The second chortle: Head intolerably near the clouds. (3.0)
The next thing I felt was a sharp pressure in my shoulder before everything rushed into a multicolored.
It seemed that, in addition to hiring a talking griffin hit-woman, Devin replaced the lights with a pair of yellow, transparent crystal clusters that jutted out in sets of four. They crawled downwards like stalactites, the middle ones being longer than the surrounding three.
Devin definitely had too much time on his hands. If he dipped in his tuition fund for this, Mom was going to be livid.
"Talk!" The griffin stood above me, its- or rather, her voice came out as half screech and half scream, like a person in a shout-off with a bald eagle.
I scooted towards the door, ignoring the rub-burn it inflicted on my bum. When I cleared enough space, I sat up, only for her to be upon in two wing-beats. She had no hair around her brows to speak of; though the purple spots around her eyes crinkled into a scowl.
"The ceiling is pretty?" I stammered.
In my panic I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind, and it was stupid. Panic and stupid are like conjoined twins.
She stared at me blankly for a second, her beak ajar. I felt the reaction before it came, akin to the moment when a baby falls on its head and just looks at you with huge eyes for a split second before releasing the floodgates. Except this time, the only tears would be coming from me as my still-beating heart was ripped out of my chest.
Somewhere in the ninth circle of hell, Murphy and Satan were laughing over a cheap pack of beer at my expense.
The next noise she made was all screech, like a raptor diving upon a poor defenseless salmon.
I bolted to my feet, though I had a hard time standing at all, my joints were pudding. It was a small miracle that I had yet to soil my clothes.
Yeah, because it would be oh so disrespectful if the mortician had to deal with a bit of waste alongside the usual viscera.
"I don't know!" I shook my head enough to feel my brain whipping about. "Wait." I frowned. "What did you mean your bed?"
The griffin gave a harrumph and leaned forward, poking me in the chest with every two or so words. "I mean my bed, in my room, in my house!" Everything she said following that was a dull, incoherent roar. Maybe my reptile brain kept me backing up a step with each jab, but the rest of me wasn’t in the moment.
“Not possible.” I said, more to myself than anyone.
'Today is Saturday,' I thought.
'Yesterday; I went to school, took a history test, came home, ate dinner, showered, pretended to understand my textbooks, and slept. Unless there was some truth behind all those jokes about this year's senior prank being the contamination of the cafeteria's salisbury steak supply with acid, I am pretty sure that nothing went amiss during my waking hours. There are exactly zero logical explanations for waking up next to a giant talking bird of prey.'
A sensation brought my train of thought to a close. No, it was a lack of a sensation. The griffin’s talon hovered before my chest. A blue string of shirt fabric hung from it.
Her eyes were stuck on something to the side of me; just a second ago, she was all sound and fury, now it was the opposite. Common sense screamed for me to capitalize on this moment, to jump out of the nearest window, to do something other than see why I was offered this brief respite. Despite myself, I turned.
Standing in the doorway was a taller griffin with a grey coat, speckled white. Its neck and head feathers were a pale shade of tan. It held a single white talon to its beak, letting it rest on the carpet only after locking a pair of green-rimmed eyes with my own.
Double griffins in the one hallucination. My sanity score had to be somewhere in the single digits.
The newcomer slipped past me and the other griffin on its way to the edge of the bed before settling down.
"Gilda," he said in a deep, measured tone just above a whisper; "Who you let into your bedroom is no business of mine, however, I would ask that you at least keep whatever you're doing at five in the morning quiet. Your sister is still asleep, and I would like to save "the talk" for a much later date than today"
I wasn't going to comment on that last bit.
Gilda on the other hand, flared her wings, "I didn't let her in my room!"
The taller griffon gave her a glare, mouthing, “Quietly, please.”
Slowly, she furled her wings back up and squeezed them against her sides, taking a deep breath. It looked like a kind of self-calming exercise. Her left wing twitched every now and then but it seemed to work for the most part. She continued in a much softer tone, "I woke up to her hugging me. Emperor knows where she came from, the windows and doors are all locked so there's no way she got in withou-"
I raised my hand, by then, I was sitting, legs crisscross applesauce like an elementary kid.
"What?" Gilda snapped.
"I'm a guy."
Her left wing twitched again, tail swishing to and fro like Oreo does before pouncing on someone. I decided against telling her that she was the one who did the hugging.
Distantly, a tiny voice stirred.
We froze. The older griffin stared into the empty hallway with widened eyes. A moment’s passing without griffin number three making an appearance seemed to satisfy him enough to speak up.
"The living room," He said, pointing a poofy white tail tip at the doorway. “And not another sound before then.” He stepped off, brushing between us and stretching his wings with a yawn on the way.
The ceiling was incredibly high, Shaq O'Neal would likely have no problem standing on his own shoulders two times over. Forward we went, four paws, four talons and two feet; yet only one set of creaking steps.
Weird. They were taller than me, when laying down at least. Assuming they were more lion meat than bird meat, they weighed more, too. Perhaps it had something to do with weight distribution; I was all vertical while they had four points and a greater area to walk on.
I followed while a sense of dread crawled its way up my spine on wretched, freezing, spider legs. I recognized absolutely nothing about my surroundings. The walls were a rock-like gray and padded to boot. I pushed on one with my thumb and it gave a bit, like a gym mat. Visibility was low, the nearest source of light came from behind, partially eclipsed by the top of Gilda's frowning face.
It was however, just bright enough to make out all kinds of decorations my family could never afford; marble plates with beautiful swirling patterns stood out at even intervals, capes depicting gold trimmed symbols worthy of representing a bevy of high budget rpg factions sometimes took up the space between. Where they were absent, little curios like ornate helms and model ships with great canvas wings told any visitors that their unwashed feet were dirtying the realm of the upper crust.
And then there was a picture frame. I stopped, barely feeling a hard beak jab into the midsection of my spine.
Four griffins. two of which looked like younger versions of the ones bordering me. They were bunched under what I guessed was a bronze fountain with a giant fish, body curved upwards into a “C” shape, water gushing from its mouth. They were at a park or museum in the middle of summer. The mini-Gilda was front and center, a black furred chick with red feathers hung onto her back, talons resting on her head. To the left was papa griffin and to the right was a red furred, white feathered one who had Gilda's side in a loving embrace. It was the last straw, the last shell needed to shatter my already flimsy wall of denial
'No.'
'No no no no no no no!'
I squinted and tried to change the image with my mind, tried to bend the tall pine-trees into the oaks that grew outside of my home. Tried to will the feathers and beaks and talons away in place of Mom; with her subtle brown skin and black hair that gave off a nice sheen in the light due to her never missing a day of beauty products. Devin, and his perpetually cocky smirk. Dad’s easy-going eyes, almost impossible to upset.
Gilda poked my back again. "What's wrong with you?"
I shook my head, "Nothing, my apologies."
Everything was wrong. My stomach turned knots, if I had anything in my stomach I would have thrown up right there.
'I can't prove that this is real' I thought, more hope than substance. It was so vivid; from the cool carpet on my feet to the smell of thin air with a hint of ash...
A lucid dream. It had to be. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. No need to panic; this would soon be over, I would wake up to a nice Saturday morning, tell my family that I loved them and then laugh about this experience. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
The form in front of me coalesced from a hazy silhouette into the taller griffin as we met a pair of windows taller than I was. Blue twilight bled through thin curtains; fully revealing much of the same décor we’d already marched past. A polished round table, much bigger than the paltry thing my family plays board games on was surrounded by an "L" formation of sofas. A fireplace stood beyond them. The ceiling was even higher than the hallway and had a skylight at the very top, a fresh, almost free-flowing feel permeated the room. Like the one you get from stepping outside on a summer day.
He motioned me over to the small part of the "L" while the two griffins sat on the largest piece of furniture together, the male fiddled with a strange, lamp-like thing with the same type of crystals on Gilda's ceiling while the she-griffin cast me a glare that dared me to even blink in the wrong manner.
As his talon slid up the lamp shaft, the crystals gave an increasingly intense glow until all resisting pockets of darkness were eradicated.
"Let's start small; my name is Norward and this," he said, motioning open talons to his right; "is Gilda. Our surname is "Of Golden Tides"
I swallowed, getting the last bits of dryness out of my throat.
"Charles Burke."
The conversation went on, with Norward moving forward from simple questions like "How do you feel?" and "Are you hungry?" in a calm voice that somehow drew a few smiles from the both of us, eventually tapering off into more personal ones. Parents, siblings.
Nationality.
"America?" He parroted, putting an odd inflection on the middle that made it sound like “mare”. "Is that one of the Zebrican Islands or a sub-state of the Crystal Empire?"
I shook my head, prompting a frown from him, he got up and disappeared behind another hallway to the far right; "Hold on a minute."
I heard the muffled sound of drawers opening and closing amid rustling paper. He was back soon enough with a scroll held in his tail which he moved the crystal-stick/lamp to make room for. Unfurling it across half of the table, he asked, "Alight, where’s home?"
I humored him; there were three large continents, two moderately sized ones and multiple outlying islands in between and around them. At the very center was one of the large ones, labeled: Equestria connected to it above was: The Frozen North and to the South-East across an expanse of sea laid Griffonia, I didn't bother to read the other place-names, skimming instead for my own.
No results, as expected. I shook my head.
"Odd." Norward scratched at his neck while Gilda leaned in a bit, I couldn't tell if she wore a curious frown or a disbelieving one, I assumed both.
"Are you a mage or from a family of 'em? A teleportation spell gone awry perhaps?"
He cocked his head to the side when I responded in the negative again. "Magic is all stories and superstition where I’m from. There was a big witchcraft scare or two when America was just a colony and this guy named Chris Angel in recent years, but they were both fakes."
"Ponyfeathers." Gilda said; "Magic is half of what makes your heart pump, it lets plants grow, it's what heals you when you get cut- I mean," She waved her two front limbs in the air "It's in everything."
I stood up, leaving a Charles-rump-sized crater in the couch. The light from the window had grown in intensity while the lamp thing lost its glow. Either Norward had shut it off, or the crystal mechanism didn't work in the presence of direct light. It didn't matter really, I could probably make it work any way that I wanted to, as soon as I figured how to warp the dream.
My surroundings were solid, it would probably be hard to change because my mind already painted a consistent picture, it would be like adding "derf" between five and six. Maybe if I consciously thought about something I had yet to receive "visual" confirmation of.
"May I go outside for a quick second, please?"
"I don't see why not." Norward stretched and led me through a short trek into another hallway; "You'll get a better view from the roof," he explained when I asked why he was leading me there instead of the front door.
The stairs were narrow and went up at sharp incline, never ceasing until the top of my head brushed with the ceiling. I sneezed twice on the way and was coming upon a third when he stopped, feathers littered the stairs in abundance. Norward braced a trapdoor against his shoulder.
"Wait!"
He looked back at me like I had a tapeworm growing from my forehead. I bit my tongue, feeling warmth rush to my cheeks. That was a lot louder than I meant for it to be.
"May I?"
He shrugged, moving aside.
I swallowed, grasped the handle, closed my eyes and tried to visualize something so ludicrous that it would have to come from a dream:
'Pitch black despite light coming in through the windows' I squeezed my eyes a little harder for luck; 'ACDC doing a kids tunes concert with pink strobe-lights under the shadow of three moons made of cheese. In the midst of it all; Sephiroth standing on the turret of a Leman Russ main battle tank flanked by two velociraptors ridden by George Washington and Morgan Freeman.'
'Yes, this image pleases me.' I swung the door open, opening my eyes as soon as my feet hit flat ground.
A clear blue sky and a gush of cold air that stung my lungs with each inward breath. The roof was grey and sloped, covered in chunks of rocky material. Birdsong that I had never heard made itself known in the distance and a cloud floated directly above my head, near enough to reach out and touch.
'Don't panic' I repeated to myself with every step until I reached and sat down on the edge. The sun was just above another lower cloud formation, mercilessly illuminating the area around me; mountains connected by wooden suspension bridges spanned as far as I could see. Their crests and a great part below were carved off, making a stable base for loosely packed groups of mostly white and red and brown, flat-roofed buildings. Far below were more buildings clustered closer together in orderly squares broken up by wide streets.
Figures of every shape and color other than human moved along the roads that spider-webbed through the array and met together into a straight line, making its way into a thicket of misty trees.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
I hardly acknowledged Norward, or the fact that Gilda had followed us up a short while after.
There had to be some way that I could prove the falsity of it all. A second’s pause, then a grin slowly creeped along my face, too wide to have any humor.
"Hey." I said, the detachment in my own voice scared me a bit. "If I jump, do you think I'll wake up?"
He may have said something, but I had no way to know for certain. I already teetered forward, past the safety of the ledge.
There was the sound of rushing air.
Stats
Page generated in 0.033 seconds
Total duration
991 users online
1,683,506 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I think more HiE or HiG need more African American's going there.
Well, it's interesting to say the least...
Right about here is when I decided I liked Charles.
Also Gilda's brother is taking the fact some random guy popped into his little sister's bedroom while she is asleep remarkably well. Just saying, I may not have a little sister, but I have nieces and if that ever happened... well...
The wouldn't find the fucking bodies.
That is a problem with the whole "falling to end a dream" thing, if you dream traveled, you just...
Happily, falling does NOT wake me up from dreams, so I would never use such a method.
Those cloud walls must be between drywall and thermalight cement block in strength, because if they were just drywall, Charles could get into trouble by leaning on them too hard, and half thin thermalight block he can break with a good kick.
Thoughts on plummeting. Singalong. I beleive I can fly. I beleive I can touch the sky.
Thoughts on approaching the surface. Its so big and round, I know, Ill call it Ground. I wonder if it will be freinds with me.
You know, I just relaised what creeped me out about this town.
Its Edward Talonclaws.
Yup, the gryphon family will from now on be quite veary of the biped that throws himself off roofs.
Oh *snap*
did you really just refer the USA as America? are you trying to offend all other Americans?
I couldn't read this. The entire thing felt disjointed to me; like all of the paragraphs were isolated from the rest of the story. The lack of a flow made this a chore to read.
4879808 USA is the only American country that counts. We are Americans everybody else is not. They live on the continent only cus we let em. Cept Canada, they are that cool little brother.
The "meet and greet" scene is fine. The real annoying cliché in this chapter is the "I must be dreaming" thing.
4879929
My apologies for that.
I tried to make the paragraphs leading up to the longer ones as short as possible to avoid exhaustion on the reader's part.
If you can be troubled; may I have the single most jarring one so I can use it as a model to possibly fix the rest?
4879617
Edward Talonclaws?
I don't get why you Yanks are so afraid of saying that someone is black. It's not like you're calling them anything derogatory.
4880669
It's the essays I'm getting all the time.
Sometimes, I have to make a conscious effort to use contractions.
4880141 Dude, I'm American and even I have to say piss off. I am so sick and tired of hearing that we're the best, you know what no we're not, not by a long shot. Learn up on our problems and maybe you'll learn something.
Yes... jump from a roof when you think you are dreaming. Will totally helping
4879808
Yunno becaus i'm canadian ... yunno in america >:C
The meet and greet may be cliche but none the less necessary. I'm just surprised that the father is so calm about this, but then again everyone isn't the same and so their reactions may be different in that regard.
Over all a nice little development chapter ending in a not so cliff hanging cliffhanger.
4879808 forgive my ignorance, but I do not understand the offence. Could explain to those that don't live in the US?
No, you idiot! What are you doing?! Don't jump! There's an entire family of griffons in there to cuddle! I don't care if one is a guy!
4879808 Sorry, but that's a common saying here, if someone asks what country you are from, America is a common response. We are also known as American. We are from the United States of America, shortens to America.
4880648
Edward Scissorhands. The thing that creeps me out about that movie, is that the street which looks like the Stepford Wives alien scene, is an actual USA suburb.
4880789 cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/98d6f59158d782f69cf01ef7521518c7.png
Also. yes we are in fact the best.
4881401
Ah, I see; the thought about that guy walking around the US is a bit discomforting.
4881450
I don't know... Canadians sure do seem to be the best specimens of humanity on the planet.
4881450 The best in idiocy maybe
4881918 Best Military
Best people (we give more then any other nation, we only have bad crime rates in the cities that have banned firearms, and we have the most wealth)
Best science output in the world
The rest of the World looks to us
We have the most assets
Best Allies
Great land with rich resources
Best founding doctrine which other countries modeled themselves after
We got too much swag that all the other countries are green with envy.
4881962 I'll agree with all of that but what I mean by idiocy is that even that we have all that we are constantly looking for more even if we don't need the resources. We spend far more than needed on military ( not talking about aid and such ), we consume far more oil, food, and are behind by a large margin in several knowledge stats. We have a huge unemployment rate and prison population. I'm not saying we're the worst, but we're not the best either. All I'm saying is we can improve and should strive for it. I'm sorry if it felt like I was attacking you, I just hate hearing this constantly.
4879808
Oh, that's so witty of you. I've certainly never seen that before.
4879469 i think it's father which makes it that much more impressive
4880379 It's cliche because it's the most likely response. People would try to retain their grasp on 'reality' by refusing the reality they're presented, thus they decide it must be a dream or a hallucination.
4879808 'American' is the actual adjective for the US. When the UN convenes, they refer to the representative of the USA as 'the American Representative'. If anyone is offended by that, then they just need to get over themselves and find something that actually matters to be butt-hurt about.
4882014 Yeah i will also concede that we are idiotic. That being said out of all the countries, objectively speaking, America is doing the best overall. Jack of all trades master of very few.
4882163 That I can agree wholeheartedly
4882158
Is it? maybe I'm just weird because I never have vivid dreams and I love fantasy, but if I was in a situation like this, I would just roll with it even if I did think it was a dream. Really, there's nothing too wrong with assuming you might be dreaming. But why is the immediate response of all these humans in Equestria to try to wake up? If they're in the middle of the Everfree Forest getting chased by a manticore, it makes sense, but with something like this, why try to wake up? Why not just enjoy it while you can?
But even if we accept that it makes logical sense to assume you're dreaming, I think that it's still a problem from a storytelling perspective. If the dream thing is going to be relevant to the plot somehow, that's one thing, but in every HiE story I've read that does this, the human will spend a chapter or more talking about how he's just dreaming, and all it really does is put off anything interesting that might happen later in the story,
That image pleases me as well.
But yeah, to prove that you're asleep do something that's sure to kill you. If it turns out you're awake, you don't have to prove anything.
I'm guessing that if the fall doesn't convince him that he isn't dreaming, Gilda will painfully remind him of reality.
4882255 Well, first off, you can't know how you would react in this situation unless you've been in it or something similar. I myself have had vivid dreams, and can honestly say that I would have fun with it. However, some people are unnerved by the 'wrongness' of the dream and want to escape it. That's just how some people are. As for its use in fiction, I find it makes a good opening, especially for comedies. I myself used it in one of my fics.
4885783
Thanks
.
I find the years before part odd though. Perhaps it was a story similar to this one? I just published it less than two months ago.
4886734
Glad I could fulfill a wish of yours then.
Here's to hoping I don't disappoint!
4882163
4882186
Exceptionalism is something you strive for, like perfection. And like perfection, we may never attain it. But it is the journey towards the ideal that matters.
4891976
Some sage-like words there, you remind me of a certain speech...
4881962
Bullshit that why we are trillions and trillions of dollars in debt to china right?
4914084 8.4 trillion dollars of our debt is to ourselves. by ourselves i mean the Federal Reserve. the rest is owed to avrious other nations with china being 6-7 trillion dollars.
If you liquidate all of our assets we have 216 trillion dollars worth of collateral. That is so far above every other nations its not even funny.
4914330 That still is bullshit.
4914330 Also I think you're not very good at saying things. Why because someone whos says that not very realistic. Why because why hell do I gotta pay taxes if this is true? Another thing if you say these things why the hell aren't you telling them dumb butt who run our country to fix it instead of making it worse? Yes we need to be patriotic but at the same time we need to understand if they keep running us to the ground we won't be worth shit in the real world.
That not very bright thing to say why because who in their right mind would do that? We can't just say stuff like that. That's not how the world runs. What if's only hide the problem and it things like that that will keep us in debt and let them idiots keep on running this country and not fix anything. Like the homeless problem or the hungry. If were so rich problems like that wouldn't happen here.
4914424 I dont recall saying that I am not for Those in charge fixing the debt. Our debt problem though is more complex than just "We need to stop borrowing money from foreign powers". But as it is China is about to go into another great deppression soon which is why none of our businesses are going over there, its why a lot of their businesses are trying to escape. Imagine the housing bubble crisis that caused the Great recession except 100 times worse. Once that explodes they will need money. If they ask us for money we just say "We don't have it" at which point they will say you promised and we will say come and get it. They either go to war with us for the money which they won't be able to do and nobody would fight with them or they collapse in on themselves.
either way America wins.
4914690 Lol Wrong again. Why because if china goes to a great depression the world will feel it and we will too. It will not be a win for us in any way. Infact it will push everybody into a depression. Everybody gets exports from china. Look at your shoes or your dishes you eat out of.