The sun shone brightly, making the white stones of the city glow. Lyra squinted against the dazzling light. She’d spent so much time in the less-vibrant town of Ponyville that she was unaccustomed to the almost heavenly glow of Canterlot. She slung BonBon’s duffle bag over her shoulder and stepped down from the platform, hooves clattering on the cobblestone. A rickshaw rolled past her, bearing another passenger from the train.
It was good to be back. The city was less grand than it had been when she was a filly, but it was still a thing to behold.
“Good to be back, yeh?” Twinkleshine asked, trotting up alongside Lyra.
“Yeah…”
The other mare glanced down at a nonexistent watch. “They’re not gonna let us into the archives till sundown at the earliest, so you should hang out. See the sights, smooze with old pals… Hey, your dad’s a guard? You could see him, even.”
Lyra nodded with a smile. She’d been thinking about that on the ride over. “I have an idea of who to see already.”
“Well good then! See ya in a while, yeh? Yeh.” With that, Twinkleshine trotted off, disappearing into the crowd.
The unicorn sighed and slowly made her way to her destination. From what she remembered, her friend lived somewhere in the noble district, which meant a good climb upwards to the higher portions of Canterlot.
The early morning sun gave way to the noonday sun, and Lyra finally found herself at her destination. The house she stood before was a fair-sized townhouse. A treble clef inside an “O” was burned into the door, the mark of the mare who lived there. Lyra could hear muffled music from within, rhythmic drums, the slap of a bass, and the mournful sound of a saxophone.
Taking in a deep breath, she rapped on the door. After a few moments, the music stopped and the door slowly opened. A grey mare, standing on her hind legs, studied Lyra with impassive violet eyes. She smiled.
“Salut, Lyra! It’s good to see you. Just how are you?”
“Hi. I’m good. How bout you?”
Octavia shrugged. “Good as well. Please, come in. It’s nice to see you – a bit odd though, with no warning or anything.”
“Yeah,” Lyra said. “I was in town and decided to come see you. I have a little problem, see. I have this song stuck in my head and I can’t get the ending down. I hoped somepony like you – somepony who knows music like the back of their hoof – that they could finish it for me.”
The earth pony frowned. “A collaborative symphony?”
“No, not really. It’s just a short, simple little song, but I can’t get to the resolution. It’s driving me nuts.”
The frown grew, but Octavia nodded. “I can see what I can do, but I can’t quite promise things. Come.” She trotted over to a grand piano that sat far to the side in the foyer.
Octavia’s house was of a fair size, but still lavishly decorated. The few times Lyra had visited she had been in awe at how Octavia could afford such a house. In fact, she was still trying to figure that out. Lead cellist couldn’t pay that much, could it?
The mare plinked a key and sat down. She looked up with expectant eyes. “I assume you have some sheet music?”
“Oh sure do.” Lyra dug through her saddlebag, finally withdrawing a crumpled set of notebook pages. She floated them over to Octavia, who set them on the piano, smoothing out the wrinkles as she did so.
Slowly, Octavia began the song. She went through it a few times, clumsily at first, but soon she was playing like she had always known the song. The musician paused on the final part of the song, repeating over and over, eyes shut and mouth moving noiselessly.
Finally, she laughed. “Tsk, Tavi dear! Over-thinking as always.” She continued the melody and closed it with what seemed a sudden stop.
“It stopped,” Lyra observed.
“Of course it did.” Octavia hopped off the bench with a smile on her face. “It’s meant to begin again. The part you were missing was just the bridge back.”
The unicorn blinked, trying to process this. “Well darn. Now I feel dumb for not noticing that.”
“It happens to the best of us.” Octavia started to walk past Lyra, to a hallway on the opposite end of the room. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable while I make us a pot of tea. Then we can chat, yes?”
Lyra nodded, though Octavia didn’t notice. She glanced around, eyes flicking from one decoration to the other. A hoofful of golden records, a standup bass in one corner, and was that – it was! An autographed picture of Flank Sinatrot himself.
When Octavia returned with the tea, Lyra was bubbling with excitement, her misery forgotten for a moment. “Did you really meet Flank?”
“Oh, yes.” Octavia handed her one of the teacups. “He’s a charming stallion, for the most part. He can be…” She shook her head. “Oh, never mind me. You probably want to know how I met him. I played a few album sessions with my bass…”
Octavia spoke for a few hours on her experimental steps into jazz and meeting legends like Dizzy Geldespie, Louie Hoofstrong, and Nat King Colt. Lyra sat, utterly entranced by the stories. It surprised her a great deal that the otherwise posh mare had a fondness for jazz.
“Jazz is a brilliant form of expression,” she said at one point. “It’s freedom in music form – not chained down by the rules that plague other styles. Jazz is improvisation and improvisation is freedom. You play for yourself, not anypony else.” She fell into such a long silence Lyra thought she had fallen asleep. Then she started up again, giving a short treatise on how jazz improvisation worked.
The whole thing was fascinating, but Lyra found herself running out of time. It was getting close to nighttime, and she still hadn’t found her dad yet. She excused herself, exchanged goodbyes and left in a hurry.
***
Lyra had no intention of stopping on her way to her father’s, but a stallion gave her pause. He was dark blue with vivid green eyes. The same vivid green eyes as… The pony from the steel wagon? No, the pony who stopped her in the streets the other day; the one looking for his friend.
“Hey!” she called out. He paused and looked at her, frowning. “Did you ever find your friend?” she asked, trotting up to him.
“My… friend?” he asked, frowning even deeper.
“Yeah. Cookie Barrel, I think you said?”
The stallion did nothing but continue to frown. “Look, miss, I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“But you were in Ponyville the other day,” Lyra sputtered.
“Ponyville? Why the bugger would I go to Ponyville of all places?”
Lyra couldn’t think of anything to say. She just stared at him, aghast. It was the stallion from the other day; she knew it! He looked exactly the same. How could… How could he…
A horrible feeling came over Lyra. Her throat tightened so much she could hardly breathe, and her heart began to go a thousand miles a second. Her chest tightened as well, like a fist was clutching her heart. A wave of dizziness swept over her. Despite her tight throat, she felt like she was about to vomit.
This can’t be happening, Lyra thought. All of a sudden, she felt the soft touch of a hoof on her shoulder. Looking up, she saw the stallion standing over her, a look of both fear and worry on his face.
“Miss? Are you alright?”
The tightness in her chest loosened a little, as did her throat. “I’m… not fine,” she managed. “I have anxiety attacks. Sorry to worry you.”
The pills, she thought. Setting Bonbon’s duffel bag down, she dug through it. Withdrawing a small container of pills, she popped one in her mouth and swallowed hard. For a moment, it felt like it stuck in her throat, making her wince.
“Do you need me to stay with you?” the stallion asked, still hovering over her with a worried look.
“No, no, I’m fine. I just need to collect my thoughts.” Lyra coughed, the pill finally dropping to her stomach. The stallion nodded, and walked off, still glancing back to make sure she was okay. She waved him on, still sitting on her hind legs.
Clutching her head in her hooves, Lyra let out a quiet sob. She just wanted this to end. She wanted to be normal again. No anxiety, no sadness, just the Old Lyra. All smiles and jumps for joy.
Whatever happened to her? Lyra thought. Whatever happened to the way I used to be?
The answer was obscenely simple: It went away when the changelings took her body away from her.
Her shadow was long when she finally stood up and continued on her way.
***
Lyra sat on the steps to the muddy-brick townhouse, saddlebags sitting on her lap. She was in the ward where the royal guards lived when not on duty. If her memory was right, dad would be coming home –
Now. A pale green unicorn clad in bronze armour was making his way down the otherwise empty street. His mane was cut in the plain, severe manner of the army, and it bounced slightly as he walked. His gold eyes were full of good humour, and they twinkled as he took notice of her.
“Lyra!” he shouted, breaking into a run. He swept her up in a hug, her bag clattering to the ground, as she was wholly unprepared.
“Dad,” she said, voice muffled by his pressing of her head into his chest.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” He let her loose. “I’m just happy to see you again. It’s been ages. Couldn’t really visit during the war.” Father Heartstrings smiled sadly before glancing up at his door. “Here, let’s go inside and sit a while.”
Lyra’s eyes traced the arc of the falling sun as he did so. “I, uh… I can’t stay too long, ’cos I got places to be later.” She looked back at him with a small smile. “But I’ll try to stay as long as I can.”
“Good! I’ll put on some tea.” His voice became muffled as he slipped in through the slim door. Lyra’s stomach rumbled in protest at the thought of more tea.
The flat was cramped and rather old, a far cry from Octavia’s lovely townhouse. It made Lyra want to wince that her father lived in such a state of disarray. He kept the flat nice and clean, but it was still an awful-looking place to live, in her opinion.
“Here we are,” he said, coming out of the kitchen just a room away. He hovered a pair of steaming tea-cups next to him.
“Thank you,” Lyra said, accepting one as her ear twitched slightly.
“I really wish I could’ve made the funeral,” he said, voice tightening. “I was out on a bug hunt and didn’t get the news until I got back to Canterlot.”
“The only pony you got mad was Uncle, and he already doesn’t like you to begin with.”
Her father simply nodded, a troubled expression crossing his face. He must have been thinking about his poor relation to Uncle, his brother-in-law.
They chatted a bit about the family. He was, of course, interested in what his grandchildren were up to, and Lyra was more than happy to oblige.
“I wanted to give you something,” he said after a while.
“Oh?” Lyra frowned. She didn’t quite know what he could possibly give her, except-
Except the family lyre.
He took it down gingerly from the scuffed and torn wall, and hovered it over to her. She took it in her own wrap of magic, placing it on her lap. Lyra plucked experimentally at one string. The sound that emanated was pretty beyond her belief. It hadn’t been used it years, and yet it was still in perfect tune. And what a tune it had!
“I don’t know what to say.” Her voice was soft, almost lost beneath the string’s vibration.
“Don’t say anything. Play.”
Her hooves moved of their own accord, plucking the strings and playing a beautiful melody. The song Octavia had finished for her. It seemed like the moment of playing the song would last forever, those notes stopping time itself. Then the ding-dong of the great clock tower rang, and that feeling was shattered.
“Horse apples,” Lyra said. “I really gotta get going.” She could have sworn it was earlier than it was. That song had eaten away all her time. Strange, it didn’t seem very long at all when she played it.
Packing away the lyre, she looked up at her father. “Sorry to-”
She stopped, smiling. He was asleep, a bit of drool escaping his open lips.
“Sleep tight, dad.”
***
Twinkleshine was waiting for her at the gate that led to the royal archives. “Ready?” she asked.
“I guess so.” Lyra shifted from one hoof to the other nervously.
Her friend placed a hoof up to a small engraving inset in the centre of the gate where the two halves met. There was a chime and a brief glow before the gates swung open. Twinkleshine trotted through with a smirk. Lyra stepped carefully through, half-expecting to be zapped by some sort of magical force that didn’t quite like her being there. Nothing happened though, and she smiled unsteadily before continuing.
There was a terraced pathway to the towering archives that wound around a hoofful of statues. Snarling chimaeras, regal alicorns, militaristic griffins, and slender draconequuses towered over the path. Lyra slowed to admire them a bit before catching up with Twinkleshine. There was something about pre-Mare in the Moon era art that was missing from modern art. Lyra couldn’t put her hoof on it, but she had always preferred the music and paintings of the previous era.
Twinkleshine paused at the entry to the library, and turned back to face Lyra. “See that tower?” she asked, pointing to a tower on the far end of the building. It was tall and from Lyra’s perspective, it appeared to have a black line cutting the rounded top in half.
“What’s with the top?”
“There’s this big mechanism that folds the top of the tower in so the telescope can see the stars,” Twinkleshine explained as she inserted the magical key to open the giant doors leading to the library’s lobby. There was a click and the door swung open of its own accord. “Here we are. Let’s go in, yeh?”
“Yeh.” Lyra followed her friend in.
The library was larger than Lyra expected. The bookcases were easily three stories high and rolling ladders were required to reach the top. Each case was crammed tight with ancient, yellowed tomes.
“I have no idea where to start,” she said to herself.
“There’s the Catalog.” Twinkleshine pointed straight ahead.
In the centre of the gigantic lobby was an old, twisted tree. It was not very tall, only about half the height of the bookcases, but it made up in width what it lacked in height. The whorls of its trunk somewhat resembled the face of a monkey. It was an Ent, one so ancient it had almost slipped into the sleep of trees.
“He knows a heckuva lot, yeh.”
“Okay, thanks,” Lyra said, starting for the Catalog. “Where’s the tower, anyway?”
Twinkleshine gestured to the right side of the lobby. “Just follow the sun-and-moon symbols to the east wing and you’ll find it. See ya later!” She scampered off, following her own directions. She was a little unsteady, making Lyra wonder if she had been drinking too much.
Lyra was uneasy. The Catalog was larger than it had seemed before, and the whorls were definitely a face of some sort. It seemed to be looking right at her expectantly.
It was… well, creepy, for lack of a better word. She’d certainly heard of Ents before, but she’d never had the opportunity to meet one. Much less the Catalog that the library had been built around.
“Er,” she started. “I don’t suppose you speak.”
Raroom, the Catalog boomed. “In sooth it does. What do thou desire?”
“I need a book to help me find out the meaning of a really old, obscure word.”
“It knoweth many books of these. It knoweth the text of the books. What word dost thou seek?”
“Kukures.”
Booraroom. The Catalog fell silent, and Lyra thought the whorls deepened into an odd frown. After a long while, it spoke once more. “There is no such word that I know of.”
She cradled her head in her hooves, feeling a throbbing there. All this for nothing. That hasty exit, the hurt she gave BonBon… She needed to get away, get her mind off this. She needed to rest.
She needed Twinkleshine.
***
The white mare was glued to her giant telescope, peering through the viewer to pilfer the secrets of the universe. Her pink tail swished back-and-forth excitedly.
“Something going on?” Lyra asked as she entered the astronomy room.
“Just a rare planetary alignment. Ain’t nothing too unusual.” Twinkleshine punctuated this last remark with a wink before turning back to observe the planets.
“Sounds cool.” Lyra shrugged her saddlebags off and laid on her back, gazing into the stars. Without even realising it, she levitated her new-old lyre onto her chest, laying her front hooves on it. Slowly plucking the strings, she began to play it.
There was no real melody to it, not at first. The longer she played the more of a melody she teased out. Soon there was a beautiful, ethereal song echoing through the chamber. The music of the spheres.
Lyra was surprised at herself – this wasn’t The Song, and it was good, yet entirely original. How could her subconscious be a better composer than she was?
The mystical twang of strings soon died, slowly bringing themselves to a halt. Lyra felt her eyes grow heavy, and she fell asleep.
Lyra suddenly snapped her eyes open. Twinkleshine stood over her, face almost touching Lyra’s. Her eyes glowed green, like… like a changeling’s.
Lyra’s fur matted to her as sweat poured down her body. Her heart pounded, and she felt sick inside.
A bit of drool dribbled onto Lyra’s chest.
“Save me,” Twinkleshine hissed. “Save me, Lyra. You’re the only one who can.”
Lyra woke with a jolt. Twinkleshine glanced down at her, still enrapt in the beauty of the stars.
“Somethin’ wrong?” she asked.
“No… nothing’s wrong,” Lyra answered. She took in a deep breath, trying to steady her heart.
It had just been a dream. And yet, it felt so real. None of her other dreams had felt so real.
Shivering, Lyra curled up again, trying to go back to sleep. Sleep that never came.