Scribblefest 2018 and preview of Twinkle Twinkle - Speaker to Dragons · 2:33am Apr 23rd, 2018
I hate (ha!) to blow my own horn, but Scribblefest 2018 has announced the winners, and Falling Leaves of Oak took the Applejack prize. Drinks are on me! (up to a total of ten bucks, at which I'm out of prize money.) 
As a bonus, I'm including a bit out of an upcoming story that I'm working on, Twinkle Twinkle - Speaker to Dragons
Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Sacrifice Fly
“Loyalty to your commander is the greatest asset of the Praetorium.”
— Commander Hurricane
Twinkle was not a betting pony. In Unicornia whenever the festivals came around with their games of chance and skill, she would attend with her brothers and watch as they exercised their talents to the feigned awe of whatever mares they were escorting around. They always made her promise to stay quiet during the festive outings, although that was difficult when she would see one game of chance or another severely leaning on the rules of probability. There was no real reason for spending the tips and shards of their allowances on the chance of getting some stuffed animal for less than they could have just purchased one, but she trailed along anyway and often found herself carrying an unexpected prize or another.
It probably related back to the way other normal unicorns used ‘things’ to recall memories. Twinkle’s mother had a glittery paper star hanging on their bedroom wall which Obsidian had given to her as a present once, and Peridot could just cast a single glance at it before her eyes would well up with tears and she would be sniffly most of the rest of the day. Twinkle was an expert at using small clues and slips of the tongue to unravel the most hidden mystery, but she had never been able to work the story of the family heirloom out of her parents.
She had no problem reading the story of the Dragonlord’s children.
The first of them had not made it more than a short distance away from the valley before his siblings had ripped him nearly in half, leaving the bloody corpse spread across a hilltop. Claws and teeth alike had torn one wing off, and although he had fought and torn colorful scales from several of his attackers, they had worn him down in the end.
The Dragonlord landed a short distance away, but not far enough to avoid getting blood on his claws. He almost dropped Twinkle in his haste to examine the body, leaving her in the blood-soaked wreckage of a bush with strangely enough a few golden trinkets of apparent Minotaruian make under a root. She levitated them up in her magic for closer examination while the Dragonlord fumed over the body of his son. How the golden trinkets got there was another mystery in a long line, but one that was fairly easy to theorize an answer.
When Brass had used his fire magic on the family wagon and when Ruby had used hers to carry the piles of branches up to the cave, they had breathed out across the treasure and then breathed the smoke back in, presumably storing it in some sort of secondary stomach. Upon his death, the Dragonlord’s son must have breathed out that magic fire and it coalesced back into the treasure that had been stored inside.
Before the Dragonlord could snatch the golden baubles away, she let them fall back to the ground and stepped off the blackened grass. He was not in a stable mental state right now, and to provide any excuse would mean her death before she could lure him far enough into the Windigo’s clutches to kill them both. She settled for the stiff rigidity of the terminally terrified, and did not say anything when the enormous dragon grabbed her and bolted to the north again without a word.
Of course she had questions that she wanted to ask the Dragonlord during the long trip, but she was not stupid. Talking would reduce the probability of her plan working, and most probably the deaths of many, many ponies. Still, an hour or more later when the Dragonlord curved his path downwards to land next to two more of his children who had killed each other, she could not keep her mouth shut.
She bent her neck down, closely examined the small cluster of flowers she had been dropped into, and took a tentative bite.
“Buttercups,” she murmured to herself as she took another bite. They looked similar to the flower, but they tasted like butter, freshly churned and salted just a bit for flavor. The exodus most certainly had not encountered any such plants, although the pony’s path had not been through this exact section of grassland, so it was not impossible for her to have missed this species before. Her mother had loved plants, and her special talent was flower arranging, so Twinkle’s home had been filled with plant books, all of which she had read, of course.
Before the Dragonlord had finished bellowing and making threats over the corpses of his two dead children, Twinkle had harvested the few plants that stuck up out of the snow and held them close while they swept back up into the sky.
Just because she had a task that would save the lives of many ponies did not mean she could not also try to unravel a different mystery.
- - Ω - -
“Where is my treasure!” howled the Dragonlord, squeezing Twinkle until she could barely see the fading sunlight. “I’ve been flying forever! Show me the treasure!”
There was a vague sensation of being shaken, then the crushing pressure released except for a sharp pain in her side that was most likely a rib. Twinkle sucked in welcome air and staggered to her hooves in the Dragonlord’s palm, looking out across the snowy ground for a recognizable landmark. What she saw looked vaguely familiar, but just as weird as the buttercups she had eaten a short time before.
The two short mountains the pony exodus had passed between on their way south had been replaced, one with a recognizable sculpture of some sort of snake-pony-dragon-bird thing, and the other by a massive pile of unknown colorful spheres. It actually took her a few moments to recognize the snake-creature from a book she had read, although it was supposed to be fictional.
“Draconequus,” she said out loud despite her best efforts. “A mythical creature of disunion, chaos, and strife.”
“How much is it worth?” chuffed the Dragonlord from nose-length away.
“It doesn’t really matter since you can’t carry a mountain,” pointed out Twinkle. “That wasn’t there before, anyway. Nor that,” she added, pointing at the giant pile of colored spheres. “Anyway, one of your children has already been here and gone north to Unicornia.”
The Dragonlord’s eyes narrowed into slits and he blew a puff of smoke over Twinkle. “How can you tell?”
Twinkle waved a hoof until she had enough fresh air to breathe, then pointed down through the Dragonlord’s claws at a discolored spot at the base of the mountain of colorful balls where a spreading stain marred the brilliant image. A short glide later, the Dragonlord scowled at the single clawed leg sticking out from under the massive dragon-sized spheres and the red pool around it. He poked a sphere with one claw, then stuck Twinkle up to it with a bellowed, “Tell me what that is, pony!”
A few theories she had crafted during the glide were casually disposed of, replaced by an idea that was pure insanity. She leaned forward, sniffed the sphere, then hesitantly licked it.
“Tutti-frutti bubblegum balls,” she said. “The size of houses.”
The Dragonlord was just as flummoxed as Twinkle, but hid it worse. He leaned over, took a bite out of one of the spheres, and chewed, then spit out the gum and just stared at the corpse of his child.
“If you’re frightened, we can go back,” said Twinkle.
The Dragonlord let out a primal growl and closed his fist around his captive unicorn before launching himself into the air, headed north. Inside her crushing prison, Twinkle Twinkle shivered from the growing cold and the thoughts of meeting a creature who could kill a dragon so casually.
If Twinkle is Speaker To Animals, sorry, Dragons, does that make Discord the Puppeteer, as in Piersons?
Spike must have a powerful set of lungs.
4845523
You need such a set of lungs if you have any hope of calling Impact!