Shore Leave
An unfamiliar emotion plagued Rainbow Dash’s heart as they cut the iceberg loose over the Great Ocean.
It wasn’t sadness – she knew sadness. It wasn’t regret either, though as a general rule she was not a pony given to feelings of regret, and she might’ve had some trouble pinpointing that particular emotion on a map. Also, she was pretty sure she didn’t have anything to regret, so that must not have been it.
But still, there was some vague sense of loss lurking in her breast as she and Nutmeg watched the iceberg drift off over the ocean. They’d been dragging it for days, and its briny scent still clung to the Orithyia and clogged her nostrils, and she imagined she’d be tasting it for days to come. Barely an hour had passed since they captured it outside Cloudsdale that she hadn’t wished it gone.
And yet, now that it was floating on its lonely way back over the ocean, she found herself already missing it. Without an iceberg, the Orithyia felt somehow less than whole. Detached from its purpose.
Melancholy. That was it. She was feeling melancholy.
“Kinda sad, watching it go,” Nutmeg said.
“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash waited on the railing as the iceberg shrank with distance. Clouds began to form around it as the warm, moist ocean air encountered its chilly surface, and soon enough the iceberg was lost in the mists. She wondered how long it would survive out there before melting.
“Well, I think we deserve a bit of a break after that,” Nutmeg said. He returned to the wheel and gave it a spin – the Orithyia whirled nimbly in response, its wings and fins twisting to grasp the air and stabilize the ship throughout the maneuver. The Orithyia was a cargo ship in the most technical sense of the term, but when detached from its cargo – a million tons of ice – it was faster and more graceful than any airship Rainbow Dash had ever seen. More like a living pegasus than a waddling construct of balloons and wood.
Rainbow Dash came up beside him. “Where to, then?”
“Cloudsdale. We’ll port there for a few days, grab some supplies, get a bit of rest. Sleep in a real bed, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds kinda nice.” Rainbow hadn’t slept in a real cloud bed in weeks. She’d tried using a wild cloud for a bed her first night on the Orithyia, but they froze too quickly around the icebergs, and there was nothing worse than sleeping on a frozen cloud.
Unencumbered by any icebergs, the Orithyia quickly gained speed. They reached Cloudsdale just before nightfall.
* * *
Cloudsdale was the same unruly ball of floating chaos that Rainbow Dash recalled from her childhood. Cloud neighborhoods orbited the core of the city, floating up or down according to the whims of their residents. Roads existed only in the most notional of sense of the word, with pegasi simply flying straight from origin to destination. The Equestrian Postal Service, as far as she knew, still went crazy when it had to deliver a package in Cloudsdale.
Pink was in this year, apparently. Everywhere she looked, Rainbow Dash saw pink. Pink clouds, pink streets, pink homes, pink waterfalls. Even at night the city glowed pink, its core and tendril neighborhoods shining like some wild creature from the undersea depths. Some holdouts retained their blues or greens and even a few vivid yellows, but for all intents and purposes the war was over. White is dead – long live pink.
Nutmeg docked at one of the public piers, and they spent the next hour securing the Orithyia to cloud moorings. Trash from their journey was collected, the ballast tanks emptied, and the old hydrogen swapped for fresher, lighter gas.
“So, how long are we staying?” asked Rainbow Dash as they swept the last of the trash into a pile on the deck.
“Three nights should be plenty. Did you want more?”
She shook her head. “Nah, Cloudsdale’s, like… eh. You know?”
“Uh…” Nutmeg tilted his head. “I guess?”
She nodded. “Yeah, exactly.”
“Right.” Nutmeg paused, frowned at something, then plowed ahead. “Anyway, I know a nice hotel in this district. Clean and cheap. Interested in splitting a room?”
A month ago, if a stallion had offered to split a hotel room with Rainbow Dash, she would have offered to split his lip in reply. Now, after weeks in the Orithyia and its non-negotiable close quarters, the question seemed silly. Of course they would share a room. Why would a pony need a room all of their own? So she nodded, and they set off into Cloudsdale, chatting all the way about their plans for wasting the money the past three weeks had earned them.
* * *
The Cumulus was not, in Dash’s eyes, the sort of hotel that screamed ‘cheap’ at prospective customers walking by. It had a doorpony and a bellhop. The lobby was four stories tall and lined with actual wood panels, enchanted to keep from falling through the clouds. Hallways on opposite sides of the lobby led to the indoor swimming pool and the attached bar/restaurant. The mare at the reception desk wore an embroidered vest with the hotel’s name on the breast.
She smiled as they approached. “Mr. Nutmeg, welcome back. How long will you be staying?”
“Three nights, Daisy,” he said. He slid a small plastic card across the counter. “Two adults, please.”
“Of course.” Daisy filled out a card with their information. “And we have a letter for your companion.”
Rainbow Dash blinked. “For me?”
“Yes, Miss Rainbow Dash, correct?” The receptionist slid a thin envelope across the desk toward her. “Every hotel in Cloudsdale has one, actually. Somepony is apparently very eager to contact you.”
A cold sweat broke out beneath Dash’s coat. An emergency? Was someone sick? Worse? Her hoof trembled as she tore the envelope open.
Dear Rainbow Dash,
I hope this letter finds you well. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but your library books are now one month overdue. I was unable to find them while searching your house, so I can only assume you took them with you when you joined that nice stallion with the airship.
Pursuant to Ponyville Civil Code section 24.3, I am hereby authorizing—
Rainbow lowered the letter with a laugh. Library books! To think, she’d been worried about library books. What a silly mare Twilight could be. Dash made a mental note to tease her for this obsession the next time she was in Ponyville.
“Er… is everything alright?” Nutmeg asked.
“Huh? Yeah, it’s just one of my friends. She’s a bit eccentric about stuff.” Dash tore the letter in half and tossed it in a nearby wastebin. “I’ll introduce you the next time we’re in Ponyville.”
Their room was on the first floor and they had no luggage to speak of, so they went directly to it. It was, as Nutmeg had promised, clean, with two cloud beds and tasteful prints of bucolic forest scenes hanging on the walls. The bathroom had the latest in cloud arcano-technology, with heated floors, hot and cold water, and a tame tornado in the shower stall.
She hopped onto the nearest bed and immediately rolled onto her back, wings splayed out to either side. A real cloud bed! She felt the aches in her spine and neck melting away. Never again, hammock! Never again!
“Comfy?” Nutmeg settled onto the other bed and began casually preening his wings. They didn’t really need the attention – Rainbow Dash had never seen him fly in their entire month together – but preening was a relaxing process that helped unwind the stresses of the day, so she didn’t begrudge him it.
“Yeah, totally.” She rolled over to face him. “Hey, you said this place was cheap. What gives?”
“There are much more expensive hotels in Cloudsdale, Miss Dash.” He spat out a tuft of down.
“Yeah, but, c’mon.” She waved a hoof around. “This ain’t a motel.”
He shrugged. “I’m a business owner who captains his own airship. I’ve managed my money well.”
“Huh.” Rainbow Dash chewed on her cheek. “So, wait, you’re, like, rich or something?”
“I like to think I’ve done well for myself.”
“Cool, that’s cool,” she said. “So do you, like, get mares chasing you for your money?”
He chuckled. “I try not to make a show of it, Miss Dash. That’s now how I was raised.”
“Yeah, me either.” She paused. “I mean, I guess we weren’t rich, period. But if we had been, I don’t think we’d have made a big deal out of it. Not like some ponies.”
“Oh? You know some big spenders?”
She rolled onto her back to stare up at the ceiling. “A few. Some families in Ponyville have more bits than they know what to do with, and they make sure you know it.”
“That’s how it goes with money.” He stretched his left wing out to its fullest extent, shook it to settle the feathers, and folded it against his side. Apparently satisfied with the result, he shifted his attention to his right wing next.
Rainbow Dash ruffled her own feathers and frowned at the rustle that emerged. Weeks on the Orithyia without access to the normal oils she used had slowly dried them out. Even with regular preening, she knew they would start to itch soon at night. Perhaps while they were in Cloudsdale she could buy a few vials of oil for the ship.
But that could wait. “I’m hungry,” she declared.
“Well, we’re in Cloudsdale. What do you want to eat?”
“You’re the captain. You decide.”
“Hm.” He nibbled on his feathers a bit more. The wait stretched out, and just as Rainbow Dash was about to voice her impatience he spoke again.
“Very well, I decree that we will eat at a nice little Neighponese shop I know nearby.”
Rainbow Dash consulted her inner gourmand and decided, after just a few seconds of thought, that Neighponese would do nicely.
“Great,” she said, hopping off the cloud and onto her hooves. “C’mon, let’s go. I’m buying.”
* * *
The Neighponese soup shop was like most of its kind, more of a stall that had slowly accumulated walls and a ceiling until, with the passage of time, it had grown into the nearby buildings. Ponies sat on stools before the long counter that lined the front of the shop, behind which a cheerful orchid-colored mare ladled soup into steep ceramic bowls for her customers. In the back, clamoring among the steaming vats and sheets of noodles laid out to dry, a small-ish stallion chopped and diced and shredded every imaginable ingredient on his cutting boards, while on his back a tiny colt clung to his mane and watched, wide-eyed, all full of silence and intent.
Rainbow Dash and Nutmeg waited until two adjacent seats were open and squeezed into them before anypony else could steal them. Before they had even settled their wings, the hostess dropped a pair of steaming-hot teacups in front of them, along with two menus.
“So, what’s good here?” Dash asked. She wiped her hooves with the hot towel waiting on the counter for them.
“I like the seaweed and egg with rice noodles,” Nutmeg said. “You can get it with fish if you want.”
“Eh.” Fish was more of a coastal pegasus thing, out the way of Typhoon or Cataract. “Sounds good. No fish, though.”
“Very well.” Nutmeg returned their menus along with their order. “Nothing to drink?”
“This’ll do.” Dash tapped the teacup with her hoof.
Nutmeg nodded and raised his own glass for a sip. For a long moment they were silent, content to watch the chaos behind the counter or listen to the busy street behind them. The sun had set hours before, and the cloudlights cast shifting, soft shadows as they orbited slowly overhead.
“So, you’ve been on the Orithyia almost a month now.” Nutmeg said. “How’s it feel?”
“The icebergs are pretty cool. I don’t think I’ll ever get bored with them.” She took a sip from her own tea. It was green tea, and tasted like sweet grass. “No pirates yet, though. I thought there’d be more pirates.”
“There are a few,” Nutmeg said. He frowned as he spoke, and stared down into his tea. “Raiders, really. Gryphon criminals and the like. They lurk past the borders, in the rim. Once I found an iceberg that drifted in from the north. There was an odd shape buried within, like an occlusion in a gemstone, and when the iceberg began to melt it gave up the ruins of an ancient airship, crewed with corpses, armed with spears and swords and hooks.”
“Whoa,” Rainbow Dash breathed. “Cool!”
He snorted. “Sure, cool. And sometimes I’ve seen unflagged ships, sailing out west near the Great Ocean. Rangey things, loose and built for speed. They run without lights, with baffles on their wingtips to silence their wakes. But they could never catch the Orithyia, and I never took the opportunity to meet with them.”
“Aw!” Rainbow smacked a hoof on the counter. “You shoulda fought them! Smash their ships and bring them back in chains!”
Their soups chose that moment to arrive. They both smiled at the hostess and took a quick, polite slurp from the broth before returning to the topic of pirates.
“I’m just one pegasus, Miss Dash, and the Orithyia is everything to me. Why risk her fighting pirates when there are icebergs to be hunted?”
“Duh? Because!” Dash scooped up a chunk of seaweed with her spoon and slurped it down. “They’re pirates! Somepony needs to stop them!”
“Perhaps, perhaps. But isn’t that what the royal navy is for?
“Eh, maybe.” Dash set her spoon down and picked up the bowl with both hooves to drink the last of the broth. “Why should they get to have all the fun, though?”
“I think they would dispute that fact with you,” he said. “But, hopefully, we’ll never get to find out.”
He forgot to knock on the wood counter as he spoke. Perhaps that is why, a week later, Rainbow Dash finally got her wish.
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6765614
The pawns are tiny Twilight Sparkles who are promoted to Alicorn status when they reach the last rank.
Man, I love Cloudsdale, and you've done well with it in the brief time we're (presumably) going to be seeing it. Twilight's increasingly histrionic reaction over the library books is hilarious.
Twist: Dash is a wanted criminal by royal decree of Her Highness Princess Twilight Sparkle. She IS the pirate!
Best. Line. Ever!
Also we got the second confirmation that Nutmeg is not flying anywhere. I'll be sad if this is merely a red herring... Anyway, I wonder how he gets around Cloudsdale though?
I've got the feeling Rainbow should have really read the rest of that letter... Man, she's gonna be in trouble when she gets back, isn't she?
I'm really liking this. Airships are pretty darn cool.
I do like the idea of Cloudsdale as just constant, ever changing chaos. Discord probably loves the place.
Shesh, Twilight, calm down a little. Dash better watch out the next time she's in Ponyville, who knows what Twi might do. Also, I have a feeling that Dash should have finished reading that letter.
Typhoon? Cataract? I want to know more.
It's pirate time!
I should make a list of running gags. So far, there appears to be:
Broken Table
Twilight, Princess of Overdue Books
Rainbow gets stircrazy.
I really regret I can only "like" this thing once.
Loved your description of Cloudsdale! Also, I'm getting curious about Nutmeg. It's not a name you'd associate with iceberg wrangling, and his flightlessness is intriguing.
Is that supposed to be a jarring reminder that equestria is not earth, or am I being stupid?
6790843
I took the implication to be that old hydrogen has mixed with air due to inevitable imperfections in the envelope. In other words, both old and new gas are hydrogen, the new stuff is just pure -- "fresher".
H E R E S Y