Harpflank and Sweets: Interval
Lyra lay, unmoving.
The bright sun, bathing Metropony City in Celestia’s warmth, could barely penetrate the thick blinds that had been snapped shut days ago. The heavy plastic slats cast lines of shadow like prison bars across the unicorn’s lithe yet immobile frame.
The room was sweltering, summer heat and faulty air-conditioning to blame. Lyra’s bed was soaked in sweat, but she didn’t care.
All was still. Even the insects had been battered into submission by the heatwave. The only sound was that of Lyra’s slow, regular breathing.
On a whim, she rolled over to face the ceiling, and immediately wished she hadn’t. What lines of light had made it through the binds pierced her eyelids, and she squinted in pain, instinctively rubbing them.
It was the most she’d moved in almost a week.
As if galvanised by the involuntary action, she sighed and sat up, taking her customary unusual position. She winced as her stiff joints creaked in protest, chastising her for her neglect. As she rubbed her knees in an effort to work some feeling into them, she took a look around her room.
It was not a pretty sight. Several days’ neglect was starting to take its toll, and the dust was beginning to show. An enterprising spider had even constructed a web between a pile of magazines and the coffee table they occupied, before the summer sun had sapped its strength too.
Her gaze travelled from one of the apartment to the other. Nothing fancy, but nice enough. Though the pay she received for her work at M.A.R.E. could have sent most Canterlot nobles into what they would describe as “something of a tizzy,” she had kept her old living arrangements, relishing its familiar environs after a hard day’s battle.
Besides, she wasn’t in this job for the swag.
Her roving eyes passed the integrated kitchen in which many midnight meals had been crudely slapped together, the exercise machines scattered about the room, the sheets of music that lay-
Don’t think about the music.
Screaming at herself inside, she tried to stop her eyes from continuing their journey but slowly, inexorably, her gaze reached that which she knew had been her goal all along.
The harp stood in one corner, tall and gleaming. It alone was pristine, having none of the lived-in rough-edged wear that everything else, including the room itself, seemed to display.
It stared at her, mocking her.
She felt something deep within her, the same thing had sent her into self-imposed exile five days ago, and had kept her here no matter how hard she tried.
A great emptiness, a sense of loss she could hardly believe possible, threatened to engulf her. She took a deep, trembling breath.
No. No crying. Crying is what losers do.
Nevertheless, she felt the tears creep into her eyes, and she was suddenly gripped with a fierce determination. Tensing, she screwed her eyes closed and battled herself, sitting herself down in front of the gathering darkness, staring into the face of it and saying “No.”
But it wasn’t enough. A single tear crept from the welling pool before it subsided, and she fell back on the bed, frustrated at her own weakness.
This is so stupid. It doesn’t matter if it’s gone. I can live without it.
There was a knock at the door and she sat bolt-upright. She stared at the wooden panelling in confusion. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Hay, she’d even taken the precaution of pretending she was on a trip so they wouldn’t-
“Lyra?”
Despite herself, Lyra smiled weakly. Of course Bon-Bon had figured it out. She’d had Lyra worked out within a week of their meeting. Her smile widened as she remembered the great surprise she had repeatedly instilled in her friend during their first few days together as her various talents had come to light.
Heh, her face when she first heard me pla-
There it was again.
Bon-Bon’s voice, tinged with worry, came through the door again.
“Lyra, are you in there? What am I saying, of course she’s in there. Lyra! Open the door!”
Lyra waved a hoof dismissively at the door’s blank facing. Let her knock. She cared deeply for her friend, and it hurt both of them to shut her out like this, but now was just... not the time.
“Lyra, it’s been five days. I know you’re not on a trip, because your ingenious plan to go into hiding didn’t involve anything beyond telling everyone ‘I’m going on a trip.’”
Lyra nodded sagely to herself. It had been a good plan. But flattery would get her friend nowhere.
“Not now, BB. It’s locked, by the way.”
She rolled over in bed again, pressing her face into the mattress in an effort to block out the world.
“Lyra, you know what I’m going to do.”
Lyra continued to nuzzle the mattress, taking the first small pleasure she had in days in its softness.
You’re right, I do. You’re going to give up and leave me alone until I can work this out by myse-
The door exploded inwards, shattering into innumerable splinters and coating the entire room in a very fine layer of debris. Lyra leapt to her hooves, assuming a defensive stance as instinct took over. She dropped it almost as quickly, as Bon-Bon stepped daintily through the ragged plaster that had once been a doorframe. She slumped back to a sitting position on the bed, pouting.
“Oh. Right.”
Bon-Bon was looking around the room, casting an analytical eye over the shadowed mess. She frowned.
“This place is a disgrace.”
Before Lyra could say anything, Bon-Bon had trotted to the blinds and yanked them open. The sun that Lyra had been so carefully ignoring streamed in and she almost cried out.
“Jeez, BB! I like my eyes, ‘k?!”
Ignoring her, Bon-Bon turned and swept a hoof towards the untidy room.
“What is all this? You’re usually much tidier than this. Look at all this junk!”
Lyra jabbed an indignant hoof in Bon-Bon’s direction.
“Hey! This is no junk!”
Stooping, Bon-Bon picked up a magazine, glanced at the cover, and read the title aloud.
“Batman and Robin. You still read this stuff?”
“It’s a good fic!”
Bon-Bon fixed her with a flat stare.
“Lyra, it’s a fan comic about a television show in a television show. I thought you left Friendship is Science behind years ago?”
Lyra blew a raspberry at her friend, and Bon-Bon giggled.
The conversation died away and there was a moment’s silence. Lyra, staring at the floor, started as she felt a tender hoof rest on her shoulder. She looked up to see Bon-Bon standing before her, eyes filled with concern.
“What’s wrong, Lyra? I talked to your neighbours. They say you’ve been alone in here all this time. They say they heard you... heard you smashing things.”
Removing her hoof, Bon-Bon stepped back and sat on her haunches. Lyra visibly gathered herself.
She opened and closed her mouth a few times, waving her hooves vaguely in the air as though hoping she would encounter the words she wanted to say. A few moments later she stopped and frowned, before shaking her head. She took another deep breath, steeling herself to say what she had avoided saying to herself during her time alone.
“It... it won’t come anymore.”
Bon-Bon tilted her head quizzically.
“It won’t... What won’t come?”
Lyra gritted her teeth, forcing the the words out before she could persuade herself to shut up and save Bon-Bon her whining.
“It... it won’t...”
Bon-Bon raised a tentative hoof, ready to comfort her friend. This seemed to be both the best and worst thing she could’ve done. At first Lyra snarled and slapped it away, but just as Bon-Bon was recovering from the shock, Lyra burst out,
“The music, okay? The music won’t come. I don’t hear it anymore. I don’t... I don’t hear it anymore.”
There was a terrible silence. Lyra’s heart sank. She knew Bon-Bon could never understand. She knew from her friend’s previous job as a sort of freelance agent that Bon-Bon knew music, but she didn’t... know music. She didn’t know how it spoke to you in the midnight hours, how it refused to leave until you acknowledged it, how it interrupted anything you were doing to thrust itself into your mind and force itself to be played.
She didn’t know how it made you love it.
Taking the initiative, she sighed and stood up. Maybe... maybe it would help to get it off her chest. She strode across the room to where her harp sat, shining in the now brightly-lit corner. With a grunt of effort, she magically dragged it to the large beanbag that, for some reason, had always been her favourite place to play. She beckoned Bon-Bon over, settling into the beanbag as she did so.
“Ask me to play something.”
Bon-Bon, who had herself sat on the dusty chair nearest Lyra, blinked.
“Ask you-”
Lyra groaned. This needed to be over with.
“Ask me to play something. Anything. You know my tunes.”
Bon-Bon gave her an odd look before closing her eyes in thought. Lyra screamed at her in her mind as the seconds ticked by.
Ugh, why do you always have to think so hard?!
After what seemed like an eternity, Bon-Bon’s eyes snapped open and she smiled.
“Play that one you wrote when you were a filly. What was it called? ‘The Sound of Rain?’ I only heard it once, and that was years ago.”
Lyra nodded, silently cursing her friend’s well-meaning ignorance. Anything but ‘The Sound of Rain.’ But she couldn’t back out now.
She breathed in and out, flexed her neck, and performed all the little rituals that she had developed when playing in private. She had never let anypony see her like this before. In the days before she had given up her music career entirely for M.A.R.E, she had always presented a casual mask to the studio ponies. She didn’t need to care to play well, and it was just easier all-round if nopony knew... well, knew how much she did care.
Bon-Bon looked on curiously as Lyra stretched and sighed, and the concern that she had felt for her friend upon entering the room grew. She had never seen Lyra like this before. She was always focused when performing or fighting but this... This was something deeper.
Lyra finished with a slow breath outwards, and looked Bon-Bon in the eye.
“Are you ready? I’m going to start playing now.”
Bon-Bon nodded uncertainly, and Lyra settled into her ‘playing’ pose, sitting in her unusual way, but with a light tension visible in every muscle. Bon-Bon glanced at Lyra’s horn, awaiting the telltale glow that would signify her friend grasping the strings with what she insisted were her magical ‘hands.’
Nothing happened.
The harp was silent.
Lyra’s horn remained dark.
The silence stretched on.
Bon-Bon realised Lyra was shaking, her fur gently rippling as she trembled with barely contained emotion.
“Lyra? Why... why aren’t you pla-”
Lyra’s head snapped up, tears streaming from her eyes and her face pleading.
“I am playing, BB! I’m doing everything right, but the magic won’t flow! I’m trying to play along, but there’s... there’s nothing there! I can’t hear the music.”
Without warning, she leapt from the beanbag and galloped to Bon-Bon’s chair, collapsing onto her. Almost recoiling, Bon-Bon caught her in a surprised embrace, trying to blink away the shock. Lyra sobbed into her shoulder, great wracking cries that made the very chair they shared shake. Bon-Bon could feel her friend’s tears moistening her back.
For a while, she just held her, trying to come to terms with the situation. Lyra, the strongest pony she knew, the pony who had suggested without a moment’s hesitation that they teleport into the sun, was weeping like a broken-hearted filly. Her friend was deeply troubled, almost crushed, by her seeming inability to play. Not only that, but their position was becoming distinctly... awkward, Lyra clutching her tightly as they both tried to fit on the suddenly-rather-small chair.
Her inner Bon-Bon snapped at her.
This is no time for stupid jokes. Look at your friend. She needs you.
Fearing the worst, Bon-Bon looked back down at the crying unicorn. Lyra, it seemed, was pulling herself together. As if suddenly realising what she was doing, she scrambled out of Bon-Bon’s reach, hiccuping as she brought the tears under control. There was an awkward moment as Lyra sat on her haunches across from Bon-Bon, wiping her eyes and taking deep breaths to calm herself.
Bon-Bon opened her mouth to speak, but Lyra held up her hoof.
“Wait.”
She closed her eyes, sniffing a few more times. After a few moments, she opened them and began to speak, her voice wistful. Her words had a touch of melancholy, but there seemed a lightness to them that Bon-Bon hadn’t seen in her friend since she had entered.
“I first heard the music when I got my cutie mark. Or maybe I got my cutie mark when I first heard the music. I could never tell. I’ll never... It was amazing. I was walking through Fluttershy Gardens, trying to clear my head. I was all riled up about... something. I don’t even know anymore. You know me. Anyway.”
Bon-Bon stared as her friend continued the story. Lyra’s past had always been a closed book, something she kept to herself. Nopony had ever pried any further because, hey, it was Lyra. What could she be hiding?
“I was walking through Fluttershy Gardens. It was a pretty sucky day. I guess Celestia was having an off day.”
Lyra chuckled to herself.
“So, I’m there, feeling sorry for myself. I’m standing by... In fact, I’m standing by the fountain we always hang out at. Ever wonder I why I always choose that spot?”
Bon-Bon blinked. The depth of the hole in her knowledge of her friend seemed to be growing by the minute.
“I’m standing by the fountain. I’ve always liked the sound of water, it’s soothing. That kind of splooshy pitter-patter... Anyway, just as I’m losing myself in the sound and starting to feel better, it starts to rain. Irony, huh?”
Bon-Bon giggled despite herself. Lyra smiled at her friend’s reaction.
“So, yeah, it rains. I’m a picture. Poor little filly, all alone in the rain, wah wah wah. Of course, I couldn’t see the funny side. Even the water had betrayed me. So, being a dramatic sort, I sort of slump against the fountain.”
She lapsed into silence. Bon-Bon watched her, enraptured by the story. She felt like she was at the edge of something, an understanding that all their years of friendship had yet to let them reach. She almost jumped when Lyra suddenly said,
“And that’s when I heard it.”
She smiled, a small thing that began to grow as she spoke.
“The rain hitting the ground. The countless little splashes as the raindrop landed in the fountain.. The difference between the sounds when it hit the soil, and the wood, and the stone.”
Her smile widened further, her eyes shining as she relived the precious memory. She rose on her haunches, almost standing, as if physically lifted by the emotion.
“It all... came together. I don’t know how. It was a just a big ol’ mess of water splashing on stuff. But it was... and is... the most beautiful thing I had ever heard! For this one wonderful, impossible moment, every single thing I could hear was singing exactly the same tune! It was amazing! It was unbelieveable! It was...”
Her smile froze, and she slowly settled back to her sitting position. Her smile was wan now. Mournful.
“It was the music.”
Bon-Bon’s mouth was hanging open. She snapped it shut and shook her head in amazement. So many years, and Lyra had never once told her anything so... candidly. She was laying her soul bare, and Bon-Bon simply didn’t know how to respond.
“I’m... I’m so sorry, Lyra. I never-”
Lyra cut her off with a laden shrug. She continued her story in a sing-song voice.
“I don’t even know what happened next. I came to at home, sitting in front of a pile of paper covered in notes. I didn’t even know what notes were. I asked my mom. Apparently I’d run in, soaking wet and yelling, pointing at my flank and asking ‘What’s one of these, and where can I get one?!’ I kept saying it was the only thing that would make the right sound. Then I had run up to my room and just...written a song. Been hearing that song ever since. Not all the time, of course. That would suck. But whenever I felt... alone, or couldn’t work out who I was anymore... I heard the music.”
She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“And that’s how I got my cutie mark.”
They sat in silence as Lyra finished her tale. As she looked with sympathy into her friend’s eyes, realisation crept over Bon-Bon.
“‘The Sound of Rain.’”
She gasped with horror as she realised the import of what she had just said.
“Oh, Celestia, I tried to make you play it!”
Lyra shrugged again.
“You didn’t know. I didn’t tell you.”
“Yes, but-”
“It doesn’t matter.”
They lapsed into silence again.
The room had cooled as the sun continued its journey across the sky. The time was near when Celestia could lay her job to rest and Luna would, thanks to them, perform her own. A layer of clouds had gathered above the city, casting darker shadows than even the deepening sunset.
Bon-Bon’s ears pricked.
“Lyra. Listen.”
Lyra opened her eyes, surfacing from whatever reverie she had been occupying, and raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
Bon-Bon waved a hoof for her to be quiet, and strained her ears.
“Listen!”
Lyra narrowed her eyes. She had bared her soul, told her friend her dearest truth, and this was Bon-Bon’s response? She felt the anger rise.
“Well, I’m sorry if I bored you, but-”
“Shh!”
Lyra gaped at her friend’s impossible rudeness. But... Bon-Bon could never do that to her. Unsure of what to expect, she listened.
And listened.
And then...
She began to hum.
It was broken, at first. The notes jumped around, refusing to sit at the right pitch or keep to the beat. But, a few bars later, they settled into place and the tune took shape. At the same time Lyra’s voice grew stronger, until she was no longer humming but outright vocalising, eyes bright and mouth wide in a rapturous grin.
Bon-Bon sat and watched as her friend leapt up and danced about the room, prancing like a filly with a new toy, singing the familiar melody at the top of her voice.
At last, Lyra reached the end of the tune, and rushed to Bon-Bon, planting her hooves on her shoulders eagerly.
“The music! It’s back! It came back! I don’t... I can’t... How?”
Bon-Bon replied with words that she wasn’t entirely certain were hers.
“Maybe... Maybe the music just needed a break. Maybe, after all these years, it felt a little taken for granted. You haven’t played it properly in a long time, right? Maybe it thought you had forgotten it. Maybe it even wanted to see how you did without it.”
She smiled as the final word planted itself in her brain.
“Maybe this was just... an interval.”
Lyra looked at her oddly for a moment. Then she burst into laughter.
“You’re weird, BB.”
Bon-Bon couldn’t help but join in. The two laughed until they cried, laughed away the pain that had threatened to tear Lyra down.
Lyra wiped a tear from her eye and, for the last time, fixed Bon-Bon with a serious gaze. Still smiling, she said,
“Thanks, Bon-Bon. For being my friend. For being there to listen to. For... caring.”
Bon-Bon trotted over and clasped her friend in a tight hug.
“You’re all the thanks I need.”
They stood their for a moment, simply enjoying each other’s company, before Lyra spoke.
“Okay, that’s all you’re getting. We’re not that close.”
Bon-Bon let go quickly and playfully kicked her in the leg.
“Eeew.”
They grinned at each other, and Bon-Bon looked back at the door.
“Oh, yeah, sorry about your door.”
Lyra shrugged.
“I’ll get a new one.”
Chuckling at her friend’s suddenly carefree attitude, Bon-Bon turned to leave.
“Well, I’ll give you and the music some time alone.”
Behind, she heard Lyra laugh sarcastically. Thunder rolled as she turned into the hallway and headed for the elevator. By the time she had reached the ground floor, the storm had already begun. It was going to be a hay of a time getting home.
Something made her ears prick up once more, and she smiled to herself. It seemed Lyra, despite the weather, had opened a window, letting golden sound flow into the night.
From both outside and in, from both the world and a single pony who fought to save it, from both roiling clouds and chiming harp...
The sound of rain.