It’s not always fun being famous, you know.
Sure, I like ponies to admire me – what pegasus wouldn’t? But if it burns too brightly, a star becomes blinding to look at.
You want me to explain? Well... back in Cloudsdale, there’s this big lighthouse. Only inland lighthouse in Equestria. I worked there when I was just out of school. Didn’t stay long. Couldn’t...
It’s at the top of the Weather Factory – you know why it’s there? Simple: to make sure weak fliers stay safe around rainbows.
I learned something important the hard way up there: that lighthouse works both ways.
Author's Note: Runner-up in Weekly Contests Flash Fiction Contest #11. The requirement was to write a story for the prompt "Lighthouse" in no more than 100 words, with using coloured text as an extra challenge. This fic is exactly 100 words, not including the title.
Here's a full explanation of what the colours mean:
This is Rainbow talking to Twilight. Exactly what happened is supposed to be left to interpretation, but the pinkish red could represent embarrassment, let's say. "Hard" is in red, not the pinkish-red of "Couldn't...", so it's a different thing. "Hard" is blood-coloured, so it could represent either an accident Rainbow caused through carelessness, or an occasion when she had a rush of blood and upset somepony. As for other things, "school" being in brown is obvious and represents Rainbow Dash's opinion of classes, while "Equestria" being in green is an even more obvious reference to it being a green and pleasant land.
The "burns too brightly" sequence is one I rather like. It's supposed to show that Rainbow became more and more and more obsessed with showing off, to the extent that she started really annoying people, just as light is good but a camera flash to the face isn't. The word "blinding" was made barely readable for that reason.
Other things: "pegasus" is in blue, a less brilliant shade than the cyan that represents Rainbow Dash herself, to show that Dash has always felt that she shines out even among her own kind. "Cloudsdale" is grey because my headcanon has it as a tough, industrial city. And "Weather Factory" is the same colour because it's the reason why Cloudsdale exists in the first place: the city is a company town, effectively.
The blue and yellow? Well, that's actually cyan, Rainbow's colour, while the yellow is that of a certain other pegasus. The point is that Dash discovered that while the literal lighthouse helped weak fliers (eg 'Shy) stay safe around literal rainbows (at the factory), Fluttershy herself -- said weak flier -- could also act as a figurative lighthouse who kept Rainbow Dash safe from overdoing it. Note that in the word "rainbows", I've included the six colours of the Equestrian rainbow and the middle two letters in cyan to represent this specific rainbow, Dash, to show its double meaning.
And the final two words? One goes one way, one the other, representing this... and it also looks like a hug between two ponies we know became best friends. :)
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Intriguing.
5649389 I'm actually quite pleased with this one: for example, the mid-blue of "pegasus" doesn't just represent the sky, while the colours I used in "rainbows" were also carefully chosen. When I posted it over on my blog, I explained the meaning in the comments to this post.
Edit: And I've now added that explanation (under spoiler tags) to the A/N in the story itself. Don't know why I didn't do that at the time, really.
Why do you hate tablet users?
I was gonna say I'm not sure it quite works when you have to explain the entire story, but have a blank comment instead I guess. :|
10336538
Quite honestly, I don't think I need anything like that much explanation. I just felt like putting it in. :P