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// 1 - What a Find 
// Story: The Unpublished Origin of Daring Do 
// by David Silver 
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"A.K.!" A stallion with a warm smile and thick glasses approached, a pipe dangling from his maw. "Such a pleasure to see you. And what a find indeed. We'll be talking about this for years."

The other stallions nodded with agreement, one of their bowl-like caps flopping to the side, forcing the pony to reach up and adjust it out of his field of view. They were in a simple ball room, all half a dozen of them standing beside a table with a large punch bowl.

Manehattan could be seen through the wall-filling windows, revealing it was well into night, but the city was far from dark, so many lights twinkling. It was a not a city known to ever truly sleep after all.

"Thank you, I was just doing what we all do," demurred A.K., adjusting her own glasses. "The hardest part was securing information and permission from the locals to commence the dig."

"And that's just it," argued a male, throwing a hoof over her back and drawing her in. "We've all hit that kind of wall before, but you broke through! You deserve a little back patting for it."

Suddenly she was getting those back pats. They all patted her cloaked back a moment as she awkwardly smiled. She let out a breath when they had their fill. "Yes, thank you." She trot up to the table beside them and reached a hoof for the ladle, pouring herself a drink. "I have to get right back out there... I'd love to sit and examine the find, but it doesn't--"

A hoof touched her, on the shoulder that time. "You don't need to remind us. There are two kinds of ponies out there. The ones who find these priceless artifacts, and the ones who examine them. Rarely do the two mix."

A.K. shot that stallion a withering look, loudly sipping from her drink before she caustically replied, "Great, now tell me why the latter make more bits, every single time?"

Another let out a weary sigh. "Because they're the ones that get to write papers about the discoveries. What would we write, 'Found something interesting, I think it's really important!' No, that wouldn't do. These things have to be confirmed and checked and compared and... We're already off at another dig site."

A.K. tossed her head, her well mannered and bonetted mane remaining fairly stable. "Ponies just don't understand how difficult our part is." She raised a hoof to her chin, a shrewd look taking on her features. "Maybe they need to be told."





AK sat down at her desk, glancing outside at the darkness. There wasn't much to see at that time of night from her hotel, just hints of lights she could have enjoyed if she got closer to the window. "No..." She turned her eyes to the typewriter, her trusty friend. She ran a hoof over it gently, a little smile on her face.

"You've been with me..." She'd taken it on so many outings. It'd seen most of the interesting places she had. "Time for us to work together like never before." She pressed down on one of its two buttons until it clicked, but nothing happened. How could it? You had to press the buttons many times before an actual stamp was made.

Such was the price for a typewriter that worked with hooves. She pressed down the same hoof, than quickly followed it up with a tap of her other forehoof, starting to type. "So you think digging in the dirt is easy," she said to herself as she wrote. "You think it's just a fun job, crawling through the graves of our ancestors, hoping desperately to find some evidence of their passing? Well, sometimes it is... We're here because we want to be, because we're passionate about unearthing the past, but is it easy?"

She leaned in on the typewriter, her writing slowly picking up speed as she got into things. "Of course not. Over time, all becomes stone. What does not become stone, is lost. What becomes stone can be hard to tell apart from the rock that surrounds it. We dredge it free, one little chip at a time, our breaths held, our eyes wide. We hope and pray and down comes the chisel, one little fleck removed. Was that part of what we were looking for? Hope not, there are no take backs."

She paused to reach for a glass of water, sipping softly as she rocked on the chair she was perched on. "It can take days, weeks... sometimes longer still, but eventually we are holding something grand and wonderful, but so weathered and weary, almost like ourselves, as if it became just as tired as we did. But do we get to hold it close, to keep and treasure? Of course not." She had to stop, a hoof clopping down on the desk in a fit of anger. "We turn it in."

"We send it away to a safe place, where it can be restored and held safely. We have to work, to keep digging and looking, but what we find goes home." She let out a slow sigh, visions of the shards and artifacts she'd managed to unearth dancing in her mind's eye. "We don't get to examine them, that's not really our job. Other ponies do that, ponies you've heard of, the ones that make big announcements about what we found. The best we can hope for is a small line. 'Unearthed by A.K. Yearling,' and that's it. Is this fair? Fair or not, it simply is. They wrote the paper, they get to decide what's in it."

She grunted as she angrily continued her paper, detailing the process from start to end, her life, condensed to a bundle of papers. "And now, dear reader, you know what it's like. I can't promise your opinion is changed at all. I don't even know if you made it this far, but I'd like to think you did, and you're wondering about it, about us, wading through the dust, climbing the sheer walls and digging holes, hoping and working. We want to understand the past, to better understand our current. If we do not know where we came from, we don't know where we're going, and ponykind deserves better than that." She hit the last key with a stroke of finality, the echo clicking through the small hotel room.

She looked up with red eyes to see bright light streaming through the window. She squinted them shut and hissed. She had been typing for so long. She reached for her glass, but it had no water, and hadn't for some time. She knocked it aside and it hit the ground, rolling away. She half-fell from the chair, her legs wobbling dangerously. "Maybe... a little too long," she barely whispered to herself, staggering towards the bed that looked so comfortable, practically calling for her. "Some sleep..."

A loud clopping knock came from the door. "It's checkout time," came a melodic female voice. "Are you leaving?"

A.K. put a hoof to herself, sagging against the bed. Had she typed that long?! "One... One moment..." She couldn't really afford to hold onto that hotel room another day. "I'm going..."

"You sound tired," came the muffled mare's voice. "We aren't full. Why don't you just go back to sleep?"

Yearling peered at the bed, so soft and inviting. She wanted to take up that offer... "No, really, I'm going. I'll be out in ten minutes, sorry for the hold up." She started sweeping things off the desk into her bag, her typewriter flopping onto the mess that had reached the bag before it. She closed it with a snap and slung it over her shoulders, her wings faintly more visible a moment, not that she used them all that often.

She emerged into the hallway to see the cleaning staff had moved on to the next door along the hallway. She turned away from the cart and started down the hallway, just to stagger and flop against the wall, breathing hard.

"Are you alright?" The maid had returned, peeking into the room she had vacated. "I'll mark you as being out on time, but are you sure you don't want to stay another night?"

"Mmfine," she managed to mumble, pushing off the wall and resuming her trek. "Just need to get home." A little smile appeared on her weary face. "I can take a nap on the train..." She strode into the carpeted elevator and sank down to her haunches. "Lobby."

The pony already sitting in the elevator tipped his hat before his horn glowed, pulling a lever back even as the gate was closed in the same glow of magic. The next thing she knew, she was being shaken likely with soft hoof presses. "Wha?"

The elevator handler inclined his horn towards the exit. "We're here, ma'am. Have a nice day."

"Oh, oh yes." She rose to her hooves, cursing that that micronap had left her feeling somehow more tired than when she had started. "Later..." She staggered out into the lobby proper. She couldn't see them, not exactly, but she could feel eyes on her. The other ponies were judging the unkempt mare that was drunkenly forcing herself towards the exit. They were thinking their unkind thoughts, imagining a wild night of debauchery, she imagined.

She left their accusing but silent stares, emerging into the street. The heat of the day washed over her and her head throbbed as if the sun were somehow baking her brain in her head. She half-fell down the steps, taking a sharp right to start slowly down the sidewalk. She could distantly hear the clip-clops of many other ponies around her, trotting energetically from place to place. At least, she thought silently, they were all too busy to pay her any mind.

"Watch where yer walkin'!" complained a pony, brushing past her with an angry grunt.

She didn't even look up, trudging to the train and collapsing on a bench there. She looked up at a clock, her ears folded back against the loud speaker announcing trains coming and going. Her train wouldn't be there for a few hours. She fell over her bag, her head resting on it and her eyes closing. An hour or two of sleep sounded pretty good, and she faded off almost instantly.

"Miss Yearling?"

She blinked open her eyes and her cheeks lit on fire. In front of her was one of her fellow dirt diggers. She sat up sharply, even if that stoked a fierce pain through her head. "Oh! I didn't see you there."

"I imagine you wouldn't, with your eyes closed, Miss Yearling." He was smiling, but it was an unsure smile, his eyes wandering over her. "Is everything alright?"

"They're fine..." She glanced up at the clock. She hadn't overslept. That was good. "I had a late night."

"You left at a reasonable hour. May I?" He gestured a hoof at the bench beside her. When she nodded, he hopped up and sat down. "Something keep you up? Do tell if I'm prying where I'm not wanted, Amy..."

A.K. could feel her blush growing more intense. Only a few people knew her actual first name. "You know I don't go by that." She brought up a hoof to cough into it. "Since you're here, actually... do you mind doing a little pre-reading?"

He hiked a brow at that. "I'm afraid my skill set doesn't really include that. I prefer to be recovering and preserving, you know the drill, sometimes literally."

She smiled a little at the professional humor. "I do, but it involves us, what we do. A peer's eyes on it would be nice." She put her hooves on her bag as she undid the clasp. "Just tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, as it were. I want to show people what being one of us is like, make them care... You know?"