Confused Night Blogging: The Sea is Dark and Deep · 9:59pm Apr 17th, 2018

This post, for the joy of absolutely nobody, is mostly unedited, except for the electronic demons pointing out grammar errors and the barely coherent corrections your's truly managed to sneak in, and is an exercise in writing more spontaneously and trying to throw out ideas.

Aside from an old short story of mine at the end. That was written a couple of years ago.

Today I managed to write a thousand words for my Switcheroo entry. There's a serious risk I will be able to finish it by the relevant deadline, which means something ridiculous and unexpected is waiting around the corner with a can of mace. I'm eager to discover what it will be.

I finally bought also the tickets for the Galacon. I have no ideas what to expect there, except that I will meet people and embarrass myself. It's gonna be lovely.

New semester at the university started last week, and that meant planning which lectures I shall attend in the vain hope that I will sooner or later be able to get my bachelor. Considering what I have to do, the time to commute from work to the lectures and then back, the projects I have to finish for which I get paid, the projects I want to finish because they are fun (*cough* Chryssi's Bildungsroman *cough*), and the time I need to waste on Discord and with friends, I get a whopping five hours of sleep every night during the week. It's gonna be awesome, and it will be interesting how long I will endure it before I snap and devolve into a brutish parody of a human being for a weekend.

I love the idea of the sea, and I'm actually surprised it doesn't appear more often in stories on this site. It's a never-ending, ever-changing expanse of nothingness hiding horrors and marvels. It's alien, cruel, moody, bountiful, and completely disinterested in the fates of the little creatures dwelling upon it. It's endless possibilities and you can't really fight it and win. And stories on the sea are among the purest you can find. It becomes all about the characters, about what they want, about what they get, and about what they lose.

The sea itself is such an interesting character. It can be anything, except good or bad. Those things don't apply to it, never will, never have.

And yet people love the sea. People (and ponies, but it's almost the same in this context) are defined by it, humbled, reforged, forever marked y salt, sun, and harsh winds. Free and prisoners, if not in the body then in their souls. It hasn't even to appear directly in the story, and yet, if written well, you can feel it, even if you, reader, never experienced it yourself. Gotta be some Jungian shit right there.

I admit I'm as guilty as everybody else on this lacking approach. There were a lot of stories I planned about it, but I lacked time and talent to write them. Or maybe I'm just too lazy, who knows. Sooner or later I will write about the decade between Zecora's exile and her arrival in Equestria, about her adventures in the middle sea, far east, about her lovers and enemies, and how sometimes those where one and the same.

All this rambling about the sea actually leads me to something everybody should read.

Corto Maltese is one of my favorite characters across all media. His stories are masterworks I reread at least once per year (and have done so for fifteen years) and where I discover something new every time. I understand that finding them in English may be complicated, but if you can get them, or if you can read French or Italian well enough, it would be a crime to deny them to yourself.

Corto Maltese as he tells fairy tales to the cats of Venice

Here's a story I've written three years ago. Too short for FimFiction, and probably not good enough for the moment. Maybe I will go over it sooner or later, maybe not. Don't be too harsh.

Luna brought her hooves down on another shadow tentacle and dissipated it into a fine mist that slowly retreated to the whirling mass at the border of the dream. She snarled at the horrid thing, not really sure how to attack it. It was different from the usual nightmares, it didn't behave like a hunter or a trickster, it simply was there, immense, limitless. She wasn't sure she could stop it if it decided to advance with all its weight, but she wouldn't wield to it without a fight. She simply couldn't leave the old mare to that… that thing, whatever it was. She briefly looked over her shoulder, to the small boat on the ocean where the dreamer sat, unaware of the battle, resting under the warm kiss of the sun. It pained her that even in her own domain ponies looked upon her sister, but this wasn't the time nor the place for her wounded ego. She would simply take this disappointment and bury it deep down in her heart, along with all the others.

This was a last dream, the last thing that mare would ever experience before passing on to whatever came next, and she wouldn't let it be haunted by nightmares.

She faced again the oppressive mass, extending her senses to get a measure of her adversary. The front she faced, the only defined surface she could discern, was alien and cold, unlike anything she ever had faced. With all the power she could muster, she bellowed at it “Leave this dream, abandon my realm, the Dreamer is under my protection, and not for you to prey upon!”

The dark mass flowed, oily and black, and as it spoke its voice was the storm, washing over the princess. “SHE IS MINE, MOONCHILD, AND YOU WILL NOT TAKE HER FROM ME.”

For the first time in centuries, Luna shivered. That words carried power unheard of, and a hint that her enemy was ancient, older than her, older than Discord, older than ponykind itself. Steeling her resolve, hiding the trembling she asked “What are you? You that lay claims on my subjects.”

“She is the sea.”

Luna blinked, then looked down at her side, where the old mare, a pallid blue earth pony, stood, straight and proud, her muzzle carrying the traces of long years, her cutie mark a bleached image of kelp. “What is the meaning of this?”

The mare looked at the boiling mass. “That is the sea, and she came only to collect what had been promised to her.” She looked up to Luna. “It was a bad time for us, many years ago. On our island, nothing much grows, but the bounty of the sea had always been rich. And then something changed. The algae began to disappear, the boats sent out to other islands sometimes didn't return, the storms became worse every year.”

The scenery changed. Luna and the mare stood on a rocky cliff overlooking a small island, a little village near the coast. “And so I got out on my boat and called for her. I made a pact, prosperity for us in exchange for the promise I would join her when my time would come.”

Luna looked at the small hovels, at the barren landscape. “Why? Why didn't you come to us? Why didn't you simply leave this place? You would have been welcome everywhere in our reign.”

“This was our home. I know they say that ponies are not creatures of the sea, but they are wrong. She may be a harsh mistress, but she is just. She accepted my proposal, and now she is here to collect what I promised. There is nothing that you can or should do your Highness.”

“Why did she accept?”

“Who knows? We may learn to interpret her moods, but we can never truly understand her.”

They stood on a rocky beach. “I don’t know what will become of me, but I will continue in death as during my life, as her subject, not yours. I am sorry your Highness, and I thank you for everything you and your sister have done for us, but this is not your choice.” With that, the mare walked on, to the swirling dark tentacles, that softly embraced her. She turned a last time, smiling. “It has been a good life, do not be sad for me.” And so she disappeared, leaving a lone Luna in an ending dream.

Music for the night: