To keep from wrecking anything, Octavia locked every muscle in her body. Ice flushed through her legs and magma pooled in her chest. Her ears rang.
Anxious hooves shuffled behind her.
A muscle strained behind her ear. It traveled down her neck and ended with a shudder down a wither, threatening to tear everything loose.
Slowly, deliberately, Octavia prepared herself to speak. The process was delicate and painful, drawing breath and opening her jaw, water flowing over a dam. She nearly broke, tail lashing, seized herself, and tried again: breath in, hold, wait, release. In, hold, release. Again, in, hold...
"I am mad at you, Vinyl," she said, voice rigid as wood, eyes on infinity, "because you cut the bread in the wrong way."