Haunted House Adventure Playset, part 1
“You ever deliver an iceberg to the wrong town?” Starlight Glimmer asked.
Starlight stood near the prow, her forelegs propped up on the fo’c’sle rail, gripping it tight to lean out over the miles of air between them and the ground. Nutmeg had brought them down over the course of several hours, until they were about level with the cotton-ball stratus clouds that liked to float around seven-thousand feet. On any other day, Rainbow Dash might be eyeing one of those clouds for a nap, or considering how to shape it as an impromptu obstacle course for her flying drills. But on this day Rainbow Dash was an airship crewmare, and that came with responsibilities, and she would be damned if she shirked those responsibilities anywhere that Starlight or (Celestia forbid) Nutmeg might see.
Rainbow considered the question. Not because she didn’t know the answer, but because the very implications of it confused her. “No. How would we even do that?”
“Well, towns all kind of look the same from up here,” Starlight said. She pointed down at the mosaic of fields and forests and long stretches of grassland below them. “Like, we’ve passed over three towns in the past hour. What if one of them was actually Groveport?”
“Like, if the town was in the wrong place?”
“No.” Starlight rolled her eyes. “Towns can never be in the wrong place. They are, by definition, in the correct location. I mean, what if you were up here and you saw two towns way down below that looked the same, and you took the iceberg to the wrong one?”
Rainbow tilted her head. “Well, what if that town also wanted an iceberg? Then wouldn’t it be the correct town too?”
“No, because then the town that asked for the iceberg originally wouldn’t get one. And even worse, they would have to watch the other town, probably a rival town, enjoy having an iceberg while they didn’t! That would be even worse than not having one.”
Right. “So, going back to your first question, we’ve never delivered an iceberg to a town that didn’t ask for it,” Rainbow said. She ticked her points off on her hooves. “Second, even if we did bring one to the wrong town, Nutmeg says it’s company policy to only accept payment on delivery. That way we never run a negative, uh, obligation debt? I think that’s what he calls it. So we could just tell the town that didn’t get the iceberg ‘Sorry, we’ll try to find another one for you.’ And third, why couldn’t the towns just share the iceberg? They’re super big usually and they have enough water for most towns for years.”
“What if they didn’t want to share?”
“Well then I guess they’d be jerks.” Rainbow shrugged. Then, after a moment of thought, “Is that your secret mission? To make sure Groveport shares this iceberg with other towns?”
“I don’t think so.” Starlight said. “Mostly I was just wondering how you could tell towns apart from way up here.”
“Oh, why didn’t you just say so?” Rainbow hopped up onto the rail, balancing on it with her hooves. The Orithyia swayed ever so slightly in response to Dash’s movements, her hull swinging beneath the balloon by a few fractions of a hair’s width. “You see the river below us?”
Starlight gripped the railing hard between her hooves and leaned out over the edge. “Yes! The winding one?”
“Yup. That’s Glassy Brook. We’ve been following it west for the past five hours.” Rainbow walked along the railing to the ship’s prow and trotted out along the wood beam, until she stood at the very tip of the ship. The wind here tossed her mane all askew and tried to peel her wings open, forcing her to into glorious flight. She squeezed them against her side. “You see way up ahead, near the horizon? That long green line?”
Starlight squinted. “Uh, maybe?”
Oh, yeah. Unicorn eyes weren’t as good as pegasus eyes. “Trust me, it’s there. Those are trees growing along the Attlestone River. It’s the biggest waterway in western Equestria and flows all the way to the Peaceful Ocean. If we follow Glassy Brook for a few more hours, it will join the Attlestone, and that’s where Groveport is.”
“So you just go by natural landmarks?”
Rainbow relaxed her wings, letting them grasp a bit of the rushing wind. The air picked her up and tossed her back off the prow to land on the sanded teak deck, just a few feet forward of the ship’s wheel. She shook herself, resettling her feathers, and trotted back to Starlight.
It was Nutmeg who responded. He kept a firm hoof on the wheel, giving it little taps to compensate for the shifting winds. “Landmarks, or stars,” he said. “If there are clouds above and clouds below, or if we’re inside clouds and can’t see the land or the sky, then we use the compass and the chronometer. And we go slow, of course. Nice and slow.”
Too slow, Dash thought. The compass and chronometer were perfectly good for navigating. They could drive the ship at near-to-full speed even in the densest clouds, but of course the Equestrian Airship Insurance Association prohibited such movement. Reckless, they called it. Accident prone. She blew a raspberry at the thought. What did the EAIA know about flying, anyway? Probably nothing.
“Anyway,” she said. “We’ve never delivered an iceberg to the wrong town. And even if we did, it’d still be cool, because, you know, who doesn’t want an iceberg?”
“Our Town never wanted one,” Starlight said.
“Yeah, and look what happened to it.”
Starlight opened her mouth. After a moment she closed it, a thoughtful look on her face.
“What happened to ‘Our Town’?” Nutmeg asked under his breath as Rainbow Dash trotted back.
“It’s a long story,” Rainbow whispered back. “But basically Starlight used to be a power-mad cutie-mark stealing villain who wanted to enforce a demented version of involuntary equality on ponies everywhere, and she ran a town of virtual prisoners as a test for her twisted dystopian vision.”
Nutmeg glanced at Starlight, who was back to leaning against the rail, eyes on the horizon. “You really think an iceberg would’ve made that situation better?”
Rainbow scratched her flank with a hoof. “Well, don’t icebergs make everything better?”
Nutmeg was silent. Then, eventually, he nodded. “Fair enough, Miss Dash. Fair enough.”
* * *
The sun was approaching the western horizon as Nutmeg pulled the Orithyia into position over the fields south of Groveport. Beneath them lay an enormous hill, part of a range that bordered the river and lent the world a wrinkled look from their perspective in the air, like wet-crinkled paper or the bands of an earthworm. Few ponies lived in the hills, and as the iceberg melted it would fall in a perpetual winter rain onto the hill, and there flow toward the town as a tangle of frigid streams to be diverted by the farmers where they chose. The massive shadow of the iceberg stretched out to the east, carving a dark swath across the land all the way to encroaching shadow of night.
Rainbow Dash hurried back to the transom and peered over the aft railing. The engines on either side growled, the gears within shifting as Nutmeg threw them into reverse. The propellers slowed, stopped, then began to spin counterclockwise, bringing the lithe ship to a graceful stop. Behind them, the iceberg continued to drift forward, prisoner of its own inertia.
Dash waited until the iceberg was just a few dozen meters away, and the lines binding it to the Orithyia grew slack. “Right there!” she shouted, and jumped over the railing. Nutmeg cut the throttle, and Rainbow flew out to the iceberg to begin the tedious, cold work of digging out the steel pitons.
“Need help?” Starlight called.
“Nah, I got this!” Rainbow unslung the ice axe from her belt and began chipping at the scaly ice that had built up around the lines. Sometimes the icebergs grew on their windward faces as the Orithyia dragged them through the air, and a full foot of their lines was now buried within the ice. It took Dash almost an hour to excavate all of them, finally severing the ship from its cargo.
Starlight was still waiting for her on the aft rail when she flew back. Frost had built up in the sorceress’s mane, and her teeth chattered. But a smile still stretched out on her muzzle, and she clapped as Dash landed.
That was cool. It was good to be appreciated. She looked around for Nutmeg, but he was nowhere on deck — below, then, carrying out the dozens of little tasks that had to be finished before the Orithyia could land. Rainbow stomped on the deck, knocking out the beads of ice that had built up in the shaggy coat on her fetlocks.
Huh. She glanced at Starlight’s neatly shaved fetlocks and frowned. Time for another visit to the barber? She filed the question away for later.
“S-so what k-keeps the iceberg from just d-drifting away after you leave?” Starlight asked. The muscles in her shoulders shivered beneath her coat. The poor mare needed a blanket. Or maybe just walk to the front of the ship, where the desert clime of Groveport still warmed the air.
Rainbow Dash led the way. It only took twenty-five steps to walk from the transom to the base of the prow, but that was enough to bring back a touch of desert warmth. The ice in her coat began to melt and drip onto the deck. Puddles of water formed beneath both mares and flowed out special grooves that led to the gunwale and the long drop below.
“Usually they don’t move, once we drag them this low,” Dash said. “Icebergs usually only drift if they get caught by high altitude winds. If Nutmeg thinks it might blow away, though, we can use a few lines to anchor it to the ground. Kinda dangerous, though. We try to avoid it.”
Starlight peered back at the floating glacier. “How’s it dangerous? Can the cables break?”
“No, but in twenty years or so the iceberg will melt, and then nothing will be holding the lines up.”
“Oh.” Starlight looked at the iceberg, then down at the ground, still a thousand feet below. “Yeah, that could be bad.”
With the iceberg and the Orithyia now divorced, Nutmeg brought them down to Groveport. The town had no buildings with spires able to dock an airship, so Dash waited until the keel was a dozen feet above a dusty field and tossed their rope ladder over the edge. Then she followed after it, not even bothering to open her wings, just eating the shock with her legs. The dirt was soft and puffed out beneath her hooves. Nutmeg and Starlight followed, using the ladder like boring ponies (though, of course, Nutmeg had an excuse for using the ladder, and Starlight was a unicorn and therefore couldn’t be expected to show as much bravery as Dash routinely did).
“Is this where we discover your secret mission?” Nutmeg asked. He led the trio toward the town, where a small crowd of ponies was beginning to gather. A herd of foals escaped from the bunch and raced toward the iceberg, where snow was beginning to accumulate on the side of the desert hill. A few exasperated parents followed more slowly.
“You’ll learn it as soon as I do,” Starlight offered back. She smiled as they walked the dusty trail and even spun in a circle to take in their full surroundings. “I like this place. Reminds me of the desert around Our Town, you know?”
They didn’t have to walk far before they met the welcoming committee. Although the Orithyia was a small and insignificant thing next to the enormous iceberg that now floated beside the town, enough ponies had seen her land to go and summon the mayor. At least, Dash assumed this was their mayor – a stocky, sandy earth pony mare who looked like she ate anvils for breakfast and had a cutie mark of an axe splitting a log. Her face was crinkled with age, but she wore a huge smile as they approached, and without hesitation trotted forward and wrapped all three in an enormous embrace that expelled the air from Dash’s lungs. Nutmeg gurgled and Starlight squeaked.
“You made it!” the mare announced. She gave them a final, rib-cracking squeeze, then dropped them onto their hooves. “Ah, we’ve been looking forward to this day for weeks! Finally, all the water we could ever want! And those buffalo can keep their damn river!”
“So,” Starlight croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “So, this is Groveport, right?”
“Ayup, where else would we be?” The mare grinned and slapped Starlight on the back. “Welcome to Groveport, home of the finest tree nut orchards in Equestria! We’ve got almonds and walnuts and chestnuts and pony Brazil nuts and more pecans than you can shake a cashew at! Why, if there’s a better town for nuts anywhere in the world, I’ve never seen it! Oh, I’m Oaky Wedge, by the way. Mayor ‘round these parts.”
“What about peanuts?” Dash asked.
“Peanuts ain’t tree nuts. They’re legumes.” Oaky Wedge frowned. Then, after a moment, she added, “But ayup, the peanut fields are down south. We do pretty good business with them too.”
“We hope this iceberg will help your town with its water needs,” Nutmeg said, ever the diplomat. Sometimes Dash wanted to poke him in the ribs with her feathers, just to see if she could get him riled up, but of course that could never happen so long as they were captain and crewmare. Starlight, however. Starlight might be able to get him worked up. She and Trixie really were made for each other. “Now, I hope you don’t mind if we discuss the details of our payment?”
While Nutmeg and Oaky Wedge continued in lowered voices, Rainbow Dash fell back to pace alongside Starlight. They trotted down the main avenue, the river to their right, slow and sluggish in the late summer, and the solid timber plankhouses of the town to the left. Most were two or three stories, with actual glass windows and fancy bronze ornaments decorating their pointed roofs, either lightning rods or weather vanes or maybe both, Dash wasn’t quite sure. The whitewashed boards were painted dun by the desert dust, but they showed none of the peeling or cracking Dash expected. Every few houses there was an empty space filled with communal gardens and shaded by enormous palm trees laden down with coconuts.
“So,” Dashed said. She wrapped a wing around Starlight’s shoulders and leaned hard on the mare, steering her toward one of the shady oases between the houses. They stopped beside a burbling little fountain made out of stones carved like desert tortoises. “Where is it?”
“Huh?”
Oh, come on. “The mission,” Dash hissed under her breath. “Where’s the secret mission?”
“Oh!” Starlight looked around, turning around several times to take in the garden and what little more of the town they could see from it. “It’s around here somewhere. They’re always in the last place you look, you know?”
Dash frowned. “That’s because you stop looking when you find it.”
“Well, yes.” Starlight kicked at a fallen coconut, rolling it over. A few tiny sand beetles scurried away from the sudden exposure into the welcoming shelter of a spiny desert fern. “So, to answer your question, we keep looking until we find it.”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“Maybe, but it’s what we’ve got.” Starlight trotted back out into the street, where ponies were gathering along the planks of the riverwalk to stare up at the iceberg across the way. Their voices rose in delight as an icy wind swept down its side, painting the desert below with frost and briefly leaving a frozen glaze on the river’s surface. Confused insects scattered away from the momentary winter, finding safer harbor in the cattails along the water’s edge.
Dash hurried after her. They weaved around the crowd and avoided the foals trying to tangle in their legs. Finally they reached the end of the town, which was really only a few blocks stretched out along the river, and came to a stop.
There, past the edge of the town, where the carefully maintained grasses gave way to the scrub brush of the desert, stood a tombstone of a house. It rose from the dirt like a clattering skeleton, naked and gaunt and sprawling, with planks bleached the color of old bones and dark windows like empty eyes placed high beneath its pitched roof. Wings nearly as large as other houses extended left and right, all fallen into equal disrepair. And from the highest peak of its splintered oak-shingled roof perched a rusted weathervane, a wrought-iron pegasus balanced on one hoof, her wings extended like flags. Ruddy orange stains dripped down from the rusted iron onto the shingles, and in the fading sunset light it appeared almost like a streak of blood.
They stopped at the edge of the road. A lonely desert wind caressed Dash’s wings, floated up the unkempt yard, and blew through the mansion’s exposed timbers. A melancholy howl echoed out from the ruins.
“Okay, yeah, that’s it,” Starlight said. “See? Always the last place you look.”
* * *
They found Nutmeg and Oaky Wedge back on the south side of town. Nutmeg held a promissory envelope in one hoof, and was quietly protesting as townponies loaded bag after bag of walnuts and pecans who knew what else onto his back.
“Really, this is too kind,” he said. His legs were beginning to wobble. “I don’t want to take advantage of your incredible generosity—”
“Oh, ayup, it ain’t nothing!” Oaky Wedge said. Still, she waved off the rest of the crowd, everypony of which seemed to have their own gift bag of nuts ready to offer. “Had a great harvest last year, you know? Nuts for days!”
“Right, well, we deeply appreciate it,” Nutmeg said. He took a careful step toward the Orithyia, then another. “I’m afraid our schedule calls for us to depart soon for—”
“Not yet!” Dash cried. “Remember the thing?”
Nutmeg blinked at her. “What thing?”
“The thing. The secret thing.”
“Oh.” Nutmeg glanced at Starlight. “You, uh, found it?”
“We did!” Starlight beamed that too-confident smile of hers. “I mean, I think so.” Turning to Oaky Wedge, she continued. “What can you tell us about the big house at the end of town?”
“The haunted one!” Dash added.
“What, the old Miller place?” Oaky laughed. “Oh, ayup, I guess it does look a mite haunted, don’t it? But it’s just an old house, empty ever since old mare Miller vanished one night under unexplained circumstances. Nothing more.”
“It’s totally haunted,” Dash whispered to Nutmeg. “Like, trust me on this.”
“How many haunted houses have you experienced?” he whispered back.
“Oh, tons. Every year at Nightmare Night they would build one in Cloudsdale, and for ten bits you could walk through it with the lights turned out and pretend that the Wingless Pegasus was chasing you, and—”
“Real haunted houses, Miss Dash. Not for children.”
“Oh.” Dash frowned. “None, I guess? Well, one now.”
Starlight was still expounding on something to Oaky Wedge. Dash tuned back in to hear the best part. “Trust me, I’m an expert on paranormal matters. That is definitely a haunted house, and the only way for us to, uh, confront the angry spirits within is to spend the night inside!”
“You sure?” Oaky peered down the road and squinted. The dark shape of the derelict home was just barely visible through the dust and evening gloom. “It’s just an empty house, is all.”
“Absolutely sure,” Starlight said. She wrapped a foreleg each around Dash and Nutmeg’s shoulders, pulling them in close. “It’s the only way to put this mystery to rest.”
“Ain’t no mystery, just an empty—”
“Put the mystery to rest,” Starlight said again. Then, pulling Dash and Nutmeg around to face her, “Now, who’s ready for a sleepover?”
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This story never fails to make my day every single time I see it's updated, and it's only gone and done it again. Really looking forwards to finally seeing Starlight's """secret mission""" next chapter.
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Rainbow really has embraced her new career / hobby as an iceberg wrangler.
Let's see where things go with the possibly haunted house and everything!
"pony Brazil nuts" seems you missed a placeholder?
It’s great to see this story continuing! Nice chapter which great interactions between Rainbow and Starlight!
Dash is so cute in this, every time. This story just makes me happy. Thanks, Gardez, for a wonderful Christmas gift to the site!
Always brings me a bit of joy seeing a new update on this fic.
So! Shall we go see just how haunted this house really is?
10001089
No, that's their actual name.
10001432
cdn-img.fimfiction.net/user/js93-1451914572-866-128
How many chapters long will this story be?
>pony Brazil nuts
Waxed and smooooooth.
First off let me say it wonderful update I enjoyed it thoroughly. Second could you imagine Rainbow Dash eventually getting her own sky ship could you just see her friends reactions? and finally I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year and I look forward to Future updates
Well now I'm even more curious as to what Starlight is up to. Usually it's the locals who insist a house is haunted and visitors who disbelieve.
I think the problem is actually gonna involve the Buffalo, with that throwaway comment. Are we getting an Appleoosa rerun perhaps?
10001910
I personally think Starlight has been talking to Rarity too much and has a case of the shipping goggles.
10000870
I can think of one huge, practically titanic exception.
Not to be confused with the "Equestrian Inheritance Exception Investigation Organisation", the governing body assigned to resolve inheritance issues with Earth Ponies' vast familial networks before they became bitter internecine feuds.
The organisation rose to international prominence after successfully resolving the infamous inheritance case of Greenleaf MacDonald, mechanised farming magnate and barnyard rights activist, and his numerous bastard offspring. Due to Greenleaf's proclivities as a handsome, well travelled play-colt, it was quickly discovered that along with his dozens of Equestrian offspring, Greenleaf also managed to sire yak, diamond dog, donkey, zebra, buffalo and changeling progeny as well. With tensions rising and an international incident looming over the distribution of Greenleaf's estate, HSH Twilight ordered the organisation to resolve the brewing crisis as quickly and Harmoniously as possible.
It took 2 teams of auditors working 24/7 nearly 3 months to innumerate and catalogue all MacDonald's holdings, but in the end they were able to affect a fair and just deal that satisfied all parties involved. Princess Twilight herself awarded the teams with Equestria's highest civilian decoration, the Friendship Star of the Crystal Heart with Golden Suns and Silver Moons.
The organisation's accomplishments were shortly thereafter immortalised in a popular tavern refrain.
Ruh-roh, Rutmeg.
10020147
Someone gets it :)
10000844
Well, icebergs do make everything nearby...
(Wait for it...)
20% cooler.
What a conveniently loomy edifice.
10020611
If you shout enough at the internet, the internet shouts back or something. And happy new year!
I used to flat-out dislike Starlight, but as a fanfic character, she's friggin' gold.
Also, can I just say how endlessly amused I am at "Pony Brazil" and the like whenever it comes up in your work? It's one big "screw this, I'm not playing this game" every time it happens, and I love the audacity.
Rainbow just says it like it is, don't she? She really should have been Honestly lol
Nothing can go wrong in a sleepover