It was a dark and stormy night
You aren't sure how much more obnoxious this night can get.
Under most circumstances, namely because you'd like to think you have your wits about you, you make a point of checking what the weather is going to be like - it's not like wings work well when bogged down with rain, or that flight is something easily accomplished when any sort of windstorm is scheduled. You can't imagine anything with the ability to fly enjoys poor weather. Typically, one enjoys exercising this rather helpful ability, most things with the capacity to do so spending a great deal of their time in the air, enjoying the feeling of the wind rushing past them, and the sight of how everything looks from so far above. It's something you take great pride in, being able to climb to such heights with a few, powerful beats of your large wings, your hind-legs sprawled out behind you with talons outstretched, reaching out towards your next destination, your next goal.
The only time you didn't really appreciate this particular ability was when your line of work called for you to make a delivery under less than ideal conditions. Like, for example, some pompous old crone wants you to bring something to such-and-such nephew several towns away, in pouring rain, as fast as possible. Or perhaps someone hired you to bring one of the many technicolor residents something they were far too lazy to deliver themselves, but still wanted the job down despite, say, snow that was quickly piling up into mounds the height of a healthy young griffon. Proper mail services often had policies in place to protect their workers from having to work in such poor conditions, often giving the employees time off until things subsided. As such, it was no surprise that people looked to the respective weather teams of each little populace.
Which, as a griffon messenger, you could never understand. Back home, the idea of controlling the weather at all seemed frivolous; there were always too many other things to do of far greater importance. Like, for example, if you were someone in your position (which is exactly who you are) you would be busy with any number of deliveries. There had been a good life in staying behind and running messages back and forth, but a rather dull one. Unlike your siblings, you had wanted to see what else was out there in the world. Being confined to the same place, with familiar, dull architecture and a generally boisterous populace had seemed more like an end to your life than the beginning of your independence. And so, bidding farewell to your family, you used the funds you had slowly accrued in previous years to travel to Equestria. It hadn't been a very long trip, but it certainly been something that sticks out very clearly in your mind. A great deal of questions that had been asked about you, filling out forms, answering more questions, getting a feel for the written language of the region, and finally, filling out more forms.
If you knew that all that trouble would have led to where you are now, you might have thought twice about your decision to come to Equestria. It often led to you being frustrated with how the weather teams were supposed to make the weather miserable from time to time, as if that really had a place when there were numerous individuals just trying to get from point A to point B without being bogged down by water. Much like your current situation. You knew it was late based on how long you had been flying to this city on the side of the mountain, but the clouds above your head had you convinced that you wouldn't be able to tell where anything was in broad daylight. And from each and every one of the grey, deceptively fluffy masses, poured a veritable torrent of water that was currently beating down against you, your goggles and windbreaker, and your carrying bag, which you could only hope hadn't been soaked through. It was designed to resist the elements, and many claims had been made by the shopkeeper that it was absolutely waterproof when closed properly, but you were beginning to have your doubts that anything could hold out against this.
Speaking of, you were a little shocked that you hadn't already been forced to land. Lifting a dull yellow digit in front of your face, and carefully nudging the lens of your goggles with the black claw attached to the end of it, you clear some of the rain away long enough to see that you're most definitely now in Canterlot, the destination for the package carefully tucked away in your sack. After a few moments spent in remembering your directions, you float a little ungracefully down towards one of the more high-end wards of the city. It wasn't such that it clutched you deep in the urges to forcefully eject all things prude from the vicinity, but it was enough that you could tell the ponies living here wouldn't take too kindly to the sight of a ragged looking griffon standing on their front porch. Or anyone's porch, for that matter. In your current state, you looked more like a beggar than a messenger, the sack currently slung around your shoulder easily able to pass as a rucksack containing all of your belongings.
Honestly, despite taking some amount of pride in your work, particularly for the fact that you were willing to tough it out through weather like this (for the promise of Bits, of course) in order to get something delivered, you wouldn't be able to blame someone if they mistook you for someone unsavoury. You normally took pretty good care of yourself, always making sure that you had preened yourself before leaving your quaint little home, smoothing out the dark brown feathers covering your body and making sure the white tuft that decorated your head and neck hadn't started sticking up in odd places. Often making sure that none of your careful work into maintaining your flight-feathers had come undone in any of the traveling you did. Now, though, you were a sopping wet mess that looked to be a pretty poor excuse for a griffon. More like a soaked collection of feathers that were vaguely attached to each other, the only things that really defined what you were at this point being the rather prominent beak jutting out from the rest of your face, and the somewhat unsightly claws you sported on four of your six ends.
Spotting the house that had been described by your most recent employer, you embark on a less than graceful descent onto the cobbles that made up the carefully constructed road of the city. Blessing the overhang over this unknown individual's porch, to clamber your way onto the steps and take just a moment to shake some of the water off of your body. The result is mainly that you manage to shower your immediate surroundings in rainwater, the secondary reaction being that you managed to fluff all of your feathers up in the process of this rather poorly planned action. Unfortunately, this did little to help your wings, which are still completely waterlogged beyond immediate means of solving this problem. You note this with a frown, an expression that looks more than a little ridiculous given your current appearance, and place a few heavy knocks on the solid wood door in front of you, turning and reaching into your sack for the (hopefully) dry package.
Had you been facing the right away at the time, you might have seen the door swing inwards, a grey mare with startlingly amethyst eyes standing in its place.
