It was a short ride in retrospect, but at the time it seemed to Turnip like an eternity of sharp turns, sharp bumps, and sharp edges. Before it was over, she had a few more bruises on top of the old ones and a cut on her left foreleg where a bad jolt had sent her up into the end of the broken cradle bar. After yet another wide, skidding turn, Summer called for a halt. Unfortunately for Turnip, it was not the good kind of halt.

“Target ahead, bearing ten o’clock from our position, four hundred meters!” Summer yelled. “Aim for the rear one!”

Turnip jostled with Thrash to see what the turret was pointing at. Over an open field ahead of them ran two of the enemy machines broadside to them, one illuminated by the headlight of the other. To their left, along a dirt path, she spotted the lights of a truck or two; ahead, Turnip could make out the taillights of the rest of the convoy. As she watched, the foremost enemy tank fired on the move, and a bright flash blossomed several dozen meters beyond one of the stopped trucks.

“Hold it, Minty!” Supercharger yelled suddenly. Turnip looked over curiously just as the engine roared and everything lurched. She tumbled to the back of the turret, and Thrash held on to his gun.

Turnip picked her aching body back up as Summer indignantly shouted, “Just what is the meaning of this?”

“There’s no time for shooting!” Supercharger yelled back. “I’m gonna ram them!”

“Corporal Twist is a capable gunner, she can…” Summer began coldly, then stopped. A small grin quirked at the edges of her muzzle. With disturbingly good humor, she ordered, “Gunner, turret to nine o’clock.”

They in the turret began to swing around and Turnip lost sight of the rapidly approaching tanks. She propped herself up to look out the loader’s hatch vision port instead. Yep, that dark shape there was it, and any second now…

Turnip dropped down and braced herself against the hull, on top of and next to the empty shell racks, just before a terrific impact knocked the wind out of her with a scraping, grinding sound of tortured metal on metal, like how Turnip imagined a train derailment must sound like. Thrash, hanging on to his gun, was swung around into the side of the turret, where the noise of his impact was drowned out by everything else happening in the moment.

“Target the track!” she dimly heard, as the floor began to tilt up under her. The noise of the gun came with the same lopsided wheeze from the shocks and spat the casing out. It hit the floor and rolled against the collection under Minty’s chair. The floor continued to rise, and the scraping screech only increased in its shrillness.

And then, abruptly, the floor rose to a full diagonal angle, and Turnip slid and then tumbled into the gun cradle, struck it, bounced off, and found herself rolling over spent casings to end up pressed against a larger, older mare. A searing new pain was shooting through her shoulder and she was finding it hard to breathe.

“Loader, armor-piercing!” she heard Summer yell, from somewhere far away. Minty nudged her, then nudged her again harder. Turnip groaned; she’d touched a bad rib.

But she picked herself up. And slipped on a casing that rolled under her. And got up again, throwing a hoof over the undamaged bottom bar of the gun cradle, pulling herself up more.

“Shell,” Turnip managed to croak in the oddly quiet interior. The grinding had stopped and the engine had dropped in revs.

A dazed-looking Thrash, hanging from his gun for dear life, quickly looked over and kicked the last shell out of the rack, where it tumbled down the slope and slammed against Turnip’s hindlegs, all seven kilograms of it. Turnip sucked in a hissing breath through clenched teeth and dropped to all fours and groped for the business end.

“Driver, prepare for a hard reverse spin,” Summer ordered.

Shell in hoof, Turnip strained to lift it up and over her head, over the cradle, and set the nose in the breech. She heaved forward, pushing the length in, closed the breech, and promptly slipped on the discarded casings again.

The instant the breech closed, Minty fired the gun, and the breech recoiled right where Turnip’s head had been an instant before. The sudden percussion had a note of finality to it as the breech ejected the casing of the final shell. It bounced on top of the fallen Turnip, still burning hot from the gun, and though she couldn’t muster the energy to push it off, the problem was solved by itself when Supercharger reversed the tank to more level ground and the hot casing rolled off her and across the floor to bump against Thrash’s hoof.

Summer heaved a deep sigh of obvious relief. Minty deflated back into her seat, looking limp and weary.

“Radiopony, ask the group if they’ve encountered any more enemy armor. Anypony you can’t reach, go through the Major’s radioponies – he has the range we lack.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cashmere squeaked.

Turnip lay in a little pile of pain in the floor. Her part here was done now and there was no need to pretend to have it in her to keep fighting.

“Driver, take us over to those trucks, and we shall see what is the matter.”

The tank backed up and turned and started forward, slowly. The trip took but a minute and then they halted. Summer opened her hatch, looked around warily, and pulled herself out.

“Hey, you lot! Why are you stopped? Explain yourselves!”

A western-accented male voice outside called, “We had a breakdown, sair! We can’t make heads ‘r tails o’ what’s wrong… whoever worked on this earlier didn’t tell anypony what they did!”

Ahead, Supercharger sucked in a breath.

“Very well then; we’ll tow the wounded across the bridge. What’s in that other truck?”

“More wounded, sair.”

“If they can, tell them to climb aboard the tank or hoof it. Get your towing cables. Oh, and some of you lot had better go and capture the occupants of that tipped-over tank over there. Corporal Supercharger?”

Turnip listened with closed eye as Summer directed Supercharger to place the tank before the truck. The cables were affixed, ponies were heard clambering over the hull, and then they were away, the engine struggling to pull the extra tons of weight through the transmission’s lackluster torque.

The ride was oddly peaceful. The fighting was too distant for anything to be heard over the constant cacophony of noise the tank made everywhere it went, and the occasional thump as one of their passengers shifted on top. It was difficult for Turnip to remember that every minute that went by, somepony was probably getting hurt or killed. She wondered if Strawberry had already joined those ranks, and decided she didn’t want to know.

After a while, they eased slowly to a halt.

“Corporal, why did you stop?” Summer demanded.

“We’re here,” Supercharger answered simply.

“So I can see. Take us across.”

“Are you sure, ma’am?” Minty cut in. Turnip cracked open her one eye and squinted up at Minty just as the mare pointed ahead. “That bridge doesn’t look like it can take twenty tons. If it collapses, everypony who’s back there fighting right now will have to swim.”

Summer stayed silent, so Minty pressed on. “…And your squad would have to abandon their tanks to the enemy.”

After a further pause, Summer said, “I see. Thank you, Corporal Twist. I fear we shall have to risk it eventually, though.” She pushed open her hatch again. “Cast off that truck, there, and fetch a fuel hose!”

Turnip made a decision. Rising painfully to her hooves, she started climbing over Minty, who sat back and didn’t interfere. She pushed on the hatch, which opened fully only after some shuffling from outside, and slunk out to end up face-to-face with a gaunt-looking burnt-orange stallion, who moved back. Then, Summer noticed her.

“Enlisted Sprout, just what do you think you are doing?”

“Ya don’t need me no more,” Turnip grunted. “I’m just in yer way.”

“Do I need to order you to remain at your post?”

Turnip heaved a sigh and turned slowly to face her, realized she was turning into her blind side, and turned the other way. “‘S not my post no more. ‘S his.” She pointed back at Thrash with her injured forehoof, then used the same forehoof to wipe at the blood running down her chin. It only smeared it some more. “Ya ain’t got no shells left. I’m goin’.”

She turned and began to pick her way down the front of the tank, following behind the burnt-orange stallion. The corner she stepped down was bent in, as if by a giant hoof, and the center of the main armor plate was dented and split down the middle with a wide crack, giving a glimpse inside the tank. The blunt shape of an enemy shell remained wedged right in the middle of it.

“Goodbye!” Cashmere called. She had opened her hatch and was forming an obstacle to the ponies still trying to debark.

Turnip paused on the brink of stepping off the nose, then turned and ducked under the gun to stand before the hatch. An earnest little smile graced Cashmere’s delicate pink features. “Don’t worry about me none. Jest…” Turnip paused to swallow down an unexpected lump. “Find out if Corduroy’s okay, okay? Now git back in there.”

With that, she flipped the hatch up, forcing Cashmere to duck or be hit. The hatch hit its seals with a resounding clang of finality. Turnip turned and dove off the tank, a decision she immediately regretted as her foreleg buckled under her the instant she hit the ground. Ow…

She lay in the dirt of the path, gathering her strength, when suddenly she found herself being helped up by another of the walking wounded. It was a cotton-candy-colored mare with a left foreleg tied off at the stump with dirty linen and more wrapped around her midsection. Turnip met her eyes with her good one, nodded, and, unspoken agreement reached, they leaned on each other and began to make their slow six-legged way towards the bridge.

On the cusp of the rickety-looking structure made of logs and hope, Turnip paused and looked back, forcing her companion to stop as well. Summer was looking the other way, calling instructions to the ponies unhitching the truck from the tank. It was just as well. Whatever happened now, the fight was in their hooves, not hers.

“Sorry,” she mumbled to no one in particular, and her and the strange mare crossed together. Awaiting them on the other side, beyond the friendly gun emplacements and machine gun nests, was a veritable swarm of medical ponies bearing the familiar cross-and-four-hearts. Turnip was swiftly separated from her fellow and hustled behind cover, where she was placed on a dirty white stretcher and whisked away to a large field where scores of other stretchers lay in orderly rows. They left her immediately and went back for somepony else.

Turnip lay listening to the song of the wounded for a time; the moans, groans, the silence. She supposed she should well count herself among their number now. All she could think about was how much everything hurt, and how utterly exhausted she was. Looking up at the starlight of the Princess’s heavenly firmament, it was hard to believe that not twelve hours ago she had taken her first life.

Turnip sighed, closed her eyes, and immediately passed out in a deep, exhausted sleep.

/ - / - / = \ - \ - \

Turnip awoke with the sun in her eyes. It was well past midday, and her throat was parched. Luckily, she still had her canteen, and the problem was quickly dealt with. She wiped her mouth, capped the canteen, and looked around.

She was lying on her side on a blanket outside a large tent, and she had neighbors. She sat up. The flap of the tent was open, and inside she saw more wounded lying, some on improvised cots, some on the ground like she was, with only a simple barrier layer between them and the dirt. There were a hoofful of tents like this one, and she realized they were the same kind used for the old casualty ward, just a lot fewer in number. They must be reserved for those hurt too badly to risk leaving them in the sun.

Army nurses and a few doctors scurried about the area, ducking in and out of tents, carrying water, fresh bandages, surgical tools, and whatever else it took to manage a thrown-together field hospital. Turnip observed the nurses for a long time. None of them were the mountain-rose-colored mare she was hoping to see.

She tried to stand, and found that not only had her right foreleg picked up more bandages, her left had some too. She could barely to stand on the gimp foreleg, and she hobbled over to the prone form of another pony to “borrow” his crutch for her own use. None of the overworked medical ponies so much as glanced her way as she slipped out of the field hospital, crutch in hoof.

Where to? She asked herself. Where else? Was the response. She wandered around, talking to ponies and asking where the supply dump was. Most of her burning questions were answered in this way by the time she reached where the new supplies were being distributed.

It seemed that the operation to rejoin Equestrian lines had been a complete success, though not without its costs. Turnip knew all about that. Most soldiers she talked to could hardly believe that an entire company’s worth of ponies had made it all the way from the old front line to here. It was swiftly becoming something of a local legend, and Major Grapevine’s name was on everypony’s lips as the unicorn who had made it all happen. Despite being a unicorn, his permanently messy appearance and pragmatic attitude had greatly endeared him to earth pony enlisted troops all throughout the new camp.

Turnip knew that, in truth, only about three-quarters of a platoon out of the whole company were still capable of fighting. The rest were either dead and buried along the way, or like her, laid up with only the buzzing flies and fellow invalids for company. She felt that everypony of the bunch, including her, was due for some leave for sure.

“Cigarettes, please,” she said to the harried pony who was busy sorting boxes just pulled off the back of a nearby truck.

“What?” he glanced at her and did a double-take, almost dropping a ration crate on his forehooves. “Oh, er, here,” he said, pulling out an unfamiliar compact field ration and flinging it her direction distractedly. “Actually, have another one. They’ve got cigarettes in them now.”

Turnip thanked him, gathered her loot onto her back, and hobbled away. A pony should take the good with the bad, and if that meant exploiting her wretched appearance for her own gain, then so be it.

She found the tanks, such as they were, some time later. Of course, she knew where they were since long before she got the rations, but she was in no hurry. Hobbling up, Turnip began to feel like she had somehow lucked out with getting the snot beat out of her three ways to sun-day.

There was no rest for anypony capable of working, it seemed. The crews of each tank were hard at work alongside the motorpool ponies to repair and restore every one of the hoofful of tanks there. There was Summer’s big long-barrel infantry support model, of course, and two of the three anti-tank models beside it; the third was absent. Near them stood Captain Havoc’s personal tank, a great big square of a machine who’s exact role Turnip had never been quite clear on, and one of 5th Armored, D Company’s slope-faced command tanks, the other one being absent as well. None of the other members of the old company were there.

The steady crackle of welding machines rang through the air as Turnip made her way over to Summer’s tank. She noticed some flowing lettering on the barrel jacket she’d missed before, white lettering with black accent, spelling out “-ing Ranger”. The rest was obliterated by a gouge in the steel of the gun barrel. Turnip shrugged.

“Turnip! What are you doing here?” Cashmere’s voice exclaimed. Turnip turned her head; the mare was cleaning the mud-spattered hull with a wet rag. On the other side of the turret, an arc flash spilled around the edges of the metal.

Turnip shrugged. “Bored. Hungry. These here rations got cigarettes in them now, did ya know that?”

She held up one of the packages and tore open the end with her teeth. It was a “supper” ration, according to the printed label. Sitting down, she ripped open the main course and started eating the oats dry. Honestly, she was getting a bit sick of eating oats all the time, but she had to admit there were few things better for a fighting pony to eat. Well, eggs would be better, but those would probably go bad in transit.

“Cigarettes? Where?” came Cashmere’s soft voice from close at hoof. Turnip looked at the pony standing next to her. There weren’t friends, but…

“Prob’ly these,” Turnip said, nudging a small package over with her gimp leg. “And wouldja look at that, they even come with matches.” She knocked those over to the side as well, tore open the salt ration, and tipped it all back onto her tongue. Mmm, salt. “Light up on yer own time. Refill my canteen from that there water tank yonder, will ya?”

Cashmere swiped the tiny package of cigarettes with the speed of a striking cobra and stashed it under her collar, then picked up Turnip’s canteen and hurried away. Turnip watched her go. She resolved to leave as soon as her meal was done. There really wasn’t anything here for an injured enlisted loader like her to do but be in the way. There were worse things than laying around among a bunch of wounded with nothing to do, and she would know – she had laid around with the dead.

She swallowed the entire ration of sugar just as Cashmere reappeared at her side, hoofing her the now filled canteen. “Thank ya,” Turnip said, “Apple slice?”

Cashmere eagerly swiped one of the three slices of dehydrated apple the ration had come with and swallowed it like a hungry bird. Turnip took one as well and chewed it slowly. It wasn’t bad; it was just as tasteless as dried apple always was. She tapped the last slice to indicate that Cashmere could have it.

“So,” Turnip began, as Cashmere ate the last slice, “Ya write letters?”

“Yeah…” Cashmere said guardedly, looking at Turnip like the dried apple had been poisoned. “I write to my kin, mostly. Tell ‘em what’s going on. I haven’t got a chance to send the last seven letters I wrote yet.”

Turnip nodded sagely. “It’s good t’ keep in touch with yer folks. If I was any hoof at writin', I’d try an’ do it too.” Cashmere didn’t have anything to say to that, and the silence between them began to stretch. “Tell ya what,” Turnip began again, standing up and getting her crutch under her leg, “Ya can write t’ me anytime. You know the address, eh?”

Cashmere laughed bitterly. “How could I forget?”

Turnip raised her hoof from the crutch to pat Cashmere on her withers. “Attagirl. Git back t’ work.”

And with that, she turned and hobbled away from the tanks. She didn’t look back. Not even once. Not even a peek.

“Oh! ‘Scuse me! Sorry!” Turnip apologized, picking herself up off the ground.

The mare she had run into shook dirt off her bundle of papers and sneered at her. “Lady, next time, look where you’re going!”

And so she returned to the hospital, resigned to a long wait. When she walked back inside the bounds of the area, a nurse who noticed her return scowled at her, and she scowled back. She found her blanket and lay down on her side and lay her stolen crutch to the side.

The day passed in the peculiar way that extreme boredom does to a pony. Every second that ticked by was an eternity, and every hour was nothing. When a doctor called to get everyone’s attention from the center of the space they had been given, she could have sworn she had laid down just a few minutes ago, despite the sun being near the horizon.

The doctor had good news; it seemed that higher-ups had managed to commandeer a riverboat from somewhere and were going to use it to transport the surfeit of casualties that the remnant of section six command had to deal with. The doctors were doing what they could, but in these conditions and without most of their equipment, there was only so much they could do for the wounded. With the majority of the Lost Company – not what the doctor said, but what Turnip had heard the group coined in rumors, suddenly dumped in their laps, they were positively overwhelmed here. Turnip looked around as he spoke; yup.

Well, it seemed the riverboat was scheduled to arrive in the evening and begin taking casualties down the river under cover of darkness, to a point where the army was better equipped to transport all these ponies to actual hospitals. The doctor said this first run would be ponies in critical condition, who would likely die without better facilities, and any room beyond that would be taken by volunteers. He stressed that the first trip was fraught with risk, and likely to be attacked on the way. That didn’t dissuade Turnip any.

The hospital passed the time until the boat arrived in a very different mood than before. Where before, most were content to lie around or hold quiet conversations with their immediate neighbors, ponies now chatted excitedly with each other about the boat and what it could mean. From there, of course, the conversations inevitably bloomed into other matters. Turnip found herself standing in a small knot of other ponies who could still stand without help, discussing fishing with one of the very few pegasi among their number.

“So once ya got yer catfish and ya done measured it, ya take out yer hook and throw it back in the pond. That way ya can ketch it again later,” Turnip explained. “There’s this one catfish I done caught five times in a row – my cousin named ‘im Mister Gills, and I guess it stuck, ‘cause now I call ‘im that too!”

“Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second,” the pegasus waved a foreleg in front of him with a frown. “You go catfishing, and you don’t eat the catfish?”

“…Why would I eat a catfish.”

“Because!” he protested, rustling his wings. One of them was mangled and misshapen under its linen wrapping. “They’re tasty! You mean to tell me you live in catfish country and you DON’T eat them? You’re really missing out!”

“Blech.” Turnip made a show of sticking her tongue out in disgust. “No thank ya. ‘Sides, if ya eat ‘em, how’re ya gonna have any fish to catch next year?”

“You fish responsibly,” the pegasus said loftily, with a little grin. “Fishing’s no good if you don’t leave some for later, eh?”

“I suppose,” Turnip said dubiously. “Ponies ain’t s’posed to eat fish, anyhow. Jest ain’t right.”

“Sure it is!” he protested again. “Why-”

“ATTENTION EVERYPONY!”

It was the doctor who had delivered the announcement earlier. Perhaps they chose him because of his voice.

“THE BOAT HAS ARRIVED AND THE PATIENTS ARE BEING LOADED NOW!” he shouted. “THERE’S STILL ROOM ABOARD! ANY VOLUNTEERS? RAISE YOUR HOOF!”

Turnip’s hoof shot in the air. Privately, she felt that the method needlessly discriminated against ponies without a foreleg to spare, but perhaps that was the point. She knew if she had a boat full of invalids, she’d want a few of them that could fight.

“Wow, that’s, um…” she heard the doctor say, “Way too many.”

She looked around herself to find that just about everypony who could have their hoof in the air, including her pegasus companion, did. She scowled. These selfish ponies were going to cost her a fast ticket out of here.

The doctor seemed to make up his mind, and he cleared his throat meaningfully. “Alright. Keep those hooves up, and I’ll point out who gets to go. Nurse, stop me when we reach, let’s say, thirty.”

A nurse beside him nodded, and he set off through the crowd. “You. You. You.” He pointed to each pony in turn, and the ponies selected dropped their hoof and gathered unprompted at the edge of the hospital nearest the river. Turnip stopped counting once he passed fifteen; he wasn’t going to pick her.

As he wandered by, though, she decided that wasn’t a reason not to try. She waggled the eyebrow that wasn’t too swollen to move and tried to give the doctor a little grin, which probably looked like a grimace. He noticed her, stopped, and his eyebrows twitched towards a frown. “You,” he said, pointing at her before moving on to another group of ponies, and her heart soared.

“Yes!” she said quietly to herself, putting her hoof back on the crutch. “So, I gotta go, what was yer name again? Not that it matters, of course.”

The pegasus grinned at her, seeming unbothered at being passed over for selection. “Polestar. Yours?”

“Turnip,” she answered. “Don’t die.” It was the best wish for another that she could think of at the moment.

“I’ll never die,” Polestar said as his grin took on an ironic quirk, and then Turnip stepped away and made her way over to the rest of the group, which had already reached twenty-eight members and was waiting for her and one more.

“And…” the doctor said, hoof on his chin in careful deliberation, surveying the camp. He had the power of life or death in his hooves, though perhaps in a different way than usual, and he knew it. “You.” He pointed to a mare with bandages all over her face, neck, and barrel. When she walked over to join the group, Turnip decided that she was a burn victim, by the smell of her.

As soon as everypony was together, they followed an orderly down to the riverside. Along the way they passed some very fresh positions dug in near the top of the slope down to the riverbank. There it was, moored to the shore with a few lines: their salvation. Turnip was amused to notice that the bridge, a ways upstream, was partially collapsed, wooden beams hanging in empty space.

The riverboat was tall and long and barely fit the channel of the river, being only a scant few meters from the opposite bank while being moored to the nearer one. The tall flared smokestack spewed pale grey smoke into the gathering darkness and the wheel paddled slowly to keep the boat from drifting downstream. Turnip hoped the smoke hadn’t given them away too badly. The wooden railings and trim were painted a baby pink color, and the columns supporting the canopy that overhung the deck were decorated with heart designs carved whole into the wood. The windows likewise had charming little heart designs painted above them.

It was, in other words, a near-perfect example of traditional Equestrian design, marred only by the blackout shutters over the windows and other wartime modifications. After spending months existing around only the bare, utilitarian designs of the military, it felt out of place, more like a ghost from a past life than a real vessel. Turnip had to ignore the feeling that if she stepped aboard, it would take her away to some forgotten afterlife. She rubbed her eye and looked again, just to confirm that it was real.

She wasn’t the only pony to think so, she noticed, as several other ponies tapped hesitantly on the gangplank to confirm its corporeality and paused before climbing onto the deck. She made a little three-legged hop down to the deck from the railing, then turned and helped another pony ease her way down. The gangplank was simply set against the railing, rather than at the designated embarkation point she could see further down the boat. That space was taken up by a healthy soldier and their machinegun.

Turnip found somewhere to sit between some of the badly wounded ponies littering the deck, where they couldn’t be fit into the cabins, and watched the shore. Once everypony was on board who was meant to be, ponies on the shore cast off the mooring lines, which were dutifully pulled in by the crew, and without so much as a whistle blast, the huge paddle-wheel at the stern stopped and began moving in reverse.

It was a strange feeling to be aboard a working machine and not be doing anything. Sure, she’d been on trucks, tanks, and of course a train, but a truck had a driver, the tanks she’d been in had always had her on in a crew capacity, and trains kept their crew hidden from the passengers, for the most part. A boat like this one was an altogether different kind of beast; the crew scurried around and over their passengers as they saw to their duty, which right now seemed to be using long poles to ensure the boat didn’t get too close to either shore.

She watched the shore begin to slip by ever so slowly. The boat had to move in reverse a fair ways, she guessed, before it could be turned around. She thought about the ponies she’d known. The buddies she’d made and never seen again. As a member of a tank crew, the ponies around her never really died so much as they… left.

Sure, she’d sometimes see the aftermath of a fight before, and the sights, sounds, and smells were something she would never, ever forget, but prior to a few days ago, she’d never known what it was like to see the same ponies you fought beside with such fervor devoid of life after it was over. Maybe that was better than the pony just vanishing from your life like they had never existed. But it was harder, too.

She cast a glance at the pony lying next to her. She was a greenish-blonde mare with material packed into a chest wound, held in place with bandages. Every strained breath she took had a weak gurgling quality to it, and her lips were flecked with bloody foam. Turnip flicked her ear and pretended not to notice. Every battle fought, Turnip saw, made many dead, but they made many more like this mare, or like the amputee who had helped her across the bridge; destined to either die soon or live out the rest of their lives as cripples. Turnip was just one of the lucky ones.

She looked at the riverbank again. Already, they were nearly beyond any sign of Equestrian forces. She hoped Summer and her crew would be alright. As for her, well, maybe she had potential as a nurse? Strawberry seemed to have picked it up easy enough, so it couldn’t be too hard for a hick from a root vegetable farming family…

Turnip put down her head, closed her eyes, and tried to fall asleep to the comforting vibration of the deck and the gentle splash of the paddle.

Author's Note

And thus ends Turnip's arc, and the third story arc out of five. This part took far too long to write, and I'm not happy with some aspects of it, but overall, I'm satisfied with the outcome.

Since we are now a little past the halfway point in the overall story, I think it's a good time to take a rest from this story and these characters and work on something else for a bit. We're not quite done here, since the claws of inspiration seized me and forced me to write some little character vignettes revisiting the characters who's perspective's we've already seen, so stay tuned for that, but otherwise, this story won't be coming back for some months.

You may have noticed the short length of individual chapters. This time, instead of purposefully writing the story as a series of "acts", like I did last time for Minty, or writing one great big brick, like I did for Summer, I wrote the whole thing and then broke it into pieces according to what I thought would give the best chapter-to-chapter flow. That's why chapter 2 is so dang short.

I read somewhere (not saying where) that "comments are an author's food pellets". That struck me as very true, and I am extremely grateful for all of your comments. Thank you ever so much, you all really know how to make a guy feel appreciated.

Celestia willing, this fall I'll be back with another banger