JUNE
Life is hard. Anypony who says otherwise is either lying, naive, or trying to sell you something. Life is hard, but love is harder. Love is like a fresh pearl, straight from the seabed. At first, you see it and marvel at its natural beauty, but once you have it in your hooves, you start noticing things. The pearl has discolored spots. The pearl isn't quite smooth on one side. The pearl is flawed. To make it perfect takes time, effort, and skill. Not everypony can give a pearl the picture-esque shine it is known for. Such is the same with love, it would seem.
I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me. I'm not some sad sack of a stallion who lazes around moaning about love, and I don't regret one single moment I ever spent with her. Not one. I don't blame her for what happened, nor do I mope about and blame myself. It just happened, and I won't let that fact soil any of our memories together. They were some of the happiest times of my life, even the night we first met.
I'd gotten off the train sometime in the afternoon, pushing my way through the cloud of ponies trying to board. I guess the departing passengers are just expected to climb out the windows, there in Baltimare, because they flooded in as soon as the doors opened. I managed to escape the swarm without losing my bags, thankfully, but that was only where my troubles began. Baltimare must be the most confusing city in Equestria, or at least east of Canterlot. It took me over an hour to even figure out where my destination was, let alone the time it took to walk there through the mass of spaghetti that is the city's road system.
I was moving at a trot down the paved road, the contents of my saddlebags shifting against my sides with each step. I was smiling at the time, despite my delays. It was the first time I'd been in Baltimare, and more importantly, the first time I'd come to visit my girlfriend there. She'd come to see me a few times, but I'd never gone to her. I tapped my hoof to the apartment door and waited for a response, glancing about the street.
Baltimare is... well, it's nothing special, honestly. I once ended up on a roadtrip to Vanhoover, and it really isn't any different. Paved roads, short brick buildings and tall metal ones, carriages here and there. Once you've seen one big, modern city in Equestria, you've pretty much seen them all. Now, the little towns, those always struck me as more varied. But I digress.
The door opened before too long, and the purple pony known as Lilac Links greeted me with something a little less than what I'd call a smile. "Hello, Miss Links," I said.
"Hey, Coconut," she said dully. "Been a while."
"Yeah, a bit." My own grin faded away. "Something the matter?"
She opened the door a little more, stepping back from the entrance. "Come on in and have a seat."
I followed her inside, the door shutting behind me. I'd never been in her apartment, of course, but it wasn't anything notable. Off-white walls, beige carpet, not much decoration to speak of. We both sat down on the simple red couch in her living room. For a short while, neither of us spoke. I had a bad feeling already, so I was waiting for her to say something first.
"Coco?" she said at last, her rose eyes fixed on the floor at her hooves. I felt a chill go down my spine. Even though she hadn't said anything but my name, I could tell by her tone that whatever followed wouldn't be pleasant.
I asked, "We need to talk, don't we?"
Lilac nodded. "I think we should stop this."
"Stop our plans, you mean? It'll be quite a while until the next Summer Sun Celebration."
Lilac flatly clarified, "Stop dating."
"Oh."
She laid it all out to me, there in her living room: how we rarely got to see each other, how she's just not cut out for long-distance relationships, how much of what she wants to say gets lost in letters, and how she'd already found a replacement for me. I didn't blame her for that last part, not really. She wasn't getting what she needed from me, so she got it from somepony closer. She was kind enough about it all, though, apologizing and telling me that it wasn't my fault, that I was a great stallion, and so on. I understood her position. I did. Didn't make me feel any better, though.
There wasn't much left to say, so I left before too long, and that was the last time I saw her. I checked into a thoroughly unremarkable hotel, shrugged off my saddlebags, and sat down on the squeaky mattress. My evening was gone, plus the forty bits I spent going out there. Not but a waste, now. Even if I attended the celebration, Lilac was sure to be on my mind the entire time. I thought about maybe trying to find some mare at the party to take my mind off her, but I just didn't feel like it. It wasn't heartbreaking, since I really never did get to know her all too well, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt.
So I sat on the bed with a hoof to my chin, thinking about how I should spend the rest of my "vacation". What did ponies usually do when they got dumped? The first thing that came to mind was getting really drunk and wandering about the city while screaming and cursing Lilac's name.
The next thing I can really remember is stumbling from grass onto cool sand with a near-empty bottle of some pineapple beverage clutched in one hoof. I glanced back toward the glimmering city some distance away and shouted some vague insult in its general direction before settling down on a flat boulder jutting out from the beach. There I sat, a soft breeze in my mane, glaring out at the ocean and cursing the city and everypony in my wake for taking my mare and ruining my evening. Not my proudest moment, but not one I'd take back, either.
It wasn't much longer before I leaned backward, turning the bottle completely upside-down, but only a few drops slid out onto my tongue. With a scowl and a grunt, I stood up and chucked the empty bottle. I don't know why I did it, really; I was just frustrated and felt like throwing something, I guess. I can't even remember where my foggy mind wandered to during the following few minutes of staring at the dark waves, but what happened next is forever etched in my memory.
There was the bottle, floating along the water's surface, dipping in a little further now and again and sinking ever-so-slowly as the neck sipped in more of the liquid. But then, it completely disappeared with just a little splash. I blinked once, and it was gone. I thought it was odd, but nowhere near as odd as what followed. There was this little clinking sound to my left, and then...
"You dropped this."
My heart almost stopped dead right there. The sound of that voice cleared all other thoughts from my mind in an instant and sent my spine rigid. I slowly turned to look for the source of the words. There, floating next to my rock, was a mare staring up at me with big, teal-colored eyes. Her coat was white, and her mane was spread out around her in the water like so many tendrils of pink seaweed. Curiously, her white fur turned to shining scales just below the neck. My discarded bottle was sitting next to me on the rock, the mare resting a translucent pink fin rather than a hoof against it.
I turned away from the creature, looking back at the dark ocean for a few seconds and blinking for good measure. When I looked to my left again, the white mare was still there, and still unlike anything I'd seen before. My brain finally made contact with my mouth, though I didn't manage anything profound. "What?"
"You dropped this," she repeated, her voice reminding me vaguely of a tin whistle. "You should be more careful with your trash; someone could get hurt." Even though she seemed to be scolding me, she didn't look angry.
"Um, I'll try to keep that in mind," I replied numbly. "Thanks."
"What's your name, litterbug?"
"It's, uh... My name is Coconut. Coconut is my name."
"You're staring at me, Coconut," she said, grinning at me.
"Sorry," I muttered, moving my gaze away and shaking my head slightly. "I've just never seen a sea pony before." I tried to think of something to say. "What's your name?" was the best I could come up with.
"My name's Ripple." Her accent was a little strange to me. The closest I'd ever heard to it before was from a unicorn seamstress back in Ponyville, though I'd heard that her accent was faked for effect. "And I'm a mermare, actually," she corrected, her smile faltering just a little.
"Ah, yes, mermares, right. I always get those two confused." After a moment, I asked, "What is the difference, anyway?"
"We're pretty different, really, though we're related," she said. "For one thing, sea ponies have bare, curly tails, while we mermares have long tail fins." She flashed her tail up out of the water to show me that she did, in fact, have a pink tail fin. "We also have manes, and they just have fins and spines. They're also a little scalier, almost like they have chitinous shells. Mermares are usually bigger and faster, too."
She paused, a fin held thoughtfully to her chin. Then a look of panic shot across her face and she held both fins up. "Not that I think we're better, or anything! They're, like, a lot more colorful and they have the best seaweed burritos!" She held one fin to her chest. "Doesn't matter what ye be, we're all equal in the sea."
I raised an eyebrow, but then just nodded slowly and said, "Of course." I glanced back toward the dark ocean for a moment before asking, "You are real, right? I didn't drink too much, pass out, and start dreaming, right?"
She tittered. "Of course I'm real." Ripple reached one of her pink fins up toward me, holding it a few inches from one of my knees. "You can touch me and everything."
I leaned over with a shrug, extending out a hoof for her to wrap in a fin. Yeah, she felt real, alright. Really soft, too, almost like she herself were made of water. I made a mental note to be gentle if I ever touched her again, as I feared her delicate little fins might just tear open like wet tissue paper. "Okay," I said, putting my hoof back on the rock, "let's assume that you're really here. I have a question, then: why are you talking to me? What brings a mermare to the beach at such a time of night?"
She opened her mouth to speak, but I quickly added, "Not that I mind, mind you. I'm just curious." I didn't want to scare her away, after all.
"I live pretty close to the shore and I saw your bottle floating by," Ripple explained. "I came out to see where it came from, and that's when I saw you up here. You looked pretty down, so I swam over to see if you were okay."
"Oh. I guess I do look a bit of a sad sack, don't I? Sitting alone on a rock, staring at the ocean with a bottle of... whatever this stuff is." I picked up the bottle, squinting at the label, but I couldn't make out anything other than "Horseshoe Bay" in the dark. "Whatever," I said, putting the bottle back. "All I know is: it tastes like pineapples and poison, and it's only making me more depressed."
"Aww," she cooed, propping herself up on the rock. "What's the matter?"
"Well," I started, scratching a hoof at a crack in the stone under me, "I traveled halfway across Equestria to see my girlfriend in Baltimare and attend the Summer Sun Celebration together, only for her to break it off with me because we're too far away all the time, thus making my entire trip completely pointless and leaving me with even less than I started with. I think that about sums it up."
Her pony ears flattened to her head. "I'm sorry, that sounds awful. You can always find someone else, though, right? Not everyone has a problem with long-distance stuff."
I patted a hoof to my own chest. "I like it, myself. Less outbursts, no stress from having to see each other too much, plenty of time to think of the perfect thing to say in your letters..." I trailed off, ending my list with a sigh. "It's just that I came all the way out here and then got a room at an inn, all for nothing because I'm probably going to just pass out on this rock. Just a waste of time. And money, too."
"I'm sorry," she said again, patting at one of my hooves with a silky fin. "You'll find someone, though." She smiled at me, and I could swear that it was more than a little crooked. "I'm sure you will."
"Plenty of fish in the sea, right?" It must've taken a good ten seconds for me to realize that I'd just said that to an actual fish, and a pretty cute one, at that. Well, not a whole fish, but part fish. I shifted against the rock a little, adding, "Figuratively."
"So, where are you from?" she cut in, turning sideways to eye me with one brow raised. If she caught my blunder, she didn't react. "By your accent, I'm guessing you're from the hazy moors of Trotland, right?"
"Yeah, enough of that depressing stuff. And I'm from Ponyville, actually."
Her thin brow furrowed. "Really?"
"My parents from from that area, though. Most ponies wager that I picked up their accent growing up."
"Oh." She held her fin up again, looking thoughtful. "Yeah, that makes sense."
I nodded once, commenting, "I'm still not sure you're real, by the way. I've had some pretty convincing dreams before."
"No?" she chirped, tilting her to one side. "Well, we'll just have to fix that. Hang on a minute, I'll be right back." She smiled at me again and dove down beneath the surface, disappearing from my sight.
I spent the next few minutes wondering whether she was coming back or not, along with whether or not she was just a dream and I'd finally woken up. She did reappear, and she held out her fin to me when she did. Something was resting on it, and I reached out a hoof to take it after a second, being sure not to handle her too roughly. She'd brought me a little brown and white shell, built in a perfect spiral pattern, and with a little hole drilled into it near the wide opening. I wasn't sure at the time, but I know now it was a shell from a nautilus. A long cord made of braided strands of pink hair in the same shade as Ripple's was looped through the hole.
"A necklace?" I thought aloud.
"Mmhmm," she said with a nod. "Keep it with you, and if you wake up later without it, then this was just a dream. But if it's still there, then you'll know it was real."
I shrugged, putting the cord around my neck and letting the shell hang just above my breast bone. "I guess that works, yeah. Have to wait a bit to be sure, though. What should I do until then?"
"I don't have any plans," she said.
"Me neither, I guess." I ran a hoof through my mane. "Say, how'd you see my bottle if you were at home? Shouldn't you be sleeping, or are mermares nocturnal?"
She pointed a fin and her eyes toward the sky. "I was watching the moon from my nest. I do that a lot." She turned her teal eyes back to me. "Have you ever seen the moon from underwater?"
"No, I've never really been a water-kinda guy."
"It's really pretty from down there. Would you like to?"
I turned to meet her gaze. She just watched me, her body bobbing up and down just a bit with the waves. I shrugged, nodded, and got to my hooves, allowing her to pull me from the rock and in with her. The idea that she may have been about to drown me didn't enter my mind, somehow, even as the shock of the icy water blasted me almost back to sobriety
She didn't so much pull me under as much as give me a little tug and guide me down. I held my breath, shutting my eyes against the seawater as I dove. She had one of her velvety fins wrapped around my hoof as I rolled over to face the water's surface. I opened my eyes just a crack at first, the liquid stinging me a little. Everypony always said that salty water isn't irritating to their eyes, but it's always done a number on mine. Both my eyes widened despite the discomfort as I realized why Ripple enjoyed the view from down below.
The moon was still there, just like always, but it didn't look anywhere near the same. Instead of a smooth ball, the light coming in was broken and scattered by the ever-shifting surface up above. Thin lines of white were streaming off the center, writhing like tiny worms of pure white. Other beams were thicker, stretching down toward the two of us through the dark seawater and making the waving tendrils of seaweed glisten and shine.
I wrenched my gaze from the sky and caught Ripple looking not at the moon, but at me. She was smiling with bright eyes, as though amused by my reaction. Her mane was splayed out and floating behind her, looking less like hair and like a long, frayed fin running over her head and down her back. I've never known how she can look so different beneath the waves, but I tell you that she's almost an entirely different creature when in the open air. The scattered moonlight cast shifting shadows across her scales and coat. Much like the moon above me, it was a sight my eyes had never taken in before. If I had woken up right then to find it had all been a dream, I wouldn't have been surprised in the least.
She opened her mouth, and I could vaguely make out the words as she said, "Told ya."
I smiled back, and opened my own mouth to reply, only to taste saltwater as it flooded in. I think I must have made some quite the distressed face to go along with my choking, because her eyes shot wide and she grabbed my shoulders. She pulled me close, and at first, I thought she was going to give me some sort of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, like you sometimes would read about. Instead, she pumped her tail and pulled me to the surface. I spat out my mouthful of water, and I think I might have spewed it on her face. She didn't say anything about it, though, she just held my head up above the water until I got my own breathing under control.
"Sorry! Are you okay? Can you breathe? Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. Please tell me you're alright."
I was nodding to her, but she kept asking if I was okay and saying how sorry she was. She helped me back up onto my rock as I continued coughing, my throat and eyes both burning. Once I felt better enough to reply, I croaked out her, "Don't worry about it, it was my fault. It's fine, really. I did something stupid, and now I'm paying for it." I had to cough again before adding, "I'll be alright, though."
"A-are you sure?" she squeaked, one fin held over her face.
I told her I was sure, running my shivering hooves along my muzzle to get the water off. It didn't help, though, seeing as my legs were just as soaked as my face. She didn't say anything for a while as I shook the seawater from my coat and blasted some from my nose, and it took me a moment to notice that her face was buried behind her fins as she made a couple of quiet whimpers.
I found my voice after a second. "Are... are you crying?"
She peeked at me from behind a fin, and I could see a bit of moisture built up in her eye. "I... I tried to... and I almost... I'm such a..."
"Uhh..." I stared down at the weeping mermare, unable to figure out what in Tartarus I should do. I hadn't exactly dealt with crying mares a lot, and the fog in my mind from that pineapple stuff wasn't helping. The sight of her crying made me want to jump back into the water and hug her, but we'd just met, so it probably would've been a bad idea. Plus, I'd just almost drowned, so I wasn't too keen on diving back in. I settled on patting her on the shoulder and saying, "Let it all out. I'm here for you."
Her tiny sobs abruptly turned into giggles, and she looked right at me with an amused yet slightly confused expression. "What?"
"I don't know, actually. It just, uh, seemed like the thing to say." I shrugged and shook my head slightly. "I'm not good at this."
Her giggles died down after a second, giving way to a look of concern again. "Are you sure that—"
"Yes," I said, holding up a hoof, "I'll be fine. It's going to take a lot more than that to get rid of me. And it was beautiful, by the way. Certainly worth a little coughing." I sat back a little, stopping my hoof halfway to the bottle that I had forgotten was empty. "So are you, actually."
"Thank you," she chirped, "and might I say that you're—wait, are you saying I'm beautiful or worth coughing over?"
"Um, both, I guess?"
She giggled again, all signs of her previous distress washed away by her wet fins. "Well, let me say that you're quite a handsome pony, yourself."
"You know, back there when I started to drown, I kinda thought you were gonna give me mouth-to-mouth to give me air."
I could just barely see her blush in the moonlight as she held a fin to her lips. "That would've made it worse, actually. I would have just pushed more water down your throat."
"So, you do breathe water, then?"
She nodded once. "Mm hm."
I didn't really want to change the subject so dramatically again, but my rump was starting to hurt. "Do you care if I move onto the sand? This rock is really hard."
"Go right ahead," Ripple said, and so I did. I found a nice spot of open sand and planted myself there, grinding my rump down to get a good little crater seat. She called out to me once I had settled in. "Can I join you over there?"
I nodded, and she quickly sank down out of sight, only to shoot back up and right out of the water. I watched, mouth hanging open as she smoothly arced through the air, droplets of water raining down below her. Then she hit the ground on her back, peppering me with sand and splattering me with salty water. I spat out a bit of both and she muttered, "Oh, sorry. I wasn't thinking about—"
"Don't worry. Although, wait a minute, are you gonna be okay up here? You just said you breathe water, right?"
"Well, I do," she replied slowly, reaching up to a ring of slits all around her slender neck, "but I can breathe open air as long as my gills stay moist enough. That's how crabs can do it, too."
"Oh, okay then. I never knew that." It took me a few seconds to look away from her face and back toward the water.
"But if I start to gasp and thrash, just throw me into the ocean, 'kay?"
I nodded along, though I sincerely hoped I wouldn't ever have to. Not that she looked heavy, mind you. Though, with a fishy body like hers, she might well be heavier than me. If she were on top of me, it might be a hard to breathe. Then we'd both suffocate. If any one of us were to be on top of the other, it should probably be me.
"So," Ripple suddenly said, "you're from Ponyville, huh?"
"Yeah," I replied, trying to bring my focus back from thoughts of how her smooth, wet scales might feel against my coat. As I realized she may not be very familiar with the place, I quickly added, "It's a small town south of Canterlot, right around the middle of Equestria."
"Oh, I've heard of it. That's where the Elements of Harmony are, and the newest princess. Of course, it took a few weeks for the news about all of that to filter down to us. We pretty much have to send out scouts to go up into town and get a newspaper. It takes some time, but we're pretty much up to date about Discord, and Tirek, and all of that recent stuff, too."
As she continued on, I couldn't help but stare at, well, her body. It wasn't like a pony body at all, even though her head was quite similar to that of a mare. She had the ears, the muzzle, and the mane, but from the neck down, she was vastly different. She was long and slender, with barely a curve along the smooth taper from torso to tailfin. She was almost a bit like a finned snake with a pony head, and I wasn't able to keep my mind from wandering to what it would be like to have her wrapped around me.
I felt like such a sick pony. A pervert. Did I really want to... to do things like that to a fish mare?
"Um, Coconut? Are you okay?" Ripple asked, looking at me sideways. "You look kinda distracted."
I shook my head and cleared my throat. "It's nothing. Just, um, thinking. And you can just call me 'Coco'. Most ponies do."
"But I'm not a pony."
I was about to apologize for being insensitive when I caught sight of her smirk, and gave her one of my own. "Okay, how about this: most of my friends call me that, so you should as well."
"Friend? Oooooh," Ripple said, giving me a little tap on the shoulder with a fin, "did we just get a relationship upgrade?"
I had to turn my head back toward the lights of Baltimare to hide the blush that I felt was sure to be on my face. "Yes, I think I can call you a friend at this point. Though, potentially still an imaginary one." By the time I looked back at her, any playfulness she'd had was gone, replaced by a scowl.
"How many times do I have to tell you that I'm real? It's like you don't want to believe in me."
"Sorry," I muttered hastily. I sure did apologize a lot, that night. "So, um, what about you? Where are you from?"
Her little smile returned. "Well, I live in a modest nest just off the coast over there." She paused to point with a fin. "I used to live in T'Leth, though, and that's where my family still is." Upon seeing my vacant expression, she clarified, "It's a little city inside a canyon, about a hundred and thirty miles from the shore, here. There isn't much there but ports for surface trade, though."
"Surface trade? Like, with ponies?"
"Yeah, totally. T'Leth traders meet with ships from Baltimare at least once a month to exchange goods. I guess they don't talk about it much over in Ponyville."
"Apparently not." That was the first I'd heard of such a thing. "I guess it makes sense, though," I said after another moment. "Two cultures being so close, and all. They'd either start trading commodities, or they'd start fighting."
"Yeah," she replied a bit slowly, her gaze drifting over the sand. "Anywho...."
We kept chatting on, mostly about nothing in particular. The specifics have been lost in my brain, I'm afraid. The next real line I can clearly recall was when Ripple looked out over the ocean.
"You're lucky," she said. "The sunrise isn't nearly as nice from down there, especially in the city. Can't even see the sun all the way down there."
My tired eyes scanned the horizon until I saw what she was talking about. There was the sun, alright, sliding up into the sky. All the sight did was make me sigh, reminding me of why I came to Baltimare in the first place: to see the Summer Sun Celebration with Lilac. Thoughts of the fickle mare faded slightly as Ripple pointed a fin toward the horizon.
"What's going on with the moon? Shouldn't it already be down by now?"
"That's part of the new Summer Sun Celebration," I explained, my eyelids heavy and my back starting to hurt a little. "Used to be that Celestia would just raise the sun, but now that Luna's back, they do this special exchange thing with the sun and moon."
"Oooh, that's nice." Ripple shifted a little on the sand, and I could feel her scales against me. She was surprisingly warm, which didn't help the stray thoughts my foggy mind kept having about her. "I'm glad Princess Luna is back."
"Me too. It's nice to have three princesses. I mean four." My back popped a few times as I stretched and yawned. "Do you come to the surface to see the sunrise much?"
Ripple yawned herself before replying, "Sometimes I come up to see the sunset, but I'm usually alone. Most of my friends are too busy for that sort of thing."
I nodded once. "I can relate, at times. My schedule is completely inconsistent, these days. I was barely able to get this trip out, and that just turned out to be—"
"A waste of time?" Ripple asked flatly.
I hesitated, turning ever so slightly to look at her as she gave me a gentle smile. "Perhaps not," was my reply as I returned the grin. "I do enjoy making new friends, after all."
"Me too."
* * * *
I woke up to a crusty feeling and a headache. I sat up slowly, squinting against the harsh light that assaulted my eyes. Almost every inch of my coat was caked with sand, and every move I made caused it to shift and release little hoofuls of the stuff. I was still on the beach, but the sun was now high in the sky.
I got to my hooves, stretching and groaning as I did. Aside from a little soreness and a headache, I felt okay. Lonely, though, as I found no company there on the beach. Nor were there any vendor services, just sand, grass, and trees. I could see Baltimare from where I was, though. Memories of the previous night came back to me slowly as I trudged back up the beach toward the city. I knew that I'd been cheated out of attending the Summer Sun Celebration, and that I was supposed to check out of the hotel sometime today, but most of the rest after buying a bottle of pineapple stuff was just a fuzzy blur. I wasn't sure how I'd gotten so much sand glued into my coat, but I knew I wanted to get rid of it, so a shower was the first thing on my mind after getting some water.
Sand turned to grass as I distanced myself from the shore, and finally to pavement. It took me a while to get back to the city, let alone my hotel room's shower. I don't know why or how I had managed to wander so far from the city. I guess I wanted to be alone. I wagered that the beach I'd spent the night on wasn't a typical tourist spot, based on the distance and the fact that there were no drink stands or anything around it. It also explained why there were no other ponies out there with me.
"But I'm not a pony."
My hooves stopped their scrubbing as the sound of a tin whistle voice speaking those strangely-familiar words rang through my mind. I couldn't quite recall the source, but the memory of the voice sent a chill through my spine, for some reason. I tried to shake it off and resume my scrubbing, but my left forehoof struck something hard on my chest.
I reached down, prodding the thing loose from my sand-caked coat, and brought the object up to my face. It was a little brown and white shell, its form a perfect spiral pattern. Through a hole near the opening ran a strand of pink string that was only now becoming unstuck from it's place around my neck. No, it wasn't string, it was hair. Hair from Ripple's mane.
The memories came back like a cartful of mixed fruit, with different bits and pieces all pouring down on me until it was a complete pile again. I hadn't been alone on the beach that night. There had been a creature, a beautiful, ivory mermare who made my trip worth taking. The little shell fell from my hoof, falling back against my breastbone as I turned and galloped from the still-running shower. My face slammed into the bathroom floor when my wet hooves slid out from under me, though.
Rethinking things a little, I got back up and speedily finished my shower, making sure not to damage my necklace. After that, I headed downstairs and hit the streets. I did the best I could to retrace my steps, but I had to do it in reverse because I hadn't been paying the slightest attention to where I'd wandered the previous night. It wasn't too hard once I reached the bay and started following the beach. The playing families and sunbathing mares thinned the farther I went, until I was the only one making my way across the sand. Their laughter faded in my wake, until the only sounds around me were that of a wind and waves.
I slowed and picked my way over the beach, searching for the tell-tale divots that marked my hoofsteps. I guess I thought that if I could find where I'd been, I could find her again. I wasn't actually able to find my own hoofprints, but I found something better after maybe half an hour of scanning the shoreline north of the city. There was the bottle of Horseshoe Bay Pineapple Grog, resting right on the rock where I'd left it. No, not where I'd left it.
I snatched up the bottle and hurled it out toward the horizon, watching it splash against the water. I guess I was hoping for a repeat of the prior night. There I stood, eyes glued to bottle while it bobbed and gently sank as it slowly filled with seawater. I watched and waited, hooves still and unmoving on the stone. At last, the ocean won out, and the bottle finally slid down and away from my sight. No sudden splash, no sea creature bringing it back to me, nothing.
Could it have been a dream? No, it couldn't. I had evidence. I had the necklace. Surely, I didn't pick it up in a gift shop and then forget all about it, right? Or maybe I had. Maybe I got so plastered by what was in that bottle that I'd wandered into a store by the docks and bought the shell out of impulse. I hoped not, but there was no mermare to be found on that beach, it seemed.
I sighed at the second disappointment of my little vacation trip. I supposed it wasn't a big deal. I had plenty of friends back in Ponyville. Friends who weren't part fish. Friends who could hang out with me for more than a few hours without suffocating. Friends who didn't have eyes you could drown in and a voice that could give you chills with merely the memory of it. Friends who didn't make me question whether or not fish could be sexy. I turned back around and headed toward the city again.
"You dropped this."
I whipped back around at the sound. There she was, giving me the smile I so remembered, teal eyes locked on me. Her white coat and scales were vibrantly shining under the sun, and I could see just how pale was the shade of pink on her fins and mane. My hooves carried me back to the rock at a gallop, and I skidded to a stop at the edge. I had to take a moment to compose myself, clearing my throat before saying as casually as I could, "Hello, Ripple."
I don't think my attempts at aloofness worked much, because she hid half her face behind a fin and laughed for a few seconds before giving her reply. "Hello. I see the shell pendant did its job." She briefly gestured to the sandy necklace.
"Heh, yeah, it did." I fiddled with the pendant for a moment. "Took me a bit, though. I sorta..."
"Forgot about last night?" she finished for me, and I gave a sheepish nod. "I figured you might, yeah. You were a little out of it, I could tell."
"But I remember you now." And I'd never forget again, despite some wishes of my other friends. I sat down on the flat stone, quite possibly in the same spot as before. We picked up from the last conversation I could remember before passing out that morning. Her voice was as pleasant as my hazy mind remembered it, and her pony face was just as cute. Of course, I couldn't stay forever. After all, I had a train back to Ponyville to catch that very afternoon.
"Oh crap, my train!" I jumped up and scanned the beach for a clock, but none was to be found. I turned my eyes skyward, but that still gave me only a vague idea of the time of day. "Oh, I hope I didn't miss it already." I turned back to Ripple. "I'm sorry, but I have to run."
She dismissively waved a fin, though her soft grin got just a little smaller. "It's okay. You've got a life back home after all. But..." As she trailed off, her smile faded completely.
I knew what was on her mind, for it was on my own. "Hey," I said quietly, "I'll come back."
That seemed to ease her mind a bit. "When?"
My mind searched for an answer for just a few seconds before coming to a conclusion. "Solstice. I'll be back at the next Summer Sun Celebration."
Her mouth dropped open in a look of shock, but then she glared at me, her pony-esque ears flattening to her head. "You're gonna make me wait a whole year?!"
"Gosh, that does sound pretty terrible," I said, rubbing a hoof at the stone beneath me. "It just seemed like the poetic thing to say, sorry. How about sometime next month? I can't say for sure when, 'cause of my job, but I promise I will."
She nodded, looking far less cross. "That's a lot better, yeah. Just don't keep me waiting too long, okay?"
"Promise," I said with a nod, standing up straight. "Well, it was lovely to meet you, Miss Ripple, and I'm sure it'll be lovely the next time, but I must go. Until next we meet." I gave her a little wave, at which she smiled once again. "So long."
"See you later, Coco."
Chapter 2: Back to Baltimare
JULY
"So, what is your job?"
"I didn't quite say, did I?"
Ripple shook her head, mane waving about in the water around her. "No, you only said that it wasn't very consistent."
"Well, that's certainly true," I said. "I actually don't have a single job. I do whatever somepony needs me to do, you see. I do odd jobs around town, usually having to do with plants." I gestured to the palm tree on my own flank as I added, "Plants are my specialty, as you might have guessed."
"Right, yeah," she said quickly. "Of course. So, you don't know when you'll have free time because you never know when you'll get a job?"
"Exactly." I paused shifting my rump against the wet sand and taking in a breath of the salty sea air as another little wave washed over me. I must say, I was learning to have quite an appreciation for the scent of the ocean. "What about you? What do you do for a living?"
"I, uh," she began, eyes shifting a bit, "I manage a restaurant back in T'Leth."
My eyebrows went up just a bit. "Wow, really?"
She sighed, eyes downcast. "No, I work at Kelp Burger."
I hadn't ever heard of the place, but her tone didn't make it hard to guess just what kind of establishment it was: a fast food joint with a less-than-high-class reputation, no doubt. "Hey now, there's nothing wrong with that. Somepony—er, someone's gotta do it, right?"
She tossed a little finful of water aimlessly. "I guess."
"I used to work at a place like that myself." Her gaze drifted back to me as I continued, "I've also been a janitor, a street sweeper, and one of those ponies that sits in a restroom and hoofs you a towel to dry off with."
She blinked, her expression vacant. "A what?"
I blinked back. "You know, a restroom attendant."
"No, I mean 'what's a towel?'"
That was a question I'd certainly never been asked before. "It's a, um, a piece of fabric that you use to soak up water." I paused, pondering that definition with a hoof to my chin. "Hmm. Yes, I can sort of see why mermares might not have a use for towels down there. In the ocean, I mean."
"Yeah, I've actually never heard of one before. I've seen some pony trade goods come into T'Leth, but yeah, I don't know why anyone back home would want that."
"What sort of pony goods do you use, then?"
"Well," she started, putting a fin to her chest, "I myself very much like lettuce and carrots. Ooh, and those little clay dolls."
"Figurines?"
She nodded once. "Yeah, I think that's what they're called. I have, like, a whole shelf of them. I've got a dragon, a mantahawk, a bunch of random little ponies..." She trailed off, eyes skyward for a moment longer before turning back toward me. "Do you collect anything?"
"Just plants, really," was my initial reply. "I know, it's a total stereotype for us Earth ponies, but I have a rather fond liking for things that grow. I have a fair few, too. Always meant to have a greenhouse built. There's a lot of things I always meant to do, though." Only when such thoughts brought a frown to my face did I realize that I had been smiling. How long had my face been that way? The last time I remember grinning was when I'd first seen Ripple come up from the sea to greet me that day. Had I been smiling ever since? That wasn't like me at all; I normally don't smile all that much.
I cleared my throat and mind. "Anyway, I think my favorite of my plants is the ficus I keep in my living room."
"Why's that one your favorite?"
"I just like the name."
"Ficus?"
"Yeah." I smiled a little again. "I just always thought it was a funny word, you know? Ficus."
She nodded slowly. "Ficus."
The next solid minute or so of our conversation was entirely composed of the word "ficus." Not one of my prouder moments, but we were having fun. It was almost like a contest to see who would say something else first. I guess I won.
"Hey, do you wanna ficus—bleh," she said, shaking her head as if to remove the word itself from her mouth. "I mean, do you wanna go somewhere?"
"Did you have any place in mind?"
"Not really. I'm just kinda restless, you know?" She swam about a bit, making tiny circles, as if to display her point.
I stood up from the sand, looking from one end of the beach to the other. "Yeah, I guess we could take a walk, er, swim, er... something."
"You walk and I swim?" she inquired with one brow raised.
"Yeah, that." I turned, taking a few steps to the right, vaguely following the water line as it gently shifted up and down the beach and against my legs. Ripple followed along in the water beside me, her spirits already seeming to lift. A brief bit of trivia from my youth popped into my mind. Something about sharks not being able to breathe without swimming, thus passing water through their gills. Not that Ripple needed that, obviously. She spent uncounted hours on the sand with me in the open air.
"You know," I said, "we really ought to figure out some way to keep in touch and whatnot, and to meet up." I hadn't even thought about how I was to find her again until I was already in Baltimare. I'd managed to catch her attention by going to the same flat rock on the beach as before and simply throwing stones into the water every few hours. It really wasn't the best system. "Assuming, that is, that you want to keep hanging out with me."
"Of course. I dunno what, though. I don't think the Equestrian Parcel Service will give me a mailbox in the middle of the beach, let alone down at my nest."
"Yeah, and I don't know if I could get someone to routinely make special trips out here just to see if they can find you to give you a letter."
"We'll figure something out."
I nodded as I trotted along some distance away. "Yeah, we'll make it work. Just so long as we figure it out before I have to go home again, which isn't until tomorrow."
"I guess we have a little time, then."
It wasn't terribly long before we had reached the northwestern tip of Horseshoe Bay. I'd been there once, briefly, the first time I went looking for Ripple a month ago. I hadn't really paid much attention to the scenery before, but now there was time to appreciate the blue-green waters stretching out between us and the southern shore. A few boats drifted here and there, their white sails gleaming in the sun. There was Baltimare to the west, the fusion of old port town and modern city made clear from our spot on the beach. The old wooden docks rose up from water's surface abruptly, but the transition from old buildings to new was smooth as the city stretched out over the land. Smooth save for one structure, that is: the thick, glass-walled wedge that was the Baltimare Convention Center.
I had to admit: Baltimare looked a lot more remarkable from way out there than it did up close.
"It's quite a sight, isn't it?" I asked, noticing that Ripple's eyes seemed to be taking in the city as well.
She nodded her head, making little waves around her. "Yeah. Land cities are totally different from sea cities. A lot more colorful and vibrant, for one thing."
"Oh, you want a vibrant city? You should see Canterlot, someday." I brought my muzzle skyward for just a moment as I continued, "Tall towers of white, gold, and pale violet stretching out from the deep purple stone of Canterlot Mountain. High banners whipping in the strong mountain winds. Now that is quite a sight."
"I kinda don't think I'm gonna get to see that. Isn't it, like, right in the middle of Equestria?"
My eyes scanned the distorted colors of her scaly body below the surface. "Yes, I suppose that might be hard for you to reach, huh? Maybe I can get you a postcard or something." My mind began to wander as my eyes did the same across her slender form. "Wait a minute, did you say you live near the coast?"
"Yeah, pretty close to where we first met."
"But if you live out here, and your city is a hundred-something miles away, how do you get to your job at Kelp Burger? Do you really swim all that way?"
"My—I ride a mantahawk into the city." She held her fins out, quickly elaborating, "It's, like, this big, flat fish with an bird head that you can ride around. We use them for heavy lifting and stuff like that."
"Oh. Well, that's cool, then." I pulled one of my hooves from the water, pointing it toward the city. "Speaking of burgers, you want to head to the docks and get some food? I don't know what they serve there, but I'm sure it's edible."
"Yeah, that sounds great," she chirped, swimming a little ways ahead of me along the shore. "I go down there pretty often. There's this great oatburger stand up there."
I followed as closely as I could, little waves just barely lapping at my belly. "You know, I once saw Princess Twilight at a Hayburger back in Ponyville. She made a bit of a mess of herself."
"Wow. That must've been quite the scandal."
"Not really, no. A few photos circulated for a while, but nopony really cared. After those newspaper pictures of Princess Celestia stuffing herself with cake, that was nothing." I could hear Ripple's gasp from where I was trotting, and turned to her. She was swimming sideways, one front fin held to her mouth.
"How did she manage to stay in power?" she asked with wide eyes.
I shrugged, which is hard to do when slogging through thigh-high water. "I don't know, but nothing ever came of it."
"That's crazy," she remarked, still on her side and looking me over. "I can't help but notice you brought along the nautilus shell I gave you, by the way."
"Heh, yeah," I said simply. It seemed like the thing to do, on a visit to her. If not for that shell, I might never have remembered her and gone back. "I really like it. It, uh, goes well with my coat."
"Yeah," she agreed. "I think it suits you perfectly."
We arrived on the docks before too much longer, though crossing through the more tourist-heavy beaches was a little bit awkward. The ponies that didn't seem to notice Ripple gave me strange looks for talking to myself, and the ponies that did notice her sat up and stared. Most were too busy with themselves or their families and friends to notice either of us, though, which was fine with me. But I must admit, being seen alongside a creature as beautiful as Ripple isn't something I'd be ashamed of.
The Baltimare docks looked to be one of the oldest parts of the port town. Not surprising, given that towns like this often get their start with being fishing locales. The wood looked old, with splinters seeming to grow from every support post. The boards at my hooves were well worn, but I didn't see any gaps big enough to get a leg stuck. The marina consisted of one long strip, bordered by buildings on one side and piers on the other. There weren't too many other ponies about, but there were quite a few boats and ships moored along the coast. It wasn't hard to tell the tourists from the residents, since the tourists were constantly staring at everything and bumping into things. It was pretty obvious that I wasn't from around there, I'm sure.
Ripple swam along the platforms, weaving around the support beams as she lead me to the oatburger stand. The fast food stall itself was as unremarkable and wooden as all the other buildings on the docks. The stallion running the stand didn't say anything as we made our orders, with Ripple relaying her order through me from under the boardwalk. One oatburger with a side of hayfries each, plus a drink for me. I'd be surprised that what we ordered was almost exactly the same, but the menu didn't have much else to choose from.
When I turned around with a greasy paper bag in my mouth and a cup balanced on a hoof, I spotted Ripple waving to me from the end of an empty pier. I trotted out to meet her, and with a swish of her tail, she boarded the platform to slide up next to me.
It was the first time I'd seen her whole body while sober. She was quite, well, wet. Big, too, but not thick. Her pale pink mane, which seemed to alternate between being made of hair or made of fin webbing based on whether she was submerged, was draped across and sticking to her in every place it could. She ran one of her long front fins down herself, brushing the soaked hair all to one side. Her scales were glistening, each one reflecting the sunlight from a different angle. My gosh, she was so long. She could probably wrap around me twice, at least. It still shamed me just how attractive I found her, especially her more aquatic features, and especially without being drunk.
I sat down as she continued to smooth out her mane, and I dug my hooves into the bag to distribute our food. The oatburger didn't taste like anything special to me. I'm no expert on sandwiches or burgers, but it did seem well crafted. Good balance of ingredients and whatnot. Still just an oatburger, though.
I swallowed my first bite and turned to my companion for the day. Ripple was munching away happily on her hayfries. I guessed that they didn't import hay down to her town, since it would just get soaked. That thought led me to say, "So, what sort of things to you export to us land dwellers? You've mentioned a few things you import already, like carrots, figurines..."
"Chewing gum, too," Ripple replied. "We export a lot of things. There are the obvious things, like seaweed, coral, and little novelty trinkets. There's also a whole industry for plundering sunken ships and selling the stuff back to the owners. Much easier for merponies to do it than for land ponies, so we're usually the ones who do that sort of thing." She took a bite of her oatburger, which she had just stuffed with hayfries.
"Oh, and pearls, too," she added after swallowing. "I believe that eighty-six percent of all the world's pearls come from merponies."
"I never knew that. I almost feel like mermares are a secret kept to the coast, because I never hear about any of these things." I shook my head slowly. "I tried to look them—I mean, you—err, you people—mermares. I tried to look up mermares, but the old library in Ponyville blew up, and the new one didn't have anything."
She furrowed her brow at me. "It blew up?"
"Yeah," I said, nodding. "You remember that evil centaur, Tirek? He blew up our town library."
"Why'd he do that? Does he hate books, or something?"
I waved a hoof in the air. "It's a long story. Simply put: he was after somepony who lived in it. The point is that I tried to learn, but I wasn't able to find anything about mermares."
"Merponies."
I leaned closer to her. "Huh?"
"Merponies," she repeated, tapping a pink fin to her chest. "I'm a mermare, but there are merstallions, too. Kinda might be hard to keep breeding without them. And it's okay. It's hard to find much out about land ponies back in T'Leth. We don't get many waterproof books coming in. I have to just come up here to the docks and find ponies to talk to if I want to know things."
I nodded, chewing on another bite of my oatburger. "Well, you've got me now, so if you want to know something about us land lovers, ask away."
"Just a sec." She didn't wait for a reply, she just rolled off the pier and into the water, leaving me to sit there in confusion. Her head popped back up after less than a minute, followed by the rest of her as she climbed back onto the platform. "Sorry. Needed a drink."
"So you do drink, then?" I paused, slipping a few ketchup-covered hayfries into my mouth. "You don't absorb water or something?"
"I drink a lot. All saltwater fish do, too." She wiped a fin across her neck, right along the line where her coat turned to scales. "Plus, you know, gotta keep my gills wet."
"Of course." I didn't recall her having to get a drink when we met, but much of my memory of that night is still fuzzy, with only certain parts standing out through the haze.
There was silence for a little while after that as I ate my lunch, and it took me that while to notice that she wasn't eating hers anymore. At first, I thought that she was just thinking of a question to ask about land ponies, but she seemed to be watching something, her eyes ever-so-slightly flitting this way and that. I followed her gaze past my own body, across the wooden boards of the dock, and to a little cluster of sailors chatting by a moored sailboat. "What is it?" I asked, looking back at her.
"Just keeping an eye on things," she responded. She was eating again, but her teal eyes were still locked on the sailors.
I watched the objects of her fixation, but I couldn't see why she was so interested in them. A couple Earth ponies, a unicorn with an eyepatch, a griffon, a few pegasi, some crates, a barrel of spears... I didn't get it, but I didn't press. If she wanted to tell me, she could. No need to rush. I had plenty of time to get to know her—through letters, if nothing else.
"So," I said, finishing off my burger, "you seem to know more about this town than I do. Any ideas on how we can get letters back and forth?"
Ripple was still looking past me as she opened her mouth to reply, but something suddenly thumped up against the underside of the pier beneath her, making our food bag shudder and our hayfries bounce. She glanced down at the boards with wide eyes, then curled herself around the edge of the platform to stare down at the water under us. I leaned over as well, squinting down at the dark surface. I could just barely see something whitish beneath the waves.
The mermare beside me put on a sheepish little grin and said, "Excuse me, I have to take care of something. Be right back." She didn't say anything more, she just slid off the platform and down into the water, her pale, distorted form joining the other below. Through the waves, I couldn't tell if either her or the other thing were moving for at least a few minutes. I could make out Ripple by her pink mane, but the other thing had something in a dark purple hue streaming off it.
After some time, Ripple came back to the surface. The other being darted off to the south and out of sight. I simply asked, "Was that another merma—merpony?"
Ripple gave a short nod, her expression too neutral for me to read. "Yeah, that was my half-sister." A smile came to her suddenly, and she hopped up to rest her front fins on the dock again. "And hey, I know how we can send letters."
I smiled a little wider at that; I'd been smiling most of the time she was around. "Great! What it is?"
"There's this bar right on the edge of the water where..." she trailed off, her smile fading and her gaze suddenly seeming to focus on the greasy paper bag in front of her.
"Where what?" I said.
"Where, uh, where you can send mail and I can go pick it up. They'll hold it for me and send stuff, too." Her eyes shifted back to me. "So yeah, we can do that."
"Sounds good to me. What's the address?"
"Oh, the bar doesn't have a mailbox," she said with a little splash of one fin. "You'll have to send it to the manager, and she can hold it until I come by. Just send the mail there, and I'll set up the rest." I made note of the mailing address as she told it to me. We dumped our trash into the nearest bin and headed off. I caught her looking at that same group of sailors again just before she swam off the other direction, leading me back toward the beach.
I struck up a new conversation as I made my way over the old wooden boards, glancing at her as she swam to the side of the docks. "So, when do you think I'll get to meet your sister?"
"Half-sister," she corrected. "And she's kinda shy." She stirred her fin around in the water, adding, "Most merponies are pretty shy, actually. It's why we aren't as well known as sea ponies, I think."
"Well, maybe someday. I don't want to put any pressure on anypony. Or, um, anyfish?" After a second of silence, I settled on, "Anybody."
"You'll probably meet her eventually, if you keep visiting."
I'm sorry to say that most of the rest of that day has been lost. Not every moment we spent together stuck in my mind as well as others. I recall spending some more time chatting on the docks, and it seemed like no time at all before the sun started to dip out of sight.
"It's getting pretty late," I commented, watching the sunset from my spot on the dock.
"Yeah," Ripple said, leaning back against a wooden support post nearby. "I should probably be getting home, soon."
I scratched at my face a bit. "I'm guessing I can't, uh, crash at your place, since it's underwater."
"Yeah, that wouldn't end well, sorry. For either of us, actually." She spun in place, leaning the side of her head against the post, and continued casually, "There'd be investigations and accusations. They'd probably lock me up for drowning you."
"Hey, you know what I should do?" I went prone on the wooden platform, bringing my face closer to hers. She looked a bit tired to me, probably from swimming so much all day. Her lids were half closed as she looked up at me. "Next time I'm here, I should rent a boat. Then we can go out and... I dunno, do ocean things."
She gave me a gentle smile, nodding softly. "That sounds nice." The mermare pushed off the post, yawning. "I'm sorry, but I need to get some more rest. It's been a long day."
Her yawn spread to me, and I had to pause before replying, "No problem. I'm sure I won't have trouble finding an inn for the night. My train leaves at about noon tomorrow, so we won't have much time before I have to go. Shall we meet at the same rock in the morning?"
Her pale head shook from side to side, and she briefly dipped her gills in the saltwater. "I've got work in the morning, sorry. I guess this is goodbye, then."
"Only for the moment, Miss Ripple. I'll be back next month. Plus"—I raised a hoof for effect—"I'll start sending letters once I get back." I dropped my hoof back down. "So I'll see you later, Miss Ripple."
She held up one of her pink fins and waved at me, saying, "Bye, Coco." Then she rolled over and sank beneath the surface, swimming away from the pier. I quickly lost sight of her in the growing dark. The last I saw of her that night was not but a splash and a flash of white out in the bay. It brought a smile to my face, nonetheless. It seemed such a clichéd thing to do, leaping from the water to bid goodbye like that, and I loved it.
