Sight-Reading

by Venlinelle

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, Sonata Dusk, Comedy, Equestria Girls
Length: 2225

Sonata talks to herself in the shower a month after the Battle of the Bands.

After a month of uncertainty, sulking, and reorientation, Sonata rambles her shower thoughts on everything from the sirens' new human voices, to the loss of their magic, to the Rainbooms.

This is a short, stream-of-consciousness character voice exercise. Dialogue is fun, so why not remove everything else? I'm rather pleased with it; Sonata's head, as it turns out, is a delightful place to be.

Published 2024-02-04 20:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-02-04 20:10:00 UTC

Shower Thoughts

Dear diary!

I’m not really writing in a diary—I’m just talking in the shower. Aria said the cute diary she got me was magic and would hear me from wherever I was, but I’m pretty sure she was lying. She and Dagi are the ones who keep track of human technology and stuff, but I don’t think they have magic like that. And we sure couldn’t make it.

But that’s okay! Maybe instead the diary is just waiting for me to come back and tell it everything fun I’m doing instead. It’s nice to feel wanted.

Well, kinda fun. Funish. Funesque?

It’s been a month since the whole frizzle-frazzle with the Rainbooms. Honestly, it could be a lot worse! Dagi and Ari aren’t shouting at each other as much anymore, and we’ve got soooooo much money left from the past thousand years or whatever that we haven’t had to give up much. They’re still worried, though; I can tell, ‘cause they yell at me less when they’re actually worried. I keep trying to kiss Ari to cheer her up, but she always goes all “Sonata you’re disgusting” and “I told you to wait until I’m drunk.” She’s such a clam! But I always get her eventually.

The big thing we’ve been up to is learning to sing again, though.

I know! Learning to sing! Hello?! Since when was that even a thing?

Apparently all those times humans have said they didn’t know how to sing well weren’t just them making stuff up ‘cause they sounded bad—humans actually have to learn to sing! Like it’s… riding a bike, or butchering a sailor or something.

And like, we’re not human, obvs, but our gems are broken, so we have no way to express the magic that makes us different anymore. Dagi said all our magic being stuck in the gems was something to do with the way Old Beardy’s—uh, Star Swirl’s—banishing spell interacted with the camouflage protocols of the portal. She pretended she’d thought of it, but I’m pretty sure she just asked Sunset Shimmer from the school. I saw them talking in an alley when I was buying tacos the other day.

Aw fishsticks, we’re out of shampoo again. Maybe if Dagi didn’t have so much hair… I’ll just use whatever this bottle is! They can’t be that different; they all taste pretty much the same.

Anyway, singing as a… an almost human is weird. Like, really weird.

Singing hurts now when I do it too much—Ari and Dagi say it doesn’t for them, but I can tell they’re lying. How abyssal is that? That’s like if it hurt to breathe. It’s… kinda scary, honestly. The internet says it gets easier when you do it more, and I really hope it’s right, ‘cause I keep trying to sing like I used to and it just doesn’t work anymore. A couple days after the Battle of the Bands I ended up coughing blood on Ari’s nice vest and she chased me around the apartment for an hour. I could tell she was more mad at the singing thing than me, though, so I let her catch me after a while.

We figured that out pretty quick, so there hasn’t been any more blood. Uh, any more than normal. It still really blows, though.

Apparently that means something else in this world these days that isn’t anything to do with whales? Humans are weird.

Speaking of weird, you know how when we sing it sounds like whatever we want? You know, ‘cause it’s a tetradimensional mana projection instead of sound waves and stuff? Or maybe you don’t know, since you’re a book and also in the other room. But it does!

Or it did. Apparently when humans sing and they just sound like one person talking, it’s not ‘cause they just suck, it’s ’cause that’s all they can do! And now it’s all we can do! And I hate it!

A month ago, when I sang, I could sound like any instrument I wanted! I could do three or four voice parts, or piano and strings, or a capella if I wanted to be boring, or a tuba theremin duet, or someone else’s voice, or anything! Now it’s just a capella. All the time. What is wrong with human bodies?

It’s like… Here, listen! Ah ah-ah ahhh, aha ah-ah ah aha aha ahhh.

If I did that two months ago, it would’ve had so many layers! Not as many as Dagi can do, but at least a few parts. Now it’s just… me. Like when I talk. It sounds… hollow. Ugh. Is this what it’s like to be human? I don’t like it.

I mean, obviously there are still Songs, like back in Equestria. Those always have accompaniment, and Canterlot High seems to get a looooot of them for some reason. But we can’t control those, so that’s no help.

But oh, it gets worse, diary that probs can’t hear me! ‘Cause all that’d be fine—well, not fine, but, you know, fine—if we could still sing whenever we wanted! But now people look at us when we sing in public! And not in an adoring way or a cute angry way or that fun don’t-brainwash-me-and-eat-my-husband crying way! A judgy way! Like we’re just normal humans! Like they shouldn’t be kneeling at our feet and weeping for the honor of hearing our voices! Those kelp-sucking— GAH!

Ooooh… I punched the wall and slipped; I guess you can’t see me. Sonata, you ditz.

But yeah. Humans don’t listen when we sing now. They just… watch us, like we’re being weird. Or take videos of us and laugh. Or call the police. And they definitely don’t do what we say. It’s like… It’s like…

Okay, you’re a book, right? How would you like it if one day someone started laughing at you for having words? Of course you have words! You’re a book! I… guess you don’t have words right now, ‘cause I haven’t written any, but like… you get it, right? It’d be wrong. And unfair. And annoying.

And I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I feel like I did when we got to this stupid world and figured out we couldn’t breathe underwater or fly anymore. It took us so long to get used to that. Is it gonna take that long all over again? I don’t know if I can do that.

Sigh.

I’m being a real moonfish here, I know. I don’t wanna complain so much, it just keeps happening.

It’s not all bad. For realsies! Like… Okay, so, Dagi and Ari like me. I know they do; they’re my hatchmates, or sisters I guess, and we’ve been together for over a thousand years now. We’ve seen sooooo much of this world together! They can be jerks sometimes, but like, when Ari says I’m the worst, she just means I’m the worst siren. She’d still pick me over any human. And I’d do the same for her! Or Dagi, obvs. I love them.

But they’re not… nice. I guess I don’t need to whisper; they’ll take it as a compliment. Which it is, kinda! I like when they’re mean—it’s cute, and it’s fun to make people miserable with them, even if we can’t eat the energy anymore. I just wish… they were as nice to me on the outside as they are on the inside.

But that’s what I was getting to! I’m not happy that we failed, duh, and losing our magic is something I used to have nightmares about, but, ya know, sometimes prey wins. That’s just science. And I am… a little happy about how Dagi and Ari are taking it.

…Okay fine, I’m actually super very extremely happy about it! I’d jump for joy, but I don’t wanna fall down again. Maybe I can just hop a little.

So get this. It’s a week after the Battle of the Bands—not like, right now, just in my brain—and we’ve been moping around on the floor and eating ice cream all week—I do have a brain, even though Ari says I don’t—when Dagi drags us all to the lounge and says we’re gonna sing together—though actually lobsters don’t have brains, and they’re still pretty smart, ‘cause I lost a chess game to one once—until we start sounding good again and she’s not gonna let us have any more ice cream—I still ate him though, plus the chess board; it was crunchy—until we do.

Uh… Wait, let me start over.

A week after all the stuff happened, Dagi made us start practicing singing together!

We never sing together! Okay, well, we do, all the time, but always to get something. Never for fun. And I guess this isn’t for fun exactly, but it’s all of us, together, not in public. We’ve done it every day—except for a few days where we took a break after we all hurt our throats and I ruined Ari’s vest—and it’s my favorite thing we’ve done in like three hundred years.

The other two are upset, but it’s not really at me, so we just kinda… be together. And we sing, and Dagi complains when we do stuff wrong but not much ‘cause she gets it wrong too, and Ari makes tea ‘cause she won’t let me touch the stove anymore. And then we go back to sulking on the floor. But for a couple hours, it’s… nice. It makes me hate my boring new singing voice a bit less.

You know—I am gonna whisper this part, so don’t tell anyone—it almost makes me a tiny, tiny bit jealous of the Rainbooms. I know! A siren, being jealous of humans! Actually I think a couple of them were ponies, but still!

Hold on, though, let me finish. Like I said before, we never really learned to sing—not like other creatures have to. It was just like… swimming. It was something we did together, but we didn’t really enjoy it. You don’t enjoy stuff you just have to do all the time.

But humans… They sing together because they want to. The Rainbooms, and the cute magician girl, and the girl with the weird eyes, and the girls with the piano who kept making fish-eyes at each other, and everyone else at the school just chose to sing, and to be in the competition. I guess the Rainbooms kinda had to, ‘cause they knew about our plan, but they still started the band for fun in the first place.

And that seems… I dunno, kinda amazing? For all these humans—and the pony—music is this… special, fun, awesome thing that you do with your friends, not just a boring job. And like, me and the others have always liked singing, but more for the whole mind-control-feeding thing than the music itself.

And… I feel weird saying it, but what if not having to sing all the time to get what we want… lets us be like that? Maybe now that it’s not super easy, we’ll get to spend more time together, and be as happy singing as all those humans seem to be? I mean, look at the past couple weeks! We’ve all been nicer to each other than we had in a hundred years.

…Can you keep a secret, diary?

I’m thinking about… going to talk to some of them. The Rainbooms, I mean. We never do stuff like that, but we’ve never lost our magic before either, so…

And I’d feel bad for doing something so crazy, but I did see Dagi talking with Sunset the other day, so I feel like she might feel the same way. She’d probably be mad if she knew I knew, but I know she doesn’t know I know, and now I know… she, um, knows… um… You get it.

Sigh. I think… we’re gonna have to start doing things differently now. We don’t have magic, we can’t sing like we used to, and I think we’re still immortal but I don’t even know that. I don’t know what to do—I mean, I never know what to do—but it feels like talking to some humans who already know what we are is a good start.

Oh silt, Ari’s yelling at me. I think I talked too long. I don’t wanna use up all the cold water.

I gotta go! Thank you sososo much for listening! Nobody ever listens to me for this long.

…Though maybe the others would now. Worth a try; maybe next time we finish practicing, when Ari’s making tea and can’t run away.

Bye!

Author's Note

I had a lot of fun with this. I really love the version of Sonata who's essentially Pinkie Pie but a thousand years old and with no conception of human morality.

There are a lot of angsty stories about the sirens losing their magic and adjusting to their new lives, so I decided it'd be fun to make one that was a bit more optimistic. After all, the Dazzlings hardly seem to resent Sunset when they meet again in Backstage Pass, and Pinkie lists them among her friends in a later short; besides, Sonata doesn't seem the type to dwell on the past. Or, admittedly, much at all.

Please comment if you enjoyed the story!