//------------------------------//
// Desert Roses 
// Story: Rock Beats 
// by Aragon 
//------------------------------//

Cloudy Quartz was not made of ice.

Ice melts.

“Daughter of mine.” Quartz’s voice came from the kitchen. She spoke softly, in the way gold is soft because if you bite hard you leave teeth marks. “I require your immediate assistance.”

And Limestone Pie—who had been lazing around near the fireplace, because it was Tuesday, so it was Marble’s turn to plow the pebbles—sprung to action, frowning her most worrisome frown all the while.

You didn’t do things ‘immediately’ in a rock farm; patience was essential to the whole experience. And Cloudy Quartz was the quintessential rock farmer. In her personal language, immediacy meant life-or-death.

So Limestone sprinted towards the kitchen. “Mom!” she yelled on her way, voice gravelly. “I’m here! What’s wrong?!”

Quartz’s face was completely neutral, but it was neutral in an agitated way. Overrun by emotion, she spoke in a complete monotone. “The land we walk on,” she said, “is alive. I have found its living, beating heart inside a trench by the East field. I fear your sister may die of fright if she sees it.” 

Limestone stopped running so suddenly she drifted like a racecar, leaving skid marks on the kitchen floor.







The trench that contained the heart of Equestria was out by the East Field. The trench wasn’t hidden per se, it was just one of many—the East Field was getting ready for calcite cultivation next year, and that meant digging a lot to maximize surface area. 

That was Igneous Rock’s job, and he was good at it. Igneous was a shovel virtuoso; it was one of the many reasons Cloudy Quartz was crazy for him. They had literally never talked about the topic.

This also meant that there was no way Igneous hadn’t found the heart as well; it was impossible not to see it. Not only was there a glow coming out of the earth—a red glow, like sunlight filtered through a ruby—but there was also the sound.

Thump-thump, thump-thump.

It wasn’t loud, not really, but it did shake the ground. And Cloudy Quartz was rather fond of the ground, so she wasn’t happy with that little fact.

She came back to the East Field after making sure Limestone and Marble Pie were out of the farm for good. They were to spend the night out on their mother’s orders, which—knowing Limestone Pie—meant picking a fight with a young bachelor, and breaking their heart afterwards. Limestone was a violent one. Quartz loved her very much. 

Thump-thump.

The heart was still there when she returned, inside the trench, and it was still beating. 

It was a heart of rock, inorganic and yet alive—it moved, pulsated, rough edges and sharp ends where flesh would bend tenderly. It was the size of a small cow, and whenever it beat, it cracked and broke in places, only to fuse back together a moment later.

The red glow was intense, but the heart wasn’t searing hot—merely warm. Like flesh, perhaps. Cloudy Quartz did not start sweating when she got close, but she did tug at her shawl so her neck could breathe.

Or, well, no. She would have. She started doing it, even, but then stopped, and inspected the heart. Could the thing see her? It did not have eyes, but it was certainly alive, and alive things had a tendency to perceive others.

Cloudy Quartz only took her shawl off when she was cutting stone, which was by far the most boring task in the rock farm, and thus, extremely intimate. Quartz only cut stone in front of her husband, because she knew he liked boring things. Only he—and sometimes her daughters—had seen her neck.  

So she didn’t tug.

“Husband of mine,” she called, jumping out of the trench and looking around. The rock heart was not loud and so she did not need to raise her voice. Still, the heartbeat—thump-thump, thump-thump—changed its tune. Before, it had sounded indifferent, unaware of her presence.

Now it sounded attentive. It might not have eyes and ears, but it did know Cloudy Quartz was there. It was listening.

“Husband of mine,” she repeated. “I cannot see you. Are you here?”

“I am.” Igneous jumped out of a trench by Quartz’s right, carrying a shovel in his mouth. Oh, how dreamy he was. “Apologies. I was digging.”

Quartz nodded, silent.

Behind her: thump-thump, thump-thump. Louder.

Igneous Rock heard it, too, and frowned. Which, for him, was an overwhelming show of emotion.  “Perhaps it is not a good idea,” he said, “for you to be here. Marble Pie will not dare interrupt me as I’m digging, but if you are here, and I am not digging anymore, she will want to come say hi—”

“She will not be home until the morrow,” Quartz said. “She is in the village for a night of fun and savagery.”

“…Savagery?”

“Limestone Pie is with her.”

“Oh. Of course,” Igneous said. “She is a violent one. I love her very much.”

“I do, too.”

Igneous Rock put the shovel down, and that made Quartz sad, but she didn’t show it. Igneous simply fixed his tie and kept talking. “It was good that you thought of sending our daughters away for the night. Marble Pie is gentle. She might have been upset if she saw the Heart.”

Quartz nodded. “I thought the same.” 

There was a subtle change in Igneous Rock’s mannerisms at this point; one that, were Quartz to have a mirror, she was sure she would observe in her own self, too. Their daughters were out. They were on their own, now.

On their own.

A certain truth of nature only mineralogists truly appreciate is that ponies, like river beds, are sedimentary. They are accumulations, compressed sums of individual elements, eroded and shaped by time. 

With rocks, it is minerals, deposits, that sum the parts of the whole. With living beings, it’s events: your first love, your greatest loss, the happy tears you cried that day. 

Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz’s lives had been eventful, but nothing had shaped them quite as much as their daughters, their little girls, the most important thing in the world. Upon their birth, Igneous had become Igneous Rock, Father. Quartz had become Cloudy Quartz, Mother.

But now, the children weren’t there, and thus the river had flown backwards, taking away its topmost layer, exposing what laid underneath. Cloudy Quartz, Mother, was now simply Cloudy Quartz, Wife. Igneous Rock, Father, became simply a Husband.

And you could tell. You could tell in the way they spoke each other’s names.

“Cloudy Quartz,” Igneous said, and his voice was brittle and sweet like sugar crystals. “You do not have to worry. It is not evil, the Heart.” 

He spoke in a way that made it clear `Heart’ was a proper noun. In a rock farm, there were no plants or wood or paper, so you had to bring forth grammar through vocal chords alone. 

“But,” Igneous continued, “it does look threatening.”

“It has an intricate structure,” Cloudy Quartz said. “Detailed.”

“I concur. I would not be able to cut stone into such a shape without it cracking.”

“I could.”

Behind them: Thump-thump.

The sound made them both flinch. Things had almost gotten too spicy there, for a moment.

So Igneous Rock looked at the Heart, which had so rudely interrupted their salacious flirting, and tipped his hat. Then he grabbed the shovel again, and headed for the shed where they stored it at the end of the day. “Let us speak in private,” he said.

Quartz was already walking before he was done talking. “Let us,” she said, leading the way. Then she eyed her husband. “You are holding that shovel quite fervorously.”

“It is a heavy shovel. You are tugging at your shawl quite a lot. I can see your neck.”

“It is warm out here.”

So they walked to the shed, and they walked very very close together.







“What is the Heart, then?” Quartz asked, sitting down at the table. They had moved from the shed to the kitchen. “And why did you not tell me about it?”

“I found it yesterday night.” Igneous didn’t sit next to Quartz. Instead, he walked straight to the fridge and opened it. “I wished to tell you as soon as possible, but by the time I came home, you were fast asleep.”

That was true. The West Field was ripe around this season, which meant Cloudy Quartz had to scythe the silicates early in the morning, usually before dawn. Whenever that happened, she would not have the same sleeping schedule as her husband.

Still. “You could have woken me,” she said.

“I would not dare to.” Igneous Rock was still rummaging through the fridge. The sound of clinking glass filled the kitchen. “Your rest is of most importance.”

Quartz frowned. And, in that moment, you could tell that Limestone Pie was her daughter. 

Because Igneous and Quartz didn’t just understand each other; they had, essentially, the same brain. They anchored each other. They spoke in the same language, shared the same struggles, made the same connections. They both really liked rocks.

That’s why they had gotten married. Not because one was good with the shovel and the other was good with the scythe, but because they both understood that they were good, and why that was important. Neither could ever feel lonely while the other was in their lives.

Only, in that moment, Quartz wasn’t understanding her husband, and her husband clearly wasn’t understanding her. 

So she frowned. “I,” she said, voice gravelly, “can go without sleep for one night.”

Igneous did not look away from the fridge. “I am not doubting your resilience. It would be, however, needlessly risky to test it. Scythes are dangerous.”

“I am good with a scythe.”

“Yes. You are the best stonecutter I have ever met. But it is a husband’s duty to care for his wife.”

This was, by far, the most heated argument they’d had in years. Cloudy Quartz was glad she had sent the girls away to have fun. They would have been devastated.

So she made herself stop frowning. Consciously. “I understand,” she lied.

There was a pause.

Igneous Rock looked away from the fridge, and looked at his wife. “I apologize,” he said. “I worry you underestimate how much you work. I show my gratitude by respecting your rest. But I do not want to sound condescending.”

“Let us leave this matter behind us.”

“That sounds reasonable. Nevertheless, I should have woken you up and told you about the Heart. It was not my desire to hide things from you. I will not make this mistake again.” 

Igneous went back to the fridge, and finally found whatever he was looking for—and so he stepped away, holding a box full of bottles in his mouth. Cider, Quartz noticed. She had taken a liking to it after the Apples’ visit.

Mellowing at the sight of one of her favorite treats, she waited for Igneous to sit next to her. “Right now we are both awake,” she said, “and our daughters will not hear us. Tell me about Equestria’s Heart. Better late than never.”

“Yes.” Igneous didn’t sit. Instead, he signaled towards the door. “I shall. For you see, yesterday I was digging the trenches on the East Field, to prepare for the calcite cultivation next spring.”

Quartz got up, and walked next to her husband. “Yes.”

“And then, while digging, I found the Heart of the land.”

“I see.”

“That is all.”

They kept walking in silence.

Quartz looked at Igneous. “Dear.”

Igneous tipped his hat. “I was making a joke,” he muttered. “There is more to the story.”

Quartz said nothing. Sometimes, she thought, it was really obvious that Pinkamena was the serious one in the family.

Igneous kept talking. “The land is alive, and so, it has a heart. It is not surprising, for rocks grow and mutate and reproduce, and is that not the meaning of life? And what is the land, if not the primordial rock?”

Quartz fixed her glasses. They were walking towards the East Fields, she noticed. Back to the Heart. “The land,” she said. “You do not specify Equestria.”

“That is the name we gave it, but it is not its own. We may carve gypsum into a shape of our liking, but its true shape will always be—”

“—The desert rose,” Quartz finished. “Because it is the one it grew by itself.”

“Indeed.”

Gypsum was Cloudy Quartz’s favorite mineral, and her wedding pendant was a desert rose. Igneous Rock was, very obviously, also sad because of their lover’s spat. That made Cloudy Quartz forgive him instantly.

To show this, she touched Igneous’ hoof slightly, and so everything was fine in their marriage again.

“What is our land’s name, then?” she asked.

“Hearth,” Igneous said. 

“…A heart inside the earth?”

“A place for warmth.” Igneous nodded to himself. The cider he was carrying clinked. “It is a fitting name.”

“And the Heart told you this,” Cloudy Quartz said. “It can talk?”

“It can. You feel its voice inside your chest. That is why I was so late to come back home yesterday; Hearth and I had a long conversation.”

“You two had a heart to heart.”

Igneous looked at Cloudy Quartz, his face inscrutable. “You are on a roll,” he said, voice dry. “Sometimes it is truly apparent Pinkamena is the serious one in the family.”

Cloudy Quartz touched Igneous Rock’s hoof slightly a second time, and Igneous Rock touched Quartz’s hoof back. 

Oh, the lasciviousness. 

Once they got to the East fields, Quartz stopped all the touching, so as to not lose her head completely. “I do not quite understand,” she said, “how you found the Heart in the first place. You simply dug, you say, but you have dug this field many times before. Did you never dig a trench in the correct spot?”

“I have, I believe,” Igneous said. “But it was not there last year, or the year prior.”

They found the seventeenth trench to the left and jumped down. The Heart was waiting for them. Thump-thump, it beat, hello. 

Igneous Rock touched the Heart and spoke. “We are back,” he said. “This is my wife, Cloudy Quartz. I have told you about her.”

The heart beat a little faster, thumpthump, thumpthump. 

Igneous nodded at it, and looked at Quartz. “Observe,” he said, “how the rock breaks and reforms with every heartbeat, how the cracks are instantly sealed. That is how it moves through the land. It simply breaks, and then fuses itself back.”

“It travels underground,” Quartz said, to Igneous, and then to the Heart, because it was rude to speak of someone in front of them. “You travel underground,” she repeated.

Thump-thump.

“You have to touch it,” Igneous said. His hoof was still in contact with the Heart. “You may think your replies, if you so wish, and it will still understand you. I find it easier to speak out loud.”

Quartz nodded, placed a hoof on the Heart. It was odd, because it felt like rock—it was rock; calcite and magnesite and aragonite, among others—but it was also outwardly alive, and moving, and warm.  

But it didn’t burn, in spite of the red glow. That was good.

“Hello,” Quartz spoke, looking at the Heart. “You travel underground, then, and you chose to come here?”

Yes, the Heart beat. It was strange, because it definitely was a heartbeat, not a voice—it’s just, it was a heartbeat in the shape of a sentence. Quartz felt it inside her own chest, clear as day.  I heard the music of your pickaxes, the gliding song of your scythe and shovel. I heard you grow my children and give them shape and love.

Quartz let out a breath she did not know she’d been holding in. “You have been alive all this time? What are you?”

I am Hearth. I am the land that you walk on, and the rocks that you harvest. I am the minerals in your water and the dust on your shelves. You are touching my Heart, where my consciousness resides, but my body encompasses everywhere.

With every heartbeat, the ground shook, and Quartz realized—it wasn’t shaking in response to the beat, it was shaking alongside it. It was the geographical equivalent of swishing one’s tail side by side while walking.

Instantly, before anything else, she knew what to ask. “Is there a core inside our planet?” she asked.

Yes, replied the Heart.

“What is it made of?”

Mostly iron and nickel. Your husband asked the same thing yesterday.

Cloudy Quartz didn’t smile, but she didn’t smile in a happy way. She looked at Igneous, and saw that he had the exact same face as her.

Igneous spoke, then. “Our daughter Maud Pie is getting her rocktorate. She is writing a thesis on your core.”

“She does not know that you are alive, however,” Quartz said.

That does not surprise me. Life started outside of me, but it slipped through the cracks, and filtered itself through me. Its sediments grew.

“Like a stalactite?” Quartz asked.

Yes.

“You do not look like a stalactite.”

I chose this form consciously. I wished to meet you, and shaped myself into an approximation of your biology. So that you may understand I am alive, and choose to speak with me. So that I would not look threatening.

Quartz tilted her head forty five degrees to the left, and looked at the Heart, focusing on the details. “You failed,” she said.

You do not look threatened.

“I am not. But one of my daughters, she would be traumatized if she were to find you. You look horrifying.” She stopped to think for a moment, and added: “The rest would enjoy your presence, however.”

They sound like they understand the stone. That is the sign of a good daughter.

“They are adequate,” Quartz said.

“They work well,” Igneous added. 

You are bragging. That is good.

It was then that Quartz looked down, and blinked. She did not remember sitting down, nor did she remember resting her back against the Heart so that she could speak to it more comfortably, but she was doing exactly that. Every heartbeat made her sway, but it was a comfortable sway. Relaxing, like ocean waves, only more solid.

Igneous Rock was also sitting next to her, and when she looked at him, he offered her a bottle of cider.

Quartz took it. She was quite thirsty, she was surprised to find out. Her throat was sore. “I am not used to speaking for so long,” she said to the Heart. “Apologies.”

There is no need to apologize.

“I had a sore throat, too, yesterday,” Igneous Rock said. He opened a bottle of cider for himself, but did not sip from it yet. “For I talked until late at night, and we are of few words.”

You do not need to speak your words aloud. I have no ears. You may simply think your replies, and I will be able to understand you.

“I already told you,” Igneous Rock said. “I feel it is more natural for me to speak aloud. And I want Cloudy Quartz to hear what I’m saying.” He then looked at the Heart. “Yesterday, I asked you what your Heart was made of. You spoke of calcium carbonate.”

Yes. Calcite, and aragonite, and vaterite. There is also chalk, and limestone, and marble in me. 

“Why such a wide variety?” Igneous asked.

You are made out of carbon as well, the heart beat. Similarity eases communication.

Quartz took a sip of her cider, and looked at her husband.

There had been a subtle change in Igneous Rock’s mannerisms. 

Cloudy Quartz was the quintessential rock farmer, and in a rock farm, you didn’t do things immediately. Patience was essential to the whole experience. And yet, in that moment, Quartz acted without thinking, without giving herself time to consider her own words, because she wanted to say this, and it was life-or-death. 

She said: “Igneous Rock,” and her voice was sweet and brittle, like sugar crystals.

Igneous looked at her.

“We had a horrible fight earlier today,” Quartz said. “I want to apologize for that.”

“There is no need. I should have woken you.”

“That is not why we fought. I felt alone, and I was scared.” Quartz looked at the Heart—which was still hearing them; they had not moved away from it—and then back at her husband. “I believed you were hiding something from me, and I did not understand what you were thinking.”

Riverbeds have infinite layers; no matter how many you expose, there are more underneath. Quartz and Igneous had been shaped and morphed by the birth of their daughters, but that had only been the most significant event in their lives. It hadn’t been the only one.

Because they also had each other.

“We always understand what each other is thinking,” Igneous said. 

“Yes. That is why I was so scared. Because only we understand what each other is thinking. Even our daughters struggle, sometimes.”

Cloudy Quartz, Wife, and Igneous Rock, Husband. They had become that after they’d met for the first time, and then they had never met anyone else except for their own flesh and blood.

“We,” Quartz said, “were alone, together. But not anymore.” She caressed the Heart. “I feared I was losing you. I was not. I apologize for misjudging you, and I will be more confident in our marriage from now on.”

“I wanted you to experience this by yourself,” Igneous said, nodding at the Heart. “I knew words would not have made it justice.”

They had made a friend.

I apologize for the distress I have caused, the Heart beat. I wish I could have appeared in front of you both at the same time. I simply could not find the chance to do so.

“There is no need to apologize,” Igneous said. “We enjoy your presence.”

That is good news.

A friend of their very own, someone who understood them and spoke their same language. Someone that made you forget the passing of time while deep in conversation, someone that made you want to keep asking questions, and who loved to reply.

It wasn’t quite as intimate as romantic love, nor as protective as the bond they had with their daughters. But it was love all the while, and it quenched a thirst Quartz did not know she had.

So she looked at the Heart. “Please, do make our farm your residence. We will come visit you often. It will be a fulfilling passtime.” 

That was my intention all along. I am glad to see I am welcome. 

Then Cloudy Quartz, Friend, surprised herself by saying: “When I was younger, I was often told I came off as cold. Uncaring. Like I was made out of ice.”

She had never told this to anyone. The only ponies who would’ve understood were Igneous Rock and her daughters, after all, and they already knew about it.

And indeed, Igneous Rock, Friend, was already shaking his head. “A foolish comparison,” he muttered.

I agree. It does not fit you.

Quartz nodded. “Ice melts. I do not. I stay solid.”

“Like quartz,” Igneous said. “Like selenite, and gypsum.”

“That is what you said then, yes,” Quartz said.

Gypsum, the heart beat. The mineral that grows into desert roses. It is a good comparison. It does fit you better.

“It’s a good insulator,” Quartz said. “Do you know what that means?”

Yes. It means it won’t melt. But if you touch it, it’s warm to the touch.

Neither Quartz nor Igneous smiled. But they didn’t smile in a way that made it very clear they were Pinkie Pie’s parents.