They're Not Ponies
Griffons Don't Celebrate Hearth's Warming
Admiral Biscuit
One disadvantage to being a princess, daughter of nobles, and sister to a prince was scheduling holidays. A nice, peaceful family gathering for Hearth's Warming simply wasn't in the cards for Twilight. This year, Velvet and Night were going to the Crystal Empire to visit Cadance, Shining, and Flurry, and while Twilight would have liked to join them, she'd already volunteered to help with the Ponyville Hearth's Warming Pageant.
That didn't totally preclude a trip to the Crystal Empire, but it was a convenient excuse, and she could tell that Velvet felt the same way. It would give her parents more time with their grandfilly and Twilight assured them that next time she came to Canterlot, they could celebrate a late Hearth's' Warming together.
• • •
Twilight dragged herself home after rehearsal. It was hard to believe that actors could forget their lines when the story was known to nearly every foal in Equestria, and yet, they had. A frustrated Amethyst Star finally suggested that they just paint Commander Hurricane's lines on the back of his shield.
Flash cards would have been a better idea, Twilight thought as she walked through the streets of Ponyville. And that got her to thinking about Rainbow Dash, and how different ponies learned in different ways.
She almost started reading Feldflüchter's book On Education but the truth was that she was mentally exhausted, and so she had one cup of tea, brushed her teeth, and went to bed.
Sleep wouldn't come, which was not an unusual situation for Twilight. She let her mind wander where it would. Sometimes she got her best ideas when she was laying in bed trying and failing to sleep.
Other times, mostly after too many hayburgers, she had her worst ideas.
Gilda doesn't have a family to spend Hearth's' Warming with. That had come out of nowhere, but it was true. Or was it? Pinkie had mentioned a Grandpa Gruff, but were they close? She wracked her brain, trying to remember everything that Rainbow had said about Gilda and Gilda’s family. From what she knew, griffons didn’t exactly seem to have close family ties.
Her schedule formed in her mind, and there was time to visit Griffonstone; between the morning train and judicious teleportation, she could both visit the town and invite Gilda back to Ponyville, especially since there wasn't pageant rehearsal tomorrow.
Twilight pushed the covers off and went back to her library—she knew right where her copy of Bygone Griffons of Greatness was—then stretched out on her reading pillow.
Twenty minutes later, she was sound asleep, her head cradled atop the open book.
• • •
The next morning, it didn't take her very long to pack; she kept several checklists on hoof for packing on short notice. A trip to Griffonstone matched the 3B Checklist quite nicely, and she was waiting at the train station well before the train arrived.
She'd dithered about inviting Rainbow at least, although the more she thought about it, the more she thought it would be a nice surprise for the pegasus. Pinkie would have also been a good choice, but she was running herself ragged getting everything ready for Hearth’s Warming.
On Education had been a worthwhile fallback choice of travelling companion, and as soon as she'd gotten settled in her seat, Twilight had pulled the book out of her saddlebags and commenced to read.
She'd finished the book before the train made it to Griffonstone, although that wasn't her fault; the snowy weather had caused several delays when the train had to break through drifts, and Twilight added 'learn a good snow-melting spell' to her mental checklist.
Pinkie and Rainbow had given her a description of their trip to Griffonstone, but they'd failed to mention that the train station was essentially abandoned, and the train only stopped there long enough for her to disembark.
As it backed around the wye to return to the main line, Twilight swore that the hiss of the air brakes sounded exactly like a sigh of relief. Nevertheless, she pressed on, keeping an eye on the path to Griffonstone as she flew the shortest, switchback-free route to the top of the mountain.
Her first view of the city was underwhelming. She'd assumed that most of what Rainbow and Pinkie had said about the city itself was hyperbole, but upon viewing it with her own eyes, it clearly was not. Judging by what she could see, the winter snow cover was a blessing. Even Starlight's isolated village had looked nicer.
She flew around town, looking for either Gilda or the library; unfortunately, she found the latter first. There wasn't much she could do to fix it—while Twilight knew a few mending spells, they weren't up to the task of repairing the wreckage of the library. Just the same, she started sorting books and placing those which could be salvaged under shelter—when she got back to Ponyville, she could send a letter to Princess Celestia and she was sure that she could get the Griffonstone library fixed.
Twilight was so engrossed in her task that she didn't notice Gilda had landed right behind her; in fact, the griffon watched her sorting for several minutes before finally clearing her throat.
“I almost didn't recognize you with the wings.”
Twilight jerked up, two books now spinning forgotten in her aura. “Gilda?”
“The same.” She scratched a talon across the ground. "Everyone was saying there was an ube alicorn playing in the garbage—“
“Ube?”
“Yeah.” Gilda motioned at Twilight's coat. “Oh, that's right. I forgot you ponies can't see those colors. You—“
“Listen. Gilda . . . I'm the Princess of Friendship—”
"Congratulations," Gilda sarcastically interjected.
Twilight finally remembered the books floating in her aura and set them gently down with their sisters. “But when you came to Ponyville—“
“Hey—“ Gilda held up a claw in protest.
“I should have tried harder. And I'm sorry.”
An almost inaudible sigh escaped the griffon's beak, though her face didn't betray it. “So did your stupid table send you here? Or are you just here to pick at the bones of our library?”
Twilight shook her head. “No; it was my idea.”
Gilda looked around at the slightly neater stacks of books. “Dash told you about the library, didn't she? I knew you were a total egghead.”
“Actually, she never mentioned it.”
“Pinkie, then.” Gilda sighed. “Let me guess. You must think that fixing our library will fix everything that's wrong with Griffonstone, but you're wrong.”
Twilight kicked a soggy, shredded book away from her hoof. “I don't think that."
Gilda wasn't buying it.
"I'm not here for the library, or the books, or Griffonstone. I . . . well, I was the worst friend ever when I was a filly. I always had my muzzle in books and could never make time for anypony. When I tried to reconnect with my old friends in Canterlot, I—it didn't go all that great. I never even gave Moon Dancer her birthday present.” Twilight's ears drooped. “I came here because I thought that maybe you'd like to come back to Ponyville. Spend Hearth's Warming with Rainbow? If you’re not doing anything else, that is.”
“Pony holiday. We don't celebrate that,” Gilda said flatly.
“Really?”
“Really, dude. Think about it. Unification of the three tribes of ponies, discovery of the new pony homeland, friendship defeating the wendigos, and a new pony paradise. . . . Remind me again how many griffons were there in that story.”
“Well, none.” Twilight frowned. “But the pageant isn't exactly historical, anyways. There could have been griffons. Wasn't it Commander Hurricane who made peace with the griffons?”
Gilda shrugged. “Who knows? Even if she had, look around you. Whatever might've happened back then didn't exactly lead to a griffon paradise, did it? So why would we care?”
“Is it better than it was before Rainbow and Pinkie came to Griffonstone?”
“What if I said it is? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“What I want to hear,” Twilight said, “is that you're coming to Ponyville for Hearth's Warming. Even if you don't celebrate it yourself, it would still be nice to visit an old friend, wouldn't it?”
Gilda narrowed her eyes. “You told Rainbow that I was coming, and you're not going to leave until I agree, are you?”
“She doesn't know I'm here. I didn't tell anypony.”
“But you'll tell her if I refuse.”
“That's not it, Gilda. Don't you see? I could have done better. I should have done better, but I didn't, and I can't change the past. But maybe I can change the future. Not with a spell, but by extending a hoof in friendship. I won't tell you what to do; that's inside you. There's no trickery here, no obligation, but maybe a chance to change the future a little bit.
“Think about it, that's all I ask. Hearth's Warming is the next full moon, and I hope to see you there.” Twilight stuck out a hoof.
And Gilda reluctantly bumped it.
• • •
Another week made all the difference in the pageant—while Commander Hurricane still used his shield as a crutch, he hardly looked at it at all, and the majority of his lines were delivered as written.
At the same time, Hearth's Warming decorations festooned the entire town, along with herds of snowponies in front yards and occasionally on roofs.
Of Gilda, there was no sign.
Twilight wrote a letter to Princess Celestia and obtained enough funding to build a decent library in Griffonstone.
Rainbow Dash still had no idea that Twilight had visited Gilda.
It wouldn't be fair to say that Twilight forgot about inviting her to Ponyville, because of course she didn't. But one lesson she'd learned was that sometimes things were out of her hooves, and if she wanted to keep her sanity, it was best to only focus on the things she could control and deal with the rest as it came.
• • •
The pageant went off mostly without a hitch. Chancellor Puddinghead managed to forget to wear her hat for the entire first act, but nopony really noticed that, and when the curtain finally closed, Twilight and Amethyst breathed a sigh of relief. Twilight especially; over the course of the production she had learned that she wasn't cut out to be an assistant director.
There was a certain sort of catharsis in packing the costumes and props away for next year, a reminder that while the pageant was over, it would happen again. Maybe next year somepony else would be looking at Commander Hurricane's shield and wondering about the block-printed lines on the back of it.
“Did you notice the griffon?”
“Huh?” Twilight jerked her head up. “Gilda?”
“I guess.” Amethyst shrugged. “It kinda looked like that one that came to Ponyville before, but I never paid that much attention to her. I wonder what she was doing here?”
“Maybe she came to celebrate Hearth's Warming.”
“Hearth’s Warming is a pony holiday. Griffons don't celebrate it.”
Twilight smiled. “Don't they?”
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Admiral Biscuit · 5.5k words · 81 3 · 1.3k views
- Admiral Biscuit · 34k words · 51 3 · 1.5k views
- Winter Quill · 1.7k words · 61 1 · 993 views
- LucidDreamer · 2.6k words · 49 2 · 1.2k views
- Astrarian · 1.2k words · 47 1 · 994 views
- Admiral Biscuit · 1k words · 102 4 · 1.8k views
- Masterweaver · 2.1k words · 79 2 · 2.8k views
- Alabenson · 1.9k words · 56 0 · 2.2k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.164 seconds
Total duration
608 users online
1,355,026 hits today, 2,707,512 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.®
Its nice to see a good Gilda story that doesn't make her out to be terrible.
Ube = http://www.colorhexa.com/8878c3
It is also the name of a purple sweet potato from the Philippines.
forgot a space in there.
Griffions are asses. Twilight's somewhat more stable and this was a nice read.
Nicely understated
You made me look up a railroad Wye. You evil educational person.
Very, very nicely done, Biscuit! I really enjoyed seeing Gilda interact with Twilight. The ending was perfect!
8639962
I second this frustration at inadvertent education. We shake our fists at thee, Biscuit.
I dunno who added that part, but it's a perfect addition!
Because meat.
Gilda: Hearth's Warming?!? I'm Jewish!! I get eight candles, a dreidel and some rat meat every year! I'll be as bucking grouchy as I please you little Hoofler youth!! Now scram !!!
This is a interesting story and a good read.
But what if she's not actually a true Griffon anymore?
Keep going! ;)
8639796
Looking back on the episode, also with the knowledge of how crappy Griffonstone is, I don't think that she's a terrible griffon. She never really resonated for me as a character, so I'm glad I got the opportunity to write this, because it gave me the chance to get to know her better.
8639861
That's what I got the name from (and I've edited the blog post to add that in). In this case, though, it's meant to reflect that Gilda's visual spectrum is greater than a pony's.
8639894
Correction made; thank you!
Well, yes, griffons do seem to be. I don't know about Twilight being more stable (especially in the early episodes), but I guess if nothing else, she's less of a jerk than the average griffon.
Glad you enjoyed it!
8639935
Thank you!
8639962 8640002
What can I say? I learned half the words I know by coming across them in books.
Besides, I've always figured that my stories ought to be educational and factually accurate. Hopefully, they're also entertaining, but if not, the first two will do.
8639990
Thank you! Glad you liked it!
8640019
I thought about it as I was reading through your far superior dialogue in that section. My editing note changes "Or are you just here for the library" to "Or are you just here to pick at the library books," and then when I was actually editing the document (I usually do edits on paper), I thought of changing it to "pick at the bones."
It's easier to eat than Chinese takeout.
derpicdn.net/img/2012/8/9/70377/full.png
8640107
Somewhat related:
img00.deviantart.net/5cdd/i/2014/352/4/f/rarity_hanukkah_2014_by_pixelkitties-d8acanx.png
8640222
Thank you!
8640320
Maybe she isn't--she went to pony flight camp, and she's friends with ponies? Plus she saved ponies instead of getting the idol?
8640823
Also somewhat related: https://derpicdn.net/img/2012/6/28/23615/large.png
8640888
We call hax!
Aww, warm and fuzzy feelings that weren't from alcohol!
I like it!
D'awww... So nice to see another side of Gilda, the one we rarely see, where she's not just some grumpy griffon. She just needs a few hooves extended to her in friendship, that's all.
8640888
8641567
I do what I can.
8641662
Thanks!
8642855
It was a bit of a stretch for me, to be honest . . . in my other stuff, I use griffons as antagonists. But that didn't feel in the holiday spirit, and anyways, sometimes just a hug or an outstretched hoof in friendship makes all the difference.
Okay, not bad. I like Gilda, so seeing her in non-grouch mode was pretty nice. This story gets an upvote and a fave.
8647630
Thanks! It was a lot of fun to write, and a bit of a challenge (because I usually think of her being in grouch mode, myself).
8647705
Whenever I write her, she's not afraid to call someone out on their nonsense. A straight-forward, blunt but not too rude.
(Have a watch.)
8647741
I've always just used griffons as antagonists, but since I was writing this story for someone else, that didn't seem right, so I took a different tack.
Plus, in The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone, she did seem to value her friendship with RD enough to choose her over the statue.
She is very much a no BS kind of lady, though. And I like that.
Underutilized, just like Gilda.
Who, Amethyst Star?
8640800
I like to imagine that she was trying to do a predator dominance ritual thing, but instead of challenging or deferring to her enough to let her settle into a comfortable social position, ponies just kept blowing her off like she was worthless, right up until the entire herd suddenly turned on her at once.
8705371
Actually . . .
That's a fair point. There would be a very different type of display (for lack of a better word) between a natural predator and a natural prey animal.
Nicely done!
9191771
Thank you!
Due to fan pressure, they warped Hearth's Warming into Christmas. You watch the first episode, it was "Ponies coming together to found Equestria." NOT Christmas, Thanksgiving & IMO, non ponies think it's a big, fat, hairy deal. Still, it brought this to mind.
Moderately intrigued by griffons seeing a broader (or at least) different color spectrum.
10602105
).
True fact, many birds see in a broader color spectrum than humans do. We’re trichromatic (three ‘colors’ of light receptors), and some birds are tetrachromatic (four ‘colors’), so they’d be able to see additional colors. Some insects can, too, and some flowers actually have UV ‘paths’ for the bird (or bee) to follow to find the nectar (’nectar guides’; google for fascinating pictures
Also for what it’s worth, IRL equines are dichromatic, so they don’t see as many colors as even humans do.
cloudfront.horsenetwork.com/sites/4/2016/07/VAR11-e1419027940877.jpg
10604824
Least they aren’t like dogs or bulls. Still strikes me as humorous that bulls can’t see red.
10605127
Actually, horses have rather similar vision to dogs in that respect. Equines can’t see red, either, and can’t easily distinguish between greens and yellows. On the plus side, they’ve got good night vision, and a really wide field of vision.
This is true. I wonder how that myth got started; after all, people have been working with bovines for a long time, and you’d think that somebody would have noticed that the bull got mad no matter what color cloth was waved. . . .
10606717
According to at least one website matadors used red capes to hide the bloodstains from killing the bull with the sword hidden behind it.
10606741
I’ve heard that, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s after the fact justification. I’d guess (and it’s only a guess) it was red because that worked well with the audience (easily visible, etc.) or because red was fancy and expensive (just look at the rest of their outfits).
10619182
Also possible. It might even come down to the dyes that were prevalent enough to be relatively inexpensive.
10619328
Yes, or the ones that were expensive . . . I think that red dye was actually pretty expensive back in the day . . .
So I got curious and did a bit of reading, and found out that the red cape and most of the trappings of ‘modern’ bullfighting were set in place in the 1720s, and I also learned that the Spanish had the lock on good red dye by the mid 1500s. From a skimming reading of another article about bullfighting, there is apparently at least some Christ imagery in it, and the Wikipedia article about dyes mentioned that that red was often used by Renaissance painters to represent the cloak of Christ.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Hero (the Jet Li film), but there’s a lot of what I’m sure is important color symbolism to a Chinese audience, and which goes completely over my head. [and I just looked that up, and in fact, there are articles explaining it]
10626704
Yeah with Hero it’s obvious that there are major color themes but it doesn’t convey a great deal to the western audience other than a change of narrative.