Track 1: Slave To The Grind
For the third day in a row, Flash Sentry stopped short as he turned to step away from the cafeteria counter. His grip on the tray full of alleged food was tenuous, enough so that an apple tumbled over the edge.
He didn’t notice it. He was too busy noticing her.
Twilight and her friends sat at a table on the far side of the busy cafeteria. Only it wasn’t Twilight; it was someone who looked like her, and sounded like her, and smelled like her, and had the same friends…
He squeezed his eyes shut, turned, and set his foot down on the apple.
Flash landed hard on his butt. He had barely a moment to register the pain before he saw his tray heading skyward. A few kids on the lunch staff screamed and tried to dodge the globs of foodstuff flying toward them. The sound drew everybody else’s attention. Then the splattering began; all over Flash and the surrounding area.
Someone laughed. Then someone else did. Pretty soon the whole room had joined in.
Flash climbed to his feet, cast one last glance at Twilight’s table—Fantastic, she noticed—shoved his hands into his pants pockets, and made a beeline for the nearest exit.
The laughter climaxed as he neared the door. He threw his weight against it. An earsplitting alarm sounded as he pushed through and stumbled out into the parking lot.
“Well that’s just great,” he muttered under his breath, finally noticing the emergency exit sign staring him right in the face. He looked back and watched as the teaching staff began to herd the horde of laughing teens toward him. He resigned himself to looking like an idiot and rested his back against the door, holding it open.
Every single kid at Canterlot High passed him, looked at him, and continued laughing as they made their way to the designated emergency meeting spot at the other end of the parking lot.
...Until the ones he dreaded most came out as well. Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Sunset Shimmer, and painfully-not-Twilight filed through the doors. They lingered near him in a cluster, all giving him similar looks of uncertainty.
He sighed and decided he’d better say something before one of them did. “It was an accident. I’m sorry. I’m just… not all together lately. I’ll be fine.”
The girls exchanged looks he couldn’t read. Sunset Shimmer turned toward him. “Flash…”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to do this, Sunset.”
She frowned and turned back to the others. “Give me a minute here.” They each nodded, glancing at Flash Sentry again before walking toward the rest of the school kids.
He rubbed his eyes. “I said…”
He opened them and saw that she was standing closer to him than he’d expected. She looked up at him with those light-blue eyes that he’d always found hard to resist.
She smiled. It was friendly—only friendly. “Come on Flash, I know you. It seems like you’re still hung up on Twilight even though we talked things over at Camp Everfree?”
Flash shrugged. “I know, but it’s not that easy to let go.” He chuckled a little. “And it’s still kind of awkward, you and me talking about me and her.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “What could be awkward? We dated, we broke up... we were on opposite sides of an attempt to mind-control the student body…”
He laughed. “You’re right. What’s awkward about that?”
Her smile faded. “Flash, you know she isn’t your Twilight.”
Flash kicked at the ground. “It kinda seems like I don’t have a Twilight.” He met Sunset’s eyes. “What? I mean, she’s cute and all, but she has a life on the other side of the statue. Mirror. Whatever.” He sighed. “And whatever that is, it kinda seems to keep her busy.”
Sunset nodded gravely, before breaking into a grin. “Plus, you realize she’s a horse, right?”
Flash smiled back at her. “Yeah, well, I guess I’m zero-for-two on the whole horse-woman thing.”
She gave him a playful slug on the shoulder. “The term is mares, you dork.” She pursed her lips. “Do you remember when we broke up? How you’d go and play those awful death-rock-punk songs really loud, over and over?”
He furrowed his brow. “How do you know about that? I did that after hours at school, all alone...”
Sunset cleared her throat. “I may have been a little stalkerish at times.” She looked at the ground. “But that’s all behind me now.”
Flash started to reach a hand toward her, but then stopped. “So you’re saying I should do that again? Just hole up and rock out on my guitar until I feel better?”
She shrugged. “Being alone isn’t always the best way to get better. You might want to try something a little bit different this time. They do an open mic night at the cafe down by the community college most Fridays.…”
He laughed. “Oh sure, I bet the college kids would love to get a chance to hear some high school senior crash their party with a solo-guitar rendition of obscure rock and metal songs that are older than either them or us.”
Sunset smiled. “Well, when you put it that way, who could resist?”
Limestone lowered the jackhammer into position on the long vein of granite. She paused, spat in her palms, then tensed her bare arms against the sides of her overalls.
She threw a quick glance back at the rest of her “team.” Limestone’s terracotta-skinned father stood next to the jagged face of the quarry pit, wiping rock dust from his hands onto his rough jeans and red flannel shirt. He looked up, met her eyes, and gave her a confident, stiff-lipped nod.
Limestone’s youngest sister, light-grey of both skin and hair, slouched next to him. Her shoulders drooped as she pressed her hands tightly over her ears, making her long, featureless dress look even more like a potato sack.
Limestone sneered. “Useless Marble,” she muttered before gritting her teeth and thumbing the jackhammer’s starter. A bone-shaking sensation of sinew versus stone traveled up her arms and rippled down her body. Limestone snarled with joy as she watched the flecks of stone begin to fly. She leaned harder on the jackhammer, pressing with all her strength, even letting it caress her stomach for a moment as she drove it through the rock below.
Limestone startled at the sudden feeling of a hand on her shoulder. The jackhammer punished her momentary loss of concentration by kicking up and out of the small hole she’d cleared. Her grip slipped, and the tool juddered upright for a moment before falling to the earth, still chattering. She vaulted over the fallen jackhammer and began a stream of curses that continued flowing several moments after she’d managed to turn it off.
Limestone slowly looked around, noticing her father’s look was edged with disapproval, and spotting Marble curled-up in a ball on the ground. She also realized that the newcomer who’d put a hand on her was Maud, her immediate-younger sister, who sported a mid-length, plain denim dress. It was representative of her sense of style, which might be charitably considered ‘unique.’
Limestone bared her teeth. “What are you doing here, Maud? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of dealing with a problem?”
“I wouldn’t call finding this much salable granite in one place a ‘problem,’” Maud said.
“Yeah right, like I’m going to run a side business doing kitchen counters.” Limestone spat into the vein. “I’ve lost the better part of two days trying to work my way around this crap, and I’ve had it. I’m cutting through.”
Maud cocked her head. “I don’t think that’s going to work. The relative hardness of your cutting blade isn’t enough.”
“What?! Of course it is! This blade is pure carbide!”
Maud bent down and studied it. “This is carbide-coated steel. You can see the coating starting to wear down at the tip.”
Limestone didn’t bother to look; she knew Maud wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Instead, she roared and threw her gloves down at the jackhammer, then turned and stomped off down the mile-long gravel path from the quarry proper to the family’s two-story home.
There was a sound of crunching rocks beside her. Limestone scowled at her sister. “Don’t you have college to be dealing with?”
“I always come home on the weekend.”
Limestone hesitated. “It’s Friday already? Ugh, where’d the week go?!”
Maud said nothing, but nodded back toward the quarry pit.
The two walked silently for a time; Maud at first exerting herself to keep up with Limestone’s angry march, then falling into step more naturally as Limestone’s breathing and pace gradually returned to normal.
Limestone gave Maud a sidelong frown. “Well, aren’t you going to lay into your sales pitch about how ‘awesome’ college is?”
“If you like,” Maud said as they stepped into the house’s shadow. “It’s pretty much the bomb.”
“You wouldn’t know a bomb if it hit you straight between the eyes,” Limestone muttered.
Maud blinked. “Of course not. I would probably be dead.”
“Maud, just… stop, okay?” Limestone clenched her grimy hands into fists, then paused, and wiped them on her rock-dust-laden overalls. “This place has everything I need. I’ve got food, shelter, a good job, and I can keep an eye on our folks as they start getting older.”
“They married young. They just turned forty.”
“Whatever!” Limestone trudged up to the door. “So you’re here for the weekend. Why do you have to come out to the quarry and bother me when you know I’m busy?”
“You and Pinkie said you’d watch me read my poetry when I was ready.”
And there it was; most people probably wouldn’t notice the change in Maud’s demeanor, but Limestone knew the telltale signs and read them loud and clear: the eyes cast ever-so-slightly downward; the mild rounding of her shoulders; and the almost imperceptible tightening of her lips.
Limestone sighed. “What do you need us for? They’ve got shrinks on your campus, right? If you don’t ‘feel’ like you can share your ‘art’, then why don’t you go talk to one of them?”
Maud met her gaze. “On the off-chance that I did happen to suffer from anxiety or a related disorder, that’s possibly the least sensitive way that you could talk to me about it.”
“Yeah, well, remind me how all that denial helped you ‘fake it til you make it’ with that boy you had a crush on in high school.”
There was a long and uncomfortable pause. Maud took a deep breath before answering: “He was unavailable. And I’m not the one of us who’s living in denial.”
Limestone gritted her teeth. “Yeah, you’re the one who’s going off to college and living your dream, or whatever. Someone had to stay behind and help Dad run the quarry! And I didn’t exactly see you volunteer!”
Maud’s gaze was impassive, as always. “I asked him if he wanted me to stay.”
Limestone’s tirade faltered. She took a breath, trying to recover her momentum. “And?”
“He said no.”
“I…” Limestone stared back down the path to the quarry, tensing her fists. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I guess… I just assumed.”
There was a subtle shift in Maud’s jaw. “I think you like to make assumptions because you’re afraid people have bad intentions, and you’re even more afraid to find out if they really do.”
Limestone opened her mouth, but then sighed and closed it again, stuffing her hands into the oversized front pocket of her overalls. “Yeah, well, since when did you turn into a psych major? I thought you were going for geology.”
“I don’t have to declare until Spring, so for now I’m embracing a classical liberal arts approach to my education.”
Limestone sighed and looked down at herself. “All right, you quit rubbing it in and I’ll come to your dumb reading.”
Maud’s lips curled a few millimeters upward. “Thanks, big sis. You’re the best.”
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I like this Maud.
Well, Maud would have to take a number of general education courses and electives so she is free to look at subjects other than geology. Also, what were you thinking Limestone? You should know what type of equipment you have! You could have jacked up the jackhammer.
Poor Flash. Why hasn't anybody told him that he sounds like Bob Dylan trying to sing Metal? Don't believe me? Here's his first band:
The fact that we've only seen Limestone once in the show aside,it's nice seeing some interaction with her and Maud. And I'm always up for Flash angst.
An odd pairing, but I'll bite. Well written so far.
Wait. LIMESTONE is the oldest here? Huh. That’s different. I always thought of Maud as the oldest.
8549061
Thanks for reading! As for their relative ages, I go with Nick Confalone's interpretation:
"I won't be the one left behind" just got a lot more ouch. Poor Limestone
I like this. Flash is clear-cut and draws attention, and the prose suits the Pie Sisters well.
I love Maud's comedy.
and don't you forget it!
really enjoying introducing the Pie sisters and their personalities through their dress
auaugh i love her so much
i really love the way you wrote the relationship between Maud and Limestone, and the respective complexes each of the sisters bring to it. they are both just drawn so very well here, the tension that comes from being very different and extreme personalities while still having that backing of that sisterly bond that feels very real. a very impressive start! i can tell i'm in for a good one.