Overcoming Oceans

“To be fair, we did have sex in their private pool. Twice, in fact.”

Each step you take along the beach with Twilight Sparkle brings the sensation of soft, cool sand on your hooves. Luna’s moon, almost single-handedly lighting the night sky, gently bathes the beach in its soft glow as the soothing laps of the waves carry across the deserted shoreline.

Hours ago, this place was bustling with ponies eager to sunbathe with a cool drink, or splash around in the shallows. Now, as night falls, those ponies have either retired to their homes and hotels, or have taken themselves to the local town’s nightlife scene. Nopony else here but you and Twilight.

“Yeah, I know…” your lavender lover shrugs, “I’m just not used to acknowledging my brother doing… you know, that sorta thing. I mean, I know they’re married and stuff, so I should totally expect such a thing, but…”

Eventually, the unicorn just ceases to care, losing herself to her timelessly calm surroundings. It’s their life, after all. They can do whatever they want with it. More so, since it’s technically their villa.

Twilight Sparkle closes her eyes. She can feel the faintest night breeze disturbing her mane, and taste the salty essence it carries. She can hear the lapping of every distant wave, every deep, droning moan of… of…

“W- wait a second,” her eyes flick open, tinted with an expression of bemusement. “Can you hear that..?”

You flick your ears this way and that for a moment. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“What am I listening out for?” you ask.

“Moaning,” she replies. “A sort of weird moaning noise.”

Out of sheer disbelief, you turn your head back towards the villa, which is by now a glistening speck against Horseshoe Bay’s town. “Geez Twilight, don’t tell me you can actually hear Cadance from all the way out here-!?”

“What? No, of course not! Also, ew.” She pauses for a moment, mouth agape. “There it is again! That moaning! Can you hear it!?”

You admit, there is a sort of… rumbling sound. It’s difficult to tell exactly where it’s coming from. You wouldn’t even call it moaning. In fact, you can’t really think of any creature that would make that sort of noise, except for…

The sand under your hooves vibrate. Another long, droning rumble comes from nowhere, yet everywhere. Of course, it’s night. Too dark to see to your full ability.

Twilight’s ear twitches. Her head suddenly turns to further down the shore, bee-lining towards the water. Her ears could certainly pinpoint the sound better than yours could.

You didn’t even have to ask; at the blink of her eye, your love’s horn flickers to life, a brilliant purple glow lighting the surrounding area.

“It’s this way,” she nods. “Follow me.”

Your eyes soon adjust to the light of Twilight’s magic, letting you see that little bit further into the distance. A full minute of trotting goes by, accompanied only by the shifting sound of hooves kicking up sand with each step, and occasionally the low rumble of… whatever that could possibly be.

The vibrations get stronger and stronger every time. The sand feels just a little colder too, you notice. The taste of salt accompanies the breeze. You’re getting closer to the sea’s briny water than you‘d like.

That’s when you see it; a huge splotch of black against the distant moon and stars. The shape rumbles again; this time you’re close enough to hear it as a moan.

“Oh my gosh,” Twilight Sparkle breathes, halting on the spot. After a moment or two of recollecting her wits, she breaks out into a gallop. Without a second thought, you follow right behind her. Closer and closer you get to this mysterious shape. Eventually, it starts to take form; a long creature (you guess twenty, maybe twenty-five feet), sprawled across the white-yellow sands. No limbs, save for a single flipper on each side.

You screech to a halt when you realise what it is. Your very nature screams internally to the trigger that you’ve been stuck with all these years. Every panicking fabric in your body tells you to run away. But your common sense soon reins your mind in, telling you there’s nothing to fear.

And yet… there it is. A beached whale. Huge. Harmless. Helpless.

Twilight gallops to the marooned creature. The light from her horn helps fill in every little detail as she studies it up-close and personal, with a somewhat wilful fascination.

“It’s… I think it’s a Balaenid whale, Eubalaena genus!” she exclaims, trotting up and down its length. You can see Twilight’s mind racing as she takes one mental note after another. “Same anatomy, same part of the sea for it to be swimming in this time of year… but no, something’s not right, something’s not right at all…”

You mentally tune out of Twilight’s spoken observations, not because you tire of it, but honestly, she does go on and on sometimes. No, you’re far more interested in the unmoving thing. Right there. In front of you.

There lies the source of your fear for all of these years. There lies the very reason you’d cower from the sea’s edge. There lies a huge, twenty-something foot whale that can’t shuffle back to the water to save its own hide.

You feel a warm glow of relief stir in your chest. Any fear that had gripped you before just seems to slip away, like chains off a prisoner. Without the slightest apprehension, you place a hoof on the monster’s blubbery skin, confirming once and for all just how harmless this thing is.

You smile. Then you chortle. Then you uncontrollably laugh.

Your overexcited mirth certainly snaps Twilight out of her contemplation. “What the-?”

“Look at it!” you cheer between fits of hilarity. “Look at how the tables have turned! After all these years I’ve been too scared to swim in the sea, too scared to embrace my own Cutie Mark’s calling! Well the ball’s in MY court now!” you haphazardly prod it again with a hoof, ignoring the whale’s low, rumbling moan of protest. “You hear me, ya lard-fish!?”

“Wait a second! It’s-!”

You don‘t even notice Twilight’s objection; too busy relishing the opportunity to scream the demons out of your metaphorical closet. “Now you’re on MY turf! In the literal sense! Turf! And you‘re stuck on it, dummy! I can‘t believe I was ever afraid of something that eats microscope-fish! Well there‘s no plankton here for YOU, pal!”

“Stop that!” the mare behind you pleads. “It’s only-”

“Didn’t want grief? Shouldn’t have been stupid enough to try swimming on sand!”

“Snap out of it!”

The purple aura around Twilight’s horn turns red out of utter frustration. You tear yourself away from your festival of whale-taunting fairly quickly because of that. She takes a deep breath, waiting for her light to turn purple again before talking.

“It’s only a calf-whale,” she says. “A young child. Eubalaena whales are usually over fifty feet long. This one’s hardly half that size. The poor thing must’ve gotten separated from its parents.”

You turn back to the beached creature. You assumed that, since you were so young at the time, your distorted memory had made the whale from years gone by larger than it was. That the whale lying before you right now, dry and helpless, was the real deal. The truth of the matter? The whale was just as foolish, as young, as scared as you were once upon a time.

The familiar rumble of protest from the creature causes the surrounding sands to vibrate once more. Twilight Sparkle whispers something under her breath. She probably didn’t intend for you to hear it;

“If Fluttershy were here to see this… she’d be crying with the whale.”

Your hoof presses up against the whale’s hide, gently this time. It’s getting more dry and cracked by the minute. If it had been beached during the hot daylight hours, its situation would’ve been far worse by now.

“This thing needs to get back to the water,” you tell Twilight. Regardless of however you were treated so long ago, this particular whale didn’t try to eat you. It shouldn’t suffer for what it didn’t do. “Wait here, I’ll head into town to see if anypony can help.”

“No need,” she replies. “I’ve got this.”

“Huh? What-!?”

A fierce flash emits from Twilight’s horn, shocking you into taking a few steps away for safety. The aura intensifies tenfold, its brilliant light arcing from her horn. From there, the magic flows toward the beached whale, weaving and whirling around its gargantuan form. Soon, the whole thing is a massive glowing spectacle.

Twilight Sparkle’s legs dig themselves into the sand; she’s pouring all of her effort into… into….

“Please, Twilight, be careful!”

You can’t tell if she heard you; the sheer force of her magic is thunderous to your ears. After a moment, two moments, three… you notice the huge creature slowly, but surely, rise from its sandy deathbed, if only by a foot or two. You hold your breath, resisting the urge to speak; the last thing you’d want is for Twilight to get distracted now, of all times.

Slowly but surely, your lover’s aura carries the whale over the dry sands, over the calm lappings of the shoreline, over the water’s shallows, until finally, she considers the whale to be just far enough out to sea.

Her aura weakens, lowering the whale bit by bit. As soon as it touches the cool, refreshing water, its tail writhes in anticipation. When the unicorn’s magic releases its grip, the creature disappears beneath the waters surface entirely, kicking up water with an almighty clash.

Her horn snuffs itself out. The aura’s sound dies down completely, along with its light, and you’re left in the moonlit silence with Twilight Sparkle.

It’s home.

After a moment of puffing and panting, Twilight gives a weary chuckle. “Hah. I’ve lifted bigger.”