Daylight. Bright. Go Away.
“Ugh....”
The newly turned Gryphon groggily opened his eyes and pushed himself to his feet, mentally vowing never to sleep on a rock floor ever again.
Still a Gryphon. This is gonna take some getting used to.
Quickly finding out that his new cave was much too small to properly stretch in, he made his way to the mouth of said cave, pondering what he would eat today. Seeing as how he was a mixture of a Lion and some sort of Eagle, it was unlikely that he would be an omnivore like when he was a human. Then again, just because he had characteristics of the two animals didn't mean he shared the same diets of th-
In the midst of his musing, he saw something that made him stop dead in his tracks.
There, at the entrance to his cave, was a fish. A trout, actually, resting on a pile of snow.
No way. That... What? How?
His mind struggled to make sense of the situation. There certainly wasn't a fish there before, and the little pile of snow was obviously there to keep it fresh; there wasn't any snow in the cave to begin with, so something must've pushed it in.
And that's where the problem was.
Something obviously knew he was here, and probably knew that he didn't catch any fish last night too; unless they just though the trout would be a nice little cave-warming present. But why would they bother giving him the fish, barring the (infinitely slim) possibility of friendly neighbors? It's not like anyone here owed him a favor; he didn't even know where here was.
Also comes to mind the possibility of an intelligent race in this place; more like probability, really. Which leads to the question of what they had to gain by giving him food...
Bah. To hell with it.
Grabbing the fish with one of his hands-, talons, rather, he brought it to his beak and stopped.
How was he going to eat this?
He figured he had two options: Tear off chunks and swallow those, or swallow the fish whole.
He didn't really like the concept of either option, but was definitely more willing to go with the first.
After about five minutes of trying to tear apart the fish, he realized he was getting nowhere fast with trying to eat it like he was. And a lot of blood all over himself. He wasn't very dexterous with his new-found claws, and was doing a rather shoddy job of tearing the meat off.
So, before he could think himself out of it, he grabbed the fish by its tail, opened the hatch, and dropped it in headfirst.
If I choke I totally deserve it.
The fish stuck in his throat, gagging him for several seconds before he was able to force it down.
Is that how I'm supposed to eat it? Crap, I don't think I'll ever get used to that. Maybe it only worked because it was so small...
Wait, no, that fish wasn't small, it was a least a foot long! How big am I, anyway?
Walking out of the cave, he looked for things he could use as reference points. The trees would work if he knew how tall he was, but for now they only told him that he was probably shorter than he used to be; which didn't really help because how big he was wasn't really solely based on height anymore...
Shrugging, he used this opportunity to stretch, spreading out like a cat on a windowsill and flaring his wings.
Actually, wait...
Finishing his stretch, he kept his wings as extended as he could, still unused to using those muscles. They drooped a bit, and he noted that they were a bit heavy; so he took the opportunity to observe them and saw why.
His wingspan was... impressive. He didn't know exactly how long they were, but they were pretty big. He started flapping and tilting them experimentally, trying to the hang of them. The feeling of the muscles in his chest being used to flap wings was... new, to say the least.
It felt a bit alien to him, but he got used to it (more or less) eventually and tucked them to his sides.
Now came a new matter. Hygiene.
He still had trout blood all over his face and arms, probably his chest too, given his luck with white outfits.
Just my luck, I get a coat color that shows off every stain that I ever get. This is going to be annoying if I want to make myself presentable. For whatever reason. Maybe if I meet whoever gave me that fish...
He didn't want to jump into the bone-chilling river, so he decided to do the next best thing, and rolled around in the snow for about ten minutes. Thankfully, his new fur/feather combination coat seemed to repel water decently well, so he didn't end up all that much colder for it. It seemed likely to him that Gryphons lived in cold environments, if he could just meander around in the snow and barely be cold.
On a whim, he stuck his wing out, tucked his head to the side, and started preening it. He didn't know why he was doing this, but he figured he'd go with it. He'd heard somewhere that a bird had to preen every so often to keep its feathers in shape, so that it could stay airborne more efficiently and retain heat better; yeah, that was probably it...
After running his tongue and beak through his wings a couple hundred times, he stopped to think. Airborne. Could he fly? It seemed like it was possible, maybe; it's not like this was a normal place, the rules seemed willing to bend a bit. He'd never know unless he tried, and he might as well while he's still fresh and fed. Well, sort of fed. He still felt pretty hungry, and his stomach was gurgling every so often, but the solitary fish would do its job for now.
Snapping his wings out in what he'd like to call an impressive display, he took a running start towards the stream, figuring it would be too far of a jump to make without the help of his wings.
I have no illusions of being able to fly just like that, but gliding would be a nice start.
Picking up speed, he jumped at the stream's bank...
And promptly jumped completely over it. He didn't even catch any real wind in his wings, just a slight tug of resistance.
Well, that was... disappointing. At least I know I can jump, like, 8 feet though.
Shrugging and folding his wings back up, he decided to just keep with his original plan: walk upstream until he found civilization.
Someone near him, however, had other plans.
A tree branch snapping, the rustling of feathers, a thump, and the crunch of snow was all the warning he had before he was verbally assaulted from behind.
“Hey, who're you? Why are you walking around Whitetail woods in the middle of Winter? You know town is the other way, right?”, a somewhat grating feminine voice borderline shouted.
Jumping a bit, he tried not to panic; this was obviously one of the natives, and they obviously knew the lay of the land. Also, they knew where town was.
Another moment of reflection led him to realize that they seemed completely unsurprised by his appearance, so he was probably some kind of local creature. Inhabitant, actually, would be a more accurate term, seeing as how they seemed to expect him to res-
“Hey! Are you listening to me?! Don't you ignore me, Buster, I asked you a question!”
More like 3, but okay...
Promising himself not to freak out, he turned to face the new arrival.
...well, it's certainly not a Gryphon, that's for sure.
It... It was kinda.... Funny looking. It was like a horse... pony... pegapony... thing, but other than the whole, quadrupedal, horse-like tail, hooves and mane thing it had going, it really wasn't all that similar.
For one, it was glaring at him with its rather expressive face, it had a very small muzzle and very, VERY big eyes. They were a little creepy, and really disproportionate. It had wings, obviously, which were flared out at the moment to make itself look bigger or something. He would've laughed at the futility of it, as he was at least a foot and a half taller than it, and much, much bigger, if he wasn't busy trying not to do anything rash.
Its coloring was weird. Beyond weird. Its coat, wings, and hooves were cyan, but its mane and tail were rainbow colored. This pony thing made no sense.
So he said the only thing he could think of.
“Uhh... Hi?”
Smoooooth...
“Don't you 'Hi' me, I asked you a question! Who are you?”, it, actually, if the voice was anything to go by, she, demanded.
Giving a frown, the former-man responded with, “Why should I tell you? I somehow doubt that this is your property, pony.”
He'd said the whole “Pony” thing in a derogatory manner, practically spitting the word, but she seemed unfazed by it. Maybe they were actually called ponies?
What he'd said, however, seemed to get to her. For about half a second. “I, uh... Don't dodge the question! I asked you who you are! Why would you not want to answer that?” suddenly, the not-man had her rather large magenta eyes taking up his entire view, “Are you a spy!?”
What.
Giving a growl from deep in his throat (Oh cool, I didn't know I could do that...), he retorted, “I don't see any reason to tell you, Ms Rude; do you normally answer the questions of folks who accost you for no reason, or are you just being a hypocrite? And get out of my face.”
With that last statement, he pushed her away from him, and saw that she was hovering over the ground with her wings. Her rather small wings. Wings that shouldn't have been able to hold her up under any circumstances.
Not fair.
She gave him a hard glare, “Fine then. I guess I won't bring you back to town, despite how obviously lost you are. Good luck finding your way to Ponyville on your own, jerkwad.”
As she started to turn away, he started to panic; this might be his only way to get to some semblance of civilization, he had to act quickly, “Hey hey hey, wait! Yeah, I'm lost, and if you stop being so rude, I'll be happy to accept your help, just don't leave me here! I have no idea where I am!”
Ouch, my pride.
It seemed to work, as the pony turned back around with a cocky grin on her face. “Oh? Willing to answer my questions now that I threaten to leave you all alone?”
It took all of his willpower not to attempt to slaughter the mutant farm animal... Pony thing.
“Fine. But you had better show me the way to town after this.”
Still wearing that same infuriating smirk, she said, “Don't worry about that, I'm a mare of my word.”, as he was trying not to let his eye twitch in irritation at the horrible pun, she continued with, “Who are you, then? You still haven't answered me.”
Giving a small sigh, he finally answered her question with, “You can call me Albus. Now can we go?”
Finally wearing something else on her face than that irritating smirk, she stopped his attempt to leave cold with a frown and, “You said you'd answer my questions, and I still have more. Why are you in Whitetail woods, for starters, and what was with that whole 'jumping over the stream dramatically' thing?”
Shit, she saw that. Can't tell her I don't know how to fly, she'd never let that go, I'm sure. Let's see...
“I thought we'd already clarified that I'm lost, which is why I'm accepting your help. As for the jumping thing, I sprained my wing a while back and was testing how well it could take my weight. It didn't work too well.”
Great, now I have an excuse not to have to try and fly to.... Ponyville, I think it was, with her.
Still frowning, she started to stare at him, as if to try and tell if he was lying. “Alright then, fine. Follow me, I'll be sure to fly slow enough for you to keep up. You can call me Dash, by the way.”
Giving a noncommittal grunt, he began to walk after Dash, who had set off into the trees.
I have a bad feeling about this...