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Could-Have-Been
“Letter for you, Rainbow Dash,” Ditzy called, hovering at a distance.
“Bring it on over, Ditzy!” Rainbow raised a hoof from where she was lounging outside her cloud house, waving her in closer.
Ditzy flew over and hoofed off the letter she was holding. “Here you go.”
“Thanks!”
“Anytime.” Ditzy nodded with a big smile before she flew away.
Rainbow leaned back on her cloud and sighed contentedly. It was a good morning. Perfect weather, a day off to relax, and now, to top it off...
She looked at the envelope and smiled. “Huh. Griffonstone. Haven’t heard from there in a while.” Her hoof slid easily under the flap, tearing open the seal, and she wriggled out the sheets of paper inside and unfolded them.
Reclining on the clouds and warm sunshine while holding the letter up in front of herself, she started reading.
Hey dweeb.
If you’re reading this, you’re not gonna believe what happened...
Rainbow kept going. After the first few lines, she suddenly sat upright. Her smile faded, eyes going wide while all the blood drained from her face.
“Oh, fuck!” The words slipped out half-consciously on her breath.
Fighting her instinct to respond in a physical way—to fly, to fight, to do something—Rainbow Dash forced herself to keep reading as quickly as she could, hoping desperately that this was some sort of mistake, or a joke. This has to be a bad prank, she thought, holding the paper with shaking hooves.
After she reached the end and found that it was not, she dropped the letter and bolted.
Minutes later, Rainbow Dash burst into the map room of the crystal palace. “Twilight, just letting you know I’m gonna be out of town, because I gotta go somewhere!” She announced. “Now!”
Twilight was sitting at the table and reading from a thick book. “Umm, okay.” She looked up at Rainbow with a confused stare. “Where?”
“Griffonstone!” Rainbow replied.
“And why?” Twilight continued.
“Ugh!” Rainbow let out an exasperated huff and rolled her eyes impatiently. “Gilda!”
“Rainbow, maybe you should slow down,” Twilight suggested, staring at Rainbow Dash with one eyebrow half-raised. “What about Gilda? Just take your time and explain. Did something happen? Is she alright?”
Rainbow’s mouth opened, then closed. She stood as still as a statue for a moment, before her eyes went from determined to defocused. Her chest deflated and her legs shook. Then her mouth opened again, slowly, and she forced out words.
“She’s dead, Twi.” Rainbow sank to her haunches and sniffed down tears, wiping her watering eyes. “She’s dead.”
“Oh, no. Rainbow...” Twilight walked over and pulled her into a hug, wrapping her in her wings. Rainbow Dash finally crumbled into quiet wordless sobs.
Griffonstone looked different. That was what Rainbow Dash noticed the most, and what she tried to make herself think about to keep her mind from wandering to... other things. It was hard enough to find distractions on train ride here and the hike up the mountain. She just wanted to let her brain tune out and turn off for a while and get some relief.
The last time she’d been here with Pinkie Pie, she reminisced, the eyries had been falling apart, the palace was on the verge of being a ruin, and the library was already one. The whole place was “a dump,” as Pinkie had put it at first sight. She hadn’t been able to argue with that assessment.
But she could see after walking around for a bit that the griffins had really turned things around since then. The streets weren’t littered with loose straw and sticks anymore. The buildings all looked structurally sound now, too, which was good because she was about to have to go into one, an office right across the way.
Rainbow Dash approached, then steeled herself before she pushed the door open and entered.
“Hello,” a female griffin with a gyrfalcon front half and leopard-spot back half said from behind a desk. “Can I help you?”
“Are you...” Rainbow thought for a second before remembering the name. “Germane? Gilda’s executor?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Germane nodded. “She said a pony should be coming around eventually.”
“Well, I’m here,” Rainbow Dash said.
“Great.” Germane stood up and extended a claw. Rainbow Dash reached out and accepted the hoofshake. “Why don’t you sit down?” Germane motioned to an empty chair in front of her desk.
“I’m Rainbow Dash, by the way.” Rainbow Dash sat. “So, just to be upfront, I’ve never done this before. All I know is I got a letter telling me to come here and ask for you, but it didn’t explain a whole lot. What happens now? And what’s an executor, exactly, anyway?”
“Heh.” Germane smiled dully for a second. “Alright. Well, to start with that, it means Gilda hired me to tie up her loose ends and make sure some last instructions she left get carried out.”
“Oh. Like, a will?”
“Kinda, but a bit different,” Germane explained. “Gilda didn’t have a written will in the formal sense. Didn’t really make sense, since she didn’t have much of anything to leave behind that needed one. She mostly just had some directions for her...”
Germane trailed off.
“What to do with her now that she’s dead,” Rainbow Dash said flatly.
“Yeah.” Germane nodded. “Yeah, that.”
“Her letter said that much, at least. Let’s get this over with.”
“Alright. I guess we can get right down to it, if you want.” Germane got up and picked up a small stoneware urn with a lid on it from a shelf on the wall behind her. She set it in front of her on the desk.
“These are her...” She covered her beak with a claw and coughed delicately, while looking away. “Um, mortal remains. Her ashes. I’m sorry, I don’t, uh. I don’t know if there’s any more sensitive way I can phrase that.”
Rainbow Dash sat still, and silent, and stared at the urn. Suddenly she was numb. Everything felt unreal. This wasn’t really happening. What was this thing in front of her?
Time rolled along in an awkward, stilted silence that Dash was aware of but felt strangely dissociated from, like she was watching this all happen from outside.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Germane offered.
Without a word of reply, Rainbow Dash stood, picked up the urn, and walked out.
She could only barely remember doing that, and nothing afterwards. Everything was a haze until she found herself back in her hotel room, crying her eyes out into a pillow until she was finally drained enough to fall asleep.
She caught the first train out the next morning, before the sun had even risen. She didn’t want to stick around long enough for the daylight to let her see any more of the new Griffonstone.
Reaching the west Equestrian coast had taken Rainbow Dash a lot of trouble; a couple days’ travel by train and then nearly another whole day’s flight on her own wings once there weren’t any more tracks to ride.
But here she was, she made it. It was a beautiful place. Waves rolled in a slow rhythm, one after another, while Rainbow Dash sat on the rocks above them, while the urn sat next to her. “Well, here we are,” she declared, turning to address it. “This is where you wanted me to take you. The edge of the world, the end of everything. Just so I can scatter your dumb ashes.”
“Heh.” Rainbow Dash snickered at her own bad pun momentarily. “Dumb ashes...” After a few seconds, the smirk on her face died and she sobered before fading off into silence and resuming watching the waves. They washed in and out, in and out, over and over again, and she let herself be mesmerized by the slow, steady, crashing pulse of the world.
Not wanting to move, she just sat and watched those waves. They rolled along ceaselessly until the sun was about to set, sinking down into the horizon to the west, leaving golden light glittering on the swells of water as they rose and fell.
But she knew she couldn’t stay forever.
“Gotta get this over with,” she muttered, finally willing herself to act before the world grew dark. She grabbed the urn, then flew lethargically up about a dozen meters.
This was the point of no return. Wincing, she reluctantly let the urn go.
It fell, tumbling through the air for a little over a second before smashing into the rocks below and shattering. A cloud of grey dust burst out and billowed away into the air, spraying in every direction. It hung heavy and opaque for just a moment before dissipating into the wind.
“I guess that’s the end of your world, G,” Rainbow said, watching it all go. “And it’s the end of a piece of mine, too.”
Rainbow Dash poked her head into the map room. “Twilight?”
“Hi Rainbow,” Twilight said. “Good to have you back in Ponyville.”
“It’s good to be back. Wasn’t exactly a fun trip, but I got everything done that needed getting done, so... at least it’s all taken care of now.”
“I’m sorry again about Gilda,” Twilight said. “How are you holding up? Doing alright?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
“Anything you want to talk about, I’m here,” Twilight offered.
“Eh.” Rainbow Dash shrugged and sighed. “Not really much to talk about. She got sick, she died. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Well, I meant, you know, more about you,” Twilight clarified. “But as far as that goes, did you find out what it was?”
“I did, but it was some big word I don’t really remember,” Rainbow Dash said. “Basically something about her blood, something wrong in her bone marrow. Her cells turned bad. There was no way to stop it.”
“Oh.” Twilight paused. “Oh, I see. I’m sorry, Rainbow.”
“It wasn’t something quick.” Rainbow Dash was silent for a few seconds. “She knew, Twi. She knew she was sick for months. But she didn’t tell me, not ‘til after she was gone.”
“Do you wish she had?”
“I don’t know.” Rainbow shook her head. “At first, I was mad. Really mad. At first I did wish she’d told me. Like, why would you not tell people?”
“And are you still mad at her?”
“Nah.” Rainbow shrugged. “I had a lot of time to think while I was traveling. But when I did, I just kept going over could-have-beens in my head. I kept having these fantasies about how it could have been different, you know? What I would have done differently, what I would have said, whatever. If there was more time. If I had just known. If I had just been there.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow nodded. “I felt pretty cheated at first, too. I felt like I deserved to know. But, then, I started realizing some stuff. I think I know why she didn’t tell me.”
“Why do you think?”
“Because what good would it have done?” Rainbow Dash asked. “For all those could-have-beens, what would have been the point to any of them? There was nothing that was gonna cure her. What really would have happened if she’d send a letter that said, ‘oh, hey, by the way, I’ve only got a couple months left. But nevermind that, how’ve you been?’ She knew how that would have gone over.”
“Probably not well,” Twilight guessed.
“After a while, I realized that she did me a huge favor, in her own way,” Rainbow said. “I think she must have thought about it pretty carefully. She had to decide what her last days were gonna be like for everypony who knew her. And yeah, she could tell me, and I would be a totally bummed out, scared, desperate, nervous wreck, trying to find some crazy way to fix her even though it wasn’t gonna happen, and I’d spend every second of those last months being miserable and probably making her miserable because of it. Or...”
“Or... not.” Twilight nodded.
“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed. “Or not. She could just not say anything, and I wouldn’t have to go through that. So she didn’t. And I guess that was easiest on everypony.”
“Still, I guess that does rob you of your chance to say some things you might have wanted to,” Twilight said.
“Nah, not really.” Rainbow Dash thought for a moment. “That’s more of those could-have-beens, but... you know, we grew up together. We knew each other well enough that I kinda think Gilda already knew anything I would have said anyway. So I don’t even think that matters.”
“So you’re okay?”
“No. I’m not.” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Not even a little bit.”
She walked over to the map table and flopped her head down on it. Her back slouched and her wings drooped. “Someday, Twilight. Not yet. But someday.”
“Bring it on over, Ditzy!” Rainbow raised a hoof from where she was lounging outside her cloud house, waving her in closer.
Ditzy flew over and hoofed off the letter she was holding. “Here you go.”
“Thanks!”
“Anytime.” Ditzy nodded with a big smile before she flew away.
Rainbow leaned back on her cloud and sighed contentedly. It was a good morning. Perfect weather, a day off to relax, and now, to top it off...
She looked at the envelope and smiled. “Huh. Griffonstone. Haven’t heard from there in a while.” Her hoof slid easily under the flap, tearing open the seal, and she wriggled out the sheets of paper inside and unfolded them.
Reclining on the clouds and warm sunshine while holding the letter up in front of herself, she started reading.
Hey dweeb.
If you’re reading this, you’re not gonna believe what happened...
Rainbow kept going. After the first few lines, she suddenly sat upright. Her smile faded, eyes going wide while all the blood drained from her face.
“Oh, fuck!” The words slipped out half-consciously on her breath.
Fighting her instinct to respond in a physical way—to fly, to fight, to do something—Rainbow Dash forced herself to keep reading as quickly as she could, hoping desperately that this was some sort of mistake, or a joke. This has to be a bad prank, she thought, holding the paper with shaking hooves.
After she reached the end and found that it was not, she dropped the letter and bolted.
Minutes later, Rainbow Dash burst into the map room of the crystal palace. “Twilight, just letting you know I’m gonna be out of town, because I gotta go somewhere!” She announced. “Now!”
Twilight was sitting at the table and reading from a thick book. “Umm, okay.” She looked up at Rainbow with a confused stare. “Where?”
“Griffonstone!” Rainbow replied.
“And why?” Twilight continued.
“Ugh!” Rainbow let out an exasperated huff and rolled her eyes impatiently. “Gilda!”
“Rainbow, maybe you should slow down,” Twilight suggested, staring at Rainbow Dash with one eyebrow half-raised. “What about Gilda? Just take your time and explain. Did something happen? Is she alright?”
Rainbow’s mouth opened, then closed. She stood as still as a statue for a moment, before her eyes went from determined to defocused. Her chest deflated and her legs shook. Then her mouth opened again, slowly, and she forced out words.
“She’s dead, Twi.” Rainbow sank to her haunches and sniffed down tears, wiping her watering eyes. “She’s dead.”
“Oh, no. Rainbow...” Twilight walked over and pulled her into a hug, wrapping her in her wings. Rainbow Dash finally crumbled into quiet wordless sobs.
Griffonstone looked different. That was what Rainbow Dash noticed the most, and what she tried to make herself think about to keep her mind from wandering to... other things. It was hard enough to find distractions on train ride here and the hike up the mountain. She just wanted to let her brain tune out and turn off for a while and get some relief.
The last time she’d been here with Pinkie Pie, she reminisced, the eyries had been falling apart, the palace was on the verge of being a ruin, and the library was already one. The whole place was “a dump,” as Pinkie had put it at first sight. She hadn’t been able to argue with that assessment.
But she could see after walking around for a bit that the griffins had really turned things around since then. The streets weren’t littered with loose straw and sticks anymore. The buildings all looked structurally sound now, too, which was good because she was about to have to go into one, an office right across the way.
Rainbow Dash approached, then steeled herself before she pushed the door open and entered.
“Hello,” a female griffin with a gyrfalcon front half and leopard-spot back half said from behind a desk. “Can I help you?”
“Are you...” Rainbow thought for a second before remembering the name. “Germane? Gilda’s executor?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Germane nodded. “She said a pony should be coming around eventually.”
“Well, I’m here,” Rainbow Dash said.
“Great.” Germane stood up and extended a claw. Rainbow Dash reached out and accepted the hoofshake. “Why don’t you sit down?” Germane motioned to an empty chair in front of her desk.
“I’m Rainbow Dash, by the way.” Rainbow Dash sat. “So, just to be upfront, I’ve never done this before. All I know is I got a letter telling me to come here and ask for you, but it didn’t explain a whole lot. What happens now? And what’s an executor, exactly, anyway?”
“Heh.” Germane smiled dully for a second. “Alright. Well, to start with that, it means Gilda hired me to tie up her loose ends and make sure some last instructions she left get carried out.”
“Oh. Like, a will?”
“Kinda, but a bit different,” Germane explained. “Gilda didn’t have a written will in the formal sense. Didn’t really make sense, since she didn’t have much of anything to leave behind that needed one. She mostly just had some directions for her...”
Germane trailed off.
“What to do with her now that she’s dead,” Rainbow Dash said flatly.
“Yeah.” Germane nodded. “Yeah, that.”
“Her letter said that much, at least. Let’s get this over with.”
“Alright. I guess we can get right down to it, if you want.” Germane got up and picked up a small stoneware urn with a lid on it from a shelf on the wall behind her. She set it in front of her on the desk.
“These are her...” She covered her beak with a claw and coughed delicately, while looking away. “Um, mortal remains. Her ashes. I’m sorry, I don’t, uh. I don’t know if there’s any more sensitive way I can phrase that.”
Rainbow Dash sat still, and silent, and stared at the urn. Suddenly she was numb. Everything felt unreal. This wasn’t really happening. What was this thing in front of her?
Time rolled along in an awkward, stilted silence that Dash was aware of but felt strangely dissociated from, like she was watching this all happen from outside.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Germane offered.
Without a word of reply, Rainbow Dash stood, picked up the urn, and walked out.
She could only barely remember doing that, and nothing afterwards. Everything was a haze until she found herself back in her hotel room, crying her eyes out into a pillow until she was finally drained enough to fall asleep.
She caught the first train out the next morning, before the sun had even risen. She didn’t want to stick around long enough for the daylight to let her see any more of the new Griffonstone.
Reaching the west Equestrian coast had taken Rainbow Dash a lot of trouble; a couple days’ travel by train and then nearly another whole day’s flight on her own wings once there weren’t any more tracks to ride.
But here she was, she made it. It was a beautiful place. Waves rolled in a slow rhythm, one after another, while Rainbow Dash sat on the rocks above them, while the urn sat next to her. “Well, here we are,” she declared, turning to address it. “This is where you wanted me to take you. The edge of the world, the end of everything. Just so I can scatter your dumb ashes.”
“Heh.” Rainbow Dash snickered at her own bad pun momentarily. “Dumb ashes...” After a few seconds, the smirk on her face died and she sobered before fading off into silence and resuming watching the waves. They washed in and out, in and out, over and over again, and she let herself be mesmerized by the slow, steady, crashing pulse of the world.
Not wanting to move, she just sat and watched those waves. They rolled along ceaselessly until the sun was about to set, sinking down into the horizon to the west, leaving golden light glittering on the swells of water as they rose and fell.
But she knew she couldn’t stay forever.
“Gotta get this over with,” she muttered, finally willing herself to act before the world grew dark. She grabbed the urn, then flew lethargically up about a dozen meters.
This was the point of no return. Wincing, she reluctantly let the urn go.
It fell, tumbling through the air for a little over a second before smashing into the rocks below and shattering. A cloud of grey dust burst out and billowed away into the air, spraying in every direction. It hung heavy and opaque for just a moment before dissipating into the wind.
“I guess that’s the end of your world, G,” Rainbow said, watching it all go. “And it’s the end of a piece of mine, too.”
Rainbow Dash poked her head into the map room. “Twilight?”
“Hi Rainbow,” Twilight said. “Good to have you back in Ponyville.”
“It’s good to be back. Wasn’t exactly a fun trip, but I got everything done that needed getting done, so... at least it’s all taken care of now.”
“I’m sorry again about Gilda,” Twilight said. “How are you holding up? Doing alright?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
“Anything you want to talk about, I’m here,” Twilight offered.
“Eh.” Rainbow Dash shrugged and sighed. “Not really much to talk about. She got sick, she died. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Well, I meant, you know, more about you,” Twilight clarified. “But as far as that goes, did you find out what it was?”
“I did, but it was some big word I don’t really remember,” Rainbow Dash said. “Basically something about her blood, something wrong in her bone marrow. Her cells turned bad. There was no way to stop it.”
“Oh.” Twilight paused. “Oh, I see. I’m sorry, Rainbow.”
“It wasn’t something quick.” Rainbow Dash was silent for a few seconds. “She knew, Twi. She knew she was sick for months. But she didn’t tell me, not ‘til after she was gone.”
“Do you wish she had?”
“I don’t know.” Rainbow shook her head. “At first, I was mad. Really mad. At first I did wish she’d told me. Like, why would you not tell people?”
“And are you still mad at her?”
“Nah.” Rainbow shrugged. “I had a lot of time to think while I was traveling. But when I did, I just kept going over could-have-beens in my head. I kept having these fantasies about how it could have been different, you know? What I would have done differently, what I would have said, whatever. If there was more time. If I had just known. If I had just been there.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow nodded. “I felt pretty cheated at first, too. I felt like I deserved to know. But, then, I started realizing some stuff. I think I know why she didn’t tell me.”
“Why do you think?”
“Because what good would it have done?” Rainbow Dash asked. “For all those could-have-beens, what would have been the point to any of them? There was nothing that was gonna cure her. What really would have happened if she’d send a letter that said, ‘oh, hey, by the way, I’ve only got a couple months left. But nevermind that, how’ve you been?’ She knew how that would have gone over.”
“Probably not well,” Twilight guessed.
“After a while, I realized that she did me a huge favor, in her own way,” Rainbow said. “I think she must have thought about it pretty carefully. She had to decide what her last days were gonna be like for everypony who knew her. And yeah, she could tell me, and I would be a totally bummed out, scared, desperate, nervous wreck, trying to find some crazy way to fix her even though it wasn’t gonna happen, and I’d spend every second of those last months being miserable and probably making her miserable because of it. Or...”
“Or... not.” Twilight nodded.
“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed. “Or not. She could just not say anything, and I wouldn’t have to go through that. So she didn’t. And I guess that was easiest on everypony.”
“Still, I guess that does rob you of your chance to say some things you might have wanted to,” Twilight said.
“Nah, not really.” Rainbow Dash thought for a moment. “That’s more of those could-have-beens, but... you know, we grew up together. We knew each other well enough that I kinda think Gilda already knew anything I would have said anyway. So I don’t even think that matters.”
“So you’re okay?”
“No. I’m not.” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Not even a little bit.”
She walked over to the map table and flopped her head down on it. Her back slouched and her wings drooped. “Someday, Twilight. Not yet. But someday.”
There's a potential flaw with the opening of the story. Since the letter comes from Gilda but we don't get to read it, we don't know what it contains. Based on that and the story title, I thought for the entire first half of this story that this was a comedy about Gilda getting married. When Dash cries to Twilight, I thought it was supposed to be humorous.
Remedy: I think you should show us that letter. It would convey lots of information to the reader, and there's no reason to hide that information from us—it isn't useful keeping the details a secret from the audience. My advice is to show us what Dash sees, author. Show us the letter, and let us develop feelings the same way Dash does in the story.
I think Rainbow Dash wouldn't take a train for something like this, she'd fly the whole way. Flying is more personal, especially given how much it would exhaust her to do it.
The discussion at the end felt a little telly and heavy-hoofed, especially the very end of it. Extending it out past a single conversation might help to provide a slower, more natural reveal of what Dash is feeling, and leave some of the interpretation to the reader.
Remedy: I think you should show us that letter. It would convey lots of information to the reader, and there's no reason to hide that information from us—it isn't useful keeping the details a secret from the audience. My advice is to show us what Dash sees, author. Show us the letter, and let us develop feelings the same way Dash does in the story.
I think Rainbow Dash wouldn't take a train for something like this, she'd fly the whole way. Flying is more personal, especially given how much it would exhaust her to do it.
The discussion at the end felt a little telly and heavy-hoofed, especially the very end of it. Extending it out past a single conversation might help to provide a slower, more natural reveal of what Dash is feeling, and leave some of the interpretation to the reader.
I have to admit, I'm not a fan of sadfics, so my enjoyment level of this fic wasn't very high. That said, speaking as a critic, I can't find all that many flaws with it. It was a pretty realistic portrayal of a character going through grief towards a lost friend, and as such it hit all the emotional points with the characterisation it needed to.
It's a very mature fic, not in the sense that it's gory or sexual, but in the sense that it's honest and open about the characters emotions, without making Rainbow Dash feel far out of character. I suppose the only thing I can really critique is that it feels a bit standard by this point. This kind of story has been done many times, including in the show (though not quite as literally; see "Tanks for the Memories"), so there wasn't very much that really added a "wow" factor to make it stand out.
As such, I think giving this fic a rating of a straight A would be the most honest score I can provide. It's not my cup of tea, but for those that "enjoy" sadfics (which is kind of an oxymoron, but that's neither here nor there), I think this will be one to keep.
It's a very mature fic, not in the sense that it's gory or sexual, but in the sense that it's honest and open about the characters emotions, without making Rainbow Dash feel far out of character. I suppose the only thing I can really critique is that it feels a bit standard by this point. This kind of story has been done many times, including in the show (though not quite as literally; see "Tanks for the Memories"), so there wasn't very much that really added a "wow" factor to make it stand out.
As such, I think giving this fic a rating of a straight A would be the most honest score I can provide. It's not my cup of tea, but for those that "enjoy" sadfics (which is kind of an oxymoron, but that's neither here nor there), I think this will be one to keep.
It's never easy to deal with the loss of a loved one.
I enjoyed the story, despite its shortcomings, I think there's a solid concept in here that can be perfected with a little bit of work. As >>Trick_Question said, that last scene could benefit from being more than just dialogue. Show us Dash's thoughts, her body language, how is she feeling? Is she behaving differently now that she's returned? This is something that permeates the whole story, at several moments, the narrative would've been much richer had we gotten to see Dash's thoughts.
I can't deny that I liked it, though, and with an adequate expansion, this could be a moving piece.
I enjoyed the story, despite its shortcomings, I think there's a solid concept in here that can be perfected with a little bit of work. As >>Trick_Question said, that last scene could benefit from being more than just dialogue. Show us Dash's thoughts, her body language, how is she feeling? Is she behaving differently now that she's returned? This is something that permeates the whole story, at several moments, the narrative would've been much richer had we gotten to see Dash's thoughts.
I can't deny that I liked it, though, and with an adequate expansion, this could be a moving piece.
I like the idea behind this. It does away with the melodrama that usually comes with stories like this. It felt like one of the more realistic depictions of losing a loved one that I've read in fanfic. So that's good!
As for the... less good, I'd say the description was a bit bare throughout. As those above me mentioned, the entire last scene has virtually no description in it whatsoever. I feel like the heart of this story is good, but it needs to be fleshed out with some meat on the bones before I'd call it great.
A valiant effort!
As for the... less good, I'd say the description was a bit bare throughout. As those above me mentioned, the entire last scene has virtually no description in it whatsoever. I feel like the heart of this story is good, but it needs to be fleshed out with some meat on the bones before I'd call it great.
A valiant effort!
While at the micro-level this story does some things right, it's ultimately just too short. Rainbow shows up, gets the ashes, scatters them, feels sad, and... that's it. What there is is fine, but there's so little it barely qualifies as a story. I get the impression that the author knows how to put a scene together, so I'd love to see them write something longer, but this will go near the bottom of my slate.
Genre: Rainbow Dash Flies East West
Thoughts: I felt like this was well-constructed and a bit poignant, though its poignancy was blunted by the conclusion being delivered in summary rather than letting us see it unfold. I feel the Author could likely spin a great yarn out of the train trip and flight that we didn't get to see. It's fundamentally more engaging for the audience to be able to see and/or experience significant events like those; whereas the moment with Twilight isn't significant in itself, IMO.
But the pieces that are here do well.
Tier: Almost There
Thoughts: I felt like this was well-constructed and a bit poignant, though its poignancy was blunted by the conclusion being delivered in summary rather than letting us see it unfold. I feel the Author could likely spin a great yarn out of the train trip and flight that we didn't get to see. It's fundamentally more engaging for the audience to be able to see and/or experience significant events like those; whereas the moment with Twilight isn't significant in itself, IMO.
But the pieces that are here do well.
Tier: Almost There
>>Trick_Question
>>The Power Wolf
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>zaponator
>>GaPJaxie
>>CoffeeMinion
Thank you, everyone, for your reviews.
I definitely think this is way shorter than this kind of story should be - writing under time pressure is always interesting. This entire entry was written in a hair under five hours, and I hit submit with about one minute left on the clock. And yeah, it shows. I was left feeling a little frustrated at the time, because I had the distinct sense of having written a frame and hung whatever bits I could on it more than of having written a full-fleshed story. Still, I also felt I had a worthwhile concept that I could do something with because there's a lot to address and explore in it, so I was pleased with it in that way. With the feedback provided here, I have a lot of confidence that I can expand this out into something really good.
>>The Power Wolf
>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>zaponator
>>GaPJaxie
>>CoffeeMinion
Thank you, everyone, for your reviews.
I definitely think this is way shorter than this kind of story should be - writing under time pressure is always interesting. This entire entry was written in a hair under five hours, and I hit submit with about one minute left on the clock. And yeah, it shows. I was left feeling a little frustrated at the time, because I had the distinct sense of having written a frame and hung whatever bits I could on it more than of having written a full-fleshed story. Still, I also felt I had a worthwhile concept that I could do something with because there's a lot to address and explore in it, so I was pleased with it in that way. With the feedback provided here, I have a lot of confidence that I can expand this out into something really good.