Twilight awoke from her lingering half-sleep to the nattering of birds. Several times throughout the night she’d wake up, tense, listening for the sounds of breaking twigs, shifting rocks, shuffling dirt, before falling back into an uneasy sleep. The only positive was that she didn’t think she was alone in this, if that was even a positive at all.
She rolled over as best she could in the cramped tent to find Rainbow already awake. Twilight grunted faintly in greeting.
“Mmph,” Rainbow replied, wriggling around as she dozed.
Judging by the soft, blue light shining through the canvas, it was later than she’d’ve liked; as much as she wanted to sleep in, she really didn’t want to have to spend more than a day in Beech. She shuffled awkwardly upright, shaking Rainbow gently as she did. “Up you get,” she mumbled, forcing herself out of the tent.
Blinking dumbly in the daylight, she followed the sounds of splashing down to the riverside. Pebbles crunched underhoof as she came up to Squirrel, busy dousing her face in the brisk water. “Morning,” she said as she followed suit.
“Oh, good,” Squirrel said, giving her a friendly splash. “I didn’t have to wake you.”
Twilight gave her head a vigourous shake, water spraying as her mane whipped about. “Great – now I’m wetter than I wanted to be,” she pouted.
“You’ll live,” Squirrel smirked at her, turning back to the camp.
Feeling about as alert as she was going to get, Twilight clopped out of the water after her. “I suspect we’ll need to wake Rainbow again.”
“We could collapse the tent around her?”
Twilight snorted as she entertained the idea. “Leeet’s give her a few minutes first.”
Unfortunately, there wasn’t actually that much to do; so, after scattering the ashes in search of any stubborn embers to extinguish, Twilight poked her head back into their tent. “Up you get!” she repeated, giving Rainbow another nudge. “Up! We can sleep in Hurricanum.”
A hoof reached up to push Twilight’s muzzle away. “I’m awake! Geez,” Rainbow said, rising more quickly to her hooves than Twilight would’ve guessed. “Just give me a sec,” she added, leaving the tent to head riverwards.
While she was off waking herself up, Twilight pulled out their gear and bags. She was mostly done rolling them and the tent up by the time Rainbow’d gotten back. “Took you long enough,” she teased, finishing up her work.
“Yeah, well... whatever,” Rainbow shrugged, glancing around their clearing. “We good to leave, then? I don’t want to take to the air until you do.”
“Should be good,” Twilight said, sharing a quick look with Squirrel. “Yep – we’re good.” She tossed her gear onto her back, balancing it carefully until she could load it back into the canoe. Rainbow waited until she and Squirrel had pushed off from the bank before taking off once again.
“Back soon!” she called down to them as she gained height and disappeared downstream.
There was barely a scattering of clouds in the sky. The day promised to be a warm one too, with the morning chill already fading despite that it was little after dawn. They rowed languidly, letting the current do most of the work for them as the tree-lined banks drifted past. “Well, we got started nice and quick today,” Twilight said after a while. “Couldn’t’ve taken more than twenty minutes.”
“Helps that you’ve finally gotten down how to collapse your tent properly.”
“It did take a mite longer to learn than I’d anticipated, yes,” Twilight admitted – much to her annoyance, the canvas-bound frame really didn’t like being folded unless it was being done just so. “Should be able to make it to town before noon.”
“Mmhmm.”
“I – actually, I suppose you’ll be leaving us, then.” Twilight had more-or-less forgotten about that until now – Autumn Beech had always seemed so far away before.
“That was the deal, yes,” Squirrel said, shrugging disconsolately.
“Well... thanks for getting us this far?” Twilight said, a questioning lilt to her voice; she couldn’t help but feel that most of the trip she and Rainbow could’ve done on their own. “We’d, umm, oh! We’d still be stuck in the swamps without your help. So there’s that.” She was poking a bit more fun at Squirrel then perhaps she should’d’ve, but she couldn’t really help herself here.
“Yes!” Squirrel cheered up a bit at that. “I definitely helped there. The forest, too.”
Twilight wasn’t entirely certain what else to say – it seemed even Squirrel knew she’d been less of a guide for most of the journey, and more of a travelling companion. Still, a deal was a deal, and an egregious sum of money was an egregious sum of money. “Sooo...”
“...”
“What’re your plans after this?”
Squirrel shrugged, clearly lost in thought. “Don’t know. I’ll need to head back home soon – might just wait until a westwards convoy flies through? Take that to Calendar, then another back home.” She didn’t sound very convincing though.
Twilight nodded along distractedly. “Oh, right – you’re on vacation right now, aren’t you?”
She shrugged again. “After a fashion.”
They fell into an uncomfortable silence as they focused instead on rowing. The trees had thinned enough to fade almost entirely into grasslands and meadows. Steep mountain slopes lay close by to their right, while far greater ones lay far to the north, blued by distance.
It wasn’t too much later that Rainbow reappeared, coming in to circle low overhead. “Hey!” she shouted out excitedly. “There’s a rocky bank up ahead – pull over there!” And with that, she took off again grinning.
“She looks pleased,” Squirrel noted, eying her curiously.
“Better that than stressed,” Twilight said, watching her friend do a few figure-eights before dropping down and out of sight. “I wonder what she wants?”
Not five minutes later they spotted her again, standing on a wide, rocky beach of sorts, where the river turned sharply. It took little effort to direct the canoe thence, beaching themselves on the gravel. Rainbow bounded out to pull them a little more secure before leaning on the prow. “Alright, so bear with me,” she began, still grinning widely. “But the river branches up ahead.”
“Not again!” Twilight groaned.
“No, no! It’s good this time!” Rainbow insisted. “Look, most of the paths around here are fine – they’re flat, they’re shallow, they’re boring.”
“Safe, you mean,” Twilight countered. “Safe is good.”
“But still boring!” Rainbow repeated, wings fluffing out as she struggled to find the right way to word this, before, apparently, just giving up and blurting it out. “Let’s take the rapids!”
Twilight raised a brow skeptically. “Excuse me?”
“They’re fine! They’re not that bad at all, I think,” Rainbow said, her hooves bouncing up and down, the boat bobbing beneath her. “But they look fun! I mean, we’re splitting up after this, right? So, like, let’s have some fun with this first! Worse case, we aim for the shore and just walk the boat to the next river – it’s barely more than a hundred metres or so at most, so it’s not like it’d be any trouble.”
Twilight wasn’t entirely sold on the idea – getting to Beech as quickly and soundly as possible made the most sense to her. Still though...
“Sounds good to me,” Squirrel said, a smile gracing her muzzle. “We missed out in the woods, after all.”
“Exactly!”
“I don’t know...” Twilight hedged – it would make for a neat last-leg of the journey, though. Unfortunately, Rainbow chose that moment to bring out her secret weapon.
“Are you...” Twilight hesitated. “Are you making puppy-dog eyes?”
“Yep!” Rainbow exclaimed, tail flicking as she put back on her best begging-face. “Pleeease?”
Ugh. “Oh for goodness’ sake.” She rolled her eyes. “Fiiine.”
“Alriiight!” Rainbow cheered, immediately pushing the canoe back out into the river. “I’ll tell ya which way to go!” she said, hopping in between them.
Twilight was too busy trying to keep the canoe steady to respond for a moment. “Fine, fine; you’re sure this is safe?”
“Totally! I don’t think it’s more than a couple feet deep; plus, I don’t think it’s even rough enough we couldn’t just swim through it in a pinch. I just thought it’d be fun.”
All things considered, it didn’t sound that bad to Twilight. It would hopefully make for a nice sendoff for Squirrel too – after going through the mess in the woods together, she felt she’d miss the mare. With the sun beginning to fully rise, and the cool breeze blowing in their faces, she was actually starting to look forward to it.
“There it is!” Rainbow called out, pointing ahead to where the river visibly branched, a little cluster of stubby trees growing between the streams. “Take the right one!”
They reangled the canoe, Twilight sitting up tall to try and scout out just how bumpy it was going to be. As Rainbow had said, both banks were shallow and easy to climb, while the water didn’t have much in the way of white caps – which was good.
They picked up speed almost as soon as they entered the branch, their oars out and pumping as they fought to keep stable. “This isn’t nearly as bad as in the woods!” Twilight shouted.
“We’d’ve needed a proper raft for those!” Squirrel called back over the sound of rushing, splashing water.
Between them, Rainbow was laughing as they paddled around little obstacles, having an entirely unreasonable amount of fun considering she could fly, Twilight thought, especially considering these rapids could hardly be called ‘whitewater’; in fact, she had a feeling they shouldn’t even be calling them ‘rapids.’
A brisk splash of water sprayed over the bow, soaking a grinning Twilight mane-to-tail. After everything since their airship went down, she finally felt like she could relax and enjoy themselves – they were practically there! Autumn Beech was more than big enough to have made it onto every map, no matter the scale; sure, they had the Seven Mines to pass through next, but that was it! One more obstacle and they were done.
The canoe bucked beneath them as it bumped up against a boulder, the water frothing all around. “Give it a shove!” Twilight shouted as Squirrel and Rainbow heaved, pushing them off and away from the mess of caught flotsam, the current quickly yanking them back around.
The water swirled as they fought their way out of its eddy, getting thoroughly soaked in the process. Paddling hard to regain some sense of control, they aimed for a relatively calm bit. “This is great!” Twilight laughed out.
“Hell yeah!” Rainbow cheered, whipping her mane out of her face. Behind her, Squirrel poked questioningly at their gear.
“Panniers should still be dry inside,” she said, hoof splashing back down into the layer of water their canoe had picked up. “Let’s take it easy though – we don’t exactly have anything to bail this out with.”
“Right,” Twilight agreed, sobering up a touch as she noticed the pooling water. “Can do.”
“It doesn’t last much further than this,” Rainbow said, shaking her head. “We’ll be fine. Now! Let’s get going again.”
The trio eagerly rejoined the rougher parts, as ahead of them Autumn Beech loomed ever closer. Set on the tip of the long, hilly arm that divided the North and South Whithers, Beech was an old river-trade and farming town, built sprawling around the fertile riverbanks; dominating its centre, set on a stony rise, was a wooden fortress turned now to governance.
The river soon started to smooth out, much to the ponies’ disappointment. “Aww,” Twilight pouted. “I don’t suppose there’s more of this up ahead?”
“Nah,” Rainbow said, looking equally put-out. “Nothing.”
“Maybe there’ll be something on the mine route?” Squirrel wondered. “Could ask around about that.”
“I guess...” Twilight trailed off, giving it a bit a thought. “Might not be safe though – we’ve the town right here, after all, so it wouldn’t really matter if we capsized. Not much, at least.”
Rainbow shrugged, kicking idly at the water pooled in the boat. “We can deal with it when we get there.”
“Mmhmm.” They passed close by a herd of cattle, grazing near the riverside. “Almost there, aren’t we. Do we just keep following this path?”
“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “There’s a big dockworks that all the little rivers end up joining near. Bunch of sheds and stuff too – I guess we store our canoe there?”
“Yeah,” Squirrel chimed in. “Could rent a spot there overnight, or just leave it tied up in any old place and hope for the best.”
“And risk having it stolen?” Twilight said, scandalized. “We’ll pay. Doubt it costs much, either.”
“Nope.”
As they got closer they started passing short, wooden piers jutting out into the river; scores of dinghies were tied off or dragged ashore nearby. The occasional pony or deer could be spotted minding the herds, their dogs sprinting around madly as they directed the cattle to wherever they were off to, but for the most part the agriculture seemed to be based around the many terraces built into the hills. “I’d’ve thought there’d be more wheat fields or the like around here,” Twilight remarked, gazing around as best she could at their flattish surrounds. “Seems like it’d be easier.”
“Nah – it’s all a rocky mess around here,” Rainbow answered. “Couldn’t see anything like good farmland when I was scouting this out.”
“Ahh.”
As they turned a bend the city-docks came into view, a frenetic melange of piers, mooring piles, and anchored boats. Here, the river, swollen now by multiple converging branches, was slow and wide, its current weak, as it parted north and south about the docks.
The place was busy, with dozens of canoes, dinghies, and cats puttering around, to say nothing of the myriad of boats moored at the many docks.
“Let’s get up to shore,” Twilight said, pointing at a mostly-clear section not far off. “We can drag it out of the water there. One of us can then ask around for someplace to store it.”
“I can do that,” Squirrel volunteered. “You two just guard the canoe in the meanwhile.”
Squirrel wound her way alone through the wall of sheds they’d beached behind. Finding a dry-berth to rent for the night should be trivial – she’d seen a couple on the way in, in fact; rather, this was probably going to be her last opportunity to make up her mind about what she was going to do about the other two.
Sure, she’d only agreed to take them this far, but after all the mess with the swamp – and the woods too – she was kind of inclined to see this thing through all the way to Hurricanum. It probably wouldn’t even take her any longer to get back home from there either, if she didn’t count the extra few days’ travel through the Mines; plus, she’d never been there before, so going might actually make her vacation feel like a vacation.
She arrived at the first shack and poked her head in the open bay door. Canoes of various makes were stacked on beam-shelves nearly to the canted roof high above, while dust and scattered chips covered the well-worn stone floor.
“Hello there!” she called out to a stallion near the back. He paused in his planing to spare her a glance.
“Can I help you?” he said, waving a shavings-covered paw at her as he slumped comfortably on his stool.
Squirrel ambled into the storehouse, the noise of the docks muffling behind her. “Any chance of storing a canoe here til tomorrow? Not looking forward to trying to drag it to the inn with me.”
The demigryph glanced up and down the storage racks, ears flicking in thought. “Yep,” he nodded. “Got room if it’s not for long.”
“Terrific – I’ll be back with it soon,” Squirrel said, turning to leave. “Oh!” she added, pausing at the threshold. “That reminds me – you wouldn’t happen to know if any of the convoys are stopped in town right now, would you?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. Head over to the northside – you should be able to see the skydocks from there.”
“Sounds good – thanks.” She’d figured as much, but it hadn’t really hurt to ask. Stepping out again into the late-morning light, she hurried on back to the other two.
It wasn’t long before she found them. “Hey!” she shouted down to them, as they hunkered impatiently beside the canoe. “Found a place.”
“Great!” Twilight called back up, looking relieved to be able to get back to doing something. “Let’s go, Dash.”
The pegasus grumbled as the two of them awkwardly carried the canoe high enough up the embankment for Squirrel to get some purchase on it. Together, the three of them heaved it over their heads and made their slow, cautious way back to the storehouse, doing their best not to knock anyone over in the crowd.
“Sorry!” Twilight apologized to yet another poor soul they’d accidentally clocked with the thing. “Really sorry!”
“Almost there,” Squirrel called back over her shoulder as she watched the annoyed pony stalk off in a huff. She gave a sigh of relief as they approached their destination. “Here we are!”
“Finally,” Twilight echoed her sigh. It took only a few minutes for them to work things out with the stallion inside, their canoe hefted on high by block-and-tackle.
“I know an inn or two,” Squirrel said, nudging them back outside and towards the central rise. “Cheap, but clean.”
“Right,” Twilight nodded as they began to weave past the many shops and stores around them, their alleys becoming ever narrower and their roofs ever taller as they ascended the hill. “So...” she trailed off, words almost lost over the bustling clatter of hooves on cobble. “I suppose we’ll pay you your due there?”
Squirrel shrugged, trying to look disinterested despite her traitorously swishing tail. “I guess. Mind if I meet you there later though? I’d like to check out some things first.”
“Alright? I mean, I can’t see that that’d be a problem.”
“Good, good,” Squirrel smiled, as she began humming to herself. She ignored the nonplussed looks the two were giving her, being far too interested in trying to remember everything she could about the Mines. On that note, however, it occurred to her she probably shouldn’t wait til later to say something – just in case they disappeared on her. “Do either of you mind if I come along the rest of the way? I haven’t been along that route before, but I’m sure I could pull my weight.”
Twilight stared at the mare – while this wasn’t wholely unexpected, she still found herself surprised.
“And how much would that cost us, exactly?” Rainbow asked, looking Squirrel up and down skeptically. “Another bazillion bits?”
“Drams.” Twilight couldn’t help herself.
“Yeah, drams – whatever,” Rainbow huffed, ruffling her wings. “It’s still a bazillion of them.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Squirrel waved her off. “Or about the first bazillion, for that matter.”
“See? She – wait, really?”
Squirrel shrugged in her best attempt at nonchalance. “I only asked for that much ‘cause I figured you two’d say ‘no’ if I did; was kind of annoyed when you agreed to it anyways,” she added, shooting Twilight a displeased look.
“For goodness’ sakes, Squirrel, why didn’t you just say so!” Twilight exclaimed, giving her a poke in the chest.
“You two looked like you were going to try to cross the Green Leek no matter what,” Squirrel scowled at them, trying to make it abundantly clear how foolish she thought that was. “I could hardly let you blunder around and die.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Twilight tried, fighting her blush.
“Wait, hold on,” Rainbow cut in, flapping her hooves. “Hooold on – this means we get to keep the cash, right?”
“Of course you’re hung up on that,” Squirrel rolled her eyes – a habit she was gaining from Twilight. “Yes. I don’t want your money.”
“Is it ‘cause you did such a bad job?” Rainbow grinned, giving her a nudge. “I bet it is, ‘cause you really did a bad job.”
“Umm...” Squirrel hesitated. “Maybe a little?”
“Hah! Knew it.”
“Well, sorry for having standards! I’d just feel kind of dumb taking any money now, all things considered.”
“Aww, you did a fine job guiding us,” Twilight said, patting her on the withers. “A very fine job indeed.”
Squirrel snorted, shaking her head. “Great – even you’re ribbing me.”
“Maybe a little,” Twilight echoed, grinning. “Well I for one don’t mind you coming along in the least. Rainbow?”
“Meh.”
“How enthusiastic,” Squirrel drawled.
“Oh, she’s just being difficult,” Twilight said, flicking her with her tail. “Why do you want to come along, anyways?”
“Haven’t been through the Mines before,” Squirrel explained, walking a touch more lightly now. “Haven’t seen Hurricanum either – or the lake for that matter. Shouldn’t add much more to my trip home, too.”
“What about work?” She and Rainbow were technically on a mix of vacation days and government pay right now, but Squirrel presumably didn’t have that luxury. “Must be a heck of a vacation you planned.”
“It’s less of a ‘vacation’ and more of an ‘I’ll reapply when I get back’ kind of thing?”
Rainbow let out a low whistle. “You quit work just to go hiking!? Weirdo.”
“Be nice, Dash,” Twilight chided, giving her a nudge. “She probably just wanted to give up her grueling day job in pursuit of her lifelong dream of kinda-sorta-poorly guiding people around the continent.”
“Did I just get burned twice?” Squirrel said indignantly. “By the librarian?”
“Hey!” Twilight giggled. “I can be witty! And how’d you know what my job was, anyways?”
“Lucky guess? You give off vibes, you know.”
“Super book-vibes,” Rainbow nodded in agreement.
“Would’ve guessed you were some sort of archivist if you weren’t so young-looking.”
“I’m not that young,” Twilight pouted.
Squirrel laughed. “You say that like it’s a bad thing!? Equusians are nuts.”
“Uh huh,” Twilight huffed over their giggling. “So where exactly is this inn we’re heading to, then?”
“Ahhh just up ahead, if I’m remembering rightly,” Squirrel grinned, looking around to get her bearings. “Shouldn’t be far.”
In short order she veered off down a side alley, its jettied buildings looming darkly overhead. Signs jutted out to hang on rusted chains, naming shops and inns alike. It was but a few doors down that Squirrel found what she was looking for, entering an otherwise nondescript building. Twilight and Rainbow followed close on her tail.
They trod into a smokey, cramped barroom, chairs and tables stretching straight across to the far windows. Despite the low, sooty roof and general disorder of the place, it wasn’t particularly gloomy – Twilight figured it would, in fact, be rather cheery once it had filled up come evening. Not seeing anyone about, Squirrel beelined for one of the side doors near the bar; judging by the muffled conversation she could hear through the wood, she was probably on the right track.
After getting bounced around between a couple of workers, they were finally able to find someone to talk to about getting a room.
Once they’d sorted out their lodgings for the night, it was time to hit up the town for supplies and, hopefully, some sound advice for their next leg. “Might want to split up for this,” Twilight tendered as they stepped back outside, still fully geared up. “I don’t know how big this town is, and we still need food, maps, and info.”
“Not many thousands here, last I heard,” Squirrel said, still looking pleased as punch. “We’ve got plenty of time; best we stick together too – I still know where the markets and airdocks are, after all, and it’s those latter that’ll likely have any maps we’re looking for, I think.”
“Fair enough,” Twilight said, figuring that all sounded reasonable enough – most people travelling through here likely did so via the aerial convoys, after all. “Which first?”
“Docks,” Squirrel said, looking left and right down the alley as she tried to work out which way to go; with a hum, she took off further down the alley. “Best view from there,” she added as an afterthought. “Might as well get the uphill stuff out of the way first, too.”
They soon crossed into a wider street, hanging a right to keep going up. The buildings were less dense here, with little yards and sheds adorning many of the corner streets; the sounds of chickens were omnipresent. “This place used to be a military town, didn’t it?” Twilight asked as they passed through an old, mossy palisade half-hidden amongst the homes. “Ages back?”
“Kind of,” Squirrel said. She jerked her head to the hill’s peak, where they could just make out the top of the wooden keep. “Used to be a more aggressive polis, you know? So of course it had its own little army; being at the fork of the Whithers was no small boon, and what better to do than enforce a toll? Nothing of consequence here anymore though.”
“How’d that work?” Rainbow asked as they passed by yet another sturdy, stone building within the bailey, vertical arrowslits littering its top floor. “Can’t exactly stop a bunch of big barges going through if they don’t wanna be.”
Squirrel chuckled. “You can, actually. If we’re lucky we’ll be able to see them from the docks, but there’re a couple towers each side of the both the rivers; what they’d do is, is they’d raise a giant chain between them. It’d be too heavy to get onto the surface, so it’d end up sitting a couple feet under the water – low enough for paddleboats to go over, but anything bigger would have its keel cut out from underneath it if it tried.”
“Oof,” Rainbow winced.
“Yep! Chain’s still there too, buried somewhere at the bottom in all that muck.”
“A bit mercenary for my taste,” Twilight frowned – such a toll would’ve been far too prone to corruption to be of any real benefit to the town. “What happened?”
“About as you’d imagine – a bunch of the towns and cities around the Basin banded together and came down here in force.”
Twilight grunted. “Predictable, from the sounds of it.”
“Mmhmm. Think that was a century back, now? Thereabouts.” They were passing back out of the bailey, entering an area clearly built out over the hill, as dirt and cobble switched to stout wooden planks beneath them; between the cracks they could make out the slope slowly falling away. A stairway ahead led up to a higher platform. Given the lack of shops here, it seemed likely this wasn’t the main entrance – that, and that they still didn’t have much in the way of a view encouraged them to keep climbing.
Pausing a moment at the base of the stairs, they waited for a group of people to finish coming down, its members chatting amiably as they balanced rucksacks and panniers on their backs.
“Tourists?” Twilight wondered aloud, glancing back over her withers at the noisy group as they made their own way up.
Rainbow snorted. “Doubt it – not much to see around here.”
“Probably just passing through,” Squirrel said as they clopped up onto the next platform – this one much longer and wider, with a triplet of airship hulls hovering in bays just off to their left. They’d need to ascend yet higher if they wanted to reach them. “Good camping around here though – that route I took last time goes all the way to Drizzle, and it’s supposed to be quite beautiful.”
“Drizzle’s the underground one, right?” Rainbow asked, perking up. “With all the gnolls? And dragons and gold and treasure?”
“I... don’t know about those last bits,” Squirrel hedged, side-eying the mare. “But, yes.”
“We totally gotta go there, Twi.”
“I’m pretty sure we want to get to Hurricanum, actually.”
“Well, yeah,” Rainbow admitted. “Obviously. But, like, afterwards.”
“You’d trust one of these airships again?” Twilight asked, doubt evident in her voice. “The last one was supposedly of quality build.”
“Nah – we’d hike!”
Twilight sighed, but didn’t much feel like arguing about just how silly that sounded. “Let’s just save this conversation for when we finally get back, okay?”
“Aww...” Rainbow slumped. “That means ‘no.’”
“Alright kids,” Squirrel interrupted them, just as they reached the main loading dock. “Time to focus.” She settled down onto the planks and stared back out over the town. From here they were roughly level with the top of the fortress; below, the town sprawled out downhill, right up to the rivers’ edges. Just as Rainbow had said, there was little in the way of farmland beyond – what had looked like grasslands from the canoe were in fact a patchwork of meandering rivers, rocky beaches, and thin, tree-lined bogs, stretching nearly the entire width of the mountains north and south. Although Twilight could just barely make them out from here, most of the food was grown on terraces carved into the northern face; likewise, facing them from across the North Whither – where the ground evened out away from the river-nexus – were the town’s orchards.
Well to the south they could just barely make out the break in the cliffs they were heading to next, where the South branched to pass through the marshes and drowned tunnels of the Seven Mines. “Doesn’t look too far from here,” Twilight said, squinting into the distance. “I think I can see part of the mountain chain the Coriander runs along, too – Hurricanum’s just at the end of that.”
“An afternoon’s flight, if we had one of these,” Squirrel said, jerking her head at the ships behind them. “Still some days off for us, though.”
“Almost there,” Twilight muttered before, with a shake to clear her head, she turned her sight back to the town below. “Right, then – where’re the markets? Any ideas? I can’t make out any open-air ones from up here.” At this angle everything was just rooftops and yards. Logically, the cluster of buildings making up the main entrance to the port would have one or two supply shops somewhere among them – lugging heavy gear back up to this height would be a menace – but it seemed equally unlikely anybody would bother hauling food up this high when travelers would favour the fresher markets below.
“Over that way, maybe?” Squirrel had stalked off to the ship-side of the gangway, nodding down to something. Stepping over, Twilight could see a small clump of colourful buildings on the far side of a northern bridge. “Orchards likely drop off their produce there,” Squirrel reasoned. “Would make sense if the main open-air wasn’t too far off.”
“We’ve a destination, then,” Twilight said, pleased they had a heading – it was already just after noon, from the look of it.
“Hey – you two are just gonna look around that entranceway for some things, right?” Rainbow said, jerking a wing towards the port entrance. “‘Cause if so, I can take a fly down, check things out, then come find you after.”
“Sounds good to me,” Twilight said with a nod. “Need me to handle your gear?”
“I can take it,” Squirrel offered. Rainbow shrugged before doffing her satchels and hoofing them over.
“Back soon!” Rainbow said as she bounded towards the end of the dock.
Squirrel took a moment to wedge the satchels between her own panniers before speaking. “Well, off to look for maps, then?”
“Yep – we’ll want some sort of markers for the tunnels, too.” Twilight led the way back down, weaving through tarp-covered crates and bare struts – the dock presumably didn’t see enough traffic to warrant keeping things tidy – and towards a series of small, ramshackle buildings wedged tightly against one-another. There were a few stevedores milling about outside what looked like the harbourmaster’s office; rather than simply passing them by, she figured she’d try asking for a spot of help instead. “Hello there,” she began, smiling tentatively. “Know of any places around here that sell maps or travel gear?”
“Or rope?”
“Yes, or rope, or anything like that?”
One of gryphons grunted, giving her a disinterested look as he pointed a claw vaguely a few doors down. “Hang a left there – should be the third on your right.”
“Ahh, right, thanks,” Twilight said, walking on as the dockworkers went back to chatting amongst themselves.
“Not particularly comfortable talking to strangers, are you?” Squirrel asked as they watched a dirt-smudged group of foals gambling merrily past. “‘Cause I’m pretty sure I saw a sigh of relief when they spectacularly failed to maul you.”
“I didn’t think they’d attack me!” Twilight scowled – hassle her a little, sure, but outright assault her? No. “I just don’t like – I mean, I don’t know what they’re going to say or do, after all.”
“Don’t like jumping in if you can’t see the bottom, huh?”
“Precisely.”
“Which does rather beg the question as to just what you’re doing in Avalon, then,” Squirrel noted. “I can’t imagine they sold you on the idea that being a diplomat was an entirely predictable job – not all the time, at least.”
Twilight hummed to herself as she tried to work out the best way to word this – she felt like she owed her some kind of explanation after all this, especially considering she was following them onwards. “A... friend back home encouraged me into this.”
“Encouraged, or ‘encouraged,’” Squirrel said, rearing up for a moment to make air-quotes.
“Bit of both,” Twilight admitted as the other mare clopped back down. “She’s always been high-up politically – myself too, if to a lesser extent – and she’s been wheedling me into this for ages. Said I needed to get out more.”
Squirrel’s brows shot up, a great grin on her face. “Wait, wait – your friend wiggled you into a high-end, long-distance diplomatic gig because she thought you ‘needed to get out more’?” She let out a bark of laughter. “Wow.”
“It does sound kind of silly when you put it like that, yeah,” Twilight said sheepishly as they drifted to a stop outside an old stained-wood storefront, its varnish peeling off in droves; unlike the open-fronted workhouses either side, this one had a pair of dirty front windows and a heavy-looking door, crooked open in the hope of tempting a breeze. “Technically we’re observers, but in reality this is more of a paid vacation of sorts.”
“Equusians are definitely weird. This looks like it, by the way,” Squirrel said, nudging the door a little further open before stepping inside. The interior was cramped, with packed shelves running down the length of the shop; still more gear lay on beams and trellises above.
A disheveled-looking buck glanced up from where he was rummaging behind the far counter, just barely visible in the back. “Hello there!” he called out to them. “Got something in mind, or just browsing?”
Squirrel stepped in front of Twilight with a friendly flick of her tail, clearly taking point. “Heading through Seven Mines tomorrow, actually,” she began, heading towards the counter.
While she was busy with the clerk, Twilight figured she’d best get to browsing for what they needed. Largely ignoring what the other two were talking about, she wandered down the narrow aisles seeing what they had. A great deal of what was there seemed to consist of parts for various ship systems – a lot of which amounted to tubing, piping, gauges, and so forth – but there was a decent deal of general gear here as well. Rearing up to sidle down a particularly thin section, she found the rope they were looking for. Should be well made, too, considering it’s for ships and all.
Finding things in the right gauge was proving to be a bit of a nuisance, however. Luckily, Squirrel took that moment to poke her head down the aisle. “There you are! Find anything we can use?”
“Yep,” Twilight said, unhooking a couple of lengthy coils that looked about right. “Still want something to mark our passage through the tunnels though – paint, maybe?” Although if it wasn’t bright enough it probably wouldn’t help.
“Picket here’s got some real bright stuff we can use,” Squirrel said, disappearing from view again. Squeezing her way out of the aisle, Twilight followed her to the back counter proper to see the buck had set down a few small tins.
“Doubt we need all that,” Twilight said, nudging the cans around to face her. “Which is brightest, do you think?”
“Yellow looks good to me,” Squirrel said, tapping one of them. “Should be able to see it well enough on the walls – let’s go with that.”
It was not much later that saw them stepping back out into the alley. “Shame about the maps,” Squirrel said as they wandered back the way they came.
“Yeah...” Twilight said, a touch put-out; unfortunately, they didn’t have any back-country guides for where they were going. “We might have to wing it.”
“The route’s pretty straight-forward – just follow the main river. It’s supposed to have some decent flow compared to all the deadends that branch off it, so we shouldn’t really be able to mess it up.”
Twilight hummed irritably – she hated winging it. “Still not ideal.”
“We’ll make it work.”
“Mmm.”
They’d just reentered the dock when Rainbow dove down to meet them, landing with a clunk. “There you are!” she said, ruffling her wings as she stepped up to them. “What happened to being in a hurry?”
“Oh, shush,” Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. “We’ve got our stuff, sans the map – any luck finding the market?”
“Yup! Squirrel was totally wrong by the way,” she said, preening. “Nowhere near the bridge at all.”
“Well, off to it then,” Twilight said, ignoring Squirrel’s grumbling. “Lead the way.”
Rainbow nodded and took off jauntily back the way they’d just come. “Looks like there’s a shorter path down here,” she said back over her withers. “Then it’s just a more-or-less straight shot down to the bottom, hang a right, and boom! We’re there.”
“Wouldn’t that put us right next to the bridge?” Squirrel drawled.
“Pffft! It’s, like, ten miles away from it!”
“I don’t think it is, actually.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Twilight cut them off. “In the meanwhile, daylight’s burning.”
As it turned out, the market was, in fact, right next to the bridge. “Nuh uh!” Rainbow insisted. “There’s, like, an entire block between us and the river!”
“It’s not even a hundred metres!” Squirrel countered, stomping a hoof. “Practically half that!”
“Twiliiight!” Rainbow whined. “Tell her I’m riiight!”
“Oh for goodness sakes, girls, how in the world are you arguing about this!?” Twilight huffed – she was hoping to avoid being drawn into their inanity. “We should focus on replenishing our rations – oatbars, dried fruit, that kind of thing – so enough bickering already; honestly.”
“Hear that?” Rainbow smirked. “Twilight says I’m right!”
“She literally didn’t.”
“You’re just jealous ‘cause I win.”
“Girls. Food.”
“Fine, fine,” Rainbow relented, going back to checking out the stall-fronts either side. The market here was quite probably the only one in the town considering both how large and crowded it was, but also how varied its wares were. Food – fresh and otherwise – was prominent, but more than a few canvas-covered stalls or permanent shops were displaying clothes and other things.
They didn’t really need much – this was more precautionary than anything – but Twilight would hate for anything so easily preventable stymying them later on.
“How ‘bout we get some new stuff?” Rainbow asked as they passed by a line of coat-racks. “We’re never going to get the smell of the swamps out of our clothes. Or the tent.”
Twilight was tempted – the stink was faint, but nigh omnipresent – unfortunately... “Much as I want to say ‘yes,’ anything we get is as likely as not to get just as mucky on the next bit. We should probably wait til Hurricanum.”
Rainbow wilted. “Makes sense I guess. Only a few more days, at least.”
“Just a few more,” Twilight agreed, trailing off as her eyes finally caught on something. “Here we go.” She veered off towards a display of neatly-stacked piles of bars and patties. Little signs hung on small stands next to them.
“Oats, fruits,” Rainbow read off as they wandered down the line. “Jerky, pemmi – wait, pemmican?” Her face scrunched up. “Ew.”
“I don’t think those are for us,” Squirrel said, peering over her withers. “Fish I’m fine with, but game? I think not.”
“I don’t think I’ve had fish jerky before,” Twilight said as she scrutinized the pile herself. “Any good, Dash?”
Rainbow shrugged. “It’ll get stuck in your teeth, but otherwise, yeah – it’s kinda nice.”
“Ick. Maybe not, then.”
They ended up just sticking with the fruit and cereal types, taking care to buy more than they’d need. ‘Just in case the boat goes down and we have to walk it,’ Twilight had said. After that, there was little left to do but wander around some more and take in the sights, such as they were.
“Bit rural, isn’t it?” Twilight said as they meandered down the riverside. “More so than I’d thought it’d be, I mean.”
“‘Rural’?” Squirrel snorted. “Didn’t you say you lived in an orchard-town? How much more ‘rural’ could this possibly be?”
“Sweet Apples is... well, it is small, yes, but it doesn’t feel small.”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s...” Twilight cast around for the right way to word it.
“There’s a city,” Rainbow said, beating her to it. “A big one! It’s in the distance, but it’s close enough – that totally makes Sweet Apples way more fancy than this.”
“I was going to talk about the railways and that we’ve one of Equus’ five Great Libraries, but sure, Canterlot on the horizon works too,” Twilight finally managed to get out.
“Those things do sound more impressive than ‘a big city in the distance,’” Squirrel rolled her eyes. “It actually doesn’t sound as backwater as I’d thought.”
“It kind of is, actually,” Twilight admitted. “It should be far larger, given its location and history, but seeing as it’s abutted the Everfree forest for some centuries now, most people don’t want to live anywhere near it.”
Squirrel kicked a stone idly out of her way, watching it skip briefly along the silty water. “Something wrong with the woods?”
“The magic there’s... erratic,” Twilight said after a short pause. “Makes people feel uncomfortable – like a chill breeze that no coat can keep out.”
“Spooky.”
“Hence the small population.”
The continued down the riverside, passing pebbly beaches and stubby docks, lazing adults and gamboling foals and chicks. “Could grab some food?” Rainbow said as they stopped by the northern terraces. “Do it now and we’ll still have time for dinner later.”
“Not much else to do while we wait til evening,” Twilight said, glancing up at where she thought the sun was. “Don’t think it’s much after noon, so... sure! See something nice, earlier?”
“Not really,” Rainbow said as they turned back the way they came. “Should be something around here, though.”
It hadn’t taken too long to find a nice place to grab a bite – after a bit of walking they’d come across a tidy little restaurant on a street corner, with red blooming flowers and pale pink awnings. Rainbow poked idly at her empty cup of tea – a nice lemongrass blend – as they lazed in the coloured shade. Street traffic ambled and clattered by as people and cargo were moved up and down the cobbled slopes. There wasn’t really much to do until tomorrow, after all, and the inn here sure beat another night in the tent.
Or would that be curled up in the canoe? She was still a bit sketchy about just how wet this next section was going to get. “This is kinda dull,” she eventually said, breaking the comfy silence.
“It kind of is, isn’t it?” Twilight smiled at her. “I still think it was best to wait until morning, though – that’ll give us plenty of time to get acclimated and sort out our pace before nightfall.”
“I know,” Rainbow shrugged. “Still bored waiting.”
“Could go for another fly-around?” Squirrel chimed in. “Scout ahead a touch.”
Rainbow shook her head. “Don’t want to leave you two here.”
“We should be alright on our own for a few hours,” Squirrel tried, shooting a quick glance at Twilight. “This place sees enough visitors that we hardly stand out.”
While quite true from what she’d seen so far, Rainbow still didn’t feel comfortable leaving them behind. “I can do it tomorrow, once we’re on the river – it’ll be fine then.”
“Yep,” Twilight nodded. “That it will.”