Tempest Shadow wanted nothing more for Hearth's Warming Day than to laze around her cottage. Her cat had different ideas and the paw-prints lead her into an Apple family celebration.

Written for Sane Marbles for Jinglemas 2024

This story is a sequel to Old Paths, New Directions

Hearts & Hooves Day is a pony holiday. It’s filled with chocolates and flowers and other similar snack foods. It has cards with gooey sentiment. And it has lovestruck ponies making all kinds of grand, silly gestures to their special someponies.

Gilda is a griffon. And griffons don’t go in for any of that kind of nonsense.

Edited by: Nightwalker

Written for the February Super Happy Hearts and Hooves Lovefest Fanfic Event

You do not have to read Old Paths to understand this. Its merely a sister story.

Now with Spanish translation. Thanks to SPANIARD KIWI for that.

For all her life, Gilda has been living in an alien society. Feared by ponies and shunned by the few griffons living in Cloudsdale, she has spent her life largely adrift. The only times she never felt alone were those when she was around Rainbow Dash.

Now, five months after being brushed aside for her rude behavior, Gilda has come back to Ponyville. Her hope is to spend the holidays with her old friend as they've always done, that maybe their relationship isn't wholly over. But those new friends of Dash’s are still complicating things, and Gilda's lingering, crushing depression isn't helping matters either.

Out in the woods north of town, away from ponies and their irritating antics, the griffon finds something different. It doesn’t complain. It doesn’t judge. It is accepting and it is unforgiving.

But, above all else, it is silent.

Created for the EqD 2014 "Friend Off"

Edited and beta read by Nightwalker

Mildly edited and cleaned up in December of 2020.

Takes place during season one.

Now with Spanish translation. Thanks to SPANIARD KIWI for that.

Ever since losing her best friend, Gilda has wanted nothing more to do with ponies, instead opting to bury herself with work with the goal of earning enough bits to return to her homeland on her own terms. But while living in Equestria, forces much bigger than one measly messenger are at work, slowly pulling two superpowers apart.

Whether she wants it or not, Gilda's life is still filled with ponies; from the one in her dreams to the new turquoise pegasus following her around, to Celestia herself. With a little sleight of hoof from Equestrian royalty, the griffon is offered the opportunity to either stand up and better her life and the lives of others or continue to be a hapless bystander and wallow in melancholy.

For Gilda, it comes down to a much simpler choice.

Stay, or go.

Re-written story

Edited and beta'd by Nightwalker

Takes place after Wonderbolts Academy and before Magical Mystery Cure

Now with Spanish translation. Thanks to SPANIARD KIWI for that.