//------------------------------// // A Long Way from Home // Story: Survivor's Gorge // by Withoutwords //------------------------------// “Hush little pony, don't say a word- Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird...” Hoofbeats on the road outside. Shouting and screaming and the sounds of desperate fighting. “And if that mockingbird won't sing, Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring...” Swiftwind's voice was soft, barely audible over the noise. Calm beneath the chaos. “And if that diamond ring turns brass, Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass...” Summerstone yelped in fright as something slammed into the wall of the house, shaking dust from the rafters. Swiftwind lowered her muzzle without interrupting her lullaby, pressing her cheek comfortingly against the little filly's. “And if that looking glass gets broke, Mama's gonna buy you an oxen yoke...” More jolting impacts, again and again. A rafter cracked, falling to the floor in two splintered pieces. Still, Swiftwind sang. “And if that oxen yoke turns over, Mama's gonna buy you a dog named Rover...” Summerstone began to cry, sobbing softly against her mother's flank. She was too young and too frightened to do anything else. Another rafter cracked, but didn't fall. The walls groaned, dropping plaster and paint like oddly colored snow. “And if that dog named Rover won't bark, Mama's gonna buy you a brand new cart...” Summerstone screamed as a section of the roof fell almost on top of the table they lied under. Swiftwind only pulled her closer, spreading a wing over her soothingly. She seemed not to even care that her home was being destroyed around her, or that the stump of her hind leg still bled sluggishly under the concealing fall of her tail. “And if that brand new cart breaks down-” A loud, ominous crash of something landing on the roof, and the entire structure roared in protest, trembling on its remaining support. Roof, walls, the mangled griffin corpse that had been its undoing: all of it collapsed. The table legs, carved to hold a family's dinner, buckled under the sheer weight. Summerstone's scream ended with a sudden and telling silence. Swiftwind could feel her own ribs shatter. Her body exploded in pain, every nerve afire with it. Somehow, she moved. Shifted a chunk of wood, felt the pile settle more heavily. Heard faint shouting, anguished cries. Breathing hurt, burned through her like the fires of Hell as she laid her head nose-to-nose with her daughter's, forced one more lungful of air into her tortured body. “-y-you'll... s... still b-be the swee... sweetest li... little f... filly... in town...” ~*~ Shadowheart woke with a start, and for one wild and terrifying moment, he couldn't separate his waking nightmare from his remembered one. His legs moved weakly, trying to carry him toward a pile of rubble that no longer existed, to rescue somepony years dead. The moment passed, however, like it always did. Swiftwind was dead. Summerstone was dead. They were nothing more than skeletons and memories. “Hey, are you okay?” Shadowheart tore himself away from the past, looking up sharply. He didn't know the voice, and no matter how concerned it sounded, he didn't trust it. “Hey, whoa- don't move! You're hurt pretty bad from that fall. Sorry I didn't manage to catch you in time.” Shadowheart struggled to stand, but his traitorous body wouldn't let him. All four legs hurt, though not bad enough to be broken, and refused to bear his weight. “Stay away from me.” The griffin blinked at him, as if she couldn't understand why he was behaving this way. “Dude, what is wrong with you?” she demanded. “A great deal more than I'd tell a griffin,” Shadowheart responded, watching her warily. Something was... different about this one. She was leaner, both in build and in health- if he had to guess, she hadn't been eating much if at all lately. Her markings were odd, too- there was no way she could blend into anything with such bold brown feathers and that stark white head, and certainly not with what looked like purple edging on her crest. But it was more than that. Shadowheart's gift was the ability to see into the hearts of others and judge their intentions. He hadn't met a griffin yet who didn't ultimately intend his death, but all he sensed from this one was a desire to help. Help him, specifically. Which flew directly in the face of everything he knew about griffins. “Geez, you're a grouch,” she said. “Whatever. The name's Gilda.” “What kind of name is Gilda?” Shadowheart asked. He'd never known a griffin to have a name like that, either. “Tell me your name so I can make fun of it,” Gilda retorted, batting her hind foot at a rock and sending it skittering out of the circle of firelight. She radiated a sense of innocence and trust completely unlike anything Shadowheart had ever encountered, and he found himself answering her. “Shadowheart,” “Now that is a weirdo name,” Gilda said, laughing. “Are you hungry? I can hunt up some food for you.” “Why do you care?” Shadowheart asked. “I'm a pony.” “Yeah, I can see that.” Gilda turned her head, fully focusing one bright avian eye on him. “I'm not blind, you know.” “Where did you come from?” Shadowheart wondered, shaking his head. He meant it rhetorically, but she answered, anyway. “Cloudsdale, originally. I left Ponyville a couple weeks ago- can't really tell you where I've been since. It's totally boring out here. You want something to eat, or not?” Shadowheart assessed himself. He was hungry. He might have done his own foraging, except he knew pain well enough to know he had broken ribs under the crude bandages wrapped over his flanks. His legs were badly bruised and would probably take days to heal enough for him to walk. If he wanted to eat, he'd have to trust a griffin. “Fine,” he said at length, laying his head down again. He hadn't noticed before, but Gilda had pressed a worn leather bag into service as a makeshift pillow. That was... kind. Something else he wasn't used to from griffins. “Okay, then. Rest up, and I'll be back,” Gilda stood, shaking out her wings, and launched herself skyward. For several seconds, her back was completely open; one well-timed burst of magic, and he could have killed her. Definitely the strangest griffin Shadowheart had ever known. -end chapter- Short chapter is short. Now you know what the 'other' was for. I like to surprise people sometimes.