//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4A 
// Story: My World Is Empty Without You 
// by McPoodle 
//------------------------------//


My World Is Empty Without You



Chapter 4A






Fluttershy breathed a slow sigh and stood, walking away from her papers, quill, typewriter, and ink, pacing the room.

“Oh come on, a big emotional scene, setting up for the big finale, you could even kill off Brass Quill,” Angel offered hopefully.

“Not right now, Angel,” Shy said quietly. “I just… I just made Darai the main character of my massive fiction novel empire with thirty one published stories if you include the Etheric broadcasts, and… Can she carry that? Can I carry her? She’s so much more complex, her stories… I’ll have to ditch the current adventure-of-the-week format obviously. I’ll need to edit this story to have her rhyming slowly drop as she comes out of her shell, but then I also need to show her holding onto Zebra culture and traditions, clearly enough to distinguish between rhyming as a speech habit, and culture as something worth preserving…”

She paused, looking at Angel and Ryooki, who were both looking at her as though she’d grown a second head.

Cheeks hot, Shy sat down and mumbled something.

“I’m sorry, what?” Angel asked.

“I may have gotten a sociology degree a little while ago to help with portraying cultures I don’t understand better…”

“How… How did you do that? You’re a wildlife caretaker,” Angel scoffed.

“Twilight kept talking about how most ponies think it’s harder to get a degree than it really is, and I found out a few classes were being held locally, and transferred credits… Twilight helped a lot,” she scuffed the floor with one hoof, blushing still. “But anyway! This is a big big change for the series, it’s huge, and now… I think that it’s going to be such a huge change, maybe… I should scrap this draft, and start over.”

“NO!” Angel shouted.

Ryooki and Fluttershy stared at him.

“Yes,” Ryooki said, crossing her arms. “Yes you should. You figure out a lot of things, but you could make it better, and this is a good stopping point.”

“But… I… You tried so hard, and came so far, what if in the end it doesn’t even matter?” Angel asked frantically. “Finishing this, you can give it a good ending, and then work… work backwards?”

Fluttershy hummed softly, frowning. “I… I suppose,” she conceded.

“But you’ve pushed it as far as you can go, and you just have to know,” Ryooki countered. “There’s a point to refining what you have before trying to finish it!”

“Is there some reference here I’m missing?” Fluttershy mumbled, frowning a little.

“If you kept everything inside, even though you try, it could all fall apart!” Angel insisted. “Get it out onto the page now!”

“Okay, okay!” Fluttershy said, holding her hoof up. “Both of you, calm down. I’m going to continue, just… stop speak-singing, it’s weird.”