Rising Tides, Sinking Skies
I was just a filly when the waters came.
No one knew where it came from or how. The water just was. There were no torrential rains. No massive ice melts. One day every lake, every river, every pond out of nowhere began to take on water and burst its banks.
Ponies tried to stop it, of course. They built dams and flood walls and invested countless bits in researching solutions. But no matter what they tried, whatever water they removed or displaced was always replenished by the next day.
Not even Princess Celestia herself, embodiment of the sun and all its heat, could stop the rising tide. Her solar magic erased huge swathes of water, miles and miles of it with every pass... but even she couldn't be everywhere at once. The water always came back. And it never stopped rising.
We thought that was the worst of it.
And then the first of the great Cloud Cities fell.
No one saw it coming, but maybe we should have. Even before it all Las Pegasus had already been bloated and heavy with steel and dazzling lights. They needed teams of pegasi just to keep it aloft. But it was profitable, so the ponies in charge kept it flying.
Until one summer morning when over ten thousand homes, shops, and casinos fell from the sky and sank in the depths of the only recently named Lake Luxury.
There was a nationwide day of mourning to remember the ponies who had died. Ceremonies, speeches, even a memorial in Canterlot inscribed with all their names. I saw it myself once, back before the nobility built their great sea walls and locked the gate.
A tragic accident, they called it. Poor maintenance and bad luck. An inevitability of cut-rate construction. A tragedy, but no one connected it to the rising water. There was no reason to.
And then Nimbusberg followed it a few months later.
After that was Thunderstead. Then Dewford. Cirrusshire. Neighwark.
Nowadays there’s only Cloudsdale left. At least, we all assume so. It’s hard to say when no one’s seen the city in years. Not since it became the Eye of the Eternal Storm. A never-ending cyclone powered by the wingbeats of thousands of pegasi, towering high enough into the sky to be the only true landmark left above the surface. Sometimes rumors make their way out, but rumors only. Rumors that there's not much of a city left; just one giant weather factory filled with barracks and cloud generators that run day and night. Stories about an endless cycle of siphoning, patching, and fitful sleep. Whispers that if they were to stop, even for a day, the last cloud city would crumble and fall like the rest.
It only hurt their efforts that Pegasus magic is so weak now. Before, you could build a whole house of clouds and only need to do a little maintenance once a week to keep it together. Now, if I make a pillow when I go to sleep, I’ll wake up with my head on the boat’s hard wooden seat.
And yet they keep going. Trying to preserve some last vestige of the old world like an elderly pet.
I’m glad I didn’t go there when she gave me the chance.
Life is simpler on a boat. Mine’s a sturdy little thing I bought off a salvage diver in New Haven. Just big enough for myself, my supplies, and some cargo. I don’t need much more than that.
I save the engines for emergencies; gemstones aren’t cheap, charged ones even less so. I was never that good with Pegasus magic, but I can at least make enough wind to get from island to island.
Trading's not an easy life, but it has its perks. I get to visit the different settlements, keep in touch with old friends, and there's always a buyer somewhere for salvage from one drowned village or another.
Most settlements are decent enough, provided you know somepony inside. Applebloom still waives the duty fee whenever I make a run to the Sweet Apple Dome. It’s one of the safer settlements, provided you don’t mind crossbred seaweed-apples and the ever-present knowledge that a million tons of water are suspended above you just beyond the grow-crystals and obsidian dome. Not great for pegasi, though. We get antsy without a sky.
The Flood was a blessing to noble families of Canterlot; the ones rich enough to buy up the mountaintops before their bits lost their value and build their own little kingdoms where they could rule as they pleased. I've heard their mountain fortresses are like little slices of the past inside, but non-citizens aren't allowed past the outer seagates. And citizenship comes at a price only the truly foolish or desperate are willing to pay.
The Flotillas are a dangerous mixed bag. Some are ponies who gave up on finding unclaimed dry land. Some are pirates and looters. Some are one pretending to be the other. That’s a deadly mistake you only make once.
I don’t bother with them. Trust is a rare currency these days.
I hear in the far north, Empress Cadence's been implementing some desperate scheme of artificial tribalism to try and bring back the wendigos. It might cost a thousand years of friendship, but at least you can trot on ice.
With the ponies I know, the favors I’ve saved, I could settle almost anywhere. New Haven. Port Appleloosa. I could probably even talk my way into Canterlot if anyone would actually faithfully deliver a message to Twilight. Sweetie Belle begs me to stay every time I bring more fabric to Rarity’s compound.
But I can’t.
I was born a pegasus, but denied the sky. First by stunted wings, and then again when the magic faded.
But when I stand at the prow of my boat, with a strong wind behind me and nothing but hundreds of miles of empty water ahead…
…I can’t tell the sea from the sky.
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Water world.
I bet the sea ponies are responsible.
Anyone else getting strong Wind Waker vibes here?
11209533
My first thought was Waterworld too, actually.
Trust Scootaloo to survive any apocalypse.
Very fun story, honestly I wish this was extended into a longfic. It somewhat feels like 'Empty Horizons' crammed into a thousand words, but I mean this in the best way possible. The small glimpses we get to the locations are really intriguing, I especially like the idea of how society remains with all its positive and negative aspects even after an apocalyptic event like this.
No lie the title made me giggle.
11209499
Shoo be Doo! Shoo Shoo be Doo!
sounds like a raft thing to me
This kind of feels like "Rogue Diamond" mixed with Raft.
11209499 TURN THEM INTO SUSHI! ..... Yes I KNOW that SASHIMI is the sushi with fish and SUSHI is actually the vinegared rice! But not everyone is a crazed otaku like me!
Ok, didn't know what to expect from this... But I crave more!
Hmmm.
More!
I'm not normally one for this kind of content, but this is great! Full length story when?
Scootaloo on a sailboat? Gives me flashbacks to:
- MLP: FiM
- Adventure
Six stars on EQD! To save Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo must confront her fears and sail to the land where dreams are made...Interesting short story. A longer version would be much appreciated, but it's up to you TheDriderPony. This definitely has Water World vibes, though not full on water world, at least not in this short form. Have a like.
I like scootaloo Apocalypse stories
That was wonderful and so though provoking.
Well done!
I'd love to see more
Greetings. Your reading has been completed and can be found below. I hope you enjoy.
Wow, this was fantastic. Very cool world to think about. I would definitely read more of this if you ever decided to write it.
Fascinating glimpse at a semi-doomed Equestria, though it feels more like an in-universe world building document than a story in its own right. Such are the hazards of a thousand-word-long AU story. Still, fascinating stuff. I hope you build on it some time. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the judging.
11209533
Depends. Does Scootaloo sell pears you can use to mind-control seagulls?
11263840
I still want to know which of the gods of Hyrule thought that was a good idea. A practical joke by Farore, perhaps?
This reads more like a world-building google doc with a ton of very interesting pointers and ideas, but doesn't really build upon them. Don't really get to know much about the main character herself outside of a shallow (pun intended) relationship with Applebloom.
An alright read, but I'd enjoy more a saga made around this, or at least a more thorough one shot with each of the individual ideas; Cadence trying to revive the Wendigos being the one that caught the most attention for me
Fantastic story about a world in over it's head.
It honestly makes me wonder what happened to the Princesses though.
It's hard to imagine that they all have so little influence, even in a post apocalyptic scenario.
Feels a lot like a intro to a larger story, but I won't complain since I loved it anyway!
Here's hoping that if there's a follow up I will get to read it!
11210083
This educational moment has been brought to you by...
Alondro!!!! Dun dun dun dun! Alondro!!!!
oof, love worldbuilding premises like this, applying "new rules" to natural phenomena and just seeing where things go. and the inevitable flooding of the entire world is actually a particular favorite of mine!
agh, the fragility of civilizational overreach!
love these pun city names
a fittingly mythological fate for Cloudsdale
augh, that is an entire story right there! i can just feel the dire atmosphere living in such a civilization. love it
never heard this simile before but i love it now
hey, that's not a pun city name!
aww, love this post-apocalyptic fate of the Apples! glad that they managed to figure out how to still be apple farmers in a world without soil
reminds me of Nepal in Stephen Baxter's Flood! and yet another story in a single paragraph
and yes! augh, yes, this is a worldbuilding concept i've been dying to use or see used, instrumentalizing the effects of the Windigoes. and Cadance with her independent polity would be the perfect one to experiment with extreme measures like this
and augh, the extra weight of meaning that comes with the viewpoint character being Scootaloo! perfectly executed, exiting the story with a chill.
and what an honor it is to see it here! i really loved this. just love stories of societies and people adapting their lives to new and extreme circumstances, and this ticked all the boxes for me, especially with the ending. great stuff!
Bro Cadance just straight up said "fuck it, we ballin"
This story reminds me of the game Raft. Where you have to travel from island to island gathering supplies, expanding on your raft, and visit the remains of civilization as you try to piece together why everything in the world is now underwater.
My headcanon for this fanfic: Sweetie and Scootaloo are dating, but it's a long-distance relationship due to Scootaloo's trading. They both want Scootaloo to stay and settle down, but they both know she can't stop or stay in one place for too long (kinda like the Doctor).
11339484
Imma look that up