Hearing Her Smile
By Laura Schiller
Based on: My Little Pony
Copyright: Hasbro
It's her smile he remembers.
Cherry Pie was a hardworking, no-nonsense earth pony who ran an orchard near where Sweet Apple Acres is now. She could harvest the fruit from one of her signature cherry trees in minutes, round up a herd of sheep faster than one of her own sheepdogs, and go whole days without speaking a word beyond the necessary instructions to her farmhands. But when she smiled, which was rare, she made a tiny, high-pitched sound, almost like two balloons rubbing together. Discord, with his sharp mismatched ears, used to hear her smiling from clear across the room. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard, and as an immortal, that was saying something.
He did everything he could to bring out that smile. He shapeshifted into a rubber ball and bounced around the room; he formed cotton candy clouds and made it rain chocolate; he invented Zap Apples especially for her, to watch her eyes light up along with the rainbows across the fruit, and shook his head when – of course – she immediately worked out how to turn them into jam and make a tidy profit.
She smiled at their wedding. And she smiled at the birth of their son.
It is a fact, however, that parenthood strains even the strongest relationships. All the more so with a colt who jumps from rooftops and bounces back up, turns the water in the well into root beer, or practices being a one-pony marching band while his mother tries to file her taxes. Discord, being Discord, was proud. Cherry was not. She withdrew to the furthest edges of the farm and, not knowing what else to do, her husband and son came up with ever more outrageous stunts to get her attention.
It started as a joke. It is difficult for him to remember that, even now, when almost everything is a joke to him. Making the cherries on the trees explode into fireworks was meant to be a romantic gesture, like the Zap Apples, and at the same time shock her into giving him that smile which had become so much rarer over the years.
He never meant to burn down her entire orchard.
Sometimes, even centuries later, it feels as if he were still there: the crack and sizzle of the fireworks, the blinding light leaping from tree to tree, the screams of small animals running from the flames. He could have done something, anything; conjuring a waterfall or a cloud of extinguisher spray would be easy for him today. But he was younger then, his powers still erratic. In any case, he was too shocked to even move from where he hovered in the sky, watching his wife gallop uselessly back and forth with a water bucket as her life's work crumbled into ashes.
Earth ponies are stubborn. Like the fruit she wore as her name and cutie mark, Cherry had a hard kernel under all her sweetness. Nothing he could say, no apology, no promise to do better, could stop her. One morning, her side of the bed was empty.
Diving out the window after them, still half-asleep, the last thing Discord saw was his family heading down the road, loaded down with saddlebags. His son's mane, corkscrew-curled and fire-engine red, had turned as dark as the dusty road and as straight as a pin.
He could take a hint. He never went near them again.
He heard (accidentally, of course; he would never stoop so low as to research them, absolutely not) that she found work with a deeply religious mining clan in the north, and possibly even married their leader, though he finds this hard to believe. Cherry loved nothing better than things that grow. The thought of her surrounded by dead, cold rock for the rest of her life does not bear thinking of.
Soon enough, the name Discord became infamous throughout Equestria and caught the attention of the Princesses themselves, which cost him dear. But even at his worst, there was a certain Northern mining village he never touched.
/
He drops by Sugarcube Corner now and then, where Pinkie Pie works. Sometimes he does it literally, shooting his long body down the chimney in a cloud of soot, and that always makes her laugh. Their ideas of humor are shockingly alike; he noticed this even when he was first released from his statue, and it was this, perhaps, that caused him to single her out with particular malice from the other Elements of Harmony. He took away her laughter. It still amazes him that after such a crime, she can even allow him into her house, let alone laugh with him. But she does.
One afternoon, she tries to teach him to bake cupcakes, and it turns into a food fight that leaves the kitchen snowed over with flour and both of them sticky with icing. Mr. Cake throws a foreleg over his eyes and slowly backs away, and the two of them roll around the floor giggling until their sides ache. Finally Pinkie asks Discord if he can vanish the mess, and to his own chagrin, he does. She cleans herself up in her usual manner, though, wrapping her tongue around her whole body like a little tornado, and it's utterly ingenious. He couldn't have thought of a better method himself.
Often she smiles at him, an ear-to-ear grin only she could contrive, and if he is lucky, he doesn't simply see it.
He hears it.