1 - Marooned by Fate
Drifting Down the Lazy River
Marooned by Fate
"It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed — only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all — that night, nor the next, nor the next."
— The Adventures of Buck Fin
It was one thing to consider floating down the river on a raft in search of adventure while reading a book and marveling at the wonderful time the young pony in the story was having. Once the shadows began to gather and the night birds emerged, it was a far different thing for Turpentine to consider when belly-deep in wet sand, trying to shove a huge collection of logs off a sandbar and back into the river.
For the first few days after he had left the orphanage, his trip had been an adventure worthy of the book. It had been fun hiding under the collection of loose brush and branches in the middle of the raft whenever a pegasus flew by, then prodding for the riverbed below with a pole at random times afterwards, pretending that he had some sort of influence over the course of his gallant ship. Well, raft.
There were at least a dozen logs making up the raft with four or five ropes weaving them together. They were not as big as most of the logs which occasionally slipped away from the lumber mill upstream of Tidewater, and which the local farmers tied up against the riverbank whenever they could be easily caught. These were long and straight, well worth the five bits a log he could have gotten when the chuffing steam tug would come every week or two to gather up their lost wooden sheep and tow them back upriver to the mill.
At the time, he thought an adventuresome raft was a far better use for the lost logs. After all, boards and timbers held no interest for Turpentine, much like his home town considered the negligible value of a small earth pony colt who had no interest in growing turnips or beans.
Instead, he was a painter, but not the way his home village preferred. Painting was something they did with a broad brush dunked in thick white paint, using long straight strokes to give as perfect a surface to the house or barn as possible. Of course, not everypony in the village preferred a plain white house. Some of them were adventurous excitement-seeking rebels, who actually painted the trim… red.
Right now, Turpentine would have given good bits he did not have for a few of those lumbering art-impaired ponies to be pushing on his stuck raft instead of himself. He had his earth pony strength, but there was nothing to push against but wet sand. Without a shovel or a winch, he had heaved and dug as much as possible, leaving a muddy mess at the front end of his raft where it had plowed into the sandbar at the pokey top speed the river had permitted. What was worse, Turpentine had seen the collision coming, and had tried with every bit of his strength to pole the raft to one side or the other of the sandbar, which was large enough to have trees of its own.
Well, now it had a dozen more, only horizontal and naked instead of vertical and covered in leaves. He was well and truly stuck, and since the sandbar/island was in the middle of the river, it would take a strong swimmer to make it to either bank. He really did not think he was that strong of a swimmer, particularly since he had never swam anywhere he could not reach down with a hoof and touch bottom.
“Buck!” he declared in somewhat less than his full volume, despite the complete lack of anypony within hearing distance to criticize him on his language. It was probably not as bad as Waterhorse Crusoe being abandoned on some Ponyneighsian island far away from civilization, because if he squinted, he could see a tugboat pushing a barge upriver a good distance away. There was enough driftwood scattered around to make a fire, some thin sandgrass that should not be too bitter to eat, and the bushes on the island certainly should have some berries or tender leaves. It could be an adventure, even though he was rapidly losing interest in the appeal of adventure and really starting to long for his plain and simple bed in the orphanage.
About the time his fifth damp match spluttered to death in the pile of damp driftwood, that keening sense of longing for his previous life was getting difficult to ignore.
Nights on the river were dark, but here on the island with the long moonlit shadows of the sandbar’s trees reaching out across the glittering sand like waving tentacles, his muddy and sand-packed hide trembled despite the relative warmth of the fall air. “Buck” he muttered again before placing the remainder of his matches back into his somewhat damp collection of gear. Matches were supposed to be magic. You struck a match, applied it to the wood, and a campfire would start. It had worked that way in his books, but Turpentine was beginning to lose track of how many corrections he was going to discuss with the authors if he ever got a chance. With an additional shudder of his mud and sand packed hide, Turpentine turned instead to a problem he could at least do something about, and there was plenty of water around to for that solution.
He had never liked taking a bath at the orphanage, but the claw-footed tub and the stringent brushing of Mother Windrow would have been welcome compared to the trouble he had wading into the river and squatting down to rinse out the worst of the sand. A brush would have been nice, and he even would not have turned down a bar of lilac soap if it had miraculously appeared next to him, but at least he could get out the worst of the embedded grime before wading back onto the sandy beach of the sandbar and promptly picking up even more sand on his hooves.
The lukewarm water of his river bath only sucked the warmth out of his skin, making Turpentine shiver in the cool night breeze when he emerged from the water. After a brisk shake to dry himself as much as possible, he picked his way gingerly over to the camp and the small crackling fire which was beginning to eat its way up through the driftwood he had optimistically piled up for the night. He had gotten nearly all of the water toweled out of his mane before a disquieting realization swept over him, and he stared at the campfire.
Maybe one of the matches was less extinguished than I thought. Or not.
Turpentine took a long look around his campsite, seeing nothing in the darkness except the scrubby trees waving in the night breeze, the ripples across the river surrounding him, and the unspeaking stars looking down.
“Hello?” he called out, trying to look in all directions at once. “Is anypony out there?”
There was no response.
Stats
Page generated in 0.023 seconds
Total duration
1,017 users online
2,179,643 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
First comment reserved for the author
Welcome to the sequel of The One Who Got Away, a quiet story of the river Fen, and the young unicorn who finds his new barony to contain several surprises. For starters, there is no land in his new barony. Secondly, his new castle turns out to be a broken-down riverboat. And third is… seaponies.
In this sequel, we find ourselves following the trek of a much younger colt named Turpentine, who has decided to seek his destiny by floating a raft down the river Fen to Baltimare, where he will become a famous painter. There's just one minor obstacle in his way...
Chapters will be posted one per day, starting 2/6/2017 (and two today, because the first one is kind of short), and ending on Chapter 18 and the Epilogue. So relax, watch the river flow by, and enjoy.
Just keep an eye out for the local inhabitants. They can sneak up on you.
A different protagonist? ... better see some of our prior ponies, make that romance tag live up to its presence after all when the first one didn't quite get to that point. Looking forward to seeing how this goes and expands upon the prior story though with Gaberdine (spelling? I think I got it right) and the odd, quirky water barony. And seaponies too. Can't forget those!
EDIT - First chapter doesn't really contain a whole lot, although it does lend a bit of character to this orphan Turpentine. Really can't say anything one way or the other till more comes out, I suppose.
7926659 Please note the 'E' in the rating. The only beds here are riverbeds. After all, Turpentine is almost eleven, and Ripple is almost nine. (Do you know how difficult it is to write a E rated story with this bunch of readers?) Think of it as an adventure, with extras.
7926670 Oh, I know, it's more a critique on the fact that Gaberdine and Pearl never had actual romance between them in The One Who Got Away. So, I am hoping that you actually elaborate on that in this story (which can be done with an E rating!) so the romance that didn't happen in the prior one does here. Romance doesn't imply anything elicit, I just would like to see more than 'casting eyes at each other' at the very end as the romance.
Can't really say if I like the POV shifting to Turpentine yet or not, will probably need a few more chapters of content to make a determination there. I can already see why you're quoting Twain though, at first glance it does seem that you are pulling some inspiration and.or creating parallels to a degree with Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn's stories here. Writing itself is solid as always, so again, time shall tell.
YES! I have been looking forward to this story for a while.
It's finally here!
And so it begins. Eagerly lookng forwqrd to seeing where this story takes us.
7920505
A riverboat?
What a world, where the old classics make laying/lying mistakes
And yeah, I know, it's in character, and just a line before that he said "We catched fish". Still.
(what? I wasn't looking for motive, moral or plot. Just errors
)
I hope for his sake that the description of "a huge collection of logs" doesn't mean his raft fell apart on top of getting stranded
Hee. Some nice ponifications there
...which he had failed to light
Awwright. consider me hooked
PS: concerning the chapter title... I hope he's not going to meet some seapony called "Fate"
(Contented rumble of approval.)
Oh, and watch out for millipedes. Some of those river peninsulas and islands are just crawling with pretty big 'uns. Especially if there's a lot of grasses and ferns on 'em.
Get ready guys, because it's finally here.
A good start. The descriptions and the introduction are very nice and sweet. It lacks a little something to be entirely caught by the plot but it's the first chapter so I guessed it will come with the next ones. A little upvote for now and I expect it to become a big one.
I loved that one. Perfect.
Not many stories on this site have had me anticipating them, let alone so eagerly. The One That Got Away is one of my all time favorites on this site for reasons I cannot quite describe. Already, I can feel the inkling of that same inscrutable feeling just from a single chapter. Cheers to a new journey.
7927638 You know, it's really tough to stay modest when people write stuff like this. Stop it. Really.
7927190 Kansas just has these little biting bugs that make it so if you pitch your tent on the sandbar, you *really* should spray first. You should also check to make sure Tuttle Creek Reservoir is not going to open up the tubes or it might get a little wet, too.
7927142 No, I'm not going to name a seapony 'Fate.'
Love it already Georg
Well I'm a day late and already hook...can earth ponies eat fish?
By Mark Rein!
Love your sarcastic Author's Notes.
But isn't MLP kind of base on different morals and motives? One thing I learn from the very first chapter is that you always bring a brush to get the sand out
Yes, I've been looking forward to this one. The first story was wonderful, so I have high hopes going into this one.
7927070
At least there are no crazy monkey-throwing Germane Conquistadors.
Minimal length for a chapter to be awesome? - well you've got the answer.
I can't wait for the rest of the story already!
Tsk tsk! Nopony ever taught him how to construct a proper firelay!
I recently went out after a wet sleet and snow storm simply for the practice of starting and maintaining a fire in the worst possible conditions.
Even then, it took only one match. Such is the result of 30 years of practice and knowledge of campfire building!
You know, when I see ponified versions of books and authors, it does not bother me at all. Yet, when I see ponified names of scientists or pieces of technology, I feel indignant at the imaginary theft of intellectuals and IP. Not sure what that says about me. I guess I see culture as something freely shared between humans and ponies, yet when I see ponies with high-level identical technology I think, "Hey! That's our thing! You already have magic; leave our greatest achievements alone!". Huh.
Nice intro. Descriptive, but never boring. But why does Turpentine keep calling for his childhood adventuring inspiration? Doesn't he know Buck Finn is a fictional character?
Even the author notes, even THAT is awesome, amazing, and radically cool.
+Infinity Points!
Hmmm...I believe his motives may be to get away from all the "boring old adults" as I like to call them.
a
ottle Vaca as it were.
It's really a large moral lesson if you think about it.
"Do what we say just because we say it" so this kid is going to have an adventure away, because they probably discouraged such creative (and dangerous) thinking.
Now then, I'm also thinking the plot of the story may be to find companionship on this small island?
Maybe he will end up stranded out at sea, with only a seaport for company, laying down on his (probably) crappy raft and staring at the stars, quietly.
Probably thinking "did I take a wrong turn at alberquerky?"
I already have a sneaking suspicion of who his hidden helper might be.
I do love me some Huckleberry Fin. And new character. Can't say much else so onwards we go.
7947608
Aw. Did nobody get the reference?
Is anypony out there, or am ah talkin to maself...
I'll just leave now.
Is anypony out there
Nopony Home
Vera Swim
AAAAAAAHHHHHH!111!
Got away has a SEQUEL?
...
calm now.
Somehow I missed this existing. may have something to do with it coming out while I was absent from the site.
Time for more reads
Ah. back again. It's like returning to an old friend.
Hehe, still can't get over how Turpentine thought it was a good idea to build a raft when he can't even swim.
8813117 Silly. He has a raft because he can't swim. Or at least much. Otherwise, he could go tubing. (Although that would take some time, and cut down on his cargo capacity.)
You wrote the best Author's note