Sitting on a warm, flat rock, Maud watched as Tarnish both took care of breakfast dishes and read a book at the same time. She envied him, just a little, even if she wouldn’t admit it. For her, doing dishes was a task that involved a lot of effort and sometimes it meant spitting soap bubbles for hours. While Pinkie could pour bubble mix into one end and shoot bubbles out of the other, Maud was not fond of soapy flavours. Not at all.

Looking up, Tarnish eyed his wife and treasured her peculiarities. She was a weird one, alright. Last night, she had kept sniffing the box with the flavoured salt licks hidden inside. She hadn’t eaten them yet, but he knew that she would. For now, she seemed content to sniff them and then bat her eyelashes. He closed his book, slipped it into his saddlebag, and finished up the dishes, which were minimal. Oatmeal was a pretty simple meal, all things considered.

“Well, I can’t wait a minute longer,” Tarnish said in a voice that sounded foalish with excitement, “I am going to go and have a look inside of The Scariest Cave in Equestria. I’m dying to see what the big deal is. It can’t be that bad.”

Maud’s head moved with an unexpected suddenness as she locked her penetrating stare upon Tarnish. A thousand warnings might have wanted to come out of her mouth, a thousand good pieces of advice, all of them suggesting that Tarnish not tempt fate, push his luck, or invite disaster.

Instead, all that came out was, “Tarnish, don’t be stupid.” An adequate expression if ever there was one. Maud gave her husband a cool, calm, collected stare, and after a moment, she shook her head. She watched as he adjusted his pith helmet, secured Flamingo, and it occurred to her that Tarnish was going now. She got up and made ready to follow him.

“Maud, my stoney honey, I hate to be that guy, but I don’t want you following me inside. Let me go in and have a look around and get a feel for how dangerous it is. I don’t want anything bad happening to you.”

As Tarnish stood watching, Maud had a rare show of reaction—she rolled her eyes. He felt a little bad, but he knew that he was doing the right thing. He was being a grown up. He was being a stallion. He was the one going to investigate the loud noise, the thing that went bump in the night, he was the one putting himself in danger so the mare folk could stay safe.

And from the looks of things, Maud was never going to let him live this down.

“Now I mean it, Maud. It’s… perilous in there, I’m sure. Do you have something in your eye?” Tarnish checked his sword and the shield strapped to his back. He felt like some knight in some fabled story about the days of yore. Except there was something wrong with his maiden, his damsel, his pretty, pretty pony princess.

“Tarnish, sometimes…”

“Maud, just humour me, okay, and let me go inside, have a look around, and let me feel like I’ve done something brave and noble, okay?” Tarnish gave his soulmate a hopeful look.

“Fine. I suppose you need to feel stalliony after cooking breakfast and doing dishes.”

The snark bit deep so Tarnish turned away so he could face the cave entrance and not face Maud. A river flowed into the cave and there was a narrow bit of land along one side that had a steep angle. It was covered in stones and moss, which meant it was treacherous to tread upon.

It was time to go in and have a quick look around…

Mere minutes after entering, Maud’s knight in chocolate armor came running back out again, with Flamingo drawn and his shield held in his telekinetic grasp. He fled from the opening and was covered from head to hoof in shimmering green goo that glistened with a rainbow shimmer.

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARGH!” Flamingo cried as she retreated. “Run away! Run away!”

Taking Flamingo’s advice, Maud backed away and wondered what had just happened. She eyed Tarnish and listened to his breathing. His sides heaved like a blacksmith’s bellows. Under normal circumstances, she would be aroused by the sight of him huffing and puffing. “Tarnish, is that blood?”

“No,” Tarnish replied as he turned to stare at the entrance of the cave, “the blood was purple-blue… this is vomit—”

“Oh yuck!” Maud lept backwards away from Tarnish and her lip curled away from her teeth in a rare display of absolute disgust. “Ew, Tarnish… just ew.”

Keeping a wary eye upon the entrance to the cave, Tarnish began his own retreat, walking along the side of the river that flowed into The Scariest Cave in Equestria. He didn’t like it, no sir, he didn’t like it at all.

“You smell,” Maud said to her husband as she tried to increase her distance.

“I am covered in vomit… and… other… things…” Tarnish’s ears stood up as something dribbled from his pelt and plopped down upon the stones along the side of the river. “You don’t want to know what the yellowish lumps are.”

“Are we safe?” Maud asked, not wanting to think about what the yellow lumps might be.

“They stopped chasing me when the sunlight hit them and they began smoking,” Tarnish replied. “I just encountered a pack of ghastlies. I feel accomplished. I also feel sullied and quite greasy. Maud, I think I need a hug—”

“No. Not a chance.” Maud, who no longer felt safe, continued to back away. “I’ll keep watch as you bathe in the river. No hugs for you. How does it feel to be a stallion and to have faced the danger?”

“Feels good, Maud… feels real good. Now, now I’m gonna grab my mare and maybe make me some foals… I’m feeling virile after that display of stallionhood.” One of Tarnish’s ears twitched and a thick, viscous dribble of goop splattered down to the ground with a sloppy, moist plop. He stuck out a leg, gave it a kick, and sent more shimmering, sparkling slime flying. “The ghastlies avoided the water. I don’t think they like bathing.”

Snorting, Maud shook her head and watched as Flamingo flew around in circles. The poor sword seemed traumatised and she was covered in purple-blue ichor, which meant that she had to slice something and defend Tarnish. Maud felt bad for her, but she didn’t feel too bad for Tarnish, who had just been saved by a mare. Okay, she was now a sword, but the principle applied.

“Stay alert, Tarnish… I’m going to go and get you some soap and a scrubbing brush.”

No matter how much he scrubbed, he still felt soiled. Tarnish thought back to an earlier point in his life when he had encountered the flying skunks. He was a pony of constant sorrows, with pain and misery as his only companions. At least, sometimes it felt that way. Goop and soap bubbles floated down the stream and into The Scariest Cave in Equestria. He knew that he was going to have nightmares about his encounter in there. It wasn’t Tartarus, but it was damn close and could pass for Tartarus if some enterprising filmmaker wanted to make a movie about the afterlife.

“You missed a spot,” Maud said to her husband in deadpan as he continued to scrub. “Right there, that space between your hoof and your ear.”

“You’re so helpful!” Tarnish dipped his scrubbing brush down into the chilly, knee deep water. He squirted more soap onto his back and then scrubbed with vigour, trying to get the greasy, soiled feeling out of his pelt. “I saved you from having to endure this… you owe me. My stupidity saved you.”

“I suppose it did,” Maud replied as her ears splayed out sideways.

Had Pinkie Pie been here, she would have noticed that her sister Maud was smiling.

“The ghastlies are pretty ghastly.”

“They call them that for a reason, Tarnish.”

“When they saw me, the males began furiously masturbating… can you believe that? They’ve weaponised masturbation… I’m glad I got out of there before they had a chance to finish. I wonder what sort of aim they might have.”

“This is the reason why nopony studies ghastlies and there is almost nothing known about them. Right now, you might just be Equestria’s current expert on the behaviour of cave dwelling ghastlies. Had you stayed to observe their aim, you might have earned some fame on the lecture circuit.”

“Somehow, the sense of accomplishment just isn’t what I would have imagined it would be.” Tarnish gave himself a shake and sent suds flying, then continued to scrub-a-dub-dub. “I wonder where they sit in the cave’s ecosystem… are there things that eat ghastlies, and if so, how?”

Maud let out a visible shudder. Field science took a special breed of pony. She had no doubts now, she and Tarnish would produce little super-scientists capable of any sort of field work. Of course, that would mean letting Tarnish touch her again, which Maud doubted that she would ever do.

Now somewhat clean, although he felt a little dubious about ever truly being clean again, Tarnish watched Maud as she studied some rocks. These rocks had a pleasing dull grey colour, almost the same colour as Maud’s pelt. She was sitting in the grass, her pith helmet shading her eyes, and she had a loupe over one eye, secured with an oiled canvas strap wrapped around her head. There were sparkles that glittered in the rocks. After the events of the morning, Tarnish had a hard time becoming interested in rocks. What he wanted to do more than anything else was keep bathing.

For the lack of anything better to do, he pulled out the ball of roots from his saddlebags. It looked alive, but he could not say why he thought that. When he put his ear up to it, he could feel some warmth, which was peculiar. He held the root ball up in front of his face so he could study it. He didn’t even know what sort of roots these were, what sort of plant they belonged to. He supposed it didn’t matter.

There was life here, he could feel it, he was connected to it. He closed his eyes and tried to focus. There was life everywhere, all around him, in every blade of grass, in every tree, in the worms that burrowed through the soil beneath his hooves. There were microbes in the soil. This was a world of magic and everything had a connection. There was the radiant magic, the stuff that came up from the ley lines, but there were other types of magic as well, magic that seeped up from other sources.

He didn’t know the name for the magic that animated the trees and the plants and gave them purpose. Things like poison joke could filter magic because another magic, a stronger magic, a deeper magic, gave it purpose and function. Lost in contemplation, his eyes closed, Tarnish did not see that a small pink wildflower near to where he was sitting bloomed.

Almost in a stupour, Tarnish pulled the blue orb out from his saddlebags and held it up with the root ball. It made it easier to connect, it was like a magnifying glass held in just the right way in a beam of sunlight. It brought him focus and understanding. He could see dancing blue spots along the inside of his eyelids, which danced against the red sunlight that shone through his flesh.

The magic of the ley line was strong here, there was an intersection, a nexus, but there was another magic here, something stronger, something primal, something that had shaped the very foundation of the world, and Tarnish could feel it on the edges of his perception. His senses cried out as he tried to focus upon the other magic. It was like feeling a cool ribbon of air that somehow managed to worm its way through a hot, stifling room. In one spot, one would feel hot air, and in another spot, one would still feel the hot air, but if one kept moving around and paying attention, if one stood in the sweet spot, one could feel the narrow band of cool air.

Several poison joke flowers sprang into existence, bloomed, and then begin to spread tendrils, sending out runners so that they could continue to grow and advance. That subtle, hard to feel magic gained focus, Tarnish could feel that it had grown stronger, it was easier to detect, but still weak.

Opening his eyes, Tarnish saw that the root ball was writhing, moving, the roots were wriggling even as he watched, but there was no sign of the timber wolf that the root ball had once been. He did not get discouraged, but instead summoned his patience. There was no rush. A tree did not grow within a day, but over the course of a lifetime.

Author's Notes:

I hope I made at least one person laugh today...