with a tent pole, tied so tightly so close to the ground that he couldn't get the stiff fabric to lift enough to let him squeeze out, and simply pushed untiedness onto the rope that held the tent to the tent pole. Then he pushed at the stiff fabric, hard, until it unloosened enough from the pole that he could crawl underneath.

Discord slunk along the edge of the tent, sticking to the shadows, trying to find a way to get out to the bushes or to the open grass outside the stone-tiled arena without passing anywhere near one of the spotlights. He darted to the shade of another tent, and then another, and then under a wagon. Yes! The sun was rising, but he was so close to the edge, and now the spotlights were dimmer and less noticeable. Ironically, although the area was better lit with the sun coming up, there was less contrast between light and dark, so he wouldn't stand out in the unshadowed parts as much as he had. He glanced around himself from under the wagon. No pony hooves, no pony voices. Time to do this.

At full speed, he bolted straight for the edge of the arena... and howled as pain shot through him, just as he crossed onto the grass. He jerked and convulsed, and couldn't move any part of his body voluntarily, and there was a searing pain just like the shocks from the collar, except it was coming from inside him and all throughout him.

"Oh, dear." It was Faun Whisper, the cream-colored earth stallion. "Whipcrack wasn't joking about setting a ward specifically for you, was she?" The pony bit the scruff of Discord's neck and lifted him, then trotted onto the stone tile. As soon as Discord was above the tile and not above the grass, the shocks stopped, but he was so exhausted and weak from the shocks, he hung limply, with no attempt to struggle.

"Whisper! Give him here!" Whipcrack was standing in front of the animal tent, pawing the ground, nostrils flaring with fury.

Whisper trotted over to her and deposited Discord in front of her. "Your wards seem to have done the trick. He was suffering from a severe, continuous shock the entire time he was out beyond the tile. I take it a pre-existing barrier like that can be tied into a ward to make it more effective?"

Whipcrack glared. "Whisper, you're an earth pony. Don't pretend you know something about magic."

"And don't pretend you're an expert on training smarter animals," Whisper retorted. "Shocks, whippings, beatings... no wonder he keeps trying to escape! If I treated my monkeys this way I wouldn't have kept a single one."

"Mr. Thunder put me in charge of this creature. Not you." She levitated Discord with her magic. He'd been struggling to move, to get up and run, but every muscle hurt and they were sluggish to respond to him. Now Whipcrack was going to punish him for the escape attempt. He whimpered, and struggled weakly, but he just didn't have it in him to fight back hard... not like fighting back had ever helped anyway.

"Mr. Thunder would like to see some return on his investment. When do you expect the creature will be able to perform?"

"I have not had nearly enough sleep, Whisper, don't start this with me."

"If I don't, Mr. Thunder will. I've been told that if he doesn't perform at the next stop, he'll be handed over to me."

"Do you comprehend that this creature has magic? Dangerous magic? What are you going to do if he turns the ground to quicksand like he did a few days ago?"

"Probably summon Mavis to assist."

"Mavis! That charlatan doesn't know a single genuine spell! Don't tell me she's got you as fooled as the rubes! Just because she dresses like a witch—"

"Mavis is a perfectly competent unicorn. Her spells may run more toward illusion than brute force, but I'm quite certain she'd be as adept as you are at undoing anything the creature does. He's just an animal, after all; dragons use magic too, but it's a handful of rote spells, not the complexity of true unicorn magic, and I'm certain the same is true for Mixup here."

Feeling was coming back to Discord's limbs, and strength. More importantly, given that he was suspended in the unicorn's magical field still, his magic seemed to be thawing out. If the two of them could just keep arguing... it felt like listening to them was energizing him. All he had to do was cast something that knocked Whipcrack unconscious, and then he could run again. He looked up into the sky, but there was no convenient cloud he could cast heaviness onto.

"Well, you and Mavis can go sit on it and spin. The draconequus is mine to train unless Mr. Thunder actually tells me otherwise, and I think he'll be ready to perform by the next stop."

"Oh, that would be excellent. Because we're moving on tonight."

"Tonight? After the show? Is that wise?"

"Far be it for me to argue with Mr. Thunder," Whisper said. "I would imagine there's some financial imperative driving us to pack up and flee by the dark of the night."

"There always is," Whipcrack sighed.

There. Discord focused his attention on Whipcrack's hooves, and only her hooves, and flipped their gravity.

Whipcrack screamed as her body inverted and she fell a short distance into the air. Her hooves weren't heavy enough to pull her too far into the air, because Discord hadn't cast gravity reversal on her whole body, so her head and barrel were still trying to fall down while her hooves were trying to fall up. Her magical hold on him released, and he was off like a shot.

"I'll get him!" Whisper yelled back at Whipcrack, and galloped after Discord.

Discord hadn't counted on that. Well, it wasn't that important. In a wide empty field, he'd have no hope of outrunning an earth stallion, but in a plaza coming to life with ponies leaving wagons and entering tents, moving boxes and bags, and pulling carts, there were plenty of obstacles that would slow the earth pony down. He wove around the hooves of other ponies, sometimes making them trip and drop whatever they were carrying on their backs, much to his amusement. He went under wagons and kept going, while his pursuer had to go around. Other ponies joined the chase, but he lost them as well. By the time he reached the edge of the plaza, he couldn't even see Faun Whisper behind him anymore.

Discord started to step over the edge of the tiles – and hesitated. Whipcrack had cast that spell, and she was probably still upside down, but did that mean her spell would be inactive? He couldn't take the risk.

He opened up his inner vision to study the properties of the spell. There was the part about shocking someone who crossed the barrier, and there was the part that filtered the targets so that it would apply only to the particular individuals Whipcrack wanted it to apply to. Unlike the spell at the Cheddar farm, where the parameters had been broad and simple, this was complicated. The prohibited individuals were defined with... he wasn't really sure. Something using sympathy magic, or symbolic magic – either a part of the individual standing in for the whole individual, or a symbol representing the individual. Either way, he couldn't tell which of the individuals on the prohibited list was himself.

Hooves clopping rapidly behind him. Hastily he tried to re-pointer the spell so it would shock everyone but the prohibited individuals, but that didn't work because the spell would have cost too much energy if he'd done that and it didn't have that much. He couldn't rewrite the spell to point at a completely different group. But what if instead of shocks it was tickles? He ought to still be able to run even if he was being tickled, and he could see that the spell would run out once he got a dozen pony-lengths away from the ward.

Discord altered the properties of the spell, jumped off the stone, and immediately started giggling and squirming at the tickling sensation. It didn't stop him from running, though he kept flinching from imaginary tickles and that slowed him down. But all he had to do was get far enough away—

This time he saw the pegasus shadow swooping down at him. He dodged, rolled, shriek-laughed as the tickling intensified, and bolted again... straight into a dark blue unicorn who hadn't seemed to be there a split second ago.

"So you're the one who has the entire circus in an uproar," the unicorn said, smiling, as she levitated him. The pegasus, a showmare in scanty sequined clothing, soared away. Discord tried to cast on the unicorn to make her magic push him instead of pull, but the tickling was destroying his concentration. He couldn't stop laughing and writhing and batting at imaginary feathers brushing all over him.

She carried him back onto the stone tiles, out of the effect of the ward. Discord panted, and tried to focus his concentration on breaking free of the unicorn. And then pain shot through him, and the choking sensation, and something clasped around his neck. Discord clawed at his neck to find that the collar had just been fastened back on. And there was Whipcrack, with her horn lit.

Oh no. He shrank back, remembering what had happened the last time he'd used magic in front of Whipcrack. No, no, please, I have to get away, I can't let her do this to me, please... Frantically he tried to undo the buckle of the collar, or tear it with his claws to get it off.

"Thanks for catching him," Whipcrack said coolly, not sounding particularly thankful at all. "I've got him now."

And then her magic hung him upside down by the tail and dragged his paws behind his back, so he couldn't reach his collar anymore. He swung precariously, his head within less than a hoof of the stone below. Occasionally his antler actually did hit the stone tile, sending a jolting pain through his head.

She carried him into the tent. "Wow, you really stepped in it this time," she said. "I'm not sure if it's possible for you to have made matters worse for yourself. First you try to escape, again. And then you attack me. With magic. And then try to escape again after that."

The blood was rushing to his head, giving him a pressure headache. "Please..."

"I told you last time that if you pulled another stunt like this, you'd think what you got last time was merciful. But then you added in attacking me with magic. In comparison to what you're going to get now, you're going to think the last time was downright fun."

He tried to get his paws to the collar, tried to use his magic to free himself despite the collar. All he got was muscle strain in his shoulders and repeated shock-chokings from the collar. "Let me go," he begged, knowing with his mind that she wouldn't understand him and she wouldn't do it even if she did, but he couldn't believe this was inevitable. There had to be something he could do, some leverage he could employ, something.

Then she swung him, like a pendulum, and smacked the side of his head against the iron bars of a cage.

Discord cried out. She swung him again, this time more sideways, as if he were the whip she was cracking. His back and wings hit the bars first. Discord felt something crack, and horrible pain in his wing, and he screamed – and screamed even louder as the motion followed through and the back of his head slammed into the iron bars.

After several blows where she swung him at something hard, she dropped him, and began to whip him so fast he couldn't even see where she was going to hit until he felt the pain. A long, drawn-out, agonized wail came from his throat, chopped by the frequent shocks of impact forcing breath out of him. Interspersed with the blows from the whip, she kicked him repeatedly, stomped on him, and picked him up with her magic to whirl him around and throw him. Over and over she screamed, "No magic! No running away! Do you understand me? Do you?"

By the time the punishment was over, Discord was only semi-conscious, and everything in his body hurt more than he had ever imagined possible. Whipcrack dumped him back in his cage, and he lay there unmoving, because it hurt far, far too much to move, and maybe if he didn't move and he tried not to breathe too much and he tried even harder not to think, maybe unconsciousness would finally claim him.

Discord wasn't aware that a unicorn veterinarian had been called in to treat him until he felt magic pushing broken bones into place. He screamed, though with all the screaming he'd done the night before, his voice had turned into a hoarse rasp. The vet's magic held him still, no matter how hard he tried to fight back. Then he felt warmth spreading over each of the broken places, simultaneously soothing and painful. The warmth turned into intense heat. He whimpered piteously. It hurt; just a little hotter and it would start burning him, he thought. But the pain of the broken bones faded into the heat, and when the heat itself faded, he could move his limbs again. They ached horribly, especially when he tried to move, but now it was at least possible.

He faded back into sleep again after that. When he woke, he had a great deal of difficulty getting to his feet, and his back ached more than it had right after the healing. The whip weals and broken wings that had been healed still ached, but there was more to it than that – something heavy, something stiff, and it was harder to move his limbs than it should be, as if he was pulling against resistance.

When he managed to turn his head to look behind him, he saw a wooden rod, or a pair of them fastened together in a triangle with no bottom, running along his back. It had been fastened into place with straps that went over his wings, holding them painfully tight against his body, and there were ropes laced through it by both sets of limbs. Both of his upper limbs had been tied by the wrist to the rope running through a hole in the flat rods, so if he stretched one limb out the other was pulled up against his body, and it had been tied tightly enough that he couldn't quite put his paws together. He could still walk on all fours in a bowlegged fashion, his paws bent slightly and far out from his body. The rope at the back was tied only around his dragon leg, the other end of it tied around his barrel and then looped back to fasten to itself right next to the rod. It was taut enough that it hobbled him, making it impossible for him to get on two legs.

He twisted his head and tried to bite at the ropes, but they had metal wires twined through them, which hurt his teeth. Discord couldn't bite through metal. He lay panting, frightened and in a great deal of pain, for some time until Whipcrack arrived.

"That is your Board of Shame, Mixup," Whipcrack said, using her magic to attach a leash to his collar, and then pulling him out of his cage, almost dragging him. He yelped in renewed pain. "You're a very flexible fellow, and you've proven that you can't be trusted with that flexibility. That board is staying on you until I feel confident that you can be trusted to perform, and if we take it off for training and performing, we're putting it back on as soon as we're done, until I'm sure that you're done with this escape artist business. Now. We're going to practice tail lifting, because right now that's all you've got the range to do." She placed a smallish barbell near his tail. He'd done this particular trick, if you could even call it that, once, yesterday. "Mixup! Tail lift!"

Discord glared at her. Why did she think he was going to cooperate with her anymore, after the savagery of the beating earlier and the restraints she'd put him in? His tail hurt, badly; the veterinarian had fixed dislocated vertebrae, but the fact remained that Whipcrack had held him by the tail when she'd tortured him by swinging him into things or throwing him, and now the muscles hurt horribly.

Whipcrack pulled out her signature whip. "Mixup. Tail lift."

She was going to beat him again. He didn't care. The whip couldn't hurt as much as he already ached. "No," he muttered, and didn't move.

The whip came down, proving his premise incorrect. It could hurt more than he already ached. But he was so, so tired of being beaten and forced into doing things regardless of how he felt about it. Maybe if he stood his ground and endured the beating, maybe Whipcrack would realize that it was hurting him too much to try to do the tail lift, and stop demanding it.

Yeah, right.

Three more iterations of this, and his resolve was cracking. It hurt so much. Maybe... maybe he should try to lift the bar? He wasn't going to be able to do it, but if he showed an effort, maybe she wouldn't hurt him?

And then a voice called. "Whipcrack! Half an hour and you're on! What the hey!"

"Oh dog doo, I lost track of time. All right, let me box this guy up for travel tonight and I'll be right over."

Box him up? Discord didn't like the sound of that. He whimpered and shrank back.

It didn't do him any good. Whipcrack's magic lifted him and stuffed him into a small cage, just like the one he'd been brought here in, possibly the same one in fact. And with the bindings on him, he had no hope of undoing the hinges this time.

Bored, and trapped, he drifted in and out of pain-wracked sleep, woken frequently by hunger and the aches all over his body, and lulled back by physical weakness and boredom. Later, a commotion woke him fully. It was dark outside, the moon was high, and despite this being the time that normally everything was quiet, the menagerie was full of earth pony workers, loading cages onto carts. One of them opened Discord's larger cage, picked up the small cage he was actually in, and hoisted it onto a cart, then yoked himself and pulled it out.

On the short trip from the menagerie tent to a wagon, Discord could see activity all around. Ponies of all races, some of them still in performer makeup, were helping to box things up and put them into wagons, or undo and take down tents. Belatedly he remembered Faun Whisper saying something about the circus moving on tonight.

He wondered if the new location would be easier to escape from. He wondered if he was even willing to try. He hurt so very much, and he'd been so scared this morning when Whipcrack had started throwing him around and he'd been sure she would kill him. He wanted to be free, but was an escape attempt worth the price he'd pay if he failed?

He was left in the wagon all night, though many of the other animals were removed. He hadn't had any food all day yesterday, and there was no water in the wagon, so by now he was extremely thirsty.

When they finally got around to moving him, he saw that there were no stone tiles on this arena; the circus tents were all set up on bare grass. His cage had been directly set on the tiles, before, which made him optimistic that there would be grass in it now. But when they dumped him into the large cage, it was obviously a new one, with a bottom. It didn't have the grid, but the bars were much narrower, too narrow for him to squeeze through. There was a full water trough, and an empty food trough. What was worse, other animals were being fed.

It was nearly noon before Whipcrack appeared. "Well, now, let's see how you behave now that you've had some time to go hungry." She pulled him out of the cage and presented him with the bar again. "Lift, Mixup."

So she wasn't even going to feed him until he did it? Discord closed his eyes, feeling helpless. He didn't have a choice, did he? She was going to beat him if he didn't do it, and starve him.

Sullenly, he curled his tail around the bar and lifted it. He still ached, but not as badly as he did yesterday, so it wasn't quite as impossible as it had been then.

"There we go," Whipcrack said approvingly. "Was that so hard?" She levitated an apple out of her saddlebag, put it in her hoof, and hoofed it to him. Discord tried to grab at it with his paws, but the ropes that bound them to the board on his back made it so he couldn't reach. He stuck his tongue out instead and coiled it around the apple, pulling it into his mouth. As he chewed and swallowed, Whipcrack petted him with her hoof, and as much as he wanted to find it degrading to having her stroke his mane like he was actually an animal as she thought... no one had touched him with any semblance of kindness since his mother had disappeared. He knew Whipcrack wasn't kind, he knew she was petting him because she was happy that he was obeying her and not out of affection... but it didn't matter. It still felt good.

"I want you performing in tomorrow's show," she said. "Let's do a few more tail lifts, and then I'll take those restraints off you and have you practice balance. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, and I've got other animals I need to deal with today too, so be cooperative and you'll get toys to play with. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

His ears perked up. Toys? The worst part of his captivity was the utter boredom. Yes, he would very much like something to play with. Discord decided then to cooperate to the best of his ability... this time. Let her think she'd cowed him into submission, do the tricks she wanted to get the reward, bide his time and take every opportunity to scout out what this new location looked like so he could quickly get away if he did find a chance to escape.

So he did the tail lifts, and got more food. Then she had him practice balancing on the ball again. It was easy enough until she wanted him to walk on the ball, making it roll beneath him. He had several spills, which hurt a lot given how badly he ached from the beating yesterday, but Whipcrack was pretending to be nice now, as long as he was cooperating and trying to do as she said. She kept giving him small food rewards, the little cookies, and when he managed to keep the ball rolling under his feet for more than a few seconds, she gave him more fruit. Then there was juggling practice. He could still only manage two balls.

When Whipcrack put him back in the cage, it was with several of the balls. They were a little bit bouncy, and too big to push through the bars of the cage, so he could bounce them against the cage bars, though the results were unpredictable. He was left without his restraints aside from bindings holding his wings down, free to play with the balls, though there were workers all over the menagerie and Whipcrack herself working with other animals at the far end, so he didn't really have an opportunity to try to escape. A worker brought him more slops – less appetizing than they could have been after cookies and fruit, but after a day without food, he was more than hungry enough to devour them all. And then he played – bouncing balls all over his cage and catching them again, practicing juggling on his own because it was something he'd wanted to be able to do before they started demanding he do it, balancing balls on his nose or the tip of his tail.

There was more training later, in the late afternoon. Whipcrack drilled him on the ball balancing until he could keep it up more or less indefinitely, and rewarded him with grapes – much smaller than an apple, but much sweeter and tastier. She had him practice juggling while on the ball. He dropped balls far more often than he caught them again, but Whipcrack would just lift the ball and toss it back to him. By the time she was called away for the start of the show that evening, Discord was actually capable of juggling one ball, slowly and carefully, while balancing on the bigger ball.

Two earth ponies put him back in his restraints. Discord was too worn out to try to resist them. At least today had had a modicum of fun to it, for the first time since his captivity – the training was hard work, but balancing on a ball while juggling was absurd and entertaining enough that Discord was enjoying doing it. He wasn't given an evening meal, but he didn't really miss it, with all the treats he'd been given during training.

The restraints were annoying, and difficult to sleep in, but he was tired enough to manage it.

Training the next day began in the early morning, before breakfast. Discord didn't like being woken so early, but when Whipcrack started removing the restraints, he wiggled with excitement. That, at least, he was looking forward to.

He got up to juggling three objects on solid ground, two if he was walking on the ball. It was getting easier and easier to do this; keeping his balance on the ball was just a matter of shuffling his hind feet rather than ever fully removing them, while swishing his tail to provide a counterbalance. He also demonstrated to Whipcrack that he'd become proficient at balancing a ball on his nose. For that, he got a whole pawful of grapes.

Breakfast, after training, wasn't even slops – it was a light meal of hay. Hay was boring, and Discord didn't like it much, but he could put up with it if he was getting so many treats during training. There was more training after breakfast, and then playtime in his cage, with no restraints, and then yet more training. Discord was getting bored with simply walking on a ball, and on his own initiative, stepped down off the ball, lifted it with his tail, tossed it, bounced it off the back of his head, and when it landed, jumped on top of it and started walking again, this time with exaggerated arm motions intended to convey the swagger of a rooster, or a stallion who was particularly full of himself. Whipcrack actually laughed at that one.

In the afternoon, she presented him with a garment. Discord studied it, puzzled. It really wasn't much of a garment at all – it was more like a sequined tube sock large enough to accommodate his barrel, attached to a small cape. Bemused, Discord let her put it on him.

"We're going to run through routines for tonight, because you're going to be performing," Whipcrack said. "Let's make sure you've got this down cold. If you do well, I won't put the board on you tonight, though you'll have to wear mittens if I do that."

Discord wasn't sure he knew what mittens were, but he knew he liked the idea of not wearing the board. So he wore the silly garment, even though it itched, and he practiced doing the same tricks in the same order, over and over, as Whipcrack told him to do, even though that was boring him. He wanted to do well at whatever it was he was expected to do so he wouldn't have to sleep with the board on.

And then it was showtime.

He was brought to another tent on a flatbed cart, secured to it by a leash but not caged or bound otherwise. This tent was positively huge; in height and width it dominated the arena. Inside, he could hear hooves stomping, and it sounded like hundreds of them.

Whipcrack undid his leash from the cart and tugged him down. "Now, remember, Mixup," she said. "The boss paid a lot of money for you; this is your chance to start making it back."

This had the opposite effect of what she was probably going for. He didn't have to buy me, Discord thought sullenly. Maybe I don't want him to make his money back. Maybe I'm angry that he ruined my life by buying me. He considered screwing this up spectacularly in order to embarrass Whipcrack.

But when he was brought out onto the stage, under the bright lights, and he saw the masses of ponies in the audience, the thought fled. His first reaction was fear – being surrounded by ponies gawking at him had never been particularly good for him in the past. But as his eyes adapted and he was able to see better, he could see that they were looking at him, not with disgust, but with wonderment.

"Presenting!" Thunder Roll, the fat pegasus who seemed to own this circus, stood off to the side, shouting in a positively booming voice. "For the first time performing ever, fillies and gentlecolts, you will be the first to see this amazing freak of nature and his astonishing abilities! Let's hear it for Mixup, the draconequus!" Ponies stomped their hooves, their eyes radiant as they gazed at Discord, and despite the fact that Thunder Roll's words were somewhat insulting, Discord found that something inside him was unfurling that he'd never even known was there before. They were all looking at him, not with hate and fear, but with anticipation and interest.

"A draconequus, as you fine folks may know, is a nearly extinct kind of creature, a bizarre mixed-up hybrid of a dozen different animals. Note the head like a pony's! The tail like a dragon's! Note the lizard leg, the goat leg, the lion leg and the griffin leg!" Thunder Roll pointed with his hoof at Discord's various features, and Discord stood up on his hind legs to give them a better look, then strutted around a bit on the stage. The crowd went wild, stomping so hard the wooden bleachers they were standing in seemed likely to break. "Fillies and gentlecolts, it is our pleasure here at Yellowtail and Thunder's Amazing Circus to bring you this one-of-a-kind spectacle, a creature never before viewed by pony eyes... and tonight, he'll perform for you!" More stomping. Discord grinned, showing off his teeth. This led to some shrieks, but they seemed to be shrieks of excitement more than fear.

He started with the routine he'd practiced with Whipcrack all afternoon. There were more cheers and hoofstomping for his juggling and ball-walking, but Discord quickly got bored. He flipped himself upside down, attempting to juggle with his tail and dragon leg while walking on the ball with his arms, to the delight of the crowd. Whipcrack, off stage where he could see her but the audience couldn't, glared at him, but that didn't stop him. Who was the performer here, Whipcrack or Discord?

Of course, not having practiced that particular maneuver at all, it wasn't long before he slipped and fell. The crowd gasped, and Whipcrack looked simultaneously horrified and furious. Thunder Roll looked angry as well. Acting mostly on instinct, Discord looked out at the crowd with a comically exaggerated expression of bewilderment and pout of disappointment. It did the trick; they started laughing, some of them stomping as well. He leapt to his feet, springing up easily, and used his tail to toss two of the three juggling balls he'd lost up into the air. Then he turned toward the crowd and mimed an expression to indicate that he'd suddenly had an idea, eyebrows raised, eyes wide and mouth open. More laughter, and yet more when he picked up the ball he'd been walking on with his tail, and tossed it into the juggling mix.

He juggled the giant ball and the two smaller ones for a minute or two, did his "idea" expression again... and attempted to walk on the third juggling ball. Of course it didn't work; there was no space for both feet. His attempts brought hilarity to the crowd as he spun around in circles, or rolled forward rapidly, tail flailing as if he was trying to catch his balance, still juggling. At one point the large ball fell on his nose, and he kept his head in the air, keeping the ball wobbling precariously, perched between his muzzle and his small horns. Then he tossed it up with his muzzle, tossed all three of the smaller balls into the air, started juggling them, and timed a leap to coincide with one of the larger ball's down-bounces, using his tail slapping against the ground to give him more force. He landed on the ball, still juggling, and walked it around in a circle on the stage one more time, before jumping off it, tossing the three juggling balls in a bucket, and bowing to the crowd.

Thunderous stomping, big grins, shining eyes, hoots and hollers. Discord looked around the applauding crowd, his own eyes wide and his own grin huge. For the first time in his life, ponies were cheering him, looking at him with approval, praising him. It was the first time in his life any large group had approved of him; his mother and brothers had laughed at his antics sometimes, but most of the other draconequui in the clan had ignored him or rolled their eyes.

This was wonderful. This almost made everything else worth it. He still wanted his freedom, he still hated Whipcrack for killing River and for all the beatings... but maybe he wasn't going to try to escape again right away. Maybe he'd work on trying to prove to Whipcrack that he was sapient, and then maybe he could be a performer like the ponies were, free to come and go as they pleased, eat what they want, and train and work for the love of performing, not the fear of beatings. Because the truth was, they loved him out there, they were calling for more, and he never wanted to give this feeling up. Ever.

Discord trotted obediently off stage to Whipcrack when she called him, expecting treats. She shook her head, a look of confusion on her face. "I have no idea how you did any of that, and I don't know whether to whip you for going off-script, or give you fresh greens and a cupcake for your performance. That was amazing. Also terrifying. I'm going to have to find some way to keep you from using completely untried, unpracticed moves in your performance."

He grinned at her, and let his tongue loll out like a dog's, wagging his tail. If she was so convinced he was an animal, maybe miming an actual animal would get a positive reaction out of her. Whipcrack sighed. "Oh, all right. You can have a treat."

The treat was neither fresh greens nor a cupcake. It was a cluster of grapes. Discord would have preferred the cupcake, but this was acceptable, and besides, the excitement of performing was honestly as much of a treat as he really needed, not that he was ever going to turn down food.

Mittens turned out to be garments that went over his paws, made of thick, heavy fabric he couldn't seem to claw through, where all of his digits except his thumb were in one part of the garment and a smaller part enclosed his thumb, allowing it to move independently but forcing the rest of his digits together. It was similar to the wires in effect, though more comfortable. Rope was used to tie the mittens to his wrists, and he probably could have used his teeth to tear the rope off, but he didn't want them to think he had to wear the more restrictive and uncomfortable wooden restraint again. When he went to sleep in his cage that night, the mittens were actually comfortable surfaces to rest his head on, and if he had any difficulty sleeping, it wasn't due to pain or discomfort nearly as much as it was due to the memory of the crowds stomping and shouting for him.

For the first time since he was taken captive, Discord was actually happy.

Circus of Cages

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The next several days were a blur of happiness. Discord couldn't get enough of performing. He was actually glad to learn new tricks from Whipcrack; he wished she'd just explain the whole thing, in words, rather than giving it to him bit by bit because she thought she was training an animal and not teaching a talking creature, but at least she moved fast enough that he'd get to practice three or four new tricks every day... and then show them off at night. Whipcrack would get irritated with him for performing tricks that weren't part of the routine once he was on stage, but he always pulled it off and the crowd always clapped and cheered and if anything did go wrong Discord was always able to roll with it and make it look like part of the show.[/a]

There were fewer treats; Whipcrack had apparently figured out that Discord was motivated to learn new tricks and that he was good at them, so there were only treats when he succeeded at pulling off the entire sequence for the trick she was teaching him, not at each step of the way. This was unfortunate, because the slops they fed him were less bearable than before now that he'd gotten used to eating treats. He'd spent too long going hungry to turn his nose up at food, so he ate it, but slowly and reluctantly. Maybe if he kept bringing in the crowds, they would start to feed him better food? He would stare longingly at thrown-out snack food from the performances like circus peanuts (which weren't peanuts, and he wasn't sure why they were called that) and candied apples and popcorn. Oh, how he missed popcorn.

He learned that the days went in a cycle, like the cycle of day and night except that it was completely arbitrary and made up by ponies, and that this cycle controlled things like market days, answering a question he'd been wondering about for years. Ponies talked about things like getting provisions on market days. Apparently different towns had different market days. The circus packed up and moved to another town every so often, usually at the end of one of those cycles, which they called a "week". Occasionally they would have to pack up and leave in the middle of the week, usually in the middle of the night in a big hurry. Discord got the impression that this might involve money in some way, but wasn't sure how, because none of the ponies would talk about it in detail.

At first he was excited to be traveling to so many new places. But the truth was... they were all the same. He wasn't allowed out of the narrow confines of the animal cages, the trainers' tent, and the Big Top, which was the name for the place where he did his performances. If there were sights to see, he wasn't able to see them. The audiences were all the same – all ponies, usually either mostly earth ponies or mostly unicorns. The unicorns tended to wear more clothes. Discord would peer out through a gap in the backstage of the tent to look at the audiences and gauge them while they were still watching the other performers. Pegasi, when they did show up, were generally completely unimpressed with the acrobats. But they still laughed at his performances. So, didn't that mean that he should get even better treatment than the acrobats, because his show appealed to all three kinds of pony, while the acrobats could only interest the earthbound pony tribes?

It didn't work that way. Acrobats got to work with each other to set their own routines, and he saw them eating delicious things, like pies and cheese. They talked about receiving bits, and spending them in town. Discord got bad food for his meals, a hard floor to sleep on, a harness holding down his wings and mittens wired to his hands every time he wasn't practicing or performing. Even the treats he received weren't nearly as good as what he could see the pony performers getting.

The only thing that made up for any of it was the applause.

Ponies staring at him in astonishment and wonder! Ponies whooping and hollering as he pulled off particularly amazing stunts! Ponies laughing as he played the fool for them, making exaggerated expressions and doing silly things to entertain them, before he switched back to doing something that would make them gasp in awe... this was it. This was all he wanted out of life. If they would only recognize that he wasn't an animal, and start treating him like they treated the other ponies in the troupe, and let him sleep with blankets or something, and let him go into town and buy things there and all the other things the ponies got to do, and talk to him, not at him... okay, so he actually had quite a number of things he wanted that he wasn't getting, but they all boiled down to the same thing.

He couldn't put up with being treated like an animal forever. But as long as he had some hope that maybe they would figure it out, maybe they would finally understand him and treat him as a respected and valuable performer and not a trained animal, he was willing to try to stick it out and not try to escape again, because nothing had ever been as wonderful as the crowds stomping their hooves and shouting with happiness at him. All of their adulation, their wonder, their attention, for him. Discord would put up with quite a lot, for that.

His routines got longer. Discord didn't mind; the opportunity to perform longer thrilled him. Apparently some sort of negotiation with the acrobats had gone badly; now there were two fewer of them performing, and their routine was distinctly shorter. This supported Discord's belief that he was more important than the acrobats. Why, he could do most of their tricks himself – the ones that didn't involve having a partner, anyway. He even demonstrated to Whipcrack one day in practice, by running off as soon as her back was turned, climbing up onto the high wire, and crossing it on all fours, since he couldn't use his magic to make his goat hoof behave like his dragon claw, and while goat hooves were great for climbing mountains, they weren't all that for tightrope walking. The cleft helped, but claws and digits worked a lot better, and he had those on three paws. He fell off a couple of times – it was his first time tightrope walking, after all – but caught himself with his tail, swung around the wire, and landed back on it, making it look like he'd meant to do that.

To his surprise, Whipcrack was angry with him. "Don't do that again!" she shouted, brandishing her whip at him and making him shrink back with fear. "Do not leave the training area unless you're being brought on a leash! Do you understand?"

"Of course he doesn't," Faun Whisper said to her, patronizingly. Most of the time, unicorns were patronizing to earth ponies, but Whisper was patronizing to Whipcrack most of the time. "My dear Whipcrack, if he was smart enough to understand what you're saying to him, he'd be too smart for us to use. We'd have to set him free. The laws against enslaving a sapient being are very strict."

"I know that," Whipcrack scowled.

"Well, then you should know that yelling at him and waving your whip around is worthless! He has no idea what he did wrong. For all he knows, you're angry at him for getting down off the tightrope."

While this was untrue, given that Discord was sapient and did understand everything Whipcrack had said, Whisper was handing Discord a "get out of punishment free" card, and Discord took it, lolling his mouth open, panting like a dog, and wagging the fuzzy tip of his tail, impersonating a clueless dog who only wants to please its masters.

Whipcrack scowled. "He understands a lot more than you give him credit for," she said sharply.

"Oh, he's a very intelligent animal, there's no doubt about it. He's like one of the monkeys – he's curious and he wants to play and try new things. You should praise him for that, not threaten to punish him. He just spontaneously taught himself a new trick!"

"Yes, but it's a useless one. Mr. Thunder will never let an animal act intrude on the acrobats' territory. Mixup's never going to get to perform on the high wire."

"But now you know he can. And don't be so sure about Mr. Thunder. An animal who can walk a tightrope might even impress a pegasus audience."

"I can't train him to do tightrope acts. I don't know anything about the tightrope."

"Well, I'd be happy to take training him off your hooves, if you like. At his level of intelligence, I think he'd respond better to an animal speaker or animal specialist, anyway."

"You're no animal speaker, Whisper. Don't get too big for your britches."

"No, I'm not, it's true. But I know how to handle intelligent animals. Your talents are better served training bears and lions and that sort."

Whipcrack scowled even harder. "Oh, because I'm not an earth pony, I can't handle myself around animals? What's this bucking mark mean, then, that I like to stand on chairs and wave ribbons around?"

"I don't doubt your talent," Whisper said, his tone so smooth it was almost greasy. "I don't, however, think that this draconequus is an appropriate fit for the techniques you're skilled in. I'm willing to try training him in tightrope walking and other skills that would impress Mr. Thunder, if you aren't."

Whipcrack leaned forward, her muzzle almost touching Whisper's. "Mr. Thunder gave Mixup to me to train. Not you. Now, unless you have some race-based objection to unicorns being animal trainers, we're done here. Come on, Mixup."

Discord did not come on. The thought occurred to him that if he blatantly disobeyed Whipcrack in front of Whisper and pretended he didn't understand her orders, maybe Whisper would talk to Mr. Thunder to get the right to train Discord. It seemed to Discord that he'd have better luck getting the fact that he was sapient through to a trainer who already believed him to be an extraordinarily intelligent animal who should be managed with praise rather than punishment. So he just sat there, tongue still lolling.

"Oh, for crying out loud," Whipcrack snapped. "Come on, Mixup." Her magic pulled at him. Discord yelped and scrabbled, trying to resist the pull, but it was of course useless.

Discord didn't stop taking opportunities to practice on the acrobats' equipment every chance he got. If there was some kind of dispute with the acrobats, let Mr. Thunder replace their act with his. The more valuable he was, Discord thought, the more likely he'd be able to get what he wanted. Slavery was illegal, according to Faun Whisper, so as soon as he proved he was intelligent, they'd have to let him have the same amount of freedom that other performers did. Whipcrack didn't appreciate his attempts, and yelled at him and sometimes even used her magic to yank him down off the ladder or high wire, but he didn't stop. All he needed was for someone to be impressed by him and tell Thunder Roll, and he was sure he'd be allowed to replace the acrobats entirely.

It didn't happen that way. A few weeks after his act was extended, it was abruptly shortened again, Whipcrack giving him the signal to wind things up and make his bows before he was done with his routine. Discord could have tied things up with a flourish – he was adaptable, and he could change his routine on the fly – but he was very, very angry that he wasn't being given the amount of performance time that he'd come to expect. Had they brought in a new act, or hired more acrobats? Who cared? Discord was a star, his act got the house stomping harder than most other acts did, and he deserved better treatment than this.

So he ignored the signal. He continued his routine, drinking in the attention, the gasps of awe and the riotous laughter. This gave him little attention to spare for Whipcrack, but the glimpses he caught of her were gratifying. She looked so angry she practically had steam coming out her ears. Again and again she gave him the signal, and again and again he ignored her. She couldn't use her magic to pull him off stage; that would give away that he wasn't obeying her, and she'd be humiliated in front of the entire audience.

When he was done performing his routine, not when Whipcrack thought he should get off the stage, he bowed, accepted the applause, and finally walked off the stage on his hind legs, all the while continuing to bow as he headed to the stage exit. As he came into the backstage area, he looked up at Whipcrack... to see seething fury in her face, still.

"You saw my signal. You know what that means," she growled. "You ignored me!" Her magic yanked him, hard. He yelped as she stripped him with magic without waiting for him to remove his own costume, and then continued to drag him back to his cage.

But they loved me! Discord thought, furiously, trying helplessly to balk as Whipcrack dragged him. I did my job! I entertained the audience! This isn't fair!

Once he was in the menagerie, the whip came out. "How dare you defy me!" she snarled. "You know how important the 'end performance' signal is. You made me look like a fool in front of Mr. Thunder – a fool or someone deliberately trying to upstage his new stage magician act!" She punctuated her words with blows from the whip, as Discord screamed and tried to pull free. "When I give the signal to stop, you stop! Do you hear me?"

Even through the pain, he wondered why she always said things like "do you understand" or "do you hear me", when she couldn't manage to interpret his frantic cries of "yes" as words at all. If he was a dumb animal, why was she even asking him anything? Was she expecting a response? She usually beat him harder when she said it, the whip slashes more vicious as the words came out of her mouth.

Once she was done, she bound him with the board and the wires around his digits, and threw him in his cage – literally, and he couldn't brace himself or twist his body with the board on. He landed half on his back, half on his left side, with a wrenching pain in his left shoulder. Discord cried out, but Whipcrack ignored him, leaving him there to suffer.

Later that evening, the circus veterinarian came by to bandage his wounds and apply antiseptic, though nothing for the pain. Discord had just managed to get to sleep, despite the pain; it was infuriating that they woke him up and he'd have to go through the whole process of fighting his way toward sleep to escape the pain, again.

He made a decision. From now on, all his efforts would go toward trying to master pony speech. If he could prove that he could talk, all of this would end, and he'd be allowed to perform as a free agent, like a pony. All he had to do was re-learn how to make sounds that ponies could interpret as being language. How hard could it be?

When he wasn't practicing routines, he was practicing speech.

The draconequine language he'd grown up speaking was useless to him now. Let it go. He was fairly sure he wasn't pronouncing anything correctly anyway. Too many of his sounds came out as various animal noises. His fang and his forked tongue prevented him from properly making any sounds that needed his lips to go together or his tongue to go in one specific place in his mouth.

Discord had never spoken pony fluently. He'd learned the language as a thing he heard, not a thing he communicated in. For years he'd had no one to talk to but Little Sister, Fire, and himself. Picking up the pony language so he could understand what the ponies said was important for staying safe and finding out where they put the best food, but speaking in it was pointless when they wouldn't acknowledge that what he was saying was even speech, so he hadn't bothered to try. Also, he'd been in denial as to how badly his transformation had mangled his ability to speak at all.

Now he had to confront it. More than half the sounds ponies made, he couldn't. Ponies couldn't make most of the sounds he could, either, but that wasn't relevant when he was trying to get them to understand him.

So he practiced. He repeated what he heard ponies say, as closely as he could. He didn't do it with Whipcrack; he didn't want her to know he was practicing speech, not until he was good enough at it that no pony could possibly deny that he was speaking. But he practiced with the ponies who worked in the menagerie, bringing food and water and cleaning cages. Occasionally one of them would say jokingly that it sounded "just like he's talking," or point out that he was mimicking them. A few of them would try to get him to say crude words. Discord knew which words were considered uncouth and disgusting by ponies; he didn't try mimicking those. His mother had always impressed on him the need to avoid crude language, so that he wouldn't seem uneducated and wild. When the ponies finally did figure out he was talking, he didn't want their first exposure to his speech to be curse words and epithets.

Discord wasn't good at telling time, but an entire season passed; it grew cold outside the menagerie, and then cold inside as well, and the ponies brought heated blankets or extra straw to the various animals, depending on how valuable they were and whether they were able to use a blanket. Discord got a blanket, which he was grateful for; one of the things that infuriated him about being treated like an animal was that he didn't get to have anything soft to sleep on. Outside the tents, there was often snow on the ground, and the ponies who came to his performances came wearing snow boots and scarves, sometimes hats and winter coats as well. There was a special performance for an event called the Winter Moon Festival, which lasted longer than most of the other performances. And then the cold got worse.

Even with the blankets, Discord did badly with the bitter winter chill. He wasn't in a warm underground burrow or a cave with a roaring fire and a thick layer of fallen leaves to burrow into; he was kept in a cage, with open bars that let the drafty air in, inside a tent. There was a large magical heater in the center of the tent to keep the tent from freezing, but it didn't put out enough heat to make Discord comfortable. His body was stiff and aching every day when he woke up, the moreso if he was forced to sleep with the board on. He had to exercise as soon as he was awake, even before breakfast, or the stiffness would plague him even while Whipcrack was training him, and she wasn't forgiving of mistakes he made because the cold made him less flexible and less agile than normal. And the cold slops that were his breakfast and dinner were less bearable than they'd been when the temperature was moderate.

He missed warm food. Hot buttered popcorn, roasted fruit, squash heated over Fire until its outside was just slightly charred and the inside was oh-so-soft... buttered roasted potatoes, crumbling in his mouth... warm soupy mixtures he made from heating grains and milk together until he got some sort of porridge, and mixing jam or spices or both into it, how it filled his belly with welcome heat that radiated down to his toes in the winter... He was better off now than he'd been his first winter, but every winter since then had been better than this. Discord got no warm food, no opportunity to play in the snow, no fire, no clothing to warm him aside from the sparkling sequined costumes he wore for his performances – which weren't warm anyway... All he got was one rough blanket that was heated magically every night by a pony whose sole job appeared to be casting heat spells. it wasn't even a very comfortable blanket, though it was better than the plain hard wood that had been all he'd had before.

So he was very, very eager to get to the point where ponies could understand that he was sapient and deserved to have a bed in a tent, and warm food, and nice blankets, and everything else the ponies got.

"Hello!" he practiced, over and over, in the darkness of the menagerie at night. "Nice to meet you! I'm..." He blanked on his name, trying different things. Whatever pony word meant "discord" had never been said in his presence, so he didn't actually know his own name. Sometimes he tried "Fuchayoei", the draconequine word that represented his name. Sometimes he used the word for "mess" because he didn't know the word for "chaos" in pony either, or exactly what chaos meant anyway except that it meant his principle and also making messes. He used Whipcrack's name for him, "Mixup," sometimes, but he hated it. It made it sound like his body was the most important thing about him, and that his body was a mistake, that he hadn't been given the gifts of so many different animals by the power that changed him and brought out his magic but instead he was just put together wrong somehow.

So, skip that part. "Hello! Nice to meet you! I'm a draconequus! I have a pony head and a dragon body, but don't be scared, I don't breathe fire and I don't eat ponies! Actually I really like popcorn, does anyone have any?" And then if a pony said they had popcorn and gave him some, he would eat it and juggle with the box and then pretend he'd done a magic trick where the popcorn had magically disappeared. And all the ponies would laugh. He knew it.

One day, he decided, this was it. This was the day he would prove to all the ponies in the audience that he'd been a sapient being the whole time. Then the circus ponies would have no choice but to acknowledge him – according to Faun Whisper, the way they were treating him would be illegal if anyone knew he was intelligent.

By now he could almost do his tricks in his sleep. He didn't have a routine per se, the way the acrobats or the earth pony stage magician did. Discord had a repertoire of tricks he knew how to do, and he'd practice enough of them before the show that he could put together a performance out of them without difficulty, and then he'd make up his performance on the fly. Whipcrack couldn't make him stop doing it, because she didn't have any way of punishing him for going off-script that wouldn't more likely be interpreted by an animal as punishment for a good performance. As long as Discord didn't screw anything up, and as long as he got off stage when he got the signal to end his show, he was safe to do whatever he wanted.

Today, he danced on a large ball, upside down, using his talon and lion paw for "feet" while he juggled small, brightly colored sacks of rice with his hoof, dragon paw and tail. He performed acrobatic feats no pony could possibly manage on a series of raised bars of different heights, twisting his entire body through gaps a pony couldn't even fit through, let alone shimmy through as part of an acrobatic maneuver. And then, before going on to his next set of tricks, after he landed, he bowed to the audience.

"Hello!" he shouted. "Nice to meet you! I'm a draconequus!"

The crowd roared with laughter.

Discord blinked. What he'd said wasn't that funny. "I have a pony head and a dragon body... is you laugh why?" He knew the syntax on that last was wrong, but he couldn't keep going. They were laughing at him. Not at his entertaining comic antics that he deliberately put on to make them laugh. They were laughing at something he meant to be completely serious.

A foal in the first row said, "Daddy, it sounds like he's talking! Doesn't it sound just like he's talking?"

"I am talking!" Discord shouted, this time with some anger.

The father of the foal continued to laugh. "Yes, it does, honey! Oh, wow, imagine how hard they had to train him to do that!"

"Say something else!" another foal in the second row yelled. "Keep talking!"

"Listen, ponies! I can talk! This is talking! Don't laugh! I talking now!"

"He looks so serious!" a unicorn mare chortled. "Like he really thinks he's talking to us!"

"Oh, skies, I'm going to die laughing! This is too much!" a stallion gasped through fits of laughter.

Laughing at him. At his attempts to talk. At his best efforts to prove that he was worth just as much as a pony, that he deserved the same rights and treatment. It was just funny to them, because all they could hear was an animal mimicking something that sounded almost like pony speech.

Tears welled in Discord's eyes, but he wasn't going to let them see him cry. He didn't finish the routine; he ran straight for backstage.

Whipcrack chased after him as soon as she realized he'd left the stage. "Mixup! What are you doing? You've still got two more minutes! Your routine's not done!"

Discord ignored her. Rage boiled up in him. He raced at his top speed, on four legs, to the edge of the tent and tore at it, raking his claws through it.

"What are you doing? Stop this, now!" Whipcrack's voice was still far away. He was still out of range of her field. Maybe there was enough time. He used his teeth and all of his claws, including the dragon paw, ripping through the tent, too angry to consider the likelihood of recapture. All he wanted was to get away. They'd never accept him. They'd never treat him like a pony. The ponies who'd cheered and clopped their hooves and laughed at his slapstick had laughed just as hard at his attempt to talk and prove he was as smart as a pony. He hated them all and he never wanted to go back in the tent and perform for them, ever.

The hole was big enough. He launched himself through... directly into a large snowbank.

Discord shivered, and struggled to the top of the snowbank, but it was powdery and his legs were short. On four legs, he could stay on top of the snow some of the time, but if he sank, his whole body would be in the snow. On two legs, he was taller than the snowdrift, but there was too much weight on his two feet to keep him from sinking. Without his wings or magic, he couldn't figure out how to get through this.

And then Whipcrack's magic pulled him back.

After the beating, after the screaming, after being thrown back into his cage with the board bound to his back and his claws clipped short and blunt, Discord decided that he'd made the wrong call, months ago when he'd decided to cooperate for a chance to perform. Once he was free, he could learn to talk properly and then find another circus and join it voluntarily, not as an animal treated as property. But he couldn't stay here. He couldn't stand it anymore.

From this point on, he was once again going to take any opportunity to escape that looked as if it might succeed.

Winter gave way to spring, with a big festival that resulted in two performances a day for several days, and afterward there was no more snow on the ground and the weather had turned warmer. Discord tried to hold onto his blanket, but there was nowhere to hide it and growling at ponies who attempted to take it from him didn't do any good when they were unicorns and could hold him at bay with magic. Why did they have to take his blanket, though? There was no good reason they couldn't have let him keep it, just because it was warmer now and he didn't need it to keep from freezing to death. It just reinforced Discord's determination to escape.

He continued performing, because he had to hide from Whipcrack how much he wanted to get away, and because it was still the only fun he got to have. A lot of the joy of it had been taken away when he'd realized the ponies in the audience saw him as a dumb animal just the same as the ponies in the circus did, but it was still fun to get applauded, even if he had less respect for the ones giving him the applause, now. When he didn't challenge Whipcrack or do anything other than learn the tricks she wanted him to learn and then use them in his performance the way she wanted him to, she didn't leave the board on his back when he slept. He was more agile when he didn't have to sleep with it, and she wanted him to be agile.

That was going to be her mistake.

He needed a wire for a lockpick. They no longer wired his fingers together; they used rope to fasten the mittens to his wrists. Finding a piece of wire without Whipcrack noticing what he was doing was going to be challenging. He kept his eyes open. Be patient, and watchful. Something was going to turn up, eventually. He was sure of it.

But when it finally happened, it came as an enormous surprise.

One of the ponies who worked in the menagerie was being fired. Strong words were said. The supervisor accused the pony in question of coming to work drunk – which, Discord knew for a fact, was an entirely accurate assessment. The stallion who'd been so accused responded with accusations of wage theft, and hours worked that had gone uncredited, and Mr. Thunder's abusive tirades, and how anypony would drink if they were forced to work in such conditions. A couple of the stallion's friends chimed in to offer their support for his statements. The manager threatened to fire them too. A mare from the group sneered at him. "What'll you do if we all quit? What then?" The manager, a unicorn, responded that it hardly took intelligence to take care of a bunch of filthy animals and that earth ponies were barely better than the creatures in the cages anyway. One of the earth ponies in the group being potentially fired grew enraged, and literally picked up animal poop and flung it at the manager.

The entire time, Discord watched avidly. A fight broke out, hooves exchanged blows, and by the time all was said and done, five ponies had lost their jobs and the manager had a broken jaw and was covered in animal waste. The manager saw Discord watching, and scowled at him. "What are you looking at? Filthy animal. Don't stare at me with those stupid eyes!"

For a moment Discord was very, very angry. This idiot couldn't even tell that his own species weren't animals, let alone that Discord wasn't either, and yet he dared called Discord stupid? Act like he was better than Discord, because he was a unicorn and could do magic, when if this collar was removed Discord's magic could run circles around his? All he'd need would be for the collar to fall off his neck, and he could show that unicorn who was the animal around here!

The manager doused the light in the menagerie, and Discord, trying to turn around to go lay down and sulk, felt something hard under his paw, between the mitten and the wooden floor. There was enough light trickling into the tent from the moon and the lamps outside that he could barely make out something that glinted, so he licked it, exploring it with his tongue.

What his tongue seemed to find was literally unbelievable, but when Discord picked it up and held it in the dim light, turning it this way and that so he could make it out better... it was exactly what it had felt like it was. It was the padlock on his collar. Still locked, but inexplicably not on his collar anymore.

Discord felt the collar. The padlock was, in fact, gone. Nothing had happened to the rings that the padlock usually held together; they were still solid. There was no possible explanation for how the padlock had just fallen off of him... except that possibly, he'd had another one of those magical flares from anger, like he'd had when River died. And he hadn't suffered backlash, because his magic had freed him from the collar.

That didn't really make sense, because he'd been so angry when River died. Being mad at a stupid unicorn insulting him didn't even compare. On the other hand... he remembered feeling like his magic was stiff, the last time he'd gotten his collar off, and then Whipcrack and Faun Whisper had argued with each other and it had felt like it was making his magic stronger, more responsive. Maybe when ponies argued, it fed his magic. It made sense. Discord nodded, remembering. Before mommy had – before all the draconequui had – that night, when it had all happened, the tribe leader had named him Discord, Principle of Chaos and Disharmony. That meant his magic liked chaos and disharmony, or was good at making it... he wasn't entirely sure he exactly remembered how Principles worked. But it made sense, that when ponies argued and created disharmony, it made his magic stronger. And with stronger magic, fed by that lengthy argument and then fight, maybe his desire to get free of his collar had been enough.

Whatever. Discord wasn't going to question it. He pulled the collar free and tossed it on the ground, then tore the mittens off with his teeth. He could have done that anytime, but without his magic to assist in an escape attempt, what would have been the point? Now he was free to escape.

But he was going to be careful this time. No running out into snowbanks (not that there should be any snow at this time, but the weather hadn't been predictable on his mountain, so he assumed it wasn't necessarily here either), no running into a floodlamp and being seen, no knocking anything over. No being caught by magical wards. He'd be watchful, and patient, and cautious, and look for opportunities. He wouldn't just race right out to freedom – that was how he'd been caught, practically every other time.

Slashing a hole in the tent so he could escape had never been the part that had gotten him caught, before, but he was careful with it anyway. With half of the animal caretaking staff on the evening shift fired, there might not be anyone guarding the menagerie tent, or there might be a whole horde of security ponies who'd come in response to the disturbance. Until he got a large enough hole in the tent that he could check it, Discord had no way of knowing. So he had to be careful, but also, not take too much time. Taking too much time had defeated him on some of his attempts.

Once he'd torn a hole large enough to look outside, Discord determined that the coast was relatively clear. There were huge spotlights everywhere, but he knew that from his previous attempts. As long as he stuck to the shadows he'd be fine. He squirmed out through the hole in the tent and slunk from patch of shadow to patch of shadow.

The layout of the circus tents wasn't the same as it had been in his first few attempts. There were more tents, and he had difficulty figuring out where the edge was. Eventually, though, he managed to slink his way to the outer border of the circus... which was caged in with a high wire fence.

With his magic, he made the harness that held his wings to his sides fall away, but his wings hurt once they were free; they could barely flap. He wasn't going to be able to fly over that fence. He could climb it, easily enough, but Discord wasn't going to fall into the exact same trap more than once. First he had to examine it magically to make sure it was safe.

His heart sank when he got a good look at it. The barrier was enchanted to send up an alert if anything living tried to cross it, animal or pony, and the spell had a lot of weird repetition to it. He couldn't be sure, but it looked to him like if he changed the obvious place in the spell where it said to send alerts so it would do something else, the repeating pieces might catch that the spell wasn't the same as it used to be, and trigger some other spell he couldn't see. Or some part of this spell that was hidden in the repeating pieces.

Well. There had to be a way to get through it – otherwise the alarm would be going off all day when shipments of food came in, not to mention customers. Either it was based on time, in which case the alarm spell would cease when a particular time came that outsiders were supposed to come in and vice versa, or there was a place where it didn't apply, for example a gate, where interchange with the outside could happen. If it was the gate, it would mean Discord could still escape under cover of darkness. If it was time, he'd have to watch the spell, and wait. So the smart thing to do was to look for a gate now, and if he found it but it was still a problem, then he'd have to wait it out.

He slunk through the circus. There were a lot of wagons which served essentially as buildings – wagons that performers lived in, wagons that stored food and props and costumes, wagons that during the day would provide medical treatment to injured performers or would be where the makeup artists did their work on the performers. It was easy for Discord to stay under wagons; he was small and could flatten his body to a degree that a pony foal could not and still be able to walk. The wheels weren't high, but that just made it a lot harder for ponies to see under the wagons. It was harder to get from wagon to wagon with the spotlights in place; he had to creep around the shadows, gauging when to move slowly so as to stay almost invisible and when to move quickly so no one would have time to notice him.

Eventually he found one gate. There might have been others, but he strongly suspected this was the only one he'd need. It was wide, and there were bright lights shining all over it, and a booth where a pony dozed, safe from the chilly night air of spring. Discord could smell the dog chained up outside the booth before he saw it, sleeping in the grass beside the booth. So, the gate was protected by a dog, and a guard. This must be the right gate.

Unfortunately the spell on the fence was active on the gate as well. Discord groaned to himself. Either the gate needed to be opened, or it needed a certain time of day, or it needed a unicorn to deactivate it. Any of those could be the trigger to take down the alarm, but none of them were likely to happen until morning, and Discord was very tired.

He considered his options. He could get some sleep and wait for the gate to open in the morning, hiding under a wagon. But if the wagon was moved during the day, or if they used dogs to search for him, he'd be caught. He could stay awake and wait for the gate to open, but if he did that, he'd be exhausted by the time the opportunity to escape actually did come up. Or he could go back to an unguarded portion of the fence, climb it as fast as possible, and rely on speed and his ability to disappear into a forest or nighttime shadows to escape the pursuit that would quickly follow.

Triggering an alarm and relying on speed to outrun it seemed entirely too similar to the things he'd done in the past that had resulted in him being recaptured and beaten. And he had his magic now. What if he made himself invisible? He examined himself carefully, the properties that allowed ponies to see him. What if he adjusted those properties so that light just went through him? And how would he check it?

Hmm. The makeup artists' wagon would have mirrors. It might also have makeup artists in it, but Discord could maybe cast a spell to check for ponies before he tried to go in it? He crept back to the makeup artists' wagon. Figuring out how to cast a scrying spell was hard, but making the wood floor of the wagon into strings he could just crawl through was easy, and once inside, he listened for the sound of breathing ponies. Nothing. The wagon smelled overwhelmingly of pony and of the tangy mineral scents of makeup, and there was no light at all, but if he shifted traits of bat-ness inherent in his wings to his ears, he could hear amazingly well. No sounds of life at all. The makeup artists must sleep somewhere else, then.

A switch activated the magical circuits that turned on the lamps. Discord climbed up on one of the stools and examined himself in the mirror. He saw himself in mirrors fairly often – backstage in the Big Top was full of them – but he was always wearing his costume then. Now he saw himself naked, clad only in his fur, feathers and scales, and he was scruffy. His fur seemed ungroomed. His pegasus wing, no longer bound to his side, badly needed a preening. The stubby little antler and goat horn that had replaced the two draconequus horns he'd been born with were duller in color than they looked under the Big Top's lights. Even the scales on his tail and dragon leg seemed less shiny than he thought they ought to be. Had the sequins on his costume dazzled him out of noticing that he looked downright sickly? Discord had seen himself in ponds and streams and dishes of water he'd filled so that he'd have a mirror to look at himself, many times, back when he was free, and he'd seen himself many times when he was sick with a cold or a fever or hunger. He knew what it meant when his fur and scales were dull and his wing was unkempt.

Misery made for an ill appearance, it seemed. Well, he was getting free tonight. Or tomorrow, more likely, but the point was, he wasn't going back to the circus. He just had to make sure he got out of here safely.

His attempts at invisibility didn't work as well as he'd hoped. Making himself transparent was fine until he moved; things behind him visibly looked warped when he changed position. Making light bend around him made him blind. So did making light jump straight through him as if he wasn't there. When he specified that light should go to his eyes but nowhere else, his golden eyes glittered in the emptiness, practically shining and very, very obvious.

Discord sighed. He didn't have all night to find a good invisibility spell, and he was very tired. The one where he made himself transparent would work if he was lying under a wagon sleeping. This wagon wasn't close enough to the gate, though. He had to get close enough to the gate that when the spell went down he could take advantage of it easily without having to cross through the circus in daylight again. So he crawled back down through the strings a spot on the floor was made of, let them revert back to wood that behaved like wood, and slunk back to the gate, where he took up position underneath one of the wagons that was closest. As soon as the gate opened in the morning, he'd be ready.

For now, he set his properties so that he was transparent, set the properties of the grass underneath him so that it was sun-warmed and dry rather than chilly and covered with dew, and curled up to sleep.

He woke to the sounds of ponies shouting. The sun was up, but the gate wasn't yet opened, so he shrank back under the wagon he was hiding beneath.

"Look inside everything! Look under everything!" Mr. Thunder was shouting. Discord smirked. Good luck with that. He might be noticed if he came out of his hiding spot and into the light, but as long as he stayed where he was and didn't move, he was completely indistinguishable from the shadows under the wagon. Sooner or later, they'd notice his wing harness had been removed, and then maybe they'd guess that he flew away, and they'd stop looking. They'd need to open the gates before the evening's performances, anyway.

He was almost flattered that it seemed like every pony in the circus had been drafted into trying to locate him. Was he really that valuable? If so, they should have treated him better – they had no one to blame but themselves.

Discord's stomach growled. Was it late enough into the morning that it was past his usual breakfast time? He wasn't good at telling time. Unless the sun was blatantly near the horizon or up at the top of the sky, all times seemed roughly similar to him – the sun was in the sky, someplace, or else it was nighttime so it wasn't. It made sense that it was after breakfast, though, because who would have discovered he was missing before the menagerie workers came in to feed the animals their morning meal?

Well, once he got free, he'd get food. He'd gone hungry before, for far worse reasons than escaping to freedom. He'd live through this.

For what seemed like quite a while, he saw ponies tear back and forth. The makeup artists' wagon, above him, rocked with the efforts of the ponies inside it to search every cabinet he could be hiding in. Multiple ponies peered under his wagon, and trotted off in frustration. Discord's grin got bigger. Ponies were no match for his magic. The only way they'd kept him penned up as long as they had was that they'd used that collar that took his magic away.

It was taking them an awfully long time to finish their search, though. Come on. Admit you can't find me and give up!

And then he heard the dogs.

Discord tensed, remembering being attacked by the dog at the Quench farm. How could he have possibly forgotten? Dogs operated on smell, not sight, and he'd done nothing to conceal his own smell.

Well, he wasn't as young and naïve as he'd been when the Quench dog had attacked him. He had ways to defend himself against dogs. Maybe re-pointer the dog's gravity sideways so the dog would fall away from him, or maybe replace the dogs' legness with swimming-fins-ness. Swimming fins wouldn't do a dog a whole lot of good if it tried to attack. Or replace the sharpness of its teeth with softness and squishiness.

When a dog found him, he growled at it, and slashed at its nose. It backed away, barking. "Good boy!" some pony Discord didn't recognize shouted. "Collin found him! He's under the wagon here!"

Discord peered out from under the wagon and saw a unicorn galloping up. "Get out of the way, Snoop," the unicorn shouted. "That thing can be dangerous! I'll pull it out with magic!"

Fury swept through Discord again. He remembered being captured by the three unicorns, who pinned him with their magic; remembered the dark blue unicorn, Mavis, who'd grabbed him for Whipcrack and handed him over chuckling like she didn't care at all about the beating he was destined to suffer. Remembered Whipcrack herself, and all the terrible things she'd used her magic to do to him.

The unicorn wanted to pit himself against Discord's magic? How would he like to try that without hornness?

Discord focused on the unicorn's horn for a moment. He couldn't make it dematerialize – he could only alter the properties of things, not make things cease to exist. But if he expanded his attention to the entire pony... the pony had the property of "unicornness". What if the pony had the property of "earth ponyness" instead?

First there was magic pulling at him – and then, a moment later, there wasn't.

"My – my – what happened to my magic? I can't feel – I can't feel my horn!" The stallion put his hoof to his head – and started screaming. "My horn! My horn's gone! My horn's gone! Stars help me!"

"What?" The earth pony with the dog stared at him in shock. "You're right, it's gone! Land almighty, this thing can do that?"

Suddenly the wave of ponies converging on Discord from the center of the circus started backing away. "It took Fire Tongue's horn!" "Did you see that?" "Will it take our horns too?" "Can it take wings?" "Oh, stars, I don't want to go anywhere near it!" "Me neither!" "Don't be a wuss, we're earth ponies. We've got no horns to take!" "Don't be reckless! What if it can take our legs? Or eyes?" "Land eternal, I'm not going near that thing!"

Thunder Roll's voice roared. "I don't care what it's done with its magic! If no one catches that draconequus you're all fired!"

An earth mare with a lasso galloped forward and tried to sling the lasso under the wagon. Discord backed up, out from under the wagon, and ran for the fence. It didn't matter if he triggered the alarm anymore, and if he pointed gravity at one of the trees on the other side of the fence he didn't even need his wings to be usable; he could just fall out of the fence's boundaries and land in the trees.

Ponies came at him. Some tried to use magic from a distance, yanking him. They couldn't hide themselves from him, though; Discord could see the magic, plain as day, like a thread coming from a glowing horn. He'd snap away hornness and make the pony an earth pony, or make their up into a down for a moment, so they'd fall into the air shrieking for a pony height or two before Discord moved his attention elsewhere so they'd fall back down. Pegasi dived at him. Discord snapped away one's wings, and she plowed into the ground with a scream. Reversing gravity on others made them plummet upward temporarily until they figured out how to readjust themselves. He turned one's wings into batpony wings rather than pegasus wings and he crashed while trying to figure out how to fly with them. After that the pegasi gave him a wide berth.

Earth ponies chased after him hardest and fastest, and he had to be quick about casting spells to stop them. Ground slick like ice. Ground liquid like water. Blades of grass sharp like glass. Grass on wheels, so when a pony landed on a patch of grass it skidded and rolled somewhere the pony wasn't expecting. Also the up-as-down trick worked as well on earth ponies as it did on unicorns.

Rather than climb the fence, when he reached it, he turned it into paper and tore right through it. It felt so good to use his magic again, after so long. While fighting back was initially terrifying, as the chase went on and his tactics scared more and more of the circus ponies off from pursuing him at all, he began to feel viciously accomplished. Strong, almost invincible. Take that, ponies! Treat me like an animal? Keep me in a cage? See how you like it when I turn your world upside down!

He bolted through a small copse of trees right outside the fence... and found himself on a street. It wasn't a thick forest like he was used to; it was a layer of trees planted literally about four trees deep before it gave way to overly settled territory. Discord had generally avoided being in the pony towns during the day; he'd snuck in at night to take food from their trash or break into buildings and steal supplies, like when he'd taken the materials he'd needed to fix Little Sister.

Ponies on the street gawked at him. Discord ran. Away from the circus, away from the staring ponies. Down the street. Maybe there was nothing up ahead but more streets, but if he kept running and running, sooner or later he'd get to somewhere that there were no ponies and they'd leave him alone. He didn't look back, though he could hear that there were still pursuers from the circus. When they got closer, he'd worry about it, since he'd probably have to look at them to cast spells to stop them, but right now he just wanted distance.

Something hit him in the backside, knocking him sideways. And then a searing, horrible, mind-destroying pain burned through his tail. Discord gasped, and then screamed. He twisted sideways, trying to see what was causing the pain.

There was a harpoon

There was a harpoon attached to a chain

A harpoon attached to a chain and it

It went through his tail

He had time to register only the horror of it, the utter wrongness of seeing a bolt go into his tail and a sharp, pointed head poking out of it and the blood everywhere, before someone or something yanked on the chain and he screamed. His body went flying, skidding across the ground, but he was barely aware of the motion through the nauseating, senses-blotting totality of the pain in his tail.

He couldn't summon up magic. He couldn't concentrate. He couldn't even see straight. When the dim shadows of ponies appeared in front of him, encroaching on his space, he snarled and snapped at them, but he couldn't snap horns away anymore, so nothing stopped them from grabbing him with magic and binding him, wrapping chains around his entire body.

What happened after that came back to him, when he dared to try to remember it at all, in a series of disconnected snapshots, so that he was never sure what order anything happened in, and didn't want to know badly enough to endure probing those memories. There was another beating, more savage than any except the one that had involved Whipcrack literally flinging him into things. There was a metal bolt with rings on both sides inserted into his tail, in a different location than the harpoon had been, which necessitated punching a second hole straight through his tail. There was a new collar that was nothing but the metal mesh, and a small blue flame burning his fur and the skin underneath it as a pony welded the collar's edges together, while other ponies held him tightly as he screamed and tried to thrash. There was a cuff welded around his dragon leg, which thankfully was impervious to heat or it would have been just as bad as the collar being welded around his neck.

It was days before he was healed enough to perform again – days that he spent with the board on his back, his paws unable to both touch his neck at the same time, shackled to his cage by the bolt in his tail and the cuff on his leg. They hadn't even left him enough range of motion that he could reach the edge of his cage to poop; he had no choice but to do it in his cage, not even in a corner but out in an open spot that was the farthest he could reach with the chains he wore. The first day after his escape attempt, they didn't even feed him – not that he could move well enough to eat much anyway. It hurt badly enough to drag himself over to the water trough.

He didn't feel at all recovered enough to perform when Whipcrack finally released him from his chains and took him to the training tent to practice for the evening, but he was too afraid to balk or challenge her. While she hadn't beaten him again after he was chained up, she did come in on a daily basis to scream at him about how he had almost gotten her fired and how dare he attack ponies with his magic. He'd learned that no one was permanently hurt – the wings and horns he'd zapped away had returned after they'd collared him, and the worst any of the ponies had suffered was broken bones, and after the beating he'd had more than his own fair share of those. But of course, the ponies had no sense of fairness and were far more upset about the brief moments when they'd been deprived of wings or horns than the months they'd spent depriving him of his freedom. So Whipcrack was in an especially bad mood, and Discord didn't dare cross her.

Performing hurt. They'd had healing spells cast on him, of course, but for some reason the spells were working more slowly and erratically than they had the first time he'd been beaten badly enough to need assistance from healing spells. Bones that had been formerly broken still ached, and every muscle protested the moves his routines required. Also, he was out of practice. The performance was lackluster, so Whipcrack didn't give him any treats for a reward afterward, and even the applause was weak.

Over the next several days, as he healed and got back into practice, Discord improved, but he was still bound to the board, fingers wired together, and leg and tail shackled into place, every time he was returned to his cage. The only time he had any physical freedom of motion at all was during training, practice and his performances. The applause wasn't enough to cut through the misery of the way he was being forced to live, particularly since Whipcrack had gotten very stingy with the rewards and he was hungry all the time, but he tried to be good, to demonstrate the behavior they wanted from him, because he wanted the level of freedom they'd given him before the escape attempt. Just to sleep without the board on his back keeping him from curling up would be wonderful. They could still shackle him, just take away the board and he'd be happy. Well, happier than he was now, anyway.

But they didn't do it. Days went by, and still Discord was restrained harshly every night. He learned to hold his need to eliminate in until they undid the board and unlocked the chains, so he could do his business somewhere other than the middle of his cage... which meant sometimes agony in his bladder, when he'd drunk too much water and it felt like it was going to burst, but better to hold it and deal with the pain than let it go and endure the smell. His cage was only washed once a week or so, and especially as the days grew warm, that wasn't enough. The smell of the menagerie in general was overwhelming, and he desperately longed for fresh air. If his own cage smelled like pee, where he couldn't escape it, that would be the worst thing ever.

The strangest thing was that during training and performances, Whipcrack treated him like she always had. She praised him when he did well, though that was rarer now – Discord found his concentration slipping, and a general exhaustion and weariness making it almost impossible for him to perform at his best or even be in top form during training. Whipcrack didn't beat him for these failures, but she would yell at him, or express disappointment, and either way she'd withhold treats. Still, it was normal in comparison to the overkill of the bindings. Every night without fail, and every day if he was taken from his cage and then returned to it during daylight, she or some other pony put the board on and fastened the shackles. It wasn't easy for them, either. The new collar seemed to absorb much more magic than the old one did – Discord didn't get any boost from arguments or chaos any more, and couldn't even feel his magic, most of the time, but on the other hand, unicorns couldn't seem to grab him as easily as they had once. Many times, Whipcrack had to rely on earth ponies to put Discord's bindings on him, because her magic started behaving erratically when it touched him. And yet, she never forgot or slipped up. The bindings went on every single time.

Spring gave way to summer. Discord used to love summer, when the days were long and warm and tasty food grew everywhere, even up on his mountain. He and Little Sister had played until night fell almost every night and then chased fireflies. Discord had even learned to catch them without being too rough with them and hurting them. He'd tried putting them in glass jars to light his cave without Fire, since Fire had often been too warm for summer days, but they stopped glowing and faded away unless he let them go.

This year, there was nothing to love about summer. He felt as if he was the one who was fading away from a lack of being let go. He was tired all the time, and his performances had become seriously lackluster. As long as he didn't outright disobey anything, Whipcrack didn't beat him, most of the time. Sometimes when he was especially exhausted and sluggish she'd lash him once to force him to wake up, the shock and pain startling him to full alertness, but nothing like what she'd give him if she thought he was being disobedient. The shouting and insults didn't bother him as long as she didn't hit him. It did bother him that she didn't give him treats, but not enough to give him the energy to perform the way she'd like.

He practiced talking because it was all he could do. With the board on his back and the shackles on his leg and tail, with the metal mesh collar draining his magic away so much that he couldn't even feel it and pony magic would fail on him more often than it worked, he knew he had no realistic hope of escape. Discord's only hope was somehow, someway, to convince some pony that he was intelligent, and that meant he had to try to learn the language. In the absence of any feedback, though, he couldn't tell if he was getting better or not. When he practiced a new trick, Whipcrack would tell him if it was wrong, and yell her explanation of what part of it was wrong at him. Once he got it right, she'd tell him so. But with speaking pony, all he knew was that no pony ever acknowledged that he was talking at all, and certainly, they never gave him any advice on what he should do to improve.

Every so often, he acted out despite the certainty of being beaten for it, throwing temper tantrums or deliberately ruining his own practice, because what else was there to do? Lying in his cage, unable to move very much, was so boring he wanted to die. Nothing to do but stare into nothing and daydream of things he was trying hard to believe he'd have the opportunity to see or do or experience sometime again in his life. He chewed on his paws, biting his claws down until he reached the veins within and drew blood, because he couldn't do anything else. He couldn't even reach his tail to suck on it or chew anymore. Food was tasteless, and even on the rare occasions when he got treats, he felt humiliated and sickened by the fact that he'd done something to please his captor, just because she had power over him, so they never tasted as good as they had when he hadn't hated Whipcrack quite so much.

So when he had the chance, he popped balls rather than standing on them, or broke the juggling toys he was given rather than juggling them, or chewed through ropes rather than swinging on them. He never risked doing these things during a performance – if he humiliated Whipcrack in front of the actual audience, he knew the pain he'd get would be unendurable. The beatings he got for doing it during practice and training were bad enough, and he always swore to himself that he wouldn't do it again, that it wasn't worth it... but he always found himself doing it again, because he was bored. There was so much destructive, restless energy in him from being confined for so long. It didn't last long – he couldn't channel the energy into performing better, because it actively resented him doing anything he was "supposed" to do, and there wasn't enough of it to keep him awake and alert much longer than he ever was. It just came from the fact that he was angry and he was bored and he hated everything, and when he saw an opportunity to take out his feelings on inanimate objects, he grabbed at it. In the moments when he was doing it, he didn't even care that there would be a beating later; either he didn't think of it at all, entirely focused on his impulse of the moment, or it seemed at that moment unimportant, or sometimes even something he was willingly drawing down on himself because he wanted to feel rebellious and bad and because a beating was at least interaction, something that could make him feel something besides the endless boredom.

He came down with a summer cold, coughing and sneezing. This didn't get him any better treatment or any freedom from having to perform. But it didn't go away. And he had mouth sores, and his body ached horribly all the time, and his teeth hurt.

Then one day he was practicing on a balance beam, when he felt suddenly dizzy and fell over. He wasn't high enough for a safety net and wasn't low enough not to bruise himself badly when he hit the floor. Whipcrack yelled at him to get up, and he tried, but another wave of dizziness had him going down to four legs. And then he threw up.

The vet was summoned. Discord lay on the floor, miserable. "What did you do to him this time?" the vet asked Whipcrack.

"He fell off the balance beam and then vomited," Whipcrack said, leaving out the part where she'd screamed at him and brandished her whip, threatening him. "I haven't punished him; he's obviously sick, or he ate something bad for him."

"Well, how am I supposed to know what's wrong with him if he's sick?" the vet said peevishly. "It's not like anyone ever mentioned dragonisses when I went to veterinary school. He's some weird chimera hybrid, how would I know how to treat him?"

"You fixed his broken bones," Whipcrack said.

"A skeleton's a skeleton. But different species need different things. Medicines that help a pony might kill a lion or a snake, and this creature's all kind of mixed up animals. You're going to need a specialist of some kind. There's nothing I can do here."

"And what if he dies, and Mr. Thunder is out his investment?"

"He's made plenty of money off the creature already. I'd say he's made back his investment. And there isn't anything I can do. I don't know what's safe to give him." The vet started walking out. "Make sure you keep him quarantined. Whatever he's got, you don't want him giving it to all the other animals."

So for a day, and maybe longer, Discord got an entire empty wagon to himself. It didn't do him any good; they didn't remove the board on his back, they still shackled his tail to a bolt on the floor, and he was too sick to do much of anything anyway. He spent most of the time drinking from his water trough, crawling over to a corner to expel the water from his other end, and trying to sleep in between. He had no realistic idea of how much time he'd been there when Whipcrack arrived with a new pony, an earth mare with a light blue coat, so pale it was almost white, and an orange mane. Despite himself he smiled at the color clash. Ponies got so annoyed with certain color combinations, but they were usually the prettiest ones.

The pony stopped dead on looking at him. "What have you been feeding this animal?" she asked.

"Pig slop," Whipcrack said.

"With meat in it?"

"No. He won't eat meat."

The pony glared at Whipcrack. "What do you mean he won't eat meat? This is a carnivore. Look at those talons! Those teeth!"

Whipcrack rolled her eyes. "Tell that to him. We haven't been able to get him to eat any form of meat. He threw a fit when we killed a fish he was keeping in his water trough, after refusing to eat any of the fish we gave him for food, so we tried other meats, but he turned everything down. So we feed him pig slop."

Discord's eyes burned, and he suddenly wanted to cry. He'd managed not to think about River for months.

The mare blinked. "What was a fish doing in his water trough?"

"We tossed fresh fish in with him. One was apparently not dead yet, and he put it in his water trough. I assumed he was saving it for later, but after he threw a tantrum over it being killed, Whisper said he suspected Mixup was trying to keep the fish as a pet – that maybe he'd been raised in a household with pet fish."

"And he had a tantrum over it being killed?"

"He had a less powerful restraint collar then. Sometimes his magic could get through. He attacked us all with his magic."

"Mm-hmm." The mare came over and knelt by Discord's side. Her tone, when she spoke to him, was gentle and maternal. "You don't feel at all well, do you, honey? No, not at all." She stroked his mane softly. "Could you open your mouth just a little for me? Let me see your teeth?" Discord obeyed. For that gentle touch and soft words, he'd have done anything. No one had treated him this kindly since his mother died. "Oh, what nice choppers you have. All mixed up, though, just like the rest of you! But I see so many meat-cutting teeth there. Why don't you want to eat your meat, honey? Don't you know you need it?"

Discord tried to speak to her, his voice rasping and weak. "Mommy said... against... way of harmony. 'S bad to kill animals and eat them."

The mare jerked back, an expression of startlement on his face. "Uh... does he do that often?"

"Start yowling at you when you talk to him like he thinks he's talking? Yes, yes, he does."

"Hmm." Her hoof pulled a satchel from around her neck and set it on the floor. "My name's Dr. Salvia. I'm a veterinarian, and an expert in exotic and unusual animals. I'm going to figure out how to treat your tummy bug, okay?"

"He can't understand you," Whipcrack said dismissively. "You don't need to tell him your credentials."

"Maybe I don't, but animals respond well to a soothing tone of voice that sounds confident." She carefully and gently examined his various body parts, asking him to show her a paw, now the other paw, now could she please see his back paw? and so forth. Weakly he proferred the requested paws. Dr. Salvia stroked his legs, and his tail, picking slightly at itching, flaking scales. "Lot of itch here, hmm? But the temperature's very different. And there's no bugs that ought to be able to get through dragon-like scales like these and not do terrible damage to other parts without the scales. So this isn't bugs, is it, honey?"

"What does an itch have to do with vomiting?"

"Everything." Salvia didn't look up from her examination. "What I'm seeing is consistent with severe protein deprivation. His joints seem badly swollen—"

"How would you know? They look fine to me. What are you comparing them to?"

"Griffin limbs. And goat limbs. I'm not just a vet; I do medicine for non-pony sapients, too. Besides, they're tender to the touch. He winces when I handle his joints, no matter how gentle I am or how little I'm actually moving them." She lifted his tail. "And look at this. Scales flaking off. Scales dull, or brittle, or cracked. Clumps of fur falling out. This – you said he's a draconequus?"

"Yeah, that's what Mr. Thunder said the ponies that sold him to us said he was."

"He's been sick for some time. You have to feed him protein. I was wrong about him being a carnivore – he's got too many teeth for chewing vegetation – but I think he's an obligate omnivore. He needs proteins; his body can't make all the ones he needs."

"Well, tell me how I can get him to eat meat then!"

"Bring me some. Let's see."

When Whipcrack came back with a plate of meats, Discord felt simultaneously more nauseous, and very hungry. The smell of meat was appetizing, even though he refused to eat it, but he felt too sick for the feeling of hunger itself to be bearable. He turned his head away.

Dr. Salvia gently offered him different meats. "Chicken? Do you like chicken? No, not a fan of chicken. Here's turkey! You might like that! No, not turkey? Well, what about pork?" and so forth. Discord turned up his nose at all of them, and finally, reached out and pushed the plate away.

"Stop being a brat, Mixup," Whipcrack snapped. "The doctor's trying to help you."

"Does he drink milk?"

Whipcrack frowned. "Who'd waste milk on the pigs? That stuff's expensive. I hear cows demand luxury housing on dairy farms. Ponies to wait on them hoof to hoof."

Salvia chuckled. "It doesn't quite work like that. But please go get some milk. And some eggs. Unfertilized chicken eggs, if you have them."

"Yeah, we do."

When Whipcrack was gone to get the milk, Salvia said, "I see your mouth watering. You're drooling a little. But you won't eat the meat. Do you think it's wrong, to eat meat?"

"Yes," Discord croaked.

"...You just said yes. Well, you said something like 'iiiaash', but... that sounds too much like yes to be a coincidence."

"Yes," Discord said again, wondering if his fever was so high that he was dreaming this. "I did."

"Oh lands of plenty. You are sapient." The doctor drew a deep breath. "Do they know? In the circus, do they know you can talk?"

"They don't think it's talking," Discord said bitterly. "They think I'm an animal."

"I have to admit I didn't understand any of that. Can you say yes or no? I'll ask the question again, do they know you can talk, and you can say yes or no."

"No."

"What you said sounded like 'nau', but I'm going to assume that's how you're pronouncing no. Please confirm if you meant no by saying it again."

"No," Discord said, and giggled weakly. "That's a paradox," he said in draconequine, because he didn't know the word 'paradox' in the pony language. "I'm saying yes to say no."

"Okay, that doesn't sound like pony speech at all, but it's too complicated to be animal noises. Were you just speaking your native language?"

"Yes."

"Dear land. They're slavers and they don't even know it." She took a deep breath.

Whipcrack came back with the milk and eggs then. It had been so long since Discord had smelled the sweetness of cow milk. Despite his nausea, he happily chugged it down. The eggs were raw, and he wasn't the biggest fan of raw eggs. "Raw," Discord said, trying to articulate clearly and slowly. "Want cook eggs." Except he could hear now that what he'd actually just said was "nnnraehh, ahn hccoo ehcc."

"I don't understand that," Salvia said. "But you'll drink milk, and that's the important thing." She got to her hooves. "You need to feed him proteins that aren't meat. Milk's very important, a lot of protein in that, and if I don't miss my guess he's a young creature, well within the age range that milk's good for him. There's other sources of protein. Beans and peanuts, nuts in general actually – mix them in his food for him. Eggs. You could mix them into the slop if they're raw, but he might actually eat cooked eggs. Mushrooms. Cheese and yogurt, if he likes milk he should like those things. Cream occasionally maybe."

"You want him to eat practically like a pony."

"I want him to eat differently than a pony; we're not omnivores. Milk's a tasty treat for us, but for him, it's vital. You've been feeding him in a way that caused protein deprivation, which damaged his immune system and made him vulnerable to other illnesses. He's got a head cold and an ear infection."

"Can you treat him?"

"I'll need to do a sensitivity test to see if he has a bad reaction to the topical potion for his ear." She dabbed a little bit of the potion on the inside tip of his ear. "In fifteen minutes that will either redden and swell up, or it won't, and if it doesn't, I can put the potion in his ear to help combat the illness. As for the cold, they usually just have to run their course, but we could magically amplify his immune system. There's a potion I can give him orally that should stop an infection in most species, and be harmless in the ones it doesn't work in, but it'll be a couple of days before you'll see an effect. You mustn't let him perform as long as he shows any symptoms at all; he could fall and injure himself."

"Great. Just great," Whipcrack sighed.

"You also need to undo those shackles, get that board off of him, and emancipate him. Pay him fair back wages and let him go, or hire him on with a contract." Salvia's voice was suddenly very hard.

Whipcrack stared as if Salvia had suddenly started speaking in gibberish. "What."

"This creature is sapient," Salvia snapped. "And a child. You've been confining a child in a cage with shackles on, and what have you done to his tail? That would be horrifying if you'd done it to any animal, but you did it to a sapient! He talks!"

"He just makes noises that sound like talking," Whipcrack said, but she sounded afraid.

Salvia got in her face. "He. Talks. I couldn't make out much besides 'yes' and 'no' but he's definitely actually speaking a language, and at least some of the time, he's trying to speak pony. He just doesn't have the right tongue or mouth for it so it doesn't sound right. Griffins don't speak pony either, but they're sapients who speak a language, and so is this draconequus."

"That can't be right! Nopony would have sold him to us – look, from what I heard they caught him raiding ponies' barns for food, like some sort of large pest. And anyway, my cutie mark is for training animals, not sapients!"

Salvia's glare was very cold. "My cutie mark is for treating animals too, but I can care for sapients as well. And from the look of your cutie mark, well, torture works on anypony, doesn't it."

"He's just an animal with freaky magic."

"He tried to keep a fish as a pet." Salvia was almost snarling. "And you ponies were so blind, you had no idea what that meant. You murdered his pet in front of him. Why would an animal store a fish in water? How would an animal even know fish belong in water? Or that putting the fish in the water would preserve it longer? Why would he refuse to eat fish, but save one fish to eat later? And then attack you with magic for killing that fish? How did you not see this from the beginning?"

"Let me get Mr. Thunder."

"Oh, by all means, do that. I'm going to give my sapient patient his medication."

After Whipcrack left, Salvia stroked Discord's forehead again. "You poor thing. You must have been through some terrible times. I can see whip scars all over your body. I wish I understood your language better."

"Me too," Discord said.

"Well, I'm going to put drops in your ears, for the dizziness and to apply healing magic directly to the infection. It won't hurt, but it will feel weird. Then I'm going to give you some medicine. It'll taste terrible, but I want you to drink it all up, because it will probably make your sickness go away. You understand me just fine, right?"

"Yes," Discord said.

"Good. Oh, that must be so frustrating for you! You understand ponies, but you can't make the sounds of our language!"

Salvia turned out to be telling the truth, both times. The potion in his ear felt weird and made him even dizzier, and strange things happened to sound – he heard a roaring in his ears, and Salvia's voice sounded briefly as if he was underwater and she was on shore – but it didn't hurt. And the potion she made him drink was absolutely awful. He gagged repeatedly after taking it, but didn't vomit.

"A dose of this every day for three days and you'll be fine before you know it," Salvia said.

Mr. Thunder came in, followed by Whipcrack and a burly unicorn Discord didn't know. "Miss Salvia! I hear you have opinions about my draconequus!"

"They're not opinions, Mr. Thunder, and it's Dr. Salvia. This is a sapient being. He talks. And I'm fairly sure he's a child, so in addition to the penalties against enslaving a sapient being, you could be facing some serious child abuse charges."

"Well, we certainly wouldn't want that!" Thunder Roll said, jovially, and Discord's ears perked. Was it possible? Were they finally going to let him go? He'd want to find another circus to work at, and practice his pony, of course, but he'd gladly see the backside of this place and then never see any part of it again. "Whipcrack, could you go back to the office and tell Legal Pleading that I need him on a contract matter? Tell him specifically that there's a questionable contract involved. Use that word, questionable, so he knows which scrolls to bring."

Salvia scowled. "What do contracts have to do with anything?"

"If we were going to release the draconequus, and if he's really sapient as you say, then certainly we'd want to offer him a job contract. He is an excellent performer. Very dedicated to his craft, you know."

"You've known all along he was sapient," Salvia said in a horrified tone.

"Of course not! We're not slavers here. I run a perfectly respectable circus! Whipcrack, if you'd please?"

"Yes, sir," Whipcrack said, and headed out the door.

"This circus is my life," Thunder Roll said as Whipcrack shut the door behind her. "I'd do anything to protect it. Do you think I'd knowingly purchase a sapient being? But, well, now that it's happened, I'm sure we can smooth it all over and we won't have to involve any of the authorities if he accepts full employment with us."

"Do you really think this child is going to accept an employment contract from you? You've beaten him, chained him, treated him like an animal."

"Miss Salvia, you were hired for medical credentials. Have you even treated our draconequus friend for his illness yet?"

Salvia blinked. "Yes, of course. Short-term, I gave him ear drops. This—" she gestured at the terrible potion she'd made Discord drink – "has two more doses in my bag, that he should take once a day and then he'll be fine. But long-term, he needs more protein. He's an omnivore, but he has some kind of objection to eating meat. Give him milk, beans, nuts, mushrooms, milk products like cheese, eggs, that kind of thing. He can't survive on just vegetarian pig slop."

"Excellent! Well, then, I thank you for your fine service. Cleaner, if you please?"

The burly unicorn nodded – and a thread of magic fired from his horn, clamped Salvia's muzzle shut, and then twisted her head violently. She dropped to the floor, limp.

Discord stared at her. He was feverish. This was a delirium dream. He hadn't just seen that.

"Clean this up," Thunder said to the big unicorn, whose name was apparently Cleaner. He nodded again, and Salvia lifted up in his magic – still limp, her head hanging at an angle that Discord had seen too many times in animals killed by other animals – and then they vanished. Now Discord knew he had to be hallucinating in delirium. Unicorns couldn't just disappear, right?

His eyes widened as a lensing effect passed in front of him. Cleaner hadn't just disappeared. He was using the same kind of invisibility spell Discord himself had used.

As the door opened without any hooves or visible magic touching it, Thunder looked down at Discord. "Sorry you had to see that, boy," he said. "Assuming you are sapient. But I was telling her the skies' honest truth. I wouldn't have bought you if I'd had any idea you might be pony-intelligent, but now it's done and I can't afford for my circus to suffer the kind of penalties we'd come under if we were known to have enslaved a sapient being. There's nothing in the law that grants any kind of amnesty if you didn't know the creature was sapient. If it got out to the authorities that you're intelligent, my circus would have to pay fines back to the first day we got you. We'd be fined out of existence. And I'd spend the rest of my life in jail. I'm never going back to jail again, you get it? Not for some pathetic little chimera."

Discord wished the terrible medicine hadn't quelled the nausea in his guts. He wanted very much to projectile vomit at Thunder. He settled for spitting.

Thunder's mouth twisted in an almost-smile. "All right, boy, I'll give you that one. But if you're smart enough to understand what I'm saying then I'm sure you're smart enough to understand that if you spit at me again I'll beat you within an inch of your life." He loomed over Discord. "There's to be no more of this 'trying to talk' nonsense. You're a trained animal, and that's the way it has to be, and if you persist in trying to get above your station and implicate my circus in an act of slavery... well, you were expensive and valuable but you're not worth my entire circus. I won't lose any sleep if I have to tell Cleaner to take care of you, too."

The fever still burned in him, but chills ran through Discord's blood. Thunder Roll had just threatened to kill him rather than let him be treated like a pony, because if the circus treated Discord like a pony it would reveal that they'd ever enslaved him in the first place.

"Now, you can perform, like you've been doing. You're smart, you learn fast – which I suppose makes sense if you can understand speech – and you're talented. We'll give you the food the late doctor said you need, and if you behave yourself and put on a good show and you keep your mouth shut, so Whipcrack doesn't go getting any ideas, I'll make sure she gives you your treats like you deserve. But if you keep trying to escape or disobey... there are worse places you could be, in a circus, than performing in the ring. You want to be a display in the freak show? I've had naturalists asking if they could poke you with needles, take samples of your blood and study you. I could make back my whole investment selling you off to be dissected. Or I could lock you up in the freak zoo with the two-headed dog and the wooden wolf. And if you make too much trouble, I can call in Cleaner. Up to you, boy."

There was a knock at the door. "Sir, it's Whipcrack. Legal Pleading said he'd come on by in a bit."

"Come on in, Whipcrack!" Thunder gestured expansively with his wing, despite the fact that she was on the other side of a door and couldn't see it.

Whipcrack entered. "Where's the doctor?"

"Paid her off. It cost a bodacious bit, but the whole thing was a shakedown. She knew what kind of penalties we'd suffer if anyone thought we were keeping slaves, and she thought she'd claim one of our animals is talking and blackmail us into paying her off. I don't want you to use her again, even if we're in this neck of the woods."

"Understood, sir. So Mixup's not sapient?"

"Of course not! He's a smart little fellow, don't misunderstand, but no smarter than Whisper's monkeys or Flitterfree's parrots. Give him his medicine, do as the doctor ordered and make sure he gets more protein in his diet, and he should do just fine."

Whipcrack sighed. "That's good. I was worried. I didn't go into animal training to end up torturing slaves. That'd just be wrong, if he's pony-intelligent."

"Well, that's why it's against the law, of course!" Thunder patted Discord with his wing. "If he keeps up all that yowling and chattering like he thinks he's trying to talk and it bothers ponies, we could always cut out his tongue. He doesn't need that to put on a show."

"I don't think there's a need, sir. He's mostly pretty quiet. Yowls when he gets hurt or he's being punished, mostly. And that thing he did the night he tried to escape into the snow was hilarious, at least until he ran off stage and never finished the show that night. But if I could train him to yowl like he's talking to the audience—"

"No, best not. Who wants some ignorant guardspony coming by because some rube misunderstood and thought the draconequus could really talk? Let's avoid the misunderstanding in the first place."

"All right, sir."

Discord wanted to cry, but not in front of either of them. Hatred burned in his heart – more for Whipcrack than for Thunder, ironically. Thunder Roll was evil and what he'd done and what he was willing to do were evil, but that just made him a non-person in Discord's eyes, someone who was unilaterally and wholly an enemy and who knew it. Thunder wasn't under any illusions about being a good pony. Whipcrack... Whipcrack had the gall to think she was good. To think she had a moral high ground of any kind. It wasn't okay in her mind to torture a sapient being, but as soon as they weren't sapient enough to verbally protest the treatment, then it was okay! Her hypocrisy burned.

They all left, then. Discord stared at the spot where Dr. Salvia had died for discovering that he was an intelligent being and telling his captors about it. The more he thought about how horrible it was and how unfair it was, the more tears stung his eyes even as rage burned in his heart.

Someday. Someday he'd get his magic back and he'd practice with it until he was so strong that he could make ponies who treated animals this way into animals and then see how they liked it. Treat Thunder and Whipcrack like objects and refuse to acknowledge that they were even talking while he made them do anything he wanted. He'd put on a show with them. Make them dance around like little puppets. If he could make butter grow wings and milk jugs dance, certainly he could control ponies if he wanted to, right? He just needed to get out of here, and get strong.

His health improved. Perhaps it was his imagination, but drinking milk and eating cheese and nuts felt good in a way that food hadn't felt good in a long time. The three doses of medicine took care of that disease, and then he didn't catch another one, and many of the symptoms of the general malaise that had plagued him for a while went away.

But many did not.

He was bored. He ached all the time because he was forced to sleep in a rigid position, his normally-flexible body unable to bend because of the board bound to his back. As his health improved, he was full of restless energy, but unless he was training or performing he had nothing to spend it on. And the anger and grief at what had happened to Dr. Salvia, and the implications for himself, had never gone away.

They would never acknowledge him to be their equal, or even a less-than-equal employee. He would be treated as an animal, now and forever. They'd never willingly let him go, either. How could they risk him learning to talk and bringing the wrath of the law down on them?

Discord laughed harshly. As if. Law meant nothing to him – law was for ponies. It had never protected or helped him in any way. Magic was what he'd use to get his revenge, if he ever got free. But ponies had such weak magic, it never occurred to them what could be done with magic.

The first time he'd managed to summon magic despite his collar, he'd made the ground liquid, and ponies had sunk hoof-deep in before the collar had stopped him. What if Whipcrack and Thunder sank into liquid ground, and they were missing Whipcrack's horn and Thunder's wings, and no matter how they screamed and begged he pretended they were just making animal noises? Or maybe he'd change the sound of their voices so nothing came out when they talked but animal noises. Quacking, like a duck. That'd be funny. And then they'd sink all the way in and the ground would close over their heads.

And then just as they were about to suffocate to death he'd pull them out. And do it again. Over and over, once for every beating. And then he'd make Dr. Salvia's bones come out of the ground – presumably Cleaner had buried her someplace – and River's bones too, and he would leave Thunder and Whipcrack stuck knee-deep in the ground where they couldn't escape and he would make their murder victims' bones poke them in the forehead, again and again, over and over and over like the horror of the boredom they'd inflicted on him until they begged him to kill them to make it stop. And then he'd say "No," in pony, accentless clear pony that they could understand perfectly, and fly away.

It was a wonderful fantasy, and he indulged in a lot more of them as the days passed, but they weren't enough. Fantasizing about the way the world could be if only he had the power to change it had never been enough for him. He had to do something, something to hurt them, to punish them, but he had no magic.

It wasn't like he wasn't trying. He was struggling against the metal mesh collar, constantly. He could feel it draining him. Since they'd started feeding him properly, there had been moments where he could feel his magic again, and he fought the mesh, trying to get some kind of magic to work, trying to do something, anything, to prove he could still do it. But it never worked. The mesh seemed to grow in power as he did; he could tell because right after he'd been fighting it, unicorn magic stopped being able to touch him at all. Even Whipcrack's whip sometimes fell out of her magic and landed on the floor the moment it touched him, or when it got close, and she'd have to pick it up and use her hoof to hold it.

There were a good number of whippings for him to test that on. He was too angry to control himself, to keep the rage hidden. Whipcrack would say something particularly insulting while he was training and he wouldn't be able to stop himself; he'd spit at her or throw one of the practice balls he was supposed to be juggling. Or he'd take the opportunity to trip a pony that was walking past by grabbing their hoof with his tail and pulling. Or he'd run off during practice and start chewing on props, trying to ruin them.

He didn't try to talk, to explain himself, anymore. That would be useless, and he remembered what Thunder had said, about how they could cut out his tongue if he tried to talk.

Summer days passed and began to turn to autumn. He'd been a prisoner here a whole cycle of seasons. When he thought about that, the rage threatened to envelop him completely.

Discord started looking for weaknesses. What could he do to really hurt the circus? What could he do to punish Thunder for killing Salvia, and holding him prisoner for so long even now that Thunder knew he was sapient?

Bite a pony? He'd only get one pony before they stopped him, and he wanted Thunder to suffer. If he bit Whipcrack, Thunder wouldn't care. He only cared about his circus. And Thunder never came near enough anymore that Discord could bite him.

Attack the audience? No. Discord didn't hate the audience. They didn't know he was intelligent. They loved his act and they applauded him. He wanted Thunder to suffer, and the circus, and Whipcrack, but not the audience.

Attack one of the other animals so that they couldn't do that animal's show? Again, no, because Discord had nothing but sympathy for the other animals (well, except for one rooster who would never shut up, and the constant cock-a-doodle-do was maddening. But no one at all would care if he hurt a rooster that never shut up. Besides, maybe the rooster was trying to talk in rooster language. It wasn't the rooster's fault that his voice was so annoying.)

Attack the tent?

Show after show, Discord used the opportunity to see where the tent poles were fastened, and how, and how they kept the tent – the Big Top – up. The menagerie tent was held up with similar principles, but it was overall somewhat smaller.

The Big Top was an oval. Ponies came in on one of the short sides, and there was an exit on the other short side. When shows were over, ponies were allowed to leave out both of those exits. On one of the long sides were the stair-stepped benches that the audience sat in; on the other long side there was a musical band that played the accompaniment, a place where ponies could buy snacks, and the backstage. And then, in the center, was the ring.

There were many, many poles holding up the tent, and it was tacked down with a lot of stakes outside. But the center pole for the tent, the main pole that went up first, was in the center of the ring. It was very sturdy; as much as its energy went into holding up the tent, the other poles worked on holding up the tent too so the tent helped hold up the pole itself, and they had to actually have a team of earth ponies pull it down when it was time to take it down.

The circus didn't coordinate with weather teams in the places it traveled to all of the time. Most of the time they seemed to manage to get the local pegasi to keep the weather nice, but sometimes it was rainy or even stormy, and autumn was always a time of a lot of storms.

Discord practiced an act that required him to ride a funny one-wheeled vehicle around the ring in a circle, while juggling. He practiced juggling knives, because ponies were amused by balls but astonished when it was flashing steel that could cut him to bits if he lost control. And he practiced using his tail to grab one of the knives as it went around in the loops of his juggling, so he could then set his knives down, grab oranges, juggle them, and then stab them in midair with his knife. Ponies went crazy for that one, and he got to eat the top orange, as long as he did it comically, pretending that he didn't know what an orange peel was for. Then he practiced them all together.

Whipcrack applauded his skill.

What an idiot. She would never see it coming.

He waited until there was a storm, when the rain was pelting hard against the top of the tent and he could hear thunder and even see the flash of lightning through the tent, which was normally too opaque to show any of the outside except whether there was sunlight or not. He got on his unicycle, and juggled his knives, and rode the unicycle around, and while every pony's eyes were riveted to the knives he was juggling and the swiveling and looping he did as he drove the unicycle, none of them were looking at his tail. Or the very sharp knife in it. Or the way he was dragging it over the ropes holding the center pole up at the place that his magical vision told him was the weak point of each rope.

Circle, circle, slice. Circle, circle, slice.

When he started juggling oranges, the two ropes holding the center pole were held by a single fraying strand each, nowhere near strong enough to endure the tension.

When he collected the oranges on the knife and then started ostentatiously and humorously eating one, the fraying strands were starting to break, fiber by fiber.

When he ran up the pole with his claws and grabbed the high wire, he could feel the pole wobbling, just a bit. When he grabbed onto the high wire with his claws and tail, he kicked back against the pole as hard as he could, to send himself skidding across the wire, before he used his tail to right himself and balance on it.

When he jumped up and down on the wire, which was attached to the center pole, he could see it shake the pole in the other direction, away from the direction he'd kicked it. The pole was visibly wobbling at the top now.

Discord jumped down, using his acrobatic skills to twine himself around and fling himself from multiple bars and swings all the way down, so he could land triumphantly next to the pole. And after he bowed and they applauded and he strutted toward the backstage, he wrapped his tail around the closest of the ropes and gave it a good hard yank.

It snapped.

It was a testimony to the construction of the tent that the other rope didn't snap until Discord's act was over and the acrobats started to climb up the ladder on the center pole, and that the pole didn't start to tip until there were acrobats up at the top, weighing it unevenly.

Discord was near the side exit for the animals and performers, being leashed for his trip back to the menagerie tent, when he saw the roof start to move above his head. Whipcrack yanked him out of the Big Top entirely, by his leash, just in time for him to see the center of the tent cave in... sideways. Pulling toward the next support pole.

They barely got out of the way in time as ponies stampeded out of every exit. Whipcrack dragged him through the pouring rain, over to the menagerie tent, but didn't go inside. She was staring, stricken, at the Big Top, as the poles inside it slowly tipped over, then faster, until the whole thing finally collapsed.

Five ponies ended up dead. Three of them were circus workers who'd stayed inside trying to stop the fall of the tent. Two had been elderly ponies who were trampled in the stampede. Discord felt bad about them, but not about the circus ponies. Every pony who worked for this circus was corrupt, and complicit. His suffering was the fault of every single one of them.

Many ponies were injured, mostly from the audience. There was an investigation of some sort. Discord didn't know the details. The investigation, whatever it was, was a complete sham put on for the police, because Thunder Roll knew what he'd done.

Thunder came to see him, not that same night but ridiculously late into the next one. Discord was a light enough sleeper to wake as soon as he heard the cage door unlocking. He shrank back as much as his bonds let him as Thunder flew up into his cage and landed less than two heads away from Discord.

"Did you think you wouldn't get caught?" Thunder asked coldly. "They found the ropes were cut. No one knows how – we inspect those before every nightly performance. But ponies in town are howling for blood. Did you know that you just killed five ponies? Three brave employees who gave their lives to try to save the customers, and two others?"

By that time Discord had in fact heard. He said nothing. Just because Thunder knew he could talk didn't mean Thunder could understand him any better than he ever had.

"I'm going to have to throw some innocent employee under the wagon to appease those ponies, because no one would ever believe a dumb animal would be able to cut the ropes. Does that make you happy?" He kicked Discord. "Five ponies dead, and an innocent pony will have to take the blame and end up in prison. A lovely night's work for you!" Twice more he kicked Discord, who couldn't curl in on himself to protect his softer parts, due to the board; all he could do was try to keep his back to Thunder, but Thunder, despite his weight, turned out to be flightworthy enough to hover over Discord and kick him back into the position he wanted.

"Well. They'll imprison some poor drunkard I find to pin the blame on, but you'll get yours, don't worry. I told you there are worse places you could be than the ranks of the performing animals. You'll learn why you should have listened."

With a final kick, he turned and left. Discord was left shaken, hurt, and frightened, wondering what Thunder was going to do to him. Whipcrack didn't know Discord was intelligent and Thunder couldn't dare reveal that to her, so it wasn't as if Thunder could tell Whipcrack to punish him for cutting the ropes – even she couldn't be blinded enough to believe he could come up with his plan and sabotage the tent without pony levels of intelligence.

Four days after the incident, days with no performances, the circus picked up and moved to a new location... and Discord learned his fate.

The freak zoo was a much smaller tent than the main menagerie. There were maybe a dozen or so animals in it – the two-headed dog and the wooden wolf Thunder had once mentioned were there, plus other creatures. A large, feathered creature with paws, but a beak, with the glare of an owl but the bulk of a bear. A snake-like thing about the size of a foal's leg, with tentacles coming from a flower-like maw. A tiny creature that looked like a pony with insect wings and antennae. A rabbit with antlers. And many others.

Discord was no longer allowed out of his cage. The board was never taken off his back; the wires holding his fingers together were never taken off his paws, and after the second time he pulled them off with his teeth, he was kept muzzled all the time, except during meals. Ponies came to gawk at him, and Thunder Roll talked about how savage and vicious he was, how dangerous and ferocious. They couldn't use magic on him anymore, but they'd send a shock of electricity through the chain attached to the bolt in his tail, making him yowl and writhe. It wasn't enough electricity to be visible or to make a zapping sound, so for the customers watching him it must have looked as if he was reacting to them with territorial fury.

He wasn't the only one suffering this way. It looked as if most of the animals were being tortured to make them seem more ferocious. The tiny bug-like pony wasn't being obviously tortured, but one time Discord was able to see into the creature's mouth, to see what looked like it had been a pony-like tongue before it had been severed into a stump. He remembered Thunder threatening to do the same thing to him. Was the bug-like pony intelligent too? Had it tried to plead its case in a language no one understood, begging to be treated with the dignity of a sapient being, so Thunder had had its tongue cut away?

Sometimes they did take him out of his cage, and earth ponies held him down while strange ponies did various things to him; on different occasions, they poked him, jabbed him with needles, pulled off his scales, and had his mouth forced open with a gag-like contraption while they used tools to press painfully against something on the roof of his mouth, making some sort of liquid shoot out of his fang. They took blood from him, sometimes enough to make him dizzy, and sometimes they pushed something into him with a needle that made him dizzy and nauseous and unable to move his body, as if he was far, far too heavy for the strength of his muscles... but he could still feel everything when they cut him open to examine his innards, and then sewed him back up again. Feel everything, but couldn't move or make a sound.

They'd cut away the metal mesh collar so they could use their magic while studying him, on the occasions when they cut him, and then they'd cast a healing spell on him after stitching him back up, and then someone would weld the collar back on after the healing spell, so he'd have to live with the burns until they healed naturally. It didn't help him; after they put the needle in him and pushed the burning thing into him, he'd lose the ability to use magic just as much as his ability to move his body or make sounds. They talked about him during the studies as if he wasn't even alive, as if he were a thing for them to prod at and inspect. He understood from their conversations that sometimes the ponies studying him were naturalists, ponies who were trying to understand the biology of animals and wanted to study him because he was an unusual type of chimera. Other times they were thaumaturgists trying to study the magic contained in his body. Apparently his blood did interesting things when combined with other magically active ingredients in potions, and the stuff that came out of his fang supposedly made ponies hallucinate.

After a while, he attacked his handlers every time they dragged him from his cage, because it never meant he was being allowed to go for a walk or taken to the practice tents or anything except the experiments. It never did him any good. With his muzzle on, he could in theory still use his fang, but he didn't have access to any of the rest of his teeth, and he couldn't use his claws separately with his fingers wired together. The earth ponies who handled him wore protective gear, and kept him on a kind of leash that used a pole so he couldn't get close enough to them to hurt them.

There was nothing, nothing any more except being stared at as a freak and tortured to give the ponies a better show, the experiments that hurt and terrified him, and the mind-numbing boredom of being bound and helpless in his cell when no one was there. If he snapped at the handlers who freed his mouth so he could eat, they'd deny him a meal, so he didn't even have the pleasure of terrorizing them, not without paying for it. Sometimes he was willing to pay the price anyway, because he hated them and every other pony in this circus so much, but they were used to handling dangerous animals and managed to never let him get his teeth into anything that wasn't covered with padded protective gear. The food was the same as he'd been getting before, slop with nuts and cheese added in, milk given with his meals, but now there were never any treats for performing, or for any reason at all.

Discord spent his days daydreaming of a world where everything was different, because there was no point to trying to dream of realistic things he could reasonably make happen someday when he had no hope of ever being free. What if clouds could sing? What if fish could dance? What if the moon danced the hula, with a grass skirt on? What if glass rained from the sky and ripped apart every pony he hated?

In the beginning, he had hopes that Thunder would change his mind, that Discord would be brought back to perform because he made so much more money for the circus as a performer than as one of many animals in a freak menagerie. Then he had hopes that one of his captors would slip up and not tie something tightly and he'd be able to break free. Then he had hopes that at least he might manage to bite one of them and maybe then they'd decide he was too dangerous to handle and free him, or kill him. At this point, Discord thought death might well be better than living like this.

While he still had hope, he begged silently at night for his mother to come back, to find him and save him. By the time hope died, the thing he'd been denying to himself for years finally sank in. She hadn't gone away to another land like she had said they were all planning to do. The spell had gone wrong. The flash he'd seen, the last moment of seeing his mother or any other draconequus ever, had been the spell vaporizing them, not sending them to a new world. Because if his mother was alive, she'd move sky and earth to come back to him and save him. And she hadn't done it. That meant she was dead.

No one was ever going to come save him. No one was ever going to free him. No one was going to slip up and leave him unsecured enough that he could free himself.

Discord wished he was dead, but with his fingers wired together and his body unable to bend, he couldn't do it himself and he was scared to anyway. So he spent his days dreaming of a world of impossibilities instead, because it was all he had left, or would ever have until he died.

The Unicorn Princess

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When Celestia opened her eyes, she knew, immediately, without looking at any clocks, that it was two hours until sunrise.

Half an hour before sunrise, her attendants would come to wake her up and help her get dressed in Princess regalia. She would eat something small but tasty, like an apple, because using a lot of magic on an empty stomach would make her dizzy and on a full stomach might make her nauseous. Then she would go out to the ritual circle where the other sun-raising unicorns would be gathering, and together they would raise the sun.

Normally she had no difficulty sleeping until it was time to get up, but something had woken her this time. She wasn't sure what. All she had was the fading memory of a friend's laughter... a friend that didn't really exist.

Tears welled in her eyes. She couldn't even remember his face. She couldn't even remember his race, although probably he'd been a unicorn because she thought she could maybe remember him using magic? All she remembered was how much she cared about him – was he a best friend or a brother? Maybe, in the way that dreams conflated things, he'd been both. She remembered his laughter, and her feeling that they were destined to be friends forever. But he'd never existed.

And then she blinked the tears away, as she remembered the dreams she'd had as a filly. (Well, a young filly. She was a filly now, but she had a cutie mark, so she wasn't a filly filly.)

Celestia swung her back legs out of bed, and then her forelegs, and then she trotted quickly to the door of her room. The door was large and heavy, but her magic was powerful enough that she could help move the sun despite still being a filly, so she had no trouble opening it. It would be very, very late at night by the standards of someone who hadn't gone to bed yet, but she thought there was a good chance Luna might be awake. Despite being a tiny filly who was supposed to go to bed at moonrise, Luna was more often found up well past midnight. Celestia wasn't sure how late she usually stayed up, since Celestia herself had to go to bed early if she was going to work on the sun-raising team, which she had ever since she got her cutie mark. But there had been days when a plainly overtired Luna had showed up for breakfast, demanding waffles with strawberries and then immediately going back to bed, and Celestia was very aware that Luna wouldn't normally wake up for breakfast even if you yanked all her covers off her and poured water on her flank. So if she showed up to breakfast, it was a lot more likely that she'd never actually gone to sleep.

Her sister's bedroom was a good distance down the hallway, but as long as she stayed on the rug and walked rather than trotted, she could mask the clop-clop of her hooves with a spell that made it so she wasn't quite 100% touching the floor, just brushing against the top of the rug. Not that any of the palace guards would stop her if they caught her roaming the palace this late, but it would get back to Father and she didn't want that.

With her magic, she pulled open Luna's bedroom door. Luna had stuffed animals arranged on her bed and was manipulating Stelluffy, a pink and purple cat, with her wings. "...and I say we attack tonight! If we wait until morning, the enemy will be prepared!" Luna said, presumably giving voice to Stelluffy.

"Luna?"

Luna startled, dropping Stelluffy. "Oh – sister! I just woke up a few minutes ago!"

"That's not true and I hardly know why you'd say such a thing, when you well know that I know you stay up all night," Celestia said. "I'm not here to carry tales to Father about your sleeping habits. I had a dream and I need to talk to you."

"Oh!" Excitedly Luna leapt off the bed. "A dream? What kind of dream? I have plenty of advice I can give you about dreams!"

"Did you ever dream a thing and have it come true?"

Luna blinked at that. "No... well, perhaps. I often dream of breakfast foods and then at breakfast the foods are there!"

"Cook knows you love waffles. Is it waffles you dream of?"

"...Not necessarily..."

Celestia sighed. "Did you ever dream about an important thing? And then it came true?"

"I dream about defeating monsters, and so far, no monsters have ever attacked us..."

"Be serious, Luna."

"Defeating monsters is very serious. If I don't defeat them in dreams, they might come out from under my bed and attack me!"

"Did you ever dream of something that ended up happening in real life, during the day?"

Luna frowned. "No," she admitted, sounding disappointed. "Did you?"

"Twice." She sat down on Luna's bed. "Once when I was your age, I dreamed of a little blue pegasus filly, whose name was Luna—"

Luna snickered. "What a strange thing to dream of. I wonder if you might have been inspired by having a blue pegasus named Luna for a sister."

"Mother wasn't even visibly with foal yet."

That brought Luna up short. "You... did?"

Celestia nodded. "I was very disappointed when you were born, because I dreamed of you playing with me, and of course a newborn foal can't do any such thing." She laughed slightly. "Mother and Father both assured me that you'd be ready to play before I knew it, but to be honest, those years seemed very long."

"You really dreamed me before I was born?"

"Well, Mother was a blue pegasus, so I thought perhaps I was only dreaming a sister that looked like her, except less fierce." She swallowed. "But then... when you were still very tiny, before you could even eat anything other than milk... I dreamed of Mother fighting a terrible creature, a snake with the face of a horse—"

"A horse? Not a pony?"

"It was definitely more like a horse." Celestia had never seen a real horse, only pictures, but the giant animal cousins of ponies had made a strong impression on her in the pictures she'd seen. "Anywise, I dreamed of Mother, with flame in her mouth, charging through the air at this monster, who was long and thin and made of all sorts of different animals. In the dream, she struck him with the flame, and he began to burn, but he pointed at Mother and her wings fell off, and she fell." She swallowed again. "Then Mother told me she was going to fight the Spirit of Chaos, who was trying to destroy all Equestria, and I... I knew she'd never come back."

Luna sat next to Celestia and draped a wing over her older sister's back. "How awful! I don't know what I'd do if I dreamed of Father dying, and then he did... I'm so sorry for you, sister."

Celestia managed a smile. This wasn't a thing she liked remembering. "Thank you, but it was your loss too," she said. "You just don't remember."

"I don't," Luna admitted. "I wish I did remember her. Everyone tells me of Mother's nobility and her power in flight, but everypony here is either an earth pony or a unicorn. I hardly ever even see a pegasus unless they're in the palace guard. You have both Father and Starswirl to teach you magic, but who'll teach me to fly?"

"I'm sure Father will find a tutor for you when you're old enough," Celestia said. "In any wise. Twice now I've dreamed a thing and it came true. Last night, I dreamed of a friend – or perhaps a brother, I'm not sure—"

"With Mother dead, how could we have a brother?" Luna asked skeptically.

"I don't know. Perhaps Father will marry again. Perhaps he'll adopt a colt. But you know how dreams are. I'm not sure whether he was a friend or a brother, but I dreamed of him laughing, and I was laughing with him, and I remember in the dream feeling that our destinies would be entangled forever... and then I woke up and now I can't even remember his face. I only guess he was likely a unicorn because I think he was using magic."

"And you think this might be another true dream?"

"I don't know. You are so interested in dreams, I thought perhaps you'd know how to tell."

"If you dreamed me as I am, and you dreamed Mother's battle as it was... why would you dream a colt whose face you can't remember, if it was a true dream?" Luna asked. "It's the normal way of dreams that we forget them when we wake, but all I've read of true dreams says that they stand out in the mind."

Celestia raised an eyebrow. "All you've read?"

"I can read a bit for myself!"

"A tome on dreams, though?"

"Well, no, I had Nurse read those to me, and we skipped the boring bits. But still! Whether I read it with mine own eyes or Nurse's voice, still I've read it, right?"

"But I woke up right after the dream, far earlier than my norm. What woke me up, then, if it wasn't a true dream?"

"It's true..." Luna put her forehoof to her chin. "True dreams are supposed to wake the dreamer, so she'll remember. But they're also supposed to be easy to remember. I don't know, then. This seems as if it could be either one." She raised the hoof into the air next to her head suddenly. "Wait! Have you thought of how you might meet such a friend?"

"He could have been a brother..."

"How old were you in the dream?"

"I don't know. I don't think I was an adult..."

"Then he can't have been a brother, because there isn't time left in your childhood for Father to remarry and our stepmother to foal and then our brother to grow old enough to be laughing with you, unless it was a foal's laugh. Was he a foal?"

"No," Celestia admitted. "He was more of an age with me."

"Then he can't be a brother."

"Unless Father adopts."

"Why would he adopt? He has his heir, and a second princess in case you need help. We don't need a brother!"

While Celestia thought perhaps Luna's vehemence had more to do with wanting to remain the baby than an actual belief in the non-necessity of brothers, she did have a point. Too many siblings destabilized a royal family, so she'd been taught. "So a friend, then. If it's a true dream."

"Or perhaps the colt you're destined to marry!" Luna pointed out.

"That's possible..."

"Because we don't have any friends, sister. How would you meet a friend? Colts our age aren't even allowed to play with us."

It wasn't entirely true that Celestia had no friends, not anymore. There were noble unicorn fillies and earth pony fillies from the great clans, like Apple and Cookie, who would come to the palace to be her playmates... but only fillies were chosen for the honor. None of her friends were colts, nor were any colts likely to be invited to the palace to be her playmate. She did know some young stallions, who were something like friends; she was the youngest of the circle of unicorns who raised the sun, but her status as a princess and the strongest of them meant that they treated her as an adult. None could be called a close friend, but they laughed with her sometimes. "He could be another sun-raiser. They're much like friends to me."

"Didn't Master Starswirl say that they must change every year, though?"

Celestia nodded. Most unicorns couldn't work on raising the sun longer than a year before taking permanent damage to their magic. Starswirl thought that Celestia might be different; she was hardly the only pony with a sun cutie mark, but she could feel the sun even on the other side of the world, and joining her magic to the others' to call to the sun felt effortless, even exhilarating. Most unicorns didn't try to join in on raising the sun when they were still blanked, most didn't claim to hear the sun calling them, and none other had gotten their cutie mark when they tried to join in on raising the sun and found themselves successful, despite being young and mostly untrained in spellwork. Obviously she couldn't lift the sun by herself, no individual pony could ever be that powerful, but they'd determined that when Celestia joined in they didn't need a full eleven other unicorns... one or two of the team had been taking days off to rest their magic almost every day since Celestia had joined, because her magic seemed so attuned to the sun, they could get by with a team of ten or eleven rather than the full twelve. It seemed that raising the sun actually was her special talent, and so Starswirl thought perhaps she'd be able to do it her whole life without damaging her magic. But it was indisputable that it drained and damaged other unicorns. "Perhaps I'll be able to remain friends with some, though. And since they must change every year, perhaps that's where I'll meet him! Every powerful unicorn comes to the palace to give service to the sun or the moon, eventually."

"It's possible, then." Luna shrugged. "But then why couldn't you remember his face?"

Celestia looked at the ground and pawed at the bed, once, before remembering that Nurse said that that gesture showed too much uncertainty and humility to be appropriate for a princess. "I don't know."

"Perhaps you should ask Master Starswirl. I certainly can't give you more advice." She looked back at Stelluffy, lying discarded on the bed. "I want to go back to playing before Nurse wakes up and makes me go to sleep."

If she thought about it, Celestia realized it might seem somewhat unbecoming to be turning to a sister half her own age for advice. Luna couldn't even read yet – not books for adults, at any rate. "If you don't go to sleep soon, how will you be able to wake up in time for the circus?"

"Is that today? I'd forgot."

"Luna," Celestia said, exasperated. "We've only been talking about it for a week!" Going to the circus when it was in Equupolis was apparently also beneath the dignity of princesses, no matter how many times they pestered their father the king, the archmage their teacher, or their nurse, but inviting the circus to come perform at the palace was perfectly acceptable. Celestia had had a hard time concentrating on her lessons all week.

"I suppose I'd best go to sleep soon, then," Luna said, sighing as if very put-upon by the necessity. "If only ponies never needed to sleep! Should you find a spell to let a pony not need sleep, sister, please cast it on me?"

Celestia laughed. "I think that should there be such a spell, Master Starswirl would never sleep." She'd caught her teacher napping on more than one occasion. There might be spells to eliminate the need for sleep for a short time, but she didn't think the kind of thing Luna wanted, a spell that would let her go without sleep indefinitely, existed.

She didn't think she was going to be able to get back to sleep for the hour and a half or so before dawn, and this time early in the morning would give her the opportunity to do the reading for her lessons before the sun was up and there was the opportunity to play in the gardens. She'd have to play alone because of Luna's weird sleep schedule and the lack of a scheduled playdate with any of her companions, but she was used to it. Celestia climbed off her sister's bed and got to her hooves. "It would be best if you did get some sleep," she said. "The circus will be coming to us in the late afternoon, so you'll have the chance to get a full night's worth. Well, in your case, day's worth."

Luna laughed, and then mock-pouted. "I'll never understand why ponies insist on sleeping during the best hours, and being awake when that bright orb of eyeball doom is in the sky."

"Some of us like to see colors rather than shadows," Celestia retorted, but in good humor. She and Luna teased each other about the value of night vs. day all the time since she got her cutie mark. "It's not so dire, at any rate. We only need avoid looking at it directly; then it doesn't hurt the eyes."

"Speak for your own eyes," Luna said.

"I will! My eyes quite love it!" Celestia grinned. "But lest we debate until sunrise, I'll take my leave now, and let you sleep, if you will."

"I might," Luna said. "Perhaps."

"You don't wish to be too sleepy to see the circus!" Celestia advised, before pulling open the door to Luna's room with her magic and heading back to her own. She had to decide which of her studies to pursue in the hour she had before she needed to begin preparing to join the sun-raising ritual. History seemed a fair bet, or thaumaturgy, or maybe even natural science. Or perhaps literature. Math was right out.

By afternoon, Celestia had helped raise the sun, played in the courtyard gardens, peeked in on the circus crew setting up their Big Top, had her lessons, peeked in on the circus again, practiced some spells, and trained in deportment a bit, trotting about with a hat perched on her head. The hat kept falling off. The idea, her governess said, was to trot so gracefully and smoothly that the hat would stay on, and do not use magic to cheat and hold it close. Her governess sighed at her progress, or lack thereof. "Her Majesty Platinum's granddaughter you might be, but you're also the daughter of Imbrium, of Commander Hurricane's line."

Celestia frowned slightly. "Pegasi have different ways to be royal than unicorns," she said. "There's no shame in being a pegasus royal. My mother was a warrior, not a diplomat."

Prim Proper ducked her head deferentially. "Of course, your highness, I meant no disrespect to your mother."

My mother who you still haven't called "Her Majesty" as you did Grandmother Platinum. Celestia didn't say anything. It was more important to keep peace and slowly wear away the pro-unicorn prejudices of the staff over time, before Luna had to take deportment lessons too. "It's true, I'm a unicorn, so your lessons are of great importance to me," she said diplomatically. "So I'll do my best to improve. But I'm not at all ashamed to be the daughter of a pegasus, even if her blood in my veins might make me a trifle rougher than my father was." Father was actually well pleased with Celestia's progress and claimed that he'd been able to keep the hat on far less than she could when he was her age, but Prim Proper was too young to have trained the king.

"Of course, your highness, as you say."

She was saved from further awkward conversation and any more need to trot about with the hat by the arrival of a messenger. "Princess Celestia! His Majesty the King requests your presence in the throne room!"

The hat promptly fell off again as Celestia reared up slightly in excitement. "Is it finally time for the circus?"

"I wouldn't know, your highness. The King only asked me to summon you."

"It must be! It must be!" Celestia practically bounced out of the studio where she'd been practicing her smooth trot. "Good day to you, Governess Proper! I'll see you tomorrow!"

In the throne room, Father and Master Starswirl were there, waiting... but no Luna yet. Celestia sighed. "Luna isn't awake yet, is she?"

"Her nurse was told to carry her here if she refuses to get out of bed," Father said, "but I wanted to spare her the humiliation if she's willing to come on her own hooves."

Luna walked in, slowly, dragging each hoof. "Good morning, Father, Master Starswirl, Celestia," she croaked.

"It's afternoon, Luna," Celestia chided her. "I warned you."

"You really need to work on your sleep schedule, little one," Father said. "I know you enjoy the night, but there are things that need to be done by daylight."

"I know, Father," Luna said, head hanging. Celestia happened to know her head was hanging less out of remorse and more out of exhaustion; Luna disliked meeting anypony's eyes when she was tired.

"She'll get moon or stars for a cutie mark," Master Starswirl said. "Mark my words. All the best mages are night ponies." He ruffled Luna's mane. "Oh, if you'd only been born a unicorn, little one! What a mage you'd grow into!"

Father sighed. "I'm sure Luna will be as magnificent in flight as her mother was. In the meantime, I believe there is a circus two little fillies wished to attend?"

"I'm ready, Father!" Celestia said.

"I'm sure you are... but I don't think Luna is," Father teased.

Luna raised her head. "Am so!"

"Are you really? You look as if you'd rather return to your bed than go to a circus. Would you rather take a nap? We can wait."

"Faaaather!" Celestia stamped a hoof impatiently. "Luna's ready, now let's go!"

"But she hasn't said anything. You can't speak for your sister, Celestia. Luna? Are you sure you're ready?"

Luna's eyes were beaming a death glare at their father. "Tia does speak for me and I am ready! I'm not even tired at all!"

This was obviously a lie, but Father let it pass. "All right then, shall we go?"

Celestia was very impressed by the circus. Luna was not.

"Look, Luna! Look how they sail through the air!"

"Any grown pegasus could do that," Luna grumbled.

"But they're earth ponies. How dangerous that must be! They can't even catch themselves with magic if they should fall!"

The Big Top was eerily empty. It could obviously accommodate hundreds of ponies on the benches surrounding the performing rings, but the only ponies sitting there now were members of the royal court, perhaps 30 ponies in all. Celestia wished the stands were full, that the ponies in them weren't obviously taking their cues from her and her father and clopping their hooves only when they saw that she or her father were, rather than when excitement overtook them. Court was so artificial. Ponies never wanted to show her their true faces, and she could already see the problem would get worse as she got older; sometimes she could catch ponies out because they ignored her for being a child, but she never saw anypony drop their guard around Father.

She wanted to be swept up in the excitement of a crowd. She wanted to be surrounded by a wave of sincere emotion, ponies all around her radiating the same feelings in harmony. Raising the sun was like that. Nopony cared that she was the princess, when she joined in with the other sun-raisers. They were there to do a job, united in the harmony of their task and their desire to help the other ponies of the world by raising and lowering the sun. She'd hoped the circus would be like that, that there would be ponies filling the stands, all feeling the thrills and excitement at the same time. But here she was sitting next to her sister, who wasn't even impressed by the earth pony acrobats at all, just because she was a pegasus, and Father seemed to be clopping his hooves just to be polite, and Starswirl wasn't even paying attention, and none of the other ponies seemed to have sincere reactions at all.

It was very disappointing. Celestia tried to put it out of her head and focus on the show. And the show was fun, and thrilling to watch, and the clowns were funny – even Luna was impressed by them – and she loved the animal performances – the birds who flew in synchronized patterns and trilled recognizable tunes, the monkeys who juggled, the parrots who had conversations with the pony who presented them. (Luna was less interested, not being much of a fan of nature.) But it wasn't really enough. She wanted others she could share her feelings with. If not a crowd of like-minded ponies, then at the very least a friend. Besides Luna. A friend closer to her own age, who actually woke and slept on her schedule more or less rather than staying up all night and sleeping half the day.

When it was over, and the performers had bowed, Celestia said, more wistfully than with any active belief that she could have it that way, "Would there were more! I'd gladly watch another hour or two..."

The pegasus ringmaster flew up the stands. Despite his bulky frame, he seemed to have no difficulty getting into the air. "Pardon me, Your Highness, but I couldn't help hearing that you wanted an encore performance?"

For a moment Celestia, taken aback that she was being directly addressed by a commoner, could say nothing. Not that it bothered her to be addressed – she simply hadn't expected it to happen. Nopony outside of palace staff, nobleponies, and elected earth pony officials had ever spoken to her before. Father said, "I do believe the princess was interested in seeing more, yes. Do you have anything else to show her, circus master?"

"I do indeed, Your Majesty! If the princesses would come out of the courtyard—" he gestured with his foreleg – "we have our menagerie parked outside the palace, in Equupolis proper, and we would love to host them! We have exotic animals from every end of Equestria, and places outside our land as well!" He leaned his head forward. "Forgive me if this is presumptuous of me, but I do believe the young Crown Princess seemed very interested in our animals?"

Luna yawned ostentatiously. "Perhaps the Crown Princess is, but not this princess," she said. "Father, if the only thing there is to see anymore is more animals, I want to retire back to my room, if you please."

Father tousled Luna's mane with a forehoof. "Very well, little one. Nurse, please escort Luna back to her room?"

Luna's nurse nodded, curtsied, and led Luna away.

"If it please you, Your Majesty, I'll retire as well," Starswirl said. "I've studies I need to return to."

"Yes, yes," Father said. "Someday, you'll learn to lighten up and have fun, Swirl. But go on."

Celestia looked up at Father, her eyes shining, desperately controlling the urge to bounce in place. "A menagerie, Father? Can I go see?"

Father smiled indulgently at her, before turning his attention to the ringmaster again. "No offense to you, good circus master, but my daughters cannot simply leave the palace and mingle in Equupolis. There are many who disagreed with the decision to unite the races' leadership, and in the crowded space of your menagerie tent, there would be no room for the guards who protect my daughter to maneuver. However, she does want to see your beasts... and I know that an itinerant circus must be able to move the creatures' cages. Please bring the cages here, into the courtyard, for her to view the animals within."

The ringmaster blinked. "Hmm. Yes, I think we can do that, Your Majesty. Let me make the arrangements."

And so it was that half an hour later, a cage was wheeled out with a snarling beast within, a creature like a lion, but with bat wings and a long stinging tail. "Behold the Manticore!" the ringmaster said. "A ferocious chimera from far eastern lands, with the body of a lion, the wings of a bat and the tail of a scorpion!" The beast roared and lunged at the bars of its cage. "The Manticore is a meat eater, so do be sure to stay well away from the cage!"

While the creature was fascinating to look at, Celestia felt sad, seeing its obvious distress and anger. She didn't see what could be done – plainly a dangerous meat-eating animal couldn't be let free – but it hurt to see how its captivity was making it suffer.

Other animals were less upsetting. There was a magnificent peacock, and an absurdly large rooster with white and black feathers and a proud red crest, larger than Luna. There was a wolf made of wood, and a crocodile made of rock. A black and white striped cat-like creature paced within a cage; the ringmaster called it a "tiger". There was a tiny, delicate creature, shaped like a pony but with butterfly-like wings, in a birdcage. Celestia oohed and aahed over each new creature as it was brought out. Some of them, she was able to get very close to, like the birds and the small pony-like creature.

It saddened her to see how some of the more monstrous ones were treated. A large red serpent-like creature with a mouth full of razor teeth coiled within a very large cage, occasionally levitating and slamming itself at the bars. Celestia could plainly see why the creature had to be caged, but its obvious unhappiness at being in that cage made her heart twinge in sympathy. Another large catlike creature, black and smooth-furred, paced impatiently in its cage. A large leathery bird screeched in another cage, battering at it with its wings.

"Those animals seem so unhappy," she murmured. "Father, is there nothing we can do?"

"We cannot simply confiscate the circus' property, and putting animals in cages to display them isn't illegal mistreatment," her father said softly. "And we would be hard-put to keep such savage beasts safe and happy themselves while also safeguarding our ponies from them."

"And now," the ringmaster said, "the strangest animal of all! We promise, you've never seen a creature like this! A chimera of too many animals to count – part pony, part dragon, part lion, part snake, part goat, part eagle, and so many others! Introducing Mixup, the draconequus!"

Next to Celestia, Father stiffened. She glanced back at him, and saw shock in his face for a moment, perhaps even fear, before it hardened into a grim visage. Puzzled as to why her father would react in such a way, Celestia turned to look at the animal whose cage had been dragged out – and drew in a breath of shock herself.

The creature in the cage had the head of a colt.

Even in his cage, he was bound and chained a dozen different ways. His eyes looked wrong, unponylike – she couldn't clearly see them at this distance, but they looked like they might be solid yellow. And he was glaring at her, at her father, at the ponies in the stands, as if he wanted to cast them all dead with just his gaze.

He was obviously miserable.

Without saying what she intended, since Father would stop her if they did, she rose from her seat and trotted down to the arena. "Circus master!" she said in her most commanding tone. "I wish to see this creature more closely. Please remove him from the cage!"

"Ah, Princess, I wouldn't do that if I were you," the ringmaster said, smiling nervously. "The creature can be very dangerous..."

"You have him chained and bound," Celestia pointed out. "Surely your ponies can protect me from a chained animal? I want to see him."

She did, but that wasn't her reason. He was a colt. There was intelligence in those angry eyes. Surely Father would see it, if he were removed from his cage.

"Celestia," Father said warningly. "If the circus master says it's dangerous—"

Celestia put on her most winning smile. "Oh, Father! The creature is so fascinating, though! And I can hardly see him if he's behind bars! Besides, we have our guards, and you're very powerful in magic, and the circus master has his ponies as well... how could there be any danger from one little creature?"

Father softened, as he always did. "Very well, then, but be careful."

The creature snarled through his muzzle and twisted his head wildly as the handlers pulled him from the cage. "I must warn you that this creature is powerfully magical," the ringmaster said. "We've placed a collar on him to protect all of us from his wild magic, but it's made it impossible to use magic directly on him."

"That changes things," Father said. "Celestia, you should stay far back. If magic doesn't work on him—"

Father hadn't seen it yet. Celestia knew he had to see it for himself. If she said the creature was a colt and intelligent and he should be set free, Father would smile indulgently, and ignore her. Admittedly, she'd spent entirely too much time as a young filly declaring that various animals were her friends and they could talk to her. But she was older now! She could tell the difference between animals and creatures who could speak!

"He's in chains, Father," she said. "What harm could he do?"

"Now, your highness, the reason the creature is in chains is because he's a dangerous and wild beast, and you can never take your safety for granted with such an animal," the ringmaster said. "I must advise you to stay back."

"Oh, but I want to see!" Celestia said – and bolted forward, before her guards could intervene or anyone else could stop her.

There was a board on his back, segmented, with round rings on its top where there had been a rod. She'd seen them remove it as they brought him out to display. His body twisted and writhed now, but with the rod in place, he wouldn't even be able to do that, and his paws and one hoof were shackled with chains that connected to the board, short, so he had very little range of motion. She could see his fur was worn away under the shackles. If he was an animal, this was horrible abuse. If he wasn't... She felt sudden rage on his behalf. She knew he wasn't an animal.

And then, before she had a chance to react, his long tail, with the segmented board running all the way down it, swept out, curled around her hoof, and yanked her to his side. He threw one foreleg around her neck, pulling himself to two legs, his talons sharp against her neck. "Reh groh!"

One of the circus ponies, horrified, tried to yank on the chain around his neck. "Mixup! No!"

"Yehss," he hissed. With his other paw he grabbed the chain and yanked it back toward himself. "Reh groh! Aii kihh hfrincehz! Reh groh!"

"He's telling you to let go of his chain," Celestia said, her heart beating frantic and hard. She'd been looking for a way to free him; she hadn't thought of doing it by becoming his hostage. Would he really hurt her? He could – the claws were sharp – but would he? He was desperate, after all. She would be, too, in his position.

The circus pony responded by yanking on the chain more savagely, which led Mixup to yank it back and dig his claws into Celestia's neck, drawing a bead of blood. "Ai kiih! Reh groh naoww!"

"Let go of his chain!" Celestia demanded. She couldn't free herself with her magic; it felt like it was being sucked away the moment she lit her horn. In the stands she could see Father's horn lit, but nothing was happening.

"He's not talking, your highness, he can't talk, he's an animal—" The pony, an earth mare with a cutie mark of a chair and a whip, was practically babbling.

"Animals don't take hostages," Father said, striding forward. "Creature! I have archers surrounding you! You may be resistant to magic, but I doubt you are resistant to arrows. Release my daughter, or die!"

The creature laughed. "Kihh nee! Hrincez kihh too!"

"Father, don't," Celestia said. "He's desperate and scared—"

"He's threatening my daughter's life!" Father shouted. "Ringmaster! How did you not know this was a talking creature?"

"I – we never guessed," the ringmaster babbled. "Everything he says sounds like animal noises, how were we to know?"

"Raaiis," Mixup snarled. "Raaiis, raaizz, raaiz! Sey nyu! He nyu!" His foreleg tightened even more. "Free nee ro Aii kihh. Kihh nee? Sen Aii free, an hrincez gro ihh nee."

"Calm down," Celestia said. "It's okay. My father will free you. You don't have to threaten me."

"Sen do ihh. Free nee."

"Creature, I will not make this demand again. My archers are at the ready. Release my daughter now or die!"

"Father! He's intelligent and they've been treating him like an animal! How would we behave, in such a case? Don't threaten him!"

"Celestia, what do you expect me to do with a being who's threatening to kill you?"

"Do as he says," Celestia said. "Free him. Why is he being held in chains and displayed to audiences as a magical beast if he's intelligent?" She turned to the pony with the whip and chair cutie mark. "You! My father will reimburse the circus for whatever you've paid for this creature, but he is no longer yours. Free him now."

"Your Highness... it's not that simple..."

"Surely you have the key to these chains?"

Mixup laughed, hyena-like but enough like a pony laugh that Celestia could tell what it was... and that it was bitter. "No key. Nehr s'hfoss cahn off."

"Wait, did you just say they're never supposed to come off?"

The hand at her throat fell away, as the creature looked down at her in shock. "You... you unrssan nee?"

"Your accent's really hard, but yes, I understand some of what you're saying." She squirmed free of his loosened grip while he was still too startled to remember he was trying to hold her hostage. "For instance." Celestia's voice hardened. "Father, I believe that when the ringmaster said that they thought he was an animal and could only hear animal noises... he said 'Lies, they knew.'"

"How do you know?" Father asked. "Celestia, I can tell what he's saying are words, but I thought he was speaking a completely different language. I couldn't make out anything he was saying at all!"

She shrugged. "It just... sounds like that's what he's saying, that's all."

"Yehss," the creature said, trying to nod his head despite the board and chains restricting his movement. "Yehss! He nyu! Kiih hfony cuz ssee nyu, ssehh sey haa free nee cuz Aaii can taahhhk, an' he dihhn wahn any t' nroh..."

"I didn't understand most of that," Celestia admitted. "But it's all right." She reached up and laid a hoof on his shoulder. "We'll get you out of these chains."

Father sighed. "I suppose we do have to," he said, sounding much more reluctant than she'd have thought he would be to free a child from bondage. He must have been really upset by Mixup taking her hostage and threatening to kill her, she thought. Normally she'd never expect Father's compassion to falter. "Ringmaster. Is the creature's accusation accurate? Did you know he was intelligent?"

"I swear that when we purchased him, we had no idea he was intelligent," the ringmaster stammered. "We would never condone enslaving an intelligent creature!"

"Raiiz," Mixup snarled again.

"Mmm. And the fact that draconequui were common in the southern regions when the Founders first came here, and they were intelligent creatures with a civilization... that didn't ring any bells? I suppose you were completely ignorant of all of that?"

"I—I'd never heard of such a thing! I bought him because I was told he was an exotic beast!"

"Ah." Father nodded. "Well, the law doesn't provide for ignorance being an excuse, but under most circumstances, with a genuine misunderstanding involved like this, we would waive the penalties." He strode forward. "Release the creature into our custody now."

"He duzn deserrr it," Mixup said. "He kihh hfony to keee sheekreeh!"

Wait. Was he saying someone had killed a pony to keep the secret?

"Of course, Your Majesty!" The ringmaster bowed, sweat shining on his flanks. "Whipcrack, get those chains off him!"

"Good," Father said. "I do have to take certain factors into consideration, though. Namely, the fact that you have obviously abused him beyond all reasonable treatment for an animal. I'm not inclined to make an exception under the law for an animal abuser, whether or not they were also a knowing slaver." As the ringmaster went pale, Father called to the guards. "Arrest this stallion."

"Wait! No! Your Majesty, I swear—"

"I think the draconequus just said that this stallion might have killed a pony to keep it secret that he was intelligent," Celestia interjected. "I can't be completely certain, but it sounds very much as if that's what he's saying."

"Yehss," Mixup said.

"No! He's lying! I didn't – I would never do such a thing! My hooves are clean! I'm innocent! Are you going to take the word of some creature—"

"We will investigate," Father said sharply. "Take him to the dungeon. Sergeant Peppercorn, please take a group and make sure the circus ponies are detained. They aren't under arrest and they can remain with their tents for now, but until we've had a chance to investigate how deeply this practice of enslaving intelligent beings goes, none of them are to leave Equupolis."

The mare who'd been ordered to remove Mixup's chains had brought over an earth pony with bolt cutters, who was breaking the links on Mixup's chains and freeing him, although the shackles and the collar remained on his body. The board fell away.

"You'll be freed to return to your normal life," Father said to Mixup, stiffly, which Celestia didn't understand at all. "I'm not aware of any draconequus settlements around anymore, but if you head south into quetzalcoatl territory or out east to the coast, there may still be some—"

"No, Father," Celestia interrupted.

Father sighed again. "What is it now, Celestia?"

"He's a colt. If he's older than me I would be much surprised. You can't just send him on his way to try to find his people when he doesn't speak the language well and he's been abused; he's a child. We have to take him in and take care of him."

"Wha—nroh! Aai cahn taay caeh naisehh, Aaii dohn nee—"

"Yes, you do," Celestia said. "At least, until you're healthy. I don't know what beasts like you are supposed to look like, but I love to take care of animals, and I know that any with scales as dull as yours or fur and feathers so sparse, and so many visible bones, cannot possibly be in good health."

"We could find a foster home for him in Equupolis," Father pointed out. "You can't take an intelligent creature as a pet, daughter. Perhaps you're right, perhaps he's a child in ill health and needs to be cared for, but there's no especial reason why that duty would fall to the royal family."

"I don't want a pet – I mean, of course I don't want to take him as a pet, Father! But if I'm the only one who could see that he was a colt, and I'm the only one who could tell that he was speaking our language, then must need he live with me and not some strangers who mayn't be able to understand him or tell what he needs!" She lowered her head, and then tilted it up at him with pleading eyes. "Please, as a favor to me. At least until he's healthy and can speak well enough to travel on his own."

Mixup shook his head stubbornly. "Aaii don nee you. Aaii cahn tay caeh naisehh."

"I don't think you can," Celestia said. "If ponies who see you can't tell you're a talking creature or that you're even speaking our language, how would you find food? Where would you take shelter? This is Equupolis, a large city, not a forest or some other wild place." She rested her hoof on his shoulder again and looked up into his eyes. "I'm sure you were able to take care of yourself in your homeland, before the circus enslaved you. But here, you'll need help."

He shook his head again. "Chuss nee mazih." With one claw he tugged at the thick metal mesh collar around his neck. "Tay ziss aw nee an lehh nee yuuss nai mazih."

She wondered why he could pronounce the letter m when he tried to say "magic" but not when he tried to say "my" or "me". "You can't use magic well when your body's not healthy," she said firmly. "Now, no more arguments. I'm the Princess and you have to do as I say."

"She's right, boy," Father said gruffly. "I may be the King around here, but Princess Celestia definitely outranks me." He chuckled. "So, um. You don't have any possessions at the circus that we need to retrieve for you, do you? I imagine not, since they were keeping you chained up in a cage, but..." Mixup shook his head. "All well and good then, let's get you inside and get you cleaned up and get that collar off you. I want my court mage Starswirl to take a look at you."

Mixup's eyes darted back and forth. He was plainly extremely uncomfortable with the idea, but he allowed Celestia to lead him back into the palace proper. As soon as the doors were closed behind them, though, he bolted.

"What? Wait!"

"Guards! Retrieve that draconequus! He can't be allowed free roam in the palace!" Father shouted.

Celestia chased after Mixup, followed by the guards – pegasi in the air of the hallways, unicorns trying and failing to grab hold of him. Something about that collar around his neck seemed to swallow magic. The guards weren't very effective, though, because the draconequus' body was long and low rather than tall like an adult pony, and he could go under furniture and slide through gaps between a door and a floor that seemed impossible.

Celestia knew the palace by heart, though. Perhaps the guards did too, but not from the perspective of someone small, someone who could go places no adult could fit. So she followed him. Into the kitchen, where he sent pots and pans flying every which way, though the disaster would have been a lot worse if they hadn't already served dinner. Into one of the main hallways, where he knocked over decorative suits of armor and sent them rolling at the guards. Celestia easily jumped them.

And then Starswirl was there, between Mixup and his nearest exit. He reared back.

"Nunny, chinshi yuzhin. Nee bushing yow shwimma?"

Mixup stopped dead. "Ni show wuud yeyang?"

"Budow." Starswirl looked down at him. "We have food, and we can try to get that blasted collar off you, but you need to cooperate, and stop running."

Mixup's eyes narrowed. "Zhezuh ho byow shwang."

"Celestia. The boy listens to you," Starswirl said impatiently. "Tell him I'm not lying."

"Of course you're not! Master Starswirl is very honorable. If he says he'll give you food and get that collar off, then that's what he's going to do."

Mixup sighed. "Oww raii sen."

"What's he speaking, Master Starswirl?" Celestia asked.

"The draconequui used to speak a dialect of the language of Longkuo, the dragon country far to the east. I learned a small amount of it, back in the days when... well, that's not important. My accent is surely terrible, but possibly better than his Equestrian is." He turned away from Mixup to look at Celestia. "Your father summoned me to help with this. I hope you know what kind of barrel of earthworms you've opened with this."

"He's a colt, Master. Maybe not a pony colt, but a colt nonetheless, and they were torturing him and treating him like an animal. I had to save him!"

"Yes, yes. We all know what a soft heart you have, Celestia. Well, what's done is done. Come, boy, let's get some food into you. You're skin and bones. We don't have any meat for you, but there's plenty of cheese and nuts."

"Aii dun eee neeeh," Mixup said sharply. "Showlungmah de hezzy jido."

"Ah, yes, because that's what everyone remembers about the draconequui. Their dedication to Harmony," Starswirl said. He sounded sarcastic, but Celestia didn't understand why. "Come on. Celestia, go see your father."

Celestia bowed. "I will, Master Starswirl."

She trotted off... and then turned and watched as Starswirl led Mixup back to the kitchens. Only after she could no longer see him did she go to find her father.

***

Father seemed unusually tense and nervous. "Celestia, I've questioned the circus workers, and I don't think there's any question. The draconequus can't stay here." He was pacing, and his voice higher pitched and faster than she was used to.

"What? Father, why not?"

"It's inhumane – not to mention terrible for his health – to cage his magic like that," Father said. "But his magic is wild. Chaotic. They describe him making horns and wings disappear off unicorns and pegasi, or turning stone to water. We can't have something like that running loose in the palace."

"Can't Master Starswirl do something to suppress his magic? Like that spell you told me you had to cast on me when I was a baby and having magical surges?"

"We don't know. He's not a pony, and his magic isn't pony magic. We'd have to observe the magic for ourselves, but the moment that collar comes off and lets him perform magic... he could surge out of control. They've been restraining him like that for two years."

"That's horrible!" Her forehoof went to her mouth in shock. "Don't you see, Father, that's exactly why we can't just turn him out into the wild on his own? Here at the palace, we have you and we have Starswirl, the two most powerful unicorn mages in the kingdom! But what if you sent him away and he had one of those chaotic magical surges you're talking about in a small earth pony village? How could they defend themselves?"

That brought Father up short. Finally he said, hoarsely, "Your mother fell to chaos magic. I don't want such magic anywhere near you or Luna."

Celestia took a deep breath. "I dreamed her death before it happened, Father. I dreamed that she fought a monstrous beast, and he took her wings, and she fell."

Father went still. "Why did you never tell anyone?"

She lowered her head. "To what purpose? I didn't speak when I could, and Mother died. If I had spoken up – if I'd warned her—"

"Stop right there," Father said. He came forward and enveloped Celestia in a hug, as tears welled in her eyes. "Your mother died a hero, protecting all Equestria from that monster. She knew she might die. And if she had known for certain that she would die... she still would have gone. She had an entire nation to protect, and two beautiful daughters she loved more than anything else."

"But if I had warned her—"

"Nothing would have changed," Father said gruffly.

For several moments he held her, neither of them speaking, as she tried to keep herself from crying. Finally Father said, "The spirit of chaos was a draconequus – a mixed-up creature with limbs of many animals, wielding terrible chaos magic. Do you not see why I don't want this... this creature you've rescued... anywhere near my precious daughters?"

"He's a child. He's not the monster who killed Mother." She disengaged herself enough to look into Father's eyes. "You always taught me that friendship is a kind of magic, Father. What if I could befriend him?"

"Celestia, the risk—"

"Do you think any ponies ever made friends with the monster that killed Mother? Do you think anypony ever reached out to him and said, 'you're safe here, we're your friends, we'll take care of you?' Because I can't imagine that any ever did."

"Are you saying that Mayhem was a monster because nopony wanted to be his friend? Celestia, he was the Spirit of Chaos. It wasn't his nature to have friends, or want them."

"Well, this is a colt, not a spirit of anything. And if you send him away, who knows what will happen to him? Maybe he'll be captured and tormented again. Maybe he'll learn that ponies should be hated and feared, and he'll grow up to be a monster too. But if he stays with us – with me – and we make friends with him... then even if it turns out he has such terrible magic, he won't want to harm us with it. He'll try to control it to keep us safe, because we're his friends."

Father was silent for a long time. Celestia added, "I dreamed of him as my friend, Father. I know I can do this."

"Because you dreamed it."

"I dreamed Luna's birth before I knew Mother was with foal. I dreamed Mother's death. And I dreamed this colt's voice, laughing with me, last night. His destiny is linked to mine, I'm sure of it."

"The Gift of Apollo..." Father murmured.

"Father?"

"Your words... have merit," he finally said. "But this is a probationary thing, Celestia. If he harms anypony, if he proves to have uncontrollable magic or magic he refuses to control, if he won't obey and cooperate, then he must leave."

"Yes, Father! Thank you, Father!" She hugged him tightly again. "I haven't dreamed anything terrible happening, so I'm sure you won't regret this!"

"I think Master Starswirl needs to talk to you about the Gift of Apollo," Father said. "I'll let him know."

The sun needed to be lowered before Celestia managed to find out what had happened with Mixup. Starswirl wasn't in the group today, which made sense; as a star-marked unicorn, he went between sun team and moon team as needed, and he'd been in the raising this morning. Father, also a star-marked unicorn, joined instead.

Once the sun was put away and the moon team got to work, Celestia went looking for Mixup, only to find that he was apparently hiding under her bed.

"He's faster than he looks," Starswirl grumped. "I had his collar removed while the cooks were feeding him, so he'd be less likely to surge and I could safely cast a suppression spell on him; his magic will return to him slowly, as his health improves, rather than all rushing in at once." He was briefing Father, not Celestia, on the situation, but Celestia was listening on the grounds that this was her new friend and also that it was her bedroom he was barricaded in. "Then I decided to have the doctor examine him, but before he could get anywhere near him, the boy was off and running. We managed to herd him into Celestia's bathroom, since her servants had already drawn her nightly bath and we thought that maybe if we got him clean, we'd be able to get a better look at his health without spooking him... but it looks like he can breathe underwater. It was an hour before he came up."

"Why is he in her bedroom then?" Father asked.

"Well, after he poured almost all her shampoo into the tub so he could make foam sculptures to play with, we decided to drain the tub so we could get him out. Telekinesis works on him now, but not well; he doesn't like it and even with the magical suppression spell I put on him, he has some means of countering it. It looks to me like he's literally breaking the framework of the magic, so it scatters without effect. The better we'd be able to see him, the greater the chance we could get a hold on him if he bolted again. So I had the servants bring in towels and let him dry himself with them... except he managed to pull some kind of sleight of hoof where he piled all the towels together, went under them, and then bolted with a towel in his mouth. Nopony saw him for a moment or two; we thought he was still in the towel pile."

Celestia smiled. "That's clever of him."

"Clever, maybe, but it means you'll have to sleep somewhere else tonight," Father said. "He's too wild, too unpredictable. It's not safe."

"I can get him to come out," Celestia said. "And I won't sleep until he does come out."

"It's still not safe—"

"Your Majesty, let the filly do what she's going to do anyway behind your back if you forbid her," Starswirl said. "The boy's magic is mostly suppressed—"

"He has claws, and fangs!"

"One fang," Celestia said. "He only has one."

"I'm not suggesting she sleep in the room either, not as long as the creature's loose and awake, but if she draws him out from under the bed, perhaps she can convince him to go to sleeping quarters that we prepare for him." Starswirl looked directly at Father. "He's not Mayhem, Starfire. He didn't kill Imbrium."

"I know," Father said steadily. "But he's of the same kind and smells of similar magic. Can you blame me for my caution?"

"Of course you want to be careful with my safety, Father," Celestia said. "Don't worry. I'll be careful."

Celestia collected supplies. This was not how she'd envisioned things going, when she'd first had the idea of freeing him and then of getting Father to let him live in the palace. When she'd talked him down she'd had ideas of how things would go, how they'd give him a bath and food and medical treatment and he'd be so grateful and happy and she could show him all around the castle and maybe teach him how to speak pony. She hadn't expected him to run away and hide under things.

But she was determined. She'd reached out to him in the first place out of compassion, but as soon as she'd heard his voice, she'd known. Even distorted by his terrible accent and the fierce emotion he'd been displaying at the time, she'd heard the voice from her dream, the voice she hadn't even been able to clearly remember outside of his laughter. She wouldn't be completely sure until she got Mixup to laugh... but she was sure enough. The dream she'd had last night, the one she'd gone to Luna about, the friend whose face she couldn't remember... but she remembered his voice. And it was Mixup's. She was almost completely sure.

As she entered her bedroom, the smell of scented shampoo hit her nostrils, and she wrinkled them. It smelled like he'd gone way overboard on the shampoo. Of course, who knew how long it had been since he'd had a bath? Had he ever even had a nice bath in his life? Had he even known what the shampoo was? She knew nothing about his life before the circus.

Carrying the bag of food supplies with her magic, she knelt down by the side of the bed. When she peered under it she could just barely make out a pair of golden eyes, glowing dimly in the darkness. "You don't have to hide, you know," she said. "We're friends now. Nopony's going to hurt you." No response. "I brought food for us to share. Would you like some?"

That got him to crawl far enough that his muzzle was sticking out from under the bed, his eyes focused intently on her. Celestia had cared for enough animals to know he would bolt if she made any sudden moves. "You seem like you might be a meat eater, so I thought maybe you might like some dried fish?" She levitated the smoked, dried fish jerky over to him.

He growled and swatted at it with his paw, tossing it aside. "Nroh nee!"

"Oh, that's right, you said you don't eat meat. Okay, so no fish." She drew a cheese wheel and a butterknife out of her bag, and sliced a wedge of the cheese out. "How about cheese?"

That got his attention. When she levitated the cheese wedge over to him, he grabbed it... and then scurried backward, back under the bed. Celestia sighed.

"You don't need to run or hide. I brought more stuff, you know. We could have a tea party." She set down two saucers, two cups and two plates. "Well, it won't really be tea, but we can pretend." On both plates, she arranged hay, a pile of nuts and fruit, a fresh salad with carrots and mushrooms, and a slice of vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. The muzzle reappeared.

"I just had a great idea!" Celestia got to her hooves – causing the muzzle to retreat back into the darkness under the bed – and began pulling books down from the upper shelves of the bookcase with her horn. They were large, weighty tomes containing classics of literature, there to be impressive more than to be read, and they'd been there as long as Celestia could remember. The books she actually liked to read were on the three bottom rows, where she'd been able to reach them before she'd mastered telekinesis. These ones had gotten most of their use in her lifetime as bricks for book forts, like the one she was building now.

Before long she had stacked three pillars of books in a rough triangle, or rather, a pentagon where the two closest bedposts, at the head and foot of the bed respectively, were the other two points. Then she yanked the top blanket off the bed, tied two corners of it to the tops of the posts so it conjoined to the canopy on the bed, and ran the other two corners to the left and right pillars of books. It stretched far enough that she could lay books on it to hold it in place, but not enough to complete the effect she wanted. Two other blankets added to the mix, tied to the middle of the bedposts by one corner and draped around two of the pillars, one to left and center and the other to right and center, and now she had a proper tent, held up by the bed and book pillars. The downy comforter folded at the foot of the bed and the various soft pillows at the head went to making a comfy place to lay down on. "There we go. Now we have a fort!"

"Aaaaooow," came from under the bed. It sounded more like a cat yowling than a word.

"I'm sorry, did you hurt yourself?"

"Aaaooow! Aaaooowt! Naaaooow!" The whole head emerged, a furious expression on his face, and his paw pointing at where the door was, beyond the edge of the tent.

"Oh – oh, wait! Are you saying 'out'?" Rapid nod. "Are you telling me to get out?" Another angry nod. "Well, I won't. This is my room you're in, and I have every right to be in any room I like anyway, as this palace is my home. But I won't hurt you, and I did bring you food. Didn't you see the food?" She pushed the plate slightly closer to the bed.

His eagle talon shot out and grabbed the plate, but when he tried to pull it back under the bed, she tugged it back. "No, no. I want you to eat with me. Come on out and have a tea party with me! I have a lot of drinks." Celestia levitated the ceramic jugs out of the bag and untwisted the caps. "You can have lemonade, chocolate milk, apple juice – oh, you like one of them?" He had crawled forward, warily, half his body out from under the bed now. "Point to the one you want."

He pointed. With a single, exotic digit. Celestia had to control a shiver of excitement at how strange and different he was. She'd seen griffins in pictures, but never met any – and while he had limbs like a griffin, his body shape was completely different. "Caa caooow."

"Chocolate milk? Very well, good sir." She took his cup and poured the chocolate milk into it, then levitated it back over to his saucer. He came out the rest of the way to take the cup, but was still crouched on all fours, tail curled around his legs with the end of it twitching, backed up against the bed.

The creature stretched his paw to grab the cup, drank it in a single gulp, then grabbed at the fruits and nuts with a paw and shoveled them into his mouth as fast as he could. He then devoured the cake, ignoring the greens and the hay. Celestia was still nibbling at her salad when he pushed the plate and cup at her. "Mroar?"

"You want more?" Another nod. "I'll be happy to, but you have to come out and sit with me."

The creature's eyes flicked to the left and right of her. Apparently satisfied with whatever he was checking, he crawled the rest of the way forward and sat up by the place she'd set for him. "Sssssiiih. Naaaoow mrooooar."

"That isn't the polite way to ask," Celestia said, pouring him another cup of chocolate milk. "I say, 'Would you like some more?', and you say, 'Yes, please.'"

"Yehsssss hfreeeasss." His sibilant s sounds were almost a lisp, but not quite – a sound more like a snake hiss crossed with the "th" sound than a real s. But he obviously understood everything she was saying, and had probably practiced speaking pony. For a creature that didn't seem to be able to make the same sounds ponies could, he was doing quite well.

She set his cup down on his saucer. "Now say 'thank you' and I'll give you more fruit and nut mix."

"Sssssaan gyoh."

"That's very good," Celestia said encouragingly. "We'll have you speaking pony well enough that anypony can understand you in no time. Want more cheese?"

"Yehhsss hfreeaz." This time he'd managed to make the "z" sound that occurred at the end of please.

"You're doing very well. Try to say cheese. It's almost like please, so I bet you could do it." She levitated another cheese wedge over to him.

"Sssheeeez."

She poured herself lemonade. "So they told us your name was Mixup, but since you can't really speak pony, I don't see how you could have told them your name. Is that your name?"

He growled and shook his head. "That's a 'no', I assume."

"Nroh."

"What is your name?"

He said something that she couldn't comprehend well enough to ever repeat it. "I'm sorry, I don't think I can pronounce that. Would it be okay if I still called you Mixup?"

"Nroh!"

"Hmm. Let's see what nickname we can give you, then, until you're able to tell us your name in pony. What about Mishmosh?" He shook his head. "Uh... Hodgepodge?"

With an irritated expression, he went over to the center pillar holding the tent up and shoved it, knocking all the books over, and making the sides of the tent fall down. "That was rude!" Celestia snapped. "Just because I haven't been able to come up with a good name for you—"

He shook his head. "Naaaymuh," he said, scooped up a pile of books in his forelegs, and dropped them higgledy-piggledy.

Was he trying to tell her what his name meant? "What are you trying to say? Something about this means your name? Books?" He shook his head. "Well, if it's not books, then all I see is a mess." That got a smile and a rapid nod. "Your name is Mess?" This time the creature made a gesture she didn't understand, his thumb and foredigit on his talon held almost together, pinching an imaginary tiny item with a small gap between his digits. Celestia had no idea what that meant. "Do you want me to call you Mess?" The talon gesture again, and a nod. "Okay, that's a silly name but if you want that to be your nickname, I guess it's okay."

She used her telekinesis to repair the tent. Mess didn't help; he spent the entire time drinking repeated draughts of chocolate milk out of his teacup, a talon digit crooked through the mysterious rounded handle on the side. Celestia had always wondered what that thing was for; unicorns didn't need it and other ponies couldn't use it. Apparently it was so that creatures with opposable thumbs and digits, like griffins and minotaurs, could use them.

No sooner had she finished rebuilding the tent than the edge of it pushed inward, rustling. Celestia gasped, startled, and Mess dropped his cup, spilling chocolate milk on the blanket, and darted back under the bed. The blanket took the shape of a foal, and then a familiar blue leg pushed out from underneath it. In a moment, Luna had gotten her head out into the tent.

"There you are, sister! I knew you were awake!"

Mess stuck his head back out from under the bed, slowly. Celestia sighed.

"Luna, you're supposed to be in bed."

"But you're awake!"

"I'm older than you."

"But how am I supposed to sleep when my sister is conducting diponatic relations with a new race?" Luna asked. "I have to learn how to do these things because what if you hurt your hoof and I have to do things for you someday?" Mess, who had by now fully crawled out from under the bed, started chuckling.

"It's diplomatic, not diponatic, and I'm not conducting diplomatic relations with a new race. I'm trying to make a new friend."

"Oh! Well, that is a thing I should know how to do too!" Luna plopped herself down and started lifting the lids to the various ceramic jugs. "Hmm. Lemonade, chocolate milk, apple juice... where is the iced tea?"

"I didn't bring any. Iced tea keeps ponies awake, and it's late at night."

"I drink iced tea at night all the time."

"And your nurse is always complaining that you never sleep. Where is she now?"

"Nursey is sleeping, of course. She went to bed only a little while after the moon went up. I pretended to be asleep, but the moon is so pretty and big! How am I supposed to sleep through this?"

By now Mess was laughing outright. Luna grinned at him. "Do you like to stay up at night too, weird creature thing?"

"Don't call him that. He's asked us to call him Mess."

"He can talk now?"

"Not very well." She turned to Mess. "Say 'yes please.'"

"Mroar caacow." He pointed at the chocolate milk.

"He sounds like a cat," Luna opined.

Celestia ignored that. "Oh, right," she said to Mess. "Would you like some more chocolate milk?"

"Yehsh hrfreeths."

Luna laughed. "That doesn't sound anything like 'yes, please!'"

"But we would be just as bad at his language. Mess, could you say your name again? Your real name?"

He repeated it. In amidst the catlike noise, Celestia thought he'd said something like "Fuu tiaouh." She tried to repeat that back to him, making him laugh again.

"Futyaoeh?" Luna said, getting a lot closer than Celestia herself had.

"Ruuneh," Mess responded, pointing at her with a digit on his lion paw. Then he turned to Celestia. "Shressha?"

"Just call her Tia," Luna said. "I and all of her friends do."

"All of my friends and you. You don't put 'I' first, that's arrogant."

"I'm a princess. How can I be arrogant? I'm supposed to be in charge of everything. Except for if you or Father say otherwise."

"It's still arrogant," Celestia said. "How did you know about Mess? You weren't awake when I rescued him."

"Dihn reshkyu," Mess said. "Aii kod ruuss."

"I beg to differ," Celestia said. "Yes, you got loose, but the archers would have shot you for threatening me, except that I told them not to. So I did rescue you." She grinned.

"I brought toast," Luna announced, as Celestia poured Mess more chocolate milk and then gave Luna an apple juice. "It's buttered. I brought jams for it too." She removed a cloth-wrapped baguette from her own saddlebag, and pulled out a butterknife and a few small jars, then set the baguette down and opened the cloth. It was, in fact, a hot, toasted, buttered baguette, sliced in half longways.

"How did you do that? The kitchen is closed."

"Is not. The moon raisers and the night guard need to eat too. I just asked the night cook. Moon Cake always makes things for me because we have the same name."

Mess raised a furry black eyebrow. "'Luna' means 'Moon' in old Minosian," Celestia said to Mess. "It's said that a lot of our language comes from that region, including the word 'pegasus'."

Mess pointed at the bread. "Thoooass."

"Yes, that's toast. Do you want some?"

"Hfreess." He couldn't seem to manage the letter 'p'; he was making an overly strong "h" instead, huffing it out so it sounded like a cross between an h and an f.

"Do you want jam?" Luna asked. "I brought blackberry, peach, apple butter, orange marmalade, and strawberry."

Mess nodded. When Luna asked "Which one?" he pointed to all of them. Luna pouted. "I didn't bring that much toast."

"Here." Celestia broke off a piece of toast and gave it to him. "You can put whatever jams on it you like." She opened all the jam jars and set them down, with the butterknife next to them.

Mess did not use the butterknife. He scooped jam out of the tiny jars with a single curved claw from his talon, dumped it on the toast, and then used the back of the claw to spread it. He also covered the same slice of toast with some of every jam they had, overlapping in several places.

"Say thank you now," Celestia said.

"Sssangyaoou naaoow," Mess said.

"No, I didn't mean you had to say the word 'now', I meant..." She trailed off at the huge grin on his face and the small chuckle. "Oh! You're joking!" Her face felt warm. How could anyone have ever mistaken this creature for unintelligent? He knew two phrases in Equestrian and he was already using them to make jokes.

"I still think he sounds like a cat," Luna said.

"Yes, but we have to teach him to speak Equestrian. I think if he practices, he'll get to the point where everypony can understand him, even if he has a strange accent."

Mess shook his head. "You don't think ponies will understand you?"

He made a slashing motion with his paw while shaking his head. "Unrsssan, yesssh. Unrsssan aaarr."

"Understand arrr? I don't understand what you mean."

He rolled his eyes, looking frustrated. "Unrsssan raaiik hfoniie."

"Understand like a pony? But that's what I said."

He shook his head. "Nroh asssen. Saaoon raaaik hfonie. Saahmaaie."

It took her several seconds to get it. "You're saying someday you'll sound like a pony and you won't have an accent?"

Mess nodded eagerly. "Saaahmaaie."

"Well, you've got quite a way to go," Luna said. "Because I can't understand anything you're saying."

"There are sounds he can't make," Celestia said. "He's saying 'somay' rather than 'someday' and 'unersan' rather than 'understand' because I don't think he can really make t or d sounds, and he definitely can't say p, so when he says 'pony' it comes out sounding like 'phony'. And all his l sounds are coming out like r's."

"Hrakisss," Mess said. "Hrakiss ross."

That one was beyond Celestia's ability to translate. "Um, yes, I guess so. Would anypony like me to read a story?"

"I would!" Luna waved a forehoof in the air eagerly. After a moment Mess copied her.

"Okay." Celestia lifted the edge of the tent and slipped through it so she could see the spines of the books in the stacks she'd made. Most of the books she personally enjoyed probably wouldn't entertain a foal Luna's age, but most of the ones in the pillars she'd made were entirely too boring for any pony in her opinion, and she had no idea what Mess would like, but finally she found a collection of old folk tales among the books she'd made stacks of. She skimmed through it, and was delighted to see one she thought would work well for both of them.

She crawled back into the tent with the book, having replaced it in the structure with a copy of a book that wasn't even in Equestrian, and flipped it open to the correct page. "This is 'The Goat Sister.' Once upon a time there was a queen who was about to give birth. The king and all the court were eager to see the new little princess, but to their great surprise, the queen gave birth to a kid, a little goat filly. What was even stranger was that she held a wooden spoon in her hoof, and wore a tattered hood on her body. As everypony gasped in surprise, the little goat filly said, 'Oh, don't worry so much! My sister will be perfectly normal and beautiful, you'll see!' And as she scrambled to her hooves and got out of the way, the queen gave birth to the foal everypony had been expecting, a beautiful little princess."

Luna and Mess listened raptly at first, as Celestia told the tale of how Tatterhood, the goat princess, and Sweet Heart, the pony princess, grew up as best of friends and watched out for each other, even though all the courtiers spoke ill of Tatterhood behind her back, claiming that she was ugly, that she was evil, that her strange magic was monstrous and that the queen must have consorted with a goat to produce her. Then a prince who came courting Sweet Heart turned out to be a wicked warlock in disguise, who transformed Sweet Heart into a pig. Tatterhood took Sweet Heart with her on an adventure, where they came through many trials, to restore Sweet Heart back into a pony.

By the time she got to the end, though, where Sweet Heart was getting married to a prince who had helped them in their trials, and Tatterhood had just revealed to the handsome earth pony who was captain of the prince's guard that she could turn into a beautiful pony herself anytime she wanted to, but he told her he thought she was more beautiful when she was herself... both Luna and Mess were asleep, leaning on her respective sides. Or rather, Luna was leaning against her left side, and Mess, on her right side, had somehow managed to slither over her back in his sleep, so his head was now on her left side too, near her head, and his body was draped over her back.

Celestia sighed. If she tried to move, she'd wake both of them up, and it was so hard to get Luna to sleep at night, and Mess was likely to startle and hide under the bed again. Besides, the whole reason she'd filled the tent fort with pillows was so that they could sleep in it if they wanted to; she'd wanted to give Mess a safe den to sleep in where he felt protected from intruders, but also where she could interact with him, and, well, that was exactly what she'd ended up with.

It was far past her own bedtime, and the soft little pony with her downy feathers and the skinny draconequus with thick fluffy fur around his middle were both warm and cuddly, though Mess had too many bones that she could feel for her comfort and she was definitely going to have to help the cooks make sure he filled out. Celestia pulled a pillow close with her telekinesis and laid her head on it, putting her forelegs under it. Morning was coming soon, and she'd have to get up for the sun-raising. So she really should have gone to sleep hours ago. She certainly didn't have time to summon the servants and have Luna and Mess taken to their own rooms, even assuming anypony could carry Mess without waking him up and making him run. Besides, he wasn't dangerous to her if he was asleep. And that was exactly what she would tell anypony who asked.

She set all of the food supplies out of the tent with her horn, so the servants could get to them. And then she let sleep take her.

What a wonderful day. This morning she'd dreamed of finding a best friend, and now here he was.

Author's Notes:

For those of you who read "Eating Dessert First"... yes, "Tea Party Without Tea" is embedded here, with changes to make it fit the rest of the chapter properly.

This is the only chapter where Discord is this bad at speaking Equestrian. He may have a bit of an accent still in the next chapter, but as we all know, he will fully lose it while he's still a child and become completely fluent in Equestrian.

Discord and Starswirl's conversation in the draconequus language is heavily bastardized Chinese from Google Translate. The long-ma speak Chinese; the draconequui spoke a dialect of it that, frankly, wasn't nearly changed enough, but everything on Terra Fabula changes more slowly than on Terra Mundi. (The draconequui were in Amareica for three thousand years before dying out. That should be long enough to render a language unrecognizable, but I don't have enough skill with linguistics to mutate a language in such a way that it's recognizable where it came from and yet completely unlike the language it started as.)

Translations of the conversation in the draconequus language:
Starswirl: ("Boy. Do you want food?")
Discord: ("You speak my language?")
Starswirl: ("Not much.")
Discord: ("This had better not be a lie.") and then later ("The draconequus Way of Harmony.") BTW, the word "draconequus" is in their own language "small dragon horse", or "dragon-pony." The long-ma that they came from are bigger than they are.
Later, when he says his own name, it's "Futyaoei"... based on the Chinese "Bu tiaohe", "disharmony" or "discord".

Translations of Discord's mangling of the Equestrian language for people who do not have Celestia's patience:
"Let go!"
"Yes. Let go! I kill princess! Let go!"
"I kill! Let go now!"
"Kill me! Princess kill too!"
"Lies. Lies, lies, lies! They knew! He knew!" His foreleg tightened even more. "Free me or I kill. Kill me? Then I free, and princess goes with me."
"Then do it. Free me."
"No key. Never supposed to come off."
"You... you understand me?"
"Yes. Yes! He knew! Killed pony 'cause she knew, she say have to free me 'cause I can talk, and he didn't want anyone to know..."
"Lies."
"He doesn't deserve it. He killed pony to keep secret!"
"Wha—no! I can take care of myself, I don't need—"
"I don't need you. I can take care of myself."
"Just need magic. Take this off me and let me use my magic."
"All right then."
"I don't eat meat."
"No meat!"
"Out. Out! Out! Now!"
"Cacao." (word borrowed from the quetzalcoatls to the south, means chocolate)
"More?"
"Sit. Now more."
"Yes please."
"Thank you."
"Yes please."
"Cheese."
"No." and then again "No!"
"Name."
The talon gesture he's making is "close enough."
"More cacao."
"Yes please."
"Didn't rescue. I got loose."
"Toast" and then "please."
"Thank you now."
"Understand, yes. Understand all."
"Understand like pony."
"No accent. Sound like pony. Someday."
"Practice. Practice lots."

The Last Draconequus

by alarajrogers

Principle of Chaos

The Feral Child 1 of 2

The Feral Child 2 of 2

The Caged Beast

Circus of Cages

The Unicorn Princess