Three word sentences. Think about them. At the dawn of language when the first syllables oozed out of the primordial alphabet soup, three word sentences were among the first to evolve. Like sharks and turtles and crocodiles they’d evolved into relative perfection early on and had ever since made a hobby of watching more transient, complicated things come and go. Complication could be beautiful, but exacting simplicity could be beautiful and tended to be longer-lasting.
I love you. Please find me. Third degree burns. All good examples.
Three word sentences just work. A pony could say a lot in that.
This all meant that when Flotsam tumbled into the fire and wood crumpled and sparks exploded in a skywards torrent there was a lot of linguistic options for the ponies involved.
Disregarding the gasps and especially the expletives, the first three words were Flotsam’s. “Oh, I fell,” he grumbled,” sounding rather disenfranchised with the whole thing as the fire completely failed to do anything nastier than hiss and spit. He was slurring noticeably, groggy in more than one sense of the word and maybe hadn’t realized where he was yet.
The flames were coursing along fixed, immobile lines in the air beneath him. They curled up cocooning him in fire. He lay not on the coals and embers, but the same invincible lines set somewhere above those, in what would nominally be prime roasting real estate. His head lay in its own little bowl shape. An isosceles triangle accommodated his horn.
And the sound of it! It was almost like rain smattering on thick glass, thousands and millions of separate little sounds all mixing down together into a constant. Like that, but with somepony going a bit mad on the faders and EQ as well, making an effect that was uncanny and a little off-putting. Better than sizzles and screams mind you, but still unnerving.
“Oh my stars,” said Charming Booty. Shanty had a hoof over her mouth. The eyes of both mares were wide and bright with reflected firelight.
Harpoon, who had closed a lot of ground very quickly in a lunge had clenched her jaw on an instinctual level. She struggled quietly to unlock it. Nopony moved, each feeling that unique and precarious big fall from a thin rope feeling that they might do the thing that broke Flotsam’s concentration and end the spell.
Except the pony himself didn’t seem to be concentrating. Laying there on air, blanketed in fire, he hardly seemed awake.
“How are you...?” Started an awed Shanty.
Harpoon, who was less curious and more pragmatic on general principles groweld “Don’t fall asleep,” in the low, authoritative rumble of hers that not only brokered no argument but went around to argument’s house during daylight hours and smashed its windows.
“I don’t know.” He gave a lax and horizontal shrug. “Happened by itself.”
Charming Booty circled him in spectacle. “Can you keep doing it?”
“Or better yet, get off the fire? Shanty cried.
Flotsam wiggled and rolled to his other side, like a pony in a trough who was drunk might do if said things were also on fire.
“I…no. I don’t I can,” he answered with an audible tremor. “This isn’t me. I mean, it is, but I can't... I didn’t think this. It just did. If I try to change it I think I'll break it.” He cautiously prodded the magical barrier then offered up an embarrassed, apologetic look.
Shanty fell in an increasingly shrill heap. “Well, that’s fine then. He’s just going to go into the fire and burn a little bit, no worries! Use your magic then, Charm.”
“No!” shouted Flotsam, who was getting caught up in the hype. “Do you know what happens when you try to move magic with magic?”
“-“ started somepony, but he cut her off.
“Me neither! Don’t do it!”
“Well…move the fire!”
Charming Booty’s horn flickered, spat a few pitiful sparks and faltered. She strained, a burning log wobbled hopefully then stopped. Charming Booty gasped, the magic broken.
“What was that?”
“Shut up you, I’m drunk!”
“I’m drunk too!”
They squared off, face to face in that imminent fight or kiss manner. “Music mare, don’t you even.”
Shanty kept on until they pressed foreheads belligerently. “What . Was. That?” she challenged. The teen blinked revelation then dropped her face into her hooves. “Oh sweet waters…you’ve got whiskey prick.* Pony’s going to burn to death because you can’t get a spell off!”
Charming scorned her. “He won't die!”
“No,” Shanty snapped back, “he’ll just be on the fire burning alive. But he won’t die so that’s okay! No worries, we can all just sail on to Rivaplút! Have a great laugh about it on the wharf!
“Unicorns,” she grumbled under her breath before snatching up a mug, slashing the dregs into the night air and in one long cry shouted through clenched teeth, ran in a doppler-effect to the water’s edge, filled the mug, ran back and flung the water with a Kee-yah!
The fire sizzled and spat and, had it been a monster, would have left somepony obligated to say the tried and true cliché, “You’ve gone and made it mad now...”
“Shanty, just stop.”
“I did better than you,” she huffed. “He’s drunker off his face than you and he’s casting a kick-flank spell.”
The mare shrugged. “He’s a savant.” She tasted the word, pleased with herself for choosing it. “Hot savant,” she tried.
“I see what you did there,” Flotsam said wretchedly. “Because I’m still trapped on fire,” he stressed, hoping to remind them of this fairly important fact.
“He’s an idiot,” growled Harpoon, who had spent the last minute or so carefully watching the flames, where they curled and where they didn’t, constructing an image in her mind of the shape and extent of Flotsam’s invisible cage.
To nopony in particular she then said, “Okay,” and sprang into the air.
“Where’s she-” They heard a deep splash. Something dark, fast and trailing streamers of water shot past Charming Booty and Shanty. It skimmed the fire, whipping the flames into a caged frenzy. Harpoon’s wine red hooves shot out and like her namesake and, with a yelp from Flotsam, the unicorn was snatched up.
The sound of the magic ended with a merry Poi!, leaving a vacuum that sucked the flames upwards into the disturbed air.
Impact, motion, bewilderment and physical intimacy all stole into Flotsam’s awareness. Light exploded into dark. Pain unfurled like a red carpet down his back legs, while the rest of him was wrapped in cool rushing ocean air and an unflinching grip.
“That’s twice now.” Harpoon stated as they came to ground at the trees’ edge.
Glancing back they could see the fire – sans hostage – getting enthusiastically ultra-murdered with water and sand and mean words while other crew mares at last wandered nearer, wondering what all the fuss had been about.
“Yeah,” Flotsam said as he took his hooves. The skin of his back legs stretched taut with the motion and blistered. He faltered and hissed to breathe. “Ah, that hurts.”
Saying nothing but a sort of grunt in the affirmative, Harpoon simply lifted him back up and ferried him deeper into the trees, back towards the supply cache. “Hang in there,” she suggested not unkindly.
It was certainly better than “Walk if off,” in any case.