“And you sure didn't need help making a fool of yourself. You know, this is not how I thought my old friend would treat my new friends; if being cool is all you care about, maybe you should find some new cool friends someplace else.”
A brown haired and white feathered griffin awoke sitting straight up, sweating and gasping for oxygen. It was the middle of the night in her old worn in apartment she called home.
“It’s cool... Gilda, it was only... a... dream.” the griffin consoled herself, those words were still ringing in her ears. She tiredly dropped back onto her pillow, which she now noticed was damp either from sweat or tears. “That was so... real.”
Morning.
Gilda rose once more from her bed, this time to the sound of her alarm clock waking her up for the morning commute. She sat up to stretch her arms, then her wings, which took up slightly more room than the claustrophobic apartment room permitted. She threw off the covers, turned her body to step off the bed, and slammed a fist down onto the still ringing alarm clock.
Outside her room, a small, enchantment-powered machine was hard at work producing steam from the kitchen counter. Gilda walked her way over to it, still blinking the morning gunk out of her vision. She grabbed a ceramic mug from a cabinet just above the small magic device and inserted it into an open slot where the machine’s face would be. Coffee dispensed into the mug, just what Gilda needed. She had completely forgotten about waking up during the night and went about her normal everyday business, thinking of nothing but the day ahead of her. The incident back in ponyville was more than a year ago now, she had changed quite a lot in that time, though she had become a bit more calloused to the memory.
After an unhealthily long stand in the hot shower and minimal feather brushing, Gilda grabbed her carry on pouch of currency, identification, and other such goods and stepped out to the balcony of her apartment. Manehatten sure was a sight on Monday mornings. A sight. Not beautiful per se.
Eyes half closed, the griffin stepped back and dashed forward over the gate of her balcony. Her apartment rested on the sixteenth floor of her apartment complex, so she had a couple seconds of leisure falling that she tended to exploit. About eight meters from the ground, the griffin burst open her wings and looped up from a collision course with the ground to a calm glide through the tall buildings of Manehatten.
The feeling a flying wasn’t as much of a thrill as most Earth ponies or Unicorns would think. In fact, it was rather tiring, using all your strength to not only resist but to overcome the pull of gravity. And the cold, high altitude morning air didn't do much to help.
Gilda’s first stop, Starbucker’s cafe for some breakfast. The coffee there was way over priced, but their bagels were to die for. Gilda day dreamt about having a meal that actually had meat in it. She forgot was meat tasted like, being around herbivores nearly her entire life.
The griffin came to a graceful land on the street corner the cafe was on. Though a graceful land for her was slowing down before impact just to enough to keep her head on her shoulders. Gilda swear she felt indentations in the concrete where she’s been landing everyday for the past... Celestia knows how long.
A small, brass bell rang as Gilda came through the glass doorway, “The usual, Gilda?” asked a voice from behind the counter. Coffee Bean had surprised Gilda this morning. Coffee Bean was a warm, brown, coffee colored unicorn who never bothered to brush out her mane, letting it look somewhat like Rainbowdash’s. Just with less color.
“The usual” dweeb Gilda thought about adding, old habits.
Coffee bean released the coffee cup she had been rubbing clean with her magic and a cloth, trotting through a door into the backroom to start Gilda’s meal.
Gilda found a comfortable seat to lounge on as she watched the old news reporting television. It always seemed to be on here, whether anypony was looking or not. Suddenly a newscaster appeared on the flickering saw-tooth television set.
“TROTTINGHAM NEWS”
Heh, in Manehattan. Gilda thought. She was hardly even paying attention.
“Stunning reports last weekend from the royal wedding in Canterlot” The news colt proclaimed. “An unidentified, rainbow-maned mare was able to pull off a legendary aeronautic move, ‘a sonic rain-boom’,” he paused to make sure he read that correctly. Gilda was suddenly much more alert towards the television screen, “Yes, a sonic rain-boom, when a pegasus flies so fast that a rainbow and a-” The screen was suddenly a monochrome music video of a Mexiquestrian fiesta.
“I hate that channel.” stated Coffee Bean, holding a remote with her magic, “Oh, and your breakfast is ready, Gilda.”
Gilda sat stiffly in her chair for a moment, concentrating on the screen and half expecting it to go back to the last channel. She let out a deep sigh and her muscles relaxed into the seat. She looked over at Coffee Bean, who was now preoccupied with clicking through the channels and chewing a piece of bubblegum.
It wasn’t anything, Gilda. She thought to herself, then got up to retrieve her breakfast. The unicorn hardly seemed to notice Gilda taking her hot bagel and sitting back down in her seat, now pondering how she and Coffee Bean seemed to be the only two in the small cafe. It wasn’t anything.
Just another day loading shipments from Manehatten's seaport onto sea bound cargo ships. It hardly paid the bills of her small apartment, but she enjoyed the vacuousness it brought. She even became accustomed to viewing the physical exercise as a way to vent out old thoughts. Thoughts she knew she should’ve been over by now. Gilda was hard at work lifting her own weight and the weight of a wooden crate with her wings. She never grew tired of that relieving feeling her muscles got after dropping a heavy cargo item onto the deck of a ship. She even liked the burning sensation of lactic acid pumping through the crook of her wings. Heh, Biology class, she thought, the only thing we needed to know from that class was how to build more muscle for flying.
More simple thoughts ran through Gilda’s mind as she loaded the boat with shipments for wherever it was going. What am I going to have for lunch today? Dinner? Maybe I’ll go hunting after work today. Man, I haven’t had any meat in ages! How do these ponies get any protein in their diets? Bah, I always promise myself I’ll go hunting. I’m just so tired when I get home from work.
“How are those apple crates coming, Gilda!?” A distant voice yelled from the pier, Gilda didn’t have to turn to know it was her boss, Gunther, who had yelled out. Gilda also realized that she had been on autopilot for about an hour now, and that the last crate from... she searched for a label on the crate she just set down... Sweet Apple Acres was on the boat.
“All done!” Gilda yelled back, the brown Earth pony named Gunther went off to give orders to a couple pegasi who were standing by, probably to get the boat ready to head off to sea. It didn’t bug Gilda anymore that most ponies were like this, straight to the point, almost as if avoiding a conversation with her. She actually preferred it, they had nothing to say to her, and she had nothing to say to them. She was just happy that most of the residents of Manehatten had gotten used to seeing a griffin on a day-to-day basis. Still, the prospect of something interesting happening in the future never seized to intrigue Gilda’s mind. And she often spent time thinking up random situations and how she would react to them.
Man, I really am that bored, to think about what I think about on a normal day...
Maybe someday she'll actually do something she’s thought up while pushing around crates a barrels.
