Walking along the highway that wound along the southern edge of Froggy Bottom Bog, Maud and Tarnish continued without incident on their way to the Ghastly Gorge. It was an interesting geographic region; to the south, there was desert, dry land, sand, and very little moisture. To the north, the bog itself, the place where the land sunk several hundred feet below sea level and all of the water in the area drained, forming a vast swamp.
Off in the distance, there was the Ghastly Guardians, the source of much of the water in the region. The snowpack on the mountains melted, forming hundreds of streams and rivers, all of which drained into the Ghastly Gorge, forming the Ghastly Gash, a massive canyon, all of which drained into Froggy Bottom Bogg.
As they traveled, Tarnish not only figured how out how to condense water from humid air, but he had managed to recreate his teapot steam whistle, an almost deafening sound that could range in volume from angry teapot shriek to an ear piercing train whistle. Tarnish discovered it was great for scaring the local wildlife into leaving him and Maud alone.
Seeing a sign on the side of the road, Tarnished Teapot turned his head, squinted, and gave it a read. “Ghastly Gorge: left at fork, forty miles.” He paused for a moment, standing there, listening to the sounds of the wagon wheels creaking, and then looked over at Maud as she continued. He broke into a trot to stay at her side and said, “So, two or three days and we’ll be in the gorge… and then I suppose a few more days to get wherever it is that we are going.”
“Yep.” Looking ahead, Maud saw the fork. There was another sign. The left arrow had the words ‘Ghastly Gorge’ and the right arrow had the words ‘Las Pegasus.’ Below the wooden sign was another sign that read, ‘Crossroads Campsites’ and there was a crown burned into the wood.
Seeing it, Maud made a quick decision, and that decision was, it was time to stop for the night. She slowed down a bit, easing up on her forward momentum, and took the left road. The right road had deep ruts, while the road leading to the Ghastly Gorge was almost unused.
The campsite was located just a ways down the two roads that extended from the fork. It was triangle shaped, situated almost at the fork, and could be accessed from either side. There was no water pump, but Maud was not concerned. There were raised berms with elevated wooden platforms and lean-to roofs over them.
“This place doesn’t seem too bad,” Tarnish said as Maud came to a stop. Without even looking, he gave the wagon’s brake lever a telekinetic flick, locking the four wheels into place.
It would be dawn soon, there was already light showing in the east and the moon was settling down for bed. Tarnish stood sniffing, this place smelled a bit fetid and rotten. There was a breeze blowing down from the north, blowing the foul miasma from Froggy Bottom Bogg through the camp. The camp showed signs of recent use. There was trash here that hadn’t begun to decompose and one of the fire pits looked as though something had been burned in it. There were bones in the fire pit. Tarnish couldn’t tell for certain, but it looked like rabbit bones, or perhaps some small rodent.
He watched as Maud unhitched herself from the wagon and smiled when she gave herself a shake. Tarnish took a step closer. “What do you want to do for a meal?”
Maud shrugged as she lept up onto one of the wooden platforms and sat down on the edge. She looked down at Tarnish, the breeze tugging at both her mane and her ears. “It isn’t too warm, we could cook something.”
“There’s a raspberry thicket over there… I think I’m in the mood for fresh berries with whatever it is we fix to eat.” Tarnish eyed the berries in question; the thicket might have been planted for the campsite, but it had grown wild long ago. “How does rice and stew sound? We have the extra water and there are lots of cans of vegetable stew.”
Maud’s eyebrow raised. “I like rice. It’s plain.”
For a moment, Tarnish contemplated Maud’s love of plain things and thought about how this applied to him. He turned his head, looked at his own chocolate-brown pelt, and then looked back at Maud.
“Plain things tend to be exactly what they appear to be. What you see is what you get. When things get fancy, they also get complex. You might see them, expect something based upon what you see, and get something else entirely. This leads to disappointment and discontent, something that could have been avoided if things were left simple and uncomplicated.”
Opening his mouth to reply, Tarnish remained silent instead. He inhaled, tried to say something else after a moment of thinking, but failed in this endeavour as well. He tried several times to come up with something to say, but stood there, his mouth open, gaping like a fish.
“If you don’t close your mouth, you’ll eat a bug again and I’ll get creeped out whenever I go to kiss you,” Maud said.
Unable to sleep, Tarnish poked around the camp area, looking for interesting plants and rocks. The dawn had been spectacular, the sun rose over the trees, setting the world ablaze in a rosy glow. Not far from the camp, Tarnish found a small, grassy hillock with exposed stone on one side. It looked as though somepony had chopped away at a deposit of shale, leaving behind whatever wasn’t needed.
There were loose bits of shale that had fallen out of the hillock, and Tarnish, curious, began pulling and tugging out loosened bits of shale. A section of the hillock collapsed, spilling thin fragments of shale out on to the ground, and Tarnish studied them, curious about their shape, texture, and colour. He kicked over a pile with his hoof and by random chance, he saw something.
Looking down, he saw a fossil. The bones of a small lizard like creature could be seen in the shale. Excited, Tarnish lifted up his prize. The thin piece of shale was maybe an inch thick, about a foot long, and maybe six or seven inches wide. He held it up in the sunlight and admired his find. The skeletal remains were highly visible and easy to see.
Excited, he ran back to camp.
Holding a magnifying glass in her fetlock, Maud Pie studied the fossil that Tarnish had brought her. He had brought it to her, grinning, excited, and hardly able to contain himself. Now, he was off in the brush looking for more, as there were all kinds of shale deposits around here in the bog.
Pleased that her husband had brought her a fossil, Maud had given him a kiss. It only seemed fair. She felt it was a fair exchange. She hoped that Tarnish would bring her more. She wanted to be out looking as well, but she was tired, her legs were sore, and she was already having some trouble keeping her eyes open.
Maud had no idea what sort of lizard had been trapped in the muck so long ago. It was tiny, fine boned, and by the looks of things, had been whole of body when the bog had swallowed it. None of the bones appeared broken. This was a beautiful specimen and a collector or a museum would pay a fair bit of coin for it. For Maud, it was priceless, a treasure of great value, something that Tarnish had given her. She intended to put it up with her special rocks.
Looking up at the sky, Maud noticed how high up the sun was. She was having trouble staying awake, but her rising sense of panic granted her a state of alertness that was now counteracting her drowsiness. Tarnish had been gone for several hours and had not returned.
A dreadful sense of worry gnawed at Maud’s insides. Refusing to allow panic to consume her, she lept down from the wooden platform and landed upon the soft earth. She headed off in the direction that Tarnish had left, following after where she thought he had gone.
Tarnish left behind an easy to follow trail of broken grasses, bent twigs, and other signs that were obvious, even to a pony with no real tracking ability. Maud’s ears were perked up for any sounds that she might hear. She heard birds, she heard buzzing bugs, but no sounds of Tarnish.
Maud didn’t like this at all. She picked up her pace, looking for signs of Tarnish’s passing as she plunged through the underbrush. She found another hillock of shale, this one was in a sorry state, most of what was aboveground was gone. Tarnish had been here. Maud found fresh hoofprints in the soft earth and a few pieces of shale scattered around.
“Tarnish?” Maud cleared her throat and did something she seldom did. She raised her voice. “Tarnished Teapot, where are you?”
Maud took off once more, her worry giving her speed. She found a blackberry thicket, some of the berries had been eaten and there were chocolate brown hairs in the brambles, as well as fine, long hairs that were cream-coloured. Tarnish had a very distinctive mane and Maud was quite fond of it, wishing perhaps that he might grow it just a little longer.
“Tarnish, where are you?” Maud said in a voice that was almost, but not quite, a shout. She stomped through the underbrush. Tarnish’s trail was a bit harder to spot here, there was a lot of leaf debris covering the ground. “Tarnish, I want to hear your voice, where are you?”
Not certain she was on Tarnish’s trail, Maud doubled back and went back to the last spot she was certain that he had been, returning to a place where she found a hoofprint in a muddy patch. She stared at it for a moment, and then realised that the front curve of the hoof pointed off in a different direction than she had headed.
Maud went tearing through shrubs, plowed through spider grass, and shoved her way through a thick clump of ferns. She saw a glimpse of something whitish grey, and then, much to her horror, she realised that she had found Tarnish. She walked around him to look upon his face. It was frozen in a mask of horror and pain. His stone body was unmoving, his eyes were wide and unblinking.
For a mare who loved rocks, this was a nightmare scenario. Maud let out a strangled sound, the closest she had ever come to crying, and she stood there, frozen, trying to contain her panic, trying to regain her composure, trying to reassert control over herself.
“No!” Maud gasped. She rose up on her hind legs, found her balance, her fatigue melting away as her adrenaline took over. “No!” Maud stomped forwards on two legs, wrapped her forelegs around Tarnish’s stone barrel, and with a heave, she lifted him. He was much heavier than usual, but Maud scarcely noticed.
“No, no, NO!”
Maud’s last utterance caused a group of startled birds to take wing. She wobbled, struggling to keep her balance, she was a quadruped and walking bipedally with this much weight was difficult.
“No!”
Grunting with effort, Maud hefted Tarnish around, supporting him on her shoulder, against her neck. A growing sense of horror filled her. There was no heartbeat within his ribs, no animation in the body that she so loved.
“NO!”
Angry, scowling, Maud stormed off, heading for the camp, her whole face quivering and trembling with emotions that she had no control over. So overcome with emotion, Maud could no longer hold anything in, and she let out a wordless wail of grief as she headed for the camp, not knowing what to do.
More than anything, Maud wished that she could stop shaking. She had never experienced anything like this before, this feeling of utter helplessness, and these overwhelming feelings of emotion. Her fine sense of control was gone, leaving her an emotional wreck.
She paced around the camp, not knowing what to do. Tarnish stood near the wagon. Maud, distraught, could not appreciate his fine stone features or the exquisite level of detail that the petrified statue of her husband had.
And then, Maud had an idea. She went to the wagon, rose up on her hind legs, and looked down inside the bed. She found Tarnish’s saddlebags and near them, she found the mirror. Tarnish had left it sitting in the sun before he had left so it could recharge.
Reaching out with her foreleg, she hoped that it would work for her. She squeezed its handle in her fetlock, took a deep breath, tried swallowing the large lump that made it difficult to breathe, and then cleared her throat, trying to hold back her overwhelming panic.
“Twilight Sparkle?” Maud, frightened, shook the mirror, hoping it would work. “Twilight Sparkle, are you there? This is Maud Pie.”
“Maud?” Twilight’s voice was filled with confusion.
Before Twilight could say anything else, Maud blurted out what was wrong. “I need your help… please hurry… Tarnish was petrified by a cockatrice or a basilisk… I have his statue with me in the camp!”
“Oh no!” A panicked wheeze could be heard coming out the mirror. “Hang on, I’ll be right there! It might take me a while, but I’m coming!”
“Don’t you need to know where I am?” Maud asked.
“No, I know where you are,” Twilight replied. “I’ll explain when I get there, I promise! Maud, try not to worry, Tarnish will be okay, I promise!”
“Try to hurry!” Maud’s voice, no longer a monotone, had a definite tone of fear to it. It cracked and wavered, fluctuating as Maud tried to suppress her terror. “Please fix Tarnish… I need him… I can’t bear this!”
“Hold on Maud, I’m coming and I know just what you need to make you feel better! I’ll be there as soon as I can, just hang on!” Twilight said.