Fluttershy decides to surrogate for a couple, but doesn’t want any extra attention from anypony, and so she simply doesn’t tell anypony else.
This story was written for the New Blood contest. The prompt was “A Secret Life” and this story aims for the fourth bonus. I was compelled to take that prompt as literally as possible.
I submitted this story in the final hours of the contest; it was quite difficult to finish, this being my third or fourth attempt at finishing a story for it, and I had fun.
The cover art is by SNSPony.
Chapters (1)
RRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The story ended abruptly!
It was getting to the good part and then there were no more lines!
This story feels empty without the part where po ies discover the thing
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Agreed! You should definitely work on it and get through Fluttershy’s surrogacy. I’d love to see how she deals with her friends finding out right there at the end, and how she deals with the birth. And of course, will she continue being a surrogate?
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I should probably just rewrite this, yeah. It was rushed, but has other issues. It's not up to my usual quality.
Here's your New Blood Contest feedback!
When I first read this, I looked at the subject matter, the cover image, and your profile, and figured "this must be some fetish shit". I'm still not entirely unconvinced that there's something to that idea, but the story was quite nice. If anything, I wish there was more of it... but I'll get to that.
The story is quite well written, although it is not error-free, mostly related to strange word choice. For example:
...Huh? "Some mares had as their destinies to help in this"?
I think you mean "ruin" the day.
Lack of comma in and out of the quotation, and "It seems" is in the wrong tense.
In sections with lots of dialogue, you've mixed characters' lines together in the same paragraph. This is typically avoided, for good reason. I think it mostly works here, but it gets messy in a few spots, like this:
The "Rainbow Dash interrupted her" part should be properly escaped from dialogue, maybe with dashes to indicate suddenness. However, to be honest, dialogue entry/exit is a huge mess as it is so I can't fault you too hard here.
There's some more of this level of error throughout the story, but not much, which is actually pretty good. And the writing sells the emotional investment and the visceral aspects of pregnancy - the physicality and the psychology of a little you growing in your belly. But even if it was boring and incoherent and full of errors, that would all be overshadowed by the conspicuous, disappointing lack of a proper ending.
The story just... stops. On a joke!
Okay, admittedly this was a good joke, but certainly not "the whole story has been building up to this point" good.
Right from the start, from the first paragraph even, it seems the story is building up to a post-partum tragedy or twist of some variety. I wrote down in my original notes that the first thing Fluttershy mentions is her lack of a special somepony, or a "second half" which completed her. For a story laser-focused on pregnancy, it's easy to imagine it would end with Fluttershy reluctant to give up the foal that's been growing in her for so many months; to resist giving it up, even. Or maybe, after Fluttershy hooves the newborn off on its real parents, she decides she wants one of her own. There are lots of angles for a proper, emotionally satisfying ending.
Am I getting too into this, for someone who doth protest too much at the start? Maybe. But this is the only story in the contest with this issue, so I feel it's notable, and important to mention and criticize.
Even so, thank you for writing this, and for participating in our little contest. I hope you keep writing, and I hope to see more from you in the future.