Daring Do and the Gryphon's Goblet

by Sir Squidfish

Chapter 1

Daring Do and the Gryphon’s Goblet
Part 1

The blistering heat of the afternoon sun beat down on Daring Do as she wearily plodded through the desert. She wished she had a cold glass of alfalfa juice right now… even one sip. A drop of water… Stop it, she mentally upbraided herself. Thinking about water right now is the quickest path to a straight jacket in a rubber room. Assuming I ever get out of this scrape…
She thought back to her previous adventure. She had gotten out of some pretty tough, even seemingly impossible situations, there was no denying that. But now… now she wasn’t so sure. A slightly morbid and humorous thought crossed her mind. Why do all my adventures seem to involve me getting stranded in a very hot climate with no water? She wondered, stretching her tired legs and gazing around at the barren landscape. Maybe I shouldn’t stereotype after only one and a half tries. It was true that the majority of her escapades existed only in her imagination. But this was here. This was real.
She sat down for a second, resting and wishing she had some shade to take a nap in. Sleep… what a great idea. Her eyelids began to droop. Her legs started buckling under her. Sleep, she repeated as her head began to nod…
She suddenly snapped her eyes open and bolted upright. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She scolded herself again. If she fell asleep now, she would never make it out of the desert alive. To close her eyes… she might as well begin digging her grave. I have to keep walking, she determined, just keep going east. I can’t miss my direction, and at least for now that means walking away from the sun. She had to do something, think of something else than this discomfort and thirst and hunger and tired legs and tired eyes and heat… Good job, she told herself ruefully. She found herself automatically reviewing her past, right up to the start of this whole blasted expedition. The school, her normal life as a teacher, her home in Indianapples- and that fateful day when she first heard of the priceless and mysterious artifact known as the Gryphon’s Goblet…
***
Daring Do sighed into her desk. Her students were acting just like she used to at their age. Did small ponies ever change? She surreptitiously glanced at her class again. Sure enough, there was Feather Duster shooting spitballs at Peppercane again, Coconutty fluttering her eyelashes at Spickenspan, and Sweatybloom passing notes to Platinum Bling… No, all that ever changed over the years was the cafeteria food- she couldn’t understand how anypony was supposed to swallow that garbage. She forced herself to focus on her class. They were wild, all right. But nothing the world’s number one daredevil bonafide explorer couldn’t handle, right?... Right? She watched Peppercane yell at Feather Duster, Spickenspan fall off his bench, and Platinum Bling laughing so hard she sounded like a damaged pig. Daring decided enough was enough. It was time for action. She would… she would…
The bell rang.
Luna, that was close, she thought.
“Alright everypony, thanks for…” The students were already stampeding out the back door.
“Page 78 on mythological monsters and… Aw, forget it,” she muttered.
Another great day of cheerful education!
She hated her job.
***

Daring Do shook her head, causing sand to fall out of her explorer’s hat and onto the ground. More sand… She wished now that she had stayed in Indianapples. So what if she hated her job? At least being a teacher didn’t get you shot at or tied down in a crumbling temple or melted by ancient magical relics… or crippled. She looked sadly at her wing. It hadn’t set right when she’d broken it before, and now it was back in its splint, pinioned uselessly against her side. If her wing were in proper shape she would have been out of this heat days ago and back on the trail of the Gryphon’s Goblet. What ever possesses me to go on these crazy snipe hunts in the first place? She wondered. She recalled again the start of this exploit, why she had consented to it at all…
***

Daring Do sat in her home on Mane Street, looking through the window and watching the ponies go by. She was bored. Very, very bored. Bored enough to chase crickets around the yard? Not quite. Bored enough to feel sullen and pouty? Definitely.

She wished she had gone with her friends to the Steedway instead of staying home all night. The Wonderbolts were performing there- Flame On, Jetwheels, and that new guy… Sauromon? Sauron? Soarin, that was it. Daring was a huge fan of the veteran Wonderbolts, but she figured the chunky rookie would never amount to much.

Her friends had invited her to the exhibition last week, but it was the same old story. Daring didn’t have much money- being a teacher paid less than she expected. Every once in a while, she might get an offer to go to an archaeological dig or expedition, and that would give her a bonus. If she got lucky, she might even be able to sell the Canterlot museum an artifact or two- then there would be money for a while. But the rest of the time, there was barely enough in the teacup to keep the rent paid, much less shell out 120 bits on a Steedway ticket. She sighed. One of these days she was going to get a better job than schoolteacher to a bunch of rowdy foals… one day.

She knew she should be grading papers or tests or preparing for the weekend or something… Anything. But she couldn’t seem to shake her current mood. Summer break was coming up- maybe she could find something better to do with her life then. Maybe. She had always wanted to be a great adventurer, and in truth she already was- the incident with the sapphire statue had proven that. Yet here she was, a mediocre schoolteacher stuck in Indianapples, bored out of her skull because she wasn’t making enough to afford one little trip to the Steedway. Bored enough to sit here talking to herself when she should be working. Bored enough to go out and rob a bank, she joked silently. She knew she could never resort to crime even if she wanted to- and it certainly wasn’t a question of guts. Her inborn sense of justice would never allow her to do anything dishonest, even without her firsthand witness that crime never pays. No, she was no bank robber. But she was a world class explorer. Albeit an explorer grounded because of a broken wing. An explorer stuck teaching rowdy foals arithmetic and whatever else they didn’t want to learn. Stuck in Indianapples. Daring smiled grimly- she was totally conscious of the fact that her pity party had now come full circle.

Well, alright already, enough with the heroic introspection, she silently chuckled. She halfheartedly picked up a math test and started to grade it. Her mind wasn’t on her work though, and she found herself getting distracted. She sighed. The whole thing simply wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe I could just give them all A’s…

She straightened up. Come on, Daring, ditch the attitude. What would you normally do to cheer yourself up? She frowned. Normally, she would go to the park and fly the tar out of the clouds until she felt dizzy enough to consider landing. Not an option with a busted wing. She started to put her head back down, then perked up slightly. She would go for a walk.
A walk… Wow, that was a radical concept. In the past, she had sometimes wondered why pegasi even had hooves… Well, now she knew. She closed the test book with a decisive bang, grabbed her hat, looked at the hat, grimaced, put the hat back on the peg, and started out the door.
***
Unobserved by the grounded explorer, a coal-black pony a block away was monitoring Daring through binoculars. He pointed at her and muttered something to himself in a foreign language. The stranger watched her trotting away from her house and he put down the lenses. Checking to make sure he was not noticed by curious eyes, he strode up to the front door of her house and carefully slipped something through the mail slot. He then crossed the street and entered a nearby establishment, choosing a seat near the window with the best vantage point of the mare’s front door. He ordered a drink and settled into his bench. Then he did something totally unexpected.
He smiled.

Comments

[Sir Squidfish]

Hey everypony, this is X.F. I know a lot of people have written this title, but I wanted to take a crack at it because "Read it and Weep" is my alltime favorite episode. Please comment so I will keep on writing! Thanks.

[Neo X Genesis]

I think this story is amazing! I'm going to watch this so you better write another chapter!

[Sir Squidfish]

>>Neo X Genesis Thank you, I will. I hope you will be patient as I'm also writing The Kingdom War right now and have to divide my microscopic amount of free time between two stories. Hopefully I will be able to post a new chapter soon. Thanks again for commenting, it really means a lot!

[Random as pinkie]

Awesome writer! You need to write more historical fiction!