My name is The Merry Widow.

And tomorrow I will die.

For five decades now, I have plied the seas with my crew, brave and bold ponies who faced the storms and dangers of the ocean with a song on their lips. The screams of the wind and the grasping clutch of the depths would terrify lesser ponies, but my faithful crew was safe in my embrace. Little colts they may have been when they set their first unstable hoof upon my decks and carved their names into my mast, but under the lessons of their elders, my crew matured into true sailors.

At least those who survived.

The sea is a jealous bitch, angered at the ships who dare to sail her beautiful surface, and her rage knows no bounds. Many times while the waves tossed me like a toy, my crew clung to the stays and prayed to whatever gods might hear, but most of all they trusted me, and I never let them down. Through whatever fearsome storm the vengeful sea threw at us, we would return to port. Sometimes leaking to the capacity of the pumps with most canvas carried away and only a few lines still intact, but we returned, time after time, year after year. My faithful crew rejoiced in their survival, mourned their companions lost to the sea, nursed their own wounds, and made me ready to sail again.

As much as I refused to admit it, the years extracted their toll upon my decks and ribs, tattering the planks and splintering spars. My once graceful path through the waves became more of an awkward wallow, then a slow trudge, until at long last I reached my present anchorage.

When Celestia raises the sun, I will be towed to the breakers.

While awaiting my fate in the darkness, I feel the touch of another. A longboat brushes up against my sides and ponies climb up onto my decks once more. I know their hooves upon my tattered and patched decks, aged shoes gone rusty over the years and the occasional stub of wood where the dangers of the sea claimed her due. Many names have been carved into my mast since I first set to sea, but so few of them have returned to see me on my final voyage. Old and young, they gather around, searching for their own names on the mast among the multitude and running unsteady hooves across the splintered wood, cracked and dry with age.

They hoist a keg onto my decks and bring out flagons, giving me one last time to share with my beloved crew. They drink until the keg is emptied, spilling more than a few flagons of ale upon my dry deck in my honor while they sing once again. Songs which I thought long forgotten drift out across the darkened sea, songs of hearth and home, of loves gone away and storms survived. They sing until I wish I had a voice to sing along, to show how much I loved and cared for them.

Then after far too short a time under the starlit sky, they are silent upon my decks again until the eldest of them moves forward to the ship’s bell.

The chimes of my bell ring out across the silent dark sea. Twice. Twice again. Twice yet again. And twice a fourth and final time.

I now know why they have come to me. Before my end. Before the breakers.

The false light of dawn stains the horizon just a few points off the bow by the time we pass the reef and the wind begins to pick up. Lines are tied down and the splintered wheel lashed into position before the crew breaks open a last cask. They dampen my dry wood and empty hold, splashing onto every surface before they return to the longboat, taking with them my tarnished brass bell.

May it bring my faithful crew joy and remembrance.

The longboat casts off and drifts away when the wind fills my tattered and patched sails, driving me out into the open ocean. My adversary. My ally. My home.

The first candle in my hold burns down to the pool of oil and the flames erupt, devouring the dry wood and aged canvas. In a few minutes, the fires spread throughout my entire structure, leaving me a raging inferno as I sail into the rising sun.

My name is The Merry Widow.

And today, I’m going home.