...Or, would "Starry Nights *In* Knossos" make more sense?
Ships of all shapes and sizes filled the harbor by the hundreds. Their masts glid across the sea like the gulls soaring above, framing the moored Theseus; a massive black-and-bronze-and-white affair that dubbed itself as “the world’s first luxury liner!”...Whatever that meant.
The Theseus was crowded. All its passengers massed to its level-most deck like bees about to swarm. Once the gangway thunked against the wooden boards of the dock proper, they cascaded through it and spilled across the harbor and beyond. Nearly all were minotaurs, most had elaborate jewelry of silver and gold on, and the few that wore clothes were dressed in colorful, almost garish silks. Chatter and laughter filled the air, and no one paid mind to the little pony- averaging a head or three shorter than everyone else- standing in the midst of it all.
Starry Nights was a tall unicorn with a periwinkle coat and blue mane so light it almost seemed white. It was cut fashionably short, which meant there was still enough mane left to fall and frame her stately muzzle. She was perfectly normal, except that her horn was dark and oddly oversized. But that was neither here nor there.
The unicorn weaved her way through the crowd until she stepped onto the cobblestone streets. Before her was the great city of Knossos, capital of the Minos Republic. It was a square mass of white-washed houses, all stacked up on top of eachother like the walls of a giant labyrinth. Clothesline and tarps hung in between the narrow alleyways, and everywhere she looked minotaurs teemed in and out like ants, from house to storefront to market.
Starry smiled at the sight and took in a deep breath of the salty sea air. Once upon a time the very existence of this city would have been an impossibility. And yet here it stands, as tall and proud as the ‘taurs that bustle about! How I wish the sight brought me nothing but the most heartfelt enthusiasm! Unfortunately…
Her smile fell slightly as she remembered that. The thing that had been dampening her spirits ever since she realized it. Suppressing a sigh, Starry took out a small slip of paper from her saddlebag. On it was a slightly crumpled and creased map, though she only called it that out of kindness.
See, Starry wasn’t technically traveling alone. The cruise ride was a pleasant surprise, but the plan from the beginning was to explore Knossos under the wing (Hoof? Horn? Bicep?) of her host, a friend of a friend named Selene. Since Equestria lacked a lot when it came to extranational routes to island nations on the other side of the world, Starry’s arrival time was fuzzy at best. So instead of hemming and hawing about when she stepped into the city, Selene sent her a map so that when she did eventually arrive, she could easily follow it and meet her host at her family’s store- The Golden Thread.
She thought it was a foolproof plan, up until she actually looked at what had been sent over
There was no nice way to put it. The map sucked. It was all smudged lines and letters in a vague contour of a square-ish shape. She couldn’t make heads or tails of it, except that the store was somewhere in Knossos's center. Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing if she wasn’t about to enter a literal maze of a city.
Starry hissed out the sigh she’d been holding in. “What ever!” she said out loud to no one, the need to internally monologue becoming external. A few heads did turn at her blurting out, but she was speaking Equestrian and was obviously some sort of tourist, so…
“I do not need a map-” she continued as she stuffed the paper back into her bag, “For every path upon this labyrinth must invariably lead to some middle, no matter how winding or treacherous the path! Onwards, I say, or I am not- er, Starry Nights!”
She reared up and galloped into a random alleyway. If she had to brute force her way to the center, then so be it! She needed nothing but her wits and the song in her heart!
A musical number and half an hour later, Starry was hopelessly lost.
She was exhausted. The unicorn felt as if she had snaked across half the city by now, yet she felt farther from the center than ever. The only thing that kept Starry from completely blowing her gasket were the slips carved between every city block, wide enough for a single minotaur to shimmy through and so enough for her to rush ahead as straight a path as she could manage. It didn’t help. They were all dead-ends.
The very existence of this city should be an impossibility! She snorted in frustration, nothing makes any damned sense!
She ran into another slip, feeling the warm stone under her hooves. This was a particularly long stretch, and the introspection got to her.
Perhaps the fault is my own, she thought with a frown, I could have just asked assistance from any of the fine ‘taurs I have passed, if my pride did not block the notion wholesale. I would not be running about like a headless chicken then. Better to do it now than later, I suppose.
With a sigh she approached the end of the alley, prepared to ask the first minotaur she saw for directions. But she heard a commotion of sorts from that direction, and so she quickened her pace until she was spit out into what seemed to be a bustling street market.
The light of the morning sun filtered through thick canvases of blue and gold hung overhead. All around her swirled the people of Knossos. She saw the merchants hawking their wares and the pedestrians circling their way ‘round the market. Most noticeably was the procession of horses. They were tall. Some wore goggles, and others caps with a horseshoe insignia at their front. Many had green banners draped over their backs that read “!!CARRYAGE ASSOCIATION GENERAL STRIKE!!” in bright red letters. All wore saddles and bridles- though they were nothing like ones Starry had ever seen. A middle-aged stallion stood at the front with a bronze bullhorn in front of him, and he spoke to an impromptu audience in a loud, gruff voice.
“-our fine organization has served the citizens of this city for generations!” he yelled, “Our grandparents served yours, and they did it with pride! These rosy-cheeked, posey-assed, namby-pamby fillies behind me have galloped through this damn labyrinth for too long to be disrespected like this! We made this city, and if you throw your lot with the Council and let those unholy motowagons-” he said the word like he wanted to spit it out just as quick, “into our streets, we can unmake it just as easily!”
Starry’s eyes widened in realization. She knew Minos was rapidly industrializing, to a much farther extent than Equestria, but she hadn’t realized motowagons were already in civilian use! Oh, the local ordinances this requires must be absolutely fascinating! Perhaps I could even look to them as guides for when Equestria inevitably…. Ah, no. This is a vacation, I must not bring work into this. Directions are what I must find. Being lost is dreadful.
But as she looked at the horses, she realized the answer to her problems were right in front of her. A Carriage Association was public transportation, and surely its workers must know the routes throughout their city like the back of their hoof! The mares lingering behind the stallion seemed to be there to yell out in unison for special effect, so it was simply a matter of asking whichever one looked the most bored. Now that was a foolproof plan.
Starry made her way to the back of the group as the speech continued. She spotted a listless looking roan, and instantly judged her to be her direction-giver. She cleared her throat and closed in, “Hail! You there!” she called out. She spoke in Minosean, though there was an indecipherable accent on top of her Ponish lilt. “Fair weather to thee, cousin. If I may, I-”
“Unicorn!” the mare blurted out dumbly, causing Starry’s mouth to set into a hard line. The mare had the decency to look somewhat sheepishly at having blurted that out. She was young, with a strawberry mane and bright eyes. “Er, I didn’t mean to say that out loud…”
Starry snorted. She supposed she couldn’t fault her too much. “No troubles,” she said breezily, “I take no insult, for I am very, very far from my fair Equestria. It would be stranger still for you to miss that, though do take care it does not happen again. Let us begin again, shall we?”
The mare stared at her blankly for a second, then nodded. “Okay?”
Starry cleared her throat again. “I am Starry Nights- noble scion and perpetual tourist- and you are…?”
The mare tilted her head and squinted slightly at her before answering. “Aleka,” she paused to think, then, “Single and... um... carryage rider?”
“I could see! A proud profession, if I may add. Although it looks as if you have run into some trouble?”
Aleka nodded. It seemed she’d gotten her bearings back on. “Yeah… Yeah! You probably wouldn’t know, but the city council’s planning on letting us ordinary cityfolk buy and use them motowagons. ‘Course, most of the ones they have so far are made for ‘taurs, and, y’know, that's real competition. So here we are, striking.”
Aleka finished with a tired laugh, which made Starry frown. “Do you not believe you shall be victorious?”
“Ehhh, I’m only here ‘cause I’m union and I don’t want my uncle to get into more trouble.” She gestured behind her, where the gruff stallion had kept on his increasingly loud speech-turned-tirade. “And I like being a driver, but times are changing. By the time I'm my uncle's age they're'll probably be not much use left for us old draft horses. How many will want to pay for a ride when they can drive themselves or use the tram? Or the subway, if that ever gets finished? Dunno, it feels like we're just delaying the inevitable, standing 'round here making fools of ourselves for something we can't stop.”
“I… see.” Starry turned contemplative. “Misguided as it is, I understand why your uncle acts so. He clings to the past in a world that has changed past his recognition. He seems to think lashing out will change his future, though that does little to change his reality. ”
“Yes?” Aleka said, a little dazed.
Starry shook her head. “Ah, that is neither here nor there. In truth, I came up to you because it seemed you would have some time to give me directions.”
“Oh! That’s what this was all about? You shoulda said so sooner! I could run through this city with my eyes closed. Where do ya wanna go?”
Starry smiled and told her about The Golden Thread. She took out a quill, some ink, and a blank piece of parchment. This made Aleka mutter something about her granddam, but she made a much more detailed map than Selene could (presumably) hope to do. As Aleka seemed to near the end of her scribbled directions, Starry’s eyes flitted across the Carryage Association’s banners again.
“Your comrades misspelled ‘carriage’,” she said.
“Huh?” Aleka looked up at her and spit out the quill to talk more clearly. “How do you mean? That’s how carryage has always been spelled.”
Starry wrinkled her muzzle. Minosean was a beautiful language, and the idea that a wrong spelling of a word had somehow become standard since the last time she checked disturbed her greatly. “Truly? Is it not with a columned ‘I’ rather than the forked ‘Y’?” she pressed further, taking the new map in her magic and nodding thanks.
Aleka squinted at her.
In an instant, before Aleka could reply, the gruff stallion (who’s ongoing speech had become comfortable background fuzz) suddenly stopped, only to be replaced with a single word. Yelled so loud as to have been spit out from his bullhorn.
“SCAB!”
Starry turned to see the stallion pointing in her direction with a look of pure fury. For a brief moment she was so offended that she truly considered grabbing him with her magic and making his life very unpleasant for the next few minutes. But she looked beside her saw that Aleka was looking behind them. She blinked and followed suit.
There, in an alleyway at the entrance of the marketplace, was the strangest sight Starry had ever seen. There was a horse, a buckskin stallion, frozen there with a look in his eyes that indicated the fear of several gods, his gaze flickering between each of the Association horses like a foal caught with his hoof stuck in a cookie jar. On top of him, riding upon his back, sitting on him, was a minotaur, who looked just as scared.
Aleka muttered under her breath, “Oh, Gods…”
The buckskin stallion reared. The minotaur fell to the ground with a yell. The horse meanwhile scrambled his hooves upon the stone and made a break for it, sprinting away so fast that his iron shoes made sparks. The gruff stallion whinnied in rage. “GIRLS, GET HIM!” he yelled as he followed in pursuit, trailed by a dozen or so mares.
Starry looked at Aleka for an explanation, but all she gave her was an apologetic frown. “Sorry, this has been happening a lot lately… you’ll be ok, right? You understand the map alright?”
Now it was her turn to be dazed. “I… yes. Yes, I will be alright. Best of luck with your... scab?”
With a nod, Aleka galloped after the angry herd, leaving Starry alone in the still bustling street market. She blinked, hard, and sighed tiredly.
They didn't use to do that...
Morning had come and gone, and the summer sun beat down upon Knossos. Its light made the heart of the city all the more a sight to behold. Here the sky was wide and free, and buildings were no longer built with stone but with marble painted thousands of colors. The city was open and didn’t inspire claustrophobia, and this allowed for the wave of masses to ebb and flow all throughout. Here she saw the commercial districts, luxurious neighborhoods, and in the distance the dome of what must’ve been the Ekklesiasterion, where the Minosean senate met.
Starry weaved deeper and deeper into the city’s center, until she found herself in front of the cursed storefront at last. The Golden Thread. A bakery, surprisingly. She entered it, fully ready to reprimand her host for that truly shitty map, but it seemed the minotaur of the hour had other plans.
“You’re finally here!” she heard before being scooped up into a bonecrushing hug.
Selene was at least three heads taller than her. She looked gentle, with short straight horns, brown fur and bangs that swept fully over her eyes, but she was clearly still strong enough to fully lift Starry off her hooves.
Starry squirmed in her grasp, extremely uncomfortable. “Ack-! Yes, it is I, Starry- could you please unhand me? I don’t- quite remember ever feeling my lungs so clearly!”
“Oops, sorry!” Selene laughed freely as she placed her back on the floor. Now she could see that Selen was wearing a purple chiton . “I was waiting for you for so long! I know it’d take a while, but for a while there I thought you just wouldn’t show up!” She paused for a second, “When did you show up? I don’t remember seeing an airship coming by…”
Starry dusted herself off, glad to be in a position of dignity again. She grinned at the question, thinking fondly of her daring escapades to get a ride to Minos. “That is because I did not come by air, but instead through sea. There is no direct aerial route from Equestria to your Minos, you see, and taking even a meandering one would have taken far too long. Instead I took an airship to Wingburg on the Gryphon Coast, where I had heard your MV Theseus would soon be taking port. Once there, it was all simply a manner of muscling my way in. For as rich and prestigious the guest list was, there is nothing a bit of Equestrian gold cannot do to change a hesitant mind.” Plus a few threats of bodily violence.
“Wow, that sounds amazing!” Selene said, genuinely impressed. “Well, I’m sure glad you got here when you did. It’s been dead around here all morning. If you want, I could close up for the day and give you a real tour of the city! You must’ve seen some real interesting stuff on the way here, right? I’ll tell you all about it!”
The last comment annoyed her. But Starry could tell that though Selene had been the cause of her troubles, it would be in bad form to curse her for her horrid cartography skills now when she was so graciously offering to attend to her needs.
So Starry sighed and smiled. “Right. Let us get a move on, then.”
“How’d you meet Glint Heart, anyway?”
It was well into the evening, though the sun had not gone down just yet. They had spent the last few hours walking through the city’s many landmarks. Selena was a surprisingly good tour guide, good enough for Starry to forgive her about the map debacle. Now they headed towards their last stop of the day: the Knossos Museum of Fine Arts.
Starry swallowed her gyro (a delectable treat), “He happened to be posted upon my security detail, and we became fast friends thereafter. I suppose I made a favorable impression, considering he reached out to you for me.”
Selene laughed, “Glinty’s got so many friends, it’s so hard to keep track of ‘em sometimes! He usually complains so much about nobles too. No offense, heh.”
“None taken,” she said with a knowing smile, “We can be quite trying. Ah, but enough about dear Glint Heart. I will make sure to write him thanks- it seems we are here.”
The KMFA was a huge complex of stone and marble. Inside it housed the hundreds of Minos’s cultural and historical treasures. As with everything else in Minos, it was packed, and uncharacteristically lively.
“Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but how much do you actually know about our history?” Selene started, gearing up to get into her ‘peppy lecturer’ schtick.
“Very much and not at all, I would say. I consider myself an enthusiast of its far past, but your modern facts elude me still.”
“Right right, so what’s the newest stuff you know about?”
“Hm, up to the beginning of King Asterion VI’s reign?”
“Woah, you almost got to the real important parts! That explains why you speak so funny, though!”
“Pardon?”
“You need a huge refresher- actually, mind if I try something out with you? I’ve been practicing being part of the chorós at my theater, so this’ll be good material.”
“If you must. Go ahead, then.” Starry sat down and waited to be entertained.
Selene grinned and cleared her throat.
“Long ago Minos was a peaceful kingdom of the sea, where no ‘taur ever went hungry and where gold lined the streets. King Asterion VI was a kind, gentle ruler… and ‘twas this gentleness that felled him.”
Despite herself, Starry nodded gravely.
“One day Minos was overrun by a terrible storm! Lightning struck from the sky and fires raged in the torrent of rain that drowned our island. The Thunderian Empire heard of our wealth from the north and raised a great army to ransack Great Minos. King Asterion fell to the Thunder Emperor, and he crushed our great island as if to the waters below. For hundreds of years the people of Minos were nothing but slaves to his regime, chained to our home with nothing no ‘taur could hope to do! But anger did fester, and determination grew. Until one fateful night the anger of all taurkind pushed the Thunder back.
The sky turned black, and the sun- once shining and bright- was blotted out so fully by the gentle moon that only its outer flames were radiant enough to peek through, as if a halo ‘round that inky darkness that was the moon’s center. Thus began Minos’s longest night, where we all looked to the sky and saw that this was a call from gods and mortal alike, to overrun Thunder and fight for the freedom which had been taken away from us!”
As if to illustrate Selene’s story, Starry saw that many of the prominent statues in the museum had similar motifs of breaking chains and flight.
“When the moon retreated and the Sun came up once more, Minos was ours once again. The Eclipse started the revolution, and it ended it just the same. So began Minos’s age of republic, and all we see today a millennia later."
The minotaur paused for dramatic effect. She took Starry’s stunned silence as a sign of her good work which, granted, was definitely part of it. She would have been very impressed otherwise.
“Hah! Was that good or was that good? Up top!” she brought up her hand for a high five, which Starry absentmindedly gave a hoof-bump to.
“An… an eclipse? A thousand years ago, you say? That was not a dramatic embellishment?”
“Oh, definitely not. The eclipse’s pretty important. I mean, pretty much everyone back then that could write had something to say about it. Didn’t your princess have something to do with it?”
“If ‘by something to do with it’, you mean she foalishly attempted to bring out night eternal because of her complete and utter selfishness, then yes, very much I would say.” Starry snapped. Selene raised a brow at her, and she instantly regretted taking that tone. “...Apologies.”
“Nah, it’s ok. I guess it’d be a bigger deal for you guys since she’s one of the big bosses to you.”
“That is one way to put it. I suppose… it is hard for me to think of anything she did in… that time, as anything good. It has indicated nothing but shame to me- and our people. What happens when terrible power is put upon the shoulders of somepony unworthy to wield it. Doubly so because it would be more terrible to think of what would happen should she fall to those dark impulses once more.
“For you to say that infernal Eclipse was the cause of so many happy things for your people? It is jarring.”
Selene shrugged, “Silver linings, I guess.”
“Excuse me?”
She smiled lazily, “Well, it sounds like what your princess did was pretty terrible, and it's scary to have some-pony have that much power, but she’s not doing it anymore, is she? And just ‘cause she made the eclipse for bad reasons, doesn’t mean it was bad by itself. Plenty of ‘taurs thought it was beautiful back then, and if you Equestrians weren’t having your thing back then, you’d probably thunk the same thing too! So, silver linings. Take the good, take out the bad, and it's all good again!”
Starry stared at Selene, and then finally said “...silver linings, hm? That can be wise, friend... in its own way.”
“I have my moments! But c’mon, we’ve been standing ‘round here too long. There’s plenty more stuff here I'm sure you’ll love.”
The unicorn smiled and stood up. Selene had already spirited herself away, not looking back to check if Starry was following her. Nothing else was watching out for a little pony.
Starry Nights looked up to the ceiling, which was clear with glass and showed the sunset hues in its full glory. With a flourish of her horn the sky turned from orange to a full purple. Stars twinkled distantly overhead, and the stark white of the moon peeked over the window's edge. With small smile of satisfaction she followed after Selene, ready to begin her first true night in the great city of Knossos.
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Oh, that is interesting worldbuilding
Would love to see what more stories you have planned
11630033
aah thanks, im glad you found it interesting!! mlp is surprisingly a good setting to play around with stuff that isnt strictly high fantasy and it was really fun writing out Minos and (what would realistically be a nightmare to actually live in) Knossos
As was previously said, I enjoyed the world-building. With regards to the secret identity of Starry Night, I think you did an excellent job at hinting who she was. I had my suspicions, but I wasn't certain until the end of the story.
Good work!
A satisfying read. I liked the setting, and the characters's interactions were entertaining.
If I did have to criticize something, the occurrence of "shitty" is rather out of place in the otherwise tame narration.
Other than that, a solid story. Good luck in the contest!
11655184
thank you for reading!!
11656726
l'll keep the language use in mind for later stories. im a little desensitization to "shit" as a swear so i definitely missed the fact that it didn't fit in a story otherwise empty them. anyways thank you!! good luck to you too
That was an enjoyable read. Well done for your first story posted on the site!
As others have mentioned, I found the wordlbuilding quite fun. It's always nice to reach beyond Equestria, and seeing how the events of Nightmare Moon touched other countries was an interesting idea.
And yes, I found the word limit a little bit of a struggle too, but it looks like you covered it well without making the story feel too rushed.
Here and now beginneth your New Blood Contest feedback!
The first thing I'll say is that I liked this a lot. This was in my top five picks contest-wide, and would have won a prize if I was the only judge. So, considering you asked for "Ruthless" feedback, I don't think I can really tear into this the way you might be hoping for.
That is not to say there is nothing to criticize. There are Technical Problems. No obvious typos, but a low level, permeating lack of refinement, which sometimes becomes concrete and identifiable in strange phrases or sentence constructions.
I'll pull one example from the very beginning:
Starry Nights is a "tall unicorn", despite being shorter than everyone around her. These ideas are disconnected. They could be integrated by saying she is tall for a unicorn, and so forth. Also, "periwinkle coat and blue mane so light it almost seemed white" - the lack of a characterization for her mane colour beyond "blue" makes it seem like you meant to say her coat was periwinkle and her mane was a blue so light it was almost white, but this is not done in the original sentence so it's unclear.
Another example from the very end:
Swallow is not a very good speaking verb. Maybe that comma should have been a period, but even then this could be greatly improved with something like "she swallowed her gyro before answering". Perhaps better integration of the delectability of the gyro could be achieved.
These are of course very minor, but while they don't individually change the meaning of the sentences or reduce their narrative quality, in numbers and spread out across the rest of the story, it does have a detrimental effect.
Speaking of narrative quality! Beyond technical concerns, I found the story slightly unsatisfying. The hidden identity of the main character and the recounting of geopolitics and ancient history made me think, all the while I was reading this, that something was going to happen. Maybe Starry Nights would discover what she was looking for in the Museum, or connect with some kind of underground society of moon-worshippers, or, I don't know, lie down on some hotel bed made of stone and deliver a last-minute punchline.
Maybe that's a me problem. This is a Slice of Life, after all. But the meandering nature of the story left many things unresolved in a way that itself felt unresolved, compared to other examples of the genre.
Ah well. You might be thinking that's a lot of stuff I didn't like. What about stuff I did like?
The scene descriptions. The characters. The way you establish the city and its history as vivid and active and messy. How Nightmare Moon's eclipse a thousand years ago affected these people, in their own circumstances, in a believable and important way that nonetheless has absolutely nothing to do with some small tribe of alicorns half a world away.
Aleka is a standout side character, and I love how when Starry introduces herself as a "noble scion", Aleka responds with "single", as if 'noble scion' is some kind of relationship status. And from Aleka's perspective, it must have been weird for some odd foreigner to come up to her and basically go "asl?" in early-modern Minosean.
I like Starry, who, despite being a terminal nerd, endears herself by genuinely trying to understand the situation and sympathize with these strange people. I like Selene, the prototypical gentle giant with deadly hugs that is no less entertaining in its thousandth instance.
I could go on and on some more, describing yet more things I like and don't like, but you probably get the picture by now.
TLDR: This story has some consistent minor technical issues and leaves almost everything unresolved in a way that feels slightly unsatisfying even for a Slice of Life, but presents an invented city with history, complexity, and plenty of character. Good stuff.
And what a great first story! I hope to read more from you in the future.
11741160
addressing what seemed to be the biggest criticism across all boards- even outside of this review- being that the story was meandering and ended on an unsatisfying note (and always as a caveat that the story was enjoyable otherwise, which is always flattering). its been a hot minute since i posted the story. ive reread it with fresh eyes, and though at the time i definitely didn't think it ended on an unsatisfying note, i see why it got the impression it made. so, as a piece of self-criticism to supplement the decidedly un-ruthless review:
"the author is good at introducing ideas and the implication of depth, without being able to execute those ideas fully"
bypassing the typical "buh the word count!" excuse, there were many aspects of this story that i simply didnt think through thoroughly. and things i thought were clear weren't so because those ideas were still stuck in my head. i could have done a better job making starry's inner world a much more pressing part of the story so that the ending of 'well, she's gotta look at the bright side of things' hit a better note, or something or other that would have made the story 'better'
anyhow, i won't turn this reply into an endless stream of 'what if?". past addressing the technical writing problems, which i do appreciate, the extended explanation on the narrative and why it felt like it felt short really did give me a lot to think about, and realize this part of my writing that i hadnt formalized into words until now. so, thank you!! and for reviewing this, and for the nice comments beforehand
Hello! Have a review. My apologies for the belated courtesy note: I've had Covid, but this still should have been quicker. I've always liked FiM's use of Greek mythology, so this fitted right in. Atmospheric, with some interesting world-building. Where it fell down a little for me was the word count limit: there's maybe just too much stuff here to fit comfortably in 4k words. Mind you, as your "first story in pretty much ever that actually had a coherent beginning, middle and end" this isn't a bad start at all. I'm glad you've written more since.