//------------------------------// // Chapter Five, Building Relationships: Romance of the slice. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Kuril- My daughter came back. Sure her eye was bandaged up and she looked like a pirate, but she was perfectly fine. My daughter’s new stray was just looking at everything as if it were her first time seeing a forest and she seemed awed by the clearing we lived in. She was a cute parrot with a black bandanna skull cap on her head and the braided feathers were really adorable, I was always meeting those that were more adorable than my little tom cat. The bird my daughter brought home was keeping mostly to herself and she looked to be sitting quietly in a corner with a sea turtle. Speaking of my daughter, where was she? Maybe I should ask Fizzle. “Fizzle dear, where’s my daughter? Dinner will be in thirty minutes, then we can play some Ogres and Oubliettes before bed time.” The pony had been giving the parrot curious looks and she turned back to me with an upset look. “She did kind of drop an airship on Sekhet by accident.” Well that would explain Fizzle suddenly running inside and the crashing noise I heard, maybe that’s how we’ll build the town. Give everything a crashed airship theme. “It wasn’t the captain’s fault that the balloon exploded… mostly.” The teenage parrot spoke up defensively while hugging the turtle to her chest. “My daughter is your captain… that’s so adorable!” After a moment I stopped clasping my hands together and coughed into my right fist. Fresh Start, Fizzle, the turtle and even the new stray were staring at me for the squeal I had unleashed. “Ahem, anyway, I take it Sekhet is going to give her a hard riddling away from all of us?” “Yes, she dragged Jade off to riddle her.” With that Fizzle sighed while looking away from me. “It sounds like she’s going to ask a hard one this time and she doesn’t want anyone helping Jade.” “Riddle, why would she just simply ask a riddle after taking an airship to her head?” Well stranger, even I and everyone here knew Sekhet was actually a friendly goddess. “If I were her, I’d have crushed us with my big meaty paws.” Sekhet was relatively friendly anyway, she liked my cooking at least and I knew she would never threaten to kill Jade. There are worse things than death that could happen to my daughter. Though Sekhet did rip out an Ursa Medium’s throat in front of Fizzle, but we don’t talk about that. “I’m Jade’s mother, who are you?” The food was simmering at the moment and didn’t need me to watch it, but I only had two minutes before I needed to get back to it. It’s vegetable chili night with crackers, corn chips and my daughter’s favorite partial obsession parmesan. My daughter always was more of a dairy loving Abyssinian than a fish loving one. -Jade- “Okay Sekhet, let’s get this over with. Give me what you think is a riddle worthy of this accident.” I resigned myself to this, I wondered just what kind of punishment she would give me if I failed to answer correctly. “Gladly, but its two riddles like last time. Your failure will involve you giving me half your portion of whatever Lady Kuril is making for dessert.” Sekhet could see I was about to object, so she held up a giant paw and stopped me. “Though it may have been an accident, the airship was moving at terminal velocity this time.” “I’ll give you that, because last time it was about twenty feet above your head before it dropped.” This time the boat had been dropped from much higher up and it wasn’t like I was aiming to land it on Sekhet on purpose. It just happened that way as I only had enough time to cast two griffon feathers at myself and Jacky. “Here’s my first riddle. What usually loses its head in the morning, but gets it back at night?” Okay that was an interesting one, makes me wonder if Sekhet will write books on the subject. If I could sleep on this riddle then I might… sleep… that’s it! “A pillow.” She nodded that I was right. A pillow loses the head that rests on it in the morning, but it gets it back in the evening when you go to bed. “Unless you’re nocturnal or an insomniac, then your pillow gets lonely and wants a friend to share in its misery of going headless.” “Cute, but no less true of those who don’t sleep at night.” That actually had Sekhet snickering, she quickly stopped and stared at me with a look of contempt. “Moving on to my next riddle. Using only the numbers four and six, how can they be half of five without dividing?” “A math riddle?” I now know for certain that Sekhet wasn’t playing around. “I didn’t even know a Sphinx could do those! You’re playing dirty you giant piece of…” “Mud can be quite cleansing I hear, ever been to a spa that doesn’t ask questions? Las Pegasus is quite nice for things like that.” Sekhet's toothy smile would not intimidate me, I glared at her as hard as I could manage. “Now answer the riddle Priest Jade, or do you want to give up on your dessert this evening?” Well a Sphinx couldn’t tell a riddle that was completely impossible to solve, that would be completely unfair and would break the spirit of the thing that they were known for. How could you use just four and six to equal half of five without division? This was horribly complicated. What kind of math problem could possibly… wait... putting two and two together... eureka! Clever girl Sphinx, clever ancient girl. I almost didn’t get this one, but you’re not winning my so dearly cherished dessert on the night I just got back you blatantly evil food hoarding goddess! “The answer are the letters ‘I’ and ‘V’.” There was a long moment that I was being stared at by a wide eyed Sekhet, she started smashing her paws against the ground angrily. “Darn it and I thought that would get you too! Apparently you know your numerals.” We went back to the restaurant together and she shrunk down to her alicorn size. “Your dessert is safe from me… this time at least.” Sekhet honestly wouldn’t sound too threatening to anyone who heard her whining about not winning half my dessert. She was still a goddess and should be treated with respect for the fact that she can defeat entire armies on her own, so don’t ever drop an airship on her head on purpose. - The chili was quite good. My mom knows I don’t like spicy foods, but she makes the chili so well that I can’t help but eat it. The fine taste of spices, beans, garlic, pepper and onions and my coveted parmesan. Sometimes mom thought I was more mouse than cat, but both species liked dairy products and everyone knows that. As for the dessert that I had saved from Sekhet? It was a nice and tart raspberry sauce drizzled over a delicious slice of cheesecake! Jacky joined the O and O club the town had going this evening. Well the town of only one big, slightly dysfunctional, family living in The Witch’s Fare. That would start changing soon, thanks to some zebra word of mouth and the inn we planned on building here. First we had to help Chickadee make herself a character. We already had a witch, a rogue, a spell sword, a cleric and a spoony bard, so what would a parrot choose as her class? Jacky Blackcap Chickadee liked the archer class, because she wanted to stay at range and not let her bad luck effect our game. I didn’t have the heart to tell Jacky that her curse wasn’t that big a deal anymore, despite all of us getting some really bad dice rolls. It made the game more interesting and hectic for all of us, so bad luck wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in this instance. My pirate souvenirs were a hit with mom and Fizzle. Mom liked her hat because it was shaped like that of a witch’s given a jaunty pirate theme. Fizzle liked hers because it could cover her stump, she could go out in public without having to wear the cloak. A cloak, I noted, that she seemed quite unwilling to part with. I don’t think Sekhet liked her worshipper though, mostly because Jacky worshipped me more as her captain and didn’t really know much about Sekhet at all. -A week later- It seems mom had quickly adopted Jacky as well, I sometimes wished my mom would give me more hugs like she does those two. I was a little jealous, but that jealousy was tempered by the fact that Fizzle and Jacky had had somewhat less than stellar childhoods. My childhood in Abyssinia was actually quite upbeat in comparison. I truly had no problem with Blackcap, which was her nickname now. After her bad luck seemed to have significantly dropped to a less life threatening level, it was now relegated to causing minor misfortunes that weren’t a big issue for any of us to handle. Jacky wasn’t going to be called Black Jack around here, as it is a nickname that seems to upset her and she preferred us using her middle name of Blackcap more. I only had one issue with Jacky, she wouldn’t call me anything other than ‘Captain’. This is even when I explained to her I wasn’t a pirate or a captain and that I was in fact a rogue sun priest. She didn’t care, I would always be her captain that sailed us through the hellish storm that was made of her horrible luck literally out to get her and me. Her luck’s apparent last revenge was to eventually end up with Sekhet getting crushed under The Double Dare. The Double Dare was now useless for the same reason the Predestined Paradox was, its keel broke upon Sekhet’s unbreakable spine. At least the rainbow the next morning had been beautiful, we didn’t have weather mares and we didn’t need them. We here at Airship Mauled would take what nature, life and anything else could throw at us. Having a goddess that was domesticated by my mother’s cooking helped immensely, Sekhet wasn’t hiding the fact that she wasn’t leaving after she declared herself my mother’s advisor. Apparently mom is also the mayor of our one home town. I was walking along the tracks to Ponyville with my two friends, if we had train tracks to our home then this trip wouldn’t be as problematic. Things had been pretty quiet at Airship Mauled, which was nice as it allowed my eye to get better and I had a week of fun hanging out with both Fizzle and Jacky. The three of us were heading to Ponyville on small adventure. We had to get one of the construction crews Celestia hired to modify the first crashed airship into our home, we were turning the second crashed airship into a small inn. The second thing we had to do was meet the teacher Celestia was hiring and would be teaching us for the next few years. Our educations were wide and varied. Fizzle’s education had stopped cold and she was at the right age where her education equaled up to what she had been training for at the age she had lost her horn. Getting into Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns didn’t require just learning and using incredible magic, it also required that you learn a lot of other subjects. If Tempest was allowed to carry on for the next seven years without help, then she would be quite poor socially and lacking in a good education. For example, she would be gullible enough to believe that an evil villain would actually fix her horn and wouldn’t just keep stalling on doing just that to keep her as expendable pawn. Note to self, recruit Grubber. I would also like to point out that Fizzle might never get a cutie mark thanks to her broken magic, but I wasn’t about to tell her my theory on that. Jacky’s education was very pirate centered, she almost knew everything she needed to know about being a pirate. Surprisingly enough, she was well educated by the school in Turtle Toga which was taught by a rotation of pirates. Physical education apparently involved fighting with weighted wooden cutlasses, pirate accountants taught math and pirates taught pirate related history. Writing, reading and cussing counted as their own language classes, pirates had to learn how to write their memoirs somehow and selling said books was a thing successful pirates did for their retirement. I didn’t know where Jacky would have been in the next few years, but being stuck on Turtle Toga was my best guess after the storm we flew straight through. The ship ended up falling out from under us after that and everyone that lives in Airship Mauled knew what happened next. I believe Jacky would have been lonely and still waiting for a captain to appear. Nobody liked being near someone who is cursed in some way, well she was cursed until I helped weaken it considerably with my actions. I might not have been what she wanted exactly, but I was what she needed in the end. My own education was not up for discussion. I can tell that we are almost at Ponyville’s train station since a train just rushed past us. It was still early morning when we arrived, we were making really good time here. All we had to do was find our teacher here, she’d be holding a… no way… it couldn’t be! Why was it her of all the ponies that Celestia could have gotten for this? Let’s see crimped pink shaded hair, cutie mark of three smiling flowers, coat color of… I want to say light purplish cerise. Yep it was a younger Cheerilee. It could be her sister Cherry Blossom, but I highly doubted it. “Excuse me, but you wouldn’t happen to be a teacher looking for some students would you?” Even if she were, we still had business in Ponyville. She jumped a little in shock and looked towards us. “Why yes, I am. I’m Cheerilee and I’m waiting for my students, I’m supposed to meet them here and get escorted to their school.” I hoped that Cheerilee was going to transfer to Ponyville after she was done with us. She was pleasant enough, but she kind of just wrote us off as we weren’t ponies. “Did you a get a description of said students that you’re supposed to be teaching?” I looked to both Jacky and Fizzle, both of them felt as awkward as I did about this. “Not really, but Celestia herself told me they would be quite special and that they’d be a real challenge to teach.” Your expectations were for pony students then. Said special students and challenge are currently standing in front of you. “Hello teach, we’ve still got some business in Ponyville. If you want to back out of teaching us now that you know that some of us aren't ponies, we’ll understand.” I had never seen a jaw drop, ears wilt and tail scrunch up between a pony's hind legs so fast in disbelief before now. “Well you’ve got to begin somewhere, teaching all of us will be fun!”