Bluegill Brine was asleep when the rumbles started. They rippled through the water, then through her head and tail fins, tingling her scar until she sat up. Brine thought it was just a seaquake until she realized she'd been reclining on her back. Whatever quake was happening, it was coming from the Land. In Brine's experience, Land disturbing Sea was very bad.
The rumbles came again.
Gurgling with apprehension, Brine darted from her reef hovel, twirling around in the shallows. Night. No sun to act as a guide, but the Bright Tower on the cliff was still shining down. Brine found most Land things confusing and scary, but the Bright Tower wasn't one of them. Okay, maybe how it shined was a little confusing, but it definitely wasn't scary. Whenever the sun went down or the fog got thick or the clouds got stormy, the Bright Tower turned on and gave Brine something warm to look up to. Right now it was illuminating the source of the rumbles: a massive twisted machine barreling across the clifftop.
Brine gurgled with horror as the machine slammed into the Bright Tower. Metal on stone echoed over the water and a hideously huge crack split the point of impact, base to light source.
Brine had been a small fry when she first found the Bright Tower. She'd been less than three days hatched, alone and drifting. There had been other hatchlings with her, at the beginning, but they'd each been quicker or stronger and before long they'd swam off and left her behind. Nothing remained in the open water, not even waves, so the fry who would one day call herself Brine poked her head out of the endless water. Just to see if the world really had washed away without her.
It hadn't. Near the horizon, a tiny drifting flame caught her lonely eye. With nothing else to swim towards, she'd paddled hard and fast. Brine's memories of arriving in the bay were spotty due to how young and exhausted she was when she arrived. She had nopony to confirm this, but that first flame seemed to have broken away from the Bright Tower, not actually be part of the tower itself. She recalled it passing over her head as she swam, like a lantern in flight. Fantastical, but she'd probably never find out what it was. And either way, Brine had made it. Strength fully spent and coastline finally in sight, Brine had slipped under the breaking surf, light from the Bright Tower's beacon guiding her towards a seaweed bed in the soft sand below.
The mechanical monster was backing up, and Brine dared to hope it would pivot to go away. Then it rammed the Bright Tower again, tearing the wall away and causing the beacon's light to sputter. Brine gurgled fearfully, mournfully, and her scar throbbed as it always did when her heart rate was up. But the turmoil of Maretime Bay's only Sea Pony was drowned out by the roar of engines and crumbling of brickwork. Her precious Tower and the monster attacking it were both on Land. The one place Brine couldn't go, even if she had the bravery and brawn to defend the light. But she didn't. Brine had nothing. All she could do was bob like a helpless buoy as glass cracked and the beacon, the only companion she'd ever had, snuffed out forever.
Somepony was panic whinnying. It wasn't Brine, whose lack of lungs was already making her lightheaded and fuzzy from her head being above water this long. She ducked down and rubbed her eyes with her forefins, gulping gillfuls of water while trying to get accustomed to the sudden gloom. When Brine resurfaced, a second whinny had joined the first, both voices coming from two flailing, four-legged shapes clinging to the side of exposed rooms. The sight of them made Brine cower in the dark water, her inexperienced mind racing. She knew Land Ponies made machines. Every twelve moons they all gathered together to show off new ones made in the town's biggest building. So what was all of this? Machines... frightened Land Ponies... the Bright Tower... Brine's precious, obliterated Bright Tower...
Another rumble, the loudest and last of them all, frothed the breaking waves around Brine. She looked up in time to see the metal monster topple over onto the ground. The Bright Tower toppled too, but in the opposite direction: it was throttling down toward the bay. Brine couldn't physically scream, but the wreckage crashed down on top of her before she would have had time to anyway.
Brine was a small fry again. Watching the Land Ponies gathering for another annual machine showcase. She'd only been here two years, but both of the town's previous gatherings had been in the giant building further inland. Never on the beach. Some smirking red colt was settling down behind the wheel of the main attraction: a sailboat with no sails. Brine's instincts told her to stay away, far from sight, but curiosity was too strong to resist. Who knew when so many Land Ponies would be so near again? Beach gatherings didn't happen every year, after all.
And so Brine slithered through the muddy shallows. Flat on her stomach, far from the surface, yet close enough to hear the Land Ponies making excited murmuring sounds. Rightfully so, since the average everymare could only speculate on the inner workings of a sailboat with no sails! Brine, in a unique position to ponder, guessed that the boat moved with limbs like she did. Daintily, she drifted under its hull to explore, befuddled when she didn't find any fins.
The boat's propeller found her though.
Flesh flayed from fishbone as Maretime Bay went from having one Sea Pony to having three quarters of one. The shallows choked with red clouds and shredded scales so Brine's flailing, crippled retreat was more of a blind delirious dash. Her insides, better described as 'outsides' now, were searing and spasming from the sting of saltwater exposure. Then she finally went numb from shock.
None of the Land Ponies noticed the carnage below. Too much attention being commanded by the snazzy speedboat driving deftly down the coastline. Still, if any donned a snorkeling mask to look, they'd have seen chopped chunks of chum, some shredded scraps of Sea Pony tailfin, and an inky ichorous cloud billowing from the gutted gasping victim. Pale as a ghost from blood loss, the mangled mess of Brine's body sank into a hole in the nearby reef, darkness thick and inviting as a grave. There she huddled, arm across her chest to hold in the innards she still had. Sporadic spasms shook her body. Some were jolts from exposed nerve endings. Most were labored beats from her weakened heart.
Spiritually, Brine never really left that hovel. Physically, she slunk out from the reef a few nights later.
The Bright Tower was active that evening. Its light swept back and forth as it surveyed the bay. One pass refracted the water near the seaweed bed, where a starving Sea Pony tore a trembling mouthful of aquatic grass. From temple to tailtip, a clot of scaleless shredded skin disfigured the entire left side of her body.
Brine stayed away from Land for a long time after that.
The roar of continuing rubble jolted Brine back to her senses, and she dove down towards the sea floor with the Bright Tower's ruins still splashing down around her. Water rushed past her ears as she rocketed, loud but not loud enough to drown the roar of the pursuing wreckage nor the phantom remembered whir of boat propeller.
Never again.
Brine's scar ached from exertion, and knowing it was there supercharged her swimming.
Never ever again.
With the bottom of the bay suddenly in sight, Brine's instincts knew to start dodging. A colossal shadow loomed over her, so she veered hard to her right. An instant later, a section of wall plunged harmlessly into the sand where she'd just been. Brine breached upwards, rushing tailcurrent only barely rippling her headfin as she twirled deftly away. Other sections of the Bright Tower were spiraling down too, but none landed even close to nearby. Brine trilled in wordless celebration, back arched and face rapturously lifted to the unobstructed moon above.
Brine was a fish who had never been introduced to the concept of glass, so when a monstrous, invisible weight suddenly smashed her nose in she was too stunned to react. Before she knew it, Brine was pinned to the muck by a ring of window panels she could neither see nor understand. All she knew was they were hot. And heavy. And slowly squeezing the life from her gills as she feebly pushed against them.
Her scar ached. Everything ached, but still the panels didn't move. Brine flopped like the dying fish she was, gurgling with panic, then fury, then defiance of those uncaring, unknowing, unreachable Land Ponies.
Up above, on the cliffside of Maretime Bay, Sunny Starscout joined three gemstones together in ancient formation.
Brine gasped as a tangible pulse of energy fizzled the water around her. Was the world more luminous? Or was she more luminous? Brine felt like she'd just become her own Bright Tower, her own furnace of encouragement and resolve. Not that she was aware, but the ring of windows around her had indeed been the top of the lighthouse and her spot in their middle was where the broken former beacon had been. Unlike the former beacon though, Brine wasn't destined to be enclosed. With renewed strength, she heaved away the tower top and wriggled to the surface.
Somehow, the sky was bright when Brine broke the surface. Dawn? Magic? Both? She was too buzzed to make sense of the landscape. A blunted stump remained where the Bright Tower had been, but more gripping than that were the Land Ponies clustered around it: They were flying.
Okay maybe not all of them, but a good third were flapping wings Brine'd never seen before. It was dazzling for a creature of the sea to see creatures of the land become creatures of the sky. The world had changed, that much was clear. From her spot far below in the bay, Brine flapped her rapturous fins, wanting nothing more than to soar up and join them.
Nothing happened. She was still just a fish.
Some other ponies, ones who weren't flying, had magic swirls around their heads. Around their manes. Around their horns. Brine felt her own forehead, hoping for some surprise transformation there, but her face was featureless. Aside from the old scar that started near her cheek, anyway.
Brine's eyes burned, both from tears and air exposure. What force of nature was it that hated her so much? A grand thing had clearly just happened. A momentous, mystifying thing. But like every earthshaking event on Land, Brine was been left out of it. No, she was worse than left out; just like at the beach expo, she'd gotten curious and hopeful and the Land nearly killed for her daring to poke her head out.
Brine slipped back underwater, cursing the ocean even as it filled her gills and brought her breath back. Down she drifted to mingle with the broken ruins of the Bright Tower. They littered the sea floor, a reminder she had nothing to look up to now. All of Brine's hopes were sunken, down below in the mud.
She paddled listlessly towards her hovel only to find the reef wasn't there anymore. Scattered shells and chunks of coral drifted near an impact crater of broken brick. With nowhere to go and nothing left, Brine held her tail in her forelimbs. Would her own body dissolve too now? What else could possibly bring her any lower?
Something crinkled Brine's dorsal fin, and she reflexively spun around. She'd backed into the glass window ring again, now settled upright on the sea floor like a squat cylindrical fence. Since the panels were warm instead of scalding now, Brine reclined against them to watch the last of the Tower's detritus settle around her. There were books soaked to the point of illegibility. There were canned vegetables that Brine had no need for, even if she knew what they were. Clothing fell like snow along with shoes, hair ties, and even a set of roller skates. All meaningless belongings of whoever had lived here.
Brine tilted her head up, still able to see the soaring shapes of Pegasi in the sky. If there was any hope of salvation left, she felt it being carried away by the current, alongside all the scattered junk around her.
Then a rounded fishbowl, just big enough for Brine's head, landed in her lap.
Author's Note
A closeup of Brine from the cover art. Ahobo did a brilliant job of making her scar clearly visible, but subtle enough that you won't notice without looking for it.
Sunny Starscout stood on the beach, forehead sweating with concentration as she levitated another piece of old newspaper. After her magic made a few fumbling folds, she set the toy boat adrift in the shallows.
"Ooh, that one's looking really good!" Izzy was sitting in the sand on her haunches, using hooves and horn together to fold her own boat.
"Still rough and clumsy though," Sunny admitted. A week had passed since the return of magic, but her skill with it wasn't really improving. She could only lift the lightest objects, and she certainly couldn't cast spells. Sailing paper boats together had been Izzy's idea. An informal test to see if a happier Sunny was a more magical Sunny. Right now, the poorly folded paper boat was listing to one side, taking in water and slowly sinking. Izzy piped up again when she noticed Sunny's horn sputter like a dying candle flame.
"Uhh... hey! We don't hafta stick to just boats, ya know. There's lots of other things to do on the beach." She glanced around, but aside from the two discouraged friends and their stack of scavenged newspaper, the sand was empty and deserted.
"It's okay Iz," Sunny assured. "I'll just make a replacement one." She almost added 'what's one more thing lost to the bottom of the bay?', but instead she chuffed to clear her mopey mind, levitating another paper and flashing what she hoped was a convincing smile.
"Skipping rocks!" Izzy blurted. "Throwing is waaaay easier than folding. Watch!" Exaggerating her exertion, she levitated a smooth stone from the sand, then lobbed it into the breaking waves. "Oh, bummer. Not even one skip. I bet if you tried, you'd be leagues better than I am."
Izzy was an awful actress, and her sloppy attempt at sloppiness was almost enough to make Sunny laugh. Almost. Horn more solid than it had been all day, she raised a rock of her own.
"Okay, you're on. Let's see how many jumps I can get. One... two... thr-"
Sunny balked when something round and glass glinted between waves.
"Hey, izzat a message in a bottle?" Izzy was standing now, swishing sand from her tail.
"I... I don't know, Iz. Looks kinda big to me. Is it coming closer?"
The orb, (Sunny could see now that the thing was round as a beach ball) steadily made its way towards the shore. Not bouncing like litter or floating like driftwood though. It surged forward a bit before stopping. Then it surged forward again. Those movements matched the strides of a confident lifelong swimmer.
"Holy moly Sunny, it’s a helmet. And it looks like a pony is wearing it!"
Izzy splashed out to meet the mystery diver, saltwater wetting her face and mane. Sunny followed, more cautious than her friend, but more concerned that a pony with a fishbowl head might need help. Especially since the fishbowl appeared completely filled with water.
The swimmer halted in front of Izzy, flat on its belly in a low tide so shallow it only came up to Izzy's knees. "Hi down there," Izzy invited. "Can you hear me through that thing? Need help yanking it off? Or standing up?"
The swimmer nodded to answer Izzy's first question, then shook its head to answer her other two. Sunny finally caught up and stood shoulder to shoulder with her friend. The swimmer's fishy eyes flicked back and forth between the two Land Ponies with an expression Sunny couldn't decipher. Then the swimmer stood up.
Sunny noticed several things at once.
The swimmer's "fishbowl helmet" was actually a lighthouse lantern safety cover. Its make was identical to the one lost to sea a week ago. It was upside down and filled with water churning gently from intake on the wearer's gilled neck. Strapped around the swimmer's midsection was another familiar apparatus: an old saddle belt a teenage Sunny once modified for Pegasus cosplays. The swimmer was wearing it wrong, with the wing mounts pointed down instead of up. And instead of wooden wings on the belt docks, a pair of Sunny’s missing roller skates were propping up the wearer's limbless rear end.
Sunny stared dumbfounded at the shambled suit of her old possessions. Those mechanical clothes tailored from lost offal. The fishy equine wearing them swayed in the seaside breeze, shivering from the unfamiliar feel of air but holding steady as its eyes met Sunny's. Land and Sea Ponies were face to face. Equals.
"Holy moly, what happened to your side?" Izzy seemed oblivious the merpony's miraculous nature, wading around and gawking at something that made the merpony's face redden with shame. Its head fin, Sunny noticed, was draped to the left like a mane, carefully angled to cover a nasty looking facial scar. Or no, wait. The merpony shuffled her finny forelimbs and the skates pivoted to reveal an old injury that started on their wearer’s face and ran down the entire length of her nervously twitching body.
"Are you okay?" Izzy was babbling. "Sunny, is she okay? Should we do something?"
The merpony looked submissively at Sunny, who cleared her throat to find her voice.
"You... you live in the bay?"
A nod.
"All that stuff you're wearing... it's from the parts of my house that fell in."
A shrug.
"Oh my Faust. Then the rubble must've landed on you. Hurt you. Left you with that-"
The merpony burbled some muted noises that weren't part of any language Sunny recognized. Its facial expression and gesticulating forelimbs conveyed the message though: Not you. Something else. All in the past and best forgotten.
"Hey Sunny, not to interrupt, but Twenty Questions isn't gonna get us anywhere fast. Did your dad's notes have anything in them about ponies from the ocean? Or how to understand the way they talk?"
The Sea Pony's ears had perked up at Izzy's question. It waggled its hairless eyebrow ridges, clearly on board with the research suggestion. Sunny chewed her lower lip, as she often did when thinking hard.
"Maybe something... about hippogriffs and a pearl… and magic that's ocean related..."
Izzy nudged Sunny to pull her out of her naval gazing. "We should go check, Sun." The Sea Pony nodded assent.
"Um, yeah. Okay. Sure. Maretime Bay has seen heaps of new faces over the past week. One more trotting down mainstreet probably won’t flip any lids. How 'bout it, fishy? Think those new wheels of yours can carry you to my lighthouse?"
The Sea Pony's jaw dropped at the word 'lighthouse.' Then it nodded so enthusiastically Sunny thought its makeshift helmet might fly right off.
"Sounds like the yays have it," Izzy exalted. Then she innocently addressed the newcomer again. "Anything else on your mind?"
Bluegill Brine regarded the two Land Ponies who'd spoken to her. Who'd greeted her. Even invited her into the town. Carefully, shakily, fully aware she was new to balancing on four legs, Brine reached out to her new friends and pulled them close for a hug.
"Well this certainly doesn't need a translation," Izzy joked. Sunny simply nodded and returned the slimy Sea Pony's embrace. Her phantom horn softly sparked with renewed light, and it stayed that way as she led the trio's trot up the beach.
To Brine's eye, Sunny's horn was a ponified beacon, guiding the way towards a welcoming rebuilt lighthouse in the distance.
Author's Note
Sequel!
EBluegill's Snowfall
A seapony wants to know where all her land friends have gone. What's that falling from the sky? Why are all the ponies of Maretime Bay prancing around in it?
Jaded Hearts ·
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