Octavia looked around her bedroom to make sure she was completely alone, before leaning down and grabbing her cello case with her teeth, and pulling it out from under her bed.
After using her hoof to carefully slide the zipper open, she carefully - using her hooves and her mouth - pulled her beautiful instrument out of the case, and slid the case back under her bed with her hind legs so she wouldn't have to worry about tripping on it.
When she had the cello positioned just the way she wanted it, Octavia awkwardly made her way over to her "cello playing stool" to practice. Once she was seated, everything was easier. She used her legs to cradle the instrument, and her left arm for support. It would have to be used for other things later, but at the moment, all she needed to do was avoid dropping the thing.
Octavia went through more cellos than most ponies. If she didn't have such a wealthy family, Octavia would have probably been forced to quit her music habit a long time ago. She had broken six or seven instruments, actually. Each of them had been beautiful and masterfully crafted, but that didn't stop gravity and poor gripping from making her drop most of them off a stage.
Even her parents had told her to just quit more than once, or maybe pick an easier instrument to hold, but Octavia never wanted to quit. She enjoyed the challenge, even if her parents didn't enjoy their lighter purses. So her instruments were always replaced, no matter how they broke.
There were a few cheaper instruments Octavia had been given to save money, but she usually ended up with something fairly nice to play with, if not the very best instrument money could buy.
Octavia had spent hundreds of hours with each of her cellos, violins, and basses, so it never felt right to throw one away when it was broken beyond repair. Even if all she had were a few small pieces of wood to keep on her dresser. She collected at least that much from all her broken instruments, and that was part of what had caused her problem.
Nopony could ever know, but she did things with the remnants of her instruments. Strange, freaky-pony things. She ate the leftovers.
It had started innocently enough. She had always used her mouth to help her grip on and avoid dropping them. It just kind of felt natural that the wood tasted good. It wasn't weird at all. Right?
She didn't eat them everyday, but she had made it all the way through at least two violins and a stick which had looked almost like a viola neck. With her strong teeth, she had taken that down in just a bite, and the bitter taste was enough to make her decide to stick with the "real stuff" for the rest of forever.
She had tried to stop before, on several occasions, but she usually just ended up doing it more than ever before. She limited herself to two bites a day to save wood, and the system worked perfectly on most occasions, but she had broken her rules a few times and had once even made it up to five bites on one occasion. Five tasty bites of glorious wooden delight. Octavia smacked her lips.
She had tried chairs and other furniture before - and while they tasted far better than the one unfortunate stick - Octavia far preferred the real stuff. There was a certain taste that musical wood had. A melodious quality. Subtle, yet able to completely change the taste and the nature of a piece.
The taste music added to the wood was a rich, smoky flavor, strong and sweet at the same time. And Octavia couldn't get enough. She gently nibbled on her cello as she played it, not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough that she could just barely taste it. She almost wanted to "accidentally" knock this cello over. It was the best tasting one yet.
As she pulled her bow along the strings of her cello, music echoed through the room, slow and steady, and quite serious. The song Octavia was practicing was part of a new album she would be releasing in the coming fall. A far more complex series of songs than any of her past projects, and all of them were fresh and exciting.
Octavia was getting better and better at capturing the emotions in every song she played. There was a time when it had just been about the notes and the chords, and the rhythm she had to keep. But now she was past that. She didn't have to try and strike the right area anymore. She willed the bow to move, and music happened.
As she moved into the deepest part of the song, a knocking at her room door paused her song. She rested her arms against her cello before calling out the door to ask who it was.
When no answer came, Octavia returned to her playing. It had likely been some sort of joke played by one of the servants, or even just the wind.
Diving back I to the heart of her song, Octavia tightened her hoof around the bow and swung it with a polished skill earned from years of practice and patience. Touching the strings in a complex pattern, she sent out a few arpeggios, before breaking down the notes and slowing the pace for a crescendo.
Then she stopped again, not because somepony had knocked on the door, but because somepony had opened it. Her very own door, without even asking. Getting off of her stool and carefully leaning her cello against it for the moment, Octavia walked over to her door ready to give somepony a piece of her mind.
There wasn't a single pony there, though. Not a servant, not the butler, not even her parents. Something strange was happening. Octavia shut the door back, before pulling the cello case back out from under her bed and putting her cello back into it. As she reached down to close the final latch with her mouth, Octavia used it to scream instead.
There on the ground beside her was what looked like a viola neck. It was short and straight. She knew it wasn't one, though, because she had eaten this particular viola neck before, and it had turned out to be a stick.
It looked slightly different this time than it had last, as it was completely see through and made of a smoky cloud-like substance, and had several limbs coming off of it. Limbs which were moving the way arms and legs move. That might not have been enough to merit the scream, actually. But the fact that it was winking at her with one of its eyes was.
"Hello, sexy. I'm the ghost of Steve the Stick. Wanna play?"
And then Octavia screamed again.
