Seashell (print rewrite)

SEASHELL

Excerpt II
From the journal of Sunburst, April 21, YS 1329:

My next assignment is royal guard duty! Finding this out came as a shock. It’s not an assignment I would have expected directly from coming off my posting at the Seawall.

Then again, I really didn’t know what to expect. Normally I would have found out ahead of time, but being at the Seawall is not a normal situation and there was no way to get my new orders until after I returned. I was told before I left that it would be something fairly easy to balance things out after an arduous assignment like the wall. But being stationed in Canterlot itself? I didn’t see that coming.

I have two weeks of leave before I have to report for my next duty assignment, too. Since I’m already in Canterlot checking back in from the wall, I decided to just stick around and use the time to get a little bit of a feel for the city. As paradoxical as it may sound for somepony who loved being posted to the literal furthest away it seems possible to be, I’m not usually a very enthusiastic traveler and there’s nowhere in particular I feel drawn to go see as a tourist. Besides, I think I owe it to myself to relax for a while.

And on my very first full day off, what was the very first thing I did?

A shower.

A real shower, I mean. A long, steamy one.

Hot water, and soap, and conditioner for my mane, and everything. The works!

…I realize it would seem silly to anypony else to call basics like soap and conditioner “the works,” but they really feel like it after six months of bathing outdoors with nothing but cold rain kicked out of a cloud.

I guess by more normal standards for actual civilized ponies my one big luxury was that I bought some premium feather oil and spent a nice long relaxing morning combing and glossing and preening my wings. Not that I don’t take care of them normally, but I was elated to see my yellow feathers back in top shape and shining again in the sun like burnished gold after months of roughing it in the wilderness. Still, I… always feel kinda funny, in a kind of embarrassed way, about stuff like that. It’s the kind of thing I know aunt Spitfire would rib me for. “You a pegasus or a peacock?” I can just hear her asking with the little smirk she shoots when she’s being good-natured about her teasing. I love her. She’s everything I aspire to be as a pegasus. But I don’t think she has a ‘chill’ setting.

So far, I’ve spent a fair amount of time hanging around being lazy and sitting by myself at an outdoor table at a corner cafe with a cold drink and watching it all drift by. Canterlot is a busy town, but I’m on vacation and I only need to be as busy as I decide to be.

I had a lot of fun the other day, watching the aristocrats with more money than they know what to do with walk around in their funny hats, and their overwrought dresses, and other such coverings, as if the beauty of the natural form of a pony isn’t enough for them. Still, there is some talent to be admired in some of it. Clothes and fashion aren’t a big interest of mine, but it’s neat to see the art that goes into it when it’s done well. Also it’s entertaining to be a fly on the wall and ponywatch. What struck me most was the sheer range of quality on display: some ponies have impeccable taste, and some are just comical in their pretense and maybe would have done better to just be naked. But one way or another, it never really fails to be interesting.

But now that I’m reflecting on this, I feel a little bit of a creeping concern. When I read back the paragraph I just wrote, I suddenly see how it says a lot about the distance and isolation in my way of passively pony-watching. I don’t think I was conscious of it in the moment. I realize now I was watching the show but not engaging with the reality and presence of the ponies in it. I know they’re people who exist but I don’t know why I couldn’t feel it.

Maybe, even for all its deprivations, the Seawall was too comfortable. Growing up like I did, the only pegasus in an earth pony town, made me feel very alone at times. I think I got used to it. After a while there was something easier about that loneliness, and about being by myself. I don’t know what exactly. But whatever it is, I think being alone for six months on the wall let me indulge in that familiar feeling of distance and insularity from other ponies—whether it was healthy or not.

Maybe the fact that I see it now, even if it took a little time, means it was a mirror I needed to be shown. Maybe everything good has a dark side and maybe even the stuff that’s bad for you can be used for something good.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m not sure it’s as simple as just being either good or bad for me. My gaze keeps going back to the seashell I brought home from the wall, sitting now on a little shelf above the desk I’m writing at. Twisting spirals and pastel rainbow mother-of-pearl shimmering colors make it a refuge of intense beauty for the creature that once lived inside. At the same time, the protection offered by a strong hard shell means self-imposed isolation—protection by retreat into a fortress of insularity. These aspects are inseparable from each other in the purpose of such a thing. It wouldn’t exist in its captivating form without serving the function of being a barrier, a place to hide away. I don’t think this makes it good or bad, it just is what it is; and it is what the shell-dwelling creature knows. To the mollusk, the solitude of the shell is what’s right. It is safety. The creature within stays alive that way.

Lately I wonder sometimes how different I am. I wonder if that was why I was really there, out on the wall, and if that was what I was really looking for. I wonder about the upsides and downsides to distance, and what’s really best for a creature like myself.
 
 
Or maybe I’m just thinking too much about it for today.