The audience made hardly a sound.
Octavia had, at some point, stopped focusing on the intensity of her own playing and redirected her attention to the piano player. Not turning her head to see him, which she could not afford to do anyway, but to take in every note of his playing. There was a softness to it that made her heart tie itself up in knots. They were performing an instrumental rendition of "Like Somepony in Love," that classic number about the borderline incomprehensible feeling of being in love with somepony. Not just in love, but in the early stages of love, when the price of the relationship has so many zeroes added to the end of it so as to be absurdly costly, more costly than any real relationship, before those waves of newfound romance simmer and the zeroes get taken off the price tag, one by one, until the cost of love becomes what it ought to be.
She listened to the piano as the keys being struck kept speaking her mind, how they replicated and amplified her feelings about her own life. She knew, from rehearsals alone, how the words went, even as she sensed their absence during the performance.
Then she pressed a button on the cassette player, and the music stopped.
The house became quiet again. It was, on most days, much calmer than what most outsiders would expect, given the living conditions, the fact that the architecture literally seemed to have been the byproduct of two completely different blueprints, the fact that there were two musicians within its confines, one of whom having a well-earned reputation for seeking out noise as a top priority.
It was an unfriendly quietness, though.
It was quiet because nopony wanted to talk.
Octavia put the cassette player aside and took off her headphones. The headphones themselves provided a level of clarity that came second only to listening to a pristine 180-gram vinyl record, and that clarity did not come cheaply. Vinyl Scratch had bought them for her a couple years back, as a birthday present. An exchange between good friends. The color of the muffs complimented Octavia's mane nicely, even if the stickers of cartoon bunnies that had been slapped on beforehand undermined the expensiveness and artistic merit of the equipment. She never said she liked those stickers, but she never protested strongly enough to remove them either.
As Octavia eyed her work station, she came to the anticlimactic realization that she did not keep her possessions as neatly organized as she would have liked—or rather, as she would have liked from the perspective of somepony who knew nothing about her. She kept mostly hand-me-downs from her parents, which included a record player nearly three decades old which miraculously still worked to a satisfying degree, not to mention a stack of roughly fifty cassettes, mostly modern classical and jazz standards.
She considered all her belongings, and how many of them there were. Where she chose to hide her belongings. She devoted a shelf to her vinyl records, naturally, some of which had also come from her parents, some of which she had bought over the years on recommendations. Nestled behind that shelf, in a box that was hard for anypony to see and even harder to dislodge from its little note, there was a smoothly textured cylindrical object, about ten inches in length and three inches in width. Beside this object lay another obscure thing, a spherical object which resembled an egg, and this egg-like object was connected to a remote controller via a thin cord.
Her eyes wandered until she noticed Vinyl's presence again. For her part, Vinyl still sat at her own station, on the opposite end of the house, donning her recognizable pair of shades and her own pair of headphones. These headphones, too, had stickers of happy cartoon bunnies on them. Vinyl liked those. Octavia could see that she was hunched over, maybe working on a mix, maybe fiddling with tracks simply to distract herself from everything. There lay a stack of post-it notes on Vinyl's desk—a fresh pile that had not yet been used, and along with them a cup which contained a dozen or so number two pencils.
Octavia decided to say something. "Can you hear me?" she asked.
Vinyl didn't respond. She did not move so much as a muscle.
"You probably can," said Octavia. "You just don't want to talk to me right now."
Wearily, Octavia came up next to Vinyl, and she noticed the lack of sound coming from her headphones. "See?" she said, as if proud of herself. "You can hear me fine, I bet. You're listening to me, but you don't feel like saying anything. Well, I think that's rubbish. Listening to me talk while not wanting to even lift a hoof to speak for yourself. It's like you've become a little foal again."
Nothing.
Octavia straightened her bow tie, almost as if wanting to tighten it around her neck. "I apologized, did I not? I could understand if you're upset with me because I didn't try to amend things the moment they got out of hoof, but I did, so I don't see how you could be acting this way," she continued. "Honestly, I have never seen a mare outside of a theater overreact in the way you have been overreacting. If I said I was sorry, and I did, then that should be enough for you to at least lighten up a smidgen."
While she did not know what kind of reaction to expect, Octavia had it in her head that Vinyl would at the very least say something to her, even if it was a note of dismissal, even if it was a note saying that she hated Octavia and that they should never see each other again. Something was, after all, always better than nothing, and nothing was worse than rejection by way of silence.
"Are you really giving me the silent treatment?" asked Octavia. "It sound ridiculous when it comes out of my mouth, doesn't it? The silent treatment. I can think of all the jokes already. 'How can she be giving me the silent treatment if she never talks to begin with? What is she doing, somehow talking even less?' Something along those lines, some wretched joke like that, and I'll have you know that I don't appreciate such behavior."
She felt her blood pressure rising, but she could not figure out as to why. Out of mere frustration? Because Vinyl treated her as if she didn't exist? Breathing hard through her nostrils, she paced around the room until she came back to Vinyl's side. "What did I do to deserve this?" she asked.
Vinyl pressed a button on her mixing table, and the music started. At a low-enough volume, though, as Octavia could tell by the lack of blaring noise coming through Vinyl's muffs. It was as if she wanted to distract herself from Octavia speaking her mind, but not to the point where she could no longer hear anything outside her world of music. Certainly not loud or energetic enough to compel Vinyl to bop her head, as she had a penchant for doing in the midst of a tune that "bumped in the whip," so to speak.
"All right," said Octavia. "If you refuse to talk to me, then I have no choice but to drown out the awful silence with my own voice. Does that sound fair to you? I will talk about anything that comes to mind, I swear it. You don't know how horrid I can get when left to my own devices. Why, when when I was a young filly I was the loudest member of my family—nay, one of the loudest fillies in all of Trottingham! I swear it!" Yet as she spoke these words, something felt wrong about them. The words felt at least partly counterfeit, made up on the spot without any basis in reality. Where had she gotten such an idea from? Certainly not from her memories, which, as she drifted to a few snapshots of her foalhood, she found to be startlingly different from what she had proclaimed.
She caught a pile of words in her throat, and she cleared it. "Actually," she said, "if I'm being completely honest, I was not the loudest of fillies. Far from it. I'm sorry I said that. It might sound predictable, but I was a quiet foal. I didn't talk so much as listen, which was something I enjoyed a lot in my youth. I suppose not so much anymore. Is that what you wanted to hear from me? That I don't listen too attentively anymore? Sure, I could have been more patient and observant earlier, but I at least acknowledged that I had made a mistake then. It was a heat-of-the-moment decision, and I'll be sure not to make it again." She stopped for a few seconds, then said, "I promise not to. How does that sound to you?"
If Vinyl had heard any of what Octavia said, she didn't respond to any of it. She stayed at her desk, almost like a statue, like an object with no life within it.
"Fine," said Octavia. "Have it your way. If apologizing won't work, then I'll try something else. If saying I'm sorry truly means that little to you, then I suppose that means I'm at liberty to talk about whatever I want. I could insult you and you wouldn't have anything to say about it, right? But I won't do that, dear Vinyl, because I like you. You're a good friend of mine, and I would hate for the chasm between us to widen even farther."
Just as Octavia had expected, Vinyl had no response. She stayed where she was, as if waiting out a vicious storm, resiliant as a boulder that could not be eroded. Octavia groaned at how firmly her friend stuck to her guns on the matter. One side could talk but not take action, and the other side could talk specifically not taking action.
What to do?
Perhaps inevitably, for a mare who never used her voice to communicate much of anything, Vinyl's body movements always struck Octavia as subtle to the point of artfulness. There was a subtle cadence in the way she would request something, anything, be it a cable for an amplifier or a night spent together. Multiple times, usually at parties attended mostly by musicians, Vinyl would work her silent magic on a stallion or mare who might want to spend some quality time with their favorite DJ behind closed doors. A nod. A knowing smile. A shrug of the shoulders. How could such minute movements of one's form say so much? It was something that often gave Octavia pause, but apparently not enough to disarm her growing sense of curiosity about this mare she'd known for so long. Or thought she knew. Being so close to Vinyl at this time, like a sculptor examining her work, she squinted her eyes and wondered if the mare she saw in front of her was also the mare she had been on such close terms with.
"Should I tell you something I've never told you before?" she then asked. "Or should I try apologizing once again? Oh, what a mess this is. You probably won't say anything either way. I suppose it wouldn't matter, then, if I told you a bit more about my foalhood." She rested her hooves and elbows on Vinyl's desk and tried to pierce those shades which acted as shields, as if entering a conversation that both was and was not transpiring. "You've known that I had learned to be a musician since I was young. Terribly young. I was first taught to play the piano, but I wasn't all that good at it. Mind you, I wasn't terrible as a pianist, but I was also not promising enough to warrant a lifetime of training. I moved to the cello, then the upright bass, because I had shown more promise with stringed instruments." Her eyes shimmered with melancholy remembrance. "My father was normally a tender stallion. He still is. You would have to go out of your way to get a rise out of him. But one time he hurt me deeply, seemingly without meaning to. He told me, during one of my piano sessions, that nothing is worse than a mildly talented musician."
She then said, in an almost matter-of-fact tone, "I continued to play with my schoolyard chums, but I never touched a piano again." Feeling a certain ache in her joints, she started pacing around the house again.
"When I was growing up," she continued, "sometimes I would hear my parents cause a ruckus in different parts of the house. Usually it was upstairs, where they slept. Of course, when I was very young I assumed they were wrestling, much like how the colts and fillies at my school would wrestle when they didn't have to worry about homework, or listening to an instructor. Later, when I was old enough—" She stopped herself, almost chuckling. "When I came of age, I realized my parents had been making love. Quite vigorously, too. They were private about their affairs, but they weren't exactly discreet about it. Now, most of my classmates would have found it utterly grotesque to hear such things, but I myself felt soothed over it."
A ripple of redness overcame Octavia's cheeks, but she continued regardless. "When I heard those goings-on, I felt relieved that parents were so clearly in love with each other that they would never leave. I thought of their lovemaking as a sign of 'true love,' whatever that might be. And true enough, they stayed together, but probably not because they enjoyed each other's bodies so much." The redness deepened, and Octavia got the aching feeling that she was reciting something without knowing what, as if she had been recalling passages from one of many erotic novels she knew from heart. The mere possibility of such a thing propelled shame through her veins like blood. "I suppose," she said, "that I started to think about the connection between loving somepony and wanting to have their body for yourself. When I left Trottingham, I promised myself that I would get to know my special somepony with as much passion as my parents expressed toward each other—and what a horrid idea that was. Not to say I never found my equal, but I kept gravitating towards things that could quench my thirst for such passion. Love ballads, and... dirty novels." Flames sparked on her cheeks. "I thought I knew what I had, that I had found the answer to my problem, but it felt right to me. So I never brought it up to anypony. I never talked about it."
For the first time, or at least the first time Octavia had noticed, Vinyl breathed. She let out hot air through her nostrils, her nose acting as a pressure valve for something unspoken.
That alone incentivized Octavia to keep going, for she had to have been getting somewhere with this line of recollection. "You almost certainly know this by now, but I found you terribly attractive when I first met you," she said, hesitating slightly. "Oh, don't get me wrong, I tried to convince myself that you couldn't possibly be the one for me. Those shades you always wear. Never being able to see those gorgeous eyes of yours. When you took your shades off the first time, I felt like the Princesses had arranged for the most memorable of eclipses, only for me. And to top it all off, your mane looked like it had been struck by lightning too many times to count. So unkempt!" she cried. "And yet... I loved it. I knew I wanted to have some of it for myself. Selfish, I know. I wanted to have some of you for myself, and it took me so long just to admit that much. An amount of self-admittance that was beyond inadequate. True, my accepting of your invitation to your bed, as a sort of experiment, was not something I did out of mere curiosity. I accepted because I had always wanted to be with you in that way."
Vinyl turned her head, very slowly and minutely, to meet Octavia's gaze.
"You wanted me to say that, didn't you?" asked Octavia. "You wanted me to admit that I had wanted you all this time. As if I would have never said so otherwise, like it would have remained a secret forever or some such nonsense. Well, I'll grant you this much satisfaction." Her lips quivered. She felt as if something had crawled down her throat and rested at the pit of her stomach. "It must also give you satisfaction to know that I love you, Vinyl. I absolutely do, no doubt about it." Desperate to get this wretched thing out of her gut, Octavia let her voice climb to intimidating heights. "I bet you wanted to hear that too! From me! And now I've said it! Not only am I sorry for what I did, but I love you too!"
Silence overcame them once again.
Octavia's lungs seemed like they were about to burst. She felt something wet on her muzzle, but she couldn't bother herself with it. "Well?" she asked, resisting a sniffle. "I don't... I don't know what else I can tell you. I don't know how I can give more. I wish I could give more, but I cannot. I can't do it. I'm sorry I... I'm sorry I hurt you like this. I don't know how many times I can say that. I hurt you terribly, my darling, and I don't know how I can make up for it. I didn't think. How could I have failed so badly, somepony like me not thinking at such a time? I don't know, but I'm sorry. But please, please, Vinyl, if you have anything to say to me, please say it now. I don't want to take anymore of what you've been doing to me."
She kept repeating a few words, depleting them of their meaning, and refused to leave Vinyl's said.
Until a sound came along.
The sound of pencil tip on paper.
Vinyl took a post-it note and wrote something down, slowly, deliberately, quite different from her normally rushed manner of writing messages. Still, she wrote something all the same.
Octavia's eyes widened, and her jaw slowly fell agape as she watched Vinyl finish her note and magic it close to Octavia's face. She took a moment to reacquaint herself with the chicken scratch, as if coming across Vinyl's writing for the first time, and took in each letter as it came. The painful warmth that had entered her eyes and cheeks only intensified, grew more excruciating, but in a way that seemed to cleanse her spirit.
Her lips quivered again before curling upward.
"It's enough," she said. "It's enough."
