Sunspear

by Cerulean Blue

Epilogue - Followup

To Her Royal Highness Princess Luna,
Commander Night Guard

Your Highness,

As requested, three Night Guard thestrals of retirement age and good standing were approached with your special request, all agreeing to take up the mission. They left a month after you returned from your absence as per your instructions, and made their way to the village at the coordinates given. Using the cover story of retiring Night Guard looking for somewhere to settle down outside of the cities, they have started integrating themselves into the life of the villagers. A week after they arrived, they were surprised when Her Royal Highness Celestia abruptly appeared without notice. She stayed the night and morning, entertaining the foals and helping with some minor tasks around the village before taking wing east into the jungle.

Winter Star (ranking thestral) said that HRH Celestia noticed herself and the other thestrals straight away but paid no notice to them. No attempt was made to approach as requested.

Your Highness, Winter Star reports that your sister looks happy.

Your loyal subject,
Group Captain Cloud Sweeper
Featherstone Night Guard Division

Comments

[Jade Dawn]

You've got an interesting idea here, but from an initial reading, I feel like things were way too short and rushed to have much of an impact.

Maybe I need to reread it, but I'm also a little confused by the ending.

[ArgonMatrix]

I enjoyed this story! You touched on some interesting concepts and presented a unique situation. You also painted Celestia in a believable light, which I appreciate.

However, I must agree with 9932870. While it was an intriguing premise, it needed a lot more room to be explored in order for it to really have the impact that it should have. That rushed feeling—combined with scattered little mistakes like missing punctuation, repeated words, and show vs. tell issues—meant that I couldn't get into it as much as I would've liked to.

Still, I don't regret reading this. I hope you expand on this concept, because it could definitely be a seed for something great.

[Cerulean Blue]

9932870

It feels a bit short and rushed because it was a bit rushed, unfortunately. I wasn't considering entering the contest until I realised I might have something that fit, and everything except the first chapter was written over a day and a half.

I think I know the answer, but what confused you about the ending?

9932949

Yeah, this story was unfortunately rushed quite a bit for the contest and that included any editing sorry about that. Glad you enjoyed it :)

[Jade Dawn]

9933493

I think I know the answer, but what confused you about the ending?

Again, I might need to re-read it, but I somehow got the feeling that the implication was Celestia somehow had something to do with the attacks.

[Cerulean Blue]

9933505

That's not what I meant to convey, but I can definitely see why that would come across like that.

Luna arranged with Celestia to attack at night together, along with the rest of the force. However, Celestia impetiously attacked by herself and then called down a Sunspear to burn the nest out and melt the very rock of the hill.
* The first epilogue is where Luna sends a wing of ponies and thestrals to see if the sunspear is still there (the implication being that it has permanently altered the landscape). It turns out that the sunspear is still there, but it's fading away.
* The second epilogue is Luna spying on Celestia - Luna is afraid that Celestia has lost control of herself, and could potentially be a threat to the stability of Equestria. Celestia in this case knows that Luna sent the spies, but doesn't care.

I think there's much I could have added to clarify that.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Very compressed storytelling overall. Yes, some degree of obfuscation was necessary for the sisters' heart-to-heart to work, but the story overall feels disjointed and rushed. The tiny chapters don't help the sense of disconnection, nor does that very ambiguous and bizarre first epilogue. Even after reading your explanation, I'm still not sure how we were meant to grasp that. Plus, all of the emotional development feels post hoc, all Celestia reacting to things that happened years or centuries ago aside from the initial inciting incident.

It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but you crammed a lot of story into too few words.