Octavia stood outside the club where Vinyl performed that night, pacing back and forth. The streets were now almost completely deserted, the draw of music and drinks no longer bringing anypony to form new crowds. Sounds were sparse other than the occasional police siren and a vagabond gently playing a few sour notes on a violin across the street, hoping to coax out any late night bits into the jar in front of him.
Octavia had waited until the music in the club stopped. She stayed rooted next to the stage as other ponies made their way out, eventually being shuffled out herself by the club’s owners. She tried calling out to Vinyl, but the closer she got to the exit the more she realized that the DJ was no longer on the stage. Griffons were packing up equipment, but the track master herself was nowhere to be seen.
The only thing that stopped Octavia from leaving the area and its creeping darkness was having spotted a moving chariot at the back of the building, Vinyl’s DJ moniker adorning the side of it. When she tried to approach it the two stallions in the chariot’s harness stopped her, and, like the diamond dog guards, didn’t believe she actually personally knew the popular club regular. More security now prevented her from even seeing the chariot — let alone get near it — and so she paced, hoping for any idea that would come to her to get the attention of an old friend. Her thoughts would be clearer if it weren’t for each flat note the beggar across the street repeatedly played.
“Oh, for Celestia’s… HEY!” The cellist could only take so much when it came to butchering the cousin of her favorite instrument. The dry cords stopped abruptly, surprised at the new sound in the air.
“Are ya talkin’ ta me, miss?” The vagrant was a dull blue with a darker and also dull blue unkempt mane. He wore a red flannel shirt overtop a white one, or at least one that used to look white. Both articles had barely enough cloth still on them to be wearable. A simple straw hat kept the worst of his mane hidden from world; if only it could do something for his teeth.
“Yes! Stop!”
The stallion quietly brought the violin and bow to his chest, leaning somberly against the wall behind him. He eventually slid to the cold concrete at his hooves. “Sorry, miss…” The words barely reached Octavia’s ears, but still somehow left an impact on them. She took a few steps towards the stallion slumped on the ground. The sight stirred something within her that hadn't taken a breath in quite some time.
“I… apologize,” she said, though a part of her mind told her it was silly to do so. “I haven’t had the best of days recently, what with almost dying and my best friend refusing to speak to me…”
The stallion looked up at her, almost as though he didn’t quite understand what his eyes were telling him. “Miss, Ah can tell you’ve had some troubles. Truly. But thangs don’t look like they’ve been bad for ya either. You’re quite purty, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, and that alone makes you better off than most of us in this city.” Octavia’s stomach churned slightly, but also felt a little warm at the words.
“Thank you.”
“And, if Ah may continue,” the stallion said, clearly intent on doing so, “as far as almost dyin’ and yer best friend not talkin’ to ya… Well, some ponies these days would like nothing more than ta have sumpthin’ take ’em away. And a friend fightin’ with ya is better than no friend at all.”
“I’m not quite sure I’d agree with you there…” Octavia began.
“Balieve me,” the vagrant said, lifting his bow and violin again, “ya really should.” The air was once again filled with off keys and improper chords, irritating Octavia to no end. She wasn’t sure what in their conversation gave him the impression that her previous demand had been retracted.
“Why are you still playing?” Octavia asked, resisting the urge to yell a second time. “There’s no pony around to try to get bits from anymore.”
“Oh, Ah don’t play for bits at this hour, ma’am.” The amateur violinist said, trying his best to play more solemn notes. “It’s true, Ah can make a good amount where the crowds come by, but yer right when ya say no pony is around anymore. Other than you and me, a’course.”
“Of course…” Octavia considered him for a moment. “Er, I don’t have any bits on me either, so…”
The stallion chuckled. “Nah, ma’am, Ah don’t aim to ask ya fer any bits. A conversaysh’n is worth a li’l more to me these days anyway. Truth is, Ah just can’t sleep around here. Figure maybe if Ah practice a little, Ah may be able ta actually play this thang well some day.” He chuckled. “At the very least, it keeps the cats away for a spell.”
Something in the vagabond’s words stirred something else in the cellist; another buried memory was making its way to the surface.
“Would you mind if I borrowed that for a moment?”
“Wha? Mah fiddle?”
“It’s a violin. And yes.”
“I know you don’t like mah music, miss, but please don’t smash it or nuthin’… It’s darn near the only thang Ah own.”
Octavia gave him a warm smile. “Don’t worry, I know how much an instrument such as this can mean to a pony.” She gently removed the violin and bow from his hooves, wiping them both briefly on her cloak before standing upright and placing the violin to her chin. At the very least, maybe she could show him how one is properly played. It’s true that she hadn’t played one in a few years, but surely she wasn’t too out of—
SCREEEEEEEEECH
Octavia cringed at the sound the instrument made. While the vagrant guffawed at her expression, she gave the offending hunk of wood in her hooves a good look. She suspected that perhaps the stallion simply didn’t know how to properly tune it, but upon closer inspection she noticed that it had two D strings, an E string in place of a G string (how’d he screw that up?) and had a strong suspicion that the A string had come from part of the beggar’s flannel shirt.
“Are… Are you familiar with the proper way to care for this delicate piece of equipment?”
“Lady, alls Ah know is Ah won that in a poker game, and have been using it to pay mah ante in others since.” Octavia gazed at the stallion sadly, but also with a certain degree of shame. “Now, Ah know what yer thinkin’,” he said, addressing the look, “and Ah know. Ah really shouldn’t be gamblin’ in my position. But that’s just how Ah am. Lookie hur.” He reached down with one hoof and pulled up his two shirts to reveal a cutie mark of two playing cards: an Ace of diamonds, and a two of clubs. “Thangs don’t always go right for me. Ah have mah highs, and Ah have mah lows. Right now is just one of mah lows.”
Octavia nodded slowly, forgetting about the poorly strung violin in her hoof for a moment. After a brief mental deliberation, she gently placed the instrument down and unfastened the front of her cloak. “Here,” she said, handing the garment to the unfortunate pony in front of her. “I really don’t need this, and I imagine some of the nights here can get a little chilly. I’m sorry it’s not as pristine as it was a few hours ago…”
The stallion stared at it for a moment, not sure what to do. He looked back up at her. “You ain’t even played the fiddle yet. Yeh don’t need to thank me. Or pity me.”
“Very well.” Octavia picked up the instrument and recaptured her previous posture, twisting the turning pegs at the top. “I will simply leave the cloak here in the street. Whether or not you decide to take it from the ground is up to you, but I will be most displeased if such a fine article — rips and tears or no — is left in the street upon my departure.”
The beggar considered her words for a moment, and slowly reached out to the garment while the musician mumbled to herself.
“If I just think of playing it across the strings backwards, and really tighten up the E string — well, D string…”
“Miss…” the unfortunate pony began hesitantly, “Just what are yeh gearin’ up ta play?”
Octavia placed the bow to the strings. “A lullaby.”
- * - * - * -
The grey filly rolled in her sleep. A dim light was creeping across her eyes, despite her clenched eyelids doing their best to defend against it. She hesitantly opened them to see the source was coming from beneath her roommate’s bed sheets, the white filly’s silhouette black against them.
“Vinyl…”
The owner of the name jumped, causing her head to become exposed. “Uh… hi, Octy. Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I can ask you that too, you know…” Octavia hopped out of her bed, almost slipping on the long sleeves of her blue crescent moon stamped pajamas. She crossed the room and hopped into Vinyl’s bed instead.
“Oh… I’m reading.” Vinyl had a magazine at her hooves, more recent than the last one she showed to Octavia but already showing some wear. After about a week of Vinyl showing Octavia each page in that first issue over and over again, the pair discovered a subscription number in the back and, to Vinyl’s delight, discovered that it was still in print. After working together on a lemonade stand they raised enough money to pay the fee, and Vinyl proceeded to spend the two months after anxiously awaiting each monthly issue. She’d already had this one for two weeks though, and Octavia didn’t know what more information her friend could possibly get from it.
“Vinyl, it’s late… We really should try to get some sleep. We have school in the morning.”
“I know, it’s just… I can’t sleep.”
“Can’t sleep? How? You just close your eyes and—”
“It’s not that I don’t know how to sleep… I just… Can’t.”
This was hardly the first time something Vinyl said confused Octavia. She and her roommate came from completely different worlds in her eyes, yet she didn’t mind; it made her feel as though they got to teach one another things they never would have learned on their own. That said, not being able to sleep just seemed too ridiculous to be a thing.
“Okay, well, how come?”
“I don’t know… Some nights I just have bad dreams. And some nights I just can’t stop thinking, you know? It’s like my brain is a machine that doesn’t want to turn off.”
Octavia considered this for a moment. “Well, what is it you think about?”
“A lot of stuff.” Vinyl admitted. “Like, sometimes I think about something stupid I did, and what I coulda done different. Sometimes I get these songs… They’re not real songs, or at least I don’t think they are. And it’s like, the songs are fun, you know? Like you would listen to them and be happy and want to jump up and down, and I just get really excited thinking about them. Like, maybe I’m supposed to make them some day…?”
Some pieces were starting to fall into place in Octavia’s mind. “Have things always been like this?” Vinyl nodded shyly. This explained why Vinyl would frequently nod off in their classes, despite their teachers getting mad whenever she did. Octavia always just thought she was really bored, even though Octavia thought that the classes were really interesting. The only times Vinyl seemed to be awake — really awake — were during the practical classes where they got to actually play real instruments, rather than just learn about them. Vinyl had a habit of getting into trouble here as well, although for playing instruments in ways they were never supposed to rather than sleeping. Just last week she got in trouble for trying to show their instructor that she didn’t even need a bow to play viola and could just tug at the strings using her hoof instead.
“And sometimes…” Vinyl continued, breaking Octavia from her thoughts, “…I think about my mom and dad. Like who they are, where they’re at… Why they didn’t want me…”
“Stop,” Octavia commanded. She understood anything concerning parents was a major source of pain for her friend, but with how often it came up it was almost starting to annoy Octavia how much that pain ran parts of Vinyl’s life. She would never actually tell Vinyl any of this, of course. “I don’t think your parents didn’t want you. They would be just stupid to not have a daughter as cool as you.”
Vinyl gave a small laugh, but her expression didn’t change much.
“And besides, we’re sharing my parents, remember?” Vinyl gave a few quick nods, but still said nothing. Octavia suddenly had an idea. “You know what I think about before I go to sleep?”
Vinyl sniffed and rubbed one of her eyes. “What?”
Octavia hopped back down from Vinyl’s bed, and started digging under her own before pulling out a small curved case. “My mom used to sing to me every night before I went to sleep. I know some ponies say their moms or dads would read them stories, but mine would sing,” she explained, pulling a violin out of the case in front of her. She sat on the floor with her legs sticking forward, her back arched and erect, and the base of the violin between her hind legs. She held onto the instrument’s neck with one foreleg and its bow with the other. In time she would outgrow using this smaller instrument this way, but at this point in time she knew no other way to play it.
“Is that the violin from your cutie mark story?”
Octavia smiled. “No, but it’s almost just like it. I don’t think the school could have just given me one. This one my Auntie Faddle gave to me just before I came here. It’s one of my cousin Fiddlesticks’ old ones.”
“Oh…”
The mention of more members of Octavia’s family looked as though it was doing no favors for Vinyl’s mood. Rather than address it, Octavia decided to continue the trail of thought she started when getting out the instrument. “Yeah… Anyway, when I first moved here, I missed my mom a lot. It was really weird going to bed without her singing to me.” She bowed a few notes out of the violin, turning some knobs to tune it as she did so. “But at night if I thought really hard, I could hear her singing to me, and it really helped. I’ve been sleeping okay since!”
Vinyl snorted. “Well, my mom never sang to me. So I don’t think I can just think about it.” Octavia’s roommate’s words were starting to get a little sour.
“We share a mom now. How many times do I have to keep telling you that?” Vinyl crossed her hooves and looked away from the grey filly squatting on the floor. Octavia continued, “And even if she’s not here right now, it doesn’t mean she can’t sing for you.”
Vinyl’s head rotated back towards Octavia, this time it being her turn to bear a look of bewilderment. Confusion aside, she still said nothing, so Octavia pressed on.
“I’m not really good at singing, and I don’t remember all the words, but I think I know how to play it. I’ve been figuring it out during practicals when we had some down time.”
“Down time? When did we ever have down time during practicals?”
“Well, you never do… Down time for the rest of us is when Professor Baton is yelling at you for trying to use bass drum mallets on the timpani.”
“That’s—!” Vinyl clearly couldn’t find the rest of the words to her response, eventually deciding to punctuate it with another snort instead. “Whatever. Just play it already.”
Octavia would have much rather played for a happy audience than an annoyed one, but decided to forgive her friend and blame the lack of sleep for her attitude. Octavia took a few deep breaths, and slowly pulled the bow to echo the first string of her mother’s lullaby. She closed her eyes, visualizing each note that she had spent the last few weeks trying to memorize. Once or twice a note sounded flat and she made a mental reminder to figure out what the real note was supposed to be, but for her friend’s sake she never stopped playing. Not until a bar or two before the end, anyway.
“Yeah… I haven’t quite gotten to the last few notes yet. But—” Octavia looked up and opened her eyes to address her friend directly, but Vinyl was not facing her anymore. The budding musician could only see a messy blue mane poking out from lavender bed sheets that slowly and rhythmically rose and fell, each action punctuated by a soft snore. Smiling to herself, Octavia put her instrument away as quietly as possibly before getting into her own bed to mimic her friend.
- * - * - * -
“Woo! Evening, boys! You guys have any trouble out here tonight?”
“There was this one snobby-sounding mare who kept trying to get back here, but we eventually got her to shove off. Didn’t look like a regular here though; she was way too clean.”
“Probably one of those Canterlot reporter types, trying to get a story or do a review. Funny, usually they’re perfectly keen on bashing my performance without even attending.” The white DJ chuckled to herself, although her laughter had a certain degree of spite in it. She watched as the club’s stagehands loaded up her expensive equipment onto a carriage in the back, where they would take everything to a storage facility to wait until the next gig. The night had been fun, she admitted, although the crowd wasn’t quite as rambunctious as she usually likes to see it get.
“You sure you don’t want us to just take these to The Dungeon right now? I mean, you open that place in a few hours.”
“And have it just sitting outside, unattended? Nah, I’d rather have this stuff locked up until the joint opens. Besides, between the show and the booth we should have made enough tonight to pay you guys for the extra trouble anyway.”
“Alright, if you say so. Just thought we’d put it out there.”
“Yeah, I know. Now go on and get going, or you guys won’t get any sleep either.”
The two stallions at the front of the cart laughed, and in a moment gave the wheels a solid tug before it got some real traction. In a moment, they were off and in the distance.
“Nice work as always, Pon-Three.” Vinyl turned to see the manager of the club standing behind her. “I’m really starting to think you can give MC Wish a run for his money around here.”
“I think you’ve got that backwards,” Vinyl said with a grin.
The club owner chuckled. “Your night’s pay,” he said extending a hoof to pass Vinyl an envelope, which she took in a light blue magic aura.
“Aw, yeah! Now I can finally get that cash to— HEY!” Vinyl opened the envelope, something in its contents causing her some alarm. “This is barely more than half of what I was paid last time I was here!”
“Sorry, DJ,” the owner shrugged, his brown mustache going crooked for a moment, “But last time was during the university’s spring break. This is finals week. The kids come for stress relief, but the bar doesn’t make nearly as much with so many of them needing to study hard in the morning.”
“Well that bites.” Vinyl wanted to take out her aggression on the club owner, but knew it wouldn’t do her much good. A part of her was regretting telling the carriage stallions that she could pay them extra, but in all honesty she was still making enough to spend a little here and there. After all, she was DJ-PON3, the most popular performer in all of Manehattan!
The mustachioed stallion chuckled at the DJ's remark. “Don’t I know it. Do you need a lift home?”
“Nah. I prefer walking; I’m not too far from here. Thanks though.”
“Hey, at least I offered. Have a good night, Pon-Three. Even if there are only a few more hours left of it.”
Vinyl laughed. “Yeah, you too.”
The club owner ducked back into his building, locking things up behind him as he went. Vinyl was now alone outside the structure, the usual sounds of downtown her only company. She had gotten used to the sirens at this point, although they did still have a way of making her uneasy. That one bum was also at playing his violin again. Vinyl severely disliked that guy; she felt like he was just mooching off of her success, always knowing that a few suckers would show up in the large crowds that came to see her. Something was different in his chords today. They still sounded terrible, yet somehow also… professional. Had he really gotten that much better since the last gig he showed his rotten face at?
Vinyl tried to pay no mind to the low grade music, but her mind refused to let it go for one reason or another. In fact, there was something almost familiar about the tune. Where had she heard it before? Vinyl racked her brains, the mystery’s answer suddenly her number one mental priority. It wasn’t part of any of the songs she played or listened to regularly. No, even those she would have been able to pick out from an instrumental version by this point. Perhaps something she heard when she was younger then, back when she was still attending that worthless excuse of a school. They loved this type of music there. In fact, even her old roommate—
No. It couldn’t be.
Vinyl detoured from her path home to walk around to the front of the club she just performed in. She could hardly believe the sight in front of her.
The bum was there, so she had been right in assuming it was his violin. But he was curled up against a brick wall, slumbering peacefully under an expensive (though somewhat ragged) black cloak. The thing that Vinyl had trouble processing was the fact that the stallion’s violin was not being played by its owner, but instead by a finely groomed, prim-and-proper grey mare that looked extremely out of place in Manehattan’s clubbing district.
What was she doing here?