Chapter 5 - After the Ball
Octavia rose at her normal time the next morning and carried out her daily rituals trying to ignore what she knew was coming. All too soon she was forced to catch her train for Canterlot, she was tempted to ‘accidentally’ miss it, but that would only delay her fate. She resigned herself to a bad day, she supposed that the stallion, this Open Doors, couldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do but she imagined a day of turning down his suggestions would quickly become aggravating. Still her sacrifice had raised fifty thousand bits for those who lost their homes when the twin tyrants attacked, she had to look on the bright side, it would only be a single day.
To her surprise the address on the card Open had given her led to a large timber works in one of the outer districts of Canterlot ringing the base of the mountain itself. She gave the card to one of the many ponies working there and was led to a modest flat positioned over the yard.
The door to the flat opened to reveal a well groomed stallion who Octavia hardly recognised as Open Doors, “Hi,” he said with a grin, “You’re early, nice to see you again.”
“You look different to last night, Mr Doors,” said Octavia in surprise.
“Yeah, I was a bit of a mess then,” said the stallion rubbing his head self-consciously. “I’d been working all day and didn’t have time to clean up, I was exhausted, I was lucky not to fall asleep.” He gestured for her to enter which she did cautiously, he shut the door behind him cutting off all the sound from the works below.
“What is it that you do Mr Door?”
“Please call me Open. I run a chain of builders mostly. Granddad started it all but Dad wanted me to know how the business worked so he had me learn the trade from the ground up like he did. With the recent rebuilding work business has been booming but most of our staff have been shifted to the cities damaged by the twin’s attacks. A local school needed some emergency work done yesterday and I was the only one here qualified to do it so I didn’t have time to make myself presentable before going to the party.”
Octavia flushed as Open told his story, “I am afraid I have judged your book by its cover, Mr Do.. I mean Open. I was afraid I thought you were going to be an obnoxious slob. Please accept my apology.”
The stallion was silent for a moment, “I guess I would have done the same in your situation, so apology accepted.”
“Thank you. Now what can I do for you ‘master’?”
“Well I thought that you could maybe play for me?” he looked a little bashful, “I’ve heard great things about your work, it would be an honour. I play a little cello myself and I’m fair at the piano I wondered if you could critique my performance later?”
Octavia smiled, “I would be delighted. Just don’t expect me to pull my punches just because you spent so much money on me.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. However, first I thought we could enjoy my other purchase at the auction together.” He walked over to the far side of the flat and carefully took out an old recording. “It’s a recording of the funeral of Herdi. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No I don’t mind at all, in fact I think this is going to be a very enjoyable day.”
A few days later to her surprise Octavia found Bluenote waiting outside of the sweet shop when she left for her morning run.
“Bluenote, this is a rather early start for you is it not? Have you come to join me on my jog?” she asked.
The blue mare yawned and looked at her blearily. “Not today. How did your day as being a ‘slave’ go?”
“It went wonderfully, Open turned out to be the perfect gentlestallion and a musician of significant skill as well. We have agreed to remain in correspondence.”
Bluenote grinned, “Octy and Open sitting in a tree..” she began to chant.
“It is not like that,” said Octavia quickly her face colouring, “But I believe we could be good friends.”
“Good. Now you know you agreed to do my chores for a day? Are you free today?”
“I have nothing on which I cannot reschedule. I can come to your house when I have finished my run. What would you want me to do?”
“I made a list,” Bluenote handed over a scroll.
Octavia opened it and began to read, “This does not look too bad.” Then she allowed the scroll to fully unroll it reached the ground and kept going, her face and ears dropped, “Oh.”
“You ok to do it?” asked Bluenote.
“Yes,” Octavia took a deep breath, “I did agree to this.”
“Good I’ll see you later, I’m back off to bed now.”
Thus Octavia found her day taken up with work on and around Bluenote’s house. She painted the fence, cut the grass, cleaned the chimney, fixed a leaky tap, cleaned the kitchen and polished her friend’s tuba. By the time the sun was sinking in the west Octavia was dirty and exhausted but had finished every last thing on the list.
“I’m done,” announced the grey mare.
“Actually there’s one thing you’ve missed,” called Bluenote from the kitchen.
Octavia scanned through the list with a groan, “No, I’ve ticked off everything.”
“It’s on the back.”
Octavia flipped the note over to reveal a last instruction, ‘Have a picnic with Bluenote’ it read. “I want to make sure I get my money’s worth out of you,” noted Bluenote with a smile as she came out of the kitchen with a large hamper balanced on her back.
The two of them set out a blanket in Bluenote’s back garden and the blue mare busied herself laying out the food while Octavia rested her aching muscles watching the moon rise and the stars come out. She liked to greet the rising of the sun with music but considered silence a better tribute to the rising of the moon. “Did you make all of this yourself,” she asked once the moon was up as she watched the pile of dishes around her grow.
“Nope, all of this is from Ram Sea.”
“The chef from the ball?” asked Octavia in surprise.
“Yep. After it was all over I went to see him in his kitchen. He’s not a bad as they say, as long as you wear earplugs. Anyway I offered to make a seventeen thousand bit donation to charity and in exchange he offered to make me up a hamper of goodies. Including his famous mushroom and walnut Pâté.”
She took out a knife and spread a generous amount of the brown substance on a slice of toast.
Bluenote bit into the pâté. “Worth every minute of the wait,” she groaned.
Aloe glanced up as the door to the spa was opened and her regular customer Ms Jane Doe aka Fluttershy entered. She had no idea why the pink maned pegasus tried to hid her identity but she had learned to respect her customer’s privacy.
“Ah, Mz Doe. Good to see you again. How can I help you today.”
“Oh, I’d like the full works please, if that’s ok,” mumbled Fluttershy. She felt like rewarding herself for the donation she had gotten from Blueblood last week. She had originally fault against that instinct, she knew it was wrong and she should use her money to help others but then Rarities words had come to her ‘you have to feel good about yourself so you can make others feel good about themselves’ and going to the spa made her feel so very good about herself.
“I’m afraid ve still have some of our facilities under repair. You vould have to share the hot tub with another customer.”
“Oh, who would that be?” Fluttershy asked timidly.
“Mz Rarity,” Aloe cringed slightly expecting the pegasus to disappear in a cloud of dust again.
For a moment it did look like Fluttershy would bolt but then she steeled herself and stood firm, “That should be alright.”
“Good,” smiled Aloe, “Let me get you a towel.”
Rarity was surprised and somewhat pleased that Fluttershy joined her in the hot tub, she had not seen the pegasus since the ball and had hoped to bump into her here.
“Darling, I haven’t seen you all week, how are you?”
“I’m fine thank you,” replied Fluttershy.
“Good. You haven't returned that dress yet, have you decided to keep it?”
“I think so, it does look very good on me doesn’t it?” she sounded a little unsure.
“It looks amazing, it’s one of my masterpieces but even the best dress can only highlight the existing looks of its wearer not create true beauty,” Fluttershy blushed at the compliment, “Oh and how are all your animals after their little expedition.”
“It look some time to get them all home but Del Colt and his brother were a big help. When I got there I found Cat Scratch asleep on the floor, my animals had tied the poor dear up. At least they gave her a pillow and blanket to make her comfortable. Oh, I know Angel meant well but he can be so single minded sometimes, I gave him such a telling off but he’d had a stressful day so I made sure to make him his favourite treat as well. Do you think I was too hard on him?”
Rarity gave a small smile, “I think you know best how to treat your son, er pet, assistant? Whatever he is to you.”
“Oh, he’s my bestest friend ever,” replied Fluttershy with a smile, “How is the orphanage doing?”
“I was there last weekend, it is doing wonderfully thanks to Blueblood. I helped the foals write him a thank you card, they’re very creative.”
“That’s nice. Have you thought about supporting a different charity now?”
“Not really, the orphan’s always need some help or another, even now. How is the animal shelter doing?”
“It’s got enough money for this month. I’m mostly helping to stop the destruction of the east Equestrian wetlands now, they have so many rare animals in them. Did you know..”
Rarity cut of Fluttershy before she would get into her spiel. “What happens to the shelter after than month?”
“Well, I or somepony else will have to raise more money for it.”
“Have you thought of working on that problem by itself for a while, make sure the shelter has a stable income?” Rarity sounded somewhat exasperated.
“We’ll I don’t really have the time to do that, there are so many other causes that need help.”
“But if you focused on one thing like I do with the orphanage you could make a real lasting change.”
“And you could try to help something other than that one orphanage,” cried Fluttershy.
The two mares stared daggers at each other from the opposite sides of the bath. Then Fluttershy’s eyes softened, “Rarity, can we agree to disagree on this?”
Rarity smiled, “I think that might be for the best darling. I would like to be your friend but I think our opinions are too divided on this issue. We can agree to talk about everything except our charity work?”
“I think I’d like that,” agreed Fluttershy.
“Good, you can tell me how your animals are doing and I can tell you about Sweetie Bell being chosen for the school play.”
“That sounds perfect,” replied Fluttershy with a smile as she relaxed back into the warm water
“Fluttershy darling, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
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3567909
This is supposed to be a vegetarian version made mostly out of mushroom.
However, depending on exact social mores in Equestria I would not be surprised if Bluenote had tried meat at some point even if most ponies don't eat it.
There are few animals that are entirely incapable of eating meat even if not specially adapted for it (no reason to let all that protein some other animal carelessly left lying about go to waste).
3567724>>3567884>>3567932
Yep, I've drawn quite a bit of inspiration from previous stories when making this. It's my standard position for both fan fiction and GMing, I'm not good at creating stuff from whole cloth but I'm fair at taking things from other places and stiching them together.
3568049
The Cadenceverse has been shared for quite a while, this is my second story in it and Planatarian has written some as well (although he seems to have dropped out of existence).
Hopefully GrassandClouds2 will get around to writing his story about Fluttershy's father visiting soon so we can get a bit more background on her. I'm sure Octy can empathise a bit although Fluttershy seems to be a bit more, I want to be just like Dad rather than wanting to be the best (although to her the differentiation is very small).
Interesting about the title, does it matter that's she's not the presumptive heir? She is the third child, from what I'd seen only her older sister would automatically be 'Lady' Melody?
On a similar note Fluttershy's dads title suggests he's a member of the C-verse equivalent of the Privy council. Which suggests Cadence uses a Privy, they make their golems really life like don't they
This story ends well. It even brings up emergency-response versus continual funding. They are both important. Indeed, it makes sense to continually fund a charity which does only disaster-relief because disasters happen continuously. We could also get into overhead and earmarks:
Some donors noticed that charities, unable to get their acts together, spend over half their money on overhead. These donors started funding charities which spend less than 10% on overhead. That is just as bad:
Spending so little on overhead means that accounting breaks down, thus allowing unscrupulous ponies to steal the money. Good charities spend 10% to 20% of their income on overhead.
Earmarking money is a terrible idea because it destroys the flexibility for money to go whither one needs it. It could lead to a situation like thus:
A tsunami leaves millions of ponies homeless. A charity gets millions of bits for shelters. It can only use half of the bits before it repaired or replaced all of the homes. The ponies soon discover that the tsunami damaged the waterworks. An outbreak of dysentery occurs. The charity finds itself with more than enough bits to fix the waterworks, thus saving the lives of thousands of ponies, but cannot do so because these bits are for shelters only. The problem of earmarks connects with the problem of overhead because many donors earmark money to assure that it goes to helping ponies —— ¡not overhead! Earmarking is a terrible idea.
3569446 You're quite right - I haven't been paying as much attention to published works as I might lately. In any event, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I love your portrayal of Blueblood - he's just as vain as in canon, but he makes fun of himself about it, and is a genuinely decent stallion underneath.
According to Wikipedia, the daughters of a Duke are all entitled to the courtesy title of Lady, followed by their first name. So Octavia can be addressed as Lady Octavia, or Lady Octavia Philharmonica. Melody, the eldest, is also Lady Melody or Lady Melody Philharmonica.
If the Duke or Duchess has another title - for example, if the Duchess also holds the title of Countess of Marebai - then Melody can style herself as Lady Melody Philharmonica, Countess of Marebai (again, as a courtesy). If Melody married and had foals, her eldest child could use some other title derived from the Duke or Duchess, if there are any left. Octavia and Viola don't have that right, though.
I like titles, even if I don't actually know everything I need to know about them.
3570687 Running and funding charities is always complicated, yeah. Overhead is sort of important, but it's far from the most important thing. Really, the only measure that matters is "good accomplished per bit donated". If the way to achieve the most good is to pay a huge salary to a CEO who would otherwise be making his fortune in private business, then you do that. As for earmarking, I've heard stories of earthquake victims being given literal mansions because they couldn't legally spend the money any other way. Either you trust that the charity knows what to do with the money... or you don't give them your money.
3571186
> “If the way to achieve the most good is to pay a huge salary to a CEO who would otherwise be making his fortune in private business, then you do that.”
You are right about that:
Bill Gates has more money than he can spend. He started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He tries to run the charity himself. As far as I can tell, most of the money has been conned away. He should look at the top 1 thousand charities, find the best run 1, and offer the leader a salary of 1 million dollars annually for running the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Carte blanche. Of course, Bill Gates should audit the charity annually for making certain that the new head has not decided to become a billionaire by embezzling, but other than that, stay out of the way of the new CEO.
The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation can go from one of the largest but least effective charities in the world to 1 of the largest and most effective charities in the world.
Good ending, here. I like the twist with Octavia's 'master'. Also, glad Bluenote got her food. I hate it when the comedic sociopathy is overplayed.
3569880>>3570793
In an earlier version Rarity was an orphan herself who had been adopted by her 'on screen' parents and Sweetie was her parents biological daughter although Rarity still considered her her true sister.
As for Angel / Fluttershy my original idea was for Angel to be a rescue pet who Fluttershy rescued from a cruel unicorn (one of the few individuals who Fluttershy could truly hate), hence his fear of magic but I toned it down to better fit the setting. I'm keeping the idea of Angel's mother being badly injured and Fluttershy putting her down for a possible future story where one of the foals pets gets ill and has to be euthanized and Fluttershy helping the foal come to terms with this.
Plus I am interested in a Angel / Cat story at some point.
3643471
I'm glad I'm working in an alternative universe then, I'm really not keen on the name Noi, does it even mean anything?
First draft round Carrot Top was a single mother and it was her son Rarity had scared her about but then I found out about her having a canon sister so I decided to change it to her instead.
All in all this was a good fic. Really cool take on things.
3830447
I actually think they put on that accent to seem more 'exotic' to attract more clients, sort of the same way Rarity does.
Fun fact, one of my original idea's back when Rarity was an orphan she had a natural Scottish Accent picked up from somepony who ran the orphanage, she covered it with her afflicted accent but it tended to come out if she was angry or stressed.
I also gave Jack Lumber a non standard accent, he apparently from Somerset or possibly Devon.
3830855
My God! It's my dance!
I'll be honest, I lie your version of Blueblood best, he is very vain and a bit stuck up, but he is reasonably decent underneath. I think that sometimes, yes, it is best to agree to disagree. Let's hope our 2 generous friends can get along well.
I love your take on Bluenote. She's still obviously the Element of Laughter, but she's not the butt monkey like Trixie (Manehattan) and Cheerilee (Lunaverse) have a tendency to be, or even when she is, she dusts herself off and comes out on top... ironic for someone with her lazy streak (or it could just be the way she prioritizes things). She has Pinkie Pie's optimism, but not some of her more annoying quirks.
10778982
Fair enough. Though he wouldn't be a prince, since it's his relation to Celestia that's what makes him royalty, even if it's extremely distant. Although seeing as this is an AU, he can be a prince for a completely different reason. In these AUs, it seems like Cadance gets the biggest overhaul though. In the Lunaverse, she's a magical clone of Luna that has been purified (basically, the Lunaverse version of Cadance is basically the Lunaverse version of Past Sins). And the Cadanceverse has her as a golem.
10779053
Yep, in this case he's a prince on account of ruling a Principality. A part of Equestria which split off when Luna and Celestia went mad and never rejoined.
Fun Fact: 50,000 bits would equate to $6,250. Though the bit is no longer used, it was an actual form of currency. A bit was equal to 1/8 of a dollar, or 1/2 if a quarter, or 12.5 cents. The bit existed before the concept of cents did. Back then coinage was used to represent fractions instead of percentages. So when you do the math, 1/8 of 50,000, or 50,000 divided by 8 equals 6,250.
Called it! Octavia actually did have a good day.
It took a few days, but she finally got to eat!
10780764
Well I'm British so it's likely I've had a little more exposure to the British version rather than the American one, although to be honest I've not had much to do with any reality TV. Ram Sea is entirely based on second hand memes as it were so I suppose it could have more to do with the American portrayal.
10780764
Its an interesting thing to think about when creating AU's how much can a character be changed from their canon personality before they stop being the same character? If a name and an appearance enough? How much can you change the appearance even?
If your universes version of Twilight is a male griffin with also exactly the same personality is that character more or less the same as canon Twlight than one who looks the same but has no interest in learning?