A whale of a tale

The stone halls of the old castle echoed with hoof steps as Twilight Sparkle made her way down to the ancient library. A soft yawn came from her back. "Why did we have to come here so late?" The small form of a dragon asked.

"Because Spike, I want to do some research into Equstria's past."

Spike sighed. "But why so late?"

She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him with a blank stair . "Listen we're already here and personalty I don't want to walk through a monster infested forest in broad daylight all by myself." She turned back and continued walking. The dragon only shrugged she did have a point the Everfree forest was no place to just walk about with out some form or protection.

After walking for a ways the two finally reached the library where rows upon rows of old tomes that dated back a thousand years and more. The purple mare smiled at the wealth of knowledge before her. Taking in a deep breath she let out a happy sigh. "Alright lets get to work!" Spike nodded and slipped off her back.

"So anything to do with history right?" He asked.

Twilight nodded and went off to the little secret room that held a few books and pulled her saddle bags off. The ever faithful Spike was quick to his job and had found a few books here and there and after getting an arm load he would bring them to the room and stack them for her to go over. Twi helped as well lifting a good many in her magic and taking them to her growing pile. They worked in silence mostly unless Spike where to ask about a book and if she wanted it or not. Once that was done thought they had a fairly large stack a few smaller ones.

Spike pulled over a pillow for her, to which Twilight lay down on and ruffled her wings to get better situated. "Thank you Spike. Now.." She trailed off as her fuchsia magic swelled around her horn and over to the books and she brought one back and she opened and started reading. Meanwhile Spike being the kid that he was started to look around there room for the night. He went to what few book shelves that where there and schemed for something that might interest him.

"Mmm.." He said quietly to himself as his eye's danced over the tomes, until a particular set of of them caught his eye. "What the?" They where much different from any of the ones near them, darker in color but with no ornamentation to be seen. Picking up the first of them he flipped to the first page. The paper was worn and old but then again in a library as old as this one it wasn't anything special. His draconian eyes read the small heading: "Property of James Cable." Spike scratched his head. "James Cable? Huh...weird name." He continued on. The letters where scrawled on the page in a choppy form of cursive.

"Journal entry 1,
I suppose I should start off by saying I shouldn't have went to sea. We haven't seen a whale since we left the harbor at Jamestown around two mouths ago. Some of the more seasoned men abored have urged me to start these entry's and I can see why...Helps with the boredom. I suppose now it would be best to describe some of the crew members that I've gotten to know: The captain, a proud imposing figure by the name of Abram Marle and his two cabin boys of about no more then 15 years of age, are Robert and William Johnson."

Spike had stopped there, more of those weird names. "Hey Twilight?" He looked to his friend just a few feet away.

She blinked and looked to him. "Yes?".

"This book here." He pointed at the journal. "It's got all these weird names in it."

She marked her book and sat it down. "Bring it over here." She motion beside her. "Let me take a look." He nodded and handed her the book as her sat next to her. Twilight opened the book and read through the first little bit. "Huh...your right, those don't sound much like pony names to me." She shook her head.

"Who do you think it is then?" The dragon child asked. ".

She shook her head again. "I don't know Spike but this has actually caught my interest, mind if I read it?"

Spike smiled. "Only if you read it out load I was gonna read it too ya know."

Twilight couldn't help but chuckle as she patted his head. "Sure thing." Shifting on the pillow to make room for him he crawled up next to her. "Now where did you get to?" She held the book open in her magic before them.

"Something about cabin boys."

The purple alicorn smiled as she nodded and cleared her throat. "Alright."

"The only other I knew by name was the ships cook, a short stout fellow of Irish birth, Conner was all I knew him by as there had never been a mention of his last name. Now the ship, a good ship she is and as fine as any American port can produce and the name she bore was Abagail, a small frigate I beleave they said she was and as much as I hate it all one-hundred and sixty of us are stuck on her until we fill our quota or a year is up.
-James Cable, June, 3th, 1828. Age 19"

With that the first passage ended and the two looked at each other and she turned the page reveling another entry.

"Journal entry 2.
Today was a good day, we encountered another ship which gave us a heading to follow to where they said whales where of plenty. They say to head north a ways and that will know we've arrived by the the gulls."
-James Cable, June, 14th, 1828."

" Journal entry 3,
It's been around three weeks since we meet the ship that told us to go north and today was a very special day for all the crew. Today marked the anniversary Fifty-two years in the making, that we became our own country and free of England. Some of the more adventurist had fashioned few makeshift rockets that set the evening sky's a blaze! Although today was fun we still have yet to see a single Whale.....I'm beginning to think there are none in this part of the world anymore.
-James Cable, July, 4, 1828."

"Journal entry 4,
Three mouths out to sea and still no whales. Our look out did spot a swarm of gulls just before sunset and we thought we had made it but since we arrived late in the day we've decided to anchor here for the night and try our luck in the morning.
-James Cable, July, 10th, 1828."

Inside the dim creaking hull of the Abagail. I sighed as I laid my pen between the pages of the journal and tucked in safely under a bag I had rolled up as a pillow. The bosun heaving piped down* the crew for the night an hour or so ago. I was just about to drift off when a shake brought me back.

"Come on James!" one of my crew mates shouted.

Sitting up I caught a passer by as the original was long gone. "Whats going on?" I asked in confusion.

He looked back in excitement. "They've spotted a whale!"

* Piped down/ Pipe down: A signal given from the bosun on his whistle for the end of the day, requiring lights (and smoking pipes) to be extinguished and silence from the crew.

Author's Note:

Alright so this is the first chapter of my first story so what do you think? Now I'll be mostly in James point of view and an actual story will unfold, with little bits of Twilight thrown in as she reads.

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TCValley

TCValley #1 · Jan 30th, 2014 · · ·

...Hello, my friend.

I noticed a few things with this story that I thought I would point out.

Firstly, the title. The first letter of each word should be capitalized, and "sea's" should be "Seas".

I quite like the beginning. It's written nicely (with the exception of a few minor errors; easy to fix), and the scene is set pretty well. But then...

The dragon only shrugged she did have a point the Everfree forest was no place to just walk in with out some form of numbers or protection.

This ...sentence... could use some fixing. Say, like this?

The dragon only shrugged. She did have a point; the Everfree Forest was no place to just walk about in without some form of protection.

I'm going to assume you have no proofreader, pre-reader, or editor yet. That's pretty normal; I don't either. I still HIGHLY recommend them. They can be awfully nice, and help you with the way the story is told, written, and how well it flows.

Of course, again, I'm being rather hypocritical here. In fact, feel free to disregard anything I say.

*Ahem*

The way this whole chapter is written is quite nice; I like the way you describe actions and the like. Feels like I'm in the story.

The only problems I see are as follows:

Firstly, the punctuation could use some work. There are places where periods and commas are needed, and apostrophes are not. These little errors disrupt the flow of the story, and are very easy to fix. T'would only take a few minutes, or an editor.

Secondly, this:

Now I'll be mostly in James point of view and an actual story will unfold, with little bits of Twilight thrown in as she reads.

...You never want to give the reader an opportunity to stop reading. You never want to do anything that might throw them off, or make them lose interest. If you jump POV like that, the readers will be thrown overboard (haha!). I can see how this chapter would be an exception; you'd need Twilight to find the book for them to see James' life. Still, you could do it a little more subtly. Just plain out jumping from third person restricted to first person really disrupts a reader's idea of what's happening.

Other than my (useless) opinions, I like this story. I await the next chapter~

Oh, and by the way, congrats on your first story. Good luck with the rest, for there will be many.

(P.S. If you ever need help with editing, proofreading, pre-reading, or anything like that, and you're having trouble finding someone willing [which is really hard on a friendly site like this], just let me know. )