//------------------------------//
// I Am Not Octavia 
// Story: Who Am I? 
// by Zeck 
//------------------------------//

	Octavia Melody stood perfectly erect. Her poise was rigid, her form impeccable. Years of standing on her hind legs made her stance seem natural, when it was anything but. Any pony that saw her would have no doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing. She was a mare that radiated perfection from every molecule of her being. Ponies who witnessed her on the street would catch themselves staring in awe for a few moments. Those that heard her create music were always captured by feelings that they had never known existed within themselves.
But something was wrong with her. Octavia played her cello perfectly as always. The music sang in the air, but her ears remained deaf to its beauty. The bow and cello rested in her hooves, but they did not feel like an extension of her being. The faint smell of redwood from her instrument filled her nostrils, but it failed to tickle her nose. She saw the notes on the sheet of paper in front of her, but her eyes could not see the beautiful music they formed. 
“Octavia?” The voice sounded far away. It was faint, hushed by an eternity of distance that existed only in her mind. She continued playing, her hooves and body going through the motions that they knew so well, yet now felt alien to her. What was wrong with her? Why did everything seem so…dim? So quiet?
“Octavia,” the voice said again, slightly louder this time. It still sounded so far away, as if a sailor was calling from shore out to her on the open ocean.  The deep ocean, with its lapping waves and blending hues of blue, coming together to form something vast and great…
“Octavia!”
A hoof reached out and shook her. Octavia jumped and dropped her bow. She struggled to keep her cello upright as she blinked her amethyst eyes rapidly. Where was she? How long had she been here? And where had she gone before she had been here?
She looked down to see who was gently shaking her. 
“Welcome back,” said Beauty Brass with a smile. “We thought we had lost you for a moment there.”
“Oh.” Octavia felt a strong coloring flood her cheeks for a moment. That was right. She was practicing with her ensemble. They didn’t have any gigs—Performances, Octavia corrected herself—coming up, but they still enjoyed playing together. And it was always a good practice to maintain her talents, even if they were not needed for the foreseeable future.
“I…apologize,” she said, picking up her bow from the floor. “I was lost in the…in the moment.”
“You were lost all right,” said Fredric as he swung around from his piano, “though I doubt it was, as you said, ‘in the moment.’”
Octavia blinked once and stared at him, confused about his statement. “Excuse me?”
“Octavia, we stopped playing three minutes ago. The moment was long since over,” said Harpo. Octavia turned to look at the harpist. He was right. Harpo was already standing and had his harp placed snugly in his carrying case. That act alone took him two minutes. Celestia, had she really continued playing after the others had finished? What in Equestria was wrong—
“What is bothering you, dear?” Beauty asked, finally taking her hoof off of Octavia. Octavia stared at her. Her coat looked…wrong somehow. The thought was completely absurd, naturally. The musician looked the same as she always did. Her brown mane was perfectly combed, her purple eyes had the same gleam they always did, and her coat was just as shiny as it always was.
Her coat. Octavia stared at it. That was what was wrong. Her coat was the wrong color. That is even more absurd, Octavia thought. Beauty’s coat was the same color it always was. It looked like a soft blue, not quite as blue as a clear sky, but not so soft that it began to look aqua.  So why did Octavia think her coat should be a different blue?  
Yes, her coat should be a fierce blue, with raging emotions that words could not begin to capture…
“Nothing is bothering me,” Octavia said, dragging herself back to reality. “I merely have a lot on my mind.”
Fredric smiled. “I can imagine. That song of yours has made you rather famous. Number one on all the lists.”
“You helped, Fredric,” Harpo said.
“Well naturally,” Fredric said as he tapped himself on the chest, “but Octavia stole the show. It’s her amazing singing that everypony is talking about, not my piano playing.”
Octavia felt emotion bubble up inside of her, but it was not pride or satisfaction.
“Indeed,” Beauty said. “I had no idea you had such a beautiful singing voice. And the passion! Your words were filled with emotion. Your face had such a refined look to it, but your eyes looked as if they were screaming in pain. Wherever did you learn to sing like that, channeling emotion so well? I honestly believed your heart was tearing in two.”
Octavia felt the emotion creep closer to the surface, to the point where she could feel her face heating up. To cover for herself, she began putting her cello away in its case, making sure her back was to her friends. 
“It seems Miss Melody truly is perfect at everything,” Harpo said. “It will not be long before she becomes so famous that she forgets about the rest of us.”
“Nonsense!” Fredric said. “Octavia is too good of a friend to do that. She’d never—”
“I apologize, but I really need to get going,” Octavia said. She strapped her cello’s case to her side and stood so quickly that she nearly lost her balance. “Also, I…I do not believe I will be able to make the next session.”
Without waiting for a reply or turning to look at her friends, the ash colored mare moved for the exit. She opened the door and stepped out into the night air. 
The wind stung her cheeks, but she refused to acknowledge it. She trotted down the street at a brisk pace, trying to maintain her natural grace but finding it impossible to do so. She turned a corner and then finally brought her hoof up to her eyes.
“Stop crying,” she said as she rubbed her face. “You have no reason to cry. And if anypony sees you, imagine the embarrassment. You are currently the most talked about musician in all of Manehattan, and quite possibly Equestria. The scandal this would cause would be enormous.”
Does any of that matter though? asked a voice inside her head.  
“Of course it does!” Octavia said furiously as another tear ran down her cheek. She stomped her hoof on the sidewalk as she felt the liquid fall from her face. This was her dream! She loved her music, and her dream was to share her music with every pony in Equestria. 
But not the most important pony?
“Be quiet!” Octavia hissed to herself. “She brought it on herself. She only ever made time for me when it was convenient for her! She never thought about me!” 
You know that is not true.
“I…I…” Octavia fell silent. She no longer wished to continue arguing with the voice in her head. That was what mentally unstable ponies did, and she was most certainly not that.  She continued to walk home in silence. 
A soft tune began to play in the air. Octavia recognized it as a rendition of one of her favorite songs and, thankful for the distraction, she began to hum along with it. She closed her eyes and allowed her head to sway gently with the tune, following the notes as they rose and fell. It was one of the first pieces she had learned to play on her cello, and it would always hold a special place in her heart because of that. Her favorite part was coming up. Soon, the string instrument would begin climbing into a glorious—
The tune suddenly reset, going back to the beginning and playing again. Octavia opened her eyes and blinked. That was not right. What pony would ruin such a beautiful piece of music by cutting off the best part? That was something Vinyl liked to do whenever she… 
Octavia looked around for the offender, wanting to understand why somepony would do such a thing, when her brain suddenly placed where the sound was coming from. Sighing, she reached behind her neck and pulled her phone from her mane. A trick Vinyl had taught her. One of many.
For a brief moment, Octavia considered hanging up. She did not want to talk to anypony, and she certainly did not wish to speak with Vinyl. And yet, she found she could not put the phone away. She had not heard from Vinyl in over a week now. It was not that she wanted to hear from the pony, but she was growing…concerned. Maybe she should stop by the D.J.’s apartment, just to make sure she had not done anything rash. 
Octavia’s phone played the tune a third time and she hit the answer button without thinking. She raised the phone to her head and spoke first. She was in no mood to hear Vinyl’s pleading, and the best way to stop it was to start before the D.J. had a chance to speak.
“Vinyl, I told you before, we are—”
“Vinyl? What?”
Octavia flinched and pulled the phone away from her ear. She glanced at the number, something she had completely forgotten to do before answering, and felt…something. She was unsure what it was. Relief, disappointment, frustration, and…sadness? That could not be right.
Octavia put the phone back up to her ear. “Hello, Lyra. May I help you?”
“Are you going to let me in, or am I going to have to stand out here and freeze to death? I’ve been knocking for five minutes.”
“First of all, it is not that cold. Second, you are covered in fur, just like every other pony, and none of them are in danger of—”
“Octavia, you’re doing it again,” Lyra said flatly.
The cellist felt a warm glow come to her cheeks, and it was almost enough to banish the stinging cold. “I apologize. Anyway, I am currently not at home, so I am afraid I cannot let you in.”
Lyra groaned. “But your band friends—”
“Ensemble.”
“Octavia.”
“Apologies. You were saying?”
“They said you had left and were on your way home. That was nearly twenty minutes ago. How in Equestria did I beat you home?”
Octavia tilted her head to the side. “I…have no idea. I have had a lot on my mind it seems. I suppose I was lost in thought.”
“Yeah, B.B. said as much. Any chance you’ll be home in the next few minutes? It really is cold out here, and I’d rather not wait another hour while you search for the meaning of life.”
“Very funny,” Octavia replied. Lyra was simply being her typical, easy-going self, but right now her attitude was starting to irritate Octavia. The worst part about it was that she could not figure out why the mint green unicorn’s attitude was getting to her. The last time Lyra had truly annoyed her had been all the way back in college, and that had been years ago, before they had been friends.
“There is a spare key under the fourth rock from your left. I will be home in a few moments,” Octavia said, trying to get her mind off of things that bothered her. There seemed to be a lot of them lately. 
“Nice. I’ll see you in a bit.” Without waiting for a good-bye, another of Lyra’s little quirks, the unicorn hung up and Octavia was left alone with her thoughts again. She sighed and slipped the phone back into her mane and continued walking.
She reached her home in another six minutes, and as she walked up to her front door, her mind wondered why her cello was so heavy all of a sudden.  She did not recall it weighing her down this much in the past.
She knocked a few times and called out to Lyra. The door opened on its own—Lyra’s magic, no doubt—and Octavia walked in. She unceremoniously dropped her cello off to the side and seriously considered simply walking to her room and going to sleep. She was exhausted. Yes, that had to be the reason behind everything; her distraction from practice, her exceedingly long journey home, the sudden increase in mass of her cello. It was all due to her being exceptionally worn out. Most likely from all the sudden attention she was receiving from everypony because of her new song. 
“Welcome home, Octavia!” Lyra said from the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mine, but I started a fire. I was freezing. Hot chocolate?” Sure enough, a fire was burning nicely in Octavia’s little fireplace. Its heat radiated across the room, chasing away a good deal of the cold that had followed her in through the door. 
It was also rather dangerous, she thought, that Lyra had made it so big and then left it alone. One stray spark and Octavia might very well end up shopping for new carpet, or worse.
“I swear, you are as bad as Vin—” Octavia caught herself. 
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Hot chocolate would be lovely.” Octavia walked over to her couch and sat down, folding her back hooves gently under herself while her front ones rested on the cushion. She felt the exhaustion bleed from her body and her muscles began to unwind. She had not realized how tense she was. She looked around her living room, hoping to help herself relax even more with the calming effects of familiarity.
Everything was in its place. Well, except for her cello, but she had no desire to reposition the surprisingly heavy thing from its current resting spot by the door. Her glass coffee table was free of clutter and had two coasters spaced evenly apart, with four more stacked in the middle. A few paintings, mostly of abstract concepts of music and a few lovely locations, hung on her walls, all perfectly aligned. Her music stand was off in the far corner—where her cello should have been as well—along with a single bookcase that held all her books about music, as well as her sheet music. She noticed that the carpet still had several deep indentations in it next to her practice area. She wondered how long it would take for them to go away. Seeing them bothered her, but not because they clashed with her otherwise perfectly organized home.
Octavia continued to stare at the corner. She saw Lyra exiting the kitchen out of the corner of her eye, levitating two steaming cups of hot chocolate. The unicorn came over and placed one on each coaster, and Octavia suddenly had the urge to remove Lyra’s glass and place it on another coaster.
Instead, she reached for her own glass and picked it up. She blew on it a few times and then took a small sip. The warmth flooded her body, banishing the chilly night air from the last fragments of her being. Her hooves began to tingle as the heat slowly bled into them.
“It is delicious,” she whispered as she took another sip. She looked up at the unicorn and started to smile, but stopped when she saw what Lyra was wearing on her head.
“What?” Lyra asked. She tilted her eyes up, following Octavia’s gaze, and then chuckled. “I told you I was cold. The weather in Ponyville doesn’t usually get this chilly around this time of year. Rainbow likes to— ”
“Please take it off.”
“Uh…”
“Please, Lyra.”
“Okay?” The unicorn pulled the, what was the word Vinyl had used…’beanie,’ off her head and placed it on the table. Octavia stared at it, ignoring the growing sense of heat in her hooves.
It was not the most elegant thing she had ever seen.  The stitching on the beanie was slanted and uneven in many places.  At one part in the front, the stitching looked like the rise and fall of a rapid heartbeat on a heart monitor.  The fabric was certainly not top quality, and if a pony was perspiring when she put it on, the beanie tended to itch something terrible. Indeed, even when it was brand new, it looked as if it was already falling apart. How it had lasted so many years was a mystery to even to the greatest minds in Equestria.
And then there were the colors, and the shapes those colors were supposed to make. What were supposed to be neon blue flames burning around the entire circumference of the hat looked more like sick blobs. They were sown, rather poorly, on top of purple fabric that was littered with grey and white musical notes. Only, instead of the grace and fluidity of Octavia’s treble clef, the notes looked ill. They were jagged and uneven, as if a pony had handed a baby filly on a sugar rush a marker and told it to draw shapes. 
In short, it was by far the most garish article of clothing Octavia owned. It did not match any of her other outfits, and she could never imagine herself wearing it under any circumstances. If she had seen it in a thrift shop for only one bit, she would have thought the price too high.  If somepony had offered her a million bits, but she had to wear the article of clothing at her next concert, she would have told them to keep their bits.
If it had not been hoofmade by a certain D.J. as a thank you gift for a silly little scarf, Octavia would have long since thrown the thing away. Instead, she had kept it tucked away in a drawer in her room. At least until she had started searching her home for Vinyl’s belongings. She had pulled it out, fully intending to give the dreadful thing back with everything else, but she had found that harder to do than she had anticipated. So she had left it hanging on the rack by the door.
Now, it sat in front of Octavia on her glass table and she found herself losing her soul in the rolling blue of the blobby flames. Her eyes danced across the music notes, tracing each one along their frantic paths of creation until the journey ended, then flinging to the next and repeating the process. She felt herself falling into the purple sky they decorated, her amethyst eyes losing focus as her body leaned closer…closer…
Searing pain raced through her hooves as her drink spilled and she jumped. Her cup of hot chocolate fell from her hooves and tumbled onto the table, its heated contents flowing out across the glass and dripping onto the carpet. It drew closer and closer to the hat, threatening to turn it into the rag that it so rightly was.
Without thinking, Octavia learned forward and yanked the beanie off the table before the liquid could touch it, nearly falling face first off the couch as she did. 
“Damn it,” she said. Her eyes went wide as she realized that that phrase had escaped the confines of her mind—and worse, her mouth—and she felt her cheeks burn.
“So…you going to tell me what’s bothering you?” Lyra asked after a moment. Octavia looked over at the unicorn and noticed two things. First, she was sitting in that rather odd position she favored for whatever reason. Second, and much to Octavia’s annoyance, she was wearing a smirk.
“I am simply distracted.” Octavia carefully put the beanie on the couch and rose. She walked to her kitchen, wincing a little whenever her front hooves touched the ground, and found a towel.  She placed it in her mouth and walked back out to the living room.
“I’ll take care of that.” Lyra gently tugged the towel out of Octavia’s mouth with her magic and brought it over to the table. Without moving from her awkward sitting position, the mint-green unicorn used the rag to clean up the mess. 
It must be nice being a unicorn. Being able to levitate things, like towels…or record—
“Stop it!” Octavia hissed.
“Well, okay, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to leave a stain.”
“No, I was not speaking to you.”
Lyra looked around the room in a painfully slow, exaggerated motion and then shrugged. “There’s no pony else here, Octavia. Either you’re playing host to some rather rude ghosts, or there’s something bothering you.”
“There is nothing bothering me. Why does everypony think something is bothering me?” Octavia stomped her front hoof and winced as she was reminded that it was still tender from the hot beverage.
“Hey, ghosts! It’s awfully rude to have conversations that we can’t all hear!” Lyra shouted at the walls.
“Stop it!” 
“See what I mean? I don’t know what you’re doing, but Octavia’s getting pretty—”
“That time I was speaking to you.”
Lyra simply responded with a grin and continued to clean up the hot chocolate. Octavia sighed and walked back over to the couch. She folded her legs up under her body as she sat, careful not to put too much pressure on her front hooves. It was a much more relaxing position.
“Very well, you win,” she said.
Lyra instantly twisted out of her odd sitting position and took a position like Octavia’s, taking up the rest of the couch. Her face was…uncomfortably close to Octavia’s when she turned her head. 
“I knew it!” Lyra said, her sunglow-colored eyes going wide with excitement. “What do I win?” Octavia glared at her. “Right, sorry. So…”
“I…” Octavia suddenly found that her voice had stopped functioning. There was something choking her, not just physically, but mentally too.  Words were becoming harder to form in her mind. Those that did form properly were impossible to articulate. They came out as nonsense. Squeaks, hiccups, stammers, and gasps of air. 
Only two ponies outside of Octavia’s family had ever seen the cellist cry. One of those ponies was currently sitting on her couch, staring at her with a growing look of concern. The other pony often knew how to make the tears and the sadness that brought them disappear in a moment, but was just as often the cause for them in the first place. Such as now. 
Octavia lowered her head as the tears began to trickle down her muzzle.  They did not come in rivers—she was too proper for sobbing—but they still came. She felt her black mane fall forward and she was grateful that it would block Lyra’s view of her face. 
“Octavia,” came a voice along with a hoof on her shoulder, “I can come back tomorrow if you don’t want to talk about it now.”
Octavia forced her voice to comply with her mind. “No,” she said. “No, I…I just need a moment.” She took several calming breaths and willed her tears to stop. She brushed her mane back in place with her hoof and looked up to meet Lyra’s gaze.
“There’s the famous cellist,” the unicorn said with a smile.  “So…what did Vinyl do? This time, I mean.”
Octavia blinked. “Wha…how did you…?”
“You mean besides the fact that her turntable is gone?” Octavia struggled not to look over at the empty corner. Lyra held up her front hooves and began tapping one with the other as she listed reasons. “You could not take your eyes off of that hat. You practically fell off your couch saving it from the evil chocolate milk invasion. And finally, there was our phone conversation. You thought I missed it because I was so cold, but I didn’t.”
“What do you mean?” Octavia asked, trying to hide the color that she felt in warming her face. 
“You were obviously hoping it was Vinyl when you answered. I’ve never once heard you make a mistake when you answer your phone, which means you were really, really distracted. D.J. on the brain big time.”
“I…was not hoping it was her.” Octavia’s eyes shifted away from Lyra’s face and she was suddenly wishing her mane still covered her eyes. 
“Liar.”
“I am not.”
“Octavia, we’ve known each other a long time.” Lyra pressed her forehead against Octavia’s and smiled. Octavia hated it when the unicorn invaded her personal space like this, so she tried to back up. But Lyra simply scooted after her, keeping their foreheads connected, until Octavia could not back up any further on the couch. “A very long time. You can’t fool me.”
Octavia stared into the sunglow eyes. She could feel them drilling into her, stripping away the protective layers until there was nothing left but herself. No fancy etiquette, no constantly maintained elegance, no demands for utter perfection. Just an ash-colored musician who loved the sounds she made, both alone and with her friends.
Lyra was one of Octavia's first friends. They had not gotten along too well at first. Octavia had grown up having perfection demanded of her, and Lyra’s easy-going lifestyle and her odd…quirks had been a source of annoyance for the cellist. Lyra, for her part, had told Octavia that she was a stuck up mare who did not feel music and thus could not cause others to feel it. The unicorn had said Octavia would never amount to anything in the music world beyond a simple show guest because no pony would be able to listen to her music without falling asleep.
Vinyl had walked up at that point and slammed her forehead against Lyra’s so hard that her sunglasses had cracked and fallen to the ground. 
“You take that back,” the D.J. had shouted. “I listen to her play for hours, and it’s bucking amazing! Take it back, or I bucking swear I’m going to make it so you have to learn how to play your harp with hooves!”
Octavia had been so shocked by Vinyl’s actions that her response had been an automatic defensive reflex.
“Lyre,” she had said.
“What?” both unicorns had said, turning at the same time to look at her.
“It is called a lyre, not a harp.”
And that had been the start of Octavia’s friendship with Lyra. The mint unicorn had been so shocked that somepony actually knew what her instrument was that their differences had been completely forgotten. They had spent hours talking about music together after that. What they loved to play, who their favorite musicians were, different styles they used. Octavia had been glad to find another pony who enjoyed strings as much as she did. Vinyl had been a great companion and an invaluable support, but her tastes in music had been vastly different. Up to the point where she tended to ‘zone out’ whenever Octavia talked about it. 
Lyra had enjoyed having another musician to talk to because none of her other friends played anything, and she had grown tired of constantly telling ponies, “It’s not a harp!” She had taught Octavia how to feel music, instead of just playing it for perfection, and Octavia had given Lyra lessons on how to make her playing more dignified.
Her friend had been made because of Vinyl's courage to stand up for her. 
“All thanks to Vinyl,” the cellist whispered as her mind swam with memories. Had she ever paid for Vinyl’s glasses? The fact that they had broke was her fault…
“Yes, I know that this is all thanks to Vinyl. But you still haven’t told me what she did,” Lyra said, snapping Octavia out of her memories yet again. That was happening to her more and more lately, to the point where she was growing concerned. She wondered if she needed to see a psychiatrist about these memory slips.
“She…” Octavia paused, trying to put it into words. What had Vinyl done, exactly? Missed her concert? So? Vinyl missed a lot of her concerts. She had even told Octavia, on several occasions, that while she loved listening to her play, going to her concerts—with all those stuffed shirts and rigid, fake attitudes as she put it—bored the living hay out of her. 
So why was missing this concert so important? Why could Octavia not just brush it off like she had so many other times? What had made this time the breaking point?
That was it. How many times had Vinyl said she would be there? How many times had she promised that she would not miss the next one? How many times had Octavia looked out at the audience and seen that one empty chair in an otherwise full house? How many times had she wished that all the other seats had been completely empty if it meant that that one seat would be occupied? How many times had she listened to Vinyl’s excuses with a smile on her face while her heart broke? 
“Vinyl merely decided that she has other priorities in her life, and I am not one of them.” Octavia blinked, trying to hold back the tear that was threatening to run down her cheek. She knew if she let that one escape, more would follow, and she was unsure if she could stop them this time.
“That doesn’t sound like her at all,” Lyra said with a frown. “And you know it,” she added with a whisper.
Octavia felt anger well up inside her. “Of course it does!” She stood up from the couch and stomped her hooves on the carpet. “‘Octy, I’m so sorry.’ ‘Oh boy, I completely spaced this one.’ ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll be at the next one for sure.’ ‘Sorry, I’m busy with my friends.’ ‘It’s tonight? Shoot, I already have plans.’ ‘I totally blanked on this one.’”
She stormed back and forth across her living room as she recited each excuse that Vinyl had ever given her. Each stomp of her front hooves sent pain racing through her legs, and each shot of pain only fueled her rage.
“She is never there for me! Every time, it is always some excuse! I know she does not enjoy going to my concerts. I do not care for going to her clubs! But I still go! Because she asks me to! She wants me there, and I go because I like making her happy! The smile on her face when she looks up and sees me smiling back at her makes the constant noise and everypony bumping into me tolerable. Why is she unable to do that for me? I…I just…” 
She stopped. Her body was shaking, whether from anger or grief, she could not tell. She felt tears streaming down her face again, and this time she did not try to stop them. It felt good to finally release her emotions, to be nothing but a raw nerve exposed to the world instead of buried under her upbringing. 
A hoof slid around her shoulder and she felt a muzzle brush against her neck. 
“I just want her to be there for me,” Octavia said quietly as she lowered her head. “But she never is. I do not want to deal with it anymore.” 
“I know how important she is to you,” Lyra said, patting the cellist’s neck as she hugged her. 
“But I am not important to her. That is the issue.”
“You know that’s not true. You are probably the most important pony in Vinyl’s life. It’s just…you know what she's like. That pony is used to doing things on her own. Living in the moment. Having fun and being wild. Her mind gets distracted and lost easily. Very easily. Personally, I think it’s all that loud club music. Rattled her brain.”
Octavia chuckled at that. “Maybe. But it does not matter. I can forgive her, but I do not want to go through this anymore. We are done. This pain…it is not worth it.”
Lyra hugged her tighter, and for a moment, Octavia thought the unicorn was going to talk her out of her decision. To her surprise, Lyra did not.
“If that’s what you want. You know best about your feelings.” She let go and took a step back. 
“Um…thank you,” Octavia said, slightly confused by the fact that her friend had given up so easily. “And thank you for listening to me.”
“Hey, no problem. Even stuck up mares like you have emotions and problems, just like us lower class ponies.”
“Quiet, you,” Octavia said with a grin that was not entirely forced.  With her mind no longer drowning in grief, a thought jumped in. “By the way, why did you come to Manehattan? It is a rather long ride from Ponyville, and I imagine Bon Bon is worried about you.”
“Nah, she’s fine,” Lyra said with a wave of her hoof. “Told me to make sure you stop by and visit when you’re in Ponyville.”
“Gladly, but I am afraid I do not have any plans to go to there at the moment.”
“Right!” Lyra stood on her hind legs for a second and slammed her right hoof into her left one. “That’s the whole reason I’m here! Oh wow, she would have killed me if I forgot.”
Lyra trotted over to her saddlebag and began digging through it. After a moment, she pulled out a sealed letter and held it up with her magic.
“This is for you.”
“What is it?”
“Uh…” Lyra looked over the letter for a second. “It’s an invitation. Do you want me to read it?” Without waiting for an answer, Lyra opened the letter, cleared her throat, and put on a rather dreadful Canterlot dialect as she read. 
“‘Dear Miss Octavia Melody. You are currently the belle of the musical ball, so to speak. Your latest song is absolutely dazzling!'” Octavia felt a twinge of guilt at the praise, but she continued to listen. “'Why, I have never heard something so beautiful, and yet so heartbreakingly painful. It would be my great honor if I could have you perform at my next fashion show. I am currently recruiting musicians who specialize in stringed instruments, and I can think of no other pony who would be better fitted than you. Miss Heartstrings has already agreed, as well as your cousin, Miss Fiddlesticks. Please tell me you will be here. The date is listed below. I look forward to hearing your answer, and hope to meet you in pony soon. Sincerely yours, Miss Rarity.
“'P.S. If Lyra forgets to deliver this, I will be quite cross and you can tell her’—oh!” Lyra slipped back into her normal speaking voice and blushed. “I, uh, don’t think I’m supposed to read that part.”
Rarity was a rather famous pony and she was connected with Princess Celestia. Octavia had crossed paths with her on occasion, and while they had never been formally introduced, she had always respected the fashion designer. More so after she had seen her stand up to Canterlot’s elite to defend her friends. To turn down her invitation would be rather rude, but…
“That is kind of her, truly,” Octavia said, “but I must decline.”
“Aw, come on Octavia!” Lyra pleaded. “It will be fun. You, me, that relative of yours who I still can’t believe is related to you in any possible way. Look! I’ve already drawn up the sheet music!” Lyra pulled out another piece of paper from her saddlebag. Octavia looked it over. It was rather nice, but she could see several places where it could be improved. 
“I do no think I can play well enough right now. I am too…distracted.”
“Which is exactly why you need to go.” Lyra waved a hoof around the room. “Everything in here, everything in Manehattan, screams Vinyl at you. If you really want to get over her, you need a break from all of this. Clear your mind and whatnot.”
Octavia thought about that. It was true that everything she saw lately was reminding her of Vinyl. She did not want to completely forget the D.J., but she had to admit that getting away from the constant reminders of their broken relationship did sound nice.
“Very well, Lyra,” she sighed. “When do we leave?”
Lyra began bouncing up and down with her typical big grin on her face. “Yes! I knew I could guilt trip you into going! I told Rarity I could—” she stopped bouncing when she saw Octavia’s stare, “I mean, that’s great! Glad you changed your mind. Our train leaves in the morning.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yep. Bright and early tomorrow morning. Better start packing.”
“Lyra, it is ten thirty at night.”
“Good thing all you need is your cello and that bow tie you like to wear, huh? Speaking of the time…”
Octavia sighed again. She knew what was coming next, but she asked anyway. “Yes?”
“Can I sleep here? I didn’t make a reserva—”
“You may sleep on the couch. Like you always do.”
“Great! Thanks, Octavia.” The unicorn trotted back over to the couch and laid down. She yawned once, smiled, and then was out like a light. She hummed softly with every few breaths. 
Octavia put the fire out and retrieved a spare blanket from the hall closet. She draped it gently over her friend.  Friend. She would never have become friends with Lyra if it had not been for Vinyl. That thought made her heart ache slightly. She looked around for the hat, and then gently placed it on Lyra’s head.
Lyra lived in a completely different town. She had her own life, with her own responsibilities, and a very special somepony who genuinely cared about her, yet she still found time to be there for Octavia.
Octavia smiled sadly as she turned out the lights and walked to her bedroom. As she tucked herself in, a single thought went through her head. 
Why can you not be like that, Vinyl?