Braeburn is a stallion from a family of workaholics. He is determined to make sure Appleloosa becomes a thriving, successful town no matter what - even if the cost is his own health.
Lily is a nervous mare who is scared of her own shadow. She has lived through Nightmare Moon, Discord, a dragon, an ursa minor, plus whatever else has attacked Ponyville this week. She would much rather stay home in her nice, safe garden with her nice, safe flowers than venture outside her front door - but her friends have other ideas after reading Iron Will's latest book.
When Braeburn is sent away from Appleloosa to stay at Sweet Apple Acres for the sake of his health, nopony would ever have imagined the two would meet. Yet the yearly celebration of the Spring is Sprung Feast provides the stage for a very unconventional love story.
Featured on EQD! 28/3/13
26K words?!!
Holy shit....
it was adorable good on you for oringal pairing of barbunxlilly :D
Awesome. Good job. I had fun reading this.
For a first time one-shot, this was a pretty great read about two minor characters in the series.
Nice callback on the whole Screaming Lily fad.
Do keep up the good work upon such ideas like this one in the future.
Evening and night blooming flowers have always been my favourites.
beautiful, absolutely beautiful, dare I ask for a second chapter my good sir?
Nice story.
26K?
Challenge accepted... when I have the time to read all of it.
But fear not, I'm sure I'll enjoy it, the plot summary won me over, didn't it?
cute.
also,noteworthy!!!!
This was the smoothest 26k words I've read in a single chapter.
Didn't get detracted once while reading in one sitting.
Plot progression, details, character interactions, everything feels right, and that's the first time I felt that way while reading something since the past two months.
It deserves 30 times more views than it has now.
I was listening to an Old Friend from The Hobbit during the of this story, fits perfectly.
26k and featured on EQD woah!
I would like to put a long review stating all the things that i loved in this story, however i cannot do that.
If i did, i would simply be typing back your entire tale.
I thank you for this wondrous story, it was worth missing a bit of sleep to finish.
--- One Psychopathic Maniacal Fox
A wonderful and touching story. Nice to see something that doesn't carry a sad or grimdark tag for a change.
A very good read! Felt very much like something that could happen in an actual episode. The characterisations was perfect, the Funny Background Events was spot on, and the whole shebang just oozed adorableness.
You realise, though, that we won't let you get away with not writing a sequel, right? Good. Glad we got that sorted out. Carry on!
"Twilight" should be capitalized, since it's a proper name.
Same here -- "Spike's" should be capitalized.
Yes, vast... tracts of land.
And now chapter 2 please
26 k i am impressed son , or would it be gizer? will read it i been reading dairies of a mad man for hours now and the ride is far from stooping hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue hue. ok i think that's enough hue
I read the entire story while listening to Killswitch Engage. Such a great band to listen to while reading... AND NOW I HAVE NINE FULL DAYS TO READ ANYTHING I WANT!
Very nice!
That was really sweet. Loved Lily's progression.
Holy crap! That was great, genius
I must say, that was one of the most enjoyable stories I've read recently. The characterization was excellent, the pacing was perfect, and the story as a whole left me quite satisfied. As for the writing itself, there were a very places with sentences that seemed a tad bulky, but nothing major. Very well done, sir!
After letting this sit in my read later list for forever and a day, very glad I finally got around to reading this! Twas fun and interesting to get a story on more backgroundy ponies (never really looked into it meself) and it all tied together really well
Lily and Braeburn, huh? Not a ship I'd have thought of, but it worked weirdly well. Nicely done, sir.
Ignoring that little blasphemy, the work you did here is great. I haven't enjoyed piece from FiM Fiction so much in a long time. Perhaps it is a result of preference, but I loved your depictions of the Apple family being a family. D'awwsome. You just don't get such things in many other works these days. They really felt like a real family, a really real family as down to earth as their rakes and hoes. You used your side ponies with care, too, and that is something we don't get to see in the show that I wish we did. Maybe I haven't been in the fandom long enough to know, but if you invented the flower-friends-forever yourself I have to tell you that your artifice was artistically brilliant.
Go on and edit your work--turn some of your "hims" to "hises" and "hers" to "shes" in accordance with standard English grammar rules--and I will be expecting more enjoyable reads from you hopefully in the near future.
Did I miss an obvious clue or something? Who was AJ making out with when she was missing for so long and came back with grass in her hair?
I want to preface my comments by saying: I liked this story. While I'm about to start being critical, please remember that this is all starting from a baseline of approval.
The dialogue in this story could stand to be tightened up a little. There were a few places where I felt the dialogue dragged just a few lines too long due to excessive back-and-forth, where a little editing could make the conversation a lot punchier. Not serious, but it was enough to get my attention. You might also want to check the slang in your story -- I'm going to guess you're from somewhere in the UK, because I ran across several bits of brit-slang. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but it does feel weird when a phrase like that comes out of somebody in the Apple family. One bit that I thought was particularly problematic was "trying it on", which I've never heard before and had to go to Google with. It was especially irritating because Braeburn didn't understand it at first either, but then he just figured it out instead of having somebody explain it to the audience.
There were a couple of character moments that felt oddly out of place, like they're cameos of somebody's OC. Rock Angel springs to mind immediately; where some of the characters had a real connection to the plot (such as Caramel's dad, who served a dual purpose as an example for Lily and to set up the non-moment with Caramel), Rock Angel just has two or three mentions that don't seem to do anything except draw attention away from the action. You point the metaphorical camera at what is apparently background and focus on it for a paragraph or two, for no apparent purpose.
So, okay. That's out of the way, let's talk about plot.
I feel like there were a few pieces of information we were missing. We never got any explanation as to what happened that caused Lily to be such a social wreck in the first place. While I don't want to delve into a depressing backstory or anything, that sort of anxiety doesn't come out of nowhere, and all three of the sisters have it to varying degrees, so I naturally want to know what caused the problem.
A minor side note -- it's bad form to explain complex events after the fact. It wasn't good when Tolkien did it, and it's not good here. If Twilight and Rarity are going to save the day at the end (and I'll talk about that below), we should see them do it through Lily's eyes or have enough information to figure it out on our own without having it exposited at us after the main conflict has been entirely resolved.
And that feeds into the other big problem I had; Lily doesn't have a defining decision. She seems to switch mental gears based entirely on her destined love's mellifluous voice. That is to say, I wanted to see some internal change or decision on Lily's part where she consciously decides to press on despite her fear, and I never felt like I got one. Even when she stops being scared, she's a passive passenger in her own life; Braeburn just makes her feel less scared, and she's carried along by that emotion just as much as she's pushed around by her insecurities. Then she's allowed to appear in all her glory before the crowd thanks to Twilight and Rarity, but again Lily isn't the decision-maker. She's pushed around by her friends -- certainly a more benevolent driver than her fears -- but it still feels like Lily lacks agency in her own romance.
I rather wished that Lily had been forced to make that critical choice to show up in her ruined dress or give up on the dance, at which point she has to decide that Braeburn is more important than public ridicule. Or better yet, given the wisdom she drops on her sisters later about "just being us" and not worrying about labels, she ought to shed the ruined fancy dress and just go as regular Lily, same as you'd see on the street, wearing nothing but a lily in her hair.
I really enjoyed reading this. It's being well written made it easy to get through without frustration, and it seemed to flow alright.
Your use of the word Gobsmacked made me laugh harder than it should, but that's just an inside joke I have with some friends of mine. Don't see that word very often! xD
I enjoyed how most of the story was not them being in love, but instead it was 3 quarters build up. The 1 quarter of awkward romance was great though.
I should have gotten around to reading this sooner...
Totally worth the 4 hours of sleep deprivation to read this beast.
Am I the only one who though Braeburn was the one getting on the train?
I really liked this one!
Its nice.... Really nice.
(Wish I had learned about the bookmark function before I started reading this
)
The Art of the Derp was a decent enough story. I read it, had fun with it, but in the end its a story I would have forgotten about before too long.
This story however, I enjoyed at leas twice as much and I am sure I'll read it again before too long :)
This was an awesome story. Maby you can write anther story taking place of the point of veiw of somepony else, or something like that. For you seem to be quit good at it. :)
That was cute. I could definitely picture the party in my head. And I have a sneaking suspicion AJ was hanging out with Dash this entire party.
One of the best, and certainly longest one-shot I have read. Great work. Plenty of emotion and imagery.
That's impressive, Daisy able to give Daisy a hoof-bump.
Hehehe, what a cute and nice story! Love it
Cool, this is the first fic I read on this site a couple of years ago that really got me into MLP fanfics; I've only found it again just now. Thank you for writing this.
Very sweet story.
I'm going to read this again, because I loved this story.
Does anyone else get the same vibe from the title that this should be a Clopfic
Awww such a happy ending! This was really cute!!!'
Diuretic tinctures... Is fluid retention that big a problem among ponies??? I would have thought all of Pinkie Pie's sugar would have their kidneys working overtime just to keep the sweet, sweet crystals below lethal levels.
Oh well, cute story over all, and a happy ending, something it wanted as early as the first paragraph. Bravo!
Rainbow is her usual self I see.