//------------------------------// // Chapter 17: But not for Very Long // Story: Through the Aurora // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Sharp Edge grinned broadly as the first structures of Agate came into view below them. It reminded Theo of plenty of similar places she’d seen on the American northern frontier. Unlike her homeland, these people didn’t have a thousand years of history in the town. The ample use of redwood logs and the local granite made the cabins seem almost like a charming little tourist destination, maybe a ski resort. To say the locals were surprised by their arrival was an understatement. As they emerged from the trees, they instantly attracted a crowd of confused and worried ponies. “Where did you come from?” A gray-furred earth pony asked, apparently the only one brave enough to talk to them directly. “There’s nothing up that way for… two hundred miles?” “Possibly further,” Sharp said. “We were traveling by airship. I mean no offence, but we didn’t intend to visit your town. We hope you’ll be able to assist us getting to Canterlot. Whatever the method.” “We have a train!” somepony said. Theo wasn’t sure who exactly, except to know that they were a child. At least they didn’t seem afraid of her. The town watched her intently, but no more than they did Emerald or Sharp. Her experience in Sleighsburg didn’t seem to be repeating itself. “It won’t come back for, ummm…” “Six days,” somepony else said. An adult stallion. “I’m the pony you’ll want to talk to about accommodations until then. I own the rental cabins in town. Visitors sometimes come out here to hike and appreciate the scenery, that kind of thing. I’ve got several empty if you’d like to rent.” “We would,” Sharp said. “Assuming your rate is competitive, I mean. We do have supplies to camp if we need to. We’ve already been traveling far. “They’re fair!” the pony said, though he seemed to deflate visibly at the remark. Maybe he thought they’d be an easy mark, and now he was disappointed. “Just two bits a day, no fancy city electricity, but we’ve got hot water now. Put the whole system in myself.” You are not winning me over to this idea. But as worried as she might be, Theo kept her mouth shut. It wasn’t really her place to say, since she still felt this entire disaster was her fault. It wasn’t just the cabins they frequented. The town had a tiny shop, with real food and prices that even Sharp seemed excited about. However remote they were, the abundance of local farms apparently meant they could replenish their food without difficulty. Eventually they found their way to the cabin, and Sharp Edge shut it behind them. So far as Theo had noticed, there were no terrified mobs, and no ponies had stalked them to the cabin. I wish both engines hadn’t gone off at exactly the same time. It would be easier to think it was an engineering mistake than sabotage. People shouldn’t want to kill us. “Dibs on the shower!” Theo said, hurrying over to the bathroom without even removing her saddlebags yet. “If I had to smell like campfires and trees for one more day, I think I might’ve died. There’s a reason I stopped camping when I was a kid and never started back up again.” Nopony argued with her, and she locked the bathroom door behind her. The facilities were simple, not unlike rugged rental cabins in many a national park. But she hadn’t been alone for almost a week now. Even just a few minutes were a great relief. She stood in the hot water, letting it wash over her until the gray water went clear again. There was even more of it here than there had been on the Horizon, and no worry about running out. She stayed in the heat until her body started to go numb, and the single mirror was fogged so much she couldn’t even see her own face. She could scour away the dirt of travel, and the more of it she got through the more like a person she felt. She might not be able to transform back into a human, or to replace her missing organs and return to her proper sex. But at least she could attend to basic sanitation again. What the hell am I going to do when I have to make the trip back? Maybe if she came up with some get-rich quick scheme, they could use the money to salvage the ship and get back into the air. Trouble was, it seemed like someone had beaten her to the punch. If Theo wanted to earn as much money as she could in this alien world, the best way would obviously be to “invent” some simple technology that Equestria didn’t have and sell it as widely as possible. But Feather already did that. And their parts were on the sabotage. That was so stupid as to suggest either an obvious plant, or simple ubiquity with their components. They couldn’t possibly realize a human was here, could they? She couldn’t answer that question without knowing the history of Feather—maybe it was more a situation of constants and variables, and there was always meant to be an Apple Store in every world. And maybe genius-designed engines spontaneously catch fire and melt themselves in flight, even though the natives don’t have any technology to do that. “You about done in there?” Sharp asked through the door. “Not that I mean to rush… I know you can’t rush a mare to leave the facilities before she’s fully satisfied. But if you wouldn’t mind…” He might as well have cast a spell himself. The comparison with a mare was all it took for her to jump from the bathroom, still a little damp around her head. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t have any clothes to wear, so she could let herself dry off naturally. “There,” she said. “Thanks for…” Sharp Edge was right outside the bathroom, only a few meters in front of her. He took one look at her and started to giggle. “I… had no idea you got that, uh… voluminous.” What? Theo raised an eyebrow, glancing down at herself. She winced at what she saw. At least she knew why Sharp Edge had thought she was so funny. Apparently her feathers hadn’t liked being in the water for such a long time. She’d been wet long enough that around her chest and shoulders, she’d expanded to twice her size, maybe more. The problem wasn’t as bad in back, where fur and feathers mixed more evenly. Even so… “Well.” Sharp Edge looked away from her, clearing his throat. “If you excuse me, I’m, uh… it’s my turn.” And he vanished, hurriedly shutting the door behind him. Emerald giggled, more innocently than he had. She didn’t seem to mind that she was still dirty, or that she’d been chosen last in line for a shower. She bounced up beside her, looking at the shut door. “I think he likes you, Summer.” Now it was her turn to blush. Her ears flattened, and she turned hastily away from the bathroom, making her way back to her saddlebags. Her electronics had been largely disassembled, at least all the non-waterproof ones had. The batteries were all removed, where there was no danger of the circuits going live when they were exposed to moisture. She opened her bags, rearranging what was inside without any real purpose in mind. She just didn’t want to make eye-contact with the filly. “That’s silly,” she said. “Sharp Edge is an experienced adventurer. He’s a craftspony, he’s an inventor. I’m just a… lowest bidder programmer who was stupid enough to take the night shift.” “Yeah I dunno what any of that means.” Emerald hopped up onto the edge of the bed, propping herself up and grinning at her. There was only one bed—and unlike the Horizon, this one was clearly large enough that it could fit them all without difficulty, if they wanted to use it that way. There was no storage loft, or anywhere else tucked away for other people to sleep. Apparently they only rented to couples here. “But I do know Sharp. I’ve known him my whole life. When my dad sailed away and didn’t come back, he was there for me.” “He has no reason,” she said again. There were other aspects of that, things that she doubted a child could understand. She tried anyway. “I’m not… like this normally,” she said. “I’m not a…” “You weren’t a hippogriff before,” Emerald finished for her. “He knows that! We all know that! Just look, he doesn’t care.” If there was one fact that stopped her from melting into a solid puddle of embarrassment, at least the shower was running again. There wasn’t a chance this conversation would be overheard. Little blessings. “Has he ever seemed interested in anyone else?” The instant she asked, Theo wished she could take the question back, but of course she couldn’t, and Emerald knew it too. She beamed, apparently taking the question as acquiescence of some kind. “I think so. But whoever they were, they never visited Sleighsburg. She was… you should probably just ask him. He didn’t really talk to me about it. I’m just his apprentice, and I wasn’t even that back in Sleighsburg.” “I won’t.” She sat back, zipping the saddlebags closed again. “Sharp Edge has been nothing but wonderful to me since I arrived. I’d be lost without him… probably dead in the snow. But I’m not from here. One day I’m going to go back home. I’ll be my old self then, and then it won’t work.” Emerald frowned. As young as she seemed, this conversation didn’t seem to faze her much. It was actually the opposite, like she’d been preparing for something like this for some time. “You still want to go back? Isn’t Equestria better than where you came from?” Theo opened her mouth to deny it but found she couldn’t. She’d not had great experiences in Equestria so far—nearly being thrown into the sea by crazed primitives, nearly dying in an airship accident, having to hike for days to civilization. None of those had been terribly enjoyable experiences. But at the same time… “There is something I wanted to ask you about, Emerald,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Ever since the crash.” “Sure.” Emerald sat back on her haunches, looking down on her. Apparently she hadn’t noticed that Theo hadn’t answered her question. “I like being helpful! Having something to do is… good.” “I don’t want to lose the ability to talk to you again,” Theo continued. “After losing this artifact, I realize it’s… probably inevitable. Maybe I’ll have to take it off again for some reason. Or maybe some evil person will go and steal it. However it happens, I… need to learn your language. I think it would be way easier to learn when I can put on some jewelry and instantly know it again, rather than having to figure something out after we lose it for good.” “Oh.” Emerald looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “There must be ways to teach it. I heard about a griffon once, on one of the ships that visited. He barely spoke any Ponish, just did what he was told. There must be a way to learn.” “We can figure it out,” she said. “Probably with Sharp’s help too. I think there just won’t be any shortcuts on this. I’ll just have to have the necklace off as often as I can and be trying to figure out what things mean. And maybe… we’ve got six days until the train comes. That’s enough time for a crash course.” There was plenty of time for study in the next six days. However beautiful the landscape, however much her human self might’ve been excited about a hike somewhere the world wasn’t covered with snow, she’d had more than her fair share of nature in the last few days. Agate didn’t present them with many alternatives—the residents were all completely devoted to their own professions. They had their own harvests to bring in, their own crafts to produce for the next round of tourist ponies that would soon be visiting from who knew where. That left her group with plenty of time to themselves, time they could use for lessons in Ponish. Theo was better off as a European than she might’ve been if she were American—most Americans at the observatory only knew the one language. But she spoke three, and was comfortable with the idea of learning more. Unfortunately for her, there was nothing she could carry over from her comparative linguistic flexibility with a single broader family of human languages. Pony speech came from an entirely different lineage. The sounds weren’t just strange, but even when the words were familiar by accident there was no relation in meaning that would allow her to intuit what things meant. It was like learning an Eastern language, but even harder, since at least the minds that had invented Chinese were fellow humans and had the same mouths. Theo tried anyway, memorizing for as long each day as her companions had the patience to teach. But while Sharp Edge was good with many things, he wasn’t meant to be a teacher, and could only sit still repeating the same phrases for so long before he had to wander off and do something. Emerald was better, though she was still a child. Theo wrote down what she could, repeating phrases over and over to get her pronunciation right. By the time six days had passed, she was confident enough with the basic repertoire of what tourists would often learn. If she needed to ask where the bathroom was in any pony city she visited, she had that one on lock. Eventually the train did arrive, at not so much a station as a slightly raised platform with a coal bunker and a water tower. They bought their tickets, then passed a bewildered engineer on their way in. “I didn’t leave you here,” the elderly pegasus said, stamping their tickets in turn. “This is the end of the line.” “Yeah,” Sharp Edge agreed. “We were stranded here, but now thanks to you we’re not. Celestia thank whoever planned your route to go so far north.” The engineer shrugged but didn’t press. There was no conductor, or any other passengers. A handful had left the pair of passenger cars before them, probably destined for the same rental cabins they had left behind. Agate faded slowly into the distance, Theo watching from the window as they rolled cautiously down an unsteady mountain track. There was something wonderful about having an entire passenger car to themselves—lots of space for Emerald to run around in, or for them to talk about anything they wanted without being overheard. “Well, they didn’t try to drown me in the sea,” Theo said, watching out the caboose window. “I call that an absolute win.” “If it makes you feel any better, they wanted to throw me in too after I helped you,” Sharp said. “And I’d actually die. You probably wouldn’t.” “Uh…” She looked away from the tiny wooden cabins, raising an eyebrow. “I’m an okay swimmer, I don’t think I’d do very well in water just a degree or two above freezing. Actually… wait, it’s often lower up here. The salt keeps it liquid a bit colder. Do I look Finnish to you? Or Icelandic?” “I don’t know what that means,” Sharp answered. “But you look like a hippogriff. At some point you’d change into a seapony and escape, wouldn’t you?” Theo’s eyebrows went up a little higher. “I would… what?” Emerald landed beside her, sipping on something. Theo looked down and saw a juice-box in her grip, or some pony equivalent. Apparently the train had refreshments. “Summer doesn’t know, master. Travelers must not have more than one form. Which I guess means they’re like ponies?” She leaned past Theo, holding up the square camera and snapping a photo of the village as it vanished into the distance. Unlike most of Theo’s gear, the camera was meant to be waterproof, rather than depending on good luck and desiccants to get it working again. “Right.” Sharp sat back in his seat, blushing slightly. “Forgive me. Sometimes you seem so… I forget you’re not from around here. But the ability is there. Everypony knows seaponies and hippogriffs are the same thing. That’s how you survived the Storm King. Your city was under the ocean. When you went looking for the necklace, I assumed we were seeing a version of those powers. You were so good in the water…” Then he trailed off, ears flattening. Theo didn’t much want to think about what Edge must be. “There’s nothing magical about being able to swim. You two can do it too. Everyone I know learned how to swim. Compared to some of the places I’ve practiced, that pond was balmy. No glacial runoff feeding it.” “I dunno, Summer. You were better than us. You probably just don’t know how to use your powers yet. Maybe the hippogriffs can teach you when we get to Canterlot.” “I’d rather they just show me how to use the door,” she said. “And maybe… if they’re feeling generous, maybe pay for a new ship for Sharp. That would be good.” “I told you not to worry about that.” Sharp rose from his seat, turning his back on Theo and going to the refreshment table. He returned a few moments later with a plate of dried fruit, setting it down on the empty seat between them. “You don’t owe me anything.” Theo reached over and stole a few dried strawberries, chewing thoughtfully. “Don’t call it owing then. I just want to help. But I’m thinking we won’t need handouts if we’re really determined. Have you ever seen Star Trek Ent—that’s the stupidest question I’ve asked today.” “You’re not stupid,” Emerald said, settling down beside her and nuzzling her leg. “Don’t say things like that, Summer.” Then she hesitated sipping at her juice-box until it made that characteristic empty-sound. “What’s a star trek?” Sharp Edge nodded, apparently agreeing the question required an immediate answer. Theo’s ears flattened, and she pawed at the chair, looking away. How could she explain what she was thinking without confusing them? “There are things my world has that yours doesn’t. If I needed bits for something, I would try to use that. Come up with something your world could really use, but you don’t have yet.” She sat back, considering some of the things she’d been thinking. “Trouble is, most of the stuff I know best is… useless to you. You haven’t even invented the technologies that would let you invent the technologies that I could help you invent.” “That’s confusing.” Emerald rolled her eyes. “I’m getting more apple juice.” Theo reached into her saddlebags down on the floor, removing the notebook she’d bought from the Agate store and flipping through it. “I had to guess on some of this stuff, so you should tell me if any of this sounds stupid, or you already have it. We talked about guns before, but… maybe we’ll skip that one.” She flipped to the next page. “You probably already have industrial steel, don’t you? Railroads use so much of it they wouldn’t be sustainable otherwise. You know how to extract the carbon from iron and dope it to exactly the percentage you want?” Sharp Edge’s eyes widened. “You’re… a blacksmith? All this time when you spoke of your work, you seemed more like an… arcanist. Or maybe a thaumaturge, designing spells. Yes, we know how to cast steel, and forge it. There are factories in Equestria that make thousands of tons of it now, that’s how cities like Manehattan are built. Skyscrapers take stronger stuff than bricks to keep them upright.” “Right, yeah.” She flipped that page. “What about water diseases? Do ponies get dysentery?” He winced at the sound, looking away. “They used to. You’re talking about sanitation now? Just how much do you know?” “A little of everything,” she said. “My tablet had thousands of books, but I’m not sure I can get it to start up again. And unfortunately a little of everything is worth just as much, so it won’t help. Most of history’s biggest inventions had direct industrial application. I don’t really know how ponies do things outside of little villages in the middle of nowhere. Of course they don’t do things the same way. Who’s surprised by that? And the Crystal Empire… we don’t have anything like that.” She flipped the page over. “What about airships? The Horizon, would you say she was advanced?” “Better than anything in the royal fleet,” he answered, a little defensively. “Her engines were one of a kind. I’ll… have to retrieve my technical drawings from my family’s property in Fillydelphia if I plan on building them again.” “Do you think ponies would be interested in building ships that can travel a hundred times as fast? Or a thousand times as fast?” Sharp Edge burst out laughing. “At full burn, the Horizon could break 100 kilometers per hour. She could outpace this train we’re in, and all but the fastest pegasi. She was already more advanced than anything in Equestria.” “Oh, good!” Theo turned the paper over, holding up the pad. “I built one of these for a high school engineering project. Mine had some issues, but… this was before I knew I was going into CS.” Edge whistled, pulling the engine up close and looking it over. “Celestia above this thing is complicated. What is it?” “It’s a high-bypass turbofan engine. An airship propelled by one of these should be able to reach speeds of…” She hesitated. The Horizon had also been made of wood, with a gasbag holding it in the air. Trying to accelerate it with a jet engine would turn it into kindling far faster than a water landing. “In aircraft designed for them, 1000 kilometers per hour or more. But… those require high-precision engineering, with a tendency to catastrophic failure if you’re off by even a few centimeters on those blades. On the next page, you can see a simpler design. Far lower efficiency on that one, it’s a turbojet instead of a turbofan… which doesn’t mean anything to you. But I think we have a better chance of actually building one.” Sharp Edge turned the page, looking over the drawings. There was a time when Theo’s technical drawings had been fairly expert—but even though claws could grasp a pen, they lacked the precision of fingers. He passed the notebook back. “I have a friend in the Air Service who would probably buy these from you. If we had a working prototype.” Theo looked away. For the second time that day there was an expression on Sharp’s face that she didn’t like. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what the pony was thinking—it was that she did. “I didn’t know you were so… smart,” Sharp said. “You’re wasted in a library if you can do things like this in a workshop.” Is that what you want me doing in your workshop? She winced, rising suddenly and turning away. “I’m, uh… I’m gonna walk to the engine,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few.” She needed time to cool her head, before she said something she would regret.