Cigarette ashes burn red
but they fall like snow,
and I hear the wind a callin' my name
and this world's got to end someday soon.
A slick black queen
in a slick black coat
her leggings high and her brim down low.
She's beautiful and she knows it.
You can't believe you just let Vinyl Scratch move in. She's piggish, doesn't wash any dishes, and plays that repulsive music in all hours of the night. You found her passed out on the floor of a nightclub, spouting some nonsense about her coltfriend dumping her or something. Being a pony of great generosity, you scooped her up and brought her back to your apartment. She was luckily sober enough to have personal boundaries, but after a little bit of conversation, you heard she has nowhere to go. After MUCH thought, you decided to let her live in your stuffy flat.
Living with Vinyl Scratch is honestly the stupidest descision you've ever made.
"Vinyl? What did you do with my hairbrush?" You shriek over one of her unlikeably loud 'songs'. Her room is locked up tight but the music tears through the door, seam-ripping at the threads of your patience and shaking the silverware stacked upside down and sideways in the kitchen sink.
"In the drawer beneath counter!" Vinyl doesn't even bother to stick her head out of her door. You grit your teeth and stomp into the stark white kitchen. A balcony candied with mountain dew bottles and sour punch straw wrappers hangs from the side of your apartment, a vast sea of concrete jungle stretching beneath it. You fling open one of the drawers, and sure enough, the blue and gold hairbrush is pressed between a spatula and a pizza cutter.
You yank the brush through your hair and curse the very unicorn that caused all of this- the almost fire, the gala mishap, the humiliation from your peers. You want to strangle her so bad, but you try to focus your anger on your hair.
It's gonna be a long year.
You can't believe you just moved in with Octavia. She's snooty, stuck up, and demands you wash the dishes when she doesn't lift a hoof to help you set up for concerts. Yeah, she did bring you home from the night club that one time your disgusting coltfriend dumped you for accidentally forgetting to put in headphones while listening to dubstep, but who cares! Her policies are ridiculous! She forced you to tell her all about yourself, and you eventually told her you had no place to rest your head except for your turntables.
Huge mistake.
She made you move in with her, even though you can make a peachy keen bed out of the barstools and a table cloth at your nightclub.
Living with Octavia is honestly the dumbest descision you've ever made.
She's yelping about her hairbrush, so you tell her that you last saw it in one of the drawers in the kitchen. She stomps around and throws a hissy fit.
It's going to be a long year.
You're practicing a piece for a concert tomorrow night when Vinyl finally decides she'll come out of her hermit hole. She trots lazily into the kitchen and grabs the last bottle of that neon green slum she's always gulping and ambles back to her room. You roll your eyes and play fiercely a sonata you've practiced for months.
The song goes eloquently and gorgeously until that last little note. Your practices have yielded a high pitched shriek that would make a deaf pony herself wince and cover her ears.
Vinyl's door is shoved open and she walks out on her back hooves, her glasses propped up behind her horn. She takes the cello and it's bow from you and glares, pressing the bow to the strings. Scratch plays the last measure of the song, each note hit perfectly and smoothly. You brace yourself for a cacophony of an ending note, but the song climbs up and ends on the exact note as it was written in the sheet music.
She hands it back to you and drags herself back to her room. You're taken aback by her ability, your jaw slack and your eyes wide.
After an hour of practicing endlessly, you finally decide to go out for a breath of fresh air as another song starts up from Vinyl's room. You wrap the scarf you knit a month ago around your neck and brush a piece of fuzz from the end.
_-_-_-_
Small snowflakes drift from the sky, dusting your black mane with little white specks and filling you with a childlike whismy. Some may scoff at the sentiment of such joy brought from frozen, crystallized water. You vaguely remember the pony's name who started the snowflake... Snowcrop? Something like that.
You shake your head and pull the scarf closer to your neck, squinting and leaning forward as the blizzard picks up. The winds shriek an eerie melody, but you push forward as the snow howls and the trees swing and sway. The warm light from a candy shop pours out from a street corner in inviting curls, making you gallop towards the familiar place.
Bursting through the door, a sweet little bell jingles a three-toned melody. The walls are painted a well-loved, washed out magenta and are peppered with little photos. You exhale and walk up to one of the walls, searching for a particular photo. It's the left wall, and you trail the tip of your hoof across the worn sepia photos. Right there, three inches away from the center and down just a pinch, held up with patterned tape, is a picture of you.
In the photo, you're grinning an ear to ear grin with your white and blue braces gleaming. A half-eaten birthday cake sits in front of you, a large '8' candle shoved haphazardly in the middle.
It fills your nose with a bookish scent and your mouth a sickeningly sweet taste. You remember every sharp detail of that day, from the adrenaline rush when you raced to this very pastry shop to the high-pitched giggles as you stumbled around your backyard, clumsily grabbing at fireflies, tired but free as a bird.
A knot forms in your throat. You shake that feeling away and trot to the counter. An elderly pony with a warm, saccharine smile greets you with the small wave of a hoof.
"Hello, miss Taffeta Turpentine. Fine day we're having! So much for the first day of spring," you chuckle as you look along the shelves under the counter. Sticky-sweet rock candy coaxes you, sandwich cookies draw you in, but you know exactly what you're getting.
"Please, call me Taffy," the mare responds, taking a pink and brown paper bag and filling it up with your favorite treats- Strong mint, sugar melted into ornate shapes, and one you hate- Jawbreakers. Vinyl demands you bring her back a monthly tribute of extra-sour jawbreakers, lest she hold your ear-plugs hostage.
The shopping expedition ends as it began- quickly, frigidly, and silently. You give a grateful nod to Taffeta and walk out the door, a light airy feeling in your chest.
While you hate Octavia with every fiber of your essence and occasionally want to strangle her, you wonder what it'd be like to kiss her. While you don't fantasize about it (no you sick moron), you wonder what she would taste like. Fine wine? Ripe grapes? You wonder and wonder, and honestly you're beginning to develop a little crush on her when she storms through the front door, bringing a winter storm advisory with her, her icy glare and cold words already cutting through the surly silence of your room. From your pillow fort, you hear stomping hoofsteps, the rustling of paper bags, and finally, the clunk of something outside your room.
You hope it's what you think it is... Yes! Octy got you jawbreakers.
Score one for DJ P0N-3.
While you abhor Vinyl Scratch from the bottom of your heart, you can't help but feel the slightest spark of love. No matter how hard you stamp your metaphoric hoof onto the little ember, the flicker burns dimly and you can't do anything about it.
After dumping the slum of a candy in front of Scratch's door, you drag yourself to your room and slump against the doorframe.
Your heart is pounding again, your throat seizing up with pain. You let out a hacking cough, your chest rattling with every breath you take. Without hesitation, you pop one of the mints you got from the pastry shop onto your tongue, the fresh taste calming your heavy breathing. The attacks are getting worse and worse each day, and you try to convince yourself it's just heartache or a cold.
To calm your frayed nerves, you walk over to your cello and pick up the bow. Gently, as if you'd break it with the slightest twitch, you run the bow carefully across the strings.
A heavenly note pours out, one after the other, weaving an elaborate and ornate melody like glass. It's so full of feeling, yet melancholy and sustained throughout.
In your head, a scene plays. It's a turnabout argument between a goddess and a reckless demon. The demon has spiked purple-and-blue hair, a spike protruding from her forehead. The goddess is dressed in long, flowing gray gowns that trail as she paces angrily, reprimanding the demon.
The melody quivers and fades away as the goddess collapses to her feet and withers away. You're left breathless as the final notes drift quietly into the last snowflakes that fall from the sky, each telling a story.
You fall onto your bed, only a memory of today's events running through your mind.
If only you had stayed awake a little longer to hear a playback of the song you just composed on a violin in the next room.