If Not Today, Then Tomorrow
It was the happiest day of their young lives. Gemini and Crescendo, high school sweethearts, had finally tied the knot. The wedding ceremony had been nothing terribly elaborate, but it was something they’d remember for the rest of their lives. They left the small church to the sound of wedding bells, and quickly made their way to their hotel room.
The hotel room was, of course, just a temporary stay on their honeymoon. They had skimped on some of the wedding’s expenses to afford two tickets for a cruise. In fact, their hotel room overlooked the harbor where the ocean liner sat docked. It was the largest vessel to ever be built by pony-kind, and being on its maiden voyage was a dream come true.
Gemini sat on the bed, looking over a black and white pamphlet detailing some of the ship’s many features. “It says here that it can hold 2,224 ponies at a time! And to think, Crescendo, we’ll be two of them!”
Crescendo, who had been staring out the window, turned to his new wife with a smile. “And we’ll be two of the happiest” he said. He gave the ship one last look before shutting the blinds. The two lovers spent an enjoyable night tangled up beneath the sheets, eventually falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing against the harbor.
When the sun peeked through the cracks in the blinds the next morning, Crescendo was the first to awake. He had fallen asleep with his hooves wrapped around his lover, and he struggled to disentangle without waking her. After a few moments of effort, he had slipped his right forearm out of Gemini’s grasp. The left one was more of a challenge though.
As he tried to slide his left forearm out from under Gemini’s head, her right hoof started coming with it. He had to stop as Gemini began to stir. His left hoof was sucked back beneath her and she began tugging at it. After a moment, Gemini woke up and looked around in confusion.
“How in the—Crescendo? Did you do this?” Gemini asked, looking down at her hoof. She rolled over and Crescendo felt himself being dragged with her. Together, they looked down to see their horseshoes had been fused together; his front left to her front right.
“Well, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Crescendo said, scratching his head with his free hoof. The weld between the horseshoes was seamless, and could have only been achieved through extreme heat. And with neither of them being unicorns, magic was out of the question.
“Mine is stuck,” Gemini said, trying to remove her horseshoe. “Try yours.”
Alas, Crescendo’s horseshoe also refused to budge. They simply lay in the bed, staring at their strange predicament. The grandfather clock across the room chimed, indicating nine o’ clock.
Crescendo looked up in panic and said, “The cruise begins boarding at 9:30. We mustn’t miss it!” He tried in vain to pull the two apart, only managing to land them both flat on the floor.
“I’m not going on the cruise like this!” Gemini cried. Crescendo looked to the two tickets sitting on the bedside table. At 23 bits each, he wasn’t going to let anything stop him and his beloved from attending that cruise.
“I’ll get a blacksmith! There’s one not too far from here!” Crescendo said, trying to ease his lover’s mind.
“No, I’m not going out in public like this!” Gemini objected. The mare crossed her hooves across her chest, bringing up Crescendo’s left hoof with hers.
First class tickets! Two months pay! All for nothing! Crescendo’s panicked thoughts weren’t helping him concentrate so he cleared his mind. He would simply send somepony to the blacksmith in his stead! The stallion dragged his lover to the door and slowly opened it.
Out in the hallway was a young colt sweeping the floor. “Psst,…Hey! Hey you!” Crescendo whispered loudly.
The colt looked up, searching for the source of the voice. Eventually he saw Crescendo and trotted over to the open door. “’Ello Mistah!” the colt said cheerfully.
“Hello, I need a big favor from you.”
“Sure thing Mistah, whatcha need?”
“I need you to fetch me a blacksmith, the best in town, and I’ll pay you!”
The colt laughed. “Dontcha know the blacksmith isn’t open on Wednesdays?”
Of all the rotten luck…
Gemini peeked her head out the door and looked down at the colt. “Excuse me, there may be a way you could still help us.”
“An’ how’s that?” the colt asked curiously.
“Can you get us some tools? Like a file, some clamps, vice grips, those sorts of things,” Gemini said, listing off anything she thought might be useful.
“Aye, I can, I can,” the colt said, saluting the two before trotting off down the hallway. He returned a half hour later with a large assortment of tools.
Crescendo grabbed up a pry bar and tried to find a gap between his hoof and Gemini’s. The colt was allowed to sit and watch, and he marveled at the fused horseshoes.
“How’d that happen? Was it some kinda magic?” the colt asked curiously.
“We…don’t…know,” Crescendo answered, using all his strength on the pry bar. The horseshoes were much stronger than the tool, and it bent in half under Crescendo’s force. He could only look at it in awe. Outside on the docks, the ship was beginning to board. The sound of hundreds of happy passengers echoed up through the window.
Gemini took up a file in her teeth and tried to separate their hooves that way. After several minutes, the file was dulled completely, but the horseshoes didn’t have a scratch. The clock in the room chimed again to inform them it was now ten o’ clock.
Crescendo grabbed up a metal wedge and balanced it on top of the fused horseshoes with his free hoof. “I want you to grab that hammer,” he said to the colt, “and bring it down as hard as you can.”
The colt looked into Crescendo’s eyes and could see just how hesitant he’d been to suggest such a thing. “Are you sure, Mistah? What if I miss?” the colt asked.
“You won’t,” Crescendo said confidently.
Gemini didn’t care how confident her husband was, she wasn’t risking injury over some stupid cruise. As the colt brought the hammer up, Gemini pulled away. “Is there anything else we can try?” she asked, tears in her eyes.
Her husband looked to the pile of tools the colt had brought them and shuffled through them. Over the span of two hours, they tried all the saws, wrenches, chisels, and drills the colt had brought them. When one would break, the colt would disappear out the door and return with a new one moments later.
A whistle blew from down in the harbor and cheers erupted from the docks. The three ponies looked out the window to see the Coltanic sailing away on its maiden voyage. A gust of wind swept through the open window and lifted the two tickets off the night stand.
“Well,” Crescendo said, watching the worthless pieces of paper fly away, “at least we have each other." The two embraced for several moments until they heard a faint pop. When they pulled away, they found they had individual control over their hooves. The welds had simply…undone.
They looked around the quiet room and found the colt had disappeared during their embrace. The tools had all been gathered up and were nowhere to be seen. Gemini held her hoof up to examine it and saw no evidence of tool marks whatsoever. Without a moment’s hesitation, they grabbed their suitcases and left the hotel. The rest of their honeymoon would have to wait. For now, they were content just having each other.
And even more so when the Monday newspaper came in.
The Coltanic had sunk five days after its departure. An iceberg had breached the hull and subsequently killed nearly 1500 of the ponies aboard. Crescendo and Gemini could have easily been part of that statistic, had the strangest thing not happened at the worst possible time.
For years, they told the story of how their horseshoes had been fused together. It made their friends and relatives laugh. Most just assumed the two had either lost the tickets or overslept, and needed a clever cover-up story. Only they truly knew the truth…well…them and the mysterious colt.
After twenty-five years, the couple finally decided they were going to have the honeymoon they’d missed out on all those years ago. No voyages on the seas for them though. This time they were going by air. It was apparently much safer. At least, that’s what the pamphlet for the Griffin’s new LZ 129 Griffinburg airship said.
There were thirty six casualties of the Griffinburg disaster, which happened almost exactly twenty-five years after the sinking of the Coltanic. Amongst the deceased were Gemini, Crescendo, and a colt that could not be identified or accounted for in the flight’s passenger log.
Author's Note
If you know the historical references, the story is more chilling.
Let me know if I provoked any thoughts.
