I wake up, and I think I would like to be a farmer today.
Spring Heath is asleep beside me, a purple shape in the dark. I give her a nudge with my muzzle, in case she feels like fooling around, but she mumbles and rolls away.
Ah well. Perhaps tomorrow.
The house is quiet without any foals. There are no thumps echoing from the bedrooms, or slamming doors, or shouts from tiny throats that they need a special lunch today for a field trip and sorry for not mentioning it last night. It is peaceful, and I hear the grandfather clock ticking in the parlor, even from my spot sipping coffee in the kitchen.
Spring Heath descends the stairs, her coat and mane still matted from sleep. I gesture to the steaming mug waiting at her seat, and she smiles at me.
I hope I get to be a farmer today.
* * *
“Buckwheat!” The administrator calls my name, and I step out of line. My heart is pounding, and even though the spring day is still chilly, I feel the first drop of sweat run down my side.
Please be a farmer. Please be a farmer.
The administrator fumbles with the paper tag that has my name. She looks up at me, then down at the list of names on the table before her. She looks at me again, then at the tag, and finishes back at the paper.
I don’t think she’s done this before.
“Uh, Buckwheat?” She waits until I nod. “Okay, good. You're a blacksmith!”
I wince, my ears falling flat against my mane. “Are you sure? Not a farmer?”
She runs her hoof down the list of names again, then slides it sideways to the column of jobs. “No, blacksmith. Do you know where to go?”
“Yeah, I’ve done it before.” I turn away to let the next pony take my place. There’s no point in holding up the whole village.
* * *
Blacksmithing isn’t as hard as it sounds. You just heat the iron in the forge until it glows, take it out (carefully!) with the tongs, then hit it with the hammer until it’s the shape you want.
I consider the misshapen disk of wounded metal before me. It didn’t quite curve the way I’d hoped, and the sides are split in several places. If I squint, it vaguely resembles a pancake with curled edges, or maybe an ashtray.
Close enough. I place it on the shop counter, where a tan earth pony is waiting. “Here’s your bowl, sir.”
We stare at it in silence for some time.
“Okay,” he finally says. He drops a few coins on the counter and leaves with his purchase.
Rarely, maybe twice a year, Igneous gets to be the blacksmith, and she crafts masterworks for us. Plows, horseshoes, barrels of nails, on that day everything is perfect.
But today I am the blacksmith.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get to be a farmer.
But it’s fine if I don’t.
* * *
I come home and there is a foal waiting for me. I vaguely recognize his lemon coat, and after a few seconds I speak.
“Saffron… Lark?”
“Saffron Spark,” he corrects me, then runs up to toss his legs around me for a hug. “Welcome home, dad! Mom’s making dinner.”
I walk into the kitchen, and sure enough a lime green mare is at work over the skillet. The smile on my face is genuine – the first of the day. Glenmore has been my wife before, and she makes a wonderful potato casserole. I can smell it cooking.
She trots over and kisses my cheek. “Welcome home… Buckwheat, right? How was your day?”
“Not bad,” I say. And it’s true.
* * *
I am supposed to be asleep beside my wife, but instead I lie awake in the dark. This happens, sometimes.
Ponies who visit our village ask, bewildered, how we do it. How we can stand to change everything – everything – about our lives every day. How we don’t go insane.
These ponies have never suffered. They’ve never left their home after losing their wife and unborn foal in a delivery gone wrong. They’ve never wished for oblivion to take them as well. Maybe, if they did, they would understand the solace we find here, where every pony can be any other, and to lose one is to lose none, because we are all the same.
I love it here.
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be a farmer.