Winona gets into some poison joke and turned into something similar to the Diamond Dogs. Adventure and headaches ensue.
A bipedal canine of similar structure to the creatures in "A Dog and Pony Show" finds herself lost in a swamp.
Naturally, she can't remember a thing about how she got there. Just that her name is Winona, the hat she found belongs to a good friend, and she should probably return it.
The world being what it is, her journey will not be that simple.
Slightly spoilery, but this story grew from the desire to have someone refer to Celestia as "Frith". Sometimes I love where the spiders in my head take me.
Story Quality brought to you by Amneiger the Editor and Chautauquan the Prereader.
Due credit also to Klondike, the scholar and gentleperson who let me use their art for the cover.
Conscious thought came to her in the company of a powerful ache. Cranial cavities gave protest to new strains as wakefulness asserted itself over blissful insensitivity.
Where am I?
Such was the first thought that came to her mind. It wasn't much of a thought, typical of a sentient being awakening somewhere they hadn't fallen asleep.
She wasn't sure where she had fallen asleep, but it almost certainly hadn't been half submerged in this chilly water. Since she had not yet opened her eyes, the first feeling she was conscious of was touch, the cooling embrace of water from around her middle down to her back feet. The second, as she drew a breath, was the plethora of smells permeating the air.
Some were familiar. Mud, plants, mud-plants, water, water-plants, something rotting; these scents came from all around, and were immediately recognized. Others were strange and unknown. Like sounds heard through a wall, or shapes seen through a mist, these unfamiliar aromas tantalized her. She tried to think back, whether she'd smelled anything like this before.
Memories from before she awoke were fuzzy, a smell here, an image there. Apples. Cloth. Straw. Boards. Water. Nothing clear, and certainly nothing like what she could smell now.
Further musing was interrupted by a spike of pain. The migraine ceased torturing her after a second, but it left a constant reminder of its presence in the form of a continuing ache.
This wouldn't do. She brought a limb up to her head and rubbed it. The rubbing did nothing to dispel the ache, but she felt better for having acted.
An insect chose this moment to investigate her. Its whining flight brought it winding around her half-raised body until it came to a rest on her ear. She brought a limb around, the same one she'd used to rub her head, and caught the insect mid-takeoff, squashing the arthropod into something that felt like mud.
Her eyes opened to confirm the feeling. Sure enough, the substance she'd smashed the insect into was mud, glistening in the light. Her limb was flanked on either side by a shimmering flower. She turned her head. The plants seemed to be everywhere, growing on vines that slid into the mud from above, hanging down from a tall, broad tree a little further inland. She frowned, bringing her headache back to prominence. Something was still wrong. The limb to the right in the mud, which had responded to her commands, was unfamiliar.
The whole appendage seemed wrong. It was a paw, sure enough, with the light fur “gloves” she was used to, but the digits were longer, jointed differently. She picked the offending limb up, using the opposite one to brace herself against the ground.
She wiggled the fingers. There were three of them now, with two joints each, and a fourth one opposite that only bent once. The single-jointed digit was shorter than the others. She stuck the first of the long ones out and brought it closer. The nail on the end blended almost perfectly into the rest of the paw, but the tiny black pad on its underside provided a contrast and marked where the claw ended. The whole underside was smeared with mud.
Curiosity satisfied, she turned to the insect. It sat there in the mud, twitching two short antennae and flexing its bright wing cases, buzzing its wings every once in a while. She brought her finger down and poked it. The insect fluttered a bit in response, but remained where it was.
She continued to stare at it for a minute or two, watching it flop around. Finally it recovered enough to take off and made an annoyed-sounding buzz at her, before flying off to parts unknown. She paused.
I just got told off by a bug.
Another thought, more absurd than coherent, but a thought, and one she found amusing. She felt something bubbling up in her chest. It felt like a cough or a sneeze, but she didn't feel like holding it in.
“Heh. Hehehehe—”
The laugh came forth like a small brook breaking a beaver dam, and like that brook, it flowed long and hard for a few seconds before she regained her faculties enough to realize something. She had laughed, verbally. It felt strange and unfamiliar, like she'd just stepped on a cloud or done something similarly absurd and impossible. Yet it also felt natural, like when she'd moved her fingers. That feeling brought another thought to her mind.
It felt like I was made to laugh that way.
She suddenly had an urge to look at her face. She turned her head, trying to look over her right shoulder into the water. When that didn't bring it into view, she pushed off with her left arm, causing her to balance on her back two limbs.
She looked down.
Looking back at her was a long light muzzle tipped with a black twitching nose with matching whiskers. The head attached to that muzzle was round and furry, with two triangular, floppy ears sticking off at angles. A pair of bright, large eyes examined her, a curious expression outlined by the eyebrows.
This is me.
What am I?
The thought sprung unbidden into her mind, and echoed there for a good while. The collie in the water stared back the entire time. How long she stood like that she didn't know. Her trance was only interrupted when her reflection was obscured. Something had floated up to her on the water.
A dark-ish object, round and flat with a mound in the middle bobbed serenely in front of her. She sent an arm down to retrieve it, pulling the item closer for inspection. It smelled faintly of sweat and apples. Its rim was interrupted by what might have been a very smooth bite mark.
Suddenly, she was back. Before the “now”.
There was a fire nearby, crackling and emitting its ashy smell. A comforting source of warmth from one side. From the other, another scent. A smell of wood, earth, sweat and apples. Her head turned. She felt smaller somehow, and her body felt more familiar. There was the source of the other smell, sitting on something nearby. It was wearing the bobbing trance-interruptor on its head, obscuring most of its head. Its snout was shorter than hers, and its coat was shorter and darker than her “gloves” but lighter than the rest of her fur. It smiled at her, a quirk of the mouth she knew meant happiness. She could feel her tongue lolling and her tail wagging. She was smiling back. A friend. A good friend. The whole scene was permeated by a feeling of relaxation and contentment.
A shift, like a sunbeam bleeding through a cloud. A new scene presented itself. Her friend was talking to another of its kind. A lighter one, hovering off the ground with wings. The hovering one's messy, multi-hued coat was swishing about as it dodged her friend's attempts to catch it. The hovering one had her friend's bobbing trance-interruptor clenched in its mouth. Her friend was vocalizing. “Rainbow Dash, ya'll give me back mah hat this instant!” The sounds meant little to her then, but the tone said everything. A fun game to play with friends. She felt her throat let loose a volley of happy barking.
Then, she felt she was further forward. Closer to now.
The friend was far above her, and wind was whipping at her fur. She tried to reach her friend, but the ground ahead of her was too steep and slick. Her friend was looking down, seemed very concerned. Calling to her. What the friend said was lost to the rushing of the wind. She couldn't hear. Rushing noises filled the air. She scrambled to get up, but just slid back down each time. The rush had become nearly deafening. Then, there was a “Whumf” noise, and then she was back.
She shook her head, clearing it but bringing back the migraine. She looked at the hat, connecting the sound to the object. A howl, long and wild from far off, interrupted her investigation of the object. She recognized that sound. Another memory, more a feeling than a picture or scent, was associated with that howl. That noise meant danger, an enemy that needed to be fought.
I need to help.
A problem presented itself. She needed a way to keep the hat while moving quickly. She looked around, searching for something, eventually settling on straight down. There was a black band around her hips, just above where the water was. That would work.
She moved. She tried running on all fours, but her arms were wrong. Her head was too far forward, and the whole posture seemed awkward and slow. Nevertheless, she tried to make her way towards where the howl had come from. That ended quickly, in a jumble of limbs and errant cypress knees.
A new approach. She reared onto her back legs again, like she had in the water. This felt natural. A step, however, was punctuated by a loss of balance and subsequent close acquaintance with a lot of mud and a low cypress knee.
She finally settled on a scrambling gait, back legs hunched up and spine bent, with her arms helping with stability by grabbing handy surfaces. So postured, she made her way through the swamp.
Mud, mud, trees, mud. These were the sights and smells that repeated themselves ad infinitum to her. Occasionally she'd get a paw stuck in particularly watery muck or trip on a gnarled root, but she forced herself onwards.
Her persistence was rewarded by dint of a change in scenery. A clearing presented itself, grass obscuring the ground and a howl breaking forth from across the way. She proceeded towards the source of the sound.
A lone creature, giving off an acrid, burning smell, was scratching at the base of a tree on the edge of the clearing. As her eyes focused on it she scowled. She remembered this creature. Once again, no images or smells, just an impression. They were friend-eaters, if you let them. She growled her anger at the thing.
It turned to look at her, placing all four of its feet on the ground from where they had been scarring the tree it had been barking up. It was a twisted mockery of an animal, made of dead tree and held together by who-knows-what. Its eyes glowed like fire, flickering in an odd hue. It made a growl similar to hers before launching into another howl.
That was when she struck. Her back legs extended fully, launching her across the intervening space. She grabbed the at its head in one paw, and grappled over its back with another. Her main focus, however, was getting her jaws into where its neck would be if it were of flesh and blood. Instinctively she searched for a jugular.
She didn't find it, coming up with a mouthful of sticks for her trouble. It flailed at her, trying its best to bite her in return, but her paw kept its head held high and away from her own neck. She went back in, tearing with her jaws at the wooden thing, but it refused to stop struggling.
This continued, her tearing and it struggling, until a loud CRACK rang out from close by, and the thing clattered to the ground in a pile of wood. She spat out one last mouthful of sticks, and looked over at the source of the noise.
It was a creature like the friend she remembered, the hat-owner, only lighter and not as strong-looking. Its fur grew long from the front of its face, and it grinned at her around a few missing teeth.
“My thanks to ye. Pesky timberwolf caught me by surprise. Had to get up the tree to keep from getting et.”
Its voice caught her by surprise. She understood it.
“Good to see its heart was rotted after all, broke up with just one buck. Means it won't have packmates about.”
These sounds were thoughts. She wasn't just hearing noises and interpreting their tone. Something had changed.
“My name's Solitaire, what's yours?”
Another memory chose this time to assault her conscious mind. It was the friend's voice, from much further from “now” than the other memories had been. The voice was higher in pitch than the other memory.
“Ah think ah'll call you-”
Her voice, scratchy and hoarse compared to Solitaire's, broke the silence.
Winona paused. She'd returned the stranger's gesture, telling him her name after he had given his. There was likely more to introductions than that, but a memory floating just under the surface of full comprehension suggested that sniffing his rump would be considered rude. As the silence stretched on, she analyzed him.
He was a quadruped, of the same species as her friend, slightly blockier and with bulk in different spots. He had very light fur and a crest of longer, darker fur running down his back. She thought she could see another marking near his rump, but that same memory gave her a feeling staring at that would not be good. The whole coat was straight and untangled, but very shaggy. His smell, what she could make of it through the acrid scent of the creature they'd killed, spoke of maleness, sweat, slightly stale fear, and something tangy.
At any rate, he didn't seem to know what to do either. He started to say something, and then shut his mouth again, cutting off the fledgling sentence before it could express anything coherent.
The impasse was eventually broken by a gurgling noise. The low rumble was short and loud, echoing through the clearing like far-off thunder.
Winona whipped around, trying to pinpoint the location of the creature. Her eyes showed her only trees and swamp water. She couldn't smell it, whatever it was. Even with the scent of the thing she had killed filling her nostrils, she should have been able to find the source of the disturbance if it was that close. Her ears had told her it was behind her and lower, practically on top of her tail. Yet there was nothing.
Then, it sounded again, and she realized what was growling. Solitaire stopped searching the edge of the clearing and centered his eyes on her midriff.
He paused for a second, and then laughed.
Winona wasn't sure how she felt about that laugh. It sounded like wood squeaking on wood, and it ended in an unhealthy-sounding wheeze.
Solitaire ignored the askance look she was giving him and tipped where a hat would have been on his unkempt head.
“Well, friend, the least I can do is offer some food to the hound what rescued me. Come on, I'll fry us some eggs and onions back at my place.”
With that, he turned and started trotting in the opposite direction from where Winona had come from. She scrambled to follow, his crashing progress and downtrodden trail making him easy to track, even without that distinct scent.
Focusing as she was on trying to keep her balance, she very nearly trampled Solitaire. He had stopped for no readily apparent reason, and was looking at the ground ahead of them.
“Step where I step, hound. This is Warden territory, last thing we want is to be mistaken for lawbreakers.”
Winona wasn't sure what those words meant, “warden” in particular had no meaning, so she remained silent, only nodding to show she'd heard. By the tone, however, she could tell whatever they were the words were very important. Solitaire began walking again, much more slowly this time.
As they pressed on, Winona noticed the ground getting wetter, and the smell of decaying plant matter worsening. One wrong footfall sent her leg plunging into the gunk up to her knee with a noise halfway between a gurgle and a splash.
Solitaire paused momentarily to frown in her direction. The scowl made her uncomfortable, and she felt her own face shifting, the motions and contractions natural and foreign at the same time.
To distract herself from the stare and her reaction to it, she tried to remedy the situation. She could feel her foot being pulled down, but trying to extract it made her other foot start to sink slightly, causing a small voice in the back of her head to start panicking. Getting her limb back ultimately involved grasping an overhead branch and a strong pull accompanied a loud sucking noise.
Once it was apparent she wasn't sinking he looked about, ears swiveling in all directions. A slosh of water to the left of their path riveted Solitaire's attention, and he turned to get a look at the noise's source.
Winona followed his line of vision, where she saw yet another creature, at the same time familiar and strange.
This thing was an amalgamation of known factors, bits of bird and cat mixed at random. The body shape was feline, but its front legs ended in scaly fingers-claws, and wings spread from its back, shading the area immediately in front of it. Its long neck and spear-like beak were those of a cattle egret, but its eyes glimmered with fierce intelligence that a cattlebird lacked.
The barbed spear it held was another clue that this creature's claws were not its most dangerous feature. It fixed the both of them with an intense stare, a crest along the back of its head rising and falling inquisitively. Both eyes narrowed, and the beak opened and closed in time with a trilling vocalization.
“Lllllllllllllawbrrrrrreaker?”
Solitaire shook his head rapidly. The stink of fear, fresh and pungent, washed through Winona's nostrils. Winona, for her part, decided to mimic her guide.
The gesture seemed to assuage the creature, and it stalked off into the swamp, leaving the cloudy water undisturbed by its passage.
Once the creature was gone, Solitaire resumed navigating the swamp, picking out his hoofsteps a tad faster than before. After a little bit, he broke the quiet to explain.
“That was a Warden. Swamp griffons. Their settlement of Marshwood isn't far, and they view any sentient that hunts in these parts as lawbreakers. And they don't look kindly on lawbreakers.”
After that they kept moving in silence for a while, but eventually Solitaire began talking. At first it was an occasional remark, on the plant they passed or an animal that hopped across their path. Winona learned about “Heart's Desire” and "Bullfrogs”, which looked familiar, as well as “Plunder Vines” and “Swamp-Squid”, which didn't. As Solitaire went on, his spats of talking got longer and longer, until he started flooding Winona's ears with a stream of discourse.
“I don't get many visitors out here, the Great Swamp isn't exactly an open invitation for guests. I guess that was kinda the point. I'm out here on purpose, you see. Used to be a big shot, dealer for a casino out Las Pegasus way. Then it just got too hot for me, not literally mind, situation just turned dangerous. There was this one mare, cheated like she had spots, swindled the entire house out of quite a pretty penny I can tell you. Never seen so many bits go missing in such a short time. And the boogers upstairs couldn't figure out how she was doing it.”
The content of the tirade was irrelevant; Winona understood almost nothing of it. The words were ideas, but many were unfamiliar, and the ones that weren't didn't paint any recognizable picture.
“Then it came out that she always came to my table. Naturally the bosses thought I was helping her. Strong words were exchanged, I got real acquainted this big muscly minotaur the owners employed for various things, and I really didn’t want that to happen again, so I skipped town. Came to live here, out of the way, there's nopony, or anyone else for that matter, out here to try and collect old debts.”
She ignored the continuing speech, still reveling in the fact she could understand the words, until Solitaire took his eyes off the trail for a second and looked back at her.
“Anyway, never seen a Canid quite like you, most of your kind remind me more of bulldogs and pugs. That isn't a rude comparison, is it?”
Winona returned the gaze, her mind still deep in thought.
“I...”
Trying to think back, to draw conclusions about whether she should be offended, just made her head hurt more. Bulldog? Pug?
“I don't know. Those words mean nothing to me.”
Solitaire nodded, turning back towards the swamp.
“So, what brings you out here? Don't get me wrong, I'm mighty grateful for the rescue, and it's nice to have somebody to talk to, but I'm still curious. If you'd been a strongarm from the White Bishop you would have left me up that tree for the timberwolf.”
A response was once again not immediately offered. Winona could feel her migrane returning as she thought back.
“I was helping a friend get someone out of a ditch.”
She could feel pressure on her head, she was pushing at something that was warm and hairy and smelt of sweat and grass. She could hear her friend grunting far above, like she had something in her mouth. A loud “MOO” came from whatever it was she was pushing.
“The wind was picking up, and I could smell a storm.”
Her tail was being pulled every which way.
“There was this roaring,”
The ground was shaking, and the distant rumble grew louder with each passing second.
“And, suddenly, it was like the world was made of water.”
She couldn't breathe, she couldn't smell, all she felt was water, all she could see was water, all she could taste was water, the only thing she knew, besides water, was to start kicking.
“From there it's all a blur. The next thing I remember is waking up here.”
Solitaire's eyes widened. His voice filled with a different tone, one that spoke of disbelief and awe.
“Ya got caught in a flash flood, an' survived?”
Winona nodded, not knowing what else to do.
Solitaire laughed.
“Well, after an escape like that, would be a shame to live out your days in a bog like this one. You'll be wanting my help to leave the Great Swamp then?”
Winona nodded. Returning where she'd come from sounded good, and if nothing else she needed to return the hat.
“I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. I need to stay here, or my enemies will find me. However, some of those who move through this swamp are my friends, and they can help you. I'll introduce them once we've eaten.”
The first thought that came to mind upon seeing Solitaire's home was what a piece of junk it was. Winona wasn't sure why, that was simply her first impression of the place. It wasn't undeserved. Planks of wood, stained with mold and mildew, made up one half of the structure, while the other half was a hill that leaned over the rest of the thing with a lazy-looking slouch. A flock of ranging birds, what her memory told her were called chickens and were not to be chased, pecked at equally wild-looking grass in front of the ramshackle structure.
The chickens scattered in a fowl-smelling cascade as Solitaire walked up and put his hoof against a few slats of wood, which swung aside to allow entrance. They swung back as he entered, and then swung back as he exited again, a sheepish smile on his features.
“Sorry about that. Been a while since I had guests.”
The inside smelled just as mold-ridden as the outside. That was all Winona could tell of the place for a few seconds. The interior was so dark, she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or shut, and the only sound was the clatter of Solitaire's hooves on hollow wood, until a tapping noise came from the middle of the room, accompanied by a glowing light to flood the space.
The source of the light immediately became apparent. Solitaire was drawing his hoof away from it, a transparent globe embedded in the ceiling. A network of wires and stones hung beneath it, like a spider's web full of shimmering gems. The thing held a strange symmetry, throwing the light in all directions, out into the swamps through nooks and crannies in the walls.
A trio of shining motes flickered inside the sphere, little glimmers dancing in patterns and loop-the-loops. Winona watched, fascinated. The motion and rhythm of the shimmering will-o-wisps held no rhyme or reason that she could see, but they drew her eye like a moth to a flame, and left her in awe of their coordination and mystery.
“Beautiful, aren't they?”
Solitaire was there, watching the lights as well.
“Blinklings. They put on a show, lots of pretty lights, and feed off the goodwill and wonder their dance generates. Much more benign than their larger cousins, and useful; they give off magica, which can be channeled off into spells.”
Winona simply slumped to her haunches, sitting on the bare floor and watching the lights dance as Solitaire paused in the corner of her vision before padding to a different part of the room. There were smells of smoke and metal from that direction, but she wasn't paying attention to that.
The lights were relaxing. They took her mind off her headache, and how tired she was. As the pain faded, Winona drifted into her thoughts. She looked down at the black band that encircled her waist and the hat that was stuffed beneath it. She removed the headgear and examined it. It was a plain thing, battered and nicked. The product of a long life, with plenty of hard work and adventure. Hard work she'd shared with the hat's owner.
And, just like that, she was back, before the “now” once again.
Nipping at the heels of a pile of lumbering, lowing creatures. They were friends too, but didn't talk as much, and needed help motivating themselves to get under cover. Their protests of “Moo!” were just the product of ire and desire for that last bit of grass. Alongside her was the hat-owner, joining her eager barks with yells and whoops as wild and joyous as her own.
Winona's eyes tightened as she concentrated. These memories were fainter, but the pain from earlier was gone. She could look back without fearing the stabs in her mind.
The hat-owner was important, but their relationship was complicated. So many facets...
Master and Servant.
A flaky white thing in her mouth. It wasn't tasty, food for eating or bone for gnawing, nor was it liable to getting thrown so she could chase it. She carried it nevertheless, for it pleased the hat-owner to have this brought from outside to the chair by the fire. Whatever it was for, unimportant.
Mother and Daughter.
Newspaper. That was what the white thing was called, but now it was in the corner, and she couldn't remember what it was for, which was why the hat-owner was angry.
Sister and Sister.
A wrestling match in freshly cut grass, the two of them nuzzling each other, interspersed with licks and laughter of all kinds. An argument about nothing important. Forgetting about it by the next day.
Alpha and Beta.
The wood-creatures had them surrounded, but there was no fear for either of them. In an instant, the hat-owner had plunged into battle, whooping and lashing with all four limbs, shattering all they touched. Behind she followed, pouncing on one that tried to take her pack-leader from behind. Sticks and splinters flew and the smell of battle filled her nostrils as the two of them wreaked a swathe of destruction upon the enemy.
Friends.
The fire again. Laughing about nothing in particular. Enjoying each-other's company. Belly rubs. Listening when one of them needed to cry.
There were words that could describe how they related. None of them quite hit it, but Friends was closest.
Such was the depth of her meditation that Winona only noticed the food once Solitaire waved it under her nose. As he put the plate down on the table her mind was flooded with scents that described a medley of delicious flavors awaiting consumption.
Eggs, cheese, spices, these were familiar. There was something else there too. Strong, planty and pungent. Winona wasn't sure what it was, but her eyes picked out a pile of clear slices next to the eggs.
The whole mess was unfamiliar as food, but another rumble from her stomach prodded her to give them a try. Carefully, she extended one of her arms, fingers slightly apart. She picked up one of the slices and brought it up to her snout. She wanted a taste, but she didn't feel like using her tongue on the unfamiliar things until she was good and ready.
The clear slice was wet, almost slimy, and its smell just got stronger as one of her nails poked into it, spilling more juice down her finger. The thing had an ambient warmth that was almost too hot for the pads on her first finger and thumb. Trying to figure out how she knew what those parts of her were called made her head hurt again. Rather than contemplate the nomenclature, she sent her tongue out, poking at the translucent slice quickly, sending a few drops of juice flying.
It tasted almost like it smelt, but the pungency was more of a tang, with an aftertaste that reminded her of the smell of an open fire.
It tasted good.
She popped the slice of onion into her mouth, and was rewarded with tenfold the earlier taste, accompanied by a wet crunch that sent fluid crashing through her mouth.
With that, she gave in to her stomach's instructions and dove in with a vengeance. Her paws proved perfect shovels for the eggs, and Solitaire didn't comment on her eating methods. She could see out of the corner of her eye that his nose was too deep in another bowl of the stuff. The eggs were perfectly fluffy, with the taste of yolk and white mixed with a dairy-like taste that wasn't cream or milk but only added to the eggy flavor. Accompanied by the occasional onion slice to spice things up, but not too often lest she get overwhelmed, the meal turned out filling and tastier than anything she could remember eating.
It was gone all too soon, but she wasn't hungry when it was. On the contrary, she sat back, eyes closed as the lights from the blinklings danced across her eyelids. Contentment. That was the word for this, and she savored the lazy bliss of the moment, not sparing thought for hands nor hats for a while.
She wasn't sure how long she sat before Solitaire cleared his throat and spoke up.
“That friend of mine should be passing by very soon. She's got a ship, and she can take you anywhere the winds blow with that thing. I should know, she brought me here.”
A delicate insect fluttered across their path as Solitaire led her out of the house and down to a wooden platform resting on a tiny island a short jump from the shore. Hooves sent hollow clacking noises ringing from the wooden steps as Solitaire moved, and it wasn't until he hit the platform that his attention was snatched by the gossamer intruder.
“Hmm, a Blue Morpho. Rare butterflies, them.”
Its shimmering wings brought flowers to mind, hanging in the mud from far above.
A gray cloud, smelling of swamp and sweat, started blowing in from ahead of her. It was practically opaque, obscuring trees and ferns as it swept across the land.
“Well Winona,”
Solitaire paused. His face spoke of scrambling for words, like what he needed to say was right in front of him, yet eluded his tongue, like the last bit of food on a dish. Finally, he settled on an enigmatic smile and a simple sentence:
“Good luck.”
And with that, he faded into the rapidly thickening mist.
Winona stared into the fog, trying her best to make out the “ship” that would bring her out of the swamp. All that availed her senses was the smell of wet ground, coupled with the sight of the thick gray cloud that had settled over the swamp. Insects and who-knew-what-else were making too much noise for her ears to be any use.
She was just considering returning to Solitaire's shack to ask where his friends were when she heard it. A rhythmic thump, separate from the songs of the cicadas and the humid throb of the swamp. Smell alerted her next of the approaching object, her nostrils speaking to her of black tar and used wood. As the sounds grew louder, more aromas made themselves known. Sweat and rope, chipping paint and grease, evoking images of plows and summer furrows.
She turned to where the smells and sounds were coming from. Now that she was looking at it, the fog in that direction was getting brighter than the surrounding mist.
Then, like a cragodile breaking the surface of a murky pond, the ship emerged.
It certainly looked wooden, its groaning sides bringing to mind more stationary structures. A pair of lanterns, one a simple flame in a lamp, and the other glass globe inhabited by a swarm of blinking lights, lit up its front.
A voice pierced the fog.
“Fend off!”
A pair of misshapen bundles flew over the side of the ship swinging down on ropes to bang against the wooden panels. They were then caught between the ship and the platform she was standing on, taking the impact with a muffled thud.
A rumbling brogue split the silence that fell.
“Alright, the beacon's lit, all hands on deck to offload supplies! You two, get off your feathered duffs and do your jobs, or I'll have your guts for garters! I don't want to stay in this neck of the swamp any longer than we've got to.”
The exclamation also snapped Winona out of her stupor. She couldn't just stand here watching. She needed to make her presence known. So, she spoke.
“Hello?”
A series of rumblings and scraping noises were the only responses she got from the ship.
“Hello!”
As she looked on, a wooden box approached the edge of the ship, accompanied by more rumbling and scraping.
Frustrated, she let out a series of short barks.
The rumbling stopped.
A beaked face, like a bird's but stubbier and with a twinkle in its eyes not found on its smaller cousins, peeked over the edge of the ship. Its appearance reminded Winona of the Warden from earlier. Instead of inquiring about lawbreakers, the beak split into a smile, accompanied by a happy-sounding voice.
“Ahoy there! What's a dog like you doing in a swamp like this? Don't you lot live on the other side of the mountains?”
Winona ignored the questions. They didn't mean much to her, what mattered was that she had the ship's attention.
“I want to get home! Solitaire said you'd help me!”
The bird-face quirked a feather where his eyebrow ought to be.
“Did he now? Well, it's not my place to give permission about that sort of thing. Come aboard, you'd best talk to the captain.”
With that, a pair of feathery arms ending in scaly hands extended over the side. There was something odd about those arms, besides their alien makeup, that Winona couldn't quite place, but she padded forward and gripped them in her paws nevertheless. Despite her misgivings, they pulled her up the side of the ship effortlessly, and when she got to the top, Winona saw why.
The hands that had hoisted her belonged to two separate creatures. Their arms were shaped more like hers than Solitaire's, although the rest of their bodies belied any relation. For one thing, they stood on all fours, rather than balancing on their back two like Winona had found she could. Despite their posture, the pair of them were only just shorter than she was. They weren't identical, with one having darker accents on his white feathers than the other, but besides that they looked almost the same, like a lighter shaded, more stocky version of the Warden. The both of them spoke in unison, sounding for all the world like one voice.
“Welcome aboard the Honeysuckle!”
Then, they lost synchronization as one on her right flashed her a smile and spoke.
“I'm Mikko. I'm the handsome one.”
The darker of the pair pushed his doppelganger onto the deck, an identical smile plastered on his face.
“I'm Tuuli. He's actually the stupid one.”
Winona could hear, see and smell others moving on the ship, but their details were lost in the flurry of activity that was these two.
“Am not!”
Like the Warden, they were more akin to birds and cats than herself or Solitaire.
“Are too!”
However, these two were shorter and squatter than the swamp guardian.
“Your mother's ugly.”
Moreover, while they had none of the Warden's grace,
“We're twins, idiot.”
they were speaking and moving with an almost bewildering speed.
“Doofus.”
Winona wasn't sure why, . “Bentbeak.”
but these two annoyed her.
“Mangefeather.”
Then, she realized why.
“Dweeb.”
Another memory. A collection of feelings.
“Blueberry.”
Charging onto a field, the smell of dirt, white feathers and seedstock scattering into the air.
“Redcurrant.”
The sounds of indignant squawking mixing with her barks.
“Numb-head.”
These two were different,
“Flybrain.”
in the same way the Warden was not an egret,
“Butt.”
but they were still annoying.
“No you.”
Very annoying.
“You infinity.”
Their back-and forth was interrupted by an authoritative voice from the other side of the boat.
“IF YOU TWO DON'T GET US PUSHED OFF IN THE NEXT THREE SECONDS, I WILL PERSONALLY DEBEAK YOU BOTH AND USE YOU FOR FISHBAIT!”
As Winona watched, the twins shared a look, and then replied in unison.
“Aye, captain.”
With that, they both jumped over the side. Winona moved to the side of the ship to see if they were alright, but before she could look the two soared back into view, each held aloft by a pair of wings.
They turned a showy loop-the-loop above the ship and then flew down to the platform she'd left. They pushed against the ship, chattering away and each disparaging the other's pushing prowess.
“They bicker like a pair o' old hens, but their hearts are in the right place. Thank the First their head plumes are different colors though, or I'd never tell the two rapscallions apart.”
The voice was louder than the hat-owner's, and riddled with a strange brogue rather than a drawl. It was also coming from right behind her.
Winona spun around, and was greeted by the sight of yet another person standing there, completely different from the others she'd met or could remember. This one stood a bit taller than she did, on two limbs. Unlike her own, the newcomer's lower legs ended in hooves, with the relevant limbs covered in thick hair and curved in odd ways. The upper body looked similar to her own, but without the thick fur covering anything, and a strip of cloth around the widest part of the torso. Capping the odd creature was a head that reminded her of rumbles and moos, with the short stubby horns and wide nose sealing the relationship, even if it was a distant one.
“Captain Nigans, master and commander o' this fine ship and sorry excuse for a crew, at your service. Although from the sound of it you'll be at mine until we reach port. I assume ya can work to earn your berth?”
Winona wasn't sure what a berth was, she assumed it was a place on the ship. So, she straightened her back and looked the captain in the neck. Staring at her eyes would be a challenge, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She wasn't sure why she knew that, or to straighten. It just seemed the right thing to do. The words followed naturally.
“Yes ma'am!”
The captain's eyes softened at that.
“Good to know. Shake on it?”
Winona looked down in response to motion. The captain had her right hand extended, fingers open.
A quick flash of memory passed behind her eyes.
“C'mon Winona, shake paws!”
Ah.
She laid her right hand in the captain's, and moved along as the captain shook it up and down. In her peripheral vision, the captain's face contorted a bit, expressing mild disbelief, followed by a wide grin that made Winona nervous.
“You grip like a wet fish, but no worries. We'll fix that right quick.”
With that, the captain grabbed her right hand. The captain arranged her fingers so they were gripping the captain's hand, and then the digital undulation began in earnest.
“Like that. Faith, what have you been doing with your life, no clue how to shake hands? What's your name anyway, hound?”
“Winona.”
“Well, Winona, nice to have confirmation old Solitaire's still kicking. Heard he died months ago, et by a timberwolf.”
A sudden twinge made Winona turn, hoping for some reason to see the Solitaire's home twinkling there as she'd left it. Instead, there was only a bare hump of grass and the floating platform, slowly moving away as the ship drifted.
Winona stared at the swirling mist in horror. There was no hut. Just an empty island and a ball of blinking lights floating in the mist. Was any of her experience real? Had Solitaire been alive at all? Already, she could feel her memories of the hermit fading, like he had, into the mist.
Behind her, she heard the captain take a deep breath, and then a short snort, followed by a mutter. Something about smell and blinklings.
“Nice to see you finally got some proper security, you old goat!”
Winona looked at the captain askance. An odd sentence. A goat was a small quadrupedal animal that had to be kept away from the gardens, and that made no sense. Who was she addressing, what did it mean?
Before she could work herself up any further, Winona heard the reply, muffled slightly by the mist.
“Yer mother was a winged buffalo an' ya father smelt of elderberries, you decrepit air witch!”
Winona listened to the voice. The cadence was the same, as was the pitch and tone. She even thought there might have been a bit of that wheezing laugh at the end there. That was Solitaire alright. The captain and her friend exchanged a few more insults, but like with Mikko and Tuuli, Winona couldn't hear any malice in their voices. Nevertheless, she gawped at the disappeared hut, or where the hut ought to be, for a few more seconds before one of the twins spoke from right at her elbow.
“Don't mind the captain. She's been telling old Solitaire to hook his blinklings up to a glamor for as long as I've been doing this run with her.”
He turned, and slapped a hulking creature that was standing there.
“Ain't that right Pooch?”
The creature didn't turn around. His (she could smell that much) voice was deep and gravelly, like he was chewing a stack of pebbles.
“It's VAN PUCH. Puh-oock. You cut ze cuh-sound off, like you lose your head as you say it. Dumkopf.”
Winona could hear him snuffling the air, and she realized he was probably taking in her scent. She was not quite sure how to deal with this. Indecision reigned behind her eyes as “Pooch” turned to face her. He was about as much like the captain as the twins were like Solitaire. His nose was pushed in, he had no horns, and his teeth, what she could see of them, were snaggled and sharp.
Even as she took in these details, she could see his eyes doing the same. One of the wrinkles above those too-large eyes raised like an inquisitive eyebrow. Should she to ask him if anything was wrong? Introduce herself? There was something familiar about that face, but she couldn't quite place what it was.
The captain, calling from somewhere outside Winona's field of vision, cut in before conversation could start.
“Pooch! Get your stubby tail belowdecks and stoke up the engine! I want us in Freedom City by morning!”
Pooch paused and drew in breath through his mouth, one finger extended into the air. He looked at Winona for a moment, then towards the back of the boat, and then breathed out. His reply sounded subdued.
“Aye keptin.”
His eyes shifted left and right, and Winona could smell a new emotion on him. It wasn't fear, although it was close. It wasn't anger either, although she could see blood rushing to his face.
“Vhen keptin gives you liberty, hyu come down ze hold, yes? Show hyu vat I do on zees ship.”
Before Winona could come up with a response, the creature called Pooch padded towards a square piece of wood sitting on the floor, lifted it up, and climbed inside the hole beneath.
“You don't have to go, you know.”
Winona turned, and there was the captain, her arms crossed over her chest, eyes glinting and a hard expression on her face. Before Winona could ask what the captain meant, she continued.
“Winona, Pooch has no authority over you. He tells you to do anything you don't like, you tell me. I don't think that's what he meant, but the fact remains. You don't have to do anything you don't want to, so far as he's concerned.”
Winona wasn't sure what that meant. She wasn't sure what Pooch's offer had meant either. There were a lot of things she wasn't sure about, but this boat was her best chance at returning the hat, so she decided to keep her puzzlement to herself.
“Yes, ma'am.”
And, before Winona had time for second thoughts about expressing her doubt, a set of claws had seized her around each of her upper arms, and she found herself frog-marched around the boat. A griffon spoke from her right as she moved. Her nose told her it was Mikko.
“Right, first things first, we need to get you familiarized with the boat.”
Tuuli spoke from her left.
“You are unfamiliar with nautical terms, yes?”
She had no idea what they were talking about, so she shook her head. The twins grinned in response, the two of them crying out in joyous unison:
“Crash Course!”
The two griffons swung her around so she was facing the front of the boat.
“Port,” said Mikko, pointing across her chest to the opposite side.
“Starboard.” Tuuli continued, mimicking his brother.
Winona looked down at the two arms, crossing in front of her and indicating into the distance. She tried to sneak a word in edgewise.
“Okay.”
With that, the left (or was that port?) claw pointed straight ahead.
“Fore.”
She was spun around, and then they were facing the back of the boat.
“Aft.”
A thumping noise called her attention downward. A leg was projecting around and in front of her from the right, and the paw at the end of that leg had the first toe extended downward.
“Deck.”
Then, a claw was back, gesturing around them.
“Foredeck.”
Another pointed at the back of the ship, which was raised enough to have a door in it.
“Poop deck.”
Then more and more gyrations, getting faster and faster as the Twins picked up momentum and enthusiasm. First stop was a door set into the deck.
“Hatch,”
Open the hatch.
“Hold,”
Close the hatch, spin around to one of the posts sticking out of the deck and pointing off to the left.
“Portmast.”
Another whirl, with the portmast's opposite twin coming into view.
“Starmast.”
A box in the middle of the deck.
“Envelope locker.”
A piece of wood sticking out of the poop deck.
“Wing-lever. (Don't touch!)”
From there the spinning just got too fast, and before Winona could protest properly she was sitting on the deck, unsure of which direction was up, let alone starboard. All the scents were mixed up by the whirlwind pace, and her hearing was not helping either. For a moment, all she could hear was the rhythmic thump-thump from below, presumably her heartbeat.
It took a few seconds for her to realize that the thumping was not, in fact, her heart in her throat. It was coming from directly beneath the poop deck, a steady beat that was part roar, part whine. The sounds deepened, and then there was a metal-sounding crunch, and a splashing sound started coming from the stern. She looked up at Mikko, who was standing off to a side, new headgear perched upon his skull. She quirked an eyebrow at the exuberant twin.
“What, never heard a rune engine go? I'm sure we included that in the tour.”
Winona frowned. He was wearing her friend's hat. She snatched it off him and stuffed it back under the band around her waist, and growled her annoyance. It wasn't his hat. Wasn't hers either. No-one, barring her friend, ought to be wearing it.
Something long, thin and projectile-like flew into her peripheral vision. An old, ingrained habit stirred beneath her conscious mind, and caused her to snap with her mouth rather than her hand. Before she could think to do anything else, the flying pole was securely trapped between her jaws.
She turned, trying to find the source of this oblong intruder. The pole made a swishing sound as she moved. There was Tuuli, coming up from a crouch.
“You'll be helping Mikko pole the boat.”
From behind her came a squawk of protest.
“I think not! She'll be helping you pole the boat, whilst I get some shuteye.”
Tuuli responded by pointing at something over her shoulder and yelling “Look!”.
Curious as to what the excitement was about, Winona turned, and instantly felt an impact on the pole, which jarred her entire upper body and made her teeth hurt.
When she got around to where Tuuli had pointed, there was only Mikko, holding his head, and the sound of squawking laughter from behind her. She turned to face the prankster, but only got another jarring hit for her trouble.
Once she'd rounded on the culprit, he was rubbing a sizable lump on his head, the perfect mirror of his brother's. His smile was only just cracking at the side of his beak, but Winona could hear it in his voice.
“I suppose I deserved that one. You head below Mikko, I'll teach Winny here how to pole.”
She frowned. That was not her name. She spat the pole into her waiting hands and growled.
“Winona. My name is Winona.”
Tuuli only winked, which gave her the feeling she should have kept quiet.
“Right. So, here's how we do this. I stand over here, on the port side, and fend off anything I see in the water, like a cragodile or a sandbar or something. You stand over there, and do the same thing on the starboard side. The rune engine pushes us through the water, we just keep the ship from colliding with anything that might have developed in the channel since we were last here.”
And so, thump-thumping away, the ship chugged off into the swamp.
Winona, however, only had half her mind on the water ahead. There didn't seem to be anything in there, just a few water plants hovering in the murk. One of them bumped off the ship as the Honeysuckle drifted into it. Seeing nothing threatening, Winona chanced a glance at her waist. The hat was still there, tucked under the band where she'd put it after Mikko swiped it. Why was she carrying it?
The answer was simple: It belonged to a friend of hers, one she could remember working alongside for a long time. Most of her memories, the ones she still had, were shared with that friend.
Friend.
Realizing what was bothering her, Winona set her pole onto the deck and rushed to the stern, barreling by the still-woozy-looking Tuuli.
She thundered up the steps to the poop deck two at a time. She passed the captain, who was standing by what she now remembered was the wheel, and giving her a funny look.
Winona ignored that. Time was of the essence.
When the end of the ship and the railing would let her go no further, she took in breath. She'd need a lungful to make herself heard.
“Solitaire!”
The shout almost echoed in the swamp, before it was eaten by the muggy atmosphere.
“Thank you!”
Having delivered her message, Winona strained her ears for an answer. She wasn't particular about what her new friend said. What mattered was that he had heard.
No response came from the thick miasma that they were leaving behind. Only the chug-chug of the rune engine, whatever that was, reached her ears. Silence reigned for a few more seconds, before the captain's brogue broke it.
“I'm sure Solitaire understands. He was never the best at remembering thank-yous either.”
Winona looked back at the captain, who was not watching her. In point of fact, the captain was looking at what was ahead, and turning the wheel in front of her as she did. Watching where the boat was going.
Winona realized she ought to be doing the same thing, from her post up front.
Settling back into her role, Winona sighed. The work was easy enough. Just use the pole to push anything that might sink the boat. Cragodiles were more than happy to get out of the way once they were aware of the obviously-bigger-than-them thing about to run them over. Floating logs were less cooperative, but did not actively fight her pole's firm nudging.
An introspective smirk played at the edge of Winona's lip. This was better. She wasn't lost, or at least her path ahead was pretty clear. Work on this ship until they got back. The captain knew the way. Moreover, she could actively work towards that goal, with good, honest, physical labor.
Her motions became practiced. Back, forth, back, forth, in tune with the throbbing from within the ship, she shifted her gaze across the arc of swamp she could see. No logs in the path, no rock-like backs breaking the murky water's surface so far as she could see.
After a bit, she heard Mikko come out from beneath the deck and replace his brother at the station opposite hers. Tuuli promised to relieve her once some time had passed. In the interim, the work proved occupying.
Back, forth. Side to side. The familiar motions let her slip away in a haze of familiarity. Her vision swam. She'd done this before.
Ripples of grass passed by, and she could feel her tongue lolling about as she gamboled in the sunlight. There was a great rumble ahead and to her left, and she could smell the deep, earthy bovine musk with undertones of road dust and sweat, and amplified a hundredfold by weight of numbers.
Her friend was there too, moving alongside the herd, keeping up with the rhythmic thumps of a solid set of legs. Their job was to make sure the group all made it home safe and sound, on time and without breaking anything. This her friend accomplished by guiding their momentum with a nudge here, a whoop there.
For herself, the job was simpler, albeit more strenuous. It involved watching her side of the group and making sure none of them got out of formation. To do this, she had to patrol up and down the lines of heaving, sweaty – cow, that was the word – and running in wherever she saw deviation. Once there, she would bring the offending drifter back into line with well placed nips, barks and shoves.
After that, it was back to patrolling, matching the movements of the oscillating herd and keeping them on task. Back and forth, the rhythmic motion of her survey took her. Back and forth, the thunder of hooves mixing with the joyful whoops of her companion and the stolid moos of their charges. Back and forth, back and forth...
“Fend starboard! Sandbank!”
Mikko's shout drew her out of her reverie, and she thrust the pole down, pushing hard against something deep beneath the surface. The ship didn't float left like she'd thought it would though. In fact, it drifted right, towards her, despite her shoving. She dug her feet in, and she could feel her claws cutting shallow furrows in the wood as she pushed.
There was a deep, rumbling rubbing noise to signal her failure. The ship jerked slightly, setting her off balance. She tried to adjust like she'd been learning to ever since waking up, but the movement, back and to the right, was too quick and unheralded for her to anticipate, and her nose became intimately familiar with the wooden surface of the deck.
“Stupid dog, don't you know 'Fend starboard' means push something so the boat goes right? I thought we went over this!”
She cringed.
“Tan your hide Mikko, it's what you get for whirling the poor thing around the place like a Sphinxian dervish. It's a wonder she knows which way starboard is!”
Winona could hear the vitriol in the captain's tirade, even if the words themselves were hard to follow. So it was with some trepidation that she listened to the hooves approach her from behind.
As the hollow thuds of hard hoof on ungrounded wood came closer, Winona's anxiety rose with its progress. She propped herself back up with the pole, noting the rough texture of the wood as she used it for leverage. Before her fears could be vindicated or allayed, the pain in her head returned with a vengeance. Absent since before she met Solitaire, the pain had faded from her perception, but now made up for lost time mercilessly. She yelped, trying to give vent to the pressure and hurt, but falling far short of any relief.
Winona could feel her legs going out from beneath her, and she gripped the pole in her paws, trying to arrest her downward progress. She failed, not even noticing the splinters that pierced her fingers, the fire behind her eyes occupying her sole attention now. Letting the pole go, punctured paws scrabbled at her head, having no effect even as her knees gave out and the deck rose abruptly to meet her.
Winona awoke horizontal. This was the first thing her senses told her. The next was that trying to move swayed her back and forth, and whatever she was wrapped in smelled of musty locker. Light came in tiny patches, like the musty-locker-wrap was only letting in little shafts of illumination. Sound was only present in the form of some creaks and groans, like a house settling on its foundations.
The silence was broken by a growling from her midsection. Realizing she was hungry, Winona decided to get up. She shifted her weight, but rather than rolling on solid ground, the musty-locker-wrap moved with her, and there was no comforting solidity. Without anything to lend her traction aside from the smelly wrapping, she gave a short growl and started to get out with an almost frantic energy.
A few seconds of thrashing later, she was deposited unceremoniously on the floor by the must-wrap. The impact gave her an aching head again, albeit mild compared to the migraine that had blacked her out before.
“Oh, hey there sleepyhead.”
It was Tuuli, standing off to her left in a doorway. His beaked face looked somewhere between amused, relieved and sheepish.
“Very sorry about what happened, we didn't realize you had a condition. The Captain doesn't think it's anything serious, probably just dehydration and fatigue.”
He stood there for a few seconds, with a grin that put Winona in the mind for cheese plastered over his face, before he dropped the expression and sighed.
“Fine, I slept through the shift change and left you up there too long. Captain says I'm to take your watch until noon. We're still cozy on the sandbank you found for us, so you can sit pretty, maybe visit the galley, while my brother and I try and figure a way to get us off.”
When asked, Tuuli pointed behind him at what was apparently the galley, and then leapt straight up through the open hatch. Winona took the opportunity to look around. She could hear footsteps thumping around above her. Light was streaming in through an occasional knothole above, and the hatch behind. It was a dark, moldy smelling space, narrow and oddly shaped. Crates were stacked near where the room's walls came to a point, opposite the door Tuuli had been standing in.
She could smell something coming from the crates, but what it was eluded her. It was metallic, whatever it was, but unlike anything that had been in Solitaire's hut, or any further back she could remember, for that matter.
A noise from behind Winona attracted her attention before she could puzzle out the crates, their smell, and the odd pull they had on her mind. She turned to take in the source of the sound, perhaps a scratch, a cough, or a scratchy cough, she wasn't sure.
It was neither one of the twins nor the captain. Thinking back, Winona realized this was the fourth crewmember, Pooch. He (she could smell that much,) was a bipedal creature, at just a little bit below her height. His nose was square and stubby, only sticking out a little above his jaw, which projected out in a massive underbite. Two earnest, curious eyes were looking her over in much the same way she was him. Once again there was the urge to sniff at his tail, with the accompanying impression that would be a bad idea. A pair of sharp, pointed ears completed the silhouette.
His fur was very short, a dark hue that contrasted with his bright eyes. There were still darker patches here and there, giving him a mottled appearance, although the patchy light from above didn’t help. His vest was covered in pockets where hers was checkered and plain, and each pocket was filled with bits of what smelled, glinted and clinked like metal.
His tail was short and stubby, with what looked like hardened spikes of fur sticking out at odd angles. It swished back and forth pensively.
Overall though, he reminded her of nothing more than a slightly more hunched, short-haired version of herself. She could smell similarities, and there was an odd pull towards him, like the one from the crates, but instead of at the forefront and almost soothing, it was insistent and at the back of her mind.
Winona chose to ignore that.
At length, he broke the silence.
Up until this point, Winona had recognized most words, and if the meaning behind them escaped her, the sounds at least were familiar. Now, his words meant nothing at all. The tones and sounds were completely foreign. They were nice-sounding words, pleasing to hear and flowing in and out of eachother like a burbling stream. Or, they sounded like they were and would be, if it weren't for the thick, guttural accent that punctuated the mismatched lot.
Her confusion must have shown on her face, because he abruptly switched, moving into a more natural-sounding mode of speech that went better with his accent. It still made absolutely no sense to Winona.
This disconnect jarred her out of the absent-minded looking-over she'd started giving him. Shaking her head, she almost missed a comment, thrown down from above by Mikko (Or was it Tuuli? She wasn't close enough to catch the scent).
“Oi, stop confusing the poor girl Pooch. She speaks Equish just fine.”
Ignoring or otherwise responding to anything in the enclosed space was cut short and rendered irrelevant by a tinny reproduction of the Captain's voice.
“Full reverse power!”
Pooch, for that was apparently his name, shouted back.
“Aye, kaptin!”
With that, he stepped through a doorway opposite the one she was standing in. A high, shrill whistle broke out, followed by a steady chug, chug sound. The chunnering increased in pace, and the entire ship shifted with a thud and a splash. Something clattered over the decking, and a few shouts rang out above. There were another set of thumps, and then another metallic shout. “Full speed ahead Mister Van Puch,” it said.
After a few moments, he poked his head back out.
“Vell? If hyu don't hef ze decency to speak Shelt or Dober, least hyu could do is accept my offer for a tour.”
The tone was caustic, but with a hint of something else. Winona wasn't sure what else was lurking beneath those words, but the idea of being impolite itched at something behind her eyes. There was newspaper involved. Being impolite was bad. So she followed the odd creature as he retreated into the next room.
Winona's eyes widened as her vision took in the space she'd stepped into. All around were humming lights glowing from grooves cut in straight, sharp shapes through wood and metal. Some things spun too fast for her to see. Others moved back and forth with no-one moving them, and their clicks beat a staccato rhythm, like a heartbeat of oak and iron. Hissing emanated from a hot, round cylinder larger than the Captain, and pipes rattled and whistled at odd intervals.
“Zees”
Even though the parts, the sights smells and sounds, were unfamiliar, the spirit of the place, or at least the impression Winona got off the setting, was as near and dear to her heart as the smell of earth, straw and apples.
“Ees mein kingdom.”
This was a place where work got done.
Pooch thumped at something, and the grin on his face could only have been pride. Winona remembered pride. It was how she felt on a sunny knoll in late afternoon, looking out on her home, surveying the domain of herself and her friend.
“She is Sharp Seven-Seven vater-cooled dual rotary rune engine out of Clawchester. Griffons zere make best engines, but don't let ze Twins know I tell you that. Ze last thing those two need is bigger egos. Especially sinze zey is not even from zere.”
He paused, and Winona just watched the machine go for a bit, observing the dance of all the parts in perfect harmony.
“Zo, vhere you from? Der Sheltmarch iz isolated normally, dose born zere not leave willingly. And zey all speak Shelt.”
Pooch took a long, wheezing breath.
“Hyu not smell like escaped slave. Zo, hyu are Republican? Live among ze Mimagi? Perhaps Griffon Protectorate? Swampkin? Vould not be first time ve hef found ze rail-runners in marsh, but typically zhey not need a lift.”
Winona frowned. She wasn't sure. She couldn't remember the place's name, and none of the ones Pooch had mentioned sounded familiar. She thought back as the gears moved in their mechanical tango.
“It was a warm land, rolling hills and farms tended by Solitaire's people.”
Winona could see Pooch's expression narrowing in the corner of her eye.
“Ekvestria? Zat is unusual. Dog might be Pony's best friend, but Canid is Ponies' least favorite race. Ve not liked much in ze North.”
He sighed, and rolled both eyes.
“Ees not like I blame zem. Gem Poachers raid zeir mines constantly, and only reason ze Hornblende Hounds not executed when zey run across ze Dober border trailing half ze Ranger corps is because ze old treaty not allow for extradition. As ees, zey get reassigned to vorking ze Saluk mines.”
He gave her a meaningful look,
“Vich is almost as bad.”
A hiss came from the machine, and one of the spinning wheels stopped turning. It threw out a cloud of odd-smelling vapor, and a new noise, a discordant clank, clank, clank, emitted from somewhere within the mechanical heart of the ship.
Pooch reached down and grabbed a metal object, a thin bar with an oddly shaped end, and visited the misbehaving mechanism with a combination of trauma both physical and invective. He bashed at one of the more solid-looking metal parts, punctuating each hit with a word Winona didn't understand.
“Flippervalt! Gerschput! Gerschput!”
She wasn't sure whether it was the hitting or the yelling that finally subdued the mechanism. Either way, when Pooch turned back to her the engine was chugging along like normal.
“But, enough about politics. Zees is supposed to be grand tour! And not zat confusing zing ze tvins did yesterday. I show you all ze worky-bits, and you get to see vat makes zees boat tick!”
They moved through the machinery, Pooch directing her to duck or to grab “Zat great, er, big, ahem, ah, tail of yours.” to keep from getting caught in the gears as needed. Winona only half listened. There was a pull, something interesting, that they were approaching. It wasn't Pooch, she'd already gotten used to ignoring that. Whatever it was reminded her of the peace she'd felt when she looked at the Blinklings in Solitaire's house, and of feelings associated with the crates in the other room.
More terms she didn't understand. Gyro-stabilizer. Roto-magic converter. Gearbox. Mana siphon. Main coolant valve. Crystal Housing.
Then, Pooch lifted a hatch, and it all became clear.
She could definitely tell the feeling's source was the crystal now. It smelled of rock, but cleaner. Beyond the smell though was a throbbing, behind her eyes, like a migrane but almost comforting. The closer she got to it, the stronger the throb got.
She put her hand in, and Pooch’s warning yelp came a second too late.
One moment, she was feeling the throbbing, hearing the heartbeat of the ship.
A sharp intake of breath, and she was that beat. She could feel her own heart, but throbbing inside her now alongside it was a great, pulsing energy. That energy had a word in it, not one she could remember or understand, but she could feel the idea, the thought behind that energy.
Move.
The word was farther off, out and along, but she could feel it. It wanted to make her go, speed, celerity, momentum, she felt if she held on the energy would push her onward, and only something very solid would make her stop.
Then, she breathed out, and the beat was gone.
“Hyu are not normal Shelt, are hyu.”
She turned to the voice. Pooch’s eyes were very white, like he’d been walking in the noonday sun. Winona shook her head. She could still feel the throbbing, but now it was more like the steady beat of her heart, or the sound of her breath. Normal. Unimportant.
Now she just felt awkward. Pooch was staring at her, the engine was pounding away, Perhaps talking would make that go away. She sighed, taking a moment to think of what to say.
“What about you? Where are you from?
Pooch turned away. She could barely hear his reply over the engine.
“Ich bin ein Eigenbrötler.“
Winona cocked her head. More words that meant nothing.
“I am alone. I hef no pack, no family. Is ancient custom, vhen certain Dobervolk come of age, leave ze mountains, find self, find friends. Find mate. Find family. Start new pack, maybe come back to mountains, maybe start new Dober colony. Normally take place underground, but I choose ze surface.”
Pooch's face became even more downcast, and a sigh whistled between the snaggled teeth.
“Vas perhaps not best idea. Has been very lonely. Not many free dogs on ze surface. My people, zey not pay attention much to what goes on aboveground. Haz given us a reputation as trespassers. Thieves. Vorse. Other breeds have reasons for not playing nice. Danes are best at smashing schtuff, most peoples only see zem for dumb muscle. Shelt keep to zemselves. And Salukii attitudes not help much, az usual. Noses too far in ze air to be much use.“
Winona only nodded. Even over the roaring of the machinery, she could hear the loneliness in Pooch’s voice. Even more, his eyes were aimed the whirring gears, but they were unfocused, and if they had been outside, he would have been staring into the distance.
So they simply stood there, together, listening to the movement. Not saying anything, just being there.
