The paper was rigid, stiff, held upright on the narrow little pedestal with black ink filling its surface. Lines and dots and mysterious sigils all etched into a near-incomprehensible but beautiful pattern across it, all to try and convey the idea of music to the reader. A practiced eye could read it, a practiced hoof could play it, but it was the rare and beautiful few who could hear the music in it without a chord being played.
Octavia stared at the sheet music, her eyes half-lidded as they followed the score, listening to the music play in her head. Her hooves twitched subconsciously to the movements they would have had to follow, but there was no cello in them, no bow to sound the strings, and not a noise in the study.
The mare lay on her back, her long mane spread around her head, shining softly in the sunlight filtering through the tall window. There was a half-empty bottle of red wine on the table just beyond her head, an empty glass beside it with the bowl still faintly crimson from the last draught taken only moments before. Sheets of music were scattered over the carpeted floor like snow, some showing the crinkling and rips from a careless or disinterested step. Books of it were overturned, spread open or left in small piles all around; littering the centre table, the couch, and even currently being used by Octavia herself on the floor as a pillow.
Her eyes flicked away from the sheet on the stand, only to alight on another piece that lay half-upright in the corner of the room. Octavia scanned the opening movement impassively, a few chords sounding against her mind's ear but fell silent as she sighed and laid back, eyes closed, hooves crossing over her face.
Music filled her life, every note of it a joy, combining together and building a harmony that could leave her as breathless and smiling as a filly at play. It was more than a part of her, and yet here in her home surrounded by music, she felt somehow trapped; the staves scrawled across a thousand sheets of paper were like prison bars, keeping her in place. Every note had to be just so, exactly this tone, exactly this long, played to exactly this rhythm. It was hard to explain to others who hadn't a love of music, and trying to describe it as having some other pony making you walk by placing your hooves just so, one step at a time, just didn't get the message across.
Octavia stretched out one hoof, scrabbling blindly through a pile of papers at her side. She drew one up and held it over her head to peer at it from one squinting eye. Her favourite piece, or on any other day it would have been; third movement of the Autumn Sonata - rolling waves of notes moving slowly, melancholy, mourning the fading of the sun and the summer it had brought. Midway through, the depth and tempo increased; notes fluttering and moving, dancing like leaves across the ground to the will of the wind sweeping them away before the coming snow.
The music in her head died abruptly as she tossed the paper away, the rustle of it settling back to the carpet breaking the real silence of the room. She pushed herself upright onto one elbow then turned a bit to lean her back against the edge of the sofa. She could have probably been laying on it instead of the floor, but its soft blue cushions were currently occupied with the one real love of her life. Octavia leaned her head back until it settled against the smooth, dark surface, one hoof rising to stroke lovingly against the lacquer.
The double-bass was taller than she was when standing upright to play it; its body a rich gleaming brown pattered with whorls and knots in the grain. The latter would have been seen as hopeless imperfections in any other instrument, but to Octavia they were more familiar than a lover's face. The bass was old, and nicked, and chipped, and bumped, and scratched, but there was no other instrument in all Equestria she would rather play. No others sounded anything near as good, or could so easily find and hold the music she bent it to.
Her wine glass was full and the bottle now empty, a few streaks of pale crimson drifting down from the green glass walls. Octavia sipped at the rich red, tasting the subtle flavours dancing with the bitter tannins, her tongue curling against the corner of her lips to catch a stray droplet. She let her head fall back again, thumping it lightly against the body of the bass. It boomed softly with the impact, strings vibrating in sympathy to fill the cellist's ears, reaching into her heart and finding a rhythm there, stirring it. Dark eyes opened slowly, an echo of something blooming in her mind's ear.
With some care she pushed herself upright, her robe whispering softly against her flanks as it settled. The wood of her double-bass was cool and smooth to the touch, a little thrill moving up her spine as she caressed the strings again. She drew the battered, beautiful instrument off the sofa and set it upright in the centre of the study and tried the strings lightly to test their harmony out of habit moreso than needing to tune; the bass always held its pitch. She took up the bow from where she had leaned it against the music stand, then touched it to the strings.
The bass hummed, deep and thoughtful, chords mingling into a smooth harmony deep as the ocean. Her eyes followed the music on the stand, hooves moving with grace, moving with style, moving mechanically and without desire. She stopped, the strings left humming in a discord. The mare stared at the sheet music for a long time with no expression on her face, then leaned the bass against one shoulder and took up her wineglass. She took a deep draught, thought for a moment more, set her wineglass down carefully then lifted one leg and kicked the hated music stand over. It clattered to the floor, papers falling about it, adding little to the mess the study already was.
She was just about to return the bass to the sofa, but halted halfway to it when a hoof bumped against the instrument. She stood and stared fixedly forward, seeing nothing, ears twitching as the bass' strings fell in and out of harmony. Octavia bumped it a second time, and the instrument rewarded her with a harmony of a different pitch. A long minute passed, eyes shifting back and forth like she was reading something in the thin air before her. Then, all at once, the bass was upright along with the pony, the bow set against the strings, opposite hoof set and poised on the neck above. She listened to the silence in the way musicians had, trying to find the right place…
The bow moved slowly, fibers rubbing against the metal strings, the vibration sounding in the bass's body and curling up though its neck to her shoulder. She tried again, frowning, her movements hesitant as she tried different angles, different strings, different chords; trying to find that right place but finding nothing.
She paused once more, frowning. Her eyes turned to the wine glass with her hoof following shortly after. Drained, the glass smashed against the floor opposite the room, the sound sharp enough to cut.
The bow moved, and music filled the study. It was slow and deep, the old bass reverberating with the strength of it. It was her favourite piece, or would have been had it been any other day. Melancholy, mourning the fading sun and the summer it had brought, growing cold and distant before finding a small piece of joy in the dance of leaves across the earth. It was complex and beautiful and had to be played just so…
Octavia broke the harmony just there. She didn't stop playing, nor did she miss a note; it was a carefully planned misstep. The bass thrummed as the strings sang, the autumn melody turning into something else; drifting, moving like a loose thread caught in a buffeting wind. It shifted to and fro, quickening, slowing, curling, trying to find something to connect with. She didn't stop, nor did she try to find her way back to the sonata; instead, she let the music move with its own will, wandering, rising, falling, and twisting. An outside listener might have only heard a confusing racket, but She could hear something in the chaos of it, kept trying to find her way towards it.
And then she had it. All at once the bass was pulsing with a new harmony, her hoof drifting up and down the neck, the bow catching the strings just so. It was slow and heavy, something familiar yet so very strange, something so very new. She found her body moving with the sound, her hip bumping against the double-bass's proud body, coaxing the strings into a second harmony just beneath hers.
Now Octavia was flying. It wasn't the ponderous rhythm of the Autumn Sonata but something else entirely; a sound that reached right into her soul and found the music inside. There was no pattern to follow, no tempo or structure or prison-bar staves to keep it reined in.
Most only listen to the guitar or the lyre; the fast, bright little notes that come so fast and sweet with their melody, but it is like missing the forest for the trees; a guitar is only the raindrop.
The bass is the storm itself.
She played the storm, played it loud and fast and hard; the bow drawing forth thunder from the metal and wood and casting it into the sky to dare any gods there to answer. The intonations drove away everything but itself, her body vibrating to the pulse of her heart, to the pulse of her music. The storm of sound rolled, curling into and over itself, climbing high into the sky to fill the world with the depths of its fervour. Lightning crazed across the roiling clouds, bringing with it a thrumming echo of aural force that rattled the bottle on the table. The bow was forgotten, the pony plucking at the strings now with the tip of a hoof with a cadence snare-drum fast, chords drawing together and smashing apart in a chaos of creation.
Octavia played the rain sheeting down; first as a downpour then a torrent then a deluge. The music found a bird sailing through the madness, a tiny point of calm buffeted by the winds. The notes pattered onto its back then off and away with the raindrops in a cascade, falling to the pounding, echoing ocean below. The bow had returned, scraping, pushing hard, Octavia's entire world rocking and heaving with the flow of salt water pummeled by typhoon winds. The resounding crash of waves on the rocks of a stony shore finished the job of sending the wine bottle tumbling to the floor with a smash that was lost in the music.
The grey mare didn't hear it, nor would she have cared. The song was in her bones to the marrow, her mane sticking to her face from the sweat that curled down her body. Breaths came hot and ragged from the widest smile she has ever known, her dark eyes squeezed shut in the ecstasy of creation.
The music found its way back to the bird, following it higher and higher; climbing above the storm into the calm, beautiful blue depths of the sky. The bow sounded the strings, drawing each wing beat out, each curl of feather showing in the way the notes bent under her hooves. Higher and higher she flew, above the world itself and into the heavens above.
There, she played the sun and the moon in their dance, she played the turning of the innumerable glittering stars and the patterns of their twinkling. Her music followed the slow, endless journey of a comet as it arched through the void, a trail of glittering diamond in its wake. She found the deepest parts of the Universe and played the heavy, reverberating song at its heart.
Octavia played her life itself and found it deep, and loud, and beautiful.
