Spike receives an invitation in the mail for the first annual dragon festival, an event that he has been corresponding with Ember about for some time. As he prepares to travel with her to the dragon lands, Ember asks Twilight to join in on the event as well. Furthermore, as Ember and Spike begin their trip they happen upon a new dragon who says that he, like Spike, was born and raised outside the dragon lands.
This is a nice slice-of-life story overall, with good characterizations for Twilight, Spike, Ember, and "Gale". The first two-thirds is a little slow, and might put readers off, but the ending is well-done and well worth the trip.
The reveal towards the end caught me by surprise, and it makes the entire story that much more interesting in retrospect, so it would be good to have stronger clues early on of where this is going, to hold the reader's attention. You do a good job at dropping hints that suggest something is "off" about Gale as a dragon (such as not being wild about gemstones), though it might have been the length of the initial setup with Twilight and Spike that meant that these didn't strongly stand out or signal the ending you intended (as opposed to simply being in character with Gale's stated origin as a hill-dragon, for example).
The main story here is essentially the journey with Gale to the festival, and the festival and reveal itself, which was well-done, so if you wanted to shorten this you might consider focusing on those, and providing just enough context for Spike's trip to support that.
BTW, you could easily add the Romance tag to this, since that would be appropriate given the ending and it doesn't really give anything away.
Good job!
9512973
I greatly appreciate the input. It's hard to talk about in the comments without spoiling the story for those who haven't read it, but I do hear you on the "clues" part. The hardest part of writing this was deciding what to hint at, what not to and to what degree. I suppose it's a matter of perspective, as the writer I know where the story is going so my mind is artificially inflating the impact of those hints. As a result a small hint becomes a big one in my eyes and my biggest worry was making it too easy to piece together. I'll definitely take that into consideration going forward with other projects; but I did throw in the romance tag. 👍
Great twist!
Also poor Smolder didn’t get invited
I think this is your only misstep. While the story itself, the characters, the whole thing is wonderful... this rapidfire confession just feels a little rushed. Like I said, great story otherwise.
9843047
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the story. When I get the chance I'll go through that part and see what I can do to make it feel less rushed, because I do understand what you're saying. I originally wrote that part three separate times to get it as it is now, trying to capture his emotional spill as he attempted to explain himself.
9843107
I think if you broke up the dialogue a bit with descriptions of Ember and Thorax as they have this "first-fight", it would go a long way towards evening out the pacing.