Melodious Desideratum

by Desideratium


Magical Impediment

Your eyelids appear to be weighed down by several hundred pounds, but somehow you find the strength to tear them open.

You’re in the hotel room, buried in a mountain of blankets and pillows, with no recollection of how you’ve ended up here. The latest memory that surfaces in the jumbled whirl of thoughts that makes up your mind is having dinner with Royal Riff and Vinyl, but you aren’t sure how you managed to get home to bed.

With the power of a thousand dragons, you lift your head from an extremely fluffy feather pillow to search for a clock. You locate one—a modern mechanism built directly into the wall with no numbers, only dashes—and make out both the minute and hour hands pointing vertically. Twelve o’clock.

You’ve successfully slept until noon.

The realization of that sends an electric shock to your muscles, effectively waking you up quite violently. The rest of your body is out of bed before your mind has fully realized that the time for sleep is over. Your horn is lit and flinging pillows and sheets around, making the bed. You leave your magic to do its work, and go into the bathroom. Your refection in the massive pristine mirror is disheveled; your eyes are ringed by red and your cobalt mane is a tangled mess. With two jolts of grey magic, both problems are eliminated.

You’re halfway to the kitchen, when you realize that you have nothing to hurry for.

You stop dead in your tracks. There’s no reason to get worked up trying to get ready for an engagement that doesn’t exist, and it’s a strange sensation. Yesterday, you barely got time to breathe, but today is open.

“Well, what now?” you say to yourself.

Your saddlebag on the other side of the room catches your eye. A pair of books is spilling out, and one of them is your trusty spellbook. Since you have nothing better to do, it might be nice to catch up on your magical studies. You take a seat on the provided sofa, the tome hovering near your head. Settling into the soft velvet, you open to your bookmark. The title of the page makes you grin from ear to ear.

Teleportation.

The concept of disappearing and reappearing in another location is an idea that has fascinated ever since your first instructor at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns demonstrated the correct technique for a successful teleportation by warping from his desk the chandelier hanging from the entrance hall. You’ve always considered it to be too advanced for your level of magical ability, so have therefore steered clear of it thus far.

But as Royal Riff pointed out, your confidence has been promoted.

After the taxing events of yesterday, performing a teleportation seems positively easy.

****

Performing a teleportation is not positively easy.

In order for the event to occur, it requires an extraordinary amount of concentration, which apparently you’ve been unable to muster. A perfect focus on the area which you want to occupy, with no variation of thought.

A bead of sweat gathers on your forehead and slides down your face, leaving a cold tingle. Your nose almost touches the page in front of you as you diligently scan the notes in the margins. After every attempt, you receive the same result: a bright flash that negates your vision, then nothing, leaving you disoriented and frustrated.

A barely noticeable note near the bottom of the page catches your eye: “A small booster to the chance of success for the spell is to relax the mind, to focus on a pleasing thought. The euphoria raises relaxation, giving the teleportation more margin for error.”

Happy thoughts. You scour your mind for something cheerful enough. I’m playing with the Royal Canterlot Orchestra, you settle on. You let the thought permeate your mind, focusing on how happy the thought is making you feel. As before, you gaze at your desired location—the other side of the room—and launch the spell.

The white light appears, and your insides seem to fall into zero gravity, as per usual. You sense your hooves leaving the floor, and you become extremely lightheaded.

The light clears.

No teleportation has occurred.

You collapse back on the sofa, upending the book and spilling it onto the floor, pages splayed. You’re too exhausted even to pick it back up. That and your growing anger at this spell; no other piece of magic has posed this much of a challenge.

You stare at the wall for a good five minutes, and then haul yourself upright.

Your day is empty—this magic work was the only thing you had planned. The only place you can think of to go is the concert hall; hopefully you’d find Royal Riff, or Symphony, or . . .

Octavia.

The cellist’s face burns into your mind and your horn lights on its own. Your vision is instantly blocked by the alabaster barrage that comes from everywhere and nowhere at once, and your body is completely off the ground. Your temples are almost crushed by an intense pressure attempting to flatten your head.

Your hooves touch the ground again. Your vision clears.

You’re no longer in your hotel room.

Dim lighting, black linoleum. A vast, vaulted ceiling. A grand piano.

The only location you can think to be is naturally where you’ve arrived at: the concert hall.

“Where in the buck did you come from?” says a surprised female voice behind you. The violinist, Symphony. She has her violin propped up to her neck, and her bow appears to have frozen mid-stroke.

You look down at your body to make sure all of you made it in one piece. After passing your own inspection, you look up at Symphony, smiling widely. “I’m actually not quite sure. I was in my hotel room a second ago.”

The violinist’s jaw hangs slack, causing you to chuckle at her bewilderment. “But . . . what . . . how?”

“An extremely complicated teleportation spell. This seemed like a viable place to test it out.” No need for Symphony to know that your transportation was entirely accidental, triggered by . . . Oh, Celestia, Octavia.

She was the happy thought.

You cough quietly. An ill-timed move, because it came out sounding slightly suspicious. Not giving Symphony time to question it, you hurriedly keep talking. “So, why are you around here? Rehearsal isn’t until later.”

Symphony, over the sudden shock of your magical appearance, replies, “Oh, sometimes I come over here to practice. Wonderful acoustics, you know. Also, time by myself to think . . .”

“About what in particular?”

Symphony looks up sharply, and you immediately realize your error. “Sorry . . . I don’t need to know. That was inconsiderate.”

The violinist sighs deeply. “No, it’s fine. Mostly I’ve been worried about the orchestra. With Lyrica being so incompetent, the ranks are falling into disarray. Even Octavia’s been difficult to work with, and she’s the one we could usually count on to bring a little bit of order.”

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s fine now.”

“And you’re the one making fun of me for using ‘fine’. Seriously, what’s up with her?”

Symphony looks in surprise to her violin, apparently she hadn’t realized that she had been holding it up for your entire conversation. She lowers her instrument. “Her music has been wonderful, as usual, but she’s been so . . . unhappy. Unworkable. I’d like to think it’s still her mourning Frederic, but she’d gotten over her loss relatively well. At least, until you arrived.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Something about your presence has her flustered. I noticed yesterday that during rehearsal she kept shooting you these little looks periodically, and she’s been much quieter when I spent time with her personally.” Symphony falls silent. She indeed looks like she has a huge weight resting on her back. You feel like you should say something to console her, but all the scenarios you devise in your mind sound insensitive and inadequate.

Instead, you leave the violinist and walk over to the piano. The bench slides out of its own accord and the keyboard cover folds upward, moved by invisible hands. You take your spot, reaching out with magic to engulf the instrument, feeling its shape and familiarizing yourself with the contours.

You begin to play, and everything fades to nonexistence. You start slowly, a simple melody using the upper half of the keyboard that hopefully imbues happiness, for Symphony’s sake. The lower notes chime in, providing much-needed balance.

The music climbs in pitch, fluttering higher and higher, while the low notes still strike soft chords.

The final note sounds softly, bringing your short melody to a close, and you look up to see Symphony with tears in her eyes.

“That was beautiful. Thank you.”