Family meet-ups, nowadays, tended to end up rather negatively for Octavia. Save for the usual get-together that happened every reoccurring autumn, Octavia's relatives and family friends met up at least three times each year, the dates of which always happened to be the literal, outright worst times for the mare's busy, bass-career. There had been many a time when she'd simply opted on sighing, pressing her lips against her cheeks, shaking her head at the calendar hanging on the wall in front of her, and basically saying, "Screw it," before catching the next train to the concert hall. Octavia may have been completely, undeniably and... admittedly cluelessly loyal to those closest to her, but the questions she'd be subjected to, like a burning snowstorm that buggered up your nose and crusted the ends of your individual strands of fur, would absolutely ruin everything else that would make the whole reunion worth the ticket price, the tiredness in her hooves, and the looks of amusement when her cousins heard her accent again.
Her parents were the main culprits, which made the whole matter infinitely worse than it would've been if it had been anypony else. She loved both her parents to the cold depths of hell and right back to her waking nightmare of a life, but they had a knack for eternally nagging and pestering her with the most nonsense kinds of questions that she'd just roll her eyes at, shake her head, and grab a fork to dig back into her positively scrumptious biscuits and bowl of salad so she could pretend she didn't have to answer more.
This had been a recurring thing when Octavia was a filly, as well.
Her parents—her father, exceptionally so—were very overprotective of their kids, and Octavia was no proper exception. As a matter of fact, she probably had it the worst of her three siblings. Their "precious middle daughter", destined for "greatness" and absolutely brimming with "promise", was not allowed to step hoof outside and join her friends if even a single individual of the opposite gender was waiting with them. Of course, being a kid and slightly hating her parents at the time, she and her companions had learned to simply hide any guys that were going to be around them for the day, and so thereafter she'd created a nice exploit to get past her parent's strict rulings.
This kind of absolutely ridiculous overwatch had a root even further back as well, when, instead of giggling about colts on the playground—which she, admittedly, did do a few times—she was focusing on how much rosin was on her bow, if it was perfectly positioned, and whether or not she was putting enough pressure on it when she slid it across her four reverberating strings. Her practicing was important to her, but it always seemed loads more important to her parents, who, as they headed off to bed, always told Octavia to make sure that she practiced her bass that night. Setting her bow down, turning the page of her music book, and turning toward the wide open door with sweat on her brow, the young filly would grumble nothings under her breath and continue what she had already, for the past few hours or so, been doing.
It actually happened a lot, now that she thought about it.
She'd be sitting at the kitchen table, pencil coiled in her hoof and scribbling angrily away at the paper in front of her, when her parents would stride around the room and tell her to get started on her homework before she could go and "not" play her bass. This common event cut a lot deeper as well, because she'd usually be working on the very last question of her daily assignment whenever it happened, and her focus would be sullied and riddled with new thoughts of annoyance and angst.
Such buggery was why Octavia had a fondness for straying away from family get-togethers. Every single party, and meal, and simple lounge-about were plagued with incessant interrogations addressed to her poor, poor self and her—strictly assumed—poor life.
Her parents—and her other relatives occasionally—wouldn't stop nagging her about whether or not she was currently dating someone, or when they were going to have grandchildren, or if she was expecting, or when her baby was due, or when their well-deserving daughter was finally going to settle down on an early retirement fund and build up a nice life for herself.
She always reminded them that she didn't want to be with some kind of stuck-up, nose-held-high-in-the-air noble, that she wasn't a huge fan of children and legitimately never wanted to bear any as long as she lived, that, no Aunt Rosin, she wasn't expecting, that, yes Uncle Trompeto, her dress was a tad loose around her stomach and now she felt a little hurt, and that she already had a nice life for herself, for their information. Eating ice cream and loathing herself was probably the greatest things she could be doing with what she'd built up thus far in her career. At the very least, she wasn't going outside and doing anything stupid, now, was she?
"Psst!"
Oh wait.
She was.
Barely suppressing the jump that threatened to throw her to the roof above her head, Octavia raised both her eyebrows and smoothly stared straight ahead at the machine still spilling coffee into the mug underneath its nozzle. Idly working her jaw around like a grazing cow– wait no, she wasn't fat, shut up!
...
Godsdammit.
Idly working her jaw around like a grazing cow, Octavia smacked her lips disinterestedly and turned her head to the right. Sesame's black mane jostled to and fro as he continued his sneaky pose on the floor. She looked down. Sesame stared back up at her.
She blinked.
He did the same.
Octavia narrowed her eyes ever so slightly—mostly due to the ceiling lights she still wasn't used to—waited for Sesame to say something else, and simply turned back to her developing cup of coffee, still steadily pittering away in front of her face. Whatever the nicotine-addicted Unicorn had to possibly say to her was by no means more important than her boiling brew. It had been a hell of a long day for her and everybody else, what with all the scary pirates, and boring libraries, and hours and hours of doing practically nothing in a city Octavia wasn't really accustomed to nor saw reason to be in the first place.
When she was doing the same thing all by her lonesome back in Ponyville, it seemed a lot more... exciting somehow. Solitude did wonders for the amount of absolute nothing Octavia could do, but being around others made her restrain herself in the slightest sort of fashion. She knew what restraint was, because, really, she'd had to stop herself from saying the outright stupidest things countless times when dealing with Canterlot—and other city—locals, but it felt a tad different with the Birds' Eyes and Sesame.
Gods if this was what it was like having friends as an adult, she didn't think she could keep doing it. No wonder she kept to herself ninety-percent of the time.
She blinked, the only way she knew how to cease her many trains of thought before they sped away from their respective stations. The coffee maker was motionless and silent, and the other sounds of the hotel room flooded her head like a tidal wave once more as she reached up to grab her piping hot mug.
Octavia didn't need to turn her head—nor really wanted to, anyway—to know that W and Lavi were still sitting at the far table, huddled over the artifact guidebook like an unlucky Hoofball team down by one at the end of the fourth quarter and talking it up like it was a bulging wallet they'd discovered on the side of the road next to their local arcade. She couldn't blame them, seeing its incredible importance, but Valkyrie sure could.
Her voice riddled with crunching and disgustingly audible chewing, she creaked the springs on one of the room's beds to seemingly adjust her position and groaned at them, "Could you guys read any louder?"
Lavi was quick on the draw. "Fat ass."
"Wet head."
W chuckled deeply.
Lavi growled to herself, the clearly angry turning of a page accompanying it.
"Spronker."
"Go yeep, eaglet."
Octavia began to wonder whether or not the griffons were just making up these slurs to impress her or something. Spronker sounded like some kind of cleaning product that would get the burn marks out of her oven.
...
She really hoped her cookies were okay. When she got back tomorrow, it'd be the first thing on her list to eat, unless they'd burned away as quietly as T still assuredly reading and overall keeping to himself in the farthest corner of the room.
"Octavia!"
Octavia pressed her lips against her cheeks and lowered her cup from her lips. Looking back down at the floor to her right, she watched as Sesame turned to his left hindleg and shook it, most likely because it had fallen asleep in the mare's ignorance of his presence, but also probably because of his odd-looking attempt at a crouched figure. She raised a brow to question it, but realized all too late that she wasn't supposed to be taking notice of him. A quick flick of her head to the couch on the Unicorn's left and a thorough checking out of its height helped Octavia deduce what Sesame's intentions were, if his tried "whispering" wasn't already an aid enough.
The stallion was trying to be sneaky.
She flattened her eyebrows and fell to her haunches, cradling her coffee in both hooves.
"What?" She asked nonchalantly and definitely above the Unicorn's wanted volume, not fully knowing what exactly he was wanting. She had a bit of an idea about his topic of the hour, but truth be told she wasn't trying to think about it all too much herself.
Sesame grit his teeth and hurriedly looked the griffons' way. Octavia did the same.
The four birds continued what they were doing as if the mare and stallion weren't even alive.
"Keep it down, Octavia!" He hushed, waving a foreleg up and down with his words.
She grinned at him and cocked an eyebrow. "Oh," she practically shouted, "I'm sorry Sesame."
Sesame groaned as he shrank lower to the ground and let out a shaky breath. "Look, what are you gonna do about the..." He trailed off, tilted his head at a forty-five degree angle, and clicked his tongue as he nodded toward the exit door of the hotel room.
Octavia blinked.
Yep.
"The ticket?"
Sesame nodded like some kind of patient dog.
"I'll..." She pursed her lips to the side. She brought them back, then created different beginnings of different letters with them as she hummed a low C to herself. Finally, she bit on her cheek and swirled her coffee around in front of her. "...I'll... figure something out...?"
Sesame waggled his eyebrows at her. "You'll have to think of something quick."
"Whatever's the rush?"
"Tomorrow'll be here eventually, Octavia."
She stole a glance at the clock, remembering that it was around six in the afternoon and they still had a little less than six more hours until the next day arrived, but found where it stood on the wall above the cabinet opposite her and whispered a low curse to herself when she saw that it was actually a little later than she'd prior thought.
"Y'see, I was thinking..."
Octavia looked at Sesame to show her interest in whatever convoluted scheme he was planning.
He adjusted his position on the carpet once more and opened his mouth for two seconds with an intake of breath, then slowly continued, "...when we go out tomorrow and head off to the ship, you could–" He brought up a hoof and shook it like he was riddled with arthritis, then moved it from his left and to his right, "–sneak away and try to go snatch a ticket really quick."
Octavia took a sip from her brew. "What if, in the slightest chance, they're closed?"
"Damn, you're right. It's Sunday tomorrow." He scratched at his goatee and hummed. "Well, if they are—which, well I wouldn't even know actually—then you can always take a carriage."
"That's a fair point, I guess," Octavia admitted, "but it'd take a lot longer on one of those than a train, and I'd like to get there as quickly as possible."
Sesame snapped, startling the mare mainly because he, as a pony, bore no fingers or claws to do such a thing. "Got it!"
Octavia hoped he didn't take it literally when she dipped her head and spoke a muffled, "Hit me," into the bottom of her cup.
"I could go with you when you head out and help you pry open the kiosk's shutters or whatever they've got!" He laughed, showing his teeth as he nodded. "I'm sure I could pick the lock on whatever pad they've got, and we could even break in without stepping hoof next to it!"
Octavia screwed up her face, but felt a wobbly grin cross it. "Oh, huh? By that method, we could very simply just teleport the ticket out of it, can't we?"
Sesame a-ha'd, "Yeah, we could actually!"
An old scene playing out her in head, Octavia snorted and added, "Maybe while you're searching around in there, you'll find Ol' Skinny Dipper's gold teeth–"
A whinny escaped Sesame as he threw his head back and barked at the ceiling in amusement, "Next to– next to his–"
"His fishing rod!"
Sesame pointed a hoof at her and squealed, "His–!" His flannel-covered stomach rumbled in time with his whoop, "Aaaahahaha!"
Octavia, snickering behind a hoof like any refined mare would, turned her head to the right and found four pairs of eyes now staring their way. Well, three, now that W shook his head with a smile of his own and poked his beak back into his book.
"In The Dark is such a good film," Sesame finally sighed, free of his laughing high.
"Definitely one of Star Bright's better roles, I find," Octavia claimed, cheeks rising once more, "then again, I still think Redemption was better for her."
"Oh, hell yeah," Sesame replied, mane jostling as he nodded, "that scene in the bar with the shot glass is a work of art."
"'Just make sure it's cold,'" Octavia recited in an attempted gravelly voice that was marred by her accent. She leaned toward Sesame and waited for his continuation with bated breath.
"'Cold as my dead wife,'" the Unicorn responded likewise, eliciting a wild grin from the mare, "'with all the cheap sex too.'"
Octavia hummed at the Unicorn in front of her and drank the last drops of her coffee down her throat, then, while looking for the trash can, remembered their prior discussion, and threw the cup into the bin with anticipation racing in her mind.
Sesame coughed into a hoof. "Back to the matter at hoof, though, Octavia. You should figure out what you're gonna do."
She sucked on her teeth and stole another glance at the clock. The train station wasn't too far from the hotel, and she could prooobably reach it before it closed at seven if she made a quick canter, but even then, she knew that walking around a city she didn't know at night wasn't too bright an idea, if she could excuse her horribly ashamed self for the unintended pun. Grumbling, she pursed her lips again and idly tossed her mane.
"What should I tell them, you think?"
"What," Sesame asked, "you're heading out now?"
"I might not get a favorable chance tomorrow," Octavia explained, fumbling with her hair, "and I'd rather not sleep on something as... harrowing as that." She'd done so with much worse things before. It wasn't any fun.
Sesamed clucked his tongue. "Bathroom?"
"Mares don't take that long, Sesame."
He scratched his chin again.
Octavia helped him out, "I was just thinking of telling them I was heading to the lobby."
"But what if they come down to look for you?"
"You're here, aren't you?"
Sesame shook his head in an instant, "Oh, I am not covering for you on this–"
"You hatched the scheme," Octavia reminded him slyly.
"They'll hatch me!" Sesame shot back, throwing a hoof in the griffons' direction as if what he'd just said made even the slightest amount of sense.
Octavia raised an eyebrow.
Sesame—still holding his leg up—shut his mouth, let his appendage fall to the floor limply, and sighed. "Godsdammit, fine." The mare, getting up to head out, adjusted her bowtie when she stepped past Sesame, who called after her in a hushed whisper, "Be careful, though, alright?"
"I think you know I can handle myself quite alright," Octavia affirmed, a hoof raised up to continue her pace.
"Maybe they do," Sesame replied.
He hadn't seen her back at the lodge, or in the clearing. He had a fair point.
"Where ya goin', Octavia?" Lavi's voice called, prompting the mare to look at the griffon and find her peering at her from behind W's book.
Octavia pressed her lips together and looked around the room to find literally everybody now staring at her.
"Just... heading down to the lobby for a pint."
She noticed W's immediate frown and wished she could just strangle the old coot for not enjoying the idea of fun, but shook her head and turned to the door before the lot could question her further.
"Hey, before you go!"
Octavia let out an overly-exaggerated sigh, then faced Valkyrie with a likewise overdramatized smile on her face.
"You mind telling 'em t' get us some more pillows?"
The mare twisted the knob and fled with a very unreassuring, "Oh, of course, I'll get right on that," that she hoped Valkyrie would grovel at.
Shutting the door behind her, she stepped out into the dimly lit hallway and stood there for awhile, her hoof still grasping the door knob. It was absolutely silent now. Only the low buzzing of the ceiling lights still called out to her, and even then, she was able to let out a burst of air and revel in the abrupt peace and quiet she was meeting and greeting with. Retracting her outstretched hoof and placing it against her face, she rubbed at her forehead and shook her mane around.
"Zacherle, this is a bad idea."
She sucked in a breath, paused, looked at her hotel room and the people surely waiting inside, cleared her throat, and trotted toward the elevator at the end of the corridor with a hurried pace. She may have been lying about the pint, but she sure as hell could use one now.