The walk took longer I’d’ve liked, but eventually, we got there. The sun was setting by the time we got to our destination—or rather, intermediate destination. It was a small town sitting where a railroad crossed the river we’d been following. Though perhaps calling it a town would be something of an exaggeration. It was considerably smaller than Riverstone and seemed to consist of little more than a railway station, small dock, and cluster of supporting buildings scattered around. If I were to speculate, I’d say its sole purpose was to be a refueling stop for locomotives and steamboats and place to move cargo and passengers between the two.
We made our way to the train station and I found a comfortable-looking bench to flop on while Cinnamon went off to procure us some tickets from wherever it was tickets were procured. I entertained myself in the meantime by watching as a few ponies tended to a parked locomotive in the distance. It was a fascinating thing indeed to see them work the tools using nothing but hooves and mouths. Colorful ponies climbed all over the machines, cleaning them, oiling parts, performing maintenance and other intricate manual tasks that I wouldn’t have thought possible to do at all without hands, let alone with the speed and efficiency these workers had.
Enthralled as I was watching them go about their duties, I didn’t notice Cinnamon return until out of nowhere her face bounced up into my field of view.
“Hey! Birdy!” She said midair, causing me to jerk my head back in surprise. When she'd landed back on her hooves she continued, “Anypony in there?”
I blinked rapidly and looked down at the mare. “Err, yeah. What’s up?”
“Goody. I’ve been trying to get your attention for like a minute now.”
“Oh. Sorry. I was distracted,” I said sheepishly.
“You don’t say? Well, I’ve got our tickets.” She patted a pocket on her saddlebags with two tickets poking out. “Thankfully, we got here before the last train of the evening departed, or else we would have had to wait until morning. And I’d rather not do that. This place is a little sketch, even for me. So let’s go before they leave us behind.” She waved a hoof and trotted off.
I followed as she led the way to one of the platforms. The train parked at it looked like it only had like three passenger cars, the rest were all cargo. The place seemed basically deserted. I didn’t see anyone else on the platform, and when we boarded the train there were only a couple of other passengers in the first car. We moved past them to the next car—which was empty entirely—and took our seats. I let out a sigh of relief as I let the various bags I was carrying slide unceremoniously to the floor in a heap before climbing up onto the bench seat and unraveling my dirt-caked hand wraps. Cinnamon threw her own saddlebags onto the pile and climbed up into the other seat facing mine, smiling.
Eventually, the conductor came by and checked our tickets and made sure everything was in order. Not too long after that, with the squealing of metal and the hissing of steam, the brakes released, and we were moving.
Movement was good. Knowing I was getting the fuck away from everything back in Riverstone… it was a good feeling. Moving forwards towards a goal, any goal, was progress. I let myself relax some and just looked out the window as the sights and sounds of the station gradually faded until they were replaced entirely with the slowly passing hills and the rhythmic rumble of many wheels over rails.
Not too long after the station disappeared behind us, the door at the end of the car opened and a cart being pushed by a mustached unicorn stallion rolled through. He made his way past the rows of empty seats and rolled to a stop at our end of the car. The stallion gave the two of us a warm smile. “Good evening. Would either of you care for something to eat or drink? I apologize that we can’t offer you a proper meal during your ride, but we mostly haul freight, not ponies, so this is all we’ve got.” He gestured to the cart that was loaded down with an assortment of snack foods.
I briefly glanced at the cart full of things I couldn’t afford and then responded with a quick shake of my head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
Cinnamon, on the other hand, took this opportunity to leap out of her seat and up to the cart. “Ooh, I’ll have those,” she said, pointing with a hoof at a bag of pretzels. “…and also some nuts. And some of them too. And that,” she continued, pointing energetically to item after item.
The stallion gave a hearty laugh. “Sure thing, miss.”
And then the requested items glowed blue and rose into the air. I sat there dumbfounded with my gaze locked on a bag of pretzels as it lifted off the cart, floated through the air, and plopped down in the seat next to Cinnamon.
Cinnamon, for her part, seemed completely unphased by this phenomenon. She casually fished a familiarly clinking bag out of her saddlebags, from which she withdrew a hoofful of gold coins. Coins that then themselves started glowing and flying back to the cart.
Did I see that right? That couldn’t be right.
I adjusted my glasses. Probably just a glare from the sun—nope there goes the peanuts defying gravity now. And the dude’s horn is glowing the same blue color. Okay. So, he’s got something to do with it. That makes sense. Well, I mean, not really. It made no goddamn sense. But it was something.
My attention never left the stallion as he finished making a mockery of the laws of physics with Cinnamon’s food and rolled the cart away using the same brand of glowing fuckery. I kept watching the stallion and his cart until they both disappeared through into the next train car.
My train of thought was interrupted by a package of pretzels smacking into the side of my head. I looked down to my lap where it fell, and then across to Cinnamon, who was sitting there with a sizable pile of assorted snacks held in her forelegs. I raised an eyebrow and asked, “What was that for?”
“You weren’t answering me. You were too focused on the cart,” Cinnamon said. She leaned out into the aisle and looked past to the end of the car. She grinned. “Or maybe it wasn’t anything on the cart you were so hungry for?”
I followed her gaze. Through the door to the next train car, the vendor stallion could be seen hunched down with his head stuck in the cart. Or more specifically, only his tail end could be seen.
“I— bwaah?—That is not what!—I wasn’t—There was—” A bag of chips hitting me square in the beak cut me off mid-stammer.
Cinnamon giggled and waved a hoof. “I’m just messing with you, Birdy. I know you’re just hungry. Worry not, for I have you covered.” She held up an apple and tossed it—this time waiting until I was actually paying attention and able to catch it. Which I did… though not without accidentally skewering it with all four talons on the hand.
I frowned at the fruit and plucked it free from where it was stuck, which ended up just getting it stuck on the talons of my other hand. I frowned harder. “So what was it that you were saying?” I asked while wiping the free hand on my sleeve.
“Oh, I was just saying that it’s going to be a long ride to Canterlot. Gonna be close to midnight by the time we get there. You need to keep up your energy.” She motioned to the unfortunately-impaled fruit before turning a bag of chips into an impressive improvised feedbag.
“Right. Thanks,” I said and awkwardly tore a chunk of the apple off with my beak in a messy and not particularly graceful display. Beaks, man. They sure do have a way of making things difficult. I got my knife out and used it to cleanly cut off a slice of the apple, which I popped into my mouth. There, much more civilized.
I cut off another slice but paused before eating it. I was reminded of this morning’s breakfast. The one Cinnamon had gotten me. This was the second time she’d gone and spent money on me. Plus the train ticket. Third. Plus whatever potential loses she was suffering from not having a job. Because of me. Before I knew it, I was being hit with the same wave of generally nauseating guilt that’d struck this morning. Fuck.
“Hey Birdy, what's wrong with your face? Something in your apple?”
Double fuck. “Oh, no. I’m just… not that hungry,” I lied.
“Mmm yeah I don’t buy that,” she mumbled around a muzzleful of food. “I saw you destroy one of Buttered’s platters in near record time. And that was before we spent all day walking. What’s up?”
I sighed and set the apple aside. “It’s just…” Did I really want to explain this to her? No, not really. Was I going to get out of this without explaining? Also not really. She was still waiting for a response and, as history had shown, I fucking sucked at lying. Really sucked. Oh well. “…I feel like I’m taking advantage of you here? You’re going out of your way to help me and I’m… I’m just being a drain and causing you trouble.”
“Oh. Is that all?” She waved a hoof dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal. I want to help.”
“Right,” I mumbled, avoiding meeting her gaze. “I just don’t like the idea of being dead weight. I’ve got no way to pay you back and I kinda doubt that will change anytime soon.”
“Maybe not right now, but I’m sure we can think of something you can do to repay me.” I looked up to see her grinning mischievously. “So many uses for a big griffon like yourself.”
“I— err, uhhh…” I stammered.
To her credit, Cinnamon managed to keep up the look for a whole five seconds before bursting into a giggle fit, complete with falling onto her back and flailing all four hooves. “Hee hee hee. Oh. Wew, I’m just messing with you, Birdy. Don’t worry about it. Honestly. It’s fine.”
I untensensed and shook my head slowly. “I don’t get how you can be this… unconcerned? About all this? I got you fired for fuck’s sake.”
At that, Cinnamon stopped giggling and slowly sat back up. “Hey. Okay, No. You did not get me fired. You weren’t trying to get me in trouble. It was my choice to help you out. Just like how it was Graywall’s choice to be a dickwad and can me for it. I blame him, not you.”
“But if I hadn’t been there, you wouldn't have been in the situation where you needed to make that choice in the first place.”
She rolled her eyes. “And if the ponies who used to do my job hadn’t up and left the same week I happened to be passing through Riverstone, I probably would never have started working there in the first place and wouldn’t have been in the situation. But I don’t blame them. And you weren’t even there intentionally anyways.” She shook her head. “No. It’s no one’s fault but Graywall’s. And, well, my own because, truth be told, I wasn’t going to be sticking around there much longer. Your visit just sped things up.”
“You were already planning on leaving?” I asked.
“You don’t mouth off to your boss the way I did if you have long-term employment goals. And it's not like it was the greatest job in the world. Pretty crap, honestly.”
“Why were you working there then—if you don’t mind me asking.”
She shrugged. “Same reason anypony takes a crap job, I guess. I didn’t really choose it specifically, just sorta ended up there. That it was far away from some ponies I want to be far from certainly helped. Just a source of bits and a place to stay while I got my hooves back under me.” She sighed. “Though it's been time to get back home for a while now. Been putting it off. Until now…” She trailed off and just stared into space, occasionally munching chips one at a time.
Cinnamon didn’t seem like she was going to offer more on that subject, and I couldn’t really think of how to respond in a way that didn’t seem like prying, so that conversation kinda died right there. We both ate in silence for a few minutes before I decided to restart conversation with a different topic, one that had been sitting in the back of my head and bugging me.
“So uhh, what the heck was with that thing with that unicorn dude earlier?”
“What was what?”
“The thing with his horn and the glowing and the floating,” I explained, accompanied by hand gestures miming a horn and floating object.
“His… magic?” she suggested.
Now it was my turn to be confused. “Say again?”
“His magic,” she repeated.
“Uhhhh…” So, I hadn’t misheard. I eyed her skeptically. She wasn’t bursting into giggles like she usually did after messing with me.
“His magic.” She elaborated. “Telekinesis. Unicorn thing, y’know?”
“No. No I do not know,” I said with slow and exaggerated shakes of my head. “I don’t know any of this. Unicorns in general are still news to me.”
“Oh, huh. I guess so. Well now you know. Unicorns do telekinesis.” She looked at me quizzically. “I’m kinda surprised this is the first you’re noticing it. They’re all over the place.”
I was surprised too if this was apparently as completely normal as she seemed to be implying. “I haven’t been paying too much attention to the specifics of unicorns. Or any ponies for that matter. Been focused on other things for the most part.”
“Right, sure, but I’m pretty sure I’ve even mentioned it before…” she tapped a hoof to her chin as she thought. “Yeah, just earlier today. Half the reason for you to go to Canterlot is to find some unicorn specialist who can help you with your magic problem.”
“I thought you were joking about that,” I said flatly.
She cocked her head to the side. “Why would I be joking about that?’
“I don’t know. Because teasing the crazy griffon is funny?”
“No—I mean—what about that would be a joke?”
“The part where you said it's magic.”
“And that's a joke because…?”
“Because magic isn’t real!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up.
Her ears flattened back. “Yes, it is?” She said sheepishly.
I dropped my face into my hand and rested it there. “Sorry. Ok, yes, it is here. Apparently.”
“…You don’t have magic where you’re from?”
“No. We don’t! At least not like that. Back home, ‘magic’”—I made air quotes as I said the word—“is either fictional nonsense or… illusions. Stage tricks and the like. Nothing like…” I flailed my arms vaguely in the direction I’d last seen the stallion. “…that.”
“Oh, we have stage illusionists too, but that's not real magic. Unicorns making stuff float around with their telekinesis and casting spells. Pegasi making and controlling the weather and all that. Celestia raising the sun. All the magical creatures and monsters doing what they do…” She screwed up her face, sticking her tongue out to the side. “And a whole bunch more stuff I can’t think off the top of my head.”
My eye twitched. “…are you fucking with me right now? Because if you are, I’d like to politely request you stop before my brain melts.”
Her smile faded slightly. “Err, no, that's all true. Magic is pretty core to life here in Equestria.”
My gaze fell to the floor. “Oh… ok. Well then,” I said with a calmness that did not at all reflect the turmoil going on in my head.
Magic. Telekinesis. Weather spells. Magical monsters, and tons of other things I’d already forgotten or just subconsciously refused to parse. All real. Magic was real here. Or “magic”. Fucking freaky shit that’s totally there and happening and likely has some actual reasonable explanation that meshes nicely with my many many years of studying how the world works and so could probably be called something a little more sensical than magic but you know what? I saw a fucking unicorn levitating potato chips with his mind like it was no big deal and there's no way that should be possible but there it was and the other talking pony here who knows far more about the stuff than me and deals with it on the daily just said it was magic so screw all the “sufficiently advanced” science bullshit it's fucking magic. I was a goddamn griffon in a goddamn world of talking horses and I’d manage to get this far with my sanity more-or-less intact. I could deal with shit being called magic without having an aneurysm. Just gotta not fucking think about it. Step two. Remember step two. Step—
“Hey, Birdy?” came Cinnamon’s voice in a low whisper. “You’ve been staring at the floor and mumbling to yourself for a couple minutes now. I didn’t melt your brain, did I?”
Oh. Indeed I was still staring at the floor. The perfectly normal wood floor that wasn’t trying to overturn my well-cultivated understanding of reality. It was nice.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and looked up. “Uhh, no. Well, probably not. I’ll manage. Probably. Hopefully. Just gotta not think about it. Easy.” Then I winced. “Wait, no. You said the reason I was like this was magic, didn’t you?”
“Yesss?” she said carefully.
“Right. Okay. So. Umm, which one of those things that you said just before, if any, would most likely explain how I am here and a griffon?”
“Getting dropped into the wrong world in the wrong body? Now, I’m just a magicless earth pony myself, so I’m no expert on these things, but if I had to venture a guess… definitely some unicorn mage messing with things they shouldn’t be. No doubt about it,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “As I said earlier, it’s why you’re going to Canterlot. It’s like horn-head central up there. If anypony has a clue what's up with you, they’re there.”
“Alright.” Just gotta talk to some unicorn wizards or someshit. That sounds doable. Probably. I’d managed so far. Though it was one thing to experience a one-off incident of completely-incomprehensible circumstances, you can kinda just ignore thinking about the why and how and just deal with the other little issues, like picking a lock or running away from a psychopath. It was a whole other sort of thing for that mind-breaking, physics-defying fuckery to be commonplace. Until now, it’d been easy to think of this place—Equestria—as basically just like Earth, but with horses in place of humans.
But that thin facade I’d been leaning on was crumbling. Now the thing I’d been trying so hard to ignore was the destination. Of course, that was always going to be the case, wasn’t it? I was always going to have to wrap my head around this whole fucked-up series of events. It was just something best done in small bites, so my brain didn’t choke.
“Hey Cinnamon, I might be doing some deep pondering about the universe. If I look like I'm having some kind of mental breakdown, just slap me or something, ‘kay?”
“Sure thing, Birdy,” Cinnamon said, sounding completely unphased by the request.
“Thanks,” I said, shredding the top off a package of pretzels and pouring the contents into my mouth. “‘Preciate it.”
As it turned out, I wouldn’t have a need for Cinnamon to forcefully slap me out of any existential mental loops I might’ve had, because as time wore on, I found myself returning to an entirely different train of thought, namely, all the horrible things I would do to whoever designed this seat should I ever meet them.
Proficient as I was in the sedentary arts, I never thought there’d come a day when I would feel so at odds with a chair. And yet here I was, adding chairs to my ever-growing list of nemeses as a griffon.
No matter which way I tried to rest my ass in the seat, I just couldn’t find a position that was comfortable for more than a few minutes. I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with all these new appendages. There were very few comfortable ways to actually lean against the seat without sitting on my tail. It was just too damn big, and the seat was clearly not designed with it in mind. Oh sure, there was a depression built into the seat between the base and the back that I’m sure would have provided a perfect amount of clearance if my tail was about a tenth of the size it was. But no, I had to have a massive floppy noodle of bones and fur sticking out of my ass!
Which meant that the only way to sit back without sitting on my tail was by slouching far enough back that it stuck out between my legs. But then the seat back was of course pony-sized and thus too low, so I couldn't lean back except in the corner by the wall. But sitting in the corner meant leaning heavily on my shoulders and wings that were already straining from being contained in my jacket.
And so it was that I kept finding myself shifting uncomfortably in my seat every few minutes and silently wishing horrible fates upon some nameless pony who clearly didn’t think it was worth the investment to accommodate non-pony passengers.
“Y’know,” Cinnamon said. “It’d be a lot more comfortable if you just let your wings out instead of keeping them crumpled up in there. Trust me.”
I looked up and narrowed my eyes skeptically at her. “You don’t even have wings.”
She flopped onto her side and rolled around in the seat—apparently also suffering at the hands—or hooves—of incompetent seat designers. Though to a lesser extent. “And yet I still have more experience with them than you, Mr. ‘Wasn’t a griffon forty hours ago.’” She rolled onto her back, looking across at me while upside-down. “I’ve spent a lot more than forty hours getting comfortable with a pair of wings, lemme tell you,” she said while wrapping her arms around herself in a hug.
“Your claimed experience is noted,” I dead-panned. “But my own experience states that the best place for useless appendages is securely fastened away where they can’t drag around and get in the way of things. Because they will.”
“Not really any way they can do that when you’re just sitting there now is there?”
“You underestimate their power,” I said matter-of-factly.
Cinnamon huffed and threw her forehooves up. “Fine. Whatever,” she said. Then she muttered, “Stallions. Always got to be stubborn about things.”
I rolled my eyes. Okay, yeah, she was probably right. There probably wasn’t anything that my wings could do that would be any more aggravating than how they were presently getting in the way. So, I shrugged and unzipped my jacket, unleashing the jumble of feathers contained within. After a moment’s consideration, I rolled the jacket up and stuck it behind my head as a cushion. I leaned back and closed my eyes, focusing on just relaxing, rolling my shoulders around so my wings would flop out to wherever they wanted to be.
“I think it's more comfortable?” I commented. “Hard to say what feels better since I’m still not entirely sure what it is that I’m feeling with these damned things in the first place.” Sensory feedback was still weird as hell. Most of what I was feeling was just a whole bunch of tingling as the feathers all over my body fluffed loose with every jerk and vibration of the train car.
“I’d say it’s a huge improvement,” came Cinnamon’s voice from directly to my right side, much, much closer than it should have been.
I SQUARK-ed and jumped in my seat, eyes flying open as I looked around in surprise. A quick review of the situation revealed that Cinnamon had relocated to my seat, laying against the wing that was spread out to my right, using it as a cushion.
“…though not if you keep jerking like that,” the mare continued with a huff. She bunched a few of the thicker feathers up in her hooves and mushed her face into the bundle.
My jaw worked up and down uselessly a few times before I remembered how to use words. “Was the entire point of all that— “
“Yep,” she answered immediately.
“So I would—”
“Yep.”
“Just so you could—”
“Mhmm,” she hummed with her muzzle pressed into my wing.
I remained silent for a while as I tried to figure out how I was supposed to reply to that. “Y’know, in some cultures it’s considered rude to use someone as a pillow without asking. I imagine similar conventions exist in cultures with wings.”
“You mean like in that griffon culture you’re not actually part of? Or maybe the pegasus culture you still don’t know anything about?” She fluffed her feather pillow a bit.
I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it with an audible clack. She had me there. For all I knew, impromptu cuddling was assumed to be perfectly acceptable around here. And if Cinnamon’s tendencies were at all representative of the rest of her population, that was exactly the case.
“Even if that is the case…” I said, “I don’t have to conform with either. I may look like I belong here, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily need to act like it.”
“That’s true. You can tell me to move anytime you want,” she said as she curled her legs under herself and settled deeper into the feathers.
I briefly entertained the idea of pushing her off the wing and out of my seat just to make a point, but then I dismissed it. It was too much of a dick move and, truth be told, I didn’t really care. It didn’t really bother me. Probably would have felt a lot more like the invasion of personal space that it was if the space being invaded didn’t feel so foreign. And the damned feather duster wasn’t doing me any good, it might as well do Cinnamon some.
I sighed and slouched back into the seat. “It’s not like I need to go anywhere anytime soon…”
“That’s a good Birdy… I think I'll nap until we get there,” she said and closed her eyes.
And with that, Cinnamon went quiet and her breathing gradually slowed, indicating she’d drifted off to sleep. With how long we’d both been walking today, I wasn’t the least bit surprised she’d fallen asleep so quick. I know my own weak academic ass was exhausted enough that I’d’ve loved to join her. Unfortunately, there was still just a little too much… everything… going on in my head that I wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep until I was properly tired and ready to pass out—like I’d been at ass o'clock last night after running for my life.
So, seeing as I was in the apparent need of something to focus my thoughts in order to prevent running off on dangerous mental tangents that lead to thinking far too hard about things that shouldn’t be thought, and this was the first real moment of free time I had since my arrival here, it seemed fitting that I take advantage of this opportunity to do what I should’ve been doing ever since deciding that everything I was experiencing wasn’t all in my head: taking notes.
It was disgraceful, really. So far, I’d spent nearly forty-eight hours on what I was assuming to be an alien planet of some kind and the extent of my permanent documentation was a few bird selfies on my phone. That was wholly unacceptable. If, when I got back home, I didn’t find a way to publish at least a dozen papers about this in as many fields then I’d be a failure to both science and humanity. Even if no one believed a word of it until long after I was dead. Which meant I needed to be writing down and documenting every fucking detail possible. Which meant I needed something to write with.
Given how my wing was occupied as it was, I couldn’t exactly lean forward enough to grab my bags sitting on the floor. So instead I had to reach out and carefully grab them with a foot, hooking onto the strap with feline claws and dragging them out from beneath the pile to where I could reach. That done, I quietly rummaged around until I found my notebook and a pen.
I frowned as I grasped the pen awkwardly in my hand. Griffon fingers were considerably thicker and less flexible than a human’s. This, combined with the massive talons sticking out the ends, meant writing was going to rely a lot more on the wrist and arm than the fingers. This was not going to be pretty.
Steeling myself, I flipped the notebook open to the first blank page and wrote the date at the top. Then I frowned harder. Never before had the term ‘chicken scratch’ been more appropriate than when referring to the marks on the page before me. It was… legible. Kinda. But also agonizingly slow.
I idly wondered if I’d have better luck typing instead. Probably not, in all honesty. Talons would make typing even more awkward than writing. Being down a finger on each hand also meant another twenty-five percent drop in speed. No, it’d be slow as fuck poking away one key at a time. But at least it’d be perfectly legible. Too bad ‘slow as fuck’ and ‘limited battery life’ didn’t mesh. So I was stuck with the chicken scratch. Lovely.
Well, having something to focus on was part of the objective, right? It just happened that my ever-growing hatred of avian anatomy features prominently in that focus.
…Speaking of which, that itself was a new and groundbreaking experience for science and humanity and as such should be documented. So, I wrote…
Observations on being a griffon in horseland:
- Writing, or performing any kind of similar dexterous manual task as a griffon, is a pain in the ass.
- Griffon fingers are just dumb in general. Too bulky, too rough and not enough of them.
- Big, stupid, talons: while probably quite effective at murdering things, just get in the way when you don’t need to murder anything. Its really fucking annoying and makes you want to murder things.
- Wings and tails suck. They just get caught on things and collect dirt. No actual use.
Cinnamon shifted in her sleep and nuzzled into my wing. All the weirdness surrounding the situation aside, it was admittedly pretty cute, and I couldn’t help the corners of my beak curling up into a slight smile. I crossed out that last bit and amended it:
No actual use. Some minor uses.
Okay. What else? There was definitely more than this, I was sure. There was no way the sum total of the past two days’ annoyances only filled up four bullet points. I tapped the pen thoughtfully against the tip of my beak.
- Beaks. Beaks suck. Make using glasses/mugs/cups complicated.
- Mugs, cups, chairs, stairs. Fuck stairs. Doors.
Oh god doors. Just the thought made my tail twinge.
…And now that I wasn’t ignoring it, the pain in my tail was very noticeably still there. I was going to need some more ice for that. Hopefully, there would still be snow in their Canterlot. It’s in the mountains, so probably. Maybe the food stallion would come by again and I could ask if he had any ice. I would’ve gone to track him down and check but… yep, snoozing mare still occupying my wing still totally out of it. Like a goddamn cat jumping up into your lap and falling asleep. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
So, back to not thinking about things by thinking about other things. I was done with this section of notes for now, so I skipped ahead, leaving several blank pages to fill in later. Time to be a little more professional about things.
Through some combination of as-of-yet undetermined factors of cosmic fuckery, I have found myself in the rather unique situation of being unexpectedly transported to an alien world and stuck in the body of one of the local species: a griffon.
It all went to shit started went to shit at approximately 7:10 pm last Friday as I was riding my bicycle home from class…