Rising Tides, Sinking Skies
I was just a filly when the waters came.
No one knew where it came from or how. The water just was. There were no torrential rains. No massive ice melts. One day every lake, every river, every pond out of nowhere began to take on water and burst its banks.
Ponies tried to stop it, of course. They built dams and flood walls and invested countless bits in researching solutions. But no matter what they tried, whatever water they removed or displaced was always replenished by the next day.
Not even Princess Celestia herself, embodiment of the sun and all its heat, could stop the rising tide. Her solar magic erased huge swathes of water, miles and miles of it with every pass... but even she couldn't be everywhere at once. The water always came back. And it never stopped rising.
We thought that was the worst of it.
And then the first of the great Cloud Cities fell.
No one saw it coming, but maybe we should have. Even before it all Las Pegasus had already been bloated and heavy with steel and dazzling lights. They needed teams of pegasi just to keep it aloft. But it was profitable, so the ponies in charge kept it flying.
Until one summer morning when over ten thousand homes, shops, and casinos fell from the sky and sank in the depths of the only recently named Lake Luxury.
There was a nationwide day of mourning to remember the ponies who had died. Ceremonies, speeches, even a memorial in Canterlot inscribed with all their names. I saw it myself once, back before the nobility built their great sea walls and locked the gate.
A tragic accident, they called it. Poor maintenance and bad luck. An inevitability of cut-rate construction. A tragedy, but no one connected it to the rising water. There was no reason to.
And then Nimbusberg followed it a few months later.
After that was Thunderstead. Then Dewford. Cirrusshire. Neighwark.
Nowadays there’s only Cloudsdale left. At least, we all assume so. It’s hard to say when no one’s seen the city in years. Not since it became the Eye of the Eternal Storm. A never-ending cyclone powered by the wingbeats of thousands of pegasi, towering high enough into the sky to be the only true landmark left above the surface. Sometimes rumors make their way out, but rumors only. Rumors that there's not much of a city left; just one giant weather factory filled with barracks and cloud generators that run day and night. Stories about an endless cycle of siphoning, patching, and fitful sleep. Whispers that if they were to stop, even for a day, the last cloud city would crumble and fall like the rest.
It only hurt their efforts that Pegasus magic is so weak now. Before, you could build a whole house of clouds and only need to do a little maintenance once a week to keep it together. Now, if I make a pillow when I go to sleep, I’ll wake up with my head on the boat’s hard wooden seat.
And yet they keep going. Trying to preserve some last vestige of the old world like an elderly pet.
I’m glad I didn’t go there when she gave me the chance.
Life is simpler on a boat. Mine’s a sturdy little thing I bought off a salvage diver in New Haven. Just big enough for myself, my supplies, and some cargo. I don’t need much more than that.
I save the engines for emergencies; gemstones aren’t cheap, charged ones even less so. I was never that good with Pegasus magic, but I can at least make enough wind to get from island to island.
Trading's not an easy life, but it has its perks. I get to visit the different settlements, keep in touch with old friends, and there's always a buyer somewhere for salvage from one drowned village or another.
Most settlements are decent enough, provided you know somepony inside. Applebloom still waives the duty fee whenever I make a run to the Sweet Apple Dome. It’s one of the safer settlements, provided you don’t mind crossbred seaweed-apples and the ever-present knowledge that a million tons of water are suspended above you just beyond the grow-crystals and obsidian dome. Not great for pegasi, though. We get antsy without a sky.
The Flood was a blessing to noble families of Canterlot; the ones rich enough to buy up the mountaintops before their bits lost their value and build their own little kingdoms where they could rule as they pleased. I've heard their mountain fortresses are like little slices of the past inside, but non-citizens aren't allowed past the outer seagates. And citizenship comes at a price only the truly foolish or desperate are willing to pay.
The Flotillas are a dangerous mixed bag. Some are ponies who gave up on finding unclaimed dry land. Some are pirates and looters. Some are one pretending to be the other. That’s a deadly mistake you only make once.
I don’t bother with them. Trust is a rare currency these days.
I hear in the far north, Empress Cadence's been implementing some desperate scheme of artificial tribalism to try and bring back the wendigos. It might cost a thousand years of friendship, but at least you can trot on ice.
With the ponies I know, the favors I’ve saved, I could settle almost anywhere. New Haven. Port Appleloosa. I could probably even talk my way into Canterlot if anyone would actually faithfully deliver a message to Twilight. Sweetie Belle begs me to stay every time I bring more fabric to Rarity’s compound.
But I can’t.
I was born a pegasus, but denied the sky. First by stunted wings, and then again when the magic faded.
But when I stand at the prow of my boat, with a strong wind behind me and nothing but hundreds of miles of empty water ahead…
…I can’t tell the sea from the sky.
Author's Note
Fun Fact: The first draft of this story was written on a typewriter in the Quills & Sofas room at the final Bronycon.
