Community Service

by scifipony

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Gilda, Adventure
Length: 5828

The magic pony map had seemed satisfied that Pinkie reminded me about friendship. I now realized it had also sent Dashie to show me the Idol of Boreas to finish the process Pinkie set in motion, namely having me save the griffons of Griffonstone.

Saving a friend, and acknowledging her, had led me to right here, right now, Twilight Sparkle’s tourist guidebook under my talons, thinking about this thing ponies called community. Griffons had lost the symbol they agreed brought them together and had allowed themselves to forget their greatness. It was the degradation I’d brought upon myself when I humiliated myself at Pinkie Pie’s party. But then I thought, what if Dashie had foreseen the true second step in saving us? She knew griffons through me. Was she right? Save the idol, save the world?

Published 2015-05-30 02:40:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-05-30 02:40:02 UTC

Community Service

Touched by pony magic, touched in the head—that’s what I was. All it took was Dashie’s friend Pinkie Pie shoving me toward Greta with a scone to give, and the memories started coming back, like a bandage ripped off a wound.

Mother had returned us to Griffonstone from her assignment in Cloudsdale with the Saddle Arabian Trade Union. She had given me a purse of bits, told me to find my fortune, and fledged me. After having raised me amongst ponies, she nevertheless left on her next assignment during night, abandoning me amongst a people who may as well have been an alien species. I clung to the thought that I had someone for which there is no exact word in Gryphone: a friend.

Rainbow Dash had fledged the year before, and I was sure that if I found her and explained what had happened, she would teach me how I might find my way. When I searched for her, I learned she had become an Element of Harmony, some sort of pony warrior, though I am still confused what that actually meant. When I found her, it did not go well. My inability to open up about my situation, and my gut reaction to vent on her friends my frustration with myself, doomed any chance I might have had to find help in my last friend, or in anything I had learned in Equestria.

Or so I thought.

Now, I remembered my time amongst the foals, my hard-won spot as a stranger in their herd. The give-and-others-give: the pony way. Not the griffon way…

Not the griffon way anymore, at least.

I lay on the ground below my bakery cart, out of the sun, my flank warmed by the oven above. Below my talons lay the craft-sewn, painstakingly penned tourist guide to Griffonstone that Dashie had left behind. The calligraphy couldn’t have been Dashie’s, no more the content could have come from that dense skull; it had unicorn scholar scent all over it. The hoof-made book mapped out a tour of a city that existed only in ruins, but no more glorious a place could have existed. I’ve seen Canterlot; I’ve seen Manehattan. Trust me on this. I gazed up toward the crown of the One Tree, at the missing branches. In my mind's eyes, I saw the fabulous palace and the mercantile markets that had fallen into the sea so long ago that nobody alive remembered them intact.

I closed my eyes and saw a horned age-yellowed cyclopean skull larger than three griffons upon one another’s back. The legend wasn’t a legend; it was history.

That meant that my city, my people, were at least as great and proud as this Twilight Sparkle-Princess wrote they were. All because of what they believed when they found the Idol of Boreus.

A legendary artifact that, incidentally, had been a mere inch out of my grasp.

At the time, it had seemed only to be more gold than a griffon could comprehend. Dashie’s life had been more important, and saving her was the right thing to do because saving a friend had led me to right here, right now, paper under my talons, thinking about this thing ponies called community. Griffons had lost the symbol that they agreed brought them together and had allowed themselves to forget their greatness. It was the same degradation I’d brought upon myself when I humiliated myself at Pinkie Pie’s party. Perhaps it was a flaw in the species.

But then I thought, what if Dashie had foreseen the true second step in saving us? She knew griffons through me. Was she right? “Save the idol, save the world?”

Claws rasped the dashboard of my wagon. I startled and cracked my head on the wood chassis as Greta called, “Fallen feather, wake it up!”

I scrambled out, fluffing the dust from my feathers, and preening a few into place.

She held out two bits, the green feathers around her eyes gleaming emerald in the broken winter sun. “Too much to ask for a hot scone?”

“For you, broke-beak, one bit.”

“Nah, two bits is right.”

“In that case, two scones and we’ll share.”

The set of her beak told me she thought me daft. Yeah, and I was. She said, “Why not?”

But while I chewed my amazingly fluffy cinnamon-flavored confection in companionable silence, I could not find it in me to break through my fear of being seen as crazy to share my revelation. Dashie had said it: "Sappy." It would have been easier to share where I stashed my emergency bits.

The next day, I pulled my wagon past the ruin where the library had collapsed under that tremendous first snow of winter. My wagon’s steel-clad wheels slid on a sluice of gravel from the fallen roof. A wall had pushed out, spilling books. A hastily lain, gray water-stained tarp had blown aside, exposing others. Some were water-warped; others open with parchment leafs fluttering in the gusty breeze. Doubtless, ponies would have rallied together to rebuild their temple of knowledge.

Griffons, not so much. At least some lesser miscreant had helped the librarian care for her broken wing.

I looked and I wondered, could I find a book that might describe the Abysmal Abyss, perhaps detail a safe path to the bottom to explore it? I stopped and unhitched.

I walked through the gravel, broken wood slats, and pulverized plaster, crunching and slipping as I went. No chance that the book I wanted would lie exposed. I collected a dozen damaged books and stuffed them under a protected overhang. Nothing had been stolen. Griffons did not steal, but they didn’t care about things not theirs, either. Was I a loser because I did care?

So I collected all the exposed books, then made a drag using the tarp and some lashing line. I loaded up wood that looked structurally sound and stacked it to one side, and afterward piled stone and other materials next to the stack. How hard could it be to rebuild the library, anyway?

Dawn the next day, I woke under my wagon aching from the fur tuft of my tail to the last pinion in my wings. The neatly piled materials cast long shadows in the faintly veiled sun. I cat-stretched and chewed yesterday’s stale stone-like scones, my breath fogging before me. I thought about the idol, glowing in a shaft of sunlight that had projected down the slot canyon. I began digging out a post hole. The sooner I found a book, the sooner I’d find the idol, the sooner I would feel the magic I had nearly touched.

As lunch time approached, I was little closer to propping up the roof. Guess I was smarter than I looked, because I had finally realized I needed tools I didn’t have.

When I stepped back, I found I had gathered quite an audience, five guys two gals, including Greta. I fluttered my wings to dislodge the dust. My eye caught one griffon dressed in a grey work tunic with a belt that sported a hammer, amongst other things. His gruff voice said, “I hear you bake better than you build, feather-less.”

I smiled. “The question I have for you, rock-eating dweeb, is whether you can build half as good as I bake? If so, perhaps we can trade.”

“Your scones can’t be that good.”

“If I bake, you’ll be working.” I had Pinkie Pie’s secret.

That deal turned into quite a lesson for everyone. Since my return from Equestria, and the hard deal that bought me my wagon, I’d spent my days, beak-down eyes-adverted, an alien amongst my own kind, a scared pony with no herd. By end of the day, thirty griffons had pitched in. I continuously mixed up batch after batch of scones. Some paid bits, some didn’t. Baking powder, flour, molasses, nuts, and charcoal for the fire showed up, even crystalized rainbow sugar, which I used by sticking snow drifts to the top with the molasses before baking. Supplies kept arriving and I kept baking, filling the air about the library with sugar-sweet baked goodness. As the sun fell, a barbecue appeared, and a pretty awesome spread of roasted and burnt delicacies left the grill and filled stomachs. A fiddler showed up. There was plenty of insults to go around and many a story told.

I didn’t tell mine. I was sure that my “feather shares-alot” nickname was an insult. That I was pony enough to be pleased proved me crazy.

But they resurrected my library. (Yeah, mine. Insane, right?)

The first customer of the day woke me while just a glimmer of orange showed to the east; it was an hour before sunrise below an otherwise midnight blue star-spangled sky. The last customer left me three frantic hours of baking later. I finally got to explore the building in the daylight. While structurally intact, busted wood furniture and overturned bookshelves filled the interior, together with broken plaster, and dirt and leaves blown in during the freaky winter storm that had dashed the building to pieces to start with. An unglazed under-eves clearstory about three talon-widths in height made for a wane, drafty light. The few windows were boarded up. I left the door open, allowing barely warm air to waft in; I coughed at some of the lofted dust.

A library needed a librarian. Guess-who waved her talon.

Sometime after lunch, Greta stuck her emerald feathers through the door. Between us two, we righted all the bookcases and got them properly placed. She turned out to be tinker, someone who fixed small things and sewed clothing. Within that hour, a number of the odd-jobbers showed up; her associates who often worked the morning with any who would pay. Without a real plasterer, the library would never look right, but brooms and brawn went a long way to cleaning floors and restoring a few library tables so we could begin to sort books.

Greta asked in her crackly voice, “You looking for some baking books? Or are you a feather-brained altruist,” the last stated, not asked, an insult looking for a roost.

“I’m looking for a book about the Abysmal Abyss,” I said, offhandedly, pushing a centuries old green bound book with yellow-brown pages into the lost pile. Wet, then dried, the pages had merged into a sad congealed mass.

She looked at me, green eyes studying me as I took a group of discolored brown chap books and stacked them in the good pile, despite ripped spines. She said, “You’re a treasure hunter?” It was such a good insult, it didn’t require enhancement.

I bit off my instant retort, took a few deep breaths and stacked two more volumes before saying, “I am a baker. But I would like to start to restore a few things.”

“Then why a book about the abyss?”

I flew to my wagon and returned with Twilight’s purple sewn-together pages. I put it down front cover down, to hide the juvenile sketch on the front. “This is why.” I continued to sort.

Greta read some pages, leafing through the rest. “This city doesn’t exist. A feather-brained fantasy overlay of Griffonstone.”

“It existed.”

“Ha. You’re a comedian, too?”

“Last week, I rescued a–” I was going to say friend “–pony who fell in.” I suddenly realized the jobbers had also stopped to listen. “Two of them, actually.”

A griffon with crimson head feathers said, “Gary the Tunneler said a blue pastel pegasus paid him to go there, but ran out of bits. It fell in?”

I shook my head. “She rappelled down, but the rope broke.”

Greta asked, “So, you rescued it?”

Another: “You wanting to start a rescue business? Not many griffons stupid enough to fall into the Abysmal Abyss.”

I looked around. Over a dozen pair of avian non-pony eyes locked on me. I remembered when Pinkie Pie paused for emphasis, before she declared she wanted to sing. I did the same. One beat, two, three. “I want to restore some things.”

“You said that,” a bluish griffon in the back remarked.

“I want to restore us, I want to restore Griffonstone.”

“One building at a time?” Some of the jobbers laughed, but went silent when I opened my beak, though one stifled a cough.

“I found the Idol of Boreas.”

That brought a cacophony of laughter. I shouted over them, loud enough to ruffle feathers, “I could almost touch it. It’s real.”

They quieted as I charged on. “A nutso purple pony scholar wrote about it in this book.” I thumped the guidebook with a fist. “And mapped the bridge destroyed when the giant monster Arimaspi attacked King Guto. The blue one figured it out from Grampa Gruff’s story. She couldn’t find the idol because the little slip of the thing got blown around like a dandelion head, but I found the idol when I climbed down. It’s a gold stylized talon as bright as the sun, with a glowing red opal globe in it’s clutch. The pony found the right place.”

“But you didn’t get it?”

“The pink one dove after the blue, causing a rock slide. The ledge broke and the idol fell, and it kept falling, probably to the bottom.”

“Treasure hunter,” someone said, but with a clear sense of awe.

“No, I want to restore things. I’ve seen the legend is true. The ponies recorded it all; the greatness we lost–no, no, what griffon-kind chose to forget. If I can climb to the bottom, I can search for it. If I bring it up, we’ll all remember. I’m sure there’s magic in it.”

And that, and a little more annoyance, got me to this point, at the edge of a slot canyon so deep that perpetual darkness shrouded its depths. While it took the broke-wing librarian to sift out the right book, it turned out to be ruined and written by the old bird everyone knew as Grampa Gruff, who had no time for anybody until the crew rebuilt the collapsed second floor on his roost. Then he wouldn’t shut up, even when the carpenter threatened to barbecue him.

The next day, today, had dawned warm, melting the last of the snow. Two hours later, Garson the crimson-feathered pile-driver griffon said, “Take this,” and handed me a piton hammer he had wrapped with paraffin-soaked muslin strips.

“Wings up,” Gary the tunneler commanded, snicked on a hip belt, and handed me stuff. “Clip the canteen there.” Snick. “The magnetized pitons there.” Click, click, click. “Hold this.” He handed me a talon shovel, a pry bar, chisel, and other tools on loops of light-weight rope and clipped them to my waist. He pulled to checked the clips and holsters held. He tied on Garson’s hammer last. A mangy silver-feathered news griffon handed me a camera on a neck strap. Hundreds had shown up, complete with souvenir sellers and food carts (mine excepted), to see the Griffonstone’s first 3-star scone baker get herself killed. Theatre verité. I felt every eye on me.

Gary finished eying my kit by saying, “Keep everything clipped. If you insist on killing yourself, don’t break loose or break anything thing. We might at least then retrieve the stuff.”

“Thanks.”

Strange luck that Gruff should explain that when the snow melt reached the bottom, the slot canyon floor would fill and wash clear the season’s detritus, which thanks to my “fumbling ineptitude” had dropped the idol into what would become the main flow. Somebody had to go now. By the afternoon, the artifact would wash out to never-found land. Unfortunately, for lack of money up until this week, I had had to harvest the nuts and berries I baked into my sorry scones. That meant flying with ropes, then rappelling down a cliff and into the trees and shrubs that grew on the cliffs below the One Tree. You physically can’t fly and berry pick; trust me on that. That qualified me for this, pretty much since I had been able to successfully rescue Dashie and Daft Pink and I had become an “idealist” (no insult-enhancement required).

Garson used his sledgehammer to hammer down two ropes and a half-dozen jobbers wound loops, ready to play out. I walked to the precipice. Dashie’s choice had been a constriction in the leagues-long geological fault that was barely five yards across. Trees hid behind me what on the other side, across the rift, were soft hillocks in roughly rectangular arrangements: ancient bridge-supports buried by time. Near gale wind blew upward. I walked up to it, checked the ropes, lowered my goggles, and gazed into the abyss, my crest feathers bent fully backwards by the wind. The sun penetrated down to the first ledge, no more. Slightly opening my wings immediately halved my weight.

When I looked over my shoulders, I got a half-hearted cheer. Greta stood behind me and said, “I will miss your scones.”

Pretty good coming from a griffon. About 20% pony.

I gave a salute, clipped on to the rope, and fluttered my wings. That got me to hanging on the edge. I lowered myself down. The pulley thingy (don’t expect me to learn the terms) whizzed loudly, and despite being blown like a tattering flag, it got me gently to the first ledge and twilight darkness. I checked the ropes, then thunked the headlamp with a talon. The fireflies buzzed awake. A gust of wind blew me left, but I was ready. As I lowered into the gathering dark, my wane light became correspondingly brighter. All around me, the whistling wind could not cover the constant trickle and drip of water, which heralded a growing noisome scent of blue green algae that fouled standing water. My paws scrabbled for purchase on jutting outcroppings until I found a ledge. I looked down and could not see the next one.

Black below; black with a vanishing rope above.

When I had dove after Dashie, with a lot less equipment than this, my only thought had been how pissed I was. I wouldn’t admit it to Dashie now, but this constriction of my world scared me. Almost enough to weather the embarrassment of returning to the surface.

But I remembered the brilliance of the idol despite the century-plus that had passed since its loss. No doubt it was gold. Its shine resembled the shine I had seen grow in the griffons that heard my story. If finding this thing could change everything… What worth was a scone baker next this singular chance?

Pinkie would remind me that I made good scones.

“I can do this,” I said, swallowed hard, and pushed off.

The pulleys buzzed and buzzed. My talons began to cramp, holding the brake so long. My ears popped, but at least the wind died down to a mere breeze. Were the walls not closing in to less than my wingspan, I could have flown.

Something else did, fluttering by my face close enough to startle. I bounced into the wall and almost didn’t see the boulders appear below me. I hit bottom with stunning force. Were it not for the helmet, I might have knocked myself out. I’d have bruises on my head, and on my hips from the hammer.

And I lay in an inch of cold water. That got me up, despite feeling wobbly. Boulders of red layered gold and brown sandstone, ranging from the size of an icebox down to a hat box, littered a meandering path. Nothing much smaller lay below my paws. Starting from about twice my height on down, the walls looked like carved wood that had been sanded meticulously into undulating waves parallel to the path. Above that, it roughened where rock had cracked and broken. Yearly flows had carved the abyss over countless millennia.

Something skittered behind me in the dark. As I looked, I saw bits of plants, moss, and trash from the city. Rats. I heard others ahead, looked and shuddered though with beak or claw, I could surely protect myself. I checked my clips, and tugged on the rope to check it was taut and fully set. A faint jerk probably meant the crew knew I was still alive.

I unclipped, looking at the pulley thingy. It had a ratchet to help me climb my way up; it would still be a hard task. The idol was the size of my head. Made of gold, it would be incredibly heavy.

“Find it, first,” I said. My voice didn’t echo, but the dripping water did sound louder.

I hoped that a falling heavy object wouldn’t have fallen too far afield. Even so, I unlooped a length of thin rope, tied it to the main rope as I had been instructed to assure I could find the my way back if my light failed, and walked the ten yards it represented. I found nothing, though I managed to slip by resting a talon on the wet wall, banging an elbow and almost breaking a wing.

The accumulating water seemed to be rising in depth. Nearly two inches now, and it was icy.

I splashed back to the climbing rope. The news griffon had insisted on me taking pictures, so I took a minute to put the camera on a rock facing the rope, to press the ten-second button, and step back in time to put my talons on the rope and look heroic.

It flashed.

I screamed, absolutely blinded. Blue and purple phosphenes swooped about me like hyperactive ghosts and I cursed every foul word that came to mind, then “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

As I ran out of steam, the darkness closed in further and the trickle of water seemed louder and more demanding. I reached for a small tar-head torch and patted the tin matchbox, but before I could begin to fumble out a match, I started to see the wall. The torch would be good for a few minutes, not longer, and I would need it if the idol wasn’t on the path, but wedged above me.

I checked the rope, did another signal pull, and strode carefully in what was likely (or at least better be), the right position. Soon I could make out the walls clearly enough, despite the now faded green and orange phosphenes still plaguing me.

Rats scuttled somewhere above. At ten yards, I tied a second line, even though I was certain I couldn’t get lost; Gary had insisted. I also noticed the water had risen to at least three inches and I shivered from the cold.

The breeze picked up.

At twenty yards, I knew I had passed under the bridge site. I scanned the rock above, looking for places for fallen objects to wedge, then turned a corner.

And there it was, almost submerged in the stream. The fall had dented it, bent over the upward tines, and caved in part of the base. Still, it could not be mistaken for anything but the Idol of Boreas. I slung up the camera, shut my eyes, and clicked.

As I picked up the ice cold metal artifact, I realized three things. First, it was much lighter than I expected. Second, it was fully submerged. Third, the breeze had picked up dramatically.

I noticed a fourth: the stream was moving rapidly.

As I splashed back to the climbing rope, a fifth thing made itself known: a rumbling sound, ahead of me, growing louder. Rats were survivors. They had climbed up for safety. Far smarter than me.

I lifted the flap of my messenger bag, dropped the idol inside, and latched it. As I ran, slipping, I clipped some extra clips; after this trouble, I’d die first before losing the thing.

I ripped the light line free from the climbing rope, clipped on to it, and gave three hard tugs. The rumble became a roar as I tried ratcheting, but it wasn’t fast enough. I wrapped the rope around my arm and middle, and pulled myself up. The ratchet banged against my side as I pulled with all my strength, digging my extended claws into whatever purchase I could get.

As bad as the wind and approaching watery roar sounded, the thunderous clacking of boulders bouncing against rock walls and each other like baby blocks for leviathans made me scream in instinctive terror. A wave of water crashed just below me, buffeting me like a rag doll, spraying and drenching me to the skin despite the oil in my feathers. Now I truly shook. But for difference in seconds, I might have washed out to never-found land. Heart racing, gasping from the cold, I nevertheless wrapped the rope even firmer around my arms, though my shoulders burned with exhaustion.

To add insult to injury, the camera flashed again, catching my hind-quarters and maybe the raging torrent below. Blinded once again, I feared I might truly die here.

Then the rope jerked. It bounced me against the wall and dragged me upward. Eventually, I found enough purchase to get myself properly placed and to untangle the rope around me. From then on, it was just hanging on and suffering accumulating bruises as I hit ledges and eventually got blown by the increasing wind.

I was half senseless, though relatively dry, by the time talons closed around my arms and deposited back over the edge on gravel and winter-browned turf. I think the collected griffons were as stunned to see my bedraggled self safe as I was. Other than helping me over the edge, nobody touched me. After a minute, I levered myself up on my haunches to look at the softly murmuring crowd. Greta’s green feathers flashed in the sun as her scarf and cape fluttered behind her. She was closest. The rope crew had clearly retreated. Everybody else just stood there, near the tree line.

I opened my mouth, but it was so dry from screaming, that I only croaked. I flipped open my canteen and drank. They watched me, barely milling around. I caught the smell of barbecue and unwashed griffon. On second thought, that was probably wet griffon smell: me.

I dropped the canteen with a clank and said, “What’cha looking at, losers?”

A laugh started at one end, but it moved wave-like through the audience until I started laughing, too. When I reached to my messenger bag, the laughing stopped completely but for someone hacking and coughing in the back.

I placed the mud spattered Idol of Boreas on the ground before me, at which point it promptly fell over, rolling until the red opal in the center pointed upward. The globe was clearly chipped.

None other than Grampa Gruff piped up from the back. “Not it!”

Others chimed in. “It’s dented.” “Broken.” “A piece of tin!”

Though it was obviously in a disreputable state, it was clearly gold. Considering it’s weight, probably hammered gold-clad pot metal, but gold nonetheless. “It’s definitely gold,” I said. A scudding cloud flashed light across it, presenting a unmistakable show.

“Gold, but still fake,” Grampa Gruff said, and fluttered crookedly over to land near the artifact. “Dented. Not pure gold, probably thin plate over base metal. The Kings of Griffonstone never built anything but from pure gold!”

Like he knew. The last king had died before his grandfather fledged. Were he actually my blood relative, I’d have disowned him… or something.

“The book Bygone Griffons of Greatness states that the idol was found, not made.”

“A pony book, bah!” He pointed his beak upward, turning his blind eye dismissively toward me.

“I found it in the right place.” My growing rage made me tremble.

“When all the griffons who searched a century for it–” namely, him, “–never found it? How strange is that?”

“Fake!” someone shouted. Others joined in, grumbling. Greta and some of the jobbers who’d had supported me looked nervous, and sad. Some griffons had started to walk away. A few took flight.

I yelled, “It is not fake!”, causing Grampa Gruff to stumble; most everyone stared.

Somebody sneered, “Counterfeit at the very least.”

At that, I simply roared. And roared, and roared… Stones and sticks flew as every ounce of fury drained from the depths of my heart, through my lungs, and out my burning raw throat. And with it tears, and soon only tears.

My voice echoed back at me, full of hurt.

The crowds, shocked, gave me their attention when I said, “Perhaps we griffons deserve to be the poor, discontented, ill-mannered, miserable people we have allowed ourself to become. Me, you, everyone. This beautiful thing—" I choked up "—was made of the dust of golden sunsets blown across the mountains by the northern winds. If you cannot—can not believe in this, what could possibly make you losers believe in yourselves?”

I kicked the artifact with my talon, which only earned me more bruises. But the pain in my knuckles reminded me of when I first saw the idol, holding Dashie and Pinkie over the abyss, but able to almost reach it, too. Behind me lay…

“I will get you proof.” I turned and roared again, “A ton of proof!”

I grabbed the ropes still clipped to my waist. I played out enough to get me to the proper ledge and then doubled the length. I detached the ratchet and looped and lashed the remaining rope to the posts Garson had driven into the dirt. I told the rope crew, “When I call up, be prepared to haul a large weight back.”

And with that, despite aches and shooting pains in my thigh and legs, I backed over the edge of the abyss and rappelled down. Up here was sufficient light amongst the shadows. Were it not that I already knew what I was looking for, I would have missed it in its hidden alcove. I swung to my right a few meters and lowered myself onto the top ledge, then over, nearly impaling a paw on the spiral right horn of the gigantic cyclopean skull.

The distant ancestors of the rats down below had probably stripped the flesh days after the monster fell to his death. Incisor chiseling carved swirly patterns on the dirty yellow surface. But for a femur, weather and years of wind blown sand had scattered everything else. Judging from the horns, it had probably been some sort of goat-minotaur giant. In height, from chin to the tip of its horns, it exceeded my wing span; thumping proved it solid bone. No wonder King Guto couldn’t defeat it except to destroy the bridge beneath it.

I took the climbing rope and lashed it to the skull, horns, and various boney protuberances. When I couldn’t rock it, it noticed the bottom had mineralized and stuck to the rock. For the next hour, I hammered, chiseled, and pried, freeing bone from the rock face at the expense of pounds of bone, but marring the gigantic mass little.

Eventually, I rocked it loose. Wiping away muddy perspiration, I removed the camera from my neck, carefully placed it, and pressed the ten-second button. I busted out a victory sign. The flash was less blinding.

Replacing the camera around my neck, I sat on my haunches and roared upward, “Haul it up, slowly.”

A minute later, it budged. A few minutes later, perhaps with the addition of another dozen griffons, it began to rise. The rope groaned alarmingly, and scraped against the rock, but didn’t fray. I pushed and rotated the skull until it rolled up and out of the alcove against the relatively clear wall.

As it jerked upward, I took another photo, then sat, alone and abandoned. Like Dashie had when her rope had broken. Would my fellow citizens send a rope down for me?

The pony magic map had sent Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash to Griffonstone to find a solution for a friendship problem. Pinkie had been sure that it had sent them to remind me about friendship and a sense of community that I had discovered growing up in Cloudsdale. Rainbow Dash had been convinced that the map had wanted her to retrieve the Idol of Boreas, to restore the magic that had given griffon-kind pride in themselves, and to restore our sense of community. And she had been right, too. The map had seen to it that Dashie gave me enough information to finish the process Pinkie Pie had set in motion.

If it could happen, it would. I had done all I could, now.

And if this failed, I would return to Cloudsdale… Assuming someone sent down a rope.

A minute later, rope plopped against the top of the alcove, providing enough warning that I dodged aside. My heart beat faster. Feeling weak with relief, I gathered the rope and prepared to climb. I didn’t have to, though. After I got to the top of the alcove, I was hoisted the rest of the way.

My first clue that something had changed were the griffons that wheeled and crisscrossed the abyss at sufficient altitude as to not lose lift or control. Then at the edge, I looked out to more griffons than I thought existed in the entire city, young and old, on both sides of the abyss. Easily a third of those gathered soared through the sky. I flared my wings in surprise.

They roared as one, “Gilda!”

I saw nothing more because my eyes flooded with hot tears. Though I said it loudly, my words were drowned out by a nation of chanting griffon voices. I said, “After all this annoyance, they should pony-well make me a freaking princess!”

Author's Note

Gilda's voice was a challenge, but after forcing myself to write a story treatment with only the glimmer of an idea, Gilda spoke up and told me what to write. She is so... not diplomatic. When she realized that Rainbow Dash was as right about what the Cutie Map wanted as was Pinkie Pie, the story was a go.

For those who noticed, I apologize: This is the third story in which I blamed Rainbow Dash, deservedly, for a weird winter storm.

As for the sins of the writer, these are what I recognize:
•This story went too long; I rarely practiced concision or ellipsis.
•I am certain I got the details about repelling down a cliff wrong (edit: now rappelling).
•Too much telling and not enough showing.
•There are few deadline dash typos I undoubtedly missed.

Critique requested, beyond what I said above. If something annoyed you, I would find it most useful if you briefly tell me what you think I was saying so I can figure out how I messed up. Thanks!

P.S. Yes, this is an immediate follow-on to the events S5E8, fixing the Dashie-bashing I feel the episode afflicted upon her. I wrote what I felt about the episode in my blog, Marathoning Pony.