Little Ember

by Heresy Incarnate

Freedom

Soaring, high above the clouds, freedom

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I woke up in a good mood and automatically cast my shield spell without thinking before sliding off of Mother and heading towards Amber's den. Six moons ago, Amber had requested formal permission from our Mother, the Matriarch of the nearby region, to remain in her Lair in order to help me. She would have been within her rights to deny him now that he had grown large enough to carve out a Lair of his own, and from what I gathered he had in a far away land that the ponies call “Saddle Arabia,” but she was willing to accept him until the next Great Meeting. My lessons had been going well and Amber was convinced I was ready to start reading “Twilight’s Tantamount Transmutation and Thaumaturgy Tome.” I didn’t understand what half of those words meant, but I doubted the title would be important to what I wanted to know, so I began reading the actual spells.

They were written much the same way as the title was. Techniques laid out using advanced and complicated terminology that I had little to no understanding of. I was getting discouraged until I found a spell I was familiar with. It seemed Twilight considered being able to touch lava safely an expert level spell, capable of being cast by only the strongest “unicorn” ponies, with long periods of practice and years up building up some sort of magical energy pool and even then, the longest she had seen it maintained was for an hour… I grinned at my fortune, it seemed that my life here had prepared me for the spells in this book, I just needed the technical knowledge to understand all the proper preparations, and it wouldn’t be long before I was able to cast “Starswirl’s Alicorn Ascension” labelled as being the “Ultimate Spell” and covering 7 pages of technical material in preparation for it to even have a remote chance of working.

Amber would help me with the language ‘twas what he was staying here for anyhow. It had been a struggle to grasp speaking Equestrian, it used sounds foreign to the Draconic language I was familiar with listening to, but I found that it was still easier than trying to produce Draconic rumbles and growls to speak. On the other hand, the writing was completely foreign to me, and after I got the basics of speech down the majority of the time Amber and I spent was getting me to understand how these symbols interacted to form words.

The Draconic language didn’t have a written aspect, and all our knowledge and customs were passed down through the generations orally, we shared news of the world at The Great Meeting and then went about our ways for another short year before we met again. Every 8 or 9 decades we would choose a new location to meet just to shake things up a bit, and according to my Mother a couple decades ago the decided upon location was The Caldera. We Dragons are fairly social beasts, everyone visiting each other yearly for a few weeks, we might care about our Territory but nodragon misses out on The Great Meeting.

I groaned at Amber and flipped through the book frustratedly, trying to talk to him in Equestrian. “Twilight is big dummy. Using big words I don’t know.”

He chuckled and gently set down the book he was perusing, replying in Draconic. “You’ve gotten good at Equestrian, but you still miss a word here or there.”

I huffed and gave him the nastiest look I could manage. “Not fau-” I stopped and scrunched up my nose in concentration. “Not my fault. Dragons don’t have some of these words.” He shrugs and looks at the spell I’m trying to get a handle on, it’s a “simple” light spell but when I tried to cast it my magic just released a burst of flame like I was used to. I couldn’t figure out what the second to last step was.

Amber raised a brow as he saw the spell I was having trouble with and traced his claw gently along the page. “Are you building the energy up in your horn?”

I rolled my eyes at him “Yes.”

“How about clearing your mind of other distractions?”

I gave him a pointed glare. “Yeees.”

His claw stopped on the step I was having trouble with and he translated it into simpler terms, finally. “Are you visualizing the light you want to make before releasing?”

I blinked before slapping my hoof to my face in exasperation. “Makes sense. I should have known was… THAT was what I was missing.”

Amber lightly patted my head with a foreclaw and I gave him a deathglare. He was the only Dragon that was gutsy enough to treat me like a pony, and if he wasn’t my brother he would get away with much worse than he did. I cleared my mind and focused my magic, maybe a shining red snout would make him reconsider doting on me. “Hey! That’s too bright put it out!” I giggled despite myself and flipped to the next spell as Amber batted at his face, glowing a bright unabated white. The spell didn’t exactly say I could change the color of the light, so I considered that a success.

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It was The Great Meeting. The 18th Great Meeting I had been around for to be precise. I had perfected my Equestrian in the eyes of Amber and I had everything I needed to attempt “Ascension.” I had a childhood of magic under my belt and on these weeks I had the entire Dragonic clan offering me support. The spell said a key ingredient was “The Magic of Friendship,” and a Dragon couldn’t hope for better friends. Mother, who had raised me as her own despite my differences, Amber, who had left his Lair unguarded to help me, and all the other Great Dragons in The Caldera this night, who treated me with nothing but respect though I had done little to earn it. I gathered together 6 precious gems, gifts from my kin and symbols of their caring, and recited the spell. “From all of us together…”

Comments

[El_Padrillo]

While I can't claim to know what style Little Ember (hereafter LE) is learning Equestrian at this point, I find the idea that she is using phrases as opposed to the Esperanto/Esperantian style of building sentences via words slightly less believable. Here are the lines in reference:

“Not my fault. Dragons don’t have some of these words.”

“Makes sense. I should have known was… THAT was what I was missing.”

Note the missing, implied words. When I was in Spanish 1 class in highschool, I didn't mind dropping the subject pronouns, but many of my classmates had an extremely hard time of letting go of them, and I would assume a new student to a language would want to keep things as by the books as possible. Of course, it is possible that the dragon language here uses similar phrases, or that Amber simply wanted to teach her through phrases, but I have to say that, at least the latter, isn't very likely. Words are the building blocks of languages, not phrases (but the Deez Nutz and His Name is John Cena memes do make me question that sometimes). I am, admittedly, being a nitpicker, but, hey, somebody's gotta do it, right?

However, I, as a linguistics enthusiast love that you include the idea of words not translating (real world example: English to Spanish: Do you have a pistol?----> ¿Tienes (or Tenéis for a plural you or y'all) una pistola?-----> (Literal translation) You have a pistol? Note the missing "do".) Just the idea that you have to add words which you have no meaning for in your native tongue can be confusing. I will note that the fact that it seems the Equestrian language uses more words than the dragon one, it could make sense that LE would want to exclude certain words, or talk in phrases their native language speaks (real world example: ESL (English second language) learners in Mexico often want to ask "How many years do you have?" as opposed to "How old are you?" because of the literal translation of the words that we use to ask that question. English is strange in that we ask for the age as opposed to the years had.).

Other aspects I liked is the number connections in the last paragraph, those being 18 and 6, which should be fairly easy for the reader to identify (adulthood and number of elements of harmony). I especially love the diction. The words are descriptive, but not purple. That's an important part of it for me. While I find purple talk in 3rd person stories acceptable, but not always preferable, in 1st person narratives, it almost always creates a detachment between the reader and the narrator. They have to be believable, and so far, LE is relatable enough for me. Growing up in an extremely rural area, I often didn't feel much like the other kids at all. My mannerisms were different, as well as my home culture, but they were (almost) always welcoming and warm to me, and I could blend in with their culture, and even enjoyed it, despite not being like them. My parents were suburbanites and halfway city slickers. They way they raised me to act, despite my hometown's general actions brought up some disparity. But I turned out alright, I think.

Anyway, sorry for digressing. I tend to ramble on sometimes. Back to the story, I also enjoyed more of the indirect characterization here, which paints a much clearer image of what kind of person LE is, how she learns, etc. I also feel like the more direct description of dragon culture, while not necessarily optimal, was the best choice to get it across in a short amount of words. Trying to paint us an image of it without being told would have been hard given the amount of words in these fic, so good call on that. However, if were forced to rewrite it, you should try to give us those details by allowing us to observe them rather than directly stating it. Let your readers think a little, I say.

Also, show detail note, while you mentioned ponies call Saddle Arabia by that particular name, however, it is worth mentioning that the creatures that inhabit Saddle Arabia are actually horses, as seen here. It'd have been nice if that note would have been made, but perhaps LE and Amber weren't aware of this fact or simply ignorant of the distinction.

I enjoyed this chapter. I'll be reading 3 sometime in the future. Hasta entonces.