Night Lights
Flotsam stood up, or tried to, but he hadn’t moved for a while and it was such a sudden, spinning, dizzy mess with four legs on. He saw the world go careening across his vision… “Uh oh,” he moaned sickly-
…and collapsed into the fire's welcoming embrace.
Pause. Stop. Freeze the mental image. Zoom out the eye of imagination. The fire becomes a bed, becomes a bowl, becomes a distant speckle. Now we look down on the nameless island like a map on a table in a very dark room. Slide it to the side. Move the point of focus. Descend back into it, lower than low-hanging wisps of cloud, lower than tree tops. Approach at last an extensive sand-castle. Go close up. Let each grain be visible. Take a moment to appreciate the frozen shimmers of starlight and the patterns locked into the surface of the water in the background.
Now let time resume. Carefully.
Patches dozed peacefully.
She dozed peacefully and snug inside the hollowed out space of the sand castle. Infrequently she made little mew mew mew sounds. She turned and twisted and lolled in ways that nominally looked uncomfortable or strictly speaking, impossible, but in actual fact managed to convey total comfort. For years – most of her life at that – Patches' world had been one defined by tight space management, steerage and low ceilings. The only open spaces familiar to her were above decks or, failing that, overboard. The latter didn’t bear thinking about. There was the rigging of course, but as a pony went up there was less and less actually useful space – the great view was comprised in large parts of all the things a filly couldn’t stand on or hold to on account of not being there.
An early skill learned, so early as to not even be a skill, but a fundamental part of her perception had been unconsciously rewording the idea of ‘cramped’ into ‘cozy.’ Knowingly or not, Flotsam had done the filly a kindness in giving her a little hollow, a den of sorts to shell up in for the night. It was more like home that way.
Clams did whatever it was clams felt it necessary to do in the darkness. Even the sand fleas slept. A hermit waved threateningly at a nudist four times its size, but since they were both crabs there wasn’t really any more to make of it. It had seen something promising and was willing to stake a claim. It tried to climb, but the filly rolled and it would have to start over.
All was quiet. That was to be expected. The glowing, however; that deserved comment.
It was soft, a candlelight without the candle and the palest possible pink without actually being white. The light pulsed and glimmered ever so slightly, like a starfish doing patient calisthenics. It came from the red cockle shell, or to be more correct was coming from somewhere else completely, but was presently inhabiting the cockle.
The shell was standing. It was perched with unlikely balance on a single grain of sand at the very centre of the little podium and spinning very slowly as if all this were a completely irrelevant and forgettable occurrence. And if you were a clam or a sand flea or a crab that would have been very much the case.
It was a different matter for Patches …and by some small extension the singular hermit crab trying to climb her mane after having taken a realtor’s investigative interest in Patches' ear.
The glow was pink – faintest, softest pink – but the thread that began to unspool from it could only be called silvery, snowy purity. It grew, waved like underwater forests, and then pressed gently to Patches forehead.
She sighed, frowned, shook her head and flicked her ears in sleep. The hermit crab, deciding that this was the false advertisement of a rough neighbourhood took its indignation and left, contributing no more to the story.
Patches woke up.
Well, no, truth be told she didn’t.
Her eyes were open and the expression presently on her face was one of keen alertness. But it wasn’t hers.
She spoke, and the words were hers only in so far as breath and vocal cords were concerned. There were two inflections, as might be created by a skilled actor rehearsing both halves of a dialogue.
“It’s steady,” said body-of-Patches. The esses were beautiful, uncanny, alien visitors to the filly’s voice.
“Can you hold it? We’re not…who is this?”
Affronted pride flashed momentarily across Patches features. “Be assured that I can.”
“This is it. This time it’s real. I know it.”
“It is-”
“Shining! Shining!” Patches cried, half-croaking, making to stand with unnaturally sharp, knee-jerk reaction movements.
“Stop!” she then hissed, slumping again.
“But he’s here,” she pleaded with herself. “This is the strongest love-image we’ve found yet. It's real this time. I know it’s him. Shining is here!”
“As I, to, sincerely hope. But we do not steal a pony’s body and strain her mind just because we have an excuse. Good reasons open the door to bad reasons,” she reflected bitterly.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean, we didn’t…?”
“No, Cadence, we did not. I understand your anxiety. You are forgiven. But you must be gentle.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right. What…what are we looking at? I can’t make it out…”
“It is night.” Patches said with a touch of pride, “and this pony is on the beach.”
“Inside a tent, maybe?”
“Something like that, no doubt. For what I can see of the stars…yes, we are – that is to say, our host is – in the area of the Coral Coast. No more than several hundred leagues away, I am sure. I cannot be more exact.”
“So he didn’t run off,” Patches mused resolutely.
“Did you truly believe that he did?”
“No! You know I don’t. But..."
“We might have discussed this in your dreams, free of judgement and ears, except you more or less have stopped sleeping entirely,” Patches chided, which was impressive in its own way because here was a filly in a hollow on a beach in the night with a glowing thread of magic rooted to her forehead, and still she managed it.
“Don't remind me. Anyway we’re going off-topic. I need to talk to this pony. Can you get us into her dreams?”
“I can, yes.” There was an edge of uncertainty to the words.
“Luna, are you alright?”
“It is nothing. This unusual method you’ve designed is perhaps a little more taxing on me. That is all.”
“I need to be sure, Luna.”
“You would prefer to be the one to speak with her, I trust?”
“Yes. Wait, don’t I have to be asleep? I can try, but…”
“Do not worry about that, friend Cadence.”
“What do you – Ow! What was that for-Oohhhhh.” For the sake of narrative one might imagine, very distantly, the swaying of hooves and a crumpling.
“Well. That was somewhat extreme,” said Patches to herself, but only in the literal sense. “I hope for her sake you do have an answer for us, little pony, that we may put this to bed at last.”
A mote of light coursed down the shining thread and disappeared into Patches’ head. A moment later, a second followed it.
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static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Luna_Sweet_Dreams_7838.jpg
Ho ho! Shining's family might get some answers!
... That conversation between Luna and Cadance is pretty good, too. A pretty good amount of information.
As Shining still burns offscreen.
Huh interesting
I really love the scenery building put into this chapter, and the crab parts were hilarious.
The crab parts really remind me of Terry Pratchett, hilarious bits of world building.
6458303
Considering that SirTP is my most beloved of all writers and I'm doing a Discworld convention next week... it means a lot to me
6457874
I don't know why but that comment made me imagine that after shining fell (didn't fall) into the fire the rest of the crew just stopped talking and watched him burn for a while before going back to talking completely ignoring him
Cruel and a tad gruesome but (I believe) kind of funny?
6457866 *Pinkie Pie's Dream*
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/8/31/712302__safe_pinkie+pie_animated_human_3d_wat_wide+eyes_source+filmmaker_dancing_derp.gif
All caught up.
Just a little bit too late... Shining Armor now comes in an "extra crispy" edition.
You know you've gotten off easy when the hermit crab decides not to climb into your ear and settle in.
Hmn, this glowing cockle shell. Concerned family member who has finally tracked Shining down? There's a fair number of possible candidates for who might be casting such magic.
Make that multiple family members, assuming fellow princesses count.
Time for some dream spelunking.
I think that this might be the first time in the entire story that we might have switched perspectives, gotten the end of the previous chapter for frame of reference, and gotten a glimpse that Shining Armor is being looked for, extensively at that, all at the same time.
I felt it was jarring the way you transitioned to Patches POV (well, relatively her POV anyways), mostly because you have not done that at all earlier in the story (that I recall). Rather than continuing in the story-like fashion, it felt like you went from narrator to director for a moment there, creating an establishing shot when usually such a thing is done within the flow of the story, if that makes sense.
I am also intrigued on how this husband-seeking spell of sorts works, but I have faith that it will either be fully revealed later on or at least touched on at another point.
New chapter tommorow. You can hold me to it. Aiming to get the pace a bit higher yet.