The Brightest Shine

by Cozy Mark IV

Ch. 8 Settling In

The Brightest Shine

Written and read by Cozy Mark IV & Jan. McNeville

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-made work of prose. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is the property of Hasbro. Please support the official release

Chapter Eight: Settling In

Shining rolled over in her sleep, the hard ground digging into her back, even through the sleeping bag. Her mind wandered through dreams of sweltering jungles and stone cities, until gradually, she opened her eyes to take in the sight around her.

Steam. The world seemed to be full of it, and though she could see the ground around her, everything else was invisible, lost in the drifting green steam like some enormous sauna that smelled of... rotten eggs?

“Hello?”

“Oh, good, you're awake!” Steady's voice answered from somewhere to her right. A moment later, the soldier appeared out of the steam before her, looking somewhat sleep deprived and a bit worried. “Are you feeling okay?”

Shining thought about it, then nodded.
“Aside from a crick in my back, I feel fine. Where are we, anyway?”

Steady looked at her carefully before answering,
“Underground. The cave widens out into some large chambers with hot springs, hence the steam and the smell. Are you going to be able to handle this?”

Shining felt some nervous tension as she looked around, but even looking carefully, there was no way to tell how big the room was: The steam clouds illuminated by the green chemical lamp made it impossible to see the walls.
“Uh... I think I'm okay, actually...” she replied, noticing as she turned her head that something was dangling under her jaw. With a raised eyebrow, she reached down and undid the buckle on the horn cap.

“I'm glad you're doing better.” Steady breathed in relief. “Your team got one of the stones repaired before everyone called it quits to get some rest. I'm sorry, but we had to drug you again to get you down here to safety. The igloo you built is impressive, but the cold is starting to seep in even there.”

Shining passed the cap to Steady as she agreed,
“The walls are nearly as thick as I am long, but as cold as it's going to get, they won't stay warm forever...” She cringed as another memory occurred to her. “How are Squall and Sand Storm?”

Steady's face fell.
“Not well. They're both okay physically, but their injuries have them very depressed, and I can't say I blame them. Verdant has read some medical texts, and she thinks she can help, but we have no idea how much, or how long it will take.”

Shining hung her head.
“I'm sorry Steady, I should have known, but I didn't think of the risk in time...”

Steady took her in his hooves as he tried to console her.
“It's okay... you didn't know, and neither did anypony else.”

She shook herself and stood up,
“Their injuries are going to be the least of our worries if we don't get the sun repaired soon. The rest of our tribes are much further south, but the cold is coming for them, and we have to beat it there if we're going to save anypony. I assume we won't be sending anypony else outside after this?”

“Not without your glowing bubble. How long will that spell work anyway?”

“As long as a pony can hold it. It works as a crude boat too, so it should be good down to any cold we can survive in here.” She paused with one hoof extended in the act of reaching for a tool. “Uh, could you show me the way to the workshop? We'll need to get Pie, Spec and Verdant up here too.”

Steady chuckled softly.
“Pie and Verdant are already waiting, and if I can find Flare, I'll find Spec. Those two have been inseparable lately...”

A quick walk following a line scratched in the cave floor soon led them to the work site where Pie and Squall stood watching Verdant in fascination. The earth pony was concentrating hard, her eyes tightly closed, and a small mound of earth was growing in front of her.

“What is she-”

“Shhh...” Pie chided gently, before adding in a whisper, “She's trying to get us some better heat to work with.”

As Shining watched in amazement, the small mound of earth began to open at the top, splitting apart like the peddles of a flower and revealing a core of bubbling molten magma that slowly expanded into a pool about the size of a basketball. When the growth slowed to a stop, Verdant sighed deeply and relaxed as she opened her eyes, looking a bit sheepish as she realized the others were watching.

“You can grow a volcano?” Shining asked in astonishment.

Verdant waved a hoof dismissively
“Not a very big one.”

“Not a... Seriously?! You can grow a volcano, but you don't think its a big deal because it isn't large enough?!”

Verdant was blushing now as she replied,
“Well, no, the magma is really near the surface here, so it's not that hard. I couldn't do this just anywhere, but growing a lava tube out of a volcano isn't that difficult.”

After a long silence Shining turned to Steady,
“Could you please go find our missing teammate? We'll need Spec to get started, though,” she added in admiration, “It will be a lot easier going with a steady heat source.”

Steady soon returned with the two mares trailing behind, Flare smiling once more while Spec seemed to be doing her best tomato head impression. Verdant had also gone to fetch Sand Storm, and had carefully led him to the edge of their impromptu meeting circle.

“All right, ponies, it's about time we sat down and laid out our plan for the next month or two.” Shining
announced, “We still have 37 stones to fix, and I'm going to need all of your help to craft the evener I'm designing.” She added, holding up a notebook full of calculations. “It won't do us any good to re-light the sun and burn ourselves up in the process.”

“How long do you expect this to take?” Steady asked respectfully.

Shining felt that familiar swell of pride and... other things, as he waited for her answer.
“If we work diligently? A little over a month. The repairs to the sun might take less time, but we need the evener to work before the sun will do us any good. Just imagine trying to carry it by hoof; even the reflective shields wouldn't help us at the center of a tornado made of fire.” They all winced as they remembered what the sun had done when brought near the ground.
“And while we unicorns and earth ponies will be busy down here, don't think your team is off the hook.” she continued with a smile at Steady. “We'll be relying on you to bring down the supplies, cook meals, keep an eye on the cave and monitor the conditions outside.”

There was a clopping sound, and they all turned to turned to Sand Storm who, for once, looked reserved, even unsure as he called out to the darkness,
“Meaning no offense, but... why would we look around the cave? It's not likely to change is it?”

Shining shook her head,
“I hope you're right, Sand Storm, but I'm not giving your team busy work. We'll need at least one way to reach the surface once it's time to light the sun, and until then, we need to keep the warm air and water in here with us. That means following all the different tunnels until we've got a decent map of this place. I've already shown Pie how to do the bubble shield, and we'll make a trip out to the surface every few days to keep track of what's going on. In the mean time, I suggest the three of you find some paper and start mapping this place. We may need to block or use some tunnels in a hurry soon, and we'll need to know where.

…

The days underground passed slowly. Dropping the sun into a snowbank had indeed caused deep and pervasive cracking through the sun stones, necessitating re-heating and sealing work, as well as patches to the spells within.

Three days into their repairs, Pie and Squall took the long tunnel up to the surface, but one attempt to move the door block showed it was frosted tightly in place.

“Don't,” Pie held out a hoof to stop Squall as he lined up for a hard buck, “Let me form the bubble and we can teleport to the outside.”

Squall looked at her in surprise,
“You can do that?”

Pie shrugged sheepishly,
“Well... yeah. There wasn't a lot to do in that basket while we were flying with the sun, so Shining taught me a few tricks. It takes a lot out of me to go very far, but for a short hop to the other side of a wall? That's nothing.”

Squall snuggled up next to her as the glowing bubble formed around them, and with a 'snap!' they teleported outside.

The landscape looked very different than they had expected. The green glow from Squall's chemical lamp cast a small circle of light around them, but for the first time since the lost of the sun they found they could really see the landscape. The clouds were gone overhead, though some still lingered far away on the southern horizon, and the mountain side around them was bathed in a soft moon-like light.

They both knew it wasn't moonlight.

Instead of a ghostly white light of sun reflected off of the white moon, the light around them now was tinged a sick yellow. The source of the light looked about the same size as the moon, but when they stared hard the truth was clear to see. This was the light of the sun, but stripped of all power to warm or even light their world. The air outside their bubble was almost perfectly clear, but a careful eye could catch the tiniest of snowflakes, seemingly appearing out of the air itself and drifting southward, always southward as they floated slowly to the ground.

“So it's really happening... That's... that's dry ice snow...” Pie finished in a whisper as she rubbed up against Squall. “It's got to be at least seventy-five degrees below zero out here!”

Despite the heat of their little bubble, both ponies couldn't help but shiver as they took in the frozen scenery around them under the weak light of their dim sun. After a long moment, Squall spoke quietly,
“We should go back down and tell the others. We have to hope we can get the sun going before this reaches all the way south...”

Pie looked up at him, her eyes watering as she tried not to cry,
“But what if we can't?! What if we get done too late?! I... I'm scared, and... and I don't know if I can do this.”

As she turned away, Squall gently put a hoof under her chin and brought her face up to his,
“You can do this, Pie. I've met a lot of ponies in my life, but I've never seen any mare as brilliant and capable as you.”
Bringing their muzzles together, he kissed her, long and slowly, and after a moment, her wide eyes closed and she returned his affections.
“Thank you, Squall... That... means a lot to me right now.”

The two of them stared into each other's eyes a moment longer, then vanished with a 'Snap!', leaving behind a small round depression in the snow cover where they had stood.

...

The calm warmth of the steamy cavern was shattered by loud cursing as Shining hurtled another failed evener stone into the mist.
“Buck it all! That's the third one we've carved today and the damn thing still won't channel a spell properly!”

Pie, Spec and Flare were dimly visible, leaning against a wall, their exhausted expressions beginning to register irritation.
“Shining, we've been at this all day! Let's leave it until the morning and get some rest.”

Shining wheeled on Spec, her anger raging as she shouted,
“Morning?! What morning?! We're trapped down here, hiding in this cave while our friends are out there, trying to stay alive!”

“You think we don't know that?!” Flare spat back as she stepped protectively in front of Spec, “She's doing the best she can, but your raging and working everyone until you can't see straight isn't helping!”

Shining glared at the pegasus for a moment, then closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath.
“I'm sorry, it's... It's just... hard.”

“Why don't you let her try?”

All those assembled looked in surprise at Sand Storm, his one hoof resting on Verdant as he led her forward towards the sound of their voices.
“She's been working with me on re-growing my eyes, and I can already see blurry shapes again... She's really amazing, and I think she can help.”

The sight of Verdant leading the blind soldier around was one they had gradually grown accustomed to as the days had turned into weeks, but to see him leading her forward, blushing with embarrassment... that was something new.

“Please Sand, I... I don't know if I can-”

“Hey, now, none of that.” Sand admonished softly, feeling for her head, then turning it to face him. “You are special. You're the most special pony I've ever met, and I don't care who knows it. Just ask Shining to explain what she needs, and I'll bet you can help them.”

Shining's expression had changed from irritation to thoughtful contemplation as he spoke, and as Verdant stepped slowly forward, Shining grabbed her sketchbook and began leafing through it.
“Okay, the basic principle we're using is based on the spell of averages: we need the heat of the sun to be spread out evenly over large area.”

Verdant nodded,
“Well yes, that shouldn't be hard, we just need two orbiting spherical moon stones.”

“Good, you're getting this now. But think of what would happen if we rigged it to heat evenly over an area?”

Verdant's brow creased in thought, then her eyebrows shot up.
“Oh! If we heat evenly, then we'd wind up cooking ourselves too!”

“Now you've got it.”

“So we need the evener to cap out at body temperature or just below?”

“Yes, good, but what happens if you walk into the field with cold hooves?”

“Well, they'd instantly heat up to body- oh... yeah, that could cause serious damage, like dunking a hypothermia victim in a hot tub.”

“Exactly, so it has to stop heating around, say, 20 to 25 degrees, or about room temperature, but it also has to be controllable. Let's say you were trying to walk across a frozen lake?”

“Okay, so it has to heat to 20 to 25 degrees C, but we have to be able to change the output of the sun too.”

“You got it.” Shining stated grimly, “We need a thermostat control, a shape and area size control, and a total power output control. We had one buck of a time just getting it to light back home, and we forgot the on/off switch. This is going to be a very complicated control spell, and it also has to last.”

Verdant was looking daunted now as she asked,
“How long?”

Shining looked at her levelly.
“If this dimming of the sky is caused by an interstellar dust cloud, then this sun may have to burn without failure or breakdown for several hundred years. The penalty for a breakdown could be the extinction of our species.”

Pie snorted.
“No pressure, right Shining?”

Verdant missed the comment as she seemed to be thinking quickly.
“What about a ring?”

“A ring?”

Verdant was picking up confidence as the continued,
“Yes, a ring! A large flat disk around the entire diameter of the sun! We could load it with all the main spells, then introduce or remove the moons as a way of controlling the details. That way, the ring acts as the interface between the easily programmable moon stones, and the stubborn but durable obsidian sun stones.”

Pie was nodding approval as she stated slowly,
“That could really work...”

Shining was still fixing the earth pony with a level gaze.
“Yes, it definitely could, and we would help you program the spells. But we can't make an obsidian ring in the size we would need, let alone with enough precision to carry that many spells.”

Verdant smiled warmly at her.
“Well, I can. It will take a couple of days, and I'll have to bring some of the right magma to the surface, but I can definitely grow you an evener ring.”

Sand Storm felt his way forward and put a foreleg around her shoulders.
“That's the mare I know.” Pie and Spec smiled at the two of them as Sand suddenly swept the larger pony off her hooves, dipped and kissed her. The slight tremor in Sand's forelegs was the only sign he gave of her greater weight, and Verdant relaxed and returned his embrace.

…

That evening, after most of the others had wandered off to their beds, Shining gave a long yawn and finally put down the slightly soggy notebook she had been sketching in. It had been a long, productive day, and it had left her exhausted as such days usually did. The fact that they were beginning to lose touch with the celestial rhythms as they sky grew dark, and that this 'day' had been almost twenty-six hours long didn't help matters.

With a groan, she pushed herself to her hooves, lit her horn, and walked down the trail to the right, marked here and there with small colored stones to keep a pony from getting lost in the endless steam. Before long she came upon two sleeping mats laid a pony's length apart.

“Time to call it a night?” Steady asked as he quickly tucked a borrowed textbook away under his mat.

Shining nodded and collapsed onto her own bed in a heap,
“Yes. I know better than most how long this is going to take, but some days...”

Steady smiled softly as he fished for something in his saddlebags.
“Some days you look at the work ahead of you and want to throw up your hooves and go home?”

Shining sighed and rolled over to look at him.
“I know, I know; we're doing this so we can have a home to go back to... It's how I can keep up these hours, but that doesn't make it easy.”

Steady found what he was looking for and pulled the horn cap from his bag, eliciting an obstinate look from Shining.
“Hey, I'm not thrilled about this either, but are you really willing to risk all our lives on making it through the night without another nightmare?”

Shining glared at him for another moment before lowering her head with a sigh, grumbling;
“They're not nightmares, they only happen when I wake up.”

Steady walked over and slipped the horn cap into place, gently buckling the strap under her chin as he asked,
“I've been wondering about that ever since we met; You're one of the strongest ponies I've ever met, yet your claustrophobia...” She looked up at him again, her stern expression somehow more tender for the strap dangling under her chin. “I'm not trying to pry, I just... I'd really like to get to know you better. I've worked with a lot of mares before, but you're... different.”

Shining tried to hide her smile and maintain her stern expression as she asked; “Different?”

Steady blushed, but continued,
“Well, yes. Do you know how rare it is to meet a mare who's smarter and more knowledgeable than I am, but who doesn't outrank me, or look down on me for my family?”

A look of confusion crossed her face as Shining asked,
“Your family?”

“They were weather ponies,” he replied, a little defensively. After a moment he seemed to register her blank stare, and his own expression softened as he explained.
“The weather ponies that bring the rain to the Ep- er, earth pony farms are on one of the bottom levels of pegasi society, mainly because we have to have extensive dealings with earth ponies. Some weather ponies hold their prejudices close to their hearts, and they refuse to talk with the earth pony farmers, blaming them when things go wrong without taking any responsibility. Our family had one of the best crop yields in the valley because we listened and worked with the earth ponies to deliver the right amount of water to the right place when it was needed. They taught us what kind of weather and how much sun was best for each crop, and we gave them what they needed to succeed.”

He sighed and sat back down as he continued,
“Of course that meant a lot more work for us, and even some of the other weather ponies hated us for it. We broke with tradition and shamed them with our results. The long days also meant that while the foals of military families could attend school for the whole term, I had to complete the whole term in a fraction of the normal time. My parents were always there to help with the homework, but the planting and harvests weren't going to wait, so we all made sacrifices.”

He smiled at a pleasant memory as he continued,
“Now, eventually, all that rushed studying proved invaluable. When I applied to the force, I was lumped in with a bunch of other green recruits, but by the time we finished our entrance exams and courses of study, I had already earned two promotions, and that kind of set the stage for everything after that.”

Shining found herself smiling as she looked up at him,
“That sounds like so much fun... hard work and sunshine during the day and studying at night with a family that loved you...” She shook her head and her smile faltered as she continued. “My parents were both wealthy aristocrats, but money doesn't always equate to a better life. Since the time I was old enough to remember, my mother despised my father, and my father had a well-earned reputation for drinking and chasing anything on four legs. Mother did what she could to ensure I would have a future despite his... proclivities, and that meant schooling. Endless hours of schooling and tutoring so I could make myself desirable to the rich stallions at court.”

"Education makes a mare attractive to unicorn stallions?" Steady sounded favorably surprised.

"Not exactly. Her theory was that my father had...well, she called it a devil inside him. When it made his poetry famous, that was all well and good, but when it made him erratic, impulsive...well, not so much. She thought that she could educate it out of me. If poetry and art made a pony into the biggest horndog this side of the Diamond Crater, well, surely pure mathematics and theoretical physics should leave a pony calm, collected, sensible...even loyal to one's family. Everything my father wasn't. That's the kind of mate she wanted me to be attractive to, so I could have a better life than she did."

Shining smiled ruefully as she continued.
“As you can see, things didn't go quite according to plan. It turned out I was good at physics and math. Really good. Before long, I had left the rest of my class long behind and was soaring off into higher maths, particle physics, nuclear chemistry, you name it. Stallions weren't attracted so much as, well...terrified. The same devil that made my father a hard-drinking sybarite with a taste for wenches, I have it too, but my drink is coffee and my wenches, such as they are, are theorems, proofs and experiments."

"I hardly think that's the same thing."

"Isn't it? I neglect people for my work the same way he neglected people for his poetry and mares. I have the same outbursts, the same black moods and giddy highs...it's just that within academia, that sort of thing passes for normal a bit better than it does at the Royal Court."

"I don't think that's a fair assessment. I've never seen you in a black mood yet, unless this one counts, and if ever a pony had a damn good reason..."

"I manage them by working, Steady. I work until I can't feel the pain anymore, and sooner or later I make a breakthrough and that's enough to justify the resulting highs to others. What began as an interest grew into a coping mechanism, then a way to hide in plain sight, then a lifestyle. And somewhere along the way I made a career out of what poor Mother intended to be an elaborate pickup line.”

Her face fell as she went on.
“I don't think either of them really understood what had happened, or who I grew up to be. I worked hard to make them proud of me, but the closest I ever got was the time in high school when I developed that lever-action wine bottle opener. Father carried it with him everywhere, and was always going on about his smart daughter who had invented it, but by that time he was on such a downward spiral that he didn't have many friends left to tell... The damnedest thing was, I ended up getting a patent for the thing, and until all this started,” she gestured at the cave around her, “I was still getting royalties from the design.”

“What kind of opener was it?”

“The one with the two arms that flap up and down as you move the plunger.”

Steady whistled in respect,
“Commander Hurricane has one of those! I had no idea you designed that!” He thought about it a little longer, a hoof under his chin as she smiled. “But I have to confess I still don't understand...” he trailed off, gesturing to the horn cap she wore to bed.

Shining sighed, but didn't dodge the question this time,
“You can thank Socks for that.”

Steady hadn't been ready for that segue.
“Socks?”

“My pet cat.” Shining clarified. “When I was still little, I found this adorable stray cat wandering the grounds, and I brought him into my room to feed and bathe him. He was little more than a kitten at the time, and in pretty poor shape, but I took care of him and nursed him back to health; I read all about cat biology and started sneaking him table scraps when Mother wasn't looking. I kept him secret for almost three weeks before my mother discovered him; she told me to put him in a pet carrier with a sheet over it and the servants would get him to the vet for a checkup. Well, Socks was a lot smarter than I was at the time, and he absolutely would not get into the carrier, so, the simplest solution to my mind was to climb into the carrier to show him it was okay.”

Shining swallowed hard and looked away as she continued,
“Well, when the servant came to take the carrier away, I thought it would be a fun prank to go instead and find out what a vet was like, so I stayed quiet while he loaded the carrier onto a cart with me in it and drove off. The 'vet' he took me to turned out to be an animal shelter. With the dogs and cats making such a racket ,I started to get scared, especially after he set down the carrier on a shelf in the back room and left me there. I couldn't see everything through the little air holes in the carrier, but I could make out the white walls, floor, and a lot of other carriers lined up next to mine with kittens and puppies in them.
“It didn't take long for the animal warden to return, and I watched as he took the cat out of the first carrier and put her into the gas chamber. I listened as the scratching got weaker and weaker, and then stopped altogether, her little tail giving one last twitch before she closed her eyes forever. The next one was a puppy, and the little thing practically leapt from his crate to lick the unicorn. He looked so sad as he put the little thing into the next chamber and moved on to the third carrier. I couldn't move, I couldn't make a sound, all I could do was huddle in the back of that tiny space, shivering in terror and watching as the little gray puppy scratched plaintively at the glass, and whined, then whimpered and eventually stopped moving.
“When the animal warden reached out to open the door on my crate I screamed. I don't remember all of what happened after that, but they say the explosion embedded pieces of the carrier into the ceiling and singed the walls black as I ran for cover. It took them quite a while to figure out what had happened, but they eventually discovered me in a tree outside, some three stories up, hanging on for dear life and crying for my mom.”

Steady's eyes had gone wide as she finished,
“Sweet buck!”

“My parents weren’t much help either; when I had turned up missing, they each blamed the other for losing me, and by the time the animal warden had recovered from his heart attack, brought me down out of the tree and taken me home, the two of them were railing against each other with everything they had. He dropped me off with the servants and left it at that, though in retrospect, I can't really say that I blame him.”

She turned to look at him again,
“So that's where I got my claustrophobia from. Academically I know what happened, and that it has nothing to do with our present situation, but whenever I get into too tight a spot I can feel that mindless terror just pushing at the back of my mind. I do what I can to be strong, but I don't know if I'll ever get over this.”

Steady reached out and gently took her hoof in his.
“Thank you for telling me this, I know this can't be an easy story to tell, but I'm glad you trust me enough to let me know.”

"Well, and they did let me keep my cat after that," Shining smiled. "Provided I met them at the door to my room with enough completed homework or finished research to use up all the available interest they had in me for the day, they wouldn't even see him. I negotiated with the servants for his food and found enough other students who needed homework done for them to cover the expense of his veterinary care, and after that, things were much better."

"How did you negotiate with the servants? Wouldn't they just bring you cat food if you asked?"

"I thought of that, but then Mother might have seen the line-item in the budget. So I approached the butler and housekeeper with an offer. No more sliding down banisters, I'd tidy away my own breakfast and tea things and bring them downstairs rather than requiring a maid to get them and I'd stop ordering meals. They could just prepare whatever the downstairs staff were having and the savings in preparation time and ingredient cost, as well as work hours, should free up enough to conceal the expense of Socks' little cat dinners."

"And they accepted that?" Steady smiled, imagining a studious little filly approaching a stern, pompous butler.

"They did. Of course, Mrs. Chatelaine pointed out that I had ordered the same thing for tea for the past three years and Pennyworth said that nobody minded the banisters, but that's just the kind of ponies they were. I wanted to thank them, so after I'd gotten Socks' vet needs taken care of, I saved up and got Mrs. Chatelaine some new scissors, exactly the kind the maids said she'd been looking at in a catalog for a year or so. Thing was, they cost more than I expected, and I wanted to have something for Pennyworth, so I took my science fair project on levers and screws, reworked it a little and took the drawings to a blacksmith in Iron Street and paid him to make me one."

"That was the wine-bottle opener?"

"Yes. Pennyworth loved it, said it made things much easier. I know now that he was struggling to hide his rheumatism, and the opener bought him more time, I think, though after my father's worst debts came to light, Mother would never have given Pennyworth the sack, not when he hadn't had a raise in so long. Anyway, the dear old chap persuaded me to submit it for patent, even brought me the forms and personally bought the stamp, and what with a long career in butlering, he knew just which companies to submit the notion to. It was in production before too long, and even if my father didn't open his own wine until, well...until things got the better of him, I think he was still pleased to have a bright daughter." She sighed a little. "But it was really for Pennyworth, come to think of it. I actually miss him and Mrs. Chatelaine a lot more than I've ever missed my parents."

"I do have to ask one question, Shining," Steady frowned a little. "You still remember your old butler and housekeeper, how is it that you didn't even know Verdant's name?"

Shining blushed.

"That is a failing of mine. I'm not very good with names, and when I know people in a work context, I don't always take the time to get to know them as well as I should. There's also been a bit of a problem, probably also my fault...I've had a bit of turnover in terms of assistants."

"Turnover? You mean the inventor of the artificial sun, who forgot to mention not to cross the beams, let alone building in a fail-safe, has trouble keeping an assistant?"

"I've had them last longer than four months before," Shining frowned defensively. "Verdant has been the most loyal, though, and she's really amazing at what she does. After awhile, I actually felt too embarrassed to ask her name. She had been with me so long, and I really did feel more comfortable with her than the silly unicorn undergraduates the university used to send me."

"I feel embarrassed we called her 'the Ep' for so long."

"Well, I tried not to, but when I used the servants' names at university, ponies used to make fun of me. Servants one knew, it's okay to use their names, of course, but learn the name of your scout at Oxford and you're either hopelessly lonely or sentimentally liberal to your classmates."

"Your scout?"

"Kind of like a maid-of-all-work in a university setting."

"...What's a maid-of-all-work?"

"You know, not a ladies' maid or a chambermaid or a kitchenmaid, but one who does a little of everything. I had a maid-of-all-work after leaving the nursery and never gave her up. Mother said I might keep her if I liked, but I could never have a ladies' maid. They might be able to style your mane, but I've never met one who even knew how to clean the beakers and flasks without making a ghastly mess or an explosion."

"That explains a little about you, I suppose."

"What do you mean?"

"Verdant was going to steal your clothes last night. Pie stepped in and did it, since she knows how to sew a button as well and we really can't waste Verdant's time with the laundry, not when she's our only CB."

"Oh. Did they need a wash?"

"You'd been in them for a week, they were missing six buttons and one of the elbows was actually worn transparent."

"...Oh." Shining went red. "That. I do have a bit of the poor-little-rich-girl incompetence."

"I think you just forget to change clothes, or eat, or anything when you're working."

"I really do. It was so much easier when I had Sylvie."

"Sylvie, your ladies' maid?"

"Maid-of-all-work, she'd remind me, but I liked her as much as a ladies' maid," Shining sighed. "But then I would've had to call her by her surname and that simply wouldn't do. 'Growth' sounded too much like asking a tumor to please see to the acetylene burner and brush the dust out of the wind tunnel. Sylvan was just amazing when it came to laboratory work, and considering my room back home essentially was a laboratory, well...I was close to her. She made my father nervous no end and Mother seemed to quite like how uncomfortable he was with an earth pony maid helping his daughter with her studies. It was like Mother enjoyed it. Sometimes at meals she'd ask how Sylvan was working out and I'd just gush about how much I liked her...sometimes it'd even make Father leave the table."

Steady Hoof was now staring at Shining Mind in shock. Could she actually be that dense?

"So this Sylvan, your maid, she was an earth pony?"

"Yep. Worked on our family's manor, as had her parents before her. My mother hired her and had her trained as a maid-of-all-work a little after her child arrived."

"Her child." Steady's voice was stern, irritated with how Shining seemed to be missing the obvious.

"Yep. Whose name I never could bring myself to ask," Shining Mind sighed. "It was bad enough that the half-sisters Father acknowledged wanted nothing to do with me, but knowing my best friend in that house had a little filly just a little older than I was, whom I'd never be allowed to play with or get to see, well...it stung less if I didn't know her name. That way I could imagine how strong and brave she'd be, how she'd always love to hear about my experiments and care what I was up to. In my imagination, she was like a real sister, a big sister, and I'd sometimes tear or burn the covers of textbooks so Mother would buy me another and Sylvie could take the damaged ones to her daughter.

"I thought when I finally met her, that we could be friends, that she'd be everything I'd ever imagined...and somehow, in all the wonderful things I was imagining about her, I completely forgot she'd be an earth pony. So when the university said I could have my choice of earth pony assistants for the fall term, I was expecting just another Ep, and in walked the younger double of dear old Sylvie...well, Sylvie without the scar.

"I knew she knew who I was and she knew I knew who she was. I had hoped she would greet me by name, we'd be friends in a minute and...she just looked at her hooves and waited for me to speak to her. Like I was no better than my parents, no different from any other damn unicorn who wouldn't know a Fournier transform if he met it in the street and needs a compass and a team of Sherpas to find his own asshole with both hooves!

"So I just said 'let's get started,' and put her to work without saying anything. I was so disappointed that the pony I'd always imagined was just another Ep, beaten down and just as ignored as I was, but instead of making a new home with science, just...accepting her fate."

"...But then she stood up to you," Steady smiled.

"Yeah, she did," Shining sighed, a sad smile on her face. "And by now, it is far too late for us to ever be friends."

"Not necessarily," the pegasus officer patted the bookish unicorn on the withers. "Suppose we do get the sun up and running again, you two will be heroines. Maybe then you can go back, find Sylvan Growth and-"

"She died the year I got tenure," Shining's head went down. "Verdant showed up for work ten minutes after Pennyworth's letter came, eyes red, but still, she set to work preparing the things for the morning's experiment. Like my stupid experiment mattered more than her own mother's funeral. I lost my temper and told her to get out and go home for the day. She looked at me like I was nuts and saw I'd been crying too, and...well, and then Pie and Spec came in, so I acted like I was angry about revisions and gave everyone the day off with pay." The gray unicorn sighed, her dark mane tangling around the horn cap. "If I could've just stopped being such a...such a stupid sparklefart!"

"...A what now?"

"It's a bad word for unicorn. If calling an earth pony an 'Ep' or a pegasus a 'featherbrain' is bad, this is...I think it's roughly on par with 'digger' or...or 'flappybutt.'"

"Flappybutt?"

"You've never heard that one?"

"No, I cannot say I have ever heard a pegasus called a flappybutt. Not outside of a preschool," Steady snorted, ruffling Shining's mane a little. The corner of her mouth turned up a little bit underneath her sad eyes.

"...I'm not good at swears."

"You're not good at certain pony skills, is all. You're good at science, mathematics and working hard. If you're on a team with someone else who can handle the pony skills part, you'll be okay," Steady smiled, a little sadly. "And you are trying. You're getting better than you were when I first met you, and if there's one way to tell the value of a pony, it's whether or not they can improve."

"I'm just doubtful as to whether I'll be able to improve fast enough to get the team through this. I mean, we've got a lot riding on the ring for the sun just now. Only the entire future of our entire world. It's...I just kind of wish a better pony could've gotten the job, is all."

"You'd rather be dead in your home city while some spikehead with more people skills than brains bucked the dog up here?" Steady frowned. "Far as I know, you're the best pony for this job, and while you don't know it, you're a lot better than you know."

"You clearly don't see what I do to ponies around me," Shining glared down at her own hooves.

"I clearly do see what you inspire the ponies around you to do. We all struggle to keep up with your working pace, you're quick to take over for others when they're feeling the strain and now that you and Verdant are on an equal footing, the two of you are doing more than I've seen a science division get done, and in half the time." The pegasus frowned. "And the sooner you realize that you're worth something, not for who you were back there or for what you've been trying to be, but for who you are, right now and what you mean to these ponies, on this mission...well...that's when I think those black moods of yours will get a little more manageable."

"You aren't trying to tell me they'll magically go away?" Shining smiled ruefully.

"You're not the first pony to have that hereditary devil somewhere in your family tree, you know. If it makes any difference, I think you've found one of the healthier ways to deal with it I've ever heard of."

"It does tend to make things work...until I drop."

"So drop, if you need to. That's why I'm here...to catch you."

Their eyes met and held...for just a second.

"Now get some sleep, sparklefart. That's an order." And Steady Hoof marched off to his own sleeping bag, wishing there was some way to comfort the claustrophobic unicorn without risking the collapse of an entire mountain if things went wrong. Or worse...losing their working relationship.

Shining Mind wasn't exactly good at swears, but the metaphors she growled into her pillow about ornery flappybutt pegasi commanders were pretty explicit. So explicit that after a few minutes she stopped cursing, blushed violently red and drifted off to sleep still trying to figure out how you could resent someone so much and still feel so strange every time he was anywhere near her, let alone where these bizarre thoughts were coming from.