Don't wanna be dead to life

Don't wanna be dulled to extinction

Don't wanna be lost in dreams

Don't wanna be caught sleepwalking

Maybe I should break the chain

Maybe I should break the connection

Such strange little birds

Devoured by our obsessions

Why we kill the things we love the most

Kill the things we love

Kill the things we love the most

-Garbage

They say your first love cuts the deepest.

What they don't tell you is that your first love is usually someone you've picked for wholly stupid reasons. Really, looking back on him, he wasn't really that great. He was a lousy lay, and I've had plenty to compare it to. He was also very strong and powerful.

Like I said. Stupid reasons.

I first encountered the dog god when I was roaming the Amarezon. Mother Nature and I weren't really on speaking terms around that time (more on that later) but I still had my magic. She had placed it in me, and while my link with her was temporarily broken, I was independent of her for that reason.

I was swinging through the canopy when I first encountered his presence. I say his "presence" instead of corporeal self, because like me, he is an aspect of nature.

There was lots of colour up here in the canopy. Lots of different looking creatures too, but a lot of them were very boring looking brown things. So I made them have ridiculously big beaks, or really long tails, or humongous eyes and very long snouts, and pink bottoms...you get the idea. I even started fights among warring species, which was a delight to watch, I can tell you. The howler monkeys vs. the macaws was especially entertaining.

But while I was enjoying the spectacle, I came across something I'm sure wasn't mine. I mean, I find it hard to concentrate on one thing for very long, but I was fairly certain I had not made the creature in front of me. Its arm looked swollen. I fact, it looked like it did not fit the rest of its body, and it was making a wailing sound. I cocked my head at it. Well, it was a delightfully different creature, that was certain, but I had no memory of making it. After a beat it wailed once more and disappeared into the thick canopy.

I forgot about it over the next few days, until I came across another oddity which I'm sure I was not the cause of. It took me a while to notice it, because for the most part it looked like one of mine, until I noticed the parrot in front of me had three eyes, and its beak was twisted.

What a delightfully bizarre looking creature!

What was going on? Was someone doing this? Was someone creating creatures like I was?

I had been alone for some time. Nature had once told me there weren't others like me. But did she mean they weren't exactly like me or did she mean there weren't other immortal beings?

I sniffed at the bird. It smelt overly sweet, like rotten fruit. It wasn't a pleasant smell, but now that I had it I could pick up my mystery date's trail.

It took me a few days, but I finally came to a cave near a running stream. The water looked tepid and there were dead fish floating on the surface.

"Hello?" I called, but only my own voice echoed back at me.

"Butts!" I shouted, and the word bounced back at me once more. I snickered. "Tail hole!" I shouted out, grinning. A twig snapped behind me, and I whirled round and came face to face with a huge skull-like dog face. He was stocky, more than anything, like a deformed huge bulldog, only much more square and muscley.

"What do you want?" he breathed at me. And I was hit by that cloying smell again.

"Why, to talk of course," I said, grinning, and trying to not show that I was metaphorically crapping my pants. At least I would be if I wore any pants.

He smirked at me and began circling me as if I was prey.

"You're a rather unusual looking one," said the dog god.

"I could say the same about you."

A loud barking laugh came from the stranger's throat.

"I'm going to enjoy you," he said.

"I can assure you I'm very chewy."

The creature laugh-barked again. "What makes you think I want to eat you?"

"Well what is it you do want? Sex? Because I only kiss on the sixth date, and only after I've been worshipped mercilessly. Brushing my fur helps."

"It's not sex either," he said, but the way he was eyeing me up made me skeptical about that.

"What then?" I asked.

Before I could react, he grabbed my arm. He felt cold, very cold and I could feel my strength being sapped from me. I smacked him in the face with my tail in surprise, then I dealt him a blow of magic for good measure.

He rocketed across the forest floor and slammed into a tree.

"What?" was his response, when he had righted himself once more.

"Well I didn't expect such a rude welcome," I said, my nose in the air. "If I had known you were such a killjoy I would never have come!"

"Wait, why are you here?"

"Well," I said, flashing onto a branch above him. "I was minding my own business when I came across the most delightful handiwork."

I pulled the three-eyed parrot out of a pocket in the side of my body.

"Where were you keeping that?"

"It doesn't matter," I said quickly. "The point is it exists. Where did you learn how to harness chaos like that?"

"Chaos?"

"Well, sure. Are you like me? Because this is what I do. I make things different."

He cocked his head at me. "You change things too?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, look at me. Do I look like one of those brown, boring things in the treetops? Or do I look smolderingly bangin'?"

"You...certainly look interesting." He eyed my antler and goat horn."What do you mean by chaos?"

"I mean change. Upheaval. Creativity. I mean, a three eyed bird? Genius!" I slapped my thigh and grinned.

"It's what I do," said the dog.

"It's what I do too! I made birds with beaks twice the length of their bodies!"

He eyed me coldly. In hindsight that really should have been something I was on the look out for, but at the time I was too excited. I'd found someone like me! Finally, I wasn't alone. Buck you, Mother Nature!

"So," said the dog. "How about a partnership? We make things together?"

I was too hasty in accepting his offer. Way too bloody hasty.

His name was Xolotol. He was a godlike being like me, and he changed things like me, and I was so goddamn happy to finally have someone who understood me! Xolotol had his faults, but in my blind infatuation I had simply come to view them as quirks. After all, I looked strange to other beings. No one understood but him and me. I licked the sores on his face at night, nuzzling him in the cave. He got sores often, a symptom of what he was, though I didn't know it at the time.

"No one wanted to be with me until you," he said one night.

I had never had anyone say that to me before. It made me feel so needed and wanted. "Likewise," I whispered. I could feel him sob as I rested my head on his back.

I was barely out of colthood. But that didn't matter to Xolotl, and to be honest, at the time it didn't really matter to me. Does anything matter when you are both millions of years old? Like I said, I age very slowly, and Xolotol did too, even if he was older than me.

I also began to learn that his magic was different than mine. It was kind of disturbing in hindsight. Mine created things, and while on the surface it looked like he was being creative like me, what he was actually doing was destroying and deforming.

I'm not opposed to deforming. I think it can be hilarious. Think of a pony with a giant butt, or a crow with buck teeth. You can't NOT find those things funny.

But the destroying part I had a harder time with. But I said nothing, because Xolotol needed me, and I needed him. I...I loved him.

Stupid Discord. Stupid Stupid Stupid.

It had all started off so well. But nothing is static. And eventually, our differences came to a head.

Xolotol had killed something, as was his way, and I didn't like it. It reminded me of Hubert.

It was a toucan, and it was lying there on the forest floor looking very sorry. Ants were already started to crawl over it, aiming for the eyes first.

"Shoo!" I said, brushing them off with my tail tuft.

I looked furtively over my shoulder, then pressed my paw down on the bird. "Wake up," I whispered. Nothing happened.

"Please wake up. Don't let it be like Hubert again." I felt my eyes starting to sting.

When I lost Hubert, I had been unable to do anything. I wondered if I could do anything now. I concentrated hard, swimming through the patterns. When I opened my eyes the toucan was wriggling.

"Yes!"

I stroked its feathered back with my paw, and eventually it hopped in front of me then took off into the canopy.

"Why did you do that?" came a low growl from behind me.

"I..."

"I thought the agreement was we would change things together."

"Yeah, I said change not kill. Dead stuff is boring. It doesn't move. It doesn't react. How can that possibly be fun?"

"Fun? Who said anything about fun?"

"Don't you enjoy doing this stuff?"

"It's what I'm supposed to do."

"That's not what I asked. I mean, I thought you liked changing animals into funny shapes."

"Why do you think the animals I make into funny shapes are that way?"

"Because it's amusing?"

"No, it's because I am decay and deformity. And you've just spat on what I am by making that bird alive again."

"I did nothing of the kind," I snapped. "I just improved on your handiwork."

Xolotol was looking at me now with a pained expression, but it quickly turned into one of resolve.

"Meet me back at the cave," he said.

That nights activities were not at all tender. He pushed me onto the cave floor with his big paw and was rougher than I would have liked.

"Not so hard!" I growled.

"Shut up," he responded.

I gritted my teeth in anger and set his tail on fire.

"WHAT. WHAT." That did it, he was off me in a flash, running around the cave, screaming and howling, until eventually the more logical part of his brain kicked in and he ran towards the stream and sat down in it. I heard him sigh with relief as the cool water rushed over him.

Then his voice sounded very low and dangerous. "You're messed up, Discord," he said.

I suddenly had the terrible fear that he was going to leave. I would be alone in the world once more.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I shouted, and ran towards him.

"Get away from me!" he snarled.

"But...but..."

"Bloody freak," he snarled.

"No, please. I can make it better! I'm sorry!" I began to cry.

"What is wrong with you?" he said.

That night I slept in a corner of the cave, away from Xolotl, weeping softly with my tail tuft covering my face.

It went on like that for years. He would do something I didn't like, and I would say so, or do something in defiance and he would threaten to leave and told me no one else would ever understand me.

Until one day, things took a turn for the worst.

Xolotl was in a bad mood already when he came home. Apparently he had not come across anything to decay that day expect trees. I was poking at one of his dead fish and looking unimpressed, and I think that motion alone made him snap. Well, really perhaps it was the years of tension, but that was the straw that broke the camels back.

"You miserable little tease," he snarled at me. "All day long you act like you're such hot shit. I don't know why I put up with it."

I really didn't feel like listening to one of his diatribes today.

"Maybe it's because you're ugly," I said, half-jokingly. "And boring."

His huge form moved towards me. I wasn't too worried. I had my magic to protect me.

"You think you can do whatever you want, don't you?" he said to me. "You think you have a say in all this? What do you think happens to all your 'wonderful creations' eventually? They die. Everything dies. It's a fact of life. But oh no, you think you're special and different. Really, you're nothing but an arrogant little worm. There's only one reason to keep you around, and you'd better not set my tail on fire."

Then he was on me, and I froze.

When I say I froze I mean I couldn't use my magic to defend myself. To this day I can't really understand why. I just knew that someone who I thought cared about me was pinning me down and hurting me.

"Get...off..." I said through gritted teeth and then his big paw hit me across the face and I was blinded by pain.

You have to understand, that when I say pain, I don't necessarily mean physical pain. Oh, there was some of that, but mostly I felt shock at the situation. I was shocked into silence; not just the silence of speech but the silence of everything. He had never hit me before. I couldn't use my magic, I couldn't will myself to bite or scratch, because I couldn't quite believe this was happening. I did not want to believe it was happening. He was supposed to be my partner. Someone who understood me.

There was some fumbling and then a different kind of physical and emotional pain overtook me as I realized what he was doing.

I stared up at the light coming through the leaves in the canopy high above me. I could hear birds singing but they sounded distant as if their cries were muffled. I don't remember much of what happened inbetween then and the moment Xolotl rolled off me. For all I know minutes or hours could have passed by.

"I'm going to have a bath," he grunted, and walked down towards the river.

I rolled away from him and curled inwards as his footsteps became fainter.  

I began to shudder as all the feeling came back into my body and then I was crying. I felt sore in places I didn't even know existed. I conjured up some mushed up fruit and tried tending to the pain as best I could but all I did was make a mess and make my fur and feathers stickier and I began crying again out of frustration and sheer desperation.I remember sleeping in the canopy that night. It just felt safer, and worked as a makeshift shower. I could hear the trickle of rain as it navigated the vertical maze of leaves and the uneven sound comforted me. It was the only thing that comforted me. I no longer had the feeling of being held by nature, instead my eyes prickled with tears and rage as I realized she had not lifted a finger to help me.

Then something insufferably stupid happened. Xolotl told me he was sorry, and that he hadn't meant to hurt me. He just caught up in the heat of the moment, and he would never do so again. I flinched.

"Don't touch me," I growled when he reached for me with his paw.

"Aw, Discord. Don't be like that. You know I can be hot-headed sometimes. I...I just got so angry that you didn't appreciate what I was doing. What can I do to make it up to you?"

My ears perked up at this. I was being given the upper hand again. Xolotl was practically grovelling at my feet. He made pathetic whining sounds and his ears were flat against his head.

"Promise me that will never happen again," I said firmly. "And today we get to do what I want with my chaos."

"Discord..." he reached for me with his paw as if to pull me into an embrace, but I stepped back.

"Ah, ah, ah! Promise me," I said.

"I promise. I'm so sorry, my little coyote," he said to me, tears in his eyes. And then I did let him run his paw across my face. To be honest, it felt good. It felt good because it was a loving paw again, instead of the rigid, controlling one he had used on me the other night as he pinned me down. It was as if there were two different Xolotls, and the one from the other night was a monster I would never see again. I let him nuzzle me and stroke my face, my feathers fluffing up as they responded to his touch.

"I am a terrible person, Discord," whispered Xolotl as he ran his muzzle through my feathers.

"Perhaps," I said, not that kindly. "But we all make mistakes."

Boy, do we.

My first mistake was forgiving him in the first place. Never forgive, Discord! You know this.

He just kept doing it, and I kept forgiving him, because dammit, I wanted things to be the way they were from the start. Who else was there to talk to about these things?

I hated being overpowered and used for sex, but I put up with it for some reason. I went off into lala land whenever it happened. Just stared at the sky...

I put the journal down. It was after sunset and I hadn't even noticed that the room was dark. (Predator eyes, you see.) I didn't feel like writing anymore. Because the truth is, I kind of understood how he felt. How no one likes what you are, and you can't make them see the beauty. You can't make them see the beauty of chaos. And that's probably how Xolotol felt about his powers.

The thought that I might understand him made me feel nauseated. I was a bad person too. Is that what I made Fluttershy feel like? No, it couldn't be. She didn't have feelings for me.

But I made her cry.

I was starting to think about the cliff again, when she was back in the room, moving towards me.

"Discord, are you okay?"

I didn't reply, just sat there in the darkness, watching her.

She turned and walked back up the stairs, likely assuming that I was asleep.

I watched her vanish into her bedroom. I don't know why I ached so much for the contact of another being after what had happened to me. I just knew I did, and I curled up, trying not to let memories keep me awake and fill my heart with the terrible heaviness.