After I was allowed to leave the hospital Fluttershy escorted me back to hers so she could continue to look after me while I rested.

It's almost laughable when I think about it now, and it must have been to passer's by as well--the sight of a slight, dainty yellow pegasus leading me by the paw as I tried to walk without wincing. It was more of a shuffle than a walk. It wasn't just that I felt sore all over and was stuffed with painkillers. It was also the trembling. It's the same kind of trembling one feels after you've had a tremendous shock, and then it feels as if all the life that left your body is rushing back into it and it's far too much to take.

So I was trembling when Fluttershy led me to the couch then put the tea kettle on. She brought me the blanket and told me I should get some rest.

I've been on her couch for the past few nights. There’s been a lot of moaning and groaning from me because I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Except I hadn’t; I’d jumped off a cliff, which is probably a pretty fair equivalent.

However, when I woke up on the couch this morning there was someone under the blanket with me.

She was curled up, her head resting on my neck and her hoof over my chest. Her pink mane pooled on my feathers and on either side of me.

I nearly started crying then and there. She was that worried about me that she was actually holding me while I slept . As if she was afraid I'd try to leave again. Not an entirely unfounded fear--The thought had crossed my mind; The thought of boarding the night train again and taking it to Horsehoe Bay, where the cliff was.

I craned my neck slightly and looked down at the snoozing pegasus. Truth be told I didn't know what to do with her. It had been so long since I'd been held by anyone, and those were in far less innocent circumstances than this one. Touch is an odd thing at the moment. When you haven't felt the touch of anything for a thousand plus years, it...takes some getting used to again.

"Did writing down stuff help a little?" came the soft voice. She was awake, and her voice carried such a gentle tone that it didn't even startle me.

"Not sure. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be writing."

"Write what you feel like writing. Whatever makes you feel better. That's what I do.”

She shifted so that she was sitting upright now, and she began to tidy her mane.

“Better about what?” I responded.

She seemed to choose her next words carefully. “Well, you just fell off a cliff,” she said. “You can’t be feeling too good about that.”

“Oh…yeah. But I figure all I need is some bedrest and I’ll be okay. After all, isn’t that why I’m here? Doctor’s orders and all that.”

In truth I think it was more that Fluttershy was afraid to let me out of her sight for the foreseeable future. Yes, the doctor had told us that I needed someone with me for the next few weeks while she made regular house calls to see if my condition was improving, but Fluttershy had offered to be the pony who looked after me. I suspect it was going to pan out that way anyway, given that everyone else isn’t exactly bosom buddies with me. Or even affable acquaintances.

Fluttershy was piling her mane up in a bun while she searched the living room for a stray hair pin. “Yes,” she said, “but I think writing about how we feel can also help.”

“Did you read that in a self-help book?” I said, perhaps a little too snarkily.

She shot me a look that wasn’t quite “The Stare” but was verging on it. I cringed slightly under the blankets.

Her eyes softened at me. She gave up on her hair bun and her mane tumbled down around her shoulders again. For some reason I poked my head above the blankets again to get a better view at the sight. It was a rather lovely one.

“Discord,” she said, making me jump slightly. “If you’re not going to talk to me about what happened then you at least owe it to yourself to talk about it.”

“But…”

“No ‘buts’, Mister.”

“What’s the point if no one is going to read it?”

“Would you like me to read it?”

“Erm…I didn’t say that. I just…it feels like I’m talking to myself, and believe me I’ve done enough of that.”

“I find that if I write down about everything surrounding an…um…situation, then even if I’m not focusing on what’s bothering me at the moment, it can usually make things clearer in my head. Then I find out things about myself that I hadn’t realized were there.”

“Like a third head?”

“Third?”

“Never mind,” I said. My attempt at joking/deflecting the conversation had fallen flat. I tried sitting up and winced a little.

“Oh, my,” said Fluttershy. “I guess I should make breakfast and then it’s time for painkillers.”

“Both of those things would certainly be nice,” I admitted. She smiled softly at me and went to start the preparation of the food. I glanced down at the hardbound plain notebook on the coffee table and sighed. She had told me to write about everything, including things that made me feel better.

Reminiscing about Hubert was quite nice. I think I'll do more of that.

I spent a great deal of my time playing with my newfound pet. His wings were the most amazing colours. I can’t even describe them accurately when I remember them. If you’ve ever seen the iridescent wings of a Morpho butterfly, then I assure you they pale in comparison to what Hubert’s wings looked like. There were incredible purples, and pinks and blues in his wings, and sometimes greens depending on how the light hit them.

Now, this may come as a shock to you, but I didn't turn out to be the most compliant of Mother Nature's sons.

I was a kid. I wanted to spend most of my time playing and eating. Plus I had newly discovered powers! I used a lot of this power to mostly conjure up yummy things for Hubert and I to eat, but I wasn’t exactly the creative virtuoso I am today.

There were plenty of things Nature wanted me to do, but I pretty much told her in no uncertain terms to buck off and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it since she had placed a part of me in herself and I would live for as long as she did. I was still susceptible to disease, and pain, but for the most part I was stuck in this world, as was made so blatantly clear a few days ago when my body was pulled from the water covered in seaweed.

Little One, I think we should work on some more processes today.

“I don’t feel like it.”

Why not?

“Because I want to do other things!” I shrieked as I cannonballed into the nearby spring. Water splashed everywhere and Hubert made a buzzing sound that resembled laughter.

I could really use your creative input.

“I don’t waaaannna,” I whined. It was a beautiful day and I had planned to annoy some giant woodlice by making them roll into balls and catapulting them into the nearby bushes with a sling I had fashioned out of a rubber plant.

May I remind you why you are here.

“You may,” I said snottily.

You would be dead without me.

“It was because of you that I nearly died,” I countered. “You and your stupid plant.”

If you don’t learn how to use the powers I gave you properly it could come back to bite you in the arse.

“Aggh! Alright. Fine, I suppose I could do it for a little while.”

I hated “lessons” as she called them. I had trouble sitting still. There was so much to explore and now the world was a much more beautiful place. It wasn’t just dry woody ferns and crab-like creatures. It was flying reptiles and flowers that smelt like rotten meat and giant insects. Not to mention all the forest to explore. Some of these things were our own creations, but most of them had grown out of whatever mysterious process Nature was using to further the species. One I still wasn’t privy too.

I was angry at her for not telling me what it was, so I decided I was going to be a massive bitch when it came to lessons.

Discord. Discord? Discord! Are you even listening to me?

“Not particularly.”

For goodness sakes, Child. I’m trying to work here and you are ruining everything.

“I rather thought I improved it,” I said, admiring the creature I had just made swim around the shallow waters I was standing in.

Those trilobites were supposed to be free to swim around when and where they pleased.

“And they are. I’ve just made it a bit more challenging.”

The predatory creature that looked like a cross between an armour-plated squid and giant shrimp dived down and grabbed another trilobite hungrily.

You are such a handful…

One of the things she and I didn't see eye to eye on was what she called “Slate Wiping”.

Every few millions of years or so, Nature will decide that whatever it was she created, or whatever had evolved of its own accord wasn't working for her. So she destroyed it, whether it be via giant meteorite, change of climate or tidal wave. Sometimes she opted for all of the above.

The most famous of these incidents is the one that killed off most of the dinosaurs. I say “most of” because a great deal of them did eventually evolve into birds and dragons. But then, that was part of her little game, you see: Let's see which species are worthy of surviving a catastrophe. Though this is the most famous, probably because it was the last one before ponykind came along, there was one much worse. Palaeontologists now refer to it as The Great Dying, which makes it kind of sound like a pony prog rock band instead of the horror it actually was.

I can practically hear you now.  "But Discord!" you say. "I thought you loved chaos and mayhem!?"

Well, yes I do. And truth be told I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy watching new forms arise from slate wiping, but it was the other aspect of the process I wasn't so keen on--the one that held a lot more finality.

Some of the things that disappeared didn’t get to evolve. In fact, they never came back. They were a dead end, and I really didn’t like that.

Perhaps reminiscing about Hubert wasn't the best of ideas.

“I’ve got some tea,” said Fluttershy. I looked up from the notebook, startled at the sound of her voice.

“Discord…you’re crying,” she said.

“What?” I said, completely surprised when I pressed my paw to my face and felt wetness there.

“I’m sorry I took so long with the painkillers,” she said and opened a packet of powder, which she stirred into my tea.

I cleared my throat. “Um, yeah,” I said. “The pain is getting to be a tad unbearable.”

I held the mug between my talon and paw, enjoying the warm feel of the ceramic against them then sipped the hot liquid. Fluttershy was now checking my bandages. “This one needs changing,” she said softly. “I’ll do that once the painkillers start to take effect.”

I snuck a glance at her as she turned her attention back to the tea tray. She’s a curious little thing. From the very beginning she seems to have shown no fear of me. Even in the maze it was as if she was greeting an old friend. I couldn’t even smell fear on her, and it is unfortunately a smell I am wholly familiar with.

She befriended me when I was released by Celestia. Something I was pretty sure was some kind of cruel joke at first, so I responded in kind.

But it wasn’t a joke. Fluttershy isn’t cruel. I mean, that goes without saying given the Element she represents, but I’m baffled all the same. I’m not a good person, despite Fluttershy’s insistence that I am. Only months before I had handed her over like a piece of meat to a madman because I thought I could have my cake and eat it too. Tell me, is that what someone who is a “good person” would do? No,it isn’t.  It’s what someone like Xolotl would do.

I felt my stomach heave slightly as I remembered that name.

I had been so lost in thought that I completely missed the fact that Fluttershy had changed my bandage for a fresh one.

“There,” she said, smoothing it down, “that should do for now.” She had also left breakfast for me on the coffee table: scrambled eggs with bits of spicy pepper and onion in them. She knows I like strong-tasting food.

“I’ve got to go out and feed the animals now,” she said. “But I’ll be back just before lunchtime to see how you’re doing.”  She placed a hoof on the side of my face and my ears automatically flattened at the feel of it. Then she was out the door, carrying her basket of carrots and oats.

I opened the book and looked at the last line I had written:

“I hated her in that moment because she took Hubert from me.”