Next to you, the soft sound of breathing can be heard, the only noise currently audible. Quiet, but deafening considering the magnitude of what it means.
Your eyes snap open. The ceiling above you is clearly not your own.
While your mental functions are warming up, you’re left to wonder where you are, and who the pony in bed next to you could be. Since your mind is not sufficiently focused to command control of your body, you survey as much of the area as you can without turning your head.
A stormy landscape painting on the wall. The faint blur of a digital clock on the nightstand on your right. Navy blue bedclothes. A white-painted bedroom door hanging ajar, giving you a glimpse of the immaculate, ultramodern apartment on the other side.
A familiar black cello case propped up against the wall. Very familiar, belonging to . . .
Your mind is awake now.
As to not cause any sudden vibrations on the bed, you slowly turn your head to look at the sleeping mare on the other side of the bed.
Octavia’s mouth hangs slightly open, the mound of blankets she shelters under rising and falling with her breath. She’s adorable in sleep, but that doesn’t make this situation any less precarious.
Your heart pounds, almost loud enough for Octavia to hear, even in sleep. You have no idea what you should do. Should you leave, and hope she doesn’t wake when you’re climbing out of bed? Or should you wait for her to wake up? You’re not sure if her supernatural hearing is as effective during resting periods, but you don’t want to take chances.
“Octavia?” you mutter in the cellist’s ear. You figure it would be safer to wake her up yourself—she might be more willing to negotiate if she doesn’t catch you suspiciously sneaking out of her bedroom. It would understandably inspire the wrong idea. “Octavia . . .” You nudge her shoulder gently. “Wake up.”
Octavia’s breathing changes in rhythm and her eyes suddenly squeeze tightly. She’s definitely awake. The cellist rolls over so her face is buried in her pillow.
“I swear to every name in the Equestrian aristocracy, if you don’t leave me alone, I will hunt down and kill everypony you love, and . . .” Octavia’s muffled ranting is cut off abruptly.
Octavia’s head snaps off her pillow, her wide eyes immediately finding your sheepish face. She blinks once, twice, her mouth ajar. “What are you doing in my bed?” she asks, dangerously quiet. You would have preferred her to shout—her cold fury is far more horrifying than any exclamation would have been.
“Uh . . .” you start. “I can explain?”
“How did you get in my house?” Octavia shrieks.
So much for placidness.
You recoil at the sudden cry, falling off the bed and getting hopelessly tangled in bedclothes. “What are you doing in my bed?” Octavia continues.
“You asked me to!” you protest, you voice muffled by a wad of blankets over your face. You tear some of the fabric off of you, finding Octavia’s disbelieving gaze.
Octavia mouths wordlessly, staring at you incredulously. “W-what?” she splutters.
“You were . . . a little delusional last night. Also my fault,” you admit.
“What happened?” Octavia demands. Her eyes grow, impossibly, even wider. “Oh, sweet Celestia. You slept . . . in my bed!”
“It’s not like that! We didn’t . . .” You cut yourself off, not happy with your implication of . . . that. Both you and the cellist redden. “Nothing happened, is what I’m trying to say.”
“But how did you get here?” Clearly Octavia wants to steer clear of the subject as well, and that’s fine by you.
You manage to mostly extract yourself from the blankets. “Uh, how much do you remember from last night?” you ask, tugging your last leg out of the mess.
Octavia ponders for a moment. “I was talking to you in that club, then I started to get the most terrible headache. You offered to take me home . . . then it’s all blank from there on out.”
“I teleported us here. It was a bad idea—we were both exhausted, and I didn’t have time to prep completely. When we got here, you were a little . . .” You pause. Traces of your headache from last night is starting to resurface, and is only accentuated by the fact that you’re beginning to feel the strains of magical draining. Octavia isn’t the only scatterbrained pony in the room.
“Discombobulated?” Octavia offers, her rage quickly dissipating. Thankfully.
“Yeah. When I tried to leave, you wouldn’t let me.”
“Okay. And we didn’t . . .” Octavia trails off, looking at you pointedly.
“No,” you confirm firmly. Octavia stares at you for a minute, searching your expression for any hint of untruthfulness. Apparently you pass her inspection, for she sighs and drops her gaze.
“I suppose I can’t blame you for this, but if I’m ever intoxicated out of my mind again, do not do what I tell you. This time it was relatively tame, and I’m grateful for that.” Octavia slides out of bed, miraculously leaving the blankets unruffled, making her side of the bed look like nopony had even slept in it.
You blink slowly. “This time? This has happened before?”
“Don’t ask.”
Octavia has such a comically intense look on her face, that you can’t help snickering, which only accentuates her exaggerated disapprobation. She sticks her lower lip out, glaring at you with fiery death behind her eyes, and at this point, you decide that she’s messing with you. You hold the eye contact, smiling contentedly until Octavia can no longer uphold her mask of antagonism. A crack in her armor appears in the form of a shy grin.
“I’m really sorry, Octavia,” you say sincerely. “This won’t happen again.”
Octavia waves you off. “You’re quite all right. I suppose I should have expected something to go wrong when Vinyl asked us to partake in the night life with her. I’m just sorry that you had to be put in such an awkward situation at my hooves. I made it far more uncomfortable than it had to be.”
“Logically, though, it was my fault that you were in such a state in the first place,” you counter, determined to wipe the cellist clean of all blame.
“It was my idea to accompany Vinyl. You didn’t know what would have happened.”
“I shouldn’t have even tried to teleport us. It was a moment of stupidity on my part.”
“Symphonic Keys!” Octavia snaps with a smile on her face. “Just shut up and let me take some of the animadversion. You cannot deny that we wouldn’t be in this situation if not for my actions.”
You open your mouth to retaliate, but Octavia clicks her tongue sharply, and you wisely clamp your jaw shut again. “Sorry,” you mutter.
Octavia looks down at the mess of blankets you had created on the floor, then at the door to the bathroom. “I am in desperate need of a shower. I don’t think I’ll ever get the smell of that club off of me, but I may as well try. You . . .” Octavia pauses at the doorway. “Make yourself at home, I suppose.”
The tip of her charcoal tail disappears into the bathroom, and the door shuts with a soft click. A moment later, you can hear the ambient sound of running water—in your opinion, one of the most relaxing sonorousness ever to be discovered.
You shake your head to clear your thoughts. The sudden jerking tugs at your mentality, sending an angry, and painful, response to your nervous system. A dull, rhythmic, pounding begins behind your eyes, sending regular pulses of discomfort.
You wince, kneading your face. One of Clusterbuck’s miraculous remedies would come in handy just about now. You make a mental note to demand the recipe from her, trade secret or not. Your horn sparks—miniscule points of white light scatter from your forehead, dissipating before they hit the ground. That’s new.
You look up, barely making out the blurry outline of your grey horn, anticipating more unconscious magical activity. After a moment, though, it becomes clear that the spurt of sparks was a one-time thing.
As you move to leave, your hooves nudge the pile of bedclothes you had dislodged. Your persistent headache dissuades you from using magic to make the bed, but you feel obligated to right the disorder—considering that you had caused the mess in the first place.
And so you engage in a practice that you haven’t participated in since you were a young foal, when you hadn’t yet discovered your magical prowess.
You make the bed by hoof.
And mouth, to be fair. The ends of your forelegs lack the gripping ability that your jaw possesses, and dragging the heavy blankets back onto the bed requires a steady grasp on the layered fabric. It feels strange, you having been using magic for the majority of your lifetime, and you begin to question the sanitariness of the ordeal. But then again, earth ponies have been using this method since the beginning of time, and they seem to be doing just fine as a species.
A bead of sweat pools at your forehead and rolls down the side of your face. The droplet threatens to drop from your chin, but never does. It quivers maddeningly, a tingling that you cannot address at the moment—for your mouth is clamped tightly onto the down comforter, tugging mightily on the cloudlike surface, attempting to put it back into its rightful place. Your center of gravity is low, putting your entire body into the gargantuan effort.
Finally, after much sweat and silent cursing, the comforter is in place. You smile, satisfied with yourself for accomplishing the seemingly simple task. The grin, however, slides off your face faster than it appeared when you see that you still have another blanket—plus several throw pillows—waiting on the floor, mocking your discomfort. Determined to defeat the inanimate objects, you grit your teeth and go to work.
“Symphonic? Do you need any . . . assistance?”
You whirl, the blanket still dangling from your mouth. Octavia stands in the now-open doorway, her mane damp and shiny from her shower. Warm steam and the scent of mint wafts out of the bathroom, accentuating your sweat. “Ohm, Ahktarvia,” you slur unintelligibly, your words muffled by the intruder in your mouth. You hastily spit it out when Octavia titters. “Er, no thanks. I can manage.”
“Are you sure?” Octavia’s mirth at your inability to accomplish even this, again, seemingly simple task, without the aid of your magic.
You look down at the bed. Your efforts had made it marginally better-looking, but not by much. “Uh, maybe not . . . could you . . .”
“Absolutely. How long has it been since you’ve made the bed without magic?”
You start to count the years in your head, but quickly give up. Your mental facilities are far to scattered to accomplish simple math. “Too long,” you settle on.
“I see.” Octavia takes up her position on the other end of the bed and bends over to grasp the corner of the blanket in her mouth. “Tungth,” the cellist intones. Hoping you had interpreted the attempt at communication correctly, you tug at your side of the beddings, at the same time as Octavia. The effort the chore had required is halved with the cellist helping.
In less than a minute, the bed is back into perfect order, just as presentable as it had been last night. Octavia is giggling quietly to herself, she having just noticed your labored breathing. “Are you okay, Symphonic? Do you need a lie-down?”
You draw in a difficult breath. “On this bed?” Gasp. “Are you kidding? That would mean . . .” Gasp. “I would have to . . .” Gasp. “Make it again!”
“The couch?” Octavia suggests, still chortling.
“Rest assured, Octavia.” You take a moment to draw in a lungful of oxygen. “I’m just fine. Winded, is all.”
“From making my bed? That is definitely a first.”
“Fair enough. What now?”
Octavia leads you into her living room. On the white couch, Crescendo the genius kitten perches, licking himself contentedly. Across from him, the chessboard you had played on is placed, it’s pieces once again midgame—undoubtedly another mental game Octavia plays with herself.
“Crescendo,” Octavia croons, leaning over to nuzzle the back of the kitten’s head with her nose. “Where were you last night when this scary stallion tried to rape Mommy?”
“Excuse me?” you ask, mock offended.
Crescendo gazes at you smugly, his pink tongue still hanging over his chin, further mocking you. A faint rumbling emanates from his direction as his purrs. He lets off a quick mew, and for a moment, you consider getting yourself a cat. Why is the creature so irresistibly adorable?
“Do you have any plans today?” wonders Octavia. She puts her hoof up to Crescendo’s face, and he gratefully thrusts his head against it.
“Since I moved to Canterlot, the extent of my plans involve rehearsals, concerts, and the occasional dinner with Vinyl. No, I’m not busy. You?”
“No.” Octavia avoids your eyes, distracting herself with Crescendo. Her body language suggests that she is expecting you to continue the conversation, and all you have to do is correctly interpret her intentions.
“Do you want to . . .” You clear your throat. “Do something?” you finish vaguely.
Octavia meets your gaze, smiling casually, but behind her eyes, excitement shines. “Symphonic, are you suggesting a date?”
“No . . .” Octavia stares pointedly at you. “Well, maybe. Yes,” you admit.
“Very well, then. I accept. What do you have in mind?”
“I have no idea.”