Chapter 3: Igneous Rock
Now Cloudy Quartz Pie had borne to Paradise three Daughters, all truly virgin births, for Cloudy was still in truth a virgin. But she was tired of this status, for she had given birth to three children and yet still had never had knowledge of any stallion. And there was one stallion she long had loved, though while she was still acting as brood mare to Paradise she had not deemed it fair to wed him -- for, though the way in which Paradise quickened its Friends had little in common with ordinary Pony sexuality, the idea was close enough that Cloudy knew she would have felt like an adulterer against her admirer had they been husband and wife.
But now Cloudy had done her duty to Paradise, and far more than most, for even the most devout and dearest Friends of Paradise rarely bear more than a single fluffy Daughter for their Deity. And Cloudy's Daughters were special, like none ever seen before. She held -- and Paradise agreed -- that she had done more than enough.
So Cloudy was now free in her heart to wed her true love.
***
Igneous Rock came of a lesser family than did the Pies. The Rock holdings lay west rather than south-west of South-Dunnich, and their mine was poorer and their earth-current weaker than those which graced the Pie Rock Farm. He was the eldest of five children: with two sisters and two brothers; and his father was dead and his mother in declining health. For long years he labored to keep the Rock Rock Farm afloat, while his brothers were still young and his sisters still unmarried, leading his siblings in their own labors, and doing the heaviest and most difficult work himself.
The unremitting effort might have broken down a lesser Pony. But Igneous, though of but average size and build for an Earth Pony, was blessed with determination and fortitude far greater than that of many a larger stallion. He had worked hard since he was quite a small colt; and though his family was not prosperous, his mother had made certain not to stint them in their simple but nutritious fare. So beneath his plain brown coat moved muscles that were wiry and powerful. In his prime, Igneous could work in the field all day, lay down to sleep and arise fresh early the next morning, fully-rested and ready for another day's work.
Igneous had known Cloudy almost her whole life -- he was sixteen years her senior, and had first seen her as a tiny foal, riding the back of her mother Goldie. She had been the school-mate of his own youngest sister Seddie, and had frequently been over to the Rock Rock Farm to play with her friend. Even when she was but a filly, he had been struck by her grace and elegance; she had seemed to him like something out of a picture-book depicting the daughter of some noble of the lost North-Realm. Over a decade and a half he watched her grow, until she was a little filly no more, but instead a young mare: quiet and demure, but in whose eyes he often spied sparkling happiness -- though at first he did not grasp that this was due to his his own approach.
They spoke together more and more. By imperceptible degrees they became friends. Eventually, it was him she came to the Rock Rock Farm to visit, to talk with about her doings, her hopes and her dreams. She was still the friend of his younger sister, but Igneous and Cloudy had become each other's best friends, inseparable.
Igneous and Cloudy made an odd pair, the serious, work-hardened stallion in his early thirties; and the polite, educated young mare just entering her late teens. To them it seemed wholly natural. He was awed by her intelligence and erudition, and protective of her youth and innocence; she responded to his competence and quiet, sure strength, so much like that of her father Jasper Quartz. Her talk was endlessly fascinating to Igneous, who had a limited education but thirsty mind; for her part, Cloudy always felt safe and cherished when she was with her dear companion.
She told him of her religion, her faith that Paradise would redeem Ponies of their sufferings, that in the darkest hour of Ponykind, Paradise would fulfill its ancient purpose, and reach out to give the world its most special Daughter to save them from ultimate destruction. He told her of his love for his family, his determination to support and protect them until his siblings were full-grown and safely-wed, and needed him no longer.
They began to look forward eagerly to their meetings, to the chance to inform each other of the events since they had last parted. To exchange gossip, compare notes, discuss plans -- their conversations were becoming the high points of their lives, so simply and naturally that it seemed inevitable. Yet for a long while neither of them dared to hint at more than friendship. Their friendship was so perfect that neither wished to spoil it, the more so because they so greatly admired one another.
He saw an imaginative power and purity of purpose in Cloudy which touched a vein of idealism in his soul which he had not known himself to possess. She was to him a scent, a song, something indefinably beautiful in whose presence the workaday world seemed transformed with wonder. He yearned for her, but he knew that to one such as her, he could never be more than a dull old working-pony, on whom she had by some strange fancy chosen to gift her company. Should he speak to her of his feelings, she would be revolted at his presumption; his desire to sully her magical person with his mundane touch. He very much did not want to drive her away, so he remained silent.
She realized that Igneous was strong both in body and soul, and more so, he was a stallion whose strength was always devoted to the well-being of his loved ones. She began to imagine a future in which she would have that strength and love beside her always. Yet Cloudy was shy, and feared to drive him away should she raise such hopes directly. Besides, in her own mind she was not yet really a mare: surely he would laugh at such pretensions on the part of one who had just a few years back been an inmate of the school-room? She was but a silly little filly, while he was a stallion full-grown, destined to wed a mare as impressive as his own self, something that she surely was not.
***
But one day they met, and Igneous was wroth. Not with his dear friend Cloudy, but with certain crude stallions he had met on one of his trips into Nickerlite, stallions with which he had conversed on other occasions and marked as sometimes-annoying but harmless fools, such as exist in all times and places. This time, however, his enounter with them might have led to violence, had not Igneous been well-tempered in both word and deed. He summarized the reasons for his anger to Cloudy, as they sat watching the sun set over the White Tail Hills in the Pies' northwestern field, she gently leaning against his side, a familiarity she was increasingly tending to take with him, a slight but dear burden of which he would not have been rid for a heap of high-quality gemstones.
"They looked at me and laughed and said I was your stallion!" Igneous said with indignation, a rare look of anger on his visage. "'Cloudy Pie's colt-friend,' that's how they termed it. 'He's stepping out with her,' they said. 'Sparking her.' The nerve of those no-accounts!" he said, literally snorting.
Cloudy turned her head to look at her best friend. For once, Igneous found her expression unreadable.
"And what did you tell them?" she asked.
"Well, I told them they had no business spreading such scurrilous and scandalous gossip about such a fine filly as yourself. 'Miss Pie,' I informed them, 'is a good and decent girl of the best family and most correct conduct, and you yokels have no call to insinuate that she would do anything at all improper!' I said it just like that, like out of a book, because you deserved nothing but the best in defense of your reputation." Igneous firmed his jaw, obviously confronting those very same stallions in his memory. "I had to stick up for your honor," he concluded.
"And what did they say to that?" Cloudy asked. She was smiling now.
"Why, those scapegraces just took it all as one big joke!" Igneous replied, outraged. "They just kept laughing and laughing, saying things that implied I had ... intentions ... and when I ran at them they lit out of there, but they were still laughing!" Igneous paused for breath. "I guess I must have looked very angry. But imagine that! Them thinking that a fine filly such as yourself might fall for ... well, you know ... I'm just an old farm hoof, bit-a-bunch, as they say ..."
He floundered for a moment, entirely unaware of the way in which Cloudy's eyes softened, her lips trembled at his previous statement, as if she were coming to some strong emotional realization.
"They were talking about us as if we were stepping out together!" he concluded.
Cloudy was quiet for a moment. She looked down, and her long, straight grayish-green mane, which she had let loose for her walk in the fields, fell down to cover her face so that it was obscured from his vision. Then she tried to look at him but quickly looked away, blushing furiously and biting her lip. Her lip firmed and she seemed to come to some sort of decision, and she looked back it Igneous, her blue eyes gazing into his own, unflinching.
"But aren't we?" she asked him softly.
For a moment Igneous did not grasp her meaning. Then he did.
"Oh," he gasped.
Cloudy did not relent.
"Aren't we stepping out together?" she asked again. Her eyes were looking right into his soul.
There was fear in those eyes, but also hope, and at that moment Igneous realized that Cloudy was not afraid for her reputation, not worried about impropriety, but rather afraid that he was going answer 'No' to her question. And he realized what that meant, and he shook with amazement at the thought that any filly -- no, he thought, for the first time fully-seeing the last few years of her growth, her no longer childish figure and the even less childish desire in her gaze upon him, any mare as wonderful as Cloudy Quartz Pie could possibly feel that way about any Pony as ordinary as himself.
"Oh --" he said again, starting to speak, and Cloudy must have seen the answer in his eyes, the only answer any sane stallion could possibly make to an offer of such inestimable worth. For as he started to speak, she leaned in and up to his face, and closed her eyes slightly, and brushed his lips with her own. It was an untutored kiss -- Cloudy had not put much store in kissing games or bundling parties, for she had always been a serious and correct little filly -- but in it was all the sincerity and warmth of the innocent young heart which she was giving to him.
Almost in a daze, Igneous returned her kiss, feeling her soft lips against his own, smelling and tasting her uniqueness. He could scarcely believe this was happening in real life, for this was like one of his most secret dreams, only far more wonderful. Igneous, of course, had kissed mares before; especially when he had been young and had more than once imagined himself in love. All these foolish adolescent fumblings were now laid bare to him as vain and tawdry, and he was glad that none of them had ever gotten so far as Intention, for he was an honorable stallion, and would have wed any mare he had promised.
For nothing he had ever known was like that first kiss of true love from Cloudy. And in that instant he knew that he would overcome any obstacle, defy any convention to be with her, on any terms, from now until the moment of his heart's last beat. So it was very well indeed that he had no other to wife.
They kissed again, long and slow; and then nuzzled and rubbed their faces and cheeks together, and at last sat front to front,heads cradled against each other's necks, lips resting gently against the bases of each other's neck, each one's mane trailing across the other's face in a posture of surpassing intimacy. They sat like this for long minutes, drinking in each other's scent and warmth, hearing each other's pulses, not entirely certain where one pony left off and the other began, neither daring to say anything in the perfection of this moment. They both would have in that instant volunteered to remain like this always.
But slowly reality, cruel reality resumed, and they realized that they were sitting on hard ground and the sun was setting and they would both have to go back to their separate homes.
So they separated, just a bit, and he looked into the eyes of she who had walked out into this field with him his best friend, and was still his best friend, but now also his beloved. Her irises were wide open, her eyes looked very big, and even after they were no longer embraced she leaned toward him eagerly. He could see and hear and smell her arousal, and felt a sudden rush of desire to take her, an impulse he firmly suppressed. She was his beloved best friend, his own true love, and he would not betray her trust by rushing her into anything she might regret happening so quickly. They would have a lifetime together, many decades of love to come.
He managed to speak. "I love you," he said. It was the only thing he could say.
"I love you too," she replied. Her voice was breathy.
"We'd better be getting back," he said. "Don't want to make your family concerned for you."
"I suppose you're right." She leaned toward him, pushed forward, bumped and rubbed his cheek, then almost flung herself at him, pressing her head against his breast, rubbing her head repeatedly there, her small compact form almost like that of a foal's against his tall, lean, well-muscled frame. "I wish we could stay," she said. "I wish we could stay out here together all night and -- let whatever happens happen -- as if we were the first two Ponies in all the world and nothing else mattered but each other!" She buried her face against him and he could feel the warmth of her cheeks, and knew she was blushing.
He reached out a foreleg, put it around her, held her tightly, unwilling to relinquish the possession of her sweet feminine form. He gently stroked her back, nuzzled her neck. When she gave a little gasp and shuddered slightly, he realized he was going too far, touching places that were too reminiscent of the places he would be touching if he were to -- he firmly pushed down that thought, for it was far too dangerous in this, his initial ecstasy at having won her love.
He very gently but very firmly separated them again. He looked down at her shy, solemn little face.
"We have to go now," he repeated. "Or we may not be able to."
She nodded, never taking her eyes off him, and they both got to their hooves. They turned toward the Pie farm house.
They started walking together, she frequently leaning and bumping up against him, as if now requiring the physical contact. He sighed a bit in happiness every time she did this, acknowledged in this simple manner that she was his mare, in her heart.
As they got closer to the house, practicality started to return to them, and a thought struck her.
"Will they know?" she asked him.
"Yes," he told her. "Our scents are mingled."
She blushed. "Should I wash myself?" she asked. "I mean -- I like smelling like you, it's wonderful, but is it the wrong thing to do?"
"Better not," Igneous replied. "If you wash now," he explained, "they're likely to think that -- well, that we didn't get up in time."
It took her a moment to understand the implication, and then she crimsoned furiously, all the way down her neck and breast.
"Oh," she said. "Right. I can bathe later."
"I like smelling like you too," Igneous told her. They bumped particularly long this time, and Cloudy essayed a nibble against the side of his neck that forced Igneous to hurriedly think of the smallest and least exciting details of hauling rocks to avoid displaying certain physical evidence that he did not want to be showing if any of Cloudy's family should happen to come upon them.
Sweet Celestia, he thought, Cloudy is irresistible! He looked fondly and perhaps more than a bit lustfully at his beloved friend, who giggled at him and did a flirtatious little dance, almost certainly unaware of the extent of the physical reaction she had almost provoked.
As they neared the farm house, Igneous realized with regret that this would be the end of their time together today, the best time he had ever known in his entire life. I'll have to talk to Goldie and Jasper, he realized. Tomorrow -- not now -- I'm too flustered. But it wouldn't be right not to let them know I'm courting their daughter. For that was what he was now doing. Cloudy was in a category in his mind that completely precluded any casual assignation, even if he had been a stallion inclined to such.trifling ways.
"So, I think it's settled," she said. "We are stepping out together."
"Oh, yes," he replied, smiling.
"And we've been ..." she trotted over and whispered in his ear, "sparking!" She withdrew, grinning joyfully.
He had never seen Cloudy so purely happy.
"Yes, we have." And he felt a great joy in his own heart at making it real by saying it aloud.
They paused on her doorstep, unwilling to part. Finally he leaned forward and kissed her one last time. She responded eagerly, passionately, and he had to be the one to break it off, for he strongly suspected that in a moment the door would open and Jasper or Goldie would be glaring out at him kissing their eldest daughter right in front of the Pie House. Or, worse, it would be some of Claire's little brothers or sisters.
"I'll see you tomorrow afternoon, right after sundown, if that's all right with you and your folks," he said. "I'll want to talk to your parents."
"Until tomorrow, then," she said softly, smiling and blowing a hoof-kiss at him.
Igneous Rock was one of the most stereotypically Earth Pony of Earth Ponies, but on the way home he felt like he had done magic, and as if he were not so much walking as flying.
***
So it was that Igneous Rock happily went home.
Cloudy Quartz Pie was certainly no less happy, though when she stepped back into her home, it was to discover that her maternal grandparents, Surprise ("the Nth," as she styled herself) and Reliable Oak, had come over to share the company of their eldest daughter and her family.
Surprise the Nth -- an octagenarian white mare whose now-fading gray mane had once been brownish-blonde, if one old painting and many fond memories expressed by Reliable were to be believed, was working on a sheaf of mathematical calculations, as was normal for her. She was a brilliant mathematician, who from time to time developed advanced and outrageous theories whose import the rest of her family could but dimly grasp, and which even most other mathematicians often poorly comprehended..
Her husband Reliable, generally called Relly, a brown-coated, salt-and-pepper-maned stallion in his late nineties, was poring over her reslts. Relly was a highly-competent but far less gifted mathematician, who always checked Surprise's inspired but sometimes slapdash work for accuracy. Relly generally understood Surprise's ideas -- making him about the only Pony in the Nickerlite area who did -- but he never could have originated them.
Reliable had been checking Surprise's work in this fashion since they had met at Canterlot University. He'd been a graduate student serving as a teaching assistant, had noticed a simple mathematical error on a complex paper, and had offered to help her. He'd been helping her for six and a half decades now, with Cloudy's mother Goldie being one of the less-mathematical results of this assistance. They'd been married over six decades, a state of affairs Cloudy found both impressive and admirable.
As Cloudy opened the door and stepped into the large room that served the Pies as both dining hall and parlor, her grand-parents looked up from their papers and flehmened at her. Cloudy blushed slightly, for she knew she bore the scent of her beloved, and hoped that Surprise and Relly would be too wrapped up in their mathematics to draw the appropriate conclusions.
Her hopes were immediately dashed.
"Ah," said Surprise with some satisfaction. She turned to Relly and pointed to one of her papers. "It's as I predicted -- I'm off by only three days, which is well within my margin of error."
"Now, now," chided Reliable in his slow but sure manner. "You have not really sampled the data. You assume this was their first kiss, and also no more. Both are likely, but you cannot be certain. Observer bias, remember?"
"I think my curve is good." Surprise gazed at a complex graph chart, wrinkling her brow in concentration. "But you're right -- I'm making too many assumptions." She frowned, then her face lit up in a smile. "Easily remedied!" She looked up at Cloudy, whose blush was by this point extremely obvious. "Did he kiss you before today, dear? And did you two do anything more than kiss?"
"Um ... uh ..." Cloudy adroitly replied, the blush now spreading all the way down her chest. She was literally at a loss for words.
"I'll take that as a yes to the first question," Surprise said, making a mark in her notes. "And as to the second one?"
Cloudy's older brother Pie Chart, who was home for the summer from Pranceston University, looked up from his newspaper and smirked at her. "Come on, Cloudy," he said. "We're all dying to know the answers. Scientific progress demands it." His smooth gray face, under its golden mane, would have looked quite innocent if not for the shape of his smile, and the light of mischief dancing in his pale yellow eyes.
Cloudy gave him a wounded look.
"Oh, I went through all this myself," Chart assured her. "Granny's been working on this project on and off for many years."
"Yes, I have," Surprise said brightly. "My General Theory of Romantic Love and Sexuality. It will make possible all sorts of predictions through multi-variate statistical factor analysis modified by age and subcultural determinants. So, Cloudy, did you let him ..."
Whatever question Surprise had meant to ask remained unspoken, as the door to the kitchen opened and Cloudy's mother, Goldie Pie, stepped into the room.
"No, Mother," Goldie said. "You are not going to bombard my innocent young daughter with questions to gather data for your dubious theory."
Oh, praise be to Paradise, Cloudy thought. She wants to protect me. Cloudy's mother was one of the most determined Ponies Cloudy had ever known, and well able to stand up to Granny's mathematical curiosity. Cloudy began to relax a little: she was sure she was safe now.
"Dubious theory?" Surprise snapped. "I'll have you know that my theory has checked out well against the academic data. I just have to test its predictions aganist future events, and Cloudy is perfect because she's ..."
"Cloudy is perfect because she's my daughter," Goldie interrupted. "And a young mare in love is not likely to want to answer a lot of nosy questions."
She called me a mare! Cloudy was thrilled. Up until now, her mother had only referred to her as a "filly." Except that time that she gave her The Talk, a few years ago when she'd begun her cycles. Wait, she can't be meaning to -- A certain dread started to chill Cloudy's heart, but then she realized with relief, No, she already did that. It was really embarrassing, but there's no reason she'd want to do that again. Not even somepony in Ma's profession would want to do that again.
"Bah!" snorted Surprise. "I would have thought that you of all Ponies would appreciate the value of rigorous mathematical prediction in this field. If not, why did I bother to send you to Miskatrottic?"
"I won a scholarship, remember?" countered Goldie, stepping over to put herself partly between Surprise and Cloudy. "And one thing I've learned from over thirty years midwifing is that matters of the heart are unlikely to be amenable to rigorous mathematical prediction."
"On an individual basis," argued Surprise. "The behavior of Ponies en masse should be logically-predictable, just as we can't easily track a single molecule of a gas, but it's behavior in measurable quantities is very much determinable by mathematics."
"Well," said Goldie, setting her jaw firmly, "my Cloudy is most definitely an individual, not a social mass. And you shall treat her as an individual at this very delicate and tender stage of her life. Is that clear?" She leveled her amber eyes and glared into her mother's purple ones.
Surprise snorted and blew air from her mouth, but in the end could not meet Goldie's gaze. She glanced at her husband Relly in hopes of support, but he simply shrugged. Relly had not lived to his great age by getting between his wife and his daughter in one of their epic disagreements.
Surprise looked back at Goldie, still not directly meeting her eyes.
"When did you become such a mutinous child?" Surprise asked her fifty-three year old daughter.
"I've always thought for myself, Mother," replied Goldie. Her expression softened. "It was one of the first things you taught me, by your example."
Surprise snorted again, but the snort sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.
"Come with me," Goldie told Cloudy, and opened the door of her study.
Cloudy almost trotted into the familiar, book-lined room, dominated as it was by Goldie's great desk near the window. Such was her relief at having an excuse to leave the main hall.
She breathed a sigh of relief as her mother closed the door. "Thanks, Ma," she said with utterly-unfeigned gratitude. "I don't know what I could have said to Granny if she'd kept on -- hey!" Cloudy yelped. "What are you doing?"
For Goldie had bent to quickly sniff her entire anatomy, including portions of it which Cloudy preferred to keep decently hidden under her caudal appendage. Goldie raised her head, and a very professional expression, one which Cloudy had seen many times before, though usually directed at patients, settled upon her orangish-yellow features.
"Good," said Goldie. "Very good. My instincts were right -- Igneous is a good colt."
"He's not a colt," Cloudy insisted, her tone going a little dreamy. "He's a full-grown stal ..." Abruptly, she realized that this might be precisely the wrong tack of conversation, and cut off the rest of the word. "Anyway, no. We didn't. Igneous was a real gentlecolt. And," she said in a rather hurt tone, "you could have just asked me."
"You didn't respond well when your Granny asked you," pointed out Goldie, raising an eyebrow.
"That was in front of Gramps and Chart!" Cloudy protested, her eyes wide in honest shock. "I couldn't talk about something like that in front of my grandfather! Let alone Chart -- he seemed way too happy about the whole situation!" It occurred to Cloudy that Chart might have been getting back at her for certain teasing remarks she herself had made about her elder brother's adolescent crushes, back when Cloudy herself had been but a small filly, and hence loftily above such carnal distractions -- but at this moment she was in no mood to be fair-minded toward Chart.
"So, you feel it's better to talk about this sort of thing one-on-one, in private, with your mother?" Goldie asked, cocking her head.
There was something about Goldie's rather intent gaze and tone of voice which, perhaps, should have warned Cloudy, but at this point the young mare had been through such an intense roller-coaster of emotions that she was not thinking very clearly.
"Well of course," replied Cloudy.
"Very good!" said Goldie, her eyes lighting up. "I think it's very important that we have a Talk about certain things."
A slow warning bell began to ring in Cloudy's brain. She had caught the implicit capitalization of the word "talk." Her mother hadn't spoken to her like this since ...
"But we already had that Talk!" Cloudy protested. "Five years ago, after I got my Cutie Mark!" She glanced down automatically at the three light-bluish cloudy quartz crystals adorning her shapely bluish-gray hip. "I know all about where foals come from!" she cried, blushing. Growing up in the country, she'd had a general idea of the mechanics some years earlier, but did not want to mention this.
"Ah," said Goldie, "but this is a different Talk."
"Different?" asked Cloudy, becoming frightened. "Different, how?"
"Well, that was the Talk I give to a filly just entering puberty, to make sure that she knows what to not do with excited colts if she doesn't want any unexpected additions to her family. This is the Talk I give to an excited young mare who is actually stepping out with a very special somepony, to make sure that she knows what to do to resolve their excitement without it resulting in at best a somewhat hasty marriage. Do you understand me?"
Cloudy's thoughts slowly wrapped itself around the implications and then, terribly, she did understand her mother.
"You don't mean you're going to talk to me about ..."
Goldie nodded, pulled down a rather thick book from her shelf -- one Cloudy remembered having peered into on her own in delighted shock some years ago -- and then, as Cloudy watched in numb horror, opened one of her desk drawers and pulled out two dolls, one of a mare and the other of a stallion.
"See!" Goldie crowed in professional delight. "I have visual aids! Oh, I've been waiting to do this for my own daughter ever since you were born!" She advanced on Cloudy with the visual aids.
Cloudy tried to hide under her own mane.
"I had nopony to do this for me," Goldie explained. "Your Grandma was always too obsessed with mathematics to raise me properly. Your father and I had to figure this all out on our own. You're lucky that you're a midwife's daughter ..."
And, as her mother opened the book to a full-color and highly-detailed illustration which made Cloudy furiously blush, even though she'd seen this particular picture years before, the young mare realized that her nightmare had just begun ...
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More later--but I am so pleased to see this at last! Igneous is a sweetie.
Well, perhaps that's a bit gushy and maybe not the perfect word to describe him, but still.
Goldie, on the other hand . . .
Well, actually, I sort of like Goldie here. Cloudy's embarrassed, of course, but the fact that her instinct is to talk to her mother is a good thing, and so is Goldie's matter-of-fact "this is the way it works" speech. They do stick out as unusual in their rural context, and probably have received a better education than most in the area (and not just in sex ed.)
5289065
Igneous is, fundamentally, a very good, honorable, fair and kind Pony. And he is naturally sweet where his loved ones are concerned. He's also tough as the rocks he farms, but he's had to learn to be hard to support his family and defend them against danger.
Canon gives a mixed image of him. Pinkie sees him as grim -- but then she is seeing an older Igneous, and this is Pinkie's perspective -- Pinkie is maniacally-cheerful to a point that no other Ponies, save Cheese Sandwich, can match. Neither Maud nor Pinkie seem the products of an abusive home life. And he not only tolerates Trixie, but winds up paying her well for her labors. Seriously, tolerating Trixie long enough for her to earn significant money implies that he's a pretty good guy (and also that Trixie can work pretty hard when she wants to).
I get a lot of my background on the rock farm from Ask the Pie Sisters. Marble and Limestone love their parents, and actually enjoy farm life. But then, they are normally cheerful girls, rather than being maniacally cheerful like Pinkie.
As future chapters will make plain, Maud is naturally very sober and emotionally flat. That's not the product of cruelty, it's the calm rationality which makes her an ideal Guardian of Paradise. Her family can translate from Maud-to-normal Pony emotional language, and they are well aware that she has loves, hates, likes and dislikes as does any other Pony. Igneous comes to love Maud greatly.
So yes, I see Igneous as a really admirable Pony. His rustic ways hide a keen mind, and though he's mostly an autodidact (he didn't even complete elementary school) he's both literate and curious about his world, and he knows more than one would imagine (though Cloudy and Maud are the scholars in his eventual family). He's both modest and taciturn: unless he likes and trusts you a lot, he will mostly let you do the talking, and even if he loves you, he's inclined to hear you out first before commenting.
As to the Second Talk ...
Heh ... but we're seeing that scene from Cloudy's highly-embarassed POV, and worse, for her it's a huge Mood Whiplash between the extreme romantic idealism of that mutual declaration of love and her mother's focus on the physical details of sexuality. Though maybe I overdid the Cringe Comedy there -- it's a gentler scene in context with the next chapter, but I decided to split what was originally going to be one really long chapter into two or three shorter ones. Suffice it to say that Goldie hasn't really blighted Cloudy's fillyhood.
Goldie is a firm believer in love. She's very much in love with her husband Jasper, with whom she's been totally monogamous. And she has a very good opinion of Igneous, who has after all been friendly with Cloudy for years before this, including at ages in which a romantic relationship would have been illegal even in Equestria. She basically trusts Igneous around her daughter, to a degree she might not trust most stallions.
On the other hoof, she's a midwife, and knows all about the ways in which the best of intentions and ideals can have unplanned consequences. And Cloudy's her eldest daughter, so this is the first time she's the chance to give one of her daughters the Second Talk. (Chart got his mostly from Jasper, who is a bit less enthusiastic on the topic).
Why is the Second Talk so embarrassing? Because, as I may or may not have made sufficiently explicit, she's explaining sex to Cloudy in part from the POV of "this is what you can do instead of full physical intercourse." While Cloudy is not quite as innocent as Igneous imagines (he sees her through a Romantic Love Filter, and to some extent always will), she is pretty innocent, and was barely even yet thinking in those terms. Igneous actually gave her her first real kiss.
Surprise the Nth is, as I'm sure you've noticed, a bit crazy. Her romantic advice to Goldie, when Goldie was in her mid-teens, consisted mostly of giggling interspersed with personal reminiscences far more embarrassing than anything Goldie says to Cloudy in the Second Talk. Goldie wishes somepony could have given her the Second Talk, which is why she goes a bit overboard on the topic to Cloudy. Goldie is lucky that she was already with Jasper at the time.
Goldie deeply loves her whole family, and did not mean to embarrass Cloudy as much as she did. Goldie loves her mother, too, though she finds her combination of scientific detachment and personal interest in her own life rather annoying. It would bother Goldie if she realized that she's coming off in much the same way to Cloudy!
Huh, I say, I didn't see this story updating.
5289420
I don't think I've put any of my incompletes on hiatus -- I might even update Trinity at some point. Do you like the new chapter?
One of the stranger truths a person encounters in his or her life: Once upon a time, your parents were young and in love, among other mental states.
Seeing it happen with Cloudy and Igneous is especially bizarre. As you've noted, what we've seen of them in canon is both very limited and portrayed through the lens of Pinkie, which can be a very distorted one indeed. Seeing the ponies here and knowing who they will become makes for a fascinating juxtaposition.
In any case, happy to see this update, especially with a chapter that was by turns sweet and hilarious. Quite appropriate for the origin of Pinkie Pie. I look forward to more.
5289479
I was just saying that it's been close to half a year since this updated, and I was expecting that another story would update (like Divine Jealousy).
While Cloudy Quartz and Igneous Rock are sweet together, I bet they wish it hadn't taken so long to get together properly. Family, when they embarrass you, you know they love you!
5291273
LOL!!! Yes, Goldie can be embarrassing, for the opposite reasons that her mother Surprise is embarrassing. Well, the real delay is going to be the years when Cloudy bears the Daughters of Paradise; Cloudy is only 15 going on 16, during the main part of this chapter, so even given that Equestria has a lower age of consent than modern America, they couldn't have gotten together much earlier (up until around 1-2 years earlier, Cloudy really was a child in the eyes of Igneous, though granted an exceptionally mature and intelligent child).
5290368
One of the points of my fiction in general, not just my fanfiction, is multi-generationality. Everyone was young once, and only the unlucky or immortal will fail to grow old.
Mind you, even the younger Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz are hardly wild and crazy. Nowhere near as wild as the young Surprise the Nth was, anyway. And she's still kind of crazy at the point of this story.
I'll admit, I find the idea that Pinkie and Maud aren't Mr. Pies's daughters . . . cruel somehow. Don't ask me why.
5306069
The whole situation is rather cruel for Igneous, and to some extent Cloudy. It could have turned out very badly -- but he surmounts it through his sterling character, and winds up loved by his wife, his step-daughters, and his full daughters as well.
5289186
As the daughter of a nurse midwife... this is very familiar.