Stroll

by re- Yamsmos


Severance

If she were going to be completely honest with herself, and therefore remain a horribly broken record of an Earth Pony, Octavia was legitimately looking forward with all of her being to returning to the wondrous meshing-together of wood, stone, and hay that she so liked to call her home.

The nice, massive green bush she'd proudly call her own fancywork in the shape of an eighth note standing silently and rustlingly next to the mailbox that lay pretty much devoid of letters bearing her name, the fact of which slightly depressed her and sank her further into the glass of wine or the cup of coffee she was nursing at the time of thinking about it. The two-faced coloration of the whole thing looking like it belonged in some children's cartoon and not in the actual, living world that she so woefully was walking in. The flowers she'd bugged off from a market happily smiling past her in an effort to try remaining alive; the glass windows with the blue bass clefs plastered across them with the haphazard results of an impatient pony who was wasting useless time until their dinner—noodle cups and wine—that day.

The admittedly beautiful view of the town of glorious Ponyville frequently, and definitely much better off, seen from behind the only curtain Octavia liked to peel away these days. The couch she so loved to keep next to the entrance for the sole purpose of falling into, sleeping on, reading around, eating near, and staring at before doing any of the former. The piano she spent more days glaring at than actually playing, a fond, constant reminder that buying whatever you saw fit in such a small town in such a—kind of—small house only led to bothersome glances and objects you couldn't easily move without asking for help. Octavia didn't like asking for help. That was probably why the piano remained where it was, directly on the spot she would've liked placing another couch.

Home, though.

Back to the dragging mornings and empty rebellions, fueled by three cups of raw coffee and little munchies on cream cheese-topped bagels. Back to unkempt manes and pink bathrobes she was all too dreary to fix or discard, respectively. Back to hours of wasteful lounging about and racing minds better left untapped, where the only thing to keep you company was a forced Unicorn mute, pictures of happy puppies, books she'd already read fifteen times over, under, through, and over again, and food and drinks she'd feel all too excited and simultaneously miserable to feast on.

The poor, poor oven, prior rife with soft, hot, gooey chocolate chip cookies she was pretty sure she could easily get back to after taking a quick walk around town. The poor, poor goods, left to rise, flatten, enlarge, blacken, burn, roast, smolder, and then die away in a most horrible, terrifying, genuinely scary kind of send-off. Her house—which was probably not even standing at this point, either by way of cookie-induced fire or bored, crazed, experimental, poorly excitable Unicorn fire—and its kitchen smoking and puffing like Sesame Seed from across her.

Lavi grabbed Sesame's cigarette out of his mouth with two talons, did a little flip with it in her grasp, and flicked it into the garbage can.

"Hey!" Sesame griped.

"Lavi, that's still burning," W said calmly.

"Oh shit," was the swift, matter-of-fact-but-still-definitely-worried reply. Lavi rose from her seat in an instant, swiveling about—possibly breaking a few discs in her spine or whatever they had—and reaching into the dumper with gusto.

Yes, home.

She'd like nothing more than to be there. There, she could play her music in peace. Prepare for Trottingham in the next couple of days. Meet up with her bandmates in the concert hall and rehearse for a few hours on Pavaneigh and The Swan, both pieces being two of her absolute favorites in the world. Pavaneigh for its lonely sounding violin solo and its longing notes, and The Swan for literally everything about everything in its everything. Come to think of it, the entire Carnival Of The Animals was simply gorgeous. Silent Signs was an absolutely incredible composer, the beautiful bastard camel he was, and if she could go back in time to when he was still blessing the earth with his life, she'd plant a kiss on his cheek and squish him until he pushed her off his long-legged body.

Gods she was so jealous of cellists.

The ponies of Trottingham were nice folk. She thought. Had she gone there already? With all the places the Symphony went, she thought that she'd at least remember a few of them. They all kind of... melded together into one stream of regretful nights and long mornings. As a matter of fact, they reminded her of her house. Home. That place she was going to be. That place she belonged. That place she really really wanted to be at right now to get away from the absolute... atrocities of table manners, proper behavior, and tableware exercises she was currently witnessing.

When they weren't touching beaks in a quiet bakery indoors, the Birds' Eyes made one hell of a ruckus and a full-fledged scene that prompted her to suddenly mind her baseball cap and lower its bill an inch more.

"You throw another fry over here, I'm leaning over and stabbing you with my knife."

Octavia stopped what she was doing, lips pressed against her cheeks, and thereafter continued keeping to herself and the Caesar Salad beneath her gray fork and white knife.

"Work faster!" Valkyrie played, bringing a balled-up claw behind her head and repeatedly swinging it near Lavi's head. "Work faster!"

Lavi looked up from her hunched-over position, tapping the small box with a talon before quickly snatching one of Valkyrie's fries.

The response was instant.

"That's dirty fighting."

"Your whip skills suck," Lavi replied, opening her beak wide as Valkyrie's mother and tossing the potato down her gullet for all to see before going back to her prior pastime. A nearby stallion, spotted by Octavia's peripherals, viewed the display as violent terrorism, adjusted his glasses, meeped, and collected his things before sprinting off. Though not willing to point it out—as Valkyrie would most likely jump at the chance to make fun of more ponies—Octavia let out a small, unnoticeable giggle, then hummed to herself and chewed on a piece of lettuce.

"How's it at, you two?" W asked, politely wiping his beak with a napkin and childishly crumpling it up onto the table.

Sesame's clear retort of "Who the hell says that?" was cut off by Lavi, who nudged the Unicorn with her elbow and spoke.

"Well, it's going, I guess. Then again, I'm just kind of watching and not really doing anything."

"'Just sit there and look pretty, darling,'" Sesame responded with not an ounce of a sense of actual emotion, his eyes never leaving the two bobby pins wrestling around the lock in front of his face.

"Aww, you think I'm–"

"It's a quote. From a movie," Sesame interrupted, horn still ablaze. Octavia bit her lip and peeled her ears back.

"You know what's also a quote from a movie?" Lavi asked, her voice betraying the results one would usually find after such a blunt remark.

Sesame leaned his head to his left a bit, slipping his tongue out of his mouth. "What's that?"

Lavi brought up a claw and bumped Sesame on the back of his head.

He grit his teeth and worked his jaw around, looking at the griffon next to him and growling, albeit weirdly lispy, "Godthdammit! I almotht bit oth my thriggin' to'gue!" He rubbed at his injury absent-mindedly, glaring at Lavi the entire time.

"She's sensitive about her weight," Valkyrie remarked with a smirk.

Lavi turned about with the finesse of a ground-ridden, one-winged hawk. "You like sailors!"

Valkyrie hissed, "They're strong!"

"They hit and quit!" Lavi spat, her beak in a grin.

Valkyrie mirrored the expression, shooting back, "Don't you mean like T's dad?"

"My dad actually came back, mind you both," T replied, pausing to sip from his straw-protruding, plastic-confined soft drink.

"When? Yesterday?" Lavi asked, placing a closed claw against her hip and raising a brow all sassy-like.

"Dunno," T began, taking another sip, "I'd ask your mom."

Valkyrie picked up a french fry and tossed it at T. Despite everything Octavia had learned and been told about the griffon by her close friends and allies, her aim was true as honesty, and the slice landed and sat atop T's perpetually frowning beak. She and Lavi both burst into laughter, completely missing T as he pinched the fry off, moved his arm over the table, and plunked it into Valkyrie's drink at the very exact moment she cracked open an eyelid, wiped away a tear, leaned forward, and raised her cup's bottom to the sky.

She sputtered and hacked up a lung or five, slamming her drink down onto the table and sticking out her tongue. "The hell was that?!"

"Couldn't wait," W answered, chin resting on his interlaced talons. "Told you three I had t' go."

"Thought we already changed your diapers, old coot," Valkyrie coughed, screwing her face up at her leader while fishing around in her drink for the intruder. Her expression lightened up at dizzying speed, ending in a toothy, barely-held-in-grin when Lavi began snickering.

W, reaching to his left, grabbed hold of the parasol's rod sticking out of the middle of the table and flicked the lever down on its side. The red and white umbrella thoroughly thunked on Lavi's cutely feathered head, causing her to whisper a small curse and began pushing it back up. Octavia, in the meanwhile, was relatively glad that she, as a pony, was slightly shorter than griffons. Maybe being small wasn't a bad thing to be after all. At least, in the company of griffons. With ponies, there was endless ridicule.

She didn't miss high school.

"You're punishing me for laughing?!" Lavi asked, locking the umbrella back in its prior position.

"I'm punishing you for being alive."

"Blame Lavi'th mom for that one, I think," Sesame quipped, stopping his work for a second to regard the griffon across the table and to his left with his tongue showing between his lips. How he was able to make progress on a small lock underneath the shade of two umbrellas was something Octavia found legitimately impressive.

Octavia hummed at her salad.

"Which one?" Valkyrie chimed, earning an elbow from an angry Lavi—which looked like it really hurt—who rested the arm on the table and pointed a stubby talon at her opponent after the fact.

"Don't pay what Val says any mind, Sesame–" she began with a certain bite in her words.

"Oh, I won't–"

"–she's got three stepdads," she continued, ignoring Sesame's shaking of his mane, then turned to her subject, "all hippogriffs. Least if she were a griffon she'd feel ashamed of herself. But because she's a hooflover, she doesn't feel bad about selling her ass on the corner lot next to Grandpa Gruff's birdhouse."

Octavia had borne witness to many a cat fight while attending high school back in the day. Usually, such hallway encounters ended in pullings of flowing manes, wrestling on the floors, astute proclamations of female dogs, and shoutings of blunt racism that made no sense of being brought up in the slightest. She'd never really involved herself in such events, but she liked to remain a bystander, see who was more steadily approaching a victory, and start picking out a side to root and shout for, albeit silently where it could all fester like a mental illness. Gods she was a horrible pony.

"Last day with us, and you get to watch them argue at lunch. How about that?" W asked from next to her, prompting her to set her tableware down on the napkin adjacent to her plate, mind her misaligned fork, stick out her tongue, and, while still looking the griffon's way, adjust its position.

A sour, very much wretched taste worked its way onto her poor tastebuds, but she was very much certain with herself that it was because she'd just bitten on a piece of an apple. Why anyone in their right minds would put a Red Delicious on a veggie salad was beyond her and might've been against a law if she remembered correctly. Taking up her napkin in both hooves, she pursed her lips and discarded the faulty fruit, making sure to fake a cough before bundling up the paper and tossing it next to her plate again. Admittedly, she... didn't like to think about how it was to be her last encounter with the griffons and Sesame, but she couldn't just quite ignore W's question at the same time. She swallowed a lump down her throat and picked up her fork again.

"Not quite the send-off I was expecting, mind, but I have to admit that it's better than walking around town," Octavia replied, stabbing a crouton and thereafter realizing that such an action was impossible.

"Well," W said, clapping his talons together like her school teacher used to do—thank you, Mr. Bon, for all your vivid, planetary teachings—and grinning a cheeky grin, "still have a few hours left. Got any deep, dark secrets left to share before we leave?"

She laughed, "Oh, I have an unsustainable, particularly raging fetish for Hydras. I hope you're all right with that fact." Her bunched up cheeks and upward inflection were simple disguises; they hid the very angry little mare who was currently berating herself for using "unsustainable" the completely wrong way. Gods, could she even comprehend speaking? She'd have to thoroughly adjust herself in front of her mirror for a few hours when she returned home, despite the now suddenly realized revelation that she'd have to actually look at that gray mare again for a long period of time. She'd have to suck it up and make more than just an attempt or two to return back to her long-rehearsed sophistication, otherwise her bandmates—sans Concerto, the lovely stallion—would poke fun with fifteen short sticks and never let up.

"I have to deal with Valkyrie wanting to bang fish and Lavi constantly confusing her sexuality," W replied toothily, "I think I can handle you liking three heads at once."

"Smarmy bastard," Octavia coughed, "I bet Candidate there is more than just your weapon of choice."

W, if he had lips, would've pursed them as he hunched over and instinctively reached for the fine weapon sat up next to him on the bench. "Why I never!"

All right, the attempts at her accent were cute the first time. Now they were just getting dumb.

Her own thoughts didn't seem to perturb Lavi, who—seemingly caught in a lull in her argument—held her stomach and shot her head back to seemingly laugh at the sun's misery of being the sun and therefore un-layable.

Octavia flexed her chin and pressed her lower lip upward in a pout, eyes narrowed and ears against her head. Her ballcap, prior securely tucked onto her head, tilted just a tad.

"So," W began again in a much calmer tone, catching her attention once more. She turned to her right, then up, and locked eyes with him. Lavi and Sesame across the table were back to what they were doing—or at least what Sesame was doing, at the very least—with Valkyrie keeping to herself to finish her food. One of Octavia's eyebrows went to the sky as she screwed her face up. "What's first on the agenda for Octavia Philharmonica when she gets back home?"

"Wellllll," Octavia droned, rolling her eyes to her left and following the direction with the rest of her neck only to come back again, "first off is my oven."

"Oh-ho-hooo, I know where this is going," W claimed, tapping a claw on his plate. Sitting straight on his seat, he asked, "What was it? Pizza? Maybe with pineapple on top?"

"Cookies," she sighed, "most assuredly a black mess as of days ago."

"Whoa!" came Valkyrie from the other side of the table. "You had T in your oven?"

T simply responded by taking up his arm and swiping Valkyrie's drink off the table.

Octavia bit her lower lip, expecting a savage, no-holds-barred beatdown from the chaotic griffon, who narrowed her eyes and... whimpered like a child. Valkyrie leaned over to her left to assess the damage that had been dealt, making sure to tell T that he was, "such a pee-pee hole," as she went down. She was being oddly... what was the word, non-confrontational today. Octavia wondered what had happened to the stars the night prior, and just how oddly they must have aligned.

"Oh God, I hope you at least have another tin of dough somewhere," W admitted, seemingly finding talking with the mare to be miles more important than supervising his dysfunctional teammates. He shrugged for a second before holding his stomach and chuckling over the sound of Valkyrie slamming her cup onto the table, "Now I feel bad for not shipping you home sooner!"

That wasn't necessarily his fault. "That wasn't entirely your fault. First, the train, then Tall Tale, then no ride from there." Octavia bunched up her cheeks and deflated. "No matter. I'll be off in the end one way or another."

She felt a nudge at her shoulder and looked up at the source.

"Hell of a walk, huh?"

There was the slightest bit of frost dangling off her tongue, but she worked her jaw a half second and reconsidered, "Quite."

"You fought bandit ponies," W started, bringing out a claw and showing it to her. "Eight, to be specific." He held up the next digit. "Tread through a Godawful cave." Another. "Cradle-robbed a fry cook."

"Dick," came Sesame from across Octavia, attention still somewhat fixated on the box.

"And fought off a minotaur." One more. Now it looked like he was rearing to give Octavia a high—what would that be—four? He assisted her with her horrible math skills, bringing his elbow up off the table to show her his four claws. "There's a story there. Think your bandmates would believe it?"

Octavia let out more of a scoff than a laugh, touching a hoof to her chest, "Gods, no. If I even made mention that I'd even gone outside, they'd call me out on it and never get off it."

"You tell me you live in Ponyville and you never go outside?" Sesame asked, finally rousing himself from his work.

"What's so good about Ponyville?" Valkyrie questioned, snatching Lavi's drink from in front of her and raising it to her chin.

"It's pretty country," Sesame responded, turning to the griffon with a leaning forward and a clip clop of his hooves on the table.

Lavi, grabbing hold of the now-open box in her claws, motioned at W for a second, then suddenly tossed the container behind her boredly and directly into the dumpster. "Dead end," she said quietly, shrugging.

"Damn," W replied.

Octavia shook her head with an odd look on her face. Wait, that was that? Nothing?

"Wouldn't know about it," Valkyrie grumbled. Octavia took notice of a very sudden, very swift, very quick-to-disappear look of anger on W's face, but didn't wish to push it. "We've got great things, too!" she continued very enthusiastically, "Gruff, Greta, Gabby, Gilda, Gordon, Gonzo, Gabe, Garza, Grundle..."

"You griffons are really fond of your G's," Sesame noted, voicing Octavia's wonderment for her. Despite her inner insistence on not arousing any very loud arguments and hurtful name calling, she clucked her tongue like the brethren of the other four of her lunchmates.

"Actually, why is that anyhow?" She watched as Lavi closed her eyes and looked down, shoulders fidgeting and bouncing as her beak upturned. Valkyrie raised a talon to her mouth and turned away, head shaking. T, smirking, stole a glance at W, who tutted at his subordinates' lack of insight.

"Naming convention," he said finally, "ever since King Grover. Griffons name their kids something with G in them if they're royalty." He rolled his blue eyes, brought up a talon of his own, and made a circle near his head with it. "Nowadays, they just do it because... why not?"

"What of you lot, then?" Octavia asked, taking a second each to look at the four members of the apparent Birds' Eyes. "Lavi..." Lavi struck a pose. "Valkyrie..." Valkyrie pointed her stubby talon toward the ground, or, what was immediately underneath it, her fries. "T..." T hummed a note. G sharp. Impressive. "W..." W looked at her. "No G's." She finished matter-of-factly.

"Our parents never loved us," Lavi admitted, tone infinitely betraying such a fact.

"That's why we all left home, actually," T added, "couldn't live in such a G kind of world."

"And now we shoot people for a living!" Valkyrie chimed in, grinning cheekily and placing her arm over Lavi's armored shoulders.

"Pay her no mind," W grunted, "we generally only shoot people if we have to."

"Or shoot at," Lavi said, then, regarding the griffon across and to her left, "though that's usually T's job. Keeps them right where we want them."

Octavia screwed up her face.

Lavi took up a shooting position from where she sat, though it looked a little more... compact(?) than the rifles Octavia had seen both her and W use. "He just clicks a button and DOODOODOODOODOODOODOODOODOODOO!"

"It's also how I'll break my wrists one day," T proclaimed, frowning.

"Slippery as Valkyrie's mom when that happens. Like arthritis in an earthquake," Lavi compared, chuckling a little at her own joke.

Octavia took mind of Valkyrie, whose eyes—and head—suddenly darted over just an inch to their left. The mare rose a brow and opened her mouth.

"I think it's safe to say you won't miss us when you leave," Lavi piped up, cutting Octavia off from her first consonant.

At that, Octavia felt a bit off. Her ears flattened against her head again, but one look from W next to her caused her to reach a hoof up to her scalp and fake an itch. She... she would. Surely, she would. At least, just a little, maybe. Or a lot. There was a degree there. Somewhere.

She looked up yet again. Valkyrie was now moving her neck around to see over T's head at a slightly worrying pace.

"Found someone–" Lavi began.

Valkyrie cut her off by lightly slapping her beak down, practically hopping from her seat like a horny rabbit during summer, brushing salt off her armor, spreading her dark brown wings, and zipping away across the street.

Everyone turned toward the direction she was headed, and no one was surprised.

Valkyrie touched down on the ground near the entrance to the docks, a blue-robed, tricorn-wearing griffon walking along the cobblestone on his hindlegs, a pair of barrels hoisted over his shoulder. He looked at her when she landed, and immediately began speaking to her in a volume deafeningly loud enough for Octavia and the others to hear from their outdoor table a few blocks down. Even amidst the sea of happily conversing ponies, Andy Trout always made sure that he was heard and heard well.

Octavia licked her lips. "Should we go after her?"

W hummed. "Nah. Give her a minute."

Octavia pursed her lips, watching as Valkyrie and Andy began descending down the docks.

Valkyrie turned her head to her right and let out a genuine, large, chipper laugh.

Octavia shook her head and stared at her salad. It was such a bewilderment just how much of a crush Valkyrie had on that poor sailor. Of all the griffons—or ponies—she found attraction in the one that would bring her back home. A single soul she could've easily missed.

Octavia looked back up.

And she smiled.