Past eleven in the evening, things tapered off. The children had been sent back to the apartment room, and everyone else had downed several more beers.
The smell of alcohol had convinced Garlan to give in to the fun: everything tasted better as grain-fermented nectar washed it away. Gary got tipsy as more beer spilled. His last words before dinner ended was about wishing Garlan a happy birthday months before it’d happen.
The reunion wrapped up. The cousins got up from their chairs, wishing the family well before heading westward to the hotel room they were staying in—a holiday-discounted offer, naturally, for the money-conscious griffons. Stuffed and full with great food and drink, Gladys suggested that Garlan sell beer at his stall for maximum nightlife profit. Garlan’s cooler head prevailed.
Ginger waved them goodbye as the visitors disappeared into the night sky, the three cousins keeping Gary steady in his flight but were otherwise alright.
With the festivities finished, Ginger brought plates and beer bottles into the kitchen to wash them clean; the bottles could be recycled for a profit. The kids would be checked on to see if they weren’t damaging any of their new-fangled human gadgets.
A claw turned off the cart’s gas. Garlan washed the wok and poured the leftover oil into the garbage bin. Inventory to check: counting and re-counting just to be sure. Last thing to do was fold up the wheels and store the cart on the side to clean with a damp rag. Halfway through the wiping, his cart shone under the lot’s dim orange lights.
It’d be presentable enough for tomorrow. Never worked much on a Sunday: he hit the streets on Saturday for weekend vendor duties. Sundays, on the other claw, were slow in the mornings; many in the area would be at church, and lazy siestas would cut short an otherwise bustling afternoon. At night, people would try visiting fancier establishments to get something really good before Monday beckoned them back to work.
Garlan kept wiping the cart. Though it shone, it wasn’t the cleanest nor the most stylish of them all. It had wheels for moving, and its pantries had enough space for all the supplies he needed. The umbrella on top was essential in the tropics where rain would come and go without warning, though it’d been something to get used to since he’d never needed one in his cold dry home.
Home: a place before time. A time marked by murky streams, by climbing up a ladder with its bottom stretching into an eternal void. He could fly, but he’d felt that someone might cut off his wings, someone like happy-go-lucky Gary. What was important was reaching the top. Gustave le Grand got to the top by leaving the griffons behind and cozying up to ponies who’d hail his hauteur tastes. Now, he worked in Equestria’s capital while pony nobles praised his culinary genius.
Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie had come and gone, and Princess Twilight herself had dropped by for friendship summits with Griffonstone’s remaining de facto leaders, but Garlan’s eagle eyes had seen better things, higher heights. It was him and the few other griffons racing to escape that sinking ship.
Their number dwindled when that Gallus kid returned from the friendship school and rallied the griffons to fight against the Legion of Evil thousands of miles away. The valor of those who heeded the call of duty couldn’t be denied, but Garlan saw them as asylum psychos: holding on to a stupid hope of building something out of nothing back home. At least those griffons got rewards for saving the world.
A eureka moment had hit him: he could come over to Equestria and make his bits there. All he’d had to do was change his fare from fried meats to fried hay: ponies would swarm him with their hard-earned coins for good food on the cheap; not just anywhere too, but a place for big shots like Canterlot or Manehattan where big money could be made. However, they were a curious bunch too: they might ask him questions about who he was, where he came from, and why he’d left home.
News of Earth came next. The details of first contact had escaped him, but what hadn’t left his notice was the promise of another world, the promise of a whole new universe to settle in. A place without any magic would be a terrifying prospect for a creature used to a world full of it, but it’d seemed that humans had somehow got through all of their magicless history without going extinct, compensating with science fantasy miracles and other technologies like satellites and the Internet. Cross-dimensional portals cropped up across Equestria, carrying the hope that every kingdom in the world would have one just as every Earth country had those airport things.
Soon, news of Earth-Equestria relations came about, of humans moving here and Equestrians moving there, with Equestrians—especially ponies—stirring up a buzz in places like the United States and Europe. He’d already considered moving to Earth by then, and while such a tactic would be daunting, he could endure the locals gawking at him if it meant they’d leave him alone and get to business.
So he’d moved. In this land, Garlan was a pioneer, a griffon making bits in a place where no other griffon had done so. Life was good.
Wing flaps snap him out of remembering. Might be a relative coming back to get something they forgot: wouldn’t be good since they’d strike up some midnight chat and things would get emotional—maybe they’d cry on his shoulders because they still miss him—and he wanted to get to bed already. No worries: he had work tomorrow, so that would be his reason. There was work to be done on the morrow with a new week’s worth of money—
A feminine sigh. A familiar sigh.
“Ginger?”
He turned around to see Ginger under those faint orange lights, sharp shadows cast upon her face. Her eyes shot down, facing the concrete ground. She smelled of sweet dish soap and other detergents; leftover suds glimmered on her claws.
Her husband took a long look at her, waiting for her to make the first move. Then, “So, honey… how’re the kids?”
Ginger sighed, dodging eye contact. “Fine. They’re doing fine. Just watching cartoons again.” Hesitant, thinking through. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
Garlan scrubbed up the cart’s last scraps of dirt. “Then what is it?”
She crossed a foreleg on the ground, shy for a moment. Eyes back up, leveled at his. “What were you thinking when you said we’d visit, not stay?”
A dull blink was what he could manage. “The usual. We had a fun party, but you know how Gary is. My cousins are good enough for company even though they’ve bought Gary’s tripe wholesale.”
“What are you calling tripe?” Ginger groaned as she shook her head, wondering. “And see, that’s the thing: you acting smug while Gary came here as he was.”
“Not everyone can be that optimistic.” He put away the rag: the cart was clean, ready to go in the morning. “I’m certainly not like him. I was my same serious self through the night. I’d be lying if I tried to smile every waking minute of the day.”
Her tail flicked around. “He’s too happy for his own good, but he certainly didn’t harm you. Annoying, yes, but you’ve faced much worse back home.”
Especially back home. “So? What do you want me to do? Apologize to him right now?”
“Well, you could certainly do so with your phone.” Her tail stopped thrashing about: it sagged. “But it’s not just your attitude. You’d also have to apologize for lying.”
That got his goat, but he stayed stoic. “What exactly did I lie about?”
“About going back home for the Festival.”
Garlan opened a claw for emphasis. “I said it as clear as crystal: we’re visiting, not staying. Gary heard me, the others heard me, and they’re happy for me anyway.”
“But your heart wasn’t there.”
Garlan raised his claw. Put it back on the ground. Ginger walked a few steps away, back turned to him with that sagging tail.
“That’s what’s going on: you say it, and then you let it waste away in your head until you forget it. You meant it, but you also wished it’d slip from your mind.” She planted a claw on her hip. “By the end of the week, you’ll regret saying it, tell them that something came up, and anything becomes a good excuse to not go. I bet you’ll use Macario’s generous invitation just to get away from it all.”
“And what makes you think I’d do something like that?”
“We’ve been married for eight years, Garlan. I know you too well.”
And Garlan gestured to her, Yeah, now defend yourself too. What is this, a firing squad and the leader’s my wife?
Ginger took the silent challenge. “There’s nothing wrong with visiting Griffonstone for the holidays. It wasn’t all good, but it wasn’t all bad either.” Her eyes fluttered for a moment, reviving that youthful energy of honeymoon and romance. “Don’t you remember our first Blue Moon Festival together?”
Coolly, “It was the exception, not the rule. Besides, even if we can stand what’s going on there, what about Gwen and Genaro? There’re too many bad influences in that place. Griffonstone hatchlings are too rough for their own good, scamming pony visitors like taking candy from a foal.”
“As if any child isn’t capable of such evils.” She rolled her eyes to stress the point. “And before you say anything: you could teach them. If someone tries selling our children beer or scams, tell them about it.”
Ginger rubbed her eyes before looking back at her weary husband. “This isn’t some random airplane trip. This is their home—our home—we’re talking about, the home of griffons like them.” She noticed the security guard moving his head somewhere else; too far away to listen, but he’d sensed the spouses’ heart-to-heart. “They know this place isn’t their real home, no matter how much you say otherwise. They don’t see other griffons aside from us, you teach them things that wouldn’t fly in Equus, and… well, magic doesn’t exist in this world too.”
A claw placed itself on a nearby wall, cushioning some of her weight. “You’ve seen how they are, Garlie.” That took him back years to the day she called him Garlie as they sat under a burning red dusk in Griffonstone, back when he was only a hungry griffon aching to leave home. “Genaro... he’s not having a good time in school because everyone treats him like an exotic animal. Gwen... she’s not in school yet, but remember the crayons we bought for her a week ago? She’s… all of her drawings are just humans, humans from the shows she’s watched and the cities we’ve been to. Not a single griffon… she hasn’t even squawked or screeched for a year—that might’ve slipped from your mind too, but I remember it far too well. I’m… I’m not even sure if they’ll call her a griffon anymore—”
“But things are better here on Earth!” Garlan flared his wings up, reaching out for her. Inviting her to join him. “There’s always a way to fix things here: I’ll be here, you’ll be here, and we’ll raise them up as good and responsible griffons just like we’ve done all this time.”
Yet Ginger left his claw open, left him hanging. “Things may be better here, but I still don’t get much of the local language, and neither do the kids. Though I don’t speak a lick of it, I can tell you still stumble with it outside of business.” Her stiff wings ruffled. “Barely anyone flies here too. We can’t just go around meeting new faces in the sky anymore.”
“But you’ve heard the news about inflation, haven’t you?” He spread his claws about like an over-excited tour guide. “Records for the national stock market, triumphs about a booming economy—the news pundits are prophesying about this country becoming the newest Asian Tiger. In a few more years, things will get a lot better, and you won’t regret staying here when we jump from third-world to second-world and then to first—just in time for me to find a more lucrative job and for the kids to get into a good high school or college. They’ll get great jobs from the get-go, and they’ll be set for life—”
“But these humans are also big on what’s theirs.” She steps forward so he couldn’t escape her face. “They ask a lot from us: another language, another cuisine, another culture altogether. Fitting in isn’t easy; you know that very well with your language dictionaries for this country.”
Garlan shrugged over past study nights for those dense booklets. “That’s the price we must pay. There’s no such thing as free lunch. Besides, the long-term pay-off is what matters in the end. We can stick anything out, honey, as long as we keep the end in sight.”
She ruffled her feathers more. “But for what? I… I know why we had to move back out, and I was excited to be here.” The look on her face back then, the thrill of a whole new world—something new, something scary; a new start, a restart, in a better place—none of that appeared on her shadowed face. “But, to tell you the good truth, honey, I miss it. I miss our old home. I miss home. I can’t even call this place our home: we’re renting apartment space! What will happen if something bad happened to you and you couldn’t work anymore? Back then, at least we had our own nest with our own roof over our heads.”
She set her eyes toward the sky. The stars and the constellations she could find, beautiful. She strained to hear the imaginary sounds of griffons back home: the flapping of wings, the occasional screeching and squawking and crowing of neighbors, the strong cool wind that would grace the peaks of their place.
“Ever since the humans gave them a stack of phones and internet things, they’ve sent me pictures of how life is like back there. Do you… do you get them too?”
Garlan’s sigh: his defenses lowered, a confession to make. “I’ve scrolled past them. I was still focused on work in the afternoon, and then I made smooth talk with the landlord over the phone. Speaking of, we could get another discount from him to get more savings—“
“Things weren’t so bad.” Her glance had no bite to it: her softness stung. “I… I miss them all. I’m… I know I haven’t said much about any of this, and I’m sorry for not telling you sooner, but… I miss them. I miss everyone back home. I miss home.”
The night remained silent. Ginger kept to the stars’ dark canvas.
“At our worst, we could still have each other to complain to, to talk to… but here, it’s a different set of names, a different set of problems, and they’re solving them quick too. The humans here are already faster than us, and I find very few familiar faces here.” It wasn’t entirely true: tourists would brighten her day, though Garlan would sometimes sneer at a day-tripping crayon-colored pony.
His heart jumped: he hadn’t noticed the light grip he had on her shoulder. He saw her tears coming up, could feel her sweat from being outside for too long without taking a bath. She’d never cried over home: always about something threatening the family, threatening their lives, but Garlan the guardian angel would shelter her and their precious hatchlings beneath his wings.
The guardian angel had vanished. Tonight, Garlan caused his wife’s sobbing and sorrow. Nothing but tears flowed from her eyes, down her hawkish face. She bore the body of a fierce leopard with its tail of dominance, owner of a wide set of wings which, in ancient times of war, would’ve led a squad towards the death of a pony battalion, with a sword raised high. However, just as she knew him, he knew her too. An ancient warrior had her fellow griffons to fall back on, but not so for a homemaker who didn’t feel at home.
This familiar world became strange for a blink. He stepped closer to her, disoriented.
Seconds or minutes or a quarter of an hour. How long Garlan had been out there, silent to caress his sky-staring wife, scanning the stars above, feeling her feathers as they grow rough but tender under his scratch, as he coddled her head and nuzzled her neck—
A sober voice gnawed inside. Told him that affection alone wouldn’t solve everything. That sentiment alone wouldn’t save the day.
At the end of what felt like an unwanted eternity, she stepped away from his grip and his hug. Her eyes, puffy and unbefitting a ferocious-looking griffon. “I… I don’t know why you’re so against home. It wasn’t all bad.” A sniffle; snot dripped from her beak. “With some… hard work and good-hearted griff... it could become a great place. You should know, helping the people here like that...”
He did not look away from the sky. He blinked stupidly. The cart faded from his mind: only Ginger and her happiness, her joy, her purpose—
“I’ll see to the kids, Garlan... but, well, tomorrow’s a Sunday. They can sleep late. As for you—” she stopped to swallow the snot building up “—you have a good night. If you decide to... change your mind about the Festival… d-don’t be so gruff.”
A kiss goodnight, a peck on the cheek, warm and exciting just like their honeymoon nights: drunk on love and whatever bargain-counter drinks they could afford. They’d kiss and nothing could stop them in their romantic prime.
Ginger disappeared upstairs. In a minute, the kids would hug her. They’d ask her about the red eyes, so she’d drink some water to fix that up.
Only the stall remained. His pride and progress lay under the night sky with its abundance of shining heavenly bodies, the moon reigning over them as queen of the night.
In the distance, two men stood at the security stand. Must be midnight already: one going in to start his graveyard shift, the other leaving for home and sleep.
Garlan took the cue. He rose up and flew, headed for bed.