Octavia fell into a sea of stars, and each was a vision. Love, loss, comfort. Ponies she didn’t know, creatures she couldn’t name. Her music flowed from each star, all nine symphonies, somehow all in harmony and building upon each other.
A nervous stallion emboldened by her music to take courage at last and propose to the mare he loved.
A child who would never walk, laying in his sickbed, losing himself happily in the joyous crash of her songs.
A griffon, distraught at the fallen culture of her homeland, inspired to become their first great artist of the modern time.
The Fifth Symphony was Octavia’s loudest and most triumphant, the last one written before she gave up trying to write what she could hear with her failing ears. The Sixth, written in the utter silence of her own mind, was perhaps when her work truly came into its own. It was subtle, almost tempting, evoking curiosity and a wistful longing for more.
Odd, to hear it with her own ears. All the more since it was tinny and wobbled, played from the brass horn of a gramophone.
Three ponies perched around it, listening with attention: Parish, Frederick, and Beauty. They wore smiles at they did so, and clapped at its end.
“That’s her!” Frederick said at the end of it all. “That’s Octavia. Who would have guessed?”
“I did,” Beauty Brass announced.
Parish gave a snort. “You boast.”
“I did!” Wine sloshed as Beauty gestured with her glass. “Not exactly, I’ll grant you. But she always seemed a bit larger than life, wouldn’t you agree? Too good of a musician to be merely a musician. I’m not surprised she moved on to bigger and better things.”
“You talk of her like a princess,” Parish teased, trading a grin with Beauty. “Remember when we played for the embassy, and they served us griffon wine after? Octi began snugging the ambassador’s feathers after one glass! Lucky for us the old bird was a good sport about it...”
They set down the needle to play the Sixth again and continued chatting, laughing about old antics when all four were together, always speaking fondly of Octavia like an old friend.
Invisible in her starry dark, Octavia gave a little smile. “I’m surprised they think fondly of me after the way I treated them. Nostalgia really does make the past seem fairer.”
“Perhaps,” Discord said evenly by her side. “But perhaps your own guilt and bitterness made you forget the good times you shared. And perhaps you did not consider they may have forgiven you, each of them knowing well the tragic terror of a musician becoming deaf. Perhaps they later recognized your little insults for what they really were, a desperate response to your own silent fear.”
And the vision passed. There were so many more.
An old mare. All else was gone, and there was nothing left for her but to die. Yet she heard the music and smiled with hope, tears shining in her eyes.
A stallion, always meaning to do good yet never with the will. The words of her re-published Ode to Joy haunted him, somehow: “Harmony flows all around us, humble love binds heart to heart!” He began volunteering at an orphanage, and would come to call many of those children his own.
Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.
Octavia was shocked to see them. She watched them dance chastely as her music played, alone in some palace bedroom. They stared at each other, tears falling to the ground, smiling with joy and sorrow in equal, incalculable measure.
“Never again,” Celestia whispered.
“I’m so sorry,” Luna replied. “My foolish jealousy...”
“And my thoughtless ignorance.”
“Never again,” Luna promised.
They embraced, rocking each other, listening to the music play.
This felt too private even for spectral intrusion. Octavia turned away, yet saw the pair again in other stars. There were fights and squabbles, and fits of moodiness and depression. Always then, alone or together, they would listen to her music. Their mood would lift, their love would be reminded, and the solar sisters would come together once more.
Then those fell away.
A farmer’s family sang the lyrics added to Octavia’s First, loud and entirely off-key. It was Hearth’s Warming, and they all worked together to cook and decorate, bound in the raw happiness of being alive.
A free concert in a Canterlot park. A poor filly stood there with her parents, eyes wide and rapt upon the stage as the well-dressed musicians played the Eighth Symphony. Her hooves moved, and she seemed to imitate the motions of the cello players.
She was grey, and her hair was black. Octavia stared after her as the vision fell away, tracking the child’s star as long as she could.
Then, obnoxiously, Discord swung before her.
Octavia opened her mouth to protest. Her precious stars disappeared, replaced with the most idiotic background she could imagine. An absurd ‘living room’ if it could even be called thus, with tables on the ceiling alongside an upside-down volcano, and tea bags floating through the air. Discord himself reclined on a couch made of piano keys, idly swirling a tumbler of milk in his claw.
Complaint faded to curiosity – if this was some prank, why was her precious Seventh playing in the air its queer sounds of mournful hope? Why was Discord ignoring her?
In a fit of sudden violence, Discord hurled the glass to the wall. The motion brought another thing to sight – a framed photograph of a smiling yellow mare with a pink mane, clutched in his other claw.
“Oh, enough,” Discord chided himself. His voice was broken, and glassy tears hovered in his eyes. “No temper. You wouldn’t want me to be angry.”
He swallowed thickly, cradling the picture. “What was it, you said? ‘Keep living, you will be happy again.’ But how, my little butterfly? How?”
He hugged it, and fell to weeping. Hours, perhaps, as the symphony wound on. Then at last he released a tiny laugh.
“Well. We had a lot of fun, didn’t we? Oh my, remember when I tried to make myself normal for you?”
The sight fell away. Just a vision, after all. One of thousands or millions. Comfort to the distraught. Inspiration, not only to fellow musicians, but to all who allowed her music to touch them. Thus would her work echo into the future as good deeds compounded, and those inspired would go on to inspire…
So many stars. Octavia watched them flow around her, awestruck for she had never imagined what she had now seen. She had received compliments and letters, yes, but always thought them idle. She knew she was good. Her music soothed the agony in her deafened heart and put bread on her own table. It was all written selfishly, for herself alone.
“Yet it is no longer mine,” she said, staring about her with wonder. She saw cruel sirens with tears in their eyes, embracing each other. Creatures of all races listening in highest pleasure and deepest grief, many seeing in that music their own vistas to climb.
“Not mine to barter or sell. It is the world’s, now. It would be stealing.”
Music rang out around Octavia, loud and triumphant. Not only her own – Marezart, Clopin, Ponytovsky. Composers from ages past. Inspirations in her younger years, their influence glittering like stars in her symphony, which she now passed to those who who would come.
And then she found herself in a pear orchard, in the cool of the day. The low sun covered the land in gold, glittering off the heavy, ripening fruit. A cottage of stone and straw was there, and from its open door a lone voice hummed her imperfect First.
Octavia walked into the house. It was warmer inside, and heady with the smell of pot-roast pears simmering on the stove. A patched black-and-white pony beamed at her, with a dappled babe held on her back.
Octavia’s throat turned in a knot. She stiffened, and Peela’s smile grew soft and sad.
“Hello, Octavia.”
“How?” Octavia croaked.
“We are in a place beyond all pain,” Peela replied. “Even regret, though I recall its touch. I am so sorry, Octavia. For everything. I wish...”
“No, please.” Octavia shook her head. “I forgave you. I… forgive you. All of it, everything. With all my heart.”
The patched mare smiled through her tears. “Thank you.”
“But how?” Octavia pressed. “How do you know that tune? You died before it was written.”
Peela gave a laugh like Octavia had never heard: so light and utterly carefree, beautiful as a warm sunset.
“Oh, my sweet child! Do you think your songs do not carry all the way up here? Ah, but this is a mere vision to you, and already you fade from sight. You shall have to wait til you return to understand, and then we shall meet again.”
Octavia lunged, embracing Peela with fierce desperation as the scene began to disappear. “Mother, mother!”
Peela hugged back, just as tightly. “My poor daughter.”
And then she vanished, orchard and all.
Octavia’s heart broke, for Peela was wrong, and they were now parted forever. That happy place was not for her.
She had lost all track of time in this wonderful star ocean, and was neither saddened nor surprised when Discord appeared before her. Not a vision this time, but standing with her in the bright darkness.
Her reached out his paw, and she placed her hoof within it. They began to walk, still in each other’s grip. The stars faded to black like the darkness before dawn, and in the distance a grey light drew nearer with each step.
“Discord?” Octavia said.
“Hm?”
“I saw you there, Discord.”
“You must be mistaken.”
“Oh.”
The dark around them began turning to a grey fog. A train whistle sounded in the far distance.
“Discord?”
“Hm?”
“I wonder.” Octavia furrowed her brow, puzzling over a missing piece. “I heard so much of my music, in every place and land I could imagine. The First Symphony, the Ninth, and all in between. But I didn’t hear my Tenth at all.”
“That’s easy,” Discord said airily. “Your Tenth is sitting on your desk. No one has heard it yet. I can’t show you the future.”
“Can’t, or won’t?” Octavia asked.
Discord scratched his chin, then shrugged. “Not telling. It’s always idle to look for fortune-telling, but especially for you. Your coming choice could rearrange everything.”
“And all those past choices, too,” Octavia said. She swallowed, then continued. “I suppose I understand now. The deafness, the poverty, the friends who… who I was too blind to see. Painful memories, but this is who I am.”
She breathed in a slow, steadying breath. “I never wanted to live in pain. Or to, to endure what comes next. This bleak night, sifting through the pieces of a life… but what a life! All those stars, Discord. What I’ve done and through music shall do, come-what-may to body and soul!”
Her hooves trod on wood. They were back at the foggy station where this strange journey began, and a train had just pulled in.
“The next stop is ours,” Discord said quietly.
“A moment.”
Octavia released his paw and walked over to the wooden bench. She reached beneath it, smiling as her hooves touched something with a hollow thump.
She pulled it out – the worn, leather-clad cello case of her youth. The tag with its purple ribbon, ‘Octi.’
She turned the tag around, finding a second note on the back. ‘Love ya! -V.’ Vinyl had given this to her after her old case broke.
The peace of Octavia’s smile wavered. Vinyl… why wasn’t she in the visions? Perhaps Octavia simply missed her among the thousands of stars. But it seemed such a strange omission. Perhaps she shunned Octavia’s music, and thus was not shown. That would make sense, at least.
“Oh, Vinyl,” Octavia said tenderly, her eyes lingering on the scribbled ‘V.’ “Did you go on ahead? I hope not. I pray instead you found a lover who deserves you, and live on in perfect happiness. And if you are in a place where you watch me now, I am so sorry. How cruel our fate: deaf and blind to each other’s love. But it is too late now, and if you are departed, I fear I follow not where you surely are. Farewell!”
She slung the cello on her back. It was heavy, but it was hers. At Discord’s side, she stepped onto the ethereal train and in the next moment was back in her study.