Very few creatures realized just how much Maud Pie valued simplicity and truthfulness in speech or the struggle she went through every time she opened her mouth to speak. To truly understand anything required context and Maud found other ponies were rarely willing to listen to all of it. So she did her best to tell as much of the truth as possible in a way others could understand using the least amount of words needed. When the three fillies approached her, she was ready.
“Hi!” the pegasus said brightly. “You’re Pinkie’s sister, right? We heard you were visiting and wanted to ask you how you got your cutie mark.”
In the brief pause before Maud spoke, years of memories and a vast quantity of knowledge whirled through her head. You couldn’t properly answer any question without considering all of it and she had a great deal of practice at that. The time was barely an eyeblink compared even to the pebbles under her hooves. And so she remembered.
Maud was six when she first realized that she liked rocks. She also finally began to understand how words worked, what they meant. Words were confusing. They weren’t still. They changed constantly depending on how somepony said them, or when they were said, or what they were referring to. The words about things were easier. Things didn’t change as much and their words didn’t either. But even they were just so hard to keep track of and there were so many different words for everything and everypony. She was learning them all, but they never seemed to end and she was having trouble holding them all in her head.
Limestone was angry with her for taking so long to think about how to answer questions and for never being able to think of anything good to say. She called Maud slow once, and even though afterwards was one of the only times she’d apologized for being mean, it still hurt to think about. Her parents said she was just different and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad or both. She had tried to explain, but she was never sure which word was really the right one and without them, nopony could understand.
Right now she was thinking about the word ‘stone.’ Sometimes it was the same as ‘rock,’ but other times not. Sometimes it meant every kind of stone there was, but other times just one kind. That didn’t seem right. How could you have one word that was so many things? And putting words together was even worse. Having to pick just one tiny bit of what one word was and another tiny bit of what another word was and having them go together in all kinds of ways? It made her head hurt with all the thinking that took.
With a heavy sigh, she gave up her current attempt to make sense of things and went back to playing with her favorite toy, a little wooden wagon. She could spend hours loading it up with whatever caught her eye and pushing it around the house, leaving things in neat piles every so often. Limestone wasn’t bothering her. Her parents weren’t looking at her in that way that made her feel bad. She was happy, kind of. Then Pinkie came walking along. That was her name when she was talking to Maud, but sometimes it was different.
“Hi!” Pinkie said, smiling at her. Maud smiled back, though hers was much smaller, nearly invisible. Pinkie never needed her to use words. She liked Maud just for being Maud. She never pushed.
“What’s that?” Pinkie asked, looking down at the wagon, which at the moment was full of interesting pebbles collected from outside. “Ooh! There’s lots of different kinds, aren’t there?”
Maud nodded, pleased that somepony else had seen that the rocks weren’t all the same. They were all different shapes and colors and each one had its own little marks.
“Sometimes I think words are like that,” Pinkie went on, picking up a few pebbles out of the cart and squinting at them. “There’s lots of them and they’re all different, but most of them all end up saying the same thing, just like how all your different rocks are in that wagon.”
Maud turned the idea over in her mind. Words…are like my wagon? They are all piled on one thing? Just like one pebble falling, gathering friends as it came rolling down a slope, an understanding began to take shape. All of these are ‘rocks.’ There’s different words for different things about them, but they all mean ‘rock’ at the bottom. Ponies pile lots of words onto one word at the bottom, like my wagon. Or they only pick the top rock off of a pile and ignore all the ones underneath. And if I understand what they really mean, maybe I can answer with what I really mean. I get it! Maybe.
“I…see,” she said slowly, taking great care to make each word sound just right. “Thank you.” Her smile grew a fraction. It wouldn’t stop Limestone getting angry at her or her parents looking at her in that strange way, but it made her feel much better. She looked down at her wagon and its cargo. If rocks can help me like this, what else can they do? I need to know more about them.
Maud was nine when she first heard the song. As the ringing of the school bell faded, she made her way out into the yard, considerably behind the other students, except for Limestone.
“Anypony giving you trouble?” Limestone asked, putting a hoof on her shoulder and looking at her with a deep frown. Maud shook her head and an evil grin appeared on Limestone’s face, showing a prominent missing tooth. “Good! That makes a whole week now. Maybe they’ve finally learned their lesson. You sure you don’t want me to show you some moves?”
Maud shook her head, lowering her gaze as she trudged along. They keep using different words to say the same thing, just like everypony else, she thought. They don’t like me, they think I’m strange and for some reason they think I should be ashamed of what I’m like. I didn’t care about them before they started being mean to me, so why would I care about them now? And it doesn’t matter what they or I or anypony thinks about what I’m like, I’m not going to change, not deep down. I understood that a long time ago. It might have hurt once, now it’s just annoying, mostly.
“I don’t care what they say,” she replied. “You don’t need to do anything that gets ponies hurt.” She felt bad about Limestone getting in trouble for fighting so often and wished she could make her sister understand, but despite getting much better with words, Maud still couldn’t change Limestone’s mind.
Limestone struck the ground with a forehoof. “Grr! That’s not the point! Some ponies just pick on others because that’s what they do for fun, it doesn’t matter what you think! And sooner or later one of them will probably get mad enough to start hurting you. You need to show them that they don’t get to mess with you!”
There are three of them and one of me, it’s not a fair fight, Maud thought. Besides, if I hit them, ponies will blame me for starting it just like they do to you even when they hit you first because you hit them back harder. And all of your winning hasn’t made them stop, it’s only made them angrier and made it so they try even harder to hurt both of us. We’re only in this school for another year and our parents already promised we wouldn’t be at the same middle school as them. It isn’t worth it. If I react it only encourages them to keep trying. They’re already in a lot of trouble with the school over what they’ve done, even more than you.
“There are other ways to do that than hitting them,” she said, looking up to meet her sister’s furious gaze. “I don’t like hurting ponies.” Limestone stayed angry a bit longer, but then relaxed with another frustrated sigh.
“I know, I know. How many times do I have to say it? It was an accident, I know you didn’t mean to, none of us knew you were that strong, and the tooth will grow back. But there are ponies who don’t understand anything besides getting hit bad enough to make them back off and I’m not always going to be there to do it for you!”
With that, she stomped off across the yard, leaving Maud alone. Maud promptly made her way towards her favorite rock. She liked it better than the ponies here. She certainly understood it more. It was still hard work understanding what other ponies meant with all the unnecessary words they used and they talked fast and expected answers fast. They weren’t consistent, their moods and attitudes changing all the time. They said they were friends with other ponies based on anything and everything.
Maud could stand Limestone being mean or Pinkie being Pinkie or Marble being afraid most of the time because she knew what was underneath all of it. She knew who they were. She didn’t know who any of these fillies and colts were and she didn’t think they could or would tell her. They weren’t satisfied when she did manage to answer their questions, they wanted to hear her repeat the same thing in lots of different ways, to use more words than she needed to. They didn’t like it when she didn’t want to talk about things that didn’t matter to her. She had taken to finding places to be alone during recess and lunch, usually outside where there were plenty of interesting rocks.
Fortunately, the classes were wonderful. The teachers knew a lot more than she did about everything and she wanted to learn it all, particularly about rocks. There was even more to rocks than she had imagined and it was called ‘geology.’ That word was important, it held a lot of other words piled onto it and held within it, like the crystals inside the hollow rock - no, the geode - her mother had given her for her last birthday. It meant nearly everything there was to know about rocks, minerals, and how they made the world what it was. It was how the world was made. Just hearing that some rocks were millions of years old made her so excited! Other ponies besides Pinkie saw her smile. The world was much older than the ponies who lived on it.
Now, she stood beside her favorite rock, a pony-sized boulder partially buried in the ground at one corner of the yard, and tapped at it with a hoof, intently focused. What made this rock what it is now? How far has it come? Where did it come from? What was it made of? She couldn’t wait to find out the answers to all her new questions. She rapped at the rock once more, harder. The dull knock as her hoof connected seemed to echo strangely and for the briefest of moments, she heard and felt…something. It was the weight of ages. It was the impossibly deep groans and grinding of moving stone. It was the most wonderful song she had ever heard, thrumming through the core of her being and plucking at her heartstrings.
Then a loud and shrill noise drowned it all out.
“Hey, dim bulb! Still wondering why your best friend can’t talk?”
Maud closed her eyes and pricked her ears up, desperately trying to recapture the song that was beginning to slip away, but of course the interruption only got louder and angrier.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you! This is our spot now, so shuffle off and find a new rock to drool over!”
Maud opened her eyes and turned around to meet the confident smirk of Morning Star and the less confident one of Evening Star, who evidently had finally overcome the lingering fear of Limestone Pie once again. Morning Star hefted a few pebbles with his telekinesis and tossed them at her hooves.
“There, you can have those rocks. This one belongs to us now.”
Maud hesitated. I could just come back anyway when they aren’t here and I’ll be leaving this school in not too long anyway. They’ll probably just follow me to whatever new rock I settle on and do the same thing now that they know it matters to me, so I could probably come back. It doesn’t make any sense to make a fuss over this. It’s not worth it. But, shockingly, none of her reasoning was having an effect and indeed, she found it veering off onto a new line of thought.
If I give up the rock I might never hear that song again. I wouldn’t be able to find out more about this particular rock nearly as easily. I would be turning my back on the most incredible, special thing I’ve found in my life besides my family. He jokes about it but this rock is my best friend and I stand by my friends. Even if I hear the song again, every time I’d be reminded of this.
To her own surprise, she said, “No.”
There was a brief silence and a confused look on both colts’ faces, then, Morning Star shook it off and trotted closer, Evening Star in tow. Maud’s eyes narrowed. Where’s Sun Break? She glanced around, then up, but for once the pegasus wasn’t waiting to swoop down and drop pinecones or something.
“Looking for your sister?” Evening Star taunted her, circling to one side of Maud and planting a forehoof on her rock. “She’s not coming. And we’re getting impatient.”
Maud’s forehooves twisted slightly, digging into the ground in preparation for a turning kick and she had to bite her tongue to make herself stop the motion, remembering Limestone’s bloody tooth and mouth and shocked scream. Her thoughts kept going, faster and faster and less neat. They haven’t started anything yet, I can’t hit them, they’ll just blame me but they can’t have it they won’t have it it’s mine mine mine it’s the only thing in this school I’ve ever wanted but I can’t start the fighting. I have to give up something. They want this spot and the rock. That’s an easy choice.
“You can have the spot,” Maud finally said. “But I keep the rock.”
Morning Star chuckled and backed off a few paces, gesturing theatrically at the rock.
“If you want to take it with you, go right ahead. We’ll give you a fair chance.”
Then he jumped as an outraged shout of you little sneaks! came from the far corner of the schoolyard, followed by a growing scuffle. He and Evening Star looked over to see Sun Break, wings beating madly as she desperately tried and failed to hold Limestone back. The earth pony was steadily moving towards Maud and the brothers and dragging the flailing pegasus along for the ride. During that moment, Maud, barely paying heed to the noise, bent down and took hold of the rock with both forehooves. Now that the brothers were finally quiet, she found she could still hear the last remnant of that wonderful song, a faraway and sad melody, and she promised herself and the stone it wouldn’t end that way.
Whether it was the power of the song, the awakening of a natural talent, or something altogether different, Maud couldn’t say, but a cloud of dust leapt into the air as the rock shifted in the ground. Everypony nearby stopped talking or playing and turned to see. Eyes widened and jaws dropped as Maud found the grip she was after and heaved. The ground tore and split and earth showered down in streams as she groaned with the effort, teeth grinding, and before she quite knew it, Maud was standing on her hind legs, holding the entire rock, at least as big as she was, over her head. The entire schoolyard was staring now, even Limestone had come to a stop, with Sun Break’s wings drooping as she too gaped up at the sight.
“Where…” Maud grunted. “…should I…put it?”
Morning Star swallowed hard, the shadow of the stone falling over him, cold and heavy. He took a couple tries to find his voice and it was squeaker than normal.
“Um…actually, right there’s fine. You can have the spot, we don’t need it.”
“Are…you sure?” Maud asked, feeling her newfound strength beginning to fail as the last soaring note of the song left her ears.
He nodded rapidly. “Yep, we’re sure, really, it’s all yours, in fact, we have to be going now, good bye!” He turned, shoving Evening Star ahead of him, and left at speed. Maud carefully lowered the rock back down and eased it into the immense hole it had emerged from as best she could. The moment she felt it resting on solid ground again, she collapsed beside it, completely spent, panting as though she had just been galloping for her life. The next thing she knew, Limestone was hauling her upright. Her sister was smiling, incredibly wide, and mostly without the evil glare that went with it.
“That was amazing!” the other filly told her. “I knew you had it in you, but I never would have thought of that! I bet they’ll leave you alone now. Ha! You should’ve seen their faces!”
Maud was only listening with half an ear. She reached out with one hoof and weakly tapped the rock a few more times, but nothing happened. I wish it was small enough to take home with me. But it’ll still be here when I come back. It’s older than I am.
She was ten when her father took her down into the deep places of the earth for the first time. First, they walked over to the edge of the vast, deep-carven bowl of the quarry. Above it, an entire hillside had been hacked into shelves of stone, with space for dozens of ponies to carve out the enormous slabs of rock that would be laboriously dragged away to sell. But they had never had other workers or sold such enormous amounts of stone as long as Maud could remember. This place was too big for them and yet, here they were. They stood there for some time in silence, but that was often the way of things.
Igneous Rock Pie, her father, had come to respect her aversion to speaking unnecessarily. No doubt he wanted to give her a little time to absorb the view in her own way. Her lips twitched in the tiny smile only her family could see and he returned it with one of his own, almost imperceptibly softening the stern, angular lines of his face. Turning back to the quarry, he spoke quietly, although they were alone upon the rocky slope.
“It is time for thee to begin learning the deeper secrets of the stone,” he said. “Thy work thus far is adequate and we believe it fit to entrust thee with greater responsibility. We trust thou shalt prove worthy of it.”
“Thank you,” Maud said, bowing her head. I don’t know if I’ll be worthy, but I’ll try my hardest.
He gestured for her to follow and the two of them began making their way down the broad, gravel-strewn switchbacks that permitted descent to the bottom of the quarry. As they moved, he spoke again, nodding at the high mountain slope at the back of the quarry.
“Thou knowest the tale of Holder Cobblestone, of course, and how he and his siblings drove out the mighty dragon that did once lair upon yon mountain to claim these lands for their own. But thou knowest not of how it came to be that we alone now dwell herein.”
Maud’s eyes widened fractionally. Am I finally old enough to hear that story? We’re going into the caverns?! Limestone, the only one of the sisters who had heard it (until now, it seemed), had told the other three privately that the story wasn’t worth waiting for but the destination was.
“Long ago, dozens of earth ponies did work this land,” Igneous went on. “Holder Cobblestone’s great victory drew many to his newly won home, for they knew well that he should need many hooves to aid in the labor of harvesting the good mountain stone. And as the great work did begin, lo! a great wealth of iron and gemstones was revealed to the seekers. From these many delvings did our homeland take its shape. From them do we now possess the many chambers and passages within the bosom of the earth, below our quarry.”
Maud’s mind whirled about like an increasingly unsteady top as the story went on. The two of them turned a corner and passed into the shadows that drowned the deeper levels of the quarry. He spoke of how the mineral wealth was mined out, Equestrian architecture moved on to favor concrete, sandstone, brick, and other things besides what was found at their quarry. Their family’s wealth declined, until the time of Rose Quartz, Maud’s mother’s grandmother.
At mentioning her name, Igneous paused a moment and patted the stone slope beside him fondly.
“She looked at this place, a shadow of what it was, and saw her future. And so it has been for all of us since. We come here to look into ourselves.”
“I never thought one pony mattered much when looking at rocks,” Maud said, tapping lightly at the stone beside her. Since the time at the schoolhouse, she had struggled to recapture that elusive song, but had never been able to do so consistently or very often. She had wondered if it was somehow because she wasn’t giving up enough of herself to listen to the wider world, but her father seemed to be saying it was the other way around – she wasn’t paying enough attention to herself.
“You would not think one grain of sand matters much, but when it is stuck in your eye, it becomes the entire world,” he answered, resuming his steady pace down the path. “Your connection to the earth flows through you. It cannot be opened until you understand how it works.”
Maud was quiet again, turning that idea over in her mind, but her father kept talking and she turned her attention back to the story. Her father spoke more of Rose Quartz, of how she was there for the invention of electric current and was able to buy and then mine the copper lodes that had been mostly overlooked until her time, making enough to buy the entire quarry. And all this was only the beginning. Rose had a vision, one she’d received through communion with Holder’s Boulder.
Unbidden, Maud’s eyes turned upwards to where the namesake stone rested near the quarry’s edge, eternally watching over them.
“That boulder is no common stone,” Igneous said, following her gaze briefly, “but a great amplifier of earth magic, hence its presence in the dragon’s hoard. Rose was the one who set it in its current place, at the center of the lines of power that run through this land, deep and wide. And she was able to harness it. The magewrights of the unicorns require crystals for their work, many of which normally take years to grow and shape. In their arrogance, they believed only they could properly perform this task, but Rose had worked with the cast-off shavings they left and knew the truth, that our tribe was just as capable, if not more so. She reopened the old delvings as a place to grow those most valuable of crystals, and the surface lands became where the crystal seeds are prepared. Those rocks that thee and thy sisters move contain within them the seeds of our greatest works. They must be properly seasoned and immersed within the great wells of earth magic before they can be moved down to the caverns, broken open, and that within grown. That is where we are bound.”
Another long silence fell. Maud was glad of it. Even if she was inclined to speak, she hardly could find the words. All those years and years moving those rocks around. All our sweat and scrapes and bruises. All those times when complaints were ignored, when we had to stay up late doing homework because the rock farm came first, when we had to miss birthdays and summer vacations weren’t vacations for us. All of those times waking before dawn to move rocks before the sunlight crested the mountain. All of that…for this? For some of the most powerful magical items in Equestria? When at last she did find some words, they came out in near-whisper.
“Our work matters that much?”
Igneous nodded. “Aye, that it does. If thou dost wonder why I and thy mother did not tell thee and do not tell thy sisters even of that until thou art ready, know that we merely seek to give all of thee a proper appreciation for the labor rather than the rewards of that labor.”
Maud had no answer to that but to nod silently, and with his story finished, her father too said nothing more for a long while.
At length, they reached the quarry floor and he led her over to a rough-cut opening in the face of the slope. A sturdy wooden door blocked the way, locked with an enormous padlock and with a sign on its front reading Private Property – Keep Out! Taking a key from his hat, Igneous unlocked the door and tugged it open. The hinges squealed in protest, grinding with rock dust, but they turned, revealing a pitch-black tunnel beyond and a brief gust of stale air.
Just beyond the door was an old box of miner’s hats. Swapping his own hat for one of them, he handed her one and adjusted it to fit, then showed her the switch for the little flashlight on the front. Then he swung the door shut behind them.
As the two of them walked down the tunnel, she felt a faint, cool breeze on her fur. It was like a spatter of cold water here in the warm, still air, and she shivered, making her headlamp’s cone of light jitter in front of her.
“Air vents,” her father explained, his voice barely louder than a whisper. Even the slightest sound seemed louder, though, and she could hear him clearly. “They let fresh air in so we do not suffocate down here. If more ponies helped us with these crystals, we would need better fans to make sure enough air passed through.”
With each step she took, Maud felt as though she travelled miles away from everything on the surface. The stone enfolded her in a dark, warm blanket and she felt a peace unlike anything she had known. Her father was right. This is where I belong. She strained her ears, hoping to hear the song again. She heard nothing, but something within her was awakening. All of her senses seemed to grow more acute. She saw patterns and grains on the tunnel walls and felt faint grooves and creases and textures in the rock under her hooves. There was something there, something vast and wonderful and very, very old. But then they emerged into a great cavern and she stopped, holding her breath. Her father looked down at her and smiled, wide enough for anypony to see.
All around the cavern, luminous crystals of every color, shape, and size shone softly with an inner light that made them appear to have hearts of molten glass. Small blue crystals lined the walls at just above head height glowed brighter than all the others, illuminating the entire cavern brightly enough to see by.
“Every one of us connects with the earth differently,” Igneous said, walking over to the nearest crystal and running a hoof over it with a critical eye. “I can see how it all fits together and so how to break it apart in a way that suits me. Your mother can see how to nurture these crystals and then to harvest them in a way that will suit those who buy it. We have worked together quite well these many years in that way. Pinkamena is different, she takes after my side of the family, from when Humble Pie defied his family’s tradition of baking to marry into our line, but thou seemst to take after the Quartzes of old. What dost thou see?”
“I don’t see into rocks,” Maud said slowly, after a longer pause than usual. She had to think very carefully about the words she used here. She still didn’t fully understand what she felt. “I heard a song once and I felt...everything about a rock.”
“I am glad to hear it,” he replied. “Thy stone sense is strong for your age to feel such things. Thou hast learned much about the earth in thy studies, but to find thy talent, thou must learn what it means to thee.”
“Why does it matter what the earth means to me?” Maud asked. “It just is.”
His eyebrows went up and he turned back to face her, flicking off his headlamp. Maud did the same, letting the shimmering radiance of the crystals alone play about them. He looked…proud of her, and she found that her heart was hammering fit to burst against her ribs just at the thought.
“Thou seemst to have skipped from the beginning to the end of this particular lesson,” he murmured, his almost-smile growing wider. “Yes, in the end, it matters not what anypony thinks of the earth. It matters what the earth thinks of us. Even rocks of the same type are not perfectly alike. How the earth flows through thee depends on thee alone and thou art much more complex than any rock. How thou interacts with it is important. It gives thee purpose and meaning in your life.” He glanced back at his mark of a miner’s pick. “I received my mark when I understood how shatterpoints work. Thou must needs determne what about the earth thou dost understand better than anypony else.”
Maud nodded, her eyes growing wide as she leaned forward, ears raised in anticipation. “How?”
A long silence followed as her father lowered his gaze, putting one hoof to his chin in thought, and for once Maud was not content to wait for it to end. “How?’ she asked again, and his head snapped upright again.
“I ask thy pardon, Maudalina,” he said, although his tone was a warning. “Were I to tell thee too much, thou wouldst find it all the harder to gain the insight thou seekest. A pony’s mark comes from their own understanding, not that of others.”
Maud sat down on her hind legs, bowing her head and doing her best to let the unfamiliar impatience bleed away into the stone below.
“You heard the song once before, you said,” Igneous finally said, looking down at her once again. “So it was with I and thy mother and all our kindred. It is beautiful, is it not? What wert thou thinking about at the time?”
At least that part’s easy, Maud mused. “A rock.”
“Of course. What about the rock?”
That gave Maud considerable pause. Its shape, density, the type of rock it is, its formation, history, color, wondering what else there was to know about it… The list went on for some time and she didn’t know what out of it all was the most important. Finally, she gave up.
“Everything,” she said.
Her father didn’t seem disappointed, at least. “And why wert thou thinking about everything about that rock?”
If his last question had been difficult, this one was nearly impossible. Because I love it more than any other rock, because it’s my only friend and has been since the day I first noticed it and started asking questions. Because it’s the closest large rock to the schoolhouse. Because I need to know everything about geology and it was a larger sample than pebbles. Because I think it can give me answers about myself and the world. Reason after reason piled atop each other until it seemed she would never be able to sort through them all and get to the center of the matter. She briefly despaired before trying another tactic and considering just part of the question. Why was I thinking about everything? I mostly think about rocks anyway, maybe that’s close enough? That one’s much easier to answer, but is it the right answer?
Maud paused for a good five seconds before answering. “I wanted to know.”
Igneous nodded firmly.
“Focus on that, then. Thou wanted to know. Follow that desire wherever it leads thee. I’m sure thou shall not have any trouble with that.”
Maud looked up into his eyes with a steady gaze. “I will. Thank you.” That’s the biggest question yet, but if it helps me hear the song again, I’ll think about it for as long as it takes.
As it happened, it took years. Many, many spare moments, snatched from her formal schooling and her instruction in crystal growth and shaping were dedicated to the new all-consuming question her father had asked her and that she now asked herself. Maud was fourteen when she heard the song again. She was lingering after school again, gazing fixedly at her favorite rock. She was close to graduation. Soon it would be time to leave and she wouldn’t have nearly as much time to examine it closely. Yet, she knew more about it than she had previously.
It was the worn-down remnant of a glacial erratic, a piece of mountain granite broken away from a banded formation and carried down from the Snowmane Mountains, many miles to the north. She knew it was an igneous rock, approximately how many years ago it was formed, the nature of the magma, pressure, and time that had molded it into what it was. But she didn’t know why it had sung to her. She didn’t know why it mattered, why she wanted to know.
She ran a hoof over the surface, feeling the resistance of stone on keratin. Was it just wanting to know more about this particular rock? Had she sensed some kind of geological event that had taken place in the distant past? What was the song? Another pony would have been frustrated, but Maud wasn’t worried at all. Answers would come in time, tiny fragments of insight piling up like silica until she understood. That was what tectonic forces amounted to in the end, pressure and time. Another thought struck her. Why was I interested in rocks to begin with? Forget about now, what started it all?
Sure, she had been raised on a rock farm, as Pinkie liked to call it, but she was certain that even if that was not the case, she would still have been drawn to the stone. Why was she carting pebbles around with her toys and polishing them to a smooth finish as a foal while Limestone was trying to see if she could find the right way of shouting to crack stone apart and Pinkie was experimenting with rock-based desserts? What did she see in rocks, even then? She ran a hoof across the rock in front of her once again, feeling the coarseness of the grain. What would this one be like if it were polished? Would the other ponies have liked it more, appreciated it the way I do? Then, she gasped aloud as the answer to her question struck, as though Holder’s Boulder had fallen on her head.
Because other ponies appreciated them more, and me more, when they were polished up. They were beautiful to me, and I wanted everypony else to see them the way I did. I still do. That’s why I want to know everything about rocks and stone and why I’m so interested in this one. The stone is beautiful and the more I know, the more so it becomes. Just like most ponies’ hearts and minds. And the more I know about that beauty, the more I can teach others and the more I can reproduce it in the stones I work and shape, and see it everywhere I look. Because the world means so much more that way.
She chuckled, the first time since Pinkie’s first surprise party that she’d made such a sound, and then did so again, quieter, at how other ponies would have reacted to seeing it. She looked at the boulder in front of her again, remembering all that she knew about it, how it had spent the many long centuries of its life to end up here, a journey of such immensity, complexity, and distance that even it, small as it was compared to the whole world, made everything she knew tiny. How can anypony not see how amazing and beautiful it all is? She looked, really looked into the vastness of geologic history and felt her soul shudder with awe, wonder, terror, and excitement. A small part of her mind whispered that she needed to go and tell her father what she’d realized, but for once in her life she was tired of waiting.
She rapped on the rock again, hard, feeling the nearly-undetectable shudder and fracture it made, and this time, she heard the song come roaring back, deafening in its volume and humbling in its beauty. But then, too, for the first time in a long while, there was fear. It didn’t stop. It grew louder. Too loud! Was her last coherent thought before stabbing pain lanced through her head and she staggered, stumbling, falling. Her hooves went to her head as she tried to stop it from splitting open with the power and she tasted blood dripping from her nose.
A distant shriek and as her vision began to dim, she saw Marble running into view. Maud tried to say something but she had forgotten how to form words. Then everything went mercifully silent and dark.
Maud awoke to find herself in a hospital bed with her whole body aching like it had been run through an active fault line. The lights were dim and she glimpsed the night sky out the window. She heard a faint gasp and Marble burst into view again, tears streaming down her face despite the wide smile she wore. Her sister then smothered her in a tight hug, quietly sobbing on her shoulder. Maud kept her mouth shut despite the flare of pain that came with it and slowly brought her own forelegs up to return the embrace. She took a breath and her voice sounded like rock dust.
“I’m so sorry, Marble.”
“You drank in too much earth magic,” Marble whispered in her ear. “Nana Pinkie said you’re the most talented pony she’s ever seen and also one of the stupidest, to try something like that alone!”
“I know,” Maud said, patting Marble carefully on the back. “I should have waited and gotten help. It just seemed more important than anything.”
“It’s not more important than your family,” Marble said, her voice as loud as it ever got. “It’s not more important than you! You matter! You’re special! Promise me you won’t get lost in there again because you think that’s where you belong!”
“I promise,” Maud said, and Marble finally relaxed her hug, pulling back.
“Good. Now go back to sleep. I’ll be right here if you need anything.”
Maud lay back and closed her eyes again and this time her sleep was quiet and dreamless.
She was fifteen when she understood everything. Older than most ponies, perhaps, but she considered the gain more than worth the wait. A long conversation with Nana Pinkie had made matters clear. She had only been listening and then trying to take hold of the singer without knowing what she was doing. She needed to raise her own voice. She stood again before her favorite rock outside her old schoolhouse. It was a weekend, so the yard was deserted. Raising a hoof, she gently touched it to the face of the stone and let her awareness sink in. She heard the song, clear and bright, but this time she held back from delving into its full power. It was too big for her, the last time she had tried this had proven that beyond any doubt. A pony who could stand before the entire song of stone without flinching would be somepony that could crack the world in half and she wasn’t that.
Instead, she listened carefully, learning the tiny piece of the song that was her stone’s voice, how it seamlessly wove into the greater whole, its tone and weight. And then, she sang in answer. Nopony else would have heard a thing and indeed, drool began running from one corner of her mouth, but Maud was far beyond caring about that at the moment. She sang with her soul, an endless note that thrummed through her body and into the rock and beyond, passing into the song of earth itself as the tiniest of whispers. But the harmony began as she found the proper pitch and notes and then she knew.
It was like her previous vision, but this time it was a clear stream rather than a raging flood. She could choose where to dip her hooves in and see more closely. She saw the stone’s formation long ago in cooling magma from where the massive tectonic plates in this part of the world ground against each other. She saw its place in the rising of the Snowmane Mountains, the massive range being forced out and upwards as fragments of the great plates cracked and splintered. She saw its breaking and falling into the great glacier’s long journey and how the ice carried the rock here before melting. And she saw the marks of all those ponies and other creatures who had touched it, tiny abrasions from the long years since, right down to her, right here and now. She felt a tingling sensation, back in the physical world, but paid it little mind. Her voice was fading now as she no longer needed to sing to keep seeing all that she wished. Her song became soft and faint, a sad farewell to an old friend until next they met, and she felt the other singer’s music shift slightly to match her harmony before returning to its eternal melody.
Then she was back in the schoolyard with a dry mouth and a small puddle on the ground in front of her. She was also smiling. And as she wiped her mouth, she saw that a small fragment of the rock had broken off and lay in front of her hooves. Reaching down, she picked it up, hearing a tiny, musical note from within, a child of the greater song, just like her.
“Your name is Boulder,” she said. “After your parent.”
She felt…complete. And, looking back, she saw a brand-new cutie mark on her flank, a grey diamond to denote the beauty in rock and stone that she, among few others, could see, understand, and love.
After a few seconds, Maud replied to the three fillies.
“I realized how rocks are amazing and how I love them.”
“Oh,” the pegasus said, greatly underwhelmed. “Uh…that’s great! But…how?”
Another short pause.
“I thought about it a lot.”
“Do you think that if we thought a lot about rocks, we could get cutie marks?” the earth pony put in hopefully.
Pause.
“Maybe. But probably not.”
A chorus of groans rose into the air.
Author's Note
As it happens, I had no idea that the contest was even happening until my esteemed proofreader mentioned it, hence the length of this particular piece. I just like Maud Pie and all the ways that she's 'different,' as I tend towards the literal-minded myself. I'm pondering a possible sequel to cover when she met Mud Briar at that petrified wood exhibition.
