All The Mares In The House Groove To Mozartby SanctaeChaptersLentoLargoAdagioLentoThe lights were low, the dimmer meticulously aligned with the yellowing sticky label she’d used to mark the brightness that was just right. The kettle had been standing for a minute or two, teabag waiting patiently in an old mug proudly advertising the Grand Equestrian Orchestra. You know, back when they were still called that. The rattly old windows had been dragged shut, the curtains pulled, and the sofa dragged laboriously across the thick, warm carpeting to the perfect spot that she had painstakingly found. The record was lovingly drawn from its cardboard sheath and placed, with practiced reverence, on the turntable. The stylus was lowered, the motor powered, and a few dials turned. Her mug of tea steamed gently on the low wooden table as she took a moment to plump the cushions under her neck and flick a few wayward strands of hair out of her face. She closed her eyes, letting the aroma of lemongrass condense into a pleasant cloud around her head as the first silky notes of Brahms’ Waltz in A Flat Major flowed into the room. The sofa sighed with her as she leant back, allowing the stress of the day to be swept away by the dance. Her ear flicked. Her eyebrows furrowed as she fidgeted on the cushions. She took a gentle sip of her tea, rolling the flavour around on her tongue as she tried to block it out. Tried not to feel the vibration destroy the flow of the gramophone stylus, tried not to notice the insidious off-tempo thumpingoverpowering the nuanced piano, tried not to have her evening ruined by the moronic, tasteless, soulless...noise that- Right. That was it. She slammed her mug down on the table and stamped across the room, snatching up a broom from its designated corner. “Keep it down already!” She started furiously adding a set of new dents and scratches to her battered ceiling. “If I wanted to listen to that trash I would have dropped out of school and taken a job selling glow sticks on the streets to fuel my drug habit!” A final few shots from the broom handle and she sat back down again, fishing a few flakes of plaster out of her tea. The bass got louder. ~~~ All The Mares In The House Groove To Mozart - A thesis on the nature of subjectivity in art versus the concepts of merit and quality - Sanctae ~~~ The cello, as some proportion of music lovers would presumably tell you, is the most beautiful instrument in all the orchestra. Possessing a deep, soothing voice, smooth tone, and rich timbre, it is often held to be the most expressive, the most emotional of them all; a piece of art unto itself. And without fail, after the last, soulful note has rang out around the concert hall, and the last peal of teary applause has died into silence, the beauty and the artistry suddenly deflate like cheap bubble wrap and there you are. It’s almost ten pm, it’s raining, and you have a four foot wooden box you need to drag home without a single dent or scratch, otherwise it’s several hundred bits down the drain. This must be why people bother to play the flute, she thought. Or chose to play something so monumentally awkward that moving it magically becomes somepony else’s problem. Lyra. “What, Tavi?” “Hmm?” “You just keep staring at my cutie mark and grinding your teeth. It’s kinda worrying, actually.” “Mm, oh, it’s nothing. Forget it.” She stopped walking, bouncing the heavy cello case up her shoulders a little, almost overbalancing down the hill, giving a slightly different muscle group some grief and lulling the other ones into a false sense of security. Home was still a good half an hour away. “I know what’s gotten under your coat. It’s that pony upstairs again...how’d you put it?” Lyra put on her best ‘tea-and-crumpets-on-the-lawn’ voice. “‘That vapid, boorish troglodyte and his squawking, atonal caterwauling’ and then a bunch of other words I had to look up when I got home.” Octavia said nothing, resuming her slow walk down the hill. A minty green elbow nudged her in the ribs. “Ah, c’mon Tavi. I know I said that I would strangle you if you didn’t shut up about it, but that was then. This is now, and I want to be here for you in your time of artistic intolerance.” “IT’S NOT INTOL-...It’s not intolerance, Lyra,” she said, adopting a tone usually reserved for rather trying foals and adding just the slightest undercurrent of impending physical violence. “It’s the simple fact that it is not art in the first place. It’s the result of a violent altercation between a microphone, a pony, and a bag full of angry cats from which no party emerged victorious.” “Well, I went to the last open booth night at SoundBite and I’d say that was pretty victorious!” “That’s not funny, Lyra, and stop waving your hooves around. You’re embarrassing the both of us.” Lyra dropped daintily back onto all fours, nose imperiously in the air, and trotted back to Octavia’s side; the very picture of poise and grace save for the manic grin. “Look at it this way. You blast one kind of music, he, she, or it blasts anoth-” “I do not ‘blast’ Beethoven. I do not ‘crank’ Mozart. I play them as they were meant- don’t give me that look” “Pfffhahaa, oh Tavi. Could you just say ‘crank’ again? Please? I want the sound engraved in my memory.” Her friend skipped nimbly out of reach of the right hook, laughing like a hyena. “I really don’t know what I did for fun before I met you.” “Probably spent hours watching the spin cycle on the washing machine...” “Ah, there ya go. Them's fightin’ words.” Lyra again matched pace with her slow plod, dialing the grin back to a friendly smile. “Look, all I’m saying is that maybe you could live and let live a little, hmm? It makes people happy and that’s what’s really important, love and peace and all that hippy nonsense.” “But it makes me unhappy.” Suddenly, a hoof grabbed her cheek, twisting her head to look into a pair of deeply concerned eyes; the smile wiped away. “And that’s important to me, Tavi, as a friend and as a fellow patron of the musical arts.” The earnest stare was piercing, the deep golden eyes hypnotizing. “But I think you need to consider that Drum ‘n’ Bass kicks flank and Mozart would probably agree.” “Aaugh!” She knocked the hoof aside and stomped down the road. They were, she realised, just past Lyra's place. “Tavi.” She stopped and turned, Lyra having paused by her front gate a little ways behind her. “Look, there’s a specials night at SoundBite that is the closest thing I can think of to something you might be physically capable of enjoy- of not hating. Come out tomorrow, and I’ll show you that it isn’t really as bad as you think. ‘Sides, we haven’t had a night out in ages, it’ll do the both of us some good.” Octavia stared blankly back at her friend, into the completely put-on expression of wide-eyed despair and desperation, and considered. Sometimes the important decisions in a pony’s life are easy to spot. “I’ll cut the green wire”, “I’ll just double-check the safety net”, “I think I’ll wait ‘til I’m sober before I tender my resignation”. Sometimes, however... “Hmph...okay, okay, don’t break out the puppy eyes. Anyway, I don’t think I could stand another night in, alone with that cacophony, so why not spend a night out with that cacophony and a good fr-...well, you, at any rate...” “Yes! Awesome! I’ll send you th-” “...On one condition,” she shot over her shoulder. “If I hate it, drinks are on you.” Lyra snapped to attention, throwing a curt salute, before turning her attention to the two stallions pulling the cart containing her massive harp. Octavia could just hear the exchange as she walked away. “That’s great lads, I don’t suppose you could just help me get it inside could you? And mind the doorframe, this only works from a very specific angle.” ~~~ The sign had been neon red and ‘witty’, a headphone-wearing piranha biting, then un-biting, the second half of the name. Inside was dark and heavy, everything bathed in a flat, pink-red glow. They’d gotten their hooves stamped at the door and bought their first G&Ts (or vodka-cokes in Lyra’s case) at the bar, ignoring the unsteady advances of a particularly quick-off-the-mark colt. Now they were seated in the corner, Octavia anxiously scuffing her hooves along the scratched wooden tabletop, Lyra talking nineteen to the dozen about the ‘artists’ for the ‘SoundBite Nu Culture Nite’. The stage was small; really just an area with no tables, a few more power outlets, and slightly better lighting. A mauve pony with a rather poofy mane was fussing over a mixing desk to one side, the other side remained curiously empty save for a lonely microphone stand. Her eyes kept roving over the stage as she drank, the microphone, the DJ’s three-daisy cutie mark, and the banners and posters in the back advertising upcoming events. “So, that’s why it’s called ‘Nu Classical'. Well, it’s why it should be called that even if nopony does yet, and...you...weren’t listening anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” “Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry, Ly.” “Hey, don’t sweat it. It’s the music that matters anyway, not the history, really.” “...You actually know a lot about this, don’t you?” “Yeah, it’s a bit of a hobby, y’know. I just picked the history up as I went along- oh, here we go!” A beige earth pony with a deep red mane had taken up the other side of the stage, exchanging a few friendly words with the other pony before stepping up to the microphone. “Hey there SoundBite!” Lyra enthusiastically cheered along with the rest of the bar, kicking Octavia under the table until she got a half-hearted ‘Woo’. “We’ll be starting up in a minute or two, so you just stay right where you are for Crystal Rose, that's me, and DJ Sunny Delight!” She smiled, winking to the small crowd, and turned to start unpacking her instrument from its rather oddly shaped case. “DJ Sunny Delight?” “Yeah, she’s been playing a few gigs around town recently...and...what’s wrong?” “What is that?” “...That’s a cello, Tavi. They’re a member of the stringed section in an orchestra. Maybe you’ve heard of them? ” “...What. Is. That.” “A. Cello. Tavi. If you want I can draw you a diagram. It would just be the word ‘CELLO’ written on a barmat next to a bad drawing of your face, but I’m thinking we need to go back to basics here.” “Lyra.” “...Yes, Octavia.” “That...is a stick...with some strings and....oh sweet Celestia, is it connected...is that an electric amplifier?” “Yes, Tavi. Yes it is. Have you really never seen an elec- where are you going?” “To the bar.” “But you haven’t finished your...uh, okay wow, Tavi, that’s actually a little impressive. Wanna get me something while you’re up?” “Drinks are already on you, Lute-butt” “Nuts.” ~~~ She was at the bar when the music started. Oh, it got her hopes up. For one, glorious, fleeting instant she thought she might be able to stand it. ‘Crystal Rose’ wasn’t the best, by any means, but there was a little spark of something in her playing that, if nurtured, could maybe take her places. The instrument - she shuddered as she necked another G&T - the instrument was...unique, certainly...she found it helped if she didn’t think of it as a cello in all but the most technical sense. But the backing...ugh...the screeching wail and thick drumbeat were just too much. They drowned everything out. Any emotional depth that might have been coming through from the cello was a last, desperate hoof poking above the waves, struggling for air as it slipped beneath the foaming sea of - she gave Lyra’s money to the barcolt, knocking back a G&T but saving the other two - sea of...of...something something drowning metaphor...the DJ sucked, that was what mattered. DJ Sunny Depfffhehehe, ah that name was just...ahem, anyway, DJ Sunny Delight, more like DJ complete lack of subtlety. She didn’t blame the ‘cellist’, the cellist was...well she was a cellist. Clearly the issue here was that turntable...thing. Lyra didn’t seem to care, she noted, sipping delicately at her G&T, her friend was beside her at the bar, jumping around and shouting things at Octavia from time to time. She had no idea what- she took another si- Oh, the glass was empty. She ordered another. She had no idea...er....um...something. Music, probably. The music wasn’t very good. It was still playing, the music...she thought...actually hard to tell. Sounded like...distant. Woops, almost lost the glass...where’s the table gone? Hi, Lyra. Didn’t get a word of what Lyra just said but it’s probably funny. Something about a lute not being a harp. She knew that. She knew musics. She liked playing the cello. Better tell Lyra that, she likes music too. The music here isn’t too bad. Catchy. Makes you move your- Oh it’s really bright. Ouch, who, oh, door frame, how silly. Lyra’s laughing too. It’s funny. Funny and cold. Cold mainly. Pfffhahaha Lamppost dancing with Ly- wait...other way rouuhahahaaa. Wooooo, Lyra! Weren’t they at a bar? Something about cellos. She loved playing cello. Lyra lives here. Bye bye Lyra. Like music, hehee, can’t sing straight. Just not practiced...huh, this is her house...but Lyra lives miiiiles away...she must be the fastestest pony in...door keys. OOF, ouch, who left shoes here? Stupid place. Stupid sh The first, hard rays of morning slotted between her loosely pulled curtains, hitting her neatly across the face like they had some personal grudge to settle. Right now, as she lay there with the thought dragging itself through her head by its fingernails, that was the only reasonable explanation for the world of misery in which she found herself. Blinking hurt. Breathing hurt. Her mouth was full of rust and her face felt like it was going to explode. She lolled her head to the side, looking over at- aawww, no...Out of the corner of her eye she saw a rounded shape underneath the duvet. She would have sighed if she had the strength, she would have closed her eyes if her eyelids weren’t made of razor-blades, and she would have massaged her forehead if her hooves weren’t made of lead. As it was she just stared at the ceiling. It was always so embarrassing in the mornings, that’s why she’d sworn she wouldn’t drink like that anymore. Not after last time. Especially after last time. Lyra still had the pictures. She shuddered as she lay there, painfully squinting against the sun. She withstood it for almost a minute before the piercing headache from getting up started to seem more attractive than the piercing headache from the sunlight. Besides, better to get this over and done with now. She shakily clambered out of bed, threw back the covers, heaving her cello off the bed and back onto its stand in the corner, fishing her bow out from under the bed to join it. The re-tuning was going to be a bitch. LargoThe morning had … ugh … Celestia … the mid-to-late afternoon had dragged. She had dragged back the covers as she fell out of bed. She had dragged herself through a painful shower, dragging a comb through her mane when she was done. She had dragged herself into the kitchen to drag both a spoon through her morning cornflakes and her eyes across the morning paper. She had dragged her jaw mechanically up and down, swallowing from time to time, tasting nothing but dry cardboard. Each breath dragged through her throat like she’d swallowed a motorbike engine as the minute hand slowly dragged its way round the face of her treble clef kitchen clock. After all but throwing the dishes into the sink, she had dragged herself back to her bedroom and dragged her cello onto her back, preparing to drag herself up the hill to morning practice. She wondered how Lyra was doing. She hoped it was worse. She had half a mind to put a brick through Lyra’s window on the way past. Maybe get a specially commissioned brick with ‘Dear Lyra. You have the worst ideas of anypony I have ever met. Yours sincerely, Octavia” engraved on it. Well, maybe not ‘sincerely’, that was rather too formal for a brick. Urgh, thinking hurt. Hmm. ‘Yours, uurrgh’? Maybe ‘yours, my mouth tastes like death’ or ‘Yours, I hate how easily you can shrug off hangovers’. ‘Yours, I can’t feel my extremities’. Blast it all. She felt abysmal. A low, ghostly groan echoed through her ceiling, the sound of something dying or at least in mortal agony. For a moment she felt a grudging sympathy, it seeming that she and the pony above her were apparently not so different. It was strange, actually. It was a kind of kinship in a way; an unspoken connection through shared, awful experience as, despite their disparate tastes, they both found themselves in a hell of their own design. She felt almost- The groaning, moaning death rattle - which Octavia had been thinking had been going on for a while - dropped forty octaves and picked up a dull thumping crunch every second along with a seismic, offbeat thud. She couldn’t scream; just mechanically her throat would barely let her get beyond a gravelly, primal growl, but boy did she think a scream. She slammed the door behind her and staggered up the stairs, slotting a passive-aggressive note - Your music is bad and you should feel bad, or words to that general effect - under the door. Then she staggered her way down again and lurched, blinking, into the sun. It still bore a grudge. She squinted painfully as she trudged through the suburbs and up the hill towards the city centre. It was a lovely day. The sky was clear, the air was clear and warm, and the streets and gardens shone in the late afternoon light. Just for once she sort of wished it wasn’t. Her mood struggled to break-even as she plodded into town, sweat slowly gluing the cello case to her back. She was walking slowly, being overtaken by groups of teenagers off into town to presumably throw away their educations in an orgy of hedonism or whatever it was that teenagers did on a Saturday afternoon. Every single time it was the same thing. She could put up with how they barged past her, mumbling something that could be generously interpreted as an apology. She could even put up with the preponderance of hoodies and the wave of that awful bodyspray they all seemed to use. What set her teeth on edge was the faint whispering just at the edge of her hearing; Tck tss tck tss tck tss tcktck tss, with some high-pitched whining noise barely audible in the background. Every. Time. She didn’t even want to think how loud that must actually be, but must it always be the same? She just wanted to grab of them by the shoulders and shake some taste into them. Out of all the genres that one could possibly like, the one sweeping the blasted country was the one that had maybe three different songs that were just endlessly iterated through a computer. Where was the soul? Where was the love and effort? She was nearly at the city centre. She could tell from all the billboards that were starting to sprout up; giant pictures of some unicorn’s grinning face with a dangerous amount of lasers reflected in her oversized shades. She turned a corner, another board of a different- oh, wait, different image for the same ad campaign; a single shattered glowstick and the same pair of sunglasses, images half visible in the spilled fluorescent liquid. As she read the poster something niggled at the back of her head but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on what it was. Something familiar in the text. Oh well. Not like she cared anyway. She’d just have to try and be the better mare; ‘love and tolerate’ as Lyra would put it. She still had her beloved art and, no matter how much mass produced trash the public mindlessly consumed, nothing was going to take that away from her. ~~~ “What do you mean, cancelled!” She was aware that she was standing up when everypony else was sitting down - except for Lyra. She was aware that she was shouting when everypony else was staring at her in mute confusion - except for Lyra. She was aware that she was behaving in an utterly undignified manner when everypony else was staying calm - except for Lyra. She didn’t care. The conductor did. And the other cellists, whose music stands had clattered, like dominos, to the floor when she had leapt to her feet, probably cared too. “Well, I said our booking has been re-evaluated. Ms Scratch’s tour only has one block of available dates.” “Well why don’t we go to the Canterlot Gallery, tear out all the canvas, and spend the next month sewing a carpet so she doesn’t have to get her hooves dirty when she descends from her gooolden chariot to grace us with her butchering of the oldest and most noble art by debasing both it and our ears with-” she would have kept going had she not run out of air. Also Lyra’s applause had made her lose her train of thought. Lute-butt was - well, the best was to describe it was probably ‘lounging’ - over at the other side of the orchestra, behind the violas, resting an elbow on the top of her golden pedal harp. She had the gentle smile of somepony who was enjoying a good movie or stage show and, for the last few seconds, had begun softly shouting ‘encore’ and clapping. Octavia looked around the stage as she got her breath back. They’d been practising in an old theatre for the past few weeks - and, more specifically, the last hour and half - while their normal rehearsal venue was being refurbished. The air had the tang of that musty theatre smell and the lighting was rather harsh, but it was a good size stage with good acoustics. Octavia rather liked the faded charm of the place. At least, when she wasn't busy being royally ticked off. “I know you may not like it, but the fact is that the Arena barely breaks even on our performances as it is. It’s just a postponement. It’s not the end of the world, now please sit down.” “Yeah, sit down Tavi, the bass players are sick of staring at your butt. Well, almost all of them, eh Top Fret? I see ya checkin’.” Lyra made a rather inappropriate clicking sound with her tongue that carried quite clearly across the orchestra. “Miss Heartstrings, you aren’t helping.” “This is ridiculous. We’ve been preparing for this for months. We’ve had the booking for months.” “Miss Clef, the manager of Canterlot Arena is a personal friend of mine and he asked me a personal favour-” “So if it had been the ... the … the Canterlot Under 6’s Recorder Club in their world debut then you’d have been fine with it too?” “Some of those kids are pretty talented, Tavi. If they started doing proper auditions rather than letting anypony join then they’d be hitting the big times. I mean, there’s this one filly who always stands at the front and she just … can’t ... what? Yeah, the CUSRC are a thing and I went to see them by accident this one time. You wanna make somethin’ of it?” The echoes faded into the dusty seats and faded backdrops as Lyra shadow-boxed in Octavia’s general direction “Ahem, I … er, what was, oh right. I don’t see how that’s a fair comparison Ms Clef. Ms Scratch is a world famous artist who is coming to Canterlot as part of her tour.” “They have about the same amount of musical talent-” “Well, if they’d just ditch that one filly...” “-and I simply cannot abide that we are moving aside our program of beautiful art-” “The Sibelius is just boring as sin, if you ask-” “-in favour of some audiovisual apocalypse from Vinyl Scratch?” “You got that off the posters, Tavi.” “Shut up, Lyra!” “Aye aye, ma’am.” “Ms Clef?” “Yes, Mr Baton?” “Sit.” She picked up her music stand, disentangling all the metal pointy bits from her neighbours, and sat back down on the cheap plastic chair, pouting as she did so. “I know we’ve been working very hard for this concert but it’s only a couple of weeks. As we are clearly all a little stressed right now-” Octavia deliberately avoided eye-contact. “-we can come back next session and try some new pieces, but for now I think we should call it a day.” There was a collective sigh and a rustling of sheet music. There was also a loud woop, the sound of somepony yelling “School’s out for summer, baby! Woooo!”, and the thumpity-thump of hooves galloping up the aisle, into the darkness, and out of the door. Octavia had completed the metal origami puzzle of closing up her music stand and was hefting her cello back into its case when the door creaked open and a familiar voice echoed distantly from above the dim rows of seats. “So, yeah, I’m gonna need somepony to give me a hand with the harp.” ~~~ She hadn’t been able to face dragging her cello back already, instead choosing to relax at a corner cafe she was rather fond of. Green tea, scones and a slice of carrot cake had done wonders for her, ‘revitalising herbal energy (tm)’ flooding her body as she watched the sun slowly set. By the time she had finished her meal and the odd conversation with some fellow musicians who came past, it was starting to get dark, and her mood had swung from unfocused, grumbling anger, to very targeted, grumbling anger. There was a problem in Canterlot and she was going to fix it. The more she thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. These were ponies who just, lit-er-al-ly, did not know what they were missing. They couldn’t have heard anything better than that manufactured nonsense and so they simply didn’t know any better. Well, tonight, Octavia was gonna change their tune, literally. Heh, she’d spent most of a pot of tea working on that one. And so it was that she walked the darkened streets of the Bits Of Town That Lyra Likes, cello on her back, looking for somewhere to spread her own personal gospel. Octavia was not ashamed to admit - in fact she was rather proud to admit - that she didn’t really know her way around Canterlot’s … less laudable areas. Still, she was a grown mare, she knew a bar when she saw one. Speaking of... The Pink Apple Club - Entendres now on buy one get one free! - New acts always welcome on amateur night! (Yeah, that’s tonight.) She sighed, staring at the pink neon sign and various, crude cardboard supplements beneath. This looked like the best she was going to get at short notice. Yes, it didn’t exactly have the air of a place that she actually wanted to go to … but that was sort of the point. It briefly crossed her mind to call Lyra to get some support but, as the drunken slew of last night’s half-memories glugged past her eyes, that idea rapidly lost its appeal. The cello case drew a few glances as she walked inside and eased her way through to the bar, resting it against counter and cricking her shoulders.The club was dimly lit; what light there was was dirty pink and diffuse. A small stage sat front and centre, backed by a grotty red curtain and flanked by a basic DJ booth. It turned out that an Entendre was a kind of drink; bourbon, some kind of fruit brandy, and so much sugar that she could feel her teeth rotting. She eyed the remaining one, and the barcolt, warily. “So, um, sir, I couldn’t help but notice the sign outside your establishment.” He gave her a quizzical look, his eyes flicking between her face and her cello like an indecisive bee caught between an unexpectedly upper-class gray lily and a wooden, four-stringed daffodil. “I would like to try my hoof as it were,” she tapped the cello case almost apologetically, there was never any harm in being a little submissive with such an unusual request. “If that wouldn’t be a problem?” The barcolt shrugged, “Not my cup o’ tea, miss, a little unorthodox. But eh, it’s why we have amateur night. Spices things up a little.” He nodded over at a door at the back of the bar. “S’just through there. Whenever y’ready. Been a quiet night so far.” She eyed up the door, procrastinating over her free drink. It looked dark, and mysterious; almost threatening in the dim pink light but she wasn’t going to back out now. The door gave her the creeps as well. She downed the second drink, trying not to taste it, and lugged herself and the cello through the door. The scent of tacky rose perfume hit her like half a brick in a sock as she stepped into the dim pink … well, she wasn’t quite sure there was word in Equestrian that quite captured the bizarre blend of dressing room, cellar, and alcove-under-the-stairs that the tiny room possessed. Two young mares, slouching by the grimy vanity stand, broke off from their conversation as the door clicked shut behind her. As she choked on the cloying air and wiped her burning eyes, they swept her up, flanking her and gently guiding her towards the scruffy chair by the mirror. “Hi there, luv. I’m Candy and this is Bunny. You done this before, darlin’?” They were obviously professionals, she thought. They were already going to work on giving her basic makeup like it was taking no conscious thought whatsoever. She tried to speak without moving her face too much as they went to work with a liner pencil. “Um, yes, I’m actually pretty good. Not much of a professional though.” She didn’t want to be too intimidating, best to go in low and surprise them. “Well, if we expected you to be a pro then it wouldn’t be amateur night, would it, silly!” Candy … or possibly Bunny, she’d already forgotten, gave her a big, easy smile. “You have a costume?” “Um … no, I don’t have one.” “No costume. Well, that’s alright luv, I’m sure we can find you something. We don’t have much though at the moment as our box hasn’t arrived yet. We usually only get ponies doin’ it spur-of-the-moment, like, a little later of a night. Ah, here we go.” Whichever pony wasn’t that one - their cutie marks were surprisingly unhelpful for telling them apart - had just finished digging around in a box in the corner, and was coming back with... The next minute or so was a complete blank; her mind had spat out its metaphorical coffee all over the metaphorical kitchen table and by the time it had gotten a tea towel, cleaned everything off, and come back to see what it had missed, she was standing in front of a mirror in a black tutu, stockings, elbow gloves, and sporting a perfectly ridiculous tiara. Something was being said about it being an ironic goth look. They were quite possibly correct. Who knew. Upon hearing something about corsets, her mind hit enough panic buttons to get her to do something. “It’s lovely. This will be great.” In retrospect, not quite the opinion she had been aiming to express, but still it probably wouldn’t get any worse and if her dignity must be the martyr to light the way for the musical masses then so be it. They were talking at her again as she picked up her cello. “What music do you usually work to? We don’t have an amazin’ selection but we probably got some backing that will work for you.” Well, this was it; it was time to test the water. “Well, I thought I’d try some classical, shake things up a bit. I won’t need any accompaniment so you don’t have to worry about that.” She watched as Bun- … one of the mares’ eyes narrowed in temporary confusion, the mental dots being quite visibly joined as they took in the cello case. “O- Oh … okay. Wow, that’s .. .exotic. I don’t think we’ve ever had that before.” Octavia quietly congratulated herself; she was one step ahead of the game. The two mares were gently ushering her through another battered door and towards the back of the curtain. “No, I didn’t think so. That was why I decided to try it out.” Octavia could feel the bald velvet of the curtain on her back. “Well, just keep it interesting and emphasise the exotic stuff and you’ll be fine. Best of luck!” “Well, Khachaturian’s concerto in E minor is pretty … exotic...” She had been pushed through the curtains. The stage was hers. The lights were warm and there was a general muttering and a few indistinct catcalls and heckles from one particularly rowdy corner of the room. The tutu was more annoying than anything she could possibly have dreamt of and the stupid gloves were making it hard to hold the bow properly. Still, apart from that, really it wasn’t so different from any other concert. The first notes of Khachaturian’s E minor were already singing around the establishment as looked at out around the crowd. They were confused, of course they were. She’d expected as much, taking the heckles well in stride. It should only take a moment or two and then they would see what they had been missing all these years. Some of the heckles were a little confusing though. She had plenty of time to try and work out what some of the less obvious hoof gestures meant; she could play this piece in her sleep. A sharp psst came from over her shoulder and she twisted slightly as a pink hoof emerged from behind the curtain, tapped her on the shoulder, and proceeded to make small circles in the air. She blinked, continuing to play. Spin? Turn? She should turn round? What? Well … okay. The cello spike provided a natural pivot point and she could just about manage to play while slowly moving. Slowly, sedately, as if in some bizarre waltz or romantic slow dance, she began to turn, a look of confusion plastered over her face as the audience tittered and whistled. As faced the curtain - she could have sworn she heard laughter from behind it - the mental gears began to turn along with her and the cello. As she faced front again, she stopped playing and held up a hoof as the last note died. The bar fell utterly silent. The air was electric, charged with the potential of twenty odd ponies all holding a collective breath of anticipation. The piercing gazes burned her more than the spotlight as she slowly inched a free hoof along her back, tracing the contour of her spine. She could she the eyes that worshipped the progress of that dawdling hoof until it teased onto its destination, see the grinning faces hungrily waiting for the inevitable. There was a gasp from around the room as she moved only minutely, a tiny flick of a hooftip to release a simple clasp, and she felt the warm air caress her. Her familiar bowtie fluttered to the ground at her hooves. She looked down at it, then back up at the audience as somepony blasted a piercingly shrill wolf-whistle at her. She sighed. “This is a strip club, isn’t it?” ~~~ “It was a strip club, Lyra. A strip club! Why do we even have those?” The sky was black,the wooden bench was cold, and the grass beneath was damp. The park lights were faint and washed the colour out of everything. She was curled up on one side, gesturing angrily a hoof, Lyra was sitting upright at the other - as was her way - making sympathetic noises. The cello case and cello were propped up to one side. Lyra had been nice enough to go and pick the case up to save Octavia further embarrassment after the latter had fled the club. “I mean, seriously Lyra. You’re naked right now!” Lyra threw her hooves across herself and tucked her knees up,. “Ah! It’s true. Don’t look at me, don’t look at me!” “And then they come try and hoist me off stage like a sack of potatoes, and immediately start blaring out some of that utter trash. Fine, I missed the point a little, but it’s like they didn’t even hear what I was playing!” She smacked a hoof against the wooden planks of the bench. Lyra was leaning back, her back of her head resting unnaturally against the backrest so that she was looking up at the sky. “Some ponies just don’t like it. It’s just the way things are.” “I’m going to have to do something about this. Some ponies don’t like classical. Okay. If they won’t learn to love art, I’ll just have to show them how horrible their beloved electronica is.” An idea began to take shape. A terrible, glorious idea that built itself up before her eyes as she rubbed her hooves together. “We have an extra month of time that Ms. Scratch has kindly given us. That will be her last mistake. I will use this month wisely and by the time I’m finished nopony in Canterlot will be able to listen to that racket ever again. Yes. That’s it! It’s easy to make that useless noise so I’ll just learn how! I’ll make music so awful and catchy that everypony will lap it up, and that’s when I strike. I’ll get them hooked on music so cheesy and tasteless that they won’t be able to live with themselves! It’s perfect. I’ll destroy it all with it’s own success!” “Tavi, can I just check something?” Lyra rolled her head against the back of the bench until she was looking at Octavia. “On a scale of ‘oh Celestia, I’m going to remember all of this in perfect clarity’ to ‘hey … hey … hey … Ryra … I have … the besht … besft … idea, wight’, how off your hooves are you right now?” “I’m perfectly sober.” Lyra sucked the cold night air in sharply between her teeth, grimacing. “Yep.” “Wow. So, hang on … the club…?” “Yep.” “Wow.” A lonely moth fluttered and bumbled around the light by the bench. A cold breeze dashed through the park. Octavia shivered. “It’s a terrible idea, isn’t it?” “Atrocious.” “Will you help me?” “What are friends for if not this?” She lifted her head up, turning to face Lyra properly. It was the strangest thing. She spent a good fifty to sixty percent of her time wanting to punch the mare in the mouth, but when it really mattered… “Thank you, Lyra. Really.” Lyra threw her a high-beam smile and held out a hoof, waiting politely for Octavia to figure out that she was meant to bump it. “No worries ‘Tavi. Right!” She slammed her hooves by her sides and threw herself onto her hooves. “This momentous occasion calls for a celebration, whaddaya say? The night is yet young and I know this great little place just down the way. Kinda small but I think you’ll like it.” Octavia found herself smiling; a real, genuine grin that wrapped her head up in a big warm hug. She demurely got to her hooves and slotted into position by Lyra’s side. “Oh, go on then. Lead on!” And they were lost in the lights of the town. ~~~ Her head hurt and her mouth was full of pillow. A bowtie was hooked jauntily on the radiator a few hooves from her face. She stretched an exploratory back hoof out to the other side of the bed. There was a dull wooden thonk as it hit hollow wood. She buried her face even further into the pillow. “I’m gonna kill her.” AdagioFour hundred equestrian bits. Four hundredequestrian bits … hmmm. Four hundred equestrian bits … worse. Four … hundredequestrianbits … tch. Oh, well, be fair; three hundred … andninetynine equestrian bits. ‘A penny saved was a penny earned’ dearest mama had always said. She narrowed her eyes at the receipt stapled to the glossy instruction manual. It was the strangest thing, really. Over the course of the walk back from the shop the number had somehow grown every time she’d looked at it until now it almost seemed like she’d spent a lot of money or something. She knew she’d got a great deal, that helpful young colt from the shop had assured her of that. Still … she just couldn’t stop herself noticing certain similarities between the number on the receipt and things like a holiday … or her rent. “Gimme that a second.” A minty green forehoof waved blindly from the darkness under Octavia’s hardwood desk. A similarly coloured, upside-down tail and butt also protruded from the depths amid a mass of cables, cable ties, and small, ripped plastic bags. She pressed the manual against the waving hoof until it grabbed its prize and shot back to whence it came. The butt waggled appreciatively. “Ffankff ‘Afi,” the voice said, presumably through either the screwdriver or the wire cutters. She turned to curl up on her office chair, resting her chin on her forehooves and watching the desk through half an eye. “You know,” she told the butt, “you have the amazing gift of being able to hold things in the air through sheer force of will and a happy evolutionary accident … maybe you could consider doing that from time to time?” There was a not particularly delicate ptchoo and a dull thump of something metal hitting a carpet. “Ah, young foal, you criticise that which you do not comprehend. Complete your studies and when you come to ask the question you will realise that it need not be asked at all.” “You just can’t multitask, can you?” “Who’s fixing whose electronics for free?” A back hoof waved menacingly in her general direction. “Noted, maestro.” “Which, if I may be so bold, could have been completely avoided in the first place.” The butt took on a more appraising tone. “Perhaps if you had brought somepony else along, maybe? Somepony who actually understands what she’s doing, even? One that could perhaps tell that a certain item does not have a power plug that will, oh I don’t know, actually fit in an Equestrian wall socket, for instance.” “Now hold on a minute.” She got off the chair and walked over the butt again. She always got a little fidgety about new gadgets; something about technology set on her edge, meant she couldn’t stay still. She nudged the butt with a hoof. “I gave you every opportunity to come help me pick something out and you said no.” “Wha-” There was a very solid sounding bang, the desk shook violently, and there was the sound of somepony releasing a breath through gritted teeth. The butt began to shake violently as its owner shuffled backwards from under the desk until a slightly dazed looking face appeared, propped up to stare accusingly at Octavia. “Allow me to indulge in a dramatic re-enactment.” Lyra cleared her throat and started making ring-ring noises before lifting a forehoof from the floor and bringing it cautiously to one ear. “Hello, Lyra the-best-friend-in-the-world-and-knowledgeable-music-mare-in-the-field-of-electro speaking. Who is calling? “Oh. Lyra, jolly good, just the mare I wanted to talk to. Oh-ho-ho, what japes!” “I do not sound li-” “Well, if it isn’t my very good friend Octavia, what a coincidence. Why, I was just thinking about how little you know about electronic music not thirty seconds before you phoned. What may I, your faithful comrade in arms, do for you?” Octavia’s expression was flat as the solos from that one filly in the Canterlot Under 6’s Recorder Club. “Well, my friend-whom-I-will-shortly-abuse-to-get-free-DIY-assistance-from, I was thinking I would take that terrible idea from last night and go drop a month's paycheck on it right this very afternoon by buying a bunch of things that I don’t know how to use! Doesn’t that sound simply spiffing?” “...it was only two and half weeks’ pay...” “Well, as a friend let me express my concern at such a rash decision and caution that expensive gear does not equate to having an easier time learning a new skill. I beg you, listen to me for I am wise and most definitely not being ‘silly and unhelpful’. “Oh-ho-ho, what an utterly barmy thing to say. I’m going to go do it anyway! Chocs away-tally-ho-jolly-hockey-sticks-wot-wot! “Wait, no! My good friend! H-Hello?” Lyra stared in confusion at her hoof, knocking it against the floor a few times before holding it up to her ear again. She turned to Octavia with an expression of utter confusion and disbelief as she put her hoof down. “She hung up.” Octavia winced. There was something about those piercing golden eyes that made arguing at them rather hard when they were glaring right back at you. “And then by the time I manage to get to your house you’re already unloading the boxes at the bottom of the stairs.” “Eheh,” she tugged self-consciously at her bow-tie. “Thanks for … um … helping with the stairs....” Lyra’s expression softened somewhat as she smiled and leaned forward to lightly bop her friend in the side of the head. “I’m not mad at’cha ‘Tavi, you just didn’t get the best deal. Some things are really good though. The converter for your antique mp3 player was a good call and something I wouldn't have thought to pick up.” She waved a hoof at the gramophone. Octavia bit her tongue. “Besides, what mare doesn’t love learning how to re-wire electrical plugs?” She disappeared under the table again, leaving ‘Tavi, as before, in the dubious company of her butt. ~~~ “But you have no idea what you’re doing. None. At all. Not even a little.” Octavia chuckled gently as she shooed Lyra towards the door. “Oh Lyra, you’ve already got me past the bit I don’t understand. I may not be good with all this technical stuff but I know my music.” Lyra was slowly backing towards the door, her teeth set in a horrified grimace as she cast around desperately for an argument. Her back hooves were already being forced over the threshold. “Do you even know what a ‘woofer’ is? What sampling is? What a freaking MIDI is? Do you even know how to save a file?” “Lyra!” The reprimand slipped out a little more forcefully than Octavia would have liked. She reached out an apologetic hoof and patted Lyra comfortingly on the shoulder to try and make up for it. “Look, I know I may not be as up to date with computing as you but the creation of musical art has nothing to do with understanding how many megaflops are in my cyber pipes.” Lyra let out a weird little squeak, like she’d just trodden on a mouse. “Come round tomorrow night, if you really must, and you can listen to the first few songs and we can discuss marketing strategy and so on.” Lyra was now standing out in the hall as Octavia slowly closed the door. A desperate, slack-jawed plea was etched into her face, one eyelid stuttering like a computer in the instant before a bluescreen. “Thank you for all your help.” Octavia could now only see a narrow strip of hallway and a terrified pair of eyes. “…Right … bye then...” Her front door creaked shut. There was a muffled scream from the hall, a sigh, and then the sounds of hoofsteps down the stairs. Tavi rubbed her hooves together. She was full of ideas. She was a veritable wellspring of inspiration, a font of skill and training. She giggled a little to herself as she dimmed the lights and picked up a cushion from the sofa on her way back to her work room. This was going to be a piece of cake. She placed the cushion on her desk chair and climbed up onto it, wriggling to get comfortably sat before she pulled the chair closer in to the music desk. There was a chorus of cracks and pops as she stretched luxuriously, bringing her front hooves high above her head and pushing her neck to the side. She reached down, pulling open a desk draw and extracting several leaves of musical manuscript and a pencil which she set on the desk in front of her. Her mind was beginning to settle in anticipation of the music; ideas and soundshapes were flowing freely between her ears, begging for release. She could see the limitless possibilities of tone and tempo laid out in the empty horizontal lines of the paper in front of her and, as she reached the centre of that calming inner silence, she could feel that she could craft it. With an expression of total and complete calm, her eyes drifted around the forge upon which she would work her magic. The black monolithic mixer was to her left with its blizzard of dials and switches, the computer was humming away with … something running on it, and her trusty gramophone was sitting at the back. The ghost of a smile danced on her lips. The computer clock read half past one. It was time to begin. She reached up and spent a moment adjusting her hair so it wouldn’t get into her eyes as she worked. It was time to begin. She could do this any time. Just needed to let inspiration do its thing. She reached over the desk, tilting the monitor down a little to get rid of some glare. Just had to let her years of training guide her through … yeah. She tapped a hoof along the wooden table top. Time to make some music. The computer fan buzzed despondently from somewhere under the table. She cleared her throat and loosened her bowtie a little; there was no sense in being uncomfortable while being creative. The clock ticked over another minute. Well first she needed to have a plan. You couldn’t write music without a brief, silly filly. She needed a plan. She needed a list! She snatched up the pencil, licked the end, and began to write in the top corner of her manuscript. “1. Need a drum beat.” Yes. That was a good starting point. She needed a beat, a foundation to work from. She reached out a hoof towards the keyboard. The computer screen was filled with an dense, empty grid, like some hardcore variation of Battleships with tiny, inscrutable buttons sprinkled like confetti around the edges of the screen. There were buttons with letters, buttons containing pictures of smaller buttons that also had letters, buttons with letters - and sometimes even little squiggly arrows - next to them.... Her hoof paused, hovering a millimeter above the keys, wavered towards the mouse, and then returned to the keyboard again. She glanced over at the black box and its avalanche of dials and sliders. Her hoof retracted and moved up to stroke her chin. “Hmm.” She stared at the screen. The screen flickered back at her. The room was quiet save for the gentle hum of various cooling fans. “...Hmmmm.” The screen remained stubbornly blank. She narrowed her eyes. Tentatively, she reached out a hoof towards the mouse and slowly pushed the cursor around. ‘Samples’. Lyra had mentioned those. She moved her cursor over the menu and, grimacing like she was pulling the pin on a live grenade, clicked. There were several … somethings to click through. She just pressed enter until they all went away, leaving a series of dots on the screen at regular intervals. She stared at the dots. The dots flickered back at her. DrumLoop_Basic1.mp3. She pressed play. Unh tss unh tss unh tss unh tss unh tss Mechanical drum beats popped out of her newly connected speaker system at precisely 120 beats per minute. Biting her tongue in concentration she reached out again, shakily grasped the mouse, and, swallowing nervously, clicked stop. It stopped. There. Nothing to it! She took a deep breath and grinned to herself. It wasn’t that hard at all. She pencilled in a faint tick next to the first and only item on her list. The drum beat was basically covered; she could come back and polish it up … later. She saved the file - which she knew perfectly well how to do, thank you Lyra - and turned her attention back towards the list. She picked up the pencil again, twiddling the end round in her mouth for a moment before continuing. “2. Must be catchy.” She double underlined that one, tapping the pencil against the paper a few times. “3.” She looked around the room. The curtains weren’t straight. It was a little too warm, really. Maybe she should have turned the thermostat down. “3.” She got up, crossed the room and neatened the curtains. When she was happy, she sat down again. She traced over the ‘3’ a few times before giving an imperceptible shrug and writing- “3. Must be really good.” She stared at that one for a moment, chewing her bottom lip, before crossing out the ‘really’. Her eyes drifted, seemingly of their own accord, over to the clock. Twenty to two. She let the pencil drop to the table and pushed herself off the chair. It was basically lunch time and she knew as well as anypony that you couldn’t work on an empty stomach. She’d grab a bite to eat, settle her stomach and get the creative juices flowing. She trotted quickly into the kitchen leaving the computer, and its solitary drum line, to its own devices. It was quarter past three by the time she had finished the washing up. She dried off her hooves with a now damp floral tea towel, slinging it over the radiator as she meandered back into her ‘studio’ and collapsed into her chair. The screen still showed a single line of blue dots. The paper was still blank, bar her list. The mixing thingy remained thoroughly inscrutable. Well, she’d just had a nice meal and that always made her a little sleepy. She nodded to herself. Yes, she hadn’t planned this terribly well. She’d have to take a little power nap and then throw herself, rejuvenated, into the process of making art. Yawning, she pulled herself off the chair again. The alarm went off at quarter past six and five minutes later Octavia was meandering her way out of bed. She’d had one or two pretty good ideas as she was dropping off to sleep and was looking forw- wait. She glanced up at the living room clock. Almost seven o’ clock. She’d completely forgot! It was an hour later by the time the latest episode of The Archers had run its course. By quarter past eight she had paired up all her loose socks, by twenty to nine she’d re-alphabetised her LP collection, and by nine fifteen the inside of the oven was sparkling clean. Now the birds were singing their way through their evening chorus and she was once again slouching in front of that blasted screen and the stupid sheet of blank paper, chewing her way through the remains of the end of her pencil. She was reaching the end of the Beethoven piano sonata to which she’d been listening. Now there was a pony who knew how to make something popular. She’d been aiming to get herself thinking a little more analytically, maybe borrow a few tips from the great stallion himself to fine tune her own efforts. Progress had been plentiful. “4. Piano sounds nice.” Also, the drums now went tss unh tss unh rather than unh tss unh tss. That had been a bit of a breakthrough, honestly. Her head rested blearily on her forehooves, half an eye staring glassily at that stupid screen with its stupid dots. Stupid program; it was just a bunch of lines and dots. How on earth was she meant to make music with silly little coloured lines and dots. Fisher-Price My First Music was what it was. Her gaze came to rest on a cut-glass decanter - a present from a foreign orchestra she’d played for - which sat, tucked away, on a small oak table in the corner of the room. She cocked her head to one side. Maybe she just needed to let go a little. Loosen up just a smidge. Let the old imagination out of its cage, so to speak. Besides, the glasses were right there and just yesterday she’d bought a bunch of fresh lemons. She even had the tonic bottles in her hoof now, had somehow been magically teleported over to the decanter, and somehow the stopper for the decanter had been mysteriously removed so frankly it would be silly not to have at least one. Maybe two. ~~~ “Public Service Announcment from the ofice of Canterlot Council: Classical sucks. You also suck. Both these things suck. :( Thanks for you attention.” Lyra regarded the notice in the way one might regard one of those nice gentlecolts with the sandwich boards that helpfully inform people that the end is nigh: with a fair degree of skepticism. She was pretty sure that the sign, clumsily but enthusiastically sellotaped to Octavia’s front door as it was, was not a real Council Directive. On the one hoof, she had to admit she could kinda see where the poster might be coming from, but the fact it was written in blue crayon on cardboard repurposed from a box of Hay Flakes, contained obvious spelling mistakes, and had a rather detailed unhappy face in it were probably signs it wasn’t real. That and the footnote of ‘seriously though, what the hay are you even listening to?’. She knocked again as she re-read it. The door creaked open an inch or two until a thin strip of darkness was visible, broken only by a single, furtive eye. It looked at her and frowned. “What? Why are you here? You said you’d come back tomorrow.” “It’s been three days ‘Tavi. I haven’t seen you for. Three. Days.” The eye narrowed in confusion. “Three...?” “I knocked. Repeatedly. I was on the verge of calling the police to begin the hunt for your corpse.” She leaned forwards towards the shadowed figure and peered at the bloodshot eye. “When was the last time you slept?” The eye stared wildly. “No time!” A hoof shot out from the darkness and in a flash had wrapped round her neck, dragged her through the doorway, and frogmarched her into the desk chair Lyra now found herself in. She almost recognised the room. It reminded her of Octavia’s study if a crazy person had coated the floor in manuscript paper and empty tumblers of - she sniffed - gin and ton-… well, mainly just gin. She also almost recognised the pony wading through the sea of paper. It reminded her of Octavia if Octavia had taken to living in a hedge recently. “Okay, forget sleeping. When was the last time you ate?” She sniffed again. “Or shower-” With the subtle violence of a ringmaster cracking a whip, a hoof was suddenly quivering an inch from her muzzle, smelling faintly of gin, sweat, and desperation. Trying not to make any sudden moves or loud noises, Lyra ran her eyes up the hoof until she reached the shaking, distant eyes of her friend as she swayed drunkenly on the spot. She spoke with the husky voice of autumn leaves falling in the breeze. “Ssshhhhhh … it is done.” Slowly, and with reverential care, Octavia’s free hoof pressed a single key on her keyboard as she closed her eyes in ecstasy. When you got right down to it, the piece was quite simple, containing only three components: a classic, if somewhat simplistic, eighties drumline, an amount of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata that took the definition of ‘sample’ and threw it out the window, and the sound of one, possibly two, crying foals. This was delivered at roughly the volume of a jet aircraft coming in to land between Lyra’s ears. It took all … ALL … of Lyra’s limited willpower to keep a straight face as she desperately partitioned off a part of her brain to deal with the trauma later while reducing the outward signs of physical distress to a few spasming facial muscles and shaking limbs. As her vision started to blur, she managed to reach out, wrap a hoof around the speaker cable as it trailed across the floor, and pull. Hard. Silence. Massaging her temples and biting her lip, she looked at the pony responsible. She hadn’t moved since the sound had begun; her head was down, her eyes were closed, her hooves were hanging loosely in the air like a conductor waiting to lead in the orchestra. Lyra could barely tell she was breathing. “Tavi, I-” “Oh Celestia, it’s abysmal!” Looking down at her torso, Lyra found Octavia had crossed the space between them with surprising speed and was now kneeling on the floor with her forehooves wrapped around Lyra’s chest, wailing like a banshee and pounding her hoof on the chair arm. “Tavi, you-” “You’re right. I’m a hack. I’m a talentless waste of space. I should just cut my cello into kindling and cast myself into the sea. Call the orchestra, Lyra. Tell them I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting them down. I’m sorry for letting my family down. And you, dear, sweet Lyra, I’ve let you down as we-” “Tavi, you haven-” “What would Mozart think? What would Beethoven think? They'd laugh, Lyra. Laugh, I say!” “I don’t think-” Octavia stared up desperately at the ceiling, forehooves clasped as if in prayer. “I’m sorry. Forgive me! FORGIVE ME!” She buried her chest in Lyra’s chest again. The wailing intensified. Lyra sighed. She’d been here before. Octavia had locked herself in her house for a week because she’d been unable to play a section from Berlioz in time with everypony else. Lyra had spent several hours trying to convince her that it was just a minor misprint in her copy of her part, watching her increasingly blunt explanations fall on increasingly melodramatic deaf ears. Eventually, she had been forced to come up with a solution. “All right. Lyra Emergency Three-Step Recovery Plan time.” Octavia pulled up short, twisting her panicked eyes upwards to look into Lyra’s face. “Woah, wait, come on now, be reasonab-" smack. “Step 1.” “Ow, that reall-glrk.” “Step 2.” The hoof that had just recently slapped her in the face now pulled her into a headlock as it dragged her through into her bathroom, pushed her through the pink shower curtain, and punched the cold water tap. Lyra leaned up against the sink, watching as the silhouette behind the shower curtain performed a very accurate and enthusiastic interpretation of the scene where Dorothy melts the Wicked Witch of the West. “So, clearly leaving you alone with this was a bad call on my part and, for that, I apologise. I won’t make that mistake again. This time I’m getting you some proper guidance so that you won’t create a … ‘collection of sounds’ that un-makes the fabric of reality. Again.” There was a violent, guttural hissing sound from the other side of the curtain. “You want Step 3?” There was a damp whimpering noise. Lyra crossed her hooves in front of her chest and allowed the merest hint of smile to cross her face; it wasn’t often she got to play at being the practical one. “Darn right you don't.”
LentoThe lights were low, the dimmer meticulously aligned with the yellowing sticky label she’d used to mark the brightness that was just right. The kettle had been standing for a minute or two, teabag waiting patiently in an old mug proudly advertising the Grand Equestrian Orchestra. You know, back when they were still called that. The rattly old windows had been dragged shut, the curtains pulled, and the sofa dragged laboriously across the thick, warm carpeting to the perfect spot that she had painstakingly found. The record was lovingly drawn from its cardboard sheath and placed, with practiced reverence, on the turntable. The stylus was lowered, the motor powered, and a few dials turned. Her mug of tea steamed gently on the low wooden table as she took a moment to plump the cushions under her neck and flick a few wayward strands of hair out of her face. She closed her eyes, letting the aroma of lemongrass condense into a pleasant cloud around her head as the first silky notes of Brahms’ Waltz in A Flat Major flowed into the room. The sofa sighed with her as she leant back, allowing the stress of the day to be swept away by the dance. Her ear flicked. Her eyebrows furrowed as she fidgeted on the cushions. She took a gentle sip of her tea, rolling the flavour around on her tongue as she tried to block it out. Tried not to feel the vibration destroy the flow of the gramophone stylus, tried not to notice the insidious off-tempo thumpingoverpowering the nuanced piano, tried not to have her evening ruined by the moronic, tasteless, soulless...noise that- Right. That was it. She slammed her mug down on the table and stamped across the room, snatching up a broom from its designated corner. “Keep it down already!” She started furiously adding a set of new dents and scratches to her battered ceiling. “If I wanted to listen to that trash I would have dropped out of school and taken a job selling glow sticks on the streets to fuel my drug habit!” A final few shots from the broom handle and she sat back down again, fishing a few flakes of plaster out of her tea. The bass got louder. ~~~ All The Mares In The House Groove To Mozart - A thesis on the nature of subjectivity in art versus the concepts of merit and quality - Sanctae ~~~ The cello, as some proportion of music lovers would presumably tell you, is the most beautiful instrument in all the orchestra. Possessing a deep, soothing voice, smooth tone, and rich timbre, it is often held to be the most expressive, the most emotional of them all; a piece of art unto itself. And without fail, after the last, soulful note has rang out around the concert hall, and the last peal of teary applause has died into silence, the beauty and the artistry suddenly deflate like cheap bubble wrap and there you are. It’s almost ten pm, it’s raining, and you have a four foot wooden box you need to drag home without a single dent or scratch, otherwise it’s several hundred bits down the drain. This must be why people bother to play the flute, she thought. Or chose to play something so monumentally awkward that moving it magically becomes somepony else’s problem. Lyra. “What, Tavi?” “Hmm?” “You just keep staring at my cutie mark and grinding your teeth. It’s kinda worrying, actually.” “Mm, oh, it’s nothing. Forget it.” She stopped walking, bouncing the heavy cello case up her shoulders a little, almost overbalancing down the hill, giving a slightly different muscle group some grief and lulling the other ones into a false sense of security. Home was still a good half an hour away. “I know what’s gotten under your coat. It’s that pony upstairs again...how’d you put it?” Lyra put on her best ‘tea-and-crumpets-on-the-lawn’ voice. “‘That vapid, boorish troglodyte and his squawking, atonal caterwauling’ and then a bunch of other words I had to look up when I got home.” Octavia said nothing, resuming her slow walk down the hill. A minty green elbow nudged her in the ribs. “Ah, c’mon Tavi. I know I said that I would strangle you if you didn’t shut up about it, but that was then. This is now, and I want to be here for you in your time of artistic intolerance.” “IT’S NOT INTOL-...It’s not intolerance, Lyra,” she said, adopting a tone usually reserved for rather trying foals and adding just the slightest undercurrent of impending physical violence. “It’s the simple fact that it is not art in the first place. It’s the result of a violent altercation between a microphone, a pony, and a bag full of angry cats from which no party emerged victorious.” “Well, I went to the last open booth night at SoundBite and I’d say that was pretty victorious!” “That’s not funny, Lyra, and stop waving your hooves around. You’re embarrassing the both of us.” Lyra dropped daintily back onto all fours, nose imperiously in the air, and trotted back to Octavia’s side; the very picture of poise and grace save for the manic grin. “Look at it this way. You blast one kind of music, he, she, or it blasts anoth-” “I do not ‘blast’ Beethoven. I do not ‘crank’ Mozart. I play them as they were meant- don’t give me that look” “Pfffhahaa, oh Tavi. Could you just say ‘crank’ again? Please? I want the sound engraved in my memory.” Her friend skipped nimbly out of reach of the right hook, laughing like a hyena. “I really don’t know what I did for fun before I met you.” “Probably spent hours watching the spin cycle on the washing machine...” “Ah, there ya go. Them's fightin’ words.” Lyra again matched pace with her slow plod, dialing the grin back to a friendly smile. “Look, all I’m saying is that maybe you could live and let live a little, hmm? It makes people happy and that’s what’s really important, love and peace and all that hippy nonsense.” “But it makes me unhappy.” Suddenly, a hoof grabbed her cheek, twisting her head to look into a pair of deeply concerned eyes; the smile wiped away. “And that’s important to me, Tavi, as a friend and as a fellow patron of the musical arts.” The earnest stare was piercing, the deep golden eyes hypnotizing. “But I think you need to consider that Drum ‘n’ Bass kicks flank and Mozart would probably agree.” “Aaugh!” She knocked the hoof aside and stomped down the road. They were, she realised, just past Lyra's place. “Tavi.” She stopped and turned, Lyra having paused by her front gate a little ways behind her. “Look, there’s a specials night at SoundBite that is the closest thing I can think of to something you might be physically capable of enjoy- of not hating. Come out tomorrow, and I’ll show you that it isn’t really as bad as you think. ‘Sides, we haven’t had a night out in ages, it’ll do the both of us some good.” Octavia stared blankly back at her friend, into the completely put-on expression of wide-eyed despair and desperation, and considered. Sometimes the important decisions in a pony’s life are easy to spot. “I’ll cut the green wire”, “I’ll just double-check the safety net”, “I think I’ll wait ‘til I’m sober before I tender my resignation”. Sometimes, however... “Hmph...okay, okay, don’t break out the puppy eyes. Anyway, I don’t think I could stand another night in, alone with that cacophony, so why not spend a night out with that cacophony and a good fr-...well, you, at any rate...” “Yes! Awesome! I’ll send you th-” “...On one condition,” she shot over her shoulder. “If I hate it, drinks are on you.” Lyra snapped to attention, throwing a curt salute, before turning her attention to the two stallions pulling the cart containing her massive harp. Octavia could just hear the exchange as she walked away. “That’s great lads, I don’t suppose you could just help me get it inside could you? And mind the doorframe, this only works from a very specific angle.” ~~~ The sign had been neon red and ‘witty’, a headphone-wearing piranha biting, then un-biting, the second half of the name. Inside was dark and heavy, everything bathed in a flat, pink-red glow. They’d gotten their hooves stamped at the door and bought their first G&Ts (or vodka-cokes in Lyra’s case) at the bar, ignoring the unsteady advances of a particularly quick-off-the-mark colt. Now they were seated in the corner, Octavia anxiously scuffing her hooves along the scratched wooden tabletop, Lyra talking nineteen to the dozen about the ‘artists’ for the ‘SoundBite Nu Culture Nite’. The stage was small; really just an area with no tables, a few more power outlets, and slightly better lighting. A mauve pony with a rather poofy mane was fussing over a mixing desk to one side, the other side remained curiously empty save for a lonely microphone stand. Her eyes kept roving over the stage as she drank, the microphone, the DJ’s three-daisy cutie mark, and the banners and posters in the back advertising upcoming events. “So, that’s why it’s called ‘Nu Classical'. Well, it’s why it should be called that even if nopony does yet, and...you...weren’t listening anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” “Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry, Ly.” “Hey, don’t sweat it. It’s the music that matters anyway, not the history, really.” “...You actually know a lot about this, don’t you?” “Yeah, it’s a bit of a hobby, y’know. I just picked the history up as I went along- oh, here we go!” A beige earth pony with a deep red mane had taken up the other side of the stage, exchanging a few friendly words with the other pony before stepping up to the microphone. “Hey there SoundBite!” Lyra enthusiastically cheered along with the rest of the bar, kicking Octavia under the table until she got a half-hearted ‘Woo’. “We’ll be starting up in a minute or two, so you just stay right where you are for Crystal Rose, that's me, and DJ Sunny Delight!” She smiled, winking to the small crowd, and turned to start unpacking her instrument from its rather oddly shaped case. “DJ Sunny Delight?” “Yeah, she’s been playing a few gigs around town recently...and...what’s wrong?” “What is that?” “...That’s a cello, Tavi. They’re a member of the stringed section in an orchestra. Maybe you’ve heard of them? ” “...What. Is. That.” “A. Cello. Tavi. If you want I can draw you a diagram. It would just be the word ‘CELLO’ written on a barmat next to a bad drawing of your face, but I’m thinking we need to go back to basics here.” “Lyra.” “...Yes, Octavia.” “That...is a stick...with some strings and....oh sweet Celestia, is it connected...is that an electric amplifier?” “Yes, Tavi. Yes it is. Have you really never seen an elec- where are you going?” “To the bar.” “But you haven’t finished your...uh, okay wow, Tavi, that’s actually a little impressive. Wanna get me something while you’re up?” “Drinks are already on you, Lute-butt” “Nuts.” ~~~ She was at the bar when the music started. Oh, it got her hopes up. For one, glorious, fleeting instant she thought she might be able to stand it. ‘Crystal Rose’ wasn’t the best, by any means, but there was a little spark of something in her playing that, if nurtured, could maybe take her places. The instrument - she shuddered as she necked another G&T - the instrument was...unique, certainly...she found it helped if she didn’t think of it as a cello in all but the most technical sense. But the backing...ugh...the screeching wail and thick drumbeat were just too much. They drowned everything out. Any emotional depth that might have been coming through from the cello was a last, desperate hoof poking above the waves, struggling for air as it slipped beneath the foaming sea of - she gave Lyra’s money to the barcolt, knocking back a G&T but saving the other two - sea of...of...something something drowning metaphor...the DJ sucked, that was what mattered. DJ Sunny Depfffhehehe, ah that name was just...ahem, anyway, DJ Sunny Delight, more like DJ complete lack of subtlety. She didn’t blame the ‘cellist’, the cellist was...well she was a cellist. Clearly the issue here was that turntable...thing. Lyra didn’t seem to care, she noted, sipping delicately at her G&T, her friend was beside her at the bar, jumping around and shouting things at Octavia from time to time. She had no idea what- she took another si- Oh, the glass was empty. She ordered another. She had no idea...er....um...something. Music, probably. The music wasn’t very good. It was still playing, the music...she thought...actually hard to tell. Sounded like...distant. Woops, almost lost the glass...where’s the table gone? Hi, Lyra. Didn’t get a word of what Lyra just said but it’s probably funny. Something about a lute not being a harp. She knew that. She knew musics. She liked playing the cello. Better tell Lyra that, she likes music too. The music here isn’t too bad. Catchy. Makes you move your- Oh it’s really bright. Ouch, who, oh, door frame, how silly. Lyra’s laughing too. It’s funny. Funny and cold. Cold mainly. Pfffhahaha Lamppost dancing with Ly- wait...other way rouuhahahaaa. Wooooo, Lyra! Weren’t they at a bar? Something about cellos. She loved playing cello. Lyra lives here. Bye bye Lyra. Like music, hehee, can’t sing straight. Just not practiced...huh, this is her house...but Lyra lives miiiiles away...she must be the fastestest pony in...door keys. OOF, ouch, who left shoes here? Stupid place. Stupid sh The first, hard rays of morning slotted between her loosely pulled curtains, hitting her neatly across the face like they had some personal grudge to settle. Right now, as she lay there with the thought dragging itself through her head by its fingernails, that was the only reasonable explanation for the world of misery in which she found herself. Blinking hurt. Breathing hurt. Her mouth was full of rust and her face felt like it was going to explode. She lolled her head to the side, looking over at- aawww, no...Out of the corner of her eye she saw a rounded shape underneath the duvet. She would have sighed if she had the strength, she would have closed her eyes if her eyelids weren’t made of razor-blades, and she would have massaged her forehead if her hooves weren’t made of lead. As it was she just stared at the ceiling. It was always so embarrassing in the mornings, that’s why she’d sworn she wouldn’t drink like that anymore. Not after last time. Especially after last time. Lyra still had the pictures. She shuddered as she lay there, painfully squinting against the sun. She withstood it for almost a minute before the piercing headache from getting up started to seem more attractive than the piercing headache from the sunlight. Besides, better to get this over and done with now. She shakily clambered out of bed, threw back the covers, heaving her cello off the bed and back onto its stand in the corner, fishing her bow out from under the bed to join it. The re-tuning was going to be a bitch.
LargoThe morning had … ugh … Celestia … the mid-to-late afternoon had dragged. She had dragged back the covers as she fell out of bed. She had dragged herself through a painful shower, dragging a comb through her mane when she was done. She had dragged herself into the kitchen to drag both a spoon through her morning cornflakes and her eyes across the morning paper. She had dragged her jaw mechanically up and down, swallowing from time to time, tasting nothing but dry cardboard. Each breath dragged through her throat like she’d swallowed a motorbike engine as the minute hand slowly dragged its way round the face of her treble clef kitchen clock. After all but throwing the dishes into the sink, she had dragged herself back to her bedroom and dragged her cello onto her back, preparing to drag herself up the hill to morning practice. She wondered how Lyra was doing. She hoped it was worse. She had half a mind to put a brick through Lyra’s window on the way past. Maybe get a specially commissioned brick with ‘Dear Lyra. You have the worst ideas of anypony I have ever met. Yours sincerely, Octavia” engraved on it. Well, maybe not ‘sincerely’, that was rather too formal for a brick. Urgh, thinking hurt. Hmm. ‘Yours, uurrgh’? Maybe ‘yours, my mouth tastes like death’ or ‘Yours, I hate how easily you can shrug off hangovers’. ‘Yours, I can’t feel my extremities’. Blast it all. She felt abysmal. A low, ghostly groan echoed through her ceiling, the sound of something dying or at least in mortal agony. For a moment she felt a grudging sympathy, it seeming that she and the pony above her were apparently not so different. It was strange, actually. It was a kind of kinship in a way; an unspoken connection through shared, awful experience as, despite their disparate tastes, they both found themselves in a hell of their own design. She felt almost- The groaning, moaning death rattle - which Octavia had been thinking had been going on for a while - dropped forty octaves and picked up a dull thumping crunch every second along with a seismic, offbeat thud. She couldn’t scream; just mechanically her throat would barely let her get beyond a gravelly, primal growl, but boy did she think a scream. She slammed the door behind her and staggered up the stairs, slotting a passive-aggressive note - Your music is bad and you should feel bad, or words to that general effect - under the door. Then she staggered her way down again and lurched, blinking, into the sun. It still bore a grudge. She squinted painfully as she trudged through the suburbs and up the hill towards the city centre. It was a lovely day. The sky was clear, the air was clear and warm, and the streets and gardens shone in the late afternoon light. Just for once she sort of wished it wasn’t. Her mood struggled to break-even as she plodded into town, sweat slowly gluing the cello case to her back. She was walking slowly, being overtaken by groups of teenagers off into town to presumably throw away their educations in an orgy of hedonism or whatever it was that teenagers did on a Saturday afternoon. Every single time it was the same thing. She could put up with how they barged past her, mumbling something that could be generously interpreted as an apology. She could even put up with the preponderance of hoodies and the wave of that awful bodyspray they all seemed to use. What set her teeth on edge was the faint whispering just at the edge of her hearing; Tck tss tck tss tck tss tcktck tss, with some high-pitched whining noise barely audible in the background. Every. Time. She didn’t even want to think how loud that must actually be, but must it always be the same? She just wanted to grab of them by the shoulders and shake some taste into them. Out of all the genres that one could possibly like, the one sweeping the blasted country was the one that had maybe three different songs that were just endlessly iterated through a computer. Where was the soul? Where was the love and effort? She was nearly at the city centre. She could tell from all the billboards that were starting to sprout up; giant pictures of some unicorn’s grinning face with a dangerous amount of lasers reflected in her oversized shades. She turned a corner, another board of a different- oh, wait, different image for the same ad campaign; a single shattered glowstick and the same pair of sunglasses, images half visible in the spilled fluorescent liquid. As she read the poster something niggled at the back of her head but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on what it was. Something familiar in the text. Oh well. Not like she cared anyway. She’d just have to try and be the better mare; ‘love and tolerate’ as Lyra would put it. She still had her beloved art and, no matter how much mass produced trash the public mindlessly consumed, nothing was going to take that away from her. ~~~ “What do you mean, cancelled!” She was aware that she was standing up when everypony else was sitting down - except for Lyra. She was aware that she was shouting when everypony else was staring at her in mute confusion - except for Lyra. She was aware that she was behaving in an utterly undignified manner when everypony else was staying calm - except for Lyra. She didn’t care. The conductor did. And the other cellists, whose music stands had clattered, like dominos, to the floor when she had leapt to her feet, probably cared too. “Well, I said our booking has been re-evaluated. Ms Scratch’s tour only has one block of available dates.” “Well why don’t we go to the Canterlot Gallery, tear out all the canvas, and spend the next month sewing a carpet so she doesn’t have to get her hooves dirty when she descends from her gooolden chariot to grace us with her butchering of the oldest and most noble art by debasing both it and our ears with-” she would have kept going had she not run out of air. Also Lyra’s applause had made her lose her train of thought. Lute-butt was - well, the best was to describe it was probably ‘lounging’ - over at the other side of the orchestra, behind the violas, resting an elbow on the top of her golden pedal harp. She had the gentle smile of somepony who was enjoying a good movie or stage show and, for the last few seconds, had begun softly shouting ‘encore’ and clapping. Octavia looked around the stage as she got her breath back. They’d been practising in an old theatre for the past few weeks - and, more specifically, the last hour and half - while their normal rehearsal venue was being refurbished. The air had the tang of that musty theatre smell and the lighting was rather harsh, but it was a good size stage with good acoustics. Octavia rather liked the faded charm of the place. At least, when she wasn't busy being royally ticked off. “I know you may not like it, but the fact is that the Arena barely breaks even on our performances as it is. It’s just a postponement. It’s not the end of the world, now please sit down.” “Yeah, sit down Tavi, the bass players are sick of staring at your butt. Well, almost all of them, eh Top Fret? I see ya checkin’.” Lyra made a rather inappropriate clicking sound with her tongue that carried quite clearly across the orchestra. “Miss Heartstrings, you aren’t helping.” “This is ridiculous. We’ve been preparing for this for months. We’ve had the booking for months.” “Miss Clef, the manager of Canterlot Arena is a personal friend of mine and he asked me a personal favour-” “So if it had been the ... the … the Canterlot Under 6’s Recorder Club in their world debut then you’d have been fine with it too?” “Some of those kids are pretty talented, Tavi. If they started doing proper auditions rather than letting anypony join then they’d be hitting the big times. I mean, there’s this one filly who always stands at the front and she just … can’t ... what? Yeah, the CUSRC are a thing and I went to see them by accident this one time. You wanna make somethin’ of it?” The echoes faded into the dusty seats and faded backdrops as Lyra shadow-boxed in Octavia’s general direction “Ahem, I … er, what was, oh right. I don’t see how that’s a fair comparison Ms Clef. Ms Scratch is a world famous artist who is coming to Canterlot as part of her tour.” “They have about the same amount of musical talent-” “Well, if they’d just ditch that one filly...” “-and I simply cannot abide that we are moving aside our program of beautiful art-” “The Sibelius is just boring as sin, if you ask-” “-in favour of some audiovisual apocalypse from Vinyl Scratch?” “You got that off the posters, Tavi.” “Shut up, Lyra!” “Aye aye, ma’am.” “Ms Clef?” “Yes, Mr Baton?” “Sit.” She picked up her music stand, disentangling all the metal pointy bits from her neighbours, and sat back down on the cheap plastic chair, pouting as she did so. “I know we’ve been working very hard for this concert but it’s only a couple of weeks. As we are clearly all a little stressed right now-” Octavia deliberately avoided eye-contact. “-we can come back next session and try some new pieces, but for now I think we should call it a day.” There was a collective sigh and a rustling of sheet music. There was also a loud woop, the sound of somepony yelling “School’s out for summer, baby! Woooo!”, and the thumpity-thump of hooves galloping up the aisle, into the darkness, and out of the door. Octavia had completed the metal origami puzzle of closing up her music stand and was hefting her cello back into its case when the door creaked open and a familiar voice echoed distantly from above the dim rows of seats. “So, yeah, I’m gonna need somepony to give me a hand with the harp.” ~~~ She hadn’t been able to face dragging her cello back already, instead choosing to relax at a corner cafe she was rather fond of. Green tea, scones and a slice of carrot cake had done wonders for her, ‘revitalising herbal energy (tm)’ flooding her body as she watched the sun slowly set. By the time she had finished her meal and the odd conversation with some fellow musicians who came past, it was starting to get dark, and her mood had swung from unfocused, grumbling anger, to very targeted, grumbling anger. There was a problem in Canterlot and she was going to fix it. The more she thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. These were ponies who just, lit-er-al-ly, did not know what they were missing. They couldn’t have heard anything better than that manufactured nonsense and so they simply didn’t know any better. Well, tonight, Octavia was gonna change their tune, literally. Heh, she’d spent most of a pot of tea working on that one. And so it was that she walked the darkened streets of the Bits Of Town That Lyra Likes, cello on her back, looking for somewhere to spread her own personal gospel. Octavia was not ashamed to admit - in fact she was rather proud to admit - that she didn’t really know her way around Canterlot’s … less laudable areas. Still, she was a grown mare, she knew a bar when she saw one. Speaking of... The Pink Apple Club - Entendres now on buy one get one free! - New acts always welcome on amateur night! (Yeah, that’s tonight.) She sighed, staring at the pink neon sign and various, crude cardboard supplements beneath. This looked like the best she was going to get at short notice. Yes, it didn’t exactly have the air of a place that she actually wanted to go to … but that was sort of the point. It briefly crossed her mind to call Lyra to get some support but, as the drunken slew of last night’s half-memories glugged past her eyes, that idea rapidly lost its appeal. The cello case drew a few glances as she walked inside and eased her way through to the bar, resting it against counter and cricking her shoulders.The club was dimly lit; what light there was was dirty pink and diffuse. A small stage sat front and centre, backed by a grotty red curtain and flanked by a basic DJ booth. It turned out that an Entendre was a kind of drink; bourbon, some kind of fruit brandy, and so much sugar that she could feel her teeth rotting. She eyed the remaining one, and the barcolt, warily. “So, um, sir, I couldn’t help but notice the sign outside your establishment.” He gave her a quizzical look, his eyes flicking between her face and her cello like an indecisive bee caught between an unexpectedly upper-class gray lily and a wooden, four-stringed daffodil. “I would like to try my hoof as it were,” she tapped the cello case almost apologetically, there was never any harm in being a little submissive with such an unusual request. “If that wouldn’t be a problem?” The barcolt shrugged, “Not my cup o’ tea, miss, a little unorthodox. But eh, it’s why we have amateur night. Spices things up a little.” He nodded over at a door at the back of the bar. “S’just through there. Whenever y’ready. Been a quiet night so far.” She eyed up the door, procrastinating over her free drink. It looked dark, and mysterious; almost threatening in the dim pink light but she wasn’t going to back out now. The door gave her the creeps as well. She downed the second drink, trying not to taste it, and lugged herself and the cello through the door. The scent of tacky rose perfume hit her like half a brick in a sock as she stepped into the dim pink … well, she wasn’t quite sure there was word in Equestrian that quite captured the bizarre blend of dressing room, cellar, and alcove-under-the-stairs that the tiny room possessed. Two young mares, slouching by the grimy vanity stand, broke off from their conversation as the door clicked shut behind her. As she choked on the cloying air and wiped her burning eyes, they swept her up, flanking her and gently guiding her towards the scruffy chair by the mirror. “Hi there, luv. I’m Candy and this is Bunny. You done this before, darlin’?” They were obviously professionals, she thought. They were already going to work on giving her basic makeup like it was taking no conscious thought whatsoever. She tried to speak without moving her face too much as they went to work with a liner pencil. “Um, yes, I’m actually pretty good. Not much of a professional though.” She didn’t want to be too intimidating, best to go in low and surprise them. “Well, if we expected you to be a pro then it wouldn’t be amateur night, would it, silly!” Candy … or possibly Bunny, she’d already forgotten, gave her a big, easy smile. “You have a costume?” “Um … no, I don’t have one.” “No costume. Well, that’s alright luv, I’m sure we can find you something. We don’t have much though at the moment as our box hasn’t arrived yet. We usually only get ponies doin’ it spur-of-the-moment, like, a little later of a night. Ah, here we go.” Whichever pony wasn’t that one - their cutie marks were surprisingly unhelpful for telling them apart - had just finished digging around in a box in the corner, and was coming back with... The next minute or so was a complete blank; her mind had spat out its metaphorical coffee all over the metaphorical kitchen table and by the time it had gotten a tea towel, cleaned everything off, and come back to see what it had missed, she was standing in front of a mirror in a black tutu, stockings, elbow gloves, and sporting a perfectly ridiculous tiara. Something was being said about it being an ironic goth look. They were quite possibly correct. Who knew. Upon hearing something about corsets, her mind hit enough panic buttons to get her to do something. “It’s lovely. This will be great.” In retrospect, not quite the opinion she had been aiming to express, but still it probably wouldn’t get any worse and if her dignity must be the martyr to light the way for the musical masses then so be it. They were talking at her again as she picked up her cello. “What music do you usually work to? We don’t have an amazin’ selection but we probably got some backing that will work for you.” Well, this was it; it was time to test the water. “Well, I thought I’d try some classical, shake things up a bit. I won’t need any accompaniment so you don’t have to worry about that.” She watched as Bun- … one of the mares’ eyes narrowed in temporary confusion, the mental dots being quite visibly joined as they took in the cello case. “O- Oh … okay. Wow, that’s .. .exotic. I don’t think we’ve ever had that before.” Octavia quietly congratulated herself; she was one step ahead of the game. The two mares were gently ushering her through another battered door and towards the back of the curtain. “No, I didn’t think so. That was why I decided to try it out.” Octavia could feel the bald velvet of the curtain on her back. “Well, just keep it interesting and emphasise the exotic stuff and you’ll be fine. Best of luck!” “Well, Khachaturian’s concerto in E minor is pretty … exotic...” She had been pushed through the curtains. The stage was hers. The lights were warm and there was a general muttering and a few indistinct catcalls and heckles from one particularly rowdy corner of the room. The tutu was more annoying than anything she could possibly have dreamt of and the stupid gloves were making it hard to hold the bow properly. Still, apart from that, really it wasn’t so different from any other concert. The first notes of Khachaturian’s E minor were already singing around the establishment as looked at out around the crowd. They were confused, of course they were. She’d expected as much, taking the heckles well in stride. It should only take a moment or two and then they would see what they had been missing all these years. Some of the heckles were a little confusing though. She had plenty of time to try and work out what some of the less obvious hoof gestures meant; she could play this piece in her sleep. A sharp psst came from over her shoulder and she twisted slightly as a pink hoof emerged from behind the curtain, tapped her on the shoulder, and proceeded to make small circles in the air. She blinked, continuing to play. Spin? Turn? She should turn round? What? Well … okay. The cello spike provided a natural pivot point and she could just about manage to play while slowly moving. Slowly, sedately, as if in some bizarre waltz or romantic slow dance, she began to turn, a look of confusion plastered over her face as the audience tittered and whistled. As faced the curtain - she could have sworn she heard laughter from behind it - the mental gears began to turn along with her and the cello. As she faced front again, she stopped playing and held up a hoof as the last note died. The bar fell utterly silent. The air was electric, charged with the potential of twenty odd ponies all holding a collective breath of anticipation. The piercing gazes burned her more than the spotlight as she slowly inched a free hoof along her back, tracing the contour of her spine. She could she the eyes that worshipped the progress of that dawdling hoof until it teased onto its destination, see the grinning faces hungrily waiting for the inevitable. There was a gasp from around the room as she moved only minutely, a tiny flick of a hooftip to release a simple clasp, and she felt the warm air caress her. Her familiar bowtie fluttered to the ground at her hooves. She looked down at it, then back up at the audience as somepony blasted a piercingly shrill wolf-whistle at her. She sighed. “This is a strip club, isn’t it?” ~~~ “It was a strip club, Lyra. A strip club! Why do we even have those?” The sky was black,the wooden bench was cold, and the grass beneath was damp. The park lights were faint and washed the colour out of everything. She was curled up on one side, gesturing angrily a hoof, Lyra was sitting upright at the other - as was her way - making sympathetic noises. The cello case and cello were propped up to one side. Lyra had been nice enough to go and pick the case up to save Octavia further embarrassment after the latter had fled the club. “I mean, seriously Lyra. You’re naked right now!” Lyra threw her hooves across herself and tucked her knees up,. “Ah! It’s true. Don’t look at me, don’t look at me!” “And then they come try and hoist me off stage like a sack of potatoes, and immediately start blaring out some of that utter trash. Fine, I missed the point a little, but it’s like they didn’t even hear what I was playing!” She smacked a hoof against the wooden planks of the bench. Lyra was leaning back, her back of her head resting unnaturally against the backrest so that she was looking up at the sky. “Some ponies just don’t like it. It’s just the way things are.” “I’m going to have to do something about this. Some ponies don’t like classical. Okay. If they won’t learn to love art, I’ll just have to show them how horrible their beloved electronica is.” An idea began to take shape. A terrible, glorious idea that built itself up before her eyes as she rubbed her hooves together. “We have an extra month of time that Ms. Scratch has kindly given us. That will be her last mistake. I will use this month wisely and by the time I’m finished nopony in Canterlot will be able to listen to that racket ever again. Yes. That’s it! It’s easy to make that useless noise so I’ll just learn how! I’ll make music so awful and catchy that everypony will lap it up, and that’s when I strike. I’ll get them hooked on music so cheesy and tasteless that they won’t be able to live with themselves! It’s perfect. I’ll destroy it all with it’s own success!” “Tavi, can I just check something?” Lyra rolled her head against the back of the bench until she was looking at Octavia. “On a scale of ‘oh Celestia, I’m going to remember all of this in perfect clarity’ to ‘hey … hey … hey … Ryra … I have … the besht … besft … idea, wight’, how off your hooves are you right now?” “I’m perfectly sober.” Lyra sucked the cold night air in sharply between her teeth, grimacing. “Yep.” “Wow. So, hang on … the club…?” “Yep.” “Wow.” A lonely moth fluttered and bumbled around the light by the bench. A cold breeze dashed through the park. Octavia shivered. “It’s a terrible idea, isn’t it?” “Atrocious.” “Will you help me?” “What are friends for if not this?” She lifted her head up, turning to face Lyra properly. It was the strangest thing. She spent a good fifty to sixty percent of her time wanting to punch the mare in the mouth, but when it really mattered… “Thank you, Lyra. Really.” Lyra threw her a high-beam smile and held out a hoof, waiting politely for Octavia to figure out that she was meant to bump it. “No worries ‘Tavi. Right!” She slammed her hooves by her sides and threw herself onto her hooves. “This momentous occasion calls for a celebration, whaddaya say? The night is yet young and I know this great little place just down the way. Kinda small but I think you’ll like it.” Octavia found herself smiling; a real, genuine grin that wrapped her head up in a big warm hug. She demurely got to her hooves and slotted into position by Lyra’s side. “Oh, go on then. Lead on!” And they were lost in the lights of the town. ~~~ Her head hurt and her mouth was full of pillow. A bowtie was hooked jauntily on the radiator a few hooves from her face. She stretched an exploratory back hoof out to the other side of the bed. There was a dull wooden thonk as it hit hollow wood. She buried her face even further into the pillow. “I’m gonna kill her.”
AdagioFour hundred equestrian bits. Four hundredequestrian bits … hmmm. Four hundred equestrian bits … worse. Four … hundredequestrianbits … tch. Oh, well, be fair; three hundred … andninetynine equestrian bits. ‘A penny saved was a penny earned’ dearest mama had always said. She narrowed her eyes at the receipt stapled to the glossy instruction manual. It was the strangest thing, really. Over the course of the walk back from the shop the number had somehow grown every time she’d looked at it until now it almost seemed like she’d spent a lot of money or something. She knew she’d got a great deal, that helpful young colt from the shop had assured her of that. Still … she just couldn’t stop herself noticing certain similarities between the number on the receipt and things like a holiday … or her rent. “Gimme that a second.” A minty green forehoof waved blindly from the darkness under Octavia’s hardwood desk. A similarly coloured, upside-down tail and butt also protruded from the depths amid a mass of cables, cable ties, and small, ripped plastic bags. She pressed the manual against the waving hoof until it grabbed its prize and shot back to whence it came. The butt waggled appreciatively. “Ffankff ‘Afi,” the voice said, presumably through either the screwdriver or the wire cutters. She turned to curl up on her office chair, resting her chin on her forehooves and watching the desk through half an eye. “You know,” she told the butt, “you have the amazing gift of being able to hold things in the air through sheer force of will and a happy evolutionary accident … maybe you could consider doing that from time to time?” There was a not particularly delicate ptchoo and a dull thump of something metal hitting a carpet. “Ah, young foal, you criticise that which you do not comprehend. Complete your studies and when you come to ask the question you will realise that it need not be asked at all.” “You just can’t multitask, can you?” “Who’s fixing whose electronics for free?” A back hoof waved menacingly in her general direction. “Noted, maestro.” “Which, if I may be so bold, could have been completely avoided in the first place.” The butt took on a more appraising tone. “Perhaps if you had brought somepony else along, maybe? Somepony who actually understands what she’s doing, even? One that could perhaps tell that a certain item does not have a power plug that will, oh I don’t know, actually fit in an Equestrian wall socket, for instance.” “Now hold on a minute.” She got off the chair and walked over the butt again. She always got a little fidgety about new gadgets; something about technology set on her edge, meant she couldn’t stay still. She nudged the butt with a hoof. “I gave you every opportunity to come help me pick something out and you said no.” “Wha-” There was a very solid sounding bang, the desk shook violently, and there was the sound of somepony releasing a breath through gritted teeth. The butt began to shake violently as its owner shuffled backwards from under the desk until a slightly dazed looking face appeared, propped up to stare accusingly at Octavia. “Allow me to indulge in a dramatic re-enactment.” Lyra cleared her throat and started making ring-ring noises before lifting a forehoof from the floor and bringing it cautiously to one ear. “Hello, Lyra the-best-friend-in-the-world-and-knowledgeable-music-mare-in-the-field-of-electro speaking. Who is calling? “Oh. Lyra, jolly good, just the mare I wanted to talk to. Oh-ho-ho, what japes!” “I do not sound li-” “Well, if it isn’t my very good friend Octavia, what a coincidence. Why, I was just thinking about how little you know about electronic music not thirty seconds before you phoned. What may I, your faithful comrade in arms, do for you?” Octavia’s expression was flat as the solos from that one filly in the Canterlot Under 6’s Recorder Club. “Well, my friend-whom-I-will-shortly-abuse-to-get-free-DIY-assistance-from, I was thinking I would take that terrible idea from last night and go drop a month's paycheck on it right this very afternoon by buying a bunch of things that I don’t know how to use! Doesn’t that sound simply spiffing?” “...it was only two and half weeks’ pay...” “Well, as a friend let me express my concern at such a rash decision and caution that expensive gear does not equate to having an easier time learning a new skill. I beg you, listen to me for I am wise and most definitely not being ‘silly and unhelpful’. “Oh-ho-ho, what an utterly barmy thing to say. I’m going to go do it anyway! Chocs away-tally-ho-jolly-hockey-sticks-wot-wot! “Wait, no! My good friend! H-Hello?” Lyra stared in confusion at her hoof, knocking it against the floor a few times before holding it up to her ear again. She turned to Octavia with an expression of utter confusion and disbelief as she put her hoof down. “She hung up.” Octavia winced. There was something about those piercing golden eyes that made arguing at them rather hard when they were glaring right back at you. “And then by the time I manage to get to your house you’re already unloading the boxes at the bottom of the stairs.” “Eheh,” she tugged self-consciously at her bow-tie. “Thanks for … um … helping with the stairs....” Lyra’s expression softened somewhat as she smiled and leaned forward to lightly bop her friend in the side of the head. “I’m not mad at’cha ‘Tavi, you just didn’t get the best deal. Some things are really good though. The converter for your antique mp3 player was a good call and something I wouldn't have thought to pick up.” She waved a hoof at the gramophone. Octavia bit her tongue. “Besides, what mare doesn’t love learning how to re-wire electrical plugs?” She disappeared under the table again, leaving ‘Tavi, as before, in the dubious company of her butt. ~~~ “But you have no idea what you’re doing. None. At all. Not even a little.” Octavia chuckled gently as she shooed Lyra towards the door. “Oh Lyra, you’ve already got me past the bit I don’t understand. I may not be good with all this technical stuff but I know my music.” Lyra was slowly backing towards the door, her teeth set in a horrified grimace as she cast around desperately for an argument. Her back hooves were already being forced over the threshold. “Do you even know what a ‘woofer’ is? What sampling is? What a freaking MIDI is? Do you even know how to save a file?” “Lyra!” The reprimand slipped out a little more forcefully than Octavia would have liked. She reached out an apologetic hoof and patted Lyra comfortingly on the shoulder to try and make up for it. “Look, I know I may not be as up to date with computing as you but the creation of musical art has nothing to do with understanding how many megaflops are in my cyber pipes.” Lyra let out a weird little squeak, like she’d just trodden on a mouse. “Come round tomorrow night, if you really must, and you can listen to the first few songs and we can discuss marketing strategy and so on.” Lyra was now standing out in the hall as Octavia slowly closed the door. A desperate, slack-jawed plea was etched into her face, one eyelid stuttering like a computer in the instant before a bluescreen. “Thank you for all your help.” Octavia could now only see a narrow strip of hallway and a terrified pair of eyes. “…Right … bye then...” Her front door creaked shut. There was a muffled scream from the hall, a sigh, and then the sounds of hoofsteps down the stairs. Tavi rubbed her hooves together. She was full of ideas. She was a veritable wellspring of inspiration, a font of skill and training. She giggled a little to herself as she dimmed the lights and picked up a cushion from the sofa on her way back to her work room. This was going to be a piece of cake. She placed the cushion on her desk chair and climbed up onto it, wriggling to get comfortably sat before she pulled the chair closer in to the music desk. There was a chorus of cracks and pops as she stretched luxuriously, bringing her front hooves high above her head and pushing her neck to the side. She reached down, pulling open a desk draw and extracting several leaves of musical manuscript and a pencil which she set on the desk in front of her. Her mind was beginning to settle in anticipation of the music; ideas and soundshapes were flowing freely between her ears, begging for release. She could see the limitless possibilities of tone and tempo laid out in the empty horizontal lines of the paper in front of her and, as she reached the centre of that calming inner silence, she could feel that she could craft it. With an expression of total and complete calm, her eyes drifted around the forge upon which she would work her magic. The black monolithic mixer was to her left with its blizzard of dials and switches, the computer was humming away with … something running on it, and her trusty gramophone was sitting at the back. The ghost of a smile danced on her lips. The computer clock read half past one. It was time to begin. She reached up and spent a moment adjusting her hair so it wouldn’t get into her eyes as she worked. It was time to begin. She could do this any time. Just needed to let inspiration do its thing. She reached over the desk, tilting the monitor down a little to get rid of some glare. Just had to let her years of training guide her through … yeah. She tapped a hoof along the wooden table top. Time to make some music. The computer fan buzzed despondently from somewhere under the table. She cleared her throat and loosened her bowtie a little; there was no sense in being uncomfortable while being creative. The clock ticked over another minute. Well first she needed to have a plan. You couldn’t write music without a brief, silly filly. She needed a plan. She needed a list! She snatched up the pencil, licked the end, and began to write in the top corner of her manuscript. “1. Need a drum beat.” Yes. That was a good starting point. She needed a beat, a foundation to work from. She reached out a hoof towards the keyboard. The computer screen was filled with an dense, empty grid, like some hardcore variation of Battleships with tiny, inscrutable buttons sprinkled like confetti around the edges of the screen. There were buttons with letters, buttons containing pictures of smaller buttons that also had letters, buttons with letters - and sometimes even little squiggly arrows - next to them.... Her hoof paused, hovering a millimeter above the keys, wavered towards the mouse, and then returned to the keyboard again. She glanced over at the black box and its avalanche of dials and sliders. Her hoof retracted and moved up to stroke her chin. “Hmm.” She stared at the screen. The screen flickered back at her. The room was quiet save for the gentle hum of various cooling fans. “...Hmmmm.” The screen remained stubbornly blank. She narrowed her eyes. Tentatively, she reached out a hoof towards the mouse and slowly pushed the cursor around. ‘Samples’. Lyra had mentioned those. She moved her cursor over the menu and, grimacing like she was pulling the pin on a live grenade, clicked. There were several … somethings to click through. She just pressed enter until they all went away, leaving a series of dots on the screen at regular intervals. She stared at the dots. The dots flickered back at her. DrumLoop_Basic1.mp3. She pressed play. Unh tss unh tss unh tss unh tss unh tss Mechanical drum beats popped out of her newly connected speaker system at precisely 120 beats per minute. Biting her tongue in concentration she reached out again, shakily grasped the mouse, and, swallowing nervously, clicked stop. It stopped. There. Nothing to it! She took a deep breath and grinned to herself. It wasn’t that hard at all. She pencilled in a faint tick next to the first and only item on her list. The drum beat was basically covered; she could come back and polish it up … later. She saved the file - which she knew perfectly well how to do, thank you Lyra - and turned her attention back towards the list. She picked up the pencil again, twiddling the end round in her mouth for a moment before continuing. “2. Must be catchy.” She double underlined that one, tapping the pencil against the paper a few times. “3.” She looked around the room. The curtains weren’t straight. It was a little too warm, really. Maybe she should have turned the thermostat down. “3.” She got up, crossed the room and neatened the curtains. When she was happy, she sat down again. She traced over the ‘3’ a few times before giving an imperceptible shrug and writing- “3. Must be really good.” She stared at that one for a moment, chewing her bottom lip, before crossing out the ‘really’. Her eyes drifted, seemingly of their own accord, over to the clock. Twenty to two. She let the pencil drop to the table and pushed herself off the chair. It was basically lunch time and she knew as well as anypony that you couldn’t work on an empty stomach. She’d grab a bite to eat, settle her stomach and get the creative juices flowing. She trotted quickly into the kitchen leaving the computer, and its solitary drum line, to its own devices. It was quarter past three by the time she had finished the washing up. She dried off her hooves with a now damp floral tea towel, slinging it over the radiator as she meandered back into her ‘studio’ and collapsed into her chair. The screen still showed a single line of blue dots. The paper was still blank, bar her list. The mixing thingy remained thoroughly inscrutable. Well, she’d just had a nice meal and that always made her a little sleepy. She nodded to herself. Yes, she hadn’t planned this terribly well. She’d have to take a little power nap and then throw herself, rejuvenated, into the process of making art. Yawning, she pulled herself off the chair again. The alarm went off at quarter past six and five minutes later Octavia was meandering her way out of bed. She’d had one or two pretty good ideas as she was dropping off to sleep and was looking forw- wait. She glanced up at the living room clock. Almost seven o’ clock. She’d completely forgot! It was an hour later by the time the latest episode of The Archers had run its course. By quarter past eight she had paired up all her loose socks, by twenty to nine she’d re-alphabetised her LP collection, and by nine fifteen the inside of the oven was sparkling clean. Now the birds were singing their way through their evening chorus and she was once again slouching in front of that blasted screen and the stupid sheet of blank paper, chewing her way through the remains of the end of her pencil. She was reaching the end of the Beethoven piano sonata to which she’d been listening. Now there was a pony who knew how to make something popular. She’d been aiming to get herself thinking a little more analytically, maybe borrow a few tips from the great stallion himself to fine tune her own efforts. Progress had been plentiful. “4. Piano sounds nice.” Also, the drums now went tss unh tss unh rather than unh tss unh tss. That had been a bit of a breakthrough, honestly. Her head rested blearily on her forehooves, half an eye staring glassily at that stupid screen with its stupid dots. Stupid program; it was just a bunch of lines and dots. How on earth was she meant to make music with silly little coloured lines and dots. Fisher-Price My First Music was what it was. Her gaze came to rest on a cut-glass decanter - a present from a foreign orchestra she’d played for - which sat, tucked away, on a small oak table in the corner of the room. She cocked her head to one side. Maybe she just needed to let go a little. Loosen up just a smidge. Let the old imagination out of its cage, so to speak. Besides, the glasses were right there and just yesterday she’d bought a bunch of fresh lemons. She even had the tonic bottles in her hoof now, had somehow been magically teleported over to the decanter, and somehow the stopper for the decanter had been mysteriously removed so frankly it would be silly not to have at least one. Maybe two. ~~~ “Public Service Announcment from the ofice of Canterlot Council: Classical sucks. You also suck. Both these things suck. :( Thanks for you attention.” Lyra regarded the notice in the way one might regard one of those nice gentlecolts with the sandwich boards that helpfully inform people that the end is nigh: with a fair degree of skepticism. She was pretty sure that the sign, clumsily but enthusiastically sellotaped to Octavia’s front door as it was, was not a real Council Directive. On the one hoof, she had to admit she could kinda see where the poster might be coming from, but the fact it was written in blue crayon on cardboard repurposed from a box of Hay Flakes, contained obvious spelling mistakes, and had a rather detailed unhappy face in it were probably signs it wasn’t real. That and the footnote of ‘seriously though, what the hay are you even listening to?’. She knocked again as she re-read it. The door creaked open an inch or two until a thin strip of darkness was visible, broken only by a single, furtive eye. It looked at her and frowned. “What? Why are you here? You said you’d come back tomorrow.” “It’s been three days ‘Tavi. I haven’t seen you for. Three. Days.” The eye narrowed in confusion. “Three...?” “I knocked. Repeatedly. I was on the verge of calling the police to begin the hunt for your corpse.” She leaned forwards towards the shadowed figure and peered at the bloodshot eye. “When was the last time you slept?” The eye stared wildly. “No time!” A hoof shot out from the darkness and in a flash had wrapped round her neck, dragged her through the doorway, and frogmarched her into the desk chair Lyra now found herself in. She almost recognised the room. It reminded her of Octavia’s study if a crazy person had coated the floor in manuscript paper and empty tumblers of - she sniffed - gin and ton-… well, mainly just gin. She also almost recognised the pony wading through the sea of paper. It reminded her of Octavia if Octavia had taken to living in a hedge recently. “Okay, forget sleeping. When was the last time you ate?” She sniffed again. “Or shower-” With the subtle violence of a ringmaster cracking a whip, a hoof was suddenly quivering an inch from her muzzle, smelling faintly of gin, sweat, and desperation. Trying not to make any sudden moves or loud noises, Lyra ran her eyes up the hoof until she reached the shaking, distant eyes of her friend as she swayed drunkenly on the spot. She spoke with the husky voice of autumn leaves falling in the breeze. “Ssshhhhhh … it is done.” Slowly, and with reverential care, Octavia’s free hoof pressed a single key on her keyboard as she closed her eyes in ecstasy. When you got right down to it, the piece was quite simple, containing only three components: a classic, if somewhat simplistic, eighties drumline, an amount of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata that took the definition of ‘sample’ and threw it out the window, and the sound of one, possibly two, crying foals. This was delivered at roughly the volume of a jet aircraft coming in to land between Lyra’s ears. It took all … ALL … of Lyra’s limited willpower to keep a straight face as she desperately partitioned off a part of her brain to deal with the trauma later while reducing the outward signs of physical distress to a few spasming facial muscles and shaking limbs. As her vision started to blur, she managed to reach out, wrap a hoof around the speaker cable as it trailed across the floor, and pull. Hard. Silence. Massaging her temples and biting her lip, she looked at the pony responsible. She hadn’t moved since the sound had begun; her head was down, her eyes were closed, her hooves were hanging loosely in the air like a conductor waiting to lead in the orchestra. Lyra could barely tell she was breathing. “Tavi, I-” “Oh Celestia, it’s abysmal!” Looking down at her torso, Lyra found Octavia had crossed the space between them with surprising speed and was now kneeling on the floor with her forehooves wrapped around Lyra’s chest, wailing like a banshee and pounding her hoof on the chair arm. “Tavi, you-” “You’re right. I’m a hack. I’m a talentless waste of space. I should just cut my cello into kindling and cast myself into the sea. Call the orchestra, Lyra. Tell them I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting them down. I’m sorry for letting my family down. And you, dear, sweet Lyra, I’ve let you down as we-” “Tavi, you haven-” “What would Mozart think? What would Beethoven think? They'd laugh, Lyra. Laugh, I say!” “I don’t think-” Octavia stared up desperately at the ceiling, forehooves clasped as if in prayer. “I’m sorry. Forgive me! FORGIVE ME!” She buried her chest in Lyra’s chest again. The wailing intensified. Lyra sighed. She’d been here before. Octavia had locked herself in her house for a week because she’d been unable to play a section from Berlioz in time with everypony else. Lyra had spent several hours trying to convince her that it was just a minor misprint in her copy of her part, watching her increasingly blunt explanations fall on increasingly melodramatic deaf ears. Eventually, she had been forced to come up with a solution. “All right. Lyra Emergency Three-Step Recovery Plan time.” Octavia pulled up short, twisting her panicked eyes upwards to look into Lyra’s face. “Woah, wait, come on now, be reasonab-" smack. “Step 1.” “Ow, that reall-glrk.” “Step 2.” The hoof that had just recently slapped her in the face now pulled her into a headlock as it dragged her through into her bathroom, pushed her through the pink shower curtain, and punched the cold water tap. Lyra leaned up against the sink, watching as the silhouette behind the shower curtain performed a very accurate and enthusiastic interpretation of the scene where Dorothy melts the Wicked Witch of the West. “So, clearly leaving you alone with this was a bad call on my part and, for that, I apologise. I won’t make that mistake again. This time I’m getting you some proper guidance so that you won’t create a … ‘collection of sounds’ that un-makes the fabric of reality. Again.” There was a violent, guttural hissing sound from the other side of the curtain. “You want Step 3?” There was a damp whimpering noise. Lyra crossed her hooves in front of her chest and allowed the merest hint of smile to cross her face; it wasn’t often she got to play at being the practical one. “Darn right you don't.”
