Fallout: Equestria - Group Anthology - 2016

A Letter to the Tides

by Gamma Deekay

To my dearest love,

I’m writing to you in the hopes that this letter finds you in good health. Every year on our anniversary, I’ve endeavored to write a letter reminding you of what you still have here in the home that we built together. If you’re at all like me these days, it can be hard sometimes to remember how things used to be. On top of that, it’s not easy to find a working pen these days, or a clean sheets of paper for that matter. I’ll try to keep things shorter this year than the last one I sent you.

Our story starts with a few simple, frightening words. Panic. Chaos. Death. Destruction.

All of these are adept words for how the end of the world would meet us. Most ponies in the cities busied themselves with things while trying to forget the constant threat of megaspell destruction hanging over their heads. Hell, I used to be one of those ponies right up until they shipped me out to the front lines in Hoofington. Still had those fears when I stepped on that damn landmine too. My guess is that they went out around the same time my foreleg and I got a divorce. It was a shame, really. Ol’ lefty and I had some really great nights together.

Nope, after that I wasn’t afraid of the when anymore. I’d stared death right in the face on the battlefield, and I didn’t intend to get on a first name basis with it. Those days, I’d known that the end of days was coming, and from that point on, I’d intended to be prepared for when it finally arrived. Fresh from the hospital, with my medical discharge papers and a peg leg prosthetic, I’d needed a plan for the future. Of course, like all great half-cocked plans, booze was an important and imperative foundation. And that was when I met you.

Spring Tide.

Freshly promoted to captain, you were there at the bar with your friends, celebrating your pretty little officer’s flank off. Fifteen years have passed since then, and I still remember that night like it was yesterday. I bought you a drink, which you refused. I’d insisted you take it, you broke a bottle over my head. It was great fun. But the formal apology the next morning when you were sober made the pain worth it. I’d never had a mare look so ashamed of herself that she did everything to avoid eye contact with me, and as you know, I’m a stallion who’s let down quite a few mares in his time!

Still, I’m glad you came at all, because that’s when you’d told me you were just trying to bleed off stress before the last day finally arrived. You didn’t know when it would hit, but like me, you didn’t care about the when. Without that, I may have never known there could be somepony like me out there in the world. I mean, sure, odds were high that somepony somewhere thought the same, but the odds that it happened to be the attractive mare who would also give me a concussion had to be pretty astronomical.

Honestly, what astounded me more than your beauty, was your openness to friendship. Something which after a few more months of seeing each other developed into something much more serious. Sure, it wasn’t easy at first. You had your ship to take care of, off on deployment for months on end. And me? Well, I had plans to build us a bunker. Not just some broom closet with a bucket either. Oh, no. I used my medical pension supplemented with your pay to fund us an underground palace to live in.

I remember that some days we’d argued about where it’d be for hours on end. Do we build it out in the forest just outside the city? Or maybe up in the crystal range, a hundred miles out from civilization. In the end, on our third anniversary of meeting each other, we both decided enough was enough. We both brought our best ideas to the table, and we agreed that the night wasn’t over until a compromise was made.

You wanted to buy the old High Point light house and build our shelter there. That way, when the end did come, you could always find me, even if you were still out at sea. You had this amazing ten point plan for every contingency to go along with your proposal, and not a single flaw could be found by me. All except for the one point I’d brought to the table that evening. My one and only compromise, was that I wouldn’t stand for anything unless you agreed to marry me. By the end of dinner, you’d gotten your lighthouse, and me? Well, I think my real reward came with dessert in bed!

Still, we married, bought the property, moved in, and quickly got the permits in order for construction of our new megaspell safe home. Even bought us one of those fancy spark reactor things to power the place, even if it put us way over budget at first. Funny how fast those next two years went by. You were often off in the battle groups in the western seas, while me? I kept that lighthouse running every night, and our safe underground bed warm and waiting for you every day. With our shelves stocked, spare parts for everything we could ever need, I’d thought we had more than enough of everything to get us through any manor of megaspell apocalypse that would happen upon us.

Turns out I was wrong on two accounts. Time was what we hadn’t stocked up enough of in the end. The flash from when Seaddle went up was about as punctual an announcement as we could have hoped for in the end. I was down in the bunker before the blastwave even hit the lighthouse windows. The second thing I was wrong about, was that the when does matter. You weren’t slated to return from maneuvers in Marewaii for another month, and while I said I wasn’t afraid of the end times, what I was afraid of was never seeing you again.

To tell the truth, not much changed for me when I sealed the door to the outside. I still went about my day cleaning up the place, cooking some food, and doing some light reading of all the… interesting naval history books you’d stocked our bookshelves with. Don’t get me wrong, Practical Principles of Maritime Strategy: A brief summary of Equestrian naval history sounds like a thriller at first look, but it turned out to be more interesting on the thirty fifth read than I gave it credit for. Anyway, after a month or so underground, I’d decided it was high time to head topside and make sure that I could still get the old lighthouse to operate.

Oh and was that a mistake!

The glowing snows had been much worse than anything we could have ever anticipated. The moment I unsealed the door, a cascade of irradiated snow piled through the doorway and engulfed me. Up until that moment, I’d never hated snow in my life. Though again, I should be thankful I guess. I don’t know how or why, but that much radiation didn’t kill me. Well, that’s not completely true. Even as I write this, my body is dying, it’s just… taking it’s sweet time to do so.

Over the last few years, my skin has dried and cracked, my mane and tail have fallen out. Oh, and I’ve got your dad’s rasp, you know, his wheezing smoker’s voice? It’s not all downsides through. Radiation doesn’t hurt me anymore, and I’ve been able to really stretch our supplies down here because I don’t really need to eat that often. The point is, ever since that day, I’m a bit… different than you might expect. Hopefully not too different that you’ll turn around and sail off into the sunset again when you finally get back to me.

Now there’s something I’ve missed. I don’t know if you’ve got it the same wherever you are, but ever since the end of the old days, the sky's, well, missing. I don’t know why, but the pegasi cities must be real determined to keep it dark for our lighthouse, because I haven’t seen Celestia’s warm sun in years. At first I worried about why they did it, but it seems that they’re determined to never speak to us again, and I’m fine with that. Then again, it’s not like we got much sunlight living around Seaddle anyway, right? Eeyup, it still rains almost every other day here, haven’t missed much in your absence with regards to the weather.

The extra darkness the clouds provide has kept my hope alive all this last decade that you’re coming back. I’m sorry to say that because of this, I’ve deviated from your ten point plan a bit. Unfortunately, this note might be one of the last to be written while the beacon is powered. More darkness means more time to run the beacon light every day, and while a few extra hours a day might not be much, it’s certainly added up. As I write this, only one spare beacon bulb remains in the stockroom. We had a burn out last night, and so after lunch today I’ll be changing out the old one for the last time. Once this next one burns out, the light to guide you home will go out forever.

I wish that I could come find you. That I could charter a ship to sail the open seas, scouring the waves until I could once again find you. Sadly, I fear that I’d have the misfortune of setting sail the day before you returned, and I can’t afford to leave you here on your lonesome. So here I’ll stay. Even if the last beacon burns out, the love for you I still hold in my heart will continue to call out to you. Please, come back to me.

Yours for the rest of time,

Quicklime Bastion

P.S. You know what I just thought? I’ve been really holding up my end of our end-of-days plan over here, and have yet to see anything from your side of it yet. I know I’m not the easiest stallion to live with, but would it kill you to make it home for our anniversary dinner this year?

P.S.S. If you could pick up some fresh milk from the store on your way home, that would be great. I think our current bottle went bad a decade ago.

“There.” I sighed happily, spitting the pen out onto my desk. A cursory sweep over the three pages I’d written brought a smile to my muzzle, and a renewed hope in my heart. I felt good about this note! This year would be the year that she’d finally get it and come sailing back to me, I just knew it. Pausing with my thoughts, a peculiar burning smell caught my nose. “Oh shit! The soup!”

After nearly burning my lunch on the stove, I was sort of glad that my tastebuds had somewhat dulled with my unusual condition. Today’s soup wasn’t more than just boiled down pickled turnips, but I was saving this week’s rations for tonight’s special dinner. A broccoli and mushroom quiche, served with a well aged fifteen year old bottle of wine, and to top it all off, and entire carrot cake made out of mushed together fancy buck snack cakes. Everything about tonight was going to be wonderful. As usual however, there was just the one part of it always missing, and I didn’t strictly mean ol’ lefty.

As I cleaned up the few utensils and dishes from the soup, I put on Tide’s favorite record. As usual, I must have looked like an utter fool as I danced around the room in a slow waltz with only a wet dishrag as a partner. Still, the music always helped to keep me focused, and there was still so much to do before the evening got started up.

I swept the kitchen, dusted the bookshelf and all the light fixtures. After getting dinner started, I even did my best to fix the leaky pipe under the bathroom sink that’s been annoying me for almost a month. Returning my plumber’s tools to the near barren supply closet, I stopped and looked to the shelf in the back of the small room. The single, yellowing cardboard box sat all alone in the corner next to the compact spark reactor. It felt like it must be as lonely as me, undisturbed since the door had sealed shut what feels like so long ago. Trotting over to it, I peeled back the sealing tape, opened the top flap, and retrieved the last beacon bulb we had.

Only to find that it was somehow already burnt out.

“Well, that’s what we get for bargain shopping.” I sighed, trying desperately to not let this dim my hope too much. Really, this had been the worst thing to happen to me since I misspelled colloquialism twice in last years letter. I knew things were going too well today when I didn’t have a single error in there this time. Well, other than saying I still had one bulb still left usable that is. Hoofing the broken bulb back into the box, I set it back down onto the shelf, and went back to my preparations.

A few more hours of preparing dinner flew past before the old wind up clock chimed the hour of six, letting me know that both the darkness of night and this month’s high tide would be waiting for me outside. Wrapping myself in my raincoat, I hobbled over to my desk and promptly rolled up my letter as tightly as I could. Holding it in my fetlock, I grabbed last anniversary's cleaned out wine bottle with my muzzle and slowly guided the note inside. I would have made a comment about how lewd it felt shoving it in there, but unfortunately I think I’d used up all my good ones over the last decade. With the note secured inside, I firmly pressed the old cork top into it, sealing my letter inside.

Today, the wind was colder than normal for this time of year. Stiffer too, nearly battering me off balance as I trotted across the small lawn around the base of the towering lighthouse. The darkness of night lent me no favors, but the wind had whipped up quite heavy waves that capped almost against the top of the small cliff we our home was perched on. The rhythmic crashing and rolling of the ocean as I stood at the precipice of the High Point cliff face was serene and calming. I closed my eyes and stood there for a moment, taking in everything around me, before raising my remaining forehoof as high as I could reach it.

With all the force I could muster, I threw it as far as I could into the wild western seas. Maybe this year it would find it’s way to my love. Maybe this year, she’d come back to me.

The rending and shearing of steel made me jump and cringe, bright sparks filled the night from only a few hundred feet away down the shoreline. The sound was as puzzling as it was jarring, and it sent my heart rate racing as my mind tried to catch up on it’s own time. Almost immediately, a flickering set of lights illuminated the interior of a small vessel that seemed to have run aground on the rocky beach below. A shadowy figure moved inside slowly, trotting out of sight of the heavily fogged and dirty windows.

Intrigued, my heart jumped and commanded my hooves to move, while forgetting I’ve been a three legged pony for quite some time now. At a hasty hobble, I wrapped around the edge of the cliff down toward the beach. It screamed at my mind to process just what had happened, even if I could see it with my own two eyes. Was is possible? Could it be...?

“Quicklime!?” A voice not unlike the gravely tone of my own called out through the night. Even masked under the scratchy sound of it, I knew that voice. “Quicklime, are you there!?”

“Spring!” I cried out, half laughing, half actually crying. This was the moment that I had waited ten years for. “Spring, I’m over here!” Spring was hard to see in the poor illumination the boat gave, but she moved with nearly as much swiftness as I did. “Could it really be you?”

Clambering over the edge of what seemed to be a junky tug boat, the bright seafoam green eyes I’d always loved hunted for me in the darkness. “Quick, I… I’m sorry!” She cried out, collapsing as she dropped out of the boat. “I was stranded on a reef in Marewaii, and it took me forever to find another seaworthy boat, and…” With a stumbling skid, I slammed against the side of the boat before dropping down next to her. She seemed to be suffering from the same affliction as I was, but it was her.

“Oh it is you.” I whimpered, pressing my hoof to her quivering muzzle to silence her. Instead of saying something else without thinking, I ended up throwing my legs around her tightly to let my brain catch up a bit. Then, for the first time in ten years, I felt somepony else return a hug. “I knew you’d come back to me. I never gave up hope…”

She laughed through her tears as she held me tighter than she ever had. “I’ve missed you, so much.” Loosening her grip a bit, she pulled back and looked me in the eyes. “I… I love you, Quick.”

“And I love you, Spring.” I managed to get out between my own joyous sobs. “You’re home now, and you never have to leave again.” Sniffling, I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. To that, she returned the kiss on my own before simply pulling me close again. “Happy anniversary, my love.”

“Happy anniversary.” She sighed, relaxing in our embrace.

So after all, it turns out I was wrong for a third time. While we had run out of time before, the when of the end of the world hadn’t mattered after all. So what if the world had blown up a little bit? Nothing much had changed for us when it did. She sailed back to me in the end like she’d promised, and that was just the way we’d planned it. Even if it did take a little longer than we’d thought.

Planting my lips on hers, I was just happy to finally have her home for good.