When Rarity accepted the offer to negotiate trading opportunities with the United Feline Kingdom, she expected nothing but polite talk (and one fabulous masquerade ball). But upon reading that the UFK has some particularly strict customs, she must rise to the occasion with very little notice. The only question is, will her choice of companion make things difficult...?

Written for Everfree Northwest's 2015 Iron Author competition. The challenge was to write the story in two hours, and incorporate the themes of "one brief, shining moment", "a voyage", and "masks".

I'll be posting two versions; the original, posted as written (other than formatting to make it easier to read), and the cleaned up version.

A crossover with the TV show Forever.

For most of his 200-year existence, Dr. Henry Morgan has been writing in his journals about the things he's seen and learned about life and death from his various rebirths. Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised when a talking alicorn princess visited him and said she wanted to discuss his immortality. The only question is, where do they go from there...?

Rated Teen on the grounds of there being several mentions of death/getting shot, but generally, this is supposed to be silly.

THIS STORY HAS TWO ENDINGS. I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I went with both. The "played straight" ending is Chapter 3, the "absolute crack" ending is Chapter 4.

Horatio Hornblower, Captain of the HMS Lydia, is forced to pull into the safety of a mysterious island after taking heavy damage from a French ship. The island in question? A little land called Equestria.

Initially suspicious of the ponies, Hornblower finally consents to work with them to get his ship in fighting condition once again. As a sort of trust-building exercise, Princess Celestia has sent over some help; the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. They see it as an adventure; Hornblower sees it as a test of his sanity.