//------------------------------//
// Starlight Flies East 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

One day out from Riverfall, the noonday sun shone distantly from above on the deck of the Immortal Dream, a front of clouds billowing down from the mountains in the distance behind them. Maple stood on the deck looking backwards, her loosely-braided mane blowing in the wind.

"Thinking?" a voice asked, and she turned to see Slipstream walking up beside her. The pegasus still wore her sweater, and it looked quite cozy in the high mountain air.

"I did it again, didn't I?" Maple sighed in resignation, shaking her head. "Overreacted and made a huge decision the moment something happened to get me emotional. And all my friends went along with it, yet again. I wonder if I'll ever learn..."

Slipstream tilted her head in concern. "I suppose we could tell Shinespark to turn back... If you've changed your mind about-"

"I'm not even sure." Maple cut her off, still staring over the edge. "For all I know, we'd wait several days and I'd still come to the same decision. My house isn't livable, so I'd have to stay somewhere else. I know Starlight doesn't like it in Riverfall, and my life has been such a series of ups and downs that I never had a normal to return to in the first place. And as much as I love Amber and Willow..." She sighed again. "I don't know what I need, but I have a chance to look for it instead of waiting in bed for it to drop into my lap. And I think we can do this. We're all more experienced than we were in Ironridge. This time, we can make this trip worthwhile."

Slipstream gave an uncertain grin. "Well, I'm glad to hear you're optimistic? You might be a seasoned adventurer now, but I'm still just a nobody who jumped at the chance to be along for the ride. Heh..."

Maple's eyes widened. "I'm definitely not a seasoned..." She paused, thinking. "I almost am, aren't I? I've certainly survived a lot..."

"To me, everyone is," Slipstream said, standing and looking back with her, leaving Maple staring at the back of the pegasus' ears. "I was born in a Stone District hospital back when the Stone District was for well-off vacation homes and growing cool-weather terrace crops, raised in Ironridge by two married parents who were always home for dinner, did my time in school, got a job in a skyport food court, got promoted from there to the information kiosk, dreamed of being promoted again to a flight attendant... About as normal and uninteresting as you can get. My family never traveled, never got rocked with all that political drama while I was a kid... all that. Ponies like you who come out of a town that's basically been off the map for years? I'd know, because I was the pony others would ask about things like that, and no one asked. Then you get all involved with everything and there's battles and revolutions and suddenly half the economy vanishes overnight..." She wiped her brow with a wing. "Just saying, but all of you are something else. I feel like a third wheel."

"Hmm..." Maple allowed herself a moment of reminiscence. "That sounds like me, ten years ago. I grew up raised by multiple families, with my biological mother barely a part of my life and my father as an anonymous stallion in Sosa, but that's normal for Riverfall too. Me, Amber and Willow were just three fillies with dreams of going on a big adventure to the city..."

"Sounds exotic to me." Slipstream folded her forelegs on the railing, looking impressed. "Then again, I just got a little overdosed on how exotic and exciting different places can be. I'm going to need to keep my head on tighter if we're traveling like this, huh?"

Maple blinked, slowly realizing that she was the veteran another pony was coming to for advice. Whether she felt like she deserved it or had just ran around flailing was another matter, but... "Acting sensibly is good," she murmured, feeling slightly out of place saying it.

"Heh." Slipstream's wings fluttered, holes knitted in her sweater so she could still use them while staying warm. "I just hope I can make myself useful, now that I'm traveling with Ironridge's finest."

Maple nodded. She didn't say it, but she felt exactly the same.

"Looks like we're outrunning the weather," Slipstream remarked, trying to keep the conversation going. "A lot of the flights in Ironridge get canceled due to bad weather around the skyport, and sometimes flights get delayed coming in from Yakyakistan, but I never see too much of that from the north or east. The Griffon Empire's climate in particular is supposedly very mild. I've heard some locals say their goddess Garsheeva controls the weather, but I don't know if it's true."

"I suppose you could ask Gerardo," Maple said absently. Leaving behind Ironridge and Riverfall meant leaving behind the constant rain... She wouldn't miss getting drenched, but the sound of it on her roof at night had always been soothing. Hopefully the east wasn't a total desert.

"I should, shouldn't I?" Slipstream perked up. "Good idea. Want to come?"

"I think I'm going to go check on Starlight." Maple apologized with a smile, stretching her back and turning in a circle. "I hope she's found something to do. I was out here watching the world and thinking, but I think she thinks far too much."

Slipstream shrugged. "Okay. I'll be on the bridge, or wherever else Gerardo and the others are."





After a full circuit of the ship, in which she found Valey fast asleep in a library chair and a Do Not Disturb sign hung over the door to someone's cabin room, Maple found Starlight in the observation room at the very front of the ship, hunched over a book. The filly's ears flicked when she approached, and she realized there was no point in being stealthy.

"Hello, Starlight," Maple said, settling down next to her in front of the panoramic, protruding glass window that let a viewer see in every direction including down. "Keeping busy?"

"Trying," Starlight grunted, flipping a page and not looking up. "All I've done for the last ever is sleep and try to stay alive, and I stopped doing things for fun for a while before that. This feels weird."

Maple smiled sadly. "Are you succeeding? Am I interrupting anything?"

"I don't know. I'm passing time." Starlight kept her focus on the book, tail flicking once. "I need to learn to enjoy myself when nothing bad is happening, though, so that's what I'm trying to do."

"Well then," Maple whispered, folding her legs beneath her and laying next to Starlight, draping the filly with her tail. "I suppose I'll pass time with you."

Her forehooves rested on glass, and the view straight down showed the Yule, still tracking eastward and sticking within several miles of the mountain wall. The terrain hadn't changed at all from the area around Riverfall, with stretches of massive old-growth forest, hills covered in shorter conifers, and impassably rough rocky crags covered in jungle foliage so green it left her seeing a red afterimage when she blinked and looked away. Most of it was moss, vines and ferns, plants that thrived in the cool and wet, and every few miles the river grew from another tributary from the mountains to the south.

Already, the Yule seemed slightly thicker than she remembered it, though the still-draining flood was partly to blame. She could see flood damage higher on the banks where two thin lines of gray had been scoured away, and wondered if there had once been fallen tree trunks and the like that had been swept away by the surge.

Her head rotated, and she looked at the rock wall to the south. Shinespark's cruising altitude was more than twice the height of the tallest trees, yet as far away as they were she still had to shift and crane her neck to see the top. The perfectly vertical face was frequently marked by columns of white spray, water making a journey so far down that even the clouds couldn't carry it back up. Where did the mountain storm water even come from? Some of the ribbons vanished halfway down, their sources too insubstantial for their mist to survive dilution by the massive fall, and others started far below the top, jetting from caves or underground rivers where water had been trapped by the valleys and unable to find a surface way out.

Maple shifted again, looking to the north. Where there wasn't mountain, the horizon went on as far as her eyes could see, and she quickly realized the Yule had tributaries from that direction as well: it only made sense, since the massive rainstorms had to dump their water somewhere. Between the shattered rock and vertical jungle, she could make out dozens of northern lakes that dotted the landscape and fed into the river to drain. Fish were an exportable resource, right? Someone could probably found a community between several of the richest lakes and see it grow quite successful...

And in front of them, the Yule continued. Maple closed her eyes; they wouldn't be reaching the Griffon Empire any time soon.





"Maple?"

She awoke from her nap to a little hoof poking her in the side and Starlight's face right in front of her own. "I'm getting hungry," the filly announced. "And it'll be evening soon. Do you want to make dinner?"

"Oh, I could do that," Maple replied, blinking herself awake and stretching her legs. It was probably a good idea... and she couldn't actually remember if she had gotten to make anyone dinner in quite a while. She let herself yawn, left Starlight to her own devices, and trotted for the galley.

Shinespark's supply room, seen properly lit and wide awake, was a thing of beauty. Maple stood in the center surrounded by crates higher than she was, allowing her mouth free reign to water as she daydreamed what she was about to make. Raw ingredients? There were plenty of sacks of essentials like flour, and a cooler for milk and eggs and the like sat against a wall that was undoubtedly connected to the air conditioning apparatus in the cargo bay, which was the next room over.

The ship's array of spices was also impressive; a lot of those were likely imported. She would need to play with them for sure. Something spicy, then... Maple's eyes scanned a large rack of fruit, fresh and dried. Maybe not. Her diet was still recovering from eating nothing but in Ironridge. Though Valey would appreciate some as a side dish...

Beginning to hum unconsciously, Maple danced around the room, taking stock of everything else they had. Hanging from the rafters were strings of tubular things she was reasonably sure were meat, though while she recalled a discussion on the subject during the breakfast she had shared on the ship in Ironridge, she couldn't remember if it was a delicacy or an oddity. Either way, best to ask about that first to be safe, and she didn't know how to use it in a dish in the first place.

Vegetables... there were plenty of vegetables as well. Barley, too. Maple licked her lips; the first day they hit cold weather, that was going in soup. Split peas, beans, various legumes... She checked one of the giant crates, being rewarded with squash and gourds. Those could go well spiced! She closed her eyes and sniffed a tomato, an idea beginning to take form in her mind. What else could she find?

Bags of sugar and salt. Good to know where those were. Unground black peppercorns... She'd need a grinder, or maybe a dish they could work whole with. The next crate had ears of corn; that would be a treat to prepare. They had butter, right? Yes, they did, along with cream. Cream! Furtively, Maple got out the tiniest glass she could find and took a sip, just for fun, shivering at the richness. While she was trying things...

All the caps came off the spice jars, and her nose passed over them, inspecting carefully. Plenty, she knew instinctively, since Arambai got Riverfall's food supply from Ironridge. Plenty more were new and unique, likely fancy or high-end ones Shinespark had gotten her hooves on. She'd use those in moderation until she knew what they did. Checking more... One jar sent Maple reeling back with a wall of nostalgia. She hadn't smelled that since the boats stopped! It was one of those feelings that had vanished from her life with a subtlety she never knew it was gone, and her eyes almost started to water as the sweet aroma reawakened memories of foalhood dishes. She couldn't remember her name, but one of the mares in the pool that raised her always cooked with this... It had to be used. Maple replaced the cap and pocketed the jar with her cutie mark. It had more or less recovered from the damage it took in the Flame District, and she was feeling empty without using it to carry anything around.

Face set in eager, purposeful determination, Maple reached for a suitable pot, changed her mind and grabbed one a size larger, and marched into the kitchen, preparing to cook.