Author's Note

Welcome back, here we are with more story. Sorry for the delay.

Time is the fire in which we burn.

-Gene Roddenberry.

Vagari Ignis

Rin, Daring, and Blank sat around the kitchen of the ship as me, Grass, and Echo came back from the nearby stream with water that we filtered. Daring made a point for us to stop and take a small break after the whole Starlight incident and get some food in our bellies.

One thing I had never really thought much about with everything that occurred since we got here was eating. Drinking water here and there was fine, but we really didn't need much in terms of food as quickly as our friends thought.

Living the life that we did back home, as well as our respective training made food a lower priority.

"So," Daring cleared her throat, going over to the stove that stood barren of any flames before grabbing a match with her wing as she tossed it into the wood, making sure the smoke funnel was sealed and directing it outside the ship. "What's on the menu for you guys?”

Rin stretched her arms out to her sides, sounding a bit relieved as her muscles were slowly relaxed. A small yawn followed as she begun to spin the yarn in her mind about what she wanted to eat. “Dunno; not that picky of an eater, really. If I had a choice, it’d be something sweet.”

“Not so much for me; just something small, I guess.” I said, setting the bucket down and leaning on the table next to Rin. I really hadn’t worked up an appetite, but I was somewhat sure that they wouldn’t just settle for us not eating with everything going on. “I guess some pork or beef would be good,” my mouth began to water a bit at the idea of a good burger, especially with some chipotle Mayo, a fried egg, and mushrooms.

“So you guys are carnivores,” Grass figured as she thought about a few of the things that I told her about us. “Explains why you have those sharp teeth.”

“Canines, and we can eat plants and meat; omnivores. But I’ve been trying to make it a point to balance it out.” Rin said, twirling her hair as she knew that her eating habits whenever she did eat was less than ideal, what with inhaling the equivalent of a bakery every other week back home, only for her to gain no weight.

“I’ve wondered about eating meat; how is it? Do you have any certainty rituals you guys have to do for you to eat it?” Blank asked, pointing a hoof at us as she munched on some celery sticks. “I’m sure you have to cook it and all, but are there some meats you can’t eat?”

That did spark a bit of curiosity in me on the prospect of the different things we could and couldn’t eat. There were a lot of things that as far as I knew, that we could eat if prepared correctly, and the slightest mistake could kill something.

“Well, there’s not a lot that I can tell off the top of my head, but I’m sure that I know something who can,” I uncovered my Life Drive, signaling for Ai to come out in a flourish of pink particles, appearing with a smile on her face.

“Ai! Master, how may I assist you?” Ai asked, her cute arms folded behind her back as she waited for my orders.

“Can you tell our friends here about a few of the different kinds of food Humans can’t eat at all or only can eat when certainly conditions are met?” I clasped my hands together, knowing that Ai had any kind of information on that topic, or any other taken care of once she consulted any story material in her Hammer-Space.

Giggling as another miniature explosion of pink particles formed, the specks conforming to the shape of a book that comically looked to heavy for my Fairy to lift, but her telekinesis made the feat easy. “Ai! There are plenty of foods that Master and other Humans like him cannot eat or cannot eat without the utmost preparation. For example; the seeds of a cherry, poisonous pufferfish, and grass. The components of each of those items either do not meet the requirements for human digestion or contains elements that if not diluted sufficiently will result in death.”

“Jeez, really? You can’t eat grass?” Grass Song asked, shaking her head, treating the information like a foreign word.

“Yep, not at all, so we gotta be careful about what we eat, or we could end up dead.” I said, shrugging my shoulders as Daring looked at us, waiting.

“So, are you guys hungry? Anything you can eat that ponies can too?”

“Ai! Dandelions, so long they are not sprayed with any fertilizer and the entire plant has the bitterness cooked out would make an excellent alternative!” Ai said, beginning to list off the various dishes while me and Rin had a talk.

I had wanted to make sure she was ok after the whole. . .Nir incident.

“Hey, are you doing ok?” I gently asked, Rin looking at me with a small glint in her eyes. I wasn’t able to identify it right away, but I ventured what Starlight did to her may have scared her a bit. “You can talk about it if you-“

“-No, it’s fine. I just. . .I. . .ugh. I don’t know; it felt weird, wrong, and I can’t put it into words, but something’s missing,” Rin ruffled her own hair, displacing some dirt and dust from our earlier spat. Her voice had almost gone quiet, as if she was scared. Rin never was scared. Of anything. “I don’t remember what really happened, and I hurt you and our friends. I even argued with Hanabi before I hurt her, too.” I watched as Rin rubbed her shoulders, seemingly disgusted of the thought.

I had to reasssure her. It wasn’t her fault, even if her and Blank did knock us out. Their hearts were in the right place, and the end result of it seemed to be more than enough punishment.

“It’s fine, Rin. You didn’t hurt us really, and it wasn’t really your fault. Starlight-“

“-Played us like a fool from the very beginning. And I told you guys that I didn’t like her from the beginning, but you wanted to play it safe,” Rin bitterly mentioned, casting a look to Daring as a vein on her neck began to pulse, only for her to calm down and sigh in defeat. “But, I did let my anger get the best of me, too,” Rin admitted.

“Why, though? You sounded like Starlight did something to you personally, or you had experienced something like that before,” Grass ventured a guess, making Rin tense a bit before turning her head the other direction. “You have?”

Rin refused to answer Grass’s question, and as much as I wanted it to be known for the sake of conversation, this was Rin’s internal turmoil, and nobody but her could be the true victor.

“Let’s save the questions for later; we already established what happened back there was unfortunate, and Blank and Rin feel bad about it, but we need to focus on what exactly we’re going to do about getting back home,” I said, trying to get the main goal back on track. “Since Starlight left, is there anything else that we could do to help us?” I asked Daring, her face scrunched into thought as she maintained the fire with a bellow.

Echo walked over, tapping my leg as I looked at her, as she begun to shy away from a moment when I stared at her a bit intensely. “I-I might k-know something we can use,”

“Wait, what?” Blank asked, what her sister said catching her for a loop as she flew over to her saddlebag and brought out a old, chipped parchment. “What do you mean, sis?”

Echo unfurled the parchment, most of the words unfamiliar to me as I had never heard been said before. It mentioned something about some item called El Oro De Dios.

“What is that?” Rin asked, looking over the parchment with me. Something called out to me why this looked some kind of familiar. It sounded Spanish, but I never took the time to learn the language to know what the words mean.

“It’s something I-I heard a few p-ponies talking about in a tavern, and a stallion d-dropped this, so I managed to t-take it without them finding out.” Echo said, looking over the rest of the document to find more information out for us. “They said it could have m-mystical powers, but I-I wasn’t so sure.”

“How come you never thought to bring this up, Echo?” Grass asked, observing the parchment for herself. “Any lead we could get to them Rin and Jamir home would be a big help, but we got to figure out what the word means.”

“Ai! The phrase is in Spanish, Ms. Grass Song!” Ai cheered with her boundless energy, floating over to the parchment, looking it over as her eyes glowed a brighter pink than normal for a second before speaking again. “It means The Gold of God! But what exactly that talks about in the form is unclear! Does it not say what the phrase represents?”

“Hmmm, nope. Just that it has been given different names in the past, and that it’s been highly revered,” Grass turned the parchment around and around to see any possible different angles. “It mentions one name over and over though; Seaquestria.”

“Then that must be a good a place as any to start, but there’s only one problem; none of us can swim deep enough if we have to go down deep,” Daring said, bringing the idea out in the open. A valid point point as we couldn’t go that deep anyways without needing air in less than 5 minutes. “We’ll need to overcome that hurdle, first.”

“Then we’ll need to get some information. Check the map; where’s this Seaquestria and what places are near it?” Blank asked.

Pulling the large map out of her saddlebags, Daring looked over it for the moment before locating the place in question, only to frown and look downtrodden.

“What’s wrong?” I walked over, seeing what the fuss was about. Daring sighed and tapped the map with a hoof.

“We’re going to have to go beyond Equestria, where not a lot of ponies have gone, and from the looks of it, it will take a little while to get there.”