Featherflit's Narrow Escape

Featherflit awoke early for once; and for the first time she flung open the curtain covering the small window in her room. To her surprise, it was still dark outside. Not the complete darkness of those first few days in the cavern, before the glowing corals covered the walls. But the light from the plants was very muted. The corals glowed a dim purple that seemed to pulse gently, like they shared a heartbeat. Little glimmers in the distance showed where the light reflected from the shining scales of the fish.

Flylight had said the plants operated on a twelve-hour cycle; Featherflit thought that she must have awoken before they reached their next bright phase. The dimmed radiance was less obviously stunning, but had a more subtle beauty to it. Featherflit’s hooves twitched again towards a paintbrush that wasn’t there. Compared to the nightscapes and star scenes she had painted in the world above, the vista of fish and purple corals curving across the cavern walls was comparatively tiny, but it still held an ethereal beauty. Featherflit could not deny that Queen Novo had done an incredible job in beautifying the cavern, and creating species that were as lovely as they were functional.

There was another added bonus of being up this early; nopony else was awake. The gently flowing water outside was completely empty. The lantern corals swayed on their stalks in utter silence; the fish were the only flickers of movement.

Featherflit couldn’t resist any longer, and with a swish of her tail, she was moving up and out of her window. There was no glass, of course; while her forest home had been glazed with the clearest, finest glass Featherflit’s limited budget had been able to afford, down here there was no weather to shield against, and all the houses were open to the elements. The cavern was so isolated from the wider ocean that all the currents in here were slow and peaceful. Perhaps in time, somepony would invent a method of blowing glass underwater. A windowpane might be pleasant for soundproofing and privacy, if nothing else. For now, it was as easy for Featherflit to slip out through the window as it was to use the front door.

She hung motionless in the water outside her bedroom, taking her time to drink in the peaceful sight of Seaponia at night. All was quiet and calm. She glanced down, hoping for a glimpse of the seemingly endless kelp fields below, but the pale lavender light illuminated only the town itself. The depths of the cave were dark and shadowed from her sight.

If not for the little motes visible in the water close to her face, Featherflit would have been able to believe the whole city was somehow suspended in the air. The purple radiance of the corals against the stark black of the stone could have been stars in the night sky. The fish could almost be clouds or some strange, alien species of bird.

She knew it was still very early, but she wanted to make a start. After so long trapped by indecision and lethargy, she was longing for a little action. She and Flylight had planned to go to the kelp fields; so to the meadows they would go. The sooner the better.

With a kick of her forelegs, she propelled herself around the edge of the house. She stuck her nose in through the nearest window and lifted the curtain. There was the darkened living room, the black outlines of her mother’s coral furniture alien in the shadows. It must be the next window. She flipped her fins and tried again. The next window revealed the sleeping forms of her parents, snuggled close together on their larger bed-platform. Featherflit smiled to herself and let the seaweed curtain fall. Getting to grips with the geography of a spherical house would clearly take a little more time.

She nudged the curtain of the final window aside, and at last she was looking into Flylight’s room. A blaze of light streamed out of the window, and Featherflit hastily heaved herself inside and tugged the curtain shut behind her. Flylight’s new potted algae clearly had not gotten the message on the twelve-hour light cycle.

Flylight was wearing an eye mask to protect against the illumination of her plants. Featherflit looked down at her sleeping sister, and felt a surge of protectiveness for her little sibling. Flylight looked so young when she slept. Like the foal Featherflit remembered her parents bringing to her that first morning. Flylight had been so small, fresh from the egg, still damp with glaire.

But Featherflit’s reflective mood soon passed; she wallowed enough in nostalgia over the past few weeks. She might not be fully reconciled to her new life, but she was determined to make an effort. And that meant getting out there.

She nudged Flylight hard in the ribs, and Flylight moaned and rolled away from the touch. Featherflit persisted, putting her muzzle close to her sister’s ear. “Psst!” she hissed. “It’s time to go.”

Blearily, Flylight fumbled with her sleeping mask. She finally managed to push it off, and blinked up at Featherflit. “Ugh…what time is it?”

“Time to go,” Featherflit repeated brightly. “Up you get!”

Groaning, Flylight let Featherflit push her out of the bed. “What a role reversal this is,” she muttered, rubbing again at her eyes.

“I thought I’d better make up for lost time,” Featherflit offered with an apologetic grin.

Flylight returned her smile, seeming to finally make it out of the fog of sleep. “Good idea. Stars, Featherflit, its good to see you being enthusiastic again.” She swam to the window and looked out. “But for Novo’s sake, its still halfway through the night!”

“Surely nopony can sleep for twelve hours straight night after night?” Featherflit asked. “Some ponies must get up early.”

“I’m sure some ponies do,” Flylight said, a tinge of grumpiness returning to her expression. “But I don’t usually get up four hours before dawn.”

Intrigued, Featherflit hastily joined her sister at the window. “How can you tell its four hours to go?” With no sun or moon to calculate by, she had assumed the twelve-hour light changes would be the only time measurement aid down here.

“Um…it’s the light level,” Flylight said, frowning out into the night. “The types of coral we planted up here glow brighter the closer we get to dawn. Its still dim, of course, or nopony would be able to sleep. But there is a difference. Keep an eye on it as we get closer to dawn, I’m sure you’ll see it.”

Featherflit looked closer at the distant plants and shrugged. “Maybe. But let’s make a start, shall we?”

“Don’t you want any breakfast?” Now that the first flush of waking was over, Flylight’s humour was returning, and a wry smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

Featherflit thought about it. “Can’t we eat on the way? Or we could always just grab some kelp once we’re down there.”

Flylight gave her shoulder a playful shove. “If everypony did that, there’d be no kelp left by harvest time. No. We’ll find something in the kitchen.”

The two of them hastened to the kitchen, and after a hurried session rifling through their father’s neatly organised larder, as well as much hissing at each other to shut up and stop making so much noise, they were finally making their escape. Featherflit was almost disappointed when Flylight led the way out of the front door. Being able to enter and exit through windows was quite liberating, really.

They quickly dropped below the level of the town, and not long after that the glistening coral on the cavern walls petered out as well. When Featherflit asked why that was, Flylight shrugged.

“I think the plan eventually is to grow them everywhere. But they were most needed up near Seaponia. I suppose they haven’t gotten to this part yet.”

Featherflit squinted down at the murk below them again. She still saw only the shifting purple shadows of untold depths. The cavern might drop down forever, for all she could tell. “How long will it take us to get to the fields?”

“About three hours, I think,” Flylight said. “If we dropped straight down, we could make it in maybe forty minutes. But the sudden increase in pressure can make your head hurt; a lot of seaponies even fainted in the early days. Official advice now is to circle your way down.”

Featherflit frowned. Vertical dives did increase the pressure on your brain when flying, but she had done that plenty of times. Only little chicks were meant to avoid that more risky manoeuvre. And surely the water would support anypony sufficiently to make the dive gentle enough to cope with. It wasn’t like you could fall at any speed through water.

“Try it on your own time,” Flylight said sharply, seeing the scepticism on Featherflit’s face.

“Stars, somepony got out of bed on the wrong side today,” Featherflit rejoined. But she smiled to take the sting from her words, and was rewarded by Flylight’s laughter.

“Only because I was woken up in the middle of the night by you!”

Featherflit followed Flylight’s lead and let her set the course. They skirted the edge of the cavern for a short distance, before doubling back towards their starting point to begin their smaller circle again. All the while, they were slowly but surely working their way downwards.

Flylight didn’t seem much disposed to talking, but Featherflit supposed she couldn’t blame her. Flylight had never been much of a morning hippogriff. At any rate, Featherflit found enough to occupy her interest; the cavern wall was pitted with ridges and cracks, many of them more than four times the body-length of a seapony. The dark crevasses led away to who knew what hidden worlds, and Featherflit peered eagerly into each one they passed. One of these tunnels might contain her path to the wider ocean and the world outside.

After they had been swimming for an hour, the dim lights of Seaponia were almost out of sight, but there was still nothing visible below them. Featherflit felt strangely claustrophobic, for saying she was in such a large space. What if they never reached the bottom, and ended up stuck in limbo, suspended in the middle of an unknowably deep canyon? She considered asking Flylight if the sea floor was always so difficult to see, but feared to voice her foalish thoughts aloud. She thought she might die of embarrassment if her little sister had to comfort her. She breathed out a little stream of bubbles. It was fine. They’d reach the bottom soon enough.

Flylight kept them swimming in the same loose spiral. Time crept on. They swam down at a steady pace, but to Featherflit’s relief it began to grow lighter. When she looked up at Seaponia, though it was still blurry and distant, it seemed a little brighter than before.

As they went further, a little more of the cavern was revealed. The sea floor was still shadowed and beyond the range of her vision, but she could see more of the empty water in the centre of the cavern now, and a darkening in the distance that she thought must be the opposite wall.

Featherflit was watching it with interest when she saw a flicker of movement. The motion in such a large blank space drew her eye immediately, but she had to squint to see it clearly. The water made things further than a few hundred wingbeats away seem hazy. She peered closer, and could just about make out a pale shape with paler fins, swimming purposefully along. It was descending with considerable speed, almost vertically. She tried to shield her eyes with one hoof and looked again. “Hey, Flylight, you see that?”

Flylight followed her pointing and narrowed her own eyes. “Isn’t that the stallion who was fighting with the guards?”

Featherflit blinked. “Sky Beak?” She looked again, and supposed that the distant shape could be him. It had the same distinctively high crest as he did. But he was moving rapidly — soon he would vanish into the gloom beneath them. Flylight had said that swimming directly down was against the rules set by the royal guard, but Sky Beak didn’t seem too concerned with that. “Where do you think he’s going in such a hurry?” Perhaps, she mused, he was going to do some work in the fields. Though she certainly wouldn’t be sprinting there like he was. Or maybe, like they were, he was just trying to escape the hustle and bustle of the town before most of the seaponies awakened. A third, more thrilling possibility occurred; perhaps he was on his way to search the caves!

Flylight simply shrugged. “Whenever I see him, he’s always rushing somewhere, just like that.”

“And you’ve never spoken to him?” Featherflit demanded, irrationally a little annoyed at this oversight on her sister’s part. Now she would have to speak to him herself to solve the mystery. She wondered if he had already found a way out; surely not. If he had, why would he still be returning to Seaponia at night? He had seemed to hold little enough love for the Queen and the other hippogriffs.

“No!” Flylight answered with genuine shock. “After the way he acted above-water?”

Featherflit bridled at the veiled accusation. “Watch it; if you hadn’t been there I’d have probably done a lot worse myself.”

Flylight smiled. “Oh come on, Featherflit — you, fleeing the royal guard? Give me a break.”

“Its true,” Featherflit insisted. “I didn’t want to come; I still want to leave. Or that we could all leave together.”

Flylight made no answer, but her brow was furrowed with concern when Featherflit looked across at her. “Try… try to get used to it, Featherflit,” she said eventually. “The Queen says we’re going to stay down here for the rest of the year. Perhaps longer. She says its the only safe place for us.”

Featherflit made no further answer; the last thing she wanted today was to fall out with her sister. They continued their descent in silence. Featherflit glanced back at Seaponia several times as they went. Each time, the purple glow from above seemed infinitesimally brighter. Just as Flylight had promised. The lantern corals, still emitting no light of their own, were just black shadows against the sky.