Set in the early days of Ponyville, Little Steppes is an earth pony filly, and the daughter of the village cobbler. She's clever and light-hoofed, but has often used these skills to steal from other ponies around the time. To try to make up for her misbehaviour, she goes out into the Everfree to help gather wild fruits, and ends up coming acoss a pair of magic shoes, dragging her into the centre of a midnight plot...
Inspired by the works of Enid Blyton and her 2002 short stories which I read as a child, this is a (compared to my other works) a short story about what happens when a young pony takes things which don't belong to her, as well as teaching the lesson to never wear articles of clothing you find just lying around...
Chapters (3)
That was a cute little story. You pretty well imitated the tone and voice of Enid Blyton. This story kind of reminded me of her short story In the King's Shoes. This maybe should have been called "In the Princess's Shoes,"
but it's probably fine the way it is now.
I really enjoyed your characterization. You really gave them a lot of depth and believably.
I'm just a little confused on when this took place. Was it 1000 or 100 years before the the first episode?
I think a little more cerebral than most Enid Blyton, but still interesting and very enjoyable! Good job!
7498686
Hey there, thanks for reading. :D I always love getting interesting comments such as these.
for me, I was taking inspiration from the story The Enchanted Shoes, which was one of her shorts, I believe http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=1444 In the story, a kid named William finds the titular shoes, puts them on, and ends up being walked to a rather unpleasant dwarf who uses him as an errand boy, delivering packages of stuff to various magic users. One of them sympathizes with the boy, and gives him a means to remove the shoes, but, the only way, apparently, to keep them off is to put them on someone else, leading to child's fantasy book vengeance. But yeah, it might have made more sense, but I also couldn't resist the play on words.
As to my setting, I've set this story roughly 80-100 years before the Events of MLP:FiM's events. In terms of that setting, I had the image of the last days before the dawn of the Modern Era, where old colonial frontiers are closing, technology is spreading around the land, and the old ways people did things were beginning to change. In other words, somewhere between the late 19th Century and the very early 20th Century.
Meanwhile, The spell keeping Luna and Nightmare Moon trapped on the moon would naturally be beginning to weaken, cracks forming within it, and this might not allow her to return fully, but it allows her to put her hoof in the door, so to speak.
Either way, I didn't REALLY intend for this to be entirely in the same vein as Blyton's works, since I do enjoy going into slightly darker themes, and I try to write for the teen/young adult kind of audience for the most part. But, that one book has stuck with me for more than 14 years now, and I think I can attribute my love of the Clingy MacGuffin Trope to it.
That being said, while I like to think this story could be fairly self contained, I do have plans to expand on Little Steppe's own story considerably in her future. Maybe not as her as a young child, but being an earth pony who can use magic is going to be very interesting for her as an adult, I think...
7498686 Where can I read In the King's Shoes?
7691420
I'm guessing you are either interested in Enid Blyton's works or it just caught your eye.
I'm not sure exactly where you can get The King's Shoes. It is a very short story, (a board book really) only a few pages long .
It is a very child-oriented story about a peddler who swaps shoes with the king because he thinks it will be fun. However, the shoes confer all the arduous responsibilities of royalty upon him so that by the end of the book he swaps shoes with the king again to return to being a peddler.
(This summary is brought to you by Yes's "Close to the Edge")
My dad bought an a copy along with several other Enid Blyton short stories like The Blue Eyed Cat and The Magic Treacle Jug for my siblings and I years ago.
You might find it for sale on amazon or ebay. Your choice whether or not you want to spend the money for it. Personally, I hadn't thought about the story in years until I found this Little Steppes's story and related "Enid Blyton" and "Shoes" from my memory.
This is the link to the Enid Blyton site: http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=1627
Hope that answers your question!
