• Published 24th Mar 2012
  • 973 Views, 14 Comments

Summer (The Fence) - 206-Ginge



An unfortunate incident grounds Jack the Griffin in Ponyville

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Chapter 1

Fucking pigeons.

I took account of my current situation. I was on my back, looking up at the underside of several large oaks. I could see where I had made my initial impact with them; the outline of my large eagle wings were distinct from the other holes obviously made by pegasi. My back throbbed in pain, letting me know which part of me hit the ground first. I had no clue where I was, but I knew my flight to Los Pegasus was going to be significantly delayed.

My head ached as I recalled the event that led me down here. I had been basically on autopilot, trying to keep warm by taking my mind off of the cold breezes pelting me from the east. Instead I thought of my family in Los Pegasus, my sister whom I hadn’t seen since moving out when she was seven. God, she must be nearly nineteen by now. I tried to imagine what she would look like. My mind kept putting her seven-year-old features on a nineteen-year-old body, which didn’t make sense, but it made me feel warm, and that was my ultimate goal at the time.

Suddenly, a flock of pigeons cut directly into my path. Being the clumsy flyer I am, my attempts at avoidance failed, and I soon found myself plummeting downwards at a frightening pace. Whether I hit one of the damned rats I’m not sure, but I certainly did hit something. My aching back wouldn’t let me forget that, not for a while. I turned my attention now to getting on my paws.

“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAW!”

Pain. Burning. The feeling of bone scraping flesh, nerves being pinched, muscles clenching rapidly. I shot back to my original position, still feeling the burning sensation in my wing. I was stuck. I couldn’t roll over without immediate pain, not to either side. I was fucking helpless. God damn pigeons.

As the pain began to pass from my attempts at moving, my mind began to race. What the hell was I supposed to do? Call for help? I could be anywhere right now! My stupidity in not taking along a map sure did pay the fuck off.

Speaking of which, where were my bags? They certainly weren’t around my waist now. I scanned the area, looking for a hint of black canvas. At least it was light enough down here to see. The gap I had created in the trees certainly helped, but in general the oaks didn’t block all that much light from reaching the soil underneath them. Usually that meant grass, but, lucky me, all that was around was compacted dirt.

Wait.

Compacted dirt?

“HEY! IS ANYONE OUT THERE?”

A small voice called from far away, but I had no idea how to respond. Would a caw scare the voice off? The voice almost certainly belonged to a pony, but I’ve never met many of them outside of flight team. I knew Jen had started working with them in Los Pegasus, but I also knew that the general pony population enjoyed living separately from us.

Well, what other choice did I have?

“SCREEEEEEAAAAAAW!”

I felt the ground beneath me vibrate with the impact of hooves running. Damn, too loud. I mulled over the situation, again: I was most certainly in an area populated by ponies, since the dirt beneath me was unnaturally flattened. I had just made contact with one, but my scream had most likely scared it off. My wings were almost certainly fractured, perhaps in multiple places, and to top it all off, I couldn’t move. So, my options were basically either try to roll over again and risk causing irreversible damage to my wings, or wait for somepony less afraid of a griffin call to come along.

Just then a purple smudge came out from behind an oak quite a significant distance away from me. I noticed the vibrations of the ground were getting stronger, not lighter. The purple smudge was actually coming towards me. So it wasn’t afraid of griffins, after all.

“YOU OKAY OVER THERE?”

I paused.

“Yeah, I’m just screeching out in pain because it’s too nice a day. NO, I’M NOT OKAY!”

Sarcasm. Great way to introduce yourself, Jack.

Thankfully the vibrations didn’t decrease in intensity. I began to make out some detail about the purple smudge. The first thing I noticed was that it was indeed a pony. The second thing I noticed was the horn on top of its head. The third thing I noticed was that there was a second part to this pony, a small creature riding along on its back, also purple, and with green spines down its back.

A dragon. Really? A unicorn carrying a dragon was going to save me from my helplessness?

The pony finally reached me, and stopped suddenly when it saw the blood that surrounded my outspread wings. Yeah, I certainly wasn’t pretty.

“Oh, my, you really are hurt.”

“Yeah, well, landing on your wings after a 200-foot drop will do that to you.”

I really couldn’t stop being my douchey self for more than five minutes.

The unicorn stared at my figure, a look of genuine concern on her face. “Can you move?” she asked.

“Oh, totally, I just thought lying on my back after giving myself a compound fracture was a great idea.”

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

The unicorn, completely unfazed by my jerkishness, entered a period of intense thought, interrupted by the baby dragon on her back.

“Uh, Twilight?”

“Oh, sorry. Do you mind if I try lifting you?”

“Um, knock yourself out, but I don’t think-“

Suddenly I was surrounded by a purple glow. Ah, yes, magic. The unicorn’s face was filled with concentration. I suddenly felt the ground move downwards. My conscious mind was briefly confused by the disorienting sensation, but only for a moment before the pain came back.

“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAW!”

The purple glow vanished and I dropped the short distance back to the ground.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the unicorn rushed to get the apology out of her mouth. “I guess I can’t lift your wings with the rest of you.”

Without anything supporting them, my wings had drooped ever so slightly as the unicorn pulled me upwards. This movement was enough to cause every nerve in both of my wings to protest loudly.

“Okay, let’s try not to make him make THAT sound again,” the dragon commented. Funny enough, I had screeched about three more times today than I had in the past year. It was a pleasant sound for no one, but it also was my natural reaction to extreme pain, which I was going through.

The unicorn stood perplexed for a few seconds, and then sighed. “I can’t think of a way to lift your wings without getting help from somepony else. Spike, could you run into town and fetch Doctor Stable? Tell him the details, too, or else we’ll wind up galloping back and forth from the hospital like we did last time.”

“Yes, sir!” With that, Spike was off.

“So, I’m Twilight Sparkle.”

“I’m Jack. Sorry about being such a jerk there.”

“Oh, it’s really no problem. When my friend Rainbow Dash broke her wing, we couldn’t get her to stop talking about how she was ‘a victim of the wind’ and she ‘totally could’ve finished the loop if that wind didn’t keep blowing her off course’. I mean, seriously, have you heard of a pegasus so stub-“

She stopped when she looked back down at me and blushed slightly. She had talked too much. “So, uh, what brings you to Ponyville?”

“Pigeons,” I answered with a straight face. Now I knew where I was, at least.

She stared at me blankly for a few moments before realizing that I was joking, and laughed awkwardly. “I take it this is a detour then?”

“Yeah, it most certainly is.” It was awkward having a conversation with someone looking down at me while I was quite seriously stuck to the floor, but I appreciated the company.

An idea popped into my head. “Hey, would you mind looking around for my bags? They’re black canvas, waist-style.”

“Oh, sure,” Twilight responded cheerfully. She stepped carefully around my wings, moving around the trees as she looked. After a couple of minutes, she asked, “Where you headed?”

I hesitated for a moment. She certainly was friendly, and her cheerfulness had managed to keep my mind off of the pain, but she was slowly getting personal, I could tell. I didn’t exactly feel like opening up to her, but at the same time she’d asked me a question.

“Los Pegasus,” I responded.

“Oh, you’ve got quite a bit to go then, don’t you?”

“Yeah, well, I’m a little over halfway there now.” Oops. That would qualify as opening up.

“That’s good.” She didn’t take the bait. Or maybe she detected my reclusiveness somehow and didn’t want to press further. Either way, I appreciated it.

She looked in silence for the next few minutes, getting farther away from me with each circle she made. I thought about how glad I was she happened to be out here. Her simple presence was enough to keep me calm. I was lucky she wasn’t alone, too, or else she would be the one fetching the doctor right now and I’d be alone.

I felt vibrations again just as I heard Twilight yell “Found it!” She made her way back towards me through the trees, holding the bags out in front of her with her magic. I saw quite a few ponies galloping towards me from far away as well, a good sign. If they were able to find me so quickly we couldn’t be that far away from the edge of the woods or the hospital.

The ponies made their way to me fairly quickly. I saw that there were four of them in total. One of them obviously was a doctor, while the others seemed to be nurses. The doctor was a unicorn, while the three others were earth ponies.

“Oh, wow, these are some pretty bad fractures,” the doctor said with some concern on his face. “We’re definitely going to need to get you to the hospital.”

I noticed one of the nurses was carrying a large stretcher with her, which she proceeded to lay down next to me. The doctor used his magic to pull out two pieces from the bottom and attach them to the sides of the stretcher, presumably for my wings. “This might hurt a little, but it’ll be over quickly,” he promised.

With that, I was again surrounded in a purple glow as my body levitated slightly off the ground. More prepared for the pain this time, I managed to prevent myself from screeching, but I still felt the pinch of bone on nerve as they quickly slid the stretcher underneath me. Twilight gracefully dropped me onto the stretcher, and with my wings now fully supported by the solid wood, the five ponies all pitched in to lift me up and carry me swiftly to the hospital.

---

“Sorry to have to tell you this, but these x-rays don’t look good.”

I groaned. I knew that my wings were pretty busted up before coming to the hospital, but after arriving I realized just how bad they were. Not even the heavier painkillers could completely block out the discomfort of going from stretcher to bed, forcing my wings back to their natural position at my sides. I moaned all through the x-ray session as the well-intentioned nurses prodded my wings into different positions. The doctor now was with me, telling me the bad news.

“It looks like surgery will be necessary. And I don’t think you’ll be able to fly for at least six weeks.”

I felt my chest drop. There was no way I could shove my claustrophobic ass onto a train meant for ponies to Los Pegasus, and if I couldn’t fly there, I was stuck. Walking with talons was one of the least comfortable methods of locomotion evolution had come up with, and doing it for the 600 miles either way over any period of time would be torture.

“Based on what Twilight told me about your story, I’d assume you’ve got no place to stay here in Ponyville. You’re welcome to stay in the hospital for a few days, but I must insist you find other accommodations. Your insurance wouldn’t be too happy to pay bed fees for too long, and when they get unhappy they make you pay.”

Great. Stuck in a small town with no place to stay and basically enough cash to last me three days in Los Pegasus. I didn’t even have money to pay for a hotel, since I had planned to stay with my sister. Way to be prepared, Jack.

“Thanks, Doctor,” I moaned. “When will you operate?”

“As soon as possible,” the pony responded eagerly. “However, I’ve got quite a few patients to check up on before committing myself to the long operation yours will be. We’ll most likely begin getting you prepped in about half an hour. In the meantime, you have a visitor.”

I perked at the words. Who would visit me? My sister didn’t even know about my injury yet, and even if she did, it would take her three or four days to get here. The doctor left and I then noticed the purple unicorn standing in the doorway. Twilight Sparkle.

“Hey Jack,” she said, walking into the room. “I figured you’d be awfully lonely stuck in a hospital in a town you’ve never been in before, so I stopped by to say hello.”

“Well, thank you kindly,” I croaked. With all the painkillers flowing through me, I wasn’t in much of a mood for light conversation. I noticed she hadn’t brought along her dragon companion. I was slightly grateful; I didn’t really feel like making new friends at the moment, and while Twilight wasn’t exactly a friend yet, either, I preferred being alone with her rather than alone with the two of them.

She sat near the bed and pulled a book out of her waist bag. “You don’t mind if I read, do you?”

Wait, what? Read? “Uh, no problem,” I muttered. Why would she come to say hello and then just read? Who exactly was she?

She opened up the book with a smile and turned her eyes towards the page. “So, where are you from?”

Ah, manipulation. Maybe when she decided to not press further back in the forest, she was just trying to stop herself from coming on too strong. Now that she had me drugged, she must think she could get me to open up easier. Well, I wasn’t going to make myself vulnerable to the person that happened to be close to me in the woods this morning. I decided short answers were the way to go.

“Near Baltimare,” I replied in a huff.

“Interesting,” she commented earnestly, still reading the book. “Why are you headed to Los Pegasus, then?”

“Family,” I shot back.

“Oh, kay,” Twilight responded, obviously a bit thrown off by my quick answer. She wasn’t getting the best of me. “What kind of family do you have over there?”

“Sister,” I again replied in a flash. I looked at the blank TV and saw Twilight giving me an odd look in the reflection. She probably was a bit miffed by my sudden brusque personality. Hopefully she’d chalk it up to the painkillers and stop asking questions. Lo and behold, the next twenty minutes went by in silence as Twilight read her book and I shut my eyes for a quick doze.

I appreciated the company. I really did. It was just... too much. I didn’t really know the unicorn, anyway. I guess I was going to be stuck here for six weeks, so I should start making friends, but... I just felt separate from the ponies. I’d never really spent time with any of them before. Even when I was on flight team I stuck with the other griffins. This whole thing felt rather forced, anyway. I was pretty sure she was intentionally trying to get me to open up to her, and I had no idea why. I didn’t trust her, not yet.

“Jack?” Twilight’s quiet voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I opened my eyes and saw her at the foot of my bed, bags packed. “I’ve got to go. When you get out of surgery, you can tell one of the nurses to send word for me if you need company again.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled back, still half-dazed from a combination of fatigue and drugs. She was too nice. I didn’t think that I’d be sending word for her in any sort of hurry after the surgery. She turned to the door and left.

I fiddled with the small remote they gave me for the bed. I’d been moving my feet up and down for a while when a nurse came in and told me the doctor was prepping for surgery and they’d be putting me under in a few minutes. I almost told her they might not need to bother with the drugs, but thought better of it. I’d been a little bit too sardonic throughout the day today, and it wasn’t winning me any points with anyone.

Things started happening in a blur, and the last thing I remember before going under was the doctor getting slightly confused about where to put the IV, since my front legs were talons with no large blood vessels in them. He decided my hind legs would do, and I fell asleep quickly, eager to get some real rest after the day’s ordeal.