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No Rod For Maud 2018

by forbloodysummer

Chapter 2: Questions Events Have Raised

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“And that’s where foals come from, got it?”

Marble pawed at the ground, not meeting Limestone’s gaze. That didn’t sound right, but contradicting Lime could be dangerous.

“Hm, um, that’s not what, um, Ma said…”

She tried to hide behind her fringe, bracing herself for the scathing response that was sure to come.

“Urgh, Ma was talking about earth pony foals.” Limestone’s response was fairly restrained by her standards, but Marble still leaned back a bit away from her.

Maybe asking Limestone had been a mistake. But after they’d read Maud’s letter together, the details about Mudbriar, not to mention the craze apparently sweeping through the stallions of Equestria, had left Marble with a lot of questions.

“Mm-hm?”

It was the most eloquent answer she could muster up under the circumstances.

“All foals start off as earth ponies, ok? That’s what you get when a stallion and a mare hate each other very much and want to share that loathing with the world by making a foal suffer through existence too.”

Marble was fairly sure Limestone had misjudged some things there, but it didn’t sound entirely out of place with their family dynamic or life on the rock farm.

“But,” Limestone continued, her voice growing even more impatient, “if you want them to become a unicorn, you have to cut off their love horn, so a magic horn will grow instead.”

Peering out with a single eye from behind her curtain of hair, Marble lifted a worried eyebrow. “What about for a pegasus?”

“Throw the foal out the window. If it grows wings, you did it right.”

All colts and fillies learned about the magic in Equestria’s air, and how it could make stuff like that happen. But all the same, Marble was glad Ma hadn’t tried that with her.

“And, um, what if you do it wrong?”

“Then you’re gonna need a mop.”

Studying the ground in front of her (the bare earth of the farm’s outermost field, below which lay the silica deposits with the flawless quartz crystals), Marble wondered what effect that first experience of a pegasus’ life had on their personality, and if that was why they were rumoured to be so brash.

Not that she’d ever met one. But then she’d never met a unicorn until Trixie had worked at the farm, so she might still meet a pegasus someday. Though she knew there was one type of pony she’d never get to meet, as they were much too important to ever have time to visit something as dull as a rock farm.

“And an – ” her voice dropped to a whisper “– alicorn?” It felt strange saying the word there, like it didn’t belong in the dirt with the rest of them.

Limestone snorted. “Can you imagine how hard it must be to cut off a stallion’s important bits while he’s falling from the rooftop? That’s why there are so few of them.”

With that thought, Marble was especially glad she decided against leaving the farm to study medicine. If that was the sort of thing proper doctors had to do, then she was much better off staying put as the farm medic. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if she were a pegasus and could fly, but still.

“So Mudbriar, and all those other stallions who love Maud like that, they’ll all become unicorns now?”

The sight of Limestone rolling her eyes made Marble draw away again, knowing another outburst was probably imminent.

“No,” Limestone put her face in her hoof and shook her head, “it has to be done when they’re foals, remember? As full-grown stallions, they just become geldings, who are like normal earth pony stallions but quieter.”

Was cousin Big Mac a gelding, then? Marble hadn’t thought there was anything strange about him being so shy, but he was the stallion she’d spent the most time with apart from Pa, so what would she know?

“Or,” Limestone added with a shrug, “like Mudbriar, they die.”

At least Big Mac came though it ok, if that was done to him. So much had happened since Pinkie had moved to Ponyville! Marble had spent time with a stallion (or possibly a gelding, but that was still new and different), and even met a unicorn.

Thinking about Trixie, though, Marble frowned down at her hooves. Something still didn’t quite fit. And the explosion she’d expected from Limestone still hadn’t arrived, so it was probably overdue. She couldn’t really just let the subject rest, though, not when she was so close to knowing everything and the few remaining gaps would puzzle her for days to come.

“But, um, what about female unicorns?” She blushed and hid behind her fringe again, though Limestone loomed closer and peered through the mane, holding her gaze. “How do you create them, if there’s, you know, nothing to cut off?”

Limestone blinked, then sat back on her haunches and blinked again. Marble took that as a sign that it was safe to come out, brushing her mane aside and edging nearer her sister.

“I have no idea,” Limestone said, holding a forehoof to her chin. “But that must be it.” She glared down at Maud’s letter again, still held in her other front hoof. “What else could a eunuch be, but a baby unicorn?”

Author's Notes:

I will echo the comments of DWK and many others that Pinkie's visit to Limestone and Marble on the farm was the best bit of the episode, and that seeing more of those two would be great.

I'll go one further and say that Limestone Pie is my new favourite thing, and I've spent the last couple of weeks reading every story she's in :twilightsmile:

The punchline in this chapter is one I came up with while reading Shakespeare in secondary school English class. Never thought I'd be writing in a fandom it so fits with :pinkiehappy:

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