Oh no, it's him again · 7:36pm Jul 12th, 2021
Per the title, it's me again. Just bearing a wee general update, and also some horse-words.
First of these first, I'm still alive, honest, despite recent signs of activity suggesting otherwise. 2020 did a number on my output, and that's lasted into this year as well. Writing The Prince, the Mockingbird, and the Dreadful Twilight Sparkle was like pulling teeth, and the months thereafter have been a complete writing doldrums. There's a Legends-shaped weight pressing on my conscience, and if anyone's been looking forward to more of it, rest assured I'd very much like to get back round to it. Daring's been left in suspense for Cormaer stories too long.
But I have been writing again recently. A recent move and a change of scene's worked some sort of alchemy there. It's been slow, and with productive days very much outnumbered by vague-tinkering days, but horse-words are taking vague shape. Not for Legends, but for another story that's occurred, and which I wouldn't mind working on a little more. I'd prefer to work on it more and preferably finish it altogether before publishing — no sense in risking another half-finished story lurking around for the rest of the aeon — but no harm in showing a wee bit of the current draft just now. The first scene, and enough paragraphs to inspire sufficient dread.
Words past the break, and past the pictured natural disaster, who may very well feature.
There was a knack to herding glaciers, and anypony who called herself Princess of the Crystal Empire had to acquire it.
From her vantage point in the sky, Cadance surveyed a vastness of the rocky tundra north of the Crystal Empire. A rolling patchwork of red-green fields and bare crags stretched all the way to the saw-edged mountains that marked the boundary of Utmost North. It could have been quite a sublime landscape, if not for the confused glacier meandering down through the middle of it.
There was a motion and an insistent coo from her back. She had Flurry Heart bundled up in a cradleboard there, just below her withers, and the little alicorn had been patient long enough.
“Mommy’ll let you watch in a moment, Flurry,” Cadance murmured, and she descended towards the glacier’s advancing face, flapping carefully and steadily. From her back, there came another sound of infant disgruntlement. Flurry much preferred it when they went fast.
Cadance studied the glacier as they flew closer. It was a stripling as glaciers went, merely half as high as the Crystal Castle and wide enough to only just about swallow up the city itself, both safely many leagues south. Within its gleaming bulk, lambent blue-green light glimmered, like an aurora behind glass.
Cadance reached round with her magic and lifted Flurry’s cradleboard from her back. Flurry squealed with delight and wriggled in her swaddling as she was turned around to face the glacier.
“See?” Cadance leaned in close to Flurry. “That’s a glacier. Gla-cier.”
“Baabwapffft,” replied Flurry. Her expression had gone curiously still. Cadance looked her daughter over for a moment, her head tilted, before the low, thunderous, grind of the glacier moving over stone drew her attention back to events.
The glacier was quicker on the uptake than most, and it only took about ten seconds to notice the new objects at its fore. It ground to a halt as best anything with a million tons’ worth of momentum could. Inasmuch as Cadance could discern glacier body-language, she saw that it was wary.
“Hello there,” she said. “Are you lost?”
A redundant question, if it was here at all. This one seemed to be doing its best to ponder the query. Eventually, after about two minutes — and that was really quite remarkably fast — it thundered in a vaguely affirmative way.
“I see,” Cadance said. “Would you like to turn west? That’s to your right. There’s more like you there by the sea.”
As she spoke, she let her mind brush against its own. At the forefront of the glacier’s slow, vast mindscape, she sensed confusion. No wonder. It couldn’t be every day that little entities came up and started squeaking at it.
And at the back of its mind, there was little but the cold fog of dread. No wonder, suspecting what she did of where it was coming from. Slow wasn’t the same as stupid, and it would move south no matter what. The only trick she needed to play was to adjust its angle.
The old pony rulers of the Crystal Empire, she knew, had had to make whole expeditions of this. They’d perched themselves atop hilltops or clouds and patiently shouted up at the advancing masses for days on end. For the older, slower glaciers, they could be stuck trying to deter them for weeks. Entire tent palaces and regular supplies from the city would be set up.
But Cadance could put her power to work. With only the lightest touch of her magic, she reached out past an outer shell of mixed parts bewilderment and fear, and found all its innate loves at its core. Love of the herd that would await it. Love of calving little icebergs amidst its kindred. Love of the stillness that lingered at the world’s edge.
Its heartstrings were revealed, and she brushed a note from them. This way.
Only a minute’s contemplation sufficed for the glacier to change course. Slowly, it turned to aim southwest-by-west, and began undulating towards the far-distant sea.
Cadance breathed a sigh of satisfaction and turned to Flurry. “See, Flurry? Now the nice glacier won’t come too far this way and roll over a farm or two by accident. That wouldn’t be much fun for the farmers, would it? One day, you’ll help me do this as ...”
Cadance paused for a long moment, and leaned closer to her daughter. “Flurry?”
Flurry’s expression was still and rapt, fixed on some point on the glacier’s moving form. No … perhaps past it altogether. Her little horn glowed once or twice, magic gathering and then dispersing, as if she wanted it at the ready but had no idea what to do with it. A stupefied “Bwwr,” escaped her.
“Flurry? What is it?”
Cadance leaned in till her muzzle was just shy of Flurry’s, and that was enough to break the spell. Flurry met her gaze and a laugh burbled out of her. “Gll-lr!”
“That’s right, darling!” Cadance laughed as well, plain relief filling her. “Gll-lr indeed!”
And Flurry was back to normal for all of the flight home, cooing and babbling and occasionally teleporting herself free of her cradleboard. And she remained her usual self for the rest of the day, and Cadance’s worries ebbed away.
But she did mention it to Shining that night.
And before she went to bed, she stood alone on a balcony and looked north, to where on the very edge of sight, an aurora crowned the distant mountains. A curtain of shimmering light, shot through with threads of violet and green, red and black.
And she did wonder.
Fifteen years after that, the Crystal Castle’s blessed predawn hush was broken by the sound of a door being slammed open. As was usually the case when doors slammed open in the castle, Flurry Heart came cantering through.
She wore a grin that was a little too lively for any being’s early morning. She held a rolled-up scroll and a folded-up waistcoat tight under one wing. In her magical grasp, she bore a groggy-looking griffon hen, who was bobbing and slowly rotating in place.
“Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I might have a problem,” Flurry said, as she galumphed down a long stairway, the yellow light from her horn dancing in the crystal walls and steps. “That problem is I might just be a little too brilliant.”
“Right,” yawned the griffon, who had come to bob upside-down. “Let’s say that, yes. Do you mind walking me through how you came to that conclusion? ‘Cause when you barged into my bedroom just now and yelled about how you needed my help then carried me off, I think some of the details must have gone over my head.”
“Well, listen. I’m going to need your help with a plan. I’ve been working on it for a … oh, ha ha. Stop clutching at your heart and listen, Gwen.”
“The p-word coming from you just brings on this instinctive feeling of dread, it’s the strangest —”
Flurry snorted an unladylike snort and stopped before the door at the bottom of the stairs. “If you’re awake enough to tease me, you’re awake enough to open this door. I know Majordomo Juniper gave you keys to the storage areas.”
She set Gwen down on the crystal floor, and the griffon unsteadily stood up and unfolded herself, stretching out her blue-gray wings. Flurry opened her own wing and floated over the waistcoat, part of the staff uniform for the Crystal Castle. Gwen took it and shrugged it on with nigh-reflexive motions, dipping her claws into a front pocket to retrieve a bundle of keys as she did so.
Gwen paused then, the keys aloft in her grasp, and looked at the door. She then turned to Flurry. She re-inspected the door. She refreshed herself with another stare at Flurry.
“It goes in the lock,” Flurry helpfully prompted. “You put it in and turn.”
“It’s this fussy preference I’ve got, I like to know why I’m opening a door before I open it.” Gwen’s voice grew a little quieter. “Juniper trusts me with the keys. I also like to be trustable. Tell me what you need through here, and how it relates to the plan, and what your plan is, even.”
“Oh, fine. I’m to set up the Crystal Faire in advance. So I need access to all the equipment for it,” Flurry replied.
She smiled brightly. Gwen, her expression still pensive, slowly turned the key in the lock. The door swung open.
Who, the niece of Twilight Sparkle? No, surely not.
Lovely to hear from you, and to see what you're working on. The bit with Cadence touching the glacier's heart was especially brilliant.
Aside from that, glad to hear you're crawling out from under last year's malaise. Goodness knows it took its toll on all of us. Looking forward to seeing the full story!
Target sighted.
Releasing the ants.
Sounds wonderful!
5553911
Glad to be emerging from the malaise, and hope to be inflicting more Flurry-themed words on the world soon. Hope you're keeping well yourself.
5553915
No, no, look, I've been good, I'm being good, I'm producing horse-words and everything, no, not the ants, NOT THE A—
5553917
Thank you! Hope it inspires all due wonder, as and when it emerges.
Yeah, 2020 was A Year all around.
Glad to see you back! This little snippet has proved quite intriguing, both in terms of the biology of glaciers and of what's planned with Flurry.
Awww, it's a girl glacier. I can hardly wait to see the little baby calves.
(although it does bring up some fairly odd questions about glacier reproduction...)
Glad to see more of you and Raricube! Even better to hear there's horsewords coming.
5553929
Glad to intrigue, and gladder to have 2020 in the rearview.
5553930
Whenever Equestrian science broaches the subject, biologists, meteorologists, and arcane theorists get together to scream that it's somehow all the other's fault, don't look at them, and the few dedicated glaciologists hide.
5553931
Horsewords hopefully forthcoming! I'll see if I can get a steady writing pace going for this one.
I love it.
And the fact that outlandish concepts like that can even be thought are why I love fimfiction.
5553951
(I don't have a problem with giving sentience to things that oughtn't be sentient, I can stop whenever I want, I swear)
What's this? Going on fimfiction and actually having my spirits raised?
So good to see you.
Yay for Scottish horsewords!
car bus wat u dong
5553966
I should post daftness like the above more often, it seems to be raising various spirits. Good to hear from you too!
5553974
I the hors word with added gll-lr, clever car bus I being
5553976
ha ha, car bus go toot-toot :D
5553977
car bus toot like car bus born to toot
pres per toot-toot good too
This sounds glorious. Can't wait to see more.
2020 will never truly die. It will only wait for us to lower our guard.
5553982
Glad you approve! Hope to deliver more.
In some distant age, our descendants will be sitting content and happy in the year 20200, all-too-unaware of the zero waiting to fall off the end.
Oh this should be interesting.
Would you believe I'd been checking your page just yesterday, worried something might've happened? Welcome back, Carabas! Here's hoping for more pleasant pony publications in the future!
5554050
Hope it continues to intrigue.
5554189
Back and able and accounted for, but deeply gratified for the concern. A bad mix of 2020 malaise and real-life stuff got to me for while, but the worst of it should now be past, and regular horse-themed drivelling can recommence.
Prefer to have a new story about the world leaders such as the emergence of the Crystal Empire and the new vassal of Equestria in all but name but this snipped is okay.
I feel attacked.
Them's good words, though. Don't even need the "horse" qualifier.
5554276
No timeframe in mind for when the world leaders are going to ride forth ingloriously again, I'm afraid - but this one should be Palaververse-compliant. Who knows, there might even be the chance for a cameo.
5554294
It's amazing how a career on Fimfiction instils a certain amount of sympathy with George R R Martin. One day, we'll even figure out his alt here.
Glad you approve of the words!
Glad to know you're not dead. :)
Sorry about the writing difficulties, though.
Good luck!
(I believe, though, that in accordance with my standard practices, I'll be skipping the preview for now. Spoilers, you know -- and it's not as if I'm in particular need of more hype for a new story from you. :D)
5554366
Glad likewise to be not dead! No worries about skipping the preview - the full thing should with you any decade soon.
5554516
Heh, thanks. :)
I like this story so far! Eager to see what Flurry is up to....
Good to hear from you, Carabas!
Nice so far!
5554672
Good to hear from you too, Olden! I hope Flurry's full exploits entertain, as and when they emerge.
5554865
Thank you! Hope it continues nice.
I'm glad to see you back and you're doing okay! Looking forward to whatever you're writing.
5555251
Thank you! Hope whatever ends up written satisfies.