The Care and Keeping of Your New Pegasus Roommate

by TheMutatedDeity

1. Meeting Your Pegasus

If you’ve already met your pegasus, feel free to skip this chapter. Or read it, I’m not your mom. This is mostly aimed toward the creatures who have yet to meet their new roommate and have no idea how to even approach a pegasus. Pro tip before we even get started because I’m nice and don’t want you to crash and burn on your first meeting: do not treat them like a frightened little bird. They will not appreciate you cooing at them and gently offering seeds from your hand like you’re some sort of Princess of Nature. My dragon buddy Cinder tried that and nobody lets him forget it.

So it’s probably up to you how you meet them, but for me, it was more arranged in advance. So I mentioned I work at the post office, right? Until we standardize green dragon fire as a method of communication or invent some sort of way to instantly talk to people, we all know mail is the best (and pretty much only) way to talk to people far away. Unless you really like shouting. If you can just shout at your friend across countries, shit, all the power to you. Griffinstone is small enough that you can just shout at people across the town. I know I have. But we’re in an age of globalization and, big gasp here, griffins are moving away from home. Mostly to the School of Friendship over in Equestria, those nerds.

And it turns out Equestria notices a lot of griffins are coming over there and is like, “Hey, you guys should get a post office so you can keep in touch with the kids you’re shipping overseas,” and we were like, “No, that sounds like a lot of work,” and they’re like, “What if we help you build one and help stimulate your super sad economy with more jobs and more money,” and we’re like, “Hell yeah, money,” and now we’ve got a whole post office with letters and uniforms and junk! I have a pension! I don’t even know what that is!

How exactly they chose griffins who’d be willing to spend their day flying around bringing people fancy paper is beyond me. I know I was looking for a new job as a fresh young adult, and I guess whoever was doing the hiring thought it’d be a good idea to find somebody still somewhat bright-eyed and bushy tailed. You know the type, before the weight of the world beats ‘em down and all they ever wanna do after that breaking point is sleep? Describes 75% of the adultier adults in Griffinstone. But I could still wake up at 8 am and not have every bone and joint in my body scream at me. The day I try to get out of bed and feel something in my knee pop is the day I curl up and die. Long story short, I’m one of the first ever postgriffins in this grand new age of intercontinental friendship and harmony.

Part of the whole deal about Equestria helping us out with a post office was sending over some pony workers, which, I’ll be real with you, nobody was really excited about. Grandpa Gruff, who’s simultaneously everybody’s and nobody’s grandpa like it’s some sort of title you earn if you live to be old as dirt, complains a lot about the ponies he met in Equestria. He complains a lot in general, but about ponies specifically. Too loud, too colorful, too cheery, too… pony-ish. You get the gist. All that skepticism kind of rubbed off on the rest of us.

Fast forward a li’l bit and it’s the first day of the post office opening. The air’s caught in between nervous and excited, which mostly just chokes you until something happens. I’m with three other griffins who I mostly know but don’t really know, y’know? The kind of mutual acquaintance you have ‘cause your mom was friends with people and invited them over for poker and then they brought their kids to keep an eye on ‘em so you’re semi-knowledgeable about their existence by proximity. So, we’re all standing outside the office watching the sun rise like it’s the opening scene to some cult classic novel, waiting for our boss to show up (who has never been a morning person and never will be), and we see this chariot in the distance. Like, a whole royal chariot with gold trimmings. Most of us have never even seen that much gold, so we’re standing there slack-jawed as it approaches.

We’re all thinking, “holy shit, did one of the princesses of Equestria come out here to bless our jobs or something?” The chariot gets closer and we see little figures flying in front and alongside it. We haven’t seen ponies in Griffinstone since the blue one and the pink one showed Gilda how to improve our lives with acorn scones, but we all recognize them as actual ponies in the flesh. For creatures who have only ever seen other griffins and the occasional dragon, this shit is wild. Chariot lands with the ponies and this important-looking unicorn steps out, takes one look at the majority of Griffinstone, and decides he doesn’t wanna be there. Which is fair. If I were from some economically well-off area and got sent to Nowheresville with a combined wealth of 3 and a half brain cells and 7 gold coins between everybody, I wouldn’t wanna be there, either.

“Where’s your supervisor?” First words out of his mouth aren’t even a ‘hello’ or ‘my name is some fancy bullshit pun, what’s yours?’ I can already see why Grandpa Gruff was angrier than usual talking about ponies.

“Uh, she’s running a little late, but she’ll be here,” one of my new coworkers Georgia, sweetest songbird-lion mix who couldn’t put up a fight to save her life, pipes up.

The unicorn scowls (I could feel the frown lines on that guy) and pulls out a pocket watch from his jacket. “We really don’t have time to waste, so let’s just get on with this.” He pockets the watch and stands in front of the doors to the office.

“Welcome to your new careers as employees of the Griffinstone Branch of the Equestrian Postal Service. I am Prompt Delivery, head of overseas expansion for the EPS. You have all been chosen to carry out an extremely important task: receive, sort, and deliver the mail. You may be unfamiliar with the concept, but it is vital to the backbone of any proper nation.”

At this point, I’ve pretty much decided this guy’s ruining ponies for me. I look over at the others and from their delightful frowning faces, we’re definitely all thinking the same thing.

“To help you get settled into your new responsibilities, Equestria has loaned some of its finest postponies. Each of you will be paired with a pony partner who will teach you the ropes of how a post office operates. These ponies will be here for six months, after which your partnership period may come to a close depending on your competency. We expect this branch to be fully functional as soon as possible, and should this not come to pass yadda yadda yadda yadda…”

Look, I’ll be real with you, I started zoning out at this point. He just kept droning on and on! Pretty sure I got a solid mini-nap by the time he decided to shut up.

“Sorry I’m late!” the voice of my boss shook me out of my sleep. Flying overhead, she took a dive and landed with a ‘thud’ on the broken cobblestone road. It took me a second, but I finally recognized her and probably lit up like a holiday tree.

“Miss… Gloria Bubo, I presume? You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago on the dot,” Prompt Delivery glared as she shook her feathers.

“Lost track of time in the shower! Don’t sweat it, I’ll put in overtime. Now, who’s ready to sort some mail?” Gloria beamed at us.

I should let you know Gloria is a legend in Griffinstone. She’s like the mom version of Grandpa Gruff. Showed up to my mom’s poker games and took home a serious chunk every time to blow it all on weird crap from the couple of shops around town. If you’re super nice and she likes you, you might get some of that weird crap. Still have a wooden figure that’s supposed to be a bear but looks more like a fish committing crimes against all natural laws she gave me when I was nine and it’s my favorite thing ever.

Mr. High-and-Mighty over there just kept glaring. This guy’s gotta have the world record for bitchiest expression. “I expect you to be on time going forward. The mail doesn’t stop over your showering habits.”

“Not a problem. Won’t be late again, boss!” Says the woman who will never arrive on time.

“As I was getting to,” he continues, “your pairings have been predetermined and will now be assigned before you get to work. Miss Bubo, you’ll be with one of our senior postal workers, Letter Tray. Georgia Sturnus is with Balloon Price. Gavin Paradisaea with Package Permit. Grayson Corvus with Lightning Delivery. Finally, Gylfie Harrier with Espresso Stamp.”

Writing all those names down, I’m just now realizing how many G names griffins have. Do other species have this problem? And what is up with the pun names for ponies? Do their parents name them puns in hopes they’ll get a job like that, or is it all just random luck? Too many questions and no pony I’ve met knows the answer. Probably a rant for another time.

Anyway, we don’t know each other's names and we’re just standing there looking at each other trying to piece it together. Prompt sighs and his faith in the intelligence of griffins hits rock bottom. “I trust you can make the introductions yourself. My allotted time here has ended and I must be on my way. Good luck, and we expect to hear from you soon.” He promptly took off and back to his carriage, the pegasi pulling it absolutely peeling out of town.

We continue standing there like idiots until an older-looking blue-grey pegasus pipes up. “Don’t worry about Delivery, he’s always been a sourpuss.”

“You mean he was born with a stick up his flank,” a dark grey pegasus with a sick neon yellow mane deadpanned.

“I wouldn’t say that, buuut… yeah,” the old mare winks. Not gonna lie, I did snort. “Let’s forget he took over and try this again. Hi! I’m Letter Tray, and I’ve been a postmare for the past thirty years. I’ve been doing this longer than most of you have been alive and can happily answer any questions you have. This charmer over here is Lightning Delivery. The pink one staring off into space over there is Balloon Price, the light brown one to my right is Package Permit, and the dark brown one I’m pretending I’m not seeing losing tic-tac-toe to herself is Espresso Stamp.”

I crane my neck to see the last pony, my new partner-in-crime. Deep dark brown coat, pink and magenta spiked-back mane and tail, and white patches on her face and legs that kinda looked like built-in socks. From a glance, she looked pretty cool, but I had to look closer. Her face was scrunched up in concentration, and I noticed she had lost not one, but twelve games to herself in the time Prompt Dickhead spent explaining things. By the way, that unicorn will forever be known as Prompt Dickhead in my heart.

“Our own stare master over there is Gylfie,” Gloria’s voice brought me back to the present. I blinked at Gloria and Letter Tray and they just kinda chuckled to themselves. I’d like to imagine it was about how awesome of a team Espresso and I were going to make, but it was probably something more like how young people are always starin’ at them damn clouds. Another signature Grandpa Gruff rant. “Let’s head inside and see what we’re working with!”

I could absolutely regale you with all the fine details of our beloved post office that Letter Tray so lovingly explained, but Espresso and I were chatting pretty much the entire time, so I’m just going to write down what I know. So as we’re all walking in, I casually scoot up to Espresso, who’s finally decided to get revenge on herself another day and called tic-tac-toe temporary ceasefire.

“So… postpony, huh?” I very smoothly initiated conversation.

“Oh, uh, yeah! Not my first choice, but it runs in the family!” Espresso chuckled in the way somebody who really didn’t want to be in their career path chuckles. “How about you, post… griffin?”

“I’ll keep it real with you, they needed young people and I needed money. Beats rolling marbles around in the dirt until one of the elderly yells at you ‘cause you’re being ‘too damn noisy with those clinkin’ marbles! Back in my day, we just sat there ‘til our eyes glazed over and we liked it!’” I did my best impression of my pappy and got a half-snort half-cough out of Espresso.

“I think you’ll be missing the marbles soon enough. I worked at the Ponyville post office, and the only interesting thing that happens is the holiday season and the latest monster of the week destroying half the town.”

“Equestria has monsters? Like, actual monsters with sharp teeth and murderous intent? Part of me thought it was just like, a land of rainbows and cupcakes and parties.”

“Eh, we do have a lot of all three of those, too. You’d be surprised how many ancient evils suddenly surface to enact revenge on Equestria and take it over. Last week, I counted three.”

“No kidding! What’d your military do?”

“Our military?” she cocked her head to the side which was actually super cute. Don’t tell her I said that.

“Yeah, I’d assume militaries deal with ancient evils threatening the good of the country. I wouldn’t actually know, the Griffinstone army is literally three rocks in a trenchcoat.”

“Three rocks sound more efficient than Equestrian military forces. All the world-ending problems are dealt with by the princess and her friends.”

“The sun one or the moon one?”

“The friendship one.”

“There’s a princess of frickin’ friendship? Do you need a ruler for that?”

“We have a princess of love in the Crystal Empire.”

“How does that even work? Does she just go around shipping people and fixing marriages?”

Espresso tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Y’know what? I don’t think anypony knows. At this point, princess just sounds like a made-up title so Celestia can sit on her ultra-fancy throne and shove cake down her throat while the other princesses do the actual paper pushing.”

“Well shit, I can shove papers around too, they’re not special. I’m at a job that literally has paper shoving in its description! If being an Equestrian princess means you gotta do some grunt work and fix friends and love or something to reach the top and just pig out on cake, slap a horn on my head and call me princess of not-giving-a-fuck!”

She stared at me and puffed up her wings a little. Immediately, I’m thinking, ‘aw shit, you scared her on the first day,’ so I open my stupid beak to apologize, but she says something I think defines the pony experience very well:

“You guys can actually curse out loud here and no one cares?” Her voice was incredulous, like a little kid being handed a giant piece of candy and realizing they don’t have to share with their annoying little brother. If I could snapshot the moment her world opened before her eyes, I would.

“Eh, there’s some limits, but you’re in the country whose national pastime is complaining. If we didn’t have curse words to vent our frustrations at life, I think we’d all resort to incredible violence. Do you wanna say fuck?”

She stared for a couple seconds more, then nodded like her life depended on it.

“You’re welcome to any time. You just gotta make it count. It’s a fantastic word that’s gotta be used in the right contexts to really drive the fuckin’ point home.”

“Do we have any questions about the partnership process?” Letter Tray spoke over our conversation. Espresso and I made solid eye contact for a good ten seconds, realizing we totally talked right over every little detail that was probably super important, and simultaneously elected to just bullshit it and shake our heads.

“Glad to hear absolute silence! Just to make sure before we get started for the day, everypony here has made living arrangements for the next few months, yes? The spaces at the local inn are limited, and I wanted to make sure you claimed your spots!”

I glanced at Espresso and witnessed her dark fur blanche and eyes stare straight ahead. After a few seconds of no response, I waved my claw in front of her face. “Espresso? Earth to pegasus, come in, pegasus?”

Slowly, her head turned to me, and eyes landed on mine. She said only one word.

“Fuck.”

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Quick Tips and Tricks:

• Don’t be scared to meet your pegasus! Approach with confidence. They can smell fear and will judge you for it harshly.
• Find common ground and talk from there. You might have more in common than you think! They’re creatures like you and me, not flying pastel marshmallows. Looking directly at you about that, Cinder.
• Every pegasus is different, but generally don’t be a dick in the first few minutes and they’ll like you. That being said, if your pegasus is a jerk, one-up them to establish dominance. The jerks only listen to the ones they can respect.