What Lies Beneath
Admiral Biscuit
Quills and Sofas Prompt 100
I was just a filly when I went on my first sea voyage. At first the ship was intimidating; the decks constantly moved around underhoof, and all the lines and booms and sails were always in motion, and always making noises above me. Even as a curious little filly, I stayed close to Mom’s side at first, up until somepony shouted out that there were dolphins.
I’d never seen a dolphin before, except in picture books. They were strange grey things, not like a fish at all. They darted around in the wake of the ship, leaping from wave to wave, and then some of them swam up to the side, sticking their heads up above the water and grinning at the ponies gawking over the railings at them.
They’d dance around in the wake and leap above the water and I only had eyes for them until they finally got done with their playing and swam off. I watched as they vanished under the waves, catching one final glimpse of them as they came up for a breath of air before disappearing completely.
While we ate a picnic lunch in our cabin, I looked out the porthole and wondered what it would be like to swim through the water like a dolphin. I could ponypaddle, but I wasn’t very good at it. Mom said that I was getting better at swimming, and maybe I was, but I thought that even if I practiced for my whole life I’d never swim as well as a dolphin.
I thought about the dolphins and when we went back up on deck, I looked out over the railing to see if I could spot them again, but they were gone. So was the land—we’d sailed far enough away that I couldn’t see it behind us any more.
I eventually got bored with just watching dolphin-free waves and started exploring the ship—everywhere a filly was allowed to go.
After I’d seen the cabins and looked up the masts and figured out what most of the ropes were for, I found myself up at the bow, and I watched how the ship cut into the waves, getting splashed a few times in the process. I felt more confident on my hooves; I’d gotten used to the way the deck moved around. I’d gotten used to all the noises of the sails and the rigging, the creaking of the ship.
After a couple of hours, I could see the skyline of Vanhoover off in the distance. At first, I thought it might be a mirage or a distant cloud bank, but as we got closer, I could tell it was the city. I’d never been to Vanhoover before, and the memory of the dolphins faded as I started thinking about what we were going to do there—the museums we’d visit and the stores and Mom said that we had a hotel room that was five stories up so it would be almost like being in a cloud.
There were more boats as we got closer to the harbor and the sailorponies took in some of the sails and tied other ones shorter to slow us down.
I could see off in the distance the lighthouse that marked the entrance to the harbor, and I also noticed two strange sticks jutting out of the water. As we got closer, I could see that they were masts just like on our ship and I couldn’t figure out why they would be there.
One of the sailorponies noticed where I was looking, and he said that those were the masts of the Truxton which had sunk in a gale several years ago. He pointed to where there was a shoal that had torn her bottom out. I didn’t see where he was pointing at first, but then I noticed that the waves looked different as they marched across a patch of sea. Once I’d seen it, I wondered how the lookouts hadn’t, and he reminded me that there had been a gale, and it would have been harder to spot with the wind and rain and breaking waves everywhere.
I kept my eyes on it until we rounded the end of the jetty and it was lost to sight.
Five floors up had seemed like a lot when I imagined it, but it really wasn’t. It was still high enough that I could see the harbor over other buildings, and I could see the bay beyond, and I could even see the Truxton’s masts sticking above the water.
I wanted to get a closer look at it. My mom said that I was silly, that it was just a waterlogged old wreck, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How many other things were there under the water that didn’t have masts sticking up to make them easy to find?
Mom changed around our plans to hire a small boat that would carry us out to the wreck. I was so curious I was willing to give up a trip to the toy store—that had been her offer, and I took it.
The boat she hired was smaller and only had one mast and a triangular sail which made it easier to steer. It stunk of fish, but I got used to that after a while. I kept my hooves up on the cabin, hind legs splayed for balance. I had to duck whenever the captain said he was tacking, because the boom would swing across and could hit me in the head.
He had to be careful as we got close to the wreck, because our boat could get snagged in the Truxton’s rigging. Our little boat didn’t have rails along the side, so I could lay out on my belly and stretch my head over the edge and see into the ocean.
At first I didn’t see anything but murky greenish-blue water, and I kept glancing up to see how close we were. I didn’t want to give myself eye strain looking through the water, but I didn’t want to miss seeing it, either.
I started to wonder if maybe he was playing a mean trick on me; I couldn't see more than a few ponylengths through the water, and then I thought I could see the water’s color change and then the Truxton appeared through the water almost like a ghost. I could see the deck below us, even the shadow our boat’s hull cast on the wreck as we passed over. I could see the cabin and some ropes trailing over the edge; a dark square that led down into a cargo hold.
“Is there any treasure in there?” I asked once our boat had drifted clear of the wreck.
The captain laughed. “I doubt it. After she sank, ponies with diving gear salvaged what they could of the cargo and fittings.”
That was disappointing, but it made sense. If the wreck was so easy to find, of course any treasure it might have contained would be long gone.
We drifted over it several more times, and I got a good look at everything that could be seen.
There was another wreck, closer to shore, that he sailed over before we went back to harbor. There wasn’t much left of it, just the broken keel and some ribs half-buried in the sandy bottom like a ship skeleton. He said that it had been a lumber barge which had broken free in a gale and fetched up on shore where it had been torn apart by the waves. He said that some ponies who lived near the shore had salvaged the bigger planks to use for their homes.
Wrecks were popular with fish, and as long as ponies were careful not to snag their lines they could get a good haul near a shipwreck. Lots of fish liked to hide in all the little nooks and crannies that the ship provided, he told me. I didn’t see any fish—I guess they were all hiding—but I did see a curious octopus who crawled across one of the broken ribs of the ship and then jetted up towards the surface, before changing his mind and darting back down. There were so many animals that lived in the ocean!
Mom wanted a mare’s day of relaxation on the beach, and I wanted to find more shipwrecks. There wouldn’t be any at the beach, but maybe I could find something else interesting on the bottom.
After a while she got bored of watching me swim and dive, and I didn’t want to relax in the sun like she did. So she found a couple ponies who had snorkel gear and asked if they’d watch me for a while.
We went off to a little inlet a ways up the beach. That was safer for beginners; waves wouldn’t splash down the snorkel tube. They showed me how to put on the face mask and paddle around with my head under the water and it was really hard at first but after a while I got used to it.
I even found a shiny bit coin! It was lying on top of the seagrass, practically begging to be found. They had to teach me how to hold my breath and dive down in order to actually reach it, and I got a few mouthfuls of seaweed and almost lost sight of it a couple times before I finally triumphantly returned with it.
It was late in the day when my Mom finally came back over, and they said that I was a natural and I could have spent the bit coin but I wanted to keep it as a souvenir.
We found a store that sold masks and flippers and snorkels and I wanted to go back out to the Truxton but Mom said it was too dangerous, that I could get caught in the rigging or inside the cabin or hold, and I didn’t want to admit that she was right but I knew she was. A day of swimming in the little inlet had been good practice, but I wasn’t very experienced, just enthusiastic.
After I begged and begged, Mom finally agreed that the lumber barge was close enough to shore to explore safely, so we got up early in the morning and took a taxi down to the waterfront. It was really weird to try and walk on the sand with my flippers, but I didn’t think I could put them on in the water.
I waded in and put on my mask and duck-walked along the bottom until the water was deep enough that the little waves were lifting my hooves off the sand, then I bit down on my snorkel and stuck my head down in the water and started swimming.
It took me a long time to find it. I had to keep lifting my head up to look around and try and remember what the landmarks I’d seen were, and I kept getting distracted by things I saw on the bottom. Things I’d never seen before, because I’d never known to look.
I swam out until the bottom became murky and then I knew I’d gone out too far, so I turned around and looked back at the shore and tried to get an idea where I was. Mom was standing almost in the water, so I waved a hoof at her so she’d know I was okay, then I pushed up my mask and studied the shoreline, trying to remember what landmarks I’d seen from the sailboat. I’d had my attention too focused on the bottom, and that was a mistake I wasn’t going to make again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a greyish shape coming through the water, and I nearly jumped out of my fur. I didn’t know what it was right away, and thought it might be a big fish that would gobble me up, until it got closer and I saw that it was a dolphin.
He swam up to me and stuck his head above the water and then got behind me and started pushing me towards the shore.
“I don’t need to be rescued,” I told him. “I’m looking for the shipwreck.”
The dolphin stopped pushing and swam around towards my head, then tilted his nose in the direction of the Truxton.
“Mom says that one’s not safe. But there’s another one on the bottom near here, a lumber barge, just ribs and keel, and—“
Before I could finish, the dolphin dropped his head under the waves and swam off. I thought he’d left, but then he popped his head up again, closer to shore, so I started paddling over in that direction.
He must have thought I was taking too long, because he came back and started pushing me along until the two of us finally found ourselves above the bones of the ship.
Now it was my turn to surprise him; I took a breath and then dove beneath the waves. I was almost at the bottom when he caught up to me.
I put out a hoof and touched the waterlogged wooden rib of the ship, kicking up a small cloud of silt in the process, then I started swimming along the keel.
Each time I surfaced, I made sure that I blew all the water out of my snorkel before I took a breath, and each time the dolphin would surface next to me and also blow out some water.
There wasn’t much to see of the wreck, and it wasn’t too long before I’d seen all of it. I didn’t want to go back to shore yet, so the two of us raced from one end to the other, and since he could easily beat me, he started to swim between the ribs, zig-zagging back and forth.
By the time we’d gotten done playing together, I was getting tired. Swimming was hard! I still thought I had enough energy to make it to shore, but my dolphin friend wasn’t as sure and pushed me most of the way.
When the water was too shallow for him, I put my hooves down on the bottom and we said our goodbyes. I nuzzled his nose and he flashed his tail at me as he dove under the water and swam back out to sea.
My mom waded out to meet me, and pointed excitedly at my flank—I’d gotten my cutie mark! Two dolphins in a circle, nose-to-tail. Did that mean that I was destined to be a sea explorer? Or a cetologist? There weren’t oceans or dolphins back home, and as we were riding in the taxi I wondered if it was a mistake, if I’d lose my cutie mark if I didn’t stay by the ocean.
After we got back to Vanhoover and I washed all the salt out of my hair and coat, we went and had a fancy dinner at the hotel restaurant and I got cake and ice cream for dessert and all I could think about was wanting to go back out in the water to explore some more.
Dad said diving was just a phase, and I’d grow out of it as I got older, but he was wrong. I spent as much time as I could with my snorkel and mask exploring the lakes and rivers around town and I worked and saved so I could afford to go back to the coast and learn how to dive properly. A snorkel and unicorn magic could only get me so deep; if I really wanted to explore, I’d have to learn how to wear a proper diving suit.
I’d thought it would take me a couple years to save up enough bits to afford equipment and training, unless I wanted to move out to the coast on my own and get an apprenticeship with a diver. I’d thought about it, but I didn’t want to leave my family and friends behind.
To my surprise, my parents agreed to double all the bits I’d saved up, which meant that the very next summer, I boarded a train for Whinnyapolis, where I’d spend all summer learning everything that there was to learn about diving.
There were days of book-learning and spellcraft and theory before we were even allowed in the water; then there were practice pools to swim in and a hyperbaric chamber that we got to sit in to understand pressure, and we had to learn what every piece of equipment was for and how it worked and then one day we got to put all the equipment on, only to have to take it off again without even getting wet.
A couple of days later, we started practicing in an abandoned quarry, just to get used to the equipment. I didn’t like putting the bronze helmet over my head, I didn’t like getting winched down in the water, I didn’t like how heavy the boots and weights made me, I didn’t like the oily smell of the compressed air, and I hadn’t expected how much sediment I’d kick up every time I moved, practically blinding myself.
I hadn’t thought it would be like that. I still had the image in my mind of returning to Vanhoover and swimming with the dolphins and climbing triumphantly over the Truxton’s decks as if it was still above water and as I lay in bed that night, I wondered if my cutie mark was wrong, if I was chasing a hopeless dream.
But then two days later, we went even deeper, and as I stood on the bottom and watched the sediment settle around me, as I came face-to-face with a catfish who was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, I knew I’d made the right choice. There was a whole new world under the surface of the water, and I was going to spend my life exploring it.
Author's Note
Click HERE for story notes!
