And She Took a Number 2 On Reality
I don't really have much to say about living as a hippogryph. In my head, I know I wasn't born like this. Yet, having a beak on my face, a pair of wings on my back, and hooves for hind legs feels natural. I'm still an omnivore, I still work as assistant security in the late night hours, and I still live in a small, one-bedroom house.
What is painfully obvious is the difference in my pet. She used to be a cute basset hound that whined a lot. Now, she's a unicorn with a really light, really faded purple hide. She can magically float my sandwich off my plate without making a sound. She even slices it into triangles without a knife before eating bread and all.
... and she still whines a lot.
"Vivi!" Her hooves dance in place on the tile floor. "I need to go!"
I slowly flip through a stack of papers with my talon. "Can you wait, Starlight? You just went out an hour ago."
"But I need to go now!" A whine escapes her mouth, sounding just like her puppy-self.
"If it's that severe, just open the door yourself." The two parts of my beak click against each other. "I've seen you do that, even before you had magic."
"Vivi, please..." Her tail practically wraps around her back left leg.
It's a battle I can never win. If I don't surrender now, she will keep whining for hours on end. I'll never be able to finish my work properly. I sigh as I drop down onto all fours and walk around her. I gently press the door with one talon to open it outward. Starlight rushes out in a blur without so much as a thank-you.
"Silly dog," I mutter before returning to my files.
Now, what happens next is something I can't verify. All I've got is Starlight's word, and I've learned during her days as a puppy that what she says or implies is not always true. Even if I spend almost two hours petting her, she still insists after dinner that I haven't pet her at all. She seems to admire the life of a high-maintenance dog and wants all of the attention such a lifestyle entails. But I digress.
According to Starlight, her horn lights up before she can do her business. A glass window appears between fence posts and pulls her toward it. She tries to scoot backwards on her rear, but she ends up falling over and gets pulled in faster. As she passes through the magical window, a flash of white makes her eyes hurt. But a familiar scent convinces her to open them.
"Cats!"
She practically barks as she goes running along the space. Her nose tells her it's four cats. She wonders if they'll be friendly. Maybe she'll ask them if she can play chase with their tails. There are just two problems. No matter how far she runs, the empty space doesn't stop and she still can't see the cats.
Her tail whips around wildly. She insists she is really excited and still needs to go out. "Where is Vivi? She never lets me out!"
Completely false, but I won't interrupt her story.
Something that looks like a giant, funny frisbee flies toward her. She pants at the introduction of a new toy. It must be her new toy, right? Her horn is pulling it toward her. She leaps and holds her mouth open wide in anticipation.
It nearly knocks her face off in the impact. She holds her front hooves against her muzzle in equal parts pain and confusion. Why would anyone make a frisbee out of such hard material? After shaking off the shock as much as she can, she gets a better look. The frisbee is not a frisbee, but a round table.
"Why is a table flying like a frisbee?"
Starlight hops on top of the table to get a better look at it. Many times, she has been told not to be on the table. But no people are around to tell her "no" this time. Her horn lights up again, this time shooting a light at the surface of the table.
"Yipe!"
She attempts to scoot back. However, nothing seems to hit her in the face this time. Instead, more light is being projected from the table. She describes the shape of the light to me as that picture ball on a hook that I keep, only flatter. I think that's the first time she ever describes my globe out loud to me.
Anyway, the map looks like it has all of the funny land on it, but with less pretty colors. As she tries to find our house on that tiny picture of the world, rings of light surround the edge of the table. These rings form a column and rapidly float up. She tries to grab onto the flat picture, but some invisible hand pulls her up amidst the light rings. She says she... "goes out"... on the table before disappearing through a circular window of blinding light.
I don't ask her for clarification, because she curls up her tail in shame during the re-telling of events.
She howls as lights from all around her attack her head. Words that she doesn't understand suddenly bombard her mind all at once. She sees numerous reflections of herself in a variety of outfits and styles that she would never put on. One reflection has a navy blue graduation outfit on. Another has the loincloth of early-age man. Still another, the image seems to have a pair of wings with a singular feather sticking out in the middle of each wing.
I try to pinch my beak, but then remember that it's too tough to bend like that. "Is all of this really crucial to the story?"
Eventually, the space of painful lights and images spits her out. She finds herself standing in the middle of a bedroom. It doesn't look like our bedroom, so she sniffs around. Her eyes widen as she finds the scent of cats. She scampers out of the bedroom right after hearing a front door shut. She turns around a corner and sees... four alicorns. One of them is pointing a tiny red dot of light while the other three follow it with extreme interest.
Starlight tilts her head at this. Where are the cats? The scent leads out to this big room, yet they aren't anywhere. She goes sniffing around the walls. She finds the trail going along the kitchen floor and up in the direction of the countertops. But there aren't any cats. I suppose the thought that the alicorns originally were the cats didn't cross her mind.
The poor girl feels an itch on her underbelly and she starts scooching along the counter. Her horn gets an itch too before it drags her through the wall. Something in the wind straightens out her mane as she finds herself in a different outside. Several plain houses are lined up on either side. She puts her nose to the ground, trying to find any familiar scent.
A whine escapes her mouth as she zigzags between the parallel house lines. She can't find any scents of people or toys or even a scrap of food. Her ears flop down as she walks along a path. After what feels like a full day, she nudges a door open and walks inside.
...
"Anyway, that's why you're a gryphon now."
I roll my eyes while using the paws on my hind legs to scratch each other. "You're still a silly dog, Glimmer."
"Now can you let me out, Gigi?!" Glimmer runs her hooves in place on the floor.
"I've seen you open that back door even before you grew a horn." I shake my head. "Either let yourself out or wait."
Author's Note
I guess technically, you don't need to have read the other two stories to know what's going on in this one.
...
In an unrelated note, I wonder what it would take to get people to stop wanting more stories like this.
...
(Originally, I wasn't going to upload this at all, due to how short it was. Then, I decided to see if people liked it better on the day you're apparently supposed to fool around.)
