Untied

First there was nothingness. After the nothingness there was a sound: it was a quiet, haunting xylophone. I opened my eyes, and my pupils contracted from their dilated states.

I took a breath. The air was dry. My throat itched and I felt the need to cough, but I refrained from doing so.

The dust-covered walls and ceiling of the room were colored a dull brown, and the planked floor was a shade of burgundy. A single lamp held was by a rusty hook on the ceiling. It contained a slowly dying flame—one could compare it to a drowning ant—which dimly lit the room with a lonely, tired orange glow.

In front of me was a wooden cello.

As I stood up, I noticed the thin, metal strands tied around my hooves and legs.

“Hello Octavia, today you are going to play your cello. Let us start with something simple: Pachelbel’s Cannon in C-major,” a monotonous voice said.

Automatically, against my will, I picked up my worn-out bow. I played. Hour upon hour had passed and it still continued. It was perpetual: the end was never in sight.

My previously empty flank glowed with a bright light. When the light dissipated, a purple treble clef was revealed to be permanently embroidered onto my thigh.

I could feel my youth slowly, agonizingly drift away from me and the strings transform into weighted chains and the knots around my limbs turn to shackles.

A set of words uttered by a child echoed and rang in my head, getting progressively louder as time passed.

First a month had passed—

“Let me untie you…,” she whispered.

—then a year went by—

“Let me untie you…,” she muttered.

—then a whole decade—

“Let me untie you…,” she murmured.

—then an entire lifetime had left me. I was nothing but bones.

“Let me untie you, Octavia,” she said.

Everything turned black.

A pain burrowed into my head and stagnated like a suffocating cockroach desperately grinding against an eardrum. The disturbance caused my eyes to burst open and my lungs to fill with oxygen.

The first thing I noticed was a ceiling. It was a light orange color, one foreign to my own home. The poster-covered walls of the room were a bright sky-blue. The bed I laid within was much smaller than my own, and the sheets were colored in a rainbow of pastel hues rather than the usual blackberry color.

I planted my hooves onto fluffy white carpeting and looked around more, trying to get my bearings, to find any clue concerning where I was. I looked up at the ceiling, then down towards the floor, back at the bed, then at the walls and then the posters covering those walls. Slowly, I noticed a pattern: whoever lived here must have really liked the sky.

Across from the bed, against a wall, and under a drape-covered window were two comfy-looking office chairs and a wooden desk. One side of the desktop was covered in books of a wide variety, ranging from less formal literature like Daring Do to more formal subjects like modern and classical music theory, Fourier analysis and synthesis, and baking. The other side of the table was covered in stacks of paper. If one looked closely, he or she would notice one of the stacks was transcribed entirely in braille.

Adjacent to the desk was a white door with an equally white doorframe. Instead of a wretched doorknob, it had a brass lever that an earth-pony or pegasus could easily press down with a hoof. I opened the door and was greeted with the face of Lyra Heartstrings. “Oh, hey, I was just checking on you. How was your sixteen-hour-long nap?”

The pain in my head awoke and eagerly stabbed at my brain again with its rapier. I winced. “Please…, refrain from yelling, Lyra. I have a headache.” Even speaking hurt.

I know I drank hard brandy last night, but only a little. Vinyl could probably gulp down two mugs of the stuff until she would be even mildly affected. Why must I be so sensitive to alcohol? Why should I suffer for attempting to get that blasted hallucination out of my mind? Answer me, Celestia!
“I’m not.”—she raised an eyebrow—“I’m whispering.” She stared for a moment, and then asked “Is it that bad? I mean, you look terrible but not, like, that bad.”
I nodded.

“Alright, well, I still have some coffee sitting in the pot for you. Want some?” she offered. I nodded again. Lyra, you are a lifesaver!
Lyra walked down the white hallway, presumably towards the kitchen. I followed close behind her, even though every bone in my body burned with fatigue and every hoofstep either of us made sounded like a giant, ear-shattering stomp. Of course, that was only the equally head-destroying hangover speaking.

The short hallway opened up into a room with a rectangular table—likely used for eating—in the center. Surrounding the table were six wooden chairs. Naturally, I took a seat in one of the chairs, awaiting a soon-to-arrive caffeinated drink. Lyra nodded and said “Go ahead, make yourself comfy. I’ll go get your coffee.” She trotted into what was obviously a kitchen, opened a cupboard with her magic, levitated an ornate coffee-mug out from the compartment, and quietly shut the door.

“Do you want me to heat it up, or are you just fine with it at room temp?” she asked.

“Room temperature is fine. Thank you,” I said.

Lyra lifted a pot off an unlit stove and poured some coffee into the mug. After setting the near empty pot back down, she walked back to the table I was sitting and put the coffee down in front of me. She grinned and sat herself down on the opposite end of the table, “There you go.”

“Thank you.”

“No need.”—Lyra waved a hoof in dismissal—“So…, what happened last night—if you don’t mind me asking? You kinda disappeared after Bon-Bon joined us. You were pretty drunk when we found you,” she said.

“Lyra, I know you really like Bon-Bon. I find Sweetie Drops to be a nice pony too, but…—” I sighed and took a sip of my coffee. “—sometimes she can be a little too much for me. The very nature of our conversations is draining. I can only manage a couple minutes before I am absolutely exhausted. I needed a break. I wish I knew how to put up with her as much as you do. Maybe we could be better friends then.”

“After you’ve been ‘round her for a long time you get used to it. Anyways, where did you go, the bathroom?”

“Actually, I went outside to unwind and get some clean air.”

“But why were you drunk?”

I took another sip before answering. “I—”

Just then, a door creaked open and slammed closed. Soon after, silly humming of sorts could be heard from the hallway leading into the dining room. “I’m home!” a voice called.

Lyra smiled lightly, but genuinely. “Oh hey Bubbles! Sorry but, um…, could you try to quiet down a bit? My friend here has a headache,” she said.

“Oh, sorry,” the pegasus walked into the room. She was wearing a pair of black shades that covered her eyes. She had a grey coat and a blonde mane. “Hey, how are you?”

What was up with those shades?

“Uh…, hello?”

Seriously, why was she wearing those shades? What was their purpose?

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Sorry. Hello, who are you?” I asked. How polite of me. Yes, Octavia, you most definitely did anything other than make yourself look like an absolute fool.

“My friends just call me Bubbles,” she said.

Peculiar; she gave me a nickname, but no name…. “I see,” I said.

After a small awkward silence in which I lifted my coffee up to my muzzle and took a swig, Lyra spoke. “Bubbles, you know you don’t need to wear those in the house, right?”

Bubbles lifted the shades from her face and put them into the saddlebag resting on her back. “Sorry. It’s a habit.” She opened her eyes to look at me. At least, I think she was looking at me. One of her eyes was slanted outwards in a different direction than the other.

Wait…, what? I am pretty sure eyes do not behave like that.

“Now that it’s out of the hat…, Octavia, this is Ditsy Doo, my housemate. She’s a mailmare.”—Lyra pointed at me with a hoof.—“Bubbles, this is Octavia. She’s a cellist.”

The mare grinned. “Nice to meet you, Octavia!” she said enthusiastically.

Oh.

That’s why she flinched.