“Okay! Maybe I don’t want to be in this stupid band anymore!” The clatter of a guitar falling to the floor was heard.
Afterwards, utter, unbroken silence. His anger had exploded as he finally hit a boiling point. His wings flared, his teeth clenched.
“Come on, Sunrise, there’s no need for rashness now.”
“Alright, Hay Bale, tell me, what am I doing wrong?”
The two ponies, one a pegasus and one an earth pony, were clustered together in a recording room. Sunrise set his wings firmly back onto his sides. He tugged on his jacket and adjusted his glasses.
The two bandmates looked around the room. Two other members were there, one, a pegasus, on drums, and one, a unicorn, holding a sitar.
“Sorry, boys,” Sunrise conceded, pushing his hair out of his face, “I guess I let my emotions get the better of me again. It’s hard when there’s a pony like Hay Bale around. We’ve been together since high school, and yet he still insists on controlling the thing.” He narrowed his eyes at the offending crimson coated earth pony in question, who simply gave a shrug in response.
“Seriously, don’t you all agree that he’s a little too controlling?” Sunrise pitched.
Nopony responded.
“All I requested of you was to edit the guitar solo at the end of the second verse,” Hay Bale defended, throwing his hooves up as if deflecting the blame.
Sunrise picked up his guitar and played a quick guitar lick. “My idea was better.”
“What, pedaling on the same chord for 8 bars? There’s a reason why there’s an 8-bar gap there.”
“Well, I figured I’d lay out a chord progression while Rail Way over there would play his sitar, you know, since the whole trip, he’s gotten pretty good at soloing on that thing,” Sunrise said, gesturing to the blue, mustached pony in question.
“I personally think that you two should just kiss and make up,” Rail Way responded. “Fighting expends the energy we have to live our daily lives.”
Sunrise groaned, pushing his hoof up to his face. “He’s talking about that spiritual stuff again. Can’t you see that this band is falling apart, Hay Bale? Like I said, we’ve been doing this since high school. We’ve done everything and then some, we have nothing else to give. Like, we’re mixing sitar and electric guitar now? Have we lost our minds?”
“I’m personally having fun,” the carbon coated drummer said.
“Of course you are, Carbon Press,” Sunrise said. “You’re always having fun.”
Carbon Press opened his mouth, then looked dejectedly at the ground. “Once again, you regress me to an unimportant pony, as if denying my songs weren’t enough,”
“Well—“ Hay Bale started.
“Don’t even,” Sunrise started, throwing down his guitar as he had a few moments prior, “I quit!”
Sunrise stormed out of the recording studio, leaving behind three musicians, all with dumbstruck looks on their faces.
“You know, Hay Bale, he wasn’t wrong,” Carbon Press said, putting down his sticks on the head of the snare, propped up on a tom. “You can be a bit controlling sometimes, there have been a couple songs that I felt awfully fed up with your drum suggestions on. Need I remind you of the time I left the band for two weeks?”
“While the sitar is a graceful instrument, I feel like this song didn’t necessarily require it,” Rail Way said. “I just didn’t want to question you, because then, things like that happen. Waste of energy, if you ask me.”
Hay Bale sighed, putting his head down, “I know. We’ve pretty much reached the end of our run. I say we record the song without him, release it as a single, and then call it quits on the complicated stuff. We need to go back to the Rock roots of our little band.”
The three recorded the song in relative silence, though every now and then, somepony would awkwardly suggest something. It was clear to the three that nopony really wanted to be there. Everypony seemed to catch the mood, and so they left with hardly a goodbye afterwards.
Hay Bale walked into the bitter nighttime air, bass case on his back, and inhaled deeply. Had he stolen the love that the band had back when they were young, so much that he couldn't give it back?
He wandered out into the streets, it was a little damp out, but that was to be expected in the country. Trottingham wasn’t really known for sunny skies.
He decided to take a different route home, just so the night air could clear his mind a little. He also wanted to be as far away from his bandmates as possible, because he couldn’t bear to think of the criticism.
On his way back, Hay Bale came across an old earth pony sitting in a rocking chair. He felt like the pony was familiar, he just couldn’t place it. He knew he’d never seen him on his way back, but that was because of the new route.
The rocking chair’s shrill creak broke through the silence every couple of seconds. The pony was a stranger, so Hay Bale continued on by.
“Hey,” the stranger said. Hay Bale stopped. “you’re Hay Bale, aren’t you? You’re one of the singers of that band… The Quarry Stallions?”
Hay Bale turned towards the stallion and nodded.
“Yeah, I thought so,” he said, leaning forward in his chair briefly for a better look at him. “I’d recognize your face anywhere, my grandchildren love that stuff.”
Hay Bale responded with a disconnected, “Hmm.”
“I don’t usually see you around here, what’s eating you?” the old stallion inquired.
“You know, just thinking.”
“Band problems?”
Hay Bale momentarily reared back. Naturally, he had to ask, “How did you know?”
The old stallion gave out a hearty laugh. “I was in a band myself when I was younger. We were The Lonely Hearts, I was the lead singer, Shears. Band broke up when we got into a huge fight onstage. I haven’t really done anything since. Haven’t had to. But still, my motto is that life goes on.
“I learned something a few years down the line, long after we’d already fallen away from each other. You know what I learned, Hay Bale?”
Hay Bale shook his head, but nonetheless came closer. That’s why the stallion was so recognizable! The Lonely Hearts, the brass band, momentarily discussed as a possibility for a morale booster if Equestria got into a war, they were such an inspiration to Hay Bale when he was growing up.
“I learned a very important lesson. The love you take is equal to the love you make. If you make more love for others, then they’ll give you more love in return. You just have to be prepared to give out as much love as you can.
“So, I suggest that if you’re having band problems, don’t do what I did. Send them a letter, maybe even just a ‘P.S. I love you’, anything of importance to show that you still care, and maybe they’ll show that they still care, too.”
The old stallion got up, and meandered back into his house. Hay Bale wandered home.
To, Sunrise,
Hey, Sunrise, I ran into Shears earlier today, The Lonely Hearts, if you remember them. He told me to write a letter to show you I still cared, so well, I decided on doing it. I don’t have very much to say, but all I wanted to tell you is that I still care about you.
I know I’m standoffish at times, and probably a bit controlling. I can try and get better, but I can’t promise you an ultimatum. It’s the two of us, alright? Sunrise/Bale? If you get this letter, I’d like to ask you to just record one more album with us. If it goes well, we might record another, but I just want you to record one more album at least.
I want to try to get better, and prove that if friendship is a game of give and take, I want to give as much as I take, perhaps even more. I need a friend like you to keep me in check.
One more album, alright?
Sincerely, Hay Bale
To Hay Bale;
Sure, I can do one more album. I have to admit, you aren’t all that bad.
Sincerely, Sunrise
Author's Note
In case you can’t tell by the low-quality cover art. This isn’t exactly a story I’m perfectly happy with. It was my entry in the QnS “Random Act of Kindness” challenge with the prompts ‘strangers are just friends you haven’t met’ and ‘give and take’. It didn’t place.
While this version is quite a cut above the mess I submitted, it’s not perfect. I suppose it’s alright, but I’m still mainly keeping this here for preservation of the work.
See if you can find all The Beatles references, in classic Dashie04 fashion, music references are worked in there as well as they can be.
