I'd be a prospector...I'd be a prospector of the prospectors. I'd wait for luck to strike them, and then I'd take their gold.
-- Aubergine (The Prospectors)

Importance: The story's title comes from this line, which is Aubergine's response to Clara asking her what she might be if she lived somewhere else. This is the moment their idea for self-sufficiency is born, as they do exactly what Aubergine describes; they get to know wealthy men and then rob them.

I saw what she'd known all along. What she'd been swallowing back on our prospecting trips, what she'd never once screamed at me, in the freezing boardinghouse: You use me. Every party, you bait the hook, and I dangle. I let them, I am eaten, and what do I get? Some scrap metal?
-- Aubergine (The Prospectors)

Importance: Aubergine imagines Clara saying these things to her as they prepare to make their escape from the Emerald Lodge, and feels the...