I turned around in time to see an ice-blue pegasus mare wearing a pair of saddlebags descend below the tree level back around where Tonny and Wood Pusher were splitting logs.

“What’s going on?” I asked Bartlett.

“It’s lunchtime,” Bartlett replied. “Our work patterns change during different times of the year. During the winter months, we’ve got less daylight but by nature of the season the work is often more strenuous, making for shorter but more intense workdays. So rather than going back to the Pav for lunch, we get lunch dropped off on-site. Come on, let’s head back there.”

I noticed that the rhythmic splitting sounds had stopped. By the time Bartlett and I had returned to the splitting team, there were fifteen other creatures there, and one bright green teenaged filly was bringing a very small raincloud down toward us. The saddlebags were sitting on the big stump and Gavin was inspecting the contents. Buckthorn Puller had opened up the shed and was pushing out a cart holding a couple dozen wooden mugs; two other ponies were rolling out firkins marked ‘small beer.’

The tiny raincloud was placed over a metal washtub. A stomp from the filly got a small but steady stream of water going, allowing workers to rinse off any particularly unwelcome detritus off their hooves.

“There’s a dozen in each bag, so counting Spuds, we’ll still have three extra,” announced Gavin. “The ones with cheese are in the red bag, the ones without in the brown one.”

The tom turned to me and said, “You’ll be having a traditional miner’s lunch, Spuds! Doesn’t matter if it’s mining for soup, coal, iron, or gold, we all eat pasties! Do you prefer yours with or without cheese?”

“I don’t mind either way. But what’s a pasty?” I asked.

Gavin pulled out a roughly semicircular baked good, holding it by the pronounced crimp on the outside curve. It somewhat resembled the large calzones sold in the streets and restaurants of Manehattan, though it appeared to have a heavier and denser outside.

As he handed it to me, the griffon proclaimed in his resonant baritone, “A complete meal in a convenient package! Hold it by the crimp; the end with the heavier dough knob on the crimp is the ‘bottom’ of the pasty. That’s there so that even if a miner has dirty claws or hooves or hands, they can hold it by the crimp on the bottom end and just toss the bottom away afterwards! Start eating from the top. It’s a thick and heavy shortcrust pastry around a filling, in this case fried tofu, cheese, potato, and a little onion, bell pepper, and carrot, with a few herbs and spices. That’s most of it. When you get to the bottom, there’s a section filled with a cherry mixture like you’d find in a cherry pie!”

Short Kerf collected his own lunch, saying “The pasty is arguably the griffons’ biggest contribution to mining life. Carry it in a small saddlebag, and it’s a nutritious high-energy meal that will stay warm for hours while also helping keep the miner warm! It’s too bad we’ll never know who was the tom or hen who first came up with it, because they should get a statue from at least five centuries’ worth of miners and lumberjacks. But it was a donkey who, in my opinion, put the perfecting touches on it about three hundred years ago by realizing that they could put an additional crust piece inside to allow for separation into a lunch part and a dessert part. About that time, pasties spread to also become a staple food of lumberjacks and pegasus long-distance couriers.”

“Griffon long-distance couriers too,” said Gavin. “In fact, it’s a point of pride for a courier – whether pegasus or griffon – to be able to ‘do the fives’, meaning that they can deliver a five-pound packet of messages – or as in the initial journey, medicine vials – across five hundred miles of wasteland and make the return trip within twenty-five hours, carrying their own supplies of five quart-sized waterskins and five pasties. It requires a combination of speed, physical and mental stamina, load-bearing ability, and the feel for air currents to get the best flight efficiency.”

I asked, “Twenty-five hours? Why not twenty-four?”

Gavin smirked. “Five squared.”

Short Kerf continued as he got himself a mug of small beer, “You’ll sometimes hear this two-part kind of pasty called a ‘clanger’. One of our cooks, Apple Clanger, is actually named for it. She’s the daughter of a soup miner and a coal miner, and you won’t find anyone who makes a better pasty than Clangy.

“The usual lunch drink in the field is small beer. Due to the nature of brewing, it’s a safe drink when local water sources are potentially dirty or diseased. Water here at Pea Ridge is fine, but we still go with it because it provides a few more calories. No chance of inebriation though! The alcohol content of small beer is about a tenth of normal beer, so it’s literally impossible for a healthy adult to fit enough small beer into their belly fast enough to even feel a buzz!”

As the lumberjacks broke up into small groups and I sat down with Bartlett, Short Kerf, Gavin, and Tonny, I noticed that instead of the one pasty that everyone else had, Tonny was holding four. With a practiced eye, he carefully broke them apart, removing the dessert sections with the crust divider intact and then tossing those pieces over to a group of three of the younger workers.

“Not a fan of dessert?” I asked as the bull took a large bite from the remaining savory section of his first pasty.

“Oh, I like dessert,” Tonny chuckled quietly. “I like it a little too much, really. But you know how it goes, Mr. Spuds. A bull – or a stallion – gets on the wrong side of thirty, they need to start watching their diet a little more if they want to keep their body in first-class condition. So a couple years ago, I made the decision to skip high-sugar foods at breakfast and lunch most days. Give it to the apprentices whose metabolisms can still do double desserts every meal without the slightest ill effects. Tartarus chain it, some of these apprentices and younger jacks are still at the stage where they can eat an entire pie and it comes out as muscle instead of fat!”

“Aren’t you all lumberjacks?” I asked. I took another bite of my pasty. The tofu, cheese, potato, and hints of other vegetables and herbs blended perfectly with the crust. I was going to have to see if any local places made them when I went home.

“Yes and no,” said Bartlett, “Tonny is referring to ‘jack’ in this sense as a rank. In this type of profession, the starting rank is apprentice, followed by ‘jack’ as in soupjack or lumberjack. A forestry apprentice graduates from apprentice when they’ve demonstrated competency in one forestry task like limbing or felling, developing skills in a couple other forestry tasks, and meet certain other basic requirements. That usually takes between a year and a half and four years, though most have the forestry skills down within two and it depends on those other factors.

“A good worker interested in advancement can make journeymare – the term is used whether mare or stallion – after about three to six years of being a jack. A journeymare is either an expert at one task or quite good at two or three, competent at several others, and generally means they can just walk into any soup mining or forestry team and be able to contribute from day one.

“Not everyone reaches the rank of master, and many who have or could develop that level of skill don’t go after the title because most masters have the responsibility of leading a team. It usually takes at least six years and more often a decade to go from journeymare to master; the fastest I’ve known is our lead charcoal burner Mazz who was an apprentice at fifteen, jack at seventeen, journeymare at nineteen, and got his mastery at twenty-three! Mazzy was a prodigy; he’s now what we unofficially call a senior master, one of the best in the nation at what they do and someone who’s actively pushing their field forward.”

I finished the savory portion of my pasty as Short Kerf added “Occasionally, someone gets promoted to master without demonstrating great expertise in any particular subfield.” He waved his half-finished pasty at Gavin. “We’ve nominated Gavvy here even though he doesn’t have master-level skill at any one thing. The trick about Gavvy is that he’s rated a journeymare in a boatload of different things! What is it now, lumberjacking, timber-frame building, pipe fitting, and drill-and-pump operation? And I know Cookie Clicker thinks you’re pretty comparable to someone with bachelor’s degrees in soup prospecting and accounting.”

The griffon nodded. “Yup. I’ve almost got everything I need.”

“That’s pretty impressive!” I said. “Why do you need such a wide variety of skills?”

Between bites of the cherry end of his pasty, Gavin said, “The Griffish Kingdoms are sort of a craphole. You know this, I know this, everyone knows this even if few griffons want to admit it. We lag behind other countries and city-states in all sorts of things, from agriculture to engineering to our literacy rate. But there’s a few of us who want to do something about it.

“The plan I had nearly two decades ago was to come to Equestria and learn the soup mining business, all parts of it. And then I’d recruit a team to go back to the Kingdoms and start up soup mining there. Soup mining is almost nonexistent and they’re still gathering soup via naturally-occurring springs back home. We get proof of concept, start training a few teams over half a decade and expand the industry, and we’ll be feeding tens of thousands of griffs a decade after that.

“I’m about three years away from heading back with a team. Bounder’s all in favor of this; there’s already a half-dozen ponies here ready to come along with me. But to do so, I’ve got to be at least familiar with all of the relevant jobs – though things will be much easier with Bucky heading up the forestry team.”

Bartlett told me “Buckthorn Puller just achieved his mastery six months ago. Starting this spring, he’ll begin recruiting his own work crew, most likely younger jacks and journeymares who will want the adventure of heading to the Kingdoms to pioneer soup mining there. In fact, it’s likely that a few of our current apprentices will join him once they– ”

We were interrupted by the bright green filly’s shout of “OH YEAH? BET!” from the direction of the three apprentices who Tonny had tossed his dessert portions to. Three of the pieces had been eaten and the fourth piece sat between the teenagers. As we watched, one of the two colts took the remaining cherry end and knob and stuffed the entire thing into his mouth at once. Clearly, this method of consumption was the condition for getting the extra dessert.

As we watched the colt try unsuccessfully to chew the pasty, Bartlett facehooved, Gavin exasperatedly muttered “teenagers!” and Tonny winced slightly before deliberately assuming a studiously neutral expression.

Impressively, the bull managed to maintain his expression even after the colt snorted several fragments of cherry pasty out his nostrils, as Gavin kept muttering, “well, at least I won’t need to use the Haymlich maneuver on him again.”

Short Kerf turned to me and said, “About those ‘other requirements’ besides forestry or mining skill that gets somecreature promoted from apprentice to jack? Chief among those is the ability to consistently avoid being a moron. I think someone or someones just had their promotion clock moved back a few months.”

Author's Note

Click here for the notes to Interlude #1!

Other story notes: We'll be switching between Chapters, which will usually involve the actual work, and Interludes, which will cover downtime. Though this whole story is worldbuilding to a large degree, it is being written so the Interludes are more like character studies.