The Trek to Ice Cream Rock
The Trek to Ice Cream Rock
Admiral Biscuit
“Murgh.” Sea Swirl shoved her head back against the pillow and squeezed her eyes shut. She nestled up against Coco and yawned before burrowing ever so slightly further under the covers.
It was a weekend, and even though the night before she'd wanted to get up early and go diving, the bed was warm, Coco was warm, and she was comfortable right where she was. The lake wasn't going to go anywhere.
Five minutes later, she blinked her eyes open again and stretched out her hooves. Coco was pressing against her back, and he slid against her as she moved. She flicked her tail against his hind legs and arched into his stomach. “You awake?”
He replied with a loud yawn and smacked his lips. “No.” She felt the mattress shift as he nested into the pillow.
“Mmm.” She flicked her tail again. “Some of you is.” Sea Swirl pushed her rump against him.
“Rest of me isn't.” He nuzzled the top of her mane, brushing lightly against her horn.
“You can just lie there.”
Coco snorted and nibbled on her ear.
“I'll make pancakes after.”
He let go of her ear and hooked his hind leg over her flank.
• • •
“Eat up, big boy.” Sea Swirl set a plate of pancakes in front of Coco. “Gotta get your strength back.”
He quickly counted the pancakes on his plate, which was a considerably larger number than the two on hers, and nodded. “You want to go diving, don't you?”
“Weather's perfect for it.”
“And you want to use the suit.”
“I've always wanted to walk across the bottom of a lake. All the way across.”
“Which means I'll be in the boat.”
“But you won't need to run the derrick,” she reminded him.
“Just the air pump.”
“Yeah.”
“All day long.”
“Basically, that's it.”
“And row the boat, too. To keep up with you.”
“It'll be easy. It’ll be shallow enough I'll hardly use the suit lights.”
“Calculate out decompression stops.”
“Won't need them.” She cut a wedge off a pancake and speared it with a fork. “'Cause the bottom'll come up slowly.”
“Get you dressed.”
“It'll be on shore.”
“Undress you.”
“Also on shore.”
“Spend the whole day on the boat, in the middle of a lake, lonely.”
“You'll have this morning to think about.”
He nodded. “And the pancakes, too.”
She glared across the table at him. “Are you saying you'd rather think about pancakes than sex?”
Coco shrugged apologetically. “That was twenty minutes ago. I have pancakes now.”
“You're hopeless.”
“Thanks, Swirl. Would you mind passing the syrup?”
She grabbed the jar and rocketed it across the table at him. He caught it in the crook of a hoof and placidly began drowning his pancakes, ignoring her as she picked her plate up off the table and theatrically stomped over to the sink.
Coco watched her hindquarters intently and let out a low whistle as she flicked her tail off to the side for his benefit.
An hour later, the two were at the banks of one of the many lakes which dotted the Ponyville landscape. Coco was in the water, gripping the bowrope in his mouth as he tried to tug the boat loose from its wagon. Sea Swirl was using her horn to lift the stern free of the keel bunks and keeping an eye on the wagon to make sure it didn't roll into the water with the boat.
“One, two, three!” Coco yanked back and Sea Swirl shoved diagonally. “One, two, three! Come on, Coco, you can do it.”
“She'll go on the next one,” he yelled, his voice muffled by the rope.
“One, two, three!” Sea Swirl felt the boat shift as she lifted, and Coco almost fell on his rump as the boat screeched off the bunks and splashed into the lake.
He waded back ashore, the painter still in his mouth, and she tied the boat to the wagon before opening the toolbox on the front and dragging out all the pieces of her diving dress.
Coco helped her, laying them out on the grass neatly. One by one, she held them up, and they both looked for any defects. A leak in the suit could easily be fatal, after all.
Once it had passed inspection, she got her underclothes out. They'd help protect her coat from the rough edges of the suit, and make it easier to get into the stiff outfit. It was a loose-spun one-piece silk garment with reinforced booties, and it was perennially sweat-stained. Rarity had never seen her underclothes, thank Celestia: the fashionista would have recoiled in horror if she'd ever laid her eyes upon them, and that was before Sea Swirl had made some modifications with a pair of scissors and her limited sewing skills.
Coco helped her into it, and tugged her tail through the back slit. She stood motionless until he brushed his nose against a particularly sensitive part of her anatomy.
“Missed some of your tail the first time around,” he lied.
She shot him a dirty look, but didn’t mean it. Coco never missed the opportunity to goose her when he was helping her into her clothes—it was one of the little things she loved so much about him.
He waded to the boat and climbed aboard, to begin the process of checking all the equipment for the second time. Sea Swirl watched him as she began to braid her tail. For such a boring, routine process, Coco approached it with a remarkable intensity. She’d been amazingly lucky to find him as a partner; he was as serious about diving as she was, even though he rarely went down himself.
“I'm ready,” she told him after she’d tied her tail to her hind legs to keep it out of the way. Some serious divers cropped their tails right up to their docks, but when she wasn’t diving, she liked having the option to look pretty without resorting to tail extensions.
Getting her into the suit was complicated. Since it had to be able to hold pressure, any seams were out, so she had to contort her whole body through the neck-hole, and she had to do so carefully, lest she damage it. That was where the silk undersuit came into play—it made her slipperier.
Once she was completely ensconced, Coco went around and checked the suit again, making certain that all the cinches were secure and out of the way. When she was on the bottom was not the time to find a problem with the equipment.
“Looking good,” he told her. “The suit’s alright, too.”
“I'll put my helmet on in the water.” She lifted it off the grass with her horn.
Coco nodded.
“Gonna go straight across the bottom, or as straight as I can.” Sea Swirl looked across the bank. “Over there—see that rock? The one that looks kind of like a ice-cream cone that fell over?”
“Yeah.”
“That's where I'm going to try to come out. So keep the boat headed in that direction. Maybe lead me a little bit; then I can sorta follow the air line.”
“Got it.” He jerked his head towards the boat. “Everything onboard’s looking good, and I got the derrick off its blocks and turned out. You ready to get in the water?”
She nodded.
“Okay. I'll get aboard, and you wade in behind me. Come up next to the boat, and get your helmet on. I'll double-check the wingnuts, clip you into the derrick, and then you can go under.”
She waited until he was halfway to the boat before trudging down the slight slope of the bank and into the water. Her hooves felt absurdly heavy—the lead boots on the suit made each step a chore, and forced her to move in an uncomfortable splay-legged waddle.
Sea Swirl looked down at her suit. “I don't know who has a more complicated relationship, suit—you and me, or me and Coco.”
The suit didn't answer, so she turned her attention back to her preparations, and lowered the helmet over her head.
The next quarter-hour was agonizingly routine. The helmet was tightened, the air line and winch line were connected, and she lowered herself all the way under water so that Coco could check for leaks. She had nothing to do but look at the muddy bottom and sweat. This close to shore, there wasn’t anything to see except the bottoms of a cluster of cattails to her left.
When he finally gave his nod of approval, it was all she could do to keep from galloping into deeper water, but she cautioned herself to be patient. That wasn't what this was about—this was a nice leisurely walk across the lake bottom.
So she settled on watching the fish dart around her legs, and the weird sensation of the water rising up her chest, and then across the front glass of her helmet. She paused once she was almost all the way under, with just the tiniest sliver of sky visible at the very top of her vision.
She could see the air hose lying limply on the surface of the water; soon it would be her literal lifeline.
She took a deep breath of oily compressor air and stepped forward, her hooves kicking up little clouds of silt.
She'd always had an interest in the water. Her mother joked she was half-seapony, but supported her hobby, buying her a mask, snorkel, and flippers the birthday after she got her cutie mark. She'd left school early to apprentice with a diver; she'd learned nearly everything she knew from hooves-on experience. Somewhere along the way, she'd met Coco, and the two of them had unexpectedly both wound up in Ponyville.
Sea Swirl stopped and looked up at the surface of the lake. She was deeper than she'd thought—maybe ten feet, maybe a bit more. No great distance; she could free-dive that far easily. Yet even at this shallow depth, it was a different world. Gentle currents took the place of the wind, slowly waving the seaweed.
She started as her hooves disturbed a catfish hiding in the thick seaweed. He shot off in a silvery flash; she watched him until he vanished in the distant darkness before looking around to see if there was anything interesting in her field of vision.
It always surprised her, the things she found on the bottom. It was mostly a pony-free zone, but every now and then she'd find a shoe, coin, or some other artifact. She'd even found a stove in one pond; how it had gotten there was anypony's guess.
She moved on, her head constantly swiveling around, searching for any interesting landmarks.
• • •
Coco sat alone in the center of the lake. It wasn’t an unusual place for him to be.
Most ponies would have been bothered by the solitude, but he liked it. He preferred being in a boat. In a different life, he might have been a seafarer or a bargee, and if he hadn’t met Sea Swirl, he would’ve most likely gone off to the coast.
He smiled at the memory as he leaned over the bellows pump. It had been a case of of being in the right place at the right time. She’d needed somepony to row for her, and he was looking for any excuse to be aboard a boat.
Their relationship had only blossomed from there, especially when she found out he was a pretty good cook and also didn’t mind grooming her after a dive. She was cute, funny, and had a practically insatiable appetite in the bedroom, which was more than enough to keep him happy.
He reached for the oars and began rowing. She probably imagined that he lazed around like a fisherpony, resting in the boat while she did all the work down below. Nothing could be further from the truth: he had to contend with the gentle wind blowing the boat off-course, as well as track her slow progress across the bottom. On top of that, he had to work the bellows almost constantly, and keep the air line and winch line unfouled and played out, and he couldn't take a break until she was back above the surface.
He didn’t mind at all.
When he judged there was an ample amount of slack in the lines for a few minutes longer, he began pumping the bellows again as the boat’s momentum carried it across the water.
• • •
The bottom of a lake was a mystery to most ponies. Once the water was deep enough that they couldn't see it any more, it faded from their imagination.
Not so for Sea Swirl. She slowly walked through the muck, her helmet lights providing the barest illumination. Her eyes were scanning the range of her vision intently, observing everything from the humblest patch of seaweed to the small rocks which dotted the lakebed, occasionally being drawn up as a school of fish passed over her head.
Every bit of it was as interesting as the land above—maybe more so, because ponies hadn't claimed it and shaped it. It was a wild realm which did whatever it pleased, with none of their intervention, and she was totally out of place in it.
A dark, regular shape loomed out of the gloom, and she changed course to examine it. It was an old wagon, simpler than the modern designs. It was lying upside-down, its wheels reaching for a sky they'd never see again. The treads were badly rusted, and tendrils of algae hung from the spokes. As she moved around to the side of it, she caught a flash of movement as she scared yet another fish out of his home.
Its presence was a mystery. Probably it had been used in ice service, and had broken through the ice. She followed it around to the harness, a faint fear gnawing at her belly, but the chains on the evener were not attached to any traces, and there were no bones scattered on the bottom. Even if it had fallen through the ice a century ago, it would have still been news in the town if ponies had been dragged to their deaths with it.
She finished her circuit of the wagon and moved on, checking to make sure her air line didn't get snagged. As she moved on, she occasionally looked back, until the wagon was finally lost in the darkness of the bottom. She knew she’d probably never see it again—and it gave her a weird feeling of loss as it vanished completely from her sight.
There were other things to see, though. She passed across a barren stretch of sand, weaving around the rocks which littered the otherwise featureless surface. A minute later, she was back in a muckier bottom. Some strange current had kept the nutrients away from the sandy spot—perhaps there was a spring underneath, pushing up against the encroachment of the seaweed. It was just another mystery of the deep.
The slope of the bottom was so shallow, she hardly noticed her rise until she was close enough to the surface to see the shadow of the boat's hull above and behind her. She guessed she was only about twenty feet down now, and would soon be at the opposite shore. She'd always wanted to walk all the way across the bottom of a lake, and now she'd done it.
She turned that over in her mind. It didn't feel like a masterful accomplishment. She hadn't found a shipwreck or sunken treasure, or really much of anything besides the wagon. . . but she'd won a private victory.
Almost.
Sea Swirl began moving forward again, wondering if Coco could see the helmet-lights from above, or if she was still so far down she was invisible to him. Maybe if he knew right where to look—if he judged the angle of the rope and air line correctly.
She moved onward, her steps quickening slightly as she neared her goal. She could faintly make out the sun, and was surprised to see how far along in the sky it had moved while she was down. It felt like her trek had only lasted minutes, yet the sun revealed that she’d spent the better part of the day down there.
The last few yards were the worst. Her suit became more and more of a liability as the water depth diminished. The bottom had lost its interest—she could survey it more easily with a snorkel. As her helmet finally came completely above water level, she reached with her magic to the heavy wing nuts that secured it to the suit and began spinning them loose. She made sure she was in shallow enough water that if she dropped one she could easily find it again. Replacements had to come all the way from Vanhoofer, and they weren't cheap.
Her suit had pockets on the forelegs, and she levitated the nuts into a pocket, one by one, before lifting the helmet free. Her first breath of fresh air was like a thousand spring mornings condensed into one.
Coco had edged the boat up close, and she sent the helmet over to the deck before continuing her walk. She would have liked to take off her weight belt and weighted boots, but the lead in them wouldn't accept her field, and likely as not she'd wind up dropping them and making more work for Coco.
He followed her in at a sedate pace, securely beaching the boat. He tossed her a line, and she trudged up on shore and tied it to a tree, just in case. They could never be too cautious with their equipment.
Once he'd waded ashore, they began the unpleasant but necessary task of removing her suit. They both spent a minute clearing a small stretch of beach of any sharp rocks which might puncture her diving suit before she lay down on her back and let him undress her.
She bent her limbs to his instructions, and he slowly worked her free. Her underclothing came next, but that was something she could handle on her own. It was soaked in sweat and stank to the heavens, and the feeling when it was finally off was priceless.
Sea Swirl immediately galloped back into the water, bellyflopping when she was past her knees. She let herself sink to the bottom, occasionally dipping her mane under to rinse it off too. It was a horrible mess of tangles—she knew it was—but washing the sweat out was a priority.
When she was satisfactorily clean, she went back to shore, untied the painter, and pushed the boat free of the bottom, then hooked her hooves over the gunnel and scrambled aboard with a little help from her stallionfriend. She pointed down the shore to the ice-cream rock. “Didn’t miss it by much.”
“Nope.” He hooked his forelegs around the oars and began pulling.
Since Coco had the rowing situation handled, she stretched out on the foredeck and let the sun dry her off. She flopped her tail off to the side, just to make sure that Coco wouldn’t get bored, and closed her eyes
• • •
Getting the boat onto the wagon, getting it home, and unloading and maintaining all the equipment took up the better part of the evening. Sea Swirl's mane was still a mess, and her tail was still braided, although she'd untied it from her hind legs.
"Spa," she said thoughtfully. "Relax in their tub, and then have my mane and tail groomed.”
"I can do that, you know."
"Yeah, but you're not as good as Aloe.”
“I'm better on the crank.”
“That's 'cause you get so much practice when you're alone.” She lightly punched his shoulder.
“It's true.” Coco leaned into her icebox and began rummaging around. “When you're not with me, I just sit at home alone, pining. And you know what they say about idle hooves.”
“You're such a goofball.” She tugged the tie out of her tail and swished it back and forth, loosening the braid. “What are you looking for?”
“Anything, really. What's in here?”
Sea Swirl shrugged. “Were there leftovers last night?”
“How about this?”
“Put that in the compost heap. I don't remember the last time I ate stuffed peppers.” Sea Swirl moved up next to him, and stuck her muzzle down in the icebox. “Okay, there's nothing worth eating in there.”
“Except plain ice cream.” Coco pulled his head out as well, and shook some ice crystals off his muzzle. “By which I mean ice.”
“The only thing to do is go out for dinner.”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Coco shut the lid and turned to face her. “You know, you're proof that unicorns can't cook to save their lives.”
“Yeah, yeah. I can make pancakes.” She opened a cupboard and pulled out a tin of crackers. “Should have gone over to your house. I bet you have all the fixings for a five-course meal all laid out.”
“Sure do.” He grinned at her. “There’s one thing I don’t have at my house, though.”
“What's that?”
“A tub big enough for two.” Coco leaned over and kissed her nose.
She swatted him away and stuffed a cracker in her mouth. “I’m hungry.”
“I know. Which is why I had Big Mac bring over a cooler full of sandwiches.” He pointed a hoof towards the back door. “He left ‘em on the back porch for us.”
“When did you have time—“
He bopped her lightly in the muzzle. “Before I came over yesterday. Told him if he saw me on the lake to bring it over. ‘Cause you don’t have any food at your house, since you can’t cook.”
Sea Swirl put the lid back on the tin of crackers and nuzzled his cheek. “So, all along you were plotting to find a way to get in the bathtub with me?”
Coco nodded.
“And I suppose it’s going to turn into a repeat of the last time we took a bath together?”
“Oh, probably. You’re the one who—”
“You didn’t object,” she reminded him. “And then you'll spend the night.”
“I expect to.”
“And in the morning—“
“Pancakes.”
Sea Swirl blinked, then punched him lightly in the flank.
Author's Note
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For more of Sea Swirl and Coco Crusoe, read Sea Swirl's Dive
