Ragtime Dandies

by NotHereAnymoreProbably

The Last Goodbye [Sad]

A tear rolled slowly down her face. Another followed it, and another, but Gilda raised no claw to wipe them away. She held her regal poise, looking into the distance, awaiting the sun’s slow rise. And when it at last shone its light upon the world… she would sing.

She wanted to look away, to gaze instead at the one lying beside her, lifeless… yet serene, happy. But she would not break millenia-old griffon customs for mere discomfort. She would not dishonour the one she loved so easily.

At last, the bright orb of the sky began to edge over the surface, reminding her of Fluttershy’s love of the dawn and all its wonders. Oh, how Fluttershy would sing, so full of life and joy… and now she would be sung over, as she was returned to the earth.

As she imagined laying the beautiful pegasus in the dirt and covering her again, Gilda shook and had to swallow back a gasp of pain. She would never love again; not for griffon traditions, but because there was simply no other like Fluttershy. No other being in Equestria - pony, griffon, or anything else - would she ever love as she had that beautiful, beautiful…

She praised all the gods that the sun had wholly risen when she broke down, falling to her side and covering her beak with both claws. She curled up beside Fluttershy’s body and sobbed - reached out to brush her pink mane out of her eyes, as she had done so often in the years before… only this time, her eyes weren’t full of kindness, gleaming with love for everything there was. This time, they were closed, never to open again.

She cried for a long time. And finally, as the sun shone brightly upon them, her cries turned into something else. Slowly, a melody began to form, and wracked less and less by her mourning, it began to grow. As she sang, Gilda thought of her life with Fluttershy; memories, glad and sad, melded together in perfect harmony and presented themselves to her. Their love had transcended mere words, and so, wordlessly, she sang of everything they were, everything they had been together.

Gilda sang of her frustration at finding that a little yellow pegasus was destined to be the love of her life; she sang of her joy in finding that she didn’t care. She sang of everything she grew to love about Fluttershy, and she sang of how proud she was, to have shared everything with her.

At last, singing of the long wait ahead of her, until they could meet again, Gilda lowered Fluttershy’s body into the open grave awaiting her, returning her to the earth which she had loved so much.

And though she would soon stop singing, she knew that the song was a part of her now, and would be until she breathed her last.

Comments

[Phazon]

This one sure felt sad, but I think whatever sadness I may have felt was stunted by the words, "GildaShy? What the sense make? " running through my head. One of these days I will find that ON switch for my willing suspension of disbelief.

[NotHereAnymoreProbably]

1556305
I mean no offense, but I think it's sad that you need to suspend your disbelief to take a story at face value, due only to the characters in it. That must limit your enjoyment of so many things

Think of all the possibilities if you can get past that - Princess Leia/Wicket, Picard/Q, Beast/Gaston...
The possibilities are endless.

...Scar/Nala

Anyway, at least you got that it felt sad. Your mitigation aside, I'm glad I managed to get a bit of that across.

[Phazon]

1557147 Didn't you have to disregard any notion that it would be difficult for Gilda and Fluttershy to both start and maintain a relationship before doing this?

Also, I don't know who/what Wicket is, I don't watch any Star Trek and I had to Google Gaston to know what you meant (Beauty and the Beast?). As for The Lion King, I don't know too much about prides among lions, but it might actually be fortunate that Scar, as the king of it, wasn't already mating with her along with the other lionesses... Then again, I think I actually am a little too preoccupied with plot holes and fridge logic.

[NotHereAnymoreProbably]

1557330
I didn't have to disregard anything at all.
Difficulty isn't an issue for me, really. I saw two characters who:
a) I found aesthetically pleasing when presented together
b) Were essentially opposite in personality; one is basically the paragon of kindness in the Equestrian world, while the other is a really big jerk.

Now, that first point is incredibly biased on my part - I'm sure there are some people who just simply HATE brown, yellow, pink and white being anywhere near each other, while I personally quite like that.
The second, on the other hand, covers so many of the romance stories that exist beyond fanfiction. There's a girl who's pretty happy with her life (Fluttershy) - then, along comes something she doesn't understand, and it niggles at her, and she can't get it out of her head, and so she goes and tries to learn more about it, to try and understand it. The thing she can't understand is Gilda's mean-ness, clearly. It's a common theme - essentially, there's a 'bad-boy' (or girl, here) that intrigues the main heroine, and despite herself she wants to know more (or even perhaps she doesn't, but they are constantly thrust together by circumstance). Repeated interaction brings development, eventual feelings, eventual romance - a relationship.

It's basically as I said - difficulty is not an issue. One of the most common tropes of romantic stories that exists is the fact that not all romance begins with compatibility. I don't actually have a backstory that explains how Gilda and Shy got together in this story, but I could make one up, no problem. In fact, I have plans to.

So yeah.
Glad to ramble for a while!