Not a single guard tried to stop her from marching through Canterlot Castle. The truth was that they all knew who she was and that she was no threat to anypony. Keen, snorting steam and flashing fiery glares at anypony who dared come close, preferred to believe it was because she was more dangerous than King Sombra right now. It was better than thinking about the little sting. Floating in her magical aura was a small stack of papers that threatened to turn to ash at any second, the pages covered in red marks.
After several minutes of near-silent expletives and not-silent-at-all hoofstomping, she arrived at a small, snow-covered garden. Slamming her rump down on an icy bench, she glared at the statue of Smart Cookie in the middle of the space and wondered if she couldn’t use her horn to melt it. Not a pony came out to see her, the small garden being entirely empty on this frozen, early winter’s day. With nothing better to do, she began reading through the papers, snarling and mumbling and occasionally cursing.
After what felt like an eternity, somepony walked through one of the nearby doors and approached. It was her dear Uncle Fine, for once making no attempt at a stealthy approach. He appeared quite somber. That was almost a disappointment.
“Hello, Little—”
“What in Tartarus is this?!” She waved the papers in hoof, already out of her seat.
He cast them a cursory glance. “Looks like the short story you asked me to critique.”
“Critique, yes.” Her horn sparked, and the dozen pages spread out over her head. She thrust a hoof at the closest one. “This is practically a rewrite! You had something negative to say about every other sentence.”
He frowned at her, disappointment plain on his face. There was that little sting again. “If you wanted a yes-mare, you could have just asked your mother.”
“I’m not going all the way to Ponyville to ask Mom to read a short story.”
“But you’re willing to interrupt my workday to complain about commentary that, might I add, you specifically requested.” He rubbed at his temple and heaved a long sigh. “Keen, I gave you permission to come here in case something important came up.”
“It’s important to me,” she countered with no less fire. It was a wonder the snow at her hooves hadn’t melted. “I wanted your help. This is the first thing I’ve written in three years and you reward that inspiration and drive with… with red!”
He tilted his head, annoyance and curiosity making for strange companions on his features. He seemed to be expecting something, but Keen couldn’t imagine what. She wished he would just get on with it!
With a snort of steam, he trotted to the bench she’d been using and sat, making sure to put his frustration on display with every motion. That done, he met her gaze. “All I’ve heard so far is ‘how dare you criticize me?’. Do you have something specific in mind or are you just upset that I made corrections at all?”
She scoffed and shook her head in ardent denial. “That’s not it at all! I do want critique.”
His piercing redwood gaze didn’t let up, and suddenly she didn’t feel so confident. “Then what’s the problem?”
“Everything!” She snatched one of the floating pages in her magic and read through the neat notes on the side. “Like here, when you said Saltpeter was inconsistent. He’s perfectly consistent!”
Uncle Fine raised an eyebrow even as he dusted some powdered snow off the space beside him with a stray hoof. “The stallion was too stupid to see all the clues that his marefriend is having an affair at the start of the story, but then he’s observant enough to solve the puzzle midway through in twenty seconds? Then he can’t see the solution staring him in the face in the climax and his marefriend, who up until this point didn’t even have a name, came in and saved the day.”
“He’s smart about some things and dumb about others!”
Brush-brush, more snow was cleared. “The two puzzles had nearly identical solutions.”
“Just because it was obvious to you doesn’t mean it’s obvious to him.” She snatched another page out of the air. “And here, narrative voice? What’s wrong with my narrative voice?”
“You mean aside from the fact that you switched to first person for no reason on page four?”
She threw up her hooves. “It’s a gimmick!”
Brush-brush, the pile under the bench was growing. “A ‘gimmick’ is something that the entire story depends on. You did it for one sentence out of twelve pages.”
She opened her mouth for another counter, but one didn’t come. Now that she considered it, yeah, it did come out of nowhere. She glared at the paragraph in question, at the sentence. A single line, set in parentheses. She liked the line. It was funny. She couldn’t just change it. “It belongs there.”
“Why?” She looked up to find him watching her, utterly confident and unwavering. “What does that one line do that’s so important for the whole story?”
“It…” She had an answer, but it felt like a stupid one. Fidgeting, holding on to the fire that suddenly wasn’t so hot anymore, she muttered, “It’s important for the moment.”
Perhaps he could see that she was losing steam. Oh, who was she kidding? Of course he could. He smiled and patted the now-dry bench. With a huff, she brought the pages back together as a single document and sat. “My flank’s already wet from sitting on this bench once.”
“It’s painful, isn’t it?”
That little sting wasn’t so little anymore. She tried shoving it down like all the other times. It didn’t want to go away, like a roach that stubbornly refused to go down the drain. “No,” she petulantly fired off. “It’s cold.”
Pretending not to hear, her uncle pressed on. “You thought you had it. Every word, perfection. The logic behind your sentences, unassailable. Then you give it to someone who you’ve come to think of as an expert, anticipating that they'll love it every bit as strongly as you do.”
She turned her head away, eyes burning. Forelegs crossed, she hunched her shoulders and scowled at nothing.
“I’m sorry.” Uncle Fine had the audacity to sound sincere about it. “Every writer goes through this eventually.”
She scooted a little further from him, shivering when her flank touched the cold metal side of the bench. “I bet you didn’t.”
He chuckled at her struggling attempts to hold onto anger. “My cutie mark is for hiding, not writing. When I first started out, I was bad with a capital B.”
Blinking, she finally dared to look at him. He offered her an amused smile that spoke of self consciousness. “I find it hard to believe that you ever were a bad writer.”
“Some would argue I still am.” He chuckled, brushing a hoof through his not-so-bright-anymore red mane. “There’s a circle of authors keeping tallies on bad reviews. It’s like a contest to see who can get the most. We dole out ‘consolation prizes’ at the end of every year. Miss Velvet’s expected to win this one.” Upon realizing she was staring, he sighed and shook his head. “None of this helps, does it?”
Back to glaring at Smart Cookie’s smiling, stoney face. “I’m not wrong.”
“Maybe you’re not,” he confessed. That only made her brace. He wouldn’t say that unless… “Maybe I’m just an old geezer, too set in his ways to recognize that the medium’s changed. Maybe you’ve discovered the ‘new age’ of writing.” He waved his hooves as if to put something on display. “But you know what I really think?”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“I think you’ve never faced real criticism before.”
The sting became venomous, and she wasted no time channeling said venom to her tongue. “I have too!”
Unperturbed by her outburst, he calmly asked, “Have you shown it to anypony who has said anything other than ‘misspelled this one word, great story, can’t wait for more’?”
Blinking back the wetness in her eyes, she tried to think of an example refuting his insinuation. Friend after friend after friend, ponies who weren’t writers, ponies who weren’t storytellers. Green Daze, Dinky, Ani, she’d even managed to get Apple Bytes, which was something of a miracle. Plus her roommate at CSGU, a few others. Every last one of them said the same thing. Every. Last. One. “They… They said they liked it.”
“And they probably did,” Uncle Fine admitted. “But Little Miss, was a single one of them an actual writer? Or a critic? Maybe even an Equish teacher?”
She fumed, or at least tried to. Underneath the simmering anger, a voice screamed that she was right, that her writing was fine, and she had plenty of ponies to vouch for that. But even deeper down a second voice squeaked out, timid and trembling, that maybe she wasn’t as good as she thought she was.
She didn’t want it to be right. That couldn’t be permitted. With a huff, she stuffed the papers back into her saddlebag. “I finished a story.” Bitterness laced her words. “For the first time ever, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how to do it. Every word was chosen with a specific intention.”
Her uncle shrugged. “Yes, well, I’m sure Queen Chrysalis had a perfect plan too when she initiated the invasion of Canterlot.”
“That’s a terrible comparison!”
“Is it?”
“It is, she failed!”
Fine stared at her, his manner curious. Eventually he gestured to her pack. “Then try to get that published in anything other than a school newspaper or magazine.”
There was that seed of doubt again. Keen had to fight to avoid biting her lip. “M-maybe I will.”
“But if you want my advice—” A beat. He leaned closer, the better to be at her eye level, and asked, “I am still allowed to offer advice, aren’t I?”
Sticking her muzzle up a little, she replied, “As long as it’s good advice.”
He nodded seriously. “Then here’s my suggestion: sleep on it. Give it a week. Then read through my notes again.”
As much as she wanted to be angry at his every word right now, Keen could only respond to that suggestion with open confusion. “What good will that do?”
He gestured both forehooves at her face. “All that steam currently taking up space in your head—” He made flapping motions with his hooves as he raised them high. “—will have been vented and ascended into the stratosphere. You’ll be able to think clearly when you read through it again.”
With yet another huff, she refocused on Smart Cookie’s stupid face. “You’ll still be telling me my writing stinks. I’ll probably just get mad again.”
“Maybe. But I know you, kid. You’re usually a very patient and gentle pony. This big outburst of yours is refreshing, but still only temporary.”
‘Refreshing’, he said. Maybe she could understand why. It was well known that she tended to bottle up her emotions. The bottle just hadn’t been big enough this time. Perhaps she should listen to him, at least on this point. Maybe when she looked at the story again in a week she’d be able to better articulate why his corrections were wrong.
Not taking her eyes from the statue, she sulked and pouted. “I’m still mad at you.”
“Which I understand perfectly.”
Keen shot him a ‘look’. “Would you stop with the ‘ever-patient, old wise stallion’ routine?”
He reared back his head in mock offense. “Are you daring to suggest that I am anything but patient, old, or wise?”
She tried for a disdainful sniff, but all the anger in the world couldn’t keep her from smiling a little. “You’re two out of three, which ain’t bad.”
“Right.” He nodded primly, only to blink. “Wait, which two?”
The smile was easier to hold when it was at his expense. She returned her eyes to the statue and said nothing.
“Fine, be that way.” He certainly didn’t sound offended. Part of her was disappointed by that. “As interesting as this conversation has been, you really did interrupt me in the middle of something important, and I need to get back to it.” He started to get up, but paused. After a moment’s consideration, he surprised her by wrapping a lone leg around her withers in a gentle hug.
“I really am proud of you, Keen. I know I might look like a villain to you at the moment, but I am on your side, and finally finishing something after all these years? That’s an accomplishment, no matter how much red I splatter across the pages. You keep it up and someday you won’t need to ask for my help anymore.”
Darn her for having spent so much of her developing years around Fluttershy! It was just too hard to stay angry at her uncle when he was showing genuine affection like this. So though the spiteful pony within hadn’t quite died, she returned the hug and muttered a reluctant, “Thanks.”
And he left. Trotting, just like he arrived. No smoke, or disappearing when her eyes happened to be elsewhere. Keen knew her uncle well enough to understand that he chose that manner of egress for a reason. She didn’t know what the reason was, but she knew it was for her sake. Somehow.
She waited two weeks to look at his notes again, rather than one. And while she still didn’t like it, that time she could at least admit to herself that maybe he had a good point or two. Just maybe.