The Paths Beneath Us

by BlazzingInferno

Three

Something smelled awful.

Mica’s nose twitched, and her ears soon followed. Moving anything else hurt too much.

She took a deep, gasping breath and felt her ribs catch on fire. Even worse than the pain was the smell though, a bitter, biting scent that reminded her of the ’discount’ food vendors’ molding bread and rotting produce.

A pale light leaked through her closed eyelids, brighter than a torch and without any of the usual flicker. Where was she? What happened? She remembered being lifted by her saddlebag, rocketing through the darkness, and nothing more.

“Am… Ami. Ami!” Talking hurt. She remembered screaming now, screaming for what felt like hours as she flew through the unknown. Did she black out after that? The world was still now, and she’d come to rest on something soft, cool, and damp.

Her eyelids felt like marble slabs. Lifting each one took all her focus and concentration, but the view that awaited her did nothing to answer the questions swirling through her mind. A brilliant sliver of white light shone in the distance, like a bonfire condensed into a pinpoint or the world’s most powerful headlamp. Everything else remained a shadow, unseen and still.

“Ami!” she called again.

A pebble landed on her side, a pebble that buzzed and skittered across her hide on impossibly small legs.

She’d never moved so fast. A moment later she was standing, a ragged scream dying in her parched throat as the not-pebble flew away through the dark, clicking and buzzing as it went. The pinpoint of white light swam in her vision while the rotten smell threatened to make her gag. It was only when she reached back to loosen her saddlebags that total panic set in.

“The tools! Where are the tools?”

Mica shuffled through the soft muck on the ground in the vain hope of finding the saddlebag or at least some of its contents. “We can’t lose the tools! Can’t… afford.”

Breathing hurt enough. She’d throw up if she kept trying to talk. She’d throw up if one of those little flying things landed on her again. She’d throw up if she didn’t get away from this fetid smell. She stood knee deep in the muck now, rocking back on forth as she fought to keep her balance. They’d be indebted to Pogo and his dumb pack for the rest of their comfortless lives, if they could make it back home at all.

She shut her eyes tight and tried to slow her rapid breathing. “Don’t panic” was a miner’s most important rule. She had to slow down and assess the situation. Ami came first, followed by the tools, and then a way back home. She repeated that list until it became a mantra: Ami, tools, home. Ami, tools, home. If she couldn’t shout, she’d just have to look and listen.

Forget the smell; so what if she’d landed in a garbage dump or worse. Now that she was standing still, she could hear more of those buzzing things in the distance, which was hopefully where they’d stay. There was an occasional rush of air too, a gentle air current that eased the stench and brought the hint of something else to her nose, something strong and yet vaguely familiar and inviting.

Time to look around again. Slowly she opened her eyes, and slowly she examined the most visible of the shadowy forms around her; staring right into that white light wouldn’t help matters. She needed to be smart, to use the light instead of being blinded by it. The rotting stuff stood in mounds all around her, and further off massive stalagmites as tall as the palace and covered in branching spikes reached up to the unseen ceiling overhead. Searching for that ceiling nearly made Mica fall over. As tall as the stalagmites were, the cavern’s uppermost reaches were further away still, dotted with a million white candles, and glowing a faint blue.

Her knees folded of their own accord as the enormity of the cavern struck her, along with the strange feeling that she might fall off the ground into that seemingly infinite expanse of tiny lights, which seemed to be growing stronger as the larger white light faded into the distance, passing behind some obstacle that obscured it from view.

In an instant everything clicked: tiny lights up above, an overabundance of plants, random air currents, and odd creatures added up to “the surface.”

Every story she’d ever heard about the place tumbled through her mind, most of which she’d considered too fanciful to possibly be true. How could the sky be that big? How could there be creatures the size of a pin-head that fly? But it was. In hours she’d journeyed to the place that took the diamond dogs weeks to reach through tunnels too steep for donkeys. She’d come further from home than any of her ancestors since the founding of the mines.

A cold wind swept through her. “How do we get home?”

---

Hours passed before Ami’s voice rang out nearby. Mica had given up searching once she’d found the enormous hole in the earth, its edge dotted with rocks, the smashed headlamp, and the torn remains of her saddlebag. A great pink tatzlwurm scale, another legend she’d dismissed as fantasy, was still lodged in the saddlebag’s thick belt.

“Over here, Ami.”

Mica ran the her hoof along the scale’s sharp edge, contemplating how close they’d both come to being torn to pieces instead of dragged along. Their tool-filled saddlebags had saved them, or at least delayed the inevitable. There was no chance of getting home now; they were stuck forever in a land of pungent smells, burning bright lights, poisonous insects, and who knew what else.

“There you are!” Ami shouted. “We’ve been looking everywhere!”

“We?”

Mica chanced opening one of her eyes for a split second, just long enough to spot Ami’s companions before the sun’s searing brightness forced her to shut it again. There were two others with her, a much older jenny and some other creature that looked like a donkey dipped in yellow paint. She opened her eye again, drinking in the sight until the pain blinded her. The yellow creature had wings and a pink mane. Was this a pony?

“Oh my goodness!” the pony said. “Are you hurt?”

Mica shook her head. “Fine. I’m fine. Ami, there’s a big hole here, be careful.”

Ami trotted over and pulled her to her hooves. “Come on, let’s get you to a doctor.”

“Huh?”

“There’s a whole town! Fluttershy the pony found me almost at once! She was looking for that tatzlwurm with some of her friends, and… and… we’re on the surface, Mica! The surface!”

Mica took a few tentative, wobbly steps forward. “I noticed.”

Fluttershy hovered nearby, judging by the gusts from her wings. “I-I’m Fluttershy. You must be Mica.”

“That’s me.”

The other jenny cleared her throat. “And I’m Matilda. Pleased to meet you both. When Fluttershy said she’d found a donkey out by the compost heaps who said she was from… well I don’t know what to call the place.”

“Home,” Mica grumbled. “I call it home.”

The ground under her hooves grew firmer. They’d stepped onto a path.

Matilda came closer, her voice hushed. “I always thought the mines were a myth! Cranky and I both heard the legends growing up, of course, about donkeys in caves far below, living on their own without the aid of pony magic or anything else besides their own resourcefulness and determination. I… well, I always found it so inspiring, growing up. And here you are.”

Mica sighed. “Here we are.”

---

Things kept happening, whether Mica wanted them to or not. Inside of a day she found herself at a doctor’s office, an impromptu party, and now, mercifully, in a small back room at Matilda’s house. The curtains were pulled shut and a tiny candle on the table beside her provided the only light. Aside from the ever-present smells of dirt, flowers, wood, and a dozen other unknown things, she could almost relax.

She ran her hoof along the tatzlwurm scale again, the one thing from the world below she’d refused to part with, and wondered what it was worth. Would this weird, impossibly rare thing pay off their lost mining tools and buy them new ones? Some of the rich dogs and donkeys collected oddities like this, after all.

Laughter rang out just beyond the door, and a moment later Ami trotted in. Mica’s tired eyes spotted a flower wreath around her neck and an enormous smile on her face. “How are you feeling? Are the pills the doctor gave you working?”

Mica took a small, pain-free breath and rubbed the bandages wrapped around her middle. “Better. My ribs feel fine.”

Ami found another chair and joined her at the table. “I’ve been having the most wonderful—” she froze for a moment and her smile lessened “—I mean, every creature I’ve met has been so kind and generous.”

“That’s great.”

Ami felt her away across the table until she could press Mica’s hoof between hers. “Please don’t just sit in here all alone. Please come out and talk with me and the others.”

“It’s too bright. The sunlight hurts my eyes.”

“I asked, and the sun set already. It’s dark outside now.”

Mica turned away. “Thanks, but… What do we do now? I can’t just sit around drinking tea or something like we’re on vacation. Yesterday we were worried about starving and paying off our new tools.”

“I know. And I know you miss home, but—”

“And I know home is a lousy place. Our cave is always too cold, and the mine’s dangerous, and we’re poor… but it’s home. It’s where all our stuff is. It’s… it’s where Mom and Dad are buried. And now we can’t ever go back.”

Ami remained silent for a minute, and when Mica glanced back she saw her lips were pursed. “The flying ponies say they could take us there, back down the hole we were pulled through. But I’m not going.”

Mica nodded, a strange longing stirring inside her for what she herself admitted was a terrible place to live, a place that was barely suitable for donkeys more capable than her and Ami put together. Sure some of the cave-dwellers were better off than others, but all shared the same risks; if the mine collapsed tomorrow, the rich creatures in the palace wouldn’t have anybody to sell things to. “I know you’re not.”

“There’s all sorts of helpful things here for blind creatures, but best of all there are other blind creatures. I could have an almost normal life with a nice place to live, and friends, and even a safe job. I’ve been retelling our story to everybody willing to listen all day, and I think I’m actually going to write it all down. Mom’s old stories too, and dad’s, and everything about life underground. I’m going to write it down in a book and see if I can sell it. Fluttershy says she has friends who can help with that part.”

That idea got Mica to smile, just for a moment. They’d switched places: she’d become the shut-in, incapable of functioning in the broader world while Ami was free at last. “Sounds like you’ve got everything you ever wanted.”

“You could too,” Ami whispered, “I know it. You could do anything here, be anything.”

“But what if—“ Mica drew in a sharp breath as her old frustrations joined her on the surface “—what if I want… I hate the mine. I hate how dirty and dangerous it is, and how hard Mom and Dad had to work just to keep us fed, and how it took them away, and I never want to go in there again. But it’s all I have. I’ve been training to work the mines forever.”

Ami left her chair, stepped closer, and nuzzled her sister’s neck. “Well what if, and this might sound crazy, we figure out a new plan together and get some help from all our new friends?”

“That does sound crazy.”

“No crazier than the story that brought us here.”

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