Diamond in the Rough

Old Friends and Relationships

A Diamond Tiara in the Vogonverse

Diamond hummed softly as she rocked her little filly. Ruby Broach had finally fallen asleep. Unlike her twin brother, Shiney Bit, Ruby seemed to be naturally fussy. It took rocking her, walking with her, singing to her, and even the occasional taxi ride to calm her down enough to sleep. Unless it was Fredrick holding her. She seemed to be perfectly behaved with her father. She couldn’t get upset. In many ways she was the same way with her father. She could remember, honestly remember, how she used to act. Nopony other than her father could ever get her to behave.

“I suppose that old mare’s tale about how we’d all pay for our foalhood was right, wasn’t it Ruby?” she asked as she gently snuggled her little girl.

After Ruby Broach had finally, finally went to sleep she took her into the bedroom where Shiney was already sleeping hard. She looked down at her two foals. Ruby was almost a complete copy of her when she was a foal. Her coloring was a little different. She seemed to be a lighter lavender color, and her mane seemed to be mainly white with small purple strips in it. There was the fact that she looked very much like a pony. Her brother, Shiney, was different because he truly did have some of his father in him. He looked like his father from the waist up, or at least close, although his mane, tail, and coat on his legs looked like hers. She gently kissed her little boy, watching him get comfortable turn over, and snuggle against his sister.

That was something that Ruby seemed to live for. The only other person she would be quiet for, besides her father, was Shiney. She hoped that the two of them would stay close. She’d heard that there was a half brother she had somewhere. Her father had apparently had a short fling with a young mare, and it hadn’t lasted very long. She never found out who her brother was, or even how old he was, but she did know that it had happened after her mother had died.

It was the talk at their house. The maids, Randolph, and the pool colt all talked about it. The secret mistress that her father had. Looking back on it she wished that she could have gotten to know her brother. Maybe they would have been close. Maybe he could have helped her become a better pony, but then again it seemed that things happened the way they happened for a reason. Her coming here, meeting Fredrick, learning what it was to live without the wealth her father had, all of it had made her a better pony.

She was a happier mare, a now married mare with two beautiful foals. Once they were asleep she walked over to the wall, detached a tablet from its hanging charging station, and opened up the FEMA employee login app. Once it was open she entered into the logistics area. Working at the Church had helped her realize how good she was at this. She had helped plan the distribution of the food the Church got through donations, the layout of the bedding area, and through those plans she had helped them help an additional ten percent. It might not sound like much, but she knew that it meant another twenty to twenty-five people got to eat, sleep, and be safe inside of the walls of the church.

At the moment she was helping FEMA work around the new housing solution to take the place of the stacks. Her first thought was the lego bricks. They weren’t overly expensive, from her own experience they were comfortable, and she noticed that the way they were stacked together was far more structurally sound than the stacks. Her suggestion was considered, approved, and then it was left up to her to find the contractors that would be willing to work for FEMA on the project.

And that was where she was at the moment. Thirty-two government contractors, and out of them six were willing to work on this project. It disappointed her that so many of them wanted the government to build apartments that looked more like prisons than apartment complexes. One of them had even laid down a design from the twentieth century for an apartment complex called the Cabrini Green.

It was downvoted, mainly because it wasn’t cost effective, and because it would be self serving for the contractors with various lumber, hardware, and building supply businesses. That contractor had decided to opt out of putting in a bid to build the apartment complex, and in a way Diamond was glad to see him go. He didn’t seem like a very honest stallion, and after learning what she had about the original Cabrini Green she didn’t want to see the same thing happen here. The original Cabrini Green had ended up being a place where crime, gun violence, gang violence, and other atrocities had happened. The articles had said it was because of the poverty stricken that lived there, but Diamond knew that wasn’t the only cause.

She had seen what happened in the stacks. How having so many people crammed into a small space had become a perfect breeding ground for crime. Her suggested answer to this was that each apartment would be for one family, or no more than four unmarried roommates. There was some arguments over it, but she went through to explain why she thought this was best. How it could cut down on crime, made the ponies that live there feel like this was their home, and not just someplace to sleep.

Once she explained it the other project directors agreed, and it was decided that the number of these complexes would be increased to keep the overcrowding to an absolute minimum.

“Dia?” Fredrick called from his office.

“Hmmm?” she asked as she sent the contact emails to the six contractors. Their bids had been acceptable, and having six of them working on the project would be easier than simply having one do it.

“I’ve got to head over to Richardson’s Transports. Mr. Jamerson asked that I come over personally and install their new Digital Assistant, and please make sure that everything worked perfectly fine for them before I left,” he said as he came into the room.

He hugged her, kissed her, and she felt him cup her cutie marks as they held each other.

“Okay, don’t take too long. I’m almost done with this, and I’m going to be getting lunch started in about fifteen minutes,” she said as she nuzzled his cheek.

“I shouldn’t be more than half an hour or so,” he replied.

He gave her another kiss, grinned at her, and then headed out. She watched him leave, looked back at the tablet and saw that all of the emails had been sent. She stood up, stretched her back, and looked toward the kitchen. They had a full pantry. It made her happier than she realized that it would. Those times of going without food had been life lessons she never intended to forget.

She opened the pantry to see their old standby of SpaghettiO’s lined up on the first shelf. Her first thought was a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, a bowl of SpaghettiO's apiece, and that would be a good lunch. A moment later her eyes came across something a bit more daring. She had cheddar cheese, a stoneware pot, and she knew they had a loaf of garlic bread. The idea of fondue, garlic bread, and some tomato soup caught, and held, her attention.

It wouldn’t be that much harder to fix, and it would be nice to share a meal like this with Fredrick. After deciding to go for it she began getting everything ready. She took out the stoneware pot, the plate warmer for it, and she added a very thin layer of non-stick butter flavored spray to the pot itself. Once the pot was starting to warm she took out the wheel of Cheddar they had.

She carefully unwrapped the cheddar, giggling a little as she did, and thought about what the sales mare had said about it.

“Unwrapping cheese is so much fun because it’s like undressing a man. You know what to expect, but there’s that moment of uncertainty that makes it so exciting. That moment when you hope that you’re right, and it’s not until that cheese is unwrapped that you find out that you are.” the sales mare had said when they bought it.

She began cutting the small wheel into cubes, dropping them into the pot, and watching as the cheese began to slowly melt. Grinning, she walked toward the pantry again and found tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and some jalapenos. Taking them out she found a small soup pot, poured the cans of sauce and diced tomatoes into it, she added in about a quarter of the jar of the jalapenos, and then she grabbed the seasonings. Some garlic, onion powder, and just a hint of cinnamon. She set the pot to heating up, and then, then she found the bread.

A nice long loaf of Prench, or French rather, bread. She took it cut it in half, and then slathered both sides with butter, took the garlic seasoning, and added it to the bread. She grabbed a cookie sheet, placed the two, cut lengthwise, halves on it, and put them into the oven. A mere five minutes and they would be done. She looked at the time, and almost fifteen minutes had passed since she started fixing lunch. Fredrick said he would be thirty, so lunch would, hopefully, still be warm when he got home.

She checked the soup, noticed that it was nearly done, and began simmering it. She then checked the fondue, and did a quick taste test. It was perfect. The cheddar tasted wonderful warm. That was when she heard the frantic knocking. She walked, quickly, toward the door, and expected to see Fredrick. Instead she saw somepony she hadn’t seen in so long. Her dress was one she had wore to Diamond’s cutesinera. It had been altered, obviously, but that wasn’t the only problem. The top had been ripped open, the front of her dress was ripped, and there was something dark and on the inner thighs of the mare standing in front of her.

Before she could get a word out the mare latched onto her, crying, bawling like a baby, and Diamond wrapped her arms around her old friend. Her friend that was upset. Her friend that was lost, and her friend that was waking her foals up. She brought her inside, and she felt the mare’s voice hitch several times.

“Silvy…” Diamond said softly.

“Di… I… I…” she managed to get out before she began crying again. Slowly she calmed her friend down.

She brought her to the kitchen, watched as Silver Spoon ate as if she was starving to death, and then at the point of eating twice what she would have thought possible Silver Spoon fished off the entire lunch she had fixed. Her friend was full, but still flighty. Something had happened to her. Something bad, and it bothered her.

“Silvy, want to talk about it?” she asked.

“I… He… I was lost… and he was there, and he saw me… He… I just wanted to ask a question,” she managed to get out.

The slow realization of what happened began to sink in, and she remembered what she had seen nearly a year ago. Those terrible stallions doing those horrible things to those two mares. It had been horrible, and she didn’t want to think about Silver Spoon facing those things alone. The door opened, Diamond looked up, and saw Fredrick. She noticed his confused expression, and motioned for him to come into the room with them.

“Silvy, you’re safe now. We’re not going to let anything happen to you,” Diamond said as Fredrick took a seat beside her.

Author's Note

(And we have a new character introduced. It's been coming for a while, and I'm sure that everypony that has been reading this realized that eventually Silver Spoon was going to be added to it. That said, I hope that everypony enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it

Thanks again

RJP)