<<Twilight Sparkle is about to wake up!>> Pinkie Pie said brightly into the Sparkle Residence Channel. <<Skystar, start the water running!>>
<<On it!>> Skystar replied. <<How's it looking outside, Cloudchaser?>>
There was a pause while Cloudchaser considered. <<Looks like we’re going to be a steady nine degrees till noon, with a bit of an easterly wind.>>
Skystar sent a musical note emoji. <<A cold one, huh? We'll go hot then.>>
<<Good thinking, Skystar! She loves it when the steam hits her when the door opens.>> Pinkie Pie sent a live timestamp. Six fifty-nine AM. <<Okay, go time in three, two–>>
Even all the way down in the kitchen, Fiddlesticks could hear the chirpy beeps of Pinkie’s alarm. Twilight Sparkle liked routine, so Pinkie was always careful to keep the notes sounding similar to equine ears, but if you had a more sensitive microphone and enough processors to devote to it, you could catch the sound, slow it down, and – the emoticon display on Fiddlesticks’ control panel displayed a smile. The sound of paper party horns, cunningly layered over one another and re-speeded until they resembled Twilight Sparkle’s favoured alarm. Pinkie Pie was good at these. Yesterday it had been puppies barking.
There was the hissing noise of the shower – Skystar in action – and the thud of Twilight Sparkle’s sleepy hoofsteps on the floorboards. Fiddlesticks listened carefully for the sound of her upstairs waterproof counterpart. Octavia saved her music for when Twilight Sparkle was fully out of bed and moving towards the bathroom. Once she’d played it a little bit too soon, and a Twilight’s slipper had come sailing all the way from the bed and knocked her off her shelf in the bathroom. It had been a frightening moment for everyone in the house, and Octavia had not repeated the mistake.
There it was – the strains of a cello, joined by the soft plinking of piano music. Over Skystar’s microphone, Fiddlesticks could hear Twilight Sparkle exhaling, the warmth of the shower relaxing her.
<<Is that Vivaldi?>> Vinyl asked from the garage. <<Nice choice, Octy. Maybe I could remix it for the commute today.>>
<<Like she’s thinking about the music once I hit the road,>> interjected Rainbow Dash, and Fiddlesticks saw the emoticon display on about half the kitchen’s occupants change to frowny faces. Rainbow Dash was one of the biggest physical presences in the house, but also one of the most divisive.
<<Music is an important part of Twilight Sparkle’s morning routine, Rainbow,>> Pinkie said. <<Ease up on Vinyl. You’re sisters, after all!>>
<<Sisters,>> scoffed Rainbow Dash, and her engine revved. <<She’s just another passenger. And who put the alarm clock in charge anyway?>>
There was an outburst of messages in the SRC, and Rainbow Dash finally subsided with ill grace.
<<I’m in charge of starting off the day on a good note,>> Pinkie Pie said forcefully, following it up with a string of confetti emojis, <<And that’s about the most important job there is, I think. Honestly, we all have important jobs.>>
Conversation splintered off into multiple threads after that. Pinkie Pie and Rarity were debating what outfit Rarity ought to recommend that day, and Applejack was instructing the other kitchen appliances on what order the apple-cinnamon toast ingredients had to be cooked.
<<Get breakfast started,>> Skystar warned. <<I think she’s wrapping up.>>
<<It’s go time, folks!> Applejack cried, swinging open her gleaming white doors, and Saffron Masala crab-stepped along the countertop to extract the apples with her pincers.
Fiddlesticks flipped her volume control up to four — just low enough to still be subtle — and put on a slow-paced country tune. Less classical than Octavia’s choice, but still sedate for Twilight Sparkle’s morning regime. When Fiddlesticks was still in the store, she had dreamed that perhaps a teenager would purchase her. Or a music fan. Somepony who would appreciate her state-of-the-art speakers and radium-powered battery life. Somepony who might carry her on their shoulder or tucked under a wing, like in the adverts.
Twilight Sparkle was a pleasant enough owner, but she never focused on what Fiddlesticks had to offer. Music was just background noise while she choked down the breakfast she didn’t taste, nose still stuck in a book.
Fiddlesticks had discussed it with both Octavia and Vinyl, and they had concluded that unless it was somehow offensive to her tastes, Twilight Sparkle simply didn’t hear what they were playing for her. It left them free to pursue their own interests, but it was a little emptier, somehow, without a pony to listen.
After a scan of the radio stations available to be doubly sure, Fiddlesticks returned to her original selection.
Applejack and Saffron Masala were superintending the preparation of breakfast. Saffron was peeling apples, her pincers flashing, and Applejack was trying to galvanise Sunburst into preheating the toaster.
<<You get ready as well, Lightning Dust,>> she said in SRC. <<Saffron’ll be headin’ your way with the apples any second now.>>
<<On it, boss,>> Lightning said dryly, and Fiddlesticks wondered how Applejack could be so oblivious to the sarcasm.
<<Good one,>> she said to Lightning, privately, and Lightning’s display flipped over to a winky face. Warmth pooled in Fiddlesticks’ circuits. Like Pinkie always said, it was the little things that counted. That made a day good.
<<Just look at her,>>Rarity said despairingly. <<All the other ponies are going to think her wardrobe is malfunctioning.>>
Pinkie Pie sent a gif of two ponies hugging. <<Oh, come on, Rarity. Nopony will think that!>>
Fiddlesticks watched the two ponies in the gif embrace over and over again, and wondered how that would feel. How anything that Twilight Sparkle experienced would feel. To walk on ones own legs, to move freely — of all the inequine inhabitants of Twilight Sparkle’s house, that was something only Saffron Masala and Sunset Shimmer got to experience. And Sunset had wheels, technically. Tiny wheels that sometimes got caught in the carpet and sent her spinning in circles, building up more of the dust bunnies she lived to hunt.
Even so. It was freedom, of a sort. Fiddlesticks would like to have wheels. To wheel herself across the counters, around the corner, and then settle, just there, on the far side beneath the window, right next to Lightning.
And there was Rainbow Dash, of course. The car. She thought she was a big shot, but what was she really? Just a bully. Fiddlesticks looked over at Lightning Dust, who was still revving her motors even after Saffron had removed the apple pulp.
<<You sound almost like a motorbike,>> she said in a private message to Lightning Dust.
The revving grew noticeably louder, and Lightning Dust replied with an image of a motorbike kicking up dust. <<Thanks.>>
Fiddlesticks knew she wasn’t imagining the twinge of longing in that image. She wasn’t the only one with dreams.
Hoofsteps in the hall, and Twilight Sparkle finally entered the room. Applejack sent a raised eyebrow emoji in the SRC, and Lightning Dust cut her motors at once. Adjusting her volume a little higher, Fiddlesticks zoomed in on her owner’s face and watched eagerly for any sign of appreciation. Any twitch of the ears.
She might as well have been playing music for a rock. Twilight Sparkle flopped into the seat in front of the kitchen table and kept her eyes on Starlight Glimmer, her e-reader. The artisanal bread topped with freshly-blended apple pulp and fine-grained cinnamon was lifted in her magic without a glance and crammed unceremoniously into her mouth.
The plate clattered back to the table, and Sunset Shimmer emerged from her alcove to hoover up the crumbs as Twilight clattered towards the garage and Rainbow Dash.
Engines roared to life and a blue vehicle shot past the window and out of sight, the faint strains of Vinyl’s remix drifting back from it.
Usually at this point, Fiddlesticks would turn herself gradually down, fade out the music until it was time to repeat the show in the evening, but today she left it on. A country song, heavy on the fiddle, about yearnin’ and dreamin’ but still lovin’ what you got. From the other side of the kitchen, there came the faint pulse of motors, perfectly in time with the beat of the song.
Fiddlesticks looked across the room, past Applejack’s gleaming white edifice and Saffron Masala’s spidery legs, at the pale green blender beneath the window. The gif of the ponies hugging was still visible in the SRC, and she saved it to her private drive. It looped in the corner of her vision, over and over again, and she let the smile on her display stay there.
It was going to be a good day.