"A famous author once wrote that life itself is art, and you should seek to incorporate reality into your art as much as possible," the unicorn spoke clearly.
Frost Sparks was a teal blue unicorn with relatively short stature but always high aspirations. Across from him sat his friend Seph Tantalum, a reformed changeling who'd known him all his life, and acted as his advisor throughout.
"Profound words," the changeling admitted. "But why don't I ever see such ideas show in your work?" He pressed, firmly holding eye contact.
Frost recoiled slightly in his seat, feeling a surge of guilt creep into his mind. "Well, from what work I've shown you, it's absolutely there! For instance, whenever I walk my dog, I compare some of the more peculiar thoughts I have to things that my characters might do. I assign them to different characters to better solidify their personality!"
He sat up straight, speaking with as much pride as he could in order to subdue his lurking fears.
Seph huffed. "That's a nice way to keep your work on your mind, but, I'm not sure how much that'll really impact the content of the story," he explained calmly.
"Well, the quote also refers to taking events and personal experiences from life and converting them into art for others to enjoy," Frost spouted, unable to keep eye contact for more than a second. "For example, there's an important scene where- no, wait, that's not until the first arc is complete… I mean, all my characters reflect real experiences in some way or another for authenticity, but none of them are necessarily one-to-one with real life."
Seph fought the urge to roll his eyes. "That's a nice detail, but again, no one can appreciate them until the work is actually published. You said there's already a scene planned for the next arc? When will that be?" He asked innocently.
Frost recoiled even harder, his eyes going wide from some biting internal fear he had no idea how to address. "Oh! Well, there's, uh… that's not until the second major arc. The first major arc has about seven, only one of which has been published."
Seph nodded compassionately. "I know you tend to work slowly, and that's perfectly fine. But, you've been telling me about your ideas for so long it's hard to keep track of them all. Why don't you sketch more? It can easily be relaxing."
Frost began to calm down, losing the slight stutter in his speech and holding eye contact out of respect. "I suppose, yeah. It's just that, I love writing, and I love making an impact on the lives of others, but I can't seem to focus on it. All the same, I think I get most of my creativity out through little projects with my friends. We'll often make some kind of craft, and sometimes I'll even make a short story to go along with it. I just can't seem to focus on this type of writing."
The unicorn huffed, his head lowered but his mind still racing with thoughts and data, trying to find a solution to his problem.
Seph looked at him for a moment, letting out a gentle sigh and smiling, before getting up from his seat and giving him a hug.
This wasn't a very common occurrence, although Frost absolutely wished it was. He embraced his friend, emotions and worries flowing through his mind like a circular waterfall, in a neverending state of chaotic motion.
As much as he cared for him, Seph couldn't stay for long. He lifted up from his friend, hooves still on his shoulders, and held eye contact with a grin. "Whatever the case, I know you can do it."
Frost yearned for the hug to continue, but only nodded. "Thank you."
With burdens lifted just a little, the changeling returned to his seat, standing beside it as though he was preparing to leave. "Next time you even think about those characters, you better be writing a plot, not random facts!" He proclaimed, still smiling supportively.
"I'll do my best!" Frost promised.
As his friend walked away from their seats, after some arbitrary point, he disappeared completely. His seat, the table, and the buildings around him all soon followed at once. He stood up in shock, seemingly causing his own seat to disappear, before the ground itself vanished. Falling into a sky blue void, his consciousness ended the sentence.
Frost sat up in his bed instantly, possibly making record time.
"Huh!? Why did- is everything still there!?" He thought frantically, knowing it should've been impossible, but panicking nonetheless.
He quickly shifted around in bed, prying open the blinds of the window behind him to peer outside. He could tell immediately that he'd slept for far too long. The shadows on the road indicated that it had to be close to 11:00 in the morning.
He groaned quietly, opting to escape the petrifying clutches of his bed before he ended up staying for another two hours due to a mix of stress and laziness.
He performed his morning stretches, gave a thoughtful look to the pile of seasonal clothes building up in the corner of his room, and opened the door to head out. His dog immediately fell into the room, as she'd been laying against the door before that point.
He groggily made his way down the hall, opting to skip the bathroom entirely in order to get to his workstation faster. Though it was faint now, he remembered the most important part of his dream.
When he arrived at his desk, he looked at everything that adorned it. Pencils, papers, notecards, folders, and a magical device to communicate with his friends. In his head, he knew what he had to do. Images of his characters faded in and out of his train of thought like the sun on a cloudy day.
He lifted open the case of notecards with his magic, but stopped before lifting one out. "Maybe I should shower first?" He thought, still fairly sluggish.
He stared at the cards, existing concepts of characters and scenes trying their hardest to populate his mind.
"Ugh. Maybe I just need food…" he thought, again mentally preparing himself to move.
Instead, like anyone in his time, he turned to the magic orb on his desk and sought the company of his friends. The only thing any of them had sent in the past ten hours was an image of a cat which also appeared to be looking into an orb, but it was funny because it was relatable.
He smiled. "Okay, okay, I'll go and, um-" his characters tried to infiltrate his thoughts again, their vague outlines appearing clearly as they had done hundreds of times, but never anything that inspired a story.
He silently groaned again, checking the orb to no avail. "I just need to pick something with no stress attached, then I can build up to more difficult things," He thought confidently.
He pondered for a moment, standing beside his chair with a hoof to his chin. "Ooh, hey, I've been meaning to write something about myself. I bet those ideas would flow with no resistance at all!"
Refusing to pass up the opportunity to write something fun, he took up a pencil and paper, sat in his seat, and stared. His eyes were wide, his smile great, and dropped his head onto the page.
"How do you write, again?"
Author's Note
Fun fact, this is the most I've ever written in a single day, let alone in a single sitting! Maybe I can learn a thing or two from myself and finally update a certain other story.
Higher quality content is on the horizon.
I'm in the zone, it's just the wrong zone.
"Frost!" Seph exclaimed, knocking down the door.
Frost shrieked, jumping in his seat. "What!?"
"How long have you been in here!?"
"Like... three months? Why?"
Frost paused for a moment, staring blankly at Seph. "Oh, wait, that's bad, isn't it?"
Seph put a hoof to his face in mild disgust. "You have responsibilities to keep up with! Stories to write! You've gotta get a job soon! Why are you still playing with blocks back here in your room when there's so much to do!?"
"...I understand, but, I'm happy where I am. And to be blunt, my mind isn't gonna care until something changes. My thoughts just like to drift around like that, and when all the important stuff is done via crystal ball it's hard for me to get invested."
Seph was left speechless with a whirlpool of thoughts. "But- but you have to! You can't just sit here!"
Frost just sat there. He stared back at him for a moment, allowing the irony to sink in.
"For the love of Luna, how can you be so calm about this!?" Seph threw his hooves in the air.
"It's what I do best. It's how I prevent myself from going insane, and getting too deep in self-loathing. Just float on, keep doing what I'm good at, and I'll be happy."
"But there are people that need you, including your future self! You can be doing so much more! You need to be!"
Frost shrugged, anxiety quickly beginning to nip at his mind.
The two stared silently at each other for a while longer, unknowable thoughts driving blindly through a dense fog of stress and uncertainty within their minds.
"Would you be more persuadable if you were standing up and moving around, not just sitting in the same place for thirteen hours a day?" Seph offered.
Frost put his hooves together and stared off into some corner in the room. "Hmm, that's not a bad idea, that does usually help."
He obliged, making his way out of the seat, before doing a little stretch.
"There, good!" Seph applauded. "Now, what do you want to do?"
Frost's eyes seemed to drift apart as he stared blankly once again, not looking at anything in particular. "Blocks..."
"No! You can do literally anything else! Pick something else!" Seph pleaded.
Frost continued his mental crusade against himself. "Food... bathroom... walk... ooh, a walk outside would be good." He smiled.
"How about... learning how to do your taxes?" Seph offered, doing his best to seem enthusiastic about the dull topic.
Frost giggled quietly. "...No? It'll be a miracle to even get me outside."
Seph felt a certain feeling of dread looming. "Okay, we'll just do that then."
By some miraculous stroke of luck, or a good performance from his friend, or just the wind deciding to blow in a good direction today, Frost made it outside.
"Okay, here we are."
Frost stared out at nothing in-
"Why aren't you moving? You've barely made it past the door."
"Well, I was just going to go on a walk, but you've planted the idea of all these important responsibilities I've been neglecting in my head, so now I'm wondering if it'd be better to sit down and work some stuff out."
"I suppose that's fair." Seph nodded. "But, by doing that, aren't you already committing yourself to thinking about those things?"
"But I'm not doing anything about it, I'm just standing here being indecisive."
They both paused once again.
With a heavy sigh, Seph broke the silence. "Frost, you have an assignment due soon, don't you? Go back inside, get the papers, and work on it out here."
Frost's thoughts threatened to drift away again, but he ultimately nodded, agreeing with his friend before doing as he suggested. Once he located the papers, the thought of returning to his humble pile of blocks resurfaced again quite convincingly. Thankfully, with the help of that anxious mental fog threatening to drag him under, he was able to make it through. He allowed his mind to run on quietly autopilot for a moment, taking the papers and heading back outside.
Upon seeing his friend return, Seph was greatly relieved. "Awesome, we can get to work on that together."
Frost smiled, easing himself out of the trance and placing the assignment down before giving it a look. Seph glanced over it as well, appearing to process the information much faster. "Is that really all there is to it?"
Frost tilted his head to the side in confusion.
"It just says to summarize a section of today's newspaper, how have you not managed to do that yet?" Seph complained.
"You already know my answer to that. I can't really help it."
"Well, uh, do you want some help with this?" He stuttered.
Frost presented a smile, slightly forced due to scattered anxieties impeding his thoughts. "I would appreciate it, I know this is important."
The two scanned over the newspaper to look for something to talk about, in hopes of getting the assignment over with. Seph was worried about his friend's well-being, more interested in pushing forward to the next thing so that they could feel triumphant again soon. Frost glanced over several articles, with no text managing to stick to his mind, despite how clear it was that these writers had done their best to look appealing. Eventually, his eyes locked onto something interesting.
The first words spoken by either of them in several minutes came from Frost.
"...Weird cloud looks suspiciously similar to Songbird Serenade?" He giggled, after quoting the headline of an article.
"What? Where'd you find that?" Seph giggled in return.
Frost pointed a hoof at his side of the paper, featuring a fairly small article that barely managed to fit the accompanying image in the designated space.
"Wow, that, uh," Seph stuttered. "That doesn't look like her at all?" He giggled again, unsure of how to react.
"Yeah, but look at the text!"
Frost traced his hoof along the lines as he spoke them aloud. "It's not every day that you see THIS cloud! Conspiracy? Coincidence? The life's work of a dedicated fan? Who knows! One thing's for sure, the detail is just impeccable! Whoever, or however this sky art may have come into being, the essence behind it is truly divine! Ooh, if I could spend a day with them, it'd be the best day of my life! Let's delve deep into some possibilities."
Seph still looked a bit confused, not sure what response was expected. "Jeez, they sure sound... invested?"
"That's a good way to put it!" Frost cheered. "Some say that oftentimes, all you need to do to hook someone in is show genuine emotion and passion. I think this one sticks out to me for that reason. Based on the wording, I'd bet they're the one that made the art, and they want others to be just as excited about it as they are."
Seph suddenly perked up, seeming impressed. "I like that! And you're probably right, it would be pretty weird to get worked up over a cloud otherwise." He giggled.
Frost giggled a bit more as well, before drawing a blank. "What're we doing again? Oh! Summarize the article!"
"Right! Can you do that?"
"As long as I don't waste any time, or else I'm gonna drift away again."
Seph quickly slid a paper and pencil over to him, leaving him to his work. Over the course of a couple minutes, Frost wrote:
The article I chose was titled "Weird Cloud Looks Suspiciously Similar to Songbird Serenade" and was written presumably by the pony that found the cloud.
Suddenly, he hit a crossroads. He could write about what he actually found interesting, and gush over the author's passion, or he could obey what he assumed to be expected of him, and write out boring facts. His train of thought quickly began to lose steam as he couldn't make a choice. As an anxious fog began to conquer his mind again, everything quickly fell apart, leaving him thinking only about the liferaft made of blocks, back at home on his desk.
"Frost?" Seph prodded.
"Huh? What? Hi, sorry, uh, what? Writing! Yes, I'm- I've got it!"
Seph stared with a mild sense of concern. "...Frost. Breathe."
Taking a moment to break from his trance, he obliged, concentrating on his breathing to quell the anxiety which grew much faster than he first realized. He put a hoof out in front of his friend in order to politely ask him to move to the side, giving him room to walk around, allowing blood to better flow to his head, further putting him at ease.
Seph watched patiently, reading the newspaper a bit more to let time pass without friction.
After a couple minutes, Frost took his final deliberate breath and returned to the paper.
"Feeling better?"
"Much better." He smiled.
With the exception of a few mental hiccups throughout, he was able to stay focused with his friend's help, completing the assignment and marking it off on his to-do list.
"There, didn't that feel great? Now you can go on that walk without stress!"
Frost smiled. "It did! But, now I don't feel like going on a walk, I've already spent a good amount of time outside, and I could probably go back in if I wanted."
Seph thought for a moment, knowing that it'd still be good for him. "Follow me."
"Huh?"
"Just follow me, I wanna show you something."
Frost looked very confused, but followed his friend down the road, trusting in his good intentions. In less than a minute he had fallen for his trap, as his mind took in the familiar sensations and cues of the nature around him. Without pause for regret, he was now on autopilot, set for going on a walk as usual.
"Alright, now that's two things off your checklist!" Seph cheered. "Maybe now we can get inside and start looking for a job for you?"
Frost paused, going through options in his head, inadvertently creating ideal conditions for the same anxiety that plagued him when he first stepped outside to rear its ugly head once more. Before it could grab him too tightly, he gently shook himself awake, and began to verbalize his thoughts to organize them better.
"I've still got dishes to clean, clothes to wash, another assignment to work on before the end of the night..." He trailed off at the end, as more distant tasks that seemed to infinitely increase in difficulty continued to pile on his train of thought.
Seph's ears twitched at his response. "Alright, well, no worries. We can write it all out, and tackle everything one step at a time!"
"But I'm tired!"
"It's only four o'clock! Did you ever have lunch?"
"...no..."
Seph shook his head. "We have to do this sooner or later. I know there's always a million things to do, but if you break them down, they won't seem so intimidating. What if you separated the dishes into distinct piles and just did one at a time?"
"I guess that would work? It certainly sounds better than the default."
Seph smiled. "Then let's get to it!"
In the ten seconds it took them to walk back into the house, Frost's mind already dug up more responsibilities he'd been neglecting. Writing, catching up with friends, checking up on his partner, worrying over grandparents, worrying over how much water he'd had today, wondering if he should be going to the bathroom more or less often...
Seph lifted a spoon and dropped it on a plate, purposely causing a racket to get Frost's attention.
"Ah! Sorry!"
"It's alright, I'm not upset. If there's anything seriously on your mind, feel free to vent." He turned on the sink and tossed his friend a small towel, then the spoon. "Dry these off as we go, one at a time."
Author's Note
Even after multiple months of nothing, this only took me three days. I'm genuinely impressed with myself 
