It is little wonder that griffons are a proud and confident culture, quick to place themselves upon a pedestal above the other civilizations of the earth. This could easily be confused as arrogance, if one makes the dangerous assumption that the griffons lack the ability to stand by their claims. A griffon does not pretend to be the best, gloating with empty words. A griffon hunts for a pinnacle and then spends his every moment to surpass it, only to begin the hunt again for a new goal. A true griffon could settle for nothing less, embroiled in this pursuit since birth. Nothing but reaching the top could make him happy.
Gander was not happy. In the sixteen years since his birth, he could never recall being happy. He had never won a fight or successfully stalked a dangerous beast. He had never beaten others his age in a contest of speed or skill. He had never accomplished anything extraordinary that he could truly take pride in, and therefore he had also failed at being a true griffon.
Which, in a sad sort of way, made sense to Gander, as he was not a griffon. Not quite. His beak was pitch black and not overly large, not unheard of among the griffon kind, but the tip of the bill was dull and flat, entirely unsuitable for tearing at flesh. This also made an unhappy amount of sense, given that Gander could not stomach meat and survived on mostly foraged grains. Much of the plumage of his head and abnormally long neck was the same color black as his beak, save for a thin strip of white beneath his chin. The rest of his feathers were mottled brown and white in alternating stripes, from his wings that lacked the musculature and feather length for true speed down to his front legs that were just as equally lacking in strength. His forelegs and feet were dark and scaly, a trait shared with other griffons, but their well-defined talons were absent, cursed instead with stubby little claws that were good for next to nothing. His hind end was covered in a coat of white and at least had a decent amount of power hidden away in his back legs, but it was a far cry from the lithe and graceful feline form that characterized the griffon species. No, his legs were stocky and stout, ending in solid hooves rather than stealthy paws. The last difference, the final disgrace in his eyes, was the long black hairs that made up his tail.
A pony’s tail. Not a lion’s. Not a griffon’s. A tail meant for swatting away pests, not keeping one’s balance in pitched chases just before dealing a killing blow. Gander was no hunter. He was no griffon. He was a mistake, born of an aberrant union between his griffon father and some brood mare. Most days, he felt that word could sum up his entire life. Mistake.
Today was no different. He peered into his reflection with a scowl, beady black pupils looking back in disgust. With a splash, he broke the stillness of the lake and brought a few clawfuls of water to his face, the last of his preening for the morning. Clean feathers meant easier flying and Gander needed all the help he could get, since his airborne acrobatic skill could be classified somewhere between a sagging balloon and a thrown brick. Grace was not his strong point. For that matter, nothing really was.
Unwilling to look at himself again in the crystal clear pool, he turned away and back to the campsite where he’d spent the previous night. It wasn’t much of a camp, merely some long reeds fashioned into a makeshift bed. He’d been unable to find a stray cloud last evening, and had gone to ground as the sun set. The lack of roving clouds disturbed him. Many things did in this place. It was a feeling he could not quite identify, but could describe only as a pervasive wrongness. It was as if the life had been sucked out of everything. It ruffled his feathers in a chilling way, and Gander did his best to ignore it. He hoped he would not spend long here; this was pony land, after all, and he did not belong.
Not that he belonged in the griffon territories, either.
He shook his head to clear it of stray thoughts and focused himself entirely on flight. It was somewhat of a struggle; Gander beat at the air with his wings like a salmon might thrash as it made its way upstream. The earth only grudgingly loosed its hold and he took to the skies, spiraling around the lakebed as he gained altitude. Around him, the countryside sprung into view. Densely packed trees and sparse shrubbery with the occasional lake dotting the landscape, all illuminated by warm reds and oranges by the sun rising into a cloudless sky. It was a picturesque spring morning, absolutely perfect in every way. Too perfect, Gander’s instincts murmured.
For even as he flew onward, those little details continued to nag at him. The uniformity of the trees, the clarity of the water, and most especially the horrid evenness of the wind kept his flight, one of the few things that he took comfort in, from being pleasant. Gander may not have been a pure griffon, but he’d had griffon instincts beaten into him from youth, and those instincts despised the very air beneath his wings. The wind was the breath of mother earth, he knew. It held her capricious spirit. It was wild and unfathomable, changing from moment to moment. It should have been roiling in the sky like ocean waves in a storm, and only those worth of her favor would dare face them. Only those who knew the wind as they knew themselves could see the patterns in the breezes, and dance from updrafts to thermals like one born of the sky itself.
But this? Ever since he'd left the griffon lands, the wind had been flat and dull, listless and unassuming. It was as peaceful as the water of the lake in which he had washed only moments ago, water that was also entirely lacking of... of... something. Of spark, of life. The winds here, the water and earth too, was simply wrong. If Gander was smarter, perhaps he could understand. Perhaps he would be able to express his feeling of wrongness instead of being locked away in thought when he really should have been paying attention to the skies.
If Gander was smarter, perhaps he wouldn’t have collided head-on into the only other thing sharing the skies with him. On that note, if he were a true griffon, perhaps he could have at least salvaged his dignity with a suitably majestic screech of indignation instead of the startled honk that left his beak as he struggled to right himself in the air, pulling out of a narrow spiraling dive with an ungainly amount of floundering. He could feel the strain in his wing as he fought to regain control of his spin.
“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh!” A voice from behind called, a voice light like a sparrow’s but tinged with concern, like a child caught in the middle of mischief by her elders. The sky and the ground exchanged places a few times in Gander’s view before he finally steadied himself and wheeled around to get a glimpse of what had interrupted his flight. There, in the middle of an otherwise empty sky, floated a disturbingly rectangular cloud. Next to its unnatural shape was, of course, a pony.
A pegasus, to be precise. A mare, Gander assumed though he couldn’t be sure when it came to ponies, with such a strikingly yellow coat that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen her earlier even with his head in the proverbial clouds. Perhaps he had confused this pony with the sun. Her mane gave weight to that notion, as it was an orange so bright that it put even the yellow of her coat to shame, swept back and unruly like hungry flames. She was altogether too colorful for his senses, and even the way she simply hovered there, as if gravity didn’t exist, seemed to mock him. Her eyes were simply another perceived insult, brilliant blue orbs that looked to him in concern, and any self-respecting griffon knew that concern was merely pity in disguise. If her gaze was an insult, her voice was torture, sickeningly sweet and never even pausing for breath as she stammered apologies. “I am so, so, sooo sorry! Are you okay? I totally didn’t even see you there. I was just flyin’ along and, whoosh, there you were! And I ran into you, or is it flew into you? I mean, I’m not runnin‘, I guess, but still!”
A surprising fact about griffons is that, despite their prominent beaks, they do indeed have teeth. Gander’s were already grinding together. He landed atop the cloud, if one with edges could really be called a cloud, grateful at least that the clouds here in pony lands still retained enough life to keep him aloft even if he couldn‘t say the same for the winds.
“I can not believe this happened to me. I mean, again. How many times am I gonna screw up before I learn to watch what I’m doin‘, huh?” The pegasus had yet to cease her yammering, so, as he waited, Gander stretched his wings in a simple test for damage. Never for a moment did he take his eyes off this wretched little flying banana, who seemed to be apologizing for the third time now. He doubted that any pony could be considered a real threat, especially one as seemingly spineless as this, but a griffon would never let his guard down. Besides, she seemed to be winding down at last, and not a moment too soon. Gander wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.
“And that’s when I realized that I just wasn’t meant for derbies, so here I am tryin’ to get my hoof in the door with this cloudmakin’ gig and these things are really delicate, you know, and now I’ve probably gone and messed everythin’ up again, and my boss is gonna chew me out for runnin’ into somepo- uh... into a... wait, what the hay are you?” The instant she spoke, her eyes widened and hooves flew to clamp over her mouth, cheeks flushing scarlet at her faux pas. "I mean, uh... hi? Er, sorry. For, um, yeah. Everythin’, I guess. Are you okay?"
"Ça va..." Gander began, before correcting himself. In his youth, his father had made certain he was fluent in equestrian, and though he disagreed vehemently on its necessity he wasn't nearly stupid enough to go against the old griffon's will. "I am fine, pony. The wing, it is sore only. A rest for a moment, and all things is good."
The mare landed on the cloud next to him, a wing brushing against her brow in relief. “Well, that’s good then. I mean, it’s one thing to ruin a cloudstarter, but accidentally hurtin’ somepo- uh, someone would be way worse.” She held a hoof out expectantly, adding, “The name’s Seafire, but my friends call me Ducky. What’s yours?”
He eyed her hoof for a moment, before sighing as his childhood lessons in foreign etiquette took hold. “Gander le Gannet,” he replied in a grumble as he shook her hoof. A respectful gesture, he knew, though the griffon in him quietly railed that respect should be earned and not given. He filed that away as yet another slight against this entire country as a whole while the pegasus merely beamed at him with a smile.
“Cool! Gander. I like it. Very far-out soundin’, you know?” Her smile faltered in a moment of confusion, as if trying to recall some obscure fact. “Hey, wait, isn’t that, like, a griffon name or somethin’?”
“Yes, that is true. I am a griffon.” Gander was somewhat surprised that the pony had even heard of his culture before, but apparently she had heard more than simply names as she glanced behind his head with an unspoken question. He quickly cut her off as she began to open her mouth, repeating himself with a slightly darker tone, “I am a griffon.”
Seafire, or Ducky depending on who was asking, waved her hooves in front of her face as if to chase away his darkening mood. “That’s cool! Yeah, totally. I’ve never met a griffon, you know. I mean, before now. Uh... yeah.” She floundered for a moment, trying to pick a less prickly topic for conversation. Fortunately for her, Gander had some experience with this issue and swiftly changed the subject.
“What did you mean, pony, when you said ‘to ruin cloud starting’?” He clawed at the fluffy cushion of water vapor beneath them with one stub of a talon. “This is a cloud. The shape, it is... strange. But it is a cloud. How is such a thing ruined?”
“Oh!” Ducky exclaimed, jumping into the subject enthusiastically. Although, even though he had only just met her, Gander could not imagine her doing anything without enthusiasm. The pony seemed to be made of energy. “You see, Gander, this baby here ain’t no ordinary cloud.”
She patted the cloud beneath her as she spoke, resembling -if anything- a proud mother. Even the slight jostle against the bed of white beneath sent a tremor through it that summoned a rumble like thunder, causing Gander to momentarily lose his balance. He, of course, pretended like his stumble didn’t happen. Griffons were not clumsy, after all. Unfortunately for him, the talkative mare was more sharp-eyed than he'd given her credit for.
“Whoa, watch your step. Anyhow, this is a special cloud that we in the industry call a cloudstarter! With the right positionin’ and a little touch of good ol’ fashioned pegasi magic, a cloudstarter can fill an entire region with light cloud cover!”
She gestured widely, as if stretching from one horizon to the other. Her voice then dropped, eyebrows following, and she spoke with a grave seriousness, stressing certain words as if to hammer them into his skull. “The only problem is that they are very hard to make, and veeery easy to break. A single wrong jostle, and bam! You‘ll have clouds comin’ in crooked for a week. Plus, they’d be all weird and stormy! ...I’d bet this one’s already done for.”
Her expression twisted into a grimace as she surveyed the cloud they stood upon, knowing its cost would more than likely come from her wages, only to perk up almost instantly. “But at least you’re okay! Thank Celestia!”
Gander snorted, giving his head a slight shake as the ends of his beak curled into a slight sneer. Even were he able to accept the utter wrongness of forcing the weather, her final comment was one step too far. “I would rather not, pony.”
“Ooookay. It was just an expression, you know, but whatever, I guess.” Ducky’s formerly cheerful mood darkened like a raincloud covering the sun on a summer day. It appears even ponies who are all smiles have a sore spot. She sat back, forelimbs set across her chest defensively. “You got a problem with the princess?”
“It is...” despite being raised with the equestrian language, the griffon still had difficulty finding the right words. He finally settled on, “...not our way, pony. To be thanking one when there is nothing given. It is... wrong.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head so sharply that for a moment Gander thought he could hear their movement. “Yeah, nothin’ at all. It’s not like she raises the freakin’ sun or anything. Nobody gives a flyin’ feather about that.” Thankfully for Gander’s linguistic skills, the level of sarcasm she was injecting into her voice was more than powerful enough to transcend language barriers.
“Your Celestia pony raises the sun, yes. But the griffon does not ask this of her. We would not be asking this, even for her to stop if we did not ask.” Gander inclined his head, a prideful motion. Self-reliance was a tenant of life, and one that every griffon followed. It was merely another facet of strength, after all. The pegasus seemed to be gawking in utter confusion, so he added, “it is not our way.”
“Wait, so, lemme get this straight...” Ducky blinked, the incredulity seeping into her voice. “You’d rather live in eternal night rather than ask a freakin’ favor? Like, ‘hey there, pony princess, would you mind just raisin’ the sun a bit, if it ain’t too much trouble?’ Like, you don’t wanna say that, so you’d just sit there and freeze your feathers off?”
Gander scoffed inwardly. The ignorance of these ponies. “A griffon never will ‘just sit there.’ Tell me, pony, where does the sun go at night?” He gestured with one brown wing to the distant horizon. “To the west, yes? And there are lands to the west. Beyond the pony lands, and far beyond the lands beyond those.”
“So...” the mare started, trying to put herself in the unimaginably stubborn mindset of a griffon. “If our princesses were to just, I dunno, take a weekend off and forget bringin’ about daylight, you’d all just... fly away?” At Gander’s approving nod, she continued, “You and your family and just every other griffon out there would all, what, up and chase after the sun?”
“You are understanding, pony. Yes,” the griffon gave a slight smile, more of a twist of his beak than anything else but it was as close to the real thing as he would ever come. “If your Celestia pony were not to bring the day, a griffon would hunt the sun and find it. If the night too were to flee, a griffon would hunt the stars.”
“Wow. Uh... just wow.” Ducky was impressed. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was impressed by, either the level of griffonkind’s collective guts or merely the thickness of their skulls. “You folks are really into not needin’ the princesses. That’s, um, that’s all right, I guess.”
“It is our way. We ask nothing of ponies, and need nothing of ponies.” Gander swirled a bit of the cloud beneath him around his claws. “Your cloud-starting, too. Your making of the weathers and the tending of the plants and the beasts. To do things for others, we griffons do not do this. It is... wrong, I think. We do not want this.”
“But why?!” Ducky blurted out, unable to wrap her head around the concept. “If you’re not takin’ care of the world around you, Gander, then who’s gonna?”
Gander snorted heavily through his beak. “You ponies have much nerve, to be thinking the mother earth is needing of your care.” He gestured towards the ground, far below. “Pony or none, griffon or none, the earth is here. Before us, she was here. Long after, still she will be here.”
“Yeah,” the pegasus broke in, “and what if she likes the extra help, huh? Nopony minds a helpin’ hoof now and then. Nopony can do everything all alone. If I were the ol’ lady earth, I wouldn’t mind somepony coverin’ the weather for me every now and again.”
The griffon shook his head. “What you ponies do is not the will of the earth. You ponies shape the weather. You shape the plants and the beasts.” He jabbed towards Ducky with one wing, though it was not an aggressive movement. “You shape the lands, when it is the lands who should be shaping you.”
“You don’t seem to have much of a nice opinion on ponies, Gander,” she muttered. “I’m hearin’ a lot of ‘ponies are wrong about this and that.’ If’n we’re so wrong and you don’t like us so much, then what’re you doin’ here in Equestria, huh?”
“You are wrong, pony,” Gander said, completely missing the contradiction in disagreeing with a pony who just stated that he disagreed with ponies. Perhaps it was a linguistic thing. Or perhaps, Ducky thought with another roll of her eyes, it was more of that griffon thick-headedness. Regardless, Gander continued. “It is not that I do not like ponies. I do not care about ponies.”
“Well, that just answers my question perfectly, don’t it?” As the pony spoke, Gander began to wonder how this pegasus could possibly fly straight if her eyes spun in such a fashion so often.
“I am saying that a griffon hunts only for himself.” At long last, he was rewarded with an extended pause of sweet silence. All good things must come to an end, unfortunately, and the mare finally broke the silence once more after much thought.
“Gander...” she said, looking at him with one eye narrowed in a perplexed expression. “Now, I ain’t sayin’ I agree with it, but I know you gotta do what you gotta do. That said... if you came all this way for a bite to eat, I’d really start to worry about your huntin’ skills.” The griffon smacked himself in the face with a wing, even as Ducky continued talking. “I mean, what, they ain’t got squirrels or whatever where you come from?”
“I do not hunt squirrels, you strange mare, I hunt a pony.” Gander growled. The slight dig on his skills as a griffon, which admittedly held the sting of misaimed truth, was almost more than he could stand. Ducky bounced into the air, hovering in place with quick beats of her wings as she shadowboxed an invisible opponent with her hooves.
“Oh-ho, you’d better not have just said you were gonna eat a pony!” She froze as a new thought formed, her wings stopping mid-beat and dropping her back onto the cloud. “Unless you mean you were huntin’ for a mare to...” The scarlet blush returned to her cheeks, coloring her face like a ripe tomato as she began to stammer. “I’m, uh, whoa, I’m s-sorry, but I don’t think I’m, uh, in a place in my life right now for a relati-”
“I am looking for my mother!” Gander shouted, his wings flapping impulsively in annoyance at this stupid mare. Yes, that was what it was. Annoyance, not embarrassment. A griffon was above such petty things. At least his outburst shut the pegasus up, if only for a few moments. Gander turned away, staring out at the skyline. A griffon wouldn’t leave his back open, either. Well, it wasn’t the first time he wouldn’t live up to being a griffon.
“...So she’s a pony, huh?” Ducky called from behind him. He did not answer or turn towards her. “Oh. All right. Guess that explains the... yeah.” Another minute or two of peace. “Well, um, I can totally relate to family problems. I mean, obviously not as much as... uh. Yeah. Still, it’s good to keep in touch, you know? Family is important, mothers especially.”
“I despise my mother,” Gander nearly hissed the words. True enough, there was hatred clear in his voice. It was almost as foreign a concept to Ducky as the griffon himself.
“Whoa, now! Hey, um, everypony has problems, but you can’t really-”
“You know nothing, pony,” he cut her off harshly, giving the mare a glare for her effort. She withered under his gaze, the griffon in him noted with satisfaction. Gander spat each retort as if the words left a vile taste in his mouth, punctuating each with a stab of his leading wing feathers at the cowering mare’s chest. For a moment, it looked as if she might run away. “Nothing of what she has done to me and to my kin. Our name is shamed! Our traditions, defiled! Our ancestors, dishonored! Our lives... ruined!”
“W-well, that ain’t... I mean, you shouldn’t blame-”
“And I am the result.” His face soured in loathing, beak curled in a half-snarl. The hatred in his voice from before did not come close in comparison. “A... mistake. Les déchets. Outcast. So, yes, pony. I can and I do despise my mother. Do not presume to tell me otherwise.”
An uneasy silence fell. On Gander’s part, he had said all that could be said. Though the rage within him had yet to burn out, the heat of the moment had died down and he was in no danger of another flare of repressed emotions. Ducky, meanwhile, was still well and truly cowed from the outright violence in his every word, as if the griffon was a moment away from spilling blood in a berserk frenzy. For every second that passed, however, a change seemed to be occurring within the young pegasus, her expression rapidly switching between awkward terror to moral outrage and back again as she attempted to gather up her courage.
“...yeah, no. You know what, Gander? No.” Gander’s brow raised in surprise. He honestly hadn’t thought the mare capable of talking back, much less with such conviction. She stood on her hind legs, wings fluttering slightly to keep her balance, and stuck her fore hooves to her hips in the manner of a sternly disapproving parent. Her odd posture managed to bring her up to eye level with the taller griffon and she did her best to set a glower upon her face, though the entire look coming from a brightly colored pony was more laughable than commanding of respect. Looks notwithstanding, her unyielding voice actually brought Ducky some measure of authority. “I don’t rightly know what kinda troubles you got, and I sure as hay don’t know what you’ve been through. Life’s hard? Fine, I respect that...
“But!” At this, she pushed her face towards his own to look him straight in the eye. Gander had to restrain himself from retaliating. Ducky marched on, ignorant of her blatant challenge. “I don’t believe for one sunny second that you can throw it all on the back of any one pony!
“Whatever issues you got, don’t go blamin’ somepony else when you could be workin’ to make life better. Throwin’ blame about is just wastin’ time for nothin’. Plus, it’s downright lazy, which don’t sound all that griffony to me.” Her forelegs were crossed against her chest again as she eased into a position that could gracefully be called indignant, but more truthfully was closer to a sulk. “If it's the griffon way to go blaming ponies for all your problems, then maybe it's the griffon ways that are your problem! And since you’re talkin’ all about ‘griffon ways’ this and ‘griffon ways’ that, let me tell you a little somethin’ about pony ways. Nopony would ever call her child a mistake. Ever! And I am super mad on your mother’s behalf, so don’t you dare let me hear you say that about yourself ever again!”
Ducky followed this impromptu speech with a snort from her nostrils, much like a bull before the charge, still running high on the rush of adrenaline. Contrarily, Gander was frozen in place, his face equally immobile. On the one hand, such disrespect should have only a single answer resulting in ritual combat and very possible dismemberment. On the other, a bright yellow prey animal who had most likely never harmed a fly, accidental collisions notwithstanding, had just told him off. The griffon was lost as to whether he should be tearing this impudent mare limb from limb or laughing until his sides split open. Apparently his internal conflict ran on for too long, as Ducky finally spoke up once more with a petulant tone. “So, what do you have to say for yourself?”
Eventually, as the thoughts of Gander’s mission here in pony lands returned, the urge to boisterously laugh in the mare’s face faded. Fortunately for her, so did the blood thirst, but Gander was still left with a less-than-polite mentality.
“I think,” he said at long last, “this conversation is over, pony.”
A roulette of various emotions passed by on Ducky’s face. Surprise, hurt, sadness. She was entirely without self-control, Gander noted. She would have been an even worse griffon than he was. Finally, the mare settled on mild irritation, with a furrowed brow and a vexed frown. “Well, then... fine.”
“Fine,” Gander agreed noncommittally, looking past her as if she had already left.
“Fine!” She stuck out her tongue as she took off from the cloud, wheeling swiftly away with a grace he could have never hoped to match. Gander did not watch as she left, choosing instead to stretch out his wings and roll them back in their sockets with an audible pop. The soreness of the collision had long since faded, and he had wasted far too much time talking about nothing of importance with that brazenly impertinent ma-
“Um,” a voice called from behind him and he sighed. Her again. At least she had the grace to sound embarrassed. “I... uh, I need the cloud.”
“Fine,” Gander grunted as he launched himself into the air, his wings holding him aloft with their heavy strokes. Even as the distance grew he could hear her last parting shot, as the winds were not strong enough here to swallow her words.
“Well, fine!”
And, like that, the winds carried him away.