you are already at your destination
Don’t tell the Grand Table, but I’ve never been kissed. I was knighted at twelve years old after besting several dragons in a tourney by myself. I’ve grown into a fine griffon—beautiful, elegant, fierce and brave. I am the perfect example of Vedina’s future to present to Equestria. We are home to valor, to chivalry, to devotion above all. Devotion to one love, one country, one world.
Dead Reckoning leads me through the forest, dancing over gnarled roots and leaf litter like she’s walked this path a thousand times before. Her pale blue coat and her pastel purple mane remind me of the sea at sunset. I’m mad for her.
She carries more life in her gorgeous smile than any noble I’ve met. She’s completely unlike the rest of our class. Canterlot’s School for Excellence in All is filled with the pompous rich and the unfulfilled. Dead Reckoning’s special talent is her name sake, but extrapolated a thousand fold. She predicts. She knows. She’s an oracle in all but name. A look at one person and she sees their future as clear as crystal.
When we started dating, she looked at me and said “I don’t know if this is going to work out.”
I grinned at her and told her, “Bring it on.”
She’s a monster. She gambles like a maniac, she beats everyone but me in any physical activity. She excels in all of our classes. She laughs harder than anyone and cries bitterly for every cruel thing in the world.
Love, as has been taught to me by my parents, and theirs, is a chain. There is but one single chain bursting forth from your heart and when you are born, it slithers through the world and it finds someone, and it chains you to them forever. I’ve been made aware that this is…hardcore. But it’s how I feel.
The trees around Dead Reckoning and I begin to clear as we enter some sort of field. I can see something glittering in the distance.
She stops suddenly, and glances at me over her shoulder. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Is she disappointed in me? I haven’t failed yet.
“Are you sure about this, Georgia?” she asks.
My response is immediate. “I’m not afraid of your parents.”
Dead Reckoning smiles at me. “Okay, then.”
She takes me further into the clearing, and it’s only when we’re free of the canopy that I see it.
It’s a giant building made of crystal—crystal domes and openings and stained glass, and crystal pillars shaped like trees with pink leaves keeping the structure stable, growing into the domes and poking out of random places. I can see that in the middle, there’s a giant “tree trunk” that forms the core of the home.
“This is grander than any castle I’ve ever seen,” I tell Dead.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“Would it hold under cannon fire?”
“My…mother once threw a boulder the size of a building at it, and the boulder shattered into a thousand pieces.”
I’m smiling. When did I start smiling? Oh, but it just looks so cool.
Dead’s hiding a smirk. Did she see me grinning like a hatchling? I try to force my treacherous beak into the neutral straight line that I’ve been wearing all day. One must be calm and composed when one meets their future spouse’s mother and father.
A roc’s screech pierces through the air.
RRAAAAAAAHWWWWK!
I’m in front of Dead in a second, blood boiling, eyes wide. I scan the sky, but the sunlight’s glaring gets in the way of my sight. I draw the dagger I brought with me and just as I begin to tell Dead that everything will be okay, that I’ll protect her, because I love her—
The color pink envelops my vision, and something crashes into me—
And the dagger is out of my claw, lodged into a tree.
I am on the ground, head facing the tree, wondering what happened.
“Dead’s home!” a shrill voice calls.
“Mom,” I hear Dead say, “You bowled over my friend.”
“What?!”
Long, wiry, pink-feathered arms grab me and pull me up until I can stand, and—
“Tailfeathers,” I say aloud, not on purpose.
Standing in front of me is Lady Silverstream, the legendary royal advisor to Queen Skystar. She absolutely dwarfs me in size. She might be three times taller than I am. She might be four times taller than I am.
Silverstream grins. “So you’re the griffoness who our daughter’s taking for a trial run.”
I’m on the ground, wings spread, bowing in the traditional way before her sentence finishes. “I am humbled in the presence of nobility. I am Dame Georgia of Vedina, second daughter to Henrick the Dragon Tamer, of House Fenring.”
“She’s cute,” Silverstream says, presumably to Dead.
Dead snorts. “Her course isn’t the smoothest.”
“Is anyone’s?” Silverstream asks. She turns to me. “You may rise, Georgia. Please make yourself comfortable for the duration of your visit here. We would love if we could get to know you without titles or anything like that. Aurora knows that Gallus has had enough of politics.”
“Gallus, Lord Protector of the Realm?” I ask. I look at Dead, my beak falling open in surprise. It’s no wonder she’s so perfect. What a union of heroes!
An exasperated, nasally voice comes from behind me. “That was only for an hour, when Spike and Twilight got food poisoning from that sketchy noodle place.”
I turn around to see a blue griffon with golden tipped crest feathers. He’s got a sarcastic look to him, not unlike the common ruffian. But there’s a grace to him as well.
“Sir,” I bow my head. “It’s an honor to meet you. I have looked forward to the moment I’d meet Dead Reckoning’s parents since we had our second date.”
Gallus looks at Dead. “She’s hardcore.”
Dead Reckoning scoffs. “I’m hardcore, too.”
“I never said it was a bad thing,” Gallus says.
“You implied it,” Dead says. “Where are the rest of you?”
“The rest of you?” I ask. I step aside to let Gallus join Silverstream, and feel a rush of affection when she drapes a wing over his back.
“My parents,” Dead Reckoning says. Her voice is lower than it was. Have I offended her?
“But there they are,” I say. “Lady Silverstream and Captain Gallus.”
“That’s about one-third of them,” Dead Reckoning says.
I blink. “What?”
“I have—” Dead begins to say, but she stops.
“Recking Ball?” someone says from behind me. Their voice is a scratchy rumble.
I turn around.
There’s a dragon, the source of the voice, tall and muscular enough that she must be ready to enter the quadrupedal stage of her life cycle. Beside the dragon is Doctor Ocellus, a changeling whose lectures I adore, whenever I’ve had the opportunity to attend. Beside the changeling is a yak who looks like she could move mountains. Beside the yak is a pony. Just a pony, colored like sand and kelp.
“So,” Dead’s voice makes me jump. She’s right beside me. “These are my parents. My three dads, my three moms. And the reason we won’t work out.”
A day goes by. Silverstream shows me foal photos. Gallus tells me war stories. Smolder challenges me to fourteen wrestling matches, and I let her win the tiebreaker out of politeness. Ocellus gives me a signed copy of her book and Yona gifts me a beautiful dress. Sandbar makes for extremely pleasant conversation.
Me and Dead find ourselves by a river, and the pit in my stomach that’s been growing as the sun has been dragged lower and lower to the horizon now feels like an endless void.
“You don’t get it,” Dead says.
And of course I don’t. Of course I don’t. They can’t…all love each other. That’s not how it works.
They can tell me otherwise.
I won’t believe them.
Dead Reckoning is my one and only. She’s my chained other half.
“If only you could,” Dead says.
“Could what?”
“Get it,” Dead says. “Because I like you.”
“I love you,” I mutter.
“Not yet,” Dead says. “That’s not how it works.”
She’s wrong.
“I’m thirsty,” I tell her. I go back to the Treehouse.
Dead’s parents aren’t around. They’ve all gone to some pub out in the town and I am alone in the living room, which is littered with family photos.
There are pictures of Dead with her fathers, Dead with her mothers, Dead with all of them, all celebrating birthdays or awards at school.
A shuffling startles me. I jump away from its direction, and turn to see Ocellus.
“Hello, Georgia,” she says.
“Hello,” I say.
Demons. Changelings are demons. That’s what the old knights say. They were wrong, of course. I adore changelings.
“My daughter loves us a little too much,” Ocellus says. “Actually, let me take that back: she loves us too much for her own good.”
And then I figure it out. “She won’t take me if I won’t take you.”
Ocellus smiles at me sadly. “I’ve always wanted to go to Vedina, you know. The beaches look dazzling. Silverstream and Sandbar would have a wonderful time.”
“How does it work?” I ask.
“How do you think it works?” she asks.
“I…have an oath to the Sun,” I say. “I try to speak the truth, especially when it hurts.”
Ocellus nods.
“I think that you are all…lying,” I say. “I think that you play favorites. I think that there’s no way that Gallus can love someone like Sandbar. I think that there’s no way that you can come to a decision. I think it’s possible that Dead raised herself in your mess, and that she’s perfect because of no one’s influence but the universe’s.”
Ocellus nods again. “That’s simply untrue.”
“It might be harsh,” I say, “but—”
“We’ve never had a single fight,” she says. “Can you believe that? Not a real fight, anyway. Choosing the perfect restaurant to eat at on the weekends is another story.”
“I cannot believe that,” I tell her.
Ocellus nods, again. She’s examining me. Testing me?
“How do I get out of this?” I ask. “What is the right thing to do?”
Ocellus smiles, ever so slightly. “Vedina only allowed male rulers until about ten years ago, yes? When your current queen and her queen-consort came into power?”
“That was their will,” I said. I look down. “Their bravery to challenge the cracks in our country’s armor. But this is love. This is—”
“Scary,” she said. “Uncomfortable. Disgusting. Repulsive. A lie. Evil.”
I don’t know what to say.
I don’t think I would say it like that.
“There’s only one thing,” Ocellus says. “The attempt to understand. The triumph over the mystery.”
She puts a hoof under my chin to look at her in the eyes, which shine.
“Will you rise to the task, Dame Knight?”
Dead would often tell me personal things about our teachers as they entered the classroom. Our History professor, Pyrite, had a slight limp in his leg one morning, and she turned to me and said, “He’s getting a divorce.”
Sure enough, he did.
That still wasn’t enough for me to believe her. Not then, and not every other time she would do the same thing with our other teachers.
But she takes a single look at me as I approach her where I left her, and her eyes widen and she says, “Oh. You’re actually changing your mind. We might work out after all.”
And she stands and before I can apologize, she kisses me.
My first kiss feels like fireworks. It feels like a thousand colors and a million flavors, and a single orchestra playing a song that breaks my heart and mends it in the span of a few seconds.
I believe her now. I believe them all.
Or, I’m starting to.
Author's Note
hi hi okay so
Vedina is a playable country in the Equestria at War mod for Hearts of Iron IV—aka the best game mod ever made—this version of Vedina is based off of EaW's Vedina but reimagined a little bit, since there's obviously no wars going on in this fic
as this was written in under an hour, it's much shorter than i'd like it to be and i'll most likely be expanding it sometime
Winner of the 2023 Quills and Sofas Queer Speedwriting Contest !!! hell yea
