//------------------------------// // So this is home? // Story: Road to fame: My new life... As a gryphon. // by lord indisar //------------------------------// I was happy to have finally reached the end of the forest, and well... I was definitely nowhere near Ponyville. No Fluttershy's cottage, no Twilight's Castle, and certainly no Canterlot in the distance. In other words, I was absolutely lost in terms of location. The unicorn came to a stop at a house that was practically the first one we ran into, and opened the door. And well, it was as I'd expected a home to look like. It had lighting, a kitchen, a refrigerator, a little sofa, stairs to a second floor, bags of oats and bags of hay....okay maybe those last two were for ponies only. She set me down on the carpet mat and lay down on the couch, and began staring off into space, as if she was thinking about something. Huh, guess feet are allowed on the couch, I decided, before jumping up onto the couch, flexing my talons and paws and 'getting a feel' for the sofa, which turned out to be quite comfortable. Meanwhile, I padded over to the little unicorn, kinda well.... Inspecting her, really. I hadn't seen her in the show, so I wanted to look. She had a hanging lamp for a cutie mark, and she actually seemed quite young. Huh... how old is she? I wondered. She seemed in a word, pretty. With cute little freckles on her face. Couldn't be that old. And that's when she turned her head to where I previously was, before looking to me. Snake, your cover's blown, get outta there! "(What is it, little one?) she asked softly, in that same language that I didn't get earlier. "Hmm?" I tried to sound out, but instead of the 'hmm' sound, I let out a shrill collection of noises that I could only describe as some sort of short bird call. Oops. She didn't seem to be phased by my unexpected outburst (at least to me. That was freaky!) Instead, she zoned out again. Jeez, what was she thinking about? And at that moment, I heard, and felt, a rumbling. My stomach. Oh lord, I didn't even know it could do that! Well the unicorn must of heard me, as she snapped out of her little phase, and got up and went towards the kitchen, looking around quizzically. Oh right... Damn, I was a gryphon. She wouldn't know how to feed me. I'm sure somewhere along the lines that eagle-Lion had paired with some sort of herbivore, right? I mean, Gilda ate an apple in the show, so I guess I was an omnivore, right? Then again, I hated that part about the show. There's no way any combination of a bird of prey and a lion would be able to process that type of food. The only headcanon I ever came up for that was that griffons didn't have to be a cross between an eagle and a lion in the Poniverse, just a cross between any feline and any bird. Though that headcanon is shattered with the fact Gilda's clearly eagle on the bird side, and lion on the feline side ( they even addressed it as so in the show), so.... Yeah. I don't know how that works. But chances were that life was still going to be a bit of a living hell anyways. How would ponies even treat a predator such as me? I wondered, so... I mean, I'm a child now, they'll understand, sure. But when I'm older? Would they expect me to find some other way to eat? Will I have to hunt in secret just to get proper nutrition enough to live? Wow, that would be a pain, with my white beak and claws. At least my main body was pretty black. Being white would suck so badly... Wow, the racist undertones....But back to the seriousness of all this. What would I be expected to do when I was older? Would ponies call the guards because they witnessed me killing little creatures? And even if it was permitted, there's surely some ponies out there that would persecute me so hard for killing animals. Now I'm glad I'm not in Ponyville.... Actually, remind me never to go there, at this point. I'd rather not face the Staremaster. Well, the unicorn came back with some hay, as if she expected me to eat some. Well, it was time to test out these new tastebuds, so I sniffed it a little, before pulling one of the straws into my mouth... It tasted like... Hay. Though the taste was a even blander than I thought it would be ( it's hay, so... That's already beyond bland. Now picture it even blander than that.) . So... That was a nope. I still didn't appreciate hay. Yes, I tasted it when I was a human. It tasted like hay. The unicorn just kept holding the pile in my face, probably waiting for an answer from me or something. Well I decided to let her stop waiting, and did the single most jerkwad thing I could do at that moment. I blew the rest of the hay into her face. Though there was one thing that the single piece of hay still in my mouth reminded me of. Hey, look, I'm Jet now! I silently claimed to no one in particular. What? That was my favorite show when I was a kid. And I wasn't letting her take the piece of hay, which she inevitably tried to do. Nope, my chewing twig, not yours! Well she herded me outside the house, where I noticed it was getting darker, and she led me to the little garden she had out there. Oh goodie, more taste tests. I spit out the piece of hay, and the unicorn plucked some plants off a vine, and the plants oddly enough... Looked like... Tomatoes... Oh god... I hated tomatoes( And I let her know that, by giving as much of a death stare as I could with my big ol' eyes) , especially if they were alone, and not in a salad. Too juicy and weird tasting to eat straight. I mean, grapes tasted good, so the juiciness was actually nice... But tomatoes.... Eww. Just weird. Well... Again, different taste buds, so I might as well taste it, so I bit one. Let me tell you now, it tasted like a tomato. Only weirder... And it felt even juicier than a tomato of that size should. Oh my god. Like biting into a little balloon, filled with 90% water, and 10% ketchup.. Needless to say, I spit it out in the first second it exploded in my mouth. And I had to get that damned taste out of my throat, so I started gagging. Well... Next she presented me what looked like raspberries and blueberries. Okay, I liked those. I mean, in my old life, at least. So I bit into them, and well... They also tasted juicier and more watery than fruits of their size. Like, mostly water, then the actual taste of the fruit. I'm sensing a pattern here... Well, tomatoes weren't fruits, but the general makeup of it was the same. Filled with wet insides, and a solid outside... Any ways, I could live with the blueberries and raspberries, though not on them alone of course. The unicorn then moved onto some weird stalk plant that she pulled out the ground, taking some of the ground with it. I can only really describe it as some sort of lettuce-celery hybrid, and when she gave some to me... Same problem with the hay, it tasted pretty bland... Only this one tasted more like celery than anything, but blander... I'm using that word way too much, aren't i? I hate celery without ranch... So I spit it out. Nope. I mean did it taste edible? Not exactly, but I'd hit on it if I was absurdly hungry. I'm a spoiled little brat. She seemed done with the things she had in the garden, I guess, even though I noticed a few other things. I guess she had enough information? Dunno. But I wasn't done. I noticed something squiggling on the ground where she pulled the Lettuce-Celery thing from. A worm. It was also at that point I realized my vision was way better than I used to have, probably those eagle eyes at work. I dashed upon it, and.. Left it up to my mind to start thinking. I was half-bird wasn't I? And birds eat worms. Hmmmm.... What I was thinking of doing was beyond stupid, but I was curious. And nothing could taste worse than those tomatoes. I mean... Oh god, I'm trying to rationalize eating a worm. Well, here goes nothing, I decided, and dove to eat the worm that was far too slow to escape my killer beak. Surprisingly, it tasted... Not bad. Maybe sweet, even. Ew.... The hell I just do? Apparently the unicorn was thinking the same, with the look of disgust that was on her face. Well, it tasted better than those tomatoes, and no one can call me out on how wrong that is. It's not like i was going to degrade myself to the point of eating just worms. That's where I'll draw the line. I'm sure I'd wise up eventually to the fact that I was eating worms, and it wouldn't taste good after a while.... Anyways, we both went inside, and the unicorn gave me some tablet thing. Maybe an antibiotic, because I just ate a worm... And then she went upstairs, probably to the bedroom, as it was getting even darker outside now. *** twenty minutes later...*** "Fuck....She gave me a sleep pill, didn't she?" I asked myself, felling a little more than just relaxed, eyes half-closed, and laying on the couch. And I resigned to the embrace of sleep.