I don’t remember falling asleep but I sure as hell remember waking up. From my pocket my phone started screaming at me. It took a considerable amount of effort to retrieve it and unlock the screen before sticking it to my face and grunting.

“Uh, is this Nicholas?” My blood froze and suddenly I was fully awake.

“Bailey?” I asked.

“Hey, yeah, it’s me,” she replied.

“H-Hey,” I said quietly.

“So… How are you?”

“Seriously? How the fuck do you think I am?” I almost shouted, my shock melting into rage.

“What’s that suppose-“

“I got an interesting phone call from a concerned friend this morning informing me that you’ve got a new guy.”

“I… Oh…” A silence fell.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“How is he your business?”

“You told me you were coming back!” I was screaming so hard that my vision was clouding. “You told me you just needed a break! Now after two months of absolutely no contact someone else has to tell me you've moved on because you won't own up to leaving me and you have the nerve to ask me how it's my business?! YOU SAID YOU STILL LOVED ME!” Her muttered reply was drowned out by the ringing in my ears.

“Did you hear me?” She said after a few seconds. “I said I have to go, my shift is starting.”

“Of course it is,” I replied. She said nothing. After a few seconds, she hung up. I sighed and sunk back into my recliner, I don’t even remember standing up.

“What the buck is going on?” I glanced up at Vinyl.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” was all I could think to say. My whole body was shaking. My vision swam. My stomach churned. I stood and ran to the bathroom. I heaved at the toilet but nothing came up. After a bit Vinyl showed up with a bag of ice.

"Just try and breathe," she said holding it to my head. I slid my back to the wall and leaned against it.

"Thanks," I muttered.

For the second time that night, I drifted off without realizing it. Oddly enough I woke up in my own bed and judging by the pounding in my head, it hadn't really been sleep. More like my mind and body shutting down for maintenance. I groaned as I sat up and swung my feet to the floor. The room was dark save for a few stray rays of what I guessed was morning sunlight. As I got up and headed for the door the pounding got worse. It wasn’t until I opened said door that I realized the pounding was bass coming from the living area. Somehow knowing that made my head hurt less.

I stumbled down the short hall, fighting the brightness of the sun in full now, and found that Vinyl had finally set up her music equipment. She stood behind a half circle of wires, soundboards, and speakers. A few records floated above her, held in her magic, while she half scowled at a laptop sitting next to a turn table. She hadn't noticed me yet so I made for the kitchen in search of caffeine and pain pills. I'd just started setting up the coffeemaker when the music died.

"Morning sunshine." Vinyl called.

"It's nearly one in the afternoon," I grunted taking note of the clock on the coffeemaker.

"Same thing," she replied. I could almost feel her hesitate for a breath before she continued. "How are you holding up?"

"Ask me in half an hour when I'm awake." She laughed. "So did you, like, carry me to my room last night?"

"Nah, after a while I helped you up and just kept you walking in the right direction."

"Ah, well, thanks," I said turning to face her, "You haven't really seen me at my best."

"I hope not," she laughed again. "It seems like I meet most of my friends at their lowest, so in a weird way I almost expected this."

"That's a story begging to be told but I really don't have the mind to pry it out. Where did you get a laptop? And how do you even know how to use it?"

"You don't just jump headfirst into a new world dude. I did a good bit of research before I came. It got here this morning, figuring it out as I go."

"Just like that huh?" It made sense, and I felt a bit dumb for assuming... whatever I had assumed before. Come to think of it, I hadn't really given it too much thought.

Halfway around the globe and my world was still tied to her wrist like a balloon.

"Music is what I do," Vinyl said. "Give me two hours and I'll blow your mind."

"Kick it then," I said. Vinyl grinned and the beat filled our apartment again. I fixed my first cup of coffee, popped two pain pills and sunk into my recliner.

Vinyl started simple, playing around with a few different rhythms and sound styles before settling into a slower thudding beat. I closed my eyes. I'm not sure if the beat matched my pulse at first or it was the other way around, but the bass unraveled me. A few soft notes melted into the rhythm, disjointed at first but they soon collided into a slow melody. At first it almost felt sad, but as the harmonies began to fall into place a feeling of peace washed over me.

For the first time in recent memory, my mind just... stopped. It felt like I was breathing for the first time in years. Vinyl kept the pace for a bit before fading the bass away leaving only the slow, walking melody. The walking trickled away and stopped for a few seconds before breaking out in a run, the pace doubled. The bass returned more intense than before, my heart kept time. It was just me and the music now, running. Running for our lives, running towards our future, running just to run. Liberation. The music built more, breaking into a sprint with me on its heels. It just kept building faster and faster, practically dragging me, my heart pounding out the tempo against my ribs.

Then it stopped.

I was falling. The rapid pace had given way to the same slow melody as before and I was drowning in it. My pulse was starting to slow and I realized I had been holding my breath since the fall. The melody began to dissipate into the disjointed notes of its beginning.

"That was amazing," I thought aloud.

"That's what I aim for." Vinyl replied. "And it only took twenty minutes."

"Seriously? It felt more like five."

"You really got lost in that one didn't you?"

"Hopelessly," I said, reaching for my laptop which had been left on the coffee table. "Can you do it again?" By way of answering she started the beat up again, and I began to write.

Music is one of those things that is easy to define but hard to understand. Anyone can throw together a generic beat and a simple melody and call it music, and it would be, but only by definition. Truly good music, regardless of genre, does not come from the mind but from the soul. Passion, joy, peace, rage, sorrow, pride, terror, they give music weight. Music composed by the soul embodies the soul that composed it, and as such cannot simply be listened to. Close your eyes and you can hear the voice of the artist, open your heart and you feel the cry of theirs.

The same applies to any artistic medium. Writing is, on the surface, the easiest way to convey a feeling as long as it's simple. Anything deeper than that and it becomes a challenge. Words have lost their weight. They are such a pivotal part of day to day life that they've been watered down. What was once a window to the mind is now taken for granted.

Take the word "restoration." Ask a group of people what it means and you'll probably get an answer like "it means to restore something." No weight. According to Webster, restoration is defined as follows: the action of returning something to a former owner, place, or condition; or the return of a hereditary monarch to a throne, a head of state to government, or a regime to power. For me, the last one is the best, the weight of a returning a regime to power held in a single word.

That's not to say every word has to carry the weight of the world. In most cases, it’s the combination of certain words in just the right way that gets to us. Add to the formula the multitude of words at an artist’s disposal and the possibilities are endless.

Just as with music, the best words are written with the soul; the artist pouring his heart out on a page. Such passion is easy to label and define, but so hard to understand.

I sighed as I read and reread the brief passage I had typed.

"You know," I half shouted over the music. Vinyl pulled the volume down a bit and I was able to talk normally, "I think writing is the hardest form of art to present."

"How do you mean?" Vinyl responded.

"The scope of interpreting music and visual art is nearly universal. They can ignore barriers like language that writing can't. Sure, words can be translated but, more often than not, a direct translation can't carry the original intent. The only way past it is to rewrite the piece and try to capture the original as best you can. Beyond that, writers have to wrestle with structure. I don't know how it works for you but I have all these different things bouncing around inside my skull and I have to practically bleed them onto a page and hope the words line up. It's so frustrating when you have this thing in your head and you want so badly for others to understand it but you just can't adequately explain it. What do you write when you want to explain how hurt you are and broken isn't enough?"

"You should be writing this down," I could hear the smirk in her voice.

"That's the other thing, I can't tell you how many times I've had a thought or idea and by the time I got it to the page it was something else entirely and I can't even remember where I started. It's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands."

Vinyl seemed to think on this for a moment. Her horn glowed and some settings shifted on her various boards. The beat became distorted, as if underwater, and the melody shifted to strings.

"I met Octavia just over three years ago." She said suddenly. I closed my laptop. "We were both budding musicians at the time, although I already had a bit of a name for myself. Tavi's parents had been trying to force her to take over the family business. They had a bank I think, something to do with money, but her passion was music and it showed when she played." Vinyl smiled softly. Her eyes grew a bit distant as she continued. "I’ve never seen an earth pony move the way she does when she plays. Some of the things she does shouldn’t even be possible, like gravity itself bends so that it can hear her play. I got her on her first gig. It was small time, but she caught the eye of talent and started getting calls. Her parents still ride her though, despite the fact that she makes better than they do now."

"Where do you fit in all of that?" I asked. Her eyes glazed over.

"I’m still figuring that out. Our audiences are so different. A high class cellist shacking up with a disk jockey," she gave a bitter snort. "What a scandal for those blue blooded snobs. We ignored it at first. We were happy, that’s all that mattered, but when the jobs stopped coming... Happy doesn’t pay the rent." The music faded and Vinyl sighed. "That mare deserves so much more than I'll ever be able to give her there. So I came here. With any luck we can start over."

"Why isn't she with you then?"

"She wanted to make sure I had something to come back to if this doesn’t work out."

"You couldn't have said that last night?"

"Words are hard for me," she sighed. "It's like you said, putting thoughts into words, they never come out right. Music is what I understand. There’s just something about being behind the turn tables that makes pouring my heart out the easiest thing in the world, ya’ know?"

"Next time just say so." I smiled.

"Shut up," she smiled back.

“I may steal that bit about gravity bending to hear her music. That was really good.”

“Go for it,” she said and dove back into her music.