He woke up, from his dreams into a nightmare.
It was the fifth day.
Five days of surreal trouble as he tried to digest the fact that he was a pony in a pastel world.
At first, he had believed it a strange nightmare, but no matter how big his hopes became, how much he begged every god he could think of, it never ended. Going to sleep was a brief respite, but one that was always followed by horrified screams and panic attacks.
On the third day, they had increased the concentration of whatever medicine they were injecting in his veins. It made his mind a hazy place, with no place for panic, leaving naught but a lingering horror that could not even be expressed.
On the fourth day, he realized that he had no fingers anymore and he fell completely silent.
For Nimble Fingers, as they now called him in some fit of blistering irony, had once been a pianist.
None of them ever called him Nimble Fingers, though his idiot brother-in-law had once called him Fairy Fingers, so in a way he ought to be grateful that the Universe had showed a little restraint. He ought to.
But he wasn’t.
If there was any emotion at all that could pierce through this great veil of nothingness casted over his mind, then it would be anger. They threw him down on that bed, restrained him when he had gone violent, drugged him when even that hadn’t been enough. They asked him again and again, the same question.
“Could you please tell us what is wrong?”
NO! NO HE COULDN’T!
How could he…?
The loss of his fingers couldn’t be expressed with mere words. He had lost his music, and with it, his dream and passion.
And they wondered why he could never smile at the little fun things.
The ‘ponies’ around him were so strange. They were nothing like they were supposed to be. They could talk, their eyes were freakishly large, some even had wings and he could have sworn one of them had a horn.
Ah, he was going insane, no doubt.
Trying to tell them they were all impossible and didn’t exist had ended with a worried psychiatrist being called in.
A psychiatrist? They were intelligent enough to have jobs: doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, janitors, and that was just the hospital. They spoke of many things, including cities that sounded like bad jokes, creatures that existed in legends and magic. It was all insane.
They told him he was a stallion. They were wrong.
They told him he was subject to a strange case of amnesia. They were wrong.
He remembered. He was a human. He was a man and a pianist, not a freaky pastel mini-horse!
He had been sitting on his father’s knees, next to his sister. Once in a while, his father had made him bounce to keep him entertained. He hadn’t quite understood what they had come in that big room for, nor did he really get why there had to be so many people around.
Those questions had been forgotten and dismissed when the sounds had arisen within the concert hall. The notes had danced, high and low, flowing in perfect harmony, reverberating on each wall and surrounding them.
He had not believed that it had been only one instrument until his father had confirmed it.
Then, his eyes had shone with interest; they had not left the pianist until the end, until he had disappeared behind the curtains. But the magic had not been broken; he had talked about the experience all the way back home, he had decided he wanted to hear this again, he had decided he would play it himself.
That was the day he had fallen in love with piano.
“Now then, Mr. Nimble, did you calm down?” The doctor asked with an insufferable sincerity.
“Yes,” he lied. He wasn’t calm, the dread was simply laying beneath the surface. How could he ever be calm, how could he ever feel better, without his fingers?
Apparently, that simple lie was all the confirmation needed by that stallion to declare him fit for release. He had given a look to his papers first, but within minutes of having seemingly calmed down, he was free. Were they all so foolishly trusting?
There had been a file for him, even though he was not a pony. There were records of his health, as if he had been here even once before in his life.
For all intent and purpose, everyone around himself told him he was a pony and had always been one. How he wanted to insult them for that. How he wanted to make them swallow that stupid benevolence of theirs.
It came to the problem of moving. There had been times, when at the height of his panic and horror, he had struggled and bit and kicked and punched, but…
Now that he no longer held the power of his fear and his despair, Nimble Fingers felt out of his depths.
He walked slowly, with each step being a hesitant movement of foreign limbs, but he was not stopped. Though the nurses eyed him strangely, concern lighting in their gaze as he passed them by, a grunt of annoyance from him convinced them to stay away.
How strange, how foreign it was to walk on four legs, to have no toes for balance and…
No fingers…
His jaw clenched, hard, an acute pain spreading from his flat teeth being grinded together. Why? Why had that happened?! What had he done to deserve it?!
He could not honestly tell when he had left the hospital and started trotting down the street. His mind had been elsewhere at the time. It was when his right front hoof hit a rock and he tumbled to the ground that he finally realized it.
With an irritable snort, he blew the dust away from his muzzle. The way he was splayed across the dirt path was wrong. It felt wrong. The articulations in his limbs were off, his tail had fallen awkwardly over his left hind leg, the fur on his belly and his neck was pressing against his skin and he could feel the shape of his jaw shifting with every breath.
Somehow, this world had chosen to rub it in. And it wasn’t done yet.
“Howdy, mister!” Some pony greeted him cheerfully.
Her voice was high pitched, with something of a childish quality to it, and he saw the same in the pink mare to whom it belonged. She was all smiles, skipping around him rapidly. The moment she stopped in front of him, sounds started coming out of her mouth in an almost uninterrupted flow.
“I heard you were in the hospital, because you were found unconscious and when you woke up you were acting all weird!” For the first time, her shining smile had disappeared. There was care in her blue eyes, worry expressed in the hug she gave him. “When I came to visit with chocolates and cupcakes, the nurse told me you were not fit for visitors. So I came back today, but they said you were gone!”
Her words gave him pause.
She… had given him chocolates and cupcakes? Vaguely, he could remember kicking his bedside table in one of his freak-out, and something might have fallen off then, but… He didn’t understand; why did she leave him a get-well present? He didn’t even know who she was.
“I…”
“But that’s no problem at all!” Lightning fast, she untangled herself from him and bounced back to her initial position. “I’m just sad we couldn’t talk together earlier, but obviously we can do that now, silly!”
He stared, slowly coming to the realization that he might not get to place a word in. The mare’s mouth seemingly had a mind of its own.
“My name is Pinkie Pie, Ponyville’s party planner extraordinaire!” She reared, stretching her forelegs to the sides, but in a distinctively humanoid way. For a second, it was almost as if he wasn’t looking at another pony. But the feeling passed quickly and the mare was back on her four hooves, inches away from him with a pleasant smile. “What’s your name?”
“Huh…” He blinked too shocked for words.
“Well, new friend I want to know the name of?” She subtly leaned forward, grinning.
Finally, his voice came out, weaker than he would have liked, but audible. “Fingers…”
“Fingers?” She placed one of her hoof beneath her chin, looking to the side. “Like those little things minotaurs have?”
Minotaurs… There were minotaurs in this place. Of course. Couldn’t have turned into that? At least, he wouldn’t have lost everything.
And the mare in front of him didn’t seem to understand his inner turmoil in the slightest.
“It’s a little boring to just call you that. You need a nickname!” She hummed thoughtfully. “Finny. Fingy? No. Gers… gers… um…”
He felt his patience begin to run out with this nonsense. He had neither the need nor the desire to be stuck with a stupid nickname when they already insisted in calling him ‘Nimble Fingers’, of all things.
“Jerry!”
“No!” His shout came out harsher than he had intended. The truth was that he would rather not share a name with his brother-in-law.
“Okayyyyyyy…” she said slowly, her neck stretched backward, ready to bolt if things went sour. “So, you remember more now? You do know where you live, right?”
He could barely hold in an annoyed grunt. “They told me it was on the east side, number forty.”
But, at his reply, the energy came back with a vengeance. “Oh! I know where that is! Follow me!”
And before he could protest, she grabbed his hoof and started pulling him away.
--
He didn’t know how or why, nor did he care for it that much, but she had delivered on her promise. The two of them were within sight of a house she affirmed was his. Judging by the address he noticed on the mailbox, she was right.
As she led him inside however, he could honestly believe that the house was meant to be his. The door opened to the living room, decorated with very few furniture or objects, but in a shape that offered a good resonance. The walls themselves were painted with a calming shade of green, and that was the only extravagance he could see at a first glance. It was the very picture of sobriety. At the very least, that much was to his tastes.
He advanced rather slowly, replaying the sequence his legs needed to follow every time he hesitated to take a step. On this occasion, it at least gave him the opportunity to take in the appearance of his new place of residence. At his side, Pinkie appeared fixated by the shelves in the room.
“Oh wow, look at all those disks!” His ears caught her exclamation and the note of excitement in it. But the moment he glanced her way, she had already zipped the distance to a small stand on top of which rested a gramophone. “That’s a neat collection, Finny.”
Pinkie, by a method he could not figure out, strangely held one large vinyl disk at the tip of her hoof. The precious item remained in the air against all logic, its side shown to the world.
He didn’t recognize the names, or the portraits, luckily. However, when his eyes locked onto the disk’s cover, a part of his mind did understand what they were about.
There was a… a style particular to those covers.
Something stirred in his stomach. He could not quite put his… hoof on it, but seeing those images left him with shaking legs.
“Let’s listen to them, okay?” she asked and, in the same breath, placed the disk onto the machine.
Cringing, he decided to sit down, albeit he almost came to regret it the next moment.
Pinkie’s body lowered for a second, face crunched up with determination and eyes locked onto the spot just next to him. Before he could realize what was happening, she was in the air, posed to dive bomb the sofa, and the following ripple in the cushion lifted him a few inches.
Unbalanced, he almost fell, only prevented from doing so by a pair of pink hooves. “Whoopsie, be careful there. That would have hurt. And you wouldn’t have heard the beginning of the song.”
At her words, he looked up, toward the old gramophone and its spinning disk.
Long and mournful notes started to fill the living room and, at that moment, as dread gripped his heart, he knew he had been right. It was classical music, but not just any kind either.
It was a requiem.
He had played a requiem at his father’s funeral.
The casket had been left open, the visitors stopped close by. Each of them spent a few seconds with the deceased. Their whispers could not be heard over his music. They added another breath to the melody; it made it all the more solemn, that much harder for his fingers to carry his intent.
His sister had sat by him. She hadn’t said anything; she had simply looked at him play.
Crumbles hit the left side of his face. “What the…?”
Dazed, he turned, only to see that Pinkie had somehow gotten her hooves on a bag of popcorn and was enjoying it thoroughly.
“Well, it’s certainly good music, but it’s not very happy.” She shoved another handful of popcorn in her mouth, munching enthusiastically on it. “Still, whatever style you like the best, the important is that it makes you feel better.”
His heart still heavy, he truly did not want to speak anymore. He would much rather listen to anything else, and his eyes flickered to the source of that music again.
She noticed.
“You like piano music, right? I'm sure that if you work really really hard, you can play like that someday too!”
It froze him on the spot.
He couldn’t hear the record in the background anymore. His ears were ringing too loudly, with her cheerful, helpful, KIND words repeating over and over again.
It was as if a dam broke, as emotions flooded through his mind with enough intensity to make him stagger. The veil of calm the medication had induced was gone.
He kept his eyes firmly locked the ground, gritting his teeth. He only unclenched his jaw to whisper harshly, “Get out…”
“…Finny?” She sounded so unsure, so honestly surprised at his reaction. The pink of her fur became visible on the edge of his vision. “What’s wrong? Did I-?”
A warm, buttery hoof brushed against his shoulder. It was enough to make him see red.
“I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE!”
Mane deflated, tears gathering in her eyes, she galloped her way out.
He stood alone, the piece still playing on the gramophone with a perfect indifference to their squabbles. The mournful sound weighted more heavily against his conscience now.
Guilt briefly made his throat tighten. She couldn’t… she couldn’t have known… But the anger would still not leave him. This burning rage in his chest, the anger he felt toward whatever god had made him this plaything, it threatened to overcome him. She had taunted him with the one thing he needed.
But he couldn’t have it.
--
The water was running, from the faucet, from his mane. Cold as it was, it did not do him any good. The air was humid, and his fur was sticking to his hooves. He hated the sensation. He hated that it was even possible for him to experience it.
The image on that reflective surface was not any better. Pitiful, with that large square muzzle or those comically large eyes. He could still hardly wrap his mind around the fact.
“How do you deal with loss?” he asked the pony in the mirror.
And in it, he saw the memory form behind those same eyes.
“S-Sis?” The word had escaped his mouth. “What’s wrong?”
Wordlessly, his sister’s hand had moved to her flat stomach. In her eyes, there had been nothing but the pain of loss.
So he had played.
The notes had been soothing and slow, following a tempo that they recognized in their mother’s steps. Never had he reached high notes; never had he reached low notes. It had remained a simple melody that followed a neverchanging rhythm. With a tenderness that was usually absent from his relationship with his sibling, he had let his fingers create music. He had played for her.
He had played and she had listened, with tears rolling down her cheeks and her head resting on a pillow. Her eyes had slowly closed, as if she was letting go of her struggle, of her pain. With time and notes, she had fallen asleep.
He had played for his sister a lullaby to help her forget her torment, however temporarily.
His grip on the sink slipped. He was shaking too badly to hold on.
He knew that he could not overcome this trial as he had done before. They had robbed him of it, and he was at a loss.
He had been taken away, he had been changed and destroyed. His hooves were simply a tool to show him that, to rub salt on his wounds until he accepted it.
Between his sobs, he could only choke out a few words.
“I’m so sorry, Lisa…”
--
He was trotting, clumsily, at a snail’s pace, into the streets of the town. He didn’t have a goal, not that he had enough knowledge of this saccharine hell to choose one in the first place. For all intent and purpose, he was wandering, fleeing from the house he was told he owned.
It was luck that he had looked that way, at that moment, in time to see it. Through the window of a bar, he could make out an object more familiar to him than any other.
The desire struck him like a speeding train. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself at the counter, staring at the bartender with pleading eyes.
“Can I try it?” he asked, his voice breaking.
The stallion nodded and led him onto the small stage.
He tested the floor, noting the creaking of the wooden planks. It was all solid, though perhaps the stage was slightly confining. Its size wasn’t anything to write home about, but it could serve for a musician that wished to share their music with a public. The piano stood alone, taking most of the place, and he looked at it with fear in his heart. A hesitation jolted through him, yet he did not back away. He… he could not…
Already, the bartender was returning to his counter. So, Nimble Fingers sat down, as well as he could manage, and looked down at his keyboard.
It was not an unfamiliar position for him.
His music had evolved. They came in groups of thousands to hear him play now.
A look on his right showed him the entirety of the theater, filled at maximum capacity. He could not see their traits, not the color of their hair or the approval in their eyes. Lights fell on him from above, into a column that illuminated nothing but him, and his piano. They were only a sea of shapeless figures, called by the value of his name and the promise of his talent.
Gently, he leaned forward, just enough to be hovering over his keyboard, but so subtly that no member of his audience would ever realize it. It was a relationship he had entertained with his art privately, in the eyes of the world.
Letting his hands dance just over the notes, he closed his eyes, reaching for the image he knew he would achieve today. When finally the ideal had been solidified, he let go of his restraints and played.
He had the power to create a new world on the tip of his fingers.
He was a pianist.
Music was his life.
Music had always been his life. He could not… he could not screw it up.
He inhaled once, deeply, then exhaled.
He could not screw this up.
For a moment, his hooves hovered just above the keyboard, in a motion he had practiced thousands of times before. In his chest, his heart beat maddeningly fast, and pulses of blood went through his temples almost painfully. He noticed his limbs trembled.
Then, putting the last of his hopes in it, he tried playing.
The bartender flinched.
It was horrible.
Even he had to fight the flattening movement of his own ears, as the sound came out… as it came out in the worst piece he had ever played.
The notes were big, they could accommodate his hooves easily, but… but it was wrong! There was no flow, no continuity. Every sound was stilted, sharp, aggressively pressing against them. His new appendices lacked any agility and dexterity. He was playing with an open palm, a giant nail, his elbows! Anything but his fingers!
Every time a part of him touched the keyboard, he cringed. This was not how he reached music; it was not the way of a pianist. Nothing he tried worked. But how he tried and tried and tried again! Desperately, while his mind slowly devolved into panic and hysteria...
His ears, stronger than before apparently, offered him every false note, every mistake, every abominations, five times over.
A symphony.
Dissonance.
A lullaby.
Discordance!
A requiem.
Horrible TRASH!
Someone rightfully shouted.
“Stop!”
It wasn’t even an attempt anymore. His hooves sent pangs after pangs of pain all throughout his limbs, for he put too much strength in his movement, too much energy lost into a vain, futile, worthless attempt.
BANG!
A mist of fury started covering his sight, reducing the bar to nothing in the face of this instrument – this parody of an instrument – that mocked him for being close, oh so close, to the real thing, while producing naught but the most atrocious sounds.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
It gave him no satisfaction, to hit so strongly. But he could not stop. He would not stop!
Before his eyes, the keyboard suddenly shrank, and his breath came short. Hooves, those damnable HOOVES, had grabbed his midsection and thrown him away from the piano.
He struggled, shouting with rage like a possessed madman, swinging around those useless bloody stumps at the end of his arms. He fought against this bigger pony that threw him to the ground.
He struggled and fought. With his anger, with his fear, with his loss. All for nothing. He thrashed and crashed until another pony came to restrain him. Still he fought.
He had nothing else.
--
His coat was not enough to safeguard him against the cold emanating from the northern wind. His fur felt damp, especially under the bandages they had put on him. The tissue was spotted red. The pressure applied with each step made his legs shake.
However, his physical injuries didn’t register. There had been a much deeper cut.
He had had the confirmation of what had been hanging in his face for nearly a week now. It was enough to make his head spin.
He trotted inside his house, one of the few last places that he could be alone. That was what he wanted. Slamming the door behind him, he finally felt what little energy he had left desert him. His hind legs gave out from under him, and he settled into a pitiful sitting position.
“I don’t want to play anymore!” he had screamed.
“I can’t play anymore,” he whispered, curled up on himself.
That was it. He could not imagine what to look forward in life.
He… simply didn’t want to do anything.
What broke him out of his daze was a clear crystalline sound that rang just behind him. It reminded him of a chime, and he felt the presence of a person at the door. Instincts honed from a lifetime of practice made him attentive to the noises. Hooves scrambled to place themselves just right on the other side of the door, and a chatty high-pitched voice called for him.
Curiosity, or perhaps even a reflex, made him open the door.
A spike of anger shot through his brain when he recognized the one that had made the request. Had he had the dexterity, he would have closed the door in her face. However, while he scrambled around the doorknob, his eyes caught sight of another pony with her.
Sighing, he let go and dropped down on all four. His expression remained tired as he sent one last questioning look to Pinkie Pie.
“I heard what happened. So, I decided to call in a few favors from a friend or twelve – and I won’t go into the details, that golden apple was very-well hidden and Rarity uses really exotic shampoo –, but, anyway, I managed to find somepony willing to help you.” She pointed to the grey mare staying in the background.
“Pinkie…” he said slowly, discouragement gaining on him again. Nothing mattered.
He had lost the very expression of his soul. What else could there be in this world for him? What help could there be for him? He wanted to tell her as much, that her misguided efforts would not yield results. He had already opened his mouth to do so…
But then, she told him just a few words, enough to shake him to the core.
“Octavia is a musician.”
His eyes widened.
“Classically trained,” the grey mare added, with a touch of pride. “Miss Pie told me you share an interest.”
Only then did he look, truly look, at her. She held herself straight and high, proudly so, refinement showing through the few words she had said.
She… she reminded him of her.
She was old. A gray old crone with the sternest gaze he had ever seen and one of the most impressive musical backgrounds in the whole state.
“Wrong!” She snapped. “Did you even practice?! I swear it is as if you have two stumps instead of hands!”
Absurdly, the memory made him want to laugh. If he had known back then how literal that comment would turn out to be, he would have…
…What would he have done?
He lowered his head, revolted by his own thoughts. His current situation changed nothing to what his music had brought in his life and that of his family. It had brought him closer to them.
There had been an instrument in that bar. It was possible.
And with this new pony’s help…
He might get a chance to play again.
Slowly, his eyes went to Pinkie, to the friend that had arranged for this.
“W-why?” he asked her, his voice hoarse and thick with rumbling emotions. He couldn’t understand, couldn’t fathom this mare who would sacrifice something for a stranger, for someone like him that had thrown her out the last time. “Why would you do this for me?”
And, for once, her entire being felt subdued. She was calm, her lips curled into a small smile, with still a glitter of sadness to her gaze. Her right hoof rose, and pushed gently against his chest.
“You’re always sad, Finny,” she said, as if it explained everything.
“But y-” He started, only to be cut off by a hoof pushing against his lips.
“I just wanted to see you smile for once.”
He had been younger, much younger, the first time he failed. It had been silly, just the wrong note at the wrong time, but in his mind, it had been a disaster, a calamity, an explosion, and he had frozen on the spot. Heavy silence had followed, during which he had grown more and more embarrassed.
Returning home, he had sworn to never play in public again.
He had sworn in front of his father. Following that, there had been a few minutes of sitting down, in their kitchen, while his father talked about his 'great' success as a comedian. But more than this, they talked about his failures.
The most spectacular of them had happened early in his career, on a talent show, and it just so happened that the video of it existed.
They had watched it, side by side on the sofa. It was terrible, and all the more funny for it. He could still remember laughing to tears; he could still remember his father laughing even louder.
Afterward, he had decided he could give playing another try.
“I’m sorry, Pinkie. You were only trying to… to…” He could not say it, and, from the knowing smile she gave him, it was not necessary either.
Trying to get his breathing back to normal, he felt a soft contact against his neck. Her hoof gently helped him turn toward his new acquaintance, and he offered no resistance.
Pinkie’s guest had remained respectfully silent during their exchange, conscious of the emotions at play. Her gaze was carefully inviting, as if she was only waiting for him to say the words.
“Will… you teach me how to play again?”
Octavia smiled, and Nimble Fingers finally felt like smiling back.