1.3 - Observations
I was dreaming. Or hallucinating. I hit my head on the statue and now I was in a coma. Should’ve worn a helmet. This is what you get. You crash, hit your head too hard and bam! You’re stuck in a hospital bed dreaming you're a mythological creature.
I held a hand up, flexing the fingers and inspecting the movements. The scaled digits wiggled, mocking me with their birdliness. I turned my attention away from it and to my surroundings, hoping they might make more sense.
The room was small, with simple stone walls and a low hanging wooden ceiling. The walls were featureless except for a heavy-looking wooden door and one small window high on the wall, through which sunlight poured in at a low angle and hit the bed where my face had been.
The bed itself was also basic. A simple cotton sheet and one pillow laying on a rough pad that I guess technically qualified as a mattress, despite spine’s adamant disagreements.
Well, nothing about all that was particularly strange but did little to help the whole I-am-a-griffon thing make any sense. So I elected to not think about it and roll out of bed instead.
My movements were uncoordinated and brought with them a wave of dizziness. Which, combined with an unexpected resistance from my feet sticking in the sheets, meant that my departure from the bed didn’t go as I’d intended. I hit the stone floor beak first and landed in a pile with the bedding resting on top of me.
Ow.
I flailed my limbs about to extricate myself from the sheet that claws on my feet had decided to bring with me. The sheet was tossed away to where it hopefully couldn’t interfere again. This left me with a clear view of an unnecessarily poofy tail that was apparently covered by the sheet before. So there’s that too. Neat, I guess. Tack that onto the list.
I rolled over so my feet were under me and stood up, which wasn’t the greatest of ideas. The joints in my feline legs didn’t work the way I was used to, and I lost my balance as soon as I was upright. I took a step back to regain my balance and ended up stepping on the aforementioned tail.
“Ffffffffffff—” I yanked the foot back up.
And promptly fell over onto my side…
…and landed on a wing. Hard.
“Jesustittyfuckingchrist! W-why!?”
Holy hell that hurt. Ohh my god. What the fuck brain. I mean, yeah, I totally get the need for some realism here and there, but maybe tone it down on the dream pain? Please? Thanks. I shook my head. Apparently, the only thing new appendages were good for is opening up new and exciting opportunities to hurt yourself.
I took a minute or so before slowly climbing onto all fours. Not one to repeat mistakes more than a dozen times, this time I stayed on all fours. Slowly, I straightened my limbs, going from elbows and knees, to hands and feet, and then a little more… and I was standing.
I was standing up on all fours, with my spine straight and my head level, eyes forward, and my weight resting comfortably on my fingers and toes like the abomination of digitigrade creatures that I was. It felt kind of like crawling, but less awkward, with limbs that were meant for it. Natural.1
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1Natural as in how this body was meant to work, it was still weird for a biped.
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And it was super fucking weird.
My attention turned to my new appendages that had been causing so much trouble. The wings were hanging limply at my sides, dragging on the ground, and the tail was doing whatever it wanted… which at the moment also meant dragging on the ground. I’m sure the moment I stopped focusing on it it would go back being a tripping hazard.
They felt weird. Really weird. My brain didn’t quite know to deal with exerting control over the new limbs. The wings almost felt like a second set of arms—
I flexed my shoulders, rolling them around, trying to coax any movement out of the wings. Nothing. They just flopped around.
—A second set of arms that I don’t know how to, or couldn’t, actually use. Lovely.
They could feel pain though. That they could do just fine.
I wasn’t about to let a little something like lack of bodily control get in the way my curiosity, however. I sat down, took each of the wings in my hands and, with a little bit of fussing and dragging, manually extended them out as far as they went. The wings splayed out to my sides like a big, feathery rug. Fully extended, their full span had to be something like three to four times my current height. But big as they were, I wasn’t sure that was enough surface area to provide sufficient lift for something my size… whatever that size was. I didn’t actually know, given the lack of things to compare to.
Whatever. It wasn’t like I was about to be using them for flapping around anytime soon and realism had taken a back seat anyway. Except where pain was concerned. That was still on point. Good job brain. Excellent choice of priorities.
Time to see what else this place had in store. I walk-slash-crawled across the room over to the door, shoulder-mounted feather dusters dragging and collecting dust along the way. Upon reaching the door, and to my absolutely infinite surprise, I found it didn’t even have a handle. Just a barren wooden beam across the front and a small open window—barely twice the width of my head—completed with a couple metal bars. It required bending down a little, but I looked through the window.
Beyond the door was, amazingly, an empty hallway. A few similar looking doors lined the walls of the hall, though they lacked the barred window mine did. I guess I was special. The hallway ended with what was probably a set of stairs going up. I could be wrong, it was hard to see without my glasses.
Ladies and gents, I present to you… me, the world’s first nearsighted raptor. I had literal eagle eyes and I still couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of my face. It was funny. I laughed at how funny it was.
I stuck my arm through the window to try opening it from the other side, but the bars prevented me from reaching very far. Nothing within reach felt like any sort of handle or lock.
Well, since all this was all definitely in my head… I glared hard at the door and willed it to open. It remained stubbornly closed. I tried again, this time also giving it a firm push for good measure. Still nothing. Strange, doors were usually a bit more obedient in dreams, especially once they went lucid. I pounded on the door with a fist several times just to be sure. Nada. The door was closed, and I wasn’t getting out of here until that changed.
Fine, whatever. I threw my hands up I'm defeat and turned back to the bed. Coma-induced fever-dream or hallucination or whatever, I’ll just let it do its thing. I’ve never had a dream last that long after becoming aware it was a dream anyway. Coma induced ones couldn’t be much different. I’ll just wait it out. Go back to sleep and let my mind move on past this whole thing.
I clambered up onto the bed, then dragged my wings up off the floor. The bed definitely wasn’t the most comfortable thing around, but it would make do. I laid down, closed my eyes, and let my mind go blank. Soon this messed up dream would pass.
Any moment now.
I scratched at the edges of my beak.
Just had to go back to sleep, and then before you know it, I’m awake.
The damned wings were being uncomfortable. I rolled to my other side.
Awake, or dead. That was also a possibility, given the head injury.
But at least you’re not bored when you’re dead.
Any minu— ok fuck this. This is officially the most aggravatingly boring dream ever.
I rolled out of bed and marched back across the room, somehow avoiding tripping over myself in the process. I pounded my fist on the door and yelled. “Hey! Anyone out there? Open this thing up! I don’t care what this is, I am not staying in here. Stupid fucking door! You think you can hold me? Hey! HEY! HELLO-O!”
I was practically growling as I repeatedly punched the door. For several minutes, I kept yelling at the door, the room, everything beyond the door, and the universe in general, because apparently that was the only fucking thing that I could do.
“Raaaaaaugh! RaaaaACKAWWW—” I snapped my beak snapped shut with an audible ‘clack’. My yell had involuntarily shifted into a distinctly avian screech. I… wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but I didn’t like it. I stopped my pounding and slumped down against the door.
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself.
I was back to laying on the bed because I had absolutely nothing better to do.
Oh, there were some things to do in this room, which measured eight paces by ten and a half paces. For example, I’d investigated the window on the wall. I’d discovered that although it was above my head level, it was at ground level on the exterior. So, my cozy little cell was in a basement. A truly fascinating discovery, I know. The ground outside was also covered in snow and I think there were trees in the distance. That was all I could get from that without my glasses.
Also, when I’d thought I’d heard movement from the floors above, I’d stuck my ear—well, the side of my head—to the stone wall to try and find out more. From that, I’d determined that there may or may not be things moving around elsewhere in the building.
I was a regular detective with all the stuff I was finding out, you’d better believe it.
So, I’d spent the better part of an hour now laying on the bed with my eyes closed. As it happened, laying on the bed with my eyes closed is also what I was doing when a soft clatter came from the doorway.
In an instant, I was upright and focused on the door, like it was the most interesting thing in the world, and at the moment it might as well be. As swiftly as I could without tripping over myself, I stumbled over to the door where a small wooden tray of food was balanced in the window. I quickly moved it out of the way and bent down to stick my face into the gap. I’d gotten there just in time to see someone—no, something hurriedly leaving down the hall.
Without my glasses, I couldn’t quite make out what I was looking at. It looked like some kind of four-legged animal, significantly smaller than myself, mostly brown in color, and though it was quiet, the sound it made when it walked was a lot like hooves clopping on stone.
The creature stopped at the end of the hall, at what I assumed was the base of a staircase, and started making noises. Noises that sure sounded a lot like hushed speech, but it was too quiet to make out. Movement of another figure on the stairs caught my eye. This one similar in shape but gray in color. I pressed my head as far into the bars as I could and strained to listen.
It was all just a bunch of indecipherable noise until the volume picked up and I could make out that it was indeed actual words being spoken. The voice was distinctly male and sounded less than pleased, “—I am the lord of this manor! I decide how things happen around here. If I say that he is not to be fed, then you are not to feed him! Simple as that!”
“With all due respect, sir, you never said not to,” the other voice replied. This one sounded feminine and was much calmer. “And you usually have us feed your guests. In fact, your previous instructions on the matter were to, and I quote, ‘not bother me with these insignificant little things on every single occasion. Just serve them. Celestia help me, I’m going to have an aneurysm if I have to deal with one more hour of this.’ End quote.”
Voice number one, the angry dude, sputtered and let out a series of incoherent sounds before being able to make words again. “W-what could possibly make you think that that beast is my guest?”
“I’ll admit, the choice of rooming arrangements is a little unorthodox, but it’s not my position to make judgements on such matters,” the female replied coolly. “And you have in the past clearly expressed your desire certain individuals locked—”
“Get—just get out of my sight and back to work before I fire you on the spot! And do not come back down here!”
At that, the first of the figures, the small brown one, left without saying another word. Which was probably good for her, because even from this distance, and without my glasses, I could tell that Angry Dude was about to blow a fuse.
After a few moments, Mr. Angry descended the stairs the rest of the way and began walking down the hall towards me. Assuming he wasn’t as blind as I was, he almost certainly could see my feathered face mashed into the bars. I guess he’d decided to grace me with his presence face-to-face.
As he closed the distance, I was able to clearly make out what he looked like. The hooved-animal assessment was apparently spot-on. The creature approaching me looked like some kind of misshapen miniature alien horse thing. It had a disproportionately large head that held even bigger eyes and, apparently, a conical horn. A small alien unicorn. We were at the same eye level now, but I was bent over with my face stuck in the window. Standing up straight, he’d have been about a head shorter than me. It would have almost been cute if his face wasn’t so red it was visible through the gray fur.
And then he made it even worse by talking. “And you,” he snarled. “Don’t get comfortable. I don’t know how you made it in here, but it doesn’t matter because you’ll never breathe a word of what you saw here to anypony. You’re going on the next boat to Zebrica. There are individuals there who will pay quite handsomely to take you off my hooves and make sure neither you nor anything you say will make it back here. Ever.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left. The sound of hooves on stone echoed off the walls as he ascended the stairs and left me alone down here once again.
Well… that was certainly ominous. But hey, at least things had finally gotten interesting.
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Ooh, things are getting interesting.
Well, this OC's pooch just got screwed.
This here, this is what I mean. The foot note is completely unneeded for the story since you already have him say it afterwards.
Is he going to switch between ther equestria girls world and his or is he going to stay as a griffon?
Needs more incoherent birb noises.
Really enjoying this one so far, love to see where you take it.
8808707
I'm glad you like it so far, and I hope you like where it goes too, because we've got a long road ahead.
A unicorn noble that is more stuck up and self absorbed than a French or English king, AND extremely racist? Must be in Canterlot. Knowing how people normally do stuck up unicorn nobles, quite possibly Blueblood.
I like her
9638461
That's unlikely given that Blueblood has white fur and this noble was grey
8799658
When you say it like that I can't help but think of Stagate SG-1
Of course he ends up with Evil McNasty who sells other species into slavery. Because ponies are now part of Clown World.