“And that’s everything you need to know about my sister Marble,” Pinkie Pie explains as she, her two foals, and Doug wait outside the otherwise deserted Ponyville train station.

“But, Pinkie,” Doug objects, “you haven’t said anything.” They have, in fact, just arrived; he sets down Pinkie Pie’s glaringly pink suitcase, followed by shucking the Rarity-made rucksack off his back. Lemon traipses to the booth and rouses the drowsy ticket stallion while Meringue stares down the tracks, her natural frown at any sort of delay slowly deepening.

“Exactly!” Pinkie Pie nods as though that miniscule description should be sufficient. Doug merely sighs. “Pa, Igneous, he’s the bedrock of our family, even if he’s stuck in the mud. Ma, Cloudy Quartz, she’s a real gem.” She winks, drawing a short chuckle. “Limestone, on the other hoof, is just a teensy-” she holds her hooves a scant inch apart “-weensy bit dry.” She grins, waiting with bated breath for their reaction.

“Don’t look at me,” Lemon says as her sire glances her way, hoping for some explanation. She struggles to only bounce in place and not off the walls. “I get to meet my aunts!”

“No uncle?” Doug asks, curious.

“Octavio’s in Manehattan learning to bake,” Pinkie Pie explains in a rushed voice. “He’s hoping he can one day be as good a baker as I am! And Maud’s getting her rocktorate, so she probably won’t be there either.” She pokes Doug in the side. “It has to do with Limestone’s name,” Pinkie Pie hints.

“...And not her lack of humor?” Doug guesses.

Pinkie Pie scoffs. “Look, I’d set a bad precipitate if I filled in all the blanks.”

Doug groans. It’s going to be that kind of trip. Better get ready.

“Speculation superfluous. Focus upon locomotion.”

“Thanks, Meringue,” Doug says, ruffling his youngest filly’s dull yellow mane. The train, a dusty hauler built for carrying massive rock slabs, slowly comes to a screeching halt. The earth pony conductor tips his blue-and-white Union hat before going to his checklists. Two changeling drones leap down and grab their luggage.

“Antares,” the reddish orange changeling introduces himself, then motions to his pink colleague. She gives a brief wave. “And Fang. Are you sure you’re okay without a passenger car?”

Their surroundings are particularly bare, with no furnishings and metal slats for windows that barely let in any light. Doug finds it perfectly suitable, though Lemon gives the walls an appreciative nod, like she is regarding a blank canvas.

“Accomodations adequate.”

The changeling grins at Meringue’s succinct response, grateful they don’t need to modify the hauler or add a car. He lays a thick blanket inside the covered hopper with a quick demonstration of the heavy sliding door, closing it behind him.

“Water evaporating is how limestone is made,” Pinkie Pie finally explains once they’ve settled down, crossing her forelegs with a huff. “One way, at loess. Hence, dry. How do you not know this?”

“I’ve had a lot on my plate,” Doug answers with a shrug, sitting next to her. “It’s not my fault.”

Pinkie Pie stares at Doug for a moment before giving a resounding ‘meh’, complete with forelegs splayed to the side. “A tad caliched,” she consoles, patting Doug on the head. “Limestone does not sulfur foals lightly. Especially those mantled with pyrite.”

Doug spreads his jacket to better expose the giant golden crest tattooed on his chest. “Good thing I lava challenge.”

Meringue groans, thunks her head against the hard floor, and bundles the blankets around her ears. Lemon snickers as she removes a set of colored chalk from her saddlebags, laughing along as her parents refine their slate of rock puns.

Several hours later, the train slowly pulls to a stop. A heavy thumping comes from outside, loud through the thick metal, pulling Lemon away from her mural of the desolate countryside and getting Meringue to poke her head out from her blanket burrow.

A moment later the door slides open with a shrill complaint, exposing a monstrous scorpion standing scant feet away.

Doug scurries back, heart racing. The reddish orange behemoth fills the entirety of the opening, at least five times as tall as a pony and just as wide, not even counting the wicked claws. Thick plates armor the body, with eight squat legs and a segmented tail curling upward and ending in a nasty stinger.

“Come on, Dougie!” Before he can stop her Pinkie Pie leaps forward, suitcase in muzzle, and pronks underneath the waving claw. Wait, waving? Eight blue eyes whirl with bemusement as the scorpion steps to the side, revealing a shrubby desert and a second scorpion, this one pink.

“Nice morph,” Doug remarks as he folds up the blanket, then dons his rucksack, doing his best to appear unflustered. He doubts he fools anyone. “Pure scorpion, or crossed with something?”

“Pure Hadrurus,” the surprisingly high pitched voice answers. “But this one’s a bit on the small end.” Antares flexes his claw, then scoops out a chunk of dirt, making a little ramp for Lemon and Meringue. Once they’ve all left he closes the door, his large bulk making it seem effortless. “See you tomorrow!” He gives a quick wave before lumbering off, joining his partner by a pile of rough-cut marble slabs and begins loading them onto the flatbed cars.

The unstaffed train station, though similar in size and shape to Ponyville’s, offers little in the way of amenities, not even a map of the surrounding area. Pinkie Pie follows a winding path between towering mesas and deep canyons. Wide-mouthed caves dot the landscape, some natural and some carved by Quarry Eels or wide-ranging maulwurfs. Other bowl-shaped areas cut into the mesas are abandoned quarries. It reminds him of spelunking with Rarity, though it seems the very terrain is as valuable as the gems.

“So your parents are rock farmers,” Doug asks as they trek along. It would be easy to get lost in the dry and monotonous landscape, as it seems behind every mesa is another flat-topped mountain, nearly identical. “Did they open these quarries?”

“No, silly,” Pinkie Pie answers with a cheeky grin. “They’re farmers, not miners. Though they would dig their own rocks instead of buying from the Bombo’s or the Na-Mites or the Kieselgurs.” She identifies several of the quarries they have passed by, with their small shacks built into the surrounding mesa. “Oh, and look! We’re here!”

Pinkie Pie points, past the elliptical boulder precariously propped over a prodigious pit, toward a rustic farmhouse, windmill, and grain silo. The cozy farmhouse shares much in common with those built by the Apples, with a steep wooden roof and thick stone chimney and shuttered windows that all suggest heavy snow during winter. A blue-gated wooden fence surrounds the property, mostly consisting of a few scattered fruit trees and the flowing gold of a large wheat field.

Out of the field strides a light brown stallion, his gray-banded black fedora covering a gray and white mane that doubles as a mutton chop beard. He wears the thinnest white collar Doug has seen, not even a quarter suit, along with a solid black tie. His cutie mark is a simple mining pick. He stares at the approaching pink pony, and remains as still as a statue except for the chewing of the wheat stalk in his mouth.

Pinkie Pie stays uncharacteristically quiet, her grin gradually becoming more and more forced at the ensuing silence. Lemon and Meringue follow their dam’s hoofsteps, though only Lemon seems to struggle with not speaking.

“Verily,” the aged stallion finally says as Pinkie Pie gets within speaking range, his voice dour and cold. “Mine prodigal filly returneth.”

The words open a floodgate. “Pa! It’s so good to see you! How’s the farm? How’s the fam? Ma? Maud? Limestone? Marble? Octavio?” She grins from ear to ear, waiting for a response. Anything, really.

The stallion weathers her outburst with the stoicism of a stone. There is a hardness present that sets Pinkie Pie’s teeth chattering behind her grin. “Thine untimely departure hast brought naught but peril to thine hearth and home.”

Pinkie Pie’s eyes grow round as saucers, tears bubbling on the edges. “W-what?”

The conversation baffles Doug, all the rock puns he prepared tumbling from his mind. The unfeeling ‘greeting’ from Igneous, Pinkie Pie’s distraught but unchallenging acceptance as her rump hits the ground? Something is going on that Pinkie Pie never alluded to, but he has no clue what.

Pinkie Pie’s sire turns to Doug. He cracks a friendly, if guarded, smile. “Surely thy name is not but Doug Apple.” He offers a short nod. “I am called Igneous Rock Pie, son of Feldspar Granite Pie. May Providence favor thee well, and to thou comfort our humble homestead bring.”

“Err, yeah,” Doug answers, still quite confused. “Nice to meet you. This is Lemon Pie and Meringue Pie.”

Igneous turns his smile to his grandfillies, warmth filtering through the guarded cracks. “My fondest greetings to thee, ones of little stature.”

“I’m not that little,” Lemon objects, bouncing forward to wrap her forelegs around Igneous’ barrel. She doesn’t have to reach far, as she is only slightly shorter than her dam, if ganglier. He, somewhat surprised by the motion, taps her back twice, brown muzzle lost in her poofy yellow mane.

“Observation accurate.”

Meringue waits for Lemon to pull away before offering a brief nod.

Igneous nods back, looking pleased at the filly’s greeting. He turns to the other approaching members of his family: an older light gray mare with a bundled green mane, a checkered kerchief around her neck, and a cutie mark of three green gemstones; a mare just a shade darker than her dam, purple eyes half-hidden behind a straight, greenish gray mane, her cutie mark of three purple marbles; and a purple mare with a harshly cut gray mane, scowling like she just ate the lime and two rocks of her cutie mark.

“Oh!” Pinkie Pie exclaims, bounding to her hooves. “Now you can meet the rest of my super-mega-fun-derful family! This is my dam, Cloudy Quartz!”

Cloudy Quartz taps a hoof to her kerchief, smiling at Doug and not reacting to anything Pinkie Pie said. “Thou shalt know me as Cloudy Quartz.”

The purple mare pushes forward. “Gaze into the eyes of Limestone Pie. Ma and Pa may-”

“-Hold on,” Doug says, interrupting the lime and stone marked mare. Oh, Limestone. She growls at him, but holds her tongue. He motions at the despondent Pinkie Pie, now straight-maned and on the verge of tears. “What’s going on here? Why are you ignoring her?”

“Limestone Pie,” Igneous admonishes, clearing his throat. “If any mare neigh obey Thy will, note that mare, and neigh hath company wilt her, that she ashamed be. Yet she shalt neigh thine enemy be, but as a sister admonish.” Limestone glares at Doug for a long second before closing her eyes and stepping behind and beside her sire, focusing her anger at a nearby mesa.

Cloudy Quartz stays at his side, addressing Doug as Marble slips behind her. “Thou art an outsider, and of the world,” the flinty mare starts, explaining without malice in a hard, matter-of-fact voice. “We do neigh expect adherence, neigh even understanding, of our ways. To expect such would folly be.”

“But what did she do,” Doug insists, drawing minute glances but little more. He finds it infuriating that her family would treat her so poorly, his hands balling into fists that he has to consciously unclench.

“She did’st herd with thou,” Cloudy Quartz states unapologetically. If Doug’s frown lengthening bothers her, she doesn’t show it. “She did’st so neigh the blessing of the Pairing Stone being given.”

“The… what?” Doug glances at Pinkie Pie for confirmation. She, muzzle twisted to a sullen glower, stares at the ground.

Igneous Pie trots to the house, quickly returning with a bottle-shaped rock. He holds it reverently, displaying it for all to see. The other mares of the Pie family give it respectful bows.

“You’re… grievously insulted,” Doug says, taking a deep breath to keep from shouting, “she herded up without spinning a rock?”

Next Chapter: Ch. 164 - Ancient Waystones, Part Two Estimated time remaining: 6 Hours, 11 Minutes