EQD WTG #005: The Impossible Tea Party

The swing doors of Ponyville's post office squeaked softly as the pink-maned pegasus entered, her usual gentle smile brightening Zip Code's day as it always did. “Morning, Fluttershy!” the postmaster earth pony called, leaning back in his chair. “Beautiful day, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes!” Fluttershy agreed. “Just splendid for the birds. I saw a crested jacksnipe over the forest today.”

“And that's good?”

“Good? It's marvellous!” The pegasus gave a little hop of delight. “The crested jacksnipes aren't due for at least a month! Spring really is coming!”

“Ah, that's a mercy,” Zip Code sighed. “When the weather's chilly, the boys can get frozen right through on the rounds … I'll have to thank Rainbow Dash the next time I see her, on behalf of all of us. Anyway. Can I help you?”

“Um … yes.” Fluttershy pulled a carrot out of her saddlebag, followed by a packet of bird seed, a crumpled animal charity leaflet and, finally, a neatly sealed, if somewhat smudged and creased, envelope. “Sorry about the mess,” she smiled bashfully, packing her other effects away again. “A badger got at it before I left … they can be so curious at times.”

Zip Code flipped the envelope over, saw the adress and felt his spirit crumple. Much as he liked to see Fluttershy and was always glad to help her, when it came to these letters … there were times when he just questioned his job choices.

“That time of the month again, is it?” he asked, a faint, pleasureless smile bending its way into his face.

“Now, Mr Code!” Fluttershy said, slightly reproachfully. “I've told you again and again how he loves to get mail.”

“Yes, yes, I know …” The postmaster rubbed his forehead. “But unfortunately, we posties don't exactly feel the same way about delivering it.”

“Oh, that's a shame …” Fluttershy frowned for a moment, before looking up, her face brightening. “Oh, I know! How about if he came around to show his gratitude?”

Zip Code launched off his chair and landed neatly on the backrest. “No!” he screeched. “No no no! Please, anything but …”

His training kicked in again when he saw a disappointed pout on his customer's face. “Thanks for the offer,” he said quickly, sheepishly settling down into the seat again. “But you see, the last time he came in here … well, it was before you and your friends reformed him, see, and even after you restored order, we still had stray stamps all over the place. We're still finding them, actually – last week, Special Delivery found one right down in –“

“I understand, Mr Code,” Fluttershy said, gently. “But the fact remains that however mischievous he is or was, Discord still loves it when a letter arrives. Surely you wouldn't disappoint him?”

Zip Code knew what was coming next, and yet he still failed to look away when It came. It wasn't the Stare that Fluttershy used on troublesome animals. It was different – dangerous, alluring, and infinitely more underhanded.

It was, in fact, the full blast of Fluttershy's simple and trusting eyes, and though there may have been many ponies who could resist It, Zip Code had yet to meet them.

“All right,” he sighed, defeated. “You know the postage to Discord's place – one bit for the stamp, three bits for the special journey and a little consideration for the postmare.”

“Here you go,” Fluttershy said, counting out four bits. “And will the usual consideration do?”

Zip Code nodded, and the pegasus lifted a brown, moist and still slightly warm muffin out of her bag, placing it next to the coins. “Thank you so much for this,” she said, heading for the swing doors. “I'm afraid I need to go now. But tell everypony I said hello … if you don't mind?”

“You're welcome,” Zip Code responded, smiling warmly – no matter how inconvenient her request was, you couldn't let Fluttershy go without a smile to warm her. The doors squeaked back into position, and the postmaster reluctantly left his chair and passed through the bead curtain into the post office's back room.

“It's time again,” he announced to the group of ponies sitting around the small, untidy office room. “Special, you get the candles. Post Haste, if you could draw the pentacle … Mr Zippy, you can get the book out, please. Comet, Derpy … you're up.”

“Eh, I guess the time had to come,” Comet Tail grunted as his colleagues began to scramble, preparing the room for the action to come. “You know, Mr Code, each time I do this ritual … it's like I'm dancing on the edge of a geyser full of lava. With piranhas in it. Lava piranhas.”

Zip Code rubbed his forehead. “I know, I know … but you know the motto. Neither rain, sleet, driving snow, earthquakes, monsters, supernatural phenomena, announced apocalypses nor pandimensional blockades shall halt the delivery of the mails. That's the rule, and we have to follow it.”

“Or what?” Special Delivery asked as he adjusted the position of the Anterior Starboard candle.

The postmaster sighed. “Or the other post offices get to call us sissies. Now come on, we want to get this over with.”

Since Discord's reformation, the Ponyville postal staff had gained much experience in the arrangement of the Cosmofractal Rift ritual. One result of this was that it barely took them two minutes to set up the pentacle, complete with accessories. Another was that once Derpy had taken up her usual position in the centre and Comet Tail was ready to begin the mystic chant, everypony else took a big step back.

Within a few bars of Comet's incantation, most of the candles' flames had turned a deep, virulent yellow. A chilly wind whipped at the tails and manes of the ponies, and as if from far away, the sounds of deep, mournful trumpets were heard.

Post Haste held his breath as the overhead light began to flash crazily and a cloying neon green mist drifted from the corners of the room. The wind became stronger and colder, and icy crystals slowly formed on the edges of Special Delivery's wings. There was an ominous creaking from Mr Zippy's glasses.

“Hang on!” Zip Code slapped his forehead. “Almost forgot. Derpy, this is for you.” He pulled out the muffin that Fluttershy had left and threw it into the pentacle.

Derpy's face lit up as she caught the baked good. Her eyes swivelled around, one of them managing to focus on the postmaster. She was still smiling when a rip in Reality, shaped uncannily like a carrot, opened up behind her and swallowed her.

Derpy fell through a sequence of stars and bay windows, floated down a river of sky and found herself freewheeling through a void, filled sporadically with lifeboats, woodpeckers, rood tiles and the occasional hat. A cabbage flew past, turned into a bottle of lemonade and waved cheerfully at her. Derpy returned the wave and took a bite out of the muffin.

So far, she was enjoying the trip.

Riding a breaking wave of mousetraps, she barely avoided crashing into a barrel organ and bounced off a statue of Princess Celestia. As she admired the fretwork on a passing dinner jacket, a bell-pull dropped down in front of her.

That was exactly what she'd been waiting for.

She grabbed the bell-pull in her mouth, and gravity, which had been looking for her ever since she was sucked into the rift, sighed in relief. Derpy's newly acquired weight dragged on the bell-pull, which, with unexpected logic, caused a bell to ring.

A door appeared next to the bell-pull, and fulfilled its raison d'être by opening. Seeing that the doorstep had also arrived, Derpy let go of the bell-pull and touched down, smiling up at the figure in the doorway.

It was quite a tall figure, towering high over the grey mailmare, and dark as a panther's shadow. It stood on two legs and seemed to be wearing clothes – a lot of them, in fact. The first time that Derpy had seen this particular figure, it had also been the first time that she had seen a creature that wore clothes all over its body. Some ponies wore hats, some wore jackets, and sometimes, some of them wore boots. But this creature wore a hat, a jacket, and boots and even pants. It had no tail, but a carefully cut black mane, and a white face that was always smiling.

“Ah, Miss Derpy,” the creature said, bending down and turning its eyeless smile on her. “I assume you have a letter for Mr Discord?”

Derpy nodded and beamed as she handed over the precious envelope. Behind the creature, she could see the rest of the house beginning to form. It was catching up with her.

“I see you're catching up with the house,” the creature said, still smiling. It seemed like a nice enough smile to Derpy, even if it never disappeared and never changed.

A voice that Derpy had heard on a few occasions sounded from inside the rapidly forming paradoxes. “Is there a visitor, V?” it shouted.

V turned slightly. “It's Miss Derpy, sir,” he called. “She has a letter from Madam Fluttershy.”

“Well, bring her in, won't you?” Discord shouted, his chuckleous voice echoing down impossible corridors. “We've got enough space here for another guest. The more, the merrier!”

“Very good, sir! Mr Discord is currently entertaining guests,” V added, turning back to Derpy. “Would you be agreeable to joining him? Time should not be an issue.”

Derpy's smile widened, and she bounded up the steps into the hallway of Discord's house. The tiling of the floor was, as usual, disconcerting, but that was only to be expected of a surface which looked like a grid of cubes, pointy corners sticking up in the air, until you put a hoof on it – at which point it obediently returned to its flat, two-dimensional surface shape. Derpy had in the past found that walking on the tiles was a rather headache-inducing experience, especially with her flawed depth perception, so she elected to simply fly instead.

V turned around, and led her on, down a staircase, which took them one floor up and onto a walkway through the strange void. The two figures, grey pony and black biped, walked out of a door, while a large mansion began to manifest itself before, behind and above them. A quick shower of chestnut trees tumbled past on one side.

“Mr Discord seems to be acquiring the skill of socializing,” V commented as they walked. “He already has four guests with him, more than at any one time before, and each from a different reality.”

The pair reached a square tower built over the walkway and took the left exit.

“He's been in regular contact with manifestations from all kinds of dimensions – it's quite amazing, really. He has a certain way of changing one's perception of the world.”

After leaving the tower, the pony and the vigilante had been walking along the straight path. It led them to another doorway, directly over the one that they had originally accessed the walkway from.

“You know, I feel privileged … some of the time.” V's steps, regular as a marching rhythm, slowed. “This chaos … it's perfect, the vision that I've aspired to for so long. If I had just one wish, though, Miss Derpy, just one wish … I'd wish for my own freedom. To be able to explore. To act. To leave. Not to serve this selfish bender of reality, but to fight – to fight for what is right, to be …”

V suddenly jerked, like a fish on a line, and slumped down on himself, his shoulders dropping, his head falling as if his neck had been snapped.

Derpy waited. She'd seen this happen before.

V straightened up, and carried on as if the break had never happened. “He'll be waiting,” he commented, as they reached a wide French window with a balcony. Leaning against the railing was a ladder, its rungs planted inside the house, its top out of sight above the window frame. V began to mount the ladder, while Derpy simply flew out of the window and rose up on a strangely convenient thermal.

The top end of the ladder was leant against the railing around the flat roof of the mansion. Having scaled it, V hopped down over the railing and approached the party sitting around a stylish coffee table. “Ladies and gentlebeings,” he said, gesturing at Derpy as she approached, “Miss Derpy.”

Discord turned around, a smile on his snaggletoothed horse's face. “Derpy!” he grinned. “How delightful to see you, my friend. Come and sit with us, won't you? V, a cup of tea and a muffin for Derpy, if you please.”

“Very good, sir.” V swayed slightly on his soles, and gave a discreet little cough. “I don't know if you noticed, sir, but there's been a banging and groaning noise for a while now. I investigated as soon as I became aware of it. It seems that Mr Scapegrace slipped on the Penrose Staircase. He's been falling down it for the past three hours.”

“Oh dear,” Discord said, his face showing no emotion except a vague stirring of interest. “Did he say how it happened?”

“I have a feeling that Master Stewie may have tripped him, sir.”

“Little rascal,” Discord chuckled. “Oh, well. When our guests have left, you could just turn the gravity down for a few minutes – that ought to solve the problem.”

“Very good, sir.” V marched back to the impossible ladder and descended, neatly and nimbly.

Discord watched him go, a satisfied smile shaping his face. “Good man,” he commented. “Good man. Well, Derpy, won't you sit with us? Bad Wolf, can you move over for a moment?”

One of the ponies – no, creatures. The other beings around the table were all creatures, all of them with the same bipedal build as V – although their faces were a strange pinkish colour, and far more flexible. They were all smiling, though, and their clothes didn't cover all of them, and they had eyes that were actually eyes, which was something that they had on V.

The one that Discord had adressed – Bad Wolf – shifted on her bean bag. “C'mon,” she smiled, flicking a strand of blonde mane out of her face. Derpy clambered up next to her. She was quite warm, and so was her smile – even though she wasn't a natural blonde. Derpy could tell. “So, you're from Equestria, are you?” she pressed on.

“We've all heard a lot about Equestria,” the creature next to her – another female – said. This one, like V, was dressed in black. Unlike him, though, she had a face that was smiling at the moment, but might not always keep that state. As her eyes rested on Derpy, the pegasus met her with one eye at least and hoped that the smile would stay for as long as possible. The creature's hair didn't help – almost pure white, with a black streak, and messier than a haystack after a tornado strike.

“Now, now, Susan,” said a third being – a male, with a frizzy black mane and moustache, strange, bulging eyes and quite possibly the silliest pair of boots that Derpy had ever seen. They were large and dark, and wore white jackets. Derpy had been to the odd fashion show, and she'd seen strange outfits, but clothes wearing clothes was new to her. “There's always sump'n new if ya look fer it – especially at Ole Man Discord's hacienda.” He raised a digit – that was another thing about these creatures, they all had digits – and tapped the brim of his top hat with its skull-and-crossbones symbol and its feather.

“Smooth, Frank,” the final creature muttered. “Real smooth.” All that Derpy could see of her was a pair of sapphire eyes under the shadow of an intensely blue hooded cloak.

“Oh, come now, Rachel,” Discord chided, floating up and into a large, overstuffed armchair. “We're all friends here, remember? A circle of good friends, sitting down for a drink and watching the Rift Soup float by.” He waved his lion paw at a passing jar of jam. “Why, bless my twisted chaotic soul!” he added, grasping his forehead with both fore-appendages. “I haven't introduced you all yet. Friends, this is Ditzy Doo, but you can call her Derpy. She delivers mail to this, my humble home, and she's never yet disappointed. Just think – no junk mail, no income tax demands, not even a gravity bill! I've been thinking about why those things pass me by, and I believe it's all because of her.” His tasseled tail made a pass in the air and conjured a fresh chocolate muffin, right in front of the mailmare.

Derpy smiled at her new friends, most of whom smiled back. Only Rachel rolled her eyes and leaned back in her bean bag. A mug of tea on the table in front of her became shrouded in blackness and rose to her lips.

“I know!” Discord exclaimed. “You can all introduce yourselves, tell us how you got to know me … why don't you start, Susan? Susan?”

Susan, the female with the vital smile, was giving the muffin in Derpy's hooves a lot of attention. She appeared to have a lot of attention to give, and the grey pegasus began to wonder whether she should offer her a bite. The way in which Susan's eye was starting to look like an empty socket with a small blue light in it was slightly disconcerting.

Discord cleared his throat, and the tea in Susan's cup rose up before splashing down into the porcelain again. Susan blinked, looked around, and spoke.

“Sorry – sorry. I was distracted for a moment.”

“No kiddin',” Bad Wolf commented, with a sly look at the muffin.

“I didn't have lunch today, all right?” Susan snapped, and Bad Wolf seemed to shrink in her seat. Susan took a small, calming breath, and spoke again. Derpy pretended not to notice the way in which her hair wove itself into a tight, neat braid without being touched.

“My name's Susan Sto Helit – Susan to my friends and family, Miss Susan to my pupils. I got to know Discord through a family contact, my grandfather's in a similar trade. Not at all the same one, though. They just use some of the same methods.

“Anyway, Grandad can get a bit busy at times, so he had to pass Discord's invitation on to me. It hasn't been the first time, either.”

“No, and I must say that dear Susan got used to the workings of my house pretty quickly,” Discord added.

“I've seen impossible things before,” Susan responded, coolly. “You just have to remember that the more impossible something is, the more likely it is that someone, somewhere will try to make it real.”

“The tea, ladies and gentlebeings,” V said, making Derpy jump. The creature had appeared behind her without a sound, but with a tray, from which he brought down a steaming cup of fragrant, aromatic tea.

“You wouldn't happen to have –“ Susan began, only to fall silent as V produced a saucer laden with a teetering pyramid of confectionary. Some of it involved cream, some of it raspberry, and there was the odd coffee bean mixed in. All of it, however, was made with some kind of chocolate – the kind whose smell permeates walls and windows. Oddly enough, there didn't seem to be any nougat, at least not that Derpy could tell.

V left, almost imperceptibly, as Susan delicately removed the top chocolate from the pyramid and placed it carefully in her mouth. “Ammyway,” she continued, “ang on – ummp – Discord is basically a business contact.”

“And maybe more?” the draconequus murmured slyly.

“Yw're a mummkey, Discawrd, am wew you nowitt.”

“Ah, now me 'n' Discord, we're business pals too,” Frank, the male creature with the hat, drawled. “My business's in havin' friends, ya know – friends in other places, if ya get my meanin'. An' not just a different town – friends all the way on the Other Side. An' if this ain't Another Side entirely, well, I dunno what is.” He stretched an arm out over the table, and his arm's shadow kept on stretching until it found a bottle of champagne, reclining in a bucket of ice. The bottle rose up out of the ice and found its way into the waiting hand. Frank gave his other hand a little wave, and after a short puff of pink, it was holding an elegant glass flute. Derpy lowered her muffin and watched his shadow more closely. She'd been in this house a few times, and met some of Discord's guests, so she was hardly surprised when the shadow of the hand holding the base of the bottle independently pulled the shadow cork out, and even less so when the real cork followed suit in popping from its neck. Frank poured himself a glass of the golden, bubbly liquor and took a deep draught. “Ah, life can be so sweet,” he said with a satisfied sigh, “when ya got friends lookin' out for ya.” He pulled out a deck of cards and flourished them at Derpy. “Care ter take a look inter yer future?” he smiled, the gap in his teeth dark and deep.

“Don't take it,” Rachel warned, in her muttering, yet forceful tone. “He'll show you the future, yes, but it'll be the future that he makes happen. It's a rip-off.”

“Yew callin' me a fraud, sweetums?” Frank said, calmly, but ever so slightly oozily.

“If you mean I'm saying your magic doesn't work,” Rachel answered, levelly, “then no. You know how to borrow it, at least, and it works for you. But it's going to come back one day, and it'll bite you where it hurts. Hard.”

“Ah guess you'd know about that, li'l Rae-Rae,” Frank crooned.

Rachel's eyes briefly separated into two pairs – red and slanted. “Don't call me that again,” she warned, and her voice sounded deep and ancient and devoid of anything good.

“Rachel, Rachel,” Discord said, snaking around her and offering a slice of gingerbread. “Always so angry, always fighting. Why don't you tell us how we met?”

Rachel's eyes joined again, and she glared at Discord for a moment, before lowering her hood to reveal dull grey skin – almost the same colour as Derpy's coat – and a purple, rigidly styled manecut. “I've known you for a long time,” she said, quietly. “I've spent almost all my life fighting you, even if we never met. I don't know … sometimes, it feels almost like I invited you in when my friends were being difficult. But, well … I finally won, at least for a little while. I managed to bring order back into my world, with my friends helping me. We managed to stay strong against you. And then I sensed a kindred spirit in a world near here … one who thought my thoughts, knew my joys, spoke with my voice. So I made the journey, inside my mind, and I ended up here. I've never gotten through to Equestria, that place where the friendly mind lives, but I've tracked you down, Discord – and I know that I can drop in to keep an eye on you.”

“And pilfer from my library,” Discord noted. “I'm still waiting for you to return that Shakespeare quarto.”

Rachel turned delicately red. “Well, it's the only surviving example …”

“Fair enough,” Discord said, somewhat quickly. “I just kept it for snack value anyway. But what about you, Bad Wolf? You've been a bit quiet.” He theatrically huffed at his claw. “Is it my breath? That chicken kiev last night seemed a bit strong to me …”

Bad Wolf laughed, showing a good set of teeth. “It's … well, it's weird,” she said, unable to contain the odd nervous giggle. “See, it all started when I met this man, this wonderful, amazing man who could twirl the Universe on his finger. I couldn't even start to tell you the things we saw together, and, well … I saved him once. But to do that, I had to look into his machine, into the golden maw of Time Itself. And I saw so much there … I saw everything that could happen, I saw great things and terrible visions, and it hurt … this man, he took it all away, he healed me and made me forget. But you'll never forget some things you see, Derpy. It's like the mind keeps a hold of things, but it puts them away somewhere, so you won't see them whenever you close your eyes. And one of the things I saw, well … it was Discord here. He didn't look like he does now, he didn't have horns or claws or teeth or those weird eyes, but … he was there. I'd recognize him anywhere.”

“And then, one day, she was exploring a place where not many explorers go, and even fewer survive, and she stumbled on my humble home,” Discord finished. “Just as well I was reformed by then – from what I hear, this girl's taken on Old Nick himself. And won.”

“It wasn't easy,” Bad Wolf said, still a little thoughtful.

“It shouldn't have been. He's my brother-in-law.”

There was a pause – quite literally, in fact. Derpy felt herself freeze in space, unable to move or blink or even breathe.

“Sorry about that,” Discord said, when the pause was over and everyone had taken a breath that they didn't need. “The time fuse must have popped out again. V's getting pretty quick at replacing it, though.”

“He wasn't always like this, was he?” Rachel ventured. “Serving people, bowing to authority. I can feel the rebel in him, the man who'll die before he follows an order.”

“Yeah, I know people like that,” Frank agreed. “But see, Discord here's a unique guy. He can get people to help him, even if he don't need any help.”

“And in V's case,” Susan added, “it's hard to notice … he's practically black and white already. You have to look closely at the mask to see the grey spots.”

Discord laughed in delight. “You know, Susan, you're a remarkably perceptive woman.”

“I try to do my best. It runs in the family.”

Derpy sat with her new friends, and smiled, and accepted muffins whenever they were offered. She had time. Everypony had time when they visited Discord. Besides, Bad Wolf seemed to think she was rather cute. She was already starting to ruffle her mane, without Derpy even having to ask her. If the pegasus waited for long enough, she might even start tickling her behind the ears. You could always hope for something. Hope was good.