Accidents of Sentience
The last rays of the afternoon sun shone down on the continent of Zebrica. Crickets chirped as the wind blew through the tall grass. Rocks and the occasional tree were strewn about the otherwise flat savannah. High above the ground, a griffon soared through the air, the warm breeze ruffling her feathers as her keen predator eyes took in every single detail. She could see mice and snakes rustle in the bushes from far above, though she was after larger prey.
Gilda came across a small zebra village: the town of Poleka. Most of the buildings were huts made out of mud and straw. A fire was lit in the town center for the evening, with zebras sitting around it, singing and chatting. The smoke wafted up into the air, assaulting Gilda’s nostrils. Mothers and children were standing at the pond outside of the village, taking drinks. Several zebras were out in the grasslands, grazing.
No zebra saw or heard her coming. Griffon wings were as quiet as falling leaves. Her target, an elderly zebra stallion sitting on his front porch smoking a sweet-smelling herb from a pipe, did not even realize what was happening. He was aware of the pain for merely a second as her razor-sharp talons pierced his skull, scrambling his brain.
Some of the griffons simply didn’t care. They’d snatch young foals while they played in the yard, or they wouldn’t properly ensure their victims were dead, instead leaving them alive and terrified on the flight back to the Nest. Gilda wasn’t like that. She was a predator, true, but only because she had to be. She at least tried to take the oldest zebras who had lived full lives, or the injured ones who were on death’s door anyway, and make their deaths as easy as possible.
Just as a young zebra colt had noticed Gilda, calling out in shock in the zebra tongue, she had already ascended five meters into the air, gripping her prey in her claws. In her thirty years, she had become very efficient at hunting.
She’d much rather live off of oats and apples like her pony friends in Equestria, food which required a simple swift kick to get. How easy that must have been. But that just wasn’t enough to support a three-hundred kilogram killing machine, even one that didn’t want to be a killing machine. Griffons needed huge volumes of protein that they could only get from meat, unlike ponies. Whenever Gilda had heard Rainbow Dash whine about her so-called problems like not getting into the Wonderbolts, or only getting a measly ten paid federal holidays at her weather job, she had to restrain herself from slapping her ungrateful friend in the face. As an herbivore, Rainbow Dash had it made and didn’t even know it! Every day in a pony’s life was a blessing.
Gilda was a kilometer away as the zebra townsfolk down below and behind her were calling out in shock, shouting after the monster who had just snatched up a village elder. Even at this distance, with her sharp ears, she could hear every jeer and insult thrown her way, every wailing cry to the heavens. With her sharp eyes, she could see every tear rolling down their striped faces, though she didn’t bother looking back.
Her eyesight would be the first thing to go, would she ever stop eating meat for more than a few months. Then, her talons would fall out. Finally, her bones would crumble, until she eventually died. She had seen a couple other griffons do it before. It was a months-long, agonizing process, and only the most principled griffons became vegetarians, who were both unwilling to kill living creatures and unwilling to commit suicide out of self-hatred for their own wretched existence. The rest, like Gilda, simply had to live with who they were. Only a slightly lesser torture, in her opinion.
The sun was setting off in the west, the direction of her nest. As she squinted her eyes and flew towards the sun, she recalled the alicorn who moved it. Thousands of years ago, griffons used to hunt ponies in Equestria, back when the three pony tribes were still separate. But once the tribes were united under Celestia and Luna, the princesses demanded that the griffons never hunt in Equestria again. After all, the princesses reasoned, they wielded the Elements of Harmony to protect the whole world, griffons included, from powerful beings like Discord. The least that the griffons could do in return would be to leave their little pony subjects alone and go hunt in another country.
The griffons refused to leave at first, seeing the princess’ demands as a protection racket by the “alicorn mafia”. But with the three pony tribes united, they had a formidable defense against predation. Either the magic of the unicorns, or the flight and weather skills of the pegasi, or the strength of the earth ponies could be overcome by themselves, but not when the tribes were working together with all of these skills in concert. The ponies kicked the griffons out of Equestria by force, where they resettled to the continent of Zebrica and they looked for new prey.
They decided on zebras, since all of the other potential game in Zebrica had issues. The hyenas were vicious, tough to kill, and their meat was too sinewy. The herds of wild gazelles “belonged” to the manticores, who would fight griffons to the death for even looking at “their” prey wrong. Elephants and giraffes were too big and too strong. Fishing in the sea was banned due to a treaty with the seaponies, who threatened to capsize any fishing boat for fear their children would accidentally get caught up in nets. So zebras were quite literally the only game in town.
Gilda’s wings ached slightly as she fought against a northerly wind on her return to the Nest. It was atop and around a giant cliff, and the griffons’ homes were nestled in between all the cracks.
To solve the ethical problem of predation, the griffons had tried animal husbandry, but that had its own problems. How much better was it to kill twenty chickens to get the same meat that was in a single zebra? Chickens were quite smart. A few could even cluck along at kindergarten level conversations. There wasn’t an exchange rate for different species’ lives like there was for foreign currency, so who decided how many chickens morally equaled a zebra? Some griffons said “five” and ate only zebras; some said “fifty” and ate only chickens. Some just didn’t care and ate both because they liked variety in their diet. Many types of meat tasted just like chicken, but not zebra.
Cows, pigs, and goats were even worse since they were more clever than chickens, and they could comprehend their mortality. The few cattle ranches in the griffon lands more resembled slave labor camps than the free-range dairy farms in Equestria, where all that was expected of them was milk. As it was, cattle would do anything and everything in their power to escape being slaughtered and served as steak, so they had to be shackled.
Gilda finally arrived at her home nest, on a ledge near the bottom of the giant cliff, but still several meters above ground. The nest was made of twigs, dried leaves, and branches, and just big enough for her to comfortably stretch out while sleeping. Unlike ponies and zebras, most griffons were content to sleep under the stars, not cutting down trees for wood to build houses or disturbing nature any more than they had to. Striped zebra skin blankets were spread out for Gilda to sleep under on cold nights. The griffons used every part of the zebras, not letting a single thing go to waste, and they only hunted when they needed to eat. They were quite the conservationists.
Gilda retrieved some firewood from inside of a crag in the rock and placed it in a circle in her fire pit, putting some dried leaves and twigs at the base for some kindling. She struck flint against stone, the flint loudly clicking repeatedly as sparks soon erupted and set the kindling ablaze. She blew on it as best she could as small flames burst from the kindling, lapping at the logs.
At least the zebras that Gilda ate had gotten to live a full and free life, and were never tortured. At least she wasn’t responsible for the death of dozens of chickens a week, instead killing a single zebra at the end of his life anyway, the meat from which could easily last her a week. It was small comfort given what she still had to do, but griffons had long learned the mental gymnastics of predation, all the things that they told themselves to justify their actions. They’d also developed a strong sense of sarcasm. “At least we’re not breezies” was a common refrain of griffons like Gilda.
The zebras had never been pleased about the hunting arrangement, for obvious reasons. Recently there had been some talk amongst the zebras of arming themselves with modern weaponry and fighting back against the griffons. A zebra cleric who claimed to offer salvation to his “chosen” people pledged that a Zebra Empire would rise from the savannah and defeat their predators in a great battle. A few griffons had even been killed by his well-armed followers.
This was far from normal, though, since for many centuries, zebras had been easy prey. Their only defenses had been flint spears, bows, and their potion-making skills. Also, their monochromatic defense mechanism that makes no one zebra distinguishable from another. Perhaps that trick worked on colorblind predators, but griffons could see the entire color spectrum, and Gilda had never once failed to catch a zebra simply because he was standing in a group. She just looked for the target’s eyes and went from there.
With the fire now burning and catching the logs, Gilda placed the zebra carcass over it, suspended from a wooden spit. After a few minutes, it was sizzling, the tantalizing, mouth-watering scent of meat filling her nose. She always felt guilty about enjoying it so much. Even though she took every precaution she could think of to ensure she acted humanely, somewhere deep inside, she felt it was still wrong. If she ate chickens or fish, it would be wrong, too. Her entire existence was wrong.
Gilda removed the zebra, now cooked to perfection, from the fire. She said a small prayer to the God of the Hunt, if he even existed, thanking him for the meal and for the zebra who died to provide it. Though Gilda wasn’t particularly religious, she wanted to hedge her bets. Hopefully whatever god existed would understand why she and the rest of his creations did what he seemingly created them for.
It would be so much easier for Gilda and all griffons if the zebras weren’t sentient, if all animals in Equestria weren’t aware and feeling to some degree, from the smallest bunny to the largest whale. Eating a dumb animal would be easy. It would still be a living thing, sure, but at least it wouldn’t have feelings or be cognizant of its death. Why couldn’t there be just one available species in Equestria like that: a perfect prey for griffons, the perfect predators?
Conversely, why did the griffons themselves have to be blessed with the gift of reason? Gilda would have preferred simply being an animalistic slave to her natural urges, unable to tell right from wrong. But no, morality wasn’t as black and white as the zebras’ coats. Whether by some cruel design of fate or evolution, some accident of sentience, the griffons were damned to be monsters by their original sin of being born the wrong species, sentient predator instead of sentient prey.
Gilda dug her beak into the leg of the zebra, tearing off a bite of flesh. The salty taste filled her mouth. Taking no time to enjoy her meal, she rended flesh from bone with killer efficiency, finishing the whole leg in under a minute. The quicker she got it over with, the better, and she would go back to some other distraction like flying or reading until she had to eat or kill again. She wiped the bone clean until not a single remorseful morsel remained. Her stomach was full, her body absorbing the nutrients it needed.
And she hated herself for it.