Taming Strange. Or: How I learned to stop worrying and make love in public

Octavia slammed the door behind her and propped her back against it. She held a hoof to a heart that could put Rainbow Dash to shame with its racing. She was not ready for tonight.

All she wanted to do was get the first good night's sleep she'd had since staying at the conservatory. Instead she had gone to reprimand somepony, and wound up defending that pony from the guards for the very thing she had gone to reprimand her about. Not to mention she was now going to have dinner with that pony, a mare. Who had kissed her, also a mare.

Octavia was not particularly concerned with matters of love and sex. She didn't shun the subject by any stretch of the imagination. For Celestia's sake she spent her summers in Prançe! Land of wine, romance, and bad accordion music. But never did she ever once look at another mare in. That. Way. Her head was spinning as she finally put all four hooves on the ground.

Her dorm mate Ivory Keys noticed her return and greeted her cheerily. "So killer! What did you leave for the guards? Capital show! You got those barbarians to.~ Where are you going?"

Octavia hadn't heard a word. She didn't even register that she was being spoken to. She walked slowly, face drawn with thought, muttering to herself. "She kissed me." Ivory heard her say causing him to cough up and splutter the drink he'd poured himself.

His head snapped around to his room. "Toney! Get in here! Quickly!" He called out. The tubist came in with no sense of urgency in her step. She greeted Octavia who again heard nothing, even going so far as to leave the door open as she sat down on the bed and held her head in her hooves.

Deep Tones walked up to her coltfriend and asked about the distracted mare. He whispered what the cellist had said and her eyes went wide, a hoof shooting up to cover her mouth. "How scandalous!" She breathed to herself. The couple moved to the doorway but said nothing.

They listened seeing if they could glean anymore information from the puzzled mare, but Octavia sat in perplexed silence. After a moment they decided to leave her with her thoughts and gently shut her door.

Octavia was in that terrible limbo where one cannot keep a thought in their head, but cannot stop thinking. She thought about how her rage was instantly quelled by those captivating eyes of her's. She thought about how she had just had her first kiss stolen. She wondered why she let it happen.

She wondered why she had stood up for the pony, and very probably had just broken the law by interfering with guards in the execution of their duties. She wondered why she had arranged a meeting with her. But the thought that kept coming up over and over again was. "Why do I want to see her again so badly?"

Octavia sat in this posture until she had to squint her eyes at the morning sun coming in through the window. She suddenly wondered what she had been thinking about literally all night. She slid to the floor and was amazed how sore she was. She stretched painfully, joints popping as she did so.

The cellist walked with the slow gait of one who hadn't slept all night. She went to take her turn in the bathroom as Deep Tones was just coming out. A more alert Octavia would've noticed that she was grinning ear to ear.

The exhausted earth pony walked right by her without seeing her and her unusually wide smile. A quick morning routine later a reinvigorated Octavia trotted out of the bathroom ready to face the day. She opened the door only to find a madly grinning Deep Tones staring at her, less than an inch from her face. She flinched at the unexpected proximity.

"Umm good mo." Octavia tried to say

"Sooo who is she?" The tubist burst out interrupting her dorm mate.

"Who's who?" The cellist asked genuinely confused.

"The one that kissed you! The one you were muttering about all night." The inquisitive pony asked, bumping Octavia with her hip to punctuate the question. The cellist's eyes shot open as the memory of the night's events came roaring back.

Her face was redder than Big Mac's. She squealed into her hooves in embarrassment. The tubist could barely contain her laughter at the sight of the perpetually placid pony turned to blushing mess.

"Oh Celestia what have I done!" Octavia began pacing around the room speaking a mile a minute. The issue for Deep Tones was that Octavia would start a sentence then half way through she'd remember something, a new wave of embarrassment would wash over her, and then she'd start down a new train of thought.

All that the tubist could glean from the broken incoherent ramble was that it was in fact a mare, who plays bad music, that had in fact kissed her. She had kept her out of a dungeon somehow, and that she'd agreed to a rendezvous. The cellist finally slowed down and pressed her back to the door slumping down to the floor. "And now I have to get ready for a." The word caught in her throat. "Date." She almost whispered.

Deep Tones' grin once again risked splitting her face in two. "No dear heart this is great! We've always said you need to get out and meet more ponies! Don't worry about it love. If she's able to keep you up all night, I'm sure she's quite a catch." She said winking. "Don't worry I'll help you with everything you need. You just go to class and don't think once more about it until you get done."

With that she shoved the feebly protesting cellist out the door. "But I've never been on a date!" She whined. The tubist closed the door behind her and started to spring lightly away when she heard a knocking. Eyebrow raised she opened the door to see who it could possibly be at seven thirty in the morning. "I need my cello Toney." Octavia deadpanned.