“I’m telling you Smokey, you just need to drop by the spa and they can get you all shined up for the games,” said a green stallion as he illuminated another patch of crystals.
“I know, I know. There’s just no time to do it, and plus it would just wear off in a week or so down here,” Smokey sighed as his pick excavated the crystals.
“That sounds more like an excuse to me, but I get what you're saying. It’s hard to keep a shine when you’re mining most of the day. But, I did hear from a friend of a friend that there is an off-menu treatment, that’s guaranteed to last for months.”
He gave a snort, “Peridot, even if that was true, there’s still the problem of not having enough time in the day.”
“Don’t worry about it, we get off shift in a few hours, we can go then.”
“But, I’m uh… doing things after”
Peridot gave him a deadpan look, “What sort of things?”
“Umm. . . important things?”
“That’s what I thought,” he said with a smirk, “I’ll set up the appointment during lunch.”
Knowing that arguing was useless at this point he reluctantly agreed.
~ Six Hours Later ~
“Welcome to the Crystal Springs Spa, how can I help you today?”
Peridot walked up to the counter, “We have an appointment for Peridot and Smokey Quartz.”
The mare looked at her schedule, “for the ‘Royal Pamper and Polish’?”
Peridot nodded and the mare told us that our treatment would be ready in a moment. So we took a seat in the comfy waiting area. Smokey looked over at Peridot, “Do you know anything about this mysterious treatment?”
“Not a clue, but I did hear that it smooths down rough edges. So, maybe they can get all those chips off your shoulder,” he said jokingly. “Don’t worry about it, it’ll be fun.”
Another attendant walked up to us, “Peridot and Smokey Quartz?”
Peridot spoke up, “That’s us.”
“Nice to meet you, my name is Amethyst, follow me and we can get started,”
The mare led us deeper into the spa and into a room that had several large bathtubs. Two of them were already filled with water, steam wafting off the surface. When we got into the tubs a few more attendants came in, along with two carts laden with scrubbers and soaps.
Each of them took a scrubber and approached the stallions. While a few more of them poured a couple of gallons of soap into the baths themselves and another gallon on each of the stallions, while the rest of the attendants started scrubbing thoroughly.
After a few minutes, the scrubbing stopped and a bucket of water was poured over them followed by more soap, and the scrubbing resumed. This repeated about four more times before the stallions were let out of the tubs and were surrounded by towels and vigorously dried.
Peridot was the first to recover from the whirlwind of cleaning, “Was that really necessary?”
Amethyst just smiled at them, “Absolutely, if you had any dirt or stone dust on you then the treatment would have done more harm than good.”
Smoky let out a snort at that, but it was kinda hard to tell since his head was still wrapped in a towel. His mane being a little stubborn to dry.
After Smoky extracted his head from the fluffy confines, Amethyst led them through the spa, passing other treatment rooms along the way. Until they reached a small hallway with a single door at the end
The door led into a small tiled room that held four other doors. Amethyst led Peridot through one door, then led Smokey through the other. The whole room was shaped like a cylinder on its side, with everything being covered in soft rubber, but the room itself was empty, except for two dozen stones varying in size. The smallest of the stones being about as big as his hoof, while the largest was the size of his head.
“Enjoy your treatment,” she said as she closed the door behind me. The sound of a lock sliding into place was heard, completely sealing him into the room.
Smokey heard a rumbling above him and noticed a large hole in the ceiling that ran the length of the room. Then a few pounds of coarse black sand was dumped on his head. Followed by a few pounds of some sort of pellets and various powders.
Smoky shook his head dislodging the small mountain of powder from his mane. Looking around the room he saw that the mixture only filled the chamber a little above his fetlocks.
Just what kind of treatment is this?
Looking over the room again, his gaze lingered on the various rocks that were laying around. This setup seemed familiar, but he couldn’t put my hoof on it.
The rumbling resumed as it finally dawned on him, It’s a rock tumbler! They sometimes used machines like these to refine crystals before they go to market.
With that, a cascade of ceramic pellets flooded into the chamber, burying the stallion up to his neck. As Smoky tried to shift his weight, he heard the sound of rushing water and sure enough, hot water surged into the room, filling the gaps between the stones. Steam hanging heavy in the chamber.
Unable to move Smokey decided to relax before the treatment truly began. This feels really nice, Smoke thought as he relaxed into the rising water. I actually wouldn’t mind this if I didn’t know what came next.
Soon the water stopped, filling the room just above the pellets. He heard a small scraping noise as the lid to the chamber closed sealing the room completely. Then, with a slight groan, the chamber slowly started to spin. Slowly at first, but then it started to spin faster and faster until the rocks and other materials, Smoky included, started to ride up the walls and tumbled into the slurry below.
He tumbled end over end, all the while the coarse sand flowed into every nook and cranny and slowly eroded his outer crystal. While the rocks would occasionally grind against him, smoothing him even more.
After Smokey was tumbling for about an hour, the spinning slowed and finally stopped. After spinning for so long Smoky was a little dazed. He felt a suction from underneath as the slurry was drained, pulling him into the depths.
He didn’t fall very far, landing with a wet smack on the conveyor belt below, that trundled through a tunnel of high-pressure water cannons. The “Rock Wash” seemed to take forever, but when Smokey finally emerged any evidence of the slurry had been blasted away.
Smokey tumbled off the end of the conveyor belt, landing amongst the stones. After the last of the stones landed on top of him, there was a clunk, letting the rocks and the stallion fall into the tumbler; followed shortly by the rest of the material.
****
Smokey went through the tumbler four more times.
After the final time through the wash tunnel, he wasn’t dropped back into the chamber. Instead found himself on what appeared to be a very soft bed, surrounded by the various stones that were processed along with him. A towel wrapped foam pad, firmly pressed down on the stallion sopping up any remaining water.
Only after the pad lifted up, did Smokey realize that he was on another conveyor. This one taking him past more sprayers, these ones layering on a coat of polish. After the sprayers, the conveyor stopped beneath some spinning buffer pads, that preceded to polish the stallion thoroughly, before depositing him on a soft cushion.
A little disoriented by the whole ordeal, it took him a moment to realize that he was back in the spa proper again, specifically in the hooficure section. Next to him was Peridot, being tended by a spa pony.
“What a wild ride that was,” Peridot joked, while another attendant started to work on his mane and tail, trying to get it back into some semblance of order.
“That’s an understatement,” Smokey replied, as another spa pony started his own hooficure.
“Oh, don’t be like that. You’ve got to admit it was like nothing you’ve ever done before.”
The spa attendant finished Peridot’s hooficure, and started applying a thick layer of mud to his face, complete with cucumbers over his eyes. While another attendant started working on Smokey’s mane.
“Well, it was pretty cool.” A smirk came to his muzzle, “though I better not hear that you ‘fell’ into the rock tumblers at work.”
Peridot snorted, “Nah, that’s more Saphire’s speed. You know she would rather die than come to a ‘frou-frou’ spa,” Smokey let out a chuckle at that, his hooficure finished and moving on to his own facial.
The stallions sat in contented silence, as they enjoyed their treatments.
But their time at the spa soon came to a close, and they walked out into the evening light looking properly polished, pampered, and ready for the Games.
Author's Note
The idea for this story came to me after re-watching the season 3 opener.
I thought to myself, What if they really are crystal? How would they prepare themselves for a big event, like the Equestria games? and most importantly, Would a rock tumbler work?
This led down a deep rabbit hole, that ended up with me researching the best rock tumbling practices for hours, drawing diagrams for a pony-sized tumbler, and calculating proper ratios of ingredients for the tumbling process.
I hoped you enjoyed this little romp through my madness.
Be sure to let me know what you think.
