Epilogue
Lost at Sea
Epilogue
Admiral Biscuit
There were times that the ground was frightening. Lots of ponies wanted to talk to her, and they didn’t speak Equestrian quite right—or maybe it was her. She couldn’t be certain; all that she knew was that sometimes their words grated upon her ears, and she longed for the solitude and simplicity of her cloud and the ocean and nothing else.
Most of the time, she stayed at the small vineyard with Auvergne and Ariégeois. She learned to tend to the grapes, and flew bird patrol, feeling a bit guilty every time she chased a small flock of starlings off. After all, her first proper land food had been stolen grapes.
Some afternoons she watched over the sea, sitting atop a cloud that she put together, much to the confusion of her host.
Unbeknownst to her, she had circled the ocean for months, caught between trade winds. The feral winds that had spawned her storm had conspired to put her into a continuous loop of the ocean. Had she known, perhaps she could have flown northward for a day and made a new cloud, or southward . . . out of the reach of the winds. But she hadn't known, and so she'd circled over the ocean several times, just out of eyeshot of merchant ships.
The capricious winds had finally shown her a bit of mercy, guiding her out of the endless cycle and into a more easterly breeze, where she'd traveled for half a moon as it made its way slowly but inevitably towards a distant shore.
It took weeks before Cloud finally accepted the land as truly real.
She sat in her room, with the sea breeze gently blowing through an open window, ruffling the lacy white curtains. A quill sat beside a fresh sheet of paper, as she considered what she might write in a letter home. Would anypony believe her story? She could hardly believe it herself.
If it hadn’t been for Star Catcher, she might have left the letter unwritten, but she couldn’t leave her wingmare unsure of her fate.
Cloud Climber finally picked up the quill in her mouth and began writing.
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Well, nice story you wrote there. The only complaint one could make is that you made it so short and efficient. Some of the earlier chapters could have beneficed from a few more line to increase the tension.
And on the other hand, it made a good fast pace that led us where it needed us to be without wasting time. So...
8519524 Silly person trying to science without the creds.
BIOLOGIST HERE! All complex free-living multicellular organisms, as well as fungi and bacteria, possess enzymatic pathways to synthesize glucose from almost any carbon-based nutritional biomolecule. Starches are merely polymers of sugars to begin with (as is cellulose, but only certain microbes can break it down since mammals lack the enzymes required); while fats can be reduced to simple acetyl units which are then reassembled into glucose, along with pyruvate, glycerol, alanine, and glutamine. In mammals, this takes place mainly in the liver, but has also been found to occur in the cortex of the kidney, the intestine, skeletal muscle, and astrocytes in the brain.
Pyruvate, for a basic example, is the simplest 3-carbon alpha-ketone acid and is part of the normal glycolysis cycle. The reverse reaction of using it to create glucose is begun by pyruvate carboxylase adding one carboxylic acid group and forming oxaloacetate, which is then swapped for a phosphate to form phosphoenolpyruvate by phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPKC) and enter the cytosol where the remaining enzymes in the glycolysis process perform a reverse reaction at low glucose concentrations (due to reaction kinetics influenced by substrate concentrations) to produce glucose, save for the final step in which glucose-6-phosphate is dephosphorylated by glucose-6-phosphatase, rather than a reverse reaction perform by hexokinase (an irreversible step in the glycolysis pathway).
THIS IS HOW YOU NERD!!
Nice ending to this story! I was hoping that she would return but I guess she couldn't afford the passage to go back home.
Poor Cloud, just god... Even at the ending of the story I still feel sorry for her, having to take all that time to accept she'd really found land and wasn't hallucinating. Least she's finally starting the long road to recovery and getting back in touch with her wingmates, but God above... Excellent story Biscuit, the feels and pain for the characters were real here.
Oy! This needs more tearful homecoming! I demand an epilogue the second!
Oof. Well, at least it wasn't the doldrums.
She's a changed mare alright, and I kinda expected her reaction to being back with ponies again. The ocean gave up on killing her and cast a spell on her instead from which I doubt she'll ever escape. Wonder how it would be for her to go back home one day, after everyone has already more or less moved on from grieving and accepted her death - sometimes they just don't come back after all, as it has ever been.
...
And straight into the favourites it goes, a wonderful story that had everything I love. Great work.
8519602
Hey, I even understood most of what you wrote there. And I admit to feeling a bit silly indeed since I really should know that, although I did formulate the glucose thing as a question and not stated it as fact. :b *concedes and tips hat*
Fantastic work. You capture the sense of isolation and worn-down sanity so well, I'd almost think you'd been shipwrecked yourself. Thank you for a gripping read.
A fantastic survival story. It got a bit darker than I expected towards the end, but still quite thrilling.
8519782
Passage can't be that expensive- her story's sensational enough that selling it should easily get her a ticket back.
This story really needs an epilogue to the epilogue. Did she go back? When? If not, why not? What was she like a couple years later?
8519824
8519795
And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!'
The Hermit crossed his brow.
'Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say--
What manner of man art thou?
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
Hah!
There's plenty of room for another chapter here, but I guess the end of the story is already inevitable. One way or another, she'll get back home.
<Oops! Wrong universe!)
Once Cloud's health is restored (and I'm pretty sure she'd want to repay her new friends as well) she could probably get back to Equestria on her own, or she might be fortunate enough to meet a pony in Prance who speaks Equestrian, and can direct her to a consulate or some such. She could have some sort of adventure traveling by ship, or flying, or depending on whether there's a land crossing between Equestria and Prance (nobody really knows what their world looks like) she could hire on as a lookout while they cross the wasteland, to warn of raiders, slavers, and other dangers...
8526766
I was just considering using Frisian for the 'really old-fashioned peasantry' ponies in my current story, but when I played around with an online translator, it was too close to Scots to work. I'm probably going with Danish. Since the concept is 'narrator can more or less understand the yeomen when they talk, but the laborers and workers are mostly unintelligible'.
8519565
Yeah, I could have drawn it out more. I kind of wrote it on a lark, to be honest. I was thinking back to when Silver Glow mentioned it in her journal, and thought I might as well write it out.
Amusingly, it is one chapter longer than what Georg initially pre-read . . . I added one of the chapters in rather late.
And this is really behind-the-scenes stuff, but we were discussing whether to have interludes between chapters in Chonamare, and mutually decided against it, since it would probably break up the flow of the story.
It's always a mixed bag, isn't it? Too fast, and you're left wanting more; too slow, and you get bored. Finding exactly the right pace is a challenge, and of course it varies by reader.
8519602
This is one of the things I love the most about writing on Fimfic. Someone tosses out a 'did you know?' fact, and pretty soon somebody else who's an expert in the field gives an exact explanation.
8519782
I'm not sure if she ever does. She can probably work and get some bits to afford passage back home. Heck, maybe the weather system has something in their budget for that kind of thing. Then again, she might decide she likes it better in Prance, and stay there.
8519795
I can't even fathom how an experience like that would change a person--or a pony. But I know it would, perhaps for the better, and perhaps for the worst.
Thank you!
8519824
The ocean rarely gives up what it takes. Even though she made it back to land, she isn't the same pony who left. For better or worse, who knows? I can see her never wanting to fly out of sight of land again . . . but I can also see her quitting weather forever and becoming a sailor.
Oh, man, I don't even know. I'm sure books have been written about that kind of subject. No matter what, her relationships with Chonamare and the other pegasi on her team have been forever altered.
.
8519823
If she hadn't been gone for so long, she could have crashed her own memorial service
I don't know about a second epilogue . . . I honestly don't know for sure if she would go back or not.
Because Coleridge says it far better than I ever could:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
8519920
Luckily, I haven't. I do love me a good sea story (and if it's true, so much the better), and I've probably read dozens of this type of story in my formative years, along with a few regarding the much more mundane 'lost in the woods.'
You're quite welcome!
8520260
Thank you!
I think that months of near total isolation, along with a very poor diet, would put one on the very edge of mental breakdown. In fact, while I'm no expert on the subject, from what I've read, it seems that a lot of times in situations like this some people just ultimately give up and die, while others don't. Survival sometimes seems to not only be a case of physical strength, but mental determination.
8520498
Yeah, there's probably lots of ways she could get the bits for a trip back to Equestria proper. The weather team might even pay for passage, or the Equestrian navy could pick her up next time they sail to Prance.
I honestly don't know. I could see her never wanting to leave sight of land again . . . but I could equally see how the ocean got a grip on her, and she becomes a sailorpony for the rest of her life. All I know for sure is that the Cloud Climber who landed in Prance is not the same Cloud Climber that fought a storm outside Chonamare.
8521184
The fickle winds, man. They need a team of pegasuses to whip them into shape.
8522639
If she wants passage back to Equestria, it wouldn't be too hard to arrange. She could work and save up her bits for passage, either around the vineyard, or else on cloud patrol or a weather team. She could probably find the Equestrian embassy (perhaps write them a letter) and get free passage that way, or hire out for one trip on an Equestria-bound ship,
Whether she would . . . I honestly don't know.
8526873
It's hard for me to see her just staying in Prance permanently. It seemed like she had a life back in Chonamare, with friends and family. Being isolated for months is a hell of a thing, but I don't think it'd make her want to throw her entire past away.
I could see her wanting to stay on land, but I could also see her becoming a sailor and eventually being part of an effort to establish more permanent contact with the seaponies.
8526809
You can't use Danish; the Danes don't understand it.
8520548
Such a wonderful poem (one of my top favorites) and of course perfect for this story.
8526811 I walked across the Atlantic once... (Alondro now believes he is Pony Jeebus... he's been playing with lab chemicals again...)
8526918
I've gotten in several gunfights with the police, and the funny thing is that I'm not lying about that.
8526809
Well, if you end up going with Danish, feel free to drop me a note.
As a native speaker, I'd be happy to help out.
8526848
Man, my brain just won't let go of this story.
They have, although I can't give a concrete example. To me, it looks as if Cloud has some form of PTSD (which wouldn't be overly surprising really) or a kind of Stockholm syndrome - only that it applies to the ocean or possibly her cloud raft. If strangers taking an interest in her bring her physical discomfort, I think going home to Chonamare could end up being an awful experience... She's not the same mare anymore, and people usually have a hard time accepting that somebody they thought they knew has fundamentally changed and can't simply fit in again and pick up where they left off. Resentment often builds up on both sides. First she might feel like a ghost, and then as a stranger. This is what psychiatrists are for in our world today, but as a pegasus, Cloud has the option of simply beginning a new life wherever she chooses. Not a happy option, but a viable one.
It's also fairly obvious (well, I interpret it that way) that she longs for the simplicity of the ocean where there's no need to fit in again. Cloud can have a simple life at the wine yard that doesn't come with the pain of re-uniting with the people of Chonamare or she could indeed become a sailor-pony. As you said, the sea rarely lets go of something again.
Damn. This story. So many potential tales waiting to be written, from dark to sad to bittersweet or maybe, just maybe, happy... somewhere behind that vast horizon.
8526950 I suspect you of criminal activity! *Puts you in the prison of bones!*
8532533
In this case, it was totally legit.
8527993
I almost wonder if there might not be a bit of survivor's guilt in there, too. She doesn't know that the rest of the pegasi survived the storm--the same cloud that got her could have gotten one of them, too, and they might not have been as lucky as she was . . . and maybe a bit of resentment that they didn't find her, as well.
That's certainly a big factor. Chonamare has moved on; they've accepted that she's gone, and in a way they might be offended that she came back after they gave her a nice memorial. Her house would almost certainly be gone; while I can't say for certain what might have become of her possessions, I can't imagine that the other pegasi would put any amount of work into maintaining her cloudhouse as she left it. It feels right to me that they would have let it drift off over the sea.
Then again, in a seafaring town, maybe the ponies would hail her as a hero, a mare who fought the ocean for months and finally won. And I guess that in and of itself might be uncomfortable for her. While I have no personal experience, I think that sometimes when you do something heroic, it doesn't seem heroic at the time.
Well, I'm not entirely sure about that. I think that of all the tribes, the pegasi are the most likely to have wanderlust built in. I think that that's why we didn't see Rainbow or Fluttershy's parents until very last, and why we haven't seen Scootaloo's (or for that matter, Rumble's). In that regard, I could see her building a new cloudhouse in Prance, and maybe joining the weather team there. But I could also see her having a desire to go back and visit Star Catcher in person--after all, if anypony is really feeling guilty for her loss, it would be Star Catcher (of course, this is more in the future; at this time in the story Cloud doesn't know if Star Catcher survived the storm).
I think that at this time, she does long for the simplicity of the ocean, but it's hard to say if that would last forever. Simplicity is nice, after all, but so is a regular food supply and visits to the spa and all those other things that civilization brings, and I think that she does know the difference.
Yeah . . . she's had a happy ending of sorts, but maybe it's not quite the happy ending for her, not yet. No matter what, she's emerged from her ordeal a changed mare, and she can't ever go back to the way it was before.
8549472
Huh, that's a good angle, too.
Never thought of that possibility, but that certainly fits. Of course, me being me, I immediately thought about how that would make everything even worse. *sigh* Good thing you're there to put things into a bit more positive light. ;)
Anyway. Thank you for that long and elaborate reply!
I really appreciate that.
8550983
It's hard to say, really. There's not a lot of canon evidence--for the most part, the ponies in Ponyville seem to not hail Twilight and company as heroes, despite how many times they've saved Equestria, so besides Rainbow, it doesn't go to anypony's head.
I think--and I don't know--but there might be the kind of bond that maybe soldiers or firefighters or anybody who does something risky and perhaps dumb has, and that might make a difference. Heaven knows that there's dozens of ways to spin it, though, and they're not all good.
Oh, you're quite welcome! I love thoughtful comments, 'cause half the time people think of stuff I never would have.
I too want another epilogue. Is she okay? Does she make a new life in Prance?
8690760
I think she eventually winds up back in Chonamare. That's what feels right to me, anyways.
Thanks for reply, Admiral ....
Guess I'll try to explain myself a bit better here, even if will be nearly offtopic to story above (I stalled at reading it :( )
I usually like to read, and think over everything I've read. At some point dolphins (and other live beings) were for me just some distant beings I grow curious about. I tried to step close to them (after reading nearly all russian literature, off-line, mostly, because Internet for me was also only something limited, not available at home). This road lead to many discoveries ..most of them quite sad. But some still important, I think..
Like, how ideas live (or die) in our world? Someone has to carry them forward, otherwise they often lost. Idea about Contact with sapient Cetacea was more fresh like 50 years ago, and while many VERY interesting and little-known details of reality were discovered since those times - it never come to its goal.. May be partially because all those little details only makes sense together?
For example Ken LeVasseur was working at Lou Herman's dolphin lab, but after just two years of research (and close contact with two captives) he and his friend Steve Sipman and few others come to unavoidable conclusion all this research in captivity just literally killing dolphins. So, they freed them. With consequences for their whole lives ... Yet Ken not stopped completely, and tried to develop some idea how to carry this 'talk to dolphins' idea into reality WITHOUT methods requiring food deprivation and captivity. He digged out two important pieces of puzzle... http://www.whales.org.au/published/levasseur/index.html - see references to The Pepperberg Technique for Model/Rival Training and Markov's research (I actually read a lot of papers following his reference list - including "Alex and me" by Pepperberg, Savage-Rumbaugh's books, and whole trilogy by Eugene Linden about apes. And Markov's papers, too - because I'm from Russia .... not like idea about middle language gained any ground inside our scientific circles .. Markov's research was about _detecting_ language by mathematical means, not about decompiling/translating it. yet, little detail from his reaearch still motivates me to continue ...because, well, one big feature of language is ability to talk about objects and places absent from immediate environment, or emotional states unclear otherwise...exactly because poor captive dolphins showed very big insistence on talking to each other _in little isolated pool with nothing else_ IMO, is additional proof at advanced language in use here ... But I meet those 'language scientists' in person many times, and unfortunately they just dicks when it comes to ethics. They apparently need all this research not for helping dolphins in any way, even less for advancing any abstract science - but for making good show out of themselves ...so sad. They ruined my world, but truth/reality is more important than illusions ... I still cling to variation of this theme!). It all was written in 1996! I found it all only 10 years later ... and also important book from nearly same era, King of the Sea by Derek Bickerton - I already posted reference to it here on fimfiction, but guess second one will not hurt much...Because dolphins there actually..sounds like real-world alien enough dolphins...In many other books they sounds too much like humans.
I also read J.C. Lilly and found them worth re-reading as ...well, philosopher of science. There were other books I pulled to my home during research ..like ... Wade Doak's works. We even briefly meet at facebook, but it ended with disagreement, because by now Wade was not interested (unable) to push forward as much as he did back in time ..enough conflicts in life hit him hard enough... :/ There are other little known authors and stories ..like Jan Ploeg's 17 years long journey with Dusty .... http://janploeg.nl/ Other dolphins from same region over last few decades..other friendly dolphins and cetacea...it all started to make sense if you pull everything together. Yet ....Many humans who were curious enough even just 20 years ago for going forward and try few things today ...well, not in their peak form, even if their memory and in some cases discussions we have still important ...Like Russell's story: https://www.kintocetaceans.org/russell-hockins.html . This is ..interesting but also quite sad to see how time ticking ...and realize our time definitely not limitless (so, yeah, no Equestria for us, because time).
Still, may be some ideas actually livable, I for example extremely fascinated with Anthony Weston's ideas of different living, yet if none want to live (try to live) them - they will remain untested .... http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/459/760 - I started here (because you see, dolphin keyword!), but continued to read other books, like "MOBILIZING the GREEN IMAGINATION" and "The Incompleat Eco-Philosopher". Very important ideas..but who will try them IRL? One human can't implement them, they are collective by definition .....And yeah, because I live in Russia yet write to english-speaking board (and to writer who lives in USA) myself is of no real use when/if it ever come to building those futures ....not in direct way. So, do I ask others to do work I should do? Hopefully not only, I mean more different test points will not hurt, and anyway even if some international and intercontinental activism looks like possibility (for some) today - I come back to conclusion we better to try and build something at home(country/land), because..well, home is home.
well, as far as I (we) can see - Eqestria is place/universe where life utilizes magic, and where mind actually can change matter. So, some beings remain biological/magical, some become completely magical (Phoenix birds, Thimberwolves ..at least their body is not what host their 'I' - or it really 'we' for them? Anyway, they still resebles biological beings, even if purely by tradition/inertia.) There also apparently informational (social) evolution..ideas come to life, sometimes literally, tested in real-world, and sometimes survive...or wait until better times.
So, idea is ..ponies might be not first sapient magic users/carriers, but at some point they were relatively simple earth ponies, who focused on what is _really_ important for them - food, space, comrades/herd (and childrens). They can grow plants, and influence soil (at minimum) - so naturally they at some point applied some (incomplete) ideas about how life work to their own childrens, with varied results? Some become unicorns, who can do more strange magic, and may be THOSE actually give birth (even literally) to strange hybrid ponies..This at least answers why those ponies still roughly pony-like - their 'creators' wanted somepony recognizable, literally, even if with additional elements. This also explains why wings are too small - they mostly from thought inertia about 'all flying beings MUST have some sort of wings'. Pegasi mostly power their flight by magic, so it seems logical they come from unicorns. So, merponies probably were either attracted by idea of living IN seas, or pushed toward this idea by some climato-historical combination of events ...
So, they not purely product of biological evolution, but product of _incomplete_ application of incomplete but useful even in this form knowledge about life, as it exist in Equestria ....
8846338
You're welcome!
I do try to reply to every comment, although I'm not always quick about it
I think that back in older days, there was more hope at communicating with other life on Earth and less thought about the inherent difficulties of it. Although I don't know the timeline all that well, I can't help but think that this would have been after Goodall's successes with great apes which might have put some impetus behind the research.
There were also, I think, some ideas of military uses (which might have been nothing more than scientists trying to get some of the military funding).
I'd guess as we got farther into attempting to communicate with dolphins and other species, we started to realize some of the difficulties of it, along with the possible harm to the animals in question. I think that there's a whole different frame of mind that we have than animals as well, which is something that's got to be dealt with. The same holds true in people; different tasks take different kinds of intelligence and our normal, traditional ways of understanding and quantifying intelligence can't deal with that. One example I heard was that of a plumber who can build up a model of the pipes in his head simply by reaching through the wall and feeling around . . . that's not the kind of task that you can put on a standardized test, for example.
How do dolphins see the world? How do they think? What are we to them? And why should they be interested in helping us? It's probably putting too much thought on them, but I could see chimps and other apes kind of viewing us as funny-looking apes and dealing with us in that manner, but to a dolphin we aren't even some sort of fish. We can't go where they do and do what they do . . .
I have a feeling (although not knowledge) that such experimentation is still going forward, although perhaps with less promise than was imagined in the past. Maybe we're trying to decode dolphin language and understand the nuances of their communication, I don't know. I watch a series on YouTube called "Think Like a Horse," and in a lot of his videos, he explains how the horse sees the world, what it sees as scary, why it reacts like it does, etc. And I think to have any meaningful communication with animals, we've got to get to their level, rather than to think of them as funny-looking humans, because their minds just aren't built that way and maybe ours are.
I think of that sometimes when I'm writing. I mean, here in this story I'm trying to imagine how a female, magical, flying equine sees the world when she's lost at sea; all I can do is base it on my own experiences and what I know. Were Cloud Climber actually real, she might have a very different story to tell, and maybe I wouldn't understand all of it--I can't understand all of it, because I can't perch on a cloud, I can't rise above the ocean waves on a thermal.
Maybe we need to bridge that gap before we can really talk to dolphins. Maybe someone who's spent much of their life in and on the water is going to know more about being a dolphin than some behavioral scientist in a lab. Maybe somebody needs to swim with the dolphins (and I mean really swim with them, not be in a captive pool with them) in order to begin to properly understand them.
But I don't know . . . I kind of brush up against neuroscience and behavioral science, but I know very little about both of those fields.
I think that one thing that the internet can do is help knock down borders and increase opportunities for communication and friendship on a global scale, perhaps moreso than any other medium has to date. It's not without its disadvantages, of course, but could you have found what you did without it? I'm old enough to remember having to do research papers by searching through microfilm and card catalogs and all that stuff; nowadays, I can find a Wikiedia article and a YouTube video on practically any subject I have any interest in whatsoever. And while I could never have imagined this when I started publishing stories on FimFiction, I've literally got a global audience. I'm in America, one of my normal pre-readers is in England, I've pre-read for a guy in South Africa.
We all need to do our little part at home, for sure--whatever that little part is. What we're good at, and where our passion lies. But we can use the internet to reach beyond our homes, and maybe people with ideas can get together with other people who have ideas, people who never might have never been able to meet in the past due to international boundaries, and share those ideas and let them grow.
That's an interesting idea--all the other tribes of ponies are earth ponies who grew and expanded to fill other ecological niches not by evolution as we know it, but by more practical direction. I haven't seen that idea before, although it's not really out of the bounds of possibility for magical creatures. It also could potentially explain some of the 'glitches' we've seen in the show, such as Daisy using casting magic in one episode. I prefer to go with a more mundane biological explanation, although the genetics are rather complicated to make that actually work in a realistic manner.
Interestingly, horses (and other animals) can adapt pretty quickly to new environments. I remember reading that the Sable Island ponies have evolved over 300 years or thereabouts to have shorter pasterns, which serves them well on the sandy hills of the island. I think that I also read that they could drink brackish water, but I'm not entirely sure about that. So I suppose with magic, it might be possible for ponies to take to the sea, and to perhaps become more and more seaworthy over time. [alternately, a good fallback explanation is always that 'Discord did it] One wonders if they would have some sort of myth or legend behind it, something like Pony-Atlantis slowly sinking below the waves, and the ponies learning to live in the sea instead.
The idea of pegasi using more magic-based flight and using their wings for steering or something like that is more common, and it's actually the notion that I subscribe to. There's no way that they're big enough to actually propel pegasi, unless they're absurdly light.
And that's also a potential explanation for hybrids. When two ponies love each other very much . . . or maybe an eagle and a lion. . . .
>> Admiral Biscuit
Wow, this was long and good reply. Thanks for spending your time writing it.
Yeah, while balance is important - there seems to be tendency in us to cling to only one side of sentence, so one camp cling to mechanizing/oversimplifying and other camp tend to..mysticize/project everyting as one complete phenomena. In reality they ...seems to have some things in common with us, but not everything. It seems hard to remain in good balance, not even between (human) ideologies, but with balance as it really flows (our inner and social life seems to be really changing from exactly act of looking at it, so scientific methods developed around assumptions about unchangeable by observation objects and processes started to derail... I hope this, and just plain lack of will actually slowed down any meaningful progress on our self-understanding...compared to engineering and sciensies around/behind it our social life ..not just 'chaotic' (it isn't really, so sociology and other disciplines still can exists), but very poorly understood, like our education etc is much more about traditions, demands of the current and misbeliefs. .not like we can meaningfuly predict what this or another change in our lives will do, on longer run... so, i really hope for more systematic understanding what really makes us -us, like we are today, and what really helps. So, philosophical roots of science, like being careful with observations and conclusions and thinking - yet without specific bias science in those areas carry today.... [1])
Yes, this is what Ken tried to do, in his life, but guess he was 'a bit' carried away by this human-only overly-anthropocentrized (and in wrong sense! we barely know about ourselves today!) world..Last year I even suggested to him to try and carry on this (human) community meeting he apparently attend from time to time at sea! Because yes, while spinner dolphins for example much need rest from night hunts - just relatively quietly discussing human things around them, with real respect for their senses doesn't seems to be overly bad idea. But of course, it heavily depend on how much humans actually can be respectful/sensitive - they (we) tend to overestimate ourselves there... And yeah, I agree on coming down to other beings..Common dolphinfolk apparently not uberinterested in humans as some ..long-time social partners, yet I hope by giving them time, energy (so for example they can actually ask you to change course, so they will ride boat's wave not only as long as our paths are the same, but actively change it for their benefit! So, communication for life, not just for something _too_ abstract from their everyday reality and everyday needs!) and similar..ingridients they will come to conclusion _some_ humans might be good to have around! Right now even best cooperative interactions between humans and dolphin/cetacea folks a bit ...hit and miss, on both sides. But for this communication working humans should literally be listening ..and be ready to change their plans/path for others, as requested or wished or even hinted.
Books and Internet and videos ..Of course. But it also has darker side for me - I sort-of forced to see events I have no say in from all over the world. There is little point in making good thinking as text if it will be simply ignored by other humans. Julian for example from France, and he is more on humanist/philosopher/artist end of spectrum. We hoped to build some device so he will able to speak more clearly to some famous dolphin [2] and other less famous ones ... But guess you will understand this analogy: it somewhat hard to move anywhere if you need to build your car from small parts for the first time. Even if idea behind electronics we hope to use actually quite old - specific waterproof implementation is not something you can buy easily/cheaply, and without somewhat unusually sensitive human behind all this things will go...in unwanted direction.
You see (probably) - humans who often swim with dolphins (libre ones) have no real reason to dive into (rotten) science deep enough for actually coming up with something really useful. And humans who do science today ...well, not kind of humans who can really put their, hm, heart in being, sigh, friend to non-human above all else.
[1]
from p. 91-92: Palgrave.Macmillan.Kanzis.Primal.Language.The.Cultural.Initiation.of.Primates.into.Language.Mar.2006.pdf
but again, I was reading those and many others, and they inspired me ..only to crash a bit later because, well humans turned out to be too ready to put dolphin(s) at last position, and go for human goals, using dolphin(s) in sad sense of the term 'use'. It all flow in wrong direction, not TO dolphins/cetacea/whoever else ... Talk (among humans) can be quite good, but walk (swim?) usually not ...
I moved somewhat away from more individualistic views because , well, we all social beings and this sort of implies we can't ignore this dimension. And looking real hard into this 'food problem' (as initially described for dolphianriums) lead me to exploring thinking and history of humans, on why humans reacted so hard when their source of life was pulled away from them..and how and why revolutions erupted, and what humans wanted and what they get, over recorded history... Right now I settled for non-mainstream anarchism, but it seems way of acting actually more important than just self-labeling (anarchists had best observation of current reality and various forces inside human societies, it seems. Most ..debiased. But unfortunately this hardly lead to finding working solutions to all those ...not so little human problems, esp. if one side prefer not to cooperate) So, it turned out by moving away from humans you can't abandon humans, if you really want something ..working.
A bit back to story we commenting under ...It seems it was set in relatively early times, when compass and long-range communication (radio?) was at very least not something common/lightweight enough for weatherponies to wear on their flights? At least until mid-Season 5 radio and similar devices seems to be absent from canon, probably because they remove many needs for personal meetup? Personally, from early sci-fin/adventures and history I don't think radio is such social ruiner and disabler, but this story for example will be quite different if there was some way to orient yourself more easily, or call for help. I still try to imagine from time to time how technology (magical or more known here physical) and social life will co-evolve.. for different imaginable starting points. Was fire so big important in magical world as it supposedly was here for humans? From what exactly one can do textile with basically just hooves and few simple instruments? How sideway-looked-at (for more Earth-type horses) written language may look like? Sometimes I think those questions are more like distractors from IRL problems, but may be they still keep me thinking..on unusualities.
[2] http://www.irishdolphins.com/webpilot/list/details.asp?l=2&contentid=58 - this specific website is old, but there are still humans with whom this dolphin inter-act? inter-live even today ...
And a bit more more on Internet..yes, you can find a lot, but guess you already noted ..often it all just copy/paste of some mainstream views.Its paradox (but explainable one): it seems in USA even such possibility of at least trying to be friend to libre dolphin is little known or supressed on the 'safety' grounds...Ignoring fact those very 'sickentists' DO bodiely and psychological harm to local dolphin, with permission ...:/
You might also look into papers by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Kymlicka - unfortunately, even if some of his points really good ... it hardly changes reality-as-expirienced for even most friendly and open non-humans ... He is also non-anarchist, and I mean for me this is strange, you can't ignore evidence of our overly hierarchical behavior, it really unscientific..but see above, scientists of today not really best (or not even adequate) living examples of living by principles allowed some of them to discover all those amazing and alarming tendencies in the world ....
You can't just end it like this! There's still so much to do! So much to experience! I need to know what happens next, damn it!
Is there any chance at all that you will write a sequel to this? Where cloud climber comes back to Chonamare, and we get to see some more masterfully written psychological action?
Please?
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Please?
I don’t know. I set out to write the story because of something that Silver Glow mentioned in passing in Silver Glow’s Journal (that a weathermare got lost in a storm and sent a letter from Prance six months later). It’s not something that I’d really considered expanding upon, but then again sometimes the muse has me pick up something I’d done before and work at it again, so it’s not totally out of the question.
If I did, it wouldn’t be any time soon; I’m up to my eyeballs in other projects.
Ow, my heart! Too many feels...
It didn't help that one of my OCs is named Cloudy Heart, and it was all too easy to imagine her in a similar situation. (I did draw her on the ocean once, art below)
This was a good read, but I would've loved one more chapter to see Cloud Climber and Star Catcher reunited at last.
Cloudy Heart takes the phrase 'couch surfing' literally
64.media.tumblr.com/6700a444e9aa18ccdf2cb63693ee8423/0a7d1c7cfe6895c8-3f/s1280x1920/6c33df4174dfa11755af69b92609868477ee5ee8.png
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She’s cute! (and couch surfing, lol)
Getting lost in the clouds over the ocean is serious business, and I would imagine that coastal pegasi are warned about it time and time again . . . but I know enough about flying airplanes to know that sometimes pilots get lost in clouds and that usually doesn’t end well. . . . At least Cloud Climber eventually found dry land again.
I thought about it, but in Silver Glow’s Journal, Silver never said that Cloud came back, and as I was writing I kind of thought she might stay in Prance—would she want to risk crossing the ocean again?
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I usually think going through the clouds on a plane is cool, but I'd never thought about getting lost in them before... I'm just gonna hope I forget about that before I end up on a plane again.
Yeah, probably not. Maybe on a boat?
I hope she was able to go home.
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She might want to, or she might want to set up a new life in Prance. Either way, at least she's safe.