I need to tell you something

by jayisabluebird

So Please Listen Carefully

It was a snowy day. Twist sat on a bench next to another filly. She was white, with a cream and light brown mane. Both appeared to be about nine years of age.

"Aw, do you really have to move? You haven't even gotten your cutie mark yet!"

"I know, but Momma says we have to. Daddy got a new job somewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Momma won't tell me."

"Aw, come on, Mocha! You've got to know!
The filly named Mocha shook her head and took a sip of the hot chocolate she was holding.

"Well, even if I did, which I don't, I couldn't tell you, it's a secret."
Twist looked in the direction of her house.

"I'm gonna mith you. Real bad. And I won't be able to vithit you."
Mocha got off the bench, and put her hoof out for Twist to high-hoof.

"I gotta go. We gotta finish up packing our stuff."

"Can I vithit your house tomorrow? Before you move?"
Mocha didn't answer and she trotted away, towards her house.

"...Bye, Mocha..."
A very sad Twist waved her goodbye and got up to leave. She knew Mocha didn't even see her.

____

Peppermint Pause took some deep breaths. She remembered her daughter Twist telling her everything that had happened that day. She wished she could've let her daughter know the truth in a...well, less sad way. But she needed to tell her daughter. She needed to know the truth.

"Twist, honey, could you come down to the living room?"
Twist almost instantly came down the stairs and starting speaking very fast.

"What is it? Is it a car? I'm getting my license soon, you kno-" she was stopped by her mom.

"Twist, honey, just because you've gotten rid of your lisp does not mean you can talk on rapid fire. Slow down."

"It doesn't matter. Just tell me what it is!"

"...You've had coffee, haven't you?"

"...maaaaaybeeeee..."
Peppermint looked her in the eyes.

"Really?"

"Nope! I was kidding!" Twist said, in a more relaxed tone. Peppermint sighed.

"Great, because I have something... Important, to tell you."Twist sat down on the couch.

"Okay, so... What is it?"

"It's about Mocha..."
Twist gasped. "Really? Is she okay?"
Peppermint cringed a little.

"Not... Not exactly..."

"What do ya mean?"

"Well, when she moved... She didn't really move."

"So we can visit her?"

"M-maybe... If you want to, after this."

"Okay, mom. You're making no sense."

"Just listen, okay? She... Had a brain tumor, and it was cancerous. It was inoperable, so... The month they said she would most likely die was the month she told you she'd be moving. And the canterlot coffee shop she got named after her wasn't a contest, it was her final wish before her death..." Twist sat with a blank stare, not saying anything. "Twist...?"

"I'll be in my room." Twist got up and walked up the stairs. Without showing any emotion, she slammed her bedroom door. Then she started sobbing. Peppermint could hear Twist from downstairs, and her heart ached.

"Maybe. I should've waited longer to tell her... I'm sorry, Twist. Sorry for lying."

____

Some time later

"Mom?"
Peppemint was surprised to hear her daughter speak.

"Y-yes, Twist?"

"...Can we visit Mocha?"

"Twist, what so you mean? She's... Oh." Peppermint fell silent. "Y-yeah, we can go."

____

The snow was falling, like it was on "that" day. The day Mocha... "Moved away."

"Where is it?"

"It's the one shaped like a coffee cup."

"I should've guessed."
Twist walked over to it and touched it with her hoof.

"I remember her so well..."
Twist got down to lay in front of it, and started crying. She didn't care how cold it was.

"Twist, honey, don't lay in the snow too long..." She ignored her mom. "Twist...?"
Suddenly, Twist got up and I started running. Her mom called out to her. She didn't care. She didn't care that her mom started chasing her.
____

"Twist, honey, this is Dr. Starnight. He's gonna be helping you, okay?" Twist looked up at the pony her mom mentioned. He was a therapist. She was in a therapist's office. The only therapist office she had been in before was a speech therapist's office. This was different. This pony was supposed to help her because she was emotionally wrong. Or at least, that's what she called it.

"I'm not a child, mom." Twist answered. She really wasn't in the mood to go through with this. Peppermint ignored her comment.

"Alright, I'm gonna leave you two. Alright?" Dr. Starnight nodded. Twist went back to looking at the ground. Did her mom really think there was something wrong with her? She knew subconsciously that she did need some help to get though this. To break the silence, Dr. Starnight cleared his throat and began talking.

"So... It's Twist, correct?"

"...yeah."

"So, why are you here?"

"My mom thinks there is something wrong with me." Several seconds of silence followed.

"...Care to explain?"

"My mom told me that one of my childhood friends was really dead and not moving, and so I did what any normal pony would do and cried and now she thinks something is wrong with me."

"She said that to you?"

"Well... No..."

"So the 'she thinks something is wrong with me' part is assumptions?"

"...yeah."

"Alright, so how about you explain the whole thing to me, in full detail." Twist took a deep breath.

"Well, when I was little I had this friend..."

____

It was a snowy night. Twist was curled up in her bed, crying. But she wasn't crying out of sadness, for she was smiling. They were tears of joy. She was happy, because she finally found someone to help her with problems she never knew she had.

Author's Note:

Any constructive criticism helps load. If you could give me any, I'd highly appreciate it! But I would not appreciate inappropriate bashing. Advice helps me grow, not hate.

Comments

[RandomHamster33]

I think it's a bit rushed, and the part abut the therapist was a bit out of place. . .

It wasn't bad for a first try.

[Pascal]

Not bad.

[jayisabluebird]

5237092 thanks! As for the therapist bit, it was because of the word minimum, hehe. Originally it was not included. And. I'm not the best with pacing, so I'm gonna work towards improving that.

[jayisabluebird]

5237123 Thanks!

[EquesTRON]

Yes, not bad for a first effort. My advice would be as follows:
(Oh, hay, here we go, somepony punched his "persnickerty" button again.)
(Quiet, you.)

First -- when you have trouble meeting the 1000-word minimum, that's nearly always a sign that you're not putting enough detail into your descriptions of where the characters are and what they're doing. And such is the case here. Nearly all of this story takes place in a blank white room, as far as the reader can tell; there's no descriptive language to set the scene. We don't get any description of what Twist's house looks like, or what the doctor's office looks like, or what's in it. The coffee shop is barely described beyond "being shaped like a coffee cup" (which also seems out of place for Canterlot, since from what we've seen of it in the show, they don't do the kinds of whimsical buildings and storefronts that Ponyville does)... and so on. The characters, too, are barely described at all – what does Twist's mother look like? What does the doctor look like?

It's usually also a sign that you're rushing through the action too quickly. This jumps so quickly from one segment to the next that none of it really has any opportunity to make an emotional impact on the reader – and the lack of descriptive language really compounds the problem here, because there's not enough to pull the reader into the scene and make them feel the same things the characters do. This concept really needed about 3,000 - 4,000 words, at least, in order to have room to breathe.

Also, don't do this:

Some time later

Remember, you're not writing a TV script here; indicating scene changes by directly telling the reader "afternoon at sugarcube corner", "later that day", etc. as the first line of the scene is poor practice, as a general rule, especially in a 3rd-person narrative.

From a technical, grammar standpoint:

When dialogue is followed by an attribution (also known as a "dialogue tag") of who said it and how, the two elements together are always treated as a single sentence, according to these rules:

(1) If the character's dialogue would end with a period if it were a stand-alone sentence, you end with a comma before the closing quote tag instead;

(2) the first word of the attribution (the part outside the closing quote) is not capitalized as the start of a new sentence; it is only capitalized if it is someone's name, or the pronoun "I";

(3) if the character's dialogue ends in "?" or "!", those marks are still used before the closing quote, but rule (2) on capitalization still applies.

Therefore, a line like this:

"I'm not a child, mom." Twist answered.

needs to be punctuated like this:

"I'm not a child, mom," Twist answered.

Also: dialogue tags ("said", "asked", and "replied") are your friends. Unattributed dialogue like this:

"Aw, do you really have to move? You haven't even gotten your cutie mark yet!"

"I know, but Momma says we have to. Daddy got a new job somewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Momma won't tell me."

"Aw, come on, Mocha! You've got to know!"

is confusing, because we don't have any idea who started the conversation, and it isn't until one character mentions the other by name that we can finally backtrack to sort out where the conversation begins and with whom.

Oh, and notice I specifically mentioned "said", "asked", and "replied"? Use them often, and use other speech verbs (especially highly-specific ones like "murmured", "explained", "deadpanned", "lectured", etc.) sparingly, if at all. Those three are effectively "invisible" to a reader, and they won't notice you using them repeatedly, but they will notice when an author seems to be going out of their way to avoid them. "Swallowed-a-thesaurus syndrome" is never a good thing. Not that you're having an issue with that now, since you're not really attributing the dialogue at all; just something to keep in mind for the future.

(How could you swallow a whole dinosaur, anyway?)
(I don't think that word means what you think it means, Scootaloo...)
(Why not? It's a "saurus", isn't it? Brontosaurus, tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, thesaurus.)
(Good grief, Scoots, didn't ya learn nothin' in Miss Cheerilee's class last week?)
(A-hem. Do you three mind?)
(Sorry...) (Sorry...) (Sorry...)

Next, don't indent only the dialogue, and not the other paragraphs. It's bad practice, visually distracting, and not something you'll ever see in published writing. The proper way to do it is either to indent all paragraphs:

Twist walked over to it and touched it with her hoof.
"I remember her so well..."
Twist got down to lay in front of it, and started crying. She didn't care how cold it was.
"Twist, honey, don't lay in the snow too long..." She ignored her mom. "Twist...?"
Suddenly, Twist got up and started running. Her mom called out to her. She didn't care. She didn't care that her mom started chasing her.

or, indent none of them, and put a blank line between each one:

Twist walked over to it and touched it with her hoof.

"I remember her so well..."

Twist got down to lay in front of it, and started crying. She didn't care how cold it was.

"Twist, honey, don't lay in the snow too long..." She ignored her mom. "Twist...?"

Suddenly, Twist got up and started running. Her mom called out to her. She didn't care. She didn't care that her mom started chasing her.

(Less common, though still acceptable, is to do both – indent the first line of all paragraphs, and leave a space. Some people will ding you for it and tell you not to do it, but there's no rule that expressly forbids it. Personally, I think it's easier to read on a PC monitor, which is a "landscape"-oriented display that requires your eye to travel a longer distance to find the ends of the lines than a "portrait"-oriented book does.)

Anyway, aside from those, your grammar and spelling seems pretty reasonable overall; I saw a couple of typos, but no egregious errors like misusing the wrong homophones ("its" vs "it's", "too" vs "to" or "two", etc.), switching between past and present tenses in the same sentence, and so on.

Like I said: not bad for a first effort; you mostly just need to slow down, flesh things out with more detail and description, and let the narrative unfold at its own pace rather than rushing headlong through it. Again, whenever you find you're having trouble hitting the 1,000-word mark, you're probably not describing things enough, and rushing the action too fast.

(Ya done bein' pedantic now, sugarcube?)
(That's your new favorite word, isn't it, Applejack.)
(Hey, you taught it to me.)
(Touche.)
(Two what, now?)
(*sigh* Never mind. Say goodnight, Applejack.)
(Aw c'mon, that joke's older'n Celestia.)
(...)
(...she's standin' right behind me, ain't she.)

[jayisabluebird]

5237667 Thank you so so much for your advice! Since I am a newcomer, stuff like this is treasure to me. I really appriciate it! (Gosh, I hope I spelled that right, my autocorrect is not working and normally I'm a bad speller, hehe.)

[Geminii]

The snow was falling, like it was on "that" day.

Quotes aren't for emphasis. Italics are generally the go-to choice in this case.