I didn't truly realize that I had been hanging the buntings until after the third one went up.
Some ponies would call it tradition, I suppose, and as with so many traditions, nopony can truly say who first did it, much less when -- although for this particular bit of ingrained cultural habit, I suppose I could make a rather good gallop at the why. You gather cloth which matches the mane, tail, and eye hues, no matter how many bolts that takes, but... bolts I have aplenty. You loop them, and you give each of the loops a half-twist just before you choose the display spot. For pegasi, they are to be hung as high in the air as possible. With earth ponies, at least one of each shade will be delicately draped across the ground and stay there for the full duration of their shiva. Unicorns...
The traditions in my family are not exactly what anypony would call pronounced, and most of those which exist seem rather forced, especially those placed upon us by my mother. There were many days in my youth when I believed that her only goal in raising me was to keep me from enjoying everything she'd personally done as a filly, and when I watch her now from afar as she takes a hooves-off approach with Sweetie, I feel that she's gotten all the repression out of her system with her first foal. How very lucky for me.
But... I have been lucky, in some ways. I have attended funerals in my lifetime, but none for anypony who was particularly close at the time. Friends of my family, of my father, old injuries catching up to the former best of those teams or new ones inflicted upon the young. Only a few, and still too many, but... they were never for a unicorn.
Some, when they hang the buntings, choose the exact hues of the lost life. Others will deliberately grey them, symbolizing the passage into the shadowlands. More than a few will intensify, make every shade into a final shout of defiance, and who will truly hear it? I... chose the colors of the living. It was a pattern I did not wish to alter, not after what had happened to him already...
I was hanging the buntings, in my shop and home. I didn't plan to, and I -- don't seem to be fully aware of when or why I started. But then I realized I didn't know how to hang them, or where, or...
...they are hung by the family, friends, lovers, those who knew and loved the lost.
Why am I hanging them at all?
(I knew nothing.)
I do not play music in the Boutique. Several shops in town do, but I have never taken the plunge. I generally view in-store music as an inconvenience. For those who own large facilities, such as Mr. Rich, it is necessary to keep multiple gramophones wound and in rough synchronicity, which typically only leads to a pair of results: lyrics chasing each other about the sales floor and headaches chasing the more sensitive customers out of the shop. As for those with less space to fill... it is simply a fact that no music is universal in acceptance. Everything I could play would offend at least one potential client and with my typical luck, that would be the pony who trotted in just as their least favorite song began to spiral forth. Add that to preferring... well, not eavesdropping, of course, simply a tactful attention paid to whatever ponies are discussing about current events in case I might have something worthy to add or pass on long after they depart... and the only background music played comes from the instrument of my sewing devices, which tend to keep a steady beat.
But I do own a gramophone, of course. I brought it down from my bedroom. It looks odd in the light from my shop's windows, stranger still with the record resting motionless upon the turntable. My field has wrapped the crank in blue, and the hue of my signature seems odd to me, more faded than it should be. And it is not turning the crank.
It would, if I thought about it. I disparage myself sometimes for my field strength, especially when I compare it to Twilight's. For that aspect of my life and magic, I am average. I always will be. But average strength is still far more than sufficient for winding a gramophone. All I have to do is... think about it. Want it. And it would happen on that level of instinct, perhaps without true thought being involved at all, simply from desire to hear...
But the crank is not turning.
Why?
He had been performing for years before I was even born, so the first thing I inherited was a rather impressive extant catalog.
I suppose some might think it unusual of me, that my tastes might be directed towards something old that had not had its hour come around again in the nostalgia-lit hues of the vintage. But he never felt old to me, although it took some time before I truly understood why, and then I simply admired him all the more for it. When I recognized what he was doing... he felt so very much like me. As if we knew each other, thought the same way, could have had so many discussions. Not about music, of course, not for very long: I listen, but... my faint skills with the eskadron faded as soon as I was happily away from that teacher, and my expertise is only that of the listener. Fashion... yes, we could have spoken of that, at length, and I so would have loved to design for him, he would have been such a challenge, I have old sketchbooks where I would trace his form from a magazine and then lovingly drape him in...
...I still have them, actually...
...I thought -- he might come in one day, after everypony knew me, or perhaps he would even become the reason why they knew me, and I would show him the sketches and prove I'd been thinking about how to make him look his best for a very long time, or at least the best which had existed at that particular moment, which never lasted for very long and that was why we felt the same. Because the thing he was best at, after music, was reinvention.
Reinvention of the self.
Who was he? Whom did you wish him to be?
(Who did I wish him to be?)
He was so romantic... if that was his desire. Or anger, oh, he had that, a fog of fury which could shroud the continent so that you would never see just where the final kick was coming from. Love: there were times when I felt he could feed an entire changeling hive just through walking by. Defiance? He never cared whom he might offend through words or songs or actions or mere existence: his name proved that every day. Male royalty? Truly? And not through the tenuous connection granted by rumored generations or simply an old House of nobles which had ultimately held onto nothing more than an ancient, powerless title? There was a time when he discarded even that and simply insisted that people call him by his mark, which led to some confusion because nopony had ever figured out how to pronounce an icon. But he gave that up after a few years. We all have false starts now and again.
He was never old because he never allowed himself to be old. When one of his selves seemed to be showing the faintest touches of fading, he simply discarded that version and took a new one. Always a musician -- with everything else a variable. I admired that so much, the ability to cast one self aside and choose the next. It was what I wanted, and he... magic without workings, fields, or tricks. Magic I could learn. Magic I... still can't quite figure out. But he could do it. Forever fresh, forever new, forever young --
-- forever gone.
We never met.
(I am glad for that.)
I wanted to. But my mother... was dedicated to her temporary tradition. She attended his concerts, before I was born: why would she not? But for me? No, his music was too loud, or too suggestive, perhaps too angry or explicit or just too. I inherited his early catalog, and I inherited it from her, playing it in an empty house when my parents had gone out, because anything she was so against simply had to have some value to it. They caught me eventually, of course, and my father finally heard why she'd been keeping me from the records during the loudest portions of the fight. And then the music became mine, after he stopped laughing.
But... it was just the records. For concerts -- never Ponyville. He mostly traveled the coasts, avoided Canterlot for reasons I never knew until -- well, he avoided Canterlot: not a single concert there in his entire career, not even for the Princess, and it was rumored that she'd asked him personally. The closest he came was five gallops away, and when I learned of that in my fourth year of school -- I was in my fourth year of school. Bound to the grounds, trapped as I was for the entire duration.
I nearly went for it. I was planning. How many bits to scrape for the train? With travel time involved, I still would have been missing for a few days: could I pretend an illness where none would check to see that the lump under the blankets was actually a pony? What about the cost of the tickets? What of my age? How much could I have bluffed and lied and simply charged my way past? But the bits were not there, and... when I was at home during the holidays, it was always too far, my mother didn't want me traveling alone nor would she accompany, my father was on the road too much himself and could not be asked, I didn't have the bits...
...I didn't have the years.
And when I did? I had a business. A small one, which needed all the supervision I could give it in order to prevent collapse. New enterprises are like Crusaders: they pretend to behave themselves until the exact moment you stop looking. When stability finally began to present the first rumor of approach -- so did a petite librarian. After that... my time partially belonged to the thrones. But still, surely a mission would send us in a happy direction, or... a private performance? For the Bearers? Did that seem too much to ask, especially for one who had turned the Princess away? Of course it was. And yet I dreamed, for there was time in which to do so.
And yet he died.
Perhaps... perhaps the crank is stuck.
News can travel slowly.
Spells and devices for communication are rare. In the most desperate of times, the thrones will dispatch their best teleporters to revive the post of town crier across the continent, but for simple obituaries... news typically moves at the speed of ponies and trains and pegasi hired for their best short-range rushes. So I had a happy day where he was dead and I did not know. But it was also a day where I did not think about him at all. Why should I have? I hardly listen to his music every day, or every week, or every moon, and there were no reminders, no cause for such thoughts. And I feel -- like I neglected him. As if taking the records down on that day would have given him just that much more time under Sun. Dead and not dead.
(He didn't deserve it.)
How did I hear? Lyra. She was huddled by the fountain, sobbing, and Bon-Bon was curled up next to and partially around her, as much as anypony could be when trying to comfort somepony in one of those strange postures. It was grief, I could see that, and -- Lyra has no family other than Bon-Bon, nopony she could have lost. It seemed like such a private moment, something where the two of them needed each other and only that, but even Bon-Bon looked confused and it was just Lyra crying, I had time and...
...I -- give of myself. It helps, sometimes, or at least so I tell myself, for that is what gives me the strength to continue giving. I did not want to intrude on her grief. But it was the first time I had seen Lyra in a state where Bon-Bon was somehow not enough for her, and any aid I could provide, any comfort...
Lyra told me. She showed me the article. She showed me...
And then I was hanging buntings.
And then I stopped.
A designer is not her dresses.
Here is my work. It surrounds me, along with the temporary silent company of one gramophone. Anypony can look at it. Anypony can judge, and practically all of them do. They find a thousand reasons for why my creations are not suited to their needs, with the majority of those being lies, and perhaps a truth or two might sneak in along the way, tucked next to the receipt. Ponies judge my work and through doing so, they judge me. The verdict is seldom a kind one.
This dress, here. The silver-grey, the one I wished to make appear as if a mare had found her coat replaced by gentle moonlight. I only finished it three days ago. Ponies have had a little time to view it. Several have admired, others have turned up their snouts, and all have left the base model exactly where it is. And if I went to those ponies and openly asked them for their judgments, I would hear those verdicts, as harsh as they might be. Every one of them might do me that courtesy. Evaluation of skills they did not personally possess. Assessment of talents unknown to them. Recital of my thoughts, oh, that would surely come. It truly astonishes me how common the talent for telepathy is, how many marks represent that personal trick when nopony has ever read a thought, when only the resonance of emotion is ever detected, and still so many ponies are sure they know exactly what I was thinking at every moment...
What would they tell me, should I ask them to consider this dress and recite my thoughts? They would create an inspiration for me, or simply what some would undoubtedly see as a rather poor idea. Others might go back further, craft an event in my life which ultimately echoed forward and was reincarnated into cotton and carbon. They would weave me, out of whole cloth, presenting a design they had conjured at first glance and never given a moment of consideration since, certainly not for any necessary alterations. I would only be what they had already decided to see me as -- and nothing more.
And should I protest? Why, I am simply too close to my own work, too taken up with my (inadequate) creation to know what I was thinking when I (inadequately) created it at all! No artist is qualified to judge their own process, thoughts, inspirations... anything! That is for the critics, and the only way any might know what I intended is to wait until I enter the shadowlands and then announce it for all to hear, assuming any would still care. Because at least then, I would not be present to protest, and it is not as if I have any concept of what I might have been up to...
But ultimately... they only pretend to know.
It was a cool spring night, and Opal had gotten out. There is a tree branch near my bedroom window, the one I like to leave open so that Rainbow, should she be in the mood, might grant me a gentle breeze. Opal sees it as an opportunity, and -- I shouldn't worry, I know that: she does not go very far and part of it is just to tease. But I still check, so I can be certain her perch is a secure one. And when I looked out to find her... Moon glowed along her fur, and newborn leaves rustled in the breeze, casting shadows over her form to create a cat made entirely of shimmer and shade and contentment.
Hours before I slept that night. Hours before any sketch showed even a tenth of that moment, and I will never capture it all.
Would any guess at that? For that is all they could do: guess. Is it possible for any to craft my entire life, all the little paths and gallops which brought me to the point where that moment was even possible? And even for that singular pony so lucky as to build an entire life out of aether... the designer is still not her dresses. There is so much more to me than that, whether they wish there to be or not.
And so the musician is not his music. There was so much more to him than that.
So much less.
It is not autopsy. It is dissection.
They wait until death, do they not? Until the artist is no longer there to speak, until that precious moment when they can say exactly what was thought and believed and done without protest, and that is when the knives come out. Call it analysis, call it retrospective, call it anything except bloodshed because that word is only giggled by those who just listened to the final heartbeat.
When somepony dies... some say those in the shadowlands hear us still, if they care to. But they never speak. They never defend themselves. Or...
...they no longer have the chance to hold truth back from publication. Especially those truths which might cost them sales.
Lyra had the article...
He thought about being a hoofball player. A hoofball player like my father. I almost laughed at that, through my tears, when I read it in the article Lyra showed me. Not because of his build: there are positions for the small and speedy, especially if they can either take a hit or fully avoid all of them. I laughed because it was so unexpected. And also so in character, for what I knew of him.
(I knew nothing.)
Because he would set his mind to that goal, and reinvent himself as a hoofball player, and then --
-- this is why Lyra was crying.
Equestria believes in friendship, and love is nothing more than friendship which has caught fire. As a nation, we have honored that love for a long time. Any two who are of age may bond. On truly rare occasions, three or more. And ultimately, that love is expressed as future generations sent to find whatever love they may...
...Lyra cared about him. Cared about him as I did. I wish I had known that. We could have talked about him.
Talked in the time where neither of us knew anything, wrapped in the comfort of our mutual ignorance.
She cared about him.
And he hated her.
Those around him kept it from reaching the press, at least while he lived. But the bribes stopped coming, and now... now ponies know. That he felt the only love which could exist, which should be allowed to exist, was between a mare and stallion of the same species. Oh, there was no race he hated of our three -- as long as they only loved each other, in exacting pairs. And so that was all he surrounded himself with. All he responded to.
Given the true royalty his name falsely aspired to... he would have overturned the laws. Dissolved so many unions. And the children of those unions... taken away from any parent? What would he have...?
...my romantic life is... something of a tangle, a half-pulled knot where I move in and out through the loops, never quite extracting myself, never quite pulling another in with me. I date, of course, when I can. I seldom fully lack for suitors, although I often find myself facing a vacuum of those whom I would wish courting me. And when I look back across numerous failures and frustrating evenings which end with my stomping away from the bar and dances without partners and that Tartarus-freed Gala --
-- I have...
...I've...
...I have never been in love.
Ever.
I have had crushes. Attractions. Infatuations. Fantasies which I should have never allowed to become as vivid as they did. But love? The only thing I have ever been in love with -- is love itself. I have no experience of love, not beyond books and stories and -- songs. Nothing with a pony.
I hope to be in love. I long for it. But for now, all I have is friendships, and...
...perhaps, someday, if one of them caught fire...
...and if it did --
-- what was that sound?
My field -- my horn is blazing and --
-- the record is shattered...
Why was I hanging buntings?
I read the article Lyra had with her, as much as I could before the tears rendered words too blurry. I knew what he was. What he had hidden. If I had known from the start... as a filly, before I truly understood, I might have listened. But not after. Never after. And yet I went back to the Boutique, into the stockroom, and I gathered the colors before heading into my bedroom and fetching the music. Songs of anger and defiance and love where only he knows what he was thinking when he wrote them, and now will never tell another. The knives slice, and no protests come from the shadowlands, none which can be heard at all. None which are deserved, and ---
-- I was hanging buntings.
I shattered the record.
I would have broken him, if I'd had the chance and the strength and -- no, that is the anger, I am not a pony of violence, not unless provoked, but I feel as if...
...it is murder, is it not? That is the reason for my rage. He died, and in doing so, he killed. Every memory I had of him lies in fragments. Every imaginary self I created for him in place of knowledge is a corpse spreading chill across my soul.
I lied to myself, expertly, just as so many lie to themselves concerning me.
I heard the music and told myself I knew the musician.
I did not.
Who am I mourning?
What am I mourning?
Lyra stops in front of the Boutique.
"You hung buntings," she says. Her voice is soft. It often is. Lyra sometimes has trouble with words and... it hasn't been all that long since the tears stopped. Even less time since they started again.
"I did." Hanging from flagpoles. I'd never known that before.
"But the colors --"
"-- the cover of his first album. It -- seemed suitable."
She's looking at me.
"That record is new," she quietly observes, looking at the gramophone and slowly-rotating crank on my left, playing its songs to springtime Sun.
"It's a replacement. I... broke the last one."
Staring now.
A whisper. "Why?"
"Because the musician is not the music."
I mourn because the eternal river has one less pony dipping their bucket into the waters of dream, and what I truly loved was the flow.
"And so..." I tell her, "the music can exist by itself."
She looks at me for a while. Then she tucks her legs under her body and settles into the grass.
And we listen to songs of love, as an act of defiance, and decide for ourselves what that love is for.
Author's Note
but all I can do
is just offer you
my love
