Truth looked at the mare across the table from her, a glance that spoke many words. They had just been having a very private, not-so-nice conversation about Rose’s behavior over the past day. The Countess, wed to one of the Sons-of-Celestia, was a noble Blue-blood, much like Truth herself, before her husband had perished. This glance though, spoke none of that, “Oh dear. That vulgar Brown mare is coming this way. Get up, quickly, before she sits with us.”
Mossy Brown trotted up to the table, and cheerfully greeted them, “Hello ladies. I was hoping I would catch you at tea,” her muzzle dipped slightly as she noticed the nearly empty tea cups on the table.
“We’re awfully sorry you missed it. The Countess and I are just off to take in the air on the boat deck.”
“Why, that sounds wonderful. Let’s go. I need to catch up on my gossip,” Mossy was either being completely oblivious to the intention, or understood completely, and was intentionally kicking social understanding under the table. Truth ground her teeth as the three headed over to the towering Grand Staircase to go up to the boat deck.
__
Captain Smith sat with Bright Island and Tom Shipsmith at another table, only half-noticing the gossiping mares around them. While the ladies were enjoying their tea-time, these three were quite busy, in discussion, leaned over the blueprints of the ship, as well as a chart of various numbers that Island would never have understood without the designer there to help.
“So,” Island tapped the aft end of the blueprints, “You’ve not had them light the last four boilers?”
“No, but we are making excellent time, no less,” the captain smiled broadly, fluffing his wings.
Shipsmith nodded, “Besides, lighting those last four would be a waste of coal, and would require several crews to be taken off other boilers. It could be done, but would be impractical at the current time.”
“Captain, Mr. Shipsmith,” he looked at the other two, then spread his hooves across the paper, “the press knows of the size of Titanic. Let them marvel at her speed too. We must give them something new to print. And the maiden voyage of Titanic must make headlines!”
Shipsmith sighed, grateful to the captain for taking the conversation, “I prefer to not push the engines until they’ve been properly run in.” The Unicorn designer nodded approvingly at the captain’s deft words, but was stalled at the other Unicorn’s next comment.
“Of course, I leave it to your good offices to decide what’s best, but what a glorious end to your final crossing if we get into New Yoke on Tuesday night, rather than Wednesday, and surprise them all,” his hoof hit the table, “Retire with a bang, eh, Wind?”
The captain nodded stiffly, then waved Island away. As the rich noble left the table, Captain Smith looked to his friend, “Can we do it?”
“Theoretically, the hull can handle it. Shall I inform Chief Bell to light the rest?”
“Tom, if your calculations are correct,” he let the unspoken ‘and they will be’ float for a moment, “We will not need all four extra boilers to achieve Tuesday night,” the captain tapped on a row of numbers listing the maximum pressures necessary for given speeds. As it was, the ship was making very good time, not a doubt in their minds of an early arrival, “Have him light up twenty seven and twenty six,” his hooves brushed across two boilers near the stern.”
“I will give you word when they are lit. Expect it by breakfast,” Shipsmith stood and began the trek down to the boiler-rooms to inform the Chief Engineer.
__
Rose and Jack trotted down the length of the aft deck, past ponies lounging on deck chairs in the late-afternoon light. Stewards scrambled back and forth serving tea and hot cocoa.
Rose had a smile wider than Jack had ever seen, “You know, my dream has always been to just chuck it all and become an artist…Living in a garret, poor but free!” She glanced back at her blank flank, hidden beneath layers of fabric.
“You wouldn’t last two days. There’s no hot water, and hardly ever any caviar,” he laughed, and mimed the act of eating caviar beside one of the trash-cans lining the deck, “I say, this is some fine garbage tonight…”
“Listen Buster…” she snickered, but managed to keep an angry façade up, “I hate caviar! And I’m tired of ponies dismissing my dreams with a chuckle and a pat on the head.”
Jack stopped laughing at her sudden seriousness, then held out a hoof, “I’m sorry. Really, I am. Garbage Caviar?”
She giggled, “Well, alright,” took the offered imaginary Caviar, “There’s something in me, Jack. I feel it. I don’t know what it is, whether I should be an artist, or, I don’t know…A dancer maybe?” Jack’s eyes panned over her figure, “Like Isadora Belle…A wild spirit.” She leapt forward and whirled on one hoof, dress floating into the air as she twirled back onto her hind hooves and fell into Jack’s waiting fore-hooves. Before she finished catching her breath, something else caught her eye, “Or I could be a moving picture actress!” Her face lit up as she dragged him towards the stallion with a camera, the one she had seen earlier, before boarding the ship. His mare was still making the wooden poses from before, though this time on the rail.
The stallion was saying something, “You’re sad. Sad, sad, sad. You’ve left your lover on the shore. You may never see him again. Try to be sadder, darling.”
Rose shot into the camera’s view and struck a theatrical, wholly inappropriate for the situation, pose at the rail. The mare burst out laughing. Rose dragged Jack into the picture and pushes him into a pose quickly as the stallion rants and gestures, “CUT CUT CUT! GET OUT OF MY SHOT!”
Rose posed tragically, hoof to her brow. Jack propped himself up on a deck chair, the two mares fanning him with his own wings, like his own personal slave girls. Jack, on his knees, pleading with hooves clasped, while Rose stood, back to him, head tilted in bored disdain. Rose cranking the camera as the two stallions made like cow-ponies, twirling imaginary guns, and pretending to shoot each-other. The other stallion dropped dramatically to the deck, pantomiming his terror, then his death. Jack twirled an air-moustache for the camera, mouthing, “I hath defeated thou for ever and for always, and shall lay claim now to all what is mine,” he grabbed Rose from behind the camera and swept her over in a deep bow, her dress hiding that he was holding them up with his wing on the rail. His lips brushed hers, “But no more of this, for the board might complain.” The two fell to the deck, rolling in laughter, joined by the camera-stallion and his mare.
__
Jack and Rose leaned against the A-deck rail, the same one Rose had gone over earlier. In fact, Jack could see the scratches on the lowest beam where her hoof had failed to grip the surface. The two were illuminated only by the deck lights, as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. If any other ponies had been on the deck, they would have sensed a sort of magic not restricted to Unicorns floating in the air. As it was, Quartermaster Rote paused in his rounds, to leave the two alone, instead routing up over the top-deck, just behind the aft-most funnel.
“So what then, Mr. Wandering Jack?”
“Well, then logging got to be too much like work,” his wings fluttered in remembrance of long nights spent plucking splinters with his teeth,” so I went down to Los Alicorns, to the pier in Santa Monica. That’s a swell place. They even have a roller-coaster. I sketched portraits there for two bits apiece.”
“A whole two bits?” Rose was stunned. That was pocket change to her. Literally, she had more than that in her purse, tucked into her dress right now.
Jack didn’t catch that, of course, “Yeah, it was great money…I could make a couple tenners a day, sometimes. But only in summer. When it got cold, I decided to go to Paris and see what the real artists were doing.”
Rose looked up at the sky, a slight wetness at the corners of her eyes, “Why can’t I be like you Jack? Just head for the horizon whenever I feel like it?” She turned to him, “Say we’ll go there, sometime. To that pier. Even with we only ever just talk about it.”
“Alright, we’re going. We’ll drink cheap beer, and go on the roller-coaster until we throw up. Gallop down the beach, right in the surf, and you can ride my back like one of those rodeo ponies. But you have to ride like a cow-pony. None of that side-saddle stuff.”
“You mean one leg on each side? Scandalous,” her smile widened, “Can you show me?”
“Sure, if you’d like,” he bowed down off the railing, “Milady?”
She laughed and poked his muzzle with her hoof, “Not now, Jack. Someone might see. Later.”
She glanced out at the horizon as Jack rose to his hooves again, “And teach me to spit. Like a stallion. Why should only stallions be allowed to spit. It’s unfair,” she glanced back at Jack, his gray fur glowing in the setting sun.
“They didn’t teach you that in finishing school?” his face was incredulous, “Here. It’s real easy. Watch closely.”
He bent his head back and spat out over the water, watching as it arced over the water and vanished, “Your turn.”
She twisted her lips up and spat. A pathetic little bit of foamy spittle ran down her chin and dribbled onto the rail. Jack wiped it off with his shirt-sleeve, “Nope. That was pitiful,” her face fell, “Here, it’s like this… You hock it down,” he made a horrible retching sound as he continued miming the motions, “Then you roll it on your tongue, up to the front,” the gob rolled down onto his protruding tongue, looking like a raw oyster, “Ligth thith,” He pulled his tongue back in, “Then a big breath, and,” he spat the gob into the air, “You see the range on that thing?”
She follows the steps, him miming the steps as he followed them himself. She lets the gob fly, and he joins in, watching as two little comets of saliva and phlegm soared out over the sea, “Mine went further.”
She hit his shoulder, “You’ve had more practice,” a slight blush colored her cheeks, “Besides, I don’t need range to get the same effect, I’m a lady. And ladies don’t spit.” She laughed, “It’ll throw them for sure.”
Rose turned to him, and suddenly went white. He felt a tingle down his wings and tensed up as he turned. Truth, the Countess, and Mossy Brown are standing there, two shocked, one bemused.
“Mother, may I introduce Ratchet Jack Darkson.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Truth scoffed slightly, disappointed in the scoundrel with spittle running down his chin.
The others were gracious and curious about the stallion who had saved my life. But my mother looked at him like an insect. A dangerous insect which must be squashed quickly.
Well, Jack, it sounds as though you’re a good stallion to have around in a sticky situate…,” Mossy spoke directly to the Thestral, only to be interrupted by a bugler sounding the meal call, “Why must they insist on announcing dinner like some damn cavalry charge?”
Rose gripped her mother’s shoulder, “Shall we go dress, Mother?” A glance over her shoulder at Jack, “See you at dinner Jack.”
Truth scowled at the deck, “Rose, look at you…Out in the sun with no hat. Honestly. You’ll burn your ears.”
The Countess followed the two away, with Mossy Brown remaining behind, hoof on Jack’s shoulder, “Son, do you have the slightest comprehension of what you’re doing?”
With a smile, Jack replied, “Nope. Not a clue.”
Mossy sighed, “Well, you’re about to go into a snakepit. I hope you’re ready. What were you planning to wear?”
Jack looked at his ratty clothes, “Oh…Uh…Quartermaster Rote said there was a mare named Mossy Brown who could set me up with a suit for the night. I should probably…”
“I’m Mossy Brown. Pleasure to meet you. The Quartermaster already left me a message to look out for you.”
Jack grinned.