//------------------------------//
// Swords at D'aww...n 
// Story: Washed Up 
// by ambion 
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	Captain Nautica found herself faced this morning with an unusual problem. 

There was nothing going wrong, simply enough. She awoke knowing that the wind was steady and the ocean calm, she could feel it as if the ship were an extension of her own body. There was nothing to outrun, or chase, nothing in the hold to spoil and nothing of work to set before her crew. The ship was clean and tended in every possible way, and even the weather was being precisely everything they could have wanted of it.

It left the mare rather vexed, to tell the truth. Idle hooves annoyed her to no end, and to add to that there was an albatross of a stallion riling up her mares. It’d be bad form to truss up Flotsam and toss him back out in a dingy after taking him onboard, but Nautica toyed with the idea anyway, like a filly with no intention of eating her dinner. She made herself a bitter cup of tea from the shiny little decanter fastened to the table.

Restless tickled at even her, she could feel the energy hopping along in the back of her hoof. She glared at it sternly and willed it to stillness. 

The map which sprawled across the table was not the neatest of things, nor the prettiest. The edges were stained and curled in on themselves like dying spiders; notes and scrawls and corrections like little black veins popped up all over the parchment and in more than one place the compass had scored ragged grooves through it. The magnifying class with which she marked their position sat all on its own, glass and a rim of brass on a wide patch of empty blue, filled only with the fanciful depictions of turtles and serpents such maps so characterized themselves with.

There was sunshine and nothing but mares and waves. Nautica’s gaze hunted along the wall, her eyes falling to rest on the polished sabre that hung within her cabinet. She sipped her drink and mused. The sabre’s weight was familiar when she drew it and fitted it to her hoof. 

There was the heat, the warmth that stirred them all up. And the stallion, too, whom did even more to that effect. Well, she knew what to do about that anyway. She gave the blade a  cursory few flicks, slicing the air to little ribbons of sound and breeze.





Mares lined the railing, or at least their backsides did. Well into morning now, the sun blazed overhead as if it were keen to see the activity about the ship and what it saw therein made it just a little bit...heated

A little bit further aft and to the side, daylight shining off the sweat of his flank, Flotsam watched in much the same manner.

Patches leaned on him, into the breeze, her scratchy mane having its way with his chest. “It’th thparring practith!” she explained, giving a wiggle and little jump that put the crest of her head colliding with the stallion’s chin. He winced and tried to make no sound of it.

Three unicorns had already gone below decks, taking positions at intervals along the way. There was the feeling of magic, that familiar tickle of it, than a procession of weapons that drifted out from the dark and into the light. Mares helped themselves to anything and everything as it came out, butting butts and shoving hooves away from this or that piece, though there was no shortage of choice.

Flotsam’s lips scrunched together, as did his eyelids. “Patches?”

“Yeth?” The glint of her happy, innocent eyes was joined by the equally bright glint of steel she carried in her mouth. It was small enough, the little blade she carried, bouncing along with joy to have the one she wanted, even if it was only because the grown mares favoured the larger and heftier ones. It was like seeing My Little Filly’s First Edged Weapon, and Flotsam stopped and stared dumbly. “You’re not getting one?” she squeaked out past the pommel.

“What does this ship actually do”

The filly’s face went stony and flat. Her mouth clicked into gear like something rehearsed. “Entrepreneurial commodity import/export by predictive and preemptive thalvaging of goodth.”

Flotsam gave the rag she tied her mane back with a long hard glare of interrogation. “Right...” Something, or several of them were rousing in his head. He didn’t feel quite so comfortable with this ship as he had a second ago, but there was a call of excitement and a general shuffling about of mares, and the moment sat...if not forgotten, then shunted aside for the meantime.

The Captain moved like a shark through the shoals: slow and with utmost ease, her crewmares gently but insistently moving around to give her space. Her thin sabre flicked this way and that, a pointed dorsal thin ready to go slicing through the waves at the scent of blood.

“Sheath me,” she ordered, her voice rising over the general din of chatter and clatter. Before Flotsam could wonder what she meant, one of her unicorns jumped to the command, casting a thin veil of magic that wrapped around the blade. Nautica examined it for a moment before striking out against the railing. Rather than the thud of metal on wood and the carving out of chunks from it, there was only a sound like air going whoomph, as if stirred by pillow fighting. The Captain whipped about, slashing full length at a rope or tether of some sort. Rather than sever, it caught the blade and twanged back into place.

Nauticaa nodded. She withdrew her sabre and returned it to scabbard in a single flourish of steel. “Good. Bring up a roll of bandaging anyway. Don’t want this to be too tame now, do we girls?” 

A few mares cheered, a few more chuckled. Indeed, they did not want tame. From his corner, Flotsam noted that there was no fumbling of handles, no novice swinging of beatsticks. These mares were competent, and experienced.

A firm pressure against the stallion’s backside made his ears perk up and a whinny slip past his lips. “Go on,” Patches grunted as she pushed in futility against his mass, the short blade still clenched in her teeth. “Get one too! Practith ith fun!” She gasped, ceased her efforts and pushed out her chest. “I call dibth on Floththam!” 

Mares, spreading out and pairing off, looked to the filly and stallion. A few ears perked, and a few eyes squinted with interest and thought. The stallion gulped, then did so again when he caught sight of Charming Booty, grinning at him from across the deck. Nearer the prow. Harpoon flexed her wings and worked the length of a cudgel. As if psychic, the mare met his eye.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Flotsam felt the urge to arm himself, having no idea if he had any capacity at all to use anything amidst the assortment. He took the step forwards to the floating weapons presented and Patches stumbled from her attempts to push him. Even the Captain, Nautica herself paused to watch him face the daunting, floating flotilla of edges, points, corners and curves.

Likewise, the mares of the ship were watching his edges, points, corners and curves also.

“Yay!” Patches cried out happily, and wiggled a little jig in the sunlight.