Overcoming Oceans

The muted drum of your heartbeat thumps within your skull. Your equine ears are plugged with the water that surrounds your every inch. Broken light patterns, formed by the sun’s rays through the water’s surface, dance around you. Your eyelids are held shut in contemplation. They’d be shut a lot tighter if you were without goggles; you aren’t partial to the sensation of chlorine in the eyes. Nor do you much like the taste of said chemical.

Still, you needed to clear your head one way or another. Your usual go-to tactic would be to take a dip in your beloved lake back home, but that’s way too out-of-reach. Meditating at the bottom of the villa’s ceramic-tiled pool will have to do. But it’s just not the same. You’ve been underwater for, what, two or three minutes? If this were the lake, you’d be relaxed by now. Instead, you shift a little in anxiety, a small uncomfortable grunt manifesting itself as a few bubbles.

You should have told her from the beginning. All it would’ve taken is a moment or two of “Sorry Twilight, but I can’t stand the sea” and that would’ve been that. Instead, you kept biting your tongue on the matter, because you didn’t want to disappoint her, nor her family. Look where that’s gotten you.

Just as you’re about to muse upon how it probably couldn’t get any worse, you feel a wayward hoof jab at your left side. Aw, nuts. They found you.

Or rather, Cadance has. Looking up towards the source of the prodding, you notice, to your mild surprise, the pink-coated princess sitting next to you upon the pool floor. While your heart is, and will always be, Twilight Sparkle’s, you admit that Cadance’s mane flows quite beautifully in the water. She reminds you of Celestia and Luna like this, only with more water and less… you know. Breathable air surrounding you.

Nevertheless, the Crystal Empire’s pink ruler points a hoof upwards, towards the surface of the pool. She’s asking if you want to go up there, perhaps so you can talk to her about what happened back at the beach.

You weigh your options; Shining Armor and Twilight are most likely up there, waiting for you to surface. The desire to avoid facing their disappointment far outweighs the pinch of your lungs, at least for now.

No deal. You shake your head, fold your forelegs and avoid eye-contact with Cadance to get the message across. What’s she gonna do, huh? Sit at the bottom of the pool until you change your mind? You may have spent several minutes underwater before her arrival, but you know you could beat her at this silent contest easily.

Shing… fwash!

Unless she magically conjures a large, breathable bubble around herself, keeping the water at bay. Stupid versatile alicorn magic.

With the prospect of her leaving you alone out of the window, Cadance expands the protective dome at a flick of her horn, giving ample room for two ponies to sit side by side within it. She scoots over and pats the now-dry pool floor beside her, inviting you to join her. She probably wants you to explain your actions earlier; abandoning her younger sister-in-law like that.

Carefully pressing your hooves against the magical barrier, you let yourself pass through its defences little by little. After finally falling though to the other side, you gulp the chlorine-thick air that the arcane bubble provides (not that you were desperate for air or anything) and ponder over the pool’s water pressing against the side of it.

“So,” you finally ask the princess, “Shining Armor and Twilight. Are they..?” You nod your head upwards, gesturing towards the surface.

“We asked Shining to look after our saddlebags and stuff at the beach, but Twilight’s looking for you inside the villa right now.”

You sigh in acknowledgement. “Well, sorry for bailing on you guys like that. I should have told you long before, but-”

“You’re thalassophobic,” Cadance finishes, “you have a fear of the sea and the ocean, triggered mostly by its inhabitants.”

“Er, what?”

“Shining Armor explained everything, since you told him about it last night,” Cadance scratches her chin in thought, “and Twilight told us the actual name for it though.”

Of course she did. Sounds like the Twilight you know and love.

“I thought I’d have gotten over that by now,” you mutter. But it was so many years ago, and you’d long since pushed the worst of those memories from your mind. You had to try it to be sure.

That damned whale. Most ponies have reasonable fears when it comes to the ocean; stinging jellyfish, sharks, all manners of poisonous critters and plants just waiting to be trodden on by some unfortunate soul. Nope; your biggest fear is a fin-flapping mass of plankton-scoffing blubber. What joy.

“That one flaw,” you sigh. “That one issue of mine, and it’s ruined the vacation. Twilight… really wanted me to dive with her.”

As comforting as it seems, you weren’t expecting Cadance’s kind, regal hoof to reassuring rest upon your shoulder.

“Twilight would never hold that against you,” she says. “Love involves accepting each other’s flaws, not pretending they don’t exist. Heck, I’m the princess of love, married to the stallion of my dreams, and I’d never, ever stop loving him. But we still have flaws because that’s what makes us who we are.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I hog the bed sheets, Shining drinks milk straight from the carton. I take forever in the bathroom to get ready, and Shining always leaves the toilet seat up. I snore loud enough to wake the dead, and Shining never uses a coaster to place his drinks on. But it doesn’t stop us loving each other. And as sure as sugar, your own flaws will never stop Twilight from loving you..”

Those words simply hang around the magic bubble’s silent interior, seemingly forever. It gives you more than enough time to slowly drink them all in. Twilight loves you, and you love her. And that’s all there is to it.

“I think…” you tell Cadance, “I’m ready to see her now.”

The princess of the Crystal Empire smiles, and with a glimmer of her horn, the bubble dissipates and the water comes rushing back to its natural state. Between the water overtaking you, and your head breaking the surface, that split second submerged is more refreshing to you than your previous attempt to meditate. Maybe because your mind is clear now.

“There you are!”

You don’t need to wipe your dripping mane from your goggles to know whose voice that belonged to. Twilight Sparkle kneels poolside on her four legs, looking down to the two soaked ponies within. Without hesitance, you hoist yourself from the water and wrap your forelegs around her in a loving embrace. She doesn’t mind the damp in the slightest; she responds in kind.

“I’m so sorry for running away like that-”

“That’s okay, really, I should have asked-”

“And I should have said something earlier-”

“Don’t worry, Shining explained the whole thing-”

“Can- can I still be your cuddle-fish?”

“Oh, silly question, I wouldn’t have anypony else.”

Cadance, still in the swimming pool, just treads water for a minute or two, watching the young couple, tangled in one another’s hooves, whispering sweet reassurances into each other’s ears. Finally, content to see two halves of a heart become whole again, she pulls herself out of the pool and quietly makes her way to the beach, where her own darling husband is waiting for her.

The princess of love can tell from a mile away; those two lovebirds are gonna be alright.