A Song of Ice and Ponies

by Wargame

Interlude: Preparations

Lyra Heartstrings

Pacing around her small, messy house, Lyra had to make sure that everything was absolutely perfect. Sighing to herself, Lyra began making a mental checklist of what she had already done to make the house as calming of an atmosphere as possible. Quite frankly it wasn't every day that possibly hostile monsters were brought into your house for some tea and casual conversation to see exactly how homicidal they are.

Her window was repaired to light the room naturally. The old coffee table which had previously been cluttered with awful sketches and beer stained music sheets had been replaced with a far nicer coffee table. One with fancy drawers to hide her awful sketches and beer stained music sheets. Looking around to make sure that nothing was out of place, Lyra turned to the two militia ponies trying to scrub out a stain in the corner of the living area with a single wet sponge.

"Don't even try with that," Lyra told the militia ponies, "I've tried using practically everything to get that stain out, and it keeps coming back. I don't think your sponge is gonna make too much of a difference." Glaring at Lyra, the first militia pony made no effort whatsoever to hide his indignation.

"Look we came here on orders to make sure that your house was in presentable order," Dance Fever was the tan militia pony's name if Lyra remembered correctly, correcting his posture to sit taller he followed, "She should be more respectful to volunteer militia ponies, isn't that right Cosmic?" Startled at the sound of his name, the light yellow militia pony visibly jumped.

"What was that?" Cosmic looked over at his partner, "I wasn't paying attention, this stain won't come out." Sighing loudly, Dance brought a hoof to his forehead and relaxed his shoulders. Lyra smiled slightly to herself.

"Never mind Cosmic, just stop scrubbing the carpet, we should get on our way anyhow," Cosmic's face lit up as Dance Fever spoke, "Just one more thing to sort out before we head back to City Hall." Rising up on all four hooves, Dance Fever approached Lyra,

"I'm pretty sure I've got everything covered so far you two, I can handle a few conversations with these things," Lyra waved Dance Fever off dismissively, "Just some quick questions so we have something to tell the Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends when they get back from the Equestria Games." Dance Fever shook his head at the mare.

"That's the thing though, your first talk isn't going to be with one of the humans," Dance Fever paused to let the fact sink in, "Your first interview is going to be Big Macintosh." Lyra was taken aback at this, she didn't couldn't think of a reason why Big Macintosh would need to be questioned. As she opened her mouth to ask Dance Fever, Cosmic stood up and approached the mare.

"The thing is," Cosmic spoke slowly, "After what Big Macintosh told us when he came back with those things, we ain't too sure if we should trust him."

"Why wouldn't you trust him?" Lyra turned her gaze to the second militia pony, "Isn't Big Macintosh Thuderlane's go to stallion when it comes to this militia stuff?" Dance Fever shook his head.

"Usually he's the second in command, and one of the only stallions around who nopony else would question when he would tell us what to do," Dance Fever shook his head, "But what he told us about what happened in the Everfree, we don't know what to think." Lyra's mood took a shift for the worse, if Big Macintosh had lost the militia's trust, then this was something far more serious than the standard Everfree afair. Cosmic shifted uncomfortably.

"If that's all, we should take our leave now," Dance Fever nodded to Lyra.

"We'll bring them over one at a time starting at nine in the morning so you can have each interview separately," Dance Fever nodded to Lyra, "Now if there's nothing else you need from us we'll be headed back to City Hall." Taking a moment to glance around the house one more time, Lyra could only think of one more task for the militia ponies as they left.

"If you'd just go grab the box marked 'Emergency' from my shed and bring it in here I think that'd be enough." With that Cosmic and Dance Fever went outside, Dance Fever came back a minute later with the box balanced on his back.

"With all do respect ma'am," Dance said with a hint of concern, "This is just a box filled with alcohol." Dance Fever turned to leave as Lyra levitated the box off of his back.

"Emergency whiskey," Lyra said to herself as the front door closed behind the militia pony, staring at the three remaining bottles packed into the box she grimaced, "Tomorrow's gonna be a rough day."

Author's Note:

I'm back it would seem. This scene just came up in my head and refused to leave, so I decided to write it. At 2 o'clock in the morning. I decided to do only one draft of this to save time. I would love to hear your opinions on how it turned out.

The story has been brought back from the hell pit of cancelled stories and put back into action.

Dope.

EDIT: Touched it up so it looks like less of a trainwreck and more like a bicyclewreck now.

Comments

[Dream Searcher]

It seems that I have forgotten about this story and it wasn't in my favorites anymore. That's fixed now, though. But, one does notice that it has been written in the middle of the night.

[Wargame]

3478232 Hm, can't say I'm surprised by the dip in quality, I'll need to edit that next time I get the chance. Anything in particular that I should look out for when I get around to it?

[Dream Searcher]

3478688 Commas, my friend, dem commas you forgot.

Also, this:

I don't your sponge is gonna make too much of a difference.

I think you forgot a 'think' in there.

[Wargame]

3479375 Maybe she just didn't his sponge could handle the stain.

But seriously I fixed that. Hooray.

[Dream Searcher]

3479393 trajectum.hu.nl/files/beeld/nieuws/Borat_Great_Success.jpg

[Wargame]

3479403 Celebrations ensue!

media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqmd6pZ1wP1qg7w52.gif

[Sean Mulligan]

I'm glad that this is being continued.

[Wargame]

3480199 The story is glad to be continued.

[Wargame]

3539022 I'm so glad that at least one person caught that.

[HackamoreHalter]

Hello, folks. The Authors Helping Authors group brought me here, that I might offer opinions and suggestions for the betterment of pony-kind. I'm not a certified expert, and I most assuredly won't be going into quite the detail that I see others have put into catching errors, but hopefully I'll be able to contribute something helpful. So, let's begin!

Regarding grammar and sentence structure:

I noticed a few errors as I was reading through, mostly involving joining two sentences together. Let's look at one of the first sentences.

Everyday he worked at Sweet Apple Acres his distaste for the red fruit only grew stronger, the only reason he still worked at the godforsaken place was because he didn't mind looking at the apples on Applejack's flank.

I really don't think these sentences need to be joined, but if we were going to go that route then we would need something more powerful than the comma alone. Either a semicolon or a coordinating conjunction (IE: and, or, but, etc) would do the trick. I noticed this same error cropping up again and again, so be on the lookout for it.

Next, still near the beginning of the text, we have this part here...

"Hey Mac! Do you think we could call it early today?" the shivering farmhand called, already knowing the answer, "We're already pretty far ahead of schedule."

My problem with this is the comma after the word answer. While commas can lead into dialogue, what you've got here is the end of one sentence and the start of another (as shown by the capitalized We're), so I would go with a period instead of a comma. I wasn't one-hundred percent sure on the rule here, so I double-checked real quick with a random writing guide. Apparently, what you're doing is called a comma splice.

Something like the phrase 'two-by-four' should be hyphenated because it's a compound modifier.

Some more missing commas with introductory elements and parentheticals. For example...

"The two by fours are on the bottom rack right?"

This should have a comma between the words rack and right.

For directions, only capitalize the word if it is a proper name. If the southern shed is just a shed in the south, the word southern doesn't need to be capitalized. In a similar vein, I see one instance of the word forest being capitalized with it doesn't need to be.

We need an apostrophe for old ponies' tales, because there are multiple old ponies and the tales belong to them.

I might be able to point out more corrections to be made, but as an overall summary there's plenty of room for improvement. These sort of issues are easily fixed with a pre-reader or an editor to point out all of the wayward commas, though. I'm much more interested in talking about content and direction.

Regarding content:

One thing I did notice is a lack of descriptions for the ponies. Yes, we all know what they look like from the show, but I'd still like to see a little more window dressing when it comes to character introduction.

I feel that you're overusing the term 'buck'. Yes, it sounds like a swear while being pony related, and we all love it for that, but there are so many different ways to swear without relying on buck. As an example that is fairly well known, the Fallout: Equestria protagonist could have made a living coming up with colorful terms to describe the Wasteland. Let's see some variety.

I'm rather fond of the GoT books, and one important aspect of those stories I feel is missing here is the frozen element of the White Walkers. When they're around, an already frigid winter wonderland somehow manages to get doubly cold. They carry with them an aura of extreme cold, and I'd like to see a little more of a description of that with the Walker conflicts here.

I agree with a previous commenter's unease with the Macintosh dream sequence. It seems out of place and it doesn't really seem to serve a narrative point. If we're going to be putting dreams in here, let's get some really weird symbolism. Let's distance the dream from reality a little bit. The inclusion of a three-eyed raven would also help bridge the gap between the MLP and GoT universes, too.

What I liked:

I appreciate that you've gone into effort to show a knock on the head has more serious consequences than just waking up a few hours later. Concussions are usually ignored in stories, and that makes me sad.

The nod to the human-obsessed fandom view of Lyra was nice. We tend to pidgeonhole ponies into very narrow personas, and it's always good to break free from those.

A death in the first chapter is to be lauded for a GoT crossover. We must sate George R. R. Martin's lust for blood with pony sacrifice. Side characters, main characters, and anything else that moves should be questioning their survivability.

That's about all I can offer for two-ish chapters of content. I've yet to see a masterful crossover with the GoT universe, so I'm very much hoping you bring this story back to life like it was following the Lord of Light.

Thanks for writing,

-Hack