Author's Notes:

On his first day of work with Old Sim, Talib sees - or imagines - something terrifying in the Everfree Forest. His employer proves as irascible and bristly as he'd feared, but also reveals surprising depths, and Talib goes home puzzled.

In the morning, Talib got quietly out of bed and crept downstairs. The dark pre-dawn air tasted fresh and cool – autumn was scheduled in the next couple of weeks, and there had been some light rain overnight. As he entered the quiet kitchen, oven still warm from bread-making the night before, Talib peered out the east windows and saw no hint of the sun yet. Good. Old Sim had told him to be there at first light, and he didn’t seem like the kind of pony who would brook tardiness. Or much else, for that matter. To save his parents some work, Talib re-kindled the fire in the oven from some desperately-glowing embers, and put a pot of water on the stove to boil for their tea. There was only time for him to throw on his pre-packed panniers and grab an apple. He slipped out and closed the door behind him, looking up into the clear sky.

The moon was still up, full and bright. That’d help him find his way to the lumberpony’s cottage, several miles around the edge of the forest. The stars were brilliant, breathtaking, hard-edged and cold. Talib had never quite been able to accept the requirement of everypony for sleep. Why sleep when there was such beauty to be enjoyed? But a requirement it was, and he usually kept regular hours. For some reason, any disruption to his routine tended to send him into a tailspin of lethargy from which it took weeks to fully recover. He had a feeling he’d need all his strength for the day’s work. And the day after that, and after that…

Talib walked peacefully along the path at the edge of the Everfree Forest, munching contentedly on his apple. Eventually he threw away the stem and pulled a slice of bread and a hard-boiled egg from a pannier, continuing his mobile meal. The Forest at his left was quiet, and Talib was enjoying the serenity as he neared Old Sim’s shack. Princess Celestia must, at that moment, have decided to begin the work of raising the sun, because he noticed a lightening of the sky toward the East, and the stars, sharp points of crystallised light, were beginning to fade. The Ponyville dawn chorus began hesitantly, a rooster here, a few larks there. It contrasted noticeably with the silence of the Forest. Talib paused uncertainly. The silence of the Forest…

The Forest was never silent.

There was always some little animal chittering, some insect chirping, birds singing and fighting, predators growling, owls hooting… but not this morning. At Talib’s left, deathly quiet created a feeling of simultaneous suction and pressure, which he turned slowly to face. Nothing moved in the trees. Not even the trees themselves were stirring in the wind, as if holding their breath, tensing their bodies, bracing for… what? He peered deep into the murk, straining his eyes and ears.

But it was another sense which moved him. A sense which made the hairs stand up all over his coat, which screamed, run! and started his hooves moving in a panicky dance, bare moments before he saw, or imagined he saw, two baleful red jewels, fell cousins to the impassive gems in the sky, pointed towards him from the blackness.

Before he could convince himself of what he’d seen he was galloping hard to Old Sim’s, which came into view at the bottom of the hill he’d just cleared. Lights were on and smoke rose from the chimney of the ramshackle little cabin, in a clearing at the edge of the forest. The giant workshop was still dark, though, so Talib made straight for the house, fear summoning a burst of speed which mere competition never had. He daren’t look back but imagined a malign presence close behind as his hooves clattered over the final few yards of cobblestone to the door, which he banged on urgently. He turned around, feeling claws swiping through the air towards his face-

But there was nothing there. No sign, either, that he had been pursued. All seemed normal. Unnerved, he kept half his gaze on the treeline of the forest until Old Sim opened the door. No ‘good morning’ from him, of course.

“Want to break the door down? I’m not deaf, colt. Well, at least you’re on time. Come in, come in,” he gestured impatiently.

Talib stepped over the threshold hurriedly, not taking his eyes off the Forest until the door was closed. He turned to Old Sim.

“Uh, Sim… did you… did you see anything out there just now?”

The old stallion eyed him cautiously, “Well, I wasn’t staring out the window pining, for you, Talib. You look like you ran halfway here… did you see something?”

Talib looked out the window. The clearing was bare. Something had caused him to panic, but if was anything more than his hyperactive imagination, there was nothing to indicate it.

“…I guess not.”

Old Sim still looked suspicious, but eventually turned and busied himself in the tiny kitchen. Talib glanced out the window again, shrugged, and tried to calm down. Maybe he was just nervous about today.

“Make yourself at home, colt,” said Old Sim with a generosity which surprised Talib, before continuing in his usual vein, “but don’t touch anything! We’ll head up to the workshop in a spell.”

Talib looked around for somewhere to sit, but no such space presented itself. The tiny cottage consisted of a kitchen, a closed door (presumably to Old Sim’s bedroom) and a small living area, all rough and simple and suggestive of someone who didn’t give a fig for appearances. Or comfort, or cleanliness, or organisation, apparently – there were a couple of stools at a small table, presumably intended for meals, but in fact used for storage. As was every other surface. You could tell how often something got used by comparing the thickness of built-up dust – Talib was certain, with some callipers and the right calibration, it’d be accurate to within a week. The crude stone walls were slapped together with mortar and the roof was slate. Maximum durability, minimum upkeep. But it wasn’t the architecture which fascinated.

The Forest seemed to have been brought into the shack. Or bits of it, at least: unusually-coloured stones of varied mineralogy; blanks of rare woods in every combination of brown, red, yellow and even purple; burls and twisted branches, hacked and finessed into even more weird shapes and designs; even the bones of various animals, some easier to identify than others. Old Sim clearly had the hoarding instincts of a very assiduous and slightly macabre magpie. The whole thing smelled musty but the pleasant aroma of cut timber will do wonders for even neglected dwellings. Surprisingly, Talib spotted a bookshelf (that was charitable; really some rough planks stacked in between relatively flat stones) with documents of various ages and sizes. He wandered over and peered at them. There were a few scholarly treatises on the Forest which he’d read many times and, surprisingly, one or two he hadn’t, and a bunch of what looked to be journals. Talib hadn’t taken Sim to be the reading type, much less the writing type. But then, ponies were full of surprises. He itched to get his hooves on the unfamiliar volumes…

“Alright Talib, that’s enough gawping around. Dump your things and let’s get to work.”

Old Sim was holding a foul-looking, cracked mug containing some stinking liquid. Talib dropped his panniers on a relatively flat mound of timber blanks and couldn’t help twisting his face in disgust as Old Sim actually drank the stuff. The old stallion noticed the expression and cackled.

“Want some? Heh, of course not. I buy this tea from Zecora every summer. Keeps these old bones moving. I’ve gotten used to the taste, by now. Come along, colt.”

Talib followed him out, the slipstream of astringent steam making his eyes sting as he blinked and thought, nope. I could never get used to that stuff.

The workshop was stupendous, easily three times as big as the already oversized one at home. A surprisingly normal-sized door – there was no way the logs came in here – in the sturdy wooden walls let them inside. Eyes adjusting to the pre-dawn gloom which the many windows were powerless to improve, Talib felt momentarily disoriented when the room turned out to only take up about a quarter of the building. A wall and another regular door partitioned off the remaining space, so Talib surveyed his immediate surroundings.

The initial impression was of neatness – not a single nail appeared to have been left out on a bench. The workshop was far better organised than the cottage, and Talib would have confidently bet a bag of bits on which space saw more of Old Sim. Benches ringed the room and skeletal furniture in various stages of assembly occupied clearly-defined spaces around the floor, like long-dead predators still jealous of their territory. The various medium-sized tools required for such work were not visible, but their location was suggested by the plain, well-made cabinets on the walls and the drawers under benches. What was visible on the walls were the larger tools, the enormous saws and axes used in felling various types and sizes of tree and for processing them into timber or rather, as Talib soon learned via a clipped correction, lumber. The smell, the inimitable loveliness of sawn timber, was romantic and heavy.

“This is incredible,” Talib enthused, “I didn’t know you made furniture as well!”

“Side business, really. Through here, colt,” gestured the lumberpony, up on two legs and noisily slurping his hot foul brew as, with his other hoof, he casually opened the door leading to the rest of the building. Talib went through.

The feeling of disorientation returned when he found himself in a long, narrow corridor with the Forest clearly visible at the open end. Confused, he looked around and realised the masses to his left and right weren’t the true walls of the building but towering, openly-spaced stacks of lumber.

“Drying shed,” said Old Sim laconically.

Those two words did little justice to the grandeur of the warehouse. As Talib had noticed, the far wall was simply not there, presumably to improve air flow. As the light improved and his pupils dilated, it appeared the wall was in fact ingeniously constructed in segments which folded, concertina-style, on sturdy runners almost flush with the flanking true walls. The lumber was stacked to dizzying heights, and Talib couldn’t understand how one pony had reached the top. However it was managed, Old Sim clearly really cared about angles. The floor of the warehouse was perfectly level. The planks were all impeccably aligned, equally spaced for air flow, meticulously sorted by size, species and grade. It looked like you could take an exact right-angle wherever you pleased. Talib glanced sideways at the old stallion – he knew Old Sim was prickly, but now it seemed he might be, well… a bit odd. Talib asked the obvious.

“They’re all so straight and even… why is that?”

Old Sim nodded, apparently at the importance of the question. “Any little imperfection, any distortion or misalignment, is reflected in the warping of the lumber as it dries – a log’s weight is more water than wood, when you drag it in. Green wood’ll season here for months, maybe years for some of the dense, thick planks. That long drying time is why I need to stockpile so much at any one time. But it’s plenty of time for poorly stacked wood to warp, and nopony who knows what they’re about will pay full price for a bent beam.”

“This warehouse is enormous,” said Talib, clearly impressed, “you can’t have put it up all by yourself.”

“Of course not, I ain’t no one-pony army. Had the whole Apple clan out here a few summers back, when I outgrew the original self-made one. Your crush, Applejack, is one of the most helpful, hardworking ponies I ever did see,” he slipped easily into reverie, “this was back when my brother was helping out for a few seasons, and production increased. Heck of a team.”

Cheeks burning that his infatuation was so easy to read, Talib decided to steer the conversation a little.

“Where’s your brother now?” he asked, uncertain if it would be thought prying, or just making friendly conversation.

“Got hisself hitched, had a foal. Now runs a timber-mill off a big plantation out West. Higher-throughput, more industrial stuff. Matter of fact, you’ll meet him later this year when he brings the clan to visit.”

He appeared to come back to the present, donning his usual gruff tone. “That’s quite enough reminiscing for one day, if you please. Let’s get to work.”

They walked back into the workshop and from the wall Old Sim selected a large saw for each pony. Returning to the warehouse, they walked over the impossibly flat rammed-earth floor to the far end. There was more space here, no geometrically perfect stacks of lumber – just an intimidating pile of variously-sized logs, a large cart stored neatly against one wall and some saw-horses against the other. They were close enough to smell the Forest more than they could see it in the dim morning, and a pleasant breeze wafted sylvan aromas freely through the opened wall. The floor here was covered in sawdust, and Talib reasoned this was where most of the heavy work was done preparing the timber.

“I sledded these logs here from the Forest yesterday. This week we’ll cut them into lumber and add them to the stacks.”

“It’s still pretty dark. Shouldn’t we bring a lantern in?” asked Talib. The older pony just looked at him, and for a while he couldn’t figure out why. Then it hit him.

“Oh.” Talib was standing in a bone-dry puddle of sawdust, surrounded by drying timber, in a wooden warehouse. Old Sim must have a mortal fear of fire.

“That’s probably rule number one,” the young colt joked hesitantly.

“Never thought it needed codifying,” Old Sim retorted.

This was not a good start. Must he feel forever awkward around other ponies, and worst of all around his new boss? Talib had half-hoped that, once in his element, Old Sim would transform into an attentive, conscientious mentor. But perhaps the rough diamond was just sandpaper all the way down. Talib decided to keep his mouth mostly shut except for work questions until he got to know his job, and his employer, a little better. At least this wasn't his first time handling a saw.

They worked all through the lightening morning, hoisting logs of various sizes onto the sawhorses or cutting them as they lay, debarking them and slicing them up. Talib never realised there were so many different ways to create planks from trunks. Fast-growing, younger trees with wide rings and which were not as susceptible to warping were “plain-sawn”; the round edges were simply cut off and the resulting square-shaped log cut into identical planks. Most logs, however, were not suitable for this method – they contained too many rings, and each one would exacerbate the butterflying effect of shrinkage as the ends warped away from the heart. These were quarter-sawn, a technique which Talib was still struggling to get the hang of after a couple of hours. The log was first sawn in half, and a wide plank taken off each. Each half was then halved again, and a plank taken off each newly-exposed face. Then the quartered logs were placed on their backs, so the right-angle was facing the warehouse roof, and cut straight down. It was a tricky business. Finally, for some particularly impressive specimens, there was rift-sawing. This turned out to be a kind of star pattern – a plank cut straight out of the middle, then another middle plank was taken from the two halves, and so on until the wedges became too thin. Edges were then sawn off square. This produced an awful lot of offcuts but also, apparently, the highest quality lumber. You could, when your supervisor was distracted with his unbearable beverage, reassemble them and look lengthwise to see the cuts making a kind of star of planks, reminding Talib a little of Dawn’s cutie mark. Then Old Sim had to go and complicate things further.

“See this here?” asked Old Sim, his hoof tracing around a darker circle towards the centre of a particularly large log, “that’s heartwood. Older, tougher, bigger trees often have a noticeably stronger and denser core, surrounded by sapwood. We cut these like so.” Deftly producing a pencil Talib hadn’t noticed from behind one ear, Old Sim marked the same star-shaped pattern on the end of the log, plus a neat square around the heartwood. They prepared several significant logs in this way. The difference between dead heartwood and living sapwood fascinated Talib but he had no further time to examine it as the sweaty, heavy work continued. During a short morning break which Talib filled with food and water rather than botany, Old Sim ran off somewhere for a while saying he had to “get something going”.

As they worked toward lunch, it became clear that nothing was wasted – Old Sim was a veritable model of thrift. Stripped bark was fragmented for sale as mulch. Some of the long pieces left over from making planks, wedge shapes, were kept for sale as skirting or other finishing trims. Odd-shaped offcuts were not thrown away but were piled haphazardly in the cart, clearly for some purpose yet to be revealed. Even the sawdust, every second day, was swept into bags and apparently later combined with fragrant resins to make incense.

At lunch, they dragged the sawhorses outside and used them as makeshift benches, soaking up the sun’s warmth in the still-crisp air while they munched down much-needed sustenance. The day was blessedly cool, given the intensity of the sweat Talib had worked up. He already felt certain muscles stiffening and was not looking forward to the inevitable aches that would intensify over the next week or two until his body adapted. Old Sim, however, didn’t seem to have any trouble leaping off the sawhorse and proclaiming it was time to get back to work.

They had got through a noticeable chunk of the pile as midday further cooled into afternoon, though there was still plenty for the rest of the week. Another short break for afternoon tea and they switched jobs to stacking the timber as afternoon contracted into evening. The riddle of the impossibly high stacks was solved when Old Sim pulled down some rope, apparently out of thin air, but in fact attached to pulleys on runners in the roof beams. With the aid of this contraption and two free-standing ladders the ponies scaled the heights of the warehouse, the weight of the lumber taken in large part by the rope. In the fading light Old Sim’s geometry was no less true, though accurate stacking was the day’s most challenging task for Talib. The older lumberpony kept switching out Talib’s choice of spacing chocks, realigning, grumbling to himself absently as he did so. His timing, however, was perfect, and just as it was getting too dark to work they had finished up, the tools were cleaned, oiled and stored, and they walked outside as the dark-blue evening became black night.

Talib really ached now, and he knew it would get worse before it got better. Still, the day was over and he hadn’t made any serious screw-ups.

“Welp, you’ve still got all your hooves,” said Old Sim, damning with faint praise, “that’s a win.”

Talib just nodded, massaging his shoulders as they walked towards the cottage.

“You’ll be sore tomorrow, and worse the day after,” Old Sim confirmed, “come along and we’ll do something about that.”

Talib wasn’t sure what the muscular older pony had in mind – surely not mutual massage? His self-conscious awkwardness precluded such physical intimacy even with his parents. But Old Sim led him through the stone cottage and out the back. As they returned to the cool night air, Talib gasped in wonder. A small but beautifully arranged garden of miniature trees, maybe two dozen, greeted them with silent dignity from their simple but beautifully glazed pots. They appeared to span a range of ages, some still miniature saplings, others as gnarled, wizened, twisted and blasted as the oldest Forest king-tree. These looked far, far more ancient than Old Sim himself, and Talib asked where they’d come from.

The old forester’s thoughts turned visibly inward. “An old friend, who inherited them from a long line of ponies. It’s quite an ancient skill, they say.”

A note of sadness, even bitterness in Old Sim’s voice warned Talib against further inquiry. They moved on toward a wooden shack in the back of the garden and Old Sim directed Talib to take the pail hanging outside on the wall and fill it from the pool. The pool in question was just behind the shack, only a dozen yards across but apparently deep enough for complete immersion. Talib made a mental note to practise his breath-holding there when he got the chance. It was fed by a trickling stream that came straight out of the Forest itself, not far beyond. Filling the pail, Talib returned to the shack Old Sim had entered, who now called him inside.

As he reached for the wooden-handled door, he felt heat radiate towards his hoof. Slightly concerned, he opened it hesitantly.

“Hurry up!” snapped Old Sim, “Don’t let out the heat!”

Startled, Talib ducked inside and closed the door before he really felt it. Heat like an oven washed over him, in stark contrast to the now-sharp night air he’d just left. Eyes watering a little, he scanned the gloom for his companion. The only source of light was some embers among large stones in the centre of the earthen floor – that must have been what Old Sim was preparing when he ducked off during the morning break. The wooden walls were completely blackened with soot, and the overpowering scent of smoke was just the other side of pleasant. Finally he spotted Old Sim, perched on a high bench against the far wall of the shack. Talib hesitated.

“…what is this thing?” he enquired, uncertainly.

“Ain’t you never had a sauna before?” was the old stallion’s rejoinder. “Bring that pail here and sit down. Breathe through your mouth.”

Talib did as he was bid and Old Sim retrieved a large wooden ladle from a hook on the wall. Scooping from the bucket, he threw a glob of water onto the stones, which hissed and spat furiously until the water was gone and silence fell once more. For a while, Talib didn’t notice any change.

Then the invisible plume of steam attacked him, pummelled his skin and seared his nostrils. His abdominal muscles clenched involuntarily as he struggled to find breath, breathing cautiously through his mouth as instructed. The feeling was not pleasant, and any slight movement amplified the scalding heat. Between this and the tea, Talib wondered if Old Sim wasn’t just a bit odd, but downright masochistic.

“I’ll leave it at that for a spell. Throw some more on when you feel you can handle it.”

In here, the old pony spoke quietly for a change, his hushed tones already sounding friendlier than the sharp bark he customarily used. Talib didn’t trust his lungs to handle speaking through the steam, and kept silent. That seemed to suit Old Sim, but something about the sauna made the silence – instead of awkward, as Talib usually felt – relaxing, companionable. Contemplative. Talib began to understand the appeal, even as his pores strained to extrude as much sweat as possible. After a while, he took the initiative and threw another glob on the stones. Prepared as he was, the steam wasn’t so bad this time, and the intense heat seemed to pierce his skin and warm his muscles directly. They fought their tense fight for a while but eventually the unstoppable heat overcame them, and they went supple at last. A feeling of well-being washed over Talib as he half-closed his eyes in the warm darkness. Old Sim handed him a leafy bundle of birch twigs, and Talib looked at him questioningly.

“Whack your muscles with these for a bit. Helps with the blood flow.”

Both ponies occupied themselves slapping their coats with the branches. The effect seemed comic, but Talib kept that to himself. It was soothing his aches, and that was the main thing. Eventually though, the heat got the better of him and a tingling started in his skin.

“Sim… I feel a little light-headed.”

“That’ll happen, till you figure out your limits and get used to it,” said the old pony quietly, apparently immune to the heat, “go outside and cool off in the pool. Take your time, and come back in when you feel better.”

The young colt walked carefully to the door and slipped out quickly, mindful not to leave it open any longer than necessary. The beckoning pool was only a few yards from the sauna and he waded in gratefully. The clear water was deliciously cool and his body was completely submerged before he was even aware of the conscious desire to do so. He sank to the bottom and held his breath, but his heart was pumping so hard to deal with the excess heat he only managed a minute before surfacing. Talib drank greedily of the crystal liquid. Nothing had ever tasted sweeter. He gazed up at the beautiful stars and, his heart slowed somewhat, submerged himself again. As he lay on the bottom counting, mind empty and heart slowing, he was nearing a personal record when the tingling he’d earlier felt in his skin returned, but this time localised to his cutie mark. He ignored it for a moment, focusing on controlling his heart rate, when sudden thoughts flashed unbidden through his mind. The dream… smoke and fire, like in the sauna, but brought as a death to the Forest. Water covering him, the sounds of his heart and that other heart slowing and stopping. Wings of many kinds, and perhaps… perhaps eyes, too, like evil red jewels? The image was confused. But the final image was crystal clear, apprehended with piercing clarity; a teapot with eight arrows, and a young unicorn’s cutie mark…

He surfaced, splashing and gasping for breath, cutie mark still buzzing and crawling, the previously beatific night now appearing hostile and alien. Talib calmed his madly-dancing thoughts and sat on the bank. Composed, he decided his pursuit of personal best had deprived his brain of much-needed oxygen. There was no mistaking, however, the similarity in the symbols on his grandfather’s teapot and Dawn’s flank, he could see that now. Unable to find an explanation, Talib pushed the thought from his mind for the moment and returned to the sauna.

“Alright, Talib? You were out there for a while,” said Old Sim, throwing a couple of ladles on the stones.

“Fine thanks, Sim. Just cooling off.”

Old Sim grunted and said nothing. They sat in the heat for a while longer, Talib’s mind pleasantly blank, until he remembered something from yesterday. He plucked up the courage to ask.

“Sim… what was Progress saying yesterday about an offer?”

Old Sim’s features darkened further in the dark sauna. “Wanted me to be forepony on his logging venture, other side of the Forest.”

“You aren’t interested?”

“He’s bad news. You’d be smart to keep clear of him, too.”

The older pony fell silent threw more and more water on, as he apparently decided he’d coddled his apprentice long enough. The steam intensified and, just when Talib thought he couldn’t bear it any longer, Old Sim announced he was going to finish off in the pool, taking the pail and hanging it outside. Talib burst through the door behind him, sides heaving, and veritably jumped into the water next to the lumberpony.

They sat quietly in the water for a while.

Eventually, Talib broke the silence, “Where did you get the idea for this thing?”

“I didn’t. My pappy brought the tradition from out West, where the family’s from. We four built this sauna together, first thing we did when we followed the Apple family out here. Wouldn’t be a home without a sauna.”

“I like it,” said Talib generously, earning a wry eyebrow from the now-relaxed old stallion, “but, uh… do you know where this stream comes from? My cutie mark was tingling a while back.”

Old Sim eyed him with interest. “It springs out the ground a few miles into the Forest. Tingling, eh? Anything else happen?”

Fire and smoke, wings and eyes, water and heartbeats…

“Uh, no, not really,” said Talib unconvincingly, glancing at Old Sim’s apparently un-tingling cutie mark; a spreading oak tree.

Old Sim relented and leaned back on his elbows, muscles flexed, looking up at the stars.

“The sauna is a sacred place; it’s for relaxation, yes, but also contemplation, seeking, listening.” Talib had not expected mysticism from this salt-of-the-earth type, who continued, “every place has its spirit – your home, a sauna, even the Forest. Especially the Forest. And this pool is an extension of the Forest.”

Talib nodded, uncertain how to interpret this. It seemed Old Sim had hidden depths, but his words had remade the night for Talib; safe and beautiful once more.

“Alright colt, it’s late. Let’s see you off home.”

They left the pool and shook themselves off. Old Sim told him not to mind dripping on the floor of the cottage as they went and got his panniers. With some seedcake to serve as his dinner on the way home, Talib said his farewells and promised to be back same time next day. Old Sim merely nodded and closed the door, leaving the young colt alone with the sky and the rising moon, still full.

Walking briskly home to stave off the chill of his drying coat, Talib remembered the frightening experience of the morning and kept his distance from the Forest. But if anything was watching the still-dripping young pony, he was not aware of it, and crawled up to bed without incident. The rest of the family were already sleeping and Talib joined them happily, more exhausted than he had ever been in his life.