We open our eyes, and we see a cave wall. Good, nothing has changed since we closed our eyes. It is a new day...or perhaps a new night.
Down in the caves there was almost no natural light, so the time was anybodies guess. Not that it really mattered. We were awake, and that meant it was time to eat, and then it was time to dig.
We push ourselves up, making sure to check the gem on our collar. Good, it is still there. We polish it up, making it shine...
Even though it won't last, our gem will soon be obscured with dirt and filth.
We join the rest of the dogs, trudging forward, not talking. Talking took up time, and lost time meant lost digging, which meant lost gems.
Which was unforgivable.
We are thrown a bag for food, and we hesitate a bit as we peer inside. Other dogs had once seen a dragon eat a batch of gems and thought that by eating gems we could become as strong as them...
We did not enjoy that week.
But we are lucky today, there are some eggs and carrots waiting for us. They are probably stolen from the ponyfolk, but we do not mind, food tastes just as good even if it was not meant for us.
We are not allowed to enjoy the food for long before a loud bark echoes through the cave. Food time is over, it is time to dig...
We find our hole, we know it's our hole because it is better than the rest of the holes...we think. But no one is yelling us, so it is probably our hole. A quick dive, and we are lost deep within the dirt. We dig and dig and dig. Our arms are strong, shoveling dirt behind us, and then we are lucky. We have already uncovered some gems, so shiny and sparkly, but we can't take them, no no no.
Climbing out of the hole is easy, the sparkly gems held close to our chest. We throw our findings into an empty cart, it looks like we are the first to get gems today, that is good...we think. Well, we know it can't be bad. At the end of dig time the cart will be taken away and the gems will...
What do we use the gems for? We guess that they may be used to make more collars or other clothing...but we have found so many gems from our digging, what do they do with the extra?
We shake our head, that is thinking, and thinking is not digging.
Down we go, back into the dirt, back to digging. Our claws slam into something and we are excited, it could be a big jewel! But we are wrong, it is big, solid, heavy, but not shiny. We grasp it with our paws anyway, other dogs have use for it.
We strain our arms as we haul it out of the dirt. Not-gems are no fun to find, they aren't nice to look at, and they are always too heavy. We pull it out of our hole and drop it with a loud clang on the cave floor. Other dogs will hear the noise which means we don't have to move it any more.
Other dogs will take the not-gem and make things out of it. They call it armor. and it is shiny, but not gem-shiny. They say it is strong, that it will help in fights, but we don't understand.
No one ever fights us, and other dogs don't even know how to fight. We are good at poking or prodding, annoying. We can be sneaky, but we are no good in real fights. It is nice to pretend we are, but the illusion is hard to keep up after only five ponies beat us up to get their friend back.
Unless we do something first, no one cares about us enough to attack.
But we are thinking again, and it is dig time, not thinking time. We are not even sure if we have a thinking time.
We try to bury the thoughts beneath a mountain of dirt, going deeper and deeper. Eventually, our arms start to hurt. We always thought that was odd. No matter how strong or tough our arms are, they will always start to hurt, and there is nothing we can do. Complaining does not stop the hurt, does not stop the need to dig and find gems, so we just keep digging.
Eventually, we find a few more gems, just enough for a handful, and we do a much betting job of putting them into the cart. No more distracting thoughts. We start to dig again, this time with only one paw, the other grabbing food for the bag for a snack. The eggs and carrots taste odd in our mouth, they are old as well as being stolen...still better than eating gems though.
The bag is empty now, we are full, but our paws still hurt. We store the bag in our vest and continue to dig. We wonder briefly how far down we've gone. Will there ever be an end? Will we ever find enough gems...and if we do, then what?
Our thoughts are broken as our claws scrape against against something hard beneath the dirt. We groan, expecting another not-gem that we must drag even further than before. But when we brush away the dirt, we see something amazing. It is a gem! But not a boring normal gem, this one is extra large and extra shiny, a blue diamond! We are extra careful as we pull it out of the earth. We pause as our eyes take it in.
It is perfect, and it is ours. This is too great to be put in a collar or...whatever it is other dogs do with the gems. We store the gem with the empty bag and climb out of our hole. Other dogs are up there too, waiting. It looks like dig time is over, and our cart is only half full. It is not bad...but not good either. The other dogs look at us, expecting something more, but we shake our head, the hidden gem burning beneath our rough vest.
Other dogs shrug and walk away while a big other dog starts to roll the cart away. We are tempted to follow, to see where the gems go...but there is no point. What would we do if we found the gems? We still would need to dig.
Our arms hurt and we are tired.
We find our bed, it is sleep time. But we do not sleep when we close our eyes, we can hear the gem beneath our vest. It is beautiful, and it needs to be looked at. We take it out, holding its wonder before us. Even in such little light, it seems to sparkle.
We cannot take our eyes away from it.
It is beautiful, pure, bright, calm...perfect.
It is...everything we are not. Not just us, but other dogs too.
We are low, dirty...wretched. No one in this world cares for us...all we can do is dig, after all. We diamond dogs gather these gems because we know they are beautiful. We surround ourselves with them, surround ourselves with beauty...because we hope others will associate us with it. Because we hope that someday, someone will care about us...
Our arms hurt, and the gem does not look as beautiful anymore. We close our eyes and we try to pretend. Pretend that the gem is not just something we found in the dirt, that it is something more. We try to see it as a gift, something that was given to us because someone cared about us. It helps for a little bit, the glow seems to return to the gem.
But we cannot pretend for long, we that no one would ever care about us like that. We look down at our bed, even this was not given to us. We took it from another dog, they were old weak...we wondered what had happened to them...
The glow is gone, and the gem is nothing more than a shiny rock. We stand and return to the digging area. It is so quiet now. All the other dogs are sleeping. We find a lonely hole and toss the gem in, listening to it clatter against the sides as it falls down. Some other dog will find it tomorrow, and maybe they will think less than we do. Maybe it will keep them happy.
We are tired and our arms hurt. We need to get sleep soon, we need to be ready for dig time tomorrow.
It is all we know how to do...and maybe if we dig deep enough, we can find something better than gems
We can find something that makes us worthwhile...something that could make others finally care about us.
