This story holds a special place in my heart because it was really the turning point in not just my Neopets writing, but my writing career as a whole. Finishing this story helped me realize that I could actually write substantial stories start-to-finish - that long-form fiction wasn't an impossibly daunting task - and it inspired me to keep working on my novels.
It was also the Neopian Times story that truly served as the catalyst for nearly everything that came after. With it, I tapped into a world and a cast that I became so deeply interested in that I couldn't help but want to explore them further, and the whole thing kept building on itself like some kind of wonderful literary snowball.
Ever since I'd adopted Dark_breed_Hyren as a teenager, I'd wanted him to have some sort of cool mysterious past, probably involving combat training because he was my dedicated Battledome pet. But everything I tried to come up with was kinda lame. After I took a break from Neopets for a while and came back to it in college, I found myself tinkering with the idea again, and settled on something that I actually liked--and that gave Hyren a lot of great character development. (And Blynn and Terra too, I guess. And also the Werelupe King? But that has more to do with "Worth Searching For" so I'll talk about that later.)
Another side note to this story is that I wrote it while going through an extremely rough college semester fraught with health issues and prodigious amounts of unnecessary stress (I don't recommend attempting that, not worth it). Plotting this story out in my head, and writing it down when I had the time, gave me something to cling to when it felt like the rest of the world had gone insane. So I have to credit this story for doing that. (Although nowadays I've learned that it's much pleasanter and more efficient to just take better care of yourself in the first place.)
Please note that this story does not read the same as what got published in the Neopian Times. I edited it quite a bit to bring it more up to speed with my current writing skills, and made it less intense because nobody needs that, seriously.
Enjoy!
Hyren woke up to voices outside his door.
“Hey, Blynn, isn’t tomorrow Grundo Independence Day?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah! It is! How about that!”
The diminutive blue Grundo rolled over in his bed to stare
out the window of his room.
Kreludor was almost full and high in the sky,
casting its silver light across softly undulating hills and towering cypress
trees. His family had moved to
Altador some years ago, from
Mystery Island. His
owner had been ecstatic over the rediscovery of a lost civilisation. Hyren was
more excited to live in a place where it didn’t rain several times daily.
“What do you think Hyren wants to do tomorrow?” Hyren’s
brother
Pharazon asked from out in the hall. “Maybe we should throw him a
surprise party!” The faerie Draik’s tone was hushed but eager—he obviously
thought Hyren was asleep.
“Ooh! Awesome idea!” their sister
Blynn said. The disco
Zafara, on the other hand, had a distinct lack of volume control.
Hyren smiled. With Blynn and Pharazon in cahoots, a party
for him would be quite interesting indeed.
