The earth pony walked along the side of the rock field; they'd gotten rather frosty lately, and so she loathed going in. The last time, she'd slipped and almost joined the oh-so-romantic pegasi she'd come to retrieve; her hoof rubbed against her badly-dented breastplate, as if to remind herself that it was still there.
“Keep the pebbles off, y'hear?” she shouted—though she knew the moron couldn't hear her past the echo corridor—as she began to work her way past the dense rock formations with the practice of a dancer.
A dancer; that's what she should've been. Certainly not a professional in whatever it is the name was for whatever ungodly horrible thing she did.
The circumstances hadn't exactly given her the choice, though; rotting corpses weren't exactly good to keep around. The ice at least made it semi-bearable; it certainly didn't make her wonder less why she chose to do the job. The flow'd been increasing lately, even more than usual. The sky hadn't stopped receding.
Until then, that was. The damn thing nearly blinded her just as the mare hit the ground. She felt sorry for her for the five seconds it took to register that she'd have to clean her body off the floor.
At least the dumb thing had the courtesy to say something: some gross bastardisation of the Celestial Prayer that she clumsily transcribed down in her little black book, along with the rest. She almost welcomed the Empyreans. Sure, the prayers tended to run the gamut of whiny to pathetic, but the times she didn't hear them were far, far worse.
The flesh tended to become part of the snow, and she wasn't very good with shovels.
With a slight shudder, she moved down her regular path.
The bodies almost always tended to land somewhere in a zone about a mile wide; she normally had plenty of time to make various threats to herself, hypothesise about her alternative career options and lament her indecision, but this time something ripped her from her thoughts.
The sound of crying. Not mare crying or stallion crying; she'd heard plenty of that in the echo corridor.
Foal crying.
She'd heard that once in the corridor.
It wasn't pretty.
“Hey,” she said, and her eyes widened. Had the dumb mare really jumped with her foal? “Hey, who's there?”
A loud whine came back in response.
“Horseapples.” She looked about for a hoof-hold. It wasn't about to happen again; not if the kid was still alive. “Where are you, kid?” she said, as she scrambled her way towards a familiar seeing-rock. “I am an officer of the Equestrian Transitional Authority! Please respond!”
The cries went around the valley, and she groaned as she pulled herself up. She hoped the foal was big enough for her to see; as she reached the top, closing her eyes to shield them from the cold, she pushed her head down and the tip of her muzzle bumped into another.
She opened her eyes and her eyes looked into the brilliant, temporarily silent stare of a pink-haired, white filly, her wings to her sides and horn shining in the light. She looked to its side and then back to her.
There was no cadaver.
“Mama?” she said, and smiled like the sun.
Not bad. Certainly not what I was expecting. Though it was at some parts a bit hard to follow, try to make the descriptions clearer, so that the reader can get a better picture of what is going on, and where.
Well, I've never seen a story that had a idea similar to it so far.....so tracked.
Image has me, but will wait until completed. 1149408 TL; DR Jk. lol
I agree with 1149408, the first chapter was very interesting, and clear enough, though some things could be made better, but this chapter... I'm not sure if this lady was watching the whole time, or what happened at all. From what I understood, Twinkle sacrificed herself in a glorious blaze of magic near the peak of a mountain or cliff, but she didn't jump off. In other words, if the gravedigger lady saw Twinkle's end, she also should have seen Celestia's birth. Also, where did her mentor disappear to? There seems to be a major disconnect between the setting of this chapter and the last.
Like'd and Fav'ed, but could you clean it up, or have some proofreaders help you go back over it?
Some of overuse and misuse of semicolon .
A bit rough/ sketchy in some places.
Interesting to say the least.
On a whole, me likey. Fix what needs to be fixed, however.
1150104
Ignore virtually everything I said, I just read your blog post, and essentially reread the first chapter. There is still a small amount of confusion, since you never outright describe the cliff, other than the fact that a LOT of ponies had been committing suicide off of it lately.
Sorry?
Also, with the way the first chapter has changed, you may want to remove the comedy tag. Just saying.
One other thing, why is there a comedy tag? Or is that to come later on?
Secondly, the first chapter involves suicide (sacrifice if you like), I'm unsure that falls into the rating of 'everyone' surely 'teen' is more appropriate.
Oh my.
1150173
It's more like dark (or gallows!) humor, but I don't think it would justify the 'dark' tag, maybe a bump to 'teen,' as said.
1150183
The dialogue was pretty funny, just not slapstick funny, more like witty banter.
1150316
I didn't notice. Take from that what you will.
1150322
C'est la vie, to each their own in the humor department. The tag could also have relevance later on; I imagine raising a powerful goddess to be more than a simple endeavor.
1150353
I'd like to think so.
The haters are out in force. I don't know why. Thematically, I strongly disapprove of using human, er, pony, sacrifice in a story and having it work. But I can overlook that.
End of chpt. 1, "Her neck broke against the rocks and it turned a brilliant white." Reads as if her neck turned a brilliant white. I wouldn't mention it, but it's supposed to be a dramatic finish, and the grammatical ambiguity ruins it.
1150316
Wut? I never said anything about a dark tag.... Go look at Amit's blogpost, and you can see why I said this has a lot less comedy than before the edit.
1151473
I know, that was my brain pre-coffee, and all I ended up typing out were fragments of my thoughts on the matter; I simply didn't include all the context when I wrote the coment, apologies for the misunderstanding!
I read the blog post shortly after I read the story, and I can't decide which version I like better. That said, I think the comedy tag can still apply, it's just more subtle and morbid humor that's lightly coated in snarky, Sorkin-like banter as opposed to the full on heavily battered and deep fried version from the blog post. You are right on the money with the confusion, though. Much like my original comment, the story is missing context in very important places, namely: settings.
I really enjoyed this. It was a cool version of the MLP mythos.