//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9, I wandered.  (Wilderness, Part 9) 
// Story: Meta Gamer in Equestria: Odyssey 
// by reflective vagrant 
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My bag was packed, the jar had most of its sea biscuits left and the rest of the space was filled with dried walnuts for the trip.  I had a decent enough wolf bone and hide knife at my belt along side my flint shiv, a higher quality fishing stick I had carved recently and the wand stuck in my boot, not that I knew how to use it.  The rest of my possessions that I came into that lake with were tucked away in the bag, on my belt, or on my shoulders.  I had searched high and low in the weeks I had been studying, looking for the remaining items that were missing from Moss's initial inventory.  Going through a "pretty safe" path would have been nicer if I had his shield, but I couldn't find it or anything else anywhere.
I saw the griffin come to see me off and give what I could only guess was either an obscene gesture or a taunt. 
"I see you're happy to see me go," I called in the chummiest voice I could.  It phased him only for a moment.
The zebra came out with a few things to put in my medical kit, and quickly drilled me on the supplies.  I immediately recognized the paste used for neutralizing poison, at least a single dose's worth, and the sanitizing solution she used on my arms.  The rest of the items...  I think I got one of them right in being a bottle of smelling salts, but she could tell it was just a guess.
She just shook her head and put the first two in my kit, then brought out an envelope with a purple, six pointed star and five more smaller stars around it on the front.  She then drew a picture of a horse with wings with a symbol matching the one on the envelope.  She showed me giving the envelope to her, then circled the drawing, indicating that this is what she wanted me to do.
"If I see this horse, give it to them,"  I repeated back to her, mostly rhetorically.
The griffin gave me one last wave goodbye with a cackle just as the zebra snapped her eyes at him and made him jump.  Promptly, she raised a hoof and pointed towards me.  She then pulled that hoof in, pointed it to him, and then swung it back to me, jabbing at me a few times in the air.
He just about opened his mouth to object, but the sudden tension in the air that emanated from the zebra stopped him in his tracks.  There wasn't anything physical that changed.  Her back was turned to me and there were no visible signs, but I could feel the writhing of anger in her at that moment in spite of this.
Even with the irritation I had with her holding out information, I still respected her as a wise mare.  But this?  This just made me scared of her like a child that would be scared of a mother that found out they had knowingly shrugged a chore she set them on.
She really did care about my well being.  Not that it justified the means or meant I should forgive her, but it gave me a bit better an insight to why she did it.


The track was uneventful, save for the occasional pause that the griffin insisted on.  I probably wouldn't have complained, had it not been for the fact that he pounced on me from behind and shoved my head into the dirt with no warning every time.  He was tasked to keep me alive through the last stretch of forest and I had discovered in our time together he prided himself on getting the job done, but that didn't stop him from hating my guts.
I will admit though, I was kinda glad to have him.  The stretch of forest between the zebra's hut and the village was pretty spooky.  There were dark shadows that creatures could easily hide in ambush and there were multiple tracks of things that definitely didn't look friendly.  But fortunately, the distance was so short we didn't even need to take a rest.


When we reached the other side, he gestured towards a direction on a nearby road.  He was about to take off when I stopped him and gestured for him to wait.  His feathers ruffled a little, but he seemed to calm down when he saw me presenting the portion of antidote paste from the zebra to him.
I just shrugged my shoulders and meekly spoke, "I'm out of the woods now, I don't think I'll be needing it."  Then I knelt down and drew a picture of him fighting the chicken/lizards in the woods.
He gingerly took the medicine and put it in his own pack, then turned back around and glared at me.
"tvuq!"  He called out while throwing a talon at me in a firm, but non threatening fashion.  He repeated this a few times until I realized he was teaching me a few words.  When he was sure he had taught me the words for stop, halt, something that had the effect of "go away," yes, and no, he performed an action of his talons to show an exchange, similar to when he took food for my lessons on magic.
"OK then big guy," I said in as humbled a tone as I could muster while masking my growing laugh, "It's a trade, not a gift.  Your honor is intact."


I focused on memorizing those words as I walked in the direction the griffin pointed me after parting ways. "Stop, halt, go away, yes, no," I repeated to myself over and over.
After about half an hour of rehearsal, I saw building from the village come into view.
I came to the edge of the... well turned out it was more of a town than a village, and stopped to take it in a bit better.  I didn't see another humanoid in sight, but I kinda was expecting that by now.  There weren't any griffins or zebras, but there were plenty of those small horses trotting and flying about.  They even came in a rainbow of different colors.
A few in armor seemed leery of me as they continued on their patrol, and I likewise felt a little scared of them.  I didn't want trouble.
I noticed not all of the horses had wings, some had horns, and some had neither wings nor horns.  My initial look around didn't seem to indicate that there was any major divide between the types though.  They all kept a significant distance from me as I started walking into town, but the horned ones talked to hornless ones, winged ones talked to horned ones, and so on and so forth.
I could have sworn I saw a lizard tail go into a building that I had just come around, but I wasn't able to investigate it.  Instead, I found myself being investigated.
A stick was being poked at one of my fin ears, making me jump back.
One of the horned horses with a mint green coat was looking at me and my ear in a child like curiosity.  The stick that had just been poking me was surrounded by a faint glow that looked like it was holding it up.  The horn of the horse was also glowing the same color.
'The horned ones can lift stuff...' I thought to myself.
"halt!"  I heard from behind.
When I saw a spear from a guard come up between me and the pony, I quietly thanked the griffin for teaching me those words.  Had I not recognized it, I would probably have ran and it would have made more trouble.
"Xjev't huoph up jisi?" I heard the guard say from behind me.


Turns out, the guard was actually coming to my aid.  He promptly gave the unicorn mare a small lecture that I couldn't even try to follow and ushered her away.  When he turned back to me he made a courtesy of apology and almost said something before spotting the sharp point at the end of my fishing spear.
His eyes moved back and forth between me and the fishing spear.  Finally, he gave me a firm glare, marched forward slowly and declared, "O'n huoph vu jewi vu dupgotdevi yuas qoli, tos.  Xjomi vji japvoph vuumt ug niev ievist esip'v izqsittmy ceppif op uas pevoup, tunivjoph vjev sitincmit e xiequp ot huoph vu deati vsuacmi og e pixdunis liiqt xewoph ov esuapf op e vuxp ug qupoit.  Puvjoph qistupem.  O katv piif vu liiq vji qiedi."
As he said this, he stepped forward and eventually reached for my fishing spear with his teeth.  Not wanting trouble, I didn't resist when he pulled it from me and tossed it to another guard.
"Go away, tos."  I heard him respond with another respectful nod.
He was just about to leave when I realized I kinda needed to make sure of some other stuff so that I didn't get on their bad side later.  It would be easier to ask a guard that had already taken a respectful disposition to me than a random one later.  Or worse yet, one that stopped me for something with a bit less than respectful tone.
"Stop!" I called, hoping I was saying the word I was meaning to say.
When I saw him turn around with a confused look on his face, I winced but didn't back down.  It was at that moment I realized why the zebra and griffin didn't try to teach me their language before:  I couldn't pronounce it right and it was painfully obvious to them when they heard me speak my own language.  I just hope I didn't sound too much like a grunting ignorant primitive or something just as dense just then.
I opened my hand in front me for the guard, and slowly pointed to the knife and shiv at my belt.  I then gingerly pulled them out of their sheathes and let them go, landing promptly in the dirt.
When I backed away, He came up and looked at them oddly.  He put his hooves against each other on the ground next to the flint shiv, promptly kicking it slightly in my direction.  The bone knife he looked at more closely, put his hooves down together in front of it and paused.  He looked at it for a moment, looked up at me, looked back and forth between my hands and looked back down at the knife.  He then hopped his hooves sideways slightly to where they were next to just the blade and nodded.
"Yua'si katv xovjop sihamevoup xovj vjot upi.  Epuvjis jemg opdj epf yua'f piif e qisnov vu dessy ov up yua.  Katv fup'v fu epyvjoph tvaqof xovj vjin.  Xi'si xevdjoph," he said with a serious tone as he moved his hoof back and forth from pointing to his eyes to pointing at me.  He then flicked the knife towards me as well and went on his way.
As I picked up my knife and shiv from the dirt, I realized the griffin taught me those words just to help me understand the town's folk, not the other way around.  I had to lean against a wall at this thought as I cleaned the dirt off of my blades before putting them back in their sheaths. 
At this point, I had to wonder.  What was I even wanting in town now that I was here?  I really didn't have an answer at that point.  "Well.  I got the guards OK.  That's as good a first step as any.  Now I just need to mind my manners and keep my mouth shut while I get my bearings."







"And that's where we stop.  I kept my end and you agreed I'd get a night off from your visits tomorrow night."
A huff of frustration pushed her bangs up and about for a brief moment.  "Yes.  We did agree to that.  But your tale among ponies seems like it's just beginning and I've grown fond of your company.  You are one of the few creatures in the land that I don't have to be diligent with to not resemble the monster of my past."
I just looked at her blankly.  "And who says I don't see you as a monster?  I just consider myself one too now.  Now leave me be already."
She looked both a little hurt and a little confused from this.
"OK OK, I don't see you as bad.  You've grown past those things I've heard tell about."
She paused a moment to think of a comeback as she let the hurtful words leave her mind, forgiven.  Taking just enough time for it to not quite start becoming awkward, she managed to continue, "As I feel you will soon enough too.  Whatever it was, I'm sure Fluttershy would forgive you."  With this, she jumped into the nexus and left me to my little island of brooding.


I just curled up my dream body into a ball position and rocked myself back and forth.
"That isn't the issue, Princess," I called out absentmindedly to the void as my mind slowly slipped out of the lucid dreaming that came with Princess Luna's presence.  "She isn't the one I need forgiveness from."
I didn't have to wait long before the chaos that was my normal, random, hodge podge of thoughts, sleep that even Princess Luna couldn't make any sense of managed to set in.