Following Fluttershy down the stairs, Applejack couldn't keep herself from shuffling forward a little faster'n her honeycomb just so's she could nudge her nose into that gorgeous pink tail and grin at Fluttershy's giggled little, "Applejack!"

'Cause never again, AJ vowed silently right then and there: never again would she let herself go nigh onto two months without a heaping helping of Fluttershy in her life. She didn't care how crazy things got around here—let Trixie come back a third time; let everypony wake up tomorrow as griffons; let Pinkie Pie bake herself a horn and a pair of wings and declare herself the Princess of Pie—

"Saturday the 30th," she said, coming down off the last step and planting her front hoofs extra-firm in the carpet of Fluttershy's front room the way she woulda stomped the ground to drive home her point if she'd been outside. "Unless you got another date in mind?"

Fluttershy looked back over her shoulder with a smile that set ev'ry inch of Applejack to singing like a tree fulla barn swallows. "I wanted to do it today, remember?"

"Oh, really?" the bass trombone of Discord's voice asked from the kitchen. "I'd've thought you two had done everything two ponies could do to each other in the time I was away trading theories with her newest highness." He stepped through the doorway then, as frilly a pink apron around his middle as Applejack had seen in all her born days, a platter balanced and spinning slowly on one eagle talon. "Come along, now; I made sandwiches, and you must be starving!"

Glaring at him as Fluttershy managed to both freeze in place and shrink back into her mane, AJ couldn't keep her words anywhere near to friendly. "Thought you was gonna be at Twilight's a couple more hours."

"As did I." Pulling a spatula outta nowhere, he began shoveling what looked more like cubical pancakes than anything sandwichy from his platter onto two plates that Applejack woulda swore hadn't been on the table a second ago. "Alas, our esteemed Twilight's a great deal cleverer than she seems at first glance: not only did she add several unexpectedly salient points to our discussion of chaos theory, she then demonstrated an impressive understanding of the topic by reforming a shattered piece of chalk merely by manipulating the probabilistic nature of basic thermodynamics!" Discord heaved a little sigh. "So I came home early."

Not really paying any attention to the big feller's whining, Applejack had moved to Fluttershy's side, had started nuzzling her gently to coax her out of the embarrassed cloud she'd wrapped around herself. But that pretty yellow head popped out all on her own, a frown on Fluttershy's face. "My goodness, Discord! I don't know that I've ever heard you sound so disappointed!" She hurried across the room, Applejack finding herself frowning, too, but for what she reckoned was a totally diff'rent reason. "Usually when you come home after talking with Twilight, you're practically dancing; you're not feeling sick, are you?"

Discord gave a smile as feeble as lukewarm tea. "It's nothing, really." He flicked the platter into the air, and the thing burst like a stuck balloon, taking the sandwich things with it. "But you still haven't said what's happening Saturday the 30th!"

Fluttershy gave a squeal and launched into a quick, hoof-tapping dance. "Applejack and I are getting married!" Fluttershy zipped across the table to hug Discord, then zipped back to hug Applejack, the kiss she gave her more'n enough for AJ to decide that she could forgive Discord just about ev'rything he'd ever done—till Fluttershy zipped back to the table and declared, "Say you'll be one of my bridesmares, Discord! Please say you will!"

Shock moved across Discord's face like wind across a cornfield, and AJ figured she likely looked that same way herself. "But...I'm not a mare." His expression went all thoughtful. "Though I supposed I could remedy that easily enough..."

"No, no!" Fluttershy was still hovering over the table. "You, Discord! As yourself! Because you're our friend! And we wouldn't want to have the ceremony without you!"

"I...I'm honored," he said, and it sounded so honest and heartfelt, all Applejack's suspicions crunched their tiny little teeth even louder in her brain.

With another squeal, Fluttershy did a flying somersault. "It will be the most magical day ever!" She swooped over to wrap another hug around Applejack. "We've got to tell everypony and start getting everything ready! If we go right now to let them know, they'll have time to—"

"Honeycomb?" It near to broke AJ's heart to bring even a bit of earth-bound reality to the fluffy pink clouds Fluttershy practic'lly had floating around her. "How 'bout we make that tonight? I've still got chores that need doing, so if Discord here'll pop me back to the Acres, I'll meet'cha in town at six for supper, then we'll make the rounds: Pinkie Pie to Rarity to Rainbow to Twilight." And it wasn't really a lie when she finished with, "It's just a couple hours, but it'll help me out a whole lot."

"Of course!" Fluttershy settled to the ground, but AJ was more'n happy to see that she didn't lose a flicker of the light dancing in her eyes. "I have some rounds I need to make through the Whitetail Woods, too." She leaned forward, touched a kiss as perfect as cool summer rain to Applejack's cheek. "You know that you've made me the happiest mare in Equestria, don't you?"

"Well, now." Applejack bent her neck so she could meet Fluttershy's lips with her own. "Reckon I might just give you a run for that title, little missy."

Fluttershy giggled. "We'll call it a tie!" She floated toward the door. "And thank you so much, Discord! Oh, everything is just so wonderful!"

The door creaked opened and clicked shut; Applejack turned to Discord, still in his apron at the table, and keeping her voice down, she asked, "So, you wanna talk about it here? Or out in the orchard where we'll have more privacy?"

Discord went still, something Applejack wasn't sure she'd ever seen before. "I don't know what you mean," he said, but his lion paw came up—still attached to his arm this time—and with a snap, AJ found herself standing with him beside the same tree she'd been working on before the long, luscious lunch break she'd just spent getting reacquainted with her marefriend.

Meaning something was going on, something he wanted to talk about but didn't know how to bring it up.

What more than usually horrible thing that might be, AJ couldn't begin to guess, so she kept up the tough front, eyes and ears open for any clues he might give off. "You ain't fooling anypony, y'know. That apron? Them sandwiches? Them big, dewy eyes when Fluttershy asked you be wunna her bridesmares?" She stepped closer, wondering if a nervous Discord would smell like the sour persimmon stink she was suddenly picking up. "One thing I's learned since Rarity's had that cat of hers: when the dang thing starts purring and primping and cleaning her paws all nice and delicate, that's the time I better step lively, else I'll end up with a fetlock fulla claws and teeth." She fixed her gaze on his. "So whaddaya want, Discord?"

"Want?" He flung his mismatched arms wide, both of 'em stretching like rubber bands. "I have never, I'll have you know, ever wanted anything! The instant I conceive a fancy—" He snapped his claws, and a bright red ten gallon hat appeared between his antlers. "It's mine without my ever having to go through the tiresome 'want' stage!" His smile glowed with smugness. "It's part of my spiritual nature."

"Huh." Applejack clicked her tongue. "'Cause I'm thinking right now 'bout the time you covered these here fields of mine with ice. Seems to me you wanted something bad enough after that to take all that ice away. Or am I remembering wrong?"

His smugness smoldered into something harder. "Fluttershy's a special case," he more growled than said. "You of all ponies should know that."

"Reckon I do." Looking at his body language—the way his eyes kept shifting away and the odd sorta clutching twitch that seemed to be wriggling among his eagle talons—AJ started thinking she was getting close to the problem. "But this ain't about Fluttershy and you, is it? You don't feel for her the same thing I do or else you'd see me as some kinda rival insteada picking me up and carrying me over to her place. No, you've got something else you wanna have but don't know how to get. It's something you figure I can help you with, so you're trying to get on my good side, right?"

And the expression that spread itself over Discord's face right that very minute made AJ's breath freeze in her throat. 'Cause she'd seen that very exact same look before on her own face during that whole awful week after she'd fallen for Fluttershy but Fluttershy was still pining for Big Macintosh. And if it wasn't Fluttershy he'd fallen for—

"Sweet Mother of Mercy." Applejack had to force herself not to scoot backwards. "Twilight's done flipped your switch, hasn't she?"

The various parts inside him usually shrieked and writhed, gibbering in mad abandon around the maypole of his mind—and wasn't that a lovely little image; Discord filed it away for inclusion in the autobiography he was constantly composing in his thoughts. But now his entire interior continued floating droopily, quiet as a single bird in a meadow at dawn.

Discord hated everything about it, hated the way he was feeling, hated that he was feeling, for that matter. Of all the annoying things that had gotten shoved down his throat when he'd been slammed in the head by the magical steel wrecking ball known as friendship, feeling things all the livelong day was without a doubt the single most annoying.

And to feel so many awful, wonderful things about Twilight Sparkle of all creatures—!

Applejack was still talking. On the off chance that some of it might be useful, he went back to listening.

"That's why you came to me. 'Cause Fluttershy knocked me over sideways same way Twilight's knocked you."

Deny it, deny it, deny it! a large number of the voices in his head started yodeling, but listening to them hadn't been helping him at all so far. He grit his teeth so hard they burst like popcorn, big and white and fluffy and shooting from his mouth all over the startled little pony.

Which at least stopped her talking. "It's just so overwhelmingly tedious!" he exclaimed into the sort of silence he liked best: the stunned kind. "Twilight Sparkle is everything I've always despised in Celestia, but twelve times over! She's so contained! So confined!" The image shimmered behind his eyes: Twilight at her chalkboard during the luncheon lesson they'd just shared, her limbs longer and leaner with her new alicorn growth, her wings tucked at her sides, her magic daintily plucking at the foundational strings of reality as he whispered to her about quantum decoherence. Shivering with one or another of those blasted feelings, he couldn't keep the phrase from squeezing out: "So orderly..."

"Mother of Mercy," he heard Applejack's rustic twang say again, but when he focused on her, she was smiling. "Guess we know what pushes your buttons, now, don't we?"

"Buttons?!" Without even thinking, he fashioned himself a long, swallow-tailed coat from the hat he'd conjured up earlier and made sure it had five dozen big purple buttons running down the front. "And switches?!" He caused an oversized knife switch to form on the tree behind him, snapped some goggles over his eyes, grabbed the switch, and slammed it from up to down, sparks sizzling and flying, a huge, white-hot jag of lightning shooting from the top of the tree into the cloudless blue afternoon sky. "Because I don't think either of these things is what you have in mind when you use those words!" he shouted over the clap of thunder that rattled the entire orchard around them.

"Will you simmer down?!" Applejack screamed, and even though he had dispersed all his props by then, Discord didn't get nearly the tickle of humorous satisfaction that he should have at sight of the frazzled pony, her hat askew between her ears, her hoofs spread wide and planted, her yell the only sound suddenly anywhere in their vicinity.

She recovered quickly, though—Discord had to admit that—straightening her hat and fixing those relentless green eyes on him. "One thing I learned pretty well: it don't do any good to get all weird and stupid just 'cause you're in love with—"

"I'm not in love!" Everything inside Discord was whirling now, and he let it out, swirled the confining bands of reality away from himself and Applejack, surrounded them both with as sybaritic a scene as he could manage: ponies wearing diaphanous robes and draping themselves over each other across silk and satin cushions and pillows in what his many years of stirring about in pony minds had told him were highly graphic sexual poses. "This is what I'm supposed to wallow in, I'll have you know! Filth and perversion! Squalor and deviance! Excess and—!"

"'Supposed to?'" Rather than staring open-mouthed at the frenetic coupling—and tripling and quadrupling—going on around her, Applejack, he was shocked to discover, was still looking at him. "You doing what's expected now, Discord?"

The word hit him harder than any physical blow could have, the conjured conjoinings cracking and crumbling away as surely as apples dropping from a bucked tree. And as much as he wanted to summon them back, Discord found he could only blink at Applejack, nothing between the two of them now but the actual sunlight and air of her horribly wholesome orchard.

"Thing is," the folksy little beast was saying, "it ain't gonna do you no good to deny it. Tried that myself, y'see, and I just ended up a big ol' pile of misery." She stepped toward him, and maybe for the first time in his life, Discord had to fight the urge to step away. "So be your real, true, chaotic self, you big foal, and do the one thing nopony'd ever expect of you." She stretched her head closer to his, and every spinning part of Discord's brain froze to stare at her. "Let'cherself just plain fall in love with Twilight Sparkle."

The scream that burst from all his assorted parts, he saw as the force of it blasted him into the air like a Wonderbolt in pursuit of pie, also tumbled Applejack head over fetlocks away between the rows of apple trees. So that was one good thing at least.

Waiting at the café, Fluttershy felt sure every other pony in the place was staring at her. But she usually felt that way no matter where she went, so she'd gotten pretty good at ignoring it. Besides, the way she and Applejack were going to make everything official tonight and start the ball rolling toward three weeks from today and the wedding—their wedding!—she was so nervous and excited—Pinkie had a special word for this feeling, Fluttershy knew, but she found that she couldn't remember what it was—she really didn't think she had space inside her for any of her regular nervousness right now.

Still, the clench in her stomach loosened with a snap she could almost hear when Applejack hove into view up the street, the springtime sun drifting down through the late afternoon toward evening and casting her marefriend's big soft shadow over the ground ahead of her. It took all Fluttershy's strength of will not to leap over the railing of the café's patio and fly out to her, but she didn't want to draw any more attention than she already had—

Until Applejack got close enough for Fluttershy to see the frown creasing her forehead; Fluttershy absolutely shot from her seat, flipped herself onto the street, and skidded to a halt on the sidewalk in front of her marefriend. "Applejack? What's wrong?! How can I help make it better?!"

With a blink, Applejack's frown melted like butter in a pan. "Aw, that's sweet of you, honeycomb, but..." She blew out an apple-scented breath and leaned forward, the little nuzzle she touched to Fluttershy's neck so soft and gentle, Fluttershy almost forget that they were kissing while standing out in front of a restaurant full of other ponies who were all probably looking at them.

And even though she did remember it, right at that moment, turning her head so she could nuzzle Applejack, too, she found that she didn't care.

"It's just Discord," Applejack said with another sigh.

Her stomach reclenched. "I'll speak to him," Fluttershy said with a sigh of her own.

"No!" Applejack pulled away, but then she tucked her head into the crook of Fluttershy's neck again. "It ain't anything 'cept him being himself, so there's really nothing to talk about. I told him what he had to do to fix it, and, well, he kinda exploded." She stepped back, but this time, she had on one of her big grins. "Ding-dangedest thing I ever seen: blew me clean over backwards."

Fluttershy nodded, her stomach untwisting most of the way. "He doesn't take advice very well."

"He'll come around." Applejack nudged her. "Me, though, I'm ready for some supper!"

Dinner was wonderful, the best Fluttershy had eaten in months even though she'd been to this very café more than once in that time. She just hadn't been here with Applejack, and that made all the difference. Fluttershy found herself over and over again just getting lost in Applejack's voice, in her eyes, in the way her hair bobbed around behind her. She would suddenly realize she wasn't hearing anything and would start back to see Applejack grinning. "Reckon I'll ask you that again, honeycomb."

What made it all even better, though—and Fluttershy didn't really notice this till they were finished, Applejack telling the waiter to charge everything to the Apple family account, the waiter nodding and smiling and bidding them both a lovely evening—were all the other nods and smiles she saw from the ponies around them, the pressure of their eyes not terrible for the first time since that wonderful hour she'd spent posing for Applejack's cousin's art class back in Manehattan.

Because when she was with Applejack, she realized, it didn't matter who was looking at her. All that mattered was that she was with Applejack.

The visits with their friends were wonderful, too, but then Fluttershy had expected that. At dinner, they'd talked over what they were going to say, but when they walked into Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie bouncing around the tables to bring ponies their dessert orders, Applejack's sudden shyness took Fluttershy by surprise, her marefriend's freckles standing out against the darkening orange of her cheeks. "Might be we could have a word in private, Pinkie?" Applejack asked.

"Ha!" Pinkie's smile curled like the locks of her mane. "If you're gonna say you've set the date for the wedding, my tail beat'cha to it! It's been twitching the news to me for, like, hours, so I've just been dancing in my head, waiting for you two to come by and tell me all official!"

The thought made Fluttershy swallow—Pinkie's tail always knew so many things!—but Applejack just gave a slow grin. "And did it tell you I was gonna ask you to be wunna my bridesmares?"

Pinkie froze in mid-leap, something that never failed to take Fluttershy's breath away, then clattered to the floor like a dropped barrel lid. Silence filled the sweet shop for two ticks of the wall clock, then Pinkie slowly stood, her eyes wide and seeming to vibrate in their sockets. "Everything," she said, her voice almost echoing in Fluttershy's ears, "that has ever happened to me during my whole entire life has been leading up to this moment." She more drifted over to them than walked, rested her left front hoof on Applejack's shoulder, her right front hoof on Fluttershy's. "For the party that will take place upon that day..." She shivered, and Fluttershy couldn't help shivering, too. "Those ponies then abed will call themselves accursed they were not there."

The more usual sort of hugging and squealing happened then, all the ponies in Sugarcube Corner saying congratulations. And while Applejack gave out the details—the ceremony at noon three weeks from today in the main barn at Sweet Apple Acres with the reception to follow in the Ponyville Town Square—Fluttershy steeled herself, jumped over the tightening knot of smiling ponies squeezing in around them, sailed out the front door, and galloped as fast as ever she could toward Carousal Boutique just like she and Applejack had planned.

Rarity had largely stopped crying by the time Applejack came pushing through the front door. In fact, she'd switched fully into 'mad fashionista' mode, Fluttershy marveling at each and every wonderful design Rarity was pulling from the stacks on her work table and tossing aside. "These are just concept drawings, of course," she kept saying. "Now that I have a deadline, I shall buckle down and truly get to work!"

But when Applejack asked Rarity to be her other bridesmare—"I reckon we'll call y'all 'attendants' seeing as how Discord's gonna be wunna Fluttershy's."—just as Fluttershy had thought, Rarity had broken down again, Fluttershy getting more than a little misty-eyed herself as their unicorn friend had latched herself to their necks.

"Oh, Applejack!" Rarity burbled at one point. "When we were the last two blank-flanks in Miss Organdy's class, did you ever imagine how wonderful our lives would turn out?" Which got Applejack to tear up, something Fluttershy saw so rarely, it blurred her own vision even more.

By the time they all managed to pull themselves together, Rarity making them both promise to stop by Wednesday evening—"So I can dazzle you with the gowns we'll all be wearing!"—Fluttershy was very glad Applejack had insisted on waiting till after dinner to make these rounds. Without that bowl of potato soup inside her, she was fairly sure she wouldn't've had the strength to continue.

At least Rainbow Dash was simple—yes, she leaped from the ground with such a vigorous cheer that the shockwave staggered Fluttershy nearly over sideways, and the hug when Fluttershy asked her to join Discord as her bridal attendant was just a trifle on the tight side. But her grin made Fluttershy feel as warm and safe as it always had, and Fluttershy couldn't help joining Applejack's snort when Rainbow said, "You guys married are gonna be so great! And I oughtta know about great, right?"

They left her rubbing her front hoofs together in the glow of her house floating overhead—"And I know just what Pinkie and me'll do for your bachelor parties, too!"—and circled halfway along the outskirts of town before heading toward the square again and the library, Twilight out on her balcony with her telescope and a big grin. "Word's all over town!" she called, spreading her wings and swooping down to catch the both of them in a hug that almost knocked Fluttershy over for the third or fourth time that evening. "I'm so happy for you two! With everything that's happened around here since you first told us you were dating, I wasn't sure we'd ever see the day!"

"You gotta have faith, Twi." Applejack gave Fluttershy a wink over Twilight's head, and Fluttershy felt a little twinge. "We're getting it all figured out," Applejack went on when Twilight had ushered them inside and they were settled around the kitchen table, Spike giving them his congratulations after bringing them some tea and heading upstairs with a comic book tucked under his arm. "Pinkie and Rarity are my oldest friends in town, so they'll be my bridesmares or attendants or whatever we're calling 'em, and Fluttershy's going with Dash and Discord."

Twilight's face fell, and Fluttershy could almost feel the strain that went into her bringing her smile back. "That...that will be wonderful, I'm sure."

The little catch in her voice almost got Fluttershy to blurt out their question, but Applejack put one hoof on hers, reached across the table, and put the other on Twilight's. "And we're hoping that our favorite princess might just have room in her schedule to perform the ceremony."

And once again, Fluttershy saw, Applejack had been right to ask Twilight this way: the joy that blossomed through the air around her made Fluttershy think of a sudden jasmine bloom. "That's right! I can do that now, can't I?!" Her eyes curling into crescents and her smile absolutely radiant, Twilight's wings shot out to lift her into a hover. "I've never been so happy to be a princess! And just think of the research I'll have to do into the cultural history and traditions of weddings! I can hardly wait!"

Applejack nodded, then with a lick of her lips, cocked her head to look at Fluttershy. Fluttershy knew what she was asking—they'd talked about this at dinner, too, as quietly as they could—and she nodded, her throat suddenly very dry. "Also, umm, Twilight..." She reached for the cup of tea and tried not to notice how much her hoofs were shaking. "We thought we should probably...tell everyone—all our friends, I mean—about me and my...my wiggler...."

"'Cause, well..." Applejack cleared her throat. "You said Fluttershy had the right stuff to sire foals in me, so we...we reckoned we better get the girls clued in before I get pregnant instead of after..."

The closed library, already quiet, seemed to get quieter, the mint tea suddenly sour against Fluttershy's tongue. It was so hard to talk about this even to somepony who knew her secret! How would she ever be able to tell the others?!

"You're right," Twilight said, and the clench in Fluttershy's middle loosened a notch or two. "I'll help in any way I can."

"Next Saturday night." Applejack was using her 'take charge' voice, something that always made Fluttershy breathe easier. "We'll invite Rainbow, Rarity, and Pinkie on over here after supper, and us three'll let 'em know."

Looking up from her cup, Fluttershy blinked the shimmers from her eyes to see Twilight and Applejack both smiling at her. And that, she realized, was how she'd be able to do it Not by herself, but with her friends beside her.

The rest of the week, Discord did his best to lay low, usually stretching himself along the bottom of the stream that ran beside Fluttershy's cottage. He'd thought briefly about spending the time in the well at Sweet Apple Acres, the lowest point he knew in town, but the possibility of drawing Applejack's attention there quickly put the kibosh on that poetic little idea.

Quite a shame, too. He had so many other ideas he'd much rather have kiboshes piled upon. This whole 'being in love with Twilight Sparkle' thing, for instance. If ever an idea deserved a slow and suffocating death beneath a steaming pile of kiboshes—

Of course, thinking her name sent sounds and images rippling through him, all of them entirely inappropriate: the way her face would light up when he offered her a particularly tasty morsel of abstruse physics; the sweet jasmine scent of her joy; the delight in her voice when she would—

"Gah!" He burst from the bottom of the stream and sliced himself like an eel of some sort through the cascading net of air molecules. He should be imagining himself swooping down upon her, ravaging her, defiling her, forcing her to scream in a combination of agony and ecstasy till she was begging him both to stop and to keep going! He should be tearing out fistfuls of that soft, fragrant mane, should be smearing kohl an inch-and-a-half thick around those sweet, expressive eyes, should be dressing her in spiked leather with matching leash and collar so he could parade her through the streets of Canterlot! He was Discord, wasn't he?!

Except— "You doing what's expected now, Discord?" Applejack had asked, and Discord flung himself away from Fluttershy's cottage, flashed through the evening sky to the center of town, wrapped himself fluttering like a banner around the flagpole atop city hall. There were so many things in the world that he didn't want—to be predictable; to be turned to stone again; to care for creatures other than himself; to find himself in a situation where the word 'eleemosynary' might be spoken in his presence—that disdain and disregard were second nature to him. But actually wanting things? How did that even work?!

Flapping from the flagpole, he found his attention drawn to the lights of the library tree, and one or two of his inner voices piped up with the information that during the few times he'd come up from the bottom of the stream to get some sandwiches this past week, Fluttershy had been fretting about some sort of meeting she and Applejack were organizing at the library tonight.

He almost popped in to see how things were getting on, but the thought of gazing upon Twilight Sparkle twisted his guts—and not in the ways he enjoyed, either. Best to just stay put and hope she walked by a window or something so he could leer at her. Even though several of his voices informed him that they wouldn't feel right about doing that, which was so absolutely wrong in every respect that he—

The library's front door slammed open. Discord craned himself forward, but the pony who came galloping out was white, the purple mane and tail streaming out behind her not the correct shade of purple. She raced past city hall below him, and tears seemed to be welling around the edges of her clenched eyelids.

How curious...