The next Saturday, right smack dab in the middle of rearing back to buck the tree she'd set up in front of, the reality of the whole dang thing hit Applejack as hard as a hayloft collapsing.

Getting her bearings, shifting her weight forward, gathering herself for the actual kick, she caught a glimmer in the corner of her eye from the barn's little cupola, rising above the rows of trees between there and here. The late afternoon sunlight had glanced off the apple weather vane they'd salvaged from the barn before this one and the barn before that one and the barn before that all the way back to when Granny Smith's pappy musta clambered out onto the roof of the very first barn on the Acres and stuck the thing there.

Wunna the drawings of the wedding decorations flashed into AJ's head then—the little white top hat Pinkie was so excited about putting on toppa that ol' iron apple—

And quick as that, her knees went flabby, her front legs bending when they shoulda stayed straight and her hind legs lashing out all catawampus. They smacked into the trunk at just exactly the wrong angle, the force of the kick shooting back along her spine and snapping her teeth shut so hard, it rattled her eyeballs, burst the air from her lungs, and tipped her right over face first into the dirt.

"Whoa!" came a shout from above, and four familiar blue hoofs landed just past the end of her nose. "You OK, AJ?!"

Swallowing, Applejack stood, blinked at Dash blinking back at her. "Sweet Mother of Mercy," she somehow managed to say. "I'm getting married next week!"

The grin that spread over Dash's fool face was so rakish, AJ figured she coulda used it to clear the yard after the Running of the Leaves. "If you survive the bachelor party tonight, y'mean," the pegasus more purred than said.

Which washed all the wobbliness outta AJ right quick. "Consarn it, RD! I been telling you for two weeks! Nothing squalid or tawdry!"

"Ha!" Dash stomped the ground and flared her wings. "I don't even know the meaning of those words!"

"Exactly!" Leaning forward, Applejack jabbed a hoof against Dash's chest. "So help me, if'n I glimpse hide or hair of any stripper, either stallion or mare; if'n I catch even one whiff from some lewd cake Pinkie Pie's put together; if'n I hear anything—"

"Relax, AJ." Dash's grin lost its more cringe-inducing edges. "It's Fluttershy's bachelorette party, too, so Pinkie and me decided to keep everything pretty low-key."

And as much as Applejack wanted to believe it... "Low-key for you and Pinkie? Or low-key for ponies who still might have a sense of decency left?"

Dash's eyes narrowed. "OK, that? A little uncalled for."

Grinding her teeth, AJ took a deep, slow breath and blew it out. "You're right. It weren't fair, and I'm sorry. I just—" She took another breath thinking it might steady her but wasn't too surprised when it didn't. "Me and Fluttershy! Getting married! A week from now!" She had to stop herself from grabbing Dash's shoulders and shaking her. "How in the black, inky bowels of Tartarus does a thing like that happen, huh? How do I end up being the luckiest mare in Equestria?"

A wistful look wavered across Dash's snout for the teensiest piece of a second: AJ was pretty sure she wouldn't even have seen it if'n she hadn't been standing with her face near to pressed into Rainbow's. But then Dash was tossing her head, puffing out a barn-buster of a sigh, turning away, and heading through the trees. "I'm gonna need a lot more cider in me, cowgirl, before I feel qualified to get into all this philosophy junk." She looked back over her shoulder, all brash and smiling again. "You coming? If you're tardy for your own bachelor party, Twilight might not let you get married."

Chuckling, Applejack moved to her side, and the two of them started for the main gate and the road into town. "So how come I gets the bachelor party and Fluttershy gets the bachelorette party, huh?" She made her accent as thick as tule fog in an upland holler. "Ain't I ladylike enough for y'all?"

"Yeah, right." Dash nudged her with an elbow. "Maybe Shy's got the equipment, but anypony with half a brain knows who's the stallion with you two."

"I dunno." Applejack let her mind wander back to those rare but wonderful times when her honeycomb would agree to wear the hat, either literally or metaphorically. "Reckon you'd be surprised how 'take charge' she can be when she's of a mind to."

"OK. First rule?" A sour, uncomfortable smell had crept into Dash's usual flowing water scent. "From now on, you never get to say anything that makes me imagine you and Fluttershy—" Her voice jittered to a stop, her ears flicking down, and she swallowed so loud, Applejack could hear it gurgle. "I'm gonna need that cider sooner insteada later!"

"Excuse me?" And as much as AJ didn't wanna be nasty about it, she plum couldn't stop herself. "After all the double entendres and innuendo I've had to put up with from you for however long you been hanging around—"

"Oh, and second rule? You don't get to gloat about first rule."

Well, that led to Applejack saying as how she'd be happy to follow these new rules if Rainbow agreed to foalsit any one night of the week for free, and that led to Dash rattling off a whole 'nother set of rules about where and when she'd be willing and able to perform her duties as 'Aunt Rainbow.' More banter followed that, and before AJ even knew it, they were crossing over into town, the flippety-flopping in her middle gone to nothing. Walking with Rainbow like this, it mighta been any Saturday evening the past five or six years insteada the night of the party celebrating her upcoming wedding.

Smiling, she leaned a nudge into Dash's shoulder. "Thanks," was all she figured she could say without getting too blubbery.

Rainbow tossed her head. "Yeah, it doesn't matter who's getting married: we all know who the best mare is around here."

That deserved a little more'n a nudge, and AJ was happy to deliver it, the two properly squabbling as they came 'round the last corner to Carousel Boutique, the place lit up like Granny Smith's last birthday cake, some nice 'n' mellow fiddle music floating out the doors and windows.

"Well, now." Applejack had to stop, push her hat back, and take it all in. "This shin-dig's seeming downright civilized."

"Like I said." Dash slid a front hoof smoothly through the air. "Low-key. C'mon!"

Inside, the place looked just exactly right: enough streamers and balloons so a pony'd know it was a Pinkie Pie party, sure, but the sandwiches and cakes and linen and doilies all matched the genteel music coming from Rarity's sound system. Not to mention how the simple, summery sort of dress Fluttershy was wearing at the table beside Rarity and Twilight made ev'ry last bit of moisture dry right outta Applejack's body in sheer wonderment.

"Sweet Mother of Mercy," she couldn't keep from muttering. How in the bright blue above was a pony like that having anything at all to do with a pony like her?

Dash's elbow jabbed her ribs. "Looks like you could use a little cider yourself."

"A double." Feeling like she was walking into somepony else's dream, AJ hadn't even taken a step forward when Fluttershy turned away from listening to whatever Rarity was saying, her gaze meeting Applejack's, and—

The way her honeycomb absolutely lit up made AJ rethink whose dream this might be. "Applejack!" Fluttershy sang it like she was about to kick off a musical number, but Applejack didn't feel one bit disappointed when she didn't: she leaped into the air instead, swooped all lacey silk and feathers across the table, and nigh to wrapped herself around AJ's barrel, Applejack's ev'ry nerve firing into overdrive at the touch of those lips against hers. "Isn't it wonderful? Oh, this is going to be the nicest party anypony's ever had!"

"You betcha-rooty!" Pinkie called from somewhere, AJ's vision clearing enough to show the earth pony bouncing up and down behind Fluttershy. "And if you like your parties a little more rambunctious—" She gestured to the Boutique's open back door. "We've got that covered, too!"

That got a shiver running through Applejack, but Pinkie's grin didn't have a shadow of lasciviousness about it; figuring she owed her friends a smidgeon of trust, she followed Pinkie, hopping to the doorway like some giant pink rabbit, and peered outside.

Spike and Discord were standing there in black-and-white striped shirts, Discord with a whistle around his neck. Waggling his eyebrows at her, he grabbed the whistle, puffed out a blast like a steam locomotive, snapped his lion paw, and AJ felt her jaw drop as a scaled-down rodeo stadium burst into place in the field behind Carousel Boutique.

"Y'know," Dash said behind her, and Applejack looked back, the pegasus polishing the edge of a front hoof against her chest, two big mugs of cider on the ground beside her. "In case you might wanna—oh, I dunno—play a game or something."

AJ coulda hugged her, but decided instead to grab wunna the mugs. "Horseshoes first." She took a swig of that cool, sweet tartness and waited for Rainbow to do the same before she added, "Reckon you might have a chance at that."

If'n it'd been anything other than cider, AJ reckoned from the cross-eyed, puff-cheeked look on Dash's face that ev'rything in fronta them woulda been dripping with a fine spray mist. But it was cider, and Dash nigh to flipped herself over backwards to keep her lips shut, her whole throat bulging to swallow the stuff. "Uh-huh," Dash said after a highly entertaining few seconds, her scratchy voice even scratchier. "Y'know, as my friend Rarity has remarked on more than one occasion—" She jabbed a hoof three times into Applejack's chest. "It. Is. On."

And, oh, how it was; AJ couldn't remember the last time her and Dash had just squared off and played that way. Folks walking along the street past Rarity's in the long spring evening stopped to watch and cheer, and the resta the girls came out, too, Twilight floating a table so they could sit with their tea and whatnot—though Pinkie got 'em up hooting and hollering quick enough, waving pom-poms and flags and all. Spike did a fine job officiating, but Discord got a mite more involved. Stopping the action with a blast of his whistle ev'ry now and again, he would announce, "The next three shots from each competitor must be made blindfolded!" or "This particular race is to be run backwards!"

"Discord!" Spike kept saying with a different sort of sigh each time. "That's not what referees do!"

To which Discord would reply with a wave of his claws, "My stadium, my rules!"

In all honestly, though, Applejack didn't mind it a bit—made the whole thing more of a challenge—till Discord straight up refused to let them play Ups 'n' Downs. "I'm sorry," he said, folding his arms and looking away, his chin upraised, "but in some things, I'm a classicist. And the very concept of one-on-one Ups 'n' Downs makes my heart spin and spasm in its grave." He grabbed the lapels of his ref's shirt like he was gonna rip it open, a huge smile unzipping along his face. "Here! I'll show you!"

Spike's spines bristled. "Nopony wants to see that!" he shouted; then in a calmer voice, "But he does have a point. Ups 'n' Downs really oughtta have teams."

"Oooo!" Pinkie squealed from the sidelines. Sprinting over, she slid on her knees in front of Applejack, one front hoof waving frantically. "Pick me! Pick me!"

"Aw, yeah!" Dash stomped the ground. "Ups 'n' Downs doesn't get more classic than earth ponies versus pegasi!" She waved to the other three. "C'mon, Fluttershy! Let's you and me show 'em how we did it back in flight school!"

"Ummm..." Fluttershy shrank into her mane just a bit. "I was never very good at it back in flight school, actually...."

"What?!" Leaping into the air, Dash scowled down at Applejack. "Fine! I'll take the two of you on by myself!"

"Rainbow?" came Twilight's voice, and AJ looked over to see her glowing all purple; closing her eyes, Twilight stepped sideways, leaving the dress floating there, and spread her wings. "I'm not familiar with the game, but if you explain it to me, I'll be happy to give it a try."

Since it was just Ups 'n' Downs, it didn't take long to run through the basics, and the match they had after that, well, AJ wouldn't've ever before even considered calling a silly little ball game like Ups 'n' Downs epic. But with Twilight's head for strategy and Pinkie's ability to see where things were going before the things themselves even knew they were going that way, Applejack found herself scrambling and leaping, tumbling and blocking, throwing and catching and laughing her fool head off for she didn't even know how long.

Still, the sun had gone down when Discord whistled the end of the game. And with her friends whooping around her—and a fair percentage, she reckoned, of the town standing 'round the edges of the field doing the same—Applejack whooped right back, her smile widening as she realized she hadn't so much as glanced at the scoreboard since the game had begun.

It was love at first sight, Fluttershy's breath catching in her throat as she lifted the dress, green and light and airy as a summer afternoon, from the box that had floated into the cottage just ahead of Rarity. "Oh, it's perfect!"

"How could it be otherwise?" The outfit Rarity was wearing had been designed along similar lines, Fluttershy could see, but it was paler, more a reflection of Fluttershy's dress than something meant to stand on its own. "Two of my best friends in all the world are having their bachelor and bachelorette parties at my home and place of business." Rarity gave a crisp nod. "Today, everything will run smoothly and perfectly, or I shall know the reason why."

Taking a few moments to savor the act of slipping the dress on, Fluttershy followed Rarity out into the late afternoon and couldn't keep a skip out of her step: in fact, she didn't want to keep the skip out. For nearly the first time in her life, she hoped ponies would see her, hoped they'd notice her as she and Rarity trotted into town. "We need a brass band," she found herself saying, "with Pinkie right in front twirling a baton or playing the bagpipes! And Rainbow Dash and Twilight overhead doing loop-de-loops! Then you and I—" Turning her skip into a strut, she kicked her knees up, threw her head back, and puffed out her chest. "We'd march and dance and promenade from one end of Main Street to the other!"

Rarity's giggle stabbed Fluttershy's ears, but before self-consciousness could make her collapse upon herself, she felt Rarity pressing in beside her. "Brass band? Ha!" White and silver flashes caught the corner of Fluttershy's eye, and she glanced over to see Rarity matching her strut stride for stride. "As if we needed any such accoutrements! The two of us are more than enough of a parade on our own!"

Fluttershy's heart soared again, and with many a wave and a nod to the ponies who gaped and grinned at them, she and Rarity paraded laughing all the way to Carousel Boutique.

Inside, Pinkie was having Twilight fasten one last streamer in exactly the right place on the ceiling, and Fluttershy couldn't keep from leaping up to hug Twilight, then dropping back down to hug Pinkie, the two of them wearing dresses that exactly complemented hers. "Thank you so much for all this!" she said into Pinkie's tangle of a mane.

"It's our pleasure," Twilight answered from behind her.

Pinkie gave her a solid squeeze. "This is gonna be the specialest week we've any of us ever had, and it's all because of you and Applejack!" Then suddenly, Fluttershy was hugging empty air, Pinkie's voice coming from across the room. "Ooo! And wait'll you see what Discord's got planned!"

Turning, she saw Pinkie way over by the back door, Twilight also looking at her, a spider-web thin frown stretching across her face. "Is Discord out there?" Looking over her shoulder at Fluttershy, Twilight started toward Pinkie. "What's up with him lately? I mean, he usually stops by the library to talk during the week, but I haven't seen him since—"

"Ah." Rarity stepped up to Twilight's side, nodded to Fluttershy, then gestured to one of the tables set up in Carousel Boutique's showroom. "Perhaps before Applejack and Rainbow arrive, we could have a little chat about Discord."

A chill trembled through Fluttershy. Almost as soon as Applejack had mentioned last week that Discord might be falling in love with Twilight, Fluttershy had decided that she really didn't want to think about that. So she'd dusted off the avoidance skills she'd developed to survive growing up around the passive aggression of her mother and brother and the more active aggression of her father and had simply refused to think about it. Still, if Rarity was going to talk about it now, Fluttershy would do what she could to help.

Fluttershy followed her two friends over to the table. "The thing is," Rarity began, the glow of her horn raising a teapot and pouring them all a cup—

But that was when Applejack and Rainbow came in, and seeing her marefriend with the light from behind gleaming off her hair and shoulders, so beautiful and relaxed and joking with Dashie, Fluttershy felt like she did when her butterfly friends would swoop up and around her, all tickly and floating and happy. This, though, was even happier than that, and the next thing she knew, she was kissing Applejack and hugging her and telling her how wonderful everything was.

Then Pinkie called them out back and Discord made this whole arena appear and Spike had the cutest little referee's shirt and everything got even more wonderful. Fluttershy couldn't look away from Applejack enjoying herself with a heavy emphasis on the 'joy,' couldn't help murmuring, "Oh, my," her mind full of wonder that a pony like that would want anything to do with a pony like her...

And yes, Fluttershy had to admit, she did actually look away from Applejack a few times over the next several hours: when Twilight floated their table out so they could settle in to watch more comfortably; when Pinkie got them all up to help with the cheerleading; and at some point while it was just her and Pinkie at the sidelines waving their pom-poms, she glanced over to see Rarity talking to Twilight, the alicorn's wide eyes darting back and forth between Rarity and Discord out on the field. So she guessed Twilight was finally hearing all about whatever was going on there.

Not long after that, Pinkie and Twilight went out to join in the game of Up 'n' Downs, and Fluttershy retired to the table where Rarity was clapping her hoofs and shouting encouragement. During one of the time-outs, though, Rarity leaned over and whispered, "Two o'clock tomorrow afternoon at the library: will you be available?"

Fluttershy blinked and nodded, then the game was back on, Rarity calling out, "Don't settle for a half-goal, Rainbow! Go for the full-point conversion!"

Things got fairly exciting right around sundown: the last minute of regulation play ticked away and one last tricky piece of broken field running let a giggling Pinkie skip around flying tackles from both Rainbow and Twilight to slide over the goal line—or into the scoring box; Fluttershy had never been too clear on the rules of Ups 'n' Downs—just as Discord blew his whistle. "That's game!" Spike yelled, puffing green fire from his nostrils like fireworks. "Earth ponies win by two points!"

The cheering that burst out then from everywhere around them just about made Fluttershy leap straight into the air, her panicked glances showing her most of the town gathered around Discord's conjured stadium. But the whoops out on the field quickly pulled her attention back, Applejack and Pinkie high-hoofing Dashie and Twilight—"It's your party, AJ," she heard Dash say with a laugh, "so of course I'm gonna let you win!" Unable once more to stop herself, Fluttershy leaped out into the scrum of her friends, her hoofs closing around Applejack almost by instinct.

"Watch it, honeycomb!" Applejack tried to pull away. "I'm a mite on the sweaty side here!"

But Fluttershy pressed herself even closer. "You're perfect in every way!" she announced as loudly as she could, and because she wanted to with every pounding beat of her heart, she planted her rear hoofs in the grass of the field, wrapped her front hoofs around her marefriend's neck, and kissed her right there in front of everypony: deeply, passionately, without a single shred of fear or nervousness anywhere near her. Drinking in Applejack's earthy aroma, she breathed the word out again: "Perfect."

"And so," Fluttershy heard Rarity saying from somewhere, "fillies and gentlecolts, we hope to see all of you for the main event next Saturday evening in the town square where we shall be celebrating the union of Applejack and Fluttershy!"

"Yeah!" Pinkie added. "And plenty of cake: that's Pinkie Pie's promise to you!"

More cheering, and the townsfolk moved on, Fluttershy squeezing into Carousel Boutique beside Applejack, the other girls following with Spike and Discord. Almost at once, though, Discord began darting nervous glances at Twilight and making the oddest excuses for leaving the party early: first, he had to polish his antlers; then he'd signed up for an early morning cheese-making class; then he was heading for Cloudsdale at midnight to observe the formation of some anomalous vortex.

Her heart went out to him; it was so obvious that he wasn't used to being nervous that she wanted to take him aside and give him some pointers. But with everypony eating and drinking and laughing, dancing and singing and carrying on—Fluttershy was always amazed at how much commotion just the six of them and Spike could make at a party when they put their minds to it, and with Discord there, even out-of-sorts, he seemed to make enough noise on his own as six regular ponies would—she never had the chance.

Spike started getting droopy-eyed against some of Rarity's sofa cushions pretty quickly, too—he was still just a baby dragon, after all—and Twilight turned a smile toward Discord. "Say, if you do have to leave early, do you think you could take Spike home and get him settled?" She batted her eyelashes. "I'll even repay you with a special treat tomorrow afternoon at the library at two-thirty..."

A number of colors flashed across Discord's face—Fluttershy was sure green plaid was one of them—but then he was bowing with a flourish. "You have only to ask, my princess." He snapped the claws of his lion paw, and Spike drifted snoring into the air. "Oh, and how many pieces would you like him to be in when you return later this evening?"

"Just the one, please." Twilight giggled and sipped at the straw in her mug of cider. "And I'd like him to hold the same individual eigenvalue along the quantum spectrum as the Spike I'm entrusting to you now. If that won't be too much trouble."

"Hmmmph!" He drew himself up, his snout pointing toward the ceiling. "You drive a hard bargain, Twilight Sparkle! But fine." He waggled his claws at Spike, and the snoozing dragon began floating toward Rarity's front door. "I shall take my leave of you ladies and bid you all a fond 'good evening.'"

Fluttershy added her voice to the various Good nights the others were offering, Twilight twisting around to call, "And don't forget: two-thirty tomorrow at the library!" Discord bowed again, pulled the door open, blew Spike outside with a puff of breath, then closed the door behind himself.

Twilight immediately straightened and turned a serious face to everypony at the table. "And you'll all be there at two o'clock, right? So we can get everything ready before he gets there?"

"Ready?" Fluttershy blinked from her spot cuddling against Applejack. Apparently she'd missed something again.

Looking up, she saw Applejack shake her head. "I dunno, Twi. You sure you wanna go popping the top offa this particular can of worms?"

"Worms?" Fluttershy started to ask, but the blush that spread over Twilight Sparkle made Fluttershy forget all about saying anything.

"I do," Twilight said. Her mouth went sideways. "Not anything about a real can of worms, I mean, of course, but—" The blush darkened her purple face even further. "I've never had anypony have a crush on me before."

Dash blew air through her lips, Pinkie giggling and Rarity sighing. "Trust me, darling," Rarity went on. "We could fill a small auditorium with the stallions and mares in this town who have crushes on you."

"Really?" Twilight's eyes went very wide. "But...nopony's ever said anything to me about—"

"Well, duh!" Dashie took a big swig of cider. "I mean, c'mon! Even before you went all alicorn, you were, like, the sixth or seventh most intimidating mare in town!"

Disbelief practically glowed on Twilight's face. "You're sure you're talking about me?"

That got a laugh from Dashie, and she waved her mug—a little tipsily, Fluttershy thought—at the rest of their friends. "C'mon, guys! Back me up here!"

Thinking about it, Fluttershy had to nod. "I might even say fourth or fifth most intimidating, Twilight."

"But I—!" Twilight shook her head quickly. "I don't try to be! Not before and not now, either!"

Pinkie pushed a cupcake across the table toward Twilight. "None of us tries. We just are." She nodded to Fluttershy. "It's why I was so worried about Fluttershy and Applejack ever finding their special someponies: 'cause neither one of them has any idea how super-de-dooper-de-sexy she really is!"

Blinking, Fluttershy felt Applejack grow still against her. "You wanna run that by me again, sugar cube?" Applejack asked.

"See?!" Pinkie leaped up with a grin. "AJ's all smoldery, dreamy, and strong!" Her grin vanished, her eyes half-closing, her face becoming very stern and serious. "Sexy?" she said in a rougher, deeper voice than Fluttershy had ever heard from her. "I'm sorry, but with a business to run, I haven't the time for such things." Her face bounced back to normal like a pink rubber ball. "And Fluttershy? She's just so fragile, sweet, and innocent!" Her mane cascaded down over her face, her eyes peering out from behind it as huge and blue as cornflowers. "Sexy?" she whispered, the quiver she now had in her voice making Fluttershy's ears fold sympathetically. "I don't think I even know what that word means..."

"Pinkie,..." Applejack more growled than said.

"But it's true!" Everything about her brightening, Pinkie bubbled up into being herself again. "I mean, Rarity knows exactly how sexy she is, and she can raise and lower it like a flag depending on how intimidating she wants to be. And me and Dashie?" She jumped sideways and threw her front legs around Dashie, Rainbow smiling in a gentle way that Fluttershy rarely saw from her. "We'll never get married to any of our playmates 'cause we're not that kinda ponies, but anytime we get tired of being so intimidating, we know we can go to each other to get whatever loving we need right then, and that makes ev'rything all rootily-tootily-right!"

Fluttershy's cheeks started getting hot and prickly at the thought of Dash and Pinkie with legs and lips entwined, but then Pinkie popped up right in front of her, wrapped her and Applejack into one of her great big hugs. "And now you two have found ponies you can't intimidate 'cause you're both just as intimidating but in totally different ways!" She spun away so quickly, Fluttershy would've been sucked into her slipstream and fallen over if Applejack hadn't been right there holding her all safe and steady. "So now if Twilight and Discord get together, they'll be able to be that way, too! And it'll be great!"

Twilight had the sort of overwhelmed look on her face that Fluttershy often saw when ponies were trying to understand Pinkie, but instead of backing away slowly as most of those other ponies did, Twilight began nodding. "I...I think I'd like that," she said, almost no breath behind her words. "Because Discord, he's just so infuriating and interesting and—" She shivered, her eyes closing. "Unpredictable..."

"Mother of mercy," Applejack muttered. "You being orderly flips his switch, and him being disorderly flips yours!"

Fluttershy put a hoof over Applejack's mouth and gave her the slightest bit of a Stare before turning to Twilight. "I think having you as a special somepony will be very good for Discord, and Applejack and I will do everything we can to help."

The others pledged the same, and the laughing and the dancing and the cider drinking went on, Fluttershy just basking in all of it. For as much as she loved her friends and had always enjoyed their parties, leaning here right now against Applejack, she couldn't help feeling that this one was special, like there had never been a party like this before and there would never be a party like it again. The usual sorts of jokes and goofiness rippled around her, but nuzzling her own sweet Applejack and getting nuzzled in return made everything inside her hum like bees happily working in their hive.

Then Applejack was inviting them all out to the Acres for supper Wednesday night and a little wedding rehearsal, and the party was breaking up.

"Remember," Twilight said as they all thanked Rarity and moved out into the moonlit spring night, Dash leaning against a quietly giggling Pinkie. "Tomorrow at two at the library."

"Oh, we'll be there," Rarity answered.

Then Fluttershy was gliding like a dream up the street, her wing caressing the luscious muscular expanse of Applejack's back, Applejack pressing herself to her side in ways so wonderful that Fluttershy couldn't find words to describe it. "My place," she murmured into Applejack's ear. "Please. We can be alone there, and...and I want very, very much to be alone with you." She'd been so good all night, had run the magical chant through her head at triple and quadruple speeds to keep her lacinia closed against the steady pressure of her wiggler's eagerness. But now, all she could think of was letting it leap forth, letting it tickle Applejack's own lacinia open, letting it plunge into her marefriend's glorious depths.

"Well, now." Applejack's voice rumbled Fluttershy's whole body. "That's right neighborly of you, honeycomb." A warm breath stroked Fluttershy's ear, and she couldn't stop a gasp at the teeth that tugged the tip of that ear. "'Cause I reckon I've got a little hankering of my own going on over here."

The walk back to her cottage had never seemed so long or so spectacular: more than once, Fluttershy almost gave in, almost threw away her every last inhibition to push Applejack over into the grass alongside the road right then and there. The thought of making love to Applejack under the star-speckled sky of Princess Luna's night shot even more electricity through Fluttershy's already charged-up system, but whether it was her or Applejack who started panting first, she didn't know. All she knew was that she needed to get herself up inside of Applejack as quickly as possible.

Fluttershy felt like they were galloping by the time they crossed the bridge to see her cottage practically glowing in the shimmery moonlight. Starting up the path, though, Applejack froze beside her, Fluttershy continuing on more than a few steps before the sudden lack of warm mare beside her brought her to a halt. "Honeycomb?" Applejack's voice had a coldness to it that acted like a big bucket of ice water across Fluttershy's inner flames. "Reckon you've got a visitor."

Still panting, Fluttershy finally got herself to focus, saw a shadow advancing down the walk from her front porch: a stallion, slender and neat, everything about him tentative and familiar from all those years ago.

"Fluttershy?" Silver Burr asked, stepping close enough now for her to see his face clearly in the dimness.

But she couldn't do anything except stare at her brother, very nearly the last pony she had ever expected to see again.

During the months after his resuscitation but before he'd stumbled across her exercising her ardor quite loudly and stickily across her bed sheets, Discord had wondered why Fluttershy spent so much of her time sighing over the awful romance novels that crowded her bookshelves.

Of course, her panicked explanation as she'd cowered amongst her pillow that afternoon two weeks ago while attempting to hide her shriveling stallionhood had brought him nicely up to speed concerning her grand love affair with Applejack, the love affair that Discord had inadvertently interrupted. He'd done his part to make amends that very day, however, had swooped the bucolic object of her affections back to her cottage for some much-needed recreational nooky, and, he was pleased to notice, she'd not returned to her little bookshelf since.

But now that he was engaged in cock-blocking himself—not that he had genitalia, several of the voices in his head continually reminded him in exquisitely dissonant harmony—he'd found himself rummaging through these books with alarming regularity as he sprawled listlessly across Fluttershy's various sofas. Of course, each trite and tedious tale revealed itself to be more dreadfully contrived than the one before it—except for a large musty volume that he discovered on the bottom shelf, a romance from several hundred years ago that stuck out from the others like cotton candy among brussel sprouts.

Entitled The Mare of Llamancha, it had grabbed Discord's attention from the very first paragraph and had dragged him figuratively by the snout into the lives of the ponies, cows, donkeys, camels, and alpacas living in one fanciful mountain community, and most especially into the very hearts and souls of the noble and ridiculous Rocinante, an earth pony worn out before his time, and the captivating Hoaty, a jenny donkey so full of verve, vim, and vigor that all the sneering of her neighbors couldn't dim her sense of humor.

"Oh, yes," Fluttershy had told him when he'd waved the book at her and demanded to know why she was hiding such a shining gem amongst the dross of her library. "That was here when I moved in. It's a classic, though: the musical Hinny of the Hills is based on part of it."

Reading the book cover to cover, then turning back to the beginning and reading it again, Discord found himself identifying with both the unpredictable Hoaty, doing her utmost to show Rocinante the marvels of the workaday world around him, and Rocinante, slowly falling in love with this bewitching creature whom all the forces of society were telling him he shouldn't even be friends with. More than that, though, Discord kept wanting to leap into the pages, smack the characters around, force certain scenes to come out the way he thought they ought to—and it was every bit as horrible as all the wanting he'd been feeling toward Twilight Sparkle.

It took him the rest of the week going through the novel from page to page a dozen times and marveling at how it all fit together into a strange, spiky but unified shape before he had slowly arrived at yet another foul realization, the sort of thing that had been happening to him much too often of late. Because, yes, he could slide into the frozen statue of the story, could wrench it from the shape it had held for all these centuries, could juggle its characters and events in any way that struck his fancy—

But that would be wrong.

Thinking the word made his every inner voice start to yammer and spit, his head like a bell with forty-four thousand clappers inside it. None of which stopped the word from being true: reading the thing over a thirteenth time the morning before Fluttershy and Applejack's party, Discord found himself laughing in the places where he'd laughed before, found his blood boiling when he read the parts that had enraged him before, found himself growing misty-eyed at exactly the same scenes that had touched him before. Changing any of the bits and pieces would unbalance it, make it less interesting, turn it into something even worse than those other horrible books.

Just like the ponies around him. They looked at the world and their places in it as if they were characters in a book; all they saw were beginnings that led into middles and wound up at endings. It was why they didn't like change, why they couldn't deal with the sorts of truths he traded in, truths about indeterminacy and tap-dancing, about cotton candy and genetic drift, about simple ideas that could shift the entire foundation of a society and complex structures more massive than Celestia's raggedy old sun that still popped as quietly as soap bubbles when looked at too sharply.

So no matter how wonderful he found those things to be, when he brought them into the lives of ponies, all he did was make the ponies terribly anxious, nervous and sad. All he did was make them think that the universe might not be as tidy as they wanted it to be.

Except for Twilight Sparkle. Ever since her alicoronation—or whatever they called it—she'd begun asking him questions, had begun taking an interest, had begun becoming interesting. And Discord had no idea how to deal with that. Well, no idea that he could actually act upon without destroying what made her so interesting. Doing his usual sorts of things to Twilight would be like rewriting The Mare of Llamancha: he could only make her stupider and less intriguing no matter how linear and stodgy she often seemed to be.

Stop it! the entirety of his inner chorus wailed: Just stop thinking and do something!.

Fine, then. From now on, he would follow Rocinante's example and do everything he could to keep Twilight Sparkle from knowing that he was having these unnatural thoughts and feelings about her. She didn't need him messing with her life, and messing with her life was all he knew how to do.

There. Problem solved.

Popping over to Rarity's for the party, then, with multiple screeching songs in his head and heart just the way they were supposed to be, he'd had a wonderful time. Till the games were over and they were all inside the Boutique with their sandwiches and sliced pie and Twilight smiling at him and looking at him and breathing a portion of the same air as him.

He'd grabbed at the excuse to trundle Spike off to bed just to find some oxygen somewhere that wasn't flavored so delicately with lavender and was halfway back to Fluttershy's after nestling the little reptile into his own personal gravitational field halfway up the western wall of the library stairwell when the rest of what Twilight had said finally registered in however much of his brain as it took these days for him to notice things.

Two-thirty, she'd said. Tomorrow afternoon, she'd said. Special treat at the library, she'd said.

Which could mean anything. And at the same time couldn't mean anything. Shouldn't mean anything.

Shriveling himself down to a single strand of spaghetti, he wormed his way into the ground beneath the big oak tree behind Fluttershy's cottage and wondered what it would take to get the Elements of Harmony back from that overgrown shrubbery out in the forest. Or maybe it could turn him back to stone...

He didn't bother with consciousness for a number of hours after that, finally sighing himself back to some form of existence or another in the damp, dirty embrace of the earth a few moments before his appointment. That he would attend was, of course, a foregone conclusion despite any and all internal grumbling. For how could he stay away when she had invited him?

Still, he let himself move slowly, let his lion paws regrow over the course of several minutes before snapping himself with a thump into a chair at Twilight's table. Stretching and yawning and trying to find his eyes so he could focus them, he blew out a breath that he hoped stank of rotting strawberries. "Now see here, Twilight Sparkle! This special treat of yours had better not involve ice cream in any way, or I—"

By then, details of his surroundings had started trickling in: Twilight at the other end of the table as contained and compact as a rose not yet opened for the dawn, a stack of scrolls beside her; Rarity seated to her right; Pinkie Pie vibrating like a cicada wing to her left.

"Gracious!" Discord touched his eagle claws to his chest, the word 'tribunal' springing suddenly to mind. "Surely I don't have a library book overdue?"

Pinkie giggled, but, well, that observation contained almost as much useful information as saying that the electrons in the carbon atoms all around him continued dancing their cloudy quadrilles. It was a universal constant: whatever happened anywhere, Pinkie was going to giggle.

"It's nothing bad," Twilight said, the faint smile on her lips making Discord forcibly not think about the first touch of sunlight over the rose bud from his earlier metaphor. "In fact, it's something I think we might both of us enjoy."

"Both of us?" He couldn't help making a show of pointing to himself, then to Rarity, then to Twilight, then to Pinkie, all the while mouthing the numbers from one to four.

Rarity gave a laugh. "Oh, now, don't mind Pinkie and me. We're just here as chaperones."

The word jabbed him like a wasp, its venom pumping into his system. "You see," Twilight was going on, chipper as an axe among kindling, "Rarity told me about your possible—" The blush that lit her face then was the full light of day, her rosy petals flowering to full bloom. "—romantic feelings toward me, and I...I thought I'd like to explore that subject." The glow of her horn raised the first scroll from her stack, set it on the table in front of her, and smoothed it open. "So I've made up a schedule that I hope we can use as a springboard toward setting in motion a discussion of—"

"I won't have it!" The humming in his head exploded like flaming magnesium doused with water. "Schedules?! And chaperones?! And 'possible romantic feelings'?!" He slammed his lion paw against the table. "Are you trying to kill me?! Is that what this is?!" He aimed shaking claws at her, her eyes big and blinking and innocent across the table. "I will not have you being so perfect and cute and orderly, Twilight Sparkle, especially not when that's exactly what I want!"

"You—" Her brow furrowed. "You don't want what you want?"

"I don't want to want! I don't want to want to want! I don't want to want to want to want! I don't want to want to want—!"

Which was about when all his internal explosions finally ripped though his skin, and he burst into a pillar of mustard-scented fire, blasting out every available door and window toward the open sky above.