"Having fun with my students?" Professor Sea Star asked, sharing the narrow confines of the kitchen with Valey as both of them poked around for a snack. "I haven't seen them in the instrument area all day."
Valey shrugged. "More like they're having fun with us. You've got some really enthusiastic kids, there."
"I chose them because they were the most driven." Sea Star shook her head. "With the size of this ship, it isn't a class just any can take."
"You just trying to make them explode from excitement, or something?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "They're barely holding themselves together, there. Ebb and Flow, at least."
Sea Star nodded, closing one cabinet to make room to open another. "I am. The only outlet for curiosity is learning. I've been studying these seas since I was their age, and there are mysteries here that will far outlast my lifetime. The greatest work I can do is ensure there will be more, find and enable the ones who will carry on that search for knowledge in my stead. I want them to remember these experiences for the rest of their lives."
"Sounds pretty idealistic," Valey replied. "What are you even hoping to learn? What do you want to do with it?"
"Anything and everything." Sea Star produced a box of hard biscuits, and started slicing cheese. "There are hundreds of other ponies at Kinmari, let alone elsewhere in the world, who take knowledge and create things with it for the benefit of civilization. Whatever we discover here, someone will make use of it. But the sea has been my frontier for decades, and that isn't changing any time soon."
Valey eyed the biscuits. "Yeah... hope I'm not messing anything up with this, I guess?" She tapped her pendant.
Sea Star sighed. "You're skewing our instrument readings with a magnitude we can't compensate for. Don't expect to go on any pleasure cruises with that later. I'm only letting you on because you're doing a net service to my students."
"You said they were already messed up because of our ship," Valey pointed out. "What is it even supposed to do?"
Sea Star shook her head. "Do you know what the lifestream is? Premonition fluxes and flows? Ether? Harmonic polarity?"
"Woah, hold up!" Valey stopped her with a hoof. "From basically another world, remember? There's a decent chance I actually do, but I probably use completely different names than you."
Sea Star raised an eyebrow. "You're not the first visitors Kinmari has had from the north. Most of them tend to be adventurers or diplomats instead of scientists, though. Forgive me for judging your mannerisms and physique, but you strike me as more of a tavern brawler than an academic."
Valey mirrored her look intensely. "You better not be calling me chunky."
Sea Star chuckled. "You're too small to be chunky. I wouldn't be surprised if my students are your seniors." Her tone returned to serious. "Which is why I would be surprised if you knew more than them, since they've been studying cutting-edge science for their entire lives. But perhaps the north is more advanced than us. Please, enlighten me."
"I told you, girl." Valey shrugged. "Just give me the explanation and see if I can follow along. What's this ship doing?"
"Serving as a water taxi for stranded refugees," Sea Star wryly replied. "At the moment, tragically little else."
Valey stuck out her lip. "Yeah, but what's it supposed to do?"
"It measures the flowing of the lifestream, which is a sheet of positively-charged harmonic energy also known as ether, using the effects that flowing has on the world around us." Sea Star gave her a look. "How familiar does that sound to anything you know?"
Valey shrugged. "I mean, it makes sense, even though I don't think I know the words. Is this the same kind of harmonic energy you get from the flames in those crystal palaces you find really far underground?"
Sea Star instantly dropped her snack and stared at Valey. "Crystal palaces far underground? Elaborate. What do you mean by these?"
Valey grew a tiny, smug grin. "Oh, so we do know some interesting stuff? I dunno how to describe them. They're, like... really big buildings made entirely out of crystal, about as far underground as you can go. And they have these crystal trees with flames inside them that give us some special kind of energy that's way more powerful and versatile than mana, and has something to do with cutie mark energy?"
"You mean to say you've not only found structures like these, but been inside them?" Sea Star pressed. "How did you get inside? And you use them for power?"
Valey winked. "Strictly speaking, one of them used to power the entire Griffon Empire. You wouldn't happen to know where one is, would you?"
Sea Star frowned. "Perhaps this is a discussion we should have with more faculty present, once we reach the university itself. I'm afraid I wasn't entirely truthful earlier when I said my only goal for understanding these waters is knowledge itself. We understand enough about what might be possible to know when to keep certain things under wraps."
"Woah. Hard stop." Valey held out a hoof and narrowed her eyes, lowering her voice to a whisper. "Real quick, lady, just so you know: me and my friends know enough about the spooky inner workings of the world to wish we knew less than we do. If you guys are advanced enough to have realized that there's some extremely dangerous stuff you could potentially learn by poking around with how the world works... it would probably be a decent idea to step back and ask yourselves whether it's a good idea to dig this stuff up at all."
A shadow of worry crossed Sea Star's brow. "As I said, this is not the place for that discussion. Rest assured we have entire councils to ponder that question. It would be far better to speak of this with them."
"Yeah... gotcha." Valey turned to leave, even though she didn't yet have her snack. She glanced back at the professor. "Did you get a chance to hear why we're refugees?"
"There was a storm of unusual magnitude that destroyed the border fortress," Sea Star replied. "But I haven't heard your individual side of the story."
"There was a scientist," Valey muttered, voice low. "Real off his rocker. Had altered himself in ways that might not have made him a pony anymore. He was trying to create a god, like the Empire's goddess Garsheeva or probably your Princess Celestia. And instead, he accidentally made a monster that beat Garsheeva and killed nearly every batpony on the continent. Completely by accident. She was a byproduct of his experiments and bad luck."
She straightened up, the professor's expression blank. "My friends and I? We're here because we never want to deal with that again. Just be careful, okay?"
"...I see." Sea Star nodded. "That's troubling, and I expect it isn't the last we'll talk of this. You ought to get some sleep. We should be at Kinmari by morning."