//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8: Dearest Cantata, Part Two 
// Story: Follow Her Lead 
// by Ice Star 
//------------------------------//

Cantata opened the shutters on her window fully upon waking, the first shafts of morning sunlight finally reaching her part of the ocean. One of her hooves shakes, and she nicks a scale and mutters something to herself, but even she is too tired to catch exactly what she has said. 

There's nopony around here. There hasn't been for months. Cantata has lived in this hut for years since she left Tiberia to pursue the life she currently led. She may not be a pony, but if she was, Cantata was sure of what her cutie mark would be. The mark of a first rate scout, a true explorer, would lie upon fleshy hindquarters. 

Her hut is only two rooms, four walls, and a roof. For a long time, Cantata didn't mind this. The two simple rooms were unusually spacious for a home inhabited by only a strange mare like herself. The ceiling was far taller then required to house her, so every day she could push open the shutters and look out at the rocky overlook where she lived without even touching the top of the doorway, for it was so tall that even a full-grown Alicorn might slip through with ease. She would know.

The harsh terrain was mostly gray and stretched far beyond what her eyes could see. A whole multitude of inky and dark shades that one who did not know any better would surely call dismal swallowed up the underwater world she knew like a gaping mouth.

Still, the steep drop was not as innocent as her family, if they knew where she lived so far away, would have liked. Cantata lived on the edge of the first abyss of the Barren Sea, which was a hollow waste where only the only creatures that lived in such a place, where exotic and terrifying carnivores scattered among the depths.

Cantata hadn't minded the lack of company for a long, long time. Her simple hut was filled with a modest clutter of the few personal treasures she had brought with her from Aquastria. Most was gear an adventurer like herself would need, if she were still able to explore the treacherous reaches of the void-like sea.

The greatest treasure that she had was a large shell as big as a shield held in the hooves of one of the hoplites in the Royal Guard of Aquastria, although its purpose was not to defend. Very carefully, a craftspony with unrivaled skill had carved staffs, bars, and notes into the rosy dawn-pink surface and filled them with enchanted gold that had never lost its glitter.

Seven great sonatas covered the interior, each gilded note of this heirloom was a part of the most well known tunes of all the reaches of Aquastria, and the Outlands that she had traveled through in order to reach the realm almost as barren as the neighboring sea, far from any village or equine soul.

Now, more than ever, Cantata would find herself outlining each note with her forehoof, singing softly. She still recalled the words for each tune, every foal did. Each sonata, so lovingly gilded, was about the the Alicorn Prince Neptune when he got his mark and was revealed to the world countless centuries ago.

The royal heir, a god like all the other Alicorns, lived in the underwater basin that was Main Aquastria.

Cantata felt the relief outline of each note under her hoof. It was as if they were waiting to flow off of the shell's polished surface with the sweet melody of the music inscribed there.

She hadn't realized she had forgotten what it felt like to talk to another equine until those months ago, when he had left. How many had it been now? Eight, she guessed, for there was no point in speaking when she was only among the company of herself in this land she now found so lonely, wishing that news was actually able to reach her.

How surprised she had been the first time she saw him, six years ago. A young stallion with a calculated, almost reluctant determination, business-like personality and no knowledge of the territory around him.

Of course Cantata would stop to talk to him, ask him what he needed, and if he had any place to stay. He may have looked at her so strangely when she had asked that last part, because they stood in front of what was little short of an aquatic megacanyon that had managed to make even this tall, magnetic god of a stallion appear dwarfed.

The gods, so many of the gods had disappeared, he had said. He thought only one remained, and she had little reason to believe most all he had spoken to her. Cantata could still recall how she had blinked, recalling the whisperings of old stories. A journey the gods had taken? A war? She hadn't remembered. As a filly she had always been out searching to make the old new in her eyes, while her sister learned the art of war. Neither filly had time to sit around and listen to things that happened before they were born.

He needed a guide through the Barren Sea, he heard tales of strange things beyond this drop off and it was Cantata who told him that these things were all true, adding details only a resident would know, well-captured by her explorer's eye.

This stallion had no place to stay so she offered him her friendship and willingly shared her home, although the door had to be altered then, as he was certainly tall. That was how his height came to be.

She managed to teach this fellow - who seemed almost sheltered - little by little, and day by day, he learned almost as much about the Barren Sea as she did. Even though he was not adventurous in any way, and cared more about the destination than the journey, his measured strength was able to keep up with her endurance when out among the stone waste of a landscape.

Soon, he was able to find his way through the labyrinth to find what is was he sought in the three years they spent together.

She waited, but not in apprehension. He was a stallion who could handle himself.

Her lover in all but name came out after months, traversing the Barren Sea's floor oh hoof for most of the way back. But she knew that he was gone when his eyes would never meet hers and would only stare into a distance with a look of absolute horror at things even he didn't seem to understand.

Months later, she still remembers that look. Mostly, she remembers what he looked like walking away, back to the part of civilization somepony like him came from and how she said nothing the whole time. When he first met her, he had looked at her a bit with the same plain acknowledgement of differing status he would show any subject. When he returned from those twisting abyss walls from whatever far off place he had been, where he claimed shadows talked and the sky hid a hole, he had looked at her with a lucidity only she had managed to initiate and puppet. It was her who dispelled enough of what had happened to him - at least, for a time - and watch how drawn to one another they found each other. She saw their strangle blueprint of what could - in hyperbole - be called a relationship lead a god into her bed night after night after night...

When he left, he looked at the horizon only, and his eyes only bore the look of someone distracted if they fell upon her. She knew she had become his ghost.

Cantata raises her hooves and brings them down over and over, and beneath them, the precious shell with its sonatas lovingly composed in King Neptune's name falls to pieces with each strike as merciless as whatever force took his mind away and made him scream at any shadow.