Feathers and Ruffles

by Autobot Lancewing

First Day

Feathers and Ruffles
First Day

A nine year-old griffon who was wearing a black jacket, a green collared shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes looked at the intimidating structure before her: Cloudsdale Elementary School. She had been to several schools, and always had a hard time fitting in with the other kids in her class. She took a deep breath and slowly walked in. As she walked through the hall, she saw lots and lots of ponies, but they were only pegasi. She had never seen ponies before, but they didn’t seem as bad as some people made them out to be.
She moved quietly over to the locker her mom said was hers and opened the door. She placed a few of the things from her backpack in there before closing the door and walking toward her classroom. She looked for a desk in the room her mom said had her name in it.
When she found it, she sat down and placed her backpack under her desk. Eventually, a girl sat down on her left. She was a light blue mare with a rainbow mane. She wore tennis shoes, jeans, a pink shirt, and a dark blue jacket. Her pink eyes met with the griffon’s own. The griffon looked away from the pony, not wanting to socialize just yet-
-But the pony had other plans, “Hey there,” She greeted.
“Uh...hey…”
“What’s your name?”
“Gilda…”
“Oh...nice name. I’m Rainbow Dash.”
“Nice to meet you, Rainbow Dash…”
“I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new?”
“Yes…”
“Oh… Do you know anyone here?”
“No…”
“Well, you do now.” The rainbow haired girl smiled.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
******
The bell had rung signalling everypony, and griffon, that it was time for lunch. Rainbow looked toward Gilda, “Do you need me to show you where the cafeteria is?”
“I think so…”
“Okay, just follow me.”
Gilda nodded and followed Rainbow to the cafeteria.
When the two girls came to the double doors leading to the cafeteria, Rainbow stopped, “You can go first.”
Gilda walked through. The first thing she noticed was that the huge room was filled with ponies. If she were to get an aerial view, it would look as if she were looking at candy. She looked around even more and noticed that it was designed to look like a gym, likely because the room doubled as a gymnasium for physical education. Even if it weren’t already common knowledge to eat off of the floor, it would especially be a bad idea to do it here. She noticed the line forming towards the right wall, so she moved towards there with Rainbow behind her.
She grabbed a tray, bowl, and spoon before she was given her share of… vegetable soup? “Well, it’s better than the slop I got at my old school.”
Gilda waited at the end of line for Rainbow to catch up. "Can I sit with you?"
“Sure.”
Rainbow led the way towards one of the tables, but she trips and spills most of her soup!
"Uh oh!" A boy's voice called out, "Rainbow Crash strikes again!" He and two other boys burst into laughter.
Gilda looked at the trio, then helped Rainbow up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just something I get a lot.”
"Can't you tell a teacher or something?"
“I did, several hundred times.”
“Doesn’t seem like they’re doing a good job.”
"One of them has a rich dad, and another's mom is the vice principal."
“Ah. That explains it.”
"Yeah... My parents said that if it continues, I'll be transferred."
“Definitely not news for me. I’ve been transferred…” Gilda stops to mentally count the number of times she has been transferred before, “Six times.”
Rainbow's eyes widened, "And you're MY age?!"
“Yeah… My parents move a lot.”
“Why?”
“Work.”
"What the heck do they do?"
“They’re ambassadors.”
Now Rainbow’s eyes widened. "Did you just say a bad word?"
“No… Why?”
"Oh...just sounded like one..."
“I thought you did.”
“Well, an ambassador is a person who represents a specific country. In this case, Griffopolis.”
"Oh...sounds boring."
“Tell me about it. When I grow up, I want to be something more awesome than that.”
"Me too, I wanna be a Wonderbolt."
“A what?”
"You've never heard of the Wonderbolts?!"
“I’m not even from here. Like I said, I’m from Griffopolis.”
"Oh yeah... Well, the Wonderbolts are this super amazing flying team! They do all these tricks and stunts and stuff! And I wanna be one, too!"
“Oh, like the Flareagles, right?”
“Who?”
Gilda was silent for a minute. “Nevermind. Let’s just eat before something happens.” Gilda pours some of her soup into Rainbow’s bowl. “Here you go.”
Rainbow didn’t know what to say. No one had ever done anything like that for her.
“Are we gonna eat or what?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Both girls went to the table and sat down before preparing to eat. Gilda took a bite, but couldn’t get around the fact that there was no meat. “How do you stand this?”
“Stand what?”
“There’s no meat in this soup.”
“Oh, ponies don’t eat meat.”
Gilda gave Rainbow a queer look. “Why?”
“Why do you eat meat?”
“Cuz it tastes good…”
“Well, here it’s illegal.”
Gilda didn’t say anything, but took another sip of her soup. 'I'll just have to get used to it.'