“Self-conscious, uncertain, I'm showered with the dust
The spirit enters into me and I submit to trust”
-Peter Gabriel, The Rhythm of the Heat
"I struck the agogo, trying to fall in with the beat of the drums, and gradually I became part of the event, and, becoming part of it, I controlled it. [....] In the dancing area many aspirants to ecstasy were still moving. The German woman twitched unnaturally, waiting to be visited - in vain. Others had been taken over by Exu and were making wicked faces, sly, astute, as they moved in jerks.
-Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
As the ponies disembarked from the idling train, Octavia donned a scarf to ward off the chilly winter wind. It blew through Vinyl's coat much more ferociously with the high altitude, but she didn't mind. She craned her head back and gazed at the starry sky through the smoke spewing from the engine, wondering how long it would be before snow blanketed the land. The alabaster towers of Canterlot Castle looked like pillars holding the sky up and keeping the stars from crashing down. She knew, on a conscious level, the sky wasn't about to fall, but some deep-seated fear took hold of her and fretted about the unreality of something overhead that refused to obey gravity.
“Oh, I do hope I remembered everything,” Octavia moaned as she flipped the catches and peeked inside her cello case. “The princesses are supposed to be in attendance, and I'd hate to make an absolute fool of myself in my first solo performance.”
“Aw, you won't,” Vinyl said.
“I will, I just know it,” Octavia said in a sulk. “The recital line-up is comprised of the greatest living musicians in Equestria, and then there will be me sticking out like a sore hoof and making mince of the finest classical music.”
To cheer her up, Vinyl joked, “Hey, take it from a professional maker of musical mince: you ain't got a thing on me.”
Octavia chuckled, her spirits lifted. “Thanks, Vinyl. For coming along.”
“Moral support brigade, at your service,” Vinyl declared, giving her roommate a mock salute.
“Now, the recital doesn't start until nine, but I'm afraid I'll have business to take care of backstage until then, so I won't be able to join you.”
“It's alright, I got business in town to take care of anyway.”
Fretfully, Octavia asked, “But you'll be there, right?”
All I have to do is check Beats of Burden, she thought. It'll take a half-hour, tops.
“You can bet on it,” Vinyl said.
As they descended the station steps, a bulky pony in a cloak with a hood drawn over its head tried to brush past them, but accidentally jostled Vinyl and made her stumble on the stairs. The pony turned back to them, and Vinyl saw two piercing yellow eyes looking at her, almost through her. They gave Vinyl a chill.
A dusky voice declared, “My most sincere apology, but I'm in a hurry, you see.”
“Do I know you?” Vinyl asked.
“Perhaps by reputation or having seen me from afar, but never have our paths been crossed by the stars. But I know you, Miss DJ-P0N3, who spins her records with such glee.” The figure lowered its hood, which brushed a black-and-white striped mohawk on its way down, revealing the figure not as a pony after all, but that zebra that sometimes palled around with Twilight Sparkle and her friends.
“Zecora, right?” Vinyl asked.
The zebra nodded, graceful and elegant on her slender neck and long legs.
“And now if you will excuse me, I have a pony that I must see, for I must do some supply shopping, and they frown when I arrive past closing.”
The zebra pulled her hood up again and darted down a narrow alley between two buildings.
“What an odd pony,” Octavia said, a little snootily. “I hear she lives by herself in the middle of the Everfree Forest. Perhaps she's mad, like the gossip says.”
As Vinyl stared at the alley the zebra had disappeared down, she mumbled, “Yeah. Maybe.”
Vinyl stepped out of Beats of Burden, Canterlot's biggest record emporium, and felt like kicking something. She hadn't managed to find another copy of the record, and the colt behind the counter had given her a blank look when she'd asked. She was left her with all this pent-up frustration she had to get out of her system. However, she didn't think the city guard would look kindly on vandalism. She passed a clock, and saw it pointing at 7:57. She still had an hour to kill, and was too jumpy and restless to sit and wait for the recital to start. As she wandered through the lonely, empty streets of Canterlot, her thoughts turned to the Song that eluded her. Sometimes it seemed like a myth her mind had made up, as no song could have such power. Shaking her head, she instead worked out some epic dubstep beats and poured her frustration out by codifying it into music, even if the music only existed (for now) inside her skull.
Suddenly the shadows to her left moved. She halted in her tracks and lifted a hoof off the ground, her survival instincts screaming at her to run from danger. But it was only the cloaked shape of Zecora emerging from a side-street. Vinyl watched her start to walk away, seemingly unaware of Vinyl's presence, but something gave the zebra pause. Her hooded head whipped around until she was looking over her shoulder, and her eyes came to rest on Vinyl.
“We meet again, Miss Vinyl, on the streets of the capital.”
“Yeah, how about that,” Vinyl said warily. “What a coincidence, huh?”
The zebra smiled wryly, every bit the mystic, as she ambled over to Vinyl. “In coincidences I do not believe, but rather in the world's weave. As we travel along our lines, sometimes events produce rhymes.”
“Hey, I'm all about rhymes, but you lost me.”
“It is not a thing to be discussed lightly," the zebra said, glancing around. "Is there somewhere you must be? I do not wish to accost, but you look quite lost. If you are searching for a place to belong, then I gladly invite you along.”
Vinyl thought, A place to belong....
She couldn't say whether the zebra had meant it to sound so ominous and portentous, or if it was just a convenient rhyme, but the words struck a chord in Vinyl. She still had an hour to kill until Octavia needed her, so....
“Eh, why not?”
Zecora turned on her hooves and walked away. “Then follow close, if you please, and I'll show you where I feel at ease.”
The longer Vinyl followed her, the more the mare regressed and looped back to the train ride. A pounding rhythm penetrated her like a heartbeat. It seemed to come from under her hooves, from the very ground itself, and from the buildings ahead of her. Trepidation at what was rushing up to confront her stole over her. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead, got inside her goggles, and stung her eyes, making her blink excessively until she lifted them up and rested them over her horn. She didn't see Zecora stop until she almost ran into the zebra, who stood in front of a skinny building on a narrow street with "The Veldvet Club" emblazoned over the doorway.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“A little slice of home,” Zecora said, “for zebras who roam.” Then she pushed the door open and slipped inside, leaving it open for Vinyl Scratch to follow. As the DJ crossed the threshold into the unknown, she passed a poster proclaiming tonight's music would be performed by the house band, Umbanda on the Run.
Inside, the atmosphere was the polar opposite of the Canterlot streets: cramped and hot, with wisps of smoke tinging the air and a muted, warm red light bathing the shadowy ponies, zebras, griffons, and other denizens of Equestia sitting at little round tables. Their eyes were fixed on the well-scuffed dance floor taking up the back half of the long, narrow room. The dancers stomped and writhed with almost unconscious joy. The dancing crowd was mostly zebras, though there were a hoofful of ponies too, and a lone Cloud Goblin who seemed to have abandoned the mischiefmaking his race was known for in favor of the dance. A dais stood in the center of the dance floor, which Vinyl thought was an unusual place for a stage. On it, a dozen zebra beat out a frantic, frenzied rhythm on all different kinds of drums that boomed in different timbres. Mixed in with them were other zebras shaking gourds, ringing bells, blowing horns made from tusks, and plucking harps and bowing one-stringed cellos that looked like archery bows. They all joined together in a ferocious, bass-heavy song, ripping primal music from their battered, homemade instruments. Vinyl's heart beat in time with it, and some feral beast stirred in her chest and flexed its claws.
Zecora led her to one of the little round tables. As they sat down, Vinyl tore her eyes away from the musicians and the ecstasy on their faces to glance at a clock: forty minutes until the recital. The rhythm both fascinated and revulsed her, and her eyes were drawn back to the musicians at the center of attention. Half of her longed for the abrupt time signature changes of dubstep, while the other half was slowly ensnared by the propulsive music, drawn deeper and deeper into it until it became everything. The heartbeat of the world.
“Zebras grow up with the pounding of these drums,” Zecora said with a slight smile, “from when we are born to when our song's done. We say it's the heartbeat of the world, since the day it was first whirled. It was set to spinning, in what we call the Rhyming. For though the stars twirl round and round, they always return to where they began, we found.”
The heartbeat of the world, Vinyl thought, stunned. She'd thought the exact same thing. It was almost like Zecora had read her mind.
“The universe gave us a beat so its song would feel complete," the zebra continued. "We give thanks to it most sublime by spending our lives speaking in rhyme. It helps give the song the completion it requires, and elevates those who sing it higher.”
“That's nuts, man,” said Vinyl, her awe growing as she thought about the Song from when she was a filly. She tapped her hoof to the beat to stave off the restlessness the music instilled in her. “What was that you were laying down before? About how us meeting here was a rhyme?”
The zebra's eyes left the band and settled on Vinyl Scratch, and she still had that secret smile on her lips. “As the lines of our songs stretch out before us, written by the universe in verse and chorus, we play along to its songlines divine, and sometimes it seems two lives rhyme. A chance meeting under a falling star, or two identical thoughts divided by distances far.”
“Songlines....is that some kinda zebra word for cutie marks? Discovering our true selves and following our destiny?”
“If you wish to call them so, I will not tell you 'no'.”
Zecora's eyes went back to the musicians on the bandstand. The horn players bellowed out a sustained note, and the raging beast in Vinyl's chest roared in response. The rhythm worked its way through her defenses and threatened to take her over. She shook violently and wondered what was wrong with her, that she would lose control so completely. Her eyes went to the shadowed faces of the other patrons, to see if the music was affecting them like it was her, but they merely watched with curious detachment and soaked up the exotic flavor.
“What's happening to me?” she whispered to herself, as the beast roared inside her and tried to tear its way free.
“If you feel the rhythm call to you," Zecora said, "then what it bids you should do."
The table rattled as Vinyl shot up forcefully and stood on unsteady hooves. Sweating and panting with the rhythm and the heat, she glanced over at Zecora in a panic.
“Go,” the zebra said with a nod.
Vinyl took a step towards the dance floor, then glanced back at Zecora again.
The zebra smiled. “Just so.”
Hesitantly, Vinyl lurched towards the dance floor. The music drowned out everything but itself as she approached the throng of wild, impulsive dancers. Even though she could see the other ponies in the crowd, she half hoped the zebras would refuse her and cast her back, as if to say 'this is zebra music!' She was scared of what would happen if she surrendered to it. But the dancers parted for her, and the beast within her roared in triumph.
The dancers swayed and swung wildly, though they looked like they were flailing around. Searching for the perfect movement that would unlock everything that was supposed to follow. But none of them had managed to find it yet and were stuck in place. Corralled, even. Vinyl was no slouch when it came to dancing, but as she joined the fray she also reined her movements in, resulting in a jerky, awkward, self-conscious jumble of a dance. Her mind was telling her this was foolish as it restrained the beast in her chest.
Bridling it, she realized, then just as quick she surmised what the beast was:
A horse.
She realized she was caught between her pony brain telling her she was a fool and her inner horse bucking to break free and run wild. The zebras' song was the song forged by the wild savanna, pure and unsullied by the castles and cities ponykind had built for itself. Vinyl felt torn between those two worlds. Ponies constructed civilizations to make order of their lives, but the wild savanna she'd never known had a natural order all its own. Neither order was better, but both were necessary, she suddenly knew. And the order of the savanna was much simpler, because it only asked one little thing of her: to run. The beat the drummers played wasn't just of the heart, it was also of the hooves, because to be a pony was to gallop without end. That was something Vinyl Scratch had consciously forgotten, but nopony can truly forget that. The heart knows it, even if the mind doesn't.
Vinyl had spent so long in the city that the pull of the drum was irresistable. She was out of balance, and her heart cried out for the simplicity of the run. Her mind tried to get her to break away and leave the dance floor, but the rhythm was too strong. It gripped her, body and soul, waiting for that one final leap of faith before she surrendered herself over.
So she did.
She gave in and let the music course through her. Her inner horse ripped free of the chains that had bound it, the chains of society, and it reared back and neighed in ecstasy. Her dance became likewise feral and free, and something unconscious. She was not even dancing, but rather she'd become the embodiment of the drums themselves. Her dance was wilder than any of the other dancers. And why not? Her inner horse had been chained up for much, much longer than any of theirs, until its fury to break free had become a raging tempest. As she shouldered through the crowd and started to run, they bowed to her wild abandon and followed her.
Her herd.
She knew then why the dance floor went around the dais: so they could run free.
The Cloud Goblin leapt out of their way; he was not made for running, so he'd have to find his own way.
As Vinyl's hooves hit the floor and her knees absorbed the shock and pumped to propel her forward, scattered images flashed through her head. They were not memories, as she had never experienced anything like them in her life, but they felt real nonetheless, though she couldn't say if they were cobbled together from her imagination or stemmed from a deeper source of knowledge entirely. In the real world she was in the Veldvet Club, true enough, but at the same time, in these flashes, she ran across dusty, grassy fields under endless blue skies, her nostrils filled with the scent of nature and the dust and dirt kicked up by her hooves.
And, for that night at least, she ran free and unfettered.
Vinyl had never run as fast or as hard as she did that night, and when the drummers beat their drums into a frenzied climax, the wild horse in her kicked and whinnied in the music's thrall. Then all at once the music stopped just when it reached its fever pitch, leaving only that final sustained note echoing through the small club. Slowly Vinyl's herd drifted apart. She came back to her senses and stood in the middle of the dance floor, her aching body giving a sigh of relief. As she heaved, she felt both deeply unsettled and yet also strangely at peace. Cleansed, almost. She had needed to run wild for a long time, but she hadn't acknowledged it until now.
“Wh—what happened to the music?” she asked.
One of the zebras on the stage smiled down at her. “Though we zebras love our dance, we still respect the ordinance, which says we can only play when, the clock is between six AM and ten.”
She'd missed Octavia's recital by an hour, but with the way the dance had consumed her, that didn't surprise her. What did surprise her was that she didn't seem to care. It seemed so irrelevant now that she'd learned there was this wild animal inside her. It may have slumbered again, but she knew it was there, just waiting for a chance to leap to life again. Every time she moved her legs, she'd have to live with the knowledge there was a wild horse bucking to break free. She had such ferocious power inside her. It terrified and thrilled her at the same time.
She walked slowly back to Zecora, who gave her a look of reserved approval. Vinyl Scratch saw the zebra anew; was that why Zecora was so relaxed and confident? Because she held regular communion with the wild horse inside her? Because she didn't wait until it was all-powerful and raging to break free to come into contact with it? Because she knew every corner and every facet of herself?
“Did you find what you were seeking, Vinyl Scratch?" Zecora asked. "Or is it still too far beyond your reach to catch?”
I found something alright, but it sure ain't what I was looking for.
Wordlessly, she slipped past the zebra, who didn't look put off in the slightest. Perhaps she knew there were times when a pony just needs silence. Vinyl slunk through the door and put her hooves back on the cobbles, then paused and lingered as the crowd streamed out of the Veldvet Club around her. She was the lone rock in the river, standing still while the water flowed around her.
Why was she standing still? Why wasn't she going with the flow? What was holding her back?
Even after she started moving, those questions occupied her mind on the long walk of shame to the Royal Canterlot Concert Hall. When she rounded the corner of the big stone building, she saw Octavia sitting on the steps with her head bowed. Vinyl's legs failed her and she stood rooted to the spot, watching her friend from afar. Probably an ex-friend by now.
Vinyl Scratch put a hoof forward to face the music when all of a sudden, with sudden savageness, she thought, How can she ever know about the wild horse inside me? What right does she have to judge me for freeing it? Or for freeing myself?
Just then, Octavia picked her head up and glanced around until her eyes fell on Vinyl. A world of accusation and vengeance seemed to be behind those big purple eyes. Vinyl shuffled over to the steps, utterly conscious of Octavia's eyes on her the whole way; her hoofbeats clopped loudly against the stones in the chilly late autumn air. Ten feet away, she stopped and stared across the gulf between them before offering a mumbled apology.
“Sorry, I, uh, lost track of time.”
Octavia's eyes narrowed slightly.
“I got lost, too,” Vinyl added, which was true enough. She'd found herself, though.
“I see,” Octavia said, her voice colder than the air.
Neither spoke, leaving the wind to fill the gulf between them.
“When I walked out on that stage,” Octavia declared suddenly, “I thought to myself, 'I know I won't make a mess of things because Vinyl's here, and I'll feel dreadful if I dragged her out here just to see me make a fool of myself'. But then I looked at the audience, and lo and behold, you were nowhere to be seen.” She bitterly laughed. “It wasn't even as if I could pretend I didn't see you. The hall was small, and there weren't more than a hundred ponies on hoof.” Octavia's gaze drifted away and settled on the distance. “I froze. Completely and utterly. It took me half a minute to work up the courage to go five bars, which is when I made my first mistake. But by no means was that the last one.”
Vinyl couldn't withstand the brunt of Octavia pointedly not staring at her. She glanced up at and admired the stone facade of the concert hall, with its columns and arches.
“I made an utter embarrassment of myself,” Octavia said.
“I'm sure it wasn't that bad,” Vinyl said.
Octavia barked a sneering, condescending laugh. “You're sure, are you? Well, if you'd bothered to show up you'd know for certain, wouldn't you?”
Without waiting for an answer Octavia pushed herself up and walked away, her cello case balanced on her back. Vinyl watched her go, still troubled by how relaxed she felt about all this. Almost like it didn't matter anymore. Her experience at the Veldvet Club had left her feeling energized and purified, and she didn't want to let go of that feeling. Vinyl was tired of living a life that was only half-lived.
As the last train to Ponyville wound its way through the darkness, Vinyl slumped against the wall and rested her head on the windowpane. She stared outside, seeing without seeing, as drowsiness stole over her and the rock of the train lulled her into slumberland. With a great effort, she shrugged off sleep and raised her head. She stared down the carriage at Octavia, sitting five rows away. Octavia caught her staring and pointedly turned her head away with an inaudible harumph. Vinyl couldn't keep her own head up any longer and let it drop. It thumped against the window, but the dull pain didn't bother her much.
The Friendship Express rounded a curve and burst into the moonlight. Vinyl stared up at the craggy face of the moon and in her half-asleep stupor fancied she could see the princess of the night staring back at her.
As Vinyl yawned, she thought, I bet Princess Luna knows what I'm going through....
“Help me!” the colt cried. His strained yelp echoed through the pitch black labyrinth.
Hold on, I'm coming, Vinyl thought. She stumbled over dusty earthen stone littered with rocks. From ahead shone the faint glimmer of light. Where the colt was, there the light would be as well, she knew with absolute conviction. She had to get to the light and the colt, and couldn't let anything stop her.
“Who trespasses in my world?” growled the low voice of the labyrinth's guardian, a dark figure who blocked the light and barred her way.
Impulses surged through Vinyl's brain, and at the forefront a terrified urge to run from danger and never stop. But a new impulse was there as well, something that had slept in her for so long, something wild and feral. It was the mental image of an untamed horse, kicking and bucking as it made heroic battle against those who would do it harm. Snarling, Vinyl embraced that image and readied herself to charge and run the guardian down. Spurred on by the plaintive cries of the oppressed colt, she kicked against the ground and started galloping. When she locked horns with the guardian and threw it to the ground, however, she got a terrible shock. Faint light from deep in the catacombs fell onto its face, which she saw was her own. Terrified, she realized the guardian she was struggling against was herself, and it was leering at her. A sharp, squealing pain ripped through her head, like her mind was putting on the brakes....
Vinyl awoke with a start as the train pulled into Ponyville Station. Her head snapped every which way, caught between dream and reality, although reality was winning the tug-of-war. The dream had already started to fade, all except the terrible image of herself as her own worst enemy.
It was just a dream, Vinyl. That's all. Just a dream.