Coco

“...And so,” concluded Sergeant Grimsly, “we have decided to put you ponies to work on Sable. It will hopefully keep your minds from wandering too far.”

“What kind of work?” asked Captain Billet. They were all assembled on deck for their morning time in the fresh air, while the rat crew went about their duties.

“Mostly menial tasks. Peeling potatoes, washing the floor, and so on.” Grimsly stated. He paired up the ponies; and to Coco's pleasant surprise, she and Caballeron ended up assigned to work together.

“How lucky.” she commented.

“Lucky indeed.” agreed Caballeron, not sounding pleased about this situation.

“Mister Grimsly,” Coco asked, “what is it that we'll be doing?”

“That's Sergeant Grimsly to you.” said the rat. “You, Miss Pommel, are an accomplished seamstress, are you not?” Coco nodded. “We'll have you working on the spare sails, and perhaps uniforms as well.”

“Of course.” she said. Just like on Nutmeg, Coco sighed. She was supposed to be on vacation, and she ended up doing work anyway! And it wasn't even the work she enjoyed, designing and making new things; it was just fixing old things!

“As for you,” Grimsly gestured to Caballeron, “you look like a strong pony. Sails are quite big, as you've no doubt noticed whenever you look up, so moving them around is not a one-person job.”

“Better than sitting around all day.” grumbled Caballeron. Grimsly led them down into Sable again, and this time, they got to go below the first deck. In fact, they went three decks down. They descended well below the waterline, into a hold overflowing with captured goods. It was very dimly lit, with only a few lights to illuminate the area.

“Electric lamps?” noted Caballeron. “How luxurious!”

“Our fleet transitioned to electricity some years ago. Gas lights are far too dangerous.” Grimsly said. “A shame our Canine enemies are too thick-skulled to learn that lesson, eh?” laughed the rat. “Not that it'd do them any good now, we torched their wood-and-iron fleet at port. The brutes could barely mount a defense!”

Coco frowned as they picked their way through the stacks of materials. There was everything down here; crates of ore, sacks of grain, chests full of who knew what. They even had a pallet of gold ingots down here, and a box full of books! “Mister- Sergeant Grimsly, why are your people fighting the dogs?” asked Coco.

“That's a big question, Miss Pommel. We're fighting because... Because...” Grimsly actually stopped walking, and Caballeron bumped into him. He pushed up his helmet and scratched his head, before turning around to look at her. “Come to think of it, I don't really know why it started. We're rats, though; go where we would, we have always found enemies. The dogs are just the latest in line.”

“Thanks for trying to explain, at least.” said Coco. Her friend gave the rat a look that said many things. She didn't know how to interpret it. They resumed their journey through the hold, before they reached a room full of tightly folded canvas.

“Sails!” declared Grimsly, marking the ones that needed fixing. He left her a kit of needles and heavy thread to use. “Now, don't sabotage anything, or you'll get a bolt through the brain.” With a cheery smile, the rat departed. Coco's stomach fluttered at the thought of a crossbow being pointed at her head.

“What an upbeat fellow.” remarked Caballeron. “Though I would have hoped he would use walking the plank as a threat.”

“I'd hope for no threats at all.” Coco said. They unfolded the first one, as much as they could in the room. It had but a single bulb lighting it; Coco felt like it was nighttime despite it being late morning. While she worked, Caballeron was left with little to do except adjust the sail. It wasn't long before he started asking questions.

“How do you do this?” he wondered, watching her needlework.

“Lots of practice.” she stated. “My old boss made sure I knew how to work fast and well.”

“Sounds like she had a good work ethic.”

“Hah! No, she had me doing everything while she drank coffee and read magazines all day. A worthless mare if I ever knew one.”

“I've never heard you speak so negatively of anypony, Coco.” Caballeron feigned surprise.

“Some ponies don't deserve to be spoke well of. I might be trying to be a better mare, but that doesn't mean I can't tell the truth, especially about those not worth being better to.” Coco jabbed her needle through the sailcloth harder than she had intended. “She made me hate coffee!”

“Coffee got us into this mess, I may hate it too by the time we're through here.” snorted Caballeron. For a moment, Coco paused her work, and looked up.

“We are going to make it through this, right?” she asked, her ears twitching back. “We're not going to end up with bolts in our brains?”

Again, Caballeron got that look she'd seen earlier, something she couldn't quite pin down. “I hope so.” he said, before lowering his voice. “I don't know what they know about me, if anything. If they know as much as I worry they might... It could end very badly for me.”

Coco glanced away uneasily. “I don't want to sound selfish, but they won't come after me too, will they?”

“No, I don't think they will.” he assured her. “If they start harming innocent Equestrian citizens, the rats will bring down the wrath of Celestia on them.”

Did he just exempt himself from innocent citizens? Coco asked herself, turning back to her work so Caballeron didn't see her questioning expression. He did say that he had been in trouble with a rat named Timar. But Timar had been the one to try and steal the Horn, not Caballeron. Why would Caballeron be punished by the rats for that? That all seemed very unfair, and it reminded her of Suri again, to her distaste. She had to remind herself that Caballeron did not imply he was innocent, though. Was it possible he was the one who stole the Horn? Maybe... But he seemed too respectful for that kind of business.

It was a few more hours until they were brought up for lunch, but after they were put back down in the hold again. Coco didn't mind. Getting her hooves to do something, even menial, was far better than sitting around in that horrible hammock all day with very little to do but read that awful book Rarity had loaned her.

“When this is over,” Caballeron said, “I'll be happy if I never have to touch sailcloth again.”

“It's not so bad.” Coco told him, continuing on with her sewing. “I just wonder how they got these so torn up in the first place.”

“Storms, no doubt.”

“I'd never been on a ship until the other week, and never on a full sailing ship until this adventure of ours...” she sighed, before trying to look on the bright side of things. “At least we'll have a good story to tell.” If they ever got back.

“Will it be your first?” asked Caballeron, pulling the stretch of cloth towards him so that she could fix the next gash.

“Just because I've never been more than twenty miles from home before now doesn't mean I don't have my own stories, Cabal.” Coco stated coolly. He rolled his eyes at the use of his shortened name. “You told me I could call you that, don't look annoyed at me.” she said, jabbing a hoof at him.

“Fine, fine.” Caballeron waved dismissively.

“As I was about to say... When I was a little girl, I found an archaeological site myself! I must have been twelve, maybe thirteen; out running around doing who knew what. I certainly don't remember.” I suppose it was some game... “It had flooded that spring, and when the water went back down again, it took a lot of dirt with it. I was going through one of the scoured fields when I saw something coming out of the ground.”

“That's how most digs begin...” commented the stallion, nodding slightly.

“Well, I did dig it up. It was a griffon helmet!” Coco could remember that day clearly still. It'd been the most interesting thing to happen to her until she went to Manehatten. She hadn't even cared that she got her hooves dirty while unearthing the thing. It had been rusty beyond all belief, and corroded to the point of having holes in it, but it had holes for ears and a protrusion mimicking a beak. No doubt, it was a griffon helmet. “I took it to my grandfather, of course. He was the academic one of the family. He told me it was a Greenlandic helmet, from one of their old nobility.”

“Really?” asked Caballeron, leaning forward. “That's a rare find.”

“He said the same. Later, I took him and some of the tenants out to where I found it, and we dug up half the field. You wouldn't believe some of the things we found-” Coco paused, then remembered who she was talking to. “You would, actually, wouldn't you?”

“From the way you describe it, it sounds like it was a battlefield you discovered.” noted Caballeron.

“It was.” she affirmed. “My grandfather thought it was one of the final encounters between the griffons and Celestia's army.”

“Fascinating.” Caballeron said, with no hint of sarcasm. “Which one? Riverfield? Murkwater? Redbanks?”

“Uh...” Coco blinked, before shaking her head. “They sound like the same thing to me.”

“Exactly.” He laughed at that. “It's an ongoing debate in the community, whether or not there were really three battles, or just one going by three different names that have evolved over the years.”

“Ah.”

“What's for certain though, is that after Celestia's show of force, Greenland was subdued, and thus ended two hundred years of the Griffonlaw. Manehatten and all lands north were left free to prosper under the rule of the Princess...” Caballeron sounded like he was reciting a history book. He just might be, thought Coco, smiling to herself. “What did you do with the artifacts you found?” he asked.

“My grandfather said they belonged in a museum, and donated them to the big one in Manehatten.” Coco replied. That got a disdainful snort out of Caballeron. “Do you have something against museums?”

“I do, in fact.” he grumbled. “The Royal Historical Society has had it out for me, for over a decade now. A. K. Yearling had her part to play in that, but they made me an enemy of theirs even before she came along.”

“Why?” asked Coco, tilting her head in thought as she sewed on. It was something she'd noticed: he always mentioned, or at least implied, that he was outside of the archaeological community. How did one become an exile in academia?

“I get things done, Coco.” said Caballeron, frowning at nothing in particular. “I delivered results when the rest of them sat around moralizing.”

“Delivering results?” Coco gave a little laugh. “You make it sound like you're a villainous mob boss in a detective novel!”

“Hah. No, I'm not quite there. Though I have dealt with ponies like that. That didn't stop me from getting my doctorate, at least. I managed to get that before they cast me out completely. A. K. Yearling's class was the last one I ever taught, it was during the same year. After that incident with her, I was out on my own. It was definitely a change in perspective, being a loner, at least.” he shrugged.

“Yeah...” Now she got to frown too. Caballeron was right. Ponies were sociable creatures, and a pony outside of society was a very strange pony indeed. She wondered just how far from the herd Caballeron had gotten. “You're not totally on your own, are you? You must have somepony out there, friends or family or..?” asked Coco, putting down needle and thread.

“My parents passed on a while back, my grandparents even longer ago, so I can't say I have any family. And...” Caballeron thought for a moment. “Hmm. Well, I have contacts, a few people I can trust here and there, from Austmark to Wic.”

“So... no?”

“I'm afraid I move around too much.” admitted Caballeron. “I've haven't spent a year in one place since... Since I was teaching in Lithton, I suppose.”

“It must be rough.” Coco said.

“It's not so bad. I've seen more of the world than anypony else is ever likely to see. I wager I've been places that even the Princess hasn't seen.”

“What's the point without friends?” asked she. Coco stood up, and moved closer to him. “If you've got no one to share all those experiences and stories with... It just seems sad, really.”

“The point? It's the-” Caballeron started to say, before she cut him off.

“No pony should be without friends.” said Coco firmly, putting a hoof against his. “It's a good thing I'm here, isn't it?”

All Caballeron did was give her a perplexed look. “Perhaps it is.” he finally said, lightening up.

“Of course it is.” Coco stated, looking slyly about. “Without me, who knows what trouble you'd be in right now.”

Those words meant for Caballeron's ears alone reached another pair. Soon, the bait for the trap would be set. But for the time being, the two ponies remained ignorant of that; they were too focused on their growing relationship. As Coco would learn later, Greywacke the political officer had predicted exactly what would happen in the following week.

Author's Note

So that's what, our second hint of anything romantic in a supposedly romantic story? Hey, don't blame me, people don't fall in love instantly. It takes time to build things up believably, at least between two characters so radically different. Unfortunately, I'm all out of time! The contest deadline is... right now. Time to submit.