Not Another Speedwriting Ficby Admiral BiscuitChaptersTrotcon 2017Trotcon 2018EFNW Iron Author 2019Trotcon 2019The Stars are GoneToday is a Good Day to DieEFNW Iron Author 2021EFNW 2022EFNW Iron Author 2023PVCF Prompt Fic—Starlight's Magic BoxPVCF Iron Author 2023EFNW 2024 Speedwriting PanelEFNW Iron Author 2018Vivid Syntax's Super Short Fics (EFNW 2019)EFNW 2021—Writing Workshop, Scene DescriptionsTrotcon 2017Trotcon Speedfic Panel 7/14/17 Admiral Biscuit Luna and Roseluck in the Zebralands The dirigible was off-course. That much was known. How far off-course, nopony knew. The Sirocco winds had whipped up the desert sand, obscuring the view of the ground below, and the night sky was obscured by high clouds. Roseluck was not worried. She knew that up in the bow of the airship, Princess Luna was in her cabin, and surely the princess of the night knew where the stars were, even if they were obscured. Right? "Your Highness?" Nightshade, Thestral commander, regarded the lunar diarch nervously. "We're, um, lost." "How can we be lost? Does the captain not have navigation instruments?" "Yes, but with the sky obscured and the ground obscured. . . ." "Perhaps we could simply stay airborne until the sky clears," Princess Luna suggested. "The chief engineer says that we are low on hydrogen," Nightshade said. So we must land soon--as soon as we find any suitable land." Meanwhile, on the main deck of the dirigible, the ship's pegasi were taking flight, descending into the sandy malestrom. Roseluck watched them with a growing sense of alarm. The pegasi frequently flew around the airship, inspecting the rigging and the envelope, but these were flying away and not coming back. A vague sense of unease was growing in her breast. Didn't sailorponies say that rats deserted sinking ships? Why wouldn't airship pegasi do the same? She thought about asking one of the non-winged crew members--they, at least, couldn't so easily abandon ship--but she decided to wait. She knew that she had a tendancy to panic unnecessarily, and maybe this was one of those times. Sure enough, after a while the pegasi started coming back, and Roseluck breathed a sigh of relief. That relief was somewhat short-lived, though--after the last pegasus landed, Roseluck started hearing the hiss of escaping gas, and the dirigible began to sink towards the blowing sand below. Nightshade stepped back in Princess Luna's chambers. "The captain says that we are far south of our destination. We will not be able to fly again until the storm clears." "A pity . . . I was looking forward to meeting with the Saddle Arabians." "I could ask the captain how far from Saddle Arabia we are," Nightshade offered. It was tempting, but Princess Luna knew that the captain probably had his hooves full already, so she simply shook her head. Perhaps this is an opportunity, Luna thought. I could meet more of our subjects. The flight down was bumpy and rough. All the airship pegasi did their best to keep the ship under control as it descended through the whipping winds, but they didn't have nearly enough wingpower to battle a duststorm. Roseluck had retreated to her stateroom. She thought that if she was going to die, ti would be better to do it in a bed then clinging to the railing in horror. When she ship finally landed, she breathed a sigh of relief. She was still alive, and just as importantly, none of the flower arrangements she had brought for the Saddle Arabian embassy were damaged. She hastily packed up her belongings, completely oblivious to the fact that their dirigible was not in Saddle Arabia. Nightshade looked out the porthole and studied the zebras that were now beginning to encircle the downed craft. They didn't look hostile--but it was her job to make sure that the Princess was safe. I am sure they are peaceful," Princess Luna said. "We have been at peace with the zebras for centuries. They are just curious, that is all." She rubbed her hooves together. "Come along, let us meet our subjects." Author's Note In this fic, I was hampered by both not being nearly as fast with a typewriter as I am with a keyboard, but also an unexpected mechanical failure of my machine. Luckily, ROBCakeran53 was ready to help out. Trotcon 2018Rainbow Dash and Featherweight on the Moon Trotcon 2018 Admiral Biscuit The moon was very far away. Everypony knew that. Princess Luna had once been on the moon. She was the only pony who had been, as far as anypony knew. This was, of course, a sensitive topic for both Luna and Celestia, so nopony had asked either diarch directly. Rainbow Dash often sat on a cloud and contemplated the moon. It was further away than any cloud she knew of. As high as she’d flown on weather patrols, the moon had never appeared to get any closer. She was going to fly to the moon. This was certain. This was a fact, as much of a fact as Celestia raising the sun every morning. Rainbow was a brash pony, and even she knew it. Thus, she kept some of her bragging to a minimum, not claiming that she was going to do something until she had actually accomplished it once. And, if she’d kept her muzzle shut, nopony would have ever known that she planned to fly to the moon. Scootaloo had been feeling down about her inability to fly, so Rainbow had tried to cheer her up the only way she knew--by bragging that she was going to fly to the moon. Scootaloo had mentioned that to the other Crusaders. One of them had told Twist who had told Rumble and then word had gotten to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon--neither who would have confronted an adult mare, no matter how ludicrous her claims. Word had eventually gotten to Featherweight, who was clever enough to recognize a newsworthy story when it fell into his lap. When he asked Rainbow for an interview, she realized that it was time to put up or shut up. Rainbow was not a big believer in thinking before speaking (or thinking in general), and after winging her way thorough an interview, she began preparations in earnest. Flying from the ground was impractical. Rainbow needed a higher launch point, which meant either a cloud or a balloon. Staging took the better part of a day, along with special dispensation from the weather team. Snacks were cached on the clouds, and she took flight from Ponyville at sunset. She did not make it to the moon. She was far, far above Ponyville when she finally tyurned back. So far that she could not see buildings on the ground, only small points of light that were Ponyville and Canterlot and Cloudsdale. For all of Rainbow's brashness and bravado, she knew that it would take her time to build up her strength and endurance, so every day she flew higher and higher. She got a scarf and then a hat and then a sweater. It was a week before the moon got appreciably larger in her vision and full month before she got close enough to begin to decide on a landing point. There were all sorts of crates on the moon, and while the bottom of a crater might be an easier landing spot it was further to fly. It was almost six months before her first almost-landing. It could have been an actual landing if she had desired. She’d gone below the rocky lip of the crater, briefly entering into its shadow, and then she’d focused on the ground below her and it looked almost like sand. Grounded ponies didn’t appreciate that there were different landing techniques for different surfaces from sand to grass, from water to cloud. But there were! She would have, if she'd had less confidence in her abilities, and if her flight had had less historical import. Being the first since Luna to set hoof on the moon was a special occasion, one that she was determined to have properly documented. So she told Featherweight. The next morning, Featherweight gave her an exclusive interview and then she began cloud-hopping, working her way up further and further. The moon wasn’t up yet, and she took her time. She was at the highest cloud, and she could see it over the edge of the horizon. It was not visible to anypony on the ground yet and would not be for a while. Experience was her guide for the next length of her flight--with no aerial landmarks, she had to choose a direct course to where the moon would be when she got there. That was where the practice came in. No longer did she look back at the ground. Only the moon, and her position in the sky. She had to make a few course corrections, but not many, and then she was skimming over the surface of the moon. She came up over the lip of a crater and then glided down into the flatter terrain underneath . . . craters were almost like upside-down mesas. The ground was sandy and loose, looser than she had imagined, and for a moment she lost her footing. She flared her wings and then dropped back down again and then she was down on the moon, the first pegasus ever to set her hooves on the lunar body. Featherweight flat-out didn’t believe her. The lunar dust on her hove and in her fur wasn’t proof enough, and she had flown out of eyeshot. Even Twilight’s telescope wasn’t good enough to resolve her when she got close to the moon. Not that anypony called her a liar, certainly not to her face. And Rainbow wasn’t the cleverest pony, but the more she read Featherweight’s interview the more she became convinced that the reporter didn’t believe her. She started to question herself, and flew another flight to the moon, just to prove to herself that she had done it. And that was good enough for her. Almost. “I believe you, Dashie.” “Thanks, Pinkie.” Rainbow fluttered her wings. “But hardly anypony else does. If Featherweight’s article hadn’t been so . . . so. . . .” “Condescending?” “Yeah.” “He writes fairly.” That was something that Rainbow Dash could agree with. “Take him up there with you,” Pinkie Pie suggested. So she did. Author's Note This time at Trotcon, while I had to contend with an earlier panel time, I had no typewriter malfunctions and managed what I think was a reasonably decent story, certainly for the one hour period I had to publish. EFNW Iron Author 2019Iron Author 2019 Prompt: Focus on a minor/side character from the show who has been the focus of an episode NOT any of the mane six or a princess! NOT fandom characters (like Berry Punch or Derpy) Should be featured in an episode Be set 10 or more years in the future Petunia Paleo didn’t notice at first as the train begin slowing. She had a bench to herself and was working her way through the latest issue of Journal de Physique despite her limited Prench skills. Comme celle faisant allusion-- She looked up, suddenly aware that the train had stopped. The conductor hadn’t announced any station stops, which suggested that the train had broken. Again. The trip to the badlands had thus far been fraught with misfortune, so far taking two days longer than it ought to have. Plans had been changed, and changed again, and changed again. She tried to turn her attention back to the journal, but her mind just wasn’t in it, so instead she cast her gaze outside the train window, to the verdant forest that came almost up against the side of the railcar. It was easy to imagine it an untamed jungle, perhaps with ancient ruins just beyond her view--but that was the kind of thing that Daring Do would be interested in. Not her. She could faintly make out through the trees what looked like a rock face, and for a moment she imagined it as an ancient castle before a gust of wind rustled the trees and revealed it for the short rock outcropping that it was. Geology was important to paleontology. She couldn’t just go digging anywhere and expect to find fossils; the land had shifted and changed through time. Some ponies even thought that the land floated in the seas and drifted around slowly on the currents, although in her opinion, that was a stupid theory. Clouds drifted, continents didn’t. But they did rise and fall, rains came and went, and before the ponies it was all chaotic and disorganized. What had once been a fertile valley might have become the bottom of a shallow sea; a lake might have dried up and desertified, the only evidence of what it once was the fossils buried beneath. Petunia stuck the journal back in her saddlebags and shifted around on her seat to get a better look at the rock outcropping. It looked like it could be limestone, and limestone often had fossils. She stilled her wagging tail. No more was she the eager filly she’d once been, digging holes willy-nilly in search of discovery. She was educated, a department head. Expeditions were planned out in meticulous detail. She tore her eyes away from the scenery and looked around the coach. Ponies were grumbling about the delay, quietly thus far. The conductor hadn’t yet come through saying how long it would be. The vestibules of the rail cars were open, she had a few tool in her saddlebags, and the outcropping wasn’t that far away. She could just take a quick look. Surely she’d hear the train as it started up again. ***** The train crew was crowded around the locomotive, like doctors attending a patient. Steam hissed out around it, blocking some of her view. Can’t be a simple problem, or there’d only be a couple of them working on it. She’d have plenty of time. The tracks were built up on an hill of loose gravel, and she picked her footing carefully as she walked down. It wouldn’t do to break a leg. Down at the bottom, the ballast rocks transitioned into muck, and then the edge of the forest, trying to reclaim what once had belonged to it. From her position, she couldn’t see the outcropping any more, but that didn’t matter. She knew where it was. On occasion, her saddlebags got caught on a low branch, or dragged up against a rock. She squeezed through as best as she could, pausing long enough to identify the larger rocks she passed. As she’d hoped, they were limestone. Even better, she could see small fossils in some of them, ancient leaves trapped forever in stone. Aquatic ferns, and little twisted shells, no doubt from the long-extinct snails that had eaten those farms. Interesting, but not what she was looking for. Still, she picked up a few of the better fossils, taking careful note of where she found them, and put them in her saddlebags. ***** Petunia nearly jumped out of her fur at the shrieking whistle behind her. She scoped up one last fossil, shoved it in her saddlebags, and then took off at a fast trot through the woods. By the time she reached the railroad right-of-way, the train had already began to move. She scurried up the slope as fast as she could and lept into the open vestibule of the last car on the train. A few heads turned to watch her as she walked down the aisle, but most ponies were too lost in their own situation to pay her any mind. The train was moving at a gallop when she reclaimed her seat, and she settled back in place. Trees flashed by outside, and then the train thudded across a short wooden bridge. She caught a glimpse of a waterfall upstream, one which looked it was formed in the same geological formation that had produced the outcropping. If I was still a filly, I’d have let the train leave without me. ***** That thought lingered in her mind. When she’d been a filly, it had been her parents dragging her back, and she swore to Celestia that as soon as she was an adult, she’d be able to go and explore wherever she wanted to. And that had been true, to an extent. But now every trip was preceded with days of meetings and budget arguments, of checking through journals to find if that area had been explored, and if so what had been found. She had to herd an entire team of graduate students, had to write papers on what she’d found--it just wasn’t much fun anymore. Petunia dropped the journal on the bench and got up, moved out into the aisleway. Set her saddlebags on the bench and went thorough them quickly, just to make sure she’d packed well, and she had. Years in the Badlands had refined her packing skills. She went back through the rail cars, towards the back of the train. Now a few heads turned her way, especially when she got to the last car. The vestibule was empty. It didn’t look like the train was going that fast when she looked out at the forest, but up close the rocky ballast was just zipping right by. This is stupid. I’ll break a leg for sure. When there was soft grass all the way up to the ballast, she jumped, tumbling along briefly before skidding to a stop, whole and unhurt. Her heart was hammering away in her chest, and her mind was full of the thrill of discovery. Since there was no longer any need to keep the tracks close, she picked a fairly easy path, winding through the more open spots in the forest. She kept her eyes open and her ears alert, wary of any monster who might make this part of Equestria its home. ***** It took a while, but she found the rock outcropping again. It wasn’t as pronounced, being overgrown some placed, or buried beneath loamy soil. A few miles further, and she might have missed it entirely, might have just stepped over a slight rise in the ground. She settled in a spot between two tall trees. Now she wasn’t rushed, now she wasn’t listening for the noise of the train; now she could concentrate on the fossils like she really wanted. And what a treasure trove it was! The rock was thick with them, the impressions laid down millions of years ago. Even in the short height of the outcropping, she could see two distinct phases of life, with a fuzzy sort of boundary between them, evidence of some ancient cataclysm. She followed it back, working her way almost back to where she’d first visited the wall. The sun was low and the shadows long when Petunia finally gave up for the night. The wall of rock provided a halfway decent shelter, and finding a pine tree only served to make it better. White pine needles were soft and comfortable, and the thick boughs would keep the wind off her, keep her warm. ***** Climbing back the embankment was difficult, now that her saddlebags were weighed down with fossils. Her center of balance was to far back, and she kept almost tipping. She’d almost cut it too close; the train was nearly on top of her as she waved her hooves to signal it and then jumped back off the tracks as it thundered by. A moment later, the pounding of the wheels across expansion joints was muted by the shrill ear-flattening screech of the locomotive brakes, and she got back up between the rails and trotted after the stopping train. It took a little bit of explanation before the conductor finally allowed her to have a seat without paying for a new ticket. And when the train finally got to its destination, it took more explanation and a few very apologetic telegrams back to the university, but it had been worth it. It had all been worth it. Author's Note At first, I thought that a background character would be a perfect prompt for me, but when Xepher added that said character should have been the focus of an episode, my initial idea of using Apple Leaves fell by the wayside. At the moment, I couldn’t think of any speaking characters who’d been major episode characters (of course, now I can think of dozens off the top of my head), so I hopped over to the Wiki page for foals, and when I came across Petunia Paleo, that was a pony I’d written before, and knew decently well . . . even though now that I think about it, I don’t believe I’ve ever actually seen that episode. Also worth note, since I was judging, I didn’t submit my entry. Trotcon 2019Prompt: Cheerilee and Vinyl Scratch in Manehattan Cheerilee turned her head towards the entrance of the arena. A steady crowd of ponies were streaming out, but she was waiting for one mare in particular. She finally found her, appearing for a moment as if she were somepony else--her dark glasses were tucked up above her forelock, pushed just against the base of her horn. As soon as she stepped out into the sunlight, her horn lit briefly and her glasses slid down over her eyes, presenting the familiar facade of DJ-Pon3. Cheerilee waved and the unicorn came over. “I should have told you,” she said. It wasn’t much of an introduction, but it served. Vinyl nodded, and Cheerilee continued. “She . . . I didn’t know you were into wrestling.” And at first I was just didn’t feel like bringing it up, maybe lingering resentment from foalhood, maybe a belief that being a wrestler wasn’t a ‘real’ job. It was different for Vinyl. Her housemate was famous in her own right, and everpyony knew that Octavia was one of the very best cellists in all of Equestria. Anypony would be proud to be her--that wasn’t fair. Vinyl was equally famous; maybe not a pony who Chererilee would go out of her way to see, she wasn’t into the dance scene and scratching turntables, but she couldn’t help how much Vinyl had overcome to get where she was . . . and everypony knew that a cutie mark never lied. “I just didn’t want to sound like I was bragging,” Cheerilee said. Vinyl nodded. She flicked her ears--Cheerilee wasn’t overly adept at reading ear language, but she knew it well enough to get by. “Yes, I know.” Cheerilee’s drooped. “I should be proud. She’s proud I’m a teacher.” Vinyl shrugged, and her ears twitched. “It’s true. She said so, after I--” Vinyl raised an eyebrow. “I subbed for her in a match.” Vinyl grinned. “You already knew that, didn’t you?” A nod. “Rainbow told you.” Another now, a couple of ear flicks; although Cheerilee could have understood even if Vinyl hadn’t explained. Some ponies got angry at gossip, especially when they were involved in that gossip, but Cheerilee couldn’t blame Rainbow. She was always enthusiastic when meeting ponies she thought of as ‘awesome,’ and Cherry Blossom certainly qualified. As well as the Ponyville schoolteacher kicking flank in the arena. Vinyl touched her hoof to her lips and brought it forward, a simpler way of semaphoring ‘thank you.’ “We could go backstage and meet her,” Cheerilee offered. “She didn’t get me VIP tickets, but we are family, and. . .” Vinyl grinned. Octavia never got VIP tickets, either. “But . . . there are ponies who paid a lot of bits for their tickets,” Cheerilee said. “We should wait until after they’ve had their turn.” Vinyl nodded, then her ears started moving. “No, I don’t want to wait here, either,” Cheerilee replied. “But--there’s a Hayburger down the street. Want to get a snack?” Author's Note Originally written on typewriter at Trotcon. In case you missed the comics, Cheerilee has a twin sister named Cherry Blossom who wrestles under the stage name “Mystery Mare.” The Stars are GoneThe Stars are Gone Admiral Biscuit Sweetie Belle looked dejectedly in her craft drawer. She’d just finished a piece of crayon art depicting The Great and Powerful Trixie defeating the Ursa Major. Admittedly, she was taking some liberty with history, and she knew full well that her big sister hardly approved of the Great and Powerful Trixie, but art was supposed to be speculative. It was no fun to always make drawings of things that had actually happened, or—in the case of her many sketches of cutie mark potential—things that might one day happen, just not as soon as she hoped they would. Her drawing was nearly finished. The Ursa had an ample coating of glitter to make him look more fearsome, and The Great and Powerful Trixie’s magic was also sparkling with glitter. The sky overhead, however, was boring. She’d wanted to color it black, but didn’t have enough of her black crayon left to color the whole sky, and Rarity yelled at her when she used makeup for art. Glittering stars would be good enough. They’d get the point across that this was the night sky, and they’d add a nice bit of punch to the otherwise empty negative space on the drawing. The only problem was the stars were gone. Sweetie Belle wasn’t blessed with her older sister’s organizational style; she’d learned from Magnum that as long as you were good at remembering where you’d had something last, that was a good place to leave it, and it generally worked well for her. Except when Rarity moved her book bag after tripping over it, or lectured her on the importance of keeping dresses in the house and pinecones outside. There was no reason for Rarity to have moved her stars, though. Her beautiful gold-foil stars, an entire sheet of them with only one or two missing. Sweetie yanked the drawer out as far as it could go, ignoring the wave of glitter that slid up and over to the lip. She ran her hoof through the clutter, finally resorting to dumping things out on the floor, and there were still no stars. None of the other drawers in her desk yielded stars, either. Sweetie sat on the floor and pushed her art supplies around on the off chance that the stars might suddenly materialize, but they did not. Finally, she stood back up. There was no need to be disappointed. True, her art wasn’t finished, but that could wait. What was more important was the mystery of the missing stars. Prancy Drew wouldn’t just mope; she’d figure out where they’d gone. “Cutie Mark Crusader Detective, yay!” Sweetie bounded out of her room and down the stairs, trailing a small whirlwind of glitter behind her. Her first stop would be the treehouse—with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo on the case, she’d find her missing stars for sure, and maybe they’d get a cutie mark in detectiving. Author's Note A speedwriting contest fic, in GaPJaxie’s new Discord group! (Note, Discord link will expire tomorrow at 6pm EDT) We were all given an hour to write, but because work, I only had about 17 minutes. Turned out okay, got DQed in the first round by fics that were better. Congrats to the winner, TheHatMan! Today is a Good Day to DieToday is a good day to die... I would prefer tomorrow, though Admiral Biscuit She’d always expected her life to flash before her eyes. Wasn’t that what ponies said? That right before you died, your life passed before your eyes? Her life didn’t flash before her eyes. Instead, it was nothing but a flashing warning light and a blaring alarm that set her fur on end. It was a little thing, but little things rapidly turned into big things. That was why there was an alarm; it was supposed to warn a pony before things got completely out of hoof. It was supposed to warn a pony while the situation was still recoverable. Programmers couldn’t see the future, though. They considered some forms of failure, they wrote a useful guidebook to help in bad situations, but even they could not have forseen a collision--or if they did, they glossed over it. They might have written in the manual to not run into things, and that was good advice. They were safe at home, whoever they were. She was not. She was falling through the uncaring sky, her machine coming apart around her. Secondary alarms flickered on, their tone less urgent. They were systems she could potentially live without, at least in the short term. Long term? Well, she was pretty much fucked. Mama hadn’t raised a quitter, so she reached out and silenced the master caution warning--it wasn’t telling her anything useful any more. She tentatively moved the tiller, trying to establish how much control authority she had left. Not much, but not nothing. The ship responded sluggishly to her command, its movements wallowing instead of crisp. Training kicked in, hours upon hours of practice in simulators as fake emergencies were thrown at her. There was no flashback of her uncompleted life going through her mind; instead, there was a purely analytical flowchart of how her current situation related to anything at all she’d trained for. Right behind that came years of experience at the controls, the feel of the craft when things were normal and the feel of the craft when things were less than normal. The flashback to the impact, the blow that shook her ship from stem to stern, the moment of panic. The dryness of her mouth and the chill that ran down her spine, the desire to run, to gallop away followed by the realization that there was nowhere to gallop to. Outside was death; inside was life, at least for a few fleeting moments. More alarms blare--secondary systems failing. The ship knows it’s mortally wounded. She can still see tumbling bits outside the window, too many of them critical parts of her craft. She punches the console, her shoe denting the uncaring metal. The alarm isn’t silenced. “Hull breach, hull breach.” The bulkheads are shut, they work automatically. In fact, if she were to die at the controls right now, the autopilot might manage to carry her home, or at least close to home. For a moment, she can see it. A ghost ship, controlled by nothing but the residual magic in its navigation system, finding its way home. Inside, nothing but a corpse. No. Mamma didn’t raise a quitter. She grabs hold of the control yoke, and punches the autopilot off. The ship might be able to guide itself without her, even with this much damage, but she’s not willing to let it. If there is to be death today, it will be with her at the helm, laughing in the face of Fate. * * * The ship is sluggish, the damage mortal. Bits and pieces of aluminum are still flaking off the wing, she’s dumping fuel through multiple tank breaches, most of her hydraulics have gone teats-up, and in terms of helpful suggestions, the QRH is a useless waste of paper. It might as well suggest she pack it up and go home for all the help it has to offer. Engineers programmed the systems to try and save the ship but didn’t give as much thought to the ponies within, she knows that. “Pan, pan, pan.” Her voice in the radio is strained, high-pitched. “Flight 1408.” A pause, then the ground control replies. Laconic, as always. “Uh, go ahead, 1408, state intentions.” What are her intentions? Live. She wants to live. Today is a good day to die, but tomorrow would be better. “Extensive port wing damage, hydraulics failing, fuel leak.” You gotta lay it on thick before ground pays attention. She could declare an emergency, but that feels too final. “Need direct vector to any suitable landing field.” She concentrates on her voice, gotta keep the edge of panic out. If she can talk calmly, she is calm. “Understood.” The voice on the radio is calm, and why shouldn't it be? He’s sitting in a comfy chair, not fighting for his life. Clearance instructions blur by; she’s focused on her struggling craft. “Need direct routing.” She focuses on her charts, hoping for a miracle, but one is not forthcoming. * * * She’s got one shot. Her craft is hopelessly damaged, barely capable of flight any more. It doesn’t cut through the air like it ought, but it’s still flying. She’s kept the sink rate survivable, at the very least. But will it be enough? For a moment, she moves outside herself, seeing the struggling craft plummeting through the air, picturing the controls set and held in the only position which still allows some semblance of controlled flight. The engines are stilled; it is a ghost drifting through the sky. Ahead, a small gap in the trees. Not a runway, that hope had long passed. Her hooves work the controls, delicately bringing her craft in line with the last hope she has. The radio can’t hear her any more; she’s gone beyond the horizon, and there is nothing left but her and a crippled machine. Oh, to be a pegasus, and to soar majestically through the window to freedom. * * * The deceptively soft sound of trees brushing against the fuselage, and then the drop, the twisting chaos as her craft is torn apart by the uncaring forest, tumbling and plummeting to its fate, now entirely beyond any last hope of control. She keeps her hooves on the tiller, for what illusory comfort it provides. More telltales illuminate, although at this point they’re not meaningful. The last dying gasp of the machine, skidding across the snowy forest floor and then all is silent, the power has failed, too. She punches the cockpit glass out with a hoof and stumbles away from the smouldering wreckage in a daze. One leg drags behind, broken, although she isn’t aware of that. She’s outside in the good air, she’s alive, and that’s what matters more than anything else. Author's Note Written for the eighth Quills and Sofas speedfic contest. Lost in the first round of voting. I kinda dithered back and forth with her being in a space ship or an airplane and ultimately decided to write it so it could be either. Anyway, hope y'all enjoy it, for what it is. EFNW Iron Author 2021This early in the year, their garden wasn’t much. A clear rectangle of soil, surrounded by a border of snow. Peachy had cleared it off one moon ago, after the last heavy snow of the season had fallen, and gotten to work planting. Carrots, beets, kale—those could all survive the chill if she kept their leaves warm at night, so she patiently covered them with straw every evening and then brushed it off in the morning, letting the leaves receive a little sun. Red spent his time out in the barn, preparing their tools and implements for spring. The teeth on the spring harrow needed sharpening, all the gears and axles needed to be lubricated, and their muck wagon badly needed to be re-decked, although that was a project that could wait until later if it had to. Satisfied that all was well, that the few cold-hearty weeds had been dealt with, Peachy nosed the straw back in place and walked to their house to begin dinner. She scraped her hooves clean on the mat, grabbed a couple of split logs with her teeth and balanced them on her back as she crossed the threshold into their house. The kitchen stove stayed burning all day in the wintertime to supplement the heat given off by the fireplace. *** After dinner, Peachy banked the fire in the stove while Red washed up. She nuzzled his cheek, he booped her nose with a soapy hoof, and the pair retired to the main room of the house. They had a coffee table that had been covered for much of the winter in sketches of their fields, scraps of paper labeled with seed varieties, seed catalogs which had come in the mail, and a dog-eared weather almanac. A farmer’s puzzle: which crops to plant, in which order, in order to take best advantage of the soil, the sun and the rain. Now that the seeds were ordered and there was nothing to do but wait for Winter Wrap-Up. “Got us something.” Red tugged open the credenza drawer. “When I was in Ponyville last market day, Spilsberry had a fretsaw painting for sale.” “Fretsaw painting?” He nodded. “It’s a map of all of Equestria, but all cut up and mixed up.” “Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy a map that wasn’t cut up?” “Where’s the fun in that?” He pulled the box out with his teeth and carried it over to the table, then dumped it out. “All the settlements is labeled.” Peachy looked at the pieces, scattered around the table. “Sure is a lot of desert, I didn’t think there was that much desert in all of Equestria.” “Them are upside down.” Red turned it over, revealing a dissected swamp. *** Neither of them had ever assembled a puzzle before, and the two debated strategy. Both quickly found the pieces for Ponyville and Canterlot and assembled that small region of Equestria, but then were at a loss. Neither of them knew where Las Pegasus was, nor Seattle, nor Horseshoe Bay. Peachy decided that since the border pieces were distinctive, it would be easiest to build them first and work in from there, while Red preferred working out from Ponyville. *** Winter Wrap-Up morning dawned bright and clear, and neither of them had time to add a few more pieces to the puzzle before getting ready to work. She checked the garden while he went into the barn and got their plows and harnesses squared away. Both ponies were more than familiar with the tasks at hoof; they barely paid attention as Mayor Mare gave her annual pep-talk, or as Twilight and Amethyst Star gave out assignments. By noon, Ponyville was clear, the snow all dumped on the banks of the reservoir. Now country ponies returned to their fields, accompanied by the townponies. Fields were plowed off, soil was turned and prepared for planting, Luna’s moon illuminating as they worked into the night. Red and Peachy shrugged their harnesses off in the barn and trudged back to the house, scraping their hooves before crossing the threshold. Red covered a yawn, and Peachy pulled the door shut behind them. “Seeds tomorrow?” “Rain’s scheduled.” Red tilted his muzzle skyward. “Don’t like it, been talking to some of the other farmers, nopony likes it. It’s a new idea from Cloudsdale, they say. Rain’ll melt off the last of the snow that got forgotten.” “The ground’s still half-frozen, and what’s not frozen is saturated with snowmelt!” “Gonna be a lot of angry ponies in a couple days,” Red said. “Somepony might get herself tarred and de-feathered.” *** There wasn’t much she could do to protect her garden. As the rains started, Peachy harvested the beets and carrots which were mature, and a few day’s worth of kale—there was no point in taking more, it would wilt before it could be eaten. She thought about making sandbags with the burlap sacks that they had in the barn, but knew that her plants could survive a few days underwater if they had to. “Stay strong,” she told her plants. “It will only be for a few days.” *** She’d just finished making dinner when Red came trudging in. “Water’s at the top of the dam, and—” “Did you scrape your hooves on the way in?” “Uh—” “Red Hyslop Apple, you know better than that. You weren’t raised in a barn.” He thought about saying that when the farm inevitably flooded, muddy hoofprints on the floor would be the least of their problems, but his father had always said ‘happy wife, happy life.’ “Applejack’s already making a stink about it,” he said, when he sat down at the dinner table. “And I ran into your friend Lavender on her way to complain to the mayor, I guess some of the low-lying areas have already started to flood, and that’s without the dam overtopping.” Peachy rolled her eyes. “Lavender’s fields flood every spring, that’s why her soil’s so good. If I thought floodwater’d uproot all the rocks in the south field, I’d be hoping we did, too.” “Her field might flood, but her shed usually doesn’t.” “It’s that bad?” Red nodded. “I heard the pegasi are stopping the rain, but they’re too late, they’ve already passed the threshold, water’s still running into the reservoir and snow’s still melting and there’s already a trickle over the top. Some of the ponies in low-lying areas have already left their houses to stay with friends or family. I’m going to take the wagon back, load it up with burlap sacks, and we’ll try and get a little more freeboard.” “You want some help?” “You stay here. Worst happens, use your best judgment on what you can move, what you can get above the water. We’re high enough we should be okay.” Peachy leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you.” *** She’d moved all that she could, she’d gone to the garden and given it another pep-talk, and she’d seen the moonlight reflecting off low spots in the forest and fields as the water crept in. Slowly, stealthy, like a thief in the night, inevitable and unstoppable. Peachy knew the farmhouse and could navigate it on the darkest night, but tonight she wanted the comfort of a hurricane lamp. When Red got home, he’d be hungry. Soup was warm and filling, soup could simmer on the stove for hours more yet. Soup didn’t occupy her attention nearly enough. She watched out the window as the rising water inundated her garden, and for a while it was still visible by the plants sticking up above the water and then they were gone, too. *** As the water crept across the threshold, Peachy nosed another puzzle piece into place, finally completing the Unicorn Range. The front door was open—there was little point in closing it; it wouldn’t keep the water out—and she could see torches and lanterns and lit windows in the distance, all across Ponyville and the surrounding fields. A few pegasi zipped around the skies, but most of them were gone and she could hardly blame them. Out in the fields, a silhouette of a bulky stallion, wagon behind. She could see the ripples around him as he pulled, like a boat in the water. He waved, and she waved back, then waded across their porch and down into the floodwater. Her hooves were wet anyway. She caught up to Red at the barn, and after he’d backed the wagon into its spot, helped him unhitch and unharness. “Dam failed,” he said simply. “Hole opened, ate up all the sandbags and rocks we tossed in. Pepperstep’s house is gone, it was right in the path and didn’t stand a chance. Smashed to flinders.” “Always said she was a fool for building there.” The two of them started wading back to the house. “Mayor ought to make the weatherpony who thought of the rain go and find every board. You want some soup? I made a pot.” He paused at the threshold and rubbed his hooves across the mat before stepping inside. Peachy stuck her tongue out at him. Author's Note My 2021 Iron Author entry . . . for those of you who don’t know what that is, you’re given a prompt and two hours to write. This year, you had to pick three of the four listed words: Threshold Puzzle Garden Lead Balloon They were also supposed to be used meaningfully, rather than just once in the story to tick off a box. As usual, I did a little bit of research; jigsaw puzzles are called that because you cut the pieces out with a fretsaw, and John Spilsbury is the first to have created them. He was a cartographer, and rather than the randomly-shaped pieces we have today, he cut around borders. I didn’t even get an honorable mention . . . I haven’t read all the fics yet, but I can say that the three winners were good. Aquaman won, and we almost got in a fight ‘cause he stole one of my ideas. GaPJaxie came in second, and TangerineBlast got third place. I can’t remember the honorable mentions, although I did write them down, somewhere. If you want to read all the entries, here’s the list. It doesn’t say who got what prize (if any). The three top winners have all been published on FimFiction now: Feelings are Stupid (Tangerine Blast) In the Center of the Hedge Maze (GaP Jaxie) Frozen (Aquaman) Y’all probably remember Peachy Sweet and Red from other stories of mine. Pepperstep is a real pony, too. Well, sorta; upon further study, it’s another name for Cayenne. Source EFNW 2022Guru Gabby Griffon and the Guerrilla Giraffe Gaffe Admiral Biscuit For Iron Author 2022 Honorable Mention Winner and Ambitious Alliteration Award Winner There was a point in which giving further orders could have no effect. A point in which the choices made, the training completed, the exercise and rehearsals and choreography and everything else were done, and could not be undone. The moment where she had to trust that everything that needed to be done had been done, the moment that every creature was in his or her appointed place and knew the task that they were to perform soon–too soon. All around her, the hushed voices of her trainees, her students, her mentees. She’d taught them everything she’d known . . . no, that wasn’t true. There wasn’t enough time to teach them all that she knew, all that she’d learned; there was barely enough time to teach them what they needed to know. She fluffed her wings and tapped her claws on the scarred wooden floor. It was hard to keep silent, hard to still the butterflies in her stomach, hard to put her trust in others, even though she had to. Quiet hoofsteps across the floor. She could barely see who it was in the murky shadows. Most of them waiting were wearing all black, blending in with the shadows. It was crowded and hot. It was always crowded and hot before, too many creatures and too much stuff all crammed into a too-small space. Beyond the wall she was leaning against, she could hear voices, and she said a silent prayer to whoever would listen that her people remembered to be stealthy. And they did. She was intently focused on her internal monologue, so intently focused that she didn’t hear her assistant approach. Gabby almost shrieked when he tapped her on the shoulder. It was amazing how much socks could quiet hoofsteps. “Hey.” A very soft whisper, but it sounded loud. It sounded like something that could be heard beyond them. “Miss Gabby, do you know where the gaff tape is?” “There isn’t any in the light booth?” He shrugged. “You told us not to go across the catwalks when there was an audience below.” “Oh yeah.” Her heart swelled with pride. It was a small thing, but her many lessons had been taken to heart. “Why do you need it? Did some of the cables come loose?” “Nuh-uh, Gladiola’s head is coming off and we need to tape it back on.” For a moment, a macabre image played across her mind, and then she jerked back to the present as he kept talking. “I told them that it lacked structural integrity, but nopony listened to me. I shoulda–” “In the future you could use your own initiative,” Gabby instructed. “Maybe carry around a roll of gaff tape for taping heads back on.” That was a strange sentence to have just spoken aloud. His ears flattened. “You told us that a good stagehoof is always prepared.” The lesson had been learned. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. “There’s some downstairs in the green room.” “Thanks.” “Oh, and Gaura?” “Yes?” “Nice work on the socks, I totally didn’t hear you coming.” “Thanks!” •••• The play was delayed five minutes while Gladiola’s gorilla head was gaff-taped back on. Maybe somebody in the audience heard the distinctive noise of gaff tape, maybe they didn’t. •••• Now that the curtain was open, she could stay back and watch from the sidelines. It was both a familiar perspective and a new one; even during the full dress rehearsals she didn’t stay backstage, she patrolled the theatre, giving advice, helping her actors and techies when they needed it. No matter how the dress rehearsals had gone, there was a different vibe to opening night. A soft ‘clang’ caught her ear, and she turned and cocked her head, trying to focus on the source. It wasn’t anything that had broken on stage–it had come from the direction of the balconies. Everybody knew that theatres were haunted, but even the ghosts respected the plays. This was something else; something had fallen or broken, or something. •••• Theatres are magical places, full of secret passageways that few know. The normal way to get to the balconies was through the audience, out the auditorium doors, then up a flight of stairs. She chose to creep behind the sets, risking a glance out into the house as she went. Gladiola the Gorilla and Geoff the Giraffe were both on stage, chasing around a small knot of innocent adventuring ponies. If any of her movement was seen, the audience would just assume that some other fearsome forest creature was about to join the fray–and they wouldn’t be wrong; as she crossed back into the shadows of the wings, Gypsophilia the Gnu trotted on stage. Gabby flew up the ladder, ducked through an access hallway lined with carbide lamps, and then slowly made her way down a flight of disused, dusty stairs. Practically every riser squealed in protest as soon as she put an ounce of weight on it. “Oh no, another monster, run!” She could hear the hoofsteps of the actors as they trotted around the stage, now further pinned in with the arrival of Gilbert Gopher. Laughter erupted from the audience and more and more jungle creatures arrived to meanace the main cast, and then she was easing open the lower hallway door–the hinges squeaked. There, on the floor, where it clearly didn’t belong, was a grille. Somehow, it had fallen off the ventilation shaft. This hallway was almost never used. While it wasn’t obvious to Gabby how the grille might have loosened up, she knew that it could have been unscrewed for a long time before it finally fell flat. And she would have given it no further thought if she hadn’t also noticed a pair of eyes that vanished into the darkness as soon as they were spotted. The hollow banging of a creature against a metal duct was all the proof she needed that something was in the shaft. Gabby glided across the hall and crouched alongside the vent, wiggling her butt as she got into pounce position, just waiting for those eyes to return. Return they did, a few seconds later. First a muzzle, poking curiously out of the vent, nostrils flared. Then some leopard-spotted fur, then the eyes, two horns, ears– “Hey.” Gabby’s voice was a whisper. “Who are you?” The ears snapped over, and the head followed. “And why are you in my vent?” A look of indignation crossed the stranger’s face, before giving in to pride. “I am here as a leader of the guerrillas who are going to make you regret ever putting on this farce of a play.” “Look, I know the writing’s not the best, but it’s Ginger Shade’s first play.” “It’s speciest. And we aim to put a stop to it.” “How do you mean?” Gabby got up from her crouch and moved more into the center of the hallway so that her strange visitor wouldn’t get a crick in her neck. “You’re portraying non-pony creatures in a bad light. With an imperialistic pony view of things. Maybe we don’t have the big glittering palaces of Canterlot or trains, but just because most of us like to live a simple life and not bother anybody doesn’t mean that we don’t have any kind of a culture. We’re not a bunch of ignorant savages.” “Did you even read the play?” “No, but George did and he got very offended.” “Who’s–” “Well, not all of it, but he read enough of it to get the idea.” “Literally the moral of the play is that friendship is magic,” Gabby said. “The entire second act revolves around that.” “Oh.” “So are you the spotter or something?” She shook her head. “We, uh, it seemed like a good idea to sneak through the vents, that’s what they always do in movies. So if you could just pretend you didn’t see me. . . .” Gabby ran a talon across her crest, then dropped on her rump in the hallway. “So, I’m the stage manager, and it’s my job to make sure that the play goes off without a hitch, or a guerilla I guess.” “Guerillas, there are a bunch of us. George’s goons, we’re called.” “How many?” “I’m not telling you.” “Will you tell me your name?” “If–” She paused, before speaking again. “We’re not friends. I’m entirely opposed to your theatre production. Even if it’s like you say and the whole play revolves around a friendship lesson–” “In Equestria, it’s literally the law that they do.” “–you’re mocking me by having your giraffe be a pony with painted-on spots and a paper mache head and neck.” “So you’re a giraffe, then?” She nodded her head. “Why didn’t you come to tryouts? You could have auditioned.” “I didn’t hear about it, okay? The ponynet’s really unreliable where I live.” “We could have put up posters,” Gabby admitted. “I do apologize for that. I did wonder why we got a mostly pony and pony-adjacent cast.” The giraffe snorted, blowing up a cloud of dust from the floor. “I’m pony-adjacent.” “Moreso than me,” Gabby admitted. “What’s your name.” “Clementine.” “Huh. Would have expected it to start with a ‘G’.” “Are you stereotyping?” “No, just that it seems most species I know like alliteration.” She stuck out a talon. “My name’s Gabby, by the way.” “Gabby the Griffon?” “Yeah.” Gabby took back her unshook talon. “So . . . I think we’re almost to the intermission now, and I really need to get back to my spot on the stage. My assistant has a lot in his hooves, and it sounds like I’ll have to be dealing with George the Guerrilla–” “How’d you know he was a gorilla?” Her brain short-circuited for a brief instant, crashed, and then rebooted. “Lucky guess.” Might have to expect a groundhog and a gnu, too. She frowned. What does a gnu even look like? Gabby turned and started to walk away, then paused as her talong was on the half-open door. She could feel Clementine’s eyes on her, almost pleading? “You . . . are you stuck?” Clementine let out a long-suffering sigh. “I got my head up this shaft, you’d think I could get it back down again. I could back up but there’s a dropoff behind me and if I fall in that I’ll really be stuck.” Gabby rolled her eyes. Respectfully. And then she got out her cell phone and started punching in numbers. •••• The actors took their final bow and the curtain came down for the final time. The hoofstomps of applause faded out and there were none more enthusiastic than those of a giraffe in a neck brace, standing in the back where she wouldn’t block anybody’s view, and also off to the side where she also wouldn’t block the view of ponies in the balcony. The fire department had extracted her from the ventilation system midway through the second act, and they’d also found George the Guerilla Gorilla who had taken a wrong turn and wound up one building over. Hugs and hoofbumps were exchanged, and at the end everypony learned a valuable friendship lesson or two. Gaura never again stage-managed without a roll of gaff tape, George graduated from Guerillaing to geology, ultimately getting a gneiss degree from Georgetown, and Clementine auditioned for the next play and got a leading role. Gabby learned not to assume that giraffe names start with the letter G, but she still doesn’t know what a gnu actually looks like. EFNW Iron Author 2023Tropical Paradise Iron Author 2023 Admiral Biscuit The old stallion nosed his rowboat against the smooth black obsidian sand, leaning back in the stern to let the bow fetch up as far as it would. With practiced ease, he stowed the oars, then slowly walked forward, shifting his weight as the waves rocked the boat. He took the painter in his teeth and pulled it well ashore, far beyond where the ocean could take it back, and then he started unloading. First, his catch: two buckets full of seawater and oysters. Then, his supplies: two buckets of paint. He reached into the rowboat a third time, tugging out salt-stained weather-worn saddlebags. Some ponies had fancy workshops in the city; he had the smooth expanse of the beach, the soothing crash of the waves, the gentle trade winds ruffling the palms, and the jagged mountains behind him. He pulled a dull knife out of his saddlebags. The original handle had rotted off, and he’d made a new one out of vines. It was more comfortable on the teeth, anyway. One by one, he pulled the oysters out of the bucket and carefully pried their mouths open, revealing a delicate pearl in each. The pearls were set into a small muslin sack, while he chucked the oysters back into the ocean. Sometimes he wondered how they felt about that. Dragged up from their home to the surface, piled in a bucket, their mouths pried open, and then they took a brief flight back into the ocean from whence they’d come. Once the last pearl had been harvested, the stallion got back to his hooves and stretched, then picked up the buckets one-by-one and carried them down the beach, dumping them back out where the sand was soft and water-saturated. He didn’t have to; they water would have soaked into the sand anywhere he’d dumped it out, but he’d always done it that way and there was no reason to change. He grabbed his boat and pulled it further up the beach, now beyond the reach of tides, as well. Shoving it over wasn’t as easy as when he’d been young. His hooves slipped on the lap-straked wood several times before the boat finally cooperated and tipped over. The buckets went underneath, ready for tomorrow. He tucked the muslin bag of pearls into his saddlebags and strapped them on, then he started looking around the beach for a piece of driftwood. There was always some above the high tide line, the bleached bones of trees and ships, tossed about by the ocean until they were spat back out on land. A shadow crossing the beach caught his attention--a lone pegasus, either on cloud patrol or searching for dinner. He watched her until she’d rounded the corner of the mountain, back towards Shelter Bay. Both paint cans wobbled precariously as he made his ascent up the mountain, up towards a cluster of buildings. The road had always been winding and full of switchbacks; now the jagged scar of a lava flow cut through some of it. He snorted and spit at the dried magma as he first encountered it, several hundred feet up the mountain already. The trees and underbrush had grown back all the way to the edge of the rock but it was a barrier they could not cross. Nor could he easily cross it. After it had happened, some of the townsponies had tried chipping it away, but it dulled pickaxes and was impervious to shovels. Smashing it with hammers knocked chips off but it would take forever to get through it that way. He cautiously set hoof on it--the rock was slippery and provided almost no purchase. It was nearly as dangerous as it had been when it was still molten. As he crossed, he thought about The Day. The earth had been rumbling for weeks leading up to The Day, and then the mountain had started spewing forth ash and lava. Some ponies fled; some stayed in their homes to shield themselves, and the flow mercilessly cut through forests, homes, and roads, it fell in waterfalls off ledges and set trees and underbrush aflame and then it spread out on the beach and swallowed the docks until it finally drown in the ocean, hissing and steaming. Back on the path again, he looked down at his hooves. There were spots where the path was worn to bare rock and others where soil and ash had accumulated. Small plants were growing in the latter sections. Something would need to be done about them before they grew too big--the ash had been a boon for the soil, filling it with nutrients for all the plants to enjoy. Midway up the mountain, the land leveled out. A trick of ancient geography, with the addition of lava flows piling up before they flowed off the edge. This one had behaved no differently, leaving a pile of glassy rock in its wake. One day, plants would thrive there again, but the stallion doubted he’d live long enough to see it. Further up, the palms and underbrush had been cleared, leaving a series of terraced hills. Farms, tended to as well as they could be. Most of them had largely escaped the volcano’s wrath, although there were a few scars here and there from flaming ejecta. He set down his buckets and sat on a smooth obsidian rock that jutted up from the soil, its surface warmed by the sun. It had always been a popular resting place for ponies making their way up to the village, with room enough for three or four. He rested until the sun had passed its zenith, and then he continued along the path, past the lush gardens, past a field of flowers that were all in bloom. Bees and butterflies flew around, gathering up the nectar. A few more switchbacks and he was at the top. Down the main street, past the hardware store and the blacksmith’s, past the bakery and the restaurant, the small green which had been the market, then down the side street to his house. He loved his house. It perched right on the edge of a drop-off, giving him a pegasus-eye view of the caonopy and the ocean beyond. Every day that wasn’t cloudy or foggy he could watch the sun rise. And on the other side? The volcano. The stallion set down his paint, neatly arranging the two cans by the door. He took the driftwood back outside and threw it on his woodpile. Sometimes it got cold at night, so he had a little wood stove to warm things up. He walked out the side door, towards their garden. Right after The Day, most of the crop had been lost, buried under ash. Leaves singed off the plants, and any hope of recovery had been dashed by the dark clouds blotting out the sun. But the garden had bounced back. Some of the plants had recovered enough to bear fruit once again, and others had been planted in the enriched soil, thriving in what had once been a ruin. Weeds, too. He took his stirrup hoe and started working the rows, digging out the weeds. Sometimes he wondered if he should bother; there was enough sun and nutrition for both crops and weeds alike to prosper. That was the wrong kind of thinking. That was a lazy pony’s way, that would lead to a weed-choked garden. It was better to address problems when they were small. The sun was already behind the volcano’s peak when he finished. He brushed the dirt off his hoe and put it back in its place, then picked an assortment of vegetables for lunch. Radishes, tomatoes, lettuce, alfalfa, violets. There wasn’t anything to drink in the pantry cupboard, so he went down the street to the general store and got several bottles of soda. Their stock was getting very low, he noted. He ate in the market square, as he often did. When he was a colt, it had always been bustling, a vibrant hive of activity. Familiar faces at the booths, hawking their wares, even the occasional wagon full of supplies from the mainland. Or what everypony had always called ‘Beyond.’ His hunger sated, he dusted off his hooves and walked back to his house. He picked the first paint can and took a brush off the wall and started walking through town, towards the south, towards the-- He tried not to think about ‘The Day,’ but there were always reminders. Every time he looked up and down the side of the mountain, every time he looked along the main street and saw the vexing scar that cut through his town. He didn’t have a ladder or scaffolding, so he improvised. Empty barrels from the general store, crates from the smithy, boards. Everypony contributed to keeping their community nice. Sometimes ponies got busy and couldn’t take care of the small stuff, that was something he understood. He would do his part. He’d been working on the other side of the street, and had left everythihng there. The home was beautiful, a cheerful yellow that caught the sun’s rays and reflected them back onto the street, unto everypony. It stood out from the verdant forest that surrounded it, and it drew the eye, even from the beach. The palm fronds that covered the roof and awning had faded as they’d dried, going from a lush green to a straw brown. That couldn’t be helped. Lantana and Daffodil and Hibiscus lived there--it was a small town where everypony knew everypony. He stacked the crates and barrels, and started to work. A bright orange for this wall. The volcano had stained it with soot and scorched off the original paint and it just looked ugly and forgotten and that wasn’t right. The stallion painted until the bucket ran dry, then he went home and got the second bucket and painted until that, too, was gone. He hadn’t bought enough. Still, the unpainted sections were low down on the wall, and they’d soon enough be covered by greenery again. There was no reason to go home right away, and no reason to clean his paintbrush--he’d just get another one from the general store tomorrow. They still had plenty. He walked down the street to the market green, and turned around, admiring the fiery orange wall. A perfectly complement to Lantana’s house, he decided. He hadn’t been sure when he’d bought the paint. Now that it was done, his heart felt lighter. It had long been the ugliest thing in the village, and he hadn’t been sure what to do about it. It was the vestigial remains of Seashell’s house; everything else had been consumed by the lava. He’d thought about pushing it over, but wasn’t sure how to do that, and even if he managed, he’d have been left with a pile of rubble which would have been worse. From the market, in the fading light of day, it looked like it could still be a complete house. He sighed and sat down in the center of the market. The grass had grown back--that would need to be tended to soon. And he still had to thatch Starshine’s roof. Starshine. He stood up and walked across the market green and straightened her marker, and then he took his place back on the green, surrounded by his family and friends. Author's Note For those of you who don't know, Everfree Northwest holds an Iron Author writing competition every year. The rules are simple: at the beginning of the event, you're given a prompt--usually in the form of keywords--and then you have two hours. A team of volunteers reads the fics, and the top finishers go to a separate panel for judging. For this year, our prompt words were "vibrant vestigial, vexing volcano, verdant vegetable." While we didn't have to use the specific words, they had to be thematic in the story. The winner was Shaslan with Flower Wars, which I mention again because it is so good! Undome Tinwe came in second, and R5h got third, while EileenSaysHi, FanOfMostEverything, Jordanis, ManeEffect, Master Thief, Wanderer D and myself all got honorable mentions. This is the story exactly as it was presented to the judges. This is one where I might do some editing and make it a standalone, since I think it came out really well and could shine with a little bit of cleanup, but I want y'all to also be able to see the original. Since not everybody has posted their fics on FimFic just yet, you can read them all HERE. (Xepher's server) One other thing I should mention, about half the fics were written by people doing Iron Author for the first time ( I think it was 21 or 22 first-timers). PVCF Prompt Fic—Starlight's Magic BoxStarlight's Magic Box Starlight Glimmer regarded the cardboard box with the same scrutiny a scientist might regard a new species of bug. Or rock—Maud often had a similar mien. This wasn't a rock or a bug; it was just a box. Six smooth walls of cardboard, arrows indicating which end should be up. An address scrawled across the top in hasty yet precise mouthwriting: Pinkie Pie had sent this to the Crystal Castle. Anything could be inside. She knew the pink party pony's predilections—when she opened the flap, confetti might burst forth . . . or Pinkie Herself. It was unpredictable. Almost magical. A magical box, even if not imbued with any actual magic. But then, weren't all boxes magical? Couldn't all boxes contain anything at all? Well, if it would fit in the three dimensions of the box. Starlight slit the tape and lifted the flaps with her magic. She flinched back, instinctively waiting for the confetti. Inside the box was a three-layer cake: no more, no less. We were given twenty minutes to write a one-page only story involving three words/themes: box, the number three, and Starlight Glimmer. It had to be handwritten. Since this one's short, I figured I'd post the photo I took of the page I handed in. Yes, my handwriting's terrible; this is the version I re-wrote to be legible. PVCF Iron Author 2023Ship’s Log 1600 hours 24 days after Midsummer Moon Vessel secure at dock Ship’s Log 1630 hours 24 days after Midsummer Moon Finished with engines Chief Engineer Bright Star’s ears perked as the engine room telegraph jangled. He instinctively moved towards the repeater as the signal rang out a second time, the harsh noise of the bell cutting through the cacophony of the engine rooms. A young hoof silenced it, rang out the reply to the bridge--he sighed. All the young cadets, he hadn’t even bothered to learn their names. What was the point? “Chief?” He turned his head. Second Engineer Peppermint Barque dropped her satchel on the scarred deckboards, and as he turned he saw the concern on her face, just for a fleeting moment before her face hardened, her body stiffened, and she instinctively saluted. “At ease.” The Chief’s desk was clear of all but the Engineering log, the ship’s journal . . . the Captain thought that the Ship’s Log up on the bridge was the important one, but while that kept their course and weather, the commands from on high, their journal, kept in the bowels of the ship, tracked the operations of her, the hidden side nopony ever saw. Page after page, a third of them in his own hoof-writing . . . no more. Today’s logbook entry was the last. Everything he now did was for the last time. He closed his eyes, let his nose and ears take in the familiar smells, the familiar sounds, to save them just a little longer in his memory. And then he pulled the key off his belt and gave it to now-Chief Engineer Peppermint Barque. There was nothing more to say, so he didn’t. Bright Star hesitated at the entry of the engine room, watched her bow her head as she wrote in the journal book for the start of watch . . . he’d trained her well. Bright Star had been hired onto the Diamond Rose the day her hull had slipped into the water for the first time. He’d started out as a wiper--basically a gopher in the engine room--and worked his way up and up, watching ponies come and go, and yet he remained. As the years went by, he could barely remember a before-time: it was always the ship. He had little interest in the ports of call. Occasionally he’d leave the ship and pick up a few trinkets to send to his nieces and nephews, but for the most part he preferred to remain aboard, to stand his watches in the engine room. No more. Now he was retired. It was official the minute that he had relinquished his command and his key to Peppermint Barque, and what remained was him getting his belongings off the ship and onto land. There wasn’t much. A few trinkets for the grand-nephews and -neices back home, some of his tools, some clothes--it all fit onto one rucksack. The chief’s engineer’s quarters weren’t exactly luxurious. Maybe twice as big as the rest of the engine crew got. He didn’t have to hot-bunk if he didn’t want to, he had a writing desk, and now it was all Peppermint Barque’s. By the end of her watch, he’d be gone, nothing but a memory. He sighed, looked out his porthole and down at the dock. The gangway had been run out, rigged--he watched the Executive Officer make her way onto the dock to discuss the loading with the Dockmaster. Bright Star considered, just for an instant, going up to the bridge and saying his goodbyes to the captain. But he wasn’t a sentimental pony. His watch was over, and it was time to go. The gangway took out some of the rocking of the ship, since one end was anchored on dry land. He looked down, over the edge, even though he knew not to. There was a moment of vertigo, a thrill of fear as he pondered the between-space, the not-ship and not-land, the oily dirty water, clogged with garbage. Every time before, he was thinking about when he’d return to the ship, but now? Now it was done. His watch was finished, and that was that. Bright Star wasn’t a sentimental pony, but he couldn’t let the ship go. The Diamond Rose had been his home forever. One last look, the ship tied in the dock . . . he never liked the way she looked when she was tied up. She was meant to be in the ocean, her engine running at a comfortable pace, her screw beating behind, settled into the water at a good draft, not the ungainly shallow draft so many harbors required. Extra steam required to pump the tanks, to respond to commands from the bridge, and then when they got into port they had to remember to switch over the pumps-- A frown crossed his muzzle as he studied the wisp of smoke drifting out the stack. It was heavy and greasy and he shook his head. He hadn’t even been gone for an hour and they were overfilling the boilers. And then a brief lull on the dock. Even the seagulls wheeling overhead were silent--or maybe they weren’t and Bright Star was just that attuned to the ship. Old instincts took over. He dropped his rucksack and charged back to his ship, shoving a pony off the gangway as he went by. The main entry to the engine room was along the B-deck and around aft, but he knew a shortcut. Everypony in the engine room did. He raced around the decks, his hooves echoing in the empty space, welcoming him back home. Peppermint Barque still hadn’t gotten the hang of sliding down access ladders. That was one of the many things he couldn’t teach; she’d figure it out or she wouldn’t. One more passageway, and there was a remote valve bank that Peppermint might have overlooked. He yanked the hatch open and touched the back of a hoof on one of the pipes. Blazing hot, the cooling water wasn’t circulating at all. He should-- He could hear the boiler straining at its seams. It was now or never time. He grabbed the wheel and started turning, all the pressure and flow gauges in his head. The pipe was knocking, steam pocket building up in what should have been the fresh-water supply. They’d block the supply, they shouldn’t be there. The inlet! Some of the floating debris in the harbor must be blocking the pipe. Bright Star knew how to fix that the proper way. A bank of valves in the engine room could be turned to backflow the water, to push away any obstructions, but there just wasn’t time. He knew a shortcut, one that would save the ship and save the boiler, one that would save the entire crew in the engine room--and if he’d been quicker, it could have saved him, too. But he hadn’t been. As long as the engine kept running, the bilge pumps would, too. Bright Star reached up and opened a valve that he never should have opened while the engine was running, listened to the flow of water and steam as it rushed the wrong way through the pipe, and then he spun a second valve wheel shut. Down below, he still had time. He slid down the ladder, gracefully dismounting in the lower ballast tank. He knew every inch of the ship, and he knew where the scupper was. He could hear the suction from the engine and feel as it tried to pull water in from the tank, but there wasn’t enough in it. Yet. The scupper valve was only meant to be opened in drydock, certainly not while the ship was at dock. He wrestled it open wide, nodding in satisfaction as the blast of water knocked him off his hooves. It slammed him against the steel wall of the tank, the pressure of the water echoing in the confined space. His ears were trained, and as the water rose, he heard the cooling pumps pick up this new supply of water. It was the last thing he heard. Chief Engineer Peppermint Barque stood rooted to the dock as a nearly-finished ship slid into the water. It heeled over, recovered, and then bobbed in the channel, as if awaiting its orders. Those would come, in time. Once it was fitted out . . . once he was fitted out. She placed Chief Engineer Bright Star’s cap on her head, then picked up the champagne bottle. It was time to christen the new ship, and who better to name it after? Author's Note Since PVCF 2023 had a writer's track, we also had an Iron Author. I don't remember who won (it was announced during closing ceremonies, and it was a name I wasn't super familiar with). The prompts were Legacy, The Space Between, Journal, and Injury; you only had to use three of the prompts. EFNW 2024 Speedwriting Panel“Enchanted” Admiral Biscuit There was a small grove outside Ponyville, in a space that was neither quite Ponyville proper and not quite the Everfree Forest, either. A between space. A magical space. And none of the adults in town knew it. How could they? They went about with their lives, their eyes and minds always focused on jobs or relationships, or the fact that Amalgamated Ironworks stock had gone down four points in the last day and if it went down any more– SIlver Spoon sighed. Adults didn’t see the little strip of land, the little border between town and not town. They just walked over it without a care in the world. They didn’t see that it was magical–that it was enchanted, the kind of place that felt everypony passing–that let everypony pass, and yet they held no sway over it. For it was in Ponyville, at least according to the maps. It was under the jurisdiction of the weather patrol, the flower police, the grass guardians . . . and yet, it still did its own thing. It grew what it wanted, and it was obvious to Silver Spoon why it did–it had its very own forest spirit, something that would only appear in those spaces where neither ponies nor untamed Nature could quite take hold. It was a peaceful place for her to sit and watch, even if nopony else in town knew it for what it was. Author's Note On Friday, some of the Quills and Sofas dpeedwriting crew presented a panel on how to speedwrite (and why you should), and at the end if it, challenged us to write a fic in 10 minutes using the prompt 'enchanted'. EFNW Iron Author 2018EFNW Iron Author 2018 Words to use: Fire Palpable Brooch Homeland Security has taken all the fun out of flying. When I was a kid, there was always eager anticipation when we got to the airport. A little bit of caution—Dad always wanted us to check one more time that we weren't carrying our Boy Scout pocketknives before we went through the metal detector—and after that, we'd go right to the gate and watch the airplanes. Some airports had a rooftop area where you could watch the airplanes land and take off. One weekend when we were near the airport we just went by and airplane watched for a while. Not any more. They've taken away one thing after another all in the interests of security. There's a bit of paranoia about going through the line, and if you don't follow the instructions exactly you get pulled aside for a pat-down or some blue-gloved TSA agent going through your luggage or demands to dump out your water bottle. At least there's a bar between the security checkpoint and the gate. A fancy bar—it even had a little brick oven in the corner with a cheerful fire going. I checked my watch, and then took a seat at the bar, right next to the fireplace. Close enough that I could see the flames dancing just out of the corner of my vision. Airport drinks are stupidly expensive, since they've got you captive, and you either pay for them or you get nothing. I ordered a double. By the time I'd finished my drink, I'd mostly forgotten about my trip through the security checkpoint and proceeded to find my way to my gate. Of course it was at the far end of the terminal, and while I could have taken the airport tram, I thought that walking would be better. Work off that last little bit of nervous energy. I'd packed everything in a carry-on bag—an old one that didn't have wheels—and by the time I got to the far end of the airport, I was really wishing that I'd decided to replace it. Or checked it in like any normal person would have. But I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. I'd been smart enough to bring my Kindle, both for in-flight entertainment and before. It was fully charged, and loaded with a few new books that I'd been meaning to read, as well as a few old favorites in case I just didn't feel in the mood for something new. After proactively putting my cell phone into airplane mode, I leaned back in the seat and lost myself in the world of Westeros. * * * An hour later, I was standing in line in the boarding area, not entirely certain that I was in the correct line. They'd announced boarding for zone 2, which I presumed was somewhere on my boarding pass, but after looking at it three different times, I still hadn't found it. There is probably a field of sociology which takes place entirely at airports. Maybe psychology, too. People have a range of experiences on airplanes and at airports and a range of reasons for flying. I mostly don't try and figure out someone else's business, but my eye kept being drawn to the customer in line just behind me. It would have been better if she was in front, because then I could have pretended that I was just looking to see if the line was moving, not catching sideways glances at her. This is like the setup to a bad sitcom episode, I thought. Why would a pegasus even need an airplane? That was a singularly stupid thing to think. I had legs, but if I wanted to go somewhere farther than my mailbox, I'd probably drive my car. I thought about saying something to her then, but there were a few people between us. A wrinkled old prune with an ivory brooch holding her shawl clasped, a gaggle of college-girls that were gossiping about how, like, totally hawt the waiter at Olive Garden was, and a well-dressed businessman whose sole focus was on his cell phone. The line started shuffling forward, moving at zombie-speed up to the gate where our boarding passes got scanned one more time, and then we got to go in the airbridge to the airplane. There was very little overhead bin space left by the time I stowed my bag, and then I squeezed through to the window seat. For all the fun that the TSA had taken out of flying, they still let airplanes have window, which meant that I could still look out and feel some of the thrill I'd felt back when I was a kid. I looked over the safety card and fastened my seat belt and asked myself if I should've used the bathroom one more time before getting on the airplane and then I crouched down a little bit and looked out the window. I must have been completely lost in the intricacies of airport operations, because I never noticed when she sat down in my row. I didn't notice her until I heard the thunking click and saw the lights blink briefly, a sign that the airplane had switched over to internal power. The stewardesses were walking down the aisle, closing the overhead bins and looking at seat belts. And there was a pegasus pony sitting next to me, struggling with her buckle. “First time flying?” I said. “On an airplane.” She fluffed her wings a little big, just in case I'd somehow missed seeing them. “Yeah.” I shook my head in the hopes of rattling some of the stupid loose. “That's what I meant. Do you want a hand? Er, some help?” “Maybe.” She tugged at the belt. “I don't even like these things. What good are they going to do me?” If I'd had a moment to think, I probably wouldn't have, but I reached across her lap and got the free end of her belt, and then I had to basically grope her to get it fastened. Airplane seatbelts were not designed for comfort or adjustability, but I could at least take solace in the fact that they were roughly designed for my anatomy. In her case, not so much. She looked singularly uncomfortable. “If there's nopony in that seat,” she said, pointing to the vacant center seat, “I'm gonna stretch out after the airplane takes off and I can take this dumb thing off.” “That's a good idea.” “You don't mind, do you?” “Not at all.” I had already decided that I was going to lift up the arm rest if nobody took that seat, and give myself a little bit more butt room. “I'm Lynn,” she says, sticking out a hoof. “It's not much of a pony name; my parents named me after contact.” “Bob,” I say. “What brings you to Earth?” “I'm in truck driving school. At first I wanted to be a train driver, but then I realized that trucks don't have to follow tracks and can go wherever they want to.” “How—” I clamped my mouth shut. Maybe I was wrong, but it felt like asking a handicapped person something really offensive about their disability, and I'd already proved myself a fool by asking her if it was her first time flying. * * * We were four hours delayed getting off the ground, and the mood in the cabin was getting tense. I could see that she was suffering from her belted-in position, but there was nothing she could do about it. The stewardesses were merciless in enforcing the rules, getting slightly snappier as the time wore on, and I could hardly blame them. I never liked the shuddering feeling as the airplane first started accelerating down the runway, but it smoothed out like it always did. The plane shivered a little bit and then the nose came up and then we were climbing. I kept my nose pressed up against the window, looking for familiar landmarks. The announcement chime dinged politely a few minutes later—seemingly right away, although I could tell that the airplane had mostly leveled off. The pilot gave his standard boilerplate about keeping your seatbelts fastened whenever you were in your seats in case of unexpected turbulance and then said that the stewardesses were going to be passing out drinks and food from the lunch menu and that everyone was going to get half-off as a way to apologize for the delay. Lynn hadn't waited for the end of the announcement to unbuckle her seatbelt and stretch out on the chair. Maybe she was afraid I'd renege on my promise and take the middle seat, or maybe she's been just that uncomfortable. She stretched out her wings and rolled her back and then managed a brief Yoga pose: Downward Facing Dog. She flicked her tail once, and then dropped her rump back to the seat, her tail brushing lightly against my leg. And then she was asleep. * * * Every time you hear an interview after an airplane crash, it always starts out with: 'the flight was normal until. . . .' But how else are you going to describe it? It was normal until it wasn't. Someone had a vague foreboding, or a feeling, or saw something. I never saw or felt anything amiss; the flight was normal until one of the stewardesses came back to our row and crouched down in front of Lynn, pausing for a moment before shaking her shoulder. She kept her voice low, but I could hear anyway. “Do you know how to fly?” Lynn's ears dropped down and then perked back up, and she nodded. Meanwhile, a palpable terror grabbed me. In these post-9/11 days, passengers don't get to go up to the cockpit to look around. The doors are locked, and nobody but the flight crew gets to go up there. Ever. There were no announcements over the PA. I watched Lynn follow the stewardess down the aisle, all the way to the curtain between first and second class, and then I lost sight of her. She was pretty short, and I didn't want to stand up, didn't want to cause a panic. I pulled my seat belt tightly around my waist and took the safety briefing card out of the seatback in front of me. Now was a good time to review the instructions. Lynn took in the deserted cockpit. Scraps of the meals that they'd eaten were still on the floor, a mute testimony of what had happened here. She could smell the fear and sickness and she pushed those things to the back of her mind. It's just like a truck. She took the left seat. The driver sat in the left seat, and the co-driver sat in the right. She wouldn't have a co-driver for this flight, but it was reasonably short. Trucks had cruise control; airplanes had fancier cruise control. She knew without consulting a single instrument or gauge that the airplane was flying itself, making minor course corrections to keep it pointed towards its destination. There was a wheel in front of her to steer, and two pedals that were presumably the clutch and brake—the throttles were a pair of t-handles. Studying the wheel for a moment revealed that not only did it turn, but it also pulled forward and back. It only took her a moment to correlate its movements with the airplane's response, and she nodded in satisfaction. There was even a radio. The CB in her Peterbelt had about 40 channels; the airplane clearly had many more, since the display was four digits long. Since she didn't know what channel it was supposed to be on, she left it where it was and looked around for a mic. That turned out to be attached to the headset. You weren't allowed to wear them in trucks, because they blocked too much hearing, but maybe that was allowed in an airplane. There was lots of wind noise. “Breaker one nine, anypony got a copy? This is the brown birdhorse, come on?” A moment later, a voice exploded in her ear. “Are—get off this channel! This is an aviation channel.” “Ten-four,” she said cheerfully. “I'm in an airplane, and neither of the pilots can fly it. If I'm on the wrong channel, which one do I need to be on?” There was silence, and then a new voice cut in. “Ah, brown birdhorse?” “Yeah.” “This is Omaha control. Did you say that you're in an airplane and neither of the pilots can fly it?” The voice on the other end of the radio sounded slightly worried. “Ten-four, good buddy.” “We need you to squawk seventy-seven seventy-seven on your transponder.” “I'm not good at bird—can I just say it?” “I . . . you. . . .” The radio fell silent for a moment an then a new voice came on. “Ah, brown birdhorse, how much flight experience do you have?” “I've been flying for fourteen years. Not in a commercial tru—commercial airplane.” She scanned over the flight instruments. Maybe the transponder was another name for the Qualcomm. Those usually worked on their own, but maybe there was some kind of a special procedure for them on airplanes. “It's an instrument that should be in the center of the cockpit,” the voice said, and then continued describing the location. The dials were tiny and not hoof-friendly at all, and it took her several tries before she got all the windows to show sevens. “Ten-four, I've got it.” “Okay, we see you.” There was another long pause. “Um, say intentions.” “Intentions.” Lynn tapped her hoof against the control column. “I guess I intend to land at the nearest airport. We're supposed to go to Vanhoof—Vancouver, but I haven't got a map, and I can't find the GPS.” Surely there was a GPS on here, somewhere. Probably in the center screen, which was currently showing a compass heading, along with speed and altitude. “Understood.” There was a pause. “The closest airport is Butte . . . it should be off to your twelve o'clock position. Please contact the tower on 124.9 for approach instructions.” “Ten-four. Brown birdhorse out.” The knob on the radio was slightly less fiddly than the one on the so-called transponder, and it didn't take her too long to switch to the new frequency. She sat right on the edge of her seat and craned her neck to see over the nose of the airplane—she ought to be able to see the airport in front of her. “Breaker one twenty-four decimal nine, this is the brown birdhorse. You got a copy?” “We can hear you, brown birdhorse. Is that you actual name?” “Negative, good buddy. It's just the one I use on the radio.” There was surely some way to make the seat move forward and back. Just like the air seat in her Peterbelt, it had lots of levers, and she started tugging at them experimentally, until she finally figured out how to make it move. She shifted around on her rump waiting for a reply from the radio, and finally got one. “You . . . are you a pony?” “Ten-four.” The pedals were reachable now, but she was happy to just let the airplane cruise along on its own until she got close enough to see the airport. It wasn't like trying to drive on a highway with all the other cars crowded around; it looked like she had the sky to herself. “Miss . . . Schantia?” He pronounced her name slowly and carefully, and also completely wrong. But he'd tried, and that was nice of him. “That's me.” “Do you know the number of souls on board?” “Hold on, I'll see if I can find a loading manifest.” There would be maps and manifests and log books and who knew what else stuffed in the various compartments and cubbies up here. It was a shame that she didn't have a proper pilot to explain it all to her, but it couldn't be that complicated. “You can ask the stewardess,” the voice on the radio suggested. “Ten-four, thank you, that's a good idea.” * * * The men and women on the radio had been very nice and polite, which was something that she couldn't always say for her fellow truck drivers. Sometimes they were outright mean when they realized that the truck was being driven by a pony. The airport was off to her left, still out of view. She'd successfully intercepted the glideslope at the control tower's suggestion, and then continued past it, not realizing that she was supposed to descent. A moment later, a familiar voice came back on the radio. “Uh, Miss . . . brown birdhorse, you ought to be slowing and descending. Is the airplane damaged?” “No, negative. Not as far as I know. I can check.” “Let's get you slowed down, first.” “Ten-four.” She reached out her hooves. The brake would be on the right, the clutch on the left—it was probably smarter to clutch in first and see what happened, then use the brake if she needed to slow down faster. There was less resistance than she'd expected, and the airplane turned sharply to the left. She grabbed the control yoke tightly and jerked it to the right, which caused it to roll to that side which still going right. An alarm started blaring. Throttle. She yanked back on the throttles. Am I losing my air brakes? She hadn't found any air pressure gauges. Brakes. That eliminated the steering problem, until she took her foot off the clutch, at which point that the airplane rolled way over to the left. Rather than fight it, she just let the airplane go all the way over, centering all her controls as it passed 270 degrees of roll. “Sorry about that, tower,” she said when she finally got the airplane under control again. “I guess I've got a problem with my brakes.” If I can find the gear selector, I can downshift. “Don't worry about it. Just get on a course of 330 true and execute a direct approach to runway 33L.” “Thirty-three el.” She nodded, digging out the approach plates. She'd found them when she was looking for the loading manifest. There were lots of numbers on them that she didn't have time to learn, but importantly it had a picture of the airport, so she knew she was going to the right place. Behind her was a window that, unlike the ones in the cabin, could be opened. If I can get some air in here, it'll help me fly this thing. “She hasn't got it.” Every eye in the control tower was fixed on the drunken staggering of the 727 as it lurched towards the runway. It was too low and too slow and there was a gasp of horror as it dipped below the trees. “You stupid piece of shit!” Lynn punched the center of the instruments. Everything was broken on this dumb airplane. Neither the brake nor the clutch worked, if there was a gear selector it was hidden somewhere. A voice kept saying 'stall' or 'terrain' or 'pull up,' but didn't offer any other useful suggestions. I'm not going to make it. The trees in front of her were very close, and the airport was very far. I'm not going to give up until— Branches started smacking against the fuselage, and her instincts took over. She lept out of the pilot's seat and bounded across the navigator's table, then out the open window, tumbling briefly as the rush of air caught her, and then she was free of the tumbling, flaming wreckage. Author's Note While I did well in the Iron Author competition in 2017, such was not my fate this year. The first problem I had was the prompt--while I could write at length about pony firefighters, that’s Rescue Sunstreak’s bailiwick, and he was in the competition, too. So I went with a different option. . . . While the idea’s decent, and I’ll revisit it properly in the future, one of the biggest problems I had was when I realized at about the midpoint of the story that it needed to be in third person, not first person. By then it was far too late to go back, and so I just changed tenses and pressed on. Vivid Syntax's Super Short Fics (EFNW 2019) At EFNW 2019, Vivid Syntax had a panel where he challenged us to write short fics based on particular prompts . . . and then in some cases, challenged us to write them even shorter. The first prompt was King Sombra and Braeburn The two stallions stared at each other awkwardly. Finally: “Cryssssssssstals.” Braeburn raised an eyebrow. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapleoosa.” And then they kissed. Next up was Gallus and Sweetie Belle: “Welcome to Home Ec!” Sweetie Belle squeaked. “Rarity couldn’t be here today, so I’m your substitute teacher!” Gallus face-taloned. Vivid challenged us to write a shorter version: “I’m your substitute cooking teacher!” Sweetie squeaked. Gallus face-taloned. And then an even shorterer version: Sweetie cooks Gallus laments Our next prompt was Silver Stream and Sandbar*: Sandbar frowned. “So you say that male hippogrifs have cloacas as well?” Silverstream nodded brightly. “How does that work?” ______________________________________ *Admittedly, this was something I’ve done before, but I thought it’d be funny for the lulz. Our next challenge was three characters--Spike and Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy--along with an emotion. Fear: “Fluttershy, no!” Spike stumbled backwards as a giant hoof crashed down, nearly crushing him. Pinkie traversed her party canon expertly. “I can stop her!” “Don’t hurt her!” “This won’t.” Pinkie yanked the cord on the cannon. A billion cute fluffy bunnies shot out and engulfed the hulked-out pegasus. Our last challenge was the theme of reconciliation, featuring Yona and Soarin: Soarin bowed his head before knocking on the door. She won’t answer. Of course she did, and her eyes narrowed. “Stupid bird-horse. Why you here? Why you mock Yona?” “I--” the words barely felt sincere, although he did mean them. He did! “I’m sorry I confused you with a buffalo. I’m sorry that I said stampeding and smashing were the same thing.” “Yona forgive you.” She stomped on the ground. “That all.” Soaring shook his head. “I apologize for not understanding the meaning of apple pie in your culture.” EFNW 2021—Writing Workshop, Scene DescriptionsEFNW 2021—Writing Workshop, Scene Descriptions Admiral Biscuit This was from a panel by Vivid Syntax where he gave us tips and tricks for describing scenes, and then challenged us to try it first with the room itself, and then a photo from the show. 1: The Room The first thing he noticed was sparkly marble or granite tabletops with mica or quartz sparkles in them, some look almost like gold. Creak of office chairs and the gentle clack of a laptop keyboard. Steps down to each row, and industrial carpet with an unrememberable pattern. Sixteen TV screens on the wall, the white background on each not quite the same, ir is that a trick of the light? Music and shouting or singing from the hall outside, more distracting than everything else. Four mics on stands, but only one person at the table. Our second task was to describe this scene, from both Diamond Tiara and Apple Bloom’s POV Source 2: Diamond Tiara I heard a commotion on the playground and trotted over with Silver Spoon to see what was going on. Applebloom was up on her hind hooves spinning a hoop around her tail and a bunch of ponies were watching her all excited—I saw Berry and Noi and Dinky and Twist and that lavender filly whose name I can’t remember and of course her two loser friends cheering her on. And then I got close and saw she had a cutie mark on her stupid flank, as if you could get a cutie mark by spinning a hoop. Her loser friends had made a fake one to show off to all the other loser ponies, and me and Silver Spoon were gonna have to put a stop to it so we could go back to being playground princesses. 3: Apple Bloom Ah couldn’t believe it, that Ah’d gotten was really workin’; Ah was up on mah hind legs twirling a ring around mah tail and ah had mah cutie mark and everypony was so happy for me, ah even forgot Scoots and Sweetie hadn’t gotten theirs yet. Ah saw Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon comin’ along with a scowl but ah didn’t care. Fk that bh.
Trotcon 2017Trotcon Speedfic Panel 7/14/17 Admiral Biscuit Luna and Roseluck in the Zebralands The dirigible was off-course. That much was known. How far off-course, nopony knew. The Sirocco winds had whipped up the desert sand, obscuring the view of the ground below, and the night sky was obscured by high clouds. Roseluck was not worried. She knew that up in the bow of the airship, Princess Luna was in her cabin, and surely the princess of the night knew where the stars were, even if they were obscured. Right? "Your Highness?" Nightshade, Thestral commander, regarded the lunar diarch nervously. "We're, um, lost." "How can we be lost? Does the captain not have navigation instruments?" "Yes, but with the sky obscured and the ground obscured. . . ." "Perhaps we could simply stay airborne until the sky clears," Princess Luna suggested. "The chief engineer says that we are low on hydrogen," Nightshade said. So we must land soon--as soon as we find any suitable land." Meanwhile, on the main deck of the dirigible, the ship's pegasi were taking flight, descending into the sandy malestrom. Roseluck watched them with a growing sense of alarm. The pegasi frequently flew around the airship, inspecting the rigging and the envelope, but these were flying away and not coming back. A vague sense of unease was growing in her breast. Didn't sailorponies say that rats deserted sinking ships? Why wouldn't airship pegasi do the same? She thought about asking one of the non-winged crew members--they, at least, couldn't so easily abandon ship--but she decided to wait. She knew that she had a tendancy to panic unnecessarily, and maybe this was one of those times. Sure enough, after a while the pegasi started coming back, and Roseluck breathed a sigh of relief. That relief was somewhat short-lived, though--after the last pegasus landed, Roseluck started hearing the hiss of escaping gas, and the dirigible began to sink towards the blowing sand below. Nightshade stepped back in Princess Luna's chambers. "The captain says that we are far south of our destination. We will not be able to fly again until the storm clears." "A pity . . . I was looking forward to meeting with the Saddle Arabians." "I could ask the captain how far from Saddle Arabia we are," Nightshade offered. It was tempting, but Princess Luna knew that the captain probably had his hooves full already, so she simply shook her head. Perhaps this is an opportunity, Luna thought. I could meet more of our subjects. The flight down was bumpy and rough. All the airship pegasi did their best to keep the ship under control as it descended through the whipping winds, but they didn't have nearly enough wingpower to battle a duststorm. Roseluck had retreated to her stateroom. She thought that if she was going to die, ti would be better to do it in a bed then clinging to the railing in horror. When she ship finally landed, she breathed a sigh of relief. She was still alive, and just as importantly, none of the flower arrangements she had brought for the Saddle Arabian embassy were damaged. She hastily packed up her belongings, completely oblivious to the fact that their dirigible was not in Saddle Arabia. Nightshade looked out the porthole and studied the zebras that were now beginning to encircle the downed craft. They didn't look hostile--but it was her job to make sure that the Princess was safe. I am sure they are peaceful," Princess Luna said. "We have been at peace with the zebras for centuries. They are just curious, that is all." She rubbed her hooves together. "Come along, let us meet our subjects." Author's Note In this fic, I was hampered by both not being nearly as fast with a typewriter as I am with a keyboard, but also an unexpected mechanical failure of my machine. Luckily, ROBCakeran53 was ready to help out.
Trotcon 2018Rainbow Dash and Featherweight on the Moon Trotcon 2018 Admiral Biscuit The moon was very far away. Everypony knew that. Princess Luna had once been on the moon. She was the only pony who had been, as far as anypony knew. This was, of course, a sensitive topic for both Luna and Celestia, so nopony had asked either diarch directly. Rainbow Dash often sat on a cloud and contemplated the moon. It was further away than any cloud she knew of. As high as she’d flown on weather patrols, the moon had never appeared to get any closer. She was going to fly to the moon. This was certain. This was a fact, as much of a fact as Celestia raising the sun every morning. Rainbow was a brash pony, and even she knew it. Thus, she kept some of her bragging to a minimum, not claiming that she was going to do something until she had actually accomplished it once. And, if she’d kept her muzzle shut, nopony would have ever known that she planned to fly to the moon. Scootaloo had been feeling down about her inability to fly, so Rainbow had tried to cheer her up the only way she knew--by bragging that she was going to fly to the moon. Scootaloo had mentioned that to the other Crusaders. One of them had told Twist who had told Rumble and then word had gotten to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon--neither who would have confronted an adult mare, no matter how ludicrous her claims. Word had eventually gotten to Featherweight, who was clever enough to recognize a newsworthy story when it fell into his lap. When he asked Rainbow for an interview, she realized that it was time to put up or shut up. Rainbow was not a big believer in thinking before speaking (or thinking in general), and after winging her way thorough an interview, she began preparations in earnest. Flying from the ground was impractical. Rainbow needed a higher launch point, which meant either a cloud or a balloon. Staging took the better part of a day, along with special dispensation from the weather team. Snacks were cached on the clouds, and she took flight from Ponyville at sunset. She did not make it to the moon. She was far, far above Ponyville when she finally tyurned back. So far that she could not see buildings on the ground, only small points of light that were Ponyville and Canterlot and Cloudsdale. For all of Rainbow's brashness and bravado, she knew that it would take her time to build up her strength and endurance, so every day she flew higher and higher. She got a scarf and then a hat and then a sweater. It was a week before the moon got appreciably larger in her vision and full month before she got close enough to begin to decide on a landing point. There were all sorts of crates on the moon, and while the bottom of a crater might be an easier landing spot it was further to fly. It was almost six months before her first almost-landing. It could have been an actual landing if she had desired. She’d gone below the rocky lip of the crater, briefly entering into its shadow, and then she’d focused on the ground below her and it looked almost like sand. Grounded ponies didn’t appreciate that there were different landing techniques for different surfaces from sand to grass, from water to cloud. But there were! She would have, if she'd had less confidence in her abilities, and if her flight had had less historical import. Being the first since Luna to set hoof on the moon was a special occasion, one that she was determined to have properly documented. So she told Featherweight. The next morning, Featherweight gave her an exclusive interview and then she began cloud-hopping, working her way up further and further. The moon wasn’t up yet, and she took her time. She was at the highest cloud, and she could see it over the edge of the horizon. It was not visible to anypony on the ground yet and would not be for a while. Experience was her guide for the next length of her flight--with no aerial landmarks, she had to choose a direct course to where the moon would be when she got there. That was where the practice came in. No longer did she look back at the ground. Only the moon, and her position in the sky. She had to make a few course corrections, but not many, and then she was skimming over the surface of the moon. She came up over the lip of a crater and then glided down into the flatter terrain underneath . . . craters were almost like upside-down mesas. The ground was sandy and loose, looser than she had imagined, and for a moment she lost her footing. She flared her wings and then dropped back down again and then she was down on the moon, the first pegasus ever to set her hooves on the lunar body. Featherweight flat-out didn’t believe her. The lunar dust on her hove and in her fur wasn’t proof enough, and she had flown out of eyeshot. Even Twilight’s telescope wasn’t good enough to resolve her when she got close to the moon. Not that anypony called her a liar, certainly not to her face. And Rainbow wasn’t the cleverest pony, but the more she read Featherweight’s interview the more she became convinced that the reporter didn’t believe her. She started to question herself, and flew another flight to the moon, just to prove to herself that she had done it. And that was good enough for her. Almost. “I believe you, Dashie.” “Thanks, Pinkie.” Rainbow fluttered her wings. “But hardly anypony else does. If Featherweight’s article hadn’t been so . . . so. . . .” “Condescending?” “Yeah.” “He writes fairly.” That was something that Rainbow Dash could agree with. “Take him up there with you,” Pinkie Pie suggested. So she did. Author's Note This time at Trotcon, while I had to contend with an earlier panel time, I had no typewriter malfunctions and managed what I think was a reasonably decent story, certainly for the one hour period I had to publish.
EFNW Iron Author 2019Iron Author 2019 Prompt: Focus on a minor/side character from the show who has been the focus of an episode NOT any of the mane six or a princess! NOT fandom characters (like Berry Punch or Derpy) Should be featured in an episode Be set 10 or more years in the future Petunia Paleo didn’t notice at first as the train begin slowing. She had a bench to herself and was working her way through the latest issue of Journal de Physique despite her limited Prench skills. Comme celle faisant allusion-- She looked up, suddenly aware that the train had stopped. The conductor hadn’t announced any station stops, which suggested that the train had broken. Again. The trip to the badlands had thus far been fraught with misfortune, so far taking two days longer than it ought to have. Plans had been changed, and changed again, and changed again. She tried to turn her attention back to the journal, but her mind just wasn’t in it, so instead she cast her gaze outside the train window, to the verdant forest that came almost up against the side of the railcar. It was easy to imagine it an untamed jungle, perhaps with ancient ruins just beyond her view--but that was the kind of thing that Daring Do would be interested in. Not her. She could faintly make out through the trees what looked like a rock face, and for a moment she imagined it as an ancient castle before a gust of wind rustled the trees and revealed it for the short rock outcropping that it was. Geology was important to paleontology. She couldn’t just go digging anywhere and expect to find fossils; the land had shifted and changed through time. Some ponies even thought that the land floated in the seas and drifted around slowly on the currents, although in her opinion, that was a stupid theory. Clouds drifted, continents didn’t. But they did rise and fall, rains came and went, and before the ponies it was all chaotic and disorganized. What had once been a fertile valley might have become the bottom of a shallow sea; a lake might have dried up and desertified, the only evidence of what it once was the fossils buried beneath. Petunia stuck the journal back in her saddlebags and shifted around on her seat to get a better look at the rock outcropping. It looked like it could be limestone, and limestone often had fossils. She stilled her wagging tail. No more was she the eager filly she’d once been, digging holes willy-nilly in search of discovery. She was educated, a department head. Expeditions were planned out in meticulous detail. She tore her eyes away from the scenery and looked around the coach. Ponies were grumbling about the delay, quietly thus far. The conductor hadn’t yet come through saying how long it would be. The vestibules of the rail cars were open, she had a few tool in her saddlebags, and the outcropping wasn’t that far away. She could just take a quick look. Surely she’d hear the train as it started up again. ***** The train crew was crowded around the locomotive, like doctors attending a patient. Steam hissed out around it, blocking some of her view. Can’t be a simple problem, or there’d only be a couple of them working on it. She’d have plenty of time. The tracks were built up on an hill of loose gravel, and she picked her footing carefully as she walked down. It wouldn’t do to break a leg. Down at the bottom, the ballast rocks transitioned into muck, and then the edge of the forest, trying to reclaim what once had belonged to it. From her position, she couldn’t see the outcropping any more, but that didn’t matter. She knew where it was. On occasion, her saddlebags got caught on a low branch, or dragged up against a rock. She squeezed through as best as she could, pausing long enough to identify the larger rocks she passed. As she’d hoped, they were limestone. Even better, she could see small fossils in some of them, ancient leaves trapped forever in stone. Aquatic ferns, and little twisted shells, no doubt from the long-extinct snails that had eaten those farms. Interesting, but not what she was looking for. Still, she picked up a few of the better fossils, taking careful note of where she found them, and put them in her saddlebags. ***** Petunia nearly jumped out of her fur at the shrieking whistle behind her. She scoped up one last fossil, shoved it in her saddlebags, and then took off at a fast trot through the woods. By the time she reached the railroad right-of-way, the train had already began to move. She scurried up the slope as fast as she could and lept into the open vestibule of the last car on the train. A few heads turned to watch her as she walked down the aisle, but most ponies were too lost in their own situation to pay her any mind. The train was moving at a gallop when she reclaimed her seat, and she settled back in place. Trees flashed by outside, and then the train thudded across a short wooden bridge. She caught a glimpse of a waterfall upstream, one which looked it was formed in the same geological formation that had produced the outcropping. If I was still a filly, I’d have let the train leave without me. ***** That thought lingered in her mind. When she’d been a filly, it had been her parents dragging her back, and she swore to Celestia that as soon as she was an adult, she’d be able to go and explore wherever she wanted to. And that had been true, to an extent. But now every trip was preceded with days of meetings and budget arguments, of checking through journals to find if that area had been explored, and if so what had been found. She had to herd an entire team of graduate students, had to write papers on what she’d found--it just wasn’t much fun anymore. Petunia dropped the journal on the bench and got up, moved out into the aisleway. Set her saddlebags on the bench and went thorough them quickly, just to make sure she’d packed well, and she had. Years in the Badlands had refined her packing skills. She went back through the rail cars, towards the back of the train. Now a few heads turned her way, especially when she got to the last car. The vestibule was empty. It didn’t look like the train was going that fast when she looked out at the forest, but up close the rocky ballast was just zipping right by. This is stupid. I’ll break a leg for sure. When there was soft grass all the way up to the ballast, she jumped, tumbling along briefly before skidding to a stop, whole and unhurt. Her heart was hammering away in her chest, and her mind was full of the thrill of discovery. Since there was no longer any need to keep the tracks close, she picked a fairly easy path, winding through the more open spots in the forest. She kept her eyes open and her ears alert, wary of any monster who might make this part of Equestria its home. ***** It took a while, but she found the rock outcropping again. It wasn’t as pronounced, being overgrown some placed, or buried beneath loamy soil. A few miles further, and she might have missed it entirely, might have just stepped over a slight rise in the ground. She settled in a spot between two tall trees. Now she wasn’t rushed, now she wasn’t listening for the noise of the train; now she could concentrate on the fossils like she really wanted. And what a treasure trove it was! The rock was thick with them, the impressions laid down millions of years ago. Even in the short height of the outcropping, she could see two distinct phases of life, with a fuzzy sort of boundary between them, evidence of some ancient cataclysm. She followed it back, working her way almost back to where she’d first visited the wall. The sun was low and the shadows long when Petunia finally gave up for the night. The wall of rock provided a halfway decent shelter, and finding a pine tree only served to make it better. White pine needles were soft and comfortable, and the thick boughs would keep the wind off her, keep her warm. ***** Climbing back the embankment was difficult, now that her saddlebags were weighed down with fossils. Her center of balance was to far back, and she kept almost tipping. She’d almost cut it too close; the train was nearly on top of her as she waved her hooves to signal it and then jumped back off the tracks as it thundered by. A moment later, the pounding of the wheels across expansion joints was muted by the shrill ear-flattening screech of the locomotive brakes, and she got back up between the rails and trotted after the stopping train. It took a little bit of explanation before the conductor finally allowed her to have a seat without paying for a new ticket. And when the train finally got to its destination, it took more explanation and a few very apologetic telegrams back to the university, but it had been worth it. It had all been worth it. Author's Note At first, I thought that a background character would be a perfect prompt for me, but when Xepher added that said character should have been the focus of an episode, my initial idea of using Apple Leaves fell by the wayside. At the moment, I couldn’t think of any speaking characters who’d been major episode characters (of course, now I can think of dozens off the top of my head), so I hopped over to the Wiki page for foals, and when I came across Petunia Paleo, that was a pony I’d written before, and knew decently well . . . even though now that I think about it, I don’t believe I’ve ever actually seen that episode. Also worth note, since I was judging, I didn’t submit my entry.
Trotcon 2019Prompt: Cheerilee and Vinyl Scratch in Manehattan Cheerilee turned her head towards the entrance of the arena. A steady crowd of ponies were streaming out, but she was waiting for one mare in particular. She finally found her, appearing for a moment as if she were somepony else--her dark glasses were tucked up above her forelock, pushed just against the base of her horn. As soon as she stepped out into the sunlight, her horn lit briefly and her glasses slid down over her eyes, presenting the familiar facade of DJ-Pon3. Cheerilee waved and the unicorn came over. “I should have told you,” she said. It wasn’t much of an introduction, but it served. Vinyl nodded, and Cheerilee continued. “She . . . I didn’t know you were into wrestling.” And at first I was just didn’t feel like bringing it up, maybe lingering resentment from foalhood, maybe a belief that being a wrestler wasn’t a ‘real’ job. It was different for Vinyl. Her housemate was famous in her own right, and everpyony knew that Octavia was one of the very best cellists in all of Equestria. Anypony would be proud to be her--that wasn’t fair. Vinyl was equally famous; maybe not a pony who Chererilee would go out of her way to see, she wasn’t into the dance scene and scratching turntables, but she couldn’t help how much Vinyl had overcome to get where she was . . . and everypony knew that a cutie mark never lied. “I just didn’t want to sound like I was bragging,” Cheerilee said. Vinyl nodded. She flicked her ears--Cheerilee wasn’t overly adept at reading ear language, but she knew it well enough to get by. “Yes, I know.” Cheerilee’s drooped. “I should be proud. She’s proud I’m a teacher.” Vinyl shrugged, and her ears twitched. “It’s true. She said so, after I--” Vinyl raised an eyebrow. “I subbed for her in a match.” Vinyl grinned. “You already knew that, didn’t you?” A nod. “Rainbow told you.” Another now, a couple of ear flicks; although Cheerilee could have understood even if Vinyl hadn’t explained. Some ponies got angry at gossip, especially when they were involved in that gossip, but Cheerilee couldn’t blame Rainbow. She was always enthusiastic when meeting ponies she thought of as ‘awesome,’ and Cherry Blossom certainly qualified. As well as the Ponyville schoolteacher kicking flank in the arena. Vinyl touched her hoof to her lips and brought it forward, a simpler way of semaphoring ‘thank you.’ “We could go backstage and meet her,” Cheerilee offered. “She didn’t get me VIP tickets, but we are family, and. . .” Vinyl grinned. Octavia never got VIP tickets, either. “But . . . there are ponies who paid a lot of bits for their tickets,” Cheerilee said. “We should wait until after they’ve had their turn.” Vinyl nodded, then her ears started moving. “No, I don’t want to wait here, either,” Cheerilee replied. “But--there’s a Hayburger down the street. Want to get a snack?” Author's Note Originally written on typewriter at Trotcon. In case you missed the comics, Cheerilee has a twin sister named Cherry Blossom who wrestles under the stage name “Mystery Mare.”
The Stars are GoneThe Stars are Gone Admiral Biscuit Sweetie Belle looked dejectedly in her craft drawer. She’d just finished a piece of crayon art depicting The Great and Powerful Trixie defeating the Ursa Major. Admittedly, she was taking some liberty with history, and she knew full well that her big sister hardly approved of the Great and Powerful Trixie, but art was supposed to be speculative. It was no fun to always make drawings of things that had actually happened, or—in the case of her many sketches of cutie mark potential—things that might one day happen, just not as soon as she hoped they would. Her drawing was nearly finished. The Ursa had an ample coating of glitter to make him look more fearsome, and The Great and Powerful Trixie’s magic was also sparkling with glitter. The sky overhead, however, was boring. She’d wanted to color it black, but didn’t have enough of her black crayon left to color the whole sky, and Rarity yelled at her when she used makeup for art. Glittering stars would be good enough. They’d get the point across that this was the night sky, and they’d add a nice bit of punch to the otherwise empty negative space on the drawing. The only problem was the stars were gone. Sweetie Belle wasn’t blessed with her older sister’s organizational style; she’d learned from Magnum that as long as you were good at remembering where you’d had something last, that was a good place to leave it, and it generally worked well for her. Except when Rarity moved her book bag after tripping over it, or lectured her on the importance of keeping dresses in the house and pinecones outside. There was no reason for Rarity to have moved her stars, though. Her beautiful gold-foil stars, an entire sheet of them with only one or two missing. Sweetie yanked the drawer out as far as it could go, ignoring the wave of glitter that slid up and over to the lip. She ran her hoof through the clutter, finally resorting to dumping things out on the floor, and there were still no stars. None of the other drawers in her desk yielded stars, either. Sweetie sat on the floor and pushed her art supplies around on the off chance that the stars might suddenly materialize, but they did not. Finally, she stood back up. There was no need to be disappointed. True, her art wasn’t finished, but that could wait. What was more important was the mystery of the missing stars. Prancy Drew wouldn’t just mope; she’d figure out where they’d gone. “Cutie Mark Crusader Detective, yay!” Sweetie bounded out of her room and down the stairs, trailing a small whirlwind of glitter behind her. Her first stop would be the treehouse—with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo on the case, she’d find her missing stars for sure, and maybe they’d get a cutie mark in detectiving. Author's Note A speedwriting contest fic, in GaPJaxie’s new Discord group! (Note, Discord link will expire tomorrow at 6pm EDT) We were all given an hour to write, but because work, I only had about 17 minutes. Turned out okay, got DQed in the first round by fics that were better. Congrats to the winner, TheHatMan!
Today is a Good Day to DieToday is a good day to die... I would prefer tomorrow, though Admiral Biscuit She’d always expected her life to flash before her eyes. Wasn’t that what ponies said? That right before you died, your life passed before your eyes? Her life didn’t flash before her eyes. Instead, it was nothing but a flashing warning light and a blaring alarm that set her fur on end. It was a little thing, but little things rapidly turned into big things. That was why there was an alarm; it was supposed to warn a pony before things got completely out of hoof. It was supposed to warn a pony while the situation was still recoverable. Programmers couldn’t see the future, though. They considered some forms of failure, they wrote a useful guidebook to help in bad situations, but even they could not have forseen a collision--or if they did, they glossed over it. They might have written in the manual to not run into things, and that was good advice. They were safe at home, whoever they were. She was not. She was falling through the uncaring sky, her machine coming apart around her. Secondary alarms flickered on, their tone less urgent. They were systems she could potentially live without, at least in the short term. Long term? Well, she was pretty much fucked. Mama hadn’t raised a quitter, so she reached out and silenced the master caution warning--it wasn’t telling her anything useful any more. She tentatively moved the tiller, trying to establish how much control authority she had left. Not much, but not nothing. The ship responded sluggishly to her command, its movements wallowing instead of crisp. Training kicked in, hours upon hours of practice in simulators as fake emergencies were thrown at her. There was no flashback of her uncompleted life going through her mind; instead, there was a purely analytical flowchart of how her current situation related to anything at all she’d trained for. Right behind that came years of experience at the controls, the feel of the craft when things were normal and the feel of the craft when things were less than normal. The flashback to the impact, the blow that shook her ship from stem to stern, the moment of panic. The dryness of her mouth and the chill that ran down her spine, the desire to run, to gallop away followed by the realization that there was nowhere to gallop to. Outside was death; inside was life, at least for a few fleeting moments. More alarms blare--secondary systems failing. The ship knows it’s mortally wounded. She can still see tumbling bits outside the window, too many of them critical parts of her craft. She punches the console, her shoe denting the uncaring metal. The alarm isn’t silenced. “Hull breach, hull breach.” The bulkheads are shut, they work automatically. In fact, if she were to die at the controls right now, the autopilot might manage to carry her home, or at least close to home. For a moment, she can see it. A ghost ship, controlled by nothing but the residual magic in its navigation system, finding its way home. Inside, nothing but a corpse. No. Mamma didn’t raise a quitter. She grabs hold of the control yoke, and punches the autopilot off. The ship might be able to guide itself without her, even with this much damage, but she’s not willing to let it. If there is to be death today, it will be with her at the helm, laughing in the face of Fate. * * * The ship is sluggish, the damage mortal. Bits and pieces of aluminum are still flaking off the wing, she’s dumping fuel through multiple tank breaches, most of her hydraulics have gone teats-up, and in terms of helpful suggestions, the QRH is a useless waste of paper. It might as well suggest she pack it up and go home for all the help it has to offer. Engineers programmed the systems to try and save the ship but didn’t give as much thought to the ponies within, she knows that. “Pan, pan, pan.” Her voice in the radio is strained, high-pitched. “Flight 1408.” A pause, then the ground control replies. Laconic, as always. “Uh, go ahead, 1408, state intentions.” What are her intentions? Live. She wants to live. Today is a good day to die, but tomorrow would be better. “Extensive port wing damage, hydraulics failing, fuel leak.” You gotta lay it on thick before ground pays attention. She could declare an emergency, but that feels too final. “Need direct vector to any suitable landing field.” She concentrates on her voice, gotta keep the edge of panic out. If she can talk calmly, she is calm. “Understood.” The voice on the radio is calm, and why shouldn't it be? He’s sitting in a comfy chair, not fighting for his life. Clearance instructions blur by; she’s focused on her struggling craft. “Need direct routing.” She focuses on her charts, hoping for a miracle, but one is not forthcoming. * * * She’s got one shot. Her craft is hopelessly damaged, barely capable of flight any more. It doesn’t cut through the air like it ought, but it’s still flying. She’s kept the sink rate survivable, at the very least. But will it be enough? For a moment, she moves outside herself, seeing the struggling craft plummeting through the air, picturing the controls set and held in the only position which still allows some semblance of controlled flight. The engines are stilled; it is a ghost drifting through the sky. Ahead, a small gap in the trees. Not a runway, that hope had long passed. Her hooves work the controls, delicately bringing her craft in line with the last hope she has. The radio can’t hear her any more; she’s gone beyond the horizon, and there is nothing left but her and a crippled machine. Oh, to be a pegasus, and to soar majestically through the window to freedom. * * * The deceptively soft sound of trees brushing against the fuselage, and then the drop, the twisting chaos as her craft is torn apart by the uncaring forest, tumbling and plummeting to its fate, now entirely beyond any last hope of control. She keeps her hooves on the tiller, for what illusory comfort it provides. More telltales illuminate, although at this point they’re not meaningful. The last dying gasp of the machine, skidding across the snowy forest floor and then all is silent, the power has failed, too. She punches the cockpit glass out with a hoof and stumbles away from the smouldering wreckage in a daze. One leg drags behind, broken, although she isn’t aware of that. She’s outside in the good air, she’s alive, and that’s what matters more than anything else. Author's Note Written for the eighth Quills and Sofas speedfic contest. Lost in the first round of voting. I kinda dithered back and forth with her being in a space ship or an airplane and ultimately decided to write it so it could be either. Anyway, hope y'all enjoy it, for what it is.
EFNW Iron Author 2021This early in the year, their garden wasn’t much. A clear rectangle of soil, surrounded by a border of snow. Peachy had cleared it off one moon ago, after the last heavy snow of the season had fallen, and gotten to work planting. Carrots, beets, kale—those could all survive the chill if she kept their leaves warm at night, so she patiently covered them with straw every evening and then brushed it off in the morning, letting the leaves receive a little sun. Red spent his time out in the barn, preparing their tools and implements for spring. The teeth on the spring harrow needed sharpening, all the gears and axles needed to be lubricated, and their muck wagon badly needed to be re-decked, although that was a project that could wait until later if it had to. Satisfied that all was well, that the few cold-hearty weeds had been dealt with, Peachy nosed the straw back in place and walked to their house to begin dinner. She scraped her hooves clean on the mat, grabbed a couple of split logs with her teeth and balanced them on her back as she crossed the threshold into their house. The kitchen stove stayed burning all day in the wintertime to supplement the heat given off by the fireplace. *** After dinner, Peachy banked the fire in the stove while Red washed up. She nuzzled his cheek, he booped her nose with a soapy hoof, and the pair retired to the main room of the house. They had a coffee table that had been covered for much of the winter in sketches of their fields, scraps of paper labeled with seed varieties, seed catalogs which had come in the mail, and a dog-eared weather almanac. A farmer’s puzzle: which crops to plant, in which order, in order to take best advantage of the soil, the sun and the rain. Now that the seeds were ordered and there was nothing to do but wait for Winter Wrap-Up. “Got us something.” Red tugged open the credenza drawer. “When I was in Ponyville last market day, Spilsberry had a fretsaw painting for sale.” “Fretsaw painting?” He nodded. “It’s a map of all of Equestria, but all cut up and mixed up.” “Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy a map that wasn’t cut up?” “Where’s the fun in that?” He pulled the box out with his teeth and carried it over to the table, then dumped it out. “All the settlements is labeled.” Peachy looked at the pieces, scattered around the table. “Sure is a lot of desert, I didn’t think there was that much desert in all of Equestria.” “Them are upside down.” Red turned it over, revealing a dissected swamp. *** Neither of them had ever assembled a puzzle before, and the two debated strategy. Both quickly found the pieces for Ponyville and Canterlot and assembled that small region of Equestria, but then were at a loss. Neither of them knew where Las Pegasus was, nor Seattle, nor Horseshoe Bay. Peachy decided that since the border pieces were distinctive, it would be easiest to build them first and work in from there, while Red preferred working out from Ponyville. *** Winter Wrap-Up morning dawned bright and clear, and neither of them had time to add a few more pieces to the puzzle before getting ready to work. She checked the garden while he went into the barn and got their plows and harnesses squared away. Both ponies were more than familiar with the tasks at hoof; they barely paid attention as Mayor Mare gave her annual pep-talk, or as Twilight and Amethyst Star gave out assignments. By noon, Ponyville was clear, the snow all dumped on the banks of the reservoir. Now country ponies returned to their fields, accompanied by the townponies. Fields were plowed off, soil was turned and prepared for planting, Luna’s moon illuminating as they worked into the night. Red and Peachy shrugged their harnesses off in the barn and trudged back to the house, scraping their hooves before crossing the threshold. Red covered a yawn, and Peachy pulled the door shut behind them. “Seeds tomorrow?” “Rain’s scheduled.” Red tilted his muzzle skyward. “Don’t like it, been talking to some of the other farmers, nopony likes it. It’s a new idea from Cloudsdale, they say. Rain’ll melt off the last of the snow that got forgotten.” “The ground’s still half-frozen, and what’s not frozen is saturated with snowmelt!” “Gonna be a lot of angry ponies in a couple days,” Red said. “Somepony might get herself tarred and de-feathered.” *** There wasn’t much she could do to protect her garden. As the rains started, Peachy harvested the beets and carrots which were mature, and a few day’s worth of kale—there was no point in taking more, it would wilt before it could be eaten. She thought about making sandbags with the burlap sacks that they had in the barn, but knew that her plants could survive a few days underwater if they had to. “Stay strong,” she told her plants. “It will only be for a few days.” *** She’d just finished making dinner when Red came trudging in. “Water’s at the top of the dam, and—” “Did you scrape your hooves on the way in?” “Uh—” “Red Hyslop Apple, you know better than that. You weren’t raised in a barn.” He thought about saying that when the farm inevitably flooded, muddy hoofprints on the floor would be the least of their problems, but his father had always said ‘happy wife, happy life.’ “Applejack’s already making a stink about it,” he said, when he sat down at the dinner table. “And I ran into your friend Lavender on her way to complain to the mayor, I guess some of the low-lying areas have already started to flood, and that’s without the dam overtopping.” Peachy rolled her eyes. “Lavender’s fields flood every spring, that’s why her soil’s so good. If I thought floodwater’d uproot all the rocks in the south field, I’d be hoping we did, too.” “Her field might flood, but her shed usually doesn’t.” “It’s that bad?” Red nodded. “I heard the pegasi are stopping the rain, but they’re too late, they’ve already passed the threshold, water’s still running into the reservoir and snow’s still melting and there’s already a trickle over the top. Some of the ponies in low-lying areas have already left their houses to stay with friends or family. I’m going to take the wagon back, load it up with burlap sacks, and we’ll try and get a little more freeboard.” “You want some help?” “You stay here. Worst happens, use your best judgment on what you can move, what you can get above the water. We’re high enough we should be okay.” Peachy leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you.” *** She’d moved all that she could, she’d gone to the garden and given it another pep-talk, and she’d seen the moonlight reflecting off low spots in the forest and fields as the water crept in. Slowly, stealthy, like a thief in the night, inevitable and unstoppable. Peachy knew the farmhouse and could navigate it on the darkest night, but tonight she wanted the comfort of a hurricane lamp. When Red got home, he’d be hungry. Soup was warm and filling, soup could simmer on the stove for hours more yet. Soup didn’t occupy her attention nearly enough. She watched out the window as the rising water inundated her garden, and for a while it was still visible by the plants sticking up above the water and then they were gone, too. *** As the water crept across the threshold, Peachy nosed another puzzle piece into place, finally completing the Unicorn Range. The front door was open—there was little point in closing it; it wouldn’t keep the water out—and she could see torches and lanterns and lit windows in the distance, all across Ponyville and the surrounding fields. A few pegasi zipped around the skies, but most of them were gone and she could hardly blame them. Out in the fields, a silhouette of a bulky stallion, wagon behind. She could see the ripples around him as he pulled, like a boat in the water. He waved, and she waved back, then waded across their porch and down into the floodwater. Her hooves were wet anyway. She caught up to Red at the barn, and after he’d backed the wagon into its spot, helped him unhitch and unharness. “Dam failed,” he said simply. “Hole opened, ate up all the sandbags and rocks we tossed in. Pepperstep’s house is gone, it was right in the path and didn’t stand a chance. Smashed to flinders.” “Always said she was a fool for building there.” The two of them started wading back to the house. “Mayor ought to make the weatherpony who thought of the rain go and find every board. You want some soup? I made a pot.” He paused at the threshold and rubbed his hooves across the mat before stepping inside. Peachy stuck her tongue out at him. Author's Note My 2021 Iron Author entry . . . for those of you who don’t know what that is, you’re given a prompt and two hours to write. This year, you had to pick three of the four listed words: Threshold Puzzle Garden Lead Balloon They were also supposed to be used meaningfully, rather than just once in the story to tick off a box. As usual, I did a little bit of research; jigsaw puzzles are called that because you cut the pieces out with a fretsaw, and John Spilsbury is the first to have created them. He was a cartographer, and rather than the randomly-shaped pieces we have today, he cut around borders. I didn’t even get an honorable mention . . . I haven’t read all the fics yet, but I can say that the three winners were good. Aquaman won, and we almost got in a fight ‘cause he stole one of my ideas. GaPJaxie came in second, and TangerineBlast got third place. I can’t remember the honorable mentions, although I did write them down, somewhere. If you want to read all the entries, here’s the list. It doesn’t say who got what prize (if any). The three top winners have all been published on FimFiction now: Feelings are Stupid (Tangerine Blast) In the Center of the Hedge Maze (GaP Jaxie) Frozen (Aquaman) Y’all probably remember Peachy Sweet and Red from other stories of mine. Pepperstep is a real pony, too. Well, sorta; upon further study, it’s another name for Cayenne. Source
EFNW 2022Guru Gabby Griffon and the Guerrilla Giraffe Gaffe Admiral Biscuit For Iron Author 2022 Honorable Mention Winner and Ambitious Alliteration Award Winner There was a point in which giving further orders could have no effect. A point in which the choices made, the training completed, the exercise and rehearsals and choreography and everything else were done, and could not be undone. The moment where she had to trust that everything that needed to be done had been done, the moment that every creature was in his or her appointed place and knew the task that they were to perform soon–too soon. All around her, the hushed voices of her trainees, her students, her mentees. She’d taught them everything she’d known . . . no, that wasn’t true. There wasn’t enough time to teach them all that she knew, all that she’d learned; there was barely enough time to teach them what they needed to know. She fluffed her wings and tapped her claws on the scarred wooden floor. It was hard to keep silent, hard to still the butterflies in her stomach, hard to put her trust in others, even though she had to. Quiet hoofsteps across the floor. She could barely see who it was in the murky shadows. Most of them waiting were wearing all black, blending in with the shadows. It was crowded and hot. It was always crowded and hot before, too many creatures and too much stuff all crammed into a too-small space. Beyond the wall she was leaning against, she could hear voices, and she said a silent prayer to whoever would listen that her people remembered to be stealthy. And they did. She was intently focused on her internal monologue, so intently focused that she didn’t hear her assistant approach. Gabby almost shrieked when he tapped her on the shoulder. It was amazing how much socks could quiet hoofsteps. “Hey.” A very soft whisper, but it sounded loud. It sounded like something that could be heard beyond them. “Miss Gabby, do you know where the gaff tape is?” “There isn’t any in the light booth?” He shrugged. “You told us not to go across the catwalks when there was an audience below.” “Oh yeah.” Her heart swelled with pride. It was a small thing, but her many lessons had been taken to heart. “Why do you need it? Did some of the cables come loose?” “Nuh-uh, Gladiola’s head is coming off and we need to tape it back on.” For a moment, a macabre image played across her mind, and then she jerked back to the present as he kept talking. “I told them that it lacked structural integrity, but nopony listened to me. I shoulda–” “In the future you could use your own initiative,” Gabby instructed. “Maybe carry around a roll of gaff tape for taping heads back on.” That was a strange sentence to have just spoken aloud. His ears flattened. “You told us that a good stagehoof is always prepared.” The lesson had been learned. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. “There’s some downstairs in the green room.” “Thanks.” “Oh, and Gaura?” “Yes?” “Nice work on the socks, I totally didn’t hear you coming.” “Thanks!” •••• The play was delayed five minutes while Gladiola’s gorilla head was gaff-taped back on. Maybe somebody in the audience heard the distinctive noise of gaff tape, maybe they didn’t. •••• Now that the curtain was open, she could stay back and watch from the sidelines. It was both a familiar perspective and a new one; even during the full dress rehearsals she didn’t stay backstage, she patrolled the theatre, giving advice, helping her actors and techies when they needed it. No matter how the dress rehearsals had gone, there was a different vibe to opening night. A soft ‘clang’ caught her ear, and she turned and cocked her head, trying to focus on the source. It wasn’t anything that had broken on stage–it had come from the direction of the balconies. Everybody knew that theatres were haunted, but even the ghosts respected the plays. This was something else; something had fallen or broken, or something. •••• Theatres are magical places, full of secret passageways that few know. The normal way to get to the balconies was through the audience, out the auditorium doors, then up a flight of stairs. She chose to creep behind the sets, risking a glance out into the house as she went. Gladiola the Gorilla and Geoff the Giraffe were both on stage, chasing around a small knot of innocent adventuring ponies. If any of her movement was seen, the audience would just assume that some other fearsome forest creature was about to join the fray–and they wouldn’t be wrong; as she crossed back into the shadows of the wings, Gypsophilia the Gnu trotted on stage. Gabby flew up the ladder, ducked through an access hallway lined with carbide lamps, and then slowly made her way down a flight of disused, dusty stairs. Practically every riser squealed in protest as soon as she put an ounce of weight on it. “Oh no, another monster, run!” She could hear the hoofsteps of the actors as they trotted around the stage, now further pinned in with the arrival of Gilbert Gopher. Laughter erupted from the audience and more and more jungle creatures arrived to meanace the main cast, and then she was easing open the lower hallway door–the hinges squeaked. There, on the floor, where it clearly didn’t belong, was a grille. Somehow, it had fallen off the ventilation shaft. This hallway was almost never used. While it wasn’t obvious to Gabby how the grille might have loosened up, she knew that it could have been unscrewed for a long time before it finally fell flat. And she would have given it no further thought if she hadn’t also noticed a pair of eyes that vanished into the darkness as soon as they were spotted. The hollow banging of a creature against a metal duct was all the proof she needed that something was in the shaft. Gabby glided across the hall and crouched alongside the vent, wiggling her butt as she got into pounce position, just waiting for those eyes to return. Return they did, a few seconds later. First a muzzle, poking curiously out of the vent, nostrils flared. Then some leopard-spotted fur, then the eyes, two horns, ears– “Hey.” Gabby’s voice was a whisper. “Who are you?” The ears snapped over, and the head followed. “And why are you in my vent?” A look of indignation crossed the stranger’s face, before giving in to pride. “I am here as a leader of the guerrillas who are going to make you regret ever putting on this farce of a play.” “Look, I know the writing’s not the best, but it’s Ginger Shade’s first play.” “It’s speciest. And we aim to put a stop to it.” “How do you mean?” Gabby got up from her crouch and moved more into the center of the hallway so that her strange visitor wouldn’t get a crick in her neck. “You’re portraying non-pony creatures in a bad light. With an imperialistic pony view of things. Maybe we don’t have the big glittering palaces of Canterlot or trains, but just because most of us like to live a simple life and not bother anybody doesn’t mean that we don’t have any kind of a culture. We’re not a bunch of ignorant savages.” “Did you even read the play?” “No, but George did and he got very offended.” “Who’s–” “Well, not all of it, but he read enough of it to get the idea.” “Literally the moral of the play is that friendship is magic,” Gabby said. “The entire second act revolves around that.” “Oh.” “So are you the spotter or something?” She shook her head. “We, uh, it seemed like a good idea to sneak through the vents, that’s what they always do in movies. So if you could just pretend you didn’t see me. . . .” Gabby ran a talon across her crest, then dropped on her rump in the hallway. “So, I’m the stage manager, and it’s my job to make sure that the play goes off without a hitch, or a guerilla I guess.” “Guerillas, there are a bunch of us. George’s goons, we’re called.” “How many?” “I’m not telling you.” “Will you tell me your name?” “If–” She paused, before speaking again. “We’re not friends. I’m entirely opposed to your theatre production. Even if it’s like you say and the whole play revolves around a friendship lesson–” “In Equestria, it’s literally the law that they do.” “–you’re mocking me by having your giraffe be a pony with painted-on spots and a paper mache head and neck.” “So you’re a giraffe, then?” She nodded her head. “Why didn’t you come to tryouts? You could have auditioned.” “I didn’t hear about it, okay? The ponynet’s really unreliable where I live.” “We could have put up posters,” Gabby admitted. “I do apologize for that. I did wonder why we got a mostly pony and pony-adjacent cast.” The giraffe snorted, blowing up a cloud of dust from the floor. “I’m pony-adjacent.” “Moreso than me,” Gabby admitted. “What’s your name.” “Clementine.” “Huh. Would have expected it to start with a ‘G’.” “Are you stereotyping?” “No, just that it seems most species I know like alliteration.” She stuck out a talon. “My name’s Gabby, by the way.” “Gabby the Griffon?” “Yeah.” Gabby took back her unshook talon. “So . . . I think we’re almost to the intermission now, and I really need to get back to my spot on the stage. My assistant has a lot in his hooves, and it sounds like I’ll have to be dealing with George the Guerrilla–” “How’d you know he was a gorilla?” Her brain short-circuited for a brief instant, crashed, and then rebooted. “Lucky guess.” Might have to expect a groundhog and a gnu, too. She frowned. What does a gnu even look like? Gabby turned and started to walk away, then paused as her talong was on the half-open door. She could feel Clementine’s eyes on her, almost pleading? “You . . . are you stuck?” Clementine let out a long-suffering sigh. “I got my head up this shaft, you’d think I could get it back down again. I could back up but there’s a dropoff behind me and if I fall in that I’ll really be stuck.” Gabby rolled her eyes. Respectfully. And then she got out her cell phone and started punching in numbers. •••• The actors took their final bow and the curtain came down for the final time. The hoofstomps of applause faded out and there were none more enthusiastic than those of a giraffe in a neck brace, standing in the back where she wouldn’t block anybody’s view, and also off to the side where she also wouldn’t block the view of ponies in the balcony. The fire department had extracted her from the ventilation system midway through the second act, and they’d also found George the Guerilla Gorilla who had taken a wrong turn and wound up one building over. Hugs and hoofbumps were exchanged, and at the end everypony learned a valuable friendship lesson or two. Gaura never again stage-managed without a roll of gaff tape, George graduated from Guerillaing to geology, ultimately getting a gneiss degree from Georgetown, and Clementine auditioned for the next play and got a leading role. Gabby learned not to assume that giraffe names start with the letter G, but she still doesn’t know what a gnu actually looks like.
EFNW Iron Author 2023Tropical Paradise Iron Author 2023 Admiral Biscuit The old stallion nosed his rowboat against the smooth black obsidian sand, leaning back in the stern to let the bow fetch up as far as it would. With practiced ease, he stowed the oars, then slowly walked forward, shifting his weight as the waves rocked the boat. He took the painter in his teeth and pulled it well ashore, far beyond where the ocean could take it back, and then he started unloading. First, his catch: two buckets full of seawater and oysters. Then, his supplies: two buckets of paint. He reached into the rowboat a third time, tugging out salt-stained weather-worn saddlebags. Some ponies had fancy workshops in the city; he had the smooth expanse of the beach, the soothing crash of the waves, the gentle trade winds ruffling the palms, and the jagged mountains behind him. He pulled a dull knife out of his saddlebags. The original handle had rotted off, and he’d made a new one out of vines. It was more comfortable on the teeth, anyway. One by one, he pulled the oysters out of the bucket and carefully pried their mouths open, revealing a delicate pearl in each. The pearls were set into a small muslin sack, while he chucked the oysters back into the ocean. Sometimes he wondered how they felt about that. Dragged up from their home to the surface, piled in a bucket, their mouths pried open, and then they took a brief flight back into the ocean from whence they’d come. Once the last pearl had been harvested, the stallion got back to his hooves and stretched, then picked up the buckets one-by-one and carried them down the beach, dumping them back out where the sand was soft and water-saturated. He didn’t have to; they water would have soaked into the sand anywhere he’d dumped it out, but he’d always done it that way and there was no reason to change. He grabbed his boat and pulled it further up the beach, now beyond the reach of tides, as well. Shoving it over wasn’t as easy as when he’d been young. His hooves slipped on the lap-straked wood several times before the boat finally cooperated and tipped over. The buckets went underneath, ready for tomorrow. He tucked the muslin bag of pearls into his saddlebags and strapped them on, then he started looking around the beach for a piece of driftwood. There was always some above the high tide line, the bleached bones of trees and ships, tossed about by the ocean until they were spat back out on land. A shadow crossing the beach caught his attention--a lone pegasus, either on cloud patrol or searching for dinner. He watched her until she’d rounded the corner of the mountain, back towards Shelter Bay. Both paint cans wobbled precariously as he made his ascent up the mountain, up towards a cluster of buildings. The road had always been winding and full of switchbacks; now the jagged scar of a lava flow cut through some of it. He snorted and spit at the dried magma as he first encountered it, several hundred feet up the mountain already. The trees and underbrush had grown back all the way to the edge of the rock but it was a barrier they could not cross. Nor could he easily cross it. After it had happened, some of the townsponies had tried chipping it away, but it dulled pickaxes and was impervious to shovels. Smashing it with hammers knocked chips off but it would take forever to get through it that way. He cautiously set hoof on it--the rock was slippery and provided almost no purchase. It was nearly as dangerous as it had been when it was still molten. As he crossed, he thought about The Day. The earth had been rumbling for weeks leading up to The Day, and then the mountain had started spewing forth ash and lava. Some ponies fled; some stayed in their homes to shield themselves, and the flow mercilessly cut through forests, homes, and roads, it fell in waterfalls off ledges and set trees and underbrush aflame and then it spread out on the beach and swallowed the docks until it finally drown in the ocean, hissing and steaming. Back on the path again, he looked down at his hooves. There were spots where the path was worn to bare rock and others where soil and ash had accumulated. Small plants were growing in the latter sections. Something would need to be done about them before they grew too big--the ash had been a boon for the soil, filling it with nutrients for all the plants to enjoy. Midway up the mountain, the land leveled out. A trick of ancient geography, with the addition of lava flows piling up before they flowed off the edge. This one had behaved no differently, leaving a pile of glassy rock in its wake. One day, plants would thrive there again, but the stallion doubted he’d live long enough to see it. Further up, the palms and underbrush had been cleared, leaving a series of terraced hills. Farms, tended to as well as they could be. Most of them had largely escaped the volcano’s wrath, although there were a few scars here and there from flaming ejecta. He set down his buckets and sat on a smooth obsidian rock that jutted up from the soil, its surface warmed by the sun. It had always been a popular resting place for ponies making their way up to the village, with room enough for three or four. He rested until the sun had passed its zenith, and then he continued along the path, past the lush gardens, past a field of flowers that were all in bloom. Bees and butterflies flew around, gathering up the nectar. A few more switchbacks and he was at the top. Down the main street, past the hardware store and the blacksmith’s, past the bakery and the restaurant, the small green which had been the market, then down the side street to his house. He loved his house. It perched right on the edge of a drop-off, giving him a pegasus-eye view of the caonopy and the ocean beyond. Every day that wasn’t cloudy or foggy he could watch the sun rise. And on the other side? The volcano. The stallion set down his paint, neatly arranging the two cans by the door. He took the driftwood back outside and threw it on his woodpile. Sometimes it got cold at night, so he had a little wood stove to warm things up. He walked out the side door, towards their garden. Right after The Day, most of the crop had been lost, buried under ash. Leaves singed off the plants, and any hope of recovery had been dashed by the dark clouds blotting out the sun. But the garden had bounced back. Some of the plants had recovered enough to bear fruit once again, and others had been planted in the enriched soil, thriving in what had once been a ruin. Weeds, too. He took his stirrup hoe and started working the rows, digging out the weeds. Sometimes he wondered if he should bother; there was enough sun and nutrition for both crops and weeds alike to prosper. That was the wrong kind of thinking. That was a lazy pony’s way, that would lead to a weed-choked garden. It was better to address problems when they were small. The sun was already behind the volcano’s peak when he finished. He brushed the dirt off his hoe and put it back in its place, then picked an assortment of vegetables for lunch. Radishes, tomatoes, lettuce, alfalfa, violets. There wasn’t anything to drink in the pantry cupboard, so he went down the street to the general store and got several bottles of soda. Their stock was getting very low, he noted. He ate in the market square, as he often did. When he was a colt, it had always been bustling, a vibrant hive of activity. Familiar faces at the booths, hawking their wares, even the occasional wagon full of supplies from the mainland. Or what everypony had always called ‘Beyond.’ His hunger sated, he dusted off his hooves and walked back to his house. He picked the first paint can and took a brush off the wall and started walking through town, towards the south, towards the-- He tried not to think about ‘The Day,’ but there were always reminders. Every time he looked up and down the side of the mountain, every time he looked along the main street and saw the vexing scar that cut through his town. He didn’t have a ladder or scaffolding, so he improvised. Empty barrels from the general store, crates from the smithy, boards. Everypony contributed to keeping their community nice. Sometimes ponies got busy and couldn’t take care of the small stuff, that was something he understood. He would do his part. He’d been working on the other side of the street, and had left everythihng there. The home was beautiful, a cheerful yellow that caught the sun’s rays and reflected them back onto the street, unto everypony. It stood out from the verdant forest that surrounded it, and it drew the eye, even from the beach. The palm fronds that covered the roof and awning had faded as they’d dried, going from a lush green to a straw brown. That couldn’t be helped. Lantana and Daffodil and Hibiscus lived there--it was a small town where everypony knew everypony. He stacked the crates and barrels, and started to work. A bright orange for this wall. The volcano had stained it with soot and scorched off the original paint and it just looked ugly and forgotten and that wasn’t right. The stallion painted until the bucket ran dry, then he went home and got the second bucket and painted until that, too, was gone. He hadn’t bought enough. Still, the unpainted sections were low down on the wall, and they’d soon enough be covered by greenery again. There was no reason to go home right away, and no reason to clean his paintbrush--he’d just get another one from the general store tomorrow. They still had plenty. He walked down the street to the market green, and turned around, admiring the fiery orange wall. A perfectly complement to Lantana’s house, he decided. He hadn’t been sure when he’d bought the paint. Now that it was done, his heart felt lighter. It had long been the ugliest thing in the village, and he hadn’t been sure what to do about it. It was the vestigial remains of Seashell’s house; everything else had been consumed by the lava. He’d thought about pushing it over, but wasn’t sure how to do that, and even if he managed, he’d have been left with a pile of rubble which would have been worse. From the market, in the fading light of day, it looked like it could still be a complete house. He sighed and sat down in the center of the market. The grass had grown back--that would need to be tended to soon. And he still had to thatch Starshine’s roof. Starshine. He stood up and walked across the market green and straightened her marker, and then he took his place back on the green, surrounded by his family and friends. Author's Note For those of you who don't know, Everfree Northwest holds an Iron Author writing competition every year. The rules are simple: at the beginning of the event, you're given a prompt--usually in the form of keywords--and then you have two hours. A team of volunteers reads the fics, and the top finishers go to a separate panel for judging. For this year, our prompt words were "vibrant vestigial, vexing volcano, verdant vegetable." While we didn't have to use the specific words, they had to be thematic in the story. The winner was Shaslan with Flower Wars, which I mention again because it is so good! Undome Tinwe came in second, and R5h got third, while EileenSaysHi, FanOfMostEverything, Jordanis, ManeEffect, Master Thief, Wanderer D and myself all got honorable mentions. This is the story exactly as it was presented to the judges. This is one where I might do some editing and make it a standalone, since I think it came out really well and could shine with a little bit of cleanup, but I want y'all to also be able to see the original. Since not everybody has posted their fics on FimFic just yet, you can read them all HERE. (Xepher's server) One other thing I should mention, about half the fics were written by people doing Iron Author for the first time ( I think it was 21 or 22 first-timers).
PVCF Prompt Fic—Starlight's Magic BoxStarlight's Magic Box Starlight Glimmer regarded the cardboard box with the same scrutiny a scientist might regard a new species of bug. Or rock—Maud often had a similar mien. This wasn't a rock or a bug; it was just a box. Six smooth walls of cardboard, arrows indicating which end should be up. An address scrawled across the top in hasty yet precise mouthwriting: Pinkie Pie had sent this to the Crystal Castle. Anything could be inside. She knew the pink party pony's predilections—when she opened the flap, confetti might burst forth . . . or Pinkie Herself. It was unpredictable. Almost magical. A magical box, even if not imbued with any actual magic. But then, weren't all boxes magical? Couldn't all boxes contain anything at all? Well, if it would fit in the three dimensions of the box. Starlight slit the tape and lifted the flaps with her magic. She flinched back, instinctively waiting for the confetti. Inside the box was a three-layer cake: no more, no less. We were given twenty minutes to write a one-page only story involving three words/themes: box, the number three, and Starlight Glimmer. It had to be handwritten. Since this one's short, I figured I'd post the photo I took of the page I handed in. Yes, my handwriting's terrible; this is the version I re-wrote to be legible.
PVCF Iron Author 2023Ship’s Log 1600 hours 24 days after Midsummer Moon Vessel secure at dock Ship’s Log 1630 hours 24 days after Midsummer Moon Finished with engines Chief Engineer Bright Star’s ears perked as the engine room telegraph jangled. He instinctively moved towards the repeater as the signal rang out a second time, the harsh noise of the bell cutting through the cacophony of the engine rooms. A young hoof silenced it, rang out the reply to the bridge--he sighed. All the young cadets, he hadn’t even bothered to learn their names. What was the point? “Chief?” He turned his head. Second Engineer Peppermint Barque dropped her satchel on the scarred deckboards, and as he turned he saw the concern on her face, just for a fleeting moment before her face hardened, her body stiffened, and she instinctively saluted. “At ease.” The Chief’s desk was clear of all but the Engineering log, the ship’s journal . . . the Captain thought that the Ship’s Log up on the bridge was the important one, but while that kept their course and weather, the commands from on high, their journal, kept in the bowels of the ship, tracked the operations of her, the hidden side nopony ever saw. Page after page, a third of them in his own hoof-writing . . . no more. Today’s logbook entry was the last. Everything he now did was for the last time. He closed his eyes, let his nose and ears take in the familiar smells, the familiar sounds, to save them just a little longer in his memory. And then he pulled the key off his belt and gave it to now-Chief Engineer Peppermint Barque. There was nothing more to say, so he didn’t. Bright Star hesitated at the entry of the engine room, watched her bow her head as she wrote in the journal book for the start of watch . . . he’d trained her well. Bright Star had been hired onto the Diamond Rose the day her hull had slipped into the water for the first time. He’d started out as a wiper--basically a gopher in the engine room--and worked his way up and up, watching ponies come and go, and yet he remained. As the years went by, he could barely remember a before-time: it was always the ship. He had little interest in the ports of call. Occasionally he’d leave the ship and pick up a few trinkets to send to his nieces and nephews, but for the most part he preferred to remain aboard, to stand his watches in the engine room. No more. Now he was retired. It was official the minute that he had relinquished his command and his key to Peppermint Barque, and what remained was him getting his belongings off the ship and onto land. There wasn’t much. A few trinkets for the grand-nephews and -neices back home, some of his tools, some clothes--it all fit onto one rucksack. The chief’s engineer’s quarters weren’t exactly luxurious. Maybe twice as big as the rest of the engine crew got. He didn’t have to hot-bunk if he didn’t want to, he had a writing desk, and now it was all Peppermint Barque’s. By the end of her watch, he’d be gone, nothing but a memory. He sighed, looked out his porthole and down at the dock. The gangway had been run out, rigged--he watched the Executive Officer make her way onto the dock to discuss the loading with the Dockmaster. Bright Star considered, just for an instant, going up to the bridge and saying his goodbyes to the captain. But he wasn’t a sentimental pony. His watch was over, and it was time to go. The gangway took out some of the rocking of the ship, since one end was anchored on dry land. He looked down, over the edge, even though he knew not to. There was a moment of vertigo, a thrill of fear as he pondered the between-space, the not-ship and not-land, the oily dirty water, clogged with garbage. Every time before, he was thinking about when he’d return to the ship, but now? Now it was done. His watch was finished, and that was that. Bright Star wasn’t a sentimental pony, but he couldn’t let the ship go. The Diamond Rose had been his home forever. One last look, the ship tied in the dock . . . he never liked the way she looked when she was tied up. She was meant to be in the ocean, her engine running at a comfortable pace, her screw beating behind, settled into the water at a good draft, not the ungainly shallow draft so many harbors required. Extra steam required to pump the tanks, to respond to commands from the bridge, and then when they got into port they had to remember to switch over the pumps-- A frown crossed his muzzle as he studied the wisp of smoke drifting out the stack. It was heavy and greasy and he shook his head. He hadn’t even been gone for an hour and they were overfilling the boilers. And then a brief lull on the dock. Even the seagulls wheeling overhead were silent--or maybe they weren’t and Bright Star was just that attuned to the ship. Old instincts took over. He dropped his rucksack and charged back to his ship, shoving a pony off the gangway as he went by. The main entry to the engine room was along the B-deck and around aft, but he knew a shortcut. Everypony in the engine room did. He raced around the decks, his hooves echoing in the empty space, welcoming him back home. Peppermint Barque still hadn’t gotten the hang of sliding down access ladders. That was one of the many things he couldn’t teach; she’d figure it out or she wouldn’t. One more passageway, and there was a remote valve bank that Peppermint might have overlooked. He yanked the hatch open and touched the back of a hoof on one of the pipes. Blazing hot, the cooling water wasn’t circulating at all. He should-- He could hear the boiler straining at its seams. It was now or never time. He grabbed the wheel and started turning, all the pressure and flow gauges in his head. The pipe was knocking, steam pocket building up in what should have been the fresh-water supply. They’d block the supply, they shouldn’t be there. The inlet! Some of the floating debris in the harbor must be blocking the pipe. Bright Star knew how to fix that the proper way. A bank of valves in the engine room could be turned to backflow the water, to push away any obstructions, but there just wasn’t time. He knew a shortcut, one that would save the ship and save the boiler, one that would save the entire crew in the engine room--and if he’d been quicker, it could have saved him, too. But he hadn’t been. As long as the engine kept running, the bilge pumps would, too. Bright Star reached up and opened a valve that he never should have opened while the engine was running, listened to the flow of water and steam as it rushed the wrong way through the pipe, and then he spun a second valve wheel shut. Down below, he still had time. He slid down the ladder, gracefully dismounting in the lower ballast tank. He knew every inch of the ship, and he knew where the scupper was. He could hear the suction from the engine and feel as it tried to pull water in from the tank, but there wasn’t enough in it. Yet. The scupper valve was only meant to be opened in drydock, certainly not while the ship was at dock. He wrestled it open wide, nodding in satisfaction as the blast of water knocked him off his hooves. It slammed him against the steel wall of the tank, the pressure of the water echoing in the confined space. His ears were trained, and as the water rose, he heard the cooling pumps pick up this new supply of water. It was the last thing he heard. Chief Engineer Peppermint Barque stood rooted to the dock as a nearly-finished ship slid into the water. It heeled over, recovered, and then bobbed in the channel, as if awaiting its orders. Those would come, in time. Once it was fitted out . . . once he was fitted out. She placed Chief Engineer Bright Star’s cap on her head, then picked up the champagne bottle. It was time to christen the new ship, and who better to name it after? Author's Note Since PVCF 2023 had a writer's track, we also had an Iron Author. I don't remember who won (it was announced during closing ceremonies, and it was a name I wasn't super familiar with). The prompts were Legacy, The Space Between, Journal, and Injury; you only had to use three of the prompts.
EFNW 2024 Speedwriting Panel“Enchanted” Admiral Biscuit There was a small grove outside Ponyville, in a space that was neither quite Ponyville proper and not quite the Everfree Forest, either. A between space. A magical space. And none of the adults in town knew it. How could they? They went about with their lives, their eyes and minds always focused on jobs or relationships, or the fact that Amalgamated Ironworks stock had gone down four points in the last day and if it went down any more– SIlver Spoon sighed. Adults didn’t see the little strip of land, the little border between town and not town. They just walked over it without a care in the world. They didn’t see that it was magical–that it was enchanted, the kind of place that felt everypony passing–that let everypony pass, and yet they held no sway over it. For it was in Ponyville, at least according to the maps. It was under the jurisdiction of the weather patrol, the flower police, the grass guardians . . . and yet, it still did its own thing. It grew what it wanted, and it was obvious to Silver Spoon why it did–it had its very own forest spirit, something that would only appear in those spaces where neither ponies nor untamed Nature could quite take hold. It was a peaceful place for her to sit and watch, even if nopony else in town knew it for what it was. Author's Note On Friday, some of the Quills and Sofas dpeedwriting crew presented a panel on how to speedwrite (and why you should), and at the end if it, challenged us to write a fic in 10 minutes using the prompt 'enchanted'.
EFNW Iron Author 2018EFNW Iron Author 2018 Words to use: Fire Palpable Brooch Homeland Security has taken all the fun out of flying. When I was a kid, there was always eager anticipation when we got to the airport. A little bit of caution—Dad always wanted us to check one more time that we weren't carrying our Boy Scout pocketknives before we went through the metal detector—and after that, we'd go right to the gate and watch the airplanes. Some airports had a rooftop area where you could watch the airplanes land and take off. One weekend when we were near the airport we just went by and airplane watched for a while. Not any more. They've taken away one thing after another all in the interests of security. There's a bit of paranoia about going through the line, and if you don't follow the instructions exactly you get pulled aside for a pat-down or some blue-gloved TSA agent going through your luggage or demands to dump out your water bottle. At least there's a bar between the security checkpoint and the gate. A fancy bar—it even had a little brick oven in the corner with a cheerful fire going. I checked my watch, and then took a seat at the bar, right next to the fireplace. Close enough that I could see the flames dancing just out of the corner of my vision. Airport drinks are stupidly expensive, since they've got you captive, and you either pay for them or you get nothing. I ordered a double. By the time I'd finished my drink, I'd mostly forgotten about my trip through the security checkpoint and proceeded to find my way to my gate. Of course it was at the far end of the terminal, and while I could have taken the airport tram, I thought that walking would be better. Work off that last little bit of nervous energy. I'd packed everything in a carry-on bag—an old one that didn't have wheels—and by the time I got to the far end of the airport, I was really wishing that I'd decided to replace it. Or checked it in like any normal person would have. But I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. I'd been smart enough to bring my Kindle, both for in-flight entertainment and before. It was fully charged, and loaded with a few new books that I'd been meaning to read, as well as a few old favorites in case I just didn't feel in the mood for something new. After proactively putting my cell phone into airplane mode, I leaned back in the seat and lost myself in the world of Westeros. * * * An hour later, I was standing in line in the boarding area, not entirely certain that I was in the correct line. They'd announced boarding for zone 2, which I presumed was somewhere on my boarding pass, but after looking at it three different times, I still hadn't found it. There is probably a field of sociology which takes place entirely at airports. Maybe psychology, too. People have a range of experiences on airplanes and at airports and a range of reasons for flying. I mostly don't try and figure out someone else's business, but my eye kept being drawn to the customer in line just behind me. It would have been better if she was in front, because then I could have pretended that I was just looking to see if the line was moving, not catching sideways glances at her. This is like the setup to a bad sitcom episode, I thought. Why would a pegasus even need an airplane? That was a singularly stupid thing to think. I had legs, but if I wanted to go somewhere farther than my mailbox, I'd probably drive my car. I thought about saying something to her then, but there were a few people between us. A wrinkled old prune with an ivory brooch holding her shawl clasped, a gaggle of college-girls that were gossiping about how, like, totally hawt the waiter at Olive Garden was, and a well-dressed businessman whose sole focus was on his cell phone. The line started shuffling forward, moving at zombie-speed up to the gate where our boarding passes got scanned one more time, and then we got to go in the airbridge to the airplane. There was very little overhead bin space left by the time I stowed my bag, and then I squeezed through to the window seat. For all the fun that the TSA had taken out of flying, they still let airplanes have window, which meant that I could still look out and feel some of the thrill I'd felt back when I was a kid. I looked over the safety card and fastened my seat belt and asked myself if I should've used the bathroom one more time before getting on the airplane and then I crouched down a little bit and looked out the window. I must have been completely lost in the intricacies of airport operations, because I never noticed when she sat down in my row. I didn't notice her until I heard the thunking click and saw the lights blink briefly, a sign that the airplane had switched over to internal power. The stewardesses were walking down the aisle, closing the overhead bins and looking at seat belts. And there was a pegasus pony sitting next to me, struggling with her buckle. “First time flying?” I said. “On an airplane.” She fluffed her wings a little big, just in case I'd somehow missed seeing them. “Yeah.” I shook my head in the hopes of rattling some of the stupid loose. “That's what I meant. Do you want a hand? Er, some help?” “Maybe.” She tugged at the belt. “I don't even like these things. What good are they going to do me?” If I'd had a moment to think, I probably wouldn't have, but I reached across her lap and got the free end of her belt, and then I had to basically grope her to get it fastened. Airplane seatbelts were not designed for comfort or adjustability, but I could at least take solace in the fact that they were roughly designed for my anatomy. In her case, not so much. She looked singularly uncomfortable. “If there's nopony in that seat,” she said, pointing to the vacant center seat, “I'm gonna stretch out after the airplane takes off and I can take this dumb thing off.” “That's a good idea.” “You don't mind, do you?” “Not at all.” I had already decided that I was going to lift up the arm rest if nobody took that seat, and give myself a little bit more butt room. “I'm Lynn,” she says, sticking out a hoof. “It's not much of a pony name; my parents named me after contact.” “Bob,” I say. “What brings you to Earth?” “I'm in truck driving school. At first I wanted to be a train driver, but then I realized that trucks don't have to follow tracks and can go wherever they want to.” “How—” I clamped my mouth shut. Maybe I was wrong, but it felt like asking a handicapped person something really offensive about their disability, and I'd already proved myself a fool by asking her if it was her first time flying. * * * We were four hours delayed getting off the ground, and the mood in the cabin was getting tense. I could see that she was suffering from her belted-in position, but there was nothing she could do about it. The stewardesses were merciless in enforcing the rules, getting slightly snappier as the time wore on, and I could hardly blame them. I never liked the shuddering feeling as the airplane first started accelerating down the runway, but it smoothed out like it always did. The plane shivered a little bit and then the nose came up and then we were climbing. I kept my nose pressed up against the window, looking for familiar landmarks. The announcement chime dinged politely a few minutes later—seemingly right away, although I could tell that the airplane had mostly leveled off. The pilot gave his standard boilerplate about keeping your seatbelts fastened whenever you were in your seats in case of unexpected turbulance and then said that the stewardesses were going to be passing out drinks and food from the lunch menu and that everyone was going to get half-off as a way to apologize for the delay. Lynn hadn't waited for the end of the announcement to unbuckle her seatbelt and stretch out on the chair. Maybe she was afraid I'd renege on my promise and take the middle seat, or maybe she's been just that uncomfortable. She stretched out her wings and rolled her back and then managed a brief Yoga pose: Downward Facing Dog. She flicked her tail once, and then dropped her rump back to the seat, her tail brushing lightly against my leg. And then she was asleep. * * * Every time you hear an interview after an airplane crash, it always starts out with: 'the flight was normal until. . . .' But how else are you going to describe it? It was normal until it wasn't. Someone had a vague foreboding, or a feeling, or saw something. I never saw or felt anything amiss; the flight was normal until one of the stewardesses came back to our row and crouched down in front of Lynn, pausing for a moment before shaking her shoulder. She kept her voice low, but I could hear anyway. “Do you know how to fly?” Lynn's ears dropped down and then perked back up, and she nodded. Meanwhile, a palpable terror grabbed me. In these post-9/11 days, passengers don't get to go up to the cockpit to look around. The doors are locked, and nobody but the flight crew gets to go up there. Ever. There were no announcements over the PA. I watched Lynn follow the stewardess down the aisle, all the way to the curtain between first and second class, and then I lost sight of her. She was pretty short, and I didn't want to stand up, didn't want to cause a panic. I pulled my seat belt tightly around my waist and took the safety briefing card out of the seatback in front of me. Now was a good time to review the instructions. Lynn took in the deserted cockpit. Scraps of the meals that they'd eaten were still on the floor, a mute testimony of what had happened here. She could smell the fear and sickness and she pushed those things to the back of her mind. It's just like a truck. She took the left seat. The driver sat in the left seat, and the co-driver sat in the right. She wouldn't have a co-driver for this flight, but it was reasonably short. Trucks had cruise control; airplanes had fancier cruise control. She knew without consulting a single instrument or gauge that the airplane was flying itself, making minor course corrections to keep it pointed towards its destination. There was a wheel in front of her to steer, and two pedals that were presumably the clutch and brake—the throttles were a pair of t-handles. Studying the wheel for a moment revealed that not only did it turn, but it also pulled forward and back. It only took her a moment to correlate its movements with the airplane's response, and she nodded in satisfaction. There was even a radio. The CB in her Peterbelt had about 40 channels; the airplane clearly had many more, since the display was four digits long. Since she didn't know what channel it was supposed to be on, she left it where it was and looked around for a mic. That turned out to be attached to the headset. You weren't allowed to wear them in trucks, because they blocked too much hearing, but maybe that was allowed in an airplane. There was lots of wind noise. “Breaker one nine, anypony got a copy? This is the brown birdhorse, come on?” A moment later, a voice exploded in her ear. “Are—get off this channel! This is an aviation channel.” “Ten-four,” she said cheerfully. “I'm in an airplane, and neither of the pilots can fly it. If I'm on the wrong channel, which one do I need to be on?” There was silence, and then a new voice cut in. “Ah, brown birdhorse?” “Yeah.” “This is Omaha control. Did you say that you're in an airplane and neither of the pilots can fly it?” The voice on the other end of the radio sounded slightly worried. “Ten-four, good buddy.” “We need you to squawk seventy-seven seventy-seven on your transponder.” “I'm not good at bird—can I just say it?” “I . . . you. . . .” The radio fell silent for a moment an then a new voice came on. “Ah, brown birdhorse, how much flight experience do you have?” “I've been flying for fourteen years. Not in a commercial tru—commercial airplane.” She scanned over the flight instruments. Maybe the transponder was another name for the Qualcomm. Those usually worked on their own, but maybe there was some kind of a special procedure for them on airplanes. “It's an instrument that should be in the center of the cockpit,” the voice said, and then continued describing the location. The dials were tiny and not hoof-friendly at all, and it took her several tries before she got all the windows to show sevens. “Ten-four, I've got it.” “Okay, we see you.” There was another long pause. “Um, say intentions.” “Intentions.” Lynn tapped her hoof against the control column. “I guess I intend to land at the nearest airport. We're supposed to go to Vanhoof—Vancouver, but I haven't got a map, and I can't find the GPS.” Surely there was a GPS on here, somewhere. Probably in the center screen, which was currently showing a compass heading, along with speed and altitude. “Understood.” There was a pause. “The closest airport is Butte . . . it should be off to your twelve o'clock position. Please contact the tower on 124.9 for approach instructions.” “Ten-four. Brown birdhorse out.” The knob on the radio was slightly less fiddly than the one on the so-called transponder, and it didn't take her too long to switch to the new frequency. She sat right on the edge of her seat and craned her neck to see over the nose of the airplane—she ought to be able to see the airport in front of her. “Breaker one twenty-four decimal nine, this is the brown birdhorse. You got a copy?” “We can hear you, brown birdhorse. Is that you actual name?” “Negative, good buddy. It's just the one I use on the radio.” There was surely some way to make the seat move forward and back. Just like the air seat in her Peterbelt, it had lots of levers, and she started tugging at them experimentally, until she finally figured out how to make it move. She shifted around on her rump waiting for a reply from the radio, and finally got one. “You . . . are you a pony?” “Ten-four.” The pedals were reachable now, but she was happy to just let the airplane cruise along on its own until she got close enough to see the airport. It wasn't like trying to drive on a highway with all the other cars crowded around; it looked like she had the sky to herself. “Miss . . . Schantia?” He pronounced her name slowly and carefully, and also completely wrong. But he'd tried, and that was nice of him. “That's me.” “Do you know the number of souls on board?” “Hold on, I'll see if I can find a loading manifest.” There would be maps and manifests and log books and who knew what else stuffed in the various compartments and cubbies up here. It was a shame that she didn't have a proper pilot to explain it all to her, but it couldn't be that complicated. “You can ask the stewardess,” the voice on the radio suggested. “Ten-four, thank you, that's a good idea.” * * * The men and women on the radio had been very nice and polite, which was something that she couldn't always say for her fellow truck drivers. Sometimes they were outright mean when they realized that the truck was being driven by a pony. The airport was off to her left, still out of view. She'd successfully intercepted the glideslope at the control tower's suggestion, and then continued past it, not realizing that she was supposed to descent. A moment later, a familiar voice came back on the radio. “Uh, Miss . . . brown birdhorse, you ought to be slowing and descending. Is the airplane damaged?” “No, negative. Not as far as I know. I can check.” “Let's get you slowed down, first.” “Ten-four.” She reached out her hooves. The brake would be on the right, the clutch on the left—it was probably smarter to clutch in first and see what happened, then use the brake if she needed to slow down faster. There was less resistance than she'd expected, and the airplane turned sharply to the left. She grabbed the control yoke tightly and jerked it to the right, which caused it to roll to that side which still going right. An alarm started blaring. Throttle. She yanked back on the throttles. Am I losing my air brakes? She hadn't found any air pressure gauges. Brakes. That eliminated the steering problem, until she took her foot off the clutch, at which point that the airplane rolled way over to the left. Rather than fight it, she just let the airplane go all the way over, centering all her controls as it passed 270 degrees of roll. “Sorry about that, tower,” she said when she finally got the airplane under control again. “I guess I've got a problem with my brakes.” If I can find the gear selector, I can downshift. “Don't worry about it. Just get on a course of 330 true and execute a direct approach to runway 33L.” “Thirty-three el.” She nodded, digging out the approach plates. She'd found them when she was looking for the loading manifest. There were lots of numbers on them that she didn't have time to learn, but importantly it had a picture of the airport, so she knew she was going to the right place. Behind her was a window that, unlike the ones in the cabin, could be opened. If I can get some air in here, it'll help me fly this thing. “She hasn't got it.” Every eye in the control tower was fixed on the drunken staggering of the 727 as it lurched towards the runway. It was too low and too slow and there was a gasp of horror as it dipped below the trees. “You stupid piece of shit!” Lynn punched the center of the instruments. Everything was broken on this dumb airplane. Neither the brake nor the clutch worked, if there was a gear selector it was hidden somewhere. A voice kept saying 'stall' or 'terrain' or 'pull up,' but didn't offer any other useful suggestions. I'm not going to make it. The trees in front of her were very close, and the airport was very far. I'm not going to give up until— Branches started smacking against the fuselage, and her instincts took over. She lept out of the pilot's seat and bounded across the navigator's table, then out the open window, tumbling briefly as the rush of air caught her, and then she was free of the tumbling, flaming wreckage. Author's Note While I did well in the Iron Author competition in 2017, such was not my fate this year. The first problem I had was the prompt--while I could write at length about pony firefighters, that’s Rescue Sunstreak’s bailiwick, and he was in the competition, too. So I went with a different option. . . . While the idea’s decent, and I’ll revisit it properly in the future, one of the biggest problems I had was when I realized at about the midpoint of the story that it needed to be in third person, not first person. By then it was far too late to go back, and so I just changed tenses and pressed on.
Vivid Syntax's Super Short Fics (EFNW 2019) At EFNW 2019, Vivid Syntax had a panel where he challenged us to write short fics based on particular prompts . . . and then in some cases, challenged us to write them even shorter. The first prompt was King Sombra and Braeburn The two stallions stared at each other awkwardly. Finally: “Cryssssssssstals.” Braeburn raised an eyebrow. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapleoosa.” And then they kissed. Next up was Gallus and Sweetie Belle: “Welcome to Home Ec!” Sweetie Belle squeaked. “Rarity couldn’t be here today, so I’m your substitute teacher!” Gallus face-taloned. Vivid challenged us to write a shorter version: “I’m your substitute cooking teacher!” Sweetie squeaked. Gallus face-taloned. And then an even shorterer version: Sweetie cooks Gallus laments Our next prompt was Silver Stream and Sandbar*: Sandbar frowned. “So you say that male hippogrifs have cloacas as well?” Silverstream nodded brightly. “How does that work?” ______________________________________ *Admittedly, this was something I’ve done before, but I thought it’d be funny for the lulz. Our next challenge was three characters--Spike and Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy--along with an emotion. Fear: “Fluttershy, no!” Spike stumbled backwards as a giant hoof crashed down, nearly crushing him. Pinkie traversed her party canon expertly. “I can stop her!” “Don’t hurt her!” “This won’t.” Pinkie yanked the cord on the cannon. A billion cute fluffy bunnies shot out and engulfed the hulked-out pegasus. Our last challenge was the theme of reconciliation, featuring Yona and Soarin: Soarin bowed his head before knocking on the door. She won’t answer. Of course she did, and her eyes narrowed. “Stupid bird-horse. Why you here? Why you mock Yona?” “I--” the words barely felt sincere, although he did mean them. He did! “I’m sorry I confused you with a buffalo. I’m sorry that I said stampeding and smashing were the same thing.” “Yona forgive you.” She stomped on the ground. “That all.” Soaring shook his head. “I apologize for not understanding the meaning of apple pie in your culture.”
EFNW 2021—Writing Workshop, Scene DescriptionsEFNW 2021—Writing Workshop, Scene Descriptions Admiral Biscuit This was from a panel by Vivid Syntax where he gave us tips and tricks for describing scenes, and then challenged us to try it first with the room itself, and then a photo from the show. 1: The Room The first thing he noticed was sparkly marble or granite tabletops with mica or quartz sparkles in them, some look almost like gold. Creak of office chairs and the gentle clack of a laptop keyboard. Steps down to each row, and industrial carpet with an unrememberable pattern. Sixteen TV screens on the wall, the white background on each not quite the same, ir is that a trick of the light? Music and shouting or singing from the hall outside, more distracting than everything else. Four mics on stands, but only one person at the table. Our second task was to describe this scene, from both Diamond Tiara and Apple Bloom’s POV Source 2: Diamond Tiara I heard a commotion on the playground and trotted over with Silver Spoon to see what was going on. Applebloom was up on her hind hooves spinning a hoop around her tail and a bunch of ponies were watching her all excited—I saw Berry and Noi and Dinky and Twist and that lavender filly whose name I can’t remember and of course her two loser friends cheering her on. And then I got close and saw she had a cutie mark on her stupid flank, as if you could get a cutie mark by spinning a hoop. Her loser friends had made a fake one to show off to all the other loser ponies, and me and Silver Spoon were gonna have to put a stop to it so we could go back to being playground princesses. 3: Apple Bloom Ah couldn’t believe it, that Ah’d gotten was really workin’; Ah was up on mah hind legs twirling a ring around mah tail and ah had mah cutie mark and everypony was so happy for me, ah even forgot Scoots and Sweetie hadn’t gotten theirs yet. Ah saw Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon comin’ along with a scowl but ah didn’t care. Fk that bh.
