Sunset Shimmer slouched on the battered old metal-and-plastic stacking chair and stared down at the amber-complected hands lying open on her lap. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it all the way through the ceremony. Everyone was there—we tried to keep track, and if I couldn’t look for somebody, one of the other girls did—except Wallflower.” Her hands turned over to rub along the fine fabric of dress slacks chosen to match an elegant blouse, formal enough for the morning’s pomp but simple enough not to interfere with the rented cap and gown she’d left in the care of her friends before her hasty departure.
The middle-aged woman on the other side of the ancient metal-and-laminate desk rocked back and forth slightly on her creaky swivel chair. “You said she’s shy. Do you think maybe she just didn’t want to face a big, intimidating crowd?” The question could have sounded skeptical; instead its gentle tone suggested a genuine probe, and maybe playing devil’s advocate. “She could have her diploma mailed to her, after all.”
Red-and-yellow hair bobbed with an emphatic shake of the head. “No. She was doing better, I’m sure of it, and we were trying to encourage her; she seemed thrilled when I gave her a yearbook with our signatures already in it. I was a little concerned because I hadn’t heard from her for a few days, but all of us—I mean, the whole graduating class, not just the Rainbooms—were busy with last-minute stuff, so I just figured she was too. Now, though . . .” Sunset glanced up, brows knotted, at her hostess. “I’m really worried, Rose.”
Captain Rose Brass returned her guest’s look with her single good eye, narrowed now in thought. Despite her trim, modest powder-blue business suit and white blouse, the tall, sinewy figure exuded an air of tough, raffish competence, from her platinum-blonde military buzz cut to the shiny-polished black closed-lace shoes currently hidden behind the desk’s modesty panel. Scars spilled across her brass-colored left cheek and forehead, visible all around the ostentatious black patch covering the eye on that side. A state-of-the-art prosthetic right hand drummed fingertips on the worn desk blotter for a long moment, then paused. “Okay. I’ll look into it.” She didn’t say I promise. She didn’t need to.
Sunset nodded, relief clear on her face. If there was anyone in the world who could find out what was going on with Wallflower Blush, the retired army officer turned youth social worker was that person.
Rose’s chair pivoted a few inches left and right as she gazed up at the water-stained ceiling tiles of her tiny bare-bones office. Sunset was long gone—no doubt to rejoin her circle for a well-deserved celebratory meal in some medium-fancy restaurant, surrounded by the warmth of a half-dozen families dragged together at the insistence of their daughters. The childless divorcée quirked a brief bittersweet grin and silently wished them well before returning to her train of thought.
The timing of Sunset’s early-afternoon visit was fortuitous. About a year ago Rose’s case load had been cleared almost completely, and somewhat mysteriously, to make way for a set of three clients named Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk. She had been the only social worker in town with the experience and, more importantly, the security clearance needed to deal with a trio of magical sea creatures punted out of their world, and apparently inadvertently into this one, as a consequence of their misdeeds. Further misdeeds—for they plainly had not learned their lesson—and the efforts to resist them had left the now-human troublemakers even more bereft than before, utterly lacking even the vestiges of magic they’d brought with them, homeless and alone.
Contact with Sunset Shimmer, and all the connections in both worlds she trailed behind her, of course had come along for the ride. Rose had taken the opportunity to provide a little discreet guidance to the young unicorn mare-turned-woman, and was gratified by Sunset’s efforts to reach out and to make amends for her own mistakes. By all accounts Ms. Shimmer was becoming a fine, upstanding individual in either incarnation, though it looked like she was determined to stay in the human world for the long term, even making plans for university.
At any rate, the months since a thick stack of briefing papers had turned Rose’s world upside-down had been a roller coaster, but by the spring just passed a lot of it had settled out. In fact, matters pertaining to the three ex-sirens had become routine enough she’d been on the verge of requesting more cases. She still might, depending on how the current inquiry fell out, but until she had an idea what the situation was for this Wallflower Blush, she didn’t want to commit to anything that might lead to a case overload. It had happened to her a couple of times, and the results were always unpleasant for everyone concerned.
She’d finished the preliminary work, starting with standing up a new case file. It was unusual for one to be established from the inside like this, but not unheard of. As a youth social worker she normally worked with minors, but there was provision to override that in special circumstances. Unique knowledge of a case, explicitly including classified information, was one of them; that box duly had been checked. Anyone looking at it would wonder why the blank was filled in with the same coded explanatory phrase as the Dazzlings’ file, but that was all they could do unless they were willing to break the rules. Also, the subject had turned eighteen within the last six months, so she was covered that way as well.
Next came building a dossier, using all the public records Rose could access from her office computer or telephone. Sunset already had provided as much information as she could about Ms. Blush—including a small clutch of recent photos downloaded from her smartphone—along with the bizarre artifact the other girl had discovered some months back, since shattered to pieces in yet another confrontation. The captain shook her head, wondering how many other such time bombs were scattered around the city, and why they hadn’t been destroyed rather than squirreled away. No doubt it had seemed a good idea at the time, but if she had a penny for every young butter-bar or NCO who’d told her that after some minor, or not so minor, disaster . . .
She sat up abruptly and reached for her keyboard. Now she needed to generate some decision trees and plans of action.
This is my first foray into your writing, Dave, and I gotta say it's a pretty strong start. You've got a lot of great descriptions littered throughout this entry. Not only describing the scenery and details, but the small actions/body language that communicate a lot between your characters (Sunset's hands in her lap, Rose Brass resting her shoes against the desk's privacy panel). I'm going into this without reading Amphorae or any of your other stories that feature Rose, and I've already got a decent grasp on what kind of character I expect she will be.
I see that we're starting this right on the heels of what we saw at the end of Forgotten Friendship. Sunset (and, to a lesser degree, her friends) is concerned enough about Wallflower being missing at graduation, but they haven't had enough time to establish too much of a rapport/friendship with her. That doesn't bode well...
The question that any sane character in a world featuring ridiculously powerful magical artifacts should ask, LOL.
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My primary inspirations for writing are Tom Clancy, Lois McMaster Bujold, and David Weber—Clancy and Weber for world-building (or world-explication) and Bujold for style. Paying attention to the little details can contribute so much. Bits of posture or body language are effective at conveying mood, and I’m trying to get better at relying on them rather than stating mood or emotion straight out. Brief dips into stream of consciousness allow for odd or irrelevant but still interesting thoughts, if one is careful not to do it too much or too often. Key snippets of description can carry a lot of the load without extensive digressions, if one picks just the right elements.
I figure there’s at least a month and a half between the bulk of “Forgotten Friendship” and the epilogue, since that’s how far in advance a yearbook printer deadline is—and of course a graduation ceremony usually is a little while after the school year ends, to my recollection. So call it a couple of months between destroying the Memory Stone and Sunset going to Rose.
Thanks so much for the extensive comments! You are so much better at that than I am.
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...I don't think I've ever stumbled across any of those writers, which is no doubt an error that ought to be corrected on my part. Would you have any recommendations from their bodies of work?
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Bujold started out in science fiction, though these days she’s moved on mostly to fantasy. Since I read the former and in general don’t read the latter, I’m familiar only with her Vorkosigan series, which is published through Baen Books.
Weber is all SF, and I primarily read stories set in his Honor Harrington universe, though I’ve read bits and pieces of his other series. The HH books also are published by Baen, but his other works are scattered among other publishers. His writing heavily emphasizes military affairs and socio-political ramifications.
Clancy was the originator of the so-called “technothriller” back in the 1980s. His best-known works are the Jack Ryan series, some of which became big-budget movies—The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears.
You probably would enjoy Bujold, especially her fantasy. You might enjoy Weber, though I am less certain of that. I suspect you might not enjoy Clancy; politically he was very conservative by the standards of the day, and it shows in his writing. He does an excellent job of explaining why and how governments and their agencies work the way they do, especially during the Cold War, but there are lots of background assumptions that may rub you the wrong way.
A strong, albeit subdued, start to what judging by the word count has turned into an absolute beast of a story. Your introduction to Rose is useful to newcomers but also veterans to your stories - while I lie possibly somewhere in-between, having only read Amphorae, Rose has a certain curiosity to her actions here that sets her apart from the aforementioned, where she was very much the authority figure.
Other than that, it feels very similar to Amphorae in tone. You build your characters just by describing their interactions - even though nothing really happens per se, you're still laying out context and setting the scene in a way that feels natural, even casual. Must say, I'm rather looking forward to this one.
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I was very conscious of the need to cover the same ground for a new reader while not boring a returning reader. The key to that, I’ve realized, is for each reintroduction of a character to overlap the others without treading exactly the same path. What’s different about the various openings? Here, it’s the very element you pinpoint—Sunset and Rose are, at this time, somewhere between acquaintances and friends. They know, and are comfortable with, each other, so the tone is a little different, and I’m able to vary Rose’s description somewhat to reflect an interaction not at all like her dealings with the sirens.
By the same token, this is the same Rose doing pretty much the same work, so her personality is going to dominate the tone of the chapter in more or less the same fashion. Moreover, a similar degree of drama is involved, and one of the reasons Scampy originally lobbied so hard for this story was the tone I was able to set for Amphorae. Shifting radically away from that seemed both unwarranted and likely to be a bad fit.