The Foreign Account

by DynamicEquilibrium115

III

Mind’s Eye, a senior clerk of Lord Goldenhoof’s Building Commission, was supposed to be in the thoroughly urbanized city of Port Maresby, meeting and discussing with clients the plethora of issues present with commerce on the island of Papua New Whinny.

Instead he was squatting in the mud near a collection of ragged leaf huts in the backwater village of Hornoka where he knew nobody. Except for a drug smuggler named Silver Slider.

Said drug smuggler was on the other hand quite jovial, and not at all perturbed of the caravan’s misdirection, even sharing his bucket of small fish with Mind that he had purchased from the villagers. The sardine-like creatures were slimy and crunchy which Mind would have preferred cooked, or dead at any rate, but Silver explained that the fish cooked or dead were deadly poison.

“Oh bother,” Mind whined in between bites of fish, “I should be at the Commission office in Port Maresby right now, enjoying some fine cheese and perhaps a glass of wine.”

“I buy my stuff in the north and sell it in the south,” shrugged Silver. “You have to be more flexible my friend.”

Mind sighed, after the recent downpour his coat was damp with dirty rainwater that left him chilled to the bone. Just sitting here pouting over his misfortune would do no good however, there was work to be done in the capital which could not commence in his current predicament. “My only business is in Port Maresby.” He said resolutely.

“Well, you have a couple of options” the Earth Pony replied. “Most villages on New Whinny don’t stay put for long. If you stay here you’ll have drifted down to the gates of Port Maresby in two or three months. That’d be the easiest choice.”

“That would put me far behind schedule.”

“Your next option,” he continued, “would be to join up with the caravan again. Only this time they might be going in the right direction, and they might not get stuck in the mud, and they might not all get murdered by swamp monsters.”

“Not tempting,” Mind frowned, “Anything else?”

“Ride the roots,” Silver smiled, “The Underground Express. Follow me.”

Mind followed Silver outside the village to the edge of the forest canopy. There, Silver started prodding the wet soil periodically with one hoof until a frothy mass of bubbles arose from the ground.

“Perfect.” He grinned and turned to face Mind. “The Underground Express will take you due South, that’s the post-winter migration. You’ll know you’re near Port Maresby when you begin to see lots of red clay, at that point look for a breathing hole to get out and you should emerge a short walk’s distance from the city gates.”

Mind gave him a confused look, the pony was talking perfect gibberish. “W-What?”

“Here,” Silver took hold of Mind and positioned him on top of the bubbly formation. Mind stared horror-struck at the Earth Pony as he began rapidly sinking into the muck.

“Now remember, wait until you see the red clay. Then just look for the bubbles and push up.”

Mind wriggled but the mud had already enveloped him up to his nose and he could only reply with an inarticulate noise that sounded something like “Oog.”

“And don’t worry about the fact that you’re being digested. You could live in rootworm’s belly for months.”

This was the last Mind heard before the ground swallowed his head, horn and all.

Suddenly Mind felt an all-encompassing warmth surrounding him and the rush of moving quickly forward. He opened his eyes and saw himself covered in a translucent goo that kept him suspended weightlessly among the intricate network of roots and mud. He felt confusion and euphoria in equal measures, like he was soaring across the night sky high above the earth and not beneath it in the Underground Express. Mind wasn’t quite sure what to make of the situation but fragments of what Silver Slider said reached his thoughts.

“Red clay…rootworm…you’re being digested…”

The words shook around inside his head, angrily pounding against his cranium trying to penetrate into a place they clearly weren’t welcome. But Mind knew it, he had gone from eating fish to being eaten alive as a means of transport. He was in one of those worms.

Mind’s Eye then made the executive decision to pass out.

***

He awoke in stages, amidst a dream of being held in a mare’s warm embrace. He smiled and opened his eyes only to be greeted with the crushing reality he was actually in.

The rootworm was still gliding madly forward, brushing past exposed roots and rocks with ease. Mind looked around and saw that he was surrounded by the red clay of the earth, at which point Silver’s words resurfaced about being close to Port Maresby. Now all he had to do was find the bubbles.

But there were no bubbles to be seen. Even as the worm rushed onwards, nothing but clay, dirt and rocks entered his view. Mind began to panic, what if he couldn’t find any bubbles? Would he suffocate down here and have his remains digested by the disgusting slimy creature he was in over the course of several months?

Mind began squirming, the increased pressure causing the rootworm to speed up, to get a better look ahead of him. There, not even fifteen feet ahead, rose a slim column of tiny bubbles that penetrated the surface. This was his chance.

Just as the creature passed underneath it, Mind pushed upward with his horn and burst through the worm’s thin skin, popping out of the ground amongst a sloshy pile of red mud.

Two gray zebras were nearby and looked with polite curiosity at the mud splattered unicorn erupting from the forest floor. Mind looked up from the dirt at them and saw one halfway up the tree, the other beneath it with a net into which furry rat-like creatures intermittently dropped from the leaves above. Although not educated in the practice Mind knew fishing when he saw it.

He approached the zebras with a smile. “Excuse me chaps,” he said affably, “I don’t suppose one of you could point me in the direction of Port Maresby?”

The zebras introduced themselves as Zebura and Zolo and looked at each other, puzzling over the question.

“Who is the one you seek?” Zolo asked.

“His name I believe is,” Mind replied thinking back to his long gone files of Papua New Whinny contacts in Port Maresby. “Shaka…Senzangakhona?”

Zebura nodded. “For five gold, show you way, but now we must leave, no delay.”

Mind thought that to be the best business he had heard in the past two days and promptly handed over five bits.

The zebras led Mind out of the forest canopy and onto a rocky, but firm, coastal road. Situated up behind the hills was a glorious expanse of water, the Bay of Tidore. Mind noted the magnificent walled estates whose edges sat perilously close to the cliffs and vast fields of plantations that stretched out onto the deforested plains.

As the side of the road pointing inland steepened Mind could hear the sound of rushing water from within, which Zolo explained was the Pongola River that flowed to inner Papua New Whinny. As Mind looked all around, admiring for the first time natural beauty that didn’t jeopardize his life, he caught himself thinking, “this is pretty.”

Closer inspection of the fields presented a shocking reailty. The ragged serfs tending the fields were malnourished and their few crops were as rotten as the produce present on the caravan. The thin weak zebras were near-death, and seemed more like ghosts than sentient beings of rational thought, it made Mind shiver.

After two or three hours of walking Mind could still see the regal accommodations tiny forms in the distance. He was tired, and horrified, of the infrastructure and environment of the island and utterly irritated with the inefficiency of everything. What should have been a short hike turned into a laborious trek unheard of in modern settlements.

“How much further?” Mind asked the zebras who looked at one another as if they never expected the question to come up.

“Shaka is near?” Zolo pondered. “Or far?”

Zebura shrugged ambiguously. “For five gold, show you way, but now we must leave, no delay.”

“You don’t even know, do you?” Mind cried. “If you had told me that up front I could have asked somebody else!”

The sound of hoof beats against the pavement up ahead became noticeable. Someone was coming.

Mind started towards the noise to hail the traveler, and missed Zolo’s reveal a glowing gem which spat a green orb of magic at him. Mind felt it though, the touch of ice across his spine locking it in place causing him to tumble to the ground unceremoniously, he was paralyzed.

Unfortunately for Mind, even though his body was unresponsive he could still think and witness everything going on around him. And the last thought that went through his head at that moment was, “Damn.” For Zolo and Zebura were, like many zebras on the island, cunning and opportunistic, and no friend of the unicorn.

The zebras shoved Mind to the side of the road and stood in the centre at attention. Over the bend came a zebra not like the two others. His coat was shining radiantly, matching the cloak draped behind his neck which drifted in the wind with a serene grace. “Greetings brothers!” the zebra regally addressed Zolo and Zebura, who bowed in response.

“Greetings Shaka Senzangakhona.” They said, “what is milord’s business on such a fine day?” Zebura added.

“No rest, no rest,” the Shaka sighed flamboyantly. “A she-worker of mine recently gave birth to twins. Twins! Fortunately there’s a trader in town for those and she didn’t put up too much of a fuss. Then, there’s this fool of a unicorn from Lord Goldenhoof’s Building Commission who I’m supposed to meet with in Port Maresby. I’m sure he’ll want the grand tour before opening the vaults for me. Such a load of fuss.”

Zolo and Zebura sympathised and exchanged farewells before watching the Shaka depart. Afterwards they headed back to retrieve their hostage.

However, gravity being the same on Papua New Whinny as everywhere else in Equestria, the unicorn, Mind’s Eye, had continued to fall down the slope where he'd been left and was presently in the Pongola River, drowning.