Georg’s Week of Dragons (and Strawberries, which do not breathe fire) · 4:17am Sep 29th, 2017
Starting tomorrow, I’ll be posting a chapter a day of various stories, ending with the story, More Precious Than Silver or Gold
By an amazing amount of begging, bribery, and bartering, I managed to get Skywriter to let me write a story in his sandbox. As you may know, the Cadence of Cloudsdale series is an AU started back before Cadence had been fully described out (and she still isn’t, but bear with me). Here, the tiny alicorn is the daughter of Ladybird, the Alicorn of Prolificacy, who managed to escape the collapsing Crystal Empire, only to die giving birth at the Abbey of Song in Reduit. The infant is cared for by the nuns, who adore and revere their Princess-Goddess, shielding her away from the world in order to keep her young and innocent.
And centuries pass, while the Blessed Infant remains unchanged and perfect.
Readers are encouraged to read the whole Cadence of Cloudsdale group, mostly in my preferred order:
The First Time You See Her - (Chapter 2, with Sister Kale is awesome)
Lady Prismia and the Princess-Goddess where Filly Cadence turns her first unrepentant heart.
Don’t Let The Princess Drive The Celestial Phaeton, a story of growing pains and leaving the nest (by Ponydora Prancypants, regrettably unfinished)
And of course the rest of the stories in the folders, mostly about when Cadence is older. Which brings us to the current story that Skywriter has written: Spa and Order in which Cadence hits Cloudsdale with all the impact of an avalanche. There is one paragraph in there which Murcushio contributed that I have to glue on here.
There is thunder in my ears and lightning in my mouth. This is one of the hinges of the world, the last and proudest stronghold of the pegasus nation, which devours air and water and produces rainbows and storms, light and dark in equal measure. Their lives spin around me in a whirling tornado, reaching back to their near-mythical progenitors, the Hurricane and the Flower, and forward to a fate I cannot see but can almost touch. I smell bread, and salt, and rain, and sweat, and tears, and love, and hate, and rot, and growth, and I know that I can take this bit between my teeth and pull, it's right in front of me if I only want it enough…
So, here is my schedule:
Friday - Friendship is Strawberries, in which Twilight Sparkle celebrates her first spring in Ponyville.
Saturday - The Lazy Dragon of Dragonvale - There once was a dragon so lazy that rather than go find a village to pillage for his hoard, he decided to make one. (Reading by Jake is in progress)
Sunday-Thursday - Letters From a Little Princess Monster - Goodbye Summer, Hello New Friends arc, in which Monster goes to Zebrica
Friday (again) - More Precious Than Silver or Gold - The worth of a dragon is measured by their hoard, so what happens when a dragon travels to a distant abbey to find the most precious treasure of all: a tiny alicorn, named Cadenza.
My only regret is that Her Royal Morning Coffee, Equestria 1940, Twilight Makes a Coltfriend - Literally, Farmer Bruner Has Some Ponies, and Twinkle Twinkle - Speaker to Dragons are not all ready, or I could fill up a whole month of daily posts again. Technically, I have about 30 chapters done on them all, but I’ve learned not to post until they’re done, so be patient.
Confession: I really didn't have to beg Skywriter too much. He actually encouraged me to write "More Precious" and my ego forced me to keep going. Here's what he wrote after I put up the first draft in the Writeoff in the Things Left Unsaid round: (where it placed 20 out of 73)
See! A crushing blow, right to my ego. I'm a sucker for unearned praise. But it did take two years.
I think it's one of the best feelings ever, when somebody wants to play in my sandbox. Even though none of them are perfect as stories, the few Ember's stories by others are marvelous and miraculous to me. I still just cannot wrap my mind around the people who hate having others play in their worlds, yet I've met them in person. There's one that turns up at our local writer's group, and always regards me with skepticism when I read fanfiction, because she thinks of people desiring to play in her world as a violation, and is constantly armed on the alert against it, and I just don't get it. I never will. I try to see the other side most times, and most times I can manage, but that sort of jealousy is just beyond me.
Excuse me for word-vomiting all over your blog. But really, I am baffled by this one, and also delighted by more people playing in worlds that I love. Cadance of Cloudsdale is a delight, I'll have to read your story there.
Now I get to live in anticipation of Sunday-Thursday.
There are many incomplete stories on Fimfiction that I look forward to seeing updated. Letters From a Little Princess Monster is near the top of my list. There is no character I follow that I want a happy ending for more than Monster.
Sometimes that happiness is so close I can taste it. My favorite scene is when Twilight sees Lyra and her old friends after coming home from Funland. I just reread the scene and it made me tear up all over again.
Thank you for all you have shared with us. Sunday is only a few days away.
4681490 Well, I'll bump it up a day then. The reading of the Lazy Dragon won't be out until late in the weekend, so I'll move it back to Thursday for maximum adorableness, and letting you enjoy Monster a little early on Saturday. And I'll even let you peek under the door.
Monster sighed and rested her chin on the bookshelf inside the library. She missed Trixie. Writing letters to Luna and all of the other ponies she had gotten to know helped Monster handle the endless cascade of new experiences, but curling up with Trixie who knew just what she had been through was soothing. Big problems became little problems with her sharp replies to Monster’s worries. And when she was wrong, even on a large scale, Trixie did not mope and hide from the world. She picked herself back up again and charged nose-first right into the teeth of the problem, ready or not. Trixie planned for the unexpected, because even if it never happened, thinking about what she would do if attacked or an accident happened made her prepared for other things.