Entries submitted for Loganberry's 150-Word Flashfic Contests. Individual genre ratings, story summaries, and links are included within the long description.
Despite being sisters, Dinky and Amethyst are as different as rocks and hearts. One must live as her own mare and not as a patronized child; the other just stifles her. But what will Dinky learn once she leaves home for her own life?
Even on her eighteenth birthday, Dinky received a gemstone from her smarter sister Amethyst. “Magico-thermo-rose-quartz”: useful for igniting campfires away from civilization.
Never toys, storybooks, anything non-practical. Gemstone tools. From a gemstone expert.
Boasting?
Useful though the stones were, Dinky stopped arguing and threw her hooves up.
When she finally, happily, if somewhat uncertainly left home and went to university, she went and stayed far from Ponyville. For five wonderful years, her own mare. Not a patronized child. Not a beloved sister, maybe, but not a patronized child!
Ammy never got as far in geophysics; Dinky became postdoctoral researcher in social sciences. Met tribes, greeted new friends, celebrated countless cities! An endless world of possibilities and freedom beckoned her, blinded her, tempted her to throw herself into something completely different and detached every day.
Regardless, Ammy sent a package every birthday. Always a gemstone. Always functional. Always kept and used, if secretly. Dinky always meant to write back about her amazing adventures, but never did.
Except one year…
Nothing.
Puzzled, uncertain, frightened, Dinky interrupted her sabbatical in the East to trek home. Catch a train home. Gallop home. Burst through the door.
Found Ammy alone.
She’d believed Dinky was never coming back. Why would she? Nothing came back now. Whatever she sent, nothing came back.
Guilt overcame Dinky. She'd kept every gemstone, but never replied. She understood at once. She stayed overnight. Five years caught up with them in five hours. Too little, but thankfully not too late.
Ever since, she unfailingly mailed Ammy "explorer photos" from Qilinland. Notes about temples she’d visited. And all of her love.
Lyra: born to play music. Unfortunately, on a potato farm.
Her parents promised she’d be a cultured lady playing the harp, if she wanted. They farmed together, scrimping, saving. Until eventually, unbelievably, wonderfully, Lyra reached Celestia’s School. Canterlot!
She was OK at music, but treasured the harp. The angel’s instrument. Unwisely, she told a more classically trained student.
A harp! An idle fashionista’s prop! No serious musician would treasure it. No one would compose for it. Its purpose: to look pretty and gather dust. Harpists were nothing.
Later, Lyra dropped out. Didn’t dare move to Canterlot, or return home in disgrace. She settled for some quiet town and hid away, busking. Good for nothing else.
Her parents tracked her down. Agreed to send letters and money. Their little angel merely had to wait for her big moment.
Among friendly strangers. Among appreciative regulars. Among praising friends.
“I’m investigating the nature of time! ‘No time like the present,’ everyone says. Everyone’s right! Both past and future squeeze the present to an infinitely small point, because if now has dimensions, then it can shrink further, giving those dimensions to either side. Therefore, there is no time like the present! From idioms, I’m extrapolating its real nature!”
“But… sewing?”
“‘A stitch in time’ suggests fabric-like qualities!”
“The crossbow?”
“‘Time flies like an arrow’.”
“The… whale tank!?”
“‘Whale of a time’.”
“This is Advanced Chronology!?”
“Yep-yep! Professor Regius gave me free rein!”
“Eep. I dread to think what you’d be doing if you had followed me into Astrophysics.”
“I’d be gazing deeply into your eyes right now.”
“…um… r-really…?”
“‘Stars in their eyes’.”
“Oh. G-Good. I-I mean, interesting!”
“Why, what’re you thinking–?”
“N-N-Nothing!”
“Huh? Oheeheehee, Twinkleshine! Sometimes, you think the strangest things!”
“Remind me again what we are, uh, ‘making anew’?” Daisy dangled the flowers carefully, according to the design, and hoped like heck she didn't drop them again.
Somnambula bowed. “The Hanging Gardens of Stally-On. Ah, me: the loveliest in the kingdom, with mighty Fountains of Tranquillity…”
“Will a garden pond do?” said Roseluck from the bottom of the pit. The muffled tone suggested she still had a spade in her mouth.
“…the Rosetta-Baskets of Phoenixias… so fragrant…”
CRASH!
“Oops.” Daisy winced at the scattered flowers and broken pottery. “Uh… free replacement?”
“…the Sacred Crocodiles amid the Lilies of Judgement…”
“OW!” Lily jumped.
“Apologies!” Somnambula helped remove the tight jaws. “My friend Pinkamena insisted that ‘Gum-Mee’ was harmless.”
“It bit me! It's trying to eat my leg! That little lizard's got it out for me!”
The trio exchanged glances.
“Um, with all due respect and all, your historical-ness, um, I, uh, don’t think this’ll work,” said Daisy. “See, we’re really just… small-town florists.”
“We’ll try,” said Roseluck, hauling herself out of the pit.
“Really, though, you need world experts.”
Somnambula laughed. “Oh, not at all. Humble beginnings are no barrier to greatness. Was I a world expert when the Sphinx invaded, and none stepped forth to stop the suffering!? I, a small-town peasant!? Yet I prevailed!”
“Wow…” Daisy blushed.
“I had faith; now I have faith in you.”
“Wow…”
Roseluck saluted. “Ma’am! We’ll do it!”
“OW!” Lily whimpered. “Look, can we please skip the Sacred Crocodile bit?”
Fluttershy drew a card from the deck, squinting. “‘Now We’re Friends.’”
“Uh huh,” said Twilight.
“‘Advance one step along Friendship Trail.’” Fluttershy confronted the board. “Well, I’ve been… ‘Unkind’, so this is… square one.”
“Now we’re friends again! Yeah!”
Fluttershy groaned. Birdsong. Sunlit window: she could’ve been outside.
Applejack drew. “This card says Ah lied and gotta go back one step? What? Ah’d never!”
“Don’t worry.” Twilight checked her hoofmade rulebook. “If you play a Redemption card later, you’re redeemed any lost steps.”
Fluttershy peeked. “But ‘Dishonesty’ beats ‘Redemption’ and she loses three turns.”
Applejack sighed at the board stretching out the window. “Why’s this trail one thousand steps again?”
“It’s realistic!” said Twilight. “Friendships are complex and take time; I worked all night perfecting rules, psychological underpinning, didactic theory…”
“Sorry, Twilight.” Applejack winced. “You mean well, but…”
Fluttershy grimaced. “…we just don’t see ‘Friendship: The Board Game’ catching on.”
Uncomfortably seated in Dinky's lounge, Somnambula winced. “Somnambula.”
“Uh… When you went up against the sphinx, what was it like?”
“Remind me why…?”
“History homework!” Dinky beamed. “Cheerilee says recent history is more reliable because there’s witnesses around. But a witness one thousand years old…”
“I see. Creative.”
“Thanks! More tea?”
“Five sugars, please. This modern tea isn’t sweet like my homeland’s…”
Silence.
“Getting back to the sphinx…”
“Miss Dinky?”
“…sorry?”
A heavy sigh. “Please understand. I’m honoured, but we are one thousand years apart. I can’t comprehensively convey my old experiences to new minds. The differences between then and now are too great.”
