Tholumom Lathonudlerned has been very unhappy recently. He has mourned for the loss of loved ones recently. He has looked at a masterful engraving of his family and been saddened. He has slept in a decent Alder bed recently. He has complained about the inclement weather recently. He has been angered at his conscription recently. He has been frustrated with his failure in combat recently. He has been terrified by a unicorn recently. He has eaten a decent omelet recently. He has had an excellent drink recently.
He is slow to anger, but often feels depressed. He is not particularly sociable. He cannot find happiness in his work. He is not self-conscious. He is reserved.
He has a wonderful kinesthetic sense. He is very strong. He possesses an incredible endurance. He recovers quickly from sickness and injury.
When he is angry, his hands clench into fists. When worried, he tends to use threats often.
His nose is broken.
He has begun to wonder whether all this death is worth it.
“And that’s why we make our cider the old fashioned way.” The earth pony with three apples as her cutie mark said amiably. She sat on a bale of hay in a barn that was of pleasant composition to the dwarf, though the idea of painting wood was new to him. Generally structures lasted long enough to outlive the dwarves that constructed them.
“Why would that sour your appreciation for new ways of doing things? Just because one way that is new does not work, doesn’t mean that all new ways will fail.” The dwarf shook his head at the orange pony in the Stetson.
“You wouldn’t understand. My family has been doing it for around a hundred years, since the founding of Ponyville actually.” Having said this, she hoisted a mug of cider to the dwarf. The dwarf looked at her hooves suspiciously as she passed it to him, not quite sure how she was holding the mug.
“Mhm… Either way, you make great cider Applejack.” The dwarf opened another barrel and drank.
“Yah know that yah’ll be paying for that, right?” The orange pony frowned as he drained a barrel of cider, one that would have fetched a hefty price of three hundred bits.
“Jeez, I know, I know. Don’t get your ponytails in a bunch.” The dwarf snickered at his awful pun.
“Ah’d never put up with you, Ah don’t see what reason Twilight could have fer keepin’ ya around.”
“Nice little vote of confidence. I will help out around the farm, or somewhere. Do you happen to know anyone who needs a miner, or perhaps someone to crush things with a hammer?” The dwarf’s evasiveness brought an unhappy look to the apple farmer.
“Ah don’t know anypony that would need either of those things.”
“Are the creatures of the Everfree valuable in the products that may be harvested from their bodies?”
“Ah wouldn’t recommend it. Maybe. You could always talk to Zecora about that, though I don’t see how such a weakling like you could possibly combat the dangerous creatures of the Everfree.” The pony spat into the dirt. “Those abominations are the only reason that we don’t have a stable supply of Zap Apples.”
“I’d challenge you to a drinking contest, but I’d imagine that you want payment for the cider I’ve already consumed before you’re willing to allow me the honor of beating you with my dwarven alcoholic tolerance.” The dwarf wore a smirk on his face the entire time, Applejack smiled.
“Now that yah mention it, I can see why you aren’t despised by everypony in town already. Y’all seem ornery enough to take on a hydra-“Tholumom laughed, “What’s so funny about a hydra?”
“I’ve seen worse.” The dwarf grasped towards his belt, “Damn… Forgot about that.”
“Forgot about what sugahcube?”
“Twilight and her friends decided that it would be a good idea to take my war-hammer and pick axe.” The dwarf shrugged. “Maybe they thought that being naked was the right way for me to recover. Maybe it was, but I still need to get back my hammer and pick axe.”
“Well don’t go anywhere yet, you owe me a few hours gathering apples before I can let that cider barrel off my mind.”
“Really? my hammer would make an easier job of that.”
“Well Ah don’t want you to ruin my trees for the harvest.”
“Fair enough. How do I get the apples down?”
“You buck the tree”
“Is that a euphemism, because it sounds like something that humans would say when they really meant-“
“True, but not what Ah’m talking about right now.”
“Okay then. So when I buck an apple tree I do what?”
“Kick it to shake the apples free.”
The dwarf looked strangely at this diminutive creature. The orange pony claimed to have a strength that would impress most of the most elite dwarven military groups, certainly above the caliber of himself.
“Are you sure that I can’t do something else for you, like dig out a labyrinth of tunnels beneath your farm for the storage and fermentation of cider?”
“I’d like to have you do that too, but Ah’m afraid that I can’t imagine that working out well.” Applejack was more than a little bit cynical about the abilities of this creature who had just drank enough cider to make three ponies pass out. The dwarf was, of course, offended.
“Dwarven mineshafts are as safe as being out in the open air. In most cases, significantly safer.” The dwarf beamed, proud of his only contributions to his race.
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean that I feel like I can trust you with the safety of mah farmhouse.” She added after a moment, “yet.” the dwarf glowered at Applejack. “Now come on ya wierdo, don’t be like that. Ya should know by now that I don’t feel the burn of glower-power.”
“I’m sure that when I repay you five-fold, I’ll probably earn that trust.” The dwarf’s goofy smile as he said this only served to make Applejack laugh.
“Sure, yeah right, five-fold.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll come through eventually. After all, I do have around ninety-five years left in my life before senility might begin to make my connection to the world tenuous.”
“So you dwarves, you live a long time?”
“The oldest I’ve heard of was around one hundred seventy years old. What a wonderful old woman, twelve kids, all of whom have grown up and applied themselves.
They even promised her that they would promise to finish a mood, contribute to the future of the fortress, and confine themselves to a single child at a time. Not something that you often see in my culture, but seeing it, I’m surprised that everybody didn’t pick up those ideals.”
“Save your philosophy for later Thol.” The pony gestured outside the barn, “You need to start workin’ the trees.”
Applejack then led the dwarf to the orchard. When she explained what she wanted him to do, he winced. He had an entire hill to clear of apples, without even the convenience of a hammer or ladder.
When he brought this issue up with Applejack, she laughed, comparing his physical constitution to Twilight. Naturally, he did that one thing that dwarves were designed to do as the last defence; pick up a rock, and call it a weapon.
There just so happened to be a boulder lying around, named Bill. Tholumom knew that it was named bill because on it, there was a message engraved on it, “my name is Bill.” faintly, probably produced by some dabbler learning the ropes of engraving. And so he picked up Bill, moving like a glacier up and down the hill, slamming it against the trees, breaking at least ten out of the hundred or so(too bad those trees were the largest), but somehow he managed to eventually break all of the apples from their stems.
The dwarf stood at the top of the hill, admiring the destruction that he had wrought-- along with the destruction that he managed to avoid. Broken trees were littered across the various paths of the orchard, he did not think that this could be anything but expected, so he did not attempt to clean the trees up. The apples littered the ground in much the same manner as the clothing of defeated goblins and kobolds littered certain parts of the fortress. Once again, he chose to leave the apples on the ground, but this was more due to his lack of knowledge about where the orange pony wanted the apples to end up. the dwarf did not think of the various barrels and tubs that were often already half-full of apples as he passed them on his way out of the orchard.
Instead of reporting the job’s completion to Applejack, the dwarf instead chose to go back to his temporary quarters at Twilight’s. He lounged around the library, occasionally even reading a few words at a time from a book. Twilight was busy, studying for some kind of exam; she put too much forced concentration into her study for it to be a mere casual, unnecessary interest. The dwarf however, had no motivation to study so intently, indeed he merely desired to collect his armaments, maybe even put on some clothes.
The dwarf whistled a tune as he searched the library, very slowly undoing all of the work that Spike and Twilight had put into organizing the non-book items. After ruthlessly dismantling the ground floor and the second floor, he finally found the hammer, pick axe, and associated leather armor in the corner of his own room. Afterwards, the dwarf found it hard to stay put, several years of mostly idling had left his muscles weaker than they should have been, his mind unfocused on the tasks that were presented to him, and a general rustiness in his mining skill. His hands ached from their lack of use, and his back hurt from the literal slump which had impressed itself not only upon his mind, but upon his back.
Having suited up for his digging expedition (for the sake of dwarven science), he heard something that sounded unusual, but not familiar. Strangely enough it seemed to match the general description of Applejack’s voice, exceedingly angry though.
“CONSARNIT TWILIGHT, WHERE IS THAT DANGED DWARF?” The voice rumbled throughout the library. The dwarf had two things come into his mind, first the possibility of accepting his fate from that orange pony with a hat, or fleeing. Strangely enough, Tholumom chose the former option despite the tendency of his race to wall themselves into a room of magma in order to avoid work.
He walked out of his room, through the hallway, then descended the flight of stairs to the ground floor. Applejack was indeed there, a vein throbbed on her head. “Hiya Applejack.”
“Y’all weren’t seriously going to try and get away with what ya did to mah orchard, are ya?”
“Nah, I did what you told me to do, nothing more, nothing less... Except perhaps for breaking a few trees.” The dwarf exposed his teeth in order to do something he once did quite often, smile awkwardly. “Sorry about those trees though, I suppose that I should have told you?”
“Darnit dwarf, what in all of your dumb cogitation gave you the impression that I wouldn’t mind a ‘few’ of my trees being broken? Are ya reallah serious?”
The dwarf pressed his index fingers together, recalling the gesture he once made often as a child, whenever his mother caught him doing something wrong he would simply express the guilt, not through words, but through the contact of his two fingers. “I’m sorry Applejack, I told you that I could not hope to kick the apples down, so I enlisted the help of Bill.”
Twilight’s eyes went wide at the mention of that rock. “How could you possibly know about Bill?”
“He was just lying around in the orchard, the name Bill was scrawled on it in virtually unreadable engraving.” The dwarf shrugged. “I don’t know who engraved it, but it was clear that they had very little experience in the ways of manipulating rock.”
“Don’t ya mean ungupulating?”
“If I meant to use my fingernails to perform a task that requires skill, then I would use that word. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there is little difference between your foreleg extremities and your hindleg extremities, so I suppose that I can give you credit for using the word that is correct for you ponies.” The dwarf shrugged when Twilight lifted an eyebrow at him. “What? Sometimes I just feel the need to make sure that the etymology of the word fits what I am doing.”
“Etymology smetymology,” the orange pony dismissed the dwarf’s argument, “I don’t care about the apples on the ground, Applebloom and her friends, as it turns out, have found that they can do that without messing up, so y’all are off the hook for that. Those trees that you broke, I need ya to replant them and remove the trunks.”
“I understand Applejack... Now that I have my pick axe, can I dig you that extensive cellar system?”
“Bucking hell! What do Ah have to say to get ya to leave the ground beneath my farm alone?”
“Let me dig you the finest cellars from here to Appaloosa!”
“Not today dwarfy.” Twilight finally found a reason to interrupt. “You will be going over your civilization with me in the afternoon. In the evening, you have a party that you asked for from Pinkie.”
“Fine Applejack, Twilight, I’ll just take care of planting some new saplings for you Applejack. I should be back in time for your whatever it is Twilight.”
“Saplings? Who said anything ‘bout saplings?”
“Do you really intend to have me plant full grown trees?” The dwarf sighed, expecting the worse from the orange earth pony in front of him.
“Yes... but-” the orange pony paused at the expression of dismay that the dwarf showed. “-You can actually just dig my cellar tomorrow.” The dwarf looked somewhat pleased with himself at this point. “Dammit! Just plant some more trees in their places and I’ll have no problem with you! Stay away from my cider!”
Applejack stormed off suddenly out the door, causing Twilight to wonder why Applejack was so mad at the dwarf, what did the cider have to do with anything?
“What was that about?”
“I think that your friend underestimated the amount of cider that dwarves typically consume.”
“How much is that?” The unicorn attempted to obtain a parchment and quill covertly.
“Come on now Twilight, if you’re going to take notes, do it, don’t pussyfoot around it because I might not be in a good mood. The average dwarf can consume around sixteen gallons of alcohol at once. I can consume around eighteen which places me around the top three percent of drinkers in all of the mountainhomesphere.”
“Where does all that go?”
“Into our blood. We absorb food and drink very rapidly.”
“How long do dwarves typically go between drinks and meals?”
“Sometimes a day, sometimes a month. It really depends on the situation, I know that dwarves that are injured, or have bled out recently typically need to drink more water to stave off dehydration.” The sound of scratching on parchment was incessant by now. Vaguely Tholumom knew that she was extrapolating a lot more information than she should, expanding upon points in notes when notes themselves are meant to be short and to the point. “Are you enjoying writing out more than what I say?” Twilight nodded. “Good then, I wouldn’t want you to get worked up about the sheer volume of notes that you put yourself through.” The scratchings on partchment only intensified after he said that. He sighed, “Did you just-” twilight nodded “That’s what I thought. Just please, don’t overdo it. I wouldn’t want the blood of a scholar on my hands.”
Oddly enough, or so it seemed to the dwarf, the purple unicorn perked up at this. “So the water is stored in the blood?” The dwarf nodded.
“As far as I can tell, it is in yours too.”
Twilight shot him an angry glance, which went ignored as he looked out the door gruffly, considering whether he should do what Applejack desired, or do something else.
“Are your people ruled by a monarchy or a-” Twilight was interrupted by a crash from the kitchen, “Sorry Tholumom, but I need to check on Spike” As she said this, a moan issued from the kitchen. She galloped away. The dwarf chuckled
“So that’s what animal traps are for.”