//------------------------------// // The Open Sea // Story: La Mer // by Twinkleshine //------------------------------// Twilight's mouth tasted like salt. She smacked her lips together, musing upon the strange grainy texture on her tongue, and rolled over. The cold smack of the water against her bare coat made her open her eyes. Her head was underwater for a moment. Twilight saw the raft above her and stretched up a hoof towards it, kicking her hind legs furiously. Once her face broke the surface, she took a series of deep, gulping breaths—more out of shock than anything else. She turned her head to the left and saw the open sea stretched out before her. To the right was the same. She scrambled aboard the raft, her heart pounding. Twilight’s mind raced through the advice Princess Celestia had given her on the chance that she should ever find herself completely lost and alone. Even though it was advice for a young filly, Twilight thought that it could be applied in this situation. “Fuh-first off,” she said aloud, teeth chattering from the icy water seeping into her mane, coat, and tail, “calm down.” This was easier said than done. Every breath she took ended in her shuddering. Every heartbeat was abrupt. Even running her hoof through her mane only made her feel the slimy seaweed that laid in the depths of the water she had just climbed out of that would tangle around her legs and keep her at the bottom of the ocean forever. However, in the middle of these morbid thoughts came an idea that snapped her out of her rapid decline into panicking. “Of course!” she shouted as her head snapped up, nearly tipping over the raft with her sudden movement. “The teleportation spell!” Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated on where she wanted to go. She thought of the library—the dusty smell of books, the feel of the magically warped tree against her hooves, the sound of wind rustling through the branches above, the taste of Spike’s homemade lemon cookies, the look of raindrops on the windows after a storm. Then, focusing her energy on all of these things, her horn began to glow a bright pink. She felt herself floating off the raft. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes. The glow was blinding, and Twilight felt her horn throbbing violently—the pain emanating from it spreading through her forehead and down to her neck. Her mouth hung open, and she began to scream. For a moment, she saw Spike. His mouth was moving, and his eyes were turned to a pony that she couldn’t see. “Spike!” she screeched, reaching out a hoof to touch him. He turned towards her, and she could read his lips. “Twilight?” Twilight’s horn felt like it was splitting in two. She screamed Spike’s name one last time before cutting off the power behind the spell. The glow flickered and sputtered, sparks coming out of her horn and burning into her face. Twilight howled, and the light from her horn stopped suddenly—the pain in her skull beginning to ebb. Her entire body twitched, collapsing hard onto the raft. It trembled and shook before dumping her into the sea. Underwater once again, Twilight didn’t have the energy to kick herself up to the surface again. Instead, she closed her eyes and let herself sink.   Twilight felt something rough move across her face, and she kicked her hind legs in response. Somepony made a tutting noise with their tongue like a primary school teacher as she did so.   “That won’t help you none, dear,” said a scratchy but feminine voice. “Just calm down and let ‘ol Applejack do her work.”   Something in her brain stirred upon hearing that name, but it took a moment for it to click into place.   Applejack…   Applejack!   Twilight tried to raise her head up and open her eyes. However, both tasks at once seemed too complex for her to manage. Instead of doing either, she retched—the strong stench of salt and bile now in her nostrils. She noticed that something liquid was coming out of her ears. Twilight let out a groan, the only sound her throat let her make.   “See? I told ya, didn’t I?” said the voice again.   The roughness that moved across her face was now brushing at her belly, and she realized that there was a dull pain coming from there. Twilight opened her eyes slightly and twitched her hoof towards the area.   “Ah, ah, ah,” said the voice. “No touching until I’ve done my work now, ya hear?”   Twilight let out another groan that was supposed to be a noise of agreement. She could barely see the blurry shape of another pony above her, but it was enough to realize that it wasn’t her Applejack.   She’s not wearing the right hat, for one , she thought. And she’s too hunched over. I thought Rarity nagged bad posture out of her already.    She decided to attempt words again, if only to ask this pony to stop rubbing at her sore spot.   “Hu-Who” —Twilight retched again, but this time nothing came up. —“ah-are you?” The pony above her let out a harsh bark that she supposed could be considered laughter amongst hardy sailors and the like.   “I’m Granny Applejack,” she said. “It’s nice to know that yer not as dead as I thought. Hate cleaning up corpses. Who’s this I’m talkin’ to?”   “Twi-Twilight Sparkle.”   There was a heavy pause before the pony spoke again. It was like the silence before a teacher gave their student a failing grade. Twilight wondered inanely if she was back in Magic Kindergarten.     “You must really be out of it,” muttered the pony. “Sea water must’ve done somethin’ to yer brain.”   Something about this made Twilight want to chuckle before she realized that opening her mouth again would likely result in more seawater spewing out of her stomach. Instead, she tugged her lips up into a weak smile.   “Don’t be wasting yer energy on doing silly things like that. You’ve got yerself a bad case of the chills—hypothermia if yer the fancy type—and you’ll be needing all that fight to get yerself warm again. Plus, and don’t take this the wrong way now, yer kinda all scummy and nasty from yer little dip in the big blue. Scumminess leads to infection and infection leads to pus coming out of ya and pus coming out of ya leads to a lot of bad things. Believe you me.”   It was pretty hard to follow the pony as she rambled on, but Twilight got the gist of it—no smiling and you’re sick. Lovely.   Now if only she said that in fewer words for those of us with our brains leaking out of our ears,  she thought.   She felt the pony shift a little above her, and the rough thing began to slide down her back.   “Where… am… I…?” asked Twilight slowly.   “Now that’s a question worth askin’, m’dear,” said Granny Applejack. “Yer on the good ship Honeycrisp, about eight nautical miles from Port Jonagold.”   “Ship?”   That would explain part of the rocking motion that she felt, though she suspected most of it was coming from her brain short-circuiting.   “Yes, a ship. Where else didja think we were?”   Twilight bit back a snarky remark and instead remained silent. It was becoming clear that she was far away from any place that she knew. The only thing that would help her now would be to find out just how far.   “D-Do you know of a pluh-place called ‘Ponyville’?”   “Yes, sirree,” said Granny Applejack. “But that’s a rough and tumble place for a nice unicorn like you to be askin’ about. Unless I rescued a digger. Are you a digger, dear?”   Twilight thought this question over for a second but decided to tell the truth in the end.   “No.”   Granny Applejack gave a satisfied harrumph and said, “Thank goodness. It’s not like I need another in the family, after all.”   There was a scuffling up above, and somepony shouted, “Granny! Quit yer tending and get up here!”   “Once I get up there, I’m gonna teach ya some respect!”   Twilight let out a moan of pain. All of the shouting wasn’t exactly helping her head, which had just started to throb with renewed vigor.   “Now look whatcha done!” shouted Granny Applejack.   Twilight moaned again.   “Oh! Sorry, dear.”   “Just come up here already, ya old sea hag!”   Between the bursts of pressure being put on her brain, Twilight realized that the voice from above was most certainly male and most certainly annoying.   “Fine! I’m a’comin’! Butcha won’t like it when I do!”   “Whatever, Granny!”   The rubbing along her spine stopped, and Twilight felt the air shift as she was tucked into a scratchy but warm blanket.   “Just get some sleep now, dear. You’ll feel better after a quick nap,” whispered Granny Applejack before she left. “I’ll be back in two jiffs.”   Twilight let out a noise that she hoped sounded agreeable and watched Granny Applejack’s shadowy figure walk away from her.   Within what felt like a few seconds to her, she was fast asleep—dreaming of places she had left behind.     Spike had woken up that morning to the sound of a powerful spell tearing its way through the library. Ponyville being Ponyville and Twilight being Twilight, he wasn’t exactly surprised. Still, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t concerned.   Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Spike ran downstairs to Twilight’s study.   ‘Twilight! Are you alright?!”   There was no answer, and a cold chill ran down his spine. He ran a little faster and continued to shout out her name.   “Twilight! Twilight!”   Once he got to Twilight’s study, Spike stopped dead in his tracks.   The once meticulously stacked papers were scattered across the floor. The books from the shelves, carefully arranged by author and title, laid strewn around the room. There was a scorch mark by the desk that looked suspiciously pony-shaped.   “Twilight?” croaked Spike one last time.   Whatever answer he was expecting never came.