Ponywatching

by ThunderTempest

Prompt #564-Quarrel, or Quarry?

Smart Cookie glared at the Unicorns as they stood on the hill where the three tribes were constructing the first town of their new country. It was one thing to say that they were going to cooperate, but it was entirely another to put deeds to words, and there was a great deal of bad blood between the three pony tribes. Still, the unicorns were doing their part, she supposed. Their part just happened to be the planning and intellectual tasks, just as the pegasi’s was keeping the weather good to allow the most construction time each day. Smart Cookie had always been rather tolerant of other ponies, but even she had limits. Her head knew that the Earth ponies were the best suited to the hard, physical tasks that came with building not just a new town, but also an entirely new country. That still didn’t stop her feeling a spike of jealousy and anger everytime one of the unicorns pointed that out and treated them like servants, even if they were immediately reprimanded by Princess Platinum.

Eventually, it seemed that even Princess Platinum had had enough of a group of particularly elitist Unicorns.

“Right!” Smart Cookie heard her scream from where the Earth Pony was getting ready to haul her next load. “If you think that you’re so much better than them, you can go and help them! And no magic!” Smart Cookie allowed herself a vindicated smile as the group of four unicorns approached her, and asked what they would be doing.

“Well,” she began, unhitching herself from the cart that she had been pulling, “I reckon the two of you can pull this here wagon. Just pull it to the top of the hill, empty it, and come back down to over there,” Smart Cookie motioned with her hoof as she helped the two unicorn stallions get hitched into the cart. “Get the wagon filled again, and repeat the whole thing.”

“For how long?” asked one of the stallions.

“Until sun-down or there’s nothing else to haul, whichever comes first.” Leaving the two stallions to their task, she beckoned to the other two unicorns to follow, and they arrived at the quarry where the stone for the town was being mined out by teams of earth ponies.

“You two can be helping your friends on the wagon, I reckon. When they get back here, you shovel this here gravel into their cart until it’s full. And while you’re waiting for them to get back, you can help keep the piles of rock organised, I reckon.”

With the tasks assigned to the unicorns, Smart Cookie wandered over to help out the breaking teams. Perhaps she wasn’t as nice to the unicorns because they were still ground-bound, and they didn’t have to deal with all the rocks. Still, this was a vital part of the building process. Houses didn’t crop up from nothing, and the closest available resource had been stone.

[Time]

Even so, Smart Cookie was pretty sure that by the end of this, she was never going to want to have to haul or even see another rock again.

‘Rocks,’ she thought, as she gripped the end of a rope tied to a massive boulder and began to pull, slowly inching the monolithic peice of stone over to the breaking area, ‘why did it have to be rocks that we built our new town with?’

Author's Note:

Written for Prompt #564: “Though Quarrels Arise...”
The prompt: Equestria gets off to a rocky start

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

Very nice, this could be expanded too, to show how the various races coped with the early days. I think you'd do a good job of it.