It's fresh, but the sandwich already feels soggy in my claws. "Here."
“Now feed it to me,” he commands.
I try to quell the little bubble of rage in my gut, and hold the sandwich up to his beak. He takes one slow, shaky bite, and then his good eye clouds over as he spits it back out, right onto his freshly-made sheets.
“I said no mayo!”
I can feel my incisors gritting against the inside of my beak. “Grandpa, you said you used to like---”
What’s left of his jowls are flapping. “Dammit, Gilda, the nurses told you I can’t have any mayo! I crap in a bag, you know!”
“Of course I know,” I mutter, pulling the half-pecked sandwich away from him. “I’ve been changing it.”
“You give me something like mayo, and that bag’ll get full before’n you know it!” He pumps his balled-up talon onto his mattress. “Are y’tryina kill me?”
As I toss his meal into the trash, he words come out before I could stop them: “Only since the day I was hatched.”
“Typical. Typical!”
Oh, great. He’s starting in on one of his rants again. He’s flustered and squalling now, trying to flap his defeathered wings and making the same old gestures I’ve seen since he first started trying to “educate” me.
I pick his fez off the bedside table and run it around my talons. He hasn’t been able to wear it in months; the open sores on his bald head chafed under the felt, and I try not to wince when I feel the crusty parts that are left on the rim.
“You call yourself a hen, Gilda? You’re no hen. Can’t even make a proper sandwich. Real hens know how to make their cocks a filling meal.”
So he’s back onto this again. Fantastic. “You haven’t eaten real food in months, Grandpa. I know you’d spit out anything I made you, anyway.”
“Oh? Oh? You’re talking back to your ol’ Grandpa Gruff?” I didn’t have to look back at him to know he was waving his greyed, flaky fist at me. “You want me to tan your hide, girl?”
I was about to snap something back, but when I turned to look at him, I saw something---something far too familiar. A flash of panic in his unblinded eye, and a surge going up his throat. It was almost instinct by now---I grab the kidney basin and lower it under his beak, just moments before the thick sluice of bile and food came surging back out.
“Easy,” I say in a near-whisper. “C’mon. Easy, now.”
He was always complacent after one of these attacks; he lets me wipe the strings of vomit off his beak, and I help him back onto his pillow. I excuse myself to go empty the basin, since I know a loss of control like that would at least mortify him into silence for a minute or two.
When I come back, he was pretending to preen. I don’t know why he even bothers---the chemo’s already stripped him of most of his feathers.
“Y’know, I always wanted a grandson. Not a granddaughter.”
“Yeah, Grandpa,” I grumble as I put the washed basin back beside his stash of pill bottles. “You’ve only told me about three thousand times.”
He wheezes, then coughs, and a spray of phlegm flickered from his throat. “But I suppose you’ll have to do.”
What else could I say? “Uh-huh.”
He claws at his blanket, and then, almost as if in shame, he turned his head away. So bloodless was he now that he couldn’t blush, but I could tell something was wrong.
I didn’t want to pry, but---
“...Grandpa Gruff?”
“The bag’s full again, Gilda.”
Shit.
Three surgeries ago, he’d been told they could remove the tumour. Griffons weren’t known for being good doctors, but they had looked me, and him, in the eye and made half-hearted promises. I told them I had a habit of tracking down those who broke their promises, but they had heard threats before. No matter. The two hundred and twenty-five bits I’d stashed away under my mattress helped them keep true to their word, and, to their credit, they’d flown some ponies in to check him out. But by then even unicorn magic couldn’t help him.
I’d paid. I had paid my entire life savings, but even then I knew they couldn’t do a damn thing. I’d seen it coming. I’d tended to him as his body withered away, as his abdomen swelled, as he desperately vomited up the pus and bile and shit that his body could no longer pass. Never before had I seen a body in such horrific, open revolt. Never before had I seen a grown griffon---and a male, at that!---openly sob from the utter horror and humiliation of having to puke up and taste his own bowel movements. The colostomy was one thing, and the chemo another---two mortgages on my house, a second job, and Greta’s couch as my new resting place.
Changing a bag was nothing after all that.
Pinch the tube. Take the bag. Hold your breath as you empty it. Get a new bag. Attach it. Unpinch the tube. Wash your talons. Sit back and stare out into empty space. Pretend you don’t hear the new, fresh, wet noises.
“Are you still going on with that... the little tomcolt pony friend of yours?”
I close my eyes. “No, Grandpa. For the millionth time, I haven’t dated Rainbow Dash in years.”
“Pity,” he growls under his breath. “She was good for you.”
That jerks me out of my reverie. “Huh?”
“You’re a griffon-hen, Gilda,” he wheezes, “But you would’ve made a damn fine griffon-cock.”
Again, I bumble out “Huh?!”
“You were going places. Starting your own business. Taking no shit from no one. Damn, even getting that flight school scholarship before you’d even moulted for the first time.” His good eye is closed, and, strangely, I could see the other eyeball moving around under the scarred layer. “You make a better grandson than I could ever have hoped for.”
And his talon suddenly lands on mine, seizing with more force than I thought he had.
“I never did like dykes,” my grandfather rattles out, “But you... you, Gilda, you... might’ve changed my mind.”
I blurt out the only goddamn stupid thing on my mind: “You’ve lost your shit, Grandpa.”
“Have I?” he retorts. “Or is it all in this bag?”
“You---”
“Bah!” He makes that familiar swatting motion, and I cringe away from it, even though I knew he couldn’t strike me at this range. “Look what you made me do, you silly little chick, you made me talk about my feelings.”
“Gra---”
Although his head was still loosely flopped back on his pillow, he gestures beyond my vision. “Go get me some applesauce, girl!”
“Yes” and “sir” spill out of my beak before I could stop them.
The hallway was dim when I made my way into it, but it didn’t matter---eagle eyes were made for seeing in even the worst conditions. I found the little fridge in the lobby, and after trying to make a quick decision, I ended up grabbing both the cinnamon and cranberry flavoured applesauce.
I barely ever realize that I'm in a daze. What he said...
All my life, I’d had swats on my cheek for acting like a cock instead of a hen.
All my life, I’d been scolded for being too brash. Too masculine. Too butch. I’d had a doll shoved into my talons as a little chick, and even though I knew I’d be thrashed for it, I’d ripped it apart. Grandpa wouldn’t speak to me for weeks after that.
When I told him I was never going to marry, and never going to lay eggs, he’d beaten one of my eyes black.
Sometimes, when I crouch down to pounce, the left side of my haunch still ripples a little. There are thick scars under my fur from the time I’d introduced him to my first marefriend. The ripping edges of his talons felt like fire, but they still couldn’t burn away who I was.
And now...? I can’t believe I’m blinking back tears. Now he tells me I...?
I carefully peel back the foil from one of the packets, and I rush up to the side of his bed. “Here you go, Grandpa.”
His beak is slack, hanging open. A tiny dribble of drool is hanging from it.
“C’mon, eat it,” I urge, gently pressing at his shoulder. “You said you were hungry!”
When he didn’t move, I went to grab his arm---and that’s when I felt it.
Or, rather, didn’t feel it.
“Grandpa!”
I move my talons around his wrist, trying to find it. Trying to feel what should be there against the inside of my thumb. No! My palms were suddenly at his throat, gripping against his jugular---but no---then his temples, then I had my very face against his, pressing my once-bruised cheek down onto his nostrils, but, no, no, no, NO!
The small, reeking room was ringing with screaming, and for a moment I don’t even realize that it was me. My body moved without me meaning to, and I felt blood pool out of my talons as they dug into the windowframe.
I yank it open, and then screech out into the open air, my voice a hollow, raw combination of the shriek of an eagle and the roar of a lion.
THe window had to be open. It had to. It was an old instinct.
Griffons, you see, don’t really die---they just move on. But unless you open all the windows, they can never fly free again.
Author's Note
Welp... wanted to write something from Gilda's POV, and ended up making myself cry.
My grandfather died before I was old enough to come out to him, but I'd like to believe he would've accepted me as I am. He suffered through seven terrible years of colon cancer, and many of the things in this story were based on real life.
Colon cancer is the most preventable and treatable cancers out there, by the way. They say you should begin screening at 50, but if it runs in your family, or if you are inactive, or have a poor diet, you should get tested earlier, especially if you're a guy.
