Short Story Preview: A Sample of Behind-the-Scenes Writing · 2:15pm Oct 3rd, 2012
Blog Number 10: Extract Edition
Since I'm not producing much at the moment, I thought I'd try a little experiment. Below is an extract from a story I tried my hand at a while back. I'm posting details above it so that you can see where I'm coming from. For a while, I abandoned it because I wasn't sure how to make it work, but at the same time I didn't like to leave my work without an audience, and it's something I'm trying out.
If interested, give me a PM or reply with a comment on here. Details are below:
[Title] Petrified
[Tag] Dark
[Cast] The Flower Trio, Zecora
[Synopsis] In the days before Nightmare Moon's return, the Flower Trio decide that only the best flowers are worthy of the Princess when the Summer Sun Celebration comes. In fact, their careers could be given a boost if they can nab some royal approval. And the unexplored terrain where the flowers live must include some species never before seen by botanist eyes. Each new visit could yield a new and remarkable species for them.
The only problem? The best flowers are found in the Everfree...
So far, I have completed one scene. In it, Lily and Rose get separated from Daisy, and the two try to find their way back before realizing they're in the territory of the "Evil Enchantress". Here's an extract for the scene I finished:
Through the undergrowth, the two ponies trod carefully, glancing left and right for any sign of approaching danger.
“I think it’s this way,” said Lily nervously. “Or was it that way?”
“Please don’t say we’re lost,” moaned Rose.
Lily gulped. It was all the answer she had to give. As if on cue, a low howl swooped over their ears, which flattened immediately. Their teeth chattered. Even their knees quaked.
Up ahead, the bushes rustled. Both of them froze and their ears swivelled towards the sound. Like all prey animals, ponies had a keen directional sense of hearing. Even long centuries of being civilised hadn’t been enough to remove the stamp their much longer natural history had put on them. Had they not been quivering on the spot, the two ponies might have been quietly thanking their senses.
“D…Daisy?” said Rose.
A nudge broke Rose out of her trance. Next to her, Lily was pointing at a clear patch beyond the trees to their left. If it was the main path, they could use it to return to Ponyville. They snuck over to check, keeping a sidelong eye on the bushes.
The patch up ahead promised wide open space. Old instincts beckoned them on as they guided their hooves over the ferns and spiky brambles. Even if the two of them were visible to anything lurking in the foliage, they had been visible for a long time anyway, and at least now they weren’t likely to trip if they needed to gallop.
They looked around. The space was wide, much like the main path to Ponyville, but they didn’t feel at ease at all. There was still a low mist smothering everything, though it was thinning now. They could see several yards around them before pure grey impeded their sight.
“This place feels…” said Lily.
“What?”
Lily turned around to speak, but saw something past Rose and gasped. Pupils shrinking, Rose spun around to look.
Looming over them was a statue. The podium alone would have been size enough to encase them if it hadn’t been solid granite. Rearing to pounce was the large horse of granite standing on top. Both wings were displayed. One front leg pointed at them accusingly. Its flowing mane and tail billowed so expansively it was a wonder they didn’t break off the rest of the statue. Below a horn like a javelin, two pointed eyes glared at them and a mouth parted to shriek terrible words, now never to be heard.
It looked an awful lot like Princess Celestia. If Celestia ever turned evil, this would be the result.
Both of them huddled closer together. Even if the statue wasn’t moving, its sheer presence alone was enough to make them cower.
“Wh-What is that?” said Lily. “I’ve never seen this b-before.”
They stared at it, entranced by fear, not knowing whether to flee or stay put.
“Maybe…” stammered Rose, “maybe the wicked enchantress built it. Maybe… maybe it’s an evil spirit!”
“The wicked enchantress,” Lily said. “How far do you think we are from her?”
Rose gulped. “I don’t want to think about it.”
She also didn’t want to hear what she was hearing right now. Both of them heard the suspicion pop in each other’s heads. Scared minds think alike.
Someone was walking towards them. They could hear the clopping of hooves coming from behind. Almost without any kind of choice on their parts, their heads swivelled slowly round and they peered through the mist. A shadow was approaching them, strangely lumpy for a pony. It was wearing a cloak and had pulled its hood up.
All they could see of its face were two green eyes.
With a scream they bolted, hit the statue, stumbled dizzily around for a moment, and then shook themselves down before bolting around the statue and into the thicket.
“Beware!” shouted the figure behind them. “Beware!”
They didn’t have to be told twice.
The bushes erupted and scaly wings smothered their faces. They screamed and reared in fright at the two red orbs glaring at them. The air turned red. Lines radiated from the beast’s glowing eyes. They felt an icy chill slide up from their legs and found that they couldn’t run. Rose and Lily just had time to look down and see a wave of grey sweeping over their bodies before it washed over their opening mouths and petrified their wide eyes.
Both pony statues fell aside. The cockatrice humphed at them, before it noticed the distant figure at the edge of the mist. Just what it was looking for; more victims.
As elegantly as a bat clutching a bowling ball, it flapped and hurried over. The figure lazily raised a foreleg. Several rings jangled around its striped cannon.
Grey lips pursed. Green dust was blown from the hoof. An emerald cloud like a seasick night sky blocked the cockatrice’s vision. It clucked in surprise and paused.
A green draconic snout burst through the cloud and rows of teeth reached for the cockatrice.
For the second time that day, it clucked a rude word. A flapping body crashed through the bushes. When the green illusion faded and the cloud settled, there was no sign of the chicken-beast except for frantic squawking, which faded into the distance.
The stranger took a few steps forwards and looked down. At her hooves, the statues of Rose and Lily stared up through the canopy. She followed their petrified gazes, and saw the lowering sun.
The tree was old and gnarled. Everfree Forest had been plagued with several lightning storms during the thousand years it had taken to outgrow its former boundaries. This tree had weathered them all, surprisingly because of its hollowness. Younger trees splintered when struck by lightning. They suffered from weakened wood, and that left them vulnerable to high winds. This one had no wood to weaken.
It was still alive even when the enchantress moved in and carved out a front door and windows. This gave the house an owl-like face, but she put a hollow mask over the front door and planted a larger one in the dirt like a mailbox just outside. It paid to give the resident monsters a hint.
Vines hung from the branches. Rows of bottled potions were attached to the ends to soak up what little moonlight peeked through the canopy.
A cauldron bubbled over a pit of burning logs. Masks more colourful than the ones outside leered down at the brew. Beakers lined the shelves. Branches poked through the walls, snaked across the ceiling, and poked into the walls again like woody sea serpents. More potions were dangled from these. The two pony statues reared either side of the pot as though terrified of its contents.
The stranger lowered her hood, giving her striped Mohawk a chance to breath. Thick earrings swung either side of her face. She walked over to the pot and stirred the ladle with her teeth. It was a tricky operation when you had a neck stiff with rings, but the stranger had worn them for years and barely gave it much thought.
She stopped and licked the surface.
“Hm,” she said, and smacked her lips. Her voice had a peculiar accent. “Yes, this seems to be just right.”
Now for the tricky part. With her neck braced for the weight, the stranger reached under the first statue’s forelegs and placed her own hoof gingerly over its back. She heaved. The point wasn’t to lift it straight up, but to raise the statue’s back legs higher than the cauldron.
The splash soaked both the upper half of the statue and the stranger’s mane. She shook it out and moved towards the second statue.
Nothing happened for a while. Cracks started to appear along the statue’s length. A white aura surrounded it. Beams of light seared through the heart, flakes of stone fell off, cream coloured fur was revealed, and with a flash of light the stone shell was blasted off Rose. She completed her scream.
Rose paused and blinked in confusion. She rubbed her eyes and looked around the hut.
She opened her mouth to ask where she was, but was interrupted by a pony statue falling onto her head and crushing her below the surface. The stranger waited until the flash of light to close her eyes. Bits of stone bounced off her forehead.
Lily shook herself down. Then she gave a squeal and Rose burst to the surface, gasping greedily.
They remembered the mist, the screaming, the ambushing magic cockerel, and the blackout before this point. They glanced at the masks. They glanced at the potions. They glanced at the stranger. Finally, and with an impending sense of dread, they looked down at the cauldron brew they were currently sitting in.
The scream could be heard all the way down in Ponyville, where a few ponies looked around in mild surprise before deciding that it was just the wind being frightened.
The stranger bared her teeth until the scream subsided. “There is no need to scream in fright!”
As one, the two ponies knocked the cauldron over and bolted for the door. The stranger landed in front of them, making them skid to a halt.
“Wait!” she cried urgently. “You cannot go so soon!”
Both ponies shot for any corner of the room they could claim. Since the room was mostly circular, they ended up with their backs against the far wall, never once turning away from the approaching stranger.
“Tell me what you know about the Mare in the Moon!”
They closed their eyes. The stranger blinked at them in astonishment and put her hoof down.
“Now, my two little ponies, please be calm!
“I am not here to cause you any harm.”
Neither of them seemed convinced. Instead, they continued quivering and curled up tighter. The stranger frowned and screwed her lips up thoughtfully. Then she blinked. On the flank of the pink blonde was a lily cutie mark. She looked across at the cream pony. Her flank bore a rose. Beside the stranger was a large and dull-coloured vase tall enough to rest her chin on. She peered inside.
Something slapped onto the floor between the two gibbering ponies. They both peeked through their eyelids. The flower before them bore tiny heart-shaped outgrowths on the sepals, pink petals with yellow stripes on the inside, and stamens longer than the petals. It looked a little like a crocus.
Rose and Lily stopped gibbering. They glanced at each other for help. Neither of them had heard any stories about enchantresses keeping Heart’s Desire, and their minds worked feverishly to make one up.
The stranger – whom they now saw was a striped pony – placed a hoof on the pot and tipped it over. A flurry of flowers poured onto the floor. She arranged the heap into a more respectable line.
“Allow me to show you what was in that brew,
“Which I concocted to help revive you.”
She pointed. Lily and Rose peered closer, though their mouths were still agape and ready to gibber if needed.
“This one is the bud of the Shy-By-Night,
“To reach for the root of the victim’s fright.
“This is the root of the Mother’s Balm,
“To counter the effects of the cockatrice charm.
“The liquid I used was nectar from the flower
“Of the Butterfly Orchid, to give it some power.
“Lastly, I added a pinch of Cold Stare,
“To make the stone shatter and fall from your hair.”
Rose and Lily silently closed their mouths as they quietly examined the flowers, some recognisable, some new. Being florists, they were used to seeing flowers as Celestia’s gift to the world, but being congenital cowards with little understanding of zebras, they were used to treating the striped pony as a terror from the one part of the world Celestia had overlooked. Seeing both at once was just sending out confused messages. Their legs were still tense.
The striped pony sighed. “I’ll never understand you pony folk.
“Perhaps you’ll feel at ease if I get rid of this cloak?”
Cloth flapped in the air. Lily and Rose stared at the dark stripes. What kind of pony would paint themselves that way? Even her sun-shaped cutie mark, being a spiral with arrowheads around its circumference, looked painted. Was she secretly a blank flank?
“That feels better. Now perhaps you’ll calm down,
“And tell old Zecora what is happening in town?”
Eventually, some words braved the passage through Rose’s throat. “Wh-What d-do you w-want from us?”
Zecora swept up the flowers with her hoof. Once they were all back inside the vase, she righted it and beckoned them to follow her. Rose and Lily shivered, but decided not to upset the scary-looking enchantress and followed.
“I trust you are having a party this night?
“Yet, I sense that something is not quite right.
“I see odd things happening in the sky,
“And I cannot fathom the reason why.”
She nudged a telescope, which was pointing out of the window beside her door. Zecora gestured, but the two ponies hesitated. Zecora frowned and gestured again. Lily gulped. She heard each clop of her hooves and tried not to look at Zecora as she approached the device.
Out of the window, Lily could see a gap in the canopy. The full moon glared down at her and the dark outline of the Mare in the Moon was unusually prominent. Four twinkling stars were coming towards it, creating a shape much like the famous Square of Pegasus as they did so.
Lily wondered what would happen if they collided. Would the stars simply pass behind it and continue onwards? She was no astronomer, but she was sure that the stars were much further away from the planet than the moon was. Stars shouldn’t be that bright, though.
Rose wedged her snout in between Lily and the telescope, and Lily backed off to give her friend some room. She could feel the lily in her own hair starting to fall out.
“I perused my books, but nothing was there,
“And without guidance, I cannot prepare.”
Rose pulled herself away from the telescope to stare at the zebra. “P-Prepare f-for what?” she said, her voice becoming extra squeaky. Zecora turned her back on them, (or rather her rump, being a quadruped).
“I was hoping you could tell me, I admit,
“But you know nothing either, not a bit.”
Zecora walked over to the cauldron and put it back onto the logs, which had gone out. A wisp of smoke played over her features. The other two began to twitch nervously. Zecora’s face had hardened.
“Now, you head home, as fast as you can go.
“Do not look back, and do not once go slow.”
They threw weak smiles over to her. Their pasterns and knees were itching to gallop.
“Wh-Whatever you s-say,” said Lily.
“D-Don’t l-look b-back,” said Rose, saluting feebly. “G-Got it.”
There was a zip of air, and the door slammed shut. The zebra rolled her eyes and continued cleaning up the hut.
A clear path lead from the front of the hut down to the edge of the Everfree Forest, and the earth churned under their hooves as the two mares galloped for the moonlight. They never once looked back. They certainly weren’t going to slow down.
They passed a clump of bushes. A while later, a chicken’s head rose from the leaves and stared after them. It had been ambushed, deprived of its prey, and just when it was getting some sleep something came along and disturbed it. Well, it had had enough.
Branches were shoved aside. A pair of leathery wings flapped. Soon, the bushes were quiet once again.
What did you think? Is this something you would read? I'd like to read your feedback, if you could spare the time.
N.B. I'm leaving out the stats, as it wasn't that long ago when I published the last blog. I think it works best over long-term measures.
EDIT 23/11/2017: Impossible Numbers, out.
Most annoying ponies being bailed out by best Zebra?
Do want.