"Which way should we go?" the purple colt said uneasily. "I wish the trees didn't block out the sun so much."
"Nothing lasts forever. No matter which way we go, we'll get out of the forest sooner or later," Baby Featherfall pointed out, "and then maybe we'll be able to find our way back to the herd."
"Well, I'm going to fly up and take a look around," Baby Nightglow said, his words sounding more bold than he felt. He could fly well for short distances and even do fancy manuevers like loops and quick turns if the wind was right--and if he was lucky. But once he got among the treetops here, it would be a long way up . . . and a long way down.
"No, I'll go," Baby Featherfall said suddenly.
"What? I'm a better flier than you are!"
"But if I fall, I can drift to the ground," the filly pointed out. "Besides, Rainbow ponies have to be brave. To protect--"
"And serve," Baby Nightglow scowled. "Okay, okay, I'll wait here."
He watched the pink pegasus spread her wings as she took a running start, flapping her wings so hard that they were just a blurr. Awkwardly she pushed herself up on the still, dry air of the forest, steadily flapping. Baby Nightglow tensed as she angled dangerously near the tree trunks.
At last she rested on a thick branch before struggling up the final few spans, the hovering above the highest treetop, barely visible from the ground. Baby Nightglow shifted his dark purple hooves, ready to fly after her if necessary, but a few minutes later she flew back, floating down gently as a leaf in her faint swirls of magic.
"It's farther up than it looks" were her first words.
"What did you see?"
She thoughtfully tilted her head to one side, gazing at the ponderosa pines. "There's forest for as far as I can see . . . And I caught a glimpse of blue . . . there's a lake," she continued slowly.
Baby Nightglow stared at her.
"It looks a lot like the lake in . . . that other place . . . only without the mist and wind," she said.
"Another lake?" He frowned. "Do you think we should go to it?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "This time there's nothing calling . . . But not the lake. Not this lake."
"Well, let's go there," he said. "We can get a good drink and figure out what to do next."
Baby Featherfall nodded. "This way, then."
She trotted along with Baby Nightglow laboriously flying behind her, just to prove that he could fly. After a short time the forest began to thin out and a cool breeze ruffled the ponies' manes. A lake sparkled before them, only shaded along the shore by the overhanging willows, drawing relief from the sun at the foot of the water.
Baby Nightglow stepped onto the beach, watching his hooves sink slightly in the yellow sand. Nearer to the lake, the sand was gold, darkened by the waves crawling up and slinking back. Baby Featherfall stood with the water curling around her hooves, gazing at the sand glittering in turbulence around her. She moved her feet a little, splashing, beforet taking a long drink.
"The water's good," she announced with a dripping muzzle.
"What should we do now?" Baby Nightglow asked after he had drunk his fill.
Baby Featherfall sat on her haunches and considered. "We'll go around the lake," she said at last. "It would be good if we could find a river connected to it."
"Then we wouldn't have to worry about getting water while we travel," Baby Nightglow nodded. But how will we know which way to go?
As Baby Featherfall started walking, the purple colt hesitated. "Wait a minute!" he called. He carefully picked up a few rocks and set them together on the beach so they formed a perfectly straight line. "Now we'll know when we get back to this point," he explained to Featherfall, who was staring.
She shook her head. "You have strange ideas, Nightglow."
He shrugged, half-smiling. "Sometimes strange works."
Side by side they began following the shoreline, wading in the shallows and splashing each other. After their experiences, the lake seemed blessedly normal . . . and they were both foals, after all.
The sandy shallows eventually fell away to underwater drop-offs, ominously deep, and the babies contented themselves with fluttering or running along the shore. "We don't want to get our wings wet," Baby Featherfall said as they trotted over a small, rolling rise of sand.
"Right," Baby Nightglow agreed. "That would be--" He interrupted himself with a gasp.
Baby Featherfall turned her head sharply to see the cause for alarm . . . and froze in disbelief. "It can't be," she whispered.
Her friend wasted no time on disbelief. In a trice, the colt was tumbling down the sand dune, digging furrows with his outstretched hooves as he rushed towards it--the last thing he had expected to see here.
Despite the glare of the setting sun, he could clearly see the silouhette of the equine head, the pricked ears and damped-down mane hanging in tendrils around her face as she gazed across to the opposite shore. Eight or nine spans from the shore, the sun-gilded water gently lapped around her neck as she stared into the sunset, almost mesmerized. Too excited to shout, Baby Nightglow floundered for his footing in the shifting sand with Baby Featherfall close behind him. Blue with blue hair? Oh Rainbow, if she's here, the herd must be close! Yeah!
He skidded to a stop at the water's edge so suddenly that Baby Featherfall nearly stumbled into him. "Azure, it's us! Where's the herd? Can you take us to them? I can't believe we finally found you!"
"Are they nearby?" Baby Featherfall put in, right on top of the colt's comments.
Hearing the commotion, the other pony swiveled at incredible speed. Even treading deep water, her head barely bobbed as she stared at them.
Baby Nightglow took a step back, shocked. "That's not--"
The words caught in his throat as the creature slowly rose, pushing itself out of the water with slashing, white-streaked fins. Gills on either side of the neck closed tightly, then slitted outward, then closed again in steady rhythm while blank, slightly bulging lavender eyes examined them. With a sudden flip and a spray of lakewater, the . . . thing . . . was gone.
Baby Nightglow took a deep breath as he glimpsed a long, eel-like tail disappearing beneath the waves.
Baby Featherfall could only shake her head incredulously. Then her eyes widened. "Look." she whispered.
Baby Nightglow took a step back as he caught the glimpse of dark forms gliding under the water, half-hidden by the last reddened slants of sunlight edging the waves. With a spray of foam, they burst to the surface--three of them. The blue fish-pony--that was how Baby Nightglow thought of them--the one he had mistaken for Azure, hung back with an air of caution, ready to dive away in a flash. The bolder ones bobbed only a few spans away, one of them also blue, but with yellow hair and the other white with lavender hair streaked with blue. The yellow-haired one clacked its jaws a few times, revealing rows of tiny, sharp teeth, as it stared intently at the foals. "Who you, fry?" it demanded in a voice that gurgled and slurred.
Baby Featherfall and Baby Nightglow gasped in unison. "You can talk!" the colt exclaimed.
"Me talk," the water creature agreed. "Who you?"
"I'm, uh, Baby Nightglow." He glanced at his friend.
The pink foal frowned. "I think you should tell us who you are."
"Me . . . Surf-dan-cer." Suddenly, the it ducked its head underwater, surfacing just as quickly with water pouring over its gills. "You . . ." it flipped a purple-veined flipper towards Baby Featherfall. "You Rainbow pony, fry?"
"Yes," was the simple reply. "What's a 'fry'?"
Surfdancer bared tiny, peg-like teeth in a smile while leaning back on the waves, studying the pink pegasus. "Long ago . . . we meet land pony, shore pony . . . she say . . . 'Rainbow ponies help. Help all.'"
"We protect and serve all ponies," Baby Featherfall said, putting a slight emphasis on "ponies".
"You help us, then?" Surfdancer leaned forward, focusing on the baby pony with sharp green eyes.
Baby Nightglow had already opened his mouth to agree when Baby Featherfall fluffed her wings and calmly said, "Why should we?"
Surfdancer's eyes narrowed. "Rainbow ponies help."
"If we don't find our herd again, you might be the last ones we--I--help," Baby Featherfall countered. "Rainbow ponies have to think about that too, you know."
Surfdancer snorted, displeased, and briefly ducked underwater again before turning towards the bobbing white water-pony. The foals exchanged amazed glances at the rushing flow of sounds burbling between the two. At last they fell silent, speculatively gazing at Baby Featherfall; she met their eyes calmly, never twitching a feather.
"You help us, we help you. Good enough, fry?"
"I'm no 'fry'; I'm a Rainbow pony."
The purple-maned water-pony glanced at Surfdancer, an inquisitive noise trickling from its throat. Surfdancer grinned, making an equally unintelligible reply. The baby pegasi started as both sea creatures broke into chorus of harsh barking.
Laughing? Baby Nightglow thought incredulously. Surely not.
"Yes, you Rainbow pony." At last Surfdancer focused on the baby pony again, but a grin seemed to want to slide across that streamlined blue face. "You help us, then Waverider--" a flipper waved in the direction of the white water-pony "she talk to fish, find your school." Surfdancer frowned slightly. "Herd."
"That sounds good," Baby Featherfall agreed, and only the slight quiver of her wingtips betrayed her excitement. "What do you need?"
"Not much," Surfdancer assured them. "Just carry . . . words. Message."
"Where to?" Baby Nightglow put in.
The blue pony looked at him with something like reproach before addressing its words to Baby Featherfall. "Not far. Towards sinking sun . . . another lake. Not far for ponies with . . ." The water-pony energetically flipped its fins back and forth.
"Wings?" guessed the colt.
"Not far for ponies with wings," Surfdancer continued, not sending a flicker of a glance towards Baby Nightglow. "For us, far."
"Who do we take the message to?" Baby Featherfall asked as her friend scowled.
"You take message to sea mage . . . That all. She tell others."
"Tell the others what? What others?" Baby Nightglow interrupted, but Surfdancer was again diving underwater . . . without resurfacing, this time. An uncomfortable silence stretched across the lake as the pegasi and the two remaining water-ponies stared at each other. But with a sudden splash, Surfdancer returned. Baby Nightglow squinted, trying to see what was clasped in the blue jaws. Something small . . . something that shimmered.
"Take this," Surfdancer spoke awkwardly around the object before sending it tumbling towards the shore. Baby Featherfall dove, twisting her wings sharply, the tips of her hooves furrowing the lake's skin as she caught the shape that glimmered in the twilight.
"A shell," Baby Nightglow observed as the pink foal landed and spat out her prize. ("It tastes like seaweed," she murmured, grimacing expressively.) "I've never seen one this shiny."
"It's like starlight caught in a seashell," Baby Featherfall agreed, scrubbing a hoof across her mouth.
"You throw shell in lake, mage come," Surfdancer explained. "You give her message."
"What message?"
Surfdancer glanced into the deepening shadows before whispering, "Something comes . . . I not know your word for it, land pony. But something comes . . . something big. Something bad. It smell like death."
The foals drew closer together. "That--that's the message?" Baby Featherfall asked, and to her credit her voice hardly trembled.
Surfdancer sighed, a sound echoed by the waves pulling against the sandy beach. "Yes. But it not enough that you know the message . . . must understand message."
"I understand." Baby Featherfall straightened a little, proudly arching her neck. "Something big and . . . and bad is coming."
Surfdancer snorted. "Not enough." The water-pony flipped its fins back and forth thoughtfully. "You see fishing birds, fry? Big birds with . . . wings . . . big as yours. More big, maybe. They cut through sky, they watch, they dive."
"Eagles? Why would we need to warn anyone about--"
"You listen, fry! You look at . . . eagle . . . and at fish--trout, maybe. Eagle is more big, right?"
"Well, an eagle would have to be bigger than a fish. How else would they carry them?" Baby Featherfall said reasonably.
Surfdancer eyed her with some amusement. "Fry know everything, of course. Some fish . . . Well, you right this time. Eagle more big than trout. MUCH more big."
The foals exchanged puzzled glances. "Sooo . . ."
Moonshadows played along Surfdancer's sleek face as driblets of water fell from the tangled locks of beraggled yellow hair. "Say you see something in air, fry . . . something big, like eagle . . . but not." The water-pony rocked back and forth a little, seemingly addressing itself as much as the foals. "Maybe on dark night, far away, you see it fold back fins--wings--and dive, rip the lake with its claws, tear the water. But when it rises, what has this thing caught? Not trout, fry. Not salmon or chub. One of us. Maybe Waverider, maybe me. Billow. Last time, Billow." The water-pony snorted in anger. "To it, we trout, fry. That is what you warn against."
"I . . . see," Baby Featherfall said slowly.
"Good," Surfdancer said calmly. "I tell you where you go--you follow river downstream. Not far for land pony."
Baby Featherfall thought of the "big, bad thing" lurking in the night sky and hoped it would be a very short journey indeed.