Drift away on the currents of today’s story to see Equestria as you’ve never seen it before.

Riverdream At Sunset: A Manuscript
[Crossover] [Adventure] [Human] • 7,768 words

A forgotten manuscript reveals an odd journey purportedly undertaken by Lord Dunsany, a Promethean explorer of the Lands of Dream. While the manuscript has yet to be authenticated, its contents are interesting enough to merit my posting them here.

FROM THE CURATORS: “At heart, this is just a human-in-Equestria story,” Horizon’s nomination began, but it was immediately obvious to all of us that there was much more going on.  “It’s HiE with class,” JohnPerry said, while Chris marveled: “This is in many ways ‘just’ an HiE story underneath all the trappings, but that doesn’t deter me from praising it.  First off, those trappings are really, really brilliant.”

That’s because the particular human visiting Equestria is one of the fathers of fantasy literature, and this fic is a marvelous homage to his style. “GroaningGreyAgony perfectly captures the way Dunsany meshed dense Victorian style, with its penchant for untranslated tidbits, flowery descriptions, and all the rest, with a nevertheless clear and readable narrative voice,” Chris said.  Horizon agreed: “The language here is unreal.  Pseudo-Victorian, quaint yet inviting, full of casual Greek that’s all clear in context (and all in the glossary if it isn’t), and bursting at the seams with worldbuilding of both the Equestrian and Earthy varieties.”  Present Perfect, too, fell in love with the language.  “There are just so many wonderful passages in this,” he said. “Like ‘We are glad of a fire, but we do not love it.'”

What we did love was basically everything about this story.  “Besides giving us what has to be the coolest origin story for Celestia I’ve ever read, you’ve got a protagonist who’s fun to follow,” JohnPerry said.  “Great framing story. Great creation myth.  The world-building is fantastic,” Present Perfect added.  Finally, there was a solid message in the story’s framing and presentation.  “It’s not just a story about going to Equestria, it’s a story about humanity willfully losing touch with the ways and traditions of our ancestors,” Chris said.  “Those Greek mythology callouts aren’t just to show how smart the author is, nor are they even ‘just’ because that’s how Dunsany wrote: they’re the girders which support the story’s message.”

It’s no wonder that Riverdream At Sunset sailed through our selection process with rare top scores from multiple curators.  “At heart, this is ‘just’ a Human in Equestria story,” Horizon said, “but I’ve never read another one like it.”

Read on for our author interview, in which GroaningGreyAgony discusses cat downloading, illusion shattering, and Faribalisteenism.
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