PAULA GROVER
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Fluff Feather: The Rebel Kryphon

8/21/2019

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​There is one young rebel whose story I love to tell, even if she was one of the minor players in the larger story of Queen Sunsky. The escape of the young kryphon Fluff Feather from our rule-bound society reminds me so much of my own younger days that I cannot resist sharing it. Her tale is not only mine, but it also tells the story of millions of other wingless chicks and cubs: 
 
Fluff Feather cried her raucous protest to the skies above. They had found out about her secret. Today was the dreaded day that the young, wingless kryphon was to enter into service to the gryphons. Twig Beak, the mother, preened her head-feathers lovingly, attempting in vain to calm her rebellious chick.
            “I’m sorry, wingless daughter,” the gryphon matriarch apologized to her, fluttering her own wings in consternation. “The injustices heaped upon you and other wingless ones by our higher-class sisters can only be described as unconscionable.”
            “Mama, you know that we must flee,” Fluff Feather told her. “If they find out that I am unsterilized...”
            “That was my doing,” Twig Beak interrupted her. “I chose to raise you away from our people so that you might one day claim the right to mate. I will take responsibility for my decision. You are right, though...you must flee, before that interfering cackle-monger, Councilor Stone Talon, sends the Royal Keythonic Brigade after you.”
            Fluff Feather was about to protest her mother’s plan with another loud vocalization, but the soft sound of paws against ground stopped her. A group of wingless males, known in gryphonic society as keythongs, was evidently on its way to arrest both of them. Fluff Feather urged her mother to escape with her by pushing her feathered head against Twig Beak’s leonine haunches.
            “No!” her mother insisted, with iron determination. She scratched her daughter with razor-sharp talons, as if to settle the matter. “Fluff Feather, do you want to be free or not?”
            “Yes, but...”
            “Go!” Twig Beak screeched, as a troop of six keythongs jumped out of the bushes, surrounding the pair.
            “Fluff Feather of the kryphons,” the head law enforcement officer, or LEO, cawed in warning. “Come with us or...”
            The chief LEO did not have time to finish his duty-bound sentence of arrest. Twig Beak rushed at him, thrashing her wings in rage and tearing at the furred skins of two subordinate officers. Fluff Feather joined her mother in the attack, tearing the feathers off a hapless officer’s head with her claws.
            “Halt your attack upon the loyal officers of the great gryphon queen, Heartsong!” the chief cried, to no avail. Three of the six keythongs were backing off, fearful of the furious matriarch before them. They had been trained all their lives to defer to gryphons, and they obviously did not know how to assert authority over such a fearsome winged creature as Twig Beak.
            Finally, the chief ordered his officers to stand down. “Let’s go and bring reinforcements! These two are far more savage than we ever could have imagined. You see the result, my brothers, when we neglect to sterilize wingless servants? They grow insane with a raw power that they were never meant to have.”
            “Humph-a-dumph-dumph, you silly keythongs!” Fluff Feather taunted them. “I claim my right to mate, and I shall do so with an opinicus!”
            The chief screeched in horror at the very idea of a lowly kryphon mating with an opinicus, or winged male gryphon. Twig Beak nipped her daughter’s tail to chastise her for her impudence. 
            “Chief Soundrung,” Twig Beak addressed him, changing her tone to indicate respect for the officer’s position. “I promise that I will return to answer for my crime. I am the one who raised Fluff Feather away from the society of servants, and I shall reap the consequences. But I tell you, she will not bow down to the tyranny of her gryphon sisters!”
            “Sacrilege!” Soundrung screamed, as Twig Beak chased her daughter away from them, toward the forested area of the lower mountains.
            After they had put some distance between themselves and the brigade, Twig Beak stopped. “My daughter,” she said, “at the age of seventeen sun revolutions, the time has come for you to move into adulthood. I will go back and answer for my so-called “crime”. My trial will waste the gryphons’ time, while you escape. I will hear no argument against this! If you are caught, it will mean that all my work to keep you safe will have been for naught.”
            “But why can’t you come with me, Mother Twig Beak?” Fluff Feather implored her. “Why sacrifice yourself to the gryphons’ wrath?”
            “I will appeal to Queen Heartsong’s sense of compassion and fairness,” Twig Beak reassured her. “Although she must adhere to gryphonic law, she herself is a benevolent ruler. I will be fine, my daughter. But you must get out of gryphonic territory altogether. Go now, to the territory of the equines and the hippogryph outcasts. They will not harm you or interfere with your plans. Perhaps you might even mate with a winged stallion and produce hippogryph chicks with him.”
            “Mating with a winged horse, Mama?”  Fluff Feather cried in mock horror. “You are quite the rebel, aren’t you?”
            Twig Beak bit her daughter in reprisal. “Go, Fluff Feather. May the blessings of the otherworld be yours.”
            Fluff Feather tapped beaks with her mother to signal her reluctant acquiescence, and they preened each other lovingly one last time. The lone, unsterilized kryphon swiftly ran off into the forest, leaving her winged mother behind.                             
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The Monster-Bird Queen

8/11/2019

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We wingless ones feel a special empathy for those whom the society rejects. Nonetheless, we struggle to comprehend the actions of wicked creatures such as the vile despot, Queen Talona, and her ruthless mother, Soundringer. I remind myself, however, that this despot was a misunderstood youngster at one time, and that Soundringer loved her only gryphon chick with a fiery protectiveness that few could truly comprehend. She desired only the best for Talona and so she kindled within her the desire to ascend to the most powerful position in the gryphonic community, that of Premiere Queen. Unfortunately, in her fervor to secure her daughter’s advancement, she drove her into a pit of madness, the sort of insanity that unmitigated power sometimes ignites in those who are destructively insecure. 
 
I had a dream one night that provided me with a certain insight into the two gryphons that many of our people judge as being of “low-to-no moral character”. I have written it down in my journal:                 
 
Talona screeched as she left the company of her three hated half-sisters, Sunsky, Mountain Rain, and Cloudhopper. Father Sun Quest had recently heaped yet more public praise upon the trio but he had, as usual, completely ignored his only chick by Mother Soundringer. It seemed that he would forever favor his daughters by his perfect “One True Mate”, the oh-so-wholesome matriarch, Skystar.

Tal flew off enraged into the sky, careening down near the jagged rocks until she was close enough to crash into them; and she then veered away at the last minute, saving herself from impending doom. After a while, she tired of her dangerous game and landed on a rocky ledge to rest. As the chilling wind whipped at her fur and feathers, the memories of her chickhood resurfaced.        
 
The scene was vivid in her mind. Talona, then known as “Tal”, remembered herself as a young chick under attack, retreating into the air to escape her tormentors. She felt the painful bites of the other high-class gryphlets as they chased after her. One of them plucked a feather from her wing. There were many youngsters in the sky, each one of them taking turns diving at her, but there were three chicks in particular that held the most impact for her.

“Father Sun Quest loves us, but not you!” the youngest princess cried out merrily as she chased Tal through the air. This one was Mountain Rain, the worst of her three half-sisters. She reached out with her beak and plucked another feather out of young Tal.

“Careful, Rain!” the eldest sister, Cloudhopper, called. “We don’t want to send her crashing down into the rocks, do we?”

The middle sister, the one who would be queen of Gryphonia later in life, lagged behind. She darted in and out, half-heartedly nipping at Tal’s side and then falling back. Tal could sense that this princess’s heart was not in the attack but even so, she did not attempt to stop it. This was Sunsky, the “gryphon of courage” that the oracle Truth Speaker had predicted would rise to rule Gryphonia.

Sunsky was always her most hated nemesis, even more so than the villainous Mountain Rain...perhaps it was because Sunsky was such a little goody-goody, like her mother Skystar. Tal was nonetheless surprised at how little energy this chick, the top favorite of Father Sun Quest, held within her for the assault. Talona the adult gryphon remembered her as being much more vicious, but perhaps she had overestimated her rival for the Stone Throne. It suddenly occurred to her that Sunsky was chock-full of weaknesses. She had no stomach for the fight! The young Tal decided to change tactics. She swooped down low, surprising her pursuers. She then circled around to the rear and rammed her beak into Sunsky, delivering a mighty bite in the process. Sunsky quivered and nearly fell to the rocks below, but the sneak attack had raised the ire of the little sky demon, Mountain Rain. The youngest gryphon flew headlong into Talona and clawed her savagely with her talons. Tal returned the attack, and the two little chicks floundered in the air until they fell into a thorny bush below. The thorns pierced Tal’s skin and she screeched in pain. Mountain Rain seemed oblivious to the pain and continued the attack. Tal countered it by pulling an especially thorny branch back and letting it snap into Mountain Rain’s head. This time, the nasty little creature bellowed noisily, to Tal’s perverse delight. Immediately following her small triumph, Tal fell down into the thorns, the bush so thick that it nearly choked her.

“How dare you attack my sister?” Mountain Rain cried from above. “She will be queen one day, but you are only next-in-waiting. You will be waiting and waiting and waiting to be queen, but it will never happen. You are the daughter of the dreadful Gossip Queen and everyone hates you.”

Tal felt the words sear her soul. Her beloved mother, sarcastically known as Soundringer the Queen of Gossip, swooped in and picked up her tormentor by the scruff of the neck, tossing her aside onto the mountain rock. She reached down with her left claw and gently helped her young daughter up out of the bushes. Tal wailed out her pain, pressing her head against her mother’s breast.

“There, there, my dearest chick,” Soundringer soothed her. “Those dreadful little monsters of Sun Quest’s will one day regret their actions. I will make sure that you become queen in Sunsky’s place.”

As soon as the gryphon mother’s words entered her young mind, Tal felt a jealous rage welling up in her for Sunsky, the one who would be queen. She felt as though she would like to kill her and Mountain Rain, leaving the eldest sister Cloudhopper to watch their demise helplessly. She wanted to torment these three privileged brats, just as they had tormented her.

“One day, little Tal,” Talona screeched to her younger self, within the echoing chambers of her own mind, “I will get them for what they did to you.”
 
And thus the gryphonic community planted the seed of fear within the heart of its most vulnerable chick...the one who would later be known as “the Monster-Bird Queen” of Gryphonia.  
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    Paula Grover

    I am the author of a new fantasy novel, "The Gryphon". I have been writing fantasy stories since I was seven years old. More recently, I have published free stories on fiction sites; but this is my first published book of prose. 

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