"Wow," Baby Nightglow breathed, staring upward as sheer sheets of water crashed over the rocks. The young filly also gazed at the waterfall, as it tossed wild bursts of water at the moon. Getting past the falls had been easy, since the land sloped gently on one side of the river.
"It can't be far now," Baby Featherfall said, momentarily setting down the seashell.
"I'll bet we'll reach it soon," the purple colt agreed. "Baby Featherfall?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever seen ponies like those?"
"Like what?"
"What do you mean 'like what'? Like Surfdancer and those other . . . those water-ponies."
Baby Featherfall snorted. "Those weren't ponies."
Her friend stared. "What do you mean? They looked like ponies. Well . . . from the neck up, anyway."
"From the neck up?" Baby Featherfall looked at him. "What about the rest of them? They didn't even have legs, Nightglow! And gills--ponies don't have gills!"
"Yeah, but . . ." the colt frowned. "They were so bright, just like us, and they could talk. Animals don't talk." He frowned again. "Except us."
"How could they be ponies if they don't look like ponies?" The Rainbow pony replied. "That's what makes us ponies."
"Is it?"
But the baby Rainbow pony sounded definite. "No, they weren't ponies . . . but they could help us find our way way back to the herd." Picking up the little seashell again, she began trotting downstream. "C'mon."
The night stretched on as they traveled by along the stream. As the sun peered over the eastern horizon, Baby Nightglow's ears perked up. "Look! There it is!"
"Hey, wai' up!" Baby Featherfall ran after him as he took to the air. In the valley in front of the foals, a vast lake unfolded, reflecting the misty sunrise. They gallopped eagerly down the grassy slopes to the water's edge.
"Here goes nothing," Baby Featherfall said. Drawing her head to one side, she picked up the glittering seashell and flung it towards the lake with a wild plunge of her head. It traced a perfect arc before disappearing with a small splash.
"What now?" Baby Nightglow asked after a minute or two.
Baby Featherfall stared across the waves. "We wait, I guess."
The colt paced back and forth; the Rainbow pony just kept scanning the lake. Baby Nightglow was just about to suggest that they had ended up at the wrong lake when the water rippled. Both foals leaned back as something surfaced.
Another water-pony, Baby Nightglow thought. Like Waverider this one was white, but with green hair containing a streak of turquoise blue.
"Are you the sea mage?" Baby Featherfall asked cautiously, slightly unnerved by the staring teal eyes. The water creature remained silent and still, only twitching thick-veined flipper now and again. The foals exchanged glances.
"Surfdancer sent us," Baby Featherfall said.
The teal eyes widened. "Shhuuuuurfff . . ." the water-pony replied in an awkward slur, as if mouthing an unfamiliar word.
::Surfdancer?::
It was not quite a word, though it was vaguely attached to a sound . . . two sounds, one familiar and one a foreign bubbling. It was not quite an image either, though the appearance of a blue-skinned yellow-haired water-pony flashed for an instant. It was . . . both. Neither. A thought dredged from the depths of meaning. The baby ponies looked at each other in simultaneous wonder.
Baby Nightglow swung towards the sea mage. "Yes . . . Surfdancer! We have a message for you. Surfdancer said--"
::Surfdancer?::
The thought was a little more quizzical than before, perhaps a bit more persistant.
"She doesn't understand," Baby Nightglow said slowly. "I don't think she can talk like us--like Surfdancer."
"Then how can we give her the message?"
The purple pegasus tilted his head. "I don't know, unless . . ."
::Who?:: Undiluted thought and emotion . . . It was not actually "Who?" or "Who are you?" or "What are you?", but a little bit of each. ::Tell.::
"If she uses thoughts, maybe we can too," Baby Nightglow said, catching on. "She probably wouldn't be asking us if she knew we couldn't answer." His forehead wrinkled in concentration. Thoughts. Had to send thoughts. Magic . . . he thought, and was surprised when the word echoed slightly.
Baby Featherfall looked at him dubiously, but then turned towards the sea mage, both thinking and speaking her greeting. ::Hello?::
The white pony's smile stretched. ::You learn. Who?::
The colt jumped in. "My name is Baby Nightglow and this is Baby Featherfall." But the water-pony looked confused . . .
"You're thinking in words, Nightglow. You have to think in . . . looser thoughts," Baby Featherfall said. "Watch."
"Featherfall." Baby Featherfall sent an image of herself overlayed with the sound of her name and twisted around the meaning behind it--a feather, floating groundward. "Nightglow." She pictured her friend flying against a field of softly glowing stars.
::You learn.:: The sea mage sounded very pleased indeed. ::I am Reed Dancer. But why?::
The Rainbow pony blinked, marshalling her thoughts. "Surfdancer sends you a message."
::Ahhh . . . What is his message?::
The babies blinked at each other. "'His'?" Baby Nightglow said, surprised.
"They all look the same to me," shrugged Baby Featherfall. She looked toward the water-pony again. "He said to tell you something's coming."
::Something . . . coming?:: sea mage looked perplexed and the filly knew that the concepts were too broad for her to fully grasp.
"Something big, something bad . . ." Baby Featherfall said slowly, and when Reed Dancer still didn't react, she remembered what Surfdancer had said. "Not enough that you know message . . ."
The pink filly shut her eyes and pictured a lake lapping the shores on a night, a dark creeping night. Some water-ponies were bobbing in the waves--she gave them random colors. Suddenly, something swooped from the sky, dark and indefinite, but dangerous--there was a flash of claws, like the raals had, and an impression of vast, powerful wings. The water-ponies dove as its claws raked across the waves. Baby Featherfall could not bear to let the scene continue, even in her imagination; she left the image fade.
::Leviathon!:: hissed the sea mage, fury mixed with shock and fear. ::He rises!::
The foals shivered under the weight of the word and Baby Nightglow stared fearfully at the sky.
::Leviathon wakes . . . :: Reed Dancer repeated slowly. She drew herself proudly up from the waves. ::I thank you for your message, young one. We will rally our mages. We will claim Neptune's promise. The foe shall not find us defenseless.::
She smoothed back her fins, preparing to dive.
"Wait!" Baby Featherfall said suddenly.
Reed Dancer looked up.
"What's a 'fry'?" the Rainbow pony asked.
Reed Dancer frowned. "Frryyyy?"
"She only understands thoughts, remember?" Baby Nightglow said.
"So she could only answer if we knew what it meant to begin with. I wonder if Surfdancer would tell us."
"No." guessed Baby Nightglow.
"No, I don't think so either," Baby Featherfall frowned. "Good luck," she added, glancing at the white water-pony. "Be careful."
::Be careful,:: echoed the sea mage. ::May the Rainbow be your cove.::
The foals stared. "How do you know about the Rainbow?" Baby Featherfall said at last.
They jerked as Reed Dancer let out a harsh bark of laughter, a stark contrast to her smoothly shaped thoughts. ::What pony does not?::
With a flip of her tail, she retreated beneath the waves.
Tired from their journey, they slept all day, and when the shadows grew dark and deep, each foal pretended that the other was still tired. Thus the journey back was delayed until the revealing light of mid-morning.
The babies walked with a strange solemness. "I hope they can protect themselves okay."
"They have mages, Reed Dancer said. Like unicorns, I guess." Baby Featherfall fell silent, thinking. "You were right, Nightglow. It's not what's on the outside that makes us ponies."
He nodded. "It's what's on the inside."
"No, it's not that either. It's not any thing about us that makes us ponies."
He frowned in puzzlement. "Then what?"
"Do you ever . . . do you ever feel like you're being called to be more than you can be?"
"Sometimes, maybe," he said slowly. "Sometimes . . ."
"When we hear the call," Featherfall sighed, "that's what makes us who we are."
"That's kind of on the inside," Baby Nightglow ventured.
"It's not from us."
"Where is it from, then?"
"Rainbow only knows."
"Rainbow knows," Baby Nightglow echoed. They continued walking.
The journey back was uphill and therefore slow. To make matters worse, they took a "shortcut" (a decision which each of them blamed the other for later) which left them hard-pressed to make their way back to a river which they could hear but not see. Both Featherfall and Baby Nightglow had plowed through more scratch-limbed shrubs and brittle branch-made lattices than they cared to admit by the time they finally returned to Surfdancer's lake.
"So . . . how do we let Surfdancer know we're back?" Baby Nightglow asked as he plopped down on the shore, exhausted. In the deep of night, the lake was a inky pool ridged with moonlight.
"We should've asked Reed Dancer for one of those shells," Baby Featherfall frowned.
"But we didn't," the colt reminded her, blowing his forelock out of his eyes. He glanced at the shifting surface of the lake for a moment, then bellowed, "SUUUUUUUURF-DAAAAAAAANCER!!!"
"Ow! Nightglow--" The pink filly scowled and rubbed a forehoof over her ears.
"It's worth a try!" Nightglow said defensively. "If we can't find him, how can he help us? How can we get home?"
"Maybe he isn't going to help us." Featherfall sat beside the purple foal, her wings drooping. "Maybe he never was."
"No! He just doesn't know we're here!" Baby Nightglow insisted, but he felt a flutter of fear in the pit of his stomach. Could they really trust ponies who looked like fish? Who breathed water like fish? Tempest had once told him about fish big enough to eat ponies, even adult ponies, and Surfdancer had sharp teeth . . . "No!" he repeated, more to himself than to Featherfall. "He will help us if we can just make him know we're here!"
"Well, what we need is one of those sparkly shells then," repeated Baby Featherfall, ever the pragmatist.
"Yeah . . . maybe if we look real hard . . ."
The began scouring the ground, squinting through the darkness to examine each rounded stone and broken bit of seashell that they dug out of the wet sand. Baby Nightglow pulled away a soggy snarl of seaweed and paused to make a face before examining the (somewhat slimy) stones beneath it.
"How did Reed Dancer know?" he asked suddenly.
Baby Featherfall looked up. "How did she know what?"
"That we were there."
"We threw in the seashell, silly. Remember?"
"But it was barely dawn," the the purple foal persisted. "How could she see it? How could she know?"
"Who cares? Does it matter?"
"Probably not."
The shifted through the wave-tossed debris for a bit, but Baby Nightglow kept thinking. They had gone to the lake, thrown in the shell, and . . .
"Ripples." Baby Nightglow straightened so suddenly that his back hooves slipped from under him and he sat down abruptly. He didn't care. "That's gotta be it! It's not the shell at all, it's the ripples it makes! All we have to do--"
"So the water-ponies just sit around all day waiting for stuff to fall in the water?" the Rainbow pony said doubtfully. "What about when it rains, Nightglow? Nightglow?"
The colt didn't answer as he grabbed a mouthful of pebbles and tossed them into the lake with a sharp jerk of his head. The rocks plopped gently into the water, leaving rings of tiny concentric waves in their wake. The purple colt fixed his eyes on them as they slowly rippled outwards, spreading . . . and weakening . . .
"Nothing's happening," Baby Featherfall said after a few minutes.
The blue-haired colt flew in a nervous circle. "I . . . I was sure . . ."
Baby Featherfall stood up. "If you're right . . . I think we need to be closer to the middle of the lake. And we need one more thing."
"What's that?" Nightglow asked, following her.
"A bigger stone."