The pegasi had gathered clouds over Ponyville. The day was dark and no shafts of sunlight succeeded in piercing the lid suspended over everypony’s head. It would shower down in the afternoon.
Oh Celestia, she knew she hated the rain! Drumming over the slates of her roof, the staccato of the downpour was of no assistance when she wanted to focus. It did nothing but distracting her from performing anything productive. It was the same for the optional extras this dull weather displayed… bolts of lightning, hailstones and other joyful phenomenons.
At least, the mare thought, the heat wave of the past days had vanished. She was now walking outside under the refreshing shadows of the trees bordering the Everfree Forest. For the first time since three days, he was not sweating a river. She thanked Celestia for this blessing. These two weeks-long holidays in Ponyville were of the utmost relief.
The agitation of Canterlot had her beaten down. Here she could procrastinate, careless about tomorrow, deaf to the noise of the city and ponies. She tip toed under the low branches of the Everfree. The discordant creasing the rustling leaves played was a sweet natural melody. She was happy; the grim marbled walls of Canterlot had deprived her from any connection with nature.
The wind blew through her mane, ruffling her fur. A frisson spread under her skin. She smiled.
She was approaching the Pond of the Two Rocks. It was a location she had seen earlier on the map the library pony had gently given to her. What was her name already? Was it Twilight? She shrugged; it was not her business anymore. The pool was isolated from the town. There, she was expecting that nopony would disturb her meditation.
The mellow chirruping of a spring reached her ears. They twitched swiftly.
In a hollow carved between two imposing boulders of granite was jetting a small stream of crystalline water. The pond was not big, but still vast enough to welcome a group of pony. And to the mare’s greater satisfaction, the place was empty of sentient life that could have ruined her session.
She untied her saddlebags. It slid down her stiffs and fell loudly on the shingles that surrounded the tarn. She could see the bottom of the pool, proof that the water was so clean it was a shame to soil such peaceful haven of rest.
She slithered in and shivered as the coldness nibbled her hooves. It was so cold it felt like thousands of needles was picking her flanks. She loved this numbing feeling. She closed her eyes, leaving her body slid under the water.
Only her face was surfacing. The waves she had created splashed softly on her cheeks and ears, making the air popped on her eardrums.
She gave a long and deep breath. She kept the air in her lungs for few seconds and exhaled noisily, casting bubbles on the top of the pool. It reminded her blowing through a straw in a soda, she smirked.
She was alone, peaceful. Hence she could act childishly; nopony was going to reprimand her for her uncouth manners. And it was better that way she convinced herself. She had holidays and she was going to prey on them without any restrain.
She let her spirit fly away. A dreamless catnap cradled her features and hooves. She fell asleep…
Something hurtled down in the pound with a heavy splash. Waves submerged the mare’s face. She snapped out of her sleep and gasped for air. She stood clumsily on her hooves as she hauled herself out of the pond. She coughed the water she had inhaled out of her throat. She cleared it, struggling with her lungs.
Wiping droplets of water off her eyes, she stared at the pool. Her vision was blurred. The pond had turned murky. She could not hold her disgust. She had been sleeping in that?! Her mouth distorted in horror.
Her mind was then numbed by another compelling question. What had fallen in the pond?
The waves licked her forehooves with a disturbing gurgling. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks, trying to scan the water. She craned her head over it until her face nearly touched the surface. Seeing deeper than an inch was an impossible task to fulfil. Nothing, there was clearly nothing.
A wet grating erupted at her left side. She turned, looked at it… blinked… looked at it a second time to be sure. She shrieked.
A strange creature was floating just under the top of the water; no bubble was running out of its mouth. It was inanimate, drowned. The mare’s eyes widened. She shoveled her fear deep inside and gulped. She put her hooves on the creature’s garments and pulled it out. She dragged it on the beach. The creature was motionless. Two times her size, it was completely shaved and different objects could be found in its pockets.
He was without a doubt a sentient creature. And he was apparently dead, or at least unconscious.
Like her, he had a dark skin. Hers was grey, his was dark brown.
He had a small muzzle, placed over a large mouth where she saw aligned white teeth. His eyes were closed. She refused to risk herself lifting his lids up. The mare’s curiosity was a real craving. She put her hooves on his chest and squeezed it multiple times. Water dripped out of his throat. It made the mare freak out. Was he really dead? He couldn’t, not now, not now with her!
She approached her mouth from his, ready to blow air into his lungs. She was going to do it. Their lips nearly touched.
A small breath tickled her muzzle.
“It’s alive!” she erupted in joy.
Indeed, the creature was alive. The mare smirked for that she had not to kiss him.
His thorax swelled and shrunk continuously. Yet, the animal breathed with difficulty, hissing. She reached his dangling head and moved it in a position that would ease his respiration. Withdrawing her hooves back she felt something thick and slimy stuck on it. She looked with a knot in her stomach. It was blood.
Fear sparked in her heart. She stepped back and fell on her flank.
She stayed prostrate for minutes. She kept staring at a small dash of blood sprawling on the pebbles, awestruck. It was coming from the back of his head.
She gulped. Taking her courage in her hooves, she lifted the creature’s head uneasily. Her feature liquefied. A part of the neck vertebras were seemingly broken. Small holes were visible at the top of his neck, dripping blood. This left a limp impression in the mare’s hooves. She tried to carry him up. The head just fell back hideously in a crack of bones. She winced in pain for the primate.
Unhooking the pink bowtie circling her neck, she clipped it on the poor creature, trying miserably to hold back his dangling skull. She felt nauseous; she could not move him as it would deal him the last blow.
After a moment passed thinking, she made a decision. She dashed in Ponyville’s direction, still wet from her break in the pond. Breaking her speed record, she rushed to the horsepital. She flung the door inward, grabbed the closest careponies and with a stretcher led them to the pool.
Blood had tainted all the ground under the creature’s back. He had not moved an inch, pitifully lying like a disarticulated doll. The ponies accompanying the mare shivered when they lay their eyes on him. They called him a monster.
Their duty was the priority. They put aside their worries and moved the creature on the stretcher. Coming back took longer and the stretcher turned red on the way, blood leaked over its sides.
The creature was quickly transferred in the intensive care department. The mare found herself alone in the waiting room. She sighed. She will need a new Bow Tie. Her hind legs failed her. She collapsed on a chair of the waiting room. She stayed there, despondent for an uncertain period of time. She let her head dangle over the small headrest.
She caught the blood coagulating on her hooves. She hauled herself out of her stupor, closed her eyes and tried to erase this vision from her retina. Her hooves started shaking.
She tried to wipe the blood on a towel disposed on the nearest table. She could hardly calm herself. The blood had stained her fur in some areas where she could not get rid of at the moment.
“Tavia!? What happened?” a voice slashed through the unsettling silence.
Ready to burst in tears, still holding the blood-soaked towel, Octavia turned back and saw Vinyl Scratch. Her roommate had dropped her flashy sunglasses. Her worried eyes were staring at her through her blood red contact lens. Octavia swallowed, she will never get used to these geeky accessories.
Her shivers faded away and she sought reassurance in Vinyl’s hooves. She explained her plight. Correction, she sobbed her plight. She told her everything. Napping, she had left her spirit derive. She missed the creature’s fall. Somehow, Octavia felt responsible for him. She kept thinking she could have save him.
“If I had my eyes opened,” Octavia sobbed. “I would have seen him… helped him before he dived. I would have seen his assailant!”
“Assailant?” Vinyl blabbered.
“He was bleeding from his neck. And there were these… marks,” Octavia hiccupped. “I think he had been attacked.”
Vinyl welcomed this terrifying news with a comprehensive silence. The Everfree Forest was a dangerous place after all. The relevant question was why Octavia went there.
They both looked at the door leading to the surgical unit, they had just heard hoofsteps. The gates opened and a nurse entered in the room. The small plaque she had pinned on her white coat announced she was called Healing Rhyme.
“Your pet is safe Miss…”
“It’s not my pet,” Octavia stammered in horror, willing to stop any misunderstanding. “I was at the Pond of the Two Rocks when it… he fell in. He was bleeding.”
The nurse bit her tongue.
“Yeah… Exactly, we may have a problem about that…” the nurse hesitated, swallowing her saliva.
“What?” Vinyl cut in the conversation.
“Well…” Healing Rhyme said with doubts. She stared outside the window, only to see depressing clouds. “It’s better I show it to you.”
Vinyl and Octavia stared at each other, worried. They followed the nurse to the reanimating unit.
The creature was resting alone on a bed whose linens had just been changed. Far too tall for the dimension of the bed, the nurses had folded the creature’s legs under the sheets. Of course it was not recommended for injured ponies, but the horsepital had no furniture adapted to him. Of course… he could be anything but a pony.
Octavia dried her tears.
Now lit by the ceiling light bulbs, the creature’s features were apparent. He was approximately five feet and seven inches high. He was nearly shaved from tip to tip, except for a thin greyish mane sprouting on the top of its head. He had a dark skin, dark brown to be accurate. It was wrinkled by the time. He was undoubtedly old. His eyes were still closed.
Wrapped in medical outfits, his original garments were folded by his side on a neighbouring table. It was a suit. The coat was as grey as dirt, as was the trousers. A white shirt came as an extra, accompanied by a black tie. There was also a brass necklace where dangled a medallion. Opening it, Vinyl and her friend glanced at a small picture, the photo of a woman for sure. She was smiling.
Octavia and Vinyl put back the medallion on the table, closing it with a quasi-religious respect.
Finally, they peered at the last object found in his clothes. It had a strange rectangular shape, and was hollowed by a series of symmetric holes. Its tips showed minuscule brass rivets and its top and bottom were seemingly made of silver. On it was engraved a simple word.
“Do you think it’s his name?” Octavia arched a brow.
Vinyl shrugged, she titled her head over her friend’s shoulder. She read.
“Hohner…” Vinyl whispered.
Clueless, Vinyl sighed with strength. She blew air on the object. A small twinkling broke the omerta between her and her friend. Octavia dropped it with a gasp of surprise. The two mares looked in each other’s eyes. Vinyl lowered her hooves and took the… thing clumsily, struggling to keep it tight between them.
She raised the object to her lips, inhaled slowly and held the air for a moment. She glanced at her friend, seeking for an approval. Octavia looked at her, perplexed but thrilled. Vinyl blew through the holes of the rectangular tool.
A strange vibrating sound rose. Octavia gratify the object with a genuine smile. It was a music instrument! Vinyl smirked with amusement seeing that after hours of stress, Octavia had finally managed to smile.
Vinyl was also delighted to see something new. Maybe it would be of any interest for her, the true and only one DJ-PON3.
Octavia snatched the object from Vinyl’s hooves. It was her turn to play, and she succeeded in forcing notes out of it. With the first victory she decided to not give in. She fanned a second time through the opening of the instrument, getting a minor chord. A third time, the instrument gave a vibrant and alien scale. A fourth time, she finally obtained an octave. Curious, she tried to produce a far more constructed music through the instrument, improvisation and thrill of discovery as sole guides.
She pouted, unable to find the same sonorities her violin and cello could produce. The instrument was perfect for a traveller. For it was simple enough and she had not expected too much from it. But the fun she experimented with the object was still there.
Looking back at the creature, Octavia asked herself where he came from. She knew she would not get an answer, but it was worth the shot, wasn’t it?
“We have few hopes for him…” A spooky voice snaked behind Octavia’s back.
She jumped in Vinyl’s hooves, startled.
Grinning amusingly, Octavia stepped on the ground after Vinyl had given her a narrowed stare. DJ-PON3 was not entertained. Octavia’s smile died quickly when she lay her eyes on the pony who had scared her. He was a stallion, the surgeon who had dealt with the creature earlier. He was visibly tired.
“His brainstem has been damaged by something I can’t identify…”
Octavia glanced at the bed where the inanimate shape was still breathing slowly, unaware of the goings-on around him. Nurses were setting up brain and heart monitors; they had to keep records of the creature; for a medical purpose of course. Octavia suspected it was also driven by some scientific interest.
“I also sent a letter to Canterlot,” the surgeon added staidly, –She knew it –. “This primate is all brand new for me… Maybe they know something. I also found the traces of unknown psychotropic in his blood.”
Having to watch the lost stares of the two mares in front of him, he sighed deeply. If he had no manners, he would have sunk his hoof in his face and slid it off.
“Believe me. He’ll never wake up from these wounds. He… it is an empty shell right now.”
As the surgeon’s shift was coming to an end, he withdrew in an adjoining room. Octavia and Vinyl looked to the emptiness of space in front of them. Minutes passed before Vinyl raised her voice.
“I gotta go, I have much to do and your small adventure did not ease everything for me.”
“You’re not abandoning me, are you?” Octavia pleaded.
“I have to, Moon Dancer hosts a party tonight. She hired me for the music,” Vinyl replied. Embarrassed, she preferred to change of subject. “Don’t overcommit yourself, you don’t even know him. Go back home. Wait for Canterlot’s help tomorrow.”
Octavia grunted. Feeling betrayed, she moved away from Vinyl with a look of disapproval. She came back at the creature’s bedside and stopped. She drew her hooves toward the silver plated instrument. She was fascinated by the small object.
Vinyl shrugged and left Octavia alone in the room, face to face with the dead-like entity.
Swiftly, Octavia lifted the instrument to her mouth. She tried to play. It was hard to hoofle.
The instrument was clearly not meant to be played by ponies. Studying the creature, Octavia had seen his fingers, similar to dragons’, griffons’ and minotaurs’. These species were more adapted to… handle the object. But she refused to be beat down by something this simple.
For hours she tried to produce a perfect melody, and the night had fallen on Equestria when she finally got something decent out of it.
This day, the horsepital was impressively empty and this was why no nurse came to make her lower the volume of the noisy gadget. Alone, even if the creature was ‘sleeping’ next to her. She went back to her musical meditation.
She had finally performed something kindly interesting. Hours of training had exhausted her and she wanted to sleep. She had not even the conviction to come back home. Slacking around, she went in a neighbouring room. It was empty of life. Octavia took a chair and made it slide on the floor as she came back to the creature’s room. Sitting in, she put the instrument by her side and kept looking at the bed and its occupant with a stalking interest.
In the darkness, the sandmare spread her magic over Octavia and sleep came. She sunk into her dreams without noticing that a small jolt had sparked on the brain monitor.
There was no sun, no moon, no cloud, no shadow, no sky… no ground… nothing.
Everything in that place was absolutely bright. Blank as a white sheet. The silence was deadening. Octavia sighed. No air left her lungs. She gasped with anxiousness, choking instinctively for oxygen. Her new born fear gained in momentum as she also understood she was mute. She struggled, suspended in this blankness, trembling and shaking until minutes passed and that she finally noticed she was not given to breath. Her animal survival reflex was useless here. She did not need to breath. It was… bizarre.
She calmed down, Octavia knew now she was within a dream. She raised her hooves before her eyes. She panicked.
Her harmonious features and contours had been gummed out like a character on an artist’s sketchbook. She was only formed of imperfect traits and sticks likely traced with a bold pencil. She wished she had a mirror, but she imagined herself perfectly well. She should look like a stickmare, or something similar.
Octavia tried to walk. For her greatest amazement… and horror, she was not walking, not at all. Each stepped forward she felt like erased from this blank universe, only to be redrawn further… like on a preliminary sketch of a cartoon. She shivered.
Unable to breath, Unable to talk, she could not express her fear or her emotions. She was mute and naked… Yes, she felt truly naked, here in this white soundless nothingness.
Stunned, she put a hoof in front of the other and slowly began to move forward with no point A from where to go… And no point B for where to trot.
Octavia lost track of time, she was just going forward, step by step with an erratic pace in this impossible universe. Strangely, she found herself unable to tell if this dream was three-dimensional or not. She had been flung somewhere else, where the common rules she was used to were absolutely different. Her mind boggled all along the trail.
A minuscule point popped far in the distance. But in the emptiness surrounding her, it was like an elephant in a room. If Octavia had eyes, they would have swelled to a cartoonish size. She dashed, rushing toward the form. She ran for what seemed to be hours.
She found him…
The creature was here; or at least a badly drawn sketch of him. A round white face deprived of all feature was standing over a long, slender and creepy body only formed of long black sticks. His hands were talon-like, crooked and twisted in an unnatural position. Even in his craned stance, he was still higher than Octavia. And he was wobbling on his skeletal legs.
A monster from under the bed… It was the closest comparison Octavia could do. She trembled and saw that specks of her drawn contours faded in the blankness with her shakes. She tried regaining her composure. If she could, she would have swallowed her saliva. But she was a sketch too…
The creature turned his head in the newcomer’s direction. Something was facing him. Was it a pony? He could not tell. The animal’s face was gummed away, showing only outlines. He witnessed the crackling and withering contours of this mute animal. He raised his hand, trying to appease this communicative conundrum. He looked at his tips. He was hideous with these drawn claws… His shoulders dropped slightly. He tried to speak, nothing… He was powerless.
Octavia wanted to talk, but this simple right had been forbidden to her. She was eager to communicate… but she was trapped. And the creature was right in front of her, at less than a hoof range.
She tried to reach him. Her outlines met the creature’s sketches. They met but did not touch. Octavia passed through him like she would have with vapours. She tried again. Nothing happened.
They were so close, but paradoxically so far away from each other.
Octavia wanted to scream her sorrow, but she was not able to. She could not even cry. Trapped in… Locked in… She curled in front of the creature.
The creature stepped back. His hand was hesitant, trembling. However, an idea sparked in his mind.
Octavia heard a scratch. Being deaf for hours was mind-shattering. For she who was a musician, imagining her life deaf and cut from any kind of music was something she could not stand. She would rather die than being deaf.
This is why this small scratch, like a pencil slithering on a sheet was her deliverance. From her cringed position she raised her head.
With the tip of his finger the creature was drawing something out of the emptiness facing him. Creating lines, curves, lengths, heights and depths he snatched from the blank page an object. It was a parabolic cone which strangely curved pipe was armed with a dozen of keys and minuscule levers. One of its ends was ended by a bended mouthpiece; the other one was a large opening.
Octavia’s brows rose. Was it…
A mouth loomed on the creature’s face. A widened unsettling smile drew on its newly found face, showing impressive aligned teeth. He raised the mouthpiece to his lips.
A smooth and grave tone shattered the silence like a kick in a mirror. Octavia listened to the melody blooming from the instrument. She was bewildered. The music blossomed in the air and imprinted tones from outer Equestria in her eardrums. Octavia was speechless; the music was so slow, so sad. Eerie breed of an organ, an oboe and a clarinet, the tones of the instrument enshrouded her. She wanted to believe that the notes would take shape and carry her away.
And then, something eerie happened.
The music pierced the veil surrounding the strange couple. From the bell of the instrument lower section, minuscule sketch lines flew away like incarnated notes. Stirring in the air, the lines shaped under Octavia’s hooves. Drawings formed, colourless.
A vast meadow of grass sprawled. A peach sprouted behind the musician. Octavia was on her flank, witnessing a music giving birth to some new environment. She forgot about everything and listened.
A wrong chord clacked in the air. Octavia blinked, all the drawings vanished in the tow of the discordance.
She turned back to the creature. The instrument had disappeared from his hands. Akimbo, he was crooker than before. Octavia swore he was crying. Drying invisible tears, he lifted his head and fixed the mare… if only he had eyes.
With his fingers, he drew something out of the air again. He took his creation in his hands and walked to the mare. He delivered her his work.
It was… a violin.
With quivers, Octavia took the bow, held out by the slender creature. Stabilizing the violin under her chin, she put her left hoof on its neck. With the bow, she gave a vibrato.
Colours exploded around her.
Octavia woke up in a violent jerk and bounced out of her chair.
Looking behind she saw Healing Rhyme. Her blurred vision set upon Luna, standing next to the nurse. Octavia’s eyes widened as she gargled with her limp maw, trying to kick some straightness in herself.
Luna’s stare was grieved; she had not slept much this night.
“Hello Octavia!” The princess spoke with her Canterlot voice.
The cellist smiled gently. She had played hundreds of times for Canterlot’s urbane meetings. There, she had come up to know the princess personally.
“How are you Princess?”
“Not very well, We were watching upon the world tonight and something disturbed Us… but We couldn’t find the origin of such perturbation.”
With discomfort, Octavia gave the princess a fake smile. Once the Princess had turned away her interrogating stare, Octavia winced. She tried to remember the strange dream she just had. It was… sketchy and a numbing feeling was stuck in her stomach. She wanted to put her dreams into words, but she was incapable to do so. Sorting out the pain paralyzing her mind was an impossible task.
Healing Rhyme blabbered. The nurse was in front of the brain monitor. She attracted the alicorn’s and the cellist’s attention.
“He is alive!”
Luna raised a brow and got closer to the bed, Octavia in her tow. The creature was inanimate, ghoulish even with his dark skin. Without any monitor, nopony would have been able to discern if he was dead or not. To back her words, Healing Rhyme tapped the screen of the monitor she was looking at. Small signs were jolting on its screen.
Thereafter, she palpated the creature’s cheeks. He was still spineless.
“Why isn’t he moving?” Healing Rhyme said with a shrug. “At least, he is listening.”
Luna grabbed the mare and dragged her and Octavia out. A cloud had passed on her face. A knot was tightened in her stomach. The creature’s state had brought back some harsh memories from a distant past in the alicorn’s mind. Eyelids half closed she sighed with difficulty.
“Because he is locked-In…” She whispered.
Healing Rhyme’s eyes swelled. She glanced back in the room. The “lock-in Syndrom” was a specific case caretaking ponies studied in school. It was too rare to witness it. It was a kind of medical urban legend. The patients were literally locked inside their own body without any possibility to communicate with the ‘outside’, for the rest of their life…
To be trapped until death did his soul and his body part. Thinking about it, Octavia thought it was even worse than death… What if the creature’s nose was tickling?
“Poor little creature, we don’t even know what… who he is, and he is unable to speak,” Healing Rhyme complained. “What an ordeal.”
Luna nodded slowly. Compared to Healing Rhyme, she had seen similar cases during her long span of life. But they always had family to take care of them. This primate was alone… desperately alone. He would pass away rapidly anyway. The ‘locked-in’ patients were always short-lived. Cut off the outside, forced to listen and forbidden to answer their spirit would wither fast. Then they would let themselves die. Carrying on was too difficult to… handle.
Octavia shivered. Dhe could not imagine how terrific it should be to be trapped like this. To be in a dark cage without windows and with only one-sided loopholes. She was not claustrophobic, but she could not imagine it without felling a heavy pull falling down her stomach.
She swallowed; she remembered the dream of the last night. Was it something she had made up or something else? She wondered. Luna, the Princess of the dreamlands, had said nothing. It was intriguing.
The musician tried to convince herself it was just a dream, nothing more, noting less.
Five minutes later, Octavia and Luna were forced to leave as the creature’s state had to be checked. His hygiene was also an important matter.
Octavia went back to her home and passed the whole day studying the primate’s instrument she had stolen. Even more gratifying, Vinyl weren’t there to criticize her about how her manners were only a façade. The DJ pony must have blacked-out during last-night party.
Octavia came back in the horsepital in the middle of the night. She had kept with her the instrument. She also brought her violin, well hidden within its case. In his room, the creature had not moved an inch. He was remarkable of stillness. Like in last night dream, she secured the violin with its chinrest and paced a small suit with the bow. The tone was low-pitched, deafened. The music was filled with sadness.
The vibration in the air reached the sleeping creature. Octavia gave up after fifty minutes of playing… She had no reaction from him.
She was tired. And, as her violin drifted off her hooves, she slumped into the chair she had left the morning before. She sunk again in her dreams, eager to meet again the creature.
His stick shaped silhouette was still here, waiting. At this occasion, he was sat in front of something she knew very well. It was a grand piano, with straight and blackened features. The creature had taken his time drawing it out of nothing. And to his avail, Octavia confessed he did a very good job.
The creature’s head turned and saw the cellist’s outlines traced in the blankness. He smiled. He had also disposed a Cello, leaning against the piano side.
There was no meadow, no tree, nothing… Only he, she and both of their instruments. With her hoof, Octavia mimicked the creature and drew a comfy chair in the air. She settled in and adjusted the cello.
She looked at the sketched primate. His face still distorted like a joker, he nodded.
Octavia slid her bow on the chords. The grave and stern lament of the cello resonated in its belly. The rhythm grew and fastened until Octavia was creating rousing sonority.
The creature head’s wobbled in parallel to the notes. His fingers spanned on the piano keyboard. And he started playing.
It was… majestic. It was not only the music. Octavia was used to incredible pieces of work.
Here, music was giving birth to life itself. His music shaped the world, hers coloured it. Grass, trees, sky, clouds, animals, mountains, caves, ruins… Octavia felt like a goddess. She had no doubt he was felling the same.
She started seeing change on her too. Her poorly drawn features transformed. She felt fur growing on her new dark skin. Her mane sprouted off her head, her pink and white tie made its way to her neck, her cello shone under the sun to which she had given its yellow light. Nibbling her lips, she wiped with her elbow a tear rolling down her eyes.
It was beautiful.
Leaded by the lively pace of the creature, she saw appearing a stage around her. A micro popped as the shape of five red coated females of the creature’s species started singing in front of Octavia. Their lips were only moving, locked in muteness as the lyrics seemed to be held back.
Around the stage appeared rows of seats overwhelmed by a mass of beings of the same kind of the pianist. They applauded silently. Nothing but the carnal mix of their music from two different worlds was given to hear.
She looked at her partner, still behind his instrument. He was stomping the ground with his feet in a fit of joy. His smiling was golden and his features had come back. He was old, wrinkled and was hiding his eyes behind heavy sunglasses. But he was smiling. And this smile was worth a life of maniac researches for happiness. Even broken as he seemed, even blind and even lost in another world, he was smiling…
Octavia burst into tears that dropped on her cello, drumming like downpour. In the background Octavia heard the sound of the instrument the creature played the night before. Overall, Octavia experienced a new kind of music. Her spirit was flooded with questions and ideas. She was crying… She, Octavia, had found a muse.
The beat slowed down abruptly, dissipating the warm it had invigorated in her heart. Forced to follow, Octavia peered at the change around her. The plants withered horribly, yellowing under a dryness that could not affect her. The time seemed to accelerate, seasons passed and the tree in the creature’s back crackled and died quickly.
Night had risen and the moon was going down in the horizon. The piano produced low-pitches notes, located in the bass; grave, classical and flat.
The funky music the creature had created seconds ago was now dead. Octavia felt bluesy. She put aside her bow and using the biggest chord of her cello, she played pizzicato. She pulled the string with her hoof. Sadness was paving the melodic lament. He braked. The music lost in strength until a last note came in a last pitiful whisper. The air stopped vibrating and the atmosphere turned atone.
Silence was sometimes a key part of the music.
The creature’s hesitant hands trembled over the board. He brushed over it, undecided.
He put his thumb and forefinger over the acute notes. He made the piano twinkle in a shrill and drifted his left hand over the low notes. He gave birth to a small melody, amplifying gradually.
Octavia’s eyes widened, she stopped playing again. Over the horizon was growing a light. And the more the rhythm was gaining in momentum, the brighter the light.
A staccato of sounds pierced the silence under the tips of the creature’s hands. It was baroque, powerful. He drummed over the piano and the light erupted over the sharped mountains far away.
Octavia winced, drowned in the light. The brightness was burning her fur. The music grew into an orchestral eruption of sounds.
Grabbing her bow she joined the creature. The rhythm speeded up as they raised the sun over the clouds. The mare and the pianist spread life and joy over the once sleepy fields. Flowers and buds blossomed in hundreds of colours, yellow, white, pink, red, purple, blue… Birds flew in the airs, chirruping with her music.
Aback, Octavia’s warm tears glimmered with the beams of light. She knew she was near the climax of the piece. The staccato had changed into a flow of notes, hard, light, mellow, piercing… eerie.
The spectacle given to her eyes overwhelmed her senses.
“Did you see that?” She cried in joy, hearing for the first time her voice in this plan.
“I don’t see it… I live it!” The creature replied with a genuine laughter.
Octavia missed her next note as she turned back, her eyes glaring with hopes and joy. The creature had a grave voice, powerful and paternal. He raised his hands over his head and thrust his fingers in a final major chord.
A last wave of sounds exploded in the air like a shockwave, filling everything with a last pinch of colour and light.
The vibration amplified and the dream shattered in hundreds of shards, like a broken mirror. Everything sunk into darkness.
Octavia took a deep breath, gasping for air. Her ribcage was crushed under a heavy anxiousness. She coughed and groped around as she slowly regained her senses. The black veil covering her vision faded and she found herself lying poorly on the tiled ground. She was alone in the room, again. Through the curtain she could see small shafts of light. They passed within the holes and opening of the fabric, dispersing various luminous spots on the wall.
Panting, Octavia stood up on her hooves with violent shakes. Queasiness dragged down her happiness. She slowly set up her stare over the creature. His hand was moving. It was slow, minuscule. But… it was still something.
Octavia hauled herself on the bed, rubbing the creature’s cheek with excitement and fear. He should be locked-in like Luna had explained earlier. But right now, the creature was moving his hand, drumming on the bed cover.
Octavia screamed for somepony to come and give her a hoof. Howling like a timberwolf, she squeezed the creature’s thorax by accident. Crying out in stupor, fearing she had hurt him, she tried to sidestep and mixed up her hooves in the linens. She fell over the primate’s knees and ripped off the bed sheets. She hit the floor in a hard bang.
Stunned, she raised her spine and put her hooves by the creature’s side.
The sunbeams showing through the curtains illuminated Octavia’s tears rolling from her left eye. Her lips shivered from the pain, the bemused emotion and the hopes she was feeding for the creature’s miraculous recovery.
Octavia heard hurried hoofsteps coming behind the door. The gate broke in and in the threshold stood Healing Rhyme. Octavia glanced back and saw the nurse’s horribly widened eyes. She was looking behind Octavia’s spine.
Slowly, Octavia turned over with an expressed unease. She was scared.
Fingers gently touched her muzzle and drifted over her skin. Rough and withered, the palm of his hand pressed softly on her face. He was palpating her, seeking for something. The truth struck Octavia. Looking at the creature’s eyes, she only stared at two brown irises veiled by a whitish surface. He was definitely blind.
Even if he could move his arm, the rest of his body was motionless. He had his eyes open, but his face was glued to its current position, away from Octavia’s direction. Somehow, his hand was the extension of its vision, and it continued to probe Octavia’s features. Climbing up to her forehead, passing through Octavia’s smooth mane, the hand drew with its tips a complete tour of her face. It was tickling, and strange.
The creature slid to her chin, feeling the fur on his fingerprints. Octavia swore he was smiling. A twitch plagued a part of the creature’s mouth. He started crying.
“It was a pleasure to hit the road with yah…” The creature hissed slowly through his paralysed maw. “Thanks… I’ve got to hit the road alone now. I won’t come back no more Margie.”
The words died in his gritted teeth and a last breath forced its way out of his lungs.
Octavia slowly derived her stare over his thorax. There was no move anymore. With her hoof, Octavia tried to find a beat in his neck vein. She stared at his washed-out eyes. They were not trembling anymore. They were stuck in their current position, fixing something far over the ceiling encaging the room.
Octavia cringed on her hooves. She broke down in tears. And her cry echoed in the hallway out of the room.
Healing Rhyme moved forward. Standing by Octavia’s side, she grabbed a notebook.
“Time of death, Six-Forty-Seven,” She said, neutral.
”Ah Ah Ah, you should see the look on your face,” the mare by the fire says as the scene freezes again in an eerie picture. “Did you really believe you would be the first one coming here.”
She glances at you from the shadows casted by the red fire in the chimney. Her glasses spark in the darkness for a mere instant.
“Don’t think yourself as a special… guest of this world, would you?” she smirks sarcastically, her voice similar to needles thrust directly at your heart. “You gonna have to find something more compelling to narrate, if you thought the story of how you came here would be your payment.”
You shrink on your trembling feet. Her laughter shakes your inner being so deeply you start feeling nauseous. You lie on the red rug, breathing loudly, exhausted. These dives into memories and stories are so vivid you feel like you are the one living them. It is slowly but inexorably sucking out your energy.
“Well, well, well…” she continues. “Have you learnt something from this story.”
She has a bag next to her. You swear it was not here seconds ago. She leaps inside with her hooves and rummages through it. She gives a cry of victory and looks at you, smiling. You dislike her smile, you hate it so much it makes you want to throw up.
You feel something falling on your laps. You look down, terrified.
Between your knees dwells the harmonica with the same inscription Vinyl read in the vision. There is also a pastel box.
“Creation is not commanded, it births from the nothingness, the muteness… from the blank page.”
Winona barks next to you. You jump. You had forgotten about her. You wipe a drop of sweat off your head.
“Eh, eh, eh… the blank page… Have you ever done something with your own blank page?” she cackled mysteriously.
She stares at you, pierces you with her glowing eyes. You feel sick as you become aware of the same glass in her hooves, with the same liquor.
Another throw in the fire, another spark and another flow of darkness engulfs you. Before you fall unconscious, you can only ask yourself what the purpose of all of this is.
Everything is black once again.