Twang
The night after the trial, after Father returned from his show, the four of us sat down to discuss moving the rest of Vinyl’s things from her mother’s. She’d brought a lot with her initially, but nothing that really made the room we gave her feel more than a temporary space. If she was going to be longer, Mother wanted Vinyl to have her own space where she could feel comfortable.
Father agreed and left to see if he could arrange for some extra hooves and a carriage. Mother left with him to the study and came back with a pen and paper. She guided us upstairs and to Vinyl’s room.
“Now then, make a list of everything you want from your mother’s home, and we can see about getting it all moved over and set up here just as you’d like,” Mother said. She uncapped the pen and set the point on the paper.
I could understand what my parents were wanting to do. Right now, Vinyl’s room didn’t much look like, say, mine. It was inoffensive: neutral colors, a comfy bed, nightstand, dresser, a pair of nice but simple landscape paintings above a shelf. Vinyl had left a bit of a mark on the room, but it still felt very impersonal. The shelf held her stereo, records, and assorted knicknacks. The bedside table had a weird unicorn lamp with undulating blobs inside. Clothes were scattered across the floor and were haphazardly hung in the closet.
“We can start with furniture, dear. Is there anything you want moved or removed?” Mother asked.
Vinyl stood in the middle of the room and spun around. “I... I don’t think so, no. Everything here is way nicer than I have at ho--” She blushed and stumbled over her words for a moment. “At my mom’s.”
Mother nodded, and the two of them began the process of cataloging what was in the guest room, and what Vinyl still had at her mother’s house. Slowly a plan came together. Mother, Vinyl and I would go early in the morning and help Vinyl pack. We would then move everything from there to here when Father showed up, and unpack when Vinyl was ready.
That’s how we found ourselves outside a small townhome, about fifteen minutes from my house, early the next morning. Nowhere near my house, I thought, remembering our first meeting. Mother had a small wagon full of broken down boxes and tape; Vinyl and I had copies of the list. She’d been in the lead the whole trip, but as we neared the actual house, Vinyl began to slow. “Hey, you know you guys don’t have to help me, right?”
“What are friends for?” I responded dryly. This wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation on the walk.
We stopped then, right outside the door. “Look, I just...” Vinyl signed. “My house isn’t... isn’t like yours. It’s not... not...”
Mother and I turned to face her. The older mare glanced at me before answering. “Vinyl, I told you it’s okay. We’re going to--”
At a loud bang, the three of us turned toward the townhome. The front door bounced off the wall next to it, swung back inwards, and was knocked away again by a white unicorn mare. “What are you all doing on my property?” she demanded. I don’t think she saw us, just the wagon. “Great, salesponies. I’m not buying whatever it is, so just move on already!”
Vinyl winced as the other mare slammed the door. “Meet my mom, Tavi.”
Mother pursed her lips. “Wait here,” she said, drowning out my normal reply to Vinyl. She walked up to the door and knocked twice. When Vinyl’s mother opened the door, Mother pushed past her into the house, and shut the door again.
Standing out on the street with Vinyl was probably the most embarrassing fifteen minutes of my life up to that point. Neither of us said a word, just looked between the ground, around the street, and back at the wagon. When Mother returned, she motioned us forward without a word, pulling the wagon along inside behind us.
It took her some time to place the wagon in the entryway. It was small and cramped, like many townhomes in Canterlot, but clutter filled what little space there was. Letters on a hall table, packages, bags, boxes, and all manner of other things on the floor itself.
Vinyl didn’t say a word. With ears plastered to her head, she grabbed a couple of boxes in her mouth and led us deeper into her old home, through halls and rooms decorated exactly like the entryway.
Her room was towards the top and back of the house. A little patch in the rubbish had been cleared so her door could open. Inside was a much different story.
Yes, her room was messy compared to mine, but spotless compared to the rest of the home. There were some scattered bedsheets on the ground, mixed with small paperback books. A bookshelf had a very obvious empty spot where her stereo and records had been. Various odds and ends were scattered nearly everywhere, but the room as a whole gave off an air of organized chaos. What I didn’t see, however, was the mixing equipment she’d told me about when she moved in. I decided not to ask.
Mother pushed me into the room from where I had stopped in the doorway and set the rest of the boxes down on the bed. “Octavia, help Vinyl get packed. I’m going to wait for your father downstairs with Miss Scratch.”
I set to work getting the boxes opened and organized while Vinyl started gathering the things on her list. A favorite pillow, a couple of blankets, missing clothes, a few records that had been left behind, a much bigger than initially described stuffed penguin, everything was crammed into boxes and sealed up.
Roughly thirty minutes later judging by Vinyl’s clock - not being brought, it didn’t keep accurate time, she said - Father showed up with Silver Sentinel and a couple of ponies from the orchestra. They started taking our filled boxes down to the carriage we had rented for a few hours. Next came a couple of pieces of furniture that Vinyl ended up wanting, including the shelf that seemed to previously hold the stereo.
Two hours after we showed up, we had everything moved back out. Mother shooed us out of Vinyl's old house and back to ours. We spent the rest of the day getting Vinyl’s room exactly as she wanted it for as long as she was with us. As it would turn out, that would be quite awhile.
<><><><><>
That summer turned out to be rather weird. Father’s concert became very popular, so much so that he was offered a lot of bits to bring the performance on the road. Father was gone for several months, well into the next school year, as his orchestra traveled all across Equestria. Mother, Vinyl, and I were gone for a combined month, as we always went to see his first show in a given city.
All our travelling meant summer vacation wasn’t quite as relaxing as normal, but we got to see some really cool places. Unfortunately, Grandma Serenade’s health was rather poor when we were in Manehatten, so we didn’t actually get to visit her that year, or even the one after.
I started school as normal that fall, going into fourth grade. Mother enrolled Vinyl into the same school, but, due to some paperwork troubles, it took a month before she was actually allowed to start. I didn’t actually know she was older than me until she started school in the fifth grade.
We didn’t spend every waking moment together, but it was a close thing. No matter what, though, we always got together when I practiced cello after school. She didn’t play anything, as she knew no instruments, but she always sat in the room. Sometimes she tapped out a background for me, sometimes she just sat and watched, but we always did it together.
Mother opened the practice room to me soon after Vinyl moved in. It was a semi-large room, a converted bedroom, with soundproofing covering every wall except a small section that bordered my own bedroom. It contained a couple of music stands, a couch, and an entire area for maintaining our instruments. Mother’s cello sat on a padded stand, and it wasn’t long before another was put in for my smaller one.
We were there the only time Vinyl ever tried to play cello, a month before Hearth’s Warming. She took her place on the couch and started working on homework while I set my cello up. I stood and braced the instrument before looking over towards my friend. “Do you want to try?” I asked her when she flipped a page over.
Vinyl let the magic around her pencil dissipate and looked at me. “Huh?”
I nodded towards the cello against my chest and neck. “To play. Do you want to try?”
She looked at her homework, then back at me before standing with a lopsided grin. “Are you telling me to do something other than homework, Tavi?”
“Of course not,” I said. I picked up my bow with a flourish and rested it across a string. “Nevermind.”
I tried to play a note, but Vinyl grabbed my bow with her magic. “Kidding, I’m kidding. I, uh, yeah, I guess.”
After propping my cello against a nearby wall holder, I helped Vinyl stand on her hind hooves and prop the instrument against her. I had grown in the last few months; the cello fit against me pretty well, but since Vinyl was taller, it was almost a little small for her. I helped her place her hoof on the neck, and tried to show her where to hold the bow with her magic.
We had to stop and get Mother for that one. After filling her in, Mother joined us in the practice room. She showed Vinyl how to hold and draw the bow, then sat back on the couch to watch.
I tried my best to give Vinyl a quick explanation of what to do, then opened my well-used book of music to the simplest song on the first page. Which lead us to another problem: Vinyl couldn’t read sheet music.
In her defence, I still struggled too.
I poked my hoof at the sheet music. “Okay, so when you see this, you play this note here.” I demonstrated by moving her hoof to the right spot and having her pull the bow.
Vinyl bobbed her head. “Yeah, okay, that makes sense.”
“Then this note is like this, and this one like this...” Thankfully, the piece was short and simple, so I only had to show her five notes before she could handle the whole thing. From our time at the park and practicing together I already knew she could keep time.
After clarifying a couple of notes I returned to the couch with Mother. Vinyl hesitated for a few moments before setting her hoof to the positioning for the first note, and then placed the bow on the string, and--
Snap!
Mother and I burst out laughing as the string snapped and flipped upward. Vinyl squeaked, dropping the bow and nearly falling backwards at the same time. “Sorry!” she squeaked again, managing to both quickly and carefully stow my cello back on it’s padded stand.
“It-It’s fine,” Mother choked out while I was busy giggling myself to the floor. “These things happen, after all.”
As soon the last giggle subsided, the three of us packed my cello and set off for Mother’s preferred music shop. Unlike Cross’ dress shop to the south, both my parents preferred a shop in the middle of the old part of the city. It was an old, distinguished store that my family had been going to for generations.
Coincidentally, it was not the one rented the day I found my special talent. They were however one of Father’s first, and most loyal, orchestral sponsors.
Mother normally did the basic maintenance of our instruments, but she was out of spare strings. “Besides, while we’re here we can have them look your cello over, and maybe see about getting an instrument for Vinyl,” she said on the walk.
Vinyl stumbled over her own hooves, very nearly ending up facedown on the street. “For me?”
“If you want something. Lessons, too.” Mother paused to ruffle a thoroughly shocked Vinyl’s mane before leading us into the store.
After being relieved of my cello by Mother, Vinyl grabbed me and pulled me towards the instrument displays in the back of the shop. Being an old shop, they mostly catered to the more traditional types of music..Stringed and brass instruments were arranged in the back on both freestanding and wall mounted racks. Pianos, harps, and other larger instruments filled what was left of the floorspace.
We looked at the instruments for several minutes. Vinyl had a lot of questions, most of which I didn't know the answers to. Mother joined us soon after, thankfully answering what I could not. Though we went over just about every instrument in the shop, and even got Gilded Hoof, the shopkeep, to demonstrate some, Vinyl seemed to have a hard time settling on a single instrument.
Although, that was not quite true. She was interested in much of what we looked at, but seemed to struggle settling on a specific type, let alone a single instrument. An hour later, when my cello was finished, she still had not reached a decision.
“It’s okay, Vinyl, you don’t have to choose today,” Mother said. “Take some time and think about it, and we can come back when you make up your mind, okay?”
Vinyl nodded mechanically, but said nothing else on our entire trip home. With my instrument fixed the two of us headed back to the practice room. Despite my urging, Vinyl refused to try her hoof at cello again and spent the next hour finishing homework.
“Hey, Vinyl,” I asked after practice while packing my cello.
She grunted in reply, not looking up from her textbook.
“What happened to the things you had at your mother’s house? From your deal with the music store?”
Vinyl’s gaze whipped up to mine, and she sighed. “It was rental stuff. Mom didn’t pay the bill, so he took it all back.”
“And do you remember what all it was?”
She nodded and started rattling off rather complicated-sounding pieces of equipment. I smiled and nodded, taking careful mental notes. Once I was sure I had it all down, I excused myself and hurried to track down Mother.
Naturally, I found her in the kitchen. Without thinking I charged in, receiving a hoofful of lettuce to my face for the trouble.
“You know the rules,” Mother chided while getting out more lettuce to cut. Before she could reload, I detailed my plan.
Halfway through, Mother stopped to listen more closely. “So that’s what she prefers to do then? You think she would like that over something more traditional?”
I thought back to our performance on the bridge, several months ago, and nodded.
“Very well then. It’s too late tonight, but I’ll talk to your father. Figure out what she needs, and I will take care of it,” she said, then shooed me out of the kitchen.
Right before bed, I turned the list in to Mother. It took me a long time to fall asleep. The next day crawled by as well. As soon as the final bell had rung, I sprinted to Vinyl’s class and bounced outside, ready to get her and go home. Seeing me as she left her class, Vinyl said bye to the new friends she’d made and headed towards me.
“Are we leaving already?” she asked. “No practice today?”
I shook my head. “Mother said I could skip today. We have a surprise for you at the house.”
Her ears perked at that. “What is it?”
“A surprise,” I replied with a smirk, and began leading the way home.
“Is it a new bed?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Is it a pet or something?”
“Nope.”
“It’s not a cello, is it?”
“It might be.”
She bombarded me with guesses until we made it home. Mother was already waiting when I opened the door, so Vinyl changed targets and began interrogating her all the way to her room.
The white unicorn only stopped her questions as Mother opened the door, and Vinyl spied the modest stand in one corner. A mixer, board, speakers, every single thing she told me she needed to start making music again.
Vinyl’s jaw dropped to the floor. She spluttered, then pointed a clean white hoof to me, then Mother, then her new equipment, then to herself.
We both nodded, unable to not smile at Vinyl’s shocked excitement. She hugged us both quickly, whooped, then grabbed and pulled me back behind the mess of wires, babbling on about ideas, and functions, and trying to show me what each button did.
That started the era of constant music in the house. I started practicing in Vinyl’s room some days, and we often mixed our two styles of music together. She was almost always mixing something, or at least playing something. That equipment lasted her for several years, at least until a long-overdue trip added a new side to her hobby.