//------------------------------// // June 20th, 2015 x3 and June 21st, 2015 x2 // Story: Perils of a Merpony: A Ponies after People Tale // by kitten_girl86 //------------------------------// June 20th, 2015 ~Kathryn Dear Journal, I'm doing another voice-to-text entry but this time not in my RV; I'm currently reclining on a tiny stretch of beach, just off the old outdoor aquatics center; the beach Griz uses to pump the ocean water from to refill the indoor pool. It’s been such a long two to three days, Griz told me to go relax; she’s finishing the solar panel’s install to the orchard’s sprinklers. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. I had gone to bed early last night and so in contrast, I got up early today. I wasn’t the only one; and I'm not talking about Raea. Griz was already up and disconnecting the sprinkler system from the electric power when I arrived at the maintenance building. I found her casually popping animal crackers into her beak as she worked on the breakers and wires. “You know... eating animal crackers might be seen as cannibalism if we’re not careful,” I had joked to her. She proceeded to dunk her crackers into a jar of red jam. She’s got a sense of humor, that griffon. I polished off three granola bars as I lent her a hoof at getting the new cables rigged up. “We’ll lay out the panels later. Planting that field is my priority right now,” Griz had said, and I concurred. Griz had already moved the horse-drawn plow and all of the seed supplies down to the new field. She had also used the salvaged rope to lay out the sections for each crop. The field she had laid out was huge but not impossible. Plowing was awful... the plow was heavy and cumbersome. We had to take turns doing the plowing; I did it faster than Griz but we figured it was because of the Earth pony magic. Oh don’t get me wrong! Griz is strong in her own ways... just not plowing! We were able to save some room by planting the corn and peas together, putting up little bamboo trellises for the peas to grow on. That way, the peas would keep the weeds to a minimum and the corn would protect the peas from the harsh wind off the ocean. Sure, there is a bank of trees that break most of it but not all, and not if it’s blowing the other way. Turns out, the field Griz picked ALSO has sprinkler system too! Dumb luck, I swear! That’ll save us a lot of time when we have to water anything... just go to the maintenance building (which Griz wants to rename ‘Engineering’{1} for some strange reason) and flip a couple of switches. That reminds me to hook up some timers.... Then again... I'm not entirely sure where the water for the sprinklers comes from. I’ll have to ask Griz that question tomorrow. Planting had taken much of the day but not nearly as long as the orchard. It DID take more magic out of me and I was really exhausted by the time we finished. Each crop already had tiny buds showing on the soil... a scattering of speckled green. That was when Griz brought me here and practically ordered me to turn merpony and relax. She said how whenever Patrick got really weak like I was looking, he’d let himself drop into the ocean and rinse off; he had said it was like an infusion of magic energy or some such. I gotta say, when I let myself into the water, I knew exactly how he felt. It really IS like an infusion of something. Maybe it’s magic; maybe it’s something else. Either way, it’s fantastic and just what I needed! Had I known this last night, I might have slept here instead! LOL Griz has left me here with Raea and my tablet but only after I had to beg for the latter. She wasn’t sure I’d relax but Raea had lain on top of the tablet until I took a nap. Having woken up, Raea bounded for the water and let me record my entry. Oh great... she found a stick! :P Guess that means I'm done my entry for today. Kathryn signing off. June 20th, 2015 –Sarah Dear Journal, Kathy is off exploring underwater or something... I'm not entirely sure. I just went to check on her and found the beach empty besides her towel and the tablet. So I figured I’d take this time to make my own entry for today. Patty & I went out on a Coast Guard boat to do the underwater scouting of the locations they picked yesterday. I had packed a bunch of simple foods with us and figured we could always try the local water flora if we got really hungry. A couple of the locations we had to ax right off the bat. Tidal flows were too strong underwater or moving in the wrong directions. A couple were too deep and thus, too dark to see even at mid-day. There would have been no way to even see the colony let alone, farm our own water crops. Another spot turned out to be a hangout for local dolphins and Kathy had insisted that we not inconvenience any animals already laying claim to territory. In the end of the trip, we were able to pare the list down to only four; one of them is almost directly east of Campus City from the outer shoreline. [CC is located on the tip of land surrounded by a bay but there are two isthmus’s between CC and the ocean. The one that backs onto the ocean is the outer; inside one is nothing but forest and pathways. Kathy says it’s a naturalized forest.] My money, if I had any, would be put on that one. It’s deep but not too deep; plenty of light and good temperatures for both pony & crops. The bottom is mostly all sand; few scattered rock formations, maybe even some caves but we didn’t spare the time to look. Didn’t seem to be the home of any of the animals in the area and plenty of space for later expansion, depending on what ships we end up using. My idea is to simply sink the empty boats and use those as our homes. Not much different than Kathy using her RV... I'm not talking cruise ships or anything! I was thinking just the small skippers, tugs and yachts. We’d probably need to build a dock/marina out on the outer isthmus for working on the ships we intend to sink. After we pick a spot, I'm hoping the three of us can go check out the local marinas for picking out our personal boats. Patrick will likely be responsible for sailing the ships back to the beach for now. In the meantime, I've been trying to come up with names for our underwater colony. • Wildly Wet • Miami Marina • Waterworks • Pony Cove • Sunken Ship City • Atlantis 2 Hey, what can I say? I'm not that great at coming up with names. :P –Sarah June 20th, 2015 Dear Journal, Sarah and Kathryn are splashing each other in the water and Raea keeps chasing the waves. I figured I’d take a turn at an entry for today. My vote is for the spot just directly east of Campus City. It’s a good depth, open concept and plenty of room to work with. The ocean bottom in this location was not all sand like the others; this had a HUGE section of what looked like stone slab... about the same, roughly in circular, size of the University building. Depending on the size of the ships we sink, I figure we could get easily 12 mid-sized ships on the slab... But that will all be up to Kathy. I don’t mind her taking lead on this. After all, she was an urban planner before the Event. –Patrick June 21st, 2015 @ 10:30 AM ~by Sarah Dear Journal, Things got bad last night; around midnight. Kathy is sick. Raea left the RV and found Jazz, licking her face and barking urgently until she got up and followed her back. When Jazz found Kathy the way she was, Jazz came back and woke everyone. (Patrick & I are still sleeping underwater in the pool at night. I guess Raea wasn’t sure how to wake us. Griz has an idea to rig an old school bell and how to train Raea for future emergencies; she thinks it can be adapted for the water colony later.) Kathy was all feverish and sweaty... and she could not control her merpony magic; constantly changing back and forth. For that reason, we could not put her in the ocean or the pools; if she changes to land pony while underwater, she could drown before reverting back. But I feel awful because she keeps crying out to go back into the water... begging for it. When we tried to feed her fruits, she heaved them back up. She could not even keep bottled water down; she could only drink ocean water. Then we learned that salty stuff stayed down too; salt crackers, potato chips (regular only), French fries and heavily salted tomato soup. Things got better around 3 AM, when the moon set on the horizon. I don’t think there’s a correlation beyond a merpony’s connection to the ocean tides. Patrick and I have felt it since day one, and I'm sure Kathy has learned to ignore it too by now. Kathy’s fever broke at the same time and so she was able to sleep more soundly. So much so that both Patrick & Raea fell asleep on watch and nothing further happened to Kathy; even her sporadic merpony transformations were a thing of the past. When I had just gone to check in on her and grab the tablet, Patrick was serving her some salted tomato soup; she seemed to be almost back to normal besides being really weak and having no memory of any of it. Being weak, I can understand but no memory? That’s a little disconcerting. Griz has said that the merpony visits to the water sites will have to wait until Kathy has fully recovered. She’s going to keep us busy with caring with the orchard & farm field instead. Jazz, Patrick & I will take turns checking in on Kathy as she sleeps. –Sarah June 21st, 2015 ~Kathryn Journal, Last night was awful.... I really don’t remember much of anything... Sarah and the others tell me how I was but I don’t remember any of it.... I don’t recall waking to eat, or throwing up.... Or begging to go back into the ocean.... .... Instead, I'm wracked with guilt over postponing the scouting of the water colony locations. Sarah says it’s ok.... that my health is more important. Patrick says we can try again tomorrow if I'm feeling up to it. I just know one thing for sure.... I don’t EVER want to have my friends go through that again. I have to figure out what made me sick and avoid it. This is Kathryn signing off. ... Oh, PS... I don’t think this has anything to do with the moon. I keep a lunar calendar on my personal tablet... the one that’s got all my music on it... and it was a waxing crescent last night. Nothing unusual... if anything, I’d have expected the new or full moons to affect us more. And yes, I do feel the ocean’s tides like the other two but I've learned to ignore it really well.