Wet Behind The Ears

by Casketbase77

Epilogue: Bold As Bass

Sunny Starscout stood on the beach, forehead sweating with concentration as she levitated another piece of old newspaper. After her magic made a few fumbling folds, she set the toy boat adrift in the shallows.

"Ooh, that one's looking really good!" Izzy was sitting in the sand on her haunches, using hooves and horn together to fold her own boat.

"Still rough and clumsy though," Sunny admitted. A week had passed since the return of magic, but her skill with it wasn't really improving. She could only lift the lightest objects, and she certainly couldn't cast spells. Sailing paper boats together had been Izzy's idea. An informal test to see if a happier Sunny was a more magical Sunny. Right now, the poorly folded paper boat was listing to one side, taking in water and slowly sinking. Izzy piped up again when she noticed Sunny's horn sputter like a dying candle flame.

"Uhh... hey! We don't hafta stick to just boats, ya know. There's lots of other things to do on the beach." She glanced around, but aside from the two discouraged friends and their stack of scavenged newspaper, the sand was empty and deserted.

"It's okay Iz," Sunny assured. "I'll just make a replacement one." She almost added 'what's one more thing lost to the bottom of the bay?', but instead she chuffed to clear her mopey mind, levitating another paper and flashing what she hoped was a convincing smile.

"Skipping rocks!" Izzy blurted. "Throwing is waaaay easier than folding. Watch!" Exaggerating her exertion, she levitated a smooth stone from the sand, then lobbed it into the breaking waves. "Oh, bummer. Not even one skip. I bet if you tried, you'd be leagues better than I am."

Izzy was an awful actress, and her sloppy attempt at sloppiness was almost enough to make Sunny laugh. Almost. Horn more solid than it had been all day, she raised a rock of her own.

"Okay, you're on. Let's see how many jumps I can get. One... two... thr-"

Sunny balked when something round and glass glinted between waves.

"Hey, izzat a message in a bottle?" Izzy was standing now, swishing sand from her tail.

"I... I don't know, Iz. Looks kinda big to me. Is it coming closer?"

The orb, (Sunny could see now that the thing was round as a beach ball) steadily made its way towards the shore. Not bouncing like litter or floating like driftwood though. It surged forward a bit before stopping. Then it surged forward again. Those movements matched the strides of a confident lifelong swimmer.

"Holy moly Sunny, it’s a helmet. And it looks like a pony is wearing it!"

Izzy splashed out to meet the mystery diver, saltwater wetting her face and mane. Sunny followed, more cautious than her friend, but more concerned that a pony with a fishbowl head might need help. Especially since the fishbowl appeared completely filled with water.

The swimmer halted in front of Izzy, flat on its belly in a low tide so shallow it only came up to Izzy's knees. "Hi down there," Izzy invited. "Can you hear me through that thing? Need help yanking it off? Or standing up?"

The swimmer nodded to answer Izzy's first question, then shook its head to answer her other two. Sunny finally caught up and stood shoulder to shoulder with her friend. The swimmer's fishy eyes flicked back and forth between the two Land Ponies with an expression Sunny couldn't decipher. Then the swimmer stood up.

Sunny noticed several things at once.

The swimmer's "fishbowl helmet" was actually a lighthouse lantern safety cover. Its make was identical to the one lost to sea a week ago. It was upside down and filled with water churning gently from intake on the wearer's gilled neck. Strapped around the swimmer's midsection was another familiar apparatus: an old saddle belt a teenage Sunny once modified for Pegasus cosplays. The swimmer was wearing it wrong, with the wing mounts pointed down instead of up. And instead of wooden wings on the belt docks, a pair of Sunny’s missing roller skates were propping up the wearer's limbless rear end.

Sunny stared dumbfounded at the shambled suit of her old possessions. Those mechanical clothes tailored from lost offal. The fishy equine wearing them swayed in the seaside breeze, shivering from the unfamiliar feel of air but holding steady as its eyes met Sunny's. Land and Sea Ponies were face to face. Equals.

"Holy moly, what happened to your side?" Izzy seemed oblivious the merpony's miraculous nature, wading around and gawking at something that made the merpony's face redden with shame. Its head fin, Sunny noticed, was draped to the left like a mane, carefully angled to cover a nasty looking facial scar. Or no, wait. The merpony shuffled her finny forelimbs and the skates pivoted to reveal an old injury that started on their wearer’s face and ran down the entire length of her nervously twitching body.

"Are you okay?" Izzy was babbling. "Sunny, is she okay? Should we do something?"

The merpony looked submissively at Sunny, who cleared her throat to find her voice.

"You... you live in the bay?"

A nod.

"All that stuff you're wearing... it's from the parts of my house that fell in."

A shrug.

"Oh my Faust. Then the rubble must've landed on you. Hurt you. Left you with that-"

The merpony burbled some muted noises that weren't part of any language Sunny recognized. Its facial expression and gesticulating forelimbs conveyed the message though: Not you. Something else. All in the past and best forgotten.

"Hey Sunny, not to interrupt, but Twenty Questions isn't gonna get us anywhere fast. Did your dad's notes have anything in them about ponies from the ocean? Or how to understand the way they talk?"

The Sea Pony's ears had perked up at Izzy's question. It waggled its hairless eyebrow ridges, clearly on board with the research suggestion. Sunny chewed her lower lip, as she often did when thinking hard.

"Maybe something... about hippogriffs and a pearl… and magic that's ocean related..."

Izzy nudged Sunny to pull her out of her naval gazing. "We should go check, Sun." The Sea Pony nodded assent.

"Um, yeah. Okay. Sure. Maretime Bay has seen heaps of new faces over the past week. One more trotting down mainstreet probably won’t flip any lids. How 'bout it, fishy? Think those new wheels of yours can carry you to my lighthouse?"

The Sea Pony's jaw dropped at the word 'lighthouse.' Then it nodded so enthusiastically Sunny thought its makeshift helmet might fly right off.

"Sounds like the yays have it," Izzy exalted. Then she innocently addressed the newcomer again. "Anything else on your mind?"

Bluegill Brine regarded the two Land Ponies who'd spoken to her. Who'd greeted her. Even invited her into the town. Carefully, shakily, fully aware she was new to balancing on four legs, Brine reached out to her new friends and pulled them close for a hug.

"Well this certainly doesn't need a translation," Izzy joked. Sunny simply nodded and returned the slimy Sea Pony's embrace. Her phantom horn softly sparked with renewed light, and it stayed that way as she led the trio's trot up the beach.

To Brine's eye, Sunny's horn was a ponified beacon, guiding the way towards a welcoming rebuilt lighthouse in the distance.

Comments

[A_Bloodthirsty_Unicorn56]

This was adorable and moving. I really enjoyed it!

[Super Trampoline]

Oh damn that's a poggers OC design also love the chapter title pun.

[yonalkaru]

that story pfp is adorable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Francium Actinium]

Damn I so wish there was more to this!
Adorable and sad and hopeful all at the same time. I haven't seen the G5 film so I am just having to run with some of it but I love it anyway!

[FanOfMostEverything]

Delightful stuff. Here's to a long and happy friendship between land and sea.

[Str8aura]

Butts! As bold as basses!

You're a damn lucky guy, using someone else's OC and getting off good. I've wanted to write about an oc for a long time, but the user is notably protective of them.

And gossamn did a lot of things happen on that one day magic came back. With the number of ancient evils that live off magic, its gonna go on to be one of those One Thousand Years Ago years, isnt it?

On a more civilized note, that was an excellent injury description. I tend to describe pain a lot more than you, so it's good to see you've got it.

[NicLove]

you may want to read

EA Friend from the Stars

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy
• Sci-Fi
• Slice of Life

After an eventful night, Twilight makes a new friend from the last place she'd expect; Outer Space

• Twilight
• OC
• Main 6

AntiBronyBenSwolo · 23k words  ·  8  5 · 349 views

[Kendallonian]

I think I'd love an AU fic that just rewrites the events of the upcoming series with Koi as one of the main characters.

[Comickook]

Excellent job on this epilogue. The exchanges, characterizations and general wrap-up are all quite well done. Definitely enjoyed Sunny and Izzy doing magic tests with toys before they encountered Koi and definitely understood the initial difficulty in trying to communicate with Koi before Sunny and Izzy got the idea about the Hippogriff notes. And, yeah, the end IS pretty adorable.

[Snowdrifter]

Koi is best fish. 🐟

[Teraunce]

Dawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww....
Solid enjoyable great 8/10 story. If you do more I'll bump it higher.

[Shachza]

Izzy: "We've gotta' watch for pruniness!"
Sunny: "Prunes?"
Izzy: "No, silly, pruniness!"
*Koi, furiously itchy, soon prunes all over.

[Zetari]

So glad it's back, though I look forward to any other works bluegil is in

[Kirbyfan123]

You should make this one a series

[BirdsBooksBrownies]

Twilight and I request more sea-pony stories. I'd love to see what the late Professor had to say about seaponies and other such world-building lore.

[Comma Typer]

There are two things I'd want to point out.

But with grit, engineering, and the timely return of Magic to the world, she may make some friends yet.

Now there's a way to set up some expectations from the summary... and then twist them up in a way that's still rather satisfying. From the description, I expected that Bluegill would get some magic back in a tangible manner like with the pegasi and unicorns. That didn't happen, but the timely return of Magic at least coincided, if not also correlated with, the return of ponish friendship across the tribes, which is related to the theme of a highly advanced but rather heartless Land Ponies (from Bluegill's perspective). Now, "subverting expectations" is a phrase to meme on, but I think this is one time when it can be genuinely applied to in good faith.

Second, since much of the payoff doesn't appear until the chapter that calls itself an epilogue, it does feel rather mislabeled since that meant that a third of your story is an epilogue; I'm used to its appearances in longer stories where the epilogue is one or two chapters long out of dozens, clearly meant as a fast dénouement or a nice way to wrap things up. Thus, when I got to the end of the first chapter with the appearance of the fish bowl that really isn't, it was a bit of a whiplash for me.

Otherwise, these are very small fry compared to the wonderful short story you have here. The theme of interacting with the once mysterious creatures of the Land... and doing it without the protagonist ever talking... well, it's all pulled off, and that's no small feat.

Thank you for the good story, Casket! Here's to more Bluegill!

[the dobermans]

Fantastic story! Lots of implicit worldbuilding, and great characterization.

[StarzGecko]

This was really sweet! Glad to find a sea pony G5 story that is very good

[anonymous browser]

Can't believe I missed this one when it came out. It's really good. Pretty bittersweet though, being a seapony really doesn't sound like being much fun. they seem to be naturally social creatures but often ending up scattered and alone sounds really harsh.

Also the whole getting run over by a boat thing to top it off.

[bappledilk]

Wow! I’m so glad that the sequel by Jaded Hearts led me to this story! It wasn’t what I expected at all, it was so much better. As I was reading, I kept getting more and more attached to this character, and now I just love her. Beautiful and bittersweet story. <3

[Draco Dei]

"Skipping rocks!" Izzy blurted. "Throwing is waaaay easier than folding. Watch!" Exaggerating her exertion, she levitated a smooth stone from the sand, then lobbed it into the breaking waves. "Oh, bummer. Not even one skip. I bet if you tried, you'd be leagues better than I am."

I am thinking one last unintentional harm may occur to Bluegill.

"Hey, izzat a message in a bottle?" Izzy was standing now, swishing sand from her tail.

No Izzy, a messenger (in a fishbowl), in response to the same message on a balloon you replied to earlier.

To Brine's eye, Sunny's horn was a ponified beacon, guiding the way towards a welcoming rebuilt lighthouse in the distance.