Learning Morse Code only became a bad idea after realizing she couldn't sleep at night with the rain outside telling her to suck its dick.
Mm...
What if...
What if her legs didn't know they were legs...?
Mmmmmm... what...?
No, of course she didn't have to wake up yet, it was...
...ugh, school started in... yawwwwwwn, a few hours or so.
She could get up whenever she wanted.
Mmm...
She could get up whenever she wanted and... still make it. Do her mane and make-up, eat a bowl of cereal—Hell, maybe two—and still have enough time to read a book before heading out.
What...?
Oh, let the dogs out already, they're... they're... ugh, just... yawwwwwn at least ten more minutes, please. You know what, just... just bring them in so she can pet them as an incentive. She could easily keep her eyes shut and shake away her sister or Forte, but she could not—repeat, could bloody not—deny a puppy dog's adorable little eyes staring miles and miles past her soul.
Either the well-spoken rain outside had gained a hundred pounds or so since their last one-sided conversation, or—now very assuredly—her brother had stomped angsty stomps away from her bedside and left her room in a blistering huff.
SLAM!
Reassured peace met her once more, and, finally able to enjoy herself with nopony but herself, Octavia blissfully parted her eyelids about halfway, hoping that she was sharing the heavenly presence of Buddy wagging his tail and panting heavily by her patiently-waiting alarm clock. Or, well she couldn't push Traize out of the equation either, if he'd ended up beating the other two Labs up the staircase. If that were the case, but not, like, the staircase, just the regular case, she'd have to make sure her homework wasn't torn to shreds again.
Though it seemed to be on par as religious treason at the moment to her thoroughly fatigue-buzzed mind, she turned over onto her right side, sunk her head further against her fluffy pink pillow, and raised a wobbly foreleg up to try and get what she needed in the middle of the darkest abyss she'd ever been met with in her life.
Where were her glasses?
She couldn't rightly see without her–
BOOP!
She was touching something very not wooden—like her clothes drawer—or plastic—her alarm clock—or thin—the object of her current desire—or wet—one of her dog's noses. If it was the latter, as well, she'd likely be receiving a torrent of sloppy kisses and quiet doggy yawns that would just cause her to smile to herself and snuggle up back into her blanket... and, right now, she wasn't receiving much of any kind of feedback.
Maybe he was just as tired as she.
BOOP!
Her foreleg bent at an attempted L-angle. Ninety or something, right? Was that acute or was it just called right? There was acute, less than ninety; right, straight ninety; obtuse, more than ninety; and then there was straight; which was about as straight as her but more sure of itself, and not as easily mistaken by literally anypony who knew about who she lived with.
Well then.
If not Buddy, or Traize, then who was watching her sleep?
Octavia blinked a few times, each time doing nothing for further revealing the admittedly discovered figure sitting before her seemingly confusedly, head lightly cocked and...
Her eyes snapped wide open.
Those weren't her glasses back home.
These were purple. And didn't look to be prescription by any form, fashion, or decent regard.
A yellow-white Unicorn was staring right at her, unmoving, about a little less than a bare inch from her face.
The realization came like the finishing of a fairly large puzzle, and its impact could've measured on the Richter scale if somepony had had one lying about.
She was set to go up on a spotlighted stage and her cute dress was trailing a string; her strict-as-all-Hell math teacher was about to see her forgotten, incomplete homework; she'd neglected feeding her dogs this morning before she left for school; oh Jeebuz there were like eighteen freakin' spiders in her Godsdamn shoe and they all had bombs strapped to them; she'd left her oven on at home, which meant that she'd better get back home before she didn't have one; Forte had stolen one of her burritos—the one with beans, jalapenos, cheese, and bacon that she liked, too, the little bastard—from the freezer again, and this time her trip into the basement to retrieve her baseball bat and cattle prod wouldn't be as unworthy a time-spender.
Her ungodsly, outright deafening scream didn't at first seem to possibly belong to her, but as she felt the warm cloth of the couch deform against her spine, gasped at the unfulfilling and now much more noticeable air struggling to reach her lungs, and noticed her forelegs' and hindlegs' newly—clumsily—entangled positions in her much-too-thick much-too-hot fleece blanket, she could only think about how much she'd be getting silently sniggered at later on. Probably within the next few seconds, actually, now that she thought about it.
Her first instinct was, well, an instinct.
Simultaneously tossing her disheveled, smoky mane about, wiping the drool from the side of her mouth, and stretching her little limbs out, she affirmed, "I-I wasn't sleeping!" She took sudden note of the books lying next to her—a few on the floor, and two make that three, as that piece between the cushions wasn't her imagination taking the piss with her at the moment—and directed her attention to the nearby clock she was certain usually sat next to their corner lamp, then realized her note again and bent over at the waist, hooves scrambling about and collecting the books, which she clutched against her breast like strictly "dibs" candy from the store.
"I was just reading." She rolled her eyes with a chuckle on her tongue, her mind already playing along with her tactical lie, "You know how draining that gets after a while. I was just lying back and imagining my own death, is all." She swung a hoof. "Good old self-hating Octavia, r-right?"
Vinyl's shades were gargantuan in size, and could have easily taken on Old Zacherle in the sky in something as simple as a staring contest, and Octavia could still tell that the Unicorn had just blinked like she was speaking her mother tongue.
Dammit she wasn't buying it. That was Plan A, B, all the way to Z. Ah! Plan @! What was that symbol again? Just at, right? How did you use that?
She knitted her eyebrows, and with much greater results than the "knee socks" lying in a torn-up pile by the television. It wasn't her fault she could barely use the damn things. She just wanted some cute socks.
"Where the bloody Hell have you been, anyway?"
Vinyl stood as emotionless and as stationary as a statue in the Canterlot Gardens. That is to say, all it would take to set her free would be to get a little angry, and so it went.
Her horn lit up, and out of the corner of Octavia's eyes, Vinyl's blue and green scarf hovered up from its hanging spot on the coat rack, remained there for a couple second for Octavia to simply frown at, then fell back down in a new fold.
Octavia sucked in her lips.
"Right. You went out."
Her snoot suddenly felt a bit... vulnerable, and as its area of effect spread upward and beat the holy Hell out of her tearducts, she leaned back, further shifted their main couch's shape with her back, and spread her forelegs in a Y-shape that popped and hissed them up and down again. She lulled her tongue out and let out a prolonged yawwwwwn, then blinked first her right eye, then her left.
Octavia flailed a hoof uselessly, befitting its owner. "Bah, you caught me." At that, Vinyl stepped away from her position—much to Octavia's disgruntlement—and headed around the couch and to her bags still sitting by the door, as per usual. Sitting herself up to try and get herself to properly—forcefully—awake, she rubbed at an eyelid and asked through a wide mouth, "How was it all out there?"
SHHHK!
The curtains flew open with a magenta aura that quickly dissipated. Though it was a tad bit sunny, the rain made its presence more annoyingly known by creating little puddles in the grass around their bipolar-suffering abode.
"Ah." A turn, this time to watch Vinyl fall to a crouch and root through her saddlebags. "I pray you didn't catch a cold. What with your hilarious condition, opening your mouth to sneeze at the same time only ends up making me laugh."
Vinyl soundly slapped a hoof against her rump, blowing a raspberry and glaring at Octavia.
"Hahaha! I deserve that, I suppose."
Vinyl cracked a grin, then opened her other bag.
"It's a bit past lunchtime," Octavia groggily continued, casting a quick glance at the alarm clock—which, oddly enough, was lying on its side on the floor in the middle of an open tub of what looked like ice cream—and looking back up. The news didn't seem to perturb Vinyl at first, but, just as quickly, the Unicorn rose back up to a standing position and began to head toward their kitchen.
Tussling with her mane absent-mindedly, Octavia went on, "I was going to make something but... I forgot what."
Vinyl paused at the threshold—which was quite literate, as their living room bore carpet, and their kitchen was laden with tile—and took a gander at the side of the refrigerator to her right.
"Have you washed the dishes yet, Vinyl?"
Vinyl turned her head to face her. She lifted her chin up and to the left for barely a second.
"Oh no you don't. I can get up right now and see whether you did or not."
A frown fell upon Vinyl's lips. Finally, she shook her head.
"It's your turn this round."
She was still for a second. Then she looked back at the calendar magnetized on the appliance. She craned her neck forward, muzzle scrunched up. Her horn lit up, and her glasses lifted up and onto her forehead. Cerise eyes looked up and down, then up and down again, then up, then still up, then down, then to the right, then up again, and then back down. Then at Octavia.
Another grimace.
"I have a turn. It's just that you never notice it because I get right on it."
Vinyl's face lit up.
"I swear to every single God that exists—Equestrian, Crumpish, Zebrican, Yakyakistani, Griffonian, Bitalian, Spotish, you name it—if you use your method, I am going to end up very, very upset."
Vinyl snorted.
"I know it's your preferred method and what-not, and that you invented it, but blasting music against our fragile Chineighse plates to scrape off bits of eggs and gravy a simple sponge could more easily get rid of isn't the right way to go about really anything."
Vinyl pouted her lower lip out.
Octavia's shoulders fell.
"Please, Vinyl."
Vinyl seemed to be thinking on it for awhile, then, finally, she shrugged. Even though the response was clearly in favour of Octavia's more traditional, more sensical, more intelligent method, she still elicited a few creaks from the top of the couch to peek over and watch the Unicorn the whole time as she reared up on her hindlegs, stumbled about awkwardly a bit (which was strange considering her pastime), and hit the tap on with a flick of a hoof.
Octavia cleared her throat.
At once, Vinyl's already illuminated horn enveloped the whiteboard hanging by her head. A black dry-erase marker flew up from somewhere out of her sight, twisted its own cap off, placed it on its rear, and waited patiently.
"Do anything else today?"
Not really.
Octavia sat up a bit more, dropping her chin into the warm embrace of her foreleg.
"I don't imagine there were too many people at the Jolly Roger."
You'd be sup
EEH EEH!
You'd be surprised.
Octavia cocked an eyebrow.
"Really? I always thought ponies were allergic to rain here."
Misery likes company, I guess.
"Is that why you decided to bunk with me?"
I dunno. Maybe I just thought you'd attract more guys I could snag.
"Well I–"
I couldn't be any more wrong.
"You have a boyfriend, Vinyl."
It was a joke, Tavi. At you.
"Very funny. You should do stand-up... oh wait."
Vinyl stopped what she was doing in an instant.
The water was still quietly running.
You can say it if you want, but this sponge is full of tomato sauce and aerodynamic af.
"I won't. Your secret is safe with me, love."
I'm glad.
Not finding any more fuel for the conversation fire, Octavia sank back against the couch, letting her right cheek get warmer so she could stare at Vinyl's side of the house. As the Unicorn, sensing the pause, wiped her previous words from the board, Octavia narrowed her eyes, spotting something.
Why the bloody hell did ponies always steal away with her manebrushes?
She pointed at it judgingly.
"Vinyl, why is–"
She sucked in a razor-sharp breath, and found her supply exhausted.
Her heart sank, if only for a second.
Do you ever get lonely?
She blinked more times than she'd counted.
You know, being here by yourself all day?
Her mouth fell open, though she wasn't sure if it was because she was surprised, or attempting to formulate words. In any case, she couldn't... seem to make any sound at the moment.
Vinyl was very good at figuring out silent signs. She turned her head at the absent response, and her face immediately fell. She looked back at the dishes she'd stopped washing, then faced Octavia.
Sorry.
Octavia was breathing a little awkwardly, now.
That just kind of came out.
No use burdening her.
Octavia snickered instead, her cheeks bunching up. "You have more an advantage on that front, Vinyl. You can erase before I see."
Vinyl snorted.
Good point. Let's just move on.
She would've liked to say something on the affirmative side... but, still, couldn't feel a syllable tap tantalizingly on her tongue. Despite, Vinyl suddenly capped her marker, let it clatter and thereafter roll off the kitchen countertop, and dropped onto all fours. She turned tail, rounded the corner, and once again began to pilfer her bags like a vulture on a rancid corpse.
"Oh. Did you buy something?"
Vinyl nodded.
At first, flashes of pranks past burned over her brain. Fake poop that later turned out to be oh-so-real and backfired, especially on Vinyl's crusted hooves; toothpaste smooshed between two chocolate cookies for Octavia to "indulge" in, only for her wonderful companion of a nose to save her from a lovely hospital visit; tickets to a Cigare Brûlé concert in Eaux Mares at the Eaux Mares concert, with a chance to see the experimentation of Time Bomb as he stretched his limbs out with his side project band, which... later turned out to have been printed straight from an art program, so... even through the tears, she had to commend Vinyl for being somewhat skilled at Photoshop.
Then, the memories fizzled away like fog on a busy railroad track.
Even Vinyl knew that now was not the time for such a thing. And now her curiosity was piqued and had peaked.
"A gift?"
Vinyl lifted her head and, pouting out her lower lip, she tilted it to and fro slowly.
"Hm," she hm'd, placing her crossed forelegs over her folded hindlegs and burying her chin in its warmth, "I'm afraid you have me stumped, Vinyl."
Her anticipation was quickly halted. Vinyl, swiveling around at the speed of light with her two forelegs up by her sides, grinned from ear to ear and kept her expression even as Octavia's own seemed to go from confused, to scrutinizing, to wide-eyed realization, and, finally, an adorable gape.
"Noooo!"
Vinyl nodded as if she was pleased with herself. She couldn't speak for her, but she sure was pleased with her!
Every word she spoke was met with a dip and lift of the Unicorn's chin.
"Super Epic Chicken Ramen Noodles For The Road?! Vinyl, you didn't!"
Flinging her sheets off her body with one deft motion and hopping onto the ground finally, she trotted over as quickly as she could in her admittedly swaying step, changed her sights from her prize to the one holding it, and threw her forelegs around Vinyl's neck, tightening her grip as she moved her head up and nuzzled the Unicorn's cheek. Pulling back and falling onto her rump, she took hold of her evening's plastic bowl and hugged it close to her chest. Oh Gods how could such happiness exist in such a tiny container?
Oh!
She perked up. "I'll go microwave these," she proposed, pointing at her gift, "and you go look for a film!"
Her happy, happy sights were met with a horrible frown from Vinyl's face.
She swore she heard a duck quack upon seeing it.
Oh...
"Vinyl, it's all on fire!"
A chuckle worked its way uneasily out of her throat.
"Right. Last time." She cleared her throat. "You go microwave these, I'll go look for a film."
Only when she handed over her blessed ramen bowl did Vinyl crack a grin again and, taking her cue correctly, she trotted out of the kitchen with her face undelightfully beet red and worked her way over to the television sitting atop the table on her side of the house. With the sounds of the microwave beep beep beeping and quickly, steadily humming, Octavia pulled her blanket over to her "assigned" left side of the couch, wrapped her lower half inside its nine-thousand degree knots, grabbed for the remote, and turned the television on with a tap of the end of her extended hoof.
The cooking show from the previous night had long since changed to some much-too-enthusiastic stallion cruising the country in some kind of nice-looking red cart, so she looked down at the remote to better aid her search, found the Guide button, and pressed it firmly. Immediately, the picture on the screen found a small home on the top right of the new interface, and her vision was assaulted with times, channel names, show titles, and short summaries.
Adjusting her position ever so slightly, she began thoroughly tapping the Page Down arrow on the remote to get to the usual channels showing movies around this time. After exhausting their fire extinguisher's energy supply—as well as their own—they'd settled on some kind of rom-com about pregnancy or something. It wasn't too awful, to be honest. Something about a pregnancy test in a foal's mouth in a bouncy castle or something. Some line about it being covered with pee or the likes. Not bad. Definitely not something to see again though unless she couldn't rightly take notice of the screen in the first place due to... okay, well, due to being buzzed or just straight drunk off her arse. Not like anyone could see all this anyway.
CRRKKT!
Something about talking dogs. She wasn't in the mood to think about cute dogs.
CRRKKT!
Some spaghetti western with a harmonica player and a beautiful mare in a cute dress.
CRRKKT!
Damn that might've been a good choice. Oh well.
She blinked, tilting her head to try and see better.
Were ponies nowadays trying that position? Really? That looked more than just mildly uncomfortable.
Now back in her usual mindset—at least to a certain degree—she didn't even flinch once she took notice of the hovering object facing her left side. She regarded it disinterestedly, and read it as such.
Are we watching porn?
She glared, then turned around on the couch and looked at Vinyl, whose horn was levitating both their steaming noodle cups and the whiteboard idly.
"Doing that only makes me feel lonely and only gives you ideas. Not this time."
Damn. I guess I'll have to watch it later.
"I'm blocking this channel."
You do that and I'm flushing your soup away.
"You do that and I'll suck up the water as it goes with a turkey baster and spray it on your head while you sleep."
>implying I sleep
Octavia rolled her eyes.
Her noodle bowl flew over to her side, and she let it fall onto her blanketed lap as Vinyl rounded the corner and sat on the opposite side of the couch, striking a pose that probably made her think she was cool.
She stuck out her left foreleg and bent the end three times in rapid succession.
Octavia once again rolled her eyes in their little homes, then let out a huff and slapped the remote into Vinyl's waiting hoof. In one swift motion, the Unicorn pointed the remote at the television, scrolled down a few channels, and clicked on something so fast that Octavia couldn't even read the title or its synopsis.
CRRKKT!
She glared at her roommate.
Vinyl, once again, firmly smacked her own flank with a hoof.
PBBT, PBBT!
Octavia reached over onto the table in front of them and grabbed a pair of disposable chopsticks. Vinyl's horn grabbed a plastic fork from the red Duo cup nearby, toppling the whole thing and sending both it and its equally plastic contents across the tabletop.
Octavia looked over to see if Vinyl was going to clean up her mess.
Vinyl was, in fact, not going to.
Onscreen, a trio of rather ordinary looking stallions stared up a treehouse, their clothes dirty and their manes a mess. Above, leaning over the railing, were two attractive mares dressed with flowers and blessed with heavenly voices, beckoning the three up the rope ladder dangling between them.
Octavia tilted her head, then made sure to show Vinyl.
"Is this another one of your 'getting high' movies?"
Vinyl shook her head.
"All right then."
As the scene began to unfold before them, and the stallions ascended the ladder presented to them, Octavia parted her two chopsticks and began to feast on their glamorous meal fit for kings. Well, queens, mind. It wasn't treasonous to call herself a queen when Princess Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and Twilight were, well, princesses, right? Not to say she was a queen in her own little universe. If anything, she was little more than... a simple woodworker making beams and planks for houses. She knew a mare in high school who believed herself to be a queen, stepping allll over other ponies and treating them like rubbish. She'd gotten upset over not being Prom Queen, and her parents not making her those candy net necklaces for graduation, and one of their table mates asking an apparently "stupid question" about something Octavia had prior been curious about as well.
...
Bitch.
She hummed happily at her... retribution(?), and, to reward herself, she paused in her eating, tilted her head back, and started to drink the broth from her noodle cup
MMM!
She keeled over without even a millisecond of thinking, dropping her noodle cup on the couch's left arm rest and hacking out her lungs with the ferocity of a shotgun blast. Oh Gods what in the hell...?
Her moment of confusion was thoroughly molested as her head shot violently forward. If she'd eaten more earlier today, she was sure her horrendous wretching wouldn't have ended up as dry as it was. The soft thump of her cup hitting the ground and spilling onto the carpet met her ears through the white noise shredding the inside of her skull, but she wasn't in the real mood for giving a shit. As she heaved, her body twisted on the floor, she looked up to see if Vinyl was attempting to get help.
Instead, the Unicorn seemed to not even notice her near-death experience.
Octavia quaked a hoof against her mouth, then coughed out, "G-Gods, Vinyl, you're... COFF, mute, not deaf." Still nothing. "If... WHEEEEZE, I were to choke out, I doubt I'd get any help until I was... ugh, confirmed dead."
There was a rampage going on in her stomach. Swells of heat scalded her breast, then her stomach, then all the way up to her neck, constricting it.
What in the bloody...
Her strength seemed to be vanishing. Her hoof, previously attempting to beat Vinyl's swaying hindlegs senseless, simply fell to the floor as if it wasn't there in the first place.
A shiver wriggled its way up her spine, then lodged itself firmly behind her heart and chilled her to the very core.
Oh Gods her stomach... oh Gods please just let it end...
Oh Gods she was gonna be sick.
Her head lost substance, and she dropped it hard to the carpet...
...which didn't seem to be there either.
She seemed to be floating, suspended, in deep, dark space for little less than a second, and so she raised an eyebrow, the action of which almost drove her to vomit again.
What was–
THUNK!
She hit the ground hard, her forelegs instinctively reaching out to keep her from making full impact. Seemingly in the mindset to do a pushup, she raised herself upward and cracked open her eyes to look at the newly unveiled ground again.
Wood, this time.
Not a soiled carpet of ice cream, spoons, and Gods-sent ramen.
Just...
KNOCK KNOCK!
...wood.
And... whatever that was.
She narrowed her eyes, then touched the small stain carefully, sniffing.
It...
...oh.
She frowned, then, after wiping her hoof clean on the dry floorboards by her side, began to check her mane for any more.
Oh cool.
She'd woken up in her own vomit.
Mind, she'd first believed the little stain to be drool, since she was a bit of a drooler when it came time to sleeping, but no, looking at it right now yeah that was definitely vomit all right.
She glared at nothing—well, she glared at the vomit—then scooted away a few inches and fell to her butt. She arched her spine and elicited a few scattered pops here and there, then nipped audibly and looked around her slowly-developing surroundings.
W was long gone, and in his wake, it seemed that the entire world had been drained of colour.
...oh.
It was just super dark.
The best part of wakin' uuup, was vomit by your heeead~!
Ugh.
Now stuck idly screwing with her mane, Octavia lifted her hindleg from the folded-up dishtowel lying beneath it that she was sure hadn't been there prior—as she usually wasn't in a mindset to care for herself in general, but particularly not while she was hopelessly drunk—and about knocked over a clearly half-empty cup of water to her rear and right. Newly paying it mind, and teetering a bit on her butt like she was in the middle of a tightrope show—not performing, mind, but on the edge of her seat watching in the audience—she examined it closer and found a small pill lying atop an equally small napkin next to it.
She craned her neck back.
"Oh," she said to nobody, "naproxen."
Scooping up the little gel pill in the recess of her right forehoof, she downed it with a flick of her chin, greedily reached for the cup of water, and drank it down with ease. Shaking her head as a shiver overtook her system, she let out a breath and simply sat there for what felt like a couple minutes or so. Above her head, various stomps, crashes, and voices mixed and mingled, creating a cacophony of things she really didn't need bombastically parading through her brain at such a fragile moment in her life. Clutching her searing headache with a barely-present hoof, she shakily rose to threes—then all fours—and began to trot over to the middle of the cargo bay where, hopefully, no one was sitting atop the hatch so she could get some fresh air through her choking lungs, the stagnant air of the inside of the ship doing her no wonders nor favours at the moment.
Rearing up on her hindlegs once she found the ladder, she began to ascend it with such dexterity that she'd be better off frozen in an ice cube in the middle of a pond. Looking up, she raised a foreleg free, waved it about over her head, caught something, and gently threw it open.
Pushing away every thought in her head to simply let go from the blinding light now assaulting her eyes, Octavia climbed further up, flung her upper half onto the top deck, and let the rest of her body join limply. Getting back onto all fours, she raised a foreleg over her eyes and looked about. She seemed to have caught the Scuttlebug's crew in the beginnings of a song.
One griffon, his voice quaking with grit, chirped.
"So while I sleeeept, the oth-er niiiiiight..."
Suddenly twenty voices joined in, making a much greater volume.
"Aaaanchors, anchors aweeeeeeigh, alllll!"
The lone griffon took the stage again.
"I had a dreeeeeeam, I saw my wiiiiiiife..."
The crew instantly bowed their heads, and, in an infinitely more somber tone, repeated.
"Aaaaanchorrrrrs aweeeeeeigh..."
Her search for more familiar faces grew more fruitless by the second, and, thoroughly stumped, she fell to her butt again and began to make herself look a tad more presentable, starting with her surely unkempt mane.
"She stood there proooooud, and looked my waaaaaaay..."
It seemed to be a bit disagreeable with her at the moment. No matter. She'd dealt with worse before.
"Aaaanchors, anchors aweeeeeeigh, alllll!"
She could feel that little bit sticking up. Go down, damn you.
"Her eyes did shiiiiiiine, her hips did swaaaaaay!"
There we go. Dammit. Stay down!
"Aaaaanchorrrrrs aweeeeeeigh..."
Her bowtie, next.
"Her dress was whiiiiite, like some fair briiiiiide..."
A bit crooked. Easily fixable.
"Aaaanchors, anchors aweeeeeeigh, alllll!"
There! Or... not there.
"Four years had paaaaaassed, since that bare niiiiight!"
...was it there? She couldn't tell at the moment.
"Aaaaanchorrrrrs aweeeeeeigh..."
Gods, why did she always enjoy drinking so much if the morning after was such a blinding pain to her?
"I sat and weeeeeept, like some poor foooooooal..."
Well, she kind of had an idea. She was usually focusing on her aches, and ignoring her problems.
"Aaaanchors, anchors aweeeeeeigh, alllll!"
That's why.
"I left her hooooooooome, it's all my-y fauuuuuult..."
...it looked good enough. She'd have to find a mirror later, though.
"Aaaaanchorrrrrs aweeeeeeigh..."
Her ear perked up. Then the other followed suit.
"I had to leeeeeave, I'm sorry looooove..."
She could hear some strings here and there, strumming along at the end of each line.
"Aaaanchors, anchors aweeeeeeigh, alllll!" BUH-RUM!
There it was! It sounded like a guitar...
"One day I'll returrrrrrrrn, from-the clouuuds abooooooove!" BRUM!
Hmm. Not bad.
"Aaaaan... chorrrrrs... aweeeeeeighhhhhhhhh..."
Though their eyes were closed, the shanty-singing crew members all turned as one toward something on the opposite side of the Scuttlebug as Octavia.
A snicker met her ears, clearly feminine.
BUH-RUMMMM!
At that, the entire ship cheered, whooping and hollering as they waved their claws around manically.
From the rear of the ship, Andy shouted, "Tha's a good shehnty, there, lads! Take five while yer Cap'n steers clear of all thees kelp!"
Temporarily free from their work, griffons all around her sat on the floor, or reclined against a wooden beam, or even bent over a barrel or two, smiling despite the sweat pouring from their brows. As she rose to make room for a trio of griffons who wanted to take advantage of the cold of the steel hatch she'd opened, Octavia's ears perked up once more at the telltale sound of guitar strings plucking daintily... experimentally. She turned to the source, and realized it was the exact same as the one the whole crew had ended their little note on.
A griffon, her colours resembling that of a blue-crested pigeon's and a bandage-coloured bandana wrapped around her head, sat on a small wooden bench, holding in her grasp a rather... not guitar-looking guitar. It might have been a deformed cousin you'd keep in the basement, sure, but... not a guitar by any definition. Regardless, its figure didn't seem to sway its twang, as it hit notes with perfect precision to a bit of a play on some kind of Feenuhlay polka Octavia had heard a few times in the past. What was that... Säkkijärven or something, right? A bit of a slower tempo than the original, but, yeah, that was it all right.
Her head screamed no, but her body—always the boss—brought her over to the griffon who, as if noticing the approaching presence, ceased her polka-playing and returned to lazily playing around with her six strings.
Octavia, feeling her few feet away was a good enough distance from the absolute stranger, waved a hoof.
"Hello there."
The griffon looked up with a start, then, realizing who it was—or, well, what it was, which wasn't a fellow griffon she'd have to impress in some way—let loose a toothy grin. Her dijon mustard irises sparkled despite the lack of sun.
"Hey there."
DUHDUH, DUHDUH, DUHDUH DUHHH, DUH DOIH!
The griffon's expression fell, but she worked through the mistake and kept going with her little ditty.
Octavia couldn't help but point it out.
"That was a flat, wasn't it?"
The griffon snorted. Clapping her strumming claw against the body of her... "guitar", she looked back up at Octavia and tilted her head. "What would a pony know about playing an instrument?"
Racist. Speciesist? She really needed to figure that out.
She stuck a hoof against her chest. Specifically her bowtie. "I play in the Royal Canterlot Symphony back in Equestria. It's safe to say I know a thing or two."
The griffon hummed, then, suddenly, patted the side of the bench next to her a few times. Octavia, though slightly uneasily, took a seat.
The introductions weren't slow whatsoever.
"I've seen you around a lot, but never had the time to talk to you," the griffon began, returning to her mindless strumming, "kicked some ass last night, that's for sure. Would've stayed up here myself, but someone musta locked me in my room as I was putting this away in my case. Woulda liked to kick some Diamond Dog ass." BUH-RUMMMM! "But whatever."
She looked over at Octavia, her claw still fanning her strings. She stuck out her left foreleg and presented it to Octavia.
"Name's Gibbs."
Ah, so this was the Gibbs Lavi had talked about before.
"I'm Octavia."
They shook.
"Nice name, Octavia."
"You as well, Gibbs, though I don't suppose it's your real one, seeing as how you griffons seem to like your aliases."
Gibbs chuckled. "Oh, like Tacitus and them? Yeah, they're super secret government workers." She didn't even attempt to let the joke sink in before flailing a claw. "Nah, we just like being more mysterious than we deserve. But yeah, no, I... um, I rebranded myself with a new name after I left home with my guitar."
"Why Gibbs, then?"
Gibbs smirked. This was obviously something she liked explaining.
"'coz Gibbs doesn't give a shit."
Octavia waggled her eyebrows.
"Ah."
"Ever think of one for yourself?"
Um...
Octavia narrowed her eyes.
"What, like a fake name?"
"Yeah."
...
What?
Octavia lifted her chin, eyes narrowing more.
Gibbs pouted her lower beak. "Oh don't give me that. What harm is thinking up a name for yourself? First, that doesn't give a shit part, but also, it works with my instrument. Gibbs, guitar. Y'know?"
Octavia rather liked her name, as she'd firmly established quite some time ago to... herself.
Gibbs fiddled with her strings.
"Come ooooon..."
This was eerily similar to Sesame begging her to smoke a fag, but... ugh. Fine. She guessed there was no harm in a little game.
"All right..."
Gibbs pumped a clenched claw. "Awesome! So, what instrument do you play?"
"The double bass."
Gibbs held out her guitar. "Like this?"
"Like this," Octavia corrected, bringing up her left foreleg above her head and curling up her right by her breast.
Gibbs clucked her tongue. "Ah, the boring one."
Octavia glared, but, spurred on only by curiosity, droned, "Yes, the upright bass."
Gibbs' eyebrows danced up and down as she waved a single claw around. "Well, that's easy then."
Octavia blinked.
"Then... Bassist."
Not really much of a name, but it... had a bit of a reverberation to it.
Gibbs nodded.
"You're The Bassist."
Another nod, this one more aggressive.
"Yeah, yeah, I like that." She looked at Octavia again. "You're The Bassist," she repeated.
She reached down and grabbed at a bag sitting beneath the bench. Throwing its flap open, she retrieved from inside a piece of tin foil shaped like a triangle, dusted it off, and held it out to Octavia.
"You want a sandwich, Bassist?"
Octavia looked down at it.
She was a tad hungry. And she needed to make sure her pill from earlier wasn't just sitting in an empty stomach.
She looked up with a smile.
"I'd love one."