Imperfect Strangers

The oppressive swelter of the boiler room always felt like penance in Tartarus. Sweat trickled down the back of Starlight Glimmer’s neck as she swung the shovel casting another load of coal into the great glowing furnace. It was hard to breathe down here and she could never wait to leave. The shovel floated back to the pile, spade driving in again to get one last bite of food for the endlessly hungry flames.

Exhaling, Starlight mopped her face off with her fetlock leaving dark smudges on her cheeks and forehead. She swung the slotted door closed on the furnace with a creak and a clank. Then she planted the shovel in the coal pile and checked the boiler gauge before vanishing in a magical flash. She appeared topside, the salty breeze brought her immediate relief from the suffocating heat but the sudden brightness of daylight and the cacophony of the gargantuan steam winch brought a new assault on her senses. The smoke stacks spewed a blackness into the sky that looked like ink in water.

“Clear the deck,” shouted Captain Breaker over the pounding ratchet of the gears. “She's comin’ up.” he floated his pipe back in his mouth.

The crew gathered at the aft end of the spacious cargo deck where Whitecap stood idly at the controls. Everyone was looking to the portside except for Starlight who absently watched the reel, mesmerized by the braided steel cable as it coiled around smoothly like string on a kite bobbin. This was her fourth life… A far cry from any of its predecessors.

The unicorn captain checked his watch only half paying attention to the crane. Suddenly the ship leaned to the portside as the payload broke the ocean surface and suddenly became heavier. The groan of the winch went up slightly in key as it strained. Water gushed from every hole as the frayed midsection of the wrecked airship rose into the air. It stopped abruptly with a sway after reaching its zenith at the end of the crane booms.

Whitecap flipped a switch and the payload began to slide inward over the deck of the ship, suspended by its two ends. The crew watched with palpable anticipation because no one knew exactly what to expect with this one.

Briney, the ship's indispensable transforming hippogriff, flapped up over the side of the railing and back into the boat. He slunk up to the group dripping wet with a smirk on his face.

“The debris field was actually pretty small,” he shouted over the clatter. “But it was super close to the edge of the shelf. If that ship had hit the water maybe thirty meters to the west we'd just be out here jerking off for a day and going back with empty talons.”

“You see bodies?” grunted Stormfront.”

“Oh yeah,” he nodded.

“You go in there?”

“I stuck my head in.”

The deck shook beneath them as the midsection settled with a loud creak. Breaker sighed a puff of smoke and the great crane went silent.

“Good work Mr. Briney,” he extolled, noting that the payload had come up both secured and upright. “Check those cells, Spot Weld,” he barked.

The whole company strode over to the gaping opening where the section of the wreckage had ripped away from the rest of the pleasure cruise airship. There, near the opening, was the pallid form of a dead pony wrapped gracelessly around a metal girder. The upright bend in the beam looked like it had kept the corpse from sliding out with the exiting water which was even now still spilling onto the deck and pooling around their hooves.

Pastel covered her mouth and looked away. The captain lit up his horn and gazed past the first body to the inside of the wreckage. He lifted his cap and swept back his auburn mane, uncharacteristically betraying dismay at the unfortunate scene within.

“The crystal cells all appear to be intact,” reported Spot Weld.

Most cheered in celebration. Starlight frowned. This meant more money for all of them.

The captain turned back to address the crew. “Zircon, Starlight and Newbie, get inside that wreck and retrieve all creatures’ remains you can find. Drag them out on cots or burlap if you have to. Lay them out in a row on the deck. Depending on what happens in port we may be stowing them on ice for a while. Spot Weld and Whitecap, harvest those cells carefully. It would be a pity to lose those bonuses now. Set a course for Gulletown, Mr. Stormfront. With that he tapped out his pipe and left for his quarters.

The three tapped to delve into the wreck equipped themselves in short order and assembled back in the puddle to begin the grim task.

Zircon was a seafaring veteran who hardly ever spoke and when he did it was never in rhyming sonnets like one would expect from a zebra raised in the heart of Zebrica. Pastel, the one they were calling newbie, was a delicate pegasus barely out of her teens and just starting out on the job. Clearly from a different world, her reasons for the vessel were a mystery to all. Starlight had been on two boats over the past five years. That put her somewhere in the middle of the two of them.

Without giving it much visual scrutiny, Starlight levitated the first corpse some distance from the wreck and laid it out in a more dignified position.

The three of them walked into the dank hold. Starlight's horn was illuminated while her companions carried small lanterns around their necks. The floor was slick and all around them they could hear the dripping of water, drops pattering on the floor and on their heads.

It wasn't long at all before they came upon several corpses scattered around the interior of what used to be a restaurant serving carefree vacationers. Their bodies were pale, bloated and eyeless. Their positions weren't anything indicative of a moment of terror frozen in time but more like dice shaken in a cup.

Pastel covered her mouth again as she side-eyed her first candidate who was slumped on her side. “Ugh, nasty. Why me?” she groaned.

“He wants to see if you'll quit,” offered Starlight. Gazing down at the almost unrecognizable form of the unicorn. A startled crab clinging to its face raised its claws and scuttled away.

“If you can handle pulling dead bodies out of a wreck you can handle anything.” Then again, she thought, maybe he just picked three who didn't cheer.

“He didn't mention this in the interview. Are dead bodies common on these voyages?” she asked, unrolling a cot beside the corpse.

Starlight shook her head, floating the remains onto the little mat. “No. I've honestly never seen anything like this before.” she thought back to the crystal cells. That and whatever value the reclaimed metal in the wreck could produce was all that they were after. The bodies were just an inconvenience. It felt like grave-robbing in a sense. They had exhumed these ponies looking for valuables. Though she supposed if they could get the remains back to their families it became a mutually beneficial outcome and a little less ghoulishly cynical.

Ships that sailed on the water usually went down slower and there was time for those onboard to escape or at least not die trapped in a flooded compartment. One week ago this airship, at least according to the report, fell right out of the sky in pieces after an onboard explosion attributed to a mechanical failure. Due to the violent and abrupt nature of the accident, many ponies onboard perished but they'd only see a small fraction of them today.

Zircon and Pastel dragged their loaded cots out onto the deck, dumping them off side by side as the captain had instructed. Starlight brought up the rear, levitating her own body. They reentered for more.

“This feels like it should be someone else's job,” mused Pastel. “Not anyone on this ship, someone on a different ship… not a salvage ship.”

Though articulated strangely, Starlight empathized with the sentiment. She rolled another one over, a stallion earth pony. The lips had been chewed off by scavengers leaving the teeth exposed in a snarl. Her stomach churned. This was not her most unglamorous moment since leaving Ponyville but it was the one that dredged up the most lament.

She yearned for a life of soft things again. She loved the ocean and the anonymity of her world. But she hated the loneliness and that her career and home were inseparable and the transitory nature of everything. Jobs… Contracts… Faces… Places… Ships. Nothing was permanent and when nothing was permanent what was the point of letting anything grow on you?

By the end of it they had swept four rooms and laid out eleven bodies, a head and two legs that appeared to be from different ponies. They put swatches of burlap over their faces, leaving them in the open air for the time being. The captain radioed search and rescue and organized a pickup of the remains at Gulletown as soon as possible. He checked in with Starlight just as she was finishing up at the grizzly scene.

“Your contract is up, Starlight. You re-signing with us?”

The color still hadn't fully returned to her face. “What's the next job?” she asked.

“Two galleons sank around Jade Bay. They went down with about a hundred tons of gems a piece. Not even my ship can lift both of them out of the water so cargo recovery could be as much as four weeks work.”

She nodded with weak approval. “Uh… yeah. Sounds good. When do we head out?”

“Tomorrow morning. We have to stop in Sentinel on the way to ditch the scrap and restock on coal.”

“I'll be there,” she sighed.

“Great. Going ashore for the night?”

“Yeah… I need a break after this one.”

“I'll have all your papers ready to sign when you get back tomorrow.”

Luna’s Fury chugged into the harbor against the dying orange light of the sun just as the peninsula lighthouse beacon blossomed to life. It was almost always the largest ship at every dock.

The crew was free to hit the town for the night and report back early in the morning. The amenities were only marginally better than on the boat but worth it for most, especially if they wanted to wake up next to a warm body.

Gulletown was a hole of a port. It was a griffin and pony co-op that smelled like fish and machine grease. If it weren't for the lighthouse and the water she'd say it was about as picturesque as a hair clog in a drain, the type of place that looked like it would give a visitor tetanus if they stood around too long. She was going ashore for drinks. More than usual would be required to erase the things she saw today.

“Have you been here before?” asked Pastel just after leaving the gangplank. She stood on the dock looking back at her expectantly.

Starlight blinked at the mare's ambush of a question that had yanked her out of her own mind. “Several times now.” she answered, stepping off beside her.

Pastel cocked her head. “You're going drinking, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I come with? I don't know anything about this place.”

“Yeah,” she sighed as they started down a dock as wide as a Manehattan boulevard.

“Haven't really seen a place like this yet,” she continued, scanning her eyes across the profile of the town. “It looks… quaint.”

“Most of these places just aren't very nice to be in,” muttered Starlight. “This isn't a sightseeing town. It's a shoddy amusement park for bastards. Don't just go wandering around alone.”

They left the dock and ventured onto the waterfront boardwalk which was the main drag. The town looked like it was carved out of the side of the stony hill it resided on, a place were seagulls had always congregated even before it became a place where creatures pulled dead things out of the sea.

“Is it there? That place looks fun,” said Pastel pointing to a lively old house with creatures carousing on the covered porch and a different colored light in every window.

“That's a brothel,” replied Starlight. “Sure they have a bar but I don't really want to go there.” She also didn't like the high probability of running into her coworkers.

“Oh,” she put simply.

“it's still a ways down here.”

The watering hole that Starlight found least offensive happened to be very close to the hotel she found least shady. A griffin and pony leared at Pastel as they passed by. The glance went unnoticed by her but not Starlight who felt a sudden pang of adrenaline.

“I like the ones with wings,” laughed, who she assumed was, the griffin just before they drifted out of earshot.

They came across the small, unassuming hole in the wall joint. A sign hanging out over the boardwalk read The Rudderless Ship. The neighboring fence and part of the exterior of the bar were plastered with countless posters and advertisements, the vast majority of which happened to be a repeated tessellation of a blue mare unicorn that Starlight never wanted to see again. The Great and Powerful Trixie's World Tour… Starlight wrinkled her muzzle in annoyance as they passed. She had seen that stupid poster in virtually every port and backwater town she'd braved in the past month. She could go to the ends of the earth and that fucking magician would be performing somewhere in the general vicinity.

The show bill had a sizable list of dates for cities in countries all over the planet. The big red stenciled letters stamped haphazardly across the matrix of posters said ‘canceled’ but it just registered as visual noise in Starlight's brain. She pushed inside and held the door open for her companion.

The place was well lit and they always kicked out the opiumheads which was about as much as she could ask for. For the moment it was mostly empty inside and those who were drinking were doing so alone. The pony bartender glanced up at them briefly in acknowledgment.

“What do you want?” asked Pastel.

Starlight shrugged. “Whatever ale; I'm not picky,” she replied before staking out a little table in the corner. She'd find soon enough that there wasn't much selection out here.

Starlight sank into the chair. Usually she sat at the end of the bar but she didn't like sitting at the bar with company.

“So what are we drinking to?” asked Pastel, reappearing with two open bottles in her wingtips.

“Those ponies getting reunited with their lost family and those who never will be.”

“Right…”

Starlight clinked her bottle on Pastel’s and they took drinks.

Pastel shook her head with a faraway look in her eyes. “That was messed up,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Thanks for taking the head for me.”

“Oh… Yeah,” mumbled Starlight remembering the loose body parts on the wreck.

Pastel quickly took a second swig. “So what the hell are you doing here anyway?”

Starlight blinked. That sounded like a question she should be asking Pastel, not the other way around.

“What do you mean?” ask Starlight.

“I know you're working a job for money but it's not one that's really your vocation, is it? You're not like all the other ones here.” She waved her hoof around. “You're more like me.”

It seemed like a strangely on point observation for someone so aloof and misplaced to have. “If I'm really more like you then maybe you already know the answer to that question.”

Pastel's eyes rolled around in her head like she was trying to unravel the evasive answer, a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces.

“Okay fine I'll go first and then you have to tell me yours. It's not all that interesting though. I'm a painter, supposed to be an artist, right? That's what my cutie mark says. Of course I'm good at it but just because I'm good doesn't mean I can make money off of art. I needed some other kind of application for my skills. Big boats are always needing to be painted and I can do other stuff too. It's not very creative but I have to do something and I didn't want to stay where I was. I wanted to see other far off places even if they're like this.”

“Yeah… sounds like you got catfished in that regard.”

“Well, nobody actually told me it was like that; it was just a story I told myself because… I don't know. The real catfish is my cutie mark.”

Her tale sounded about like what she expected, pathetic and sad. Starlight sighed. She could tell her one life story but not all of them. She never told all of them.

“I don't really have an interesting story myself either. I used to have a pretty good life actually. But the pony I loved fell in love with my best friend and I couldn't handle it so I just abandoned everything and never went back.”

“That's brutal… both what happened and how you responded. Do you ever feel like going back?”

“No,” she lied.

The bartender appeared at their table and set a big basket of fries down between them. “Here's your fish and chips without the fish,” he grunted.

“Thank you,” chimed Pastel, already sampling them. “I can't eat all these; take some.”

A faint smile tugged at the corners of Starlight's mouth as she helped herself to the greasy pile atop a blotchy newsprint wrapper.

An older Griffin came in through the front door and went straight up to the bar.

“Dammit, Sparks, why didn't you tell me the Great and Powerful World Tour was canceled?” he began in sarcastic urgency, jesting at the self-importance of the event implied by its inescapable add campaign.

The bartender laughed absently as he began the routine of preparing whatever this bird's usual was. “You didn't hear the magic lady got herself killed?”

Starlight's eyes widened in shock above her bottle. She set it down clumsily on the table, face snapping to the pair like a magnet. They couldn't possibly be talking about Trixie.

“Oh shit, so no more magic ever?”

“No more magic ever,” he shook his head gravely.

“Hey,” called Starlight weakly.

The griffin clutched his mixed drink and the two looked at her.

“Is that true? She's dead?”

The bartender shrugged. “Was in the paper. Front page right before that airship exploded; now the crash is all anyone talks about.”

“Are you a fan or something?” asked Pastel curiously.

“No,” she breathed, eyes falling back on the table. “Just sounds like a crazy news week is all. Kind of nice to be out on the sea and disconnected from all that, you know?” She finished her bottle and called for a second.

It was getting late, or rather, Starlight needed to escape into solitude where the real drinking could begin. She hadn't had a single thought that wasn't about Trixie since overhearing that discussion, silently cycling in an unending loop of shock and denial. The timing seemed like a particularly cruel prank by the universe.

Pastel and Starlight got up from the table leaving five empty bottles.

“I'm staying the night in town,” murmured Starlight. “Are you planning on getting a room tonight or flying back to the ship?” Even with all the turmoil in her brain she was still worried about the pegasus.

“I’ll probably just walk back to the ship,” shrugged Pastel.

“You fly back to the ship,” repeated Starlight with a slow, serious emphasis.

“Okay,” Pastel nodded slowly.

They left together but parted ways in the lamplight of the door. Starlight went up the street with a big unopened bottle of rum and got a room at a hotel she'd stayed at once before.

She trudged up the squeaky stairs to her little room. She dutifully locked the door set her bottle of rum on the table followed by a days old newspaper she scrounged up in the lobby with a small article about Trixie and the mishap she had during her performance. Actually seeing it in writing was surreal. She was really gone and in horrific fashion.

Starlight sat in the rickety chair and rubbed her face. What a day. She was not emotionally prepared to hear this. She bit the cork out of the bottle and took a big swig just as the tears came pouring down her cheeks.

She coughed and set the bottle down again. “Well, this is what you wanted, right?” she gasped with burning throat. “So why the fuck are you crying?”

No one in Starlight's life had played both her best friend and worst enemy like Trixie had. She'd come to symbolize everything she'd wanted but lost. The championship trophy sitting in the other team's clubhouse. She had planned to just be angry and resentful forever but the news of her passing had left her reeling. Inside her was a rock tumbler of conflicting emotions leaving her floundering to latch on to any one. But if she had to pick, guilt and despair were fighting for the top of the pile.

She was guilty of lusting for this irrevocable outcome, even bordering on being willing to make it happen herself. How could she deserve to cry over her ex friend's death when she'd wished her harm and felt nothing but resentment toward her since the moment they parted? She bowed her head and began to sob.- - -

An obnoxious rattling ring awakened Starlight from her nightmares. She pushed herself up from a face down position upon the rumpled comforter. She hadn't even got under the covers, just passed out on top of them. The bottle of rum lay dry and discarded on the floor. She reached for the alarm clock but it ran out of steam and went quiet on its own.

“Ugh,” Starlight squeezed her swimming head. “So stupid,” she grunted. “You never learn anything…”

She'd been too wasted and depressed to enjoy the soft bed and shower she paid for. At least she had enough awareness to set an alarm for herself.

Starlight struggled to the edge of the bed and got to her hooves with a grunt. She wobbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her sorry reflection stared back at her with hollow, red eyes. She pushed her hair back and pulled the beanie over her head before leaving the room. The stairs squeaked under her as she hugged the hoofrail all the way down.

Outside she looked across the harbor to see the dark behemoth, Luna's Fury still docked. Her teleportation spell fizzled into a pulse of pain making her wince. “Fuck,” she gasped in torment, visoring her eyes from the rising sun over shimmering waves. “I didn't even go home with anyone and I'm still doing the walk of shame.”

Seagulls cried callously overhead as Starlight ambled back toward the dock, retracing her steps from the previous night. As she came to the bar, her eyes ran along the wall of posters, where she saw Trixie's face again and again and again. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. She stopped and looked at the ripped and wrinkled smile of the mare she used to call her friend and wished that everything in her life had been a dream and she could just wake up and start the real one.

Somehow she made it to the ship, finding Breaker and Stormfront in the wheelhouse.

“Starlight, you look like you had a night,” began the captain, setting his coffee down. “Got your contract.”

She swallowed and licked her lips, trying to lubricate her mouth with all the moisture of a single raindrop. “I- I changed my mind. I can't sign on with you again; I need to leave for personal reasons.”

The captain frowned. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I don't know when I'll be back or if you'll even need me when I am,” she continued. “But I have to go.”

Breaker rubbed his stubble. “If we are meant to, we'll cross paths again. And if we do, there will be room on my ship.”

“Thank you. Uh, one more thing,” she smiled weakly. “Can you drop me off at Sentinel?”