Perils of a Merpony: A Ponies after People Tale

by kitten_girl86

August 2nd & 3rd 2015 ~PAGE RECOVERY 1101001

A wrung-out Kathryn stormed into the common room, not unlike the hurricane-like storm that raged outside, every inch of her furred body, mane and tail were soaked to the skin and made her look like she just came out of an unwanted shower.... because really, that is kinda what just happened!

As she used one of Sarah's emergency towels and put a pot of water on the stove for tea/coffee, Kathryn reflected that it had not been all about her misery. She watched as Griz helped an exhausted Jazz to reach the couch, covering first in towels and laying more on top of the shivering pegasus. In fact, she should be thrilled at what occurred that day... happy for her dear friend, Jazz.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The day had started out the same as most other days. Kathryn awoke in her RV bed, curled up with Raea; but today, she also woke with Jazz snoring away on the spare bed.

During the night, Jazz had been acting not-like-herself and no one could explain why; not even her. She had finally fallen asleep around 1 am but still woke confused and fidgety. She could barely sit still long enough to preen her wings back into place before dashing out the door and taking flight. Kathryn tried to run after her but by the time she untangled herself from the blankets and Raea, Jazz was already a speck in the distance to Kathryn.

Jazz arrived back late for breakfast with horrible news: a hurricane was coming their way! Having grown up in Key West, Jazz had seen her fair share of them growing up; Griz & Dr Jamie as well; Patrick had been down in Florida once prior for training and witnessed the devastation but this was Kathryn's & Sarah's first ever and the idea terrified them. They had seen one previously but it had stayed WAY out to sea and it was very weak. This one, Jazz knew it was going to be bad.

Jazz, seeing their fear, understood completely. "Patrick, you and Sarah need to go secure Bermareda Circle and relocate the ship to further inland; just find a river going northwest and go as far as you can, grab a new car for the drive back. Griz, you need to secure the animals, plus Max & Millie inside their building; explain the situation to them and leave lots of food & water. Dr Jamie & I will go harvest whatever I can from the orchard & fields; there's a risk we might loose them all. Kathryn, you and Raea say here and start rolling down all of the storm windows and doors you can reach; when I get done, I'll join you." Kathryn was too stunned to argue the usurp of her leadership; the others broke off, all but Kathryn forgetting about dishes. In light of the situation, she looked at the pile, and trotted away.

Griz screeched to a stop on her way to her room. "Hey, Kathryn, you also need to hitch up your RV and move it into the delivery bay if you still want to keep it!" The words were barely out of her beak as Kathryn grabbed her truck keys from the counter top and bolted outside, Raea on her heels [still hadn't figured out if hooves have heels but she kept the saying anyway].

A couple hours of harvesting and storing later, Jazz managed to get back to U1 to help Kathryn with the storm windows and doors while Dr Jamie went inside to relocate the computers' stuff (and his own personal belongings) to an upstairs office. Geez, this school was really built with storm preparation in mind! Jazz thought to herself as she flew up to close the windows of the second story via the balcony. The storm doors & window covers were steel garage-style doors that rolled up on the outside so to protect the windows inside; even the delivery door had two sets: inner normal white panel ones to match the rest of the building and the outer steel doors. An earlier inspection of the campus proved that all of the buildings had similar set ups and so she knew Griz would do the same for the animal buildings; she only really worried about flooding. Finishing with the last of the windows, she made a mental note to ask Sarah to empty the poo pools when she got back.

Kathryn's RV was parked in the huge delivery bay, the door facing the hallway door, surrounded by a wall of sandbags she made up herself from the stock pile of sacks in the bay and a pile of sand from the construction site. She was so focused on making those sandbags that she had made far too many so Jazz & Griz started using the extras to protect the main front door of U1 and the animal's door. Griz had also dismantled the special gate system, solar panels and all, from the pasture fence and stored them in an upstairs conference room.

Patrick and Sarah's job took longer than either pony thought possible. The waves were already making swimming to make sure the home ships were secure, harvesting the water plants and piloting the BC surface ship farther north before finding a river big enough for the ship & going inland difficult. They ended up going nearly as far as Disney land, hoping that it would still be there when they came back for it. A very short trot later, they found another pick up truck and drove it back, using the hoof controls from the surface ship.

August 2nd, 2015; mid-afternoon-ish ~Sarah

Dear Journal,
We are as prepared as humanely? ponily? possible. Prepared for what? BETH. The first hurricane to come towards us since moving down here. No one else seemed to care about naming it so I did. That one we saw out at sea last month was Artemis; this one is named Beth.

We are all worried, of course. Patty & I were too afraid to stay in the ocean so he went and got us an inflatable kiddie pool for the common room.... not sure why we didn't think of that sooner for Movie Nights but whatever; Griz used the fire truck to pump it full of sea water. Kathy is in here with us, in her merpony form and cuddling with Patty while I lean out the side & use my lanyard stylus to type this entry. The water seems to help to keep us calmer; Raea is on the couch, curled up with Dr Jamie. Griz keeps pacing from the couch to the front door and back. Jazz is outside, following some kind of pegasus instinct to "push the worst of the hurricane away from the campus". I've no idea if she'll succeed but Griz keeps worrying and poking her beak outside to see if she can see Jazz. All she keeps doing is letting the wind and rain come in! =Sarah

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

August 2nd, 2015; evening ~Griz

Hey,
Jazz asked me to do the entry as to what just happened... she got her butt tattoo!

I could not sit still like Dr Jamie during the storm. The static electricity kept messing with some kind of bird compass inside my head. I had read about that before but never really understood it until I became a griffon.
So I had left the merponies in their little pool with Dr Jamie, Raea and Lil' Mac; I had gone outside to watch over Jazz. But what I saw was inexpiable.... I'll try to do my best.

Dipping, diving, hooves outstretched to the storm cell itself and making contact; she flew in the same direction of the storm, seeming to be putting pressure on the side that faced the campus so to push it back out to sea. The storm winds whipped around me, pulling feathers loose, and the sheets of rain falling nearly sideways. I could not hear anything beyond the wind... except for a tiny pegasus voice yelling and screaming at the storm; or so I thought.

Jazz says she was in her element; she was actually cheering and screaming with delight. She says the speed was nothing like she'd ever experienced before and she never felt the cold the entire time.

But here's the shocking bit.... she was actually doing it! She was actually moving the hurricane away from Campus City! Not by miles; inch by inch she was teasing it back out to the ocean.... at the very least, trying to keep it on the beach. She knew that we could rebuild Bermareda Circle much more easily than we could Campus City and so it was like she was taking it directly over BC and trying to keep it on the sand.

I have no idea when the others joined me; I was too entranced watching Jazz do her thing. My first indication was Patrick staring up at the sky, in a trance-like state, removing his wheels and launching into the air. I think I barely heard him say, "I can help her!" They spoke for a moment in the sky before breaking off and flying in opposite directions, still adding that bit of nudging on the campus side of the storm.

Sarah, Kathryn and Dr Jamie all slowly walked up to stand by me as we watched, totally not caring of the storm raging around us. Yes, even scared Kathryn & Sarah, who had never seen a hurricane in person (or pony) in her entire life, was now standing out in that raging storm, staring up at their two friends as they tried to save what we had built here.

I wasn't aware of it until Sarah pointed it out to me later, but the whole time we were watching them fly, I was clutching my mother's pendant in my claw, whispering every prayer I could make up on the spot and not taking my eyes off of the two specks in the clouds. I knew my wings twitched from time to time; especially when a bolt of lightning came dangerously close but we all felt rooted to the spot.

After what felt like forever but was actually only an hour, the storm tracked past the point of BC, stayed along the beach and just kept going north. Sarah & Patrick had stopped their teasing once they were sure that the storm had cleared a good stretch beyond BC. They came flying back in, against the wind & rain that kept falling; but it was far less on the tail-end of the storm. When they landed, Patrick stood to the back and let Sarah help him back into his wheels. Jazz was practically pounced by Dr Jamie and Kathryn. But when it came for my turn to hug her, I noticed something that the others missed: Jazz got a flank mark! It was the grey circular clouds of a hurricane underneath a simple red cross. The moment I pointed it out, Sarah, Kathryn & Jazz all squealed with glee and started hugging. When they broke off, the wondering began. "So what does it actually mean?" Sarah asked. "I'm not sure... I just remember a feeling of pride when Patrick & I saw that storm off... Pride in knowing how to be prepared and pride in being able to send it on its way, letting it take its course instead of dispersing it." "Emergency Weather Preparedness and Prevention," Kathryn said. The mark glowed as Jazz heard that and we all knew it to be true. We also quickly realized that Jazz's Hebie-jebies mood the day before was her early warning alarm for the incoming storm; something, we all knew, we'd be watching out for in the future!

Finally, the remains of the storm broke through our celebration and we had decided to return to U1 until the light of morning before assessing the damage. Sarah & Patrick could not wait to check on BC so they went down to the beach right away; Dr Jamie offered to check on the farm animals while I helped Jazz get back to the common room so she could rest. Kathryn offered to get a late supper ready and I took the chance to write this entry. Yeah, we made sure to dry off before too long and I got Jazz bundled in blankets while Kathryn put on the kettle.

I just really hope we don't have too many of those storms to deal with in the future. I'm worried that Jazz might have expended too much of herself in that storm and she might suffer the same illness that happened to Kathryn and Sarah. I vow to keep an eye on the stubborn pegasus tonight. =Griz

August 3rd, 2015 - Late evening ~Kathryn

Dear Diary,
We didn't loose a single building in either Campus City OR Bermareda Circle! Beth left us one heck of a clean up but thankfully everything relatively intact, building-wise. We lost a few trees in the orchard and the farm field is completely flooded but for the most part, we got lucky thanks to Jazz.

But it was thanks to Griz staying up most of the night, we knew when Jazz got sick, just like it was with me and Sarah. Except this time, her wings would not stay folded. They'd flap out of sync and she'd loose her footing, falling on her face. Other than that, she was completely aware of everything. It was like she had lost control of her wings despite still being able to fly. It finally got to a point that Dr Jamie pulled out some old leather belts and while Patrick held the wings folded manually, he belted the wings to her body just to give her some peace. The wings flapping erratically had prevented Jazz from being able to sleep so by belting her wings, it had a calming effect on her. I gave her some chamomile tea I had been saving for this kind of occasion, she had fallen asleep easily; Griz not too far behind. I had left Raea & Lil' Mac with them while we had taken Millie & Max for an investigation of the damage.

Sarah reported that there was little to no damage to Bermareda Circle beyond the loss of the underwater farm plots, half of the kelp forest (which we knew would grow back in a month) and one buoy cable on the cement truck. She reported that even her shield spell was still holding despite the loss of the chain, which Patrick had already replaced during their inspection last night. She could not say the same for the emergency life guard tower we kept intact when we built the marina.... completely destroyed.

The worst of the damage on campus came in the form of lost paddock fencing (whole dang thing blown away) and downed trees & other debris (roofing tiles from homes and lawn furniture, for the most part). Priorities are being focused on restoring the paddock fencing, cleaning the orchard and restoring the farm field as best we can. We'll start tomorrow, hopeful that Jazz will have recovered. =Kathryn

Supplemental, around midnight

Patrick drove up to check on the BC surface ship and he radioed back that she was in perfect condition. Jazz had done so well at diverting the storm, it had never reached that far north. He said he'd spend the night up there and pilot the ship home tomorrow morning. More great news!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

ERROR 110000101010101110 ERROR 110000101010101110 ERROR 110000101010101110
COMPUTER ERROR 0010101110 POWER SERGE 010111101010001 AUG4.2015.0034 POWER PROTECT 00001 AUG4.2015.0035 POWER RESTORE 00010 AUG4.2015.0036
..........
..........
..........
ERROR 001001001
/POWER RESTORE 00011
.........
.........
POWER RESTORED 00011
........
FILE RECOVERY 001
.......
ERROR 001
/SHUT DOWN AUG4.2015.2231
.......
.......
LOG ON COMPLETE AUG5.2015.0742
FILE RECOVERY 010
.......
......
FILE RECOVER SUCCESSFUL 010
......
FILE RECOVERY RESTORED AUG5.2015.0953

Author's Note:

After recently watching the news about the hurricane seasons down in Florida, I quickly realized I had seriously overlooked a very important aspect of living down there and it also gave me the opportunity to complete something I had been planning on for a while now: Jazz's cutie mark !

I am dedicating this chapter to all of those effected by Hurricane Irma. #FloridaStrong

Comments

[Starscribe]

I had not really any new ideas until this came to me. Writer's block, I guess. And that continues with the vagueness of the writing so please do not pester me about the style of writing in this one. There will be a Part Two when I can get around to it.

Probably not. What most writers call "writer's block" through lack of experience more often boils down to not having a plan. I think you've experienced this yourself, given how quickly you used to update. Earlier in your story, you had a definite goal in mind for the story, that seemed rather clear. Setting up your undersea city was very clearly your goal, and that's good! It gave you direction and purpose in your writing, because you were moving towards a specific project.

Lots of people see writing as some kind of mythical endevor, where there's a magical unicorn of inspiration that lands on our word documents and bestows us with brilliance. This unicorn exists, but the reality of the craft is that it isn't around most of the time. I think that unicorn landed and gave you the (great by the way) idea for this chapter. But you don't need to wait for that selfish bastard to write, you can write all the time and never get stuck like this.

I mean, if you want to. Writing is just a hobby for many people, and it's not wrong not to treat it more seriously if that isn't what you want.

But if it is, I would suggest making a plan. Figure out where you see your story ending. If you have an endpoint in mind, that alone might very well be the impetus you need to give guidance to your ideas and ensure you finish your story. Look around you on fimfiction and you'll see many writers here do not have that impetus. The vast majority of stories posted here die unfinished because their creators didn't know where they were going.

Planning in more detail can help too-- some authors like to plot out the whole story, and write things down in enormous detail (Brandon Sanderson and JK Rowling are two popular writers like this). You don't need to if you don't want to... but just planing the ending will do so much for making all the dots connect in your mind that you won't believe how much it improves things. It's all the planning I've done for many of my stories, including LPoE. Just having that ending can be what drives you forward.

[Starlight Nova]

Did you make that cover art yourself?

[Crescent Nebula]

quite confused why she is going to miami when she could go to new york would be lot more easy

[kitten_girl86]

8046644 Yes I did... on Paint program

[kitten_girl86]

8046722 have you ever watched the weather stories about New York City? it's like, -10F all winter and that's just the air... imagine the water?! I decided that these merponies would not be polar bears and that they needed warmer waters lol

[Remi89]

This story has been interesting and kept me enraptured to it, not being able to set the story aside, so I'm really looking forward to the next one~

[kitten_girl86]

8317073
I'm very pleased to hear that you love the story. Unfortunately, I am very quite busy for the next two weeks so there won't be an update any time soon.

[Remi89]

8318381
That's fine, real life takes priority~ Anyways, your picture links seem to be broken, just to let you know~

[kitten_girl86]

8318424
Yes, I am aware of the photo problems... Photobucket is trying to suck money out of me. I think I found a solution for the dividers but the character photos will have to wait a while

[Remi89]

8318633
^^ Oh well~