That Orange Colt With The Bare Wings

by BlndDog

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Original Character
Length: 5718

Southpaw the diamond dog finds a colt in his mine and takes him in as a workhorse.

Southpaw is a freelancer: a diamond dog without a guild. Desperate to secure a future for himself, he signs on to become a miner.

Two weeks into his work term, Southpaw discovers a mysterious colt in a mine shaft. An unlikely bond forms between the two, and Southpaw soon discovers that the pony just might be the friend he needs.

For the Equestria Daily Summer Contest! Onwards!

Published 2014-08-01 05:30:07 UTC
Last updated 2014-08-01 05:30:07 UTC

The Longest Night

That Orange Colt With the bare Wings

Just my luck. We finally get a pony, and I have to carry him.

The feeling of his dry, cold skin on my neck made me sick, and I had already decided that I would drop him if he kicked me one more time. His nose rested on my left ear, and I was sure to go crazy if I heard one more word.

“Gerald! Asa soot! Gerald! Gerald! Gerald!”

That was an old line for him. His deeply-chipped hooves caught the fur of my muzzle, ripping out a few strands of fine brown hair with each desperate kick.

“Keep it down, Southpaw!”

I dropped the pickaxes from my left hand and flung the colt over my head. His bound limbs flailed in midair, and his bright orange coat flashed before my carbide lamp before he hit the ground and rolled down the sloped passage. Around the bend came the sound of claws scrambling over wet stone.

Just my luck.

A bobbing orb of light rounded the corner. I squinted, standing my ground despite my instincts telling me to run.

It’s Crusher.

It’s just Crusher.

There are no cyclopes in this part of the mine. A cyclops wouldn’t even fit in this tunnel.

“What do you think you’re doing, Southpaw?”

“I’m keeping it down,” I said. “He’s not yelling anymore, is he?”

“You don’t throw ponies,” Crusher snapped. “Break one leg, and he’ll be nothing but dead weight for a year. That’ll comes out of your pay, boy!”

“He’s dead weight now,” I said. “He’ll be dead weight for at least another ten years! Look at those little wings! Look at his ribs; his coat! If we’re going to put him down anyways, we should have done it where we found him. Just a tap on the head’ll do, and we could have buried him outside! There’s not enough meat on him for a good stew!”

“He’s alive now, isn’t he?” Crusher said, leaning in so far that the smoke from his head lamp stained my forehead. Still I could not see his wrinkly black face. “Any pony is better than no pony, unless you like wearing the yoke yourself. He doesn’t look like much right now, but I’ll bet he can pull a cart further than you or I. Besides, he’s kind of cute, isn’t he?”

I didn’t get to argue after that. Crusher set the pony on my neck once again and disappeared around the corner. The colt cried and whimpered all the way to the Meat Freezer, ruining the left panel of my rawhide vest with his tears.

I thought I had seen the last of that wretched pony when the doctor took him. After a big steaming bowl of beef stew and changing into a down jacket, I was starting to feel normal again. The old miners kept telling me that diamond dogs were born to work the mines, but my uneasiness had not subsided in the two weeks since I moved to the Meat Freezer.

At first there were small things: loss of appetite; trouble sleeping and waking up; a sense that I was being watched whenever I was on my own. But then came the nightmares.

Every night it was the same: I lay face up and paralyzed in total darkness, with a great weight crushing the air out of my lungs. I endured a thousand years in every short nap, and nothing ever changed upon my release.

Perhaps the others felt it too. Perhaps that was why they liked the gigantic subterranean chamber that was the Meat Freezer. Perhaps that was why the older dogs took long walks around the barracks, with heavy wool scarves shielding their faces against the stead cave wind that could freeze your eyes shut. But a fifty metre ceiling with hanging gas lanterns was a poor substitute for the endless sky.

I took my hand off my hot lantern just long enough to brush aside the three tarps on my door.

“How was dinner?”

The leather-walled tent looked and felt like a furnace. Crusher had brought his own heater, and its flames licked at the dusty work gloves hanging from the ceiling. My cast iron heater was also stoked and roaring. He had even lit my head lamp, turning the drip all the way up so that the tip of its flame rose an inch above the edge of the reflector.

He had a grey bundle in his arms; it looked like his jacket, but he took great care not to crushing it.

“How was dinner?” He repeated. “Come in. Close the door, unless you like it cold. I’ll take your heater if you don’t want it.”

He had a point; thick fog was swirling around my ankles, and already frost was forming on the innermost door flap.

“What are you doing in my tent?” I asked, dropping my jacket on the rug of rabbit pelts.

“Somebody has to make sure you don’t eat Darius.”

“What?”

“Darius,” he said in the same way a teacher might explain one plus one to a particularly dull pupil. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already.”

He rotated the bundle in his lap so I could see inside. A tiny orange nose poked out of the hood; the pony was so small that the bottom half of the jacket could be folded and rolled around him as an additional layer.

“That’s his name, as far as we can tell,” Crusher continued, affectionately rubbing the top of the colt’s short muzzle. “Darius dunac Gerald. Don’t ask me what that means. He was fighting real hard when Spitz was looking him over, but that tired him out pretty quickly. I don’t think he’ll bother you tonight.”

“What do you mean?” I said when he finally stopped to take a breath. “Why would he bother me?”

“Well, I just thought that if he’s staying with you…”

I grabbed his muzzle with both hands and held his mouth shut. It was a dumb thing to do to your shift officer, especially at the start of a three year contract, but I was already starting to realize that it was the only way to get my word in with Crusher.

“He’s not staying with me,” I said. “Do you see an extra bed here, or a feeding trough?”

“I can get you a ‘eeding trou’,” Crusher said through his teeth. “Let go!”

“I’m not keeping him,” I repeated while Crusher was stretching his jaw and rubbing his nose.

“I think you’ll like him,” he said. “He seems to understand Equestrian Standard, but he can’t speak it. Nobody knows what he’s saying. He’s also quite jumpy and very sick. You two were meant for each other!”

I raised my hand above Crusher’s head, and he immediately raised the bundle over his like a shield. The colt slept on peacefully, with a snot bubble on his left nostril.

“Take him yourself,” I said. “You’re the one who thinks he’s cute.”

“In the same way I think pups are cute. Doesn’t mean I want one. I moved five hundred metres underground to avoid mine, you know.”

“Find someone else.”

“There is no one else,” Crusher said, and the tone of his voice told me that the matter was settled. “You’re the new guy; new guys do whatever old guys tell you to do. You can take him here, or we’ll send you home with the pony in tow. That’s sure to impress your mother.”

There was no point in arguing after that. Crusher offered me his brandy flask as he went over the long list of things I should know about Darius. It all boiled down to keeping him warm and the jacket clean. Crusher left me his heater for the night and a sack of crumpled packing paper to be used for diapers.

“He’s all yours,” Crusher said and disappeared from the room, leaving me to stare over his half-empty flask at the swinging door veil.

I drank the bottle dry, perhaps out of spite. The fruitiness of the drink masked its strength, and I just managed to undress and unroll a heavy blanket before the world went black. All the while Darius slept, propped upright against a tent post.

My limbs were weighed down with a hundred tonnes of rock. The beating of my heart was thunder in my ears.

I was alone.

I opened my mouth, and my lungs deflated before I could even whimper. I felt as if my ribs were curved all the way backwards, but somehow I was still alive.

Pressure built up in my sinuses and behind my eyes. My ears popped.

“AHHHHH!”

The sight of orange light gave me hope. It must be the sun! Someone was digging me out!

I lay motionless under the rocks, which now seemed soft. I could breathe again, so I breathed deeply. They were coming for me, and I was going to be okay.

The room smelled faintly of smoke. Gradually my eyes focused on the bright net of jagged lines.

A few flecks of orange popped out of the pile of smoldering coal and drifted into the darkness.

I closed my eyes and sighed, but my blood froze when the voice screamed again.

It was like the cry of a terrified pup, energetic and desperate despite its feeble volume. Something was scrambling around the floor of my tent.

I fumbled in the dark for the lantern. There was barely any fuel left, but after a dozen strokes on the pump I managed to light it. Diffuse flames danced around the mantle for some time, barely bright enough to reveal the outlines of the room.

I had to bite my tongue when I saw the source of the commotion. I knew that ponies had big eyes, but this one seemed to be nothing but eyes. His sunken cheeks were lost in deep shadows, and his coat was thin and drab. His eyes practically bulged out of his little skull as I approached with my arms outstretched.

“Gerald! Gerald! Goon sia cas! Gerald! Papa!”

He strained against the jacket with all his might, stretching his neck and biting the fur-lined collar. When that failed he retreated far into the hood until only his shining eyes were visible, mutter all the while in his gibberish.

“Hey, Darius,” I said, putting a hand on the side of the bundle.

Do ponies bite?

“Gerald,” he whimpered. “Gerald…”

“Darius, what’s wrong?” I said. “Did you have a bad dream?”

His eyes stared straight into mine, but the colt fell silent. After a long pause to build up my courage I pushed the hood back, fully expecting to be attacked by some face-eating monstrosity.

Darius’ thin face was raw from crying, and cold sweat glistened on his long neck. His spine was like a serrated crest on his back. Now that the lantern was burning bright I saw that he had three gaps in his teeth. I tried to lift him, but he squeezed his eyes shut and turned away.

It was all very absurd. He wasn’t much bigger than a newborn pup, and probably didn’t know anything about diamond dogs. I tried to suck my lower lip over my fangs, but the damage was already done.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, stroking his cheek with the back of one finger. “It’s okay. I’m not going to eat you.”

Darius cried for half an hour before exhaustion set in. I laid him down on the rug to take the weight off his neck. He hiccupped a few times, but already he was falling asleep. I was tired too, but an unpleasant scent tickled my nose as I leaned in closer to inspect the colt.

You’re kidding.

I stooped over Darius for some time trying to think of a way to avoid the task, but my mind drew a blank. Finally mustering up the courage, I took three deep breaths and got to work. With the tips of my fingers I unrolled the jacket around him and undid the buttons. Darius shivered when the cooler air of the room hit his skin, but that was the extent of his resistance.

All four of his hooves were wrapped in bandages, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the sizable chunks that were missing. His shoulders were bare and sunburnt, and his ribs showed through his skin.

For a moment I puzzled over the big round medallion between his wrists. He had been wearing it around his neck on a frayed ribbon when we found him at the bottom of the Sinkhole, and Crusher had taken it as a trinket. It was a plain metal plate with concentric circles like a bull’s eye. Two straight lines traced out a section at the bottom of the medallion, but there was neither writing nor symbol to define its significance. I tried to take the medallion, but Darius whimpered and held it closer against his chest. He had a surprisingly strong grip for something with no fingers.

I changed him quickly and threw the wad of wet paper outside. I rinsed my hand with the icy water in my canteen, though this was probably not needed. It turned out that the unpleasant smell came not from Darius, but from Crusher’s unwashed jacket. Tying the sleeves again, it occurred to me how uncomfortable he must have been. He sobbed and sniffled softly, not quite asleep but too weak to fight.

I returned to my bed, but the pony’s sniffling was like a dripping tap. I tried covering my ears, first with my hands and then with my pillow, but even the slightest peep from Darius jolted me to full wakefulness. Finally my patience ran out.

I reached over the side of the bed and lifted the bound colt onto my mattress.

“You there,” I said groggily, sticking my nose into the foul-smelling hood. “You’re sleeping right here tonight. Now don’t make another sound, or I’ll put you outside. Got it?”

The crying stopped instantly. I would have smiled, but didn’t want to scare him again with my long teeth.

“Good,” I said instead, and laid him down on the pillow beside me.

Darius sniffed a few times, but I could hear his heart rate slowing down. I was almost asleep when he poked his head out from the hood and nuzzled my cheek.

“Gerald,” he drawled. “Gerald…”

Fortunately for me Darius recovered quickly. By the second night he was well enough to sleep in a hammock. Spitz fashioned a set of padded boots for him so he could walk while his hooves recovered, but he was not deemed fit for work until a month later.

After the first night Darius stopped talking completely. He was well behaved for the most part, and only got aggressive when I tried to take the medallion from him. He held onto that thing like his life depended on it.

I dropped him off at the infirmary every morning and picked him up at the end of the day. He ate hay and oats in the cafeteria, and spent his nights in my tent. The way he sat in the corner and stared at me silently made me a little uncomfortable at first. I always kept one eye on him, and lost a few hours of sleep in the first week in that staring contest, but in the end I decided that it was not worth the effort.

He’s just scared. That’s all.

There was one definite upside to this new roommate, however. Every night at about the same time he woke me. Sometimes he would pull my arm or jump onto my bed, but it always ended with him on the pillow beside be. The nightmare did not return afterwards, and Darius seemed to sleep better too.

I felt a little sorry for Darius the day they put a yoke on him and hitched him to a mine cart ten times his weight.

“He’ll pull it just fine,” Crusher assured me as Darius was led into the lower mines. “What’s the point of raising him for a month if we cripple him on the first day?”

I was glad that Darius didn’t look back before he disappeared down the tunnel with the deep mining crew. They needed him in the lower mines where new tunnels were being made, and though a part of me wanted to go with them I knew that I had no business there. Guild members always had first dibs on new projects, and I was three years from my induction.

The walls of the upper tunnels were almost stripped bare of gems. It was my job to salvage the leftovers. The extent of my job was to chip rocks and collect the debris in a big rusty bucket. In two weeks I hadn’t touched a gem bigger than a thumbtack, but I was fortunate that the miners’ guild would consider me at all.

Most diamond dogs joined a guild before they turned twenty. Usually it was the guild of a family member. They were paid well for their work, and there was plenty of work to go around.

It was a different matter for freelancers like me. I was never a great blacksmith or a shoemaker; too rough, too sloppy, and too impatient. The bodyguards of Diamondia weren’t kind to outsiders, and no merchant would hire me to accompany them to Canterlot. The miners were not so picky. I had four functioning limbs; that was good enough. I needed only to go wherever they sent me and do what I was told for three years, and then I would be a miner for life. It had seemed like a fair arrangement until I arrived at the Shinbone Mine and walked the dark, frigid miles to the Meat Freezer.

“So,” Crusher said when we stopped for lunch. “Have you changed your mind?”

“About what?” I asked.

“About Darius,” he said. “He’s not so bad, is he?”

“He’s not bad,” I agreed. “What’s wrong with him, anyways?”

“You’ve been asking me that same question for the last month,” Crusher said through a mouthful of cured pork. “I didn’t know yesterday, I don’t know now, and I won’t know by this time tomorrow. All we know is that he’s a pony and he seems to like you. Do you know how hard it is to find a pony who likes diamond dogs? Just be glad we have him.”

That day seemed impossibly slow. As I settled into the familiar pattern of hammer-collect-hammer my mind wandered down the dark passages into the deep mineshafts, past temporary pillars and cyclopes with their big glowing eyes. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was worried about Darius. Daggermouth had been carrying a mean-looking whip when his team left the Meat Freezer that morning.

He wouldn’t whip a colt, would he?

When Crusher announced the end of the day’s work I wasted no time gathering the buckets and tools. For the first time I was leading the way back to the Meat Freezer.

I found Darius in the infirmary, wrapped in two thick blankets with Spitz and Daggermouth fussing over him. He looked exhausted, and barely lifted his head when I approached.

“Relax, Southpaw,” Daggermouth said. “He’s not hurt or anything. He just passed out from this cold air. We were working near a magma pocket all day. I’ll remember to bring a jacket for him next time.”

“Did you whip him?” I asked, putting a finger on the colt’s forehead.

“I didn’t need to,” Daggermouth chuckled, twirling the whip in his giant hands. “I could have, I suppose, but I don’t think he would have worked any faster for it. I like this one. He’s quiet, and he can follow instructions. I think he’s a better miner than you are.”

The cafeteria was almost empty when Spitz declared Darius fit to leave. We sat next to each other on the bench and both got food, but I couldn’t eat. Darius stared at me the whole time.

Why does he keep doing that?

When he finished one bowl of hay and oats I brought him another. The smile on his face as he ate only made me feel worse.

You don’t belong down here. I don’t even belong down here, and I’m a diamond dog!

I carried him back to my tent; he was too tired to walk. He didn’t spend a minute in his hammock that night.

Darius worked as often as the rest of us. His shoulders were always bruised from pulling the cart, and there were days when he could not bend his knees, but he never complained. His coat was grey from dust, and soon he was shedding all over the place.

I spent my days off making the three hour trek to the Sinkhole with Darius riding on my shoulders. The Sinkhole was thirty metres deep and fifty metres wide, with fresh air and a view of the sky. Darius played in deep pools of icy water while I climbed to the surface to gather fresh grass and hunt a few rabbits for myself.

Almost every miner talked about going to the Sinkhole, but it appeared that few of them lived up to their words. It was a wonderful place cooled by the cave wind and countless little waterfalls, and more often than not Darius and I had it all to ourselves.

Though he still did not speak, Darius was a very good listener. Usually he sat shoulder-deep in a pool and stared at me with his big eyes as I told him about life outside the mine. Occasionally he would crack a smile, but he never answered my questions.

I learned a few things about Darius on those days. He looked like a completely different pony without his thick coat of dust. I saw the purple-and-blue cruciform stars on his flank, bracketed by two branded crescents. He was a very strong swimmer, and he loved lily bulbs.

We stayed as long as we could at the sinkhole; sometimes we even had dinner there. With each visit I became more and more reluctant to return to the Meat Freezer. I thought about running into the forest above. I was not a prisoner after all; nobody would hunt me down. But where would I go?

So it was I returned after each excursion with Darius sleeping on my shoulder, dreading more and more the eternal night of the ancient mine.

Summer became winter, putting an end to the day trips. Darius’ scratching left a layer of dust and hair on everything in my tent, and the only relief I could provide was a weekly dry brushing. All the vitality he had recovered in the summer went away in a few weeks, and he started to look mangy and thin. He still slept in my bed, but his dreams became troubled. He mumbled his strange gibberish, and more than once I was awakened in the middle of the night by a powerful kick to my chest.

My nightmare returned with a vengeance, and now Darius was buried with me. All night I listened to his tortured cries. Sometimes I woke to the sound of falling rocks from a deep tunnel. Other times Darius screamed, and I would spend hours trying to comfort him.

After eight months in the Meat Freezer I was allowed to start working in the lower mines. It was no reward, watching Darius pull the carts of gem-encrusted rock up the steep, winding tunnel. The walls were hot to the touch, and I was always short of breath. I left our canteens outside to freeze overnight, and drank scalding water by lunch time.

Unlike the upper mine, the tunnels that I now worked were full of crystals and on the verge of collapse. Hardhats and back shields were mandatory, and one miner was ready at all times with extra pillars and tripods on hand. No longer were cyclopes a distant threat. I heard their thundering steps several times a day, and once I even saw a distant glowing orb in an unoccupied section of the tunnel.

“They’re not your problem,” Daggermouth said when I told him. “We’re thirty diamond dogs here; they know better than to come this way. Now the sooner you get back to work the sooner we can get out of here.”

I avoided walking at the back of the group, even if it meant jogging with a sling full of pickaxes and a pony on my shoulder. Darius’ first day had ended with a nervous breakdown when he fell behind the others; since then it was an elderly miner who pulled the empty cart back to the Meat Freezer.

Thoughts of leaving haunted my mind as never before. I wanted to see the sun again! It was clear to me that I would never get used to this frigid underworld.

One night Darius would not stop talking. He sat at the foot of my bed, his eyes locked on the lamp on my desk. His wings hung limp at his side, featherless and inflamed from rock dust.

“Gerald, asa soot. Cona sic ac. Gerald.”

This he chanted for hours. I tried to ignore it, but his words had the most unsettling rhythm. I expected the tent to be torn out of the ground. My eyes darted around the room, searching for “Gerald”. I could feel its presence like it was lying on the bed next to me. It was a most unnatural thing, though I knew not what it was.

Finally I could endure no longer. Darius didn’t skip a beat when I lifted him up to the ceiling, but the fall shocked him enough to make him stop. He lay on the rug amidst a cloud of dust, his legs resting exactly where they fell. I stomped on his back and grabbed his head in one hand, forcing him to turn to me.

“Listen,” I growled, looking right into his terrified eyes. “We both need to sleep. I don’t care about Gerald. Nobody does! And he doesn’t care about you either! I’m all you have, Darius! Don’t make this harder than it needs to be!”

I stomped down one more time to drive my point home and climbed back onto my bed. He cried quietly after that, and I was at last free to return to having the life crushed out of me.

Darius slept in his hammock after that, with only his medallion for company. He would not let me carry him, and even tried to bite me a few times. In the night we took turns sleeping, waking each other with screams and gasps.

When Crusher finally found out about our troubles he arranged to move me to a different work crew. I was very good at digging, so I was tasked with expanding the tunnels. I now wore a heavy iron carapace and toe caps, and got a new dent in my helmet every other day.

The cyclopes were never more than a hundred metres away. I heard their lumbering steps constantly. They were mute, like giant rolling rocks. The ground shook when they clashed, and we often had to abandon tunnels for fear of getting too close to them.

“They have the best of it,” Crusher told me at dinner. “They can get right up to the magma pockets, where the really big gems are. That’s why we follow them; they’re the next best thing when you don’t have a unicorn.”

They appeared often in my nightmares, hovering over me like dying gas lamps. The strings of lights over the Meat Freezer no longer eased my mind. My tent seemed like the only safe place. I would wait out the winter. If I could just get a breath of fresh air, everything would be okay.

The slab of orange-tinted limestone before me had to be the most stubborn thing in the whole mine. I had spent the entire morning dulling my tools, with nothing to show for it. As lunch time approached I began to take harder swings. The rock broke apart in small flecks, jumping off the wall with explosive force.

A more experienced miner would have seen the signs.

It wasn’t an especially strong swing that set it off. All I remembered was a tremendous roar. I was showered with sparks as my headlamp exploded. Seeing the rocks flow around me, I at first though that I’d released a magma flow.

The force of impact blew off my toe caps and helmet, and my legs went numb from the waist-deep cascade of rocks. The earth swallowed me before I could open my mouth to scream.

I could not hear a thing. Uneven rocks dug into my ribs and chewed my hands like giant molars. My skin felt ready to burst from pooled up blood, and the hot stones on my back made me nauseous.

My lips parted.

My ribs popped as the air rushed out of my lungs.

No.

My heart pounded painfully, pushing more blood into the bulging veins of my temple. I was lying with my head lower than my feet, buried up to my neck in rocks.

When my hearing returned, even the sound of falling pebbles felt like angry bees in my ears. I could hear distant yelling, but the words were garbled and incomprehensible.

I closed my eyes and tried to free my hands. The rubble pile shifted, and a moment later my efforts were rewarded with a fist-sized rock between my eyes.

The pain from all my knuckles simultaneously popping out of their joints forced my mouth open. I let out a rattling, wet scream as the last bit of air left my lungs. Blood filled my mouth and nose, and little dots of colour exploded before my eyes.

It was then that I noticed the sickly yellow orb hovering overhead. It had not been there before; the voices became excited, even frantic. Pickaxes and sledge hammers clinked against rock, punctuated by the sound of tumbling boulders.

The cyclops’ putrid breath cut through the stench of blood and sweat, smelling like the metallic exhaust of a forge chimney. Its skin was as hard and dry as cured leather, cracking and stretching as it stooped to examine my exposed face. Thick globs of drool pattered against the hard ground.

I redoubled my efforts to break free. My lungs begged for air; air that was blowing around my nose and rustling my damp hair. As if sensing my distress, the cyclops slammed down on the rock pile with one gigantic fist. Blood exploded out of my airway, and all my muscles tightened as my ribcage was compressed beyond its limit.

Something was skittering down a narrow tunnel. The sounds of excavation were gone. The others were all yelling together, but I could not focus long enough to understand their words.

“AAAAAH!”

The cyclops stumbled backwards, causing a small quake that sent a few boulders tumbling down the pile and onto my face.

“Hey! Over here!”

It can’t be.

Small hooves danced across the stone. The cyclops’ lumbering steps receded down the unseen corridor, its eye occasionally illuminating a big diamond or a ruby. I craned my neck to keep that glowing eye in my line of sight, but it was like looking through a pinhole. I was starting to feel weightless and tired.

The cyclops leaned down, and for a split second I saw Darius. He was standing tall with his yoke on his shoulders. A sharpened beam was leaning against his side, held up by his left wing.

He did not move as the cyclops leaned in with its mouth open wide. Its eye shone like a spotlight on the tiny colt; even my clouded mind knew what was about to happen.

The yellow light faded, and there was a short moment of total silence. Then the tunnel shook like never before. Powerful pressure waves ravaged my ears, and I thought my eyes would explode.

The cyclops was mute to the end. It ripped big handfuls of gems out of the walls and tore down stone pillars, working itself into a desperate rage. Finally its strength drained away, and it flopped down on the hard floor with one last deafening boom.

I was blind and deaf when I felt Darius’ muzzle on my cheek. He was saying something; I could feel puffs of his hot breath on my ear. He started clearing the rocks on my chest, but I no longer thought about breathing.

I was bedridden for two months. I was lucky to have survived at all. The rubble flow from the cave-in had stripped my legs almost to the bone, and they never quite recovered completely. For the first week my eyes were black from ruptured blood vessels, and the tube in my mouth meant that Darius did most of the talking.

And talk he did after a few days of well-deserved rest. No longer was he just “the pony”; when Spitz finally allowed visitors in the infirmary Darius was more than happy to retell his epic struggle with the cyclops and give out hoof prints.

I spent one evening questioning him, with generally disappointing results. His mind was not all there, and he was still prone to crying when pressed too hard.

He insisted that he had been speaking all along. Given his staunch belief that he had only worked in the mine for a month at most, I decided not to pursue the matter.

He would not tell me who Gerald was, nor would he say anything about the medallion that he still wore around his neck. In the end he said his name was Flash Powder, and asked me not to call him Darius. After some talk back and forth he accepted “Dust” as a nickname.

Dust stayed with me in that mine for three years, and in all that time we worked in the same crew. He made my term in the mine bearable, and kept my nightmares at bay. In return I fed him well and kept him clean.

I was lucky indeed.