Ever since that second dream, I had been thinking nonstop. The nightmares seemed like they had a meaning; they had a theme and thus a purpose and intention. Every single one of them was related by The Puppet Master and that filly. They had always contained some form of mental torture, which suggested that—

“Octavia? You’re going to spill your chocolate.”

—maybe there was some message being sent, a warning not to do something possibly? Since those nightmares began I had been forced to play my cello against my will. Furthermore, my cutie-mark appeared almost always after the Puppet Master stated his demands. Perhaps there was a—

“Are you alright…, Sis?”

—connection between the cutie-mark and the strings? That gave rise to more questions though, and do not get me started on symbolism either. The entire predicament was a conundrum.

“Octavia!”

I snapped out of my internalized monologue. I was sitting outside a café at a modest table with a precariously angled mug of hot cocoa in my hooves, staring at my brother with a deadpan expression that easily read “I am most certainly not having troubling thoughts. No, not at all! Inside this cranium are only adorable, flute-playing sunflowers. Carry on!”

“Oh, my apologies, Noteworthy,” I said. I took a sip of my cocoa and gently set the mug back down on the table.

“Are you okay? You’re behaving really strange today, Sis,” Noteworthy asked.

“Thank you for your concern, Brother; I assure you I am perfectly fine.”

He stared at me incredulously. His eyebrows furrowed. “Alright, if you say so.”

My eyes directed themselves to the vase that stood in between me and my brother. In the vase was a singular, red tulip. It was beautiful; I observed each petal in its absolute faultlessness and I—

“Mom’s recovering. According to the doc, there isn’t much more time until she’ll be out of the hospital,” he said.

“That is good to hear. How’s she doing? Otherwise, I mean.”

Noteworthy sighed. “She misses you. She wishes that you’d visit, or at least write to her more often,” he said.

I cast my gaze down to the ground. It’s not that I wanted to ignore Mother. I just could not handle seeing her in such a condition. Watching a family member suffer because of a serious illness like that sucks something out of me I’d rather not have taken from me again. It had happened before with Father; I still remember his dying face even today, ten years later. “I miss her too…,” I weakly responded. “I miss her a lot….”

“At least this nightmare will soon be over and we can all return to our normal lives,” he stated. Oh sure, the nightmare will most definitely be over. “What will you do though? Will you continue ignoring her like you’re doing now?”
I grimaced.

“I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.”

I waved my hoof in dismissal. “No, you are right…; I have been avoiding her,” I said. I rubbed my hooves up against each other underneath the table and looked to the far right, towards the wall of bushes separating the café’s plot and the sidewalk and busy streets.

I blinked when I noticed a golden-maned, silver-coated pegasus barrel past the establishment on four hooves with what was presumably a brown mailbag strapped around her neck. I swear I heard her say “Good afternoon, Octavia!” as she passed. I chuckled.

“Why though?” Noteworthy asked.

“It’s just…after father passed away…,” I dragged. My expression had dulled again and I turned to look at my brother solemnly. “Please..., I would prefer not to talk about this right now.”

“…I understand.”

Soon an awkward silence hung in the air. The conversation had died, and I think neither of us had anything more to say. I finished my cocoa with a swig and, after placing the empty mug down on the table, I stood up. “Thank you for the cocoa, Noteworthy. Seeing you again has been delightful.”

“Yeah, we should do this again sometime. Until then, Lil’ Sis.”

“Until then, Noteworthy,” I said before I departed. It would have been rude to do otherwise.

One hour later, a door politely creaked behind me as I stepped into my apartment. It was a practical, yet pleasant and cozy place: it had a small couch and television, a modest kitchen, a sink and shower, and a decently sized bedroom with a single lavender-sheeted bed and an ordinary, adjacently oriented nightstand equipped with a family photo, alarm clock, reading lamp and novel. Across from the bed was a wooden chair and a small desk littered with paper, unopened mail, and multiple wells of varying types of ink and several accompanying quills, each with a different assigned color and purpose.

I sat down at the desktop and reached for a piece of sheet-music paper and a black quill and ink well. The quill, which had appeared to have come from a crow, was a primary feather. I stared at it for several moments in absolute awe, marveling at its marvelous condition and shape. Whatever bird this belonged to was a lucky bird indeed. After a minute of admiration, I lifted the quill, dipped it in ink, and began to write:

A G F #A

A G F G F #D

A G F #A C #A

A G F G #D

I pondered what note to write next, but, against my wishes, my mind remained empty. It was as if whatever idea I once had had disintegrated, abandoning me on a lone island of frustration with nothing but artists’ block to keep me company.

I picked up a sitar from beside the desk and played the notes I had written. I sat for another six unproductive hours playing with possible note configurations but, no matter how hard I tried or how long I searched, nothing fit. I sighed and placed my sitar down on the floor next to my chair. I needed a break; I needed to get my mental palette cleansed. I turned to look at the window hanging above my bed and out at the sun-setting sky, its orange and pink hues decorating the panes of glass with a warm glow.

Some fresh air would be nice right now.

After I lifted myself out of my chair and trotted to the front door of the apartment, I put on a warm jacket and stepped outside into the chilly but welcoming air. The streets of Manehattan were almost entirely empty on weeknights and evenings. This meant that I could easily reach my intended destination without having to wade through a sea of crazed equines waiting impatiently outside certain popular nightlife-central establishments. The weekends were an entirely different story though; those were the nights when nightlife-living ponies like Vincenza—excuse me, Vinyl—strutted through the streets and showed the oversaturated rainbows of their colors. Usually this involved rave clubs and all-night bars, lots of alcohol, possibly a few illegal drugs here and there, and maybe a group of foolish friends to provide you company whilst you committed to your nighttime debauchery.

I had neared the boundary of the city and I pressed on for a few hills to reach my usual spot. The place was always an ideal location for stargazing, which had in turn made it a fantastic area to rest myself and restore my equanimity. That being said, the practicality of such a location was not exclusive to preserving one’s sanity—I often came here just because I was bored or needed to think or get something out of my head that I could not bring myself to tell another. Call me an escapist or coward if you must, but sometimes I just needed me, myself and nobody else, and an expansive plains biome to offer a sanctum for my thoughts.

I laid down in the thick patch of grass to stare up at the evening sky, watching the last rays of pink strike the atmosphere before disappearing, leaving only the stars and the crescent-shaped moon overhead. It was officially the night. I observed the clusters of cosmic glitter Celestia had left behind in her absence. The collections of white pinpricks formed visible patterns in the sky. I could not help but stare at three constellations in particular with awe and wonder.

I heard a distant thump.

An unfortunately face-planted silhouette picked itself up and brushed one of its sides with a hoof. It flapped its wings furiously as it took a stride forward, then another, then the next before leaping into the air. Soon after, its face had once again been buried into the ground by the force gravity. Downcast, the figure stood up once more and tried again, only to fail yet another time. The shadow inaudibly screamed in frustration and, downtrodden by the forces of nature itself, collapsed onto the grass, defeated.

I contemplated whether I should approach the pony or not; I ultimately decided that I would indeed, at the very least, try to talk to it. I cantered towards the defeated mare, and gently cleared my throat before speaking. “Ahem…, hello, Miss…?” Naturally, the pegasus ignored me, her mind having been temporarily shoved into a box and squeezed to a pulp.

Usually, in a situation like this I would have put down any further effort due to my social reservation. This was an exception to that rule; something had compelled me to empathize with her. I lifted a hoof and placed it on the shoulder of the grey-coated mare, next to her long golden locks of hair. “Miss?”

She yelped and leapt forward.

Her voice was quite familiar; I had most definitely heard it somewhere before, but I had misplaced the details in my mind and had a hard time recovering them. The puzzle pieces slowly slipped back into place though: her grey fur and her shimmering mane and tail were all leading pieces of information towards the mare’s identity. Alas, it was only when she had turned her head to face me that I had confirmed my suspicion. She had looked at me with a single wet yellow eye, the other having had deviated in an entirely separate direction. Her eyes had expanded and her pupils seemed to have shrunk somewhat.

After Ditsy managed to calm down to her original state, she blinked, causing a single tear to roll down her cheek and bury itself between the furs of her muzzle.

“Bubbles…? What…were you doing?”

“…I—I want to fly. I’ve wanted to ever since I was a little filly. I worked constantly, trying to reach my goal, but I never did; eventually I gave up. Yet…here I am, making the same mistake again…and again…and again.”

“…I…do not know what to say….”

“Nopony does.”

Much like at the café, an awkward silence hung over our heads. Unlike at cocoa-break though, I stayed with my company. I laid myself down in the grass once again and stared up at the night sky. I glanced at one of the earlier constellations and smiled lightly. “Can I share some advice with you?” I asked. Bubbles nodded. “Do you see that cluster of stars right there?”—I pointed my hoof at the cat-shaped group of lights, causing Ditsy to join my gaze up at the expansive aesthetic heavens—“That’s Sphinx. She guarded Thebes with a riddle. She killed anypony who answered the riddle incorrectly. When a stallion, Oedipus, came to her and correctly responded, Sphinx devoured herself alive,” I said morbidly. Then I chuckled. “Sometimes I feel some of our biggest problems are similar to Sphinx. If we make one wrong move we are gone forever, but if we make a correct choice the problem vanishes.”

“…So…?”

I grinned. “Do you want to enter Thebes, or do you want to go beyond it, Bubbles?” I asked rhetorically. “If you have a problem blocking the direct path to your goal, make a detour; walk around Thebes instead of through it. There is no need to talk to Sphinx, nor answer her deadly riddle.”

“…Huh.”

We stayed underneath the starlight for another thirty minutes until I got dreadfully tired. “…Hey, Ditsy, I am going to head home now. Have a good night.”

“…Oh, um…G’night Octavia. See you around, I guess.”

I stood up and smiled brightly. “Surely,” I said. With that, I trotted back towards Manehattan. Tonight was a nice night.

It would have been a shame to have slept through it.

Author's Note

For any of you wondering, in this chapter I am not referring to the Sphinx of Egyptian mythology; rather, I am speaking of the Sphinx of Greek mythology.