This is a little rant I'm writing in my journal concerning my thoughts on something, or rather somepony, who's been bothering me a lot lately. A pony I simply can't stand and wish would just disappear or something. My mother, or so she claims to be, Gold Digger.
The blank flanks should all consider themselves lucky. Apple Bloom is pretty much raised by her mother and sister, she doesn't have to worry about having an abusive mother. Sweetie Belle usually lives with her sister or something because her parents are busy or whatever. I'll be perfectly honest, I have no idea where Scootaloo lives. There are rumors that she's an orphan, but no one I know has built up the courage to actually ask. All I know is that her parents are never around.
The point is that the blank flanks never have to worry having a dumb, mean step-mother like mine. I'm like the poor, beautiful girl who's waiting for her Prince Blueblood to come and take her away from the evil step-mother and live on as an Equestrian Princess and live with a life of well-deserved luxury. I'll also settle for my dad simply firing Gold Digger as my mother, but the former is my preference.
So far, I've only been calling Gold Digger a mean old mare. I guess it wouldn't be fair to keep calling her that unless I had a good reason, but take my word. I have a darn good reason for not liking her.
First, I would like to talk about my real mother. She's great. I still get to see her every now and then. Because our family is rich, me and Mother could buy anything we wanted. we would always have to bring a butler or a maid just so we could carry everything we bought. Sometimes we would have to carry a bag or two anyway, but because I knew that they were my things, I never cared unless it was really REALLY heavy. But again, that's what the servants are for.
Now let's compare her with Gold Digger, my step-mother. We don't actually shop together that much since she's not into it that much. Silver Spoon's mother isn't a big shopper either, so I can't really blame anypony for that. The problem is during the times I DO get to shop, whether she's with me or not. It seems that she doesn't like the idea of me spending Dad's money all "willy nilly" and that I should be careful. We have more money than most ponies in Canterlot. I'm sure what I use to spend with Mother was couch money.
But wait, it actually gets worse. Even now, I still can buy some of the things I want, but I'm not usually allowed to keep all that much on myself, so I usually have to rely on my parents to get me what I want. Like I said, with my actual mother, there isn't a problem at all. When I go out with Gold Digger, what does she do? She buys toys not for me, but for poor kids. She actually spends more money on other fillies and colts than she spends on me, who she's been trying to call her daughter. I mean come on! If those kids can't afford toys, then they should be use to not playing with them. It's so unfair!
Now I'm not shallow. This isn't all about money. It's also about what kind of pony they are, and I'm going to say it now, the point still goes to my real mother. She's certainly a much more successful pony.
Mother is actually in the fashion business, always working to get some of the best outfits I've ever seen out and ready to be worn by some of the biggest names I've ever heard, but as you can imagine, a pony like her would be very busy and could never get so much clothing out to so many places. What was her solution? It was genius. She opened up a business where she got a bunch of other ponies to make her outfits for her. She provided amazing clothing for other rich ponies without having to do a lot of work. I even remember hearing that she didn't actually need to pay her workers as much as you would think.
Normally, I'm not that big on manual labour since that's what workers for, but since Mother would use a sewing machine, I decided that it wouldn't hurt for me to try. I'm apparently pretty good at sewing together fabric. I'm not all that into it, but she clearly loves it, and I even get extra money out of it. It may not of been what gave me my cutie mark, but I remember being happy to help Mother.
Thinking back to my time with my real mother, I decided to at least give Gold Digger a chance. She even had the same idea and brought me to her work too. She works as the foremare of one of the mines that Dad owns. That basically means that she's the boss. But the crazy thing is that even though she's the boss, she still gets her hooves dirty, and she works in a mine, so that's very literal. Even worse, she somehow talked me into going in there with her. I think she just wanted a free worker.
The mine she works has mostly gems, thought Gold Digger tends to aim for her favourite prizes, gold, silver, and other rare ores, so to her very little credit, she does have some fine taste. But don't worry. One of her few redeeming features can be ignored since the only part of the mine she would let me dig at had nothing buried, which I suspected she did intentionally so that she could keep all of the diamonds herself. She didn't think I'd be smart enough to catch on, but I was.
I then confronted Gold Digger on managed to convince her to let me dig where the other miners were digging. After all, they actually were digging up gems and minerals, so I wanted to get a piece of that profit. So with the little pickaxe Gold Digger gave me, I actually did manage to dig something up. You can certainly image the signs of bits in my eyes when I laid my eyes on that big blue gem. As you would immediately guess, Gold Digger didn't want me to keep it since it didn't belong to me. I found it, so of course it belonged to me.
There's no debate. My real mother is better than my step-mother. The real question is: Why does my dad like Gold Digger so much? I asked him once and he just told me that he was more compatible with her, partly because he's known her since they were in school. I forgot to write this before, but Gold Digger is also so old. I don't mean to call my dad old or anything. I'm just trying to insult my step-mother.
I think Dad was also a bit confused when he broke up with my mother. I once head that he was tired of having Gold Digger as a wife, yet it was Gold Digger herself that he married. Heck, her special talent is literally digging for gold! If I didn't already know that she was an earth pony, I'd swear that she used some sort of mind control spell on Dad.
There have been many, MANY times where I wanted to go up to Dad and say to him "I don't like Gold Digger! Can't we get rid of her already?". I really wish that I could someday tell him that. The problem...well, there's something that's stopping me from getting the nerves to say it.
It's not fear that my dad will get angry at me for saying it since he's very fond of her. No, that's not it. There's just one and only one thing. The only reason I have for putting up with my step-mother at all is...
What I write here is to never leave this journal. In fact, this journal is to never leave my bedroom.
Why I let myself live in the same mansion as Gold Digger is the tiniest bit of respect I have in that old mare. With all the bad things she's done to me, there was one thing that she did for me that I can't even deny, and it was something that changed my life forever.
It happened on the day when I went to Gold Digger's mine. I had to take the longest, hottest
bath I had ever taken just to get the dirt out of my mane, so I was in a pretty bad mood when I went to dinner. Funny enough, Gold Digger wasn't overly happy either.
What happened was that she thought she found a really rare blue diamond that day. She may of been an expert when it came to rocks and metals, but she really had no idea what the difference was between a gemstone and a pincone. What she really found was a piece of lapis lazuli, and anypony who's ever even seen one should know how much different a diamond is. It just goes to show how stupid Gold Digger really is.
What's interesting is how she looked at me when I said the name of the gemstone. She didn't even mentioned the name lapis lazuli, so she knew right away that I knew what it was. She was impressed with me by my knowledge of jewelry. I think she finally realized that I like ponies who praises me for my greatness.
She even wanted to praise me more. She brought me into her study to show me all of the other precious gemstones that she had dug up over the past few days. She didn't have much of an eye for gems like she had with gold, so she always had trouble with identifying them. She gave her findings to me, and I swear it didn't even take me ten minutes to not just tell her what they were, but I even explained how they should've been cut to give them the best values.
I have to be honest, a lot of the things I said I never even realized I knew. I've always known that I had a love for anything that bedazzled, but I guess I had more interest in it then i thought. Gold Digger and Dad both took noticed and even gave me some for me to play with. Using the materials I was given, I decided to make myself a tiara to show Equestria what a princess I really am. I still say that my design for it is one of my greater achievements.
When i was done, Gold Digger scooped me up and gave me a hug. I said to her "Hey, this is my tiara! Not yours." Turned out that she wasn't happy for my tiara. She was the first one to noticed that after all of my work on the tiara and gemstones, my cutie mark appeared. Right there, that beautiful mark on my beautiful rump. I was so proud of myself for it too.
The first thing I wanted to do was run over to Silver Spoon's house to show it off to her, because the week before, she discovered her special talent in fine dining and table manners, probably because she was the first pony in her family to figure out what all twelve forks were used for. As I tried to run off, but not before Gold Digger grabbed me by the tail. She and Dad wanted to take a picture together to celebrate.
I'm not going to lie. That was the first, and so far only, picture of me smiling while with Gold Digger. She was reason I discovered what my special talent was, which was something I never came close to doing whenever I would see my real mother. She wanted me to help sew dresses up so I could help her, but when Gold Digger had me help her, it felt different. I don't she did it to help her own job. I think she actually wanted to help me get my own talent out because she knew I liked. She even promised me that I could get my own gem cutting tools when I'm old enough.
I guess the thing that makes me respect her more than I probably should is that she does take an interest in me, even when it doesn't look like it. I still get in trouble from her a lot though, even when it's not my fault. I got in trouble because the blank flanks crashed my cute-ceanera, I got grounded because of how I ran the Foal Free Press, and I guess even my dad didn't like how I made fun of a pegasus who couldn't fly. I guess that was a little bad. Basically, I still don't get along with Gold Digger all that well. But...even so, I think she's at least trying to be a good mother.
Maybe she isn't all that bad after all. Maybe someday, Gold Digger might actually be worth of being my mother.
Author's Note
I hope you enjoyed this story. This is the first one-shot I've written in years.
Now that this is out of my head and into a story, I can once again focus on my main project.