//------------------------------//
// Five 
// Story: With Her Majesty's Coast Guard 
// by SockPuppet 
//------------------------------//

The command master chief closed the book. Her words faded over the drill field. The one hundred and fifty one officer-cadets stared up at her. They knew the story, and had heard it many times before, most of them long before they ever chose the Coast Guard as their life's calling.

But this time, it had been read to them. For them.

The Chief sat down and the Commandant of the Academy rose and moved to the lectern. He ran a hoof down the spine of the book and then looked at the cadets.

"That is the tradition of our service. Our tradition is that it is better to be audacious than timid. It is better to save the life of the civilian than to preserve our own. That we have to go out, and we pay no heed to if we will come back."

He pointed toward the back of the ceremony, past and to the left of Celestia and Luna's Royal booth. "Civilian clothes and train vouchers are available at the exit. If you are not willing to live up to this tradition, you may go."

For sixty seconds, there was silence. Not a single cadet moved a muscle.

The Commandant nodded. "Raise your right hoof or talon."





The cadets, the faculty, and the families moved to a well-appointed outdoor buffet. Celestia and Luna took the opportunity to return to the Grand Corridor in the main building.

At the Wall of Honor, Luna looked at the plaques near Gale's. "I don't find Red Sky's name," she said.

Celestia gave a tiny smile. "He died of old age in his bed in Keep MacIntosh Hills, surrounded by his foals, grand-foals, and great-grandfoals. His first great-great-granddaughter, but a newborn, was nestled in his feathers when he passed."

"It is good he did not die in the service," Luna said. "He must have accomplished great things."

Instead of replying, Celestia exited the back of the building. A second statue mirrored Gale's at the front entrance. The plinth named it Admiral MacIntosh Hills, First Commandant of the Academy. "He trained three generations of officers in Gale's traditions. Other than Gale herself, nopony's influence on the service is deeper."

"Foals and grandfoals?" Luna mused. "He found a suitable marriage, then."

Celestia laughed. "He found a most unsuitable marriage, young miss Common Sailor Deck Swab."

"The filly from the Safe Harbour?"

"Filly, indeed. She was a solid three months his elder."

Luna chuckled.

"The aristocracy shunned him for betrothing a commoner, until I made a point of providing them the Grand Ballroom of Canterlot Palace for their ceremony, and a Household Regiment as honor guard. I, myself, performed the ceremony. When the rest of the peerage realized how high in my esteem the young lieutenant was, the snide comments became the quietest of whispers."

"Gale predicted that flood, fire, famine, or plague would come to his barony one day," Luna said. 

Celestia's eyes twinkled with unshed tears. "The fourth Baron, Red Sky's grandson, took up his cane and hobbled high into the rocky escarpments above the town, leading the elderly, the infirm, the pregnant, the foals and their nannies, to where the flames could not reach. The Baron's daughter—who would be the fifth Baroness, not many months later—and her siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews, all the adults and middle-aged of the barony, stood to the cisterns and the river with buckets, ready to attack any ashfall that threatened to ignite the town. The Baron's granddaughter, Red Sky's great-great-granddaughter, shouldered an axe and strode into the forest. She had faith ponies would pick up their own tools and follow her, as the scion of the Noble House that was noble in fact, and not just in name."

"Gale's words were prescient?"

"She was right. The youngest, the strongest, all the very cream of the barony, followed. For three days, they breathed naught but smoke and tasted naught but ash as they cut firebreaks and smothered falling cinders. They halted the fire within a mile of the town. Their fields and silos were burned, but I made sure no pony went hungry that winter. They rebuilt. Ponies who were not there felt their own honor lessened when they heard the tales."

Luna nodded.

"Gale, indeed, forged one of Equestria's sharpest swords. The Barons and Baronesses MacIntosh Hills remain valued and loyal vassals to the Crown."

"What of the current Baroness?" asked Luna.

"She's an epidemiologist with the Ministry of Health, fighting plague. Her heir is a first-year cadet here, graduating in three more years. The baroness's younger foal intends to join the Forestry Service smokejumpers." Celestia smiled. "She says the Wonderbolts are wimps and real pegasi fly into wild flames, not through flaming hoops."

Celestia wandered north, toward the copse of oaks resplendent in autumn red and gold. Gardeners watered a pair of new saplings and placed a thick layer of mulch over their roots to protect them from the coming winter.

After about ten minutes of walking into the copse, Luna said, "These trees are arranged precisely. Nine steps between each, in a perfect hexagonal pattern. This is a garden, not a forest."

"Indeed," Celestia said with a smile.

"There is symbolism, sister. Tell me, for I do not grasp it on my own."

Celestia waved a wing. "Every time the Coast Guard makes a rescue, whether it's merely a raft carrying a single pony or a refugee ship carrying three thousand, an oak is planted."

Luna turned in a circle, ears flat. "There are hundreds of trees in this stand. Thousands."

"And every single one represents at least one, more often dozens, of lives saved. Saved by the tradition your child's grandchild forged."

Luna sat down, dry leaves rustling under her.

"Imagine this place in spring," Celestia said. "Imagine the beauty as green life returns. Like a life saved from certain death at sea, setting a hoof on dry land for the first time, their new beginning."

Luna smiled, a single tear running down her cheek. "My legacy is dark, sister, but this place of joy brings light to my heart like the sun through the branches."

The two sisters stared at the beams of the setting sun shining through the crowns of the trees, and imagined the oaks in spring, resplendent with renewed life.