Music of Time

Every. Damn. Morning.

                Once again, I had to squint my eyes as I sat on the edge of the bed. The sun shone brightly through the window, right into my face. I had tried to stand, only to remember I was in a hospital with at least one or two broken ribs. Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I glanced around the room. I saw my bags on the table in front of me. Man, this is gonna hurt like hell. I stood up and tried to walk over to the table, grinding my teeth in pain the whole time.

“...Grh, this is so stupid…” I muttered to myself.

                After an intense amount of pain, I made it to the table and grabbed the papers. I then started the equally painful process of getting back to the bed. Apparently, I was being pretty loud in the process because Celestia, who had been talking to a nurse outside, had come in to see what was going on.

“What do you think you’re doing?” She asked, shock evident in her voice.

“Grh, walking. Or at least, ah, the very painful equivalent.” I answered with as much sarcasm I could spare. Celestia just shook her head and levitated me back into bed. It took me a moment to realize that I was floating. However, and when I did it wasn’t quietly.

“Holy crap! What the hell?!” I shouted.

“Be still! It’s hard to levitate someone who’s struggling like you are.” Celestia chastised. Once she sat down. I tried to catch my breath from the amount of pain I just experienced. “There. Now, what were you thinking, trying to walk?”

“Hey, I told you I would do it yesterday.” I defended.

“Yes, but I thought you meant when somepony was there to help you if you fell!”

“Well, so did I, but hey, at least we discovered something today.”

“And what is that?”

“It hurts like hell to walk after getting impaled and comatose for two weeks.” Celestia just gave me a deadpan look in return. I took this opportunity to open the bags I had grabbed. I opened the one with my laptop in it to make sure it wasn’t broken. It looked okay, but I’d have to check it out internally later. I then grabbed my bag of papers and started to sift through the important stuff and non-important stuff.

“Junk, pointless paperwork, blank sheet music, sheet music, sheet music.” I said to myself.

“What is all that?” Celestia asked.

“Mainly sheet music. It has twelve songs I was considering in here, and six songs the students were learning. I wonder how they’ve been.” The smile faded from my face. “I’m so sorry…”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I left them. I was their teacher, and I left them.”

“Now, you know that wasn’t your fault.” She said sadly, but sternly.

“Yes it was! I should’ve seen the other car coming. I was too busy doing the one thing my uncle told me never to do. I was texting and driving. It was all because I just HAD to tell Daniel not to screw up a damn pizza!” She was shocked. I think it was mainly because I had yelled, or maybe because I had cursed at her.

“I’m sorry. I just got a little, angry with myself. Can we just, change the subject onto a happier topic?” I asked sadly.

“Y-yes. Let’s talk about, uh, this music.” She stammered out.

“What about it?” I said while trying to calm myself.

“Well, what are these pieces, and why did you want your students to play these particular ones?” She asked.

“Well, this one here,” I grabbed the one on top. “Is called'Ignition' by Todd Stalter. It’s a fast and energetic piece. It kind simulates a spark. That spark is the thing that starts something huge. The spark that could start the creation of the greatest creation in history.”

“From how highly you speak of it, I wish I could hear it.” She said.

“Maybe someday. If you ponies can play all the instruments needed, a band could perform it. If not, I could arrange it for different instruments. Anyway let me show you the rest.”

“And this last one is calledBirdland, by Joe Zawinul, however this piece is an arrangement of that for a big band. The arrangement itself is done by Michael Sweeney, but I changed it up a bit because I didn’t like the way it sounded.”

“Those sound like amazing songs.” She said, smiling.

“They really are. I may just teach people here to play these instruments. Now wouldn’t that be a hell of a challenge?” I said with a laugh.

“That it would. Well Zachary, I’m sorry but I have to cut this meeting off here. I need to perform my duties. I bid you farewell.” She said with a smile.

“Until next time.” I said with a salute. She just laughed and walked off. I looked around the room and saw a stack of blank sheet music. “I wonder if I could…”

“Zachary? I brought you dinner.” Celestia opened the curtain to see me writing on blank sheet music with my laptop open and playing music. “What are you doing?”

“Sh! One second.” I leaned my head in close to the speakers as the song reached the end. A smile came to my face as I rushed to write the last of the notes down. “There! That’s all the parts. Sorry, what’s up?”

“I brought you dinner.” She repeated.

“Dinner?” I looked out the window to see the night sky twinkle with stars. “Oh. I lost track of time. Thank you though.” I said as I took the tray from her.

“What are you doing? More importantly, what’s that?” She pointed to my laptop.

“A computer. I’ll explain later. Basically, it keeps documents stored along with music and pictures. I was using it to listen to a song so I could write it out.”

“And you did that all by listening to it?” She asked.

“Well, yeah. My friend is way better at it than me. I can do it enough to write out the music, but he could do what I did in, uh, about twelve hours, in three.”

“What song is it?” She asked.

“It’s called ‘Molly On The Shore’ by Percy Grainger.”

“You have quite the affinity towards classical music.” She said with a laugh.

“I did teach it, to be fair. Do you guys have any other music genres perchance?” I asked.

“We have what Earth pony farmers are calling ‘Country Music’, Marches, Waltzes, and some others. Why?” She asked.

“Just curious. I think I’ll be able to play my sax in a couple of days, if the doctor is correct.”

“I look forward to it.”

With that, began the longest for days of my life. The next days would crawl by, filled with anticipation and excitement, but it would totally be worth it.