New Beginnings: Bluebelle

by Bloobweez

Nightmares: Breathing Underwater

Gut instinct taking over what little logic you were using before, you flailed your limbs and cried out, "Shit!" You were only able to manage the short yelp before all of your senses were dulled with a splash. Where you had set camp, you could occasionally feel your hooves kicking the bottom of the stream as you did your best doggy paddle to stay afloat. Here, however, you were completely submerged and with nothing solid to actually touch. Hesitating for a moment, you steeled your nerves enough to open your eyes while still underwater, something that had taken you a bit of an embarrassing amount of time to feel confident to do as a human and yet you were already doing it at 6 as a pony... Now was probably a bad time to be looking for how much faster things were going as a pony.

Speaking of faster, as you looked around you were certain this was moving a lot faster than the simple stream you had made camp at. That could either be a good thing in that you wouldn't have to stay in the river as long to reach the camp, or a bad thing in that you were moving that much faster away from the camp. You were hoping it was the former and not the latter... Continuing to use what little sight you had, you tried to find something to grab onto. The root of a tree? A generally welcoming looking rock? No such luck, all you could see were blurry shadows. Okay, okay, what exactly were you supposed to do when falling in a river, dad had gone over that at some point, right? Thinking back you were pretty sure you were supposed to be wearing a life jacket when you fell in, fucking thanks Equestria. Or whoever didn't account for a filly running off on her own and falling into a river. Or your stomach. But not you! You were faultless!

Fuck, your lungs were screaming at you now. Okay, so, if you didn't have a flotation device... Go spread eagle! You could float for days with hardly any effort as a human in the pool, perhaps the same principle applied? Channelling your inner 2009, you made yourself as stiff and straight as a board as you could, and shortly after found yourself bobbing upwards. You gasped for air and quickly bobbed back under the water before replanking and bobbing up again. Taking the breathing thing slow this time, you looked glanced around to try to get a bearing on your surroundings. To each side was a pretty steep wall so your hopes of being able to just drift to shore and walk it off had been crushed. You risked lifting your head slightly to see what was ahead and could only see the river you were in and the walls. Luckily this wasn't going too fast... For now. As you tried to look behind you, you started to flail a bit and suddenly remembered, D'oh, you've got wings stupid! Stretching them both out, you found you had a bit more buoyancy and so felt safer with looking around more.

Unfortunately there wasn't much else to see from here and stargazing was getting kind of boring. "Hey wait a second. I'm a fucking kid," you said aloud before calling out, "Heeeelp! Anypony? I'm in the river!" You paused and waited for your savior to suddenly show up atop one of the walls as though they were standing right there waiting for your call to save you, but none showed. Okay well, there was no reason to kill your throat all at once, just give it a bit and call out again. It seemed like a decent plan, eventually you would either arrive at camp or somewhere out of the woods... Okay maybe arriving out of the woods alone as a filly might not be the best idea, especially since your best reference point for getting back to where you were was "The woods around Hayton," and fuck going back to that place. You also started wondering about another possibility, if the river could slow down, couldn't it also speed up?

Fuck fuck shit fear is the mind-killer fear is the mind-killer fear is the min- okay your mind is officially the killdest. Your concentration broken, you start flailing a bit, and while you're fortunate in that the river seems to be keeping you above water for the time being, you frantically start screaming, "Help! Help! Please, somebody, anybody, help! Help! Heeeeeeeelp!" Your panic betrays you and you find yourself submerged once again, and somehow your flailing gets your head back above the water just long enough to fill your lungs before you go down again. Still you continue to flail, trying desperately to make your way back up to the top, and as you do you find your breath is lasting nowhere near as long as it did earlier. This doesn't help your state of affairs as you double down on trying to make your way back up, if you could just get another gasp of air you might be okay, you might be fine, and yet you're finding yourself fall short of the surface with each and every kick you give. Unable to breach the water, you close your eyes tight, despite being completely surrounded by water you can still feel the tears as you lament your own demise. Despite having a second chance at life, you'd managed to throw it away faster than you did the first. Did ponies have a Heaven or Hell? You weren't sure, but as you began to think on your life, you weren't too sure which you would end up in. Does God or Celestia or whoever look at your life as a whole, or do they instead look at the person you were at the moment of your demise? You never considered yourself a Christian before, but you still followed the rules generally, and you hadn't exactly been 'loving loving thy neighbor as thyself' the past couple of hours...

You distantly heard a crash in the water and thought perhaps maybe you would be crushed against some rocks, saved the shitty death of drowning. Would you be worthy of at least that mercy? You weren't sure, and before you could truly find out for yourself, you felt yourself being lifted. As you breached the water, you felt as though this was like what being born was. You struggled to actually draw air into your lungs as you spat up some water that had somehow made its way into your throat. As you looked up at the night sky, you had to wonder if you were in fact seeing the world through your own eyes, or those of another. Maybe you had died and were instantly born again. You hoped it wasn't in the Middle East.

After a moment, the sky started to get more distant until finally you felt yourself on solid ground, cushioned by a thick layer of grass. It was fairly comfortable and almost made you forget that you were pretty close to drowning a minute ago... Wait, shit, even more important, that you weren't drowning right now! You quickly sat up and were rewarded with coughing up some more water which you spat off to the side, and looking up to thank your rescuer, you found... "Cotton!?"

Cotton didn't seem to have time for your shit right now, however, as he was staring at his flank for some reason that you couldn't quite make out from this angle.

"Cotton, what are you doing here... What are you looking at?" you asked, perplexed. He wasn't exactly the last pony you expected to see right now, but he was pretty low on the list.

As though finally noticing you were there, he turned his attention to you with a grin on his face and when he turned his body to the side, you saw it. He had a cutiemark! Right there on his white flank was cross in a seashell with wings coming out the side of it!... You didn't quite understand what the fuck it meant.

"Errr, Cotton. It's great you got your cutiemark and all, but uhhh, what is it?"

"I got it for saving you!" he blurted out, not exactly answering your question before squeeing and hopping around.

You tilted your head a bit as you tried to study it with him constantly moving, the more you looked at it the more familiar it looked. It sort of looked like a medal they'd give someone in the Air Force. You adopted a face of intense thought as you continued thinking before finally a lightbulb went off in your head, "The Guardian!"

Now it was Cotton's turn to look confused, "Huh?"

"Cotton, you're a rescue diver!" you blurted out, and at his continued confusion you rolled your eyes, "Coast Guard people, the ones who hop out of helicopters to save people from sinking ships and shit."

"Oooooooh," was his only response as you could tell he still wasn't using his brain and desperately wanted to go back to jumping around with glee.

Rolling your eyes, you decided "Okay, finish your celebration." After another five circles he finally stopped, sat in front of you, and picked you up in a hug, "Whoa now horesie! Still a filly here, okay?!"

His eyes went wide with horror as he quickly sat you down and scooted back, then averted his gaze, "S-Sorry, Blue..."

With a groan and a pout, you stared off to the side, "No, it's fine. You've earned yourself a hug." He squeed again and instantly shot over to hug you again, and you actually found yourself hugging him back, "So, why'd you come back for me? I gotta admit, I was kind of a dick to you."

Not letting you go, he bit his lip before responding, "Well, you only did that because I was teasing you, and, well... You were right last night. I didn't quite have the best history with my family growing up, and I was kind of jealous that you actually cared so much for yours that I, well... Kind of held a grudge."

"You hit on people you don't like?"

"Well, I mean, if the offer is op-"

"No."

He sighed and shrugged, finally releasing you from the hug, "I dunno, I'm not sure if I have it in me to actually fit in enough with the other ponies and actually find true love here... Lord knows I wasn't going to do it back on Earth." Turning away from you, his form sagged as he let out a second sigh of despair.

Moving closer to him, you rested a hoof on his shoulder, or well tried to he was still larger than you, "Hey man, listen. Think what all of them mares are gonna say when they see that you're a fucking rescue diver. Kevin fucking Costner was a rescue diver dude!"

"Who?"

"Kevin Costner?" you ask, and when failing to see any recognition on his face, "Dances with Wolves dude? God, you really missed out on Earth. Either way, rescue divers were balls to the wall insane, please tell me you remember that show Deadliest Catch?"

Not quite seeing where you were going with this, Cotton nodded his head a bit cautiously.

"When those ships on Deadliest Catch sank or the crew got knocked off, rescue divers would jump into the water and save those dudes, in that fucking weather." Seeing the awe come in to his expression, you knew he finally came to understand just what you were getting at. "The ladies love a man who's willing to put his life on the line, just you watch you're gonna be able to get a line of 'em all wanting to spend time with you." You felt like maybe you were laying it on a bit thick, but fuck it that's what you gotta do when a bro saves your life. You always gotta respect the bro code. Even when you're a girl horse.

A hooting sound broke the moment between you two however, as glancing upwards you realized just how late it was. When you looked to him, you saw him make the same conclusion as you. "We'd better get some woo-" he started before you could cut him off.

"Forget the wood, I'm sure they'll understand, let's just get back to the camp!"

Cotton fluttered up above the tree line, looking around before finally pouting upstream and calling down to you, "I see 'em!"

"Cool, let's go!" you called back and off the two of you went, you galloping along the ground and not getting distracted by fish, him flying with the resolve of a man who'd found his destiny.

"Oh my Celestia, what happened!" cried out Mom as the two of you came running up the bank.

Despite running the whole way there, you were still dripping wet and even with the fur it was really starting to get cold. You slowed your pace down trying to save the last bit of your energy so you could get close to the fire, your body gave out just within the ring of light it cast against the ground and Mom dragged you the rest of the way. She gave you a quick once over before grabbing a stick, lighting the tip of it, and flying up. You were a combination of too cold and too tired to see what exactly she was doing but within a couple of minutes all three of the adults were huddled around you and Cotton.

"Bluebelle, tell me, what happened!" Mom seemed a bit more demanding now that the whole party was here.

You sat up and pulled the blanket she'd given closer, "Well, we split up to get more firewood and, I uhhh, fell in the river."

"Wait, you split up?!" asked Fishie, and you could see a fire behind those eyes.

"Well, y-yeah?" you said, mentally preparing for an ass whooping. Looking over at Cotton, you could see him trying to put some distance between Flying and himself.

She instantly snapped her attention towards your gaze, "Cotton, was this your idea?"

"N-No!" he stammered out.

You quickly jumped in, "Yeah, no, it was my idea! Cotton saved me after I fell in though!"

Mom was the next to put her nose in your face, "Why did you want to split up?"

You stuttered as you tried to come up with an excuse beyond Cotton being jealous of your past life being better than his past life. With Mom inching closer and closer, eventually Cotton spoke up, "Because I told her she was adopted!" All eyes shot to Cotton, yours included, as he continued, "I saw her spending time with Mom and after seeing all of the attention she got the past two days, I felt a bit jealous. So I told her..."

As the gazes came back to you, you took a moment to appreciate the fact that you both seemed to be taking turns falling on each other's sword before speaking up, "And then I didn't want to believe it anymore so I ran off and got lost, and then well, I fell in the river and Cotton saved me."

The adults all shared a look before turning back to you two and Dad spoke up, "The two of you stay here while we go sort this out." With that they moved towards the tents, leaving the two of you to warm up by the fire.

"So where exactly did you get the adoption thing from?"

"Well, it's true, isn't it?"

You had to give him that, "You're lucky they didn't tell me already, otherwise there's no way this would work."

His response was a shrug, "Gotta do what you can."

You paused a moment and thought back a bit, "Hey, uhhh, Cotton... Would you mind if we expanded on this a bit?"

"Huh?" he responded with a raised eyebrow.

"Say that you've been telling me this for a while. Could excuse some previous hostilities and might help me with some other problems."

"Errr, sure?"

"Great, thanks. I'll owe you one."

"A letter to Celestia," he immediately shot back with a grin on his face.

"A what?"

"You owe Celestia a letter on what you learned about friendship this weekend."

"Oh my God no can you just let me go drown in the river again."

"Nope, it's either a letter to Celestia or I'm not admitting to having said this before."

Gritting your teeth, you looked back over at the parents who were now on their way back to you two. It would be really nice to not have Mom trying to interrogate you on the train ride home, but at the same time... Eugh, "God, fine!"

He smiled proudly at himself and you wondered if you could beat the adults to the river for a moment before finally Fishing spoke up, "Well, we've talked about it... Bluebelle, you're going to the doctor's Monday, and Cotton you're grounded for a week."

"Aww man!" he whined, kicking at the ground with a hoof before lying down.

"Wait a second, Cotton," Fishy started as she walked up to her adopted son, "Is that...?"

He looked up at her confused for a moment before following her gaze to his flank, "Oh, yeah, I got my cutiemark saving Blue from the river!"

Fishy lifted up Cotton in her hooves and hugged him close, "Oh my goodness I'm so proud of you!... You're still grounded, though."

Cotton harumphed and you all had a laugh at his expense. With everything cleared up, moods started to rise again and you all dug into the fish. You were pretty surprised by how well prepared it was considering everyone had hooves, almost as surprised by the fact you could eat fish! Unfortunately you weren't allowed to get up from around the fire, your parents not wanting you to risk getting sicker than you likely already were. When you assured them you felt fine, which now that the adrenaline had died down you really didn't, they said to consider it a punishment for running off rather than coming back. Your night came to a close during spooky story telling when you fell asleep by the fire in the middle of some story about a shadow pony or some such.

Author's Note:

Sorry that I've been getting more sparse with the updates, I've been doing, uhhh, honestly not much of anything besides work and nerd shit. But with how hot it's been getting, it's been a bit annoying to motivate myself to even really hop on the computer, much less do writing to finish my other story or even open up my log and paste it here. By the way we're close to the end of my backlog so updates will be even more sparse, I'm gonna try to do it once a week or once every other week, maybe even try to do less bigger updates if people would rather that, but yeah. That'll probably start in a week or two depending on circumstances.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

But, isn't Bluebelle the name of Rule 64 Prince Blueblood?

[Viper Pit]

well cotton got his mark nice

[Bloobweez]

9021389
Is it? I have no idea, it's just a name I came up with a while ago.

[The Watcher Face]

9022911
Yeah that’s Bluebloods r63 name. Also why is she going to the doctor is it? I’m slightly confused.

[Samellan]

9023665
She's getting sick from being in cold water and running wet.

[Jep_Pearl]

9022911
She neeeeeeeeds to be romance with blue blood pretty please with a cherry atop.

[Bloobweez]

9041762
I generally avoid using canon characters in pretty much anything I write when I can, so much so that I would have used a made up character to fill Luna's role had that not just been cheesy as heck. I mainly just don't like trying to write someone else's character and try to pass it off as my own thing, even if the original creator of said character has no complaints or even provides some assistance to help me write them. For reference, I based Star Light off of a friend's OC, both appearance and personality wise. And for the first four updates or so I constantly kept pestering them being like "Hey is this okay?" even though it's not actually the same character as their character.

So tl;dr, there'll be very rare appearances of canon characters, and when they show up it's going to be because they play a role in the setting that I can't justify hamfisting an OC into the setting to replace them.

[Jep_Pearl]

9041858
Awe ok that's fine.

[Synergy]

"Oh my God I'm so proud of you!... You're still grounded, though."
If Fishy isn't from Earth she should probably express being gobsmacked in another fashion, such as "oh sweet Celestia." Love seeing this story on FimFiction.

[Bloobweez]

9052401
Thanks for calling that out, I don't know if you've noticed but I've been trying to keep that in order though usually when I proof read stuff I mainly just look for misspelled words and the sort. Should be fixed now.

[Horse Girls Are Watching]

Huh... well the camping arc has been a fun ride so far.

I think one of my knee jerk desires is for the adults to get on Cotton for being so forward with relationships and telling her she needs to wait until she's older or something. I feel like if the adults are aware of it more, then Cotton will relax. But learning a sort of lesson here and coming to an understanding works too? Idk, I just really want that character to improve and their friendship to get better.

"Well, we've talked about it... Bluebelle, you're going to the doctor's Monday, and Cotton you're grounded for a week."

Filly therapy, here we go

[KvAT]

9021389
Ssssshhhhh...

[Munro]

they said to consider it a punishment for running off rather than coming back

i have to call bullshit on this one on the parrent. she tried to get back dangit -.-