A Catch to Remember

~

Flowing Sands should have known better, but then again, she’d always had a knack for missing the obvious.

The school of smelts and sardines that had caught her attention were, of course, anything but subtle. She saw the sands they’d kicked up from a good nautical mile away, and grinning devilishly, she swept her tailfin rapidly to catch up to them. The strong appendage churning the water with ease, sending the young seapony sailing through the water at a speed that might rival a marlin on a good day.

And, to her credit, she was able to grab a hoof-full in her front flippers, before the net suddenly and abruptly swept from underneath her.

“Ack!” As if to add insult to injury, she dropped the fish she had been gripping in her fins. The net had already been traveling quickly when it struck her, and the moment it did she began thrashing her fins violently, trying to free herself.

It was… a rather poor idea, Flowing quickly realized. Her tail fin only got even more tangled in the netting. She flapped her dorsal fins as well, and they, too, snagged on the wiry ropes of the fishnet. Soon enough, she was a completely bound-up mess, the sturdy net rope keeping her pelvic fins pressed against her body, digging into her scales, gills, and even her… more sensitive regions down below.

This, combined with her thrashing, quickly proved to be accomplishing something somewhat contrary to Flowing’s current goal of freeing herself. It didn’t hurt--quite the contrary--but nonetheless she ceased rather swiftly when she realized just how much worse she was making things for herself. She was lying on a bed of fish, and the fisherponies would surely feel the weight and be drawing their catch up soon enough anyways. No doubt assuming they’d gotten quite lucky, only to have quite a surprise when the net breached the water.

It would be a rather humiliating sight on her behalf, her splayed out for them to see on top of a bed of flopping smelts, trussed up like sharkbait, but not necessarily the end of the world for the indignant seapony. She could already see the belly of the fishing boat looming above her, and knew it would be seconds before she had to have a rather embarrassing conversation with the fishers within.

The seawater rushed past her, tugging the net roping tighter against her. She let out a bubbly gasp, trying to twist her tail so that at the very least she didn’t have a length of rope spreading her damned pussy out on top of everything else. She was only partially successful, before she was thrust into the warm light of the sun no longer distorted by the rippling ocean waves. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve felt nice on her scales--seaponies weren’t quite like fish, as they weren’t rendered completely helpless the exact second they broke the waves.

No. Flowing quickly reasoned, glancing behind her at her tangled tail fin. She’d managed to do that while still below the waves, and almost entirely on her own.

The net broke the waves and was pulled up, towards the waiting fishing boat. Flowing already had an indignant pout by time it reached the gunwale, and she didn’t break it when she locked gazes with the earth pony that had been operating the mechanism to draw the net up.

He was, Flowing quickly realized, an absolute dreamboat.

She hadn’t been expecting him to be. In fact, she’d been expecting a whole gaggle of fisherponies to be staring at her when she was pulled up, all stifled cackles or gawking stares—and was almost instantly relieved to see that such was not the case. Instead, she had precisely one stallion looking at her with a look of sheer bewildered surprise.

“Mornin’,” Flowing said, rolling her eyes and waving with the one single fin not tangled hopelessly in the net. “Looks like you caught the big one.”

“Woah nelly…” he said. “Y-you okay there, lass? Pray to Celestia you ain’t hurt…”

“Only my pride.” Flowing shook her head. Gradually, she could feel the furious verbal tirade she’d had planned being swept away like a sandcastle come evening tides. The stallion just looked so adorably innocent, gawking at her with a mixture of guilt and pride. Her look, by contrast, quickly went from indignant to sheepish… a crimson blush turning her amber scales red. “This… doesn’t happen as often as you would think.”

The stallion breathed out a sigh of relief. “O-okay. J-just hold on. I’ll getcha out.”

“I’ll try not to go anywhere.” A lighthearted grin cracked across Flowing’s face. The earth pony quickly trotted back to the mechanism operating the large net, and gently it was lowered onto the deck of the small fishing schooner. The bed of fish Flowing had been laying upon was strewn across the deck of the ship, hundreds of fish quickly flopping fruitlessly on the ship deck. Most of them leaping back over the edge of the ship and to safety, though the fisher-pony didn't seem to mind with his attention now exclusively on the largest fish of the bunch.

The stallion quickly trotted over. Flowing instinctively spread one of her caught fins, where the net was still binding them hopelessly.

“You really got yourself caught up there, missy.”

“Yeah, I kinda freaked out a bit.” She thought of her furious thrashing, and her sheepish look returned. “Sorry about your net.”

“My net?” The stallion chuckled. “Celestia, don’t you worry none about that, missy. Got a dozen of ‘em where that came from. Just glad you're not hurt.”

He carefully brought the knife to where the net was clutching her fin, and let the blade slice away at the carefully woven ropes. Flowing sucked in a breath as he worked, praying to the tides that he was as careful with the blade as he seemed.

Fortunately, he was. A career spent threading fish-hooks and lures, she supposed, bred a calm and careful sort. Flowing watched him carefully, and he worked with trained precision. Holding the knife in his teeth, at such an angle that miscalculation or carelessness would bring the blade in his direction and not that of the helpless little seapony he was currently helping. A calm relief swept over her as she watched the ropes carefully being severed, one by one, and more and more of her serpentine body came free.

“There…” he severed through the last one, and Flowing exhaled as her tailfin came free from the netting. It’d been starting to strain, being held in such an awkward position, and she quickly let it outstretch, positioning herself so that she was laying on her belly on the deck of the ship instead of sprawled sheepishly on a bed of fish.

The stallion took a step back as soon as he finished, taking off his fishing cap and bowing his head towards her. He stopped for a moment as he did so to look her over. He seemed to be captivated by her, the way he stared deep into her eyes like he'd gotten turned around at sea and they were a lighthouse capturing his attention.

“Sorry again about this, miss…”

“Flowing. Flowing Sands.” She blushed a little at the bow. “..And you’ve been a gentlecolt about it, and mistakes happen.”

“If yer certain. C-can I get you anything, while you’re here? Would feel terrible catchin’ ya up in a net and then just tossin’ you back into the waves like the one that didn’t make the cut.”

Flowing laughed. A little break from swimming and some company seemed nice. It was a while since she’d crossed paths with a land-dweller, especially one that wasn’t a griffon flying too far out to plunder from the same fishing spots as Flowing’s kind.

“First thing you can do is tell me your name,” she said, winking playfully. “And then a tuna sandwich and some lemonade. So long as you’re offering.”

The stallion looked a little taken aback by her forwardness for a moment, his grip on the cap in his hoof seeming to tighten a little. “S-Star Point, ma’am.”

“Well, S-Star Point…” Flowing mimicked his nervous stutter with a fish-eating grin plastered on her face. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, circumstances ignored. You mind if I stay aboard your ship for a spell? Fins are a lil’ sore from all that thrashing around, and you did kinda steal the mackerel dinner I was tryin’ to catch.”

“Oh!” Star Point’s eyes grew wide. “Of course I wouldn’t mind. Make yourself at home. Y-you just hold tight. I’ll be back in a flash.”

Flowing waved a fin, and let out a little chuckle as the stallion vanished into the small fishing ship’s superstructure.

While he was gone, Flowing took to looking around the deck of the vessel. The fishing ship was small--she was probably only ever used to week-long treks out onto the Celestial Sea, and certainly not for a crew of much more than three or four.

She saw ships only on rare occasions. Fishing wasn’t a popular career choice for ponies so much as an occasional hobby for some, but it was a lucrative one all the same. Ponies themselves didn’t consume fish to the degree that seaponies and hippogriffs did, but that did not make it any less of a viable resource. The seas held plenty of bountiful harvest, and there were always those craving a more exotic delicacy.

Besides fishing boats, contact with ponies was pretty rare. Usually they made it a point to surface and chat when they spotted them above, but seaponies generally preferred to reside in the sea’s twilight zones, where sunlight was rarer and the fish were less bountiful to attract foreigners fishing. Even so, the seaponies who resided in Seaquestria had been warned time and time again by Queen Novo against contact with the ‘above world’, as she called it.

As a result, the larger majority of seaponies Flowing’s age hadn’t even seen a pony up close and personal before. She truly was a lucky one among her kind.

There was a storage bin filled with water off to one corner of the deck of the ship and Flowing flopped her way across the deck of the ship towards it. Probably not a very graceful sight, but thankfully there was nobody but the seagulls to see it. Once there, she curled her long tail and promptly kicked back, sending her arching gracefully over the wood and into the storage bin.

The splash was enormous, and she hit the sun-warmed seawater feeling wonderfully refreshed, letting out a long sigh of relief. Star Point returned after several seconds, the earth pony carrying a small basket and a large pitcher of lemonade in his mouth. He noticed her, perched over the edge of the bin looking back at him, the dangling angler light atop her head swaying back and forth as she regarded him curiously. He was taking his time reaching her, using it to stare awestruck at the undoubtedly strange creature lounging on the deck, in the rain-water from the night before.

“You haven’t seen a seapony before, have you?” Flowing ventured eventually.

“W-what?”

She snickered, reaching a fin over to grab the glass of lemonade and take a little sip. “It’s okay, I don’t mind you staring. Y’know, I haven’t actually seen an earth pony, either.”

He blinked, looking rather surprised by that. The idea that he was as foreign to her as she was to him seemed to finally click. “Really?”

She nodded. “Really. You all that handsome, or are you an exception?”

He gawked, again. Flowing snickered. It was probably cruel of her, but seeing the stallion so flustered only made her want to tease him even more.

“Stallion of few words, eh?”

“S-sorry! J-just… I mean, I should be the one saying that to you. I’ve heard the tales about the mermares out in the deep water, but I always just thought they were… y’know… foals tales. And now here you are--sittin’ in my livewell, no less!--looking like you just swam outta one.”

Star Point said it with a small smile of his own, the compliment seeming like it had taken him a good deal of courage just to get through. Shells protect this poor colt, Flowing thought to herself. She supposed it took a certain sort of… less-sociable-sort, to pursue such a solitary career, so she shouldn’t have been too surprised that he seemed a tad nervous.

“Handsome, and a sweet-talker.” Flowing said it with a smirk. “I think maybe I caught the lucky catch. Y’know, my ma said that my second cousin twice removed had Siren in her bloodline. I just never believed her.”

Finally, finally(!), Flowing got a laugh out of the stallion. Not a nervous little chuckle to diffuse internal tension, an actual genuine laugh, as he sat down at the edge of the tank beside Flowing. He shoved his snout into the basket he’d brought, producing two rather scrumptious looking tuna sandwiches. One was passed over to Flowing, who took it greedily in both fins and started digging into.

“Woah, woah…” she breathed, on her first bite. “So this is bread!”

He didn’t speak for a moment, the cogs turning for a moment, before he facehoofed at his own foolishness. “Heh. Guess that’s a new experience for you, too, huh?”

She grinned. “Everything is a new experience when you live most of your life underwater, Star Point.”

“Okay, okay, fair,” he said, “You, uh. You like it?”

“It’s amazing!” She plucked the slice from the top and started nibbling on the corner, letting the rest balance on the rim of the water container. She was amazed at how easy it was to eat! It wasn’t like the kelp salads or raw mackerel dinners she’d gotten so used to devouring every day at all, and yet somehow it didn’t seem any less filling.

“It’s so… so… airy!”

Star Point tilted his head. “Er… airy?”

“Yeah!” she clamored, her dorsal fins waving excitedly. “Like, you hardly have to chew on it or anything! Airy!”

He snickered. “Well, I’ll have to tell my ma that her bread-baking skills have the approval of the seaponies.”

“That’ll be a tale,” she said, snort-laughing. “Y’from one of them coast towns, then? Most fisherponies are.”

He nodded. “Baltimare. Born and raised. Nice enough place…”

There seemed to be more to the statement that was lost as he trailed off. An unspoken ‘but’ at the conclusion of Star’s ‘nice enough.’ Sipping her lemonade thoughtfully, Flowing decided that there would be no harm if she were to press it some more. It wasn’t often she had the chance to make friends from the coast, after all.

“...but still leaves ya wanting?” she guessed, licking the last bits of tuna and bread crumbs off of her fins.

He shrugged. “Always liked the sea. Always felt more at home out here, with a big ol’ boat beneath my hooves and the sea. Feelin’ the way it rocks and bows underneath me. I, er.” He let out a sigh, seeming to contemplate whether or not he thought Flowing wanted to hear it. Her curious, widened eyes seemed to tell him that she did, and so he pressed forth.

“I never really felt at home with other ponies,” he admitted. “Not for any length of time, anyways. I mean, I like them, and I’m happy to spend time with them, but… only sometimes. Only rare-times, even.”

Flowing gave a knowing nod. “That why you chose to be a fisherpony?”

“Yeah. Well, that, and my family owned the boat, so…” He shrugged again. “‘Sides, I like it. Being out here, by myself. Nothing but me, the waves, the gulls…”

“Ain’t cramping your style then?”

He laughed. “No, no, you’re a welcome soul, Miss Flowing.”

Flowing’s smile grew wider. “And you, an unexpected and exciting surprise, Mister Star Point.”

He smirked back. “What about you? What’s a lovely lass like yourself doing out in the deep sea all by herself?”

At that, Flowing had to pause. She’d been so familiar with steering her conversation with Star Point that, having it turned back towards her, bade her stop and consider for a moment.

Truthfully, she hadn’t really even known herself why she had left Seaquestria with only a few vague words to her friends and folks, nor where she had been intending to go as she did so. She hadn’t really known why she hadn’t turned back after several days and instead kept on swimming further and further west, surfacing every once in a while to observe how the sky, the clouds, the world around her changed and remained the same as she swam.

Then again, perhaps that was, itself, the only real reason she had to have. The same reason she saw seagulls flying over open sea, miles from the islands they called home. That inherent desire to explore and wander that lay within so many that called the ocean their home. In that sense, she was no different from Star Point.

“Guess I just… wanted some excitement,” she admitted. “We… don’t have a lot of it, where I come from. Seaquestria can be beautiful, sure, but it’s… well, it's so dark, all the time. And so many of us are so afraid to even venture too far from the deep sea that we know. There’s dangerous stuff—in the sea, and on land, and our Queen doesn’t like it when we wander around stirrin’ the pot.”

Star gave a nod, but didn’t interrupt her.

“But sometimes the quiet of the sea can just be…” Her voice grew a little bit softer, until she trailed off entirely. Suddenly she became aware of how warm the water seemed to be all around her. Or was it just her beating heart?

It didn’t matter. Star Point took the word from her before she could say it.

“Lonely,” he said, soft and low.

“Yeah…” she retreated into the water a little bit, letting her tail curl around the length of the water bin. “Lonely. I guess I left home because I felt lonely. And… I dunno what I was thinking, really. I mean. Leaving home alone cause you’re lonely doesn’t make a lot of sense, but…”

“But I get it,” Star Point said. He didn’t elaborate further, but Flowing saw his eyes searching the deck of the boat, and they said all that he couldn’t have.

“Guess it wasn’t such a crummy idea for either of us, after all, eh?” Flowing said.

“Would…” Star Point bit his lip, seeming to wonder whether or not he was being too fast, too forwards. Flowing didn’t care. Whatever he was selling, she felt quite certain that she wanted it. Star Point rose as he spoke, which meant that he was standing a little taller than Flowing’s lying and submerged form.

“I mean,” he continued, one hoof scratching at the old wood of the fishing boat’s deck. “If you’re just wandering, and you’ve got nowhere to go… You don’t… have to take off when I dump ya back over the deck like I’d already fished my limit.”

Flowing laughed. “The fishing jokes are gonna get tiresome eventually, Star Point.”

“Have they, yet?”

She laughed again. “No.”

“Then how bout ya stick around ‘till they do? Sound like a plan?”

Flowing’s smile was warmer than the sun beating down mercilessly on the ship’s deck.

“Sounds like a plan.”