“Geez Gilda, you live in a dump.”
“Like you can talk Greta,” Gilda teased as she tried to get her door back on its hinges. “At least my place has a door.”
Greta just gave a small sigh, “Alright, fair enough. Now what was this feather brained scheme of yours again?”
Gilda fiddled with the door for another minute, until she got frustrated with it and just dropped it down. “Its simple, were going to return Griffonstone to it's former glory one building at a time. First we'll get some practice by fixing up our places, then we'll advertise ourselves as repair griffons, get a few others to hire us, and give everyone something to be proud of. Then people will want to stick around, and maybe they'll be a bit happier if they don't have to live these shabby shacks. Kills two snakes with one stone.”
Greta raised an eyebrow, “Uh huh, and how does that spread the 'wonders of friendship'?” she said, waving her talons a bit for emphasis. She then sat down on a pile of nesting material, and immediately jumped back up as something quickly skittered out from underneath her to find another hiding spot.
Gilda opened her her beak to reply, then closed it. After a minute she opened it again, and closed it again. Finally she said, “I'm still working that part out. I mean it gives folks a reason to stick around, instead of winging it as soon as they could afford to.”
“Like how you were going to.”
“Ya, like how I was going to.”
For a minute a silence fell between the two griffins as Greta mulled over the idea. “Alright,” she said, breaking the silence. “I might as well help you out with your feather brained plan, since I'm kind of sick of living in a dump as well,” Gilda gave her a small smile. “So where do we start?”
The two girls looked around at the various mounds of mounds of misplaced nesting materials, the rotted wood, and cracked windows. “I have no idea,” Gilda said, and at that moment a piece of the ceiling fell in behind her. Greta just covered her her eyes with her talons.
The girls spent the next hour trying to figure out where to start their project. After another small chunk of the ceiling fell down, hitting Greta in the head, the two decided to start with the roof. To say that it was in poor condition was an understatement, it had been patched over with small bits of scrap wood in numerous places, and large chunks of it looked like they were eaten through by carpentersprites. When Gilda tried to land on it, the roof groaned in protest, threatening to collapse out from underneath her.
“Wow, it's a miracle that your roof hasn't caved in on you yet. Mine isn't even this bad,” Greta commented, tapping on a section of the roof and watched as it crumbled into sawdust.
“Ya ya ya, now help me clear all of this off,” Gilda said as she began to tear off the old wood. Greta joined in and soon the two of them had the roof striped down to the rafters, which looked surprisingly sturdy.
“Alright, so what's next?” Greta asked, wiping a bit of sweat from her brow.
“We have to recover the roof, duh,” Gilda said while brushing off the wooden debris.
“Uh huh, and what are we going to cover it with?”
“Wooden planks you feather... brain,” Gilda looked around and came to the slow realization that there was a small flaw in her plan.
“And just where might those wooden planks be?” Greta was grinning now, obviously enjoying herself.
“Oh can it you doofus, we'll have to buy some planks from Gretchen’s store. You go on ahead, I'll be there in a minute, let me just get some bits to pay her with.”
Greta just nodded and flew off toward the general store. Once she had left, Gilda ducked into her roofless house, and pulled out a small sack from under one of the piles of nesting material. She opened it up and and pulled out a few bits, and after a moment’s hesitation she pulled out a small folded up piece of parchment from the sack. She carefully unfolded the parchment for what had to be the hundredth time. On it was a map of the world, worn around the edges and covered in notes about various far flung locale. It was hard to believe that only a week ago this map had been her entire life. She would spend hours looking it over, dreaming of the places that she might go in order to get away from Griffonstone. Gilda shook her head, “Crazy how things change.” She refolded the map and put it back in the sack, stashed the sack back under the pile of material, and flew off for Gretchen's store.
When Gilda got to the store she found Gretchen and Greta locked in a bout of griffon haggling. “I'm telling you I won't sell you that lumber for less than ten bits,” Gretchen said.
“And I told you, that I'm not going to pay you more than eight bits. It's just a pile of wood, you should be happy that I'll pay that much,” Greta countered.
“It's not just wood, its talon cut maple root, improted from Zebraca. Ten bits is as low as I go,” Gretchen replied, forelegs crossed in finality.
“My left wing its some fancy imported wood, eight bits or I'm walking,” Greta crossed her forelegs as well. The two stared each other down while Gilda just enjoyed the show. After a minute of tense silence, Gilda gave a small cough trying to get the girls' attention.
“Well if Greta won't pay ten bits for the wood then I will,” she said, jumping into the negotiations.
“Eleven bits,” Gretchen immediately replied.
Gilda narrowed her eyes at Gretchen, “You just said it was ten bits.”
“And for you, I'm saying it's eleven. Take it or leave it Gilda.” Now Gilda and Gretchen were locked in a staring contest of their own.
Greta watched the two girls as they tried to out stare one another, when an idea came to her, “Fine, I'll buy your stinking wood for ten bits.”
Gretchen immediately broke off from her staring contest and turned to Greta, “Thank you very much, seems that some griffons have some common sense.” She said, quickly throwing a nasty glace back at Gilda.
Greta ignored this comment, and began rummaging around in her scarf, looking for the bits to pay Gretchen with. “Well darn, seems I don't have any bits on me. Hey Gilda, do you have ten bits you could spare?”
The two friends shared a smile, “Yup I sure do,” Gilda said, and handed Greta some of the bits she had brought with her. Gretchen looked between the two, trying to figure out what had just happened. “You need any help hauling all of this lumber?” Gilda asked, now trying to hold back her laughter.
“That would be great,” Greta relied, also trying to stifle her giggles.
Gretchen, having no idea what had just happened, ruffled her wings in annoyance, “Look just give me the bits and you two loons can have your stinking wood, and then you can get out of my feathers.”
“Here you go,” Greta handed over the coinage still smiling.
Gretchen grumbled something under her breath and then stalked back to her shop, and slammed the door closed behind her. At that point Greta and Gilda couldn't hold their laughter in any more. After a minute they regained their composure, and they each grabbed several boards and began flying them back to Gilda's place.
“Did you see the look on her face,” Greta snickered. “I haven't seen my sister that annoyed in years!”
Gilda chucked, “Ya we got her good, it's kinda sad though that she wouldn't give you a discount or something.”
“I know right? Even though she's my feathers and blood she still tries to wring out every last bit that she can out of me. Ever since she inherited the shop from my parents she's been like that.”
Gilda just nodded, and let the conversation peter out, as the flew back to her house.
When they got there, they set about re-roofing the house. More than once Gilda gave her talons a good whack with the hammer. Greta had to stifle her laughter seeing the normally composed, agile Gilda fumbling with her hammer.
“Ow, jeez!” Gilda yelled after hitting her primary talon for the third time.
“What's the matter Gilda, don't know how to use a hammer?” a voice called from the street below.
“Get lost Finnegan,” Greta called back, not even looking away from her work.
“What? I just came to collect on that small debt that Gilda owes me,” the black and gray griffon said.
“What debt? Are you talking about that scarf of yours?” Gilda asked.
“Yes I mean my scarf! Do you know how long it took me to get that stain out of it?” Finnegan asked, clutching at the green knit scarf around his neck.
Gilda shrugged, “That old rag needed a good washing anyway. I mean when was the last time you took it off?”
The comment hit Finnegan like a slap the face, “Old rag? Old rag!” He flew up to the roof, “My grandmother knit this scarf for me when I was a fledgling. Don't you dare call it an 'old rag'.”
By now Finnegan was standing inches a way from Gilda, beaks nearly touching. “First off, personal space have you heard of it?” Gilda said pushing Finnegan away from her. “Second, that scarf is nearly as old as I am, so I think that it qualifies as an 'old rag'. Third, I don't owe you a single bit, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to pin fake debts on me. Your debt is your problem, not mine.”
“Fine, whatever,” Finnegan said gloomily. He brushed himself off, readjusted his scarf, and took off.
After a minute the two girls went back to to working on the roof. “You know, Finnegan is in kind of a jam,” Greta said, lining up her next nail. “Count Geringhoff is really starting to put pressure on him to pay his debt.”
“Like I said, not my problem. Maybe if he tried to get a job around here he might have some bits to start paying the Count with,” Gilda muttered. She then hit her primary talon yet again with her hammer.
It wasn't long before the roof was fixed. After Gilda finished bandaging her talons, they moved on to the next step in their project, moving all the misplaced nesting material.
“So remind me again why you have all this in your house, rather than, say around it? Like you're supposed to do?” Greta asked as she grabbed another arm full of the material and hauled it outside.
Gilda sighed, “When we had those huge storms a few months back, I brought most of it in, because I was still saving bits and didn't want to have to go out looking for more material, or worse, buy it from your sister. So I hauled most of it inside, to keep it dry during the storms. Then I just never really got around to putting it back out around the house. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Greta rolled her eyes as she pick up another load of material. Underneath it was a big leather bound book of some kind. The leather was faded with age, and it had a few stains here and there, but looked fairly intact otherwise. “Hey Gilda, whats this thing?”
Gilda looked over at the book that Greta had uncovered, “Oh, that. It's nothing really, just an old photo album from when I was at flight school.” She sat down beside Greta who had put down her armload of material, and started pawing through the album.
The photos in the album were mostly intact, with a few splotches here and there. There were pictures of Gilda flying through the obstacle course, others of her racing with some of the other fillies and colts, and several pictures of her and Rainbow Dash. “Hey this one of the ponies that came by a week back,” Greta pointed to the picture of Dash and Gilda in mid-race.
Smiling, Gilda nodded, “Ya that's Rainbow Dash, we were best friends back in Flight Camp.”
After going through a few more pages Greta asked, “If you were such good friends, why did you two act like you hated each others guts when she visited?”
Sighing, Gilda looked away from her newest friend, “I don't know, I guess I forgot what it was like to be genuine with someone else, after coming back here. In Griffonstone everyone is aloof, and no one would ever try to be nice to someone who wasn't family. And even then. Ponies are totally different, they smile all day long, seem to have never heard of personal space, and generally care about one another, no matter who that other might be. Me and Dash just grew up differently after Flight Camp, and we kind of drifted apart. It didn't help that she had made friends with one of the most annoyingly energetic, busy-body mare I had ever met.”
“The pink one that wouldn't stop hopping everywhere?”
“That's the one.”
The two sat there for a few more minutes, then Greta broke the silence, “Well, I know one thing, I care about you Gilda, and I think that you care about me, too. You patched things up with Dash as well, right?” Gilda nodded. “So maybe there's a chance that we don't have to become like every other grumpy, loner griffon.”
Gilda chuckled, “I hope so, it would be nice to have a few more friends. Now come on, we've got a project to finish.” And with that the two friends got back to work hauling the nesting material out to its proper place.
Once they had finished moving all of the material, Gilda and Greta tried to figure out how to replace the windows. She had gotten spares two days ago, in preparation for the project, but now neither she nor Greta knew how to go about replacing them.
“We could just just break them and then pop the new ones in,” Greta suggested.
“I'd rather not get broken glass in my back paws. We could saw them out, they have wooden frames,” Gilda replied.
“Only if you have a saw, because I sure don't,” Greta shot that idea down. When the both realized that they didn't have the first clue about how to go about replacing the windows they shared a defeated sigh.
“Hey, what are you two doing with those windows?” Finnegan asked as he landed beside the girls.
“None of your business Finnegan,” Gilda replied automatically.
Finnegan huffed, “Fine, I was just going to ask if you needed any help with those windows, but if it's none of my business I guess I'll just leave you two to it.”
“Wait!” Greta shouted, stopping Finnegan in mid-takeoff, “Are you saying that you could help us replace Gilda's windows?”
“I am, ya. For a price of course,” Finnegan rubbed two of his talons together.
Gilda started to speak, then thought about what Finnegan was saying, “Fine, I'll pay you five bits to help us install the windows.”
“Make it ten bits and I'll do all the work myself and bring my own tools,” Finnegan counter offered.
Gilda mulled the idea over for a second, “Deal.” Finnegan's face lit up, and he flew off towards home at a blazing speed. Greta looked quizzically over at Gilda, who just shrugged, “Hey he needed the bits and we needed the help. It sounds like a good deal to me.”
Soon Finnegan came rushing back with a box full of tools and he began work on the windows. Greta and Gilda sat back and watched as he quickly worked the two windows out of their fairly makeshift sills and got to work on fitting the new ones into place.
“You're really good at this for being a feather brain, Finnegan,” Gilda said as he finished up the last window.
“Well my grandfather helped build a lot of the new houses after Griffonstone started expanding again. He taught me a lot while he was still around. It's kind of sad to see them all broken down nowadays. Gramps would be heart broken to see them in this state,” Gilda just nodded as he finished fitting the last window. “Alright I'm done, now then do you have my pay?” Finnegan asked.
Gilda nodded, and dropped a small pile of golden coins into Finnegan's outstretched claws. The three griffons looked at the house, taking in the haphazardly built roof, with nails sticking out in several places, the misshapen nest, with mounds of material in some areas and sparse coverage in others. The windows however were beautifully mounted, with some repairs around them for a tight fit. “Well I guess its better than when we started,” Greta said.
Gilda chuckled, “I guess so, and hey,” Gilda went up to the front door, which she had rehindged after the they had finished the roof. “At least the door and windows look nice. Any chance you could help us fix up Greta's place tomorrow Finnegan?”
The griffon shrugged, “Hey if you've got the bits, then I've got the time.”
“Glad to have you on board, now would you two dweebs like to come in for a few scones? I've still got some left over from yesterday,” Greta's face lit up at the offer nodded her head vigorously, while Finnegan just smirked and shrugged.
The three talked late into the night as a new friendship formed in Griffonstone.