Op. 3, Movt 1: Come Sta
Private Gig
by NavyPony
Op. 3, Movt 1
Come Sta
Twilight refrained from screaming in annoyance, but no amount of self-restraint could keep the mare from chewing on her bottom lip. She was usually so good at letter-writing, wasn’t she?
She was, of course. Her second-grade report card had, well, reported as much. So had the report cards from grades third through twelfth, in fact, as well as every instructor that she’d ever met. So clearly the problem lay with the letter and not with her. Very clearly, in fact. That being the case, she allowed herself to give an angry glare to the offending stationary and also one at the quill for good measure. It was normally such a good quill, too.
It had gotten her through the envelope, at least. ‘707b Black Stone Court, Canterlot’ it said, in the same graceful script which she usually reserved for letters to Princess Celestia and formal theses. The envelope was the easy part. The hard part lay in the contents of said envelope, as witnessed by the crumpled sheets of parchment she’d added to her rapidly filling wastepaper basket in the corner of the room and the scowl she was giving to the next blank sheet atop the stack.
“You are going to be a tasteful and well-written, friendly letter that thanks Miss Octavia for visiting us, compliments her on her music, inquires about her well-being and goings-on, and probably before any of the rest of that subtly asks her what she’s doing in the mid-to-near future, and invites her to come back to Ponyville without sounding obsessive or clingy or being a single run-on sentence like the last three.”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She levitated up her quill, gave it a healthy taste of ink, blotted it, and put it to parchment. Take twenty-seven.
Dear Miss Octavia,
I hope this letter finds you well. The weather in Ponyville is just starting to turn frigid, and
Twilight sighed quietly. “But what if she doesn’t care about the weather in-”
“Twilight!?” A coltish, slightly nasal voice cut through the walls of the library. “Twilight?!”
“Oh no. Crud. Crud!” She whirled into action, crumpling up her letter and throwing it into the basket in a telekinetic comet. The entire wastebasket ignited in a burst of purple fire, but that was probably for the best.
Twilight’s door slid open just as she grabbed the closest book and leapt into her bed, acting as if nothing was wrong. Because there wasn’t anything wrong at all. “Twilight?” the little dragon asked, waddling in. “What’s up?”
She turned a page. “Oh hey Spike, I was just laying here and reading and definitely not doing anything suspicious. How are you?”
“I’m… fine? But why are you reading…” he lifted a scaly brow. “How to Woo Refined Mares from Canterlot in Six Easy Steps,” Spike read aloud from the cover of the book in her hooves, “… and it’s upside-down?”
“Yes. Yes. I was reading a different book that’s… not in my hooves, and it told me that by reading books upside-down I could learn things entirely unrelated to the subject listed on the title and… my research has nothing to do with wooing refined mares or unrefined mares, or anypony at all, for that matter. It has to do with…” Her eyes scanned the room rapidly, searching for something else. “It has to do with something else.”
“…Okay…” Spike’s glare was more suspicion than scowl. It wasn’t as if Twilight had never done weird things in the past… “Well, in that case…” He shook his head nonchalantly. “I’m going to be heading out; me and the CMC had a great time last night and today we’re going to-”
“That’s nice, Spike. Have fun.” Without ado, a telekinetic shove pushed Spike out of her bedroom and downstairs as the door slammed shut with the distinctive click that locks made when trying to keep unwelcome individuals out of a room. Also, Spike made the distinctive ‘Aaaahhhh!!!!’ that baby dragons made when tumbling down a flight of stairs. Neither sound was particularly unfamiliar to Twilight and she returned to her work with her usual fervor.
Dear Octavia,
How are you? Ponyville is
Uggh, come to think of it, she probably didn’t even care about Ponyville in the slightest. It was probably such a backwater town compared to Canterlot and Manehattan and refined cities. In fact, Octavia was probably embarrassed of the time she’d spent here, and any mention of the place was sure to sour the letter.
Mademoiselle Octavia,
Wait… was she a mademoiselle? Twilight thought so, but… The piece of parchment was teleported to the wastepaper basket before she finished the thought.
Was it possible that Octavia van Clef was married? Probably not, but perhaps she had a very special somepony and didn’t enjoy the implications that she was an available mare? In fact, how could anypony even assume the fact that Octavia was single, given her social status, her gracious temperament, and her splendid… prettiness. Yes. Because she was very…
Dear Octavia,
I think you are very
What the hay was she writing? Who, how, and why could anypony begin a letter like that?! Especially when written to-
“Gaaahhh!!!!” Take thirty ended up smeared on her forehead as she face-planted on the table before the ink could dry. It was for the best, anyways. Nopony could possibly be allowed to find out that Twilight Sparkle was-
“Impossible! This is bucking impossible!” She slammed both of her forehooves down on her desk as her quill spun around the room like a butterfly drunk on maple syrup. “How am I supposed to write a letter to somepony that is entirely beyond my scope of comprehension or understanding? How can I expect myself to interact in an orthodox manner with a mare who is so much more worldly, cultured, and interesting than I can ever be expected to be? How can-”
“Writing to the Princess again?”
“Spike! I told you that-” Twilight cut her shout short – the bedroom door was still shut and locked, and this voice sounded as much like Spike the Dragon as Spike sounded like Pinkie Pie. Of course, that was because the balcony window was open and the door was shut, and more namely, the voice in question belonged to one Pinkie Pie. “Pinkie!” Twilight cried, hastily struggling to cover the already-illegible letter beneath her hooves. “What, uh, what brings you to my bedroom?”
“Not much, Twilight, not anything really. Dashie was doing weather patrol nearby, by which I really mean she was napping, and I was just getting my ornithopter ready when I overheard you stressing out about ponies beyond your scope of comprehension or understanding and I decided that you needed my help more than Dash.” The earth pony studied the room with a toothy grin, her gaze slowly settling on the scorched remains of the wastepaper basket. “What’s going on? Having trouble with another friendship report or something?”
“Oh… umm, no. In fact, it’s nothing!” Twilight’s smile was about as realistic as Mayor Mare’s recurring promises to lower taxes. “I don’t want to bother you, and I certainly don’t want to interfere with your weather patrol, so don’t worry about it… In fact, you should really just get back to-”
“Nonsense!” Pinkie exclaimed exuberantly. “I’d be glad to take time out of my busy schedule to help you with your nothing! So, what are we doing?” More blur than pony (and with a ‘whooshing’ to boot), the mare zipped to Twilight’s desk, ripped the piece of parchment out from beneath Twilight’s hooves, and began reading aloud. “Dear-”
“PINKIE! STOP!”
Pinkie Pie, now held upside-down in an aura of lavender magic some seven feet from where she had just been, continued to read aloud. “Dear something, I something something something very something. At least, I think that’s a 'something'. It might just be an inkspot. Twilight,” the poor mare tilted her head and squinted at the paper, which seemed surprisingly normal give her upside-down and levitated status, “Can the Princess even read this? Is it in some sort of super-secret secret-squirrel style spy-code? Even I can’t even read it and I can read letters and- OOF.”
Twilight released the purple aura surrounding Pinkie, and the young mare suddenly succumbed to the (sometimes fickle, in Pinkie’s case) embrace of gravity. “Yes it’s a letter-” a letter that was now wreathed in cold violet flames, “-and not a very good one. And no it’s not for the Princess. It’s… uh-”
“A what?” asked Pinkie as she dropped the smoldering letter.
“It’s, umm, a professional correspondence between me and, a…” The first book Twilight laid eyes upon was an old text she’d been studying a couple weeks back. “Between me and a pseudologist… in Canterlot. A very famous and renowned pseudologist that I admire and very much respect.”
Pinkie Pie scratched her curly mane, still lying prone and upside down on the bedroom floor. “Sue dolly gist?”
“A pseudologist, with a P. As in, somepony who studies pseudology. It’s a very technical field – I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details. Now if you’ll excuse me, I-”
Pinkie crossed her forehooves exaggeratedly. “I don’t know, from the way you’re talking, it doesn’t sound like a professional correspondence. And I should know, I’ve written… more than four.”
Twilight raised an accusing eyebrow.
“Okay, okay, three, but I won’t go any lower than that. Those letters to that party supply store definitely counted. Anyways, you should just tell me what’s bugging you. I may not be a Sued Optometrist with a ‘P’,” She emphasized the letter ‘P’ with an especially chipper smile as she rolled onto her hooves, “But there is a ‘P’ in Pinkie Pie! In fact, there’s two!”
“Yes Pinkie, I know how to spell your name.”
“And I know how to spell your name too! Y-O-U-R-space-N-”
“PINKIE PIE!” Twilight stomped a hoof on the ground and much to her credit, managed to light nothing on fire.
“Twilight, why are you so angry right now?”
“I… ugh.” She marched over to her bed and threw herself onto the mattress. “Pinkie, I’m trying to write this letter, right?”
“The professional correspondence to the Salt Nanny Varnish?” Pinkie Pie pogoed across the bedroom, hopping on all fours to her friend’s side. “It didn’t sound like a professional correspondence, you know, when you were talking about it. It sounded more like a friendlier-type letter between ponies who aren’t friends but want to be friends.”
“Yes, that is… you’re right. It’s not, strictly speaking, a professional correspondence.”
“With the Sock Navy Sane Whiff?”
“That was ‘Pseudologist, Pinkie”
“Ought Cavey Vane Cliff?”
“Pinkie…”
“Octavia van Cle-”
“PINKIE PIE!”
“Look, Twilight, I don’t actually care to whom you’re writing, I just want to help you write your letter. Look, the trick to writing impressive and personal ‘business correspondences’ is to not overthink what you’re writing, Twilight. It’s not like this is a book report, is it?”
When Twilight looked up at Pinkie she saw a conspicuous pair of horn-rimmed spectacles resting upon her face. Twilight did her best to ignore them. “No, Pinkie, it’s not.” Book reports were easy, after all.
“You should just pretend to be somepony else. Pretend you’re Rainbow Dash writing a fan letter to the Wonderbolts with a 475 character limit instead of you writing a letter to your pseudologist.”
“Pinkie…”
“You’re right – there’d be too many misspellings. Try pretending you’re AJ writing a letter to one of the Oranges in Manehattan.”
“Pinkie Pie…”
“Hey, she’s surprisingly good at writing, but I suppose the diction might be a teensy-tiny issue. Instead-”
“Pinkie. Pie.”
“Well if you wrote like you were me there’d be too much confetti in the envelope, Fluttershy wouldn’t get her actual point across, and Rarity would have waaaayyyyy too much subtext in her letter.”
“PinkiePiePleaseStop!”
“But I suppose that if nopony you know is good enough, you should just write a letter like Princess Celestia would write!”
Twilight rolled back out of her bed, “Pinkie Pie, that’s not even possible. Nopony could write a letter like Princess Celestia, because they’re not a Princess.” Which was not a strictly true statement given Princess Luna’s existence, but that was not the subject at hoof.
“Then don’t make this a book report and make it a letter to a friend, you silly filly!”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
In the little flat on the second story of 707 Black Stone Court, a certain earth pony yawned quietly as Celestia’s setting sun peeked through the blinds of her bedroom. She could’ve looked at the modern little clock on her bedstand, but she already knew it was four-thirty from the angle the sun cut through her blinds, and that meant she had to get up.
She poured herself a glass of cranberry juice and tonic water and sipped it as she appraised the fare available in her pantry. There was nothing substantial, of course. It was a house full of condiments but no real food, which bothered her no more or less than it ever did.
Sipping her drink, she ambled to her front door to peruse the mail that’d been pushed through the mail-slot. The morning paper was still there, untouched from when she’d walked in listlessly at ten, as well as a couple other meaningless envelopes that the mailpony had probably delivered just a couple minutes prior. Junk, advertisement, junk, bill (thrown on the counter instead of the trash), loan offer, and… how curious…
It was an old-fashioned parchment envelope; the address was written in a fluid but still robust horn-written script, the stamp of a kind that hadn’t been sold for several months, and the return address blank except for a name and a town.
Twilight Sparkle
Ponyville
Curiouser and curiouser.
In the little flat on the second story of 707 Black Stone Court, that certain earth pony very carefully opened the old-fashioned parchment envelope and began to read.
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Thank you for continuing this!
OMG it's not dead!
Squee!
wow it finally updated awesome
it's back! 4.bp.blogspot.com/-2z7pzqpODOQ/T4Ja94cdzYI/AAAAAAAAAJI/UE38MaTQPMA/s1600/And+the+Peasants+Rejoiced.jpg
Yes! (And I just re-read everything yesterday, how.. peculiar)
Well... Welcome back I guess?
Interestingly, this certain earth pony seems to differentiate between "junk" and advertisements.
How nice to see this come back! It'll be interesting to read it now that I have a canon Octavia voice in mind. This was a charming return, and I hope to see more!
holy shit it updated.
IT..... LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!!!!
I can't wait for two more years to pass so I can see what's in the letter!
It's hard to believe this story was started 3 years, 9 months, and 11 days ago. So many things have changed since then.
Glad to see you are still working on this. Your dedication is admirable.
And, of course, it's still a very enjoyable story, and I am happy that it is continuing.
Hey one of my tracked stories updated.
*checks update*
....
*checks again*
.....
*rubs eyes and checks again*
*definitely says Private Gig*
H-how can this be!
On one hand, I'm glad it updated, but on the other, I was just getting over this being dead and now I fear my hope has been rekindled, only to die again.
Feeling kind of like this guy:
i.makeagif.com/media/9-03-2015/9t4p64.gif
Hopefully I'm wrong and you update again in a month or two.
7576531
... I laughed far more than I should have.
7576539
I have that fear as well.
Ah, very nice to see another update to this. :)
"I was just laying here and reading"
"lying"?
"he lifted a scaly"
"He"?
"to Twilight and she returned"
"Twilight, and"?
Nice to see this update again
. It's been a long two years, but I'm sure you've been busy 
. Welcome back 
!
EDIT: All done! Solid chapter, and of course, a cliffhanger to the letter
. Looking forward to the next update whenever you're ready 
!
(Oh geez, all those related OctaLight and VinylLight fics... Brings me back
)
Thank you for the new chapter.
I hope you're doing well.
Oh sweet new chapter!?!
Though I am going to reread some previous chapters first.
I can't wait to catch up onthis again!
Ooh, glad you were able to write another chapter :)
You know most people who add a 2 year delay in their stories just come back to throw a rushed epilogue together and call it a day. Thank you for continuing where you left off and actually continuing your story.
Thank you. Time for a re-read.
Glad to hear you made it back from deployment safe and sound... and hopefully not too stir crazy from being on a ship/submarine for extended periods of time.
Good luck with the rest of the story, looking forward to one of my fav romance stories continuing.
Also, nice little trolling by Pinkie there at the end, with how she kept slowly changing the name she was saying until it was spot on.
Welcome back sir, and good to see you. Thanks for the update, and best wishes.
[youtube=0VkrUG3OrPc]
Yay!
Awesome, glad you're back!
Yay! I'm glad to see this story updated. "Impossible romances" are my favorite genre and I reread the entire thing so I could remember what had happened so far and it was just as amazing as I remembered. I especially love romance between a person and an Professional Escort it just gets me every time.
Also glad to hear you're safe from deployment and I can't wait to see more of this story from you.
As good as I remember it being and even better with this update! Thank you for this!
Yay!
Oh, thank Celestia! It updated! I love this story!
I loved this, please more.
I laughed hard.
And then I felt bad.
In all seriousness, this story is quite good, a nice blend of silly and sweet.
Please, continue the story. I am eager to see what Twilight wrote to her. Even more eager to see how this goes from here.
Ah, definitely a fun read! Hopefully the past 2 years have been kind to you and perhaps this story will continue one day.
Good story, hope to see it continued!
yep do more do more I want to see it continue
Just a really cruel cliffhanger...
Really good story