Different

'Different'.

The word is something you'd come to despise over time. Sure, it was a fine word, and it expressed what something that was not the same as something else.

However, the word lost its luster the instant your former classmates discovered the negative connotation to the word, and treated you under its definition. They isolated you, and mocked you. Eventually, you sat alone at lunch every single day, not even bothering to speak to anypony around you.

All because you had a particular affinity for the sequence of colors called 'the rainbow'.

They called you worse names after they grew older, and developed more sophisticated vocabulary-such as 'coltcuddler', 'disgrace', and yet...'different' still felt the worst, after everything. You were just a normal, clarinet-playing, navy blue unicorn. What was wrong with that?

Deciding it was best to leave them to answer that question themselves, you informed your parents of the problem, and they happily had you relocated to a quiet place called 'Ponyville', where your aunt lived and sheltered you as you more or less tried to continue with life. The schoolchildren were much nicer, with only one or two real jerks in the crowd, which helped a lot-the kids like you were far more abundant, except for that one simple fact.

You grew up most of your life in Ponyville, and everything seemed uneventful. Occasionally, while out walking, a spontaneous rainbow would appear above your head, and you'd smile briefly before moving on. 'Different' no longer bit so hard at you. Ponies actually knew you as Clarence Trill, not 'the weird kid'.

You eventually grew to lead a normal life, working as a clarinetist whenever you could, not to mention your natural love for the instrument regardless. The word seemed to have left you, and it was most certainly great news.

There never quite came a day, however, like the one day when everything you thought you knew turned upside down...

"Hey! Clarence! Wake up!"

Your eyes fling open suddenly, as the sound of a pony shouting in your ear jolt you awake. Who in Equestria could think to do such a thing? They would surely suffer your wrath...if you weren’t so tired.

As your eyes fill with yellow, you have your answer. "Sunny, what did I say about shouting...?" You groan.

The blob of yellow hops off of your bed, landing with a gentle flutter of its wings. "Hey, c'mon," Sunny pleads. "You did agree that as long as we were roommates, I got to wake you up however I wanted to. Can I have that?"

You sigh. You'd moved in with the yellow pegasus, full name Sunny Wings, when you were a bit tight on money, and right about now, you were starting to regret living under the same roof as her. She seemed to have no regard for your sleep habits.

"I have nowhere to be, so I kindly ask that thee taketh thine flank, and remove it from the premises..." With that, you flop back into your pillow, placing another over your head as a useless shield.

You weren't getting off that easily, though. "Oh, sure..." You hear the mare mumble. "I suppose that a little thing called, 'you have clarinet lessons with Coconeru today' no longer means anything."

You can almost picture the sarcastic eye-roll, but you don't care to see it. Not wasting a second, you spring out of bed, rushing for the black case seeming all too familiar, the one containing your means of serenade: your clarinet case.

Barely bothering to give a backwards glance, you hurry for the door, taking the case with a quick burst of magic. There was absolutely no time to dawdle-you were late, of all things! Sunny could wait to nip at you with a sarcastic comment, or discourage you from anything at all-after all, it wasn’t like you could teach yourself how to play an instrument. Not, of course, unless you were Neightoven.

And so you did what you had to...

You arrive at the small, unassuming hut in almost no time at all. You even begin to suspect that you might have five minutes or so left, but the second you knock, the door is opened, quite literally, instantly.

A brown stallion stares back at you, his face grim and unforgiving. It starts to scare you, just a little, because he doesn’t utter a single word. It seems to be made worse by the fact that his white mane hangs at just the right angle in front of his eyes to shade them slightly, making him seem incredibly dark.

Finally, he breaks the silence. “You’re late.”

You facehoof, mentally cursing yourself for not waking up when your roommate-OK, maybe she was helpful-woke you up herself. “Listen, I-”

You’re interrupted as the foreboding figure before you suddenly smirks, snickers, and then...dissolves into laughter? You stand, puzzled, until he manages to speak. “Nah, man, I’m just buckin’ with you. You’re a bit early, in fact.” He shakes his head, still smiling. “Ahh, I got you so good...c’mon in.” He beckons you inwards, and you follow, still a bit miffed that he would pull a joke over your punctuality, and find it more hilarious than anything he’d ever even attempted to poke fun at.

Then again...you think, as you pass what can safely be called a ‘living room’, if he had space for one at all.  Pretty much everything is a joke with him...heck, I bet he used to be a comedian or something of the sorts.

Keeping the thought to yourself-though noting to ask him later about his past career choices-you trot onwards, past the exact three doors in the following hallway that you know contain...well, one of them is the bathroom, but the rest are a mystery. On reaching the fourth door, he pushes at the door with a carefully calculated shove, opening the door for both of you to enter. The instant the door shuts, you know what’s coming the instant he spins around.

“WELCOME,” he booms. “TO COCONERU’S LAIR OF MUSICAL MALICE AND RHYTHMICAL INCANTATIONS!”

You roll your eyes, knowing he’s waiting for you to finish the other half. “Where your chords chronologically combine to make your worst nightmares come true...” You don’t sound nearly as good as he did, what with the whole dramatic pitch and whatnot, but you know if you ever upstaged him, he’d probably get upset and hide in the bathroom or something. So you just let it slide, repeating it as monotonously as possible.

“Right!” he proclaims, wheeling up a nearby chair with a simple tap. “Alright, get that magical stick of yours out, because if you ever want to charm a snake, you have to play it right!”

His humor definitely puts the bright side on another otherwise dull lesson. You shake your head, allowing that small smile to come out, before opening the case and assembling your instrument with an ease that only comes after many, many years of playing. Sure, you’d played for 12 or so years, give or take, but the things that you’d learned that you hadn’t learned, quite honestly, were pretty astonishing. It was only after your last concert-if you could call a solo in front of about 30 ponies a ‘concert’-that this particular pony noticed how much better you could be, and offered to help.

In absolutely no time, you’re prepared, though you much prefer to stand as you play, as opposed to sitting down, which lends a rather odd situation-you end up being the one standing, and he ends up sitting down. From the outside, it’d almost seem like you were giving lessons. If you could, that was. Not to mention, it had caused some problems in the past-unless you were good enough to play a solo in a concerto-which, again, you weren’t-orchestras tended not to hire ponies who played standing up.

“Right, now remember where we left off tomorrow!” You don’t even bother to correct his improper use of chronological tenses, because it would inevitably result in a, ‘it’s the day before yesterday’s tomorrow, so close enough!’.”You have to look at the squiggly dot with the line and the stick on the whole bunch of other lines to make the sounds!”

“So...” You trail. “We were...on dominant scale inversions, then?”

“Exactly, or something or other!” he proclaims. “Right then, start on your C, go to your E, B, D, A, and then F, before G. Oh yeah, and just about every third note’s up the octave before you go back down just to go back up. Got it?”

You blink. “Uhh...what was the second one, again?” While you did have a talent for grasping new concepts, ‘lightspeed talking’ wasn’t quite a ‘new concept’.

He sighs. “Alright, just start with the C. We’ll go one at a time. Though, might wanna work on reattaching that ear that you seemed to have cut off recently...”

This was certainly going to be a long, long practice, unlike many...

You take a deep breath, and the first note comes in fine enough tone-a D, tuned to perfection, as you always keep it. You always wondered why the hay they made every single instrument (bar a few) written in an entirely different way, so the situation ended up somewhat like this: “Yeeeeah, we’re saying that this is one note, but you have to play another. Oh, why? We’re just too lazy to write the same note the same way on another piece of music. So deal with it. Oh, but it sounds the same, for whatever stupid reason”.

The second note goes much the same, moving up to E as you release your magical seal on one of the keys. Of course, by some sort of mystical rule, it’s a D, but it makes no difference to you.

It’s on the third note that you suddenly switch around, activating what’s simply called the ‘register’ key, before putting down one, two, t-

You notice that Coconeru is waving for you to stop, which you do. You were fairly sure that nothing had been wrong, so...why was he stopping you? “Listen, two things here. One, you may have turned into paper, because you played that note way flat. You missed a sharp, kinda like a butcher who doesn’t take care of his tools.”

You frown. “And...two?”

He sighs in return. “Listen, I know we just started, but I think just for today, we may have to cut it short.”

It takes all of your self control not to simply fling your instrument straight at his head, making you rush there only to be early and have to leave nearly the instant you begin. You settle for an eye twitch, instead, before asking the obvious question: “Why?”

He shakes his head, pushing what seemed to be a piece of paper procured from nowhere towards you. “See for yourself.”

You pick it up, and skim it over, taking note of just about every single word you can. Eventually, you lower it, and look at his face, which is unusually grim.

“I...have no idea what half of that even meant.”

He sighs again, ripping the paper from your grasp. “Yeah, well, long story short, I’m taking a mandatory vacation.”

You blink. Mandatory vacation? He hadn’t had a day off in what seemed to be y-...well, when thinking about it, it made sense. “But..by order of who?”

Coconeru just smirked. “Believe it or not, not from my ‘boss’, who doesn’t exist, but from my mum.”

You can’t help but to snicker, but not at the fact that he was more or less being asked to corral himself back by his own mother, rather at the pronunciation of ‘mom’-for some reason, ‘mum’ always seemed to tickle your funny bone.

His smirk quickly shifts into something noticeably more serious for whatever reason a few moments after your little chuckle, his eyes darting to the door close by, and then to you. “Get out,” he states simply.

You only blink, caught unaware by the sudden shift in tone. “What?”

“I said get out.”

Well, this certainly wasn’t like him. “Why?”

“Do I need to say it again?”

You just sigh and shake your head a little. Deciding not to go against the protests of your tutor, you disassemble your instrument and place it back in its case post-haste, before trotting up to the door and heading out that way, not even bothering to take a glance over your shoulder at your obviously irritated (for whatever reason) ‘teacher’.

By the time the final door closes behind you, you’re already shaking your head in pure disbelief at the day thus far. Not only was your only guide in music pretty much gone, leaving you to yourself, but it appeared that you’d, in some way, royally pissed him off as well-you considered yourself lucky if he even ever took you back up after his vacation was over.

And what a day... Your thoughts couldn’t be more true. It hasn’t even bucking begun yet, and things already took the turn for the worst...

Deciding not to spend all day moping around the town, you decide simply to head back to your shared house, hoping to decide what to do with the rest of the day-you had at least...judging by the sun, 8 hours left in the general day (which was odd, until you recalled that Coconeru had moved practices to a later time in day for convenience). It would be plenty enough time to soak in a nice tub of, ‘what in the world did I even do?’.

However, what you certainly weren’t expecting was for that same old spontaneous rainbow to appear overhead, as it had throughout pretty much your entire life in Ponyville. You’d come to pass it off first as some weird trick with a giant mirror, followed by a bunch of magic, and eventually just accepting it as a really, really weird weather pattern.

Most weather patterns, however, didn’t quite crash into the ground, leaving a furrow behind in the ground.

Realizing quickly enough that regardless of whether or not a leprechaun had decided to place his pot of gold at the end of the metaphorical rainbow, but ended up horribly missing, that somepony was likely hurt in there. You hurry up to the spot, trying to better make out what crashed there.

Already, though, it’s rising under its own power, and you can tell it’s a pony, not a leprechaun, but...she seemed far more...extravagant than any pony you’d ever known. You could almost swear she decided to steal the rainbow that you’d seen overhead, before stuffing it into her mane. Still, you approach, ready to make sure that there wasn’t any injury too deathly. “You alright?” You venture.

The-pegasus, as she turns out to be, turns; fluffing out her wings and shaking out the feathers before nodding, completely unaware of the fact that you can’t take your gaze off of her any more than an earth pony can fly. Basically, your first thought is, Holy shit, it’s a pony literally made of rainbows... “Yeah, I’m alright. Just a tiny little crash. But thanks for the concern, I guess.”

You nod, tipping an imaginary hat-upon which you would inwardly smack your forehead at-back to her. “Right, well glad to see that you hadn’t decided to take a deliberate sky-dive.”

The mare chuckles. “Well, uh...I kinda’ did. Ever play Chicken? Yeah, try it with the ground.”

You blink. Well, she certainly has a way with...uh...danger. You aren’t sure if that’s a compliment, so you think it best to keep it inside your head. You’re snapped out of your little ‘joke or not’ filter, as she speaks again, realizing that you’re mostly unable to speak. “Alright, see ya. I think. I gotta get going.”

You can’t really let that happen, though. A pony made of rainbows caught your eyes, and you weren’t going to quite let such an interesting sight get away that quickly. “Hey, hang on a second.” The pegasus pauses, having crouched down for takeoff, before cocking an eyebrow.

“What? I’m on a busy schedule. I have a nap, and following that, another nap.”

You swallow, turning to the side. You always found yourself able to talk when in a social situation, yes, but perhaps it was lack of number of such times that made you shy away just then. She was staring right at you, with those...rose eyes and holy crud, if that wasn’t a sight to see, then nothing really was. “Oh, uh, just wanted to ask your name. Y’know, so I can...see you in the news or the obituaries or whatever.”

Lucky for you, the whole stumble with ‘obituaries’ seems to be taken fairly lightly, with quite a fair amount of giggling. “Hehe, don’t expect to see me there so soon.” she says, before clearing her throat. “Anyways, I’m Rainbow Dash, fastest flier in Equestria! Don’t forget it!”

And just as quickly, as if to prove her own point, Rainbow Dash is gone, having flown off into the distant sky, leaving....believe it or not, a trail that looks exactly like a rainbow.

You smile slightly, resuming your trek back to your home. Somehow, it feels like you have someone (or rather, pony) to think about, but one thing was for sure...

You definitely wouldnot be forgetting Rainbow Dash.