The psychotic gentlegriff

It’s 4pm and I’m waiting outside Celestia’s private study with Captain Graceful, it turned out Celestia was very serious about having Graceful keep a close eye on me. Literally as soon as I left the bathhouse he was there, just waiting for me.

“Anubis, you better pay attention to the princess, especially because she’s taking the time to educate you herself. Hopefully she’ll teach you not to steal.” I could tell that he was far from impressed with me borrowing those weapons.

“Oh of course farther dearest.” I said in the voice of a small Victorian child, this got me a whack across the head by Captain Graceful.

“Do not call me that, especially when we’re in public.”

“Okay okay, no need to get physical. I get it, you have a public image and you don’t want me ruining it.”

“Good, so we’ve come to an understanding?”

“Yes I’ll behave.” At that moment Celestia’s study doors open but instead of the pure white Alicorn, it was a silver and dark blue griffon. So this is the griffon that followed me into my bedroom, the intruder.

Her eyes widened and she moved out of the way and gave me a force smile, I can’t really blame her i mean I did basically stabbed myself in front of her. I too would be wary of somecreature that did that.

I then slowly walked in and watched in confusion as she ran over and hid behind Celestia as if I was a danger to her? And I thought I looked good, so much for that. “Um afternoon Celestia.”

“Good afternoon Anubis please take a seat just over there.” I did as she said and sat down.

Then the female griffon whispered, quite poorly. “Psss Celestia what if he has another needle or something worse, what if he tries to eat himself.”

“I can hear you! And why would I even try to eat myself?”

“I don’t know, what if you have rabies?”

That’s a thing that can affect griffons? scary thought. “Well I think you’d know if I had rabies, thank you very much and I don’t have a needle either.”

“Celestia I think he’s got something wrong with his head.”

“Silver! apologise for that comment, it’s very rude and insensitive. Anubis just made a bad decision he’s not got anything wrong with him.” The sternness of Celestia’s voice even made me wince but this Silver looked guilty for reasons unbeknownst to me.

“Well Silver I may have made a mistake but at least I don’t have a severe lack of brain cells.” Yes some would say that was unnecessary but I held a personal distaste towards being told I had something wrong with my head. In my past life I had been labelled as crazy and insane, but they could never understand the difference between genius and crazy.

“Hey!! You can’t speak to me like that, I’m a princess and I do have lots of brain cells.” And I’m already doubting that.

“Anyway Celestia what are you gonna be teaching me?”

“Well I would like you to first introduce yourself to princess Silverfeather here.”

“Very well, hello Princess Silverfeather my name is Anubis Grimgost, it’s a honour to meet you.” I tried to be sincere and it seems to have worked.

“Nice to meet you, Anubis Grimgost so um why are you staying in the castle?”

“Because I’ve got nowhere else to live but I’m going to be living with Captain Graceful for a month.”

“Oh um ok may I ask why you don’t live with your parents and how long of a flight is that from the castle?”

“Well my parents are dead and I can’t fly that good so don’t know how long it’ll take.” Silver’s eyes widened and I instantly knew why.

“Oh um s-sorry if I brought back any bad memories, I didn’t mean to….” I cut her off before she could dig herself any deeper.

“Look I know you didn’t mean to, so please don’t apologise for it. You didn’t know, it’s as simple as that.” At this point I wished Celestia would just start the lesson, hell I don’t even care what it’ll be about just hurry up and start.

This has been a mind boggling 45 minutes, so far math and English are the same. Biology and chemistry are a little different but physics is stupid, apparently I can walk on clouds and Celestia can move the sun and moon around because why the fuck not. I’m trying my best to keep myself from testing the cloud walking and interrogating Celestia on how I can do that. Any other scientists would be struggling to comprehend this. Although this is a world of magic, not to mention that I’ve literally died and can change my molecular structure at will. So makes perfect fucking sense.

I think I’m getting a headache from forcing myself to believe what I’m being told but we’re now taking a break and Celestia brought tea and cookies. “You should have allowed me to make the tea Celestia.”

“As much as I would like that, I don’t believe that I could have trusted you to only make tea.”

“Heheheheh well I can’t confirm or deny that but my tea is better.”

“You can make tea? Psss Celestia I wouldn’t trust him to make tea, it might be poisoned.”

“I would never and you need to learn how to whisper, you’re terrible at it.”

“I’m not bad at whispering!! You…. you just have big ears that are really good at hearing. What sort of griffon are you anyway?”

“No you’re bad at whispering and as for what type of griffon I am, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Mhmm I think we should call your breed the large eared griffon.” Silver puffed her chest out and had a prideful smile on her beak.

“How very creative of you. Celestia I hope you have a better name because I don’t want to be called that.”

“I’ve got nothing unfortunately but I don’t see nothing wrong with Silverfeather’s suggestion.”

We must of brain stormed for 5 minutes or so. It seemed that I was going to be categorised as the large eared griffon against my will. Then Celestia clopped her forehooves together. “Alright I believe we should be getting back to what we were doing before this little break.”

“So what next, are you going to teach us how to do alchemy or something?” The sarcasm should have been obvious but Celestia just smiled at me.

“Well I could do some alchemy and potion brewing with you two but I’m not sure if you can be trusted, Anubis. I guess I’ll just have to watch over your shoulder and make sure you’re not doing anything dangerous.” This made silver giggle and I let out a huff of annoyance. Inject yourself with a needle once and your all of a sudden put on a watch list by the princess herself.

“I mean if you have to, just as long as you teach me alchemy, please.”

“Ooh so you’re interested in alchemy now?”

“Nooooo! Alchemy is impossible to understand. Please Celestia anything else other than alchemy!!!” Silver then grabbed me by my chest fluff. “Anubis please don’t, I’m warning you alchemy is so complicated. It will fry your brain.” This would have been intimidating if she wasn’t haft a head shorter than me.

I turned to Celestia with a wicked grin. “So when do we start?”

“Nooooooooooo!!!!!!” My ears were ringing for a solid minute but it was so worth it. Silverfeather looked so lost, this confirmed my beliefs that she wasn’t the brightest individual. I almost felt bad, almost.

Silver was allowed to take a break from this while Celestia focused on teaching me the fundamentals of alchemy. We hadn’t done any practical work yet, just theoretical stuff but it was very interesting and my teacher looked happy to have a willing student.

“So Anubis this potion can heal small cuts and scrapes but isn’t able to help with large gashes and deep cuts. Do you know why?”

“Mhmmm I think it’s because the cells are to far apart for the potion to take affect so stitches have to be used?”

“Good guess, but it’s actually because the regeneration process is fuelled by this ingredient that is fatal in large quantities, so we can’t use too much of it in the potions.”

“Oh that’s interesting, so are there any ways to get around this restriction?”

“We have alchemists looking for alternative solutions to that but ponies have been looking for a fix to that issue for a long time now.”

“Oh really, so the problem is a fuel source for the cells to use for regenerating. I see….”

“And you see what Anubis, don’t be getting any ideas now.”

“I’m just saying that it might be a good idea to allow me to continue to research my ability to heal with Dr Tender.”

“Sorry Anubis but I can’t allow you to continue that until you can prove that you can be trusted. I’m not trying to be harsh but you will have to earn my trust Anubis, we’re still friends?”

“Of course we are Celestia and don’t worry I understand, what I did was wrong.” I gave Celestia a hug and she happily returned the gesture.

“Aaaaw you two look sooo cute together.”

“Oooh shush Silver, although he is quite soft and fluffy.” Celestia lifted me up and nuzzled the top of my head. It was a nice feeling but I still don’t know why. Celestia must have saw the confusion because she gave me a gentle smile and put me down.

“Anubis why do you look confused?”

“I don’t understand why being nuzzled feels nice, calming even? I just don’t know?”

“Oh um Anubis, I don’t really know how to explain it to you but it’s a gesture that mothers do to their young.”

“Ah that makes sense why i enjoyed being nuzzled and had no idea why i liked, it’s because I didn’t get nuzzled by my mom.” Celestia looked a little saddened by my words.

“It okay Anubis, not everycreature gets nuzzled by their mother.” Yeah I appreciate what she was trying to do but the reason I wasn’t nuzzled by my mom is because she was human and she love me deeply, for the sort amount of time she was with me.

“Thanks but I think I’ll survive.”

“As a griffon, you shouldn’t want anything to do with that mushy stuff.” I guess Silver doesn’t like being nuzzled by her mom then.

“Is that so Silver, I thought you wanted me to get you the next volume of Wind of….”

“Shut up shut up shut up, Celestia he doesn’t need to know what books I read.”

“I can’t imagine that they’re any good.”

“Shut up Anubis, this doesn’t concern you.” I beg to differ but I’m not interested enough to argue with her.

“Silver there’s no need to be embarrassed if you like those things.”

“I’m not embarrassed and I don’t like that stuff.”

“Okay Silver.”

“But I need to speak with you after Anubis goes, for unrelated reasons.”

“Sure thing.”

———————————————————————

The rest of the lesson was very interesting but I was now following the most up tight pony in the world, yep you guessed it Captain Graceful. We were watching the guards practicing sparring and it looked really odd. Never thought of how a quadruped would hold a sword or spear, I’ve seen two main methods. One where they hold it with their teeth and the other where they hold it with their hoofs, very interesting. But it was getting late and I was getting curious about where I was going to be staying for a month.

“Anubis, can you fly yet?”

“Yeah but not well, why?”

“Because we should be getting moving, my house is only a 3 minute flight from here if you think you can do it?”

“What if I fall or crash?”

“Don’t worry I won’t let you.” He gave me a reassuring smile and it’ll be good to get some more flight time so why not.

“So when do we leave?”

“I just need to sign out and we’ll leave.”

“Okay lead the way.” He got up and started walking towards a door, I followed him and we made it to the guard barracks. Graceful spent no time signing out and we took to the skies, I got off to a shaky start but once I got a rhythm going I was flying relatively well. I could see the worry in Graceful’s eyes, he was watching my every move but what should have been a 3 minute flight took 9 minutes and I came close to crashing twice.

Graceful was very well off, his house was huge. Does he have a family? I never thought to ask, but I was going to find out.