Sea Swirl's Dive (Onto the Pony Planet)
Onto the Pony Planet: Side Stories
Sea Swirl’s Dive
Admiral Biscuit
This story takes place at the same time as A New Dawn part I.
Sea Swirl sat in the back of a small boat, in a spot which was mostly shaded by the derrick’s supports. Even in the cool morning air, she was too hot, but there was nothing she could do about it now. It was too hard to put her suit on in the boat, especially over all the layers of clothes she was wearing.
She glared at Coco’s back. He was leaning over the bow of the boat, slowly lowering a weighted shot-line. She could hear him counting quietly as each knot passed his hooves. When he reached fifty, she grimaced. That was one hundred fifty feet, and farther than she’d ever dived before. And still the line was spooling out.
They’d been lucky when it came to this salvage operation. Twilight had not only remembered that Sea Swirl had a diving suit and knew how to use it, but she’d also informed the Royal Guard that they were to offer her their assistance—which meant that their boat had been towed to the reservoir and launched with no work on her part. She’d even gotten a Unicorn Guard to braid her mane and tail before she got dressed.
If my tail wasn’t tied to my hind legs right now, I’d be swishing it in irritation, she thought. She wiped some sweat off her forehead. Coco had finally stopped playing out line and was clipping on a buoy.
“One eighty,” he announced. “Are you—”
“What’s the dive table say?”
Coco squinted down at a piece of oiled canvas nailed to the foredeck, by the winch. “About one hour down. Four up.”
She grimaced. It was going to be a long day. “All right.”
Sea Swirl double-checked her equipment. It was a ritual she’d learned years ago, and one which she never deviated from. What she was about to do was extremely hazardous.
Her boat was crowded, with two pump mechanisms on the foredeck and a derrick in the stern. The bespelled accordion bellows was happily pumping up and down—she had great faith in Twilight’s spells, and assumed it would keep operating for the required six hours, but machines and magic were known to fail, which was why it was backed up by her old hand-cranked air pump and Coco Crusoe. He’d also handle all the heavy lifting that was required.
Her last task was to throw a hoofful of enchanted orange and yellow glow-gems overboard. By finding them on the bottom of the reservoir, she’d hopefully define her search area. If not, they were going to have to wait for a diving bell to be freighted in from Baltimare.
“I’m ready,” she told Coco.
“Sure? It’s a long dive.”
She grinned. “If it works, Twilight owes me big-time. If not, we’ve lost nothing but a day. If things go really wrong . . . sell the house and what equipment you can recover, and head to the tropics like you’ve always wanted.”
“It wouldn’t be the same without you,” he muttered.
“I’ll be fine, Coco. I’ve done this before.” She lifted up her helmet and floated it over to her head. “Come on, bolt me in.”
She heard him fiddling with the fasteners for a minute, then her head was pushed forward as he connected the air hose. Now all the sounds from outside were completely muffled by the heavy copper helmet and the constant pulse of the bellows pump.
From now on, it was hoof signals only. Coco walked around to her front—where she could see him—and made a motion like pulling a rope, then nodded. I’m tethered, she thought. He walked around her, pressing his head against each of the joints in the suit, making certain none of them were leaking. She could feel his head against her body, and tensed when he pressed up against her rump. Instinct told her to buck him away, but she just took a deep breath and soon enough he moved on.
Once again he stood in front of her. He reached a hoof up and made a motion over his brisket, then nodded. Suit is airtight. Next he tapped his temple. Suit lights are on. She’d paid dearly for two crystal lamps, but without them she’d be operating mostly blind when she was underwater. Finally, he touched his forelock. Sea Swirl concentrated and slowly lifted a belaying pin out of the rail, eight feet in front of her muzzle. They’d devised that test years ago; it gave her an idea of horn range. The helmet blocked her spells, but she’d found the distance wasn’t always consistent. She wasn’t sure why, but it was important to know her assets and liabilities before each dive.
She stomped twice, then twice again: the signal that she was ready to dive. Coco moved away and a minute later she felt the reinforced straps around her barrel pull tight. As soon as her hooves were off the deck, Coco tugged on the derrick and swung her over the water. This was the tensest point of the operation—the boat was unstable with the derrick arm out, and if it capsized it would drag her down to the bottom with it. She was unlikely to be able to cut free from the rope and drop her weights in time to ascend.
Once he’d rotated her around and secured the counterweight, she began to feel the rhythmic tugs of the winch being wound out, and watched as the boat seemed to rise in front of her. Her hooves splashed into the reservoir, and sooner than she expected, the water was at neck level, then it was rising across her faceplate, and then she was underwater.
Her descent stopped after her helmet was fully submerged. She looked up, and a moment later Coco’s face peered out over the stern. He was making a final check for air bubbles. Finding none, he nodded and disappeared again. A moment later, Sea Swirl felt the air pressure in her suit begin to rise, before the spring valve kicked open and started venting the excess pressure. With a jerk, the line began to move again, and she started her descent.
When she snorkeled, there was a huge difference between above and below. Sounds became muffled and unfocused—it was kind of frightening to almost completely lose one of her most vital senses, and it was the first one that she noticed was gone. In her hardhat suit, though, there were no sounds except for the pssh-pah of the bellows pump, and the slightly oily smell of the air.
At this shallow depth, her headlights served no purpose except to attract fish. Already, they were schooling towards her, investigating the stranger in their midst. Some of the fish would just dart around her, while other kinds would bump into her suit before swimming off. She’d been nipped a few times when she was snorkeling, but it didn’t hurt. It was more like a pinchy kiss.
She focused her thoughts on the task at hoof. Coco was going to lower her until she got within a few feet of the ground, based on the length of the shot-line. She should come down in the middle of where the crystals landed, hopefully. After that, the plan got a little bit more vague. The last few feet of hoist-rope were run through a block-and-tackle, which she could use for minor altitude changes. If she needed more, she could inflate a green bag from the exhaust valve on her suit and send it up, and Coco would give her a hundred feet of line. At that point, she’d be able to move about pretty freely, but would be stirring up the muck on the bottom of the lake.
Sea Swirl tilted her head as far back as she could manage. She was in dusky water now, her vision limited to the extent of her headlamps. She could no longer make out anything on the surface, and of course the bottom was too far away to see. She’d entered a strange limbo world of blackness where nothing had meaning any more. A few larger fish swam up to her, darting in and out of her headlamps. One of them stayed with her for an eternity, lazily swimming circles around her. She could occasionally see him flash through the stream of bubbles coming from her exhaust valve.
Eventually, the water seemed to lighten—just an illusion caused by her lights reflecting off the bottom. She carefully reached up and turned her left headlamp off, sending that side of the world into darkness. Off in the distance, she could see a few crystals glowing. A yellow crystal had attracted a crab, who was attempting to eat it.
She kicked her legs to rotate herself around the rope. She had to be careful, because it was very easy to overcorrect. A careful, controlled motion was needed, but it took a few kicks to get moving. As she turned, she counted the crystals, watching their spread carefully. As best as she could tell, she’d landed on the very outside of their arc. It was a good sign; it meant that there was no current to speak of, and things generally fell straight down.
The rope stopped her a foot from the bottom. She tapped her left headlight back on and reached all four of her legs forward. The combination of the heavy helmet and her weighted boots shifted her center of gravity forward of the rope, and she pivoted nose-down until she was facing the bottom in a very weird position. Sea Swirl waved her front hooves to start her turning again, looking carefully where the light was focused. The last thing she wanted to do was land directly on top of the glasses.
After she’d completed her inspection of her landing zone and found nothing, she moved her legs back and slowly leveled out. She reached out with her horn, feeling for the brake on the block and tackle. When she found it, she tugged it loose, letting the rope unwind and drop her unceremoniously onto the lakebed. A huge cloud of silt billowed up around her, reducing her vision to inches. She counted patiently as it settled, watching to see if it drifted.
By the time she’d reached “30 pegasus pony,” it was clear enough to see the bottom again. Not great, but not terrible either. She’d dived in a lake where the bottom was so silty she’d only made two steps before being completely blinded, waiting out her time until Coco pulled her back up.
She grabbed the green bag off her suit and carefully held it in her aura over her exhaust valve. Once it was swollen with air, she tugged the drawstring shut and let it drift upwards. Once Coco saw it, he’d give her more slack.
There would be no signal to pull her back up. Once her bottom time had been reached, Coco would simply start winching the hoist. If they deviated from the plan, the rest stops would not come at the right time, and she’d suffer a very painful lingering death. That fact had been pounded into her by her instructors, day after day. She wasn’t sure she believed them—after all, fish could swim from the bottom to the surface with no ill effects, and dolphins could dive pretty deep, too. Still, they were so earnest, it was hard not to believe what they were telling her, and she’d seen the evidence for herself when she met a sandhog from Manehattan who acted like he was stepping on glass whenever he walked.
A minute passed before she felt the rope on her back loosen, then slowly fall across her body. She knew he would play the line out slowly, to give her time to move clear of it. She picked a pair of orange gems as her targets—one in front of her and one behind. She’d walk a line pattern, using them for a reference. If she was lucky, she’d find what she was looking for.
She cast a metal-finding spell—one of the handier spells she’d learned for underwater work—and began walking. One pace forward, moving slowly to minimize silt. Scan the lakebed. Look up at the glow-gem. One pace forward. It was a process that would stretch on into forever, and at the end of it she might have nothing to show for her effort.
Already she could tell that the pressure was affecting her. While her vision through the front port wasn’t very good to begin with, a faint greyish haze had begun to creep over her peripheral vision. It was not unexpected; she’d noticed that symptom on much shallower dives. It would go away once she ascended. It was inconvenient and annoying, but nothing more.
Step. Stop. Search. Spot. Step. Stop. Search. Spot. Her world narrowed to the nearly featureless grey landscape in front of her hooves. To deviate from the plan was to miss something, so she continued her cautious automatic pace. She reached the first glow-gem and turned around, walking one body-length over from her previous path.
Her horn occasionally picked out a small bit of metal. She’d give each a pull; if it was shallow enough in the silt to come out, she’d float it in front of her mask and inspect it before putting it into her bag. It always amazed her at the objects she found, and today was no exception. By her tenth lane, she’d picked up a half-dozen rusty nails, an ore-bearing rock which she tossed over into one of her previous search lanes, two empty cans, one bit coin, and a very rusty buckle.
Sea Swirl caught a movement out of the corner of her eye—sort of in the grey haze—and blinked. Did that gem just move? She glared at it, and it stayed in place, but now the bubbles coming from her exhaust valve seemed to have taken on a faint green hue. She turned her attention to the bubbles, and saw the gem begin to dance around again, and it was no longer alone. Whenever a gem was not in her direct line of sight, it started moving. I’ve never seen that before. A small knot of fear began gnawing at her stomach.
On her twentieth lane, she ran into a spear which was jabbed point-first into the bottom. She was so busy concentrating on the area of ground right in front of her muzzle that she walked right into it, knocking it over in a small puff of silt. She lifted it back up and held it in front of her muzzle, looking at it carefully. The tip was sparking in a faint magenta color, and she watched in wonder as motes of light spun off it and vanished into the dark water.
The spear seemed very important, and she struggled to remember if it was why she was here. It was getting harder and harder to remember what she was doing in this wasteland. But she remembered that there was a pouch on her left foreleg, and that was where the . . . thing she was looking for was supposed to go. The spear wouldn’t fit, so it must not be what she wanted. She dropped it again and moved on. Step. Stop. Search. Spot.
Another long stretch of slow plodding yielded her an additional copper coin—nation of origin unknown—and a horseshoe. Her dive bag was beginning to look like she’d been gathering the detritus found outside a smithy.
She found the glasses on lane twenty-seven. Without her spell, she never would have spotted them, but the faint glow around the frames made them stand out.
As she had with the spear, she held them in front of her face mask. She fought to find the perfect distance—too far, and she couldn’t see details; too close and they were inside of the helmet lights. Sea Swirl had to work to keep them steady enough to examine. Whenever she looked away from them, they twisted away from her telekinesis and she had to move her head around until she could find where they went.
They had thin wire frames and unusual earpieces that didn’t seem like something a pony would make. She almost threw them back down as useless, but there was a nagging thought in her mind that they were important. Somewhere, she had a pouch which they should go in, but she couldn’t remember quite where it was.
She reached up a hoof to steady them—they were wavering in her field again—and noticed a small pouch on the leg of her suit, with a short length of twine floating freely. Gingerly, she slid them into the pocket, holding her leg uncomfortably high so that it was fully illuminated by her suit’s lights. She worked slowly, because most of her dexterity was gone and if she dropped them during her ascent, they might never be found.
She carefully laced the twine on the flap closed, cinching the top down tight, before looping a clove hitch over the bottom button. She yanked it as tight as she could. The lacing would have to be cut off when she got back to the top, but that was all right. She’d no longer have any use for the pouch this dive, and she could re-string it on the boat.
She began her slow, plodding walk again. Off in the distance, she could see a single orange glow which remained steady, and thought it was something she ought to head towards. Her hooves were absurdly heavy, and it was very hard to walk. She began to sweat despite the chill, and felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck.
She stopped abruptly when she came across a trail of hoofprints in the silt. They were not clear at all, and looked like somepony had been dragging its hooves. The only creature she knew that wandered around in dark, vacant places and dragged its hooves was a zombie. She began to become convinced that a zombie was following her, and looked around in fear. There were no zombies to be seen—but that’s when zombies were the most dangerous. When they couldn’t be seen. Everypony knew that. Her heart began to beat faster.
Suddenly, the harness around her belly pulled tight and tugged her hooves off the bottom. Sea Swirl shrieked as she bounced up and dropped back down.
In a panic, she tried to run, but there was something holding her back. It was like a nightmare as her hooves dug into the soft ground, kicking up clouds of sediment but accomplishing nothing else. She could feel herself beginning to be dragged backwards, and there was nothing she could do about it. Her head was filled with a loud panting noise that she knew was coming from herself, and a strange pssh-pah that was obviously coming from the monster.
Clouds of silt completely blocked her view, reflecting the lights on her helmet back at her face. She thought about trying to pull the helmet off, but vaguely remembered that it was held down with large wing nuts she probably couldn’t loosen in time. Some other reason was nagging at her memory, but before she could ponder it further, her hooves lifted free of the ground for the final time and left her uselessly trying to gallop while suspended.
She started twisting on her rope, and started to feel nauseated. Finally accepting defeat, she stopped moving, closed her eyes, and waited for whatever came next. She hoped it wouldn’t be painful.
A faint jerkiness to her upward motion finally percolated through her brain, and she remembered that she had been diving. Coco must be pulling me back up. She concentrated on slowing her breathing and paying attention to the movement of the rope. He liked to move the winch crank faster on the downstroke, letting her know when she was moving and when she was not.
Details began to come back, and she thought about the strange things she’d seen on the bottom. Another diver had told her that deep water dives could cause hallucinations, and she wondered if that had happened to her. Certainly, there hadn’t been any zombies on the bottom; that was in her imagination. It wasn’t her imagination that the pouch on her leg was securely tied shut, so she knew she’d gotten what she came for.
• • •
The anticipation of the dive had long since worn off, and the euphoria of finding the glasses was gone now, too. All that was left was the slight giddiness of breathing compressed air for so long, and she tried her best to ignore it. There wasn’t much she could do, anyway. She was totally alone, floating in a hostile environment, utterly dependant on Coco for her life. Of the thousands of things that could go wrong, at this point he was the only pony who could fix them; if he couldn’t, she’d die. It was that simple, and strangely, it didn’t bother her at all. It was liberating—short of cutting her own air line or the winch rope, she had no control over her destiny.
What was it that allows me to trust Coco so fully? She didn’t know. They didn’t have what anypony else would consider a normal relationship; neither one of them had the slightest interest in starting a family together. Coco wanted to go to the tropics, and sooner or later she’d move back to the coast to stay, but they just went on with their lives together. He had his friends and she had hers. She liked to go to the bowling alley or hang out by the water, while he preferred an evening at the tavern if he was feeling social, or sitting home with a book about the tropics if he wasn’t. Sometimes they’d go weeks without any contact, and other times they’d spend the night together—usually at Coco’s home. Sometimes they had sex, other times they didn’t.
She watched as fish darted through the beams of her headlamps. She liked watching fish. Sometimes she’d put her weight belt over her back, strap on her goggles and snorkel, and just walk into the water and watch the fish play for hours.
She slowly rose further. The water lightened to the point where she no longer needed her headlamps, so she turned them off. She could see the shadowy shape of the boat above, but was still too deep to make out any details. What felt like an eternity of waiting began, and she knew it would only get longer as she got closer. The last few stops were tantalizingly close to the surface, but to leave too quickly would kill her. In that regard, she had much in common with her scaly friends.
She shivered inside her suit. The water was still cold—and all the layers she was wearing didn’t seem to be doing their job. Of course, it didn’t help that she’d been panicking down there on the bottom. The light that was filtering down from above was little more than a tease, and she knew that she still had hours to go before she could come back out of the water.
Her clothes were uncomfortably bunched up under her elbow, right where the front strap of the hoist ran, but there was nothing she could do to shift the wrinkles. She could already feel a welt forming.
• • •
The sun was blazing far overhead when Coco finally pulled her free of the water. He cinched the brake on the winch and released the counterweight, carefully swinging her around until she was back over the deck, rocking slightly back-and-forth on her rope.
When he finally lowered her to the deck, she had to take a moment to remember how to stand. He wasted no time in unbolting her helmet and pulling it loose. As her suit sagged around her, Sea Swirl took deep breaths of fresh air, blowing a couple of times to clear the residue of oil and rubber and her own sweat from her nostrils.
Coco, meanwhile, unstrapped the weights from her back and loosened her lead-plated shoes. He gently lifted each hoof free and set it down again, letting her take her time getting her legs back under her. His eyes went over to the pouch. “You got it?”
“Yup.” She yawned. “Help me out of this suit. I’ve got to pee like crazy and then get some food in me.” She untied the pouch from her leg and floated it over to their valuables box. The box was watertight, and painted a brilliant yellow, so if it fell overboard and sank, she’d be able to find it again. With just the glasses in it, the box would float, so she made sure it was clear of any obstructions. If something happened to the boat, she was damned if she was going to go back down again.
Coco nuzzled her gently, unbothered by the film of sweat on her neck and her matted-down coat. Her mane had come askew from its braid and was crazily sticking up. “Roll over.”
He worked the suit loose, carefully sliding it down her body an inch at a time. He moved slowly, making sure it didn’t snag on anything on the boat. As awkward as it was, it was the only way for a pony to remove a one-piece suit. Any fastener could leak, so it was best to avoid them entirely.
The inside of the suit was filled with condensed sweat, muddy talcum powder, and clumps of loose fur. It was unavoidable, really; a watertight suit worked both ways. Once Coco had set it off to the side, he began helping her take off the rest of her clothes. They worked quickly, throwing them into a pile near the derrick. Later, she’d have to wash all of it.
Once he got the socks on her hind legs off, he unwrapped the cotton strips that held her tail to her cannon, letting it fall free. Later, once all the dive gear was secured, he’d help her unbraid and untangle her mane and tail, but for now just being free from her legs was good enough.
“I’m going up to the bow,” she said, flicking her liberated tail.
“Wind,” he reminded her.
“Stern, then.” She stuck her tongue out. He ignored her and picked up her suit with his teeth, hanging it on the side of the derrick and securing it with a short length of rope. Her saddlebags were tucked under the winch mount, and her helmet was slid into a box.
He unspooled a few feet of winch line, and snapped the hook around a short steel rod. He cranked it up, to take tension off the safety pins, and pulled them loose, then unwound the winch until the counterweight had descended to a few inches above the water. It looked silly, but it would make the boat far more stable.
“Box of sandwiches up in the bow. Made ‘em myself.”
“I’ll take you up on that.” Sea Swirl stepped carefully around the tangle of lines.
“Wanna keep the shot-line down, or pull it?”
“I got what we came for,” she said, lifting the lid and selecting a sandwich. She floated it to her muzzle and took a sniff before stuffing half of it in her mouth. “Af e’m wron, u’ll cwm ay awter tomaww.”
“Didn’t your mom tell you it was rude to talk with your mouth full?”
She swallowed and glared at him. “You come up here and I’ll show you rude.” He ignored her and sat on the center bench. He slipped his hooves through the loops on the oars.
“Get the anchor.” Without waiting for a response, he dug the oars into the water and pulled, causing the unicorn to stumble before regaining her footing. As he rowed, she started turning the crank on the windlass. There’d be a lot of line out; the depth of the water demanded it. Fortunately, there was no current on the lake, and there’d been no appreciable wind, or else he’d have had to set all three anchors, and they didn’t own enough line for that. As it was, he’d spliced the stern anchor line into the bow anchor. and it was still shorter than it should have been.
“I’m gonna hand those glasses over to the guard as soon as we get ashore,” she muttered, starting a second sandwich. “You know what I’m gonna do then?”
“Nope.”
“I’m gonna trot over to your house and go soak in your tub long enough for you to stow everything on the boat and get her out of the water.”
“Uh-huh.” He kept rowing, picking up speed now that the anchor was finally clear of the water.
“Yeah. Then I’m going to head over to the spa and have Lotus untangle my hair.”
“I can do that, if you want.”
“You’re going to be busy making sure the guards don’t damage the boat.”
“I will be.” He’d reached his perfect pace, and just concentrated on dipping the oars in the water, pulling them up to his barrel, and repeating the process.
“I’ll come back once Lotus’s done, don’t worry.”
“Wasn’t.”
Sea Swirl glared at him. It did her no good; his back was to her. “I’m not gonna let you mess up my mane.”
“You’re the one who needs to calm down,” he muttered. “If it gets mussed, it’s on you. I’ll have dinner waiting for when you get back.”
“There are some veggies in my pantry. Can you make a salad with them? I don’t want them to spoil.”
“Yup.” Pull. Return. Dip. Pull. “Everything hold up okay down there?”
“Not very good visibility. We might want to think about running more line through the pulley. Try it out in shallow water and see what works. Too much and I risk tangling the air hose.”
“Gotta tell Twilight her come-to-life spell worked like a charm.” The bellows-pump was still merrily going up and down. “I’ll keep an eye on it, so we know how long it’ll run.” Not breaking his rhythm, he turned to look at her. “How did you do?”
Sea Swirl gazed out over the reservoir. Flashes of sunlight off the wavelets glittered like diamonds. Up close to the shore, a pegasus guard swooped low to the water, dragging his hooves to raise a splash before banking towards them. She knew she was taking too long to answer, but he didn’t press her. “It was difficult.” She didn’t want to lie to him, but she didn’t want to tell him the whole truth, either. As much as she trusted him, he had never done a deep dive, and that was a gulf between them. She didn’t expect him to, not if he didn’t want to—but neither could she fully explain what it was like, when he had no frame of reference.
The two of them fell silent. Sea Swirl sat down in the bow, her hunger abated. Coco kept the boat moving at a good pace across the placid waters of the reservoir.
She put a hoof in the water and watched it vee around her, the ripples and splashes glittering like diamonds. Already she missed the bottom, the strange world that few ponies knew. Tomorrow, she wouldn’t dive—she couldn’t—but maybe the day after they could bring the boat back out to the reservoir and she could explore in shallower water. Take her time. Maybe just watch the fish swimming around. That would be nice.
Stats
Page generated in 0.029 seconds
Total duration
1,081 users online
1,480,913 hits today, 1,960,719 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
That spear...
It wasn't one of the guards' was it? What was it? (That's going to bug me)
After seeing just how deep a dive she had to do, and considering the risks that swirl took (I mean that is not micromorts, that is milimorts), I debate the decision of them retrieving the glasses rather than just recreating them. Of course Twilight might not have known just how much danger she was putting Swirl in but I do not think she would have had an easy time forgiving herself (and she might have taken it out on Dale) if Swirl had died.
3877663
So, I assumed you made up the word 'micromorts' and googled it. I just learned something!
According to the wikipedia page, scuba diving is only 4.7 micromorts, although I'd assume that's at a normal depth.
I'm assuming Sea Swirl is an experienced diver (since she has a dive boat and a hard hat dive suit). She's relying on routines to keep her safe, including keeping the shot line down in case she needs to make a free ascent, and having two air pumps. That having been said, it is a dangerous enterprise.
3877611
Of course it was. Dropped during the rescue.
3877772
And I read way too far into things again. I suppose her hallucinations didn't help either. I initially expected that the spear was a reference to something - another story of yours or a favorite. Simple is better though.
Now back to trying to consider all the possible outcomes for the evil character in another story.
3877862
Defenestration, disembowelment, decapitation, or something else that starts with D.
3877897
"Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window." Help me... I can't breathe...
How about deep-sea diving disaster? It's even thematic! And, as always, amazingly alliterative!
3877762
Well, I was going to concur that Twilight would surely have looked for a professional for this job, somepony who is well aware of the risks and has accepted them. But, then I double-checked, and it looks more like she just said "Hey, I know a pony with a set of diving equipment, why not her?". So, uh, yikes.
3877897
How about the Judas cradle?
Doesn't start with a D, but it's pretty bad.
Nice. I've been reading diving tales off-and-on since I was a kid - my introduction to the sub-genre was a 1930s-vintage adventure involving Navy hard-hat divers salvaging the treasure on a Spanish galleon I'd found on the back shelves of my small-town Carnegie library. Oddly, I've never pursued diving, either as a career, or a hobby. OTOH, I can tell that you, like the fellow who wrote that pulp young-adult/juvenile adventure, did your homework. Thank you.
How the devil did I manage to fail to like and fave the side stories before now?
3877897
Y'know, I actually want her to survive. I want her to be slapped down hard, but only so I can see her be built back up as a better pony. But I'll agree that she needs a deep D'ing if only to directly inject some amount of decency into her. (Oh God that sounds so wrong!
)
It's like many fan's reaction to Nightmare Moon or Chrysalis, this just happens to be an OC.
3878156
Given the technology of the show, and the likelihood that most ponies are essentially self-employed craftsponies or farmers--especially in Ponyville--Sea Swirl is as professional a diver as she's going to get.
3878295
Well, she could survive defenestration and--with prompt medical attention--disembowelment. How about fleas?
3880908
Fair enough!
3880912
Ok, that is a seriously Disturbing thought: disembowelment as a criminal punishment. Have a professional surgeon and some EMTs on hand (hoof) to do the deed without (seriously) damaging any major organs, let the punished suffer for a bit, and then patch them back up. I'm so glad that's not a thing.
3924911
I'm gonna have to take a closer look at my pants. The carpenter jeans I wore today have rivets reinforcing the thigh pockets and triple-stitching on most of the important seams. I'll so a survey of the rest of my pants when I get home and let you know the rivet status on them, and then make changes to the text if needed.
3924911
Further update: I took an inventory of my jeans. Most of them are Wranglers, in their Classic, Relaxed, Signature, and Carpenter line. Some of them have rivets at the corners of the front pockets, while some don't. Some of them have one or two rivets in the 'watch pocket' (or whatever that little pocket on the right side is called), and some of them don't.
Of all the pants failures I've had in the past, none of them have involved a piece which may be rivited: besides the expected tears in the knees or crotch as they get old, I've lost belt loops and back pockets. I did have a side pocket fail on a pair of work pants, but that was after it got caught in a doorknob, so I don't think that should count.
In the context of the story, I don't think Rarity would be familiar with the way side pockets in pants are used by people, therefore I think that she would view the rivets as decoration, rather than a requirement.
Nevertheless, it's always nice to learn something new--I didn't know that the rivets had an important function on jeans; I just figured that they were a traditional holdover in jean design.
3937290
You have no idea how long I've been waiting to use that reference.
3937351
Hah, not hardly. There's probably about thirty canon ponies that are just Apple relatives, maybe more.
I'd put Ponyville's total population between one and two thousand ponies, if we count the farms that undoubtedly lie around it and the pegasi who reside over it. True, we've only seen Sweet Apple Acres and (presumably) Golden Harvest's farm, but there are probably more.
I would assume that any 'garage-like' structures we see are carriage houses or wagon houses.
3937440
I'll admit I was exaggerating quite a bit, but I don't think it would be as high as two thousand. Firstly, considering Ponyville is mainly an earth pony town, I don't think it has a proper 'upper' section for pegasi. As far as we know, only Rainbow Dash has a proper cloud house, and nothing thus far has suggested that there are any more for the other pegasi in the area. Also, AJ's family is huge, but most of them are scattered seemingly to the edges of the map and beyond, as Apple Family Reunion points out early on. They're not Ponyvillans.
I can't argue the point about farms around Ponyville, but I wasn't really counting them. I was focusing more on Ponyville proper, which, if the street scenes are to believed, is mostly comprised of shops. Even then, and assuming the owners live above their stores in flats, and if about half the town is single or lives alone, the maximum population would still only be about six or seven hundred not including any farms.
It's unlikely that there are 'farm hands' or live-in workers for the fields, as neither of the canon farms seem to have any. With that in mind, depending on how far the official city border extends, population in the countryside could potentially range anywhere between less than 50 and just over a few hundred. Overall, the maximum population (in my opinion and 'headcanon') would just barely scrape one thousand. The minimum could be as low as three or four hundred.
...I don't know why I typed this all out, but I'll be damned if it's going to go to waste now!
Sorry.
3938725
Yes, it is. I've never been there, only Paris and some of the southern region.
I did add more dialogue tags than the draft had, but that can be one limitation of the written word vs. radio or TV. Too many dialogue tags broke up the flow of the conversation too much, I felt, and to be honest, in some of the conversations, it didn't really matter who said what, just the general flow of conversation. I've noticed Robert B. Parker did this a lot in some of his books, especially in dialogue between Spenser and Hawk. If I went back and tried to see who was speaking, I'd have to count lines; but if I just let the conversation flow naturally, I found that it felt like I was hearing the two characters speak.
For what it's worth, Last Night Pinkie Pie Exploded (recently in the Poplar Stories box) has no dialogue tags or descriptive text at all.
3938003
3937735
Thank you!
3938266
I'm basing my guesses on the small town I live in, as well as the other small towns I have lived in. We know that there are some 'traditional' shops and restaurants--besides the obvious, there's Quills and Sofas, Mr.Breezy's fan shop, at least one cafe, etc.
We also know that the town is big enough to support a hospital, school, and train station.
There are some other buildings which we must assume have ponies who work there, even though we've never seen them (the joke shop, the windmill).
We also know that some of the ponies don't have shops, and sell their goods at an open-air market. Presumably, most of them are farmers.
I assume that a large portion of materials which are used in Ponyville are made there, since Equestria seems pre-industrial. Most of those businesses are probably cottage industries.
The number of Pegasi who assemble for Winter Wrap-Up and Tornado Duty seem like a reasonable representation of the number who live and work around Ponyville. Just because we haven't seen other cloudhomes doesn't mean they aren't around--I don't think that all the weatherponies commute from Cloudsdale.
Also, in the crowd scenes for things like Rarity's fashion show, Iron Will's seminar, Trixie's show, and so on, are presumably only a fraction of the population--those ponies who are interested in what's being offered, and who have the time to attend.
There are actually formulas to get a rough guess of population based on certain occupations, and were I really motivated, I would take the time to look them up. (There's a famous example of determining the number of pianos in a given city, based on the number of piano tuners listed in the phone book)
While it's true that many of AJ's kin live other places, there's a fair number who have been recurring background characters. Two that come to mind that I have used are Apple Honey (who writes the newspaper and runs a farm supply shop in my story) and Apple Cobbler (who is the head chef at the hospital in my story), and there are several others.
wow... risking a ponies life to get back a pair of glasses... I dunno but this idea doesn't sit well with me.
Wouldn't it be easier to make a costum set? I already read that Dale got back his glasses, but that a pony had to dive this deep to retrieve it? Possibly endanger herself?... Yeah I dunno... If Rarity managed to make proper clothes for them then a pair of glasses shouldn't have been to hard. I know they would need to take measurments, costumize everything, but they could replicate it no doubt.
Imagen if Twilight could talk to Dale: "Well Dale, your glasses were on the bottom of this lake, we send down a pony to retrive them, but something happened and we lost the pony, sorry that we couldn't get your glasses" ... yeah that would have made Dale feel comfortable.
3959267
It's a little less risky than you'd think, assuming that Sea Swirl takes the proper precautions. According to statistics, one dive is about equally risky (in accumulating 1:1,000,000 chances of dying) as hang-gliding (which Apple Bloom was going to try) drinking 2.5 liters of red wine, or canoeing for 30 minutes.
You're not the first person to comment on this, of course. Obviously, I didn't make it clear enough in the story that Sea Swirl is a professional diver, with her own diving equipment that she takes very good care of. Yes, it's a challenging depth, but she's gone nearly that deep before in other dives, and can deal with most of the effects of the dive. I should have made that more clear in the story.
I think it would have taken weeks, maybe more. Rarity had the advantage of working off a set of pre-existing clothes. If they haven't got the glasses, they'll have to modify optical instruments to work with Dale's eyes, and then custom-grind lenses for him. Doable, yes, but it would take a while.
3939339
Alternatively, considering that fully half of the Ponyville pegasi whose homes we have seen live in normal ground-houses, most of the pegasi might live in normal houses, for any of a number of reasons.
Firstly, because of the bias against magic and in favour of earth pony skills (as seen in Winter Wrap-Up) might extend to pegasus magic. The show does not show ponies telling pegasi that weather magic should only be used for weather or asking them why normal houses are not good enough for them, but it could easily happen off-screen.
Secondly, we do not know if it is normal for pegasi to live in cloud houses. It is normal for Cloudsdale, but we know little of other pegasus cities (they could simply be craggy areas which only flying creatures can navigate). And even if most pegasus cities were like that, it may be that pegasi in mixed cities and towns are accustomed to living on the ground, due to prejudice or to prosaic factors of convenience such as the fact that non-cloud houses already exist wherever a pegasus might move, no matter how few pegasi already live there, and cloud houses would have to be moved or built ("You start in three days, Miss Dash; until then, here's a coupon for three metres cubed of cloud to build yourself a house").
Thirdly, it may be just too expensive or difficult. Even aside from the labour costs of making a home, cloud-making is depicted as a highly involved and in fact industrial process: People cannot, or are not permitted to, make clouds on the ground where the water is, so they have this intensive process to get the water to Cloudsdale. Further, clouds are an integral part of weather management, both helpful and baleful, and so likely have national security significance (even on Earth we have a treaty prohibiting using weather modification as a weapon of war), making accounting for them important. Which makes me wonder, where did RD get the clouds to make her house? Did she buy them through the appropriate channels? Did she grab them from the Everfree? Or are the Royal Guards going to show up and arrest her for embezzling Ponyville's weather?
3768064
The Modern Major General was not a twit. He was highly knowledgeable about a great many subjects, and if he was a nobleman (was he? I only know the song, not the play) was likely only a soldier because that was what was expected of him or because of prejudice against other occupations ("You want to become a FLORIST? No scion of this proud family shall become a florist so long as I draw breath").
4009514
I think that two is too small a sample size to draw a firm conclusion.
One possibility; it could even go without saying, or a new pegasus might learn that from the existing residents ("oh, sure, Sunny Rays, you can build a cloud house, but once the farmers learn you live in one, don't expect to get deals at the market").
Very true; the only other place we've seen that was exclusively pegasus was the Wonderbolts training camp, and that was on the ground. High ground, yes, but ground nonetheless. Presumably, they could have made it a cloud city if they'd wanted to, so maybe there's a reason why they didn't.
We can assume from show canon that Cloudsdale gets moved around since they got water from both Ponyville and Fillydelphia [I think; I can't remember if it was specifically stated that Fillydelphia water went to Cloudsdale or some other pegasus city], and we don't normally see Cloudsdale above Ponyville. It seems unlikely that the weather pegasi would commute, so they have to live somewhere.
We've also seen that RD likes sleeping in trees, so maybe that's a normal pegasus behavior (at least, I think we have, but maybe that's fanon).
Also, canon shows that one type of pony can have another type of offspring, and fanon suggests that some ponies have offspring of a different type -- Derpy, for example, can't live in a cloudhouse if Dinky really is her foal.
Plus, given the general lack of stallions of any type, a pegasus mare would increase her odds if she was willing to date any type of pony, and if she were, she'd probably want a ground home. I'd think she'd be a little less appealing to stallions if they could never go to her home.
Another good possibility. Maybe RD has a cloud house because she's weather manager for Ponyville, and the home comes as part of the job. We know she grew up in Cloudsdale, and since she's a very pegasus pegasus, she probably only would have moved to Ponyville because she got a job there. It certainly does seem quite fancy for a single young mare to have.
Or, if not as I suggested above, this could be a good hook for a story.
4010520
Yes, but it is the best evidence we have at the moment (also, AK Yearling lives on the ground, but that could be because she keeps getting injured or because the artefacts she collects react poorly to whatever magic it is that lets pegasi put things on clouds and have them stay there)
I have not watched the actual episode, but in the mlp wiki gallery for the Ticket Master, we see that RD thinks that a bed is anything with a blanket and pillow on it, including AJ's tree branches, where she was taking her mid-morning nap (is she just lazy or, as one fic suggests, is it that her job requires her to be up well before dawn and well after dusk).
Another fic suggests that it was a gift from Fluttershy's upper-class parents that she really did not like.
Also, although I rather dislike it when writers do it, many of them say or imply that cloud houses are huge because clouds are plentiful and easy to work with and shape.
Speaking of conjecture:
I am pretty sure it is only fanon, but many writers imply or say that pegasi eat fish. I assume that it is because that cloud cities are presumed to drift over the ocean on occasion (whether it is incidental or they see an advantage in it) and herbivores will eat meat if it is conveniently accessible (I remember an article in Slate that was triggered by a barbecue in which a deer wandered in and took a bite of someone's hamburger). Do they eat fish in the Celestia-Sleeps-In-verse, and if so is it common or will they only eat it when they have to park their cities over the ocean for months because of war or quarantine or something?
4010710
That's a fair counterpoint; if I may offer a rebuttal? There is probably at least one other pegasus that lives in a cloud home over Ponyvllle, since in Feeling Pinkie Keen what was obviously a moving truck was unloading household furnishings (and a wagon??) above Twilight.
Since we've seen RD napping on clouds frequently, there's also a possibility that pegasi in general don't mind just napping on a cloud whenever they're tired, perhaps forming themselves a little nest where one or more pegasi gather for the night before moving on in the morning. If they tend to be more nomadic than other ponies, they might not like having a home that they can't move. For what it's worth, I started a one-shot about a year and a half ago about two pegasi who have a small cloudhome that they tow all over Equestria.
We've also seen that RD likes sleeping in trees, so maybe that's a normal pegasus behavior.
Yes, you're right. Now I remember. I don't have access to the episode right now (at work, hiding from the boss
), but I think in their conversation, AJ implied that RD frequently napped in her trees.
IRL horses nap off and on throughout the day, so that's a possibility; weather duty is a possibility, and I don't think it would be going too far to suggest that pegasi have a lot of behaviors in common with cats.
They probably are, but I'd think that getting the clouds could be challenging, and it might be difficult to enchant them so they keep that shape. It makes sense for something like Cloudsdale, but maybe it's a little too expensive or showy for most ponies. Perhaps there are fancy cloudhomes around Canterlot and Manehattan, who knows?
Speaking of conjecture:
.
We saw Fluttershy giving fish to a pair of ferrets in one episode, and we also saw Magnum (Rarity's dad) fishing in another episode. While that doesn't prove they eat them, it does suggest that ponies are not entirely opposed to the idea of eating fish.
The first is certainly considered a possibility in fanon, and the second is true. Friends who have horses and internet research tells me that IRL horses will eat meat if the opportunity arises (like you leave a sandwich where they can get it). One possibility I've considered is that the behavior arose during lean times (like the Windigo cold spell), possibly inspired by griffons or other birds of prey, and then pegasi kept doing it because it was a good source of quick energy.
Yes. Lyra's maestro, who's Neighponese, offered her sushi in the past (she didn't try it), and she was willing to eat Dale's roast beef sandwich. Featherbrain says in one of the side stories that Ponyville has a lake where fishing is allowed, and Pinkie Pie has learned griffon cuisine after the Gilda fiasco. So in my 'verse, pegasi and some other ponies will eat fish, although it's not a regular thing for them--probably an occasional treat--and most of the conservative Ponyvillians probably wouldn't try it unless they were desperate for food.
It's one of the things I'll come to more firm conclusions on by the time Dale reaches a point where he can ask questions like these.
4012844
Standard practice would be that she'd leave it on. I took some liberties; I think most of the CG vests are self-inflating, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
Military uniforms are made of a fire-resistant synthetic blend material. While I didn't have the specifics when that part of the story was written, both my father and I believed that the Coast Guard would have thought of the possibility of a shipboard fire, and taken that into account with the material their uniforms are made of. For obvious reasons, there are many occupations where you don't want to wear clothing that will melt to you (and that's one thing I've never understood about shop uniforms, but that's a story for a different time).
4010962
Irl wild horses definitely do eat meat. Icelandic horses even used to actually go fishing by wading into rivers and stomping on them. Domestic horses usually don't eat meat but that's just cause they aren't given it.
That said, equestria isn't real life. All kinds of things appear full sapient. *I* would be nervous about eating any meat from there, even if the locals assured me it wasn't from a sapient being.
Wait, she went diving with a surface-pump running on a new spell they didn't know the duration of?
[Screams internally]
5021122
The hoof-powered backup pump was also hooked into her air line, and Coco was watching the enchanted one, to make sure it kept working. They're not that crazy.
You give a great description of the effects of nitrogen narcosis here. I always have to start relying on practice to get through the foggy brain using my camera whenever I dive below 70 feet. Though I do know someone who cought a bad case, and thought all the fish were going to suffocate so he was trying to give them his spare regulator..... Yeah we got him to a shallower depth right fast there.
I'm trying to figure out just how deep you were thinking here, that or I missed it, I'm guessing pretty deep since you mention the surface going away, unless it's cloudy water. I'd also assume less than 160-180 feet since she's still using compressed surface air. At around that depth the amount of oxygen in surface air become toxic and starts acting like a nerotoxin, so divers have to change to anothe mix with lower oxygen that would suffocate them at the surface. Ahhh the fun of technical diving
But yeah loved this one seemed very familiar even though I avoid decompression diving like the plaugue. Too rich for my blood (pun totally intended there)
A seriously terrifying tale of quiet but high courage and professionalism. Coco and Sea Swirl are two very strange Ponies, who have a very difficult and dangerous job, which the vast majority of Ponies wouldn't even begin to understand.
4010962
I sort of agree with a lot that was mentioned earlier, that the town would have a fairly small population. 500-10,000 sounds like a reasonable estimate. In my opinion, Ponyville seems to be preindustrial town that is based around a central market that brings in business and trade from the surrounding farms and other neighbouring towns. The population of ponyville itself would have likely originated from entrepreneurs who opened up shop to cater to ponies attracted to the market and would now mostly consist of them and close relatives with only a minority having moved to Ponyville later.
Looking at the hospital, I always thought it was too big for the perceived population size of Ponyville. A reasonable explanation for its size us that the hospital was government funded, staffed by residents of Ponyville and takes patients from the general area, farms and smaller towns included.
Also I'd imagine most pegasi live in normal houses (possibly also sharing earth ponies) in town due to the high cost of producing and then maintaining a cloud house.
Sorry if my reply is a bit... scattered, I'm stuck on my mobile at the moment so it's hard to go back and reread/edit.
Very well researched. Im a recreational diver myself so I know of the dangers you told about. Never experienced nitrogen narcosis myself even at 100 ft but then again, I have never done a decompression dive. My cousin is a journeyman underwater welder working on his masters. One thing that was not in the story that would have been neat to add is the effect of repeated deep dives on hearing. You loose your hearing kinda fast doing a lot of deep dives. Would think that would be important to a pony seeing they are more auditory and olfactory oriented than humans.
5391697
I didn't know--as mentioned in the blog post, I've never been deeper than snorkling/holding my breath and diving ten feet or so to the bottom.
Well, now I do . . . and I can put that in the next story of Sea Swirl diving. In fact, if it's a subject which interests you, I've got a piece of a story in this blog post.
On a more technical point, I'm torn on a pony's sense of smell. If I had to rank IRL, I'd guess a horse depends on sound, then scent, then sight. Given the shorter muzzles and bigger eyes, I'd probably switch eyesight and sound in the case of MLP. Regardless, for a pony or a human, I've got to figure that a hard-hat diving suit is pretty disorienting.
Why didn't it have outriggers, then? A simple addition to the boat would make that so much safer.
I have no firsthand experience, but I've heard Raptures of the Deep can be pretty fun.
She might have seen some cool stuff on the bottom.
But then, it might be more likely Discord was in town.
This is a fantastic bit of dialogue. It says so much about Sea Swirl in just a couple of sentences.
8932483
Thank you!
I think something else was down there with her, like a seapony.
A magic, sparkibg spear? Yeah, that's definitely not one of the guard's.
9434135
She was alone down there--it was all her imagination, caused by nitrogen narcosis (her depth + high pressure gas cause this; that’s why deep divers breathe special mixtures like HeLox, instead of just compressed air).
It was; it was sparkling because of her metal-finding spell.
This chapter could almost do with a horror tag. And here I am, reading it at 1:30 in the AM.
10269100
Well, to be fair, most of it isn’t real. Just Sea Swirl’s hallucinations.