//------------------------------//
// Dissemblage 
// Story: Knight of Equestria III: Pizzicato and Changelings 
// by scifipony 
//------------------------------//

My ears folded forward as Octavia trotted up beside me.  I glanced right.  She silently mouthed words.  Easy enough to lip read.  "I just wanted to—"

I hung my head, skimming the cobblestones.  "My ear drops don't prevent me from hearing you the way Vinyl's noise-canceling earphones do."

"Oh.  I am sorry."  Her double-bass case bounced on her back.  Her violet eyes regarded me.  Her pink bowtie stood impeccable against her stiffly starched white collar below her well-coiffed glossy black mane.  Every line of her taupe coat had been curried and combed perfectly, in-line like a corn field and straight, as if nothing remarkable had happened yesterday.

Stiff upper lip, I explained to myself.  She's more of a Trotter than I am!  I took a deep breath and dissembled.  "You looking forward to Vinyl's party tonight?"

"I was not invited.   Not working with either peerage or the family.  I just wanted—" 

—to thank you.  I cut her off by making a 180° turn.  I trotted back toward the main entrance to the castle, and, as she caught up, I pointed a wing at the guards in the portcullis and said, "Innit interesting how nopony seems to remember what happened yesterday?"

A pair of magenta eyes and a pair cerulean eyes studied us momentarily, but the two bored brass-armored mares held their positions with little more than that evaluative glance.

I said, "I remember well.  Look at that mare with her deep blue eyes and her purple mane popping out of her helmet like dyed hay.  No nervous anxiety making her tail swish!  No scanning the skies.   No yesterday when somepony conquered the kingdom.  Today, a changeling invasion might have as well not even happened."  Have they forgotten?

Octavia said, "I would not dare ask, but I am certain they remember."

"Do they?  I can't tell."  You remember, don't you?

"I remember.   But I am able to place it aside."

Oh, Tartarus!  How?  I really didn't understand normal ponies.  I started walking back toward the promenade.  Her hoof falls clicked behind me and she didn't see my eyes threatening to fill with tears.

She said, "I just wanted to—"

"Sorry I nearly collided with you and the foals.  Lucky somepony left their basement unlocked, huh?"  I hadn't just chosen you instead of six other mares running with a colt between them.  Now I was blinking furiously.

She asked, "It frightened you, did it?"

Actually, it frightens me that it didn't frighten me.  What frightens me is the certainty that what I chose to do was the right thing.  And how alive it made me feel beyond the momentary angst. 

When I didn't answer, she said, "I never learned the foals' names.  That magic swept through; when we ventured out, they spotted their parents.  They broke into tears in the middle of the street and I became an anonymous somepony walking away who had done the right thing."

Her eyes glistened when I glanced back.   In this way, we were sisters.  I said, "Sometimes you have to do the right thing."

"It is a reward in itself."

Not when it's a compulsion.  Princess Compulsive Disorder.

I caught her blinking as she noticed my tears.  She added, "We are dancing around it, are we not?"

I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes with a wing since my demonstrable emotions were no longer a secret.  

"The right thing," she said.

I nodded.

Slowly, loudly, possibly because she worried I'd cut her off again, she said, "The right thing for me is to offer to help you tonight."

In my ears, my iSing played a country-pony EDM beat with a driving guitar and a steady drum.  Wake Me Up.  The lyric tried to answer in my stead: The singer sang a story of surviving bad times, love lost (or friends) or foalish pride getting in the way.  It was personal for the singer; it turned personal for me as I realized what I listened to.  The song became about waking up and realizing my distress was all my craziness—and all the meaningless energy I'd put into it that didn't matter, even if my secret mattered greatly to me.

I breathed in as a tear dripped from my chin.  I thought, Yes, thank you, let's just dance around it  

I stopped and said, "I've this idea about live mixing."

Gathering hoof traffic detoured around us as I cradled my iSing in a wing and used my lips to select a song.  I looked into her violet eyes, watched them focus on me.  I popped out an ear drop onto my wing and offered it to her. 

"Give this a listen."  I smiled.  I'm hiding in plain sight.  Let me have this delusion.

She smiled.

I dropped it into her fuzzy grey ear.

There are plenty of symphonic dance records, some with a double-bass.  Others.  Well, "I've got this theory that different classes of  instruments are interchangeable.  The dichotomy could well surprise and energize the audience."  I switched songs.  "Tympani switched with your bass."  Another.  "Guitar switched with dulcimer.   Stuff like that."

She asked, "You want to arrange music on the fly?"

"Innit that what I already do with recorded tracks?"

"This is true."

I asked, "Can you play something you just heard and riff on it?"

She got this sly look.  "I live with Vinyl Scratch, do I not?  It  is one of her many attractions."

"Now, if I could book a piano player, too.  That'd be brilliant."

She smiled widely, like I'd given her a great big present tied with a red bow.  "It just so happens..."