There’d been two ponies being rather intimate amidst the crates before. Flotsam was pretty sure on that. There was no sign of them now, except from a certain perspective, there were still two ponies here, just not the same two ponies; now it was Harpoon and himself in a world made up of outlines in the dark and little else.

They, too, were being intimate. Flotsam winced and made the funny expressions of one having involuntary bodily spasms.

“Careful,” he cautioned. Harpoon worked at him under his back legs. She’d been direct going straight for the point and making a quick, prompt job of it.

He winced as she gave a last tug with her jaw. The pegasus came up and stepped away, she was done.

“You’re good at this,” said Flotsam breathily.

Harpoon propped herself up on the crate opposite. She wiped her mouth with the back of a hoof and grunted acknowledgment.

Flotsam slipped gingerly to his hooves. The bandages she’d tied around his back legs were tight, not constricting, but tight. The tautness added a softer note to the nagging, stinging hurt of his burns. He felt the prickle of seeping fluid which promised, sooner or later, that they’d itch maddeningly. For now though, the alcohol kept Flotsam detached from the sensations in all but the intellectual capacity.

Here in the trees tiny insects buzzed like dust-motes given rather inconsequential promotions. They made ears flick, eyes blink, tails toss and noses huff. That was it. They didn’t bite, and probably couldn’t. Flotsam didn’t recall there being any birds here either.

Flotsam lay down and closed his eyes, his back to the same crate Harpoon was on. It was unfeasibly late of the hour, he’d drunk more than he ever had in waking memory (ha, ha-ha, ha!) and felt strangely liberated by his circumstance. If tiny, nameless, harmless insects went exploring his mane – let them. If they went far adrift in his coat and lost their way, it would be on them.

Sleepily, he nibbled a few fronds of coarse, sallow, tasteless grass. “Are you from River…?” It was on the tip of his tongue. Except this one he could fish up, with some effort. “…Rivaplút,” he said defiantly, all but spitting the ú in overcompensation. Take that, memory.

For a time Harpoon didn’t answer. Flotsam thought she might have been asleep, but then, “I’ve spent time there.”

“And that’s where we’re headed?”

Again, the pause. He wondered if she were tired, or annoyed that he wanted to talk, or cautious about saying the wrong thing. Then he wondered if there was a wrong thing, what could it be? “Yeah. Everypony goes to Rivaplút, eventually.” It sounded like an expression the way she said it.

“What’s it like?”

This time the delay ended, not with Harpoon’s voice, but the sound of her hooves hitting the sand. “It’s oily.” She came very close. “How did you cast that magic?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did it before, during the storm.”

“I don’t know how. It came from…” he trailed off, bopping his temple with a gesture as if to say “it came from in here, in the darkness inside, but hey, it saved Patches that one time, same goes for myself, so that’s got to be good, right? Right?”

It was a complicated sort of gesture to say the least.

“Where’d you come from with that raft you had?”

He could smell her feathers and the salty tang of her earlier dive. He grumbled, “Do you think I don’t want to know myself?”

In spite of his flash of hostility, or perhaps because of it, Harpoon seemed satisfied. “Maybe you’ll find something in Rivaplút,” she said generously.

He realized that for all their exchange her breath had been a tangible thing, heat and motion in air. How dark had it gotten, he couldn’t even see…

Something that he hadn’t even realized was bugging him bobbled up now of all times. “Wait, is the port literally named River’s Plot?”

A wing on his back tugged him forwards and suddenly they were kissing. The answer to his question, he rationed with a diminishing consciousness, could wait.

“The Captain said…” he said in the hush between hungry, needy lips.

Harpoon somehow conveyed through kiss and moan and embrace that, yes, that was important, because the ship was their yesterday and was their tomorrow, but it was not, for once in actual fact, their tonight. Their Right Now.

It was an effective piece of body language to say the least.

We will spare the gentle reader further sensual, explicit, immodest description of their kissy-kissy. Of the hoof that familiarized itself with Harpoon’s wing and made the pegasus shiver we will only tut-tut, likewise to the one that wrapped around Flotsam’s back and pulled him closer. It might be worthy of note that the world seems a very different sort of place when one is in that position.* After the very long time of a few minutes, Flotsam dragged himself free, though what it really meant was he struggled and only nominally overpowered his own want, or give it its other name: need. Physically speaking, it was a gentle, insistent, slow pushing separation.

Flotsam stood and stepped and looked mostly-blind about with wide eyes and ran a hoof through his mane. His head was awash with the cloying pink and crimson of passion which for all practical purposes is a hell of a stronger potion than any old drink and comes from the inside anyway.

He was also smiling. “You know the Captain only makes me pretend? It’s-”

Still hard, Harpoon’s voice had a softer quality to it somehow. A voice – still stone – but polished. “I know.” The pegasus languidly came forwards, pressed lips to Flotsam’s again, his brain resumed its pleasant warm fluffiness. “I know the Captain. I’ve followed the Captain since before she was a captain. She’s always been…singular.”

Flotsam felt himself being eased onto his back. The little compartment in Flotsam’s mind that was still whirring away** noted that words had been spoken with genuine respect. Not the bought and paid for kind, as he’d presumed but of years spent together, even friendship after a sorts. “Then why…?”

The kisses were intoxicating. “Because I’m not,” Harpoon answered brusquely.

“This is whole thing is a bad idea,” thought the rational vestige of Flotsam, which was actively being shushed by the rest of him. If it was a bad idea, then it was one wrapped in yearning and tied with the ribbon of sex appeal.

Which, on the whole, made it a very enticing present to have.

They continued with the kissy-kissy for a time. The sharp – not loud, but sharp – crackle of a stick some paces behind them had the most curious effect on poor Flotsam. It combined the worst aspects of icewater-down-the-pants-shock and the imagination and helplessness of a metallic prod in the back and a stranger’s voice just over your shoulder insisting that you turn around slowly.

Some impossible abstract quality to the sound filled Flotsam with dread and certainty that it was only going to be one pony.

“I had thrange dreamth,” Patches said wearily. “There wath a hill, and it wath…?” The filly pouted with half-forgotten confusion. She trudged her way to the two ponies, now carefully disengaged from one another and nestled her way into the gap between them. She latched onto Flotsam with what a cynical reader might interpret as a subconscious “you left me alone earlier, you jerk, but you’ll not be leaving again, har-har” sort of grasp.

Harpoon gave a sort of semi-audible shrug. She seemed to relax into the new, vastly changed reality a lot easier than Flotsam. Living on a ship and all, he presumed. And with the filly having stolen a wing for a blanket, the mare wasn’t going anywhere.

Flotsam, very still, very much awake, very much aware stayed that way for a long time.
Eventually, by tiny measures Flotsam relaxed and even dozed fitfully. Patches mumbled in her sleep next to him. He’d never noticed that as a trait of hers before. If he’d paid attention to it now, it might have done him good. But we can forgive him, for he had other things on his mind just then.

Like his burns, which began to tickle and itch and tormented him through the rest of the night, just as they’d promised*** they would.

Author's Notes:

*Position as in circumstance. Not, y'know, positions.
**It was getting smaller and, metaphorically speaking, softer by the second. Equal and opposite reactions, anyone?
***They really did. You can double-check if that sort of thing floats your boat.

P.S. SPLENDIFEROUS READERS, it has come to my attention that I've not given you all the relevant cutie marks of characters in the story. And while so far the story has somewhat ignored their existence, the magnamonious butt-stamps are in fact there as per canon (but are more or less disregarded for purposes of narrative. That sort of thing might just lead to naval gazing.)

HOWEVER, as I like to add extraneous and non-essential (or non-relevant, or even nonsensical) information to the Author's notes, have a bit of extra detail that probably won't otherwise be important but might add to your enjoyment:

Cutie marks:
Flotsam - Spoilers, he's Flotsam Shining Armour
Captain Nauticaa - Crossed swords over a compass.
Harpoon - crossed harpoons
Charming Booty - three gold coins falling into a gold cup.
Patches - a knife cutting down through a piece of blank sailcloth
Shanty - Three big music notes and three little music notes radiating out from a central point
Hard Tack - A ship's biscuit broken in halves
Scuttle - a boat with its oars in the water.
Siren - [error error 404 pony not found]
Oilcloth - [DOUBLE ERROR Go away don't look here]