Rules of Etiquette

by I-A-M

Rating: mature
Tags: Drama, Octavia, Romance, Equestria Girls, Sex, Adagio Dazzle, Narcotics
Length: 50021

Octavia Melody is one of the most talented young concert musicians in Canterlot and she owes it all to the woman who taught her as a child, a mysterious woman named Serenata... Serenata Dazzle

Octavia Melody is one of the most talented young concert musicians in Canterlot and she owes it all to the woman who taught her as a child, a mysterious woman named Serenata.

For years Octavia kept her eyes open for any sign of the woman to whom she owed so much, but she never caught wind of her, despite all of her efforts. But when a moment of fate gives Octavia a glimpse of the owners of the lucrative and premier Last Note Lounge, she is stunned by the resemblance between the Lounge's manager and her old teacher.

Especially since that manager is Adagio Dazzle.

This story follows the events of Rules of Engagement, only that it exists in the same canon and with the same characters.

Published 2019-06-09 17:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-07-08 19:52:03 UTC

2. Move With Grace

That probably could have gone better.

I suppose that much was obvious given that I was still in my shirt and slacks, sitting curled up on top of my toilet in the bathroom, and quietly wondering if this was what having a panic attack felt like even three hours later after leaving the Last Note.

Either that or this was just the physiological side effect of having the foundation stones of your whole life torn from their setting and graffitied with expletives and crude pornography.

Adagio and Serenata.

Serenata and Adagio.

One and the same? Preposterous! Absolutely inconceivable! To entertain for even a moment the idea that the woman who taught me to stand tall, to walk with dignity, to never compromise the music in my heart and to always rise above my limits was no more than a villainous Siren was utterly ridiculous.

And yet… the way that Adagio had looked at me, with such happiness, and the pain on her face when I had rebuked her…

It had all felt so genuine, so sincere, and the hurt she had shown when I had slapped away her hand…

“Serenata,” I whispered, and the name echoed off the tiles of the floor. “Who are you? Who were you?”

A knock came at the door, and I wiped at my eyes before standing up, adjusting my bow tie, and taking two short strides over to open it.

Good Form stood on the other side, his expression as implacable and phlegmatic as ever.

“You have a guest at the front door, Miss Melody,” Form said courteously. “Shall I let them in?”

“Is it an arrogant-looking woman with a great deal of bright orange hair?” I asked grimly.

“No,” Form answered tonelessly, “it is a rather punky young woman with long purple hair and a green cap.”

“I don’t believe I recognize that description,” I said quietly as I stepped out of the bathroom and into the hall. “Very well, I suppose you can let them into the den.”

“As you say, Miss Melody,” Form replied with a short bow.

I took a detour into the kitchen to pour myself a measure of whiskey before stepping back out and seating myself on the long, comfortable couch. A small number of worn paperback novels littered the little end table, all of which I had finished but failed to put away, and a fire burned merrily in the hearth.

“Wow, swanky digs, Miss Grumpy-Snoot.”

I blinked in surprise at both the tone and words of my guest, and turned my head to see a vaguely familiar young woman. Her hair fell in a waterfall of violet locks down her back, and her eyes gleamed like purple gems, sharp and cold. An offensively green, pin-covered ball cap was settled on her head, cocked at a rakish angle, and she was dressed in ripped jeans, two layers of equally distressed t-shirts, and was hanging up a denim coat on the rack by the wall.

While she was turned away I noticed she had the sleeve on one side rolled up revealing an excellently executed if relatively fresh tattoo, but she turned back to me before I could identify it.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “No, wait, I know you… you’re the other sister aren’t you? Aria Blaze!”

Aria smirked and nodded. “Yeah, and I hear you took my big sister to church in front of God and everyone.”

I grimaced.

“That was not my intention,” I said stiffly before taking a drink. “But she had it coming.”

Aria held up her hands in mocking surrender.

“Hey, I’m not here to argue that,” she said, still smirking, then her expression hardened a little and she shrugged. “Okay, maybe I’m here to argue it a little… Sonata wasn’t sure how to talk to you, and Adagio hasn’t left her room since you slapped her down, so it’s pretty much up to me.”

“And is there any particular reason I should listen?” I asked tersely. “Or for that matter why I shouldn’t have Good Form remove you from my apartment?”

“Your Butler is good but he isn’t ‘five centuries of practice at hand-to-hand’ good,” Aria said, her lips curling angrily. “And you made my big sister shed tears… now I know better than anyone that Adagio can be a USDA-certified slab of bitch, but she’s still my sister, so that’s not something I can ignore.”

“Then tell me where I can find Serenata,” I snapped, sitting up and staring Aria in the face. “Serenata Dazzle! Tell me who and where she is!”

Aria’s features softened as she stared at me, and I felt curiously frightened for a moment, as if I were being observed by something much bigger and more dangerous than I had reckoned. Her eyes glinted gravely in the low firelight of my apartment, and there was something restless in her… a kind of supple, relaxed violence that had me backing up on the couch by reflex.

“Serenata… that’s a name I haven’t heard in a minute,” Aria said in a low voice. “But sure, I’ll tell you: Serenata is all three of us, technically speaking.”

“You… she… what?!” I stuttered, staring in surprise.

Aria scoffed and dropped down onto the couch, then snapped her fingers twice before fixing a sharp look on me.

“It’s a pseudonym all three of us used interchangeably,” she explained as Good Form approached with a glass of whiskey matching my own. “Serenata Dazzle doesn’t exist, she never did. If you ever met her, or saw her signature, or read her name, it was one of us.” She took a sip, gave the glass an approving glance, and took another. “We did it so we could pretend to be descendents of prior ‘Serenata Dazzles’, keep money in the ‘family’ y’know? And no one questions someone who has their grandmother’s name so long as we can answer their questions accurately.”

I worked my jaw in shock and disbelief. I didn’t want to believe her but there was a limit to reasonable doubt and denial. Moreover, Aria wasn’t trying to sweet talk me, or get anything out of me. She was here with an axe to grind over…

Over how I had treated her sister.

Adagio… Serenata… oh god.

“What have I done?” I whispered, my voice coming out reedy and weak. “I… I said such things to her… to Sere-, no… to Adagio.”

“Yeah ya did,” Aria replied grumpily. “Ugh… look, this is really not my bag, but lately I’ve been loosening up a lot thanks to-” her hand came up to rest on her tattoo and she sighed. “Fuck, just go talk to her, alright?”

My eyes lingered on her tattoo, and how her long fingers idly traced the edges of the lines and colors. She looked distant, and I saw her glance out the window towards what I thought was the Canterlot University campus more than once.

“Your tattoo… you didn’t have it those years ago at Canterlot High, right?” I asked tentatively.

“Nah, it’s new,” Aria confirmed. “Got it a week ago for my girlfriend, she got one too.”

“She must be very special,” I said softly, and felt just a little jealous at the warmth in Aria’s voice as she spoke of her.

Aria smiled, and for a moment I blinked in confusion. The gentle expression on her face seemed completely at odds with her bellicose personality.

“Yeah,” Aria said in a gruffly happy voice. “Yeah, she’s pretty great.”

“What’s her name?” I ventured, leaning against the couch as I took another sip.

“Seriously?” Aria asked, raising an eyebrow. “What do you think her name is?”

She angled the tattoo towards me and tapped it a few times and I stared for a moment. It was an evening horizon over the ocean, a wash of blues, purples, reds, oranges, and golds that captured the vista wonderfully.

“What do you mean?” I asked after a moment. “It’s just a picture of a sunse-”

Oh.

“You can’t be serious,” I said flatly, and Ari gave me a smug grin. “Sunset Shimmer and Aria Blaze… what has the world come to?”

“Dunno, but it comes there a lot,” Aria replied with a toothy grin.

I felt my cheeks burn, and I raised a hand to my face, blowing out a frustrated sigh as I did.

“Did you come here to admonish me, or spout childish innuendos?” I bit the words out with a touch of annoyance.

“Why not both?” Aria replied, still smirking. But after a moment her face softened to something more serious. “Really though, ya wanna know why I’m here? It’s because…” she worked her jaw for a few minutes before flushing, rather prettily to my surprise, “because I’m in love, alright? I love Sunset like fucking crazy. I’m absolutely batshit for her, okay? And you want to know why I’m telling you this mushy crap?”

“Bragging?” I ventured dryly.

“Damn right!” Aria snarled, gesturing with her whiskey. “But y’know, secondary to that is so you’ll know that I know what I’m talking about when I say this next thing.”

I scowled, I wasn’t sure why her being in love was relevant. It was romantic, certainly, and I couldn’t deny I was just a little jealous at how obvious it was. Aria was practically luminous with her feelings for Sunset; she really did wear her emotions right on her sleeve.

Given the location of her tattoo that was actually more literal than not.

“Alright,” I said finally, “go on… what’s this thing you want to say?”

“Adagio loved you, you absolute moron,” Aria said dryly.

I stared, and from somewhere around me I heard glass shatter. I glanced down to see the tumbler of whiskey I’d been holding laying on the ground in pieces, but I couldn’t properly account for how it had gotten there.

“I… n-no… what?” My eloquence has failed me yet again as I flailed for some kind of word or explanation. “T-that’s preposterous! Absolutely mad! It’s been better than fifteen years since I’ve even seen the woman!”

“And? That’s nothing for a Siren,” Aria replied, shaking her head. “It might have been fifteen years for you, but remember we’ve lived millennia, so fifteen years is kind of…” Aria gestured noncommittally with a roll of wrist, “it’s barely any time at all.”

I worked my jaw for a few moments, trying to find a hole in her argument. Before I could wrangle my scattered thoughts, though, Aria continued.

“I still remember the day we had to leave, alright?” Aria pressed, and she actually looked pained. “Adagio was inconsolable… she wanted to stay but we had to move on, we’d outstayed our welcome as it was, fed too long in one place, see?” She took another sip and sighed. “She mourned you for almost a straight year after we left Canterlot, because she knew that with how we traveled it might be decades before we were back in area and she'd probably never see you again.”

“But you returned less than ten years later,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “The Battle of the Bands… it was-”

“-luck,” Aria cut me off. “We happened to be a few towns away at the time, just passing through and grabbing a bite at a diner, when we felt the Elements go off on Sunset.”

“Oh,” I leaned back on the couch and stared down at the shattered glass.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t have come back around for a long time otherwise,” Aria said quietly. “It had been almost a century since I’d seen Adagio actually cry before we left Canterlot that night, but she cried for you, alright?”

“Why?” I asked in a small voice. “Why me?”

“Not my place to say,” Aria replied before finishing off her whiskey. “Thanks for the drink, Snoots, I’m gonna go pound my girlfriend into her mattress now, but do me a favor and talk to ‘Dagi, alright?”

I grimaced at the crudity of her words.

“Why would she ever speak to me after-”

“-because she loved you, dumbass!” Aria repeated loudly over my words. “Just go, okay? She’s probably still in her room, but I’d hurry because when she finally does get her wits back together she’ll probably try to drink her feelings under the table.”

Good Form swept by with a broom and tidied up the shattered remains of my glass as I met Aria’s eyes.

I let out a slow breath after a moment and nodded.

“Good,” Aria said firmly before pointing a finger at my face. “Don’t fuck this up, alright?”

“I’ll do my best,” I replied dryly.

Aria left with as much fanfare as she’d arrived with, which was a swagger and a raised middle finger. Considering who she was related I could hardly imagine her being Adagio’s sister, but then again siblings were usually contentiously different in my experience, not that I would know first-hand being that I was an only child.

“Mister Form, would you kindly bring the car around to the front?” I asked as I stood.

“As you say, Miss Melody,” Form replied phlegmatically.

I imagined, however, that I could hear a pleased undertone to his response.

It was late by the time we reached the Last Note. Good Form let me out at the front and I instructed him to head back home, and that I would call when I needed him. I wasn’t certain how long this conversation would take, and there was no sense in having him idling in the parking lot for several hours.

Form gave a judicious nod and made his way out. I had the sudden urge to call him back as I saw him leaving. To just avoid this oncoming conversation entirely since I knew it would probably be emotionally harrowing.

That and, as much as it galls me to admit, I don’t apologize very well nor very gracefully.

And I certainly owed Adagio an apology if for no other reason than for how atrociously I had behaved. Especially given that I’d done so in the middle of her place of business and in full view of her employees.

I felt my heart clench in both panic and shame.

I had humiliated her. Loudly and publicly humiliated her. Had I been in her shoes I’m not sure I’d have ever forgiven whoever was at fault for it.

Aria seemed convinced she would see me though and truthfully, regardless of whether or not Adagio forgave me, I owed it to her to at least make the attempt.

Backstage fixed me with a glare but nodded me in without comment or fee. Clearly he’d been told I was coming, probably by Aria herself, and I made my way to the bar.

Sonata was cheerfully serving patrons, her hands moving with quick, certain motions as they shook, stirred, and mixed a variety of colorful cocktails and, for a few moments, I stood mesmerized at the expertise on display.

If you had asked me who among the Sirens I thought had the best hand-eye coordination I can assure you the answer would not have been: Sonata Dusk. Yet there she was, skillfully handling orders that were coming in rapid fire, as if the customers were actively testing to see how much they could get away with.

I waited for a lull in the alcoholic fusillade to approach, and I caught Sonata’s eye as I reached the bar. Rather than the reproachful look I expected, she just smiled at me a little sadly.

“W-where is she?” I asked in a mousy tone of voice that I hardly recognized as my own.

“Her is room in the back, past the VIP rope,” Sonata replied, gesturing toward a roped off section. “I’ll let security know to ignore you when you head back.”

Then she reached into her blouse and pulled out a ring of keys, selecting one that looked old and brassy before loosening it from the clasp and tossing it to me.

I caught it and regarded it expectantly.

“Backdoor to the right of the main stage,” Sonata said in answer to my unspoken question. “Down the hall then take your first right, then it’s the first door on your right.”

“Thank you,” I said, clutching the key hard. “And… and I’m sorry for the things I said.”

Sonata shook her head. “Tell ‘Dagi, not me… honestly, you weren’t wrong to react like you did.”

“But I hurt her!” I bit out, feeling my chest tighten with shame. “The things I said to her…”

“Yeah well, maybe ‘Dagi should’ve thought of that before attacking your school,” Sonata said, her mouth turning down in a deceptively cute moue. “She’s the one who dug the hole, not you.”

“I still feel awful,” I replied, staring down at the key.

“Can’t help you there,” Sonata chirped. “But thanks for coming to talk to her, okay? If nothing else I appreciate it… I love my sister but she can be a real butt sometimes.”

I chuckled at the childish insult, then nodded, and silently turned to make my way through the growing crowds to the VIP section. True to her word, Sonata must have sent mention ahead because the mountain of a woman I’d encountered at the airport who was standing by the roped off area let me pass without a word, lifting the rope to let me go by and closing it quickly behind me.

The room beyond was only dimly lit, but I could see a stage with a long, silver pole through the center of it. I quickened my pace past it and to the door beyond, finding it locked and fitting the key Sonata had given me to it before letting myself in.

The hallway was cool and dim, much like the room outside and I followed it down, taking a right before stopping at the first door I found.

There was a finely crafted wooden placard with the title: ‘General Manager’ carved into it in gold lettering, and beneath that an identically-made plate that read: ‘Adagio Dazzle’.

I raised a hand to knock, but as I did I heard something that stopped me in my tracks.

A harsh, broken-hearted sob echoed out from the room and into the hall.

My hand went to my mouth in shock. Aria had told me what to expect, but the sound of it was a matter altogether different.

“Octavia Melody you utter, utter fool, what have you done?” I hissed harshly under my breath.

I flinched again as I heard another sob. No woman so beautiful ought to be made to make such a sound.

Taking a deep breath, I raised my hand and knocked solidly on the door.

“Go away, Sonata!” Adagio shouted, her voice ragged and raw. “I told you I’m not leaving my room tonight!”

I opened my mouth to tell her it was not Sonata, but Octavia, but my words died on my tongue.

What would she say? Would she let me in? Would my presence just make things worse?

Tentatively, I knocked again.

“Nodens oath!” Adagio spat from the other side of the door, her voice tremulous. “Go suck a tide pool, ‘Nata I’m not in the mood!”

“I-it’s not Sonata,” I said weakly, forcing the words out around my panic. “It’s… it’s Octavia… I wanted to-”

The door slammed open and I nearly leapt out of my skin in fright as Adagio stared in disbelief at me.

There are women, in my experience, who can cry with some level of grace. I, however, am not among them. When I cry it is a blotchy, snotty affair that generally involves a good deal of yelling and thrown objects.

I should also state for the record that I usually only cry when I’m angry which is infuriating in its own right.

But I digress. Some women cry with grace, and others without, but Adagio was the first woman I had ever met who cried beautifully.

Tears sparkled like gems on her cheeks, her eyes fairly glittered with unspent sorrow, and her, ah… chest heaved invitingly with every drawn breath.

She wept in a manner that made me want to kiss the tears from her cheeks and it actually made me a little bit mad.

Being that pretty was damnably unfair.

She sniffled, which was an infuriatingly fetching sound, and stared at me for a moment before speaking.

“M-Miss Melody,” Adagio said in a quiet, subdued voice that I thought didn’t suit her at all. “I, uhm… please… come in.”

Adagio stepped away from the door and held it open for me, and I entered her room with a slightly bowed head and muttered: ‘thank you’.

The room belonging to the eldest Siren sister was an object lesson in modern decadence.

The plush carpet was a subdued shade of red and the way it gave just slightly beneath my shoes informed me in no uncertain terms how comfortable it would feel to walk on barefoot. There were more than a dozen lights in the room, all low wattage and softly opaque, making the room incredibly easy on the eyes. The walls were a comfortable shade of amber, and all of the furniture was of fine craftsmanship out of some heavy wood like mahogany or teak.

At the far end of the room there was a large four-poster bed with its curtains half-drawn and its soft red comforter mussed. I assumed from the state of it that Adagio had been in bed when I’d arrived and I tried not to give that too much more thought.

A quiet hiccup from behind me took me by surprise and I whirled around. I had, somehow, nearly forgotten that Adagio was there as I took in the room.

She pulled a handkerchief from… somewhere I couldn’t readily identify since she was still wearing her dress and it had no pockets that I could see. Adagio dabbed gracefully at her cheeks, sniffling a bit as she did.

I resisted the urge to put a hand on her cheek and brush the tears away myself.

“May I ask why you’ve come back?” Adagio spoke a little stiffly, as if she were braced for something. “I’m not sure what else I can say to-”

“I’m sorry!” I blurted the words out, and Adagio jerked back in surprise.

“I… What?” Adagio stammered.

“I said: I’m sorry,” I repeated a little more calmly. “For how I acted before, at the bar.”

Adagio looked taken aback for a moment before she rallied and stood a little straighter.

“Why?” She asked sharply.

I blinked in confusion.

“Because…” I stammered, “because it was… it was unladylike and terribly rude of me as well, and because you didn’t deserve it, and… and…”

“And what?” Adagio pressed.

Swallowing back my fear and panic, I took a step closer to her, and suddenly I realized that I could smell her. The scent of rose petals, sea salt, and something I could only readily define as sunshine filled my nose, and my heart did an odd sort of skip in my chest.

“A-and,” I continued, “because you taught me better than that.”

I’m not certain what she was expecting me to say but I doubt it was that, because she stood poleaxed and staring at me for several moments afterward.

“You believe me?” Adagio asked, her voice a ghostly whisper.

I gave her a weak smile, then nodded.

“Why?” Adagio’s voice was still faint.

“Your sister came to see me at my apartment,” I replied quietly. “Aria… we had a conversation and she convinced me to come back here.”

“Aria… you romantic old whore,” Adagio said with a faint smile and a shake of her head, her words had vitriol but her voice was almost… grateful? “I’m curious about what she told you.”

“Very little, actually,” I admitted. “Other than that…”

I trailed off. It was one thing to hear a person say it but quite another to say it oneself. Could I really say to Adagio’s face that better than half the reason I’d come, and been convinced at all, was Aria’s admission that Adagio loved me?

Should I?

It seemed awfully improper on a number of accounts as well as both impetuous and not a little bit rude.

And yet, it was the truth.

“I await with bated breath, Miss Melody,” Adagio said, a touch of her old playfulness coming back to her voice. “What, pray tell, did my sister say?”

“That you loved me,” I took the plunge, and I saw Adagio stiffen.

I was suddenly struck by the mental image of a great, orange-furred cat that had been caught by surprise; its fur fluffing up angrily to make itself seem bigger.

“Did she now?” Adagio whispered.

“She claimed that leaving me behind broke your heart,” I pressed. “And that you… you mourned me.”

She sighed, visibly forcing herself to relax as she wrapped her arms around herself.

“At the time I had no reason to imagine I’d ever see you again,” Adagio replied in a slightly raw voice. “Chances were high that, if things had continued, I might not have crossed your path until several decades had passed and then, of course, you would be a midway through your life and I would still be the same as I ever was.”

“Immortal,” I supplied. “Forever young, always beautiful.”

Adagio smiled at that.

“Not anymore I’m afraid,” she corrected gently. “After the Battle we found our immortality had run its course, as I’m sure you can tell…” she spread her arms and gestured to herself, “I have aged in what I suppose is a standard human manner.”

I hadn’t considered it before but she was right. Adagio was no longer the ever-eighteen girl I’d met when I was nine. She was a beautiful young woman, now, in the prime of her adult life.

And she would age as I would.

“I mourned you in the same way I mourn those very few humans I come to appreciate,” Adagio continued. “Because death would always take them from me, no matter how hard I held on.”

She reached out, tentatively, and her hand came to hover just near my cheek as if she were silently asking permission.

I leaned in, closing the last inch of distance, and shivered at the warm touch of her palm.

“I loved you dearly, Octavia Melody,” Adagio whispered in a faint, thready voice. “As I have loved very few in my exceptionally long life… and I would have given much to see you grow into your talent.”

“I’m here now,” I said, feeling more daring. Daring enough to cover her hand with my own. “Do you still love me?”

“You’re not a child anymore,” Adagio said, breath coming more heavily. “I’m afraid that if I let myself love you again… it would be a very different sort of love than what I had for you as my pupil.”

I dared more and stepped a little closer, my eyes fixing on those warm, raspberry orbs of hers.

“And if that was what I wanted?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Adagio said with a shudder, but she did not move away. “As human as I look, and even lacking my magic, I’m still a predator… I still feed on emotions.”

“And would you ever hurt me?” I asked quietly.

Adagio froze in place, her eyes fixed hungrily on me. I felt pinned, like a hare beneath a hawk's claw, as her gaze bored into me.

“Never,” she hissed.

“Then, Miss Dazzle,” I said, in a faintly business-like tone as I leaned closer. “I… I think, if it’s not too presumptuous, that I would very much like to kiss you.”

I felt as much as heard a growl begin in the back of her throat and, rather than frighten or surprise me, my heart began racing.

Adagio Dazzle was taller than me by a head, statuesque rather than petite, with a commanding mein that suited her disposition. She had wonderfully firm shoulders that I found it a pleasure to fix my arms over as I pulled myself slowly up until our noses were nearly touching.

She didn’t stop me, and by the time I had stopped moving her arms had curled possessively around my waist. I was close enough that I could taste her breath, and we were so achingly near that-

Before I could finish the thought, Adagio pulled me the last few inches and sealed her lips over mine.

I moaned loudly against her mouth, those full, luscious lips were so impossibly soft, and the warm heat of her tongue quickly slipped through, probing for an entrance that I eagerly allowed.

She tasted like smoke and oak, the faintest flavor of the finest vintage whiskey.

The press of her breasts against me confirmed what I already knew: she was significantly more… endowed… than I. It was a slight point of irritation that I had never quite grown into the curves that my mother owned.

I hissed pleasurably as I felt Adagio’s fingers slip past the buttons of my shirt, undoing the bottom few with practiced motions to run over the bare flesh beneath. Her fingers traced my navel up to my bra, then beneath it, and I let out another quiet moan.

How much did I dare? How far did I dare to go with this?

I had waited fifteen years to find the woman who, I distantly realized, I had fallen in love with even as a child. I refused to wait for a second more.

My hands found the back clasp of her dress, and I felt her gasp in surprise against my lips as I pulled it free, letting the gown drop from around her body.

She pulled away slowly, and for a moment I was terrified that I’d gone too far, but the heat in her eyes told a far different story.

Still holding me close, Adagio trailed small kisses along my cheek to my ear, and I shivered a little at the warmth and closeness of her.

“Do you think I’m beautiful, my Melody?” Adagio asked playfully.

“Beautiful,” I said, “is rather a poor descriptor.”

Her laugh was throaty, a strong, heady contralto that sent shivers down my spine.

Then she stepped back from me, her eyes never leaving mine as her arms went around her back. I heard her bra fall to the floor, then her hands went lower, I felt her hips shimmy delightfully, and another soft rasp of fabric told me the last article of clothing she had been wearing had joined the rest of her outfit in the floor.

Adagio pulled free of my arms, taking another step back, and I felt my heart lurch and my breath catch in my throat as she pulled the band from her hair to let it fall freely, then spread her arms again, this time to give me a full view of her gloriously naked body.

Words failed me.

‘Beautiful’ was so trite and overdone, ‘gorgeous’ was so painfully vague.

My eyes roved hungrily over Adagio’s body, and I felt something primal stirring in my chest and other, lower places. She was full and voluptuous, with enough muscle that I could trace her abs with my eyes. Her shoulders, arms, and legs had a definition that left my imagination running wild with thoughts of having that body underneath me and tasting every curve of her.

Adagio was something from the elder days of the world when beauty was divine. She was a marble statue, fair Galatea, come to life.

She was heavenly… radiant… a goddess.

My goddess.

“Am I still perfect?” Adagio asked, her voice husky with lust. “Am I still your ideal?”

“Always,” my voice came out in a harsh, heated whisper as I closed the gap between us. “Forever and always.”

Adagio tangled her fingers into my long black hair, hooking her hand around the back of my head, and I felt her grip as she pulled me back up to her.

I drank in the flavor of her lips as I felt her undress me. I didn’t care, my head was spinning and my body burning, and it was all I could do to hang on to her as she stripped me of my boots, belt, and slacks. I kicked them free of my legs as I moaned and whined with every touch she graced me with.

Her fingers quickly undid the remaining buttons of my shirt, pulled the bow tie loose, and then I was putty in her hands as she caressed and kneaded at my skin, her touches as gentle as they were insistent.

“I am taking you to my bed, Miss Melody,” Adagio hissed between kisses, “and you are not leaving it until I am satisfied.”

I moaned a swift affirmative as I pressed harder against her. Both of her hands hooked under my buttocks and gripped, lifting me easily against her. A few quick strides took us to her four-poster bed and she laid me down gently on the cool sheets as she crawled over me.

With gentle care, Adagio pulled the last things preserving my modesty away, and I shivered, reflexively curling inward to cover myself.

“Don’t,” Adagio commanded.

And it was a command. Her voice rang with authority, and my limbs loosened practically of their own accord. I let my arms fall away from my modest breasts, and my legs relaxed, revealing the rest of me to her gaze. I blushed heavily as she drank me in and I think in that moment, and maybe for the first time, I felt truly beautiful.

“Give me your hands, my Melody,” Adagio said quietly, but that steel will was still threaded through her words.

I obeyed, holding them out to her, and she took my wrists in her fingers, pressed them together, then swept my bow tie around them and tied it off tightly into a neat bow.

Before I could question it, Adagio had pressed my bound hands and arms up and over my head.

Unless I wanted to rip my prized bow tie I was completely at her mercy.

And I found myself entirely alright with that.

Adagio reached out and let her hand caress lovingly over my cheek, her thumb trailing over my lips before pressing softly. I opened my mouth just slightly, letting the digit slip inside, and I suckled gently on it, earning a warm smile.

It was like watching the sun come out.

As she pulled her hand back I gasped softly.

“I… Adagio…” my words came out almost slurred. “It’s… it’s my f-first time, s-so…”

Adagio’s eyes widened a little, then her features softened to something almost angelic.

“You say that as if it would ever be anything less than gentle with you, my beloved Melody,” Adagio said softly.

Her fingers trailed down from my lips, across my breasts, then further until they were past my waist, and I gasped as I felt her trail a single finger along my slit.

“So wet already,” Adagio teased, then she prowled forward, leaving her finger where it lay, and pressed her lips to my neck, kissing me softly.

I writhed against her touch, trying to buck my hips against the soft pressure of her finger.

“Relax, my love…” she whispered softly, and I shivered as her breath tickled my neck, “just relax.”

I slowed my breathing and stared up into Adagio’s mesmerizingly bright eyes. I felt my body slacken as I tried to lift my head to reach out to her, suddenly desperate to feel her lips on mine again.

She obliged, and in that same moment her finger slipped into me, and I let out a soft cry of pleasure. One hand held my hips steady as the other worked a finger in and out of me in a steady rhythm, and through it all her lips were pressed to mine.

I was coming apart at the seams, and for a few moments it felt like the only thing holding me in place were those perfect lips.

A second finger joined the first and I gasped as I writhed. Adagio had knelt, parting my legs with hers, and I locked my legs around her waist, my body instinctively trying to bring me closer to my lover.

Then her fingers plunged deeper and I arched my back as I felt a shock of lightning pass through me, and I came over her hand and her fingers. I wriggled and shook, my arms flailing in their restriction.

I so badly wanted to wrap myself around Adagio, to feel every inch of my body pressed against hers. It was like a physical pain or ache, like hunger or exhaustion, it seared in the back of my throat like thirst.

“Again,” Adagio hissed as she leaned in and pressed herself to me, working her fingers in and out of me with increased speed. “Come for me again!”

I did, and my hips bucked as I cried out, stars swam in my vision, and I am quite mortified to admit that at that point…

I passed out.

3. Table Manners

I came back to consciousness in a state of bliss.

Rather than bother with what felt like the Herculean task of opening my eyes, I nestled into the warmth around me and took stock of myself. I was probably more comfortable than I’d been in most of my life, and it was a struggle to remain awake. Furthermore, there was a deliciously buttery feeling around my thighs and legs that I tentatively identified as supreme sexual satisfaction, not that I would know from experience, and I was nestled against the softest pillows I had ever felt.

Ah, no, wait, those are breasts.

I blinked and looked up to find Adagio cradling me in her arms, her eyes closed gently in slumber and her chest rising and falling with even breaths. The sheets were pulled up around us, the comforter thrown lightly over us, and I noted immediately that my hands were free, as they had at some point in the evening found their way around Adagio and locked themselves there.

I was also still, as Vinyl would put it, ’very naked’ except for my bow tie.

It was tied loosely in place around my neck and it was quite the only thing I was wearing.

A day ago that would have been embarrassing in the extreme, but now it felt… good. The bow tie did originally belong to Adagio after all, and wearing it like this gave me a curious feeling of completion.

I looked around the room and spied my target, a clock, and it read a bit past two in the morning. It had been just a little before ten at night when I’d arrived and I had… somewhat lost track of time after that.

A part of me knew I ought to call Good Form and let him know I was alright, but I was just so damnably comfortable. I looked back up at Adagio and rather than try and move, I took the time to appreciate her.

Her strong, deceptively muscled arms were curled around my slender shoulders, keeping me pressed against her, and her gorgeous hair was pooled around her face like a corona of summer sunlight. Those wonderfully full lips were open slightly with sleeping breath, and I was possessed by the sudden mad urge to kiss her again.

So I did.

I leaned my head up slightly and let my lips come to rest on Adagio’s. I tasted the gentle exhalations of her breath as I kissed her, and suddenly I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay there, frozen in that single kiss until there was nothing but us. I became almost painfully aware of just how warm and soft she was in my arms, and how good it felt to be held by her.

“Adagio?” I whispered gently, it pained me to wake her up but I needed her to be awake with me.

Maybe it was selfish but I was craving the sound of her voice.

Adagio’s eyes fluttered open, her long lashes tickling my face, and I giggled quietly.

“Mm?” Her reply was a faint, musical hum, and I smiled.

“I’m so sorry,” I said immediately, my voice still low, “I just… I wanted you to be awake and so I woke you up. That… that sounds so silly and childish now that I say it out loud.”

Adagio chuckled, then pulled me closer and I squeaked in delight as she kissed me.

I let my hands rove over her soft skin, firm muscle, and down to her full hips. She really did have the proportions of a pagan fertility goddess.

“Never apologise for wanting my attention, my love,” Adagio murmured as she nibbled at my ear, and I melted in her arms. “I am always happy to oblige you.”

‘My love’, she called me. I felt as though my heart were fit to burst. She called me ‘my love’ and the sound of those words sent silent fireworks through my mind, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Call me that again,” I said softly, and she smiled back at me.

“Call you what, my love?” Adagio was teasing me and I adored her for it.

I leaned in again and kissed her, and Adagio held me close. I was, I think, happier in that single moment than I’d ever been in my life. After years of searching for my beloved mentor, for the woman who had shaped me for years after she had left my life, I had finally found her.

And she loved me still.

“Are you alright, my Melody?” Adagio asked in a gentle voice, and I shivered as her fingers trailed up my bare back. “You’ve gone quiet.”

I stared into her eyes, warm raspberry jewels that they were, and reached out to touch her cheek as I replied.

“Why did you leave me?” I asked quietly. “Why did you have to go?”

Adagio frowned, and as she did I began to suspect that the eldest Siren sister was incapable of doing anything less than beautifully.

“Because we had fed for too long in Canterlot,” she replied in a weary tone. “Prior to meeting you we had already been in the city for almost six months, riling up local bar scenes and such.”

“That seems somewhat low class for you,” I teased, and Adagio rolled her eyes and grinned.

“It was Aria’s turn to pick the feeding grounds and she prefers the ground level to the penthouse suites,” she replied with a long suffering roll of her eyes. “In fact, we nearly kicked off a gang war, which was our reason for leaving.”

My eyes widened at that.

“How?” I asked. “A-and why?”

Adagio sighed. “Back then our powers were such that if we fed in one place for too long the negative emotions became… exponentially more intense.”

I thought back to how bad things got at CHS just for the week and a half the Sirens had been there, and suddenly understood. It had never gotten worse than a shouting match or harsh words, but those had been bad enough.

“As for why of it?” Adagio actually looked a little ashamed as she continued. “We stayed for almost a year, which was well past our usual self-imposed limit, because of me.”

For a moment I just stared at her. It didn’t take a master detective to suss out why Adagio had refused her sisters’ apparent desire to leave Canterlot.

“Because… because you wanted to stay-”

“-with you, yes,” Adagio admitted. “I had originally taken the teaching job with the idea of spending a month or two fleecing your family for their wealth,” her gaze turned, and I could hear the self-hatred in her voice. Her grip around me actually tightened as if she were afraid I would pull away. “Except then I began actually teaching you and I simply lost myself… you were just so earnest and devoted, and I had never had such an apt pupil before.”

“You shaped me,” I told her simply. “Your lessons etched themselves indelibly on me, and I’ve lived them ever since.”

Adagio let out slightly bitter chuckle.

“I was a poor teacher,” Adagio replied, and I felt her bury her face in my hair. “I adored you, your total certainty in me, your loyalty, and your respect… it meant the world to me… and knowing I was unworthy of it was an unbearable sort of pain.”

I furrowed my brow and pulled myself up closer so we were staring eye-to-eye across the pillow we were sharing.

“Adagio Dazzle, whatever your intentions had been,” I stared evenly at her as I spoke, “what you did was shape me into the woman I am today, and I daresay your lessons are better than half the reason I’m as driven, capable, and skilled as I am!”

“You’re being unfair to yourself, I think,” Adagio replied sternly, though I could feel her relaxing. “You have more talent in your left hand than some have in their entire family tree.” Her hand rose to rest under my chin and angle it up so she could press her lips to my neck. “And you are so very beautiful.”

I let out a shuddering breath.

“That’s overstating it a little, don’t you think?” I countered, shivering as her impossibly soft lips graced the hollow of my neck. “I’m not curvy enough to justify my height nor petite enough to pass as ‘cute’, if I’m honest I think I’m rather plain.”

Adagio nipped at my neck and I let out a squeak of pleasure, and she grabbed my hip in a sudden passion, pulling me forward to grind my sensitive sex against her leg. I gasped as she pressed forward and I felt her fingers dig into my pliant backside.

“How dare you say such a thing,” Adagio hissed, and she rolled her hips, sliding her leg up and down, and drawing out a low moan from me. “How dare you call this exquisite body of yours ‘plain’.”

What happened next will make me blush red as a rose no matter how many years pass.

Adagio sat up sharply, gripped me gently by the hair at the back of my head, bent me over her lap…

And brought one hand down, palm open, in a ringing slap across my bottom.

The sound I made was not one of pain.

“You will-” smack “-never again-” smack “-call yourself-” smack “-plain-” smack “-in my presence or otherwise-” smack “-ever again,” Adagio was breathing hard as she lifted her hand away, staring down at me. “Are we clear?”

Had I been coherent I would have agreed but at that precise moment I was a gelatinous pile of woman quivering blissfully in Adagio’s lap. I could feel the warm, delicious sharpness of the air against my bare ass and the trickle of my own pleasure drenching down my thighs and legs.

So I just nodded instead.

Shaking her hand loose, Adagio brought it to rest on the curve of my bottom, gently stroking the quickly reddening skin and making me tremble in delight.

“Good,” Adagio replied, her hand still moving back and forth in a petting motion. “Really, Miss Melody, I don’t recall teaching you to be so self-effacing… too much time spent around men expecting you to be docile, I should imagine.”

My breath was leaving me in shivers and shudders as my mouth was turned up in a delirious smile. I found myself reflecting on how very enlightening this evening had been… why, I was discovering all kinds of new things about myself.

A veritable journey of self-discovery, this night was turning out to be.

A moan tore its way out of my throat as Adagio went from stroking my sore bottom to sliding two fingers, almost distractedly, into my dripping cunt. They worked in and out of me repeatedly, never ceasing their assault but never rising to the tempo I desperately needed.

I bucked my hips, trying to speed Adagio along, but it only earned me her ire as her fingers slid out from inside me and she brought down another open-palmed slap against my rear.

“Be still,” Adagio commanded as she reinserted her fingers, “I’m not finished doling out your punishment yet, and if you try that again I’ll do worse.”

“W-What could p-possibly be worse than this?!” I whimpered as I tried furiously not to reach back to touch myself or to move my hips any more.

The words she said put a cold chill in my belly.

“Worse,” Adagio replied, her voice filled with a smirk, “is me stopping altogether.”

Well… I did ask, didn’t I?

For an entire agonizing hour Adagio inflicted the most ecstatically pleasurable punishment on me, always keeping me right at the edge of release but never pushing me over it until finally, when I was more or less incoherent, she sank her fingers deep inside me, brought a hand around to gently cradle my neck, and hissed into my ear:

“Now cum for me.”

By that point I had learned to obey.

My mouth fell open in a soundless cry, and I swear my eyes must have rolled back into my head as came to a shaking, quaking climax. It rolled over me a force of nature and when it passed I went slack, utterly spent, and laid panting and sweating in Adagio’s lap.

I was vaguely aware of her moving around me, but my senses were dulled and gray from overstimulation. The scent of something floral drifted by my nose and the sound of running water reached my ears but they were so distant to me in that moment that I paid them no mind.

I felt her return, more than saw her, just as I felt her remove the bow tie from my neck. Then I felt myself rise, being cradled in arms that held me close and safe, and I curled instinctively into Adagio’s embrace as she carried me, bridal style, into her bathroom where she gently and lovingly lowered me into a heated bath.

Adagio sat beside the bathtub, clad in a terrycloth bathrobe, and hummed a soft tune as she scrubbed at my arms and chest. I recall her taking her time with my legs and then carefully moving me forward to wash my back. Then she laid me back again and doled out a small glob of shampoo and began working it into a lather in my hair.

With practiced motions she massaged it into my scalp and I felt myself drifting out of my own body as I relaxed. Her hands were talented and precise, and I had the distinct impression she had once done this professionally.

Given her true age, though, I suppose that’s probably more likely than not.

“Are you well, my love?” Adagio asked in a tender tone.

I sighed blissfully.

“I am so much more than well, my dearest Adagio,” I replied breathily as I let my head loll against her shoulder. “I love you so dearly…”

“Even with all the years that lay between us?” Adagio asked, and I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. “Even with all I’ve done?”

I lifted a hand from the warm water of the bath and twined our fingers together.

“I have missed you for all of those years,” I replied, looking up to meet her gaze. “And I swore I would find you one day, and I finally have and, although I’m certain I didn’t realize it myself, I was even saving myself for you.”

That got a quirked eyebrow from her, and Adagio laughed her rich, husky laugh.

“Because you knew I would be immortal?” She asked.

“Well, if I’m honest…” I replied with a small laugh, “I think I’d rather convinced myself you’d been having me on about that whole ‘immortal’ bit… no, I was prepared for something of a December-May relationship, as it were.”

“How scandalous,” Adagio jeered playfully, “now get out of the water before your beautiful skin starts to wrinkle.”

Adagio toweled me off, something she insisted on doing herself, and as I left the bath I had to lean the lion's share of my weight on her. I wasn’t heavy by any means, but my legs had taken up with unsavory sorts and implemented some kind of strike against the bourgeoisie oppression of my brain, and thus refused to support me.

As it was I was half-carried back to the bed, and I curled against Adagio as she pulled the sheets and covers back over us.

“I suppose this is a bit late to ask,” I ventured sleepily as my head found that deliciously soft spot on her chest. “But I hope I can call myself yours now, in the official sense.”

“If you would have me in return,” Adagio replied, her voice was almost a plea.

I smiled as I wrapped my arms more fully around Adagio’s generous chest, purring softly as I trailed my fingers down the defined muscles of her back.

“I think will,” I replied with all the impish smugness I could manage, and her laugh was like music to my ears.

Two weeks more had passed and they were quite the most blissful weeks of my life up to that point.

Orchestra rehearsal was, of course, a constant. If we weren’t touring we were practicing, and well we should be, but between those hours spent in the rehearsal halls of Canterlot I devoted every spare hour I could to Adagio, making up for fifteen years of lost time wasn’t going to just happen after all.

Of course we spent a good portion of that in the bedroom, but significantly more of it was spent simply being… together.

We whiled away hours walking side-by-side through the snow-dappled business districts of old town and the so called magnificent mile. Drove the length of the winter-clad wonderland of the Gold Coast, with all the wealthy homes done up in their most ostentatiously gauche Christmas finery.

For all my love of my music, a woman’s career can’t be her entire life. No one’s can… not really. There has to be more to it than simple accomplishment.

There has to be something more civilized for it to be called ‘life’ and I found that in Adagio.

She was every inch the urbane wit I remembered from childhood, with her wry, caustic humor never failing to earn a laugh. Our conversations spanned topics I could never have hoped to reach with anyone else; politics, history, art in its many facets from music to sculpture.

There was no topic she didn’t have an opinion on, and no opinion that wasn’t well considered if not influenced by first-hand experience.

And in a thousand years she had a lot of experience.

“Wait, wait,” I pleaded, struggling to swallow. “For the love of all that’s holy let me finish my drink first unless you want me choking to death.”

Adagio gave magnanimous gesture of her hand and I swallowed the mouthful of pinot gris I’d taken a moment earlier.

It was late in the evening and Adagio’s presence wasn’t required at the Note for the night, so we had decided to go out to eat. The restaurant was a high class affair called La Mer, and it served some of the better wines in the area, that and their lobster thermidor was to die for.

I had dressed for the occasion, a daring open-backed, shoulderless gown of pale grey silk whose straps were woven around my neck and were accentuated by my ever present pink bow tie. Adagio looked gorgeous, naturally, but I strongly suspected that woman could crawl out from under an engine block and make it look good.

She hadn’t, obviously, and was wearing a form-hugging dressed with a high neck reminiscent of a kimono mixed with an event gown that seemed to be made of overlapping golden scales which caught the light beautifully. Around her neck was a silver necklace studded with amethysts, and a similar ring on her right hand. Her wonderfully voluminous hair was done in an elaborate updo that I’m certain violated at least two laws of physics and a handful of Federal statutes.

“Alright, go on,” I said, still laughing.

“So, no shit, there we are,” Adagio began with a laugh. “Charlemane is kneeling before the pope who’s about to crown him, everyone is watching, the whole cathedral is silent and suddenly the silence broken by a deafening crunching sound.”

“Don’t tell me…” I muttered, blushing a little as I felt Adagio’s leg tangle playfully with mine beneath the table. “Sonata?”

Adagio nodded her head dolefully.

“The entire congregation, myself included, turned our heads,” she continued, “all of them staring at my sisters and I… and Sonata was staring innocently back with some kind of crunchy sweet wafer she had sang out of a street stall vendor still in her mouth!” Adagio threw her hands up in mock dismay. “I was mortified! We’d been in the human world less than a century but it wasn’t exactly hermetic arcana to know not eat in a temple during a ceremony!”

“What did you do?” I asked, leaning forward and returning fire on her game of footsie with some playful tickling along her thigh. “Do tell.”

Her cheeks flushed prettily and I felt my heart racing.

“I plucked the wafer directly out of her mouth,” Adagio replied, “stood up, pitched it out the window and off the nearby balcony, then turned back and sat down.”

“And then?” I pressed, still chuckling.

“And then,” Adagio continued. “Aria began to snore.”

“Good heavens,” I was holding a hand to my mouth and it was all I could do not to burst into fits of laughter in the middle of the restaurant.

“At that point the soon-to-be Holy Roaman Emperor turns his head to regard us from where he is kneeling before the Pope,” Adagio laughed mellifluously, and I loved every note of it, “the Pope himself is staring at us too, which is when Sonata, bless her, takes yet another wafer from where she’d apparently stowed them in her robes and crunches into, and Aria slips off of the pew to clatter to the ground and continues to snore!” I give up entirely, and the restaurant is filled with my laughter. “Now here I am staring in disbelief at my sisters and finally I just start shrieking obscenities and bellow out my strongest amnesia song.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, coughing as I tried to catch my breath, “you wiped away the crowning of King Charlemane? But that happened!”

“Well, obviously,” Adagio replied, waving her hand dismissively. “I put a little too much oomph into my spell, and ended up blanking the whole day out for everyone in the city. They woke up the next morning and just… did it all again.”

“Wouldn’t that play havoc with their schedules?” I asked, still chuckling.

Adagio coughed again, her cheeks reddening.

“Ah, yes, about that,” Adagio made a little wheeling motion with her hand. “Their astrologers and such were so confounded by the lost day it caused a bit of havoc,” she leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her own wine. “Apparently, they did all kinds of things to make up for it, but by then we’d fled the city. It played merry Tartarus with all of their rituals, since they were measured by seasons and the like… anyway I’m at least passingly certain that’s where that whole ‘leap year’ nonsense came from, sorry about that.”

I jumped slightly in my chair and let out small squeak of surprise that I judiciously turned into a cough as I felt Adagio’s foot, sans her shoe which I assumed was still under the table, slide far up my leg and come to rest somewhere far more sensitive.

Blushing, I cleared my throat, took a drink, and fixed her with an even stare.

“Really?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as flat as possible.

“I don’t see you stopping me, my love,” Adagio cooed, still leaning back and I realized she had done it so she could extend her leg more.

I rolled my eyes but my smile couldn’t be kept from my face as I met her eyes.

“You’re a louse, Adagio Dazzle,” I replied, playful causticity in my voice.

“And how,” Adagio agreed with a toothy grin, before pulling her foot away.

Well she did because otherwise I would have ruined my dress, and I was rather fond of it. I certainly wouldn’t have dared take it to a dry cleaners… I could only imagine the whisperings that cleaning would have provoked.

“Have I told you this evening how lovely and enchanting you are?” Adagio asked gaily, still grinning over the lip of her wineglass.

“At last count it was eleven times,” I replied with my own smile as I swirling my glass and took a small sip, “but please, do go on.”

“Octavia Melody?” A slightly reedy voice spoke up from nearby and I glanced to the side.

My eyebrows rose in surprise. Being seated a few tables away was a tall, thin man that I recognized easily, though the woman he was with I did not.

“Bolero,” I said, my surprise evident in my voice. “Good evening, what a coincidence.”

“Indeed it is,” he said genially. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Stretta.”

She was a slightly short woman with cherry red hair, a softly green complexion, a kind face, and had the weight of a woman who lived comfortably, but carried it in a attractive, matronly way. She very much reminded me of an almost archetypal mother figure and I found myself liking her immediately.

“A pleasure,” I said sincerely, then gestured to Adagio. “I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Adagio Dazzle.”

Adagio inclined her head regally to the pair of them.

“Charmed,” she said, her lips curved in that enigmatic manner I found so fetching.

“Girlfriend?” Boléro raised his eyebrows slightly, “oh… I never realized you were, Ah… so inclined.”

“Is that a problem?” Adagio asked, her voice was perfectly civil but I could hear cold, hidden steel beneath it.

Stretta elbowed her husband gently in the ribs before turning back to us.

“Of course not,” she said warmly, and I found her voice to be pleasantly soft. “My husband was simply surprised, that’s all, he’s a bit dense but a good man.”

To my surprise, Boléro chuckled, nodding along to his wife’s playful deprecations. She leaned into him as she spoke, her head resting comfortably against his narrow chest, and in that moment I quite regretted every ill thought I’d ever had about the man.

True, he wasn’t a particularly exceptional cellist, and yes… I still didn’t believe he deserved to hold the first chair… but that was, perhaps, being unfair to him as a person.

“Are you here on some occasion?” Boléro asked brightly as they settled into their seats.

“Just spending an evening together,” I replied. “We’re both quite busy, the demands of business and life, such as it is… you?”

“Well, quite so actually,” Boléro replied. “I was going to make the announcement tomorrow at rehearsals but I see no issue in telling you now… I’m retiring from the orchestra.”

I blinked in shock. “W-What? Why?”

“He’s taking up a teaching position at the Fillydelphia Academy of Musical Arts,” Stretta said proudly. “He’s always wanted to be a teacher and he was offered the position last month!”

For a moment I felt displaced… caught cleanly off guard. The idea of giving up a position in the Canterlot Philharmonic Orchestra was unthinkable to me but, then, I supposed he wasn’t me. He had his own dreams and desires, and in truth I imagined he would make a phenomenal instructor.

Boléro’s technical skill had always been flawless, he simply lacked the finesse and passion of an artist. A role as a teacher, though, I imagined would suit him wonderfully.

“I fully intend to recommend you to my chair, as well,” Boléro said pleasantly. “We both know you ought to have had it long before now.”

“W-well I’m sure I don’t-” I sputtered, but Boléro waved his hand with a wry chuckle.

“Don’t spare my feelings, Miss Melody,” he replied with a self-effacing grin. “I had the chair by virtue of seniority and office politics, not my ability, everyone in the Orchestra knows you’ve got more skill than most of the string section combined.”

“Oh, I like you,” Adagio said, looking at Boléro and laughing smokily as she reached out and took my hand. “Maître d′!”

Adagio snapped her fingers and with moments an older man with dark skin and braided hair appeared, his suit sharp and neatly pressed and his beard trimmed evenly.

“How can I help you Miss Dazzle?” He asked curtly.

“Put their bill on my tab, dear,” Adagio gestured to Boléro and Stretta, “they’re celebrating a new career and tonight is on me.”

The pair stared at one another for a shocked moment before turning to Adagio.

“M-ma’am, you really don’t-” Stretta began, but Adagio cut her off.

“Oh but I do,” she countered. “Your husband recognizes talent and has very much earned my good graces by offering a hand to the love of my life,” she gestured to me and I blushed heavily. “In my very expert opinion that deserves something, even if it is simply an excellent meal in good company.”

“But-” Boléro put in, but he too was neatly given a verbal roadblock.

“Ah, Ah, Ah,” Adagio tutted, “it’s rude to deny a gift, don’t you think? Don’t make me offer again, I’ll look needy and I do hate looking needy.”

Boléro and his wife shared another look, she shrugged, he nodded, sharing that odd sort of language married couples seem to develop over tone.

“Only if you would do us the honor of joining us,” Boléro finally allowed, and Adagio smiled radiantly.

“We would be delighted.”

To my surprise I found I rather liked Boléro, and I felt a pang of dismay that he would soon be leaving. I had always considered him with a certain scorn, but his humility and generally kind nature really did endear him to me.

“Are you alright, Octavia?” Boléro asked as he took another bite of his cheesecake, then swallowed. “You look… distracted.”

At some point during the conversation we’d begun more casually using one another’s names. I find it almost galling that Boléro and I should have so much in common and that only my arrogance kept me from realising it.

“I suppose I am,” I replied quietly. “Boléro, before you leave I have a confession to make.”

“Oh?” He looked me in the eye with a wry, weary sort of smile. “Is it anything to do with contempt, my dear?”

I stiffened, and my hand found Adagio’s almost instinctively. She gave me a warm smile, though, as she stroked the back of my hand with her thumb.

“Don’t be so put out, Octavia, you’re hardly the only one,” he said with a chuckle.

“That’s hardly a laughing matter!” I shot back, feeling more than a little angry, with no small amount of that anger directed inward. “You’re a good man, Boléro, and damn any woman or man who says otherwise!”

Stretta smiled brilliantly at my remark before patting her husband’s chest.

“You see?” She said in that markedly pleased tone every wife gets when she’s proven right about something over her husband. “I told you she’s a good egg…” then she turned to me with a conspiratorial smile. “He was always too nervous to speak to you casually, you know,” she confided in a stage whisper. “You intimidate him, along with most of the other ramrod-arsed men in that Orchestra.”

“Hah!” Adagio barked out a laugh, before taking another sip of whiskey as she grinned toothily at Stretta. “Oh Boléro I absolutely adore your wife, tell me Stretta how on earth did he manage to catch you? With all the love in the world, you’re well out of this man’s strike zone.”

“I’ve been saying that for years,” Boléro lamented playfully, putting an arm around his wife.

“Believe it or not it didn’t take much,” Stretta replied with a laugh. “He’s honest, earnest, humble, kind… really, what more could a woman ask for?”

“Talent?” Boléro ventured with a self-deprecating laugh.

“That’s terribly unfair,” I admonished him, even though a day ago I might’ve thought the same thing.

“Please, I admire you too much for that, Octavia,” Boléro replied sternly. “My tenure and my family’s patronage put me in that chair, which is probably the worst kept secret in the Orchestra besides whoever Brassy’s latest affair is.”

“Those are only a secret because no one can keep track of them all,” I groaned. “Why that woman even bothered getting married is beyond me.”

“It’s all politics darling,” Adagio chided. “So long as she’s married and keeps up the basic pretense of fidelity she lends a certain respectability to her position in the Orchestra.”

“Just so,” Boléro agreed. “It’s why I was first chair at all, being the oldest member of the Orchestra and an ‘appropriately dapper-looking gentleman’, Stalling’s words not mine.”

Stalling Reins, the director of the Orchestra, and one of my least favorite people on the planet.

“It certainly wasn’t for my talent,” Boléro said with a laugh. “I’m capable, not exceptional, and certainly not phenomenal like you, dear Octavia.”

The unkind thoughts I’d had about Boléro and the word ‘capable’ came back to me a shame-filled rush and I grimaced.

“Well… skill and talent have no bearing on one’s quality,” Adagio said after a moment. “Whatever your skills, you have my respect.”

“And mine,” I added firmly. “For whatever blinkered arrogance I was originally possessed of, you may consider me a friend if you’ll have me.”

Stretta and Boléro shared a warm look before nodding graciously to me.

“We can always use more friends,” Stretta said, raising her glass, “and new opportunities.”

“Cheers,” I replied, raising my own glass.

Adagio’s and Boléro’s glasses joined ours moments later and I felt, in that moment, an odd sort of satisfaction. The primal and very necessary joy of good food, good company, and good memories.

4. Be Polite

I hate my bed.

Alright, that’s probably being unfair to my bed. Really, it’s a perfectly fine bed if one were to consider it objectively. It’s a king-size, pencil-poster bed whose posts I generally find myself hanging far too many of my worn clothes on after long days, short days, or simply days where I can’t be bothered.

My laundry would be a state of emergency by itself were it not for Good Form, I think.

Honestly, my bed has been perfectly adequate for the three years I’ve owned it and yet, looking at it now, I absolutely hate the thing solely because it doesn’t have Adagio in it.

“Octavia you’re being completely childish,” I muttered angrily to myself. “You are perfectly capable of sleeping alone for a single night.”

Not even a month together and I’m already begrudging every evening that our schedules fail to align enough for us to go to bed together. I suppose this is part and parcel of being with a woman whose livelihood is a late-night establishment, but I claim it as my prerogative to be huffy about it anyway.

“Mister Form?” I turned, smoothing my nightgown as I did, and a moment later my butler was at my bedroom door.

“Yes, Miss Melody?”

“Bring me a whiskey and my cello please, I’m feeling restless.” I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon so I may as well practice. “Oh, and my music stand and folder number one.”

“As you say,” Form bobbed his head slightly and strode away.

There were times where I felt as though I really didn’t appreciate Form enough, but the last time I’d offered him time off and a paid vacation he’d taken it personally. It was, I think, his greater pleasure to see me taken care of, and the idea of taking a vacation from that duty would have only caused him undo stress and worry.

For certain he doesn’t trust anyone else to drive me except, for some reason, Adagio, and I’m still unclear as to how she got on his good side so quickly. I eventually chalked it up as one of those things about Adagio that normal people simply can’t achieve.

I adjusted the large reading chair I had in my room and sat down just as Good Form returned with my cello case in one hand, a silver platter with a glass of whiskey in the other, and the folder and collapsed music stand under his arm.

The whiskey went onto the nightstand to my right as I took the cello and began setting up. Form settled the stand in front of me and placed the folder on, then silently bowed himself out of the room.

“Now what to play…” I mused aloud as I opened the folder.

It was thick and old with several dozen compositions tucked neatly into it. Folder One had my favorites in it, ones I knew by heart if I were being honest but playing without the sheet in front of me felt wrong somehow.

Perhaps I’m just a creature of habit.

I had barely opened the folder when I stopped, staring down at the very first composition within. It had been some time since I’d played that one, but all of sudden it felt quite nostalgic.

‘Unnamed’, composed by Serenata Dazzle.

The very piece I had learned under Adagio’s tutelage fifteen years ago, when I had known her by her pseudonym.

As promised I’d never performed it for any but my parents and some of the house staff. Despite my desire to do so, I had never performed it at any of my recitals over the years, and kept it solely to myself.

“Yes… this one, I think,” I said, feeling more pleased about the evening already.

I set the rest of the folder aside on the nightstand and laid out the sheets of music, settling each page in place with care. Then I took a sip of my whiskey, aligned my bow, and began to play.

It had been nearly a year since I’d played the piece, but my fingers found their marks as if it had been only yesterday. The tune, as always, had an odd almost haunting quality to it… a feeling of something like melancholy and longing.

It made me miss Adagio all the more.

Maybe it was because she had been absent for so many years of my life, and because I’d spent so much of that keeping an ear to the ground for her, but when she was away it felt far worse than I thought it ought to.

I reached the end of the composition, frowned, and found the beginning again, repeating it as my reclaimed my lost train of thought.

How many years had I spent pining for this woman? Perhaps a better question was: was I pining for the woman I thought she was? Or for the woman she is?

That was an unpleasant station for my train of thought to have a layover at. And yet, now that I was here, I couldn’t just ignore the notion.

Was I in love with Serenata? Or Adagio? Was Adagio a stand-in for Serenata? Never mind that the woman never existed in the first place and that Adagio was, factually speaking, my old teacher.

The end of the composition crept up again and I started over once more.

I was in love with Adagio, I was certain. I truly adored her… she was as forceful as she was gentle, and open as she was enigmatic… and she loved me with all her heart.

But at the same time a part of me was afraid I was conflating the Serenata I borderline worshipped and the Adagio who exists in the real world. It wouldn’t do to idolize the person you were in a relationship with, that was an unhealthy habit to be in.

And Adagio deserved to be appreciated for who she truly was, not for who I imagined her to be.

Adagio was… powerful, graceful, and brilliant. She was not, however, flawless… the events of the Battle of the Bands proved that. But no one is, really, and if I kept that image of Serenata in my mind, that perfected ideal, then one day…

One day Adagio would disappoint me, and it would be no one’s fault but my own.

I sighed as I reached the end of the composition yet again and this time I lowered the bow. For some reason my entire body ached and I couldn’t account for why that was. I’d felt fine a few moments ago but now I felt… stiff.

“Done already?”

I let out a squeak of surprise as I realized Adagio was sitting at the end of my bed, her ankles crossed demurely and a soft smile on her face. She was watching me, and presumably had been for a little while.

How had I not noticed her?

“Darling? I… I thought you worked tonight,” I stammered as I clumsily packed my cello away. My fingers were damnably numb. “Not that I’m complaining, obviously.”

Adagio raised an eyebrow.

“What time do you think it is?” She asked playfully.

“What?” I cocked my head and then thought about it. “I… started playing less than an hour ago, I think, so perhaps… close to midnight?”

“According to your butler you’ve been playing the same piece on repeat for close to four hours,” Adagio said wryly. “It’s three in the morning, the Note closed about an hour ago.”

Oh.

“Well,” I coughed and cleared my throat as my cheeks reddened. “I suppose that would explain why I feel so awful all of a sudden.”

“I rather suppose it would,” Adagio agreed, but her smile became a little worried.

She shifted invitingly on the bed, patting the spot next to her, and I got up, stiffly, walking over to sit down beside her.

“Lost in thought, my love?” Adagio queried as she moved behind me and her hands began gently kneading at my shoulders.

I sighed blissfully as her talented hands rolled the tension out of the muscles wherever she touched.

“Did you used to work in a spa, my dear? Because you're far too good at this,” I groaned as I felt all the tightness leaving me.

“We owned an onsen in Neighpon, in the Owari province, once upon a time,” Adagio replied quietly. “My sisters and I, I mean.”

“I thought you didn’t stay in one place for too long,” I replied as my eyes fluttered closed.

Adagio hummed thoughtfully as her hands moved down to my lower back, and I melted a little as she worked away the tension there as easily as she had above.

“Well, this was the better part of, oh, five hundred years ago,” She continued, her voice still low. “We hadn’t really established all the rules we began living by later on, we were a lot more ‘devil-may-care’ back then.”

“What happened?”

At some point I’d turned into a vaguely Octavia-shaped pile of slurry, and my head was now resting in Adagio’s lap.

“It was burned down by a brute named Nobuneighga,” Adagio replied, and her voice carried a faint tightness to it. “My sisters and I lost many friends that day.”

“I’m so- wait…” I narrowed my eyes for a moment, then glanced up at her. “Oda? Nobuneighga Oda?”

“Something like that, yes,” Adagio replied dismissively. “He ended up some kind of a warlord, at least until we got our revenge,” Adagio chuckled wickedly. “I seem to recall Aria convincing one of his retainers that Oda was going to betray him, give away the man’s fiefdom to his boytoy or some such, it was all very dramatic at the time.”

“You… that…” I stammered, lost for words. “A-are you aware of the larger… historical implications of your actions?”

“Not really,” Adagio replied with a vague shrug. “We were wanderers, we try not to affect things too much, but that one was personal.”

“Oda Nobuneighga was pivotal in the restructuring of Neighpon,” I replied uneasily. “His death, and the resulting power vacuum, left the country in turmoil for… over two centuries, I think.”

“Really?” Adagio looked genuinely surprised at that, then tapped her lips thoughtfully. “I suppose he was doing a fair job at conquering everything prior to our little intervention.”

“If I recall my world history correctly,” I said dryly, “he had very nearly unified Neighpon when his subordinate mysteriously turned on him.”

Adagio shrugged.

“If he wanted to rule the country he should have left us alone,” Adagio said with a short wave of her hand. “We put a lot of work into that hot spring, and we ran it for nearly a century. Aria was furious, and Sonata was inconsolable when he destroyed it.”

“And you?” I asked quietly, turning over to lay on my back and look up at her. “How did you feel?”

“I was utterly livid, but not over the onsen,” Adagio replied in a toneless voice. “I had a lover… she was beautiful, gentle, and the soul of kindness… and she was killed mercilessly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied quietly.

I realize it’s unfair and unhealthy to be jealous of a woman many hundreds of years dead, especially given her fate, and yet I still was.

A little.

“That’s quite a length to go to, to avenge the woman you loved,” I said with a small laugh as I reached up and playfully stroked her cheek. “That bodes well for me, at least.”

Adagio raised an eyebrow.

“Loved? My dear Melody you mistake me,” she said in a low voice. “I… cared for her, after a fashion, but more in the way one cares for a favorite pet.”

“You… what?” I stared up at her, my mouth hanging slightly open in surprise.

“Is it so hard to believe?” Adagio asked, glancing down at me. “She would live a fraction of my own lifespan, and she was beautiful, but not especially formidable.” She began idly running her hands through my hair as she spoke. “I didn’t have Nobuneighga killed out of rage at a lost loved one, I did it in a fit of pique.”

A terrible thought settled into my mind before dropping down to my chest to curl around my heart like a stone serpent. Was this all I was to her too? A beloved pet? Was I nothing more than-

“Unlike you, she didn’t have my love,” Adagio continued, unaware of my brief existential crisis. “I would do orders of magnitude worse than simply destabilize a country if I ever lost you, my darling Melody.”

I stared up at her, lost for words as she idly stroked my hair. I felt like that moment ought to have been marked somehow, as something important. Adagio had just declared that she would rattle the foundations of the world for my sake with all the gravitas of a woman trying to decide if today was a blue-lipstick kind of day or not.

“Why?” The question came out in a quiet breath, and Adagio looked at me as though I were being silly.

“Because I love you, Octavia,” Adagio replied, a faint expression of concern on her face that she somehow managed to make look like a pout.

I reached up and slid my arms around her shoulders, pulling myself up until I was almost in her lap, and stared into those wonderful raspberry eyes of hers.

“That’s not what I mean.”

I kissed her, hard and fast, and as tired as I was the love I felt there was so intense it energized me.

“Why would you go so far for me?” I asked as I pulled away, slowly, still savoring the taste of her lips on mine. “Why am I worth so much to you? Why was I so important to you, all those years ago?”

“Why shouldn’t you have been?” Adagio countered, her gaze sharpening at my words. “Was supposed to look into your eyes back then, see that total and completely guileless trust and admiration there, the brilliance and the devotion and raw desire to create music, and not love you?” She pulled me into another kiss, just as passionately before pulling back and continuing. “Was I not supposed to mourn that I had lost that when I left you? Or be ashamed that the last thing I had told you before leaving had been a lie so I wouldn’t have to see you cry as I left?”

“The bow tie…” I murmured, looking over at my end table where it sat, clean and waiting. “I had quite forgotten… you told me it was magical.”

Adagio nodded.

“Had you cried out for me, back then,” Adagio said, her voice tight, “I’m not sure I’d have had the heart to leave at all… even knowing what it would bring down.”

“I understand why you did it,” I said softly, leaning into her.

Adagio wrapped her arms around me, and I heard her let out a quiet sob as she held onto me.

“When I finally recognized you in the Note,” she continued, still holding onto me with desperate strength, “I was so happy… happier than I had been in years!”

“And I was rather indelicate, if I recall,” I said weakly.

“That fire and passion was what I loved about you, though,” Adagio spoke gently, her fingers trailing along my sides and raising goosebumps under my nightgown. “I saw the tinder when you were a child and witnessed the full flame when you found me as a woman grown… and as tragically despondent as it had left me after you were gone… I was grateful.”

“Grateful that I’d shouted you down in front of your entire staff?” I asked with a wry smile.

“Grateful that I got to see that flame with my own eyes,” Adagio replied evenly. “Grateful that, even if you hated me from that moment on, I got to see you one last time.”

She kissed me again, and I fell in love, again. Her lips were so soft, and her hands were too, and she held me so gently.

“I was afraid, you know,” Adagio said quietly as she cradled me. “When you confronted me in my room at the Note what I feared most was falling in love with who you were now, today, and having you throw it back in my face.”

“Never,” I whispered harshly. “I would never.”

“And yet I was afraid,” Adagio hissed. “You’re so strong, and so good… and I am a monster among monsters.” She looked up at me with eyes wet with tears. “Nodens oath, when you asked if I still loved you, carved straight into the heart of that fear, I almost lied and said no… just to spare myself the heartache.”

I think that was the moment that Serenata, the one I remember, vanished from my mind. That brief moment where Adagio held onto me like flotsam in a hurricane. She wept, openly, pressing her face to me shoulder and soaking my nightgown with tears. I stroked her mane of sunrise golden hair, savoring its softness and whispering calming words into her ear.

How could I love Serenata in the face of this beautiful creature? A woman who was little more than a graven image in my own mind? She was elegant, graceful, perfect and… cold. ‘Serenata’ was still and unmoving, just a memory, while Adagio was alive and soft in my arms, and her tears were hot on my skin.

Slowly, I laid Adagio down on my bed, wiping away her tears before letting my hands slip down along her marvelous body to slide her form-hugging dress from her curves. I kissed the bare skin left behind and I felt Adagio gasp, with my lips pressed to her navel, as much as I heard it.

More often than not it was Adagio who insisted on… ah… doting on me in the bedroom, as it were.

That was not going to happen tonight.

This morning.

Whatever.

Adagio gasped as I pulled off her dress and threw it off the side of the bed, and I made quicker work of her lacy underthings, but not so quick that I didn’t notice how they were grey lace over black silk.

My colors.

I didn’t rip them, but I came damn close. I was tempted, I’ll admit, because I wanted Adagio naked and I wanted her naked now.

I shrugged off my nightgown, throwing it over to join Adagio’s dress in the floor, and before she could say a word I was between Adagio’s thighs, her knees draped crudely over my shoulders I ran my tongue roughly along her slit.

Once upon a time, I considered myself quite learned in the musical arts. As it turns out I was mistaken, because I’m damnably certain I had never heard music before until the moment I heard Adagio cry out my name like she did.

It sent a shiver like lightning down my spine. That sound lit a blazing inferno in my gut and between my legs as I pushed my tongue deeper, and I groaned softly as I felt her fingers find a firm grip on my hair.

Adagio bucked wildly against my mouth, and I tasted her as she came, and I swear I nearly climaxed, myself.

Now, obviously, Adagio and I have spent many nights together, during which we’ve made love, had sex, lain together, and all those fancy phrases, etcetera, etcetera…

I’m not sure if I’m adequately able to convey that tonight was not one of those nights.

Tonight I had stripped my girlfriend naked, pinned her to the bed, and was furiously intent on roundly fucking her brains out.

She writhed beneath me, the firm muscles of her legs all but convulsing as I lashed my tongue up and down, teasing and licking her, tasting her, then fixing my lips around her sensitive button and focusing all of my attention there.

Her cries of ecstasy rang in my ears, but they only drove me forward harder. Adagio’s fingers had a deathgrip on my hair, and I'm at least passingly certain that I didn’t get all of it back. Her legs were locked around my head and I’m absolutely certain that only her phenomenal willpower kept my head in one piece.

Then the final climax came, Adagio let out a high, keening cry as her back arched and her soaked cunt pressed hard against my mouth. She drenched me from chin to neck, leaving me gasping as she sagged out of my grip, spent and panting on the sheets of my bed.

But I wasn’t done.

I did not rip her underwear. I didn’t because, as much as I wanted to I abhor damaging other people’s belongings.

It’s simply not polite.

With that said: my own underwear could rot in Tartarus for getting in my way.

I gripped them by the elastic band and tore them off with a single, harsh yank, then threw them to the side in the general direction of my trash bin.

The sound of ripping fabric brought Adagio’s dazed eyes up in vague surprise as I crawled over and mounted her, pressing my dripping cunt to her own sensitive and soaked nethers. She let out a squeak of surprise that turned into a low, drawn out moan as I lifted one of her legs up and over my shoulder, turning her roughly onto her side, and began rutting myself against her as she held herself up.

Adagio cried out my name over and over, and it drove me into a frenzy as harsh, ragged gasps of my own fell raw from my panting lips.

“I… I love you!” I gasped, grinding myself against her, and I reveled in the feeling of her body. “Ah… fuck!”

“O-Octavia!” Adagio cried out my name again, her voice almost delirious. “I… I love… you… oh shit, I-!”

Adagio’s voice burst out from her in an incoherent cry as she came, before promptly collapsing in exhaustion. Her body shook and shivered as I rode her, and a moment later I hit my own peak, climaxing against her cunt so hard stars seemed to burst behind my eyes.

My body started to go slack as my arms fell to my sides, and Adagio’s leg dropped gracelessly from where I’d kept it braced at the knee over my shoulder.

I took a breath.

Then another.

And damn it all, I passed out again.

Sunlight was filtering in through the drawn curtains of my bedroom window just enough that it fell over my eyes and woke me up from what was a blissfully restful sleep. I’ve always considered myself a peaceful sort of person but in that instant I found myself briefly regretting devoting my life to the world of music rather than delving into advanced sciences that would have given me the ability to blow up the sun.

My entire body hurt; from my neck down to my calves, it all ached like every joint had been popped out of place and then rudely slammed back in by a back-alley chiropractic quack with a ball-peen hammer.

All things considered, my sole consolation was that I was currently resting in in most comfortable position on the planet: splayed out and draped bodily over Adagio.

“Good afternoon, darling,” Adagio’s dulcet voice trickled into my ears and dragged me further into damnable wakefulness.

In my defense, very few things can wake me up like Adagio’s lustily smug, after-sex contralto. It’s the purr of a sex kitten who’s gotten exactly what she wanted.

“Hush,” I grumbled, “at least until I’m awake and willing to stay that way.”

Her laughter was like rich, dark coffee, and I couldn’t help a grin from forming on my face. I shivered as one of her fingers trailed delicately up and down my spine, tickling my back infuriatingly and sending yet more shivers to other, much sorer places.

“Adagio Dazzle don’t you dare rile me up right now,” I snarled playfully, my eyes still determinedly shut. “I am far too sore but I will follow through if only in principle.”

“Promise?” Adagio cooed in a teasing voice.

“By every god above and below, including whichever one you keep swearing by,” I hissed, cracking open one bloodshot eye, “if you keep going then I will plow your orange ass under the table, so don’t test me, Dazzle.”

Adagio laughed again and I shivered before cuddling up against her. I felt her pull the covers more snugly around us as she wrapped her arms around me and began gently stroking my hair.

“So… last night was something else,” Adagio began, her tone was more curious than anything. “I hope I don’t have to burst into tears to make that happen again.”

“God, no,” I replied, chuckling as I blushed heavily. “I just… realized something, I suppose.”

“What’s that, my love?”

“That you’re not Serenata,” I said quietly. “And I know that sounds bloody idiotic but I think, somewhere in the back of my mind, I still had that image of you and her overlapped.”

“And this realisation drove you into a frenzy of lust?” Adagio asked, one eyebrow crooked up and a wry smile on her face.

“No!” I replied testily. “I… I just realised that I wanted to be with you… not Serenata, not my vision of you, but you.” I turned in Adagio’s embrace and brought my hand up to lay it softly over her cheek. “Adagio Dazzle, the woman, the Siren, the flawed and beautiful person that I’m desperately in love with.”

This time it was Adagio’s turn to blush, and her smile was radiant as she traced her fingers lightly over my face, brushing my now-wild hair from my eyes as she did.

“A~nd I think, maybe,” I continued, laughing slightly, “that on the heels of that realisation I somewhat… lost myself.”

“Mm, remind me to make you lose yourself a little more often,” Adagio said with a low, husky chuckle. “Because last night was… ooh, shall we say, memorable.”

“What can I say, my dear, you drive me quite mad,” I teased, pulling myself up to lay a warm kiss on her cheek. “Now hold me so I can go back to sleep.”

“You’re aware that it’s almost one in the afternoon, yes?” Adagio asked, her voice dry but good-humored.

I noted, however, that even as she asked she turned slightly onto her side so we were both lying on the bed and her broader shoulders and back were now angled to shade me from the sun as she curled her arms around me.

“Methinks the besotted Siren doth protest too much,” I replied impishly, snuggling closer to her as I did.

“Mm, I’m indulging you only because you’re so tempting,” Adagio’s lips were curled into a smile as she closed her eyes and settled in against me. “What of your schedule?”

“The Orchestra can survive without me at rehearsals for one day,” I stifled a yawn as I replied. “A woman needs her beauty sleep, after all.”

“As if you needed to be more beautiful,” Adagio trailed her fingers down my side as if to emphasize her point. “You’re already intoxicating, my dear Melody.”

I slowly opened my eyes again, peering up at her in what I thought was an appropriately sultry manner. It must have worked because I saw the breath catch her throat and her eyes widen perceptibly.

“Am I now?” I asked, and I barely recognised the husky tone that came out of me. “How about we fit in a little day-drinking then?”

“That was awful,” Adagio said flatly.

“Oh just shut up and kiss me.”

5. Be Efficient

Author's Note

Shockingly, this chapter is all drama and no smut.

Heresy, I know.

5. Be Efficient

My heels clicked deafeningly as I walked towards one of the side offices in the back area of the Canterlot Symphony Hall.

Much of the venerated old Hall was given over to practice rooms, small studios for recording, as well as the enormous auditorium, of course. A small portion of the building was reserved for the more mundane details of life, such as management of the property and the like.

The nicest offices, however, were used by the director of the Canterlot Philharmonic and his associated support staff.

Now it’s not that I disapprove of the role the director plays, generally speaking. I’m not a child, I understand that at the end of the day the Philharmonic must be treated as a business to a certain extent in order to preserve its existence. I don’t strictly enjoy the idea of treating a force of living art in this manner but I can appreciate it as a necessary evil.

No, my feelings on this are entirely personal because Stalling Reins is the sort of man I have very little tolerance for. That he is the director of the Canterlot Philharmonic is irrelevant, he could have been head of the society for rehoming orphaned kittens and I would still absolutely loathe the man. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, however, I still have to deal with him semiregularly.

A week ago the former first chair cellist of the Philharmonic, Boléro, had announced his retirement. I’d heard down the grapevine that the directorial staff was debating the replacement but that I was all but a shoe-in.

This was, in my opinion, a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, it was the realisation of a dream I had long held near and dear to my heart. To be put at such an august position so early in my life would be an enormous boon to my reputation, and a notable accolade in the annals of the Philharmonic's history.

On the other hand, it meant sinking another few feet deeper into the tepid and algae-ridden pool of politics that tainted this otherwise wonderful institution.

It also meant I might have to deal with Reins slightly more often than I do now, which I considered to be somewhere between quadriplegia and a stiff kick to the cunt in terms of desirable outcomes for my day.

Nevertheless, here I am, walking down this needlessly long hall to his office in my sternest most humorless attire.

His door was cracked open so I approached with unhurried but efficient steps that I was positive he could hear, and knocked briskly on the door jam twice before entering.

Stalling looked up at me from his desk, an eyebrow raised almost disinterestedly.

He was a spare and narrow man with a mulberry complexion and straight, gray-blue hair that ended an inch past his shoulders. Stalling was built like a wood switch, and although he had no real muscle to define his long frame, he had no fat either, and the whole of it gave him a willowy, androgynous look.

Had his body belonged to another person I suppose I might have considered him to be appealing in an odd, exotic kind of way, but his eyes really ruined the matter.

They were sharp, like flint; black-gray and contemptuous. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the view through those portals would look over a darkly lit and shard-flecked wasteland of sharp rocks.

“Miss Melody,” he addressed me in a voice that I always thought was oddly sonorous for his frame. “I see you’ve come dressed for bear, or at least for bore.”

“Director Reins,” I greeted him stiffly, “as always it's a pleasure to endure your presence.” I gave him a smile that was more a barking of teeth. “You do know how I enjoy exceeding my limits, including that of my patience.”

“Sit, please, assuming that skirt bends,” Stalling gestured to the chair across from him. “We have a few matters to discuss.”

I sat and noted immediately how uncomfortable the chair was, and I immediately had no doubt that Stalling kept that chair on purpose.

His own seat had cushions, swiveled noiselessly, and could clearly recline as he moved to face me. Stalling probably thought it helped him in his dealings and I grudgingly found myself thinking that he was probably correct as I shifted in the hard, narrow seat.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” Stalling said in a smooth, authoritative voice. “We both know you’re well suited to taking Boléro’s chair, and although propriety generally weights seniority more heavily, there is an argument to be made for displaying our local wunderkind.”

“You really do know how to make a girl feel like a mannequin, Director,” I said with a polite smile.

“However,” he continued as if I had not spoken, “there are some matters we need to discuss concerning your future with the Orchestra before we go further.”

A queer chill shivered down my spine at the way he spoke, and somehow I got the impression he wasn’t just talking about whether or not I would be taking first chair.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked quietly.

Stalling leaned back in his seat and fixed those dark, pitiless eyes on me, and I felt as though I were being weighed and balanced.

“I’m sure you’re aware that our continued existence is largely thanks to our many wealthy patrons,” Stalling began, his voice still infuriatingly toneless. “Those august lovers of the classical arts who keep our lights on and our paychecks steady, yes?”

“I suppose so,” I spoke slowly, partially out of a distaste for agreeing on anything, but also out of the suspicion I was being led into some kind of trap. “I fail to see your point, though.”

“You fail to see many points, Miss Melody, but you can be forgiven that for your youth,” Reins’ tone, when he had one, was never less than polite but the barbs were always there. “My point in this case is that your appointment to first chair would be…” he rolled his delicate wrist slightly in a searching gesture, “...impolitic, at current.”

“Impolitic?” I repeated the word stiffly. “Please… enlighten me.”

“May I politely suggest you withdraw your name from the chair,” Stalling said, rather than answering me. “It would save the both of us a great deal of headache.”

“Only if I may politely suggest you withdraw your head from wherever it’s currently resting,” I replied tersely, feeling my temper rise. “I am more than qualified to hold the first chair by dint of skill alone, Director,” I put as much contempt into the title as I could manage, “and with all due respect to my peers I am even more qualified compared to any other candidate.”

“I do not disagree with any particular point,” Stalling said politely.

“Then why on earth would I withdraw my name from the running?” I asked in a low, grave tone of voice.

“For the sake of the Orchestra and your own musical career, I should think,” he replied simply. “I’m afraid you’re simply too much of a rebel, Miss Melody.”

My jaw clicked as it fell open, and stood up straight as I stared in disbelief at the director.

Me? A rebel?

“I am better classically trained than any other member of this orchestra,” I hissed, barely keeping a lid on my outrage. “There is not a single woman or man among this ensemble who more strictly adheres to the spirit of the compositions we play than I!”

Stallings pitiless eyes continued to bore into me without feeling.

“How dare you,” I whispered darkly, “how dare you question me in that way.”

“Sit,” Stalling said quietly, leaning forward and gesturing to the chair I’d vacated.

I strongly considered simply giving the intolerable pedant a strong right hook and walking out of his office, but I highly doubted I would ever be welcome back on stage with a battery conviction on my record. So, rather than escalate the situation, I took a deep breath, smoothed the creases in my skirt, and sat down.

“Right now, you are skilled but young and no one looks too closely at you,” Stalling began, reclining once more. “That will change when you’re first chair, and currently you’re not what I would call ‘Ideal’ for the role.”

“And why, pray tell, is that,” I asked through gritted teeth.

For a moment, Stalling paused and seemed to examine me, and I felt curiously exposed. Then the moment passed and he spread his hands in a faintly dismissive manner.

“Our patrons are a largely… homogeneous breed of wealthy elite, I’m sure you know,” Reins started, and I gave him a conciliatory nod to show I was following. “They’re mostly old money, largely elderly, conservative, and… set in their ways.”

That shiver went down my spine again, and I realized where he was going.

“When Boléro officially put forth your name as his recommendation he happened to mention something,” Stalling fixed me with that emotionless, unpleasant look. “Something about your… choice of partners?”

I swallowed thickly.

“I hardly think that it is any business of yours who I spend my personal time with,” I said in a low, furious whisper.

“It is very much my business to consider how such a thing would reflect back upon the Orchestra,” Stalling countered with another hatefully dismissive gesture of his hand. “And this manner of scandal would raise a number of hackles.”

“Scandal?!” I barked out a laugh. “Scandals like Brassy’s affairs? Like Frederick’s gambling addiction?”

“Those are practically boons, Miss Melody,” Stalling said, and his mouth twisted into something I almost recognized as a smirk, “those old rags love to gossip about who’s fucking who and who lost their fortune where.”

“Then-!” I started but Stalling cut me off.

“But this is a different matter,” he continued. “Personally I couldn’t care less who you exchange bodily fluids with, Miss Melody, so long as it doesn’t impinge on my job,” he sat up straight and met me with that chillingly empty look. “However, If you really want this position then I propose you cut ties with Miss Dazzle.”

The bottom all but dropped out of my stomach at his words.

Cut ties with Adagio? With the woman I loved? For the sake of my career? To appease some nameless, faceless patrons who were too blinkered by tradition and prejudice to… to…

“Having our first chair in a sordid relationship with the local madam of an upscale escort service is…” Stalling rolled his wrist again in that annoying searching manner, “...not the image we strive for, you understand?” He reclined again and shrugged. “Might I suggest a more socially acceptable scandal, like cocaine?”

Had I not been so stunned I think I might have actually strangled the man then and there, but I was so shocked and appalled by the direction this conversation had taken that I found myself quite at a loss for words.

“Think on it, Miss Melody,” Stalling said after a moment of my gobsmacked staring. “You have another week before this mess comes to a head.”

And with that I was dismissed.

Not physically but I had the distinct impression I was simply no longer in Stalling’s sphere of awareness, as if now that he had ceased speaking to me I may as well have ceased to exist.

I stood and a part of me wanted to rage at him, to harm him or scream at him, but at the same time everything just felt… numb.

He hadn’t said it in so many words but the implications had been crystal clear. I could either play the game he was proposing, either by renouncing a claim to the first chair myself or by cutting ties with Adagio, or… I could withdraw from the game.

And from the Orchestra.

Not by choice but his words had implied that he would ensure that it happened.

Turning away from Stalling, I opened the door and quietly let myself out of the office, turning only to close it behind me. He did not acknowledge my leaving nor did I bid him goodbye, and just as well… I’m not certain how I would have reacted to him speaking again.

My heels clicked deafeningly as I walked back down the hall towards the side entrance of the Symphony Hall where the players entered and left, and where I had come in at. As I did I sent a quick message to Good Form letting him know I was on my way, so he could be ready to pick me up, in part for expediency and in part because I did not trust myself to speak without screaming.

My butler could tell the moment he saw me that something was dreadfully wrong but, per usual, he said nothing, only opening the side door for me and then taking his place behind the wheel.

“Where to, Miss?” Form asked in his usual perfunctory manner.

“Home,” I said in a strangled croak, “take me home.”

I leaned back in my seat as covered my face with my hands as the car rumbled to life and quietly attempted to locate the moment in time when my life had suddenly and violently began to unravel.

The engine of my car burbled quietly in the background as I glared heatedly over the headrest of the drivers seat at the back of Good Form’s bald crown.

Had I possessed any measure of magic I’m certain my gaze would have scorched a hole cleanly through the back of his head, but as I was simply a mere mortal I contented myself with a tightly worded question.

“Mister Form,” I asked in a grim voice.

“Yes, Miss?” He replied, turning slightly to regard me with one eye.

I blew out a calming breath and met his gaze

“How precisely did you manage to confuse my directions?” I asked in a thin and furious tone. “I very clearly recall telling you to take me home.”

“My apologies Miss, I seem to have gotten lost,” Form replied in his usual phlegmatic manner.

I quirked up an eyebrow. “How curious it is that you managed to get lost only to end up in the parking lot of the Record Scratch Recording Studio.”

“Quite,” Form said simply.

I waited a few more moments until it became clear that this vehicle wasn’t going anywhere with the implied order.

With the best will in the world, fuck implied.

“Take me home, Mister Form,” I said, and even I could hear the steel blade hiding in my words.

Then the car's engine shut off.

“I’m afraid we’ve had a mechanical malfunction, Miss,” Form said his tone still infuriatingly polite. “I must have mismanaged the maintenance at some point.”

“Is that so?” My words came through gritted teeth and both of my hands were gripping the leather upholstery hard enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d ripped it clean off. “How could that have possibly happened?”

“I recognize my failing and will be sure to correct it in the future, Miss,” Form replied flatly.

A moment later the glass doors of the studio opened, and I sighed as the woman I called my best friend strode out to meet me. Given where I was and the timing of it all I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that somewhere between the Symphony Hall and the Studio my butler had managed to communicate my state to her which meant I was about to get a serious earful.

Well… metaphorically speaking.

I took several deep breaths and by the time I had finished calming myself down and willing myself not to take out my temper on my butler, three dull taps came knocking at the window of my car.

Sighing, I let out another breath and looked up.

Vinyl Scratch was the darling of the underground club scene and had been for almost two years. While that might not sound like an impressive amount of time that’s only if one fails to factor in the fickle nature of fame and the attentions of an audience. To remain at the top of such a competitive and lawless field requires no small amount of dedication, business savvy, and sheer, unbridled talent, and I learned long ago that Vinyl had all of that in spades.

I opened the door and stepped out of the car into Vinyl’s waiting arms, and I hugged my oldest friend back just as firmly as she hugged me.

Vinyl had changed since high school, but hadn’t we all?

While I had managed to attain a sort of average linear growth to my height, Vinyl had sprouted like a bean pole. She was a hair better than six foot and two, but rail lean and spare, with narrow shoulders, sharp features, and skin so pale it bordered on the albinic, which was all set off rather acutely by her long shock of electric blue hair that hung wildly around her face.

The woman most of Canterlot, and indeed the world, knew as DJ PON-3 was wearing knee-high white boots with far too many buckles, off-white fatigues covered in band badges, and a tee with her reversed bridged eighth notes emblazoned on it, a white winter coat to ward off the cold, and her usual trademark shades that hid her charming eyes.

“Vinyl, you’re looking well,” I said a little stiffly as I stepped back.

Her smile was slightly crooked as she looked me up and down, then raised her hands and signed a few words back to me.

‘You look like crap.’

I rolled my eyes. “You’re a gem, Scratch, thank you, a girl loves to hear that sort of thing on one of the worst days of her life.”

Vinyl’s brow furrowed and she gestured for me to follow and get out of the cold Canterlot winter day.

I nodded and followed her into the studio, which wasn’t a particularly large building, but had a well appointed lounge that I had helped her set up and furnish, and back towards the small break room which actually looked more like a kitchenette that belonged in a charming studio apartment than anything in an office.

Taking a seat at the table, I resigned myself to getting the story of today pulled out of me. For a woman who literally never spoke, Vinyl was phenomenal at extracting the truth, at least from me anyway. Admittedly that was probably due to our long association, but it was also because I trusted her.

Vinyl Scratch was, truly, my very best friend

A steaming cup of rose hip tea clinked down in front of me and I took it gratefully, lifting the warm cup to my nose and inhaling the fragrant vapors as Vinyl took a seat across from me. We sat in silence for several minutes as I sipped at the slowly cooling tea, and I was thankful that Vinyl wasn’t rushing me. I wasn’t really sure where to start and how to explain what I’d been up to for the past few weeks.

The pair of us didn’t get to spend nearly as much time together as we used to, mostly due to our respective, demanding careers. Nevertheless, no matter how much time passed we never failed to be able to sit across from one another and talk as if no time had passed at all.

I sighed as I set my cup down, still half full, and looked up at Vinyl who had doffed her shades, and her startlingly red eyes had settled on me.

‘Talk to me, Strings,’ she signed.

Strings… it was the sign she used for me, the one she gave me as my name many years ago.

To the world, my family, and the Orchestra, I was Octavia Melody, and I was ‘my Melody’ to Adagio, my lover and beloved.

But to Vinyl I would always be ‘Strings’, a young schoolgirl with a bad attitude and no friends sitting alone in the school’s band room as I played musical compositions no one my age had ever heard of, much less willingly listened to over their favorite pop and rock albums.

I told Vinyl everything, starting with my childhood teacher: Serenata. I told her about Adagio and our relationship, about the Sirens and the Last Note, and all about my sins against Boléro whose friendship I might have enjoyed for far longer if I hadn’t permitted my arrogance and petty spite to better me as it had. I told her about Boléro’s retirement and his recommendation that I take his chair.

And I told her about Stalling Reins.

In our long friendship I had very rarely had the opportunity to see Vinyl grow truly angry. She was very much my opposite, sanguine to my choleric, and as a general rule never taking anything negative that anyone said about her too personally. Grudges, bad manners, and insults seemed to simply slide off of her, something I had always been a touch envious of, if I’m being honest.

None of that serenity was on display today, however, as her brow furrowed and her red eyes flashed dangerously.

I was reminded quite suddenly of a conversation we had shared many years back, when I’d asked why she hid her marvelous eyes behind those shades of hers all the time. I wasn’t quite as proficient at reading sign language then so the explanation had taken some time but the gist of it was this:

‘People,’ she had explained to me, ‘like the idea of looking unique, but the truth is that people really hate it when you’re too different.’ She had taken off her shades and met my eyes with an intense stare, and in that brief instant I understood what she meant. ‘People don’t like my eyes, and honestly? They’re just eyes, I want to be remembered for the sounds I make, not the way I look.’

Red eyes really are quite terrifying when they’re filled with the kind of fury and rage that I saw in Vinyl’s face once I’d told her what Stalling Reins had said to me. They practically blazed with lambent heat and I felt myself instinctively leaning away from Vinyl as she took several deep breaths to calm down.

‘What the fuck is that guys problem?’ Vinyl signed after a moment, still looking furious. ‘What kind of colossal asshole-!’

That did it.

All of my fear, terror, and anger retreated as a fit of giggles overtook me at Vinyl’s furious reaction and a moment later I was leaning against the table laughing hysterically.

I couldn’t tell you what brought this fit on for the life of me, maybe it was just all of the stress trying to come out all at once through some kind of outburst. Seeing Vinyl get so outraged on my behalf had triggered a wave of some kind of desperate relief in me that made me feel… not good but at least a little better. Even a minor alleviation of the stress that Stalling had levied onto me was a relief in and of itself, though, and I was grateful.

In the end, I would always have my friends.

‘You okay, Strings?’ Vinyl signed, her eyes showing the concern that her mute voice couldn’t say aloud. ‘This is a big deal!’

“Is it?” I said with a slightly bitter laugh. “It feels so strange to say that but… is it, really?”

‘This is your dream,’ Vinyl pressed, leaning forward as she met my gaze, and I nodded at that.

“And yet,” I replied in a tone that had no small amount of melancholy to it, “I find myself wondering if I can really go back there knowing the kind of person I’m working for… knowing that…”

Vinyl grimaced but didn’t deny it. ‘Yeah, I get that, Strings, this douchebag isn’t the kind of guy I would ever be able to work for.’

“Not for love or money,” I agreed. “I feel unclean just thinking about the whole matter… is this really the organisation I dreamed of joining? It feels…”

Reaching out, Vinyl took my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze, smiling silently at me as I let out a slow, uneasy breath.

“Why can’t I just make my music, Vinyl?” I sniffled, tears beginning to track down my cheeks. “Why can’t this world be… be better than this? We ought to! We’re academics, educated and talented! How is it possible that I find less judgment in the lowest streets than I do in the most educated edifices?!”

‘Educated doesn’t mean smart, Strings,’ Vinyl signed back.

“Ugh, amen to that, I suppose,” I replied bitterly, wiping at my cheeks. “We ought to know better, though… oughtn’t we?”

‘Maybe,’ Vinyl replied silently, ‘but some people just don’t care, and other people just like to be cruel.’

I thought of Stalling and his rancid personality, and the utterly blasé manner in which he suggested I tear my own heart out if I wanted to continue with the Orchestra, as if my relationship with Adagio were nothing more than a scandalous, perverted fling I was indulging in.

Just imagining his smug, punchable face made me want to strike something.

“I know what you mean,” I said finally, leaning back in my chair and finishing off my tea before it grew too cold to stomach. “So what do I do?”

‘Talk to Adagio, first of all,’ Vinyl signed and I sagged slightly, my fingers tightening around my cup. ‘All things being even she deserves to know what’s happening if you really love her.’

“I do love her,” I said back after a few moments, “I love her dearly and I know that I should tell her… but what if she takes it poorly?”

‘Is there a good way to take this kind of thing?’ Vinyl shot back and I grimaced at that before conceding the point with a nod. ‘This isn’t going to be pretty no matter how you do it, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to know, and she ought to hear it from you.’

I smiled faintly, nodding again as set my teacup back down.

“You’re right, of course… per usual,” I said with an arid smile, and Vinyl matched it with one of her own before holding out a closed fist.

Rolling my eyes, I indulged her and knocked my knuckles against hers and she mimed an explosion with her fingers as I did before grinning widely at me.

‘In the meantime, I’m gonna talk to a few folks I know,’ Vinyl got a nasty little grin on her face as she signed those words, and I raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘Hey, us musicians gotta stick together, and that kind of attitude doesn’t do anyone any favors in this industry.’

“Vinyl, please don’t go overboard on this,” I pleaded, although I had to admit I was secretly more than a little vindictively pleased at the notion, “as soothing of a balm to my spite and mood as it might be, I’d rather you not bend your efforts towards toppling a venerable institution like the Philharmonic, it’s not the Orchestra’s fault that its Director is a wretched bastard of a man.”

‘Not just about that,’ Vinyl replied with a wave of her hand. ‘It’s the principle of the thing, Strings, the Philharmonic is a big deal and if this is the message they’re sending then it claps back on all of us in the business.’

Oddly, I found myself unable to argue with that. Vinyl had a far better grasp of the business side of music than I did, I was a creator of music, a performer of it, but I didn’t really embrace what I felt was the more sterile and onerous aspects of the industry as a whole. Vinyl, by contrast, had fought tooth and nail to rise up in the industry and she knew better than most how cutthroat it could be.

Even with my father’s investment and acknowledgment of her skill, Vinyl hadn’t had an easy time of it, and I admired her greatly for pursuing her dream of owning her own little recording studio. Her music was played in clubs throughout Vanhoover and Detrot and everywhere inbetween, and I was absolutely certain I’d heard at least a few of her tracks played in the Last Note itself. If she said that the behaviour of the Philharmonic was bad for the industry as a whole then I didn’t really feel I had any grounds to tell her she was wrong.

“Be careful, at least,” I leaned in and took her hand in mind. “The last thing I want is for you to get bad press and hurt your business for my sake.”

Vinyl took my hand in both of hers and smiled at me, nodding as she did, then made a shooing motion at me.

‘Go talk to your girlfriend,’ she signed quickly.

“Yes, very well, I suppose I should,” I got up, gathering what few things I’d brought in with me, and turned to leave. We were almost to the door when I stopped and turned, wrapping my arms around Vinyl again. “You’re my very best friend, Vinyl Scratch, you know that?”

Vinyl hugged me back, pulling me close, and I felt her nod before she released me and stepped back.

‘You’re the best cellist in a thousand miles, Strings,’ Vinyl signed. ‘If the Orchestra let you go that’d only mean they didn’t deserve you in the first place.’

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said dryly, but I meant every word.

I left the Record Scratch Studio feeling in significantly better spirits than when I’d arrived. Vinyl was a grounding element to my more tempestuous nature. She was calm, collected, and driven, and although she and I shared many attributes our tempers were not among them. She had the ability to see clearly where I would get myself worked up and blind myself, and I had found myself to be deeply thankful or our relationship over the years I had known her. I strongly suspect my father and mother have been equally thankful for the balancing aspect Vinyl offered me as I grew up.

As I approached the car to open the door Good Form started it up, and I slid into the back seat while fixing him with a wry, mock glare.

“I see the ‘mechanical malfunction’ has been resolved,” I said after a few seconds of silence, broken only by the healthy rumble of the engine.

“Quite so,” Form replied.

I sighed, chuckling a little as I leaned back in the seat.

“Thank you, Mister Form,” I said finally, looking up at him with a small but genuine smile. “You truly do take care of me, you know that?”

I saw his mustache twitch just slightly with the hint of a smile, and he nodded.

“Where too, Miss Melody?”

Sighing, I braced myself for the oncoming storm.

“Take me to the Last Note, Mister Form,” I said finally.

“As you say, Miss Melody.”

7. And Above All Else...

I’ve never liked Detrot all that much.

Motor City they call it, the birthplace of the automobile.

A rundown asphalt apocalypse of shut factories and poor business decisions is what I’d call it, but then I’m an unemployed cellist so what the hell do I know?

“It’s five in the morning, my love, come back to bed,” Adagio’s voice was as warm and sleepy as it was enticing, and I pulled my sleeping robe around my otherwise naked body a little tighter to ward off the chill.

As I did, I glanced back to the king-sized bed and smiled warmly.

The penthouse suite of the Cadillac Hotel, one of the nicest in the city, was quite a place. I could have fit the lion’s share of my apartment in a single room, and the view would have been quite extraordinary were it not for all the smog.

It was still quite breathtaking of course, the great skyline of Motor City was a striking one. Skyscrapers, like spears of steel and concrete, thrust out of the earth and poison smoke like defiant pylons of industry, and the new dawn light played all manner of colors in the spectrum of oil across the air and windows.

I’m not sure why I woke up, only that I did and that I was entranced by the view beyond the wide windows of the suite.

Such had been the case more often than not ever since the contract had been secured between the Last Note Lounge and better than a dozen Fortune Five Hundred companies and we’d embarked on our months-long trip around the nation, even spending one memorable week in Stalliongrad.

Three months in and I’d probably seen more of the upper crust of my world than I’d ever been privy to even as a premier cellist, which is saying something. The Canterlot Philharmonic Orchestra is widely regarded as one of the finest in the world and, as such, I have attended some truly extravagant events, but the sheer power on display amongst the board rooms and country clubs where Adagio held her meetings left me feeling a little out of my depth.

Adagio on the other hand, who was currently curled up like a great cat, bundled up in the comforters and sheets of the enormous bed, seemed entirely comfortable in such situations.

Watching her execute her little power plays between CEO’s and millionaire shareholders was not dissimilar to watching a master pianist execute a highly technical masterpiece while blindfolded. Moreover, Adagio insisted I attend all of the meetings alongside her, even if I wasn’t quite certain why.

I could only assume there was a greater underlying intention behind it, one that I’ve been more than happy to go along with.

Well… willing to go along with.

I sighed quietly, feeling more than a little inadequate.

“Octavia~” Adagio whined restlessly from under the covers.

“Sorry, darling… can’t sleep,” I said quietly, stifling a small laugh, before turning back to stare out the window again. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Mm… sleeping is far less satisfying when I do it alone, you know,” came Adagio’s grumpy reply, and she rustled under the sheets, poking an arm out to gesture for me to return to her.

I sighed again and chuckled.

“Whatever did you do before you found me then?” I asked wryly, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the cold. “Lay awake at night and suffer?”

There was a stretch of silence before Adagio finally replied.

“More often than you might think,” the quiet response caught me off guard and I blinked in surprise.

I sidled back over to the bed and slipped beneath the covers and I felt Adagio’s arms go around me, and a reflexive sigh of relief escaped my lips. There was something indescribably comforting about the feeling of being held by someone you trust utterly, something that made all the tense muscles in my body relax in a soothing wave.

“I love you,” I said quietly as I nestled closer, and her fingers wove delicately through my hair.

“As I love you, my Melody,” Adagio whispered, her voice low but more wakeful now.

I stared at her pensively for several moments; her gorgeous, raspberry eyes had a distance to them that I could almost feel. I reached out, brushing my fingers along her cheeks.

“Talk to me, love,” I said, breaking through the dense silence. “Please…”

Adagio closed her eyes and sighed.

“What should I talk about, dearest?” Adagio asked, a tension in her voice.

“Whatever is troubling you, perhaps?” I ventured, before leaning in to brush my lips against hers. “You’ve been distant lately… don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“Have I?” Adagio whispered, before furrowing her brow in that curiously charming manner of hers, “perhaps I have…”

“Is… is it me?” I asked the question that had been digging into my heart like a persistent thorn. “Have I done something wrong?”

Adagio shook her head firmly before reaching out and fixing her hands over my hips and pulling me close, and I blushed furiously she pressed her deliciously full body to mine. Even after having been a couple for nearly half a year, I still found myself entertaining whole fleets of butterflies in my belly every time Adagio made one of her customary advances.

“Never,” Adagio said, her voice still a gentle whisper. “It’s me, or at least I believe it is… there is a weight on my soul, dear Melody, and I’m not quite certain how to resolve it.”

“Then let me help,” I pressed the issue, My palm resting against one warm cheek. “Are we not together in this? I should think we’re a couple, and partners, in more than just title.”

“Of course we are,” Adagio replied, her eyes suddenly burning intensely. “I… I rely on you more than you know… and it all feels so horribly unbalanced.”

I felt my stomach fall as she spoke the words.

I didn’t strictly disagree on that point, nor could I. I possessed substantial savings thanks to my frugal lifestyle but my new lack of employment prospects meant they wouldn’t last forever. I’d given up my apartment mostly due to pragmatism since I’d not be using it for almost a year, and my possessions had been moved into one of the rooms of the Last Note adjacent Adagio’s quarters.

Even Good Form was no longer in my employ, if only technically.

With the mass renovations and expansions of the Last Note, and the inevitable influx of new employees, Adagio had all but begged me to let her take on Good Form as Head of Staff.

I’d agreed, of course.

I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d had to let him go, although honestly I doubt he would permit me to. This way he still technically fulfilled the role he wanted in taking care of me and was, in addition, responsible for fully maintaining the discipline of the wait staff in the Note.

Something he seemed to do with great relish, or inasmuch relish as someone so perpetually phlegmatic could aspire to.

The crux of the matter now was that I had become little more than arm candy to Adagio. I know she didn’t think of me as such, but as much as I believed in the concept that a woman had to have more than just her career giving flavor to her life, one also had to have some kind of fulfilling work on the other side of that coin.

I refused to become some dilettante trophy wife who could only lounge and become more vacuous by the day!

And yet, as I had feared, that ornery bastard Stalling had ensured I was blacklisted from every reputable organization in the area.

It wasn’t said out loud, obviously, for fear of discrimination lawsuits and such, but my orientation towards the fairer sex had made me persona non grata amongst the so-called cultured elite.

The admission from Adagio still stung though, and I curled against her as if wounded.

“I know…” I said in a small voice. “I… I’ve been trying to find something… anything, but no one will have me after Stalling had his word in.”

Adagio looked down at me with the oddest look of surprise on her face.

“B-but that hardly means I’m giving up!” I forced some determination that I wasn’t sure I was really feeling into my voice. “I know I… I don’t contribute anything and I know that you say you don’t care, but I also know that I’m little more than a pretty girl on your arm for the time being and-”

“What on Earth and Equestria are you talking about?” Adagio asked, her voice becoming a harsh hiss, and I recoiled a little at the fire in it.

“I… well, you only said what I’d been thinking,” I explained slowly, shifting a little uncomfortably as I sat up and pulled some of the covers around me. “About what we have feeling unbalanced, I mean, after all I…” I scoffed a little bitterly, my lips twisting in time with my gut, “I’m not exactly doing anything, am I?”

Adagio’s face went several fascinating shades of red and purple as she worked her jaw, seemingly lost for words, and I quite had the feeling I had misinterpreted her comment.

A feeling that was confirmed when she spoke in a strangled voice:

“I was talking about myself!”

I blinked in confusion.

“You… what?” I pulled the blankets around me a little as I stared at her. “You feel… like you’re… what? Not doing enough?”

“Obviously!” Adagio cried, sitting up and yanking back a share of the covers in annoyance to try and rebuild her cocoon. “How could you possibly think I would ever say something like that of you?”

“W-well, it’s not as though I haven’t been thinking it!” I countered defensively. “You have to admit I haven’t exactly been very productive the past few months!”

Adagio grabbed one of the large, overly puffy pillows that were scattered about and pressed it over her face, letting out a strangled scream of frustration into that was muffled by the thick fabric.

Dropping the pillow, Adagio fixed me with an even, withering glare.

“I… understand how you could come to that conclusion, my love,” the last two words had an inflection that sounded much more like ‘you lovely idiot’, “but rest assured that is the furthest thing from my mind… literally.”

Adagio was the one to curl in on herself this time, pulling away from me as she did while staring down sullenly at the rumpled bedclothes. Something in her body language conveyed a sense of unease, of wrongness, and something else as well.

Guilt.

“Adagio?” I said her name softly.

We so rarely used one anothers names, I realised. It was always pet names, or terms of endearment, and in a way that habit lent a greater weight to the word than even I had anticipated. I saw my love flinch at the sound of her name, and her eyes darted around as if looking for an escape. I got the sense that she’d said something she hadn’t meant to, or that she had tipped her hand accidentally and shown me something she’d been keeping close to the vest.

Considering her true age and experience, such a mistake was out of character for her.

Or… perhaps it wasn’t.

Not if I considered it in another way.

I had seen the brittle nature of Adagio’s mental fortress three months prior, when the idea of losing me for the better part of year had driven her into a drunken rage. She had struck an obstacle that her unstoppable drive had found utterly unyielding and she had smashed to pieces against it.

I wondered if perhaps her slip-up hadn’t just betrayed something of her mind. I wondered if the fact of its occurrence also revealed her state of mind.

Reaching out, I let my fingers press gently to her cheek to guide her face back to align with my own. Her raspberry eyes were so beautiful, but this morning they were speckled with fear and doubt.

“What are you hiding from me?” I asked firmly, her gaze boring in her, and I saw her flinch.

For all her grace and savvy, Adagio had never been able to lie to my face.

“It’s my fault,” Adagio’s voice was a small, tear-choked whisper, and felt a trembling shiver sink deep into her bones and stay there. “It’s all my fault.”

“What is?” I asked, feeling an unfamiliar fear well up from my gut. “What could you possibly have done?”

“This,” Adagio cried bitterly, her mouth twisting up in a pained frown, “you!”

Adagio pulled away from me, rising from the bed in a jerking, hasty motion as she flung the sheets and blankets from her naked body and swept up her nightgown, pulling it fast around her and yanking it tight to ward off the cool morning air.

She was still shaking.

“Me?” I asked in a pained voice. “What did I do?!”

“NOTHING!” Adagio cried, still not turning to look at me. “It’s me! I’ve ruined you and I can’t… I can’t stop hurting you!”

I stared at her, flabbergasted and confused.

“Adagio, my love,” I began tentatively, keeping my voice in a low, placating tone as I rose from the bed slowly to approach her, “I’m sure I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” I laid my hands gently on her shoulders, feeling the broad muscles there which were even now quivering and tense with strain. “Please… if you don’t talk to me then I’ll never understand!”

The eldest Siren sister, my lover, and the center of my world, was silent for a long time. I never lifted my hands, instead just letting her feel me close and hoping that she would come back to me from wherever it was her mind had taken her.

Eventually, she did, turning her head to look at me with one eye that was wide and terrified as she hugged herself.

“I can’t breathe,” Adagio croaked out the words. “Every day it feels like I’m drowning or choking to death on the stress…” slowly, she turned to face, and I swear I’d never seen her look so fragile. “Every day I balance a thousand tempests in a thousand teacups, each on a thousand spinning plates on a thousand poles, and if even one drops…”

Adagio shuddered violently, and I swear I heard a clicking sounds come from her jaw as she grit her teeth hard.

“Any one of these people I’m dealing with has the potential political clout to ruin my sisters and I,” Adagio hissed, “I’ve never had to deal with humans like this before, fearing them like this…” she heaved in a gasp of air and shivered again. “You keep me grounded… I’m not sure I could do this day in and day out if I didn’t have you by my side.”

Looking up at me with her eyes brimming with tears, Adagio slowly relaxed her fingers, reached out her hands, and let them come to rest on my hips, pulling me close to her as she did, and her hands traveled up and down my body, leaving shivers behind wherever they touched.

“Every time I feel like I’m about to crack or snap during one of those meetings,” Adagio said slowly, letting her forehead come to rest on mine, and I could almost feel the mental strain she was under as she did, “every time I think I can’t do it… or that I’m about to fall apart, I look at you and I see that same, perfect, total confidence in me that you’ve always had and… and I would tell myself, ‘one more time, I can do this one more time’, an endless string of ‘one more time’s.”

“I had no idea,” I said gently, then leaned up and brushed my lips against hers. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“How could I?” Adagio asked in a pained voice. “How could I say I was fraying at the edges… coming apart at the seams every day only to lay in your arms every night and feel you put me back together again?”

“Because you love me,” I said quietly. “And because I love you.”

Adagio let out a quiet sob and relaxed into my arms, and I wrapped them around her, holding her tight as she shook silently.

“I feel like I’m going to throw up most days,” Adagio gasped out, “like my stomach is trying to twist in on itself, and every morning I wake up wondering if this is the day I fail and damn us all!” She held onto me tightly suddenly, and sobbed again. “And if I drag you down with me I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself, not after everything you’ve done for me.”

“What have I done?” I asked incredulously, “what have I done that makes you feel as if everything in unbalanced? I’m barely doing anything!”

“You destroyed your career for me!” Adagio cried out as she pulled back, her face twisting into a pained rictus.

I staggered back at the sudden passion and fervor in her voice, and stared as Adagio shook, unconsciously clenching and unclenching her fingers .

“If you hadn’t been involved with me you would still have your position in the Orchestra!” Adagio continued furiously, “everything went wrong because of your relationship with me!”

“That’s ridiculous!” I countered, sweeping my hand in a cutting motion as I felt my temper rising. “My relationship with you didn’t make that wretched excuse of a director any more or less of a bigot!”

“You could have kept your life without me!” Adagio snapped. “Look at what I’ve done to you!”

I blinked, and for a moment I saw it again: the brittle, strained nature of Adagio’s mental walls that bore so much weight as she tried to protect her sisters, herself, and me at the same time as she tried to balance everything else, building a future for them as well as fearing for their safety.

“I fell to pieces because I feared losing you again,” Adagio’s voice cracked as she ran her hands through her hair wild mane of hair. “I lost you once all those years ago and I couldn’t bear for it to happen again, but I could do nothing about it! Then…” she let out a wracking sob that turned into a half-hysterical laugh, “then you just… gutted your entire life right in front of me and suddenly my problems vanished!”

“It was about more than just you, darling,” I said in a small voice, reaching out to her as I spoke but she recoiled from me and I felt a stab of pain go through my heart as she did. “I couldn’t countenance working for that horrible man once I knew what he was about, you understand? My integrity… it wouldn’t allow it.”

Adagio just huffed and looked away from me, and something about that petulant action at that moment did it.

My patience quite simply ran out.

I stomped my foot on the ground like a furious child and let out an inchoate scream of rage.

“WOULD YOU GET OVER YOURSELF YOU OVERDRAMATIC, ORANGE, GUPPY!” I shouted, grabbing one of the large pillows and slinging it into Adagio’s face with a dull thwump that staggered her backwards in shock.

Stomping forward and kicking the errant pillow away, I closed the distance between us and reached out with both hands to capture her face.

“You listen to me, Adagio Dazzle, and listen well,” I snarled, dragging her down to my level, “you do not get to decide what my moral integrity is worth, nor do you get to claim dominion over it!”

Adagio’s eyes had gone wide as saucers as I glared at her.

“I left that miserable organization for me,” I continued, unwilling to give up the momentum I’d managed to gather. “I will not, ever, permit my music to be played in service to a hidebound bigot whose only concern is pleasing a bunch of mean-souled, anachronistic, old fogeys who wouldn’t recognize real love if it bit them right in their wrinkled old arses!” I was breathing hard by this point, my cheeks flushed with anger, and Adagio was staring in shock, but I wasn’t done. “Do not believe for a moment that my remaining on that orchestra, knowing the things I know now and irrespective of our relationship, would have been anything less than the total compromise of my ideals and artistic soul, Miss Dazzle!”

I let out a slow, shuddering breath as I let Adagio go and took a step back, wringing my hands as I forced myself to calm down. For Adagio’s part, she remained where I left her, poleaxed by my outburst.

“If I am truly sorry for anything,” I said in a quieter voice, “it is only that I did not recognize the guilt and pain my actions caused you until now,” I sighed, rubbing my temples for a moment as I shook my head. “I ought to have been more considerate, because I… I see how you came to believe that what I did was for your sake, but please, please understand that I acted for my own peace of mind, more than anything.”

After a few moments Adagio closed her eyes, let out a shaky breath, and I watched as she slowly start to piece herself back together again.

Truly, I did feel bad that I hadn’t realised how much strain she had been under the past few months, but in fairness my love is an old hand at dissembling and if she didn’t want others to know her mind then they could damn well sit and spin for all the good trying to read her face would do them.

“I just…” Adagio began, her voice still cracked and raw, “I feel as though I’ve gone back to the way I was before… ruining lives to ease my own,” a shudder ran through her as she covered her face with her hands. “For so long this was the way of things, I would snare someone’s heart and destroy their life until they were of no more use to me, then I would lose interest and… and leave.”

Ah, and there it was: the crux of the matter. I sighed quietly, grimacing as I finally understand the heart of Adagio’s pain.

“You are not the woman you once were, Miss Dazzle,” my voice was low but it held a strength that surprised even me as I took a step forward and took her hands, pulling them from her face. “You were a destroyer once, yes, and you have your share of sins, but you are different now.”

“How can you know?” Adagio asked weakly. “How can you know that I won’t just… take advantage of you?”

“Because the very idea of it seems to terrify you to your bones,” I replied wryly. “Look at you… you’re practically coming apart at the seams at the mere idea that you’ll go back to the person you were.”

‘Isn’t that fair?” Adagio hissed the words out in a tone I would have taken for anger if I didn’t know how scared she was. “Isn’t it fair that I be wary of what an utterly horrible monster I once was?” Her fingers twined with mine and she pulled me close as if she feared me pulling away.

As if I ever would.

“If I ever truly hurt you, my Melody,” Adagio said in a low, gentle voice, “I do believe it would properly kill me.”

“You cannot dwell on your past mistakes forever, my love,” I replied, pulling away just enough to look up into those wonderfully warm raspberry eyes of hers. “You can’t weep over them forever either… what kind of life can we have if you never let them go?”

“Why should I?” Adagio bit the words out bitterly. “What am I that I am immune to the consequences of my actions?!”

“No one is immune,” I said firmly, hardening my gaze on her. “But as to what you are? You, Adagio Dazzle, are a lady, and if I remember my lessons correctly,” I smirked a little as I went up on my toes to kiss her quickly before dropping back down, “a lady is not her tears nor her errors, she is power and poise, she is grace and excellence in all things.”

Adagio’s features fell to a neutral stare for several moments as she took in my words, her eyes never breaking from my gaze as she did.

I all but held my breath as I waited for her to respond. I knew her well enough by now to know that I’d broken through something in her psyche with my words. I could see that fantastic mind of hers spinning and whirring as she slowly nodded, like a debater conceding a point, and then closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again and giving me a faint smile.

“You shame me, my Melody,” Adagio said finally, a wry smile turning her lips upward. “I think all of this time spent being human has rather bent my mind… I don’t recall becoming unhinged so easily before now.”

“The strain of the mortal coil, I’m afraid,” I said, chuckling dryly as I did. “It happens to the best of us.”

“I suppose it does,” Adagio agreed before slipping her arms around my waist and pulling me close. “And yet I still feel that… that guilt, for what has happened to your career.”

“It’s not got me in the finest mood either, my dear,” I replied blithely. “But it is what it is, it wasn’t your doing and, frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way… not if it meant working for that odious wretch for one moment longer than I had to.”

Before I could say another word, Adagio let out a small huffing laugh, then made a grunt of effort as she lifted my at my waist and slung me over her shoulder.

I let out a startled and wholly undignified squawk of surprise as she carried me over to the bed, my legs and arms flailing as she dropped me down onto the soft, voluminous mattress. I had barely managed to right myself before Adagio had poised herself over me, grinning down like a predatory cat as her wide, full hips straddled mine.

“I wonder if I couldn’t improve your mood, my love,” Adagio said in a frustratingly nonchalant tone of voice, her relaxed smile never wavering. “Do you think so?”

“I should think that it’s within the realm of possibility,” I replied, not to be out-done in the manner of cool demeanors.

My mouth went utterly dry as Adagio responded by shrugging her shoulders, doffing her nightgown with a roll of muscle, and I got an extremely good view of just how powerfully built she was. She was flexing, I knew, and she was doing it entirely for my benefit, and I licked my lips as I let my eyes trail across the perfectly defined body that was currently mounting me.

As usual I was transfixed by how much Adagio Dazzle was built like a Goddess of old Roam, powerful and unashamed, which was something that never failed to stir up an aching heat in all kinds of interesting places in me.

I shuddered as she idly trailed her fingers past my navel, along my ribs, and came to rest cupping one of my breasts, and I didn’t bother suppressing my moan as she captured the peak between her finger and thumb, pinching just hard enough to send a jolt of pleasure through my body as she rolled her hips slowly, grinding herself against me.

“How’s your mood now, dear?” Adagio’s voice was infuriatingly calm and teasing, despite how wet I knew she was.

“Rising,” I said, my voice dropping to a husky growl as I stared up at her through strands of my own hair that was pooling around me like an inky halo.

Adagio reached out to me with one delicate hand and placed it softly on my throat, her fingers closing lightly around my neck, and the sheer sensation of it sent a shiver down my spine that was so intense that my legs quaked at the sudden pressure.

“Mm… you do love to play the submissive, my darling, don’t you?” Adagio cooed playfully as she gave her fingers a few experimental squeezes. “You just love it being taken.”

I did.

I loved being handled by Adagio.

Her strength was more than just physical too. I loved the iron core of her personality, the rigid and unwavering power of her will that kept her standing regardless of what life threw at her.

And I especially enjoy how she gets frisky whenever she gets emotional.

A stray thought flickered through my mind as I met her beautiful eyes, and marveled at how they seemed to almost glow. Maybe this is just how she coped with stress.

And then I remembered something just as Adagio’s fingers gave the vein and artery of my neck another delicate squeeze, sending an intoxicating sensation of lightheadedness through me.

Adagio wasn’t human… she’s a Siren, a pathovore, and a small smile curved over my lips as I realised what was really going on.

Adagio isn’t getting frisky.

She’s stress eating.

A small part of me wanted to burst out laughing right then and there, but the far more significant part of me that was absolutely adoring the attention that Adagio was lavishing on me stuffed that part into a small box and kicked it roughly into the corner of my mind.

It was my expert opinion on the matter that pride should never come into one’s relationship. This feels prudent for all manner of reasons, among which being that Adagio and I had seen and would, fortune willing, continue to see one another at both our highest and lowest points. Pride would only make those low points moments of shame, rather than of intimacy, which I felt they ought to be.

So with the best will in the world: pride be damned, I have no shame whatsoever at being Adagio’s favorite ‘comfort food’.

I moved my lips, speaking low and purposefully weakly as she gave my neck another squeeze, and I watched as her eyes narrowed with care. Her hand left my neck, leaving it feeling cold and empty as she bent at the hips and leaned down to me, her ear bent towards me.

“What was that, my love?”

“I said,” I began, my words taking on a challenging, mocking tone, “are you going to take me or not?”

A lightning bolt of passion and lust scorched across her eyes as she whipped her head around to glare down at me before sweeping her hand around my head and tightly gripping my hair just above my neck.

“Insolence!” Adagio spat, as she shook me like a kitten, and I smiled up at her as I was caught up in her game. “What utter, blasphemous insolence!”

I continued to stare up at her smiling, my arms laying limply at my sides as I playfully licked my lips.

Adagio’s nostrils flared in mock outrage before she tightened her grip further and dragged my head down to the bed, pinning me there before lifting her hips up, moving forward, and positioning herself directly above me.

“Why don’t we use that smart mouth for something more productive?” Adagio purred the words out as my eyes widened in surprise.

A shuddering thrill rolled through me as she pressed herself down onto my face and every one of my senses was eclipsed with her scent and weight. That body-rocking shudder of pleasure rolled through me again, and I let out a low, hungry moan as I began to lick and suck greedily, and Adagio rolled her hips as she panted raggedly, pressing herself against my mouth over and over again.

I’m not sure when but at some point one of my hands found itself burying three fingers into my cunt, working them furiously in and out as my larger and decidedly more powerful lover rode my face to her first climax.

Another quaking shiver ran through me as I quickly followed suit, my legs jerking as thrashed under her weight.

There was something primally satisfying about being taken like this by Adagio, to feel her weight on me and her dominance. It made me weak in the knees as I lapped my tongue out, devoted to giving her the pleasure I knew she wanted, to take pleasure in the act myself which I knew was feeding her twice over.

I felt her thighs close around my head, the strength in them submerging my mind in a haze of lust. The way she was clenching around me, rocking herself back and forth as she gasped and moaned, was driving me mad, and I squirmed beneath her as my body raced with pent up energy.

Adagio’s palm pressed against my forehead, pinning my head to bed as she arched her back and let out a moaning cry of satisfaction as she came hard across my mouth, lips, and chin before sagging and slowly laying down backwards.

The pair of us were strewn lewdly across the bed, me on my back, my face a mess and my hair no better, with Adagio sprawled atop me, and our heads between one another’s thighs as we panted and gasped for air.

“Is it just me,” Adagio huffed as she stirred in exhaustion, “or do a great deal of our conversation end this way?”

“Are you complaining, my dear?” I asked wryly, my eyes still closed as I rode the high of my latest orgasm.

“Mm… that’s not precisely how I’d put it,” Adagio said, chuckling as she shifted around and rolled off of me.

I may or may not have let out a faint grumble of displeasure as her weight left me, and I turned on my side as she righted herself, coming to rest beside me where I could comfortably curl against her. The way she held me in those moments, with her arms around me and squeezing just tight enough that I would have to exert a little strength to get away, told me I could just relax, let go, and that she would keep me safe.

Although I never asked, I hoped she felt the same way when I held onto her, despite me being lesser to her weight, frame, and strength which meant I was less holding her close and more clinging to her.

“Today will be difficult, won’t it?” I asked quietly, nestling nearer to her and inhaling deeply.

She still smelled faintly of sunlight, and even after all these months I couldn’t quite place how I knew that so certainly.

“It will,” Adagio’s reply didn’t have the strain I’d expected in it.

There was a faint resignation in it instead, and a weariness of the kind you get when you have to do something onerous that you’d rather put off til tomorrow so that, when tomorrow comes, you could put it off again.

“Can you do it?” I asked, glancing up and meeting those fierce raspberry eyes of hers.

Adagio just smiled down at me.

“I suppose I can,” she replied easily, “one more time.”

I have never sought wealth, at least not in the sense that most would consider it. My wages earned from the Orchestra were far from inconsiderable, and my ability to manage my own finances came mostly from a nature of frugality and disinterest in material possessions. I will say that I’ve never quite understood the obsession with opulence and gauche displays of the depth of one's pocketbook which, to my eye, has been very nearly the only reason to have over a certain amount of money.

My father and mother travel the very highest circles of social elite and I have found it to be a place that I have very little interest in. I have, in those places, seen some demonstrations of affluence that truly beggar belief. Things that have exceeded the bounds of good taste only to sprint wholesale past ‘tactless’ and shoulder-barge their way into the realms of heavy-handed boorishness the likes of which only a syphilitic moron could imagine to be a good idea.

Growing up, I was instilled with the idea that wealth was meant to be used responsibly and wisely.

My parents owned quite a nice home, though far smaller than their peers, and much of their wealth went to philanthropic endeavors: my mother funds no less than five different scholarships, while my father funds two as well as maintains multiple non-profit organizations that help the less fortunate afford schooling, medical aid, and the like.

This was, my father always taught me, the purpose of wealth in the hands of the wealthy: to be wisely distributed without the need for the endless red tape of bureaucracy, and to ensure those in need did not remain so.

‘Without the many,’ my father once said, ‘from whence would come the wealth of the few?’

Or as my mother more succinctly put it: ‘Noblesse Oblige’.

Call me naive if you must, but until lately I’d not realised just how rare that point of view was among the wealthy ‘elite’, and it was only in spending the amount of time with Adagio, meeting the absolute cretins that hoarded money for no other reason than to afford another gold-plated yacht that it truly struck home.

I only wish I was joking about the yacht.

With that said, I’d quite ceased to bother asking Adagio where we were going next and whom we were meeting. If I recognized them then I knew it would only sour my mood and in my opinion one need not worry about that which one cannot control.

To do so just means you suffer twice, after all.

With that bit of zen crockery in mind, I laid my head to the side, resting it on Adagio’s shoulder as the long-bodied vehicle Adagio had procured for transport carried us through the streets of Detrot.

Our hands gripped one anothers, fingers twined playfully together as we sat in comfortable silence. It was these moments that I lived for, these quiet times when there was none but us, and the whole of the world was shut away. Adagio was resting her cheek against the top of my head as the car rolled smoothly along, and I relished the slow, even sound of her breathing.

Once upon a time I had wondered what it might be like to be as in love with another person as my parents were with one another and I am happy to say that the truth of the matter really is far better than anything I had imagined.

The lovely quiet came to a halt as the car cruised into the round-about of a towering skyscraper, one of the massive business pavilions of the Detrot downtown centre, and Adagio gave my hand a slight squeeze as she shifted in her seat.

“Must we?” I grumbled, not moving my head, and my heart warmed at Adagio’s throaty chuckle.

“I’m afraid we must,” she replied, “fortunately I’ve heard good things about this man, so perhaps it shall be less intolerable than most.”

“Tolerably intolerable, is it?” I asked playfully as I sat up and stretched, working the stiffness from my muscles that had resulted from the long drive. “Oh, how far we have fallen in our expectations, my love.”

Adagio rolled her eyes at my dramatic sigh as the driver opened the doors and she slid out with myself right behind her.

“Tolerably intolerable would be a sight better than the last three,” Adagio countered dryly. “That Blueblood fellow was on my final nerve and, acrylic glass or not, if he’d made one more lewd overture to you I’d have physically taught him the meaning of the word ‘defenestrate’.

“Weren’t we on the seventieth floor of the Mareiott?” I asked wryly.

“Indeed,” Adagio’s response was terse, and I giggled as I slid my arm into the crook of her elbow.

We walked into the building and, as we did, I glanced around, taking in the tastefully subdued blue and white tones of the decor. I was struck by the most peculiar sense of deja vu as we moved towards the elevator bank and of course it was entirely possible that I’d been in this building before, I’d been to Detrot on multiple occasions both with the Orchestra and with my parents as a child, but there was something else.

Something about the aesthetic was tugging at my mind.

“Are you well?” Adagio asked quietly as we stepped into the large, well-appointed elevator and she punched one of the highest floor numbers.

It was a sign of how important the place we were going to was that she had to enter a seven-digit security code to permit the elevator to accept the instruction.

“I am,” I replied pensively, “just… oh, it’s probably nothing, dear, I just feel as though I’ve been here before and, frankly, I probably have.”

Adagio nodded, shrugging as she settled back and took my arm again.

The elevator hissed silently upwards with what must have been bone-rattling velocity, because in moments we were on the forty-fifth floor of the building, and door slid noiselessly open.

I felt a slight surge of satisfaction when I saw none of the boorish examples of pointless wealth scattered around without a single thought for harmonious placement. A soft string quartet played over some hidden address system, and there were paintings placed evenly among the walls, a few that I even recognised, and all tastefully done, which I admired as we walked down a short hallway.

Adagio knocked twice on the door at the end, and I heard a damnably familiar voice answer on the other side.

“Wait, was that-” I began, before the door opened to a meeting room with a broad, circular table.

The man who stood on the other side was tall, robust, and had an air of friendliness about him that was matched only by his aura of distinguishment.

He had a pale complexion and his coiffure was a striking shade of royal blue that matched his sharp, glittering eyes which went wide when he saw me. A monocle rested primly in front of his left eye that quite fell from his face in shock, dangling in front of his sharp, dignified business suit.

“Octavia?!”

“UNCLE FANCY!” I cried happily, surging from Adagio’s stunned side and into the arms of my father’s closest friend.

“HA!” Fancy crowed with laughter as he pulled me into his arms and swung me around as if I were still a child, but he had always been a broad, strapping man. “Oh my dear! It’s been far, far too long!”

“It has!” I agreed as he set me down and pushed the doors the rest of the way open to allow Adagio to enter, and she eyed the pair of us with a wry grin.

I blushed, laughing with a bit of embarrassment as I met her eyes and nodded.

“Adagio, this is Fancy Pants,” I gestured to the man, “I’ve known him and his wife for my entire life, and he’s always been Uncle Fancy to me.”

“And?” Fancy said with a grin as he nudged me.

I rolled my eyes. “And he’s my godfather.”

“Is that so?” Adagio said with that enigmatic smile of hers, “then allow me to introduce myself…” she made a perfect curtsy, “Adagio Dazzle, proprietress of The Last Note Lounge in Canterlot.”

“And?” I echoed my godfather’s word with a smile that matched his own.

Adagio raised an eyebrow cooly at me before turning back to Fancy.

“And Octavia’s girlfriend, as it happens,” Adagio said as she offered her hand to Fancy.

Fancy took her hand firmly and shook it, and I saw his eyebrows shoot up at the strength with which Adagio shook hands. It had been quite a sight to see Blueblood cringe at the power of her grip, but my uncle gave as good as he got.

“Quite right,” Fancy said happily before turning to me, “I had heard you were in a relationship, Octavia, and I’m very happy for you.”

I blushed again as Adagio stepped into the conference room and I returned to her side, sidling close to her and resting my head on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Uncle Fancy,” I said with a warm smile. “I am so very happy with her.”

He nodded, and looked as though he was about to about to speak when the door at the far end of the small meeting room we were standing in crashed open with an almost imperial flourish.

A statuesque woman in a flowing cream-colored gown with alabaster skin, a waterfall of pink locks, and piercing violet eyes strode in with a kind of grace I was used to seeing in Adagio wearing a look of absolute delight on her face that was quite at odds with mellifluous string of Prench invectives flowing from her lips.

“Ma moitié!” she snapped at Fancy in her heavily accented english, who endured her fury with admirable stoicism as she stormed past him and pulled me bodily into her arms to crush me against her. “Why did you not tell me our niece was visiting!?”

“Well, I didn’t know,” Fancy replied as I struggled for air, her far from inconsiderable bust had quite cut off my air supply. “I had a meeting with this lovely young woman,” he gestured to Adagio, “concerning our company’s new executive bonus package, when I-” he paused as I flailed my arms, gesturing wildly for aid, “darling, please, let her go or we’ll have a funeral on our hands, won’t you?”

I was released and I gasped for air, panting as Adagio quietly shook with poorly suppressed laughter.

“H-hello, Auntie Fleur,” I said through gasps of much-needed oxygen, “lovely to see you again.”

“Ah, ma belle pêche,” Fleur cooed, mussing my hair a little as she stroked my head like I was a kitten. “It ‘as been far too long!”

“Uhm, a-are we done for the day, then?”

A voice from behind Fleur drew my attention, and I glanced behind her to spy a familiar sight.

“Rarity?!” My jaw all but dropped open in surprise.

The young woman, whom I might have thought had been Fleur and Fancy’s illegitimate daughter had I not met her parents a few times, brightened considerably as she peeked out from the room Fleur had just left.

“Octavia, darling!” Rarity bustled out, her arms nearly overflowing with sketches of what looked like dresses and outfits.

I swept past my godfather and godmother and embraced Rarity, giving her a brief kiss on each cheek as she returned the affection.

“How have you been, dear?” I asked brightly, of all the ‘Heroes of Canterlot High’ it was Rarity I’d gotten along with the best. “It’s been ages!”

“It has, but ‘a woman’s work’ and all that, darling!” Rarity said proudly.

“This is quite a coincidence,” Adagio said as she stepped up beside me, and I saw Rarity’s eyes widen at the sight.

“Miss Dazzle, what a surprise,” Rarity said, her eyes widening briefly before she held out her hand. “How’s Aria?”

“Doing well,” Adagio replied with a warm smile, taking the proffered hand and shaking it delicately. “She and Sunset are like two peas in a pod that’s on fire.”

“Business per usual then, is it?” Rarity asked dryly, to which Adagio just chuckled and nodded. “As for coincidence… less than you might think. I’ve been in the city for about a week now meeting Miss De Lis every other day, and I plan to stay for another two to work out my next fashion line.”

“Miss Belle is our newest rising star,” Fleur said proudly as she swept past the three us and behind Rarity, putting her hands on Rarity’s shoulders. “J’adore cette femme, her ideas are quite novel!”

“Indeed, charmingly rustic actually,” Fancy said happily, “and inspired by her own love life, I understand?”

Rarity blushed but nodded.

“Actually,” Fleur began thoughtfully, “if you wouldn’t mind being our first test subjects I would greatly appreciate it… here,” she pulled a few choice sketches from Rarity’s arms and passed them to myself and Adagio. “Tell me, how do these outfits make you feel? And please, be honest!”

I took up the pages and examined them, and immediately something stirred in my heart. The outfits were simple, almost stunningly so, with a breezy, airy aesthetic that made me think of simpler times. It was as though someone had taken the modest, plain outfits from the middle class of a few centuries prior, touched them up for modern day, and then accentuated the sense of comfort they gave.

In a word they were…

“Nostalgic,” Adagio said quietly, and I glanced over as she took the word right out of my mouth.

I was stunned to see the faint beginnings of tears in her eyes, although I’m certain no one else saw them as she blinked rapidly before handing the paper back.

“They’re lovely,” Adagio said sincerely, “quite lovely.”

“Agreed,” I said, handing back my own examples. “Nostalgic was precisely the word I was looking for as well.”

Fleur and Rarity shared a triumphant look before turning back to us.

“That’s perfect,” Rarity said with a broad grin, “the name of this ensemble is entirely applicable then.”

She held up another slip of paper that looked something like a title card read in flourishing, curling calligraphy: NOSTALJ’A.

“I just wish I had more examples to draw from,” Rarity lamented as she looked down at the pages with a wan smile. “I do believe I’ve visited every museum in the nation to find inspiration for this line.”

Adagio glanced up sharply at that.

“Examples of?” she asked in a quiet voice, and both Rarity and Fleur looked up at her.

“W-Well, period accurate clothing, obviously,” Rarity replied, “why do you ask?”

A small smile appeared on my love’s face, and I suddenly recalled just how very old she was. Old enough to have seen each and every one of those fashions Rarity was speaking of rise and fall.

“I do believe,” Adagio said with that Cheshire grin of hers, “that we might be of some help to one another,” then she glanced back at Fancy, “could you spare me an hour before our meeting, dear?”

Fancy just waved a hand. “Please, take your time, I have nothing more after this meeting and, from the look in my wife’s eyes, if said no I would regret it.”

Fleur smiled and turned on her heel to go back into the room from whence she’d come, and Rarity followed quickly behind her. Adagio glanced up at me, as if looking for approval, and I just smiled at her and nodded.

“Go on, then,” I said, gesturing for her to follow them, and she smiled brightly and before leaning in to kiss me, and then trotting away.

“She’s quite something,” Fancy said as the door closed behind them.

“She is,” I agreed quietly. “And I love her so very much.”

“You know,” Fancy said, his voice falling low as he glanced over at me, “she looks damnably like that young woman your father hired better than a decade ago, doesn’t she?”

I froze, and a chill went up my spine as he spoke.

“The one who taught you to play the cello back when you were, what… eight or nine years old, wasn’t it?” Fancy looked thoughtful as he tapped his lips with one gloved finger, then suddenly snapped his fingers in delight. “Serenata! That was her name!”

“I… I don’t know really,” I said carefully, “to be honest I don’t quite remember what she looked like… it’s been so long and I was so young, and we don’t have any pictures of her.”

“Wasn’t her surname the same?” Fancy scratched his head for a moment before nodding. “Yes, I’m certain of it, ‘Dazzle’... Serenata Dazzle.”

“Well obviously she can’t be the same woman,” I said with a slightly weak laugh, “ I mean… it’s been more than fifteen years and if my memory serves then Serenata was… eighteen?”

I tried to look as if I was wracking my brains, and fortunately my godfather appeared to be doing the same.

“I wonder if they’re related,” Fancy said after a few moments of thought, “she was a wonderful young woman.”

“She was,” I agreed quietly, “I’m just sorry her teaching ended up going to waste.”

That succeeded in distracting Fancy, who frowned at my words and looked over at me, sighing quietly as he reached out and put both hands on my shoulders, gripping them firmly.

“I heard about what happened with the Orchestra,” Fancy said in a gentle voice. “The real matter of it, I mean, not the white-washed hogwash they fed to everyone else.”

I scowled, shaking as I felt my eyes burning. “Yes, well… nothing to be done about it now, is there?”

“They don’t deserve you, Octavia,” Fancy’s tone was iron-hard and I nodded, not feeling much better for the platitude but appreciating it nonetheless. “You can do better than them.”

“Can I?” I asked bitterly. “I’m curious as to how, given I’ve been blacklisted from every ensemble of any worth in the country and likely a few outside of it.”

“Then look beyond that!” Fancy insisted, crossing his arms as he stared down at me. “The Octavia I remember wasn’t one to quit regardless of the difficulty of her situation! It isn’t as though Orchestras are the only way to go.”

“Then what do you advise, hm?” I asked, feeling a touch of anger color my voice. “Where exactly can I go that I could play my music and be appreciated! I’ve no desire to make albums of any kind, I’m not a studio artist!”

“Then don’t be,” Fancy said gently, “use what you’ve got to make something new.”

“Something new?” I asked stiffly, and I could feel irritation boiling up in my chest. “I’m an anachronism, Uncle Fancy, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but I don’t really do ‘new’.”

“Your lover certainly does,” Fancy said with a chiding smile, and I blushed. “She’s looking beyond the normal scope of her business to grow it into something far more than a simple gentlemen’s club, as I understand it.”

“W-well yes but…” I stammered and stopped, how could I explain that Adagio had far more experience in this sort of thing than I did? “I hardly see what that has to do with me!”

“I own a company whose wealth lay within the art of fashion, and my wife is one of the finest models and designers in the world,” Fancy said with a wry grin. “Your Adagio’s company is one whose wealth rests on pleasing the senses… can you not think of anything you might contribute to that?”

I paused to stare up at my uncle for several moments as ideas detonated brightly behind my eyes.

Adagio had said she wanted to turn her Lounge into a place that catered to all types of desires… Hell, it already had an actual lounge where Adagio sang her sentimental old ballads twice a week, and that room was packed to the walls for every single performance!

“I think I see your meaning, Uncle Fancy,” I said in a wondering tone as my mouth went quite dry.

He smiled reassuringly and patted my shoulders briskly.

“You’re a brilliant young woman, Octavia,” Fancy said with a warm smile. “I look forward to your future.”

“As do I,” I said, feeling a weight lift from my shoulders for the first time in months as ideas sprang to mind.

The meeting that followed went as swimmingly as could be hoped for, with Fancy and Fleur agreeing to buy generously into the contract that Adagio held. Unlike the other meetings there was no wheeling and dealing, just a long, frank discussion of benefits, offers, and counteroffers that operated fully above board.

I didn’t expect anything less from my Uncle, he was a savvy businessman but he preferred to operate in good faith rather than through shady backroom deals.

With that said, I’m sure my presence was part of what eased the transition. He was far and away more willing to trust to Adagio’s good intentions while I sat there, my arm looped tightly around hers.

And so it was that, when we left the offices of my godparents and got into the car, Adagio was in significantly higher spirits than usual.

“Darling,” I began as I sidled in next to her and came to rest comfortably in her arms.

“Mm?” Adagio turned to look down at me with one eyebrow raised.

“I was just curious what you were talking to Rarity and Fleur about,” I said with a warm smile, it seemed a fine enough way to break the ice, “Fleur seemed in an extraordinarily good mood… I love my godmother to death but her moods make mercury seem stable.”

“Ah, yes,” Adagio grinned widely. “Well, I just offered to allow Rarity unfettered access to my storage unit in Canterlot, the one where I keep most of my wardrobe.”

“Isn’t your wardrobe in the Note?” I eyed her quizzically.

I had seen the large walk in closet a few rooms down the hall from Adagio’s quarters that could have passed for a sizeable apartment had it not been filled with rack upon rack of fine clothing. The idea that she had yet more clothing almost beggared belief.

“Well, yes, my modern wardrobe,” Adagio said, waving her hand nonchalantly. “The one in storage is… a little out of date”

I raised an eyebrow.

“How out of date?”

Adagio gave me a thoughtful, innocent smile as she pretended to look pensive for a moment before saying: “Oh… three or four centuries, give or take a few decades.”

“My darling Adagio,” I said in mock accusation, “are you saying you’re a hoarder?”

“First of all,” Adagio said defensively, holding up a finger, “I am not a hoarder, I only kept one or two outfits at a time… it just so happens that when you live for millennia that kind of collection does tend to… accrue, somewhat.” she extended another finger, “secondly, many of them were gifts and a lady doesn’t simply throw out a gift.”

I opened my mouth to make a joke that her gifts were given by people long since dust, but the words died on my tongue as I realised what it was I’d been about to say. To me they may have simply been historical figures or people so temporally distant from me that I was almost impossible to imagine them as, well, people.

But Adagio had met them, spoken to them, befriended them even. She had been admired by them, adored by them… perhaps even loved by them.

Sentimental value had a far different meaning for someone used to living many hundreds of years amongst a species that probably rarely lived half a century for most of her lifespan on this world.

“I see, I suppose I can understand that,” I said quietly, “and you’re going to trust Rarity to handle them with care?”

Adagio chuckled lightly. “At least in this respect I would trust Rarity to treat them like holy relics, my dear.”

“Mm, I suppose that’s fair,” I agreed.

A few more moments passed and I watched the city pass us by as I considered my next words carefully.

“I’ve… been thinking,” I began, my voice quiet, and Adagio turned to regard me again with curious look on her face. “Perhaps… I’ve been going about this career of mine the wrong way.”

“How so?” Adagio asked, cocking her head to the side in interest.

I turned to smile back her, and I saw her smile match mine as she saw the light of an idea in my eyes.

“What do you think,” I started, taking her hand in mine as I did, “about expanding the lounge area of the Last Note?”

Epilogue: ...Always Wear Your Bow Tie.

The haunting strains of a cello filled the dimly lit lounge hall of the Last Note, a composition that, rumor had it, one could only hear there.

In point of fact, that was quite true, since the composition was never named nor recorded, to my knowledge. Of course, that was true of every composition that I played now, which was a relatively consistent test of my abilities even after ten years of playing this particular stage.

Adagio’s backlog of composed material turned out to be quite extensive, number in the four or five dozen compositions, to the point that some even whispered that I had found some stash of masterpieces lost to history. It also qualified Adagio for a record of some kind I’m certain in terms of number of compositions penned, although in the defense of mere mortals, she had far more time to do so.

Amusingly enough, I can’t say that aforementioned rumor is particularly inaccurate which at times makes me feel as if I’m a bit of a fraud, but Adagio wouldn’t let anyone else but me play her music so needs must, I suppose.

With that said, I could hardly keep the smile off my face today, and a very small part of me felt a bit petty about the nature of my good mood.

I’d heard, through the grapevine, that none other than Stalling Reins was being indicted on better than two dozen counts of discrimination among a laundry list of other accusations from sexual harassment to nepotism.

Of course, everyone and their dog knew the only reason he was being thrown under the bus now was for the markedly poor performance the Orchestra has shown over the past several years. His mismanagement had apparently encouraged terribly high turnover, which I’m a bit pleased to say began with my own egress from the organization, and that in turn resulted in a string of subpar tours that put him well out of the good graces of the wrinkled old relics he was so eager to please.

Without his societal shields, all of Stallings dirty laundry and awful business practices eventually came back around to slap him wetly in the face like a pair of improperly used undergarments.

Oh yes… today is a good day.

My fingers played up and down the neck of my cello with an easy familiarity, and I relished the comfort the action brought. It had been quite some time since I’d played this particular piece, but it was an old favorite of mine and given the recent events I felt like digging up something sentimental.

And what could be moreso than the very first true composition I ever learned under the tutelage of the woman who would later become the love of my life?

“Feeling nostalgic, darling?”

I blinked, knocked from my mental reverie by a familiar, mellifluous voice. I glanced up and over the empty lounge room at Adagio who was standing in the doorway entrance. She was wearing her long, golden evening gown, the scaled one that I’d found so charming, and her hair fairly floated around her.

I felt a touch under-dressed, I was still in my gray, terry-cloth bathrobe, slippers, a cotton tee-shirt and sleep pants. In my defense, my day didn’t really start til the evening, and it had been Adagio’s turn to do all of the little morning rituals.

“I’m surprised you still remember that one,” Adagio teased as she entered the room, her hips swaying seductively in a manner I had never quite decided was purposeful or just a side-effect of her delicious proportions.

“My darling wife, if I ever forget one of your compositions you are free to punish me however you wish,” I said cheekily as I set my bow on the stand.

“Aren’t I free to do that anyway?” Adagio replied, her voice taking on a smoky tone,

I blushed but didn’t look away. “Mm, perhaps so…”

As she moved between the evenly spaced tables of the lounge I appreciated, not for the first time, how Adagio wore her years with such extravagant grace. Had she been human she would have been a shade past thirty-four, or thereabouts, and yet the years hardly seemed to touch her.

I did my best to take care of myself but, as I had suspected, I inherited my father’s natural inclination towards graying early as I’d found more than a few silver hairs hidden among my dark locks over the past few months.

Perhaps it’s a sign of my faith in Adagio that I didn’t even consider dying my hair… I knew she would love me regardless of how I looked. Still, since joining her little work-out regimens some years back I feel confident in my health and appearance at the very least.

I sat my cello aside as Adagio mounted the stage and held out a hand to me.

Sighing, I rolled my eyes and took it, rising from my seat as I did. I knew where she was going with this… Adagio was a delightfully romantic woman.

As soon as I was standing Adagio raised her free hand, snapped her fingers, and somewhere in the audio booth, someone flipped a switch.

I supposed that it was likely Sonata, as Aria was unlikely to be awake since it wasn’t yet more than three in the afternoon. It might have been Sonata’s partner, of course… oh, who am I kidding, if either of them were up there the other one would be as well.

Sonata Dusk was rarely out of her the company of her lovely little nerd.

A lively waltz flowed out of the speakers and I turned to face Adagio, resting my left hand on her shoulder and as she took hold of my right.

The music rippled about us and we whirled around the familiar steps as Adagio held me close, and I sighed happily as I rested against her, letting her lead and carry me in her arms. Bathrobe or no, Adagio always knew how to make me feel like a princess.

As the waltz struck the crescendo, I moved to the music, moving in time to every beat as we stepped out and around one another, spinning in time before reaching out to clasp hands once more as Adagio pulled me in, spinning, til my back came to rest against her hand, the back of my head resting against her shoulder as I stared up into her eyes for a brief moment before the music rose again and was spun out of her arms once more.

Adagio pulled me close one final time as the song trailed off and closed, the strings fading as I stared up at her with a deliriously happy smile on my face.

“What did I do to deserve you, darling?” I asked, feeling a slight welling of tears. “To deserve… all of this?”

“I rather think I should be asking that question, my love,” Adagio replied, her voice filled with somber warmth as her hand snaked around to rest just above my backside. “However did a beast of a woman like me catch the heart of such a flower?”

“Granting how long I spent looking for you,” I said evenly as I pretended not to notice her hand sliding downwards until it rested on the curve of rump, “perhaps it’s a matter of my own choices.”

“No accounting for taste, then,” Adagio teased, before giving me a squeeze and pulling me into a kiss.

I moaned softly against her lips as she dragged me closer. In our ten-and-change years of marriage, Adagio had gotten no less forceful in her affections, something I was quite grateful for as I have never stopped enjoying them.

My lips curved into a smile as I felt her hand slip past the elastic waistband of my sleep pants and down, around my legs, to rest against my nethers, and I shivered as I felt her slip a finger inside.

“Well, hello there,” I said in a slightly breathless voice as I did my utmost to keep my knees from knocking together, “c-can I help you?”

“Mm… I don’t know,” Adagio replied with a playful smile as her finger pressed gently inside of me and I gasped, clinging to her to keep myself upright. “I haven’t quite decided what I’m looking for yet.”

‘A-Adagio, darling, please,” I gasped again as she twitched her fingers, “y-your sister is u-up there and-”

“I told her not to stick around after starting the waltz,” Adagio countered easily as she slipped another finger inside me and I stifled a loud moan by biting the sleeve of my robe.

“O-one of the e-employees could-” I started again, my voice muffled by my terrycloth bit.

“They don’t come in for another hour and you know it,” Adagio whispered back, her smile becoming absolutely predatory.

“I h-haven’t even showered ye-”

“I don’t give a damn,” Adagio hissed over me.

“Mmm…” I groaned quietly as I let her go to work on me, and I could feel her relaxing at the same time.

By the time I came, and Adagio had her own satisfaction, my legs and arms were delightfully rubbery, and I was resting upright only by dint of Adagio’s firm grip, with Adagio sitting in the chair I’d been occupying earlier and myself in her lap.

“S-Stressful morning, then, dearest?” I said after a moment.

“Those wretched harridans in the PTA make me wonder if Sirens still exist in this world,” Adagio replied aridly as she stroked my hair, “they certainly inspire me to hitherto unseen heights of violence.”

“You’ve far more patience for their jeers and nasty looks than I do, my dear,” I replied as I nestled against her shoulder and sighed happily. “If I had to endure more than one of those meetings in a row I’d surely be jailed for homicide, justifiable though it might be.”

Adagio shifted in the chair then made to stand, giving my bottom a firm pat as she did.

“You should clean up, she’ll be home soon,” Adagio chided me playfully, and I smiled up at her happily, leaning up to kiss her on the cheek.

“Oh, I suppose I can stand one shower without your presence, Dazzle,” I joked back as I walked towards the backroom, sashaying my rear a little for her as I did and called out before vanishing around the corner: “Be out in a moment!”

“Tease me like that again” Adagio called after me, “and I’m liable to follow you back there and really give you a thrashing.”

I leaned back, peering out the door and fixing my wife with a smoky look.

“Promises, promises,” I teased, before licking my lips and retreating to our shared room and shower to the sound of muttered, flowing Sirenic oaths.

My ablutions were short and I emerged only ten minutes later drying my hair, wearing my blouse, bow-tie, and a pair of low-cut jeans that Aria had bought for me which, I had to admit, showed off my meager curves nicely. I made my way towards the large kitchen area of the dining chambers, one of the newer additions to the Last Note, finished just a year and a half ago, to scrounge up some late lunch.

‘Mama!”

My face split into a wide smile as I stepped into the kitchen and was body-checked by a small missile of adoration, her slim arms wrapping around my waist and the wind went out of me as she head-butted my midriff in her eagerness to reach me.

“Oh dear,” I gasped, staggering, and I watched Adagio cover her mouth and shake with silent laughter as I hugged our daughter while simultaneously gasping for air.

“H-How was school, Serenata?” I asked, trying to keep the choking to a minimum as I looked down at her.

She stared back up at me with a toothy smile, and my heart melted all over again, as it always did.

Our daughter was so beautiful.

She was seven years old, with her hair cut to a short inky bob tapering to a sharp widow's peak. Serenata had Adagio’s statuesque frame and build, so she was a bit taller and broader than most of the other girls and quite a few of the boys. She had a dark gray complexion, closer to my father’s than mine, but her eyes were an almost identical shade of mulberry to mine, and in turn my mother’s.

I will say that she lacked any of the guile or causticity that her mother and I shared, more favoring the guileless humor of her aunt Sonata.

And, naturally, as her final gifts from the last of her Aunts…

“I won at soccer today!” she cheered.

“She got detention for kicking the ball into the goalies face on purpose,” Adagio said dryly.

“I got it into the goal…” Serenata countered a little sullenly.

…Serenata had unfortunately inherited her Aunt Aria’s sense of ‘fair play’ and belligerence.

“You do realise that probably hurt quite a bit, right?” I admonished her, and Serenata stepped back glaring down at the floor.

“He’s a bully anyway,” she said replied with some annoyance. “He tried to take Canta’s pudding cup.”

I raised an eyebrow at that and glanced up at Adagio whose eyes were a little wide. She shook her head at my unasked question, so she hadn’t known either, and I looked back at Serenata.

“So what did you do?” I asked.

Serenata smiled wickedly. “I dumped my soda on his head and called him a wiener.”

“PFFFFFFHAAAAHAHAAHAHHAHAA!”

Uproarious laughter echoed from the other side of the room and I scowled.

“Eat your bloody cereal, Aria,” I snapped, shaking my fist at the half-naked ex-Siren who was chortling into her marshmallow bits at a table on the far end of the kitchen.

“Yeah!” Serenata chirped, “eat your bloody cereal!”

Oh no.

Aria’s laughter redoubled and she toppled out of her chair, and I clapped my hand over my face as she did so.

“Oh good, discussing that little verbal development is going to make the next PTA meeting much more entertaining,” Adagio said cheerfully.

“Serenata, darling, mommy said a bad word,” I knelt beside her, laying my hands on her shoulders. “She got upset and lost her temper, but that’s not a word you ought to use, alright?”

“Why?” Serenata asked with a bright, inquisitive smile.

“W-Well, because… it’s rude,” I replied, flailing for an answer she would understand.

“Then why did you say to Auntie Aria?” Serenata asked, her brow furrowing cutely.

I groaned.

“Because your Auntie Aria tests my patience dreadfully,” I answered evenly, “and, as I said, I lost my temper.”

“So if I get mad I can say it?” she asked, her smile returned with double the force.

Oh dear.

“T-That’s not what I-” I glanced over at my wife plaintively. “Adagio… help me!”

“Oh no,” Adagio raised her hands in surrender, “I’ve been up since six this morning, mommy Adagio is tuckered out, and besides you dug this hole yourself, my Melody.”

I clapped my hands over my face and groaned.

“Bloody perfect.”

“Bloody perfect!” my little echo chirped.

I chuckled quietly as I dragged my hands down my face, and a moment later my chuckles turned to laughter as I dropped down to my rump and pulled Serenata into my grasp. She shrieked in delight as I wrestled her to the ground, her small arms swatting playfully as we tussled.

“Do not!” I tickled her mercilessly, “use the word ‘Bloody’!”

My command went unheeded.

“Bloody!” She shouted at the top of her lungs and I made a mock yell of outrage and stood, hauling her up with me and holding her upside down where she flailed yet more against my.

I gave my daughter a brief shake, and she giggled, gasping for breath with her blouse askew and her hair falling wildly around her face as she smiled up at me. As she did I noticed something, and my eyes narrowed.

“Darling dear, where is your bow tie?” I asked suddenly, and the humor fled from Serenata’s tiny face in moments.

“I… I lost it when I was playing soccer…” she admitted dolefully, and I sighed as I slowly lowered her to her feet. “I… I’m sorry…”

And she genuinely meant it, I could tell. The subdued tone of her voice was quite out of character for her normally unless she felt she’d done something wrong.

“It’s alright, dear,” I said gently, pulling her into a hug. “But you must be more careful with your things, alright?”

“I know… I didn’t even notice it had come off until…” Serenata sniffled and wiped at her eyes, and my heart melted all over again. “I’m sorry…”

“You have more,” I said encouragingly, patting her head as I did. “Just be careful next time.”

“Why do I need to even wear it?” She asked in a huff. “I’m not doing anything fancy.”

I smiled as I ruffled her hair, glancing up to Adagio as I did who rolled her eyes and nodded before moving in and kneeling next to me.

“Because,” Adagio said gently, “whether you are playing music for a crowd, or pummeling a bully with a soccer ball,” she began, reaching into one of her cleverly hidden pockets and drawing out a loose band of silk, “you are still a lady.”

“Indeed you are,” I agreed as I reached out and settled her blouse correctly, “and remember what we’ve said about being a lady?”

Serenata rolled her eyes but nodded. “A lady is never without her bow tie.”

“Right you are,” Adagio voice was bright and pleased as she wrapped the silk tie around our daughter’s neck neatly, then tied it off.

“Hey! Sera!” Another familiar voice called out, and I looked up to see Aria and Sunset’s daughter, Cantata, peek around the corner. “Come play!”

Cantata was smaller, by about half a head, and more delicate than her cousin. She was as mischievous as she was angelic with her tumbling, many-toned ringlets and cherubic face, but the pair of them were as close as sisters and Serenata was fiercely protective of Canta, even moreso than she was of the twins. The young girl had a dancer’s build and a soft heart; she cried easily, and nothing made Serenata madder than when someone made Cantata cry.

“Can I?!” Serenata turned and looked up at the pair of us with bright, hopeful eyes, and I sighed.

I really ought to say no, she did get detention after all, but…

“Oh very well,” I replied after a moment, giving her a light shove towards Cantata. “But stay close by!”

“Auntie Sunset is outside with us!” Serenata called back as she raced off, grabbing Cantata’s hand as she did.

“I think that went well,” Adagio said with some satisfaction.

“Hey Canta! Wanna hear a new word I learned?”

Oh dear.

Author's Note

We Have Come To Terms

1. Stand With Poise

The sounds of a poorly played cello reverberated shrilly through the afternoon air. A young girl with long, dark hair, a grey complexion, and a look of furious childlike concentration on her face stood in the center of a large study, her thin arms bracing a cello despite it being abundantly clear that the instrument was too large for her.

The child was nine years old, almost precisely nine in fact as yesterday had been her ninth birthday and the cello had been one of her gifts. Specifically, the cello had been the gift that the child had been most happy with.

She had begged her father for one ever since they had gone to see an orchestral performance several weeks ago.

The cellist had performed a beautiful solo that had captured the girl’s heart and since then she had asked her father for a cello of her own almost nonstop.

She drew the bow of the cello against the strings, trying to imitate how she remembered seeing the cellist at the orchestra play. Every sound the instrument made, however, came out almost painfully off-key.

Such had been the case for the past hour and a half.

Sagging in place, she let the bow drop from her hands as tears built up on the edges of her eyes. No matter what she tried she couldn’t play like the woman in the orchestra. She wanted it to sound beautiful, not at all like a dying cat.

“Octavia!”

Her father’s voice called out from the foyer, and Octavia glanced up, sniffled, then wiped at her eyes and set the cello back on the stand it had come with and settling the bow alongside it.

“Octavia come here for a moment, please.” Her father called again.

“Coming papa!” Octavia called out, her voice was a high child’s chirp.

Resisting the urge to sprint, Octavia moved quickly out of the study, down the hall, and out into the front hall of their mansion.

Her father, Legato Melody, was a tall and severe looking man whose appearances belied a soft and kind personality that led to he and his wife Soprana being well known in the city of Canterlot for their philanthropic works. Legato had the same grey complexion as his daughter and the same ink-dark hair, although his had veins of early silver running through it that gave him a look of attractive maturity. He had warm, brown eyes set into a weathered face that was lined with the echoes of old smiles.

“Welcome home, papa!” Octavia said brightly, her frustrations with her new cello were significantly lessened in her father’s presence.

Legato smiled broadly at his daughter before kneeling to scoop her into his arms.

“Ah, hello my little musician, how was your day?” Legato ask cheerily, though his face fell a little at the look of sadness on Octavia’s features.

Octavia sniffled a little. “I’m trying to practice papa… but…”

“My darling, your fervor for the musical arts is admirable,” Legato said with a small laugh, “but you ought not to expect perfection immediately, isn’t that right, Miss?”

“Most certainly not,” a high, mellifluous voice replied. “Perfection cannot be rushed.”

Octavia became abruptly aware that they weren’t alone. Turning her head in her father’s embrace, Octavia’s eyes widened at the sight of a young woman in a modest, knee-length skirt the color of dark wine, simple but stylish pumps, and a white blouse that was tied off at the neck with a lovely pink bow tie.

The woman was young, maybe high school age or a bit more although it was a bit hard for Octavia to tell since, past a certain age, everyone just looked like grownups to her. The young lady had a faintly yellow complexion, wonderfully bright raspberry eyes that glittered with humor and intellect, and the most brilliant poof of meticulously cared-for orange hair.

“Octavia, meet Miss Dazzle,” Legato said in a cheerful voice. “She will be your cello instructor for the next several months.”

“I look forward to teaching you everything I know, Miss Melody,” she said with a feline grin. “I hope you will prove to be an able student.”

Octavia nodded emphatically before clambering down from her father’s arms and stepped up to her new instructor and held out her hand.

“My name is Octavia Melody, I’m very pleased to meet you,” Octavia said in a stiffly formal manner.

Her instructor chuckled a little before extending her own hand to take Octavia’s small fingers in her grasp.

“A pleasure,” she said, smiling. “My name is Serenata Dazzle.”

“Again,” Serenata said in a strict voice. “And hold your posture firmly, but not stiffly,” she poked and prodded Octavia with a thin rod, adjusting her stance manually, “you must control how you stand but remain supple enough to flow with the music or you’ll lose the tune.”

“Yes, Miss Dazzle,” Octavia chirped as she struggled to stand as Serenata told her.

A month into their instruction and even Octavia could tell she had improved by leaps and bounds. Miss Dazzle was an exceptional teacher, and her expertise made her seem far older than her appearance would suggest. According to her father, Serenata was only eighteen but was something of a musical wunderkind.

Octavia wasn’t so sure.

“Miss Dazzle?” Octavia asked as she started in on her third rendition of an adapted etude by Chopin that Serenata had provided. “Are you really only eighteen?”

Serenata smiled faintly at the question.

“It’s rude to inquire over a lady's age,” Serenata admonished playfully, “why do you ask?”

“You’re so smart,” Octavia replied, and Serenata preened a little under the compliment. “Will I be as smart and pretty as you when I’m eighteen?”

Serenata laughed, a beautiful chiming sound that made Octavia smile.

“I should think you would be both brilliant and stunning, my little Melody,” Serenata replied before leaning in conspiratorially. “Shall I tell you a secret?”

Octavia nodded excitedly, but Serenata held up a finger to stall her.

“You must tell no one,” Serenata said in a serious tone, “it’s a secret, remember? Do you promise?”

“I promise!” Octavia said with childish solemnity, her face scrunched into an adorably serious scowl.

Serenata examined her student critically for a moment before nodding, leaning in, and whispering in Octavia’s ear.

“The truth is: I’m well over a thousand years old,” Serenata said with a smile, and Octavia’s eyes widened. “I’ve lived many lives and learned many things, so no, I am not eighteen, I’m immortal.”

Octavia’s eyes widened, and Serenata put a finger to the small girl’s lips.

“Remember,” Serenata said softly. “It’s our secret, okay?”

Nodding, Octavia continued to play, her mind abuzz with Serenata’s words.

“Are you really immortal?” Octavia asked a moment later, her hand stilling on the bow. “Really?”

Serenata nodded, then raised a finger to her lips. Octavia sucked in a breath, realizing she’d said the word ‘immortal’ out loud, then nodded apologetically.

“Now… where were we?” Serenata began again.

“Stance and posture,” Octavia said dutifully.

“Ah, yes,” Serenata walked a short circuit around Octavia once more.

Octavia could feel her teacher’s critical, appraising gaze on her, and she did her best to school her form to the shape that Serenata had taught her. After several moments of tension, Serenata smiled and nodded, tapping Octavia’s shoulder.

“Very good,” Serenata said quietly. “An admirable if novice attempt, and one that we will refine as the weeks pass.”

“Thank you, Miss Dazzle,” Octavia said brightly.

“Now, before we continue with the cello,” Serenata said with a delighted smile, “someone must teach you how to walk.”

Octavia screwed up her face in confusion.

“But I already know how to walk!”

Serenata scoffed. “You know how to stumble forward and eventually reach your destination,” she said haughtily. “But a lady moves with refinement, not merely purpose, here… watch.”

Without another word, Serenata took a step, and then another and, with her attention drawn to it, Octavia realized what it was that her teacher meant. Serenata fairly glided across the room, and it made other people seem like buffoons who could barely move properly.

“You see the difference?” Serenata asked, her full lips curving to a playful smirk as Octavia rapidly nodded her head. “Motion, stance, form, music… it’s all the same, so I cannot teach you one and neglect another.”

“What does that mean?” Octavia asked, one eyebrow raised.

“It means, my little Melody,” Serenata said with a grin as she strode over to Octavia and set a hand on her head, “that we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

The Melody household was filled with the dulcet strains of a cello, as it had been for just over five months with ever increasing degrees of skill. Today was especially good, and Legato relaxed in his favorite chair as the sun set across the city and his daughter played a solemn, haunting tune he had never heard before.

Legato had his eyes closed as he let the presence of the music wash over him. He had, briefly, wondered if it had been a mistake to indulge his daughter in her sudden and seemingly ill-considered desire to play the cello, but had relented since she was just a child.

Who knew what she would find an interest in? The cello seemed as likely as anything else at her age, after all.

Now he was far more glad of it than he could put to words. Gladder was he, though, that he had thought to pay for lessons. The cost for Miss Dazzle had been princely and if it hadn’t come with a guarantee he would never have paid such a sum to so young an instructor, no matter how excellent her references.

Miss Serenata had more than lived up to her promises though and, in five short months, she had transformed his daughter into something like a virtuoso. Octavia played with quiet conviction, her stance steady and her hands as calm as a surgeon’s as she drew the bow gently along the strings of the instrument.

Octavia had never been a rambunctious child, precisely, but this was a kind of calm devotion to a craft that Legato would have liked to see in the junior associates of his own recording company. Seeing it in his daughter made him nearly ecstatic with pride.

The final chord trailed off to a delicate, trembling end, and Octavia let out a slow breath before taking a short bow.

Three pairs of hands clapped, Legato’s being the most excited.

“That was lovely, darling,” Octavia’s mother, Soprana, said brightly.

Soprana was the kind of classical beauty found less in men’s magazines and more in old Roaman statuary. High cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and dusky skin framed eyes like warm honey. Her hair was a long, dark waterfall of black that fell to her mid-back, and Legato marveled at just how much like her mother Octavia looked.

“A perfect rendition, my little Melody,” Serenata said with a calm smile and, not for the first time, Legato was struck by a sense of age in it. “You have learned my lessons well.”

“Thank you, Miss Dazzle,” Octavia curtsied perfectly, and Legato blinked.

“Did you teach her that?” He asked his wife, who shook her head.

They both looked up at Serenata who favored them with that same, oddly ageless, smile.

“I did, of course,” Serenata said primly as she stood and walked over to Octavia. “Should she ever perform on stage a cellist ought to have the proper poise to thank her audience, don’t you agree?”

“I… suppose so, yes,” Legato replied.

“May I ask what the name of that piece was?” Soprana ventured. “It was lovely, but I’m unfamiliar with its composer. I would very much like to add it to my collection.”

“The composition?” Serenata asked with a raised eyebrow as she critically examined Octavia’s posture. “I’m afraid it doesn’t have a name, nor was it ever recorded in any studio to my knowledge.”

During the conversation Octavia remained still and calm. She was used to Serenata’s teaching methods by now. Her instructor was harsh and exacting, but not merciless, though she constantly demanded excellence which Octavia was always proud to achieve.

“Then… then how did you teach it?” Soprana asked in confusion.

Serenata laughed, a faintly superior ring to it that put a slight chill down both parents’ spines, then she tapped Octavia’s shoulder, which had become her usual signal for informing Octavia that she had passed muster.

“Because I wrote it, obviously,” Serenata replied with another easy laugh as Octavia straightened. “With a bit of grudging help from my sisters, of course. Your daughter was the first to perform it out loud in its entirety, however… just now.”

“Really?” Legato asked, flabbergasted. “You wrote that piece?”

Serenata raised her eyebrow again. “I did… it wasn’t my best work, about par really, but a fine enough exercise for a journeyman cellist.”

“About par?” Soprana whispered softly. “How many compositions have you written?”

The two elder Melody’s stared at Serenata as she circled Octavia again, tapping her lip curiously. Instead of answering them, though, she spoke to Octavia.

“Little Melody, where on earth is your bow tie?” Serenata asked sternly. “I knew something was off.”

Octavia flinched, and her eyes began to tear up. “It… it got stained in the wash… I’m sorry.”

Serenata sighed and knelt down to Octavia’s level. “You are a lady, Little Melody, not a child.”

Serenata spoke in an admonishing voice and as she did Legato stood to defend his daughter, but Soprana held him back, watching carefully as Serenata set a hand on Octavia’s head.

“Remember our lessons,” Serenata said calmly. “A lady is not her tears nor her errors, she is power and poise… she is grace and excellence in all things and most importantly,” Serenata lifted her hands to undo the pink tie of her blouse, “she is never without her bow tie.”

Carefully, Serenata coiled the bow tie around the neckline of Octavia’s own little blouse and wrapped it, tying it into a perfect pink bow.

“Do not lose that one,” Serenata said sternly, but her lips quirked up in a small smile.

Octavia stared down at the bow tie in awe, touching it gently with her fingers. It was soft and made from silk, but it didn’t feel like any other piece of silk she had ever owned and it shimmered slightly in the low evening light.

“It’s beautiful,” Octavia whispered reverently.

“I have owned that bit of ribbon for a long time,” Serenata said with a smile as she stood up, then gave Octavia a conspiratorial wink. “Much longer than some might suspect, actually. So take care of it.”

“Won’t you want it back tomorrow?” Octavia asked, her eyes wide.

Serenata sighed softly. “I’m afraid our lessons have come to an end, my Melody… my sisters and I are moving away you see.”

Octavia’s eyes widened in horror, and tears began filling them again.

“That’s why you denied my last payment of your fee,” Legato said suddenly. “Why are you moving, may I ask?”

“Family business, I’m afraid,” Serenata replied cryptically. “We will likely be gone for a very long while.”

“Is there nothing I can do to persuade you to remain?” Legato asked, a note of pleading entering his voice. “For Octavia’s sake if nothing else? If money is a factor-”

“It’s unworthy of you to use your daughter, and my beloved pupil, as leverage, Mister Melody,” Serenata admonished him in a sharp tone that set him back on his heels. “And no, I have plenty of money, this is about family.”

“If I might ask then,” Soprana inquires, standing up from her seat. “May we purchase that composition of yours?”

Serenata’s features blackened viciously, and Soprana staggered back from the near-physical force of her anger.

“I realise that you do not understand what you just asked,” Serenata said stiffly, “so know this: the one thing I will never sell, besides my sisters, is my music.” She let out a calming breath, then set a hand on Octavia’s head. “A copy of that composition is currently resting on Octavia’s music stand. It will remain there on the condition that she be the only one who plays it and that it is never recorded nor profited from, are we clear?”

“We are,” Soprana said a little weakly.

Legato sighed heavily but nodded. “If you’re certain, then I am deeply sorry to see you go, Miss Dazzle.”

Serenata’s features softened considerably, and she nodded back to him.

“I would have liked to spend much more time with your family,” she said, her voice seeming far more melancholy than should belong to someone so young. “However, I must go where I must go and I’m sure you, of all people, understand the pressing value of family.”

“I do, of course,” Legato agreed. “I wish you the very best, and please know that you always have a place in our home, should you desire it.”

“You are very generous,” Serenata replied, bowing slightly.

“P-please don’t go.”

Serenata blinked at the tiny voice, then looked down to see Octavia desperately clinging to her leg.

“I love you! Please don’t go!” Octavia cried.

“Oh…” the word came out as a soft, hollow sound, and Serenata raised her hand to her lips.

A look of something between pain and shock painted Serenata’s features as she stared down at Octavia’s small, trembling form. Her arms hovered awkwardly above the child as she stared down at Octavia who was slowly dampening her skirt with tears.

“Please…”

Serenata’s features took on an infinitely softer cast as she slowly lowered herself back down to Octavia’s level and settled her hands on the girl’s shoulders.

“If I could stay, I would,” Serenata said gently. “For you, my little Melody, I would stay, but my sisters need me and I can’t leave them any more than your parents could leave you.”

“B-but-!”

“I’m sorry,” Serenata whispered, then she pulled Octavia into a warm embrace. “We will see one another again, though, I promise.”

“How do you know?” Octavia sniffled quietly.

Serenata hummed thoughtfully, then gave the pink bow tie a gentle tug.

“This bow is magic, did you know?” Serenata said, her smile enigmatic, and Octavia’s eyes widened. “It is enchanted to always find its way back to my hand.”

Octavia looked down her nose at the silk bow tie, then back up at Serenata.

“Then… then I’ll wear it every day!” Octavia declared. “Then… you’ll come back. Right?”

“For you, my Melody?” Serenata said warmly. “I will always come back.”

~Fifteen Years Later~

Airports are a cacophony of noise and only mildly ordered chaos even on the best of days, and that was assuming that any day in which an airport was involved could constitute the word ‘best’. Canterlot’s O’Mare International Airport is one of the busiest in the world, and today it seemed to be in particularly fine, read: obnoxious, form as I disembarked from my flight.

The Canterlot Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the finest in the world, and we only just recently completed a tour of several major cities across the continent. I don’t particularly enjoy air travel, the jet-set lifestyle is not to my liking even in first class, but being the youngest woman, at twenty-four, to ever hold the second chair of the Orchestra necessitates a certain amount of travel time whether I like it or not.

In my opinion, of course, I should be first chair but that wouldn’t be politic considering the current first chair has a decade of seniority over me.

His age notwithstanding, I suppose Boléro is a perfectly capable cellist.

Capable.

I am Octavia Melody and in my very expert opinion the word ‘capable’ is merely a synonym for forgettable.

No first chair should ever be content with the descriptor: ‘capable’. That would be like a painter being happy to be called ‘color coordinated’.

It might be true but it’s hardly praiseworthy.

My teacher hadn't been satisfied with ‘capable’ when I was a child, and there’s not a single reason I can think of that I ought to be satisfied with it as an adult. Certainly, there is no reason a man two decades my senior and a decade more practiced ought to be as unexceptional as he is, why he has absolutely no-

I grit my teeth and breathed out slowly, stopping in place as I mastered my temper.

With deliberate care, I went over my routine: straightening my black slacks and smoothing out any creases in them, then my blouse, white and newly starched, I adjusted my black jacket, and ended with giving the two ends of my bow tie a firm but gentle tug to ensure it was properly tied.

It was, of course. After all, a lady is never without her bow tie.

Drawing my phone from my jacket pocket I sent a message to my driver. My cello would be delivered directly to my home via the service maintained by the Orchestra but my personal effects would be at the baggage check.

I swear that I only looked down for a moment as I was walking, just enough to type out and send the message, but when I looked up there was a veritable wall clad in a tailored suit standing in front of me.

Before I could humiliate myself by colliding with them, a hand shot out to catch my shoulder in a gentle but iron-hard grip.

“Careful, senorita.”

I glanced up and felt my breath catch in my throat.

She was tall, impressively tall, and although her suit was exceptionally well-tailored the cut only served to highlight her broad shoulders and what must be an intimidating physique.

Her words were colored with a rich Marexican accent and she had sharp, ice blue eyes, her right eye had a brutal-looking scar over it, and her knuckles had the shadows of old scar tissue as well. Her complexion was a shade of dark wine and her hair was a riotously dark red. Everything about this woman screamed that she was dangerous, and I had the distinct impression she was someone’s bodyguard.

I’d seen the like more than once among my father’s associates.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I stammered, as I straightened back from her. “I swear I only looked away for a moment.”

“It was nothing,” She replied, waving her hand. “I am easy to miss.”

I blinked in disbelief, looking her up and down. She was Amazonian in stature and remarkably tall; in other words not someone I would consider ‘easy to miss’ in the slightest.

“I… see,” I replied after a moment.

“Pardon, but I must see to my employers,” she said suddenly, moving around me with startling speed and silence.

How could a woman that large move that quietly? The concept of it was mildly terrifying.

I turned to track her movement as she left my side and my eyes widened as I saw her flag down a pair of damnably familiar women.

“-could have finished packing the rest of her bags is all I’m saying, ‘Nata,” the woman in the lead said in a tone of annoyance. “Bad enough she left the convention practically two days early, but she only took her carry-on and left everything else for us!”

Adagio Dazzle: the leader of the Sirens who had threatened Canterlot High School some seven years ago, was walking right through O’Mare like nothing at all.

If I’m being honest, I recalled very little of the events of the Battle of the Bands. According to Sunset and the others, the Sirens had used some kind of mental magic on the majority of the school. It had left only the fuzziest overall impressions of them but, all the same, the name had nagged at me for years.

Dazzle.

No one I knew had been able to recall precisely what any of the Sirens had looked like, which I supposed was part of their magic. Not being capable of remembering who had mentally enthralled you or what they looked like probably went a long way towards explaining how those three had gotten away with their antics. It must have been some kind of residual effect of their song, though, because the moment I saw her walking through the airport I suddenly recalled her appearance in sharp relief, and my eyes went wide.

“She needed to get back, ‘Dagi,” the young woman behind her said placatingly. “Ari’ was falling apart without her, you and I both saw it. If she had gone the other two days I think she might’ve popped.”

“I’m aware,” Adagio said wearily. “And I do believe that girl is good for her, but I still hold that she could have at least packed her bags first.”

“It’s not possible,” I muttered, standing stock still as I stared at Adagio. “Not possible at all.”

The orange hair, the perfect posture… admittedly I didn’t have any pictures of my old teacher, nor did I precisely remember her appearance since I had been only nine years old at the time and it has been better than a decade and a half, but I would swear up and down that…

What was it that Serenata had said? Something about not being able to leave her sisters. Could she have been a Siren?

I backed up and away from the pair, Adagio and the other who could only have been Sonata Dusk, and stumbled towards the exit.

My driver was waiting there for me, my bags already loaded, naturally, and the door held open. I all but flew past him and crammed myself into the back seat in a most unladylike fashion, and he raised an eyebrow as I passed, but closed the door and took his own seat behind the wheel without a word.

Good Form was my butler and had been for over ten years. He had been hired by my father and when I had left the family home after making my own name, Form had offered to come with me.

He was a tall, spare man who was bald and good at it, with a thick, black handlebar mustache that was neatly kept, enough lean muscle to give any ruffian second thoughts, and sharp green eyes that I strongly suspected saw more than he ever admitted. As ever, he wore a black vest over a clean white button-down, dark slacks, and polished bespoke shoes.

He and my best friend, Vinyl Scratch, constituted almost the entirety of my social circle.

“Miss Melody?” Form spoke my name as a question, glancing into the rearview mirror at me as he did, and I grimaced.

“Do not leave yet,” I said stiffly. “Wait.”

He gave me a wry look for a moment, then nodded and waited patiently.

Several moments later Adagio and Sonata emerged, followed by their mountainous bodyguard who was hefting what looked like a metric ton of baggage as easily as I carried my cello. They had a long-bodied, classic silver Cadillac that looked like to have been driven out of a noir film, and the bodyguard quickly packed away their things and got into the driver's seat.

“Follow them,” I said in a voice that bordered on angry.

Good Form lifted an eyebrow again but didn’t question me. He put the car in gear and pulled out behind the Cadillac, keeping a few cars between us as we kept on their tail down the freeway into downtown Canterlot.

Several streets later the Cadillac pulled into the backlot of the Last Note Lounge. Of course I had heard of it, being the premier gentleman’s club in the city and a place that I would not be caught dead in on my worst night.

“Shall I park the car, Miss Melody?” Form asked in his low, gentle rumble.

“You most certainly shall not,” I replied tersely. “Take us home, Mister Form.”

“As you say, Miss Melody,” he said formally. “Home it is.”

On the drive home I settled back into my seat and considered what I had seen. Never before had I wished that I had a picture of my old instructor more than I did now. I knew that the Sirens were magical, but little else, and now I was regretting not pursuing that line of questioning years ago.

“Immortal,” I whispered softly to myself. “She'd said she was immortal, could that have been true? I suppose her sisters are probably the same if so.”

Adagio, Aria, and Sonata. So was Serenata a fourth sister? The naming scheme certainly held. But if so, where was she? Had she and the others had a falling out?

Or was it possible that Serenata was actually-

No, no I refused to accept that line of thought. I refused to even pursue it in my own mind. I wouldn’t give it a moment of credence.

We reached my home, a large high-end apartment complex in the heart of downtown. Expensive, yes, but I made more than enough money and it was well situated, and unlike many of my peers I rarely spent any of my money. Many of them preferred to live the high life, parties and the like, but such things had never appealed to me.

A quiet night in with a book and a glass of good whiskey suited me just fine.

I swept into the foyer of the building, entered my security code, and stepped into the elevator. I was fuming, I knew… my temper often got the better of me if I let it, which was why I didn’t.

Perhaps it was better to not know the answer to my questions. Perhaps I should just forget I saw those two at all, forget where they lived, and…

“Serenata…” I said quietly, my hand trailing up to touch my bow tie as I clenched my eyes shut. “I… I miss you so much.”

I should not be here.

Two straight weeks of mulling it over had not left me in any better humor than I had been at the start of all of this, though, so here I am now standing outside the Last Note seriously considering if I really wanted to know so badly that I’d actually step foot in such a place.

“I will, of course,” I practically spat. “A lady does not back down, after all.”

It was chilly, and I pulled my dark grey winter coat around myself and pulled my hood up. The Last Note was open, but barely, and I walked up to the large, imposing man at the entrance whose name tag read: Backstage.

“Welcome to the Last Note, Miss... do you have an invitation?” He asked in a deep, pleasant basso tone.

“I do not,” I replied thinly, “I assume there’s a cover charge?”

“Fifty,” he said by way of response.

I grimaced, but produced a few bills and pressed them into his hand before sweeping past him. I had nearly made it to the door when I stopped and turned.

“If I wanted to speak to Adagio Dazzle, how would I do that?” I asked pointedly.

He raised an eyebrow. “The owner? You’d have t’know somebody or get really lucky,” he replied. “That or catch her eye when she sings on lounge night.”

The owner. So the Dazzlings owned the Last Note. Good to know.

I nodded, then stepped into the lounge and my ears were immediately assaulted by the musical equivalent of an AMF. Vinyl both enjoyed and created this kind of electronic music but I couldn’t find it to my liking no matter how hard I tried.

There were few patrons this early but the dancers were already taking their place. I kept my eyes down but that didn’t help my blush.

I was forcibly reminded in that moment that, in all my time spent pursuing my passion, I had rather neglected my, well, passions. Personally my preference ran towards the feminine persuasion; men were just too thick-minded and improper.

Women had poise, grace, beauty, and style that men simply lacked.

And yes, I was perhaps slightly inspired towards that due to my old teacher being something of an ideal.

The point, I suppose, is that I was essentially a vestal virgin stepping into a den of iniquity, so I kept my eyes low and made my way toward the bar, taking a stool, tapping the bar, and saying:

“Whiskey, neat.”

“Top shelf?” A bright voice chirped.

“The very top, please,” I replied.

As she poured my drink I doffed my coat and set it to the side. I had chosen a button down pinstripe shirt with suspenders, more casual dark slacks, and functional black boots that were buckled up to the top of my shin.

My pink bow tie was in its rightful place as usual.

I all but sighed in relief as a glass was slid under my nose bearing a generous measure of golden-brown liquid that smelled deliciously smoky.

Lifting it to my lips, I let the bouquet filter through my senses, then took a slow sip and savored the oaken smoothness of it.

“That’s magnificent,” I said quietly.

A beautiful old bottle, half-filled, thumped onto the wooden bar in front of me. My eyes scanned over it and I nearly choked.

“Glenfiddich Twenty-Five?!” I blurted out.

I looked up at the bartender and felt my heart lodge in my throat.

Sonata Dusk was smiling happily at me from the other side of the bar. She lifted the bottle with great care and settled it back into its spot on the upper shelf.

“Well, you did say the very top shelf,” Sonata said with a smirk.

“So I did,” I replied, staring down at the glass with new appreciation.

I didn’t go out to drink very often but, in fairness, I had an exceptionally refined palate. There were hundreds of bars in Canterlot but very few that I judged to be worth my time. I was finding myself grudgingly adding the bar of the Last Note to that list, which was only slightly frustrating since it was located in what amounted to a high class strip club.

“How many bottles of that do you have?” I asked as I took another sip, this one more appreciative and slower than the last.

“A few hundred.”

I nearly choked again, this time on my drink which, as far as deaths go, would at least have been an elegant and dashing way to go given how expensive this whiskey was.

“Where on earth did you get a ‘few hundred’ bottles of this?” I asked in astonishment.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Sonata said with a laugh, waving her hand as she leaned on the bar. “We’ve been around awhile, we own shares in like, a few dozen different major distilleries.”

I stared, my mouth hanging slightly open as I worked my jaw. Finally I just asked:

“Why?”

Sonata shrugged.

“We all like different stuff,” Sonata said nonchalantly. “I prefer gin, Aria has a soft spot for mead and wine, and ‘Dagi drinks scotch like a monster.”

“So you… what? Just decided to buy shares so you could always get your booze?” I asked with an incredulous laugh.

“Nah,” Sonata said, chuckling and waving a hand, “we sold most of the shares, we mostly started the distilleries ourselves.”

I glanced down at my mostly empty glass of Glenfiddich. “Did… did you-”

“That would be my work, actually,” a high, cultured voice said from behind me. “I’m glad someone here has good taste.”

Turning slowly, I felt my breath catch as Adagio Dazzle came into view and I realized very suddenly that seeing her from a distance at O’Mare had not done the woman justice.

Adagio Dazzle was beautiful.

Long, luscious hair was pulled back into a ponytail, leaving her bangs to fall and frame a lovely face whose features were regal, patrician, and sharp enough to cut a man to the quick. She wore a shoulderless evening gown that glittered faintly, almost like fish scales, and was the color of the morning sunrise on the waters of Canterlot bay.

The dress hugged Adagio’s more than generous curves, from her wide hips to the swell of her bust, and the collar trailed up to accentuate the graceful curve of her neck, to her full, pink lips.

In short, Adagio was breathtaking, and I licked my lips a little as the stray, treacherous thought flickered through my mind, wondering what those lips might taste like.

“Good evening, Miss,” Adagio said with a faintly haughty smile. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced though I admit… you seem awfully familiar.”

“She was a student at Canterlot High,” Sonata said brightly, and Adagio sighed as I stiffened.

“Is that why my sister was blatantly outing her true age?” Adagio said dryly. “I suppose there’s little to hide from someone who saw that mess. Is that true then?”

“Y-Yes… I suppose it is,” I replied in a wary voice.

“Ah,” Adagio said, giving her hand a slight wave in my direction. “Well go ahead then, get the whole ‘monster’ schtick out of your system, I do have a lounge to see to.”

I frowned. “I’m not here to satisfy a grudge,” I said evenly, “I’m just here to ask a question.”

“What a delightful change of pace,” Adagio said disinterestedly as she stopped to critically examine her nails. “And why should I answer you?”

“I just want to know what happened to Serenata,” I said simply.

I’m not certain I could have surprised Adagio more if I had cold-cocked her with a bar stool. She froze, her eyes still on her fingers for a moment before they rose with deadly slowness to fix onto me.

“What did you say?” She hissed.

Now it was my turn to freeze. Her eyes, once glittering orbs of warm raspberry light, were almost red with a kind of lambent hunger. Sonata swallowed thickly and quickly scooted away from us to go pour drinks elsewhere.

Shotgunning the rest of my whiskey, which was a damned shame given the age and quality of it, I took a deep breath and met those subtly ancient eyes.

“I… I want to know if you know a woman named Serenata Dazzle,” I said, proud that my voice only shook a little bit.

“And if I said I did?” Adagio asked in a low and deadly voice. “What would you do about it?”

“I want to know how to find her!” I said sharply. “I… I’ve been looking for ages and never found a trace!”

“And what would a mere mortal girl want with Serenata?” Adagio pressed, stepping closer until she was looming over me.

It was at that point that I realized Adagio was a good deal more, as they say, yoked, than I had expected. Her whole body was tense, her arms were flexed, and I could see the defined muscle across her body.

It was, shamefully, both terrifying and a little arousing.

“S-She taught me to play cello when I was just a little girl,” I stammered, backing up as I tried and failed to contain my trembling, “p-please, I just wanted to see her again! To show her how far I’ve come! I… I…”

Damn it all. Now I was crying. But a woman is not her tears.

“I want her to be proud of me!” I exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly.

Adagio blinked in shock, then stepped back and cocked her head curiously to the side, examining me as if seeing me for the first time.

“No…” Adagio whispered, and it was so quiet it could only have been to herself. “No, it can’t be…”

“What?” I snapped, wiping at my cheeks. “What can’t be?”

“Melody?” Adagio breathed my name like a prayer, and I felt my heart freeze in my chest. “Octavia Melody? My little Melody?”

No… no, that’s… that’s not-

“What did you call me?” I murmured, my breath coming in sharply.

Adagio closed the distance between us in a moment and her hands swept over me. One hand came to rest on my cheek and I was poleaxed at the expression on her face.

Pure, almost delirious happiness.

“Nodens’ Oath…” she whispered, her smile broad as tears started at the edges of her eyes. “It is you… you’ve gotten so tall, and you’re so beautiful. It seems you certainly did become as pretty as me.”

I swallowed and shook my head. “N-No… no… you’re… her name was Serenata, not-”

“I’ve worn many names, my little Melody,” Adagio said with a soft smile. “Serenata was one of them, and one I used a few times here and there throughout history.” She stroked my cheek fondly. “One that I wore while teaching a beloved little girl how to find the music in her heart.”

Tears streamed from my eyes. My teacher… my hero… my ideal… was a monster. A wicked Siren who had enslaved my friends, my entire school…

“You’re lying,” I hissed, and Adagio jerked back as if I’d slapped her. “Serenata was beautiful! She was kind and gentle and graceful and she was not a monster!”

Adagio staggered back, her lower lip trembling, and if I didn’t know better I’d swear she was about to cry.

“Don’t you dare pretend to be her!” My voice came out raw and savage, so much so that I barely recognized it. “Don’t you dare!”

“I’m not… I’m not pretending,” Adagio said in a voice that was convincingly thick with tears. “I swear to you on my song I’m not… it’s me, little Melody, it’s-”

“Don’t call me that!” I snarled viciously, as I jabbed a finger into her chest, “only she gets to call me that! And you are not my… you are not her!”

“Please,” Adagio cried, tears falling down her cheeks like errant stars. “Please… I’ll swear on whatever you want… tell me what I have to do to convince you and I’ll do it!” she reached out a hand to me, “please… my Melody, please!”

I slapped her hand away from me, and the stricken look on her face became haunted.

“Don’t touch me, liar!” I snapped.

I turned on my heel and stalked away and, behind me, I heard a dull, hollow, thump. I glanced over my shoulder and felt a chill go up my spine.

Adagio had dropped to her knees, her arms wrapped around herself, and she was shaking. I saw tiny, glittering tears falling from her face to the floor as Sonata rushed to her side.

She was lying, I told myself. She had to be lying. She had to be.

6. Have a Plan

Despite there being no reasonable cause for it, I felt a quickened surge of fear as I approached the doors to the Last Note.

I knew that Vinyl was right about what I had to do next, that I had to talk to Adagio about what had happened between Stalling and I.

Adagio deserved to know what was going on, especially since it directly impacts the both of us, individually and as a couple. I didn’t have the right to keep something like that from her, and a small part of me wanted to scoff at the idea that I was even capable of it.

I wasn’t in the business of keeping things from the people I cared about and was well aware that I had a tendency to wear my emotions plastered clearly on my face even when I made an effort not to show them. If Stalling hadn’t been able to tell how badly he had rattled me it was only because he truly had not cared, but Adagio would be able to see it in an instant.

Even if she hadn’t been an age-old hand at the game of emotional manipulation, I don’t think I’d have been able to keep it off of my face when I saw her anyway.

Something about Adagio left me raw and exposed when I was with her, and I doubt it had anything to do with magic. The fact was that around the woman I loved I simply couldn’t hide myself.

Whatever walls I’d erected against the cold severity of the world at large may as well have been so much mist and vapor to the eldest Siren sister. That or she simply possessed a key to the gates of my mental fortress which I supposed was as likely as not.

In my heart of hearts I… I didn’t want to hide anything from her.

And I’ve always been terrible at doing things I don’t want to do.

But I was dawdling, and I knew it, so I took a steadying breath and gave a nod to Backstage as I stepped past him and pushed open the crystal-glass double doors.

Most of the lights were out as it was several hours from opening time for the Lounge, and here and there I spotted people going about the business of getting the establishment ready for another night of patrons and parties.

At the bar, I spied Sonata who seemed to be in the middle of setting up her little domain. I only ever saw her and two other bartenders and she was always in the middle of them both, moving with deliberate competence that even now caught me a touch off-guard.

I suppose in my mind she was still a bit vacuous, but I’d gotten to know her enough over the month and change that Adagio and I had been together to understand that Sonata wasn’t nearly as airheaded as she appeared. A part of me wondered if she was simply wearing that as a persona, or perhaps there was just a bit more of the unearthly in her than there was in her sisters.

Something just a little more… inhuman.

Not that that was a bad thing, as I could directly attest to by using Stalling Reins as evidence: there was hardly anything innately superior about being human.

“Morning,” Sonata chirped without looking up.

She was chopping apart a large block of ice and moving the pieces to a cooler beside her as I closed the distance, and I smiled warmly at her.

“For certain definitions of the word, I suppose it is morning,” I replied, glancing outside at the late afternoon light before venturing: “such as if you just woke up?”

“Being a night owl is part of being a bartender!” Sonata replied happily, glancing up and favoring me with that charmingly girlish smile of hers, and after a moment I saw it soften. “You look kind rough, Tavi.”

I chuckled a little.

If Sonata could see right through me then I really didn’t have any chance of hiding what had happened from her much more perceptive older sister.

“It’s been that sort of day, unfortunately,” I said, not bothering to deny it. “Is Adagio in her room?”

“Mhm,” Sonata hummed as she swept the rest of the ice into the cooler and smoothly moved to the task of sort lemons and limes, occasionally tossing out some bruised ones. “She’s getting ready for the night, we got a big contract from some companies! It's gonna make us a big deal!”

“Congratulations,” and I meant it, that sounded like a big win for them. “I assume Adagio is over the moon about it?”

“Actually, no,” Sonata replied, and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “She… she seemed kind of disappointed when I told her, in fact,” Sonata chuckled slightly and shrugged, “she tried to hide it from me but we’ve been together for too long, not even ‘Dagi is that good.”

“Why would it disappoint her, though?” I asked, feeling a pit of concern open up in my stomach. “She’s so proud of the Lounge! It’s her pride and joy!”

Sonata just smiled wanly at me and let out a wry little chuckle.

“I have a few ideas,” Sonata replied, “but you came to talk to her right?”

“I… I did,” I said quietly, “as I said, it’s been one of those days.”

Rather than answer, Sonata just nodded her head towards the back and then returned to tending the bar and I took a few steps away before tossing a glance back her way. There was a strange sort of distance in her eyes, something that betrayed a bit of strain and worry that I found clashed with her usually light-hearted nature.

The sight of it put a chill in my heart… I wasn’t sure why but it felt like something bad had happened today and not all of it had happened to me.

I considered coming back another day, after all I had intended to spend the entire evening with the Orchestra, rehearsing and the like but, after my conversation with Director Reins, I couldn’t bring myself to play my cello under that roof again.

At last, not today.

God, was I really considering leaving?

I’d told Vinyl that I wasn’t sure I could bear to be a part of an organization that practiced such blatant discrimination. Career or no, the very thought of it turned my stomach and now I was forced to weigh my personal standards and morals against my lifelong dream.

Fate, it seemed, was not without a sense of irony.

Sonata continued to work, her hands moving with that odd, swift, surety that made me think of nothing so much as one of my peers in the Orchestra plying their skill with their instruments. There was no wasted motion, no distractions, and no errors; just pure technical brilliance on display that was supplemented with a spark of true artistry.

I can’t decide what to do, so instead I do what I must: I turn on my heel and go to see Adagio.

Tempest, still silent and stoic as ever, nodded to me as I passed her and I returned the gesture. By this point she’s used to my presence enough that I barely register with her, I think, but personally I still find the notion that someone so imposing could sneak up on me as many times as she had.

The VIP section was a bustle of organized chaos, with several workers moving here and there, and I spotted a familiar head of two-tone purple and teal hair standing in the middle giving directions.

Aria Blaze was dressed in low, hip-hugging jeans, a purple crop top, and the black denim vest I was used to seeing on her, and she gave sharp clipped, efficient orders as she directed the workers. There were masses of wiring all over the VIP section going to various speakers, lights, and sundry electronics.

I barely made it in a few feet before Aria snapped her gaze over to me.

“Good, you’re here,” she said, as though I’d been expected, and I raised an eyebrow at that.

“Beg your pardon?” I said quietly as Aria cut through the milling workers to reach me.

“Adagio’s in her room, and she’s…” Aria grimaced as she trailed off. “She’s not in a good place, Snoots.”

“Must you call me that?” I groaned before registering her words fully. “Wait… what do you mean?”

Aria sighed and crossed her arms, and I was struck by the impression that she was almost prettier when she frowned.

How odd.

“It’s bad,” Aria said slowly. “Adagio wanted this contract somethin’ fierce, alright? She fought for it at the convention even knowing how much work it would be to fulfill it,” she gestured around to the renovations happening around the VIP section. “It’s a huge deal, right? But all that was before she met you and… I think her priorities might’ve shifted.”

“Alright, I can understand that much,” I said carefully, narrowing my eyes at her, “but you haven’t told me what’s wrong.”

“Octavia!”

I heard my voice called out from somewhere to my side and I turned to see none other than Sunset Shimmer, half-buried in a mass of electronics surrounding a laptop and looking up at me with a wide smile on her face. Her amber skin was scuffed and dusty, her hair was a little messy, but she was every bit the bright-eyed and fierce young woman I’d gone to high school with.

“Sunset, it's lovely to see you again,” I said with a genuine smile as she stepped out from behind her workstation and made her way through the workers towards me. “What are you doing here?”

Sunset pulled me into a hug which I returned, not as easily as I had embraced Vinyl but we had been friends once upon a time.

“Helping my ungrateful girlfriend with her work,” Sunset gestured to Aria who scowled at Sunset. “I’m going to CCU for a degree in programming and they need someone they trust to upgrade and run the backend of the systems here.”

“Hey! I’m not ungrateful,” Aria snapped stepping over to glare up at Sunset as she jabbed a finger lightly into the redhead's chest. “I’ll be plenty grateful tonight.”

Sunset looked down Aria smugly and then leaned in to peck a kiss on the middle Siren sister’s lips. “You’d better, the way this contract is shaping up the only time we’ll have together in the next few months is on the job and after hours.”

Aria looked pained for a moment and then reached out almost desperately to grab Sunset’s hands in both of hers before stepping closer and burying her face against Sunset’s chest. Sunset wrapped her arms around Aria and then looked up at me with a slightly sad smile.

“Guess you’re here about Adagio, huh?” Sunset said quietly. “You should go to her, she’s pretty rough right now.”

“Why do people keep saying that?” I asked testily. “Just tell me what’s wrong!”

“No can do, Snoots, it wouldn’t help,” Aria shook her head without moving from her place buried in Sunset’s arms. “Just go see’er, and you’ll see what we mean soon enough, okay?”

Sighing, I nodded and moved past them, watching the pair out of the corner of my eye as I did.

There was something heartwarming about them, the way they looked at each other, the way they bickered and then kissed. Aria Blaze was many things but in the presence of Sunset Shimmer she almost looked, dare I say it, rather cute.

Aria truly was in love with Sunset, and it heartened me to see it. I wondered if Adagio and I ever looked like that to others who saw us from the outside.

I should be so lucky.

I walked away from the pair and towards the rear door to the right of the main stage. The hallway within was cool and quiet, and the sounds of the work outside was muffled as the door swung closed. I followed the short, familiar pathway to Adagio’s room and stopped in front of it, frowning at the slightly cock-eyed placard that hung from the door.

It was tilted at about a sixty-degree angle as if repeated blows to the door had knocked it loose somehow. I reached out to fix it, tilting it back to its proper position, then took a deep breath and began to announce myself.

My words were interrupted by an inchoate shriek of primal rage as the door thudded thunderously with the sound of impact and the violent shattering of glass.

I froze, staring at the door whose placard had returned to its original off-kilter angle, and tried to mentally resolve the voice that I had just heard through the door with the voice of my beloved.

My Adagio.

They were the same, I knew, but… never in my life had I heard her so utterly out of control. Not even when she’d been on the floor weeping had she sounded so completely lost to herself.

Without thinking, I reached out and tried the doorknob only to find it locked.

Of course it was locked, Adagio was quite mindful of security no matter what and she always kept her room locked. It was the manager’s ‘office’ as well as her own private quarters, and she kept a number of sensitive documents filed away inside.

The fact that it was always locked was why I had been given a key some time ago, so that I could reach her no matter how late or early the hour.

I paused to smooth out the wrinkles of my skirt and blouse, then straightened my bow tie before drawing out the key and fitting it to the lock. I turned it and heard the satisfying thump of the deadbolt coming free, and then opened the door to what I could only properly describe as a minor disaster zone.

There was shattered glass on the floor, and larger fragments suggested the pieces had once constituted one of Adagio’s fine drinking glasses, while the floor was stained in several places with what looked and smelled like high-class whiskey.

Speaking of the smell.

The entire room reeked of alcohol.

I wrinkled my nose as I took in the devastation of Adagio’s room, and it took me a moment to spot the woman herself.

For the first time since I’d met her, Adagio Dazzle looked genuinely awful.

Adagio was leaning her weight against her heavy vanity wearing little more than her bathrobe and staring into a mirror that was spiderwebbed with cracks. She seemed wobbly and unsettled as she braced herself on her hands, leaning heavily on them as she stared into the mirror. I saw bags under her eyes, dark circles that were exacerbated by her scowling countenance.

I realised with a flash of panic that she was favoring her right hand, as her left hand was bleeding rather badly, with cuts and abrasions on it from what looked like her having punched the mirror.

“Get out,” Adagio hissed without turning to even see who was at the door, and I watched her pick up another glass of whiskey, half empty, and slug back a swallow of the drink.

I stood there, poleaxed and stunned, working my jaw as I tried to find something to say to break Adagio out of this… this horrible state she’d somehow worked herself into. I wanted to ask her why, and how, she had ended up like this… I wanted to know what had happened.

My desire to help prompted me to take a step forward and my boots crunched loudly into the glass.

In retrospect I probably should have announced myself first, and had I been thinking clearly I likely would have. Seeing the love of my life in the state she was in, however, had quite banished all rational thought from my mind and all I could really think to do was to go to her, to gather her in my arms and kiss her and make all the darkness that was poisoning her go away.

The glass, though… that small sound seemed to snap whatever final reserve of patience was left to Adagio in her fractured state of mind.

Adagio whirled on me with a wordless howl of anger, her eyes blind with alcoholic rage as she cocked her arm back, her fingers gripping the thick, heavy glass of whiskey to heave it in my direction and I flinched back violently as Adagio took drunken aim.

“I SAID GET OU-!” The final syllable of her roar died on her lips as she saw me recoiling back from her, and the whiskey sloshed wildly, a little of it dumping onto the top of her head as she brandished the glass. “Oh… O-Octavia…”

The glass dropped out of her hand to strike the floor with a dull thud, spilling its contents across the plush carpet. My eyes followed its descent, and I had a vague thought of how much it would cost to have her carpet refinished after all the damage she had inflicted upon it.

“I… I’m sorry,” Adagio hiccuped, backing up from me with nothing short of absolute shame on her face. “I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking, I’m…”

Her words slurred badly as she bumped into the vanity behind her and staggered, and I could see she was having a hard time focusing her eyes. Adagio was drunk… righteously drunk in a manner that I had honestly never been.

I think if Adagio had been anyone else she would probably be ‘blackout drunk’ and judging from the no less than three empty bottles of whiskey I saw scattered around the vanity, I didn’t feel dissuaded from that assumption.

I was actually a little impressed she was still standing and had any control of herself left at all.

Slowly, I crossed the distance between us and reached out my arms.

Adagio grunted wordlessly, swinging her good hand in front of her as if trying to ward me away. I caught her wrist in my hand and gripped it tight, and there was little strength left in it.

“My love?” I said softly. “What’s happened to you?”

“Get out!” Adagio sobbed, her words were nearly lost to a drunken slur as she tried in vain to pull away from me. “Please… please get out… I don’t… you weren’t supposed to see me like this!”

Tears were falling hot and fast from her eyes, and her cheeks were ruddy with pain and shame. She refused to meet my gaze, all but hiding behind her unruly mane of orange and gold curls.

“If not I, then who?” I asked quietly, refusing to let go of her. “If even I’m not worthy of seeing you like this then… who is?”

Another wracking sob escaped Adagio’s lips as she sank to the floor, cradling her wounded hand and crying bitter tears. I followed her down and gathered her up in my arms, just as I’d wanted to when I’d first walked in, and held onto her as she cried.

I don’t think that any part of my life had ever prepared me for seeing the strongest woman I’d ever met be so broken, but as she clung to me I realised that there hadn’t really been any need to. I wasn’t sure if I could do anything for her, but by God I could at least be there for her.

“Ssshh, it’s alright, my love,” I whispered quietly, rocking her as she clung to me. “I’ll never leave you, and I’ll never be anywhere but by your side when you need me.”

We sat there for a few moments as she held on to me, she wasn’t wearing much; her terrycloth bathrobe that was stained with spilled drink hung haphazardly from her, and a set of the kind of racy lingerie that I suspect made up the entirety of her underthings.

Adagio wasn’t exactly a ‘tight and white’ sort of woman, after all.

As soon as I felt like she was emotionally intact enough to handle moving I pulled her to her feet and walked her into the bathroom, then sat her down on the closed toilet as I went fishing for the first aid kit that I knew she kept under the sink.

I drew it out and began tending to her hand, which fortunately was not nearly as bad as it had initially looked. None of the cuts were more than shallow, and there wouldn’t even be a need for stitches. So I washed the cuts, sprayed some disinfectant across her palm which I suspect her inebriated state mostly absorbed the pain of, and then bandaged her hand neatly.

Once that was done I pressed a glass of water into her hand and sat down on the edge of the bathtub as she sipped at it quietly, her eyes still downcast in humiliation.

“I would have happily lived my whole life without you seeing me in such a state, my love,” Adagio said after almost an hour of silence and dedicated refills of her water glass.

Her words were still loose and shaky, but not as slurred as they had been when I’d found her.

“Perhaps,” I said quietly, “but we all have our low moments, do we not?”

“I should think that after so many centuries of life I’d have run out of such moments,” Adagio scoffed, wavering slightly on her seat before steadying herself on the bathroom counter. “Bah… I’ve not been so drunk in almost two hundred years… once I could’ve downed twice that amount of liquor and still been coherent.”

“Sonata was right,” I said blithely and I crossed my arms. “You really do drink scotch like a monster, darling.”

Adagio curled in on herself at my words and I felt a pang of guilt. Frowning, I reached out and took her good hand in mine, squeezing it slightly.

“What happened, my love?” I asked in as soft a voice as I could manage. “Sonata said you won a contract… I should think you would be thrilled!”

Adagio scoffed and spat on the floor.

“Contract?” she bit the word out bitterly. “Yes… a very lucrative contract… a very lucrative, difficult, time-consuming contract that will require me to be visiting every major city for weeks at a time for better than eight months.”

A chill of pain sluiced around my heart.

Eight months? More than eight months, actually. More than eight months of separation? If we were lucky we might find a scant day or two but from the sound of it Adagio would be terribly busy throughout that whole time. The very thought of it turned my stomach almost violently. The thought of not being able to see or lay with Adagio for better than half a year was almost physically painful to imagine.

“A month and a half ago I would have been thrilled,” Adagio said angrily. “Now… now I can’t turn the contract down without being blacklisted and ruining our reputation… without destroying the business I’ve spent the last half-decade creating.”

I worked my jaw a few times, then pushed past the pain and fear.

“W-what… what is this contract?” I asked quietly.

Adagio sighed.

“The Last Note is a ‘gentleman's club’ technically speaking, but it’s more than that,” Adagio waved a hand in a vaguely grandiose manner that was somewhat spoiled by her drunken demeanor. “It’s far more progressive than most, catering to all types of desires without judgment and with a distinct promise of privacy.”

I nodded to show I was following and Adagio leaned forward, pulling her hand back from me and bracing her elbows on her knees as she massaged her temples with her fingers.

“It’s not uncommon for companies to have membership to lounges and clubs like mine be part of an ‘executive benefits’ package,” Adagio continued, and then chuckled a little wanly. “With these men and women, powerful movers and shakers of the corporate and government world, purchasing membership fees en masse, it would make this little ‘lounge’ of mine a name spoken in boardrooms the nation over, and further.” Sighing, she sagged a little, letting her hands fall from her face. “I fought to impress the representatives of these companies during a large convention some months ago and, apparently, I succeeded beyond the dreams of avarice.”

“And they’ve already begun purchasing the membership fees, haven’t they?” I said quietly.

Adagio nodded. “Yes, in almost obscene quantities in fact, and we don’t have nearly the capacity to satisfy that many members, which I had known would be the case from the outset.”

“Hence all of the work being done,” I filled in. “You were planning on expanding the Last Note using the funds from the membership fees and such.” I furrowed my brow as a thought occurred to me. “But… aren’t you three privately wealthy?”

"We are," Adagio confirmed, but I could hear an edge to her voice. "But... wealth means many different things in this world... shares, property..."

"Haven't you been hoarding wealth, though?" I pressed, "you've been around for so long!"

"And we've lost everything multiple times," Adagio replied bitterly. "My sisters and I fled the inquisition and carried nothing but what we could hold, we endured the blitz which reduced the home we'd had at the time to rubble!" She curled up for a moment and groaned. "We had small caches and safehouses all across the world, but mostly sundries like clothing, or small amounts of tradable tender like gold or jewels."

I felt a cold pit open in my stomach as Adagio recounted the miseries she and her sisters had gone through, and I began to understand what it was she was getting at.

"But you... you must be wealthy to begin this kind of endeavor," I gestured around to the Last Note.

"You're right, and for the first few years, we posted enough losses to bankrupt a small empire, darling," Adagio sad with a wan smile. "Yes, my sisters and I, mostly thanks to Sonata, put together a great deal of wealth after consolidating our caches, but..." Adagio sighed quietly, then grimaced. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain a business in this part of Canterlot? We sunk much of that wealth into this lounge with the idea that, so long as we managed it well, we would be fed for life.” she sighed again and leaned back against the cool porcelain of the cistern. “Inflation has made everything far more expensive, and even our centuries of hoarding has only brought us so far… now that we are without the ability to simply sing wealth out of people, we’ve used up a great deal of what we had saved over the past several centuries, and now only a very little of our wealth is actually liquid, much of our stock is only thanks to our ties to various industries we meddled in over the years!”

“I see,” I lowered my gaze. “So if this contract falls through…”

“We’ll be ruined,” Adagio said grimly. “I can’t do that… I’m the eldest, and it is my duty to care for my sisters, as it has been for all the centuries and ages since the deaths of our parents.”

I hadn’t ever thought of it like that but now that Adagio said it I found I could barely fathom what that must feel like. To feel responsible for two lives, and to bear that responsibility for literally thousands of years. Now she is faced with the notion of being separated from me for the better part of a year, and likely more with the new duties and difficulties this expanded business would present.

Adagio wiped at her eyes and sobbed again, then reached out for me and gripped my hand so hard it was almost painful.

“I… I don’t want to be without you again, my Melody,” Adagio cried. “Even for as short a time as this… I’m not immortal anymore… I can’t just watch time pass by now!” Slowly, she pulled herself closer to me, kneeling in front of me and pressing her forehead to my knees. “For the first time in millennia I have a limited number of moments to spend, and I want to spend as many of them as possible with you, not with these arduous cretins that have more money than sense!”

I felt my heart swell almost to bursting at the raw emotion Adagio was pouring out to me, and I slid from where I sat down to her level and pulled her in close, burying my face in her wild locks of curly hair.

“But I can’t let my sister’s down,” Adagio bawled, “I can’t just… run off and do as I want… they rely on me!” she sniffled and clung tighter. “M-Maybe Aria might do alright, but Sonata? S-She needs me! She’s my baby sister, and… and…”

That was when Adagio truly broke down.

For several minutes I held her as she wailed out her grief and pain and impotent rage. Adagio Dazzle, once the ageless and eternal Siren, cried like a child in my arms as her heart broke for her sisters and for herself.

With great care, I pulled Adagio to her feet once more and guided her back to her bed, dutifully moving around the sections of the carpet still littered with broken glass, and we laid down. After another half hour Adagio’s breathing had returned mostly to normal, and she didn’t really even look drunk anymore.

She just looked exhausted.

“Did I ever tell you,” Adagio began in a weary voice as we laid side-by-side, staring into one-anothers eyes, “that my entire family were considered to be freaks?”

I furrowed my brow at that. “No, you never did… why?”

Adagio shrugged.

“Because Sirens do not love as humans know it,” she replied. “When Sirens mate it is a violent thing, producing only a single offspring, after which the parents fight one another over who gets to raise and influence the spawn.” Adagio laughed a little bitterly. “Whoever lives gets to guide and shape the result of the union.”

“That sounds vile,” I said, mouth twisting in disgust. “The father and mother butcher each other?”

“Oh, well… yes and no,” Adagio chuckled dryly. “Sirens are a monogendered species, there are no male Sirens, our magic allows us to blend our essences to produce viable offspring.” Adagio moved to snuggled closer to me, as if talking about her people made her feel cold. “During pregnancy the carrying Siren goes dormant, while the one who remains awake defends them.”

I furrowed my brow. “Wait… you have sisters, though… if there is only one offspring then-”

“Yes I was getting to that,” Adagio replied quietly. “Our mothers made the borderline heretical decision to simply raise us jointly which, to my knowledge, had never been done before,” she closed her eyes and smiled a little as she continued on. “Our mothers were pariahs, my sisters as well, and I was considered to be tainted by ‘uneven guidance’ since I had been raised by two parents instead of one.”

“That’s awful,” I reached out and laid a hand across her cheek, stroking it gently. “Uneven guidance… that’s utter hogwash!”

“Not to a Siren,” Adagio said with a wan smile. “To a Siren the ability to function as a solitary unit was essential, we are apex predators, there simply wasn’t enough food in the oceans to sustain any considerable population of us,” Adagio flipped over to lay on her back and stared up at her canopy. “My sisters were nearly executed for simply existing, instead… our mothers paid that price, and we were separated.”

“Oh god,” I put a hand to my lips, horrified.

“But they couldn’t hide my sisters from me,” Adagio’s voice became harder and sharper, “my magic was stronger than most, and I found them… blood of my blood,” Adagio reached out above and closed her good hand into a fist. “I found Sonata amongst the geometers, weaving circles around even the elder magisters, and Aria held position as a Myrmidon, a royal guardian and elite soldier, and together we survived even the apocalyptic arrogance of our Empress.”

I stared for a few moments, and I could feel the ancient strength in the core of the woman I was lying beside. Her drive, ambition, and absolute devotion to her family had guided her all of her mind-bogglingly long life, and now she had to cope with the frailties of humanity in addition to all of the other threats.

“I cannot abandon my sisters… but I cannot be without you, either, my Melody,” Adagio’s voice cracked, and she lowered her hand to cover her face as her shoulders shook with silent sobs. “What can I do? I cannot ask you wait for the best part of a year in the hope that I will eventually have time for you.”

‘You won’t have to,’ I thought bitterly as I stood up from the bed and pulled out my phone.

I punched in the number and lifted the phone to my ear, waiting as it rang a few times. A moment later the familiar, surprisingly bass voice answered.

“Director Reins? Yes, It’s Octavia,” I said into the phone as Adagio sat up and looked around for me. “Yes… yes I’ve made my decision.”

I listened to him drone for a moment and then nodded.

“Yes, if it’s not too much trouble I’ll take your advice and withdraw,” I said, biting my lip as I heard him let out a hum of approval.

The last thing I cared for was making his day better, but this wasn’t about him it was about Adagio and, maybe more importantly, about my own ethical standards.

“I’ve decided to accept your offer, if you’d be so kind as to annul my contract to the Orchestra, I’ll be out of your hair,” I said finally, letting the words fall like the blade of a guillotine over the neck of my career, and I heard Adagio let out something like a strangled yelp of surprise. “Assuming, of course, that there are no legal repercussions to that?”

He assured me there wouldn’t be, which I knew would be the case from the start.

If Stalling Reins had pursued reparation over a broken contract I could simply backstep and offer to take up the fullness of my contractual obligations to the Orchestra. Whatever he had said to me in the office, I knew that in truth he simply wanted me gone, and that he was fully willing to permit a legal annulment of my contract if I would oblige him.

“Yes,” I replied over his next series of questions, “yes if you’ll send me the paperwork I’ll have it signed and dated within the next few days and you can move on to naming the next first chair.”

My stomach roiled as he agreed, his tone smugly victorious, and I fought down a vicious curse.

“Yes… you are… you are very welcome, Director,” I said through gritted teeth.

Then I hung up, turned calmly on my heel, and violently hurled my phone at the solid oak doorway of Adagio’s private quarters where it smashed into multiple pieces.

I spent the next several breaths spitting out every expletive in my extensive vocabulary before transitioning into what Vinyl would probably call ‘freestyling it’ as I made up another dozen more, all directed at the insufferable Director Reins that I had just infuriatingly appeased.

Silence reigned in the room for several moments as I caught my breath, stood straight, primly adjusted my bow tie, and then turned to face the shocked expression on Adagio’s features.

Adagio's jaw was hanging open and had it not been fastened by the bounds of biology I feel safe in assuming it would have struck the mattress and promptly slid to the floor. Her eyes were as wide as saucers and I couldn’t decide if the expression she was wearing contained more surprise or terror.

“What have you done?” Adagio’s voice was a ghostly whisper and I could only shake my head and smiled.

“What I probably would have done anyway,” I replied, and my voice contained a smidgen of heartbreak. I had just all-but torched my classical musical career after all. “And if I hadn’t then I strongly suspect I would have lived to regret it assuming I hadn’t snapped and strangled Director Reins by that point.”

Adagio’s eyes widened a little more and I sighed, wringing my hands for several awkward moments before I sat down at the edge of the bed and reach out to take Adagio’s hands in mind, being careful with bandaged one.

“Something happened today… something I came to talk to you about,” I began slowly, “something that… changes a lot of things for me.”

Her expression softened as I told her everything, most especially about Stalling’s ultimatum though. I could see the fury I’d seen in Vinyl’s eyes flash across Adagio’s face but, at the same time, I saw something resigned in them too, as if she was unsurprised. Over all of the anger and resignation, though, I could also see the shadow of guilt grow in Adagio’s eyes.

Guilt at having been in such a state when I had been the one coming to her for comfort, only to have to clean her up when I arrived.

“Don’t be ashamed, my love,” I said quietly, giving her good hand a gentle squeeze. “No matter in my life will be so great that I wouldn’t drop all of it to dry your tears.”

“Why?” Adagio cried quietly.

I had never seen Adagio like this before, raw and open, as if a barrier had been shorn off of her. I’m not sure why I’m surprised, if I’m being honest. The truth of the matter is that, for whatever creature she once was, in the end Adagio and her sisters probably have more in common with humans than with their own kind.

Adagio loves her sisters more than her own life and happiness, and I suspect that love existed long before they were banished here to this world.

“Because…” I finally answered, leaning down to brush my lips over her fingers, “because I know you would do the same thing for me,” I looked up and met her eyes, and she let out a quiet sob. “Or am I wrong?”

Her hand tightened vice-like around mine and she shook her head.

“No,” Adagio replied in a voice that was raw and choked, “you’re not wrong at all, my love.”

I gave her hand another squeeze, then straightened and began to undress. My bow tie came off first, and I wrapped it around my wrist so as not to lose it, then unfastened my blouse and let it fall to the floor to be swiftly followed by my skirt. Adagio watched me with hungry eyes and a growing, lascivious smile as I doffed my boots, then peeled away my lacy underthings.

Underthings that happened to be a combination of gold and warm, citrus-orange in color.

“Shouldn’t we clean up the room a little before we do anything?” Adagio said a little teasingly, but she moved more comfortably onto the bed as she spoke. “It’s quite a mess.”

“Considering what I intend to do to you, my dear,” I replied with a heated grin, “I highly doubt there would be much of a point.”

Her laugh came out husky, and for the first time that night I could hear a touch of her real self in it again. A bit of that flirtatious temptress that haunted my dreams and more than a few of my waking moments that were spent beneath the sheets when she wasn’t around.

“Aren’t I a bit of a mess myself though?” Adagio playfully shied away from me as I got onto the bed, crawling towards her on hands and knees as she played with her hair. “Look at me… why, I’m an absolute disaster!”

I was getting rather tired of her pulling away from me, she knew it drove me up the wall and that’s clearly why she was doing it.

“My day, darling,” I began as I reached her and planted my hands on her shoulders gently before roughly pinning her down to the bed, “has been quite bad enough without your teasing.”

I gripped her shoulders and lunged down to fasten my teeth around her neck and she hissed in delight at my touch, returning fire by raising her leg and pressing her thigh hard against my dripping sex, pulling a groan from my throat as I pulled away and stared down into those luscious raspberry eyes of hers.

“I’ve endured my bigoted ex-boss,” I began counting off with a snarl as I reached around the back of Adagio’s head and siezed her by her hair, pulling her head back to expose her graceful throat, “I cried my eyes out twice, put my hot mess of a girlfriend back together, and then set my own career on fire!” The last words came out in a snarl and I lowered myself to run my tongue along Adagio’s carotid, and delighted in her shuddering response. “And now the day is over, my life is in shambles, and I want my woman!”

I felt Adagio shivered deliciously in my grip as I kissed my way up her neck, cheek, and around to her full, lovely lips. As I did, Adagio looped one warm leg around my waist and dragged me down into her grasp, bucking her hips as she did and grinding herself against me. I moaned, long and low, into her lips as I felt her hot wetness press against me, and I released my grip on her with on hand to slide it between us and bury two fingers deep inside of her.

Adagio bucked again, moaning softly, and I had time to appreciate just how perfect she felt against me. All warm, firm lines along her sides, arms, and legs, and the pillowy softness of her full breasts and, frankly, divine ass.

I let my other hand wander, touching, caressing, and squeezing wherever I wanted. Tonight Adagio was mine, tonight she was letting herself be mine, and I intended to take full advantage of that.

I rolled my hips and curled my fingers inside of her, and I felt her tighten around me as we kissed. I was drowning in the sensations of her, even ostensibly as in control of the situation as I was… it hardly mattered. Adagio was not a woman you could simply be with, she was a force of nature and I was caught in her inexorable tide.

Even had I wanted to, I don’t think I could have mustered the strength to leave her bower.

So, as Vinyl would say, I leaned into it.

“You’re mine,” I whispered harshly against her lips, and I felt them curl into a seductive smile. “All mine… now and forever.”

“Promise?” Adagio whispered back huskily, her lips sliding from mine to brush against my ear, and I gasped as I felt her warm, wet tongue dart out to lick along the lobe. “Will you promise me that? Will you promise me ‘forever’?”

I pulled back from her, my own eyes burning as I withdrew my fingers from her, soaked with her honey, and slid them between my lips, tasting her as I stared into Adagio’s eyes.

How must I have looked in that moment?

Naked and bare, my ink-black hair falling fiercely around me, my eyes scorched with lust, and my breath coming in heaves.

I didn’t just feel beautiful… I felt wild.

For all of my life I’d felt archaic, staid, and bound by the ancient traditions of my art, but I think that during that time I had quite forgotten the other side of the coin we call ‘ancient’. The side of the coin that was made of beating, pounding drums in the firelit night, and of dancing painted priests of the old gods with their ululating hymns that carried from hilltops to caverns.

Adagio’s eyes saw me that way, and I saw myself within them.

Adagio was my goddess and I suppose that, at least for tonight, that made me her priestess.

I’ve never much held with paganism if I’m being honest, but at that moment I certainly understood the appeal.

“Forever,” I hissed as I lowered myself to her, caressing a hand down her leg and pressing my lips to her thighs, shuddering at the taste of her skin. “Forever…” I repeated quietly, kissing down her inner thigh until I was between her legs, and I slid my tongue up and down her drenched slit.

Her voice was angelic as Adagio cried out her pleasure, and her good hand fixed itself onto my head, gripping my hair and pressing me harder against her. I hardly needed the motivation, though, and I let my tongue explore her, taste her, and please her as my hands roamed over every inch of perfect flesh I could find.

After a few moments I felt Adagio’s legs curl around me as her breathing quickened to shuddering gasps, and I smiled as I increased the fervor of my pace. I wanted her to cum, I wanted to taste her and to feel her hit her peak.

My lover did not disappoint me.

Adagio arched her back, crying out as her pleasure splashed against my lips and tickled down my chin. I lapped and sucked as she writhed in my grip, and rather than lessen, the hunger in my belly only seemed to ignite with greater fury.

“More,” I hissed, as I pulled myself up and stared into her eyes, “I want more.”

I licked my lips as I moved, weaving my legs between hers and straddling her until our nethers were pressed together and I began bucking and rolling my hips.

Adagio jerked as I rode her sensitive cunt with primal roughness, only to rise and wrap herself almost entirely around me.

I hissed in delight as her fingers scored red lines down my back and her teeth fastened hard to my collar. I hit my own orgasm a moment later as she bucked her hips hard against me, and I only managed half of a moan before her lips were sealed over mine.

As we parted, I let out a shivering gasp of satisfaction as she pressed against me again.

“How do you feel… about having some company on those flights around the country?” I gasped out, a delirious smile on my face as I kissed along the crook of her neck, and Adagio hummed contentedly.

“Mmm… they’re all-expenses paid but… I think I could- Ah-!” Adagio gasped as I nipped at her neck, and she swatted my bottom earning a sharp, joyful cry from me, “a-as I was saying… I think I could tack on a ‘plus one’.”

“Good,” I said in a warm, satisfied tone as I wriggled against Adagio’s wonderfully pleasant body. “I’ve been meaning to take a sabbatical anyway, actually,” I pulled back only to lean in and press my forehead to Adagio’s, staring into her entrancing eyes, “and those hotel rooms would be dreadfully lonely without company, don’t you think?”

“Dreadfully,” Adagio agreed, then she moved in to press her lips lightly to mine, and I smiled as I tasted the warm, full flower of her kiss.

She was so intoxicatingly soft, and I felt my inhibitions flowing away from me with every taste of her breath, replaced with burning desire.

We parted and I stared into her eyes again.

“Now… if you would be so kind,” I said in a quiet, throaty voice, “I’d appreciate it if you would positively wreck me, darling.”

Adagio’s smile was shark-like, and I swear I imagined her teeth were the triangular fangs of a deep-sea predator for a moment.

“With pleasure, my Melody.”