I had started off with small fry, and it was time to move on to bigger things. I was choosing places that were remote but still had a small population nearby for the simple reason that as I have stated before, I enjoy having an audience.  Chaos is meant to be seen, in my opinion.

Since I'd been in stone for just over a thousand years, the people living in Horsetralia now no longer remembered me or were long dead, so for the most part I was not worried about being discovered. There had been no record of my having been there, as the natives did not keep any examples of written word at the time.

At first there had been enquiries as to whether the water supply had been spiked. Why on earth were all the tourists and staff at Ayers Hoof seeing the natural monument in multiples of three? Why were there fish swimming through the air at the site? Why was Ayers Hoof upside down and floating 70 feet above its point of origin? These people had to be hallucinating. There had to be a cause, and the cause had to have a logical explanation.

But I had come to Ayers Hoof for another reason.

Ayers hoof is also a site where a force exists, grows and cannot be contained. I mentioned it in my letter to Fluttershy but I hadn't gone into detail about it. Basically, I said Mother Nature and I used to hang, right? Well we always have.

Some sites make me feel her pull stronger than others, and Ayers Hoof is one such place, but she's always called out to me. At Ayers hoof I found a patch of sunlight and low laying plants where time seemed to slow down; vines with tiny red flowers growing on them. I would lay among this patch of vines and they would twine around me, over my arms, around my middle, through my antler. She would whisper to me, softly at times, but firmly, and I would whisper back as I pressed myself against the earth: “Sharks should always look startled” and I would feel her force caress against me in assent.

“And moray eels should always look like they just told a joke and are waiting for a response.  And there should be brightly coloured, tiny frogs that have enough poison in them to kill ten herds of elephants. And some crawly things should have 8 or 12 or even 750 legs instead of six, just to mess with the taxonomists.”

Gentle caresses.

Not all the ideas were mine, but she was surprisingly open to the ones that were.

There's something mathematical about it that I can't quite put my finger on. I know a lot about the way this universe works--you can't break the laws of physics without knowing them all first--but Mother Nature's endless repeating yet entirely random patterns were as ingrained in me as my heartbeat and it would have taken considerable force and distress for me to break them.

She understands me, and I understand her. I am inextricably linked with her yet I don't know how or why. I just know that she never judges my chaos. Instead she welcomes it, takes it into her, and gives birth to something wonderful.

And so, this time during our congress as I lay pressed with my cheek against the ground I murmured “highly alcoholic eucalyptus leaves.”

The nature reserves took a while to catch on. At first the complaints from scratched or dazed tourists were taken to be an anomaly.

Eventually, however the rangers worked out what had happened. They didn't work out the cause but they had certainly worked out why koalas were falling out of trees, often onto unsuspecting tourists. The koalas weren't happy about landing on screaming ponies. The screaming ponies certainly weren't happy either.

I, however, was delighted with this turn of events-and no Celestia to go all pouty-faced at me!

That night I was in a surprisingly good mood as I read Fluttershy's latest letter to me. It was a typical warm and still evening at Ayer's Hoof, and Mother Nature was treating me to a spectacular view of the sky.

Dear Fluttershy,

You asked me to describe the night sky here. All I can say is unless you've been to a really dark place, there really is nothing like it.

The Milky Way moves over Ayers Hoof every night and it's like someone has taken a psychedelic jar of glitter and sprinkled it over a dark, inky blanket. I bet even Princess Luna hasn't seen nights as incredible as this.

Some nights I sit here under a tree and just watch it slowly move across the sky. It's one of the few times I'm calm, and time seems to slow down.

I thought back to before I had left Ponyville. We were laying on the grass in Fluttershy's garden. It was a warm summer night and the stars were out. Their display was no where near as brilliant as what currently lay above me, but that didn't matter to me.

“I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“For Tirek, for everything.”

She sat up and leaned slightly forward on one of her arms, looking down at me.

“You've already apologized, Discord. I've forgiven you. You don't need to keep saying it.”

“I do.”

“You don't. I know you, and you're not a bad person.”

“I'm not a good person either,” I whispered.

I felt her hoof softly caress the side of my face and she said “that doesn't matter. You're my friend.”

That was when I first felt the urge to kiss her, and that was when I first knew I would need to leave.

I finished my letter, left it to one side for the morning kookaburra and listened to the soft droning of the crickets punctuated by the occasional thud of an inebriated koala losing its battle with gravity; then I slowly drifted off.

It may have been because she was already on my mind because of the letter, but that night I dreamt about Fluttershy. And no, it wasn't the type of dream you would want the kiddies looking in on.

She wanted me, I wanted her (badly) and we were in my sunny vine patch, our bodies tangled together along with the plant itself, imagery that for whatever reason I found maddeningly sensual. My paw and talon moved all over Fluttershy's soft curves. I couldn't get enough of her.; I was completely intoxicated.

I ran my paw gently over the sensitive area where her wings met her back, kissed her neck, moved my lips down then replaced my paw with my mouth and gently nipped her at her wing joint. She sighed with pleasure and I felt her lean back, her soft mane against the underside of  my body as...

WHAM

The cannon that had shot me out of dreamland was in the form of an extremely irate and drunken koala that had fallen directly on top of me from the tree I was sleeping under.

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