Octavia's Last Night

Chapters

The Weighted Scale
The Golden Roofs
The Best Years
The Long Defeat
The Dark
The Last Illusion
The Devil's Bargain
Epilogue: And Start a New Dream

The Weighted Scale

Two sounds broke the silence of the filthy study.

The damp, irregular scratch of a quill on crinkled paper. Dots, dashes and lines appeared with machine speed, stopping only to replace the feather or dunk it in ink. The writing was smudged and sloppy, but the language was clear: music. Notes and bars wound together in the strange communion that created the whole.

The second sound was the grandfather clock by the desk. A gift from a Canterlot patron, enchanted to remain wound for a thousand years. Untouched and covered in dust, it nonetheless maintained its work. The pendulum swung, and the thinnest hand ticked with every second’s death.

Neither was heard. The room’s lone inhabitant sat fixed, unmoving from her work. False teeth moved the quill with manic speed until the last inch of paper was used, then a grey hoof rose to push it to the stack of hundreds. The other hoof snapped a fresh sheet into place, and the labor resumed.

The pace grew faster. The notes, sloppier. A dry, weak cough barked from the grey mouth, sending the quill dangling at the edge of the cracked lip. But the teeth clamped down once more, and a hoof was already bringing the next page into place.

Her rump shifted in the chair. She released a quiet hiss as the cramped muscles worked their knives.

Three days since she ate. Two since she drank. She hadn’t risen since yesterday evening, and already it was nine at night.

Bar and note. Line and beat. The withered old mare worked on.

The door to the house clicked open. A tapping sound came as clawed feet trod the wooden steps up to her study.

The mare didn’t notice. She couldn’t have.

Octavia Melody was as deaf as could be.

Halfway down a fresh page, her pace abruptly slowed. This bar was drawn a little more evenly – the five precious rows from which all music runs. The notes were drawn with crisp, careful strokes, and spaced evenly through its length.

A quarter-note. A dot. A slow rising of the hoof to place the half-filled paper on the stack.

No more writing. Octavia settled her head to the back of the chair and gave a long, slow sigh. The quill fell to the ground without notice. Her eyes blinked slowly, turned upwards to the bland white ceiling. The eyes themselves were purple, and cloudy as exhaustion stole upon them. They drifted closed, and she welcomed the looming sleep.

She did not think she would wake up. That, too, was welcome. She had nothing left to do.

Yet something happened that jerked her mind from the warm nothingness. Purple eyes flew open, the dry mouth gasped, and Octavia was alert once more.

From the doorway behind her… she heard clapping. Not the heavy tap of hooves on hooves, but the thin clack of two claws being brought together in slow, mocking applause.

“Bravo, Miss Octavia Melody. Bravo!”

The speaker moved before she could turn her head, appearing before her desk in a puff of blue smoke. Yellow eyes, fanged grin – the patchwork creature that was Discord. Octavia had only seen him once or twice from a distance, back in her Ponyville days. Still, he could scarcely be forgotten, and never mistaken for another.

Today he wore a party hat, and threw clawfuls of bright streamers into the air.

Octavia’s mouth fell open. She could only stare. Discord went on, his eyes turning with a grin to the messy pile of papers.

“Not much to look at, but oh, the contents! Octavia’s Tenth Symphony, the greatest of them all. The greatest of all music! Completed here, given gloriously to the world on this…”

With the pause, the misshapen face leered to an evil smirk, and his voice grew low. “The last night of your life.”

Without missing a beat, his boisterous cheer resumed. “Tell me! Tell your fans! What are your thoughts right now?”

Octavia closed her jaw, letting the surprise pass. Her gaze fixed on Discord, now looming far over the desk with a microphone in his griffon claw held close enough to touch her lips.

A grey hoof rose and slapped the claw away.

“I think the one good thing about being deaf was that it spared me the prattle of fools.”

Discord righted himself, grinning all the while. “Oh, don’t be like that, Octi.”

“Octi’s not here,” Octavia cut in sharply. “Now get out.”

“But I just arrived!”

“Not my problem.” Octavia waved to the door. “Out. Shoo.”

To her satisfaction, Discord did begin to move. He strode around towards the door, his endless smile growing small and witty. “Talk about ungrateful. Not even a, ‘Thank you Mister Discord for miraculously restoring my ears?’”

A dry, bitter huff came from Octavia’s throat. “Good timing with that.”

She scowled, glaring pointedly at the final page. A curious thing, Discord. But she was no longer a curious mare. Her precious Tenth Symphony was done, against all odds. She’d fought the cancer for too long already, and was more than content to settle back once more.

A thin smile came to her face as she heard the door close. Odd, to hear again after so long. Of course, Discord and oddness went hoof-in-hoof, and she was not at all wistful for his return. Whatever his business was with her, she had none with him.

Her eyes rose from the paper, and the lips tightened to a new frown.

Discord had returned. Sitting down in front of her desk on a conjured stool, grinning at her sunken humor.

“You aren’t wanted,” Octavia said.

“I rarely am,” came the cheeky response. Discord thrust his elbows on the desk and lowered his head, leaning into Octavia’s glare. “Seriously, though: it’s every pony’s nightmare to die alone. And here you are living – eheh, dying – the dream. So I said to myself, ‘Discord, you rotten old sod, go pay the mare a visit!’ It’s your last chance to properly meet her, and it’d be a shame to let the night pass without seeing the genius behind the Tenth.”

A paw gestured to the stack of papers. “And it is genius, of course. I’ve heard it. I mean, I will hear it, but that’s neither here nor there. Although I suppose it is, if you think about –”

“Stop!”

Octavia slammed a hoof down on the desk with as much anger as she could muster. “Just stop. I don’t care, you idiot. Get out!”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Discord’s grin told he was not sorry at all. “I’m interrupting, aren’t I? I’m sure you have some very important dying to do.”

“Go back to your statue,” Octavia hissed.

“Now that was personal.” Discord pointed a claw at her, expression more amused than angered. “Don’t you think it’d be a good idea to scale back a bit? I am, after all, Discord. You know: the god of all chaos and mean-spirited humor?”

Octavia only groaned. “I’m dying, you twit. What can happen to me?”

Discord opened his mouth… and closed it. A strange expression came to his face. The smile remained, but it had fallen to nearly nothing. The eyes were softer. They didn’t threaten or mock, but seemed to warn her with a brief, earnest gaze.

“A funny question,” Discord said quietly.

Octavia’s ears flicked up as a new sound brushed them. The gentle creak of her front door, then the clap of hooves on wood. She looked to the empty hallway, at once aware of how dark the rest of the house was. “Who…?”

She glanced back to the study, but Discord had vanished, and the question died on her lips. She pressed them together and breathed, willing her discipline back to the fore. She was old, tired, and bitter. Not some idiot filly to be frightened by sounds.

But that was just it: Sounds, after so long without. A miracle of miracles, making the pit of fear in her stomach all the blacker. Discord’s pranks she could endure, but what was this?

The newcomer did not make her wait long. Hooves beat steadily through the house, treading their way from the parlor to the darkened stairs. A shape came slowly to sight in time with them, then emerged from the inky blackness to the light of her study.

The legs of a pony. Then… something more.

The first impression was of weak, pathetic dotage like Octavia herself. A patchwork creature like Discord, with an unkempt grey beard dangling from its reddish, bull-like face. Four pony hooves carried its body, but where the head ought to be instead grew into a second chest like a catfolk or minotaur, carrying the head and two spindly bare arms. The torso shrunk at the belly, and ribs could be counted on both the pony-body and torso.

Yet the eyes removed all sympathy – black as pitch, save for two bright yellow pupils fixed upon her. Perhaps shrunken, perhaps weakened from some unknown height, but not a natural thing at all. Even wizened it stood erect, proud, its black eyes cruel and interested.

Octavia’s throat bobbed, and her ears went flat. Animal instinct screamed at her to flee, though stubborn mind overrode it. She tore her gaze away and immediately regretted it. The hungry eyes hinted of evil, but the creature’s shadow spoke it loud. The lamp-cast image was not withered at all, but a huge, hulking demon who seemed to watch her from the walls.

“Are you frightened?”

The creature’s voice was old and reedy. A ‘clink’ followed it. Octavia saw a chain gripped in a four-fingered claw, leading backwards to a silent second: a pony-sized creature in a red cloak, with the chain latched tightly to the neck. The cowl was pulled low, denying any hint of what lay beneath.

The question eased Octavia, but only barely. Just enough to form words of her own. “I am.”

“Don’t be.” The creature trod closer, followed by its stumbling captive. “Fear is for those whose fates are in question.”

“I hope you’re not here to tell me I’m dying.” It was a breathless, nervous sarcasm, but Octavia’s wits had returned. “I’ve gotten quite enough of that from Discord, and I needed none in the first place.”

The mad god’s name brought the first change in the stranger’s face. The neutral expression twisted to a scowl, but Octavia blinked and it was gone.

A flash of light shocked the nerve-rattled Octavia out of her seat with a cry. The stranger also startled as Discord appeared between them, somehow managing to look both sheepish and mocking at the same time.

“Oh, how rude of me! I am so sorry.” Discord clapped his hands once together, then gestured to Octavia. “Introductions! This fine young mare is Octavia Melody: composer, musician, and professional grump.”

“Do tell,” the stranger said, with the bored voice of one humoring an idiot.

“And this…” Discord turned back to Octavia, flourishing towards the stranger with a claw. “Is, well, he has a lot of names. Which do you prefer?”

The stranger opened his mouth to respond, but Discord didn’t give him the chance. A scroll appeared in the bear paw, thick plastic glasses appeared on his head, and the mismatched goat loudly cleared his throat. “Let’s just do all the pomp and circumstance, shall we? You stand before Tirek, Master of Evil and Chief Prisoner of Tartarus, Lord of Flies and Lord of Lies, empowered by the Divine Truce to claim wicked souls and torment them forever until such a day that… am I allowed to say? Well, until and unless the–”

“She gets the message,” Tirek noted, rising from his seat.

Octavia most assuredly did. Nothing but legends, of course: Of the fiendish jailer who imprisoned and tortured the wicked, from the lowest Manehatten thug to the great evils of the ancient world. The king of imps and devils… here? How was that even possible? Her life had not been normal, but mercifully bereft of otherworldly attention. Now not one, but two hateful intruders…

Her eyes widened as Tirek walked towards her, dragging the red-cloaked pony along. Octavia shrank away, pressing her back to the desk.

He smiled, with thin lips and an expression of soft politeness. On the wall, his shadow doubled over with silent laughter.

“No need to waste breath. Just call me Tirek.” He brushed past Discord, not sparing him a glance. “This is unusual, I admit. I don’t fault you your fear, but really you should feel honored. I don’t personally escort many ponies to their eternal damnation, but you’re… well, you already know you’re special. To call you ‘genius’ is to belittle your skills. You are one of a kind, Miss Melody, and I could not possibly miss the chance to throw you into the fire myself.”

“What!?” Octavia squawked, shaking her head wildly. She pressed even further away and babbled. “No, no, absolutely not. I haven’t done anything! I never hurt anypony, or lied, or…”

“Vinyl Scratch.”

The words froze Octavia. The fiend grinned with sharp and tiny teeth. “Or Concerto. Remember him? He accidentally trod on your tail and you fired him on the spot. Or the old mare you hit with your cello case, who fell and broke a hip? You weren’t much help with the hospital bills.”

Octavia jerked up her head. “It was an accident! And I was broke!”

“Everyone has excuses, Miss Melody.” Tirek said lowly in his thin voice. “And that’s just three. Let’s be honest, because there’s no point in lying anymore: you were a nasty pony. Rude, aggressive, insulting, impatient. Chock-full of unkindness, and eager to share it.”

“But I’ve done good, too!” Even as she spoke, Octavia knew it was useless. His brief summary of her life was an honest one.

“Not really.” Tirek shrugged casually. “Your music is all well and pretty, but ‘pretty’ doesn’t bring you to the nice places. ‘Good’ does, so tell me: how many good deeds did Octavia do in life?”

“My music –”

“Ah-ah!” Tirek wagged a finger, his sly smile only widening. “You wrote your music for one pony, and that was you. It earned you money and fame, and what did you give back? What did you ever do for another?”

Octavia’s mouth worked, but she couldn’t utter a sound. Her mind tore backwards, searching for some release, some kindly action to hold as an example. But nothing came. Her whole life had been in fervent pursuit of her music, meeting distractions with barbed tongue and rapier wit. She never cared much for her musicians, never looked up from the writing…

She flinched and shivered as a brown-red hand settled on her shoulder. Teeth beamed happily from the bull face.

Black eyes sparkled at her, and in their reflection Octavia saw her doom. Spitted by tridents, roasted in a lake of fire for all time.

“Although…”

Tirek’s expression turned thoughtful as he uttered the word. Octavia’s ears flicked up, and the image of damnation vanished from the eyes.

“Perhaps we can make a deal.”

Octavia seized it like driftwood in a whirlpool. “Yes! Yes, of course.”

“It is within my authority to bargain for the weight of a soul. Yours is heavy – I meant what I said about your genius – but we’ve already established that it’s really worth no more than your music. Octavia Melody gave nothing else to the world. Nothing good, anyway.”

He seemed to muse back and forth, the eyes flickering with hidden fire before brightening upon her. “Yes, that is fair. Your music.”

Tirek drew back his hand. “Trade it to me, all of it. I will take that in exchange. We’ll make a contract.”

“What will happen?” Octavia asked.

“It will be gone. I will rend it from time and space. It will never have been. No memory, no hint of existence will remain.”

“But that’s all I have!” Octavia cried. “Without the music, my… my whole life will...”

Tirek tilted his head, peering down his nose at her. “Your music, or your soul. Trust me when I say Tartarus does not take it easy on composers.”

A numbness struck Octavia, chilling her heart so cold she almost fainted. She collapsed in a chair, mouth working stupidly. Her vision flew, then found Tirek and blurred. Animal whines barked from her throat, all words forgotten.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Tirek muttered. He turned to the door and pulled on the leash. “Your time is very short. But there is a little left. I shall return at midnight to claim either your music or your eternity.”

He shuffled, disappearing into the dark hall. Octavia barely heard his last words over her own rushing blood.

“Consider very, very carefully. Few get a second chance like this.”

She didn’t respond. Couldn’t. Octavia trembled in place, gasped for breath. Her limbs gripped the dusty, overstuffed armrests.

Something clinked on her right hoof. Her eyes focused to it. A tiny glass with an amber liquid.

Octavia scooped the tumbler and downed it in one motion. Molten whiskey burned down her throat, easing the chill panic. She gave a dry cough, realized at once how thirsty she was.

Something bumped her other hoof. A tall, clouded glass of cold water. Octavia drank it down.

Once empty, both cup and tumbler vanished from her hooves like a magician’s trick.

She took a deep breath, held it. Felt her frail heart tap-tapping inside, weak and fast as it had for years. Back in control.

Then memory returned, and she breathed out with a sob. She looked to her right, and there on her desk sat Discord. Neither smiling nor sympathetic, gazing back with even neutrality. A queer expression on one so strange, the yellow eyes blankly eyeing her like a card in a poker game.

“Why?” Octavia croaked and coughed again.

Inevitably, Discord’s fanged mouth turned up in a smirk. “Why is Tirek evil? My dear, you do not have enough time left for me to explain that one.”

“No!” Octavia’s voice cracked with age and fear. “Why this? Now? Me! I am no princess, no Element-Bearer! I have nothing to do with gods and devils, so why do you come for me!”

Discord stirred his own whiskey with a claw. “What’s the point in being a god or devil if you can’t inflict yourself on helpless mortals? If you ask me it’s no different from Celestia, except she likes to play house whereas Tirek melts his toys in the fireplace.”

“So that’s it?” Octavia asked with shrinking voice. “No recourse, no argument? No justice?”

“Hm, you’re not asking the right demigod.” Discord popped his glass into his mouth and swallowed. “I don’t really do ‘justice,’ you know? I’m a bit more of a rules-breaker.”

Octavia’s head snapped towards him and the hidden whisper in his words. Discord’s smirk spread, enveloping his face with a jovial grin.

“Can you help me?”

It came out so weak, so desperate. Octavia did not care.

“Can you help me...” Discord repeated, then gestured for her to finish.

She did not care. “Please.”

Smoke flashed and abruptly he was standing, throwing his arms out to the air. “Of course, Octi! What are friends for? My goodness, you’re lucky I happened to come on by.”

Octavia blinked. Then she too was standing, wearing a pink tie like in her concert days. Wood creaked beneath her hooves, for they were at a train station. Fog enveloped the structure, and though ponies shuffled around them, all she could see clearly was Discord. He wore a brown travel suit and cap, seated at a bench with briefcase in one claw and pocket-watch in the other.

“Late, as always...” he grumbled, then gestured for Octavia to sit next to him. “But that’s all for the best, isn’t it? One word of advice, my dear girl: never trust anyone who promises to make the trains run on time.”

Octavia stumbled as something caught her leg, then stared at it. A carrying case, black and longer than her. Ripped leather covered its outside, revealing the scratched, cheap wood beneath.

Her eyes traced it – every familiar blemish and tear, The worn rubber handle with its rusty hinges. The needlework keeping its edges together. A tag tied on with a purple ribbon: not ‘Octavia’ but ‘Octi,’ in hoofwriting that was not her own.

Her old cello case. No point in thinking about it, she hefted the thing onto her shoulder. Heavy, but an old and familiar weight, no worse now despite her age. She carried it to the bench and sat down by Discord’s side.

“Where are we?”

“The train station, I should think that was obvious.” He clicked shut the pocket-watch. “Or, apparently, something only pretending to be a train station because real ones naturally involve trains. Which I do note the absence of.”

“You know what I meant,” Octavia snapped, feeling her bitter wit rise back to the fore.

Discord sent her a cheeky grin. “Now, now. Be nice to the demigod who is doing you a solid.”

Octavia grunted. She slid the case beneath the bench and rested her hind hooves on it. Odd, how quickly the old motion had come back to her. She did a lot of travel in her concert days, and propping the legs made these wooden benches a little easier to endure.

She shrugged. The panic was gone. “Frankly, I wonder if this is some cruel joke. The train will take me to Tartarus, won’t it?”

Discord actually looked surprised. “Do you really think I would do that?”

Octavia glared off into the fog. “You tell me.”

“Hmm...” Discord thought a moment, tapping his most prominent fang with a claw before finishing. “Maybe to someone who really had it coming.”

“Apparently, that includes me.”

“You’re taking this well.”

A growl ripped from Octavia’s throat. “I’m more than half resigned to it at this point. You would rather I keep blubbering?”

“Heavens no, I much prefer your rapier wit to the ‘oh poor me I’m being damned to eternal torment’ routine. Been done, never interesting.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Octavia asked, then sharply turned her head. “‘The train,’ yes, how funny. For real.”

“The train,” Discord said, holding up a talon to forestall her protest. “Buuuut the train is a metaphor. See, I can help you, because I do have incredible power. Of course, the Divine Truce forbids me from mucking with anything global or stepping directly on other gods’ sensitive hoofsies, but that’s just the thing about you, you’re none of that. Hardly an ordinary mare, but a strictly mundane one who kept her head down along with the others through all the cosmic conflicts and such inflicted on your generation. No one will notice if I butt in on a decrepit earth pony about to kick the bucket.”

He sniffed, then smiled as a train whistle went off in the distance. “Well, almost no one. Tirek, of course, wants your soul, and he knows I love to meddle. We have a past, him and I. I won’t bore you with it. I can’t do anything for the you of the now and here, but I don’t need to. Chaos can bend any rule, including time itself. So we will simply go back before you became literally damned...”

“And make it right. He will never know or care about me.” Octavia gave a quick, tight smile which then vanished. “How?”

Discord stood up, beckoning for Octavia to follow. “Any number of ways, really. You know the Butterfly Effect, of course. Everyone’s heard of it by now what with all the movies and video games and such. Anything we might do to fix or adjust or change, setting you down an altered path forever.”

Octavia laughed out loud, deep and worn. She rose from the bench and kicked the cello case fully underneath it without a second glance.

“Is that all?” she asked merrily as they got in a line with nopony else. “I thought it’d be a harder cure than that! Come, let’s go fix it all.”

Discord looked at her curiously, but for once held his peace. A fog-crowned train pulled up before them, and the pair stepped on together into the past.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading. This idea has been in my head for several years now, and I am happy to finally bring it to life. Much of it is written; depending on how well I can maintain the cushion, updates will be either weekly or biweekly.

The Golden Roofs

Author's Note

Small warning with this chapter in that it includes scenes of child neglect and (verbal) abuse. There won't be any more in the fic and it all rattles past fairly quickly, but FYI and etc.

The Golden Roofs

They got off in gilded Canterlot, the city on the mountain. The home of the Celestial Sisters, the cultural heart of all Equestria with playhouses and concert halls to spare.

Yet no great halls or classical pillars could be seen where they stood, nor music heard. The city on the mountain, but a city all the same with poor neighborhoods and alleys filled with refuse, some of which could walk.

In their construction long ago, vain effort had been made to ensure such ill-favored places were beautiful. Stained and discolored murals adorned the outside of salt taverns, picturing myths few of the illiterate patrons even knew. White streets had long turned to full black, and decades-old potholes revealed even that to be a thin facade over mundane bricks.

It was all Discord could talk about as they trod through the fading light.

“That’s so absurd it’s not even funny. Bricks! You had to make them and haul them up a literal mountain to this insane city-sized monument to Celestia’s ego. A mountain made of… wait for it… stone! Ready for the taking! A mountain of it! I know I’m supposed to thrive on chaos but this is just wasteful to ship over some rocks when you’re standing on one with your own four hooves.”

“Discord, as fascinating as ancient architecture can be, why are we here?”

He shrugged, loping curiously along on his mismatched legs. “How should I know?”

Octavia gave the husky sign of irritation turned silently to restrained anger. “I have a few hours left before losing either my music or my soul. Chop-chop.”

“You brought us here, not me. It’s your past.” Discord scratched idly at his chest, looking around with an expression of curiosity. “Is this something you would change? Not that I don’t entirely agree, but it seems like a non sequitur to present concerns.”

Octavia wore a stone face as she gazed around. Memories tickled the back of her mind, but none very close or personal. “I grew up two blocks over. Why your train would drop us off here I have no...”

A new sound broke her words, shrill and pathetic. A baby’s wail, screeching across the battered walls.

Octavia’s false teeth clicked as her lips pushed them back in a grim smile.

“Ah. Now I get it.”

They followed the noise as it went on, unabated and uncomforted. A turn down an alley brought them to its source: a grey newborn, lying naked atop one of the dozen overfilled trash cans. Not even a basket or blanket gave her comfort, and the purple eyes bulged wide as it cried again with fading strength.

Discord’s gaze slunk over to Octavia, and her cold expression.

The baby fell quiet. Octavia spoke. “I almost remember this. Not the scene itself, but the chill breeze, the being alone.”

“You wish for your parents?” Discord asked with a rare serious expression. Yellow magic glowed around his horns. “We can see what would have happened it they –”

“No. Sweet Celestia, no.”

“Not even to know what they looked like?”

“No. Gods damn them.” Anger scrunched Octavia’s wrinkled muzzle.

“But the whole reason we’re here is to –”

“Let it go.”

“Alright, alright.” Discord wiped off the magic on his legs, blowing out and wincing as the baby unleashed a fresh cry. “So what happens next?”

Octavia glanced his way. “Don’t you know?”

“Please. You think I keep track of every Orange, Pear, and Apple in Equestria? I told you: you’re the one driving, not me.”

It made sense, not that Octavia was prepared to admit it. It felt right to get off the illusory train when she did, though no outside clue bid her so. Like an instinct, a thing always known. An acceptance of Discord’s promise to change the past, whether or not she fully believed it.

But not this part. Gods damn them.

She moved to pick up the baby, more from curiosity than sympathy. Her hooves passed right through, of course. A ghost of the past. Or was Octavia the ghost, in this place where all else was yet to come?

The clatter and clang of a falling trash can broke her musings. She smiled thinly and turned to the drunken mare who had stumbled into the alley. Curly haired and with a patched black and white coat like a cow, the stranger pushed one hoof into the wall as she retched on the sideways can.

The duo watched in silence as the mare belched, snorted back a noseful of phlegm, and vomited again over several long, awkward seconds.

“You like jokes, don’t you?” Octavia said dryly. “Here’s the punchline.”

“Pardon?”

A fresh cry snapped the mare’s head upwards. She staggered over to the baby, red eyes wide with revelation, salt-dried lips mumbling improvised words of care as she scooped up and wrapped the young Octavia in her own stained neckerchief.

Octavia took in a slow breath. Her frown returned as she took in the scene with grumpy indifference.

“Peela Pear. My mother. Well, the only mother I ever had.”

Octavia willed the vision forward. Strangely, the world complied. They saw the bath in the moldy sink, the tiny apartment she would learn to call home.

They saw the crate that was her crib. The filly babbled innocently, watching as her mother hustled out with bits jangling in her saddlebag.

“Mama needs a break, sweetie. Be good, and stay there with your friends.”

Her ‘friends’ were a toy metal truck and stuffed bear, both with enough strings and bits to choke an infant to death. The night passed in darkness as Octavia cried and slept and cried, with a filling diaper and empty stomach. And she kept crying when Peela returned, drunk and staggering, to collapse on the couch.

Thrown bottles shattering against the wall. Missed meals. Threats to ‘Put you back in that alley where I found you.’

Birthday parties with cheap cakes. Trips to free concerts in the nearby park. And when the stars aligned and Peela did go shopping, and did think to cook…

Octavia swallowed, somehow tasting the low, oozing sweetness of pot-roast pears. How long had it been?

“She tried,” Octavia said grudgingly. Her eyes grew wet. She wiped them, and they hardened. “She shouldn’t have. Orphanages do better, but Peela was an idiot. She talked stupidly about how ‘fate’ brought me here, how I was her ‘second chance.’”

“I see,” Discord said delicately.

“Her real daughter was ‘Octavia Melody,’ too,” Octavia sighed. “Peela made me go on visits to the gravestone. Dead at three months old.”

Her face twisted into something darker than anger, just for a moment. “She said the baby got sick, but you’ve seen how she is.”

“That’s not really a Pear-ish kind of name.”

They watched an argument brew as four-year-old Octavia learned the words to yell back.

“Canterlot isn’t a Pear-ish place,” Octavia said, watching blandly as a bottle was thrown. “She left the farm to be an actress, caught up in the romance of Canterlot’s fairy tale. She ended up working for whatever restaurant or bakery hadn’t fired her yet, eternally convinced that her big break was just around the corner. Not that she attended try-outs or acting classes or anything like that.”

Her eyes moved to the side, to the window. From here, they could see the golden roofs of mansions in other parts of the city.

“That is something I learned from her. It’s not enough to want your dreams. You must lunge for them.”

An empty house, and empty cupboard. Young Octavia knocked over the trash can for wilted cabbage leaves Peela had thrown out.

Enough.

“This,” Octavia hissed. “I didn’t need this. No one does. Even she didn’t. Peela could have made a good living, could have… hmph.”

She turned to Discord, waved dismissively to the scene. “Well? Fix it.”

“Fix it?” he repeated, with a smirk and raised eyebrow.

“You said we could change how things occurred. Take away the poverty, the neglect. We’re in Canterlot, for goodness’ sake. Let it be Canterlot for me.”

Yellow magic glowed around Discord’s horns. The smirk twisted mischievously at its corners, then grew into a full smile.

“You really think it’s that easy, don’t you?” He chuckled lowly, ending it with a girlish giggle. “Oh, sweet Celestia! What fools your ponies be.”

Octavia opened her mouth to question, but his talons snapped, and it all vanished from sight.

And there she was, in the alley with the crying infant.

Dusk was only beginning. Peela was still at the bar. But here came a pair of wealthy ponies, having missed their carriage and now quite lost as they wandered their way home. A large unicorn with a bowler hat and jovial mustache, and an earth pony in a silk green dress.

They heard the cries, ran forward with shouts of sympathy and dismay, but also wonder. The mare could not bear children, and Octavia became their miracle that day. They brought her home, bathed her, loved her. As did their loyal servants, whom they always treated well. Octavia grew into a fine Canterlot mare – cultured, vapid, spoiled. She took cello lessons, but they were squeezed between ballet, painting, and long beach-side vacations.

The years passed, flowing quickly like a river in spring. She caught the eye of Concerto of all ponies, and he caught hers. A mediocre musician, but of a prestigious band in a city that valued pedigree more than talent. His family was rich, and her father approved. They would sometimes put on little concerts together for the family at Hearth’s Warming, but as time went by her cello became a novelty to be dusted by servants. She had three wonderful children, and all loved each other in the way rich ponies do. Not without warmth or depth of affection, certainly, but as the children grew up all became generally content to see each other on holidays and funerals.

Her cancer was caught and treated early by the best doctors in Canterlot. The mare aged gracefully and died in peace. The funeral was touching, then it ended.

And Octavia was alone.

She stared at the mare in the casket, could not bring herself to call her ‘Octavia.’ Even dead she looked ten years younger. An emerald gem was clasped at her neck. The lines on her face were soft, the dimples wide from a lifetime of smiles.

Octavia ran a hoof along her own cheek. The bones were gaunt, the lines like iron trenches. She had pushed herself so long, so hard.

A claw settled on her back. She did not startle.

“Is this what you want?” Discord asked. A mocking tone hung in the words.

“What about my music?” she said.

“You saw.”

“Yes, I did.” Octavia’s old, stony discipline began to return.

The stranger in the casket. The old, rich grandmother. A talent for music, yes, but there were too many distractions, too much for a proper lady of Canterlot to learn and do.

She closed her eyes, remembered the free concerts Peela had brought her to. The crisp black suits of the musicians, the magic as they worked cat-hair rods across tools of string and wood to make the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. She remembered babbling excitedly on the way home, begging Peela to take her again.

And… Peela did, didn’t she? Every Saturday that summer, and the next.

“Passion does not occur accidentally,” Discord said, flippant despite his words. “It needs focus, attention. Nurturing and planning in quiet moments. Even desperation, one might claim. After all, if the talent doesn’t really matter then it will never become more than a hobby.”

“I don’t need a friendship lesson,” Octavia said, her voice graveled and dull. She sighed, shook her head, and turned away from the stranger.

“No. Not this.” She swallowed hard, growing a little stronger. “What good would this be, if I lost all my music? I might as well have accepted Tirek’s offer and been done with it. A less comfortable life than… her, but we’re both dead all the same.”

A steadying breath. “Take me back. We’ll change something else.”

Discord said nothing. The darkened parlor faded into a dingy apartment.

Then a schoolroom. Octavia saw herself in a prim black skirt with books stacked upon her back. The classroom was spacious, the teachers stern and attentive. Other students chafed under their uniforms, but Octavia loved it. A step closer to those magnificent maestros in black.

Canterlot’s public schools had an abundance of wealthy patrons. Her band room was a paradise. The instruction… less so. Forty minutes a day, structured songs with every emphasis placed on simply playing the correct note on the sheet. Stringed instruments were for older children – she was assigned bongo drums.

So she stole books for cellos and violins, studying them when she should have been doing math. Rulers slapped her fetlock, then again when she came in a dirty uniform, and again when she stole a lunch without hoofing over her half-bit.

But progress came. Her first time playing a violin in class was hailed as borderline prodigy. The teachers didn’t know she had been sneaking in for months to practice.

“Do you feel guilty over that?” Discord asked.

Octavia glanced towards him. “Of course not, I was seven.”

Discord shot her a winning smile. “It’s impressive how little you’ve changed, don’t you think? Even then you were an obsessive little musical bulldozer.”

They were back in the dingy apartment, in a screaming argument. Peela had broken the violin Octavia brought home, and she wouldn’t be trusted with another.

Anger crossed Octavia’s face, but it faded. “That’s another thing I got from her. We lived in Canterlot, but it wasn’t ‘Canterlot.’ You know what I mean. It wasn’t the city on the mountain, the answer to our dreams. Yet we still believed in it. We knew the squalor we lived in was unnatural, unworthy. Distinct and separate from the gold roofs outside our windows, where we would one day belong.”

A bottle crashed.

Then a beat-up, secondhand violin appeared in the apartment, though the water went off for a few days. It came without the bow, but the school had plenty and no one noticed when one disappeared.

The school. Worried-looking adults asked eight-year-old Octavia pointed questions. She knew they wanted to take her away from Peela, so she lied.

The principal’s office. Ponies kept offering tissues she didn’t want, looking down on her with mournful sympathy. Ten-year-old Octavia listened woodenly as they explained that normally she would have to go to the orphanage (and they were so sorry to have to say it like that), but thanks to a Blueblood-family donor there was a small dormitory for ponies like her. She could gather her things and go right there.

Octavia’s eyes blurred. She wiped them, found herself in the apartment. The young Octavia simply stood there, crying without sound. There was nothing to gather. The violin fell apart a long time ago.

A slow, almost whistling breath out sounded behind Octavia. She glanced back to see Discord awkwardly scratching his elbows, looking everywhere but towards her.

She caught his eyes, and he smiled weakly. “What did it?”

“Take a wild guess,” Octavia grumbled.

She turned, finding herself a little earlier in time. Peela promised to get her another violin, but she had been promising that for months. Octavia whined, and Peela reminded her she was adopted and was really ‘owed’ nothing at all. Peela stormed out in search of a bar, and the carriage hit her on the way home. This was the last Octavia ever saw her.

“You idiot,” Octavia hissed to the slamming door.

A little earlier. The idiot asleep drunk on the couch. Octavia glared down her nose at it.

Discord gave a very quiet cough. “Do you… hate her?”

“I used to,” Octavia admitted. She released a breath, and the sharp anger in her eyes turned dull. “I forgave her a long time ago. She tried. She failed. That is all.”

Asleep, Peela looked at peace with the whole world. Octavia felt tears return to her eyes. She reached down, and some kindness in the illusion let her touch Peela’s cheek. The mare smiled drowsily and leaned into her hoof.

Octavia let it rest there, just for a moment. Then she pulled away, looked away. She could take no more.

Her voice broke. “I don’t think I love her. Is that wrong?”

“I am entirely unqualified to answer,” Discord replied.

Octavia gave a breathless laugh. “Coward.”

“Got me in one.”

She pressed on, away from the apartment. Forever. She stood in her black uniform before the dorm, staring up towards it. A pleasant, new building with clean sheets, flushing toilets, and a stocked cafeteria. Sad and ironic as it was, Octavia’s life would be better here.

So much better.

Then a shout came. Cheerful, bright, and loud; a sun rising through memory and time.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

Still shaken by their mother’s death, Octavia young and old startled and stared as a newcomer ran up behind them. A pure white unicorn, with wild blue hair and pink eyes like gemstones in the same uniform as Octavia.

“You’re moving here too, right? I’m Vinyl Scratch!”

A white fetlock wrapped around the young Octavia’s neck and pulled her into an immodest cheek-to-cheek nuzzle. The child stammered and mumbled, while the old Octavia watched with wide eyes and a hoof over her mouth.

“Quick, let’s get in and pick out our rooms. I don’t want to be next to any boys.”

The young mare trembled with energy and excitement, pulling Octavia rapidly in her wake.

Octavia laughed out loud, hard enough to send coughs through her withered lungs. How comical! How amazing children are, that they simply approach one another and declare, ‘You are my friend.’ That was how it began. An assertive declaration which Octavia was too confused to decline.

She remembered full well their antics that day, and watched with childlike glee. Led by Vinyl, they went for a ride in the dryer, jumped on the beds, and threw paper airplanes off the balcony. They got scolded and spent an hour after dinner washing dishes, but every time their eyes met they burst out laughing, both of them. Octavia couldn’t remember ever laughing so hard before, but there she was: squealing, begging Vinyl to stop because her sides felt ready to explode. And of course Vinyl sneaked into her room that night and made a tent out of their sheets to play at camping.

Octavia laughed so hard as she watched them, jumping and throwing her hoof into the air like a child herself whenever they found triumph. It was easy to get swept along, but Vinyl was like that. She always was.

Octavia was still laughing when she began to cry.

The Best Years

Octavia closed her eyes, felt the fragile weight of the bow in her hoof. Held delicately in the frog’s muscles, tight enough to keep firm, gently enough to let flow. One did not push it into the strings as an amateur might expect, but rather guide and slide it along as fast or slow as the music bid.

The cello was comfortable and natural in the crook of her foreleg, its hoof held close to the strings to press and pluck them so the right note would sound from the bow. Different than the violins she favored in grade school. Certainly, a more natural posture and requiring less exertion to use, but she did not make the change for her own ease. While a violin might squeak and quickly stumble to the next frantic note, the lower sounds of the cello stretched on, compounding any mistake. It required precision, intelligence, perfect planning of one note to the next. Music itself had to be written around its limitations, for it was simply impossible to shift the bow quickly enough to match some combinations.

But those limits could stretch. Speed, precision, timing. Practiced perfection could take the cello to heights, for more than other instruments its notes could, must, flow into each other. Masterfully done, it could give the illusion of three playing at once as sounds lingered in the ear.

Octavia wasn’t a master, not yet, but other students called her one. They questioned her secret, then went off to malls and restaurants while she stayed late to practice.

Hair touched string. She slid the bow, coaxing out the cello’s song. Sound like a humming oak tree emerged, fast and slow, always smooth. One perfect note into the next.

“WUB WUB WUBWUB. WUB WUB WUBWUB. WUB WUB W...”

Octavia bounced in her bed, lifted by no motion of her own. Tissues were stuffed in her ears, and a very petulant frown scrunched her muzzle as she glared into her textbook.

Discord clicked a strange device in his hand. A picture like a bullhorn with a line through it appeared next to the scene, silencing it immediately.

“Ah, so this was your first murder.” He gestured to the shared room’s other inhabitant: Vinyl Scratch, studying atop her own bed. With her massive speakers booming, not three pony-lengths from where the young Octavia lay.

The old Octavia smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Some days I considered it. If you think this is bad, you should have seen her practicing ‘wubstep.’”

Octavia’s smile grow, though she winced away from the speakers. “I was a music snob then, and I admit I never stopped being one. Even now I hear that ‘modern’ music and have little good to say. All rhythm, so much noise, made by machines instead of instruments. But that’s not all – really, that part is just my own preference. It’s that music, it’s animal. It’s noise. Those inclined feel a rush of adrenaline, but no sadness, no joy, no subtle evocation or lingering emotion. Music should be more than the very moment of its existence. We never really saw eye-to-eye on that.”

She took a long sigh, staring at the young Vinyl. Wearing her silly shades even indoors, was she really studying?

Discord shrugged and turned the sound back on. Across the room, the young Octavia began bobbing her head to the beat. She caught herself, glanced furtively over to Vinyl, then buried her head in the book.

“It’s cool that you like my jams,” Vinyl said. Sunglasses or no, she always noticed when Octavia was flustered.

“I do and I hate it,” the young Octavia snapped. Octavia mouthed the words along with her, then laughed.

Discord muted the scene again. “I’m sorry, tell me more about how you hate wubstep?”

Octavia gave a little hum. “Well it is catchy, I can’t deny that. This was the most important lesson I learned as a filly. Those silly classes? We played dull classics written before the time of Nightmare Moon. Forty minutes per day learning to read and repeat notes on paper. I was bored to tears at our school concerts, but all the adult ponies said we were so good because the music sounded like what it always sounded like. Back then I thought that was just the way things were.”

Another sigh. A simple, happy smile found her face, her eyes never leaving her old roommate.

“Music should be emotional, skillful, evocative. Vinyl taught me that it should also be fun.

One perfect note to the next. A slow, predictable piece, but one nopony in the audience had heard before. Octavia had written it herself – experimenting, practicing. No one cared to teach her composing so she borrowed books and learned it with Vinyl, though their methods of course parted from there.

Rows upon rows of five perfect lines. To her instructors, they were the beginning and the end. So wrong. They were just translation, a language, scribbled notes to erase and change. The bird does not care if you write what it is, and nor does music.

Her eyes remained closed. She knew her song by heart, after so much time. ‘Ode to the Sun,’ she had called it. In those last years before Princess Luna’s return, Celestia-worship had been fashionable in the music world.

The last note dragged. Ponies thought it was coming to an end, and a few began to clap.

She did not ‘jerk,’ the bow, but slid it gently, precisely, quickly. Her hoof pushed low on the strings, making the sound almost shrill like a violin. Faster, back and forth, but always precise and correct, turning the low notes of the cello loud, joyful, almost fierce.

In her mind, she pictured trumpets playing alongside her, lending volume and strength. Even a voice, singing the words she idly penned in the margins.

“Mortals, join the happy chorus
Which the morning sun did start:
Harmony flows all around us,
Humble love binds heart to heart!”

But that was all silly. She was to be a musician, not a composer.

Ponies bobbed their heads, tapped their hooves to the beat. Music should be fun.

The end was deafening. She swung out her bow with flourish, head down, accepting the applause as her rightful due.

And the next contestant at their high school talent show gave her a very dirty look as she trotted on stage with some magician’s tricks.

The next pony she saw was a much happier one. Vinyl had the courtesy to wait until Octavia had her precious cello back in its case before tackling her. Octavia squawked in surprise, eyes wide as she hit the floor with Vinyl above.

“That was awesome! You’ve got this in the bag for sure!”

Octavia’s gaze slipped away. “You would have won if they hadn’t disqualified you.”

“Not gonna lie, Octi, I saw that coming a mile away.” Vinyl stood to the side, letting her friend get up. “Wubstep is new, which means it’ll catch on everywhere else twice before it gets big in Canterlot.”

She gasped when Octavia righted herself, then made a noise like a steaming kettle as Octavia returned the cello to its locker.

Octavia glanced at her. Vinyl abruptly looked away and began whistling, then resumed her pitched ‘eeeee’ when Octavia turned away.

“Vinyl, may I help y–”

She interrupted with a squeak as a hard hoof slapped her flank. Octavia spun, ready with her own right hoof, then jerked to a stop as something caught her eye. Something new and purple.

Her cutie mark had come. A treble clef. Simple, unpretentious, fitting.

Octavia stared, wonder and rare excitement breaking across her dignified face. Vinyl hugged her close, nuzzling their cheeks like she had the first day they met.

“I was wondering when yours would come in! Destiny must be slow on the draw these days. Any idiot could tell from day one you’ll be a musician.”

Memories of the long evenings writing her Ode came to Octavia’s mind, then fell to the side. Of course she was meant to play music. Vinyl was right, any idiot could tell.

“Hayburgers!” Vinyl cried out, whooping loudly. “Hayburgers, hayburgers, hayburgers! My treat, all for my bestest friend in the world!”

The old Octavia gave a tight, but genuine laugh as they sped from the school. “I was her only friend. And she, mine.”

She looked over to Discord, who quickly hid a popcorn bucket behind his back. “Really? You, I understand. But she’s sunny and pleasant and enthusiastic, she could have made all the friends she wants.”

“Don’t think I don’t know that,” Octavia said wryly, but with good humor. “She latched onto me for years past all this. Music was almost all we ever talked about. I suppose we were both very passionate musicians, and she saw kinship in that.”

She looked on, smiling faintly as Vinyl stood on a table and boasted of Octavia’s cutie mark to the whole restaurant. Then she hugged Octavia, smearing the prim mare with ketchup from her cheek.

Discord softly cleared his throat. “You… think she grew close to you because you were a musician?”

Octavia glanced to him, then back to the scene. She shrugged. “Well, yes. Music was the only thing we had in common.”

Discord’s reply came many seconds later. Not spoken to her, but muttered under his breath, almost lost in the bustle of Vinyl’s antics.

“What fools your ponies be.”

Octavia won the talent show, of course. The first of many plaques and ribbons to come, but the last for a long while. Graduation arrived, and the dormitory politely showed her the door.

Vinyl left Canterlot quickly, seeking friendlier crowds in Manehatten. Octavia stayed, tried to make her mark. A poor apartment, with gold roofs looming coldly in the distance.

Endless applications and shows of talent. They were always impressed. They never made an offer. Octavia slowly learned she competed with an army of musicians, both grown in Canterlot’s cultured schools and lured from outside by its mystifying wonder.

She was better than most. But it was Canterlot, and skill placed second to pedigree. Hiring a musician was more than an employment. It could be an alliance, a commitment, an exchange or signal of favor. Anyone halfway decent could play those familiar tunes. Prestige, reputation, who-knew-who, that came a little harder.

In every letter, Vinyl begged her to come to Manehatten. Share rent, share space, let the two struggling musicians pool resources as they fight to establish themselves. Octavia admitted she couldn’t pay for anything until she found work.

Vinyl didn’t care. “Just come.”

So she went. Manehatten was loud, crowded, uncouth. Ponies mocked Octavia’s bow tie, while in Canterlot they would comment if she went without.

She saw herself an outsider, looked vaguely down upon her new home. She belonged in Canterlot, beneath the golden roofs. Perhaps an inherited lie, but still a thing for her to hold tightly in the noisy, bright long nights.

There was work. Talent spoke in Manehatten, and endless labors had honed and perfected Octavia’s. She played in jazz bands, holiday fairs, and giant orchestras.

Then she would come home, and a smile would easily grace her stern expression. She would talk music and gossip with Vinyl, going out with her to parks and coffee shops. Vinyl was so funny, so caring, so creative and warm and beautiful.

“Hey Octi, let’s get some of those horse divorce!”

“It is ‘hors d'oeuvres,’ Vinyl! Not… oh, you know, of course you do. Laugh it up.”

The first time Octavia was invited to a socialite party, Vinyl had made them look like fools. No regrets.

They even collaborated once, throwing a cello concert to a wubstep beat. Ponies loved it. Octavia thought it sounded terrible, but it was lovely to work with Vinyl for a little while.

At high places in the city, they could see Canterlot Mountain. Sometimes the rising sun caught on the golden roofs, glittering like a temple in a sacred land.

Now and then Octavia dabbled with composing her own music again. But ponies began to notice her, and she grew very busy. All until a letter came, different from the others. Sealed by wax and scented with cologne, holding a page inked by a quill instead of typewriter.

A small Canterlot band in need of a cellist. Urgency was required – contracts were at stake, including the Grand Galloping Gala itself. The cellist they’d been preparing left without notice and they were ready to gamble on an outsider.

In short, the break she needed, wanted. Deserved.

“I’m going,” she had said to Vinyl.

Vinyl, who had been plenty busy herself, yawned and grinned. “Me too, the big East Coast tour starts tomorrow. But uh, hey? If neither of us are going to be working in Manehatten let’s move somewhere… you know, cheaper. Somewhere rural where we won’t have to rent different places for practice and sleep.”

She flipped down her sunglasses, hiding her eyes. “I mean, if you want to keep living together and stuff.”

“Of course, Vinyl.”

Young Octavia touched the pure white hoof. They smiled to each other, then did so again through the window as Octavia’s train left for Canterlot.

For Discord and the dying, damned Octavia, it took only a few steps to follow. Long enough for Discord to begin whistling guiltily.

Octavia rolled her eyes. “Yes, I loved her. Happy?”

“It seems mutual.”

“P… perhaps back then,” Octavia said, stumbling over the first word. “It… didn’t go well.”

She gave a breathless chuckle and gestured to herself. “Of course it didn’t. I’m this.”

Discord gave an exaggerated shrug, throwing his arms out wide. “True, but some ponies do have terrible taste in romantic partners. I would know.”

Octavia stopped to watch him walk ahead. “What do you mean?”

Discord froze. His outstretched talons twitched, then he folded his arms back in front and kept walking.

“Never you mind, my dear.”

Octavia took a step forward. Lights and sound enveloped her, and she forgot the conversation. A wave of nostalgic sensation: perfume smells, tall white pillars, lights bright beneath golden roofs. Ponies in pressed suits and silk dresses – and there she was, in her own black suit. She belonged. A part of the pageantry, the style, the culture, the capital.

Stress? Of course there was. But she flourished in it. Old faces, so young back then – Frederic, Parish, Beauty Brass. Octavia was stern and focused. The others raced to keep up, and so all improved by leaps.

The Gala itself was… a disaster, for unrelated reasons. But all else flowed like a fairy tale before her, all Canterlot was supposed to be was hers at last. The formal dress, the stern frown, the prim discipline, all these proved charming to those around, for she seemed in many ways an ideal musician. She would perform at parties, and be guest at others. Wearing a pink silk dress she played at Fancy Pants’ charity balls – unpaid, but fabulous for the reflected reputation. Their quartet would grow, shrink, split, reform. That was the way of things.

Octavia even tried her hoof at songwriting again, directing the music to a small band. It felt good. But it also felt a bit too late to change careers, especially with how successful hers had become.

Now and then, there would be no contracts on the horizon, no work for the week or month. A breath of air after a busy season. Then she would sell her apartment, purchase an economy-class train ticket, and wait on the wooden bench with her hooves propped on her cello case. Songs and lyrics would be doodled, but only until the train brought her to the little house in Ponyville she shared with Vinyl.

Sometimes Vinyl wouldn’t be home at all, busy with her own tours and schedule. But sometimes she would, and then they were inseparable. They would write, they would ‘jam,’ as Vinyl called it. Sometimes they would flee in terror from whatever monster sought Equestria’s greatest defenders in their home town.

Including Discord. Octavia watched nonplussed as he transformed her younger self to a trombone and Vinyl into a snare drum, leaving the pair unable to speak save by musical notes.

The scene moved on.

“I’m not apologizing,” Discord said. Octavia said nothing.

That all worked out, at least. Octavia and Vinyl laid on the grassy park in the cool of the day, watching clouds go by. A white fetlock curled around a grey one.

The young Octavia felt a kiss on her cheek. She looked over to find Vinyl already turned back to the sky, her eyes hidden behind their sunglasses.

“Joking!” Vinyl called out. Their neighbors, Bon Bon and Lyra, whispered and giggled.

Hours they passed, in comfortable, happy silence. A strange thing for Octavia, always so driven. So many ideas to write down, and endless practice to hone her craft. She always felt restless and distracted when forced to remain still, but somehow… somehow that never happened with Vinyl. Even watching them as a stranger in her own memories, she felt a lightness in her breast, a quiet sense of ease and peace.

The sun was setting. Time, even here, did not stop.

She did not look to her companion. “I wonder, Discord.”

“Hm?”

“These were the best years of my life.” Her voice cracked, but she steadied it. “To play music, to be recognized and lauded. To be a part of Canterlot, Canterlot as it should be. And then to come home, to rest and live with her. Everything was so right, so good.”

She still did not look. “Can you leave me here? A ghost in my own past, among my happy memories forevermore?”

Discord chuckled, perhaps a bit more softly than his cynical norm. “You know the answer. Will you really make me be the bad guy and say it out loud?”

They watched, just for a little longer. The stars came out. Still the pair lay there, counting them, snuggling closer together.

The night grew misty, and they were lost to sight.

“If creatures could simply stop everything and live forever within their happiest moments...” Discord mused, leading her away. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Who, indeed,” Octavia sighed. But she did not delay. “So it is. Let’s… move on.”

The Ponyville train station, a few days later. Time to go. Octavia reclined easily with her legs atop her cello case, and Vinyl by her side.

The station was quiet today. Even Vinyl said nothing, leaving Octavia to think and plan in silence. Another full month ahead of her, but maybe she’d get some time to write. It had been fun, composing her own music. It felt right, fulfilling. Maybe she’d try and force herself loose for a few evenings and–

“Yo, Octi! Equestria to Octi!”

Vinyl’s voice. But it seemed a whisper at a very great distance, heard only because all else was quiet.

She looked up curiously, then startled as she saw Vinyl speak directly in her ear.

A grin spread across Vinyl’s wide muzzle. Her lips moved normally, but her voice remained a murmur. “You can sleep on the train. Come on, you don’t want to miss it.”

Octavia turned and startled again on seeing the train had arrived. How did she miss the whistle, the grinding brakes? Maybe she did fall asleep.

Vinyl said something she couldn’t hear.

“What?” Octavia asked loudly.

The response wobbled in her ears: sometimes almost normal, sometimes too far to make out. “Take care of… Octi, I’ll see… on’t forget to write, okay?”

The rest could be inferred. “Yes, of course. I’ll see you later, Vinyl.”

Octavia walked to her train, ears strained at attention. Where was the rustle, the hoofsteps as ponies got on and off? Why could the whistle barely be heard?

She boarded, and was roughly grabbed by the guards. She had walked right past one as he asked for her ticket. She saw him grumble as he punched her in, all without a sound.

Octavia rubbed her ears. Still nothing. Why was it so quiet? Why was nopony speaking? She looked around, saw their lips move, heard a faint and distant whistle as the train lurched into motion.

She heard them speak, gasped in joy, then bit down as the sound faded once more.

So lonely. So quiet. She rubbed her ears again. Tears reached her eyes, then she shook them away.

“It took me days,” the old Octavia said, looking with sorrow as her younger self peered about like a frightened animal. “To admit it, I mean. I remember the panic, the fear. The denial. It was an infection, I told myself. A change in the air pressure, or shampoo in the ear. It would go away on its own, or if worst came to worst, a doctor would cure it. But until that could happen, I was so scared. I… I just had to distract myself. To do something to pass those maddening first hours.”

The young Octavia looked furtively around, squirming on her bench. Then she hung her head low as though ashamed someone might see. With trembling limbs she opened her knapsack and hoofed out her pencil and notebook.

Then she began to write, and the trembling stopped.

The Long Defeat

Octavia was slow to seek a doctor for the building silence. Any word, any rumor of her deafness would spread like pox through Canterlot, and that would end it all. A deaf musician? What a joke! How they would laugh at her, beneath those golden roofs. One may well call for a mute singer, or a blind watchman.

Something indistinct hummed at the edge of her hearing. A pony’s voice, recognized but not understood.

She turned her head sharply. Parish Nandermane looked back to her with expectation, testing the first few strums of his harp.

“Speak up, Parish,” Octavia called out sternly.

Parish blinked and traded a glance with Beauty Brass before speaking again, still nothing more than a vague mutter. Not only Beauty, but Frederic also watched her with concern and confusion.

Octavia flushed beneath her collar. She gave a tight nod, which seemed to satisfy Parish. They all went back to their instruments, and in the far-off murmur of their chatter Octavia swore she heard her name.

“Again with this? Enough with the mumbling, Parish. I can’t stand mumblers. Use your lungs!”

It was always deflected. Always another pony’s fault. “Speak up!” “Don’t mumble!” “Out with it!”

Surely, some began to suspect. The muttering at parties, even her fellow musicians gossiping between practice. Did they hear rumor from Parish, or those damn useless doctors? How many were talking about her, watching for any sign of weakness?

Octavia did not give them any. Always stern, she grew flinty and snappish, utterly cold to the friendly social life she once enjoyed. In some ways it proved a blessing, granting more free days to withdraw and compose.

The old Octavia watched herself in that cramped little apartment. The living room where she once shared wine with colleagues became littered with papers crumpled and flat, ink smudged and spilled. One straight quill lay on her desk, next to a waste-tin of broken ones.

And there was Octavia – writing, thinking, pacing, comparing two sheets before balling one up for the fire. Usually perfectly focused and productive, but now and then collapsing upon the couch. Octavia trembled, shutting her eyes tight as they could, rubbing her ears til they turned pink without the slightest avail. Mute moans emerged and she would fall to gnawing on a pillow – unaware as her ghostly elder self lay a hoof gently upon her shoulder. She would weep, the tears would dry, and she would rise and march to the desk.

And then she would return to the public world: with fear burning her neck and narrowing her eyes. Her music did not suffer – at least, not its quality. Octavia practiced and played with precision, and the beat of the tuba was usually loud enough for her to match its rhythm.

...Usually.

One day, the young Octavia arched her nose within the practice hall. “I was playing correctly. We shouldn’t follow the tuba if the tuba is playing wrong.”

Conceal, blame, deflect. Beauty Brass – her friend and colleague of years – flushed and fled weeping into the back room.

The ghostly Octavia glared to her younger self. “That wasn’t needed. I, I just mocked her in front of a hundred others. I was so scared, and...”

She looked down, away. The vision moved on. “I never apologized. I should have.”

It wasn’t the last time. Nor the worst time. She pressed past the shouts, the snaps, the insults, always from her own throat.

“I suppose I understand now why I am condemned to Tirek. Mortals forget their own sins easily, don’t they?”

She turned a wan smile to Discord, expecting some witty reply. But he remained silent, again returned to that serious expression which looked so odd upon his face. He watched not her, but the visions.

Letters arrived, with lightning bolts and quarter-notes doodled on the outside. They sat on the messy table for days before Octavia would open then, and she would never reply. Vinyl wrote of wild tours, noisy crowds, fun with her crew. Octavia had always sent back news of Canterlot’s music and her friends – what could she say now? Neither could be heard. There was nothing to tell so she wrote nothing, save a hasty note begging out of a visit when Vinyl came through town. Octavia was too busy, alas. Such a shame.

Her band dissolved after its contract ended. Not so strange, they often did. It took over a week for a new one to come in, and that only for a few weeks more. Contacts and agencies stopped responding to her letters.

Fewer and fewer guests came to visit. Beauty Brass had been the most common, and ceased entirely after the incident. The last was Frederic Horseshoepin – the oldest of that little Gala quartet which had been her most consistent band for years. Always the patient one, always working to smooth things over between the oft-prickly musicians.

He smiled softly as she cleared a place for him to sit. He faced her as he spoke, talking loud and slow.

They knew. Of course they knew. Half of Canterlot knew, and the other half suspected. It was regrettable, unfortunate, and all those other sad and polite terms, but the band would be searching for a new cellist. No one would hire them with a deaf musician weighing them down. They’d be laughed out of Canterlot, and rightly so.

Frederic spoke longer than he should have, awkwardly trying to soften the blow. “Naturally, you may rely on me for a letter of recommendation to help you… um, start your next career. Have you considered becoming a copyist for the Canterlot Archives? I am close with Concerto’s family and they–”

Octavia threw an ink pot at him.

A dignified letter arrived two days later, informing that her services were no longer required with his band.

Work trickled, then evaporated. The money began running out. On the face of it, merely another dry spell. It was time to sell the apartment and move back into Vinyl’s house.

Instead, she cut her expenses. Food, ink, paper, nothing else. She sold her crisp black suits and fancy dresses. Even the Rarity Special, which the darling seamstress made for her back in Ponyville. It got her through an extra month.

Eat, sleep, compose. Never leaving the apartment for days at a time. The labor grew bigger, broader. Not the silly little tune she wrote in school, nor the songs she once dabbled in as a hobby. This was to be a symphony – a whole orchestra of music, with parts from the smallest flute to the largest gong. She wrote for all of them, and everything in between. She could hear them in her mind – blaring trumpets, the cello’s strings, the clink of piano, the tempering beat of the drum.

More than just passion. Desperation. She needed money.

She couldn’t.

Couldn’t go back. Couldn’t let Vinyl see her like this.

Not all of her bridges were burned. A conductor she once performed for gave her a meeting, then arranged a second one with his orchestra’s manager. It was torture, half-hearing their words and struggling to keep up, but she made do. They were impressed – Canterlot was a city in love with its stodgy old classics, but something new (and most importantly, originating from within Canterlot) could launch them all into the limelight.

Of course it couldn’t be too new, but Octavia was a Canterlot mare and all was in order. The music was dignified, flowing, and classically-styled. But there was more.

The conductor had a hard time putting it to words, but found them after the first full rehearsal. “It’s… fun!”

‘Interesting’ was the word Octavia used. It had sharp turns of mood, crashing cymbals, rolling waves of brass lead by fierce and rapid violins. Evocative, powerful. Interesting.

Fun.

But Octavia could not hear the subtle cellos, the flutes, the soft beat of the padded drums. The loud parts, yes. The rest, only in her imagination.

It wasn’t enough.

She had a balcony seat at the concert. On one side of her sat the owner of the gold-roofed theater. And on the other, unknown and unseen, sat Discord and her older self.

At first the old Octavia leaned over the railing, keenly interested in her first performance. But it came… soft. Nothing but brass. The woodwinds, the strings, all still lost to her.

“Are you joking?” she snapped. “You cure my ears to mock me, but not to hear my own music?”

Discord chuckled, only brightening under her glare. “It’s your past, Octi. Haven’t you noticed?”

He wrapped his furry lion’s paw around her, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Of course, I can hear them all just fine. Would you like to know who in those whispering crowds were really talking about you?”

“It’s not funny, damn you,” Octavia growled. “This deafness… my life! My passion! Vinyl! All of it I lost because of this infernal...”

She gasped. Her eyes lit with sudden memory, and her anger melted into a happy smile. “Of course! The deafness, the damn deafness!”

She gripped the paw, holding it in place around her as she looked to Discord. “You saw what I became, and you saw what I was before. It’s all because of the deafness! Without it I dodge Tirek forever, and I still have my music. Change that part. Please, Discord!”

Discord stroked his beard with the free talon, smirking into her gaze. “From ‘damn you’ to ‘pretty please with a cherry on top?’”

“If you’re not here to help then what are you...” Octavia ran a hoof down her face and shook her head. “No, never mind. Do you want an apology?”

“Perish the thought!” Discord boomed out, laughing. “I never apologize, so I’d be quite a silly beast to demand it from others.”

The middle talon of his claw pressed to its thumb, ready to snap. His laughter fell to a familiar, sinister smirk. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

Octavia blinked. “Take a look?”

The talon snapped.

The train to Canterlot. Octavia had, in fact, simply dozed off at the station. She presented her ticket to the guard and covered her ears when the train’s shrill whistle announced its departure.

The trip to Canterlot passed as they all did, though Octavia’s life was changing. The prim prodigy of the cello had an ever-growing reputation, a mailbox always packed with contracts, invitations, and opportunities. Conductors sent her open promises to simply outbid the competition. Prince Blueblood invited her to stay indefinitely as a guest at his estate, and even extended the offer to her secretary and manager. Octavia’s star rose ever higher – she performed solo concerts to packed audiences, dined almost a dozen times with the lesser royals and once with Princess Celestia herself.

There were no more slow seasons; she was always in demand. Her only breaks came when nobles invited her on vacations, where they chatted music and art atop magnificent airships. No time to compose, certainly none to visit Ponyville. That suited her well. Octavia was as driven and intense as always, though she wrote to and fro with Vinyl.

She retired at the end of it all, and her presence in society disappeared at once. There were other prodigies, other maestros to admire. But Octavia did not mind. Her Canterlot penthouse was pleasant enough, and when Vinyl moved in they became instantly close once more, and were content until the end of their days.

Octavia floated above that massive penthouse, looking down as they filed out with her coffin. It was closed… good.

Wasn’t this what she wanted? Her mouth opened to claim it was perfect, then closed. Why lie?

But why was it a lie? That mare in the coffin, every bit as much a stranger as the spoiled noble from before. It wasn’t her life. Why did it feel so off, so wrong?

The answer was clear. The music. Her music. Too busy to write, to focus. No need to, with whole orchestras fawning over her, their music clear and gorgeous in her ears.

Composing a whole symphony… that would have been months of work, her star would have fallen for sure. Ponies would have thought she wasn’t confident as a musician! Not simply a question of time, but reputation. Even for one symphony – the real Octavia had written ten!

A breathless laugh fled her mouth. She turned her head and twisted her flank, looking back to her cutie mark like an enamored filly.

The treble clef. She thought it meant to be a musician, to play the cello. Back then, everyone said so. Who could have doubted?

But that wasn’t how things really were. Fate, destiny, whatever made that mark… it knew, somehow.

Pieces of that life below entered her mind. Frantic scribbles squeezed between appointments. Always too busy, and as time went on she learned to live with the vague emptiness in her heart, the growing restlessness from the cello always subdued by the comfort of her life. The doubts and regrets never spoken, discarded as idle fancy, all the way to the end. Content but never satisfied, never really happy.

She took a last look down. Then away. Shallow performances of songs already written… maybe Octavia was too proud for that. Maybe there was something else.

Her old heart trembled in its breast. Her voice came out broken. “Discord? Th-thank you for showing me, but… no. I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Discord’s low scoff floated down from above. “Now, now. What did I say about apologizing?”

He descended next to her, offering a tissue hung on the edge of one claw.

“No, thank you.” Octavia swallowed, steadying herself. “It’s… hard to explain. You must think me quite mad.”

“Not mad. Eccentric? Yes.” Discord twirled his hand, turning the tissue into a dove that he let free. “All the really good composers are eccentric, you know.”

His eyebrow raised, and a low chuckle emerged. “And you, Octavia, are a composer.”

“I suppose I am.” Octavia gave a faint smile that faded slowly. “Alright, Discord. What now?”

Discord snorted. “What a stupid question. We keep going. You’ve got a soul to save.”

Octavia sighed out, closing her eyes. “It’s… not easy. What comes next. Give me a moment, first.”

“Oh, sweet Octi. I told you before, we can’t stop.”

Octavia felt pressure on her forehoof. She opened her eyes to find it in Discord’s grip, pulling her along to the city below.

“Besides: we’re running out of time.”

The Dark

The concert was a success, but an imperfect, uncertain one. Curiosity more than anything lured ponies in, filling the hall only three-quarters with discounted tickets at the gate. Some were awed by the performance, though most were merely satisfied.

The stern, prestigious critics of Canterlot spent the whole time frowning and taking notes. They could make or break Octavia, and did neither. Praise was consistent, but not effusive. Back-hoofed compliments found their way into magazines and newspapers: “Excellent, for a newcomer to the field,” and “Not badly impeded by her lack of experience.”

At the very least, Octavia had become accepted as a composer. It would do. The concert launched her patron orchestra into a small tour around Canterlot and nearby cities, and these few months proved one long moment of truth. If they failed, the orchestra would be bankrupt and no one would ever gamble on her again.

So she traveled with them. The managers were happy enough for an extra hoof. She fine-tuned the music in shared hotel rooms and helped coach the musicians. Dispensing with pride, she bought a copper ear-horn and leaned in when the violinists played. There were squabbles and arguments – musicians tended to be an acerbic bunch, and many happily counter-punched Octavia’s sharp critiques. Frustrated and salty, desperate to prove the other wrong, both parties redoubled their efforts and thus improved. Both needed the other, after all.

Like the concert itself, the tour was a mild success. Such was a good norm, and the managers rented out a tavern for their wrap party. Octavia accepted her toast with dignity, then was left utterly alone save for a few congratulations spoken loudly into her ear.

The party went on around her, reduced in her hearing to a dull and distant roar. Cellists laughing with trombone players, while the flutists played a drunken game of stacking mugs.

No one gave her a second look. She was not their peer, their friend. Merely part of the terrain, a new composer who saw them paid for next few months.

Octavia retired early to the hotel, pulled a new notebook from her suitcase, and began to write.

That was the question, of course. For those few critics and potential patrons who saw fit to ask: could she do it again? Composing an entire symphony for an entire orchestra was a Celestia-like burden even at its most mundane level: ensuring the rainbow of different instruments rang out with both harmony and distinction, lacing their sounds together like the most complex spiderweb which could ever be imagined. Then one had to take that mere mathematical intelligence and bend it to fickle emotion, pouring out one’s own soul to stir the universal consistencies within all living beings, plucking their chords of sadness, pride, or joy so they might feel the barest hint of what the composer endured to bring it to their ears. Thence, hopefully, to recommend their friends and family buy tickets for the next performance.

To be a composer was not merely to wrestle with this impossible formula, merging the absurdly complex with the silent, desperate voice of heart. But to do it again, and again.

Octavia wrote on the train to Canterlot, and the carriage to her apartment. Next morning she walked down the street to purchase bread and good root vegetables with long shelf lives, carrots and turnips. Then to the clerk’s store two doors down for paper, ink, and lamp oil. She spoke to no one but the shopkeepers, and did not leave her apartment again all the next week.

A bare trickle of money began to come in. A few orchestras licensed individual songs in her symphony, and two bands bought permission to convert them to quartets or solos. Every bit was saved, best as she could.

Months passed in monotony, at least to an outsider. Write, eat, sleep.

“Were you stupid?” Discord asked abruptly.

The old Octavia gave him a half-lidded glare.

“Okay, so here you’re like a year away from your next real payday. I get that part. But if frugality is the idea, maybe don’t stay in the most famously expensive city in Equestria?”

“Where else would I go?” Octavia grumbled.

Discord raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

Octavia turned away. “I told you before. It’s not just Canterlot, it’s ‘Canterlot.’ Golden roofs, and so on. It is where I belong.”

An envelope with a pair of sunglasses doodled on crossed her young’s self’s desk. It sat there for a few days before she swept it to the waste-tin, unopened.

“That sounds like an excuse,” Discord said.

Octavia did not answer. They watched in silence as her young self continued her labor. Write, eat. The isolation, the deafness, all this was simply her life now.

Her second symphony came – more refined than the first, with lessons learned. Mere curiosity in the music world turned to serious interest. A run from a prestigious Canterlot orchestra solidified its reputation, while a Las Pegasus one invited her to serve as conductor for their own tour. Octavia agreed, hungry for any paying work, and purchased a new black suit though it caused another fight with her landlord.

She saw herself, erect and stern on two legs with the baton in hoof. The very image of an up-and-coming composer, standing at the very center of a hundred instruments bringing her laborious vision at last to life. She needed the money, yes. But more than that, she so badly wanted to hear.

The brass rolled like a low and distant ocean. The rest was all silent.

Octavia could see tears in her own eyes. She watched herself collapse on the floor of her hotel, weeping in the darkness, remaining there for a full day until she emerged – prim and dignified, the maestro once more raising her baton before the hushed crowd.

Growing fame meant contracts with agencies, new clothes for both serious meetings and meetings disguised as parties. Her cash barely improved over the short term, while her expenses multiplied. Her third symphony was written in a new apartment not unlike where she grew up, with a toilet down the hall and shards of glass bottles in the stairwell. She spent that winter in a knit hat, crouched next to the cheaply fed stove, writing with quill held in chattering teeth.

“You didn’t send Vinyl your new address,” Discord said mildly.

No answer.

“I said–”

“I heard you,” Octavia snapped. “What do you want from me?”

“An answer,” he replied with a cheeky smirk. “Call it curiosity.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Good thing I’m only twelve-percent cat. And that’s only if lions count.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Octavia groaned. “I checked for Vinyl in the magazines, her career had skyrocketed. Giant tours through Equestria and beyond. ‘Wubstep’ and all that. We lived in different worlds, now. Different careers which could never again intersect. It was always inevitable that we would go our separate ways.”

The Third Symphony was her first true masterpiece, dwarfing those which came before, written so close to the stove the original copies smelled of smoke. The critics were overawed, the concert halls packed as stodgy aristocrats convinced each other it was embarrassing to not see The Third in performance. Octavia moved to a little townhouse with nice big windows – a minor opulence in chilly Canterlot.

“It seems the ‘separating’ was entirely on your side.”

Octavia felt a low snarl of anger build in her throat. “Why must you keep poking this?”

“I genuinely want to know why you ditched her,” Discord said, half-shrugging his mismatched arms.

“Teeth of Tirek!” Octavia swore out loud. She stomped both hooves, raised her head up to Discord’s, and brayed for all she was worth.

Discord opened his mouth, but Octavia spoke first. “How can you not know by now, you idiot? Music was our language. We shared it, lived it, breathed it. And I couldn’t share it anymore.”

She looked down and away, anger fading to exhaustion. “I couldn’t let her see me like this. What do you imagine? For us to meet and awkwardly pass notes for three dates before she mercifully moved on? ‘Octi, tell me about your music OH WAIT SORRY.’ ‘Vinyl, play that techno-jazz on your keyboard! I am deaf but I will match my head-bobbing to yours.’”

Octavia swallowed, steeled herself. She gave a firm nod, still looking down. “It’s not like she made an effort to come find me. A painless, peaceful separation, like most other childhood friends. It’s better this way, isn’t it?”

The young Octavia was now closer to death than birth. Yet she composed upon an oak desk in a warm parlor, with drawers and cabinets available for sorting. Not that she ever used them. The floors and sofa were littered with papers. Octavia worked hunched over her desk, heedless of the idyllic snowfall just outside her window.

Struck by the long silence, the old Octavia raised her head, gazing to her companion. “Isn’t it, Discord?”

The look which served as his reply was alien, almost the strangest thing which had occurred this night. His mockery, his questions, even the vague expressions of sympathy had not been terribly out of place in their moments.

Discord smiled, but it was a warm, dead thing. His lips trembled, his red eyes were full, and a thin line of silver ran down one cheek before he turned away.

A window rattled sharply as something hard knocked against it three times. The old Octavia saw white and blue in the corner of her eye.

She turned – gasped and stumbled backwards, catching herself at the very desk where her younger self toiled.

Octavia stared into the burgundy eyes of Vinyl Scratch. The mare looked right at her with one hoof pushed to the window.

“She can see me!?” Octavia stepped forward, calling out loud. “Vinyl, I… I didn’t know! I’ll come right out.”

She moved, but Vinyl’s eyes didn’t track her. Vinyl rapped on the glass again, staring at the young Octavia. Whose head remained bent and facing away, and her quill continued to write.

“Come on, Octi.” Vinyl’s words came muffled through the window. “I know you can hear me.”

Octavia sped right for the wall. With desperate trust she passed through it like a ghost, running out into the snowy streets.

“Vinyl!” she called urgently. “She’s deaf. Try the door, or break in!”

Looking to her from the side, Octavia could see Vinyl had changed in the years since they last met. Her blue hair was cut a little shorter, her frame bony and slimmed. They were both almost forty now, and Vinyl’s own lifestyle had taken its toll – late nights, frequent travel, and every sin which could be imagined.

She was beautiful.

Vinyl tapped again on the window, softer than before. Her voice emerged a pathetic mewl. “Come on. Don’t shut me out.”

Octavia ran back inside. Her younger self remained at the desk, still and silent, writing with the same focused intensity she had for all these past years.

The vision blurred. Hot tears ran down Octavia’s face as she screamed into her past self’s ear. “Turn your head! Look up, you self-pitying idiot! Vinyl’s here! She...”

Octavia hissed in her breath. Her eyes cascaded, and her face twisted as every terrible emotion at once poured through her. “Even after your callow, cold silence to her letters, she loves you! She found you!”

The mare did not react. Not just deafness, but two full decades severed the words from the moment.

Vinyl stepped away from the window. Octavia gasped and pursued, emerging just as Vinyl squared her courage to knock once again.

“Octi, please. I know something’s wrong with you. Although I’m not one to talk… heh…”

Vinyl drew back, retreating for the last time. “She’s ignoring me.”

“She’s deaf!” Octavia shrieked, unheard. “Break it open! Embrace her!”

Vinyl stared inside a moment longer, seeing nothing but the back of Octavia’s head, then slowly lowered her own.

“It’s alright,” Vinyl muttered. A wan smile found her lips as she cast her gaze over the building. “Nice place you got, here. A house right in the middle of Canterlot. A big-name composer, with all those fancy ponies eating out of your hoof. Just what you always wanted.”

She turned away.

“NO!”

Vinyl sniffed wetly, still trying valiantly to smile. “It’s fine.”

“NO IT ISN’T!”

“Maybe… maybe nothing’s wrong. She’s doing pretty good. It’s not like I could help her if she wasn’t. I never could get anything right.”

Vinyl began walking away, whispering the last words. “Not even love.”

Octavia tore back into the house. “SHE’S LEAVING! TURN YOUR HEAD! CHASE HER, YOU FOOL!”

No answer came but the scratching of the quill. Octavia threw her head back, unleashing a mournful neigh as long as her withered lungs could hold. She fell to dry coughing at the end of it, sinking to the floor, pounding it and weeping and babbling like an infant.

Many long moments passed. The crying ceased, and with one slow motion after the other, Octavia rose to a stand.

She dried her face with her fetlock, restoring dignity as best as she could. Then she closed her eyes, counted slowly to five, and spoke.

“Discord.”

“Right behind you, my dear.”

Her eyes opened, staring rigidly ahead. “You said I could only hear my own memories. But I never heard her outside.”

“You think I have no control at all?” Discord asked with mock indignation. “Please, Octi, don’t forget who’s the reason you’re here in the first place. I just… ah… hm. I suppose I thought you should know. Help you make an informed decision and all.”

Octavia gave a nod. “Thank you.”

“Pardon?”

Slow, disciplined steps turned her to face him. “Let’s change it.”

Octavia swallowed. “She loved me. She would have kept loving me, deafness or no. That look on her face… I was so blind.”

Despite the words, a touch of doubt remained in her heart. Vinyl would love her through the deafness, but what could still bind them in five or ten years? Would they not surely grow apart, perhaps to remain friends and nothing more?

“Show me,” Octavia said. “This is the last chance, isn’t it?”

Discord said nothing. Gold glowed at his horns, and his talon snapped.

The magic took them all the way back to the train station. Octavia missed her ride, instead fearfully telling Vinyl the truth and speeding with her to the doctor. Deafness was falling – cruel and silent as death.

Octavia wept in Vinyl’s embrace. Her career, her whole life, all gone. Even her friendship with Vinyl would surely end, for what did they share except music?

“I’ll show you what,” Vinyl scribbled on a candy wrapper, then kissed Octavia upon the lips.

The darkness proved not so dark with a friend, then a wife. The silence, not so quiet with Vinyl always leaving little notes around the house. Octavia would join Vinyl on her tours, learning to fix electronics and drive a bus, anything to keep herself busy and useful. They set up extra days to relax together, to wander whatever city Vinyl was performing in, rarely eating at the same restaurant twice. The money was often rocky, but they never starved, and always made their way home to rest in pastoral stillness. The well-known paths and quiet parks of Ponyville were novelties when coming from the great cities, and there was plenty of time to nap and recharge on the cool grass or in their own bed. And one day the cities were left behind for good, and two happy old mares picnicked in the same spot as when they first came to town.

There was emptiness, yes. Frustration and tantrums and longing for music now forever lost, though always Vinyl was there to kiss away her tears. Octavia jotted notes now and then on the rocking bus, but she never had time to finish or organize them. Songs and grand symphonies remained in her heart, yes. There they stayed, and they died with her when the time came.

It was a quaint Ponyville funeral. The mayor herself officiated, and it was attended by the many close friends they made living in that small village.

Octavia watched silently as they lowered her coffin to the earth, and as the last mourner finally departed.

Hot rage burst suddenly in her chest.

“And!?” she yelled. “Why not?”

Discord lounged against another of the tombstones with his eyes closed. “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”

“I could be happy,” Octavia said. “Marital bliss – a strange thought, but why not? She loved me, and I was too dull to see it. The wrong can be righted, for both of us.”

“And your music?”

“Damn the music.”

But Octavia’s voice wavered as she said it. “Composing doesn’t give me joy. It never will. It never did. I can’t even hear the music for myself. Why not give it up?”

Discord opened one eye to look at her. “Do you really want to know?”

The question took her aback. Octavia blinked downwards, tracing the fresh-packed dirt with her gaze.

Her words came out slow and uncertain. “I want to know… why this feels wrong. It’s so good. So why is that mare just as much a stranger as the others?”

“I suppose this makes it my turn to point out something you obviously should have learned by now.” Discord stood, cracking his back with a noise like a rubber duck. “Change things for the better and yes, of course they get better! You didn’t compose because things went well, you did it because they were terrible. It was your solace, your only friend, your last remaining link to precious music.”

“Other composers had spouses,” Octavia said. “And their hearing.”

“Other composers didn’t write ten full symphonies, each greater than the last.”

Octavia sighed out slowly. “So if I asked you to compromise and simply turn my head at that window...”

“You would have staggered to a fourth symphony, but no more.” Discord approached, extending a lion’s paw with his familiar smirk in place. “Let’s not get too far off topic, though. I asked you a question.”

“I’m more than half-tempted to take this and be done, stranger or no.” Octavia turned from the grave, meeting Discord’s eyes. “Damn the music, though it is so much to give up.”

“You can see the rest, and then decide.”

“What is left?” Octavia asked. There was no more bitterness in her words, merely exhaustion. “What comes next is all the same. Compose, conduct. Until the cancer takes my teeth and my strength, leaving me to rot until you two arrived.”

‘Not all the same, no.” Discord had grown close now, his paw still extended.

“Fine,” Octavia sighed. “Show me, then.”

She placed her hoof in the paw, and they were once more back at her nice Canterlot home.

Octavia didn’t keep the townhouse for long. A market crash swallowed her meager savings, then it was back to another cold apartment until Concerto’s family invited her to stay at their estate. It was prestige rather than charity, of course – her Fourth Symphony proved another triumph, and she became a handsome trophy to present at dinners.

The arrangement proved amicable enough until she fired Concerto in the middle of the Fifth’s tour. A mediocre, spoiled musician who would rather argue than improve. His replacement was better, and Octavia’s next apartment proved warm enough.

The scenery changed, year to year – studios, houses, villas. So did the sound. Murmurs became whispers, then vanished without a trace. She fought the gathering dark, writing music ever louder, ever more dynamic to tug her feeble senses, much to the consternation of her musicians.

“Our trumpets cannot play this loud,” one of them irately scribbled for her.

“Trumpets?” Octavia laughed acidly. “Your trumpets aren’t the problem. Hooves, lungs, lips, those are what fail you. Work on it!”

Each instrument and each musician was taxed to their utmost. One of the last things she heard was the trumpeter curse her out, but then his months of frustrated practice came through to so barely brush her greedy sensation…

And then even that was gone. Octavia became guest of honor at a Grand Galloping Gala, toasted and lauded without hearing one single word. Princess Celestia penned her a very nice note of greeting, but of course could not bother with more than a few words. No one ever could.

The years passed. The Sixth came. It was not so bad, now. She was used to it all. There were parties, salutes, invitations. A painfully awkward luncheon with Princess Cadence. Golden Canterlot had swung its doors wide, just as she always craved.

“Why must I see all this?” the old Octavia asked.

Her companion held his silence, and they went on. Bright Canterlot, gilded parties… in the end, they were the exception. Always she would return to lamp-lit darkness. Always, she would raise the pen and write.

The old Octavia watched. The velvet black hair of her younger self faded implacably to a dull grey specked with white. The invitations became less frequent – she was old, unpleasant, no longer very interesting except when a new symphony came. That was good, for it meant more time to write, to compose, to conduct. She had lost patience with parties.

Octavia could remember those days – it was strange, but she never felt alone. It was like the silence breathed, somehow within and around her. She could hear the music, at least in her heart. Each of the thousand, thousand notes she put to paper sang out in her mind. The flutes, the violas, the clarinets, the horns. She could hear it all so clearly as she inked the notes, then as she waved her baton before the orchestra. How it should sound… how it must.

Her fits of depression returned: deeper, darker, longer. Each work was more beautiful, more refined, more perfected with ever-growing skill and passion. Each utterly denied to her own ears.

Yet in the dark, quill to paper, she could somehow hear.

She still could. Octavia closed her eyes – yes, she still could. The soaring triumph of the Fifth, the mysterious subtly of the Sixth, the gentle Seventh like a robin’s egg held delicately in the hoof. So carefully crafted, every note. To change even one would sever the whole song.

“And so it is with life,” Octavia said. She bowed her head, for the revelation brought no comfort.

She opened her eyes to find herself in front-row seats with Discord. Her young self – now just a few years younger – conducted the performance with her back turned. Her Ninth Symphony, the last one the world had yet heard.

Perhaps Tirek would… give her five minutes to mail the Tenth to her publisher. Before he claimed her forever.

“Why must I see this?” she asked again.

Discord turned his head to her. Octavia gestured to the stage without strength or anger. “Nothing else happens. I sit in my last house and write until you appeared. There is nothing more to regret or change.”

“What makes you think those are the only options?” Discord said, as cheeky as ever.

“I’m so tired.” Octavia’s voice broke with the words. “All this and I’m right back where I started. My music, or my soul? It is impossible. And yet I cannot trade places with those strangers, those other Octavias. Their lives are not mine.”

“No one likes it when people talk during the orchestra, Octi.”

A spark of fading energy put a snarl on her face, yet her retort halted in uncertainty. On stage, her younger self swept the baton this way and that, eyes closed, desperately imagining how the music must sound. Yet the audience was standing, stomping their hooves in riotous applause. The musicians laid their instruments to the side and were glancing to each other in confusion.

“What?”

“You don’t remember?” Discord asked.

“I never really learned what happened,” Octavia confessed.

“You lost track. In your head they were on the second refrain, but they had in fact finished the last.”

The baton continued to swing like a hard-put fencer. The audience obliviously kept clapping, but after some seconds one of the musicians stood upright.

Octavia did not recognize her at the time. Beauty Brass had brown hair, not grey. Nor did Octavia ever see her again after the insult, so long ago.

But the ghostly Octavia could see. Beauty Brass had aged, just like Octavia. Others joined as she picked her way forward – Parish Nandermane, looking so odd with his dashing mane now balding. And Frederic Horseshoepin, now an old stallion.

They stopped her flailing, taking hold with gentle hooves. Octavia’s eyes flew open, beholding three aged strangers with calm smiles and tears in their eyes as they turned her around to see the applause.

It went on, on. The clapping, shouting, whistles. The young Octavia almost fainted, staggering at the sight.

The applause… Octavia could hear it. So loud in her ears, like she was really here in this front-row seat.

It took a mountain of willpower to look away from her three old friends. But she did, returning her gaze to Discord.

“You know what?” Discord began, and Octavia was too stunned to interrupt. “I’m really bad at this. It’s not my thing, what can I say? These serious life-and-death decisions, I can’t help you very much. I certainly can’t tell you which to choose.”

He twirled his beard with a claw, arching his neck to peer back at the clapping audience. A coy smile worked its way to his face.

“But between us, I think we have the brains of a reasonably intelligent pony. You’re missing something.”

“What else is there?” Octavia asked.

Discord extended his claw to her, bending one talon in preparation to snap.

“We have a little time left,” he said. “Not much, but some. Time enough, I think, for a last illusion.”

“Of what?”

“What you’re missing.”

She looked to him guardedly, and he gave her a broad grin. “My dear Octi, would you believe that after all this you have less than a tenth of a hundredth of the full story? I will show you, if you will allow me, just a brief glimpse of what you have done, and shall yet do long after this night has passed.”

“What can you possibly mean?” Octavia pressed.

Discord said nothing. He waggled his eyebrows at her, and yellow magic glowed in his claw.

Octavia sighed, yet nodded with the same motion. The talon snapped, and the concert hall fell away in a blur of color. Then came starry darkness, with the echo of Discord’s voice.

“It is high time, Octi, that you learned just what it is you gave to this world. More than music – oh my, so much more!”

The Last Illusion

Octavia fell into a sea of stars, and each was a vision. Love, loss, comfort. Ponies she didn’t know, creatures she couldn’t name. Her music flowed from each star, all nine symphonies, somehow all in harmony and building upon each other.

A nervous stallion emboldened by her music to take courage at last and propose to the mare he loved.

A child who would never walk, laying in his sickbed, losing himself happily in the joyous crash of her songs.

A griffon, distraught at the fallen culture of her homeland, inspired to become their first great artist of the modern time.

The Fifth Symphony was Octavia’s loudest and most triumphant, the last one written before she gave up trying to write what she could hear with her failing ears. The Sixth, written in the utter silence of her own mind, was perhaps when her work truly came into its own. It was subtle, almost tempting, evoking curiosity and a wistful longing for more.

Odd, to hear it with her own ears. All the more since it was tinny and wobbled, played from the brass horn of a gramophone.

Three ponies perched around it, listening with attention: Parish, Frederick, and Beauty. They wore smiles at they did so, and clapped at its end.

“That’s her!” Frederick said at the end of it all. “That’s Octavia. Who would have guessed?”

“I did,” Beauty Brass announced.

Parish gave a snort. “You boast.”

“I did!” Wine sloshed as Beauty gestured with her glass. “Not exactly, I’ll grant you. But she always seemed a bit larger than life, wouldn’t you agree? Too good of a musician to be merely a musician. I’m not surprised she moved on to bigger and better things.”

“You talk of her like a princess,” Parish teased, trading a grin with Beauty. “Remember when we played for the embassy, and they served us griffon wine after? Octi began snugging the ambassador’s feathers after one glass! Lucky for us the old bird was a good sport about it...”

They set down the needle to play the Sixth again and continued chatting, laughing about old antics when all four were together, always speaking fondly of Octavia like an old friend.

Invisible in her starry dark, Octavia gave a little smile. “I’m surprised they think fondly of me after the way I treated them. Nostalgia really does make the past seem fairer.”

“Perhaps,” Discord said evenly by her side. “But perhaps your own guilt and bitterness made you forget the good times you shared. And perhaps you did not consider they may have forgiven you, each of them knowing well the tragic terror of a musician becoming deaf. Perhaps they later recognized your little insults for what they really were, a desperate response to your own silent fear.”

And the vision passed. There were so many more.

An old mare. All else was gone, and there was nothing left for her but to die. Yet she heard the music and smiled with hope, tears shining in her eyes.

A stallion, always meaning to do good yet never with the will. The words of her re-published Ode to Joy haunted him, somehow: “Harmony flows all around us, humble love binds heart to heart!” He began volunteering at an orphanage, and would come to call many of those children his own.

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.

Octavia was shocked to see them. She watched them dance chastely as her music played, alone in some palace bedroom. They stared at each other, tears falling to the ground, smiling with joy and sorrow in equal, incalculable measure.

“Never again,” Celestia whispered.

“I’m so sorry,” Luna replied. “My foolish jealousy...”

“And my thoughtless ignorance.”

“Never again,” Luna promised.

They embraced, rocking each other, listening to the music play.

This felt too private even for spectral intrusion. Octavia turned away, yet saw the pair again in other stars. There were fights and squabbles, and fits of moodiness and depression. Always then, alone or together, they would listen to her music. Their mood would lift, their love would be reminded, and the solar sisters would come together once more.

Then those fell away.

A farmer’s family sang the lyrics added to Octavia’s First, loud and entirely off-key. It was Hearth’s Warming, and they all worked together to cook and decorate, bound in the raw happiness of being alive.

A free concert in a Canterlot park. A poor filly stood there with her parents, eyes wide and rapt upon the stage as the well-dressed musicians played the Eighth Symphony. Her hooves moved, and she seemed to imitate the motions of the cello players.

She was grey, and her hair was black. Octavia stared after her as the vision fell away, tracking the child’s star as long as she could.

Then, obnoxiously, Discord swung before her.

Octavia opened her mouth to protest. Her precious stars disappeared, replaced with the most idiotic background she could imagine. An absurd ‘living room’ if it could even be called thus, with tables on the ceiling alongside an upside-down volcano, and tea bags floating through the air. Discord himself reclined on a couch made of piano keys, idly swirling a tumbler of milk in his claw.

Complaint faded to curiosity – if this was some prank, why was her precious Seventh playing in the air its queer sounds of mournful hope? Why was Discord ignoring her?

In a fit of sudden violence, Discord hurled the glass to the wall. The motion brought another thing to sight – a framed photograph of a smiling yellow mare with a pink mane, clutched in his other claw.

“Oh, enough,” Discord chided himself. His voice was broken, and glassy tears hovered in his eyes. “No temper. You wouldn’t want me to be angry.”

He swallowed thickly, cradling the picture. “What was it, you said? ‘Keep living, you will be happy again.’ But how, my little butterfly? How?”

He hugged it, and fell to weeping. Hours, perhaps, as the symphony wound on. Then at last he released a tiny laugh.

“Well. We had a lot of fun, didn’t we? Oh my, remember when I tried to make myself normal for you?”

The sight fell away. Just a vision, after all. One of thousands or millions. Comfort to the distraught. Inspiration, not only to fellow musicians, but to all who allowed her music to touch them. Thus would her work echo into the future as good deeds compounded, and those inspired would go on to inspire…

So many stars. Octavia watched them flow around her, awestruck for she had never imagined what she had now seen. She had received compliments and letters, yes, but always thought them idle. She knew she was good. Her music soothed the agony in her deafened heart and put bread on her own table. It was all written selfishly, for herself alone.

“Yet it is no longer mine,” she said, staring about her with wonder. She saw cruel sirens with tears in their eyes, embracing each other. Creatures of all races listening in highest pleasure and deepest grief, many seeing in that music their own vistas to climb.

“Not mine to barter or sell. It is the world’s, now. It would be stealing.”

Music rang out around Octavia, loud and triumphant. Not only her own – Marezart, Clopin, Ponytovsky. Composers from ages past. Inspirations in her younger years, their influence glittering like stars in her symphony, which she now passed to those who who would come.

And then she found herself in a pear orchard, in the cool of the day. The low sun covered the land in gold, glittering off the heavy, ripening fruit. A cottage of stone and straw was there, and from its open door a lone voice hummed her imperfect First.

Octavia walked into the house. It was warmer inside, and heady with the smell of pot-roast pears simmering on the stove. A patched black-and-white pony beamed at her, with a dappled babe held on her back.

Octavia’s throat turned in a knot. She stiffened, and Peela’s smile grew soft and sad.

“Hello, Octavia.”

“How?” Octavia croaked.

“We are in a place beyond all pain,” Peela replied. “Even regret, though I recall its touch. I am so sorry, Octavia. For everything. I wish...”

“No, please.” Octavia shook her head. “I forgave you. I… forgive you. All of it, everything. With all my heart.”

The patched mare smiled through her tears. “Thank you.”

“But how?” Octavia pressed. “How do you know that tune? You died before it was written.”

Peela gave a laugh like Octavia had never heard: so light and utterly carefree, beautiful as a warm sunset.

“Oh, my sweet child! Do you think your songs do not carry all the way up here? Ah, but this is a mere vision to you, and already you fade from sight. You shall have to wait til you return to understand, and then we shall meet again.”

Octavia lunged, embracing Peela with fierce desperation as the scene began to disappear. “Mother, mother!”

Peela hugged back, just as tightly. “My poor daughter.”

And then she vanished, orchard and all.

Octavia’s heart broke, for Peela was wrong, and they were now parted forever. That happy place was not for her.

She had lost all track of time in this wonderful star ocean, and was neither saddened nor surprised when Discord appeared before her. Not a vision this time, but standing with her in the bright darkness.

Her reached out his paw, and she placed her hoof within it. They began to walk, still in each other’s grip. The stars faded to black like the darkness before dawn, and in the distance a grey light drew nearer with each step.

“Discord?” Octavia said.

“Hm?”

“I saw you there, Discord.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“Oh.”

The dark around them began turning to a grey fog. A train whistle sounded in the far distance.

“Discord?”

“Hm?”

“I wonder.” Octavia furrowed her brow, puzzling over a missing piece. “I heard so much of my music, in every place and land I could imagine. The First Symphony, the Ninth, and all in between. But I didn’t hear my Tenth at all.”

“That’s easy,” Discord said airily. “Your Tenth is sitting on your desk. No one has heard it yet. I can’t show you the future.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Octavia asked.

Discord scratched his chin, then shrugged. “Not telling. It’s always idle to look for fortune-telling, but especially for you. Your coming choice could rearrange everything.”

“And all those past choices, too,” Octavia said. She swallowed, then continued. “I suppose I understand now. The deafness, the poverty, the friends who… who I was too blind to see. Painful memories, but this is who I am.”

She breathed in a slow, steadying breath. “I never wanted to live in pain. Or to, to endure what comes next. This bleak night, sifting through the pieces of a life… but what a life! All those stars, Discord. What I’ve done and through music shall do, come-what-may to body and soul!”

Her hooves trod on wood. They were back at the foggy station where this strange journey began, and a train had just pulled in.

“The next stop is ours,” Discord said quietly.

“A moment.”

Octavia released his paw and walked over to the wooden bench. She reached beneath it, smiling as her hooves touched something with a hollow thump.

She pulled it out – the worn, leather-clad cello case of her youth. The tag with its purple ribbon, ‘Octi.’

She turned the tag around, finding a second note on the back. ‘Love ya! -V.’ Vinyl had given this to her after her old case broke.

The peace of Octavia’s smile wavered. Vinyl… why wasn’t she in the visions? Perhaps Octavia simply missed her among the thousands of stars. But it seemed such a strange omission. Perhaps she shunned Octavia’s music, and thus was not shown. That would make sense, at least.

“Oh, Vinyl,” Octavia said tenderly, her eyes lingering on the scribbled ‘V.’ “Did you go on ahead? I hope not. I pray instead you found a lover who deserves you, and live on in perfect happiness. And if you are in a place where you watch me now, I am so sorry. How cruel our fate: deaf and blind to each other’s love. But it is too late now, and if you are departed, I fear I follow not where you surely are. Farewell!”

She slung the cello on her back. It was heavy, but it was hers. At Discord’s side, she stepped onto the ethereal train and in the next moment was back in her study.

The Devil's Bargain

The large hand of the clock ticked and moved. Two minutes until midnight.

Octavia’s hooves worked at her throat in familiar motions, looping and tugging her pink bow tie into place. The dressing mirror was corroded along the edges, but did its job. Really, this whole place was falling apart – a Canterlot townhouse, her third and last, bought cheaply to avoid the commotion of apartments and guest houses. Her last years had been a long race against time, and she had won. There sat the finished Tenth, now stacked neatly upon her desk.

She nodded, satisfied with the old tie, and turned from the mirror. Damned she might be, but she would face it with dignity. Although Tirek’s demons would probably use it to choke her or some other horrid thing.

Thunder burst outside. Rare for the mountain city, rain battered at her window.

Octavia watched the drops break and run down the glass. She shuddered, realizing in a rush these were her last moments free of endless torment. Yet a tight laugh barked from her throat, for she wanted them done. Enough with this cruel anticipation, lurking in her thoughts every moment of this strange night. What came after would be out of her hooves, and there was a small bit of comfort in that.

Tick. A buzzing as the bell wound in the grandfather clock, then a soft gong as it struck the hour.

The room grew dark, just for a second. Like the lights had guttered.

Then a click from beneath her hooves, and the shriek of rusting hinges as the front door opened. Heavy hoofsteps began walking slowly down the main hall, towards the stairs to her study.

“Must we wait yet more?” Octavia grumbled, though already her collar grew chill with sweat.

Well. She could be strong a moment longer, just one more. She sat primly on a chair, could not resist a sob but quickly took back control.

A wan smile found her face. “At least you’re here, Dis...”

She turned as she spoke, but left it unfinished. Discord was nowhere to be seen.

The hooves, heavier than those of any pony, reached the top of the stairs.

Octavia gave a short, bitter sigh and sat down facing the door. She should have turned the hallway lamp on – she did not like the darkness. She did not like how Tirek’s black body emerged like a shadow itself, bringing what seemed his disembodied head into view before stepping into the light of the study.

His motions were calm and slow. He smiled politely. A chain clinked, and his red-cloaked captive followed him into the room. One slim, withered hand held the leash, and the other raised itself in greeting.

“I have returned, Miss Octavia.” His low, reedy voice took almost a friendly tone.

“So you have,” Octavia said tightly.

“Have you given thought to my offer?”

“Much.” Resolving to remain controlled and polite, she gave a nod. “Thank you for it. On consideration, I am obligated to decline.”

Octavia braced herself. Would there be a roar of anger, thin hands seizing her by the neck? A hole torn in her study floor to the fiery abyss?

But there was none of that. Tirek’s smile merely shrunk to a more measured, thoughtful look.

“You know what that means, I trust,” he said with utter calm.

“You were fairly explicit,” Octavia replied.

“Then why?” Tirek asked, his gaze probing, his expression confused. “You will scream and burn forever, little pony, and I was willing to trade it for something you can’t even hold. Is this mere pride, or do you really value your music more than your eternity?”

Octavia hesitated, having not at all been expecting to give an explanation.

“I suppose… the music is no longer mine. It is already out into the world. Others have been inspired and comforted by it, and thus become changed for the better. I will not rob them for my own sake.”

Tirek gave a thoughtful hum, stroking black nails through his beard as he cast his gaze over Octavia. His expression returned to one of smiling expectancy, with pointed eyebrows raised in good humor.

“That is quite noble,” he announced, to Octavia’s surprise. “I must say I did not take you for the type. You are even more exceptional than expected.”

Octavia had steadied herself for rage and agony; she did not expect flattery. It tugged at her pride, but iced her nerves. She gave a single nod, fully unsure where this was going.

Tirek tapped a finger on his lips, eyes down and away in some thought. A twitch came to his face, and Octavia saw rows of jagged teeth behind the smiling lips.

“You drive a hard bargain,” he said pleasantly, at last returning his eyes to her. “I really should just take you and be done with it, but I can’t help but admire you. Allow me to give you a last, last chance. A final offer.”

He extended his bony arm, one finger stretched and pointing to the stack of papers by Octavia’s side.

“Only the Tenth Sympthony. The Tenth to me, mine to destroy, in trade for your soul. It has never been played; no one has been saved or inspired by it. The world won’t miss what it hasn’t heard. You might then pass on to Paradise with a clear conscience, having saved all the good you’ve done and your soul as well.”

The chain clinked. The captive stiffened, raising its red-cloaked head.

Octavia blinked once, twice, staring to the wall. Her eyes narrowed, scanning the words for trickery even as her heart lunged for this fragile hope. All those stars, all she’d done – untouched! Free to echo through the ages, free as her soul! The loss of the Tenth would be sad, but she had half-robbed the Reaper stalling death long enough to finish it in the first place. A token payment, the last few years of a life pushed to its bitter end, in exchange for all the years forever to come.

A chuckle pushed its way from her mouth. Her heart beat fast with desperate jubilation.

“I acc–”

“Don’t do it, Octi!”

The shrill voice rang out from decades long gone, freshened to mind by the journey of this unholy night. Yet no reminder was needed. If a thousand years would further pass Octavia would never forget the voice which came from the cloaked figure. She knew it before a white hoof lurched from the cloak, struggling against the tight collar to pull down its hood before simply ripping through it with the horn to unveil shaggy blue hair and magenta eyes.

“Vinyl!” Octavia called out, but her old friend spoke over her.

“We dead can see, Octi! Your Tenth is the greatest work of all, you must not let him have it! It is the voice of all the stars, of Harmony itself! All that you’ve done has lead to it, all the good you’ve wrought only the beginning of what it shall–”

She gave a gagged cry as Tirek hauled the leash, toppling her to the ground.

Vinyl gasped raggedly and pressed on. “By its song, Queen Chrysalis shall learn to love. Tyranny and war shall be relics of the past as the music of the Tenth brings the whole world together in harmony and love. You must not give it up, no matter w–”

Red magic glowed, and a cage like for a wild dog appeared around Vinyl’s muzzle, clamping it shut tight. Tirek’s shadow crossed over her, tying it in place while a solid cloven hoof came down on her neck.

“Silly girl,” Tirek mused. His reedy voice buzzed like hornets, the conversational tone turning low and cruel.

“Get your hooves off her!” Octavia leaped to a stand. Instinct lowered her head, ready to charge.

Tirek’s eyes turned upon her, and their black orbs turned her to animal fear. Her ears flattened, her head bowed lower. An old mare against a god, and some dreadful aura caused Octavia to retreat a step with a mewling little neigh.

“Why? She is mine.”

Tirek raised his hoof as though to stomp Vinyl’s neck, his face alight with vicious glee. But it came down slowly to rest by her instead, the black eyes still fixed upon the composer.

“Vinyl,” Octavia called, her voice cracking as she stared at her old friend. Vinyl looked worn, but not so much older than when she called at the window. Had she really died so soon after?

“What happened to you?”

The magenta eyes turned to Octavia with despair. Vinyl moaned softly into her gag.

“A tragedy of the world,” Tirek pined, speaking seriously yet unable to suppress his grin. “Those lost… those abandoned, all tend to find their way to me. Poor souls whose suffering in life was mere preparation.”

Magic flared around his horn, and the dusty room disappeared into memories. But these were a roller coaster, one vision veering sharply to the next of a life in downward spiral: tours failed, bills mounted. A has-been wubstep artist, lovelorn and become indifferent to all but the next sensation. Drunkenness turning to arrests, drugs to comas, sex to diseases. Never changing or even trying to, careening to the blackest depths of numbed aesthesis until she plunged too deeply to rise again.

The room returned.

“So what!?” Octavia shrieked, her anger flaring once again. “She doesn’t deserve you. She hurt no one!”

“Except herself,” Tirek explained with smiling calm, though his voice remained low and threatening. “Your body is not all your own, for it is a gift of the earth, protected by the nauseously loving ministrations of Celestia and shared with bonds of Harmony to all ponykind. To abandon and so cruelly murder the body is no less grievous when it is yourself instead of another.”

Tirek set his hoof on the white neck. A growl came from Octavia’s throat.

“She was to be my leverage, in case you proved stubborn.” Tirek’s shadow covered Vinyl’s body. Frost formed atop her, and she began shivering in place. “And it was made very clear what would happen to her if she acted up. Wasn’t it, dear Vinyl?”

Guilt gripped Octavia’s heart, but it flamed her anger. Too late to reconsider, to change Vinyl’s fate.

But she could share it.

“Enough!” Octavia barked. “Take your bargain and shove it up your ass, you overgrown goat!”

Then, thinking that if she enraged their captor he would forget to punish Vinyl, Octavia hocked and spit on Tirek’s chest.

“No more deals,” she yelled. “Stop wasting my time!”

Rage did flash in Tirek’s eyes, their yellow pupils sparking hot red as he seemed to grow taller before her, the room growing hot and dark, a growling scream struggling to free from his chest.

Then it all stopped, falling back to normal. Tirek smiled pleasantly at her, raising an eyebrow with wry humor.

“You don’t decide that,” he said. And his grin spread wide, showing many teeth.

The chain clinked. He brought Vinyl up by the leash to hang from the collar at her neck, dangling and limp.

Her eyes found Octavia’s, and her head shook desperately.

“I will punish her,” Tirek growled through his smile. “For both her insolence, and your own. I shall wring her through the greatest torments all Tartarus can devise, stripping her over long, long decades of all memories, all self, all knowledge but unceasing agony. Until she is naught but a putrid, thoughtless maggot, whence I shall cast her to the dark and sightless pit where she will squirm forever with all the others who foolishly defied me while within my power.”

“Or...” Honey dripped cynically from his words. “I shall release her. In exchange for the Tenth.”

Vinyl kept shaking her head.

Octavia looked away.

Silence filled the room. The anger departed, leaving her hollowed and empty. She stumbled to a chair and sat down.

The answer was clear, of course. What she should, must do. If the Tenth was all Vinyl said – stars, what glory! A song fit to change the whole world for the better. How many would be saved, both from material strife and Tirek himself? Surely that’s why he was willing to yield everything else, tolerating her and Discord’s defiance, knowing all the while he had Vinyl as his trump in this bargain he pressed so hard for Octavia to accept.

Vinyl… Octavia tried to shut out the fate in store, found she could not. Vinyl would have saved her in another life, but she in turn could have saved Vinyl. Octavia always was the responsible one of the pair. She saw for herself they could have lived in happiness. Her own fault, her own blind fault…

Yes, the answer was clear.

Octavia could save Vinyl. And her old music, that was something. Alas for the future, for glories and redemptions which would now take crueller turns. And alas for Vinyl, so urgently shaking her head, trying to warn Octavia to leave her be. But Vinyl would depart for that place of no regrets, and then all would be well.

And Octavia… would go where she deserved. So it is.

“I accept,” Octavia said, and her voice broke on the last word. She wept, her face in her hoof, not daring to look at Vinyl, or at Tirek’s grin. Nails scraped on wood as he plucked the Tenth from her desk.

A balled paper, one of her discarded ideas, brushed off with Tirek’s motion. It bounced on the edge of a waste tin to land by Octavia’s lap.

She made to push it off, but it resisted as though glued, nor did it crumple against her hoof. She blinked her eyes clear, staring as the page unfolded just enough to present her with a single line, alongside a long squiggle with horns and a grin.

“How do you know Tirek will keep his word?”

Fear opened her eyes wide. She was so tired – why wouldn’t this night end? Yet she could not let this pass.

“Wait,” she said.

Tirek froze and looked to her sharply with an expression that could not possibly be fear.

Octavia’s throat was dry. She coughed and swallowed. “How do I know you’ll really let her go?”

Tirek laughed at once, perhaps having expected a true change of heart. “A contract will do. We gods are bound by our written word, and in turn may bind mortals.”

He lowered his voice, speaking more to himself than to her. “A good idea, in fact. We can’t give precious Celestia any excuse to meddle. But we will need a–”

“A witness!?”

The door, which was already open, somehow slammed open again to reveal Discord with his arms outstretched as though expecting applause.

“You again,” Tirek hissed. He stepped forward quickly, intercepting Discord as he strutted into the room. “This is none of your business.”

“Now, now, don’t be like that.” Discord patted him on the shoulder. “You need a witness, so here I am.”

Tirek poked a long nail into Discord’s chest. “What is your angle, you little backstabber?”

“Me the backstabber? I remember our last collaboration very differently.” Discord slid around the finger, gazing over to where Octavia sat with hooded eyes. “But that’s water under the bridge and all. We want the same thing, this time. Unless...”

His eyes met Tirek’s above a cagey smile. “You would rather I told things honestly?”

A low growl emerged in Tirek’s chest. He folded his arms and looked away. “What is in this for you?”

“The Tenth could spread Harmony across the whole world, and you ask why the God of Chaos would object?” Discord gave a lazy yawn. “Yet you are being a bit spoiled with your toy. Let me facilitate this so we can all move on to our next schemes.”

Tirek smirked, but quickly caught himself and scowled. “So be it. But I will be watching you.”

“Get a good look,” Discord called, walking towards the desk.

Octavia watched him approach. She didn’t rise, nor move at all.

She did speak. “So that was your reason. But enough. You win. Write the damn contract so we can be done with each other.”

Discord nodded to her and sat down. He drew a fresh sheet of paper, dunked Octavia’s last unbroken quill in ink, and wrote the following:

‘On this date of March 26, Year One-thousand eight-hundred and twenty-seven of the Divine Truce, the undersigned do agree that the music of the tenth symphony composed by Octavia Melody, begotten daughter of Peela Pear, shall henceforth be property of Tirek (Lord of Lies, et cetera) with full understanding of his intent to destroy it forever. In exchange, Tirek shall release his hold upon the soul of Vinyl Scratch and allow her to proceed without molestation to Paradise. This agreement is to be witnessed by Discord (undersigned) and to be held binding by all undersigned parties for eternity.’

Discord signed the page and passed it to Tirek, who read it and growled halfway through.

“‘Et cetera?’” he spat, but his smile quickly returned. He read it again, signed it with a flourish, and handed it back to Discord.

Octavia had again buried her face in her hooves. She signed the page without looking and shoved it away.

“The contract is sealed,” Discord announced.

A roar emerged, blasting Octavia from her chair and sending Vinyl tumbling to the wall. Triumphant, exultant, malign, Tirek seemed to swell, growing muscular and bright red. The Tenth Symphony became puny in his hands. He breathed in and blew fire upon it, laughing and laughing as the pages burst into flames.

Octavia hid her eyes. Silence fell, the sound of the flames died… and Tirek said nothing.

She looked. He yet stood there, huge and terrible. But the Tenth remained in his hands, whole and without so much as a scorch.

Tirek breathed again, covering the manuscript with smoke and consuming fire. He stopped, it burned for a second more, and then when the flames died they saw it was still undamaged.

A snort came out, from neither of them.

Tirek tightened his grip and pulled, seeking to tear the Tenth asunder. He grunted with effort, dug in his claws, twisted for all he was worth… nothing. Not so much as a folded corner.

He threw it to the ground. The pages didn’t even scatter.

Blazing black eyes turned to Octavia. She shakily stood, pressing herself to the corner, unable to think for the terrible violence promised in those eyes.

A new sound came – a muffled giggle.

Both of them turned to Discord, who rocked in place with both claws clamped over his mouth, grinning and chortling through them.

Quick as dark, Tirek was upon him. He seized the grey neck and slammed Discord to a bookshelf. Discord gave no resistance save piercing little giggles released to the air.

“WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT, YOU PATCHWORK CRETIN!?”

The voice, even not directed at her, pressed Octavia to the wall.

Discord merely stepped to the side, freeing himself without effort. His neck sloughed through the fist like water.

“Goodness me! Someone’s not happy with his purchase. Whatever is the matter?”

“Don’t play your games with me,” Tirek’s guttural, true voice shook the house.

“No games!” Discord promised. “As told in the contract, you are now owner of the tenth symphony written by Octavia Melody, begotten daughter of Peela Pear.”

Discord smirked, meeting Tirek’s gaze. “‘Begotten.’ The Octavia who is right here was adopted.”

Tirek matched him with a grin. “You think you are clever? I have a contract with no one, fool. I have purchased nothing, and we are simply where we started. You are pathetic, Discord.”

“Now!” He roared cheerfully, turning to Octavia. “A pity, that your would-be savior is an idiot. I offer you the deal afresh: Will you give me the Tenth? Or will Vinyl suffer all the pains Tartarus can devise?”

He tugged savagely on Vinyl’s chain as he spoke, and the collar turned to dust around her neck. The chain flew free and the cloak fell away, and both decayed and vanished in a blink.

Vinyl touched her neck, eyes wide as the muzzle disappeared.

Then a lion’s paw wrapped around Tirek’s shoulder, and Discord pushed their heads together like the closest of friends.

“Oh, but you do have a contract! For you see, Peela Pear gave birth to a filly she named Octavia Melody. Her time on this earth was alas quite short, the poor babe, but her name lives on with our dear composer. The first is the begotten daughter, and the clear subject of your contract. So congratulations, old chum! If she rises from the grave and writes nine symphonies, the tenth is all yours!”

Discord lowered his voice, leaning in closer. “You little backstabber.”

“So it’s revenge,” Tirek spat.

“Funnily enough, no. I’m the god of chaos, surely you don’t expect me to tell my–”

Tirek roared, louder than ever, a mad, deep noise of rage. The windows shattered, the carpet set ablaze in his fiery aura, the books around them pulped and desiccated.

He roared again, and Octavia lost all sense of touch. She was floating, then falling and screaming towards unfathomable depths.

A third roar. It grew shrill near the end, and she could see Tirek’s silhouette grasp desperately for the shadow of a laughing snake before she blacked out.

Then she opened her eyes. The study was whole and undamaged, and Tirek was nowhere to be seen.

Slowly, she crawled to a stand. And with hooves of pure white, so did Vinyl.

They stared at each other. Vinyl was worn and emaciated, with webbed lines behind her eyes. So beautiful.

Each took a step forwards.

“I’m sorry,” Octavia breathed.

“I forgave you long ago,” Vinyl replied.

Her form began to darken, taking on starry translucence like a clear night sky.

They rushed to each other and embraced, for only a few seconds more.

“So much wasted time,” Octavia whispered.

“Yet all eternity is before us.” Vinyl smiled widely and stroked a hoof along Octavia’s cheek. “It seems I’m going on ahead. I’ll wait for you!”

Then she vanished into the starlight.

Exhaustion stole over Octavia, deeper than all she felt before. She swayed in place, yet her mind still worked. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Discord?”

“Yes?”

As he spoke, Discord picked her up and began carrying her towards the sofa.

“Why did Tirek leave without my soul?”

“Oh, that.” Discord shrugged dismissively. “Isn’t it obvious? He never had your soul.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s Tirek, Octi. He lies.”

He had reached the sofa when a grey hoof rose and slapped him gently across the snout.

“Discord, you rotten old sod!” Octavia laughed despite it all, or because of it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Hm? Well, I suppose I could have told you right from the get-go. You could have died bitter and alone, never hearing your own music, never knowing how you touched the world. And Vinyl would have remained in–”

“Enough, please.” Octavia said. “But why? Why did you help me?”

“I’ll never tell,” Discord said, and he laid her gently upon the couch.

Worn exhaustion turned at once to comfortable sleepiness. Octavia felt herself beginning to drift off, and gave a quiet yawn. “Why is this, though? All that Tirek said of me was true. I was nasty, rude, and cruel.”

“Do you remember the old mare?” Discord asked. “The one you hit with the cello, and she broke a hip. It was an accident, and you were too poor to help with the bills. But you went to the hospital every day to play for her, and your music brought light to the whole ward.”

“Do you remember Concerto? You fired him, yes. He was a spoiled boy, and this was the first time he learned he wasn’t a good musician. So he rallied, he practiced til he was blue in the face, and he went on to become a mighty performer.”

“Do you remember the stars, Octavia? All the good you’ve done, so much of it, and all that is only the beginning. For your music shall cascade through the ages to comfort the weary and inspire the great.”

“Thank you,” Octavia murmured. All to her seemed floating in a pleasant haze. “You’re a good friend.”

Discord snorted. “And you really are fading away if you think that.”

Octavia smiled. She had no breath left for a laugh. Just a whisper.

“That mare. She must be so proud of you.”

Discord said nothing.

He simply sat there a long moment, watching Octavia’s closed eyes and stilled chest.

Then he wiped his tears and stood. Casting a furtive glance around, he tiptoed to where the Tenth Symphony lay, still on the ground from Tirek’s tantrum.

Discord picked it up, tucked it under his arm, and disappeared with an echoing laugh.

Epilogue: And Start a New Dream

The sound of running water emerged from Celestia’s royal bathroom, just as it did every morning.

What was not normal was that it was early evening, and Celestia stood outside. She loitered in her bedroom with two guards and a maid, all of them staring through the doorway to the unmistakable silhouette behind her bath curtain.

This wasn’t completely unheard of, either. Discord using Celestia’s shower was one of the harmless little annoyances she tolerated as part of their détente. There would be brown hair in her drain and possibly a singing soap bar or two, with all her shampoo used up if he was feeling particularly obnoxious. But nothing ever worth commenting on, and certainly not worthy of audience.

The difference, this time, was the sound emerging above the noise of the shower. Discord hummed to himself, the notes rising and falling, echoed by pattering water.

And what notes they were! They tugged the hearts of the four watchers, making them at once curious and wistful, evoking senses they could not fully explain. Like the curtain around something grand and wonderful, teasingly out of sight yet filling the soul with bright anticipation. Their minds could not help but wonder at how the song must ring out when played as it was meant to be, instead of off-key hums.

It ended when Discord turned off the water, and they quickly scattered. Yet as he strode down the hall, immodestly drying off with Celestia’s towel, she emerged from a doorway to greet him.

“What was that song, Discord?”

“Oh, just a little thing.”

Discord kept walking, and Celestia stepped to keep up.

She laughed demurely. “That is no answer! I would hear it again, if you don’t mind.”

“You will.”

But he walked on.

Celestia was as good and kind as all the stories claimed. Yet she was also a mare used to being obeyed, and so placed a touch of authority into her voice.

“I would hear it now, please.”

“Not now.”

“When?”

Discord breathed inwards, eyes to the ceiling as if in thought before settling on a shrug. “I suppose… when the world needs it, or deserves it. Whichever comes first.”

Then he vanished, and spoke of it never again until such time did come.

It was so bright. Octavia covered her eyes, though all else she could sense. The smell of roses and pears upon the warm wind. The cool grass beneath her hooves.

The white limbs around her, hugging her close.

“It takes a minute,” Vinyl said. “Just let your eyes adjust, then try again. It’s worth it, Octi. It’s so beautiful.”

Octavia squinted. Still bright, but she could see. She gazed to Vinyl, kissed her, and turned her head forward.

She saw Heaven.

And… she heard it.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading.