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// Impossible Barriers Part 2 
// Story: Titanic 
// by Imperator Chiashi Zane 
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Rose blinked, and looked at the crew of stallions sadly, remembering how the ship looked, and seeing it overlaid on the screens that showed the rotting wreck, the sad ghost of a powerful vessel, “That was the last time Titanic ever saw daylight.”
Rock Heart pushed a new tape into the recorder, “So, we’re up to the night of the sinking.  Six hours to go.”
Dive pressed his fore-hooves to his forehead, “Don’t you love it?  There’s Captain Smith, he’s standing there with the iceberg warning in his bucking hoof…” he glanced at Rose, “Excuse me…in his hoof, and he’s ordering more speed.”
“Twenty-six year of experience working against him.  He figures anything big enough to sink the ship, they’ll see in time to turn.  But the ship is too big, with too small of a rudder…It can’t corner for shit.  Everything he knows is wrong.
Rose barely heard them, instead staring at the mane-comb in her hoof.  It was still a lovely artifact, despite the years of age it had suffered beneath the sea.
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Rose’s suite was clean and large, bigger than any room Jack had ever been able to afford, though not as big as the room he slept in almost every night of his life.  He half-subconsciously set his sketchpad and pencils on the marble table in the middle.
“Will this do?  The light, I mean?  Don’t artists need good light?”
Jack smiled, turning on a very, very poor Prench accent, “Zat is true, I am not accuztomed to working in zuch ‘oribble conditions,” his eyes wandered across one of the paintings on the wall, “Oh, Monet.”  Leaning in, he started hoofing through the stack of paintings leaned up against the surface, “Isn’t he great…The use of color?  I saw him once…Through a hole in this garden fence in Giverny.”  It wasn’t entirely untrue.  Though the artist had died years before, Jack had, through sheer luck, managed to be standing outside the cemetery when the great artist was buried.
Out of the edge of his sight, he noticed her going into the wardrobe, then to the bulky safe lying on the floor panel.  In the back of his mind, the survivor mindset, he knew, he was trying to pick out the combination by the way her magic rotated the dial.
“Kale insists on hauling this thing everywhere.”
“Should we be expecting him any time soon?”
Rose laughed, “Not as long as the cigars and brandy hold out,” the safe opened with a loud clunk, and Rose glanced up at the mirror, meeting Jack’s eyes in the reflection.  She calmly reached in and grabbed the chain of the necklace in her magic, lifting it out without the yellow field covering the blue gemstone.  Jack grabbed the chain with his wingtip, gently trying not to scratch or drop it, “What is it?  A sapphire?”
“Diamond actually.  A very rare diamond, called the heart of the ocean.”
Jack stared at the expensive stone, wealth beyond his comprehension, “Huh.  Still looks like sapphire to me,” he pushed the end of the stone into his mouth and gently bit down on it.  A quick lick, and he pulled the stone away, “Too stiff to be sapphire though…”
Rose plucked the stone away from him, “I want you to draw me wearing this Jack.”
He followed the stone up with his eyes, “Draw you?”
“Like that prench mare in your sketchbook.  Wearing this,” her muzzle split in a wide smile, “Wearing only this.”
His eyes went wide, and he swung both arms up behind his wings, pinning the appendages to his sides as they tried to snap out.
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Jack carefully set out his tools, an array of pencils, erasers, and chalk blocks like they were surgical tools, readied for an operation.  Beside them, his sketchbook sat on the desk, open to a crisp, clean page.  He looked at the page intently, searching for any defects that he could use.  Flawless.  He sighed.
His attention was drawn away from the page by a cough, and he looked up to see Rose in a black kimono that accented her golden fur and red mane.  His heart pounded in his throat as he tried to speak, but she interrupted that thought, “The last thing I need is another portrait of me looking like a china doll.  As a paying customer, I expect to get what I want,” a small pile of bits floated onto the desk, and Jack glanced at them, counting in his head.  Ten whole bits.  He owed somepony big for this catch.
Without further thought, Rose stood to her full height, and dropped the kimono, revealing the stone, hanging against her barrel, perfectly centralized and accented by the small tuft of fur at the base of her neck, where her cream colored belly-fur started.  Jack’s jaw followed the kimono as his eyes struggled to maintain their higher position.  Not that he had never seen a mare naked, or openly revealing herself to him, but never one so noble, so dignified looking.  Plus, as his heart was so proudly reminding him, he really, really, really liked this one.
“Tell me when it looks right to you,” Rose settled onto the divan, kicking her legs in the air as she slid into position, fore-hooves up on either side of the stone, the golden fur blending into her creamy chest, making the stone stand out more.
“Uh.  Lift your left leg a little…Lower your head a bit.  Eyes to me.  More smile.”
He selected a dark grey pencil and touched it to the paper.  A couple of lines, and the pencil fell to the floor as his wing snapped out, tip brushing the wall.  Rose moved a hoof to stifle her giggles, “Why, Mr. Big Artiste, I believe you are blushing.  I can’t imagine Monsieur Monet blushing.”
Jack glared at his stiff wing, “He does landscapes,” his teeth closed on another pencil, and he began to sketch again, working the thin wooden tool with his tongue and lips, eyes glancing from the paper to Rose, then back.
Despite his pounding heart, the pencil moved with sure strokes, precise lines and tracing.  What emerged was his best work, in his own opinion.  Perfect pose, casual, but arousing.  Her hooves positioned perfectly in mid-giggle.  Eyes that radiated her energy.  Perfectly toned thighs, curving around out of sight, with her tail splayed across the upper leg, then tucking between her knees, just barely managing to not actually cover anything with the fan of crimson.  Her bare flanks gave away nothing, no cutie-mark coloring in the flawless gold.  Hooves softened by being constantly covered by shoes brought together a picture of complete innocence, one countered by the playful look in her smile, the way she had her elbow positioned against her side just so, so it gave a more distinct curve to her side.  The way her creamy belly contoured along the edge of the gold fur, pink nipples barely peeking out of the soft fur.  Then the cream color moved down, terminating out of sight at the base of her tail.  She was gorgeous.
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“My heart was pounding the entire time.  I think his was too.  It was the most erotic moment of my life…Up till then at least.”
Steep Dive leaned back, trying unsuccessfully to hide his own erect wings, “Uh…What happened next?”
“You mean, did we ‘do it’?”
Rock Heart choked on the juice-box he had been sipping during the story.
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Rose admired her sketch over Jack’s shoulder, back in the kimono.  Deft hooves and the tip of his muzzle blended together pencil, chalk, and saliva, forming a smooth picture that she would have been proud to say she was the model for.
Sorry to disappoint you Mr. Dive.
“Date it Jack.  I want to always remember this night.”
He did, with a wingtip dipped in ink, he flicked the date, 4/14/912, onto the bottom corner, along with his initials, HJD.  Rose, meanwhile, scribbled something onto a piece of paper off the desk.
“Rose, Beautiful Rose, unto you, I gift this wonderful masterpiece, for a pittance wage, I have given you your heart.”  She took the paper carefully in her magic, and with a gesture, sent it into the safe, where it settled smoothly against the side.  The diamond joined in, as well as the note she had scribbled.  The safe closed with a loud clunk.
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Lovejoy slipped up like a shadow behind Kale and taped him lightly on his shoulder, interrupting the stallion from his drink and talk with the other nobles around the fire in the middle of the dining hall, in a magnificent marble alcove.
“None of the stewards have seen her.”
“This is ridiculous, Lovejoy.  Find her,” Kale almost hissed.  He was mad, more at his own failure to control Rose, than her not wanting to be controlled.  That was an easy to fix problem.
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The great vessel sped across an unnatural sea, black as oil, and so calm a Pegasus could use it as a mirror, if the passengers weren’t supposed to be sleeping.  Above, Luna’s sky shone with millions of stars, and a couple odd meteors.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a flat calm, in my twenty-four years at sea,” Officer Light-foot gazed out of the flying bridge, talking calmly into a speaker-tube leading to the bridge proper.
On the bridge, standing with one wing wrapped around the wheel, Captain Smith nodded, and replied in kind, “Yes, like a mill pond.  Not a breath of wind.”  It was uncommon, but it happened.
“It’ll make the ‘bergs harder to see, with no breaking water at the base.”
“Mmm.  Tell the Nest to use those flood-lights we got them.  Worked for me.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Well, then.  I’m off.  Maintain speed and heading, Mr. Light-foot.”
“Aye, sir.”
“And wake me, of course, if anything becomes in the slightest degree doubtful.”
Out of the corner of his eye, the captain saw his Second Officer nod, and magic up a spotlight of his own.
Light-foot smiled at the darkness.  As a Unicorn, one of the first spells he had learned was a basic lamp.  Though that was not what he was using now.  As his Cutie mark of a spotlight stated, his talent lay in creating a brilliant beam of light.  Before this job, he had used it as a stage-hand.  Now, though, the beam tore into the darkness, illuminating the ocean before him as he ran a hoof absently over the small wheel set on the flying deck.  It could steer the whole ship, if he wanted it to, but for now, the course was accurate, and the sea was clear.
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At the sound of a click, Rose froze, halfway into her dress.  Jack tensed as well, and looked at Rose.  There was somepony with a key at the door.  She shimmied the rest of the way into her dress and grabbed Jack by the tail in one smooth move, pulling him into the bedroom and closing the door softly behind him.
Lovejoy moved into the sitting room, eyes panning across everything.  The still open ink-pot, the chalk-dust he was certain wasn’t there before, and some graphite dust on the desk itself.  Precisely controlling his tone, he spoke, “Miss Rose?”  At the sound of a door opening, he darted into the bedroom, almost damaging the door in his haste.
Inside, he spotted the door to the servant’s tunnels swinging closed, and darted through.  Obviously they went that way.  The door didn’t open fully, so he figured they had gone down the hall.  He followed, eyes sweeping back and forth, after a quick glance behind the door, in-case Rose was clever enough to hide there.  He smiled grimly.  Rose had one of the best trackers in Equestria on her tail.  It wouldn’t be long before he found her.