"What's wrong, honey?" Bon Bon asked, already knowing the answer.
Lyra's head whipped from side to side, eyes darting about. She backed away from the table.
"The music," she hissed.
Bon Bon gestured to the half-eaten bowl of fresh-roasted cashews, hoping her smile didn't look as brittle as it felt. "Honey. Please. It's nothing. Finish your breakfast."
Lyra's eyes shot open. "Nothing?" She trotted around the table and thrust forward a hoof. "Sweetie … let's go."
Bon Bon set down her bowl of oatmeal, but didn't stand. "You're overreacting. I'm sure it's just Pinkie Pie again. You know how she gets." She drew in a breath and hummed a wavering melody — gratingly dissonant against the distant swelling strains of orchestration. "Hmm, hmmm hmmm, smile, smile, smile." The music was making it hard to focus. She struggled for words, raised her voice to drown out the new tune: "Fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine —"
A hoof slammed onto the table with the rattling finality of a cymbal crash. "No. We're going, Bonnie. I almost lost you at the wedding. I can't let that —"
"The song," Bon Bon said, "wasn't the problem. The songs are the happy times. We'll be fine."
Lyra gritted her teeth and raised her hoof to her right ear, brushing her mane back. "Don't do this to me. Not now. We can argue when you're safe."
Bon Bon recognized the gesture — it usually accompanied an exasperated "Bonnie" or "be reasonable" — but held her ground, ears flattening. "Don't do this to me," she said softly. "Honey, I like the songs."
A fanfare sounded somewhere down the block. Lyra froze, nostrils flaring in short breaths. Her eyes darted sideways, then fixed on Bon Bon in a wordless plea. Bon Bon sat in silence, returning the same stare. Lyra brushed her mane back again. Bon Bon frowned.
Lyra exhaled through clenched teeth. "Be reasonable. They're dangerous. Don't tell me the songs aren't dangerous. You sprained your ankle chasing after Twilight Sparkle's gala tickets."
"That was an accident. What about when those nice unicorn brothers came to town? We all sang, and then we got cider."
"I would have choked on a leaf in those hucksters' swill if Nurse Redheart hadn't known the Haylick Maneuver. We need to go, sweetie. Now."
Bon Bon winced. She'd forgotten that part. "Winter Wrap-Up," she said, trying to ignore the slow crescendo of the music. "Everypony had fun at Winter Wrap-Up. Please, honey, sit down, we'll be fine."
"Yes, and everyone was enjoying the Grand Galloping Gala until they almost collapsed the palace on us. Sweetie —" Lyra glanced down the street, and the rest of her sentence was lost in a strangled cry. She hooked an ankle around Bon Bon's shoulder and yanked. Bon Bon shrieked as she lost her balance. Lyra wrapped her forehooves around Bon Bon's flailing form, hauling her into the nearby alleyway.
Violins swelled. Trumpets blared. Twilight Sparkle leaped onto a fountain in the square outside the restaurant.
"There's a mayor, en route to her office!" Twilight sang. Her eyes glinted in the sunlight. Birds soared and swept around her. The air itself seemed to shimmer — vibrant, alive.
Lyra looked over her shoulder, horror growing on her muzzle. Bon Bon stared, transfixed.
"There's the sofa clerk, selling some quills!"
"Morning, kid!" Mr. Quill called out in perfect time to the lively beat of the pizzicato strings. Lyra's rear hoof began tapping to the rhythm.
Bon Bon felt her face flush, her heart beat in time to the music. Twilight was so happy! A smile spread across her muzzle as she squirmed from Lyra's embrace and scrambled to her hooves. She and Lyra could … could join … and. She blinked. Why had Lyra dragged her to the alleyway? Lyra was … en route to her office! No —
"My Ponyville is so gentle and still!"
The corners of Lyra's mouth curled up into a pure, joyous smile. Her eyes widened. She slapped herself harshly across the muzzle, threw herself against the side of the building, and clapped her hooves over her ears, whispering "No, no, no, no …"
Bon Bon, about to rush out into the square despite some nagging feeling in the back of her brain, hesitated. What was wrong with Lyra?
"Can things ever go wrong? I don't think that they will!"
Bon Bon heard a thump around the corner as Twilight leapt up onto one of the restaurant's tables. Then laughter, squeals, tap-dancing. Again! Another pony on the tables! She was missing out — but something was wrong with Lyra — no, how could it be? Everything was certainly fine. All it lacked was her. She took a step forward toward her rightful place in the universe —
Aquamarine hooves clamped around her and dragged her back into the alley.
"Morning in Ponyville shimmers! Morning in Ponyville shines!"
Bon Bon's head throbbed with the dissonance of separation from the beat. "Lyra!" she whined. "What are you — let me go — stop that —"
"Ssh!"
"And I know for absolute certain!"
"Let me go this instant or I swear I will —"
"That everything is certainly —"
There was a loud splash. The spell snapped like a strained rubber band.
Their bodies jerked. Bon Bon overbalanced and fell to the ground. Lyra staggered and doubled over, coughing, face red.
Thunder rumbled and rolled. Rain fell on the bridge by the river. Snow fell on the restaurant's patio.
Lyra and Bon Bon picked themselves up and looked at each other. The words of the song flooded back into memory, punctuated by the shriek of a distant unicorn dodging a lightning bolt.
Bon Bon sighed, ears drooping. "Leaving?"
"Leaving."
♩ ♬♬ ♩ ♫ ♩
The bedroom: two small suitcases on separate beds. Bon Bon's bag was floral, faded, lumpy. Four days' worth of wadded-up dresses and saddlebags; a small but bulging coin purse; a framed photo of them sitting on a park bench; a family heirloom taffy jar she couldn't bear to leave behind; her smallest jewelry box, wedged in next to the jar. Lyra's was a model of geometric efficiency. Clothing and accessories folded into tight squares and stacked in three neat rows, marred only by the mothballs Bon Bon had added a few months ago without asking. Pencils, quills, notebooks, scrolls. Pages of notes in precise hornwriting — bank accounts, family members' contact information, the name and address of their hotel. Her second-nicest lyre, all the way at the back, wrapped in fabric and tape. A binocular-shaped gap.
The balcony: The aquamarine back of an unmoving unicorn, crouching at the railing and staring at the horizon through those binoculars.
The border between them: Bon Bon.
"Hmmmm hmm hm-de-hm-hm," she hummed. "Smile, smile, smile." It just didn't seem the same a capella. "There's one thing that makes me happy, and makes my whole life worthwhile —"
"Don't."
Bon Bon stopped, then retreated to the bedroom. It was silent and swathed in shadow.
She stared at the bags forlornly. She had just about made up her mind to walk back out to the balcony when the blue-green phantom shifted. Its head swiveled to the side. Its horn lit, lifting a pencil and pad. The pencil swooped, scritched, through several terse lines and dots. The pencil and pad lowered to the ground, and the figure returned to its observations.
Bon Bon swallowed, throat dry. She went out anyway.
They were stories, stories, hundreds of stories above Manehatten, the top floor of the hotel, a west-facing room. The hills and plains stretched out toward Ponyville, a dot on the horizon: some liminal zone between the sky's pale blue and the land's fertile green, between Everfree's sickly darkness and Canterlot's barren grey. A cold wind swept around them — some artifact of the local weather team's carelessness, or some omen from the silent distance. The sun hung high in the heavens.
"Honey," she said, "come inside. Please."
"That's three," Lyra said through a raspy throat.
"Things will work themselves out. We'll write Carrot Top a letter. She'll let us know. You don't have to watch."
"Three. We've never seen a three-songer before. I'm not sure we're far enough away."
Bon Bon opened and closed her mouth. "Honey, when's the last time you ate?"
Lyra looked back, blinking, focus broken by the question. Her eyes were sunken, dark. Near the base of her right ear, her mane was tangled and matted.
"Lunch," she finally said.
"The leftovers of my watercress sandwich?"
"Yeah."
"That was yesterday."
"Oh."
Bon Bon sighed. "Please, honey. Take a break. Walk with me. There's a nice-looking Qilinese place down the block."
Lyra carefully set the binoculars down on the balcony floor and turned around, brushing a hoof past her ear. "Hundreds of acres of farmland rotted in less than the time our train took to get here. The newspaper said this morning that stores were closing in Ponyville Square due to bankruptcies. And something about riots. The weather hasn't been stable once since Twilight's little stunt Tuesday. That's our home, sweetie. I want to know if there's going to be anything there to return to once this is all over."
"If it's our home," Bon Bon said without thinking, "then we should be there with them."
Lyra winced, ears flattening.
Guilt twinged at Bon Bon's heart, but somewhere on its path toward apology, a thought ambushed it, fierce, defiant: Three songs, if we'd stayed.
Lyra looked back away. "I'm sorry. We'll go back the instant it's safe, okay?"
"Is it really home if we're only there when it's safe?"
"I don't care about home. I care about you."
Three songs.
"Do you care about me being happy?" Bon Bon asked.
"I do. But I can't lose you."
"You won't."
"No. Don't. You can't promise me that."
Bon Bon stopped, jaw straying open. Is it really love, her mind echoed, if we're only there when it's safe?
"I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. I can't. I never could."
Lyra nodded, turned back to the horizon, and settled back in at the railing.
"Lyra," Bon Bon said. "I'm leaving."
"Bring back lunch," Lyra said. "You're right. I should at least eat."
There was a long silence.
"Are they singing out there?" Bon Bon asked.
Lyra leaned forward, squinting through the lenses. "Yeah. I think. Same song though. Not four. Not yet."
No response.
"You said Qilinese, right? Do they have suàn pú gōng yīng?"
A distant door creaked and slammed.
Lyra set down the binoculars and turned around. "Bonnie?"
The bedroom: one precisely-packed suitcase.