Follow Her Lead

Chapters

Chapter 1: A Game Over Dinner
Chapter 2: Lies and Song
Chapter 4: Dearest Cantata, Part One
Chapter 5: Time Swims On, and Adagio Dazzles Sonata
Chapter 6: Within the Ship's Bones, and Adagio the Surfacer
Chapter 7: Cold Water and Colder Eyes
Chapter 8: Dearest Cantata, Part Two
Chapter 9: Sing the Song of a New Land
Chapter 10: You Shall Not Know Hunger
Chapter 11: Life is a Dirge
Chapter 12: Dearest Cantata, Part Three
Chapter 13: All Resilience Fades Away
Chapter 14: Our Swan Song Rings
Chapter 15: Lose the Game
Chapter 3: Ever Northward, Children

Chapter 1: A Game Over Dinner

I wonder how long it will take Nata to realize she's dead. Aunt Cantata isn't going to come back no matter how many times Nata stops swimming and just bobs there so her mommy can 'catch up'. Everytime this happens, I just reach out a forehoof to grab her and tell her that she'll ruin the game if she does that.

Game.

That's what is this is to her, but only because I told her so. Lies are always easy for me, and technically Aunty lied to Nata all the time to keep her happy, even if she called it something else. It was probably still a lie, anyway.

My name's Aria Blaze, I'm a siren which is a fancy way of saying I'm a monstrous half-breed that results when a unicorn stallion and a seapony mare get real close. Sometimes I'd try to tell Nata this in a lot more detail, but then Aunty'd get real mad. Nata, or Sonata Dusk, is the daughter of my seapony mother's sister Cantata Dusk. I don't know why Aunty has a siren name when she was just a regular old seapony but it isn't important, especially now that she's gone.

My cousin, Nata, is pretty dim. I mean, she still acts like a little foal and doesn't understand anything I try to explain to her, and had to be kept happy all the time and be reminded to do everything. Even when she was doing that we had to remind her of what was right in front of her. She still likes to play really silly things and act like a baby. She also thinks that clams can sing. Outside of all that, I guess she's okay. I mean, she was the only one I played with when we were both really little. After all, who was I supposed to play with, the sea cucumbers? We did almost everything together, since it was just us two and Aunty in her cottage a few reefs short of the Barren Sea's barrier. She didn't send Nata to school, so I had to play with her a lot, but there were other sirens and seaponies in the village.

Nata doesn't know who her father is, but if I know anything about anything it's that Aunty knew. What I didn't count on her doing was telling me with her dying breath. She also made me promise not to tell Nata, and for now I won't, instead I'll find him and make him love Aunty's little Sonatina like he probably should have, I mean she once made a shark smile... or maybe that was after I smacked it for trying to eat Nata's face when she only wanted to pet him. He saw more stars in a minute than a pony in the Overworld sees in a week because of me.

Still, Nata's going to be pretty upset. I mean, seaponies die real different from most creatures. They die of sadness. Also oldness, but mostly sadness. If you make a seapony very sad, so they can't do anything but be sad - too sad to even cry any more - then a seapony stops singing, and they die. I think sirens die like ponies, but then again I don't know much about ponies. I've only seen them in murals and heard the songs of sailors.

I don't like it when creatures die. Not because Nata is asking me where dinner is, and I keep telling her we'll have to catch it and she asks how do we catch a dinner... and it's kinda annoying... but because Aunty didn't take to stonework very well. No way to move stones means no cairn. No cairn means she's just 'sleeping' in the house where I left her, when I went to go tell Nata about our 'game'. Dead things attract living things, and not just any living things either but the kind that eat dead things. Get the picture?

So here we are. Every time Nata and I went into the nearest village with Aunty to get new shell necklaces for our birthdays or Nata's favorite kelp, we were often mistaken for sisters. Aunty was sea green with light purple eyes and silver streaks in her fins that were straight like Nata's and mine. I'm purple and green, not quite Aunty's green though. Nata is blue with purple hues. It wasn't that great though because we'd always get our cheeks pinched and told how cute we were. No one could remember a time when I wasn't under Aunty's care, and I'm only old enough to remember that she's my aunt and not my mom.

If Nata does find out that Aunty's dead, which she probably won't since she forgets stuff easily and I can trick her into being happy or just lie again, she'll probably start crying and it will probably be worse than when her pet starfish ran away. Her clown fish also ran away, but not the same way. He 'ran away' eight times and I 'found' him eight times, except I think that one of the ones I caught for her was a girl, but she never noticed and was ecstatic when her fish was 'returned' to her.

My mind is filled with so much right now, and I don't know what to say and I probably shouldn't say anything unless it's just a little white lie. I just don't know what'll come out of my mouth. Right now, I need to worry about other things, like the whole reef that's in front of me. Ponies live a far in the north, but navigating the Overworld is weird, and most ponies don't even live on coasts, because they're apparently too dumb to realize that the ocean is where all the food is. So, we should probably work our way somewhere north, or just a place with a city or a map. I'm too young to try Surfacing and it's a pretty scary thought to even go towards the shallower reefs, so Nata and I will just stay around here, where everything is safe.

I need to catch us a dinner anyway.

Chapter 2: Lies and Song

"Aria," Nata whined, "You're getting food all over your heart, that's yucky!"

Next to her I scoff and wipe the bits of fish, and whatever else I put in this, off my heart. It's the red thing that looked like a crystal that both Nata and I have on our chests. Our breakfast, which is the same thing as the dinner we ate, is a bunch of seaweed with mashed fish and whatever else was lying around that was fit for us to eat wrapped inside the seaweed. Nata is not supposed to know that some of the stuff we eat has a face, so I made it look as face-less as possible and told her that any of the red that drifted through the water that was a result of the fish being mashed was a cool sauce... or something. She believed me, too.

"Happy now?" I grumble between a few more mouthfuls. She smiles and claps her hooves together, having finished her own fish wrap that definitely wasn't fish, nope.

I must admit, that was a good catch on Nata's part. The thought of anything happening to our hearts is awful. We can use them to channel magic when we're older, and a bunch of other stuff Aunty said that I actually paid attention to because, magic! This wasn't just any magic either, our magic worked through our voice, and since Aunty had taught us both how to sing - which is probably how she ended up with a siren's name - Nata and I were so excited. I tried to sing others into giving me pearls and treasure from the skeletons of old ships that I'm too young to go near, and Nata... well she tried to make her starfish get married. I don't know how.

There were two downsides to this power. The first was that it only worked on ponies, who just had to live in the Overland instead of down here like anyone practical, and the second was that we couldn't just sing, we had to make others do stuff with our words as well as our voices. Yet, it couldn't just through lying like I do, or Nata telling everyone they're pretty and hugging them. We only knew a few kinds of songs, as well, lullabies from Aunty, the wordless shoo-be-doo melodies that she sang, and the 'inappropriate' songs sung by Overworld sailors that I may or may not have gotten Nata to repeat.

Nata really took to singing, too. She had the talent, but I had the words, even if I still can't get things to rhyme just right, more often than not. She'll sing everywhere, including here. She's just smiling and singing some nonsense song as we recline here, on a small outcropping that overlooks a peaceful reef that's just waking up, and so late, too. I bet it's because it's filled with lazy fish.

There are colors everywhere, and it is still kinda cold from the night where we hid in some nice anemones. No one really lives anywhere around here, except a lot of fish, since there aren't enough resources to support many villages, and a few hours west for any swift swimmer you'll find an abyss or two. Those aren't exactly welcoming. I've never seen one, but I've heard that they're scary and dark, and that there's krakens and mean squids, or something else that I'd rather not meet and it would probably scare Nata.

She doesn't have to worry though, there's not a kraken that I wouldn't hit for hurting my stupid cousin. I could probably take one on anyway, but for now I'll just stay with Nata and try to make sure she doesn't try to marry any more urchins to starfish. Nata's real weird like that.

I think we swam far enough yesterday, and I would have made us go on longer but Nata's scared of the dark and I'm sort-of-not-quite-maybe-just-a-little bit scared of what could be in it. I just needed us to get far away from our old cottage so that Nata's distracted and someone else, who has never met us, might know where to find a pony. Why can't they live in the water like everyone else? Don't they know how stupid that is? Ugh, this is going to be so hard having to look after both Nata and myself.

Wait, where's Nata? She was here just a moment ago!

"Aria look, I found a fishie with foals!"

I whip my head around, and sure enough, she had wandered away and was cuddling a rather annoyed fish to her cheek, and singing 'fishie' over and over again, like that's going to do anything.

I swim over to meet her and tell her to let the fish go. The fry that Nata had seen hover for a few moments before hiding nearby. They have a good reason not to like me, since I'm very tough.

She tries to make big eyes and garbles something about the fish that I can't understand. We still have to go a bit farther if I want her to forget this place fast enough. If I look back the way we came it still looks a bit familiar, maybe Aunty had taken us here before to gather something. She really hated gardening but I never asked why. Or maybe she just never answered, ugh why's everything gotta be so complicated?

I must be frowning because her lip starts to quiver and that's not good, because I don't know if i can handle Nata when she's sad. She's such a baby that it's easy to make her upset, but when she does start to throw a fit, she really loses it and I don't think she's even there anymore. A lot of the sailor songs tell of banshees which are like dead whales, but mean or something, and they make a lot of noise but it's mean cause they just screech everywhere. Nata is a bit like that, except she just can't control anything. Whenever I told Aunty this, and said that Nata had lost her mind again she got real mad.

I can't risk Nata getting upset because something could catch us, and that would be bad. I had lied to everyone in the nearest village the last time we were there, telling them that if Aunty kept getting sadder and no one could help her, even if she had let them, that Nata and I would come live with a friend of hers that I was sorta alright with. Again it was a lie, I know that Nata has a daddy that isn't dead, and he is going to take Nata, and I'll find him all by myself. I'll deliver Nata to her home and we'll be fine, and if he doesn't like her I'll bite him like I do whenever one of the village colts called Nata stupid. Most of them liked her and told her she was pretty, and only I could call her that but only if Aunty wasn't around.

Nata's stopped looking so sad but she sill won't let the fish go so I smiled a little bit and tried to act like Aunty, but without calling her Sonatina.

"Nata, listen you've gotta put the fish down, it doesn't like that. You wouldn't like that if someone did that to- oh gods Nata, stop I think its eyes are bugging out! Drop the fish! Drop her!"

Okay that last part wasn't very Aunty-like but Nata does let go of the fish with a whimper. "Why couldn't I have fishie?"

Oh... well now I've gotta think of a good answer. Asking about how the fish felt probably won't work since Nata has such a hard time telling what's 'mean' and what isn't.

Come on Aria, think of something.

Nata looks at me questioningly.

All I need is one good lie. One good lie.

"Are fishies bad?"

Huh?

"Bad for what Nata?"

"The game, we're playing a game, silly! D-did I lose?"

Oh, right the 'game'.

"No Nata you didn't loose, but you... you got a strike. Fish aren't allowed to be hugged in the game."

"Sorry!"

"It's alright, you only got one strike so far. You can't win if you get a lot of strikes, but do you wanna know how you can get less strikes?"

She looks a bit confused. "So, less strikes... I can win?"

"Yeah. You just gotta do one thing, 'kay?"

I get a nod from her so its sinking in.

"You just gotta listen to me. I know all the rules."

Nata makes a happy squealing noise. "Yeah! I'll do it, for realzies. Umm... but Aria what's the game called?"

"Err... 'Follow My Lead'. It's super fun, now we have to keep moving. For the game. Now just keep swimming, or else we won't get anywhere."

She's forgotten about the fish entirely, I can tell and I've lived with Nata and Aunty for years. Although I do regret telling her the swimming part, because now she won't stop singing about that.

Ugh, Nata!

Chapter 4: Dearest Cantata, Part One

The young siren swam about in front of her cottage. A giddy smile graced her face as she belted out a few notes, bubbles drifting through the blue sea which rippled in tranquil, steady waves. Visible shafts of sunlight pierced the water and wavered with its pulse. Nearby, a green seapony busied herself with plucking invading strands of kelp off the sculpted coral and stone surface of her home. One hoof pulled the plant away before transferring it to a basket held in the other. There were times when it was hard not to think of cityscapes of polished coral and pearl in her mind's eye, and the awesome territories of the far ocean she used to know, and what power there was to be found in its loneliness.

Her gaze was alive and focused, streaks of silver highlighting her fins, even if the faint tune she hummed was somewhat melancholy, unlike the nursery rhymes she sang to her young daughter and the smiles she flashed when spooning the young filly mashed sea cucumber for her lunch.

Cantata's ears pricked back to where Sonata had been playing. Why had she stopped singing? Worried, the seapony mare turned to see that Sonata was now trying to talk with someone she had never seen before, another seapony whose face was not clear. She dropped her basket and swam over to where Sonata was swimming circles around what Cantata could now see was a seapony stallion, who was clad in the slightest traces of armor and holding something in his forehooves. Sonata was babbling strings of sounds garbled from excitement with only a few words clear enough for her to make out. Many of the villagers thought that this was queer coming from a filly of her age, who at least struggled with foalish whistles to mimic song and chattered non-stop. Sonata still knew the extra clumsy language nearing the level of late infancy. This stallion at least did not give her child a passing glance.

Upon closer look Cantata could see that the stallion was clad in the remains of Aquastrian armor, most of which was hastily exchanged for a traveler's cloak at some point on his trip. His journey must have been a long one, this soldier was weary and confused by Sonata's attempted conversation. His steely gray scales appeared somewhat dull. The enchanted 'fabric' swayed back and forth in the water with the seapony, making him appear even more worn.

Cantata was about to usher her daughter off when she saw what was in the bundle that the stallion held.

"Are you Miss Cantata Dusk?" he asked.

She nodded and stared down at the purple siren filly sleeping in the Auqustriaian cloth. The poor creature was fairly small, barely past the stage where one might label her a fry, yet she still looked old enough to talk.

She had never seen this filly before but she was familiar enough in appearance that she could make a guess. "What happened?"

"Well, Miss Dusk I'm relieved that you were able to be reached but this little one here, Aria Blaze is the daughter of Pearlescence, and the unicorn stallion, Bright Blaze."

Cantata knew from the moment she heard the filly's name. It followed the tradition of many sirens before her to name each after a song for their renowned singing, and then add on the second half of the unicorn father's own name as a reminder of the magic they inherited.

"They're dead, aren't they?"

"Yes, and you were identified as the only living relative after the deaths of your sister and brother-in-law, and by the orders of King Neptune, I was sent to bring her here, if you are able to care for her."

Cantata frowned slightly at the mention of the king's name, but it went unnoticed to both the soldier and Sonata. When her sister and herself were old enough to go out into the ocean on their own, Cantata had decided to leave the main reaches of Aquastria in favor of scouting out territory near the edge of the southern continent, and see the start of the Barren Sea to the west. In those times, she decided to live there. Once she had Sonata, she moved closer to a village, which was closer to tamer reefs and land for Sonata's sake.

Her sister, Pearl, had stayed in the city they were born, Tiberia, to become a soldier for the main realm of Aquastria, like this stallion here. Cantata recalled her writing about the visiting Bright Blaze, a unicorn who hailed from the southern realms long after the Great Silence of the Overworld, and how he worked to maintain basic kinds of magical teachings among the settlers who fled to the coast from the ruins of their great citadels, and the monsters and plagues he fought in an Overworld with few, if any, gods.

She knew little else of her sister, who lived so far away. Without the aide of magic that those under the king had, even with her navigator's knowledge factored in, it would still take at least ten years just to reach the borders of Aquastria after passing through all the outer territories, and parts of the seas that have never known a permanent structure.

"How old is she?" Cantata asked. She listened closely to the soldier's answer. Young Aria's age was equal to that of a three year old pony's, odd for someone so small. In the years of ponies, which were considered to be much more understandable than the years of sirens, Sonata was three years older, despite her youthful looks. When she reached the equivalent of a thirteen year old pony, both Sonata as well as Aria would be able to Surface.

Sonata, quite literally pulled her mother from her thoughts by tugging lightly on her tail and pointing an eager forehoof at her younger cousin.

Cantata smiled. "Yes, my Sonatina you may hold her if you ask nicely."

Sonata smiled widely and held out her forehooves and watched excitedly as her little cousin was placed in them.

Cantata waved a polite farewell to the stallion, wishing him luck on his journey back. She was going to need a lot more kelp for tonight's dinner.

It would be great for Sonata to have a filly close enough in age to play with and perhaps when she was old enough Aria would be able to help care for Sonata as well.

Once again Cantata found herself staring out of the driftwood shuttered window, staring in the direction of Aquastria, imagining the capital of Atlantis.

She imagined lots of things, all while Sonata played with Aria in the background, squealing happily as her new playmate finally decided to voice herself.

"Nata!" Aria called sharply.

Cantata was once again jolted out of whatever reverie she had been in, and looked to see Sonata hugging Aria tightly, much to the younger siren's chagrin.

Chapter 5: Time Swims On, and Adagio Dazzles Sonata

Nata is still scared long after the shark has left, but I'm more concerned about the filly with the gold scales who was attacked. I've got her in my hooves, since she's barely awake. At least I've been able to distract Nata from the blood floating in the water for now.

She doesn't look to be much too older than me, and she was out here all on her own. She should have done something about those scales of hers too, unlike Nata and me she has gold-orange scales and very wavy fins like she's trying to be the sun or something. How'd she get left alone for this long? Where's she even from? You usually don't see any equine faces up 'round these parts where the water is cold and the reefs are few and far between and the sun is blocked out by the weird clouds that float on top of the water. She must of took a wrong turn or something.

I try to use a hoof to stop some bleeding on a nasty trace of a bite wound that is almost too close to her neck, and would have killed her had we not showed up by accident and Nata's screaming not distracted the shark. Even after all these years out here, she's still an idiot. I mean, the 'game' is still going on and everything. When I turn the filly a bit, I see that she isn't a seapony like we had thought, because right in the middle of her chest is her shining red heart.

She's a siren too. Nata and I have never met another siren before. They tend to live in the cities and have jobs that those like Nata and I couldn't dream of - especially Nata. I've heard from Aunty that they dazzle the court of King Neptune and sing powerful battle songs as soldiers. There's no way some highborn siren like that could be out here, right?

"Aria, can we keep her?"

I look into Nata's pleading face. She's begging again but this time it's not over food or something silly. This time it's over another creature.

"Nata I'm not sure, I mean when she wakes up she might have to go back to her home, or wherever it is that she's from, you know?"

"But I want her!" Nata shouts, "I want her, I want her, I want her!"

"Ugh, Nata be quiet unless you want to attract another shark."

"But I promise to take super good care of her!"

"What about food? Unless this colorful dolt knows anything about, well, anything we're gonna need to get her more food and you already eat a ton as it is."

"She can have my lunch!"

"That isn't going to help." Plus she'll just complain that she's hungry.

"She can have my breakfast too!"

"No, Nata she can't."

Nata starts to whimper and if this goes on any longer she's gonna be crying like the twenty-dozen times I wouldn't let her keep the sea cucumbers she found.

"But Nata..."

"W-what, Aria," she pouts.

"...It might be against the rules."

She looks down at the sea below us, "O-okay, but we can still help her, can't we?"

"Yes, Nata, we can do that. The rules allow it."

...

When we're back in the cave we've been staying at Nata can't wait for anything, as usual and I'm subjected to like a gazillion questions on her part.

"What's her name?"

"Do you think she likes those wraps that you make?"

"Can she catch dinners too?"

"Can I be her friend?"

"Why's she orange?"

I drop the siren filly on the ground, but hey, I'm sure she won't mind. She's probably off in dream land, anyway. "Nata you can't just ask others why they're orange!"

"Can she sing, though?"

Nata never learns. Even after years out here I'm still trying to figure out how anyone got her to do anything. All she does is talk and talk and talk, and did I mention she talks? When she's not talking she sings, after all, we gotta practice our singing no matter what. It's fun too, but I always end up as trying to take lead, since I'm the only one who can come up with decent lyrics, but Nata's got the better voice even if she thinks that 'Sonata' and 'oyster' are a good rhyme.

I guess it's better than total silence. I wouldn't like that and neither would Nata but noise isn't always helpful but I guess I've become used to it by now. I've become used to other things too. Like I'm technically old enough to Surface now which ought to be useful when we finally find some ponies 'cause they just had to live so far away from anything good. Nata's been old enough to Surface since forever, but we really can't have her just popping up in the Overworld. I just wanna know how much farther north is because we've been doing this for years, and how far up north can these ponies possibly be?

Nata's dumb giggling in the background draws my attention, and then I see that she's got the crudely made spear I made a while back clumsily gripped in her forehooves, even though she's seen that I wield the thing in my mouth. Having to manage Nata is, unfortunately, an experience that requires my hooves to be free. She's using the end of it to poke the gold filly's side. Gods above, I hope that golden gal hits Nata when she wakes up, because that's so incredibly dumb.

"C'mon, silly, wake up!"

"Wakey-wakey!"

"Rise and shine!"

Nata suddenly shrieks and I jump when one of those gold forehooves reaches out and grabs the spear from Nata's grip. The gold filly sits up and tosses the spear aside. One forehoof moves to her neck and rubs the wound a bit. She opens her eyes, which are a similar color to Nata's and looks around our cave but she doesn't look terribly confused like I thought she would. In fact, she almost looks calm.

"Where am I?" she demands, and those eyes of hers bore into me for the first time.

Chapter 6: Within the Ship's Bones, and Adagio the Surfacer

Her name is Adagio Dazzle and she talks a lot. She swims more like an undersea predator than a siren: silent but with a deadly strength, so she must have been alone for some time. Her voice is like the sound of the waves far above: smooth and calm, with the easiest hint of turning violent, yet there's something hypnotic about the way she talks. She's older than me, but younger than Nata, but she sounds so mature, like she's the sort who doesn't get yelled at for getting into fights every other day. She's too well-spoken once she gets around to talking for more than a minute. I'm not sure if I like that.

It's like you can't help but listen to her, I keep having to remind myself what I'm doing every now and then, but Nata's practically drooling over her, and nodding to everything she says. She was real surprised to find us looking at her when she woke up. We were even more surprised to hear about her.

She didn't say where she was from or how she ended up messing with a shark, but she did tell Nata and I that she had Surfaced before. When Nata and I began to ask her a bunch of questions about what the Overworld was like, she told us both to be quiet. She'd tell us later, or so she said. Then she started talking about where she'd been staying recently.

I couldn't believe what I heard.

She lived in a boat. Adagio Dazzle, the strangest equine I had ever met, was living in a sunken galleon not too far from where we had been. When Nata and I still lived in the village we heard tales of the old ships that rested so far from our home, and how they were filled with treasure. I wanted to drag Nata off to go and explore the wooden bones that hold the gold that dazzled us more than any tale of how the Overworld structure had ended up there.

Aunty, who I alone still remember, but does not occupy my thoughts, told us not to and dragged Nata and I away as much as I wanted to go. We could never sneak past her or the village limits, and no matter how much I thrashed I could never escape the grip of her hooves. At least, not then. I'm far bigger than runty village Aria was, and Nata is growing and growing, even if I might still be small. I'm certainly smaller than Adagio. Sometimes, she eyes the scars on my forelegs, like they'll tell her something or they're strange to her. Those scars are all I can see about my hooves now. The deep sea does that. Learning to manage spears on my own does that.

Nata doesn't remember Aunty anymore, and for that I am glad, or as glad as I can be. When I asked Adagio where her mother was, Nata looked more confused at the question than Adagio pretended to be. I made my cousin forget her own mother. I'm not sure if I feel guilty. I am guilty, but I don't feel it, since I don't even remember my mother, or at least nothing beyond glimmers of memory and her name. I think her mane was like mine, and that my father had a loud voice.

The thought of forgetting someone who loved so much like Nata loved her mother, and not even remembering them might be scary for someone else who still had a village to call home and didn't hunt for food like her and I. I can't see why it would matter anyway. Nata would have been nabbed by a shark long ago if it weren't for Aunty's disgruntled, calm patience and my guts. Now there's only my guts.

In time, I try not to wonder what else my cousin will forget and who will make her do it. Perhaps they'll smile at her like I did.

It's an honest lie, and I wonder how easy it will be to say it to someone like her.

...

From a silent reef, the skeleton of a ship rises, even though it is rotted and plants try consume it. I'm not listening to Nata's babbling because scattered among the ruins of this old wooden thing were glittering gold coins that Nata and I grabbed excitedly. They had been lying there for gods know how long, and images of Alicorn gods were stamped upon them. Adagio kept swimming in relative silence, but Nata and I couldn't resist comparing the profiles we found on coins or picking up strings of pearls and other treasures.

When Nata thought that I got the better coins, since the bust of Alicon King Neptune, Ruler of the Seas, appeared on mine she tried to throw the sparkling metal at me. She must not have been all that thrilled with who she got on hers, eh? I can't blame her if our god-king is better than the Two Alicorn Queens of the Overworld land of Al Far'iimbra, some crazy place with a crazier name. When that failed, Nata chased me around the abandoned wooden beams over and over until we were both laughing from dizziness.

Adagio frowned slightly upon seeing us act like the littlest of fillies, and looked away like our silly game was bothering her. It was kinda embarrassing, so I stopped and Nata, who was still squealing joyfully, collided with me. I admonished her with a quick shove before resumed our swim, even though it was uncomfortable to have Adagio take the lead, since it was I who was the leader. I'm not sure if she noticed me twitch, since I wanted to get back to the front. Sure, she may know this ship but this was technically my job, not hers, and I'd appreciate if she stopped doing it, at least once we were out of here.

...

With Adagio leading us through the spooky broken corridors with rotting door frames, I realized the only one left to rein in Nata as she tried to explore every room would be me. It took a lot of time, but we made it to whatever section Adagio had been staying in.

I'm not sure what the room was supposed to be or why you'd wanna walk on the ceiling of the room below you if you had four hooves like a pony. Everything was splintered and looked like it would collapse on us in a moment, and with Nata here I don't exactly think we'd be able to escape in one piece.

She's a great swimmer, but I'm still surprised when Adagio, who knows words longer than most of my thoughts, returns from the rubble with only a few splinters between some scales. She carries something in her hooves, its cloth. Not the special kind that come from Aquastria but the kind from the Overworld that gets all yucky in the water. It's wrapped in a ball and has all sorts of things tied to it in order to weigh it down and keep it together.

"What's that?" Nata asks.

Adagio gives this weird smile to us both. "Well, Sonata, weren't you and Aria going to find where all the little ponies lived?"

When Nata nods to this, I nod too.

"It just so happens," Adagio continues,"that I know exactly where the ponies live too, and that's where I'm heading."

"Yeah, but what makes us think we can trust you?"

"Aria, where do you think I'm from?"

"Aquastria? They have a ton of fancy cities there, and you act like you're from the court or something." Or at least, what I think court sirens would be like.

Adagio lets out a long sigh and brings her free hoof to her face. "I'm not from Aquastria, Aria."

"Then where are you from?"

"Water?" Nata suggests, and her eyes tell me that was the best guess that she could come up with. Idiot.

Adagio jabs a hoof towards the waves far above and her weird, kinda creepy smile returns. "You two may have yet to Surface, but that's where I'm from."

Nata is confused by her statement. "But aren't you a siren too?"

"Yes."

"How can you be from up there if you're a siren?"

The gold filly's face looks like other adults when they are tired of putting up with Nata, and they think that I'm like Nata too and won't notice. Her tone is very dry too, like how the Overworld must be. "Sonata, whales can go to the water's surface as well, and even beach themselves upon the shores."

My cousin's eyes widen. "So... does that mean you're from the shores?"

Adagio shoots Nata a wide smile but it still feels like she's trying to be mean. "Why yes! I am, actually."

"I get it now!" Nata cries.

"Bravo!" Adagio says, still smiling funny and clapping. It doesn't feel right, is it possible to make fun of Nata by praising her? This isn't lying but I'm not sure what else it could be.

Nata smiles even wider than Adagio upon realizing something, and I guess nothing seems off to her. "You're a whale, Adagio!"

Chapter 7: Cold Water and Colder Eyes

Nata and I could sing, but Adagio's voice was different. Even though it had no effect on me, I knew it was bewitching. Her voice, clear and haunting, was trained perfectly on the coasts where she was born and she sang with ease in the reef waters with Nata and I.

She was better in every way and she knew even though I would never, ever tell her! Every word that came out of Adagio's mouth smoother than every lie I've ever told, and I don't think she even needed time to come up with the messages her words made you see, she just... sang and smiled strangely as her voice flowed, smooth as waves and there was some kind of forced, unnatural charm to it that had Nata glowing and laughing. But me? I just felt twice as stupid when I fumbled and tried to get to her level.

She knew. She smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile. There was that same sweet and just barely over-doing it maturity she thought she had whenever she gave that look to Nata.

But this time there was a venom to it only I could see.

And I wouldn't forget it.

...

Adagio knew the word for every tone and lilt. She knew lyrics like I knew fights and she wanted the two of us to know it too. She was the one who took over the singing lessons Nata and I would stumble through so half heartedly every now and then like it was a joke.

She used that smile that glittered as gold as her coin colored scales to win Nata's trust. But I was fine with that. After all, she wasn't pestering me any more. No more calls to look at the newest fish she found, since colorful fish are what caught Nata's attention and those became few and far between as we went farther and farther north.

Adagio let little things slip, a turn here to be kept for so many days or a change in course to help me find the land where all the ponies lived with sea foam water that fell from the sky, which was like another Surface. I didn't believe that part of what Adagio said since there's no way a sun and moon could just float around on a Surface like that.

I never got the chance to tell her this, since she always was talking to Nata, or the other way around, while I led. They fell far behind so often, that whenever I did start to talk to them I'd always be frustrated with how slow they were, and just screamed at them whenever this happened.

Nata stopped talking to me. She stopped causing so many problems now that it wasn't me having to baby her. I could actually think a bit about what was important, like finding food or shelter. Let Adagio take care of her, she's got the time to play mommy to Nata, although, how she enjoys it I'll never know. Sirens like us can't have foals anyway, so why in a abyss's darkest reaches would she be so obsessed with being the one to make Nata's silly fish wraps or try and come up with nonsense stories to tell Nata before she goes to sleep? Nata's not a little filly any more!

Heck, I'm not even sure if she's a filly at all since, uh, it was a while ago but I told her that birthdays were against the rules since it's not like I'm gonna stick a sea slug on a clam shell and give her some garbage like that every year. When all this is over and done she'll be getting all the presents she wants from her father. That deadbeat owes her.

...

I breath out a loose stream of bubbles, hiccuping when one gets caught in my throat, and look up at the shimmering Surface far above our latest campground. Through the murky veil of water, I catch hundreds of little holes in sky so far away, where one of the Alicorn gods must have used their magic to poke holes in the darkened barrier so the sailors can still see before the sun is back next morning.

Nata and Adagio are hidden in the kelp bed that we were lucky to find, while I sit, guarding them from any predators that could sneak up on us.

I've never known much of anything about the Surface for myself, and if Adagio's words are true than we'll be Surfacing soon, Nata too. Adagio seems excited enough, in her own way and well... Nata doesn't really seem aware of what's happening. Like always.

I remember ancient sailor's tales that I heard of grand cities like reefs, surrounded by all sorts of weird things... 'landscapes'. What's that supposed to mean? I don't know and I guess I'll know when I see one.

Ponies are supposed to be very creative, their crafts aren't as nuanced or practical as the average seapony's and they even have stars buried within the earth, but once they fall from they star-holes that the Alicorns make they're called gems. Gems often end up in ships like Adagio's and they're good for trading.

I just... well, I'm apprehensive on exactly how much ponies trade and what they'll trade for. There's always so many tales from the Overworld that it's hard to know what's real and what isn't or what was when and what's now.

But would Nata's father... would he want me to pay him to take Nata and I in? We would need a lot of gems, which are like hearts, but dead, and if his name means anything to me it's that he's wealthy. I just know it. It's something a pony wouldn't name their foal unless they expected great things out of them.

"What are you thinking about, Aria?"

I shiver as I hear Adagio and realize I hadn't noticed her sneaking up on me.

"Tomorrow," I reply, lying as naturally as I always have without a flicker of guilt. Lies have never been anything for me to get worked up over.

"Is that true?" she asks, voice low and sneering like her smile as she sits down next to me.

Ugh.

Adagio...

"Yeah. There might be a storm coming, it's been too calm, wouldn't you say?"

"What makes you assume that?"

"It's always calm before a storm, Adagio. Quit playing dumb."

"What were you really thinking about?"

"Why do you keep saying I'm thinking of something else? Do you think I just sit here and have all these deep and meaningful thoughts or I sing my heart out?"

"Of course not, your singing is not from the heart and you have no reason to exhaust power like that."

"So, what was it Adagio?"

"Knowledge is power."

"What?"

She lifts her head so she no longer focuses on me, if she ever was in the first place. "It's something that ponies say."

"Well, I think it's stupid."

"Oh?" Adagio smiles a bit wider, but there still isn't any friendliness to it, only that dark, show-off gleam in her eyes, the one that matches her eyeteeth. The curly gold-orange fins around her face bounce slightly.

"Power's power. Knowledge is for scholars, power's for those who conquer. Everything is what it is."

"What about metaphors?"

"What? Don't you have something better to do than question me on things I don't need. I'm neither a scholar or a conquerer."

"Then what are you, Aria?"

"A bored, tired teenager. I don't care what else you have to say, just go bother Nata with this stuff. Gods know she could use it."

We don't say a word to each other the rest of the night. I stare straight ahead, while she hums a tune that gets on my nerves in ten minuets. Nata wakes up to a drama queen muttering about beauty sleep and a very short-tempered me who tells her to get her own breakfast.

Adagio's the one who has to stop her from eating the nearest rock. I couldn't read Nata's expression but the look she gave me after that... it was different from all the others, but I'm not sure why.

The ocean is a whole lot colder between us.

Chapter 8: Dearest Cantata, Part Two

Cantata opened the shutters on her window fully upon waking, the first shafts of morning sunlight finally reaching her part of the ocean. One of her hooves shakes, and she nicks a scale and mutters something to herself, but even she is too tired to catch exactly what she has said.

There's nopony around here. There hasn't been for months. Cantata has lived in this hut for years since she left Tiberia to pursue the life she currently led. She may not be a pony, but if she was, Cantata was sure of what her cutie mark would be. The mark of a first rate scout, a true explorer, would lie upon fleshy hindquarters.

Her hut is only two rooms, four walls, and a roof. For a long time, Cantata didn't mind this. The two simple rooms were unusually spacious for a home inhabited by only a strange mare like herself. The ceiling was far taller then required to house her, so every day she could push open the shutters and look out at the rocky overlook where she lived without even touching the top of the doorway, for it was so tall that even a full-grown Alicorn might slip through with ease. She would know.

The harsh terrain was mostly gray and stretched far beyond what her eyes could see. A whole multitude of inky and dark shades that one who did not know any better would surely call dismal swallowed up the underwater world she knew like a gaping mouth.

Still, the steep drop was not as innocent as her family, if they knew where she lived so far away, would have liked. Cantata lived on the edge of the first abyss of the Barren Sea, which was a hollow waste where only the only creatures that lived in such a place, where exotic and terrifying carnivores scattered among the depths.

Cantata hadn't minded the lack of company for a long, long time. Her simple hut was filled with a modest clutter of the few personal treasures she had brought with her from Aquastria. Most was gear an adventurer like herself would need, if she were still able to explore the treacherous reaches of the void-like sea.

The greatest treasure that she had was a large shell as big as a shield held in the hooves of one of the hoplites in the Royal Guard of Aquastria, although its purpose was not to defend. Very carefully, a craftspony with unrivaled skill had carved staffs, bars, and notes into the rosy dawn-pink surface and filled them with enchanted gold that had never lost its glitter.

Seven great sonatas covered the interior, each gilded note of this heirloom was a part of the most well known tunes of all the reaches of Aquastria, and the Outlands that she had traveled through in order to reach the realm almost as barren as the neighboring sea, far from any village or equine soul.

Now, more than ever, Cantata would find herself outlining each note with her forehoof, singing softly. She still recalled the words for each tune, every foal did. Each sonata, so lovingly gilded, was about the the Alicorn Prince Neptune when he got his mark and was revealed to the world countless centuries ago.

The royal heir, a god like all the other Alicorns, lived in the underwater basin that was Main Aquastria.

Cantata felt the relief outline of each note under her hoof. It was as if they were waiting to flow off of the shell's polished surface with the sweet melody of the music inscribed there.

She hadn't realized she had forgotten what it felt like to talk to another equine until those months ago, when he had left. How many had it been now? Eight, she guessed, for there was no point in speaking when she was only among the company of herself in this land she now found so lonely, wishing that news was actually able to reach her.

How surprised she had been the first time she saw him, six years ago. A young stallion with a calculated, almost reluctant determination, business-like personality and no knowledge of the territory around him.

Of course Cantata would stop to talk to him, ask him what he needed, and if he had any place to stay. He may have looked at her so strangely when she had asked that last part, because they stood in front of what was little short of an aquatic megacanyon that had managed to make even this tall, magnetic god of a stallion appear dwarfed.

The gods, so many of the gods had disappeared, he had said. He thought only one remained, and she had little reason to believe most all he had spoken to her. Cantata could still recall how she had blinked, recalling the whisperings of old stories. A journey the gods had taken? A war? She hadn't remembered. As a filly she had always been out searching to make the old new in her eyes, while her sister learned the art of war. Neither filly had time to sit around and listen to things that happened before they were born.

He needed a guide through the Barren Sea, he heard tales of strange things beyond this drop off and it was Cantata who told him that these things were all true, adding details only a resident would know, well-captured by her explorer's eye.

This stallion had no place to stay so she offered him her friendship and willingly shared her home, although the door had to be altered then, as he was certainly tall. That was how his height came to be.

She managed to teach this fellow - who seemed almost sheltered - little by little, and day by day, he learned almost as much about the Barren Sea as she did. Even though he was not adventurous in any way, and cared more about the destination than the journey, his measured strength was able to keep up with her endurance when out among the stone waste of a landscape.

Soon, he was able to find his way through the labyrinth to find what is was he sought in the three years they spent together.

She waited, but not in apprehension. He was a stallion who could handle himself.

Her lover in all but name came out after months, traversing the Barren Sea's floor oh hoof for most of the way back. But she knew that he was gone when his eyes would never meet hers and would only stare into a distance with a look of absolute horror at things even he didn't seem to understand.

Months later, she still remembers that look. Mostly, she remembers what he looked like walking away, back to the part of civilization somepony like him came from and how she said nothing the whole time. When he first met her, he had looked at her a bit with the same plain acknowledgement of differing status he would show any subject. When he returned from those twisting abyss walls from whatever far off place he had been, where he claimed shadows talked and the sky hid a hole, he had looked at her with a lucidity only she had managed to initiate and puppet. It was her who dispelled enough of what had happened to him - at least, for a time - and watch how drawn to one another they found each other. She saw their strangle blueprint of what could - in hyperbole - be called a relationship lead a god into her bed night after night after night...

When he left, he looked at the horizon only, and his eyes only bore the look of someone distracted if they fell upon her. She knew she had become his ghost.

Cantata raises her hooves and brings them down over and over, and beneath them, the precious shell with its sonatas lovingly composed in King Neptune's name falls to pieces with each strike as merciless as whatever force took his mind away and made him scream at any shadow.

Chapter 9: Sing the Song of a New Land

I struggled to cling to the ice with my hooves, which slipped and failed, struggling to get any grip on the cold surface as I heaved myself onto its surface. The sound of my own frantic, rough gasps could be heard in my ears and I could feel the most biting cold rattle against my scales.

My head was spinning and I could only focus on gripping this ice and breathing in something other than choked swallows, but I couldn't. My heart was going faster than I had ever known it could, and these chilly white specks kept getting in my eyes and mouth. They tasted like water and dissolved when making contact with my scales.

The choppy waves surrounding this ice, as Adagio had named the floating chunk, were no longer above me. Instead, I looked up to see a spread of boring and ugly gray foam that hung in the sky and absorbed the sun's light as it fell into the deepest part of the sea. I drew away and looked down at Nata and Adagio, who had Surfaced as well.

Nata - Sonata - was lying on her side, eyes watery and breaths thin and squeaky, although she'd eek out a short cough every now and then. Her eyes were wide and she whimpered, trying to blot out the falling specks with her hooves. Did she think they were just as chilly as I did?

Next to her, Adagio sat calmly with her head lifted high and that dumb smile on her face. Ugh, I hated it! It almost looked bigger now that we were in the Overworld, and after all these years. I still wasn't used to the weird dizziness and light up here, so I had to look away from her bright scales and squeeze my eyes shut.

I was long past the age of Surfacing, since there had never been a reason to do it before. We had never been near any ponies.

Adagio said that. These past few years, everything centered around what Adagio said and what she did.

But I was still the leader. The game was still played.

Sonata followed my lead. She still did as I said, since it's not like she'd know any better. She's still so dumb, but I've stopped being the one to look after her ages ago, since Sonata is at least functional enough to not have to follow right behind Adagio at all times anymore. It's like she's finally grown up... at least a little.

The two of us are still gasping a bit as Adagio looks toward the Overworld continent in the distance. There's too much fog to see much, and it looks almost hostile and very barren and cold, but that's where the ponies live, so it's where we have to go no matter how much Sonata complains or how strange this place will be. This land before us is where her father is, and if he's not alive still, it's where her family is.

This is her home, and I guess it will have to be my home too.

It's too quiet as our small patch of ice drifts across the ocean waters toward the dull and rocky landscape in the distance.

...

With Adagio teaching us, Sonata and I didn't just become good singers, our songs had a magic to them that they didn't have before. I did have to struggle to come up with words that Adagio could produce easily. It wasn't my job to correct Sonata anymore. Practice wasn't a chore.

I didn't even have to pay attention that much, all I needed to do was give half-hearted effort into singing a few easy tunes while Adagio taught Sonata small nonsense words put to the simplest of scales in order to make it sound like she was less stupid and wouldn't mispronounce 'strife' three times in a row before giving up and asking what it was, even though it had been explained to her before singing began.

Like all sirens, there is magic in our words. As long as we put our hearts into our songs and speech, magic will flow with all the fury of the ocean itself, so we could lead entire legions with nothing but the power of our song.

Part of that - something I heard long ago - just seems like poetic nonsense and something no one would ever say outside of a song. If you want to say something, why does it have to be embellished or elaborated?

Maybe that's why I can't ever sing much. All the words I pick are almost as simple as Sonata.

Even as I close my eyes, I can't envision a solid, seamless transformation. I can't see myself as a pony when all I feel is the gravelly rocks of the beach, and the chilly water that runs through them beneath my scaled stomach.

I can't find the right words to describe the transformation I need, I can't see myself becoming a pony and my song is useless without any heart.

I give a slight wheeze, tired of singing in this strange place where the cold hurt my throat and notes cracked in this strange, light air. I want only for the weight of the ocean to be all around me again.

There's the sound of Adagio clearing her throat loudly and I open my eyes. She's transformed from a shiny-scaled siren into a hornless and wingless pony mare. I forget what they are called, and I'm also pretty sure it doesn't matter since I'm once again pretty sure she didn't do the magic right. Her heart is still visible and there's a strange mark on her flank: an orange gem partly obscuring a musical note.

She stood on thin legs, colored a gold-yellow that seemed out of place in this bleak, stupid place. I was about to mention that her heart was still visible, which wasn't natural for ponies, and that since she was raised near the surface she should know that, but Adagio spoke first.

"Having trouble, are we?" she drawled, not bothering to hide her disgust at me being unable to sing nearly as well up here.

"Shut up, Adagio," I mumbled, squinting up at her.

Her stupid purplish eyes flicked over in a different direction as she flashed me the biggest smile she could at me, her teeth having lost all point now that she was a pony. "There's no reason for you to be rude, isn't that right Sonata?"

I was going to ask what Sonata had to do with this and then I looked to where Adagio was looking.

Sonata had either performed the spell on her own - which was unbelievable- or gotten Adagio to do it for her. It had to be the second one because there was no way Sonata was capable of doing any kind of magic like this on her own.

I saw my cousin nod her head - which was now that of a pony's- in innocent agreement with Adagio. "Yeah, ponies don't like it if we're mean! Being mean is bad 'cause it'll just make everyone sad."

"Everypony," Adagio corrects her in the same tone a mother might use.

Sonata nods excitedly, until she becomes dizzy and then she just stands about looking dazed for a while. One of her hooves - a pale blue like the ice we drifted on - reached up to play with her new fins, which fell around her face in long, thin, straight strands in two shades of blue. There was also a single fin near her haunches where her tail had been. It had been many years since I had heard the names for a pony's fins. A pony-heart with a blue note was emblazoned on her flank, I would have had the time to see what note it was too if she didn't start whirling around and trying to outrun the ocean as the water lapped the rocks.

Adagio quickly called to her, telling Sonata not to stray far before turning to me, looking down like she'd done something great. "You will need a disguise, but it looks as if I won't be the one to cast the spell."

I want to tell her to stop her bragging and just use her magic already, but Adagio has already known what I was going to do and opens her mouth, beginning her song.

Her melody is slow at first, I can hear a faint wobble and the notes stumble about briefly on purpose, before her wordless tune rises and words find their way into her song.

She sings of feeling something called grass beneath her hooves and cold veins of water that work their way across the land and running across this land.

I don't know what grass and running are, or what it feels like to have a stone caught in my hoof. I have no idea what it feels like to be a pony or to live in the Overworld, but her song makes me believe otherwise.

I had closed my eyes to listen, but when I opened them to see that the only thing to remind me that I was a siren was the heart I was born with.

Another call from Adagio and Sonata ran to her side and we looked at the mountains rising in the distance, Adagio's eyes shining with hunger that Sonata didn't see.

I would find her father, my uncle.

That's what I wanted.

But it wasn't what I should have been worrying about.

Chapter 10: You Shall Not Know Hunger

In the ocean there were many legends to explain how the abysses and trenches of the darker waters came to be. I'm pretty sure they were mostly for fillies and colts that asked too many questions when big words were brought up, or airheads like Sonata. There had to be no way that any of that stuff was true. I'm pretty sure that the gods didn't care about shoveling through layer after layer of rock with their magic just to dump them in piles in the stupid Overworld.

I don't think that airhead is even supposed to be a proper insult. Doesn't everyone have air in their head? How couldn't they in the Overworld, where the very wind feels caught between my ears?

All this was before I saw mountains. They were supposed to be big piles of rocks, right? Like a ship's grave but with rocks piled everywhere, and stretching onward.

They were nothing like a ship's grave. Nothing here is anything like the ocean.

Mountains couldn't have been made so carelessly, they're like teeth that are trying to eat the sky, their hard stone hurts the bottom of my hooves, and they are colder than the ice I clung to on the distant shores.

Adagio had to use her song - combined with Sonata's - to weave plain hooded cloak for each of us in a nice enough shade of gloomy purple. I kept almost tripping over mine and couldn't figure out the proper way to stuff this stupid, limp fin that droops in my face into the hood without having to pause every other second to tuck a chunk of purple and green stripes back under the heavy fabric that itched the creepily fuzzy coat of my pony body. It wasn't nearly as weird as the stars and swirls that were on my freaking butt, but I suppose there could be worse things.

Like Sonata laughing and trying to catch every flake of white and not just shivering and staying quiet. She must have caught my expression, which was anything but sweet, as always, because she skipped over to me, barely slipping on any rocks as she made her way over here.

Here, where I was feeling rather ill. The air in these mountains was awful. I felt so sick and could barely think and just wanted to fade into the watery depths of the nice warm, ocean. I was cold and hungry.

I was dizzy above all else. This must be what being an airhead really felt like. Sonata must go through this every day. Gods, how stupid would someone like her end up because of this? She may have been born in the ocean, like me, but her head must've been in the mountains from the start.

"Hey-ya Aria, are you feeling alrighty-ya," Sonata drawled foolishly, having decided to focus on me instead of Adagio. Ugh. Whatever.

I'd like to tell her a whole bunch of other things that aren't nice replies to her pointless question. But I don't, because I also want to lie.

I hate saying nothing, so perhaps I should just lie.

"Bored."

Oops. That's the truth, or at least part of it.

"We're going to see ponies!" she squeals excitedly. When she's done making a big deal about all the things ponies probably do, she looks at me, wanting a reply.

I don't even remember what she had been saying.

Scoffing, I turn away and stare at this horrible shark's maw of a country.

A maze of cold and teeth that only made my indifference more apparent.

I don't miss home, I lie, knowing that 'home' is something that I'm not going to have for a long time.

Sonata goes back to talking to Adagio. Something about food, I think. I'm not really listening.

There's no food here, is there?

There's hardly any air either and with no water to breathe I fill so dry inside, like I just want to cough over and over again until it doesn't feel like I've swallowed the dry rocks we walk upon.

I guess I'm lucky that Adagio and Sonata catch me when I spiral into unconsciousness, my own legs - still so foreign to me - give out beneath me.

...

I wish mountains could end.

That's the most hollow thought I've ever had. There's nothing I can do about mountains. I'm not a unicorn, who could at least wink outta, here and I'm not some powerful god that could move the giant stones like they were nothing. Even though I had the face of a pony, I didn't look any more like an Alicorn, so I most certainly wasn't a god. My eyes look the same in all this ice, and after a while, this pony face does too. Same eyes, same me.

Tartarus, I can't even fly out of here, and even if I could who's to say I wouldn't fall instead?

Adagio said she knows where ponies live, but it sure isn't the constant snowing that's keeping us from doing that. It's not the biting cold that almost got Sonata's hooves one time.

It isn't even this cursed empty feeling that the cold makes you feel. I want the ocean. I feel so hollow.

There's been nothing to eat in the time we've spent here. I can't even tell if it's been months since we entered this maze of stone. Has it been days? Yes, certainly, but I don't remember how many. Only, that it has been too many. I think my pony stomach is trying to eat me now.

Like pretty much everything else, Adagio had that under control. She still thought she was the leader and that her magic could manage everything. At first, she used her singing to try and weave food, turning the empty air into warm loaves of bread, an Overworld food, and fresh seaweed. But after a while even those began to crumble to dust in her hooves, and never had much flavor to begin with. Still, we had to eat something and bread - which didn't taste that good at all - that was reduced to dust was far from a decent 'something'. When it was just me and Sonata, I always knew how to find proper food, and it never turned to dust.

These are the thoughts that play through my mind as we sit around the blazing light in front of us. Adagio had to sing to get it, as with most of everything we had now. There's bags under her eyes as a result of all this magic, and the fire as the strange light is called, only made them look darker under her now-limp curls, which unlike my mane - another pony term Adagio had told me - wasn't parted so it would fall in her face. She looked like a hag.

Sonata tries to touch the fire like she's in a trance; as always she mutters about how pretty it looks and I have to make an effort to see through the haze in my mind and smack her hoof away.

"So Adagio, what's for dinner?" I sneer, shooting Sonata a frustrated glance.

"Late lunch," Adagio mutters tiredly in reply as if any of us could see through all this snow.

"Whatever."

"I'm hungry," Sonata proclaimed, rubbing one hoof with the other, even though I didn't even hit it that hard.

Adagio almost looked like she was trying to fall asleep. Pony forms showed their wear so easily.

We could only hear the howling of the wind as we waited for Adagio's answer. Since Sonata had magic but no brains to help her use that magic and I had brains, hardly any magic skill, and no imagination to go with it, we couldn't really do anything. For the obvious heart I had, I didn't make much use of it.

"I can't keep this up," she said after a long while. Her tone flat and matter-of-fact, because being told that the most magically capable of us will let us all starve is completely normal.

I was about to scream at her, hit her, something, well anything at this point before her next words silenced me.

"We're never going to eat again."

It was the most bizarre thing I'd ever heard. How could we not eat? We needed food! Had the mountains caused Adagio to lose her mind?

There's a moment when you know - that you should know - that you can never trust anybody ever.

This was the moment where I should have grabbed Sonata and ran, where I should have done something else, but I never did.

Adagio was right, knowledge would have been power in this case... but it's the knowledge of what came after - the side effects of her song - that should have been avoided.

I would probably have gotten lost in the mountains with Sonata and starved anyway, but that's better than everything else. I hate the aftermath of her bewitchment most of all - that twisted song that made my mind feel more airy than Sonata's could have ever been on the highest mountain and robbed both my cousin and I of all senses and I slipped into my own inner turmoil.

I have no idea when she and I woke, only that Adagio looked even more worn, except for the glint in her eye that I had never liked - that had returned. Sonata and I felt normal. What was it that the song had done? That was what I asked myself, even though it would be a long time before we got an answer. Before I did since it wasn't like Sonata minded whatever curse Adagio had placed on us all.

We never ate again.

That was a lie, we never needed to eat again, not like we once had. Only Sonata would ever still enjoy that. Adagio had stolen our need to eat, our appetite for anything. After a few days is when I had started to notice this. There was no feeling of fullness that could have come with this, only a hollow sensation that grew deeper with each passing storm and an emptiness only one food could fill.

Power.

It would be such a long, unfortunate time when I was neither pony or siren when I would realize that is what Adagio wanted all along. She wanted fame. She would want ponies to bow to her voice.

She would want war.

Because of Adagio, Sonata and I were just as hollow as she, longing only to fill the emptiness that our time in those mountains had nothing to do with this gods-damned awful feeling. She had cursed us all, so that the only fill we might ever have would be from misery and strife. Every new glance from Adagio after that horrible curse told us how we might feed, too.

We would be adored.

Chapter 11: Life is a Dirge

Ponies live in a mass grave. The valley where they live is like an ocean basin - huge - but so barren. And cold. Why do they love the cold so much? They actually don't, but I don't know why they still choose to live here.

They're nothing like the stories that we heard back in Aquastria. There are no great cities or green fields. None of us can see any forests at all. There is only the gray of everything running together - like the blight that coral could get. This valley-nation is poisoned. All we can see are squalid huts that are leaky and frozen. Most are collapsing in on themselves and have no frame - they're just piles of frozen mud haphazardly stuck in fields full of withered plants with a few boulders marking what could be boundaries of one field and another, but even those fall together and become the subject of debate. Ponies bleed for land.

The ponies here don't have any wings and horns. Each looks like they were kicked under the eyes - and the mouth as well. Where are all their teeth? You'd have to gather an entire family together if you wanted to find enough teeth to fill one mouth, because that's all they have between them. Few of them have any good teeth, and even though ponies are supposed to be colorful they look so washed out, and filth cakes their coats. It's like they try to make up for being so dull and squinty-eyes by wearing rags. Or maybe the rags hold them together. I'm not an expert on ponies.

I wasn't Adagio.

She somehow understood what a 'thou' and a 'thee' were, and smiled so everybody followed her and told her things. We had no coin, but we were able find a few wilted plants to eat - if only to blend in while she fabricated stories of where we came from between bites of soggy, mold-eaten crops that these ponies considered a feast.

They said the unicorns and pegasai stole everything else. I would have opened my mouth to spit out the foul stuff and tell them that they've lost it. Ponies don't do this to each other, none of the stories said that! Ponies were ruled by gods that wouldn't let an entire kingdom sink to this, and all the different pony races - more than I could use my four hooves to count - lived together.

Sonata's crying drowns out anything I was going to say.

"Dagi, this tastes-"

"Splendid," Adagio purred clapping a hoof over Sonata's mouth and looking across the table to the grubby, filthy ponies sitting across from us in their crumbling hall. Their hard, glazed stares were supposedly 'kind' compared to what the other ponies outside... serfs, they were called... were given. Their muzzles were crinkly-wrinkly, and I wasn't sure if it was because they had to squint past the sooty air of the smoky hall to see anything beyond those muzzles, or if it was because they constantly had to have carts pulling the shit they smeared on dirt to grow food outside. Even if it wasn't that, there was always a knot of cold, scrawny bodies piled in another, wailing following the corpses of those meant to be tossed into the cold earth, their skin mottled with strange sores or all their ribs showing through.

Why was there a feast of death in the Overworld? Nopony seemed to be able to answer that, and tell me why a mother pony squeezing a foal from her thighs to join her other starving dozen of 'em would likely sleep in the snowy soil with a baby that would never open its eyes than stare into her child's, or hear their cooing. Even the herbs that they burned in the streets with the body-carts - it was a tradition in this tribe, they said - got into everything else and the odor lingered in a strange coat at the back of my throat, one that only made Sonata, Adagio, and I cough.

Adagio received only hollow stares while I directed a very similar look to the food placed in front of me. No way I'm touching that. It's not like it would even do anything. Maybe that's what's killing all the ponies.

After a while, all mindless chatter resumed. Sonata cried quietly and I watched not even sure what to do until we were swept away by different crowds of ponies.

"They're tears of joy," Adagio said to whoever looked at her an Sonata.

I didn't look back, just smiled and lied. Saying so little apparently filled in so much for the airheads here. Adagio called us something, mares of the night, even though we were mares of the sea, and that had so many of the stallions turning their heads. I don't know why. It got them to tell us wear to go, to stare through all three of us with some strange monstrous look that Adagio knew how to return, and I think I might have known something of what that meant... it wasn't good.

Adagio can be whatever this is all she wants, because she gives me an angry whisper in my ear that this is how we'll have a home, through whatever filth she plans to do, but I won't. I don't feel what she feels, and even if I did, I know better.

If she'll let me have any refusal, it will be this one. No exceptions.

...

Adagio gave the most fake smile I had ever seen to the building before us. It was made of mud long frozen and surprisingly large for a stupid dirt hill. Well, it was shaped more like a cube and had a thatched roof with what almost looked like wood of all luxuries - which was a kind of coral that you could burn - used to fortify the crappily made structure. From the holes carved in place of windows, smoke poured out and it smelled like that awful dirt that they burned to stay warm.

There was a sign that hung from a pole nearby but there were no words on it - only a badly drawn image of what looked like food. Was this some kind of garbage dump? Most of these ponies ate garbage - and lacked fish in their diets, which I found gross - so it would be weird for them to toss what would become their meals aside when they were all scale and bones, but without the scales.

"This is our new home."

"What is it?" Sonata asked genuinely confused and tipping her head to the side.

"A tavern," Adagio replies flatly, before a strange smile wiggles its way across her face, "and maybe a little something more." There's that purr of hers again. It makes my stomach sick.

"Is that like an inn?"

"Yes," I add with a sigh, "they're nearly the same thing."

"Oh." That's all my idiot cousin has to say. Of course.

"Yeah 'oh'."

"Aria," Adagio said forcing her creepy fake smile even wider so it looked like it would fall off her face, "there's no need to be mean, is there?"

"Whatever, Adagio."

I heard a motherly tsk in reply before Sonata decided it was the right time to ask the most deep question ever.

"Why's it called an in if there's no out? Can we never leave?" she asked with a far-away tone and blank stare that made me want to roll my eyes.

"It's spelled differently from what you are thinking of, Sonata."

"If she's thinking at all, Adagio."

Adagio scowled at me when Sonata blinked in confusion. "Hush, Aria. I won't have you making a scene."

Ugh. Just who does she think she is?

I give a hmph and followed them into our new home, the hems of our new dresses, as these dumb cloth things were called, swishing. They were ugly and patched and old, but our cloaks hid them well. Adagio who never hesitated to talk to ponies had gotten the lodging for us... this terrible place is where we would stay, and where Adagio would be a disgusting, no-good 'mare of the night'. It seemed to be a good enough place to learn about these silly ponies even if we had no coin to pay for our stay, because ponies still drank and sang and slept. There were still stories among the shit.

Once we learned enough, then I'd finally able to pry Sonata away from Adagio and find Sonata's father, my uncle. He had to be wealthy, I just knew he was. Sonata would have food that didn't make her sick or complain, and someplace to sleep. She may never see the ocean again, but she'll have someone to look after her.

She'll be home, wherever that is and I'll have to stay with her, having nowhere else to go. There's nowhere to return to in the sea. Sonata is my only family and if I'm hollow without the ocean for staying with her and making sure my uncle doesn't ditch her again - I'll beat him for it - then so be it.

Maybe for once someone will want the extra mouth to feed and I won't have to hear the whispers about how hard it was for Aunty - oh, how long has it been since I've thought of her? - to take care of both Sonata and I. Maybe I wouldn't have to remember all the things she said that she said was just 'venting' to someone else, and the few times I was caught listening, too brave to cry.

It had to be bravery. It wasn't anything else that I wanted to name.

I wasn't going to be my Aunt. I was going to grow up and have my own life. There's now way I was going to be stuck taking care of someone like Sonata. I wasn't going to look so... well, like I gave up, if you looked close enough. I couldn't be that.

But I already was, and there was nothing I could do to stop history from repeating. Like aunt, like niece.

I had to find my uncle as soon as possible.

Chapter 12: Dearest Cantata, Part Three

Cantata stared blankly at the bundle of shimmering cloth resting in her hooves. She fidgeted with the edge of the material that was enchanted and unlike anything the Overworld had, for she was trying not to look at the blue-scaled filly sleeping inside the loveless makeshift cradle that her green hooves made. Next to her a kindly-looking, but still orderly and somewhat stern, midwife floated in the small current that swept through the green mare's new home, which was considerably larger than the one she had left. It had to be.

Cantata's fellow seapony awaited an answer. Her tail's swipes came in cutting swishes that tapped through the new mother's skull, an auditory dance in her dizzy mind.

"Sonata," the fatigued mare said, still not looking at the slumbering filly again, if only to see how long her tired eyes could stay weighted on the little one. "Her name will be Sonata."

"Breaking tradition, I see," the midwife said with a nod. Her own hooves were currently occupied as she transcribed the name onto a tablet which she would later slip into the pouch she brought with her before the information was transferred on a more permanent record that was to be stored in a larger city.

Cantata stared at the large pouch, a few pieces of barding lying on top of it. She didn't want to answer the other questions, or even if she could. She took note of the spear in the corner - not hers - and dreaded knowing that even though the spear was for defense, the midwife - who, unlike her Overworld counterparts, was more than just a glorified nurse - would stay until she had all the information required about the latest citizen of this realm.

"Dusk," Cantata whispered, "Her name is Sonata Dusk."

If the midwife considered her choice of a name odd, she did not say so. Cantata thought she saw it in her eyes, for just a moment, how baffled this mare was. But hadn't Cantata spent far too long looking into eyes that were everyone else's? That were his?

"And the father?"

Cantata swallowed hard. "He left."

It was obvious that he wasn't here. She wasn't fooling anyone, she was a single mother and that was that. Something didn't fool the midwife either, and all Cantata's luck ebbed out of her like tides carrying stray kelp, and left only a cold feeling at the pit of her stomach. How the world around her felt so warm outside the scales that walled away her fear!

"Name?" came the frank question.

Cantata didn't want to say it - it felt like the biggest understatement in her life - 'didn't want to'.

"Anything at all?"

Cantata hugged Sonata closer and her child, who slept so deeply in cloth, felt more like a stone. "Where does this information go?"

A fool's question, but she got an answer anyway.

"To a record hall, dear. No one is going to look at these unless little Sonata here moves, is enrolled in a school, or becomes a criminal... there isn't any way her records will be seen unless there's a reason. I'm sure you know that death and marriage are examples of occasions where her records would need to be viewed. Or have the schooling regulations truly become that lax in these parts?"

Cantata knew this but listened anyway, so that she even missed that this mare thought her a native of this backsea territory.

"The records here are controlled locally - the Overworld, of course, has it different - so even if King Neptune himself came demanding the name of this sweetie, he'd have to come up with a reason within the law he's created - as odd as it sounds - to even get a glimpse of your daughter's record, but that's not going to happen seeing as the king has a nation to rule and this little one isn't going to be causing him any trouble, now is she?"

It occurred to Cantata that this mare must have been speaking of the Overworld's older systems, because hadn't everyone heard about the gods? How the ocean was the last frontier of a ruined world above, and Neptune the sole survivor of all the divine who dared step forth from the dead worlds? Had those not been the things he whispered to her with a frozen look in his eye? And yet, they still spoke so much of this world above and how it had been.

Finally feeling reassured, Cantata blurted out a single name for the midwife to record and watched her gasp, particularly eating her words and too stunned to transcribe the name for a moment.

"Him?!"

She nodded and hugged Sonata tighter, careful not to wake the filly. "Yes."

There was a pause between the two mares and a single name was recorded.

"I see," the midwife mumbled staring at the siren filly's heart, "do you know what she is like?"

"What do you mean?"

"With a mind like one of them she'll be incredibly powerful at the cost of maturing slowly. Those who wouldn't know might mistake her for being 'slow'. The poor filly is going to outlive you by a long shot..." A somber look overcame the midwife as she trailed off, her eyes becoming spacey.

"You've seen this before?" Cantata hadn't realized the urgency that had crept into her voice until after she had spoken. Was she really that desperate in tone?

A shake of the midwife's head in a clear 'no'. "I've merely done my research in biology, you know... but I've heard of others that have, in the larger cities." She gave a sigh carrying a breeze of weight to it. "I went to Atlantis once - though, I am from Styx myself. There I heard quite a few tales. The king is not 'pure' you see. He keeps a wife who he minds when he can, and she has a young one who shows slower signs of growing in the head, but a heart that shines with talent. But before that, he fancied court seamares like yourself, and rarely they bore small siren fry quite like your Sonata. Two, I think, from premarital happenings are about, and Neptune thinks nothing of them. They can be wounded and killed like any other - Neptune lost one siren that way - but they are no Alicorn, no draconequus, no Reaper, and no divine. They still shall not live forever."

Hours later, when the midwife had long since left, Cantata finally began to cry softly so not to wake the still-sleeping filly, her heart feeling ever heavier.

Chapter 13: All Resilience Fades Away

I slammed the tray down on the counter of the tavern and rubbed the coarse scarf that covered my heart. Unlike Adagio and Sonata, I saw no reason to have it for all to see, even if the earth ponies have been under our control for weeks and we didn't need to disguise our hearts as necklaces any longer.

Ponies lumbered about and not just because of the ale served here - magic clouded their eyes when you looked too close. Their simple minds were just as clouded by our magic that only grew stronger the more we sang.

Well, it was mostly Adagio singing and Sonata copying her. When I joined them, I was just backup. Adagio still was mad at me for putting so little effort into singing but I didn't exactly put much effort into anything any more. What was there to care about? Or do? Or loathe? Or love? Or... anything?

What's the point in trying? I'll still feel emptier by the day. Sonata complains about being hungry often even though she's distracted by everything else the very next second.

She doesn't talk to me, and I don't talk to her.

I'm not sure if I mind.

Or if I care.

But I still notice it.

I barely see her. Adagio usually has her tagging along in a group of ponies that call out to the golden filly. She's started wearing the meager cosmetics they give her, and saying more stupid, more sultry things to the stallions that adore her like she's some sort of breezie tale pretty mare - she sure looks older with all that stupid paint on her eyes.

The ponies here keep treating us like adults, even when Sonata is the only one who actually is one. I told a few of them my age in pony years, and they just looked at me like I was stupid. They're the ones that are stupid, since they don't know that sixteen is when any equine isn't a little foal, and can be kicked out and told to make something of themselves. A proper adult. They can live their own lives at sixteen.

It's not like Sonata could. She still hasn't learned much of anything except that not everyone is thinking like she does and she still barely understands that, but she hangs on Adagio's every word.

She acts like Adagio's the one leading us.

Like I haven't tried to find her uncle in a world where no one seems to have heard of a single god and acts like they never existed in the first place. Even Sonata started to repeat these things and gods, gods, oh gods I just wanted to hit her because that's got to be the stupidest thing that she's ever said - which is saying something.

I remember the name of my uncle - it's Neptune! It's just like the king, and only a snooty noble with no vocabulary but a whole lot of money would bother to break the taboo of naming their unicorn brat after a god. It's even worse than naming their brat after family! Or other things that steal all identity when it comes to names!

It's still not as despicable as how Adagio leaps from bed to bed of every stallion like there's some kind of gross slut competition, or how she's taught Sonata to act, how she copies blindly and how I just do nothing, do nothing, and do nothing...

I've asked hundreds of thousands of the ponies that are drawn to the tavern with our magic if a single Neptune exists - it can't be that long, I would explain to them. Neptune should still be alive. Ponies live that long, at least. But all I got were stares. They told me ponies can barely make it past fifty.

These are ponies who clearly don't know anything! They think that ten foals is a small family and marry when they're still foals themselves. Plus, they don't even bother to keep half of them - at least - alive! They're too busy downing ale and plowing fields - and each other - as if this was the last valley in the whole word. Trying to remember what they named each of their foals isn't even in their top twenty priorities! Most of them can't even count past ten so it took forever to get one who could count to fifty!

There's no Neptune. None at all. This valley is just a sea of mass graves of half-grown fillies and colts that no one could spare the peat to burn, and not one of them has even heard the name before. There isn't even a unicorn lord by the name! These idiots can't remember how old they are, the names of all their foals, or how many they've had or lost, but the names of the unicorns who take most of their garbage food is always fresh in their minds, and the blood of family they have lost to the other tribes.

I've been stuck here in this dull place for so long with those two. Now Sonata and the rest of us work shifts when we aren't luring patrons with our songs that have ensnared the whole countryside. There won't be a manor to live in or an uncle to take care of us. We're going to have to work here the rest of our lives. I don't have anywhere to take Sonata.

She's never going to be properly fed or warm. The rude stallions who come here and say things to her that she doesn't understand, trying to offer her copper coins for rotten things before I beat them until I'm dragged off by one of their slur-shouting buddies still screaming at them and telling them to back off - those stallions will never love her. Adagio will pull me aside and tell me that my behavior almost got a good pony killed when I would never kill a pony - even a vile one like them. They aren't good.

I try to tell her this and a whole lotta other things - like how I overheard Sonata telling her she thought a mercenary earth pony mare passing through was pretty, and how next week it was a different mare... I don't see why this needs to be kept secret, they can't really be that backwards, can they?

They are and because of it, Sonata will never find love even if some mare who thought foolishness was cute came along.

Sonata wouldn't leave Adagio no matter how much I even attempted to persuade her. Day after day would be spent thinking of ways to convince her to follow me and desert this awful place full of things she was just too dumb to make sense of.

It all seemed so hopeless - and it really was the more I tried to think about it. Everything became a reminder of the life I could have had and nagging thoughts followed me everywhere.

So I stopped thinking about everything that wasn't food put in front of me or the plainest tune to hum for singing. I didn't pay attention to anyone, not even Sonata or Adagio which wasn't too hard. That part I didn't mind. It's not like any of this mattered. I give up, this emptiness gnaws at me too much for anything to be of importance.

It's not like anything matters.

That is why everything felt better and at the same time felt so much worse.

Starswirl the Bearded arrived shortly after if only to prove me wrong.

Everything can get worse, and it will.

Chapter 14: Our Swan Song Rings

Sonata walks next to Adagio, trying in vain to get her to hug her, or something... it's definitely not to shield her from the cold. She's scared. I'm on Adagio's other side, shivering under my stupid dress. It's so cold even when nothing falls from the sky and frost crunches underhoof as we walk closer to the two shapes waiting for us at the fence in the distance - the one made of rocks and mud that marks the next property.

This whole town was under our enchantment, and I bet the whole country was too. My contributions to the plan had dwindled to 'behind the scenes' work as Adagio had termed it. I call in manual labor. I guess I didn't mind. I was good at it.

I really didn't mind much any more.

But I did mind them.

I didn't have much heart to glare at the figures or to even pay attention to the loyal soldiers of Adagio's - ponies whose eyes glowed with a faint green hue if approached and acted normal until we sang or commanded them. One even carried a pitchfork, which was a far cry from the swords of legend, but I'd stopped believing anything in those was ever true. They were just stories... and stories were just like the lies I told Sonata, and everything else that was equally false about ponies, and life or whatever else I could manage to say was otherwise.

I didn't say much any more.

These two faces belonged to our foes. The first was that of one of the magic ponies - the only ones I believed could ever do something. He was old - at least to me - and ugly. His deep set eyes looked like they had been wasted squinting at papers in the dark rooms of these awful buildings, where a firepit's light wasn't much of a difference at all from pitch black coldness in the night hours. Yet I heard that magic ponies could make lights instead of burning peat all the time and I think I remember something very long ago about such a thing in the village...

But this stallion sure was something. Blech. The bags under his eyes were almost ink-dark and his coat was a light, washed out purple-ish hue. His mane and tail were the undistinguished white of snow, but weren't matted into one mass and crusted with as much filth as the ponies here had their manes, tails, and beards. Maybe he remembered to brush it a bit once every few years.

Over his eyes were flowing eyebrows as white as his mane narrowed with annoyance and the same haughtiness I had seen in Adagio so many times.

He wore a silly costume of blue with yellow stars and bells and a hat so tall I suspected he might be hiding something under it.

His beard was what caught my eye - it was like someone stuck seafoam on his jaw, curtains and curtains of it. Why did he have such a large beard? Did he truly enchant the foam from the long-gone seas to sit upon his face? No pony had such locks here. He looked as if he could trip over that beard. Was the strange mark these ponies get for performing well at some service - the one that sat upon his flank - for beard growing? I couldn't see the thing under his robe.

When he mutters to his companion his voice is very low and gruff like he can't shake some horrible cough or he's only been drinking rusty nails - an item of luxury held by the nobility in this country, which the non-magic and wingless ponies will often kill for - for his entire life.

I recognized him as the famed wizard of the Unicorn Tribe, Starswirl the Bearded. They say he's of noble blood and has the best magic skill out there. I think he's senile.

His companion however is a whole 'nother story. Based on the way this Starswirl guy treats him, I'd say he's some kind of servant.

I don't even know what he is. He walks on two legs with these freaky digits on the free ones. His muzzle is thinner and angular with sharp teeth in plain view. His fur is mud brown and he has two horns Does that make him more magical? How had the ponies here not tried to round him up and dismember him? That's what usually goes on when they see strange creatures, when they show up at all. I've heard that entire villages of these plain ponies will be devoured by grown dragons they anger and attempt to kill, and how they shriek and cry because something that shows up every few generations and haunts their stories is beyond their understanding. I see ponies with hollow eyes who tell me about fire pushing past snow to melt the flesh of a comrade.

I then see the freaky wings at this creature's back - they look like heavy cloth! Of course these ponies wouldn't be able to bother him - he can fly! I still wonder why the unicorn has him around when they're the worst offenders in being prejudiced.

This creature's voice is low and young. Starswirl calls him 'Scorpan'. What does that mean? Is he a scorpan? What was he named after? I've never heard of a scorpan. Maybe that's his tribe - the unicorns are probably wealthy enough to have tribes of servants.

Starswirl looks from the scorpan, burdened with bags and meek in appearance despite the strange looks he has, to us with a quick look of sour impatience. What does he think we're going to do?

Adagio gives Sonata and I a quick look that tells us that this is important, and that we should prepare to sing as soon as we can. I shrug and look over to these freaks again while Sonata nods dutifully.

Starswirl's impatience borders on anger until he sees Sonata and leers at her and Adagio, yet the smiling part seems so fake while all the creepiness is doubled. My blood boils. Why did that dunce have to be so pretty to these stallions? If she wasn't than we wouldn't have half the problems we do now.

The wizard speaks a few words - like the stallions I pull Sonata away from - that make me want to hit him too. Sonata blinks in confusion as Adagio holds me back before tossing me to the bewitched ponies she brought with us. They're unusually strong and I hate being held in their filthy hooves, and kick and scream insults at the wizard I learned from the sailors of long ago and watch as his face reddens, and he starts to scream back until neither of us can hear one another above the noise until a high note from Adagio pierces the air, and she makes a signal with one of her hooves.

Starswirl lights his horn, spitting that I'm an insolent whore, but Adagio is the real whore.

The scorpan takes to the air, and he has an odd look of regret to him.

We sirens three begin to sing.

Chapter 15: Lose the Game

Hollow eyed, I stared at the marble surface of the rock pillar that rose from the ground. It was a gray-ish white and shiny like seafoam.

I haven't seen seafoam in ages, so how am I supposed to even recall what it looks like? It's not like I'm a siren any more. I wobble on the two stupid, weak hindlegs I've been given, and fall forward onto knobby knees barely covered by some sort of sack-like gown the color of...

...I look down at the color, just once before returning my vacant stare, no longer to care about even the horror that burned in me for a moment.

It's the color of the ocean, and it doesn't matter any more because I'm not sure if there's even an ocean here. The dust hurts my legs, which are bare of fur, or even boots. My head still hurts from where I hit the ground...

I close my eyes and place one of these strange webbed-digit weird forehoof things across my mouth and cough a bit. Adagio is screaming at Sonata in the background. I ignore them both but Sonata's crying is just so loud and I feel so weak... these seashell ears against my head feel weaker and I can't move them...

My sack-dress - I've settled on calling it a dress - came with a scarf in a hue of brighter silver than the rock in front of us.

We came through that rock... the scorpan's magic - he opened a door and then we fell out of the rock... I hit my head...

My skinny body, so unlike my pony disguise sways with fatigue and my throat felt as dry as the earth pony inns never were, because there was ale to numb the mind and water to wet beds and aid the growth of the mildew that would freeze outside. Without any coat to properly cover me, the bruises from battle stand out like spots on my exposed skin, cold even without the snow.

I miss the world I hated so much.

Strange digits - five of them - weak and as cold as the rest of me brush the smooth surface. Closed. Sealed.

There's no way back.

The dense forest around us feels so unreal after so many years of snow. I'm able to ignore it all. I could stare straight ahead forever, straight mane falling limply over my ears to block out all sound. These forms don't even have tails, how are they supposed to do anything?

"Well girls," purrs a voice.

Adagio's voice.

I blank at that voice, limbs still clumsy and heavy and when I bother to see again, to care at all, Adagio is sprawled on the ground clutching her smashed-muzzle face with blood - the same blood across the bunched up paw-thing in place of my hooves. I try to keep my legs steady since I still barely know how to support myself in this form. I don't even know how the paw-thing bunched up like that to hit her - it certainly wasn't any instinct I had.

I gulped and my legs felt - and looked - like the roots of trees as I watched Adagio wipe the trickles of blood from her face so only a few smudges remain on her golden skin. My head hits the ground for a second time and Adagio tackles me, the fleshy-claw-digits of her paws wrapping around my neck.

"Who died and made you leader, Aria?!" Adagio screamed. "Who?! Who?!"

'Since when were you our leader?!' I wanted to scream but all I could manage was a pained choke for air.

Adagio's eyes don't look like she's even occupying her own mind - just angry, no vicious - it'sgettingsohardtobreathe - HAPPY! That's it, she looks...

I give her a shove when I manage to, rolling over and crushing her quickly with my slightly larger frame in order to get her to-

I cough when her grip falters and I jump away, scrambling to stand. Neither of us have mastered these forms. Her purple sack-garb, tied with a rope now has more dirt on the fabric and a few tears. It's a far cry from the gowns, however shabby, we wore on our way here.

-let go, I think with another gasp, reaching up to touch my bruised neck.

"You aren't the leader, Aria."

I gulp. It hurts. Why does she sound so sure, so happy? We're lost! We have no food, nowhere to go and I'm pretty sure that we can't change back now...

I reach a paw up under my scarf and feel something smooth: black ribbon that flows over my neck easily. I hadn't noticed it under the cloth. I follow it until I find a cold, hard stone. I didn't need to look at it to know it was red.

A stone.

My heart is a stone now.

It always looked like one, of course... but now each of us-

My eyes, tired and hollow look at all of us. We're heartless now, each and every one of us. I reach from the necklace to the center of my chest, just below where my throat begins on this form, searching for a bit of a pulse. Anything.

I wait. One second. Two.

Nothing.

Heartless. That's what we all are now: dead.

I take one heaving breath that might as well be my last, I choke out words now even if it feels like more weight is on me, momentary desperation melting to a coat of panic across all my senses.

"The game," I manage - it's all I need to say, really. My eyes find Sonata. Her eyes are empty, wide and staring at nothing in the distance. She shakes, a red mark is across her cheek. She pokes it and whimpers when her claw makes contact with the paw's mark on her face, thin claw's marks still visible.

She blinks at my voice, eyes still freaky - she's not there. How long has it been since I've talked to her like this?

"The game?"

"Sonata if you go with her, you'll lose."

She doesn't move.

I try again. "It's against the rules."

She looks at me like I'm the stupid one. "What game?"

Adagio looks at Sonata, she's smiling again as if she knows I'm missing something. Forgetting something obvious, even. I know everything about Sonata - there's not much to know in the first place.

She'll do what I tell her to.

"The game," I repeat.

She stares on. Repeats the same thing.

That's how I know she's forgotten, that she lost. I watch her hum out a few notes of nonsense before I see her in all her air-headed vacancy return to her eyes.

And I watch her walk over to Adagio like it's nothing and I want to scream that if she weren't so gods-damned slow then maybe I'd still be... home? No, that word is as hollow as I feel.

Somewhere.

Anywhere.

Safe, bleak words, both of them. Tragically correct.

Even though Sonata's a bit runty for her age, she's the only one of us that's an adult, and she walks over to Adagio like she's still a filly.

I don't want her to.

I don't know how long it's been, but I want her back.

I want Nata back.

"What next, Adagio?"

She looks at her like she's the leader and Adagio knows it. Of course - that must be what she's been smiling about.

I bunch the furless paws at my side as Adagio reaches out and grabs us both by the ankle of our forepaws. Her grip on mine is far tighter, even though I won't run.

Can't run.

She - Adagio - shifts closer to me for a moment.

"I can't believe you never realized how valuable, how powerful she is."

I don't listen. I barely know what she means. I just grit my flat-ish teeth as she drags us both along, Sonata continuing to hum her nonsense songs, unreachable.

'That's right, Sonata,' I want to shout, 'follow her lead!'

Chapter 3: Ever Northward, Children

Nata is special, or so I'm told. Everyone else has told me so. Well, everyone except Aunty told me that Nata was special and tried to make that word mean something with the way I was looked at as it was spoken. Not Aunty. She had to have known what 'special' really meant. She hated it when anyone said that, even though Nata kinda is special since there isn't anyone like her. Aunty always said there was something special about Nata, like she had a special talent or something only Aunty was aware of. Every time someone called Nata 'special' they were doing a poor job of hiding something to make Nata happy. Most other seaponies didn't think much on why Nata was Nata. Yet, Aunty still insisted that there was something very special about Nata but she would never say what, only she meant it different from everyone else.

She never said much of where Nata came from but I do know that Aunty used to live farther away from everything until she needed a safer place for Nata and me to live. Two sea-fillies can't live far off in the ocean and be raised right. A village would have to do. My aunty was a city seamare, and she thought she knew this. She grew up with rocky coral houses, big markets, and the sight of the sea god in her eyes as a little filly and tales of mighty divine Alicorns in her ears. Of course she thought a village's outskirts would be safe.

It isn't so safe anymore, then again I'm not sure if we're safe any more. We seem safe, after all I hear that ponies go on adventures all the time. Their type is the magical type and the adventuring type. But I've also heard that the Overworld is a pretty weird, but still very tame, place. I mean, they get to stand on something solid and they don't float, they're grounded. Here, I have to make sure nothing comes after Nata and I from all directions, even if some place seems safe it probably isn't.

We're surrounded by all sorts of color and full-blooded sea creatures, but all I know about north is that it's cold, there's not as much color, and the general direction, but I'm sure that I can find Nata's father. He's got to be a unicorn like mine was, since Nata can't be a siren otherwise. Was her father a powerful wizard of some kind? He'd probably have to be if he met Aunty since seaponies aren't supposed to Surface often. I'm not sure about ponies though. They seem to go over the water more than under it and I'm not sure what happens to a pony once they're underwater. Can they swim?

Outside of that, I know that we'll have to try and find him soon, since ponies don't live too long, Aunty was four hundred and was too young to go like she did. Ponies only live to be about two hundred. I don't understand how they can all die so young, like fish. It must be awful to be a pony, they don't even have scales to protect themselves with!

Nata, who has been bobbing swims a bit faster to catch up with me. She's been doing pretty good so far. For an entire week she hasn't asked about Aunty or anything important, only if she earned a 'strike' or for me to answer silly questions.

"Aria do you think there are whales up north? Where the game is?"

"I dunno."

"Whales can sing."

"Yup."

"We can sing too," she says. Her tone seems to be trying to get me to notice something.

"Okay...?"

Her muzzle scrunches up. "Why aren't whales sirens?"

"Because they're whales...?"

"Huh?"

"Nevermind, Nata," I sigh.

Nata scrunches up her muzzle even more. "But if we can sing, and whales can sing that means you and I are whales or they are sirens."

"Sure, they must be sirens too." I don't know how to argue with her when she's like this. She just starts to connect random things and then act like all our problems are solved. Nata thinks that clams can sing but she's never called them sirens before. I used to think that everything was cool or weird when I was really, really little before Aunty explained everything to me so all the 'strange' and 'cool' things were just ordinary and made much more sense since I don't like it when things are confusing. It just makes me want to take my forehoof and smack something.

"Hey Aria," Nata begins again, "What's cold like?"

"Umm, I dunno Nata. I've never been anywhere cold. I think it's supposed to hurt a little bit?"

Nata gulps. "H-h-hurts?"

"Well, we have scales, Nata. We'll be fine."

She nods absentmindedly. "Scales are good."

"Uh-huh."

We swim onward in silence and I try not to think about what scales can't protect us from, especially Nata. It's still so strange no having Aunty around to watch us. There's food all over if you know how to find it but I'm more worried about keeping track of Nata. I'm not Aunty, I can barely stand all of Nata's temper tantrums and questions. Her babbling is going to get to me too. I'm not patient like she was. There may be something special about Nata but I sure as Tartarus don't know what it is. Now I have to worry about Nata repeating everything I say. Or getting lost. Or eating urchins. Or Nata getting eaten. There's no one to watch her anymore but me.

Me, Aria Blaze, orphan and local tough filly because I tell you the village colts had it coming. I'm left to take care of my cousin all by myself, until I can find where she belongs. I just wish I knew where to go other than 'north', since I doubt that the cold would be my only worry way up there. All I've gotta do is tackle everything head on, and it should be fine. Nata may not use her head much, so I guess that's what I'm for now that I'm the only left who can look after Nata.

I'm just not sure if I know how. She's more of a hoof-full than a basket of angry crabs. Really angry crabs.

"So Aria, do ya think we'll make any friends?"

"Uh, sure. You're pretty nice so I think you'll make lots of friends."

"Will the ponies be nice? We've never met a pony, what if they're mean?"

"I dunno, but if they're mean, I'll kick 'em."

Nata turns and looks at me, her face is oddly serious which isn't like her. I think that when Aunty was like this in her last few months is was called 'lucid'. "That's what you do for everything, Aria."

"I know. Trust me, it'll work."

"Okay."