Stargazing

"So... What did you do after he went away?"

Starfall broke from his trance and looked to Octavia, having been staring off blankly at the wall, measuring every last grain in the logs. He had only barely registered Octavia talking to him. She was looking at him with the same blank stare he was giving the wooden planks not ten seconds ago. The mare reiterated her question, "What happened after that?" After some thinking, Starfall's face turned to an expression of deep melancholy. The memory of Lunar's departure was coming back, along with the emotions it drew from him. Asterian may have been fourteen -- and living on his own -- when his friend vanished, but it still struck a nerve that never needed to be struck. Lunar was the one pony that truly understood Starfall and his problems, and with him gone, the unicorn slipped into a period of deep depression that seemed endless. He felt himself fading into the same feeling as he responded with a hint of malice. "I did what anypony else would have done," he said. "I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and moved on. Never saw him again, and I hope it stays that way."

The stallion definitely held disdain towards Lunar, and what came next only solidified Octavia's thoughts. "I mean, he just packed his bags and left. Never wrote, never said where he was going, never came back... So I just ignored him. Removed him from my life the way he removed me."

"Well come on, Starfall. Don't you think you're being a little hard on him?"

"I don't know, it's possible..." Starfall rose from his seat and began to walk towards a small liquor cabinet lying in the corner of the room. He magically opened the door and began to browse through the shelves. He needed something stronger.

"I guess if I was... I don't know, offered a job in Canterlot writing Celestia's biography, I might leave too... but I could never do that. I have too many friends here that I care about." Starfall stopped at a particular bottle -- Applejack Daniel's. How long had it been since he had had a dram of hard alcohol like this? Starfall never was a drinker; only in moderation would he ever even have a taste of wine... Forget standards. He wanted to forget that betrayal once and for all, and he was entitled to forget.

He extracted the bottle, closed the door to the cabinet, and levitated the bottle behind him as he walked back into the living room. He encapsulated his aura around two whiskey glasses on top of the cabinet and floated them to the table. With a sullen face, he opened the bottle and began to pour himself a glass. "Starfall?" said Octavia. She sounded gravely concerned about something. The stallion stopped pouring and looked up at her. "Yes?"

"Are you a drinker?" she asked with apprehension.

Asterian let out a half-hearted laugh, his face unrelenting in its frustration. "No. More of a collector of gifts. I'll call myself a connoisseur, but I don't drink." His voice sounded sincere, but the cabinet suggested that Starfall may have been lying. Octavia frowned at him with pity, lowering herself from the sofa to get a better look at Starfall. She said in a caressing voice to him, "Asterian, drinking never solves anything. It only puts you in a hole." Maybe it was the wine's effect, but the writer felt another surge of annoyance run through him. Leave me alone. I want to drink until I forget everything. "Octavia, please. I've just relived losing somepony like a brother to me, I've lost my job, and I have nothing else to show for. I just want to... forget about it, even if it's for one night. Do you understand?"

Winters did not change her expression of concern, but she nodded nonetheless. Every now and again, you had to reset and reconfigure everything so that you can make progress, and while drinking may be a little extreme, she understood why. Indeed, she had problems of her own she wanted to forget. She looked thoughtfully at the glass of whiskey in Starfall's magical grasp as the stallion raised it to his muzzle. "Starfall?" Octavia asked as Starfall's glass touched his lips. Octavia floated the empty glass on the table in a posh manner. "Would you mind if I have a little?" she asked. Starfall chuckled at her question. Just a minute ago, you say drinking is bad. Now you want a glass? Asterian responded with a question of his own. "What happened to 'drinking only puts you in a hole'?" Octavia shrugged at his question as her concern and worry seemed to dissolve from her face. "To Tartarus with it," she said indifferently as Starfall poured a generous amount of the amber-colored drink into both of the glasses. Octavia took the glass in kind, but instead of sitting back on the sofa, she walked over to Asterian and sat down with him in his chair.

Octavia sat close to him, getting as comfortable as she could next to him. Asterian felt her fur mixing with the fibers in his coat, forming a seamless bond of white between the two. He felt a swelling of heat in his face as Octavia settled cozily beside him. She looked deeply into his eyes, and as he returned the stare, he found that she was within mere inches of him. Once again, it could have been the wine clouding judgement, but the two felt something between them. Asterian wanted somepony that he could be honest and close to, and Octavia wanted the same. Asterian's heart pounded in his chest. Without looking, he lowered his glass back down to the table and leaned in slowly. Octavia chortled as she did the same with her glass, but instead of leaning in, she held out a hoof over Asterian's lips, which were merely two inches from her muzzle. Starfall's eyes snapped open as Octavia said in as coy a manner as she could, "Slow down, dear. We'll get there."

Asterian drew away from Octavia, resuming the distance they were previously at as he levitated his glass back up to him. Octavia did the same as she lifted her hoof for Asterian to hold. With a soft smile, the stallion took his new partner's hoof in his own as they clinked their glasses together, saying in unison, "To Tartarus with it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Asterian broke from his abstraction. The world came back into focus, along with a familiar feeling: regret. How could I have done that to her? Forget that, why did she join me? It doesn't add up. Octavia's respectable, isn't she? Maybe I missed something... He closed his eyes, hoping to return to reclaim shards of his memory, yet nothing came. Try as he might, his mind worked against him, almost as if it was punishing him for his mistakes. Feathers, he thought. Nothing... You should find her. You owe her an apology, Asterian. It's the least you can do... But where could sh- Right... Ask Pine, you idiot.

He got up off of the couch, stretching his legs as he began to walk towards the door. He looked over to Merriweather, and she looked back at him, dismayed that her beloved master was leaving. Much to her surprise, Starfall grinned and reached out a hoof to her. "You coming, Merri?" he asked. The owl hooted with glee and flew over to Starfall, nesting herself on his shoulder. Asterian grinned a little more broadly as he surrounded the door handle with his magic and twisted it open. "Well, let's see where she is... She can't be that far off, right, Merri?" The owl twittered in his ear as her master locked the door and set off east -- the same direction that Winters had taken just two hours ago.

Face it, you're lost. Asterian had been wandering aimlessly through the streets and alleyways, desperately trying to track down where Octavia could be, but it was clear that he was going nowhere fast. Miss Pine appeared to have genuinely gone on vacation this time, and he found himself at the front entrance to Sugarcube Corner for the third time in an hour, still without a sign of his mark. He felt like it was something like one of those spy chases that he had read about in so many books. He needed to find her without letting her know she was being tailed... Starfall, stop over-dramatizing things and just find the mare, he mentally scolded. Just then, he heard a loud grumble and felt a void inside him. "Huh... Are you getting hungry, Merriweather?" In response, the owl nodded lazily to him. It seemed that their search would have to wait for now, as sustenance had become first priority.

As Starfall entered the establishment, the soft scent of vanilla, chocolate, and other confections gently probed his senses. The place was rather quiet for this time of day, assuming "quiet" meant ignoring the occasional flickering glimpse of a barely-understandable pink mare bouncing in and out of existence across the shop. Asterian always had a personal fascination with the way that she managed to simply vanish and reappear from out of nowhere. Take into the account she is an earth-pony, he mused, and she probably has discovered some long-lost type of magic...

"Then again," he snickered to himself, "there was that time when there were fifty of her. Who's to say that one or two were forgotten?" The stallion laughed quietly in his booth as he waited the inevitable appearance of the bubbly mare. What was her name again? She said it once... Kina... Pinka... Pika-

"HI THERE!"

"Whoa!" Asterian flung himself back as far as the window of his booth would permit him, and Merriweather let out a shriek that turned half of the heads in the eatery towards the scene. "I'm Pinkie Pie! What can I get for you today?" Once the perceived threat had passed by, Asterian began to recompose himself. "Uh, yes. I suppose a small salad would do for me." Asterian had barely finished his sentence when the waitress darted out of sight, only to pop up once more with a salad bowl. She placed it down on the table and said cheerfully, "Anything else?" Starfall shook his head in rejection before she wound up melting away into oblivion and cropping up again two booths away. Asterian ignited his horn, levitating the fork towards his mouth and calming gnawing on the lettuce leaves.

After some time of alternating between eating, looking out the window, and further musing over the baker-mare's odd skill, he paid for his meal and stepped out of the faux gingerbread structure. He looked towards the clock tower, noticing it was still early in the day. 12:37, still enough time to... Something caught his eye. A glimpse of some sort of blue mist whipped around the corner just as quickly as it had appeared. "What the... Merri, did you see something?" Merriweather looked up to Asterian with a slightly tilted head. You saw it too? There was no doubt that whatever it was could not have been natural. Something or somepony made that mist, but what?

With the sudden appearance of the fog, Asterian curiously walked away from Sugarcube Corner and into one of the many back-alleys of Ponyville's residential area. There was the same blue mist, floating there in a sphere. Starfall held out his hoof and began to approach it, but before his hoof met the orb, a voice called out. "You were showing off all night. It's only fair I show the same hospitality." Asterian did not need to turn around to know who it was. Standing before him was Octavia, her horn lit and apparently manipulating the orb of smoke.

"Octavia? What are you doing? Spying on me?"

... No.

"You could say that," Octavia giggled softly.

I could say you are stalking me...

"There's not many ponies who can sneak up on me," said he.

It's easy when your target is wearing a hat that can pick up cable.

"It comes with practice. How'd you know it was me though?" asked Octavia.

The color of the orb.

"The color of the orb," Starfall admitted.

Right...

"Oh. Very observant."

"Well, I did get a good look at you." The two burst out into laughter at the comment, losing all sense of self-control. Even Merriweather found herself hooting with glee. Once they had finally found their wits and recovered from their bout of hysterics, Asterian waved his hoof towards the alley's outlet, asking, "Can we talk, but in someplace less... dismal?" Octavia nodded, "I'd like that." She smiled to him, and he smiled back.

The two rounded back into the bakery, where after a lengthy yet fruitless conversation by the bouncing pink mare, they found their way to a small corner table and sat down together. Pinkie trailed them all the way to the table and after a little while, Starfall finally caved and ordered a mint shake. At least she is off of us, he thought. Despite the fact that Octavia did not want any of the milkshake, Pinkie wound up giving them two straws, giggling even more uncontrollably than was usual for her. "What do you think is up with her?" asked Octavia. Asterian shrugged, "I don't know."

"Maybe she thinks we're a couple."

"Maybe..." Starfall levitated the straws into the air -- pointed straight down at the drink -- before letting them fall back down to the glass, plunging into the shake like darts. Why did he feel nervous? This was supposed to be a simple apology, so why was he so nervous about it?

He said shakily to Winters, "Octavia, I... I w-want to say I'm sorry about the way I acted last night. It... It was wrong of me to act that way, es... especially in front of a guest." Octavia looked at him with surprise. She knew that apologizing after something like that could not have been easy for anypony. "Starfall, it's okay. You had every right to be angry with your friend."

"But not in front of you," Asterian retorted.

"Starfall, it's okay-"

"No, it really isn't, Octavia... Look..." Asterian could feel himself growing fainter and fainter by the minute. The pressure of the thing was getting to him. "As a host, I'm supposed to uphold a moral code... I'm supposed to uphold that code anyhow, but... last night... something cracked. I-I thought that I could forget everything bad in my life... There's something else."

Octavia looked at Asterian as she waited for him to compose himself. It seemed like hours passed by as she waited for him to speak and he waited for him to be able to. Once he did open his mouth, he voiced his memory. "I can remember a little more about last night. I remember that I felt hatred towards Lunar. You asked me what I did after he left, and I told you that 'I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and moved on'. After that, I went over to my liquor cabinet and took out the bottle of Applejack Daniel's. I began pouring myself some, but you stopped me. You said that I was only hurting myself by doing this. I told you that I had no friends, no job, and no way to ignore everything, so you let me go... You even asked if you could have a pinch. I poured you some, and then..." His voice trailed off. He felt his lower body shaking in alarm, too fearful of what could happen next should he say what happened.

"Then what?" Octavia asked. "What happened after you poured me a glass?"

You had better run. She's onto you!

"I... I don't remember..." Asterian lied.

"Starfall, please tell me. I promise I won't be angry with you, no matter what it is. I just want to know the truth."

Don't. You. Dare.

"Well... You got up from the sofa and... sat down next to me in my chair." Asterian could feel the same heat rising in his cheeks as he explained the story as best he could in between giggles. "You got comfortable... and then... ehe, I... drew in close to you... Then you... you- you put your hoof over my muzzle. Said..." He burst out into another fit of chuckles, but he managed to finish his sentence. "...that we'll get there. So I- ahem- I backed away, we... held each other's hoof, raised our glasses, and... and... I can't remember past that."

Octavia sat dumb-founded by the story Starfall had told. She wasn't even entirely certain she should trust him, but it all made sense. She absorbed the story, trying to remember for herself what had happened, and after a few minutes of thought, she had it. The whiskey, the cuddling, the near-kiss. Octavia gawked at Asterian, who was uncomfortably sitting beside her with a worried look on his face. He withdrew his arms from the table and began to leave. "Well," he said. "I suppose I should... I should just leave." As he and Merriweather were just about to open the door to exit, Octavia called out, "Wait." Asterian glanced back at Winters, waiting for her to finish. "Thank you for being honest..." This time, it was Octavia who felt a rising heat in her head, and she blushed a light pink as she asked her next question. "Why don't you stay?"

Asterian, completely taken aback by Octavia's sudden request, responded with a small nod and grin. He whispered to Merriweather, "Merri, could you- uh..." As if she knew the answer, the owl took off from his shoulder and hovered in the air. Asterian opened the door in front of him, and his feathered friend darted out of Sugarcube Corner and into the open air. With Merriweather gone, Asterian turned back, still grinning, and walked back to his booth. He took his seat next to Octavia a little closer than he had before, and she beamed at him. He looked at the milkshake with a hinting glance, "Care to share this with me, Octavia?" Winters slid closer to Asterian and brushed against him. Was this affection? Most likely, considering Octavia's response. "Of course, Starfall," she teased.

Over in the opposite corner of the shop, a pink mare observed the new couple with a close interest. Behind her, a particular cyan pegasus huffed in frustration as she gave Pinkie Pie a small sack of bits. "Okay, so you're right this time, but I will get the next one!" Rainbow Dash hissed. Pinkie Pie was too busy sighing passionately at Asterian and Octavia to notice much. "Oh, Dashie... Aren't they just so cute together?"

"Yeah, really... How'd you know they were together like that, though?"

"Because they're adorable, just like you..." Pinkie Pie sashayed her hips past Rainbow, flicking her muzzle with her soft tail as she walked upstairs. Rainbow smiled slyly as she followed her mare-friend. "I'm not adorable, Pinks. I'm the fastest, most radical-est pony in Equestria!"

"I know you are..." Pinkie snickered. "Come show me how fast..."