//------------------------------// // A Trip North: The Return // Story: Field Notes from Equestria // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// A Trip North: The Return Sure enough, it was dark outside, almost as dark as it had been in the mine. Maybe darker; the mine had had lamps, but the village didn’t have street lights. Even so, it certainly felt brighter. Just the feel of the gentle wind blowing was a change from being inside the shaft. Assay turned off to go to the rail siding, and Overburden followed her. Lignite didn’t choose to accompany them, which was fine; I'd seen the unloading arrangement before. “There wasn’t a whole lot of space at the end of the shaft,” I said. “How do you have multiple miners all working down there at the same time?” “Well, you’ve got to be friendly,” Longwall said, “’Cause it’s crowded pretty close. A lot of times, we’ll have one crew move in at a point, and then two on either side clearing behind them. Plus, there’s a lot of coal in the side shafts to get out, and so a coupla teams will work in those, too, until they’re played out.” “Makes sense.” “And we keep rotating, so nopony spends too much time with a pick or a shovel.” “Another thing I was wondering about—how come it's so clean in there? I thought mines were really dusty places.” “We have cleaning crews,” Lignite said. “Some of the foals that can't spend a whole day with a pickaxe or a shovel, plus there are some ponies who like sweeping. I guess it's kind of like chipping rocks, but with a broom.” “Good ventilation's important, too,” Longwall added. “We didn't—I should have showed you. There's lots of different ventilation tunnels here and there to keep a bit of a breeze going. Sometimes on really still days, we've got to have a few ponies running the fans, but normally just a little wind does the trick.” “The mine stays at about the same temperature all the time, but the air out here doesn't. So sometimes it wants to go up and sometimes it wants to go down, and as long as the dampers are set right, the wind practically makes itself.” “Pegasi can help, too. The emergency ventilation shaft is strong enough to support a tornado,” Gytta said. “We've never had to use it for real, but we've practiced with it before.” “Remember that one time the pegasi got too enthusiastic?” Gytta nodded. “We spent the rest of the shift looking for our tools and hard hats. I think they'd have gotten it going fast enough to start pulling coal out, except that the pit boss yelled at them to stop when a shovel went through the mine office and stuck in the wall.” That was something I would have liked to have seen. From a safe distance, of course. “Oh, hey, Lignite, I forgot to tell you, Joe’s gonna get your bed tonight.” “What?” She stopped so abruptly I had to grab on to the sides of the wagon, and then I suddenly found myself wondering why I was still in it. We weren’t in the mine any more; I could walk. “Yeah,” Overburden said. “You’re the youngest, so you’ve got to give it up.” “I can sleep on the floor, it’s fine.” “You’re not sleeping on the floor.” “You wouldn’t be so insistent if it was your bed,” Lignite said. “Probably not. I get to make the rules, though.” “Fine.” She shook her head. “I’m taking the extra blankets and making a pegasus nest, then.” “That’s the spirit.” *** It felt somehow wrong to watch Lignite and Assay get out of their harnesses. Like I had somehow stumbled into a woman’s locker room or something. Which was weird; obviously, once they got out of their harnesses, they were only as naked as they normally were. “You want to wash off? Me and the rest of the girls are going to rinse off in the town shower.” “Uh. . .” I didn’t really have anything much with me—I’d thought that I’d be going back to Greenock tonight. Certainly, I didn’t have a change of clothes or even a towel. Plus, I couldn’t help but imagine that the camp shower was much like the one I remembered from Boy Scout camp, just a series of fences around a bunch of showerheads, which wasn’t really my thing. “I . . . I didn’t really get all that dirty, you know?  And, it was kind of overwhelming being underground.” That wasn’t actually a far stretch. “I think I’d rather stay out here, until you’re done.” “Greenhorn,” Longwall said, but there was kindness in her voice. “That’s fine, just don’t go wandering off.” “We don’t want to have to go searching for you,” Lignite said. “Especially not down a ventilation shaft,” Gytta added. “Luna forbid you fall down one of those.” * * * Even though I couldn’t see it very well, I took the gem out to polish the rest of the grime off it. My sock was probably already ruined, but I used the grass to clean the gem just the same. There was no sense in making my sock any dirtier than it already was. It was only when I held the gem up to study it that I remembered that some of the ponies might occasionally snack on the grass in the field, and hopefully they wouldn’t mind if it had a bit of a coal taste to it. They probably wouldn’t; surely everything in Pit Town had a bit of coal taste to it. The gem glistened under the light of the stars, and looking at the moon through the edge I could see that it was, in fact, green. I lost myself in its beguiling facets, turning it this way and that, looking through it at the stars and the windows of the village—and ultimately, the bemused face of Lignite. “He’s just like a dragon starting his hoard.” “Maybe you shouldn’t have that,” Assay said. “We didn’t know that humans got all greedy when they got their paws on gems.” “I’m not greedy,” I said defensively, but I didn’t put it down. “It’s just—I don’t think that there has ever been an emerald like this on Earth. Back in the old days, kings would have started wars to get their hands on this emerald.” “Yup, he’s trying to hoard.” “I’m not! I’m just telling you how it is.” I did put the emerald down. “I could never in my life afford to even touch a gem that beautiful. I can’t help it.” I thought for a moment. “It would be like if you came to Earth and saw one of our coal mines, maybe you’d be amazed and mesmerized by it.” Or, given the popularity of mountain top removal, maybe they’d be horrified. “Tell you what. I’d really like to look at it in the day, and then we’ll throw it on the gem pile. I can’t take it back to Earth with me anyway.” “That’s fair,” Assay said. “If you try to hoard it, I’ll buck you until you give it up,” Longwall promised. “Deal.” I stuck out my hand, and she bumped it with her hoof. * * * I objected one more time to taking Lignite’s bed, but I got outvoted. They had a large sleeping room on the upper floor of their house, which kind of reminded me of the Seven Dwarfs’ house. Lignite opened up a wooden chest and got out some heavy blankets, which I assumed were their winter blankets, and arranged them in a pile on the floor—her pegasus nest. “Are you going to be okay walking back to Greenock tomorrow?” Longwall asked as I was getting into bed. “I can send Lignite with you, but then our crew would be short-hooved.” “Yeah, I should be. Just stick to the main road, and I’ll get there eventually.” “If you’re not sure—” “I’m sure.” I felt like I was really imposing on them already. They were probably normally in bed long before now, but I’d wanted a tour. * * * Gytta talked in her sleep, and both Assay and Overburden snored. Lignite was an active sleeper, sometimes even sleep-trotting. Maybe she just wasn’t comfortable in her so-called pegasus nest. Only Longwall slept well--every time I opened my eyes during the night, she was in the exact same position, her chest rising and falling the only sign that she was still alive. All five of them were up before the sun, and if I’d had any illusions of getting a decent night’s sleep, the five of them waking up shattered it. More specifically, Longwall shattered it. I couldn’t blame her; she had probably forgotten that I was there. Sleeping in was a thing that ponies did, I'd thought; I’d been up before them yesterday. “Wake up, everypony!” As a morning greeting, it was lacking, but I suppose if she did it every day she’d tend economize her words. I expected a lot of grumbling and complaining, but there was hardly any at all. All of them got right up except for Lignite—she wrapped her hooves around her pillow and briefly tried to shut out the world, something I was intimately familiar with. “You awake, Joe?” Longwall asked, rather unnecessarily. “Yeah,” I muttered. “Did you sleep well?” “Sure did,” I lied. “Ought to have, my bed is really comfortable.” Her voice was muffled by the pillow. Then her head popped up. “Hope you didn’t smoosh down my favorite spot.” Without waiting for an invitation, she got up and pushed her hoof against the mattress. “Let me get out,” I suggested. “Then you can test it properly.” “Yeah, okay.” She arched her back and cracked it while I was getting myself out of her bed. My neck hurt and my legs hurt but not too badly. I hadn’t walked as far as we did yesterday in years, and my body was letting me know about it. Everything worked well enough that there wasn’t much chance I’d pitch out of bed and land on my face, so I slid off to the side and she didn’t even wait for me to get all the way out before she was in bed with me. “How much do humans weigh, anyway?” Gytta asked. “Um.” I’d learned Equestrian weights, but of course I couldn’t remember them at all. “Less than you do.” Lignite rolled into the center of the bed, reclaiming her normal spot. “Still feels okay. That’s good.” “You are pretty scrawny,” Longwall said. “I don’t mean to be rude.” “You ought to eat more. Hardly ate any of the casserole last night.” “I can’t eat hay,” I told them. “Not much of it, anyway.” “Too bad. That gives you lots of energy.” Assay tapped her hoof on the floor. “Well, we’ve got some wheat bread; you can have that for breakfast. Then we have to go and work in the mine.” “And before we do, you’ve got to give up your gem.” * * * We parted ways the next morning. We had breakfast together, and Longwall thanked me for coming to visit. She said that not many ponies wanted to see where their coal came from. Assay got in her harness, and then the six of us walked over to the gem pile. I admired my emerald one last time in the sunlight, tracing my fingers over its features, and then placed it gently into the pile. Maybe in time I’d be riding on a stretch of rail that had been paid for with that emerald. Lignite told me that I rode better in the cart than some of the colts and fillies she’d known, and I don't know why, but that was really flattering. I said my goodbyes and hugged all of them--it seemed like the right thing to do. And then they were off to the mine. They of course weren’t the only ponies going to the mine. Rather than turn and head back to Greenock right away, I leaned up against their house and watched the workponies. Some of them hitched up to carts and the rest went into the mine with just their normal equipment. I counted three fillies and one colt that also went into the mine, and while that bothered me a little bit--it seemed like they should have been in school instead of working--it certainly wasn’t a sign of child labor. Probably the best way to think about it was as an apprenticeship, a way of learning a useful life skill. I’d seen a few young ponies in fields and working in Manehattan, and was this any different? I didn’t think it was, not really. There wasn’t much else to see, so I headed down the road.  If I kept up a good pace, I’d get back in time to catch the afternoon train back to Manehattan.