Beneath your feet, what treasures...
Snow on the banks and icy water to his knees and he didn’t dare stoke up his fires or his nostrils would smoke and give him away…
Dusk found Spike wading in the shallows downstream from Mill Creek bridge. It was a sullen sleety evening, winter giving way to spring. He’d picked this day because absolutely nopony would be out for fun, and this hour because anypony who’d been out for work would be at dinner. Except Twilight—but Twilight was fetlock-deep in some research project and wouldn’t leave her study. Spike had made her a nice salad before he’d gone out. With luck she’d eat half of it. Mealtimes could be very irregular at Château Vesprée, as Rarity had dubbed it.
Rarity.
His grip was already fumbling and he couldn’t feel his toes. It had to be around here somewhere! He hadn’t seen it since fall but the stream hadn’t risen since then, only frozen with winter but the thaw had come and he had to find it before the spring floods washed it away. And now the light was failing.
That’s it. Pack it in. It was a stupid idea anyway--stupid, silly, foalish. Besides he’d done everything anypony could--
Wait. Anypony?
Duh!
Closing his eyes he took three deep cleansing breaths. Then he inhaled once more, slowly, savoring the air as it moved across his palate, searching with a dragon’s senses for the taste of fire, fire swift and awful as lightning, fire so great it burned rock like lesser fires burned wood…
There, on the opposite shore. Wouldn’t ya know? He’d been so certain it was this bank he’d stood on with Maud last year, but—never mind. He plunged across the stream, reached down into the shadows and you’re mine!
He held it up in the last bit of light, a water-worn lump of what looked like red clay about the size and shape of a brick. But it was no brick: faint lines like layers in a cake spoke of passing seasons in ancient waters. And trapped between two layers was a spot of vivid green.
“Hey Maud—willya look at this!”
“Yes.”
“…yeah, well…whaddaya think it is?”
“A rock.”
“I know I know but what kind?”
“Sedimentary.”
“Then what’s that green stuff?”
He passed her the rock. She turned it over in her hooves. Other ponies would go “hmmmm…” or “Well, let’s see…” That let you know they were thinking. Maud just thought and didn’t say anything until she was done.
Not a bad system, actually.
“It is schist,” she said finally.
“Ewwwww.”
“No, a schist. This schist is a greenschist. It is characterized by the presence of chlorite, serpentine and/or epidote.”
“So what’s that mean?
“That…means it is a mafic volcanic rock.”
“Uh, volcanic. Right. Got it.”
Spike hadn’t said anything more and after a while Maud put the rock gently down. Then they’d both wandered off to…wherever it was they’d gone next.
But he’d mentioned the conversation to Twilight and she’d said oh yes, millions of years ago the land around Ponyville had been covered by a shallow sea, and then a huge volcano had erupted—explosively, KABOOM! --hundreds of miles away, near what was now Fillydelphia. Winds carried the ash all the way down here, where it settled on the lake and sank to the bottom and was covered with silt by seasonal streams. That was why you found rocks like that in Mill Creek sometimes.
And the scene she’d conjured up had stuck in his mind: the placid, long-lost lake, the distant cataclysm, its faint report like falling snow enfolded and covered over by the work of patient years…
Lights were beginning to show in Ponyville, silhouetting the arch of the old stone bridge. Spike turned and slogged upstream towards it, clutching his prize.
Once under the bridge, he groped around in the darkness at the face of the townward abutment. His eyes were slowly adjusting but he felt the need for haste and besides, he knew the spot by touch: not the stone shaped like Manehatten Island but the one right next to it, where the Broncs would be…
He froze at the sound of plodding hooves and the rumble of wheels. As they mounted the rise of the bridge a familiar grunt and an even more familiar grumble told him it was Cranky, heading home late from the recycling yard. Matilda would be keeping his supper warm. Spike relaxed, if only a little. Nopony could know about this, but Cranky…if Cranky knew, he’d understand.
But if Cranky knew then Twilight would find out, and…no. Just--no. She’d think it was weird. Or worse, cute…
The grumbling and the rumbling receded. Better hurry before she notices I’m gone.
To pull the tightly-fitted stone so neatly from its place, a unicorn’s magic would have to have been subtle and strong. A dragon’s claws were both, though Spike strained and panted. He reached into the dark hollow he’d dug there three summers ago and drew forth…
… rhodochrosite blushing on pale yellow fluorite…
…rainbow-hued wands of tourmaline fanned out like a spread of contrails…
… cubes within cubes of pink halite, an endless succession of puzzle-boxes, a practical joke of nature…
...blood-orange amber with a tiny leaf at its heart…
…amethyst of the deepest hue, a perfect octahedron like an eight-sided dice, and finally…
“Well, hel-lo there!”
Every dragon has a hoard, and every hoard has its centerpiece, its crowning glory, its queen. Spike’s was a diamond, marquis-cut and big as his fist. He never learned where it was from or how it had taken that shape. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that she found it, and she gave it to him.
She was why he hid his treasure so close to Ponyville. It was no use scrying out gemstones in town, as she’d told him—you’d just end up discovering somepony’s jewelry and that would be rude. So she’d never find it here, not even accidentally. She’d never use her Talent to look anywhere nearby.
And she couldn’t know, either. It might freak her out.
“O Best Belovèd …” and his voice came out strange to him, like the rush and thunder of distant wings. Even in the dim light that filtered down from the town, a dragon’s eye could catch something of the stone’s brilliance. But that was not enough. Holding it up in his right claw, standing close to the stone of the abutment, he risked a little fire. There…
…warm glimmering catchlights dancing in the depths of the almond-shaped jewel, reflected and refracted until the eye was entranced…
…so like, so very like the look in her eye at Hearthswarming, when she’d turned her gaze…
…turned her gaze towards…
He looked down at the great red lump of clay in his left claw.
Slowly he brought them level with one another, the two stones with very different fires at their hearts.
“You’re…you’re his, now” he said, addressing the diamond. It was Spike’s own voice again, very much the voice of a young dragon.
For a while there was only the sound of water passing under the bridge.
“But...if I make him mine…”
He sighed “…then you’re still mine too” and he clutched both stones to his chest.
He brooded on them all then, as a proper dragon should—or rather brooded over them, piled on his tummy, because the tourmaline was fragile and you didn’t want to get the halite wet and besides the ground was muddy—holding them close and warming them with the fires of his body, finally banked high in a great warm rumbling purr.
The village clock roused him, striking the hour. Spike stowed away his horde and replaced the stone. The Cakes’ shop would’ve just closed, but they wouldn’t mind him knocking and picking up something—maybe that rosemary sourdough Twilight liked. That’d give him an alibi if she asked where he’d been.
And hey, with that he could whip up some bruschetta, or maybe a croque. And some soup… he’d get a proper dinner in her yet. Yeah.
Eeyup.
He chuckled at how that stung. It would get better though. He knew that now.
It’d be kind of a rocky road. But rocks—eh, they could be pretty special, you know?
The End