"A Light in Dark Places" by Lucky Dreams · 7:31pm Oct 28th, 2015
Lucky Dreams posted A Light in Dark Places last night. If you like childrens' foals' stories, and the particular voice LD uses for them, you'll love this story. If not, you won't.
They swam, and then the stars were no more.
Darkness.
Apple Bloom pushed pulled wound wheeled yanked cranked bashed mashed at the control panel, but it was hopeless. The bedroom was too slow to escape. Too clumsy. Too cumbersome.
And now through the window she saw…
A body larger than hills, mountains, islands, continents.
Fangs too many, each one as long as a tree and as thick as their trunks.
Scales, scales, scales, some of which glowed the colour of blood, so that decorating the monster’s body were twirling swirling galaxies – galaxies formed from nothing but red stars.
“Apple Bloom,” said the star-beast, causing Apple Bloom’s stomach to turn inside-out then outside-in. “You cannot escape your nightmares. We’re going to get you. We’re going to EAT you.
Swallow you whole,
Gulp you down,
Crunch your bones,
Spit you out.
So many ways to eat your food.
So many ways: which do I choose?
Noshing and gnashing?
Splitter and splatting?
Munching or mashing?
Chomping or champing?
Sleep little girl in your bed in the sea,
Sweet little girl, so perfect for tea!
Tell me, girl, are you much of a swimmer?
If not I shall eat you for dinner!
Tender dreamer especially for me,
Tasty sweet girl under the sea.”
The monster lunged at the bedroom, and no time to run, no time to steer out of the way! Apple Bloom shrieked, “APPLEJACK! HELP!”
“Applejack! Help!” cried the fireflies.
“Applejack! Help!” sounded strange voices in the corners of Apple Bloom’s mind – or perhaps, she wondered later, they weren’t so strange at all, but the voices of her loved ones watching over her. Not that it mattered, of course, in a place where Applejack could no more hear her than hold her or hug her or kiss her.
If you're looking for a story where Apple Bloom is munched into mincemeat by a nightmare beast a slightly scary story you can read to children, leading up to a nice lesson at the end, this would be a good one even if it didn't have ponies.
If you're not, how about this handy website to calculate the body surface area of a horse?
Oh yeah! This is like in The Uses of Enchantment.
You know, by that Bruno...Beetlejuice...guy...right?
Amusingly, a one half kilogram horse has 0.07 square meters of body surface area.
A beautiful story; thanks for the recommend.
But I need a volume measurement for horses, not a surface measurement. I’m trying to provide enough mincemeat to keep my nightmare beast healthy and happy.
What if I only know the surface area of my horse and need to estimate its mass?
3506997 Try submerging your horse in a very large bathtub and measuring the water that runs out. Mass will be proportional to volume.
Thank you sooo much for blogging about this. It honestly means a lot to me.
Now all I need to do is write a poem about calculating the surface area of Applejack and everything will be alright with the world