The days following the slapping incident were tense ones.

Rainbow Dash refused to speak to Octavia (which she was quite alright with, as she hadn’t liked the blue pegasus much to begin with) and opted instead to snicker behind hands with Vinyl across the lunchroom. Twilight was mildly miffed at Rainbow’s display of cattiness, having only given Octavia a simple smug smile of approval once she learnt of the occurrence. The others hadn’t much cared, giving the coffee colored pony the same amount of attention and friendliness as before. Octavia tried to be as anti-social as possible, making up excuse after excuse to leave lunch early or to not be around the five ponies who were so desperately trying to be her friend.

Today was no different. She sat in the corner of the lunch table, ignoring hateful looks from Rainbow Dash and not even daring to think about Vinyl Scratch. Twilight was struggling to engage her in some weak conversation about music theory (in which she was terribly misguided on her information) and Pinkie eyed her healthy lunch in disgust, chewing almost angrily at a piece of white and yellow taffy. Applejack was going on and on about something her family had done that weekend, Fluttershy had opted to spend lunch with her not-boyfriend Discord, and Rarity was (as always) preening into the mirror in the lid of her bedazzled lunchbox. Octavia picked at a piece of limp, overcooked clover and sighed, sealing it neatly back into its bag and closing up her lunchbox. She turned to Twilight with the most pleasant expression she could muster and stood.

“I’m sorry, I forgot I have to be in early for orchestra practice. Since I moved, there’s been a delay in my lessons and I need to get caught up,” she said politely, forcing a smile. Twilight paused in the middle of her sentence and beamed up at Octavia.

“Of course! I know how important your studies can be,” she replied. “We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Ah, yes,” Octavia said lightly. “Tomorrow.”

“Oh, and don’t take what Dash is doing too hard. She’ll get over it, she always does,” Twilight continued. Pinkie nodded, her mouth bulging with taffy.

“Yah!” She muffled out, then swallowed with some difficulty, chasing it down with some cherry flavored sodapop. “I’ll talk to her, get things straightened out. Even she knows what a meanie butt Scratch can be sometimes!”

“That’s perfectly alright, don’t trouble yourself on my account,” Octavia said quickly, grabbing her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And with that she left, her skirt whisking about her legs as she went, trying to leave before Dash or Vinyl got the strange idea to follow her or something of the like. The orchestra practice room was right next to the lunchroom, so it was a short walk, thankfully. She’d put her cello in her assigned locker earlier that morning, so there wasn’t any fuss as she turned the dial and pulled the latch open. She lugged out the large instrument and carried it to an empty chair. There was no one else in the room, since it was lunch, and the ponies at the public school cared far less about their academics than the ones at her private school did.

She sat down primly and opened the case, setting her cello up with care. Even if she was forced to practice until her fingers bled and excel at concerts until she choked, this was still her special talent. Her one thing that she was most good at out of anypony else. And that was something that she coveted dearly.

The first drag across the strings was always the most chilling, as the instrument warmed to her touch and quivered by nanometers through the music. It sent warmth to her heart and reassurance to everywhere else. The second note was quickly followed by the third and fourth-fifth, and soon a solo symphony was dribbling from her fingertips like perfect streams of clear water, sad and liquid and beautiful. She allowed herself to be lost in the music, wrapping around her like a blanket and blocking out everything else: her mother, Vinyl Scratch, the school, her entire life. All of it disappeared and all she focused on was the beauty she made at her fingertips.

She played for who knows how long. Minutes. Hours. Days? It all melded together into one stretch of existence, beautiful and languid and fluid and—

A sharp click startled her and broke her concentration, causing a sour note to eek its way out of the cello strings. Octavia blinked as she struggled to return from her trance like state, looking around to see what had caused her to jump. Her gaze landed upon the door to the music room, which had been opened and shut, making the click upon its closure. A familiar looking white unicorn with blue hair was standing there, arms crossed and looking at her with scrutiny. Octavia drew herself up straighter than straight, adopting the equally familiar expression of arrogance.

“To what do I owe such an interruption?” She clipped out, annoyed at having to stop what she was doing to deal with somepony who wasn’t worth her time. Vinyl just shrugged, the movement combined with crossed arms causing her shirt to ride and slip in a rather randy way. Octavia tore her eyes away from the unicorn, choosing to stare at the door beside her instead.

“Oh, not much, just curious to see who was that good at the cello, since all the cellists here suck shit,” the white unicorn replied airily, not moving her gaze from the brown pony. “I didn’t know you were so good at cello.”

Octavia sniffed and flicked her bangs back from her face with a small, triumphant grin.

“But of course I am, it’s only my destiny,” she boasted, empowered by the compliment. “Though, I doubt you know how it feels to be good at an actual instrument, word around here is that your destiny is confined within the boundaries of…’technology’.”

Vinyl stared at her in shock for a moment, sending another surge of confidence through Octavia. Finally, something she could hold high, high, high above this free, wild pony. A moment of silence hung in the music room, unbroken due to walls that diminished sounds from outside.

“…I’m sorry, I thought I just heard you say that I didn’t know how to play a fucking instrument,” Vinyl said dangerously, standing upright and tightening her arms around her torso. Octavia just shrugged as lightly as Vinyl had done earlier, mockingly. The white unicorn took a step toward her, a dark look on her face. “That’s what you think then?”

No answer. Octavia wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of it, naturally. Maybe if she kept her mouth shut, Vinyl would just go away. She wasn’t surprised when the filly took a few more steps in her direction, her posture challenging.

“You think that just because you can play your silly little cello better than most that that is something to boast about?” She continued, her voice slowly rising in volume. “Just because it’s your fucking destiny to play the measly cello? Out of all the fucking instruments to be good at and you’re good at the one everypony and anypony can learn how to play well?”

Octavia shifted slightly, beginning to get uncomfortable.

“Why, of course. The cello is a very complex instrument, and to get it to really sing, one almost needs a dest—“

Vinyl cut her off harshly.

“The cello is one of the simplest instruments out there! That’s why fifth year foals choose to play it when they start music! That’s why there are so many fucking cello players out there, Octavia. You’re nothing fucking special with your fucking talent, so quit acting like it sets you up on some precious pedestal in the gates of heaven!”

Octavia opened her mouth to protest, but was cut short again by the white filly’s now shouting rant.

“And you even have the fucking nerve to assume that I can’t play an instrument if it isn’t keys on a computer! If you haven’t fucking noticed, my cutie mark is a fucking eighth note, and those are fucking everywhere in everything, digital or classical! I’ve played three different instruments in school alone since I was in first grade! I’ve got more instruments than you can imagine sitting in my room tuned to perfection and played on a daily basis because I, as any other musically inclined pony should, respect the blending of eras as one sound! My instruments were never forced on me. How many fucking concerts have you actually willingly gone to, you fucking momma’s filly?”

Octavia stood suddenly, holding her cello tightly by the neck.

“Every concert is willing! I love my music! You have no idea what it’s like to be a musician, you’re just a fake who presses keys and plucks strings that sound nice enough to make it into your obnoxious rackets!” She yelled. “I was never forced into anything!”

Octavia was good at lying. Especially to herself.

“You were playing the Paganini Caprice 24,” Vinyl spat. “My least favorite piece. And you’re playing it with the flair of a tutored pony. It’s a boastful piece without any true feeling behind it. I would know, I fucking taught myself how to play it because at one point, I felt just like you-like I had to learn! But unlike you, my parents never put me through anything I didn’t want to go through.”

“You can’t say anything about how I am or how I play! You don’t know me!” Octavia shot back, her ideas for comebacks starting to fail as she reached for anything she could to throw back at the unicorn.

“You don’t know me either, bitch! I can play the goddamn hurdy gurdy, you have no fucking place to tell me anything, you one trick pony!” Vinyl screamed, her horn glowing slightly from the sudden burst of rage. Octavia took a tiny step back, and the blue haired pony turned on her heel and stomped back to the door. Before she left, she glanced over her shoulder.

“Just because you don’t have what everyone else does, doesn’t mean you can make nasty assumptions about ponies who could learn to be your fucking friends,” she said acidly, and was gone with a swish and a slam. Octavia stood there for a moment, stunned, her grip slackening on her cello. She hated it. She hated that Vinyl was right. She hated herself. She didn’t want to assume. She didn’t want to fail. But she had. Of course she wasn’t better than anypony else. Her cello wasn’t going to get her anywhere in this day and age. It was common. It was easy. It was useless.

She’d been born with a useless destiny.

The thought hit her very suddenly, and her fingers went limp against the strings. Her cello, the one thing she had always counted on to keep her sane and important to at least someday, fell to the hard linoleum with a thud and a twang, her heart falling with it.

Author's Note

May I just point out that I don’t really care if Tavi’s grey or not. She’s always, ALWAYS looked slightly brown to me. So brown in my fiction she shall stay, until I see it fit to fix.