I used to dream. Which seemed very odd to me.

Yes, I'm a living being, but as a crystal tree planted over a thousand years ago, nearly destroyed several times before actually being destroyed, then becoming reconstituted in my new form as a tree house by the joint efforts of my ethereal consciousness and my friends, I've got to say that being alive for me isn't quite the same as it is for more natural creatures.

And yet? I used to dream.

Part of the oddness of the situation was that I don't seem to sleep. I've seen my friends sleep in various rooms throughout my complex after Princess Twilight has caused the sun to set and they've exhausted themselves with talk and other physical activities: Yona and Sandbar become very energetic when tasting each other before sleeping while Silverstream and Gallus have gentler tasting sessions that last a great deal longer.

But nothing in the sleeping that they do afterwards is analogous to anything that I do. Except the dreaming.

They often discuss their dreams with each other and with me over the breakfasts I summon for them in the mornings, and I would always nod and ask questions, trying to understand the nature of dreams. But I never shared my dreams with my friends even though it would've been easy enough to do. I only had the two dreams over and over again, after all.

In truth, though, I found my dreams to be completely and utterly horrifying in their own separate ways. So my preference was not to discuss them aloud.

---

The first of my dreams had to do with my birth, and most of it wasn't horrifying in the slightest. I've watched plants and animals as well as creatures that are neither of these—or perhaps both—being born in the Everfree Forest since I came to occupy my current vantage here, and those births seem much messier and more traumatic than what I saw in my dream.

In it, I'm very small, of course, and scarcely sentient let alone sapient. But I still see the ponies who have planted me and poured their assorted magics into me. They're huge, towering over me, but all their focus is directed nowhere but toward my coming into being. It's a marvelous feeling, actually, as their efforts twine about each other, building me up and weaving me into whatever it is that they want me to be: something they'll be proud of, I know.

Or at least, I'd like to think that. Still, I stand there in my little hollow of rocky soil, my few, delicate crystal branches trembling with the effort I'm making to raise them high and spread them wide, and bask in their warm eyes and smiles.

"Perfect," Somnambula whispers.

"Aye, a fine start." Rockhoof can't whisper, I don't think. But he tries.

Mistmane's nodding, her voice hardly ever more than a waver. "So much potential!"

The laugh that Flash Magnus gives tickles my budding leaves. "Quite the bulwark to have at our backs."

"Roots're sturdy." Meadowbrook's squatted down beside me, her gaze almost as tangible as a breeze. "Bark's got a good texture. Growth's on track."

Behind the others, Stygian asks, "What do you think, Starswirl?"

Somehow seeming larger than the rest even though I know he isn't, Starswirl stands to the other side of me and scowls as usual. "Not useful," he says. "Not yet."

And that was always where the dream would start going wrong.

My seven parents would vanish, leaving me alone for years and years and years, inching myself taller and wider and deeper through the hard, cold stone and the dark, cold air. The only light I ever saw was my own glow, pale and flickery, and warmth was something I only vaguely recalled.

I yearned for ponies to come visit me again, to speak to me and reassure me that I was doing what I ought. But the next two to arrive—alicorns, one light, the other dark—only stay long enough to tear chunks from me and then depart. Plunder vines then wriggle into being, lurking all around me, and the chaotic forces of the forest start licking disgustingly at my outer edges. I was left denuded and bereft, unknown, unloved, barely conscious and crying out soundlessly for relief—

And that was when I would startle back to full consciousness.

---

Now, I knew that the specific things that happened in the dream weren't things that actually happened. The Pillars never said those words to me, though they did say things very like them during the several days they spent casting the spells that built me. I've spoken to all of them since their return and my recreation, and the pride they radiate on those occasions rivals the touch of sunlight against my branches. Even Starswirl has smiled at me, something I don't recall ever seeing on my youth all those centuries ago, and I'm overjoyed to call them my friends.

I've spoken with Celestia and Luna as well. Together and separately they've accepted my invitation to spend time in my complex now that they're retired, and I understand completely why they did the things they did to me. And, well, I'm a tree. I bear fruit. Animals then take that fruit and use it to power themselves while in turn spreading my seeds over a wider area. It's kind of how the whole thing works.

Of course, in this case, it was the magic of harmony they were using and spreading rather than literal seeds, and I wasn't really what anyone would've called sapient when they first took the Elements of Harmony from me. Dreams are like that, I've come to see from the examples my friends have shared with me. They take bits and pieces of true events and scramble them into lies and nonsense.

Still, the horror I felt every time after having this first dream, the terror that gripped my heartwood, the fear and impotent anger that rustled through me from my furthest taproot to my most outstretched limb, I couldn't deny any of it. As I say, none of it happened the way it did in the dream, but the events themselves all truly happened. And the emotions the dream aroused in me made the scrambled details irrelevant.

It wasn't the same for the second dream, however. That was the dream of my death.

---

It began with ponies returning six of my fruits to me after using them successfully in developing harmony throughout the land. I then sprouted more fruit for the ponies—a chest, a castle, a magical table and map—and my interactions with them caused me to flower and grow, gaining a degree of sapience greater than any I've ever known.

In the dream, I would reach both further and farther, developing my projectable mobile form, interacting with non-ponies, and taking my first steps along the road to friendship. I would even extend myself to save my new friends when they were threatened with destruction, and I would regrow the Elements of Harmony for the ponies who'd been using them when they needed to resolve yet another dire situation.

And then I would be killed, horribly and suddenly.

The above-mentioned dire situation, it would turn out, wasn't quite as resolved as these ponies thought, and the villain whom they thought they'd defeated would appear in my cavern and shatter me as simply as a gust of wind blows off a leaf.

The pain was always indescribable, the fear and the anger and the anguish overwhelming. All that I could have done, all that I had done, all that I was beginning to do, all of it ended in less than an instant.

---

I would awaken from this dream each time with the crystalline sap pounding throughout every inch of my frame, and it was only after several seconds that I would be able to recall that my death in reality wasn't the end of me, that I had reached beyond what even my parents considered possible for me, and that with the help of my friends, I'd grasped for the chance at a new life in a new form.

And being here in this new form, living this new life, I feel only gratitude. For I have literally outgrown the plot where I was planted, have been transformed and have transformed myself into a creature like no other Equestria has ever known. The power I hold now is a power unmatched and unforeseen, a power of harmony that protects this entire land, my roots reaching far, far beyond this hilltop at the heart of what was once a forest that wanted nothing more than to devour and destroy me.

And yet? I kept having these dreams.

---

One evening, however, not long ago, something came slithering along the base of my hill, creeping into the mouth of the cavern where I'd spent most of my old life. I recognized the odd, dry, mustardy scent of the intruder, and I manifested my mobile self a few feet away from it—Princess Twilight has given me permission to continue using her likeness until such time as I can construct a likeness of my own.

"You," I said to the suddenly frozen shadow pressing itself into the rock where no shadow should've been. "What do you want here?"

The shadow remained still for another half a moment, then it twisted, bloated, and writhed itself upward into the form of the chaos spirit himself, Discord, the creature whom my power had twice turned to stone and the creature who had set the plunder vines upon me all those years and centuries ago. "Tree!" The bubbliness of his voice, despite the actual bubbles drifting from his mouth, was plainly false. "So lovely to see you again!"

"Again?" In arguments that I'd observed among my friends, they would often narrow their eyes in situations like this. So I narrowed my eyes at him. "When have we ever met before?"

"I meant it metaphorically." The mustard smell of him was souring, taking on an aroma more of vinegar and spoiled vegetables. "Yes, we've never spent time engaged in good-natured chitchat, but I like to feel that the two of us share a bond that reaches back over a thousand years."

"Yes." I've been working on conveying emotion in my borrowed voice, but for this conversation, I was very glad that my words still came out largely flat. "To the time when you tried to kill me."

He froze again, this time crackling as ice formed around him. "Actually," he muttered, the ice dripping off like a steady flow of sweat, "I've tried to kill you twice. And I'm here to apologize for succeeding the second time."

---

The deeper parts of me down in the depth of the earth are always fairly cold, but the chill that ran through me then was something else entirely. "What?" I asked.

He flailed his arms, leaping into sudden, frantic movement back and forth, up and down, spinning and whirling along the floor, the walls, the ceiling. "I didn't mean to!" he shouted. "I mean, yes, I suppose if I'd engaged in a bit more forethought—which is to say, if I'd thought about the matter at all—I might've guessed where my conjured Sombra puppet might take things, but—"

"Conjured Sombra puppet?" I wasn't sure I'd heard the words correctly, so I spoke each one slowly and distinctly. But images from the end of my second dream were also crashing through the various parts of me. Sombra, I'd found out later, was the name of the pony who'd killed me. But was Discord saying—?

"I had to!" Discord held up one misshapen arm, a puppet of the hideous black-and-gray unicorn twitching there. "Sombra's dead, and not even a powerful and handsome spirit of chaos like myself can do anything about that!" A halo popped into place circling the puppet's red-tinged horn, and 'x' shapes crossed out its button eyes. "So I decided that I could use a phony Sombra to slap some fear into the three actual villains I'd recruited!"

He snapped the talons of his other hand, and three wanted posters unrolled in the air beside him: a centaur, his face stony with disdain; a changeling from the days before the species underwent its recent transformation, a rickety crown on her head; and a pink pony, nothing but malicious glee in her grin.

"I needed them together!" he continued, his voice still jagged and frantic. "If they'd gone off on their own, all my plans for helping Twilight would've been ruined! So I pulled echoes and residue from the land of the Crystal Empire, fashioned them into a puppet of old King Sombra, and set it off to serve as an object lesson: Twilight and her stalwart associates would defeat it, and the three true participants in my little exercise would fall into line quite readily! Nothing could go wrong!"

He hurled the puppet at the posters, and they all burst into flame. "Except, of course, for everything!" he bleated, the fire consuming his peculiar props.

The shivering was spreading up, into, and through my entire complex. Even this far down, I could still hear the walls and windows rattling above. "What?" I asked. I still wasn't at all sure that I understood anything he was talking about, but I was reacting to it nonetheless.

"Everything!" he repeated, his arms drooping to hang like moss from his sides. "I didn't mean for Sombra to kill you! Death is the ultimate party-pooper, and I'll have nothing to do with it! But I designed my puppet to take the bits of Sombra I'd collected and expand them, flip them clear over the top, and slam them down the other side! That it shattered you was an unforeseen—"

"Get out," I rumbled, and I do mean rumbled, the entire cavern shaking and resounding with those two words.

Discord didn't even give a squeak. He just vanished as if he'd never been there.

---

It was the first time, as far as I could recall, that I'd ever actually been angry. Again, I'd seen my friends sputter and steam at each other now and again, but what I was feeling at that moment, it was...it was...

Even now after having time to reflect on the whole experience, I don't have a word for it. "Transcendent" wasn't right since that has largely positive connotations. But the heights and depths of the emotions that were surging up and back from my roots to my branches did indeed transcend anything I'd ever even imagined I could undergo.

"Engulfing" wasn't right either, for while the emotion did indeed fill my every nook and crevice, I was still able to look at them, recognize them for what they were, and not act on their howling desire to avenge myself upon the foul grotesquerie that had not just threatened my life but had actually succeeded in taking it.

Because I didn't want to kill Discord. I doubted I would've had the ability to do so, for one thing. But more than that, for all the rage that boiled unseen beneath my bark and the crystalline perfection of my walls, as much as I hated to admit it, Discord and I were apparently alike in our dislike of killing.

Still, something needed to be done, and I had no idea what that something might be.

So I talked to my friends.

---

"Whoa," Sandbar said, breaking the silence that followed my recitation of the facts.

The seven of us were gathered in the uppermost room of my complex, the one with the best views of the Everfree Forest. The views weren't strictly necessary, but my inner boiling had only gotten sharper and uglier since I'd told Discord to get out two days previous. So I was thinking that a soft and pretty sunset might help. And it did, a bit.

But Yona's face had gone completely blank. "If Tree needs Yona to smash Discord," she said with a fairly respectable rumble herself, "Tree has only to ask."

"Yeah." Smoke was drifting from Smolder's nostrils, her teeth showing and her arms folded. "Jerks like him only understand they've done something wrong when you hand them a couple of their own body parts."

Gallus rolled his eyes. "Just be sure to send us a postcard, you two, from wherever you end up after he snaps his fingers at you."

Ocellus rubbed the side of a foreleg, her gaze on the table. "And he did come to apologize. That's got to mean something, doesn't it?"

"Totally." Sandbar had done a great deal of blinking while the others were speaking, and he now looked more sure of his footing, "I mean, if he hadn't said anything, who would've even thought he'd been involved in all that stuff?"

Silverstream had been sitting next to Gallus, but now she got up and moved to stand beside my mobile self. She reached out to touch my shoulder, but of course I'm not quite as solid as they are. Still, I always appreciate the effort. "Whatever you want to do, Tree," she said, her voice and her face and even her feathers absolutely dripping with compassion., "we'll all be there to help in any way we can."

Which, I realized at once, was really all the answer that I needed.

---

Discord peered around the gateposts as if I weren't constantly monitoring everything that happened within my complex. I'd asked my friends to send word to him by any means they knew, saying that I wished to speak with him at his earliest convenience.

That had been two days before, and I'd had my senses stretched ever since, waiting for him to show up. And as tempted as I was to burst into the courtyard in front of him with my mobile form as big as my former treelike self with lightning flashing from my eyes, I didn't. I simply faded in at my regular size and shape with a smile and said, "Please come in, Discord."

"Ummm..." Several more eyes cracked open along the sides of his head. "You'll forgive me, I hope, if I don't waltz blithely and blindly into the lair of my ancient arch-nemesis."

"Me?" It took me a bit by surprise, him saying it straight out like that, but I seized the moment and discarded the opening part of the speech I'd been planning to deliver. "You mean because you're the spirit of chaos and I'm the spirit of harmony?"

He shrugged. "Either that, or me being the spirit of custard and you being the spirit of pudding is more of a cause for dissension than I thought."

Parts of me still wanted to collapse a wall or two on him, but instead, I smiled. "In truth, however, it's because of our opposing natures that I've decided to forgive you."

"Really?" All the eyes but his regular two sealed up again, and those regular two narrowed at me. "What are you implying? That you can forgive because you're Harmony but I can't because I'm Chaos?"

"Not at all." I took a breath, more pleasure tickling at me than I was expecting. "It's simply that I've come to realize that we're each of us changing. I've become more chaotic, and you've become more orderly."

"What?" He stomped his goat foot. "Them's fighting words, sister!"

"Oh?" I couldn't stop my grin from widening. "Are you going to kill me again?"

---

He froze, and the top of his head popped off, steam puffing out from beneath. "That— You— How—?" With both hands, he slammed his errant body part back into place. "I'll admit that was a better comeback than I'd been expecting from you." He swallowed, his gulp so large that if bulged his neck as it went down. "Which makes me think that you might be partially right..."

I reached for a section of my prepared speech that still seemed apropos. "It was by others using my power that you were turned to stone, and it was by another using your power that I was forced to break out of my stone. Neither of us would have chosen to go through those experiences, but because of them, we've become the creatures we are now, each of us calling others friends and being called a friend in return."

Discord's eyebrows were vibrating as if they were moths trying to escape; that they didn't in fact turn into moths, I think, showed how upset he was. I kept waiting for him to explode or otherwise transform into some sort of outlandish thingamajig, but all he did after several seconds was fold his arms and mumble a short phrase.

"Excuse me?" Since we were well within my precincts, I'd heard him quite distinctly, of course. But I wanted for him to say the words more loudly. "Could you possibly repeat that?"

This time, I half-expected that he might just vanish. But he took a breath, puffed most of it out, and muttered, "Because friendship is magic, isn't it?" He shook his head with a rattling sound, then straightened up. "You know, you never would've been this rambunctious in the old days. I have to say that I approve."

I shrugged. "I was a tree in the old days. Trees are hardly known for their rambunctiousness."

"I suppose not." He made a throat clearing noise. "I'll admit I'm a little hard pressed to know where we go from here."

Fortunately, part of my prepared speech addressed this very question. "I'll suggest that we stop trying to kill each other for a start. We're neither of us very good at it, apparently."

"Agreed." He pulled a large tri-corner hat from nothing. "To detente!" Raising the hat, he proceeded to eat it in three large bites. "That friendship is harmonizing me, I've long since resigned myself to. But I can hardly wait to tell our current princess how friendship is making the Tree of Harmony more chaotic!" He rubbed his hands together, then stopped, his eyes going wide and his hands dropping to the flagstones of my courtyard. "Wait. How exactly is friendship making you more chaotic?"

This was another part I'd prepared to speak on. "When I asked my friends how I should proceed given your confession of the other day, I received advice that was completely contradictory. And yet, that advice made me feel a great deal better and helped me to understand this large truth about myself. And yourself as well. of course."

He nodded. "Well, then!" This time, he pulled a bugle from thin air. "Here's to the first day of the rest of our lives not trying to kill each other!" He put the bugle to his lips, and in an instant, it had sucked him inside face first, the instrument falling to the stones with a clatter and a clank.

I watched for a few moments, but it merely continued to lay there. It wasn't until I had chuckled, shaken my head, and turned away to head for the front door that the bugle quietly disappeared.

And I've not had a dream since, not even the one about my birth. It makes me think that perhaps the words my phantom version of Starswirl spoke have come true. Now that I recognize what I've become, I've become useful.

It's quite the lovely sensation.