Music.
It was what got her out of bed every morning. What accompanied her on the long way to her under-paid laborer-job that led her through some of the city’s filthiest and most dangerous places; what gave her power to stick through ten long hours of dealing with frustrated customers and annoyed supervisors six days a week, and what kept her positive-minded when she arrived back home in her small apartment, knowing that the next day wouldn’t be any easier.
Sometimes, it appeared, music was the one thing that made her put up with all the nasty things the universe had thrown at her; the one thing that made her life worth living.
She was sitting on the window sill of her apartment, her legs hanging free into the eight stories-deep abyss that gaped underneath her, her look turned towards the sky above her head.
It was the beginning of an early summer night– following a magnificent day of bright blue skies and sunlight, the sun had now begun to set, hanging right above the far away horizon and bathing the land in its glorious golden light.
She felt how the gentle but noticeable touch of bass massaging her backside grew into a more noticeable and dominant tingle as her horn lit up, turning up the volume of the massive stereo system in the room behind her, and feeling how her body now got engulfed by the gentle concussions, sending shivers of excitement through her spine.
Vinyl Scratch took in a deep breath of the warm, slightly humid air, and felt how all the worries that had bothered her throughout the day that lay behind her seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye.
It were those moments in which she could feel the universe’s energy flow right through her, giving her new power for whatever lay ahead of her – something that –as she hated to admit- was still quite uncertain.
She had been out of High School for a little more than a year now. Going to college and studying was something that had been on her mind for quite a while – and something highly encouraged and endorsed by her parents.
Something inside her told her that going to college was the right thing. Studying a certain subject, preparing herself for a responsible, well-paid job, making something out of herself – it was something her parents had told her to do ever since she could remember.
But she had different plans for her future. She hadn’t told anyone but her closest friends about it yet, and she knew that it would take a good load of courage to break the message to her parents, but Vinyl Scratch saw her future in music business – she dreamt of being a professional DJ.
Vinyl knew that her parents wouldn’t be delighted by her plans, seeing as how according to them, becoming a musician meant giving up on every kind of education, dropping out of school, reducing one’s body hygiene to an absolute minimum, and spending one’s entire life time doing something that served no greater purpose whatsoever.
She knew they wouldn’t like it, but at the same time she knew that it was the right thing - she already saw it right in front of her: DJ Pon-3, this is what she had chosen to be her stage name. Using this pseudonym she had already produced a few songs and shared them with some of her closer friends, but the big fame was still too far away to even think about it.
Nevertheless, she had imagined her dream – more than once. A huge mass of ponies, several thousands of them gathered together around one massive stage. The air was burning, bustling with adrenaline, ecstasy and happiness. And in the middle of it all was she – standing in the center of the stage, armed with nothing but her own excitement and a 50 thousand Watt amplifier, ready to drop bombs.
Vinyl Scratch closed her eyes as her mind sent her to this place of her dreams. She could see it right in front of her – she could see the sea of cheering ponies, taste their excitement swinging in the air, hear their screams of ecstasy…
No. No, she couldn’t. Regardless of her mind’s desperate efforts, she could not picture the cheering of her audience. In fact, she couldn’t even imagine herself thanking her fans for being so wonderful, neither could she draw an exact imagine of the music she would be playing in that very moment.
Putting an abrupt end to her fantasies and reluctantly opening her eyes, Vinyl Scratch let out a weak sigh as reality overcame her once again: her daydreams never seemed to have sound output. Coming to think of it, she once again remembered: neither did the rest of her life.
Vinyl Scratch had been born deaf.
It had never been a big deal for her, seeing as how she had gotten used to being ‘different than the others’ in comparably little time and with no major difficulties. In fact, thanks to some intense lessons from her parents, she had even learned to speak only shortly after her peers.
Nevertheless, the fact that she couldn’t hear a single thing did cast a new light on her dreams to become a DJ, not to say that many people, when faced with those two, seemingly contradictory facts, would react with either a put-on smile and a short remark about following one’s dreams, no matter how ridiculous they may sound, or just blatant, unbelieving laughter.
The latter describes her parents’ reaction to her dreams quite exactly – she had not yet explicitly told them about her plans, but a short hint about her contemplating to ‘give the whole DJ-thing a shot’ had been rewarded with amused laughter from her father and a pitying smile from her mother.
It hurt. In fact, it hurt a lot. Not as much as it did back then, but just thinking of it still caused a faint sensation of pain to form inside Vinyl’s heart.
Once the message had been out, the dialogue with her parents had then led to a condescending comment about the ridiculousness of a deaf musician coming from her father, which had led to a heated discussion about whether the Equestrian society needed ponies of that profession at all, which had ultimately led to Vinyl Scratch retreating into her room amid tears, coming up with insults she had never thought of before.
The white unicorn could feel how tears began to form in her eyes as she thought back to that evening, a weak shudder running through her spine as she imagined how her mom and dad would react to her decision to ignore their opinions, forget about college, and walk the path of a professional, deaf musician.
However, looking back to the golden sky above her head, she quickly decided that this was none of the things she wanted to think about in that moment, determined to enjoy every piece of this glorious sunset without allowing nasty thoughts and worries about her future to ruin it for her.
So Vinyl Scratch leaned back against the ajar window panel behind her, instead focusing on the gentle massage the intense bass coming from her room gave her.
She couldn’t hear the sounds of hooves furiously clopping against the wall of her room, neither could she take note of the irritated prompts of her neighbors who wanted to enjoy this formerly quiet Tuesday evening, telling her to turn down the music like they did so often.
But even if Vinyl had been able to hear the strident complaints, she probably wouldn’t have given them a second thought anyway. After all, there was nothing wrong with enjoying what gave one’s life meaning, right?
So Vinyl closed her eyes, feeling how another shiver ran through her body as the song gained speed and intensity, slowly but steadily approaching its end. She could feel how the bass caused the fur on her back to gently swing along with the rhythm of the song; how it went straight through her body, through her innards, through every single of her muscles, causing a tingle of excitement to form in her abdominal area that nearly drove her over the edge.
This was what music was to her. Loud, bassy music was what she loved. For when she was listening to it, especially to those tracks that made the ground shake beneath her hooves, she completely lost herself in it, forgetting about the world around her, about her worries, her problems, sometimes … sometimes those songs even made her forget that she was deaf.
With her handicap in mind, one might think there was no way to enjoy music for a pony like Vinyl Scratch, but she had found her very own way. While she couldn’t take notice of (and thus was unable to enjoy) the higher-pitched parts of songs, it was the deep humming of bass that determined the way she perceived music – fast- or slow-paced, intense or gentle, she had quite a wide array of songs she could recognize just by feeling their bass line - and her repertoire was growing continuously, now also receiving input from the songs she had created herself.
She couldn’t tell how exactly they sounded – unlike other musicians, she didn’t judge her work by how harmonic or rhythmic it appeared to sound. Instead, while working on a song, every now and then she would just interrupt her work for a moment, turn up the volume of her stereo system to the max, and listen to it from start to finish. From there, she would just follow the feeling in her guts to adjust the song further – whether she should add something, remove something, or just change it, it was all up to that feeling.
And so she took another moment to close her eyes and focus on the next song that was about to start. It was one of her own works – one of the first tracks she had ever created. A long, drawn-out beat, reminding her to that of a massive gong, announced the beginning of the song, followed by a second of silence until…
Vinyl Scratch interrupted her thoughts as her eyes had slowly drifted open again and something moving in the corner of her eye had caught her attention.
Her head spun around, her eyes spotting another pony only a few feet away from her.
A gray mare -one of Vinyl Scratch’s neighbors, it seemed- had peeked her head out of the window of her apartment which just so happened to be right next to the one where Vinyl Scratch was sitting, eyeing the white mare, originally with fury, now with a mixture of horror and disbelief on her face.
Vinyl focused her attention on the aghast mare, trying to figure out what she was saying. Over the years, she had worked out quite a skill for reading other ponies’ lips – something that was crucial in her everyday life since not even one per cent of the Equestrian population seemed to know what sign language was, let alone being able to communicate with it.
After a few moments, it was clear that Vinyl was the reason for the mare’s horror, seeing as how she had caught her saying things like “Don’t do it! Don’t jump!” and “…so much to live for!”
Vinyl Scratch didn’t quite understand the mare’s worries – it took her a few moments –and a thorough inspection of her surroundings- to understand that the mare thought that Vinyl was about to commit suicide by jumping out of her window.
Giving the gray pony a somewhat confused shake of her head, Vinyl replied, “It’s … I’m fine, really. It’s all good.”
The mare’s eyes widened even further as she hastily shook her head, making fierce denying gestures with her hooves. Words like “No!” and “Don’t!” escaped her mouth before she desperately shook her head and mouthed something about “calling help”, disappearing back into her window.
With a somewhat confused shrug, Vinyl Scratch first wanted to ignore this little incident and get back to enjoying this magnificent sunset right in front of her, but then decided that she should head over to the worried mare and see if everything was alright.
So she slowly arose from her comfortable position on the window sill, got back inside her apartment with a short leap and trotted over to the wooden door that would lead her out into the hallway. However, not before she hadn’t taken a short stop at her stereo and hit the pause-button, making the intense vibrations her stereo was sending out die away.
Moments later, Vinyl Scratch knocked at the door next to hers, being greeted by a terrified earth pony mare with tears in her eyes and a telephone pressed to her ear after a few seconds.
“Yes, I want to report an emergen-“ she cut herself off as her look fell onto Vinyl who could see how a massive load fell off the mare’s mind in that very moment.
“N-nermind.” Vinyl’s neighbor ended the call and slowly lowered the phone. Looking at her with shaky legs, she then said, “So … you … you changed your mind?”
With a slightly amused smile on her face, Vinyl replied, “Sorry for the fuss, lady, but you seem to have misunderstood something. I wasn’t going to, you know, do anything other than just sitting there and enjoying the evening.”
On second thought, Vinyl didn’t know why she had addressed the mare as ‘lady’ – she was barely older than Vinyl herself, and not necessarily unattractive at that.
Her charcoal gray coat had a gloss to it that Vinyl thought could only come from grooming it twice to three times a day; the same went for her nearly perfect black mane which –in combination with her immaculate fur- made her look like the cover model for a fancy fashion magazine.
It may sound a little weird, but just from the way she looked, Vinyl caught herself assuming that the mare spoke with a rather fancy accent. Of course, there was no way she could actually tell for sure, but she decided to hold on to that idea, just because it made the mare in front of her appear even more high-class.
A faint blush made its way onto the face of her involuntary host, along with a look of discomfort. “Oh ...” she spoke, mutely to Vinyl, “I … I was just … just thinking … with the music and all…“
“You like it?” Vinyl interrupted her with a happy smile on her face, “I made it myself.”
“It’s…” the mare looked to the side with growing discomfort, “Loud. Really loud. You didn’t react to my … requests to turn it down so I thought I should see if you are doing alright.” With a weak, somewhat forced smile, she added, “Turns out you were. Alright, but probably half-deaf from this ear-shattering volume.”
Vinyl Scratch looked at the mare; it took a few seconds for a weak, understanding smirk to find its way onto her face. However, her expression got serious again as she spoke up. “Well,” she said in a manner that at least she hoped would imitate the mare’s way of speaking, “as it turns out, your worries were more than justified.”
The mare’s eyes widened with horror once again as she looked at Vinyl, then shot a quick gaze behind herself to check if she had closed her window, just in case.
Vinyl pointed a hoof at her right ear as she added, “It seems my ears have indeed suffered a little … damage from this –as you said it- ear-shattering music.”
“I’m sorry?” the mare asked with confusion in her eyes as she took a step back.
“I am legitimately deaf.” Vinyl replied bluntly, having a hard time to hold back an amused grin, “I was born this way; can’t hear a thing.”
She had never seen a mare’s face turn this red in such a short amount of time as her host took another step back, looking at her with a look that went beyond every kind of embarrassment.
“I … I … I’m s-so sorry.” She spoke up after a few moments of awkwardly staring at Vinyl, “I … I had no idea. I mean, I could have just…” she slapped her hoof against her face, shaking her head in shame, “I should have just kept my mouth shut.” She looked back up at Vinyl, the look on her face now filled with regret, “I … I am so very sorry, ma’am. I sincerely hope I didn’t offend-“
“It’s fine.” Vinyl Scratch cut her off, finally allowing the grin onto her face, “It’s not like you’re the first who doesn’t notice.”
She then took a step towards the visibly relieved mare and stretched out a hoof, saying, “The name’s Vinyl Scratch, by the way. Nice to meet you.”
The gray mare hesitantly accepted the hoof-shake, even though a faint blush remained on her cheeks. “The pleasure is all mine, Vinyl Scratch. My name is...” She looked Vinyl in the eyes, but then broke the eye contact and her embarrassed look went down to the ground, muttering something into her beard.
“Say that again?” Vinyl Scratch asked her calmly.
The gray mare looked up with a still remaining blush on her face, still trying to avoid eye contact with Vinyl. She told the aspiring musician her name, yet didn’t move her lips enough for Vinyl to actually read what she had just said.
“…Octopus?” Vinyl repeated slightly confused, “That’s kind of a weird name.”
The gray mare shook her head, then gave Vinyl a reflective look before hurrying away from her and into her apartment’s small kitchen, rummaging around in a drawer.
A few moments later, she returned to Vinyl with a piece of paper and a pencil in her mouth. Dropping the utensils in front of her hooves, the mare then bent over in front of the unicorn, picked up the pencil with her mouth, and used it to write one of the most pleasant-sounding names Vinyl had ever heard –or read, for that matter- in a perfectly flawless longhand on the paper.
Vinyl Scratch read it, then looked up to the mare with a smile on her face as she repeated it.
“Octavia.”
Author's Note
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