Sea Dreams

by Odd_Sarge

7 - Her Sea Power

“Ponies not know better.”

“Because they can’t know exactly what you’re thinking.”

“Yes. I no help, too. Don’t say what think. No word... best word, most time.”

“It’s a really good practice to speak up and vent, Reckless.”

“That why you here. We here.”

“Of course.”

Ponyville was quiet today. Sea Swirl rather liked it that way. There were so many exciting days and moments in the town: earth ponies definitely knew how to have fun, and the constant wave of new arrivals made sure every interaction was a memorable one.

Of all those episodes, Sea Swirl was glad to have settled into life with Reckless and Screwy.

“It’s nice to be out of the way, don’t you think? To settle back, and just do... nothing.”

“Yes. But retirement not so close, Sea Swirl.”

“I just moreso meant taking a break, Reckless.”

“No room for break in war. Always fight.”

“Then it’s a good thing there’s no war here, right?”

“Only war of heart. Hearts.”

Sea Swirl felt the immediate twist of pain. “Reckless...”

“No,” the warhorse suddenly broke. Her brown eyes gleamed as she laid her sights on Sea Swirl. “Your heart hurt most. You much help, yes. We friend. You best friend. But friend can hurt. I fear...” Reckless paused. She lowered her gaze, licked her lips, then tilted back up again. Her whisper was sharp. “Will hurt your heart when try fix mine.”

The ocean-hearted mare, for as tumultuous a life she lived in her mind, didn’t fight back. “Okay.” She flexed her fetlock, and brushed against the head of Screwy, sprawled out across the floor before her. “I’m sorry.”

Reckless’ forelegs slid across the living room carpet. She laid herself flat and turned away. “No. No sorry. This just life. Life I live, now.”

For a moment, they both clung to their own respective carpets. Sea Swirl felt herself tempted to slide down and join Screwy in her curled up dreams, but that would leave Reckless out of the equation. A peek now and she could see her warhorse friend sulking, her mane just poking out above the coffee table. Below, her head pressed deeper into her fetlocks. The weight of everything was bound to leave an imprint in the carpet; she was tiring herself out pushing into the floor. Was it some kind of comfort? If it was, it wasn’t nearly enough. Reckless wouldn’t be satisfied until she lived in a different world.

Sea Swirl wished she could give it to her. It was a dream.

But dreams weren’t fulfilled without motion.

If she wanted Reckless to live in a better world, she needed to act.

So, she didn’t reply. She let the warhorse tire herself in that isolated, desperate bid for comfort. If she wanted to say something more meaningful, she needed to think. Reckless was not a thinking mare. She was smart, brilliant, almost certainly a trained tactician... but she didn’t have the same experience Sea Swirl did in workings of the heart, and dreams. Yes, Reckless was a simple-minded mare, but she didn’t understand just how big her heart was.

“Reckless...”

Above the coffee table, the rounded ends of Reckless’ ears twitched.

“You’re a good mare. I really think you should know that.”

She heard a breath from below.

Sea Swirl leveraged herself forward. “And you’re a good marine. That never stopped mattering.”

Reckless shifted her legs, but didn’t raise herself. Her face remained in her fetlocks.

“You’re such a strong fighter, but you also have a strong heart. You fight for the purpose of helping, protecting, saving others. You work so very hard not for the sake of the reward, but for the sake of lives. You’ve spent so long fighting without mind for life, but you know you can have it. You deserve it. Everypony deserves a good life, and you are owed one no less or more than others. You remember so clearly the details of others, of the steps you need to take to keep them on the path. You draw them out with you, leave them safe, and dive right back into the fight. Your fight.”

Reckless raised her head. Her eyes and ears were narrowed right at Sea Swirl.

“You don’t have to fight alone. You never did. And you never have to.” Sea Swirl rested her hoof against Screwy’s form, and wound a slow circle. “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re at the end of the world. For you, it was the end of the war. For me, it was the whirlpool’s edge.”

“Whirlpool?” Reckless tried the unfamiliar word.

Her ploy to distract Reckless having worked, Sea Swirl nodded. “Whirlpool. It was a vortex, actually. I should’ve seen it was bad while on the ship...” Sea Swirl trailed off with a little smile. She was getting ahead of herself.

Reckless swallowed. “Don’t like ships.”

“I don’t like ‘em too much, either. But I love the sea.”

Slowly, Sea Swirl’s smile shrank. Not afraid, nor sad. Serious.

“But when I was a filly, for a while there, I feared the mean ‘ole blue.”

Rapt with attention, Reckless leaned her head against the coffee table. Screwy’s tail traced a path against the carpet, and her ears peaked. The eyes of her friends were on her.

And for the first time in a long time, Sea Swirl felt ready to share her story.

“Stepping into the water of the sea for the first time is kind of like traveling to a different world. All these new sensations on your hooves, the water clinging and tasting like no lake you’ve been in before? Yeah, when my parents and I lived by the Celestial Sea, I wanted to spend my whole life in those waters.”

“Every time, it was like I got a little further and further. Then, it turned out I was getting further. I wasn’t a filly like the others, with lots of siblings to rein me in, I just had parents willing to be there for me. But I swam out, and the waves crashed in, and I just... I wanted to keep going.”

“I dove under those waves, and the world just expanded. All those little shells and wash-ashores I’d see? Well, they lived and breathed in the blue beneath. And I really wanted to stay there. But I held my breath, kept my eyes open, and bobbed straight to the surface. Kicked my way back to the beach and my parents. And went home.”

“And there, with my mom still drying me, I asked to see the sea.”

“It wasn’t a cruise, just a little accompanying voyage out with my uncle on his fishing trawler. And it turned into a whole series of little trips. My parents are unicorns, but my uncle... he’s an earth pony. It made my mind go crazy whenever I was with him, because I’d always be asking him about all the earth pony ways. But well, Uncle Cerulean had a lot of tales about the sea. He’s more sea pony than earth pony, really. I loved him for it, and still do. He was stood like me, glimpsing into a different world.”

“His view didn’t exactly rub off on me, though. Oh of course, I listened to Uncle Cerulean. How could I not? He had such a way of telling tales. Such a way of living life. Lonely, but filled with knowledge of the wonders of all the world’s details. From little facts about the fish he caught, all the way to meetings with foreign warships. He was a well-lived pony, well-caught in the life he lived, but rather than feeling trapped and withheld, he enjoyed living with the boundaries of his world.”

“Little me didn’t want to be like that. I wanted to be an explorer. I wanted to go past the barrier between our worlds. I wanted to step aboard those warships, to follow the fish home, to find new lives... to dive into the deep blue.”

“I was stood up on the edge of Uncle Cer’s ship. I peeked down into the white wake of the whirlpool. It was fascinating. Like a portal into a different world.”

“So I climbed the railing, took a deep breath, and I jumped.”

“...I didn’t expect the sea to punch the life out of me.” Sea Swirl closed her eyes. Coolness pooled in around her ears. She shivered. “It was so quick. Slipped and pulled away from the surface, like the sands so far below had snatched me with feral grains. My eyes were open the whole time, but my bubbled breath just blocked my whole view, and the panic in my heart blinded any thinking I could do. So the whirlpool, that mean vortex, he took me and pulled me as far as I’d ever been from the world I knew.”

“I’d only had a taste of the sea from looking in. I’d not had so much time to explore, I’d only dreamed I’d enjoy exploring. But after a bit longer, it let me up, and I was left to look around. And all I saw was a fathomless void. Nothing to see, nothing to latch onto. It was all nothing. Open blue, and the darkness grasping me from below. And then I realized I was sinking. Just sinking. So I tried to swim, to pull myself up, and the vortex dragged me back down. I was stuck there, Reckless. I thought with my little heart, my little mind, ‘this is it.’”

“I did give up, there. My life ended.”

“I couldn’t remember much of what happened next. Experience, now, tells me that I blacked out. But then, I woke up. Woke up to a new life.”

Sea Swirl flexed her fetlocks again. She loosened the tightness of her shut eyes, and smiled. “I remember waking up to the feeling in my hooves. It was so sleek. Not slimy, but... smooth. Not like bubbles bursting against my coat, but like a cool brush easing against me. I opened my eyes back up, and there it was. A dolphin. My hero.”

“I was so excited, then. I’d only seen them distantly when I was stood in the shallows, and here I was in the deep blue. I wasn’t alone anymore. I hooked my hooves so quick around that dolphin, and he lifted me up with a few good clicks. And then there was another. And another. And soon enough, a whole pod of the most beautiful heroes the world had to offer were there for me. I clung so close to them, because they were all I had in the void of the deep blue.”

“I was back on the surface so quick. These fascinating creatures I’d never met... they saved me. A minute later, I was stood up on deck, Uncle Cer holding onto me, and my hooves over the railing again to yell my lungs off at dolphins. They gave me the chance to do so. To scream my thanks and love for them. In that moment, all the fears I had... quieted. They called back up to me, and I felt like I was where I belonged. It wasn’t the world I lived in that mattered, then. It was about the ones who I shared it with.”

Sea Swirl opened her eyes. She looked around the living room. Reckless and Screwy were still with her. Their eyes locked right on her, ears perked high. They listened to her story just as she’d listened to many before.

And so she went on, taking them with her.

“I got my cutie mark on the ship, at the edge of two worlds. I was told I had a purpose, and maybe a talent. I didn’t know what it was, there. And while all the stories I’ve heard and lived through have taught me a lot, I’m still not there. But I know that if I cling to the heroes I have, here, I can stay in this world a little longer, and maybe, just maybe, find that feeling. That purpose beyond life.”

She smiled so gently. “And so I hope—I really hope, and always will hope—if we keep close, our worlds will intertwine, we’ll realize our dreams, and we won’t ever fear living a purposeless life alone.”

Author's Note:

Comments

[NorrisThePony]

“You’re a good mare. I really think you should know that.”

She heard a breath from below.

Sea Swirl leveraged herself forward. “And you’re a good marine. That never stopped mattering.”

This part, and the couple paragraphs that follow, were some of the most emotionally raw bits from this whole story. Excellent stuff, and marvellous visuals with Sea's story as well.

[redmar]

Sea Swirls story is interesting. I wonder how that's connected to her being in Ponyville.