Author's Note

A repost of two half chapters.

Morning-Discussions

"Now, what do you say?" A nurse asks in her most annoyed and off put voice. Gilda, shockingly, manages to look abashed.

"Sorry for dropping your phone." Gilda drones/answers in equal annoyance, the jerk.

"Aaaaand?" The nurse prompts in a motherly fashion.

"I'm sorry for peaking at your phone's contents." Gilda finishes. Damn right she's sorry. No one touches my damn phone. Whatever sex or fun she had planned, Gilda can fucking cancel it.

"Now, Miss-" rub it in why don't you? "-Alex needs her bed rest." The nurse ordered. Instead of leaving, Gilda just smirked.

"But miss, I need my bed rest too!" Gilda bemoaned gently. I pointed to the door. "But, babe!" I raised up my thankfully intact phone in one hand and my middle finger with the other. Gilda just looked sly and sauntered out the door. Griffons, I doubt they'll ever make sense.

"Okay miss... y'know, you still need a new name. We can't keep calling you Alex." The nurse mentioned out of the blue.

"Huh?" I, eloquent as always.

"Well, you, technically, are the pony in the marriage. That means you have to change your name upon marriage. Obviously your first name will become Gliding," obviously? "but since you don't have a pony name, you will have to make one." I. What. Okay, let's start at question one.

"One, why do I take her first name?" The nurse looked surprised, and then face hoofed. Seems she realized that I wasn't privy to their traditions.

"It's part of the marriage. The pony must take the Griffon's clan name, and the Griffon tasked the pony's pony name, aka last name." Okay, that's not why, that's what. Sadly, I'm beginning to suspect there is no why anymore, just traditions upon traditions. Still, I could be wrong.

"Two, why can't Alex be my pony name?" The nurse looked faint. It reminded me of the "tradition" song from fiddler on the roof.

"Why, it says nothing about you! It doesn't denote your job or anything unique to you!" The nurse cried, as if it was obvious. I thought about telling her what the name it was short for meant. I decided, why not.

"It's short for Alexander, it means protector of man." The nurse blinked, but as she smiled a horrifying realization struck me.

This world was one of magic, and of prophecy. What I had just said would probably come back to fuck me harder than Gilda probably planned on doing, eventually. Sadly, I suspected that this was inevitable. Sometimes, it sucks when I'm marginally above average.

"That's so cool!" The still unnamed nurse shouted. So much for me needing bed rest then? "Why do you just go by Alexander then?" The nurse asked, perplexed.

"Well for one, Alex is quicker and easier. Secondly, I'm not actually the savior of man. It's just a name that's cool." The nurse was frowning again, and I suspected that a cultural gap was in play. "Thirdly, can I please get some bed rest?" I begged using her own words to embarrass her into shutting up already.

Thankfully, the nurse nodded blushingly and left.

Sadly, Gilda was back. I mentally noted to start bolting my windows, but unfortunately she had already gotten inside.

"Hey Alex, I got you roses!" How dare she-huh? Did Gilda actually use my name? Somehow she managed to attach a definite female gender to the normally genderless word, but it was better than Sweet Thighs.

I was blushing. Why was I blushing? Gilda handed me the roses before I could get my act together.

"Glad you like it. Normally I'd go for lilies, but that image on your phone had roses." That was both the most infuriating and most endearing sentence I'd ever heard. I mean, no one ever noticed things like that before. I had always been Alex, and everyone just moved on without ever stopping to notice stuff like that.

I was still blushing. Why couldn't I stop blushing. "What were the axes for anyway?" Gilda asks, actually sounding interested! I, I find myself wiping away a tear. Fuck, now I'm crying. Stupid fucking chemical feedback that our brains interpreted as emotions, why can't I ever catch a break with you?

"T-they are just something I got from a game I really liked, but they kinda led into my big Norse phase." I admitted blushingly. I felt more tears coming.

"H-hey, look, I really am sorry that I snuck onto your phone. I had no idea it was that big of a deal." Gilda stuttered, a bit confused by the sound of things. I wiped away the few tears that had spilled and smiled.

"I have a crush on you." I admitted softly. It was silly of me to hide it. Even if it was just the whole war thing, she wasn't trying to hurt me. Gilda, of course, was shocked. Yes, it did hurt when she didn't respond, but no I didn't break down crying and run away, even after a minute of waiting. She obviously wasn't horrified, just shocked into silence. I would get a yes or no eventually.

"okay." She, eventually, whispered. It wasn't a rejection in spirit or literally. Gilda just looked uncertain, and that meant she felt uncertain. I could live with that. ", but why are you crying?" Frack, was she dense or something?

"I'm crying because no one's ever asked that without prompting or me bringing it up, and no one has ever really been interested." I admitted, feeling surprisingly fresh with the admission. It's nice to admit being hurt to someone who cares. I'd done it often enough with people who didn't.

It took me a while, but with Gilda hugging me I managed to get my emotions back under control. I'd always thought of my myself as a romantic, even if I hadn't fallen in love every other hour. Now, with someone actually caring about what happened to me, I could see how easy it was to mistake gratitude and relief for love.

The roses smelled really nice. Gilda smelled nice too. What exactly was that she smelled like? Strawberries? How on Earth had she showered between being kicked out and sneaking back?

"Hey so, you okay now?" Gilda asked, not because she loved me, but because she was secretly a caring kind of griffon. I know that sounds weird, but at that moment I could just tell that to be true. It wasn't telepathy, it was just me being smart and not jumping too stupid, hopelessly unlikely, ideas. I also knew this because Gilda was obviously feeling awkward, instead of embarrassed, anxious, or excited. She was blushing, and she was looking back to the window for escape, but her heart wasn't racing, and her fur wasn't clammy.

So no, she didn't go all loving the poor and doing great works of charity, and no, she wasn't hopelessly in love with me. Gilda was here, with her wings around me, because she would feel bad if she left me crying.

I could definitely live with that. I'm not sure if I would have popped the question at this point back on Earth, but I wasn't going to seppuku out of this marriage either.

I do realize that this might have been brainwashing, and I also realized that it could be that and hormones. I knew that I was desperate, alone, and filled to the brim with fear, and Gilda could have been just a piece of debris I was holding to to keep out of despair. But, back on Earth, I had realized that love was crazy shit caused by hormones that controlled your mind. If Celestia influenced my peptides and dopamine releases, then my body would come to love Gilda whether or not it would have otherwise. If she trained my body to feel pleasure from just being around Gilda, then I would, and on the other hand it may have happened without her.

Thankfully, Gilda didn't seem abusive. She didn't disgust me, and she was willing to apologize. Even if I wouldn't be in magical love with her, I knew I could survive a relationship with her. In a world where immortals could do magically fun (for them) experiments on your brain, that was the best I could hope for.

"Hey so," Gilda's muscles loosened in light relief as she pulled out of the hug, "I think we need to discuss some stuff. There are things you need to know, and things I need to know." That sounded about right.

"Okay, where should we start" I asked, not really having any ideas myself. Gilda took a deep breath.

"Let's start with the war." I- "To begin with, no, neither Griffonia nor Equestria are hostile right now. In fact, we are pretty close." huh, wait what? Then why would they- "Do you know about sphere of influence?" Gilda asked, interrupting my thoughts. I, being the kid of a history teacher, knew damn well what a sphere of influence was. I'd better, or else. "Well, Equestria and Griffonia have accrued the largest sphere's of influence through diplomacy or conquest, mostly diplomacy." Makes sense, one had immortals, the other could literally attack anywhere at any time with large lion sized soldiers. "Well, that was back when we were fighting, but even now, after we've settled our differences, those spheres of influence still hold." Okay..

"Go on," Gilda blinked, as if surprised that I was following. Clearly, she had never met a incessant strategy gamer. This shit was easy.

"Okay, now, the situation is bad, better than the old cold war, and way better than the Griffonia-Equestria War of Proliferation, but our nations can't be friends. Every single country in our sphere of influence has a enemy in the other's sphere. The second one of our countries tries to tear our sphere of influence down, to pull out, the other one's sphere might attack. If they do, and it's almost happened a few times, then the attacked country's big brother, whether it be Equestria or Griffonia, would have to step in." So this was like World War One if Each alliance had a huge super power behind them.

"Why not-" I stopped my mouth before I said something stupid. Two immortals had generations of experience dealing with it, and a bilateral alliance between Griffonia and Equestria would likely only work if they managed to proliferate that message to every single country in their sphere, and if there wasn't any way unbalanced enemies, and if there weren't any extremist groups that were waiting for the big peacekeepers to step out.

"This marriage, as silly as it seems, is our country's way of slowly breaking down the hostilities, and it's been working. My great great aunt couldn't even meet her wife except on the hereditary castle on the Equestrian-Griffonian border. My great aunt couldn't visit any country in the Equestrian sphere. We use big marriages to slowly break down the culturally engrained hatreds between our spheres." That... made a lot of sense. My marriage was the big royal wedding that boosts tourism from rich countries who have enough spare time to obsess over that sort of thing. "Now, we need to talk about your... sex." he he

"I assume you mean what I have between my legs, not what I do with it?" I ask, hoping to lighten the mood. Right now, the atmosphere of doom and gloom was suffocating. Predictably, my joke fell flat.

"Yes. Now, I get that you were a guy, and... I-" Was she giving me permission to turn back? "I've seen pics of you before the transformation to a girl. It's... not too bad?" About what I expected. I couldn't attract straight girls, much less lesbians. "If you... y'know." And that was the big question wasn't it. Did I want to go back? If I said yes, then I would be hurting Gilda, but if I said no I'd ... It was actually a question? I could never go back, I couldn't get out of this marriage without causing fucking wars, and I couldn't make Gilda straight. Realistically, I would be forced to live with Gilda for the rest of my life.

"I probably won't be going back, to my home or to my old body." I gulped nervously, and Gilda wrapped a wing around me. I-I needed to tell her that I was okay, that I could do this. "Plus, It's not like I ever had a chance as a guy, this is an improvement!" Fuck, BRAIN YOU IDIOT!

Gilda looked pretty damn sad now, I had fucked up royally.