Kestrel danced about, feathers fluffed from drying after her bath. “Do I get a story, Daddy, do I?” she begged, little blue eyes wide and pleading. Her ears were folded back in what probably wasn’t a calculated begging maneuver… yet.
Gregor smiled. “I think there is something I could think to tell, yes.”
“Momma, Momma, Daddy has a story, wanna come listen?”
“I think I can hear from here, Kestrel. Momma needs another snack,” replied the heavily gravid mare. She had seemed to stay hungry all the time with this pregnancy, but unlike when she had carried Kestrel, she craved nothing out of the ordinary. Just copious amounts of it.
Gregor smiled at his mate, then guided the happy little hippogriff back to her bedroom
"Once in the land of the frozen north, before the time of Chaos, before the Three Tribes, a great tribe of fliers once dwelt. These fliers, born of a union of mountain lion and eagle, flew high and far above their great Aeries.”
“What’s an Aerie?” Kestrel asked, looking up to her father. The little hippogriff had finished getting ready for bed and earned her bedtime story by not dragging the process out. The little bundle of gray was almost always very good about that.
Gregor smiled. “It’s a stone house on a mountaintop, where fliers live. Some even connect to caves underneath.” The charcoal-feathered Griffon set Kestrel into her little bed. At the rate she was growing, he’d have to acquire a new one soon. He would probably make it a full-size bed, for future growth, and pass this bed to Ancile and his second foal, due within the month.
“Ohhhhh.” Kestrel turned a circle, then settled down after Gregor drew the blanket back.
“From the lands of deepest rime came beings of cold, great horses of ice and frost, which drove the griffons out of their homes, southward, into the lands of ones who they once called prey in the wild times before civilization had sundered the Fangwarden’s hold upon them. The ponies were at first cautious, the tales passed from their grandfathers grandfathers time of their former hunters. In time, however, these ponies accepted their new griffon friends, and the natural thing occurred when two communities mixed; The young bore signs of their newly mixed parentage, the haunches of ponies, the forequarters of griffons."
“What’s a haunch?”
“It’s… this… right… here!” Gregor grabbed one of Kestrel’s rear legs and dug in slightly, tickling her. Kestrel laughed and wiggled, begging her father to stop, which he did as he continued the story.
“Hey now, the point is to calm her for bed, not rile her up, knucklehead…” Ancile called from the kitchen down the short hallway. It sounded like she was having another snack.
“Mne ochen' zhal.”
“What?” mother and daughter stereoed.
“Sorry,” Gregor chuckled. He had yet to break the habit of slipping into his home tongue on rare occasion. Apology administered, he continued the tale.
"Hippogriffs they were called, in the language of the time; but such unions, between one who was predator, and the other who was once prey, were doomed. Soon, a gulf grew between them. The griffons could not eat the pony food alone; the ponies couldn’t bear the griffons indulging in their carnivorous ways. And so was it that the griffons left their friends, their families, to spare them the pain of knowledge. The hippogriffs, young as they were and too small to travel, stayed with their pony mothers."
“They left their families? But why?”
“Well, ah, that’s a difficult question, milashka. The griffons had to eat meat, but the ponies only eat plants. This is why you and I eat fish. Ponies around us don’t mind it as much.”
“I really really like fish, but that’s sad…”
“That it is.” Gregor tousled Kestrel’s blue mane. “Are you ready to go on?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Kestrel nodded. Gregor nodded back, and resumed where he had left off.
"The hippogriffs, with time, grew, and had young ones of their own with the ponies of which they were part. This new breed, ponies born heirs of the sky, came to be called as the first of their kind was: Pegasus."
Kestrel blinked her wide pony eyes processing that. “Pegasuses got their wings from hippogriffs?” Ancile could be heard scoffing through a mouthful of food, but Gregor was proud of Kestrel for figuring out just what he’d told her without directly saying anything about wings.
“That’s what they say.”
“Who says?”
“Griffons, mostly.”
“Ohhhhhh.”
“And yes, Kestrel, that is how pegasi got their wings.” Gregor leaned forward and gave Kestrel a kiss on the forehead, then drew her blanket up, tucking her in. “Good night, honey.”
“Good night Daddy.” Kestrel wiggled about, getting comfortable, and snuggled up tightly with the beaten old dragon plush her Uncle Forest Feather had given her.
Gregor blew out the lamp and walked out of the bedroom, joining Ancile. She had eaten a full dinner salad for her ‘snack.’
“And that’s how pegasi got their wings, was it?” asked his mate as he strode into the kitchen.
“Da, or, at least, how we griffons think it happened.”
“And we pegasi have a completely different story… something about how we were granted wings by the Great Mare so as to escape our griffon harassers…” Ancile nudged Gregor with a wing playfully.
“Your father is a direct descendant of thousands of years of pegasus military tradition, da?”
“Yeeeees…” Ancile quirked an eyebrow at the odd statement. She had no idea what Cloudhammer had to do with this.
“And it’s that certain aggressive streak that unicorns and earth ponies tend to lack which led to the Guard being mostly pegasi, yes?”
“Yeeeees… where is this going?”
Gregor chuckled. “Where do you think they got it?” He stood proudly, striking a pose with wings held aloft, one talon clutched to his chest.
Ancile drew back and whacked him playfully with her wing. Gregor stumbled back as if wounded, clutching his ‘injured’ side.
“More proof!”
