Side Effects Of Life

Chapter 2: The Honey Sucks

A final cymbal crashed, and the beat went away, leaving the crowd in an aether of formless sounds. Vinyl, grinning, glanced at the crowd, then proceeded to her laptop, golden spermatozoa floating around her like anacondas in the tropical marsh. At any minute the beat would start again, and the ponies, sweaty, high, but happy, awaited this moment impatiently, judging by the whistling and clopping they made.

As a powerful four note bassline rolled, the dancers lifted the forelegs into the air, and a loud yeah rolled through the space. Octavia, however, didn't feel cheerful. She wanted peace and quiet, a silent haven where she could recollect her mind from the acidic onslaught that was too overwhelming for her.

Octavia turned her head away from Vinyl and noticed that she was a few steps away from the bar, almost deserted save for a few couples who wanted to enjoy each other sensually and intimately. It looked like an ideal place to rest and recover after having restored her identity; although it still felt rather shaky, for the gray mare perceived herself as if her whole individuality was the same thing as Frankenstein - a jumbled mess composed from parts alien to her but which, by working together, seemed to be her. If these extensions and ideas were to fall at the seams, she would find only emptiness, nothingness, a featureless distance between the bar stand and the raving masses. The prospect of turning into void scared Octavia, and she put all the will she could muster in her state into the act of pulling back together the foreign yet so familiar and cozy parts of her being.

Illuminated by dark red and blue lights, the bar looked like a cave, the bottles on the shelves glistening like rivulets of water running down the cavern's ancient and twilit walls. As the bar shaped further into a cave, the more everything else disappeared into the background. Octavia was sure that the blasting four-on-the-floor rhythms decorated by acid melodies didn't happen behind her, but a few blocks away. The dulled out ecstatic celebration reminded her of dub-techno made by Fog, for she liked to drift away in those long tracks where every sound seemed muffled, as if a party were happening a few storeys up or below her.

Calm, mind quiet, Octavia sat on one of barstools that seemed for her to be giant amanita muscaria mushrooms due to their bright red tops.

“Can I have a glass of water, please?” she asked politely.

In no time was the glass in front of her, water shining red with occasional tinges of yellow. Almost the same way had the waters looked when she took acid for the first time, getting on a ride truly set for locales outside the dominion of common day existence.

Only a few days had passed after Octavia's appearance at Vinyl's doorstep, but for the gray mare these few days had seemed as intense as to other ponies five or ten years of dating and marriage. Many times she had thought about why she had kissed Vinyl when the white horse appeared from behind the door of her house; many times she had thought about their reverie that had begun in the hallway and ended up on the coach; many times she had thought about how her mind faded into the background the moment she saw Vinyl's magenta eyes, how her heart skipped a beat when Vinyl smiled with the smugness of a know-it-all teenager, and how her whole belly below the navel tingled when Vinyl kissed her as gently as a summer breeze on the lips and on the neck; but she couldn't find a satisfactory answer, nor she wanted to stop doing what they were doing, for it felt so right. Nothing ever had felt so right as her mad attraction to the white mare.

When Vinyl had presented her to the molecule of LSD, however, the whole universe became perfect, a crystal gem of beauty so intense that mind failed to comprehend it and languages to describe it.

“Have you ever wanted to touch the sky?” Vinyl had asked Octavia one day as they laid on the carpet, reposing in each other arms after a long love session, the late afternoon sun falling from the large window opening to the plains and hills of Equestria.

“Who doesn't,” Octavia said, then placed a soft kiss on Vinyl's nose.

The white mare stood up, annoying Octavia.

“There's acid in the house. Wait here,” Vinyl said, then proceeded into the bedroom.

Octavia lay on the floor and let the post orgasmic serenity and occasional yet pleasant shudders reign over her mind and body. She liked to satisfy herself in the privacy of her home, but never had the end result been so intense, shattering her on every level of her being. Although she had not had any kind of sexual contact with stallions - they seemed unsophisticated to her, just trying to shove their thing and ejaculate instead of making an aesthetic performance out of it - Octavia had heard about how it felt from her friends; and comparing what her friends had said about the sexual experience involving stallions with her adventures involving Vinyl, she was grateful not to have had a stallion inside her. Vinyl was the only one she needed. End of story.

“Get up your lazy flank. Let's go for a walk,” Vinyl said, returning back into the living room.

“I don't want to,” Octavia said slowly, rolling onto her stomach. “It's cozy here. Calm.”

“Believe me, it's gonna be a walk you'll never forget.”

“If you say so,” Octavia said, then stood up languidly.

Vinyl stretched to Octavia's face her right hoof, on which a blue gelatin square lay.

“What is this?” Octavia asked, her brows furrowed.

“This is acid,” Vinyl said. An impish smile suggesting things forbidden by common standards adorned her face. “I'm giving you acid.”

“Isn't this a...drug?”

Vinyl lifted her left eyebrow. “So what? I use it all the time.”

Octavia had looked warily at Vinyl. She remembered how ecstatic and somewhat unhinged most of the time Vinyl looked, but it was exactly this what had attracted her to the DJ horse in the first place. A glance into Vinyl's drug fueled eyes had been enough to send her down the path which led to underground parties, undiluted sensuality and mad, utterly mad, love. Why not to take the next step, then?

Without further delay, Octavia took the little tab and put it in her mouth. To her surprise, it tasted the same way as pure gelatin.

Vinyl's smile grew wider. “That's more like it. Come on now.”

“Will you be on acid also?” Octavia asked, her voice weak.

“I've already dropped in the bedroom,” Vinyl said. Then, as if reading Octavia's mind, she stroked her cheek against Octavia's neck. “Don't worry. Everything will be fine.”

As Vinyl looked into her eyes, Octavia felt the knots of anxiety ease up on her stomach. She had seen Vinyl doing impossible feats while intoxicated, such as performing live and DJing, therefore she should calm down. If Vinyl said that everything would be all right, then everything would be all right.

Being her first time on “real” drugs - a few glasses of wine didn't count on Octavia's mind as serious inebriants - Octavia paid all her attention to her body, expecting any second some clear changes in her body or thinking. Every tremor, every shiver, every movement in her bowels she interpreted as a sign that the tab was working. Because of her anxiety, she didn't notice when the changes really started.

As the gray mare walked down cobbled paths shadowed by long and tall trees and twisting across miniature ponds, she had noticed that the Canterlot garden looked somewhat different. Although she had strolled many times throughout these twilit paths, she couldn't remember the green leaves, the scintillating water, the bulbous tree trunks, the flowers of all the colours of the spectrum, and the manifold little insects flying from one bush to another looking so enchanted, so there. Maybe the reason for such an effect lay in the light, which seemed brighter yet more ineffable than usual, making everything shine, giving every object, no matter how small or big, beautiful vibrancy. And the way it fell through the foliage: sharp as the blade made from the best steel, but as ethereal, as angelic, as fragile as the first rays of dawn. Everything illuminated by or moving through the luminous might speckled like if it were covered by a layer of diamond dust. The most intense thing was the golden haze created by the descending Sun as its rays, falling onto the shady streets from between thick leaves, mingled with each other. The whole air inside the effulgence looked alive and glistening with golden powder, almost liquid thanks to currents of solar power moving through its emptiness. Why hadn't she noticed this beauty before? Was it because strolling through the same area for countless times had dulled her perception of the place, or because she usually didn't pay much attention to the environment surrounding her, lost in endless loops of thought? Why was she seeing it at the current moment?

A turn left followed by a turn right, and many old but new wonders opened to her eyes. The trees, the grass, the bushes, the flowers - all looked beautiful beyond words, infused by the brilliance of the descending Sun which made every object look shining and golden. Apart from overwhelming ebullience emanated all objects, whether organic or not, a profound sense of power, of might, of ecstatic energy, of the pulse of nature itself. No matter where Octavia cast her stare, she saw this intense might, manifesting through the fierceness of light and buoyancy of vibrant colours. Sometimes, she saw sparks of Nature's delight on the borders of leaves, in the cracks between the cobbles of the paths, on the ends of Vinyl's deep blue and flowing mane, even in the air itself; and she couldn't help but smile and giggle like a teenage filly that had caught the infectious laughter bug from her friends without even knowing why everypony else was laughing in the first place. Her body tingling from the force of the ecstatic flows of energy, Octavia convulsed in joyful laughter, feeling light, wanting to jump through the streets in the same way as a little foal chasing butterflies.

Energy. Energy everywhere. Energy had impressed Octavia the most as the acid advanced through her body, yet she had not been aware of the chemical source of her reaction, blaming everything on the frivolous love mood and the presence of her lover by her side, shining white, every hair of hers bristling with sparks, her eyes as bright and deep as cerise coloured diamonds. Only when Octavia closed her eyes and was greeted by golden ever shifting blobs did she realize what had happened. The awareness of the drug affecting her brain, however, didn't make her feel scared, nor did it diminish the impact of the experience she was having. Without thinking much about the drug proceeded Octavia to enjoy the amoebas floating behind her closed eyelids. For her the amorphous shapes of gold, red, and orange seemed to be a visual representation of the energy that she saw and felt streaming through every inch of space, her body included.

In fact, energy had been the essence of her first trip. Everything, Octavia felt, was related to the drunken interplay of power moving life and nature. No matter where she looked and what she experienced, everything was alive, infused with tremendous might. The breathing bridges on top of ponds and small canals; the rippling white pavilions hidden amidst emerald foliage moving on its own accord and looking as liquid and shimmery as the ocean on a bright sunny day; the flashes of white light in her vision that were followed by shapeless blotches of colour; the geometric patterns moving rapidly on the cobbled paths and watery surfaces; the eyes of pigeons that looked like black suns, bright and alien and fierce, layers of radiance emanating from the black shiny core - everything was a part of a never ending dance of joy.

Every single cell of her being charged with astral fire, Octavia jumped down the walking paths, smiling and laughing, stopping and looking around with eyes full of wonder and joy. Thankfully they were deep in the Canterlot gardens, with nopony for a mile in sight, so Octavia didn't feel anxious about appearing wild in front of a group of revelers.

When she stopped to take a breath and examined the place the two of them found themselves in, Octavia didn't look at one area for too long; for the patterns, both geometric and formless, which rested in the periphery of her vision came to the fore and in a matter of minutes completely obscured the real world, entrancing the gray mare with singular hues, perpetually morphing shapes, and shimmering energy. Sometimes she got so enthralled by the patterns that Vinyl had to pat her on the back and remind her with a kiss where she truly was. Looking at Vinyl, though, wasn't really helping. The fact that Vinyl's face kept morphing, one moment looking like her old self, the other like a Dali painting, some parts of her jaw dripping onto the ground, only added to the fast advance of rapidly moving figures. Nevertheless, Octavia was grateful for her presence, which acted like an anchor she truly needed.

The most beautiful moment of her first trip had been watching the sunset, which went from blinding yellow to deep red. When the sun finally kissed the horizon over the mountains in the west, the whole sky lit up in an explosion of red and orange. For Octavia the event seemed either like a giant squid spreading luminous tentacles throughout the dark blue sky, or like a cyclopean eye opening and obliterating everything in ecstatic and orgasmic fury. And the clouds. The clouds! Catching the yellow, purple, and red colours of the blazing sky, changing shapes like blobs of magic or the bubbles in a lava lamp, the clouds looked like eldritch creatures, fluffy yet utterly foreign to the equine world.

For many eons, or what felt like eons, had Octavia watched the furious glory of passion as the Earth and the Sun mingled with each other. Only when Vinyl interfered with her trance did Octavia look at her, and her heart skipped a beat; for in Vinyl's magenta eyes, looking red due to the vanishing light, she saw the same thing that happened across the endless fields and over the mountains in the west. The same fierce emotions emanated from Vinyl's eyes; and Octavia imbibed this flamboyancy of energy, her stare never wandering from the white mare.

As a response, Vinyl lunged forward and kissed Octavia. The kiss was light, not as lustful as usual, but Octavia felt as if the same explosion that was happening at the horizon occurred in her mind. Waves of the most electric crimson, orange, and yellow obscured every single crevice of the usual darkness behind closed eyelids, wiping in their wake the last remnants of her thoughts. Octavia's mind ceased to exist; there was only sensation, pure sensation.

For how long the kiss lasted Octavia had not known, nor had she cared to know. The moment had been absolutely perfect, from Vinyl's warm wet lips brushing against her dry ones to the kaleidoscopic and liquid madness that had been her only sight.

“Baby, do you have a light?” somepony asked Octavia.

Octavia opened her eyes, not wanting to return into the present from crimson red ecstatic and sensual memories. She looked left and saw a young mare sitting on the barstool right next to hers. By the look of her messed up mane and glazed eyes, Octavia concluded that her neighbour was either on something or drunk or both.

“I...don't smoke,” Octavia said. She tried to sound as coherent as possible despite her mind barely working. “Sorry.”

She looked at her reflection at the bottom of the empty glass - a star trapped within glass, a material that looked solid yet was in fact fragile and illusory, not knowing how easy it is to get out - then stood up, and placed one bit, golden and shining, onto the table. As the bartender took the money, the gray mare passed by the drunk or intoxicated mare, her destination set on a brown door nearby.

“I'm sorry. I got a little wasted...carried away,” the mare said in a slurred voice, rather speaking to herself than the horse who had left her. “I feel a little bad, you know? It's like...well...you know what it's like.”

Octavia knew what it was like. Knew it very well.

The gray mare found herself in a dimly lit hallway. Some ponies walked hither and thither, mainly performers getting ready for their gigs or technicians, but none of them paid attention to Octavia - just about everypony in the underground music scene knew she was Vinyl's partner in crime, who at times added a touch of classical ambiance to Vinyl's set, and even actively participated in the act by twisting knobs.

Octavia knew that she needed to walk ahead and then pass through a set of gray doors. Behind the doors a set of stairs awaited her; and as she would ascend them, she would find herself right behind the stage, right behind Vinyl.

As Octavia walked through the hallway, memories triggered by the drunk pony assaulted her, seeping into the present environment. The air of the corridor became electrified, almost palpable from the waves of unhinged, unrestricted passion flowing through it. Wherever Octavia looked, sensuality was present, not the delicate, refined sensuality of Canterlot, but the Dionysian, transgressive, rambunctious sensuality of red light districts and hormonal youth. A look at a picture of a lake near Ponyville; and Octavia remembered rolling with Vinyl on the sand and under the rays of the descending sun, then Vinyl going down on her, and then beads of her pussy juice flying through the air and shining like liquid diamonds as Vinyl reached her orgasm and arched her head back, eyes closed, mouth open and lips glistening with her secret secretions. A glance at the poster of Manehatten, and Octavia remembered convulsing madly in the hotel room, lost in the waves of pleasure, again and again, and then at the end of the performance falling into Vinyl's hooves, utterly exhausted on the mental and physical level, but revived by Vinyl's masterful licks of her neck and the space behind her ears.

Once the barrier had been broken, there was no coming back. Musical duties done, Octavia spent all her time with Vinyl, either in clubs or at parties - not well known clubs like Shroom or Hoofcienda or events like Manezora or Bam, but occult ones, where the latest and cutting edge stuff was played before it reached the mainstream and got butchered - or alone with her, working in her studio, walking around the hamlets of Equestria, and enjoying each other bodies if the opportunity presented itself.

Although Octavia came to view the club scene in a more positive light than before, she still preferred solitude and intimacy. The only exception happened when she was rolling on E, for the drug seemed to be made for getting in close physical, albeit not sexual, contact with other ponies. The gray mare couldn't describe that almost religious feeling which happened when the whole crowd danced together and rubbed together while at the same respecting each other personal space. It felt like a communion, a collective understanding and feeling, where you could look at strangers and feel no sense of danger coming from them as you stared into their eyes, and where you could allow them to touch you, knowing that the touch wasn't sexual but utterly innocent, like that of a child caressing her mother's hoof. It was more an acknowledgment that you exist and I'm awed by your existence and I respect that. While dancing on E, Octavia felt as if the whole “please don't touch me or I'll file a rape report” thing suddenly were peeled away, and everypony returned to interacting on a kindergarten level: totally open, without fear. Thanks to ecstasy, Octavia realized another dimension of these underground parties and the music played at them; for the environment and the sound facilitated this sense of total understanding.

While not rolling or on another kind of psychoactive substance, however, Octavia appreciated the parties less, unless she was with Vinyl. She couldn't get enough space to dance or move freely; the warm air between the shifting bodies didn't bring relief and satisfaction; and, if drugs were present in her system, she was afraid to stay in crowded places for too long, since it felt as the large masses would crush her both physically or mentally. Although she liked getting lost in the endless beat, Octavia couldn't achieve fully the desired state on the dancefloor, always being alert lest someone do something improper to her.

With Vinyl, everything was in reverse. The alabaster mare present, Octavia could let go of the last vestiges of her control. She couldn't really say why she acted like that with Vinyl only - maybe it was Vinyl's Dionysian presence, or maybe it was the feeling of total trust brought by the pony whom she had no doubt in – and in the end, it didn't really matter. Once Vinyl was on her side, everything ceased to matter.

Many parties had Octavia spent utterly lost in the music, jumping and twisting with her marefriend, kissing her on the lips, then neck, then shoulders, moving her hooves down her white body till parts not touched in public, smelling her skin that gave off a tinge of sweat mixed with muskier and more inebriating fragrances. Octavia's favourite moment was dancing with her forelegs resting on Vinyl's shoulders and looking into Vinyl's magenta-red eyes, which brimmed with fire every time the lights flashed, then moving closer to her, warm breaths mingling, chests and bellies touching, and then kissing each other as passionately as possible.

Vinyl pushed her right over the edge on the dancefloor. Wild and unrestricted, Vinyl allowed herself much, much more than Octavia; but this wasn't a problem for the gray mare. Vinyl's hooves, soft, moving in perfect rhythm to the beat up and down her body, sent shivers all over her skin, and sometimes Octavia caught her breath as Vinyl's hooves slipped beneath the navel and between her hindlegs. The same story happened with Vinyl's lips, which knew exactly where to plant their gift to drive her out of control. A kiss on the base of her neck, one beneath her left ear, and one on her right shoulder, and Octavia’s pussy was wet and her body felt warm and covered by a field of dense but invisible electricity. Sometimes the tension and drive was so intense that Vinyl dropped on her knees and kissed furiously Octavia's chest and belly, her hooves doing their work in total sync with the music on Octavia's hindlegs, in the beatless breakdowns only allowing themselves to play with the space right beneath Octavia's tail, lifting the tail up and massaging with utmost skill the space where hair and skin came together. Much to Octavia's dismay, though, the white mare didn't dare to plant her lips on the place that deserved their treatment the most, at least not amidst the crowd; but Vinyl’s warm breath brushing against her groin was enough for Octavia to feel weak in the knees and shivering from waves of sexual ecstasy going through her body.

It took all Octavia's willpower not to moan or embrace Vinyl tightly as a way to demand more stimulation. Dancing aroused was utterly ecstatic and utterly demanding at the same time. Her every move bristled with waves of sexuality wanting to find a release, beating against the slowly crumbling shores of her mind that was usually debilitated by acid. With every beat and every touch and caress of her marefriend, Octavia lost herself more and more to the red haze of lust. As a result, every act of restraint, of pushing back, brought pain and only fortified the electrical tingling covering her skin and the throbbing, pulsating, humid heaviness between her legs.

When Octavia was ready to snap did Vinyl finally wink and nod with her head toward the exit.

There was no point using the stalls, since everypony else was there and the whole environment wasn't aesthetically pleasant, especially with the overall condition and nauseous smells. The chillout rooms, despite the pleasant and twilit space obscured by transparent swirls of marijuana smoke, were usually crowded, and the combination of music and drugs was more suitable for delicate fondling rather than something intense and passionate. Of all the opportunities Vinyl and Octavia decided to use dark corners outside the club.

Once out of the club, their passions didn't abate. On the contrary, Nature itself seemed to pour oil into the fires of their lust. Every breath made Octavia feel dizzy after the poor ventilated rooms of esoteric clubs, and every brush of the quiet nocturnal wind against her raging nethers was a whole orgasm of its own, driving her to rise up her tail and bend down, presenting her swollen, shining, and drippy marehood to Vinyl's hot breath.

Reaching a suitable isolated area, Octavia, aroused by the smells coming from her partner and by the masterful play of nature, assaulted Vinyl, wrapping her forelegs around Vinyl's white warm body, kissing her furiously on the lips, not caring about strands of saliva left on Vinyl’s face, grinding her wet pussy against Vinyl's thigh, moving her loins up and down against Vinyl's soft and silky fur that stimulated every single piece of her sensitive folds at the same time, hugging Vinyl tighter and tighter, bringing as much contact as possible between their skins, as if in a furious effort to melt with her, her forehooves either holding Vinyl's head or moving up and down her body, playing with the base of her electric blue tail and the space beneath, making the white mare grind against herself in return.

Bored with Vinyl's mouth, Octavia proceeded up toward Vinyl's horn, pressing her heavy pussy tighter against Vinyl's body, her body tensing every time her clitoris rubbed against the warm leg of her perfect lover, every hair on her body standing because of the currents of pleasure running along her skin. A lick at the base of the horn, and Vinyl gasped, shuddering and holding Octavia as close as possible. As the gray mare worked with her tongue over the coils of alicorn, and circled her tongue around the sharp point, Vinyl barely moved her hooves. Her only action was grinding against Octavia and letting a muffled moan into Octavia's shoulder. Vinyl's motions only stimulated further Octavia's nethers; the gray mare herself could barely hold moans or squeals of pleasure as her pussy ground against Vinyl, sliding easily up and down Vinyl’s thigh that was usually soaked in her own voluminous secretions.

Passion reigning supreme, barely aware of her surroundings or feeling the elements, Octavia would detach from Vinyl and look at the face of her marefriend, always smiling, eyes ablaze with pure lust, pure energy, a satyr in a pony's body. Then in a flash Octavia would be on her knees, looking at Vinyl's belly as it moved in and out in erratic rhythms, or at the wet glistening spot on one of her thighs, right near the place where her leg turned into her body, some transparent streaks running down on both sides and forming drops on thin filaments ready to drop onto the ground. Hungry, Octavia would start kissing Vinyl's sweaty and warm belly, her kisses short but intense, moving from one area to the next, always going down, her left hoof playing with Vinyl's ass, her right hoof between her own legs, pressing against the sensitive knob right as she planted another kiss on Vinyl's body, getting covered in streams of bodily lubrication, her nose absorbing every single molecule of that strong musky smell of a turned on mare.

And as Octavia moved down, she could feel waves of sensual heat, so dense almost palpable, coming from the lady bits of her marefriend, and then she could see in the nocturnal illumination the swollen, red, and shining from wetness treasure that she wanted so much, strings of fluid hanging from the outer lips, the clitoris a pink jewel amongst ridges of aroused red flesh, and without any regrets she would plunge her face into the slit, kissing the outer lips, licking the inner, eating the viscous fluid, feeling slight hinges of its taste as it dissolved in her palate, moving her tongue from the lower point of Vinyl's pussy till the upper, enjoying how smoothly it went against silky warm flesh till it reached a bump the touch of which made the white mare jerk and made her jerk in return as she applied pressure on her own centre of pleasure, legs tightly pressed, hoof imprisoned between them, her head burning in the furnace of Vinyl's desire, her lips and nose smeared with Vinyl's secretions, her mind utterly lost amidst the smell of her marefriend, which sent her further down the circles of mania. Utterly gone into the pits of passions, Octavia buried her face deeper and kissed and sucked and licked while her hoof pressed and pressed on her own pussy and her body shivered and twisted and twitched from sudden waves of extreme sensual energies. She was unable to stand still and had to rock her body or arch her body or twist from side to side but never stopping licking and sucking and kissing and getting higher from Vinyl's shudders and twitches and rocking and twitching and twisting and moans and gasps, and with every stroke of her tongue and every kiss and every lick reaching that point of release that drove them both further and further while the world was spinning round and rouunnd and rouuunnnd.

“I'm sorry,” somepony said from her left.

The visions of past dissolving, Octavia found herself back in the hallway. Apparently, she had stopped in the middle of it and somepony from the staff must have bumped into her.

The hallway was empty, but to Octavia it was filled to the brim with pure sexual energy. The illumination was tinged red, fluctuating from energetic crimson hues so typical to burlesque bars and theaters to soft pink ones bringing memories of sexual organs; and the air itself felt dense and musky, as physical as the inebriating heat surrounding her special somepony. Through the air golden spermatozoa floated, and left in their wake long trails that shone with all the colours of the rainbow. When two or more collided, they exploded with a milky white splash which seemed as gooey as semen, and which disappeared languidly into the shivering air.

Judging by the wetness slowly proceeding down her hindlegs, and the warm heaviness in the groin, passion had full her grip on her. It literally suffocated Octavia, made her sweat and gasp for air, brought a plethora of images, moments of dalliance she had shared with Vinyl, to the front. Their wet and hot adventures in dark alleys at night, at their homes in daylight, in Canterlot groves at sunset, and in other manifold places at manifold times, shifted in front of her as vividly as when she had been experiencing them. Sucking, kissing, caressing, gliding hooves over flesh, hugging, moaning, climaxing, shivering, convulsing, merging, dissolving, losing boundaries, bathed in electric warmth and vapours of sex, everything flashing red and yellow, mouth dripping from thick fluids, heart beating fast, mind blotted out - this was her new life, and each aspect of it energized by drugs. And how many drugs.

Since her first try of acid, many substances had burned her nervous system; though good old LSD took precedence over the others - it was the first she had tried; it was the most available; and it was the most pleasurable to her along with ecstasy.

At least once a week, when the two of them were free from musical duties, they tried something new. The choice of substances was big, ranging from stimulants like speed to occult phanerotymes like some root that Zecora used in certain potions. Octavia was usually careful in the consumption of new drugs, taking at first a minimal dose and then taking more and more, while Vinyl took large quantities without even a tinge of panic. Because of this, Octavia often worked like an anchor for Vinyl, who always wanted to go further, right to the edge. However, either out of sheer luck or their almost telepathic understanding of each other, they managed to avoid bad trips or embarrassment in public.

Of all the drugs, Octavia didn't like the most amphetamines, mushrooms, and ketamine.

Speed Octavia had always considered a drug for those plebeians that liked dubstep and equivalent types of music - you take the pills and then dance like an idiot until utter exhaustion. To a certain degree, her opinion about the substance had been right. While on speed, she had danced for several hours without stopping, and only by Vinyl's insistence to rehydrate herself had she stopped her frenzy. When she wasn't dancing, however, she talked, talked about the ideas she had, ideas about music, about how to improve their tracks, about the sonic qualities of the contrabass, how the contrabass came to be, how the contrabass could be used. Every time a new idea popped in her mind, a whole dozen more emerged from it, and when Octavia focused on one of the new ideas, the whole process repeated itself, and they were so many and she needed to tell them all to Vinyl lest she forget them. So she talked for hours, her whole being nothing but energy eager to manifest itself through some kind of activity, and while she talked she either tapped her hooves against the floor or shuffled her hooves against each other or rocked her body, for she felt like Pinkie Pie, and probably acted like Pinkie Pie. Maybe speed was a drug for idiots, but sometimes being an hyperactive idiot was good; and maybe in the end speed wasn't even a drug for idiots - she couldn't remember the last time she felt so intellectually active, new ideas and connections forming every second. And the drive. The drive. It was so intense no wonder she had decided to drop some more, and then some more, dancing through the night, making manic love with Vinyl in the morning, then spending the whole day in the studio without paying attention to such things as hunger and thirst. And time rushed by in an instant, and she was taking the pills again, not wanting to lose the rush, afraid that ideas and inspiration would go away.

On the third day, though, Octavia had reached her limit, and understood why meth heads and speed freaks were portrayed in media as a violent, aggressive, and paranoid folk that couldn't act according to reason. Hungry, without an ounce of sleep for three days, Octavia spent the last day of her speed binge hiding away in Vinyl's living room, windows closed by curtains and the entrance door propped by a chair. She was absolutely sure that ponies in black, with binoculars as cutie marks, were searching for her, since they needed her for some experiments. A glance outside the windows was enough to confirm her suspicions, for they definitely stood in the darkness of the alleys, or even watched from the neighbouring house. Vinyl, who shared the same delusion, tried to convince her to hide in the studio, the safest place in the house due to acoustic isolation and absence of windows, but Octavia declined the offer, afraid that the watchponies could listen to her through the radio.

Only toward the evening the psychosis lost its power, and Octavia fell asleep, drained and exhausted, on the floor of Vinyl's living room. Her sleep, though, wasn't very relaxing: unnerving dreams about eldritch and indescribable creatures haunted her, and she was sure that several times she had waken up and felt the presence of something dark looking at her and sliding over the walls. This experience, along with the aches and profound weakness and sluggishness of mind the next day, convinced Octavia not to touch speed, or any kind of stimulants, again.

Baby food was on the second place of drugs Octavia would never do again. Having snorted it in a club, Octavia soon had found herself disconnecting from the environment; and she hadn't liked the sensation the moment it had started. Her body tingled but at the same time it felt somehow numb, and whatever sensation came, be it a smell, a bump, a kiss from Vinyl, it seemed weaker than usual, dull, as if ghosts were hitting her, not real ponies. The worse of all was, of course, the club, which became distant and dreamlike. Octavia felt like if she were having a lucid dream, her being the awake one while everypony else was just a background, foggy, muddy, every movements of theirs leaving traces. The music also followed the pattern. It seemed distorted; every sound had a quality as if coming from another dimension, warped by the travel through the spaces between.

No matter where Octavia went, the feeling of not being there followed her. Outside, beneath the stars, she felt just as away from everything as in the club, and wherever she cast her glance, everything looked slightly skewed, distorted, and somehow unreal, like a prop taken out of from the Quiet Mound games. In fact, Octavia felt as a protagonist of Quiet Mound, walking through familiar yet so singular spaces in a foggy haze. Once the world returned back with its smells, sounds, touches, tastes, and sights, Octavia sighed in relief; and the first thing she did when sober was passionate love with Vinyl, which felt unbelievably great. Because being alive was infinitely better than feeling unreal, a ghost amongst the living, or a living being amongst ghosts, Octavia decided not to have further relationships with Vitamin K.

With mushrooms, the situation was a little different. The issue wasn't that she hadn't liked them at all - for most of the trip Octavia had enjoyed the slow geometric patterns that looked like something from Daring Do novels, or the landscapes of terraced pyramids elevating above the rainforest and the amorphous creatures made from geometric patterns that inhabited them - but the general feeling they had given to her. The mushroom trip felt exactly like that - a mushroom trip. It was heavy, slow, and earthy; everything - from the initial amorphous blobs to the visions of antediluvian civilizations of the peak time - moved slowly and looked more or less amorphous. While on mushrooms, Octavia often felt like if she were enveloped by thick roots, or the myriad of strings that formed the mushroom's mycelium, and she didn't like the sensation at all. She usually tried to fight it, but the hold of the roots became stronger as a result, and she had to dive further into the slow world as revealed by the mushrooms, moving eternally and languidly like waves of the sea on a quiet day. The visuals of the mushroom trips were incredibly beautiful and seemed to have a deeper, very ancient origin, but Octavia couldn't stomach the earthiness, the entanglement of the trip.

To Octavia's surprise, Vinyl had good connections with Zecora. As Octavia found out, it was the zebra who supplied Vinyl with mushrooms as well as with more esoteric stuff. Of the less known things Octavia had tried some root and some potion, both extremely bitter in taste and both extremely potent in their effects.

The root, consumed in the form of tea, had been one long trip. At first, it was great - a feeling of energy, beautiful and extremely complex neon like visuals floating through the environment, and overwhelming warping and motion in the field of her vision. After a few hours, however, visions started, showcasing ritual scenes that looked as if taken straight from the zebra confederation, with zebras of multiple colours, some shifting through all the spectrum, dancing and venerating short, dark, and fat spirits whose laughter was as roaring as thunder. However, amongst the ritual scenes emerged memories of Octavia's life, from a time so distant that she couldn't even believe it had imprinted on her mind to events that happened the day before.

The gray mare found the trip illuminating albeit very painful, for it showed how boring her life was and how closed she was to everypony else. By watching memories as vivid and intense as the experiences themselves, Octavia understood whence her rather secretive character appeared from, how the betrayal by her first friend made her wary of others, how the inability to be popular amongst the schoolmates led to an aura of snobbishness and disdain for the common folk, how an occasional insult thrown by a popular colt regarding her cutie mark led her to distance away from privileged males. Many times Octavia wanted it to stop, but the spirit of the root keep going and going, making her look with crystal clarity at her life, how clinging to certain accidents destroyed her happiness. When the root finally let go, Octavia felt cleansed, aware of the patterns that led to her current self, and as a sign of gratitude she hugged Vinyl. Since meeting Vinyl, her life had been a kaleidoscope of sex and altered states of consciousness, but she had never before felt so alive and, frankly, she didn't care how it will end. After full return, however, Octavia decided to avoid the stuff. The feeling of regurgitating all her past in her head wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat often.

Zecora's other choice had been much more pleasurable to Octavia, despite the initial discomfort. As she had sat in Zecora's hut with Vinyl and waited for the brew, foul smelling, bitter beyond description, to kick in while nausea moved in waves from her stomach to her throat, Octavia had regretted accepting the offer. If the physical side was a sign, then the trip itself would be heavy and dense. Vinyl suggested her to relax, saying that fighting the brew would only make the matters worse. Laying down, closing her eyes, and removing tension from every muscle of her body worked like a charm; and soon the gray mare was enjoying deep and neon green and blue and purple flower patterns that greeted her behind closed eyelids. They moved slowly and reminded of the Evefree forest but without the dangers. Shining and brilliant the patterns were, and then they turned into large fluorescent snakes whose skin was an ever shifting tapestry of geometric forms.

But the visual beauty and the feeling of sedate life existing in the depth of rainforests wasn't the thing which impressed Octavia the most. When she and Vinyl decided to take a stroll outside Zecora's place, Octavia was amazed by how peaceful, perfect, sensual, and intimate the nature looked. She was aware she stood amidst the Everfree forest, surrounded by bulbous trees and ichorous vegetation, but every branch, every blade, every spider looked harmless. The whole place felt like home; and the way leaves moved, or snakes glided, or spiders weaved their web brought memories of Vinyl's tender hooves that caressed every crevice of her body whilst they hid in bed at night. Octavia wondered if this was the way Fluttershy perceived the world around her, for at that moment she herself was utterly in love with Nature in its most wildest forms, and, what seemed the most peculiar, Nature itself seemed to love her back. For the whole duration of the trip Octavia watched enraptured the Evefree, how geometric patterns and faces formed amidst the waving foliage, how spectral snakes floated amidst the branches, how jaguars moved swiftly and gracefully on branches, only to jump and transform into birds. By the end of the trip, Octavia decided that, amongst all the substances she had tried, the brew was the most enjoyable.

Having found out that Octavia had enjoyed the brew, Vinyl proposed to experiment with DMT, the main thing that made the potion what it was. Octavia accepted the offer without a shadow of a doubt, expecting to experience the things introduced by the brew in a more intense form; and the next weekend she was inhaling crystals at Vinyl's place.

After the first toke, however, she had realized that the substance was more intense than she had presumed. As the walls and coach and ceiling and windows of Vinyl's place became obscured by plant like patterns shining with warm colours, and a buzz that made her feel like a lady's toy turned on vibration mode spread out through her whole body, Octavia panicked - she went too far. Vinyl, however, urged her to smoke more, the impish smile never leaving her face for a second. Octavia obliged, and took two more tokes, after which she lost all contact with the real world as an immense chrysanthemum composed from myriads of patterns shifting colours at breakneck speed engulfed her vision. Before Octavia could even comprehend what was happening, beings seemed to seep out of the space constructed from flowing forms, beings of such singular nature that Octavia knew not a single way how describe them. Composed from the kaleidoscopic tapestry, these entities moved toward Octavia, their hooves, which ended in five little appendages, outstretched and holding in the flat middle what looked like eggs of the same peculiar composure as the whole eldritch space. They seemed to talk to her, but Octavia couldn't understand what they were saying, and when she had more or less realized that they didn't mean to do any harm and wanted to give her the eggs as gift, she was pulled back into the real world. When she opened her eyes, she was greeted by the ebullience of patterns, all moving and flowing like waves of a stormy sea. In a few moments, they abated; Octavia was able to see the place again, which looked normal, save that every surface seemed shiny, polished, and throbbing with energy.

After the experience Octavia had decided to stay away from the stuff; and she refused with a stern no Vinyl's offer to try bufotenine or 5-methoxy-DMT. She would do better if she stuck to acid, ecstasy, and hashish.

The gray mare wasn't very fond of cannabinoid substances - reefers were fun, made her relaxed, and intensified sensations, but otherwise had no point. Octavia treated them more on the lines of alcohol. While other ponies used alcohol to intoxicate themselves, she used marijuana. The effect was more pleasurable, safer, and provided just the needed stimulus for a fun time.

Hashish, on the other hand, was something. It made weed look like a child's play; if to compare alcohol with cannabis products, then marijuana was medium beer and hashish vodka. Hashish had a Canterlot touch to it, an aura of superiority and refinement. Under hashish Octavia could enjoy for hours the spires of Canterlot, the curves of Celestia's castle, the twisted alleyways of lower Canterlot. When not enjoying the curvaceous, delicate, flowing forms of Canterlot palaces, Octavia laid down and enjoyed classical music, for every sound carried a story, and together they told epic tales of ancient times, which took visual form behind Octavia's closed eyes. If there was nothing to do, Octavia laid half reclined on her couch and enjoyed the swirling arabesques moving on every surface and at times obfuscating the air. Every movement was slow and delicate; the same applied to every action she made. No matter how small her activity was, like pouring sugar in her tea, for example, Octavia did it with utmost attention, her eyes paying attention at the curves of the spoon, the swirls of the tea, the sheen of every grain of sugar falling from the spoon into the tea. And the food and liquids...Octavia could taste things that she had barely noticed before, and even a simple thing like a piece of white bread exploded in her mouth in a firework of different shades of taste.

The thing hashish was suited the most for was, of course, dalliance with Vinyl. Time forgotten, Octavia played with Vinyl's body as much as she wanted, her hooves moving lazily from one spot to another, her tongue exploring the manifold tastes of the white mare. Almost as good was receiving Vinyl's attention in return, for every kiss and lick and stroke, no matter how small or distant from the main areas of delight, of the mare was like a little orgasm for Octavia. And the slower Vinyl went, the more Octavia enjoyed it, merging with Vinyl, barely aware where her body started and Vinyl's ended. Sometimes she saw Vinyl surrounded in a blue halo, but Octavia wasn't bothered by it. The way she was feeling - every sensation an orgasm, and her and Vinyl just an amorphous blob without boundaries - was too good to pay attention to hallucinations.

The most intense part was the orgasm, if they reached it, for often mere stimulation was enough to feel good. When the orgasm happened, however, it was the strongest sexual and spiritual experience Octavia ever had in her life. At the peak moment there was nothing but a field of boundless light, extremely potent and nothing but pure ecstasy. For how long the limitless bliss lasted Octavia couldn't tell, for time wasn't something of that dimension, just like her personality. In the light, there was no Octavia, or maybe Octavia was the light, or maybe the light was real while everything else was its mere shadow. Thoughts occupied Octavia's mind later, after the experience; at the peak, she enjoyed the ineffable sensation of total perfection and total unity and total harmony.

The afterglow was another experience of its own, especially when seeing Vinyl shining like a supernova, her light energetic, warm, and nothing but pure joy. Especially intense was seeing the same light reflected in Vinyl's onyx pupils, and understanding that beneath everything they were stars just as bright and important as the Sun. After sensual adventures on hashish, Octavia couldn't look at Vinyl without awe and respect and gratitude, for she saw how beautiful the white mare was behind the facade that was called “Vinyl”; and she couldn't resist smiling when she looked into Vinyl's eyes and saw the same.

Vinyl introduced her to many substances, some pleasurable, some not, but what impressed Octavia was the absence of the most used drug in Vinyl's arsenal - alcohol.

“I don't like it, even in small doses,” Vinyl had said after a gig as they relaxed in the bar, glasses of water in front of them. “It's impossible to create anything while on it or after it. It feels like swimming through mud. My credo is living as awake as possible, not existing one fucking step above sleep and getting drowned in liquid shit.”

Vinyl's revelation impressed Octavia, and made her feel guilty. She had always imagined Vinyl as a drunk slut because of her lifestyle; therefore Vinyl's opinions were a bit shocking and unexpected. They, however, made Octavia respect her marefriend more.

Keeping with the theme of sedatives, Octavia had asked about opiates and roofies. Vinyl answered that after reading Nude Breakfast, just thinking about needles or pills made her nauseous. A look at the recommended literature made Octavia realize why.

After Vinyl's experiments, however, Octavia wasn't sure if she really wanted to try any drugs at all. The ones introduced to her brought such singular effects that she decided to stay within the realm of the easy and comfortable.

Previous drug experiences passed through Octavia's mind as she walked to the door leading backstage. She moved slowly, because acid apparently kicked fully in and was working hard, very hard, on her being. The gray mare, however, got used to it.

When work was low and free time was aplenty, both mares went on a drug binge, taking tab after tab and going to clubs to dance and then home to enjoy each other or make music. Since acid wasn't as strong a stimulant as speed, they could even take naps, so the experience wasn't as exhausting as amphetamine binges. However, it definitely was bizarre. Wherever they went the places kept morphing into something else. A stroll through the Canterlot garden changed from a trip through a Daring Do land to a glide through the faerie realms to a visit into an empire of sentient trees that could remove themselves from the ground and roam freely through the grounds. The same happened with ponies. Faces that were so familiar took forms of bizarre and grotesque quality, sometimes assimilating features of other species living in Equestria, reminding of some chimerical abomination from the deepest pits of Tartarus. The weirdest things, however, were the spectral visitors, beings that were not rooted into the common reality but became visible after the consumption of drugs. Many they were, some looking like knights from ancient epochs, others looking like guests from the far future, and all of them looking uncannily there and vibrant, and most of the time paying no attention to the mares as they went on their errands. It was only necessary to stop at one place, and soon the sidereal fauna - insects with long curved legs and wings that seemed fused to the space around; snakes appearing out of flowing wood; miniature dragons flying through the sky - would crawl everywhere. At the peak the other reality completely obscured the real world, and it became difficult moving, let alone functioning.

Usually when this happened the two mares agreed that the limit was reached, although Vinyl always tried to push as further as possible, and often spent whole nights in visionary states, acid frying her from the inside. Octavia wasn't such an extremist - the other world looked beautiful, but she was afraid of its reality, ready to suck in and not allowing to return back - so she stopped when the pull of the acid realm was too strong and paid attention to Vinyl, who rolled on the floor, eyes closed.

The most intense experience was playing live on acid. When Vinyl coaxed her to perform while high, Octavia added only her contrabass to the mix. Even while on the bass, however, it was difficult to add the sound to Vinyl's tracks, for before her eyes the sounds manipulated the illumination of the club or changed the club into something else. What struck Octavia most was how the darkest corners of the club behind the crowd would transform into snowy mountain peaks emerging from layers of immaculate white clouds as she kept making the melodies on the bass, melodies that seemed to echo throughout the vastness of the mountain ranges, melodies that were vast as the ghost mountains. Later she would hear from Vinyl how perfect her playing was, sending everypony into space, making them fly.

Judging by her struggle with musical performance while on acid, Octavia was surprised how Vinyl managed to retain perfect control over the music while under the influence. She blamed unicorn physiology on this, but Vinyl explained to her that after all her years spent with the machines she knew intuitively what knob needed to be turned and what sound to be added and what to be removed.

This was the way they were doing: being sober when work demanded, and then walking through the electric realms of acid, driven forward by energies as powerful as lightning. As time went by, however, the times between lucidity and acidic alterations diminished. On many occasions the borders blended, and Octavia couldn't tell when she was truly sober and truly high. On the dancefloor, everything became a blur, and if she were into the music, she later had to remember who she was. This kind of dropping out started to happen a lot lately, when Octavia felt herself not as her usual self but a wave of impersonal energy, ecstatic, sensual, always moving. She danced till oblivion, a bolt of pure energy swirling on the dancefloor with other bolts, and once exhaustion settled in, she gathered the bits of her individuality and took time out in the chill out room, where the sounds of The Sphere, the Future Sound of Equestria, and Wub changed the twilit space into a tropical beach bathed in the glow of an otherworldly indigo sunset. Her existence was that of ecstasy now, boundless ecstasy, ecstasy that would lead to her annihilation, ecstasy so strong that Octavia didn't really care about the outcome.

Octavia ascended a group of stairs, and found herself backstage, looking at Vinyl from behind.

The white mare bounced left and right behind her mixing deck, and through the wiggling tail Octavia could see that slit, wet from sweat, succulent and inviting. Mouth dry, manic energy passing through every fiber of her body, Octavia could barely stand still. Fluids started gathering in the folds of her marehood again. She wanted to run toward Vinyl and bury her face beneath her blue tail, taking a good sniff of her musky and intoxicating essence that was fortified by sweat, her long tongue licking from the lowest point to the rosy jewel.

Her whole skin aflame, Octavia watched away from the rosy lips protruding from beneath the white puffiness. One look at the mixing deck's channels was enough to realize what technique Vinyl used. After the trip to Albion, Vinyl returned back with a new method of mixing tracks live. The musician put all the elements of his or her track - from the kick till some random sounds - into the deck channels, and then muted the ones he didn't need at the moment. As the music proceeded, he or she could add new sounds, twist the already present ones, prolong one section, or even make the track longer. Basically, the technique allowed to create remixes and new interpretations of one's tracks on the fly. Guessing by Vinyl's concerts, she became a professional at this art.

Albion was truly something, especially in the fronts of magic and arts. And it was after the Albion trip that Vinyl became the ecstatic horse Octavia fell in love in with.

“I was always like this,” Vinyl had said to her once after a several day long session in the studio during which Vinyl pushed herself and Octavia to the limits to achieve the perfect sound for a section of her track. “After Albion it just became more obvious.”

About what happened in Albion Vinyl had never told clearly. She had went there in search for inspiration, as hearing the screeches and farts of dubstep over and over again made her sick, but a stroll through the popular dance spots had not brought the things she was looking for. Everywhere she looked dubstep and its derivatives dominated, which infuriated her. She played at a few clubs; however, she didn't feel the joy in it anymore. Passion was missing, the thing that had kept her making beats and basses and screeches through manifold nights during high school and college until physical and mental exhaustion took its toll.

Then, by sheer coincidence, she had met somepony involved in scene unknown to mainstream musicians. Without a shadow of a doubt Vinyl accepted his offer, and plunged into the hidden dimension of the misty Albion. No matter how strongly Octavia pried, Vinyl didn't let out even a single word about the occult groups she mingled with.

“They like to stay obscure,” Vinyl explained to her. “Success for them is death of the intellect and imagination. I respect them. As a sign of that, I made a vow not to reveal them. Sorry.”

“What did they tell you for you to make such a gesture?” Octavia asked.

“One very important thing,” Vinyl said in such a cold and serious tone that Octavia had never heard before from the white mare. “You either put all your being, every single cell in your body, every piece of your mind, into your work, or you're making garbage.”

On their few visits to Albion, Octavia asked Vinyl to introduce her to the secret group, but Vinyl sternly refused.

“Some things are meant to be secret,” Vinyl had said, then kissed her insulted marefriend on the nose.

With rapt fascination Octavia watched how Vinyl's hooves manipulated different aspects of the track, then moved back to the laptop. Sometimes Octavia's stare fell down, and she looked at Vinyl's private parts, waiting for her mouth to attach itself to them, to suck them dry. How Octavia wanted to place her mouth on those folds of flesh, puffy, and warm to the touch, and kiss them tenderly, enjoying their softness and their silky surface that allowed to glide her lips so easily up and down, giving a lick to the pink nod which protruded between them, lapping the ambrosia generating within the folds and then covering the outer fluffiness in a thick shiny layer, sniffing the sweat and musk of the secret parts of a mare, sniffing and coming and sniffing and coming.

As Octavia watched the dancing horse or at her equipment, she contemplated about how passionate Vinyl was about music. She had always thought of her as dumb party goer - and from what she had heard, Vinyl's grades seemed to reflect her assumptions - but one of the first things that had happened when she got to know Vinyl had been destruction of all her views about the white mare, from her music life to her sex life.

“I've never had friends, or a special somepony, for that matter. Had some crushes on a few mares - never looked at colts. Don't ask why. It just the way things are,” Vinyl had explained to her after another night of clubbing in the formative months of their relationships, while they laid down on the floor of her living room, watching the Sun rise. “I liked you since the first moment I saw you. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's true. You looked so cool, intelligent, and your music was so great. I dreamed a lot about you and me working together. But I was afraid to approach you. You were a high class girl and a diligent student. I was just a dumb kid.”

Octavia, however, didn't know dumb kids that worked the way Vinyl worked. Despite her ruffled appearance, which suggested laziness and living the life on easy mode, Vinyl was a perfectionist. While working, she always made sure that every minute detail - whether a high hat in the middle of the track or a little swirly effect hidden well behind five or more sounds - sounded exactly as she intended it to sound. For several nights and days could Vinyl work in the studio without sleeping or eating, only taking a few sips of water when the necessity reached levels impossible to push away, as she tried to make a certain section of her track, or even just an element of it, sound right. Perfection achieved, she often sat down on the floor, back against the wall, and then slipped into the dreamlands. Octavia had to carry her to bed, and then she lay next to the exhausted mare, providing warmth, physical and emotional.

Vinyl's obsession with the most perfect sounds fell on every kind of music, be it dubstep, techno, house, goat trance, or intelligent clop music. Whether a pop song or experimental noise, everything must be done right; for making half baked products and introducing them to the floors was equivalent to cheating the public and, more importantly, herself.

Vinyl appreciated Octavia's help deeply. Vinyl often said that her music lacked a certain indescribable touch of harmony, and she blamed it on her inability to make good melodies. Having studied in Canterlot conservatory, Vinyl of course knew music theory by heart, and could recite it even if she were woken up at four in the morning and asked about it. Her training, though, didn't help her when making music that she wanted. In her opinion, everything she did sounded too cheery, too cheesy; and she wanted to do something dark, not dark as in violent and terrifying, but dark as mysterious, otherworldly, sidereal, and with tinges of sadness, in the vein of early Hoofnica and Flow 418. Octavia had exactly what Vinyl needed. Her touch added that sense of mystery Vinyl wanted so strongly, making the tracks sound somehow delicate and ephemeral as morning mist despite them being heavily layered and very driving.

“You make perfect trance,” Vinyl said to her every time they finished a track, and then, like usual, planted a kiss on the right corner of her mouth, Octavia's special place.

The beat of the track which Vinyl played slowed down, high hats and melodies stuttering, and warm and soft sounding noise entered into the mix. Octavia knew that the end of the performance was nigh, since it was a later development of Vinyl's to drive her set to the peak of frenzy, placing more and more fast and driving tracks, and then at the end wash the club with walls of noise in an effort to showcase the whole point of the underground scene - driving ponies right to the edge of their minds and blowing them away for good.

“We need this song to get LOUDER, LOUDER, LOUDER!,” Vinyl shouted on the top of her lungs, and the club drowned in layers of noise. “What do you got to lose?! What do you got to lose?! LOUDER! LOUDER! LOUDEEEEER!”

Speakers turned to the max, every single crevice of the stage was drowned in organic sounding noise that always brought up images of boiling porridge to Octavia. The stage filled with white spectral electricity, thick as fog and palpable as steam, obscuring everything, turning Octavia into a charged battery, flashing in her vision in bright lights, at times white, at times red as arterial blood, at times golden, but always charged with manic energy, energy of the storms, the tornadoes, the volcanic eruption, of the whole madness of nature.

Vinyl shouted words, standing in the middle of the stage, waving hooves, but they were lost in the sea of noise, which turned more intense every moment. As Octavia stared at her, the stage drowned in golden and crimson splashes, looking to the gray mare both as blood and as lava at the same time. Shining with singular light, they floated through the air like mist, their presence palpable and electrifying. Wherever she looked the amorphous mist floated in the air, hiding the moving and breathing objects in its dense coils. The most peculiar thing was how well was the spectral lava synced with the sound; for every time the noise got louder and more boiling, squelchy and bubbly sounds appearing more and more often in the mix, the fog thickened, and even changed its texture from that of a fog to something more tangible, like syrup. Octavia could feel its power pressing against her skin, making every hair of her body stand straight, transmutating her being into that of pure energy.

Due to the ever shifting, formless, and boundless mass that filled her vision, Octavia was unable to see the crowd, or even Vinyl's hardware which stood just several meters away from her. Only Vinyl stood out through the crimson red and yellow lava, but in a rather unusual way. Amidst the haze, slowly moving and shimmering, looking like a boiling tomato soup but passed through a psychedelic filter, Vinyl's body was embraced in golden flames which shone with the fierceness and energy of the midday sun. Sitting on her knees, Vinyl was burning, burning from the inside, the aurulent fire being the energy coming from inside her, electrifying the air. The boundaries between her skin and the bright yellow flames weren't clear; it seemed to Octavia that often there was no Vinyl at all, but only the manic, all devouring fire. When the astral fire became twice its size for a moment, shooting up like a pillar of pure magic, Vinyl bent down, one hoof to her head, the other still holding the microphone.

“They're the flames from your burning brains,” Vinyl shouted, loud enough for Octavia to hear, an explosion of gold enveloped in red and yellow pulsating electric goo. “They're the flames from your burniiinng braaainnns.”

Vinyl cast a glance back; and Octavia saw the gleam of utter madness or utter ecstasy in her ruby red eyes. She had seen it several times before, but for some reason she could remember at that moment the incident with the rose.

They had been at Vinyl's place, intoxicated on acid for the second day but still running. Music blasted through the house at full volume, and the two lost ponies were lost in a dancing frenzy, allowing themselves to do things not usually done amongst the crowds, Vinyl's hooves touching every place they wanted, Octavia going down and licking Vinyl from groin to neck, Vinyl going behind Octavia, pressing herself against Octavia, and placing her hoof on the gray mare's pussy, their bodies moving in swinging motions, tails brushing against each other thighs, the heat of their bodies driving them further into passion, loud, heavy breathing warming each other necks, moans and squeals and cries of pleasure drowned out by music, the energy of lust so physical it was visible.

Suddenly, Vinyl's eyes lit up with fire so intense that Octavia had felt a chill going down her spine. In a spur of a moment, Vinyl took one deep red rose from a vase and placed it in her mouth, unaware that the thorns hadn't been cut. Octavia was shocked, for she suspected that the thorns were cutting into Vinyl's tongue. As if reading Octavia's thoughts, Vinyl wrapped her tongue, pink, shiny, wet, around the rose. Not for a moment did the white mare cringe from pain; her portrait smile never weakened, and her eyes shone with Dionysian energy.

As Vinyl looked into Octavia's eyes, dancing with the rose in her mouth, the gray mare felt the madness pouring into her, obliterating her already ruined mind. If Vinyl would have asked her to take the rose in her mouth and grate it against her tongue and palate, Octavia would have done it without a blink, and then would have jumped on Vinyl and kissed and licked and sucked and stroked her everywhere, grinding her whole body against her while her hooves and tongue worked on the white mare, moaning at Vinyl's every touch and at every single grinding movement between their bodies, till they would reach that point when nothing but pure ecstatic sensation existed and then shiver and twist and arch and bend and stretch uncontrollably together as waves of orgasm crashed their selves, leaving behind nothing but pure consciousness gripped by ecstasy.

Vinyl took another look at Octavia and spat out the rose on the floor, blood, vibrant from the presence of life, trickling down the corners of her mouth, covering her tongue with an unearhly red hue. In one single motion the white mare lunged forward and kissed Octavia, and just as her lips met Octavia's, her hoof met with Octavia's burning pussy. Feeling Vinyl's wet lips, the metallic taste of her blood, and shivering from orgasmic pulsations going up her spine and making her grind against the gentle and soft hoof, all of it happening simultaneously, was too much for Octavia too handle; and she succumbed to passion. She wrapped her forelegs around Vinyl and moved her body as tightly as possibly against the white mare, her tongue absorbing the mix of saliva and blood from Vinyl's mouth, moaning from the movement's of Vinyl's hoof down south. It felt weird, it felt wrong, it felt right, it felt strong, it felt good.

What happened later had been a blur of sensual ecstasy. Vinyl dropped on her knees, trailing her head down against Octavia's body, leaving traces of bright red on Octavia's gray fur, and buried her face into Octavia's groin, her licks quicks but precise, hitting just the right spot, painting the aroused folds and knobs of her sensitive flesh with blood. Waves of sensual electricity made every hair on Octavia's body stand, made her shiver and twitch uncontrollably, made her cry from pleasure so strong it was almost unbearable. Unable to take the ecstasy, Octavia closed her eyes, but everything in the space behind closed eyelids was red and exploding and moving and shining and charged with energy.

And everything was red once the music ended. The sudden cessation of noise was such an extreme experience that it brought Octavia to the present. The first thing Octavia did was checking out her marefriend, who sat motionless on her knees, head bent to the left side as if she were a puppet whose strings had been cut. The golden flames still licked her, but not as intense as before; and she didn't glow like a supernova anymore.

Octavia didn't pay attention to the crowd's loud clapping, whistling, and clopping. All her attention was directed at the exhausted horse resting in the middle of the stage, breathing heavily, wet mane plastered against her body, sweat shining like gold. The fact that Vinyl didn't move unnerved her. Maybe the fire had finally burned her up. Maybe her body gave up due to the cyclopean amounts of energy passing through it. The fact that she continued to burn while the general mass of red and yellow dissipated into nothingness made Octavia's stomach twist.

As the gray mare was ready to go toward Vinyl, the white horse lifted her head, then slowly stood on all of her legs. Exhaustion was clearly visible in her shaking knees.

Vinyl turned around, saw Octavia, and smiled, energy returning back into her red eyes. She strolled toward Octavia, who stood silent and anxious, watching at the liquid fire moving across Vinyl's face, dancing at the tip of her ears, going in waves across her back. The red and gold haze finally disappeared - she could clearly see the stage now, and the redness looking and acting like boiling blood was gone, a fine mist of yellow reminding in its place. Vinyl's suit of flames, however, did not.

Seeing Octavia's stern face, Vinyl's smile grew bigger. When she reached the gray mare, she planted a kiss, soft but reassuring, on the right angle of Octavia's mouth.

“Don't be afraid,” she said, grinning but clearly tired. “It's only lightning.”