Water Pony

by BlazzingInferno


Diamond

Kev stepped through the tunnel, touching the wall with his right hand and clutching his clipboard with his left. He’d passed four forks in the tunnel so far, none of which were labeled. Knowing the one correct path through a maze was a traditional source of minotaur pride, and the mine was a prime example.

The ringing of pickaxes could be heard in the distance. One more turn and he’d be at the head of the new shaft, the spot where he’d check in with his second in command just before the lunch break. Then he’d head back to his one-room office on the surface for a long, boring conference call on the only telephone for miles. At least his superiors wouldn’t be able to see him, his drooping eyelids, or his new jewelry.

Kev did his best to cherish each passing moment of the last normal workday he’d ever know. He’d hurried out of town as soon as they’d left the Magistrate’s house, pausing only briefly at the top of the hill. From that vantage point he’d seen all of the still-slumbering village, and the long procession of goats departing the distant oasis with merchandise piled on their backs. Below the village but well above the goats, Morning Dew was beginning her descent to the oasis for water. She was barely an inch tall at this distance, and yet he knew it was her. He could almost see the golden ring hanging from her ear. Tonight, all his subordinates would go home and hear it from their wives: their sicko freak of a boss married a pony, an herbivore that would’ve been a main course a few generations back. That was a problem for tomorrow. Today, all he had to worry about was holding his clipboard just right so the papers covered his ring finger.

“Morning, Boss!” someone shouted.

Kev looked up. He’d turned the last corner without even realizing it. The light on his helmet illuminated a long line of minotaurs near the far rock wall, glinting off their tools as well as the sweat on their backs. The rhythmic clang of metal on stone was broken only by the heavily loaded mining cart rolling towards him on squeaky wheels. The goat pulling it gave him a quick nod as he lumbered past.

Unlike the merchants, the goats that worked the mine weren’t so bad. At least the mining goats kept to themselves and seemed content to earn an honest wage. The fact that they barely spoke to the minotaurs was an added bonus.

“Err, Boss?”

Kev finally looked at his right hand minotaur and nodded. “Morning, Ezer. How’re things looking?”

Ezer held up a diamond the size of a fist and grinned. His being a half-head shorter than Kev, and not nearly as stocky, made the diamond look even bigger. “Things are good, real good.”

Kev almost dropped his clipboard. “Is that from the south shaft? I thought we’d tapped that one dry.”

“We hit a new vein of gems on the north face this morning. You can practically pick beauties like this up off the ground.”

“How deep do you think it goes?”

Ezer polished the diamond on his chest. “Eh, it’s impossible to know for sure this early on, but my gut says this is a big one. We’re going to make the monthly gem quota by tomorrow, easy. If we put more workers on it, we could break last year’s production record by the end of the month.”

Kev glanced at the production statistics on his clipboard, and then to the pickaxes striking the wall nearby, the wall that wasn’t glittering with gold like it used to. Nothing would liven up the afternoon conference call like getting to share good news, especially the kind that’d bring him closer to that promotion. “Is the iron ore production as bad as yesterday?”

“Yep.”

“How about copper?”

“The same.”

“Pull as many guys as you need. Abandon the least productive shaft if you have to. We’re mining gems first, ore second.”

“You got it, Boss.”

---

Nothing could erase Kev’s smile on the way home, not even the mad chatter of the merchants accosting him on his way into town. All he heard was the elated voices on the other end of the conference call when he announced the mine’s production spike.

A red scarf suspended from a pole danced in front of his face, and the goat woman wielding it shouted what little of Kev’s language she knew. “Hey! You buy? Nice color, look good on you! Maybe nice present for wifey?”

He pushed the scarf away. “No thanks.”

“She like different color, maybe? I give you good deal!”

He walked faster and stepped around a corner. Escaping one goat was easy enough; getting all the way to his house without getting fleeced was the real challenge. The town square up ahead was thick with portable tables arranged into a maze of commerce. Attention-getting flags swung at minotaur eye level, and every broken sentence was an invitation to buy something.

Kev stepped through the onslaught without giving the clothing and knickknacks on display a single glance. He only had the patience, not to mention pocket change, for one purchase. Somehow he suspected the goats knew this, and their hounding him for attention was just part of the eternal dance between their kind and his.

When the goats weren’t offering a sales pitch, they were whispering in their bleating language, or giving nearby minotaurs shifty glances. Worse still was their anonymity; there wasn’t a single goat that simply sold clothing or vegetables. The goat that’d tried to sell him a scarf today would be pushing tomatoes tomorrow, and would never do something as individualizing as offering her name. As far as the minotaurs knew, the merchant goats didn’t have names, and that just left making names up.

At last Kev reached the section of the market reserved for food. He hadn’t named all the goats, nor did he care to. Naming the few that he actually did business with regularly was more than enough. Behind the meat table stood his least favorite goat of all, an older one that he’d taken to calling Grey Beard on account of the long hairs dangling from his chin. Nameless or no, the goats had a hierarchy, and Grey Beard stood proudly at the top of it. None haggled like he did, or spoke as clearly.

Kev put his fist to his mouth and coughed, glancing around for his other two least favorite goats in the process. Tuft Head wasn’t anywhere to be seen, which was bad news. As clear as Kev could figure, he was Grey Beard’s grandson or cousin. The amount of trouble and petty crime that he was suspected of could only be explained away, and tolerated, by him having some sort of familial relationship with the big boss.

One Eye, meanwhile, was prowling around the edge of the marketplace, giving Kev and every other minotaur in sight a seething, hostile glare from his one good eye. If Grey Beard was the goats' boss, then One Eye was the enforcer, the insurance against theft and general troublemaking. Kev couldn’t fathom how he’d earned that scar across the left side of his face, unless he was old enough to know the days when minotaurs still hunted his kind for meat. He probably wasn’t that old, but then again Kev found it hard to tell when it came to goats.

Grey Beard smiled at Kev, showing off his yellowing teeth. “Looking to buy some dinner? Maybe some meat?”

“If the price is right. Got anything left?”

Grey Beard ducked under the table and brought up a cage containing two black rabbits. The rabbits retreated to the cage’s far corner as soon as they saw him.

Kev put his face against the cage. His own arm had more meat on it than these little fur balls. “No chicken?”

“Sorry, all out.”

“Dog?”

“Dog is too expensive. Special order only. You bring the money, I find you one in a few days. For right price, I even find you manticore.”

Kev sighed. Rabbit meat made for a lousy surprise to bring home, even if it was to celebrate the success in the mine. “How much?”

“For you, a special price. Twenty coin for the pair.”

“Pfft. They don’t even weigh as much as twenty coins.”

“Eighteen, and I throw in small jug of water. Make family some rabbit stew. Delicious.”

Kev hid his smile. “I’ll pass.”

“You sure? This deal not be around tomorrow. Good deal on rabbits, very very good with water.”

“Hmm. Ten for the rabbits plus the carrots you were feeding them. You can keep the water.”

Grey Beard was silent for a moment, probably to contemplate Kev’s idiocy at passing up water at such a good price. “Fifteen.”

“Deal.”

Kev dropped the coins on the table, and Grey Beard offered up a battered wooden mallet. Nothing kept meat fresh like letting it breathe right up until it was sold.

Kev shook his head as he opened the cage door. “I’m not taking them home flattened.”

Grey Beard shrugged. “How you eat them, that your business. Not refund if they bite or run away.”

The first rabbit’s neck snapped between Kev’s fingers with a dull crunch, just like his father taught him.

“That won’t be a problem.”

---

Even with his stopover in the market, Kev made it home right on time. The sun touched the horizon just as he opened the front door and stepped inside. “I’m home!”

Dana didn’t move from her spot in front of the stove, or even turn around. She simply raised three fingers overhead. “Great. Dinner’s in three minutes.”

Something was missing. Kev looked down at his leg. Why wasn’t Tam attached to it? “Tam?”

Laughter drew Kev’s attention to floor nearby. Tam was doubled over on the floor while Morning Dew hid her face behind her front legs. She popped up and made the pony equivalent of a ‘boo’ sound, which made Tam laugh even harder.

The game ceased as soon as Morning Dew caught sight of Kev’s shadow. She gasped and backed away before even bothering to look up. Her ears-flat look of surprise wasn’t that different from the rabbits, and vanished just as quickly when Tam lunged forward to hug her. She jumped at his embrace, but gently reciprocated, even though her eyes never left Kev.

Tam turned to hug Kev next. “Home! We play! All play!”

“Uh… yeah. Why don’t you go wash up for dinner first? We’ll play after.”

As Tam ran off, Kev tried to picture himself. What had Morning Dew so nervous? It wasn’t like he was holding her best friend’s severed head. Her gaze traveled down, and he realized that, to her, he probably was. He tossed the rabbits onto the table and held out the bundle of carrots he’d bought for her. Hopefully his buying her food wasn’t too weird; maybe letting Dana do that would be best.

Morning Dew’s eyes never left the rabbits. Did she think she was dessert?

“We don’t eat intelligent animals. If something has hooves, it doesn’t go on the dinner table.” He wouldn’t mention the mere handful of decades that that law had been on the books, and the fraction of that time in which it’d been fully enforced.

She looked up at him, and her frown deepened.

“The rabbits died quickly, if that helps… Meat is just something minotaurs eat; it’s the only way Tam will grow up big and strong. You don’t have to eat it, you don’t have to like it, you don’t even have to sit at the table with us if you don’t want to… There’s going to be meat, though. That’s just how it is. I… I bought some carrots for you, if that’s all right.”

Kev’s thumb rubbed against the ring on his finger. He should’ve let her have a longer stare-down with the chicken bones last night; she could’ve backed out without getting her ear pierced.

She took a deep breath and, to his great surprise, nodded her assent. She cradled the carrots under one of her forelegs and retreated to what had apparently become her corner of the house. Two hefty water jugs connected by a yoke stood by the front door, and next to them was a bed made of spare blankets and hay. Somehow Kev had imagined ponies sleeping in nests or burrows, as opposed to the genuine bed she’d constructed. How she’d put together what looked like a smaller version of his own bed without any fingers was beyond him. He’d just have to add bed-making to the growing list of pony mysteries, alongside language barriers, naming conventions, and why Morning Dew had a picture of the sun rising over a hillside just above each of her back legs. Was it a tattoo? Was it some sort of rite-of-passage thing, like a young minotaur getting their first nose ring?

Morning Dew set the carrots on her bed and glanced back at him. Her fear was gone, and that just left mutual discomfort from Kev’s staring. He turned away and picked up the rabbits. “Hey, Dana, I’ve got some good news.”

Dana’s eyes didn’t leave the stove. “It’s not going to hold up dinner, is it?”

“No, but—”

“It can wait until we’re all sitting down. Seasoning this dumb stew is killing me.”

Kev started to salivate. “Stew?”

“Yeah. Morning Dew brought back way more water than I normally buy, so tonight we’re having chicken stew.”

“That beats gnawing on the bones from last night.”

Dana dipped a spoon into a tall pot and held it out. “Make yourself useful and taste this. All I taste is pepper now.”

Kev took the spoon and stuck it in his mouth. For a moment he felt like a kid again, sitting around the dinner table with Dana and his parents with a steaming bowl of something delicious in front of him. “It’s perfect, Dana.”

“Just tell me the truth. I’m not going to kill anybody if it’s bad.”

“Seriously, it's great.”

Dana finally turned away from the stove. “That’s a relief… Maybe tomorrow I’ll try making some bread to go with it.”

“Bread? We haven’t had bread in—”

She grinned. “Ages. I know. That’s what happens when have to choose between washing Tam’s face and baking stuff.”

Kev stepped closer and lowered his voice as much as the boiling stew would allow. “So… Things are going okay with her?”

Dana patted him on the back. “Things are great, Kev. She brought us water like she said, and Tam’s been having a blast with her. Thanks for not scaring her away with those dead mice… or are they supposed to be rabbits? They’re so small it’s hard to tell the difference.”

Kev folded his arms. “Last time I bring you a surprise.”

“Good. I’m your sister. Bring your wife something nice instead.”

“I did. I got her some carrots.”

“Great. Maybe we can make a decent husband out of you after all.”