//------------------------------// // Through the griffon door // Story: House of the Rising Sunflower // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// There was a moment of dizzying disorientation as Sundance came into the room, when he couldn’t tell what was real and what was not. While things seemed normal, he’d just learned that normal could very well be an illusion. In the room, there were two creatures; an earth pony mare, and a young, tiny, somewhat rather owlish griffon cub. He stood there, frozen for maybe half a minute or so, and then, after he’d collected his senses, he started to thank Moondancer for her escort, but she left. Just as the words began to leave his mouth, the door shut behind him, and he was left alone in the room with two strangers.  The light that shone through the arched window was quite convincing.  At the moment, he was overwhelmed from his meeting with Twilight. There were questions and a great multitude of thoughts he needed to sort out. He very much wanted to come to grips with his conclusion that he was something of a Celestia figure to his friends, because this revelation consumed his identity. The exit that he’d hoped for was just another room, just another place within this seemingly endless castle.  When he turned his head to look around, he saw his saddlebags upon a narrow, decorative table, and they looked a bit fuller than they had when he’d arrived. The earth pony mare was studying him now, and she did so in silence. As for the griffoness cub, she hadn’t even looked up; she was busy colouring with a bright yellow oversized crayon for the time being. Clearly, the tiny creature had dedication to her art.  “Must of been quite a conversation with my boss,” the earth pony mare said to Sundance. “She has that effect on ponies. Hello, my name is Bourgogne Blintz and my little friend over here that I just met is Gisela. She probably won’t even be aware of your existence until she draws a perfect sun. She ignored me as well. As for you, you’re Sundance… and I can see that I have my work cut out for me.”  “Um, hi.” Unsure of what to do, Sundance continued to just stand there.  “You’re really very lucky that you’re my boss’ friend, I have to say. This grand adventure, whatever it is that you’re about to do, you get to start your journey as friends. I wish it had been that way for me.”  “Friends?” He spent a moment contemplating what was said. “I’m sorry, say again? I don’t follow. Bit out of sorts.”  “You get to start this grand adventure as friends. What is sure to be an Equestria-changing project. I wish it had been that way for me. Twilight and I, started off on the wrong hoof. We were enemies for a time… though I never had the privilege of being zippity-zapped with the friendship rainbow blast-beams of doom. No… Twilight broke me down the old fashioned way… in a dungeon, with lots of torture and hot pokers—”  “Say what?”  The mare laughed. “I’m kidding, of course. Twilight won my respect. The hard way. And I wish that I had come around sooner, because I really screwed everything up.” She sighed, shook her head, and then smiled at Sundance. “I’ll be the one responsible for crafting your public image, Sundance.”  Uncertain of how to respond, he watched the griffoness for a short time, he tried to corral his many thoughts, and when his anxiety about how his silence might be perceived had peaked, he said to the mare, “Not sure how I feel about this whole public image thing. Feels like lying.”  “No,” she replied while waving both of her front hooves in front of her. “Not lying. No. Not lying at all… think of it more as… well, think of it more as getting all cleaned up for a photo.”  “A photo?”  “Yes”—she nodded with great enthusiasm—“a photo. We clean you up a bit. Make sure you look your very best. You get brushed, and groomed, and have your hooves done. You get a little makeover so that your mane and tail look stunning. Then, maybe, just maybe, we apply a little makeup. Oh, not enough to be seen… but just enough to accentuate all the right shadows. Give your face a little depth. Then we adjust the lighting to our needs.”  “Uh…”  “The photo is still you, it just the best possible version of you. We just take what is already there and work with that.” Her smile? Brilliant. Her eyes? Filled with a manic intensity. “That’s what I do. I’m an artist. Only I don’t do photographs or fancy paintings. I create public images. I create things for consumers to consume. And under Twilight’s watchful eye, I do so as honestly as possible for the sake of my own survival. Applejack still hates my guts.”  “Seems like there’s a lot of history I’m missing.”  “Oh, there is.”  “This still feels dishonest.”  “You know, Applejack feels the same way. Hence the reason why she hates my guts.” Then, after she cringed for several seconds, she added, “Well, one of the many reasons why she hates my guts. But, I’m still trying to get into Applejack’s good graces, for Twilight’s sake. We have to work together. Which is hard to do when you have a cantankerous apple farmer that hates your guts.”  “The apple farmer hates your guts.”  “Oh, undoubtedly so. She’s the Element of Honesty. There’s bound to be some, uh, tension between us.” For a second, the manic intensity in her eyes faltered and great anxiety could be seen. “I only wish to make things better. Applejack… I wish that she’d believe that. Honestly, I can’t tell if she brings out the best in me or the worst in me. Anyhow, none of that matters right now. Gisela here, she’s yours. Mrs. Velvet had her delivered this morning. I’m supposed to observe your interactions.”  “She’s mine?” He swallowed, licked his lips, and suddenly had a keen awareness that his leg muscles twitched. “I wasn’t informed of this previously.”  “Mrs. Velvet said it would be a delightful surprise. A parting gift for you to take home.”  “This might not be the best day to do that—”  “He doesn’t want me.” The griffoness cub spoke with a thick, strange accent that was most certainly not Equestrian.  “Oh no, it’s not that.” He rubbed the back of his head with his wing and tried to think about what to say, how to explain this problem. “It’s just, well, right now, there was a bit of a fight, you see, and—”  “Nobirdy wants me,” the tiny cub said as she put down her crayon.  “No… no, it’s not that… it’s just… well, I had a huge fight with the mare that will be your caketaker, er, uh, caretaker, and that needs to be sorted out, and it would be awful of me to take you home and have you caught in the middle of all of that and…” His words faded into an anxious wheeze when he saw the cub’s slight, tiny body begin to hitch up and down.  “I lost everything,” the little owlish cub said.  “She did,” Bourgogne Blintz said to Sundance. “She lost her country to the ravages of war. Then she lost her parents to pirates and slavers during the crossing of the Cloud Sea. Her papers, which are in your saddlebags, say that she was rescued by a band of adventurers led by Daring Do and brought to Equestria.”  “There was a tall pony with a talking sword,” the cub said. “He got shot in his derrière. Then all kinds of bad things happened. A nice mare covered my eyes. I heard scary things.”  “Well, if I take you home, you might hear more scary things. Or even see them.” Sundance found that he was critically self aware that his problems at home could have far-reaching consequences—like right now. He made a mental note that he needed to find some way to sort this stuff out to avoid future problems. “Why is it that you think that nopony wants you?”  It was not the cub who answered, but Bourgogne Blintz. “Her papers, which are in your saddlebag, say that she is entirely too curious. The little tyke can pick locks with her claws, and she is a natural-born escape artist. As it turns out, this is a terrible, terrible problem in the big city.”  “Well, wandering off is a real problem back home too,” he said in response. “We’re right in the middle of spider season—”  “Star spider season?”  “No, lady. Big, hairy, ginormous, go hunting for night terrors spider season.”  “Oh.”  He turned his attention upon the cub, crossed the room, and then stood near where she sat. Her soft, silent sobs made his heart ache, and he tried to imagine the consequences that might happen if she were brought home. Today just wasn’t a good day for it, but it seemed as though he was stuck. Life was no great respecter of plans.  “I lost somepony I cared about as well,” he said, almost in a whisper. “His name was Cucumber. He… he was… he still is… Cucumber… calling him my friend doesn’t really feel right. He was so much more. A mentor. I only knew him for a short time, but he taught me so much. It still hurts that he’s gone.” With a careful flick of his tail, he sat down on the floor beside the cub.  Lost in thought, he studied her face for a moment. Yes, she was rather owlish, with tufts of feathers that looked a bit like horns. Gisela would fit right in with all of the owls and owl-creatures of the barony. Then, his eyes traveled down to the sheet of paper covered in scribbles. There was a sun in the middle, a big yellow sun, with sharp, pointy spikes that stabbed the sky. There were crudely drawn boats on a big blue ocean—and bright orange fire. Some of the boats were sinking. Flying stick figures could be seen in the skies, though what they represented exactly was unknown. Just looking at the picture, all drawn in crayon, made Sundance feel a bit sick to his stomach. It was the worst sort of thing that a foal—or in this case, a cub—might draw.  Was this his future? The future of his barony? Broken things and castaways? The unwanted and discarded? He almost asked a question about the picture, but found that he couldn’t. Words seemed useless. Pointless. Meaningless. In the middle of the horrible, flaming catastrophe, Celestia’s sun shone. Maybe there was something to that, some bit of optimism, but he had trouble feeling it. He noticed for the first time that Gisela had no tail. Well, not much of one. Just a little stubby tail with a tuft of feathers. There was some kind of cat that had a stubby tail, but he couldn’t think of what it was.  A single tear landed right in the middle of the spikey yellow sun.  Words were useless right now. Instead, he slipped a wing around the cub, who shied away. Sundance would not be denied though, and he risked no-doubt sharp claws as his wing continued to encircle her. She made a strange sound—some sort of mewled hoot that was both feline and avian—and then tried to scurry away. But escape she did not. He pulled her close, wrapped his wing around her, and was overcome with relief when her struggles ceased. She clung to him, her tiny claws prickled, and the razor sharp edges of her beak scraped against the vulnerable skin just below his throat.  She was little, slight, and light. It seemed as though she might be almost weightless. Not much bigger than a common housecat. He slipped a foreleg beneath her to support her, and then, as he was wont to do, he sat there in silence. Lost in the moment, he failed to notice how Bourgogne Blintz studied him with a scrutinous squint. This was nice and he understood why ponies became parents. Hollyhock would have to be sorted out somehow, and while he held the distraught cub, he began to plan, to figure out some way, some means of fixing this awful situation. It was up to him to make it right—not Hollyhock. While she had some responsibility for what happened, she was not in charge. He was. Which meant that he had to sort this out somehow.  And so he would.  Gisela would grow up. She would remember this moment, he hoped. It mattered for reasons that he could barely comprehend. This mattered for the same reason that his fight with Hollyhock mattered. These impressionable young ones would have their future shaped by his actions, and their future was his future. The barony’s future. He would not make the same mistake twice.  “I bet you’re a special little girl,” he said to the cub that clung to him. “Can you tell me what makes you special?”  There was no response. Not right away. But she squirmed a bit, her claws softly scraped against his skin, and then he heard her say, “I have pink toes and black toes.”  “That does make you special,” he said in return.  “Mom said it did.”  “There might be trouble if you come home with me.”  “I’m always in trouble,” the cub said with heartfelt earnestness.  “That’s reassuring.” Maybe she would make things exciting. Was it wrong to hope for that? Perhaps Hollyhock just needed a bit more to keep her busy. Yes, he found this bit of reasoning to be quite sound. “Home is a wilderness. A dangerous wilderness. I’m not sure if this will be better or worse than living in the city. Different kind of dangers, I suppose.”  The cub was silent.  “Do you remember your home?” he dared to ask.  “Just a little,” she replied. “Farms. Many farms.”  “Well, we’re a farming community.”  “I like farms. I don’t like cities.”  This was fortunate, Sundance felt. Maybe things would work out. Or things could go horribly and explode into smithereens. Which seemed far more likely if Paradox was involved. Explosions weren’t beneficial to Twilight’s long-term plans. There was the matter of taking her home though, but that would be sorted out. It would just be awkward. He would have to face the awkwardness, but he wouldn’t be alone.  He suspected that he’d just made a friend.  “It’s time to go home,” he said to her. “I have to make sure that we weren’t overrun by spiders.”