An earth pony healer is given responsibility over an injured unicorn. All eyes are on them. Maybe even those of Windigos.
Honorable Mention in the contest A Thousand Words.
Highly Recommended by PresentPerfect.
An audio reading by Pony&Wolf Productions.
“...the restraint demonstrated here is phenomenal, and a brilliant lesson...”
—Petrichord
Wow... This was, uh...
This was a fantastic one, man. Your prose here was enviable. Only 1000 words but I've seen other authors fumble to deliver half the emotion here in ten times that count.
Holy shit. This is easily one of the best stories on this site.
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Thanks so much.
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I'm more than happy to contribute to that if it means I get to write more like this. Thank you.
Oof, this is impressive. Using utter minimalism to both world-build and tell a compelling story is a feat and a half, very well done.
Prophetic? Did the spell burn Iridium or just foretell that she would be burned?
... So the healer is stuffing her ears with that voice to block out everything else? I can almost make sense of that, but I figured they'd want to listen for any other medical emergencies.
Hmm. Sensing geothermal hot spots? Possibly pegasus scouts to look for warm fronts? Intriguing possibilities here.
... They're healing the healer in return?
This is a potent tale of devotion and loss, but the word choice ranges from distracting to outright baffling. It's good, don't get me wrong, but your efforts to capture an antiquated tone come across as the healer digging through the caravan's thesaurus to impress Iridium. (And I'm not sure what the context of the text is. I assume the healer's recording this in their journal, but I'm not certain.)
Again, the narrative itself is excellent. Thank you for it and best of luck in the judging.
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Prophetic in the sense that Iridium (a unicorn) and her unicorn-made injuries were a sign that things in Equestria would only get worse.
Her voice is soft, and he's always eager to listen.
The injuries are responding to his healing.
Totally fair, but I want to be clear here and state that I wasn't trying to match that to any extent. Death of the author and all that, but here are some more thoughts: what I did intend was for the healer to come across as more educated/well-read than other earth ponies, hence his newfound appreciation for poetry. In the time I spent polishing up the story, I had an internal debate over if I should simplify the vocabulary to match the tribe, but I ended up not pursuing that.
It's a mix: for the majority of the passages, it's a state of internal reflection; for the minority, he converses with her in the present.
I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed the story. Thanks for reading.
Howdy, hi~!
This was quite an enjoyable read. The quiet emotion present in the exchanges between the healer and Iridium was wonderful and really gave this whole piece a very gentle feel. This was well worth the read and I thank you for writing it.
i love this line!
ooh, i love this one, too! it has such a great feel
i love how lines like this hint at an the shape of an entire culture while leaving the details to the reader!
and augh, the earthpony narrator fascinated by a mysterious unicorn's unicorn life! it's funny how it has that in common with the G5 movie, but with so much more weight in the worldbuilding
and oof, the idea of dealing with cancer in an age before modern medicine! though at least the ponies have magic
love the determination in this line
augh, what a beautiful description of the experience of art!
i can feel what the narrator sees in Iridium, and augh, that makes this so haunting and heartbreaking
and ooh, tantalizing. i'm reading this as a fragment of the glow of Harmony, and augh, there is something beautiful and sad in that the characters don't know what it means
and augh, love the impact of that last line, that definitiveness, you really feel it
and a beautiful end! Iridium living on through the ponies she saved, the narrator the most of all.
i love how this story feels so distinctly pre-Harmony between the archaically ornate prose and the smallness of the bit of world that is seen. and this mysterious dying unicorn being able to save this tribe of strangers through her knowledge, and yet clearly being kept distant from them, an outsider, connected most through the narrator who serves as a bridge between her and the tribe as they are on the outskirts of the tribe due to their youth. augh, there is something that rings so true about that. it feels like a very old kind of story.
just loved this work, thank you for it!
Hello! Have a review. If I can quote that here, "unusual and rather haunting" was how I felt. Nice restrained narration too. Have a like, and well done on the honourable mention!
This is definitely one of those slow-burn stories, gripping you until the very end. Very good use of text breaks and an almost poetic prose.
Definitely deserves the praise!
Less is more, right? Right.