Quicksilver
Admiral Biscuit
He twitched on his cot and snorted himself awake. He was still tired, but he hadn't been able to find restful sleep since… well, he didn't remember when.
He pushed the stiff, dusty blanket off and scratched at his belly, frowning as a small clump of hair came free. That was happening more and more often. He'd thought it was caused by the heavy protective coveralls he'd been wearing while he worked, but leaving them off hadn't helped. Still, it hadn’t made the hair loss worse either, so he went without and shook himself off at the end of the day. Luckily, his vermillion coat was the same color as the dust from the ore, so if he missed some it didn’t matter.
It’s probably just stress, he told himself. That’ll cause shedding.
He rolled off the cot and stood, stretching out on the dirt floor of his tent. His camp was primitive and remote, but he didn't mind so much. The last couple times he’d gone to town, other ponies shied away at the sight of him. He didn’t like that, so he just stayed out here in the wilderness. He told himself that he was happier—out here, he had purpose. He could pursue his talent uninterrupted. They didn’t appreciate that, so all he did in town any more was trade for supplies.
He grabbed his kettle in his mouth and went down to the stream, following the clean trail where he’d been dumping the slag from the furnace. It made a serviceable path, and it kept the weeds down—in fact, nothing at all was growing around his little trail. He paused at the riverbank long enough to glance at his haggard reflection in the moon-lit water before dipping the kettle in.
Back at camp, he set the kettle on a ledge on his brick furnace. Once it boiled, some bitter tea would dust the last of the cobwebs out of his head and maybe clear his vision a little. He'd couldn't see as well as he used to, and idly wondered if maybe it was time to spend a full day in town and get fitted for glasses.
That annoying thought was soon banished. While waiting for the water to boil, he went to his trip-hammer and put another chunk of cinnabar into the battered bowl. It was a machine he'd devised all on his own, a cleverly constructed arrangement of weights and levers, all connected to a treadmill.
He happily climbed on the walking belt and began moving, getting into an easy loping rhythm that was punctuated every twelve hoofsteps with the loud crash of the hammer coming down.
When he'd first built it, he'd often had to stop and look into the bowl to check his progress, but now he could tell just by the sound when the cinnabar was properly crushed. His focus narrowed to nothing more than the repetitive ker-WHAM of the hammer and the beat of his hooves, his only other movement a constant futile flicking of his tail against the clouds of dust the hammer kicked up.
The sky was light and the moon low on the horizon when he finally judged that the rock was sufficiently pulverized. He slowed his pace cautiously: he’d tumbled head over tail off the treadmill once, and didn’t want a repeat.
Once he’d slowed his gait to a walk, he eyed the trip-hammer, waiting until it was at the apex of its travel, then side-stepped off the belt and set the safety pin on his trip-hammer before checking his work.
It was very good ore—there were small silvery pools glinting among the red gravel, and he felt a prospector's eager thrill at the sight. He flipped the bowl’s bail up with a hoof, grabbed it in his teeth, and walked over to his bottling station.
When he’d crushed his first load of ore and seen how rich it was, he’d made a frame and stretched a piece of cheesecloth across it. He balanced himself on the edge of the low bench and held the bowl over the center, then tipped it out lightly with the other hoof. Not too much at once; if he poured it out too fast the cheesecloth would rip, and that just made for more work.
He told himself that he was going to get his morning tea while the moonsilver liquid pooled in his catchpan, but he didn't—it was just too fascinating to watch it slowly dribble through the cloth. A metal which thought it was water.
Its beauty wasn't its only use, although that was what had initially attracted him to it: back before he earned his Mark he’d had seen a small vial for sale in a general store. He'd saved up his allowance and chore money for weeks, then bought that little vial.
He smiled at the memories as the last silver dribbles of free mercury oozed through the cheesecloth. He'd played with that vial for years. It had been the one colthood toy that never lost its appeal, because there were just so many things it could do. He’d experimented with its conductivity and its viscosity, read books in the library, and even spent a week with a prospector, using it as an amalgam to drive out impurities in gold.
Satisfied that all the liquid had been strained from the rubble, he lifted the free end of the frame and tilted the cinnabar gravel into a waiting skip cart. He left the frame raised, hooking it on a piece of twine that hung down from the tent's ridgepole.
The collection tray had a spout on one corner, and he grabbed it in his mouth, expertly tilting it so that the precious quicksilver ran down into a glass canning jar. It was three-quarters full; by noon he was sure it would be joining the ranks of its brothers.
Now it was time for his morning tea. He lowered the cheesecloth frame so that it would be ready for the next load, set the lid lightly on top to keep the metal pure, and went out to his furnace, where his kettle was happily boiling away.
He blew the light coating of red dust off his chipped enamel cup and regarded his camp while he waited for his tea to steep. He didn't have the luxury of a weather schedule out here, so he had to plan ahead. On one hoof, his raw ore pile wasn't big enough to last for more than a couple days—and there’d been times when it had rained longer than that. On another, if he wanted to go mine more, he'd have to extinguish the furnace for safety's sake, and that took a while.
I'll stay in camp today. He picked up the mug with slightly trembling hooves. He didn't really notice; these days, he just left the water level in the cup that much lower so he didn't accidentally burn himself. Process everything in the skip cart, break up some more of the raw ore, then let the furnace cool off overnight.
If he really worked at it, he'd have enough to take into town by the end of the week. Then he could start anew—he'd found a huge deposit, and he was going to get all the mercury out, even if it killed him.