Tarnished Teapot watched as Igneous Rock walked around the two halves of the massive geode, his lips moving, his eyes narrowing and then going wide, alternating back and forth. The older stallion seemed stunned. The entire family seemed stunned.
“Fire opals,” Marble said in a somewhat raspy voice.
“This is quite a find.” Igneous stopped circling the geode halves and looked at Tarnished Teapot, his sideburns quivered as the older stallion struggled to contain his excitement. “You are going to be quite a wealthy young colt—”
“Oh no! I don’t want anything… nothing at all! I learned my lesson the last time I had bits!” Tarnished Teapot said, backing away from the geode and Igneous. “No, no, no!”
“Tarnish, dear, this could help you secure a good future,” Cloudy Quartz said, stepping closer to the retreating colt.
“Nope! Last time I had more bits than I knew what to do with, I was hung from a tree!” Tarnish kept retreating and almost stumbled. “I am young and I am stupid and I cannot be trusted with money, so no… just no.”
“Tarnish, dear, you are being unreasonable—”
“Cloudy Pie, leave him be.” Igneous looked at his wife, his expression stern. “We’ll talk later, but for now, we’ll respect his decision.” He turned his head and watched as Tarnished Teapot kept retreating, backing away, stumbling through the dusty dirt.
“Tarnish, you mean to tell me that you don’t want bits?” Limestone asked, one eye narrowing, the other going wide, and a lopsided quizzical expression appearing upon her face. “How will you take care of yourself?”
“There are things that are more important than bits,” Tarnish said as he stumbled and then sat down in the dirt with a grunt. “Things like living and not doing stupid stuff.”
“You’re being very silly.” Limestone looked at the colt sitting in the dirt and then looked at her sister, Maud. “Maud, he’s being very silly… tell him that, he’ll listen to you.”
“Limestone, leave the poor colt alone,” Igneous said to his daughter.
“Tarnish is right. There is more to life than bits. We have plenty of bits but we continue to live a simple, but comfortable life. Perhaps Tarnish has learned something.” Maud looked at Limestone, then at Tarnish, and then at her mother and father. After staring at her parents, she turned to look at Tarnish once more. “Tarnish, what do you want?”
“I… I… I want… I want to go look at nice caves that hardly any other pony has ever seen, like that big underground geode. I want to visit one of those places you mentioned where water flows uphill. What I don’t want is more trouble!” Tarnish replied.
Sitting in the rocking chair, Tarnish was enjoying the midmorning sun shining upon him. It was warm, without being hot, there was a pleasant, balmy breeze, and there was no more work. Maud was busy with her father, measuring and weighing the split geode, while Limestone and Marble had headed off to Rock Haven together, in the mood to celebrate.
While there were plenty of things to look at, Tarnish spent most of his time watching Maud as she worked with her father, watching her face, trying to see if he could spot some elusive expression, some body language that would clue him in on what she was feeling, thinking, something that would reveal her mysterious and wonderful inner workings. The enigmatic earth pony mare had feelings, that much was obvious. And she had to express them somehow.
As he sat there staring, his mind drifted off to other places. These ponies talked to one another. Actual conversations. Kind words. They were nice to one another. Cloudy Quartz was a good mother to her children. Tarnish thought about his own mother, Pinny Lane. She wasn’t a bad mother, Tarnish supposed, but she wasn’t a very good mother either. She and Tarnish didn’t have much in the way of conversations, they said things to each other, things like, “Before you go away to Manehatten on that bowling tournament the house needs groceries” and “While I am away in Fillydelphia please make sure to do the laundry and keep the house clean.” He and his mother had been making these simple exchanges for a long time, such a long time now that saying anything else had become awkward. Tarnish realised that he didn’t have the words to describe the relationship he and his mother had.
It was almost as if he and his mother were roommates, rather than being mother and son.
The conclusion was depressing. After an ecstatic morning of finding a massive several hundred pound geode filled with super expensive fire opals, the sudden revelation was a real downer. Heaving a sigh, Tarnish failed to notice that Cloudy Quartz had crept up beside him.
“You look upset.”
The rocking chair almost tipped over as Tarnish lept up into the air, and he was saved by Cloudy placing her hoof down upon the runner to level him out. With his ears limp against the sides of his face, Tarnish turned to look at the short matronly mare.
After several long seconds of silence, Tarnish managed to say, “I noticed your husband called you Cloudy Pie.”
The mare nodded and then turned to look at her husband. “When I was a filly, I was just little Cloudy Pie. But then I got my cutie mark… three pieces of quartz. I had just met the nicest colt. He was a little odd… he liked rocks. He gave me a piece of quartz and told me that it was almost as pretty as I was.”
Igneous seemed unaware that his wife and Tarnished Teapot were staring at him. Tarnish took a deep breath and cleared his throat. His mouth opened several times, and he would almost say something, but then nothing would come out and then his mouth would close. At last, he gave up, and his mouth remained closed.
“Igneous and Maud have more in common than either would care to admit. Igneous doesn’t have Maud’s burning curiousity, but they are both alike in many other ways. For the longest time, I had trouble figuring out if Igneous liked me. I didn’t know for sure until he gave me the quartz. He was kinda quiet, he was a bit mysterious, and he spent a lot of time looking at rocks. We spent a lot of time looking at rocks together, and I learned how to read his moods by studying his face as he looked at rocks… of course, as he grew older, he became more expressive, knowing that his foals needed to see that he felt something.” Cloudy Quartz gave Tarnish a soft nudge with her hoof. “Maud has her moods. Pinkie Pie knows them better than all of us, but Pinkie Pie is a bit special in that regard.”
“You have four amazing daughters… I wonder what it feels like, being a mother that is proud of her foals…”