When Fish Eye woke up, the batponies were oddly chirpy and happy. It had been a late night for Fish, who usually was sleeping when her ensign and the other bats were out and about and being all bats-of-the-night active. It was a bit odd being diurnal among the habitually nocturnal, but it usually meant that Fish could finish up her chores and take care of her ensign and the rest while they were safely asleep and not underhoof.
So yeah, for a change, Fish was on the same consciousness cycle as her bats, and they were being kind of… not batty. Or not as much as usual. Her new vision was new enough that she couldn't be sure of what she was seeing, but they looked different, too. A lot of the streaks of darkness and the fadedness had, well, not faded - that would be silly - but they'd filled in, and the scatteredness had un-scattered.
They almost looked like regular ponies, the morning after that awful dinner party. Uniform, smooth auras, just like the ponies in Charlie Troop, and sort of like the griffons in Apple. Well, not exactly - griffons didn't really look much like ponies, but they were all smooth and even in their auras; whether they were dark-tinged and feathery, or they were bright primary colors and deep, rich pastels, they were continuously, uniformly so.
The weird splatter-colors and streaks that some of the batponies usually sported were gone. And it seemed to match up with who was being bouncy and happy.
After the third time Fish had found herself roped into an impromptu little swirling dance by a giddy dark-winged thestral, she mused to herself that even a fool like Fish Eye ought to be able to tell that something was up.
The question was, who to ask?
Auntie A was back behind Fish's eyes, and she could feel the goddess snickering over something, but her matroness wasn't in a sharing mood.
"OK, Auntie, that's enough of that. What's so funny?" Fish demanded. Maybe she was getting entitled and pushy, but you couldn't share your eyes with a vast, awe-inspiring power that could squish you like a water-bug for this long, without losing some of your fear of retribution. Fish couldn't help herself.
Oh, little Fish, sometimes you mortals tickle my fancy. Someone took my name in vain last night, while you were cleaning up the messes of your silly VIPs. I failed to see all of it, but what I felt was enough, and I can see the residue all around you, everywhere you look.
"Your name, Auntie? The batponies called on you? I didn't think they could do that."
Well, they did not think they were calling on me. Sometimes, our lesser epithets draw old gods like myself, as petitioners call on us unaware. Or even, sometimes, just our lesser aspects. Your cute little doom-mammals were trying something fancy. A full dress ceremony, song and dance. Well, spoken-verse and dance. Your short coltfriend is not one for singing, is he? And he has terrible taste in poetry. I gave him the boost he asked for, although I did not quite understand all of it. That can happen, when they accidentally call on you, rather than their own gods.
"Well, that's all quite cryptic, but if it makes you happy, and makes them happy, it must have been for the best, I guess?"
Too soon to tell, little Fish. But we will see. They are floating on unearned confidence right now. Just because you accomplish what you attempted, does not mean that the attempt was wise, or productive, or not something that will bite you in the end.
One of the worst curses in all the lexicons of the divine, is this: 'may you receive what you desire', little Fish.
When Trixie awoke, the brightness threatened to overwhelm her senses. Memory was as slow to return to her as her eyes were to react to the glare.
When Trixie's eyes finally constricted enough to make sense of her surroundings, she found herself looking up at an unfamiliar ceiling.
Overhead. They call them overheads here on the ship.
And with that thought, Trixie remembered she was living on a warship. The Princess's Bit. And that she was the commander of a battery in a new regiment. The Sparkle's new regiment.
Trixie was trying to patch together why she wasn't in her narrow little bunk beside the workshops when a beaked face stuck itself into the view, and surprised Trixie.
Just a bit. If she were feeling more herself, she might have recoiled.
"Oh, look who else has rejoined us, Dark Wings. It's a Hearthswarming miracle!"
Hearthswarming? How long was I out? Trixie thought, confused.
"It's almost six months until the next Hearthswarming, Doctor," said… somepony that Trixie couldn't see. Someone squeaky. "You mean a Summer Sun miracle. Not that there are such things."
"Oh, I don't care about your stupid pony festivals, Wings. They're all coming back to us! That's worth a celebration. Go pour me a gimlet!"
"It's nine in the morning, Doctor. Don't you think you should pace yourself?"
"Oh, what do you know, you're just a corpsmare. Abysses below, they're all back, I don't care. Welcome back, Lieutenant Lulamoon. Can you tell me how many talons I'm holding up?"
"What's a talon?" Trixie asked the not-a-pony which she'd finally placed as the regimental surgeon.
"Well, that's not as good. Lieutenant, can you tell me who's princess?"
"Celestia? It's always Celestia. She's been princess for… when was Equestria founded again?"
"Well, the patient remembers who her princess is, but seems foggy about her history."
"That's a pony thing, Doctor. Nopony cares to dwell on the past. Lieutenant, how many hooves?"
A brown-grey hoof on the end of a brown-grey arm thrust itself into Trixie's view. "Uh, just the one?"
"See?" squeaked the mostly-unseen batpony. "Not freezer-burned at all."
"Well, not as much as I'd thought," conceded the hippogriff, as she pulled back out of Trixie's view.
The change caused Trixie to rear up a bit, and try to see more of where she was. Presumably the infirmary?
She was laying on a cot or bunk or something up against a wall. The pony who had been speaking came into focus, a bat with combat medic flashes on her uniform collar. Two other bats were squeaking at ponies laying across the room. It looked like a busy day in the med bay.
Things were starting to come back to Trixie. She'd gotten the battery squared away, and filed her report, and then there had been a great exhaustion, that she'd held off long enough to find her bunk next to the workshop.
Then Trixie remembered some of the things she'd written in that report, and felt her gorge rising.
She heaved, dryly twice, and then felt something coming up.
"Whoops! Get a bucket, quick!" said the hippogriff doctor.
Trixie's spasming stomach found something, finally, to throw up.
"Huh, would have thought she'd not have anything left to toss," said the batpony, Dark Wings.
"Never can tell," said the doctor. "But yeah, we should probably get some more fluids into her. Trixie, you want to rinse out your mouth?"
"I-" Trixie coughed, her throat hurting. "I want to know what's going on."
"Oh, Lieutenant, if I knew what was going on, I'd be a happy fish-bird," the doctor said. "How about you hydrate up, and we'll go through the checklist, OK?"
A flurry of great grey-brown wings in the air in front of the ship briefly drew Fish Eye's attention away from her afternoon service, and then she forced her focus back on the ritual. A ritual which had barely been attended, by two sailors and a bored-looking trooper from Charlie, and wasn't honestly going all that great. She'd been mostly reduced to free-associating in front of the altar, and the goddess kept making snide comments as Fish stuttered in her attempts to solemnly praise her glory in front of an audience.
"-and all the waves of your bountiful seas, and the sweetest breezes of your gentlest storm-fronts, amen," Fish intoned as she waved her sea-wrack mitre over the offerings the sailors had brought her. Or was it a crozier? She never could keep those straight. Anyways, that's enough for today. Now for the blessing.
Fish turned to her worshipers, or whatever they were, and raised two talons in benediction over their heads. Which were notably unbowed. Should I say something?
Figuring it was too late now, Fish drew a vague squiggle over each pony's head, and muttered "Tooloo, tolu, tolay, be blessed by her beneficence, today and all - always!"
Finally, the three worshipers bowed their heads, acknowledging her attempts, and got up and left, presumably to their own duties.
Fish, did you just use your private-school cheer as a blessing over my worshipers? Amphitrite asked in the sanctity of Fish's own head, as she turned to sweep the offerings into the Box of Rotting Stuff.
"And what if I did, your luminousness?" asked Fish out loud. "It isn't as if you delivered a manual when you made me your priestess."
Fair enough, the goddess replied, as a sudden vast shadow was cast over Fish and her little sanctuary to the goddess's cult.
Fish Eye looked up, and blinked in surprise at the turul crouched low over the forecastle. "Hello, your highness! Did you have a nice flight?"
"Didn't find anything big enough to eat, for what that's worth," said the enormous royal bird. "I can't get used to the schooling patterns in these waters. And I'm getting peckish."
"You're not likely to find any big fish in these waters so late in the spring, child of the winds," Auntie A said with Fish's vocal chords. "You'd have to find the shallows they're retreating to. You know, I could guide you, if…"
"What if?" the big hen asked. "I'd appreciate the guidance, your divinity, if you have it to give."
Fish could feel her Auntie thinking. It felt like cold down-drafts in a deep lake.
"You know I can only do so much for non-worshipers, especially ones of the wrong element, such as you, wind-child. There are penalties, karmic harms I can and will cause my divine self if I simply do for children of another god."
The Hercegnő Gyongyi looked down at Fish, and the goddess inside of Fish's eyes. "You want worship, your divinity? I'm not even sure how to begin doing such a thing. And although I do not follow the faith of my people-"
"And you most certainly will have to change that, when you ascend to your high aerial throne, lest you invite the wrath of your winds. They are flighty, the sylphs, but not mindless. Those that have survived these atheistical times, that is. I have not had much touch with the courts of the air in recent years."
"You haven't? And the Courts of the Air aren't just myth?"
"I, you foolish hen, am myth. Make not mock of myths and legends, for we lurk in holes and lay in wait for those foolish enough to slight us, to deny us the respect we are due."
"Why in holes, Auntie? Can't you afford houses anymore?"
"Do not start, you fool of a Fish. Auntie is negotiating with the nice avian, heathen infidel. Be a good priestess, and leave the talking to your Auntie. So, wind-child, you neglect your own altars, and yet you expect to take up the queenhood of your people? Tis no wonder they fell under the rule of - what was it you said the other day? A cock who likes to pretend his testicles produce eggs?"
Gyongyi snorted in offense, and Fish did her best to not cringe from the huge predator that could eat her in a single bite. Or perhaps two.
"If you think that enrages you, imagine what your gods will say, when you come before them unwilling to lay offerings before their intangible talons. You best get into the religious habit, princess of the winds."
And still, the big bird didn't have anything to say to Fish's goddess.
"Why couldn't you take her as a worshiper, Auntie?" asked Fish, trying to help.
"Nothing of the sea about her, little fry, for one thing. You do not become an amphibious bird merely because you eat the occasional shark." But Fish could feel her goddess thinking.
"What about the legend of the Binding?" Fish asked her Auntie.
"Clever girl!" the goddess praised her, through her own beak. "Ah, it is a good thing that you also lack testicles, little Fish, if you care to reenact the Binding. We do not have all that much time, although you all lay about as if you have all the time in the watery world."
"The… Binding of what?" asked the perplexed turul, turning her head sideways.
"I have not bound a new people to my worship in almost two thousand years, oh royal bird of the mountains. How would you like to move some of your eggs out of your solitary mountainous basket, before the gods of the air overthrow that basket in their rightful wrath? I'm offering a discount on water-baskets, half off. Just this week!"
And as the turul and the goddess dickered like fishwives through the medium of a Fish Eye, she began to feel something very funny going on in her nether regions. Something very funny indeed.
Giles' lance banked on his turn, following his lead. The heavy covered carts and their pegasus drivers fell behind the griffish guards as they accelerated away from the completed intercept. A flying weather circus they'd found transiting the open waters between Horseica and the mainland, the ponies' papers were in order, and their story made a modicum of sense.
If you had gotten used to pony logic, it wasn't so strange that a travelling nomadic clan of scruffy winged ponies could make their living flying from region to region, selling their weather-making services to anyone with the bits or ducats or thalers to make it worth the circus's while. Giles had never seen a pony weather team in the Sandstone highlands, of course, and if in his time in the workhouses of Trottingham, he hadn't heard his fellow apprentices tell of the days when the lowlands had been safe enough that the pegasi could make the circuit of the rich districts around the city, this flying circus would have left him completely baffled.
And so, he and his troopers left behind the cheerfully mercenary weatherponies and their heavy burdens, unmolested. All but a few of the pegasi had been harnessed with their household belongings packed into cloudformed airy chariots, half wicker frame, half compacted cloudstuff. Giles had gotten a look inside one of the cloud-carts, and spotted crates and sacks and locked shelving-cabinets piled deeply and compactly within the shelter-vehicle.
If every day, the weather-pegasi got up and hauled their homes, their whole lives, their entire worlds across the skies in their little carts, it was no wonder the scruffy pegasi were such impressive physical specimens. Though few pegasi were as large and inherently powerful as even the scrawniest, most starved griffon, these ponies had packed a lot of muscle and bulk around their naturally narrow, slim builds, the better to carry their homes across the heavens.
Still, for all that weight, they flew like they hadn't a care in the world.
The Princess's Bit came into sight in front of Giles before the flying circus had fluttered fully out of sight behind him. The clear late June sky was vast and cloudless that afternoon, and the tiny little airship that held everything that made them the Sixth Regiment of Guards was made even smaller by the lack of anything nearby her to give any sense of scale. The light carrier grew quickly as he and his griffons flew on their return course to their home ship.
And the Bit was moving rapidly indeed. If Giles and his lance had missed their intercept course by more than the slightest bit, they would have found themselves labouring mightily to catch up to the hurtling velocity that the light carrier had put on, in the course of more than a day and a night of running the engines nearly flat out.
Giles had heard that they wanted to stress-test the rebuilt engines, or the fuel feeds, or something like that. He was a trooper, not a mechanic, and hadn't had any more interaction with the process than the dumb labour inherent in the digging of coal that had been asked of him and his. Whatever they'd loaded to replace the 'magic coal' the griffons had muscled out of the bunkers, it worked like fire.
Or burned. Combusted. Something like that.
Giles and his griffons caught air over the envelope lookout posts, the 'griffon's nest', and dropped neatly, two by two, into the landing-square provided there, in between the lookouts' benches. In the near distance, he could make out the lieutenant and one or two of the other coolies working the new recruits on speed trials, running rings around the ship. The recruits, yellow and grey, now on the rearward arc of their circuit and chasing the ship from behind, were working mightily as Giles and his own griffons grabbed water ladles from the tanks at the rear of the landing platform, to slake their thirst.
Giles dipped another ladle's worth, and poured it over a panting, shamming Gilead, laying at Giles' talons with his legs sprawled out, and tongue stuck theatrically out as if the tom was about to expire of heatstroke.
"Get up, ya clownish cat. An' come on, ye lads an' ladies, it's enough laying about you 'ave 'ad. Geet yourselves up and out, kitlings, we 'ave another circuit of our own to fly. We found ourselves a bloody flyin' circus on the last turn around the van, who knows what further wonders lie in our paths, in the deep blue distances?" Giles demanded, leaping upwards, his wings beating for altitude.
He laughed as his griffons followed in his wake, beating back towards the vanguard in the deepening east.
It was a good day to be a Guard.