Good authors too, who once knew better words, Now only use four-letter words writing prose. Anything goes. 
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Smolder seems to be allergic to something in the School of Friendship and is sneezing fire in all directions, threatening to burn down the whole building unless there is someone who can get her to stop. Sandbar takes up the task to help, but might be a little bit out of his element.
Can Sanbar help his friend while avoiding immolation?
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Must be the dragon sneeze trees...
Mario: "Where There's Smoke..."
Luigi: "There's fire..."
...and in a second it's going to be nothing but ash, isn't it?
Not helping.
This was a sweet story, well done.
A very sweet story featuring one of my 2 fave dragons (think you can guess who the other one is by my handle 😉)
Wasn't expecting the real reason for Smolder's condition, made the story even more heartwarming! 😀💖
Oooooh that's a great line.
This is a great little one-shot, I loved it! (I also like Sandbar's observation that he's surrounded by mares, which I never realized before. XD) Interestingly it also matches my headcanon that Smolder is the most homesick of the six.
9632914 "Where there's smoke...", "They pinch back!"
I blame J. K. Rowling. She had it bad, and by the end, she was too rich and famous to take any guff from any dang ol' editor.
This is a great story. I love the interactions between Smolder and Sandbar regarding their somewhat isolation. That was the highlight. Nicely done. Though them going from place to place seem to drag on the plot too long.
Great story!
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Well, you're not wrong.
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I actually had the opposite fear; without the dialogue, there's not much that the characters really do besides change location three times. I did ask for a slice of life tale, not an epic adventure, so I'm happy with the result, but I feared some folks would find the heavy dialogue distracting. Credit to Light for keeping it interesting!
As a side note, I initially wanted Sandbar to run around the school, looking for the smoke, but that would have interrupted the story unnecessarily.
9634683
9634334
No, what you guys need to blame is all.the PS1 Final Fantasy I like to play. That's what have me the problem.
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JRPG protagonists are rather fond of ellipses. Just look at Chrono Trigger.
You make excellent non-romantic SoL. More rare thing than one might think. Well done, again
It turned out the Lotus that Zecora was talking about actually referred to the spa pony...
And then Pinkie broke out the Evil Enchantress song again.
Cute. I love seeing more Young Six in fanfiction, getting character interactions like this
cute!! i really do love young six stories. i liked it a lot!! well done!
As soon as Smolder first came on-screen in S8E01, I fell in love with her character. She is a window to the culture of the dragons that has never existed before now, and I am so thrilled to see writers exploring her character in new and unique ways. It would absolutely make sense that she would be homesick. It would absolutely make sense that ponies might be apprehensive around her for who she is. How does that affect her character development and friendships? That is something that has remained woefully unexplored within the canon of the show, and I absolutely loved your story for doing so.
I'm wondering if the first three paragraphs are too long. Most of the others are shorter, sometimes severely so, but that's still quite the text wall to welcome a new reader.
It does make the short "Eventually he came to realize that the smell of smoke was abnormal and rather disturbing." stand out that much more, though.
I liked the narration, first from Sandbar's internal point of view, then from Smolder's at the end. The dive into Nurse Redheart's head with the line "The poor nurse took a moment to breathe, fighting both her own exasperation and the urge to cough from the smoke" threw me off for a moment, but pov-hiccups like that aren't what I consider the writing's most pressing problem.
The narration often just states that a character feels or speaks a certain way without showing anything else.
For example, this part;
It's not shown at all how Sandbar made the parallels obvious. Or how he spoke the sentence in the first place. Or what he was thinking outside of a wish to "make parallels obvious."
The words themselves obviously weren't enough, because the narration felt the need to specify they were "said in such a way."
Incidentally, "obviously." It's probably the word that showcases best the issues I found.
This word is repeated very often in this story and most of the time, it's to state what a character is feeling or thinking without showing why it's so easy to know what's going through their head just by looking at them.
Sometimes, the entire 'obviously' segment is even redundant or unnecessary to begin with because of the context, like here;
The context and Smolder's words make it very clear she regrets what happened. If you feel her sincerity is up to debate—what the "a little too much" at the end may imply—or needs to be stressed even more, it's as simple as writing that she sounded sorry. This part still being from Sandbar's point of view, you can even sprinkle in a distracted musing about how strange it is for Smolder to sound apologetic if you wish, for some flavor.
Speaking of which, the little bits of Sandbar's inner voice that slipped into the narration were a high point of the story for me. I liked them even more when he actually spoke up, like with ""Which is true, but you'd think one of the billions of girls I'm surrounded by daily might find that charming... But no...""
Beyond that, I usually advise people to write down numbers, but since the entire point of Sandbar's essay is that it must be three thousands words and not one word less, "3,000" rather than "three thousands" works very well.
I found some typos;
'Sandbar,' not "Sanbar."
missed a space before "For a pony."
Either the comma at the end of the dialogue should be a period or "while saying that" is redundant.
missed a space before searching.
Only one out of the ellipse or comma is necessary.
I think you meant 'withered,' not "weather."
I also suggest separating;
into
Finally, I liked these lines:
Yona doesn't have much of an accent. I think you mean dialect.
Yeah, I certainly wasn't expecting homesickness, if anything I walked into this expecting some silly played for laughs thing like she was allergic to the wallpaper or something. I loved Sandbars bit on being one of the few males, I can actually feel for him, being that I am kind of awkward around girls myself (and the dating websites all expect $$$ to actually use their services).
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Story's proofreader here. Fantastic points all! I'm glad you found much of the story enjoyable. As for the edits, I can't believe I missed the repetition of the term "obvious" to such an extent, and those little typos are also embarrassing considering I read this thing aloud multiple times looking for errors just like that.
This is so sweet. It almost seems like it could be an episode. It has just the right level of genuineness and wholesomeness to it.