Sweeping Up the Shards

by AugieDog

3 - Securing

Heading back seemed to go a lot quicker even though Sandbar didn't think he was walking any faster. Of course, carrying one of his best friends in the world the whole way might've made a difference, especially since he could tell that Gallus had really wanted to talk. Instead, Sandbar found himself babbling things out loud that Ocellus was whispering to him. "It's okay, Gallus, you poor kitty cat. You just hang on, and we'll get you home and warm and something to eat and everything."

Ice rippled along Sandbar's back to see Gallus completely exhausted, burrs and mud in his fur, his ears tight against his head, his paws shaking where his claws were digging into the front of Sandbar's shirt. Then Fluttershy's house was ahead, and Sandbar almost sprinted across the grass to push the gate open.

Yona was standing right inside, her eyes wide, a halo of Ocellus's bees whirling around her head. "Husband bring Gallus in, set him on blanket, then get cat food."

"Water first," Gallus said, still a tight ball in Sandbar's arms. "Cold to drink and warm to wash in. Then we gotta get back out there."

"But what—?" Sandbar started.

"Inside," Smolder growled. "This neighborhood's weirdly deserted, but knowing our luck, some human'll come walking by right when we're all yammering."

Sandbar nodded, realized he was still holding her leash, dropped it, stepped through the gate, and pulled it closed behind him. Another dozen or so steps brought him to the back yard, and he carried Gallus over to the blanket, the swarm of bees getting larger with each passing second. "Ocellus?" he asked. "Is there...more of you now?"

The bees swirled into her shape the way they had before, but there were a bunch left over. They sort of squeezed in, though, making Ocellus almost as big as King Thorax. "I think so?" Ocellus's voice went up at the end, turning the answer into a question. "Some of the local bees are getting caught up in whatever magical field is keeping me me. And with what Princess Twilight said about Equestrian magic tangling things up over here, that might be bad."

Sandbar could only nod.

Then something big and furry pushed against his side. "Water, please, Husband," Yona said. "Cold and warm in separate bowls like Gallus asked."

"Right, right, right." Sandbar went into Fluttershy's kitchen, rummaged out three metal pans, used the 'hot' and 'cold' taps on the sink—good thing that was also the same as back home—grabbed a can of the cat food he'd seen earlier, pulled the lid off—these finger things were definitely neat—and dumped the fishy-smelling stuff into the third pan.

He grabbed a towel from a rack in the kitchen and stepped back out onto the brick of the patio with everything somehow balanced in his arms in time to hear Gallus say, "...spent that whole first day tracking her scent, but I found her just after nightfall. She was already in that cage in the human Zecora's house, and it took me another day to figure out how to get inside—Zecora's got two dogs, see, a big green one and a big red one—"

"Please don't be Garble," Smolder muttered.

Gallus gave a chuckle that almost sounded like one of his regular ones. "She calls them Gostir and Razer, so no worries there. At least, no worries unless you're a cat trying to sneak into their house. Oh, thanks, Sandbar."

Sandbar set the pans down beside the blanket, and Gallus ate and drank while going on with his story: "When I did finally manage to crawl in through a loose screen in one of the attic windows, I only got, like, half a minute with Silverstream before the dogs chased me out. I told her I was gonna get her out and get her home, and she didn't even look at me, didn't even open her eyes. She just said, 'I don't have a home anymore.'" He paused, stepping into the warm water bowl and combing mud out his chest fur with his claws. "I mean, we've all seen her feeling down before. But this?" He shook his head. "This was something else."

Sloshing out of the water much cleaner but dripping, Gallus rolled around on the towel, but in the end, Sandbar had to use his hands and fingers again to rub Gallus dry, something that made Sandbar's face heat up. Gallus kept talking, though: "I asked her what she meant, and she finally looked at me. 'Go back,' she said. 'I'm staying here.' I blinked at her and said, 'I'm not gonna leave you!' And then, well, then there was barking and jumping and running and maybe a little hissing and slashing, but I crashed out through the same attic window without getting more than shaken around a little."

He sighed, lapped at the drinking bowl, then slumped onto the blanket. "I thought about heading back to Equestria and getting help, but, I mean, Silverstream was just so out of it, and I didn't want her to think I'd abandoned her. So I hung around in the bushes across the street and waved whenever she looked up. I tried a couple more times to get into the house, but Zecora fixed that one screen and none of the others were loose. And the princess gave me a direct order not to contact the humans if I came through the portal as an animal."

With a shake of his head, he sat up again. "I knew Princess Twilight would be working the problem from her end, so yeesh, am I glad to see you guys." He looked around, ending—Sandbar once more couldn't help but notice—with him. "But what're we gonna do?"

Blinking back at Gallus, Sandbar couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Fortunately, Yona was there. "Silverstream say no home anymore." She swung her big head from Smolder to Ocellus. "She get news from Mt. Aris or Seaquestria lately? Her family okay?"

That got Smolder blinking. "She didn't mention anything."

A group of bees roughly Ocellus's regular size had settled at the far end of the blanket, but more formed a cloud above and around her. "Silverstream gets letters all the time from her mom and dad and Terramar, but she only ever shares funny stories in the teachers' lounge." A shudder dislodged some of her upper bees, and more swarmed in to take their places. "Still, guys, I think we really need to hurry here. I'm kind of losing track of which bees I came with and which ones I'm picking up..."

Sandbar's back did more shivering. "Okay." He pulled the book from his pocket. "I'm gonna write to the princess and see if she can find out what might've happened with the hippogriffs that got Silverstream so upset. I'll leave the book here with you guys to wait for the answer, but in the meantime, me and Smolder'll head over to Zecora's."

He swallowed and reached for the end of the leash still attached to Smolder's collar. "I'll try to convince Zecora that Silverstream's my pet bird who escaped at the same time that Gallus did. We were out looking for them this morning, found them both, brought Gallus home—in case, y'know, she saw us in front of her house earlier—and now we're back for Silverstream."

Swallowing again, he turned to Ocellus. "Are the bees still under your control? Can you put, like, three in my hair to whisper to me whatever Princess Twilight's answer is whenever it comes through? Then maybe I can figure out something to say to Silverstream that'll convince her to come with us. If Zecora'll even let me in..." He set the leash down, opened the book, and started writing an update and his question.

"Okay," he vaguely heard Smolder saying. "Gallus, can you use the pen with your claws? Or Yona? Have you tried mouthwriting like you would at home? 'Cause the princess might need more info after we leave."

Yona's snort washed over Sandbar, the wonderful sensation nearly enough to distract him. "Pen too small," she said. "Or Yona too big. Either way, pen likely end up down Yona's throat."

"I'll try," Gallus said. "Maybe I can prop it up against my chest and use both front paws to move it along the paper."

"Good." The shadow of Smolder's dog head moved across the book. "Are you still holding it together, Ocellus? Can you send a couple bees along like Sandbar asked?"

"Yeah, but it...it's almost like I've got too much control, like I'm overriding their natural instincts and making them leave their hives. I even think I'm starting to feel ladybugs and grasshoppers and ants and crickets wriggling around the edges of me. It...it might be better if I head back to the portal right now before I take over more of the ecosystem."

Sandbar scrawled a question mark at the end of his entry and pressed the book down onto the blanket with the page open. "We need you to keep us connected, Ocellus, so hang on, okay? Hopefully, we can wrap this up in, like, the next half hour, then we can all get back home." He wrapped his fingers around the leash again and nodded to Smolder. "You ready?"

She leaped onto all fours, her tail wagging. "Let's go get Silverstream!"

---

The bees crawling over his neck kinda held Sandbar's attention during the brisk walk back to human Zecora's place, but they finally settled into the shaggy hair above and behind his right ear. "Okay," Ocellus whispered. "Princess Twilight wrote that she hasn't heard about anything major happening with the hippogriffs, but she's checking with the diplomatic corps and will get right back to us."

"Thanks," Sandbar muttered. They were still maybe a block-and-a-half away from Zecora's house, but the big tree in her back yard was growing closer with each step. Unable to keep quiet, he lowered his voice and went on. "Mostly, I'm just gonna go with telling Silverstream how we're with her no matter what, how she doesn't have to run away to a whole different universe 'cause something bad's going on, and how we can work through any problem if we just stick together. That'll be a place to start at least."

At the other end of the leash, Smolder gave a sharp nod, something that made Sandbar feel better. Because if she thought he was being stupid, she would definitely let him know.

Swallowing, he stepped off the curb, then remembered to look for any cars coming. None were, so he kept going to the corner, then turned right and crossed again so he was on the same side of the street as Zecora's house. The house itself wasn't all that much bigger than the others around it, but the tree looming up from behind it really made him feel like it was crouching there, waiting to leap down and grab him. And seeing Silverstream slumped in her pink parrot shape behind the bars of the cage in the front window got him shivering again. Considering what Gallus had said—

Something tugged him forward, almost pulling him off his feet. He blinked, realized he'd stopped on the sidewalk. Smolder was looking back at him and jerking her head—and the leash—in the direction of the house.

Right. With another swallow, he picked up his weird feet one after the other till he reached the little stone path that led from the sidewalk to the house's front steps, turned to start up it—

And barking burst out inside, a frenzied sound like nothing Sandbar had ever heard before.

Smolder, stretching a front leg out in front of her, stopped, pulled back, and kind of curled the leg against her chest. She shook her head, though, put her paw forward again, and Sandbar, fighting the urge to turn around and run in any other direction, followed her to the stairs.

He climbed the three steps to the porch that reached along the front of the house almost to Silverstream's window and noticed for the first time the three or four wooden masks hanging from the walls. They didn't seem nearly as friendly as the ones he remembered from the couple times he'd visited Zecora's hut back home, but he crossed the porch, picturing a tornado of teeth on the other side of the door, extended a finger, and poked the doorbell button.

Or at least he assumed it was the doorbell button. Knowing his luck, it'd be the switch to open the door...

Some chimes rang inside, so that was good. Except that it got the dogs even more riled up.

But a whistle went off somewhere in the house, high and sharp enough that Sandbar swore he felt his frozen human ears move, trying to block the sound. Smolder's ears clenched to sides of her head, and she actually took half a step back, something she hadn't done even when the dogs started barking.

At the whistle, though, the barking cut off like scissors had been involved, and the rattling clatters that came from the door made him think locks were getting undone. He glanced down at Smolder, but she was staring at the door, every part of her radiating discomfort. Sandbar thought seriously about just grabbing Smolder and breaking for the sidewalk, but then the door was opening, a human woman about his same height standing there.

She was Zecora, all right. Of course, he'd never met any other zebras, but her dark skin, gray-and-black patterned hair, and gold bands at her neck, ears, and forearms spoke volumes. Her voice seemed really familiar, too, after she looked him up and down for a long moment and said, "Good morning, sir. How can I help? And please forgive my doggies' yelp."

Two things struck him immediately. She hadn't called him by name, so the human version of her didn't know the human version of him—if there was one. And she apparently still spoke in rhymes here.

The second one seemed odder than the first, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. Zecora was pushing the door open a little wider, and the two monstrous dogs squatting with their teeth bared on the floor behind her pretty much grabbed every ounce of his attention. Like Gallus had said, one was red and the other was green, both sleek, well-muscled, and about as scary as anything Sandbar had seen all year.

Something started twitching at his hand, and he almost leaped backward with a cry, thinking one of the dogs must've grabbed him and was trying to pull him inside. But both the dogs were still sitting behind Zecora, and a glance down showed him Smolder looking up at him and tugging on the leash with her teeth.

Ah. He'd been standing and staring again. So he cleared his throat even though there wasn't anything there to clear and said, "Yeah, okay, thanks, Ms., uhh, Zecora, isn't it?"

Her eyes maybe narrowed a bit—Sandbar couldn't manage to look away from the big dogs for long enough to judge. "My reputation must precede, for that's the name I'm called indeed."

Ocellus's voice buzzed in his ear: "Introduce yourself! We're still waiting on word from the princess!"

"Sandbar!" He hadn't meant to blurt it, but, well, it was too late now. "I'm Sandbar," he went on in what he hoped was a less-panicky voice. "I just— I was out looking for— Some of my...my pets escaped a couple days ago is the thing, and when I found my cat Gallus in the bushes across the street this morning, I saw Silverstream, my, uhh, my pet bird in the cage in your window." He tried to smile, but he felt it going wrong almost before it started. Trying to stop whatever his face might've been doing didn't work at all, and he had no idea what sort of expression he ended up aiming at her.

Her eyes definitely narrowed this time. "So Silverstream: is that her name? You brought a way to prove this claim?"

He wanted to step back, look along the porch to his left at the big picture window, and see if Silverstream had responded at all to the sound of his voice and him mentioning the others. But most of his body seemed really uninterested in taking his gaze away from the dogs. "I, uhh—" And even as the words that formed in his brain shot out over his tongue, his arms started twitching, trying to fling his hands up to cover his mouth. "Could I come in and talk to her? I know she'll respond if she hears and sees me."

Zecora stood with one hand resting on the door frame and looked at him for what felt like twenty or thirty minutes but was probably only a couple seconds. "Your dog respects commands you gave? She'll hearken? Sit? Obey? Behave?"

"Who?" Sandbar asked, but another tug at his hand made him look down at Smolder glaring up at him. "Oh! Right! Yeah, Smolder's great! She's smarter'n me most of the time!"

That at last got a tiny smile tugging at Zecora's weird human face, and she stepped back, pushed the door open even wider. "Then enter, please. We'll talk and see if you've been speaking honestly." She turned to her dogs and gave a quieter set of trilling whistles. They stood simultaneously, their ears still folded and their teeth still showing, and shuffled backwards down the hallway that Sandbar could now see on the other side of the door. "My Razer knows, and Gostir, too. My will they'd never misconstrue."

His hand holding the leash felt wet all of a sudden—did humans sweat there? Still, Sandbar nodded and said, "Smolder? Mind your manners, and we'll go on in."

Smolder didn't make a sound, but she stood and stepped across the threshold. Sandbar did his best not to make a sound either and followed.

---

The place smelled like he recalled from the few times he'd visited Zecora's hut back home: spicy, sweet, and a little ticklish even inside his human nostrils. It actually did a lot to smooth the hairs on the back of his neck and loosen the clench of his shoulders, two signs of stress he hadn't even noticed till they started fading with his first breaths inside the house.

The two dogs didn't relax a bit as far as he could tell, but they had backed all the way to the end of the entrance hall. Maybe so they could get a running start when they attacked, but Sandbar refused to let that thought go any further. Besides, Zecora, after closing the door and stepping ahead of Smolder, was gesturing to the first doorway on the left, the one that should lead into the room where Silverstream was. "Exotic birds are not my forte," she was saying. "She seems a most peculiar sort. She spends her days without a sound and always slumps like hope has drowned."

Sandbar entered a slightly cluttered parlor, then, Smolder and Zecora just ahead of him. Bookshelves lined every wall that wasn't a door or a window, and the four or five chairs were big and cushioned so much, he imagined he'd sink right into one if he sat in it. But his attention skipped right past all of the bric-a-brac scattered here and there on the shelves among the books—more masks, colorful stones, ceramic animals, spiky shells—to focus on Silverstream in the cage in the front window.

Slumped was exactly the word to describe her, clinging with pinkish-gray talons to a perch jutting out from the black iron bars. If her feathers hadn't been exactly the pinks and blues of Silverstream's colors, he might've thought he'd made a mistake, she looked so overwhelmingly dejected. She didn't look up or even open her eyes as they came into the room, and Sandbar knew that, whatever had happened to send her here, it had hit her really deep and really hard.

Before he knew it, he had crossed the room, not sure where Smolder or Zecora had gone, and was standing right next to the cage. "Silverstream?" he asked, and it took some effort to keep his voice from cracking. "It's Sandbar. I'm here with Smolder and Yona and Gallus and Ocellus."

She'd flinched as soon as he'd spoken, her crest feathers springing up and her eyes snapping open, and by the time he'd finished saying all their names, she was flapping her wings and spinning to face him, her beak opening at the same time as it somehow curled into a smile.

The light that had sprung over her face, though, faded almost at once, and she slumped back onto the perch again. Sandbar blinked, then blinked some more at the buzzing that sprang up in his right ear. "Sandbar," Ocellus more panted than said, her voice tight like she was speaking through clenched teeth. Which was weird since, even when she wasn't a swarm of bees, Sandbar didn't think she really had teeth.

"I...I don't," she was going on. "I don't know what's happening. I...I'm getting a lot of, I don't know, interference maybe? From the parts of me back at the house, I mean. I think there was a message from the princess saying that Silverstream's parents had finally decided to break up, so Silverstream was going to have to go back to Mt. Aris and become the head of their clan or something, but...but..."

The words vanished into the buzzing, and Sandbar focused back on Silverstream. "Look," he said, throwing out every idea he'd had about how to talk to her without seeming weird to the human Zecora, "whatever's happening with your parents, Silverstream, we can work something out: all of us, together, back home, not here where we're not even, y'know, our right species or whatever!"

"Damn it, Sandbar!" Smolder barked off to his left. "Uhh, I mean, woof?"

"No!" Silverstream shouted, her wings flapping this time to carry her onto the bars of the cage, her talons grabbing them till the whole thing was rattling. "We can't work it out. 'Cause we're not gonna be together anymore! My parents are giving up as heads of the family, so I hafta leave Ponyville and leave the school! I've gotta go back to Mt. Aris, become a duchess, join the Queen's Council, find some guy to get married to, and prob'bly never see any of you again!"

"What?" Sandbar yelled it at nearly the same time as Zecora, and he threw a frantic glance in her direction.

She was staring back and forth between Smolder and Silverstream. "Her squawk...is talk?" she asked.

"Uhhh," was all Sandbar managed to say before Silverstream drowned him out.

"It'll be the worst thing that'll happen in the history of ever!" she screeched. "And I was sort of crying about it to myself out behind Sweetfeather Sanctuary last week, just kind of saying that I wanted to run away to somewhere where nocreature would ever know who I was or would make me do things I didn't want to do! And then Discord was standing there, and he said he wouldn't recommend it, but if I wanted to get completely lost, there was a whole other universe through this mirror in Princess Twilight's castle where I wouldn't even be me anymore!"

Without a clue what to do, Sandbar looked at Smolder, staring up at Silverstream with her ears folded, at Zecora, staring across at Silverstream with her eyes wide, at the door that led back to the hallway where the two big dogs were peering around the corner apparently every bit as confused as everyone else. The buzzing in his ears was getting louder and more distracting with each passing instant, not a trace of Ocellus's voice in it, and now his heart was pounding loud enough to shake him where he stood.

Desperate, he threw himself another step closer to the cage. "We can fix it! I mean, yeah, maybe we can't, but it's guaranteed we can't if we stay here! Back home, we'll have a chance, but first we hafta—"

The whole house shook then, the walls practically swaying around Sandbar, and something crashed onto the porch outside the window, a dark shape looming up to cover the lower part of the window.

Not just any dark shape, though: Yona's dark shape, Gallus peering up from the back of her head, bees swirling around them both. "Ocellus attracting whole hurricane of bugs!" she shouted, her voice barely muffled by the glass. "We go through portal now, Silverstream marry Gallus since everycreature know both in love with each other, get herself named hippogriff ambassador to Equestria! We not go through portal now, we end up withers-deep in every bug ever born in human world!"

For another long second, only the increased buzzing filled the air. Then Zecora was rushing forward, undoing the clasp on the cage door, and throwing it open. "To run from problems never ends! Confront them now with help from friends!"

"Yeah!" Smolder wrenched the leash from Sandbar's hand. "With an emphasis on the 'now' part!" She waved a paw at the window. "Those dark clouds out there aren't weather related! So Silverstream? Let Sandbar carry you! Sandbar? Grab Silv, then get out the door and onto Yona's back! Zecora?" Smolder sat back and spread her front legs. "It was nice to meet you! If there's any damage to your house, let Fluttershy know, and she can get in touch with our princess." She leaped for the door. "Now let's move!"

Sandbar opened his arms, and a pink-and-blue feathery bundle smacked into his chest. Spinning, he followed Smolder to the front door, reached for the knob, pulled and ran and jumped and felt Yona slide up underneath him in ways that would've been very distracting if so many other distracting things hadn't been going on around him.

As it was, he dug the fingers of one hand into the thick, shaggy fur of her back just in time for her to surge against him, Zecora's front yard flashing past as Yona pounded down the sidewalk. Smolder was stretching out and running just ahead of Yona, he could see, Silverstream warm and quivering at his chest, Gallus clinging to Yona's shoulder beside him, and— "Ocellus!" he shouted, managing to look up and around at the swarm of bees. "You still here?"

"Mostly, I think." Her voice barely rose above the buzzing. "I was repeating everything you were saying at Zecora's house so Yona and Gallus would know, but more and more bugs kept showing up. Finally, Yona snapped up the pen, scrawled 'we come through portal now' in the book, and swallowed the pen! She grabbed Gallus in her teeth, threw him onto her back, and yelled that she knew how to start solving Silverstream's problem, but if we didn't get out of here now, we'd have too many problems to deal with! I sent the bugs I first attracted to distract the new bugs, and now, well, the sooner we're home, the better I'll like it..."

"Me, too." Gallus looked over with a grin on his way-too-feline face. "But whaddaya say, Silv? I mean, princesses marry guard captains in Equestria all the time, so who could get upset about a duchess or whatever getting in on the action?"

A squirming against his chest made Sandbar risk another glance away from the street streaming by, the school building now a block or so away. "You mean it?" Silverstream asked, peering out from under Sandbar's arm.

He nodded. "I love you, you love me. We'll just need a couple ground rules."

Silverstream's head came out a little farther, and she looked so much like her old self—other than her being a bird and everything—that Sandbar let his last lingering worry go. "Rules?" she asked.

Gallus undid a paw from Yona's scruff and held up two claws. "First, we talk everything over between ourselves and our friends before we charge into anymore palaces and shatter anymore universes. And second?" He leaned closer. "We never listen to Discord."

Silverstream giggled. "I agree. And even though this maybe isn't the way I always dreamed you'd propose to me..." She turned her pink-beaked face upward and met Sandbar's gaze. "Thanks, guys."

"Okay!" Smolder shouted ahead. "Eyes front, folks!"

Sandbar snapped his head back up, saw the stone block they'd come through approaching at a rapid rate.

Yona lowered her head. "Hope princess got message! Otherwise, could be some serious smashing here!"

But then Smolder passed right through the stone face, and Sandbar let out the breath he'd just sucked in, he and all his friends plunging through on the way home.

Comments

[TheGJ90]

That was an adventure to say the least! Glad the kids got home safely!

I imagine Ocellus may be banned from the Human World now for safety reasons, though.

[SuperPinkBrony12]

That was a very wholesome ending!

[Zalassasin1445]

PLEASE let there be a bonus chapter! I want to know what happens after they go back through the portal!

[SuperPinkBrony12]

12052399 Or maybe have her transform into something else before going through the mirror? Or would the mirror still detect what she really is?

[Hillbe]

So they eloped and had lots of baby griff griffs
And Auntie Twi gets diaper duty
Why me?

[Matthais Unidostres]

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Late_Night's review was very unhelpful, but maybe I can better explain what was meant by it. This story set up a mystery of why Silverstream ran away. It also added more complications to solving this mystery by not giving Yona a form that could blend in, and giving Ocellus a hive minded consciousness within a swarm of insects. Unfortunately, none of these were explored properly. No one saw or even noticed the huge smelly yak lumbering through the city, and when Ocellus' hive mind started to grow, it was already time to leave. Silverstream's problem was also allegedly solved too quickly. The issue with this story was that none of the obstacles were obstacles, thus no character development. Yona should have been tranquilized and taken to a zoo and needed rescue, Ocellus' hive mind should have spread further or been fragmented forcing the others to seek out the bees and restore her mind, and the friends should have had a longer conversation with Silverstream and helped her understand that responsibilities are important but can surely be delegated or worked out go benefit everyone including her. But no, instead there's a bug apocalypse so we have to just run home without a proper resolution. Basically, the ending was rushed and forced and nothing was resolved.

[Scyphi]

"And then Discord was standing there, and he said he wouldn't recommend it, but if I wanted to get completely lost, there was a whole other universe through this mirror in Princess Twilight's castle where I wouldn't even be me anymore!"

Dang it, Discord! Next time keep your mouth shut!

"Finally, Yona snapped up the pen, scrawled 'we come through portal now' in the book, and swallowed the pen!"

Oh, that'll be fun to get back later...but let's get through the portal first!

12052474
That's all assuming the transformation of passing through the mirror doesn't also nullify and reverse any of Ocellus's own transformations in transit.

I figure Twilight and others could probably work out the answers either way, given time, but it'd take a fair bit of study and analysis first, so, until then, no more changelings through the mirror for now.

12052529
I dunno if I'd go as far as to say nothing was resolved, because they still addressed what was, really, the core problem that all brought them there--Silverstream acted without thinking, overreacting to a problem that. in reality, never needed to be such a big problem in the first place, if she had just done the smart thing and gone to her friends to talk it out first. She just needed to, well, talk it out with her friends and realize that. And that this would be the case was kinda obvious from the start given the nature and circumstances of how Sil entered the portal in the first place, so it's not like readers couldn't have foreseen that being the case.

I agree the story is overall a bit rushed...but I also don't think it's actually all by that much, as the story doesn't really need all that much more it so to address that same core point. Anything else that might've happened would've just been to add additional drama for the sake of drama, and additional complications for the sake of complications, all of which wouldn't necessarily have been unwelcome, certainly (if done well of course), but I can't call them mandatory either, because they ultimately aren't important to resolving that core point. After all, this story wasn't so much about the Young Six getting into misadventure hijinks while trying to navigate an unfamiliar world in unfamiliar bodies, it's about them going to such lengths as crossing literal dimensions just so to be there for one of their friends.

Sometimes the adventure doesn't need to be so complex and epic to get its needed point across, and on that front, the story does well enough. And if that's not enough for readers then we're back to what AugieDog had said--there's plenty of other fanfics out there that might do it for you instead then.

Personally, the thing I'd only recommend changing is to drop the insect swarm thing at the end there, so to let the gang talk Silverstream into coming back at a bit more natural pace, since I figure that wouldn't really require all that many more words to do. The insect swarm idea was cool and all, but it ultimately it's just an unneeded distraction from the more important thing that was happening.

[Emptybee]

Of course Yona's solution is to smash social conventions.

[AugieDog]

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12053251

Thanks, folks:

I haven't any plans to revisit this scenario, but my plans change with alarming frequency and speed.

12052529
12052583

I probably could've turned this into a 40K-word novel, or even just taken it out to 20K words. But the contest deadline was Dec.1st, and the length limit was 15K words. So this story's done, and I move on to the next.

Mike

[FanOfMostEverything]

"Exotic birds are not my forte," she was saying. "She seems a most peculiar sort."

Oof. There's a rhyme that only works in text.

But that's the one quibble I have over what is otherwise a magnificent exploration of both world and characters. Ocellus accidentally going full Skitter was a delightful if somewhat horrifying surprise. I can't help but imagine her accidentally bringing some of the additional mass with her back through the portal and coming out at Pharynx or even Thorax's proportions. Thank you for a magnificent bit of chaos, and best of luck in the judging. (To be honest, I kind of feel bad for constraining this idea with the word limit...)

[Pascoite]

12054587
"Forte" is actually supposed to be pronounced like "fort" when used to mean a strength, though nobody gets it right, so the wrong pronunciation has become accepted. Originally, it was only pronounced "for-tay" when used in a musical context to mean "loud."

[BirdsBooksBrownies]

12055437
The more you know