The Groveport 'berg
“This is… cozy,” Starlight Glimmer said.
It was the night after their first day together. Starlight had spent hours at the prow, her forelegs wrapped tight around fo’c’sle rail as she leaned over the abyss beneath them. The gale winds had blasted her mane into a wild cottony poof more like Pinkie Pie’s, and her eyes were red-rimmed from the dry air. But she hadn’t stopped smiling the whole flight. It was as Rainbow Dash suspected – every pony wanted to fly, they just weren’t all fortunate enough to be pegasi.
It was a cruel world, sometimes. But at least she and Nutmeg were bringing a bit of joy into a poor ground pony’s life. They could be proud of that.
After a meal of canned rations and a few olives that Nutmeg had brought on for her, they retired to their cabin for the night. And that’s when things got cozy.
Specifically, they were cozy for Rainbow and Starlight, who were sharing a hammock. Starlight was a unicorn and therefore heavier than Rainbow, and as anypony who has ever put dissimilar weights into a hammock before knows, the heavier weight sinks to the bottom. Thus it was that Rainbow Dash ended up on top of Starlight in their shared net. It was, at least, a fortunately cool night at altitude, so Starlight was merely warm instead of sweltering beneath a blanket of pegasus wings.
“Yeah, there’s not much room on airships,” Rainbow said. “It’s all about weight, right? But you get used to it real fast. By the time we get to Groveport this’ll seem totally normal.”
“At least we don’t have a lot of cargo this time,” Nutmeg said. Though it was dark in the cabin, he was close enough that they could speak easily. If she wanted she could’ve reached out and touched his shoulder. “For longer hauls we have to load up the cabin and take down one of the hammocks. Can you imagine three ponies having to share a hammock? That’d be something.”
“I see,” Starlight said. “Can I air an extremely selfish and ingracious thought?”
Rainbow wriggled around to face her. Starlight’s breath tousled her forelock. “Uh, yeah, have you met me?”
“Well, it sounds like you two have shared hammocks before.”
“Out of necessity, I assure you,” Nutmeg said.
“Of course. It also occurs to me that you are both pegasi, and therefore lighter and smaller than I am.”
Hm. Rainbow tried to remember how tall Starlight was compared with Nutmeg. Perhaps a little shorter? But certainly stockier and probably two full stones heavier. “Probably true,” she allowed.
“Might it not be more efficient if you and Nutmeg shared a hammock?” she asked. Then, lower, just to Rainbow Dash, “I’m sure he wouldn’t object.”
He wouldn’t, of course, because he was a good pony and understood the importance of taking care of guests. But still Rainbow shook her head. “Nope, sorry. He’s the captain, and the captain gets the best quarters, even if it’s just a hammock of his own.”
“That’s a little old-fashioned,” Nutmeg said. “If it were up to me, I’d happily offer my guest her own hammock. But Miss Dash continues to insist on proper naval protocol.”
“Airships run on rules,” Dash said. It wasn’t until the words had escaped her mouth that she stopped to consider them and just how alien they would’ve sounded to past-her, the one who just a few months back shirked her Weather Team duties if they involved getting up fifteen minutes before noon. The old her would’ve said something flip, like Rules are made to be broken! without understanding or considering that on a delicate ship like the Orithyia, whose twin gem-fired engines had contained within their thin aluminum cowlings the power to haul millions of tons of ice across the sky, rules kept ponies alive. Rules were important, and respecting the big rules meant respecting the small rules as well. So the captain got the best hammock because that was the rule.
Weird. Rules. Dash let the mental dissonance play out in her head for a few more moments. It wriggled inside her chest, like an itch in her bones she couldn’t scratch. Then she shrugged. The motion set the hammock swaying and rubbed her coat pleasantly against the mare below her. Starlight apparently didn’t realize how warm and cuddly she was. She yawned, closed her eyes, and settled in for sleep.
She woke a few minutes later. Starlight was trying to roll over. Dash flopped along with the motion, and when the ship was still again, she set her head back down on Starlight’s other shoulder. Within seconds she was out again.
Starlight wasn’t, though. After a few minutes she groaned and tried sleeping on her stomach, then her back. Then alternating sides. Each time Rainbow rolled along with her, waking just long enough to reposition herself as a pegasus blanket before falling back asleep.
Finally, Starlight gave up even trying to sleep. “How do you do that?” she whispered.
“Mm?” Rainbow tucked her muzzle under Starlight’s chin so they could whisper together. “Do what?”
“Just fall asleep like that. No matter how uncomfortable this is.”
Oh. Rainbow yawned. “You learn to. Otherwise you never sleep, and I think that causes death eventually? So yeah, go to sleep or you’ll die.” Good talk. Rainbow closed her eyes.
“Okay, wow, straight to death. That’s a little darker than I was expecting,” Starlight said. She squirmed a bit, until her limbs were tangled with Dash’s. “I’m not sure I can fall asleep like this.”
“Sure you can. Pegasus weather teams have to sleep in storms all the time.” She carefully pulled her legs free of Starlight’s and placed them as comfortably as she could, considering their relative positions. “Can you do what I say for a few minutes?”
“Uh, I can try?”
“Awesome. Close your eyes.”
Silence. Dash waited. Finally, when it was clear Starlight wasn’t going to answer, she spoke again. “Are your eyes closed?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. They’re closed now.”
“Great. Now, start imagining all your muscles are totally relaxed. Start with your head. And I mean every muscle, okay? Even the ones around your ears. They’re relaxed too, so your ears just go limp. Then your jaw relaxes, and your cheeks, and the little muscles in your temples. Just focus on all of them and let them relax.”
Starlight grunted quietly. Rainbow gave her a few seconds, then continued. “Now your neck. Just let your head sag into the hammock. Shoulders next. Imagine your legs are just totally dead weight. They’re not holding you up or anything. Everything’s a noodle now.”
Dash slowly talked her way down Starlight’s body. She hit every muscle group, even the weird ones like the intercostals. Finally she got to the hooves, and Starlight’s body felt like a limp puddle of pony beneath her.
“Okay, now the hard part,” Dash said. “You can’t fall asleep if your mind is still thinking of moving. So the key is don’t think of anything. But that’s real hard for most ponies at first, so it helps if you just repeat those words over and over. Focus on them, okay? Focus on the words and nothing else. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.”
Starlight mumbled the words along with her. After a few moments, Dash felt her tighten. “I don’t think this is working.”
“Don’t think about whether it’s working or not. Don’t think at all, okay? Don’t think. Say it with me. Don’t think.”
“Don’t think,” Starlight whispered back.
“Good. Keep saying it with me. Don’t think.”
So they continued. Over and over they repeated the words, mantra-like, until they lost any sense of meaning. They became sounds, as unintelligible as any foreign language. Still they repeated them, slowly slurring them as they forgot what the words don’t think were supposed to sound like.
Finally, after an unknown time, Rainbow felt the last of the tension drain from the body beneath her, and she heard a quiet snore. She continued whispering for a few moments, but nopony replied.
Too easy. Dash yawned again, set her head on Starlight’s chest, and let the darkness swallow her as well.
* * *
“That doesn’t look so big,” Starlight said. She was on the port rail with Rainbow and Nutmeg, peering out at the horizon. “It’s not even as big as a cloud.”
“It’s one of the smaller ones, I’d say,” Rainbow said. “Nutmeg?”
“Hm.” He stared at it in silence for a few seconds. “A standard non-tabular, probably mostly firn with a layer of resolidified ice on the top and south sides. Maybe fifty-thousand tons?”
The object in question was a smudge to the east. The rising sun was behind it, so even Dash’s pegasus eyes couldn’t make out much more than the dimmest details from its dark form. They could only tell it wasn’t a cloud because, unlike the real clouds all around, it held station in the sky, unbothered by the wind. It might have been a stone.
“Yeah, pretty small.” Rainbow nodded. “We gonna go grab it?”
“May as well. I don’t think we’ll find any larger ones between here and Groveport.”
Yes! It’d been weeks since their adventures around Typhoon, and Rainbow Dash hadn’t touched an iceberg since then. All her wounds were healed by now, though her coat was a bit shorter in places where the ice had ripped it away, and of course her ear would always have a thin scar down its length where a sharp chunk of ice had split it in half. Just the thought of wrestling with a ‘berg again set her heart racing in her chest. She bounced on the deck.
“Excited much?” Starlight asked.
“Uh, duh!” Rainbow hopped up on the rail. Her hooves skidded on the polished wood, and for a moment she danced over the void. “You won’t believe these things, Starlight. I didn’t believe it until I really saw one. Then it’s like… Wow! Zoom! Amazing!”
“Uh huh.” Starlight leaned on the railing more carefully than Dash. “If you say so.”
“I do! I so say so!” And then, to prove it, Dash took off toward the iceberg, intent on being the first to claim it.
A few minutes later she came back to get her bag of ice-pitons, and ask Nutmeg’s permission to claim the iceberg. Sometimes she forgot that step when she was excited.
* * *
A pod of air whales circled the underside of the ‘berg, filling the morning with their eerie whistles. She kept her distance. Air whales didn’t usually attack pegasi, but they could be ferocious in defense of their young, and Rainbow saw a few calves shadowing their mothers. Hopefully they would move on without making a scene.
As Nutmeg expected, the south of the ‘berg was glazed with ice from constant exposure to the sun. Easy purchase for her pitons. She started hammering them into into place with her shoes, humming a quiet tune as she worked. Chips of ice sprayed her face and melted on her muzzle.
She grinned to herself. It felt good to feel cold again.
The Orithyia arrived about twenty minutes later. Nutmeg pulled her up about fifty yards short and started dropping lines. Rainbow swooped down to catch them and fly back up to the pre-set pitons. Soon she had enough in place to secure the ship, and she waved for Nutmeg to start the engines back up. The lines slowly tightened, the slack vanishing as the Orithyia’s engines spun up to medium power. Soon they were taut enough for Nutmeg to walk out along them and join her.
“Nice work,” he said. He perched on a rope as nimbly as a spider in her web. “Think those pitons will hold, or do we need an anchor?”
“Eh.” She tapped at the ice. “If we don’t go too fast they should be fine. And I don’t really feel like putting an anchor in, you know?” Anchors were heavy. Damn heavy. Almost as heavy as she was, and sharp to boot. Sinking an anchor into the ‘bergs was probably the most dangerous part of the job, and one she’d gladly avoid.
“Hm.” He sniffed at the ice. “We’ll keep an eye on it. If they start pulling out we’ll use the anchor.”
“Aye captain!” She saluted with her hoof, then zipped back to the Orithyia, where Starlight was waiting. She stood in the stern, between the engines, her forehooves propped up on the aft railing to watch them. Her eyes were wide, and she gawked as Rainbow returned.
Rainbow landed and struck a little pose. Not much of one – maybe a four out of ten. Extended rear leg, flared wings, and a bit of torque to her spine. It pose that looked plausibly natural while still drawing attention to all her best features. She held it, stretched for emphasis, and turned to see Starlight’s reaction.
She saw Starlight’s back. The mare was still looking at the glacier. She hadn’t noticed that Rainbow landed.
Well, that was rude. “Ahem. Hey, Starlight,” she said.
No response. She trotted forward and saw the gawking, guileless expression on the unicorn’s face. She stared at the glacier like a foal staring at her mother while her mother was performing some insane feat of aerial acrobatics and also juggling a dozen flaming torches and somehow still managing to prepare a full meal for her entire family even though Rainbow’s dad was probably going to be late at work again.
Ah. “Neat, isn’t it?”
Seconds passed. Finally, the stunned neurons in Starlight’s brain parsed and responded. “Uh.”
Rainbow took her place beside Starlight at the rail. “You know, the first time I saw one up close like this, I felt the same way? Like, they’re so big! They’re just too big, I think. Pony brains can’t really understand them at first. We seem them and we’re like, Hey, that’s big. And that’s all we can think of! The only other things we’re used to being that size are clouds and mountains and, uh… lakes? Yeah, lakes. So we see them and of course they can’t be real because nothing that big and that heavy could fly, right? So we just kinda stare at them and wait for the real world to start again. But it never will, until you get used to it.”
“Uh.” Starlight blinked and managed to tear her head away from the iceberg. “Sorry, did you say something?”
Rainbow looked at the iceberg and smiled. “Yeah, but don’t worry. It wasn’t important.”
A few minutes later Nutmeg returned. He joined them at the rail to iceberg-watch for a few minutes, and then they went about their various tasks. Starlight stared at the iceberg for hours, until the lunch bell and an empty stomach finally called her away.
Not a bad start to a trip. Starlight didn’t even complain about the immense cold pouring off the iceberg as they retired for the night. Of course, she had a warm pegasus blanket, so what was there to complain about, really?
Nothing, Rainbow Dash decided. Nothing to complain about at all. She went to sleep with a smile on her muzzle.
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I think I see what Glimmy's secret mission is. Are we sure it wasn't jointly approved by Twilight and Cadence?
Air whales, huh?
Yeah, Rainbow, something like that.
Indeed.
Always, Starlight.
This is a great story. : ) Its interesting to see Dash writen this way and the ongoing romance seems somehow appropriate and organic.
50,000 tons really isn't that big, so I'm a bit surprised by the reaction from Starlight. As a rough estimate, it'd be a tad under 40 meters per side, so that would probably be smaller volume-wise than some of the largest Canterlot buildings. It doesn't seem big enough to host a pod of whales, even small ones.
Now, 50 million tons...
There a reason why you didn't respond to Alondro's comments?
9429494
Am I supposed to?
Your Rainbow is, as always, just perfect here. And yes, weirdly enough it makes sense for her to be a stickler for rules onboard an airship!
I'd feel safer with that anchor in place.
9429494
Perhaps he might have, had the comment been especially meritous. It wasn't.
It wasn't good criticism. It explored one side of a broadly defined argument. You can have a good explanation for a narrative decision without exploring that decision in the actual narrative. For the purpose of the story, how exactly Twilight failed to discover her nature as a changeling before this isn't important to the narrative; only that she didn't.
On that subject, I offer the concept that, if you secretly had the ability to fly, sans wings, but could do so only if you did(n't) believe you could(n't) fly, would you think to leap into the air and will said power into action, or would you think about your next stop at the airport?
You do things as an infant that you won't remember as an adult, or even a young child. A changeling could, very easily, take the appearance of a pony at such an age and remain in that shifted state beyond that threshold of remembrance, never to realize that anything was wrong. This is especially true if you operate under the theory that shapeshifting magic is physiologically permanent until another change is deliberately undertaken or otherwise forcibly enacted.
You do you, Starlight. You do you.
Gah, trying to get back on the stick here, half a year later. Lovely work here with Dashie's character voice, as per usual, and Starlight is an unexpectedly delightful introduction to the cast.
Cute and thoughtful.