[teaser] sequel to Sweet Nothings · 2:23am Apr 24th, 2015
So for a while now, I've been having flashes of ideas for scenes in a sequel to Sweet Nothings. I've started writing them down and figuring out how to fit them together. He's a little preview for anyone who's interested. The final product may or may not differ significantly from this, and it will be a long time before I publish anything (if I even take it that far), but I just felt like giving a little teaser. 
The stable, in its current state, could be best described by only a single word: empty. More than simply uninhabited, the stable had been completely gutted—picked over meticulously as though by ravenous vultures feasting on a rotten carcass. The central atrium, ringed by the residential floors, was nothing but a black abyss. Only the core support structure and the barest of floor plating on each level remained. The stable, where a dozen generations had been born, grown old, and died, was now nothing more than a hole torn out from the heart of a mountain.
Day and Pirouette walked slowly. The air inside the stable had been still for more than a decade, and every step they took kicked up clouds of dust. Tiny little motes floated around in the beams of light which the two ponies carried on their heads. Theirs was the first light to shine inside the stable since its evacuation. Cautiously, they approached the abyss in the center. The light from their headlamps could not reach the floor some five stories below.
Pirouette looked around briefly, stopping when her light found one of the support columns—a two square foot I-beam made of four-inch thick steel which ran the entire height of the stable. "Are we in any danger of a cave-in?" she asked. Her voice was barely above a whisper, as though afraid to speak any louder.
Day looked toward the column and scanned his light up and down as far as it would reach. He then turned to where he could spot another column and scanned it for as much as he could see. "I don't think so." His voice was also quiet, but not from fear. Rather, Day spoke in the kind of hushed voice one would use during a funeral service so as not to disturb the other mourners. "If anything, without having to support the entire stable's weight, it might just last forever like this. Watch your step though; the floors aren't supported by the columns anymore. Stay close to the outer wall where it's anchored to the stone."
"This place is huge. Where should we start looking?" Pirouette asked as she backed away from the abyss.
"Grift said she hid the sword where my story began. I don't really know where she might have meant any more specific than just here in the stable."
Pirouette hummed and tapped her chin as she thought about it. "Maybe she means where you were born? The infirmary?"
"Where I was born. . ." Day echoed, adding a quiet chuckle.
"What is it?"
"Just something Rake told me about being born: He said it's the most traumatic thing you'll ever go through. One moment, you're safe and secure, all warm and loved, and the next thing you know, your entire world crashes around you and forces you, kicking and screaming and covered in blood, into a new life." Day looked out across the abyss. His light wouldn't reach all the way across, but he knew it was there—the overseer's office; where he had murdered his brother and father. "My mother may have given birth to me in the infirmary, but it was the entire stable that I was born from."
I was a bit surprised to see this.
Glad to see you're still writing.
Still loving that one
—Ayn Rand