He had flown from the ship when the fire had started to spread.

It was a good thing he had; not a moment after he spread his wings and pushed off the railings, tumbling off balance thanks to the high winds buffeting him, an explosion rocked him, an incredible wave of heat slamming him like a meteor. Sharp blades cut through his coat as splinters of wood and superheated metal sliced through the air and into his flesh. A particularly large chunk of debris slammed his wing, and he spiral downward through the cold clouds as the airship plummeted behind him.

He spiral down, down, down, trying to keep himself afloat with one wing, but his crippled one kept him from stabilizing. He could only keep himself from veering into the path of the airship, which would spell disaster for him regardless of whether he was above or below it: if he landed before the ship crashed, he would be crushed, and he would be impaled and incinerated if he fell on it afterwards.

When he slammed into the water, it was no different than slamming into a brick wall. All the air left him and he floated on the surface for a moment, as if he had dazed the ocean with the sheer force he hit it with. But slowly, surely, he began to sink into the dark underworld of the deep blue, his entire body aching. He could not move any of his body, but didn’t feel as if it were entirely necessary; the cool water soothed his wounds, and even though the salt stung his lacerations, it was hardly noticed by him.

He sank below the waves, air floating up past his face in opaque bubbles, and it was only now that he realized just how much smoke he had inhaled. His eyes, fuzzy from the saltwater, saw the great shafts of light surrounding his body, cutting through the water as he sunk deeper beneath the waves. It was then that he accepted his full surrender to the great, deep waters; he did not fear an eternity below any longer.

As he closed his eyes, he let his last smokey breath escape him, and he awaited the blackness.

And the blackness came, but it was not as he had been told. It had been promised to him that the blackness was to be filled with nothing, and that there would be nothing to experience. And yet, there was something cold and firm, yet not hard pressed up against him, wrapping around his lower body. He could feel the water rushing past him, and the pressure about his body was lessening. With great effort, he opened his eyes, but the lack of air made it so that he could only catch flashes of light amidst the dark splotches that dominated his vision.

When he broke the surface of the water, he greedily sucked in air, salty water saturating his mouth so fully that he felt like his cheeks and tongue alike were fully pickled to the point where they could easily fetch a handsome sum in back-alley kitchens deep within the griffon lands. He spat out his saline saliva, his vision slowly focusing the longer he stayed up above the waves. Most of his body was numb, which he suspected was from a mixture of the lack of oxygen and the temperature of the depths to which he had sunk. His eyes caught a shimmer—the briefest flash of some shiny wave of white—and for the first time since the sight of the fire on the airship did he feel true fear.

A shark has smelled my blood, he thought to himself, throat tightening as panic gripped him fully. I’m managed to make it to the surface only to be torn apart. How he longed to sink back down beneath the waves, to surrender once more to a more peaceful death, one without pain and one of quiet dignity.

Instead, he found it within himself to paddle his hooves, barely keeping himself afloat as he used his one good wing to awkwardly push himself forward. The waves were large, but they were not violent, and with his lungs full of air he bobbed like a cork. He gently rose up with the waves, and slipped down them silently, the moving mountains of water pressing on right by him without so much as wetting his mane.

He carried on like this for an unknown time—it might have been minutes, it might have been hours. Once or twice he thought he saw smoke rising up from beyond the large waves—evidence of the crashed airship—but he never got more than a fleeting glimpse before the sea fog bore down on him and the waves pushed him and and down, out and away.

Just as he felt as if both his luck and energy had finally run out, and was beginning to seriously consider revisiting the grasp of the ocean, he saw green cut its way out from the ocean mists. It was an island, that he was sure of; he knew the great floating kelp forests were only a myth, and even then, that was clearly a cliff and not a grove of kelp growing straight up into the sky. His fervent paddle grew even more frantic, and soon he felt the fine feeling of sand kicking underneath his submerged back hooves.

He stood in the shallows of the beach, jagged black rocks standing out of the water like obsidian teeth, ominously appearing out of the mists and just as easily disappearing into them once more. The beach before him was a black sanded beach, but the grains were fine. He had read a book in his youth about volcanic islands having black sand beaches, and briefly wondered if the volcano was still active. He did not care any longer as he pushed himself out of the shore break and flopped down on the warm, wet sands of the island.

He lay on his side, damaged wing exposed to the sun, his unbroken one tucked neatly between his body and the fine, dark sand. He breathed in and out, his chest heaving as he was finally afforded true relaxation for the first time in what was certainly far too long.

Winds blew down from somewhere further up the island, and with them the sea mists parted. It turned out that there were not as many obsidian spires as he had originally thought, but it was still a rather good stroke of luck that he had swum straight, and avoided being slammed into them by the waves; they looked even sharper in the dazzling sunlight.

The beach was nestled between two black cliffs harboring all manner of greenery pouring down its sides, with its top ridges being crowned by palm trees and large, brittle trees with grey branches and trunks, and silvery-green leaves, but bright orange flowers. The black sands pushed about fifty meters up before meeting a wall of vines that blended into various other vegetation that crept is way up and down the volcanic rock.

He lay there in the sun, feeling content as his mouth dried out, but soon that feeling of complacency passed; he was dreadfully thirsty, and he knew that this would spell the end for him unless he could banish it. The water had left, so all that remained as salt, and that only exacerbated the thirst.

He stared out at the blue ocean, beyond the basalt pillars and the breaking waves, and squinted in an effort to make out where the crash was. But he could not see anything out there, and the sky was covered with nothing more than great white towering cumulous clouds.

There was a splash from the waves before him, and the shimmer caught his eye again. His breath caught in his throat, for he knew he was still bleeding in several places; the shark had come all the way to the shoreline to finish his off!

But it was not a shark. It was a pony, but not a pony like any he had ever seen. She had a white face, a sleek coat covering it and a bristled white mane framing it, and black eyes that were filled with the motion of the ocean. Her muzzle was seemingly just like the other ponies he had seen all his life, but her neck was covered in three slits on either side, which gaped in the open air.

He stared at her for a moment, and the water broke, revealing the shimmer. Her long, sleek fish tail rose from the surface and slapped down into the water once more, almost playfully. He stared for a moment before opening his mouth.

“You’re a seapony,” he croaked, throat rusty with salt.

She giggled, the fins at the end of her tail trailing gently out of the water for a moment before sinking back down towards the submerged sands.

He rolled so that he was upright, his eyes still trained on her. A swath of black sand stuck to the side of his coat, crumbling off his body as it dried in the hot sun and the cool island wind shook it loose as it blew past him.

“Were you the one who pushed me out from the ocean?” he asked, before feeling incredible foolish. There was no way this mare would understand him—

“Yes,” she said slowly, her head cocked to the side. It sounded like she was struggling to speak it through a mouth full of seashells. “I pushed you up.”

He straightened, startled. “You can speak Equestrian?”

She nodded. “How?” he asked, eyes narrowing incredulously.

“Sailors,” she answered simply. “They crash into rocks.”

He nodded slowly. “Of course... why did you push me up? Why didn’t you let me drown?”

She smiled shyly, and sunk below the water for a moment. He rose to his hooves, ready to dive into the water after her, but she rose up again, this time even closer to the shore. The waves gently crashed against her, sending a small spray of salt off her back, which showered his face. He blinked hard, and looked down at the seapony, whose hooves were stretched out into the sand, nearly touching his own.

“Lonely,” she said, digging her hooves into the warm, black sands. “I am lonely.”

“Those other sailors don’t stick around?” he asked her. She shook her head.

“You are sailor?” she asked, her tongue held between her teeth much longer than necessary after she finished the “l” in the middle of “sailor”.

He shook his head. “No, I was on the airship... that huge thing that crashed into the ocean. You must have seen it?”

She nodded. “Was there anypony else that you could find near the crash site?”

“No,” she said quietly with a somber shake of her head. “Ocean too crowded. Metal and wood. Very hot. I am not able to get in.”

“But I was far enough away from the airship for you to save.” Even though he was talking mostly to himself, she still nodded in assent.

He heaved a heavy sigh, staring past her head to look out at the ocean. Nothing but an endless blue expanse, the ocean blending to the sky, the latter only discernable by the great white clouds off in the distant that were slowly growing greyer by the minute.

“Do you have a name?” he asked her after the moment of silence.

“I cannot say,” she said, nervously plodding the sand with her hooves, fish tail slapping the water. He raised an eyebrow.

“Alright...” he said, smiling slightly. “Then I’ll call you a name of my own design, how about that?”

She giggled softly. “Yes. What name?”

“Porcelina,” he said almost immediately. “My sister, back home in Cloudsdale,” he paused, then added: “That’s a city full of pegasi, like me.” He extended his good wing for emphasis. “Have you had pegasi on your shores before?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good. Anyway, my sister back home has a little porcelain seapony that she got as a gift for her ninth birthday. It was really cute, and it looks exactly like you.” He looked at her, his brow furrowing. “Almost exactly like you.”

“Your sister has me at home?” Porcelina asked. At this, he could not help but laugh, and he shook his head slightly.

“No, see... most ponies think seaponies are a myth,” he explained. “So they make little versions out of a type of ceramic, porcelain. My sister got one for her birthday, and she loves it. Even after she moved away from Cloudsdale, she kept it with her...” he trailed off, and sat down in the sand, clutching his wing with his hoof, grunting.

“Do you need name?” she asked him.

Breathing deeply through the sharp pain radiating out from his wing and into his body, he
nodded. “I-I have a name... but since I gave you one, why don’t you give me one? It’s only fair.” He grit his teeth, his other three hooves digging deep into the sand.

“Seastar,” she said after a single second’s hesitation. “Because you fall into ocean like stars that streak through sky.”

“Not after the sea creature?” he joked. After she gave him an unknowing stare, he clarified. “You know, the five legged little animals, usually pink? They cling to rocks?”

“I cannot call them that,” she said, strangely serious. “They speak of themselves differently.”

“Alright then,” Seastar said. “My name is Seastar. Not the most masculine of names...”

But he did not care. There was something he liked in that name; it fit him better than his old one in this new life he was to lead, now that he was trapped on a deserted island with no other being but a seapony to keep him company.


Seastar groaned, clutching his injured wing with his hoof even tighter. Porcelina pushed her body up, cocking her head as to get a better look at Seastar’s source of agony. “You hurt?”

Seastar nodded. “My wing was hit by something when the airship went down... I think it broke. I need something to set it with.”

Porcelina shifted uncomfortably, and it was only then that Seastar considered that she might not fully understand everything he said with her minimal grasp of the language he spoke. He sat down in the sand, the lapping of the water at his hooves doing little to quell the burning pain that absorbed his wing and was slowly beginning to work its way into his body. He grit his teeth, thinking hard.


“To fix my wing,” he said, pointing towards his crumpled appendage. “I need a long, straight stick, and something to wrap it to my wing with.” He mimed these out while he explained them, and after a moment, Porcelina nodded. She turned tail on him, which slapped the sand softly as she dove into the water. Seastar laid down, taking a deep breath as he let the cool water lick his minor wounds that covered his body.

A few minutes later, he saw the shimmer under the waves, and Porcelina popped up, riding a small breaker onto the shore. She held a long, slender piece of driftwood in her mouth, a branch from one of the silver trees, and wrapped around it were long strands of deep green kelp. When Seastar looked closer, he noticed a band of red running lengthwise down the middle of each strand.

“Sisigaki good for pain,” she said after making sure both the stick and seaweed were safely in the hooves of Seastar. “Sailors are hurt sometimes. This is help.”

Seastar nodded, and tried to elongate his wing as to put the splint into place. A feather fluttered off as he did so, and he cringed, the wing falling limp against his side once more. Porcelina slide across the wet sand, fish tail pushing her through the whitewash, and held her hoof up to his side. She was cold to the touch, but this was pleasant against the agitating heat that was now spreading along Seastar’s side.

She placed her hoof under his wing, and she held it steady as he extended it. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes as he leaned down and took the branch and set it underneath the wing, holding it lengthwise along the span. Her hooves were soon wrapping the seaweed—the sisigaki, as she called it—around to keep it in place. His back was rigid and he felt as though he was almost going to pass out from the pain, until—

“Oh, wow,” he murmured, letting his wing go limp at his side after the sisigaki was fully wrapped around it. He smiled, his eyes falling to a half lid as the immense feeling of relief washed over him, pinpricks replacing the burning, which in turn was replaced by a light feeling of almost nothing at all, as if the wing had just floated right off his body. It was almost concerning, but the wing was certainly still there, so he did not dwell on the strange reaction to the seaweed.

“It is good?” Porcelina asked hopefully. Seastar nodded down at her, smiling broadly.

“Yes,” he said, standing up and letting his back relax, tail swishing behind him. “It is very good.”

He looked out past her, relieved smile still plastered on his face and scanned the ocean. The clouds had almost all turned dark, and they were gathering. The sun still shone on them, but the sky was becoming more and more turbulent with every passing moment, and as he saw the faint purple scar of lightning flash across the clouded surface of the gathering storm, his smile slipped. He slowly walked into the water, the waves pushing against him as the winds blew at his back. They too were picking up. Both of them.

He stood in the choppy water, his hooves still in the submerged sands. The waters had darkened, out in the ocean, and he could see whitecaps and towering mountains of water forming far out from the shores of the island where he was anchored.

“They’re all gone,” he whispered to himself, the wind reaching a howl as more lighting flashed in the stormclouds. The storm was forming right over where he had crashed, Seastar was sure of it. Now that the pain of the broken wing had been dealt with, he could truly focus on what had happened. “There’s no way any of them would make it through this.”

He felt something slippery and cold slide around his legs, and he looked down. Porcelina was poking her head above the water, a curious look on her face. “What is wrong?”

“You’re certain you saw nopony else near the crash?”

She shook her head. “I not able to get to it. Too much in the water.”

Seastar hung his head, his mane whipped into stinging his face through the intense winds. “I could have saved them. I could have stayed on the ship, but instead I ran.” He looked down at Porcelina, who was looking up at him with an expression of sombre intrigue. He sighed, and continued.

“The fire on the ship started up very near to my cabin. I ran from it as soon as I could.” He stared at the water, which splashed against him as it grew rougher, closing his eyes as the salt stung them. “I threw myself from the side of the ship like it was nothing; I didn’t even warn anypony. I just abandoned them.”

He felt her cold hoof against his side, but he did not turn to look at her. “It is not you to blame.”

“Yes, it is,” Seastar said bitterly. “I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but it’s inexcusable, what I did. I am a coward.” He grunted as a particularly large wave slammed his body, pushing him back a few feet. “You shouldn’t have pulled me out of the ocean. You should just let me surrender myself to death, just like I condemned everypony on board to it.”

Her tail curled up against his legs again, and he felt her hoof move to his chest. Droplets of water began to assail him; looking up, he saw that the stormclouds had moved close enough to them for them to have blotted out the sun, and with them came the rains.

“It not as bad as you think,” Porcelina said. “You have much good to you still. You are not all one action.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Seastar said. “This one action is all that can be used to define me from now on. I made a huge error, and how many died because of it? I don’t even know the exact number of passengers on board, nor the number of crewponies. In a single act of selfishness I ruined countless lives, destroyed countless families...” He stared solemnly down into the turbulent water. “There’s no recovery from this.”

With that, he slumped over into the water, surrendering himself to the storm waves that were now rolling into the cove. Water of incredible force washed over him, but he was almost immediately pushed back up by Porcelina.

“Stop!” She cried out. “You will undo work!” She pointed towards the cast on the wing, and Seastar simply rolled his eyes.

“What do I care for that in this moment?” he spat. “I am trying to drown myself. If my wing becomes more damaged in the process, it does not matter.”

Porcelina’s black eyes sparkled with a strange fire that set Seastar ill at ease. “You do not do this! I bring you from the depths. You fight! You fight!”

He stared at her, his face contorted in an expression of disbelief. “I have no reason to fight,” he snarled at last, but he did not try to fling himself into the waves again. Instead, he pushed himself back up onto the beach. He made it out of the water just in time—a huge wave slammed the black sands, peppering his back with a buckshot blast of basalt bits.

The rain was really coming down now, so the sand was quickly washed away. He didn’t even realize how thirsty he was until a large amount of the water landed in his mouth, washing away the briny taste of the sea. He spent the next few moments scrounging around for puddles in rock, on plants, anything—but they were all too sandy or brackish. After some time of searching, he did discover a large bowl shaped leaf, and he set it down on the sand, waiting for the rainwater to accumulate before eagerly downing the water.

The pounding in his head that had been so pervasive since the original airship explosion that he had grown completely used to it finally began to subside, and thoughts with much greater clarity than ones that had come to mind before began to form.

“I’ll tell her how I feel,” he said to himself, taking another deep drink of water. “Because as long as she is in those waters, I cannot hope to atone for my actions. She’ll just try and push me back up at every chance for surrender I try and give myself.”

He walked back down to the shoreline, but the whipping winds and titanic waves made it impossible for him to see her in the water at all. Grunting, he paced down towards the end of the cove, where a large wall of volcanic rock stood, getting consistently slammed with waves. There was a small overhang on the part of the wall furthest inland, and he figured that getting out of the rain would do him some good at this point.

Just as he reached the halfway point on the beach, he caught the undeniable shimmer in the water amidst the grey, deep blue, and white that made up the storming waves. She was swimming out past the rocks, and without a second thought, he charged in after her.

He was slammed by the first wave, so powerful that it knocked all the air out of him. However, against his will, today he had become accustomed to this feeling, so he recovered quickly and pulled himself to the surface, one hoof pressed against the splint to hold it in place while he used his good wing in its place to paddle.

He was buffeted and thrown around in the waves like a leaf in a hurricane, and came close to be shredded against the razor-sharp basalt wall, but through some miracle he pulled himself around the side of the rock formation. Over the crests of the waves, he saw another formation of rocks, just like the other rock wall, but this one was broke in the middle, and through looking in, he could see it formed a sort of a barrier. Inside were more rocks and several pools of water, fed by the constant stream of the ocean through the opening, but shielded from the waves by the ring of rocks; the perfect tidal pool. And at the bottom of the far end of the furthest pool was that shimmer he was seeking.

After a moment of frantic pony-paddling, Seastar pushed himself right into the line of the opening, and the next surge of water pushed him straight through. He slammed his leg against a rock, but it was so covered in seaweed that the blow was significantly dampened. He pulled himself away, and limped towards the far pool, where Porcelina had surfaced, seemingly treading water in the center.

“You leave,” she said to him just as he was about to enter the pool. “You do not fight. At least some sailor here, they fight. Even if they do all leave, they fight! You do not.”

“I have my reasons not to!” he called out, slipping into the pool. She scowled at him, but made no other movements. However, as soon as he started swimming awkwardly over to her, she fled to the very far side of the pool, nestled up against a few rust-red rock on a small patch of submerged sand.

“There no reason,” she shouted back. “Except you do not fight!”

“How do you expect me to live with the weight of knowing all of those ponies died because I did nothing?” he yelled at her. “How am I supposed to go back and live with the remains of hundreds of families who have been broken because I didn’t shout a single word! All I had to do was shout one word, the one word of ‘fire’, and maybe somepony else may have made it. Maybe many someponies would have made it!” He had made it across the pool, and was only a rock away from her. “You can’t expect me to live with myself after this.” He set his hooves on the rock, and Porcelina’s gaze at him had indeed softened, just as he had expected it to.

“You are not only pony to make mistake,” she said, looking down at his hooves. Seastar skirted around the rock, and settled down next to her in the shallow water, squinting his eyes momentarily as the wind brought a heavy dose of rain into his face.

“You just have to understand,” he said softly. “That burden is so much to hold. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.”

“I forgive you,” she said, nuzzling up to his side, her scaley tail resting with his coarse-haired one. Seastar shivered, and looked at Porcelina apprehensively. “There is place to start.”

“I don’t see how you could,” Seastar said, shuddering as a particularly large wave slammed behind the rocks they leaned against.

“I feel same pain,” Porcelina said, her hoof resting on his chest. Seastar stared at her for a moment before she continued. “There once was many seapony. Much around island. Huge storm like this one hit many times. Rocks dangerous. Strong power under waves. I swam to here. After storm, I am only seapony.”

Seastar placed his hoof over hers. “I’m sorry...”

“It very lonely,” she said, looking out over the break of the rocks towards the towering waves of the ocean pounding the shorebreak. “Sometimes sailors come. Speak to me language of land ponies. I try to remember enough so I can speak to new sailors when they wash up. They never stay. Boats come near island and they go with them. They say they come back.” Porcelina sighed heavily, and for a moment there were only the sounds of the wind, rain, and waves. “They do not. Never.”

“You really do know what it’s like, then,” Seastar muttered to himself. Porcelina nodded. At that moment, it was as if lead fishhooks, anchoring heavy weights to his body, tore away free, allowing him to levitate out of sheer lightness.

“You will leave too,” she said softly, turning away. Even though her face was streaked with salt spray and rainwater, he could still see the tears that were making their way down her face. “There is always them leaving.”

“It’s different,” he said, lifting a hoof to her cheek, gently wiping away a tear, which was soon replaced by another. “I am different. We’re the same; we both have impossible weights on us.”

Porcelina bit her lip. “I-I am thinking so as well.”

“We named each other,” he went on to say. “Did any of the others name you?”

She shook her head.

“Did you name any of the others?”

Another shake.

A smile cross his face. “Well then, it’s settled. We are too much alike for a parting to ruin this.”

“This?” she asked. “What this?”

He brought her close, and he kissed her white lips gently. They were cold, and smooth, but it was not unpleasant. She brought her hooves to his, and her fish tail gently slid up next to his hindlegs, both of which were settled in the submerged sand, untouched by the raging storm around them.

---

The days after that broke to weeks, and Seastar explored part of the island when the storm passed and he could no longer catch rainwater. He found a small freshwater spring just ten minutes up one of the ridges, surrounded by a mass of dark green foliage, which turned out to be delicious tasting. That did not stop Porcelina from bringing him a variety of edible seaweed for him to enjoy, however, and she always had a fresh harvest for him when he returned to the black sand beach.

They talked for hours on end, and when they didn’t talk, they lounged in the shallow waters, where Porcelina would splash Seastar and he would be wont to return it immediately afterward. In their long talks, Seastar would recount his life back in Cloudsdale, speaking fondly of both his species and his family. Porcelina’s black eyes grew wide with his descriptions of the cloud city, the wonderbolts, and the weather departments. She was perplexed at first to hear that Equestria weather was controlled by pegasi, but warmed up to the idea after Seastar promised that he would show her his power of lightning once his wing healed.

“I was trained as a weatherpony,” he said to her on one sunny afternoon, laying with his injured wing exposed to the sun, a fresh wrapping of sisigaki still glistening with moisture. “Not every pegasus can coax lightning from a cloud right away. You’ve gotta get training. All of us can cloudwalk, though; that’s how our cities work.” He looked at the blue sky, brow furrowing slightly. Since the storm, there had rarely been a cloud in the sky, and when there was, it was merely a wispy, far-flung cirrus formation far off to the west. “If we get any clouds once my wing is healed up, I’ll show you my skills.”

Porcelina rarely talked of her home. Her home was the ocean, and while she did not let the language barrier get in the way of her having extended, explorative conversations with Seastar, she did not speak of the ocean without shrouding it in mystery. Oftentimes, she would stop talking all together in Seastar asked to many questions, and after a moment or two of silence, she would start up again on a completely separate topic. The best Seastar could glean was that the legends of sunken cities full of seaponies that were so prevalent back in Equestria had very little basis in fact. Apparently, seaponies traveled together in pods like dolphins or whales, two creatures that Porcelina revered. She would spend so much time talking about them that sunset would often come and pass, and Seastar wouldn’t even realize it until the glowcrabs started to creep across the beach, casting everything in a pale blue light.

“They are great creatures,” Porcelina said. “But you must not know their real names. There are powers in names, especially for creatures of the sea. If I gave them away, I would not be welcome in these waters anymore, and I would gain the ire of some of the most peaceful creatures in the waters, both fresh and salt.”

Her skill in Equestrian language increased tenfold in the time spent talking to Seastar. He accent of a seashell mouth still remained, but after the first two weeks of struggling to pronounce certain complexities, she was nearly as fluent as Seastar in his own language. She tried teaching him the language of the sea, but two issues arose: he had no gills, which were essential for the nonverbal parts of the language, which made up roughly a third of most dialects of the ocean; he was also not permitted to speak the language of the dolphins and whales, which was one of the only dialects that did not require gills.

“It is even a privilege for me to speak it,” Porcelina explained. “And I was only afforded it due to my birth in the ocean.” Seastar was okay with this, though; he accepted that he did not have Porcelina’s gift of learning language, so time was better spent teaching her his language than the other way around.

His wing healed a little over a month after the storm had passed, and the splint was able to
be removed. It of course had been changed a few times in the course of the weeks, to avoid rot, but this time he was saying goodbye for good. He did, however, keep a nice wrapping of sisigaki on for a few days afterward. His aching had not completely subsided.

His wing was weak from lack of practice, but after a few falls into the ocean from the small sea cliffs and some hasty rescues at the hooves of Porcelina, Seastar was showing off for his seapony companion in no time. Clouds were still a rarity; a few night before his wing had been operable, it had rained, and prime clouds for his lightning display had been present. He lamented this fact to Porcelina, but she had dismissed it easily.

“Those clouds return every month,” she said. “They will be here again soon enough. The
only times they are disrupted is if big storms hit, like the one on the day you arrived.”

Even though the plan for the clouds was set, things changed a week later; in the midafternoon, Seastar spotted movement out near the horizon.

“It’s a ship,” he told Porcelina. “The first one in who knows how long and most likely the last one for even longer. If I ever want to get back to Equestria...”

He expected her to angry. Instead, she just lay in the shallows, her head barely peaking above the oddly still water, which was like glass, shining in the sunlight.

“You said you would stay.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but carried all too well. “You said you weren’t like the others.”

“I’m not like the others,” he confirmed. “Because I will come back. I promise you that, Porcelina. But my family thinks I’m dead; I wouldn’t be surprised if they already held my funeral. I need to let them know I’m alive. This may be the only chance I’ll get for months, maybe even years! You know these waters aren’t well traveled, before you only got a sailor once a year at best!”

And it was true, and Porcelina knew that. She did not argue after that, but instead caressed him tenderly and kissed him gingerly.

“You will return?” she asked as Seastar spread his wings, shaking the sand from his feathers.

“I will return,” he promised, and with a salute of his wing, he was off, soaring through the sky towards the ship.

---

The ship took him back to Equestria with little trouble; it had been a trade ship coming from the southern seas, heading back to dock in the ports of Manehattan. When he returned, he dropped the name of “Seastar”. He did not need any more reminders of what he left behind.

When he returned, his family was overjoyed. His mother had wept and embraced him when she saw his sun bleached mane and ragged coat standing before her on their doorstep. His father was beyond both words and tears. His sister came back to Cloudsdale from the small town she had moved to a few years prior just to see him in his return. He did not tell them of Porcelina. He felt that they would never believe him, and oddly, it felt good to have a secret.

The weight of survivor's guilt did slam into him, as he had predicted months ago, but it was not as bad as it could have been, he reasoned. There was somepony out there, in the blue waters near that little island, that knew what it was like, and who had forgiven him. While his family also stood by his side, he did not talk to them much about it, and there was never any verbal exchange given regarding to the airship crash. The tragedy was stuck in the minds of ponies well enough without drawing attention to himself.

For five long years, he made his living back in Cloudsdale, toiling to do his best to provide for his family; his mother had fallen ill in the months he had been missing, and he could not leave her side nor abandon his family for anything while he worked. He would have nopony die by his actions ever again.

When his mother had finally recovered to a point where he felt safe leaving the family, he took his savings and chartered a ship towards the island as best as he could pinpoint it. This was achieved with some difficulty; in the five years, storms happened more and more frequently in that sector of the sea, and ships were scared go near it. But in the end, he found a grizzled captain with a large, sturdy ship, who said that he would take him within flying distance of the island.

As he flew over the cove, he knew something was wrong almost immediately. The great obsidian spires, the ones that rose like jagged teeth in the bay, were almost all broken or missing. The ones that remained were merely ground down nubs of their former selves. The beach was in a state of utter ruination; the corpses of trees in varying states of decay lined the sands, and the foliage on the cliffs were almost all ripped away. There were even the carcass of some large animal amidst a pile of driftwood in the center of the beach. He feared for the worst, and only felt the most miniscule bit of relief when he discovered that it was a dolphin, and not Porcelina.

“Porcelina!” he shouted out over the ruins of the storm-wracked beach. “Procelina! Seastar has returned! He’s back!” He stopped, a cold wind from the top of the wrecked island sending chills up his spine. “I’m back,” he said softly, staring at the cove which had been oh-so-changed.

He rushed past the wall of volcanic wall, and into the hidden tidal pool; but even after his tenth dive, he discovered no trace of Porcelina. Rounding around the wall, he returned to the ruined beach, and came face to face with a familiar face, the last one he’d expect to find on the beach.

“H-Hello,” Fluttershy said softly, her pink mane blowing gently in the wind.

“What are—” he began, before falling completely silent, gaping at her. “H-How did you find me? What’s the meaning of this?”

“I stowed away on the ship,” she said, her eyes scanning the beach, her whole body visibly shuddering as her gaze went across the dolphin carcass. “I decided that I needed some answers, and that maybe waiting patiently for them wasn’t going to work anymore.”

“Why did you come here?” he spat. “Why did you meddle in my affairs, Fluttershy?”

“Because I couldn’t bear to see my only brother suffer any longer because he wouldn’t go to anypony for help.” Her voice never raised a single decibel as she said this, straight to his face, but it had the same effect as if she had shouted it through a megaphone. He stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over a mass of seaweed.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, looking down at one of the few exposed patches of black sands.

Fluttershy took a step closer to her brother. “I wouldn’t have had to if you just talked to me. I’m not the same pony I was before you were in that airship crash. I’ve changed so much—but you didn’t even notice because you had thrown yourself into your work. The only time you ever even acknowledged me was when I did work as an Element of Harmony... and even then, it was hardly discussed in our letters, which I might add I only received three of from you in comparison to the fourteen I sent; one for every month since I became an Element.” She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. When they opened again, they shone with the tiniest hint of moisture. “I looked past that, though, because I could see you hurting. Having to go through what you did must have been an impossible burden, and since I love you... I’m willing to hear you out. I need to hear what you have to say.”

He snorted. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“I would.” Her look said everything else that was needed to convince him.

And out spilled everything he had ever said to Porcelina. Fluttershy heard her brother say it all—his guilt and his love and his hopes and his dreams. She listened as he sobbed, kicked up the sand, and bellowed at the cruel, uncaring, merciless ocean that gave and took life without so much as a second thought. He told her the story from the start to the finish: from the unforgettable fire to the first time he stepped into the Manehattan docks. There was but one time she broke composure, and it was only to blink back a tear; when he told her that he named the seapony after the porcelain one that she still kept on her dresser in her cottage.

And she stayed quiet for a moment after all his words stopped, and there was only ragged, anguished breaths through his teeth. And then she spoke. She said the words even though she knew that it was only part of a much larger problem, it was the root and it was the only place she could realistically begin to start.

“I forgive you, too.”

And she took him into her gentle hold, yellow wings draped over his shivering body as the two siblings embraced on the distant shore.