echo flower bashfully looked away from the mare lying on the ground beneath her, scuffing her hoof against the ground in thought. she took a moment before turning to face alice again, a hardly visible blush starting to form on her face as she looked into her eyes. "...I've really missed you, allie."

lady alice glowered back, ready to admonish her for calling her "allie" again, but she stopped herself. her face quickly settled into a soft yet reluctant frown, and she avoided echo's eyes for a moment before she braced herself, staring back at the large mare standing over her.

"I've missed you too, lala."

real dialogue coming someday maybe, for now take this snippet

so I've never really talked about echo and lady alice's friendship before, but they were friends.. once. they grew up together, and were incredibly close as kids. and they were even closer as teens..

yeah okay, echo and alice kinda sorta almost dated. it was a weird, complicated situation that they didn't really know how to navigate, and it's also what would eventually end their friendship. echo flower is everything that lady alice is not - she has no filter and says exactly what she feels, she's not afraid to break rules (or laws.. I'm not saying that echo has broken and entered before, but I'm not not saying that), she doesn't give a single shit about how other people perceive her. alice loves all of those things about her.. and also kind of hates that she loves them.

alice is the main reason the two grow distant, and eventually she moves to canterlot (partly for her career, but also partly to get away from echo). this scene would be happening when they're adults, and this would be the first time they've seen each other in years.

as for the actual drawing itself - first of all, this is the most effort I've ever put into a background, so even though it's pretty simple, I'm really proud of it.

second of all, I've been playing around with slightly more cartoony/chibi anatomy, I don't think I quite got it to where I want it in this piece (which is to be expected since, fun fact, this was originally a pen sketch that I drew like right after my soarjoe drawing, so I had originally drawn it with much less cartoony anatomy) but I do think I'm heading in the right direction - especially with the face, which I've always struggled with stylizing.

I was heavily inspired by @/JackieBloom and @/owlcoholik while trying to stylize and cartoonify horse anatomy since they both do a FANTASTIC job at it, please go check them both out if you're not following already!

also sneak peak and echo's cutie mark~ no I'm not telling you her talent here, though I will update her ref with this design + her cutie mark in a bit. also alice does have a cutie mark I just wasn't sure if you'd be able to see it from this angle so I left it off ashfljas