Fiddlesticks walks the dead earth of the Badlands, and plays her song to the listening shadows.
(Audio version by Illya Leonov AKA Morgan Freepony.)
You can't see the forest...
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I've been through the desert as a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain...
First thing that came to mind upon finishing the story. A sorrowfully beautiful piece. I get the sense that there's a lot behind this that I'm not getting. In any case, thank you for it.
4653063
But but I already used A Horse with No Name...
I don't know if there's that much more to get that doesn't come from reading the poem, or at least sort of skimming over it; most of the vague references and images are lifted from there. Something pushed me to re-read The Waste Land, and well, this is the result of inspiration.
4654785
Well, there's the problem. Didn't read the poem.
One degree of separation between horse fiction and T. S. Eliot. I love this site.
Absolutely beautiful.
You should submit this to someplace where good Pony fanfiction is archived.
4654785 What is The Waste Land? Where can I read that?
4669392
It's a poem; there's a link at the end in the author's notes. Or you can just put "ts eliot the waste land" into the Google device.
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
I had never realised your pen name was a reference to this. This is a nice little oneshot - short and sweet.
Is that paraphrased from the original poem? Because it sure does a solid job of establishing the poem's setting as a place of absolute death; stealing away all fluids that keep one alive every second, and divulging nothing in return. It makes a very romantic sort of sense that Fiddlesticks would go there to play for the dead.
5040003
I'm not 100% sure - I don't think so, but I was also drawing a lot from the first volume of Stephen King's Dark Tower series -- which itself pulls very heavily from The Waste Land, so it might have filtered down somehow after all. In any case, deserts (especially the kind that could be named 'the Badlands') are pretty merciless places; there's lots of environments that can look barren and lifeless, but only a desert can manage to look dead.
This is a beautiful piece. It's a shame it hasn't gotten more attention.
This is a truly beautiful read.
Thanks for writing!
5040522 I knew there was some of the gunslinger there
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
I loved Eliot, and then I was disillusioned. Now that I live alone in Oxford (unreal city) I return to the wasteland and find myself reflected back as I saw myself through a glass darkly in Prufrock as a freshman alone in the lobby of my dorm.