Quite Probably the Worst Three Stories I've Ever Written, Which I Hope You Downvote Excessively, Because, Really, They Stink That Much, And I'm Sorry For All the Creatures Whom I Inflicted Them Upon. Please Don't Unfollow Me.

by Super Trampoline

Rating: everyone
Tags: Random
Length: 1630

Three stories with the theme of "Just Over the Horizon". Swept last places in the October Writeoff

Three stories with the theme of "Just Over the Horizon". Swept last places in the October Writeoff.

Triggers: [spoiler]horribly horrible short stories[/spoiler]. You have been warned!

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-10-20 20:44:18 UTC

A Story Not Unlike Winona

* tringle tringle*

"Welcome to Marigold's Tea Palace!"

"Heya, Marigold."

"Oh, why, hello there, Super. How are you?"

"I'm great; thank you for asking. I just finished the last of my entries for this month's Write Off. I'm finally grabbing breakfast now that I'm finished."

"A Write Off?"

"Yes, a Write Off. Twilight Sparkle hosts it. Unsurprising really."

"I've been known to pen a story or two in my time. Why haven't I ever heard of this 'Write Off'?"

"Well, I guess it's a tight-knit community. I only found out about it because one of my friends told me of its existence. Pretty funny story about him, actually."

"Oh? Well, seeing how its… just before eleven, so the morning rush is over but the lunch crowd has yet to arrive, the shop's pretty empty, as you can see. So why don't you tell me about this friend of yours and how they convinced you to join the write off event."

"Right, so, Twilight started the Write Off a few years ago after a talk with the book club she's in. Cheerilee runs that, by the way. She noted that there's all these literary events up in Canterlot, but that Ponyville is a bit backwater when it comes to writing original fiction. So she started a contest where writers could all agree on a prompt, and then submit their entries to her mailbox anonymously. She'd post them on the library bulletin board for all to see, and then everypony who entered, and those who didn't too, could vote on which were the best. Pretty cool system, really. Oh, and, uh, I guess I never ordered. Um, Vanilla Hazel Nut Coffee, five creamers, three sugar cubes."

"Goodness, Super, you're going to get diabetes!"

"Yeah, well, I like my coffee sweet."

"Okay, so this friend of yours told you about it?"

"Yeah. The funny thing is, his family name is Changéling. That 'e' has a little accent over it, but other than that, it's exactly what it sounds like. So he's always getting in trouble with the authorities, who think he's well, really bad at keeping his cover."

"So, do you think he's a changeling?"

"I don't know. But I do know one thing. This most recent write off, we both wrote horrible entries."

"Why would you do that?"

"Well, it can be fun to do stupid stuff sometimes. And as long as it's within the word limit, you can write whatever you want, and you can submit multiple entries. Well, he's been known to write purposely bad stuff here and there in the past, and he said he was going to do so again."

"And you are trying to write one that's even worse?"

"Nope. I want my story to be almost, but not quite as bad his. I hope together we sweep for last place."

"So, let me get this straight. You think your story is going to be almost dead last, correct?"

"Right."

"And you think the only author who submits a worse story is going to be the one who authorities are always confusing with an actual changeling?"

"Yes."

"So you're saying your story is going to be…"

"Just over the Horizon."

And I'm a Horizon

Just Over the Horizon smiled. He loved doing these video shoots. More advertising meant more exposure meant more creatures would become Horizons like him.

"Hello, my name is Just Over, and I'm a Horizon. That's right, I'm that line at the edge of your world where the earth and sky meet. It's an important job, and I'd like to tell you a bit about it and myself.

"I was born fourteen years ago to two wonderful parents, Beyond the and A Cloud on the. I have a little brother named On the, and a big sister named Wanda. I also have a pet fish I named after my big sister.

"A common misconception is that none of us are actually horizons. Ponies think that we're beyond it, or above it, or what ever, but that's not true. We all are Horizons; we just take on punny names. It's a family tradition or something. Every time I ask my about it, he just says something to the effect of 'I'll tell you when you're older, son.' But I'm getting off topic.

"Horizons have a very important job, as I'm sure you can imagine. We have to secure the boundary between the earth and sky, and make sure neither one tries to bleed into the other. It's a tough job, but I'm looking forward to it.

"We work closely with the royal alicorn, Princess Celestia. She used to have a sister, but unfortunately, we haven't spotted her in around six hundred years. When ever somehorizon asks Celestia, she just sighs and tells us her sister is trapped 'far beyond the horizon.' Well, that's during the day. If you ask her at night, the answer she gives is 'she's high above the horizon.' Sheesh, that lady's always so cryptic.

"Anyway as I was saying, we work closely with Celestia. We rotate who is going to sit out on the edge of the visible world that day. There's a pool of about fifty, maybe sixty of us. Actually, probably more like sixty five—I haven't counted recently. We take turns sitting out there, because it's a tough and monotonous job, and it can hurt a bit when Celestia's big ball o' burning gas rips through our midsection. The moon mostly just tickles.

"I myself am proud to have been the official horizon twenty-two times. I'm just starting off, so I don't do it very often. I have the rest of my life ahead of me, and I don't want to wear myself out to early like Broaden the did. My little bro hasn't even started horizonating yet. He will soon though.

"So yeah, it's a cool job to do, being the farthest thing ponies can see and all that. It can get a little lonely sometimes, since most ponies never reach us. I really hope Rainbow Dash does though. That'd be pretty cool.

"I guess that's all I really have to say about myself. I'm Just Over, and I'm a Horizon."

Just Around turned off the TV. "Ugh, these commercials are getting to me. I think I need to sleep." So the river bend brushed her teeth and put on some pajamas, and drifted into sweet reverie beneath the soft warm covers of her riverbed.

Rebus

___Just___

The Horizon

Why are you reading this? It's invisible. I mean, I know knowledge of the fact that there is more text here isn't hard to come by, considering there's this giant blank space and a cursory glance at the table of contents shows this chapter to be much longer than three words. So, since you, dear reader, probably have found this, let me use it to tell a story.

Once upon a time there was a pony princess named Twilight Sparkle, and the princess like plumbs. Not plums, the fruits. Plumbs. She was fascinated, absolutely fascinated by vertical strings. She also liked flying kites with her brother, in fact she sang whole song about it shortly before he got married. So I guess she liked string in general. But one day she was swinging on the swing on her crystal castle swing set, and the string that was holding up her swing snapped, and she fell and bonked her head and died. A real tragedy. But this was not the end for our heroine. No. Thanks to her heroin chrystal (empire) meth addiction (Hey, running a kingdom is stressful, okay? And honestly, what do you think the crystal empire actually exports? Snow? Well, sort of.), the pony mafia came over to her crystal tree castle to collect the money she owed them. But they found her dead with a bump on her head. This saddened them greatly. It also rhymed. They all cried over her dead body lying in the dirt under the swing set with the broken swing, and they cried quite a lot. Their tears mixed with the dirt and became mud. Because this is a fairy tale bad fanfic or something and I can deus ex machina all I want, it turns out that the dirt had magical healing powers, but because of the severe drought the area was currently going through (Probably Discord's fault), the castle grounds staff (The guy Fluttershy was a jerk to in "Putting Your Hoof Down") only watered the lawn near the dirt beneath the swing set at night, and honestly, how often do you wander around playgrounds at two in the morning? That's hella creepy. So no one had ever realized that this dirt had healing powers and that water was the activating chemical. That might be the reagent or something, I don't know; it's been a long time since I stumbled through magic chemistry. So any way, the dirt turns into mud, and it starts to sparkle and stuff, and the mob is really freaked out. Like, really. They start running around while screaming like little fillies, which is appropriate because they actually are all eight to eleven. The pony mafia's been recruiting lately. You got to start them off young, am I right? So the Princess Twilight Sparkle, whose middle name is Horizon, by the way, sees all these girls hovering over her, amazed. They aren't hovering over anypony else, just over the Horizon. And she sits up, amazed to be alive again, all thanks to this magical mud. She stands up, surrounded by school fillies she owes money to, and walks to the front entrance of her castle, opens the door, gets on the floor, and everypony walks the dinosaur.