//------------------------------//
// Dissonance 
// Story: A Study In Nonsense 
// by Professor Piggy 
//------------------------------//

Octavia had always dreamt of playing on stage. Ponies always told her so.

As she sat staring at the wall across from her – an endless pulse of purple singing out over the palace, like a vast, all consuming cacophony of colours that all happened to be purple – she herself wasn’t sure. She didn’t think it was wrong to say that she had always dreamt of playing, but maybe the order was wrong. She had never once dreamt of music, but the things she saw in her dreams often became music. Words, ideas, images. She didn’t understand them, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make them into music. Everything was music. Even the other ponies.

There were a lot of other ponies, all around. She didn’t know who most of them were, especially herself, but she could hear their music. In the hum of this conversation – due next week I’m so nervous – and that conversation – as if they really defeated Nightmare Moon, that’s just a foals tale. In the pacing of their hooves and their heavy, shallow breaths. It was all around, overwhelming. It would be a good song. It frightened her. It made her itch, and she could feel her heart beating faster even if she didn’t know why. She wanted to play, fast and deep and desperate, to force that feeling out of her so she wouldn’t have to try and understand it anymore. But she couldn’t. Not yet. The clock said so. Not until she was on stage.

Being on stage was a strange thing. Sharing your secrets and thoughts and emotions with so many ponies. Like an orgy, but with feelings instead of sex. It made her uncomfortable to think about. A whole swarm of ponies she didn’t know peering into her deepest places, seeing every beat and reading every note, all thinking they saw and heard the same songs she did. They didn’t. Nopony ever did, no matter how hard she tried. It was kind of like playing with fire; it seemed like a good idea, because fire was pretty and warm, but in the end it only left you hurting and alone, tasting ashes.

She thought that she probably always felt this way, before a show. It might be different when she was actually on stage, but it was hard to say. There was no time for new feelings, then. She had to get too lost in old ones, new and different and beautiful and just as confusing every time she heard them again. It was the same no matter where she played, and that was why she didn’t really mind playing on stage if it was what she was supposed to do. It meant she got bits, and bits meant food, and warmth, and a nice quiet room with a big window where she could watch the sky and write down the music of her own thoughts.

So she would bear it. The strange tightening in her stomach and the urge to throw up. The shortness of breath, and that hollow feeling that filled her when she stepped onto the stage and saw a crowd full of ponies who would not understand. The way she sometimes woke up to find her pillow damp, and the way she couldn’t cry no matter how much she tried to. It was for the best.

And as she closed her eyes and started to play, Octavia was happy.