Ghost Lights

by Winston

Chapter 13

Ghost Lights

Chapter 13

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"Doesn't the sun ever come out?" Azure complained one morning, about a week after we arrived.

"Once in a rare while it might, I guess," I told her. "But I wouldn't count on it much."

"You're a pegasus. Can't you do anything?" she asked.

"I can't clear the whole sky myself." I shook my head. "Not in a place like this. I could bust clouds all day and new ones would only roll in just as fast. Wouldn't make any difference."

Azure just looked up at the sky sadly, then grumbled and wandered off to go do something to take her mind off it. I wished I could have helped, but what I told her was true, there really wasn't anything to be done. I know this very well, because I've tried on previous tours. I suspect every pegasus who comes here has.

Here at the Seawall, though, we all learn quickly that the great constant is the weather. This isn't like Equestria where we manufacture it and we have control. The immensity of the forces of nature run the show instead. For better or worse it's not our place here to mess with it.

The waters of the ocean evaporate moisture that turns into a continually rolling blanket of thick gray clouds. Every day is overcast, and most days those clouds bring rain. Sometimes it's barely a misting, sometimes it's brief downpours, and it's only for a part of the day in any case, but a day that's completely dry is uncommon. To see the sunshine directly - from the ground, at least - is a rare and fleeting thing that lasts a few minutes or so once every couple of weeks at best.

It never snows here, either. The huge mass of water of the ocean keeps the temperature of the air up, so it never gets cold enough. Conversely to that, it also acts like a giant natural air conditioner, so summer never gets very hot. I suppose I would have to say that the temperature is always... comfortable. Some days are cooler, some are warmer, but none reach extremes.

It's this constant and unrelenting sameness, under dull overcast skies, that can be one of the hardest things about being here for many ponies. Seasonal affective disorder, the "winter blues", can cause problems for some ponies in times of the year when days are short and gray and there's low sunlight. Imagine it being that way, only even moreso, all year around. It never ends. It never gets better, there's no real variation to break the monotony. This is one of the challenges here.

I've never been very susceptible to this, myself. I don't think I could find this place so inviting if I was. Besides, as a pegasus I had a way around it. Most of the cloud cover is low stratocumulus sheets that are easy to fly up to and get on top of. From there the sun shines down brilliantly in a clear blue sky all day long. Sometimes I liked to go up there, smooth down a flat spot on top of the cloud cover, and just sprawl out on my belly with legs stretched and wings spread out wide while I sunbathed and soaked in the radiant warmth. Nothing feels better than having that soft heat permeating into my back and coursing through my wings. The only thing to be careful of was spending too much time on one cloud. They tend to drift inland very quickly, and after a while I could find myself quite a distance from where I'd started. A couple times I waited too long resting on one, then came down somewhere unfamiliar and ended up having to make a very long flight back to find the Seawall again.

Azure, though... she didn't have this advantage. Stuck on the ground, she would just have to deal with being sun deprived for now. I felt sorry for her because I doubted she'd fully realized what she was in for when she volunteered and I don't think she'd ever been tested this way. For the first month or so, I kept a careful eye on her.

I needn't have been too worried about it, though. She figured out her own way around it by occasionally conjuring up a bright glowing orb of light that shone with what she said was a full spectrum. It emitted a gentle warmth that she bathed in the same way I did on top of the clouds. I, personally, always felt like it was more of a heatlamp than a good replacement, but it worked for her as enough of a fix that she didn't say any more about the real sun and she seemed to adjust and tolerated its absence well enough. I couldn't argue with results.

Sometimes it helps to have some structure to make the days go by, and we quickly got into a routine of how life here was going to go. It varied day to day, of course, but the basic frame of it wasn't too tough to figure out, mostly being dictated by need. We needed to eat, for example, so we both went out and foraged for grass and plantlife independently and we each found our own food. I've never been big on breakfast so I usually skipped it and preferred to eat twice a day, a moderate amount at lunch and around the same amount at dinner. Azure liked to eat breakfast in the morning and then dinner in the last hour or so before it got dark.

The possibility of sheer loneliness getting to her was also a concern I felt like I had to watch for. It might seem like it wouldn't be that bad with two of us out here, but our respective roles actually kept us apart from each other most of the time. Azure, being the unicorn, was the messenger, the nerve center reporting back to the brains in Canterlot. I, being the pegasus scout, was the set of eyes giving her something to report. My job here is to fly, and that's what I did a lot of. I flew and observed for most of the day almost every day.

I spent the first few days reacquainting myself with the immediate area, taking flights that spiraled outwards from the wall and locating all the various landmarks. I found a couple of the other freshwater springs, always good things to know the locations of. It's not very safe to be dependent on just one source of water, after all.

Once I knew the nearby surroundings I started off on progressively longer flights in various directions. I usually limited myself to how far I could get in half a day, leaving the second half for time to get back to the wall before it was completely dark. A few times I did strike out on longer trips, though, spending the night by myself in the wilds. On nights I decided to do that, I was glad I always remembered to bring matches to build a fire. It was certainly a change of pace from guard duty, and very satisfying to be here where there was no real limit to how much I could stretch my wings and be in the air and the places I could explore.

Sometimes I would spend a day just roaming up and down the shore. There are some little bars of sand that form thin beaches, but most of the coastline is jagged rocks and high cliffs. I would land and sit at the tops of the rocks, then just watch the rhythmic waves rush up and crash on them over and over again. The sea life in those places is fascinating to me. Small crabs went scuttling around in the little pools trapped by the rocks, clambering up and down the washed up ropes of kelp and seaweed. Colorful anemones would slowly wave their tentacles in the gently flowing water of tidepools, hoping to catch something they could eat. Starfish would climb the sheer stone faces, looking for the clams and mussels that anchored themselves down on them. The molluscs would shut themselves up tight, and the starfish would try to pry them open, to eat them inside their own shells.

Sometimes I would take notice of a particular starfish, working its way down the rocks, devouring its victims in a line. I would come back a day or two later and the same starfish would still be there, relentlessly working on the same shellfish that was fighting desperately to resist it. I had to keep returning, I found. Locked in this struggle, I felt for both of them at the same time. Neither was right or wrong, they were simply doing what it took to survive. Although it was terrible in a way, there was also something amazing about it at the same time, this primal high drama of life and death being played out at a pace too slow to see.

I remember one particular clam. It was such a fighter, a kind of spirit that would have made any of the old pegasus warriors proud. It clamped down and fought tenaciously for four days while a big sea star, bright red with rough skin covered in hard bumpy spines, tried to wrench it open. On the fifth day, I finally returned to find that the starfish had won and moved on. Nothing was left of the clam but an empty shell.

Tears welled up from deep inside me and I cried when I saw that it was over. Only the subtle pale mother-of-pearl rainbow shining from the interior of the shell was a silent memorial to the great battle in which the clam had fought so hard for its life but ultimately lost. I thought about giving it a burial somewhere, but in the end I didn't. I realized that the shell was never a living part of the thing, but it was the enduring legacy it left behind. With that in mind instead, I left it there in the open under the sky for all the world to see, the gravestone of a creature that never even knew how much of a hero it was.

These were the kinds of things I'd missed in the thirteen years since I'd last been here. These are the kinds of adventurous explorations of harsh but beautiful truths that are sometimes difficult to find in the civilized world.

One of the adventures I longed for the most, though, I wasn't quite willing to go for just yet.

There's two watchtowers out on the sea, on two little islets far offshore. They stood there just like I remembered them from before, like they had for probably two thousand years. Every time I flew I could see them in the distance, two lonely little teeth sticking up side by side out of the smooth expanse of the vast ocean. They looked tiny, miles and miles away.

I'd flown out to them before on my previous two tours, but it's a very long trip. Some would say it's almost an irresponsible distance to fly over open ocean, considering how isolated we are here. When I'm honest about it, I can't disagree. If something happened and I couldn't finish the flight, I'd fall into the waves and probably drown with nopony around to help. I'd just disappear forever without a trace and that would be the end of me.

Because of this danger, I held back, at least at first. Discipline and a sense of responsibility restrained me from such recklessness. I knew, though, that it wouldn't last. The longer I was out here, the more the ephemeral limitations of civilization, the right and the wrong, the rules and the notion of responsibility to other ponies, would fray and tear away, unraveling like a cheap sweater. As it came undone I would reveal who I really am under it all. From the first day at the wall I could feel it calling, waking back up after years of sleep. Eventually the call would be too much to resist, and stupid idea or not, I'd go out there anyway at least once before this tour was over.

I knew that when it happened I'd enjoy it. That flight would be the most exhilarating thing I did in a long, long time.

I had to do it. What's the point in living if you never feel alive?

I think this is a sentiment I already wrote about way back in that first excerpt, a long time ago, but it bears repeating. It's something nopony should ever forget. Life in any meaningful sense ends the day that this gets lost for good under the haze of everything else the mundane routine of the civilized world tries to wrap us in.

Doesn't it?

Comments

[Vic Fontaine]

What's the point in living if you never feel alive?

quoted for truth.

/great chapter!

[Winston]

5379238 Thank you. One of my favorite chapters of the story so far myself.

[treaclewell]

Wonderful chapter. Your story is such a nice change of pace from what people usually post here, and you always bring back memories of Maine and the cape for me. Looking forward to reading more of this!

[Winston]

5386132 Thanks! The area this is taking place in is mostly inspired by the Pacific Northwest and some of the Channel Islands of California (specifically San Clemente Island), but I can also see it recalling some east coast areas too. Glad you're enjoying it.

[Unbridled Dolly]

I think this is probably my favorite chapter so far.