Caesura

You are Anon, the only Human in all of Equestria. Being a warm night during summer you would probably be asleep but you’re wide awake. Sleep never really came natural to you as you stared up at the night sky lying on the roof of your tree house on the outskirts of Ponyville. Right now you’re spending what should be a nice night of sleep on a night of your thoughts running wild in your mind. You reach into your jeans and pull out a cigar and lighter. For all it’s ups and downs you lucky you could at least keep up one normal thing from your life back on earth. You sit up and rest your back on the trunk of the tree that protrudes from the roof and begin to work the lighter to spark a flame. The cigar hangs from your lips with a slight cider and scotch taste to it.

Your fingers fumble with the spark wheel till you succeed in bringing it to life with a flame. You can feel your eyes strain to look at the small combustion but they adjust and you stare at it for a while, letting it’s light expand across your face and the trees leaves making shadows dance and leap across the night sky. Bringing yourself back to reality you bring the flame to the cigars end and let the flame do it’s work. You pull in air to get it started and snap the lid back in place snuffing out the flame and place it back into your jeans. As you continue to breathe life into the cigar you shift your position on the trunk so your leaning up against it to resume staring into the starry night.

“It was never this quite back home....I miss that somehow” You think to yourself as you suddenly relax your body as you blow out smoke from your mouth and settle into your seat. Your mind has been wandering more and more about home. Kinda gratuitous at this point since it’s been 7 years since you were transported into Equestria, and to a bigger extent Celestia’s throne room surrounded by guards, though all things considered it could have been worse.

“It’s amazing they didn’t just straight up attack me then and there. Seeing a creature they’ve never seen would have scarred most people- er ponies.” Your mind recalls the day of you explains who you were and more importantly what you were. Celestia seemed to understand and take what you were saying pretty well. Her student Twilight tho, slightly different story. You almost lost your mind trying to explain what a human was to her in the three hours taking to her about your kind. But after all that came the bigger issue that came across Celestia’s mind.

“So my student, how do we send out guest here back home?” Asked Celestia as you walked back into Her throne room with Twilight. You could literally feel the “oh fuck” moment fall over her as she suddenly started rambling about spells and what not to the point that you couldn’t even grasp what she was saying. You rubbed your temples as your head started to hurt trying to comprehend what she was trying to say when you stepped in.

“Your Majesty, if it’s alright with you. I’m fine with staying here.” You say to Celestia as she looks at you with surprise as much as Twilight does. “I never really had a place I belonged to, I feel like I could at least make myself useful here.” You tell her as you stare at her and shrug. You look upon a literal 9ft pony who controls the sun and your entire argument hangs on a shrug....ehh you've handled situations worse, granted a bit more normal, than this. A silence fell across the chamber as everyone fell silent at your suggestion. Twilights mouth moves up and down but no words were said. All of the guards looked like they were gonna have a stroke at any moment. And Celestia just looked and...smiled. Suddenly she started softly laughing. “I see no reason as to not allowing you to stay here Anon.” Celestia had said in a warm and caring voice. She moved her way towards you and you felt you body tense slightly as she made her way to your position. “I hope you enjoy our kingdom as if was your own home.” She said as she placed a hood on your shoulder and then continued walking past you issuing orders about your accommodations for where you will be living.

Your mind comes back to the sensation of burning ash hitting your arm and you jerk your arm in pain. “Ow, Son-of-. That hurts like hell.” You think think to yourself while you pat your arm to put the embers. When it’s done you have a tiny hole in your long sleeve shirt. You dread the conversation with Rarity later about this. You begin to stand up and you look up to the sky, slowly growing from black to a light blue. You’ve been up the whole night and groan. “Fucking wonderful, Vinyl is gonna kill me.” You say out loud as you rush through your bedroom window to get ready for work. You quickly try to change cloths while also trying to to trip and kill yourself in the process. New jeans, long sleeve t-shirt combo and a hoodie. You look in the mirror to see if it looks alright. You shrug and mentally say fuck it and run out the room but not before you double back and grab an instrument case. You look to the clock, it’s 5:25. You give a slight grin.

“Gotta be there by 6 and it’s about 40 min away. Challenge accepted Father Time.” You tell this to your self as you full on sprint towards Vinyl’s record shop. Knowing you had no time to lose you decide to use every single alley to your advantage to make up for lost time. Leaping over trash cans and mail boxes like an Olympian. You nearly took Derpy out in the process of your mad dash. Not stopping you turn your head to apologize. “Sorry Dd, I’m late for work enough as is.” You shout as you see a flurry of letters that fell from her mouth fall to the ground. She looks up at you with her golden cross eyes, shocked and was ready to say something when- BOOM. You run full force into some pony and that causes you to do a 180 flip over them landing square on your back. Luckily for you your case landed on top of you. Unlucky for you it hurt like hell when it did. You grasp your case with one hand and your head with the other. Slowly rocking side to side you try and power through the pain as you stand up. A splitting headache starts to form as you finally get to your feet as you begin to start making your way again towards Vinyls. You only stop to turn you head slightly to look at the pony you just tackled to the ground.

“ Sorry about that but I’m in a hurry.” You say to them as you go full force on sprinting to make up for lost time not even making sure that they are ok. It’s a small town, and your the only human around, they will probably find you and complain later. As you turn the corner you see Vinyl standing out side her store. You push through the pain and slide on your feet with one minute to spare. You double over and start breathing heavily since you ran like a mad man over here. Vinyl starts to say something but you raise a hand up to stop her.

“Ran..huff...far to...huff...fast and bumped into someone...huff....sorry I’m late.” You tell her as you try to get your breathing under control. Once you finally catch your breath you stand up and look at her and she’s laughing to her self. “Dude, the store doesn’t open till seven. Your an hour early dumb ass.” She tells you as she starts laughing and walks into the store leaving you looking dumber than a sack of hammers. You groan slightly and waltz in right after her. Knowing full well that you day is just getting started.

Vinyls store is probably the one you spend the most at so it came to no surprise that she asked if you wanted to work for her. Records lined the walls and tables of musicians old and current around the store. Some beanbags littered the floor for customers to sit and listen to their favorite records or to just unwind. A small stage sat in the back with sound equipment for Amateur music night that was starting up again soon. The only thing that stood out was the coffee stand next to the counter, a new addition to the place thanks to you. Vinyl continued to walk past the counter and into the back room and you followed suit. The employee room was roughly the same size as the main store. Boxes of music lined the left side of the wall along with spare instruments and sound equipment. A desk with a literal mountain of papers sat under a window looking ominously at you. Next to that was a small cot and pillow worn down with use but considering you didn’t sleep it looked like the worlds comfiest bed. You eyes continued to stare at it and only Vinyls voice snapped you out of it.

“You doing alright A? You can take a power nap if you want. Store doesn’t get super busy till later so you have two hours to kill.” She says as she sets her coffee and headphones down on the desk as she turns to look at you. You only stare back and sheepishly nod your head as the rush of exhaustion finally hits you from your night of reminiscing and marathon run hit you. You gently set your case down at the foot of the cot and collapse into the pillow with a thump. You can feel sleep slowly starting to take over you as you look to Vinyl starting to work on the mound of paper work listening to her music. You silently thank her with a smile and allow sleep take over you.

Two hours go by exactly and your woken by someone shouting and screaming in the next room which promptly causes you to jolt and fall out of bed. “Ow, Damn it on my head again. Damn things gonna cave in one of these days I swear.” You absentmindedly think to yourself as you stretch and walk into the main store. You see Vinyl listening to some pony on a bean bag chair yell about someone running into her this morning. You don’t really give it much thought as you march over to the coffee machine and wait for your cup of vigor to finish brewing.

“I just can’t believe that idiot didn’t see where he was going. And to top it off he didn’t even stop to help me back up. He just apologized and ran off. The nerve of some ponies I swear.” The mare says in a huff as Vinyl pats her back with her hoof. You listen to the conversation and have a weird Deja vu moment thinking back on what she said. But you couldn’t remember. As your cup finishes you make your way over to Vinyl to see what needs to be done for the day. As you come closer you get a good look at the mare who was talking earlier. Her gray coat basking in the sunlight, her black hair in a very well kept pompadour. A pink bow tie adorns her neck. You look down and her cutie mark is a violet treble clef. Her light purple eyes sparkled in the light as she looked at you. All in all she was very attractive, for a pony at least. She looked up at you and your eyes lock together. You couldn’t help but fall into her eyes as she stared angrily at you.....wait angry? Why was she angry at you? And then like a freight train it hit you. Well aside from her lunging at you into your stomach and causing you to fall over, it hit you. This was the pony you full body tackled this morning.

“I swear to what ever god is watching over me, if I fall over or get hurt one more time I will kill you.” You grab your gut as you now lay on the floor with her standing over you. You look to her and then to Vinyl who just sits over in her bean bag nonchalantly drinking coffee. “Yeah, thanks Vinyl. Big help.” You look back to the mare and say the only thing that comes to mind. “What’s up?” You ask her. Her eye twitches at your question, looking more furious than before. Yeah not the best thing to say in this situation. You brace yourself for what comes next Incase you get hit again.

“WHATS UP?!” she exclaims and gets closer to your face. “Well for starters I WAS having a perfectly normal day until YOU rand into me and caused me to drop my new composition onto a puddle on the street ruining it forever. THATS what’s up my good sir!” She continued to yell at you for about a good hour. Any customers that did happen to walk in were met with an angry glare and proceeded to do a complete 180 degree turn and walk right back out. After about twenty five minutes of her yelling at you she finally moves back over to her beanbag and slumps into it, a look a anger and sadness taken over her. You sit up and rub your head. Sure you feel bad about it but there really isn’t anything you can do to make this right. You just sit there and look down at the floor feeling guilty about ruining her work.

“He can help you write a new one Octavia.” Vinyl says as she grabbed what could possibly be her fourth cup of coffee she grabbed during that whole confrontation. Both of you turn and look at hear as she waltz’s over to her seat and collapses into it. She continues to sip her drink as you both sit in silence. It seemed like an eternity till Octavia finally spoke.

“He can help me? Vinyl you must be joking.” She remarked with a scoff. Not gonna lie but that kinda hurt your pride a little bit. “What makes you think he knows anything about the music that I’m a professional in?” She says as she turns to you. You decide to stand up instead of sitting on the floor and try to protest but she cuts you off. “He looks like he can’t tell the difference between a crescendo or a diminuendo.” She exclaims with a huff and turns her head away from you. You stand there now just feeling all around insulted just decide to walk away from the situation.

“I’ll just, I’ll just be in the back Vinyl sorting music sheets and working on paper work. I’m gonna have music on so knock if you need me.” You say to Vinyl as you walk away. You stop short to look back at Octavia who still doesn’t look at you. “I’m sorry again Miss, enjoy the rest of your day.” You tell her as you bow your head and walk off into the back room and promptly close the door as quite as possible.

Vinyl can hear the music rise in volume as Anon begins to start his work. She sighs and look down at her coffee as she turns to look at Octavia. “Weren’t you a little mean to the guy?” She asks her as Octavia turns and looks surprised at what Vinyl has just asked her.

“Excuse me?” Octavia starts to say as she turns her body to look at Vinyl more comfortably. “I’m not the one who destroyed a months work of music in twenty seconds just because he couldn’t pay attention to where he was going.” She says borderline on yelling. The music from the back room gets louder. Vinyl sighs again knowing he could hear her and was probably pissed off even more than he was, even if he didn’t show it when he left. She turns to look back to Octavia again.

“It was his first day on the job. And from how he looked like this morning he either overslept or didn’t sleep at all. He basically passed out on the cot in the back as soon as he got here.” She told Octavia who started to look a little bit sorry for how she acted but still help her ground on her work being destroyed. “Besides, you ended up messing up more than you even realize right now.” Vinyl says as she looks to the closed office door and finishes off her coffee. Octavia scoffs at what her friend says and begins to trot off towards her ruined work on the table that she brought with her.

“I doubt that very much Vinyl. Now then, on to more pressing matters.” Octavia says as she hands her the ruined sheets of music. “Where is this talented musician you were going on about. He should have been here by now from what you’ve told me.” She states as she looks out the window looking for the musician she spoke of. if the rumors were true about he was a very talented composer who was just starting to make a scene in the music industry who happened to live in Ponyville, but strangely it was no one she knew. Only the groan of Vinyl causes her to look back at her friend, who looked more frustrated than anything else.

“See this is what I meant by you’ve messed up.” She looks to Octavia even more confused than ever. Vinyl only shook her head and looked back to the door. “Anon was the musician I was talking about.” She tells Octavia as she turns her head slightly and noticed the color in Octavia face slowly vanish. “To top it off you just yelled at him for about a half hour and insulted him. Right now even I wouldn’t want to talk to him as he is now.” Vinyl says as she lifts herself off her chair and starts to start her days work, leaving Octavia standing there confused and ashamed at what she had done.