I woke up with a headache, again. The swaying of the ship always makes my head hurt. I wished that the journey could be over, and our business in the Zebra Lands finished so I can go back to my home on Mount Eris and get off this blasted boat!

The water and I have never gotten along. Unfortunately, I come from a large family of merchants, and so I had to follow Father on his trading ventures. Usually, this meant short, tolerable trips from island to island. But recently a town near the Equestria/Zebra border had a boom in its economy and Father decided to try his luck. Thus my sister Ashaa and I had come along to "learn the trade".

Ugh.

Well, life could be worse,. “I could have been born a pony,” I thought to myself. Living in that irradiated wasteland is probably way worse than headaches and seasickness.

A pair of talons shook me from my thoughts. "Come on brother! Get up! Get up! There's a pod of dolphins swimming next to the ship!" Unlike me, Ashaa loves the water. Sometimes I wonder if we are even from the same nest. Ashaa is a very outspoken and confident Hippogriff with a cyan coat and light blue mane and tail. No matter the circumstances she always finds the silver lining. I’m hoping that Ashaa takes over the family business so I can be a writer or some other job that does not involve water in any way. She has a better grasp on business than I do anyway.

I groggily waved Ashaa away and sat up, holding my head. "Okay okay, I'll be up in a second. Just let me get ready."

Ashaa made an impatient noise and pranced over to the door of my room, looking back to say, "You're gonna miss them if you don't hurry up! They're so pretty and I want you to see them! You get all moody when we sail." Ashaa walked out and closed the door behind her.

I stumbled out of my bed and wobbled towards my dresser. Even after a life of seafaring I still haven’t found my sea legs. My room was nice and orderly, Just the way I liked it. Since this was the family ship I was allowed to personalize however I wanted. My bed was set in an alcove in the wall, my dresser and chest of Belongings on the far side. I had posters of all sorts of pre-war bands, as well as a few from the Flying Feathers, a band from north Faeloch, one of the many islands that surround Mount Eris. I have all of their music on my recorder.

After donning my favourite combat vest and a pair of black leather gloves I stagger onto the deck of our massive merchant ship. It was about fifty-seven meters long with two masts and four decks. We boasted a modest armament of five small cannons on each side of the ship. They weren’t usually used for pirates as hippogryphs were just about the only sentient beings on the ocean. Instead, they were used against various sea monsters that were awoken by the megaspell testing that Equestria performed in the sea. Most were easily scared off with a warning shot or two, but the big ones required a little more persuasion.

Thankfully I’ve only seen one giant sea monster when I was little. Apparently, that had been the biggest one on record. A massive dragon-like creature with long crooked talons. It had tried to attack Mount Eris itself. The entire Royal Navy and the Avian Guard were required to stop the dragon before it reached the city.

Glancing around I see Ashaa and a few of the crew on the starboard bow. Looking over the railing, I see the most elegant creatures ever dipping up and down through the water. Dolphins never swim as far south as Mount Eris, so I had never seen one before. They were graceful and sleek, almost flying through the waves.

Eventually, the dolphins veered away from the ship, heading east. Once they were out of sight Ashaa bounced over to me with a massive smile on her face. "Did you SEE THAT?! They were SO COOL! Jumping in and out of the water like that! I wish we could swim like that!" I smiled weakly for her sake, however amazing the dolphins were, but all my body wanted to do was curl up in my bed with a puke bucket for the last week or so of the journey.

"Yeah, yeah they were pretty cool Ashaa, I'm going below now." She tilted her head and frowned at me, a concerned look on her face. "You've been stuck down there for the last two weeks! Don't you know that the fresh air up here is good for your seasickness?"

I shook my head, looking away from her. "I'm just going down to play blackjack with Erikka."

It was Ashaa’s turn to shake her head. "Okay then, if you need me I'll be up in the crow's nest with Father."

Even if it was better for me to be outside, I liked it more belowdecks. You could almost pretend you were in a hotel down there, a nauseatingly swaying hotel, but still, it was preferable to looking out at the open ocean. Having it out of sight almost immediately made my headache lessen.

By the time I made it to the lounge I had made it from a stagger to a slightly more dignified, yet still slightly drunken, walk. The door was open so I walked in to find Erikka finishing a game of Blackjack with Karl, our cook, and Johann, our quartermaster. I waited at the door until the round was finished, then hobbled over to the table. Erikka smiled and dealt me in. "G' morning Blitz, how's today treating ya?"

I sat down, looking at my cards. "Well, it's treating me better than this hand" Erikka laughed, continuing to deal out the cards. I had two eights, not good odds. Welp, there's always next round.

We played cards for hours on end: Blackjack, Gin rummy, Go fish, You name it, we’ve played it. Karl had to get up around midday to prepare lunch and came back with sandwiches. I liked being down here, The feel of the cards in my talons, focusing on nothing but the cards. The sway of the ship almost matching the rhythm of cards being dealt, played, and picked up. Instead of gambling, we traded chores like cleaning the dishes after dinner. Since I was Captain Aarik's son, I didn’t have to do any work on the ship. But I don’t like the feeling of being useless, so even though I’m good at cards, I'd sometimes lose on purpose so I’d have work to do.

After a dinner of salted pork, slightly stale bread, and a mug of hard cider I made my way up to the deck and sullenly headed towards the bow. Unfortunately, when we were dishing out chores to the losers of each round, I ended up with the first-night watch, which means I had to stay up and look out for any danger for the next three hours. This also meant that I had to stay out here, trying to not throw up while watching the waves turn from blue to black.

The one thing I did like about watch duty is I could sit and watch the stars. Not being able to recognize any of the constellations made me realize how far from home I was. At least we have stars --- the sun and the moon too. We knew that the pegasi had fled above the clouds, letting the sky close up so nobody in Equestria could see the sky. Luckily the cloud cover didn’t reach Mount Eris, but even in the dying light, I could make out where Equestria was due to the massive expanse of grey above it. When it got dark enough I lit the oil lamp hanging from the mast and stood guard.

A massive THUD woke me from my sleep. Apparently, I had nodded off at some point. I ran quite drunkenly toward the bridge, where Father was at the helm. He looked very stressed, his hair all frizzy and his talons gripping the wheel much tighter than necessary. He looked over to see who had come. When Father saw it was me his eyes lit up. "Blitz, I need you to wake up the rest of the crew, we have a really bad storm brewing, and we might need to take down the sails." I nodded and frantically tumbled down the stairs from the bridge to the crew's quarters.

The next ten minutes were a blur. I remember getting to the big room where the crew hung their hammocks and yelling about the storm and all talons on deck. Then somehow I was banging on Ashaa's door, telling her to get up and tie-down her stuff. Then I was helping take down the sails so they wouldn’t rip the mast off in the wind that was getting stronger by the second. Then, all I could see was blue, just blue. Then black. I couldn’t breathe, there was no longer a deck beneath my talons. It was cold, really cold. And now nothing, there was no Blitz, just nothing.

Light, I could see light. It was warm and inviting. but somehow I knew if I touched it, I would never see Ashaa again. I turned around, a different light behind me. This light was cold and harsh, yet I knew it was the better choice. I grasped the light and held it in my talons. I could feel my soul going back down, away from the warmth, and back towards what I suspected was my body.

Footnote:

Brush with death: You now know what lies on the other side, you take 25% less damage from drowning.

Author's Note

I want to thank Kkat for making this wonderful sandbox for me and many others. as well as Somber for inspiring me to write my little fic.

BTW I might change and fix chapters from time to time, I'll try to let ya'll know when I do.

This is an AU and as such Hippogriffs and their lore is going to work differently from the canon hippogriffs in the show. there was no storm king and thus no seaponies.

(side note: If anyone is interested, I'd like help writing this fic, I'm not the best writer and would love a little input from others!)

Also sorry for any weird grammar. Grammarly doesn’t like slang words.