Harem Fantasy will be a real pony by the end of the story.
- Possibly as a romantic interest for Discord, but for sure she's been too much of a character to be reduced to 'just' a book again.
- Her return is strongly hinted to be the case at the end of chapter 48 and confirmed in chapter 50, but not as a love interest. Discord de-animates the book, but a mare in labor at the hospital suddenly discovers she's about to deliver two foals instead of one. The reincarnation of Harem ends up being the "anchor foal" of the story's title.
Fleur's mark and talent are for killing pedophiles.
- Fleur's mark is a trio of fleur-de-lis, which in Proteceran symbology denotes insight, but with a connotation of cunning and predation. The mark of a hunter who seeks out hidden prey.
- She manifested the mark in self-defense when under threat from a pedophile, when her greatest immediate need was to understand the threat and defend against it.
- Her trick is a weapon of sorts, but it's too slow to be primarily designed for self-defense. Rather, her trick is designed to kill its target slowly and in one of the most agonizing ways possible. It's the weapon of an executioner, for use on a particularly loathsome specie of criminal.
- Especially in the Continuum, the mark pushes its Bearer to act on their talent. Fleur doesn't display an especial compulsion to have sex (aside from what's inherent in a normal sex drive, at least), but she does show an almost fanatical compulsion to search for pedophiles.
- Finally, this might help explain her breakthrough at the climax of Anchor Foal. In trying to murder Mr. Sweet, she was in that moment her best and deepest self, and that brief moment of harmony with who she was meant to be may have helped clear out some of her emotional baggage and allow for her epiphany regarding her relationship with Fluttershy.
The divergence point from the main Continuum is Fluttershy removing Tish.
- We know that the Trotter's Fall mission happened in the Anchor Foal continuity, and it must have proceeded at least as far as the conference without major diversion because Fluttershy is aware of hybrids and of her own status as one. But something obviously went wrong in this continuity, something that means that Discord is not anchored to Equestria through Tish and the lesser hybrids as he is in the main Continuum. So what if the divergence point is that, in the confrontation in the atlier, Fluttershy didn't think of using the bubble to remove Tish's pain and instead used it to remove Tish herself? It's something Fluttershy would definitely do. And without Tish, Discord might well have not felt the same connection to the lesser hybrids (other than Fluttershy), leaving him without anchor to Equestria.
