Diamond Tiara And The Economics Of Love

by Estee

Organization Disruption

She didn't remember falling asleep, which always struck her as something of a discourtesy: if the world was going to fade out of awareness, then it could at least have the common courtesy to tell you when it was leaving. And given that she'd been awake in her bed for hours while waiting for sleep to come, it really would have helped if she'd known just how long she was expected to wait for.

Sleep, like Moon, only seemed to act when it wanted to, and Diamond was starting to wonder if either one actually liked her.

---

She hadn't intended to avoid her father.

Diamond had fallen asleep -- 'eventually' was about as far as she was willing to go. But once she'd finally reached the nightscape, she'd wound up staying there. The internal stage had been set for a single theme, and she'd gotten to watch as grey wings carried her daddy away.

It was something which should have made her long to wake up -- except that Diamond had never realized she'd been dreaming. Not when the scenario being repeatedly presented felt all too close to a potential future reality.

I have to save him.

She hadn't exactly been looking forward to breakfast: part of that came from her ongoing stress issues, and the rest arose from having no idea what she was supposed to say when he inevitably started talking about the date. But her body had crashed into sleep: as compensation for pain went, it was the least of what she was entitled to. And because it was the weekend, with no internship hours scheduled at the store...

Diamond forced herself out of bed. Looked at the nearest clock, found a backup because it simply couldn't be claiming that with a straight face and when the second opinion just supported the first, she found a servant who could verify events.

Her daddy had simply let her sleep in. He'd consumed a meal in private, and headed for the store.

---

There were things to do on the first day of a weekend, and the truly necessary ones centered around taking care of Cameo. Making sure her companion was eating properly, cleaning the terrarium, checking the jeweled scarab for signs of illness... all of that was normal. It was also a distraction, and one which very nearly worked. Right up until the necessary tasks ran out.

Food was choked down and, after a bout of willpower followed by standing with her head over the sink for five minutes while nothing actually happened, stayed down.

She had the option to go out, but... she couldn't think of anything she wanted to do in town. Or rather, she could -- but it didn't take all that much evaluation before Diamond realized that the fantasy of stomping into her father's office and outright demanding that he stop dating the mailmare wasn't going to do much. Or rather, it would probably accomplish quite a bit: it was just that none of the results would be anything she'd wanted to happen.

...maybe she could just stay in. Spending the day trying to come up with a means of saving her father was clearly the most noble option available --

-- hooves rapped on the front door.

Diamond, who had been staring at the schoolbooks in her saddlebags while wondering which homework assignment she could safely postpone first, didn't move to see who it was. She had servants to do that for her.

Literature could wait. It was a new book. She could catch up on the chapters later.
Math would probably be quick.
History was known to contain multiple examples of truly effective relationship breakup tools and because they were all illegal, had also made a point of recording the resulting prison sentences --

"Miss Diamond?" She turned. A servant smiled at her. "Your friends are here to see you."

Plural. It had taken some time before Diamond had come into possession of a plural.

"Which ones?" She already knew Snails wouldn't be there: he would be spending the day with his father, and Diamond expected to get him back after. Sweetie had both parents in town. And that left --

"Silver and Snips. They're waiting in the foyer." A little carefully, "Do you want to see them?"

"Yes."

It didn't necessarily make the day any better: not from the announcement alone. But she was miserable. And Cameo was doing her best to console and support -- but it was still the sort of emotional state which longed for pony company.

---

"Snails asked us to check on you," Silver told her as she entered the foyer.

"He wanted to make sure you were okay after the date," Snips followed up.

Which left Diamond just about ready to forgive him for up to two weeks of being totally oblivious to her fashion choices.

"And he also wanted to make sure you got your homework done," Silver added.

...maybe a week and a half.

Snips' horn briefly ignited, and full saddlebags effectively shrugged. "I brought my own books. In case you want to work on stuff with company." His features worked into a cross between a smile and a wince. "I know what it's like, trying to get everything finished when you've got working hours on top of it." With a not-so-faint snort, "Or at least I know now. Since I have to actually do the assignments." Which was followed by a soft sigh. "So how's the lousy salary life been treating ya?"

"Horribly," Diamond reluctantly admitted.

"And the date?" Silver checked. "What happened there?"

"...I forgot about it," just barely escaped from her lips.

Both visitors blinked.

"You what?" Snips immediately asked.

"...you forgot?" Silver breathed. "Since when do you --"

Diamond sighed.

"Let's talk in the conservatory," she told them. "It'll be nicer in there, with all the glass." The rebuild had brought back a few things from the old mansion, and her father still loved having one room where the majority of the walls had been designed to let Sun shine through. Diamond wanted the warmth -- and besides, she wasn't feeling all that happy with Moon. It might be time to flip the coin onto the other side. Having the conference visible to Sun could potentially save her from having to fill the other celestial body in later. "I'll -- catch you up."

---

They gathered on the plush carpet under warm rays, undiluted by cold air. Diamond spoke, and they listened.

"You need to be more careful about eating," a worried Silver finally said. "You're missing too many meals."

"Drinking," Diamond decided. "You know those ponies who say they don't have time for a full meal, so they just blend a lot of stuff together and drink it? Maybe that digests faster." She'd have to try it.

"And work made you forget," Snips groaned. "Work is horrible. Nopony should ever have to do any."

"Ever?" Silver naturally asked. "The world wouldn't be a good place to live if nopony ever worked."

He thought it over. "It's the definition."

"Work is work," Silver protested. "How could anypony define --"

"-- we'd just do mark-related stuff. Because that isn't really work at all. It's getting paid to do what you want to do." With a grin, "That's recess with salary. Diamond, I know it stinks now. But it's not gonna be forever. Doing all of the dumb stuff, like the shelves and the straightening... that's work. And it ain't you. But once you're all grown up and behind the desk... think about how good that's going to feel. Running the whole business, with your mark leading the way."

She hadn't told him about her talent. (She didn't want to. Ever.) Silver, who knew more, briefly looked worried.

"But that's a long way off," her oldest friend quickly said. "Diamond, what do you want to do now? About your dad."

"I don't know," she reluctantly admitted. "I was trying to think about it last night, and all that did was keep me awake for hours..."

"And you don't even know what he did for the date," Snips tried to confirm.

"I slept through breakfast -- I ate, Silver. I slept through breakfast with him. He probably would have told me. And I missed it." Then again, listening to the details might have had harsh effects on eating. "How long can you two stay?"

"I've got the day," Silver told her.

"I've gotta head back before Sun gets lowered," Snips put in. "I mostly got away because my mom knows I brought the school stuff. She's expecting me to bring some of it back finished."

Diamond managed to repress the sigh. They'd started out with her trying to tutor the boys, and... it had never fully faded.

"And I've got work tomorrow," she reluctantly admitted. "I wanted to put the assignments off, but... I probably can't squeeze them all in after the store. Maybe if I get them out of the way, it'll let me think about something else."

There was still time to save her father. There had to be.

"So let's do homework for a while," Silver suggested. (Snips nodded.) "Maybe we can play after, if there's still time. But at least it'll be one less thing to worry about. And we can just talk while we do it."

---

It said something truly horrible about a weekend morning to have homework as the most productive part of it.

They labored without pay, because the trickle-down economics of taxes always dried up before reaching the students. They talked. But nopony came up with anything new and while Diamond was glad for the company, the only thing it was truly doing was letting her know that somepony would be there when she felt even worse. It wasn't making her feel better.

After a while, they reached a natural break point. The worst of the assignments were complete, and everypony needed a breather before setting hooves onto the downslope.

"I'm gonna hit the bathroom," Snails announced. "Silver, meet you in the kitchen after?"

"Sure." The braid bobbed as Silver began to stand up. "Diamond?"

"In a few minutes," the resident decided. "I want to go outside."

---

Fresh air. There were adults who said it was a cure for just about anything which might ail you and as with most things adult said, it wasn't working out.

Diamond, without anypony to show off for, hadn't really bundled up. The day was cold, and there was snow coating just about every portion of the grounds -- but Sun was bright, and no major winds had been scheduled. A jacket and scarf sufficed.

She trotted down one of the main paths. Then she moved away from it. Her hooves broke through the half-ice crust atop the snow, blazed a trail towards the trees.

She needed to think.

...need still didn't equal results.

Maybe she needed to think about keeping lunch down. They were going to be in the kitchen, so Silver would try to make her eat. Not that her best friend didn't have a point. If Diamond missed too many more meals, she'd be imitating Miss Rarity. That mostly meant the fainting, but there was a chance that having her concentration completely go would do something for bringing in the accent --

-- the base of her mane prickled. Diamond's hocks went tight.

...that's not supposed to happen.

Prey sense? When she was on her own property, her own ground? Who could be watching her here? What might be watching --

-- she automatically looked towards the glass walls of the conservatory, and saw nopony at all. Not that she'd truly expected to. Prey sense rarely went off with friends.

Diamond frowned. Looked around at the snow-covered landscape. Nothing.

Maybe closer to the treeline.

She did some more damage to the pristine white. Went to war against the snow, claimed one victory at a time, started to pass beneath the first of the big oaks --

-- and a quarter-bale of snow slammed into her back.

It didn't drop her. She hadn't expected the impact, wasn't anything close to braced -- but she was an earth pony. Her knees bent slightly. For any who were watching, it was all they would have seen happen.

She looked up. The snow had come from above --

-- there were branches well overhead: thick ones, which could carry a lot of packed weight. One of them was now partially clear. None of the snow on the other wooden extensions was even partially slumped over the sides.

Diamond had a thought.

There was a visible effect. If any had been watching, they would have seen her ears rotate. Nothing more.

The outward expression of something invisible.
Slightly insidious.
Angry.

---

...winter is not death. It's sleep. The world rests, tries to renew itself. And... she's wondered about this, now and again. Because when she uses her magic, she's asking a question. Getting answers means something heard you. The world is alive, and -- does that mean it dreams?

She doesn't know. She can ask her questions -- but they have to relate to what she's trying to do. Asking the earth whether Princess Luna tries to help with its nightmares... that feels a little too personal.

Her senses reach out, and most of what they find is weight. The snow coats so much, with chill slowing the pulse of a continent. The sheer amount of mass... bale-tons just on the property, although it's a quantity which really doesn't get noticed unless somepony's trying to move it. Or attempting to pull a stunt like this, because she would usually be trying to find pressure against the earth and right now, that's everywhere.

The coating isn't even: wind creates dunes of white, while branches offer partial shielding and sometimes you get this little bare patch right at the base of a trunk. It makes the pressure into a variable, and that's not exactly helping her efforts: if it was constant, then she'd just be looking for the one thing which was different. As it is, she's trying to isolate four changes. A quartet of points which are experiencing slightly greater weight, with the spacing just so. Because as far as she's concerned, that snow didn't just randomly drop: not when the prey sense is going off and nothing else on the tree was close to falling. It was shoved.

So she's looking for whoever pushed.

It's not easy. Rain blurs the world, makes it harder to isolate individual impacts. Snow is like trying to move while wearing a dozen layers.

But she's always been good with the small details. Checking for the little things. Without irony, micromanaging.

She concentrates...

...over... there.

The big oak. The one where the trunk takes several seconds to circle. There's something on the other side of it, completely blocked from sight. Small and light, but -- fidgeting a bit. The pressure keeps shifting. And if she went around, looked with sight instead of truehearing... would she see hoofprints in the snow?

Probably. But that's not the current intent.

She's angry.

And if she's going to have snow dropped on her...

---

Diamond kept moving. Heading for a single oak. The largest in the area. And as she did so, she passed beneath a few others. Three of them dumped snow just as she passed. Only one was dodged, and she didn't care. Clumps of frozen white were shaken out of her mane, and she briefly wondered what she would have done if the tiara had still been present.

Nothing moved as she approached. Nothing ran, and she took it as a sign of intruder confidence. She would probably get a shift if she tried to reach the other side of the trunk, but...

The earth pony reached what she judged to be the exact opposite side of the wood. Turned to face outwards, with her streaked tail just barely brushing against the bark. Looked up at the branches, and all the snow waiting to come down.

Her body hunched in on itself. The spine curved, back legs came up, the forehooves planted --

-- she wasn't the youngest Malus. She didn't have to be. Diamond was strong -- and for that matter, so was the oak. She didn't have to worry about injuring a fruit-producing tree: she didn't even have any true concerns about chipping the bark. All she needed to accomplish was a single hard impact. The sort of thing which sent vibrations moving through the wood --

-- perhaps one of the Apples could have confined the results to just one side of the trunk. Diamond just had the benefit of knowing it was coming, and dodged accordingly. The tumbling snow missed her.

The other party couldn't say the same.

White weight came crashing down from every opposing branch at once. The solidified cold hit fast, hard. There was a high-pitched yelp, and --

-- Diamond was already moving. Reorienting after the dodge, charging around the trunk, and it brought her into a position where the sudden burst of light went directly into her eyes.

She spent a few seconds in blinking, trying to clear her vision. And when the spots went away, she found herself looking at a roughshod pile of snow with a partial broken dome in the center. Coming a little closer found hoofprints pressed into the white, and a trail heading back towards the woods.

Small hoofprints. But no pony.

A flash, and an absence.

Unicorn.

Comments

[Vinylshadow]

...Oh right

She's probably not happy about this either
(Not Her)

[circs]

so when do they team up?

[Grundpfeiler]

So who else is expecting the food thing to hit a crisis point? Right now Diamond is remembering to eat - but the fact that the food staying down is a problem - she can eat all she wants but it does no good if it won't stay down.

Throw in that it's only her friends that seem to be noticing - if that connection gets temporarily cut due to grounding...

[DreadedCandiru2]

She didn't realize that somepony else might not want a new daddy, did she?

[Gavier]

this is gonna be an enemy of my enemy kind of deal huh

[Harwick]

Oh Diamond…. My sympathies about your current run-down condition, but I really wanted to hear about the date…

If the relationship survives the children, hopefully someday we can get a story from the adults’ perspectives.

[FanOfMostEverything]

The tragicomic thing is that if Diamond did march into Mr. Rich's office and tell him how terrified this relationship makes her, he might be able to put this to rest. Of course, reassuring her that love isn't a finite resource has no guarantee of actually working. In a life defined by the war against scarcity, hearing about an alleged noncombatant will provoke quite a bit of skepticism.

If Diamond missed too many more meals, she'd be imitating Miss Rarity. That mostly meant the fainting, but there was a chance that having her concentration completely go would do something for bringing in the accent --

Diamond thinking that Rarity's accent is a symptom of something is a much-needed bit of levity in all of this.

And once more, the sisters-to-be nearly cross paths... and Dinky keeps getting mileage out of blinding Diamond long enough to escape. Though with snow involved, she'll be easy to track if Diamond's so inclined. And after an intruder dumped snow on her, why wouldn't she be?

Looking forward to more. This confrontation has been a long time coming.

[Lurks-no-More]

11889984
"Who wouldn't want my daddy?!"

11891183

And once more, the sisters-to-be nearly cross paths... and Dinky keeps getting mileage out of blinding Diamond long enough to escape.

Ooooh. I was thinking that teleporting away was pretty advanced for the Dink, no matter how precocious she is. That makes a lot more sense!

[Aotrs Commander]

👍

[DreadedCandiru2]

11893851
That's the thing, isn't it? She doesn't quite see her situation from the outside.