Romance and the Fate of Equestria

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Three

A great sailing ship cut through the sea. There was no crew, none of the usual flurry of activity one would expect from such a vessel, but it travelled faster than any normal ship could hope to, for just beneath the surface of the water, Kolassa was swimming, pulling it with a thick rope held between her teeth, most of her body beneath the ship and her head just below the prow.

The ship had only eight occupants: four adventurers and four goddesses. Celestia stood atop the stem like a gorgeous figurehead, gazing out into the sea, and Rose Belt came up alongside her, perching on the rail.

"So, this is a pretty big change in plans," she said casually. "You spared no expense on getting us a ship. What's this all about, Princess?"

"It's about approaching their lair with as little magic as possible," Celestia replied. "No teleportation, not even flight. Our very existence is fairly magical, of course, but something as mundane as a sailing ship makes it more likely that we'll slip under the collective notice of our enemies."

"So we're going to the treasure hoard?" Belt said, licking her lips. "We know where it is all of a sudden? Me likey…"

"We've got a pretty good idea," Celestia confirmed. "Lady Kolassa has had a dream vision about the location."

Hearing her name, Kolassa raised her head out of the water so she could speak through her gritted teeth. "I don't get them as much as I used to, since I don't actually sleep anymore, but they're there."

Belt looked down at Kolassa, her head tilted in fascination. "If you're made of sand, why don't you fall apart in the water?"

"Uh, magic?" Kolassa said condescendingly. "That's also why I don't fall apart on land."

Nearby, Luna and Trixie sat on the deck of the ship, a large astrological chart sitting between them as Luna used a compass to make measurements on it.

"All I see is… fear, terror, and torment," she said.

Trixie blinked. "What the hell kind of horoscope is that?"

"I'm trying," Luna said, wincing. "I know the stars and planets better than any living being, my horoscopes should be perfectly accurate, and yet… every horoscope I've done in the past few months has pointed to the same thing: fear, terror, and torment. Perhaps Mitgaeard emerging from Tartaros has upset the balance… either that or everypony really is doomed to torment."

"Same difference, I suppose," Trixie muttered ominously.

Luna nodded. "Perhaps."

Belt was slowly sidling up to Celestia. "So…" she said, almost seductively. "It's not easy being a goddess, is it?"

Celestia gave her a sidelong glare. "Since you mention it, no, it isn't."

"I can tell," Belt said with a smirk. "I've never fallen for your warm, motherly façade, Princess. Never in my life. Always known there was a trapped little filly inside."

"We don't know each other well enough to discuss the issue, Rose Belt," Celestia said coldly. "Do not forget that I am your sovereign."

"Fair enough, fair enough," Belt said, not the slightest bit intimidated. "Just wanted you to know… I understand. I get the torments of being a goddess, honest I do."

"How could you possibly?"

"Well, I'm something of a goddess myself," she said with a wink. "A goddess between the sheets. Hey oh! Whoever's behind me, gimme some."

She extended her hind hoof, and Song Li looked at it and jumped back in surprise. "Oh! Oh, um…" Hesitantly, she clacked her own hoof against Belt's, then giggled involuntarily.

"You are most gloriously inappropriate," Trixie remarked, now resting against the rail further back. "I've never seen anypony speak so candidly with the princess. …Granted, I've never seen the princess, but I've never imagined, I guess, anypony speaking to her that way."

Belt pranced across the railing and hopped back onto the deck when she reached Trixie. "She's just like the rest of us, Lulamoon," she said, leaning with her back against the rail. "She was mortal once, and a part of her is mortal yet. Everypony's the same as everypony else, really. Under the skin we've all got feelings that are very much the same. That's why there's nopony else I'd rather have in this party than you, Trixie, because you've always been able to see that. You were the only unicorn adventurer I'd ever met who didn't think you were better than anypony else."

"I used to," Trixie said quietly. "It had been beaten out of me by the time I met you."

"Well! Thank goodness for that."

They smiled at each other. Okapiopteryx floated down from the crow's nest and stood on the railing, staring at them with her raptor-like gaze. "Celestia's calmness is not something you should expect," she said sternly. "If you speak like that to another ruler, best watch your neck. It's deathly rude, I fear, to treat a superior as a peer. …However, ultimately you are correct," she finished grudgingly.

Belt winked at Okapiopteryx, who flew back to the highest mast.

A mystical sound echoed over the surface of the ocean, an eerie, haunting song.

"Oh!" Trixie exclaimed. "What was that noise?"

"A whale," Belt replied eagerly.

Trixie glared. "I know it's a wail. But what's wailing?"

"The… the whale."

"That's what I'm asking!"

Belt rolled her eyes. "Whale. W-H-A-L-E."

"Oh, I see, a whale," said Trixie, nodding her head. "Which is… what, exactly?"

"A seagoing mammal," said Belt. "An exercise in contradictions, 'cause they're truly massive things, and yet they filter-feed tiny animals and vegetation out of the water, couldn't swallow prey the size of a pony if they tried. And on top of that, they're as graceful as a ballerina."

A spout of vapor blasted out of the water a few dozen yards away.

"Ah, there's one, right there!" Belt said excitedly.

Trixie leaned forward, trying to get a better look. "What's it doing?"

"Expelling air from its lungs," Belt explained. "Their nostrils are on the tops of their heads, see. And now it's taken more in and it's diving back down. It'll probably be good on air for about two hours."

"Huh," Trixie remarked, watching the tiny portion of the whale's body that had breached the surface. Soon, the flukes of its tail emerged and it was gone. "Oh, what a pretty tail!" Trixie said in delight.

"Don't look now, but here's another one, right beneath us," said Belt, pointing.

"Oh!"

Directly beneath them, a huge black whale with long white fins swam just below the surface.

"It is beautiful," said Trixie. "Not nearly as huge as you made it sound, though. It's barely the size of Lady Kolassa's butt."

"Gee, thanks," Kolassa grumbled from the water.

"Sure, but it's still big," said Belt. "Big and graceful. All right, this isn't one of the biggest kinds, it's a humpback, they're usually sixty-footers, which isn't too bad. But then you've got the blue… they're about a hundred feet long, a lucky one might reach a hundred and ten. They live a long time, too. There are bowhead whales in the frozen north who have been around for more than two centuries."

Trixie shrugged. "That all sounds like a description of a fairly average dragon, to be honest. Dragons never stop growing, a hundred feet is barely an accomplishment. And two hundred years? Some dragons have claimed to be upwards of ten thousand years old, and there's little reason to suspect they were exaggerating."

"All right, maybe a whale isn't so special in a world filled with dragons," Belt admitted. "But forget about dragons for a second: look at the whale on its own merits. Is it not magnificent?"

Trixie watched it go as it submerged and disappeared into the depths. "It is, at that," she said. "It truly is."

Special Snare and Flasher came up behind them. "Wherever you turn, this world is full of marvels," Snare said in a whisper.

Trixie beamed at him, then did a double-take at the realization that she had never heard him speak before.

"We're adventurers," said Belt, "so we're lucky enough to see a lot of the more grandiose things the world has to offer. But it's the simple things, that's where the real beauty is. Ponies in our profession, they usually live fast and die young, and if they don't die, they retire young. I wouldn't mind that, so much. Settling down, having a normal life in a small town someplace, where the simplest thing can be an adventure."

Belt wrapped an arm around Trixie's shoulders and gave her a little shake; Trixie smiled and nodded.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Endnotes

You know what they say about "show, don't tell"? I'm learning… that I can't do that worth shit. I've noticed in TRIXIE and some of the recent chapters of Legend—and I'm saying this here because I don't talk in Legend, no notes there—that all my attempts to add depth to the narration, something I've always struggled with, just kill all the subtlety. I don't know which is worse. Maybe it's an Asperger's thing? Not being able to show instead of tell? I dunno. I should really be writing scripts instead of prose. Comic books, animation. This story would be so much better if I could somehow bring it to you visually, but… it's not to be.