Yellow Light Waves

by Comma Typer

Union

For the first time in a long while, Ocean Flow slept soundly.

She dreamed. In that dream, she flew underwater. Her sister swam by her, seapony too, and so did the rest of her family and friends, swimming past reefs and atolls, feasting upon shrimp and sashimi, and resting upon tiny islands of magical creatures just like them.

When she woke, she expected the old wooden ceiling of the hotel to greet her. She instead found herself in a crevice, a trench, her pillow nothing more than soft corals upon her head.

“N-no! It was real?”

A quick re-look over her body confirmed her fears, but she breathed in and out, exorcising the worries away to list her priorities: find out a way out of the beach, get some help, figure out the global situation, get her work done.

She raced up, scaring several fish out of the way, and took her head out of the sea.

The morning light bounced upon the surface, turning specks on the beach into gold, but no one was enjoying the glimmering sand. Faint broadcasts could be heard; she could discern news reports among them.

Ambling down the dirt path to the beach came Sky Beak, laptop and phone balanced precariously on his back.

“Oh, good,” she said, beckoning him to come closer. “So… did the Amareicans find a way to reverse this?”

The shake of his head signaled otherwise.

“Alright, this is… unfortunate.” Her tongue rolled in her cheek. “Any updates overnight?”

“Look, I don’t know how to say this, but—“ he scratched his head, then winced, thanks to this sharp claws “—it’s permanent.”

Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “What?”

He opened her laptop to show her a live broadcast rewound to that of some purple princess unicorn with wings telling the world that magic was here to stay. The magic had become so intertwined with this reality, it couldn’t be removed without destroying the universe.

Ocean bit her lip, only to remember that she didn’t have one anymore. “That’s a wrench into this Board project.”

Sky Beak groaned. “Do you think they’re going to care about tourists now? I don’t, not now! I tried to sleep last night, but my aching wings kept fidgeting in the bandages! I tried to get a doctor or a vet to look at it, but the best thing they’ve got is comparing me to a literal bird!”

“Hmph. Here, I thought you’d preach about having to care about the world and all that.”

Sky blushed. “I’m the exception because I’ve got broken wings from nowhere. Everyone else’s got good enough wings, if they know how to use them. Though, they don’t, half the time.” A worried look overcame him. “But what about you? I’ve actually been looking for you for some time now.”

“Turns out there’s a tiny ravine here,” she said, pointing to the sea. “It’s a good place for solitude.”

“Best beds in the world,” he muttered. “Anyway, what do you have for me before I take care of the rest of Basalt, papers and all?”

“And do you think they’ll care about bureaucracy?”

“Of course they do. This is government stuff, your territory.”

Ocean could only roll her eyes. “Well, I first need to touch base with my family...”

---

Ocean’s phone ended up scratched thanks to Sky’s claws, much to the seapony’s chagrin, but the challenge was overcome as he got to her messages.

Novo was there, just called Novo, her profile picture being a surprised face thanks to some spilled water, chalked up to sibling rivalry. There had been a back and forth, with Novo devastated about the news of magic being here for good, and having to co-ordinate with the version of herself from the other world to get some well-needed relief and transition forces. Their children got pinged, too. Fortunately, despite becoming hippogriffs themselves, they were both fine in their own Amareican lives. Silverstream’s fiancé had become a griffon during their business trip, and Terramar’s own pursuits meant that he was now dating a horse-bug who, apparently, could shapeshift.

When the messages were done, Ocean said, “Here’s what you’ll do for today: Basalt’s small enough for you to knock on doors and bring surveys out, so there’s that. You’re good with people—“

“Hippogriffs.”

“Still people. Anyway, just do that, perhaps a focus group interview or two if they’re fine with it. Just ask around about traditions, festivals, quirks.. I know some, but I need to know how it really feels, and that’s on you.”

The papers got flipped through over his claws, Sky cautious around the staplers’ clips. “And you need this when?”

“A few minutes ago.”

So a few minutes later, he found his bags swamped with the papers, along with a pencil over his ears, facing Basalt’s fate.

The sun-pierced windows gave the town the aura of a fading hangover. Windows did open, and cars did not rule the roads, with how small the town was. Had it not been for the hippogriffs that’d replaced everyone here just last night, it would’ve been a ghost town.

Some flew high, with a few kids trying to climb up the roofs with claws and wing-flaps. A cranky old lady called them down, shaking her cane from the talons.

For Sky, though, it was down to the town hall first.

“Good morning! How are you faring so far?” Kiting asked, standing at his desk in his office, carefully tapping on his keyboard. “I take it that Miss Flow has been holding up well.”

“Yes, she’s been doing fine. Any update on how the seaponies would get back on land?”

“Just got an announcement from Equestria.” He turned the monitor for Sky to see. “Turns out their version of our country, Mount Aris, has what they call the pearl of transformation, broken into tiny shards like with this necklace here.” He tapped on the screen. “They’ll be sending out teams so they can hold hands and turn the seaponies back into hippogriffs.”

“So they’ll be coming here ASAP?”

Kiting tented this claws on the desk. “Mister Beak, I hate to break it to you, but even if we weren’t low-priority, Mount Aris doesn’t even have ten thousand inhabitants, let alone ten thousand volunteers. They’ll be prioritizing the big cities first, and the shards have to recharge their magic, too. Their other Novo pretty much apologized for that, so...”

Sky Beak nodded. “That’s understandable. So what about bringing Ocean Flow to them instead?”

“The nearest port city is a hundred miles from here, and you can’t exactly call Pistia a major destination.” Kiting scanned Sky’s papers from afar. “I assume that’s what Miss Flow said about you being her representative for the Tourism Board here?”

“Yes. Maybe not the best priority to take since it turns out pony land is real and it’s taken us by storm, but—“

“I say take it,” he said, dismissive with a wave of a leg. “Any help is better than no help. With her influence, we can have unicorn visitors seeing our way of life.” Kiting let his head fall back. “Hah, imagine that!”

---

Stray visitors from across the town kept Ocean company.

Children came scampering across the sands, along with their parents. The kids asked her questions, insistent on figuring out who she was.

“You’re not even real, are you?” one of them asked.

“What do you mean, I’m not real?”

“You’re a seapony! Seaponies don’t exist! That’s what Pa told me.”

“Honey, you’re a hippogriff. Hippogriffs aren’t supposed to exist.”

“P-Pa! The water lady is being mean!”

Ocean rolled her eyes as they went away, with his parents trying to hush him down with a sandy picnic.

But a plastic bag caught her in the tail.

And she looked. It wasn’t just one but two, one inside the other.

An idea struck her in the head.

After biting one out of the other, she now had plastic bags on her fins. The droplets wouldn’t dry in minutes, but she shot a fin in the air. Vaguely, she could feel the plastic bag drying over the water.

---

“Hello, Miss Nettle Mettle!” said a bombastic Sky Beak said once the tiny cottage door opened. “Oh, and you must be the nice lady who kept the public peace from a couple young no-gooders off the roofs!”

“What game are you playing, punk?” replied the old lady, getting her cane out.

“Oh, no, I’m not playing any games here, Ma’am! See, I’m Sky Beak, and I’m here to ask a few questions about people visiting your lovely town.”

Nettle scrunched up her beak. “You’re selling me something, aren’t you?”

“No, Ma’am, it’s something much better than that! Trust me. You might’ve only seen me a few times for the past few days, but I’ve had a nice peachy time staying here! So, how about it?”

She looked at the pencil. “With questionnaires about this old place like the business telephones, I thought I’d seen everything last night. Gimmie that pencil!”

~~~

By lunch, Sky had returned, laptop and all, along with Ocean’s electronics.

“I’m all in for DIY stuff,” he said, as he took down a couple plastic bags, some tape, and her desk, “but this has bad written all over it.”

“It would be enough. Just tape the plastic all over, and make sure it doesn’t touch the screen. Don’t place the bags underneath the laptop or it’ll overheat.”

Ocean then laughed seeing the adorable sight that is the hunk of a hippogriff struggling with tape. He looked her way, but she said, “Go on. Ah, now it’s ready. Good, thank you.” She eyed Sky’s bag slung around his barrel. “Oh, and lunch?”

“Look, I can’t just sit here and chat,” he said. “I’m going to eat at the café uphill, keep myself abreast of the news and Basalt, but I’ll tell Many Bays to stop by and see you.”

“’Keep myself abreast of the news,’ the free bird says...” Shaking her head and distancing herself from her whispers, “Many Bays... you mean the sashimi guy?”

“It’s because you can eat fish. Fish eat fish, you know?”

“I’m not stupid, Sky.”

---

As he entered the café, he noted the many scratches on the door.

Over time, the sight of hippogriffs everywhere and the disturbing lack of humans had worn out their novelty, especially as bird-heads kept talking with the same voices he’d heard since his arrival. At least the coffee still smelled great to all.

But a familiar unicorn sat by the counter, a compass and camera painted on his flank. One of the creatures in the van last night.

Sky sided up to the unicorn, then from the barista, he ordered espresso.

The pony finally looked his way. “Can I even say that you’re not from here?”

Sky laughed. “You definitely don’t look like you’re from Basalt, good sir! But yes, I’m not from here.”

They exchanged pleasantries, but the TV’s news reports, used to showing local cricket broadcasts, kept butting in. More diplomatic visits from the other world were scheduled to commence, along with Equestria’s princesses making deals with the world’s major powers, including Aracea. The ticker below gave hope that the Aracean and Arisian queens would also meet soon to discuss inter-universal co-operation.

“It’s a mess,” said Leeway Cape, the unicorn, as he rubbed his horn and sipped on his cup of Amareicano. “I planned to just stop here, take a few pictures, and leave. Now... well, I don’t know how to drive anymore, not with these hooves. No one wants to drive me back to the capital, but it was a tall order anyway.”

“At least you’ve found some nice civilization here,” Sky said, clinking his cup of coffee against the saucer. “Speaking of, this your first time here in Basalt?”

He smiled wryly. “Yeah. Came back from Headland Sound. The lighthouse was beautiful, although the turbines almost ruined the mood. But the hour I stayed here before things got bad... yeah, the people were nice. Still are.” He gestured to a table where several teenagers amazed themselves by pecking a loaf of bread with their beaks. “Heh, they’re all good people. Well, can’t say the same about the roads, and there’s nothing but a library, a museum the size of a bedroom, and some wheat farms, but that’s it.”

“Oh, but what about the mountains?”

He looked out the window. “You mean those mountains? Look, I was in no shape to climb a mountain before becoming a pony, and now you’re telling me to scale them without hands?”

Sky snapped his claws. “No, I have an idea. You can still use your camera with your horn magic, right?”

~~~

“Okay, I take it back!” Leeway yelled, trembling against the air. “Flying is scary! I’m hunkering down in the hotel!”

So he jumped down and ran away, galloping across the grass fields and between several local vineyards. In the horizon, a formidable mountain range stood their ground.

“He’s right, you know,” said Stinger, touching down, having let go of her pony passenger. “Just took him up like five feet, and you heard him crying for dear life.”

Sky felt her claw on his bandaged wings. “What—ow!”

“Oh! Sorry, uh, force of habit.”

He set his haunches on a stubby fence of stone, drinking in the vineyard’s scene, tended to by farmers carefully picking grapes and pruning branches, unhindered by their new forms. Half a dozen flew over, beelining to a little stone house where, according to a proud Kiting, they’d crush the grapes in the traditional style.

“Didn’t even stop to ask about this place,” he said, inhaling the fruity air of grapes. “Now that’s a good one! ‘Hi there! Did you know that Basalt Flow is home to a wide variety of home-made wines?’”

“If they did, those connoisseurs should’ve been coming here in the thousands by now,” she said, clicking her tongue afterwards. “No, the story is that a bunch of wine wannabes found the climate perfect here and wanted to make their own label because every high-class family was doing it.”

“Let me guess: sold it off, not enough profit?”

The happy lift in her beak said yes.

“I can say it’s homegrown, then! Free from corporate influence!”

“You’re really trying to give Ocean Flow enough progress to tide her over, huh?”

“Tide her over for what?” he said. “Of course, she needs all this! And I need it, too.”

“To leave this place as fast as possible?”

His eyes widened. “Come on, Stinger! I came in here precisely to astound visitors, domestic or foreign, with the wonders of small-town Aracea!”

“No, the real reason, not the official one.”

A moment of contemplation later, he set his eyes toward the growing vineyard. It had also been a long time since he himself had had some good wine.

“Whatever actual reason I’ve had, the world’s... different. Everyone’s different now. I’ve come here for an offer to be a local tour guide, and now it looks like I’m gonna stay a little longer, and it’s not just ‘cause Ocean’s bossing me around.”

Stinger chuckled. “I searched online about you when you told me you were married to the queen’s sister. Can’t believe you pulled off that miracle, huh? But she’s quite low-key, isn’t she?”

“Her sister’s the queen; what can you do? But yes, Ocean’s a hard worker. If she ever got into sports, her work ethic alone would’ve gotten her medals. But, yes, it was a miracle,” he said, turning his eyes upward to the mountains. “That I ever got married to her at all. Me, a high school, college jock... this guy managed to snag future royalty? Others would kill for that, but I got it just because I looked rustic enough to her one day.”

Stinger shook her head. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am. My shirt was just dirty enough, and I had the jeans to prove it, and then, we had it all. The dates were gorgeous! We traveled everywhere, went to lots of state functions, and the wedding was as bright as day. Everybody who was anybody was there.”

Stinger cocked her head. “How come I’ve never heard of you, then? You’re part of the royal family, right?”

“We’d been low-keying everything long before Novo got there. Plus, busy with the kids. Can’t exactly go on grand tours and all that in public, though that got easier once we boarded them in an Amareican private high school. They’re a nest of independent little bunches.”

A couple of farmers in hats started picking grapes closer to the duo.

“So, what did you do?”

“Oh, I said it back when I came here, right? Biking competitions, extreme sports, mountain-climbing, even got into some agency that sold hill-climbing tours for beginners. I was at the top of my game, getting prize money left and right in competitions and outdoor services, and I loved it. Going beyond your physical limits like that and being paid for it is a sweet deal, don’t you agree?”

He went on, detailing his adventures. He had conquered a jungle in the Fillypine Isles, gone kayaking down a waterfall and earned a hefty sum by some Aracean counts for it, which somehow turned into organizing a short-lived league of extreme ironing, where they would iron some clothes at the top of some unnamed mountaintops, and whoever looked the coolest would win.

But Sky Beak would not notice Stinger looking away, to the vineyard and then one of the owners who would promptly tell them to buy some of their hundred-dollar wine or go home.

---

The meeting with the Board had taken a nosedive.

Now, Ocean sat there, much of her body baked under the sun, resting her fishy flesh on the rough sand, keeping her tail within the sea, compensating for the changing tide. Though thankful for the laptop protection, Ocean saw that the faces on the Board didn’t look as appreciative.

“It’s a matter of priorities,” said Good Hope, the now-hippogriff chair of the Board, on her video camera screen. “Defense spending’s gone astronomically high in case some terrorist group wants to take advantage of the chaos, and infrastructure is skyrocketing as well to accommodate our new species. The budget isn’t final, but we’ve got little to leverage here.”

“And what does that have to do with my current operation here in the shire?” Ocean said. “I’m already compiling a report here about Basalt Flow as we speak—“

“With all due respect, Miss Ocean,” said Alp Fault, some snow-white bird-horse notable for building an army of ski resorts on Aracea’s snowier peaks, “travel will be unstable, especially international, given, ahem, recent events.”

“We’re all on the same team!” Ocean spat. “It’s in all of our best interests to get a lion’s share of the funding so we could enact these projects and get our ROI—in money and in raw tourist numbers—before the summer starts.”

Another one, Rainier the seapony—broadcasting himself just above water with his smartwatch—piped up, “We are running overtime on this topic. Let’s move on to the next subject, budget projections for the Board.”

“Look, what do you want me to do with this?” Ocean held some answered questionnaires on her fin, laminated to be waterproof. “I’ve done enough work to warrant feedback and suggestions on how tourism in the shire will move forward. I can’t be the only one out there doing field agent work. I’m as down-to-earth as I can be on this Board!”

“We can’t deny that,” Good Hope replied. “But let’s table this.”

So numbers and graphs tore at her mind as the meeting continued.

The topic did return to her dealings. The rest of the shire and its coastline had to be surveyed, at least, if for nothing more than the value of its beaches. If none of the towns could be saved, that was okay; it would be money well saved for something else. Alp Fault still had it in him that a little railroad connecting the towns would be a nice experience, but Rainier insisted that a never-changing sea shouldn’t be enough to justify a whole new railroad to The Transportation Ministry.

But then, it was back to the budget.

~~~

“Meeting adjourned. Ocean Flow, stay with me.”

The gallery of faces on the screen cut themselves down to just Good Hope’s. In the relative quiet, with only the coming and going of waves to fill her ears, Ocean could see the stack of paperwork just behind Hope’s chair.

Exasperation overcame Ocean’s features. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“A lot,” Hope simply said. “We could ask you to talk with your sister to grant us extra money, but you’ll have to agree with me that now is not the best time to get this report done or to request that windfall from the Queen.”

“Not the best time? I’ve already made strides with this report despite being stuck at sea!”

“A report that assumed everyone was still human.” The look on Hope’s face then faltered. “Now, I don’t doubt that whatever these Equestrians are, we have some things in common. But I can’t assume much else. In addition, even if we had all the money we need, it’d just sit around because our projects would need massive Equestrian adjustments. Standardization will be a mess, too; public transportation already took a hit there when we realized you could just fly over half the buildings here.”

“Look, just say you don’t need this report yet, okay?”

Hope rubbed her eyes. “Not now. We’d just be sitting on our haunches anyway.”

Ocean bit her tongue instead of her non-existent lip. “I’ve worked in this Board for more than five years, and I’ve been under the Tourism Ministry for more than seven. I’ve helped save the face of several ministers in my time, and I’ve dipped my hands into a couple more projects, consulted with them... I worked my way up here as a public servant for the longest time, even if you take away my sister’s help! I’ve built up all this—“

“Ocean Flow?”

A few drops were seeping in through the plastic. Ocean blew them off onto the sand.

“I’ve sent an e-mail to everyone here to take a break,” Hope continued. “Unless the queen decides to have too much compassion on us, our budget could only keep it afloat. All the people we’re advertising Aracea to are too busy getting their claws or hooves or fins on the ground. You, of all people, should know this. You’re one of the few on this Board with more than a dozen years of experience in the government and are privy to inside politics thanks to your sister.”

Ocean kept silent as the cold waves reached her once more.

“I’ll be ending it here. We won’t be expecting any report within the next two weeks.” Then, she took a long breath. “Also, off the record, enjoy your surprise vacation. You say Basalt Flow’s not the best, but it seems nice enough. We’re all gonna need this break.”

With an exchange of goodbyes, the meeting ended, and Ocean closed her laptop, waiting for Sky to return it to her hotel room.

---

The wedding had gone smoothly, all according to her plan.

For Ocean Flow, every detail had been scrutinized, meticulously laid out for her right-hand assistants and clerks to put to reality. While it shouldn’t rival Novo’s own wedding from a few years back, it still turned out ornate in all things, from the artificial archways to the luscious red carpets.

Now, there would indeed be a small orchestra, but a local band with zithers and other folk instruments would also come on stage to perform folk music. Several top athletes of the day were also invited, giving Sky some like-minded shoulders to rub with. And the doors would swing open to cast a wide net, catching nobles and workers alike.

She would point out his past to everyone, because that was his big selling point. Sky Beak was not a politician nor an oil magnate nor a big anything. Sky Beak was a man of the people, who had applied himself vigorously to achieve his current status. She couldn’t deny that the optics would make the press fawn over her and construe herself as a disruptor of Aracean tradition, in the name of liberalism and democracy.

Today had already been her day.

So when the ceremony ended with kisses and a pick-up truck leading them all the way to a decent manor not too far from the capital, they spent the rest of the week in each other’s arms. There was another public dinner to be had, and a press conference to attend, and Sky Beak would cut the ribbon at the opening of a new hotel that offered a breathtaking vista of its soft, white sands.

There, they lay, watching the sun set.

She ran through next week’s schedule in her mind. She had to settle a biography deal for Sky, then get a high school or two named after him. Sumptuous dinners would follow as per the honeymoon clause, from Amareica to Gryphonstein, from Skogur to Neighpon...

But she had to look when cameras stormed Sky and microphones shot themselves to his face, and he said, “Yeah, she’s been great! I still can’t believe it! Sir, could you pinch me? Surely, I’d tell you if I woke up from this, right? She’s everything I wanted!”