The Lighthouse

by Botched Lobotomy

In Which Mermaids are Hunted

“Fluttershy.

“Fluttershy.”

“...”

“Fluttershy.”

“Mmmwha?”

“Wake up!”

Sudden, blinding cold. Wind whistled between her bones as the covers were whisked away. Fluttershy let out a gasp, a great crack of thunder shaking the floor. Outlined in the lightning forking down outside, streaming ragged and flashing through the open door, Applejack grinned.

“We’re goin’ mermaid hunting.”

Fluttershy whimpered. Applejack’s seven golden teeth glinted in the night. Somewhere, deep in the storm, a crow cackled.

*

Rain pounded down like the hoof of Celestia as Fluttershy trudged through the muck. Her mane plastered wetly across her face, mercifully stuck against the raging wind. Her hooves were barely hers, so deadened were they, as she dragged the awful weight of the boat along the shore. Each step was a titanic effort, her hooves sinking further and further into the ground with every pace, rain lashing backways and sideways and everywhichways as she struggled to push against the very air itself.

“Aye, just over there.” Applejack stood, a shadow cut against the sky, resplendent, upon a rock. Her one good eye burned in agony of passion, gazing out across the broiling ocean with a fury matched only by that of the sea. Fluttershy just wished she’d help with the boat.

As the lightning split the clouds behind her, Applejack hopped down. Her terrible stare turned upon the craft, and a smile spread across her face.

“Get the shovels.”

“Huh?”

Applejack spun to face her, all the power of the vast and seething depths blazing in her soul as the wind tore the words from her throat. “The shovels, Fluttershy! Get the shovels!”

Fluttershy hurried to get the shovels.

*

Waves rolled under them unknowably, black and treacherous as midnight. Down a thousand fathoms deep stretched the ocean, and their little boat clung to the top of it like a tick. Clouds reeled in fantastic whorls, incomprehensibly huge, as the tiny craft rode wave after wave, climbing those inky mountains so slowly, so frightfully slowly, before plunging down drops fourteen lighthouses tall into the creases on the face of the deep.

“Row!” cried its captain, her voice as violent and bruised as the waves. “Row, damn you!” Fluttershy, damn her, pulled on the oars with all that she had, digging the wood into the void and yanking upon its stony depths. Rain pelted the sea, the boat, the ponies, utterly forgotten amidst the ancient sworls that reared up around them.

Applejack leaned out over the prow, hoof sheltering her eye, as she scanned the horizon for signs. A wave rose up before them, the largest yet, and she barely moved an inch as they scaled its great swell, gazing into that wall of water with an intensity the tide could not match.

Climbing, climbing, almost vertical, Fluttershy pulling desperately against the oars as they raced for the precipice, the sky opening out before them in its infinite expanse. For a moment, all was visible: a million miles of roaring waves, each great monster to the eye but a pinprick, falling away from them all the way to forever. They hung there, the universe still and silent, for an instant, a century, a millennium, before the ocean reasserted its awesome power, and they plunged into the vast abyss.

Like a raindrop from the heavens they sped down the cliff, skipping over the furious surface, a stone on a lake. Faster, faster, until suddenly—

“There!” roared Applejack, quite as loud as any breaker, and Fluttershy looked up to see her pointing at something, nothing, a speck in the distance. “Dead ahead! Stay yer course!”

Fluttershy dug into the sea once again, as if she had any control over their path at all, and every muscle she had strained against it as they kept surging forward. The shovels rattled ominously along the floor.

*

“We’re here,” announced Applejack, with no small glee. Fluttershy looked around. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost an oar, the pole spinning off into infinity like a twig, and had been switching from one side to the other ever since.

“Where,” panted Fluttershy, her first words since shore, “on earth is here?”

Applejack grinned. “Does this look like earth to you, missy?” Indeed, everywhere she looked, the hills were made of water. “This is the sea. And here...here be mermaids.”

The boat lifted on a swell, dipping and diving as the tremendous void of the ocean passed beneath it.

“M-mermaids?” asked Fluttershy.

“Aye,” said Applejack grimly. “Mermaids.”

Something bumped against the boat.

Teeth gleaming, mane wild, eyepatch pulled tight around her head, Applejack smiled. “Right on time.” She stooped, tossing a shovel to Fluttershy. Fluttershy failed to catch it. By the time she’d wobbled to her hooves, shovel clamped tight in her mouth, Applejack was leaning over the prow again, eyes a-searching.

The wind howled. The rain lashed. The sea thundered. Moments passed. Then—

“Gotcher!” Applejack lunged. Her shovel swung for the ocean. There was a very definite clang as it connected with something, and the mare gave a triumphant whoop. “Little devils!”

Trembling, though she knew not what with, Fluttershy peered over the edge of the boat. The shovel weighed heavy in her mouth, a thousand times heavier than it had been on shore. She scanned the billowing fabric of the ocean, unsure of what, exactly, she was looking for. Just as the weight of the shovel tugged at her neck, and she was sure any moment she would fall from her perch into the raw oblivion below, there was a movement. A flash of colour in the darkness. A point against eternity. There, and then gone.

“Take that, ye wee bastard!” came the cry from behind, followed by a dull bong, as Applejack hit another of the things in the water.

Fluttershy searched the rolling, twisting, heaving curtain. There! Another flash, red against the black, surfacing for a moment, and gone. Fluttershy was sure it had been a face. Immediately after, a flicker of scales broke the surface. “Merponies,” she breathed around the shovel. Behind, Applejack jabbed out again.

The sea rose and fell like a creature living, like a country, like a dynasty. Fluttershy watched carefully for any colour, any faces, any scales, anything that broke the vast undulation of the deep. Her bones ached. Her teeth hurt. The air was so full of pressure she worried her ears might implode. Yet still, she searched.

In an instant, a face broke the water. Yellow. Smiling. “Heyhowarey—”

Fluttershy squealed, and brought the shovel down hard upon its head. A good, solid whack. Smack! the creature disappeared below the surface. Fluttershy may have screamed, but if she did, it was lost among the rumblings.

“Aye, there ye go!” Applejack laughed, swinging wildly at the waves beneath. After a moment, she tilted back and turned to Fluttershy. “Well don’t just sit there. There be plenty o’ mermaids abound!”

Feeling vaguely sick, Fluttershy looked back into the blackness. She stared long and hard at that fathomless expanse, that ill-tempered mistress called sea, and in the boat all else seemed to fade away. Her place seemed set, fixed, formless. Her destiny wild and laid out. She saw a thousand years and a thousand more pass by like minnows in those waves, eternity holding out its hoof to be taken. Fluttershy didn’t know if she had accepted.

Her strokes were timid and fierce, vicious and shy, aimless and calculated. She beat at the water with a desperate energy, again and again and again until her jaws could barely hold the shovel any more.

In all, she hit two more merponies that night.

*

Consciousness ebbed in and out distrustfully. Applejack sat opposite, dragging back against the waves. Fluttershy thought for a moment she saw a profound cliff falling away behind her, as if they were cresting a particularly large colossus, but that couldn’t be right, because the ride felt so very gentle. Closing her eyes again, Fluttershy didn’t even notice that they had somewhere lost the other oar, and Applejack, strange and wild as the sea, was pulling on their two shovels to row.

*

Shore beckoned. Fluttershy limped out the boat only vaguely, and was glad beyond words to feel firm earth underhoof. They left the dinghy on shore, as the tide was pulling away, and Fluttershy followed, every joint and limb as numb as the depths, as Applejack led the way back up to the lighthouse. As soon as it opened, Fluttershy was upon her sheet in an instant. Miraculously, it was still dark.

She heard the wide click of the door being locked, and Applejack’s groan as she settled down across from her. Wind hissed at the stonework.

“Applejack,” she said softly, half-hoping the mare wouldn’t hear, “why did we do that, tonight?”

“Well,” Applejack replied, her voice as full of wisdom as the sea, “it’ll help the redcurrents, see?”

Fluttershy stared, seeing nothing before her but the sheer, undefined blank at her nose. “Okay,” she whispered, and drifted off to sleep.

“Aye,” said Applejack, settling her hooves comfortably behind her head. “We’ll have some nice juicy berries come spring.”

Comments

[Venerable Ro]

Well alright then.

[Celefin]

..........................?
Enjoy those berries. There is wisdom here somewhere, I just know it.