My name is The Merry Widow.
And tomorrow I will die.
For five decades now, I have plied the seas with my crew, brave and bold ponies who faced the storms and dangers of the ocean with a song on their lips. The screams of the wind and the grasping clutch of the depths would terrify lesser ponies, but my faithful crew was safe in my embrace. Little colts they may have been when they set their first unstable hoof upon my decks and carved their names into my mast, but under the lessons of their elders, my crew matured into true sailors.
At least those who survived.
The sea is a jealous bitch, angered at the ships who dare to sail her beautiful surface, and her rage knows no bounds. Many times while the waves tossed me like a toy, my crew clung to the stays and prayed to whatever gods might hear, but most of all they trusted me, and I never let them down. Through whatever fearsome storm the vengeful sea threw at us, we would return to port. Sometimes leaking to the capacity of the pumps with most canvas carried away and only a few lines still intact, but we returned, time after time, year after year. My faithful crew rejoiced in their survival, mourned their companions lost to the sea, nursed their own wounds, and made me ready to sail again.
The toll of those years wore upon my crew. Missing limbs and patches over eyes scarred their bodies, and when one would return to the shore instead of braving the dangers of the sea, I would mourn. Without fail, more young colts came on board, fresh and pure with stems of green grass still clinging to their hooves, and I would rejoice. The carvings on my mast grew as the years wore on with each little colt or the occasional filly painstakingly marking their name and giving it a little pat when they passed during their duties. They grew into proud stallions and mares under my care until that final day when they would leave forever, back to the dry land and away from my protective embrace.
As much as I refused to admit it, the years extracted their toll upon my decks and ribs, tattering the planks and splintering spars. Patches and replacements grew thicker and more cumbersome until my once graceful path through the waves became more of an awkward wallow, then a slow trudge, until at long last I reached my present anchorage.
When Celestia raises the sun, I will be towed to the breakers.
The rotten wood of my hull will be cast away while the copper, steel, and brass will be stripped from my worn fittings, my leaky hull, and my shortened mast, all sent to feed the endless hunger of the foundries. Someday my parts may sail the ocean again in the form of a mindless steamship, but it will not be the same. Steam and steel has no heart, it does not live with the ocean like brass and wood, joined together with the love of my crew.
While awaiting my fate in the darkness, I feel the touch of another. A longboat brushes up against my sides and ponies climb up onto my empty decks once more. I know their hooves upon my tattered and patched decks, aged shoes gone rusty over the years and the occasional stub of wood where the dangers of the sea claimed her due. Many names have been carved into my mast since I first set to sea, but so few of them have returned to see me on my final voyage. Old and young, they gather around, searching for their own names on the mast among the multitude and running unsteady hooves across the splintered wood, cracked and dry with age.
They hoist a keg onto my decks and bring out flagons, giving me one last time to share with my beloved crew. They drink until the keg is emptied, spilling more than a few flagons of ale upon my dry deck in my honor while they sing once again. Songs which I thought long forgotten drift out across the darkened sea, songs of hearth and home, of loves gone away and storms survived. They sing until I wish I had a voice to sing along, to show how much I love and care for them.
Then after far too short a time under Luna’s starlit sky, they are silent upon my decks again, with the eldest of them standing beside my ship’s bell.
Only the lapping of the waves and the faint song of the breeze remain, holding us all entranced under the stars. The familiar chimes of my bell ring out across the silent dark sea. Twice. Twice again. Twice yet again. And twice a fourth and final time.
I now know why they have come to me. Before my end. Before the breakers.
My crew moves to action, aged limbs bringing out the sails and heaving at the lines while others raise the anchor. They bring a breeze from the landward side to stir my faded and patched flag, raised up to the topgallants and flapping to show the threadbare lines of my namesake. The battered figurehead which once proudly showed a buxom pegasus in flight is now barely identifiable as a pony through the rusty wires holding it onto my hull, but the proud Widow who I once was and am now moves forward through the still waters.
The false light of dawn stains the horizon just a few points off my bow by the time we pass the reef and my crew makes the wind pick up with long, slow beats of aged wings. Lines are tied down and the splintered wheel lashed into position before my crew breaks open a last cask. They dampen my dry wood and empty hold, splashing onto every surface before they return to the longboat, taking with them my tarnished brass bell.
May it bring my faithful crew joy and remembrance.
The longboat casts off and drifts away when their final wind fills my tattered and patched sails, driving me briskly out into the open ocean. My adversary. My ally. My home.
I can feel the first candle in my hold burn down to the pool of oil and the flames erupt, devouring the dry wood and aged canvas. In a few minutes, the fires spread throughout my entire structure, leaving me a raging inferno of flames as I sail into Celestia’s rising sun.
My name is The Merry Widow.
And today, I’m going home.
