Night Glider, having a difficult time readjusting to her career as a search-and-rescue worker, takes up a position as a fire lookout in Smokey Mountains National Park.
Though she is physically isolated from the rest of ponykind, the voices on her radio ensure she is never truly alone.
Winner of Bicyclette's Crackship Contest!
This fic is heavily inspired by Firewatch, but should be enjoyable to all - those who have played and those who have not.
'Twas a good read
Reminds me very quickly of a game called Firewatch.
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I was about to say, lol. I haven't even played it and I'm like 'isn't this just Firewatch?'
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It is very heavily inspired by firewatch (though it definitely has a different main plotline), well spotted! I actually intended to put that in the description, but completely forgot to add it when I published - thanks for the reminder!
Each month has such an evocative description that places me right there in the timeline. The explanation of Night Glider's surroundings as well as the mystery really kept me hooked on this fic! Great job!
I was also going to say that I was reminded of Firewatch, too, but I'm glad our main characters got to meet at the end this time
...this isnt a parody of firewatch is it?
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It is heavily inspired by Firewatch, i hope your joking.
Beautiful, just beautiful. It takes a lot of work to translate the visuals from a game like firewatch into writing, but you did it expertly, and you also nailed that constant feeling of being alone, but not being alone. this was a great read, and I definitely wouldn't mind if there was some kind of continuation.
I just gave everything a read, I loved it- a slow flow with a sweet ending.
Wow, this was amazing. I honestly don't know to say. For one thing you've nailed the feeling solitude (and the desire for it). The passage worked really well, to. I also liked the symbolism with the radios, how the one couple never grew beyond being disembodied voices while Night and Sky were eventually able to leave them behind.
But above all, I'm just happy that you didn't end it like Firewatch.
Lovely story!
It's always wild to me that people can do this isolation thing where all they have is a friend somewhere out there that is only able to communicate through one form. Just gives me the willies.
I wonder why the other couple don't hear them (wouldn't radio leaks work both ways?) or why they don't think about talking to the other couple, even if they reject it in the end...
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Fair question! I hope I don't ruin the experience with an explanation haha
My intention was for Night and Sky to be "hearing back in time" - that the frequencies on their radios were leftovers from another time, transmitted to them through the magic of the park. This is why Star Hunter has the exact same transcriptions, why they only seem to get transmissions in specific places, and why Night is able to stand in front of the carving while she hears it being carved over the radio.
In this way, the lovers from the past have established a cycle: those who use the woods to escape their problems become wrapped up in chasing the remnants of their story, and so fail to self-reflect and truly heal. Night and Sky, then, are the first to break the cycle which is why the radios go permanently silent in the end.
I definitely wish I had had more space and time to allow this all to unfold - it was slightly too big a concept to explore thoroughly alongside the necessary romance, and so i don't think I really fully laid everything out the way I'd hoped. But that's what you sign up for when you write for a contest!
I hope you enjoyed the story regardless! Thank you for your comment!
Very good story, I really enjoyed it. I hope you consider a follow up or even a longer and more drawn out version since you mentioned it not being long enough for the overall concept.
This is a delicious little read. There’s a certain irony that i found it now. I’m about to meet my boyfriend for the first time, and the feelings this story stirred are nice. Sometimes sad, sometimes good. It’s well written, I only saw a couple typos and it gripped me beyond the funny similarities to my own situation. A+ read!
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Thank you so much for your comment! It's always lovely to hear someone connected personally with a piece of mine. I wish you and your boyfriend the best of luck!! I hope you have a wonderful time together!
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Haha! I’ll let you know!
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Well, I can safely say that was the best week of my life. And this story did come u p a couple times, he thought it was funny I should find it right before we met up for real.
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That's incredible!! I'm so happy for the both you of - that first time meeting can be so magical. I'm honored that this little fic ended up playing a little part in your story, and I wish you both happiness!
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Haha, thanks. I'll make sure to enjoy him extra hard just for you!
I adore Firewatch, and I adored this.
The passages where Night Glider is alone are full of such beautiful, evocative imagery. I particularly love the intro to AUGUST. Hit me hard right in the end-of-summer-vacation nostalgia.
I also picked up what you were putting down with the griffin and pony couple. Echoes of the past was my guess, so I'm glad to see that I got it right.
I'm also pleased that this story ends more happily than its inspiration. I was afraid we'd be left with a similarly bittersweet, ambiguous conclusion. Instead, we get something hopeful (even if it's set against the backdrop of an old tragedy).
EDIT: Also, I totally forgot who Clear Sky (in canon) until like, right this moment? Which is weird, because she had an entire episode. Yet somehow, I remembered who Night Glider, background pony number whatever, was. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Makes the bit with her backstory hit even harder.
Fantastic play off Firewatch, really fun to read how you played in that space but really made it your own.
This was such a fairy tale and it is amazing to experience it! You definitely captured the mysterious nature of Firewatch and brought it out in your own way.
Very well written, Wordsmith!
Howdy, hi~!
So, first off I think you pulled off the concept fine. That no real concrete explanation is given to the radio waves, I think works well with the story as the focus is on the parallels between the past and current romance unfolding. There were a lot of emotional moments throughout that really hammered in Night and Sky's characterization that I appreciate. Also, I'm really impressed that you pulled off a romance like this where the characters don't even physically meet until the last chapter. Banger chemistry in this one.
Excellent read, thank you~!
oof, this internal voice, the cadence of the narration interspersed with flashbacks. it's already so intriguing and so good!
augh, just love how slowly and steadily these lines drive up my investment in just why Night Glider isn't letting herself fly
ooh, i would wonder too!
a. love the imagery here, b. interesting that this is how Night Glider immediately thinks of said stack of printouts...
it would throw me, too!
pfft
a shipfic without instantaneous exchanges of witty banter? what is this?? (love it)
it's a small thing but augh, i always find myself loving the way you describe things. i would never have thought to describe a crumpled piece of paper this way, but it's so evocative!
and that makes me wonder if it will become relevant to the story again later!
haha, adorable! idk, i just love it! it's like she's internalized being embodied in the radio
oof, an easy guess, apparently!
ooh, i love this concept
augh, i already love her
love the "I'm your mare", as always! and possible eventual double meaning there???
oof! i felt that interruption along with Night Glider.
i really can't wait to see what this is leading to! agh so enticing
love love love this setup! agh, i am already in love with Cloud Kicker, and just so intrigued at discovering just what her deal is! which i guess makes me very in the skin of Night Glider, fittingly enough as the viewpoint character, haha! but augh, the job of a fire lookout is one of those really fascinating things that i wish i'd learned of when i was younger so that i might have spent my youth dreaming of doing it. there's something just so appealing about the idea of living perched above a sylvan expanse devoid of people as a modern stylite. such a great setting to really delve into a character!
ooh, the mystery was on both sides! radio interference?
aww, Cloud Kicker is exactly how i imagined her!
aww, well at least she's helpful, interesting, and funny sometimes!
augh, knowing that that might not be Clear Sky at all... so many creepy possibilities!
haha, aww, this feels too real! poor Night Glider, oof!
maybe i've read too many SCPs but augh, anxiety rising
i guess since in-story it was a month ago to Night Glider, she doesn't remember. but i, the reader, do! all this was Star Hunter's attempts to decipher the snippets of radio interference, and the pushpins i imagine were these notes pinned up on a corkboard and connected with strings all conspiracy theorist-style
augh, so excited for this to pay off!
indeed! entropy, and all that
yay, she's got it!
hehe, love this dialogue tag
super creepy! i was wondering if it might be a number station of some sort, but this does seem to go against that theory
augh, every genre-aware bone in my body is hating this
aww!
auauaugh i love it
augh so relatable
oof! augh, i just love what you did with this chapter! the dialogue between them feels so comfortable and natural, and this conversation just had so many cute little moments that showed Night Glider's growing warmness and comfort with Clear Sky, instead of told. it was the perfect thing to lure the reader into feeling the comfort and warmth the characters must have, before piercing it with a ramping-up of the anxiety-inducing mystery. augh, i love this!
augh, i love it!
i mean, her name is Night Glider, after all! hehehe
i love how this instantly makes the mystery less an anxiety-inducing unknown and more a harmless thing that they're having fun figuring out
augh, love that they both do this
aww, so she is called Night Glider for a reason! these pony names have a habit of always working out somehow
augh, and i imagine this would make Clear Sky think of what Wind Sprint is going through...
huh, i guess that might explain Wind Sprint!
auauaugh, i love this! and it brings me back my earlier blathering about Clear Sky being embodied in a radio, perfect
augh she sounds so lovely through Night Glider's description
and this just happened after the conversation about assuming Clear Sky is a unicorn! agh i love it
pfft
augh, love how this puts Clear Sky on the other hoof when it comes to not being poetic when describing things
this is too relatable
:pinkiewhy:
ooh!
aww, it's so fun that these characters in a romance story are writing a romance story within it!
i do love how Equestrians both live in a world of literal magic and deities and yet maintain a very modern worldview! it definitely makes their thinking more relatable to us, at the very least!
oof!
also oof
oof, that's not gonna stay down
augh, this just put that entire mood directly into my head. it's the pony version of seeing the "person is typing" thing at the end of an IM conversation, then nothing.
and coming in to the part of the story where the climax should be, augh. a blaze foretold to burn away all but the truth underneath
oof, love how this tracks Night Glider and Clear Sky, in a way
augh, such a reversal from when Clear Sky was holding back on talking to Night Glider for fear of bothering her. love it
augh, that sarcastic statement earlier about needing to solve the mystery, lest it cause interference at a critical time...
this is a beautiful melancholy i feel in this moment with Night Glider, standing quietly and helplessly, listening and watching
oof. just oof.
between this and The Haunting of Carousel Boutique, the ghosts that you write are the only true ones i've ever read
augh, mirroring the last confession between the ghost lovers. just so good
and augh. i had the sinking feeling it had something to do with that. it must be such a complicated and anguishing set of feelings to have, and it's no wonder she would feel so much guilt and pain and self-hatred over it.
and of course, you have to leave it on a cliffhanger! augh
as always, i just love your depictions of how wielding magic must feel. and all of it coming together with Clear Sky living up to her own name; there is such poetry in that. and the part about seeing her late husband every time she closes her eyes, augh, i just feel that guilt she was talking about over the moments that she could distract herself from it. lovely stuff
and augh, just that one line about her daughter implying so much about where she is and where she was
augh, i love it
i just love the way this resurfaced again!
aww, healing!
augh, i love this directly-speaking-metaphors-to-the-reader technique, it works on me every time
the perfect way to ground the soaring heights of description preceding it, haha.
and the perfect imagery to end it with.
now this is what a romance story from the beginning should be! the way that the two mares adapted to the nature of their only method of communication, filling in the blanks of the other they could not see, just really struck me on a deep level. because that is what we do with all relationships, isn't it? we only ever get sketches of the other, filtered through the distance between two distinct beings that is not ever truly bridgeable. and we fill in these sketches to match the stories we tell ourselves. here, just more explicitly, with the "liked to imagine"s. further illustrated by the story-within-the-story of a couple who were as close as any two creatures could be, living by themselves isolated away from all other souls, but that did not save them, in the end, from falling short of truly understanding themselves and each other.
and augh, just everything! the pacing of both the story at large and the individual scenes between them, the way that the descriptions in the narration re-inforce the feel of each character, how natural and subtle and real their personalities and the way they meshed felt. i just feel like i have so much to learn about how to write a romance from this fic, and it was a joy to read. thank you so much for it!
Good story. Did remind me of Firewatch :)
I saw this on my feed a few months ago when you first posted it. I put it on my RIL then and finally now when I get around to reading it, I see it’s gone and won first place in the contest you put it in!
At least I can say that I am a fan of your stories before you’ve started winning contests with them!
As always, your writing bring forth a kind of emotional imagery that I envy. Felt like I am reading Stephen King again. (In a good way, honest!) where even the subtle things like a held breath can have a profound emotional weight behind it. Your prose is wonderful, always was, but somehow even more so with every story you put out.
You mention in your author note that you felt like it might have been served to be longer, but I think as is the story has a good pace behind it, and you captured the dynamic between the two especially well for being two characters who had zero interaction in the show, but with backstories that fitted well to one another.
I do have to giggle just a little bit though! Because I think this is the fourth story from you that I’ve read that’s ‘two ponies experience a twilight zone / magical thingy and grow / fall in love during it.’
But that’s okay! I’ll happily read a thousand stories from you until Equestria is filled with magic holes and paired off ponies. You do such a fantastic job of it that I love it every time. Celestia only knows my own stories are just silly excuses to get ponies kissing, so it’s not like am any better.
I will also grant you the greatest honor I can give. You’re the start a new bookshelf! because the deep introspection is a thing I like a lot that I haven’t quite encountered as much as I liked.
You can has review!
I can feel you there. The proportion of character focus (Night Glider, Clear Sky, and the voices) felt correct, but there are ways which you could have gone really into the dynamics more. The style of long multichapter works with a side story is a common one, but those tend to slow-burn the reveal of the connections between the main and the side stories. I'm not sure if that same feeling can be accomplished in less words, but yeah.
I often get "this would be better if it was twice the world count" in my own stories, so I know the feeling.
That said, I enjoyed the story.
Hello! Have a review. And a fave, too. I was a little iffy about this one going in, as I've never played Firewatch and I often dislike fics which bring in non-canon tech. I shouldn't have worried. While I do slightly agree that this could have been even better had the contest rules allowed it to be longer (the rhythms of the extended summer, in particular) it was still a fascinating, gripping and rather eerie read.
An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!
Augh, come back for a reread after a full school year and it's still so peakkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
I wish I could put into words how good this is past it's gooooooooooood