//------------------------------//
// Prologual Finale 
// Story: Melodious Desideratum 
// by Desideratium 
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You once again find yourself in another awkward position—similar to waking up to finding Octavia on the other side of the bed. 

The cellist has fallen asleep, nestled in your embrace, her face snugly pressed into your chest. You can barely make out her peaceful face if you look down as far as your eyes would allow, almost rolling them down into your head. Even in sleep, she appears happy; Octavia bears no smile, but a certain contentedness dominates her facial features. 

The curtain closes for a final time, after the traditional cantillation of the Heart Carol. Somewhere in the midst, Octavia had slipped from consciousness, becoming a dead weight pressing you down. Even the sheer magnitude of the chorus didn’t rouse her—Octavia is apparently a very deep sleeper. Her heightened sense of hearing appears to have shut down to allow her to get some shuteye. 

Ponies begin to mobilize, since their purpose for coming here has come to pass. Their entertainment for the night has ended, now the time has come for them to return to their warm homes. In front of you, Royal Riff and Beauty Brass stand in unison, chatting amiably. 

“Riffs,” you whisper urgently. Your low tone is unnecessary; the ponies around you are making enough noise to wake a hibernating dragon. But apparently, not the slumbering cellist. 

Royal Riff turns to meet your eyes. A grin breaks across his face when he sees Octavia, so small in sleep, preventing you from getting up. “What seems to be the problem, Symphonic Keys?” he smirks. 

“Help,” you breathe desperately. 

“Unfortunately, I have no idea what you’re talking about . . .” Royal Riff sports the maddening, unhelpful smile that you have come to know, and loathe. “It appears as though that you have everything under control. What do you need me for?” 

“Riffs, c’mon. What do I do?” 

“Wait it out, I suppose. She should be awake by morning. But I guarantee, she will be extremely ornery if you interrupt her sleep schedule. Coming here, she has gone far past her normal bedtime, as it is.” 

“Thank you for your infinite wisdom and assistance. I appreciate it. But how am I going to wake her up without being brutally murdered?” 

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Good luck to you, Symphonic Keys.” 

The violinist makes his exit, towing his date by the foreleg, ignoring the imploring looks chasing after him, leaving you alone with the sleeping tiger. “Well buck you too, Riffs,” you curse under your breath. 

“Symphonic, I thought you didn’t blaspheme. I’m disappointed in you.” 

But apparently, more crude vocabulary words make it through to her mind just fine. Octavia’s voice sounds from under your chin, the vibrations making your jaw vibrate. “That wasn’t the ideal way to be woken, I must admit.” Octavia rubs her eyes, leaving visible red marks, accentuating her increasingly disheveled appearance. 

“Sorry,” you apologize shamefacedly. The cinereal mare pushes off of you, stretching one foreleg above her head and tugging at it with the other. You hear a satisfying pop, and Octavia lowers the limbs, sighing contentedly. 

“Why is it that I achieve my deepest sleep in the midst of several hundred noisy Canterlot ponies?” Octavia wonders aloud. “No, I am sorry, for giving you an unnecessary burden to bear.” Ever the gentlecolt, you stand, and help Octavia to her hooves. She accepts gratefully, her motor functions not being fully awakened. 

“So . . . shall we?” you suggest. 

“We shall,” Octavia agrees.

You join the throng of ponies trying to squeeze out the doors simultaneously with a dozen others—a futile quest, it seems. The most that the grand doors to Canterlot palace can accommodate at a time is eight, as Octavia astutely informs you as you advance nearer. “How do you know that?” you ask. 

“My mind is a mass of random trivia. Building specifications are particularly fascinating to me. For instance . . .” Octavia points at the high, vaulted ceiling of the entrance hall. “This hall was not built at the same time as the rest of the castle. It was added a century later, built by a team of one hundred and fifty pegasi. There were two fatalities, caused by a falling eight-ton support beam. That has inspired the rumor that this hall is haunted by the ghosts of the builders.”

“Is that so?” 

“Do you care, or are you just saying that to spare my feelings?” 

“No, honestly,” you assure Octavia, who is smiling knowingly at you. “Color me interested in anything about Canterlot, or just history in general.” 

Octavia falls silent. You push your way past a trio of unicorns who are moving a little too slowly for your taste, keeping a firm grip on Octavia’s foreleg to keep track of her. Celestia knows, you’d never be able to locate her in this throng. “Thank you, Symphonic,” Octavia says suddenly. 

You look back at the cellist. She is smiling genuinely, overwhelmingly joyful for some unfathomable reason. “For what?” 

“For caring,” Octavia answers simply. And leaving you to ponder what she could possibly be inferring, she takes the lead, pulling you along now. 

With Octavia steering you, you emerge out into the cold, among a hundred other ponies going their separate ways. She pulls you off to the side, away from the flow of hoof traffic. “Symphonic?”

“Yes?”

“Can we not go home?” 

You do a double take. “What do you mean?” 

“Can we go to the concert hall?” Octavia looks at you expectantly, not a trace of embarrassment in her voice. 

You decide not to question the strange request, because for some reason, you were thinking the exact same thing. “Absolutely. I was thinking of that, myself.” 

“But no teleporting,” both you and Octavia say in unison. There is a moment of silence where you stare incredulously at each other, then simultaneously burst out laughing. Your mirth carries on for longer than it logically should, and your mind struggles to find an explanation for it. Your analytical nerve center settles on a mixture of exhaustion and sheer, utter joy brought about by being with this mystical, musical deity. 

“But seriously, though.” Octavia pulls herself together to gaze at you seriously. “We’re walking, no matter how cold it is.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else,” you assure her. 

“Then shall we?” Octavia smirks, echoing your earlier statement. 

“We shall.”

****

“Symphonic?”

“Yes?” 

“When we were talking earlier, you mentioned my family. I shrank away from your prompt, changing the conversation in the opposite direction. But now . . .” Octavia trails off. 

You move closer to Octavia, not for warmth, but for assurance. “Octavia, you don’t need to tell me. I can gather that it’s an uncomfortable subject, and I really don’t want to bring back something as sensitive as that.” Once again, you find yourself wandering the dark streets of Canterlot, checking every corner for the possibility of thugs and ruffians. But this time, you feel protected, not only by the forcefield of warm air you’d conjured, but by the presence of Octavia. 

“No, I want to tell you. I want to tell at least somepony before I die. I think you should be the one.” 

“You’ve never told anypony? Not even Vinyl? 

“No, not Vinyl. Now, you understand that I love her unconditionally, but she really wouldn’t understand what I’m trying to say. She’s always had an understanding family . . . one that could actually function as a family,” Octavia adds sadly. 

“Octavia . . .”

“No buts. I will tell you this story, and you will not interrupt or protest that you don’t want to hear it. I’m deadly serious, Symphonic. It’s been eating away at me for most of my life, and I need to get it off my chest.” 

You take a deep breath. “Okay. Hit me with your best shot.”

Octavia’s eyes grow distant as she travels back into the past. “Well . . .”

****

“I was raised in Las Pegasus. My mother was a concert violist and my father was a casino manager. Their relationship could have been better . . .”

A young Octavia cowered in her room, adorned with depictions of modern art, some of which she had drawn herself. Tears sparkled in her eyes—it was that time of day again. The time when Daddy got home. 

The furious screaming could be heard from her top floor bedroom, even with the door closed and a blanket pressed against the crack. The shrill soprano of Octavia’s mother rang out surprisingly clearly, but not distinguished enough to make out words. The mare’s shrieks were punctuated by angry bellows from a larger stallion: Octavia’s father. 

After a particularly loud scream, Octavia heard the sound of a heavy blow and a sharp cry of pain, and she winced, the tears that had been long since threatening to make an appearance now rolling down her cheeks. “Stop it, please,” she whispered to herself. 

The sound of the front door slamming, and Octavia’s father was gone. He probably wasn’t going to be home for the rest of the weekend. After the serious fights with Mommy, he would leave the house for days at a time, sometimes weeks. Octavia never knew where he went, but all she knew was that he came back even angrier than he was when he left. 

Hoofsteps sounded on the creaky wooden stairs leading to the second floor, and Octavia hastily jumped off of her bed and launched herself into her desk chair. She furiously swiped at her eyes, hiding the tears before her mother entered the room. She quickly grasped the pencil out of the tin can that held her writing utensils and pointed it at the clearly-unfinished homework assignment that she was supposed to have been working on. 

Octavia’s door creaked open, pushing the stars and moon patterned blanket out of the way. Mommy stood in the doorway, the sad weariness clearly visible in her eyes, even for the young filly. A pink welt shined against her pale yellow face. “Hello, Octavia,” she murmured, not having the energy to bring her voice up any higher. “How was school?” 

“It was . . . good,” the filly responded, spitting out the pencil to speak with her mother. 

“Did you make any new friends?”

Octavia’s eyes fell. “No . . .”

“Did you play with Symphony again?” 

“No, she wasn’t at school today.” 

“Then what did you do during recess?”

Octavia pointed at a short, paperback novel sitting on top of her school bag. “I read my book,” the filly answers simply, not wanting to further explain her antisocial attitude. 

“I see.” Octavia’s mother regarded her daughter sadly. The sadness was a given expression now—it was almost consistently present on the mare’s face. The only relief she got in her day was playing her viola for the customers at Daddy’s casino in the Very Important Pony section. And even that wasn’t guaranteed to bring her happiness. Octavia’s mother was a proud one, but also a worried one; she wanted the best for her daughter, but considered her shyness as a hindrance. 

“I was a very introverted filly at school. The others thought of me as a shut-in, and to be fair, there was some merit in that theory”

Octavia turned in her newly-completed homework assignment to her smiling teacher—a teacher that the filly knew full-well was consistently sneaking out behind the school during recess to have a strong drink or two. Octavia returned the sentiment, but hollowly. 

The filly took her seat at her small desk at the very back of the room. It was far away from the rest of the students, but she liked it that way. In fact, Octavia had specifically requested the spot. It was a good distance away from the staring from her fellow classmates; a space where she could get her work done undisturbed. 

Even still, the larger-than-average white colt in front of her still threw back dirty looks on a regular basis. Octavia’s mother had said that he was jealous, but that didn’t make him any less intimidating. Octavia was much more scared of him than she cared to admit. When picked on her, she stared ahead, silently begging him to leave her alone. Eventually, he would grow bored and turn around again, leaving the filly behind him fighting back tears and wishing nothing more than to return back home to her library. 

The lessons and lectures had started to blend together for the filly very early in the school year—whatever the teacher could throw at her, Octavia could have easily recited in her sleep. It was the result of too much time alone, with a library full of dusty tomes that everypony had forgotten about years ago. Octavia had become good friends with the librarian—a mare as dusty as the books named Clusterbuck—and the small institution had become her second home. 

“As I reached my teenage years, I started to seriously consider making a change in my life. But then Mom . . .” 

Octavia wept openly at the side of her mother’s sickbed, begging the pale mare to stay with her. 

The mare’s eyes had closed ten minutes ago, and her breath had become almost nonexistent. There was still a slight rise and fall of her chest under the thin bedclothes, and Octavia used that as a motivation that her mother could still yet make it through the illness. The convalescence was something that the doctors had never seen before—something that only existed in legends, and hadn’t even been named. No need, since it’ll never come back, they had said. 

“Octavia . . .” A faint whisper from Octavia’s mother. So slight that her daughter had to strain to hear it. “I want you to know . . .” A weak cough. Then two. 

“Mommy, please stay here . . .” Octavia whispered back. The desperation of the situation had caused her to revert back to her fillyhood, calling her mother “Mommy”.

A bare twitch of the mare’s lips became a smile in Octavia’s mind. “Octavia, I . . . I love you. So much. I’m sorry.” 

“I love you too, Mommy.” Octavia had accepted the inevitable, but still wanted to hold on to hope, for her mother’s sake. “Can we go home now?” 

“No . . . I’m sorry. I love you,” the sick mare repeated. “Tell your father that I . . .” 

The dialogue was cut off, the mare dragging out the last word but unable to continue to the next. The unfinished sentence that Octavia would never hear the end of. With her final sentiment, Octavia’s mother’s breath stopped. For good this time. 

Octavia shrieked in pain and anguish. So loud, that doctors and nurses by the dozen came rushing into the room. One scooped the filly up and carried her out of the vicinity of her mother’s body; she screamed the entire way down the hall, and through several more. 

She had just lost her mother. Nothing mattered anymore. 

“After that, I took whatever money my mother had left me and left home. I hadn’t seen my father since Mom was diagnosed, and I didn’t plan to ever again. I went to the only place I could think of.” 

Trottingham College of Music.

Octavia walked alone across the campus, dragging the tiny suitcase containing the few possessions she owned, along with her cello. Despite the college students milling about, chatting or wandering aimlessly, the cellist had never felt so alone. 

Following the directions the friendly mare at the gate had given her, Octavia made her way to the dormitories, where she was supposed to meet her new roommate. The mare had been familiar with the pony in question; she had said that her name was Vinyl Scratch, and they would get along just fine. Octavia had misgivings, even from the mystery mare’s name. Scratch. 

Upon reaching the correct door, Octavia took a deep breath and knocked. 

“Come in!” cried a voice from inside. Octavia complied, pushing open the door to find the most disorganized, chaotic living space that she had ever seen. 

The floor was more wires than carpet, leading to various machines whose function were lost on Octavia. Some appeared to be speakers, but most were completely alien to her. A couple of familiar objects, resting in a corner, were a blood-red electric guitar and a black digital cello—an abomination in Octavia’s eyes. 

Sprawled on a couch which had most likely been shoved out of its original space to accommodate more wires and mess, is a white unicorn with a wild, electric blue mane and heliotrope reflective shades. Reading a magazine. A saucy one by the position of the mare on the front page. Octavia reddened. 

“So, you’re the roommate,” the unicorn drawled, in a voice that Octavia was absolutely certain that would get aggravating very quickly. “Name’s Vinyl Scratch. Or DJ-Pon3, if you like that better. Either’s fine by me.” 

Octavia surveyed the room once more. She set down her cello in one of the few free spaces available. “My name is Octavia. And what in Celestia’s name have you done to these living quarters?”

“And the rest is history,” Octavia finishes. 

You have reached the concert hall, your arrival perfectly coinciding with the conclusion of Octavia’s life story. The abridged version, but touching nonetheless. “Wow . . . Octavia,” you mutter, in awe.

“Don’t start feeling sorry for me, now. I didn’t tell you the story so you could get all sentimental and never look at me the same way again. Symphonic, please . . .” The cellist has pleading in her eyes. Imploring you to heed her. “I just needed someone to understand.” 

You open one of the glass doors, which is unlocked for some reason, and let Octavia pass. “Believe me, I understand. I can’t relate, but I can at least see where you’re coming from.” 

“Thank you.” Octavia seems to be on the verge of tears, and that pushes you to the brink. 

Only a select few lights in the foyer are still illuminated—throwing the glass centerpiece in the hall into a ghostly light. Even with very little light to see by, you’ve walked these floors dozens of times, and finding the auditorium door is effortless. Pushing open the heavy doors, you notice that on the stage, somepony had forgotten to turn a spotlight off; it leaves a yellow circle around the instrument that you had come to love.

The piano. And next to it, propped against the bench, is Octavia’s cello. 

“How did that get here?” Octavia asks. 

“I have no idea. It was back at your apartment this morning. Unless I inadvertently teleported it here some time during the day, I’m not sure.” 

Octavia surges ahead of you, her pace quickened to reach the stage before you. Not sure if she’s racing you or not, you match her stride, running alongside her. When her speed increases, you know that she is indeed feeling a bit competitive. You pull forward, close enough that the tip of her tail is whipping you across the nose. 

Octavia wins the race, mostly because you are back behind, trying to swipe the long black hairs away from your face. The cellist breathes heavily, beaming from ear to ear. “That was . . . exhilarating.”

“Let’s do it again,” you suggest jokingly. 

“Maybe later, Symphonic.” Octavia winks at you. Did Octavia just wink? You’re left to ponder the question, because Octavia has mounted the stage and picked up her cello, complete with her trusty bow. 

You follow, watching as Octavia tunes her instrument to the utmost perfection. As you draw nearer, you pull the bench out from under the piano with magic and take a seat. Then, to your surprise, Octavia sits down next to you, her bow still in position to play. The closeness of the cellist is stifling; you can barely draw breath, even after all this time. 

Before you can even contemplate what to play, Octavia leans over and kisses you on the cheek. “Symphonic?”

“Octavia?”

“I love you.” 

Those three words. Those three, simple words that you have been unknowingly fantasizing about ever since the moment you had laid eyes on the cinereal cellist. The words that you have been forming in your mind, hoping in vain that they would be eventually directed in your favor. 

You move in and kiss Octavia back. A lingering kiss that held more meaning to you than anything else had ever hoped to hold a candle to. 

“I love you too.”

And your music begins. It carries on through the night, and forever onward, a joyful strain that cannot be interrupted by any worldly force. Your keyboard is the most beautiful that Equestria has ever heard. You have motivation for it to be as such . . .

For her.

~ Fin