The end of the world is rarely as fast as one imagines it would be.
For certain, there are ways for a world to end quickly. Impact with rogue celestial bodies. Virulent and deadly plagues. False thaumic decay. In those cases, there is no notice of approaching doom, as death and destruction outpace any harbingers of their arrival. These are Ends of the World in the truest sense; when life is so utterly decimated and the planet so thoroughly savaged that there is nothing left to Continue. No more stories to be told, nowhere and nothing left to move forwards towards.
But such things are rare.
When Equestria sank, it took weeks for anyone to notice something was wrong. There was no massive tsunami scouring civilization from the land like the hand of some fickle god, nor torrential rains that flooded cities in minutes and turned valleys into lakes within hours. If there had been, perhaps Equestria’s thinkers and politicians would have been motivated to find a solution sooner. But no one noticed that the lakes were a little bigger, the tide a little higher, the rivers a little wider, and those who did notice didn’t see the danger.
It was a slow apocalypse; like cyanide tea. Every day another drop of poison, every day the water swelled a little higher.
Panic only came when the Great Cloud Cities started to fall.
Still, it was a patient apocalypse, one that gave ponies and other creatures time to turn on each other in a desperate hunt for solutions and higher ground. Towns were abandoned, walls erected, natives roughly dislocated from their mountaintop homelands in the name of Greater Good. Wild solutions, magical and technological both, were tried and abandoned and tried again by the ever more desperate. Much was saved, even more was lost, and, for a brief period, the Equestrian shipbuilding industry had its biggest boom in recorded history.
They called it the end of Equestrian civilization. They called it the end of the world.
But it wasn’t.
Despite everything, life went on.
Equestria did not drown. It learned to swim.
I was hatched in the trash. I know that’s supposed to be an insult, but it’s just a plain statement of fact. Lots of griffons were hatched in the trash; pretty much everyone my age I know (except for Gerald, but he was a prick who couldn’t open his beak without saying something nasty, so he didn’t count for anything worth counting).
Ever since I’d first heard the phrase hurled at me from an old buzzard at age five, I’d never understood what it was supposed to mean. It was an insult, sure, I got that, but I’d never managed to puzzle out how. Where else did they expect me to be hatched? There weren’t exactly a lot of options.
In the sea? Great plan there, especially if you’re a fan of infant mortality. Day one out the egg and already being thrown in the deep end.
And the other option was, what? Be hatched in a tree or something? Another banger of a plan, assuming you could somehow get past the Lord Governor’s guards into the most protected part of his manse, leave your unborn kid there, and trust that the old dryfeathers wouldn’t immediately spot it and auction it off to the next merchant ship to come to port. (Not that anyone would be crazy enough to buy a child, but I bet it wouldn’t stop him from trying).
And so that left the trash as the default option for hatching in. And why wouldn’t you want to? Trash was the lifeblood of Gullrest. Trash was what put food on the table and a roof over our heads. It was a good day when there was more trash than usual.
So they could call me a trashbird all they liked; that’s the kind of title I’d grab with both claws and own.
I was woken from a very pleasant dream about catching a fish the size of a merchant ship by the most unholy screeching imaginable.
Though the shriek of my own I let out as I tumbled out of my nest was nothing to scoff at either.
I stumbled out of my nestroom in a blind panic, the fancy fabrics I’d saved up for pulling a mutiny on me as they turned to tangled up ropes. Still half asleep, I hopped from claw to paw to aborted flap like a puppet with tangled strings. Every move pulled something taut and threatened to yank a different limb out from under me. I slammed into the doorway, cursing as I heard something fall off the wall from the hit.
Panic gave way to anger as I grabbed the strip of fabric over my eyes and pulled. With an expensive-sounding ripping noise, it came free and I could see again. After that it was much easier to untie and shimmy my way out of the rest of the bindings (with only minimal damage).
Meanwhile, the screeching that woke me up had yet to stop.
Growling under my breath as I tossed aside the last nestsheet, I marched over to the window…
…and let out a very dignified and not at all chickish squawk as I set my claw down on nothing.
Avian instincts kicked in as I instinctively spread out, barely catching myself with three limbs on the edges of the big hole I’d sawed in my floor the night before.
Suffice to say, not my best morning.
With a few careful wingbeats, I lifted myself back onto more still-there floor. I took a deep breath, stopping and took a moment to compose myself. One, two, three, and out. That done, I carefully stepped around the hole, calmly walked across the den, and threw open the window with its mismatched shutters.
“Giovanni!” I hollered. “You shut that cat up or so help me one of these days I’m going to eat it!”
Across the dock, the old buzzard didn’t even need to open the windows of his raggedy old shack for his scratchy voice to be heard. “You just try it, missy! Lay one claw on Whiskers and you’ll see why they used to call me Gio the Brawler!”
“More like Gio the Bawler!” Not my best comeback, but I’d just woken up. “You couldn’t fight a half-drowned pony if you were hopped up on sea salts!”
“If you’re so confident, Gwendolyn, then you get your scrawny behind over here and square up!”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you!? And where do you get off using my full name? You’re not my pops!”
“If I was, you’d certainly be raised better! Now, we doing this or what?”
The challenge tried to ignite something in my chest but, like every morning, I smothered the competitive urge. Instead I just shook my head—“Just feed your darn cat already!”—and slammed the window shut. With my usual “check if the old grouch died in his sleep” routine complete, I was free to move on to the rest of my morning regime.
…starting off with fixing the wreckage I’d made in my blind rampage. Fun.
My jaw cracked with a good yawn and I shook off the last lingering traces of sleep. There was work to be done.
I couldn’t help but grimace at every piece of ripped fabric I picked up, but that was just me being too sentimental. They’d still work just fine once I wove them back into a proper nest—they weren’t burned or anything—but every bit of extra damage meant they wouldn’t last quite as long as they would otherwise. And they’d been expensive too. So what if they weren’t a “smart investment” and everygriff said that merchant had taken me for a sucker: if I was going to work hard all day then I deserved to come home to the comfiest, softest, reddest nest I could afford!
I righted a few trinkets that’d gotten knocked off the shelves, at least one of which had broken. Annoying, but no big loss there, at least. The stuff on the walls looked nice, but they were just there to distract any thieves from looking deeper for better junk to fence. All the really valuable stuff was kept in a secret compartment under my nest, right next to Pops’ old harpoon gun.
Any thief who came up against that would wish they’d settled for the knickknacks in the den.
I put the final bit of polished sea glass back in its spot where it’d catch the afternoon light and turned around to a room finally restored to how it was supposed to look. Aside from the hole in the floor. That would take some getting used to. Maybe I could put a table over it or something.
A growling in my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten yet, so I headed to the kitchen to fix that.
Opening the pantry revealed today’s breakfast options to be a choice between smoked fish, fermented fish, and fish jerky. And some dried seaweed, but if I was counting that then I might as well count the salt too.
“Could have sworn I had some sashimi left,” I muttered, before spotting the dirty plate in the sink and remembering that those particular leftovers had been last night’s midnight snack.
I shut the doors. Maybe a drink first, to help stimulate the appetite. Grabbing a mug, I held it under the water barrel and turned the spigot until it started to splash out. I frowned when it barely filled the cup halfway before trickling to a slow drip. I gave the barrel a gentle shove, and it rocked way too easily. Empty, or good as. Fantastic. Just another annoyance to add to an already frustrating morning.
Taking what little water I had left in small sips, I mentally rearranged my schedule to make a stop at the distillery to exchange some water credits for a full barrel. Sure, I could just drink from the water outside—or from the new falling hazard in the den—but that was a bad idea. Just ‘cause it was freshwater didn’t mean it was clean. Too full of tiny bits of wood and trash and junk that slipped through the nets. Ruined the taste and worse, I’d have to deal with getting little specks of plastic or wood stuck on the back of my tongue. Disgusting.
But thoughts about water turned my mind back to the new feature in the den. The hole wasn’t going anywhere, obviously, and I was starting to regret cutting it so early. Late-night-Gwen’s justification that I “needed to get used to not walking there” was feeling awful flimsy in the morning light. Maybe I’d been a bit hasty, but it was hard not to be excited. After months of waiting, it was finally about to pay off. My biggest plan, my riskiest investment. Jetsam’s ship would be arriving soon—sometime this week, even—and he’d finally managed to acquire the key part I’d paid in advance to find. Paid him a lot, but when this panned out I’d make it back a hundred times over.
So drown me if I was a little excited.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to put something over the hole in the meantime. Maybe not a full table, but at least a few boards or something. A rug over the hole would be a good trap for thieves… if I could remember not to fall in it myself.
A horn sounded in the distance, snapping me out of my thoughts and signaling that the markets were open for the day. Meaning either Gio’s cat had let me sleep in or I’d spent more time cleaning than I thought. Either way, I was missing out on prime deals. Knocking back the last of my water, I headed for the stairs, skipping breakfast. I felt more like buying something fresh anyway.
The second floor wasn’t much: just a small cloakroom and a lot of half-finished walls that would eventually be a guest room and storage area once I collected enough wood to finish building it.
I grabbed a long red scarf off the hook and wrapped it a few times around my neck. Not because I liked the way it looked or anything (even if it did look contrast really nicely against my white and grey feathers). It was entirely practical. There were small pockets sewn throughout it in case I found any good trinkets on the way, a couple already full.
Scarf secured, I stepped out onto the unfinished floor and locked the door behind me. Then, with a small running start, I took off.
Even this early it was already hot and the sun baking everything made a nice selection of mild thermals to rise on. Soon I could see my whole house beneath me, shrinking as I rose higher.
It was a good house, and I was pretty proud of it. Rightfully so, considering I’d more or less built it myself. The front was made from the back of an old shipwrecked boat, and the back was made from the back of a different shipwrecked boat. Both victims of sailing too close to the Cloudsdale Vortex. Neither was remotely seaworthy after suffering through the eternal storm, which was why I’d managed to get both of them for a steal. Benefits of cultivating good relationships with the trawler merchants (something a lot of the older griffs didn’t get, no matter how much they grumbled about me getting ‘special treatment’ when it was just basic business tactics).
The fact that one ship had clearly been a fishing trawler and the other a pleasure yacht just meant I’d had to work a little harder patching the jagged gash where they connected. But I’d done it, and now I had the nicest house on my wharf (which wasn’t hard compared to Giovanni’s shack, and there weren’t too many other neighbors since the current fad was building on the northeast side of town near the main market). And it’d be even better once I finished saving up enough scrap to finish the second floor.
I caught a stronger thermal and rose higher as all of Gullrest spread out before me.
Gullrest had something of a funny quirk that made it really hard to mark on a map (much to the frustration of visiting sailors). Only a small bit of it was a real island. It was easy to spot as I soared along. A few miles to the east there was a little spit of sand and greenery surrounding the Lord Governor’s massive manse. The single building was huge enough to house hundreds of griffons, but instead was only home to him, his enforcers, and whatever merchants or other self-claimed lords he felt like hosting. Rumor was it had been built as a hotel long before it was abandoned and Gullrest grew around it. That was the only “real” part of the island, so some mapmakers only marked out the little space it covered.
Problem was, most of Gullrest wasn’t on his little island; it was around it. Extending for miles in every direction was an endless tide of junk. Debris. Detritus. Flotsam. A passing sailor had explained it to me once: something to do with circling currents and the shape of the seafloor meant that pretty much anything and everything that floated across the Endless Equestrian Sea drifted its way to Gullrest eventually.
Though it may have looked like just more trash at sea level, this high up I could see the patterns in the chaos. I could count the uneven rings of growth expanding out from the island as new floating buildings had been added further and further offshore over the years. I could trace the more-or-less straight lines cutting through them: what had once been seaside docks and wharfs and ports until houses had grown on them like barnacles, turning them into walkways and streets. I could see the subtle architectural change as lashed together wreckages and shoddy shacks looked less and less like their original forms the closer you got to the island itself.
Gullrest was a floating city, built of lost and forgotten things that grew with every new piece of trash that floated in on the tide.
The sailors might fight and argue over where the actual borders were, but none of that mattered to me.
To me, it was just home.
I banked and set my course south and east; it was a bit of a scenic route, but I had a few stops to make along the way.
It was only a few minutes before I came across the public nets. They reached out into the sea like splayed feathers; miles and miles of thin platforms and long trailing nets to catch anything that washed up.
Salvage was everything in Gullrest. Fuel, building material, and trade. Salvage was first come, first serve, no exceptions. In practical terms that used to mean that whoever’s front door was on the outermost ring got first dibs, but the Public Nets had changed that. They were an unhappy compromise in the name of ‘fairness’ and preventing another Scrap Riot. No one was allowed to build there or claim parts for themselves, and ownership of anything that washed up went to whoever got their claws on it first. It was the first fundamental rule of Gullrest, and not even the Lord Gov had been able to successfully claim the nets as his own.
I glided low and skimmed across the surface along a random line, only paying half attention. I wasn’t really on the hunt today, but it paid to be attentive. Everyone had their own “surefire” way to find the best stuff. Some came at odd hours, others had “lucky” spots they always checked first. Most did the same as me and just skated over as much as possible, looking for the telltale glints of metal or patches of unusual color.
But there were no jackpots for me today. The section I went over was pretty picked clean. A couple of foundry apprentices were already scraping down the lines for all the leftover splinters, plants, and sludge that they’d ferry back to get cooked down into fuel bricks for the distillery.
Still, that didn’t mean I didn’t find anything. Even a quick skim managed to net me a few useful trinkets—a small purple doll, a cabinet door (still with metal hinges and handle intact!), and a glass bottle, empty but still sealed. Nothing fantastic, but it’d give me a little extra to play with when I hit the market.
I soon left the nets behind, shifting my flight north a bit towards a thin column of smoke and steam. The Fish Press distillery wasn’t the only one in Gullrest, but it was definitely one of the biggest thanks to the massive steel boiler old Gideon had dredged up years ago. It was more rust than not, but it pumped out purified water faster than any other distillery could, and in bigger batches. It was a little nearer to the center than I’d usually go, but it had to be there so they could put it on stilts. No way something that heavy could ever sit on a floating platform.
A constant stream of smoke drifted out the top as a team of apprentices fed the fire with fuel bricks and all the shreds of wooden scrap too small to build with.
A quick word with the clerk scheduled the delivery of a fresh barrel to my house. He still tried to rip me off, of course, but didn’t put up much of a fight as I argued him back down to the normal price. It helped that I was buying on credit.
I was back in the air after only a minute, catching the Fish Press’ thermal to really get some height. The name of it was a bit of a joke, actually. It didn’t have anything to do with fish or presses: those were just the only letters still legible on its rusted bulk, stenciled in pony-esque yellow and pink under heart shaped windows.
Even though the market was a good flight away, the sheer altitude I’d gotten off the thermal meant I could basically glide the whole way there.
Once I got close enough, I circled twice to bleed off the remaining height before touching down by a stand that stood out from the rest for how short it was. Despite the boldly colored banner, the stall itself was easily half as tall as any of the others: so short that whoever ran it would probably have to cut out the floor and swim.
Which, I knew, was exactly how he made sure no one ever stole his spot.
“Hey fish!” I called out as I landed. “You got some of your cousins to sell me today?”
There was a small splash and a scaly white and orange head poked out from beneath the canopy.
“You know, that joke gets funnier every time you tell it.”
“For real?”
“No. I’m lying.” A wide grin split his face. “Bring it in, you birdbrain.”
He levered himself halfway out of the water and I happily accepted the wet slap of a high claw as we both chuckled at the friendly banter. Undertow was a good egg: one of my closest friends, griffon or otherwise. Some of my earliest memories were playing by the shore with him as our dads talked business.
“How you doing, Undertow?” I asked.
“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” the seapony replied. “Got a real nice haul today. Found a shoal of perch on my way in: freshest you’ll find anywhere in this here market.”
I could tell. One or two of them were still wriggling despite being laid out across his shopfront’s display. I politely ignored the nearly perfectly rings of razor sharp teethmarks that dotted a few of them. Those without claws had to make do, you know?
One or two caught my eye; a little more clearly dead than the others, but visibly fatter and juicier. They practically called out to me… but I couldn’t look too eager. Just because he wasn’t a griffon didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to squeeze the best price out of me.
Instead, I stalled for time. “How’s the market today?”
He shrugged. “See for yourself. You’ve got a better view than me.”
Admitting his point, I took a few steps back so I could see the large billboard that dominated the local skyline. A couple squares of the grid still had griffons chalking in the day’s new exchange rates, but most of the usual prices seemed to have stabilized already. Wood was more or less fixed, as always. Red and blue scrap were both up, green was down. Yellow was still absolutely tanked as it’d been since that one merchant had offloaded a whole cargo hold of rubber ducks a month ago. No one wanted to buy yellow.
Unless it was gold. The asking price for any real gold was still sky high, like it always was for some reason. Never understood that. The old buzzards were obsessed with the stuff; give them half a chance to talk and they’d never shut up about it and they’d pay out the beak for the smallest scrap of it. I didn’t see the appeal. It was shiny, yeah, but so was water and glass and a lot of other metals, and it was so rare you couldn’t do much with it if you got any. Give me some quality red scrap over gold any day.
That said, I wouldn’t turn down any if I found it. I’d only seen real gold once in my life; an old Equestrian bit I’d found in the belly of a flounder. That alone had bought me enough water credits for three months.
The billboard was useful, but you still had to check for yourself. Prices would vary stall-to-stall—not everygriff put value on the same stuff—but it was a decent way to avoid getting ripped off. Personally, I was always willing to pay a bit more for quality red. My collection was pretty sweet already, but it could always be bigger.
“It’s a good day for selling blue,” I mused.
Undertow shook his head. “You and your colors. I’ll never understand how ya’ll managed to make an economy around what color something is.”
I shrugged. “Makes as much sense as caring what metal something’s made of. And there’s a lot more colors than there are metals.”
“Fair enough.”
I pointed to four of the fish, the two main ones I wanted and an extra pair to haggle away. “How much for that lot?”
“For you,” he said, “three reds and a green.”
That seemed a little high. “And how much for not me?”
He smirked. “Two reds and a green.”
Cheeky fish. Still, I knew what he liked. Digging into my scarf pockets, I pulled out the glass bottle. “How about this? Just found it today.”
He took it from me and turned it over in his fins, holding it up to let it catch the morning light as he inspected it for cracks and damage. “Nice. Mighty nice. Still intact. It’ll do. You got yourself a deal, partner.”
He slipped the bottle underwater to wherever he kept his payments and I snatched up my four fish and slipped them onto a wooden skewer for easier carrying. Just because I’d only wanted the two didn’t mean I wasn’t going to pass up a good deal for four. They’d make a good lunch, or maybe trade for something else.
We chatted for a few minutes more after that, mostly just shooting the breeze. Rumors about new merchants, gossip about rare finds, he even had some news via his family about other settlements beyond the horizon. I didn’t have any attachment to places I’d never been like New Haven or Port Peril, but it was interesting to hear stories about them all the same.
Maybe I would go there someday, maybe not. I was more of a ‘plan for next week’ kind of gull.
It was only when I was about say my goodbyes that Undertow smacked his fin against a board. “Oh! Right! I almost forgot to tell ya: I ain’t gonna be here for the next month or so.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s time for the Convocation,” he replied. “The whole town’s swimming out to the hippogriff city. Gotta get our transformation spells refreshed.”
“Has it been a year already?” I asked.
“Little less,” he admitted. “It ain’t the kind of thing you wanna put off till the last minute, ya know?”
I nodded, agreeing even if I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to live like that. Hiding away at the bottom of the sea in old flooded pony towns, pretending they were still ponies and nothing had changed. Not to mention having to make a huge migration every year so they didn’t suddenly wake up one morning with lungs and hooves instead of gills and fins. I’d much rather stay topside, thanks.
Of course, Undertow didn’t have to worry as much as the rest of his family did. He was second generation. For him, there was no spell to worry about. He just was the way he was.
“Well, I hope you have a good trip. Maybe pick up some good stuff while you’re there as a present for your best friend.”
“For my best customer, perhaps.” His serrated teeth flashed in a sharky smile. “You ever tried squid? They’re like baby leviathans, but they’ve got no bones so they go down so smooth and—”
“SQUAWK!!”
We both jumped at the magnified alert from the watchtower. Years of repetition from my chickhood made the nursery rhyme they drilled into our heads recite itself automatically.
~One squawk to listen, attention must be paid~
~Two squawks a merchant, there's deals to be made~
~Three squawks for danger; grab your swords or hide~
~Four squawks a stranger; so batten down and bide!
It was a stupid rhyme, but they really did a bang-up job making sure we’d never forget it or misunderstand what the watchtowers were trying to tell us. Though that still relied on whoever was posted in the towers actually doing their job. There wasn’t a lot I could do about that aside from volunteering, and the pay was famously minnowfeed.
A second squawk rang out while we were still recovering from the first. After a few moments of hesitant silence, there was no third, meaning it was the best of three options.
“Ship’s coming in,” I remarked.
“Sounds like it. It’s-” Undertow ducked underwater. Tempting though it was, I held back the urge to scarf down an extra fish. He’d definitely notice. After a bit, he popped back up. “It’s noisy ‘round here, but sounds like it’s coming in from the northwest. Good sized one too.”
With a direction in mind, I flew up until I was high enough above the stall to try and spot it.
“Who is it?” Undertow called from below.
“Wait a wet second and I’ll tell you,” I snapped back as I scanned the horizon. I didn’t need to look nearly that far. Easy bet the lookout must have been caught napping, because the ship was already close enough I could see it clearly as it headed for the docks. It helped that it was a ship I knew. There were hundreds of kinds of vessels out there, but there was no mistaking that tangerine hull.
I felt a smile creep across my beak. “It’s the Scooter Two!”
“Scooter Two?” Undertow mused. “That’s part of the Crusader fleet, right? Wonder what they’re doing this far south? I thought that company stuck to the Canterlot run.”
I landed, but I was already ready to take off again. “Their flagship does, but the smaller ones go all over. And this one’s got a package with my name on it!”
He chuckled. “Well don’t let me keep you! If a finflint like you is shelling out for it, it must be something good.”
“Get stuck in a tide pool, Tow!” I shoot back without any real heat. “Have fun at your contemplation or whatever!” I shouted behind me as I took off.
It was generally considered pretty bad form to land on a ship before it docked. Long days at sea made some sailors get… jumpy. Instead, I forced myself to land by the docks and wait as the Scooter Two went through the long process of docking, making fast the lines, and going through inspection with the harbormaster. Meanwhile, I paced a groove in the wood. Maybe it was only a few minutes, but it felt like hours. AT least it gave me a chance to eat half of my breakfast while I waited. Finally, finally the crew started to disembark and I rushed into their midst, eyes peeled for one specific sailor.
Luckily, he wasn’t hard to spot. If his seaweed-green coat wasn’t obvious enough, it didn’t hurt that he was the only hippogriff in the crowd.
“Jetsam!” I yelled and he glanced up, a cocky smile crossing his face as he saw me.
“‘ey, Squirt! Long time no see!”
I ignored the old barb dragged him over to a stack of barrels by his chest fluff. Once we had a degree of privacy, I yanked down until the beanpole of a birdhorse crouched low enough I could look him in the eyes. “Do you have it?”
“Good to see you too. I’m doing very well by the way, thanks for asking.”
“Do you have it?” I almost hissed.
Jetsam just smiled, unflappable as always. “I see you got my letter.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I did. Good to see you too, whatever. Now do you have it?”
Jetsam stood back up, pulling himself out of my grip and forcing me to look up as he leaned nonchalantly against a barrel and scratched his chin. “Hm. Hard to say. You see I’m so dreadfully famished from my long days at sea, that my mind is little more than seafoam.” His eye drifted to my breakfast skewer with obvious intent. “Perhaps some refreshments would help jog my memory.”
I glared. He smirked back. After a tense moment I ripped a fish off the skewer and threw it at him. He snatched it out of the air like some kind of trained pet and swallowed it whole. “Mm. Delightful. You’d be surprised how hard it is to get fresh fish at sea. ‘Just throw out a line’ you say, but it’s not that easy, and…” he trailed off as the intensity of my glare finally started to have an effect on him. “...and I think this joke has run its course. Yes, I have it. But I don’t think you want me bringing it out here in the open, no?”
“I trust you to be discreet.” Despite the rest of his flawed personality. At the very least he was a good merchant. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have picked him for this commission.
He shrugged. “Alright, you’re the customer. Good choice where to have this conversation, I should say,” he said as he popped the lid off the barrel he was leaning on. Reaching in, he pulled out a much smaller barrel. One marked with both his seal and mine
“That’s it?” I exclaimed, unable to contain myself. “It’s tiny! These things are supposed to be huge!”
“It’s tiny now,” he corrected. “It’s just a baby. Honestly, how were you expecting me to bring it if it was full grown? Strap it to the side of the ship?”
I boldly decided not to dignify that with a response.
Using his claw, he cracked the wax seal around the top and levered open the lid to reveal a small sapling. At least, I assumed it was a sapling. Having only ever seen the few trees on the mainland (and even those at a distance) I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but in hindsight it was kinda obvious. It looked like a stick. Like any of the thousands that washed up in the nets.
Except that this one was very much alive, with bright green leaves that glowed in the light of the small crystal set into the inside of the barrel’s lid.
“Here we are. One mangogrove sapling, fresh from the alchemy shops of the Sweet Apple Dome.” He chuckled. “You know, this thing would make me a fortune if I went and sold it to the thestral colonies in the Lunar Archipelago.”
My hackles involuntarily rose, and he raised his forearms in submission, “...which is why it’s a good thing you paid in advance. Those books you gave me sold very well in New Canterlot; more than well enough to compensate me for finding this.”
I stared down at the little twig in its bundle of damp rags. It didn’t look like much, but this was the thing that was going to catapult me to riches beyond imagining. It was bought and paid for, mine aside from a few signatures to conform the exchange. No one except Jetsam and I even knew I had it, and all I had to do was get it safely back home. No problem.
“SQUAWK!! SQUAWK!! SQUAWK!!”
I flinched as three sharp cries cut through the air like diving raptors. There was no hesitation or cautionary wait between them this time. Three warning squawks that clear meant one thing and one thing only:
Pirates.
Jetsam’s face paled to a sickly complexion as the busy noise of the ship went dead silent for a moment before hushed whispers started up again as those who knew what the warning meant explained it to those who didn’t. Tension racked up so fast I could almost feel it, like a change in air pressure. The crew, half still on deck and half down on the docks in the midst of unloading, wavered unsteadily, unsure whether to take shelter inland or load back on the boat to take off.
Everyone jumped as a door slammed open and a short figure with an impressively tall hat stalked onto the deck.
“Captain on deck!” someone called and the worried chatter doubled even as the sailors dropped what they were doing and paid attention.
“Quiet!” the captain snapped in a raspy voice. “Barrelmare! What’s got the birds so ruffled?”
“Lookin’ ma’am!” came a voice from the crow’s nest. “I can’t see—wait! North-by-northwest, it’s a Jolly Roger! Pirates!”
If the crew had been antsy before, then that was enough to almost make them break into a full panic.
The captain shouted above the din with a volume that defied her short stature. “All hooves back aboard! Quartermaster, start a headcount: the second every soul is onboard I want the gangplank lifted and the lines cast off. Engineering! Start idling the engines. I want those paddles ready to go at full steam to the other side of Gullrest the moment I give the order. On the double now!”
Cheers of ‘Aye ma’am!’ sounded off as the crew sprung into frenzied activity.
As for me, I felt a spark of anger start to burn deep in my chest. “You’re going to run? Like cowards?”
Jetsam just shook his head, like I was a child he had to explain things to. “Kid, we’re a merchant ship. Even if we had the armaments to fight off pirates, we can’t risk endangering the cargo.” He glanced around to see if anyone was watching before leaning down to whisper. “We managed to get at least some of the hold unloaded. There should be enough room down there that you can hide and be safe.”
The spark surged into a full flame and I snarled. “You want me to hide? You may just be passing through, but this is my home! I’m not going to just turn tail and run!”
Maybe they were weak pirates. Hungry and desperate and easy picking for the Governor’s Enforcers to take out before they even made landfall. Assuming the Gov was feeling charitable enough to send them out today and not so paranoid he orders them to barricade in his manse instead.
…At the very least I needed to see the enemy before deciding.
Jetsam was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Before he could stop me I braced my wings and shot into the sky. He yelled something after, but I missed that too. Probably just another plea to go run and hide like a newly hatched chick. Not this time.
There weren’t any thermals here, so I had to actually pump my wings to gain enough height. Even then it didn’t take long to pick out the only thing in the sea bigger than the usual local garbage.
For once I couldn’t blame the watchtower lookout for not noticing it until it got so close. No one who saw it at first glance would ever call it a ship. It might have been a boat at some point, but now it was just a wreck. Like if somegriff had taken the wreckage of a ship and tried to build an escape raft out of it. Blindfolded.
But as shoddy as the vessel was, the black flag flying on the stick it called a mast left no doubt to its criminal intentions. Nor did the dozens of brawny Yaks onboard, rowing it to the slowly loudening beat of a drum. If the black flag wasn’t a clear enough sign of danger, then their shorn off braids was an unmistakable mark that they were a friend to no one; cast out from even their own people.
Their rowing was unsteady, but they were cutting through the still water with shocking swiftness.
I could practically see a line extending forward to their landing point.
They were headed right for the market.
Another flash of anger surged through me. They thought they could crush my market? Steal all of the stuff I was planning to buy once I got rich? Make off with all of Undertow’s hard caught work? Not if I had anything to say about it.
But thinking of Undertow brought a cold dose of rationality to my fury. As much as I wanted to crush them for daring to take what’s mine… I knew I wasn't a fighter. Maybe I could hold off a couple of would-be burglars, but there was no way I could take on a whole pirate crew of buff yaks by myself. Even the smallest of them looked thrice my size! I needed to buy time for the Enforcers to arrive. If they were coming. And if they weren’t… maybe I could at least coax them away from the market.
But even if I could get them to follow me, where would I lead them?
I cast my eye about Gullrest, searching for a solution.
The docks? The merchants would all flee, like Jetsam and his ship, but there were probably at least a couple ships brave enough to fight back and maybe some strong dockclaws to help. Though, if there weren’t it would be so much easier for them to land there.
The distilleries? That’s where the strongest tended to work, but most were a little inland. The pirates would still get to land and rampage for a bit before meeting any resistance.
There had to be somewhere that would stop them in their tracks.
Then I saw it, and a plan started to form.
Well, less a plan and more a half-dried idea, but it was better than nothing.
Angling my wings, I aimed myself at the pirate ship. Yaks were supposed to be pretty easy to anger, so hopefully if I made them mad enough they’d follow me instead of heading straight for the market. I soared down low and hovered over them, praying that they hadn’t brought any slings or crossbows.
One of them noticed me and grunted something as he elbowed his neighbor. That carried on like a ripple till all of them were staring up at me and snarling. Even the drummer had stopped.
I took a deep breath… and took my shot. “Hey, you dryfeathers! Your mother was a lobster and your father couldn’t swim!”
I tensed, my breathing coming in short as the whole pirate crew… did nothing. If anything they looked confused as they grunted at each other. Great. I unmanaged to find the one pirate crew too thick to even understand the most basic insults of haggling banter. I needed to go lower. Something so blatant even they couldn’t misunderstand it.
“What, are you deaf as well as ugly? Get out of here before you kill all the fish with your stink!”
Something must have gotten through cause a few of them scowled and yelled something in their grunting language. I risked trying another shot.
“I bet if you shaved off all that gross fur, your boat wouldn’t be half as close to sinking. Or are you counting on all the fleas in it to keep you fed?”
That did it. One massive brute standing in front by the coxswain and his drum shouted something that sounded like an insult as he ripped off part of his own ship and lobbed it at me. Luckily, despite his massive strength he telegraphed so much it was chick’s play for me to dart to the side and dodge it.
“Your aim’s worse than your stink! Here’s how you throw something!”
Taking the only thing I brought with me—the remains of my breakfast—and launched it right at the biggest, meanest-looking one of the lot.
The wooden skewer flew true, and impaled itself deep into the pirate’s thick and matted forehead fur, briefly upgrading him to a unicorn. It tilted slowly, letting the fresh fish slide off and flop down his face.
His enraged roar of fury was something that went beyond language.
Job done, I darted out of throwing range and hightailed it out of there, headed east. Looking back, I could see the ship turning to follow, just like I’d hoped.
Now I just had to keep them angry long enough to get when I needed to go.
Looking back, kiting the pirates around the island had to be the most stressful twenty minutes of my life. They didn’t have ranged weapons, but they had no qualms about throwing parts of their ship at me or anything else they could fish out of the water while the rest rowed. And some of them had much better aim than others. My heart pounded with each near miss, even as I tried to think of new insults to throw back and make sure their anger stayed focused on me and me alone.
I just had to keep flying, keep dodging, keep egging them on. Don’t think about failure, just go.
And then, I was there.
I put on a bit of extra speed to pull ahead and landed on a narrow platform about thirty lengths from the edge. The pirates didn't slow, if anything they picked up speed as they readied for a charge.
I didn’t move.
A sudden flapping of wings distracted me for a second as Jetsam came to a half-hover beside me. There was panic in his eyes, not a trace of his usual jokiness to be found. “Gwen! What are you doing!? Don’t stop! Keep moving!”
“No. I have a plan. Just wait. Trust me.”
The pirate ship continued to close the distance. A direct collision course with me planted right in the way. Jetsam stayed beside me. I could practically feel the urge to fly away radiating from him, but he didn’t. As the first crunch of wood meeting wood sounded out, the pirates threw their oars aside and charged. They didn’t even wait for it to come to a stop, the ones nearest to the prow leaping straight out of their shoddy boat and onto the boardwalk…
…which immediately broke under their weight.
More and more Yaks keep charging off the edge, either unaware or uncaring of the predicament of each crewmate falling into the water ahead of them. Some managed to break swim away a break through the surface… only to find themselves helplessly tangled in nets. The more they struggled and thrashed, the more tangled they became.
“What’s… happening?” Jetsam asked, “Did… how did you know it would break?”
“The outer edges of the nets are most recently built,” I explained as a vicious grin overtook my features. “They might look like solid walkways but only a few actually are; the rest are as thin as possible to use less material. There’s a reason no one lands on the outermost rings.
“I… can’t believe it,” he breathed. “I thought you were on some kind of crazy suicide mission, but you actually had a plan.”
“Hey! I always have a plan. And it worked too, didn’t it?”
And it had. It actually had worked. I’d stopped a band of pirates all on my own. Stopped them from raiding the market and Undertow’s stall and Jetsam’s ship and my home. Something started to build in my chest and I let it loose. A trilling screech: a warcry like the ones noble griffon warriors used to do in the old stories.
I’d staked my claim against invaders and I’d won.
A glint of light and a burst of movement off to my right caught my eye. “And here come the Enforcers to mop things up, late as usual.”
And then I noticed more movement. A few not-so-cowardly griffs had landed on the pirate’s ship to rubberneck and more than a few were starting to rummage through it.
“Hey!” I yelled at them. “That’s clearly mine! I saw it hit the nets first!”
“Cheers!”
Undertow, Jetsam, and I knocked our glasses together in a toast. It had taken most of the day for the Enforcers to get everything sorted out, but everything worked out for me in the end. The Yaks were being held in the local lock-up (apparently there was a bounty out for them, but of course the Gov would be collecting that, not me, figures) and the remains of their ship were officially mine to do with as I pleased (which would mostly be finishing the second story, which was also where I was storing all the wood for now).
Now all that was left was to celebrate my victory with my friends. Some of whom were more happy with me than others.
“I still say you are crazy,” Undertow said from his barrel. “You coulda led them out to sea, or just kited them in circles till the Enforcers got there, or just, I dunno, not enraged the pirates.” He sighed. “But I guess you wouldn’t be you if you hadn’t done the craziest thing.”
“Hey, I resemble that remark.”
“No, no, the fish is right,” Jetsam chimed in. “You are absolutely insane. Brave and resourceful, but a complete nutter no doubt.”
I rolled my eyes and knocked back my drink. “I don't have to take this from you. This is my house. I can make you leave anytime I want.”
“Ah, but then how would you learn how to go about planting your precious purchase?” He mused. “I never told you the instructions, did I?”
“Ooh, yeah! Your tree thing!” Undertow gasped. “That’s what he brought you? Plant it!”
I mentally stumbled at the idea. “What, now?”
“Why not?” he countered. “Everyone who knows about it is here. And I wanna see what a tree looks like when it hasn’t been underwater for years. I hear they have little bits of kelp growing on the ends.”
I considered it for a moment and came to a decision. “Sure. Why not? We’re celebrating anyway.”
It only took a minute to retrieve the barrel from where I’d stored it and to remove the cover on the hole in the floor.
“That’s where you’re putting it?” Jetsam asked skeptically.
“Yes. It’s all part of the plan.”
“You sure? You know you can’t move it once it’s down.”
“I’m sure,” I insisted as I popped off the barrel’s lid. “Now tell me how I make this thing grow.”
He shrugged. “It’s pretty easy. Those alchemists really know what they’re doing. All you have to do is place the sapling where you want it—and make sure you’re really sure cause you are not moving it after—and crush the gemstone embedded in the lid. That’ll release the stored earth pony magic and kickstart its growth. Then just sit back and watch the magic.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I pulled out the little sapling. It wasn’t even as long as I was tall. “How deep will it go?
“As deep as it needs to. You’re still pretty shallow around here so there should be enough juice in the gem to get its roots down to the seabed. Even if not, it’ll still reach there eventually on its own. Just won’t start producing fruit till the roots dig into something.”
And that was what made it worth shelling out most of my savings for. It made food. On its own! All I had to do was leave it alone and it’d just create new food for free out of nothing but sunlight and water. No need to spend hours fishing or haggling at the market. And when it got big enough, I could even sell what she couldn’t eat and then the scrap would really start rolling in!
I could see it now: the second story on my house—no, a third—with branches poking out the top. My nestroom decked out with so much red I couldn’t even see the walls. A whole team of griffons working under my—working for my mangoes—to scour the nets and resell the loot on my behalf while I raked in the profits.
And it all stemmed from this little stick in a barrel.
I positioned the sapling over the hole in the floor and took a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”
Jetsam nodded and crushed the gem.
Glowing green light—magic, I suppose—poured out like a thick syrup that wound its way through the air to the mangogrove sapling. The magic sent a tingle through my claws and I let go in surprise, but the sapling remained floating in the air.
The roots began to grow, long thin things like eels snaking down through the hole and questing deeper and deeper. In seconds the ends were too deep to see, but I could still see the tops squirming and thickening. Undertow hopped out of his barrel, took three awkward flops across the floor and out the door and hopped into the sea, probably to watch it grow from underneath.
The parts I could still see continued to thicken and grow. I’d never seen a live tree growing before. It was incredible. I’d understood that plants could grow but I’d never seen it happen right in front of my eyes before. Branches split again and again as they rose, new leaves pushing out from behind older, bigger ones. It filled the hole in the floor I’d cut for it as the upper branches started pushing against the roof. Something started to creak and I was filled with a horrifying feeling that, in my hubris, I was about to capsize my own house.
But just as soon as it started the creaking stopped and the tree seemed to stabilize. Flowers bloomed at the end of branches. Small white and yellow blossoms with five petals.
“Must have reached the seabed,” Jetsam pointed out, somehow not at a loss for words at witnessing the pure magic in front of us. “Shouldn’t be long till the fruit comes in.”
He was right. The flowers withered just as quickly as they’d appeared, replaced with round fruits that quickly plumped up till the branches hung heavy with glistening shapes in shades of red and yellow and green.
It’s job done, the flow of magic diminished until it vanished entirely, leaving me with a bare lid, a few drained gem shards, and one massive fruit-heavy tree.
“Wow,” Jetsam was the first to break the silence. “That was really something.”
An understatement if there ever was one. It had worked, just as promised. It was the first, huge cornerstone in all my plans.
I reached out and grabbed one of the mangoes. It snapped off easily and sat there in my claw, heavy as gold.
I tossed it to Jetsam, then picked another and tossed it into the sea for Undertow before finally picking a third for myself.
Light glistened off its taut skin, the red patches bright and vivid as the best pieces of scrap.
I took a greedy bite.
It tasted like trash. I absolutely loved it.
"Oi!" Gio's scratchy shout broke the beautiful moment. "Whatever you're doin', stop shaking the dock! Some of us are trying to sleep!"
"You can sleep when you're dead, Gio!" I shouted back. "Some of us are still young enough to have things worth celebrating!"
I sighed as he replied back with a string of drunken curses that'd get him kicked out of any bar in Gullrest.
I guess, even when everything changed, some things would always stay the same.
