Departure
smile for me if you can
i want to have that in my head
She's pretty sure this is the worst she's ever felt. Worse than sickness, worse than a broken wing; even worse than those rare, fleeting moments of dread, facing down something terrible and powerful that might very well kill her in seconds. She's braved countless monsters, her and her friends. At least she could do something then - buck 'em in the face, show 'em what for, power of harmony and all that. But this… There's nothing to kick, nowhere to fly away to. This is an intangible everything, closing in, wearing her down to a state of near-paralysis, plagued by unbearable memories.
Through it all, she sees that face, everywhere, as burning and inescapable as the twinkling lights of lidded eyes. That face; a look that could only be described by the devastation it signaled. Then a flash, and now it's smiling, now they're lying and laughing together on that morning by the lakeside, and the sun is shining so brightly and beautifully… The contrast is jarring. It drains the moment of pleasantry, and it only makes that haunting face all the more horrifying when it, inevitably, comes back to her.
Occasionally, one of them will come around with an empty offering of food and a gentle prod of, "are you okay?" But okay is an island far, far over the horizon, and she is just drowning in the middle of it all, limbs flailing, mouth gasping for the air to scream.
What a horrible way to die this is.
Through it all, she wonders - what is the lesson here? Just what the hell am I supposed to learn from all of this?
Not to love? No… too cynical.
Not to love her?
…
Maybe sometimes things happen and you don't learn anything from them at all. Things just are, recklessly, without reason.
Am I like that?
What will she learn from me…?
Not to love? I wouldn't put it past her.
Not to love me? … well. What's the love of one mare in the world, in the grander scheme, really?
But that's empty rhetoric and she knows it. Her love is anything, any sign of life in this awful endless ocean, a splintered wooden plank or a bloated corpse to reach out for and grab hold of and hold on to so tightly.
That face appears again before her clenched eyes.
One day, not too many days from now, someone's going to think it's safe enough to ask the question on all their minds... what went wrong? Oh, they didn't mean anything by it!, they'll assure her when she bursts into tears - she knows she will, because she's crying now just thinking about it, and ponies don't ever change all that much. That was the answer, too, she supposed: neither of them ever changed. They stayed true to themselves to the bitter end, each unable to fit the other wholly into their life, trying to cut out some geometric portion of their lover to fit as neatly as possible into the vacant spaces of their heart, and tearing each other apart in the process.
She lies in tiny scraps on the floor, discarded, and tries to glue herself back together.
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RIP Fluttersyke's proof-reading comments. We shall remember them.
I liked the format, and I really enjoyed reading all the mini stories. They were short enough to get through quickly, but not lose impact. Good work!
I particularly like your use of chicken characterization.
Good job all around, this really is a fantastic story!
God damn Kex, how are you so good at everything?
When I read fanfictions, I usually try to dissect them. Peel them apart, and gesture excitedly at their different organs to explain to the world exactly what I enjoyed and what I thought could improve. But there's a rare case: I make a first incision confidently, glimpse something inside and begin rationally explaining its structure and function. I smile to my imagined audience. But then I slice again and see the same body, only from a different angle. It isn't what I thought. I make an excuse, "The lights in here are dim, but I see what it -really- was now." I make a third slice, and - I have no idea what that is. I don't know what any part of this is. I fumble for another excuse, but the crowd has seen through my farce, and I'm forced to beat a hasty retreat, my jars of snake oil broken and forgotten behind me.
It's humbling, but invigorating, to read something that is so much smarter than me.
Sorry, I don't get it.
They broke off? that's it?
4041740
If I may (I usually don't may, but today is a particularly mayable day) I think that the point of the "story" is more an impression than a tense up and down narrative. The only thing required or attempted is that you feel something or think about the things. At least, that's how I really enjoyed it (and I really did--enjoy it, that is).
Speaking of enjoyment, I spurned my instinct to comment on every single chapter because of our dear, late friend Fluttersyke who seemed to meet his end doing the very same. At least his sacrifice was not in vain. That being said I might sort of have a huge comment here (or hope I might, provided I remember everything that I wanted to say, which is, at any given point in time, impossible for me to do). Maybe.
It's not often I enjoy slice of life, perhaps because I don't seek it out as much as I rightly should, but you did a really fantastic job killing those presuppositions and getting me to enjoy it all anyways. Though all you had were moments, your assortment of those moments was nice and dandy, like you had taken them out of a moments store and put bows on top and lined them up along the street with a sign that said "Look, here are my moments, perhaps you like them and/or their bows on top?" I already said, but I really liked your moments, enough that I wish that there were more moments--if we weren't actually talking about writing, here, I'd think you were a pay-to-order phone "moments" service company that I approached on a whim from an advertisement in the newspaper, and right about now I'd be very disappointed that your store didn't actually have any moments in it, though not altogether despondent because your initial moments were fine and didn't take up much of my time. But I'd still want there to be more moments. Write more, damn you! Not of Rainbow Dash exclusively, but of things in general--I'd read it (whatever "it" was) in a heartbeat!
The previous paragraph is a great example of what I loved about your writing, and hopefully you'll consider that imitation, even flawed, lame imitation, is the sincerest form of flattery. By that I mean that your metaphorical language and voice as a writer and the frantic pacing of your sentence structures (though, I might have just read them like that in my head, wanting desperately to get to the next sentence) were absolutely charming and an absolute joy to read. Slice of life stories like this seem to sink or swim on whether they can take the mundane and the typical thoughts about typical things and turn them into something that feels beautifully alive, or just beautifully something. This story in particular made me feel as if I were having a fantastic day, a day in which I feel so good that I get up early and don't mind the sunlight and take a walk and sit down and do some writing and go to sleep happy with myself. Today is not that day, but during these seven-thousand-some words, it sure felt like it.
I'm glad you chose to have some ups and downs. The romance wouldn't have been as nice if there were not the bittersweet moments in-between filled with sadness or remorse. You did a very good job of making both feel very real and relatable, so I commend you on that, again.
My absolute favorite, of the twelve, had to be Rainbow's Father's story to her about being born from a thundercloud or somesuch. Not only did you seem to employ an entirely separate literary voice for Rainbow's Father, but the story itself had a beautiful theme and was an absolute romp to read. Your characters, even though I had never heard of them, felt very alive in the moments that they existed, even if they were only defined by nothing more than essentially a tip of the hat. On top of that, it was the most curious, and made the whole moment with Twilight where Rainbow struggled to find the right words to compliment her so much more realistic, because here we have this character born of this fantastic, articulate happening and yet she can't even find the right words to call her marefriend's eyes and/or butt and/or things in between as beautiful as they deserve. If I were you, I'dve put that slice-of-life as the first chapter. It's the beginning of her life, and it tells us a whole lot about what sort of thing we're going to be reading about--fantastic, inexplainable moments that show up out of the blue and hopefully won't budge until they've delivered a baby. And by a baby I mean a thought. In my own mind. That I won't forget.
There was a more articulate metaphor there but this is the one that my thundercloud-brain shot out and damnit I'm going to stick with it.
Hopefully you won't be too despondent by my continued, glowing praise without criticizing this or that. I'm sure you'd like to get better as a writer, and I certainly found things to criticize, but they're really semantics and a story like this absolutely does not deserve to be bogged down by the "Hmmm, it was good but your language was a liiiiiiitttle telly at parts. Maybe reconsider some of your adverbs?"
It deserved (hopefully) charming, (definitely) rambling, (absolutely) glowing praise. So that's what I attempted to give.
Cheers, hope to see more of your stuff, whatever it may be.
Just finished reading along with Bath's music and I must admit, your writing lined up quite well with each individual song's feel and style. There were many times where the current song would end just before I finished the corresponding chapter, which was cool.
Took me a little while to work out that these are actually separated stories that aren't bouncing back and forth on one time line; probably should of read the description properly.
Chapter after chapter it seemed that your writing had changed how I felt, one chapter making me feel sappy-happy (is that even a thing?) and the next being sad, worked quite well!
Overall a good read!
A good start indeed!
4038130 Oh dear...were they one of "those" people?
4045960
4041952
I should clarify somewhere, so I don't totally ruin his reputation: Fluttersyke's deleted comments were his pre-reading criticisms, written before the fic went public. They're deleted now so that you can't see all the mistakes I've corrected (and us chatting casually in the margins). He's a wonderful commenter and human being!
4041952
Lordy loo, how does one even respond to such a thorough and beautiful comment? (With great difficulty!) I'll try not to match your wall of text with my own, but really, thank you for all that rambling, and I'm glad to hear you liked it, and I reserve the right to lift highlights from your comment and put them in fancy quotations on cereal boxes, and Rainbow's dad was absolutely the most fun to write, and I hope to deliver more thought-babies to you in the future, and hopefully ones with fewer adverbs (you should've seen some of these first drafts! I need to check into Adverbs Anonymous) but just as many run-on sentences, if not more! <3
4042129
Sappy-happy is absolutely a thing, and it is what we aim for. Thank you for reading, buddy!
4041740 Well, yes and no. There's no overall narrative or continuity between each chapter, if you were looking for it (although you can link one or two together if you squint). The break-up here is an isolated scene from another larger, unwritten story that started before the chapter began and continues after the chapter ends.
4038303 Thank you!
4040754 I'm not reimbursing you for that snake oil.
4046937 Thanks for the clarification. very good story.
4046912
I like how that sentence itself was a run on sentence.
you did it the sad thing and now i feels
I just got around to reading these. I almost hate to say this, because if I had thought about it I should have known to expect this, but these are good. Very good. Not just, "oh hey my favorite musician wrote something, how neat" good, like I had though they would be, but legitimately good literature. I was gullible enough to believe your little sad sap act and think that these would just be you surrendering to a whim to write about horses and not creating something thoughtful and amazing, but it's pretty clear your creative talent extends beyond music. These may be short stories but they read like poetry, and impart far more feeling than a conventional story of this length ever would. And the pairings with the songs from Bath's album- it goes without saying that the stories feel exactly right for each song (this album being yet another one I can't stop listening to thanks to you, dammit). You should be proud of this, should do readings of it, and should write more. On your own time, of course.
4132200
Respectively: I think I am, I totally won't, and I will try my darnedest to! Thank you for your kindness, friend; and you're welcome for the Baths.
That was really awesome. I'm gonna have to find this album now.
4174094 I'm glad you liked! Hope you find + like the album too. (I'd lend you my copy, but alas, this is the internet.)
4181761
Don't worry, the internet can lend it to me. :V
4046937
I've rarely seen:
"Slice of Life" done so well and so literally. The life is there even though all we get are the slices.
Mike
4181761
For the record? Very bizarre, gets better as it goes.
I finished it!
So I finally got around to reading this one and it definitely is nothing like what I expected (a story.)
I'm not really sure what Cerulean is but I'd describe it as a collection of windows into several loosely related stories.
A unique and interesting something :)
5679711 Took ya long enough! ;) Definitely not a cohesive story - I am alarmingly rubbish at writing those.
Wow. That was a hell of a trip. Almost Tarantino-esque at times, and then decidedly not at others. Just as I thought I had a semblance of what was what, she grew in an unexpected yet believable manner. Maximalist was the only chapter that the song finished way before I read to the end, otherwise the pacing was spot on or better in that I'd finish reading (Rafting Starlit Everglades for example) and still have time to enjoy listening to just the song before moving on. The shift between You're My Excuse To Travel and Rain Smell floored me. Between your words and what is going to be a frequently listened to album, I'm left with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I'm smiling as I cry. This experience has been simply magnifique!
5724676 Dang, I'm still baffled as to how anyone finds this thing so long after it was published... But I'm glad you did, and I'm glad you liked it, and I'm super glad you also listened to the album and liked it! This whole fic was just a roundabout way of promoting one of my favourite albums, heh. Thanks for the kind words <3
You can has review!