//------------------------------//
// I won't let go 
// Story: Titanic 
// by Imperator Chiashi Zane 
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Quartermaster Rote heard the shriek and snapped away from staring through the dark for the girl’s pursuer.  Darting up the deck, he took to the air, flapping his broad wings to carry himself towards the back of the ship.  
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“HELP HELP!”
“I’ve got you, I won’t let go!  Quit stabbing me!”  He felt his hoof touch the rail.  Good, the wake of the ship had pulled him along.  Another ear-splitting scream, and he flapped down roughly.  He couldn’t see anything but tattered dress and yellow fur, “Quit Bucking Stabbing ME!”
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Rose started slipping again, and he growled at her, ignoring her protests as he rolled underneath her and shoved her up into the air as hard as he could.  For a split second, she floated in the air before crashing down on his chest, muzzle beside his ear.  He felt her hot breath in his ear as he tried to flap back to the deck.  He rolled again, awkwardly trying not to grab at anything inappropriate, while simultaneously trying to keep her attached securely to him as her magic impaired his vision, a blind groping with the field to try and find something to grab onto.  Mostly, him.
He felt that she had never lifted anything heavier than a bowl of soup, but it was distracting enough that by the time he finally managed to get to the deck, his fur was standing on end.  Finally, he managed to get them onto the deck in a rolling tumble, her head smacking him in the jaw and her horn grazing his forehead.  They came to a stop, him balanced over her, dark wings billowing in the wind like a villainous cape.  Blood started to pool on his eyebrow, and he raised a hoof to his jaw.
Rote arrived, landing in a run, after diving down a ladder like it was a fire-drill.  He skidded to a stop on the fan-tail, “Here, what’s all this then?”
He ran over and pulled Jack off of Rose, throwing him aside and revealing her disheveled look.  Between the tattered dress, the tear-stained face, and the fresh tears still running down her muzzle, it wasn’t hard to make an assumption.  Torn to shreds, her dress barely maintained her modesty.  He glanced at Jack, shaggy hair, open vest, rubbing his jaw from where Rose had hit him, then back to Rose, clearly in distress.
He knew this stallion though.  Unless Jack had lied through his pointed eye-teeth, he was not at fault for her state.  Two crew-stallions arrived, and Rote responded quickly, “Stay where you are.  Don’t move an inch.”
He turned to the stallions, “Go fetch the Master-at-arms,” to one, to the other, “Fetch a pitcher of water and a glass.”  As the two stallions raced off, the Griffon dropped to his haunches and brushed a claw across his left breast, “Jack?”
Jack gasped for air, the combination of frantic flapping and being thrown across the deck two times in rapid succession ripping into his chest, “Gah, Air…”  He continued to gulp at the air like a fish out of water, one hoof pointing at the railing.
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The Master-at-arms arrived, and calmly put cuffs around Jack’s fore-hooves, sitting the panting Thestral upright.  Not exactly distressed, the stallion seemed to at least care if Jack was going to survive, at least to make it to trial.
Kale scowled angrily at Jack, having just rushed from dinner.  He hadn’t even had a chance to grab his coat, nor had Lovejoy, who stood near Rose, holding the glass of water in his hoof.  Kale reached out and grabbed Jack by the lapels of his vest, using his magic to push the Thestral’s long mane back out of the way, “What made you think you could put your hooves on my fiancée?  Look at me you filth!  What did you think you were doing!”
Rose interrupted with a cough, “Kale, stop!  It was an accident.”
Kale turned an inquisitive eye back to her, “An accident?”
“It was stupid, really.  I was leaning over the rail and I slipped,” a brief glance at Jack’s eyes, “I was leaning way over, to see the…Ah…The propellers.  And I slipped and fell overboard…and Mr.  Darkson here saved me.  Dove right over the rail to grab me.”
“You wanted to see the propellers?”  Kale seemed suspicious.  Rightly so, but it was starting to grate on Jack’s nerves.  To Rote, he muttered, “Women and machinery do not mix.”
The Master-at-arms looked down at the prisoner in his grasp, “Was that the way of it?”  Rose’s eyes begged Jack to not tell the truth, this once.  Mixed in was a serious amount of concern that Jack couldn’t bluff.  He hadn’t been before.
“Yes sir.  That was pretty much it,” He glanced at Rose, a moment of perfect understanding.  Now a secret.
“Well then,” Rote smiled, his beak splitting down the middle, “The colt’s a hero.  Good on you son, well done,” he turned to Kale, “So now it’s all well and good, and back to your brandy, Sir.”
The Master-at-arms slips Jack’s cuffs off.  Kale helps Rose to her hooves and starts guiding her back to the smoking room, “Let’s get you inside.  You’re freezing.”  He starts off without glancing back at Jack.
“Perhaps, ah, something for the colt?”  Rote looked Kale over.
Kale turned to Lovejoy, “Oh, right.  Mr. Lovjoy, a twenty should do it.”
“Is that the going rate for saving the mare you love?”
Kale rolls his eyes, “Rose is displeased.  Mmm.  What to do,” he turns to Jack and appraises him condescendingly.  A Steerage ruffian, unwashed and ill-mannered, and a Thestral, no less, “I know.”  To jack he spoke, “Perhaps you could join us for dinner tomorrow, to regale our group with your heroic tale?”
Jack looked straight at Rose, “Sure, count me in.”
“Good, it’s settled then,” he wrapped a hoof protectively around Rose and guided her back towards the interior, leaning towards Lovejoy, “This should be amusing.”
As Lovejoy passed Jack, the stallion held out a hoof, “Can I bum a cigarette?”
Lovejoy withdrew a shining silver case from his jacket and snapped it open.  Jack quickly darted forward and took two, pressing one into the groove behind his ear for later.  Lovejoy lit the cigarette, “You’re going to want to buckle that harness better,” Jack glanced down at his saddle-bag harness, still hanging loose under his belly, unsecured, “Interesting that the young lady slipped so all of a sudden, and yet you still had time to unbuckle your saddlebags and take off your shoes.  Mmm.”  Lovejoy’s expression was unreadable, as always, but his eyes are as cold as Jack’s return.  Jack gives back just as little.
As the stallion strode away, Jack let his wings droop back to the deck, and sighed.  Rote placed a talon across the Thestral’s shoulder, “Don’t let it get to you.  He was raised by nobles.  It’s all he knows.”
Jack looked up at the noble jaw above him, “Right.  So, that just happened.  Where am I going to find a suit by tomorrow night?”
Rote leaned back, “I know a lady who might be able to help you.  Mossy Brown.  She’s new money, a seamstress by training.  Maybe she’ll be able to fix up that buckle so it doesn’t slip off so easily,” the Griffon winked at Jack.  He hadn’t quite seen everything, but he had seen the unmistakable sight of a Thestral flying behind the ship in the moonlight.  He knew that the story wasn’t entirely true, but not quite how much.  Besides, he had seen the mare dart past him, already in distress.  Whatever tore the dress, it wasn’t Jack.
“Lucky you were taking a little moon-flight up here.”
Jack rubbed his hoof on his shoulder, pinching the rugged fabric of his shirt, “Yeah.  Lucky.”
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Rose shimmied out of her dress, glad to have the help of her maid, Truly.  As she shook her tail out, Truly brushed at her mane.  Kale stepped into the doorway, and Truly prepared to go out through the wardrobe again.  The stallion trotted up and leaned towards her, his horn glowing softly, “Rose, I know you’ve been feeling melancholy recently, and I won’t pretend to know why,” he pulled a small black box out from behind his back, held in his magic.  The velvet shone in the glow as it passed between his blue aura and her yellow, “I intended to save this till the engagement gala net week.  But I thought tonight,” he muttered something suspiciously like ‘that Thestral bastard’, “perhaps a reminder of my feelings for you.”
She opened the box carefully, looking at the brilliant gem inside, inset in a thin silver chain.  The Heart of the ocean.  The first time I ever set eyes on the stone.  It was like looking at my own prison collar, and being asked to take it.  “Sweet Celestia…Kale, is it a…”
“Diamond, yes.  Yes it is.  Fifty-six carats,” he lifted the necklace out of the case and moved behind her, to place the chain around her neck, “Once it was worn by Blueblood the fourteenth.  They call it Le Coeur de la Mer, the…”
“The Heart of the Ocean.  Kale, it’s… it’s overwhelming,” she looked at the image of herself and Kale, the diamond at the forefront, partially hidden by her still messy mane.
“It’s for royalty.  And we are royalty,” his hooves stroked her neck gently.  He seems to be disarmed by her elegance and beauty.  For once, his emotions are unguarded.  Something she had never seen before.  “There is nothing I couldn’t give you.  There is nothing I would deny you if you would ask it.  Open your heart to me, Rose.”
Of course, his gift was only to reflect light back onto himself, to illuminate the greatness that was Kale Hockley.  It was a cold stone…a heart of ice.  It truly felt I had been imprisoned then.