• Member Since 26th Mar, 2015
  • offline last seen Last Thursday

Amber Spark


"Do it with love, do it with passion and never dream small!” - Author, Designer & Creator - Patreon/Ko-Fi

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Winner of the 2017 Scribblefest "Rainbow Dash" Award!


  The Cycle of Flame defines every phoenix’s life, even those who refuse to fly the path ordinated by the Cloudsong. One such mischievous phoenix has found a home on the edge of the dangerous Dragon Lands. But after an old friend beckons her home, this phoenix meets a creature of myth and legend who gives her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
  The phoenixes know her as Glorious Dawn.
  But the ponies of Equestria know her by a different name...

Entry for EFNW Scribblefest 2017 - Prompt: Growing up wild and forever free


Featured on FimFiction on March 13-16, 2017 with a Hot Tag! :pinkiegasp: :pinkiehappy:


Historian's Note: Believe it or not, this is not set in the Wavelengths Timeline!

Cast: Philomena and Princess Celestia with the Dragon Nation and the Griffon Kingdom

Cover & Section Break Design by Novel Idea
Flame Icon by MisterAibo
Philomena by moongazeponies

Beta Reader & Editor Credits
Ebon Quill - Audio Director & Quest Designer on The Manehattan Project
Tchernobog - AppleDash Fanatic, Special Guest Beta Reader
Little Tinker - Master of Systems at Poniverse & Scripting Engineer on The Manehattan Project
Beltorn - Commenter-at-Large on FimFiction
Painted Heart - Wife of the Author :rainbowkiss:

Word Count: 6,600
Version: 2.6

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 45 )

IS this set in the Wavelengths timeline?

8018378 Nope! My first non-Wavelengths story!

8018378
It's ambigious, isn't it?
My guess would be no, though.

Aw, goddammit, I nearly got first comment. :raritydespair:

8018383
Train hard, young padawan. You'll get there in time.
But it's usually Mondays when posts happen. I assume you've assessed it already.

Another wonderful work, regardless of what timeline it fits in. Your take on Philomena is just such a fun character to read about, and I really liked seeing her first meeting with Celestia. Not to mention the origin of Spike's egg, and the implication that if things go south with Nightmare Moon's return, the dragons might oppose her?

Philomena loved pranking Sunset

Not much I can say other than I really liked your spin on the first meeting between Celestia and Philomena. The fact that this story works just as well for the main universe as for probably many others is simply beautiful. The humor is brilliantly done throughout (mixed with action when teasing and taunting the dragons as well as heart-warming when Philomena and Celestia ACTUALLY meet). I'll very certainly be looking forward to more to your work, but will be quite willing to be patient, especially since I know how real world concerns can get in the way sometimes.

Surprised to see I haven't followed you yet. Well, I guess it's time to fix that.

Wow. Just wow. I don't even know where to start aside from "have a like and a fave".

8018383 If it helps, I was rather shocked to see a comment that quick too. :rainbowderp:

8018550 She's just damn fun to write. Which is probably why she shows up again in And a Sky Full of Stars! As for the implication... it's actually a little different from that. And a little darker.

8019011 Hell yeah, she did.

8019356 It's funny that you always say you have not much to say, but always have great comments. :rainbowlaugh:

8019493 I have no objections to this. :duck:

8019846 'tis a good start! Rendering anyone speechless is a win for me. :pinkiehappy:

Holy cow. Those birds can talk!

“Well sang,” Celestia replied.

Pretty sure that should be "Well sung"

Ah, so this is what you were talking about in the chat. Well worth the wait.

Nice story.
I do have to wonder how long after Luna's...'tantrum'...this takes place? And how long before Twilight's time?

It just seemed really, very odd that Twilight wouldn't recognise Philomena in the bird's introductory episode, despite said bird being Celestia's pet, and said unicorn being Celestia's student, and said student having gone into Celestia's bedroom and other private rooms countless times. What kind of sense does that make?

I also hope that error's brought up and explained, if this is going to be a series, revolving around Celestia and Philomena.

I hope next story will be about Philomena and Luna!

8020181 Corrected! It's funny, I remember going back and forth on that one... then I forgot about it entirely. :twilightoops:

8020460 Glad to see you enjoyed it!

8020640 For timing, you'll want to check my Retrospective. I explain my general thoughts on it there. As for Twi... well, it could simply be that Twi never saw Philomena in her end-of-Cycle state.

However, I fully agree that Philomena needs to make a reappearance!

8020839 That would be interesting... but if I was going to do that, it would have to be set in the Wavelengths Timeline, since the first two major arcs of the Timeline come to a head during the Millenial Summer Sun Celebration.

Well, there's nothing stopping this from being set in your usual timeline. Indeed, since it's taking place before the divergence, it could be seen as both there and not there at once. Temporal divergence is weird like that.

In any case, great work all around! Thrilling fight sequence, fascinating hints of phoenix culture, and a great bit of connection with what is to come. Thank you for it.

Also, given a certain someone's name, I have to post this:

8022693 Schrödinger's Story, perhaps? :raritywink:

Thrilling fight sequence, fascinating hints of phoenix culture, and a great bit of connection with what is to come.

If you thought that was good... I'm exhausted after writing the multiple fight scenes in And a Sky Full of Stars. Hopefully you'll enjoy that just as much. :twilightsmile:

Ah, another fan of Marcus Warner!

Fitting matchup with the story, thank you for the wonderful fluff.

8023258 Evening Star will always be one of my favorite musicians. The guy's got an amazing gift for music that can only be described as glorious. I'm even more delighted you thought I matched it well. This was actually a last minute addition to the story (I may have even added it shortly after the story went live) and sometimes what I think matches doesn't actually do the trick.

Nice to know that my instincts were right this time. :twilightsmile:

This was really good, too. I really like this take on our favorite trickster pheonix. Neat world-building for the pheonix culture just in general, I haven't seen a lot of that so it is interesting to see it explored.

Also, my inner shipper really wants to pair up Amanda with Philomena. Not even birds are safe from the shipping.

On a technical note, wow is the indent plus no paragraph spacing hard to read for me. It's weird how different that is on a screen compared to a traditional physical reading experience where this style is entirely expected.

8024140
It was great to come up with the culture, traditions and lore of the Phoenix. Believe it or not, I came up with a vast majority of it on the spot!

Also, my inner shipper really wants to pair up Amanda with Philomena. Not even birds are safe from the shipping.

...Ebon made a very similar comment when Philomena mentions that Asanda's wings were beautiful during editing. SHIP ALL THE THINGS! :pinkiehappy:

On a technical note, wow is the indent plus no paragraph spacing hard to read for me. It's weird how different that is on a screen compared to a traditional physical reading experience where this style is entirely expected.

Yeah, I know it's not a favorite of everyone, It's ironic that I do my blog posts in the spaced paragraph format. I am somewhat of a traditionalists, for better or for worse, so I've always formatted my stories in the way regular paperbacks are printed. :twilightblush:

This is a GREAT backstory for Celestia's Phoenix and one that I am VERY happy to have read. I look forward to reading the next part in this series! <3

8025839 Thank you! I'm not sure if I have an ongoing story I'll be telling from this particular point in time, but anything's possible! :pinkiecrazy:

8025908 I meant more like in the general timeline of your series with Sunset Shimmer never going through the mirror and stuff.

8027629 Oh! Of course! As soon as I'm done with And a Sky Full of Stars, we're going back to work on Prerogative, the final Origins Arc novella!

Very nice read overall. I love the depth given to Phoenix culture, and the rest of the unspoken backstory details. Pacing lags just a tad in the middle, but otherwise, a pleasant read throughout.

Philly is adorable- and so gutsy!

8034099 :twilightsmile: Coming up with the phoenix backstory and culture turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected (it's been a while since my World Builder's Disease has been allowed out of its cage...). Yeah, there's a couple pacing issues with the Asanda scenes. A bit too much dialogue where there should be action. But, that's one of the reasons I'm doing this on here: to hone my craft. So stuff like this is tremendously useful!

Thank you kindly! :pinkiehappy:

8036103 Philomena's a little brat. She's an awesome little brat! And best of all... she knows she's an awesome little brat! :trollestia:

...and so do we. :pinkiehappy:

I like this. maybe you should expand on it and show us the first few days/weeks of her being in the court.

I know you've already seen my blog review of this, so I'll confine myself here to repeating that it's the best phoenix-related world-building I can remember. Oh, and to giving you that fave at last!

8256506
Thank you kindly! I was actually just writing a blog about your blog review!

8256936
I'll keep an eye out!

Flame turkey goes "flame on"!

8742356
Blame poor impulse control.

8742379
I resemble that remark!

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

God, she's such a little shit. :V

I wonder who the "he" mentioned is. Was that Spike's egg?
But so far as I am aware, it never hatched in this one.
Did the timelines change so long ago?

9131722

I wonder who the "he" mentioned is. Was that Spike's egg?
But so far as I am aware, it never hatched in this one.
Did the timelines change so long ago?

I can't answer that, silly. Also this happened long before anything to do with Wavelengths. It may or may not even be part of that continuity!

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