//------------------------------// // 12 Between the Dreams // Story: The Cadenza Prophecies // by iisaw //------------------------------// Chapter Twelve - Between the Dreams Luna made time for a visit in the Dreamlands that night. I had been sending her little notes each day via Spike's dragon fire, and when she didn't receive one in a timely fashion, she decided to check in on me. We stood on the edge of a precipice overlooking a vast dark plain pocked with rock formations and scarred by dry streambeds. In the far distance, dim lights moved slowly. "Is this a metaphor for the unknown?" I asked her. She tapped my shoulder with a hooftip, making my armor jangle. "The dangerous unknown by the signs." "Odd. I'm not really nervous about our mission. Things seem to be going quite well." "Ah. That would explain him." Luna pointed down at my forehooves. There between them was a tiny version of the Storm King, ranting and swinging a staff in a threatening manner. Well, it would have been threatening if he hadn't been small enough to ride a mouse. I flicked him over the edge of the cliff with my hooftip. "I can only hope our meeting in the real world will go this well. But if I'm not subconsciously fretting over encountering the Storm Drain, why all this?" Luna moved closer to me, putting one wing across my back and pointing toward the horizon with the other. "Look there dearest, and tell me what you feel." The lights that moved in the darkness flicked as if they were passing behind structures too dim to be seen. "I don't see much—" "But what do you feel?" "Uh… Curiosity? Or maybe…" No, there was no "maybe" about it. "Excitement! I'm excited to… To go, to find out!" Her wing hug tightened on me and she placed her cheek against mine, but said nothing. I nuzzled her and reached across my chest with a wing to stroke her, and that was when I noticed the heavy silver shackles around her forelegs. They were studded with gems and edged with gold filigree, but they were attached to thick iron chains that stretched back into the distance behind us. "Luna! What—" As soon as I spoke, the chains snapped tight and dragged her away from me. = = = I woke up in my bunk shouting her name, my forelegs reaching out for her. There is some research indicating that swearing is effective at relieving stress. If the correlation was linear, I would have been the most serene pony for leagues around. As it was, it appeared to be an asymptotic relationship, and so I went on deck only mildly irritated rather than furious. The sky in the east was lightening, and I judged it to be around an hour before the watch change. The wind was a gentle northerly and carried the smell of baking bread from the town below. Ms. Clove Hitch was on the quarterdeck with a coffee mug in the crook of her pastern. She nodded to me. "Cap'n." "All quiet?" "Some small explosions over near the haymarket 'bout two hours ago. Probably fireworks, party, something like that. No screams, nothing caught fire. I put it in the log book, anyway. Otherwise, dead boring." "I can take the watch if you like. I need to pace and grumble a bit." She gave me a grin and said "Thank you kindly, Captain. I never say no to an extra bit of kip. You have the watch." "Sweet dreams," I told her as she headed below. Yes, there may have been a bit of a sour edge in my voice, but I really meant it. I watched the Town slowly wake up. First the little bakery and newspaper carts raced around, making their morning deliveries. Then the restaurants that served breakfast began opening and putting out their menu boards and streetside tables. Bigger carts coming from the surrounding farms rolled in next, and the farmers started putting up their stands in Nova Square. Slowly, the streets filled with every sort of creature, all going about their daily routine. It was even more soothing than swearing. = = = My day, despite having begun badly, went very well. After breakfast we had Lucky Charm sign the ship's articles, and Applejack began showing her the ropes. "This here is the aft starboard stun'sl starboard sheet, and this is the aft starboard stun'sl larboard sheet. The aft starboard stun'sl outhaul is down there on the main starboard bulwark pin rail in the waist, See it there?" "Wow," said Lucky, running her gaze over the dozens of lines made fast to the various pin rails around the main deck. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to remember all these." "It ain't all that hard. There's a system for most of 'em. And the ones that are just plain weird, are goofy enough to stick in yer memory." "Goofy?" "Yup! What d'ya think a line that ties up a dingy or rowboat is called?" "Um… a dockline?" "Good guess, but nope! Ain't it obvious it'd be called a 'painter'?" "You're kidding!" "I wish I was. What do ya think is Pinkie's favorite line?" "No idea, unless there's one that's called cake or doughnuts or something." "It's the snotter." Lucky laughed out loud. "Oh, now I know you're pulling my tail!" AJ grinned and called out to Halter Hitch who was polishing brightwork nearby. "Hey, Halter! Point at the snotter for me, will ya?" He frowned in puzzlement, but stuck out a hoof. "It's right where it always is, Ms. Calvados." "Thanks! The new deckhoof thinks I'm makin' up these names!" "Oh, really?" His frown turned to a slight grin. "Have you shown her the eeby-deeby yet?" Luck gaped for a second and then burst out laughing. Yes, she was in good hooves. I trotted over to the town hall and had coffee and a good chat with Buzzy, and we exchanged thankfully short to-do lists. Then I had a meeting with Spike up at the House. I had him send a short reassuring note to Luna, and he told me that the dragon acrobats had decided to put on an encore performance and he had arranged to help them amend their posters and spread the word. "Check it out, Twi!" He held up one of the posters that had several strange glyphs scrawled across it. "They all signed it for me! I'm going to ask Ajo to get it framed so I can hang it in my room." "Great! I assume you'll be going to the last show?" "Oh, yeah! Wouldn't miss it!" "Good! We'll be leaving tonight, and that will be a nice high note to end our visit on." "Tonight?" Spike's face fell. "Yes, why?" "Oh, it's just that Slasher invited me to the party afterward, and…" Oh. Oh. "And?" I grinned at him. He did blush, but not quite as much as I had expected him to. "And I like her, and I think she likes me, and she's really, really cute! I mean, you've seen her!" Yes, I had, but if Spike thought a sinuous length of scales equipped with hooked claws, razor fangs, and a blowtorch breath named Slasher was "cute" who was I to argue with him? "Hm… Does a one o'clock curfew work for you?" His face lit up.[1] "Really?" ---------- [1] Not literally. This is a distinction that should be made when speaking of dragons. ---------- "Yes, but that's a hard deadline. If you aren't on deck when the last grain of sand drops, I will teleport you aboard, understand?" "Sure, Twi! I… Oh hey, wait. That would be cool, right? Just pop, and I'm gone? Plus, that would give me a few more minutes with Slasher! Yeah, do that!" Oh sacred stars, he really had it bad. "Fine, just make sure you've got a bit of space around you at the time. No last-second goodbye kisses, or I might accidentally grab your girlfriend, too." He gave absolutely no sign that he had heard me. Apparently, the words "kisses" and "girlfriend" had caused his higher brain functions to seize up. "Spike!" "Huh? Oh, right! Yeah Twi, I promise!" I went by a couple of my favorite booksellers on the way back to grab lunch aboard Nebula, and picked up a few new light novels separated into numbered signatures[2] for the ship's library. ---------- [2] This was a common practice aboard vessels that made long passages. It allowed a crewpony to read the first bit of a book and then pass it along, so that quite a lot of the crew could be enjoying the book without waiting for one pony to read completely through it. ---------- I had lunch in my cabin so that I could read bits of Equestria Deserta and make notes as I ate. I left the door dogged open so that Nebulas could come and go with questions or reports, without me having to shout "Come in!" with my mouth full every few minutes. Fluttershy had come in to make a suggestion about where to install a new speaking tube but trailed off when she saw the grass mat/thing Lucky had given me lying on my table. "Oh! This is nice! Dad used to collect them, but I've never seen one quite like this. Where did you get it?" "You know what this is?" She nodded. "It's an antique wind chart. It's in beautiful condition, too." It still looked like abstract art to me. "A chart? How do you read it?" "Let me think…" She smiled. "Dad used to let me snuggle up next to him on the big couch and he'd show me his collection and talk about them. I forget the word,[3] but the map shows you how the winds should feel at any given point. The beads are landmarks, and these strands are prevailing winds, the thicker the lines, the stronger the winds. Different colors and shapes of beads can mean things, and these little lines and swirls…" She broke off frowning. "I'm sorry, but it was a long time ago, and I just don't remember much else." ---------- [3] I later discovered that the technical term is "proprioceptive navigation," and it is rarely encountered outside of historical documents or Pegasus Universities. ---------- "That's okay. I thought this was only a decoration, and now I've learned something new. You know how much I love that! Thank you, Fluttershy." "You could hang it on the bulkhead above the chart table. It would look nice there." "Good idea! That would be a fitting place for it." The rest of the day I spent as Queen Twilight, walking around town and mingling with my subjects. Aside from a few little clandestine matters on Buzzy's to-do list, I just wandered around my favorite places having short chats with the Townies. Another strong custom in Town (that was also a point of pride with most creatures) was to treat me with respect, but never to fawn on me or crowd me, so it was something I liked to do whenever I had the chance. Most creatures were surprised when they saw me. With my schedule, I only got to stroll through the town around once or twice a month at best. Their usual reaction was to bow and greet me with a smile. I had become quite a connoisseur of smiles. The unbelieving smile, the joyful smile, the nervous smile, and perhaps most importantly, the guilty smile. The big gray stallion and his two friends that I ran into on Silverdrop Lane had very guilty smiles. "Y-your Majesty! How good to see you!" I smiled back. I always do, but this time I showed my teeth. My very carnivorous teeth. The little griffin fluffed up in alarm, and the smaller stallion actually started sweating. "I know all about it," I said quietly. The griffin panicked and crouched, preparing to flee into the sky, but I held his wings against his body with a little telekinesis. "Please don't…" the gray stallion began. "Why not?" I asked. It was a reasonable enough question, I thought. I let dark magic well up in my eyes and leak out like tears. Dark fumes hissed up from the cobbles where the drops fell. "I'm so sorry!" "You're only sorry you got caught. You may not believe this, but I don't care if you're sorry or not. I only care about your actions." "I swear to you that we will make amends! We were idiots to think we could… We will undo it all, I promise!" "Any oath you swear to me will be on your life and soul, you understand that?" The little stallion seemed to be on the edge of fainting, but all three of them swore formally, three times, that they would undo the evil that they had done. Once they had vanished back the way they had come, being very careful not to run, the bystanders who had witnessed the confrontation also remembered other places they urgently needed to be. I stood alone for a moment wondering what in the world that had been all about. I made a mental note to send their descriptions and cutie marks to Buzzy for her Potentially Naughty list. Maybe she would find out the details and explain them to me the next time I was in Town. The presentation of scholastic and athletic awards at the Queen Twilight Middle School was a much more pleasant affair, and I spent longer than I had intended, listening to the young ones chatter on about important matters in their lives. The Merchant Guild meeting was less pleasant and more predictable. It seemed that almost all the troubles facing the Guild's members could mostly be solved by a grant of royal funds. Oddly enough, nocreature claimed to be doing extraordinarily well enough to offer a payment into the crown treasury. When I offered the most insistent Guild Master a loan of funds at a reasonable 25% interest, he and the others suddenly decided that they could manage to scrape by without an infusion of cash. Nevertheless, I signed an order loaning out two of my cargo ships to a young merchant who had proposed an intriguing scheme. (And for only 10% of her profits, too.) It was late afternoon by then, and I wanted to get back to Nebula to check on the final preparations for departure. That meant a trip back to Vagabond House and then a stroll down to the mooring grounds as Captain Blackmane. Both were pleasant and uneventful. Nebula hummed with efficient activity, and me poking my snoot into things just slowed the crew down, so I passed the word about the dragon show that evening, arranged for an early supper in my cabin for me and the gang, and retired to spend some time with my new books. While passing through the chart room, I noticed that someone had hung up the woven chart where Fluttershy had suggested. It did look good there. I really wanted to dive into The Book of the High Song, but it needed a good, uninterrupted chunk of my attention, so I decided to save it for the long leg of our journey over the South Lunar Sea to Seaward Shoals. I took a look at The Art of Travel instead. It was a fascinating but not exactly sensible book. It presupposed that the reader was bereft of any equipment beyond the most basic and detailed how to cross rough, unfamiliar country on the assumption that most of the party couldn't fly or levitate. Then there was a section on what equipment was necessary for a party of explorers, including quite a lot of things that the first section assumed would be unavailable during the journey. Next was a section on aerial reconnaissance, with apparently unironic advice on how to choose "native guides" for "uninhabited" country. All in all, the tone and advice in the book could have best been described as schizophrenic, even though each separate morsel of information seemed sensible enough in isolation. I scribbled bits of the more useful-sounding passages in my notebook until I realized what mindset had produced such a bewildering text. The author expected that things would go wrong in the most troublesome way possible, at the worst possible time. They hadn't said it outright, but once I realized their basic assumption, it became utterly clear. I flipped ahead a bit, and saw instructions on how to dig a shallow well and purify foul water, which was immediately preceded by a section on how to store and carry water as well as how to estimate how much would be necessary to carry in nearly every situation. The author simply assumed that anypony with a good supply of clean water would almost certainly lose it somehow. I decided to add the book to Nebula's permanent library,[4] and was wondering when I might have time to write a companion volume specifically in regards to airship travel, when Pinkie and Applejack bustled in carrying covered dishes and cutlery, and I had to clear the table. ---------- [4] Which was not an entire cabin, unfortunately, but two big bookcases with latching doors in the companionway outside the Second Mate's cabin. ---------- The gang all decided to go see the show, along with several other Nebulas, including Tempest and Lucky. As I was not in the guise of the terrifying and beloved Queen, I found it necessary to distribute bits with a generous hoof to get us all good places near the stage. At the end of the show, I dumped all the rest of the cash I had left in the basket on the stage. Everypony else gave generously and we talked about it all the way back to the mooring tower. Even Tempest and Rainbow Dash admitted to being impressed. As I had predicted, Rarity went on at length about the quality of the showmareship, and wondered aloud how some sort of (fireproof) costumes might enhance the performance. There wasn't much left to do to prepare Nebula for departure, but I wasn't relaxed enough to read or write, so I wandered around and chatted with the crew while triple checking things. Just before the watch change, I came on deck to see Applejack drilling Lucky by calling out the names of various lines. Lucky would then race over to the line and put a hoof on it and AJ would call out another. The only time she hesitated was when AJ called out, "Eeby-deeby!" Lucky took one hesitant misstep and then casually trotted over to the starboard rail and pointed toward Crescent Bay. Applejack raised an eyebrow. "Where's that s'posed to be, Ms. Charm?" Lucky grinned. "It's in the Sea Queen's locker, right next to the left-hoofed monkey wrench and the bucket of prop wash!" AJ chucked. "Perfect marks, sugarcube! Git some rest now, an' I'll start you on the spars and yards tomorrow." Lucky saluted (correctly), chirped out a cheery, "Yes, ma'am!" and headed for the fo'c'sle. AJ turned to me as I came and stood beside her and said, "I surely do love startin' pups! Always eager and quick to learn." "Do you think she's serious enough to steer her towards being a midshippony?" "I reckon we ought to wait on that. By the time we git back home, it oughta be right obvious, an' who knows what's goin' to happen in the meantime." "Mmm... I think I might give her a bit of tutoring on navigation and aeronautics, anyway." AJ gave me a curious look. "Just to pass the time," I said. I don't know why I felt defensive. She shrugged. "Cain't hurt, I s'pose." The watch changed and Ao took over on the quarterdeck. Zepherine brought her a mug of green tea and asked me if I wanted anything. My alicorn metabolism burned through caffeine at a prodigious rate, so I was always ready for a mug of coffee. I could have summoned one up, of course, but routine that approached ritual was comforting, so I asked Zeph to bring one up from the galley for me. Not that I needed comforting, Our little endeavor wasn't anywhere near the critical stage yet. Ao and I chatted until Half Hitch turned the big hourglass for the second time and reached for the bell rope. "Ware! 'Port on board!" I called out, warning everyone to clear the deck just aft of the mainmast which was our designated incoming teleport target area. I centered the entrance vortex on Spike's little tracking gem and triggered the spell. He popped aboard, wings stretched out over his head, one arm raised, and claws spread as if he had been in the middle of waving. I vaulted over the rail to the main deck. "Things went well?" He gave me a dreamy smile as he lowered his arm and folded his wings. There were scorch marks on his cheeks and ear fins. "Oh yeah…" "Good for you, lover-boy," I told him. "I want to hear all about it—tomorrow. Go get some sleep." It is totally unacceptable behavior for a midshippony to hug his captain, but I let it slide that one time. At four bells, we slipped our moorings and let the light prevailing breeze carry us out over Crescent Bay. We drifted slowly south and a bit west until the lights of the town and port were just specks on the horizon, and then spun up the engines enough to give us steerage. I calculated a rhumb line[5] that would take us to Seaward Shoals, and had Fluttershy set it as our course. ---------- [5] A rhumb line (or loxodrome) is a line crossing all meridians of longitude at the same angle, i.e. a straight line path derived from a defined initial bearing. Unlike a great circle route, it isn't the shortest path between two points, but I wanted us to swing a bit wide of the Equestrian coast to avoid being spotted by anypony. ---------- Once we were well on our way, I gave orders to wake me at the change to the Forenoon Watch, went below, and collapsed into my bunk. I had no real reason to feel so exhausted, but it was nice not to toss and turn before sleep claimed me. = = = "So…" Luna said. She was lying in front of me, staked to the ground beneath a mass of chains, ropes, and straps that creaked and rattled as she cocked her head to one side. "It seems you have some issues of concern?" I lay a length away from her, bound and staked in a similar fashion. I couldn't raise my head enough to look directly at her because my bridle had been strapped down to a martingale that was so tight it was cutting into my chest. "Ya think?" I growled around a very uncomfortable snaffle bit. She sighed and probably would have shaken her head sadly, if her bonds would have allowed it. "Luna, can you please get rid of this stuff?" "It is best to let it remain until you come to terms with the issues that created it." "Well, it's not exactly subtle, is it? I'm obviously an irresponsible foal who's afraid of obligations—" I gave a jerk that made my own bonds creak and rattle. "—getting in her way! I'd much rather be snuggling with my sometimes irritating lover than running off to commit murder simply because it's a whole lot easier than diplomacy!" Luna stared at me, unsmiling. "Stand up." "With all this on me?" "Wilt thou be defeated by mere bonds? Hast thou less strength than I?" She strained upward, the muscles in her legs, shoulders, and chest surging beneath her dark coat. A strap tore and then a chain snapped. The ripping of ropes and the popping of steel links parting became nearly continuous as she forced her way to her hooves. She shook her wings free and the shredded remains of her restraints sprayed outward like drops of mercury in the sudden, bright moonlight. She looked down on me and repeated, "Stand up." I stood. It was easy. My bonds transformed into beautiful golden strands that hung about me like sparkling spiderwebs. "Chains more fitting for a powerful and comely mare, methinks," Luna said, offering me an open chest filled with even more superb jewelry. "Let me further adorn my beauteous leymare." She lowered a golden necklace studded with diamonds over my head, and drew more items from the chest. A platinum peytral followed, and gorgeous filigree earrings. A chamfron inlaid with a mosaic of precious gems, and a crested saddle that seemed to have been carved out of a single enormous emerald settled down on me, and I realized that the stream of treasures was beginning to grow very heavy. "Stop! No more!" Luna paused, holding a magnificent coat of interwoven orichalcum links in her magic. It was studded with bejeweled medallions set with enchanted crystals that radiated immense magical energies. "Wouldst thou truly refuse such a priceless gift from your adoring lover?" I couldn't help chuckling. "It's very nice, but I hope you kept the receipt. Message received, love. You are wiser that I am, and much, much better at dream symbolism." Luna finally smiled. She banished all of the weighty jewelry with a wave of her wing. "Then take, at least, one heartfelt gift from me before we part." It was a very nice kiss, indeed. = = = =