Daring Do was on edge.
This temple was supposed to be her greatest challenge yet. Legends were told of its danger. Adventurers had died there. Yet she hadn't encountered a single trap. Not even a locked door! And if her sense of direction was right (and it always was), she was almost to the center of the ruin.
The treasure, she knew, would be worth any danger. The legendary Cornucopia was said to produce food out of thin air. It would be worth millions if sold to the highest bidder, like Caballeron would do, but she knew he hadn't gotten even a whiff of the information that had led her here. It would be worth thousands if she gave it to a museum like she usually did, and tens of thousands for the story she wrote up afterwards. If it could be used for humanitarian work, like ending the famine in Zebrica, it would be priceless.
Surely the ancients knew how valuable it was and wanted to protect it. And yet, she hadn't seen a single defense. Was she in the wrong place? A decoy of some kind? Or could it be putting her off her guard, only to spring a barrage of traps at once?
A sound reached her, a sound other than the echo of her own hooves in the halls, and she froze, ears twitching back and forth to try to catch it. There it was, a faint music. Somepony--or some creature--was humming.
It sounded female, she decided, which ruled out her two greatest enemies. It was also definitely in front of her, most likely in the central atrium where the Cornucopia was hidden. Someone was there ahead of her, and worse, she didn't even know who.
Very slowly, she crept down what little remained of the hallway and pushed the door at the end open. It creaked slightly, but the humming didn't waver. She peeked through, as unobtrusively as possible.
A short flight of stairs went down from the door to a wide open room. A little white sheep with an odd shimmer, humming cheerfully, bustled around what appeared to be an honest-to-goodness kitchen. What's that doing here? Daring wondered, furrowing her brow. She looked all around the room, but couldn't see anything that looked like the Cornucopia, although the counters piled with delicious-looking pastries meant it had to be there somewhere.
The little sheep's curly horns shone with a silver light, and a measuring cup lifted and dumped flour in a bowl. She was baking? In the middle of an ancient ruin? Nothing about this made any sense. There might be only one way to find out what was going on here.
She cleared her throat loudly. The sheep didn't even look up. "Hello?" No response. She stepped forward a few paces. "Hello?" she repeated.
As the sheep moved around the kitchen, smoothly picking up ingredients with her curly horns, she glanced directly at Daring several times, but still made no notice of her. Rule out "deaf," Daring thought.
Finally she reared up and put her forehooves on the counter. "Excuse me?"
Now the sheep looked up at her eyes. "Hmm," she mused. "None of the imaginations have ever been rude before."
Daring blinked. "Imaginations?"
It let out a soft bleat, almost like a sigh. "Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt to explain. I've been here for a long time, see. And I get lonely. So my mind creates imaginary companions for me. Sometimes they seem very real--other explorers in the ruins. Sheep usually, but sometimes ponies. A griffon, once. I think they're real, and then they disappear and I'm alone again." A whisk moved rapidly through the bowl of batter. "So now I ignore them. I haven't talked to one in... I don't know. Decades. Maybe centuries. Maybe I'll talk to you, just to have something to do."
"That can't be right. How long have you been in here?"
"I don't know. What year is it?"
Daring gaped. "What year- It's 1006!"
"Yes, that would make it about... nine hundred and fifty years? If you round down. Of course, that's assuming you actually know, which you don't, because you're a figment of my imagination."
This was going too far. "First of all, there's no way you could live that long!" she shouted. "And second, I'm a real pony! Don't believe me? Watch this!" With a burst of her wings, she flapped over the counter and swung a hoof at the sheep.
It passed right through.
"B- W- Huh?"
"I knew it." The sheep turned back to her baking.
Daring looked her up and down, and immediately realized how unobservant she'd been, so focused on the conversation she wasn't paying attention to what was in front of her. The sheep wasn't just shimmery, she was glowing, and just the slightest bit transparent. A hint of the oven and the batter she was mixing was visible right through her body. Daring Do wasn't a mare for superstition, but she also knew how to put two and two together. "You're a ghost," she whispered.
"Huh, they usually figure it out faster than that. But I guess that's because my imagination already knows. Or, I know, so my imagination, which is in my mind- never mind." She turned around and held out a wooden spoon in her magic. "Want to lick the batter?"
Daring shrugged and took the spoon. "Hey, this is pretty good!"
"I know. I've only been perfecting it for hundreds of- Hey, where's the spoon?"
Daring blinked. "Uh, you gave it to me?"
"Yeah, but you're not real, so..." She turned around, only to see Daring holding the spoon and slowly eating the batter off of it. "Sun and moon," she whispered in awe. "You're real. You're actually here."
Daring waved awkwardly. "Been trying to tell you that for a while."
"You're a real pony! You're not going to vanish!" She lunged forwards and tried to hug Daring, but fell right through. "Oh," she whispered in a small voice.
"Well, now that we've confirmed that I actually exist," Daring said dryly, "perhaps we ought to introduce ourselves? I'm Daring Do."
"My name's Fleece," the sheep whispered, unexpectedly shy with the realization that there was an actual pony in front of her. "And... I'm sorry for talking about how you weren't real."
Daring waved a hoof nonchalantly. "It's fine. I've had weirder things happen."
"Really?"
"Well... not weirder than a ghost, but way weirder than someone who doesn't think I exist."
"Wait a second." Fleece's face fell. "If you're here... then you came for the Cornucopia, didn't you?"
"Is that a problem?"
"Maybe. It's sort of... not here anymore."
Daring tilted her head. "What do you mean? Where do you get your ingredients from if it's gone?"
Fleece turned to look back at the bowl as if she'd forgotten it existed. "Right. That. It's not 'gone'... exactly..." She sighed. "It's complicated." Daring just stared, letting the silence stretch out until Fleece felt compelled to fill it. "I'll try my best to explain, but I don't really understand either.
"I was looking for the Cornucopia once. I thought it might help my people--we were struggling with famine. I'm sure it's ancient history by now, but I never did find out what happened to them."
Daring interrupted. "They started raiding food from Equestria. With our weather control, we had more than enough to spare. Eventually, we worked out an agreement where we would give them food in exchange for their wool. Although... it ended up being a little bit humiliating for the sheep. And most ponies and sheep are so used to the situation they don't care to change it, but there are always a few dissenting voices. I wish I was more encouraging."
"You've told me my people survived. That's encouragement enough." Fleece took a deep breath of relief. "Anyway. I made it through all the traps and dangers, but at the last minute, I tripped over my own hooves and fell down the stairs. I must have hit my head pretty hard. The next thing I knew, I was hovering over my own body, and the Cornucopia was nowhere in sight. I tried to leave, but something pulled me up short right as I got out of the temple. It was like there was an invisible string, trapping my spirit to the place where I'd died.
"Once I realized I was stuck living here, I started getting rid of the traps. They couldn't hurt me, but the feeling of a blade passing right through your body isn't pleasant no matter how corporeal you are. I took my body outside and buried it. I turned the place upside down looking for the Cornucopia, in hopes that one of my fellows who knew where I'd gone would come looking for it. If I could leave it outside, they could find it without risking coming in here. But I never found it.
"Eventually, I started to get bored. I used to bake, before the famine. I wished I had some ingredients so I could do it again. And..." She gestured over a spot of counter, and where her hoof passed, a trail of flour dusted the countertop.
"You're the Cornucopia?"
"It was right at the foot of the stairs. I fell on top of it, and somehow... it became part of me. It's gone, but I'm here. And any good I could do for the world is gone, all because I'm stuck in this stupid ruin."
Daring Do mused on that for a while. Then she trotted over to the stairs and examined the large flagstones. "So you died... right about... here?" She pointed.
"A little to the left," Fleece said. The uncertainty was clear in her voice, but she didn't ask questions.
"Here?" Daring tapped one large tile.
"Yeah, about."
"I don't want 'about', I want 'exactly.' Was it here?"
Fleece drifted through the counter. Her hoof passed through Daring's and a few inches further, maybe half a foot. "Here."
It was almost dead-center on the stone. "Perfect." Daring's eyes drifted over the equipment in the kitchen. She darted over, grabbed a pie server, and was back in the blink of an eye. "Stand back, please."
Fleece obliged, and Daring dug the tip of the server under the stone. It would hardly be strong enough for separating brick from mortar, but the temple was so old it didn't have to--stones here were simply rested together with no sealing. Slowly, she pushed the stone up and out of the ground, then tipped it over onto the other stones near it. "So," she said, "you can lift things with your horns, right?"
Fleece stared. Daring could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she struggled to process what Daring was doing. "I- you think this will work?"
"I think it has a very good chance."
Fleece began to cry. Her tears dripped down to the floor and faded right through it. "You- All this time- I-"
"It's okay." Daring tried to pat her on the back, but quickly stopped. "Just breathe."
"I... I could be free." A sob escaped her throat. "Almost a thousand years, and I could be free. I could go where I wanted. Meet sheep, and ponies, and all kinds of creatures." She broke down into full sobbing. "Free."
That was all Daring could get out of her for a long time.
Finally, the sobs which wracked her body gave way to small hiccups. She'd cried herself out. Daring stood and stretched. She was glad, she reflected, that the cornucopia had been said to be large. Too large for her to carry back in her saddlebags all the way to the nearest city. "Well," she said, very casually, "there's an airship waiting for me not far from here. Would you like to ride back to civilization with me?"
For a moment, Daring thought Fleece was about to break down bawling again, but she merely sniffled and nodded. "Yeah," she said in a weak voice. "I'd like that a lot."
"Shoot." Daring Do put down the telescope with a sigh.
"Shoot?" Fleece asked, looking up at the crow's nest. "What do you mean, shoot?"
"Pirates on the horizon." Daring left the crow's nest and glided down to the deck. "A ship called the Rick. I know it's a weird name, they all have weird names. They should be up here in about five minutes."
"Pirates?" Fleece whispered, seeming not to have noticed any of the rest of the conversation.
"Yes, but don't worry about it," Daring said. "It's under control."
She trotted down the side of the ship, checking that every cannon was loaded. When she turned around again, Fleece was coming up from belowdecks with the stone she was tethered to in tow, dropping it on the main deck.
"Why are you bringing that out?" Daring asked. "It's just going to be in the way during battle."
Fleece looked away. "I... I'm going to surrender. I've thought it through," she barreled on, before Daring could interrupt. "I'm the only thing of value on this ship. I don't want to get you into a fight, not after everything you've done for me. So... you can give them the stone, and I'll go with them."
"Absolutely not." Daring stomped a hoof on the deck. "I get you out of being trapped in an ancient temple, and you want to turn around and go be trapped by pirates instead?"
Fleece rubbed one leg. "...We're over water," she whispered. "If the ship goes down and my stone falls in, it pulls me with it, all the way to the bottom. I might be dead, but I breathe, Daring. What if I can still drown?"
"Stop it. Stop thinking like that." Daring tried to put a comforting hoof on Fleece's back, but stopped at the last second. "There is no way I'm letting them take you, and I'd never let you fall in the water either."
"But..."
"And that's that," Daring said, cutting her off. "I'm never gonna give ewe up, never gonna let ewe drown."
She reached out a hoof and flipped a lever. A thunderous cacophony echoed across the sky, and the Rick started spiraling out of the sky with holes in its balloon and its ship.
"Oh, and did I mention this ship has twenty-one cannons?" she added casually.
As they sailed away into a horizon full of possibility, Fleece reared up and put her hooves on the stern railing. Waves tossed the pirate ship, and she could barely make out small figures racing around on the deck, trying to bail it out.
The Rick was rolling.
Author's Note
Many writers who are far more popular than me have done this already, so I'm not arrogant enough to think you haven't seen mention of the Fimfiction Feghoot Festival yet.
Does this story seem like a bizarre premise? That's because I got it from a dream. The idea of the cute, lonely ghost who liked to bake stuck with me, and I was always planning to write it eventually. The pirates and the fact that it's a sheep are just for the pun.
For judging purposes, the first pun is the main one, but I couldn't leave the story unresolved there, so I figured I'd throw in a bonus one just for kicks.
