//------------------------------// // A Meeting of Minds // Story: Washed Up // by ambion //------------------------------// Captain Nauticaa had returned. Currently she was sitting at her desk. Opposite the desk stood several ponies, Flotsam in their midst so that he was sort of sheltered but sort of held prisoner between them. They were all to varying degrees anxious, Sea Bed in particular. The desk itself had quite a few of its many tricky little things, all useful little tools of the Captain — Flotsam recognized the hoof-guards on which she mounted her swords, among others; all polished with exceeding attention and undoubtedly kept in the highest degree of maintenance — her things were cleared from the desk to make way, but  —  and this was a big, wonderful but  —  her swords were still right there, splendid and gleaming.   They were arrayed to the side, because on the desk was a big old spear of somber stone.   Not old, actually. Big though. Plenty big.   Ponies’ eyes were on the Captain, and hers were on the spear. Flotsam felt of all things acute embarrassment.   The spear was as rough-hewn as anything, its form violently disarrayed like nature had produced one exceptionally long geode in its most irritable and distressed of bowels, then ripped the black heart from it. Or like black as coal barnacles had colonised the branching zig-zag of a midnight lightning bolt. It was savage and wild. It was gritty. It was a weapon. And it was its every magic subjugating inch somber stone.   In the company of perfect, polished swords and intricate and clever tools, it seemed to snarl and slather smugly, even in its inanimacy.   “You did this?” The Captain asked. But it wasn’t really a question. Of course he did.   Flotsam was decidedly chipper, all things considered. “Looking at the positive things here, my head’s clear. Clearer? Clear-ish. It’s not pounding.” He smiled and tapped his temples.   There was a kick at Flotsam’s ankle. “Oh and Sea Bed’s not horrifically injured or, you know, dead. That’d be bad.” Flotsam’s smile stretched at the edges.   The Captain gave him the sort of unreadable expression, one to make card sharks consider giving up cards and sharkness altogether. “Indeed. I appreciate that you can still come to that conclusion yourself.”   “To my credit, I was in the middle of pretty intense mind...vision...thing. There was, kind of, memories? Bits and pieces and what I’m going to haphazardly call my junk floating around, that’s literal by the way, but hey I remember what changelings are. That's new.”   Charming Booty horned in. She’d been eyeballing the somber stone with wide eyes. Now she flicked her fire red hair and narrowed them. “Siren’s spasms, Sea Bed, how strong was that tea?”   The almost black mare bloomed with slightly less black blush. “It wasn’t just tea,” she admitted. “There was magic.”   “Changeling mind-meld,” Flotsam helpfully explained, because ‘magic’, like symbolic hallucinations from the depths of a broken mind, could have so many explanations and meanings as to be almost useless a term without any given one.   “Don’t say that,” Sea Bed whined.   “So it wasn’t?”   She held covered her eyes. “No. Just, it sounds silly.”   “It does sound pretty silly,” Charming Booty admitted. She turned on Sea Bed, poking her in the chest.  “Hold on. I’m pretty sure we’re still hooves off with the damaged goods.”   “I was bringing him on a journey to the fractured edges of his psyche. Not hanky-pankying him.”   “At least give the poor stallion a drink first, doing something like that.”   Harpoon added her two salt-greened bits. “Getting a stallion inside his own head? Drink's for courtesy. Stallion like that wants money at the door.”   “Damaged goods,” Flotsam mumbled. “Apt, I suppose. Still. Kind of hurtful.”   “Patches,” spoke the Captain, summoning the filly who came wriggling from under the desk, a coffee pot and mugs balanced on a tray in her precarious hold.   “Yeth Captain!” squeaked the little lanky one.   “Shut them up.”   “Right away!” she beamed. She turned. She turned hard. “RIGHT, you lot! Auntie Naughty Wantth youth all to thhut yer trapth, or I’ma ‘af to cut the tongueth from yer gobth!” She cuddled the stunned stallion, giving him a big fawning smile as she squeezed him. “Ekthept you, Flottham. You’re my favourite.”   She limpet-attacked his leg and he was stuck with her nuzzling. A stern but not unkind look from Nauticaa finally drew the filly off and the Captain was served her coffee. She sipped it black while the room went quiet.   “Well done,” Flotsam overheard, whispered low and resonant from the lips of Harpoon, to the ears of Patches’, catching a slight nod accompanying the two words.   Indeed, the other crewmates seemed more pleased than intimidated.   “Now,” said Nauticaa, “who wants to go first? On the one hoof, one of my crew, one of the longest-serving and least troublesome mares on my ship turns out to all along have been... Sea Bed, if you please?”   “Um, yes.” And Sea Bed shed her skin, in a flourish of green flames. She glanced left and right, finding herself in a slightly more opened space. “I just want to start by saying-”   The Captain held up a hoof. “Not just yet. Give us a moment.” She almost smiled. Or Flotsam imagined a smile. And a softening to her tone. But only slight, if at all. “There’s this revelation to consider.”   Maybe she sighed. Maybe Flotsam imagined it.   “And then there’s you.” Her eyes were deep and dark, not imagined. And they were beautiful; he met the Captain’s gaze with — he surprised himself — almost wistful yearning. Her focused attention didn’t distress him, even as he recognized that maybe it should have. If anything, he found himself having to suppress a smile, then wondered why he had to suppress anything, so he smiled and perhaps the slightest suggestion of a quizzical, uncertain frown came out in the Captain’s stern expression.   She set a hoof on the black spear and eyes followed.   Nauticaa sipped her coffee and the air grew thicker with its pungency, swirling and mixing into the almost forgotten background of salt, sea and wood and the never-quite-forgotten and sometimes feverishly highlighted notes of female hair and sweat. She asked, “How?”   Flotsam opened and closed his mouth. How had he done it? He didn’t really know. In fact, he really didn’t know. Or was the question better interpreted as, how did a pony such as he exist that could do such a thing as whatever it really was he’d done, creating somber stone, with all it’s unknown and unconsidered connotations included? He was no better for answering that than the predecessor.   Charming Booty brushed past him and his returned Patches. “If I might interject, Captain? You must realize, the value of somber stone, it’s... it is...”   Harpoon scoffed. Her wings flicked with air-stirring forcefulness. “It’s a new tin of cookies.”   Charming’s ears went on end, exasperation making her eyes wide. “And sandwiches! Really nice sandwiches, sandwiches everyday. All new supplies. And cannons. And all our repairs. And that’s not even getting to our actual, comfortable, happy, joyous profit. This right here is why I’m Quartermaster and you are First Thug. I take the actual account of things. Somber stone is valuable,” she huffed, “very much so.”   The First Thug only snorted. “So’s fresh cookies. And that’s queen First Thug to you, Boots.”   Nauticaa set her hoof to her table. It wasn’t loud in the slightest, but it had never needed to be a noisy gesture. “I prefer the sound of ‘princess’, myself.”   Harpoon nodded. “Princess First Thug it is than, Captain.” She grinned at Charming and the unicorn stifled a giggle.   Sea Bed’s voice was a surprising addition to the mix. Her ears flicked and overall, she looked ready to wince. “I never expected my being found out as a changeling to go like this.”   “How so?”   The changeling glanced about nervously. “It’s supposed to be this big, scary moment, isn’t it? All eyes on me? That’s what I always figured.” She horned a gesture at Flotsam. “Instead he’s upstaging me.”   “Yes,” said Nauticaa, “he does that.” She gave him a look and Flotsam’s ears went back.   “Oh. Sea Bed. Uh, sorry. Also for the whole spearing you to a wall thing. I didn’t mean it.”   “You actually did.” And Sea Bed looked around again, seeing that being upstaged hadn’t been so bad, because now the eyes were on her. “Flotsam... Captain... I was in Flotsam’s head or, a part of it. It’s... It’s not very nice in there. He hates changelings.”   His ears head lowered, his ears also. “No I don’t.”   Sea Bed superficially resembled Nauticaa, even in her true changeling form. Another surge of fire and her familiar guise was resumed. Her eyes were deep, and they had pity in them. Pity and fear. Were the eyes real or fake, knowing now what he did. Flotsam wondered. What of their emotions? Real, or fake?   “Flotsam isn’t you. Not really. Captain, intended or not, he’s named very aptly by you. Flotsam. The debris after the wreck. The debris floating to the surface. That’s what he is. Sam. That’s what you are.”   “That’s it, is it? Flotsam pulled himself up, brushing the protesting filly away. “Sea Bed, thank you for doing whatever you did. I feel...better. I won't forget that you tried. But that? Anyone else want to call me damaged goods? Debris? No?” He eyed the room over. Flotsam had never seen concern in Harpoon’s eyes before, and now he did. Patches’, too.   “Whoever, whatever person I was before... you think I haven’t thought about this? That I’m at best confused and downright unstable? Either he will come back or maybe he never will. Maybe he’ll come back and take my place and I’ll be gone just like that. Maybe he’s gone and I’m what’s spat up to inherit it the mess. Maybe he’s gone and I’m going to go the same way, too.”     Flotsam pulled his torso up over the desk, his shadow falling on his spear.   “Maybe there was only ever me in here, and this is only simple madness. Sounds a sane enough answer, doesn’t it?” "In the meantime, and it surprised even me to realize this: I don't really give a damn what the truth is. I am. Talk to me like I'm a mad pony if you have to, but do not talk to me like I'm not a person. A piece. Like I'm leftovers."   He hefted the spear. It was gritty in his hoof. Heavy. Ugly in his eye. “You asked me how, Captain. How this happened. And now I think that somber stone needs to be mastered. Cowed. Enslaved, for lack of a better word. It doesn’t suppress magic just because it can. It’s a challenge. Control the magic, control the stone. I believe that’s how I created this.” The details of fresh memories grew clearer Flotsam’s mind. “I grew this. My stone, seeded from yours. And speaking of which...”   He lowered his blackened horn to Nauticaa. “It’s time you take this back. Please.”   In his peripheral, he could make out the rising eyebrow of the Captain. “Quite a speech. I wouldn't say I've ever heard 'enslavement' and 'please' used in the same appeal before. For all this, I expected you to show you could remove it yourself. Can’t you?”   Flotsam considered. “I can.”   She reached out, taking his horn in her hooves with a tenderness Flotsam had not expected. “Then why ask me?”   “Why would I want to worry you even more? Asking is polite. Asking is respectful. I’m a little mad, but I’m not going to lose sight that the Mercy saved my life. Mercy has been kind to me. So yes. I can. And the nullifier will melt or explode or even just come off. Doesn’t mean I should.”   Flotsam grinned in grim humour. ”A pony with less magic can afford to go around proving points they don’t have to."   “He did thtop the griffonth’ thhip,” Patches mused, “He hit them with their own ballth.”   “Well,” said the Captain. She even shared a little smile. “A moving speech. Does anyone protest this? I somehow doubt the nullifier will be going back on again.”   “Not likely,” Flotsam quipped. "It doesn't really provide the safety we thought it would."   “I’m disturbed by how easily I’ve forgotten Flotsam’s a fellow unicorn,” Charming said, her red mane swishing most pleasantly. “I’d be sickened, having my magic suppressed like that. It’s been cruel to treat you differently.”   Harpoon puffed her chest. “I’m game. Let him free. That or he’ll break it anyway.”   Sea Bed worded herself carefully. “I am skeptical,” she admitted. “I’m the one that saw in his head. I got a spear for it. Flotsam isn’t all and only the person you think he is. I don’t want to be against this... but I am. I don’t want to be part of this. Flotsam, I’m sorry. You scare me.” Sea Bed made for the door. “Captain, by your leave?”   Nauticaa nodded and the changeling walked free to the sunshine. Flotsam did his best not to resent her. Were it only so easy.   The Captain cradled Flotsam’s chin and pulled him closer. “You do make things adventurous, Flotsam.” Her hooves closed around the nullifier.   “I kinda feel half blessed, half cursed, you know?”   Nauticaa laughed lightly, a beautiful sound. “Let’s say two thirds the one, one third the other.” Her grip tightened.   “Wait, which-”   Flotsam tensed and cried out. Nauticaa was pulling the nullifier off.   “Ah!”   “Patches, child, look away!”   They covered their eyes just in time.   Except for Patches. She was really rather pleased with what she saw.   It was a really bright magical light, after all. Dazzling.