“Rainbow Dash, Trixie requires your knowledge!” shouted Trixie up to a cloud above the Ponyville’s market. Other ponies walking around gave her weird looks, but mostly ignored her. “Trixie with her great and powerful eyes can see your rainbow tail!”
The face of a grumpy, sleepy rainbow pony peered over the side of the cloud and glared down at Trixie.
“If you won’t come down then Trixie will go up there!” Rainbow continued staring down at her, now with a raised eyebrow. Time ticked by in this impromptu staring contest. “Okay, so Trixie can’t go up there, but Trixie can keep bugging you until you talk to her!”
Rainbow stood on the cloud, stretching out her wings and legs in a manner vaguely like a cat. A loud yawn followed suit. One more yell for her came up from Trixie, with Rainbow finally responding. “I’m coming, alright. Don’t get your horn all in a knot.”
With natural grace she launched herself off of the cloud and glided in a spiral pattern down to the earth below. “Shouldn’t you be off bothering Starlight?”
Trixie gasped. “Trixie is never a bother to her great friend, Starlight Glimmer. In fact Trixie has a very important student councilor job to do. Now then, Trixie has heard that you know a lot about griffons and Griffonstone.”
Rainbow shrugged. “More than most ponies, I guess. I grew up with a griffon friend. But if you really want to know this stuff maybe you could talk to Gallus. You know, the griffon? The griffon that’s from Griffonstone?”
“Trixie can’t!”
“Why?!”
“Because Trixie is trying to find a way to help him!”
Rainbow tilted her head to the side, somewhat intrigued. “Okay, you have my attention. How exactly are you trying to help Gallus, and why do you need to know about Griffonstone?”
Trixie smirked, looking rather proud. “Oh, so now you’re willing to listen to the Great-”
“Tell me or I’m going to fly off.”
The pride deflated as Trixie grunts. Her ears lowered. “Ugh, fine. Trixie needs to know if you have friends in Griffonstone. Maybe someone that would take in an orphan. That old bird brain seems awful.”
Rainbow blinked, and then blinked again. “Old bird brain? Oh dear Celestia, it’s not Grandpa Gruff is it?! I had to listen to Gilda complain about him for years! I don’t even know how that old geezer is still alive.”
“Trixie… wondered the same thing when she saw him. But yes, and Trixie could see how unhappy Gallus was when he was around.”
“Then why don’t you try to take him in?”
“Ahem, well...” Trixie looked away as her hoof knocked around some small clumps of dirt. “Trixie lives in a trailer.” She quickly turned back to Rainbow’s eyes. “Of her own accord! It’s a very nice trailer that lets Trixie puts on shows all over Equestria! It’s just, you know… kind of a tight fit. Not that Trixie’s trailer isn’t gre-mmph mmph mmph!” Rainbow’s hoof muffled the rest of that explaination.
“Okay, I get it. I won’t badmouth your trailer. Let’s just go talk to Gilda.” Rainbow knelt down, and opened her wings. “Get on.”
A crimson red crawled its way over Trixie’s normally azure face. “You want Trixie to do what?!”
“Listen, you have three options.” She held up a single feather. “Wait until next month for the train from Griffonston to come by Ponyville, and even after getting on it’s a pretty long ride. Also, you’d be paying for that ride, Ms. Trailer.” A second feather popped up. “Walk. This is an option only if you’re okay with probably dying. The only land route to their continent on a bridge in the far north, passing through the frozen north or a small wasteland that your friend once ruled. Lots of dangerous things, and it would take forever. Or three,” she raised a third feather, “I fly us there in like a day and a half.”
“Um, a boat isn’t an option?”
“Fine, option four, you personally pay for a boat to take you there and dump you off on the shoreline. Griffonstone doesn’t have ports, and that’s gonna be an expensive trip. So yeah, get on.”
“V-Very well, but don’t think for a moment this means anything!” She gingerly stepped over Rainbow Dash, allowing her weight to press onto Rainbow’s strong back.
“And what the hay would it mean? I’ve flown ponies around a lot. You really need to rela-please tell me you didn’t just do that.” A rope guided by Trixie’s magic tied itself around Trixie and Rainbow Dash.
“Trixie doesn’t want to die!”
“You’ve been shot out of a cannon before!”
“Yeah, one that was like twenty hooves from its target. Trixie hasn’t been thousands of hooves in the sky before!”
Rainbow Dash looked ahead with a crap-I-put-up-with expression. “Are you ready now?”
“Trixie thinks she is re-aaaaaaaah!” A gust of wind blew all around their old spot as Rainbow launched them into the sky. They were specks on the horizon.
***
The next week Gallus was sitting in one of the class rooms tapping on his desk. The final bell of the day chimed roughly an hour ago, but Trixie asked him to wait for her here.
Soon enough the door opened, and in walked Trixie followed by a female griffon he had never seen before. “Trixie, through her great and powerful connections, has come to your rescue, Gallus.”
The adult griffon rolled her eyes. “You knew Rainbow. That’s it.”
“All of Trixie’s connections are great and powerful because they are connected to Trixie!” She smirked, seemingly proud of her response. “Now then, Gallus, Starlight tells Trixie that you haven’t done well in history class, especially in the history of Griffonstone. So Trixie has gotten you a tutor! This is Gilda! You two can spend some time going over some of the basics.”
“Wait…” An edge of annoyance came in Gallus’ voice. “Did you really make me wait just so I could do extra studying?”
“You can thank Trixie later.” A sudden spray smoke filled the room, followed by the sound of someone closing the door on their way out.
“What is wrong with her?!” asked Gilda. She flapped her wings pushing the smoke towards the windows.
“She’s uh not so bad. Most of the time. Well, at least some of the time.”
Gilda coughed a few more times as she finished pushing the smoke out of the room. “Yeah, I heard that she helped you out a bit with Grandpa Gruff.” She shut the window and turned towards Gallus. “As I got older I learned there was a bit more to him than seems, but growing up there sucks, big time.”
Now this got Gallus’ attention. His eyes perked up, and he pointed at Gilda. “You also grew up there?”
Gilda nodded. “And he looked just as ancient then as he does now.” Both griffons chuckled. “So, I hear you could use some help with the history of our kingdom.”
Gallus slunk back into his chair. “Oh, because there’s going to be important. I doubt Griffonstone even lasts another generation.”
“Yeah yeah, enough with the doom and gloom. It… it, uh...” Gilda motioned in the air with her talons trying to draw the right words to her mind. “Okay, yeah, it sucks. But it isn’t just gonna vanish overnight. There’s still a lot of us there.”
Gallus leaned his chair back, looking in the other direction. “Maybe. Look, I just don’t see the point. Griffonstone is crumbling so why bother to learn its history?”
“I used to think the same thing whenever Gruff went on one of his tirades about the old king.” Gilda sat on the desk next to his. “When I was fledgeling, even younger than you, I went to a pegasus flight school. Best friend I ever had was a pegasus. I would have given anything at that time to be able to just go home with her during the breaks rather than going back to Griffonstone.”
“I hear that.”
“Heh. But then not that long ago something changed. Well, it wasn’t sudden, but I won’t bore you with the whole story. The important part was I decided to actually start talking to other griffons living there. Opened a business, and really started trying to make things better. Obviously it isn’t going to fix things over night.”
“But… you think it could eventually?” asked Gallus.
“Definitely not by myself. But, well, I’m stubborn enough to keep hitting that wall until the wall gives up. Look, I can’t give you an answer on if Griffonstone’s history is actually important for everyone to learn or not. But I can tell you why it became important to me. Our ancestors built up Griffonstone from nothing with their own blood, sweat, and tears. It became a special place to be. It became one of the crown cities of the world. And then, well, you know how it ended. The thing is, if they did it then we can too. We can learn what they did right, and what they did wrong. With our own talons we can rebuild Griffonstone into the world wonder it used to be, or into something even greater.”
“Honestly, I think the chances are slim to none. But, uh...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s kinda cool to know at least some of us haven’t given up.”
The door to the room burst open with Trixie and Rainbow coming through. “So, we got tired of waiting. Have you asked him yet?” asked Trixie.
Gilda let out a snort as she raised her wings. “No, you feather brain, I haven’t. Why didn’t you two just wait?”
“This is Trixie’s first big case as the counselor to students! She needed to know if it went well!”
“And I, uh… just wanted to make sure she didn’t mess anything up?” she said with a large, though obviously fake, smile.
“Wait, what’s going on here?” Gallus looked back and forth between the ponies and older griffon. “Ask him what? You’re not gonna try to quiz me on this stuff, are you?”
“No! Why would I… ugh.” Gilda pinched the bridge of her beak. “Okay, so here’s the real thing going on. They wanted to give us a chance to talk for a bit before I, uh, asked something really important.”
After a moment of heavy silence. “Uh, which is?” asked Gallus.
“You still need a proper guardian, right? Something that that old hawk can’t give you. Well, I have an extra room at my place, and uh, wouldn’t mind helping you with the school stuff, you know. I mean, if you want to get out of there, that is.” Gilda had to force herself to keep looking at him. A big part of her wanted to turn away, still not quite used to being this open with others.
“So… you want to adopt me and, what, be like my mom?”
“Mom?!” Gilda leaned back, her wings standing on end. “Do I look old enough to be a mom to a teenager?!” Trixie and Rainbow laughed off to the side. “Shut it, you two. And, well, you can think of me more like a big sister. A cool big sister.”
“Um, well...” Gallus retreated into his seat, avoiding eye contact with the three adults now staring at him, waiting for his answer. “I mean, it can’t be worse than being with that bag of bones, Grandpa Gruff. Okay, I’ll give it a try.”
“Awesome!” responded Gilda. “Now then, we… we need to get a lot of things for your new room. Probably starting with a bed.”
“You didn’t even have anything set up for this?!” Gallus asked, his mouth hanging out in surprise.
“Hey, don’t give me that look. The idea was kinda last minute with these two dropping in to ask me.” Gilda pointed at Rainbow and Trixie.
“Trixie really thinks you needed someone better,” said Trixie.
“No one deserves to get stuck with that old guy,” added Rainbow.
“Tell you what, you can gather up your friends and we can all go work on getting stuff for your room, alright?” asked Gilda. “They can even come over and help you set up your room if you’d like that.”
“Uh, yeah. I’m just gonna go catch up to them, and uh, do some thinking. I’ll be back later, I promise.” He rushed to the open window, and flew out.
“Heh, looks like he’s as good at dealing with emotions as you, Gil,” said Rainbow.
“Oh, like you’re any better, dweeb.”
“And hey, you really want to rebuild Griffonstone, right? Maybe eventually you could replace Grandpa Gruff. Do that whole speech of rebuilding the city to the kids and give them some hope.” Rainbow shrugged. “Can’t really think of anyone else who could do it.”
“I… I...” A blush crept over Gilda’s face. “I’m going for a flight.” She rushed out of the room through the same window that Gallus did.
“Trixie thinks she’ll be the perfect big sister to Gallus.” Trixie literally patted her own back. “The first case of Trixie’s adventures in counseling students is over. Come, sidekick, to the next!”
“Sidekick?!”
Author's Note
This was an idea I had really wanted the show to do, Gilda becoming like a big sister to Gallus the way Rainbow is to Scootaloo, and giving him something to like about being in Griffonstone. Seemed like it would have been a good moment for him, and a nice final chapter to Gilda's character arc.
