I self-consciously beat myself up that day
Wondering how I’d gone astray.
How could Goldflower care about me
With what I did to those bullies?
If she found out the truth
She’d throw me down into the gullies.
I found myself in a den of wolves
Far beyond where my past would pull.
Goldflower didn’t show up that day. I didn’t blame her. I felt like I had torn her to shreds, but I wanted her to be safe. I didn’t know what I could do, I’d tried to repress that memory, and it didn’t stick.
That day, I was on the brink of dying and I felt like shit.
The doctors were there, too, of course. They didn’t want to leave me alone, I couldn’t even see how much my message had stuck. I didn’t know how many griffons in the street that day cared enough to write up a petition with rare paper and send it to Grandpa Gruff, who was very adamant about doing things his way, whatever that meant.
I was still allowed visitors, and that’s what happened after Goldflower left the night before. Granite walked in, taking a look at the doctors before he looked at me.
“Geode, what happened?”
I mumbled in response, practically dying while lying down on the bed/chair.
Granite looked at me, head cocked and eyebrows furrowed.
“Have you slept at all?” he asked, presumably a leading question into what he’d say next.
Reluctantly, I answered him, “Not a wink.”
“Why have you not slept?” he asked.
“Because I don’t want to die,” I once again answered reluctantly.
“Given what Goldflower told me earlier today, I thought you’d be all gung-ho about dying, she told me that you were tearing yourself up.”
“Look, Granite,” I responded, “I don’t want to die because the natural instinct is to stay alive, and because I can’t die before redemption, like a villain in one of those old stories. I may be a terrible griffon, but I want to be a better one, and so I’m staying awake as long as possible just to have that chance.”
Granite looked around the room, “Geode, hate to break it to you, but that chance isn’t coming. At least not anytime soon. If there an afterlife, does reincarnation exist—“
“I’d be reincarnated as a moth,” I butted in.
“...Let me finish. As I was saying, we don’t know, you very well might be stuck with what you have now,” Geode continued, slightly annoyed.
“Well, I’m clucked,” I finished for him.
“Geode.” He emphasized, ”What. Griffon. Are. You. Today.”
“Not much better,” I responded.
“Why is that,” Geode stated.
“Because I haven’t made up what I’ve done in the past. I’m miserable because I haven’t lived up to this requirement of goodness. With what I’ve done, I need to do more good to make up for it!”
The following conversation descended into a shouting match, each of us trying to gain superiority over each other. Each of us were getting more and more annoyed with each other, and it’s quite unsightly to play back.
“Geode! What’s this goodness requirement?!” Granite yelled.
“I— I don’t know! All I know is that I haven’t met it,” I replied back.
“Well, that’s ridiculous! There’s no way that you have a threshold you have no clue what the requirements are!”
“I figure that it’ll just feel like I’ve accomplished enough! I feel like I’ll know!” I was sitting up in the bed now, and the doctors were watching bored as if this was an everyday occurrence.
“Geode! Listen to me! You’ll never ‘just know’! You need to forgive yourself!”
“Granite! I killed a griffon!”
Dead. Silence. The entire room went completely dead, everygriffon was pondering over what I just said. The doctors were suddenly perked up and writing ferociously on their clipboards as if they needed to write a report. At the time, I hoped they did.
Granite recoiled in shock, and I collapsed back onto the bed/chair. I started crying.
“I— I can’t forgive myself for that. I t-t-took a knife, and they were gone. I witnessed what I’d done in... a... a fit of rage or some skewed— version of revenge. It felt like my entire world fell apart,” I explained between sods.
“That is pretty messed up,” Granite said.
“Tell me I’m a screw up— please. I need to feel validated. I don’t want to feel good right now. Tell me I’m a bad griffon, please!”
“I’m not going to deny that what you did was absolutely terrible... I don’t really know how to help you,” Granite said.
“I’m going straight to Hell,” I responded. “I was supposed to be a savior— of the broken, beaten, and damned. I... pulled it apart, made it an impossibility. A— and I’ve broken Goldflower’s heart, too. I try not to think about it, but it always comes back.”
“That’s not who you are now though? Right?” Granite asked hopefully.
“I— I— I don’t know.”
Granite left pretty quickly after that, and I sat alone with the doctors, crying. I couldn’t forgive myself. I had to take back the past somehow. I wanted to see Goldflower again. I wished I hadn’t screwed up earlier in my life. I wished I was a good griffon. I think secretly, I knew I’d never have another chance.
All I could do was try and forget about it.