An Eternity of Rocks

by McPoodle

Apatite

Apatite

“Appetite?”

“No, apatite. It’s the name of a family of phosphate minerals found in bones. The word is Grazian for ‘to deceive’, as the members of the apatite family are rather hard to distinguish from one another.”

“Rather like monzonite and granite.”

“…You remembered.”

Maud got home, and was lectured for lying about where she was going. She admitted her crime, and went to bed without supper.

She spent the next day resting and planning. In the days that followed, she did her chores early, and afterwards performed the unprecedented act of asking to explore outside the farm.

Her father insisted on accompanying her the first few times. Eventually she figured out the right way to phrase her request to get him to stay behind.

She made sure to keep an eye on Cloudsdale. In the corner that Rainbow Dash had fallen from she generally saw flashes of light mid-morning. She never saw a filly fall out of the sky again, but she thought she could make out what looked like a three-pegasus race at least on some days. She couldn’t be sure, but the suspicion grew that the race never got around to finishing.

Maud figured if the race was that distracting that the two bickering ponies should have chosen a different place to stage their debates. But maybe evil ponies liked being distracted.

Eventually Maud figured out how she was going to get to Cloudsdale, which meant there was no longer any reason to put off starting her adventure.

She put off starting her adventure one more day, with the excuse that she needed plenty of rest. After giving Boulder a day of rock-based thrills that he would never forget, she snuck out of the house just before midnight, waited a half hour, and snuck back in.

She knew that she could have just used the special phrase her mother had given her, but she didn’t want her parents to worry about a matter of mere trust, where they might have a doubt in the back of their heads that she might be cheating them somehow. It felt better to her that her parents knew that something was wrong.

Especially since the following Tuesday—and every Tuesday after that for Celestia knows how long—would involve Maud disappearing at midnight and never coming back.

So immediately after breakfast, Maud stayed at her place at the table and waited for her sisters to leave her alone with her mother cleaning up the dishes.

“I have been Called to a Higher Purpose,” she announced for the second time in her life.

After she had explained herself, adding Rainbow Dash’s story to her own and Pinkamena’s, she waited for Cloudy Quartz’s judgment.

Her mother had brought up the bit about knowing she had disappeared, as Maud expected. And then she had opened a cabinet that Maud had always thought had been “sealed forever in a freak cement accident”—turns out that her mother was a much better liar than Maud was—and pulled out a seemingly empty saddlebag that she dropped on Maud’s withers.

Maud’s legs practically gave out. She peaked into one of the bags, and saw what looked like thousands of bits.

“I trust you to spend this money wisely,” her mother told her. “Even though you probably will only have this for one day before everything resets.”

“Actually,” said Maud, “I’ve experimented with Boulder, and it appears that anything touching me at midnight stays with me. I even still have all the notes from interviewing Rainbow Dash.”

“Alright,” said Cloudy. “That means that every day will begin with both you and the family fortune disappearing at precisely the same time. I won’t remember why you left, but I will conclude based on that that it happened for a reason.”

Maud embraced her mother then. It was an action that surprised both of them. Then she bolted out the door and made for the property line before anypony could stop her.

She left Boulder behind. The place she was going was too foreign for him to possibly understand.

“Another short chapter,” commented Starlight.

“I didn’t feel like writing for a long time after that,” Maud said quietly.

Comments

[Eruantalon]

Awwww.

I'm glad you Maud made Maud's parents understand.