RCL Interview and New Story · 1:04am Jan 25th, 2015
This week I had the honour of having Breaking News and Weather featured by the Royal Canterlot Library. And the fun of doing the interview to accompany this, which you can read here. It's really great to get one of my stories placed among the best pony fiction, and nice to have done one of the few Rainbow Dash stories in the RCL.
On another note, after missing a few target dates, I am now close to submitting my next story, which I'm calling Time on Their Hooves. I really should get the first three chapters out by next weekend. As a teaser, here is something to set the scene (it's actually the prologue written in my first draft, but I rewrote it as this one's a bit verbose).
The Rock of Canterlot was one of the greatest natural wonders of Equestria. A huge monolithic limestone promontory at the end of the Foal Mountains, dominating the landscape, overlooking the alluvial plain and forests of central Equestria. It marked the heart of the kingdom, and it was said that from the snow-capped summit of the rock you could see the entire country, from ocean to ocean.
The city of Canterlot was no less a wonder. The fairy-tale castle perched on the cliff halfway up the rock, never failed to impress passing travellers. How could such a city be built? It must surely require the magic of thousands of unicorns. That was a thought which many a visitor had pondered. Upon climbing the many steps on the path up to the city (or more usually, taking the train), they were no closer to an answer. But they were better able to appreciate why it had been built where it had: the view was truly awesome. A fact which even impressed visitors from Cloudsdale, whose views were usually blocked by the foggy haze surrounding the weather factory.
Canterlot had so many attractions that a pony could live there for his or her life and still not see everything, or learn all of its secrets. Many of the residents never saw need to venture beyond the city walls. Yet they were aware that the path up the rock continued beyond the city. The hardier travellers continued along this road, which turned into a staircase spiralling up the cliff edge. Sometimes hewn from the cliff edge, with a vertical drop to one side, sometimes disappearing into long tunnels to emerge on the other side of the mountain.
Eventually travellers would reach a plaza surrounded by a set of ancient stone buildings which made up an old abbey, high above Canterlot. The buildings, part built onto the cliffs, part hewn out of the rock, were many centuries old, but well maintained. There were two large halls, with sloping slate roofs, on either side of the plaza; and a clock tower which overlooked the entire complex. The south side was marked by a stone parapet which stood over a vertigo inducing drop to the countryside below. The north face consisted of the cliff edge, which towered another few hundred metres upwards. Out of the cliff, by whatever magic it was that brought fresh water to the surface, many hundreds of miles from the ocean, a stream flowed, the water cascading down the rock and into the abbey compound, where it was collected in a large cuboid cistern. From here it followed many paths, driving water wheels and other machinery, and emerged at the level of the plaza, where it flowed through a narrow precision cut channel, dividing the western and eastern sides of the abbey, and then through a grating in the wall, where it cascaded further down the cliff to Canterlot and beyond.
On a bright summer day, the site was a popular location for tourists and day-trippers from Canterlot and Cloudsdale. Our story, or the prologue to the real story, begins on such a day. A pegasus flying past the mountain would have seen a number of ponies milling around the plaza, inspecting the monuments, and admiring the view. Looking closer, she would make out a lavender coloured winged unicorn and three bright eyed little fillies. If that pegasus had been from Ponyville, she would have recognised this party as Twilight Sparkle and the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
Looking forward to it.