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// Prolog 
// Story: The seething sea ceaseth and thus Shimmering Sea hast savethed us 
// by kitten_girl86 
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	The bright sunny day in Manehattan had started off just grand... a birthday celebration for her 16 year old granddaughter. Ribbon Rosetta, an earth pony in her elder years, watched as her adopted granddaughter, a unicorn named Shimmering Sea, blew out the candles on her cake.
As Ribbon watched the young mare open her presents, she thought back on the day her son & daughter-in-law had adopted the girl as a 4 week old filly.


 ~*~  

Ribbon’s pegasus son, Gusty Cloud, and unicorn wife, Ivory Vision, had found out early on that they could not have children of their own. What`s more, Ivory was born with limited vision to her eyes; she could see colours [1] and blurred shapes at best. She worked at a special school for the blind, teaching fillies and colts how to deal with sudden loss of vision. {Gusty worked for the Manehattan weather patrol.}
Ribbon took them to the Seashore Manehattan Orphanage about a week after the sad news. She was determined to have grandchildren, whatever it took. It was Ivory who pointed out Shimmering Sea because of the foal’s stark blue colours. As Gusty described the infant, Ivory and Ribbon fell instantly in love with her. She was adopted the same day; the day they always celebrated her “birthday”.
Not even two weeks later, they had taken the foal to the beach for a mid-summer swim. Ribbon Rose reclined on a beach chair to work on some knitting; Ivory Vision curled up on the beach towel and listened as Gusty Cloud played with Shimmer in the water. 
At some point, the foal crawled away to find a little shell trapped in some seaweed at high tide. She never knew why but she felt something inside her that said that the shell should be in the ocean, not on dry land. Shimmer grabbed the shell in the strongest levitation spell she could muster and plopped the shell back into the water. Gusty watched from not far away and gasped at what he saw. Little foal Shimmering Sea had used magic beyond her years to rescue a sea shell clam and had earned her cutie mark! Ivory did not believe until Ribbon and a bunch of total strangers (including one of the Royal Guard on vacation) confirmed for her that the foal, indeed, had a cutie mark of a white scallop sea shell; all she saw was a tiny white blemish. Since Shimmer was so young, they decided to hold off on the cute-ceañera until the foal was older.... about five years older when a young filly entered her first magi-kindergarten class to discover she was the only one WITH a cutie mark!
As Shimmering Sea grew up, she developed her magic & studies to a point that as a tween, she got a job at the Manehattan Aquarium as a junior tour guide. By her 15th, she was elevated to senior guide.

But in spite of her name and cutie mark, Shimmer never learned to swim. Oh, she could take baths as a foal and frolic in the shallows but any time she got into really deep water, she’d sink like a stone and need to be rescued before she drowned. Nightmares of drowning plagued her as a filly and it was a fear she never got over. She loved the sea creatures... just not the sea itself.