Thtorm
Two weeks passed. A fantastic storm now battered at the Mother of Mercy. She met it in kind; her crew were possessed with a strange and frightful delight. At last, something to do!
Water sheeted off wet mares hard at work. Waves washed the deck. Eruptions of spray and wind slapped Flotsam silly. His heartbeat pounded, his eyes blinked, and he clung to the tossing and turning ship for dear life.
He faced the onslaught in terror and bravery.
The whole display was a great sight to uplift the mares’ good spirits, that. Cackles and cat-calls as to where he might better suited for were thankfully lost to the gale, if not the implicit meaning.
None were more frightfully possessed by gleeful madness than long-legged lanky Patches. She stayed to the Captain’s side (for she grappled with the great and temperamental wheel in solitary combat) relaying Nauticaa’s orders. In this manner the filly was the unexpected extension of Nauticaa’s own voicebox.
“Batten the hatcheth!”
“Aye!”
“Lift the mainthtay!
“Aye!”
“Keel-haul the main thailth!”
“Aye!”
“Port the starboard!”
“AYE!”
“That sounds made up!” Flotsam cried out. This got him a few looks from various rushing-past crew mares. Various expressions of Are you simple? and Well duh and more than one You’re a real cutie when your dumb were lobbed his way.
Lightning struck the water some mile or two away. Its zig-zagging sharpness was slow to fade from Flotsam’s eyes.
The world heaved like an upset stomach. When he could make sense of it again he saw Nauticaa rip on the huge many bespoked wheel in the direction opposite that which the lightning had struck at.
Flotsam, it must be interjected into the narrative here, was not the simpleton he might have seemed. Indeed, the lateness of the hour (for it was midnight, or well past that, or not, for in a tempest such as this there was no knowing) the suddenness with which it had been sprung on his awareness and this indeed being the sea-going storm to pop Flotsam’s sea-going storm cherry needed to be given credit in bewildering and baffling him. Addled as he was, his overexcited mind made the connection with the sudden lurching turn of the Mother, steep and harsh enough that even the seasoned crew mares cried their belays to one another and gripped tightly whatever they had to hoof for it.
His summation was thusly: Lightning is bad.
He wasn’t wrong.
Another bolt speared across the sky. Wickedly forked, it reached out with electric fingers.
The tone changed. Patches still relayed orders, jaunting to the left, to the right, to the fore and rear of the Captain, and the words to Flotsam’s ears were still as interchangeable and unknown as the games before, but the silliness went out of them.
“Ah”, the Mother of Mercy seemed to say, the manner of its words being the mood and manner of its crew. In the clenching of ropes and the gritting of teeth. “Now that we’re done with the foreplay, let’s get down to it. That being, if you’re game?”
Gale winds howled, lightning flashed and an arm of rigging from the mast came hurtling down.
It smashed barely a pony’s height above the deck, on a glittering shield of magical light. The armature, wide as the whole of the ship or near enough, slid along the curvature of the shield, made as if to slip into the sea and was jerked to a halt that rocked the Mother.
“Cut the ropes. Do it, now!”
This time, the order came straight from the horse’s mouth. The Captain’s voice seemed to insert itself directly into body via the spine. It was a good voice for commanding. Herself and three other mares now piled-up on the quivering wheel. The ship was listing now, its main mast damaged and unbalanced. The ship lurched left at every provocation while only grudgingly giving back to the right.
Flotsam had no idea how much damage it must take to capsize a ship. There was already a definite tilt he could feel in his hooves. He had unhappy flashbacks to his first sodden memories. He would rather not would revisit them.
“Aye aye, thir!”
Fast as the raindrops falling up went Patches, her trusted little knife in mouth. The rigging was staunch, soaked through and stretched taut by the shattered beam. Patches struggled up the shield, not hesitating at all on the ethereal, new and temporary deck. She set about sawing in a sort of rodent-like frenzy. Below her the stricken beam dangled like an evil anchor.
All this had happened of an instant. Patches was quick.
One rope snapped away. The beam fell lower. It hit the choppy seas and tore at the ship with such sudden drag that the mares fighting the great wheel cried out and redoubled their efforts.
Patches was a rain-blurred speck in the dark.
The second rope – the final rope – gave way with a snap of water and air. Patches was knocked backwards, head over hooves over head over hooves out over the water. Instantly Flotsam let his spell fizzle out; the beam fell with a splash and vanished instantly into the stormy night. He whipped his horn about.
The falling, shrieking filly stopped dead some feet above the churning ocean surface. Flotsam smiled.
Then a wave washed completely over the filly so that she disappeared from sight. A scream snuffed out.
“No!” Flotsam screamed, his heart bursting into hundreds of pieces.
The wave passed into the night. The filly remained exactly where she had been, held aloft on the magical tether, only know she was even more thoroughly soaked then before.
Flotsam stalled for thought. His heart unexploded back into the regular allotment of tubercles and pumpy parts. Quite sensibly he brought her back to deck.
Then he hugged Patches.
With the dead-weight cut away, the crew were winning their battle for control of ship and storm alike. Already the ferocity of the gale was giving way to a more impotent raging.
“I…” exclaimed the filly. She was shaking, more than that she was positively thrumming. Flotsam held her close. “I…” she repeated, and looked up at the unicorn.
The Captain’s voice was fury. Not furious, but fury itself. She heaved the wheel. Crew mares jumped to safety. It spun like it were running for its very life from the Captain. She caught it with one jarring hoof that brought it to a dead stillness. Her glare was decidedly unhappy.
“You. Below Decks. Now.”
Filly and stallion both nodded dumbly, their limbs scrambling faster than their brains.
“C-come on, Flottham. It’th like you n-never b-b-been through a tht-tht-thtorm before.” She laughed…or was trying to laugh, at any rate. What came out of her was a strained, crazed cackle.
Now Flotsam was completely lost. He shepherded the filly into the ship – or she him – and just as soon as they were hid away from it all Patches the Pirate broke down and had a really good cry, burying herself deeply into Flotsam the poor, confused, anxious flotsam’s shoulder.
He tried to comfort her. “Hey, hey, it’s ok. It’s ok. I’m the only pony that gets swept away in the ocean. That’s my gig.”
Her sobs came more forcefully. Patches spread snot liberally on the unicorn’s coat. Flotsam wisely said no more that night.
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Nice to see that Flotsam's shield slinging is instinctual and just as powerful as ever. I admit, I sometimes find the crew as baffling as he does, so I sympathized with him recieving all of those "are you stupid?" looks. I'm looking forward to seeing the captain's and crew's reactions to this little incident...
My heart nearly stopped. So glad that Flotsam is on the ball even with the amnesia.
More chapters! :D
As others have said, Flotsam may have lost his memory, but not all his skill, as if they were in a deeper part of his self...
Guard captain!
“Keel-haul the main thailth!”
“Aye!”
“Port the starboard!”
“AYE!”
I'm dying of laughter.
O.O Patches be stealin' his jerb!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUTnNKhF-EU
5801028 Same
Those last several paragraphs are touching.
Also;
Just spotted it on what must be my... third, fourth? reading.
Thtorm
Still a nice story to read, even if it's becalmed.