Just Stories

by slightlyshade

Rating: everyone
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Slice of Life
Length: 5815

An older Rainbow Dash recalls her short lived attempts at writing, her experiences with a most vexing writing group, and how she dealt with a curiously obsessive Twilight Sparkle: the pony that signed her up for the writing class in the first place.

An older Rainbow Dash recalls her short lived attempts at writing, her experiences with a most vexing writing group, and how she dealt with a curiously obsessive Twilight Sparkle: the pony that signed her up for the writing class in the first place.

In a story on stories, and the trials that lie behind writing them, Rainbow reflects on her larger struggle of creativity and purpose, and in the process gets to contend with the art, if it can be called such, of critique.

Published 2014-08-21 03:20:05 UTC
Last updated 2014-08-21 03:20:05 UTC

Just Stories

'Ah, Rainbow Dash, I was afraid you wouldn't show at all,' Four Wheels said, motioning for me to take the last empty seat with a single sway of one of his long, spindly legs.

On that day, the circle was arranged more loosely, to allow for various desks to be distributed, seemingly at random, across the lecture room. The other writers were still unpacking their notebooks and getting their drinks set up, telling me that there was really no need for the professor to be impatient with me: nopony had been waiting on me. I wasn't that late, anyway.

'Are you saying I'd quit? I never quit,' I said, sitting myself down with my story pressed against my chest well before anypony else was ready.

It was an assignment. Each week, for the duration of the course, there would be a writing assignment. The first three were very basic. "Write about your day" type stuff. All of them. This week, at last, it was time to show a story or novel that we were writing. Or well, a small part of it.

Now, I won't tell you about how mine went. I was still working on it, and it was a very sloppy draft. What bothered me were the finished works that were paraded around. Particularly when the professor pointed to the kid who had made a habit of advertising how cool the story he was working on was going to be and how he'd credit the ponies in the class when it would become a bestseller. (Unfortunately I forgot the name of his book, so, I guess I'll never know.)

Anyway, upon hearing it was his turn, the stocky fellow unseated himself, re-examined the sheets he was holding and cleared his throat several times. His voice had a softness to it, but at the same time it was stern; aggressive.

'What you're about to hear is the final sequence of Barley Malt the Conquering. A tale of heroism, secrets, and ruthless undead murderers.' He cleared his throat once more and paused deliberately. When he spoke again, he did so in quick pronounced inflections - resembling the rhythm of a typewriter - using all the breaths taken to read the sequence without a single stop.

'"But I love you!" the zombie dragon squeezed out of his throat, chunks of demolished demon-dwarf ponies sliding along his muscular draconic chest. Barley Malt looked cold, uncaring. "You're a dinosaur, you scary old guy. My mom only put up with you because she knew you were her nephew's favourite. Who knew?" He hesitated for a moment, wiping the sweat from his beautifully shining forehead, his mane riding the wind like a surfer at a nudist beach, unafraid of the world, and too young to give up. "That's right," he said, "I knew all along. The principal had a skeleton in his closet: you! Except you're not a skeleton. You're a homosexual zombie. Dragon." He walked away, not seeing the undead acid tears welling up inside the empty, burning eyes of his once-father as the summer sun beat down on the town square; the market square of Little Dragon Village. The end.'

There was a momentary silence as I examined the watercolour paintings on the wall opposite of me. Lots of blue and lavender touches, though what they represented was hard to tell. Suddenly there was loud applause from the guy seated next to him. I later learned this was primarily because they wrote the story together. I'm sure there may have also been a few polite hoof claps or some such, but the excited outcry from his friend was what probably prompted me to say what I did in the first place.

There was a discussion regarding all sorts of technical issues. I believe there was a long talk about not overselling the ending of your story. I'm not sure who exactly had insulted these fellows, who, before realising how cool I was, asked me if I would be interested in playing Lairs & Lemures with them "despite being a girl", but I assumed they called them out on their extremely eggheaded story. It was, quite frankly, at least as bad as the one that was recited before it. It was a felt-like-six-hundred-but-was-actually-just-two page description of that unnamed wishing well at the far side of Ponyville. Don't worry about it if you don't remember it, it's not important.

Anyway, there were heartfelt words thrown hither and yon. I distinctly remember the words "but it's emotion! Raw emotion!" uttered, driving me into a fit of insuppressible giggles. Three hours of this nonsense was having its toll on me, no doubt about it, and I couldn't keep it in any longer.

'But they're just stories,' I announced. I had spoken in a general way, but at the same time I had managed to offend everypony in the room. The whole class just chattered angrily for a few minutes. I shrugged. So much for speaking one's mind.

'Is that why you're here? To just write stories?' offered one. I was pretty sure it was one of the two guys at the back who wrote the vampire-zombie-slayer-monster story, but I may have been mistaken.

'There are no "just" stories, especially not on a moral level,' quipped the stocky mare with the glasses. I knew she was going to try to be clever the moment I first laid eyes on her.

At length, when the cacophony died down, Four Wheels put down a collection of parchment he had been gathering, neatly stacking them on the desk behind him, next to his orange juice. The circle quieted down further and he looked around the room, as if gathering impressions from everypony. 'Well, why do you think so, Rainbow Dash?' he asked, a hint of curiosity and at least as much of a dare in his voice.

I, too, glanced around the room, checking to see if everypony was listening. Indeed, they were all waiting for me to see where I would take this. If they were expecting me to argue language with them and, quite probably, watch me fumble around with it, they would be sorely disappointed.

'Well,' I started, dragging out the word as best I could, 'take your story for instance.' I was looking at the unicorn with the glasses and the freckles, hoping she'd realise I was talking to her.

'Yeah, your adventure story. It was great and all, and I like the part where the wizard starts stabbing the paper mâché elementals with the letter opener-'

'Thanks!'

'...but, well, it's just like, you were just writing stuff. There's no point to it.'

'Hey!' shouted one of the guys next to her, 'just because you don't know what you're doing doesn't mean she doesn't! There's, like, metaphors and everything: she's a bucking genius! You just can't see it!'

One of the guys who wrote the zombie-skeleton-undead thing mumbled some sort of assent, and there were tentative murmurs all around. Still, Four Wheels said nothing, so I continued, 'same thing with all your stories. It's just about zombies getting beheaded or magic rings being misplaced or that really weird obsession some of you have with firefighters or abandoned pieces of public property.'

'No offence,' I added diplomatically.

'What if she's right?' Four Wheels said nonchalantly, quieting the entire room into inaudible gasps.

'Yeah, I guess I do suck,' said the kid with the wicked manecut.

'Why don't we make that our next writing group assignment?' proposed Four Wheels, writing it down in his agenda, 'write about why you write, and why you specifically write about the things you write about.'

There was apparent relief as ponies got up and collected their pads and pens, and yet, I caught angry stares from several of them. I tried to look past them to see out of the windows. There were several parakeets gathering in the trees, flapping and calling in agitation. Maybe they weren't angry so much as indignant. The wannabe-writers, I mean.

They weren't a great success, those classes. I was supposed to go to twelve of them, that's what Twilight signed me up on. I wasn't sure if she thought I was that bad, or what, but it definitely wasn't doing much for me. I was meeting her for lunch over at the Coffee Swig and was trying to tell her as much, but it wasn't easy to get through to her.

Now, if you've ever been at the Coffee Swig - and if you haven't, I can highly recommend it - you'll know that although it's hardly a wild place, it's not exactly a faux pas to speak loudly, or have heated discussions over a hot beverage. As such it wasn't much of a big deal that Twilight was pretty much taking to shouting at me about my mention of not finishing the course. It was all about having me persist, or something, but when that wasn't doing the trick, she simply declared, 'but it's your birthday present!' and proceeded to stare at me expectantly, gritting her teeth something fierce.

'Oh, so I'm supposed to just put up with all this nerdery? I'm telling you Twi, there's no end in sight! And for what? It's not like listening to all this drivel will make me a writer or anything!' I replied.

'You're already a writer,' sighed Twilight. 'You just need to work on it, that's all,' she added, looking over at the table behind me where a young couple was sharing a plate of ginger buttercup snaps.

'I'm telling you, if you saw how bad these guys are, you'd not be so quick to judge. Like, skeleton-guy; that guy who wrote about Ripkin the skeleton looking for his missing femur or something.. he was telling me I was crap while he was more than willing to tell us again and again about how Ripkin almost-but-not-quite found his missing limb - oh but no, wait, it's actually a hind leg and it's all disjointed. No wonder he's got a bone to pick with my grammar all the time.'

I stopped myself and laughed, 'bone to pick!' I giggled and took a sip of my tea. Twilight chuckled despite her apparent intention for this lunch to be all super serious like an intervention.

'Just, please, Dash, think about it, okay?' she said as she put her hoof on mine, gingerly pinning it to the table.

I made sure that she knew I knew what I was doing, but, still she reiterated 'please think about it' at least twice more. That's the way of Twilight sometimes, I guess.

It does remind me of that silly moment with Mauve Dazzle, or, as I just called him, skeleton-guy, and him instructing me how to improve my writing. Now, this may not have been a very interesting occurrence by itself, but, I was thinking again about why these were all "just stories", as I had put it, while the latest Daring Do, or The Magic Meteor, were books. They were awesome, riveting, gripping, thought-capturing page-turners. There was something he said that immediately told me that he, surely, wouldn't know the difference.

'You should use more exciting words instead of, like, just using that basic vernacular all the time.'

And later: 'also, you use blasé neologisms where you could say, say, the viscosity was paramount, and issue a much loftier and punchier narrative.'

He had said that in such a show of dignity that, I admit, I was silenced for at least a few seconds. I remember distinctly that I considered just shrugging and leaning back, hoping he'd return to his seat. More than ever, at moments like that, I felt the urge to just spread my wings and fly off, maybe see what Pinkie Pie was up to, or see about some impromptu training with the Wonderbolts. Stronger, surely, than the resolve to engage in these sorts of useless mock-debates.

I don't remember exactly how it went down after that, except that I had underestimated their resolve. Not just skeleton-guy's, but also that girl with the glasses and her moral mission to write, so certain that if enough words would be sprayed on the walls of the planet's inner cities, we'd all ascend to a better society or something. As if we'd be able to tell what that would be like, anyway. Wasn't that the point we had arrived to in the session where we wrote about why we wrote? I don't know exactly why there were tomes turned in when it was just a matter of basic desire. Nothing about those ponies ever was basic, I guess.

Honestly, I'm not sure why I'm spending so much time thinking about them. They were just a brief collection of indications of larger ponies, there for a moment and gone the next. Spitfire did say, when she was helping new trainees, that in order to fly as high as she did, they must first learn to fall. Not much different than what the professor there said. "Just keep writing bad stories until they become good." Something like that, anyway. A far better lesson than all the mention of pacing, character voice, or narrative focus could ever hope to amount to.

I'm sorry if this is boring. But, anyway, that was just before my last session, and I never got to hear the final slogans that would probably inspire all of them to get out there and create, live, breathe, and tell stories. All I knew was that it wasn't for me. Being a writer.

I'll spare you how I walked out of there and never came back in. It didn't feel like a powerful act of defiance, so don't think I felt like this cool, suave ball of radicalness. But Twilight, when I told her what happened, insisted on having a writing day with me.

As I spent the afternoon lazing on my bed, I mulled over the ordeal in preparation. I promised I would see her at her home later that day. I just couldn't say no to her, I guess, even though there was now little point in writing stuff with her. It felt a bit dishonest to agree to hanging out under those pretences, but there weren't many nice alternatives lying around, so, it's what I settled on. It was that or let her down entirely, after all.

When I had first started writing it was just a cool new thing to try. It's exciting to try new things and it just makes you feel awesome inside when you feel yourself succeed at something you didn't know you could do. But then, especially after seeing Twilight's reaction to my first few pieces of Daring Do fanfiction, I've gotten to a troublesome crossroads: I could recognise good writing; great writing, but I couldn't create it. Reading all the fantastic books I had read I knew what I wanted to write, but after the initial rush had worn off, I could see clearly that the things I had written could not even compare. They weren't even in the same weight class. It was, in a word, frustrating. And even though you might consider Twilight's involvement a little... extreme, it's not too hard to see why she felt at least a little responsible.

All the same, that in itself was also a source of frustration that made me sigh and dig in under my thin cloudstuff blankets. It wasn't just the talk we had at the Coffee Swig. When I thought about it, tossing and turning, I largely had to think back at the stories about Daring Do traipsing through the jungle, chasing after artefacts and rescuing young aristocrats from lava explosions and gargantuan termites. It made me cringe. But just doing better than that wasn't going to cut it by a long shot. If it wasn't fantastic, there was no reason to have had it committed to document. I sighed once more, noticing the advanced hours and regretting ever showing those silly stories to Twilight in the first place.

Lots and lots of blank paper.

I had already told her I wasn't going to write any more. No more exercises, and no more stories. So, perhaps I wasn't hiding it from her. It wasn't a secret. And if she would've just accepted my decision I wouldn't have had to feel guilty about that. I sighed, dropping the dry quill next to the stack of scrolls and retreated to the couch.

'It's just a matter of writing down your feelings, Rainbow. Letting them out.'

She followed me over to the couch, and, once seated, immediately looked at me in that way that urged me to cower and hide inside myself. Beseeching, inquisitive, and, worst of all, irrepressible. I looked behind me, but the wall wasn't much to look at.

'I know, I know.'

I sighed again. 'Look, you've tried helping me here. And I know you're my friend, so you don't want to let me down-'

'Rainbow-'

'You haven't. It's just... not for me. In the end that's all it is. There'll be other battles...'

I wasn't sure why it was down to me to cheer her up. Wasn't it me who failed? Well... I was fine with it, I guess.

I looked up. I had thought that in her silence she had reached for her tea, but instead she was staring at me with her teeth on her lower lip. Probably figuring out what to say next. Something in me said she wasn't going to drop this.

She slowly pressed her hoof on my chest and again sought my eyes. 'Please don't give up, Rainbow,' she said, her voice close to breaking.

'Who's giving up?' I said, pushing her away just enough to allow me to get up. I paced around the table to get to the bookcase, reading the titles at eye-level. Just science and magic: tales of chemistry; mycological lore; geometric ponderings; monstrous zoology. Egghead stuff.

'I'm sorry,' I said, glancing over my shoulder. To my surprise, she was sobbing. Hunched into the corner of the couch with her head buried in her hooves.

'No, I'm sorry,' she stammered.

I overcame my initial surprise and quickly leapt back onto the couch, pressing right next to her. I made for taking her hooves away from her face, but, at the last moment, I simply slid my hoof around the back of her neck. She looked up, wiping her eyes.

'What have you got to be sorry for?' I asked quietly, squeezing her shoulder. 'Why is this so important for you, anyway?'

Several seconds passed before I realised that she wasn't going to answer. I looked down at my lap, thinking as best I could.

'Listen,' I started, 'there'll be other things we can do together. We can read together. Don't you like that? And I can read the stuff you write, maybe tell you when it's too dorky.'

She managed a soft giggle, making me look up at her thankfully.

'I'm sorry,' she said at last, 'I don't know why I pushed you so hard... I, I guess I got a little carried away. I'm sorry, Rainbow.'

I leaned back a little towards my side of the couch, reaching for my tea. I took two quick sips and looked at the paintings and photographs on her wall. Impressions of Ponyville, and several collections of our group of friends. It reminded me of the first few years after she moved to the Old Oak Library.

'I know why,' I said, with a proud smile, 'you just want to help, and be the best friend ever.' I laughed, and she joined me with only the slightest hesitation. Order was restored, and I was starting to wonder what I would be doing with the rest of my evening. Perhaps I would offer to keep her company a little longer. For somepony with so many friends, she sure spent a lot of time alone.

The light of the candle buzzed for a moment, and the flame clung vigilantly to the last bit of molten wax. She looked at me strangely then: differently. 'Rainbow, I want to tell you something,' she said in a most earnest tone.

I raised an eyebrow and turned to face her, waiting expectantly. Outside the hoot-hoot-hoot of an owl could be heard.

'Well, why I tried so hard. To get you to keep writing, I mean. I...'

I resisted the urge to get her to skip to the point, but it was hard to maintain a show of absolute patience. She got up and went to examining the same books I was checking out myself just a few minutes ago, almost as if verifying if they were indeed still in the exact position she left them. Suddenly she started laughing. 'I just love writing!' she exclaimed. She looked over her shoulder, wiping the last tears from her eyes.

'And you're such a great friend,' she said.

Come to think of it, maybe my walk-out wasn't so insignificant, considering Twilight's behaviour that night. I had always thought that the reason she sometimes had these moments was the same as why she had obsessed about tests so much. Once she started worrying she just did not stop.

But okay, I was about to tell you about when I walked out of the lecture room over at the university grounds on a very sunny afternoon, in the middle of an analysis of my story.

Starting with that, I was so tired of hearing about Ripkin looking for his enchanted forelimb, or this valiant firemare risking her life for sick puppies stuck in burning treetops. So sick of hearing about stagnant paint oozing its way over the canvas of whatever statement was hidden inside it; sick of Mighty Thunderbolt the Omnilectric blasting evil gryphon pirates one after the other. I had felt the sudden urge to write about an insignificant, most insignificant pony saving up in order to buy her dad a box of tools for his birthday.

My story probably wasn't any better than the others, or any less laden with pretence. But all week I had resisted distractions, relayed weather duty, and hid in my room, beating words onto paper from nothing but my very head. I recall that for the most part words didn't come easy. Nothing of that being on a roll sort of stuff you sometimes heard about, where they flow easily from one thought to the next and you feel like a passenger in somepony else's story, just riding along and happy for it. No, it was more like self-inflicted torture; a labour of intent, and probably not much more.

But paragraph by paragraph my story had woven itself into place, the protagonist Flashy getting closer and closer to getting the bits together she so desperately needed. First she had tried a garage sale, but her schoolyard friend who's garage she was borrowing had far more popular items for sale. Then she had offered to do gardening chores, but she was so bad at it that she had to settle for running away from the angry ponies who had always insisted on paying her after the work was done. Finally the climax of the tale had her make a sizable wager of all her allowance with the local playground bully in a desperate effort to get the money just a few days before the deadline, and the latter half was all about her training and getting ready to take on the three-times-larger and two-years-older thug in an epic showdown.

Twilight had dropped by a few times to offer her hoof at the writing and editing, but I refused to show her my story, saying that she'd get to see it as soon as it was finished, and not a minute sooner. However, despite her initial resolve, she was content to simply keep me company and replenish my drink- and pastry supply while I diligently picked away at the words. So, while Flashy was working out, I too was working out, harder than ever before. While she was lifting weights, I was putting basic words in place, erasing them, and trying again. When she was reading about what a suplex was, and how to escape the grasp of a much bigger opponent, I was re-re-re-examining what I had written, each time willing the sentences to be better than they were when I first imagined them.

At one time Twilight had started telling me about her day, but upon realising that I couldn't pay attention to her, she let that be it. She was very understanding about it, and it got to be so that I barely noticed she was even there so often. I never did let her read the thing, but well, it was honestly not very good at all, so that's probably just as well.

When the week was over and we had found ourselves in a circle once more, gathered with several copies of each other's stories, the atmosphere had become very loose and vibrant. Ponies had spent time honing their craft; doing something they enjoyed immensely. Already several of the stories had been discussed, mostly in brief form. Quick opinions and criticisms were exchanged; suggestions offered to improve structure and plot, and I had become at least a little excited to hear what they would have to say about mine.

I casually sipped my drink (probably apple juice) as I waited my turn, wondering what would come up. Particularly - and this was pretty important, as I was not quick to be proud of any of my writing - I was proud of the resolution of the wrestling match. There was a ridiculously long sequence of moves right there in the sandbox, not too dissimilar to the sword fights in the previous story, but ultimately it came down to the simple fact that the bully never did have the money to pay her: He never even considered losing the showdown. But yeah, her dad loved her anyway, and you could probably figure out how it went down. Despite my satisfaction with the story and, of course, its ending, I did wonder if perhaps I should've explained the rules of the match more, as I barely touched on that in the story.

When the time came the first thing that struck me was that there was no, aside from a general compliment from Four Wheels (one that I can't quite now recall), immediate response. Perhaps they didn't understand the story or were simply overpowered by its gravity, or else, perhaps I was expecting too much. In fact, there were only two comments, and these had to be extracted by the professor who had gone almost desperate in asking for any input that could be offered.

First it was the little guy with the cool lightning-like brown mane who got up and stammered for a moment, before saying, 'yeah, your spelling was... well, maybe you could use a dictionary or something.'

'The punctuation was sporadic and inconsistent,' added skeleton-guy, not even looking up.

'You know what?' I said quite suddenly, 'I'm sick of this!'

And with that I barged out. They're lucky I didn't crash right through the window. Maybe the 'civility' of the place had rubbed off on me. I did catch a quick glimpse of Four Wheels, his knitted tie making him look particularly apologetic, though it could well have been on account of wearing a tie indoors during a particularly hot summer.

I had trotted at a leisurely pace, making my way northwards along the main road, with the sprinkling of shops on my right. I felt bad, but somehow, I sensed that maybe I should've felt far worse. There was a slight breeze that had picked up and caught my feathers, unzipping them just a little. I felt free. Even the weather had brought familiarity with it, and I knew that no matter what would happen, in the end, so long as I could fly through the sky and crash through clouds, beat my wings as hard or as slowly as I pleased, it didn't matter whether I could or could not write a simple story.

I was about to take off, getting the impulse to be one with the sky when I suddenly saw, in the distance, a little filly standing just outside the Staples Unlimited - they sell excellent high quality staples, not just the dull grey and brown sort, though I believe they went out of business a few years later. She was crying.

Hurrying over to her, I saw by the look on her face that she had been crying for quite a while now. That, or she was just really hardcore about it, and could cry several years' worth of tears in but a half-minute's time. I saw Pinkie do that once, so I know that it's at least not completely impossible. Anyway, I asked her what was the matter, wondering perhaps if she was several bits short of getting the staples she needed to fix her kite or something - not that she was carrying a kite or anything of the sort; in fact, she was only carrying the summer dress that was on her, flowing freely with the calm breeze.

'Greenie, Greeno, Greener, and Yellowy all gone... three weeks and seven hours, never coming back now, dad said so! They're just gone and I can't get them back!'

I tried to stop her for just a moment; get her to calm down, or at least explain what she was babbling about, but she just wheezed and continued, barely stopping her crying as she rambled and raved.

'He said close the window or they'll fly off! Just like that and go wherever but I thought they were my friends so they wouldn't, but they would! Yellowy was my favourite and sometimes dad would bring us birdseed and we'd eat it together!'

She smiled for less than a second before she resumed crying, yelling, 'but now he's gone!'

It took me a while, but eventually I understood what she was talking about and, after telling her to stay put, I hurried back to the university grounds. I jumped the tall fence of the garden premises with but a single flap of my wings and approached the tree right next to the lecture hall I had so impulsively escaped just twenty minutes prior. As I coaxed the parakeets, which, I'm sure you'll understand, was no easy business, I felt the need to peek inside, through the window.

What I gleamed was a little unnerving, but I could eventually steel myself into getting the parakeets on my wings, in a waltz-like back-and-forth of invitation and advance that was most demanding on my patience. Why I had imagined it would be any other way I did not know, but it bothered me that they had simply gone on with their business, talking leisurely, now and then pointing at their notebooks or paper. It wasn't that I thought they'd miss me or something, or that they should: I knew the moment I came in there that I didn't truly belong, not like I did out here, in the fresh air, with smelly birds needing to be gathered in sweat-inducing temperatures.

Fluttershy later told me that these birds sometimes feel the need to fly out through open windows, as large open air beckons them in irresistible ways that not many ponies would be able to understand. Or maybe she didn't quite put it like that, but, I did make sure to tell the filly about my friend living at the edge of town, near the Everfree Forest, that would know how to make sure to keep the "greens and yellows" happy, and make sure they wouldn't go missing again. I made sure to tell her at least twice as she was so happy to be reunited with the birds that she wasn't the best of listeners.

Well, I didn't exactly tell Twilight that last bit with the birds at the Coffee Swig, but I may well have at another occasion. After all, we hung out quite a bit over the years after, just chatting about every day stuff, and her lessons and teachings in magic. Most of it went over my head, quite frankly, but it was cool to see her be so excited about it anyway. It felt like old times, even older times, I mean; six friends celebrating each other's differences as much as our similarities.

So, I hope you'll forgive a mare her inclination to wax nostalgia and talk about how I wasn't all that awesome at that time. (I was just caught out of my element: I never doubted I was actually still great, but please keep in mind that I'm probably - most definitely - winking and sticking out my tongue as I write this.) In fact, I'm making myself stop this in just a moment. I just want to sit out on a cloud and appreciate the very air around me. One never got bored doing that, I think, but maybe I should consider speaking for myself on that account. I promise that afterwards I'll have another go at this: I'm writing a novel. A little late in coming, but I feel the time's right for it. It's a story about two cool pegasi. Maybe it'll be good.

Scootaloo stood up as she turned the final page of her letter, craning her neck out of the window to look straight up at the dark sky. If the sun was shining, she wouldn't have been able to do so without blinding her eyes, but in this case she could take her time to absorb the presence of every cloud. Before her very eyes it seemed that the initial shapes started blending together, and by now, she knew how silly it was to imagine them to be particular singular shapes like unicorns, flowers, or hydras.

There was a personal note at the back of the last page, added as a "post scriptum." She got herself fully back into the room and briefly considered closing the window. She also wondered if she had gotten enough groceries. Squeezing the letter safely under a toy train turned paperweight, she started scouring the cupboards of her apartment, cursing herself for letting the place get so disorganised. Deciding on honey-loop chocolate-covered sprinklebombs, she made sure to pour herself a tall glass of grape juice to go with it.

She looked over her shoulder at the kitchen table, the red curtains freely venturing towards the ceiling in the unpredictable autumn wind. She had all day, all week, for those last few words. She dunked the grape juice into the bowl and squeezed it under her hoof, carrying it to the table without a hurry. It would probably start raining soon.