//------------------------------// // Alaala // Story: Langit at Lupa // by Comma Typer //------------------------------// Sunday arrived with another beautiful sunrise flanked by high-reaching offices. Ginger was fast asleep, given there wasn’t much to do on the weekend. Genaro and Gwen were asleep too, their wings flapping in short bursts like angels in their dream land. Breakfast was a quick affair: a bowl of cereal and a microwaved burrito from Wednesday. Breakfast scarfed down, it was out to work. As expected, the morning was bad for business: few came for early snacks. He didn’t buy much inventory for Sunday, so the real expense he’d pick up was propane: couldn’t turn the wok off during work hours. Anyone could come up to him any moment now especially in the busy underpass connecting Shaw and EDSA. Between the malls, the transportation hubs, and the hectic commercial districts around it, the underpass had become a favorite haunt of his. The words he spoke to the early risers carried a sense of other: pronounce the words as is, a raw down-to-earth sound compared to the English or Ponish he was used to. Garlan spoke first most of the time, calling others to him. A peculiar thing he noticed when he arrived in this place: daytime vendors like him would let the crowd come to them; nighttime ones, on the other hand, were loud but not obnoxious, shouting the names of their wares like everyone’d gone deaf—including fertilized duck eggs which creeped him out to this day. By going aggressive in the daytime, however, he’d guarantee himself customers: they’d have a harder time leaving someone who specifically pointed them out. And call others out he did: advertising his foods, letting others know that cheap snacks were frying. If he cooked it, they would come, some out of curiosity over a griffon selling food in a human country and others for morsels that wouldn’t kill their wallets. Customers came, food was stabbed, and sticks attacked the wok as quick bites floated in the oil like boats in a crowded bay. Everything became mechanical no matter who he served: a college student messaging his classmates about a thesis, an elderly woman looking for childhood comforts in a fit of nostalgia, a local man trying to impress his foreign wife—British or American, Garlan couldn’t tell because both spoke English—and the look on the woman’s face said it all. The weekend brought out a somewhat different set of people, but everything blurred in his work-focused concentration. Right outside a convenience store, children ran out, playing and running with each other. A parent herded them back inside, but the youngsters continued their game indoors. While staff worried themselves silly over catching uncatchable children, Garlan watched: half a brain with his tongs and his food and his smells, half a brain on those human fledglings having fun. Garlan had fried and grilled venison and other meats to sell. They’d sometimes char but he hadn’t expected to cook for a living while growing up. With Gilda selling scones like crazy, though, and other griffons mindlessly following her model with more pastries, a bright idea had struck him, pinned him down on the floor, and silently cast the blessing of exile on him: sell cooked meat! Sure, everyone hunted for their own game and prey, but it took time and effort, and cooking them required yet more time and effort—so why not commercialize it? He would hunt as much as he could on weekends so on weekdays, he’d cook them in the marketplace and give his fellow neighbors food. For bits, of course. Fish, rabbits, warthogs, squirrels, marmots, foxes—these and more delicious meats he grilled out in the open. The smells alone would madden griffons’ rumbling stomachs after a long workday. Stingy they might be, a cooked meal loosened bit-clutching claws. Yet today wasn’t a good day. Several griffons insisted on haggling over the price of a smoked rabbit. He did sell, but the profits felt meager, barely breaking even at times. He could’ve gotten better from scrounging up change from the homes of griffons leaving town for good. The sun started to set, its orange sky looking like fire. He heard from some ponies that an orange sky would portend the final days, and the sky looked very orange this time of year. At any rate, it was a mid-air inferno, and nothing would’ve gotten Griffonstone to look as painfully beautiful as it did now: a gasping breath before the end, before everyone left this place for better skies. It was the wise thing to do; everyone here would wisen up sooner or later. “Are you Mister Garlan?” Garlan saw nothing. Could be going insane now, surviving as the only sane griffon left in this pigsty. He looked down to see a clutch of fledglings. Their eyes went wide while they sniffed the mouth-watering smells of freshly grilled meat. “We’d like to buy five rabbits,” their representative declared, pointing at the rabbits hanging from a skewer. “One for each of us!” Garlan dropped some of his grouchy self; they were fledglings, after all. “That’d be twenty bits, kiddo.” “Hey, hey, what about seventeen?” And Garlan sighed. Kids these days. “Nineteen.” “Eighteen.” “Nineteen and no more.” The lead chick grunted and fished out a pouch of bits. Others chipped in, and then it was nineteen. “Fine, whatever, but thanks, Mister Garlan.” The cook pulled up some freshly-grilled rabbit, giving the fledglings those heavy skewers. He pinched each bit just to be sure before letting his young customers go. When he put the bits in his pouch, he glanced at the kids. They hadn’t flown away but stayed behind, chewing on the rabbits, surprised at their good taste. The salted rabbits were an instant hit with the kids, and it warmed his heart to see them eat without complaint—to feed them and make sure they wouldn’t go hungry, all while getting money too. The bits were nice, but still. Church hours ended as cars clogged the highways. Those who didn’t bother with the morning mass or sermon service had gone up to shop or otherwise spend the day with family and friends. It meant more potential customers on the streets. If Garlan positioned himself in the right places at the right times, he’d catch windfall after windfall. A van drove to his side of the pavement, braked, and flung its doors open. Garlan glanced behind him, surprised that people would socialize inside a vulcanizing shop. The van’s tires didn’t look flat or anything. A big family stepped out of the van, bursting with kin here and there and everywhere. “Oh, hello there!” said the woman at front. Not a foreigner, but the English accent—or American, he couldn’t tell the difference—was too out there to be local, not to mention her garish clothes and her pair of shades. “Is this…?” Best to assume otherwise. He wasn’t sure if this was an Indonesian or Malaysian or Singaporean or another nearby country neighbor. “Yes, it is. It’s pica-pica. There’s fishballs—“ “Oh, buti nga!” She got giddy like a child in a candy store orthat chocolate factory he saw in a movie on the tablet with the family. “Is… yes, what could I get for two-fifty?” Two hundred fifty pesos or around five dollars: a big dumb amount of cash to give away when two fishballs were one peso, squid balls were around three to five per piece, and his most expensive item, okoy, net him fifteen to twenty pesos over the years. Still, big dumb amounts of cash were what he’d come here for: “Up to you, ma’am. I’ll keep track of the money.” “Alright, alright! That’s good!” She fired off her order like a machine gun, something he’d learned about from one of those war movies. It’d been a spectacle: humans fighting each other with weapons war-hardened dragons couldn’t have dreamed of, only for them to stop fighting and be cool with each other some decades later. Humans were weird, but so were ponies. At least humans were much more relatable. No doubt her accent changed when she spoke two Filipino words though. She was simply local. Her family and relatives gathered around her, all chatty while pointing to one or two things for the children to see and have explained to them. “Oh, you see,” the woman went on rambling to the griffon she verbally held captive, “we’re visiting, coming back from L.A., you know? Hollywood’s nice, but nothing beats the Christmas here! It was getting so cold out there, and we don’t want to miss our kapamilya, you know?” They held family in high regard here: sticking together, with children possessing a metaphorical debt to their parents for the nurturing they’d been given, coupled with the parents’ fierce protective spirit over their young. Feasts were plentiful especially Christmas feasts where anyone with the same blood as yours would come over from all four corners of the world to dine with you and enjoy your presence. She mumbled something about being taken back decades with this old food. Garlan busied himself with rechecking his money, but decades wasn’t the right word. Garlan was busy counting his bits in their decrepit family home: a little shack at the kingdom’s edge, close to the gate welcoming non-existent visitors to the griffon heartland. A candle lit his way, flickering against the mountains’ gale. The door opened and a squall vanquished his focus. “Hello, Garlio! How’re you doing there?” Half the things Gary did made Garlan grimace, not least of which was coming in at the most inconvenient of times. At least he could remember the number of bits he stopped at. “I’m doing fine, thank you very much.” Gary closed the door and slumped on the chair, one of the few pieces of furniture that wasn’t worn too much. It therefore became a status symbol in the entire kingdom and would sell for hundreds of bits. “What is it now, Gary?” Garlan couldn’t ignore his brotherly instincts though he sometimes wished to shut them off; errands had to be done. “Someone got your goat?” Gary opened his claw and punctuated it with a sigh. The candle’s fuzzy lighting dramatized the act while he scratched his chin. “It’s difficult, you know?” Garlan humored him anyway. “What’s difficult? The neighbors finally got you losing your cool?” Gary scratched his feathery goatee patch. “I must admit, it’s difficult when nine out of ten griffons just don’t wanna give up their pride. I’m out here with Gilda, Gabby, and Greta trying to do things like the Elements of Harmony on friendship missions, but… yeah, it’s difficult.” A little smile crept up Garlan’s beak. Finally, Gary understood the message: leave Griffonstone or stay at his own peril. “Which is why… well, sometimes, I have thoughts about it being a lost cause. To be honest, it does look like that some of the time…” There it was. Garlan brainstormed on how to invite his brother into a food enterprise far away from this hovel. They could be the griffon grilling brothers, maybe even the griffon grilling bros since ponies liked to shorten words. The partnership would be most profitable; their power and riches would know no end. All he had to do was pose the question. If Gary was at the edge of the cliff, Garlan would give him the push that’d send him falling back into reality. With a calm smirk, the older brother asked, “So you’re finally considering my offer to join me?” “...but what if we make another Griffonstone somewhere else while we gather our resources for the old one?” The problem with pushing griffons off a cliff was that they could fly back up. Garlan was understandably annoyed at this immediate revelation. “Gary, look. You’re, what, busy wiping the floor at the lords’ palace?” He rapped his claw on the table, unafraid to show his impatience. “Two bits a day is a pathetic wage, and you’re still hard-headed enough to donate bits to the treasury when they’ll do nothing but hoard it until the gold tarnishes. You’re better off somewhere else with me.” He then took out a light stack of papers decorated with signatures. “I’ve already settled the documents for my family’s move to Manehattan. They have a sizable griffon population over there. You’ll fit in in no time.” “Then let’s give this a few more months,” Gary said, tapping his own claws on the armrests which were another rarity in the kingdom. “By the end of that, I’ll have thought of something. Maybe I could do favors for the lords! Yes, favors for them all!“ “But they’ll refuse to give you money because they want your work for free.” “Then I’ll give them such a good time, they’ll regret taking my services for free!” Garlan turned away from his dear brother. Griffonstone and Gary were lost causes. “Well, you do your thing and I’ll do mine. We’ll see who prospers more.” So he went back to recounting his bits. The number left his mind, so he slammed the table and almost cursed. Time to count them all over again just to be sure. Early in the afternoon, he traveled to the other side of the city, heading west with the posh high-rises behind him. A village lay near the river, neighboring a ferry service for people beating the traffic that way. It resided close to an industrial district which he’d sworn was falling apart the last time he was around. Now, thundering metalwork clanged and banged from inside, man and machine forming a single breathing being. He entered the village, passing by tall narrow houses in colorful paint jobs. It was a tight-knit if cramped community: little stores sprinkled everywhere, potted plants by the road and windows, and families eating outside with take-out tables along with neighbors and friends for the meal. However, the alleyways had told a different story: slums behind the brightly-painted facades, living spaces whose interiors could fit inside his own room, terrible stenches belying unspeakable things. Yet, from the local news and word around the street, the area had slowly become a tiny knock-off paradise. Proper houses with good water, electricity, and other modern-day amenities. Garlan took semi-welcome looks; he was a familiar though infrequent face around these parts, garnering the moniker of Mang Agila for looking too much like someone’s uncle though he wasn’t thirty yet. He stopped the cart and dumped food onto the wok. A little crowd formed around him as expected, and he took orders and pesos left and right. Still, things rang different here: in a town where everyone knew everyone else, people tended to hang around and catch up with their lives by vendors’ carts. Food became an excuse to talk, to socialize, to wait things out as Christmas neared: glaring overhead green-red-white decorations livened the siesta-filled afternoon. He slowly pushed the cart around, approaching the alleys. They were still too small for his cart to get through without blocking the way, but his twenty/five vision brought to light happier times within: vivid colors, construction scaffolds, and the people who now wore whole clothes instead of tattered fabrics. “Long time, no see.” The voice took the form of a bespectacled man in a well-clad polo shirt. Middle-aged Father Cocoy, a more recurring face around these parts. Priest and Catholic, Garlan remembered from the whirl of denominations and new beliefs he’d encountered in this world. “Yes, long time, no see.” Something tugged at him: an empty space that hadn’t been empty before. “Um, sir, what happened to your little food table?” “You mean the outdoor soup kitchen?” he said in a mellow accent, waving a hand to the former slums. “These people have gone beyond soup kitchens since their basic needs are secured. They can now provide for themselves, which is part of what I came here for.” Garlan turned back to the still empty space. “So you’re... what? Not needed here anymore?” The priest allowed a chuckle. “Their souls still need caring. It is just that I was brought here when this blessing was but a seed in barren soil. I watered and others took care of the sapling, but it is God who made this plant grow.” Last time Garlan had come around, Cocoy stood at the table, preparing rice porridge for a dozen families’ worth of people who couldn’t afford anything. Those same people were now enjoying more than three proper meals per day. “So no soup kitchens here anymore? Ever?” “No, though I would say that, in time, they shall be the ones setting up soup kitchens in other places.” Cocoy gestured to the former slums once more. “I’ve been to worse places than this, yet the poor do not squabble or complain much. With each other, they have already learned how to love, how to give. Know that they had no means to go anywhere else, so here they made their stand.” Garlan sighed over the stirring of the tongs, claw moving on autopilot. “Easy for you to say.” Cocoy permitted a smile. “Easy for me to say, not as easy for me to experience.” The smile gave way to mindful eyes. “Is something troubling you?” Garlan groaned, put on the spot by this thought-reader of a priest. He stirred harder, oil becoming a slow-dance whirlpool. “Well, what if the people you’re tending to… what if they kept fighting? Kept squabbling with each other?” He tapped his chin with a thin finger. “Hmm. A hypothetical scenario, given how my flock has rarely had problems with each other.” He turned to Garlan slowly, his black-and-white hair glinting under the afternoon sun. “But still, hope remains there if that is the case.” “Let me guess: a miracle?” Coccoy hung his head high. “God has often used the seemingly tiny acts of individuals to deliver ripples of change everywhere. It may take a long time, maybe even a time beyond your life, but no good deed is done in vain. The harvest comes when it comes… though it is good if you join in.” Just then, the priest was called by one of neighbors, and he went. A family wanted him to bless their new house. Garlan first noted that Cocoy hadn’t bought any food: it meant a lost sale. Still, with people lining up to buy from him, he couldn’t go after the priest to ask more questions. Sure, it was nice to do good things to others, he thought. Whether they deserved it or not was another question. It would take a miracle for him to return. He said that the night before leaving: the very early morning, actually, when most were still fast asleep. His wife pestered him with questions about giving back somehow—sending bits back to Griffonstone through some inter-dimensional money transfer service. Garlan didn’t want any part of it: he’d be building a pyramid of bits so they’d drown in graves of gold to eat nothing but scraps. “But what about Gary?” she asked more, sleeping hatchlings in tow. “You didn’t tell him about us leaving at all!” The decision had been sudden, and that’d been part of the plan. No drama, no fanfare, no Gary declaring more of his stubborn brain-dead ideas. “We’ll leave him be,” Garlan said. “It’s his town now, not ours. He wants to fix it more than we do anyway. Best we leave it to the crazies staying here. At least he’ll try.” Belongings jangled in their bags: a tiny fortune of cash to nab them a frail bungalow in a rural hamlet or a decent big-city apartment, food and water to last them the whole trip, and space for the many papers and forms they had to fill out in Canterlot’s Earth-Equestria Embassy. They’d still have to select the country though, and from there on, what city or town to live in—to think there were over a hundred and ninety countries to choose from. While the documents get processed, he would sell grilled hayburgers in Equestria’s capital to make money out of idle time. But before all that, he had to take the first step: leaving Griffonstone. They passed by dilapidated houses in which strangers slept on rickety nest-fodder beds. With broken windows and nigh-absent guards, it was a miracle crime hadn’t skyrocketed. Not that they’d want to steal each other’s bits. They’d keep to their hoards; gold was their life. Under the cool shining company of stars over broken hay and weathered rooftops, they approached the gateway that’d welcome visitors to the Kingdom of Griffonstone. In another time and age, the arc greeted visitors to the world’s crown jewel, of griffons welcoming each other and wearing hearts on their sleeves. They believed in themselves, and they could do great things for themselves. As pony historians would put it in scrolls and textbooks, they combined the indomitable pride of a lion with the forward-looking vision of an eagle: a recipe for success personal and beyond. But that wasn’t the Griffonstone of today. Garlan left the kingdom. First stop after the mountains: the abandoned railway station to wait for the Manehattan train. “I didn’t know you’d be here on a Sunday!” Macario stayed late in the afternoon, once again Garlan’s one and only customer at the spot where they first met. In the few years since, gentrification renovated semi-abandoned buildings into start-up businesses, complete with a parking lot crammed full across the street. “I didn’t know either. We had relatives yesterday so I took a day off then.” “But doesn’t that mean you’ll work for seven days straight this week?” asked the human. “Sunday to Saturday?” Garlan gave him his order: as many fishballs as possible on one stick. He’d learned the human’s preferences over the years. “It puts cash on the table, so why not? I don’t get tired of this if it means getting paid.” “Fair enough.” They hung out idly, wiling away the dead hour as cars and people breezed by. Garlan had the hours to wait, and Macario had the whole day to do his own thing on his off-day. He’d talked with him about his new managerial job at an up-and-coming ice cream company. The bigger salary was, naturally, the first thing Garlan had asked about. “So what about my invitation? It still stands.” That made Garlan look. “What invitation?” “For Christmas dinner at our house, remember?” Almost forgot it, but he didn’t want to say. “I’ve been thinking about it, but there was another reason why my relatives came over: they invited me to visit home for the Blue Moon Festival.” “The Blue Moon Festival? That’s… the griffons’ version of Christmas, right? Like with the ponies and Hearth’s Warming.” “Yes, the festival is our thing.” Macario doubled down on his stickful of food, leaving Garlan happy with a gain in coins. “So what do you do there?” Garlan sighed. “There’s feasts for one, mostly feasts at home though there’s the big dinner outdoors and then… then there’s also giving each other gifts, something you’re familiar with.” The sky kept Macario distracted, his mind ruminating in the clouds. “Why Blue Moon, though? I thought Princess Luna controlled the moon. I’ve also never heard of her turning the moon blue herself.” “Metaphorical, literal, I don’t know.” The shrug seasoned his feelings. “History books don’t know why, but that’s the name and we’re sticking to it.” The human took another piping hot bite. “So you won’t be around come Christmas?” Garlan stopped stirring. Kept his mind busy, kept himself looking busy by recounting his sales. “Not sure. Blue Moon starts two days after Christmas or Hearth’s Warming, so we’ll see.” The apartment stood at the end of his day. He stored the cart at the lot and locked it up under the guard’s watchful eyes. The front door opened to the smells of good fish and salted small meats, his loving wife there to greet him with a peck on the cheek. She told him about taking the kids to the nearby zoo, impressing them with the falcons and lions and hawks and tigers and eagles. They’d even gotten to meet a fellow griffon and a couple other Equestrians there; so excited to meet them, the other griffon had scooted away from their flood of questions about who he was and why he was there. Garlan then asked the kids how they’d been: would want to go to the zoo a dozen times again and see all the exotic Earth animals some more. Dinner was so good, they wolfed it down like a hurricane. Next thing he knew, he was helping her with the dishes. They shared one or two stray kisses as they calloused their soapy claws at the sink. The both of them looked out the window, stared at the stars as they flew to the roof outside and perched there. The city landscape lit up toward the future: the small structures of today with the work-in-progress skyscrapers of tomorrow—cranes, scaffolds, construction workers, everything and everyone. The near future boasted of so many gadgets and techs, so the couple talked about the nonsensical things humans kept inventing and selling to death: airless tires, 3D-printing, and magnets levitating trains. Science seemed more like fiction with each passing year, and it was moving fast. Many lovely compliments and kisses later, they flew down and went back inside. It was getting late, yet her presence still emanated warmth: youthful desire had matured into aged passion. Cars honked less as the clock ticked to midnight. She decided to take a shower, leaving him alone in the apartment with the kids. They lay in bed, watching something. He flew over to them, lying down beside Genaro as he held the black gadget box. “What’re you watching now?” An excited Genaro pointed at the phone, careful not to scratch it. “We’re watching a documentary!” “Documentaries, huh? Not those cartoons anymore?” Genaro went on to defend himself and Gwen by claiming they’re now grown-ups all of a sudden. They could certainly comprehend the documentaries’ big complex words, they said. Their father didn’t pay attention to them. On the black box’s screen, footage rolled of a human sitting in a dark room, all business with his fancy clothes. He had a bulky microphone in hand, bringing it over to his guest. “So, tell me, Your Lordship, what was it like growing in your kingdom as a child?” The guest on the other chair was also all business with his clothes. As he mused on the question, plain piano music played in the background. It played over a montage of the human’s travels in craggy heights and rocky peaks, meeting up with pony tourists and the locals Garlan had thought he’d never see again. The griffon lord, a surviving remnant of the once-mighty Griffonstone aristocracy, opened his beak to answer. Most Festivals were bad. They ended up in painful arguments and memories. But they could’ve been better. Much better. Then there was the first Blue Moon Festival he had without his parents. There’d be no arguments, no exhortations, no grumblings, no half-hearted gifts. There’d also be no mother nor father to cling onto. Love was lost. The brothers survived the ordeal without a word: making food for each other, sitting there, and eating alone while whole families quarreled like tradition. They weren’t the only ones like this though they had the decency to not intrude on other orphans’ “celebrations.” But things would be different this time. The love of his life now lived with him in a house they’d gotten on the cheap, the old owner too eager to leave. It was built on a barren tree; the topmost branch could hold a good nest for perching to overlook much of Griffonstone. They sat on the branch, watching the kingdom stumble into more tragedy. Neighbors fired off on arguments while verbal—sometimes physical—fights happened on ground and in sky. Today, this couple would not be them: today was a day for love, so they nuzzled each other, pecked each other on the cheek, preened each other’s feathers—no one would stop them from confessing their love to one another. The venison was good. She dared say he was the better cook some of the time, and he wished she were drunk because a husband cook might doom their marriage. Prepping food wasn’t the first thing he thought of; it was just how he dug into her heart. Now that he was in her heart and she in his, they lodged together at the nest, together into the night. Ginger pointed to the shining stars above like she was seven years old again. She’d read scraps of pony literature and from a romantic mule writer by the pseudonym of Donkey Hoe Tay. She said something about being starstruck: how they lived under the same stars without knowing each other until destiny tied them together. In her philosophizing, creatures from opposite ends of the world lived under the same starry sky, and love would bring sweethearts together no matter the distance. To her, that was more certain than a pony’s cutie mark. It was a sweet inanity, but it was a true inanity. He pecked her on the cheek, and she giggled at the kiss. She waddled to the side, uncovering the egg she’d laid weeks ago. It was warm, bursting with life and ready to see the world. Garlan forgot about Griffonstone. There was only a happy family to look forward to. Garlan lay awake in bed, an open window by his side. It was an hour past midnight. He’d keep the window closed for security reasons, but now, it wasn’t. He knew he should be sleeping. It was Monday tomorrow—today, in fact—and there was no excuse to hobble around on the job. He could burn a claw, someone else’s hand, or worst of all, a banknote. But he stayed awake, watching the stars. The sweet inanity remained true: he and Ginger lived under the same starry sky, and the hatchlings, growing up to be good griffons some day, had that sky as their far-reaching canopy. Yet something was amiss. The stars weren’t the same, and the constellations were different: Gemini, Aquarius, Cancer, Sagittarius—he hadn’t seen them in Equestria. That astronomy-obsessed pony in Canterlot with his ramblings about aligning stars hadn’t mentioned any of those names. Not just the constellations: to think the stars, the moon, and the sun rose and fell not by Celestia’s and Luna’s deep alicorn magic but by over-complicated astrophysics principles and equations. Back then and there, the stars were closer too. Though he didn’t care for Equestrian royalty, he’d appreciated the artistry of the night sky: a canvas Luna had made daily paintings out of. There were a couple ponies who’d told him about that living-under-the-same-sky drivel when he sold hayburgers in Canterlot. He scoffed at them internally, never letting his venom loose in public. In the end, love abided in his mind. Addled by the romance of the past thanks to that perchtop session, he saw love as the driving force that united them together under one sky. Under one sky, love softened his heart to care for young griffons by having his own, gave him others to care about so at least he wouldn’t die alone in a foreign land. But it wasn’t under this sky. Minutes later, he turned to the stall. It sat alone in the lot. One guard wasn’t much for security, but it was enough for the griffon’s livelihood. The holidays could bring in lots of money, and lots of money would help a long way under the sky. Good thing the cart wasn’t too heavy to carry around.