Looking up from his task, Tarnished Teapot saw the first golden rays of dawn upon the horizon. He had been awake for a while now, he was cold, he was sweating, he was already miserable, and the sunrise was beautiful. He inhaled, his breath caught in windpipe, stricken by the beauty of the rising sun coming up over the distant hills.
There was a loud crack and Tarnish turned his head just in time to see a small boulder shattering. Marble had bucked it, giving the boulder a sharp blow, and now the large boulder was a much more manageable pile of smaller boulders, each chunk of stone about the same size as a pony’s head. The strength of the Pie sisters was terrifying to witness.
The quarry, the place where the Pie family got rocks to place in their fields, was a series of massive rocks jutting up out of the earth, forming small hills made of solid stone. Boulders were broken off, smashed into smaller chunks, and then the chunks were moved to the flat plain where the ley lines intersected, where with time and patience, the rocks would change, and would go through thaumaturgical metamorphosis, becoming something else.
“Tarnish, Maud needs your help, drop what you’re doing and go help her,” Limestone said as she trotted up to Tarnish. “I’ll roll these over for you.”
Nodding, Tarnish dropped the rocks in his levitation and then hobbled off on three legs to where Maud was. His movements were slow and jerky, he was still in pain from the day before. Maud stood next to a boulder larger than she was, and was walking around it, squinting at it, and Tarnish became curious as to what she had found.
“Marble, Limestone, I’m going to need your help,” Maud said in a loud, clear voice that carried over the stillness of the dawn. “Go fetch me lots of water, I have an idea. We’re going to need a funnel too.” Maud pressed her ear to the enormous boulder and then rapped on it with her hoof. She then looked at Tarnish and blinked a few times. “This rock is hollow.”
“Geode?” Tarnish asked.
Maud shrugged. “Might be. Could be. It has cracks along the top and the side here. When I moved this, I noticed it was too light for its size. It’s hollow. It is empty inside, like a traveling salespony facing the existential crisis that is his life.”
“What?” Tarnish cocked his head off to one side, looking very confused by what Maud had said. “What’s an existential crisis?”
“You tell me, you’re in the middle of one, Tarnished Teapot,” Maud replied.
“What?” Tarnish sat down in the dirt and gave a quizzical stare to the impossible to understand earth pony. “I don’t understand anything that is going on.”
“Further evidence of your existential crisis.” Maud shook her head, her movement slow, and then waited for Marble and Limestone to return. “You know, it is funny, you’re still alive this morning. Daddy didn’t kill you.”
“Well, he doesn’t know,” Tarnish said, feeling an uncomfortable sensation deep within his bowels just thinking about this subject.
“Yes he does.” Maud blinked. “I told him. I don’t keep secrets from him. Last night, before bed, I told him and my mother that I had a colt in my room. I also mentioned that you were well behaved and that I had to lure you in.”
Closing his eyes, Tarnished Teapot let out a whimper and shook his head.
“They gave me a stern talking to.”
“Really?” Tarnish’s eyes opened and he looked at Maud.
“No,” Maud replied, her voice a perfect, flat monotone. “But the look on your face was priceless. My parents trust me and they know that I can look after myself.”
The Pie sisters, could in fact, look after themselves. Tarnish had just watched them smash boulders He realised that Maud had just played something of a joke on him. His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. Was she smiling? It was impossible to tell.
“Maud, might I ask you a personal question?”
“Go right ahead.”
“How would I know if you were happy?.”
Maud’s eyes narrowed somewhat. “You will have to figure that out for yourself.”
“Bother…”
Lifting a bucket in his telekinesis, Tarnish tried to hold it steady while he poured water into the large metal funnel stuck into the crack on the top of the rock. He poured in yet another bucket of water, filling up the hollow rock with water. He didn’t know why he was filling up a rock with water, but it is what Maud wanted.
He set the bucket down and picked up the second bucket. There had been many buckets brought so far, Limestone and Marble should be returning with more water at any moment. He began to pour the second bucket into the funnel and then that’s when it happened. Water began to trickle out of the second crack. Tarnish set down the bucket, took a deep breath, and then, Tarnished Teapot sat down, feeling a little shaky as well as exhausted.
“Tarnish, freeze the water, but do it slowly. When frozen, water in the form of ice takes up more room than it does as a liquid. Plug the cracks first if you can. And then very slowly, freeze everything. If this works, the rock should split along the existing cracks and fall into two halves,” Maud said.
Letting out a gasping wheeze, Tarnish wondered if he had it in him. Temperature changing wasn’t the toughest magic, but he was already exhausted. He sucked in a lungful of air, held it for a moment, considered what he needed to do, and then nodded.
“Be careful. Be very, very slow. We want to crack it open without doing too much damage to whatever is inside,” Maud said as she gave Tarnish an encouraging nudge with her hoof.
Touching the boulder with his horn, Tarnish closed his eyes, focused his concentration, and then thought about cold thoughts. Snow in the winter. Frozen drinks made with chipped ice. Ice skating. Snow. The leftovers that could be found in the very back of the refrigerator when he still lived at home with his mother. The shower, after the hot water went away. Getting his tongue stuck to a metal flagpole in the middle of winter when he was a tiny colt. The feeling of sitting down upon the ice and discovering that his testicles could be harmed.
There was a loud creaking sound, followed by another creaking sound, then a loud crackling sound as a long crack appeared in the side of the boulder. It grew longer, there was another series of crackling sounds, and the crack gained length. With a cry, Tarnish opened his eyes and stepped away as the sounds the boulder made became intimidating.
And then, without warning, the boulder busted open, split in two. One side was much larger than the other, and it fell upon the spot where Tarnish had just been standing, sending dust flying as several hundred pounds of stone impacted the earth.
Maud poked at the larger half with her hoof, squinting to see the pale morning light, and there was a gasp from Marble. Limestone came forward and also began to touch the larger half of the split open stone.
“This is a geode,” Limestone said as she looked at her sister Maud. “And it is filled with opals. We have hundreds of pounds of opals.”
“Tarnish, pay attention, this is what I look like when I’m happy,” Maud said.
Whipping his head around, tearing his eyes away from the glittering opals, Tarnish looked at Maud but could not see anything different. He studied her face, taking in every detail, watching her blink, watching as she breathed, but he could see nothing.
“This is a find of a lifetime,” Marble said in a hard to hear voice.
“Yes, and we didn’t do much damage to the opals when we opened it. Banging this open would have shattered the opals on the inside, ruining their value. Maud, we need to haul this back to the house, Marble and I will go get ropes.”
Maud, watching as her sisters dashed off, said to Tarnish, “You know, some of this is yours. It is only fair…”