//------------------------------// // Thee Thells Thee Thells... // Story: Washed Up // by ambion //------------------------------// Blue sky had given away to orange and purple and still Flotsam worked on his castle. Stars came out by ones and twos, like party guests whom were that little bit embarrassed to realize they’d come so early. It was no small thing, his castle, with outer walls that could ostensibly be called West and East, North and South. It took several strides to walk the length of one. Not that Flotsam knew which would be which, he was the last pony to have a sense of direction. He’d simply shoved sand with hoof and leg and chest and given it a shape. Magic helped, but for all that his mane was thick with sand and his body was strongly exfoliated with every motion. He’d dug a channel for his work, bringing seawater up to him. It was a long, deep gorge in the beach that cut through the surface and into the brown grit of the underneath. As his castle expanded it, he’d split the channel, scraping away at the sand, sometimes with hooves, sometimes with a sledge of magic. Patches had watched him for a while. Somewhere along the way she’d come in to help, wordless, toting a bucket and pat pat patting at the knee-high outer walls. She scooched along, working on the walls. At times she went to the shoreline. Flotsam hadn’t addressed her and she seemed to prefer it that way for now. Flotsam pushed stones and shells into the beach where the wall was left open, marking the gate to his castle, whatever it was. Two ponies working out some inexpressible frustration, he wondered. This is important He crossed the threshold. It was about two pony lengths from the walls to the castle proper, and was quite large enough – were it completely hollow – to comfortably fit a seated pony inside. He was in two minds about the whole thing. Some urging kept him at it; some discomfort that was only satiated by constant motion and effort. Nothing in the design seemed right, when part of a fragment of a suggestion floated up, another one came along only to contradict it. It bothered him, bothered him more than he would have admitted, then he’d check himself, smiling in some confusion wondering why he was getting worked up about such a thing as this all. He hadn’t lost that much of his mind, surely! Sand castles were supposed to be play. There were balustrades (tricky to do; need magic) and battlements (not tricky), a plaza of sticks around the side (rather simple), and even a grand entrance, which was really just two bits of toughened old bark pressed gently into the mound. They didn't lead anywhere, sadly. It was a castle only to external apperances. Some of the taller towers stood taller than he did. That had been a challenge. Magic had helped. He’d started on the windows using more seashells, the wide palms of bleached-white clams and the minted design of sand-dollars to find he had none. Patches put more down beside him. Whelks and limpet and clam shells in all the whites and browns and mysterious glossy purples they could muster. A few of the crew mares came and went, mostly standing to the side. Some called to him, a little bit teasing, mostly curious. He’d politely declined to engage with their jaunty antics. That’d spoilt the fun and they’d gone away grumbling. A little while passed and the compulsion to built this…whatever this was blunted. As the sun set so did his drive. Overhead the silent, expansive, twinkling interstellar party was really getting underway. Stars drifted in and out of cloud cover to socialize with one another. Flotsam sat down in the lee of his sand castle, mindful not to besiege upper terrace with his horn. His tail swished out behind him and didn’t quite reach the outer wall. The work was done. Or as done as it was going to be. He felt something needed to be said. “This is a sand castle,” he said. The stars politely ignored his iteration of the obvious. The water continued it’s delicate orchestration of the shore. “Yeah,” said Patches, still embedding shells, leaves, and sticks in such a way as to have dubious architectural reasoning other than ‘it looked nice’. Then they were down to one last impressive cockle, red like none of the other shells had been. “It’th a heart.” “Here,” Flotsam gestured a spot, together they built up a little dais and ensconced the charming red shell atop it there. “We have heart,” he observed lamely. But it was satisfying piece to have added. Patches curled between that and Flotsam. Her breathing quieted and her body relaxed a little more into his. Flotsam mused on the pleasant, distant, mysterious twinkles of light high above and far away. He wondered if he could ever find it so easy to fall asleep under the stars. He didn’t feel ready for sleep. Coming from between the trees were the occasional snatches of voices. Laughter, song, even the occasional shout. In the peacefulness of night Flotsam’s senses drifted, came apart, expanded in a mist. For a while he felt more aware of the crew’s revelry, of the starlight and the glinting of it on water, sand and shell, and the steady warmth of the filly tucked in against him than he was of himself. Why’d I build this? he wondered. But there was no answer waiting, and more questions rushed in to fill the space. Where are we even going, what am I even doing, will I stay with the Mother of Mercy? They came faster now, an anxiety clambering up out of each wave as it wrote it’s lines in the shore. He looked at himself, his white coat lit only dimly by the night, he was wraith-like, hardly there, insubstantial and as shifting as the air, the sand, the water. Now he was spinning, each question was a spoke on the wheel – how was Patches not waking with the calamity of this? - and at the centre of the wheel, the one throbbing question all the others stemmed from: Who am I? It gripped him by the throat. Nothing was going to make sense and nothing was going to free him. Patches whinnied softly in her sleep. That did it. Flotsam’s consciousness slammed back into normality. He sighed. Wiping his face only left gritty sand all over his face, forcing him to squint in one eye. The moment was passed. The night came at you in funny ways, he knew. The castle walls hadn’t been high enough to keep that out, he supposed. “I’m glad you know who you are,” he whispered to the lanky little skewbald pony. He felt more than heard a disturbance in the air. The pegasus was little more than a textured darkness, distinguished only by flecks of shine. Flotsam recognized the low, husky voice of Harpoon. “You’re awake.” It wasn’t a question. “Nice place.” It wasn’t sarcasm. He felt lost for anything to say. “Thanks.” Flotsam had the feeling that Harpoon was judging him. Patches huffed, pawed her nose, shifted and settled down again. They had both stopped to watch that, he noticed. She was judging him favourably, he hoped. “We’re ready to push off in the morning.” “Okay.” If it were daytime, the pauses would’ve been awkward. At night they were…surreal. The pegasus lived with a poker face, it seemed to Flotsam. “There’s barrels out,” she said. Flotsam was almost certain that there’d been the tiniest little question mark in her voice, the slightest hint of a softening in the inflection. Like a pony who has caught the barest glimmer of a lighthouse and cannot blink or else he’ll lose it, he navigated the unchartered waters meticulously. “You mean...” “Drinks. And food,” she added, almost as an afterthought. She’d come to invite him over. Understanding bloomed in Flotsam like a delicate seashore flower. The nearby crew was louder and brighter in his mind. Shoving off tomorrow, which meant the repairs had been finished tonight, which meant their remaining night on this little spit of land was – it could be argued, had been argued and cheered and then cheered with a toast just the other side of the island – shore leave. Going over there was a bad idea. The mares were rowdy even when they weren’t free to have fun. It was a bad idea. He considered the stillness and the quiet and the questions like sharks circling in the darkness. It was definitely a bad idea, but right now a bad idea was a great idea. “Yeah, okay,” he said, dissembling a little bit. He eased himself away from Patches, navigated his hooves carefully over the shells and the sand castle walls. It was a warm night, but still… His horn light up. Sand scooped itself neatly away from the main body of the castle. The little gates opened and slid aside. A hollow place was dug out, a small cave into the castle’s heart. With a bit of glow about her undercarriage and legs, Patches slid obliviously into the castle. Harpoon watched and said nothing, but he liked to think she approved. Keeping a glow about his horn to light the way, they made an easy walk up the beach. Flotsam felt pleasantly amenable. “So, when you say drinks and food do you mean, like, beer?” Harpoon was slow to answer, for a moment the only sound were hooves shifting sand. “Yeah. Something like that.”