• Member Since 22nd Feb, 2012
  • offline last seen January 10th

A Hoof-ful of Dust


You can't see the forest...

E

Twilight takes Moondancer through "The Chalice of Moonlight" via Haycartes' spell.

Written for the Writer's Training Grounds '15 #9.

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 13 )

Beautifully done, and not a little heartbreaking there at the end.

Suggestion: drop the OC tag, and for Moondancer add the Other tag (the green one). The "book" characters aren't significant enough to warrant an OC tag on their own. We need a Moondancer tag so we can - officially, at least - ship it. Beacuse I do, now, thanks to you.

Huh, subtlety. Well made and I was hooked once the descriptions got going.

Hah, of course twilights sees trauma first. Its logical and I'm sure some pony wrote an analysis to that effect.
I wonder to what extent moondancers viewpoints bled into her experience.

6189158
Derp. I meant to put on Other.

And, like... Moondancer was way into Twilight, right? Why else would Twilight blowing off her party mess her up so much? I don't want to ship them, but the show doesn't make it easy, you know.

6189565
I was thinking a bit about the "Frodo and Sam are gay for each other" interpretation of The Lord of the Rings (film version, mostly); like, they're not, but you see why people get that impression. Maybe there's a bit more room for interpretation in The Chalice of Moonlight between Plowshare and Hillock, however...

A good story. Took a while to kick in, but quite good when it did. I like how as it moved further along the characters (at least Moondancer) lost themselves further in the characters they were playing. Heh, the whole heady feeling of "it's your first time."

I'm not sure if you could or would even want to do it, but I would love to read a full treatment of The Chalice of Moonlight. The pieces we get here are fascinating. It reminds me of Sprout Wings, Change Heart by OmniJerBear, which is an epilogue to a fantastic sounding story that doesn't exist.

I don't want to ship them, but the show doesn't make it easy, you know.

Obligatory
i.imgur.com/f3Jpqbq.gif

6191303
I'm not sure I'd want to do a full version of the story-within-the-story, it'd just be Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off; then again, that doesn't stop a lot of (published) fantasy authors, so who knows. I do want to refer to it again somewhere else, if I find a way to do that. I know there's fanfiction authors who are very particular about the sub-universes they're creating and having things that reference their other works, and while I've never been very big on that -- I don't think I really consider any of my stories to share a timeline with any other -- the idea of this well-known fantasy novel that exists in Equestria as a recurring reference, I dunno, I like that.

gif

See, like... yeah. It's like Twilestia with all the baggage cut out of it. And she has glasses and they could do reclusive nerd stuff together, it's adorable.

6193580
It did have a very Tolkien-isque feel to it, I can totally see it being something like LOTR or at least The Hobbit. Though in terms of length, let's hope more the latter than the former :raritywink: I personally like little reoccurring gimmicks like it cropping up in other stories as a subtle way of hinting they're maybe all same universe. Either way, I hope you can find a way to do so, as I would certainly like to see more of Hillock and Plowshares's journey.

Right in the feels! Great work!

A part of me wants to see the story within the story. But part of me likes the idea of a vague touchstone, the story within the story that can be returned to and lie underneath another story.

This is really good. I was reminded of the Snow Queen. Do you have any models for the story of the Chalice?

6500255
It's all very generalised fantasy stuff; mostly I was borrowing from Tolkien, but since he both drew from a wide range of folklore and inspired basically every fantasy setting afterwards, pretty much any fantasy setting ends up being "kinda like Tolkien". The Chalice has shades of the One Ring, in that you've got these two peasants carrying around this extremely powerful magic object and not destroying the world with it, but also a bit of Excalibur, where one needs the right kind of purity to pick the thing up in the first place.

I read this a long time ago and then rediscovered it while looking for things to recommend to the Seattle's Angels for review.

I honestly don't know why I didn't add this to my Top Favourites shelf the first time, it's really quite magnificent. It's a simple concept executed with precise skill and creativity, explores interesting ideas and paints a very beautiful little paper world, and it even has that ending as a cherry on top of a delightful cake.

It's really quite amazing. Thank you for writing it.

Fantastic work here. The small details really stuck out when I read.

Also, there's a Moondancer tag now. You might want to add it.

I would read The Chalice of Moonlight, the pony novel I mean, and not just a fanfic expansion of this story. I quite liked the idea of everything being hyper-elaborate papercraft!

Twilight Heartbreaker Sparkle strikes again. Poor Moondancer. She'd just gotten over her.
This was a good read. Thx.

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