As Applejack wandered through the Hoardsmith camp, marveling and shaking her head, she suddenly stopped dead.
"Rainbow Dash?" she said, jaw dropping.
"Oh! Hey, Jackie," Dash muttered around the pencil she was frantically scribbling with. She smiled but didn't get up.
"What're you doin' here?"
"What does it look like?" Dash spat out her pencil and grinned. "Just writing the most awesome story in the universe." She gestured around them. "It's about here."
AJ opened and closed her mouth. "But Dash, ya write Daring Do fiction. Ya sell Daring Do fiction. Tarnation, you're good at that. Shouldn't you be off earnin' a living instead of bein' here swapping stories with hoardsmiths who won't give you nothin' but praise?"
"C'mon, AJ, this is art." Dash's grin broadened. "Pure. Unfettered."
"You could do that out there, too."
"But. C'mon. Dragons! They're super awesome! They're chock full of, um, allegory and stuff!"
A unicorn tourist wandered by while they talked, raising his camera, taking photos of the stalls in the surrounding artists' market.
"Well," AJ allowed, "it is true that dragons are the most awesome things pretty much ever, I reckon. But if you're writing a dragon story because it's allegorical, it's not really a dragon story, right?"
Dash rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof. "Okay, yeah, you got me. But stories don't always have to be direct metaphors about the people who write them, right? Can't you just enjoy them on their own merits?"
The blue pegasus and the orange pony gave a significant glance at the camera. The tourist wandered away. Applejack glanced out at the horizon and coughed.
"Don't know what came over me there," she mumbled.
"Oh, it's this place. It does that to you. You'll get used to it."
"I might, at that. There's something seductive about being here."
Dash smirked. "Welcome to the Horde."