Pony in Cave

Quite a fair few years ago, there sat a farm a stone’s throw away from Las Pegasus. A farm for rocks, stones, and even the occasional boulder. Such a farm could be considered to be rather mundane, given the existence of other, possibly more notable rock farms. But Igneous Rock Pie knew since he had gotten his cutie mark, that this was what he was meant to do.

The farm was fairly large, and given that he and his wife of not-too-long were still getting settled into managing the massive plot, even just sorting the rocks and stones into their own fields had proven to be rather difficult work. But every city in Equestria, from Appleloosa to Fillydelphia, always needed some more quarried materials. And so, they shall provide. The Pie couple lived alone on the humble homestead, where just a cottage, windmill, and of course the pride of the farm, Holder’s Boulder, marked any sign of occupation in the barren, rocky land.

Igneous lived a life few ponies could, working long hours until the farm was just so. Move a rock here, break a rock there, and though some other ponies may find it to be so beyond mundane that it could constitute punishment of Celestial proportions, to Igneous, nothing could be more fulfilling.

One day, however, proved to break this monotony. Upon moving a particularly large boulder, Igneous discovered something that, while common enough in many places in Equestria, including some other rock farms, he had never once seen on his own land.

On this day, Igneous found a hole.

Not just any hole, though. A decently large cave entrance.

Now, the more adventurous ponies out there would have their story begin right then. A cave where one was never seen is just a challenge waiting to unfold. But Igneous would be considered by these ponies with more daring senses to be “Totally Lame.” The cave sat, unmentioned, and untended, for a fair few weeks.

Igneous had not, however, forgotten the cave entirely. Every time he found himself near the hillside, he couldn’t help but steal a glance at the hole of extreme unknowns. Well, perhaps not EXTREME unknowns. It surely contained rocks.

This proved to be a good enough reason one day for Igneous. After letting his wife know just where he was heading, he got an oil lantern, his trustiest (and rustiest) pickaxe, and headed down.

Caves, notoriously, are formed by forces of nature that don’t usually pay much heed to the size of ponies when carving their elaborate halls. Some caves could fit an entire dragon (And those that could, often did), while some caves would forever remain unknown to all but the luckiest drops of water. It was good fortune, then, that this particular cave seemed to be comfortably decent enough to go down into. Aside from a few narrow rooms and a place or two where one would need to duck to proceed, the cave was, largely, quite hospitable to ponies.

It is for this reason, that on his first day, Igneous reached what any reasonable pony would consider to be the end of the cave. It was a terribly mundane room, aside from its size being comparable to the homestead’s kitchen. A less experienced-with-rocks pony would call it right then and there, say the adventure was done and dusted, and return.

A more adventurous pony would try their best to continue their journey deeper in the cave, to see what treasures were held further in.

Igneous Rock Pie is not either of these two. He is, first and foremost, a rock farmer.

The cave walls, he noticed, were not the same shade as any of the rocks he had been more familiar with. And so, he chipped off a sample, put it in his saddlebag, and ascended back up the cave.

Igneous Rock Pie wouldn’t consider himself to be a most terribly educated stallion, so his ability to identify rocks largely came from his own experience. As such, he could not quite place the rock, which encrusted the room in white, shiny crystals.

He was, however, lucky enough to have fallen in love with one of the only rocktors in Equestria.

Yes, Cloudy Quartz did a lot of work around the farm. But while Igneous’s work was primarily on the digging side of operations, Cloudy handled the seeding, organization, and classification of the rocks, and sent them out for distribution. Her brief time outside of the rock-farming corner of Equestria gave her just enough connections to know where to send the rocks to. Both Quartz and Pie did their best daily to keep the bits flowing to the humble farm and get the occasional non-rock-soup meal as a special treat. Perhaps one day they could even get the funds together for a rock silo for even larger shipments.

Upon his return, Igneous set the rock in front of his wife, and requested her analysis.

A brief examination was all that was needed. The rock was the very textbook image of…

Salt.

In retrospect, Igneous supposed he should have tried licking the cave wall.

With almost all rock farming being done above ground level, the rains had a tendency to wash away any foalish pony’s attempt at farming it without a greenhouse or at the very least a pavilion. But he had heard that one other pony in the area, Rock Salt, had, in fact, made his fortune off of finding a salt cave, and subsequently expanding his operations overground.

Not too long ago, then, did Rock Salt’s salt begin appearing on every dining room table from the penthouse of Manehatten’s skyscrapers to the buffet tables of Las Pegasus. As of yet, barely anypony could contest his claim on the salt industry, due to the general rarity of getting salt anywhere but drying out seawater…

But this could prove to be the Pie family’s big break.

Of course, this would mean going back into the cave.

With the promise of the salt trade on the rocky horizon, this so far seemed like a good enough deal.

Several months had passed, and the operation could be considered by just about any metric to have been a total success. The small cave’s final room proved itself to be a bountiful resource, but Igneous could tell that, for the last month, the cave was running out. The small room had done much to aid the Pies in bringing in a little extra, but with all the extra work on the farm, and the relatively low quantity of salt in the cave, it hadn’t proved to be the sort of thing that would make their farm stand out.

The Pie family’s brief time as the 3rd most profitable rock farm this side of Equestria looked like it was coming to a close.

Aside from the second hole.

Yes, within the salty room, there was a very small gap. Most ponies would pay it no mind, and when he had first found the cavern, Igneous had. But as the salty walls gave up their small bounty, Igneous couldn’t help but notice the streaks of salt descending even further into the cavern. While he could, of course, be content with simply blocking the hole off to keep any future salt confined to the walls of the room for easier farming, the promise of a Celestia’s-age of hidden salt was enough to make him crouch down one day to look inside of the small gap.

In a fairy tale, this would perhaps be the moment where he discovered a hidden underground civilization, or perhaps a room full of riches beyond his imagination.

Igneous Rock Pie’s glance only confirmed to him one thing: The cave went deeper.

The trouble with any wish to continue searching down the cave made itself obvious immediately. If the accommodating size of the cave thus far had given a hope of easy travel continuing, the small gap dashed that hope. For it wasn’t just a narrow door between two cave rooms, but rather a thin shaft that Igneous could barely fit himself into if he tried.

But try he did. And sure enough, he managed to worm about half his body into the gap going hindleg first, back to the ground. Then, as he was nearly all the way in, he grabbed the lantern with his teeth and scooted towards the cave’s unknown depths.

Several feet of scooting through the rough cave’s interior proved fruitful when Igneous found his hindhooves dangling over nothingness. And so, he scooted himself all the way back to the cave entrance, gathered a portion of the remaining salt, and returned home.

The next day, he returned to the tight squeeze of the salt room’s forbidden exit, armed once more with his oil lamp and pick. He had also thought to bring along a sturdy rope. Entering headfirst, this time on his stomach, he soon found himself with the view of the room he had felt yesterday.

Despite his hopes of a second salt room, the cave proved to be less than hoped for. Though it descended a few feet downwards, it did not have the shiny white coating of a telltale salt deposit on all but a few streaks of wall.

Wherever his bounty lay, it lay deeper in the cave.

Carefully easing his way out of the gap and feeling a wave of relief when the compression of the narrow crevice no longer had hold of him, Igneous braced himself against the cave walls, and tied a rope around a protruding rock. Giving it a tug to assure it would hold, he slowly descended the hole.

Hooves finally touching solid ground, Igneous gave the room a short survey. Sure enough, the water that had carved the chute had also departed it in a hole not too different to the one in the salt room above. An obvious issue revealed itself, however. Due to the narrowness of the chute, one would need to descend the chute and immediately begin going into the hole.

Igneous climbed up the rope, and descended again, this time headfirst. He would leave after he saw what lay ahead, the curiosity of if his fortune was just a room away being enough to keep him down here just a little longer.

What Igneous saw surprised him. Ducking into the hole, he found himself face to face with something every rock farmer knew at just a glance.

Gravel. Just regular old gravel.

The cave had been absolutely filled with the tiny rocks, to the point where no inspection of the pile would prove any further discovery at a glance.

And so, Igneous got back up, went up the rope, and headed home.

Weeks passed, and the cave went untouched. A few more, and Igneous had re-harvested all the salt deposits in the cave once more. But one day, he had a plan. Taking a beat-up old pail, he went back down once more. A few hours later, he emerged from the rock hole, pail now full of gravel.

And so, just like turning the sandstone over for an even toughness, or smoothing down the obsidian, getting gravel out of the cave became just another daily chore for Igneous on the rock farm. After a few months of taking gravel out by hoof and pail, a tiny hole of darkness was visible through the gravel. Another week, and Igneous found something most rock farmers could hardly dream of.

Shining a light down the barely-hoof-sized hole in the gravel revealed a pink twinkling. While he had simply been hoping for a second salt deposit, Igneous had found what could promise to be the most profitable rock imaginable.

A crystalline cavern, of some sort. Directly underneath his own property.

And so the next few months went, Igneous regularly descending the cave in addition to some other chores, clearing a few buckets of gravel every day, and then returning back to the surface, his trusty lamp, shovel, and pail being his only company in the rocky depths. He had, of course, informed his beloved of the discovery, as he had when he had first found the salt. This would prove to be a very fortunate fact, for a very unfortunate reason.

On a bleak day with the wind howling, as is generally standard on the rock farm, Igneous woke up as normal, cared for the surface-side rocks that needed it for the day, took a pickaxe to those ready for harvesting, and, just like any other day, went back in the mine. Oil lamp in teeth, and pail tied on his back, as he had for the last few weeks. Down to the room where the salt lines the walls, into the narrow crawl space, and down the vertical shaft once more. Hindhooves landing on the ground, as he scooted into position to get digging. The once-formidable pile of gravel now stretched out into a long, but still tight, crawlspace, ending in what had to be about the last fourth of work he would need to get to have cleared out the path entirely. From there, he could access the treasure trove, and think of some way to get the crystals to the surface with a bit less hassle than this oppressively small crack, if the bounty proved to be worth the investment to do so.

Untying the pail, he put it under one forehoof, and put the lamp under the other, and began the delicate shuffle to inch forward towards the last remaining gravel. After just filling up half the pail, however, he noticed a rather bothersome problem. The lamp had began to dim. The long price discussion of yesterday’s shipment had made Igneous forget an important part of his biweekly routine– refueling the lamp. Although he briefly considered just testing his luck, he sighed, and began to shuffle back out of the cave, bucket only half-filled. As he is sliding out, however, a rogue piece of gravel lands lightly on the lamp. This proves to be enough for its dying flame to resign, and the barely-lit cave plunged into total darkness.

Igneous would need to get out of a cave with not a single ounce of light.

He did not panic. This had, in fact, happened before. Three times, actually. The rather gravelly roof of the gap proved to be just the slightest bit likely to rain down a pebble now and then, and he had needed to escape the cave twice due to the lantern being broken. The first time, a dimming lantern had simply been ignored. From these mistakes, Igneous had learned that he could, if need be, escape the cave fine without a light. Luckily for him, the linear nature of the cave made it rather hard to get turned around, even if one had to trot slowly to avoid hitting their head on a low rock.

Sighing a slight discontented sigh nonetheless, Igneous attempted to shuffle out once more, bracing his hoof on the low ceiling as he always did. And it was then, that Ignous feels something very out of the ordinary. The ceiling moves against his hoof, and a fairly large rock dislodges from the low roof and lands on him. A dull pain is felt by Igneous, a good sign compared to the sharp pain of a more pointed rock. He did, however, find himself pinned. Shuffling blindly forward in the dark, he attempts to squirm out from under the rock. However, the gravel above had been kept in its mostly-stable state of merely dropping the rare pebble due to the tightly packed lattice of rocks above. In the absence of a keystone, they do what one may expect.

It was then that Igneous Rock Pie found himself enveloped in a blanket of gravel. Up all the way to his neck and shoulders, he tried to struggle out. This merely seemed to anger the ill-suited quilt, as he felt more gravel add itself to the pile, and the pinning rock secure its grip on him. And so, after a few short attempts, he knew there was really only one thing that could save him now.

Somepony else.

Cloudy Quartz woke up the next morning alone in her bed. This, of itself, was the norm, as she and Igneous had agreed upon an arrangement of separate beds. But what was more strange, was the vacancy in the bed beside hers. While it wasn’t an impossibility for him to spend too long out, particularly in the cavern he was so eager to access, he had usually returned to home by sunup. And yet, the cozy, hoofstitched sheets lay empty.

But Cloudy had seen it happen before. Igneous would more than likely be back by lunch, with some tale of how he had gotten into a particularly engaging session of making the marble wavier or some sort. And yet, as the rock soup kettle sang its dismal whistle, he remained unseen. And so, not long after, with a lantern, spare few hard biscuits and a flask of water, Cloudy Quartz made a trip she had made a few times– the descent to the salt cavern.

The entrance of the cave proved to have one item that should not have been there: The trustiest, rustiest pickaxe sat propped up against the wall. A surefire sign that Igneous was still below.

The upper part of the cave proved to retain its linear, welcoming familiarity. And yet, the white-streaked walls of the salt cave’s most notable room gave no sign of her husband. She looked to the abyssal crack in the stone, barely wide enough to fit even a mare, much less a full grown stallion. And yet, she called out.

“Igneous Rock Pie? Are you in this hole?”

One of the most tense silences she had experienced ensued for a few moments, as the faint echo of her call and the light drip of the cave walls whispered of a fruitless search.

And yet, the silence found itself broken, as a voice came back from the hole.

“Cloudy? Could that be you?”

A brief exchange began, and Cloudy was faced with a rather tough dilemma. Although she herself had no experience with this narrow cave, or any cave nearly this tight, she would need to put herself directly into the jaws of the cave to make it down to Igneous.

And so, getting down to the muddy, rocky floor, she made her way through the squeeze, headfirst. After a few minutes of inching forward, she found her head over the shaft, and looking down, lantern still in her mouth, she could see her husband below. Igneous blinked a fair bit. The sudden presence of the gentle lantern glow after nearly a day of straight darkness proved to be momentarily blinding to him.

After Cloudy Quartz got out of the squeeze and descended the rope, she took note of the situation. The gravel covered Igneous nearly completely, with his head and shoulders being the only things peeking out past their clutches. Testing with a few scrapes of her hoof, Cloudly managed to move some of the gravel off of the pile. But worryingly, just as soon as she did, the gap found itself filled in by the eager, loose gravel above. With the only pail in the vicinity being under the rocks as well, Cloudy was forced to retreat after she gave her husband some much needed food, water, and company.

Back up in the farmhouse, Cloudy found herself checking just about every cupboard she had to find the best makeshift bucket. Eventually, she settled on an empty biscuit mix tin, and left the comfort of the house to return to the unforgiving depths.

And so, for the next few hours, Cloudy would brave the gap, biscuit tin and lantern in mouth, go down the rope, scoop rocks into the tin with her hooves, take the tin back up, dump it in the salt chamber, and repeat. The nature of the pile would make any sense of progress impossible until it was nearly fully cleared, but Cloudy refused to let herself be deterred. But the difficult work of clearing the rocks proved to be too much after a few hours, and with legs trembling, Cloudy was forced, once again, to return to the surface.

The moon had been raised by Celestia by the time Cloudy had reached the surface, with the cold glare of the mare in the moon being the only eye to see her emerge from the hole. Cloudy returned to her home, dusted herself off, quickly fixed herself a well-earned meal, and then went to sleep.

She awoke the next afternoon to a midday sun, further evidence of how late last night had been. She fixed food for herself and Igneous, and, for the third time, went back down. Grabbing the trusty biscuit tin from its resting place in the salt room, she squeezed through the narrow gap for what already felt like the hundredth time, and, more sure-hoofed than a day before, went down the vertical shaft. Sharing the meal, she set to work. Scraping, digging, rocks fall down. Climb up, squirm through, dump out, and back in again. The cycle continued for several hours, with few changes aside from the growing aches Cloudy felt in nearly her entire body. The scrapes from the narrow gap in the cave and handling the rocks by hoof, along with the ache in her jaw from carrying the rock-filled tin had left her feeling exhausted and battered by the time she called it quits. She shared the second meal she had packed with Igneous, and returned to the salt room. Sitting for a moment on the cold and slightly damp floor, she looked at her work so far.

While progress was impossible to see if looking at Igneous, the pile of slag, gravel, and other such junk she had removed had gotten to be a fair size by this point. By her estimates, she had perhaps cleared out a third-ton of rocks in just two days. A pile of this size could easily itself cover a pony completely, perhaps even twice over. And while that of itself showed a mark of progress, a question remained unanswerable to Cloudy for the time being.

Just how much more is down there?

Igneous sat in the darkness. Alone, as he was most hours of the day, and with the only sensory feedback he had being the occasional dripping of the cave walls.

Had it been worth it? To be trapped in a cave, at the mercy of this near-neverending pile of gravel?

Perhaps some would say no. But Igneous had known the dangers, and had chosen to dig in spite of them. If he died in the cave, he would maybe spend his last moments in regret, be they to a cave-in getting him directly, or a terrible accident further in the cave leading to his wife being unable to reach him. But if it meant his wife could still make their fortune, even without him, he could rest in peace, at the very least.

If, however, Cloudy herself was trapped to the same fate he would be, he would surely live every last moment he had with guilt, even if he would not die lonely. No, this was his hole, and he had dug it for himself. If it came down to too much of a risk of cave-in, he would have to say goodbye to his teary wife, and insist she save herself.

But as the gravel on him felt lighter than it had a few days ago, Igneous prayed to Celestia that it didn't come to that.

For a third day, Cloudy found herself waking up alone, but today, with the hope of there being just a few days more until she could once again wake up to a normal day of chores with her husband. While the monotony was certainly not the most interesting, even on a good day, she would certainly trade the nasty shade of excitement she had felt the last few days for it at the drop of a pebble.

Down she went again, ducking low arches, careful on the steep bits, and down into the squeeze in what was certainly her fastest time yet. Re-energized from getting early sleep, she slid down the rope and served Igneous and herself their breakfast of hard biscuits. And so she got to work, as same as it had been. And for four hours, nothing had changed. However, by this point, something different happened. The repetitive, monotonous process had one step removed. As she went to grab another hoof-ful of rocks, almost none tumbled to fill its spot. The cave had tumbled every little rock it could, at least for the time being.

The pile had an end, and she had managed to reveal it.

After a moment of shared, but somewhat calm, celebration, she set to work again. In the next hour, she had revealed Igneous’s forelegs. Eventually, she could see the broken lantern, and the pail. Although she opted to stick with the tin for its lower weight when filled to brim with rocks, buth were good discoveries for the sake of making progress. Another hour still, and she had freed Igneous’s forehooves. For a moment, then, he tried to make an effort to brace them against the walls, and perhaps slide from the small remaining pile of rocks. However, the rock that had started it all revealed itself again, as pain shot through Ignous’s leg at the attempt, and he grunted in pain.

Another few hours, and the top of Igneous’s hindhooves became visible. With just another day’s effort, Cloudy figured she was finally ready to be done with the endeavor tomorrow. And so, she went back up, to sleep in what she felt for sure would be her last lonely night for a long while.

Another bleak spring day rose on Equestria, and Cloudy Quartz soon made her way back down into the rocky prison. Today’s mission would surely be the final one- Dislodge the rock off her husband’s hoof.

Now, the rock could easily be removed, if it wasn’t for the narrow gap’s still-low roof. Although some parts were a little bit higher from the gravel’s original crevice above Igneous, nopony could reach back to get to the rock, not even Igneous himself. Luckily, a trip to the supply shed had proved fruitful, and Cloudy had come down with a crowbar. Passing the crowbar to Igneous, he used a free forehoof to wedge the crowbar into a leveraged position. A few fateful moments of Igneous’s pushing later, and with a clank, the crowbar tumbled onto the ground. Igneous tried again, and Cloudy watched as it went on a few times. After an hour or so of trying, she decided to try her best to lend a hoof, as much a strain as it may be to reach over Igneous to reach. Sure enough, with two hooves on it, the crowbar lifted the rock slightly off the trapped hoof.

And then with a clank, the rock fell back down again, prompting a pained noise from Igneous. Hours more tries then occurred, with hours more failures. Sometimes the crowbar simply tumbled down, sometimes the crowbar wouldn’t budge, but the promising attempts that lifted the rock even slightly proved they had to be getting somewhere, Eventually, the crowbar luckily found itself in the best position it could be, and Igneous’s hoof was freed, if a bit worse for the wear. Quickly tugging her now free husband along as he pushed himself out of the hole, Cloudy shared a quick hug with her husband, and began to climb the rope. However, Igneous’s hoof proved to be a bit too injured, as when he tried to put weight on it to climb the rope, he collapsed over in pain. Try as she might to help, though, Cloudy couldn’t get Igneous out of the hole. And so, despite being freed from the rocks of the cave, Igneous found himself spending yet another night in the cold depths of the cave.

Another morning, another descent, and yet, Cloudy had not the foggiest clue what to do at this point. The cave walls seemed too difficult to try to tie a pulley to, and she certainly couldn’t carry her husband out of the cave on her own. As she made her way through the narrow passage past the salt room, she found herself staring down the cave at her husband, fallen asleep for the first time in days without being wedged. Nudging him awake, they prepare for the moment of truth. Igneous attempts to climb the rope after Cloudy. Three hooves have no trouble, and as the fourth presses down on the rope, a rush of pain hits Igneous, but he pulls himself up regardless. The hardest stretch of the cave to get out with a broken hoof is easily the ten feet of straight climbing he has to endure to reach the narrow squeeze. After that, the other hooves can do the work.And so he went. Soon he was a bit up the rope.

Halfway.

Almost there.

And then all he had to do was brace himself to enter the narrow gap. One hoofslip, and he would fall 10 feet back down, injuring himself further. Stay steady, and he could well be home free. All focus put on his injured hoof, Igneous braces it against the wall. Then another hoof. And another. Focus still on his injured hoof, however, he mistakenly tried to brace against a wet, slick part of the cave wall, and he slips.

Falls.

And gets caught. Cloudy Quartz, bracing against the narrow and getting scraped by the unforgiving cave walls for it, managed to barely catch her husband before his presumably rather painful fall, forearms shaking heavily, and lantern swinging back and forth in her mouth from the sudden movement. Igneous quickly got a hold of the rope, and tried again to brace himself.

And he succeeded. Able to get into the hole, he found himself a few minutes later back up the treacherous shaft and back in the room that had started it all. Salt crystals glinting in the lamplight, both mare and stallion took a moment to sigh relief. Aside from the pile of gravel in the room, Igneous could feel like this was any other time he had been in this room. And yet, compared to where he had been, he may as well be back in bed already.

And so, after a few minutes, they went back up to the moonlit surface, and Igneous Rock pie enjoyed a night where his blankets were not, in fact, made of rocks.

The cave remained. For a few months, both Pies avoided the hole in the ground, the memories too fresh for comfort. For these months, more than ever before, the two enjoyed each others' company, and cherished every moment they had together, even if an average onlooker would be unable to tell. But after some time, Igneous Rock Pie went back down in the depths for salt once a week again. On the fourth week, he succumbed to his curiosity again.

On the fourth week, Igneous Rock Pie went in the squeeze.

And on the fourth week, Igneous Rock Pie finally shined a light right at the mysterious, pink-glinted cave, the gravel that hid its treasures now mostly out of the way.

And it was beautiful.

And while some poetic fable may end with a second rockslide, and make some profound note on the nature of pony greed, Igneous came back that evening with barely a scratch, and a spring in his step.

Hiring a few extra hooves, he set out to make a quarry hole directly down to the cave, so that neither he nor Cloudy ever had to venture through the squeeze again. And though it would take months to dig out, perhaps even years, Igneous was confident in one thing.

The Pies would forever be known for pink.

Author's Note:

If you haven't seen Man in Cave and you liked this, go see it! Or don't. I'm not your boss.
Hope y'all enjoyed!

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23 KM To Nerdiness

23 KM To Nerdiness #1 · Oct 17th, 2022 · 1 · ·

Praying for your success!

FanOfMostEverything

FanOfMostEverything #2 · Oct 20th, 2022 · 2 · ·

Nice work. I love how well the methodical, matter-of-fact tone meshes with the characters' attitude... though part of me can't help but wonder why Igneous never broadened the tunnel into the pit room. Still, surprisingly engaging given the dry delivery. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the judging.

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