//------------------------------// // EFNW Iron Author 2019 // Story: Not Another Speedwriting Fic // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// Iron Author 2019 Prompt: Focus on a minor/side character from the show who has been the focus of an episode NOT any of the mane six or a princess! NOT fandom characters (like Berry Punch or Derpy) Should be featured in an episode Be set 10 or more years in the future Petunia Paleo didn’t notice at first as the train begin slowing. She had a bench to herself and was working her way through the latest issue of Journal de Physique despite her limited Prench skills. Comme celle faisant allusion-- She looked up, suddenly aware that the train had stopped. The conductor hadn’t announced any station stops, which suggested that the train had broken. Again. The trip to the badlands had thus far been fraught with misfortune, so far taking two days longer than it ought to have. Plans had been changed, and changed again, and changed again. She tried to turn her attention back to the journal, but her mind just wasn’t in it, so instead she cast her gaze outside the train window, to the verdant forest that came almost up against the side of the railcar. It was easy to imagine it an untamed jungle, perhaps with ancient ruins just beyond her view--but that was the kind of thing that Daring Do would be interested in. Not her. She could faintly make out through the trees what looked like a rock face, and for a moment she imagined it as an ancient castle before a gust of wind rustled the trees and revealed it for the short rock outcropping that it was. Geology was important to paleontology. She couldn’t just go digging anywhere and expect to find fossils; the land had shifted and changed through time. Some ponies even thought that the land floated in the seas and drifted around slowly on the currents, although in her opinion, that was a stupid theory. Clouds drifted, continents didn’t. But they did rise and fall, rains came and went, and before the ponies it was all chaotic and disorganized. What had once been a fertile valley might have become the bottom of a shallow sea; a lake might have dried up and desertified, the only evidence of what it once was the fossils buried beneath. Petunia stuck the journal back in her saddlebags and shifted around on her seat to get a better look at the rock outcropping. It looked like it could be limestone, and limestone often had fossils. She stilled her wagging tail. No more was she the eager filly she’d once been, digging holes willy-nilly in search of discovery. She was educated, a department head. Expeditions were planned out in meticulous detail. She tore her eyes away from the scenery and looked around the coach. Ponies were grumbling about the delay, quietly thus far. The conductor hadn’t yet come through saying how long it would be. The vestibules of the rail cars were open, she had a few tool in her saddlebags, and the outcropping wasn’t that far away. She could just take a quick look. Surely she’d hear the train as it started up again. ***** The train crew was crowded around the locomotive, like doctors attending a patient. Steam hissed out around it, blocking some of her view. Can’t be a simple problem, or there’d only be a couple of them working on it. She’d have plenty of time. The tracks were built up on an hill of loose gravel, and she picked her footing carefully as she walked down. It wouldn’t do to break a leg. Down at the bottom, the ballast rocks transitioned into muck, and then the edge of the forest, trying to reclaim what once had belonged to it. From her position, she couldn’t see the outcropping any more, but that didn’t matter. She knew where it was. On occasion, her saddlebags got caught on a low branch, or dragged up against a rock. She squeezed through as best as she could, pausing long enough to identify the larger rocks she passed. As she’d hoped, they were limestone. Even better, she could see small fossils in some of them, ancient leaves trapped forever in stone. Aquatic ferns, and little twisted shells, no doubt from the long-extinct snails that had eaten those farms. Interesting, but not what she was looking for. Still, she picked up a few of the better fossils, taking careful note of where she found them, and put them in her saddlebags. ***** Petunia nearly jumped out of her fur at the shrieking whistle behind her. She scoped up one last fossil, shoved it in her saddlebags, and then took off at a fast trot through the woods. By the time she reached the railroad right-of-way, the train had already began to move. She scurried up the slope as fast as she could and lept into the open vestibule of the last car on the train. A few heads turned to watch her as she walked down the aisle, but most ponies were too lost in their own situation to pay her any mind. The train was moving at a gallop when she reclaimed her seat, and she settled back in place. Trees flashed by outside, and then the train thudded across a short wooden bridge. She caught a glimpse of a waterfall upstream, one which looked it was formed in the same geological formation that had produced the outcropping. If I was still a filly, I’d have let the train leave without me. ***** That thought lingered in her mind. When she’d been a filly, it had been her parents dragging her back, and she swore to Celestia that as soon as she was an adult, she’d be able to go and explore wherever she wanted to. And that had been true, to an extent. But now every trip was preceded with days of meetings and budget arguments, of checking through journals to find if that area had been explored, and if so what had been found. She had to herd an entire team of graduate students, had to write papers on what she’d found--it just wasn’t much fun anymore. Petunia dropped the journal on the bench and got up, moved out into the aisleway. Set her saddlebags on the bench and went thorough them quickly, just to make sure she’d packed well, and she had. Years in the Badlands had refined her packing skills. She went back through the rail cars, towards the back of the train. Now a few heads turned her way, especially when she got to the last car. The vestibule was empty. It didn’t look like the train was going that fast when she looked out at the forest, but up close the rocky ballast was just zipping right by. This is stupid. I’ll break a leg for sure. When there was soft grass all the way up to the ballast, she jumped, tumbling along briefly before skidding to a stop, whole and unhurt. Her heart was hammering away in her chest, and her mind was full of the thrill of discovery. Since there was no longer any need to keep the tracks close, she picked a fairly easy path, winding through the more open spots in the forest. She kept her eyes open and her ears alert, wary of any monster who might make this part of Equestria its home. ***** It took a while, but she found the rock outcropping again. It wasn’t as pronounced, being overgrown some placed, or buried beneath loamy soil. A few miles further, and she might have missed it entirely, might have just stepped over a slight rise in the ground. She settled in a spot between two tall trees. Now she wasn’t rushed, now she wasn’t listening for the noise of the train; now she could concentrate on the fossils like she really wanted. And what a treasure trove it was! The rock was thick with them, the impressions laid down millions of years ago. Even in the short height of the outcropping, she could see two distinct phases of life, with a fuzzy sort of boundary between them, evidence of some ancient cataclysm. She followed it back, working her way almost back to where she’d first visited the wall. The sun was low and the shadows long when Petunia finally gave up for the night. The wall of rock provided a halfway decent shelter, and finding a pine tree only served to make it better. White pine needles were soft and comfortable, and the thick boughs would keep the wind off her, keep her warm. ***** Climbing back the embankment was difficult, now that her saddlebags were weighed down with fossils. Her center of balance was to far back, and she kept almost tipping. She’d almost cut it too close; the train was nearly on top of her as she waved her hooves to signal it and then jumped back off the tracks as it thundered by. A moment later, the pounding of the wheels across expansion joints was muted by the shrill ear-flattening screech of the locomotive brakes, and she got back up between the rails and trotted after the stopping train. It took a little bit of explanation before the conductor finally allowed her to have a seat without paying for a new ticket. And when the train finally got to its destination, it took more explanation and a few very apologetic telegrams back to the university, but it had been worth it. It had all been worth it.