Ponies of earth, think not of thy empty bellies. Think instead of thy empty hearts.

                                — Lord Honcho, Ruler of the Unicorn Mountain Range

Mud Slide had spent the past six years of her life training to be Little Rock Mining Camp’s first and only mare miner. She, like most earth ponies, had a knack for manual labor and working in the mines not only required this, but a certain will—determination, perhaps—that most ponies could only fake. As a plus, she had always been intimidating and muscled enough to be mistaken for a stallion at times; being male was one of the other requirements.

She had always prided herself in her raw, untrained strength and tenacity, but she had found over months of practice that just being a “natural” simply wouldn’t cut it in the real world. Mud Slide used this knowledge to push herself even harder, spending hours working without pay in the mineyard, pulling and pushing carts full of ore. She needed to bulk herself up, make a name for herself in the mines. Even so, she was readying herself for that heartache that came with each year’s rejection, making her heart just as strong as her muscles. But this year—oh, this year was going to be the one. Definitely.

        She spent some of her time training while her mind was unoccupied, except for the aching of her muscles and the pumping of her heart. But most of the time, she was thinking. Mud Slide wasn’t exactly the intellectual sort of pony. After all, she had dropped out of first grade shortly after learning how to spell her name (M-u-d-d S-l-i-d-e) and learning how to add up her weekly pay. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t think, and it certainly didn’t mean that she was stupid.

Just like every other pony, her mind sometimes wandered to the bigger questions—beyond “Am I hungry?” and “Where’s the chamberpot?” There was nothing like pondering the mysteries of life, during long hours of hard labor, to take the edge off. She had always been introverted, so being quiet and contemplative came pretty naturally to her. Perhaps in another life, Mud Slide could’ve been a scholar. But for all of her newfound appreciation for thinking, she wasn’t really all that interested in wild speculation on what could’ve and could be. In her opinion, that stuff was better left off to the card dealing charlatans, and traveling fortune tellers that passed through Little Rock on occasion. Even in her most thoughtful of moments, reality with its concrete problems was never far away in her mind. If you’d accused her of not having an imagination, you’d be right. Mud Slide was not known for flights of fancy, and everypony—including her—liked it that way.

        Mud Slide found herself one morning sitting in an unnaturally cold office before the foremare—an immaculately presented unicorn, with the longest eyelashes Mud Slide had ever seen on a pony, mare or otherwise.They sat across from each other, and Mud Slide realized that this was the first time that she’d ever been brought into the office before being rejected. She was being treated like an equal or like an employee. Despite herself, she gave the foremare a rare smile—a little sign of the happiness that was welling up in of Mud Slide. The foremare, for her part, didn’t smile back and simply shuffled around the parchment on her desk. After a few seconds of this, she looked Mud Slide over from head to hoof. Her eyes settled on her unkempt mane, on her yellowing teeth.

        “Miss Mud Slide, is it?”

        Mud Slide nodded silently, the little smile on her face widening. This was it. The foremare gave a curt jerk of her head and coughed, her perfectly made-up face not betraying a single emotion. Her horn glowed and some of the parchment floated to the top of the pile. Mud Slide’s smile wavered for a moment, and a tingling jolt ran up her neck. She knew it would pass, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable. The foremare must have noticed her discomfort because she cocked an eyebrow and let the magic fizzle out. Mud Slide’s jaw, which she didn’t realize hurt until then, unclenched, and her smile came back in full force. The foremare’s eyebrow settled down, and she coughed harshly again before lowering her eyes to look down at the parchment on the desk.

        “It says here that you’ve applied here at the mine—” The foremare paused for a moment and squinted. “—six times in the last three years under my predecessor. All for jobs that require...” Her nose wrinkled. “...physical labor.”

        “Yes, ma’am,” said Mud Slide as she shifted her eyes to the parchment as well. She wasn’t able to read it, but she could pick out the number six well enough. Fear began to drip heavily in the back of her throat, more bitter than licorice root. She remembered the foremare’s predecessor—a dainty and effeminate unicorn stallion who always gave her nothing but grief about wanting to be a miner. He’d always tell her that she was a “liability” to the mining camp and that she should “pursue a more feminine career.” Maybe this unicorn, being a mare herself and all, would give her a chance.

The foremare used her hoof this time to move the parchment, and Mud Slide’s back relaxed in her stiff wooden chair.

“Do you have any idea why your applications were rejected, Miss Mud Slide?”

Mud Slide shook her head and said quietly, “No, ma’am.”

A deep pit began to grow in her stomach, and she could feel it lurch within her. She looked to the floor and counted the knots in the floorboards.

“According to your file,” said the foremare after a long, pregnant silence, “it is because you don’t have your cutie mark in a relevant area. But we both know the real reason, don’t we?”

For a moment, she thought that she could see an emotion in those clear green eyes—pity. Mud Slide wanted to kick something.

“You do know the...risks of working in our mines, do you not?”

Mud Slide nodded. She wasn’t naive. She knew that she would—and already had been—be hooted and hollered at, heckled and shunned. She knew the personal costs that could come from working in a stallion-dominated field. Nopony in town had wanted to speak with her since she had started training. Even her own father had been neglected for her goal. She hadn’t been around to cook or clean for him or to move him around town in his special chair or even be there to help him into bed at night. While he thought that she was out doing odd jobs for extra money, Mud Slide was out busy betraying him. She even knew the more private costs that came with being a female miner. She could end up pregnant or dead or even married by the time her first month was out.

         The foremare stuck out her glossy lip, apparently unsatisfied with her answer. There was a quiet sense that she was evaluating Mud Slide, wondering if she was worth telling off or not.

“Well, we,” the foremare said finally as she spread her forehooves out wide before closing them again, “do not wish to turn down any eligible applicants, even if they don’t have a ‘relevant cutie mark’. As long as you can pull a minecart and have a good head on your shoulders, I don’t see a reason why you can’t work here. That is, if you’re absolutely sure that—”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mud Slide blurted out before the unicorn could finish, who fixed her with an icy stare. “Of course I’m sure.”

        The foremare brought a hoof up to her face for a moment and coughed again. When her hoof fell back under the table, her face was the same mask of indifference that it had been before but Mud Slide suspected that it had twisted into something darker while it was behind that hoof.

        “As I was saying, you must be absolutely sure that you have the necessary skills to be one of our miners. Not only that, you must be able to work with the other employees, all of whom are stallions. If this makes you uncomfortable or if you foresee any problems with that—” She motioned to the door with a wave of her hoof. “—please leave now.”

Mud Slide’s mouth was completely dry, and she could feel it crackle as she gulped. This was the moment she had been waiting for for as long as she could remember. She shifted in her seat slightly. The foremare coughed a hacking, phlegmy cough before returning to her icy glare. With a little burst of magic that set Mud Slide’s mane on end, she lifted a piece of parchment and a quill from the neat pile on her desk.

        “Please sign at the bottom, Miss Mud Slide.”

        Her first attempt at signing was too shaky, and she dropped the quill on the floor before she could even get it near the parchment. Her second attempt went much better, and she spelt out her name in large, fumbling letters (M-u-d S-l-y-d-e). The foremare looked at her coldly and then used her hoof to slide the parchment back to her side of the desk. With a well practiced flick of the eyes, she scanned the parchment down to the bottom. Mud Slide let saliva pool in her mouth and swallowed it again before the foremare looked back up, apparently satisfied, and coughed.

        “That will be all, Miss Mud Slide,” said the foremare as she shuffled the parchment back into the pile. “Please take your leave now to make room for other appointments. And—” She hardened her stare. “—know that any mistakes or ‘distractions’ on your part will not be tolerated. Please be aware that I’m putting a lot on the line for you, Miss Mud Slide.”

        Mud Slide sat there for a moment, dumbstruck. Had it really been that easy? The foremare coughed again, but this time was less of a sickly cough and more of a “get the hay out of my office” cough. Mud Slide was aware enough to take the hint, and she stood up. She was about to shake the foremare’s hoof, but realized that the foremare was no longer paying attention to her. She was instead turned around in her chair, closely examining the stone walls of her office. So Mud Slide did what she thought was the polite thing, and left without a word.

        It was raining outside, but it was quitting time and Mud Slide waited to watch the miners—her new co-workers—come out of the ground like earthworms. They were big, burly stallions and their coats were soaked with lathery sweat and the oncoming rain. While she wasn’t a dainty or even average sized mare, Mud Slide felt tiny when she watched them. It was a good feeling though, and it wasn’t even shaken when a couple of the miners shouted lewd things about her.

        When Mud Slide arrived home, she was full of manic energy and she spent the night half-awake, not ever really getting any rest over the course of the eight hours she spent in bed. She hadn’t told her father, who slept on a hay mattress on the other side of their one-room cottage. At least, not yet. He hadn’t been particularly supportive of her ambition to work in the mines—he was completely and totally against it. The only way that she had been able to go out and train for the past six years was the fact that he believed that she was out doing “odd jobs” to earn extra money, which was partially true as she had had to take on various jobs during her training to help pay for necessities.

        “Slide,” her father would say, being an intimidatingly large and powerful stallion with a dark coat and dark eyes, “yer never gonna make it as a miner. Why don’tcha get a mare’s job? I hear they’re hirin’ at the baker’s. You could make bread or somethin’ for a livin’.”

        And she’d just shake her head and say, “No sir.” Mud Slide knew better than to argue directly with her father, as he was a champion at making mountains out of molehills and a master at misdirection. Getting in a spat with him was like falling down a ravine—no matter what you did, it was going to hurt when it was all over.

Mud Slide thought she knew why her father was so against her working as a miner. He had been one too, back in the days before what the old folks called “The Great Collapse.” It had been just after Mud Slide herself had been born. A rogue magical charge had gone off in the deep recesses of the mine, and had triggered an explosion that collapsed a good chunk of the mining tunnels. Mud Slide’s father had been one of the lucky ones who wasn’t trapped in the tunnels when the charges went off, but he wasn’t able to get out unscatched. Just as he was nearing the entrance, the ceiling collapsed on him and crushed his hind legs. The unicorn rescue crew, armed with healing magic, were quick enough to save his legs from amputation.

He was left with a healthy pension but with a pair of crippled hind legs. Now all he did was spend his days at the Watering Trough, the local tavern. A pony without his outlook on life might’ve given up right then and there or might’ve let himself wallow in pity for the rest of his life. Well he hadn’t given up, and as far as Mud Slide knew, he didn’t feel pity. That simply wasn’t in his nature. She planned on telling him as late as possible, perhaps on her first morning of work.

        Mud Slide counted down the days in her head one at a time. The foremare’s assistant, a young unicorn mare with a light purple coat and white mane, had told her that it would be exactly a month before she could begin working at the mines. In the intervening time, Mud Slide worked herself to the bone training. She went down to the mine yard everyday and pushed around empty minecarts from sunup to sundown. They wouldn’t let her touch the full ones, so the empty ones would have to do. The other miners, when they were on lunchbreak, would look at her with disdain in their dust ringed eyes. But Mud Slide was too busy to care.

The hours moved quickly in the mine yard, and the days moved even quicker. It was the time spent at home that dragged. By the morning of day thirty, her father still didn’t know about her new job but Mud Slide could tell that he suspected something. Maybe it was the way he shifted in his seat during dinner, or maybe it was how he directly shouted at her about it.

“Slide?” yelled her father over a bowl of warm oats. “You got a job now?”

Wincing a little at the volume of his voice, Mud Slide saw no reason to lie much.

“Eeyup,” she said quietly before slurping up a mouthful of oats and rolling them in her mouth as she waited for his response.

It didn’t take long. Mud Slide could tell by the twitching of his left eyebrow that it was going to be a big one. But he surprised her.

“What kinda job?” asked her father more calmly than she expected, not looking her in the eye and instead staring at a wriggling beetle that had burrowed itself through their dirt floor and into their home.

She chewed her oats slowly, wondering how long it would take for her father to lose his temper. Apparently, it was on a short fuse that morning because it only took him a few seconds of her chewing for him to start shouting again.

“What kinda job?” His voice made the table shake violently.

Mud Slide swallowed her oats with a gulp and decided to tell the truth.

“I’m goin’ to be workin’ down at the mines,” she said simply before gathering up another mouthful of warm oats. It felt like warm vomit in her mouth.

Her father’s ears perked up, and he raised his eyes to meet hers. His mouth was a wrinkled, puckered slash on his face. Even through the darkness of his fur, Mud Slide could see his cheeks growing red. It was like watching a fire start in slow-motion.

For a moment, there was complete silence — nothing but the faint sounds of town filtering in through the thin wooden walls. Mud Slide was allowed a moment of calm before the storm.

“What did I say to you, Slide?! What the hay did I say?!”

For the first time since fillyhood, Mud Slide thought her father looked like some kind of storybook monster. His eyes were bulging; his teeth were bared. The muscles on his neck were taut and tightened enough that she could see them sticking out against his dark, nearly black, coat. She could feel herself shrinking in her seat; her knowledge that she was physically stronger and that he was pretty much unable to move out of his chair without her assistance was suddenly gone.

“I’m...I’m sorry, papa. B-but they pay well, and we’ll have enough money to p-pay for somepony to come take cah-care of you when I’m out workin’...” said Mud Slide, bringing out the big guns when it came to terms of endearment for her father.

        All she did was watch as her father slammed his right forehoof down onto the table with such force that the wooden bowls jumped off and onto the hard dirt floor below, the oats falling with a wet and messy splat. Mud Slide herself nearly jumped as well, her body shuddering and shaking. Her father took in a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. His eyes never wavered from hers. Slowly and tensely, he eased back into his chair.

        “You know what happens to mares down at the mines, don’tcha?”

        Mud Slide didn’t notice that she was holding her breath until that moment. Her lungs were clenching from a lack of air. She sputtered and dragged in an enormous breath, letting it out a few seconds later. With her need to breathe satisfied, she realized that her father was still waiting for a response. She gave the first that came to mind.

        “Yes.”

        Her father’s brow furrowed, and Mud Slide realized that she had just made the situation worse. She refused to look him in the eye anymore and directed her attention to the spilt oats instead.

        “How did you say yer new... job pays?”

        This question wasn’t what Mud Slide had expected, and she answered without thinking.

        “About—”

        “I hope it’s enough for yer own house, Slide,” Her father interrupted,”’cause you ain’t gonna be livin’ here no more.”

        Mud Slide took a moment to process this news. In that moment, her father had already used his hoof to point towards the door.

        “But papa, they ain’t payin’ me for another week!”

        The cold, hard expression on his face didn’t change, and he jabbed his hoof towards the door to reinforce the point. Mud Slide felt like the world was going numb. Briefly, she wondered if this was all just a bad dream. But when her father’s eyes looked so harshly into her own, she knew that it was no dream. There was no way her dreams would ever possibly project that same amount of disappointment that she saw in her father’s eyes right then.

        Mud Slide lowered her eyes to the ground and turned her back to her father. She would not cry, she promised herself. She would not cry. She got out of her chair and stood up on sore and wobbling legs. She took a few steps towards the door and wanted to turn back, to beg for forgiveness, to be her father’s little filly daughter again. But she pressed on. With a flick of her hoof, she opened the door to the outside world. Mud Slide paused for just a moment, hoping that her father would change his mind, before stepping out into the warm summer morning.

        That night was the hardest. It was the first night that Mud Slide realized that she had no friends in Little Rock Mining Camp. She slept in the cobblestone alleyway between the tailor’s and the general store, the summer air unusually chilly. True to her promise, Mud Slide didn’t cry but she did about everything short of it. It was a long night, the longest of her short life.

*********

        She awoke to the sounds of town—the squalling of foals, the clip-clop of hooves on the streets, the trickling of urine as ponies emptied their chamber pots—and to a rat trying to claw its way into the soft fur on her stomach. Mud Slide groggily stood up and gave the rat a swift kick, slamming it into the stone wall of the tailor’s. The noise it made when it slid back down made bile rise in her throat. But with a cough here and a little bit of vomit there, Mud Slide felt well enough to stumble out of the alleyway and into the streets of Little Rock. She walked to town square, vaguely noticing as ponies held their nose as she passed and as mothers pulled their foals a little closer.

        “Town square” was the grandest place in Little Rock, which wasn’t saying much. It looked about as haphazardly designed as the rest of camp, but it had a nice public water well that only sometimes got ponies sick and a wooden bulletin board that announced the issues of the day. Mud Slide walked up to to the board, figuring she had time to kill before the work day started. After all, there was such a thing as being too eager. She couldn’t read most of the notices, but there were thankfully pictures to go along with the ones she couldn’t figure out. The one that caught her eye had a picture of a pegasus trapped under a net held by a victorious pony holding up his free hoof in triumph. She knew what that one said well enough.

“Watch the skies for pegasi,” mumbled Mud Slide as she took a look at the other notices.

She didn’t quite understand why she had to watch the skies. Not since ‘ol Mister “Pegasus Hunter” Cobalt had caught one of their foals fifty years prior had there been any pegasus activity in the Unicorn Mountain Range. Still, every year, there’d always be ponies foalish enough to venture into the wilderness to try and catch one for the money and glory that came with catching one of these elusive beasts. And every year, some unfortunate but adventurous foal would find a rotting corpse or two in the woods surrounding camp.

Mud Slide was busy trying to figure out the other announcements on the board when she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. She waited a second or two and hoped that whoever it was would go away. She felt two more rapid taps, these ones more forceful than the last one. She sighed and turned around. Before her stood a burly, tough stallion with a light brown coat and warm copper mane. Large saddlebags were slung over his middle. He smiled at her, and Mud Slide felt like her heart was melting.

“You’re Miss Mud Slide, ain’t ya?”

She took a minute so that her words wouldn’t come out in a garbled, tangled mess. She only just barely succeeded.

“Ee—” Her voice cracked and squeaked, so she started again. “Eeyup.”

The stallion’s smile widened, and Mud Slide did her best not to smile back. She failed miserably and cracked a grin anyway.

“I’ve been lookin’ all over for ya.” He looked her right in the eyes as he spoke, and she was grateful he wasn’t looking at her mane or her blank flank. “I went to yer papa’s place, and he said that ya weren’t living there no more. I asked the neighbors, and they said they saw ya slinkin’ off into town. I figured, ‘Where’s the only place a pretty mare would go?’ That’s when I got my answer—town square!”

Mud Slide spent the next few moments trying to forget that he called her a “pretty mare” so the color in her cheeks would die down. She took a few breaths in and out.

“Whadd’ya want me for?” She asked quietly.

The stallion chuckled, and his soft brown eyes twinkled in the morning light. There was something about that chuckle that told her he was used to laughing.

“Yer the new guy... Er...gal,” he said simply, his smile never fading. “The big’uns sent me to make sure ya got down to the mines alright.”

        “You don’t do this for everypony, do ya?” asked Mud Slide, her smile dropping and her brow furrowing.

        He outright laughed this time, and Mud Slide was beginning to feel a little foalish for asking.

        “‘Course not,” said the stallion, still smiling, “Yer a special case, Miss Mud Slide.”

        Mud Slide couldn’t help but start to hate that smile. It was like it was painted on his face. Her own face must’ve betrayed these thoughts because the stallion’s grin wavered a bit and his voice took on a more serious tone.

        “Ya must be nervous. But once ya get down thar, ya won’t be nervous no more. I promise.”

        Deciding that she’d have to take his word for it, Mud Slide was left with one question.

        “What’s yer name, anyways?” she asked as they walked away from the bulletin board.

        “Boulder,” he said in a deep voice. “Jus’ call me Boulder.”

*********

        The walk to the mine didn’t take very long normally but it felt even shorter that day. Mud Slide and Boulder chatted the whole way, though it was more like Boulder talking at Mud Slide and Mud Slide either nodding or shaking her head when appropriate. She could tell they had crossed into miners’ territory when she began to notice broken bottles of barleywine in the undergrowth. Eventually, the walk became a bit of a climb and the road leading up to the mine took on a moderate slope. Having walked this path several times in the past six years, Mud Slide was used to it and she could tell Boulder was too by the way he took the rocks two at a time and practically jumped like a mountain goat up the steep road. But by the time they reached the mines, they were both sweating a little from the exertion.

        Even though she had seen the mine thousands of times, Mud Slide felt as though this time was different. For the first time, she was actually wanted here instead of just tolerated. For the first time, she was going to get paid for what she thought was her destiny. She shot a look down at her flank and saw it was still blank. Feeling foalish, she decided that maybe it was a little early to expect something so life affirming. Mud Slide hoped that Boulder hadn’t seen her look down at her flank, but he looked as though he was busying himself greeting some of the miners that passed them by on their way to the mine.

        “Good mornin’, Granite,” he said to a grey maned stallion.

        Granite, for his part, just looked at Boulder wide-eyed and gave a quick nod before hurriedly trotting off towards the mine. Boulder waved him goodbye and then turned to Mud Slide with a smile. She smiled back weakly, her lips feeling tired.

        “Welcome to Little Rock Mine,” Boulder said, raising his hoof to point at the entrance. “Jus’ give me a holler if ya have any problems, and I’ll come a-rushin’. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta check in with the main office to tell ‘em you arrived safely. You should be able to take it from here.”

        Mud Slide watched as Boulder walked away towards the main office, a small stone building in the middle of the mineyard. As soon as she was sure that he couldn’t see her, she let out the large breath she’d been holding and lowered her tail. Putting on airs for a stallion wasn’t usually her style, and it wasn’t easy either. She suddenly had a lot of respect for the mares that did it full time.

        Mud Slide jostled her way through the herd of ponies that formed in front of the equipment line. She’d watched so many other ponies do this that she had nearly memorized the process.

First, you had to show your identification badge—made of metal and slung around your neck on a chain—to the bored unicorn mare sitting by the equipment.

Then, her horn would glow and there’d be a chirp like a bluebird as your card was verified. Mud Slide, after hearing it for so long, had gotten addicted to that little sound and craved its ring. She had waited patiently for her own badge to make that wonderful noise for years and nearly squealed in delight when it happened.

After the unicorn scanned your badge, you’d be handed about fifty pounds of equipment—most of it magical. There’d be magic never-lose-your-way rope, magic charges that could clear out blocked passages in the blink of an eye, a little magic piece of metal you hung around your neck that got warm when you’re close to your assigned mining spot, magic this and magic that along with your standard pickaxe and magic never-go-out candle headband. All of these magic items frankly made Mud Slide’s mane stand on end, but it was just so exciting that she accepted the load without even the slightest grimace.

Trundling off to the mine under all that weight was murder on her back and all that magical equipment gave her a monstrous headache, but Mud Slide gritted her teeth and plodded down to the entrance. Her eyes darted from side to side, looking at the rocky walls one moment and the carved ceiling the next. Slowly, the sunlight behind her began to dim and the candle on her head and flickered on. This new, active magic sent a jolt of pain skidding and skipping down her spine. She shuddered, but descended deeper into the darkness. A voice called out to her, Boulder’s voice.

“Miss Mud Slide!” His voice echoed off of the walls, and she turned around against the tide of ponies coming into the mine.

It took him a minute, but sure enough his figure came into view behind the crowd. And when she saw that smile of his, her heart felt lighter than air. He stepped in beside her, two or three of her steps equaling one of his.

        “How’s yer day been goin’ so far?” he asked, eyes fixed straight ahead but with a smile on his face. “Anypony givin’ ya problems? ‘Cause I’ll let ya beat ‘em up, if ya want. Ya look like you could take ‘em on.”

        Mud Slide laughed. A group of stallions who looked like they hadn’t left the mine in weeks shot her dirty looks. She didn’t respond, focusing her attention on Boulder instead.

        “Anyways, the higher-ups thought you could use a little help on yer first day of work.”

        She frowned and he noticed, his smile shaking a little.

        “U-uh, don’t take that as a knock against ya. I’m sure they didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

        Mud Slide just shook her head and said, “They don’t need to be fussin’ over me. I’m jus’ the same as any other miner.”

        Boulder nodded and shrugged his muscled shoulders. They were silent for a few minutes as they walked deeper, the crowd of ponies thinning as they broke off into branching tunnels. Soon, only Boulder and Mud Slide were left.

        She felt nervous being alone with him. She’d never been alone with any stallion but her father before, and Mud Slide didn’t trust this strange stallion the way she trusted her dear ‘ol papa—even if he was the nicest and handsome-est pony she’d ever met.

        They came to the entrance of a side tunnel, and Mud Slide’s little piece of metal around her neck began to get warm. She began to trot down the tunnel, but a strong hoof held her back. She turned her face to look at him, bewildered.

        “I gotta tell ya somethin’, Miss Mud Slide,” said Boulder, with his smile wiped off of his face, which looked so lonely without something to lighten it up, “Jus’ a little thing, and you can go to work.”

        Mud Slide said the first thing that came to mind.

        “I sure hope this ain’t no love confession.”

        It would’ve been funny if either of them had felt like laughing, but Boulder gave her a weak twitch of his lips instead.

        “Take ta’morrow off from work, Miss Mud Slide.”

        “Why?”

        “A pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be here ta’morrow. Ya might jus’ get hurt, and I can’t have that on my mind.”

        Mud Slide’s eyes narrowed.

        “I don’t like that kinda talk, Boulder,” she said. “You threatenin’ me?”

        Boulder shrugged, and his normal cheerful demeanor came back with a smile.

        “Jus’ a warnin’, Miss Mud Slide,” he said. “Jus’ a warnin’ is all.”

His smile broadened.

“Ya know what? It’ll definitely be a day to remember, I can tell you that. Why don’tcha show up ta’morrow? Ya might like it. ”

        Before Mud Slide could ask what “it” was, the stallion had turned tail and left—the light of his headband fading quickly as he made his way up the tunnel. Mud Slide was left alone and confused. It reminded her of her very first date, if only a little.

        The rest of the day was spent quietly, the only noise being the plink of the pickaxe between her teeth as she slammed it into the rock wall in front of her. Maybe it was because it was her first day on the job, but Mud Slide felt as though she was ready to drop by the quitting time. She nearly had to drag herself out of the mine. But for as much as her body complained, her excited attitude about mining never faded. She saw Boulder on the way up, but he was busy talking with a group of work hardened stallions. Besides, Mud Slide didn’t really want to talk to him after what happened that morning. She had long since decided, after about her hundredth swing of her pickaxe, that he was trying to trick her into doing some kind of initiation rite that would end up with her trapped in the mine for a night or something stupid like that.

        It must have been a hard day on the rest of her coworkers as well because they didn’t even hoot or holler at her as she exited the mine. For a moment, Mud Slide’s ego convinced her that it was because they respected her, but she shoved that thought deep down inside. She didn’t have time to get a big head. All she had time for was sleep and plenty of it. Luckily for her, the mine provided a free bunkhouse for all of its workers which she would need to sleep and eat in until she got her first week’s pay and could afford to rent a room in town. Unluckily for her, this bunkhouse was full of lonely and grizzled miners.

        They didn’t exactly welcome her with open hooves. The ones that weren’t throwing her dirty looks and making crude gestures when she passed by were threatening her with bodily harm. After a very light dinner of dry and musty hay, Mud Slide was making her way to the bunkhouse proper when a group of particularly aggressive stallions confronted her—pinning her against a wall. Her first reaction was to turn her face away.

“Ya think ya can jus’ come in here?” One of the stallions motioned for the pony holding her against the wall to forcibly turn her face towards him. “Ya think ya can jus’ take a job away from a hard working stallion?”

He let loose a glob of spit into her already filthy mane. The other stallions let out varying noises of approval, from cheering to simple grunts. Mud Slide shook her head violently, but it did nothing to get the spit out. The stallion who had done it laughed harshly, his laughter ending with a deep cough.

“I know ya, little filly,” said another stallion with a sandy blond mane and a sandy blond smile, “Yer the one who’s been pushin’ ‘round our empty carts after quttin’ time, ain’t ya?”

Mud Slide didn’t answer, and the stallion shoved his face into hers.

“Ain’t ya!?”

She winced and nodded.

The stallion with the sandy blond mane gave her a gap-toothed smile.

“Thadda girl. Looks like yer cripple of a papa taught ya some manners.” The other stallions hooted when he mentioned her father. “Yeah. That’s right. Yer papa’s a cripple livin’ high on the hog while the rest ‘o us have ta work for a livin’. Tell us, can he shit on his own or d’you have ta help him?”

        Mud Slide’s eye twitched as the group of stallions laughed at her father’s expense. Ain’t nopony, ain’t nopony insult her papa on her watch. Even if the bastard had kicked her out of the house, he was still family—still had raised her for twenty-some-odd years. And family was worth protecting.

        She kicked the stallion holding her forelegs against the wall in the stomach, dropping in to the ground in a clean hit. It took the others a few seconds to realize what had happened and a few seconds more to stop laughing. That was all the time she needed. Mud Slide leapt onto the stallion that had made fun of her father, striking him again and again with her forehooves. He yelled for help, and she was pulled off of him by somepony big and strong. She kicked her hind legs maniacally like a foal throwing a temper tantrum.

        “Slow down there! Slow down!” A familiar voice shouted above the din. She turned around and saw that Boulder was the pony holding her tightly around the middle.

        Not wanting to hurt him, Mud Slide stopped her kicking but continued to glare at the stallion—who was rubbing his head groggily with a hoof. He must have been really strong, as she wasn’t a dainty mare, to lift her off of her hooves and settle her back down on the ground beside him.

        One of the stallions—a pony with a dirty, yellowing white mane and a dark brown coat—that had been jeering at her tried to rush her, his eyes bulging, but Boulder blocked him with a hoof to his chest.

        “Calm down, Marble! Ya don’t want to go hurting a lady, now do ya?”

        “Why ya protectin’ her, Boulder?” yelled Marble right in Boulder’s face, “Is she yer special somepony or something?”

        “Naw,” Boulder said plainly, “she’s just a friend and y’all shouldn’t be pickin’ on her. ‘Sides, we got plans ta’morrow. Why don’tcha y’all just go to the dorms and getcha some shut-eye, huh?”

        Mud Slide watched as the angry look on Marble’s face shifted from being directed at Boulder to being directed at her. She made her most fearsome face back.

        “Let’s go, fellas,” he said finally. “We don’t got time for this little filly anyways.”

        The gang of stallions let off an assortment of groans, moans, and curses, but eventually all of them—even the one that Mud Slide had attacked—moved off towards the bunkhouse.

        Once the other stallions were gone, Boulder turned to her and smiled. She didn’t feel like smiling back and merely sighed.

        “G’night, Boulder,” mumbled Mud Slide as she walked off towards the bunkhouse as well.

        “Ain’t ya gonna thank me?” he asked.

        She didn’t dignify that with a response. She was too tired, too frustrated. Mud Slide left Boulder standing out in the mineyard alone.

        The night went by agonizingly slow, and Mud Slide didn’t get a wink of sleep thanks to the constant explicit whispering and complaints from her bunkmates. But it gave her time to think. She thought about all of the usual things—food, bodily functions, food. She also, when it was the snoring keeping her awake instead of the lewd commenting, thought about her father sleeping alone in their—his—one-room cottage back in town. She thought about Boulder, even dreamed about him a little for a few minutes before sun-up. In her dream, he had been shouting something at her that she couldn’t hear. But most of all, she thought about mining. Had her father been right? Was it really not a mare’s job? And it wasn’t like she had gotten her cutie mark to prove anything to him. And now, Mud Slide was alone in the world without her cutie mark and without anypony to call “friend” or “family.” By the time the sun rose and the other miners got out of bed to get breakfast down in the mess hall, she had only been able to sleep about an hour off and on. Nothing like starting the day off right.

        Mud Slide’s stomach was trying to eat itself when she got to the mess hall, but it promptly shut up when it saw the food on the menu. Many of the miners left the breakfast line with empty plates. Feeling a little braver and more sleep deprived than usual, she speared a rogue blackened thing that the stallion next to her said was a muffin and sat down next to a pair of ragged and grizzled stallions with matching grey facial hair. Nopony seemed to mind much when she joined them at their long table. It was a good chance, she decided, to learn a little more about her fellows.

        “I don’t see why they can’t serve us a proper breakfast,” said one of the stallions as he tried his hardest to swallow his “oats.”

        “I don’t see why they can’t pay us a proper wage,” said the other stallion, having given up on eating and instead was stroking his chin with a hoof.

        The stallion eating the oats coughed raggedly twice before saying, “Them unicorns are naturally greedy. Hoard all their money and their land like dragons, they do.”

        The other old timer nodded sagely and added as he still stroked his chin, “Today’s supposed to change that, ya’know. Ya comin’?”

        The first stallion shook his head slowly and whispered, “I’m gonna be ‘out of town’.”

        The second stallion stopped stroking his chin and punched his neighbor on the shoulder, who gave a little groan of pain.

        “Yer a coward. ‘I’m gonna be out of town.’ Yeah, right. Yer just gonna be drinkin’ yer cares away at the Waterin’ Trough while we go out and do the work that’ll make our race great again.”

        The first stallion rolled his eyes and said, “I can’t buh-lieve that you’ll listen to such a little pillbug like that—”

        “All employees, please make your way down to the main office. All employees, please make your way down to the main office.”

        A feminine voice boomed, louder than any other voice that Mud Slide had ever heard before. It must have been unicorn magic because she felt a jolt run up her neck and down her foreleg. She moved quickly into the yard, joining what seemed like thousands of ponies—all stallions—in a large crowd. Mud Slide was enveloped by the noise and the weight and the heat of the herd. It felt natural and comforting to her, being part of a group. Instinctually, she felt the herd turn their eyes up to the roof of the office and did the same.

        Up on the flat roof was Boulder and beside him lay the foremare and her young assistant. They had been hogtied with thick rope. The assistant must have been the one broadcasting her voice because she was still conscious, unlike the other mare laying next to her. Boulder gave the foremare a kick to her stomach, and Mud Slide thought she heard something crack. The foremare, now awake, screamed. Boulder did nothing to silence her.

        “Today,” his voice was louder than thunder, and it hurt Mud Slide’s ears, “is a day that will never be forgotten. Today—” He pointed a hoof out into the crowd “—is the day that we fight back! This is the day that we show these”—He gestured towards the mares laying beside him, one writhing in pain.—“unicorns what we can do! There will be no more food rationing, no more population limit, no more high taxes. We can, we will, govern ourselves and prove to them”—He jabbed his hoof at the mares again.—“that we are not mindless beasts of burden!’

        The crowd was silent for a moment, but Mud Slide could feel something building up. A couple of ponies around her cried out in approval, and they were soon joined by an increasing number of others. It began to swell like a wave, and soon it felt like the herd was almost as loud as Boulder’s magically enhanced voice.

        That was when Mud Slide felt a surge explode in her neck. It was the biggest she had ever felt. It set her teeth on edge and made her stomach flop and her skin crawl, not to mention the brain-splitting headache. Nopony noticed when she fell to the ground, and nopony noticed when she got back up. When she did, Mud Slide realized something. There was trouble in the air like a thick smoke, and she wanted no part of it.

        There was a flash of light that came from the roof, and Mud Slide could just barely make out the figure of the foremare—standing upright on her hind legs—before it fell off of the roof and into the crowd of ponies gathered around the base of the building. The ponies up front pushed outwards, trying to flee. Over it all, she heard Boulder let out a rumbling curse.

The herd was scattering, but she still couldn’t get past. So she did the next best thing to asking politely. Mud Slide landed solid hit after solid hit on the torso of everypony in her way, but it still wasn’t enough. She was left panting and sweating with what seemed like hundreds of ponies to go, and she collapsed to the ground; the dust of the mineyard filled her open mouth. Her head felt so heavy, and her neck refused to lift it when she tried to get back on her feet.

When her head hit the ground for a second time, Mud Slide could taste blood and feel a rumbling in the air. The other ponies in the herd must’ve felt it too because the ones on the outer edges began to look up to the sky instead of looking at Boulder. Mud Slide propped up her head with a hoof to get her face out of the dust in time to have a hoof smack her in the forehead. Another one struck her mid-back just as her head fell back into the dust. She let out a scream, but it was lost in the crowd. Her vision was going fuzzy.

        A muffled bang went off somewhere close by, and Mud Slide watched a blurry image of ponies flying into the air. For a strange moment, she confused them with pegasi but all likelihood of that being true vanished when they all hit the ground with a harsh thump and didn’t get up. One of them still had the strength to crawl, moving a little closer to Mud Slide, before he collapsed. It took a second for her to recognize him, as she had only met him the day before. It was Granite and his tongue was lolling out of his mouth, catching the dripping blood that came from his mane. Mud Slide wanted nothing more than to vomit and she did, her bile mixing in with the dust on the ground as it dribbled out of her mouth.

        Colored lights popped in and out in her vision and within them were the silhouettes of ponies. All she did, all she could do, was watch as these lights shot out spouts of fire at the fleeing crowd. Mud Slide vomited again as the pain in her neck got worse. One of the silhouettes drew closer to her, and she shut her eyes. Now all she had was the ringing in her ears and the smell of fresh blood. She could feel a hoof press against her side for a moment and then withdraw. Then came the horn, which touched her lightly on the forehead. Mud Slide opened her eyes, hoping to dissuade the unicorn from doing whatever kind of evil spell it was planning on casting on her.

        I’m not dead! She screamed this in her head because her mouth ached and was too full of bile and blood to speak. Couldn’t the unicorn simply read her mind and leave her alone? A tear fell from Mud Slide’s cheek and she whimpered. She could just barely make out the unicorn’s blurred face through the haze that engulfed her vision. Don’t do this! She screamed in her head again, hoping that the unicorn could hear her.

        She felt the magic before she saw it happen. An agonizing pain ruptured through her entire body, and she spit out enough bile to properly scream. Something warm came from the tip of the unicorn’s horn and settled on her forehead. A split-second later, a burst of white light blinded her. Mud Slide’s screams stopped and her body went limp. The last thing she saw was the unicorn lifting its head up and turning away.

        “Mud Slide,” something whispered in the dark, “Mud Slide. Come home.”