Jo walked this stretch of river every morning. Had for years. She knew every rock.
Today, however, held something entirely unprecedented.
She stopped. A griffin, young, blue jay coloring, one wing folded wrong under him and the other flopped over the rest of him in a way that blocked any meaningful view. The water going past his side ran a shade darker than the water going past everything else. He wasn't moving. She watched his ribs for a count of ten and couldn't say for certain they moved either.
Her hoof was already lifted, the way it lifts before a step. She didn't set it down, instead lifting it to her chin in consideration.
The feathers were that particular blue. The same blue she hadn't seen up close in years, not since her husband's flying days. She noted the thought, set it aside the way she set aside most thoughts that wouldn't do her any good, put her hoof back down and turned back toward town.
SilverSholes was already up. She always was — had been since the two of them were young mares in a town that hadn't decided what kind of town it wanted to be yet. Jo knocked twice. The door opened before the second knock landed.
Silver took one look at her face. "What happened."
"There's a griffin on the river bank." Jo's voice entirely too casual for the topic, "Young. Somepony worked him over and left him in the water. A shame really."
Silver went still in that particular way of hers, the stillness that came before she moved fast. "Alive?"
"I think so. Didn't get close enough to be sure."
Something crossed Silver's face — not surprise. She reached for her cane without looking at it, the way she reached for it every morning of her life now, and called back as she made her way into the bar. "I'll get Whiskey."
WhiskeySour took longer to open his eyes than Silver did but less time to be up and moving. He didn't ask what had happened, didn't ask where, didn't ask why Silver's mouth was set the way it was. He hitched the cart. He grabbed a blanket off the back of a chair without breaking stride. By the time they reached the water he still hadn't said a word about it and knew better than to question to old mares. For that, Jo was grateful for the silence in a way she didn't try to explain.
The griffin was still there. His side was moving now, shallow, uneven, but moving. Up close the wounds told her more than she wanted to know — cut deep but not quite deep enough; the way you cut somepony when you want to draw the death out. Ear to ear.
Whiskey had him up onto the cart before Jo had finished deciding how they ought to lift him. Silver got the blanket settled with the same hooves that had been holding a cane a minute before. Jo stood back. She watched the blue feathers get tucked in against the cold and didn't say anything about what color they were, or why it mattered.
The ride to the hospital was long enough that the griffin surfaced once — eyes snapping open, body going rigid, the look of something bracing for a second hit. Jo leaned in close and told him to settle down, low, even, and definitive, the same tone she'd used for thirty years on foals about to work themselves into a state. His body unclenched before his eyes did. She couldn't have said whether that was her voice or just him running out of strength to be afraid.
At the hospital, someone asked his name. He tried to answer and nothing came out right — she understood why, looking at his throat now in the light — so a nurse set paper in front of him instead. He wrote it in a hand that shook.
The nurse looked at Jo. Jo looked back and said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
"He'll need somewhere to go when he's discharged," the nurse said, careful.
That was how that got settled.
