Sneak peek: Emberwolf · 4:18pm Dec 20th, 2017
I tried doing this yesterday by linking straight to the story -- however, apparently you can't do that anymore if the story isn't submitted? 
Anyway! I'm gonna start publishing this on Friday. Until then, enjoy the first two chapters of Emberwolf 
1: Fire
“You there,” said the fireplace, with words which crackled and burned. “You look lonely. Do you need a friend?”
Scootaloo didn’t answer, not immediately. Not before setting down her hot cocoa, peering up from her book, and frowning at the fire. A while passed in flaming silence. The lights on the Hearth’s Warming tree merry-flickered, and cast their cheerful glow over the room. But Scootaloo was too chilled to feel even the slightest scrap of holiday joy.
Fixing her attention on the fire, she said, “You didn’t just say that. You can’t have, ’cause fires don’t talk.”
Although Scootaloo saw no smouldering mouth amongst the tongues of flames, no possible way the fire could speak, she heard its voice regardless. “Hmm,” it said. “I must say, I’ve never let that get in a way of good conversation. Are you sure you haven’t mistaken me for some other fire?”
Scootaloo realised she was gaping. Not taking her eyes off the flames, she stood up and picked up her book. But the fire exclaimed, “Ah-hah! ‘Daring Do and the Flames of Mystery’! Truly, you have excellent taste, girl!”
“I’m not listening,” Scootaloo said, firmly. “I’m going to my room, now. Don’t talk to me.”
The fire sighed. Sun-yellow woodchips dulled to a deep red. “Alas,” it said. “Goodnight, girl. I won’t follow you either, if that’s a concern. But we’ll speak later, I promise, and have a long discussion about your future.”
Scootaloo pretended she hadn’t heard that.
Clutching her book, she strode from the living room and, quickly, quickly, rushed up the stairs, and, hurry, hurry, galloped along the landing and past her aunt’s room. She tripped on her hooves; the book clattered to the floor, but she left it where it fell and shoved open her bedroom door and dived under her bedsheets. She heard the door swing shut. Her heart hammer-thumped in the dark.
“That didn’t happen,” she told herself. “It didn’t happen. If it had really talked to you, you wouldn’t have run away. You’re way awesomer than that.”
All the same, Scootaloo shivered under the covers. A long while passed before she fell asleep.
2: Photo
Scootaloo lived on the tail end of Ponyville, where houses became fields, where roads gave way to trees, and where the call of adventure sang upon the blue moon breeze. The cottage stood in a lonely meadow, and she loved it. It was built from half brick and half shambles, and wore a sweater of ivy. Inside, it was a jumble of warmth, and peeling wallpaper, and rugs thrown carelessly over old floorboards: less of a house, and more a sort of warren. Best of all, Scootaloo was allowed to draw on the walls. She had permission to stick up photos of friends wherever she pleased, so that, even on evenings when Aunt Holiday and her wife were both working, she was never truly alone.
Whenever she made sandwiches in the kitchen, it was in the glare of a chalk dragon scrawled upon the pantry door. Whenever she read adventure books in the living room, her two best friends, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, smiled at her from the walls (or at least, until she had ripped down their pictures a day previously). Each and every night, when she fell asleep, she was watched over by her foalsitter: a pegasus named Rainbow Dash, who was the best pony in the world.
Rainbow Dash was perfect, in every way imaginable.
Whereas Scootaloo’s coat was the colour of autumn, Rainbow’s held the soul of the sky: it was bright blue, and her mane and tail were streaked with rainbows. They were wind-swept, even when the wind was nowhere to be felt.
“It’s ’cause I let the sky into my heart, kid, and it’s lived there ever since,” Rainbow had once explained to her with barely concealed pride. A moment later, when Scootaloo had asked what this actually meant, she had sounded less proud and more be-quiet-and-let-me-think-about-it; even so, despite the lack of an answer, the words fascinated Scootaloo. She wondered at them. She pondered them, and treasured them. From that moment on, she had tried to live with the sky in her heart, and Rainbow Dash in her soul.
And the way Rainbow flew…
At just-turned-eleven, Scootaloo struggled to hover so much as three hoof-lengths from the ground. Rainbow Dash, however, cut through the sky as though the sky was her ocean, and she was a dolphin, a swordfish. She flew with such speed and joy that Scootaloo’s heart ached at the sight of it. How she longed to soar beside her hero herself!
All of which was why, that night, she needed Rainbow Dash more than she had ever needed anypony in her life: for that was the night Scootaloo drifted in and out of shadows and nightmares…
She dreamed of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle: yet, the pair of them had foulsome fangs and midnight claws, and fire cackling laughter. They circled her in a wide dark space. They chanted in the language of loneliness, with words Scootaloo couldn’t make out but which made her feel at least seven different layers of queasiness. “Go away!” Scootaloo told them. “Leave me alone!” But again, her friends laughed at her, slashed at her with their claws—
Scootaloo flinched and thrashed – shot up in bed – “Rainbow!” she yelled. “Help! Help!”
Her breath came in fearsome gulps. Her tail twitched, and in the dark of her room, she glanced from the floor to the door to the ceiling: there was no sign of glowing claws or venom dripping fangs. Neither was there any sign of Rainbow Dash. It had been a dream. A vile, nasty little dream, and nothing more.
(From downstairs, she heard the fireplace call, “Did I hear screaming, girl? Do you require assistance?” But she especially pretended she hadn’t heard that.)
Scootaloo took a shuddering breath. The feel of reality crashed over her, and she scowled, as she remembered with a bone blazing pain, that Rainbow Dash wasn’t in Ponyville at all, let alone right there in the warren-cottage. She hadn’t been around for months. She was lost in the sky, soaring, twirling, looping, falling: all in a day’s work for a newly professional stunt-flyer.
“Can you believe it, kid?” Rainbow had said to her on a heart-frosty day near the start of September. “I’m finally touring with the Wonderbolts! How awesome is that?”
In the bedroom, Scootaloo’s eyes fell on a calendar pinned to the back of the door, barely visible in the gloom. Half of December was crossed out. Around December 30th was a large red circle with a picture of a blue pegasus scribbled inside of it…a circle that doubled as a promise…
But it wasn’t December 30th, not yet. It wasn’t even Hearth’s Warming. Rainbow Dash felt further away than ever before.
Sighing, Scootaloo fumbled for the lamp and glanced at Rainbow’s smiling face from a most cherished and particular photograph on her bedside desk.
Scootaloo froze: something was wrong. Her heart was replaced with a lightning bolt, and her body thundered with wild terror.
The photo was empty.
It had been taken in the park, on a sunny and pony-jolly day. Although the sun still shined in the photo, and though the park stretched out in green glory, Rainbow Dash had simply… vanished. The photo showed just trees and grass. Just emptiness.
Scootaloo held the frame with trembling hooves. She tilted it back and forth, as though hoping Rainbow would tumble back into the picture.
She didn’t.
“Rainbow Dash,” she whispered. “Where are you?”
Oh yay, another new Lucky Dreams story!
And yes, now unpublished stories work like this: If you don't put a password on it, you are the only person who can see it. Everyone else gets a 404 error. If you do put a password on it, then people who follow the link without logging in first still get a 404, but if logged in, they will get prompted for the password. They will be able to view the story for 24 hours before it asks for the password again. And like before, sharing links for unpublished stuff is supposed to be for editing purposes only.
4754369 Ah, right, got it. It's good to know it wasn't just my computer being weird or something.
(Also, hey man! It's good to hear from you again
)