A bastard sun broke through the guard of her blinds, seeking her sensitive eyes with unrelenting prejudice. She rolled in her bed, a matted form of grey undulating the covers as she attempted to escape the scouring arrays without avail; the beams of disapproval at her previous night’s indulgence reflecting directly off the most unlikely of surfaces, homing in on her flustered mug.
Oh Celestia, just this one day. Please, please leave me be!
But Celestia did not answer the tormented mare’s beckoned call on this day, nor had she on the day before, or the day before that.
Mumbling obscenities at nopony in particular, Octavia rolled out of her nest into a room unfit for a pony of her current affliction.
Everything was immaculately kept, her white desk against her white walls with white pencils parallel atop a stack of white paper. Octavia kept herself as she kept her room, well-maintained and aesthetically pleasing. It mattered not to her if she ended a night of drinking behind one of her regular bars sporting a disheveled mane and a stained bowtie. As long as she arrived with pride in her gait and a coat fresher than wet paint, she’d be satisfied with the sloppy happenings of a Canterlot evening.
Taking only a moment to start the electric kettle she kept in the washroom after shambling in, Octavia began her morning routine before steeping her cup of tea. Once warm to the touch and soothing to her parched mouth, she sipped the nectar that had never ceased to satisfy day in and day out for as long as she could remember. She brought forth a cascade of warm water and began to shower.
The mare, an outline of gray among a backdrop of porcelain, bathed in the company of her tea. Octavia massaged her mane from root to tip, taking careful consideration into each follicle as she had an unwarranted phobia of mare-patterned baldness. Taking a sip of Earl Grey between phases, she washed her coat, ridding herself of the relics of a past day’s adventure so she could become a Tabula Rasa to collect grime anew.
The shrill pitch of sliding steel marked the end of her relaxing shower as she turned the faucet. With grace and care, Octavia stepped over the edge of the shower as to avoid a most embarrassing accident. She began to dry herself, picking a separate towel for her mane, face, and coat from three separate racks on the wall. A white linen chased her dark mane around in circles as she tucked the corners neatly within itself. Octavia patted her face, carefully extracting what oil may have been left on her, and examined the towel with a smile of satisfaction upon seeing that the damp cloth was as pristine as it was prior.
It was about this time that the serene quiet was interrupted by a low gurgle from deep within her belly, longing to be satiated and filled.
A fog bowed beneath her as she opened the washroom door and turned into the kitchen where a usual sight immediately drew her eyes, a scrap of parchment with skewed calligraphy, partially smeared by long-evaporated liquid. She trotted towards it, a smile growing on her face as she took it in her hooves and began to read.
Octavia,
I made you breakf…. there’s a sandwich on…. Music Theory textbook, remember to study…. final today… cello practice… 6… Vinyl… cool mare.
Love,
Drunk Octavia
Receiving these letters was a near daily occurrence for Octavia ever since she discovered the joys of alcohol in her teenage years. Drunk Octavia attempted to chronicle her victories and confess her transgressions to the only mare she knew would understand. It came in handy quite often, as Drunk Octavia often took care of the chores around the house, finding it a much more enjoyable task to complete when realized that she’d have no recollection of it in the morning.
Octavia had even given life to her alter-ego by bestowing her a more formal name, Sterling Grey, a name derived from her late grandfather who had been well known among the elite of Canterlot as a well-meaning businesspony with an affinity for the sauce. Her grandfather even had a drink named after himself at a ritzy hotel bar in Manehattan aptly named “Papa’s Pantydroppers”. The recipe was a not-so-closely guarded secret among the hotel staff and the Grey family, two parts 98% distilled corn spirit and one drop of red food coloring. It was a humble drink that burned like sin, but there was a universal satisfaction that everypony felt upon shooting it, a sense of camaraderie shared among the countless hazy night the drink had brought.
Sterling was the guardian angel to a hungover Octavia. Sterling never failed to tell Octavia when she needed to be at the courthouse to contest a drunk and disorderly charge, to whom she needed to apologize to for a well-intentioned insult that’s sarcasm was ill-received, or a bar tab that she had not cleared the night before. Octavia never had a diary, even as a filly. Instead, Octavia filed away Sterling’s letters and added them to a scrapbook on rainy days. She was currently on volume six. There were only but a few ponies who knew Octavia by the name Sterling, most notably bad hookups and strange ponies in far-off towns.
Octavia came back to after realizing she had floated off to a quiet spot in her mind. She re-read the letter. The mare remembered the day’s occurrences with clarity, the usual song and dance of university life, but not too much after arriving at Neon’s apartment. Despite having a generous half of the letter obscured by what smelt like a late vintage pinot grigio, it seemed like a rather usual evening, with the exception of this ‘Vinyl’ Sterling had mentioned. Octavia didn’t bother herself with trying to remember, knowing full well and good that her endeavor would be met with futility. Instead, she was reminded by a rumbling bass in her stomach that she was indeed mortal, and sought after the sandwich prepared by Sterling in the most generous of intentions.
“Dammit Sterling, you just HAD to close it, didn’t you?”
No reply.
If her anxiety towards the situation at hoof didn’t overshadow all her cares of public persona Octavia may have felt embarrassed about muttering to a pony that wasn’t just not in her presence, but that didn’t really exist at all. Her mane may or may not have been still wrapped in a towel, but Octavia wouldn’t be the right pony to ask. Her eyes remained fixed in front of her, calculating the path of least resistance to the university library.
Sterling, with the best of intentions, had prepared several peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast and placed them on top of her music theory textbook, opened to the pages that she was be ruthlessly questioned on in her afternoon exam. In one of Sterling’s greatest shows of drunken logic, she had also closed the textbook to ward off staleness. In the nighttime, as Octavia trumped Sterling for control of her body, the jelly had seeped through the pages and stuck together an entire chapter in a sticky, stained mess.
Octavia’s only hope at this point was to waste no time in making her way to the university library where she hoped that a copy of her textbook remained available.
Pressures like this were an accepted part of the university mare’s life. To Octavia, every quiz was a pop quiz, every exam an exercise in bullshittery; and when it came to studying, Octavia could teach a washed up prostitute a few things about cramming. Octavia did not think of herself as the kind of mare to work well under pressure, she only worked under pressure.
But this felt different, there was an importance placed upon the exam by her overactive irrationality. Hallucinations of grades streamed through her field of vision, a half assed matrix composed only of zeroes. A semester of adequacy culminated with this day. It was do or die for Octavia, and she felt the weight of the world: not bearing upon her, but bursting out from within her.
She neared campus, crossing the final street, shuffling into a brief canter every other step. Octavia had fully surrendered to her hypnotic state, dancing around ponies who were coming and going, while following her angle of approach to the fraction of a degree. Ponies who stood idly in conversation, or lost in thought received a proper shoulder to the flank and a scoff in passing. The steel doors of the faux avant-garde structure opened towards her by the command of the motion sensor positioned in front of it.
Once inside, Octavia was almost intimidated by the unending stacks of books, organized in rows by a system she did not fully comprehend. Regardless, the mare cantered as she scanned the rows side to side, top to bottom, hoping to recognize the spine of the book that was burned into the back of her retinas by pure, searing desire. She passed row after row in this method with an all-seeing gaze, taking in everything that lay before her like a newborn foal looking out onto the world for the first time. As her eyes panned violently, she almost missed the green-spined text with purple lettering that mocked her in its innocuousness. She appeared in front of it with no recollection of even moving towards it, and seized the book. Octavia was hard pressed to let out a sigh of relief, even after having the first part of her errand come to fruition. This was only half the battle.
Her awareness of her position in the library placed her only a few steps away from the nearest armchair, which she claimed as if it were the highest peak in Equestia. The text had opened before her flank met leather, and Octavia was pouring over it, not seeing the individual words, but allowing the knowledge they represented to flow into her from their captivity within the pages. She sought patterns in their meaning, seeking similarities with what she already knew. Her trance deepened as she reached a zen-like state, fully consumed by her fear of failure.
Perfect darkness was what her eyes took in, leaving her no clues to her occupation in space and time. Silence was broken by five simple words that answered Vinyl’s unasked question.
“So, why didn’t you call?”
Magic pulsed in the air; a series of candles around the chamber came to life and illuminated a streak of electric blue obscuring her vision in their shadowy glow. A pair of eyes behind blues of their own stared from across the room, a glossy white in orbit of pupils the size of bits. They closed briefly while an exaggerated sniff broke another silence; the whites returned from behind their lids vigorously renewed. One lid opened beyond normality, and the other twitched violently about halfway up as if it were stuck. A surge of magical energy crackled and whirred in a deep bass. The candles sparked and grew grossly incandescent.
“BY… MY… MANE!!!”
Luna threw her head back as her mane chased it over in a glorious arc. Vinyl, no longer confused or edged, let loose a piercing cackle of unrequited laughter, taking no precautions in bracing herself as she doubled over onto the floor in a heap.
“SUBJECT!! THOU SHAN’T MOCK THE PRINCESS IN HER OWN CASTLE! CHECK. THINE. SELF.”
Fully illuminated now was the Princess of the Night maintaining only but a shred of her royal dignity as an accusatory hoof wavered in the air, pointing at Vinyl. A thin white line hung under the princess’s snout like a penciled in mustache. Vinyl, out of breath and grasping at her sides, redoubled her efforts to continue on laughing at the caricature before her.
“Luna…! Cut it out…! I-I can’t take it!” Vinyl pleaded between breaths as her belly pulsated from the painfully joyous outburst.
Luna looked to both sides nervously, and backed slightly as if in defeat, but her whole body quivered and a new train of thought came through before she pounced on Vinyl with playful intent. Vinyl looked up and saw a psychotic grin that defied whatever laws there are that state how large a grin could be. Vinyl was silenced in amusement and terror, and the room fell quiet once again, interrupted only by the sound of the DJ wiping a dribble of drool that had found its way downward to her brow.
“So, why didn’t you call?” Luna repeated, backing slowly off the frightened Vinyl as both mares regained some semblance of composure.
“Luna, I don’t have a phone.”
Luna’s expression shifted as a hoof greeted her forehead with an audible whomp. Vinyl put no more thought into it, but Luna’s cheeks flushed as she cataloged the legally incriminating, and downright bawdy messages some poor, random mare in the Canterlot directory named “Vinyl” must have received. She trotted across the room to receive her checkbook and stroked an integer with an irrelevant number of zeroes behind it to the payment of “Vinyl X---“.
“What are you doing Luna?” Vinyl asked with a mix of worry and hopefulness.
“I’m just writing a bribe sweetie. Taking out the trash is normal for some ponies, and this is very normal around the castle. You’ll learn that.”
The insinuation of Vinyl staying around the castle long enough to learn of the morality of bribery fell upon inattentive ears, she was now taking in the setting around her now lit with a blue-tinted aura. The room was large, to say the least. The bed that Luna was previously perched upon lay in the middle, an obnoxious purple centerpiece to the carousel decorum surrounding it. Shelves of various dark, muted hues lined the circular walls, topped with mementos and sentimental keepsakes from ponies most likely long forgotten by most, the shelving carved and detailed in elaborate fractals and swirls by the hooves of what must have been extraordinarily well-paid craftsponies and artists.
“Well, I suppose you received my letter at least… “
“Yeah, I w----“
“HUSH WHILE YOUR PRINCESS SPEAKS.” Luna boomed in a deep bass, swaying the candle’s flames gently under her command. “… Which is why you were summoned here.” Luna continued with a forced calmness.
“…”
“… You may speak, Vinyl.”
“I’m guessing you rigged the lineup then? Not that I don’t appreciate it…. but, I don’t want it, Luna”
Luna cocked her brow, “Pray tell.”
“Well there’s not much to pray tell,” Vinyl’s voice dripped with sarcasm at the statement before firming “it’s just too much to accept from a friend, and it’s beyond too much if it’s from someone more than a friend.”
Luna took a moment before speaking.
“It’s a good thing I may soon be something else entirely then, Vinyl. If you so choose.”
Vinyl’s facial expression became a stiff cocktail of confusion and intrigue.
“Allow me a tangent… Vinyl, how would you like to be my personal ever-so faithful student? All royal princesses pay our dues to the arts, such has been tradition for many years before your own. You may well know by name Celestia’s understudy Twilight, a student in the arts of magic. Or perhaps you have heard of Cadence’s new bimbo Ovid, whom she’s teaching the ways of the art of love, whatever that means. You and I are similar, Vinyl, and I’d like to take you in to further our studies of the magic of music. The matter was brought up after the latest conference on the Equestrian Conference for the Arts, and I volunteered to nominate you, though the committee was rather hesitant at first.” At this, Luna raised again the checkbook she had laid back on the desk and flopped it about in the air.
Vinyl reeled at this, it was simply too much to take at once. She had been transplanted from her home with one question, and that was the why behind all of this. Not the why behind Vinyl, so much was apparent in Luna’s near-obsession, but why was this happening? None of this made sense, and Luna’s illusory mysteriousness wasn’t doing Vinyl any favors. Her mind raced as conspiracies and malicious intents were concocted and dissected, but the randomness of the encounter placed any underlying logic into the realm of theory. Further, what could Luna even teach her about music? Luna couldn’t perform, and it would be outright madness to consider that there was anything the princess could offer beyond a monolithic Rolodex of musical contacts across Equestria and a rather large bank account, but there was something to be said for that in itself.
With Vinyl’s dead end in deliberation, silence reigned.
“Would you like me to explain?” Luna offered in a tone that only slightly suggested that she was coming down. Vinyl nodded.
“Well Vinyl, you’re naturally talented, but you’re damn sure not the best at whatever It is you do, to put it bluntly.”
Vinyl stared with a gaze so sharp it could cut glass.
“Your greatest resource right now is potential. Once that potential meets at harmony with your, rather boisterous personality, you’ll be huge. Think about it selfishly, you could no longer be playing nightclubs for ponies who wandered in by curiosity, but for ponies that traveled Equestria to see you. With hard work and dedication, as well with quite a bit of royal fanfare, you might have a shot at your destiny. I can see it in your dreams, Vinyl. You want that; but in addition to pursuing your visions of grandeur, you may also be able to further ponykind’s understanding of the magic of music.” Luna was staring psychotically at Vinyl now, her eye still twitching. As Luna took a step towards her, Vinyl took a half step away. “But you will need something worthy enough to dedicate yourself to.”
Vinyl, now backed into the wall, weighed the proposal. Dedication and hard work were things she had experimented with as a filly, but her experience was like tossing a stone into a pond and hoping for a tsunami of good fortune. She had been getting along just fine with her carefree floating through university, and she was happy with her life at the moment.
“You have an opportunity to seize your future on the account of the Royal Court, and perhaps even become a cornerstone for musical progress. Do you really even have to think about this?” asked a puzzled Luna, her voice carrying a condescending tone.
Vinyl felt something tugging deep inside, a shred of doubt that maybe the present wasn’t all that life had to offer. Perhaps it was time that she followed her dreams, and the door to possibility was a coked out princess who was currently muttering seemingly sagely advice a while buffing out a tiny discoloration on her desk.
“I-I’ll do it.”
Luna soared across the chamber towards the source of the tentative agreement.
“WON-derful, Vinyl. I really think you’ll enjoy Los Pegasus. However, I fear there are a few details about the trip we’ll need to discuss first.”
Vinyl’s ears perked up hesitantly.