Rebirth Into Brotherhood: A Gilda Story

Rebirth Into Brotherhood: A Gilda Story
~By: LiamNeighson
Submitted to EQD on 7/15/13 for Flash Fanfiction Event #4

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“You can’t wake a griffon who is pretending to be asleep.” - Ironfeather wisdom

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The sky was on fire.

Gilda tried to outfly the blaze but the wind was carrying smoke and ash faster than she could move. The towering inferno behind her consumed the forest and sucked the air from her lungs. She blinked her eyes rapidly and squinted to see through the encroaching cloud. Her peripheral caught sight of a gorge and she banked right to head to the rocky land. The smoke billowed ahead of and around her. Gilda pumped her wings harder than she ever had before. She straightened her neck and tucked her claws to her breast to be as streamlined as possible.

She was flying blind.

The terrible heat of a burning world caught up to her and she felt her feathers begin to singe. She cried out in pain, closing her eyes firmly as she raced against the curtain of smoke. Gilda could feel the heat of the scorched earth below her. She could hear the snapping and cracking of ponderosa pine as it burst into flames. The griffon screeched in desperation as she felt her leonine tail catch fire.

She felt a cool blast of air.

Gilda opened her soot covered golden eyes to see the deep gorge of the Twinfeather river below her. She turned around and watched the wildfire as it stopped at the cliff edge where the vegetation ended. The dry heat of the desert was uncomfortable normally but after escaping the fire it felt like the coolest cave. Gilda then noticed the burn marks on her wings and tail and felt the pain once more. With a quick twist of her wings she dove to the cooling river waters below.

As the griffon splashed headfirst into the brown waters of the deep river she rolled over and fluffed her wings. Gilda emerged with a gasp and a laugh, she shook her head and straightened her fading purple-dyed crest-feathers hanging over her forehead. She playfully cawed in celebration and looked to the deep rocky gorge cliffs that shielded her from the forest fire above. When she turned her head to see up above the water she gasped.

There was a full rainbow crossing over the river above her perfectly framing the late afternoon sun. Gilda reached up to block out the sun to see the natural wonder more clearly. She extended a claw and it passed through the spectrum of light above the river. It felt alive and bright on her sharp talons. Gilda had an overwhelming sense of comfort and happiness as she felt the colors dance around her mottled claw and embrace her. Then something cast a shadow over her. Gilda looked up to see a pegasus silhouette slowly flapping its wings above her and in front of the sun.

“You left me, G.” Rainbow Dash said from her spot in the middle of the rainbow as she looked down at the Griffon.

Gilda blinked in confusion up at the silhouette before addressing it in confusion, “Dash? What’re you doing here? I th-”

“I thought we were friends.” The pegasi silhouette of Rainbow Dash interrupted, “But you were just two-faced. I could never be friends with someone so cruel.” The pegasus silhouette flared its wings dramatically and turned in midair. As she turned to leave the rainbow followed her. Gilda felt the happy motes of colorful light leave her appendage.

Gilda wanted to say something but the temperature began to rise rapidly and distracted her. The river itself was lowering around her. She looked down in confusion at the receding water as the river stones and rock bed began to show above the surface. When she looked up once more she saw the water evaporating and following her pegasus friend as clouds. The rainbow was slowly drifting away behind the flying silhouette and the clouds around it.

Gilda felt a lick of heat to her left and noticed the shore of the river was on fire. Somehow the blaze had moved down into the gorge and even the earth itself was burning. The water continued to recede rapidly and her feathers began to dry out once more. Gilda looked back up to the pegasus taking her water away and grit her beak. She reached out a claw to grab on to the rainbow and held the intangible substance with all of her might.

Gilda pulled on the rainbow and with it came the clouds. She saw her friend Rainbow Dash struggle and fly harder to escape with the water. The river continued to dry up until only a puddle was left for the griffon to stand in. She flapped her wings to give her more strength to pull on the rainbow but she felt her paws slipping on the dry river bed. Then Gilda felt the fire tickling at her feathers and the smoke invading her lungs.

“Don’t do this to me, Dash! I need that to survive! You’d just leave a friend!?” Gilda screamed above the sound of the inferno surrounding her from all sides.

The silhouette of the pegasus turned to address the griffon in its shadow. With magenta eyes that shone like the sun, Rainbow Dash glared at the griffon. “I am not your friend.” The calmly spoken words resounded clearly over the din of the destruction around them.

Gilda choked back her sadness and turned it into rage. She gripped the rainbow until her claws ached and pulled on the rainbow harder and harder. She could hear her friend struggling in the inferno all around her as well. Then with a loud snap the rainbow broke. Gilda looked up to see the clouds burning away in the heat. Then she noticed a limp pegasus silhouette falling into the inferno ahead of her. The fading and broken rainbow followed it down into the smoke and fire.

Gilda screamed.

“Gildalahi, it is time to come home.”

The disembodied voice rose up around the griffon and embraced her. Her feathers were aflame and she sunk into the dry river bed as the fire consumed her entire world. She had lost her only friend.

“Gildalahi, it is time to come home.”

Gilda laid down and closed her eyes as she fought back sobs but the fire filled her vision even then. The flames burned away every part of her body, leaving only her soul. She shivered from loneliness in the sandy river bed as the embers of her physical being cradled her spirit self. From the thick black darkness ahead a figure walked forward over the coals.

The majestic purple phoenix spread its wings and rapidly fanned the smoke that shrouded Gilda’s soul. Her spirit guide had returned to her again. It leaned down to nuzzle at the purest fragment of Gilda and spoke to her.

“Wake up, Gildalahi, it is time to come home.”

~~~

Gilda woke with a start.

The very real smell of smoke filled her nostrils. She twisted around from her supine position on the rocky ledge she had acquired the night before and looked down into the forest. A slow moving brush fire was travelling through the scrub of the desert valley below her and she could smell the acrid burning of pinyon pines. She rolled back onto her ledge, safe from the distant fire and laid a claw across her rising chest. She closed her eyes and focused on calming her breathing.

It was another dream. The same one for almost a week. Sure there were variations, instead of a forest fire it was a tornado, or a thunderstorm, or a cave in. Instead of burning, Gilda would be blown away, or drown, or get crushed. But the end result was always the same. Gilda would race against the elements, and Rainbow Dash, her only friend, would dismiss their friendship and take Gilda’s only means of escape. In the end, they would struggle and perish.

And after it all when the sorrow felt unbearable, her spirit guide would come to her and tell her to come home.

It had been five years since her spirit guide had sought her out. The same five years that she had spent in Equestria since leaving her roost after her fledgling ordeal.

The Ironfeather clan ordeal was not unlike a typical Native Griffon ordeal. Most fledglings would spend a week of solitude and silence in the wild, foraging and hunting to survive. Each night they would drink the “black drink” and undergo a vision quest, in search of their spirit guide. Once they had found the animal that was their spirit guide they would return to the clan to be inducted as full members and take their position in the roost society. Gilda desperately wanted to be like her father, a red-feather, a warrior. But when her spirit guide came to her in her dreams she saw she was to be a purple-feather, a seeker of wisdom. After her ordeal ceremony she couldn’t bear the shame. She would never forget how her father looked at his only child with intense disapproval. When the elders dyed the tips of her crest-feathers deep purple she felt like she was being branded as a blood traitor.

That night, long ago, Gildalahi flew far away and vowed to never return.

But after the events in Ponyville days before, Gilda had already crossed the sea and gone across the rocky southern desert following the Twinfeather river from the coast into the mountains. Now she had only a single day’s flight before she would reach her birthplace, Black Mesa, the home of the cliff dwelling Ironfeather Clan.

Gilda was not sure why she wanted to return home, perhaps to make the dreams stop. In her anger and frustration at the loss of her one true friend, Gilda suspected she just felt unbearably lonely. Most of all she feared that her clan would not accept her, especially her parents. Seeing her spirit guide brought her bittersweet hope, but the message in the dream was all too clear: She had lost something special in Ponyville that day.

Gilda rose to her leonine hind legs and stretched her wings, neck, and claws. With a quick drag on her razor sharp talons through her fringe she straightened the feathers of her crest forward. She sighed as she looked up to the faded purple dye that still marked her as a wise and spiritual member of the Ironfeather clan.

With a great beat of her aquiline wings, she rose into the air and dove off the cliff in search of a water source to catch breakfast and bathe. She would need the energy for the long flight to Black Mesa today and her wings would need to be preened to make the flight comfortable.

She hoped she would also find the courage to face her father.