The sun shined quite brightly in the true blue afternoon sky; the autumn breeze was soft, gently pushing along the cloud beneath her feet. The gentle sunshine and gentler wind both warmed and cooled off her fur and feathers. It was so abjectly idyllic that if she had a Lit assignment, she’d probably spend the whole thing just describing her surroundings.

Except that Gilda was eating alone. Again. As always. While the teenage ponies around her happily chatted and ate away with little more than school on their mind. Not exactly something very nice to dwell on, let alone write about.

The young griffon idly ran her claws across her lunchbox, tapping at the tin yet making no move to open it. Her eyes scrutinized it like she might inspect some pizza in the fridge whose age and origin she had forgotten, though less mysterious and less likely to make her sick. Unless she tried to eat the box, anyway, but that would be Derpy levels of gullible and stupid. Then again, Derpy was smiling and laughing several yards away with her friends, so she had that going for her.

It was a bit of an old tin, its paint chipping and colors faded, faintly showing the magic runes beneath that kept it from falling through the clouds like most objects were wont to do. Through the pangs of hunger, she could quite clearly smell its contents, just the right smell to make her mouth water behind her beak. All the same, she just ran her claws across the box, her stomach rumbling loudly while her muscles twitched with restraint.

Gilda’s eyes focused again when she heard someone nearby say her name. Not to her, of course; behind her back when they thought she couldn’t hear, on the other, bigger clouds where the young mares and colts spent their lunch breaks. It took little effort to drone out their inane babbling again, but she kept hearing her name again and again in those infuriatingly hushed, judging whispers. Apparently she was interesting enough to warrant a full-blown conversation again. Just perfect.

Her stomach rumbled once more. She’d always thought that describing a belly’s protests as roaring in books was stupid, but hers got loud enough that she was starting to believe it.

“Shut up,” she heard one colt say a bit too loudly, “looks like she’s hungry. You don’t want her to eat us, do you?”

Gilda bit back a growl of her own as her stomach protested. Her claws clenched, scraping a gash across her lunchbox. She pulled a claw away and smacked her lunchbox off her little island, sending it to the ground as gravity took hold of it.

She heard a few snickers behind her, and dug her claws into the cloud, kneading her talons into the soft fluff as dark fantasies started to take hold. She heard wings flap and unfold, and she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Probably a teacher noticing and coming to ask what was wrong and scold her for possibly giving a ground-pounder a concussion; always the same song and dance, might as well play along.

“Hey, you dropped this!” said a half-muffled voice that was most definitely not adult.

Gilda’s eyes snapped open to see a mare her age flapping in place before her, her lunchbox’s handle between the pony’s blunt teeth. Sky blue fur, rainbow mane, cloud and rainbow lightning bolt butt brand – excuse her, cutie mark… seen her before; school jock, pretty popular. Not an adult, but Gilda found herself wishing it had been.

“I know,” she deadpanned, “because I’m the one who threw it.”

The mare raised an eyebrow. “Why would you- ugh, hold on.” She spat out the lunch box on Gilda’s little cloud, some saliva sticking to the handle. Charming. “Why would you toss your lunch like that?”

“Because I’m not hungry,” she said again, trying to sound even more bored and disinterested.

Not taking the hint, the mare fluttered up and sat in front of the griffon. “There are always trash cans, you know; don’t have to brain some random deer or something.”

“I’m a griffon; everything we do has to inflict pain on something or else we feel like failures,” Gilda joked without the slightest hint of mirth.

“Seriously?” the mare asked with perked ears and tilted head.

Gilda stared at her flatly before simply saying, “No.”

“Oh, right,” she chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck. “Totally knew that.”

“Of course you did,” Gilda sighed.

Gilda patiently stared and waited for the mare to leave. Her patience did not pay off. “So, um, why aren’t you hungry?” the mare asked, wiggling her plot into the cloud to get comfy. “Big breakfast?”

“Yeah, I had three foals this morning,” she droned, hoping her glare would literally produce daggers to scare the mare off. “They screamed a lot, but they tasted great on bread with some barbeque sauce.”

The pegasus blinked her rose-colored eyes and said, “I’m having a really hard time telling if you’re joking or not, so you’re going to have to help me out here.”

Gilda sighed and pinched the bridge of her beak, closing her eyes. “I was joking.”

“Right, eheh, very funny,” the mare said with a clearly uncomfortable chuckle and nervous smile, her wings ruffling slightly.

A few more seconds dragged by, Gilda tapping her lunchbox with her claw impatiently. Taking hints was clearly not the blue mare’s strong suit, for the next thing she did was extend her foreleg.

“My name is Rainbow Dash, by the way,” she said with a friendly smile, though Gilda could plainly see her legs slightly shaking like a cornered rabbit. A pony trying to play it cool in front of her, she’d only seen that a hundred times before. Still, Gilda couldn’t help but smirk ever so slightly.

Gilda looked at the offered hoof, up to its owner's face, then back again. She took it with a firm claw-shake and a short grunt of “Gilda von Falke.”

Rainbow Dash hastily pulled her hoof away while trying to not look like she had noticed how sharp Gilda’s talons were; Gilda was quite used to it. “Fancy name you have there,” she said with a cover-up smile.

“My dad’s a General back home,” Gilda said. “I’m here as an exchange student this year as a show of goodwill or something. It’s pure politics.”

“Gotta suck, being so far from home,” Rainbow Dash said in a bumbling show of sympathy.

“I kinda know that, yeah; it is sort of my life,” Gilda shot back with a frown.

Rainbow Dash’s ear twitched and her smile faltered. “Yeah, uh, sorry…” Her eyes wandered frantically before falling on Gilda’s lunchbox. “So, you’re a fan of the Wonderbolts too? Quite a nice lunchbox of ‘em you’ve got there. Complete line-up, too!”

Gilda just stared harder, her brow furrowing so deep it halved her vision. “Why are you still talking to me?” she asked as bluntly as she could in the hopes of piercing the pony’s concrete skull. “Just call me a monster and get it over with.”

And the mare’s smile turned into an offended scowl, right on cue. “Hey, I’m just trying to be friendly!” she said, crossing her forelegs with a huff.

“And failing very hard,” Gilda scoffed back with a flick of her tail. “Just go back to your pony friends and leave me alone; we have nothing to talk about, dweeb.”

“Look,” the pegasus growled, wings flaring behind her, “I’m very good friends with a pony or two who also used to know what it’s like to be lonely and picked on. You’ve been here for months, and I’ve only ever seen you here on this one cloud alone. I’ve been thinking about how badly she used to feel and how you must feel right now, and thought that while I was returning your lunch box I might as well try to be your friend. Why are you being such a crab when all I want to do is help?”

“Because one, I’m not your personal project,” Gilda snarled back, getting on all fours. “Two, I doubt you have any idea what I’m going through at all, and neither does your little pony friend you feel so sorry for.”

“And why’s tha–”

“Because you’re ponies!” Gilda interrupted, not caring how loud she got. “I’m the only griffon in the entire school, and only one of a few in Cloudsdale. And you know what? We eat meat!” She wrenched her lunchbox open and pulled out what her mouth had been watering for all lunch period and waving it in Rainbow Dash’s face. “See this? Grilled ham and cheese. Ham as in this used to be a pig. Ham as in this used to be part of something walking around and possibly even talking before a griffon killed it! Ever since I got here, there hasn’t been a single day without one of you feather-brained pegasi giving me crap over my diet. Even the adults give me looks as if I’m some sort of freak, but they’re too afraid to say anything because it’d piss off your princess and my dad! Every single one of you plotholes hates me just for existing! So go ahead, call me a monster and just leave, me, alone!”

Her heart freshly spilled and her own ears ringing from her volume, Gilda realized that her wings hurt from flaring so hard and her chest was heaving in rage. Out of the corner of her eye she also saw a crowd gathering, but she kept her gaze squarely on Rainbow Dash.

To her credit, Rainbow Dash wasn’t shrinking away. In fact, she was staring defiantly right back into the enraged griffon’s eyes, a competitive spark lit within them. She only took her eyes off of Gilda to glance at the gathered spectators. She didn’t even appear all that upset save for the smallest of frowns on her face.

Without a word, Rainbow Dash folded her wings back up and swiped Gilda’s sandwich from her claws. Before the griffon could throttle the thief, she took it in both hooves, opened wide, and took a big, crunchy bite out of it.

Gilda could feel her own flared wings go limp and jaw go slack as a gasp went through the crowd of colts and fillies, a few outright fainting on the spot and at least one vomiting over the side of a cloud.

In complete silence and with closed eyes, ignoring the growing horror around her, Rainbow Dash chewed with naught but a small, “that’s interesting” hum. After a few moments, she swallowed and licked her lips, thumping her chest and letting out a small belch.

She opened her eyes again and looked at Gilda with a coyly innocent but smug gaze. “Only thing monstrous about you is how much salt you put on this thing,” she said, a sly but welcoming grin spreading across her face. “Other than that, not bad!”

“B…but I… but you’re a…” Gilda sputtered, her tongue tripping over itself as her brain scrambled to make sense of what just happened.

“A completely awesome mare? Yeah, I knew that,” she snickered, rubbing her hoof on her chest and examining it. Her smug look fell and eyes went wide when her stomach let out a very low, angry squelch, her cheeks turning green. “Uh, be right back.”

In a flash of all colors, the mare sped off for the bathroom, leaving a crowd of utterly disgusted pegasi and a completely dumbfounded griffon.

Less than a minute later, Gilda found herself leaning against the wall right beside the door to the little mare’s room, her claws tapping her lunchbox and her tail twitching and flicking as she heard the daring mare inside puke her guts out. She’d left the still reeling crowd behind before the adults could fully break it up, or any of the students could blame her for the whole incident. She could practically hear them spout some junk about how she’d corrupted Rainbow Dash or something. She resisted the urge to rake her claws against her lunchbox again.

The retching sounds inside stopped a short while after. Rainbow Dash trotted outside with a relieved sigh, wiping a bit of bile from the corner of her mouth but otherwise looking good for a pony that’d just violently vomited. Her eyes and ears perked up a bit when she noticed Gilda standing there. With a small laugh she said, “I liked the sandwich, but it didn’t like me. Sorry for wasting it.”

“Take it up with the pig it came from, not me,” the griffon said with a small snort. She brought her free claw up and rubbed her own foreleg, avoiding eye contact. “Why did you do that, anyway?”

“I need a reason?” Rainbow Dash snickered. “You don’t know me too well. Sometimes I just do things because I feel like it; I kind of have a rep for being a daredevil. And maybe I was kinda curious about what it tasted like.”

“You’re not very good at lying, you know,” Gilda sighed. “If it was to make me somehow not feel so bad, it was a really dumb way to do it. Half the class saw you, and they won’t be happy about it.”

“Eh, they can flutter and sputter,” Dash shrugged off with a wave of her foreleg. “It sounds like they’re a bunch of plotholes to you anyway, so why should I care what they think?”

Gilda looked the mare in the eye and cocked an eyebrow. “Because you’re ponies, and prey has to stick together against their predators?”

“Have you even eaten any ponies?” Dash asked.

“Duh, no,” Gilda huffed. “Pony meat is beyond illegal back home, and it’s not like I can eat my classmates.”

“Then why should I have a problem with you?” Dash pressed, raising a brow of her own.

“You’re really not getting this whole ‘I eat meat’ thing, are you?” Gilda asked back, getting back on all fours. “I don’t eat ponies, but I do eat other animals that are almost as smart, some of which can talk. I get mad about the ponies here, but I really don’t blame them for hating me for it.”

“Well, I do,” Dash said with finality. “I’m not a biologist or anything, but griffons kind of need to eat meat, don’t they?”

She let out a raspy sigh, her gaze lowering. “Well, yeah, but–”

“Then end of story,” Dash interrupted. “They shouldn’t make you feel so bad just for eating what’s good for you. Nobody, and I mean nobody, should give you so much grief just for living, and I’m kinda mad they made you feel like you deserve it.”

“Nobody made me feel like this,” the griffon huffed back halfheartedly.

“Yeah, that’s a load and you know it,” Dash said, sitting her plot down like it was a judge’s gavel. “There’s no way that you felt like this back home.”

“I guess,” Gilda mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck and flicking her tail. “It’s just that… I don’t know. The longer I’ve been here, the more their hate made sense and the more I hated myself too.” She gripped her lunchbox a bit tighter as her stomach rumbled. “That’s… kind of why I’m so hungry; I haven’t eaten in days. Well, I’ve had some fruit, but my body just wasn’t built to live on just that. I’ve just felt so guilty that I haven’t wanted to eat meat anymore.”

“See, that right there? That’s uncool,” Dash huffed angrily. “Everyone who made you feel like that can go right to Tartarus on a one-way ticket. Wanting to live and be healthy doesn’t make you bad; it’s not like you can help it.”

Gilda looked up into the pegasus’ eyes. “But–”

Rainbow Dash put a hoof to Gilda’s beak. “Nope, no buts unless you’ve got a tail to go with it. I’m not leaving this spot until you eat the rest of that freaking sandwich and stop starving yourself.”

Gilda glared at the significantly smaller pony. Dash glared back many times harder, without the slightest flinch or loose muscle anywhere on her body. The griffon slapped her hoof away and huffed, “Fine, if it’ll make you happy.” She snapped her lunchbox open and pulled out her lunch, taking a bite out of it to go with Rainbow Dash’s. Her eyes snapped open when the flavors she missed so much exploded on her tongue, and before she knew it she was wolfing it down like an animal. After a few ravenous gulps and licking the crumbs off her claws, she settled down and panted heavily. “Oh gosh, that felt so good,” she softly whined, her hunger pains finally gone.

Rainbow Dash smirked and glided over to the griffon’s side. She gave Gilda a firm pat on the back, forcing a loud belch out of her. “There you go; that wasn’t so hard, was it?” the mare teased.

Gilda blushed softly as she glared at nothing in particular, refusing to look Dash in the eye. “No, it wasn’t…”

“Are you going to promise me that you aren’t going to do something that dumb again?” the pegasus pressed, prodding Gilda’s shoulder with the edge of her hoof.

“Buzz off,” she huffed.

“Good enough,” Dash snickered. “Want to hang out sometime? You seem like a cool gal when you’re not being so mopey, and it doesn’t sound like you have any friends here.”

Gilda softly growled. “Pretty smart for a jock, aren’t you? But yeah, don’t have any friends here. Not really looking for any, though.”

“Well, you found one anyway,” Dash laughed, flying up into Gilda’s face. “Need someone to show you that not all ponies are plotholes.”

Gilda looked back into Dash’s eyes long and hard; even when grinning like a doofus, the mare’s rose-colored eyes showed no sign of giving up or backing down. “Fine,” Gilda said with a shadow of a smile, “though it should probably be my place so I don’t snack on you or something.”

Rainbow’s smile faltered. “Eheh, and you’re sure your folks won’t?”

“My family’s still back east,” she explained. “I’m living with a pony host family right now.”

“Oh, that sounds awesome!” Dash perked up. “How’re they treating you?”

“Better than the foals here at school,” Gilda admitted. “They don’t have foals of their own – gay stallion couple, and all. I think you’ll like them. Last Laugh is a comedian, and Inkwell is an author who writes the most hardcore stuff I’ve ever read.” Her smile widened and she let out a small laugh. “Seriously, you’d think he was a griffon from the stuff he writes about; reading his work before the censors get to it is kind of awesome.”

Dash chuckled. “They sound great, yeah! Though I would like for you to meet my dad sometime, and he’ll probably wanna meet you once I tell him you’re a griffon.”

“Hope that won’t be a problem,” Gilda said with a nervous chuckle.

“Eh, he’s never said anything bad about griffons, so I don’t think it will be,” she admitted. “But yeah, your house first. Saturday sound good?”

“Sure, what ti–” Gilda was suddenly cut off by the lunch bell, which was followed by many flapping wings as the students filed back into the main building.

“I better get to class,” Dash groaned. “If I’m tardy again, my dad’s gonna spank my cutie mark right off. Wanna meet on a cloud below school after classes are over? We can set a time up then.”

“Sounds good to me,” Gilda giggled behind her claw. “See you after class, Dash.”

“You too, Gilda!” With a colorful flash, the pegasus was already halfway down the hall, leaving a trail of fine mist kicked up from the cloud floors.

Gilda caught herself waving at Dash’s retreating plot like a total dweeb with a smile on her face. She quickly put her claw back down to the floor and toned down the smile… just a little bit. She put her lunchbox’s handle in her beak and strutted to her own class, her head held a little higher, her stride a bit more confident, and her heart far, far lighter. That was definitely something worth writing about. Good thing Lit class was next.