Bradel's One-Shot and Minific Emporium

by Bradel

Lament

Author's Note:

Written for the March 2015 Writeoff contest, based on the prompt: "The Best Medicine".

They say I danced through star-filled streams,
My hooves high-stepping, silver-shod.
But sudden sadness drowned my dreams
Along that moonlit promenade.
A stalking shadow followed near:
Envy, ever in my ear.

Oh Sister, shall I now relate
That saddest story of our reign?
How she I loved, by cruel fate,
Had bound me to my own domain.
And sunless, sundered, did I dwell
In that gray and graceless hell.

A thousand summers thus I slept,
As stars and seasons passed me by.
And in that dreamless sleep I wept.
Oh irony, that dreamless I
Should ever be—the finest joke
That I could dream ere I awoke.

But wake I did, and waking found,
The world waxing as I waned.
By harmony was I unbound,
Though many harms for me remained.
What cure is there for calumny,
Chiefly when it deservèd be.

---

Luna sighed, setting down her quill and rising from her desk. She'd spent three nights now, trying to hammer this poem into shape, and it just wouldn't come. She knew what she wanted it to say, but she couldn't find the words.

Opening the glass doors to her balcony, Luna stepped out into the warm night air. The stars twinkled overhead, and a pale shimmer of aurora just touched the northern horizon. Summer was almost here now, the Summer Sun celebration only two days away. She'd meant this poem as a private gift for her sister, but she was beginning to doubt she could finish it in time.

Poetry had been so easy, once. Or at least that's how she remembered it. She'd grown up with it, Celestia reading to her from a book of old Eqquish sonnets each night when she was a foal. Luna wondered, not for the first time, how much of her love for the night was tied up in those old memories. Was she always fated to raise the moon, from the time she was born? Or was her cutie mark a product of her own desires? Could she have chosen a different path for herself?

No, there was no use to thoughts like that. The past was the past, and all anypony could do was move forward and try to learn from it.

Only, why was poetry so much harder now than it had been before... before everything went wrong? A millennium ago, she could have dashed through this poem in two hours. Now three nights of work could only produce a bare four stanzas.

A small noise from her chamber brought her attention back from the night sky. She turned, and to her mortification, Luna saw Celestia sitting at her work desk, reading her notes. Her heart thudding in her chest, she hurried back inside.

"Tia! What are you doing up so early?" Frustratingly, her sister ignored Luna's words and kept reading.

"Please, Tia, it is not finished." Still, Celestia made no response. Luna bit her lip, an anxious habit she wished she could quit.

Eventually, Celestia set the page back on the desk and turned. "I've never understood your aversion to letting ponies read your drafts, Luna. It's a good way to refine your work. And it's not early at all. I'm supposed to raise the sun in fifteen minutes."

Luna blinked. Had the night gone so quickly? Truly, this poem had taken too much of her attention—and for what? Her face fell. "I'm sorry, Tia. It was supposed to be a present for you, but I do not think I will finish it by tomorrow. I do not know why writing takes so much longer than it used to."

Celestia chuckled. "It takes longer because you've gotten better, silly."

"No I have not. You remember how many poems I used to write—how much ponies loved them. Now I can hardly write at all."

"Nonsense, Luna. Your old poems were... fine. But you were a princess; of course they were going to be popular. This, though—this is good. Or it might be, once you finish it. Believe me, I've been reading poetry for the last thous—" Celestia's voice trailed off and she looked back at the poem, a small frown creasing her face. "I'm sorry, sister. I didn't mean to—"

"Please, Tia. It is the past now. Do ponies not say, 'Time heals all wounds'?" Luna forced herself to smile. She'd always wanted to believe that, anyway. And maybe, in another century or so, she'd even know if it were true.

Comments

[Skywriter]

Heh, I know the feeling all too well. I only hope what Celestia says is the truth.

Check the accent on "deservéd" as I'm pretty sure that should be a grave rather than an acute.

[Bradel]

6234433
Yeah, I've got a couple things I've been working on supposed to work on the last few days, and I feel like I'm getting nowhere with them. Which was pretty much exactly the same way I felt trying to put the poem together here. The story actually happened as an outgrowth of how hard the poem was to write; I spent about half my available Writeoff time trying to put that together, and then the rest was quick padding so I could make it to word count, but at least it was on point given how I was feeling.

Writing is hard...

Also, I'm making the change on the grave/acute thing, but I would love if you'd by any chance have a citation to point me at on it. I remember struggling with this when I put it together originally, and I tried looking it up again right now, and for the life of me I have no idea how to find a reference for something like this. Do you happen to know?

[Nadnerb]

This feels meta. Is it meta? Based on the comment you posted 16 seconds ago, I guess the answer is yes.

The poem was a gift, the deadline looms, and creativity fights with perfectionism and ever more refined taste.

[Bradel]

6234827

You know, that particular level of meta didn't even occur to me. But it's totally on point.

At least I've got an outline and some ideas I really like for... um... yeah.

Well, I'm gonna post something new tomorrow. Here's hoping it winds up being a real story (one of the two I want to be working on) and not just another chapter here.

[Skywriter]

6234825
https://books.google.com/books?id=z_VmtjAU01YC&pg=PA100&dq=Oxford+American+style+diacritic&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMI3f32iInwxgIVxjweCh3X8QBU#v=onepage&q=Oxford%20American%20style%20diacritic&f=false

[Bradel]

6234886
That is awesome and I think I want that book now. Thanks!

[Skywriter]

6235572
No worries.

[Leonzilla]

I do not know why writing takes so much longer than it used to."

Celestia chuckled. "It takes longer because you've gotten better, silly."

It's true that the more things you know that could improve your work as you accumulate experience the more editing you would be able to accomplish and with it bring your writing to a higher level.

But

The ability to efficiently produce drafts it's also and important skill.

The way I see it Luna takes longer to write in part because she is a lot more critical of her work and in part because she wrapped herself in the toxic cycle of thinking that characterises writers block.

I felt Celestia addressed the first one while neglecting to mention the second one.

That's just my take of this fun little read.

~Leonzilla

[PresentPerfect]

That's it? D: