Author's Notes:

During one of the writeoffs (not sure which one) I got the start of a Cadence of Cloudsdale story written, but never went too much further with it. If I ever can get 'More Precious Than Silver or Gold' finished and polished up to Skywriter's level (good luck, Georg), I may come back and finish this up. This would be set a few days after young Cadence had been discovered by Princess Celestia and brought back to Canterlot to be raised as an alicorn. (See the email exchange between me and Skywriter below)

So... Twenty-one weeks later and I still haven't gotten back to this. I blame this thing called 'The Real World'

Anyway, here is the draft of Homesick up to the point where I got distracted. Enjoy! Now I have to share a little bit of the email exchange I had with Skywriter to make this in context, so bear with me.

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Me: I have to ask: Was the Camelopard song taken out of this one?
http://www.songsforteaching.com/folk/alicethecamel.php
(I have my reasons. And yes, they involve world conquest. Or at least Canterlot.)
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Skywriter: (after a little discussion) From the same website, it's closer to something like this:
http://www.songsforteaching.com/marlalewis/gentlegiraffe.htm
With a squarer beat, less jazzy intonation, as you might expect from nuns. "Gentle Giraffe" scans the same as "Camelopard" so it works pretty well as an example.
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Me: Hm! Tempting. Young Cadence strikes me as a pony who would sing the first verse, over and over and over and over.... instead of going on to the rest of it.
As to why. Remember about a million years ago when I said I was interested in seeing if I could produce a Cadence of Cloudsdale story dealing with her first day in Canterlot? The temptation is growing :)
Picture a long conga-line of stuffy Canterlot servants, singing along with a tiny little alicorn as they dance through the hallways of the very formal and very stiff castle.
And then the slow realization of Princess Celestia, standing there, just *looking* at them as the song trails off until only one voice is left singing.
That's the image I want to have stuck in the reader's mind. 900+ years of formality around Celestia like a pearl being formed in an oyster, until this little pink hammer of love shatters all of the walls she has brought up around her to protect against her sister's memory.

Do you know what a pearl really is made out of? Pain. It starts with this sharp-edged irritant deep in the center of the oyster in a place that can't be purged or cleaned, so what the oyster does is to wrap that pain up and try to hide it. But the more the oyster tries, the bigger and more painful the irritant gets until somepony comes along and takes the pain away.
"Do they eat the oyster then," I asked. "Because they're very good, particularly if steamed and chopped into little pieces."
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Skywriter: THAT IS SO BEAUTIFUL YOU NEED TO WRITE IT IMMEDIATELY
SERIOUSLY DO NOT EAT OR SLEEP OR PEE OR ANYTHING
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Me: Aaaahh!! I slept! My magnum opus is ruined!
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Skywriter: HOW DARE YOU HAVE BIOLOGICAL NEEDS

(First draft of my incomplete Cadence of Cloudsdale story)

It has been several busy days since I arrived in the castle in Canterlot, and I still have not seen everything inside the walls, although every moment I continue to believe I will awaken from my dreaming to the sounds of the Dawn Chorus and the gentle touch of Sister Aeon upon one shoulder. If this is a dream, it is far grander and more detailed than any I have experienced in my centuries of life in the Abbey of Song, and it continues every time the sun rises over the impossibly high crags of the Canterhorn to the east. The reason for the sunrise is the simplest thing that I had taken for granted when surrounded by the Sisters, one of many such foolish questions with no good answer such as ‘Why is the sky above us and the ground below?’ or ‘If there were no air, how would we breathe?’ but seeing the Sun-Nag use her enormously long horn to cast magic which I could never control and seeing the sun lift effortlessly over the horizon at her command makes me feel so small and insignificant.

Without the Sisters to awaken me and bathe me and take care of all of the rituals of life which filled my existence without interruption for so many centuries, I am cast adrift, like one of the pieces of dandelion fluff floating in the air during summers in the Grand Gardens of Knowledge. Tiny little bronze signs signified the contents of each small patch of flower or plant there, and the Sisters would permit me only one day a week among the neat and tidy rows. They would watch from a distance as I nibbled small bits from whatever plants struck my fancy at the moment, be it the common gardenia jasminoides or my sacred verticordia, and from this, the Guild of Flosimancers would determine the planting and harvesting for the town and the surrounding fields. It always had made me nervous, for I could still remember the one beautiful spring day I had fallen asleep in a bed of violets and the resulting harvest which had overwhelmed the Sisters’ desire for anything purple for several decades. Among the vast number of corridors and stairs in this new place, I have found a similarity, although somewhat different.

There are ponies here who have much the same purpose as the Guild of Flosimancers or their rival Guild of Paigniomancers, but instead of examining my taste in flowers or toys, they seek to find out everything they can about me. They lurk in bushes and behind stairwells, disguise themselves as servants, or use clever mechanisms of glass and metal to watch me from afar. There is a pattern to their appearance I find fascinating in the way they interact with the fiercely serious stallions with brilliant lights in their hearts who seem to be everywhere in this strange and terrifying place. Much like the Sisters, the guards are here to protect me from all harm, but they are not soft and loving, but instead hard and shining on the outside, much like my beloved pearls from Reduit. When one of the Royal Guard and one of the ‘reporters’ meet in my presence, there is a flare of conflict which I fear will turn to violence and makes me yearn for my peaceful bedroom so far away, where my slightest worry can be soothed by the gentle Reassurance Choir and a few nibbles of Sister Cream’s fudge.

My best friend is a cameleopard,
A cameleopard, a cameleopard.
He doesn't talk much but he makes me laugh.
Makes me laugh all day.