//------------------------------// // Interlude III // Story: Never Seen // by semillon //------------------------------// The Song of Saltbird: I Saltbird stepped into the ocean. He had never understood how ponies and the like could ever feel cold in water like this. To hippogriffs, water had only ever been refreshing. Safe. He waded further, walking against the tide until his long legs could no longer touch the ground, and then he relaxed. The tide rocked him back and forth as he idly floated in place. Saltbird had always felt like the ocean was where he belonged. He wasn’t sure why he kept returning to land. Here, in the water, he was nothing but truly, completely peaceful. Saltbird transformed. His feathers became scales. His rear legs melted into a giant tail. His insides scrambled around painlessly as they adjusted to his new body, granting him gills and different anatomy, but he himself stayed the same. One of the only things that didn’t change when one went from hippogriff to seapony was one’s brain. He dove into the water. Where it felt like another being before, the ocean was now a part of him, and he was a part of it. One giant community of seaponies and fish and everything else in the sea, at harmony with each other. Saltbird swam. In the distance, the glittering lights of Seaquestria beckoned to him. There, in the heart of the city, was his home. As distant cousins of Queen Novo and the current generation of a long line of artists and musicians, his family lived somewhere that seaponies of their station deserved: a giant tower filled with smooth, polished clamshell floors and reinforced pearl furniture, bright chandeliers that dimmed when night fell and imbued the water with a colored glow. Most importantly, they had seats at Queen Novo’s court. Power and influence. The artist district of Seaquestria was theirs. He felt the urge to swim to his family’s tower, take a nap maybe. Maybe order some takeout. But he wasn’t going to Seaquestria tonight. A couple of miles away from the city was a pit, a former nest of sea dragons long abandoned that had, in the last five years, become a lawless, writhing pit of teenagers looking to be away from the pomp and circumstance of Seaquestria. A haven for kids who weren’t allowed to live on Mount Aris. Saltbird was not one of them, but his best friend was. Bowsprit. They met when their fathers had introduced them at a gala of some sort. They met again when they were put into school together, bonding quickly over their similar scale patterns. Their honey colored bodies and light teal fins were indistinguishable from one another. The only way to tell them apart was by the color of their eyes. Saltbird’s were like mud. Bowsprit’s were bright blue, like a clear sky viewed from under the top of the ocean. Saltbird hadn’t seen him for a month. Queen Novo was asking a lot of Bowsprit’s family. As the patrons of the city’s Pleasure District, they were in charge of keeping companions and the like safe from criminals and rowdy tourists, and that was becoming more difficult as more tourists from Equestria arrived to take part in the exuberant delights of Seaquestria. Bowsprit was likely being worked to the bone. This was probably his first night off in months. Saltbird felt himself smiling. The more tired Bowsprit was, the more he was down for a party. And the Whirlpool, which is what kids called the pit he was currently heading to, always had something wild going on. Before he knew it he passed Seaquestria. The waves of lights were behind him now, slithering and circling around each other in an endless array of joy that he no longer saw. The lights lit his way for a quarter of a mile after he passed, and then suddenly it was dark. It wasn’t pitch, so Saltbird wasn’t afraid. It was as if he was focused on a task and hadn’t noticed that the sun was setting. The Whirlpool had its own cluster of lights. Saltbird waited until he could see it. It hadn’t felt long at all before he could. There existed a genetic phenomenon amongst Storm Children, the generation of seaponies born during the Storm King’s reign, the first seaponies born in Seaquestria. It wasn’t a particularly life-altering feature, though it made for the occasional confusion for outside scholars on Seaquestrian art. Storm Children could see just a little bit past the ultraviolet spectrum, as some saltwater fish could. It wasn’t quite as vivid, but it was there. Seven colors that only Saltbird’s generation could see. No one else in the world. Three of these colors that shot out of The Whirlpool, making it so most of the adults in Seaquestria would have no idea that such a large gathering of people were congregated within its walls. Saltbird, upon seeing the lights, sped up the pace of his swim. He was quick to notice that after a full minute of exertion, he wasn’t getting any closer. He stopped. Something was holding him in place. He didn’t feel a grip around his body, however. Magic? He looked around, craning his neck and squinting his eyes to try and spot anyone nearby. But there was no one. Saltbird began to move, not of his own accord. It was the tide. It was pulling him backwards, away from the lights. Something was controlling the water. Saltbird opened his mouth, trying to yell for help, but feeling more confused than anything. This area had always been safe from magical creatures. What was happening? The Whirlpool went further away, away from Bowsprit and his plans for the night, and then Saltbird realized he was gaining speed. Whatever was pulling him was pulling him at an increasingly accelerated pace. Soon the water began to hurt, seeming to turn solid every other second, so it was like he was being pulled through a row of walls. Saltbird grunted as he tried to thrash and headbutt the area around him, struggling in vain against whatever had him in his grip, and then, suddenly, he was catapulted upwards. He breached the surface, and his pearl shard lit up, changing him from sea pony to hippogriff before he landed back into the water. A biting chill immediately set in, now that his body had no scales to protect his insides from hypothermia. He screamed, mouth filling up with rain. A hard crash of thunder roared out from the sky. Saltbird screamed again. He was in a storm. “Salt!” came a voice, faint on the wind, weak and dying. Saltbird turned towards it, and through a flash of lightning he saw that he wasn’t alone. Hippogriffs. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. All treading water. Flower-colored blurs yelling and groaning in the midst of the storm. Saltbird squinted, looking for the source of the voice that called his name, and then he saw him. Honey colored feathers tipped with teal. Bowsprit. This wasn’t right. Why wasn’t anyone turning into seaponies? Saltbird grasped his pearl shard and tried to activate the magic in it, but he couldn’t. He felt his heart sink. “Salt!” came Bowsprit’s voice again. Saltbird went to call back, but a chorus of cries made him stop. He looked to where the other hippogriffs were and he saw a wave, taller than Mount Aris, and it crashed down on him before he knew what to think. Saltbird had never drowned before. He had never felt what it was like to struggle in water, to feel it fill your lungs and burn you, strangle you on the inside out. Days later he woke up on a beach. Sand crusted his nasty, mangled feathers. His mouth was dry. It took him a few minutes to realize he wasn’t dead. And that was where the Kirin found him.