Friendships grow and change. That's how life works and it's usually a good thing in the end. Rainbow Dash and Rarity once saw their friendship more of a friends by association sort of thing. It was a total surprise to both of them when they realized that had changed. It took them a while to realize they'd become best friends even among their other friends. But that was still as far as it went, right?
This is the story of a growing friendship and how truly unexpected love can be.

I got this idea after reading the story "Hope You Dance" by PapierSam. So if you like this please go check out their story too. In fact, go check that one out regardless.
Check it out here.

Like all my Equestria Girls stories I'm setting this at some unknown time after the second movie where the third movie still hasn't happened, mostly because it's an easy and convenient timeline to work in.
This will be a new challenges for me as most of the story is going to take place in flash back form and keeping that specific narrative focus is going to be different.
As always, let me know how I'm doing. All comments are welcome, good and bad.

Or: How to Fry Your Career in Eight Easy Steps
(Featured on Equestria Daily 1/8/13)

I'm Amber Spice, and I was Royal Chef to his royal highness Lanthanum, King of Unicornia. Was.

Now I've somehow gotten myself banished from the land, perhaps forever. Now how did I manage that, you may ask? Let's look back and see. I can't exactly sleep, so this isn't a bad way to spend my last night here.

Turns out a little bit of soul-crushing boredom, a tenacious and chaotically creative mind, and a tangent to launch off of form a dangerous recipe together.

And the result tastes like heresy.

Praise for Tastes Like Heresy:

"...very well-written. It's clever, silly, and perhaps even a bit anarchic." — Ottermatt of WRITE
"It is all very well thought out, yet feels organic instead of rigidly planned..." — Soge
"This is how original characters should be done." — Shahrazad of The Equestrian Critics Society
"Shut up and take my bits!" — SIGAWESOME

Now has its own Tropes Page.

"The first time I came back, I thought it was a miracle. By the fifth or sixth time, I knew it was a curse."

Death is a reasonable fear, but it is also a constant reassurance. A promise that no matter how bad things get, they will one day end.

That promise was broken, leaving Rainbow Dash to pay the cost.

A very last minute entry for the 2024 SciFi Contest III.

Special thanks to ScreamQueen and Rb for prereading and valuable feedback.

General content warning: Some depictions of blood, death, and debilitating injuries, but no graphic descriptions. Some existential horror.

Look, I heard you the first time! Yeesh, I wish you'd stop staring at me, as if you're reading my thoughts. 'Cuz if you could, then you'd know that while this is the first thing I'd want to do, it's also the last! I mean, horseapples, things would be a heck of a lot easier if I'd known ahead of time that Twilight and the rest of the girls had only packed three sleeping bags instead of six for this mountain hike! For realsies, if you had any friggin' clue how many restless nights I've spent thinking about you, fantasizing situations like this, then you'd know... you would freaking know how impossible it is for me to actually... sh-share a sleeping bag with my totally not-sexy-in-any-way best friend... (*ULP*) ... overnight... s-so that we could keep our bodies warm in the cold, cold forest. Grnnnng! Alright... alright! I'll do it! Of c-course I'll do it! I'm awesome! I'm not afraid of anything! Okay... I can do this... I can totally do this... I can... I can... I-I...

A sleeping Rarity mysteriously appears in her friends' beds, and nopony knows how or why. Her friends are determined to discover the truth behind Rarity's night-time snuggling spree.

I don't see what all the fuss about death is. Our princesses have been dodging it for over a thousand years. Who's to say Sweetie and I can't experiment a little? No, don't be ridiculous, zombies don't exist. Not yet, anyway.

[As seen on Equestria Daily.]

Awake and alone, Applejack will find a way to survive.

And here's a TV Tropes page, if you're into that kind of thing.

Everypony knows the Hearth’s Warming Eve tale of tribal unity and the shared rule which followed. Everypony also knows that alicorns - singular or dual - have sat on Equestria’s throne for well over a thousand years.

Very few have really looked in to what actually happened between those points.

Even Twilight Sparkle, until a chance encounter leads her to an alarming discovery: Neither she, nor any other alicorn, has actually held any legal right to Equestria’s throne. They are technically usurpers, autocrats - even tyrants.

Still struggling with her own personal rule, having the fundamental basis for her authority swept from beneath her leaves Twilight with one simple, yet impossible question: 

Now what?

Many thanks to Commawriter and Kirtai for pre-reading!

Cover image was edited by Vinylshadow. They deserve all credit for it!

Somehow, I've always known.

Cover artwork courtesy of Cloud-Drawings on DeviantArt.

My entry for the Dialogue-Only Contest!

"Sis, I know you always told me that the farm is our home and that we all belong there, but you also told me you had to leave to find that out. I hope you can understand. I'm tired of ponies telling me that I'll find out who I am if I wait. What kind of boring self am I ever going to find by just sitting around doing normal stuff?"

—

Cover image by Icaron, used with permission.