Epilogue
Destination Unknown
Epilogue
Admiral Biscuit
By the time she woke, the gentle night breeze had changed to a steady gust, accompanied by a louder crash of waves booming up through the rocks. She could feel that the air pressure had dropped since the previous night.
Sweetsong scrambled to her hooves and the wind caught her army blanket. She snapped her head around and caught it before the sea could claim it, and then climbed to the top of the rock like a sailor at the prow of her ship.
Her blanket trailed behind her like a cape.
She should have still seen the last stars in the sky, but they were covered by clouds as far as she could see, undulating ranks of grumpy grey clouds steadily marching towards the land.
Out in the water, the buoys bobbed and flashed, and the lighthouse’s beam swept across the ocean and the harbor beyond.
Soon enough, she’d want shelter. For now, she was content to stand on her rock, to let the wind ruffle her feathers and play with her blanket, to let the sea spray drift down around her, to stand on the shore she’d dreamed of reaching.
How long would the storm last? Hours? Days? She didn’t know. Human weather was fickle and changeable, unpredictable, uncontrolled and feral, and she shouldn’t have loved it for that, but she did.
•••
As the sky lightened, she looked back over the calmer waters of Greys Harbor. If she wanted to fly back to Aberdeen, now was the time; there was enough of a tailwind that she’d hardly have to work.
It was too soon. There was still more to see and do before she even considered leaving the coast.
She tucked her army blanket back in her saddlebags, made sure the straps were fastened tight, and held her wings out.
The slightest jump was enough to clear the rock, and then the wind caught her. Sweetsong let it carry her up and back, until she was once again over the beach. Then she rolled to her side and angled her wings, bringing the wind to her tail.
This time she cut across the inlet, heading for the so-far unexplored southern shore. The land bent around in a L-shape, making a protected harbor for small boats.
One leg of the L was lined with identical cabins, while on the other was a row of businesses, some of them with signs on their roofs.
She skimmed the observation tower at the point, and flew the wrong way above Westhaven Drive, landing right in front of Bennett’s Fish Shack. It wasn’t open, but two buildings down, Little Richard’s House of Donuts was, and there was already a line of customers waiting for their morning treat. Sweetsong got a raspberry fritter and a maple bar, then flew out towards the Pacific to eat them.
Instead of sitting on the beach and getting windblown sand in her donuts, she alighted on the balcony of a spindly beach-tower where she could watch over the water undisturbed.
Mostly undisturbed—despite the wind, a few seagulls found her and her donuts and swooped around the tower in the hopes of snatching a bite or two. After she’d eaten all she wanted, she tossed the rest into the air to let them fight over, and took flight again, heading inland long enough to circle the lighthouse before angling back towards the shoreline.
A few miles down the coast, the land curved in again, marking the mouth of another river. The beach was wide and sandy there; inland the terrain was flat and then it got rugged.
Out to sea, the clouds were breaking up, promising a more pleasant afternoon. The wind had dropped, leaving everything misty and wet.
Sweetsong circled inland, wondering if there might be train tracks nearby. There weren’t, but she found cranberry bogs and a horse hotel.
She flew back west, landing in the between-land that wasn’t woods and wasn’t beach and finished her tube of Pringles. Now that the weather was clearing, people had started to gather on the beach with buckets, shovels, and pipes with handles. They were massing at the water’s edge and digging into the sand for something.
Curious, she put the empty Pringles tube back in her saddlebags and flew in for a closer look.
They were hunting for clams, and she did, too, eventually managing to find and catch one. The clams were burrowed further down in the sand than she’d expected, and several of them had managed to elude her.
Sweetsong carried it back up the beach, smashed it open on a rock and ate it. It was salty and chewy, a flavor she could get used to. Some coastal pegasi swore by clams as an easy snack when fish couldn’t be caught. She wasn’t sure about easy; it had taken a lot of digging to just get one.
•••
She settled on the beach in the afternoon, settling on a skinny stretch of beach that wasn’t popular with the clam diggers. The waves had calmed down, and pleasure boats were taking advantage of the calmer weather and sunshiny skies.
It didn’t feel like time to head inland just yet, although she wasn’t sure where to go next. Nor was she sure if it really mattered.
A few miles to the south there was a small sandbar she’d seen from the air, and beyond that more land. Possibly another island—she couldn’t tell. It looked like it had trees.
She still had food in her saddlebags, knew how to catch clams now, and could probably catch some fish if she wanted to. She could head south along the coast until she found another port or a rail line. She could also go back north where she knew there were trains. Or she could stay here for the rest of the day and nest in the pine trees overlooking the Pacific.
Instead of doing any of those things, she got up and shook the sand out of her fur, then walked down to the surfline and dug up another clam, ate it, then waded back into the surf, letting the waves wash over her hooves.
•••
As the sun started to settle into the ocean, Sweetsong galloped along the beach towards a flock of seabirds, then took flight with them, watching as they wheeled away in surprise. The birds seemed to have gotten used to dogs chasing after them, but hadn’t anticipated being pursued in flight.
Not that she had any intention of trying to catch a bird. She was headed north, back towards Westport.
As the sky darkened, the sea below dimmed almost to blackness, although she could still see the lights on land. The boats below her had twinkling navigation lights, and she could also see the sweep of the Westport lighthouse. Above her, airplanes had similar navigation lights, some of them close and others far, far above.
What did they see, looking down at the ocean below? What did they see when the coastline was gone behind them? Whenever she turned her head west, the unknown was both frightening and enticing. Very few boats were out there, nothing compared to the spread of lights along the coastline. What would it look like to be in the middle of that?
Some parts of the Great Plains were nearly as deserted; sometimes she’d looked through the support beams on a grainer or over the gunnels of a gondola and seen nothing but waving grass and stars overhead. It had looked kind of the same, but it hadn’t been the same.
Sweetsong turned her head away from the lure of the ocean and focused back north, trying to spot the lighthouse. For a moment she thought she’d lost it, then its beam came around again. She cast one regretful look at the ocean and turned inland.
•••
Sunrise found her on the tip of the north jetty again, watching thoughtfully as a ship navigated its way out of the harbor. For its size, it moved fast, but not faster than she could fly.
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and so the trip of Sweetsong the hobo has come to a end.
this is a vary sweet and wonderful story.
Is Sweetsong looking to try being a stowaway? Or will she use ships as landing spots to 'hop' her way along the coast?
Game over, track complete.
Press A to shuffle deck and draw a new destination.
East looks good.
Cranberry bog? Mind the spiders and easily startled stallions that won't get some fun tonight.
This was a great adventure! Thanks for taking us on another journey!
She's going to touch the butt.
11197585
It has. A bittersweet moment, but she is where she wanted to be.
Thank you!
11197637
She really could do both . . . but if she really wants to experience the Pacific, hopping aboard a freighter as it plods out of harbor could give her a free cruise to Asia (most likely).
It turns out that LA to Tokyo is only ten or eleven days by freighter; from Greys Harbor would only add a day to that journey. . .
11197691
Exactly!
Or change transport modes and go more west. The ships aren’t coming out of harbor all that fast, after all.
11197783
Wolf spiders run the cranberry bogs
11197991
You’re welcome!
I assume that’s some reference to stowing away on a ship? Because she just might.
While I'm sad that this story is over, I'm glad that I got to ride along. Do you think Sweetsong would know this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iGYpuYgXC0 ?
11198155
i.pinimg.com/originals/83/67/63/83676386489f39b16fafa92dbe9bc467.jpg
11191564
I'm sorry. Calling her "hobo pony" is so adorable.
What does that remind me of?
Anyways. This is one of my favorite stories.
There isn't some cool adventure or morality play. Just a pony enjoying America and what it has to offer.
Great way to end the story. Open ended and leaving the reader wondering where Sweetsong will go next.
Pacific:
Oh, hey, while listening to this chapter and looking around, I think I've spotted part of the old right of way to Ocosta. ...Or to Markham, at least. I'm not seeing how it would have gotten past there, and over the Johns River. Still, neat.
Epilogue:
"Sweetsong scrambled to her hooves and the wind caught her army blanket."
...Um. From the end of the previous chapter:
"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."
What's going on there?
And another good (and potentially educational!) story comes to a close. :)
Thanks for writing and posting it!
11191351
Er, no, I don't mean a browser version accessed from a desktop, sorry, I mean the actual desktop application.
For me at the moment, specifically [checks] Google Earth Pro (which became free a while ago) 7.3.4.8248.
"No normal police department would; as you say, even if they had a helicopter and it was fueled and ready to go, if the only law she broke was riding a train, they wouldn’t bother. Well, not unless the police chief really hates ponies or something."
Right.
"No specifics on the helicopter that chased her were given in story, but in that case it was after she got discovered crossing from Mexico to the US on a train, and that’s something that Border Patrol takes seriously."
Ah, thanks.
11198149
"It turns out that LA to Tokyo is only ten or eleven days by freighter; from Greys Harbor would only add a day to that journey. . ."
How would starting closer to her destination, on that hypothetical trip, increase her travel time?
11199155
I don't imagine Greys Harbor will have many if any at all freighters going straight to Tokyo from there. so she'd have to find bigger ships to lift along to
11199753
Hm, yes, that does seem plausible, at least; thanks.
happy to have read it, yet sad to see it come to an end. lovely writing as usual AB
Very enjoyable story, thanks!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2021/5/31/2625887.gif
11197783
derpicdn.net/img/view/2018/9/17/1834713.jpg
Good story!
I enjoyed reading it.
I'll admit, getting through this story is hard. My wanderlust flares up something fierce and I feel caged.
I think that's a testament to your writing, though
I hope she gets more supplies before going to Japan!
11198184
She might . . . that’s a good song!
11198245
Gotcha, thanks!
11198432
And accurate; she is a hobo pony.
That is 100% accurate seagull behavior. Sometimes if you toss food into the air, the seagulls will eat it before it can hit the ground.
Thank you! I enjoy writing stories about ponies having fun without any huge drama.
11198893
That’s really the only way to end a story like this. Sooner or later there’ll be another train, or a boat, and she’ll be off to a new location.
11199155
At a guess (and this is only a guess), they probably continued hugging the shoreline, although the shoreline route they might have had could be long gone by now (erosion and whatnot). There’s an unlabeled (on my map) stream leading into the bay east of Bottle Beach State Park that appears to have bridge abutments over it, and a kinda straight-line route off to the east; it’s possible that it hooks down to where there’s a point of trees sticking out into the Johns River although it’s hard to tell for sure. It’s possible that they removed the abutments in the Johns River, or maybe the river has changed course after the railroad was abandoned.
I’m kinda leaning towards that tree peninsula being the old bridge, though.
Oops! I’ll have to fix that!
You’re welcome!
Oh, gotcha. I normally use the regular Google Maps, not Google Earth. I do sometimes use Google Earth, though; I used it a lot for Silver Glow’s Journal to get angled/at-altitude images. For this story, finding train routes and street view were often the most helpful (and videos from train enthusiasts, where I could find them).
I wasn’t sure if it was closer, so I added a day . . . I couldn’t find any scheduling info from Seattle to Tokyo specifically, but easily found LA to Tokyo.
Interestingly, the ‘choose your route’ tool decided to take the long way ‘round, I don’t know why (so from Seattle down to the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic, through the Med, etc.). That was like 100 days or something, I don’t remember exactly.
11199753
It was more me just guessing, rather than getting a completely accurate number. I dunno about Tokyo specifically, but the export grain elevator in Aberdeen probably takes the grain directly overseas somewhere. I haven’t found anything specific, but Washington exports grains to Japan, China, and the Middle East, and also export frozen french fries to Japan (who knew!). They also export hay to Japan, China, and South Korea.
AGP, who owns the facility in Greys Harbor, is expanding it to handle more soybeans for Asian export, although the article I found doesn’t say more specifically where they’re going.
11199954
They do export grains direct from Greys Harbor, but I don’t know where they go except Asia. It’s a deepwater port, so they can get bulk freighters in there.
11205058
Thank you!
11206217
You’re welcome!
11207358
Cape Derpy is adorable!
Thanks!
11216929
That’s understandable; I felt the same way writing it. It did inspire me to decide to take a train to Everfree Northwest, though. I’m doing it the more boring way, though; I’m taking Amtrak rather than hoping I get lucky with freight trains.
The good news is that there’s a grocery store in Ocean Shores, so she could stock up if she chooses to stow away on a ship.
11218746
[looks around]
Yes... yes, I do think you're right! Plausibly so, at least! Thanks!
"You’re welcome!
"
:)
"I normally use the regular Google Maps, not Google Earth."
I mostly use Google Earth for just looking around, and will sometimes use it in combination with Google Maps when looking for something specific.
"I wasn’t sure if it was closer, so I added a day . . . I couldn’t find any scheduling info from Seattle to Tokyo specifically, but easily found LA to Tokyo."
I mean, I guess I don't know for sure what route they'd take, and maybe there'd be currents or something involved. But Seattle should definitely be closer to Tokyo if looking at the shortest path along the Earth's surface.
...Let's see, I'm measuring it at about... 7630 vs. 8850 km. So, yeah.
...Though maybe Sweetsong isn't sure either?
"Interestingly, the ‘choose your route’ tool decided to take the long way ‘round, I don’t know why (so from Seattle down to the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic, through the Med, etc.). That was like 100 days or something, I don’t remember exactly."
...Huh. Yeah, I've no idea what might've happened there.
11218757
Oh, interesting; thanks.
I have the melancholy feeling of finishing a really good story, but mixed with the joy of a rare character that feels real in such a way that her life just continues on, even if I won't see it.
11222276
I’m guessing with a ship it would be about the shortest path, although I don’t know for sure. Back in the day, oceangoing ships had assigned routes across the Atlantic, and they may do that with other shipping lanes. Even if they do, though, I’m sure it would be a mostly direct route, rather than having to sail to LA before setting off across the ocean.
She probably has no idea. That’s something she’d want to figure out before she boarded a ship and found out its next port of call was a month away or something.
Even Google Maps gets it wrong sometimes, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t play with it a lot, so maybe there was a setting I should have changed to get a more sensible route.
11225022
Also, her high mass (she is more massive than any flying bird with only pterosaurs having higher masses of flying Earth-Animals) would help her resist buffeting from turbulence. Turbulence is still poorly understood:
11223032
Those are the best kinds of story, I think.
Who knows, you might see Sweetsong again. It’s a big country with a lot of trains.
11229027
Another problem is that if we recognize the personhood of sapient Equestrians, we shall have to recognize the personhood of sapient EarthCreatures. Shooting crows for fun would be murder. Many humans would not like that.
11229034
Possibly, although that could be gotten around if the laws were cleverly written. But it is something that a conscientious lawmaker would have to really think about, to avoid any unwanted implications (like giving crows personhood). I wonder if anybody who’s really up on laws has written a first-contact story that deals with this kind of thing? It’s not really my area of expertise.
11229037
I created campaign around this theme. SpaceAliens detected transmissions from us. Their culture is such that the intend to give to us a billion years of knowledge and technology.
The aliens land on the land of a man. He is with his wife and his sister. Her name is Darla. The have another sister who is also their mother.
He shoots at the aliens. The alien culture requires them to try to kill all humans. The aliens have only 1 small ship at Earth.
If over 90% of all of humanity commits itself to the wareffort, we have a less than < 10% chance of defeating the lone small spaceshift (think 1 AttackHelicopter against the population of North Sentinel Island.
I call this the inbred redneck campaign because someone claiming to be an inbred redneck inspired it by calling into Coast-To-Coast and claiming that he shot at SpaceAliens.
After killing Klaatu, Gort intended and was fully capable of killing all life on Earth:
"¡Klaatu Barada Nikto!"
If SpaceAliens show up, we must not let idiots take potshots at them, as the SpaceAliens might destroy the Earth in retaliation.
11224008
I'd guess so, yeah.
Right. :D
One thing when she hops a train without knowing just where it's going; there'll be a lot of stuff along the way to see, and a lot of opportunities to get off and go somewhere else. Not so much the case with a transoceanic cargo ship!
Oh, huh. Google Maps has shipping routes?
11231694
That’s true, although if she’s interested in the ocean and what it does, might be worth the travel just the same. Just to have done it. Although a shorter journey might be smarter, just to see how she likes it and where she can hide on a ship.
Not that I know of; I was unclear in my statement. I meant that they sometimes did stupid road routes for whatever reason, and figured that whatever glitch in their algorithm that might sometimes send a driver the long way between two destinations could also apply to ship route mapping software.
11232014
It is too bad that over 90% of the craton (granitic core of the continent) of Zealandia is beneath sealevel. Given that Zealandia has been separate from the other continents since at least the Cretaceous, Probably the Jurassic, and maybe the Triassic, area above water probably would have more weird and wonderful life.
The Pacific has a sunken volcanic island (Tamu Massif) the size of Iceland which was above sealevel in the Mesozoic. We should send robotic submersibles to excavate fossils there. Just as we have flightless birds now on islands, it probably had flightless pterosaurs. Given that this island never was part of the mane land, up until the early Cretaceous, the only tetrapods probably were pterosaurs, at which time birds would have arrived.
Tamu Massif
11231947
Right.
...Ah! So the "it" you didn't play around with a lot was not Google Maps, but a separate system for ship routing, with the comparison to Google Maps being there because, even with everything going into making that work, it still sometimes fails?
11235998
Correct, it was the ship routing map. I don’t remember the website, or I’d link it
11236794
The residents of Tacoma probably wished that the engineers overengineered the bridge.
11236807
They coulda open decked it, like the Mackinac Bridge.
I don’t remember the exact limerick nor the author, but here’s as close as I remember:
There once was an engineer from Graham
Who built a craft he though would convey him
If the craft had been stronger
This tale would be longer
Engineers learn that slide rules betray ‘em
1) It helps a LOT if you know what you're doing.
2) The clam bed is probably overfished.