The Standard and Normal Human: Two : Griffon Grumbles

The Standard and Normal Human Two 2

Carrying a griffon is no small feat, I mean like I said before they are slightly bigger and heavier than ponies. Having said that however I wasn’t going to tell Dagger what I thought, I mean telling human females that they weigh a lot is a sure fire way to get yourself a slap in the face. Griffons have claws, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to lose part of my face because of some stupid theory. But I digress…

We struggled through the dense forest that engulfed the area, it went on for what felt like an eternity. I could hear our pursuers in the background as they were tracking us, they were gaining faster than I had anticipated. Luckily however it had started to rain, hard. Visibility was now about 5 meters in front of me, I couldn’t see anything. I was cold, tired, hungry and now I was wet… How grand…

For all of y’all who thought going to the MLP world was going to be all sunshine and butterflies, let me tell you right now, you were more wrong than y’all could possibly imagine.

“Ugh, this is too much… We’ll never find them like this…” I heard one of the voices in the background, he sounded hopeless.

“We need to find her no matter what!” A female voice replied angrily, it must have been the second guard.

“Soon it’ll be too dark to see anything, it would be best to start the search again in the morning…”

Eventually, whilst carrying Dagger, we came across a cave. It was kind of small but to evade our pursuers it was rather well placed, I didn’t even consider what could be inside, I just walked straight in and got comfy. It was rather weird, in the corner of the cave was what appeared to be a big brown rug that had been rolled up on its side, I ignored it and carefully placed Dagger on the ground. I took out my bag and started rummaging around, I grabbed a couple of towels and a hand warmer. I placed one of her and kept the other for myself, the last thing you want to do is walk around in wet clothing. It’s a fast way to make yourself ill…

Oh and I’m not an expert by any means when it comes to survival, I’ve seen a couple of videos by Bear Grylls so I had a good idea of the do’s and don’ts. I took a seat and grabbed a drink, no, I didn’t drink my own ‘liquids’ before you even think to say it. I’m not a complete weirdo, insane maybe, but not weird enough to do that…

I took a look outside and night had descended over the forest, I couldn’t hear our pursuers, just the sound of the night sky, well that and the rain hitting the ground. Owls were hooting, squirrels were scurrying, it was rather peaceful. I changed into some dry clothes and wrapped the wet ones in the towel, I needed to dry them somehow at a later point in time. When I was finished I took my bag and placed it behind my head like a pillow on the ground and started to nod off, I would need my energy for the journey in the morning… Not that I knew where I was going…

Once again the dream world had taken hold of my simple mind, I was in a class room at the back of the class. Discord was the teacher, now I didn’t know what he was teaching and I didn’t really care. I was doodling in my book, all around the walls of the classroom were clocks. In fact you couldn’t even see the walls there was so many of them, sat next to me was Dagger. She was looking at my work, oh and she kept on trying to get my attention…

‘Nick… Hey, you awake?’

‘Nick? Hey, wake up’

“Nick! Wake Up!” Dagger screamed into my ears, I woke up in a flurry. Before I could even shout at her I was witness to something truly terrifying.

Remember when I first walked into the cave and saw that brown rug? Yeah, it wasn’t a rug…

It was a bear… A big one…

Have you ever experienced extreme fear before? Like something that makes you truly quake in your boots?

Well when the thing roared in my direction, and by that I mean my face, I soon got myself to my feet in a flurry. I scurried to my left side which was rather stupid, this was mainly because I had edged myself into a corner, not a smart move.

I tried to speak but the words didn’t come out as I wanted them to, “I- Uh- Dag- What do-“ That’s all that came out, as I said it I looked to my left and she was experiencing the same feeling. Except she couldn’t get a word out, we were both truly terrified.

This feeling soon began to fade away as I spotted something which explained everything, I could see two cute little bear cubs. I looked back and forth between the cubs and the adult bear, I didn’t know if it was the mother or father so your guess is as good as mine. The cubs were looking in confusion, eventually they strolled over to my bag and started rummaging around.

‘What the heck are they doing?’ I thought to myself, eventually one of them dragged out a small tin of biscuits. To those who are confused by what these are, it’s not an American biscuit, it’s a British biscuit, bourbons to be exact. They couldn’t get inside, not having thumbs made it pretty much impossible for them to open it.

I looked back at the bear at the right time, it gave another roar before taking a swing for me with its paw. I ducked and rolled past it back to where I woke up. Dagger ran the opposite side and got behind the bear, it was more concerned for the safety of its children. The cubs backed away from me immediately, my bag and the tin fell back onto the floor, I think I spooked them and the parent was not happy.

I knew it was a long shot but I had to try something, I quickly opened up the tin and grabbed one of the treats inside. Slowly I moved my arm towards the cubs to try and show I wasn’t going to hurt them, “H-Here, you wanted one of these right?” I asked the cub nervously, heck I was shaking so bad I couldn’t hold it steady.

The cub stared at me, then at the biscuit, then back at me. In its mind it must have been thinking. ‘Why is it holding that in its hand? It smells yummy… Maybe it’s giving it to me? My daddy always said never talk to strangers…’ I don’t know, did that sound rather silly? Meh, so what? You know what else sounds silly? Talking ponies, a griffon princess, a Draconequus that enjoyed messing with my head… Oh and that my mind was slowly descending into madness… But why does the last one sound so silly? Well I’m already crazy, been listening to the Lavender town music since I was a kid… It’s just so catchy…

Anyway, the adult bear thought I was threatening its cubs. It was roaring at me rather loudly, one of the cubs ran towards its parent and hid behind it. The other one however stayed put, it was curious. You know that cute look pets give when they tilt their head and look at you? Yeah, it did that. It was adorable, so much so that I almost forgot about the killer bear on my left hand side getting ready to downright murder me… I mean I was pretty sure it didn’t just want a hug…

Slowly the remaining cub began to slowly walk towards me, my arm was still pointing towards it with the treat still in my hand. As it got closer I could tell that the parent was extremely worried, the roaring kept getting louder and louder. Eventually it reached my hand and started sniffing what I was holding.

Meanwhile behind the big bear, Dagger was having a nervous breakdown. “Nick!? What are you doing?!” She whispered loudly, desperately trying to evade detection of the parent… bear... Ugh…

… This is ridiculous… You know what? I’m just going to call the parent bear ‘Yogi’ from now on, it sounds better than saying ‘Adult bear’ or ‘Parent bear’ all of the time… I guess this counts as an intermission? Eh whatever, I’ll get back to the story in 3… 2… 1…

The cub then took a gamble and started licking my hand, it tickled, this caused me to laugh. It also managed to grab the bourbon with its teeth and started eating it. At this point I was slowly calming down, I was even stroking its head as it munched away.

“Enjoying that?” I asked the cub, I wasn’t expecting a response, then again I tried talking to a lion last time I was in this world and that seemed to work pretty well…  I reached into the tin and grabbed another treat, it ate it and then it decided to lick my face. “Ugh… Thank you for that…” I chuckled, I wiped the saliva and crumbs from my cheeks, it was at this point in time I looked to my left and was witness to something I never thought I’d see. The Paren- I mean Yogi Bear, was just staring at me with its big confused eyes, in fact so was the other cub that was peeking from behind it. Oh and as for Dagger? She was staring at me in disbelief, she was pretty speechless. After a minute of silence I figured it might be a good idea to try and talk to it, I mean it was worth a shot right?

“Um, can you… Understand me?” I asked big old Yogi bear, it’s head leaned back in shock. This was then followed by a nod, I sighed in relief. “Ok… Look, we’re not here to cause any trouble, me and my friend over there were just looking for shelter until the rain stopped” I pointed towards Dagger as I said this, it then peered behind it and looked at Dagger. It must have looked her dead in the eyes because she freaked out and ran to me, immediately using me as a human shield.

“P-P-Please don’t hurt us…” She stuttered, something I’d never thought I’d see a Griffon do, especially her. That thought made me give myself a mental slap to the face of my brain, yeah, I just said that. It was thinking like that which causes stereotypes in the first place, heck it is stereotyping.

“Relax, I think it understands that were not a danger” I reassured Dagger, just then I had a thought. It was a longshot but it was worth a try, “Um… Listen, were kind of lost… I don’t suppose you can point us in the right direction?”

Yogi looked at me and nodded, how and why it understood me still boggles my mind to this day.

“Um… Great, is there a town or something nearby?” I asked Yogi, he nodded and walked closer to me. All of a sudden he raised his claw in the air, at this point I wasn’t sure what he was doing, I thought he was about to attack me. Instead what he did was lower his claw slowly and then he used one of his fingers to drag it into the ground. I was puzzled at first but I eventually figured out that they weren’t just random lines, he was drawing something...

To be precise, he was drawing a camp of some kind. Then he drew creatures that closely resembled ponies, except they had lines across their bodies. I quickly put two and two together and what did I come up with? Simple, I came up with 4… Duh…

“Wait, is there a zebra camp nearby?” I questioned Yogi, he nodded and then wiped the drawing away before walking just outside of the cave.  He then started drawing again, this time however it was a very simple one. It was an arrow… It pointed deeper into the forest, oh and yes I was desperate enough to get directions from a bear. He didn’t utter the sound ‘Um’ so I was sure that he knew where he was directing us. I tipped my hat to Yogi and grabbed my things, I left some treats for the cubs and headed for the exit. Dagger followed closely behind me. “Thank you for your hospitality and help” I thanked Yogi, with that he stood up on his hind legs, gave me a hug, and then finally he licked my face.

And with that we departed, still unsure as to our pursuers location we trekked deeper into the forest.

I know what you’re thinking, how the heck does someone like me deal with this kind of thing happening? You know, mentally? Heck I don’t even know, I must have a good threshold over crazy.

As we started walking I decided it was probably best to make sure that we were heading in the right direction, I rummaged in my backpack and grabbed a compass. The red arrow was pointing right, so as long as I kept it doing that we’d be fine… Well I hoped so anyway…

Dagger kept as quiet as she could, eventually however “So… Does your world have creatures like that as well?” She asked me, slowly she was becoming curious as to what I was. Beforehand she had very little interest, I mean all she wanted was some freedom, she didn’t really care too much about what I was.

“Yeah, although that stunt I pulled off back there wouldn’t have worked back in my world” I informed her, scratching the back of my head as I did it. “Heck it would probably have gotten me killed…”

“So why in the Empire did you do it?!” She shouted back, forgetting that we weren’t currently where she just stated.

Now what I wanted to say was that this was a world created for a child’s mind for a TV show, this explanation, of course, would make no sense for either of us. I mean besides having to explain what a TV was and how our world is technologically advanced, I would also have to explain that a human before me came to this world, witnessed the wonder and beauty of the land and then created several cartoons and animations which was almost a spitting image of the real deal.

Yeah… Like I was going to say that out loud…

I just shrugged my shoulders, I mean what was I supposed to say to that? “Oh and we’re not in the Empire little missy, we’re in the-“I stopped midsentence and looked around, but why you ask? Well I didn’t really have a clue where I was going, I was just following the direction that the bear showed us. “Um… Does this forest have a name?”

“A name?” She replied, slightly confused by that question. “Well yeah… Why?”

“Well I was hoping you’re Empire might have had a map or something, I mean if you had that then this forest would be on it right?”  All I wanted was some reassurance that where we were going was the right way, when it comes to knowing where I am I’m a paranoid fool.

“Yeah, though I have no idea why it’s named as such” She told me, then proceeded to confirm what the bear had told you about the camp. “They called it ‘The Alchemist Forest”

Now that, ladies and gents, is by far one of the coolest names I had ever heard for a place to be called, as I looked around it made even more sense. You know what a mortar and pestle is right? And how alchemy works yeah? Well get this, as I looked around me I noticed everything that I never even considered looking at. The flora, the bugs, heck this was a treasure trove for any go getting alchemist, beginner or otherwise.

Oh and Zebras are known for being such alchemists, well as far as us humans understand right? ... Wait, I’m not referring to our worlds zebras either, I was referring to their worlds zebras. … Obviously that’s what I meant…

“Huh, sounds like a cool place to be” I replied, thinking back to the full metal alchemist and smiling as I did it. “Well we’d better keep moving if we’re going to get anywhere right?”

We started carried on walking, but something was bugging me, I had completely forgotten at the time but it was really bugging me. I looked at Dagger and I realised what was troubling me, her wing was damaged. The thing that irritated me slightly was that I didn’t know a thing about medicine or first aid, heck she wrapped something around the wound. This of course made me think perhaps that’s why the bear woke up? Let me throw this scenario down for you guys, let’s say that she woke up, realised that she wasn’t next to the river and then realised that her wing hurt like mad. The only way for her to have been moved was if someone carried her, so at this point she then takes a step outside of the cave and slashes some vines off of the trees for a makeshift bandage.

At this point you may be thinking, ‘That’s oddly specific’. It was, in fact it was a vine that was cut in half so it wasn’t round, the only reason I say this is because I also woke up with the same kind of bandage on my left arm. It seemed as if she knew more about survival than me, I have to admit I was slightly jealous… I joke of course…

I was Extremely jealous…

Then again this goes back to the main fact at hand, she’s been planning an escape for a long time, so surely she must have done some form of research on how to survive out in the wilderness.

Anyway, we continued our trek deeper into the forest. It was slowly apparent that we weren’t alone anymore. At first we thought it was the Griffons royal guard, oh boy were we wrong…

I was leading with my happy go lucky stride, every now and again I would turn my head and look behind me, Dagger would be standing looking up through the tree branches. Something was up…

“Dagger!” I shouted behind me, not stopping as I did it. “C’mon, we need to keep moving…”

We continued a little further, then yet again she had stopped dead in her tracks.

I stopped and turned to face her, she was several meters behind me.  “Dagger? Is something wrong?” I asked, unsure as to what was troubling her.

What was her reaction? “Shush!” She insisted, I didn’t know how to take this.

“… What? I’m just asking if something is troubling you-“ I began to explain, but of course yet again…

“I said Hush!” Dagger shouted back at me, I wanted to shout at her. But slowly I realised that she was concentrating on something, her eyes were closed and her breathing had slowed down substantially.

Slowly I made my way up to her and waited, I just wanted some kind of response, the tension was killing me.

Eventually however, “We need to move, Now!” She informed me, clearly this was vital.

“Ok, let’s book it!” I replied, I didn’t want to know what it was that made her act in such a way, if I did I wouldn’t be able to act logically and quickly if need be.

We started our mad dash and kept on going as fast as out feet could carry us, well she actually has claws but you know what I mean. It quickly became apparent what was chasing us, we could hear the howls and rattling of paws closing in behind us.

It was wolves… No joke…

And I’m not talking ‘Timber’ wolves either folks, I mean real wolves. Deadly in packs and hunt as such, this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. Heck this was a chase through a forest… Wait, you knew that? … Meh, whatever…

The further we ran the more we realised that we were heavily outnumbered, we could hear them behind us, beside us, in the distance and up ahead. As far as we could tell we were stuffed, especially if the wolves caught up to us. Unfortunately for us we came to a clearing, but why’s that a bad thing? Well, as we entered we were ambushed, they first appeared in front of us, this caused us to stop dead in our tracks. We then turned around in a 180 degree to back up but, yet again, they stopped our retreat. It didn’t take long before we were surrounded, luckily for us however, well kind of anyway, they gave us quite a bit of distance between them and us… But yeah, we were stuck dead in the middle… Not literally mind you… Yet… I’ll stop I swear…

 I stood close to Dagger, I was hoping she had yet another scheme prepared. “So… I don’t suppose you’ve got a plan do you?” I whispered, trying my best to keep as quiet and calm as possible.

“Does it look like I have a plan!?” She whispered back angrily, clearly she wasn’t dealing with this situation very well… That made two of us…

The wolves seemed to fight amongst themselves, they were organised sitting next to each other in a rough circle shape.  With their big sharp teeth and ravenous attitudes, these guys were a force to be reckoned with.

This kind of situation could be described as dire, as they had just begun to act even more boisterous, a lone wolf emerged from the pack. With a large scar across its face and its right canine tooth chipped, it walked through the unbreakable line into the centre.  Commanding the pack with such leadership it didn’t need to make a sound, as it approached us the entire pack was silent. Oh and it wasn’t a small pack, I had a look around and had a quick count. It was around twenty five, this wasn’t a pack… It was a battalion…

“What are you doing in our turf?” The leader asked us, its voice was rough and coarse. At this point my mind rewound back to when I met Curt for the first time.

My mind set is so childish folks, that this whole scenario seemed like something fresh from a Disney movie. The leader of the pack for starters had a scar across his face, keeping in mind what I’ve just explained to you how do you think I responded?

I started laughing, Dagger gave me one heck of a fierce look the second I did it. “So… What do they call you?” I asked jokingly, “…Scar?”

At times like this it feels like I’m being stalked, because every time something like this happens that awkward silence pops up again and just decides to occupy the air.

It gave me a look of confusion at first, “That’s what I’m known as… How’d you know that?”

I then proceeded to fall onto the floor and continued to laugh my posterior off, this was just ridiculous.

“Oh, someone give me a medal!” I declared, holding my chest in slight pain. “Oh boy, why is this world so predictable?” I eventually calmed down and got back up onto my feet.

“Are you trying to mock me- Um…” He began to say, I think he wanted to follow that up with something like ‘Are you mocking me human?’ or something like that. Of course he didn’t know what I was so he physically couldn’t, this didn’t stop him from asking though. “…Not that I care, but what are you?”

Taking this opportunity I decided to attempt a trick of my own… I was going to lie myself out of this conundrum… With style.

I started with a laugh, and then… “You should be bowing before me, I am what’s known as a human… A master wolf hunter…” All around me I could see the wolves were unconvinced, this wasn’t a good start. “I’ve fought many wolves in my life time, this pack is no different…”

“Oh really? And how is it ‘No’ different?” Scar asked me, with very little care in his words.

I turned around and calmly walked up to the wolves in the circle, showing no fear in my face I knelt down to get eye level with one of the wolfs, I then flicked its nose and it immediately backed away. “This line is too thin… If a target ran towards here they would get straight through… Sure they might get scared and stop in their tracks, but what if they charged? The line would be overwhelmed and the target would break through…”

In reality I was just talking crap, but I needed to make it sound logical to myself for it to work, I mean if I didn’t believe myself then there would be no chance that the wolves would believe me right? Scar was observing my explanation. However, to him it was rather interesting… Compelling even…

“So… How would you make this line stronger then?” Scar replied, yes that’s what he was called. I was going to ask him to leave Simba’s dad alone but this wasn’t Disney… Oh and he wasn’t a lion… Gotta get the details right…

“For starters, when the target moves closer to one area of this circle, have surrounding wolves get behind those closest to it. Then whilst they do that the other wolves can spread out and fill the gaps, then if it moves somewhere else just repeat the process…” If you didn’t get a word of that I’ll probably sketch an explanation somewhere at some point, but the premise was pretty straight forward.  “If it can just run through then circling the target is pointless…”

“Uh huh…” Scar replied blandly, he wasn’t buying this at all… “You do realise I’m just humouring you right? Quit stalling for time… its blatantly obvious what you’re trying to do…”

“Can you blame me for trying?” I asked him, shrugging my shoulders as I did it. “It doesn’t matter anyway, I came into this world prepared…”

“Oh really? What are you going to do? Bore us to death?!” Scar suggested to me, clearly he was taunting me… Wrong move…

You see as I was talking I was messing around with my backpack, I was trying to find something as carefully as possible. You see if I had just dived into it then they would have jumped me, so I decided a subtle approach was required. Talking nonsense is what I do best after all… You see Dogs actually have a certain reaction, what I mean by that is this. Let’s say that your dog was staring at you, if you were to quickly point in one direction with your hand the dog wouldn’t look where you was pointing at, it would in fact be looking at the point of your finger. There’s probably a specific word for this but I’m just too lazy to look it up, so the plan was pretty simple, distract them whilst I rummaged around in my bag for something I knew would be perfect for this situation.

“Oh no! You’ve seen through my ruse- blah blah blah…” I mumbled not really caring if I was heard, I might appear to be downright stupid at times but I’ll say this. If I know something is bound to happen I’ll prepare for the consequences, I knew Dissy would drop me in this world eventually, this time however I was going prepared.

You see after that whole charade the first time round I did some research on surviving the wild, when it comes to wild animals the one thing I looked for was a high pitched whistle. A dog whistle to be precise, considering the close DNA between dogs and wolves I figured, ‘Heck it’s worth a shot…’

“You’re not in the position to mock me human” Scar informed me, he didn’t like being downplayed in front of his crew… His posse, his home boys… You get the picture…

“Sit boy” I replied blandly, I took out the whistle I had concealed in my pocket, which I found hiding in the depths of my backpack, and gave it a sharp blow.

The wolves around us started cringing, some even lost their balance. Dagger was un-phased by the whistle but puzzled by what was going on.

There was a downside however, if I didn’t blow into the whistle then the wolves would resume to chase after us. So I took a quick breather and quickly I shouted, “Dagger! Let’s move!” After that I continued to blow into the whistle to keep the blighters off of us while we legged it, we quickly made our way through the thin line of wolves and, once again, progressed deep into the forest with post haste.

“Agh! After them!” Scar barked at his cohorts, it took them a while to react. “I Said MOVE!”

This plan, as good as it was had one major downfall. To blow into the whistle would mean that I would need to draw breath to do so in the first place, this would be a problem considering I was running from a pack of wolves at the same time.

Ever tried jogging and talking at the same time? Yeah, it’s like that. Oh except with this you’re trying to take a deep breath and then exhale as your jogging. I was getting light headed, this wasn’t good if I wanted to keep my limbs intact. Actually I never really did ask the wolves why they were chasing us, they could have been doing it for fun right? … Actually sod that, I was pretty sure they were hungry…

I was beginning to slow down, Dagger could see this very clearly. “Hey! Don’t stop now! We need to keep up the pace!” Dagger barked at me, I was panting so damned much my vision was getting rather blurry.

I was joking about it as per usual to try and keep my spirits high, “Legs- Slowing. Lungs- Burning. Hat- Still on ma head…” Doing this however was the dumbest thing I could have done…

I tripped and fell flat on my face, I turned around and the wolves were approaching, not as fast as they had done before but it was still pretty quick. Dagger came back and helped me, she grabbed my arm and put it over her shoulder to carry me.

“By the Emperor I knew I wanted to be free, but I never expected any of this to happen…” Dagger whispered to herself, she was genuinely scared. Clearly my concept of Griffon's was flawed, I mean I thought they were all cold and strong willed.

“That’s the cost of freedom, you never know what’s going to happen next” I told Dagger, without hesitation she flicked my head quite hard with her claw. “OW! What was that for!?”

“Stop talking, you’re already out of breath, don’t make it any worse…”Dagger ordered me, I nodded and tried to focus on running.

This gave the wolves a chance to catch up, it didn’t take them long. I looked behind me every now and again and I could see them gaining. With what little sense I had left in my mind I decided to bluff to buy us some time, what I did was simple, I made it look like I was about to blow into the whistle when actually I wasn’t doing it at all. It made them cringe just from the thought that I’d actually blow it, this slowed them down substantially. Plus if they did get too close then I would just give a sharp blow and hey presto, a nice bit of distance between them and us.

I’m not as daft as I make out… Well I am but I can be quite the logical thinker when I need to be.

This didn’t work for very long however, Scar, the leader of the pack, caught on to my strategy and quickly found a way around it. I saw him vanish from the pack, he was looking for something. I saw him later returning  to the chase, it looked like he stuck something in his ears, I tried the whistle as he approached but it wasn’t working.

He tackled us to the ground, I was exhausted as it was and I just didn’t have the energy to get up. Dagger let go of my arm and rolled onto the ground, she let out a shout of pain as she landed on her back.

“Grrrrr I’ve Had Enough Of Your Games!” Scar snarled at us, he was not a happy bunny. He was, in fact, a very angry wolf.

It looked hopeless, they surrounded us again but this time they were as mad as banshee’s. They converged closer and closer to us… Until something happened, by something I mean this…

A purple mist filled the area, it literally came out of nowhere. As it rolled past my face I could smell something but I couldn’t put my fingers on what it was… Literally, I mean it was mist after all… in the distance I could see something getting closer, it was a gigantic!

Scar was looking back and forth between us and the shadowy creature, eventually he snarled and backed away. “Grrrr… Leave them be… The Ursa will take care of them…”

‘Oh how wonderful’ I remember thinking to myself, out of the pan and into the fire was the phrase I believe.

As the pitter-patter of paws slowly escaped my hearing range, I was not so eagerly awaiting my own fate. A fate of which seemed to be taking the mickey as nothing was happening, at all…

Dazed and tired I slowly got up from the ground and looked up, the shadow wasn’t even that big. In fact after the wolves left it seemed to fall to pieces… Literally…

You see what actually happened was a whole bunch of creatures made themselves into a human- I mean creature pyramid, mimicking the shape of an Ursa. What was my reaction?

“Ok, now that was some darned fine work!” I chuckled to myself, and then one of the creatures approached me. From the shadows approached a much smaller creature, it didn’t stop until I was pretty much face to face with it… Or it would have been if I wasn’t taller than it… “Uh… Hey there…”

It was a zebra, with multi coloured dreadlocks no less. Black and white stripes, as you would expect from a zebra but others may surprise you. It’s not just the same colours, I mean sure black and white is what we expect but you can get some strange mixtures of colours… I even saw a zebra with a green coat and blue mane… We didn’t cross paths, I just kind of saw him walking away from the camp. Perhaps he was leaving on a trip of self-discovery?

“What a strange and curious creature you are” The zebra started to say, “How long have you travelled? Was it very far?” It rhymed… Of course…

I chuckled to myself before answering, “All in good time my stripy new friend, we need a place to stay, do you have a bed to lend?”

… Well I thought it was good…