The vast, practically limitless country of Equestria was a most extravagant kind of place when it fully came down to discussing it. Wondrous, rich, cultivated plains and farms riddled with profit and success; seemingly tireless, snow-capped mountains and the breathtaking, eye-widening views they gave any brave enough to mount them; dense, fruitful forests that bled beautiful wildlife across the land unopposed and unscathed; carefully small towns that didn't inhibit nature in any way, shape, or imaginable form; weather, and thus, life, at the beck and call and the flapping of Pegasus wings. Equestria was a perfect country, and she couldn't admit otherwise even if she wasn't patriotic in the slightest.
There was not a thing wrong or even particularly dastardly within a single centimeter of its borders, but that didn't necessarily stop whatever horribles happened beyond them. Nowadays, only the newspapers and emergency rooms would be the true bearers of bad news. You'd read about all kinds of horrible things going on across the pond, from the dispersal and spread of massive Zebrican tribes across the entirety of the vicious, dry safari, to the Griffons butting empty heads, sharp claws, and ceaseless guns with their neighboring Hippogriffs in a standstill war that had no real end in its sights. The time of homeland warfare had long passed before Octavia was even an idea in Viola Symphonica's symphonic little head, but the idea that she was here and there was there was more than enough to cause her to simply curl up in her nice house, shut her eyes, and be immensely grateful that she was living at least a peaceful life.
Maybe that's why music was so well received. You might not have been able to fully change the life you were living, but you could at the very least put it on pause for a little while.
It was a companion of sorts, like an astronomically glorious Labrador or a nice glass of wine she felt almost scared to nip at. You didn't really need anything too fancy to start up a wondrous tune. You could start by belting out your favorite lyrics, or purse your two lips and whistle like a joyous spring bird, or you could simply frog it and hum from way down in your throat somewhere, a bassy sound so low and growly that it never truly sounded like you were actually making it. Octavia didn't pride herself on her singing voice, despite compliments whenever she found time to zone out and quietly mutter nothings to herself, and whistling annoyed miles more than it impressed. Humming was what she stuck to, and you could do whole heaps of it standing next to your double bass and staring at the clock.
Dan may have been her—their—conductor, the one pony who kept them in tempo and line as they casually strode through each and every single one of their pieces, but what was on the paper in front of her was her true boss. Despite the lack of a pair of suspenders, a buzzcut, and a cigar, the black dots, and swishes, and lines, and curves, and hashes, and words, and phrases, and numbers were what truly told her what, when, how, and where to play. Maybe she'd start on an eighth rest, followed by an ascending A-scale and ending with a high G. Maybe she'd go down low and stay there for the entire piece as a quiet backdrop—a happy little tree—then suddenly go into a crescendo and crash into the viola and violin parts like a bombastic drum substitution.
The music was her driver, and she was just trying to get through the ride.
That is to say, she was just trying to reassure the other victims next to her that she at the very least was going to get out of the wreck alive.
Hapless curses aside, Octavia knew her shit.
It would, at the usual, take her at least twice a perusing, and scouring, and observing, and studying, and glancing of her future music sheets for her to fully know all that she needed to know. In the same fashion, but definitely not even close to the same time, to a uni student studying hard for an important exam, Octavia would shoot her eyes across the snow white pieces of paper in front of her, murmur to herself about what she was going to scrounge up for her dinner that night, hum little bits of what she saw, bob her head to and fro like she belonged more in the sea than on the land, and figure out what was expected of her within half a day or so. The other half, when she wasn't sleeping, was spent practicing lightly between bathroom breaks, and wine breaks, and snack breaks, and more wine breaks, and dinner time, and after dinner time, and crying time, and shower time.
After that, with the rest of the weeks that somepony else in the Symphony would use to tirelessly rehearse day in day out presented to her, Octavia would gaze at her music half-heartedly while making coffee in her kitchen, read a book or two, drink some wine, or lounge about on her couch and look at photos of dogs.
The notes may have been the driver, but she was pretty much strapped in the second she arrived. There was no way out, but she knew what she was getting into and was more than prepared for it. She'd study it, and she'd know it by heart and mind.
Octavia blinked. The ticket in her hooves fluttered softly in the light wind blowing through the street. She would have taken a second to look up at the sky and gauge whether or not it was the result of the weather or the carts passing by, but a low voice caused her eyes to remain on level with the street she was currently standing on.
W, standing just on the edge of the crosswalk before her, was turning at the body, one claw tugging at a strap on his backpack and the other tapping on the concrete. His blue eyes regarded her a second before his gravelly voice did. "Octavia, c'mon. Carts're coming."
Octavia looked across the way and, despite believing in W's word, only began trotting forward when she caught sight of the white light in the shape of a mare in a brisk canter. Placing her ticket back behind her collar and pressing her hat down onto her head just the slightest, she grit her teeth and sheepishly looked at the carts and carriages waiting patiently for the pedestrians to go past. The words of countless apologies were on her tongue, but they were stuck there, and remained stuck there until she joined the others on the opposite sidewalk. There the words retreated back into her gut, got mixed up like some kind of alphabet soup, and eroded away before ever being used.
The sound of panting caused Octavia to wheel about in a stupor. Formerly behind her, Lavi was staring at the sidewalk, her back slumped and her tongue lulling out as she stammered, "Did... did everyone make it?!"
Octavia rolled her eyes.
The others probably didn't care.
W extended a claw to the sputtering bird, reassuring her, "Still breathing, Private."
"Don't touch me!" Lavi half screeched half giggled, barely able to keep her frown in form as the others laughed with her. Her attempted words, "I barely made it back there!" were marred with stops and starts and small fits of crackling that sounded more at home on Octavia's grade school playground.
Valkyrie cracked open her beak.
Oh Gods kill her.
"That was nuts!" She boomed, shaking her head and pointing at the slug-like carriages making an absolutely hellish pace on the street they'd just endured. "Almost lost my footing for a second!"
It was, to Octavia's surprise, T's turn. He smirked, and barely turned his head to glance at Sesame next to Octavia. "Had to keep watch on Sesame there. Almost lost the poor guy."
Sesame snorted. Octavia swore he'd choked for a second. "Don't think even a smoke could calm me down after that."
Despite the fact that he'd added onto their dumb little charade fairly impressively, the only one to fail at laughing this time around ended up being W, whose prior amused expression felt as flat as a sudden decline in the ocean's completely darkened surface. His beak clicking, he let out a low grunt that Octavia could make out even as the other three griffons and Unicorn snickered like little idiots with one another. Judging by the fact that Lavi was now plucking at Sesame's cheeks like one of her beloved double bass strings, Valkyrie was poking the air in front of the poor stallion, T was shaking his head with his teeth barely showing, and Sesame himself lightly was swatting at his attackers, the comparison wasn't all too far-fetched.
Octavia was already lifting a hoof and moving to join W when he turned at his stomach, raised a whole claw, and beckoned their companions with a grumbly, "Come on you Goddamned hooligans." The salty remark held a legitimate kick, but the small smirk he brandished betrayed it perfectly. Scrambling back to traveling mode like a bunch of delinquent brothers told to quit mulling about at the county fair, they accompanied the two sane members in a similar fashion to Octavia back in her grade school: like geese, in single file, right behind them, with leaking muzzles and quivering lower halves and half their brains.
They were probably all waddling, too.
"Spend a lot of time in there, huh?"
"Where's that?" Octavia asked, her eyes peering to her right. Finding the bill of her ballcap blocking W's blue eyes, she lifted her chin up a little more, found that it was just the slightest bit uncomfortable of a position to maintain, and continued doing it simply out of interest of being polite.
W hummed. "Your head," he said with a grin finally.
Octavia felt like kicking at the pebbles she'd just trotted over. She pouted out her lower lip, sucked it back in, flattened it, grumbled to herself where nopony could hear her—which W in fact happened to, according to his little belly chortle—and craned her neck around so hard her mane whipped at her. A fully revisited, toothy smile was plastered sloppily on her deafeningly feigned face.
"I find it to be a much nicer place to be nowadays."
"Oh yeah?"
"Oh, very much so," Octavia said matter-of-factly like she'd somehow had better things to do, facing forward just in time to sidestep a pedestrian. It continued to amaze her just how nonchalant and uncaring ponies were; the stallion didn't even bat an eyelash at the ballcap wearing Earth Pony, the living cigarette of a Unicorn, and the four, armed, hulking griffons walking briskly next to them. "All the music and ice cream I could ever want."
"God what I wouldn't give to have a nice scoop right now," W sighed longingly, prompting Octavia to double-take at the very idea that W had feelings and emotions.
"Right?" Octavia giggled breathily. "A nice waffle cone with cookie dough ice cream..."
"Cookie dough?" W asked suddenly, glancing her way as if she'd insulted his family or something, "What are you, five?"
Octavia harumphed. The fact that she legitimately felt a little hurt by his poking fun at her made her keep it all inside, within the confines of the glass jar she'd been gradually leaking since fillyhood. "If you have to be five to enjoy the simple splendors of life, then I'd have to assume so."
"Well, yeah, you'd have to be six to enjoy pistachio, wouldn't you?"
"I think you'd just need to be mentally handicapped in every form and fashion."
"First off," W started, barely able to contain the fit of laughter threatening to erupt after the mare's blunt retort, "rude."
"Oh Gods you're not a bloody Nut Lover are you?" Octavia asked, immediately regretting the slang term only she and her close friends had made up back in high school that W had no way in the world of correctly receiving and interpreting. She bit on her tongue to try and force the words to come climbing back inside, but the only thing she found was a dull tongue and a burning rush of a headache.
"Bloody?"
Gods damn this accent.
W hummed. The small amount of time she was giving him—mostly due to her not really knowing how to save face—was being used very wisely by the old griffon. Fortunately for her, the mercy inside his gizzard (if she was being correct about the whole half-bird thing and remembered what she'd learned from that owl project back in grade school) was particularly swelling at that moment. He puffed out his chest in a large intake of breath, looked behind them for a basic spell, turned back, and beamed, "Second, pistachio is a Godsend."
"Pish posh," Octavia whinnied, almost tripping onto the pavement as she felt a hoof go up to flail uselessly with her response. Catching herself certainly faster than anyone could've noticed, she lifted her chin and whipped her mane over the other side of her neck, then swiveled about to address her companion with a simple, "You're daft."
W's response was silent at first, very swift, definitely just, and most of all very much unexpected. Octavia only realized he'd reached over and tapped her ballcap's bill down over her face when she had stopped to fix it with a snort on her muzzle.
"Gah!" She sputtered, pushing the article back onto her scalp, "You're such a bastard."
"W's dad left when he was young," Valkyrie told her, prompting the mare to look up at her with a smirk.
Lavi shook her head. "Never knew 'im," she said, then, looking at W, "You poor guy."
"He's dating his mother now, actually," T added, scratching at his neck.
W fixed his stance from one of walking to one of standing still. Octavia felt a very small frown cross her lips. She'd much rather not block the sidewalk in the middle of a busy day...
"She's a very nice lady, I'll have you know," W defended, placing his right claw over his heart as if his mother was somehow encased within the depths of his figure.
"Ah dude," Sesame's voice piped up, causing Octavia and the others to all spin around face him, "speaking of very nice ladies, what kinda dog do you think that is, Octavia?"
What kinda dog do you think that is, Octavia?
What kinda dog do you think
What kinda dog do you
dog do you
dog
dog
Octavia's face lit up with the instantaneous flick of a Hearth's Warming Tree at the first second of winter. A smile, miles long and practically unexaggerated at this point, curved across her lips and pressed against her eyelids. Her heart, prior at a normal, very healthy pace, got down low on its legs, crouched down, and shot forward like a marathon runner with the speed of Rainbow Dash's thought process or at the very least what she figured was her thought process you had to think quickly if you were in the air or else you'd crash before anything maybe into a building or a wall or some bricks or a mountain or even a collection of trees with some nice apples DOG!
She felt her stomach scrape and scratch against the sidewalk pavement and start a little collection of horrible little pebbles underneath her, but neither her starry eyes nor her violently petting foreleg cared in the slightest.
"Oh my Gods who's a good dog?! It's you! It's you! Can you believe that it's you?! It is, love! It's you!" Octavia's jaw tapped against the ground as she presented a gaping smile to the gloriously adorable canine in front of her. Her two hooves hovered over her head and pointed directly at the pooch's head like two arrows to a prize in some kind of game show, with all the glamor and jazz to boot.
The Border Terrier, rather small for its size, bobbed its cute little head up and down with its tongue flopped out as it panted into her face. If her brain wasn't playing any tricks on her, it appeared to be smiling right back at her!
She shot a leg forward and began scratching at its left ear, which it so kindly received by tilting its head toward her and closing its eyes. Letting out a small squee, Octavia looked up and craned her neck to stare at the owner.
"Male or female?"
The owner, which Octavia didn't care to properly identify, droned, "Uh... boy?"
Octavia hummed to herself, then to the dog when she repositioned herself. Resting her head against a propped-up foreleg, she chimed, "Well... you're a good one at that, you are."
The Terrier yipped at her, its scruffy face never failing to look excited despite the breed's usually pissy appearance.
Octavia let out a prolonged, very real sigh, rolling over a bit and scratching the dog's other ear. "Gods... I love you so much." Rolling back over, she reached out, scooted an inch forward, and held the Terrier's head in her forelegs. "What I wouldn't give to stoop low to petty thievery right at this moment."
Her wistful woes now publicized, Octavia was met with the anticipated withdrawal of the dog by way of leash and pony-delivered, "Godsdamned weirdo." Remaining on the floor where she'd prior been lying in pure, unaltered heaven, she turned her head at the sound of hoofsteps and claws and pressed her cheek against the earth.
"Get the camera," Valkyrie's voice started.
A light punch.
"Don't tell her..." Lavi complained.
Something was lightly placed onto her head, which, at the moment, only served to shade the entire left side of her face from the sun above.
"Ran off so fast you dropped your hat," W explained.
Octavia groaned, lip in a wobble. Her purple eyes, trying to distance themselves from the quintet standing next to her, found the sidewalk again.
"I miss that dog..."