In nature matter has an equal and opposite, antimatter, which is identical but opposite to its counterpart. Electrons have positrons, for instance. When antimatter collides with its partner it creates a huge burst of energy and complete annihilation.
Octavia was briefly reminded of this as she watched an animated conversation between her best friend, a pony who had absolutely no concept of personal space, and her neurotic crush who- no, shutup brain, bad! - would, by all accounts, be her polar opposite.
“See, I’d figured medical alcohol was like, different, you know?” Vinyl mused as she walked step for step beside Twilight down the empty Canterlot street. It was still rather early in the morning around the Canterlot police station.
“Not at all! It’s much more concentrated, certainly, but it’s... I suppose an apt comparison would be comparing freshwater to saltwater. They’re both water, certainly, but... well, I suppose in this case the alcohol is more like the salt than the water, really.”
It was fascinating, to Octavia as she followed silently behind the two, just where common interests could be found.
“Huh. Do you know how they make the medical stuff? Is it, like, a spell I could learn or...?”
Twilight snorted. “There’s no magic, just a bit of science. Water and alcohol have different boiling points and densities so, with a simple distillation rig, you can refine alcohol relatively easily. You boil the alcohol, evaporate it, then condense it in a separate beaker making sure to get as few impurities as possible.”
“So, you just, what, make booze out of water?” Normally Octavia would have expected Vinyl to have grown bored, fast, but she genuinely appeared enraptured, riveted and otherwise enthralled. Though, really, that was probably to be expected from a pony who learned algebra studying BMI:alcohol intake ratios.
“Well, different plants make different liquors. The ponies in Stalliongrad use rotten potato peels to make their vodka, but honestly you can use anything with a bit of sugar in it.”
“Whoah. What if you just use, like, straight sugar?”
“Then you get rum.”
“You know an awful lot about drinks for a pony who doesn’t drink.” Vinyl laughed, skipping cheerfully along now, much to her fellow unicorn’s amusement.
“Oh, if I’m ever going to assist Princess Celestia in any meaningful way, I have to know everything I can that bears political relevance. Did you know that, less than two centuries ago, vodka constituted more than forty percent of Stalliongrad’s tax income? The rest is simply a case of analyzing fermentation of various hydrocarbon molecules and studying their effects.”
Vinyl seemed to consider that for a long second. “So, can, say, animals get drunk eating rotten fruit?”
“Oh, yes! Butterflies in particular have been notable for it, due to their incredibly high metabolism and extremely low mass.”
Vinyl grinned and spotted a particularly large, vibrant blue butterfly floating along the breeze in front of them, chuckling to herself. “Party on, little dudette.”
“Interesting. You assume the butterfly is a female?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s a butterfly. Don’t get more girly than that.” Vinyl paused. “Well, ‘cept for pink butterflies I guess. Yeah, that’d probably do it.”
“So, where do you think baby caterpillars come from?”
“Immaculate conception.” Vinyl nodded with deadly seriousness, “It’s the birds and the bees, not the birds and the butterflies. They’re too prissy and innocent.”
“You make it sound like... that...” Twilight made some awkward gesturing with a hoof, “is something good ponies don’t do.”
“N’aw, you’re just projecting.” Vinyl shrugged, flicking her head down in a curiously practiced gesture to balance her shades lower down her nose, allowing her to peer seriously over the top of them, “I’m only referring to butterflies.”
“Projecting?” Twilight missed a step, Octavia noticed, stumbling a little.
“Well, yeah. Obviously you’re thinking of jumping Octavia’s bones back there, Celestia knows why her and not me, but you’re pretty far in denial about your whole sexuality thing insofar as you don’t want to have one, I reckon, because it’s not something good little ponies should have. If it helps I’m, like, ninety percent sure she’s got a massive lady boner for you too. Am I right? Come on, somepony tell me I’m wrong and I’ll buy you both a drink.” Vinyl declared with a sweeping hoof gesture, lowering her shades with a cocky smirk.
Octavia nearly faceplanted. Her front legs locked up, deciding on their own that maybe if she was completely still nopony would notice her, whilst her back legs had decided, independently of course, that continued nonchalant walking would probably be the best bet.
Her mouth was experiencing a similar problem, insofar as it was moving desperately, forcing words that would not come, trying to apologize or deny or something to end the situation whilst her brain was at a complete loss as to what those words could possibly be.
This was not helped at all when she noticed that Twilight herself was making far too similar noises, none of which were a denial. Vinyl looked back at the earth pony and winked positively voraciously at her.
“Ooh, looks like I hit a nerve after all. Bam! Oh, man, this is just too great for words. Listen, I’m going to trot off and do music stuff. There’s something ponies just love about a song that starts with the words ‘I wrote this the morning I got out of a Canterlot jail cell’.” She chuckled, “So, you two, go out and buy each other lunch, then let it get, like, super totally awkward for just long enough for one of you to leap out at the other for big, wet, sloppy make outs.” She pressed two of her forelegs together and made smoochy-noises as her victims watched in gaping silence, allowing Vinyl to turn and head away. She called out over her shoulder one last thing for Octavia, though.
“Oh! And if she knocks you up with her crazy unicorn magic stuff name the kid after me!”
Octavia and Twilight were left glancing between Vinyl skipping and dancing off into the crowd, cackling, and each other, awkwardly flaring into new levels of flaming hot blush with each pass.
Twilight was the first to speak.
“So I know several memory manipulation spells. It’s not hard, only complicated arcana-neuro-surgery, so I’m certain I can perform it on you, then myself, and we can forget that any of that just happened... Unless I accidentally make myself forget how to perform the spell whilst performing it... huh, hold on, let me just do some calculations.”
Octavia smiled weakly. “Why don’t you do them over some coffee? There’s a rather nice patisserie just ahead.”
“Excellent! Lead the way!”
Twilight was lost in her own little academic world. Surrounding her, much to the consternation of a passing waitress, were napkins filled with scientific diagrams, hoof sketched drawings of what looked like Magical Resonance Images and, quite notably indeed, a couple of doodled bars of simple melodies composed with lovehearts in place of the little circles, all stacked in organized piles or swirling in the air around her as she added to them.
Vinyl’s voice was still ringing in Octavia’s ears, and not just because her friend was always cranked up to eleven. It was far less literal than that. She was wondering if Vinyl was right.
That was a worrying thought. Deciding that she had better distract herself with a less terrifying prospect, like the scribbles in front of her, she-
“This is brain surgery.” Octavia blinked incredulously at the piles of studious viscera surrounding her.
“Well, surgery implies cutting, and blood,” Twilight shuddered in a manner that Octavia found adorable, then immediately resented herself for finding adorable, “this is a lot less gruesome than that. It’s merely forcibly extracting and erasing a chunk of your memory by overloading grey matter tissue... by... huh.” She blinked, then looked at her mass of napkins with a raised eyebrow, “actually, it’s probably not much better than I thought.”
“So, it’d hurt, right?”
“Well, technically, it would probably be one of the most excruciating moments in your entire life.” The unicorn’s eyes went ceilingwards, deep in thought. A few seconds later she shrugged and went back to scribbling, “I say technically because you’d probably forget about the pain as soon as it happened, since it would mean the spell was working. It’d be as if you never felt it.”
Octavia shuddered.
“What?” Twilight replied, eyebrow cocked at prime ‘I don’t get it’ position.
“Oh, it’s just... even if you don’t remember it, it still happened right?”
“Well, I’m a bit of a nihilist, so to me, no, not really.”
“Isn’t that, I don’t know, a little depressing?”
Twilight jerked herself bodily out of her notes, vibrating a little as she did so. “Why would it be?”
Twilight was giving her her full and undivided attention with those rapt, attentive eyes. She felt like she was being tested for some reason, innocent as the question was, Octavia still found herself squirming in the padded booth a little.
“Well, what happens when you die, do you think?” she mused, “Surely ponies are more than just flesh and blood mechanics. What of the soul?”
Twilight shuddered, diving back into her heaping pile of napkins, “And if there is an eternal afterlife? Even nirvana would get boring, surely. Forever is a long time... and what happens when you inevitably grow weary of it? Would you even be able to kill yourself in that place to end that?” she said, brushing the question off disdainfully. “No... no, I think infinite nothingness beats infinite somethingness.”
“Well, that’s rather bleak, too.” Octavia sighed. She couldn’t help but be rather put off by... everything. Who knew the perky (if somewhat unstable) unicorn would make for such a depressing conversationalist?
At this, though, Twilight brightened considerably. “Not really! I mean, I’ve got one life to live, right? It’s going to be short, barring some sort of freak ascension to alicornhood of some kind, and I have no control over the fact that, someday, it will end. My life is a finite commodity and you know what? I’m okay with that. It just means that every day I’ve got to spend learning something, doing something, making something that will last long after I’m gone. That’s the kind of immortality I’d love to have. The medical definition of death is brain death... personally, I think a pony dies the second they stop wanting to make something, do something, be something more than they did yesterday.” Twilight nodded to herself, glancing up from her napkin to meet the earth pony’s level gaze, at which she blushed a little. “Did I say something wrong?”
Octavia closed her mouth, for fear of permanent damage to her jawbone. Well, that was a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn on the mood.
‘She didn’t say it like it was some profound pearl of wisdom, or some conceited dreck. To her, it’s simply how she lives, and it’s a simple statement of fact. And this pony thinks I’m cute, if Vinyl is to be believed.’
Twilight looked nervously off to the side, making an adjustment to one of her many, many variables surreptitiously, “I’m sorry...”
Well, that got Octavia’s attention. Whilst outwardly she scarcely flinched in her mind alarm bells were sounding loud and true.
“You’re sorry? For what?”
“Well, you were just staring at me like that, and you didn’t say anything, so I just assumed...”
‘So, you two, go out and buy each other lunch, then let it get, like, super totally awkward for just long enough for one of you to leap out at the other for big, wet, sloppy make outs’
The waitress came back with a little plate of cannolis, which Twilight had insisted on paying for.
‘Just as the prophecy foretold!’ part of Octavia’s treacherous subconscious screamed at her, ‘It’s a sign!’
Octavia was about to listen to the rational part of her well-thought-out and intelligent rebuttal when she noticed that Twilight looked rather sullen right now. She’d just spilled out something obviously very deep and personal to her and she thought that she’d done something wrong.
Rational brain was rather rudely interrupted, and outright horrified, when Octavia gingerly brushed the cannoli plate aside, delicately cleared the notes between Twilight and herself, much to the unicorn’s confusion... and then proceeded to fling herself bodily across the table and pull Twilight into a deep... well.
It would be wrong to call it a kiss.
Frankly, it was a snog. A rather uncouth one at that.
After a period of time which was simultaneously far too long for a kiss to be and, damn it, not nearly long enough, the two breathless... well, lovers, I suppose we shall now have to refer to them, parted, slightly breathless, slightly pinker than they were moments before.
“Still want that memory spell, Twilight?” Octavia sighed, adjusting her bowtie absently, panting a little.
Twilight just stared forward in space, unblinking, head lolled at a slight angle.
“Twilight?”
“Bwuh?”
“Are you alright?”
“Mmm...”
“Oh dear, I do believe I have broken Princess Celestia’s student. I wonder if this classifies as treason?”
“Hurrr...”
“Okay, now I’m actually getting a little concerned.”
A thin bead of drool poked out of Twilight’s contented lips.
“Oh, bother.” With a sigh, and a satisfied expression of her own, Octavia picked up her wantonly neglected cannoli and gave it the attention it rightfully deserved, devouring it in a few large, yet dignified, always dignified, bites.
It was about this time that Twilight shook her head vigorously, snapping herself out of her post-pash stupor. “Oh... wow.”
“So-”
“Yes, I am more alright than I have been in a long time, I suspect,” there was an impossibly goofy, satisfied grin on Twilight’s face that was testimony to this, one that would have held in any self-respecting court of law - though a self-respecting court of law that adjudicates passionate kisses between two consenting adults is perhaps a bit of an oxymoron - “and, if you had broken me, that would have counted as treason, yes, though I am a duchess in my own right, so make of that what you will. Finally, to answer your last question first- err, sorry, I mean, your first question last, no, I don’t think I particularly want to forget my first kiss. Because seriously,” she pushed back into her seat, visibly melting into it as if her bones had decided that they were no longer required in this particular pony’s anatomy, “wow. Just... wow.”
The musician blushed furiously. “Well, you were pretty fantastic yours-” tick. Tick. Tick. Brrring. “Wait, hang on, did you just say first kiss?”
The unicorn’s sheepish nod was all the confirmation Octavia needed.
Oh, well then. Doomed.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to steal your first kiss! If I’d known, I mean, oh dear, this is really b- Mmmph?!”
Twilight released the lip lock, allowing Octavia breath again.
“What-”
“Just thought I’d return the favour.” Twilight’s voice was all confidence, but she was staring nervously at her hooves under the table, her cheeks as red as the older brother of a mare she would, one day, befriend and take to a concert where this pony would be playing, a piece so beautiful that Twilight would fall in love with her all over again, for the very first time, much to this future friend’s amusement.
But that was the future. This was now.
“I- Oh, I’m sorry, yes?” Octavia was cut off, this time, by a rather stern looking older waitress, who had slunk up to their table in the mysteriously unobtrusive way that particularly experienced hospitality workers somehow pick up. This manner of movement allows them to remain almost invisible unless they wish to be, at which point they become alarmingly and disconcertingly present.
The mare practically loomed over the pair.
“I’m sorry, ma’ams,” she said in a tone that announced she was anything but, “but if you wish to carry on in this manner I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. The napkins were one thing, but your little displays are disturbing the other patrons.”
Oh. Yeah, they were in public weren’t they? Somehow Octavia had forgotten all about every pony in the room except the wonderful purple mare across from her. Well, she said purple, she was usually purple.
Still, the other diners did seem to be giving them a rather scandalized look, a few out of intrigue and a few stallions in particular with unabashed amusement.
Guh. Stallions.
“So, will you two please behave?”
Octavia glanced apologetically at Twilight and shrank inside herself a little, withering.
‘Oh dear, she’s going to be so embarrassed, she’s the princess’s student and I’ve just sullied her, assailed her publicly and - why is she getting out her bits purse?’
There was a clang as several little golden coins hit the table. Twilight rose from her seat, much to Octavia’s and the waitress’s confusion and, admittedly, to the musician’s fascination. Still blushing furiously, though with an air of the utmost confidence in her steps, Twilight trotted around the booth table, casually forcing the waitress aside with naught but sheer presence, and gently assisted Octavia to her feet in the manner one might treat a timid bird. She then proceeded to escort, or drag, frankly, her partner out of the venue at a speed one can only describe as ‘unbridled eagerness’.
‘Oh. Well, alright then, this is a rather welcome situation, isn’t it?’
‘Is it though?’ replied a rather trite and contrary part of her brain.
Octavia considered this for a moment. Well, there were definitely a lot of downsides about the pony she had bizarrely picked to be attracted to, her neuroticism, her antisocial tendencies, her-
“Twilight, are you feeling alright?” Octavia spoke, concern weighing her words.
“More than alright. I feel great! Superb! Splendid! Carpe Diem! Je suis follement amoureux! I-”
“Twilight I’m going to ask two very important questions. The first one is probably more urgent, however; So no overwhelming urge to have a shower, mouthwash, nothing?”
“I... no.” Twilight stopped, stunned, much to the chagrin of the pony walking behind her. “I... I think I’m okay.”
Octavia cleared her throat with an expectant little cough. “Secondly: Why me? Why me at all? You should hate me, if nothing else, for how I... I don’t... Eugh.” Bad thoughts rode in on that particularly gravy train of negative potential. They were silenced by a rather daring peck on the cheek by the pony who, sensing her panic, had trotted up beside her.
“Seriously? That’s what’s bothering you? I ran out mid-conversation because you made a friendly gesture! I was constantly one upping you! I bring you in as an expert consultant and spent the whole time showing you just how much I didn’t need you! I was probably more than a little tribalist! I more than deserved-”
“No!” Octavia blurted out, frustration manifesting in the form of a trudge beside Twilight, “No, I refuse to let you take any blame for what happened. You were positively modest about what you’ve accomplished, as far as I am concerned, you acknowledged that unicorns, pegasus and earth ponies are different, not inherently better, which is far more than I can say about quite a few nobles I’ve had the displeasure of meeting, and it was a gesture you were uncomfortable with that I wouldn’t have made had I known. I was the one who exploded at you, I was the one who became the green eyed monster, that had the wildly inappropriate crisis of faith...” Octavia sighed, deeply at that. “I’m the one that messed up, and I implore you to forgive me for that.”
“As if I haven’t already. I’m just... relieved. I thought you hated me. I hated me!”
Knife. Gut. Twist.
“But you didn’t! And I don’t!” the unicorn jumped on those unpleasant thoughts, squishing them beneath her hooves like overripe grapes, “And you’re very talented, and dedicated, and clean and organized- trust me, that’s like, huge for me,” Octavia had an inkling, she suspected, “you were punctual, you volunteered to help me, for science, you were fascinated when I talked about magic,” well, horrified is just a form of fascination isn’t it? Twilight paused for a moment before going on, signs of an intense internal debate evident as her gaze dropped down and away, that same rosy blush from before tinging her cheeks when she finally said: “I know it’s really superficial, and a part of me loathes to admit this even matters to me, but I also think you’re really pretty. Physically, I mean, not just mentally.”
Well, that was a welcome development. Wasn’t it?
The trite and contrary part of her brain mumbled its acquiescence. Darn right it did.
“So, uh, I guess I didn’t bring this up before, but the guards told me about last night. What you did, I mean, at the bar. Is it true?”
There was nervousness in Twilight’s voice, that much Octavia could ascertain, but her expression was an unreadable mask.
She had a good thing going here, but this was still a pretty rocky start to a relationship that had already been in dire straits. Here she was, captain at the helm and no navigator to speak of, with only her best judgement to plot a course. Does she steer towards honesty, and admit what happened, and have Twilight judge her for participating in a bar brawl? The alternative course would be lying, which would be a big breach of trust, and Twilight had essentially become her de facto lawyer in all this anyway, so she’d surely been okay with the possibility of what she’d found out being true, let alone the odds of being caught were essentially one in one...
Hrrm. Honesty is the best policy, it seems.
“Yes. As far as I can tell, all of it.”
“Well, I appreciate you not lying to me, at least. Still, did you really make a stallion more than twice your size cry like, and I’m quoting here, ‘a wee li’l tyke for his mummy’?”
“Yes.”
“Whilst standing up for your friend who had, more or less, verbally provoked him.”
“Yes.”
“Is it true you then dragged said friend off to the side to try to help her, only to be dragged back into the melee on three separate occasions?”
“Well, I only remember two of them, but most likely, yes.”
“And, for lack of a better term, you won.”
Octavia remained silent on that one. What could she say?
“Are you proud of that?”
“Honestly? No. I feel sick at the thought of what I did to some of those ponies. Would I do it again if I were in that situation, knowing what I do now? Absolutely, because I don’t regret it either. If I hadn’t acted, or rather reacted, how I had, either myself or a pony I very much care about would have been hurt much worse. That’s all that matters.” Octavia sighed heavily. “Well, this is marvellous first date conversation, isn’t it?”
“Huh. I guess this is my first date, isn’t it?” Twilight mulled this over for a good, long moment.
“Yes, about that - how are you such a good kisser? Everypony is bad at their first kiss. It’s a universal truth.” Of course, if anypony were to make a lie of a universal truth, it would be the pony beside her. The one most likely to break the laws of the universe was currently in Ponyville, baking a soundproof souffle.
“Medical journals and the section of the archives that the Princess doesn’t know that I know about...” Twilight gulped, “and I honestly hope she doesn’t. That would be very, very embarrassing. No, no, embarrassing isn’t the right word, more like mortifying.”
Octavia suddenly found herself making a mental inventory of where her library card could be right now. Perhaps she could liberate it for deeds most foul.
Take a look, it’s in a book, indeed.
“But they also told me that picnics are romantic! Which is a good thing, I think, for a date to be, yes?” Twilight asked with a desperately nervous sincerity, shooting Octavia a glance that was at once desperate and pleading.
“I would very much enjoy a picnic right now, I think, if you had a location in mind.”
“Well, did you figure you were just following me as I walked around aimlessly?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but, frankly, I suspected...”
“Well, I have a plan,” Twilight’s head came back up with a downright steely glint in her eyes, flashing dangerously for all to see, those who dared not look away, “I always have a plan.”
“I am suddenly rather apprehensive.” Octavia said aloud. What she did not add, aloud, however, was ‘and slightly aroused’, a thought she decidedly kept to herself. She beat this thought into submission, desperately hoping the thought wasn’t into that.
Twilight’s face scrunched up into a ball of focus and determination, which looked convincingly like rather bad constipation, and her horn guttered into purple light. Much to Octavia’s continued amusement a picnic blanket, perfectly folded, appeared levitating between the two.
“Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to have waited until we were at our destination?”
“Yes, that would make a lot of sense. Fortunately, we’re there.”
Indeed, the road did seem to be bisected here by a creek, almost like a moat. In fact, the creek was so distinctly moat-like that on the other side of it was a castle and drawbridge.
Octavia had the sinking feeling that this creek may have, in fact, been a moat.
“Twilight, this is Canterlot Castle.”
“Darn, and here I thought it was the bookstore, silly me.” Twilight rolled her eyes.
“We aren’t having the picnic in the castle, are we?” The tentativeness in her voice was so evident that, upon being observed, the sentence itself would shy away.
“Of course not, that would be ridiculous.” There was the grinding of chain-on-chain, and a sundry of mechanical noises, as the drawbridge lowered, as drawbridges are wont to do.
“Oh. Good, because-”
“We’re just passing through into the gardens.” The unicorn nodded primly, cantering across the bridge excitedly.
“-of absolutely no reason whatsoever.” She gulped. Hard.
Why was her mouth so dry? Why did her throat feel like she’d tried to swallow a golf ball? Why was she trembling almost, but not quite, imperceptibly?
Perhaps she should ask the immortal ruler of Equestria, who doth control the sun itself. She’d probably know.
After all, she lives here.
The last time she’d met her was... humbling. The last time she’d met the princess she hadn’t been making kissy-faces at her surrogate daughter.
Twilight seemed to notice Octavia’s apprehension, as Octavia caught up to her, and leaned over to give her new beau a daring peck on the cheek.
It was at that moment she knew everything would be alright.
Octavia lay on her back, dazed, tissue pressed, scrunched really, into each nostril. The blood splattered picnic blanket bore evidence to the reason why. Twilight had been fussing over her ever since.
“I’m so, so sorry!”
“It’s certainly alright, Twilight, really. You couldn’t have known the cork would behave as it did.”
“But your nose!”
“Well, yes, it certainly does sting. A lot. But-”
“Are you sure it’s stopped bleeding?”
“Yes. Yes, I think it has. Don’t worry, Twilight-”
“But I can’t just not worry! It’s my fault! I should have been more careful, I should have known it was aimed at you-”
“Twilight, it bounced off a tree branch.” Octavia scolded, gently.
“Yes, but even the most cursory of trigonometry would have indicated its trajectory, and it was obviously a dense oak, so knowing its material density-”
Eugh. Maths. Not that Octavia wasn’t intelligent, or a ‘smarty-butt’ as Vinyl referred to her, and certainly not to further a negative cultural stereotype but... well...
There was a reason Octavia was in an arts field.
“But, surely, there are too many variables? It would have been impossible to determine, and chaos theory itself comes into effect.” The garden air seemed to resonate with a deep, throaty chuckle, one that was felt, but not heard, whilst Octavia internally scrunched like the papery tissues, hoping that what she had sounded like she knew what she meant.
“I suppose.” Twilight muttered.
Phew.
“And you know what is really good at numbing pain?” she chuckled wryly.
“Nitrous oxide, ketamine, barbiturates, though they’ve largely been replaced by benzodiazepines,” Twilight paused and gave Octavia a scathing look, “that’s it, isn’t it? You were going to try to get high off barbiturates with me? Well, I’m not into drugs, I’ll have you know.”
Octavia blinked dumbly. “I meant ‘alcohol’, as in this lovely champagne that should nicely get the rather sharp taste of blood out of my mouth, a rather pleasant bonus, but now I’m curious as to why you’d assume I was asking you for drugs.”
“I got my pharmaceutical license last year!” Twilight declared proudly, completely forgetting her previous suspicions in the fraction of a second it took for her to register the question.
“I see. So are you going to be a doctor, then?”
“Well, technically I am a doctor,” Twilight admitted, “but not an M.D. I don’t want to go through residency. I’m far too busy.”
“Too busy for a residency, but not too busy for me?” Octavia asked, painting the words with false playfulness as a confusing flurry of emotions roiled up, anxious for an answer.
“No, not too busy for you.” Twilight laughed, resting an affectionate hoof on the still-mostly-horizontal Octavia’s shoulder.
Twilight abruptly stopped laughing and gave her newly-minted marefriend an odd look, one that she might give if the pony she were talking to had suddenly turned into a giant two-headed purple elephant.
In actuality it was something far stranger than that.
“I think this might be more important,” Twilight announced, more to herself and the world in general than to the pony beside her, tasting the words slowly, as if to sample their curious flavour, “than studying.”
Apparently that was a pretty big deal. It seemed to have thrown Twilight completely for a loop. The unicorn was looking rather obviously conflicted too, crossed legs, reassuring glances at Octavia that were fleeting at best, nervously scratching at her fetlocks...
Well, it didn’t take a genius to see the obvious solution. Just to overthink it, it seemed.
“Well, it doesn’t have to be a mutually exclusive enterprise.”
Well, that stopped the nervous scratching, at the least. Twilight blinked with doey eyes. “What do you mean?”
“We could be, how did Harpsichord say it, ‘study buddies’?”
Now, those were words that had an obvious impact on Twilight. She looked all the world like a foal on Christmas morning.
“You mean it?”
“Well, your work is fascinating, truly. I believe I’m already assisting you in an official capacity, anyway.”
“Oh! Oh! Where do you want to start?” Twilight, forgetting all pretense of composure, bounced excitedly in place.
“Right now?”
“Why not?”
“Well-” Octavia was about to continue ‘because it’s not exactly what you do on a date’. That thought died quickly, however, when she realized she would have to say ‘no’ to that face. She could not find it within herself, so she instead finished; “-how about clouds?”
After the unspoken and generally universal prompt of patting the blanket beside her Twilight snuggled in beside and joined in cloud watching.
Octavia rubbed close beside her and pointed up. “How about I’ll point at a cloud, you tell me what kind it is, and I shall tell you what it looks like.”
Twilight clapped her hooves together delightedly. “Okay, first one.”
Octavia pointed at a big, cottony one just up and to the left.
“Cumulus.”
“Rabbit.”
“It does too. Okay, that one’s a cirrus."
“A soaring crane.”
“Really?”
“Tilt your head a bit to the right, like this. That’s the beak.”
“Ah! I see it now. Oh, this is so fun. Okay, okay, that’s an altostratus.”
“Big, lazy turtle. Alright, the one directly above you. I think it looks like a snogging musician.”
“Hrrm? Which one? There isn’t any - Mmmph!”
Octavia returned to her apartment with a subtle spring in her step.
Well, initially. Then, after years of forced composure finally gave way under contended bliss, she found herself skipping down the streets of Canterlot humming happily to herself, damned whoever saw.
It was incredibly liberating, she found.
‘I should do this more often. Certainly the parts preceding.’
Ah! Here she was, home sweet - hang on. In front of her apartment door lay something that she had certainly not put there herself: a rather expensive bottle of champagne, much finer than the one she had shared with Twilight earlier.
Ooh, that was a happy thought.
Tipping it to the side a little to inspect the label - very expensive it seemed - she caught sight of a rather ornamented note attached to it.
“Congratulations! May you never suffer a cloudless day.
- Celestia”
Well, she had seen after all.
She’d been caught - oh - kissing her - oh - favourite student. She’d known.
Panic. Panic, panic, panic, panic - wait. The Princess knew and approved?!
Dance. Dance, dance, dance, cheer, swoon, dance a little more and sing.
She suddenly remembered, or rather was forced to remember by that niggling little part of the brain that always picks the worst moment for everything, that tomorrow would have to be spent preparing for her father’s funeral, the day after.
Octavia felt a little guilty that wasn’t enough to kill her happy thoughts entirely.
Idly, she wondered if Twilight would think she looked-
“Hauntingly beautiful.” Twilight breathed.
Octavia responded with a weak smile. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” She nodded, firmly, idly tightening and rearranging and neatening her new marefriend’s simplistic, elegant black dress.
“An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.”
Octavia stared, awed, at the mare timidly blushing, kicking her hooves at nothingness, blushing furiously.
“That was... what was that?”
“It’s how I feel?”
“I meant, though not to downplay how absolutely wondrous your saying that makes me feel, what is that an excerpt from?”
“Oh, well, that... I’ll tell you later, okay? Much, much later.”
“Why?”
“Much.” Twilight finished.
“Well, whilst I cannot lie that I am curious, I shall have to respect that.”
Twilight smile turned sad as she levitated from behind her a beautiful cello, the one from their first meeting. Still with that wan smile she nudged Octavia gently. “Come on,” she whispered, “He’s waiting for you.”
And with that the topic was dropped as the pair silently approached the small island of ponies clinging together amidst the ocean of headstones.
It was somber day, even though it was bright and sunny. Octavia wished it were cloudy, it were rainy, that she could say that the skies themselves wept for her father. They didn’t. They painted bright and amusing portraits across the sky in sheer defiance of what the day symbolized.
Vinyl had already arrived, surprisingly, opting for a cheap tux rather than a dress. She still managed to look rather dashing which, they both felt, was all that really mattered. Twilight and Octavia took their places in the cheap folding plastic chairs set up for the occasion.
Fortissimo Crescendo had not been a popular stallion, or a worldly one. He was distant and quiet and isolated. The proceedings was attended almost entirely by family who remained stoically quiet. Her mother, too, was flanked by a few friends on each side, but the number of attending ponies was still only about a dozen.
The eulogy was quick but respectful. There truly wasn’t much to say, which in itself was overwhelmingly saddening to the daughter of the deceased.
So to commend the body to the earth that bore him she played. She played the most wiltingly, hauntingly beautiful piece she and Twilight could come up with, a piece of subtle complexity.
So she played harder and more skilfully than she had in years.
It was the first time in a long time she had had her father in the audience.
It was the last time she’d be able to play for him, too.
She didn’t cry as she played.
She didn’t cry as, after a time, the audience began to leave.
She didn’t shed a single tear until Twilight and Vinyl, side by side, approached her and informed her it was time to leave. She was finished and it was time to stop playing.
She wept the whole time the pair escorted her home. She wept whilst Vinyl stayed so she wouldn’t be alone. She wept as Twilight gently placed the cello inside the apartment and left.
Then, in Vinyl’s arms, she cried herself to sleep.
“You’re early today.” It wasn’t an accusation, merely a statement of fact.
“Sorry, Twilove, I was just a little eager to start, today.” They had settled on the cutesy nicknames that had made Vinyl the most visibly nauseated. This, they felt, was as valid a method of pet-name selection as any other. Certainly one of the most rewarding.
“Calling me that already? Vinyl’s not even around, Octypus.” Twilight smirked in kind, boiling the kettle from the small study-room’s kitchenette as Octavia set up her instrument for the session. Tea made everything better.
“Ah, but it is Hearts and Hooves today, which I believe gives me a rather sweeping license to the saccharine and sickeningly sweet.”
“Yes, I do remember how you like your tea.”
“You tease merely because I cannot stand that bitter dreck you so generously call ‘coffee’.”
“To drink is equine, Octygon, to drink coffee, divine.”
“Yes, well. Twiangle.”
“Tavi-saurus.”
“Twi-light-of-my-life.”
“Roctavia.”
That did it. Octavia tried and tried but could not think of a sufficiently awful topper to... that. She admitted defeat in a way that came far too easily; she collapsed into her comfortable chair, straddling her cello, leaning on it in laughter.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Twilight breathed, giggling herself, “I had hoped that you’d lose on that one, I really can’t think of any more.”
“So, what have you composed for us today, mon petit chou-fleur?”
“You’re really hamming it up for the holiday, huh?”
“Yes, my dearest Twiangle, but you know you love it so.”
“I shall neither confirm nor deny that allegation.” Twilight declared with faux pomposity as she carried the drinks over accompanied by a little package by her side. It didn’t escape Octavia’s notice.
“Oh, what’s this? A present for me?”
“Well, I was going to wait until we started, but-”
“Let me guess; it’s a book?” It could have sounded like a barb, or an accusation, but it was merely an understanding of how Twilight’s unique mind worked... namely that if her marefriend was the best thing ever and books were a close second, well, logically books and her marefriend should reach unparalleled heights of excellence.
“Well, sort of. It’s a scrapbook! Of the last few months!”
“How oddly imprecise of you.”
“Well, I couldn’t work out if knowing we’ve been dating for three months, two weeks, six days and twenty two hours was creepy or romantic, so I didn’t want to... take... the risk...” Twilight trailed off, massaging the bridge of her nose with a hoof. “Wow, that was awfully thick of me.”
“Endearingly so.” Octavia agreed, delicately plucking the scrapbook from the air and sorting through it. Their first composition, their first spell, photos of their various dates... even the first note the musician had sent using earth pony magic, all sorted in chronological order.
“This is remarkably concise.”
“Well, if I thought of it as research into relationships, I had to take studious notes. So I did!” She beamed, “I thought it’d be better for you to have them, though. It’s not like I could possibly forget anything I’ve done with the best mare in the world.”
“Strange,” Octavia smiled wryly, “I thought you’d been spending all that time with me.”
“Funny that.” Twilight agreed. “So, not to be rude or anything, but did you get me anything?”
“Well, you do seem to quote poetry occasionally, so I thought I’d look into getting you a collection you didn’t already own.”
“Yes?” Twilight breathed, puffing up in excitement.
“I don’t think such a thing exists. At least, not for long.”
“Oh.” The unicorn deflated.
“But!” Octavia continued, “I did find something fascinating.”
“Well?” Twilight asked again, a bit more cautiously this time.
“‘To His Coy Mistress’ was the poem you mentioned, before my father’s funeral, isn’t it? I admit, the words stuck with me, struck a chord you might say, and I just couldn’t fathom why.”
“Oh.” Twilight said as Octavia watched with concealed amusement. Her beau turned significantly paled. “You noticed that.”
“Now let us sport us while we may; And now, like am'rous birds of prey” she quoted, noting Twilight’s eyes widening with each new damning syllable. “Correct?”
“I shall neither confirm nor deny that allegation.” She repeated.
“Twilight are you saying that you wish me to, as a mutual acquaintance of ours would so delicately and aptly put it, ‘rock your world?’”
“I mean... if you want.” Twilight ‘meeped’, “I mean, I don’t mind if you don’t want to. I like you for your brains, not your body, you know, even if I think you’re really, really pretty, and I’d like to do things to you... down there... but - if you’re not okay with that - that’s fine too, so - Mmmph?!”
Octavia had, noticing the rant was decidedly picking up steam as it got, well, steamier, decided that the most suitable course of action was to silence Twilight with a kiss.
So she did.
And it was glorious, all things told.
“We don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. I won’t be disappointed.” That was, frankly, a blatant lie, but the intent behind it wasn’t.
“So you’re saying you don’t want to then? Don’t you find me attractive in... that way?”
“What?! No, I-” Octavia took a shocked step back, looking at Twilight who appeared to be... giggling and smiling gently. “That was mean.” She scolded, though it was in the hurt tones of relief rather than genuine reprimand.
“And you were being dishonest.” Twilight countered.
“I was being tactful.”
“So, lying politely, then.”
“That appears to be the root of tact, yes.”
“Well, tact is stupid.”
“You’ve made note of this before.” Like over dinner with her parents. Or conversing with other ponies in her orchestra.
Fortunately Twilight was kind at heart, if blunt. Still, it was one of the few things about Twilight that irked Octavia.
Except - like now, for instance - when it was remarkably refreshing.
Twilight closed her eyes, scrunching them in obvious thought, and recited ”’It is an infantile superstition of the equine spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.’ Voltige said that, though I can’t for the life of me remember when, or where, he did.”
“So that’s a resounding yes to my gift for you, then?”
“Wait, what gift? I thought you said there wasn’t a poetry book that existed, that you could find, anyway.”
“Oh, no, Twilight.” Octavia walked with swaying hips and smouldering eyes to a Twilight that was powerless to its advances, “I’m giving myself to you.” She whispered into a soft, purple ear, which flicked appreciatively in response.
Twilight continued to not move.
“Mind.” Delicate nibble on the earlobe. “And body.” Fluttery kiss on the back, where the ear met skull.
Twilight continued to not move.
“Twilight?”
Twilight continued to not move.
Octavia took a step back. Twilight appeared to have been reduced to a mostly catatonic state, the only signs of life being that, well, she was still standing and, really, the incredibly goofy grin she sported.
“Twilight? Your thoughts are currently still inside your head, I’m afraid.”
“Yes.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Yes!” Twilight appeared to have started vibrating slightly, something which brought all manner of salacious and completely inappropriate images to mind for the amused onlooker.
“Ah.”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”
“I take that as a yes, then?”
“Yes!” Twilight agreed, pouncing on Octavia in a mostly-chaste hug, punctuated with a brief smooch - for, truly, it was not a kiss, nor a peck, but a proper, honest to goodness, smooch.
“So, would you like to start today’s session, then?” Octavia asked innocently enough, “I’m sure if you’re patient.-”
There was a primal, gutteral growl from Twilight’s throat, almost beastial. When Octavia blinked she was suddenly standing in... what appeared to be a meticulously ordered bedroom. Indeed, everything was rather nice, if spartan, and at perfect ninety degree angles to everything else.
There was no doubt in her mind to the location, or the meaning behind it.
“-I mean, we managed to get the messaging spell working! Proof of concept!”
Twilight stared at her hungrily for a long second before she glanced down at herself, frowning slightly. A draw opened nearby, Octavia catching it out of her periphery as she dare not look away from the spectacle before her, as the unicorn deftly slipped on four lacy pink socks.
Then surveying the result and deeming it good, she met Octavia’s gaze and stole her breath away in the process. The mare was forced to gasp to compensate, but she did not pant slightly. Oh, no, that would certainly not be refined, or dignified, no matter how... stunning... Twilight looked with the...
My...
They both leapt simultaneously, colliding almost in mid air hungrily, lips meeting passionately and legs wrapping around one another in a furious tangle, resulting in a desperate fight for balance.
The room became significantly less organized for the attempt.
The bed? Trashed.
Still...
Octavia couldn’t help but notice Twilight’s disappointment in the endeavour. Both were left panting as the adrenaline and hormones wore off, certainly, but Twilight certainly didn’t look satisfied.
“Twilight?”
No response. Twilight was in a category 2 funk, defined by its Deep Introspective Thoughts. Probably not a good sign.
“Twilight?”
“I’m sorry.” She whispered back. Now, that was curious.
“You’re sorry?” Octavia snuggled closer into the mare, nuzzling her reassuringly at the base of her jawline, a perfect location to allow for maximum loving encouragement whilst still allowing her to see if, even for a moment, Twilight’s lips would curl into a placated smile.
They didn’t.
‘It wouldn’t do to panic, we need to bolster her right now.’
“What could you possibly be sorry for, my wonderful Heart and Hoof?”
“I messed up.”
Ooh, now there was an icy dagger through her chest. Not what you want to hear from the pony whose virginity you had just taken.
“Do you...” Word choice, word choice, don’t sound pathetic, don’t sound maudlin, “regret... me?” Oh, buck it, there was absolutely no better way to ask that.
“That’s the exact opposite of the problem.” Twilight groaned. “I love you, so much, and I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted me to be perfect and I wasn’t.”
It was true the romping had been punctuated by the odd yelp, squeak and disappointed sigh, sure, but-
“You couldn’t possibly expect to be perfect on your first try, could you?”
Twilight stared back at her, deadpan. Octavia remembered who she was talking to.
“Twilight, that was fun. It just takes a little practice, learning each other’s rhythms, and you can’t get that without trying it, first.”
“But... but I read every book I could find on cunnilingus and-” she stopped as she noticed Octavia wince, flinching slightly in her embrace, “-what?”
“Just, please, my dearest, could you not use that word?”
“See? See? This is what I mean.” She slumped into the pillow, arms folded in front of her with a pout. It was almost cute, but the current context spoiled that somewhat, for Octavia. “I failed.”
“Failed? This wasn’t a test Twilight.”
“It’s worse! I can retake a test! I’ve never had to, before, but I could!”
“You’re still my Twiceratops. I’ll leave the jokes about the horns and their possible suffix up in the air, however. It’s not as if you can just try again, and I assure you the practice shan’t be too rough. Unless, I suppose, you ask very nicely.”
“Not like I could try again...” Twilight muttered, scarce so that Octavia could hear her.
But hear her she did, and that worried her.
“No time travel! Unless it somehow results in a menage-a-tois where I’m not cheating on you, it’s not worth it.”
“Can’t I just play with the fabric of space and time a little bit?”
“It will not end well, my sweet.”
“... darn it.”
“If it helps matters, you’re still the perfect snuggle buddy, study buddy.”
So, slightly sticky, but ultimately very much contented, Octavia went to pressed tight in her lover’s embrace and all was right with the world, for once.
Octavia awoke in a strange place to the sound of Twilight screaming. The cry forced all vestiges of sleepiness, all pretense of slumber, forcefully from her mind, ejecting it at roughly the speed of sound.
Shooting up with a jolt, feeling herself bounce slightly as the bed springs jumped in protest beneath her, she surveyed her surroundings.
Books, bookcases, large bed - Twilight’s bedroom, where I fell asleep after...
Oh. Right.
‘Feel wonderful about that later!’ A sensible part of her brain snapped.
Okay, okay, swirling bright light, Twilight on the floor beside the bed with gleaming, white, glowing, pupilless eyes - well, that’s the problem identified - surrounded by sheafs of note paper and... no...
No, in the dim light it only looked like note paper at a glance. They were paper napkins, some of them even collated and stapled together, covered in scrawls and doodles and formula, crumpled with age.
“Twilight?!”
The head snapped towards her, staring at her with those horrific, tortured eyes, mouth opened soundlessly in a scream that her lungs could no longer provide.
Don’t do something stupid and reckless, don’t do something stupid and-
Oh, bugger it all, it was too late for that the second she kissed the darn fool mare... that worked once.
She dove off the bed, rear hoof tangling in the sheets and sending her sprawling face first off the side. Still, she drew herself up and scrabbled furiously across the floor to Twilight, threw hooves around her neck and kissed her, hard and desperate like before and yet for such horribly different reasons, a perversity of what it had meant, then.
Her lips were hot and crackled with static but she pressed tighter and pressed on, eyes fastened shut, a lone tear rolling down her cheek.
The light burning through her eyelids simpered and died, the tense and rigid pony in her arms slackened, falling against and into her, panting furiously.
She was alive! She was alive, and okay!
Thwack!
Octavia fell backwards, burning pain in her cheek, jaw not quite settling into place. Above her were the furious, cold eyes of the pony she loved, and who loved her.
“Who are you and what in Tartarus are you doing in my bedroom?! What are you doing?!”
Scratch that.
Above her were the furious, cold eyes of the pony she had loved who no longer recognized her.
Her head rolled to the side in stunned shock. Her eye, the one not currently watering and blurred, rested on a napkin.
A napkin with a lovingly detailed sketch of a Magnetic Resonance Image of the equine brain on it.