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                      Under Pressure                       
                       -by cryptix-                        
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         (Pushing Down On Me, Pushing Down On You)         
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(Pushing Down On Me, Pushing Down On You)
“This is so unfair!”
Filthy Rich, seated behind his desk, raises his eyebrow. “Unfair how, hon? I thought you wanted a summer job. You only mentioned it, oh, a dozen times.”
His daughter rolls her eyes. “You know what I meant, Daddy.” Just in case he doesn’t or he’s trying to prove some kind of point (“use your words, Diamond Tiara”), she adds, “I meant a job with you, as junior manager of Barnyard Bargains. You’ve been telling me about my head for business since before I got my cutie mark, you know I could do it! You know I want to do it!”
Her father sighs. “Of course I know you could do it, Diamond. That’s the exact reason I don’t want you to. When you take over for me one day, you’ll be the best manager any employee or customer could hope for, but I don’t want you to get too…single-minded. You know how you can get sometimes, sweetheart.”
Diamond scoffs. “Come on, you’re overreacting.”
She knows what he’s talking about, but she’s not that overachieving foal anymore, so afraid to fail she’d pull everypony else down so she could take the lead. She’s not perfect all the time and that’s okay. It’s totally okay and she’s totally fine with it and her tail flicking whenever she thinks about it too hard is just reflex and definitely not a nervous tic.
“Besides,” she continues, “I don’t even know this mare. I don’t know if I’ve ever even met her, and we live in Ponyville. Everybody knows everybody here. Couldn’t I at least work for, I don’t know, Rarity? She sets a good example for young businessmares!”
“Rarity was actually one of the ponies who recommended Maud to me,” Filthy says, unmoved. “They have more in common than you might think, and she assured me that she’s a consummate professional in her field.”
“Which is…rocks. Great. You know, Apple Bloom’s family doesn’t pawn her off on somepony else when she already knows what she’s gonna do later.”
Bringing up the Apples is always a risky move, and from the way her dad’s eyes narrow, it hasn’t paid off this time. “The Apples split all their work between four ponies, and the physical aspects between three. I already have a team of capable employees, and they’d hate having to order you around just as much as you’d hate them telling you what to do.”
As much as she hates to admit it, he has a point. The Barnyard Bargains workers are a little scared of her--a holdover from her younger days, when anything she was dissatisfied with could be the thing that got one of them fired. They probably still think she’ll run to her dad if one of them takes the wrong tone with her.
She rolls her eyes again, more extremely this time. “Fine. I’ll go dig in the dirt with Maud or whatever. But I’m not going to like it.”
Her dad makes one of those annoying faces that adults make when they think they know more about something than you do.
Diamond approaches the Ponyville caves the next day, mane tied back and carrying a small saddlebag. She silently mourns her hooficure as she scans the area for the pony she was meant to meet.
She almost misses her. Tapping on one of the walls of the cave with a hoof is a mare whose colors are so muted she practically blends into the rocks she’s so focused on. She wears a dark teal dress, but it, too, is completely plain and unassuming. Most ponies Diamond knows accessorize with clothes in order to catch the eye, but if anything, it makes this pony blend in further. She looks absorbed in her work, even if Diamond can’t tell what she’s doing exactly.
She steps a little closer and clears her throat. “Um. Are you Maud Pie?”
The older mare lowers her hoof and turns to Diamond, her stare giving away nothing. “No, you just missed her.”
“Oh. So, is she further in the cave, or…”
“I was joking. I’m Maud Pie.”
Diamond knows deadpan delivery can be a thing in comedy, but this mare takes it to the next level. “Oh. Okay. I’m Diamond Tiara. My dad wants me to shadow you doing…whatever it is you do for a couple of days. He thinks I don’t have diverse enough interests.”
She can’t help but inject a note of exasperation into the last sentence. Maud blinks and continues to stare at her. “Yes. Rarity and Pinkie told me about you.”
Right. Pinkie Pie. This mare is supposedly Pinkie Pie’s sister. Diamond’s hardly the type to judge family resemblances, considering her similarity (or lack thereof) to her own father, but huh, genetics are interesting, aren’t they. “So did you have something planned, or are we just going to look at these rocks?”
Okay, that came out a little meaner than she meant it. Old habits are hard to break. She’s about to apologize, but Maud starts talking again. “We are going to look at rocks, but not these ones. Let’s go further in.”
She hands Diamond a mining helmet, and in what she believes is a thrilling display of self-control Diamond does not make a single comment about hat hair before putting it on.
They proceed inwards, and almost immediately, Diamond is confronted with noise.
It’s not the first time she’s heard it. To put it scientifically (Miss Cheerilee would be proud), it’s her passive kinetics in action. Her earth pony magic. Whenever she puts her tiara on, the metal and the stone whisper a tiny little comforting rhythm to her, something that helps her stand and speak with that extra bit of confidence. Sometimes, in the park, when she stands really still, she hears the ground thrum. She’s never heard anything like this, before, though. So many individual sounds, a cacophony of high notes and low notes, whistling and bassy rumblings, clashing and overstimulating.
She winces, her ears flattening to her head. “Why is it so loud in here?” she cries to Maud, who is as unshaken as ever.
“Oh. Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Is that another joke?”
Maud shakes her head. “I grew up on a rock farm. I’m used to a lot of background noise. You should be able to adapt with a little time.”
After the initial shock wears off, Diamond can sort of understand what she means. It’s not that any of the sounds are loud, they’re just all so different from one another, and it’s more confusing than anything else. It’s like listening to a whole bunch of background vocalists with no leader to take charge of them.
“Can everypony who comes in here hear this?”
Even if she’s pretty sure it’s an earth pony thing, it’s just so present that it’s hard to imagine anypony couldn’t hear it--but maybe it’s hard for pegasi to believe not everypony can fly, or unicorns to remember not everypony can cast. Maybe this cave is just really magical.
“Only earth ponies can. Not all of them hear it as strongly as others, either. You must be fairly powerful.”
Diamond’s a little taken aback by that. Powerful? Her? She’s good at a lot of things, but she never really considered kinetics to be one of them. Earth pony magic was more the Apples’ thing, and it wasn’t like you could practice it the same way you could get good at flying or casting spells. Maybe you could try breaking bigger and bigger things, but she’s sure her mother would have never approved of that hobby.
“I want to try something,” Maud says. She reaches into her pocket and retrieves a small shard of purplish crystal. It hums with an airy sound, soft and light. “Listen to this for a bit.”
Diamond listens, feeling silly. She tries to pay attention to how it’s different from the other stones, where its pitch wavers and tone shifts. Nonsensically, she thinks it sounds like the noise a flute might make on the moon.
Maud puts it away. “Now close your eyes and see if you can pick out that sound coming from in here. Try and follow it.”
Diamond closes her eyes. She feels even more ridiculous now, like she’s a dog being asked to find a scent, but weirdly, she’s actually kind of curious. She really does want to see if she can do it. So she focuses.
It takes her a moment to sort through the noise, but eventually, she gets it. Yes, there, a high, vibrating, airy note, and she actually jumps a little in excitement. “I got it!”
She remembers where she is and who she’s with and tosses her mane, trying to look cool. “I mean, uh, I think I found it or whatever.”
Maud nods. “Could you follow it to its source?”
“I mean, I guess I could…try?”
Maud nods maybe-encouragingly, so Diamond closes her eyes again. She takes a hesitant step forward when she catches the notes of the crystal again. She shuffles forward slightly more confidently after Maud says, “I won’t let you trip over anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She still moves slowly, though, unused to navigating in total darkness. Maud doesn’t try to rush her, which is nice. One of the reasons she doesn’t like trying new things is worrying about whether or not she’ll do them wrong, or ponies will laugh at her. That’s one worry she doesn’t have with Maud. She’s probably never laughed at anything. Diamond wonders how her sister feels about that.
The sound of the crystal gets louder, slowly but surely, and eventually the noises of the cave become another song entirely, one accompanied by…rushing water?”
“You can open your eyes,” says Maud.
Diamond lets out a tiny gasp.
A waterfall cascades from a crack in the rock wall, and she feels soft moss under her hooves. Clusters of glowing crystals harmonize with each other all throughout the cavern. It’s one of the most beautiful things she’s ever seen.
“These crystals don’t grow anywhere else in Ponyville,” Maud says from behind her. “I’ve been studying the conditions that caused them to develop. It may have to do with the mineral content of the water.”
She pauses, then adds, “They’re also quite nice to look at.”
Diamond sits down, still taking everything in. “Do you come down here a lot?”
Maud indicates an outcropping of rock with a canopy attached. “I live here.”
“Oh!”
And she thought her house was fancy. “I guess that explains why I haven’t seen you around in Ponyville. Since you live out here. You’re probably not there that much.”
Maud sits down next to her. “Maybe. You could also have never noticed me. A lot of ponies tend not to notice me. I’m used to it.”
Diamond can’t help but wince. Somehow, her matter-of-fact tone just makes those words sound worse. Before she can stop herself, she blurts out, “Sometimes I wish ponies didn’t notice me so much.”
Maud turns to her. Urging her to continue. Maybe.
“When ponies look at me, they think, ‘there’s a filly who’s got everything figured out.’ They know how successful my parents are and they know I’m going to run my dad’s stores when I’m an adult, but they don’t know…how much effort goes into having everything figured out. Making plans and preparing for everything only to still have it all go wrong somehow…I used to have panic attacks. I’d act so confident in public and then I’d get home and I wouldn’t be able to breathe. They don’t…happen as much anymore, but my dad still worries. I think that’s why he brought me to you, maybe.”
Maud looks at the river flowing through the cave. Both ponies are reflected in it, their images cut up by ripples in the water. “You know, diamonds can only be formed under intense pressure. For thousands, sometimes even millions of years, with the application of pressure and heat, minerals become pure, tough, and unbreakable. After so long being shaped to be a certain way…all the pressure must feel natural. But sometimes, volcanic eruptions carry them to the surface, and it’s only then that others finally get to see their true beauty.”
Diamond looks away from the crystals and turns her gaze to Maud. She said it as matter-of-factly as she’s said everything, as if she’s just stating facts. Well, she was just stating facts, in a way, but, well. Diamond’s known a lot of ponies who dance around saying what they mean because of social graces or out of condescension, expecting the pony they’re talking to to understand their point without them actually making it. Maud, though…maybe this is just the way she is. Instead of locking other ponies out of her world, she brings them into it. Lets them see things through her eyes.
Maybe Diamond did need this after all. Not that she’s going to tell her dad that.
“Thanks, Maud,” she says softly. “Um…it’d be nice if we could do this again sometime. I could come over and, uh, listen to rocks with you.”
There, for the first time, at the corners of her mouth, a very, very tiny smile. “I have some free time next Tuesday.”
Author's Note
i really wanted to write a diamond tiara story and this is what came out of it. ft. another one of my favorite side characters and some headcanons about earth pony magic. maybe if i just keep writing these i can eventually get all my worldbuilding out piece by piece.
"isn't this rock hearing ability basically rarity's gem finding spell" Kind Of. but not every earth pony can do this (maud and diamond are special cases and not all earth ponies have a rock specialization. some are more connected to plants like the apples or something else entirely) and rarity's special talent is gem-related so this ability does not make her obsolete.
shoutout to you if you catch the reference in the title + chapter title