Ohuaya Ohuaya
Stand up, beat your drum:
give of yourself, know friendship. -Aya!-
Let your hearts be taken
with many colours -Yehuaya!-
only here perhaps are lent to us
our tobacco pipes, our flowers,
Ohuaya Ohuaya.
— Stand Up, Beat Your Drum by Nezahualcoyotl
“The Summer Sun Festival is almost upon us.” The High Priestess’ voice rang out clear and strong over the heads of the crowd.
The sun beat down fiercely upon the ponies thronging in the grand square at the temple’s base, for once unshielded by the verdant growth of the trees that hung low over the streets of Canterlochtitlan. Rainbow Dash shifted her weight from hoof to hoof, knowing what was coming. What the advent of the solstice meant.
“The gods sacrifice themselves,” Raven Inkwell cried, her voice somehow carrying across the square — no magic, no artifice, just a voice redolent with power. As though in giving it to her the gods had known exactly who she would become and what her purpose would be. “They expose their hearts, they rip out the very essence of their beings, day after day.”
A frisson of mingled fear and excitement ruffled Rainbow Dash’s feathers. As always, the movement drew stares. Though everyone was listening to the High Priestess, though everyone was utterly focused, nopony could help staring at Rainbow Dash’s wings. They were a thing of glorious, unmatched beauty, and she knew that as well as anypony else. The blue feathers on her lesser coverts matched the blue of her fur, but beyond that, her primaries and secondaries all blazed with the same rainbow hues as her mane. She was like a bird of paradise born into a family of blackpoll warblers. Once a stallion had told her, voice low and reverential, that she looked almost as though she might be able to fly, like the pegasi of old. This was untrue, of course. No one could fly. That gift had left them eons before, sacrificed as so much else had been in the gods’ endless struggle to keep the universe from collapse. But in terms of raw beauty, Rainbow Dash was unmatched.
“Only the great and continuing sacrifice of the gods sustains the universe. Life is because of the gods. With their sacrifice they give us life.” The priestess was still speaking, her words carrying clearly to every citizen in the square. Behind her, a fresh gout of steam billowed up from the crater of Popocanterpetl Peak, reinforcing the truth of her words. Without the constant intercession of the twin goddesses, the volcano would have consumed Canterlochtitlan long ago.
“Celestia Huitzilopochtli births us, and Luna Meztli nourishes us.” Raven Inkwell paused, letting the silence build to a deafening crescendo. “And what must we do in return?”
“Sacrifice!” howled the crowd, Rainbow Dash adding her own voice to theirs. “Sacrifice, sacrifice!”
“Sacrifice!” echoed the High Priestess. “As the gods give to us, so we must give to them.”
She raised her hoof, and then let it fall. The clop of it against the stone echoed like a drumbeat across the square. She repeated the action, and Rainbow Dash followed suit. More and more ponies joined in until the thunder of ten thousand hooves seemed to shake the temple to its very foundations.
“It is time for nextlahualli!” cried the priestess atop the pyramid, the volcano rising like a vast dark mirror behind it.
“The payment,” Rainbow Dash called, in a ritual as old as time. “It's time to pay our debts.”
“Bring forth the payment!”
Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure if the demand came from the High Priestess, the crowd, or her own throat — it seemed to come from the earth, the sky, the city itself. Popocanterpetl Peak was smoking, oozing fire into the sky. The sun goddess was thirsty, and she needed blood to slake her thirst.
Finally, the beastkeeper emerged from the shadowy doorway at the temple’s base. A diminutive yellow mare, leading a jaguar that followed her docile as a lamb. She began to climb the stairs, the jaguar at her heels, and the crowd roared — a primal, savage roar louder than any the jaguar could have produced.
Fluttershy’s head turned to look over her shoulder — not down at the crowd, Rainbow Dash knew, but at the jaguar that she led to its death. Rainbow Dash was not close enough to make out her friend’s expression, but she knew that there would be tears in her eyes. Fluttershy was a beastkeeper of incredible skill: no animal ever sickened in her care, or died before it could be properly given to the gods. But for every charge she raised and released into its proper destiny, she always wept.
The two small figures reached the pyramid’s peak, where Raven Inkwell waited. She gestured, and Fluttershy whispered into the jaguar’s ear. Obediently, it climbed onto the great stone alter and rolled onto its back. Fluttershy stood back, and the drumming hooves beat faster and faster — a frenzied cacophony of sound losing all sense of rhythm.
“Celestia!” called Rainbow Dash and thousands of others. Begging for her to look at them. To see them, and to accept the gift they were giving her. “Celestia Huitzilopochtli!”
The jaguar lay still and unresisting, and the long flint knife flashed over Raven Inkwell’s head. It was the signal for silence, and suddenly all was deathly quiet.
Raven Inkwell barely seemed to raise her voice, but Rainbow Dash heard her as clearly as though she was standing beside her. “As the gods sacrifice themselves for us, as their hearts are exposed, we expose ours to them.”
Rainbow Dash’s heart thudded painfully within her chest as she heard those words. A pang as strong as a knife piercing her chest — as though her heart, that little fragment of the sun that the goddess had bequeathed to her at the moment of her creation, already knew its fate. As though it wanted to rejoin the great mother who sustained them all.
The knife came down, Fluttershy hid her face, and then the pulsing red ruby in the jaguar’s chest was held aloft and Rainbow Dash was screaming her joy aloud with everypony else, wishing with all her might that she could take flight, to circle the temple and display her beautiful feathers to everypony, to show the goddess just how much she loved her.
“It is time!” Raven Inkwell declared, the blood that dotted her stark white fur visible even from this distance. A cruel, violent red. “The Summer Sun Festival is fourteen days from today. The stars have aligned. The goddess calls for her bride, and the Flower Wars must commence!”
Ponies were beside themselves with delight, howling their adoration, ululating, pulling maguey thorns from nowhere to pierce holes into their fur — their tongues, their ear lobes, their wings, their chests — offering up their own blood alongside the jaguar’s. Offering it to the volcano and the goddess who commanded it.
Rainbow Dash felt the priestess’ words reverberate deep within. The Flower Wars. Her destiny.
There was a truth deep inside her, one that she had known almost from the moment she had learned to walk. Beauty is for the gods. Beauty must be sacrificed. Rainbow Dash was beautiful, the most beautiful pony to be born in a century — and so her fate was sealed. Beauty must be sacrificed, and so Rainbow Dash must die.
Stand up, my friend,
elated take your flowers to the drum:
your bitterness flees.
Adorn yourself with them:
the flowers raise their heads,
cocoa flowers of precious gold -Aya!-
are being scattered,
Ohuaya Ohuaya.
— Stand Up, Beat Your Drum by Nezahualcoyotl
“I just — I don’t understand.” There was anger in those green eyes, but there were tears, too.
“So don’t understand,” Rainbow Dash said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter if you do or not.”
And it shouldn’t have mattered. What was Applejack to her? Barely even a friend. Not like Fluttershy was.
And yet when Rainbow Dash had trotted up the steep road to the farming district, the rich wheatgrass dampening her belly, she had expected something different. A smile. A congratulations. An affirmation: this is what you were born for. I’m proud of you.
But all she got was recriminations. Confusion.
“Is this — is this why you never…?” Applejack couldn’t seem to bring herself to finish the sentence, and Rainbow Dash could not find the words to do it for her.
She knew, of course. She knew that Applejack loved her. Had loved her since they were fillies. Being loved was nothing new to Rainbow Dash, who had been marked as chosen from the moment of her birth. Ponies sought out the beautiful, the blessed. Stallions and mares alike had thrown themselves at her hooves since she was a teenager.
But Applejack had been different.
Her coat was plain and orange, her cutie mark an unassuming piece of fruit. She worked the tiered fields that ranged around the sides of Popocanterpetl Peak from dawn to dusk, using her skill and her talent to bring forth bounty from the rich volcanic soil where earth pony magic no longer could. A mare like Rainbow Dash shouldn’t have looked twice at her.
And yet…she had. She had looked more than twice. Something about that broad back, those strong shoulders, drew her back, day after day. She pretended to be looking for wild fruit, for bananas for her mother — or to be hunting small game for Fluttershy’s beasts. But no matter her destination, her route always seemed to take her past a certain orchard planted with apple trees.
And then when Applejack had noticed, she hadn’t hungered in the way other ponies did. She wasn’t like Fluttershy’s brother, who had tried to take things that Rainbow Dash had known all her life must be reserved for the goddess. Applejack had been content just to talk. To spend time together.
She was so good at understanding, usually. Any problem Rainbow Dash brought to her, she listened and helped to resolve. She gave such good advice.
But now —
“It’s such a waste,” Applejack said, voice tight.
“A waste?” Rainbow Dash repeated, aghast. “A waste to serve the goddess? To save everypony?”
Applejack huffed. Glanced left and right, making sure they were alone, then muttered in a low voice. “There was a year, decades ago, that my granny remembers. A year the priestesses didn’t do the sacrifice. Didn’t give the goddess her bride.”
Rainbow Dash stared. “That’s impossible.”
“But the world didn’t end,” Applejack said fiercely. “Popocanterpetl Peak didn’t erupt. It kept on smoking same as always, but it didn’t erupt.”
“You’re — you’re lying,” Rainbow Dash realised suddenly. She would never have thought it possible. That Applejack — who prided herself on her truthfulness and honesty — would lie, just to cheat Rainbow Dash of her destiny?
Disappointment flooded through her, heavy and nauseating. She had thought she knew Applejack, but she had been wrong.
Heartsick, she turned her face away. “I have a responsibility.”
“You don’t!” Applejack’s heavy hoof came down on her shoulder, as though she intended to physically restrain her.
Rainbow Dash moved sharply away. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re not — you’re not beautiful.”
Applejack gasped — in anger or in pain Rainbow Dash was not sure. She didn’t hang around to find out, either. Just began to gallop, fleeing blindly, crashing through crop and wild jungle-plant alike, pumping her useless wings and wishing, for the millionth time, that the goddess had not taken back her gift to ponykind. But it was a sacrifice, as so much else had been. A sacrifice to keep the world standing, to keep the stars wheeling overhead. To keep the ponies of Canterlochtitlan and the entire world alive.
The goddess would understand, even if Applejack could not. It was her duty to fight in the flower wars, and to triumph. To emerge unsullied as the bride of Celestia Huitzilopochtl.
Brushing through the final curtain of thick waxy leaves, green as life itself, Rainbow Dash looked down at the arena where she would face her fate.
Beautifully sing here
the turquoise bird, the quetzal, the trogon:
the macaw’s song presides, and
all the jingling rattles and drums answer,
Ohuaya Ohuaya.
— Stand Up, Beat Your Drum by Nezahualcoyotl
The bodies lay scattered on the floor. Blood ran in little rivulets over the stone flags, over the sweat-matted fur of Rainbow Dash’s legs, pooling at her hooves. She was winded and breathing hard, her spear broken in two, the flint blade still embedded in the side of the graceful unicorn who had once been called Fleur de Lis.
The most beautiful of Canterlochtitlan’s youth, slain and slaughtered. Flowers plucked too soon, their petals already withering away as they lay battered and broken on the ground.
But Rainbow Dash was unmarked. Her beauty whole and entire beneath the blood that marred her. She turned in place, letting them see her. She knew that even in the dust and the chaos, her feathers and her mane would shine like jewels. Her eyes slid over Fluttershy, weeping in the ranks of the junior priestesses. Over a small group of farmers, away from the pony who she knew would be there, pained beyond measure on this most wonderful of days. Away from her accusing green eyes.
Rainbow Dash didn’t look at the ponies, her fellow mortals. Not even at the High Priestess, who would deliver her from their realm. In spirit, she was already beyond it, flying forever with the goddess who was said to have a mane like hers.
She stared up at the volcano, at Popocanterpetl Peak, and she was free.
A mare with a white coat came to clean her. She was bathed and washed and anointed with the most costly perfumes. She was combed and preened and made even more beautiful. As if that was possible, darling, the unicorn mare joked, not seeming to notice that Rainbow Dash looked straight through her. The mare shampooed her tail, and then shyly lifted her heavy purple coiffure to reveal an eyeless socket. I tried my hoof at the flower wars too. Twice. It wasn’t meant to be. Sadness suffused her features, and then she let the mane fall, hiding the disfigurement once more. But you — you are more beautiful than I ever was, darling. The goddess will be so pleased with her bride this year. Rainbow Dash nodded and smiled. It was like it was all happening to somepony else.
She was led forth from the most luxurious rooms the temple had to offer — she was decked with flowers, feted with songs and gifts. She handed out blessings and feasted with the priests and the nobility. She promised six rich summers and six good harvests. She dedicated a temple to Luna Meztli and laid the first stone.
And then she was taken into the square, atop the great pyramid that stood higher than the most ancient trees, higher than everything but Popocanterpetl Peak itself, and the entire city screamed her name.
They began to chant, and she descended the steps. They brought forth music and dancers, and the procession formed. Priestesses went before and behind her, singing to the goddess. Ohuaya Ohuaya, we bring to you your bride.
Then somepony stepped forward from the crowd, her hair mussed and her face red with crying. The priestesses would have kept moving, but Rainbow Dash froze in place. Her legs locked up, like she was suddenly rooted to the floor.
Applejack’s eyes were tortured. “Please, Rainbow Dash. Don’t.”
For the first time since the Flower Wars, Rainbow Dash felt her lips open. “You knew I was meant for this. My whole life.”
“It’s not true,” Applejack sobbed. “Please. You don’t have to do this. The goddess wouldn’t — she doesn’t want you to die. I know it. I know it as sure as I know seeds come up in spring.”
“Get back,” snarled one of the warrior-priests, shoving her with the shaft of his spear. “Speaking to the goddess’ bride is forbidden.”
Rainbow Dash stared at Applejack and heard the words as clearly as if she had screamed them. She was meant to be my bride.
And all she could do, as the guards respectfully bowed their heads and pointed the way onwards, through the city and up to Popocanterpetl Peak, was lift one flightless wing and let it fall in a helpless shrug. Why would the gods make me this way, unless they wanted me back?
The huehuetl drums began to play again, the rhythm catching Rainbow Dash back in its snare, and she began to dance again. Ponies sang and laughed, strewing flower petals into her path, nearly as bright as her feathers. Ohuaya Ohuaya.
The edges of Canterlochtitlan began to fade away, stone houses and squawking parakeets giving way to tiered fields and trees heavy with fruit. The road grew steeper and the air grew warm. Rainbow Dash felt sweat prickle beneath her fur and welcomed the sensation. Celestia Huitzilopochtli was calling her. Ohuaya Ohuaya. The song grew louder, more joyous.
Rainbow Dash stood poised on the edge of the Temple of the Summer Sun. The altar was a long piece of black stone, blacker than Luna Meztli’s night, projecting out over the crater. The people were crowding onto the steps outside, thousands of ponies, a river of colour and music that flowed almost all the way back to Canterlochtitlan. The priests barely held them back, laughing and singing along with them. Happiness suffused the air like a drug, and Rainbow Dash felt drunk on it. Ohuaya Ohuaya! There was hardly any lingering aftertaste of sadness — of the mare who had loved her. No. She was doing what she had been born to do. She was performing an action so selfless, so beatific, that only the gods themselves could compete with it.
She was doing the right thing.
“Now, child,” said Raven Inkwell, and Rainbow Dash stepped onto the altar.
The obsidian was cold beneath her hooves, and she turned to face the crowd. Flared her wings, and let them all see her, witness her beauty. The air was thick with the scent of pomegranates, of rich nectar and orchid-blossoms. Ohuaya Ohuaya! She was the finest thing Canterlochtitlan had ever produced, that the goddess had ever given them, and now they were giving her back.
Everything was as it was meant to be.
“Go to her,” whispered the High Priestess. “Go to the goddess, little bride. Give to her our love.”
And Rainbow Dash turned to face her destiny.
One step, two. Three, and she was beyond the temple walls, suspended over nothing. Four, and the heat was blistering, burning her skin. Five, and the edges of her feathers were beginning to singe. Ohuaya Ohuaya! The rattles and the whistles, the voices raised in song — it was a crescendo, yet somehow muted and far behind her. There was only the volcano, there was only Popocanterpetl and the goddess at its heart.
“Celestia Huitzilopochtli,” Rainbow Dash murmured, tasting on her lips the name of the pony she was promised to. Applejack, echoed a tiny voice at the back of her mind. Mercilessly, she crushed it. Cried louder, “Celestia Huitzilopochtli!”
The ponies in the temple called the words back to her, a tinny echo, impossibly distant.
Rainbow Dash spread her stunted wings out to their fullest extent, and launched herself. Fire belched up from below, reaching to embrace her, and Rainbow Dash flew.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Mica · 11k words · 65 4 · 563 views
- Shaslan · 7.5k words · 41 6 · 436 views
- Undome Tinwe · 4.4k words · 83 8 · 729 views
- SilverNotes · 50k words · 68 1 · 773 views
- Shaslan · 1k words · 13 0 · 101 views
- Estee · 7.5k words · 112 2 · 1.1k views
- Zontan · 11k words · 32 2 · 421 views
Stats
Page generated in 0.102 seconds
Total duration
986 users online
271,090 hits today, 2,167,270 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I said it at EFNW but I'll say it again: you have a wonderful talent for making AUs (especially in speedwrite environments) that feel distinct, fleshed out, and still familiar despite what makes them their own. The mythology that's drawn upon here is implemented with the ponies we know so well, facets of who they are in the show shining through despite the different place they live in.
Of course, that's not to diminish the emotional core here. It's a wonderful tragedy, that despite hoping it could have ended differently I knew could only have one outcome. Congratulations again, Shaslan!
Definitely a no-brainer to give you the win. Excellent work!
Celestia's gotta be getting real tired of this.
It's kind of flawless.. out of curiosity how much time was allotted to write this
11668949
2 hours, same as all the other iron author stories - though i did spend the first 30 minutes frantically googling aztec culture
Howdy, hi~!
Banger story. I love the interweaving of Aztec myth into the FIM world. The roles you've picked for canon characters feel so appropriate. I love this stunning glimpse into a strange world unlike that of the show. Its so emotionally tense and a riveting read with beautiful interwoven culture. Excellent read, thanks~!
I like the uplifting ending. Definitely deserves the win, bravó!
I was in awe listening to this, baffled by how you managed to write something so good in such a short amount of time. Well earned!
I am still in awe over this. excellent Iron Author entry worth of every ounce of praise it received.
Never going to forget the first time hearing this story. Incredible in every way, and entirely deserving of first place.
This was amazing! This is the kind of story that just knocks you out of your chair, and absolutely deserved the win. The amount of worldbuilding that went into it is insane and it feels absolutely genuine. I could picture everything when Xepher did the reading of it.
Congratulations on a fantastic story!
This is one of the most orginal and entertaining MLP stories I have ever read. Aztec ponies. I'd love to read more stories of this type.
I feel so privileged to have gotten to hear this one early,
failed attempts at pronunciation and all.I'm so glad it got the first place it so richly deserves.Everyone’s already commented on how great the world building is, so I won’t talk too much about it, but DAMN, nice work! Felt real! And stuff. Coolsies. Something else I’ll say is that we’ve seen a lot of Greece and Rome and medieval Europe and all that, but Aztecs are a completely new thing, at least to my eyes. Very very creative!
This was a fantastic story at the Iron Author Competition, and it's still a fantastic story now. I'm still amazed you were able to come up with this in two hours! Congrats again on a well deserved win!
Amazing work. This is a presentation of the setting I have never seen before and I'm not sure anyone has attempted before. A well-deserved win.
How did you write this in 2 hours???
I can barely write half as much in double the time.
This is gud.
An absolutely amazing ride from start to finish! That you put this stunning work together in barely two hours makes this an even more impressive feat. A very, very well deserved 1st place win!
Hope to see you again next year!
-Vic
(aka Grand Moff Pony)
I would've gone with Ponecatepetl but can't complain. Congrats for the win!
Interesting story and very unique but not to my taste.
It loses something without Xepher struggling through the pronunciation of half of the proper nouns.
In all seriousness, magnificent work. You absolutely deserved the gold on this one. Seriously, not just creating a fleshed out AU but also folding in poetry in the scene breaks? Absolutely insane. Congrats, and thank you for bringing it to Fimfic.
It deserved the win, and I am glad to see you sharing this work with the world now. Once again Congrats, and to everyone else, quit picking on poor Xepher
Hearing this read at the end of Iron Author absolutely blew me away. This is genuinely some next-level stuff, hon, you'd better be proud of it 👏
I think my favorite part is, for all its flare and intricate writing and unique world, at it's heart this is a simple story. Dash's duty gets in the way of her love—that notion is one of the best kind of narratives for a reason. What we believe vs what we want, duty vs love, self-respest vs the respect of a loved one.
Duty vs love. Such a simple, powerful, painful narrative, presented in a totally unique style and setting. Congrats again on the win, girl. You earned it 🙏🙏🙏
Oh, and that cover art is gorgeous btw
This is so powerful, I felt like I was actually there for a moment. My gosh, just amazing.
I feel so blessed to be able to read your writing, Shas. ☺️ Even more so for this one, as one of the first to hear it read aloud, and by you no less!
This story is incredibly immersive and poignant--largely thanks to the artistic imagery and the evocative wording that paints such a painfully beautiful image. But more than that, it's also excellent worldbuilding, stellar characterization, and wonderful storytelling to boot.
If you ever end up writing more in this universe, I am the MOST down to read it. Them. All. All the many things.
I don't think I even need to say it was a well-deserved win, but I think it's good to hear it again (and again and again).
A wonderful, wonderful AU crafted under time pressure, but that pressure simply let this diamond shine more brightly!
Heard this read at EFNW. Truly an amazing story- even more so when you consider that it was written in under 2 hours!
So glad I got a chance to read this after hearing Xepher narrate it at EFNW. This story floored me when I first heard it, and it reverberated no less with me upon reading it now. Your writing flows so smoothly and easily with such evocative, vivid language... Both hearing and reading it, I could so clearly picture the story and society you portrayed in a little over 3K words. For such a short story, it feels like a journey to me, one whose ambiguous ending (at least it is to me) packs such an echoing punch that I found myself thinking about it several times between the Iron Author ceremony and now.
Wow. Just wow.
The fact that you planned, wrote, completed, and edited this story in all of two hours demonstrates some really impressive talent. You should be proud! 🙏I'll definitely be checking out your other stories.
I don't think I'll say anything here that hasn't already been said several times, but +1 to just absolutely loving how richly detailed this AU was -- and yet, also how grounded it was in the ponies that we knew; RD and the others were all so perfectly themselves seen through the lens of the different situations and pressures of this AU, which is one of my favorite things about well-done AUs. (Which this very much was.)
+1 also to being particularly pleased to have had a chance to hear it read aloud, stumbling over the Aztec words and all. Amazing story, and an incredibly well-deserved win. :)
Stories like this are why we hold an Iron Author competition at every Everfree Northwest.
The fact that someone can write this in two hours, away from home, in an unfamiliar environment, under pressure, is an inspiration to us all and a powerful testament to the creative wealth of this community.
Every year, people rise to the challenge and impress us, and this is a spectacular example. Well done, Shaslan. Well done.
I haven't stopped thinking about this since I heard it read at Everfree, mangled pronunciations and all. That you did this in two hours is extraordinary and you more than earned the award.
Absolutely superb. It's a damn shame I didn't make it to Everfree Northwest because I would have loved to hear you read this. This is a fantastic story and I'm blown away that you wrote it in only 2 hours.
Nice~♡ Raven has the Royal Canterlot Voice in this~♡
In some ways this story was predictable... But it's also very well written! Wow... These types of stories are not my thing, and yet I read it all the way thought!
It has a happier ending than what I was expecting. When I read that Rainbow Dash was going to be a " Bride of Celestia Huitzilopochtli" I thought Raven was going to skin Rainbow Dash and wear her skin. (Like in the Founding Myth of Tenochtilan)
Haven't read yet, but:
11668959
11669217
Daring Do adventures in... well getting Mayan and Aztec mixed in with each other is such a common thing it is a TVTrope* but in any case she adventures in ruins like those from Central America I am fairly sure.
*Caution: Trope responsibly, loss of time may result. (Informal education in literature may also result, but that is usually considered a plus.)
absolutely incredible stuff here. love the world you managed to build in such a limited space, especially rainbow as a character and how she fits into this world—im normally very neutral on rainbow dash, but i really enjoyed her portrayal in this. shes a pony who’s confident in who she is and what she was meant for, but in all the ways we as readers know is “wrong”, which makes applejack’s pain even more bitter to experience knowing rainbow doesnt need to throw her life away.
the ambiguity with the ending too is wonderful, tying all the way back to the start with the line about not being able to fly. i love me some ambiguity in storytelling and this hits all the right spots. again, fantastic work, and congrats on the well-deserved win!
Hello! Have a review. I'm not the first reader to feel this way, but I'm absolutely blown away that you wrote this in two hours. Spectacular world-building and a deeply memorable story in pretty much every respect. Thank you. Liked, faved, five-starred, the lot.
I just realized I never actually commented on this story, which is still awesomely heart-breaking the second time around. A well-earned win for Iron Author.
This one blew me away. A skillful mixture of MLP and Aztec mythology surrounding a dark and bittersweet story of two conflicting and irreconcilable loves--one of a pony, one of a god--was up there among the best short stories I've ever heard, pony or not. And I remember talking to you in person after you won... I was expecting someone who had done IRL work with mesoamerican lore or anthropology... and you had spent the first 30 minutes of the contest researching all the Aztec stuff!
Aztec mythology is both strangely horrifying to our modern sensibilities and absolutely, iron-cladly, consistent. The Aztecs truly believed that sacrifice of this kind was the only thing keeping their world from ending. It is wonderfully fertile ground for storytelling.
An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!
I'm pretty sure the goddesses are screaming on both anger and frustration right now.
My interpretation of the ending:
The updraft of the hot volcano gave Rainbow the final push to figure out how to fly.
The ponies (including the High Priestess) were amazed, thinking the goddesses had returned the gift of flying.
Then they interpreted this event as the goddesses no longer wanting sacrifices, instead wanting the ponies to live happily together.
Rainbow Dash made the first step by becoming good friends with a lowly farmer named Applejack.
Cheesy, I know.
But whatever.
Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.
Especially the ambiguity of the ending was very well done.
But one thing I still don't understand:
What is this "Flower War" about?
A contest who is the best fighter?
Have a song about ponies doing happy rituals:
11725319
The flower wars were an Aztec practice - from what I understand it was ritualised warfare between two nations or city-states where they all followed special rules, used less lethal weapons, and captured people from the enemy nation were often used as sacrifices. I adapted that into a more hunger games style thing where they're competing to become the sacrifice.
The Wikipedia page on it is pretty interesting:
link
I love the video
You can has review!
A super unique idea, if not exactly a happy one, but then again Aztec mythos wasn't exactly fluff and rainbows. Hearing you made this in two hours is pretty darn impressive.