Pacific
Destination Unknown
Pacific
Admiral Biscuit
Salt air . . . the widening of the river could be fooling her, the seagulls could have been fooling her, even the big ship tied up to the grain dock could have been fooling her, but the smell of salt in the air had to be real.
She wiggled her rump and sniffed at the Pringles tube, wondering if she was just smelling potato chip salt. But that was a different smell, that salt was overlaid with fake cheddar, and once she put the lid back on the can and blew her nostrils clear, she could still smell the distant ocean.
Sweetsong shoved the can back in her saddlebags and crouched on the tree, kicking off the branch to take flight. Maybe the tracks went on further, maybe they didn’t; if she was close enough to smell sea salt she was close enough to fly the rest of the way to the Pacific.
What if it isn’t the Pacific, but another sound? Impossible. She’d seen maps of Washington and she knew which direction her train had been going; there was no way it could have carried her back to Puget Sound or any of the other sounds and bays she’d been to before.
She glanced around, just to make sure that there wasn’t a motorboat or helicopter headed for her island. Not that it would matter anymore if the bulls had a boat. She’d flown the coop.
Tempting though it was to circle around and cut in close to the grain ship, just to taunt it, she was a mare on a mission and focused ahead. She concentrated on the wakes of distant boats and where they pointed—a few were crossing from one side to the other or zooming around close to shore, but most of the wakes pointed nearly due west.
She was a few hundred feet above the ground as she crossed the west end of Rennie Island, high enough to start to see the difference in water color over shallows or deeper channels. To the north, another river fed the channel and a few hundred yards inland, a railroad swing bridge, turned to allow boats to pass.
There was also a huge overgrown expanse of broken concrete that clearly used to be something. A few circular patterns in the wasteland suggested tanks had been there, so maybe it had been a tank farm once.
Why were there so many abandoned buildings near railroad tracks? Some of them made sense; she knew that the big concrete coaling towers that often straddled the rails had been used to put coal in locomotives, and once the railroads switched to diesel locomotives, they didn’t need to put in coal any more. That didn’t explain all the abandoned industrial complexes she’d seen, some of them standing as ruins with broken windows and crumbling walls, others just overgrown foundations. Did people in the past buy more things and now they didn’t? Or had they been factories building things that people didn’t want any more?
Couldn’t something else have been put in place of whatever was here before? The pilings along the shore were a clear indication that there had been a dock here, and some other ship could have tied up to it, some other cargo could have been loaded. Or they could have built apartments or houses or even a park. Everything could be reused; if somebody didn’t want it somebody else would. Everypony in her village had shared what they had and traded it when they didn’t need it any more.
Humans didn’t always think like that, though. Most of them would put things they didn’t need into storage stalls or just throw it away rather than sell it or give it to someone else. They had so much garbage that some of it got hauled off by special container trains.
Some things were beyond her understanding. She focused her attention back ahead, immediately realizing that she was closer than she’d thought to the airport that jutted out into the bay.
That was something to pay attention to. It had one runway, labeled 24 on her end. That meant that airplanes might be flying towards her as they did their downwind leg, or crossing her path on the base leg. Sweetsong didn’t have an airplane radio, which meant she couldn’t listen to any airplanes that might be flying around, nor could call the airplane directors and warn them that she was flying near the airport.
The smart thing to do would be cut across the bay, far away from the airport, well out of the way of any airplane traffic. Or she could just keep her wits about her, watch for airplanes, and hug the shoreline. Keep low until she was well clear of the departure path.
Giving up altitude after gaining it was annoying, especially since she’d have to climb again, but it was the safest option. There was a lumberyard between her and the airport, and it had a big loading conveyor that extended out on a dock; if she dove down and flew under it, she’d be low enough that airplanes wouldn’t hit her. She could keep that altitude until she was well clear of the departure path and then climb again.
•••
One airplane did land as she flew by the airport, a high-winged propeller plane with blue stripes on it. Did he see her? He must have. She’d spotted him as he came in on his downwind leg, and heard him as he turned to base behind her.
There weren’t any other aircraft moving around the airfield, but Sweetsong still kept low until she was sure she was well clear of the departure paths. It was frustrating; she could see what she thought was a distant gap on the horizon, but wasn’t high enough to be sure. She’d seen other tree-covered islands and long sandy muddy reaches that were barely above the water; maybe she was being fooled by what she saw ahead of her, too.
Just the same, she doggedly kept flying west. That would get her to the Pacific.
•••
She was at seven hundred feet and climbing when she knew for sure that the break in the land she’d seen was a harbor outlet; from miles away she could clearly see that the nature of the water changed on the other side. It was still distant and hazy, but there could be no mistaking what it was.
She did a brief victory loop over a sandy island, then focused back on her goal. She would—
Sweetsong wasn’t sure what she would do when she got there. Gallop on the beach, splash in the water, sit on the sand and contemplate the waves rolling in . . . she’d had a goal in mind and she was about to achieve that goal; she hadn’t done a lot of thinking about what happened next.
Or where to go next.
It was too early to think about that. It was too early to think about anything, she wasn’t even there yet, she was counting clouds before they rained. Even planning which side of the harbor mouth she’d land on was still a problem for later. Right now all she could see in the distance was fuzzy trees and an ocean beyond; when she got closer one shoreline might be more appealing than the other.
For now, she would just set a straight course to the mouth of the harbor, and watch around her for any airplanes.
•••
Small fishing boats bobbed in the water below her, while bigger boats went for the ocean. Jet skis and kayaks mostly stayed near the shore. Seabirds circled around, looking for fish, and ducks and geese bobbed on the water, occasionally ducking their heads down for food. A distant shape on the horizon resolved itself into a ship, angling for the same passage she was approaching. She thought she would beat it there, and maybe when she landed after she’d galloped on the sand, she’d watch it go through the harbor mouth.
Was there a lighthouse near the entrance? She hadn’t seen one yet. If there was, she could land on its roof.
Below her, unnoticed, the water was moving inland as the tide came in, as sure a sign as any that she was in fact near the ocean.
•••
A spit of land stuck into the bay, a few miles inland of the actual harbor entrance. It was popular with people who were flying kites or surfing with kites, or just walking around looking down for interesting stones or debris that had washed up on the shore. Driftwood, beachgrass, and hearty shrubs on the high spots, a place she might have decided to land and sing if the coast wasn’t so close, almost clear now as she approached.
Sweetsong played with the kites, slaloming her way between them as she lost altitude. Once she was clear of them, she did a wing roll and then continued on to the final point of land between her and the Pacific.
The bottom of the point had a circular neighborhood; the angles of the streets made all the houses look haphazard, as if they’d just sprouted up among the beachgrass and evergreen shrubs. The land wasn’t very high above the ocean, and she wondered if the houses got splashed with spume when there was a storm. They might. In a big storm, they were in danger of being washed away.
She dropped down further, until she could reach her hooves down into the water, and skimmed along the shoreline. It was reinforced with a thick wall of boulders, protection against the waves and perhaps an errant ship, if the need arose.
A few people were walking the rocks, and she zipped by one photographer with his camera on a tripod. He was taking pictures of the mouth of the bay until he saw her, then he swung his camera around to take pictures of her.
Sweetsong considered buzzing him just for fun, but instead turned her focus back to the ocean. The Pacific wasn’t far at all.
•••
Half a mile later, and the jetty at the mouth of the harbor was behind her. While there was no clear delineation between Greys Harbor and the Pacific, nor did the water feel different when she dipped her hoof in it, it was different. There was nothing in front of her but open ocean, nor was there anything immediately to her left or right.
Sweetsong did a broad circle, her hooves splashing through the tops of some of the waves. The inbound ship was still a way off, further than she’d expected it to be.
Had their lookout spotted her? Or was he too busy watching out for other things to pay attention to a single pegasus among the vastness of the ocean?
It was still too far off to really make out any details besides the tall white accommodation block and the loading masts sticking up from the deck. She couldn’t tell if it was moving at all. It might be waiting for the tides to be right before coming into harbor. If she knew for sure, she could fly out to it, but her wings were getting sore and she was already lathering from her flight.
Sweetsong gave the ship one more look before turning back to shore. The ocean side was a nice, sandy beach that was popular with people. Some of them even had brought their cars onto the beach, while others were racing up and down the waves in their jet skis.
She climbed high enough to be clear of jet skis, her wings protesting. Now that she was focused on a landing spot, she started to feel fatigue creeping in—it had been a long flight from the grain elevator, and she’d only had leftover pizza and some Pringles to eat.
Not to mention, she hadn’t had a drop of water since she took flight, and now she was starting to feel thirsty, too. The ocean water was too salty to drink and she didn’t think she could get a water bottle out of her saddlebags while flying.
Some pegasi swore by Camelbaks, but she didn’t have one.
•••
She landed on the beach well away from anybody else, tucked her head down and unstrapped her saddlebags, then rolled on her back in the sand, not caring that it was sticking in her fur. Her wings were burning from exertion; this might have been the longest flight she’d ever attempted on Earth.
And most of it over water, too, which in hindsight wasn’t all that smart. Still, she got where she was going and that was what mattered.
•••
One bottle of water later, and a quick look up and down the beach to make sure that nobody was close enough to steal her saddlebags, and she galloped up and down the beach then trotted out into the surf, deep enough that the crest of the waves lifted her hooves off the bottom. The water was cold and refreshing, and she pony-paddled further out, then let the waves carry her, let the waves tumble her around until they’d pushed her as close to shore as they wanted to.
Each wave would push her in, then as it passed, deposit her on the sandy bottom, only to be tugged back out to sea as the wave receded, then the next one would arrive and repeat the process.
The ocean currents were like air currents, but slower and more insistent. Winds tried to blow things over then gave up, but the ocean took its time and wore things down.
•••
Sweetsong stayed in the water until she started shivering, then made her way back up to shore. She didn’t have a beach towel, but her army blanket served in its stead.
The ship finally entered the harbor, and she considered flying out to it and escorting it past the jetty, but instead stayed on her blanket and waved as it passed.
After the sun had warmed and dried her, she flew into town and got a peach and burrata pizza at Oyhut Bay Grill and Loft. Instead of eating it there, she carried it back to the beach, settling just above the tide-line to enjoy her meal.
One thing she hadn’t considered was where to sleep. None of the houses had flat roofs, although plenty of them had inviting balconies. That was too risky, as was sleeping on the beach.
She’d have to go inland to find any sizable trees. There had been plenty along the coast of Puget Sound, but it was different out on the ocean; the wind blew all the trees over when they got too tall.
The beachgrass would provide some concealment, and there were a few shrubs she could tuck down into. It wasn’t as secure as a tree nest, but it would be good enough.
That decision made, she flew north along the beach, where more kite-fliers were taking advantage of the winds. Her belly was full of pizza but she joined them anyway, darting around like a kite, letting the wind catch her wings and push her where it wanted to, and whenever she grew tired of letting it use her as a plaything, she turned into the wind and dove down to the water, then let the wind push her back up to kite-height.
One of the kite-fliers decided to try and mimic her, and she danced with his kite, weaving and bobbing in the wind, occasionally twisting around its cord as a reminder that the kite was tethered but she was not.
As the day and the kites dipped down, so did she, gliding down to an open spot of beach.
Sweetsong folded her legs under her and settled into the sand, watching over the waves as the sun set, the sky darkened, and the stars spread overhead.
Some people on the beach had fires, lit while it was still light out, and they were their own stars on the beach, different and more inviting than the twinkling lights of the town behind her or the steady sweep of the lighthouse on the southern spit; different than the firefly-lights on the buoys marking the channel, or the steady reds and greens and whites of navigation lights on the boats still out in the water.
The fires burned low and people left the beach, walking or driving. The moon climbed in the sky and the waves kept up their steady beat on the shore and she finally took flight again, not to the beachgrass like she’d thought she would, but instead to the rocky jetty.
The boulders still held the warmth of day and she found a nest where the wind would blow in her mane if she stuck her head up. It might also steal her blanket, so she left that in her saddlebags.
She could sleep without.
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Destination achieved.
Roll for stay(1d3) days?
I was driving in central Oregon yesterday and had seagulls over 300 miles from the ocean. I'm increasingly convinced that I've angered the seagull gods and they're following me across the country.
Woo, she made it! Good job, hobo pony!
I've got no strings to tie me down ♫
She's finally here!
I guess Equestria has a lot less land per pony since Sweetsong's instinct is that the abandoned land should have been reused instead?
Her comments about recycling sounds like Japan before the Meiji era, when because of a lack of domestic resources and trade people would go to the lengths of searching the ashes of burnt homes for nails.
I don't know about that, Sweetsong. I see people donating to and shopping a lot at places like Goodwill, and once renewables get us to having lots of cheap electricity, it will be viable to just zap garbage to recycle back to raw materials.
Isn't one of the problems California coastal communities are having is salt water reaching shoreline houses and buildings?
Only one more chapter to go, probably!
From the song "That's NOT Illegal"
Hiding in a bush is not Illegal.
11191328
At long last
She might stay longer at the Pacific, or she might not. Depends on when the wanderlust hits again.
11191512
There’s a fair number in Lansing, which is more than a hundred miles from any of the Great Lakes. Every now and then I’ll see flocks of them in parking lots.
I suppose that’s possible. I don’t know how you’d anger a seagull god, or for that matter how you’d appease it. Doritos, maybe? Some seagulls like Doritos.
11191564
When there’s a will, there’s a way.
Also suitable freight cars so she doesn’t have to fly all that way on her own.
11191656
She literally doesn’t, now that I think about it. No home, no bills, just her and the open sky and wherever the train takes her.
11193027
Yes!
Maybe, or maybe useful land per pony. She also probably doesn’t know about soil contamination issues or zoning regulations, which are surely a reason some land which looks like prime development land isn’t. Or how specialized some industrial buildings are; some of them can’t really be used for any other industry or converted to apartments, etc.
I suspect that since the ponies have a lower tech level than humans, the manufacturing cost of something new is much higher and it makes far more sense to reuse where possible. So an unwanted building (for example) can be disassembled into its component parts, and the beams and bricks and whatever can be used for new construction, whereas on Earth (in developed nations) it’s often too expensive to sort, clean, transport, and re-use most of the building materials.
AFAIK they weren’t alone in that; back in the day things like nails were a valuable resource. IIRC, a thousand years ago in some parts of Europe you could use horseshoes as currency to pay taxes, due to the value of the iron.
Yeah, there are certainly places where used goods can be had, and she knows about them—she didn’t buy her army blanket new, for example. Heck, most of my furniture is second-hand or even dumpster-dived (the desk I’m writing on right now came out of a dumpter).
I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised. Michigan has had some erosion problems (complete with houses falling into Lake Michigan) the last couple of years due to high lake levels.
Yup!
11197512
That’s true. Well, most places.
Again, I just love an outsider's perspective of America.
I ask these kinds of questions myself: why do we as a society throw things away rather than reuse them?
Why do we have high housing prices but so much empty space?
11198431
Honestly, writing this type of story is a good way to look at those things that we Americans do and question them.
I try to keep and re-use as much as I can, but there’s a lot of things where that’s hard to do, and with some tech, it can’t easily be done (or done at all).
That’s likely a very complex problem which includes laws and regulations as well as material costs.
If in doubt just say "the true goal is the path towards the goal" and be done with it.
But even then she still needs to figure out what to do next...
Maybe crossing the Pacific?
11207340
Well, in some ways for Sweetsong the journey is the fun part.
Yeah, either a place or at least s compass direction.
Ships aren’t that fast when they come out of harbor. If she’s got plenty of food and water. . .
11255653
She did!
11258335
Indeed.
11200314 I re-use toilet paper!
11281445
That’s good for the environment!
The feel of the water and sand on her hooves and skin after making it to the Pacific must have been fantastic!
11394853
A goal achieved, Sweetsong is a happy pony, at least for the moment. But of course she can't stay in one place too long, it's not in her nature.
She really is paranoid. She didn't see anyone watching as she left the yard in the last chapter and as far as we know she's never had the police or anybody actively searching for her specifically. The closest she's come to getting caught in this entire story was when that one bull was walking alongside the carriages to where she was hiding, and another time when one was driving up to the train in a truck, and a couple of random passers-by who saw her on a train in other states and which resulted in no increase in security or surveillance.
She was caught a few times while train-hitching, (mostly early on in her career) but those ended up pleasant experiences where she even sends the people involved postcards.
Has she seen too many action and spy films where an entire nation's armed forces are hunting a single person or pony?
11506688
It's hit or miss what happens when she gets caught. Odds are that a train crew won't care too much, so long as she isn't damaging anything or doing anything risky. A bull would almost certainly try and arrest her. (Whether or not he'd succeed would depend on if she could fly away or not.)
The biggest risk for her is increased awareness by the railroad. If they know she's hopping trains on a particular line or in a particular yard, they might pay more attention, either with people on the ground or with camera--or both--and then it might become more difficult for her to hop a train. If they know she's train-hopping, even being seen near the tracks or near a railyard might get the attention of the railroad police. And unfortunately for her, she's pretty distinctive, as compared to a normal human hobo.
Granted, she's a cute pony and she can fly, which would make it a lot harder for them to actually catch her, and if they do they probably won't punish her too much, just tell her not to do it again . . . of course, if they've seen her riding the trains before and not caught her, they'll know she's habitual.
I don't know if she specifically mentions it in the story, but she's also picked up things from other hobos she's met on the way.