A Trip North: The Return
Sure enough, it was dark outside, almost as dark as it had been in the mine. Maybe darker; the mine had had lamps, but the village didn’t have street lights. Even so, it certainly felt brighter. Just the feel of the gentle wind blowing was a change from being inside the shaft.
Assay turned off to go to the rail siding, and Overburden followed her. Lignite didn’t choose to accompany them, which was fine; I'd seen the unloading arrangement before.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of space at the end of the shaft,” I said. “How do you have multiple miners all working down there at the same time?”
“Well, you’ve got to be friendly,” Longwall said, “’Cause it’s crowded pretty close. A lot of times, we’ll have one crew move in at a point, and then two on either side clearing behind them. Plus, there’s a lot of coal in the side shafts to get out, and so a coupla teams will work in those, too, until they’re played out.”
“Makes sense.”
“And we keep rotating, so nopony spends too much time with a pick or a shovel.”
“Another thing I was wondering about—how come it's so clean in there? I thought mines were really dusty places.”
“We have cleaning crews,” Lignite said. “Some of the foals that can't spend a whole day with a pickaxe or a shovel, plus there are some ponies who like sweeping. I guess it's kind of like chipping rocks, but with a broom.”
“Good ventilation's important, too,” Longwall added. “We didn't—I should have showed you. There's lots of different ventilation tunnels here and there to keep a bit of a breeze going. Sometimes on really still days, we've got to have a few ponies running the fans, but normally just a little wind does the trick.”
“The mine stays at about the same temperature all the time, but the air out here doesn't. So sometimes it wants to go up and sometimes it wants to go down, and as long as the dampers are set right, the wind practically makes itself.”
“Pegasi can help, too. The emergency ventilation shaft is strong enough to support a tornado,” Gytta said. “We've never had to use it for real, but we've practiced with it before.”
“Remember that one time the pegasi got too enthusiastic?”
Gytta nodded. “We spent the rest of the shift looking for our tools and hard hats. I think they'd have gotten it going fast enough to start pulling coal out, except that the pit boss yelled at them to stop when a shovel went through the mine office and stuck in the wall.”
That was something I would have liked to have seen. From a safe distance, of course.
“Oh, hey, Lignite, I forgot to tell you, Joe’s gonna get your bed tonight.”
“What?” She stopped so abruptly I had to grab on to the sides of the wagon, and then I suddenly found myself wondering why I was still in it. We weren’t in the mine any more; I could walk.
“Yeah,” Overburden said. “You’re the youngest, so you’ve got to give it up.”
“I can sleep on the floor, it’s fine.”
“You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
“You wouldn’t be so insistent if it was your bed,” Lignite said.
“Probably not. I get to make the rules, though.”
“Fine.” She shook her head. “I’m taking the extra blankets and making a pegasus nest, then.”
“That’s the spirit.”
***
It felt somehow wrong to watch Lignite and Assay get out of their harnesses. Like I had somehow stumbled into a woman’s locker room or something.
Which was weird; obviously, once they got out of their harnesses, they were only as naked as they normally were.
“You want to wash off? Me and the rest of the girls are going to rinse off in the town shower.”
“Uh. . .” I didn’t really have anything much with me—I’d thought that I’d be going back to Greenock tonight. Certainly, I didn’t have a change of clothes or even a towel.
Plus, I couldn’t help but imagine that the camp shower was much like the one I remembered from Boy Scout camp, just a series of fences around a bunch of showerheads, which wasn’t really my thing. “I . . . I didn’t really get all that dirty, you know? And, it was kind of overwhelming being underground.” That wasn’t actually a far stretch. “I think I’d rather stay out here, until you’re done.”
“Greenhorn,” Longwall said, but there was kindness in her voice. “That’s fine, just don’t go wandering off.”
“We don’t want to have to go searching for you,” Lignite said.
“Especially not down a ventilation shaft,” Gytta added. “Luna forbid you fall down one of those.”
* * *
Even though I couldn’t see it very well, I took the gem out to polish the rest of the grime off it. My sock was probably already ruined, but I used the grass to clean the gem just the same. There was no sense in making my sock any dirtier than it already was.
It was only when I held the gem up to study it that I remembered that some of the ponies might occasionally snack on the grass in the field, and hopefully they wouldn’t mind if it had a bit of a coal taste to it. They probably wouldn’t; surely everything in Pit Town had a bit of coal taste to it.
The gem glistened under the light of the stars, and looking at the moon through the edge I could see that it was, in fact, green.
I lost myself in its beguiling facets, turning it this way and that, looking through it at the stars and the windows of the village—and ultimately, the bemused face of Lignite.
“He’s just like a dragon starting his hoard.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have that,” Assay said. “We didn’t know that humans got all greedy when they got their paws on gems.”
“I’m not greedy,” I said defensively, but I didn’t put it down. “It’s just—I don’t think that there has ever been an emerald like this on Earth. Back in the old days, kings would have started wars to get their hands on this emerald.”
“Yup, he’s trying to hoard.”
“I’m not! I’m just telling you how it is.” I did put the emerald down. “I could never in my life afford to even touch a gem that beautiful. I can’t help it.” I thought for a moment. “It would be like if you came to Earth and saw one of our coal mines, maybe you’d be amazed and mesmerized by it.” Or, given the popularity of mountain top removal, maybe they’d be horrified. “Tell you what. I’d really like to look at it in the day, and then we’ll throw it on the gem pile. I can’t take it back to Earth with me anyway.”
“That’s fair,” Assay said.
“If you try to hoard it, I’ll buck you until you give it up,” Longwall promised.
“Deal.” I stuck out my hand, and she bumped it with her hoof.
* * *
I objected one more time to taking Lignite’s bed, but I got outvoted.
They had a large sleeping room on the upper floor of their house, which kind of reminded me of the Seven Dwarfs’ house. Lignite opened up a wooden chest and got out some heavy blankets, which I assumed were their winter blankets, and arranged them in a pile on the floor—her pegasus nest.
“Are you going to be okay walking back to Greenock tomorrow?” Longwall asked as I was getting into bed. “I can send Lignite with you, but then our crew would be short-hooved.”
“Yeah, I should be. Just stick to the main road, and I’ll get there eventually.”
“If you’re not sure—”
“I’m sure.” I felt like I was really imposing on them already. They were probably normally in bed long before now, but I’d wanted a tour.
* * *
Gytta talked in her sleep, and both Assay and Overburden snored. Lignite was an active sleeper, sometimes even sleep-trotting. Maybe she just wasn’t comfortable in her so-called pegasus nest. Only Longwall slept well--every time I opened my eyes during the night, she was in the exact same position, her chest rising and falling the only sign that she was still alive.
All five of them were up before the sun, and if I’d had any illusions of getting a decent night’s sleep, the five of them waking up shattered it. More specifically, Longwall shattered it.
I couldn’t blame her; she had probably forgotten that I was there. Sleeping in was a thing that ponies did, I'd thought; I’d been up before them yesterday.
“Wake up, everypony!” As a morning greeting, it was lacking, but I suppose if she did it every day she’d tend economize her words.
I expected a lot of grumbling and complaining, but there was hardly any at all. All of them got right up except for Lignite—she wrapped her hooves around her pillow and briefly tried to shut out the world, something I was intimately familiar with.
“You awake, Joe?” Longwall asked, rather unnecessarily.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Sure did,” I lied.
“Ought to have, my bed is really comfortable.” Her voice was muffled by the pillow. Then her head popped up. “Hope you didn’t smoosh down my favorite spot.”
Without waiting for an invitation, she got up and pushed her hoof against the mattress. “Let me get out,” I suggested. “Then you can test it properly.”
“Yeah, okay.” She arched her back and cracked it while I was getting myself out of her bed. My neck hurt and my legs hurt but not too badly. I hadn’t walked as far as we did yesterday in years, and my body was letting me know about it.
Everything worked well enough that there wasn’t much chance I’d pitch out of bed and land on my face, so I slid off to the side and she didn’t even wait for me to get all the way out before she was in bed with me.
“How much do humans weigh, anyway?” Gytta asked.
“Um.” I’d learned Equestrian weights, but of course I couldn’t remember them at all.
“Less than you do.” Lignite rolled into the center of the bed, reclaiming her normal spot. “Still feels okay. That’s good.”
“You are pretty scrawny,” Longwall said. “I don’t mean to be rude.”
“You ought to eat more. Hardly ate any of the casserole last night.”
“I can’t eat hay,” I told them. “Not much of it, anyway.”
“Too bad. That gives you lots of energy.” Assay tapped her hoof on the floor. “Well, we’ve got some wheat bread; you can have that for breakfast. Then we have to go and work in the mine.”
“And before we do, you’ve got to give up your gem.”
* * *
We parted ways the next morning. We had breakfast together, and Longwall thanked me for coming to visit. She said that not many ponies wanted to see where their coal came from.
Assay got in her harness, and then the six of us walked over to the gem pile. I admired my emerald one last time in the sunlight, tracing my fingers over its features, and then placed it gently into the pile. Maybe in time I’d be riding on a stretch of rail that had been paid for with that emerald.
Lignite told me that I rode better in the cart than some of the colts and fillies she’d known, and I don't know why, but that was really flattering.
I said my goodbyes and hugged all of them--it seemed like the right thing to do. And then they were off to the mine.
They of course weren’t the only ponies going to the mine. Rather than turn and head back to Greenock right away, I leaned up against their house and watched the workponies. Some of them hitched up to carts and the rest went into the mine with just their normal equipment.
I counted three fillies and one colt that also went into the mine, and while that bothered me a little bit--it seemed like they should have been in school instead of working--it certainly wasn’t a sign of child labor. Probably the best way to think about it was as an apprenticeship, a way of learning a useful life skill. I’d seen a few young ponies in fields and working in Manehattan, and was this any different? I didn’t think it was, not really.
There wasn’t much else to see, so I headed down the road. If I kept up a good pace, I’d get back in time to catch the afternoon train back to Manehattan.
Pity he couldnt use a permanent marker and draw a smily face on the gem, and then ask for a return to Earth on a visitors visa, for one Joe Pillow.
I wonder if our intrepid explorer will visit Chronamare?
Sleep troting, what an adorably funny image!
Do you mean Lignite? Because she says Joe slept in her bed.
Or eating half a cherry paid for with it.
Repetitious line is repetitious.
This is good stuff too! Added to the list!
Oh yes he so must visit Chonamare.
A fine capstone to the arc. I do love how the miners try to slot Joe into a familiar behavioral niche. "Ponies wouldn't care that much about some random emerald. He must be like a dragon."
9014262
"Uhm, Joe? It's okay buddy, you can stop the hugging. Just release us now, nice and slow... Good boy! Well, we gotta go... Oh dear Celestia, he's doing it again! Somepony, help! We got a serial hugger here!"
Darn right hugging them all was the right thing to do. In fact, I'd say it was your moral imperative.
That was a fascinating take on Equestrian mining.
Man... Imagine if dragons were humanity's first contact...
And when Joe woke up the next morning he was 50ft tall... "Maybe they had a point about humans being dragon line"
That night, he held the gem in his hands, stroking it lovingly with his long fingers. How bright it was! How lovely, utterly flawless. "So bright... so beautiful... mine. My own. My Precioussssss..."
9014134
I feel like the border agents would see through that ruse.
9014153
Probably not--this isn't the right story for that.
9014173
I found a video of an IRL horse doing it . . . it's linked in the blog post.
9014224
No, it was Longwall: she was making sure everypony (and Joe) was awake.
Exactly! Pony economics, how do they work?
9014262
Thanks! Fixed it.
9014328
Thank you!
9014614
This isn't really the right story for that; it's not in-canon with the Collegeverse or the Pony Planet Stories.
9014642
Thanks!
We humans do that kind of thing, so I think it totally makes sense that ponies would, too. Although that's something that a lot of writers seem to forget.
9014663
At the same time, would they really be bothered all that much? Especially if he starts scritching them behind their ears?
9014949
You just can't not. That's a fact.
Thanks!
Ooh, I don't think that would be a good thing. Either for us or the dragons, really.
9015075
gnollreader proposed that a human who claimed to be a bearataur suddenly found himself hibernating during the winter, so I suppose there's some possibility in Equestria that if you think something will happen, it just might. Although I can't help but wonder if the ponies collectively have to think it, or if the person who's affected is the one who has to think it.
9015845
And that's why Longwall said that if he didn't give it up on his own, she was going to buck him until he did.
9017416
They now have a poster with a picture of Meghan and the message "please remember to open all suitcases that look large enough to contain this human".
9017288
9017314
Gods, I miss that story.
And the idea that Ponies have some collective Waaagh! like Orks do does cheer me up.
9017362 Hey, I'm also hoarding aluminum siding and engine blocks! Which I... totally don't steal from houses in the dead of night...
9017454
And in season 9, Ponyville is attacked by green blocky things with 4 squat legs that explodes when ponies get too close to them.
9017471
And once they do, she's just going to have to find suitcases that are bigger than they look from the outside. It's a trick that magicians know.
"Why are you taking magic classes again?"
"To get to Equestria."
"I thought they had real magic over there."
"Yeah, they do. ... Also, they have pictures of me at every port of entry."
9018284
I do, too.
There's the Everfree Forest. That seems to generally creep ponies out.
9018772
I'd be pretty annoyed if someone stole my siding. Which might actually be aluminum, now that I think about it.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/12/23/1050846__safe_screencap_sweetie+belle_button+mash_minecraft_imminent+death_creeper_artist-colon-jan_don%27t+mine+at+night_this+will+end+in+explosions.png
9019209 Ah-hah! Photographic computer-generated proof!
9019768
The best kind of proof.
9020159 Yes!
Did you know aliens were working with the Pilgrims?
boropulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/PilgrimsUFO.jpg
southparkstudios.mtvnimages.com/images/shows/southpark/vertical_video/season_15/south-park-1513-a-history-channel-thanksgiving-clip02.jpg
The pictures are grainy because they only had bark for camera film back then.
9020460
I miss the good old days of bark film. Kids these days don't understand what it was like back then.
9021417 Had to watch out for bark beetles, though. They wiped out so many of those old films!
9021861
Plus, just like celluloid, bark film is quite flammable.
9023693 The stone film from 10000 BC was more durable. But a whole movie reel was 60 feet in diameter and weighted 200 tons.
9023759
Plus, I heard a lot of that film got destroyed when it was used to make wheels for juggernauts.
9023826 Yeah, alot got pillaged by Atilla the Hun. His film was very brittle shale which broke every time you watched it, so little survived to this day... the only intact film is an ancient version of "Battlefield Earth", which to this day no one wants to watch.
9023857
The book was alright, though.
Took a whole mountain to carve it on.
9023868 You should see the rock film version of "Boyhood"! It took 12 mountains to make!
9025766
At least they didn't make the mistake of putting it on a volcano. I hear that there are archivists in Hawaii even now trying to record things before they're gone.
i.pinimg.com/originals/bc/a1/11/bca111aaf9484690b308847fda66f5a4.jpg
True heroes.
9027457 If you're not on fire trying to make a video, you're clearly doing it wrong.
9037888
Sure, there are some disadvantages, like not being able to pick your nose or scratch your butt, (and I was going to put in a different link, but that one's tagged M, so technically I can't), but maybe tails and radar ears make up for it.
9027952
Isn't that true.
9038109 Oh, I'll be at Bronycon in admissions again this year. It probably is my last year, as work and home responsibilities make it harder and harder to take time off and spend money on this 'fun' that people speak of.
9037891
78.media.tumblr.com/4b4243904aea069d9f56e155465800d1/tumblr_inline_p2knta01sc1stpaip_500.jpg
Why not both?
9040683
I'll be there, too. If you don't see me at admissions, stop by Quills and Sofas. Or I could actively seek you out, which is amusingly stalker-y. I'll bring a big magnet.