Alone
It was already late at night at the School of Friendship, and most of everybody else was already sound asleep in their beds by now…all except for Gallus. The griffon was seated at a desk near the door of the student study lounge with homework spread out all around him, all illuminated by the desk’s lonely lamp. He had been trying to get in some last-minute studying before bed, but it was slow going. Really regretting leaving it to the last minute like this, he knew, deep down, he should’ve followed Sandbar’s advice to get it done when he had the chance instead of goofing off most of the day…but that’d mean being responsible.
…Which might also help explain why he also had his head down on the desk, sound asleep when Smolder stepped into the lounge and found him already inside. Smolder smirked as she watched him for a moment, supposing it was the effort that counted, then turned to the long red-violet couch sat in the center and dumped her pillow and blanket she had brought in on it. She spent a few moments arranging things to her taste before taking the couch’s decorative bolster and hurled it at Gallus.
“Hey, wake up, sleepyhead!” she shouted as she aimed for his head.
She missed and instead the bolster rammed into the desk lamp, knocking it over and bumping a couple of books onto the floor. Still, it jolted Gallus awake, who blearily sat up and turned to stare at Smolder, a sheet of his notes stuck to the side of his face. “Smolder?” he asked, confused.
“Just figured you wouldn’t want to spend all of your night like that,” Smolder replied cheekily as she fluffed up her pillow and planted it at one end of the couch.
“I’m finishing some homework for class tomorrow,” Gallus explained, rubbing at his tired eyes with both sets of claws. “Or at least I’m trying to.” He noticed the paper stuck to his face and peeled it off. “What are you doing up?”
“Yona’s sleep-stomping again,” Smolder explained, deciding the couch was ready and clambered onto it. “Needed someplace else to sleep.”
“Ah,” Gallus hummed, understanding. Yona sometimes tended to try and stomp things in her sleep—never hard enough to do any real damage, but still obliviously banging her hooves against her wall, creating noises that could be heard and felt on the other side. Smolder happened to be the one whose dorm shared a wall with Yona’s, so understandably, sleep was out of the question for her as long as the sleep-stomping continued. Sometimes it only came in brief bursts and you could wait it out, but clearly that wasn’t the case tonight if Smolder was coming in here to sleep.
Unfortunately, trying to get Yona to stop usually didn’t end well. Which sort of made sense—asleep or not, Yona was a stomping yak at the moment, and no matter what, that was when a yak was at their most dangerous. The last time Gallus tried to intervene himself, he got a hoof to the gut with enough force that it sent him skidding back out of the room, winded. Luckily, no one was really hurt, but Yona slept, and thumped, on anyway, so everybody figured she was probably better left alone when sleep-stomping. Though it was annoying that Yona still swore to this day that she didn’t do it, let alone that she had ever sleep-stomped anyone trying to wake her.
As Smolder made herself comfortable though, Gallus gazed about the dim lounge, thoughts moving on to wondering what time it was. “How late is it anyway?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter other than it’s late,” Smolder stressed, “Way later than I prefer to be up at.” She glanced around briefly too. “Besides, I didn’t check my alarm clock before I left my room, and I didn’t think to bring it with me, so…” She stopped to wonder if maybe she should’ve brought that with her too. It wasn’t going to do her much good if she wasn’t even in the same room when it goes off in the morning. But she shrugged. “Eh, both Ocellus and Silverstream are early risers and usually the first to come in here in the mornings. They’ll probably wake me up, wondering why I’m in here, asleep on the couch, so they can be my alarm clock.”
Gallus chuckled quietly at that.
“Anyway, don’t mind me,” Smolder continued as she finished settling down to sleep, waving at the griffon to carry on. “You can go back to your homework now.”
Gallus snorted as he turned back to his studies. The sight of all the work he still had to finish made his eyes even more tired. He rubbed at them again. “Yeah, that’s assuming I don’t nod off again,” he grumbled. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this tonight…”
“Can’t help you with that—I’m asleep now!” Smolder made some exaggerated snoring sounds.
Gallus rolled his eyes and picked up his quill. “Good night, Smolder,” he said. “At least you’ll be getting some proper sleep tonight.”
“Darn right I will.” And sure enough, she was soon sleeping soundly again.
Gallus let her be, seeing no need to disturb her, and focused on his homework. Though it took a gargantuan effort to keep from dozing off again, he nevertheless stuck at it. And after about another hour of staggered bursts of work, he started to get somewhere, feeling like the end was coming into sight at last.
By then, he had almost forgotten all about Smolder, as she had slept quietly and unmoving like a rock. Indeed, the last time he glanced back at her, she had lapsed so deeply asleep that it looked like she was almost melting into the couch cushions, one arm draped over the side and dragging on the floor. It made him envious, wishing he could be just as deeply asleep too and longed for his own bed. But otherwise he kept quiet so to not disturb her. This wasn’t hard—the whole school was rather silent at the moment, and it made one not want to break it if they could.
That changed, however, when he started to hear Smolder stir in her sleep. He didn’t think much of it until it persisted and he wondered faintly what it was about. He glanced back and saw her weakly turn in her sleep, but not seeing anything immediately amiss, he returned to his homework and remained at it even as Smolder started making the odd grunt or moan in her sleep.
Up until one of those sounds sounded suspiciously like a sob.
Ears suddenly perked and alert, Gallus turned around again. “Smolder?” he inquired without thinking, and saw she was still tossing and turning but in a way that didn’t seem right. Growing concerned, he rose and approached the couch. “Smolder?” he asked again, this time with more worry as he took in how troubled the dragoness appeared to be. Realizing she was in the throes of some intense dream, he reached out to gently poke her awake. “Smolder, wake up, you’re having a—”
His talon had barely poked her scaled skin when Smolder abruptly jolted awake with a gasp and immediately, instinctively, grabbed Gallus’s arm with both sets of claws, gripping so tightly that her claws dug in a little too deep. He jerked back in surprise, but he couldn’t help but stare into the scared and frightened eyes Smolder stared back with, her mind struggling to wake fully. But then her face flooded with immense relief, and before Gallus could react, she lunged forward and griped him in a bear hug like her very life depended on it.
And then she proceeded to sob into his shoulder.
To say the least, Gallus was shocked. For one thing, he was completely unprepared for this, having not seen it coming, especially not the hug. He wasn’t the huggy type. Nor was Smolder. That was more Yona or Silverstream’s thing. So for either of them to be in a hug like this was almost unheard of, and it left Gallus feeling conflicted about how to respond.
But it wasn’t the hug that shocked him the most: Smolder didn’t cry. Ever.
This was shattering everything for him right at that moment, but at the same time, he couldn’t possibly push the dragoness away. Not like this. So, slowly, gingerly, awkwardly, he wrapped his arms around her and returned the hug.
This only made Smolder grip him even tighter, as if afraid to let him go. After a moment, though, she seemed to realize herself and started to reel in her emotions. “I…I had a nightmare,” she muttered, feeling the griffon deserved an explanation.
“I gathered,” Gallus couldn’t help but snark. Then, sympathizing, he added, “It’s over now, though.”
Smolder sniveled. “Yeah,” she mumbled. She shifted, but didn’t release him. “If you tell anyone about this…”
“I won’t breathe a word,” Gallus promised. He felt he owed her that much for this rare and unexpected show of weakness.
The next couple of moments passed in relative silence as Gallus let her continue try to calm herself. After a bit, she had gone quiet and still. “Feeling better?” he asked her.
“…a little,” Smolder admitted. She seemed uncertain.
Gallus decided to sit down, repositioning himself so to plop down onto the couch. Smolder followed, releasing her hug but still keeping both sets of claws on him, for some reason wanting to keep him close. He remained shocked by just how scared she still looked—just what had frightened her so badly?
He didn’t want to pry, though. He honestly wasn’t sure how she’d react if he did. Still, as the silence dragged on with them just awkwardly sitting there, he felt like the ball was in his court now and should say something.
He worked to haphazardly compose something. “Everybody has nightmares, y’know,” he began. “Even the toughies like you and me.” That made Smolder grin a little, so, heartened, he pressed on. “There’s one I have every now and then myself…where I’m flying along in the sky with a bunch of other griffons, and then I realize this griffon flying next to me has…something on his wing…some…thing…” He shrugged, unable to find the words. “Whatever it was, it was vicious, and proceeded to eat the wings right off the griffon, leave them to plummet helplessly to their doom, and then jump to the next griffon and do it all over again. After doing this once or twice, I start to realize he’s especially interested in me and is trying to make his way towards me.” Smolder’s claws suddenly tightened their grip on his arm. “So I bolt out of there like a sphinx out of Tartarus, trying to put as much distance as I can between me and that thing, flying as hard as I can. But no matter what, he keeps gaining on me. Finally, I dodge around some mountains and stuff, and on the other side, the skies are clear and I think I’ve finally lost him. But then I feel something drop out of the sky onto my wing, and I turn my head to see that he’s right there.”
Smolder shuddered involuntarily. “What happened then?” she asked when Gallus didn’t immediately continue.
“Dunno,” Gallus admitted. “That’s usually when I wake up.” He shuddered himself. “Scares me to death, that nightmare, every time.”
“I’ll bet.” Smolder became pensive for a moment. “My nightmare wasn’t as dramatic as all that, though.”
Gallus watched her for a moment then finally just asked the question. “What was your nightmare?”
Smolder hesitated for a moment, not eager to relive it. “I woke up one morning, here at the school,” she started to relate slowly. “But there’s nobody around. I look in all the classrooms and everywhere, but the whole school’s empty. I run over to Professor Twilight’s castle and search there, but no one’s there either. I go out into Ponyville—nobody. I fly out to Canterlot—still nobody. Rocks, I even fly all the way back to the Dragon Realms, and there’s flipping nobody…just me. All alone.” She fell silent after that.
Gallus mulled it over in his head for a moment, taken aback as the nightmare was not what he expected. For a moment, he struggled to figure out the best way to respond. “Well…at least it’s not the scariest nightmare ever, right?” He finally offered, lamely. “I mean, it’s spooky, sure, but…”
“That’s just it, though!” Smolder suddenly snapped. Her expression turned deeply confused. “Why does it terrify me so much?”
Gallus fell silent for a moment. “Nobody really likes to be alone, Smolder,” he pointed out softly.
“But dragons do!” Smolder persisted, this clearly bothering her a great deal. “Dragons might start out growing up with family and siblings and all that, but then they molt and they start going out on their own! Doing their own thing! That’s something I’ve always known while growing up, looking forward to it even, that one day I’ll be an adult out with a hoard of my own, living a life of solitude!” Smolder’s gaze became distant, frightened, and confused. “…so why does the idea of being alone scare me at all?”
Gallus didn’t reply right away, mulling over what she had said. “Smolder,” he began slowly, glancing at her, “A life of solitude…isn’t the same as being alone.”
Smolder’s brow furrowed slightly as she glanced back at him. “How would you know?”
Gallus snorted before he could stop himself. “One might live life in solitude, but that doesn’t mean they’re alone. There are still others around them, others they still have to interact with, even if for little things, like…like…fetching the mail, or delivering a box, or even just to tell them to get the hay out of the way! You might be a nobody to all of them, but you’re still standing in the crowd with them. You’re not truly alone while in solitude. Just…” Gallus suddenly wilted with a sigh, closing his eyes. “…rejected.”
Smolder’s eyes narrowed again, but this time with concern. She placed a paw on the griffon’s. “Gallus…how do you know that?” she asked again, this time with genuineness.
Gallus averted her gaze, as if ashamed. “Growing up on the streets on your own will do that to you.”
Smolder went quiet for a moment then slowly sank in upon herself, ashamed for not considering that. “I guess you would know better than I would…wouldn’t you?”
Gallus hesitated. He sucked in a deep breath. “Griffonstone…isn’t a friendly place. Everybody wants to be left alone there, and they’ll be rude and mean if you get in their way. During the day, unless I was running errands for somegriff so to earn enough bits for a meal, nobody would give me the time of day. But despite all of that, it was still good for me, because then I felt I was still a part of something, part of a group.” Now Gallus was the one whose gaze turned distant. “It was later…at night…when I went to that run-down old shack that served as a home…when I had no one to talk to…no one to be with…no one but the dark and empty night…that’s alone.”
Smolder stared at him, taken aback. She knew Gallus was an orphan and had grown up basically on his own…but he didn’t like talking about it and would rather shirk the subject than address it. For him to be so frank about it now…well, it was like Gallus’s reaction to her grabbing him in a bear hug, scared and sobbing. Feeling sorry for him, she wrapped her arms around his middle in a sideways hug for comfort. Gallus numbly let her.
“…I guess I can get why being alone would scare you, Smolder,” he mumbled after a moment. “But you’re not alone…not really.”
Smolder, reflecting back on her nightmare, wasn’t so convinced. “For now, maybe,” she said. “But…what about later?”
Gallus raised an eyebrow at her. “How do you mean?”
Smolder hesitated, but the more she thought about it, the more she started to understand why her nightmare had frightened her so. It wasn’t about what she had now. “Gallus…what happens after we’re done here?” she asked. “Here at the school?”
Gallus wasn’t sure he followed. “You mean graduate?” He shrugged. “I guess we go on and…do whatever it is we want to do with our lives next. Sandbar indicated once he wanted do something nautical…I think Ocellus said she wanted to be a researcher, Silverstream would be royalty or something, and I guess Yona would go and…smash stuff.” He glanced at the dragoness in puzzlement. “Why do you ask?”
Smolder hesitated, tightening her grip on him. “It’s just…I’m thinking about where I’ll go when we graduate…and I’m just realizing…we’re all going to go our separate ways, won’t we?” She shuddered as her fear surged through her again. “Would we even see each other again? Would we even still be friends? Or would I…” she trailed off, unable to bring herself to say it.
“…be left alone?” Gallus finished, understanding what had brought this all on. He lowered his gaze, thoughtful. “Smolder…I think we’re all too good friends to let that happen. We’d all still find ways to stay in touch.”
“But what if we don’t?” Smolder asked, and she suddenly buried her face in Gallus’s wing. “And don’t lie to me, feather-butt, I know this bothers you too. Remember Hearth’s Warming?”
Gallus did. Of course he did. He actually wasn’t proud of that incident, looking back. But it proved Smolder’s point well. Absentmindedly, he ran his talons through Smolder’s spines, trying to find an answer that could quell both of their fears. “I guess our professors would expect us to go and make new friends,” he replied, but the answer felt grossly inadequate to him.
It didn’t seem to be adequate to Smolder either. “I don’t want new friends,” she mumbled.
“That’s kinda selfish.”
“I know. But it’s true.”
Gallus sighed. “I hate the idea of the other guys going away, too,” he admitted. “But…if there’s anything I learned from that Hearth’s Warming incident…it’s that they have a say in it too. We can’t make them stay. We wouldn’t be good friends if we did.” A thought suddenly coming to him, Gallus reached down and lifted Smolder’s head, cupping her chin in his talons so he could look her in the eye. “But if it helps any…I don’t plan to go anywhere. So if nothing else…I guess we’ll always have each other.”
Smolder pondered that for a moment. She smirked a little. “That sounded so sappy.”
Gallus laughed. “It really kind of was. Sorry.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“…you really promise to stick around?” Smolder then asked softly.
Gallus thought it over again, but found his answer didn’t change. “Yeah,” he replied, giving her a grin. “I do.”
Smolder returned the grin and leaned on his shoulder. “Me too.”
Silence then followed as they quietly sat there, lost in their respective lines of thought, pondering upon the night’s events, and overall savoring the fact that, for that night at least, neither of them were alone. Eventually, though, glancing out the room’s only window at the night sky, Gallus remembered just how late it was and that he still had homework to finish. He started to rise from his seat. “Look, it’s really late,” he began. “How about I run down to the kitchens, make you a hot chocolate or something to help you relax, and…”
But Smolder grabbed his talons before he got out of her reach. “Don’t go,” she asked, and then said something else Gallus very rarely heard from her. “Please.”
Gallus looked at her for a long moment then nodded. “Okay.” He sat back down.
Smolder scooted closer. Gallus let her as they lapsed into silent thought again. He glanced one more time over at his homework still left on his desk, but decided that, for this, it could wait.
They must have both dozed off not long thereafter, because the next thing Gallus reliably remembered was groggily cracking open his eyes and nearly getting blinded by the early morning sunlight streaming in through the window. Stiffly lifting his head off the back of the couch he’d left it leaning on all night, he glanced about the room with bleary eyes. The lounge was still empty save for them, and remained unchanged except for the new source of sunlight. Glanced over at the window, he saw from the sun’s position outside that it was maybe an hour after sunrise at most, roughly around the usual time they all needed to get up.
Glancing down at Smolder, who had snuggled up against his side during the night but was stirring slightly herself, he wondered if he should try to wake her, when he heard the distant slam of a door shutting and footsteps rapidly coming in their direction. Abruptly realizing how this was going to look to others and not interested in facing that, he quickly leapt to his feet, causing Smolder to fall over on the couch with a yelp, and raced back for the desk where he had left his homework. He had just sat himself back down when the lounge door banged open and Silverstream strolled in, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as always.
“Good morning, Gallus!” she cried happily upon seeing the griffon at the desk, gathering his things. “Were you up all night studying?”
“Uh…yeah, sure,” Gallus replied, deciding to go with that for a cover story. It’s not like it wasn’t still mostly true.
Silverstream’s attention then shifted when she saw the dragoness woozily sitting up on the couch. “Oh, Smolder!” she said, turning to greet her too. “You’re in here too!” She then frowned, puzzled as she took in the blanket and pillow Smolder had draped on the couch. “Why are you in here?”
Smolder glanced at the hippogriff then at Gallus. “Uh,” she began slowly, looking back at Silverstream. “Yona was sleep-stomping again.”
“Ah,” Silverstream said, nodding her head in understanding, “you needed someplace quieter to sleep.” She shot a smirk at Gallus, who was still gathering up his unfinished homework and trying to avoid eye contact. “Well then, I hope Gallus working on his homework didn’t bother you too much.”
Smolder glanced at the griffon again. Gallus glanced back, curious as to what she’d say. “Nah,” Smolder eventually replied. “He didn’t bother me at all.”
Silverstream beamed at this. “Then it looks like it was a good night for everybody!” Then, stopping to think it through a little, she gave Gallus a worried look. “Well, I guess maybe not for you, Gallus…did you get any sleep last night?”
Gallus was momentarily uncertain how to reply, and resisted the urge to look at Smolder again. “Uh…I think I actually dozed off at some point during the night anyway, so I guess I got enough whether I meant to or not,” he replied. Again, technically the truth.
Though, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t just say the truth…it wasn’t like any big deal, was it? He was just there for a friend and her back in turn. But, meeting Smolder’s eye again and seeing a bit of thankful relief in her expression, he realized it was more than that to Smolder. Maybe it was just to help her shield her tough dragon image, or maybe it was because it just felt that personal, but Gallus reaffirmed to himself that there was no need to publically broadcast the details of last night’s events.
Besides…he did promise not to tell anyone that Smolder had been sobbing into anyone’s shoulder.
Whatever the case, it was enough to satisfy Silverstream, who again brightly declared it was a good night, and invited them both to join her and their other friends for breakfast. “They’re serving waffles today!” she reminded.
Breakfast went normally. Their other friends spent most of it chatting, but Gallus and Smolder stayed rather quiet all throughout, mulling still about what had transpired. It wouldn’t be until they were all heading off for their first classes of the day though that they finally got another chance to talk.
“Hey,” Smolder said, pulling Gallus aside in the hallway, “About last night.” She shifted awkwardly, then with an embarrassed grin, simply said, “…Thanks.”
Gallus sheepishly grinned back. “You’re welcome.”
And that settled, they went on to their respective classes. Perhaps the only downside to the morning was that in his first class, Gallus had to turn in the homework he hadn’t fully finished, and as a result, only got a C+ on the assignment. But in the end, Gallus found he didn’t mind that so much.
It was, after all, still a passing grade.