//------------------------------// // Dessert // Story: Washed Up // by ambion //------------------------------// Flotsam was less than amused. The invasion of his own space he could handle well enough, but knowing that the animosity between these mares was putting Patches in distress crossed a line. His hooves put themselves firmly to each mare beside him, shoving firmly away. “Right,” he said with a huff, his breath a fetid dragon’s-belch of pickled egg. “Whatever this is, I’ve had enough of it. You and you, sort out whatever this is." A sort of instinct welled up in him, something gleaming of polish and training. He exhaled a foul tide of pickled egg fumes, a surge all but visible and all too palpable for Charming Booty. Her eyes widened, which was to say they were left abandoned because her eyelids were trying to crawl backwards into her head. The firmness of her grasp on him melted like wax, dribbling apart and falling to the woodwork. “I’m more of a dessert mare anyway...” she stammered, forcing a smile quickly broken by a sudden retech. She stood, slid two steps away and took a clear draw of the pure air. More pure, at any rate. This was still the sweat and grease laden underbelly of a ship, after all. If she wanted to throw in a last persnickety word, her wits failed her the opportunity to do so. Where other’s might smirk at the victory, Flotsam’s eyes only narrowed, and with one mare down he turned to the other. His hoof held to her chest kept her at bay, but there was no doubting the strength in there. Just beneath the thick, rough coat there were bands and cords of knotted muscle. It was quite impressive, and Flotsam was grateful she wasn’t really trying to regain ground. Harpoon merely watched, bar some resistance, seeing what the stallion would do. Flotsam hesitated. The wind was gone from his sails, or to be more apt, the egg was gone from his breath. Harpoon was a hardy mare, bad breath....okay, atrocious breath wasn’t going to work the same wonders on her as it had done for the more self-conscious unicorn. She withdrew her hoof of her own accord, giving him the barest and most unapologetic of dismissive shrugs, as if that now she was doing nothing wrong there was no point in holding anything from before against her. “I can sit pretty,” she said simply. The pegasus watched the swishing tail of the colour drained Charming Booty leave the room and smiled, though one would be forgiven for missing it, so slight the expression was on her stoney face. “Well...alright then,” he said, just a little insipidly. He turned back to his meal and tried to ignore her, realized his hoof was still pressed firmly to her chest, retracted said hoof, then failed spectacularly at resuming his previous cool. She too turned back fully to her meal, but her disdaining, amused little smile remained, a dark cloud growing in the distance, eating up the idyllic blue sky one bite at a time. She was a black hole of conversation, everything that was fun and uncomplicated with Patches had him checking his words, refraining them from the ears of Harpoon. Her absolute ease with the situation in turn put him on his guard, and even Patches was dampened in her spirits for it. “Want an egg, Harpoon?” she said woefully, proffering up one of her foul little treasures like a sacrifice. “No. Thanks,” she added, with only one second too many spent in thought. Slowly, Flotsam calmed. At least he’d gotten Patches her Smarty Pants doll back from those bullies...Flotsam blinked. Like a dream, once he realized it for what it was the memory slipped away and he could not recall it, only remembering that it had been there, fluttering at the forefront of his thoughts. Hoof to forehead, he closed his eyes, but remembrance was not to be. “You alright?” asked the filly. “Yeah, I’m fine. Everything’s alright,” he replied, rubbing the brow of each eye in turn. Time, he promised himself. Give it time; it’ll come. He chewed slowly, but the impression didn’t come back. “So you pulled me up, Harpoon...” he mused aloud. “What was that like?” Harpoon swept the crumbs and broth from her lips with the back of her hoof. “Heavy. Wet.” Flotsam waited, but that was all she had to say. Succinct, at least. “I owe you one.” “You do,” she said matter-of-factly. She said it like she fully intended to collect. He looked up and away, and felt conspicuously warm, though it might just have been his stomach acids starting a great and terrible war upon the eldritch egg. “Right.” Flotsam leaned back, leading the weight of his head hang on his neck. Stretched out to his satisfaction, he pulled himself back to an easy, attentive posture. “So what happened? You just found me?” “Yes.” Flotsam’s brow creased, ever so slightly. “Out in the water.” “Yes.” The crease bloomed into a full network of ridges, stretching down under his cheeks and forming a frown. “In the middle of the ocean.” “Yes.” He leaned in over to the stoic mare. “And you have no idea who I am, or how I got there?” “Yes.” His eyes, his hair, his posture; it all shot up. Mares from other tables paused in there eating, even Patches. “You do?!” “Yes, I have no idea who you are, or how you got there,” she repeated without any particular emotion, save a noticeable smidgen of amusement at his outburst, like salt on an otherwise stiff gruel. Without word or ceremony, Harpoon stood up. Flotsam pushed forwards into his seat to make room, but she simply lifted herself on powerful wing strokes and leapt clear over him. Directly over him. Her hooves hit the floor with a heavy clopping. He felt strange feelings welling up in him from that.  And other things, welling up from his stomach. The egg was fighting back, and what had been a perfectly flat room was beginning to feel more and more like a rickety, tumbling torment. Things sloshed inside him. Flotsam belched the worst kind of belch; the kind that heralds the mighty volcano. “Deck, he muttered,” conserving his precious breath as he could. He slid from his seat, fumbled and ran, shoving his way past any and all. His shoulders hit the doorframe on the way out, but he didn’t even slow. The evening wind slapped his face; his chest slammed the railing. It gave the necessary kick to get the chyme flowing. Flotsam hurled. Oily torrents then shimmering droplets; it all fell through the half light of evening, catching sunlight and starlight alike, glinting in all the hues of a beautiful rainbow, one that painted itself on the gently rippling ocean below, rippling and dancing on the surface of the waters. Fungus cap yellow, bog slop green, ‘what the buck could that even be from’ blue, the vivid orange of ‘why is there always carrot’, like the flecks in a river that set pioneers to gold rushes. Sufficed to say, the egg tasted even more memorable the second time around. Drained, exhausted and still heaving half-heartedly, Flotsam slumped to the deck. Steely-blue hooves came closer and closer. Harpoon whistled through her teeth, putting a hoof on the miserable, trembling stallion’s shoulder. “I know something about you now,” she said. She turned away, and he thought it might end at that. A face full of seawater alleviated those suspicions. Spluttering, eyes, ears and nose full of salt water, he nonetheless relished the cleansing, the rinsing of bile from his lips. “You aren’t from the sea. Not originally. Maybe a bit stupid, but that’s normal. Stallion,” she said, shrugging by way of explanation. Even from his muddled heap of feeling terrible, Flotsam couldn’t help but be irked at that. The pegasus scooped him up like he was no more massive than Patches herself. She dropped him on his hooves, his legs shook with weakness, but his knees held. “That’s about it for you tonight. Get going,” the first mate ordered him. Dripping and worn, he was slow to move. A feathery smack to the rump and a snort had him marching more promptly. At least he had a room to retreat to. He hoped sullenly there’d be a towel in there. And mouthwash. Please let there be mouthwash, he thought, daring to hope.