She just had to see it!
Sneaking out of her friend's house, going directly to the concert grounds, Cop Sticks just had to see this magnificent piano on stage!
Quite a distance for a young filly to walk, far enough away for any playing she did not to disturb the residence of Ponyville. She walked along happily knowing that soon she would be at the bench of a fine concert piano she had ever seen! They only let cerebrates play on the finest things. And Countess...whatever, was a major celebrity.
She was friendly enough, but Chop Sticks only came because of her excitable friend who had invited her. She was afraid that as the night played on she would have had nothing to talk about said artist, but once she saw the piano, it was all Chop Sticks could talk about!
She stopped. She heard something.
It was.
Music?
Piano music!
She approached the seating area. Song after song issued out: heavy songs, rich songs, playful songs! It was a storm over the key board!
Then she saw it, hammering away on the keys with all its might! Forward swept hair, hunched over back, long front legs ending in five digits for each leg,and longer back legs.Its clothes with a long coat that trailed like a cape behind him made it look like some kind of duke. It looked like a thing made for one purpose!
To play the piano!
She sat down and watched with fascination.
Her heart raced as she heard the music. Then calmed as he played the somber. She strained as he played the double piano music the crescendo into double forte!
She had a cousin called Double Forte...
Then slur up and down in sixteenths and sorter, pizzicato,staccato peckings!
He was acting like a Pegasus excitedly swirling the clouds, in tubular curves, across the sky.A storm on rolling across the keyboard!
He finally finished on a long melody back and forth up the scale in long wholes, quarters and halves,flipping on key back and forth he was pointing at with an exaggeratedly long digit. He stopped, crossing his arms and looked at the piano perturbed.
"You look like a normal piano."He pushed the bench back with a screech and got up and walked around the instrument, in a bipedal fashion his arms behind his back, huffing as his coat trailed behind him."In every possible way!"
He looked inside it, he crawled over it, then under it knocking as he did so. He opened it and plucked the strings.
"No, not one of Harpo's!"he said with a smack in his mouth. Then he took a wining device out of his pocket and then a set of tools, and tuning forks, laid them upon the headboard, after unwrapping by pulling a string on the cloth bundle they were in, and tuned the piano to perfection.
Chop Sticks was trying not to laugh out loud at the funny creature moved under the moon's light.
Done tuning, wrapping up the tools delicately, he sat down and played, singing a little.
"I went to the animal fair
I saw all the animals there!
The great baboon
by the light of the moon
was combing his auburn hair!
The funnest was the monk!
That sat on the elephant's trunk.
The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees
and that was the end of the monk!
Segue to Carnival of the animals by Camille Saint-Saëns!"
Chop Stick thought it was improvisation, an excellent one that lasted twenty minutes, doing wonderfully without the accompanying orchestration, she could only guess!
Done, he eyed the piano, crossing his front legs slowly.
"Ok, here we go..."he said smacking his lips as he balled up the ends of his arms.He brought them down on the keyboard with a slam.
"I'm here to show you who I am...."
After hearing such lovely music, to have the concussion of pressured appendages on the keyboard was just too much!
"STOP!"she cried.
He did so.
She rushed to the stage.
"This way!"she said.
At the edge of the keyboard she brought her hooves to bear on the frame.She used the foot pedals as she circled her hoof on the keys producing one note.
"The key pedals slide, the key board rocks...um there is a little lever in front, um see..."she withered under his gaze.
"You are very lucky. You don't talk to strangers at your age, and there is nothing as strange in this world right now as I!" he crossed his arms again.
She looked down at her hooves.
"What is your name?
"Chop Sticks."
"The pedals slide?"
"Uh,hu. Like a storm across the sea."
"Piano lesson...play it with me, follow."
They played Chopsticks.
"Ok...what can you play?"
She played a simple melody her teacher had taught her.He watched her every move.
"That's nice. Follow me on this..."
They played a little more in the style with the slides and the rocking keyboard with him adding songs between because of his digits that she couldn't.
"Ha!"he laughed."Try that Zepo!"
"Have you solved the piano to your satisfaction Fingers?" Luna said as she lit beside them."Oh,I see thou hast acquired a student! Well you can't have her!"
"Groucho...."he said under his breath laying his head gently on the keyboard, playing only F major.
"Fingers?" asked Chop Sticks.
He recovered quickly."Fingers!"he wiggled them in front of her face."Hands, arms..."
"Well?" asked Luna impatiently."What is the answer?"
"Very clever!" Fingers said with a smile. He brought his fist down on the key board and rapidly played many scales from "C" To "G-sharp". "The pedals slide something over allowing only the chosen notes to play, keyboard shuttles like a harpsichord, the little lever gives you more control....it operates much like an organ."
Luna huffed."So you will then want to play the "Organ to the Outside" again?"
He slide his hand down the keyboard. Only Joy to the World came out.
"Rock that Body!"he said with a laugh as he rattle the keyboard."Besides,my lady, 'fairer still the moonlight!'"He sang," You invoked me! I love seeing discord's face as I go all 'seaboard, Nineteen Hundred, ninety nine on him'!He said that I 'pinkied' him!"
He looked at Chop Sticks with concern,"Can you see she gets home?"
"I will."she said."Be sure to be off!"
"Yes. Oh! You owe me a tin of Imperial Biscuits!"he chortled.
"Here..."she said with an annoyed huff giving him the box, with pictures of mice in military uniforms.
"OOOO...the hunger puzzles's not filled in!"
"It was hard getting the chaos deer to give me one box!"
"Here you go!"he gave Chop Sticks one.
She grabbed it and chewed it up."It tastes like cardboard..."
"Serves you right for nearly taking my hand off!" he said pulling out another."Look it over, carefully."
"Stranger than Discord?" asked Chop Sticks as she began a tentative nibble.
"We had a piano duel with cannons...I won, now a can apologies for not giving him his due... in that he won, not the duel."
"Strawberry Apple!"
"Ah..You got the only one in the box!Now I'm left with cardboard!"Chopstick couldn't tell if he was kidding."Goodnight, Luna. Goodnight, Chopsticks."he touched her check."Dream of music...compose something I can play later..."and he walked off into the woods.He took out a biscuit out of the tin munched on it quickly before grabbing another.
"Alas, cardboard..."He said loudly, his mouth full of crumbs as his coat, like a cape, trailing behind him.
Author's Note
There we go. A store about a piano.