Abandoned: Appleloosa · 3:24am Jun 5th, 2015
One of my favorite books is Desolation Road. And as one does when one has a favorite book, one develops an urge to rewrite it to be about ponies. Appleloosa is a frontier city, after all, and with any kind of frontier setting, there's always this question: why are these people (=ponies) here? Why did they have so few ties to their old homes that they were willing to travel to this new place to create a new city with complete strangers? So Appleloosa (pending a better name) was envisioned as a sort of anthology piece, introducing various characters as it went along, with previously introduced characters then playing supporting roles in later chapters etc. But ultimately it seemed to make more sense to find existing, canonical ponies to graft such stories onto, rather than create basically a long series of complete OCs no one has any emotional investment in (while still claiming them to be ponies and stuff). Also, the writing style I was aping is not one that comes naturally to me, and while pushing one's boundaries can be a rewarding experience, I didn't think it was working out too well. So into the abandoned project landfill this goes!
Sand! Sand in your nose, trickling up your nostrils no matter how you tried to turn gravity to your advantage, defining each hair and mite of snot, cramming your senses until you couldn’t be sure if the world smelled like sand or sand smelled like the world. Sand in your eyebrows, enough that no matter your natural hair color everyone thought it had to be brown, but not golden brown or chocolate brown or wooden brown or anything so simple, but sand brown, sand so timeless and immutable that there was no color it could be compared to but its own. Sand in your eyelashes, bringing down your eyelids to twice their usual weight and making every miserable blink first a relief and later a chore, so when your eyes did open again the effort geysered sand in front of you as your eyelids lifted and shed their particulate burdens. Sand in your mouth, slipping through your frown no matter how fast you clamped your lips against the endless winds, shuttling up the cracks between your teeth and intermarrying with your gums. Sand rappelling down your throat in a silent chain of particles, each one waiting for the last to drop before beginning its own descent, slow and punctuated as the endless torture of a dewdrop-laden spider-web just inches above your forehead, entering your lungs and driving you to huge, barrel-breaking coughs that cleared you for those briefest and most blessed of moments, until you breathed in again and back came the sand, grainy, scheming, unfeeling, unknowing, irresistible. Sand piling into your ears and piling on your head and joining forces with the wind, until all you could hear from your companions shouting at you was “Sand!” and you shouted “Sand!” at them and they shouted “Sand!” back and yet there was no communication lost, for what else was there to shout? What else could you say when the sand threatened to encase your four legs and make you a living statue, for the sand had no cruelty to let you die in its embrace, and all you could do was keep moving forwards if you wanted to survive? What else could you say when the direction you walked no longer mattered, only that you were not still; the friends you walked next to no longer mattered, only that they were not enemies; the weight of the cart at your back no longer mattered, only that it was not sand and this was enough to keep you sane, knowing that there were still things in your world that were not sand. Of the ponies in those carts you knew nothing, not whether they lived or died nor whether the sands and winds were worse within the carts than they were without, only that you remained alive and the ponies walking beside you did too. So instead you would shout that you were alive, shout that the world had failed to wear you down, shout that the great force that is life had been born within you for another inch, another yard, another mile—and all you had to shout was “Sand!” because sand was the world, and to live was to live in sand, and because you refused to pause—refused to stop—refused to stiffen—refused to fall—refused to die—you were alive and you walked and you coughed and you shouted “Sand!”
Atop the Blessed Sisters Many-Storied Open-Air Restaurant of Fillydelphia, three stories above the ponies new to Fillydelphia carried there on dreams of more exciting life in the big city dwelling among the stars and the two-thousand-and-three painted pinwheels painted by a mare with more love for her cutie mark than sense or arithmetic and the five-hundred-and-eleven picture windows and the thirty-nine flower sellers and the four hucksters masquerading as flower sellers and the seventy-eight water fountains and the Amazing Amethyst who dazzled ponies and vermin alike with shows of implausible magic for three bits apiece except on Sundays and the queue three stallions wide to see the Great Ponyacchi defy death itself for five bits apiece but only on Sundays and Honest Herbal Essence who promised to make every mare for miles adore you and if not you were welcome to track her down in the next town and the beggars and the thieves and the crooks and the panhandlers and the robbers and the fools and the charmers and the braggarts and the eleven-thousand lies, two stories above the weaker pegasi and the eighty-six starlings and the twenty red rubber balls sent spinning by a unicorn foal who’d just gotten his cutie mark for juggling and the banners welcoming you to Fillydelphia City of Brotherly Little Girls and the three lost balloons and Open Air the window washer stallion with his cutie mark for fine embroidery and Deep Sleep the second-floor embroiderer with her cutie mark for psychotherapy and fifty-four foals living in attics unbeknownst to their parents and seven parents living in attics to get away from their foals, one story above the stronger pegasi and the
So that's Appleloosa, or at least leaning in toward an introduction to it. Of the planned stories I had in mind, one I'm planning on reviving at some point somewhere else; the other was about this lady, the one who jumps out an open window and rides a buffalo to submission:
My name for her was Carrot Tamale, intended to convey that she was like Carrot Top... but spicier. Yeah. So the Carrot Clan was going to have this annual get-together, like the Apple Family Reunions but for Carrots instead, and part of the event would be an eyesight contest. Because carrots are supposed to be good for your eyesight. Carrot Tamale would enter the competition, and one by one all the other ponies would drop out, not being able to see as far as she can, until the only two left standing are Carrot Tamale and her brother. And Carrot Tamale looks so far that she looks around the world and sees her brother standing with a knife behind her, ready to kill her in a jealous rage if she wins. So she pretends she can't see as far as whatever he last said, and he 'wins' the competition, and she runs away for her life and ends up moving to Appleloosa. Hooray!
Just found a notepad file with some vague plans for this one. Best line:
I have no memory of this.