Summer Days and Evening Flames PROLOGUE - CHAPTER 7

PROLOGUE

After a long day of patrolling the streets, there was nothing more that I looked forward to than spending the evening at home.

Farrington, the mining city in which I and nearly twenty thousand others made our livelihood, was the industrial backbone of Equestria. The city itself was set into the eastern face of the mountain which housed our source of prosperity: vast amounts of iron ore. Almost every day, a caravan or two left the city carrying tons of iron ingots and forged goods. Similarly, almost every day, a caravan returned with goods that we didn’t have the resources to manufacture: food, textiles, and lumber. Life had continued like that for at least two hundred years in Farrington, and if the prospector’s reports were accurate, it was going to continue like that for a very long time.

Like almost every able-bodied male in the city, I had tried my hooves as a miner. There weren’t many guilds that recruited members as young as I had been, but  despite my age, I like to think that I did an okay job while working in the mines. Those days, spent several miles underground, had been some of the darkest that I ever had to endure; even though it hadn’t been their fault, I still had no plans to return to the mines anytime soon.

My true passion was defending the law-abiding citizens from the criminals who would otherwise do them harm. Even before the mines, I had always felt a need to stand up for those who needed it most. For example, when I was eleven, I had tried tackling a would-be mugger while I was walking home one evening. His intended target had escaped because of my distraction, but I received a knife to the flank for my troubles. Luckily, the city guards had been alerted by that point, so my assailant fled before he could do anything more to me. When I showed up on my family’s doorstep escorted by two guards and covered in blood, my mother had flipped her metaphorical lid. She calmed down when the guards explained what had happened, though, and had even gone so far as to tell them, ‘He gets that from his father.’ I had swelled at pride from this; dad had been my living idol before his illness took him out of my life. Later, when my mother helped me wash the blood away, we uncovered my newly-acquired cutie mark: an icon of a golden shield.

Regardless of how much I loved my vocation, spending ten hours on my hooves in the oppressive summer heat left me weary, even after seven years of doing the same basic job. The current heat wave that we were experiencing wasn’t the worst one that I could recall, but it was still pretty bad. Usually, the mountain range to the west let some precipitation through; for the past two weeks, though, the mountains had been unusually selfish with their rain. As it stood, all of Farrington was currently under a ‘drought advisory.’ It made me sad to see the wilted flowers in the city’s planter pots, but I’d rather lose flowers than ponies. It was so dry that there wasn’t even any humidity in the air, which made the heat downright dangerous. Earlier today, two of my officers had passed out on their patrols because they hadn’t taken my advice about drinking water regularly. After this incident, I vowed that, tomorrow, I would see about getting a pegasus weather team to make some rain for us. We usually let the weather run its own course; however, the situation was becoming dire.

Usually, such a large decision as changing the weather would be left to a city official, such as the Captain of the Guard. However, he was currently away ‘burning some vacation time before retirement.’ His out-of-town trips were becoming more and more frequent; it was no secret that he was testing his two lieutenants to see which one would of us be worthy to be his replacement. This time, it was my turn to wear the ornate armor. Until he returned in five days, I was officially ‘Acting Captain’ Iron Bulwark.

As I turned the corner onto the avenue I lived on, I took note of the hunger that was growing in my gut. I had been interrupted during my lunch break by a fight that had broken out near the café. After taking care of the offenders, I hadn’t thought to finish my meal. After a hard day’s work in the vile heat, being hungry left me feeling exhausted. Also, today’s Wednesday, I remembered with a bit of annoyance: it was my turn to take care of supper. Instead of having a meal waiting for me when I got home, factoring in cooking time, I was looking at another hour or so until I could eat. Instead of resigning myself to frustration, I decided to take satisfaction in the fact that at least I got to choose what my sister and I would be eating that evening.

I reached my doorstep and opened the door. Immediately, my sister got up from the couch. “Iron! You’re home!” she greeted me happily. She cantered over to me and was about to hug me...

“Maxie... wait,” I said, which took some of the air out of her excitement. I took a moment to undo the two buckles on my right side, which allowed me to open the armor like a clam shell. I brought my left foreleg through its opening and said, “I’ve been out in the sun all day, and that armor’s only insulated on the inside.” I put the armor on its rack by the front door. Near the front of the armor rack, there was a wooden sphere about the size of a pony’s head; I put my helmet on it before turning back to my sister.

She made an exaggerated act of bringing a hoof up to her nose and said, “I’ll say you’ve been in the sun all day. You need a bath, or I can see the headlines now: ‘Disgraced Lieutenant Stands Trial After Suffocating Sister.’”

I laughed at this, but when I inhaled, I caught some of what she was referring to and had to suppress a gag. “Okay, okay. Dinner can wait a bit, until I’m less...” I paused as I thought of an elegant way to describe my situation.

“Smelly!” my sister interjected with a huge grin.

“Offensive,” I corrected her.

“Smel-ly,” Maxie persisted, stretching the word out in a silly voice.

“Shut up!” I said, shaking my head as I lost my fight to keep from laughing. My sister stuck her tongue out at me with a smile before she went back to the couch and her magazine. Still chuckling, I made my way to the washroom.

*        *        *

The cold bath had been agonizing at first, but an hour after it was over, I had to admit that it had done a good job of cooling me down. The kitchen was steamy and full of the smells of my attempt at recreating ‘stir-fry.’ I had first eaten the dish a week ago when a new restaurant had opened up in the cultural district. I loved touring Farrington and sampling all of her entertainment venues, especially the restaurants. Maxie didn’t share my love of exploring the city, though: if we were going to someplace new, I practically had to drag her along with me. She had her comfort zone when it came to a lot of things, and she rarely deviated from it.

It came as no surprise to me when she eyed her plate with suspicion. “What is this?” she asked.

“Stir-fry,” I answered while bringing my own plate to the table. “Like at Chahn’s Wok last week.” She had finished her plate of stir-fry at the restaurant, so I figured that I would try to make something from their menu that I at least knew my sister could tolerate.

She looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “This better not be as bad as your breakfast experiment. What was it again, cinnamon toast with...?” she prompted.

“Mayonnaise,” I finished bluntly.

“And then I had to go to the--”

“Hospital,” I interjected this time. “Honestly, Max, that was three months ago, can you drop it?” I asked a bit shortly; I was starting to get annoyed by her constant reminders about the whole ordeal.

“Then what about the butterscotch nachos from three weeks ago?”

“That could’ve been the next dessert craze and you know it,” I defended myself.

“And the pasta-oatmeal salad?”

“That... was a mistake,” I admitted. “Anyway, I got the recipe for this from Choshi himself, so this shouldn’t have turned out too badly.”

“Who’s Choshi?” my sister asked with confusion.

“Choshi Chahn. Chahn’s Wok,” I explained, letting her connect the dots.

She didn’t reply to this; instead, she tried a bit of her stir-fry. I also started eating. I had left the ingredients in the frying pan for too long, so the meal was a bit soggy; despite this, the centers of the vegetables weren’t cooked all the way through, and they were still unpleasantly tough. Apart from the texture, though, the flavor wasn’t too far from the mark.

“Not bad,” Maxie commented.

Even though I agreed with her, I had been thinking of food for the past few hours. I was pretty much bored of it by now, so I changed the subject: “So, how’d the post office go today?”

“Pretty well,” my sister replied with a bit of caution. “This heat’s not great for our in-town delivery ponies, but they got by okay. My performance review was today,” she said hastily, which made me worry that it had gone wrong and she didn’t want to talk about it.

“How’d that go?” I asked despite myself.

“Mister Delivery says I’m really reliable as a clerk,” she started quickly. “He says... if you’re okay with it... then I can start doing some of the out-of-town deliveries,” she mumbled the last bit of the sentence, but I heard it well enough.

I paused as I thought about it. It didn’t bother me that her boss was asking my permission for her to do something; after our mother finally gave in to her grief and joined our father in the cemetery, I had had to step up in order to raise Maxie. I had only been thirteen at the time, but she was only seven, so it was either that or the orphanage for her. Mining had been hard and our landlord had jacked up the cost of rent in order to keep quiet about our whole deal. At the end of the day, though, having our own place to ourselves was better than the prospect of sharing a bedroom with thirty strangers. Nine years later, my sister was still considered a minor and I was her legal guardian. This wasn’t the first time that I had had to vouch for her; like always, I weighed this decision before answering.

“If Speedy wants to send you out on deliveries,” I began, “I think he’s a better judge of your work ethic than I am. Tell him I said ‘yes,’ just... nothing to the northwest,” I added soberly. The griffins that lived up there were as fierce towards intruders as interracial treaties allowed them to be. I didn’t want Maxie misjudging any of the territorial landmarks and winding up impaled on a stake fifty yards outside of the city limits.

My sister missed the cause of my concerns, though. She broke into a huge smile and squealed, “Really?!”

“Yeah,” I responded. “I wasn’t too much older than you when I got a job as a guard, anyway.”

My response lifted my sister’s mood to a state of joy, and for the next ten minutes, she chattered excitedly about all of the ‘cool places she’d get to visit’ and how she’d get to go on ‘adventures’. I smiled as I listened to her romantic interpretation of the job. Even though she was smart enough to handle most troubles and issues that came with traveling, she was still a filly at heart. I hoped that she’d stay that way.

Her ranting was cut short by a knock at our door. I sighed as I pushed myself away from the table and went over to see who it was. It was rare for either of us to have any callers in the evening, so I figured that it was city guard business. You better get used to it, I realized. There’s a fifty-fifty shot for these late-night interruptions to become part of your permanent title.

I opened the door, and sure enough, one of the officers under my peer was on my doorstep. He looked completely out of breath. “Sir!” he snapped a quick salute while he gulped down a breath, but it didn’t help. He gasped out the following words: “The lieutenant... market square... netted... griffin!”

Oh, hell, I thought as I immediately picked up my chest armor. I put my left foreleg through its proper hole and wrapped the two halves around my chest. Donning the armor slowed me down, but I needed to wear it as a symbol of authority, especially if I was going to go head-to-head with Lieutenant Starfall. I missed the buckle when trying to thread the leather strap in it, which caused me a bit of annoyance.

My sister came into the living room. “Did he say something about there being a griffin being in town?” she asked with a notable air of disgust. Griffins, our neighbors to the northwest, were definitely outside her comfort zone of foreign races.

The officer seemed to have caught his breath enough to reply, and he turned to my sister. “Ma’am... The on-duty lieutenant ordered a griffin to be netted out of the sky. She’s on the ground now, and we’re waiting for Acting Captain Bulwark to come deal with the scene,” he explained, looking at me with a sense of urgency.

I was still having trouble with the damn buckle, of all the things.

“I don’t see why Iron’s got to go,” my sister said in a pompous tone, “Someone’s already there; just kill the filthy animal and be done with it!”

By the fifth time that I missed my buckle, I was downright frustrated. “Max,” I shot a glare at my sister before returning focus to my buckle. “Just shut the hell up when you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped. My anger at what she had just suggested was compounded by my newly-found ineptitude at buckle-buckling. Finally, the strap caught, so I put my hoof back on the ground. With only three buckles done, I wouldn’t do well for inspection; however, I was wearing the armor, which was what mattered.

I looked back up at Maxie, who was now wearing a look of shocked sadness. I’ll defuse that situation later, I promised myself as I grabbed my helmet, turned out the door, and began galloping to the market district. Luckily, the officer was adept at manners and I heard him close the front door as he turned to follow me. I felt bad for leaving my sister behind as I had, but there wasn’t time to apologize: a griffin getting netted down would be a sticky situation on a good day. Lieutenant Starfall was quite possibly the worst highly-ranked guard to have at the scene, and right now, I was the only pony in the city who could order him to stand down.

If he kills her without a captain’s orders, I thought, recalling the griffin’s gender from the officer’s words, it’ll be the end of his career. Either through our friendship or my authority, I couldn’t let that happen to the lieutenant. I galloped as I could, but I still felt that it wasn’t fast enough. As I ran, I remembered what had happened seven years ago...

Starfall’s fiancée, Comet Tail, had been past-due to return from a delivery by over four hours. From what he said about her punctuality, this was cause for concern. His worries eventually made it up the ranks to the lieutenant on duty; based on her proximity to the griffins to the north, he immediately began asking for volunteers to form a search party. I raised my hoof at once. Not to be outdone by his subordinate, my sergeant volunteered his whole squad...

I turned a corner and almost slipped and fell; there had been some loose earth on top of the cobblestones. I had been in too much of a hurry to realize how slippery that would be in the middle of a turn. My back legs flew out from under me; instead of fighting their direction, I slid with it until I got full control of my mass back. I heard a swear and a thud behind me; the officer who had fetched me had just fallen over. I heard another swear, meaning he was coherent enough to form words, which was good enough for me. I pushed my legs to their limit as I sped back up to my full speed.

The five of us plus Starfall began by sweeping the northern road for clues. I asked the sergeant if there was even a point to searching the road, since we were looking for a pegasus. He had replied that, in his experiences with pegasi, they often stayed on the ground if they were injured...

“You lads, come with me!” I called out to a pair of my officers who were on patrol as I passed them. These two were a welcome replacement for the officer who had fallen over a few blocks back. I knew them well enough that, without looking back, I knew that they both had snapped a salute before breaking out in a run.

We saw a brown earth pony coming towards us from the north, so we were glad to find someone who might have seen a trace of Starfall’s fiancée. It was only when we closed the distance that we noticed something was wrong: this pony wasn’t brown, she was covered in dried blood...

I turned left one last time and was on the street that led directly to the market square. I still had about a quarter of a mile left to go, but by the late evening’s waning sun, I could see Lieutenant Starfall in the distance. He was standing over a brown mass in a net. This sight gave me the drive I needed to run even faster to get to the scene.

Comet Tail hadn’t even been crying when we found her; she was rambling and incoherent. The sun had probably saved her life that day, as it had dried the blood in her wounds faster, closing them before she bled out. Still, she was in pretty bad shape:

Both of her wings had been ripped out of their sockets.

I shuddered, even while running at breakneck speed, even seven years later, as I recalled the roar of despair and rage that then-Officer Starfall had let out upon seeing his then-fiancée. Being an earth pony, I had no idea of the cultural aspects of what had happened; I had never flown before, so I didn’t know what it would be like to lose access to the open sky.

She had collapsed in my friend’s arms. When Starfall took off towards Farrington, carrying her, it was faster than I had ever seen a pegasus fly. When Comet woke up two days and several blood transfusions later, she was able to recall what little she remembered about her trip. She had made it a clear point to hug the western slope of the volcano that marked the boundary between Equestria and the Sharptalon nesting grounds. Almost everyone in the room had cringed at that news: only the eastern slope of the volcano belonged to Equestria. When he heard it, though, Starfall dissolved into a stream of obscenities and incoherent rage that got him kicked out of the hospital.

I finally reached the plaza of the market square, and for a horrified moment, I thought I was too late. There were a few guards there already, but they were busy keeping the market square empty in order to keep civilians out of harm’s way. As I stood catching my breath for a brief moment, I saw the bloody mass of feathers in the net rise and fall slightly. This gave me the comfort of knowing that at least she was alive, but it was a small comfort in the face of the situation that was unfolding. Lieutenant Starfall was standing over the injured griffin with his combat knife in his hoof and a pensive look of malice on his face. I knew what he was contemplating. I shouted at him with as much authority as I could muster, “Lieutenant Starfall! Stand down!”

He didn’t even turn to me before responding, “It’s so interesting.” I was chilled by how toneless and empty his voice sounded. “The tables have been turned. Here, now, lies a griffin who trespassed in our skies.”

There was nothing to gain by playing dumb. “Starfall, killing her won’t--”

“Her?” the lieutenant replied, finally finding his passion as he turned to me. “Do you think I give half a damn about this beast’s gender? This isn’t about something as poetic as revenge; this is about justice!” he shouted in an accusatory tone.

“If this were about justice,” I retorted, “then you would allow me to decide her fate!”

“Aren’t you tired,” he asked in an almost pleading tone, “of all of the scum that we set free on the city because of the very laws we uphold? Where is the justice in letting a thief back onto the streets where he kills someone during a mugging? Where is the justice in sending a spouse-abuser back home to beat his wife?”

His words awoke a fearful concern in my stomach. We had been friends since our early days in the guards; now, he was speaking with irrational fervor. “Those injustices are betrothed to the ‘justice’ of vigilantism,” I countered.

He turned back to the griffin that lay on the street. She wasn’t moving anymore; I hoped she was only unconscious. “If the law will make me a criminal in order to get justice for my wife,” he said, taking a step forward, “then so be it.”

“No!” I shouted as I leaped forward in a tackle. As I flew, the now-disgraced lieutenant was thrusting the knife towards the griffin. She was in the net, so he didn’t have access to slit her throat outright. However, based on the state of the griffin, I doubted that it would take anything more than a ‘best effort’ to kill her.

When I reached Starfall, I couldn’t tell whether or not he was guilty of murder. As we fell, I felt sharp eruption of pain in my left shoulder, but I ignored it. The moment that we hit the ground, Starfall began struggling to shake me off. I caught one punch with the side of my helmet and dodged a second; by then, the guards who I had brought along to the scene came over in order to help. When they pinned his hooves to the ground, he began to flail desperately, crying out, “No! Iron, let me do this!”

I stood up, noting that my left hoof wasn’t working as smoothly as it should have. The griffin let out a small sigh of pain. First thing’s first, I thought as I looked at the guards who had emptied out the market square. They were standing around the scene doing nothing. “Get this griffin to the hospital, on the double!” I barked at them. The five of them snapped a salute and picked up the broken girl. When she didn’t even react to this, I feared it was too late for her. So much time wasted, I thought bitterly as I saw the crimson stains that remained on the pavement.

I turned to the pile of guards on my right. Regardless of his intentions, Starfall had created a delicate situation that would require quite a lot of tact to handle. If I put him in jail for the amount of time that attempted murder deserved, then he would still be there by the time the current Captain of the Guard planned to retire. If there were any chance that it could look like that were my motivation, then I would lose the respect of the guards that currently served under him when I replaced the captain. However, if I ignored such a blatant crime, then I wouldn’t just be irresponsible: I would be culpable as an accomplice.

“L-leave us,” my voice suddenly felt weak in my throat as I addressed my officers. The two guards that were restraining Starfall stood up at once, snapped a salute, and left to return to their patrols. When thy were gone, my friend stood up and looked at me with deep regret. Now that there wasn’t a griffin directly in front of him, his judgment seemed to return. I could see the remorse he now felt crossing his face. He was a good pony at the end of the day; he had just been the victim of the worst of circumstances. “I... think we’re past apologies,” he said meekly.

I couldn’t fully blame him, not after everything that had happened to his wife. “Never,” I replied, shaking my head with a small smile.

His expression softened a little bit, but he still looked at me with shame. “Then I’m sorry about disobeying a direct order. I’m sorry about humiliating you in front of your men and mine like that. I’m sorry... for stabbing you,” he said, pointing to the left side of me.

Stabbed? I thought, looking down. Sure enough, there was a knife handle sticking out of my left shoulder. I let out a sudden yelp of fear, which caused the lieutenant’s wings to flare out as I startled him. “Wh... you stabbed me?” I screamed, and all of the pain that I had ignored suddenly washed over me. I let out an involuntary groan as I pulled the knife out: it was a serrated bastard, and there were now small chunks of flesh caught between its teeth. I suddenly felt my arm becoming very wet very quickly, and the world began spinning slightly.

Starfall’s wings drooped as he looked away from me with full-blown sadness. “And now I’ve assaulted a city guard. I’m going to prison, aren’t I?” I heard his voice break as he spoke.

“That was an accident,” I blinked a few times in order to clear my vision of the stars that were now swimming before my eyes. “B-besides,” I continued, feeling my voice weaken, “I c-can’t lock you up. Y-you know that. Instead,” I paused, thinking of what would be a good punishment. “T-tell your w-wife about wh-what you almost did... th-that’s harsh enough f-for a first off--” I fell forward as I tried forming the word ‘offense.’

Starfall caught me before I fell. “That’s fair enough,” he said quietly. “But let’s get you to the hospital first.” Between both of our suits of armor, I knew he couldn’t carry me there. He supported my weight on my left side, though, and together we walked down the same road that the trio of guards had taken the griffin.

At first I felt a bit uncertain about the unorthodox sentence I had given the lieutenant, but the more I walked with him, the more I realized that there was no ‘right’ punishment in this case. He had been acting out of love for his wife, who had accidentally trespassed into the land of the Sharptallons, who had every legal right to kill her. I could definitely understand him wanting to return that message, but at the same time, he had sworn to uphold the laws of Farrington at all costs.

I supposed that the only pony capable of judging the situation was his wife, and I had subjected him to just that. If she had gotten over her hardship enough to see how his breaking the law to avenge her was wrong, then he would have been needlessly breaking the law. I was sure that her rebukes would hit home harder than any jail sentence that I could come up with. If, seven years later, the pain of dismemberment was still with her, then perhaps it would have been just to trade a life for another life.

As we turned onto the street where the hospital was located, I felt glad that Starfall still had a shot at becoming captain. He was a good pegasus, but more importantly, he was a good friend.

END PROLOGUE

Chapter One -->

CHAPTER ONE

Author’s Note (Click to Read)

There was an awkward moment as the Captain of the Guard stared at me without saying anything. As the silence grew, I became more and more certain that I had said something wrong. I thought that he had just finished extending me a job offer. Like the fool I was, I had blurted out a response without thinking about it all the way. In hindsight, I was sure that it had been a test and that I had failed it. I didn’t want to add cowardice to my embarrassment, so I returned his gaze. Regardless of this resolve, I was nervous.

As we sat there staring at each other, beads of sweat started to form under the feathers on my forehead. There was no fire in the fireplace, but the room we were in began to feel stuffy and warm; I definitely felt my cheeks flush. Outside of the captain’s guard tower, the sun was setting on what had been a late-spring day. I hadn’t been outside much; I had flown home during all of the previous night, so I spent  most of the current day sleeping. Earlier that evening, I had woken up hungry and had flown to Farrington in order to get a meal. I had found a bar to eat at, but the patrons had been less-than-welcoming. After I won a three-on-one bar fight, I had been taken to the city guards’ headquarters and my statement was taken. I thought I had also been offered a job, but the longer we glared at each other in silence--

“Let me be clear on one point, Gilda,” the captain finally replied. “There are many regulations that you will be expected to uphold as one of my guards. Your honor in combat vouches for you, but if you don’t conduct yourself in a manner befitting a Farrington guard, then you will find yourself stripped of that title.”

“I’ll do my best,” I offered, noticing how dry  the inside of my mouth had become.

“Then I expect you at the front gate at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” the captain said in a softer tone. “Your training will begin at nine, but I want you there early so that we can take care of some ancillary responsibilities first.”

I don’t know what that word means, was the first thing that came to mind. I also need a clock, I scowled inwardly. It wasn’t that I had too many things cluttering up my cave; after living with the barest of necessities for three years, I felt an almost-instinctive aversion to getting a new piece of furniture.

“Eight o’ clock, then,” I repeated. “Do you, uh...”

“There’s a convenience store near here that also serves as a tourist gift shop; they’re open late and have alarm clocks for sale,” he replied knowingly.

“Is it the one that’s two blocks to the northwest?” I asked, thinking that I remembered seeing something of the sort during one of my previous visits to the city.

The captain nodded. “That’s it. I can walk you there if you’d like,” he offered.

“Er... that’s okay,” I declined immediately. “But thanks,” I paused, as I realized that I owed him gratitude for more than his offer of company. For starters, he had probably saved my life three years ago. Blood loss had left me fading in and out of a coma in the middle of a street, so my memory was sketchy around the incident; regardless, I could distinctly remember hearing a voice shouting for someone to take me to a hospital. It wasn’t until earlier today that I finally heard the voice again: it belonged to the captain.

Also, even though it wasn’t as dramatic as saving my life, offering me a job was a level of kindness that he didn’t owe me. Even I had to admit that there was no guarantee that I had any sort of reliability. I finally settled on saying, “For everything, Captain...”

When he heard my awkward pause, the captain was flabbergasted. “You’ll have to excuse me, Gilda,” he said, getting up from his seat. I mirrored his action out of respect and turned to face him as he walked around the desk. “I am Iron Bulwark, Captain of the Guard of Farrington,” he said with a slight bow.

“And I am Gilda, die Verbotene von Sharfkral,” I threw a title together for myself and returned the bow.

Captain Bulwark looked at me as if he were mulling something over before he changed the subject. “Well, Gilda. The hour is late, and we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow,” he said while walking over to the front door. I followed him, and he held it open for me when we got to it. “Remember: eight o’ clock,” he added.

“Eight o’ clock,” I parroted as I walked through the door.

“Have a good night then, Gilda,” the captain bid me farewell with a nod.

“You too,” I replied as I headed down the road to the convenience store.

*        *        *

I awoke to a shrill ringing noise. As such, I reflexively drove a fist into its source. Unfortunately for my hand, the fifteen-bit alarm clock had been sitting on the stone floor of my cave, which meant that I ended up punching the rock with all of my strength.

“Scheisse!” I swore the only way that I knew how to. If there was a pony equivalent to the word, I didn’t care: my hand was on fire with pain. I looked at the smashed remains of my clock with nothing short of hatred. Waste of a damn feather, I mentally spat. I had spent all of my pony currency the previous evening by paying for damages done to the furniture in the bar, so I had had to barter with the owner of of the convenience store in order to purchase anything. With my non-maimed hand, I scooped most of the mess up and hurled it towards the entrance to my cave. It was a left-handed throw, true, but the clock still cleared the landing outside of my cave.

And you can rust in hell for all I care. I glared daggers at the rock outcropping that the offending mechanism had flown over. Turning my gaze to my hand, I was glad to find that none of the talons had broken. That had been my main concern: talons took a good portion of a year to grow back to a functional length. A bit of pressing and flexing told me that none of my bones were broken, either.

I walked out to my landing, hating the fact that the sun wasn’t high enough in the sky to be bright yet. I knew better than to curse the sun out loud, though, so I instead resigned to making my way toward Farrington. On the way, I combined bathing and hunting by diving into the pond near my cave. I emerged with a good-sized fish. After eating, I washed the residual fish guts off my beak. In the reflection of the pond, I looked at my chest with a grim satisfaction. The dye had cost a premium and it had burned my eyes and nose to apply, but it was definitely waterproof.

As I looked at the thick, brown stripe across my chest, it saddened me to think that my spots were going to be hidden. It wasn’t the end of the world, but I had had spots on my chest plumage for as long as I could remember. I added the sorrow of losing them to the rest of the shame that I felt. I thought back to... two days ago, I realized. It’s only been two days. Remembering my best friend Rainbow Dash lying helpless and scared underneath me made me feel overwhelmed by grief all over again. She had forgiven me for almost killing her that day, but I would never let myself forget what I had almost done to her when I lost control of my emotions.

I shook off most of the water from the pond and took flight again. Last night, I wound the alarm clock before I started for home, and it had told me that it took me about an hour to fly from Farrington to my cave. I had set it for six-thirty, in order to give myself some time to hunt down breakfast.

As the forest beneath me gave way to plains, I began to wonder what the upcoming day might entail. All that I knew about city guards were that they were either standing in one place or walking around when I saw them. Remembering Captain Bulwark’s words, I figured I’d have to learn the laws of the city in order to recognize when crimes were occurring; other than that, I had no idea what was in store for me.

At this realization, I suddenly felt as if my stomach dropped a few feet. I stopped in mid-air, using my wings to hold myself steady. What have I gotten myself into? I mentally slapped myself. When the full weight of my commitment hit me, my first instinct was to flee... anywhere. I was only limited by my Verbannung Suche to avoid griffin lands, and those were tiny compared to Equestria, let alone other countries. Hell, I thought, it’s not like anyone in Farrington even knows where I live; I don’t even have to move in order to avoid them...

My logic returned, suddenly and angrily. Coward, I scolded myself. The first time someone takes a chance on you and you’re going to run away? I clenched my beak shut in order to stifle a frustrated yell: I was pathetic. Using my self-loathing as fuel, I continued on my journey to Farrington.

When I was within fifty yards of the city gates, instead of landing on the road outside like I normally did, I hovered for a few more moments. I was looking for the clock tower among the rest of the buildings; I found it and saw that it was almost seven-fifty. I also saw that two of the guards along the top of the wall were taking a marked interest in me, so I decided it would be a good time to land on the road. I walked the rest of the way to the arched gate that the captain had told me to meet him at. When I was underneath it, I looked up at its wrought-iron doors and noted that they were open. I wondered if the guards even closed them at night.

Still uncertain about what was in store for me, I mentally braced myself for the worst and I sat down. I didn’t have to wait long for the captain; within a few minutes, I saw him turn a corner and start down the road towards me. He smiled when he saw me, and his gait increased. As he got closer, the reality of the situation grew in my stomach, and I became more and more nervous. Start small. Say ‘Good morning, sir,’ I instructed myself.

Captain Bulwark waved at me when he was close enough that he didn’t have to yell his greeting: “Good morning, Gilda.”

“Sir morning!” I croaked. Damn!

At this, the captain’s smile broke into a burst of laughter. I fought to maintain eye contact and keep the embarrassment from my face. It was difficult to do both when standing right in front of him; he was a good half-foot taller than I was without his plumed helmet. His smile returned, though, and it was a comforting one. “Nervous for your first day, I take it?” he asked in an understanding tone.

“I... yes,” I admitted. It would’ve been hubris to lie to him at that point.

“Good,” he said. “I get too many aspiring recruits who think they know everything about being a guard. It’s the ones who know they’ve got something to learn that end up doing the best.”

A spark of hope lit in my chest at these words. For the first time that morning, I had a little bit of confidence: I had done something right, at least.

“Anyway, we’ve got a few points to go over even before we cover the basics. Let’s walk and talk,” he beckoned for me to join him as he turned around. I got up and walked alongside him, even though I didn’t know exactly where it was that we were headed.

“I won’t mince words, Gilda” he started. “As a griffin, you will face an additional set of hardships during your training. I’m certain that most of the other guards will at least try to judge you by your own merits, but still: I can’t simply order them to stop feeling animosity that has its roots in centuries’ worth of history.” He turned when we reached the guards’ headquarters, and we walked up the stairs together.

“That being said,” he said as he stopped to pull a ring of keys from his belt. After he unlocked the front door, I waited for him to open it, but he stayed on the landing as he continued his speech, “I expect you to deal with your peers with grace and tact. If you reciprocate their aggression, you’ll only serve to enforce their prejudices. On a personal note, you seem to do an adequate job of this already. Other than one isolated incident, I haven’t had any complaints about you while in my city.”

He turned and gave me an inquisitive look, as if he were expecting a comment. I obliged: “What incident?”

The edges of his mouth curled into a slight grin; I could tell that he was fighting to keep from openly smiling as he asked, “You don’t remember exposing yourself to a mail clerk last Tuesday?”

“Oh,” I said, remembering what was talking about. I wasn’t even embarrassed by the situation; I had just forgotten it in wake of recent events. Captain Bulwark was grinning at my apparent ignorance, so I continued explaining, “She called me ‘sir.’ I set the record straight.”

At this, the captain let out a chortle of laughter. “That would do the trick,” he admitted. His tone hardened as he added, “But joking aside, that is not behavior befitting a guard of Farrington.” He opened the door and held it open for me. I passed through the entrance and came into the guards’ headquarters. I waited for the captain to walk through the door, and when he caught up to me, he continued, “I don’t know how much you know or what you expect from this job, Gilda, but the primary duty of a guard is to maintain order, not to stop crimes.”

Without thinking, I blurted out, “What’s the difference?”

The captain stopped in place, which made me stop. He turned to me with a slight frown, but it passed before he explained, “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to bring this up: you are expected to show a certain level of respect for your superiors, both while being spoken to and when speaking to them. You will address us as ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am,’ and you will wait until we are finished speaking to ask any relevant questions. Understood?”

I felt the slight confidence that I had built up drain after being scolded. For a split second, his attitude reminded me of my older brother. Gerard was a pretentious bore that also demanded everyone to respect him. Of course, I used to throw his cock-sure attitude back in his face at every available opportunity. He’d usually respond by calling me a ‘contemptible bitch,’ I’d call him a ‘pretentious blowhard,’ he’d jump me and we’d try to kill one another before father intervened and beat both of us...

Ah, family...

As I remembered my brother, though, I noted several key differences between him and the captain. For starters, I could tell that the latter was a sincere individual. He wasn’t completely humorless, either, and he treated me with dignity. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should respect the captain: he was in a position of authority in a rather large city; unlike my brother’s dubious honor of being one of the only males in my tribe, he had had to earn his title. “Yes,” I finally answered. As soon as I finished the first word, I realized that what he just said applied to this conversation, so I added, “sir.”

I caught a glimpse of pride from the captain before he began walking again. I kept up with him while he continued his lecture, “To answer your question, then, it’s a distinction that some ponies in this city don’t make at all. The criminals, at least, see the two as one in the same. The main difference is that one is active and one is passive. To stop a crime means that you are restoring order. This is the role of the guards that is romanticized and gossiped about, but ultimately, it should only be a by-product to your true goal.”

We walked to a door in the back of the room we had entered; once again, Captain Bulwark held it open for me. I entered into a stone hallway that smelled strongly of earth. The wall on my left was lined with small windows; the soft morning sun still left the passage fairly dark. The other wall had four doors set into it.

I heard the door behind me close, and the captain retook his position on my right. I followed along with him when he started walking down the hallway, and he continued his explanation, “When you are maintaining order, though, it can be difficult to see the effect you are actually having. This is because order is the natural state of things in Farrington. The largest part of your duties isn’t to stop crimes, but to be a pillar of the community in such a way that you prevent them.” We stopped once again in front of the last door; it was locked, so the captain took his keys out again.

“I tell you this to bring up the other point I wanted to discuss with you,” he said as he turned the key in the lock, “Your presence will intimidate others at first. It’s ironic, but having you as a city guard is going to start off causing more disturbance in the city than you will prevent.”

The captain paused while he opened the door. Inside the room, there were various ranged weapons and swords resting on racks; it was the armory of the Farrington Guard. We crossed the threshold and stayed on the left-hand side of the room. I took the captain’s continued silence as an invitation to speak, “Why have me as a guard then, sir?”

“Why indeed,” he mused aloud. He turned to me, and I had a hard time reading his expression. “Because I believe that in the end, things will work out for the better. Too many of Farrington’s citizens still live in fear of a griffin attack, even though it has been centuries since the last conflict that took place on Equestrian soil. Am I correct in my theory that your ex-tribe has no intentions of such an assault in the future?” he asked.

I suddenly felt paranoid about someone that I had just met knowing my personal information. “Ex-tribe? Who told you that?” I countered.

“Nobody,” the captain responded. “But when you showed up in Farrington, you were on the verge of death; the nurses at the hospital told me that they were most likely from another griffin. I asked a friend of mine who knows a bit about griffin culture what might have happened, and he led me to believe that, while such a level of violence isn’t usually part of it, it’s not unheard of for griffin tribes to expel members,” he explained. After a moment’s pause, he added, “We were both puzzled over why you were pink, though.”

Because it was either be pink or be naked, I remembered with a mote of irritation. A pegasus had thought it would be funny to dye my entire head pink while I was asleep at Junior Speedsters’ Flight Camp. It had taken the better part of a year for the dye to completely go away on the feathers that didn’t fall out on their own volition. I pushed the past from my mind, but I was still annoyed at the captain’s words. Even though it was interesting to hear an outsider’s perspective of my former culture, I was nonetheless put off by how lightly the worst day of my life was being talked about.

I remembered where I was and who I was talking to, so I kept my discomfort to myself. “I see, sir. That’s more or less what happened,” I responded. Ignoring my past discoloration, I continued, “As for an attack... we took a huge loss of territory just to ensure that we would be left alone. Unless something has changed drastically in the past three years, I don’t think that sentiment has changed.”

“Duly noted,” Captain Bulwark answered. He paused to collect his thoughts, and continued, “It remains an untested experiment, but I figure that if the people of Farrington see a griffin living among them, then it might inspire them to seek a deeper understanding of the two cultures. At the very least, some will realize that not all griffins want to do them harm. I won’t be as asinine as to think I can end all hostilities and bring in an era of peace and cooperation; however, if such an era is to ever going to come, the first step is to reduce fear between our races.”

I thought about this for a moment. In theory, the captain’s logic was sound; even griffin inter-tribal disputes were usually brought around by a lack of understanding or empathy. However, even as I saw the thought process behind his actions, I thought the whole point was moot. Griffins had never got along with ponies from our end, and I doubted that any peace offering would be met with any sort of sincerity. Hell, I thought as I remembered the pair of pegasus wings that were nailed to the wall in my family’s cave, Father would literally kill the messenger.

A darker truth manifested itself as I thought more about the situation: griffins were a dying race. I laughed, quietly and bitterly at the irony. If this captain’s plan did get the ball rolling on repairing interracial relations, there would be too few griffins left for such a peace to matter. “It’s a noble goal, sir,” I replied. “But I think that removing fear is as far as you’ll be able to get in this situation.”

“Then so be it,” Captain Bulwark replied. He sounded pensive, almost resigned. “The point still stands, though: your actions will come under an exceptional level of scrutiny. I have full confidence that you can rise to the challenge, though,” he said in a comforting voice. His tone hardened, though, when he finished: “However, if you fail, you will be dealt with according to the guards’ code or, if need be, Farrington law.”

The fear that I had felt earlier returned to my stomach. It had somewhat subsided at the captain’s words and by the fact that I was actually learning things about how to be a guard. At his most recent threat, though, I realized that there was more on the line than my pride: I could end up in prison, or worse...

Despite recent mistakes that I had almost made, I decided that being alive was better than the alternative, and I had every intention of staying that way for as long as I could.

“So, which will it be? Do you still want to go through with this, or do you want to quit while you still can?” the captain asked.

“That’s a loaded question,” I countered. Uncertain as I was, I knew that this was too big of a decision to be goaded into making.

“Touché,” he replied. “Still, the point remains: if you don’t think you’ll be able to see this through all the way, then it would save your time and your superiors’ time if you left now.”

“How long do I have before I reach a ‘point of no return’?” I asked. “I mean... you’re not just going to throw me out in the streets and expect me to know what I’m doing, are you, sir?”

The captain laughed at this, and for the first time, I felt as if I were being condescended towards by him. “Again, I apologize, Gilda,” he said, and the look in his eyes led me to believe that he meant it. He continued, “I see why you had that look on your face, but no: I’m not going to throw you out there and assume you’ll do everything perfectly. All of the guards of Farrington go through a training process where they learn the proper procedures.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “As for a ‘point of no return,’ you’re free to leave the guards at any time, but consequences may vary. There are generally the fewest consequences if you leave before you take your oath, though. That’s at the end of the training period; for you, that means Saturday.”

I don’t know what day it is, I realized. I vowed to check a calendar or something soon; I didn’t want to appear completely uncouth in front of my captain. I sighed, pushing the thought from my head. I had roughly a week to make what could be one of the most important decisions of my life, and I knew nothing about what I was making a decision about, other than that it would be harder for me because I was a griffin. “No offense, sir, but I still don’t know what I’m getting into. I won’t flake out over anything stupid, but I won’t commit to anything until I know enough for my commitment to, well... to mean something.”

The captain looked at me as if I had just said something profound. “That’s... wise,” he admitted; his tone was just as impressed as his face was. He shook his head lightly and changed the subject, “Well, let’s get you suited up.”

“What?” I blurted out reflexively. I saw that we had came to a stop by a long rack with several suits of armor hanging on it.

“The armor of the Farrington guards,” he said, rapping his hoof against his own breastplate. “Is a traditional part of being a guard. Therefore, you’ll have to wear it if you’re going to be a guard. There’s no way around it,” he finished matter-of-factly. He turned to the rack and began checking the shoulders of suits, one after another.

For my part, I stood there in stunned silence, but silence nonetheless. The only sound in the room was the metallic clinking sound made my Captain Bulwark’s continued examination of the suits of armor. I hadn’t thought about having to wear armor on my job, let alone armor meant for ponies: there was no way that it was going to fit me properly. I sighed inwardly and thought, Might as well do this the right way.

“Ah-ha! Found it!” he called out, pulling a suit of its rack. He pointed to the shoulder seam of it, where there was a rounded indent. “Wing-holes,” he said enthusiastically, as if it were the best addition to plate armor since metal was invented. He turned to me, holding out the armor, and asked, “Do you want help your first time, or do you want to figure it out yourself?”

“I’ll get it,” I answered, taking the armor from him. It was heavier than it looked, and I almost dropped it, but even that small mishap was better than the alternative: I wasn’t sure if I could live with the embarrassment of having someone else dress me on my first day of the job. I undid the four buckles that held it together and put the smaller front-piece on the floor. I slid the back-piece over my head and tried to get it into the proper position. It didn’t flush with my shoulders by any means and it dug into my neck, but the bases of my wings at least fit into the provided holes.

Keeping my spine as level as possible, I crouched down to pick up the other half of the armor. I threaded one buckle on the front, and then the other. When I went for the two buckles in the back, though, I ran into a bit of a problem: the strap didn’t quite reach. I rotated the joint that the front buckles made, and freed up some room, but when I connected the third buckle, it was tight enough that I knew this armor wasn’t going to be ‘comfortable’ by any measure. I finished with the fourth buckle and looked over to the captain.

He was holding out a helmet. I tried putting it on, but the first time I tried it, it pressed the larger feathers on my forehead down and in front of my left eye. I lifted the helmet up and pushed them off to the side before putting the helmet back on. I lost all of my peripheral vision, but at least the openings in the side of my head were unobstructed: if they had been, I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything in addition to being partially blinded.

I looked back at the captain; this time, he was looking back at me with a look of approval. “It’s not as tight as it needs to be, but you definitely look like a Farrington guard. How does it feel?”

Not tight enough? I thought. Compared to what, exactly? “Like I’m being crushed, sir,” I answered, unconcerned with the strain that was in my voice.

The captain gave me an apologetic look, “I’ll look into getting something better-fitting, but for now, it’s the best we can do. At any rate, it’s almost time for us to head out to the streets.”

“And just what the hell is this beast doing wearing my old armor?” a livid voice came from the doorway of the armory. Captain Bulwark was lucky; he only had to turn his neck slightly to see its speaker; I had to turn all the way around. With the armor constricting my moves, I ended up having to take many little steps to slowly turn around. Because of the joints underneath the plates that allowed them to move more freely, there was also a lot of noise compared to my normal movement. When I could finally see the doorway, there was a dark-blue pegasus in it. He was wearing both armor more ornate than my own and a look of hatred that I felt, given the right circumstances, could kill at fifty feet.

“Lieutenant Starfall, good morning!” the captain cried out in a tone that sounded over-enthusiastic.

The lieutenant responded by brushing something off of his forehead. “Good morning, sir. Do you mind telling me what is going on with this...” he gestured at me, apparently not wanting to address me twice in a row.

My first instinct was to tackle the smug asshole from where I stood. As I shifted, I was reminded of the armor that I now wore: it was both heavy and constricting. Being forced to hesitate also reminded me of the captain’s words about setting an example for my race and to not rise to others’ animosity. Crippled and out-ranked, all I could do was seethe at the pegasus.

Luckily, the captain was there to defend me in some capacity. “Starfall, authority or no, that is no way to address one of your officers.”

Pure hatred crossed the pegasus’ face as he shifted his glare to the captain. His voice was terse as he replied, “I believe you mean that it’s no way to address one of Lieutenant Horatio’s officers.”

My helmet made an audible sliding noise against the neck of my armor as I turned to look at the captain. He was glaring back at the lieutenant indignantly, and I felt very uncomfortable to be the cause of their problem. “Your opposition to my orders is duly noted, as is your grossly inappropriate manner of voicing it,” Captain Bulwark finally said.

Lieutenant Starfall looked as if he had been punched. He broke the glare as he walked over to a rack that had swords on it. Pulling one from it, he said quietly, “One of my sergeants’ blades broke yesterday; that’s why I’m here.”

“Which sergeant?” the captain asked.

“Shared Justice.”

“When you give her that replacement blade, tell her that Civic Duty’s transfer request went through and that the two of them are to switch lieutenants.”

“Sir?” the lieutenant asked, slightly confused.

“She’s the sergeant with the fewest officers right now; it wouldn’t be fair to her to assign a new officer to another,” the captain replied.

A look of gratitude and comprehension crossed Lieutenant Starfall’s face. “Understood,” he nodded at the captain. “Thank you, sir,” he added after a pause. He put the sword on the same hook of his armor that a sword already hung on, and he walked over to the armory door. “And Officer,” he turned to me. A look of begrudged apology crossed his face, but his eyes steeled before he turned around and walked through the door. “Stay out of my way,” he spat.

I heard a sigh from my right, and the captain looked disappointed. “That could have gone better,” he said to me.

“It could have gone worse,” I commented, remembering how my armor had kept me from attacking him on impulse. It was a personal grievance of mine that griffins were commonly referred to as ‘beasts’ or ‘animals.’ True, there were griffins that turned around and did the same thing to ponies, but I separated myself from that group. At any rate, names like that only served to underplay our culture and intelligence.

And yet...

I had heard a few stories about the Sterkergeist tribe to the north of my former tribe. There wasn’t much to go on, but they all had themes of violence and brutality. On some level, I had to admit that slurs like that did have a basis, even if they were too generalized to apply to every griffin.

The neck of my armor dug into my shoulders, and I instinctively ducked to get away from the pain. Looking up, I saw that Captain Bulwark had put a hoof on my shoulder. Smooth... I chided myself.

“Sorry,” he apologized, “But that’s the type of attitude you need to have.” He gestured over to a shelf that had several thin cylinders on it. “Grab a baton and we’re ready to officially start your training,” he finished.

I walked over to the shelf and picked a baton at random. It was very short; I held it all the way out in my hand and it still only increased my reach by about four inches. What am I supposed to do with this, throw it at someone?

The captain appeared to my left and picked one up off the shelf. “I almost envy officers these days. Seven years ago, I had to deal with the full-length truncheons. Now...” he paused and took a step back. He flicked his baton downward, and it telescoped out to a much more useful length. I mirrored his actions, but nothing happened with my baton. I saw the strap on it where it would hook onto my armor; it was in the outer end of how I was holding it. I tossed the baton up in the air, caught it by the correct end, and flicked it out to its full length. “There we go,” the captain congratulated me. “I suppose there’s some sort of training that goes along with these things, but I’m going to guess that you can figure out which end to bludgeon criminals with.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied as I collapsed my baton and hung it on its hook near my left shoulder.

“Splendid,” he replied. “Then let’s head outside and get this show on the road.”

END CHAPTER ONE

Chapter Two -->

CHAPTER TWO

Like my introduction to Lieutenant Starfall, the rest of my morning could have gone worse than it had.

I wasn’t used to walking as much as I did that morning. Moreover, griffins weren’t built for walking on cobblestone pavement; I had to keep my fingers bent back as far as possible for fear of breaking a talon. It hurt the palms of my hands to walk in that manner, especially the right one. Still, I remembered how much it hurt to have a talon snap off, so I erred on the side of lesser pain.

Also, I didn’t seem to have the lung capacity to walk as much as the captain seemed to want me to. I blamed most of this on physiology: griffin biology was better-suited for quick bursts of lethal energy, not endurance. Even then, I spent most of my days brooding in my cave, so I wasn’t exactly an athlete. That lifestyle hadn’t necessarily been a side-effect of my exile, either: in my tribe, adults’ waking time was split between hunting and partaking in low-intensity activities. We weren’t lazy or anything, there was just a clear relationship between food and energy: the more you worked, the more you needed to eat.

At any rate, my exertions were not made easier by the fact that I felt like I was being slowly chewed by a giant metal monster. No matter what I did, I was uncomfortable. I tried to take long, slow strides, but bits of skin, fur, and feathers kept getting caught in the seams between the plates. I tried taking shorter, faster steps, but that only succeeded in wearing me out quicker. Worse yet, it broke the captain’s train of thought, so it was with an air of agitation that he asked me if I needed to stop to use the restroom.

Luckily, I was able to be honest when I told him ‘No.’ I hadn’t had to figure out how to cross that bridge yet; like I said, the morning could have gone worse.

I thought I was used to ponies staring at me everywhere I went. I was wrong. I had never seen ponies rush to their doorsteps or throw open their windows to stare at me as if I were some sort of spectacle. It wasn’t as if I had led an especially happy life up until that moment, but between being tired, uncomfortable, and embarrassed, that morning definitely stood out as one of the more miserable ones that I could remember.

So, when the captain suggested that we get lunch, it was all that I could do to keep from screaming, “Yes!”

“Well then, Gilda, where would you like to eat for your first lunch break?” Captain Bulwark continued.

“Somewhere quiet with a place to sit, sir,” I replied. I was too tired to care what we ate.

The captain chuckled, but he persisted, “I’m sure you have some sort of preference when it comes to food.” In response, I simply looked at him. When he caught the meaning behind my stare, he nodded. “Right, meat,” he said, knowingly. After a moment’s pause, he suggested, “How do you feel about potatoes?”

“Opinionated and angry,” I answered facetiously.

“Gilda...” he warned me. I hadn’t made many slip-ups into my usual sarcastic demeanor that morning, but every time I had, the captain had made it clear that he was not a fan of it.

“Sorry, sir,” I apologized. “But at this point, I’m hungry enough to eat a hor--” I stopped as I realized what I was about to say. I decided to play the language barrier card to get myself out of it, so I started sputtering random syllables: “nenkoblitzen.”

The captain stared blankly at me before smiling, “Okay, I’ll bite. What is a Hornenkoblitzen?”

I was in too deep to quit now, so I thought of something obscure that I hoped I would never have to bring up again. “They’re those weird tree things in the desert with all the spikes,” I lied.

“A cactus?” the captain asked, stumped and wide-eyed. “I’ve been to every restaurant in this city, Gilda. I don’t think you’ll be able to find cactus on any menu.”

“Then, potatoes?” I asked, going back to his original suggestion.

“Potatoes it is,” he agreed, and he led me down the road to the restaurant. As we walked, the captain changed the subject from food to my training, “So, what do you think so far?”

“The guard stuff’s a lot to remember,” I answered truthfully, “but I don’t think it’ll be outright impossible.” Captain Bulwark smiled at me, but I continued, “That’s not what bothers me, though. This whole morning, people have been staring at me even more than usual. I’ll get over it, I guess, but I can’t help but feel like I won’t fit in.”

“Well, you don’t, Gilda,” he replied. “But you’ve been a guard for less than four hours. Ponies still aren’t used to seeing a griffin walking around in city guard’s armor. Their attention will die down once you start to become part of their day-to-day routine,” he paused, “Plus, it’s not every day that I get away from the main gate and patrol like this. So, some of the bewilderment is probably directed at me, too.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Still, it reminded me of something had been nagging at the back of my mind, “You don’t usually train officers, do you, sir?”

“No, I don’t,” he agreed. “However, we’re missing two sergeants this week, which affects everyone’s schedule. This affects you because Lieutenant Starfall effectively ended up switching shifts with your sergeant. He was supposed to be training you, but back in the armory, I made the decision that you’d probably learn better from me, so... here we are,” he finished with a slight tone of exasperation.

I had to keep from laughing at the prospect. Out of every pony I had ever met, the lieutenant had easily been the most hateful towards me, and he had been slated to train me? “For what it’s worth, sir, I agree,” I commented.

“Well, for what it’s worth, if you two are going to work together, then you’re going to have to learn how to coexist,” the captain... didn’t snap back at me, but the sharpness of his tone gave me a sensation like cold water running down my back. I didn’t know what to say, so I decided to not say anything until the captain asked me another question. He didn’t, though, so it was in heavy silence that we walked the rest of the way to a building that had ‘Tater’s Tots’ written on the wooden sign hanging above the door.

The captain once again made the gesture of opening a door for me. If he had been angry, it seemed to have passed, but I still went through the door as quickly as I could manage. Once inside, I was immediately hit with the combined odors of steam and hot oil. A light-tan earth pony at a podium sounded sincere when she greeted me, “Good afternoon, officer.” Captain Bulwark came through the door and stood at my left, so the hostess added, “And Captain! What a pleasant surprise!”

“Hey, Small Fry,” the captain said, “how was the lunch rush?” There was a moment’s confusion before I realized that that was the hostess’ name, not a term of endearment.

“Busy,” she smiled back at him. “So, table for two?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “and do you have something near a wall?”

She winked at him. “I think we can squeeze you in.” She led the two of us around a wooden divider, and I saw the source of her humor: other than a family at one table, the dining area was deserted. There were dishes and napkins on most of the tables, but Small Fry cleared off one of the better-looking tables in the back corner.

I sat down on the cushion on my side of the table. I made the mistake of trying to sit up in a proper manner; I let out a slight hiss as the skin around my hips erupted in pain from being pinched by metal. I leaned forward and felt the pressure relieve, but the soreness lingered. I tried to grab a menu, but the lip of my shoulder guards dug into my upper forearm too much for me to get very far. Resigned to immobility, I sat there, slouched and hungry. At the very least, I wasn’t walking anymore.

“Having problems, officer?” the captain asked with a small hint of pity.

“No problems, sir. I actually prefer to eat while stuck in a tube like this.”

Because of the position of my head, I couldn’t look at Captain Bulwark’s face without it looking as if I were glaring at him. I saw his breastplate shaking, though, so I decided to risk it. It turned out that he was laughing, silently, as if he were trying to contain it. He finally drew in a breath and spoke, “You have a very eccentric sense of humor, Gilda.” After a moment’s pause, he said, “I won’t apologize for my tone earlier, Gilda, but I would like to clarify that at this point, I’m more disappointed in Lieutenant Starfall than you.”

I was about to ask what I had done wrong, but a waitress came over to our table and asked, “Are you ready to order or do you need a minute?”

The captain ordered some sort of deep-fried mess that came covered in cheese; I kept it simple with a baked potato. When our food came out, I was faced with the challenge of actually getting it onto my mouth. Luckily, my forearms’ limited range of motion let me reach the plate if I used the utensils that were provided. All in all, I don’t think I came off as too unrefined.

“So Gilda,” the captain began, “what do you do for fun?”

The question threw me for a loop in more ways than one. First, it was a personal question and unrelated to anything else that was happening: I wasn’t expecting it. Secondly, my mind blanked for the answer until I realized that I didn’t really do anything other than eat, sleep, and brood in my cave. Still, it would be embarrassing to say that, so I went back to my childhood.

“I explore caves,” I answered. I didn’t mention the fact that I had usually done it to avoid other members of my tribe, or how the dwindling population of my tribe had left many empty caves in my tribe’s mountain ridge, but it was as honest of an answer as I felt like giving.

 “Interesting,” came the reply, but it sounded like the captain was thinking more than that.

“How so, sir?” I asked.

“Well, you can fly, yet you spend your time underground.”

I saw his point. “Flying’s nice,” I said in an agreeable tone, “But we usually only do it for traveling or hunting. There’s no griffin equivalent to the Wonderbolts,” I said, remembering Dash’s beloved team of stunt-flying pegasi.

He let out a quick chuckle before pressing further, “So, why caves?”

“They’re a good place to be alone with your thoughts,” I answered. “The only sounds are the ones that you make. There’s some peace in that.” The captain grunted in agreement, but didn’t say anything else. I turned the question back at him, “What about you, sir?”

“I explore Farrington,” he replied, mirroring my own answer. “It’s a bit busier than caves, I guess, but that’s where the fun’s at. She’s constantly changing and growing, so there’s always more of the city to see.” I nodded in agreement; I could see how that would be interesting.

We finished eating in silence that was more empty than awkward. Finally, Captain Bulwark looked up at the wall behind me and said, “Well, it’s about time for us to get back to our shifts.”

I felt a sudden burst of shame: I realized that I didn’t have any money to pay for what I just ate. The waitress came back to collect our plates, so I figured it would be best to come clean as soon as I could. “I don’t have any money right now,” I admitted to her, “Would it be okay if I came back later and paid?”

The captain made a choking sound, so I craned my neck to look at him. “Don’t worry about lunch, Gilda. Not these first few days, anyway.”

Partly out of comfort but mostly out of shameful gratitude, I let my head fall back to its resting position. It resembled a bow. “Thank you, sir,” I said.

We left the restaurant, and Captain Bulwark told me, “Let’s head back to the citadel.” I didn’t know what that was, but at the same time, I didn’t really have a say in the matter. As we walked, the captain drilled me on how it was important to maintain a proper appearance at all times while I was on duty.

“You did a good job back there,” he finished, “save for the slouching. Still, that’ll be fixed if you stay on the guards long enough to get your own armor.” He hesitated before lowering his voice in case any passers-by could hear, “Also, I figure it’s a one-time mistake, but when you’re on your own make sure you have your money before going in to eat.”

“Well, sir, I figure when I’m on my own--”

“Absolutely not,” the captain interrupted me. “I can’t control what you do on your own time, but during your shift, you are to stay grounded and within the limits of Farrington at all times. Understood?”

I didn’t like it, but rules were rules. “Understood, sir.”

We got back on the main street of Farrington, and as soon as we turned, I realized what the ‘citadel’ was: it was the headquarters of the guards that I had begun my day in. When we were on the now-familiar landing, the captain said, “I have other duties to attend to, Gilda, but your sergeant’s shift begins soon, so she’ll take over for the last few hours today. Stick close to the lobby; she’ll be here at two o’clock.”

When we passed through the doorway, I my first impression was that, now it was daytime, the citadel felt alive. The lobby was still empty except for a filly sitting behind the desk, but I heard the sound of a muffled commotion coming from the door that was behind her and to the left.

I took care of some personal matters while I waited for my sergeant. When I asked if the restroom was, the receptionist not only gave me directions, but she added in a whisper, “Take the armor off first.”

When I was done with my small adventure, I went back to the lobby and stood, waiting. I knew that my armor was back in the same position it had been: when I took it off, there had been deep creases in my skin where it clamped on me too tightly. I had tried shifting the armor to give my creases a bit of a rest, but with a strangely satisfying irritation, the armor fell back into its grooves.

I also got to see what day it was. In addition to a clock, there was a stack of square papers hanging up: a tear-away calendar. The top sheet was emblazoned with a huge black ‘22,’ with ‘Monday’ written across the top of it in red.

So I had four days to learn the ins and outs of the Farrington guards. A precise deadline was useful information to have, I supposed, but it seemed extremely soon to me.

A little before two, the front door to the citadel opened on my right. I met the gaze of a bright purple filly. The edge of her armor was painted white, but otherwise, it was the same style of suit that I was wearing. She looked at me for a second before exclaiming, “Oh, very funny, Iron.” As she walked over to me, I heard her muttering to herself; the only word I could make out was ‘prick.’

Once in front of me, the pony that I guessed was my sergeant stared at me from head to talon. After being loomed over by the captain for the whole morning, it was somewhat refreshing to be at eye-level with someone. “Griffin, huh?” she asked me.

“Yep,” was all I said. I was still trying to get a measure on this earth pony.

She shrugged, seeming to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t getting a new pony officer. “The captain says you’re worth a shot, that’s good enough by me. You ready to go, Hilda?”

I almost corrected her, but I remembered protocol. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, raising my hand as high as it would reach towards my head. It came up a few inches short, so I glared at it.

My sergeant grimaced at the whole display. “No, no, no. I don’t care what the captain says, don’t ‘ma’am’ me all the time.” She looked at my hand and asked, “What’s this supposed to be, anyway, a griffin salute?”

“I can’t reach my head,” I said flatly.

Apparently not taking my word for it, the purple pony grabbed my arm and moved it down, then back up. She saw it get caught on the lip of shoulder opening, so she let go, shaking her head. “It seems that Iron’s on a comedy spree today, Hilda. I’ll be right back.”

She turned around and head through the door to the hallway that I had gone down this morning. While she was gone, I thought of two things:

First, I needed to get her calling me by my actual name. I didn’t know what the hell a ‘Hilda’ was, but frankly, I did not care for the way it sounded.

Secondly, I wondered if she would continue calling the captain by his first name to his face. It wasn’t a challenge of her courage, but that I was curious to see how well the two knew one another.

My sergeant returned a few minutes later, walking with three hooves so that she could better carry some leather straps. When she got over to where I was, she handed them to me. “Iron seems to have forgotten his own days as a private. Put these on.”

I looked at the straps; at first, they looked like miniature belts. It clicked though: four straps on my armor, four straps in my hand. It took a little bit of effort, but I got all four of the extensions on without taking my armor completely off. When I was done, my armor was still uncomfortable, but I had freedom of mobility again, and it wasn’t digging into my skin anymore.

“Thanks,” I said, relieved.

“No worries, Officer Hilda. Are you ready to hit the streets now?”

It was now or never. “Yes, Sergeant, but my name’s Gilda. With a ‘G.’”

She gave me an intrigued look. “Tell you what, ‘Gilda with a G,’ I’ll call you Gilda if you call me Sherry.”

“Works for me, Sherry,” I said. She stuck a hoof out, and I shook it.

“Well, Gilda, all this talking is boring. Let’s go, and you can teach me how to patrol.”

We went out into the streets, and true to her word, Sherry played coy and let me explain to her everything that I had learned that morning. I was impressed by her ability to question me in a way that both benefited me while not coming off as patronizing.

By the end of the day, I had definitely gained a respect for my sergeant. She was a little bit brazen, but she preferred a more passive leadership role over flaunting her authority. I almost found it difficult to see her as my superior instead of a peer, but she was good about correcting me the few times that I stepped over a line.

The clock tower chimed five times, signifying the end of my first day. Sherry and I stopped at the sound, and she turned to me. “Looks like you survived your first day, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. I still felt a bit overwhelmed by the task before me, but if anything, ‘teaching’ my sergeant had shown me just how much I had actually learned on my first day. I thought that, given enough time, I could function as a city guard. I felt the hint of a smile form at the edges of my beak.

Sherry responded by baring her teeth at me and squinting one eye. Before I could ask her what she was doing, she mused, “You smile weird.”

That killed it.

The purple filly shot me an apologetic look as soon as she saw my reaction. Putting a hoof on my shoulder, she added, “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, though.”

I didn’t move my beak to smile at her words, but I raised my eyebrows at her appreciatively. “So, uh, what do I do now?” I asked.

“Dunno,” she answered, “whatever it is that griffins do for fun.”

The dismissal was clear to me; I was now officially off-duty. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Night, Gilda,” my sergeant responded. Suddenly, her eyes flashed with remembrance, “Oh! Don’t take off too quick; the captain’s got some stuff for you to take home. He’s at the south gate.”

I nodded and left. Sunset was only a few hours off and I was casting a shadow in front of me: I was facing east. At the first intersection I came to, I took a right-hand turn. I still didn’t know the streets of the north side of Farrington very well, but I figured if I headed south, I’d eventually find the wall or some street I did know. Sure enough, after about five minutes of walking, I entered into the shopping district.

I walked past the writing supplies store, and I remembered something. I went to the side of the road and sat down. Thanks to the extension straps, I could actually sit in my usual perched position. I unfurled my left wing and held it in front of me, which caused a few passers-by to stare. I ignored them, focusing instead on my wing until I found what I was looking for: a loose feather.

Inside the shop, the proprietor tried to screw me out of five bits over a little cloth bag to hold my coins. Captain Bulwark’s warning still resounded in my head: I was still wearing the armor, so I had to do right by it. Remembering my armor gave me an idea, though. Instead of telling him where he could shove his stock of bags, I took off my helmet and used it as a bucket to hold the coins.

It was awkward to do a three-legged walk in order to carry my helmet. I could have walked on my back legs, with my wings spread out behind me as a counterbalance, but that would easily have tripled my perceived size. Walking like that was generally used as an intimidation tactic, at any rate, so I hobbled along with the coins jingling in their makeshift pail until I got to my destination.

*        *        *

The clock tower chimed the half hour when I passed the citadel on my way to the south gate. Shopping, I muttered in my mind with disgust. There were parts of my culture I liked more than others; a celebrated lack of material wealth was one of them. Griffins were born with nothing but their mothers’ kindness; we preferred to live that way, too.

Still, at least the shopkeeper hadn’t been greedy with her bags. Now that its time as a bucket was finished, my helmet was back on my head. My remaining bits were now in a velvet bag that dangled from the hand I was using to hold my replacement clock. There weren’t any more simple clocks at the shop, so I had been forced to buy the other one that was in stock.

It was less of a ‘clock’ and more of a ceramic statue that happened to have a clock built into it. It was supposed to look like a house, but on its roof, there were two bells. A smiling rabbit with huge eyes and two hammers stared mindlessly up at anyone reading the time. Of course the hammers were what hit the bells to ring them, so the rabbit’s arms were connected to some sort of mechanism inside the statue.

The front door and windows of the house were obscured by a sweeping banner that read, “Hop to it!” The actual clock face was set into the left-hand side of the house, meaning that time was not the main point of this device. I hated everything about that clock, but I needed something to wake me up in time for work.

As soon as I passed through the gate and onto the road outside of the city, Captain Bulwark greeted me, “Good evening, Gilda.” I turned around to find him in his usual place: a small, stone room that stuck out from the base of the Farrington wall. I still must’ve had some disdain on my face over my purchase because he added, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone looking so hateful while holding so cute a clock.”

I didn’t have to look down at it in order to be sickened. “Rabbits are food, not blacksmiths,” I said, referring to the hammers.

I heard a scoff from the corner formed by the captain’s booth and the outer wall of Farrington. In the darkness of evening, I didn’t recognize the pegasus colt that fell down onto his front hooves. I remembered his look of loathing, though, and I realized that it was Lieutenant Starfall. Technically, he was only wearing a small sword on a belt around his shoulders, so I guess it was just ‘Starfall.’ Regardless of his name, he looked over at the captain with a smarmy grin. Gesturing at me, he said, “And that is why you’re nuts, Iron.”

Captain Bulwark... grinned, mischievously. It was either his height or his stern nature that made me reel, but other than the smile, he didn’t respond to Starfall. Instead, he asked me, “So, how was Sergeant Justice?”

I grimaced. I could see why she preferred ‘Sherry’ over that. I cleared my face before answering, “Informative.”

The captain smiled at me from inside his booth. He took a closer look at my armor before musing, “Hey, my extensions!” His face fell when he realized what he had put me through that morning by not remembering them. “I apologize, Gilda; I should’ve remembered my shorter days.”

I shrugged. “It sucked, but it made it hard to get distracted,” I said as a way of accepting his apology.

“Well, at least something good came out of it,” he said in a subtle, self-deriding tone. He held some scrolls out through the opening in his booth for me. I moved my clock into the crook of my elbow, but it was still pretty awkward to take them out of his hoof. It was easier to hold them, at least. “These are probably a bit drier than Sherry’s lessons, but they’re filled with everything you’ll need to know,” he said. Looking at my clock, he added in a cautious tone, “And... be gentle with them, Gilda.”

“Like it’s not going to shred them with its claws,” Starfall said.

Captain Bulwark looked like he was about to say something, but I interrupted, “Sir, I’ll be careful. And good evening,” I said, bowing my head instead of waving. I looked around to see if anyone else was watching; the narrowness of the gate and our position outside of the city kept the three of us hidden from view of the main street. Turning to Starfall, I stared at him for a moment as I decided how I wanted to say goodbye to him...

Iron’s new pet griffin spat in my eye.

My friend had warned me about drawing my knife against her, but it didn’t matter. By the time I pulled it out of its sheath, she was about a hundred feet away already and gaining distance: too far for even my best throw. She was flying clumsily, and I hoped for a moment that she would fall, but finally, she got control of herself and began flying faster than anything I could’ve pulled off. Unable to chase her down, I just glared after her.

When she was far off in the distance, Iron burst out laughing. He had been holding it in until he was sure she was out of earshot, I guess so as to not encourage her, but now we were alone, he let loose.

I sheathed my knife before glaring at him with my good eye. He responded by throwing a towel on my head. I wiped my face clear of griffin saliva. It... stank, I realized, and I balled the towel up and threw it back at my friend’s face. It hit him in the mouth and he shut up.

After a moment’s silence, I asked, “How do they even spit without lips?”

“Accurately,” came Iron’s answer. He seemed overjoyed at what had just happened.

I glared at him a second time and he broke out in a smile. I shook my head, still unable to believe what had just happened. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself in there,” I said with a hint of scorn.

He shrugged, saying, “I’m not happy that she did it, but you had to know you were asking for some sort of a response.”

“Speaking of response,” I cut back, “what are you going to do about that? Or do you want her going around spitting and flashing at every pony who looks at her funny?”

It was slightly obstructed by his helmet, but I could still detect a frown at my accusation. He kept his voice steady as he replied, though, “I’ll make sure she knows the only reason I didn’t fire her on the spot was because she’s off-duty and no one’s around, but... she looked around, Star, and saw that we were alone. I think she knew already.”

Legalistic beast. He was probably right, I realized, and I shook my head. I stepped back in front of my usual resting spot, and with a big push from my front hooves, I stood up and fell with my back against the wall of the guard station. Iron’s voice warned me from inside, “Just remember, if you pull your knife on her when she’s looking for a fight, you’re removing any sort of mercy she’s going to have on you.”

I flipped the knife up on its belt, looking at how long it was compared to the flat edge of my hoof. I had bought it my first week in Farrington. More specifically, I had bought it after the second time I was netted down after doing morning calisthenics over my own house. The guard on the wall was ‘doing his job’ to enforce the city-wide no-fly rule, true, but I had only been five feet off the ground both times that he trapped me. I hadn’t been hurting anyone, so I eventually entered into a war of attrition with him: I could destroy his nets a lot more easily than he could repair them.

I suppose I hadn’t done aerial exercises within the city limits of Farrington for close to ten years, though, save for teaching my two children how to fly. I wanted Moonshine and Hail Storm to be able to learn in a comfortable environment, so I had pulled rank and threatened the guard near my house with ‘a week’s worth of night shifts every time he netted my kids.’ Both Iron and Comet had given me hell over it, but it was the first and only time I had ever actually abused my authority, and it was for my children.

I would tear the world asunder for them.

The need to cut nets away may have passed, but it was still useful to carry a knife for other things. For example, when my good friend and Captain of the Guard decided he’d play ‘racial ambassador’ and hire a monster with blades for arms, I had a weapon to defend myself and others from her when she inevitably went berserk and started killing citizens. Iron insisted that this wouldn’t be the case, but I didn’t believe him. I pressed the issue once more, “So, she really only fights back with what you hit her with?”

“There’s some griffin term for it she used in passing,” he answered patiently, “but I’d be careful with that definition. I’m guessing that her defense has more to deal with what you threaten her with.”

I rolled my eyes thinking, Oh. An active defense. That’s much different than taking the first strike.

I didn’t really care about griffins or their laws, though. They could all go die in a fire for all I cared. I changed the subject slightly by asking what had been on my mind when I first saw her in the armory that morning, “So, think she knows who did it?”

“Starfall...” came a warning voice.

My voice started shaking with the indignation that was brewing in me, “I mean, what could Comet have possibly done where that was the appropriate defense? I can’t imagine Comet trying to buffet some griffin. The way she tells it, he was huge! She’d probably...” I stopped talking. I could barely think straight now, but I still didn’t want to think about my wife flying for her life and losing.

It didn’t keep the image from flashing before my eyes.

I hit the city wall with a hoof. I pulled my punch, so I succeeded in venting my anger without breaking my foreleg, but I still felt angry about the whole matter.

“Hey,” a voice came from closer on my right than it should have. When I looked, Iron’s head had appeared around the lip of his stone booth. “If you really want to know, ask her. She might have seen something that day.”

I looked straight above me, exasperated at the suggestion. “I’m not--”

“Then let it go,” Iron said. By the tone of his voice, he was probably glaring up at me now. “It’s been a decade now, and you’re the only one who seems to remember. If you want closure, fair enough, but if you waive that opportunity, you’re just fooling yourself with whatever ‘righteous’ indignation you have.”

I glared back into my friend’s eyes out of the corner of one of my own. “You’d remember too, if you were reminded of it every day. Every day, I wake up and see the scars on her back. I mean, she’s good with the kids, which is great; it just breaks my heart to see her carrying on all day like an...” By the time I realized where that sentence had been going, it was far too late to prevent it.

“Like a what, exactly, Starfall?” Iron might’ve been terse earlier, but he had blown over into a cold fury now.

I decided to put up a verbal smokescreen to buy myself some time. I didn’t want this to come to blows: first, he was my friend, and second, ceremonial or not, his armor would definitely be an advantage in a fight. “You know what I mean. There’re more differences between earth ponies and pegasi than wings. Take our wings away and we get the worst of both worlds instead of something... fair,” was what I was going to call it. I finished my point, saying, “I love my wife, you know that. I just wish she could be one or the other, not an impotent cross between the two.”

A small portion of his anger evaporated, but he still looked offended over what I had said. “I guess I don’t know what it’s like to lose the gift of flight,” he finally admitted in a flat tone, “but my point still stands. Either seek out answers to your questions or stop using them as a shield for your prejudices.”

I sighed; I needed to make this situation right, at least. “Will you forgive me if I start treating the griffin with respect?”

“No,” Iron said. “I’ll forgive you because you’re my friend, even though you’re a friend who says stupid things when angry. I want you to come to terms with Comet, Gilda, and all the other griffins in your own way, not just for my sake.”

I nodded back to him. “I’ll work on that, then.”

“Good,” he said as he retracted his head around the corner of the booth. “That is a really uncomfortable way to stand, for the record.”

I turned my head to the right so he could better hear me, “Yeah, were you mounting your desk in there or something?”

“Hey! She’s a classy piece of furniture; don’t talk about her like that!” Iron shot back with mock choler.

I chuckled, and Iron’s wind-up timer went off. His allotted half-hour break was over. “Quarter-til already?” I asked, regretting that we had wasted the last few minutes of my visit by fighting. Still, Comet was expecting me home before seven, and I didn’t want to keep her waiting. “I should probably get home,” I told my friend.

“First you mock my race, now you’re abandoning me to loneliness?” he answered in a joking tone.

“You know you love doing things by the book,” I chided him. There was no rule against having a friend talk to you when you were on ‘wall guard’ duty, but it was generally frowned upon by those of us who cared about the appearance of the guards, which included Iron.

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“When do you get off?” I asked. He had been working overtime for the past week while Vigil Lens was out sick; I hoped he wasn’t doing more than twelve hours a day.

“A little over an hour from now,” Iron responded.

I pushed off the wall and spun around his booth before landing on all fours in front of him. He moved his head slightly to look at me while we said goodbye. “Comet’s making pot stickers tonight; you and Maxie should come by. Non-pay Monday’s your night to cook, right?”

He chuckled nostalgically before responding, “It used to be, but that was way back when, before she started taking deliveries. She’s in Stalliongrad tonight.”

“She spends the nights on deliveries?” I asked bluntly. “She’s a unicorn. Can’t she just teleport?”

“I don’t know how it works,” he answered with a shrug, “but she, at least, can’t really do it on a whim. I’ve only ever seen her do it once, anyway, when our stove exploded.”

“When your stove exploded?” I asked, confused.

Iron’s voice and face took on the subtle shock of someone who was reliving a past horror. “I thought that baking powder would help a soufflé rise better. I was wrong. At any rate, I probably shouldn’t have tried making six at once.”

I chuckled at that. He took an experimental approach when trying out new recipes; if he hadn’t cooked it before, the meal was just as likely to explode as it was to come out delicious. “Well, don’t burn your house down boiling water tonight; Comet’s pot stickers are amazing.”

“I’ll take you up on that offer, then,” he replied.

“See you at eight, kid,” I said with a smile as I left. Iron was only few months over a year younger than I was, but we both liked my joke about it.

As I made my way back home, though, I was alone with my thoughts. There was more on my mind than my wife’s cooking that evening.

END CHAPTER TWO

Chapter Three-->

CHAPTER THREE

I had not thought about the repercussions of attempting to fly while wearing what felt like a hundred pounds of metal. My plan had been to spit in Starfall’s smug face and then take off before he could escalate things any further. I wasn’t worried about him catching up to me; if he did, I could handle myself in aerial combat. I just didn’t want to end up killing a lieutenant on my first day as a Farrington guard.

However, introducing my wings to a new level of agony made it so that I couldn’t even enjoy spitting in the asshole’s face properly.

If there was any comfort to be had, it was that when I was flying, I could distribute my luggage across my arms better than when I was walking. Once I got up to speed, it also took less effort to keep myself aloft than it had to take off, but I was still beating my wings harder than I ever had to before.

When I finally got to the pond near my cave, I wisely realized that it would be suicide to try ‘griffin fishing.’ Instead, I saw a rabbit poking around the edge of it, and I resisted the sudden urge to beat it to death with my alarm clock. Killing was a necessity in order for me to live, but I usually did it with respect and as quickly as possible. Irony rarely played a role in it.

I hated the new clock, though. I sincerely wished that I had had the foresight to put my first, more utilitarian clock farther away from my person before going to sleep.

At any rate, even though I was heavier than usual, I could still move nimbly enough to catch dinner. I made the effort to make sure my armor didn’t have any blood on it when I was done; that was going to take getting used to.

When I got to the base of the mountain my cave was located in, I prepared for hell. Flying level and fast was one thing; the air moving around my wings created a lot of pressure, and that was most of what kept me up in the air. Flying upwards, though, required me to pull myself up by pushing air down.

Finally back in my cave, I put down my temporary coin bag, reading scrolls, and the hated clock. With my hands free, I undid the buckles and let my armor fall on the floor. I took my helmet off and put it on the pile of my armor. There was probably some sort of protocol for armor storage, but Captain Bulwark hadn’t mentioned it to me, so it stayed on the floor for now.

With a bit of annoyance, I realized I had forgotten to set my clock before leaving Farrington. I guessed that it took me an hour to make the flight, though, so I set it to seven-thirty.

With that taken care of, I put the new coin bag on my traveler’s chest. I’d move the bits around into my older one later; for now, I had something different to occupy my time with: reading. I was no stranger to literacy; during my youth, the time I hadn’t spent poking around in caves had been spent at the records-keeper’s cave, reading stories of my tribe’s past. The written languages of the Sharfkral and ponies were completely different, but I had learned both of them in school. We also had various classes involving pony settlements, history, and anatomy.

Kenne deinen Feind, our old saying went. “Know your enemy.”

The irony was that these lessons ended up letting me mingle better with their society instead of... whatever the elders of our tribe had planned by mandating such education. The scrolls that the captain had given me were large and the lettering was tiny, but the subject matter wasn’t the most difficult thing to read. I read until almost nine o’clock, when it became too dark for me to make out the words on the paper. I debated making a fire in my cave to read by; in the end, I figured that it probably wasn’t in the best interest of the paper scrolls for me to do that.

Plus, I was exhausted. I was going to have to start eating more or something; one day as a guard had sapped almost all of my energy. As I twisted the key in that damn, cutesy alarm clock, I vowed that I’d figure something out tomorrow. I put the alarm clock by the opposite wall of my cave, fluffed up the blanket that I slept on, and nestled down on top of it.

*        *        *

Shrill ringing woke me up for the second day in a row. This time, I figured out what it was before I tried to kill it, which my hand was thankful for. I looked at the two scrolls that I still had to read before my shift began, but for the time being, I decided it was time for breakfast. I caught two fish for myself that morning in hopes that it would tide me over better.

After breakfast, I got my armor on, filled my good coin sack, and picked up the scrolls. Flying to Farrington was a lot easier than coming back from it. I started from a higher point, so I could actually afford to lose altitude. I decided to take a risk: the sky was clear, so I pulled open one of the scrolls I still needed to read. I managed to do it pretty well, too, for having to split my attention between the words and making sure I wasn’t flying into a tree or mountainside.

When I got to the city, there were only three minutes until eight o’clock. I sat on the side of the road leading into Farrington and pulled open the last scroll to start reading. I hadn’t been able to read them all last night, but I figured that he wouldn’t mind too much as long as I had made an effort.

When I had finished the scroll, I figured that something was wrong for me to have enough time to do so. I walked away from the wall and flew up to see the clock tower; it was eight-thirty-nine. I landed and shrugged, walking into the city. I figured that if the captain was going to be late, I might as well wait for him at the citadel.

It was locked.

I sat on the landing, waiting for the captain. About ten minutes later, I saw an armored colt heading down the street. Instead of an exasperated Captain Bulwark, though, it was a strangely neutral-looking Lieutenant Starfall. His expression darkened when he saw me, though. I guess he was still angry about my parting gift.

When he got to the landing, he asked me, “What are you doing sitting around?”

“Waiting for Captain Bulwark to get here, sir,” the word tasted bad in my mouth. “He’s running late this morning.”

The pegasus looked behind him to the clock tower. He had an honestly puzzled look on his face when he turned back around, “You know your training shift doesn’t start until nine, right?”

That explains it, I thought. “I forgot, sir,” I said out loud. Every time I had to call him that, I wanted nothing more but to end the conversation.

He rolled his eyes before saying, “Just don’t make the mistake in the other direction.” I said nothing, but stood up and moved to the side of the landing so he could get through the door and leave me alone. With his path clear, Lieutenant Starfall moved toward the door and opened it. He looked back at me and opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but he decided against it and went inside the citadel.

I didn’t hear the lock click, so I could have gone and joined him. That sounded about as fun as incubating a porcupine, though, so I remained on the landing and waited for Captain Bulwark to show up.

When I saw the captain on the road, I got up and walked to meet him. He grinned when he saw me, which was the best reaction I had received that day. When we were close enough to hear one another, he spoke up, “You thought your shift started at eight, didn’t you?”

“Sorry, sir. I had time to finish last night’s reading, though,” I said, handing the scrolls back to him.

He looked back at me, amused. “That was the whole week’s worth of reading, Gilda.”

No one tells me these things, I lamented. “Sir, I’m confused: they only took a few hours to read.”

“True, it’s just that most recruits I’ve come across prefer to split the readings up throughout the week. Even then, it usually takes them a substantial amount of time,” he explained. There was a hint of doubt in his voice, as if he thought I was lying about having read everything.

Regardless, the captain and I started to make our rounds through the city. Instead of a lecture, the captain spent the morning quizzing me over the contents of the scrolls. More or less, I remembered most of the information. Probably the best part of it, though, was that I was too busy remembering the various facts and bylaws to take too much stock in the stares we were both receiving.

When it was time for lunch again, the captain was thoroughly impressed with my retention. “If you want this, Gilda, it’s going to happen.”

I was doubtful. Surely, there was more to being a guard than three scrolls’ worth of knowledge?

As if he had read my mind, the captain continued, “Sure, you won’t really be able to give directions or help with current events until you learn the city itself, but you’ve got the knowledge of street laws down pat.”

“Street laws, sir?” I asked.

“Well, yes, Gilda. There’s more laws than the guards are able to enforce that govern this city. For example, you’re not going to have to go to around inspecting houses making sure they’re up to fire-safety code.”

That made sense. I suddenly realized the implications of the limited scope of a city guard: I did know most of everything about Farrington laws that I needed to. I felt a surge of joy when I realized the captain’s words were true: if I wanted to go through with it, I could be a city guard.

Confidence was not something that came easily in my father’s household. I, in particular, had been singled out to accomplish certain tasks and challenges. I shuddered as I remembered what my father’s lessons usually entailed...

It had been a hot summer day when my father landed and threw me to the forest floor. “Lebenwedel,” he began speaking before I had moved, “is as rare as it is useful.” As I stood up, he raked a claw across my left side, which knocked me back over. I had made the mistake of crying out at the pain. My father responded by knocking the wind out of me with a fist to my chest. “Shut up. Find the plant and it will stop your bleeding. Make your own way home when you have found it and applied it to your wound. If your wounds stop bleeding before you are able to perform such a simple task, then I will supply you with fresh ones.”

The Everfree Forest had been dark, even in the middle of the day. I not only had to find a plant that I had seen for about three seconds out of the corner of my eye, but I had to fend off any predators that would see a wounded griffin as an easy meal.

My chest hurt and my side was on fire with pain. I had only been seven years old at the time.

When I had found what I hoped was a Lebenwedel plant, I tore it to small pieces. I worked them into a paste in my mouth before spitting it on my hand. As I rubbed it into the wound, of course my father’s remedy burned like fire.

Still, though, at least that time when he left me alone in the forest, I was able to fly home instead of taking most of a day to scale our mountain. When I got back to our cave, my father had verbally berated me for ‘taking too long,’ and told me to ‘get out of his sight,’ which meant ‘don’t come back home until after nightfall,’ which meant I would miss both lunch and dinner that day.

That had been my reward for completing one of his tasks...

Captain Bulwark was looking at me with a bit of concern. “Are you okay, Gilda?”

“What, sir?”

“You started to look pleased with yourself, but then your expression turned... harrowed,” he said, taking time to find the right word.

“Sorry, sir,” I said without thinking.

He looked at me with concern, but didn’t press the matter any further. I was grateful; the past four days had brought far too many memories of my childhood to the forefront of my mind. I remembered how successful just suppressing it had been, though, so I decided I should say something more. Actually saying the words, though, was a difficult task nonetheless. “Things were... dark, growing up,” I said, “if you know what I mean.”

“We both spent a lot of time underground, officer,” Captain Bulwark replied soberly. He wasn’t dismissing my problem, but his tone had a severity to it that told me he simultaneously understood what I meant and didn’t want to talk about his own past.

A dark humor in my mind wondered which of us had had it worse growing up, but my rational side made me ignore it on the grounds that it was not only unimportant, it was useless pride. “It’s nice that we ended up outside, sir,” I said, hoping to break the tension.

The captain said nothing in reply, but he stopped and looked up to the sky with a pensive grin. I also stopped and looked to see if there was something up there, but there wasn’t. I looked back at him, and he was looking at me now. We stared at each other for a moment before he gestured a direction with his head and broke the silence, “C’mon, Gilda. I’ll buy you lunch.” Before I could agree, he turned his head away from me and clarified his meaning. “I meant to say, it’s time for our lunch break. That I’m paying for. And... damn,” he said, flustered.

I was confused, to say the least. Did he really take that much stock in his word choice? If that were the case, I felt sorry that I had heard him swear. I pulled out the bag of bits that I had remembered to bring with me today. “I can pay for myself, if that’s how officers usually do it,” I offered.

He started walking and I joined him. “There’s no real set protocol for an officer’s training week,” he said, regaining his composure, “It’s usually rare to see more than three applicants in a given year, so usually it’s a mixture of active training and preparing for the written test at the end.”

“Test, sir?”

Captain Bulwark chuckled at my question. “You’ve been quoting Farrington law to me all morning, Gilda. I could probably proctor it today, and you would set some sort of record,” he said in a comforting tone. After a moment, he added, “You know, other than the first non-pony guard in the city’s history.”

That came as a shock to me at face value, but it made sense the more I thought of it. For the last few hundred years at least, tension had been high between our two societies. Still, there were myths that involved griffins and ponies working together for some common goal, not as the moral but as part of the backdrop. That made me think that relations between our societies used to be different, long ago.

This led to me wondering about the age of this pony city. I asked the captain, “How old is Farrington, sir?”

I realized too late that I had hit upon one of the captain’s passions. As he spoke, I was reminded of Dash’s fanaticism towards the Wonderbolts and how she could seemingly talk for hours on end about them. Unlike her, though, my captain was an eloquent speaker, and most of his thoughts coherently followed one another. She was my best friend, but I also didn’t see any storytelling awards made out to ‘Rainbow Dash’.

After lunch, I met with Sherry again. Like the captain, she quizzed me over the scrolls I had read, and like the captain, she was impressed with how much I had learned in one night. When she was done quizzing me, she remarked, “I never knew that griffins were so well-read.”

“I never knew that Farrington was founded over two hundred years ago by a mining guild,” I replied with a bit of trivia I remembered from Captain Bulwark’s impromptu history lesson.

Sherry looked at me consolingly, “Did Iron tell you the whole history of Farrington this morning?”

“No,” I replied, “it was at lunch.”

She barked out laughter at this; it was a kind of harsh sound, but that was more her voice than anything. “Oh, man. Iron’s city and Lieutenant Starfall’s kids. Two subjects to not bring up if you need to say anything in the next hour,” she said. Looking at my confused look, she said, “Well, okay, the lieutenant hates you, but to anypony else...”

I nodded before questioning, “Why does he hate me, if you don’t mind me asking?” Sherry didn’t like to be addressed as ‘ma’am,’ but I still made the effort to be polite when I was going off-topic.

Polite as I was, she wouldn’t give me the answer. “I don’t mind, personally, but my old lieutenant would probably take it out of my ass if I went around gossiping about him,” she said before she made the motion of drawing a zipper across her mouth.

*        *        *

The next few days’ training passed without much incident. I learned that Starfall made a habit of hanging around the south gate at the same time that I was done with my shift. I had also made a habit of greeting the captain during my visits, even before I knew who he was. It was out of stubborn tradition that I said goodbye to him every day when I left the city.

Starfall, for his part, remained silent. I obliged his courtesy and did the same.

Thursday morning, the captain handed me a rolled up piece of paper. I opened it: it was the ‘Guard’s Oath.’ I read it, and it was pretty standard fare in keeping with everything Captain Bulwark had been teaching me. Part of the end of it read, ‘I swear by,’ followed by a scratched-out word. I could make out a ‘t’ near the end, but that was all. “What went here, sir?” I asked, pointing to the redaction.

“I didn’t think it would be necessarily appropriate to have you swear allegiance to Celestia,” he answered levelly.

Before I could think too much on the matter, I replied, “Thank you, sir. Because I wouldn’t have.”

The captain nodded, if only in agreement to my sentiment. It came as very little surprise to me, but the pony queen, Celestia, hadn’t exactly advertised her extermination of the Schnelfluge tribe. The more naïve part of me thought that it was out of shame, but the more realistic part of my brain figured that, above all things, she loved her subjects. She had acted in defense of them; it would scare a lot of them to know the truth about how furiously she had done it.

Whatever they were, she had had her reasons for acting how she had, and I had my reasons for not wanting to pledge allegiance to her.

“What would have happened if I had made you?” the captain asked with a hint of curiosity.

I thought about it. “I would have put the armor back, thanked you, and left,” I ended up deciding.

“It would have been a shame to see you leave, Gilda,” he responded.

I thought about leaving, or at least, what leaving would have entailed. I had no ties to the area, so I probably would have moved away from my cave and found a new place to live, or at least spent some time traveling. I looked around at the stone buildings, and the ponies going about their business. Something endeared me about the city, but I couldn’t quite pin a single aspect of it down.

I turned back to the captain. “It would have been a shame to leave, sir.”

I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening going over the oath in my head. That evening, when I was back in my cave, I thought less about the words in the oath and more about what taking it would mean for me. I had never taken a formal oath, but I knew how griffins in my tribe were expected to take such things. I shook my head, though: the Sharfkral were bound by their own laws to not care about what I was doing with my life. I didn’t need to honor their laws while I was banished, and seeing as how the price of rejoining my tribe was too high, I was going to remain here, alone until...

I turned my head to the side and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to think about it.

A fire lit in my chest at the same time, though, and I whipped my head to the other side. I glared outside my cave at nothing when I realized that ‘not thinking about it’ was my favorite flavor of cowardice. I had been cast out of my tribe until I killed my best friend, who was an innocent in the whole situation. If I upheld the morals that Sharfkral law had become, I would be losing a part of myself, I realized. Even when I had been part of my tribe, I looked to our tribe’s legends, not its laws, for moral guidance.

I walked to the stone landing outside of my cave. The night sky was somewhat sacred to griffins in my tribe, or at least, it used to be. There were no clouds that night, and the stars were shining brightly. For the first time, I saw why some of the griffins in my tribe seemed to spend their nights at the edge of our meeting plaza, staring at the sky. It was as beautiful as it was immense.

I remembered the ancient legend of Jäger, god of the bountiful hunt. When he a was mortal, the elders in his village tasked him with felling Hirsch, the greatest stag in the Everfree Forest. For two weeks, Jäger went without food as he stalked his prey. When the night came for him to finally strike down his target, he encountered a mystical wolf. The wolf’s pelt was made of the night sky; its eyes were the pale yellow of the moon. Jäger was so impressed by the creature’s beauty that he felled Hirsch and offered his kill as a tribute to the wolf. Grateful to be paid homage to as it had been, the Sternwolf told Jäger its name and showed him the path to its home in the night sky. It was there that the two of them remained, hunting together throughout the ages.

I figured that some of the details of the story had been exaggerated throughout history.

Still, it was a story that emphasized the value of patience and respecting the beauty of nature. Those were two virtues I could follow. The tale also held a bit of personal meaning to me: Jäger’s quest to fell Hirsch was the historical foundation of my own Verbannungsprüfung. Over time, it had become a punishment on the same level as death, but it had begun as a coming-of-age ritual for adolescent griffins. I found comfort in the fact that Jäger, by his tribe’s standards, had failed his quest. By the end of his story, though, he transcended his mortal life and became a god.

I sighed to clear the mythology from my brain. Thinking of events that were slightly more recent, I looked pensively to the north where there were two societies that I didn’t belong to. One had violently rejected me, the other was barely accepting me.

But it’s still acceptance, I realized. Would it be so bad to live among them?

I turned to look down at the forest below me. It was quiet. With a bit of morbid curiosity, I wondered what would have happened if I had returned to my tribe with my friend’s head that day. I knew that I wouldn’t have been hailed as a hero or anything by my father, but... I would have been able to see my sisters and some of the older griffins whose company I enjoyed. I wouldn’t be lonely anymore, at any rate. Would that have been such a bad way to end up?

I turned to my right, and a withered, elderly griffin perched next to me. For my part, I didn’t scream. I could tell she was female, at the very least: female griffins’ head feathers were light and plain, save for a few markings here and there. I still didn’t know who this griffin was, but she was sitting slouched, as if her life weighed heavily on her shoulders. She was missing large patches of feathers and fur; the skin beneath was thatched with both scars and fresh wounds. She turned to look at me; her left eye was missing, like my father’s. In her new position, I could see the spots that adorned what was left of her chest feathers.

I looked away in disgust, instead looking to my left. I had somehow known that there would be another griffin there. She was the same age as the other, but she was sitting up taller and wearing the gold-trimmed armor of a Farrington lieutenant. I noted that it had been made to fit her, though, and she was wielding an ornate spear instead of the gold-hilted sword that Lieutenant Starfall or even Captain Bulwark wore. She was a triumphant figure, and she looked at me out of the side of her vision and smiled.

I looked up to the night sky again, and even though it was still late spring, Jäger was up there. As I looked around the other constellations, I saw that none of them made sense to be where they were in relation to one another, let alone for that time of year. Before I could dwell on this anymore, Jäger’s outline glowed and filled in to become a solid, if transparent object. His eye glowed brighter than any star, and as I watched, he turned his head to face me. He opened his beak and screamed at me, a sound that was terrible as it was heroic.

“WER BIST DU?”

Behind me, my alarm clock rang out and I bolted awake. I had fallen asleep in a sitting position last night, so my hindquarters were stiff and pained when I walked over to turn off that stupid rabbit.

When it was quiet again, I could think about what I had just dreamed. “Wer bist du,” the dopplegänger of Jäger had asked me. “Who are you?” It didn’t take a scholar to figure out that the two griffins were both me, or at least, future possibilities of who I could become. The Gilda on my right was what would’ve happened if I fulfilled my Verbannungsprüfung and killed Dash. I would have hated myself, and I realized with a queasy feeling of pain behind my eye that her injuries were self-inflicted. The Gilda on my left... who was she?

I turned around and walked to the outcropping again, deep in thought. “Who am I?” I asked aloud. In my dream, there had been a clear distinction between the heroic guard I might become and the wraithlike horror I would have turned into. In that sense, my brain was hinting that I preferred Farrington to Sharkral-Grat. I wasn’t completely sure how I personally felt about that, but I figured it was as good a sign as any that I would be okay living amongst the Farrington ponies.

I tried to put the dream out of my mind with a limited amount of success. Far below me, at the base of the mountain, I noticed a disturbance in the forest: a fox was chasing a rabbit back to her den. I never liked to kill female animals during the time of year where they might have offspring who were dependent on them. I supposed I might have been doing the same amount of damage to a potential wildlife family by killing the father, but I figured that a widowed mother would make a better effort to tend to her children.

I dove down and caught the fox by his neck, snapping it by pulling rapidly out of the dive. I smiled sadly to myself: hunting had become a lot easier this past week now that I had a reason to do it.

After taking care of the fox’s remains, it was time to leave. I read my oath once more, got into my armor, and flew to the city. After Tuesday, I had set my alarm clock so that I wouldn’t have any ‘hour early’ mishaps; still, I made it to Farrington with fifteen minutes to spare.

I went to the citadel to wait for the captain like I usually did. Unlike the other days of the week, though, Sherry was waiting for me behind the desk inside.

“Good morning, Officer Gilda.”

I nodded in return, saying, “Sergeant Sherry.” Even formally, I couldn’t bring myself to call her by her last name.

She smiled at me, though. “Today’s the big day. You still nervous?”

I thought about it before answering, “Not as nervous as I was on Monday.”

“Well,” she said lackadaisically, “Iron’s not here right now, but I can get you started on your test if you want.”

“And here’s me, without a quill,” I said flatly. Sherry and I shared a moment’s glance before we both burst out laughing. When we were finished, she pulled out a stack of papers and beckoned for me to sit on the leather pad in front of the desk. She handed me a pen with a soft chuckle.

The test itself wasn’t difficult; the most challenging part for me was gripping the fountain pen that was supplied with it. It was thicker around than my fingers, so gripping it should have been easy; however, I had to hold it very high up to keep my talons from cutting the paper as I wrote. Ten minutes into the test with only answering three questions, I gave up on the pen and started dipping the end of my talon in the ink to write with.

I heard someone enter the room during the test, but I didn’t bother to look up to see who it was: I had a task in front of me. When I was finished with the test, I handed it to Sherry and looked to my left: it was Lieutenant Starfall. I turned back to my sergeant, who was now busy reading my answers. I saw a box of tissues on the desk and took one: I had no idea how toxic the ink was, so I didn’t want to risk licking it off.

I heard the door behind me and turned around, expecting Captain Bulwark. Instead, I saw an armored colt that I hadn’t seen before. At first glance, I thought he was white, but his coat was actually a very faint orange color. He looked at me, then at Lieutenant Starfall. He pulled a pair of tinted spectacles out of his armor and put them on as he addressed the pegasus, “You sure you don’t want her? It’s not every day that we’re griffin a new recruit.”

Lieutenant Starfall sneered, but I wasn’t sure at what: that had been a horrible pun. “I seem to be the only sane guard in Farrington, to want to distance myself from that... officer,” he said. The fact that he had chosen his word at the end wasn’t lost on me, but now I wondered what he was getting at.

Sherry spoke up behind me, “Well, sir, when you’re the only one who’s sane, isn’t that crazy all on its own?”

“Quiet, you,” he said in a friendly tone.

The orange comedian turned to face me again. “Officer Gilda, this is our first time meeting. I am Lieutenant Horatio.”

I had heard of him by name, but like he said, this was the first time I had a face to go with the name. “Pleasure to meet you, sir,” I said, holding out a hand.

He shook it quickly, as if to speed things along. He continued his introduction, “Things are dying down at the hospital, so I expect we’ll see more of each other in the upcoming week. Still, I prefer to defer authority over officers to my sergeants, so I doubt it’ll be much more.”

He was blunt, but there was a sort of functional politeness to it. I got the feeling that he would see niceties and formalities as wasting my time and his, so I merely nodded in response to his statement.

“Have you given any thought to whether you want a day shift or a night shift?” he asked.

I hadn’t. I thought about it for a minute; I wasn’t beholden to the sun or the moon, really; my cave was dark enough that I could sleep during the day if that was what was needed. I decided to take the diplomatic approach, “What do you need more of?”

“Day shift.”

“Then day shift, sir,” I replied.

Lieutenant Horatio nodded. “Then you already know your hours. Sherry, how’d she do on the test?” he asked suddenly.

“Passed, sir.”

“Then let’s go to the press room, they’re waiting for us,” he said. Lieutenant Starfall walked alongside him, Sherry and I filed in behind the two lieutenants. I didn’t know where we were headed, but that was the benefit of following somebody who did.

Our destination was a cool, well-lit room. At the opposite end of the room was a raised platform with a speaking podium. Captain Bulwark was smiling and talking to a unicorn that was holding both quill and paper in front of her with magic. When he saw the four of us, the captain gestured to us and I heard him say, “Here they are now!”

There was an explosion of light to my left, and I turned to face it head-on. The pony holding a camera took a few steps backward. I turned back to follow my lieutenant, I had fallen a few feet behind where I had been.

When we were at the front of the room, the unicorn broke away from Captain Bulwark to talk to us. “Officer Gilda, this is News Reel for the Farrington Times, do you have a minute afterward for an interview?”

I was flustered. I did not want to do an interview. I didn’t know if I was allowed to give an interview. I didn’t know what questions she would ask, or how long it would take...

After an anxious moment, Sherry came to my rescue, “Take a statement that Sergeant Shared Justice declined permission for her officer to give an interview this morning.”

The dejected news unicorn stepped back, but was still writing on her notepad. “Thanks,” I whispered out of the side of my beak.

“No worries, press is scum,” came her answer.

The four of us took a few steps back to stand against the wall behind the speaking podium. After making a few introductions for the news reporters that were scattered around the room, Captain Bulwark started to give a speech about the integrity of the Farrington guards, and how it was their duty to protect citizens against all threats, both local and foreign. He played me off as a new step forward in pony-griffin relations. When he was done, the captain turned to me and asked, “Are you ready to become a guard of Farrington, Gilda?”

I’m here, aren’t I? I asked him in my mind, but I realized this whole ceremony was mostly for show anyway. “Yes, sir,” I played my part.

We stared at each other for a moment longer than was comfortable; he looked like he was waiting for something else.

Shelly sneezed to my right, but it came out sounding like “Oath!”

Right, it clicked in my brain. From my summer at Junior Speedsters’, I had a certain aversion to reciting any sort of canned speech. However, the ‘Guards’ Oath’ was a bit more grounded and realistic than the cheer I had had to say every morning. The captain was waiting, though, so I said the words that had been on the paper he had given me:

“I have taken upon myself the task of defense of Farrington and its citizens. Through my role as a guard, I swear to maintain the peace in this city by whatever means are necessary. I swear to put my duty before my family, my friends, and even my own life if need be. I understand the gravity of this oath, but I swear by my honor that I will do everything within my power to uphold it.”

Captain Bulwark smiled at me warmly. “Then welcome to the Farrington guards, Officer Gilda.”

END CHAPTER THREE

Chapter Four-->

CHAPTER FOUR

When I did my patrols with the captain for my first week, I had learned about protocol and how to present myself as a guard. I had learned a lot that week, but his tour-like patrols had the unintentional effect of sheltering me from understanding just how large of a city Farrington actually was.

My sergeant had given me a map of the city, but that created uneasy moments when I had to maintain a balance between appearing confident and calm despite needing to duck into an alleyway because I had no idea where I had ended up.

Another thing I noted about my first week of independence was that it was lonely. It was a strange juxtaposition, but I was surrounded by more-or-less happy ponies going about their daily lives. Sure, there were individuals who approached me for things like directions and finding ponies they had been separated from, but those interactions ran the gamut from ‘strained’ to ‘rude’.

Lonely as it was, I had to admit that it was nice to have the crowds seem genuinely disinterested in me. At least it was better than being stared at. I just missed spending as much time as I had with someone, like my training with Sherry or Captain Bulwark.

When I asked my sergeant about it, she responded with, “I know how lonely it gets, but the short answer is no, we don’t have the horsepower to partner you up with someone right now.”

I ate a lot of my lunches at diners that week. I remembered from my week with Captain Bulwark that they didn’t have the best food in the city, but I didn’t go there for the food. With my lunch break being so late in the day, there was a good chance that the pony behind the counter was just as bored with his or her day as I was.

At the beginning of my first week of being alone on the job, I learned that I was ‘unwelcome’ at one diner; I got luckier on Tuesday, though, and found a diner with a friendly waitress who didn’t seem to care that I had a beak.

In addition to my loneliness, walking gave me an entirely new definition of ‘painful’. By the end of my first week, I had gotten used to holding my talons up, but it still hurt the palms of my hands to walk that way. When no one else was in the street with me, I relieved a bit of the pain by flaring my wings and walking upright on my hind legs. Farrington was fairly crowded, though, so those moments were few and far between.

Walking with my fingers lifted for eight hours a day made it hard to make fists by the time my shift was over. I suppose I had a combat baton that I could hit criminals with, but fists and grappling were as integral to griffins’ fighting style as wings were.

Then again, being a guard wasn’t all about fighting. By my second Wednesday on the job, I only had to make one arrest, and the perpetrator was guilty of ‘defacing private property’. That was the legal term for drawing a huge bowl of fruit on a shop’s wall without the owner’s consent. The illegal artist didn’t resist arrest; the only thing he seemed to care about was whether or not I liked his ‘art’.

For the rest of the day, though, every time I passed it, I had to admit that it was a pretty well-drawn bowl of fruit. It just confused me as to why.

The week started slow enough, but Thursday was an interesting day for me.

It all began a little after eight o’clock in the guard’s quarters of the citadel. The room itself was enormous; the ceiling was high, and six desks were placed side-by-side to form two rows on either sides of the room, with plenty of space to move around on both sides. It was also well-lit; huge windows on one side of the room flooded the place in sunlight. Along the walls were various bulletin boards to remind us of hot-key issues, but the only wall decoration I really cared about was the huge map of Farrington that had colored outlines of patrols.

No other guards were in the room with us when I met Sherry there for my patrol assignment. All that week, she had been sending me to patrol a residential area in the southeast part of the city, but today, she assigned me to the Artisan district, which was located at the base of the mountain that Farrington was built around.

She had apologized for switching me, but I wasn’t too concerned about it either way. “Seriously, you’re the boss,” I consoled her with a shrug. “I don’t care too much where I end up.”

“I know, I know,” she said, waving her hoof dismissively. “I’m just pissed that Officer Bobby threw out his back and has to be on ‘desk duty’ for a while. He’s one of our best, and the Artisan district...” she paused, trying to find the best way to describe it. “Keep your wits about you, officer,” she finished.

I tapped my closed baton on my helmet. “I know how to use this, Sherry.”

She nodded with a worried smile. “Good luck, then.”

I was very thorough when I checked the patrol map in the citadel before leaving that day. I didn’t know how bad things were in the Artisan district, but if it was as rough as Sherry had hinted, I didn’t want to have to pull out my map and thus give off an illusion of weakness.

In a mining city such as Farrington, the Artisan district was mainly composed of a lot of different flavors of blacksmithing. It was interesting, at first, to see all of the raw products being refined, but that curiosity was quickly beaten out of me by the brash populace. By the time the local clock tower struck noon, I knew exactly what Sherry had been trying to convey about the Artisan district. The ponies there seemed to be hardened by manual labor; they weren’t overtly violent to me or anyone else, but they didn’t go out of their way to be polite, either.

The third time I was shoved out of the way, I complained about it. “Excuse you,” I called out to the colt who was rushing somewhere in a hurry.

He turned around long enough to yell at me, “Get bent, half-breed!” and then continued on his way. I was stunned for a moment as I realized what he had called me, but by the time it had sunk in, he was too far away for me to do anything about it. If I saw him again, he’d get to know my baton a bit better, but the odds of that happening were low, so I continued my route around the district in disgruntled silence. I had to keep an eye on all of the pedestrian ponies to make sure none of them were doing anything illegal.

It was around one when I heard shouting one block over. I went over to investigate, and saw a moss-green farrier running on the street shouting, “Stop! Thief!”

I caught a glimpse of a pony rounding the corner. From what I saw, he – or she, I hadn’t seen enough to make that call – was a light-blue pony with a red tail. I doubled back onto the street I came from in order to cut the mystery pony off. I found the light-blue pony again, and he or she was running away from where I stood.

There was about three blocks’ distance between the two of us, and it was too crowded for me to make a proper pursuit. Captain Bulwark had stressed that I wasn’t allowed to fly within the city, even at a low altitude, so I had to get creative in order to cover the distance between the two of us.

The crowd was in my way. I figured it was up to me to clear a path.

I flared my wings and stood up. From my position, I could better see the red-maned pony, but that wasn’t all I wanted.

Being some sort of mix between a lion and eagle, I had a bit of the physiology of both when it came to a lot of things. For example, I could screech like an eagle if I needed to. That was more to call out to other griffins or eagles over a long distance, though. When I wanted intimidation over a short range, the literal lion’s share of my vocal chords was what I preferred.

I took in a deep breath and unleashed a roar from hell. Every pony in the street stopped what he or she was doing in order to stare at me. “Officer coming through! Get out of the way!” I yelled in a voice that was still a few octaves deeper than my usual speaking voice.

The effect was almost instantaneous: all of the pedestrians moved to the outside of the street, and there was a clear path between myself and my goal. I started running towards the thief. Like everyone else in a five-block radius, the red-and-blue pony had taken notice of me. When we met eyes, I could tell by the shape of her face that she was, in fact, female. More importantly, I saw the saddlebags she was wearing; that was probably where she put her stolen goods. That would be good to remember in case she tried to throw away her prize in order to escape.

She turned down the street and ran, but I had a few seconds’ head start already. If we were on a softer terrain, or even natural stone, I would have chased her on all fours; however, my back feet had retractable claws, so I chased after her on two legs.

Despite the somewhat awkward position I was running in, my body seemed to think I was hunting for food. Adrenaline made me faster than the thief. I closed another block’s distance before she noticed that I was gaining on her. When she did notice, she turned down a street to lose me, so I turned down one that was parallel with it. A few shopkeepers glanced out their doorways as I ran past, but I ignored them for now: I was only worried about one pony at this point.

There were still two blocks between the two of us, but I got lucky: I came across a grassy park that took up an entire city block. I dropped down to all fours for a bit more speed as I cut diagonally through it. When I got back to the cobblestones, I stood back up and kept running in the same direction as the thief. I caught glimpses of her as we passed through intersections together. With a bit more luck, I’ll catch up to her yet, I thought with satisfaction.

Despite this hope, part of me wondered why she hadn’t yet turned down a street in order to throw me off. That answer came almost as quickly as I asked the question, though, when I ended up on a narrow bridge over a sewage canal. The water looked relatively clean, but it was a fifty foot drop down to it. It was also too far to risk jumping; even if I glided, I’d probably end up hanging off the edge of the thief’s street.

I looked over to where she was, and she was smiling at me from an intersection. I scowled as I realized that as soon as I took off running to get one street over, the thief would also make a break for it. I’d never find her again if she had twenty seconds to make herself scarce.

“Bet you wish you could fly, huh?” she taunted in a cooing voice. My eyes narrowed: she was right. The way that Captain Bulwark explained it, if I broke any laws during an arrest, not only would I get penalized, but there would be a good chance of the arrest being deemed ‘faulty’ in court. Basically, it would be a lose-win situation for me and the thief, and she knew this. She turned around and slowly walked away, shaking her hips at me.

I didn’t want to give up so easily, though. As I glared at her sultry walk, I realized that I needed a way to incapacitate her from a distance. I crossed my arms, thinking, and felt my baton with the elbow of my left arm. That’ll do, I realized.

I grabbed the baton in my right hand and uncrossed my arms. After taking aim, I threw my baton at where I guessed she would end up walking. It was a good throw, but the thief picked up her pace when the baton was at the high point in its trajectory. If I didn’t do something, I was going to miss my target.

In order to keep her at the right spot, I yelled the first thing that came to mind: “Hey! Fotze!” The thief turned around to face me. A hint of confusion was marring her otherwise gloating smile.

The baton hit her right in the side of the head, and she immediately dropped to the ground.

I fell down on all fours again and hurried over to where she lay. It was slightly slower to run like that on cobblestones, but at that point, my hind legs were screaming from the added strain of bipedalism. When I got to the thief, she was dazed but conscious. Before she could react, I took out my length of rope and bound both pairs of her legs.

When she realized what was happening, she struggled. My knots were good, though, and when she realized she couldn’t escape, she began sobbing. “Please, let me go!” she cried in a much humbler tone than she had spoke to me with earlier.

“That’s not how the guard/criminal relationship works,” I said. “It’s real easy, though: you commit crimes, I catch you in the act, you go to jail. See? Easy.”

I threw her over my shoulder, holding her hind legs in my left arm. Despite my lecture on how easy the system was, my prisoner kept struggling and trying to hit me. It would be awkward enough to carry a pony who was roughly my size, but her struggling made it all the more difficult. After she bit my wing, I told her in my harshest voice, “You know, it’d be easier to carry you if I ripped off a few legs.”

She went limp, save for the shivers of her trembling. I rolled my eyes at how easy it was to frighten this filly; she spoke boldly, but she was just a coward.

Trembling or no, it was easier to carry an unresisting pony than a struggling one. When we got back to the citadel, I took my prisoner to the guards’ quarters. It being later in the day, it was a bit busier than it had been that morning. There was a guard for each desk now, even though two of them were crowded around the desk of a third; all of them were looking over some report or file.

I saw Sherry writing at one of the desks, so I walked over to her in order to deal with the thief. “Hi, Sherry,” I announced my presence.

She didn’t look up from the form she was filling out, but she spoke to me in a concerned, if distracted voice, “I heard reports of a disturbance in the Artisan district, are you okay?”

I felt a twinge of guilt; I had probably been the source of those reports, not the thief. Still, I thought, I caught her; isn’t that the important part? “I’m okay,” I said. “I just needed to get everyone’s attention so I could chase a thief,” I shook my left shoulder for emphasis.

She looked up at the sound of my armor clinking and her eyes focused on who I was carrying. “Is that...” Sherry said, seemingly oblivious to what I had just said. She came around to the other side of her desk and pulled my prisoner’s flank away from my head to check out the mark there. It hit me in the ear hole when she let go, but from the other side of my head, I heard Sherry congratulate me, “Not a bad catch for your first real criminal. Let’s get her processed.”

She led me through a door that led deeper into the citadel. Inside was a much smaller room where criminals were booked and photographed before they were sent to a jail cell until their trial. A low-hanging shelf wrapped around three walls; on the fourth was the door and a lined backdrop used to measure height for the photographs.

I dropped the filly onto her right side, more or less in the middle of the room. As soon as I did it, I realized that I might have crushed whatever was in her bag. I shook my head, frustrated; I’d have to remember that in the future.

Still, the thief couldn’t get up due to her bonds; I didn’t feel especially sympathetic to set her upright, either. Instead, I asked Sherry, “You know who this is?”

“Know her?” Sherry asked, incredulous.

“I’m Fast Hooves, and you’re going to regret what you’ve done today,” the thief snapped at me.

Before I knew what had happened, Sherry grabbed my baton off my armor and swung it downward, extending it and striking Fast Hooves in the chest, right below the shoulder. “I don’t remember giving you permission to talk, you little piece of shit!” she shouted at the now-gasping filly on the floor.

I stood there, stunned. Sherry had a rough kind of voice, but she always spoke in a kind, quiet manner. Hearing her shout was jarring, to say the least. More than the volume, though, I was shocked by the way she had hit a defenseless prisoner. When she saw my expression, she addressed me in a much quieter, calmer tone, “No, Gilda. Don’t feel sorry for her. That whole family’s scum.”

“I don’t know much about that,” I admitted, holding out a hand for my baton. Sherry collapsed it and gave it back to me. “But where I come from, fights end when one side loses,” I finished as I hung my weapon back on my armor. I left out the part where that was usually because fights in my tribe usually ended in death or a draw, but I felt that my point still stood.

Sherry didn’t respond right away. Instead, she looked at our prisoner with a look of hateful disgust that made me shudder inside. “Ask Iron what happened to our lieutenant,” she finally said.

I grunted in agreement. My sergeant shook her head before clearing her throat and continuing, “Anyway, let’s see what she almost got away with.” Sherry bent over a still-wheezing Fast Hooves and reached into the saddlebag that she wasn’t lying on. She pulled out a golden sword hilt with several large recessions running down the shaft.

“Wow,” I said, impressed. I still didn’t know much about the economy of ponies, but I still realized that something like that was probably worth more than all of my feathers combined. Sherry set the sword aside and flipped Fast Hooves over in order to reach into her other saddlebag. Inside it were several large diamonds.

“Someone’s going to be very happy you caught her,” Sherry told me, equally impressed.

“I remember who it was, too,” I added.

Without another word, my sergeant took the saddlebag from Fast Hooves, loaded it back up, and placed it around my neck. “Well, you better get it back to them; something like this is bound to be missed.”

I blinked a few times in surprise. Is it normal to trust rookies with things of such value? I asked myself. I shrugged, feeling the new weight on my neck rise and fall: I figured I’d probably be held accountable if it went missing now.

So, burdened with jewels and responsibility, I returned to the Artisan district. Apart from a few wayward glances, no one seemed to remember my earlier display. I found my way to the farrier’s shop. From a distance, I saw him sitting on his front steps, holding his forehead in his hooves. Now that I actually had the time to look at him, I could see the creases of old age that crossed his face, but he was a dark enough color where it was hard to make out at a distance.

Sitting next to the dark-green farrier was a white colt. His mane was tied up in a strange style that I hadn’t seen before; it almost reminded me of a doorknob. I could see his lips moving, but he was talking in so quiet of a voice that I couldn’t make out his words. As I got closer, I noticed that he had an icon of a sword on his flank, but like his mane, it was made in a foreign style that I hadn’t seen before.

When I stood in front of the pair, the farrier looked up at me. I smiled at him and took off the saddlebags, handing them over. “I think all this is yours,” I told him.

He looked inside the bag and his face lit up. He met my eyes for a moment and said quietly, “Thank... you.” His voice broke on the second word, and he started crying. The white colt put his arm around the farrier’s shoulder, and he responded by pulling the white colt into a hug.

I felt as if I were intruding on a private moment, so I turned to head back to my patrol. Before I could take the first step, though, the farrier cleared his throat. I looked back, and he said, “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

I shook my head, remembering Captain Bulwark’s strict policy against taking gifts from citizens. “No need; it’s part of the job,” I said.

The dark green farrier wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, though. Instead, he looked down at my hands. “I’m no expert on griffin anatomy,” he said, “but that can’t be comfortable.”

“Er...” was all that I could get out.

“And your shoulders,” he continued, “hell, the whole suit doesn’t fit you!” he said with a tone of annoyance. “No, no, this won’t do. I simply can’t let the guard who saved my livelihood carry on like this!”

“I can’t accept... anything,” I half-mumbled. I didn’t want to seem unreceptive of gratitude, but if I was a guard, I had to abide by the rules.

“Right, right,” comprehension dawned on the farrier’s face. “I’ll get it squared away with the captain first, I apologize,” he said. Turning to the white colt, he said, “Start thinking of how you’re going to fix this girl’s armor.”

I guessed the white colt was the farrier’s apprentice. He said nothing, though; he simply smiled and nodded at his master.

“I need to get back to my patrol,” I said, “but thanks.”

“Think nothing of it,” the farrier smiled at me.

I turned and left, heading back to the street that was part of my patrol route. I didn’t know what was in store for me from the farrier, but if he cleared everything with the captain, I figured that a new suit of armor couldn’t be worse than the one I currently wore. As the steps made fires shoot up my wrists, I remembered his comments about my hands. I hoped that if he gave me anything, it would make walking less of a torture.

*        *        *

When my shift ended on Friday, I said goodbye to Captain Bulwark at his usual spot at the main gate.

“Hold on, Gilda, I’ve got something for you,” he beckoned. I walked over, and out of curiosity, I looked on the other side of his booth. The wall was empty. Seeing me check the wall, the captain added, “Lieutenant Starfall’s back on his usual shift now.”

Such a shame, I thought blithely. “Oh,” was all that I said, though.

“Anyway, there are two matters to take care of. First,” he put a leather pouch on the counter of his watch booth, “your first two weeks’ wages.”

I picked up the pouch and sat down, taking out my wallet to combine the two bags. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but it was officially more money than I had ever owned at any given time. As I mulled this fact over, the captain continued, “Also, I heard that you turned down a farrier who wanted to reforge your armor?”

“Sir,” I answered, “you told me not to accept gifts from citizens.”

Captain Bulwark smiled at me. “And you were right in doing so. It’s dangerous territory, getting paid by anyone other than myself,” he replied. “However, if he wants to reforge your armor as thanks for your efforts, that’s his prerogative. At the very least, it saves me the time and effort of getting it done myself,” he added bluntly.

I felt a swell of pride at that last part: the captain had planned on getting me my own armor? “When,” I started, but my voice cracked. After clearing my throat, I started again, “When is he going to do it?”

“You can take it to his shop now, if you want.”

I was done combining my bags, so I stood back up and returned the now-empty bag to Captain Bulwark. I was about to turn to head into the city again when a thought crossed my mind.

It had been a week since I had talked so much to the captain, and I missed his company.

Also, he had paid for my meals for a week. I figured, at least from a business standpoint, I owed him something back for that. “Do you want to get dinner tonight?” I asked.

He responded with a shocked look. “Er... I don’t think that’d be... appropriate,” he stammered.

“Officers can’t say ‘thanks’ to their superiors for a week’s worth of lunch?” I asked, adding, “It’s my turn to pay.” I didn’t want to browbeat him into eating with me, but I was confused as to why he would decline.

“Oh,” Captain Bulwark replied, nodding, “I had forgotten about it, to be honest.” After a moment’s pause, he continued, “Still, I won’t say no to a free meal, or to new friends.” He smiled as he said it, but the gesture seemed to stretch out the word ‘friends’.

“When do you get off?” I asked.

“Tonight, I am busy,” he clarified, “but I am free to have dinner with you tomorrow night at seven.”

I nodded, repeating, “Tomorrow at seven.” Bowing goodbye, I set off into the city to take my armor to the farrier. Along the way, I decided to spend a little money: I stopped into the post office.

“You!” the teal-colored unicorn behind the counter almost shouted at me.

“Actually, my friends call me ‘G.’ You can call me officer,” I shot back with a smile.

“Just write your damn letter and leave,” she said, putting a piece of paper on the counter. Rude as she was, she knew how to get rid of me quickly.

I took the paper and went over to the stand where there was a small bottle of ink. Looking at it, I realized that, despite having more events happen in the past two weeks than had occurred in years, I didn’t know how to start the letter.

Dash and I were great friends, true, but at the same time, I had almost killed her as part of a nervous breakdown. I didn’t know how to address that: coy, like, “How’s your neck?” or repentant, like, “I’m so sorry...”

I finally settled on:

Hey Dash,

How have you been?

I still think about everything that happened on Saturday, but I don’t know what else to say. Part of me thinks that there’s nothing left TO say, but still... I’m sorry.

In other news, I got a job in Farrington. I’m a city guard now. I’m not sure how much I like it, but it beats sitting in my cave waiting to d doing nothing. The pay’s decent, I guess... but you know how I am about stuff.

Anyway, I know the conditions for coming to visit you again, but I figure we can still keep in touch the old-fashioned way, huh?

Hope to hear from you soon,

~G.

I looked at the letter, scowling at my scratched-out error. I shrugged, doubting that Dash would read too much into it. I rolled up the letter and wrote Dash’s address on the outside. I handed the scroll to the clerk and left without as much as a ‘thanks’.

I made my way back to the Artisan district. After dropping off my armor, I made my way back to the south gate of the city. By that time, the captain’s shift had ended, so the night watch pony was in the booth instead. I nodded to him, and he returned the nod, so at least he was friendly.

I unfurled my wings and took off for home. After wearing it for so long, flying without the armor made me feel weightless. At any rate, it was easier to think about what was in store for me on Saturday evening.

Maxie got home from her delivery at ten fifty-six. She knew what time I went to bed by, and she was good about being quiet, but she wasn’t silent, either. The door to my bedroom was closed, so everything was pitch black, save for the faintly glowing paint at the end of my alarm clock’s hands.

Without the use of my eyes, I could still tell what my sister was up to by the sounds she made. I heard hooffalls in the hallway, then a door close, and the sound of running water: the bathroom. When she was done, she went to the kitchen and I heard the crinkling of a bag being opened quietly.

The hooffalls came down the hall again, this time stopping outside of my door. I heard the knob turn quietly, and was glad I was both facing away from the door and not doing anything incredibly personal. I heard a soft chuckle followed by, “Good night, sleepy-head.” She was wrong on both accounts, but I smiled as my door clicked shut. It wasn’t the first time this week that I had caught her saying ‘good night’ to me, but she didn’t need to know that I was having trouble sleeping.

As my sister walked down the hall to her own bedroom, my thoughts returned to the griffin who had been keeping me awake for most of the last hour.

I couldn’t even bring myself to call her by her name. I was too ashamed. I regretted how easily she had defeated my initial rejection when asking me out to dinner. The worst part was, I didn’t think that she did it on purpose. There was a good chance that she was just looking for a friend in this city, but I didn’t know if I would be able to resign to being ‘just friends’.

I felt myself agreeing with Starfall: it had been a mistake to recruit her. I shook the thought from my head, though: it wouldn’t do me good to start doubting my own convictions two weeks after the fact.

Plus, I reasoned, she’s not half-bad as a guard, either. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the disturbance that she had caused in the Artisan district, but she had recovered stolen property that was worth more than I made in a year. Moreover, she had taken a very dangerous criminal off the streets, and she had done it without putting a scratch on her. There were a few bruises and harsh words, but she was clearly within her limits.

Probably the most dangerous part of that arrest had been leaving Fast Hooves alone with Sergeant Sherry. There was no way Gilda could have known, but that situation was a veritable powder keg.

No, I reiterated, I can’t just fire her because my own personal feelings are getting in the way. Thinking about it made me remember why I had hired her on in the first place. She had entered Farrington in an almost-dead state, but she had been incredibly resilient. It only took a week for her to start exploring the town. True, the hospital only let her out for an hour at a time, and it was clear that she had lost a big fight in her homeland, but she didn’t seem to care that much about her appearance. In fact, she only seemed concerned with the post office at first. I never found out where she got money from, but I had had to remind Maxie that she was a paying customer, and that I wouldn’t just bar her from town because she was a griffin.

I had hoped that we would be able to talk back then. I was curious about her culture and where she had come from. I still kicked myself over not getting around to it, but the past was the past. Once her wounds had healed enough for her to fly, she left town and headed south. She had been nothing but a curiosity to me then.

Over the next three years, we saw very little of each other, but it was always a matter of interest to see her flying over the southern horizon. I watched silently as she lost weight and became more and more disheveled with every visit. It had made me sad to see a creature of the air becoming so haggard, but I doubted that there was anything I could do.

I also noticed how sad she was. There wasn’t much emotion in her face when she visited, but she walked quietly and looked almost longingly at the other ponies in the city. Maxie took her job seriously enough to not tell me who the recipients of the letters were, but she had been gleeful whenever she told me that ‘that griffin’ had left town without having received a response, even for months at a time.

Even back then, I had worried for her well-being. I hated how I began to see Gilda less and less, looking worse and worse with each visit. When she showed up three weeks ago, she had a look of resolution and purpose, and I had feared for the worst. If she had made up her mind to end her life, though, there was precious little I would have been able to do to stop her.

Luckily, she only wanted to send a letter and teach my sister a lesson about griffin anatomy. She visited every day for the rest of that week, except for Saturday, looking... almost happy. I wasn’t a master of griffin affairs, but even then, I could tell that she was in a better mood than I had ever seen her in.

When she showed up on Sunday evening, covered in dried blood and looking sadder than ever, there were many questions that had been raised: Whose blood was that? Why was she distraught? What had happened in the two days she had been gone? She had looked at me strangely, probably guessing that I did nothing but stand in that booth for fourteen hours at a time. Instead of asking how she was, though, I had broken my usual silence to defend my own pride.

I looked back at the clock. It was twenty after eleven now. I threw off my bedsheets and made my way to the door. Sleep wasn’t coming to me that night; I needed to clear my head first. I walked down the hallway and out my front door.

As I walked, I picked directions at random when it came to intersections. I knew that giving her a job was a risk, I returned to my original train of thought, but I couldn’t keep watching her grow worse and worse. I couldn’t have sold that motive to the press or to the Farrington city council, though. Therefore, I spun the intercultural relations angle, and that had been my official motivation.

It had been a lie to preserve Gilda’s dignity and to hide the truth from everybody. It felt like such a ridiculous thing to lie about, caring about the well-being of an individual.

As much as I felt sorry for her, I remembered how many times I had to keep from smiling at her deadpan humor during her first week. I worked hard to maintain a stout resolution when I was playing my role as captain, and it was in the public’s best interest for the guards to take themselves seriously, so I had had to put a damper on her sarcasm. Still, she found humor in a lot of situations; it was probably a coping mechanism of some sort.

I hadn’t foreseen the possibility that she and I would have so much in common.

I remembered when I realized that I cared about her in a way that was more than pity. We had finished sharing some of our childhoods with each other, and I saw her looking skyward with the same expression that I wore when I was confused but curious. The more I learned about her that week, the more I grew to admire her, but that moment had been the first time that I felt a deep compassion for her. It was different than my wanting to help out someone who was down on their luck; now, I wanted to get to know her, at least as a friend.

The back of my mind laughed at that notion. It was all impossible. The odds of a griffin leaving the northern kingdoms were low, and the odds of them doing so peacefully were even lower. And yet, here I was, finding myself wanting to get to know one better, perhaps even romantically.

I heard the bell tower strike midnight. There were now only nineteen hours between now and my date with Gilda. I looked around at the buildings: I was somewhat close to the northern gate of the city. I didn’t think that Starfall would be especially happy to hear about the cause of my restlessness, but at the same time, he was my friend. His counsel, while blunt, usually held its own wisdom.

Also, it was unbearable to keep this problem to myself. I had many friends throughout Farrington, but I wouldn’t trust many of them with such... controversial knowledge. At this hour, only Starfall or Sherry would be awake, and... I had known Starfall for longer. At any rate, I felt slightly more comfortable going to a colt for dating advice than I would to Sherry; she was old enough to be my mother, and had in fact been a friend of my father’s back when he served in the guard.

A few minutes later, I arrived at his booth. Rather than announce my presence, I decided to try my hooves at his usual way of leaning on the side of the booth. It wasn’t that difficult to do, either, but I hit the booth pretty hard, which elicited a swear from inside.

“You have about a ten-second head start while I get out of here, and that’s the only mercy you’ll--” his head appeared around the lip of the window. He looked at me, confused for a second, then he looked down to my flank, and back up to me. “Iron. Probably the last pony I would expect to see this late,” he said, still bewildered by my presence.

I had some matters to discuss, but I couldn’t resist revisiting an earlier point, “Do you see what I mean about how uncomfortable it is to stand like that?”

His head slid back around the corner. “Who made the edge of the counter so sharp?” he asked, agreeing. I grunted to show that I didn’t know. After a moment’s silence, Starfall continued, “So, what’s on your mind, kid?”

I smiled at my nickname. I had hated it at first, but over the years, it became a term of endearment. The smile left as I thought about the best way to bring up the topic at hand and not offend Starfall’s sensibilities. He had cooled off in the past few weeks since she started, but after what griffins did to his wife, I understood his continued problem with the race.

“Remember Sherry and Lieutenant Spade?” I asked. I figured there’d be an easier segue from that topic to my own, at the very least. Plus, with a fifty-fifty chance that the lieutenant’s murderer was now behind bars, the topic was also fresh in my mind.

“Sherry and Malt!” Starfall replied nostalgically. “Talk about opposites attracting. They couldn’t be any more different in... everything,” he commented, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair love each other like those two.”

What about you and Comet? I barely bit back the words. I knew why Starfall elected to do his unit’s night watch, and the reasons weren’t happy.

Starfall heard my continued silence, so he prompted me, “But yeah, midnight’s a bit late to think about ancient history, huh?”

“I suppose it is. Still, it’s pretty ironic that Gilda, knowing nothing of the histories at work, handed Fast Hooves over to her sergeant without as much as a second thought,” I commented.

My friend laughed from inside his booth before continuing, “Is that why you’re awake? Worried that I’m right and that eventually, she’s going to make a mistake and have to claw her way out?”

“No,” I answered. “Well, yes, actually,” I admitted after a moment’s thought. “But she threw a colt through a window without seeming to think too much about it. I doubt she’s going to get outclassed by any group, unless they’re carrying deadly weapons in the first place, but then...”

“Officer Gilda gets to learn the fun of paperwork,” Starfall said impishly.

“Mmm,” I agreed. “But no, what’s keeping me awake this night is a problem of a more... personal nature,” I continued. He was my friend, but it was still an awkward problem to bring up. The embarrassment was giving me pause.

My indirect approach wasn’t lost on my friend. “Well,” he began, “I’ve got one more hour on my shift, so at the rate you’re going, I think we’ll have an answer for your problem by September.”

“Fine, fine,” I agreed. “But this information doesn’t leave this conversation, understood?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he promised. “Hell, who could I tell that you don’t have some sort of dirt on me over anyway?”

Even though he couldn’t see me, I nodded at the truth. We were friends, and part of that was that we had confidence in each other that stretched beyond some of our other acquaintances. For example, even Maxie didn’t know how worried I was that she was making a name for herself among Stalliongrad’s nightlife, but Starfall had heard me out over the situation.

“What’s the term when you know enough about life that you know you don’t love someone, but still, you want to start dating them to find out?” I asked.

“Schoolfilly’s crush?” Starfall offered, amused.

“Funny. Ass,” I replied, notably less amused.

The pegasus chuckled, “I’m sorry, Iron, but for all your dressing it up in seriousness and fancy words, that’s exactly what you sound like right now.”

I said nothing, but turned my head to face his voice. I was less offended and more shocked at the insult.

Sure enough, he didn’t need to see me in order to pick up on how I had taken his comment. “I’m sorry, kid,” he apologized. “Still, you sounded just like Haley the other day. She asked me, ‘What’s it called when you like somepony more than just friends?’”

I had to crack a grin at that. Starfall was the devil incarnate to criminals and a stone wall to his wife, but the love he felt for his children was almost tangible. Plus, they were an adorable pair of pegasi. They called me ‘Uncle Iron’ whenever I visited.

“Well, it’s good to know that I at least have the romantic experience of an eight-year-old,” I said bitterly.

“You got dealt a raw hand, Iron,” Starfall consoled. “No one should have to raise a daughter at age thirteen. Now that Max can fend for herself, though, you’re a bit behind in the game is all,” he finished. It was strange to hear him refer to my sister as a ‘daughter’, but then again, I had raised her through our teenage years.

“So,” he continued, “what’s his or her name?”

“His?” I deadpanned.

“Hey, ten years and this is the first time I’m hearing of you being romantically interested in someone. I don’t know what sort of kinks you’re into,” he replied.

“Or even what species,” I admitted. The hour was growing late, and being indirect was becoming just as awkward as my confession.

Starfall was silent for a few moments as he made the connection. When he spoke, it was with a tone of disgust, “You’re... joking, right?”

“Most of me wishes I were,” I said sadly, but honestly. I knew I could control my actions, but if my mind’s rebellion had taught me anything, it was that my desires for company were not of my own making.

Starfall shocked me by appearing in the doorway set into the wall of the archway to my left. A small part of me surprised was that he had left his post; most of it, though, came from the loud slamming sound it caused and, on further review, the look of sheer rage on his face. At any rate, I pushed off the wall with my shoulders in order to stand on all fours again.

“Are you incredibly stupid or just mildly insane?” he asked, shouting the last word. I actually heard it echo in the quiet streets. He seemed to notice this, because he continued in a harsh whisper, “The only reason I didn’t go straight to city council over you hiring on that beast is that you told me that it was a professional decision; that you thought she’d make a good guard!”

“I wasn’t lying about that!” I said, feeling my anger rising at his accusation.

Starfall reciprocated my anger. His volume returned to that of a normal speaking voice when he continued, “You weren’t? Because you know what it looks like from my point of view. Three years of, ‘Oh, that griffin came by. She’s sad today,’ like I’m supposed to care, and then the first chance you get to speak to her, you hire her onto the guards? What other motives would you have to keep her around?”

“My motives for wanting to help her were separate from my judgment to hire her!” I finally shouted at him. “It’s just that now I’ve gotten to know her--”

“I mean, if you want to fornicate with animals, by all means, your free time is your own; just save the taxpayers the expense of courtship and go find some in the Everfree!”

“That’s not what I’m after at all!” I yelled in frustration, “I’m just confused about how I feel about her.” Before I could stop myself, I ended with, “I wish I were as lucky as you, then I could just choose to stop caring about someone.”

A dangerous mix of emotions crossed the lieutenant’s face. First came shock, then sorrow, and finally rage. Before he could act or speak on it, I apologized, “I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

“Incredibly,” Starfall agreed, his rage simmering down to a sad anger. We stood there, glaring at each other, until he finally broke the gaze by turning his head to the side. Coldly, he asked, “Is that what you think of me?”

“Do you really want to have that conversation right now?” I countered softly. I had wanted to talk to him about his marriage for some time, and hated to miss the opportunity, but rationality told me that tensions were running high enough as it was.

“Fair enough,” he responded. Without saying anything else, he turned around and went back through the doorway; I went to the front of his booth in order to meet him there.

When he came through the door inside his room, he looked at me and sighed. After a long pause, he finally spoke, “Did you really think it was a good idea to come to me for advice over this?”

“There isn’t anybody else awake at this hour,” I offered. “At least, not anyone I trust with this.”

Starfall let out a mirthless chuckle. “I was going to say, I saw your sister coming back earlier,” he said with a hint of amusement.

I rolled my eyes, “Yeah, I don’t feel like having Maxie running around telling everyone in the city about ‘my brother the pervert.’”

My friend let out another sigh and shook his head, “I’m sorry, Iron. But I can’t offer much help on this one. You start dating that griffin, it’s only going to end in trouble. Either from her, from the rest of the guards, or from the press.”

“What about from friends?” I asked sadly.

Starfall gave me a comforting look. Sincerely, he responded, “I’ve known you for too long to let something as trivial as romance get between us. I won’t judge you any differently just because you happen to be dating a member of a race of murderers.”

Before I could reply, the bell tower struck one. “Well, that’s my shift,” he declared. He disappeared into the door in his booth, and I walked through the gate. There was a massive grinding sound of gears turning, and the doors of the gate began to move. After they were closed, Starfall came through the access doorway on the inside of the arch again, only this time, he stepped out into the street with me. He started walking south, and I followed him. “Does that help you, at least?” he asked, returning to his previous point.

“Slightly,” I sighed. I supposed that it did help to know that, after ten years, Starfall wouldn’t end our friendship over the company I chose to keep. Still, I hadn’t even thought that that would be at stake when I set out earlier that evening, so it was a moot victory.

He stopped in his tracks, and shook his head. With a strained look, he began, “I’ll be blunt with you, then. It will end disastrously. I don’t think you even care specifically about her.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, more curious than offended.

Starfall took in a deep breath and continued, “Your sister’s been self-sufficient for the past three years, and if we’re being honest, she hasn’t needed your full attention since before you made lieutenant. You’ve had time to find romance in Farrington, is all that I’m saying. And you have: you love this city and your job. The problem with that is that you see every filly in this city as some sort of daughter, or at least, extended family.”

He stopped for a moment, but I couldn’t think of a rebuttal before he started again. “So basically, the first new female who shows up, you’re interested in her. Even better, she’s from a different culture, so she’s mysterious,” he said, flaring his eyes and stretching out the word. “I know how you are with restaurants, businesses... everything new in this city. Hell, even your ‘cooking’: you enjoy satisfying your curiosities. That’s all that I think this is.”

I ignored the jibe at my hobby, instead asking, “How can I tell if it’s just that or something deeper?”

A puzzled look came over Starfall’s face. He chuckled and shook his head before admitting, “I... guess you’ll have to date her and find out.”

There wasn’t anything left for us to say on the matter. We continued walking together in friendly silence for a few minutes. When it came time for us to part ways, he finally offered a smile; I rapped the shoulder of his armor with my hoof.

As I walked back to my house, my mind was still racing with possibilities and worries about Gilda. However, and despite the almost violent outcome, my conversation with Starfall had put part of my mind at ease. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about what I was feeling, but knowing there was only one way to find out filled me with a sense of inner peace.

By the time I got home, I was exhausted from the night’s discussion. I got back into bed and fell asleep within minutes.

END CHAPTER FOUR

Chapter Five-->

CHAPTER FIVE

I spent most of Saturday glaring at my coin sack with a growing sense of unease.

It wasn’t that I was opposed to being compensated for my work; it was that the money was symbolic of my fear that I was slowly losing what little part of my culture I had left. First with the armor, then the clock, and now the brass coins: pony society was taking over my cave at a fast rate.

I argued with myself that I had always kept a bit of their money with me before, but that was always on a necessary basis. When I thought about the rate at which I usually spent money in Farrington, I imagined the brass coins slowly forming a massive pile on one side of my cave.

That thought was amusing, but I shook it from my head to focus on the matter at hand. It had been a long-running problem for me, but in my isolation, I was slowly forgetting what my home had been like. There were days when I spent a few hours or so unable to recall one of my younger sisters’ names. Granted, my family was huge, and I hadn’t really been close with any of my younger younger sisters, but it was still disturbing that I could forget their names with such ease.

Even worse than that was when I woke up from a dream where my family members were all speaking in the language that ponies spoke. Most of my tribe had a functional vocabulary in it, true, but we would have never sat around eating and joking in any language other than our own. It was an unsettling image, and it scared me to think that my subconscious was becoming less like a griffin.

I sighed, cringing at the futility of it all. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, time was changing me. Three years, I lamented. It’s been three years since I left, and it’s like I’m losing more of who I am every day. What’s it going to be like after ten years? Twenty years? It wasn’t uncommon for griffins in my tribe to live for longer than a century. What would I be by then? I shuddered at the thought.

I once again felt myself weighing just how much my friendship with Dash was worth to me. There were some days when I felt that I would give anything to go back home and see my sisters again. Looking down at my chest, I saw the stripe there, and I remembered the cost of rejoining my tribe. I realized that, no matter how badly time could ravage my mind, I would lose more of who I was if I murdered my best friend.

At six o’ clock, my alarm clock rang, breaking my train of thought. Still, I had set it to let me know that it was time to leave for Farrington. In light of the day’s considerations, I thought about staying home. However, I had given my word that I would be there, and I didn’t like to break promises. The irony wasn’t lost on me that my griffin-oriented sense of honor was driving me to visit a city that, more than anything, was causing me to lose my cultural identity.

I picked up my coin sack and hung it around my neck. As I turned to leave, I contemplated destroying that wretched, cutesy clock. With the money I had, I could afford a new one. I decided against it, though; it did function well as a clock. It didn’t feel right breaking something just because I didn’t like how it looked.

Instead of smashing my clock, I walked off the ledge outside of my cave. After a few seconds of free-fall, I unfurled my wings and caught the air. With a few flaps, I turned myself in the right direction and headed towards Farrington. I wasn’t usually one for theatrics, but it was somewhat freeing to fly without the burden of a few hundred pounds of metal. That freedom made flying take on a whole new dimension of joy for me.

After a sideways roll, I quit playing and put on some speed to fly towards Farrington. I was meeting my boss for an off-duty meal, so I didn’t want to be rude by being late. As I flew, I thought more about why I was getting dinner with Captain Bulwark, or more specifically, why I was treating the captain out for dinner.

The fact still remained that he had saved my life three years ago by sending me to the hospital instead of banishing me from the city. When I read about the protocol for dealing with grounded fliers, it hadn’t been lost on me that the law was vague, leaving most of the punishment up to ‘a ranked officer’s judicial discretion’. When I thought about the shifts they worked and the time of day that I had crash-landed into the market square, I could almost remember Starfall being there. It made sense, I supposed, but I wasn’t sure if it was just memory playing tricks on me.

No matter how directly or indirectly the captain had saved my life, I hadn’t been able to properly thank him for it. I also owed him a debt of gratitude for going out of his way to induct me into the Farrington guards. Not only was it a risk on his part, but it also turned out that I liked being a guard. Maybe ‘liked’ was a strong word, but at the same time, it gave me a certain level of personal pride to be able to live up to a responsibility like that.

I figured that the least I could do would be to buy him a meal.

I also had to admit that his personality made it easy to try to repay my debt to him. He was serious, but he wasn’t completely humorless, either. Even though he didn’t seem to like my specific brand of humor, he wasn’t impolite about it or anything.

The best part of the captain’s company was how good of a conversationalist he was. Our conversations over lunch were easily the highlight of my first week as a guard. He was a very knowledgeable individual, but he was sincere enough that he wasn’t afraid to admit when he didn’t know something. I sat and listened to him for the most part, but when I did say something, he paid attention. At the very least, it was nice to be able to reference something I had said to him earlier without having to repeat myself.

If you love him so much, why don’t you marry him? I mocked myself. I chuckled at the idea, though. There were too many barriers to overcome, the biggest being that I didn’t view the captain like that. He was my boss, and I figured that he would be good to have as a friend, but a lover? Ridiculous, I told myself.

I arrived at Farrington almost twenty minutes early. That alone impressed me; when I wore my armor, it usually took me closer to an hour to make the trip. I had known that it would be faster to fly without the added weight, but I hadn’t imagined that I would cut off that much flying time. I landed and walked under the front gate to sit in my usual quiet manner to wait for the captain.

Almost ten minutes later, a gray colt showed up. His mane and tail made me think that he had lost a fight with his barber; they were incredibly short, even for a male. He sat down on the opposite side of the archway from me, but he didn’t say anything, so I left him to his silence at first. After a few minutes passed, though, I figured I’d make conversation, “You waiting for someone too?”

“Just for them to recognize me,” Captain Bulwark answered with a grin.

My eyes widened when I realized who the colt sitting across from me was. I had never seen the captain without his armor before, so it was surprising to see what he looked like without it. It wasn’t that he was deformed or anything; it was just that, in the three years since I had seen the captain, he had always been wearing his ornate, golden armor.

I looked again at what was left of his mane and tail. They were brown, not the deep crimson of the plumes that adorned his armor’s head and flank. He noticed my gaze, so he defended himself, “It’s not the most stylish haircut in Farrington, but it’s regulation.”

“I didn’t mean to stare, sir. I’ve just never seen you without your armor,” I replied honestly.

He nodded his head in comprehension, “Fair enough.” After a pause, he added, “And you, uh, don’t have to call me ‘sir’. We’re off-duty now.”

I stared at him, blankly. I wasn’t used to addressing him by anything other than ‘sir’ or ‘captain,’ the latter being what he had introduced himself as. I knew his name, but I didn’t want to call him by it without his permission, first.

He picked up on my dilemma. “Call me Iron, Gilda. Just not while we’re on-duty.”

I nodded, guessing, “That’s just your elders who get to do that.”

He tapped his nose with his hoof. I didn’t know what that meant. “How did you know that Sherry was on the force before me?”

“Are you kidding? She’s like twenty years older than you.”

Iron laughed at that, “A bit older than that, actually, but don’t tell her I told you that.”

I made the zipping motion across my beak that she made the few times she hadn’t wanted to tell me something. I broke the gesture, though, by asking, “So, where do you want to eat?”

“How much of your wages do you have left, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“You know me, always spending money as soon as I get it,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“So, the whole of it?” he asked, chuckling. I nodded. “I know a place that won’t break your bank either way,” he offered.

“Lead the way,” I accepted. A few feet into our trek, I defended my spending habits, “I spent some of my wages. I mailed a letter.”

“Right, last night. I remember hearing something about that,” Iron said with... I detected sarcasm.

“Really?” I asked. “Is that mail clerk coming to you every time I send out a letter now?”

“Now? No. She complained the first time you sent a letter. ‘Rah, rah, rah, she’s using all the special addressing ink,’ that sort of thing,” he said. Despite being half a foot taller than her and being a different gender, he had almost perfectly mimicked the voice of the mail clerk. I was quickly losing my fight to keep from laughing. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “I love my sister, but when it comes to you writing letters at the post office... I could only have less concern if I made a conscious effort to.”

Sister, I thought, and looked closer at the colt next to me. His eyes were completely different than hers; his were blue, hers were gray. Still, now that he told me, I could see the resemblance between the two of them. “Ah, siblings,” I said, still chuckling.

“Do you have any sisters or brothers?” he asked.

“Sixteen and an egg, last I heard,” I answered.

Iron looked at me slyly for a few seconds before his expression widened. “Seven... wait, eighteen children? Is that... normal, for griffins?” he added sheepishly.

“Without my family, there’s five adult males in my tribe and eighteen females. They have eight kids between all of them,” I answered him flatly.

He said nothing in reply. After we passed a few more buildings, there was a restaurant on our left. The sign over the door looked elegant. “Be polite to the waiters here, Gilda. This is a favorite restaurant of mine, and I’d like to be able to come here again after this,” he warned softly.

“So, wait until after dinner to break out my juggling act. Got it,” I joked.

“You juggle?”

“No.”

The captain chuckled and went to the door. Opening it, he bid me to enter with a bow.

Inside, the restaurant was dimly lit. There was soft carpeting on the floor, and there was a fountain gurgling to my left. I also heard soft music playing. In my tribe, music was a very rare occurrence. Even then, it was only ever drumming or singing. Drumming was a mundane background noise we had for gatherings and celebrations. Singing, though...

Singing was a wordless baring of one’s soul to another. When one griffin sang to another, it was usually something like pledging an undying oath of love or a last farewell offered at a funeral.

Music was a lot more common in pony culture, almost to the point of being vulgar. I had first been introduced to it during my summer spent at Junior Speedsters’, and with very little exception, it was just noise to me. During some ‘group activities’ there, I had also been introduced to the concept of singing words as part of a song. No matter how many punishments the counselors threw at me, though, I absolutely refused to join in.

The music I heard now was pleasant, almost soothing.

Iron came up next to me, and I walked with him to a podium where a well-groomed colt stood waiting. “Captain Bulwark,” he greeted him, and turning to me, the host added, “and guest.”

“Good evening, Pierre,” Iron answered, “Do you have a table for two?”

“Right this way,” Pierre led us deeper into the restaurant. I looked around and found the source of the music: on a small stage in the back, a quartet of musicians was playing. We sat down at our table, but I kept watching the musicians for a moment longer. I picked out the part of the song that I liked best, and I tried to match it with the performer. I found her when part of the song sped up: she was a gray filly who was drawing a bow across some sort of stringed instrument. The sound it made was deep and sad, but most of all, it was beautiful.

I turned back to Iron, and he was looking at the floor next to where I sat. I looked: my tail was curling and hitting the ground in unison with the gray filly’s rhythm. When I saw this, I brought it back around my legs. I met Iron’s eyes with a glare, and he chuckled, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“It’s a tail,” I said, slightly annoyed.

“I meant no offense,” he replied, “I was just curious.”

“About...?”

“My tail doesn’t curl like that,” he offered.

I remembered how short he cut it, and remarked, “You don’t have a tail.”

He laughed at that, and I figured he hadn’t meant any offense by staring at me, so I dropped the issue. The waiter came by and took our orders for drinks; I had water, Iron had some foreign-sounding thing with a number attached to the end.

When we were alone again, Iron picked the conversation back up. “So, you’re fond of the music?” he asked.

“It’s not bad,” I replied. I shifted to sit on the end of my tail before I turned back to watch them some more. “Parts of it remind me of the few griffin songs I heard growing up.”

“And what do griffins sing about?” he prompted.

“Ourselves,” I answered, turning back to face him. “Like, not about what we do, but who we are. We learned about songs in school, but I’ve only ever heard two griffins do it.”

Iron nodded thoughtfully. “Who were they?”

“One of them was an old, old wife. Her husband of almost eighty years died. They were sort of a pillar of the community, or at least, everyone knew who they were. I mean everyone. It’s rare to see a gathering with members of all three tribes, but that funeral was one such event,” I said blankly. I left out the part where there was a good chance that the entire Sterkergeist tribe had shown up, but that had only amounted to nine additional guests.

“At any rate,” I continued, “she sang her husband’s eulogy. She loved him for eighty years, but in something that probably only lasted for half a minute, everyone there knew the exact depth and extent of her feelings toward him and the sorrow she felt over losing him.”

As I finished my story, our drinks came. The waiter took our orders; while Iron picked out his meal, I scanned the menu. Of course, there wasn’t any meat, so I ended up picking the cheapest salad. Surplus or no, I had an aversion to paying for things that I didn’t enjoy, especially when I was going to have to eat again on my trip home.

When the waiter left, Iron asked, “Who was the second?”

“What?” I asked. I had only seen the one waiter.

“You mentioned hearing two songs while growing up. One was from a widow, who sang the other?” he clarified.

I felt a shudder run down my spine as I remembered Gerard’s song. I had overheard it from a distance while I was returning home from one of father’s lessons, but it was captivating, so I went to investigate. It was a sad song at its core, but it was also angry, hateful, and bitter. At the same time, it was joyful, and it spoke of a love that, while damned, was as powerful as a summer storm.

The nature of the song also meant that I knew exactly who it had been sung to. When the song was over, I resolved to leave them to their privacy, but a dead twig betrayed a footfall. I heard a hurried rustling coming towards me, and before I knew what had happened, Gerard had me pinned face-down in the dirt with two of his talons pressed against my neck.

I had no illusions about it: Stephen had saved my life that day when he told my brother to let me go.

Back in the restaurant, I rubbed my neck where Gerard had hesitated. I focused on Iron again and told him bluntly, “I swore I would never tell anybody. That knowledge, I die with.”

Iron’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything else on the matter. We sat in awkward silence until our waiter finally came with our orders. After he left us, Iron changed the subject, “So, how was your first week alone on the job?”

“Not the worst week I’ve ever had,” I said quickly, glad to be on a less personal subject. “Some ponies are kinder than others; some parts of the city are quieter than others.”

“You seemed to have persevered,” he pointed out.

I nodded in agreement. “There’s a lot to learn, like streets and stuff, but it’s not as bad as I thought it might be.”

Iron raised an eyebrow and offered, “If there’s still something about the job you’d like to know, feel free to ask.”

Instead of answering right away, I ate some of my salad while I considered the invitation. Finally, I asked a question that been bothering me since the first time it had gone unanswered, “Why does Starfall hate me?”

Iron had been drinking out of his glass, but the drink seemed to catch in his throat. After he made a choking sound, he looked warily at me and rasped, “I’m not sure if I should be the one to tell you.”

I raised an eyebrow in response, “Do you think I’d get a straight answer from him if I asked?”

I listened to the music and Iron chewed for almost a full minute while he thought it over. Finally, he cleared his throat and answered, “No. He’s my best friend, but his passion overcomes his reason sometimes, this being one such occasion.” After a much shorter pause, he added, “A while ago, griffins attacked his wife. He still hasn’t gotten over it, I guess.”

I hissed quietly in amazement: that was a brutal way for a pony to die. In spite of that, my initial reaction was that it was her own fault: she must have entered into our territory. After the Schnelfluge were exterminated for it, we stopped attacking ponies outside of our own borders. That didn’t seem to be the right thing to say at the moment, though, so I used some salad to stop my mouth from talking.

As I chewed, I figured that it wasn’t right for Starfall to hold every griffin responsible for his wife’s death. Personally, I tried to distance myself from my race’s brutal xenophobia, so I found it bitterly ironic that I was the outlet for his prejudices.

Speaking of outlet, I remembered another point of curiosity. I swallowed before asking, “What happened to your and Sherry’s lieutenant?”

Iron chuckled in disbelief. “You are two for two in the game of ‘difficult questions’, Gilda. Who even told you about Lieutenant Spade?”

“Sherry did, after I arrested that thief on Thursday,” I answered. I left out the part where she had bludgeoned the defenseless prisoner; that didn’t seem relevant to the point at hand.

Iron grunted acknowledgement and, after taking a drink, he began his story, “I wasn’t always a captain, Gilda. I made sergeant easily enough, though, so that’s when I started to get to know Sherry a bit better. She was friendly enough to me as an officer, but it was never anything personal, you see.”

Thinking back over my two weeks with her, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I nodded, and he continued, “What really struck me as ‘obvious in hindsight’, though, was her romantic involvement with the lieutenant. I mean, I thought they hated each other at first. But the third or so time she mentioned she was getting dinner with him after work, I figured something was going on. I asked, and she ‘admitted’ it, but then again, she hadn’t really been making an effort to hide it.”

Iron sighed, as if he didn’t want to tell the next part of his story. He did, though, “I was a sergeant for four years. They had been together for longer than that. They finally got engaged, about six months before... well, they got engaged. They were happier than I had ever seen them, even though they always seemed to be fighting. They weren’t serious fights, they were more... comfortable fights, you know? Like between siblings?”

Most of the fights I got into with Gerard ended with both of us bleeding profusely. Still, I didn’t want to stop the story, so I nodded a lie.

“I remember the day that the tip came in,” Iron continued, “one of the Hooves siblings was going to be at the caravan yard with a shipment of stolen goods. The lieutenant went in alone, because a larger force might have given themselves away.”

He paused before continuing, “I’ll spare you the details, but he or she got the jump on the lieutenant. He wasn’t bad with a sword by any means, but when he was ambushed by a pony twenty years his junior, there wasn’t any helping that. It was by Celestia’s grace alone that he lived long enough to tell his wife goodbye; otherwise, we might have never known what happened to him. Hell, we still don’t know which of them it was.”

There was another silence, and the waiter came to refill our drinks. It was a tragic story, but I was confused on one point. “When did they get married?” I asked, picking up my glass to get the taste of lettuce out of my mouth.

Iron smiled bitterly, “With a love like theirs, they were husband and wife, even if it took them too long to figure it out. Just because they were taken away from each other before they could sign a paper at the courthouse doesn’t change that fact.”

Actually, it does, I thought, but I decided to keep my mouth busy with some more salad. The ensuing silence was pervasive, and I couldn’t help but think I had said something wrong. I tried to rekindle the conversation, asking, “So, what about you?”

Iron raised an eyebrow, confused. “Er, what do you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I answered, “You helped me a lot this month. Or at least, with hiring me, you went out on a limb for me without really knowing me. I don’t think you were lying on my first day, but still, I don’t buy that this is all for intercultural relations, not after I told you that it wouldn’t work.”

“That’s kind of paranoid,” he replied.

I raised my claws and looked away, dismissively. “It might be paranoid,” I said while I looked back at Iron, “but I’m not used to catching lucky breaks is all.”

He smiled sadly at me. “I know. Well, I don’t know the whole of it; I can’t imagine what living in exile was like for you. If I can be blunt, though, the years were not kind to you.”

“Thanks,” I scoffed, looking away.

“I meant no offense,” he apologized, and I focused an eye on him. “It’s just... even back then, I didn’t hold any delusions about our races. Yes, I’d like everyone to get along, but at the same time, it’d be stupid to go around trusting someone who may or may not have a history of violence. I didn’t see a way to help your situation until I realized I could give you a job.”

“A history of violence?” I asked, confused as to whether or not I should be offended.

“The day you arrived in Farrington, you were almost dead from injuries. I had no idea where they were from; I guessed that you lost some sort of a fight. That sort of violence... has its time and place when you’re a guard, I suppose, but shouldn’t be anything other than a last resort.”

I thought it over before it dawned on me. “So you only hired me out of pity?” I accused.

He smiled at me, but he seemed disappointed as he retorted, “Come on, Gilda. You’re smarter than that. ‘Pity,’ if you’re going with a word with such negative associations, was what made me look for ways to help you; your honor in combat was what made me consider you for the position. I mean, I could’ve gone to the orphanage or poorhouse if I wanted to do some pity-hiring.”

The waiter came to clear our dishes and asked if we’d like dessert. Iron looked at me as if to ask my opinion; I responded, “I’m full, but go ahead if you want something.” He ordered a slice of carrot cake.

When the waiter left, I continued the conversation, “I don’t mean to question your motives. It’s just... I’ve been on my own for most of my life, even when I lived with my family. I’m not used to people doing favors for me, let alone taking chances on me.”

“Well,” he smiled, “that’s their loss. I took a chance on you, and you came through with flying colors.”

I felt my face grow hot at the compliment. “Thank you,” I said, trying to put the full weight of my gratitude into the words.

After Iron finished his cake, the waiter brought out a small black envelope: the bill. I grabbed it before Iron had a chance to; I had offered to pay, I held myself to that word. The bill came to sixty-two bits; in the back of my mind, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to do that every night, even if I did have money to smelt.

I asked Iron where to pay, and he pointed me to a small pouch inside the envelope; I counted out the money as quickly and quietly as I could. When I finished, Iron cleared his throat, “Uh, Gilda... it’s customary to give a tip for the service.”

“Tip?” I asked. I knew two meanings for that word, but none of them related to the situation at hand.

“A little extra money, like twelve bits or so. For the waiter,” he clarified.

I raised an eyebrow. “They don’t get paid by the restaurant?”

Iron chuckled, shaking his head, “It’s considered polite. Like saying thank you.”

I could just thank him, I thought, but I realized I was defending the stance of not getting rid of my money. I shrugged, and put fifteen more bits in the bag.

When we left the restaurant, there was barely any daylight left. I saw a pony off in the distance lighting torches on street corners; he was slowly making his way towards us. “Well, that was dinner,” I said inanely, hoping that Iron would pick up the last bit of conversation for the night.

“Indeed it was,” he mused. After a short pause, he added, “I had a good time.”

“Me too,” I admitted, “even though we only talked about sad stuff.”

Iron laughed at that, “I was talking more about the company, not the subject matter. You listen when others talk, that’s a rare quality to find in someone.”

I stared blankly at him. “How else do conversations work?”

“How indeed?” he mused. After a moment, he asked, “Would you be against doing something like this again?”

“Dinner again?” I asked.

Iron nodded. “Farrington is a large city. There are many different venues to enjoy, but I could show you around if you’d like.”

I thought it over for a while; it had been entertaining to talk with him for... over an hour, I realized. “I guess, but I can’t keep paying for both of us,” I finished.

He shook his head and smiled back at me, “You won’t have to.”

“Okay, then,” I agreed.

“Does this Wednesday work for you?”

“Wednesday’s fine,” I agreed. Looking up at the sky, I realized it was getting late. I told him, “I need to get going, though. I don’t want to get the wrong cave and end up fighting a manticore again.”

Iron laughed at that, but when he saw I was serious, a shocked look came over his face. Still, he recognized that time was of the essence, so he bid me, “Good night, Gilda. And... be safe, I guess.”

“Good night,” I returned before heading down the street and towards the south gate of Farrington.

From behind me, I heard Iron whisper, “Manticores?”

I made my way back to my cave easily enough; it was late when I got back, but there was just enough light for me to find the familiar landmarks around it. Before I made the final ascent, I scanned the forest floor for movement, hoping to see a good meal. I didn’t find any, so I decided to go to sleep before the now-growing pain of hunger would be enough to keep me awake.

*        *        *

The following Monday, I needed to get my armor before my shift, so I arrived at Farrington about half an hour early. The Artisan district was closer to the north entrance than the south entrance, so I flew around the outskirts of the city in order to cut down on my walking distance. The guards on the wall paid careful attention to me, but I wasn’t too concerned: it was only their job to ground anyone flying inside of Farrington’s walls.

I reflected on the futility of the countermeasures. A full mustering of Sharfkral-Grat would probably only bring about twenty combat-ready adults, but they would still easily breach the walls. They would attack at night to have the element of surprise, so by the time they knew what was happening, the wall guards would probably only be able to take out two or three griffins. The rest of the group would make it into the city’s airspace undeterred.

From there... I shook my head. There wasn’t motivation for such an assault. We were territorial by nature, but we didn’t really want to expand our borders. There were past grievances, perhaps, but acting on them would be our last action as a race.

I landed outside of the north gate and walked towards the city. The officer in the booth didn’t recognize me, so he eyed me somewhat warily. I glared back at him; I had never seen him, either, so he probably didn’t know I was a guard.

Farrington in the morning was quiet, but there were still ponies getting ready for the day. The closer I got to the Artisan district, the more shops I passed; a lot of their owners were busy getting ready for the day. One of them stopped what she was doing and waved to me; I nodded back to her but kept going on my way.

When I got to the farrier’s shop, the door was closed. With a bit annoyance, I went up to it and knocked. I heard a shuffling inside, but the sound of hooves came closer to the door. I stepped back, and the top part of it opened to reveal a tired-looking farrier.

“Gilda!” he said, but the word stretched into a foul-smelling yawn before he continued, “Please excuse me, it’s been a long weekend for both of us.” He opened the lower part of the door and stepped aside, letting me in.

The inside of the shop was sweltering. I saw the farrier’s apprentice hammering something small on a table; he finished and looked up at me with bloodshot eyes that were full of confidence. I stood in place, amused at his attitude, but I decided to wait and see the job he had done before I thought any more of it.

Then again, I thought, with all the measuring he did on Friday, I doubt it’ll be too far off the mark. The apprentice had taken almost fifteen minutes to gauge the distances between different parts of my body; he mainly focused on my front shoulders and hands, but he had spent a good amount of time on my hindquarters and wings as well. I had stood, sat, walked, and flapped for him; it seemed that he was more interested in my range of movement than my actual shape.

He finished his hammering, and then the apprentice walked over to a stand the other side of the room. On it rested my new armor. The first thing I noticed about it was that it had wings. I was curious, so I walked over to where the white colt was while he unbuckled the straps on my armor.

He handed me the top half, and I sat down to examine it. There were still slots in the torso part for my wings, but on either side of it were two large, wing-shaped flaps. There was a thick lip on the bottom of both flaps, and I saw the hints of a metal skeleton on the inside of them. I suddenly realized that, not only would these flaps cover my wings when they rested at my side, but they would also protect them from blows.

I opened one flap up as high as it would go, and it clicked into place solidly. I had to use my wing to deliberately lift it away from the armor before it would fall down again. I actually smiled at this: I would be able to fly by putting the flaps up, and then I would be able to put them back down to cover my wings while I walked throughout the city. I was amazed when I saw the front ends of the wing-covers were honed, almost like a knife blade; this apprentice apparently knew a thing or two about aerodynamics.

I put the back piece of my armor on, and the apprentice handed me the bottom half. With a start, I realized that the insignia of Farrington had been completely removed from my armor; in its place was a circular recession. I didn’t know how the captain would feel about that, but I strung the buckles together on my armor anyway. All of them fit together using the smallest possible notch. I stood back up and moved around a bit. I was still aware that I was wearing armor, but I had a great deal more mobility than I had before.

The apprentice handed me my helmet next; there wasn’t anything fancy he had done to it, but it fit the contours of my head a lot better. It was a lot better defined around my ear sockets, too, which was much more comfortable than having a lip of metal covering the top portion.

When I had my helmet on, the white colt went back to his table and beckoned me to follow him. I obliged, and he handed me a pair of gauntlets. I was ecstatic at this point; when I tried them on, they were slightly tight on my hands, but the important part was that they had cushioning and support around the base of my talons. The only thing that I didn’t like about them was that they covered my hands and talons completely, so they would only be a hindrance in a fight.

I tightened the straps of both of them with the side of my beak, and then tried walking around. It was as if I were walking on actual cloud: there was no discomfort, no pressure from walking. I struck the ground at a fairly sharp angle with the faux talons that extended out of my right gauntlet’s fingers; all I felt was brief discomfort. If I had tried that with my bare talons, my whole hand would be throbbing for hours.

Finally, I tried moving my fingers. When I made a fist, the gauntlet folded neatly. I grinned when I saw there was perfectly round hole in the middle of the metal fist; I checked and it fit my baton perfectly.

I smiled at the apprentice, then turned to the farrier. “I... don’t know what to say,” I said, trying to choke back tears. For the first time since taking my oath, I felt pride in being a guard of Farrington. It was almost overwhelming, but I managed to gasp out the words, “Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it,” the farrier replied, “you’d be surprised how little steel it actually took to fix your armor.”

I smiled to show my gratitude, and the farrier reached into his apron. He pulled out a round medallion and handed it to me. “This one took a trip to the library to figure out,” he said with a smile.

I looked at it, and the insignia for Farrington was engraved on it. I knew at once that it was designed to fit into my armor’s chest recession, but I was confused at the farrier’s words. I flipped over the medallion to look at its back, and the breath caught in my lungs.

On the other side was a historical griffin insignia, the Dreikral. The emblem itself was somewhat simple in design; three crescent shapes were stacked in order to form a symbolic griffin’s claw. It had mainly been used back before we broke into four separate tribes; however, the Sharfkral and Sterkergeist both used a variation of it when we wanted to identify ourselves. The Dreikral was antiquated, but then again, so was my appreciation for my race’s culture.

It fit me perfectly.

I sighed, flipping the medallion over and inserting it into my armor, Farrington-side out. In my head, I imagined my conversation with Iron, or rather, with Captain Bulwark. He’d be sorry about it, but he’d uphold me to the standards of the guards.

Instead of dwelling on Farrington regulations, I turned to the farrier and bowed. “We’re even, now,” I said, “no matter how much that hilt was worth.”

He smiled at me and pointed to his apprentice, “If you want to thank someone, thank him. He did most of the work on your armor, and it was his idea for the griffin insignia.”

I turned to thank him, but he was already back at work. I figured that if he was so eager to get to work, I would only be interrupting. “Tell him I said ‘thanks’,” I replied to the farrier.

He nodded at me, and I looked over at his clock. My stomach felt like it dropped a few feet: I had less than eight minutes to get to the citadel. With a note of panic, I bowed once again and left his shop.

Outside, I looked to the right and left: north and south, respectively. I was closer to the north gate of the city; if I ran there, I could fly around the wall of the city and to the south gate. That would probably be the faster route overall. Still, with the gauntlets I had now, I could run in the streets, so I figured that I could make it in time if I stayed within the city limits.

Flying or running, I asked myself, glancing down at the emblem on my chest, then at my gauntlets. I wonder how well these things’ll hold up.

I made up my mind and headed south.

END CHAPTER FIVE

Chapter Six-->

CHAPTER SIX

I burst through the door of the citadel while the eight o’ clock bells were still ringing. I was panting and sweaty, but I was on time!

My abrupt entry caused the filly sitting behind the desk to shriek and fall over backwards. Even though I couldn’t breathe yet, it was difficult to keep from laughing at the sight. Instead of laughing, though, I went over to apologize and help her back up. I heard the door open to my left, followed by Sergeant Sherry’s voice, “Running a bit late this morning, Officer Gilda?”

“Sorry, m-- I’m, uh, running... late,” I stammered back. I was still winded from sprinting all the way to the guards’ citadel from the Artisan district. With the added hassle of having to navigate streets, it hadn’t exactly been a straight-shot to the main drag of Farrington, either. Even when I got to the same street as the citadel, I had had to run for more than half of the city’s length. I wasn’t good at judging land distances, but I figured it had to have been at least two miles total.

Sherry cocked an eyebrow at my incoherent response, adding, “You’re running a bit slow this morning, too, I see.”

I grinned, but said nothing as I craned my head back to open my lungs easier. When I could breathe again, I snapped my head forward and told my sergeant, “I was at the blacksmith’s, picking up my armor.” I flapped my wings to show off their new guard-flaps to my sergeant.

She took a closer look at me, from head to tail, and then nodded approval. “He did a fine job,” she admitted, “But, we’ve wasted enough time over it, huh? Officer Bobby’s still out, so you’re back in the Artisan district today.”

I felt my eyelid twitch at the news. Instead of complaining about my bad luck, though, I nodded at the order. With a salute, I turned and left the citadel to head back to the Artisan district and begin Monday’s patrol.

*        *        *

Late on Wednesday afternoon, I realized that I had a problem on my hands. I had agreed to another dinner with the captain. He hadn’t specified a time, though, so I figured that we would default to the same time: seven o’ clock.

I didn’t know the protocol for wearing my armor when I wasn’t on duty, though, and I didn’t know where in the city I could store it during dinner. I came to the conclusion that I needed to stop by my cave in order to stash my armor.

I was not looking forward to that.

Probably the roughest part of the timing was that I had to check in with a superior officer before I could be released from my duties for the day. I was in the Artisan district, which was closest to the north entrance where Lieutenant Starfall stood guard in his booth. If he wasn’t a complete asshole about making me follow every guideline for leaving, I might have been able to save a few minutes that way.

I snarled at the thought: I knew for a fact that he let his own officers leave with just a simple acknowledgement that they were done. When I had tried to leave the city through his gate on Thursday, though, Lieutenant Starfall actually called an inspection to make sure my armor was on right. Of course, since that was before the farrier’s apprentice had done anything, that pegasus bastard had taken great joy in keeping me for almost a half hour past my shift while he made snide comments about where my armor didn’t fit.

I shook my head: getting mad about it wouldn’t do anything, and going to the captain about it would just give the lieutenant the satisfaction of knowing he had the power to inconvenience me. In the end, it would be faster to head all the way through the city to the citadel to find Sherry or another sergeant, and that meant I would probably be leaving Farrington close to five-fifteen.

I had about an hour and forty-five minutes to make a round-trip to my cave. ‘Close’ didn’t begin to describe how I was cutting it in terms of time.

All of my planning fell apart when Sherry wanted me to fill out some paperwork after my shift. It was for some new ‘Friends of the Community’ crap that I really couldn’t care less about. When I finally completed my questionnaire, she nodded to me that I was free to go that evening. The clock inside the lobby of the citadel told me that it was five thirty-six. Once outside, I ran south, got three steps outside of the gate, yelled, “See you in a bit,” over my shoulder to the captain, and took off at top-speed for my cave.

True to their design, the flaps on the back of my armor didn’t slow me down too much when I flew straight; however, they did make it more difficult to turn. Lucky for me, I didn’t need to make any quick turns on my current trip.

All in all, the armor wasn’t that much easier to fly in compared to its first version; what it gained in comfort, it lost in the fact that it weighed at least thirty pounds more. I could breathe easier, but I needed that extra breath for the extra exertion, especially on that evening. When flying, I usually got up to a cruising speed that was fast enough where I could hold myself up in mid-air with minimal effort. Because I was pressed for time, though, I needed to go at a faster speed. With air resistance constantly slowing me down to something near my usual speed, I needed to continuously propel myself forward in order to stay at my desired speed.

At what felt like half an hour later, I landed on my cave’s outcropping in a panting heap and lay there for a few minutes. I felt like I wanted to die. Instead, I took off my armor, starting with the gauntlets. Less than a minute later, I wasn’t wearing anything but my coin sack. The damn rabbit clock told me that I had forty minutes to get back to Farrington, so I turned around to leave. Still out-of-breath, I wheezed, “This... sucks... so much,” and took off back toward Farrington, again at top-speed.

By the time I came up to the lake at the edge of the Everfree Forest and the plains south of Farrington, I was damp with a copious amount of sweat. I didn’t know whether to blame the late spring’s increasing heat or my own exertion, but I didn’t want to show up to dinner with Iron in my current state. So, I judged the distance, stopped flapping my wings and dove into the lake.

At the sudden halt in activity, cramps shot up my wings. I tried screaming, but I was underwater, so my breath just escaped in a cloud of bubbles. With my lungs burning and my wings feeling like they on fire, I somehow turned myself to use the last of my momentum to turn upwards. I kicked my back feet until I broke through the surface again, then I swam over to the shore and clawed my way out of the lake.

Sand! I thought as I scowled at the clumps that were now sticking to my hands, chest, and feet. I wiped my hand on some grass before pulling the big forehead feather out of my eye. I shook as hard as I could to rid myself of all the water and sand, but the combination of them was too sticky for that. I went back to the lake a second time, cursing in my mind the whole time.

When I was reasonably clean and ready to finish my trip, I unfurled my wings to take off again. At least, I tried to, but when I did, my wings were immobilized by pain. Flying was out of the question, so I found the dirt road that led to Farrington and ran north on it. I hated land travel, but at the same time, I was grateful that at least the road leading to the city wasn’t paved with uneven cobblestones found in the city.

I got to the arch of the city without any sort of knowledge of what time it was. That didn’t bother me, though; I was delirious with exertion. I slumped against the wall with my back against it and my legs stretched out on the ground in front of me. I sat there, staring at the ceiling and trying to force air into my lungs for at least a minute before I realized just how I was sitting. I looked around and luckily, I was still alone in the arch, so there was no damage to my ego done. Regardless, I decided to pull myself into an upright sitting position before anyone came along and got a good look at me.

Iron came trotting up to me a few minutes later, so I stood up to greet him. He smiled and said, “Good evening, Gilda. How was your flight?”

Like Hell, I thought, but I didn’t want to complain about it too much, so I said, “Not the smoothest, but I managed.”

He chuckled in reply, and for the second time in a row, I let him choose the restaurant for us. It was a lot less elegant than the first place we had eaten dinner, but it had ‘imitation ham’ sandwiches. I didn’t know why they were there on the menu, but I figured that it would be worth a shot to try them out. Much to Iron’s amusement, I ordered, “Twelve of them, hold the bread.”

The food situation looked better than the first dinner, but as for the conversation over dinner, I found myself somewhat on the defensive for most of the topics. Iron asked a lot of questions about life at Sharfkral-Grat, and I obliged him with what I could. At the same time, there were a lot of questions that I either didn’t have an answer to or didn’t want to give an answer to.

For example, halfway through my fourth slice of ‘ham’, Iron asked me, “So, what is your favorite memory from growing up?”

I don’t know, I sneered mentally at the question. It was vague, and it made me think about my childhood. Finally, I picked a day that was less miserable than the others and responded, “Probably when my older sister taught me how to fly.”

Iron looked at me, expectantly, so I continued, “I guess she finally had enough of my father’s ‘lessons’. One day, she found me climbing back down to our cave, grabbed me, and took me to a sort of flat area. She spent a few hours with me going over various techniques and movements, and finally, I could sort of lose altitude at a manageable rate. Sure, it wasn’t really flying, I guess, but it helped the next time that father abandoned me on a mountain peak in order to ‘motivate’ me to fly back home.”

When I finished the story, I looked across the table to find a horrified expression. “That’s... insane!” Iron said in a loud whisper. Returning to a normal speaking volume, he added, “You could have died.”

“I know,” I replied, annoyed to have the obvious stated to me. I had left out the part where, every time my father had left me stranded, he had reminded me that he would prefer that I fall to my death rather than trying to climb down like an insect.

Across the table, Iron seemed to be genuinely upset by my story. I didn’t know what his problem was; it had happened to me, not him. Still, I didn’t know how to ask him about it without sounding caustic, so ate some more ham while I let him work it out. Finally, he asked, “Was he always like that?”

It almost sounded like he didn’t believe me, and I did not appreciate that one bit. It was hard enough to relive my past without people calling into question my honesty. “And what if he was?” I asked, taking a combative tone of my own.

“I just find it hard to believe--”

“Why would I lie?” I shouted, and a silence fell over the restaurant. Captain or no, life-debt or no, Iron had no right to call me a liar over something so serious. My anger boiled over and I added, “Who do you think beat me half-to-death before I fled here?”

“Gilda...” Iron warned.

I had had enough food and company for the night. Without another word, I grabbed my coin bag, dumped the top third of the bits out onto the table, and turned to leave. Behind me, I heard Iron swear, followed by the jingling of coins. I picked up the pace of my walking, and I nearly ran into a waitress because of it.

Outside the restaurant, it was still light, so I guessed there was some benefit to leaving dinner early. I head for the east gate; it was the closest exit from the city at this point. I was a lot slower on the pavement without my gauntlets, so I mentally cursed when I heard Iron call out from fairly close behind me. I didn’t want to run on my back legs and make a scene, and there were three netters on the wall closest to where we were, so I was trapped. That only made me angrier, so I turned around and yelled, “What?”

He glared and cut back, “We are in public, would you kindly lower your damn voice?”

“Fine,” I hissed back at him and turned around. I couldn’t avoid conversation, but I could end it quicker by getting out of the city before it was over.

Iron easily caught up with me, but he remained silent for a few moments before he let out an exasperated sigh. He followed it with, “Look, I’m sorry, okay?”

Hollow words, I thought bitterly. I didn’t even look at him as I shot back, “The only other time I’ve ever told someone about my past, they had the courtesy to not call me a liar to my face.”

“I didn’t call you a--” he started, but then he paused. “Okay, if you cut me off mid-sentence like you did, I guess it looks that way.”

“How, then?” I replied, turning to face him. “How does that sentence end without you doubting what I was saying?”

I had called his bluff, and he stood there, trying to think of a way to dig himself out of his conversational pit. Scoffing, I turned back to the road and kept walking. He caught back up to me again and apologized a second time, adding, “I didn’t mean to call into question your honesty.”

“But you did,” I said, and I realized why I was angry. Over the past few weeks, I had grown to trust Iron, at least in that he wouldn’t judge me for certain parts of my life. When he said that he didn’t believe me, it had hurt. I started thinking about why that was possible, but I pushed that line of thinking out of my mind. At any rate, most of my anger left with the realization of its source, and a deep sadness replaced it.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Iron said, bewildered. “If I could take it back, I would.”

I didn’t say anything in reply; instead, I walked to the side of the road and sat next to a barber shop. Iron joined me on my right, and I realized that it was my turn to speak. I chose my words carefully before saying, “I know you didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just...”

“I should tread carefully around sensitive subjects?” he guessed.

“No,” I answered. “Well, yes, but that’s not what bothers me. I’m not used to, you know, talking about this to someone who isn’t a witness.”

Iron lifted his left hoof off the ground, but he let it fall after a short pause. He looked at me and spoke in an apologetic tone, “Right. Next time, I won’t press so hard if you say something that I don’t understand. I’ll just... let you talk.”

I didn’t like his compromise; it left too much room for misunderstandings. “If we’re talking, I don’t mind... just, watch how you ask things and... I’ll try to not fly off the handle,” I added meekly.

He grunted in agreement. “Still, things didn’t turn out completely poorly this evening,” he added with a small grin.

“Oh, yeah?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Think of all those ponies who got dinner and a show.”

I chuckled weakly, shaking my head.

“But, it’s still early; do you want to head home now, or...?” Iron prompted.

I checked the sky; it was still fairly light outside. “It is still early,” I agreed. “What do you have in mind?”

In Farrington, there were three separate basins that formed around the three mountain waterfalls that flowed into the city. The largest basin was used for industrial purposes; another was used to provide the city’s drinking water. Iron took me to the third, which had been opened to the public. We didn’t go down to the water; instead, we sat on a stone bridge that had been built over it. Below us, families of ponies were out on boats, rafts, and near the waterfall, some were even swimming.

While we sat on that bridge watching the waterfall, I told Iron about most of the events surrounding Junior Speedsters’. I started with why I had been sent there, and told him how my friendship with Dash had made camp bearable, even if she indirectly led to my banishment. When that part of my story came up, I told him that there was one condition under which I could return to my tribe, but I didn’t tell him what it was. He picked up on the omission, though, and he asked, “What was the condition?”

I looked down at my chest, and pointed at the stripe I had painted on myself. True to the label on the dye, it hadn’t faded on the feathers that I used it on, but I did note that some specks of white were starting to show through; at this rate, I was going to have to re-do the process in a few months. “I kind of like this,” I said, gesturing to my chest. “It’s sort of my life’s story, when I think about it.”

I pulled back some of the feathers, exposing the flesh around the scars my father left me. “I got these scars when I was forced out of my tribe,” I clarified. Smoothing my chest back down, I added, “And this stripe... it’s because I almost went back.”

“Rainbow Dash is the price of readmission?” Iron guessed. I was torn between being disturbed that he had put everything together and relief that he knew. I didn’t say anything, though; instead, I looked out at the lake and nodded. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn and spit  the word, “Disgusting.”

I looked over at the back of his head. I wasn’t that good at reading pony body language, but if I had to guess, he was upset about what I had told him. “You, uh,” I started before I knew what I wanted to say. I figured it out and started over, “You seem to be taking this stuff about my father pretty rough.”

He turned to face me, chuckling bitterly. “Sorry, that’s the armor talking,” he said pensively, looking back out at the water. After a moment’s pause, he continued, “I’ve been doing this job for close to a decade, now. It never gets easier to deal with parents who hurt their children. It’s--” Iron shook his head, rethinking what he wanted to say. “I never really knew my father; I guess that’s why I feel that everyone deserves a good one.”

I looked out at the water, too. The last of the day’s light was beginning to fade; I’d need to leave soon if I wanted to get home. “We are who we are,” I mused, “whether or not there’s someone to help us along the way.”

With a small grin, Iron turned to face me. “That we are.”

“Good night, Iron,” I said quietly.

He looked up at the sky before replying, “Good night, Gilda. Fly safely.”

I nodded back to him and left, heading towards the south gate. As I did, I tested my wings: I could actually move them again. It was a vast improvement over the paralyzing cramps of earlier that evening, but they were still sore. When I was outside the city walls, I unfurled my stiff-feeling wings with a small cringe and took off for home.

I made it back to the forest around my cave during twilight. I realized that I had heartburn, and guessed that it was from the imitation ham. Without a second thought, I found a stick and poked at the back of my throat until I had ridden myself of the fake meat. Throwing up was messy and unpleasant, but if something made me sick, I preferred to control how it came out.

A wolf came to investigate the commotion that I had made. Looking over, I told her, “Go on. It made me sick; it’s not going to do any better for you.” I didn’t know whether she understood me or my tone, but she turned back to the start of her night’s hunt. After she left, I flew up from the forest floor.

As I ascended, I saw an unlucky squirrel running along the treetops. Moments later, he was mine. Glad to at least have some food inside me, I flew up to my cave for the night.

When I was nestled on my blanket, I went over the day’s events in my head in order to lull myself to sleep. I went over my conversations with Iron, and for some reason, that flowed into how glad I was to have good-fitting armor. I remembered how I had almost been late for my shift, and that reminded me of the strenuous effort it had been to make the round trip from Farrington.

If I go on another date with him, I thought sleepily, I’ll ask if I can stash my armor at the citadel. I smiled to myself; that was a good plan. My mind grew blank for a minute, but then I opened my eyes and cried out, “Another what?”

In my weariness, I had used the word so simply and naturally, without thinking of what it actually meant. Now that I was awake, though, I realized exactly what that word was.

‘Date’.

Courtship was an aspect of life that, while I had always sort of hoped I would get to experience it, the numbers were against me in the worst possible manner. Within my tribe, there were three suitable males to choose from. Despite him being a few years older than me, I had always gotten along okay with Stephen. Then again, most of our encounters had been in passing. Probably a bigger obstacle than the fact that we didn’t know each other was the fact that he was in a relationship with my brother. They were risking everything for each other, and Gerard would probably kill me just for thinking about his boyfriend in that capacity.

As for the other two candidates in my tribe, I counted, there’s Fredrick, and... that other jerk. I stood up, shaking my head. Another part of my tribe, lost to the great river of time. I supposed it didn’t matter, because it was extremely unlikely that I would ever see another griffin again. I walked out to my landing to watch the stars as I thought about how alone I was.

I remembered how late my tribe usually stayed awake, or at least, how they didn’t go to bed right at sunset like I usually did. I wondered how many of my tribe were sitting on our plateau, quietly watching the stars. Some would be in pairs, most would be alone, but all would be thinking about the same thing: our future, or more specifically, our lack thereof.

I had once asked the record-keeper why she did what she did. We were a dying race; within a few centuries, there wouldn’t be any griffins left alive to read our records. She had answered me plainly, “I know the Beute have no interest in our affairs, but their existence will also come to an end. As will it be for the race that follows them. But when I think about it, I would rather not be judged by history as a member of a tribe that forsook its own culture in order to, what, buy a century’s worth of time? Two centuries’? No thank you, miss; I would rather we face oblivion than to have our cowardice resound throughout the ages.”

Her words echoed to me now, and they brought me to one very important question: Who was I? The first answer that came to mind was that I was a seventeen-year-old female griffin living in exile. Simple as it was, though, I wasn’t sure about that definition. I knew my age and gender, but was I living in exile? I had been exiled at one point, I knew that, but especially these past few weeks, I was slowly becoming a member of pony society.

Who was I, Gilda von der Sharfkral, or Gilda of Farrington? I was a member of my tribe by means of being born there, and I had lived there most of my life. But I wasn’t a member anymore; I had the scars to remind me. I wasn’t a citizen of Farrington, either, but Captain... Iron... he had helped me through the application for a work visa, which was apparently a step or two below full-fledged citizenship.

I thought back to the cause of my most recent bout of cultural uncertainty: dating Iron Bulwark.

The words sounded foreign to me, so I said them aloud in his language. Well, I thought, now they’re double-foreign. I shook my head of the inane rambling, choosing instead to think about what it would mean to me if I started looking for a romantic partner within pony society.

There would be no going back once I made my decision. No matter who it was with, if I entered into a relationship with a pony and it worked out, I’d probably end up living with them. I wasn’t sure about a family, or even if that was possible, but I made a treaty with my mind that I would worry about that part of dating at another point in the future.

It was now too dark to see inside my cave, but I thought about leaving it behind for good. I was able to, sure; if I wore my armor, I could move all of my possessions in one trip. I shook my head: I liked my cave. It had taken me a few days to find one that was deep enough to live in yet shallow enough where there wouldn’t be something bigger living deeper on. The thought of living in a pony house instead of natural stone... I didn’t want to, but I had to admit that I could do it if I had a good enough reason to.

With that in mind, I started to weigh the idea of dating a pony against the reasons not to. The first question I asked was, cultural issues notwithstanding, if would I feel okay with myself if I dated a pony? My usual approach to morality was useless: none of my tribe’s myths centered around any sort of unconventional romances. A lot of them started with a male trying to win the heart of a female that caught his fancy, but those relationships usually were part of the backdrop of the story.

Legally, I figured that inter-tribal marriages were allowed; my mother originally hailed from the Sterkergeist tribe. At the same time, I remembered what my tribe’s law used to say about how to deal with my brother and Stephen if they were discovered. Then again, it ‘used to say’ something because, when I had almost thrown up after reading the punishment, I had stolen that scroll and burned it. That alone made me realize that my tribe’s rules wouldn’t hold the answers I was looking for: I didn’t abide by the law if I didn’t agree with it, or at least, if there was a good enough personal reason.

I thought of my older sister, Gretchen, and how I wished I could ask her advice. I doubted that she’d have a specific answer, but she would have at least had some advice for me. In that moment of reaching out to her, though, I renewed the pain I felt over her not being there for me. Sorrow gripped my throat as it hit me that I would never see her again, or talk to her, or laugh with her.

It all became too much for me, and I became blinded by tears. I threw myself into a prone position and yelled out to my sister, “I wish you were here!” but the last word was stretched out by my naked, unashamed sobs. Three years’ worth of solitude and yearning for home rushed over me, and all I could do was cry like a child.

I lay there weeping for a good half hour. My family was dead to me, I knew that. Still, being suddenly reminded of the fact made the pain as fresh as it had been the first time that I realized how alone I was.

Eventually, I stopped crying. Having let out a lot of my grief, I had a bit more clarity when I looked back at my situation. My family was dead to me, true, but I realized that the converse of that was true: I was dead to my family. I wondered how they had all dealt with that, but I figured that they at least had one other to help cope with their loss.

I was almost stunned by realization, but there weren’t any answers to my problem that would come from my griffin heritage. I had turned my back on my culture by taking a job in Farrington, and now, I was suffering the repercussions. As much as it disturbed me to acknowledge it, I had to look at the part of me that wasn’t completely griffin anymore in order to find an answer: the parts of me that pony society had changed.

I knew for a fact that pony society would look down on such a pairing. The longer I lived in the city, the more the strange looks were becoming less pronounced, but I still noted that most citizens would make an effort to walk as far on the other side from me as they could manage. I didn’t think that dating Captain Iron Bulwark would elevate me to an ‘acceptable’ level in their eyes, either: therefore, it could only bring him down in the eyes of the citizens of Farrington.

Would it be worth it to him?

I knew for a fact that his best friend hated me, and so did his sister for that matter. Those were two very important ponies in his life, so I would only make friction for him. And, taking the differences in our races aside, there would probably be political ramifications if he openly dated an officer of his guards.

On top of all of that, I had no idea if he was interested in me romantically. I laughed when I realized that I had been brooding on my ledge for over an hour about how romance would play out, but I had forgotten to take Iron’s feelings into account! He was friendly to me, true, but I had a feeling that there was more pity to that than admitted to. I thought about our interactions in that light, and I became certain that he was just being friendly and that I had blown it all out of proportion.

I smiled, turning around to head back to bed. It wasn’t the fastest I had ever come to a solution to a problem, but it was good enough for me: Iron just wanted to be friends, so there was no need to worry about romance. I chuckled at the simplicity as I sat down on my blanket.

But what about you? What do you want? my treacherous brain asked. Apparently, I wasn’t going to get to sleep with just a ‘simple’ solution.

“I want...” there was an awkward pause as I suddenly became aware that maybe I wanted to be more than friends with Iron. “Damn it,” I whispered.

I had no experience with romance. I was exhausted, though, so I didn’t want to spend another hour trying to pin down what I wanted out of a relationship. I resigned to the fact that I wanted to ask someone for advice, even though my older sister was unavailable.

I started going through the list of ‘ponies I knew’, starting with Iron. That would be an awkward conversation, though, because I didn’t want to just go and tell him how I felt. If the end result was that I shouldn’t date my captain, then I didn’t want to have the embarrassment of rejection hanging over us during every future interaction.

My next thought was of Sherry, but with how her relationship with her superior had ended, it didn’t feel appropriate to ask. Plus, I didn’t really know her that well; from the one and a half dinners I had eaten with Iron, I learned that all of my superiors seemed to have different personalities than their ‘authoritative personas’.

Lieutenant Starfall, on the other hand... he seemed to be fairly consistent between how he acted on- and off-duty. Also, he had the added benefit of being Iron’s best friend; asking him would probably get me the best possible approximation of how Iron would feel about me...

I shook my head furiously, though: that was a terrible idea. He hated me. There was a very good chance that, if he even gave me an answer, it would be a lie in order to try to sabotage my friendship with Iron.

On the subject of best friends, though... the thought crossed my mind, and when I realized who I had overlooked, I punched myself in the forehead. A letter wouldn’t be as good as asking her in-person, but Dash would probably have some advice on how to deal with the situation.

I smiled, and began planning out the letter that I would send her. Tomorrow’s Thursday, I thought sleepily, so she’ll probably get the letter on Saturday unless I get to Farrington early. I closed my eyes and scoffed at that idea, though: I had stayed awake later than I usually did, so I knew without a doubt that I was going to be tired when I woke up.

I planned to send the letter after my shift on Thursday; that way, Dash would probably be able to get me a reply by Tuesday of next week if she wrote back right away.

I woke up Saturday morning when somepony knocked on the door to my cloud home. Without opening my eyes, I let out a frustrated groan: did anypony in this town know my training schedule? Friday nights were when the skies over Ponyville were usually the clearest, so I used that time to work on flying by feel rather than by sight.

I brushed the orange and red hair out of my eyes before I opened them. “I guess everypony wants a piece of Equestria’s number-one flier,” I yawned the words as I crawled out of bed and put all four hooves on the floor. I had built my own house, but it would have been too big if I gave myself room to fly everywhere. While I was walking over to the door, whoever was outside knocked a second time. I called out, “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

When I opened the door, Ponyville’s mail carrier, Ditsy, was standing outside. “You’ve got mail, Rainbow Dash!” she almost sang the words in her squeaky voice.

I chuckled at how happy she seemed to deliver my mail, and responded, “I didn’t order any mail, Ditsy.” She giggled at my joke as she handed me a scroll. I felt a twinge of guilt when I realized who it was from, but I didn’t want to kill the mail carrier’s bubbly mood, so I told her, “Thanks!”

“Bye-bye,” she sang as she took off. When she was out of sight, I closed my door and looked at the scroll in my hoof. It was held together by a sticker that the emblem of Farrington printed on it, but I knew who it was from without that: G. was the only one I knew who sent me scrolls.

Before I opened it, I looked over at the hallway table where her other letter sat, the one that had come earlier this week. I had meant to get around to writing a reply, it was just... I had been really busy lately.

One of the better outcomes of G.’s visit to Ponyville was that it reminded me of something that I had almost forgotten I could do: the Sonic Rainboom. I remembered pulling it off when I was a filly, but even right after I did it, I had never been able to do it again whenever ponies were watching me. But when G. had tried to... well, when she needed me to catch her, I didn’t even think about doing it: it just happened.

None of my other friends had heard it or seen it that time, either: we were almost a hundred miles away from Ponyville when it had happened. Still, if I could pull it off at the upcoming Best Young Flier competition, I’d win for sure! After three straight weeks of trying, though, I still had no idea how I overcame the huge pocket of air resistance that built up in front of me at those speeds. The competition was next Sunday, so I needed to figure it out quick.

I shook my own problems out of my head as I walked over to my couch to read what G. had written me. I’d figure out the Sonic Rainboom some other time; right now, I needed to respond to G.’s letters. She was my friend, and I had really let her down over the past few years by blowing her off like I had. Sure, she had a lot of other problems going on, but I knew I hadn’t done her any favors by ignoring her letters.

It had all come to a head, I guess, when she had come to visit a few weeks ago. It had been scary to see G. snap like she had. I knew she was aggressive and had a bit of a temper, but I never thought I would be on the receiving end of it. Serves you right, I scolded myself, treating her like that the first time you see her in three years. I had known that she was feeling sad about something, but I had let Pinkie Pie talk me into trying to cheer her up at her party, and I had definitely gone overboard on the pranks.

I lay down on my back, set the scroll down on my chest, and rubbed the right side of my neck with a hoof. There were still three bumps there, just like there was one bump on the left side. Definitely overboard, I thought.

I tore the sticker off, unrolled the scroll, and braced myself for reading one of G.’s letters. Over the past few years, one thing that I learned was that she didn’t like to say exactly what was on her mind when she wrote to me. It made my head hurt to try and figure out everything that she really wanted to say, which was part of why I put off reading and responding to her letters in the first place.

I read what she had written this time:

Hey Dash,

I haven’t gotten a reply yet, but I know you’re busy with work and stuff. If you did send a reply, it hasn’t gotten here, at any rate.

I’m in a bit of a weird situation, though. I think I like my captain, but I’m not sure if he feels the same way back. I mean, we’re okay friends right now, but it’d be way weird if I just sort of came on to him and he didn’t feel the same way. This whole thing makes my head spin: do I risk it and tell him, or do I play it safe and enjoy what I have?

Hope to hear back soon.

~G.

I sat up, still holding the letter. I made a confused face at the paper and admitted, “Huh. Didn’t see that one coming.” Even three weeks ago, she still seemed mostly like her old self from Junior Speedsters’: indifferent, but at the same time, kind of sad. She had mentioned that she still hadn’t found any boys, but thinking back to everything that happened to her, that had probably been a dumb question for me to ask.

It was weird, after how she acted during summer camp, to see her having this problem. It wasn’t that she didn’t like ponies to begin with; it was more that she kind of stuck out of everything like a sore thumb. Then again, the way that most of the other pegasi there treated her, I was surprised she didn’t have a full-on hatred for ponies. At any rate, she hadn’t really shown any interest in the colts during camp, but I had just chalked that up to, well, the griffin thing.

Anyway, she was about the last friend I had who I thought would ever have ‘colt troubles’, and between Twilight and Fluttershy, that was saying something. I thought about it for a minute, and I didn’t know the answer to her question, either. She may have developed an interest in colts over the past few weeks, but I was still too busy being Equestria’s best flier to have a coltfriend holding me back. Maybe in a few years, I told myself. There wasn’t enough time right now, with my training for the Wonderbolts only being interrupted with training for the Best Young Flier competition.

Still, G. had written to me for advice, so I had to try to help. I didn’t want to mess things up for her any worse, though, so I needed some advice of my own. I put my hooves on the floor and started walking to my front door. In terms of my oldest friends, it was a toss-up between Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack for who I could ask. Rarity would probably hook me into modeling some new fashion for her, though, and I could already imagine her advice, “Oh, but if it’s true love, then nothing can stand in the way! Gilda should tell him, no, she must tell him!”

Fluttershy didn’t have any experience either, and she’d probably be too scared to commit to one side or the other for a guess. Plus, she was still mad at Gilda for scaring away all of her duck friends. It took a lot to get Fluttershy mad, but I remembered the frown on her face when she told me about the situation. No, I thought, she won’t be much help, either.

That left Applejack. She was probably my best friend, if I had to put a label on it. Also, I couldn’t just guess what she would say, either. Then again, she spoke her mind about everything, and I wasn’t too sure how she felt about G. They had gotten along okay at the party, before everything started going wrong, but G. pretty much left in the worst way possible. I had been mad at how she had acted. At least, I had been, before I knew why she took everything so hard that day. Then I just felt ashamed at myself.

I left my house and took off towards Sweet Apple Acres. I didn’t know where Applejack was that morning, but I figured that she would be out working in the fields somewhere. Sure enough, I eyed her pulling weeds in the carrot patch.

She was facing away from me, so she didn’t see me fly up behind her. I heard her muttering, “And you nasty little suckers best be gettin’ outta my carrots. That rainwater’s for them, not you. You’re weeds.”

“Hi Applejack!” I cried out, right when I landed behind her.

She let out a startled yelp as she jumped almost a foot in the air. Turning around, she pointed a hoof at me and frowned, “And consarn it, Rainbow Dash, what have I told you about sneaking up on ponies?”

“Not to do it when they’re holding things?” I rubbed my chin as I tried to remember what her exact words had been. It had been a while ago when she yelled at me the first time.

“You know what I meant!” Applejack shouted back at me, but there was a smile starting to form at the edges of her mouth.

I chuckled before I said, “Sorry, Applejack. But I got you good.”

She laughed quietly, “That, you did.” After a short pause, she added, “So, what’s up? I reckon it’s pretty early on a Saturday for you to be up and about.”

I rubbed the back of my head with a hoof, “Yeah, Ditsy woke me up with a letter pretty early today.”

“A letter? Is everything all right?” she asked with concern.

“Yeah, everything’s okay,” I said quickly. “The letter was nothing. Listen,” I added a bit of seriousness to my voice, “I’ve gotta ask you something, but it’s gonna sound a little...” my eyes wandered around before I decided on the last word, “weird.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Okay... shoot,” she said, confused.

I sighed. It was going to be tricky to get the question across without mentioning G. by name. “I’ve got this... uh, friend. And she’s kinda confused right now, because she’s got this, uh,” I didn’t really want to mention it was G.’s boss, either. I settled on, “this other friend. And she likes how they’re friends, but at the same time, she thinks she wants to be more than friends.”

I finished by adding the main problem that G. had written about, “But she’s not sure if that’d mess things up between them, so she’s kind of confused as to what to do.” I felt myself rambling, so I decided to end by asking Applejack, “So, uh, what do you think she should do about it?”

As soon as I got done asking, Applejack looked a bit sad. “Oh, I, uh... I see,” she said quietly as she turned her head to the side. After thinking about something for a moment, she looked back at me and spoke gently, “That took guts, to say that, I reckon.”

“Guts?” I asked. It felt as if I had been left a few laps behind in our conversation.

“Guts,” she repeated. “And as much as it hurts me to say, Rainbow, I just don’t feel the same way about you.”

I felt a look of extreme confusion cross my face. “What?” was all that I could manage.

She looked at me with a knowing grin, “Come on now, sugarcube, d’you really think you’d fool ol’ Applejack with that ‘my friend’ business?”

“What... no! That’s not what I... UGH!” I shouted in frustration. Applejack could be so dumb sometimes.

“It’s okay to be upset, Rainbow. Just know we can still be friends.”

I shut my eyes and wiped my hoof down my face. As I did, I opened my eyes back into a glare at my friend. “It’s Gilda, Applejack. I was talking about Gilda,” I said joylessly. I felt like I had betrayed G. somewhat, but this conversation wouldn’t go anywhere unless I cleared this mess up.

“So, I take it she did find a ‘cool new friend to hang out with’?” she replied in an almost accusing tone.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I countered. I had known her long enough to know when she was quoting me.

“Well,” she continued, “it ain’t none of my business, but y’all said some things back then that were downright hurtful. I know Gilda made a horse’s rear end out of herself, but that doesn’t give you the right to say the things you said to her.”

As frustrating as it was to have her point out the obvious, she was right. “I... I know, Applejack,” I said, looking away sadly, “I already told her I’m sorry.” I left out the part where I had effectively kicked G. out of the town in doing so: I still felt bad about having to do that.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” she said back. “As for her problem, uh... you mind runnin’ that by me again?”

I repeated myself, this time using G.’s name. It was easier to keep track of everything this time, and when I finished, Applejack started, “Well, ain’t that an age-old question? To appreciate what you’ve got, or to go for somethin’ better? Still, it sounds to me like she’s afraid of losing her friend, so I’ll say this: anypony who ends a friendship over something so small as misplaced feelings wasn’t really friends in the first place.” After a pause, she grinned slyly at me, “I mean, we’re still friends after you said all that to me, right?”

I felt my glare return before I asked, “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

“Maybe after these here carrots are ripe,” she said with a chuckle.

I shook my head. She was ridiculous. Still, all I could do was smile. “Thanks for the help Applejack. I’ve gotta go write back to G., though,” I said, glad to have a reason to leave. She was my friend, but if I stayed for much longer, she’d probably rope me into helping her weed her carrot patch or something.

She smiled and nodded. “Good luck, Rainbow Dash. And let me know if you want to come over for dinner sometime; our doors are always open to friends.”

Nodding, I waved goodbye and took off back toward my house. I thought about how to translate Applejack’s advice into something that G. would appreciate. Inside my home, I got the paper and pen ready to write. “Shtoopi ken,” I muttered. Unicorns had it so much better when it came time to writing stuff down.

I thought about putting a date on the letter, but for some reason, G. wasn’t in the habit of doing that, so I didn’t, either. Still, when I looked at the calendar with my friend in mind, something clicked, and I racked my brain trying to remember what date, three years ago, we had cut camp activities to hang out with each other for a day.

END CHAPTER SIX

Chapter Seven-->

CHAPTER SEVEN

Monday evening, after my shift, I went to the post office to see if Dash had sent me a reply. As soon as I got through the door, the aqua-colored mail filly commanded me to, “Take it. And leave,” as she smacked an envelope on the counter in front of her.

I picked it up and flashed her a sardonic grin. “Wow, the customer service gets better here every time.”

She didn’t say anything in reply, which was probably for the best. As I left the post office, though, a paranoid thought crossed my mind: What if she read my last letter? I knew she hated me, so my privacy wouldn’t really mean anything to her. I wondered which was more important to her: her hatred for me or her sense of duty to her job.

As I turned right onto the street outside, I resigned myself to indifference. Whether she knew about us or not, if things ended up working out between her brother and me, she’d just have to suck it up. There were enough issues between us already without throwing a bitchy younger sister into the mix. She’d probably get along with Gustel, I mused. Or... they’d kill each other.

I shook my annoying younger sister’s memory out of my head as I walked down the street for a short distance. After a moment, I sat down on side of the road. Using one of the metal talons at the end of my gauntlet, I tore open the envelope. It wasn’t as clean a cut as my own talons would have made, but it did the job. I pulled Dash’s letter out to read it:

Hi G!

Sorry I didn’t get around to your first letter; there’s a lot going on with the weather job right now, especially with summer coming up. I KNOW thunderstorms are dangerous, WHY do I have to sit through an hour-long lecture on them?

As for the thing with your boss... I say go for it! You’re already friends, so I figure he’s cool he’ll probably let it go if he’s not into you like that. And if he makes a big deal over it, tell him to get stuffed and move on! Farrington’s a big place, I’m sure there’s somepony there for you.

Anyway, good luck!

~Dash

P.S. Happy Almost Birthday!

As I started walking again, I felt a mix of emotions after reading the message from Dash. First was happiness and relief at how she was more or less the same filly that I spent a summer with at Junior Speedsters’. She had never liked sitting through the safety lectures there, either; she preferred to make her own mistakes.

On a deeper level, though, I knew that some things had changed between us three weeks ago. I knew exactly why she had crossed out the words ‘he’s cool’ on the letter, and I felt bad that she was still torn up over what she had said to me that day. It was a waste of her energy, though: I was the one who had screwed everything up that day by lying about everything.

I balled her letter and threw it in a nearby trash can, perhaps more violently than necessary. When I looked around to see where I was, I realized that I had headed north from the post office instead of south. Scowling at my own stupidity, I turned around and headed south, towards the gate.

As I walked, I mulled over just how badly things had turned out during my visit to Ponyville. I wasn’t even annoyed at Pinkie Pie’s overbearing happiness anymore: I was just ashamed by how I had acted.

What’s done is done, I told myself bluntly. I mean, if you really felt bad, you’d go back and apologize to everyone. When I thought about what that would entail, though, I scoffed bitterly at myself. It would be hard to apologize to everyone, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not even for you, Dash, I thought, hating myself for it.

I shook the self-loathing from my head. It wasn’t that I didn’t have cause for it; it was that it didn’t solve anything. Instead, I thought about the rest of the letter, and about the problem in front of me that I could deal with. I passed the citadel and the gate was right in front of me; Iron would be there, so I might as well tell him what was on my mind before things went any further.

I heard voices as I approached. I knew Iron’s voice, and it sounded like he was arguing with someone.

“I still don’t know why you’d even hire her on! Farrington’s supposed to be a nice city!” As I got closer, I recognized the other voice as Iron’s sister, but I couldn’t remember her name.

“For the last time,” I heard anger in Iron’s voice, “I don’t interfere with your job at the post office, stop trying to run the city guard!”

I stopped in my tracks. There was no way that I would be able to walk through that conversation without making things awkward for Iron. Also, it would be incredibly awkward for me to say what I wanted to with his sister right there, so it would be pointless to interrupt them no matter what I did.

Without a second thought, I turned around and headed to the east gate of Farrington, vowing to tell him the next time that we saw each other.

*        *        *

The next morning, Captain Bulwark was waiting for me under the arch of the south gate. I landed in front of him with a bow. “Good morning, sir.”

He didn’t return the greeting, instead saying, “From now on, you’re to send and receive your mail through the citadel.” I gathered that he wasn’t angry at me, but he definitely didn’t sound happy about what he was saying, either.

Still, I was bewildered at the concept. “I can do that?” I asked.

“Officially?” he responded, “No, you cannot. However, I’m tired of hearing about it. I’ve already brought up the issue up to the postmaster, but nothing’s changed, so if I press any more, Maxie’d probably get fired, and then--”

“Sir,” I threw caution into the wind by interrupting him, “you said it’s my job to keep the peace. If it’s that big of an issue for me to send letters at the post office, I’ll send them from the citadel. You can take the postage out of my wages.”

The captain smiled gratefully. “Thank you for understanding. Things got... bad, last night, and this is really the best compromise that I can think of.”

I saw an opening, and I went for it: “You can tell me about what happened over dinner tonight if you’d like.”

He smiled, and we made plans for the evening. His shift ended at six, an hour after mine, so we agreed to just eat in our armor. I was glad that was a possibility: making a round-trip to drop my armor off was probably the most strenuous thing I had ever done before.

*        *        *

Our evening together was, in all honesty, a terrible date. I found it incredibly difficult to bring up what I wanted to tell Iron, and it loomed over every conversation like a huge, unmentionable beast. I listened to his story about the huge blowout he had with his sister, but I wasn’t really paying attention as much as I was waiting for an opportunity to bring up what I wanted to say. I tried to do it five separate times, too, but each time, I ended up changing the subject to something inane in order to cover the first few words of my question.

Probably as a result of my awkward speech patterns, I also noticed that Iron seemed to be paying a lot more attention to everything that I was saying. It was kind of weird how deeply he stared at me while I was talking before he noticed what he was doing, but I figured that it was my fault in the first place for speaking like an idiot.

By the time it finished, I was glad that it was over. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into my cave and never come back out. Iron seemed put-off by the whole fiasco, too; still, he cautiously asked me if I wanted to get dinner again on Friday. I agreed to it before I realized what I had done, but as I thought about changing my answer, I noticed how relieved that Iron looked at the prospect. I didn’t want to ruin that for him, so I stuck to my rushed decision.

I spent all of Wednesday and Thursday berating myself for my inability to tell Iron the truth. I was shaken up with nerves about having to eventually confess my feelings, and it started to show in other areas. My lack of confidence was affecting my flying, and I kept missing prospective meals when I tried hunting. Between those two days, the only meals I ate were the ones I bought in Farrington.

Friday morning, I couldn’t even catch a sleeping tortoise. It woke up when I overshot it by a few yards, and when I turned around to catch it, it was gone. A flood of shame walked over me: I had never been this poor at hunting, even back before I was a guard and had been consumed by the growing pointlessness of my life.

I vowed that the first thing that I would tell Iron that night would be how I felt about him, but when the time rolled around, I froze up instead of telling the truth.

Halfway through dinner, it didn’t look like things were going to go any better than they had on Tuesday. I was flustered by the irony of the situation: I was so worried about my confession ruining our friendship that it was ruining our friendship. It was that, more than anything, which finally steeled my nerves enough to ask the all-important question, “What is this?”

At first, Iron looked annoyed; I had just interrupted one of his stories about when he was an officer. When he saw the concern on my face, though, he dropped his previous subject and responded to me, “What do you mean?”

It was now or never. I took a deep breath before continuing. “I mean, we keep eating dinner together and stuff. Is this just ‘meals between friends’, or is this something more?”

Iron looked confused by my question, and my fears over the matter were confirmed: we had just been friends, and I had just misinterpreted everything. I felt ashamed for putting my feelings out in the open for nothing, and wished I had just shut up and ignored what I thought I wanted.

Across the table, Iron didn’t say anything for what felt like an eternity. He finally broke the silence, asking, “Did you want this to be something more?”

Lying would be an easy way out. I decided that he deserved to know the truth, though, so I told it: “Maybe. I’m still not sure. Like, I enjoy hanging out with you, but at the same time, I can’t help but think there’s something more going on here. I want to know if this is friendship, or if it’s romance.”

“What is the difference to you?” he asked. It wasn’t combative, it was... curious, almost.

“If we’re just friends, I can live with that,” I began, fighting to keep my voice from trembling. “We don’t hate each other, and it’s fun to have someone to hang out with outside of work. But at the same time, if I’m dating anyone in this city, like romantically... it feels like that would be the last step to me leaving my tribe.”

Iron tapped his forehooves together and rested his chin on them. “Are you willing to do that?” he asked in a tone that made me think he wasn’t completely opposed to the idea of the two of us dating.

“Like I said, I don’t know. Are you willing to be ‘that colt who’s dating a griffin’?” I countered.

He let out a quick chuckle before responding, “Yes. Yes I am. In my mind, I’ve been that colt for the past two weeks now, and I’ve found it’s not too bad of a thing to be.”

The meaning behind his words clicked in my mind, and I felt an outpouring of relief and... happiness, I realized, even though the emotion felt foreign to me. I didn’t know where romance would lead the two of us, or even what difference it made for things, but for the time being, I was glad that we were on the same page.

I realized the timing involved in what he had said, though, and a bit of frustration clouded my joy. “Two weeks? You’ve been playing that angle from the start?” I asked, narrowing my eyes slightly.

“‘Playing that angle’ is a gross oversimplification,” he answered in a slightly offended tone, “but I made my mind up that, no, I wouldn’t mind too greatly if this turned romantic.”

“Right,” I tried to voice my understanding, “I didn’t mean to ask it like that. I’m just saying, sort of like the ‘you don’t have to fly all the way back home to drop your armor off before dinner’ thing, you could’ve said something from the start and saved me a lot of pain.”

“I wanted to tell you about the armor last week, but you rushed past me in such a hurry that I couldn’t react in time to warn you,” he defended himself.

I stared at him: that hadn’t been the point I was bringing up in the first place and he knew it. He caught my glare and continued, “As for originally keeping my own limits to myself, I did that for your benefit. I mean, I know you’re sort of new to the city and that I’m your superior in the guards; putting everything on the table like that would have seemed... predatory.” When he realized what he said, his eyes widened and he continued in a rushed voice, “Not that there’s anything wrong with hunting to live, it’s just--”

“It’s wrong to hunt things of a certain level of intelligence,” I interjected.

“Is that how that works?” Iron asked back with a note of curiosity.

As I went into my explanation about hunting ethics, I noted how much easier it was to talk with him again now that I had the air cleared between us. He seemed to ease up a bit on the empty staring, too, which was another plus in my book.

Things went much more smoothly for the rest of the evening. I found that one of the added benefits of starting our dates right when Iron got off his shift was that we got to spend more time together before the fading daylight told me it was time to leave for home.

*        *        *

Monday morning, I woke up to a tremendous explosion that shook my entire cave. I felt a brief moment of panic before lightning illuminated the jagged outlines of the rock walls at the same instant that a second boom erupted. It was just a thunderstorm, even if it was huge and, by the sound of it, right outside my cave.

It was difficult to see in the dark, but I read the time on my clock during another lightning flash: six fourteen. I shut my eyes, but I saw the next lightning flash through my closed eyelids. The thunder crashed so loudly that it shook my cave again, and I realized it would be pointless to even try to get back to sleep. I hated to break my sleeping routine, but an extra hour of low-quality sleep wouldn’t really do me any favors, either. I stood up, stretched out, and walked over to the opening of my cave.

As inconvenient as they were to a race of avians, we revered thunderstorms. They were more than part of nature: they were a raw, elemental force. Legend had it that, every summer, Donar reforged his hunting spear to get ready for the Sternjagd. In order to cool the head of it, he saved most of the rain throughout spring in an enormous trough. When he finally had enough, he began forging: the thunder was the sound of his hammer falling, and the lightning was actually sparks of hot metal flying off.

I couldn’t recall if there was an explanation for why the water was spilling during the forging process, but as I felt the sound of the thunder wash over me, I didn’t find it too hard to imagine that there was a sky god up there, hammering away.

I took in a deep breath, and the smell of rainwater on mountain stone reminded me of home. With another deep breath, I reminded myself that I was home right now, or what passed for it. I didn’t dwell too much on that fact; instead, I just watched the storm unfold before me.

An hour later, it didn’t look like the weather was going to clear up anytime soon. I was faced with a practical problem: flying in a thunderstorm was dangerous; flying in a thunderstorm while wearing a metal suit would be suicide. I supposed that there was a cloth lining on the inside of my armor, but that wouldn’t make any difference to my corpse. I needed to avoid the storm.

I donned my armor and decided to try an exercise straight out of Junior Speedsters’: high-altitude flying. The air was thinner and colder above the clouds of the thunderstorm, but I would rather be cold than electrocuted. I took off flying straight up, and when I broke through the top of the clouds, I was amazed at how bright and sunny it was above the storm below.

I flew north as easily as I could manage, but I still got winded within minutes of taking off. I held my course, though, and reminded myself of how many ways I would die if I fell.

The storm was a massive one, so I couldn’t see where it ended. Instead, I navigated by the peak of Farrington’s mountain. When I thought I was close to the city, I waited for a flash of lightning and dove towards the ground. I reminded myself that I was a good deal heavier; that information was crucial for pulling out of the dive. When I broke through the clouds, I saw that I was almost right on top of the south gate; I had to steer backwards in order to avoid crashing into the arch.

As fast as I dove, I didn’t beat the next lightning bolt to the ground; lucky for me, it must have hit the lake or something. I looked up to Captain Bulwark’s booth. He was in there, staring at me wide-eyed and fearful. He finally found his voice and yelled, “Where did you come from?”

I pointed upwards. “Above the storm, sir,” I had to yell over the thunder. I realized that, from his point of view, I had probably materialized in that lightning flash.

“Cool!” he responded in an impressed tone. I smiled at him before I walked through the gate to report for duty.

Sherry put me in the Market district in order to give me a break from the Artisan district. She promised me that Officer Bobby would be back to normal by the end of the week, or else she would “break his ass all over again for wasting so much time being injured.” As I began my morning rounds, I chuckled at her ruthlessness.

A little after noon, the storm finally broke. I had been out in the rain all morning, so even with my armor covering most of me, I was soaking wet. I used my lunch break to go to the citadel and towel off, which helped slightly, but I was still damp when I went back out for the second part of my shift.

The Market district was a completely different place when I got back to it. Instead of empty streets, a huge crowd of ponies had grown and given the place a feeling like it was alive. They seemed to be moving around quickly and with dedication, as if they were all trying to make up for the time they lost from the storm. Not every pony was concerned with errands, though: I noted a pair of pegasus foals splashing around in a puddle and having the time of their lives.

“Hailey! Moonshine! Get out of that puddle this instant!” I heard her voice before I saw the foals’ lime-green mother rushing across the street to end their fun. I was surprised to see that she was an earth pony; from my rudimentary knowledge of genetics, I knew that she had to have been pretty lucky to have had two pegasus children. My guard’s training kicked in, and I reasoned that I couldn’t even be sure that she was their biological mother: she could have just as easily been a babysitter or a stepmother.

Regardless of her relation to the foals, she succeeded in getting them out of the puddle. However, they took off running away from her and straight into my path. I reacted in time so that I didn’t step on the pegasi, but they made me stop in place to do it. This didn’t please their caretaker any, so she yelled a second time, “And get out of the nice guard’s way! Don’t make me get your father!”

The three of us reeled at the threat. The two foals rejoined the lime-green earth pony, though, and I chided myself for my stupidity. She led them back over to me, saying, “I’m sorry about that, officer. They’ve been cooped up all day from the rain.”

Before I could say anything, she rounded on the foals, “And what do you say for almost tripping someone?”

“We’re sorry.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

In spite of how ludicrous the whole situation was quickly becoming, I smiled at them. Their voices were adorable. I figured the lime-green pony was trying to teach them a lesson, though, so I responded in as authoritative a voice as I could manage, “That’s okay. Just keep an eye on where you’re headed in the future.”

I caught a strange look from their caretaker, so I winked back at her. She smiled, though, and extended a hoof. “I’m Comet Tail, by the way, I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Gilda,” I replied, shaking her hoof. I hadn’t met any earth ponies with sky-themed names before, but I guessed that there was a first time for everything.

She smiled, but it seemed almost sad and weary. “After hearing about you for a month, it’s good to finally hear your name.”

I cocked an eyebrow, “Who’s been talking about me for a month?”

“Only my big-headed husband, Starfall.”

“Oh,” I replied. Something stuck out about that statement, too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

At any rate, Lieutenant Starfall came over and cut our conversation short. He was in his armor, so I guessed that he was on his way to his post. He glared at me before turning to his wife and asking, “Is she giving you a problem?”

“Who, the officer?” his wife responded. Hearing them talking reminded me of the few times I had heard my mother and father speaking to one another: their speech was cold and distant, but not emotionally invested enough to be hateful.

It suddenly clicked in my mind: this was his second wife. I remembered what Captain Bulwark said about what had happened to his first wife, and I suddenly felt awkward being caught up in the middle of the lieutenant’s personal problems. He seemed happy enough to separate us, though, telling his wife, “Go on ahead with the kids, I have some guard business to sort out with the officer.”

She shot him a distrustful gaze, but she turned to her stepchildren and told them in a much warmer voice, “Come on, let’s go get the groceries.”

I watched them walk away for a moment before I was shoved into an alleyway. I turned to face my assailant, and Lieutenant Starfall’s armored hoof collided with my helmet with a metallic thunk. Armor or no, I was so dazed by the blow that I couldn’t focus on anything in front of me. Before I could even raise an arm to defend myself, I was thrown up against a wall. My head snapped back and hit the bricks, but when I tried to bring it back forward, there was a foreleg pressed against my windpipe.

I couldn’t breathe. Instinctively, I thrust my right hand forward at his chest, but there were two layers of steel separating my talons from his flesh. I struggled to free some space between my neck and his hoof, but there wasn’t any. The lieutenant had me dead to rights.

“If you ever come near my family again, I will kill you,” he almost spat the words at me.

Having given his threat, though, he threw me to the ground by my neck. My head hurt in about a million different places, but I could breathe again. I got my feet under me, and rounded on him in a defensive stance, hissing, “Du und welche Armee, Beute?”

I recognized that I had slipped back into my native tongue, but to his credit, Starfall picked up on what I had said. Ice-cold rage filled his speech when he responded, “No army. This ends tonight, just me and you. The market square, two o’ clock.” He finally calmed down enough to add, “Make peace with whatever primitive beast you worship,” in a dismissive tone.

“And you with your Mörder,” I shot back. If he was the one bringing religion into the mix, I figured Celestia could stand for a bit of blasphemy.

He said nothing in reply, but he left the alleyway to go back to the street. I figured that it would look suspicious if I came out after him, so I cut a large stretch off my patrol by heading out the other end of the alley. As my anger and adrenaline left me, I suddenly became very afraid. It had taken Starfall all of three seconds to subdue me, and when he had me there, there had been nothing I could do about it.

Regardless of the monstrous headache that I had for the rest of the afternoon, I finished my rounds for the day and went back to the citadel. When I saw Sherry, she seemed almost worried to see me. “Officer Gilda, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” I responded. “A bit of a headache, but I skipped lunch because of the storm.”

She looked at me with a glare that said she suspected something, but she shook her head as if to put it aside. “Well, get something extra on the trip home, you look like hell,” she dismissed me for the day with a weak smile.

I grinned back to her and left the citadel. Instead of heading south, though, I decided to play the odds a little and head north. For the past three visits to the post office, I had gotten the annoying teal mail clerk, but hadn’t seen the colt who worked there at all. If I was going through with this duel, I figured that I needed to set some affairs in order in case I lost.

As soon as I saw the dark gray mail colt, though, I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t want to tell him what was going on, but I figured that he could help me with what I needed to do.

“‘Evenin’, officer,” he greeted me. “What can I do you for?”

“Is it possible to set up mail on a delayed delivery?” I asked.

He seemed a bit thrown off by what I was asking, so I clarified. “Like, say I’m getting some news tomorrow afternoon, and if it’s one thing, I won’t have time to come write everyone I want to before the post office shuts. Could I write the letters now, then have them put in Wednesday’s outgoing mail if I don’t come in on Tuesday to stop them from going out?”

After a few moments, he shook his head and chuckled, saying, “I’ve worked here thirty-two years this fall, and I’ve never had someone come asking about something like that.” A bit of suspicion came over his face, “What’s this for, though?”

Sorry, Dash, I thought to myself as I lied, “My friend in Ponyville might be pregnant.”

“Might be?”

“She’ll know by tomorrow, and then another friend is going to come get me if she is. I’ll have to miss work on Wednesday to visit her, as well as letting some of my friends know,” I finished, amazed at how coherently it all fit together.

The clerk smiled as he put a stack of papers on the counter for me. Chuckling sadly to himself, he pondered, “What’s the world like when that mess’s easier than having it all handled through the post office?”

I was lying to a postal worker to cover up a duel to the death with someone whose wife had been killed by barbaric members of a tribe of my own race. I shook my head as I replied, “Complicated. Very, very, complicated.”

I took the papers over to the table that rested against the wall to start writing my letters. I figured that it would be difficult and emotional to write what might be my last farewells, but instead, it just filled me with a strong sense of impending destiny. My self-preservation screamed at me that it was stupid to die in a fight over a difference in race, but my romantic side was gleeful that I had a chance to die in honorable combat.

It beat falling to my death, at any rate.

I probably had the most to say to them, but Gretchen’s and Uncle Wallace’s letters were the easiest ones to write. It was cathartic to tell them how much I loved them and how sorry I was that I couldn’t be with them anymore. Three years’ worth of emotions flowed out onto the paper as naturally as flying felt when I wasn’t wearing my armor. Also, even after three years, it was still easier for me to write in my original language than that of the ponies. Part of me wanted to find solace in that, but I was too preoccupied with the contents of my death letters to care.

As I finished writing the letters to my family, I noted the importance of my fail safe. If either of the letters was delivered, I would have to deal with a three-griffin death squad coming to enforce the ‘no contact with any tribe’ part of my Verbannungsprüfung. I knew my father would be heading it, but I didn’t know whether he’d bring two other adult males from the tribe or his eldest children, Gretchen and Gerard. Either way, I knew that I wouldn’t be flying away from that confrontation.

Regardless of how dangerous it was for me to have even written it, I rolled my sister’s scroll up and wrote her name on it. A practical issue then presented itself: to my knowledge, there was no way to even get a letter delivered directly to Sharfkral-Grat. I didn’t know whether they would relax their lethal methods of dealing with trespassers in order to let a pegasus courier through, either. Rather than possibly sending some stranger to his or her death, I rolled my uncle’s letter around hers. It was indirect and probably a hassle for him, but the Grosfeder tribe was better with pony society. I figured it was safest to trust my uncle with delivering Gretchen’s letter.

When I was halfway through Dash’s letter, the mail clerk drummed up conversation. “So, uh, which griffin tribe d’you come from? Sharptalon or Braveheart?”

I stopped writing to muse about that. I had never heard the pony names for those two tribes before. ‘Sharptalon’ was a combination of the same two words that were the basis for Sharfkral, but I didn’t know what sort of linguistics they played around with to get ‘Braveheart’ from Sterkergeist.

“Sharptalon,” I answered out of the corner of my mouth, “but I’d call them Sharfkral if you ever meet another.”

“Sharf... kral,” he said slowly. I heard him shifting, so I looked over at him.

He looked like he had a question he wanted to ask but was hesitant to. “You okay?” I asked, hoping to clear the air.

“Yes, it’s just... somethin’s been bugging me for a while. I’m not trying to offend you or anything, but... do you guys keep, uh, trophies? Like, from hunting?”

I finished Dash’s letter and moved on to Sherry’s before answering, “It depends on the griffin and what they’re hunting. Some of us are completely against it, others do it for exceptional kills, or ones they’re proud of.” I thought of my father with disgust. He had kept a trophy from a pegasus that he killed, but it couldn’t have been that difficult for him to have done it...

I thought back to what Iron had told me, and I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach as parts of a realization all fell into place. I tried to keep a calm voice when I asked, “Did... did Lieutenant Starfall’s first wife work here at one point?” I was genuinely afraid of the answer I was about to receive.

“First wife?” the mail clerk asked, “Wow, I’m out of the loop. I didn’t even know that he and Comet got divorced.”

He continued talking, but I didn’t hear what his words were. With horror, I thought back to the filly I met that afternoon: Comet Tail. I thought that had been a weird name for an earth pony; it made a sickening amount of sense for her to be a pegasus pony. Who had been attacked by griffins. Or one griffin, whose hatred of ponies bordered on the fanatical.

Even when I had been eight, I thought that the pegasus whose wings my father nailed to our cave’s wall must have been dead. Now that I thought about it, they were the same color as she was. It all fit, and a numb sense of disbelief washed over me.

I finished with Iron’s letter, probably sounding more curt than I should have, but I could barely think straight. I rolled my letters into scrolls to send out. I combined his and Sherry’s letters into one scroll, and wrote three different addresses on the three scrolls I had.

I walked over to the mail colt to finish with my letter business. “Are... y’okay, miss?” he asked me, but his voice sounded small and far away.

“Y-yeah,” I lied. “Remember, only send these if I don’t come back for them,” I said as neutrally as I could manage. My hand shook as I poured out some coins into it to pay for postage.

“Will do,” he replied. “I’ll be here tomorrow, too; my usual desk help is out on a delivery.” Picking up the scrolls, he started to read the addresses on them before stopping at my family’s bundle. “I don’t know where ‘Erntving’ is,” he told me in a confused tone.

“It’s the griffin city out in the east,” I replied. I supposed with ‘Sharptalon’ and ‘Braveheart’, he knew it by a different name, but I had more pressing issues on my mind.

“Well, I’ll get it there somehow,” he replied in a tone that made me think he still didn’t know what I was talking about. I figured he was dedicated enough to his business that he would keep his word and get the letters delivered, though, so I thanked him and left the post office.

Outside, I sat on the side of the road and thought about everything that I had learned. I imagined what it would be like to lose my wings, and have to live life by walking around for everything. In the air, there was a sense of freedom and openness. Losing that would be a fate worse than death.

Damn you, I cursed my father. That was exactly the train of thought he used when he did that to her, too. I grit the edges of my beak together in frustration, but I felt creaking, so I let up the pressure. Breaking my beak wouldn’t solve anything.

Instead, I thought about Starfall and the rest of his family. I had heard that he loved his children, but I knew he wouldn’t open up to them with me there. Still, I took Sherry’s word for it and compared that affection to the lack of it that I had seen him show his wife. I figured that he saw her as ‘damaged goods’, but he wasn’t able to get past it, and he had the entire griffin race to blame for it instead of just accepting her for what she had become.

I was filled, not with righteous indignation, but with an overwhelming sense of pity. That was a lot of emotional baggage to be carrying for ten years, and it was completely misdirected.

I stood up and started walking towards the southern gate of the city. Any sympathy I might have had for Starfall evaporated when I remembered what I had agreed to. I might have been able to understand his position, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous to me. As I continued south, I thought about my options for the duel.

Iron called out to me when I passed through the gate. I gave him a weak grin as I walked over to him, and he picked up on it. “Is there something on your mind?” he asked with a tone of concern.

How could you not tell me! I suddenly felt a twinge of betrayal. I had asked him for a straight answer, and he had lied to me in order to protect his friend. I felt like I had answered my own question, though, and I didn’t want to misplace any blame. I responded with a half-truth of my own, “It’s been a long day, and it’s going to be an even longer night.”

“Oh? You, uh, have something going on tonight, then?” he sounded disappointed.

“Yeah,” I responded, knowing what he was getting at. It didn’t feel right to spend an entire evening with him and avoid telling him the other colt I was going to see that night, even though I realized that there was a distinct chance that this was the last time I was going to be seeing Iron. “Sorry. But, some other time, like tomorrow?” I offered.

“Tomorrow, then,” he nodded acceptance.

“Have a good night,” I said with a bow.

“Good night, Gilda.”

I put Iron out of my mind as I took flight for my cave, instead considering the available options for my two o’ clock duel. I could just go in there ready for the kill. It would be quick and dirty, but I rationalized that it was the best chance I had for my own survival.

When I thought of his two foals, though, I couldn’t bring myself to commit to that plan of action. Plus, he was friends with most of my superiors in the guards, so I would have to hide what I had done from all of them. I didn’t want to think about keeping up that charade for any length of time; one day of extensive lying to Dash had caused me to have a mental breakdown.

I could just leave everything behind, my residual cowardice suggested. My logic caught up with me and I mentally reeled at the suggestion. If I killed him and never returned to the city, I would be admitting my crime to everyone there, especially Iron.

Not only would running away be a sickening level of cowardice, I would also be breaking my guard’s oath. I had sworn on my honor to protect the citizens of Farrington, and that meant something to me. It wasn’t even a griffin thing anymore; it was that I didn’t want to be the sort of individual that just flaked out on my own given word. I needed to find a solution that left us both alive and resolved the issues between us.

My next idea was an interesting one: I could tell Iron about everything. I knew that fighting in the streets was illegal, so I would be well within my rights to report a crime before it happened. It still stank of cowardice, but I figured that Iron would try to arbitrate our situation. It would be a better solution than the first two, at any rate.

I decided that Iron wouldn’t be able to help with anything other than leaving Starfall with an even bigger sense of injustice. I wracked my brain for the rest of the flight home, but nothing presented itself. I had to show up, and I wholly doubted that Starfall would listen to anything I had to say when he got there.

Reluctantly, I went back to my first option: going in for a fast kill. He had started the fight, he was making it impossible for me to avoid, so he was to blame for the outcome of the fight. He had gotten the jump on me in the market street when I hadn’t expected anything, which was more from surprise and cowardice than anything. I preferred my own odds, really, if I was aware of the fight.

I scowled off into the distance. If Starfall wanted to throw his life away in a duel against me, then so be it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that could make his death look like an accident or the work of some thieves. If I did it right, I wouldn’t even be a suspect!

Razor-sharp resolve sharpened my mind, and I prepared myself for what I had to do that night.

When I neared my cave, I saw a stag running through the forest below me. With my problems with Starfall settled, I remembered that I was hungry, so I debated killing it for dinner. It was a big meal, but I had skipped lunch earlier, and I was going to need energy for later that night. At the same time, deer could prove difficult to kill, and even if I ate to the point of gluttony, I’d have a huge amount of leftovers. I’d have to prepare them so that they stayed edible for a few days afterward, otherwise I would be wasting over half of a kill.

It’ll at least give me something to do tonight, I mentally shrugged as I swooped in for the kill. The stag heard me coming, though and took off running, so I landed right behind it instead of on top of it. With a snarl, I ran after it. It was fast, but I was faster.

In a last-ditch effort, it turned around on me and reared up on its hind legs, trying to kick me to death. I ducked low and pounced at its midsection, tackling it to the ground. It thrashed, fighting for its life. Holding its head down, I covered its eye with one hand and I whispered, “I hope you lived well today, for it was your last,” before I sliced its jugular open with my free hand.

As the stag’s movements slowed, I was once again reminded of how fragile life was. Doubt crept into my mind about my plans for the night. Killing for food was one thing, but for honor? I had never done it before. With a twinge of fear, I wondered which role I would play tonight: the victor, standing over Starfall as he died; or the defeated, lying there and fading away to whatever awaited me after death.

I was about to tear into my stag when I heard rustling in the bushes to my left. I turned towards it, hoping that it would be a simple matter to defend my kill. Instead of a scavenger, though, the she-wolf from Wednesday stepped out into the clearing.

She said nothing, but wolves couldn’t speak, so that wasn’t really a surprise to me. Instead, she sat down on her haunches, looking at me somewhat expectantly. I looked back at her, impressed with her timing. It was customary for griffins to share such a large kill, and wolves had been friends of griffins since before we bothered to write down our histories. They were loyal hunting pets, if one cared to tame them, and even now, this one was polite enough to wait for me to offer something before she came over to help herself.

I tore a leg off and tossed it to her, saying, “Have that and anything I don’t finish.” She started eating, and so did I. When I was finished, the wolf came over to me instead of the stag. Our eyes met, and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of inner peace. I closed my eyes and heard a voice speaking in my head, and I somehow knew that it was an ancient dialect of my race. The same way that I knew it was an ancient language, I knew the meaning behind the words: Fight and die. Live through peace.

I opened my eyes and the wolf and stag’s remains were both gone. A dream? I asked myself, but I could still taste the stag in my mouth. I looked down at myself and mentally swore when I saw that my armor was covered in blood. I went over to the stream that ran near where I was to clean my armor.

I took off my armor and dunked it under the running water. It was cold, so the blood came off easily enough. I was glad that I had caught that mistake before I showed up to Farrington tomorrow. When I thought about my shift the next day, though, I remembered that it wasn’t the first thing that I was going to do at Farrington that morning.

Also, the more that I thought about it, I was incredibly weirded out by that she-wolf. I had read all of my tribe’s legends, and none of them hinted at wolves being able to... whatever she had done to me. Plus, wolves’ lifespans were measured in decades, not centuries, so she had spoken in a language that was older than either of us could have possibly been.

I knew some of the old language that my tribe used to write in because I read it on a few scrolls that were at least five hundred years old. Still, the record-keeper had to help me translate some of the words, and I was by no means fluent.

The language that the wolf spoke to me in was even older than that language.

I took the medallion out of my armor’s chest socket and cleaned the rim of it. As I did, I couldn’t help but look at the Dreikral on the back of it. I guessed that the wolf’s language could have been from around the time before the four tribes split up, but that had happened well over a millennium ago.

As insane as it was, the thought crossed my mind to return to my tribe and tell them what I had seen. I pushed it out of my head, though; they wouldn’t believe me, and for some reason, that wolf had wanted me to live. It would be stupid to throw away my life in such a wanton manner.

Instead of doing something stupid like that, I gave serious consideration to another possibility: that I had just seen a Sternwolf. It all fit, I realized, and with a glare, I felt like I had been somewhat cheated by fate. Jäger got his own damn constellation; all I got was cryptic advice on how to deal with a duel? I laughed at my own pride, though: if that was a gift from the gods, who was I to be unappreciative?

I figured that my armor was as clean as it was going to get. I put it back on and flew up to my cave before taking it off again. I looked at my clock: it was nearly eight o’ clock. I wanted to be well-rested for my date with destiny, so set the alarm for one and went over to my blanket to get some sleep.

I thought about the wolf’s advice as I drifted off into slumber.

*        *        *

I woke up in darkness, and for a panicked moment, I thought that I had slept through my alarm. That fear was alleviated, though, when a shrill ringing went off just out of reach of my sleeping position. I went over to it and turned my clock off before walking out to my landing. Outside my cave, the moon was huge, and it illuminated the treetops with a silvery glow.

I considered wearing my armor to the duel, but as I did, I heard a sad, mournful howling coming from the Everfree Forest below. “Yeah, yeah, you win,” I muttered submissively. I took off for Farrington, relishing the freedom that I felt when I was unburdened by the armor.

Between the wolf’s advice and my lack of armor, I made my mind up that I would try to talk Starfall out of the duel. If he had even a shred of honor, he wouldn’t attack me if I showed up unarmed and peaceful. Also, I felt that I could give him a bit of closure by telling him who had attacked his wife.

When I got to Farrington, the south gate was closed. Cursing my timing, I landed on the wall itself, much to the protest of the guard there. “You! Identify yourself!” he shouted as he pointed a crossbow at me. I didn’t know how much damage the bolt would do, but it certainly wouldn’t be healthy to get shot at point-blank range.

Instead, I tried calming him down. “Relax, dude. I’m here for personal business, not starting something.”

“It’s almost two in the morning,” he said angrily. He didn’t lower the crossbow either.

“It’s late-night business,” I replied with a glare.

“Which is?” he pressed.

“I’m meeting someone late at night, and we’re going to do something that’s my business,” I shot back defensively.

He finally lowered his weapon, muttering, “Next time you moonlight as a whore, stay within the city limits for the night.”

I looked at him for a moment after his insult. I committed his face to memory and vowed that, given the opportunity, I would get my revenge on him for it. For now, I settled on a warning: “If you ever call me that again, I’ll rip your throat out.”

Before he could say anything in reply, though, I jumped off the wall and glided to the main street. The market square was slightly to the northwest of the center of the city; I didn’t want to be late to the duel and miss my chance to parlay.

I got to the square almost ten minutes early, so I positioned myself to be able to watch the four entrances without craning my neck too much. The moon was bright in Farrington, too, so the market square was illuminated by its pale light. At the same time, the moonlight didn’t reach every space in the square, so there were a lot of shadows that gave me a sense of unease.

The silence was oppressive, and I was as nervous as I had ever been. Sitting around waiting for Starfall to show up was torture. The clock tower struck two, and I looked around. I didn’t like that he was late to his own duel; it felt like I was in some sort of a--

I saw movement in the shadows under a business’ awning, and a small object flew at my head. I ducked, barely dodging it, and a fully-armored Lieutenant Starfall burst from the shadows and rushed at me, in a three-hooved gallop. I realized that the thing I had barely dodged had been his knife that he always wore, and I felt a twinge of anger at his cowardice, striking from the shadows like that.

Still, he was unarmed now, so I got ready to grapple him to the ground. Before he reached me, he pirouetted on his front hoof and brought his back legs at me in a sweeping kick. It came too fast for me to parry, so I dipped backwards to dodge. As I did, I noticed the small blades sticking out of his boots. Because of the power they could put into their kicks, any pony’s hind legs were a serious threat in combat. Starfall had taken that to a whole new level, though.

He came out of his spin with his lieutenant’s sword out. I couldn’t get far enough back in time to dodge, so I brought up my left hand’s talons to block it. From the pain, it felt like I almost lost all three of them, but they held his blade at bay. I tried moving his sword away to get an opening to throw a punch at his head, but even though he was gripping it with the crook between his hoof and his foreleg, I couldn’t get it to budge.

After a second’s stalemate, he dropped his sword and went for a low sweeping kick. I jumped over him and turned around in time to see that he somehow had his knife again. He was deadly quick with it, too; I lost ground at a steady rate as I dodged his blows.

When I was closing in on a wall, I recognized a pattern in his attacks. He went in for a familiar stab again, so I ducked under it and grabbed his hoof. I pushed it away from us, and he brought his other front hoof at my head. I stood up to grab it, too, and for a brief moment, we were locked in a stalemate with each other.

“I came here to talk, not fight,” I hissed at him.

“If you don’t want to fight, then die!” he spat back. He jumped up, bringing his bladed back hooves forward in a double-kick. I let go of his front hooves to grab his back hooves. In that split-second, I decided that I had had enough. I had wanted diplomacy, but if he wasn’t going to talk to me, then I was going to have to beat him into submission before we spoke.

With the added weight of his armor, he was massive. Using my wings to give me turning power, I spun around and threw him in a random direction. He used his own wings to land on his hooves, and he ran at me again to continue the fight.

I met him halfway and started throwing out slashes of my own. It was a difficult feat, because I was pretty sure that his armor was stronger than my talons, so I had to aim mostly at his face and neckline. He was good at dodging, but I knew better than to fall into a pattern. I feigned a high swipe, and he dodged before he saw that my other claw was coming up from below.

He let out a scream of rage as my blow landed. It had been shallow, but my talons hooked on his nose guard and lifted his helmet off completely. It landed with a clatter, and I threw a punch at his forehead. It landed, and he stepped back, dazed.

Instead of going in for a kill, I decided to try a second time to reason with him. “Will you just listen to me?” I cried.

He shook his head clear and focused on me. He didn’t come running at me right away, so I took it as an invitation to continue, “I get why you’re pissed at me, but why did I have to learn about it from two other ponies?”

“I have nothing to say to you,” he replied, and I saw his foreleg twitch. It was the only warning I had that he threw his knife. I panicked, so instead of dodging, I put a hand out to try to deflect it.

Pain shot up my arm as I realized that, while I stopped it from killing me, blocking a knife with a bare hand had been an incredibly stupid thing to do. I knew he was rushing at me, but I risked a downward glance: it was lodged into the palm of my hand with most of the blade sticking out the back.

I spun around and threw a backhand with my injured hand. Starfall hadn’t expected it, and I felt my punch connect with his upper forelimb, right below his shoulder’s armor. He let out a low moan of pain, and for an awkward second, we were stuck together by of the serrated edge of the knife. He remedied that in the worst way possible: using his other hoof, he pulled the blade out completely and taught me a new meaning of the word ‘pain’.

I screamed with primal fury. It came out as an enormous eagle’s screech, and I caught a glimpse of fear in my opponent’s eyes. I lost all sense of who I was, and instead was filled instead with bloodlust and hatred.

I pounced at him, and felt his knife sink into my shoulder. It didn’t matter, though: I tackled him to the ground. I remembered his back hooves in time, and pinned them with my own back feet. He twisted around, trying to get leverage to get out from under me, but he only succeeded in exposing his back to me.

Fitting, I smiled with hatred as I grabbed both of his wings and snapped the hollow bones like twigs. It was his turn to scream, but it sounded more like pain than anger. He went limp, or at least, he stopped trying to get out from under me. I pressed my talons to his neck as I realized that I was the victor tonight.

A moment’s hesitation came over me as I vaguely remembered that there was something wrong with killing this pegasus. That was a gateway to remembering who I was and what I was doing. I looked down at Starfall, who very calmly closed his eyes and stammered, “G-go ah-head then... f-finish it.”

Is he crying? I thought with revulsion. There weren’t any tears in his eyes, though, and I remembered that I had broken both of his wings. The pain must have been unbearable; I was surprised he wasn’t crying.

I also remembered why I had decided killing him would be a bad idea, so brought my hand away from his neck and got off of him. “N-no,” he hissed through his pain, “I d-don’t want your p-pity.”

“Tough,” I replied mirthlessly. “If you didn’t have a family to go home to, this would have ended differently. Thank your kids, I guess.”

He stood up, turning to me and glaring with a mix between anger and resentfulness. He looked like he was about to say something, but a familiar voice from the southern entrance to the market square cut him off before he could say anything.

“Gilda! Starfall! What... the hell?” I found myself at a loss for words at the sight of the two of them. Starfall’s face and arm were covered in blood, and his wings were bent up at an unnatural angle. Gilda’s hand was bleeding profusely, and she had a knife sticking out of her other arm’s shoulder.

To her merit, Gilda was silent. Starfall, on the other hand, thought it would be wise to make light of the situation by saying, “I-Iron. You c-couldn’t have gotten here any s-sooner, huh?”

I didn’t know which of them I was angrier with, but I would not stand for any more of Starfall’s insubordination, not when we were both wearing our armor. “As of right now, consider yourself on ‘indefinite medical leave’,” I snapped at him.

He made a croaking noise of protest, so I continued, “If I could trust my judgment after being woken up in the middle of the night, you’d be fired right now. Go home, or to the hospital, I don’t care. Just get out of my sight.”

Gilda flinched at the words as Starfall hustled out of the square. I turned my attention to her. I was worried about her injuries and hurt by the fact that she had lied to me earlier to cover up her actions. Above all, I was disappointed that she would stoop to Starfall’s level and actually go through with a fight against him.

I used that to fuel some anger as I yelled at her, “And you! Do you know how many laws you broke tonight? I’ll overlook the facts that you ignored my request about the post office and then lied to me about this... whatever you were hoping to prove. You entered into the city past curfew and then threatened to kill a guard? That’s not to mention the various disturbances you’ve caused this evening! What do you have to say for yourself?”

She looked sad as my words sank in, and she glanced at her injured hand. Without a second thought, she spat on it. She looked back up at me with a wince before telling me resolutely, “He challenged me to a fight. I thought it would end better for him if I actually showed up. I didn’t think about the gates, but that guard didn’t need to give me lip about it, either.”

That doesn’t excuse anything! I wanted to shout, but I held my choler. I was confused about how to proceed. The minimum punishment was a fine for breaking curfew, a warning for the threat, and several hours of community service for the disturbances. I didn’t know how tough I needed to be on her, though, and... our relationship made that a tricky call to make. If I was too easy on her, I’d tell myself that it was because of our personal involvement, but if I went to the fullest extent of the law, she’d probably flee the city to avoid jail time.

As angry as I was, I didn’t want that to happen. She maintained eye contact and asked, “So, am I fired or what?” She put on a brave face, but I could hear the dread in the words.

I shook my head, “You at least had enough foresight to not wear your armor while breaking the law. You’ll be punished, but it’ll be as a civilian, not a guard.”

She looked a combination between relieved and annoyed, but she didn’t say anything. I continued, “I honestly don’t know how to proceed here, Gilda. I think what I should do is to delegate this to your lieutenant, but he’d send that to your sergeant, so I’ll cut out Horatio and give that decision directly to Sherry.”

I caught a glimpse of shame in her eyes, but she still didn’t say anything for a moment. When she finally spoke, it was in an apologetic voice, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about what was going on, but we would’ve been back to square one if Starfall felt he got cheated out of this.”

Didn’t tell me? I thought before replying, “You mean you’re sorry about how you lied about what you were doing tonight?” I knew it was dangerous ground to doubt her honesty, but she must have known that she had deliberately misled me.

Sure enough, she looked at me with a mote of anger. “The same way you lied to me about what happened to his wife! ‘Attacked by griffins’; I thought she died! Then I had to learn from the damn postmaster that she’s alive, it’s just that her wings have been hanging in my family’s cave for the better part of a decade!”

At that revelation, I was caught between shock and revulsion. Her father had been the one who attacked Comet? I didn’t know what that meant for her and Starfall, but I figured that an illegal duel would be among the better ways that he would handle the news. “Is... is that what this was about?” I sputtered.

“No, this was because he threw me into an alleyway and almost killed me for talking to his family while on patrol. I don’t have much tact, but even I know better than to tell him that I’m related to the monster that attacked his wife.”

I felt a snarl forming at the edge of my mouth, but I fought to keep my face straight. Fighting in the streets after dark was reprehensible. Assaulting a subordinate officer in broad daylight, in the middle of... I racked my brain, but I couldn’t remember where Gilda had been assigned for patrol that morning.

Starfall had a lot to answer for. Hell, Gilda did, too.

I rubbed my nose bridge with my hoof. I didn’t want to fire my best friend or send the individual I was dating to prison. The more I heard about it, the harder it was to think straight about the situation. I felt tired, so I decided to put off judging the pair of them until morning.

After I pushed my captain’s duties out of my head, they were replaced with concern for Gilda; her hand had been bleeding pretty badly. “Do you need to go to the hospital?” I asked, feeling the resignation in my voice as I pulled my hoof away from my face.

“For this?” she held up her injured hand. It had stopped bleeding, even though it had an ugly looking scab on it.

How? I thought, but I remembered her spitting on it; maybe that was enough for griffins. “No,” I replied pointing to my shoulder, “for that.”

She looked down at her left shoulder and screamed something in her native language. I didn’t catch any of what it meant, but I could tell that she was shocked. At any rate, her sudden outburst almost made me jump.

Before I could warn her, she pulled the blade out about an inch, winced at it, put it back in, and then pulled it out at an angle. By its reflection in the moonlight, I could see that the blade’s serrated teeth were mostly clean, though, so I guessed that she had figured out how to safely remove it.

She tilted her head and just... drooled on her shoulder. It was unceremonious, but she rubbed the now-bleeding wound with the wrist of her hand that was holding Starfall’s knife. When she was satisfied, she looked back at his knife, and then over to the shadows to her left. She must have seen something there, because she walked over to investigate. From the shadows, I heard her mutter, “Clever bastard.” A few moments later, she came back over to me, holding out Starfall’s now-sheathed knife.

“Do you want to give this to him?” she asked.

“I don’t. Not really,” I replied blithely.

She raised an eyebrow, but held on to the knife. “Are we done here?” she asked. “I’d like to go home now.”

I nodded, “For tonight. I’ll let you out the north gate, that’s quicker.”

She was slower than her usual walking pace, so I slowed down to match it. Walking alongside her didn’t do much for conversation, though: she remained silent for most of the journey. Finally, curiosity read its head, so I asked, “Why were you sending letters to Elpithasus? Aren’t you banned by death from doing that?”

“Did the postmaster tell you how I was sending those letters?” she countered.

I remembered the contrived system that he had mentioned. When I realized what she had intended it for, I had to admit it was fairly clever. Still, though, it made me sad to think that she could just resign to death so easily. After a somber pause, I asked, “Does living really mean that little to you?”

She looked back at me and said, “There are some things I’d miss. But if it’s my time, then I don’t think anything’s going to stop it from happening. Might as well be ready, is what all that was about.”

I mulled over her words, trying to decide if they were wise. I guessed that I could see the point she had, even if it was incredibly bleak.

When we finally reached the north gate, I opened the door that led to the guard booth. “Just, uh, climb through the window there, I guess,” I said sheepishly. I didn’t want to go through the whole rigmarole of unlocking the gate, cranking it open, and shutting it after her.

She bowed to me. “Good night, Iron.”

“Good night, Gilda.”

Out of decency, I didn’t watch her go through the window, but I made sure that she had got through okay before I closed the door and locked it. When I was alone, the night’s events came back to me, and I felt too overwhelmed with information to try to process it all.

I heard the clock tower strike three as I was walking back to my house, but I knew even then that trying to get to sleep would be an exercise in self-delusion. Instead, I figured that I should get some of my next days’ orders of business out of the way.

Despite the late hour, I knew that there was a chance that Sherry would still be awake. It felt wrong to visit her during her all-too-common sleeplessness; it seemed like I was taking advantage of her grief. Still, I needed some advice about everything that had transpired that night, and I figured that I should let her know what her role in all of this was before she got what few hours of sleep she did.

I turned down her street, and genuinely hoped that I wasn’t going to be intruding on any past memories.

END CHAPTER SEVEN