The Pursuit of Penance

by Paracompact

"Just Some Crazy Pony"

It was an unremarkably bleak midwinter morning, when fate brought the Storm King's commander to my home.

“Former commander, to be clear,” she clarified, standing at the threshold and shivering slightly from the frigid breeze. Hooded in a thin overcoat, she looked dressed for a temperate pony winter, but not a griffon one. “The Storm King has been defeated, as you may have heard, and his army disbanded.”

“Storm King, riiight.” This old griffon wasn’t fooled so easily. “Now what really brings a crazy pony like you to a remote village like ours, in the griffon highlands no less?”

“As I already told you,” she spoke patiently, without a hint of scorn, “I am Tempest Shadow, former second-in-command to the Storm King’s army, and I've come to atone for my misdeeds.” Still sensing my visceral distrust (and perhaps the imminent threat of a door to the face), she continued: “But you don’t have to believe me at the moment. Or ever, in fact. My proposition for you will remain the same.”

She’d piqued my interest, albeit only adversarially. “Which is…?”

“Please, noble griffon, let me offer to do what I can—anything I can, everything I can, whenever I can—to make up for—” she caught herself, and chose her next words carefully. “... what I’ve done.”

I only vaguely understood what this unicorn with the broken horn was getting at. “So, what? You’ll be some sort of help for us? And for free?”

“Yes. A servant for you, I’m prepared to become, or even a slave.”

“So you would, what, cook my meals, clean my house, massage my claws? For free?”

“If those are the duties you wish for me to perform.”

For another moment we just stood there, eyes locked on one another. Then—as I put two and two together—I cracked a victorious grin at the shivering purple unicorn. “I think I’m wising up to your act, pony. You go to these foreign lands and towns, introduce yourself as some character with a moral debt to repay, and throw yourself into griffs’ homes with some no-strings-attached charity ploy. Then when our backs are turned, you make off with all our valuables, and skip town to find your next gullible mark. Well let me tell you, the first thing a cub learns when he’s still wet behind the ears is that every good and service comes with a price. Ain’t no free lunch in Griffonstone!”

The unicorn panicked. “You have frostcarrots!” she blurted, preempting a timely door to the muzzle. “Um, I noticed you had a large plot of them just out back. You wouldn’t need to trust me to come into your home, if that's what gives you pause; I could tend to them, and that way be out of your feathers and away from your valuables. They’re not ripe yet, so you could trust that I wouldn’t bother to steal even them.”

This pony vexed me, but I had to admit her argument was sound. Was her angle, then, to gradually earn my trust before making her move? She must be very dedicated to her con, I surmised.

“Fine. You’re letting the cold in, and I’ve no more patience for you. You know how to weed frostcarrots? Clean out the plot of slush and snowmelt?” She nodded meekly. “Then get to it! And don’t go cleaning out too much snow, either, and leaving them to dry up and die!” With that, I finally gave the door a satisfying slam.

I peeked through some curtains in the breakfast nook just adjacent to the front door, and to my mild surprise she actually trudged all the way out to the frostcarrot plot, deposited her belongings in the shed, and kneeled down at the corner of the plot. So be it, I thought. I had no qualms milking a con artist for some free labor, because she would never win over my trust. And on the impossibly off chance that she was who she claimed to be, well… I guess she'd best be ready to turn into an ice sculpture to atone for all her sins, huh?

At that moment I felt a tender tug on my tail. I turned around to greet my young daughter Gamila, who I must have woken with my racket. “Daddy, who was at the door?”

After a pause, I answered, “Just some crazy pony. Would you believe it?”

“A pony?” she said, eyes filled with confused curiosity. “Can I meet him?”

“Eh, she doesn’t really want to talk. But guess what: We’re off the hook for frostcarrot duty this morning!”