Back from the North

by vadram

Pink

Pink

---

The train pulled into Ponyville Station, and no sooner that it did, the masses of ponies flooded out of the train and poured into the town. The town was overtaken by hundreds of Royal Guard and Nightwatch soldiers, wearing just barely enough armor to prove that they were military.

Even with the reduces armor they were wearing the enchantments still worked, changing the colors of their coats to dark grey if they were Nightwatch, or to white if they were Royal Guard, their mane however did not change.

Private Silky and Corporal Helm were among the last to get of the train. They could see a pink entity moving at breakneck speed through the crowd stopping ever so slightly in front of a pony, startling him, before moving onto the one next to him. It all happened so fast that all one could see was a fast moving pink thing.

“Listen here,” Helm told to Silky pulling him closely. “Be careful boy, the mares of this town have a reputation.”

“What do you mean?” Silky asked looking fascinated at the pink thing.

“They say that every mare in Ponyville is...”

“Hiya,” a pink pony with a puffy, almost cotton candy-ish fully pink mane appeared out of nowhere in front of Silky, scaring the pony and causing him to fall on his rear. Helm laughed.

“My name is Pinkie Pie and welcome to Ponyville.”

“Hi,” Silky said nervous as the pink pony’s head slowly moved further and further into his personal space making the stallion uncomfortable, his heart started beating faster.

“Told you kid. Name’s Helm, a pleasure meeting you miss Pie,” Helm said before leaving his friend in the clutches of the pink, blue eyed, fluffy, scary pony.

“Bye bye Helmie,” she replied while not averting her gaze from the terrified stallion.

Silky started backing up, trying to put some distance between him and those blue eyes that seemed to stare into his very soul, and from that wide smile that the more he looked at it the wider it seemed to become. But no matter how much he dragged his rear away the pony’s face only seemed to be getting closer. He took his eyes off her face only for an instance to look at her legs, they were now moving yet she seemed to keep getting closer, and closer, and when he lifted them up their faces were almost touching, and all he could see were those deep blue eyes.

“Silkmane! Private First Class Silkmane of the Second Nightwatch Guard attached to the Third Medical Division!” with his heart threatening to burst out of his chest, he yelled out his name, his rank as well as his position, he would have said anything to just to put some distances between them. Later in his life he would remember this moment and think “I knew a mare that could have made you say how much milk you drank from your mother teats just by looking at you.”

“Hey Silky,” the pony moved her face away, seemingly satisfied by his answer. “So how long are you in town?”

“We...” he spoke while taking deep breaths and with one hoof placed on his chest desperately attempting to calm his heart down. “We leave tomorrow at twelve.”

“Come on!” the mare said as she stretched out her hoof offering to help the stallion get up.

As soon as he grabbed her hoof she squeezed it, pulled him to his legs, and said: “There is little time and much to see!” before starting to run and pulling the poor pony after her.

“Where are we going?” Silky asked as he found himself struggling to keep up with the energetic pink pony. If any one of his brothers in arms ever found out that he got himself ponynapped by a mare almost half his size, he would never hear the end of it.

“Why on the Official Pinkie Pie Tour of Ponyville of course,” she replied not slowing down even for an instant.

“How... about... we... do... that... later?” Silky manages to ask as he was trying to stop himself.

Pinkie Pie suddenly stops and Silky runs past her almost hitting two ponies before he stops. He apologised to the two before turning around to look for the pink menace, she is gone. After letting out a sigh of relief he turns and starts walking away when he bumps into her again, and finds himself falling back on his rump.

“So what would you like to do?” the mare asks him.

“It was like hitting a brick wall,” he mutters to himself before looking at the smiling pink pony.

“Get something to drink?”

“Something to drink?” she asks herself stroking her chin, while staring at the empty sky. “Well we could try Sugarcube Corner, the Cakes just got their soda machine fixed, or we can go over to the Watering Hole, or the ice cream parlor, or we can get some juice from the...”

“How about a bar?” Silky interrupts her.

“A bar? At this hour? Silly Silky, all the bars are closed until nighttime,” she giggles. “Everypony knows that, well not everypony. You didn’t know that. And I’m sure there are still some foals that...”

“Actually all the bars are open today.”

Pinkie gasped.

“Yes, they are open all day, all night and tomorrow morning, so that we have a place to unwind.”

“And no pony told me!? Come on Silky,” she said pulling the stallion up and grabbing his hoof again. “We are going to get you something to drink right now.”

And before the words could even reach Silky’s ears he found himself running through town, being pulled by a hyperactive, yet cute in her own way, pink mare by the name of Pinkie Pie towards a bar, and he could not help but smile.

Comments

[vadram]

denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw1368_3W7p5.png

[Classy Toad]

AHH frickin piny she is just so creepy...

[AntiquatedAnnomaly]

Take two,

Even with the reduces armor they were wearing...

Ok, we are getting to the point where I can no longer dismiss these kinds of mistakes as typos and artifacts. I'm sorry, I hate to say it, but you have bad grammar But Don't Despair! This is not the end of your aspirations for writing. You just need to learn. I will warn you, there is quite a bit to learn, but I am willing to give you your first lesson.

Tense agreement! Important stuff, tense agreement. Wearing is past tense, reduces is present tense, don't do that. Keen your tenses consistent. In this case I would suggest: "Even with the reduced amount of armor they were wearing..."

See, not that hard. One thing that is going to go a long way towards helping you, is to write in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, instead of here directly on fimfic. I'm only guessing, but I bet you are just writing here on fimfic. Probably not a great idea. MS word--what I suggest you begin to use--has a pretty good grammar check system (slightly better than Google Docs). I went ahead and checked it out by copy/pasting this sentence into MS word, and MS word did sense that something was up. Wasn't quite smart enough to tell me how to fix it, but it did mark it. If you start writing in MS word, it will at least be able to tell you where little mistakes like this are, and even if it can't tell you how to fix them, just knowing where they are is a big step.

Ideally, you should write the first draft in Word, do a round of self editing there, copy/paste the chapters into Google Docs so that you can publish them to the internet in order to share them with your proofreaders (Google Docs is wonderful for proofreading). Then, make the second round of edits based on the feed-back you get from your proofreaders, and then import into fimfic from your Google Doc. This is my suggestion as a person who is familiar with all three programs. Okay, moving on.

Okay, this one is pretty bad, so I'ma break it down for you. Your version:

"Hiya,” a pink pony with a puffy, almost cotton candy-ish fully pink mane appeared out of nowhere in front of Silky, scaring the pony and causing him to fall on his rear.

Correct(or at least more correct) version:
"Hiya," said a pink pony with a puffy, almost cotton-candy-like, fully-pink mane, who had appeared out of nowhere in front of Silky. The startled guard jumped and fell onto his rear.

First the big change, I broke your sentence into two different sentences, why, you ask? Your sentence has two nouns (Pinky and Silky) and when you switch from talking exclusively about one, to exclusively about the other, it's confusing. Let me explain a bit better, "the pony" could be talking about Pinky as much as it could be talking about Silky, and we don't get any proof that it is talking about Silky for another few words when you say him instead of her.

Second, comma use. When you are using multiple adjectives/adverbs to describe a single noun/action, you need to split off each descriptor with a comma. If memory serves me, this is called a serial coma (If I'm wrong, I don't really care and I'm far too lazy to look it up) and you should be using it.

Third, compound words. Whenever you are using two or more adjectives together to describe one feature, you need to use a hyphen to show that those adjectives are working together. Hence, fully-pink, and cotton-candy-like.

The other changes I made were to facilitate making it two sentences.

I'm going to stop critiquing here. Partly because I don't think I'm going to find any new kinds of errors, and partly because I'm starting to feel bad picking on your story so much. Basically, you are making a lot of little systemic errors because you don't have a firm grasp on the rules of punctuation and grammar. There are a lot of great guides and websites out there dedicated to teaching new writers the rules of the road, and I suggest you look a few of them up, and start studying. As far as I can tell, this isn't a bad story. It's just that, for people who do know all these little rules, it becomes very frustrating and aggravating to read stories who don't follow them. The rules are there for your and your readers benefit. They make reading your story easier and less confusing, and you really should be following them.

If you do decide to delve into the realm of grammar in order to make your writing better, and if you are having a hard time finding these guides and websites, or if you just want a friendly face, shoot me a PM. Beyond that, good luck out there. I wish you all the success in the world

[Thunderblast]

This has something good going so far, but when I say this, I mean it in the least-harshest way possible.

You need an editor badly.