Full Fathom
Blackest mirror laps on sand and 'gainst rotted ramshackle pier. I offer a coin to the swarthy bull whose boat carried me here, and a golden sun sets in Bovind's ragged pocket. He nods and shoves off, his role finished.
Yon Bovindian fishing village slants on curved shore. A clamorous din of dreams dances in midnight. Voices flutter 'round my head like Breezy-lights, most in cowtongue, casting the sole pony a beacon upon the misty shore. I part the hanging pelt that conceals her and, in the hut, drink deep of the sticky-sweet mahua stench lingering in empty bottles. Flame licks from a crude brazier. A slumbering form is wrapped in cloak of dream pulled tight 'gainst life's rocky shores.
How loathe am I to disturb such solace.
But the moon, by usurper's hoof, draws on apace. Her pardon stings my soul, and her bidding to sift through flotsam and jetsam our lost lambs of Myinnkyun left behind, but I would be pardoned.
I sit beside her and lid my eyes 'gainst the light. Her Nightmare art is well-drawn, yet 'twas my hoof sketched the plans. I slip inside her slumbering mind. On this night, as on the many prior I spent pursuing her, I pass her battlements and murder-holes unseen. Inside her keep, she dances in lover's embrace.
“Moonstruck, I wish we could stay like this forever,” she whispers.
Clothed in wisp of dream, summoning the demons that rake her soul, I make her lover sing: “Yet all performances must end, Littlemoth.”
She chafes at my intrusion, but drink-clouded wit and ripostes feeble 'gainst the art that forged hers aid my work.
“No,” she says. “Get out of my mind, Fathom!”
I gesture with borrowed hoof and a player trots upon the stage. “The witch drowned,” I, Hotspur, say.
The panic alights her eyes.
I twist into air (into thin air) until my actorly masque falls away and a new one rests upon my brow. “Coral are now my bones and pearls my eyes,” I, Peridot, say. “With careless whisper, you drowned me.”
“It was only bad dreams,” she sneers. “Like you taught me.”
She makes my effigy to loom over us, with marionette's cross setting her to dance, but her drunk construction is clumsy and one strong blow from mine eyne collapses it.
I bid the next player enter. “Littlemoth,” I, Dawn Patrol, say, wearing hound's head. “You won't believe what I saw.”
“Hark, the watchdogs bark,” I, Peridot, say. “Scratch his ear and entreat him.”
“You're not Peridot,” she screams.
I make to rise in seafoam-swell the old colony. A lovelorn song haunts the silent ruins, decayed from carelessness. The players pantomime rutting with Minotaurs while sinister shadowpuppets whirl around them.
“My race would tear me limb from limb if they should discover our sin,” I, Peridot, whisper to my bullish lover.
“My brother too,” I, her lover, whisper back. “He calls you Palei Hantu. 'Chaos-Bride'.”
“The world is so wide,” I, Peridot, sigh. “Why must its minds be so narrow?”
“On watch,” I, Dawn Patrol, whisper slobbering in Littlemoth's ear, “I saw Peridot slipping back over the wall, with Minotaurs in chase. Nopony knows the truth, save you and I.”
“Peridot was a bitter hypocrite,” she chides. “She didn't hate miscegeneration. She hated that we flaunted what she couldn't have.”
Still robed in Peridot, I rise. In forehooves clutch I masques: one comic, one tragic. As bit players pass, my masque is swapped and thus do I hide myself from barbs.
“I tried to be subtle,” she admits. “I wanted to torment her. Teach her a lesson. But I was blinded by rage and filled her dreams with the desire to end everything. Made it her singular obsession.”
I pose in exaggerated agony; the masques fall. I, Peridot, sink in dying repose, my burden lifted. But those my players split, casting shade on sea and jungle, on town hall, on ponies monster-masqued. The tide strikes the shore and deluges them unawares.
“Everything was falling apart,” she argues, but her imperious tone gives way to a brow bent in shame. “Sooner or later they would've suspected a Nightmare's hoof in Peridot's death. If the guards didn't fillet that kelpie first and goad her kin into drowning us all. So I went into their dreams to learn how I could make everything right. I was careless, but I had no time.”
I summon a masque of sternest stuff and place it upon my muzzle. “The Night Guard is trained to notice dream incursions,” I, Shooting Star, say.
“With my deceit revealed,” she says, resigned to truth, “Fragmented Myinnkyun could never be put back together.”
With hooves raised, the graves at my command wake their sleepers. As one I face my army to her and I, now Sunspot, say, “First thing in the morning, it's time.”
“I begged you to sent more boats!” she sneers. “In my final dream-communique, I asked you where the extraction boats were. You said they wouldn't arrive in time!”
I strip my borrowed masques away and stand exposed before my wayward pupil. “Your loyal dog shooed them yonder with rough bark. Am I to bend the tides and winds to my will? I am no kelpie-kind.”
“You failed me,” my petulant pupil says. “I had to act.”
“A slippery word, 'act'. Did you commit yourself to decision, or strut upon the stage?”
“My dreams and inner world are known only to me,” she replies. “Nothing but what I reveal to others is known. Two meanings become one.”
“Excepting those with Nightmare's Gift. We pierce the veil, see the dream underneath. Our beloved princess charged you to keep watch for usurpers seeking to use Myinnkyun's nectar to cloud her powers and judgment. But you've shown no nectar is required. Only empoisoned passion. So to conceal your crime, you left an egg of idea in Sunspot's soul, and when it hatched the chick made his paranoia to embark on a mad crusade while the faulted pony absconded.”
“I didn't mean--”
“But verily the words from your lips did sound: 'meaning' is naught but reflections in others' eyne. And mine eyne would judge you guilty.”
Fall upon the stage did she, but knew 'twas for naught. “A last request?”
“Aye, I'll grant.”
“Moonstruck. I bade him come, but he wouldn't. I would dream of him....one final time.”
“Littlemoth,” I say, “your Nightmare art made you a shining star. But your umtempered rage pulled you from the heavens and caused you to fall to Earth, to crack and crash upon the ground. Know you well I, your teacher, consider the fault half my own. Goodbye, Littlemoth.”
“Fare thee well, Full Fathom.”
Unlidded, mine eyne see once again her dark hut. In Littlemoth's slumbering mind, I pluck the stuff of dreams and by my art do shape them into lover's visage.
“Moonstruck,” she whispers, her smile renewed. “I wish we could stay like this forever.” She closes her eyes and melts into his embrace, at peace.
My dagger's sharp tooth gleams.
Full Fathom:
Littlemoth's teacher in the arts of being a Nightmare, comes to hear her confession to planting suicidal thoughts into Peridot's head as revenge for Peridot's persecution of her. A lot of nice words and rhythms in this one, though at one point Littlemoth sneers a line that doesn't sound to me like it could be sneered. I also think I would've liked this better from Littlemoth's point of view instead of from Fathom's. Still, it gives me an answer that works.
Mike
Littlemoth is the nightmare.
Littlemoth incited Peridot’s murder
Littlemoth destroyed the town to save herself.
Peridot was Palei Hantu
Peridot was jealous that others could openly share what she could not
Sunspot was manipulated into attacking the minotaurs and leading the town to its doom
My biggest question is, who is the “she” that Littlemoth was worried about them finding? Why was she worried about them finding Peridot? Was the manner of murder obviously linked back to her?
This piece didn’t really impress me with the archaic language in the early bits, and while the overall story was somewhat interesting, the odd style of the prose ended up feeling distracting rather than additive.
The narrative is interesting and the solution this piece gives is likewise. That said, it is a little odd that Littlemoth would feel so offended by Peridot's hypocrisy. Littlemoth dreams of Moonstruck, suggesting that her loyalties to the pegasus probably don't run that deep. Thus, Peridot hating that Littlemoth flaunts her relationship with Dawn Patrol, a relationship that is fake and manipulative in nature, should probably make her happy, smugly noting that she has what Peridot cannot and doesn't even have to be genuine about it, rather than wrathful as she appears in this ending. Maybe I'm grasping at straws though and Littlemoth just really hates Peridot. An actual issue would be why Tommyrun sees two unicorns (one being Peridot) heading towards the docks on the night of her disappearance. Who was the other pony if Peridot committed suicide?
On another note, I found the writing to be quite cool with how Full Fathom could so effectively manipulate dreams and its manner of presenting the evidence. However, i found Full Fathom's unique manner of speaking to somewhat detract from the story.
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"If the guards didn't fillet that kelpie first and goad her kin into drowning us all."
"I may not have the skill to trace you from here, but I can buck in the door of every Nocturne in town until I find you."
-Shooting Star
“With my deceit revealed,” [Littlemoth] says, resigned to truth, “Fragmented Myinnkyun could never be put back together.”
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Littlemoth just hates her on principle, for being a hypocrite. I would've loved to go into her psychological state more, and her feelings towards Dawn Patrol and Peridot, but Horizon's wordcount limit made me grind the text down to the bone. Another tough cut: an extended backstory comparing the first colony to Roanoke, Virginia.
I sensed that was a clue Horizon planted, but it's circumstantial evidence at best; although Peridot was obliquely referenced as being one of the two ponies, nothing about it describes what night it took place on or definitively linked it to the plot, so I ignored it.