Octavia cried gently as she tried and failed to lift her mother’s foreleg. With a grunt, the young filly lost her grip on the larger mare’s foreleg and went tumbling back through the sticky-black liquid that surrounded her mother. Warm tears rolled down the mare’s cheeks for reasons she couldn’t understand as she wobbled unsteadily towards the older mare once more before doing her best to curl up against her cold form.
The filly’s stomach let out a tiny grumble as she closed her eyes tightly, trying to stem the heavy flow of tears.
For nearly half-an-hour the filly laid up against the older mare, both shivering and hungry. What had been soft crying grew into heavy sobbing as the infant seemed to realize that her mother wasn’t going to move again.
The sobbing grew and the filly tried to lift the mare’s foreleg once again. The attempt was even shorter this time and the filly fell backwards, curling into a sobbing ball.
The filly’s eyes suddenly opened wide as a new sound made its way into her ears.
The melody started out low and haunting with a hint of uncertainty; the filly instinctively curled up tightly to her mother at the slow sound as the low whine of strings filled the silence.
Slowly the tone of the music began to change, shifting to a steadier, more somber, tone.
The filly couldn’t understand why, but as the melody shifted, she found her tears slowing as she was lulled into a peaceful slumber, curled up against the cold, older mare.
***
Octavia grimaced as she held her instrument upright, as well as herself, trying to recall the melody. Like so many times before, the young mare had awoken and all but sprinted to her prized instrument, trying futilely to hold onto that same eerie melody that always accompanied the same jumbled and blurry dream. The dream itself was always just out of her reach, but the melody always came in clearly and every time she tried to recreate it her memory would fail her.
With a dejected sigh, Octavia fell back onto four legs, replacing her cello in its case with practiced ease; yet again, her mind had proven incapable of recreating the tune. Glancing briefly at the clock on the wall, Octavia knelt down and hooked the strap of her case around her neck and heaved, pulling the case carefully onto her back and departed, an expression of melancholy written across her face.
***
Octavia’s bow slowly slid to a halt as a tune besides her own found its way into her ears.
“Do none of you hear that?” Octavia’s eyes drifted down a nearby hallway to the patient rooms. When all of her fellow musicians simply stared at her in uncertainty, she carefully placed her cello back into the case, along with her bow and quickly hefted them onto her back, taking off down the hall at a gallop.
Like every Saturday, Octavia and a half-dozen other members of the music club sat or stood in the common-room of a nursing home, playing for anywhere from two to three-dozen elderly ponies. Normally, she would have played another two or three songs before trading out with another cellist in the club. This time however, she’d heard something she’d never heard before, in the waking world at least. It was the same bone-chilling violin that she’d heard dozens of times before but had never been able to retain. As she grew closer to the end of the patient rooms, the melody grew more audible to the grey mare. She could tell the song was approaching its end as it grew somber and heavier.
Octavia slid into the room just as the melody faded into oblivion, breathing heavily as she glanced at the nurses gathered around the bed. As the last of the melody faded, her hearing was replaced with the simple flat-line of a heart-monitor. As quickly as she had entered the room, Octavia departed, leaving the nurses to their business, her mind reeling with what had happened, trying and failing to rationalize it.
Octavia spent the rest of the day in a daze, returning to her senses only when her door snapped shut behind her. Almost immediately,the mare jolted, turning around rapidly in surprise. Taking in her surroundings, she quickly realized where she was and the day’s events.
Once again, she prepared her cello and made to draw her bow back. Unlike all of the other times she had done this, the composition was clear to her.
The first few strings went without issue, but as Octavia progressed through the song she began to feel a chill creep up her spine, as well as a gradual weariness beginning to overtake her. As she made to shift to the second segment of the song, she flinched back, the strings of her cello suddenly snapping. Almost as if broken out of a trance, Octavia began to heave, taking in deep breaths and shivering. She was winded, as if she’d ran a marathon, but felt as if she’d just taken an ice-bath. A slight sticky sensation trickled across her fur and she instinctively made to brush it away. As she did so, she felt tears form in her eyes as several disjointed images flashed through her mind. Wiping the moisture from her eyes and staring at her damp hoof almost in disbelief, Octavia let out a shaky, choked, breath and all but fell forward onto her bed, pulling her covers tight to herself as she sobbed uncontrollably.
***
Octavia groaned in irritation as she hobbled out of Ponyville’s hospital on three legs, a cast wrapped around her fourth. As she made her way along the side of the hospital and towards the town-square, a familiar song - or rather, the end of one - seemed to drown out all of the other sounds, as it had done once before. Octavia quickly realized she had no chance of making it back into the hospital before the song reached its conclusion. Instead, she leaned her side against the building and closed her eyes, ear pressed to the wall.
As the song slowly faded into obscurity, Octavia found a bittersweet smile perched on her muzzle. For some reason the song always seemed to calm her down, almost as if it were a long-time friend.
Opening her eyes, the mare sighed softly and made to continue on towards the town-square once more, only for her eyes to widen in surprise a pure-white, ethereal pony phased through the solid-wall of the hospital and then, as if she wasn’t even there, right through her as well.
