When an unnatural winter descends on Ponyville, Twilight soon discovers that the Windigo is not what the history books say. Her quick thinking saves the day but leaves her with a bigger problem: An ancient alicorn, a contemporary of Celestia herself, has been turned into a filly and is now Twilight’s personal student.
Everypony is asking themselves the same question: Can the power of friendship thaw a frozen heart, or will memories of the past keep her in the cold?
A submission to the More Most Dangerous Game contest.
Much thanks to silvadel for kicking my butt into gear, and for his prereading and guidance.
Chapters (6)
Inb4 everyone else
Um, can we get some tags? What is this? Adventure? Romance? Comedy? AU?
5548820
Whoops! Tagged now.
Whoa, what was with her meltdown at the end?
Ominous.
Well, it's progress.
Hmm, rather sudden ending, but I suppose you were working within a word restraint. Well done, have a like.
The hell?
Such a sudden ending without closure.
5549022 Well the contest he entered it in has a max of 15k words, so...
5549118
it looks like he could have gone another 2000
5548903
As a villain her neurosis was the compulsive hoarding of food. Giving other people food she had goes directly against a fundamental drive.
Huh. How curious
I like that take on the old Hearths Warming tale. So far, so good.
Oooooooooh, that makes things fun. She has her old compulsions, but she doesn't seem to know why.
Uh oh
The development's felt pretty natural so far. Good stuff.
Wait what? It's over? Wat
This story feels incomplete. I mean, I really like what's here, but it definitely feels like there should be more. Seeing that 'Complete' tag kinda makes me dislike the story, honestly. It feels like I'm getting cheated out of half the story.
Please write the rest of it. It was just getting to the good part.
5550836 There will be more, at some point.
WHAT??!! I need more!!!!
Windy sees her old evil in play - this is not gonna be pretty!
5548898
I really like this story and how you've written the character of Windy. The choice of a cliffhanger ending is not necessarily a bad one, but in a shorter piece the departure is too brusk. After the contest I would advise you to add an element of foreshadowing, perhaps starting a with a prologue of Twilight's despair at "Windy having run away" without explaining who Windy is, and then an epilogue of her determination to find her "daughter" and her her home.
5555979 I, uh, "left it open for a sequel."
Which I plan to do.
and about here i had to explain to my family that no, i wasn't dying, i simply couldn't breathe
it's a very hard thing to explain without words, of course, but i managed
5608283 I don't know if you're the first to catch that reference, but you're the first to comment on it!
Everypony who dwells in the Kingdom of What speakest the language of Trixie, but not all who speakest the language of Trixie dwell in the kingdom of What.
5549394 Ties in well with her compulsive overeating earlier in the chapter.
Windy Glow. Windigo.
I feel stupid for getting that now, rather than in chapter two.
Like the others, I liked her neurosis, but I didn't like the sudden ending at the moment of dramatic climax. I'd probably read a sequel, though.
5785173 I'm planning to do a complete re-write, in fact. I only managed to cram in about half of what I wanted to include in the first half of the book. So yeah, it left off halfway through. There will be more, but I will probably finish Decade first.
5785257 Best of luck with that. I did find that at its current length, it held my attention to the end, but if it grew into something the length of Past Sins I would probably have stopped reading.
5785314 Yeah, I don't want it to get that long. I meant double in terms of... things that happen. Emotional development. Not words. I mostly wrote each chapter in a single pass with bare-minimum editing. I was hoping to keep the entire thing to under 50k.
Are you friggin' kidding me :|
I'm not sure how I feel about the backstory overall, but I definitely like your take on Celestia's ascension.
This is kinda just Past Sins with a different OC. <.<
Uh. Oh. :/ Huh.
5797613 Well, that was the prompt for the MMDG contest. I think I stuck closer to the original story than most of the other entries.
5797678 Yep. Ran out of time. Poor
planningtime management. I enjoyed writing it though, and I've got an outline for the rest of the story (you know... to an ending). I plan to finish it (and re-write the existing part) at some point.5797720
I'm gonna mark my review "Incomplete" and come back to this when you're done with it. Honestly, it's not too bad, but it definitely feels rushed in places.
As to your other comment, it was my understanding that the purpose of the contest was to write an original story based on the general idea of another story, not to rewrite it wholesale.
landed 'in' front
I find the writing to be rather sparse in sections. For example, in the first chapter Twilight and Rainbow agree that they need to go to the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. After the scene break, Applejack appears without any introduction and the rest of the Mane 6 + Spike are no where to be found. The lack of explanations is somewhat jarring.
I'm also confused about how Twilight turned Windy Glow into a foal in the first place. She herself admits something like an age spell is beyond her abilities in Magic Duel and she is certainly not wearing the Alicorn Amulet. Artistic license, I suppose?
I was trying to think of what this was referring to, but I drew a blank. I do, however, remember the CMC taking a field trip in Celestia's gardens and appearing for the royal wedding.
I'm guessing the terribly abrupt ending was a result of the word count limit, so hopefully we'll get to see the rest of it some time. There are a lot of interesting ideas in the story - the reinterpretation of the Hearth's Warming story, Windy Glow's psychological problems, etc. I am, however, hoping that you find something to do with the story to make it unique from Past Sins. Beyond the circumstances leading up to the slice-of-life portion, there's nothing really differentiating it from the prompt story.
This is interesting.
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Thanks! I don't think I executed it well, though. I don't do well under time pressure. Or word limits.
Sooooo...... any progress on the rest of this / a rewrite / a sequel?
8231917
More of a... reimagining. Take this story as the inspiration for what comes next. I've got nearly 10k words of story notes for Our Discontent. That includes worldbuilding, character sketches, social structure, plot, and character development. Consider it a long-term project. I've got one story (far-future sci-fi Twilight-on-a-spaceship) nearly finished that I'll publish first, and then probably a chapter of Decade, and a one-shot or two before I can really work on Our Discontent in earnest.
I am the only one who remembers the baked bads.