//------------------------------//
// Epilogue - Joie de Vivre 
// Story: At Your Service 
// by Deyeaz 
//------------------------------//


Epilogue – Joie de Vivre




The return to Canterlot was emotionally excruciating.

        All they could do was wait in the Friendship Express for the next two hours until the locomotive arrived to their destination. Midnight’s only real option was to sit in the back of the train cars, smoking his lights with his head wide out the open window, far away from his friends. If they would ever let him call them that: Octavia had no slim desire to share the same cart with Midnight. Not after he had kissed her that night.

        It was that action that had decimated every one of her plans to romantically connect with Frédéric. It… irritated her! She had actually done a fair job in percolating such a procedure, even if it had been for an hour or more, so as to end up in Frédéric’s arms, to have him kiss her passionately underneath the flurry of colorful fireworks! Instead, that uppity cavedweller Midnight had to eviscerate her plans into oblivion by carting her away and… orally violating her!

Frédéric himself was heavily confounded by what Midnight had done, having presumed Midnight was too humble to kiss Octavia behind everypony’s backs. Simultaneously, however, there was no denying that he thought Octavia had overreacted. He never expected a distinguished, well-composed mare to slam the panic button like she did when Midnight had kissed her. He knew that he was in love with her; as was Frédéric. Yet, this side of her he had never seen before… it irked him. He was torn between going to comfort the pony he loved, and the friend he cared for.

Vinyl herself was also cleaved in twain by such desires. Octavia had reported the scribe’s actions to her, as well as her disgusted opinions about the experience, all of last night. Vinyl did her best to emit as much empathy as possible for her best friend. After all, she’s had days where she had witnessed her previous crushes trading spittle with some overly-busty, yet skeletally-thin bimbo. But after about fifteen minutes, Vinyl had grown annoyed by the ranting. She ought to have told Octavia off for devastating Midnight, for leaving him behind to wallow in misery.

But as the old quote goes, those with the important issues on their mind won’t speak up, whilst those with trivial matters won’t shut up.

        The two hours that seemed to stretch onwards into an oblivious eternity had finally come to a screeching halt with the train’s pistons and wheels, as they arrived at long last in Canterlot Station. The instant the doors hissed open was when Octavia and the others stormed off the locomotive with their luggage, Midnight trailing weakly behind them. 

        Frédéric kept looking back at the downtrodden Sarosian. Midnight looked to his pianist friend with hope, vainly praying that Frédéric would swoop in and rescue him from this pit he had burrowed himself into. “Come along, now, Frédéric, darling,” commanded Octavia briskly, picking up speed. Frédéric only shook his head, leaving the scribe to hang his own once more. 

        All Midnight was capable of doing was drowning in his guilt.

        The four would go their separate ways, three of them for Vinyl and Octavia’s home, one of them for Midnight’s towering abode. Midnight teleported into the room with his suitcase, eagerly tackling his bed in an oddly-compatible mesh of anger and melancholy. The weight of Jericho jumping on top of him, excited to see his master and best friend return, no longer lightened his mood.

        “This is why you should listen to me,” clamored his brain. “Your heart is stupid as shit.”

        “Oh, put a blood clot in it, you jackass,” grumbled his damaged heart. “I never expected this to happen, alright?”

        “Of course you didn’t! You act on impulse, with neither fear nor recognition of the consequences whatsoever.”

        “Oh, and because you overanalyze things to death, you’re suddenly the superior organ in this podunk body?”

        “Yes, dipstick. I’m the reason this ‘podunk body’ has survived your reckless antics long enough in his life to use the bathroom, let alone compute thoughts and responses at a mile a minute.”

“Ugh….” groaned an exasperated Midnight into his pillow, wishing the two vital organs keeping him alive and well would stop working.


~


        Octavia could only gaze up at the ceiling the next noon as she lay on the couch in her living room. Yesterday, she had been filled with animosity. It almost seemed to be pouring out of her ears, the way she even refused to acknowledge Midnight’s presence. She had gone to the Princesses, as she had threateningly promised, to have Midnight removed from his exclusive community service sentence. She was rather elated to hear the sound of Princess Luna shredding the contract dictating Midnight’s punishment to pieces. She wouldn’t have to put up with him again.

        Her elation soon vanished when Princess Luna had explained that Octavia’s desire to have Midnight removed from his job was not her call: Princess Celestia had hired him in the first place, so the outcome of his fate rested on the solar deity’s shoulders.

        She ought to be glad that he was no longer going to be in her presence again. Still, she didn’t find any joy in her solitude.

        Vinyl had her final exams today, no doubt whittling away at her three-hour torture-sessions in Computer Algorithms and Advanced Music Composition. Frédéric had to help one of the Canterlot Quartet’s members, Silver Strings, with her instrument. Apparently, her violin required proper tuning, as the sound it was currently making was as soothing as a saw buzzing through sheets of metal. 

        Without anypony to entertain her, keep her busy, or at least make small talk with her, she was slowly circling the drain of boredom.

        I know, she deduced, snapping from the monotony of her current ceiling-staring routine. I’ll play my cello. It no doubt has to help alleviate this dull atmosphere, right?

        She returned from her room moments later, sitting down in a chair from the kitchen table, the weighty instrument propped against her knee, her fingers curled gingerly along the strings on the cello’s neck. She held her maple bow high, poised to summon forth musical prowess.

        Out came forth low, eloquent notes, reverberating along the walls of her apartment. She was gradually melting into her music, relinquishing her iron-clad grip on her current qualms.

        *TWANG!*

Octavia’s heart stopped for a fraction of a second, as a recognizable sound shattered her concentration. “Oh, no. No, no, no!” She glared at the bow in her hands with apprehension, the traditional horsehair connected from end to end severed somewhere in the middle. “Damn!” she swore. It was the bow that her mother had given her when she had first earned her Cutie Mark. It can’t have snapped from measly wear and tear! It was coated with a very durable wax!

She examined the bow’s horsehair further. It wasn’t at all a rough cut one would expect from objects damaged over time. The laceration was clean, straight, deliberate.

She would have blamed it on Vinyl, on the off-chance that this was a practical joke. Yet Vinyl had not moved from her seat on the Friendship Express. Moreover, Octavia’s light sleeping would have been interrupted by the DJ thumping about in the middle of the night to perform her grand scheme.

She instead immediately turned her blame’s ugly, voracious head towards Midnight. He had magic far more advanced than Vinyl: he could have damaged her instrument without any of them knowing it. “That bastard… he’ll regret this!”


~


Midnight shivered.

“Oh, dear,” he muttered, his eyes diverted from his work for a fraction of a second. Spread out before him was an unwelcome plethora of documents to read, bills and taxes to pay, letters to the Princesses to answer/discard, spells and historical works written in archaic, dead languages that he could translate. The last month of inactivity had meant that the workload had intensified. Four hours of dedicated focus, and not even in a tenth of his paperwork was completed. “This is gonna kill me, isn’t it, Jericho?”

        “Eeh….” sighed a bored Jericho, the monkey playing with a tennis ball to cope with said boredom. A few abrupt thumps at the door threw them out of their stupors. Midnight actually smiled a bit, relieved that he could take some form of a break from his work. He made his way to the door, slipping on pajama pants so as to be at least a bit presentable.

        “Who could that be?” he murmured, opening the door to reveal– “Oh. It’s you.” Octavia stood at the entrance, arms crossed in a constricting manner across her bosom, tapping her hoof lightly as she leered at Midnight. “What next? You gonna murder me in my own home?”

        “Did you destroy my bow?”The mare presented her broken cello bow to Midnight.

        “No,” Midnight snapped, the sight of Octavia tormenting him. The agony in his heart could only grow more and more unbearable, as he unwillingly reminisced the hateful words she had spewed at him, two nights ago.

He proceeded to close the door behind him. It, however, was held fast by Octavia’s hoof planted firmly in its path. 

        “Don’t lie to me,” she warned.

        “I swear to you, I have no honest clue as to why it broke.” Maybe your lumberjack-like arms put too much force and broke the damn thing, thought Midnight with cruelty. This time, he no longer berated himself for thinking such a harsh thought.

He then noticed that the cut on her bow was clean as a whistle. The chances of its breaking being an accident were slim to none. “Lemme see it?” he asked, intrigued by the anomaly.

“Why, so that you could possibly do more damage to it?” Octavia asked angrily. The bow was soon enveloped in a corona of lime-green magic, and yanked from her grip. “Hey!”

“Shut up for a bit,” he said simply, walking back inside his house towards the couch. A bottle of scotch sat there on the coffee table with a blue tumbler glass. Taking off his glasses, he poured the amber liquid into the glass as he set the bow onto the table.

“Excus–!”

“Omigoooods, you’re so annoyiiiing!” he whined, Octavia’s shrill tone making it difficult for him to concentrate on the matter at hand. The sudden exclamation left her dumbfounded, resulting in the quiet that he requested. “What’s the length of the string?” he asked, taking a swig of his drink, the alcohol searing the back of his throat as it sloshed down his gullet.

He got nothing but mumbling out of her. “I’m pretty sure one sip of scotch doesn’t result in hearing loss,” he said snarkily.

“It is a four-fourths...” she answered skeptically.

Okay. A four-fourths... Measure the length of the bow in inches… twenty-eight. Length, width, height… twenty-five by two-thirds by one-sixteenths. “Get me some scissors, please?” 

“What are you doing?” Octavia asked, returning with a pair of sharp shears. He removed them from her grip with his magic, his hand occupied with his tail hair. He tried to separate the necessary bundles of hair to fit the previous bowstring’s proportions, yet each handful of his ivory locks didn’t feel right to him. He grabbed his tail and held it taut, wincing from the tugging sensation. “Wait!”

*SSSNIP*

The long mass of his tail, severed from its roots, fell quietly to the ground. He grabbed a small tuft of it and straightened it out, measuring out the dimensions before clipping away at it to let it resemble the previous bowstring’s former glory. He carefully disassembled the bow, discarding the old string, and replacing it with his tail hair. He recombobulated the bow and returned it to Octavia, who could only accept it in silence.

She held it in the dim light of the living room. It reflected off the shiny, sleek surface of Midnight’s hair, almost mirror-like as she examined how taut, how orderly the thick mass of fibers were inside her bow. “Why did you do that?” she finally blurted out. “Whilst drinking, no less?

“Because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t stop pestering me while I worked,” Midnight simply answered, reaching for his wallet on the table. “And besides, why do you care if I like to marinate my liver in alcohol?” He pulled out a hundred-Bit note, offering it to Octavia. “Buy some of that reinforcing wax that your old bowstring had. Keep the change.”

Octavia was beginning to feel... guilty? Was that the emotion that was ravaging through her, like molten lava through a helpless little village? She clutched her heart in shame as Midnight looked down at her. As though she had done something unforgivable.

And she realized she had. She ought to have picked a more sensitive way to tell Midnight that she didn’t love him. She blamed it all on the pique of the moment, where she was ecstatic at the very prospect of giving her heart to Frédéric, and he had unknowingly foiled her plans. She was slowly coming to terms with the fact that perhaps she had flown off the handle there.

Wait… why is this happening? I shouldn’t be wallowing in this godsforsaken anguish and regret! she internally argued. But despite her mental reprimandations, the stigma that plagued her refused to leave. “... I can’t. It would be insulting and crude for me to accept your money. I had just finished robbing you of your tail... and your dignity,” she said in dejection.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry,” he insisted, placing the bill in her hand and clamping her fingers around it tightly. He repressed as much timidity as he could, denying it to reveal itself on his face. Don’t you dare show an ounce of emotion, you bastard. “Now, get out. I have work to do.” Atta boy.

“Very well, then,” she concluded, heading for the exit. “Oh, and Midnight?” The stallion craned his neck to look at Octavia, who gave a humble little bow and said, “Thank you.”

The door closed behind her. Midnight released a breath he didn’t know he was holding in, letting his cheeks flood with color. It certainly wasn’t from the scotch: he knew his limits.

“Well, back to work,” he said begrudgedly, taking the remnants of his tail hair and chucking them in the bin. The remainder of his tail was short, and ended in a frayed point, much like an artist’s well-used paintbrush. He wiggled his rear’s appendage to clear it of any loose strands. “Eh… it’s an okay cut….” 

        Going back upstairs to his room, he returned to his desk, sorting through some of the letters now. “Luna, Celestia, Celestia, Twilight, Luna, Twilight, Cadence? She doesn’t even live here….” He chucked that last one aside. “Celestia, Celestia, Celestia…oh? One for me?”

        Indeed so. It was a bamboo-green envelope, stamped yet lacking in an address or sender name. Only a letter addressed to “Midnight Oil” with letters cut out from magazines and newspapers… “Odd. I don’t know any extortionists issuing ransoms,” he joked as he slit it open with a butterfly knife to read it.

        In the end, he wish he hadn’t even touched it.

        The whole print was a death threat. All of the words were arranged from magazine letter-cutouts. “Rumor has it that you had your filthy way with Octavia Philharmonica,” began the anonymous letter. “You disgusting animal. Leave this city if you know what’s good for you.”

        “Oh boy. Had my way with her?” said Midnight, slightly nervous about this breaking news. He balled up that letter and tossed it in the wastebasket. He pulled another envelope from the pile, this one also anonymously addressed to him. “Another?”

        Reluctantly opening this one, he spread the folds of the letter’s contents wide open. Midnight gulped at the word “NIGHTCRAWLER”  that was thumb-drawn in what looked eerily like blood. A curious smell reached his nose. The smell of laundry detergent. He gave the letter’s red inking a precarious whiff, the scent of ammonia ramming through his nostrils. No way could this be traced back.

        “Oh dear,” he said in simple horror.


~


        One day had gone by.

        Then another.

        And another.

        Before anyone had realized it, it was already the morning of the tenth of June, a week after Midnight and company’s return from Hoofghanistan. Every day since then, the Sarosian did nothing but chip away at his month’s worth of mountainous paperwork, all the while coping with the hate letters regarding him and Octavia being an item. He was thankful that he could start a bonfire for all of it on his balcony.

        His gratefulness for such primitive ingenuity was punctured like a balloon full of air when something had struck him in the side of the head. “OW!” He bellowed, clutching the spot next to his temple where the pain radiated. The object in question was a small, gray stone speckled with red: it had drawn blood on impact. He shook his head to clear it of the stunning blunt-trauma aftereffect. “What the…” Unless somepony had both godlike accuracy and a very powerful slingshot, the stone he repeatedly turned in his hand shouldn’t have been able to land its shot.

        Tied to the stone was a note. “There’s more,” it read.

        He really was wondering if Octavia had some sort of underground, secret fanclub that considered anything intimate with her as a sacrilegious act against the gods.

        That was when a horrific oracle hit him as hard as the rock in his grip had. He really was being threatened out of his home by this troupe of terrorists. He shuddered at the thought, unwilling to leave the home he had started here. He enjoyed the life that he had molded with his bare hands, had fought tooth and nail for. He liked working for the Princesses. He found the city wonderfully charming, even if the cityfolk were less than that.

        But, he hung his head low in sorrow. That was just it. The cityfolk. While he may not have done anything to infuriate the citizens of Canterlot, they still didn’t take kindly to half-breeds like him. The friends he had made may not want him around anymore: Vinyl and Frédéric never even called him, let alone come by to visit. The two guards he had befriended, Cirrus Storm and Scorch Shot, were probably too busy with their duties to pay half a mind to him. And Octavia…

        It was all he could do to not drown in further misery as he remembered her last visit here. He didn’t like this situation in the slightest, to be dangled horrifically over such a deadly pit. He especially didn’t like these fight or flight choices that circumstance had cursed him with. He could cut himself free, leave. Move somewhere new, have a different job. Or he could linger here, despite what drastic consequences would come stampeding his way.

        He was smart. He knew the obvious choice.

        He laid out the last of his business receipts, added them up, and wrote them off before scuttling away to a little closet beside his computer desk. Inside were two suitcases. He withdrew them from the closet and laid them down flat on the ground.

        “Jericho…” he called. “Let’s pack our stuff up. I’m giving my two-weeks notice to Princess Celestia.”

        The chimp came upstairs from the kitchen, peering at Midnight with sad eyes. “Eeh oh ah?” Why’re we leaving?

        “It’s… it’s no longer safe here, champ.”

        “Eeh?” Why? Midnight could feel his heart break at the chimp’s pained questions. He could tell Jericho liked it here. He knew that it would be difficult for him to adapt to life in a new city: the monkey was only three years old, in equine years.

        “Because… if we stay here any longer… well, you know how not a lot of ponies here even like me? You or I could get hurt. Badly, you know?”

        Jericho shook his head angrily, and chirped back his response. That’s not true! Vinyl likes you! Freddy likes you! Octavia likes you! Cirrus, Scorch, the Princesses! Don’t they like you?!

        Midnight bit his lip, doing all in his power to keep from crying. He wanted to believe his primate companion. He truly did. But after hearing the monkey shriek for an explanation, he could no longer resist breaking down. “I wish that were true, buddy.” He could only hug Jericho tightly, emerald eyes gushing torrents of saline onto the monkey’s head.

He was alone again, drifting once more in painful solitude through the universe. Even if he had been friends with Octavia, Vinyl, Frédéric, Cirrus Storm, and Scorch Shot for only a month, he would have been easily fooled into believing that it had been for eons.


~


Unbeknownst to him, he wasn’t alone in his melancholy. Octavia herself felt a strange absence as of late. It was uncomfortable to witness such an uninhabited hole in life. 

She had realized it on her walk to the supermarket, two weeks later. They had run out of Itailian spices for a new recipe Octavia wanted to test drive. At least, that was what she had told Vinyl over the phone. In reality, she wanted to find some new form of coping with her unbearable ennui. She had pulled up out of the door with her items in her arms, mind racing with what she could do next.

However, due to her lack of attention, she didn’t notice the pony she collided with. Chills bombarding her spine as déjà vu began to rear its head: the place of collision, the evening dusk hanging over the air. Her heart actually skipped a beat at who she thought it could be.

“Mid–?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, ma’am!” said a store clerk, offering his hand to her. “Are you alright?”

Just like that, her voice died in her throat as she feebly took his hand and rose to her hooves. She accepted his apology and proceeded to pick up her fallen groceries, crestfallen by the sudden turn of events.

She missed Midnight.

The first two days after their return, she didn’t care what he did, whether he lived or died. It was already three weeks, and she was feeling the bitter sting of his absence. She missed him, indeed. She missed his wacky antics, wiseacre attitude, brilliant aura, friendly glow. Maybe the reason why she was so quick to accuse him of destroying her cello’s bowstring was because she wanted to at least get to see him, if only for a moment.

It certainly wasn’t a pleasant visit for either of them. If she was feeling awful, Celestia knows what Midnight’s probably undergoing.

All she could do was return home, the whispering of the pedestrians haunting her on her sojourn back.

“That’s her, right?”

“Did she really let that nightcrawler kiss her? How deplorable.”

“Her parents would be infuriated if they heard this.”

She really ought to have not told Frédéric on the train in the first place. Eavesdropping has become a big practice for gossip extraordinaires.

Octavia made her way into her apartment, turning the key in the lock and pushing her room door ajar with her rear. “Hey, Tavi,” greeted Vinyl, the alabaster mare curled up in the armchair with a comic book in her grasp. She planted the groceries on the counter and slumped onto the couch. She sighed, as she then remembered to test the new bowstring for her cello.

She found it still leaning against the kitchen table, placed there as though begging to be played. She sat on a chair, instrument propped against her knee, bow in hand and eager to give birth to musical beauty.

Midnight’s white hairs worked just as well as her previous bowstring. The thick chords, properly tightened and treated carefully with resilient wax, almost seemed to dance with the wires of her cello that her fingers so lovingly tensed and teased, each exuded note as gorgeous as the last. She was melting into the music, the hauntingly-beautiful orchestra filling the room and echoing off the walls. She felt euphoria enter her bleak life again. The smile creeping on her lips was no longer a forced one.

She pulled her bow away from her cello, signaling the end of her performance. “That was… amazing,” declared Vinyl, stunned by how it gave even her chills.

“Thank you, Vinyl, dear.” Octavia’s grin still lingered as she gazed in earnest at the bow, examining the ivory strings with care, like a mother would her babe. “Listen, Vinyl. I have something I feel I must discuss with you.”

“Alright, then, pal. Fire away,” said the unicorn, diverting her sunglass-shaded eyes to peer through them at her friend. 

“Well… is it odd that I… miss Midnight?” She put down the bow and cello cautiously. 

Vinyl removed her sunglasses, the grape-colored tint making way for her ruby-red eyes. “Well, don’t you?”

“I… suppose.”

“You suppose?” Vinyl slowly became enveloped in her own skepticism. “You haven’t seen him in three weeks, and the last thing he did before he shut us out was chop off his tail for you. You’d be on crack if you didn’t miss him.”

Octavia felt both shocked and downtrodden, staring at Vinyl as though she had insulted her ancestors. “What’s that supposed to mean, might I ask?”

“Tavi, face it.” Vinyl sat up straight to glare sternly at Octavia. “You’re probably one of the first few ponies that he has ever even remotely gotten close to on a romantic level. He felt like he had developed some small inkling of hope that he could have a relationship with you, and you threw it in his face within seconds. You didn’t break his heart that night: you destroyed it.”

There was another emotion bubbling and frothing inside Octavia: anger. “Oh, and I presume the way he rejected you was such a wondrous celebration?” she asked coldly.

“At least he didn’t make me feel like shit afterwards!” barked Vinyl, not at all pleased with the tone her friend was copping. “What kind of pony makes a grown-ass man cry like that?” The silence that left Octavia’s mouth gave Vinyl’s argument more wiggle room to expand and strengthen itself. “Now, I understand that you like Frédéric a lot. But honestly, a year of obsessing over the same stallion who won’t even really look your way is outright pathetic! Move! On! Because all I see, right now, is a spoiled rich brat who thinks that stallions will bend over backwards in her presence!”

“Shut your damn mouth, you trollop!” cried Octavia, refusing to stand for such boorish accusations.

“Make me!” hollered Vinyl.

“I don’t make trash, I burn it!”

*WHACK*

Vinyl withdrew her left fist, knuckles stinging from the pain of launching a haymaker into Octavia’s face. A 125-pound cellist who had not been in a fisticuffs battle in her whole life, up against a 140-pound DJ who has had more than her fair share of scuffles growing up, had the same winning odds as a kitten had to a wolverine. Octavia dropped into her chair, stunned beyond all reason as her right cheek began to emit screeching pain. She screeched with it, the sensation unreal to her. “You... bitch! You hit me!” she stammered in fearful rage.

“Damn straight.” Vinyl shook her hand to try and vanquish the anguish that lingered from the punch. “Your parents might not have done it to you as a kid, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from a good ass-kicking now.” She then went to the kitchen and pulled out a bag of frozen peas from the freezer. She tossed the frigid bag of veggies to Octavia, who gingerly put it to her face. “This will make sure it doesn’t swell. Take it on and off every fifteen minutes for the next day or two, you’ll be just fine.”

“Owowowowow…” she blubbered, assuring that the peas covered the affected area, the sharp chill soothing to her bruises. “Thank you. That was… that was quite a punch.”

“Yeah, well. When you’ve got ugly creeps trying to fondle you while you’re behind the turntables, you oughta show them what’s what.” Vinyl casually blew some nonexistent dust from her left fist. “I never really expected you to say such a crazy comeback like that. Who taught you that? Midnight? ‘Cause it sure as hay wasn’t me.”

“Haven’t the foggiest. Maybe his… cantankerous wit rubbed off on me.”

“I’ll say.” Vinyl rubbed the back of her head. “I’m sorry I clocked you like that.”

“And I’m sorry I got testy with you in the first place.” Octavia grinned weakly at her friend, who gave her a warm hug in return. It was in the middle of the embrace that she remembered something rather crucial, and relative to their argument. “I’ll just clear out and head to my room, shall I?”

Octavia entered her room, and pulled out a narrow case from beneath her bed. She flipped the top open and looked at the dazzling rose that rested in its plush cushions. The rose that Galaxy had entrusted her with to make the right choice. “Endurance of Beauty,” she breathed.

Octavia plucked it from out of the case, ever-so-cautious with it should it ever shrivel to dust. She closed her eyes. She thought long and hard about Frédéric Horseshoepin. She focused on every aspect of him. His tall stature, his soft chocolate-colored fur, his sandy hair, his chartreuse eyes, his charming disposition, his sweet words, all the handshakes and hugs that she had shared with him. She adored every single one of his features.

The warmth he emitted.

The mesmerizing music he made.

He was a pure gentlecolt, through and through.

She opened her eyes. The rose did not falter. It neither intensified in radiance, nor did it wither in her grip.

Octavia closed her eyes again. She visualized Midnight Oil in her head. The ash-gray fur. The emerald-green eyes with daggerlike pupils. The white locks of his lengthy mane. His in-your-face attitude, his witty retorts, his extreme intelligence. His caring nature. His patience. His sensitivity. His thoughtful, loving, intricately-spun words. She reminisced on how it felt when he had kissed her. It was a little unnerving, but she still stuck with it. He wasn’t the greatest kisser. Not by a long shot. But she had no doubt in her mind that there are worse.

It was a little dry, almost like she was kissing a cactus.

But warm, as though the Sun’s gentle rays were dancing along her lips.

As a matter of fact, he was the first one to ever really kiss me in such a way….

She shuffled nervously on her bed at the memory, her cheeks searing something awful. She opened her eyes.

Nothing.

“Hmm?” She looked at the mysterious rose in curiosity. It looked and felt real in her fingers. Something should have happened, no doubt.. She put the rose back down in the case, bewildered by this development. She noticed a rolled-up piece of paper in the mold of the cushions. “Oh, what’s this now?” She removed the paper and unfurled it.

It was a note from Galaxy.



Dear Octavia,

You silly fool. Did you really believe that I would entrust you with a very dear treasure of mine that my husband raced to the ends of Equestria to get? I merely planted a fake in your bag. 

Now, do not believe that I am telling you this because I think that you are very naïve or crazy. But please, understand this. You do not need a materialistic object to convey an intangible emotion. Whomever you love, be it that Frédéric fellow, my son Midnight, or some other random bloke, I welcome it. Go with your gut feeling. That is why it is called “falling in love” with somepony. They will either catch you, or laugh as you hit the ground.

Love,
                ~Galaxy

P.S.: your Equuish language is very annoying. I had Night Glider and Star Hopper properly convey my thoughts in this message, big words and all.



        Octavia shifted view from the note, to the flower. Back to the note. She stifled her laughter at the letter and fake rose, rather amused by how well she had been played. She can be several thousand miles away and still play a role in my life, she mused. She then remembered the severe pain that Vinyl had issued to her face, making it hard for her to really crack a smile. “Ow!”

        Octavia sighed as she mulled over both Galaxy’s message, and Vinyl’s furious words. It had been a year since she had fallen in love with Frédéric. She was patient, for twelve months, in the hopes that the stallion of her dreams would reciprocate her desires of love. But nothing had happened. He no doubt had to be oblivious. That, or worse—he was in love with somepony else. 

He did seem to be hitting it off with violinist Silver Strings quite well….

No, no, no! Don’t jump to conclusions like that! It felt off for her to immediately hurdle toward a hasty generalization such as that one. Already, she was spiraling into doubt and fear about who was doing what. 

She noticed something written on the back of the note Galaxy had inscribed.

        

“If you love somepony, let them go. For if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.” —Khalil Gibrony



        She sighed once more, examining the quote that broke the shell that enclosed her understanding. She remembered the day in Donut Joe’s doughnut parlor, how Midnight had not only defended his honor, but hers and Vinyl’s as well. He knew he had a chance of losing, but he still did it. It was a crime that would have gone unaddressed otherwise. 

She remembered that he had actually taken the time to get to know her much better than prior their trip to Hoofghanistan. He wanted to know what she liked, disliked, her hobbies, her past. She had, of course, told Frédéric these details, yet the difference being that Midnight had asked, while she had just prattled to Frédéric.

        She gave the options much thought, the numbing cold of the bag of peas helping her concentrate heavily on the matter.

        …

        …

        …

        “Vinyl, I’m heading out,” she said, her decision made. She analyzed her clothes in the mirror. She believed to be overdressed, for once. The dark tuxedo pants and vest, and pink bowtie seemed to be too prominent for her in that moment. She stripped herself of such confining clothing, yet felt like the casual outfit she had been planning to equip was not in her repertoire. “Can I borrow some clothes, please?”

        “Knock yourself out!” Vinyl cried back.

        “You already did!” she joked, earning a hearty laugh from her fellow mare. She then came out in black sweatpants, a red tank top, and a white zip-up hoodie with green trim. “Thank you very much. I will see you soon.”

        “Sure thing, Tavi. Take care.” Octavia closed the door behind her, left the complex, and made her way to the castle. She had a pair of cheap earbuds plugged in to her phone, gracing her eardrums with Trottschalk and Ólafur Arnalds. It did more than make her impervious to the leers and mumbling of the ponyfolk.

        If only for an instant, she could at least look like she had had stopped giving a care for their high standards on what the proper pony ought to be.

        Her heart thumped slightly as she made her way to the castle. She made a small beeline for a very familiar tower. No real plan in mind, no faint inkling of what to really do. Climbing up the hundred meters of stairs to Midnight’s home was no easy task, yet she felt it was a task worth accomplishing. She reached the top, knocking on the door fervently. She could hear the faint sound of shuffling hooves and stammering. She waited for the door to swing ajar.

        “Oh, hey,” Midnight greeted, standing there rather anxiously in a pair of jeans and a lavender button-up. He found Octavia’s new attire a pleasant surprise from the hubbub going on in his house at the moment.

        “Hello,” Octavia returned. “May I come in?”

        “...I don’t know. It’s… a bit of a bad time.”

        “Well, surely a few minutes can’t hurt?”

        Midnight took a deep breath. “Yeah, alright. Come on in.” He made way for her. She entered to see Jericho speed towards her, jumping in her arms and hugging her tightly. Returning the gesture, she noticed the two suitcases that were filled to their brims and sealed with deadbolts.

“What, eh… what’s happening?” she asked curiously. Midnight didn’t answer her. He looked at the ground, ashamed, twirling a hoof into the carpet. He refused to meet her eyes. Her concern spawned forth nervousness. “Are… are you leaving?” she then asked, a bit of fear in her voice. He nodded after a fair minute’s silence. “Where to?”

“Horseattle,” he finally said. “Got a deal for a nice little house there. Train will be here tomorrow morning at eight.”

Octavia could feel a solid mass coagulating in her throat. She swallowed it away. “Will you… be back home, at least?”

Midnight tilted his head. She seemed to be rather caring as of late. He ought to be grateful, yet he was intrigued. Still, he better answer the question… despite his lack of desire to. “No.” He sat down on the couch, his tumbler glass no longer filled with scotch. He offered the seat next to him to Octavia, which she accepted. “It is no longer safe here for me… so I have to leave.”

“Midnight, dear, you don’t have to do anything,” argued Octavia, keeping herself well composed externally. On the inside, however, she was severely hurt by her friend’s urge to depart and leave her be. "I assure you, you can stay here as long as you want."

“And keep having more death threats and hate mail at my doorstep? I can’t even step outside without looking over my shoulder for somepony with a lead pipe or a knife.” He was genuinely afraid. He was afraid for himself, and his pet. “I already turned in my two weeks notice to Princess Celestia. She gave me a recommendation to go into private investigation, which is a completely different field than the one I’m in now. As of today, I no longer work for her. So, please try to understand. I am stressed beyond all logical explanation, and I've finally become terrified of living here. I don’t belong here. I never have, and I never will.”

“That’s not true.” Octavia could feel her eyes slowly burning, tears threatening to leak. She couldn’t believe it. It had to be some sort of cruel gesture by the gods themselves. Surely, she would wake up in her bed, and it would all be some bizarre, tormenting nightmare. “That’s not true at all. You belong here. With the Princesses, with Frédéric, with Vinyl, with me!” 

But there was no blanket being thrown up in the air in shock.

There were no cold sweats and fearful state of mind that would follow this horrendous "nightmare."

“Octavia.” He slipped a hand underneath her chin. She shivered at his touch, yet out of surprise rather than disgust. “I can’t throw you under this… steamroller with me. If I stay here with all of you, I’ll just bring shame and danger to you, to Frédéric, to Vinyl, to all my friends here. The Princesses even get flak from some of the other countries about why they hired a Sarosian as their scribe, their assistant, their personal freakin’ recordskeeper.” Midnight sighed, percolating his next words. “I’m a liability to you guys, now that these threats are getting more intense. If any of you get caught up in the crossfire, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“I don’t care.” She shook her head profusely, wiping the tears that clung to her eyelashes. She peered intently into his emerald irises, her pulse starting to quicken. “You… could never bring me shame, Midnight.”

Midnight’s heart began accelerating in his chest as she went to hug him, the embrace a long-lasting, tender one. He would miss the smell of magnolias she gave off, the feel of her arms wrapped around him. She pulled away as the first sounds of rain began to pitter-patter against the windows of the living room, the thick quilt of clouds shielding the night sky from the earth. 

If you love somepony, let them go. For if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.

...a year of obsessing over the same stallion who won’t even really look your way is outright pathetic!

Go with your gut feeling. That is why it is called “falling in love” with somepony. They will either catch you, or laugh as you hit the ground.

Vinyl was right.

A year of waiting for Frédéric to return her feelings was far too long.

“May I… see it… before you go?” she asked, the heat in her cheeks now very apparent. She began to slowly unbutton his shirt, peeling away at the folds of cotton.

“Octavia… please, don’t,” Midnight implored, well aware of what she wanted to see.

She had already reached the ribcage, and had found what she was looking for. Along his ashen fur, in the center of his chest, was one long, vertical scar, embroidered with stitch marks. The mark of his cardiac surgery, where his best friend has given him his heart to help him live on. “It’s okay…” she cooed, eyeing it with care, stroking along it with a thumb. She placed her lips upon it, kissing the disfigurement the same way a worshipper kisses his idol’s hooves, or a knight kisses his queen’s ring.

Octavia pulled back, redoing Midnight’s shirt and placing her hands on his hips. She swallowed another lump in her throat. Her next words would decide their fate, whether it be for the better or for the worse. She was ready. She was prepared for all the wonderful, horrible, beautiful, terrible things that would be held in store for her if she proceeded to say it. “Midnight Oil, son of Comet Ash, son of Umbral Quasar. I...” Come on... say it, now. “I... I love you.”

Midnight’s heart rate continued to rise as he heard the phrase escape her lips. He did his best to calm his pulse. He readjusted his hand onto her chin. He scanned her alluring orchid eyes for any sincerity in her words. He was captivated by them, and everything else about her, be they her posh accent, her sense of style, her talent with the cello, her amazing figure, and her heart of gold. She was too good to be true. It had to be a dream. “Do you… love me?” she asked, cheeks burning feverishly as her voice bordered between both hope and fear.

Dare he say it? Dare he say what he had been feeling for over a month to her, lest it be an illusion, and he was to wake up in his bed, frustrated and heartbroken? “Of course I do,” he answered. “I love you. And I will always love you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality… I will love you, Octavia.”

He saw tears escape from the corners of her eyes, a very warm and overjoyed smile on her lips. Her cheeks were rosy, glowing from heat, touched by the string of words that he had captivated her with. “You mean it?”

“For you, a thousand times over.”

He could hardly believe it, this tremendous event in his life.

Octavia Melody Philharmonica.

The most spectacular, most talented, and most beautiful pony he had ever laid eyes upon…

...loved him.

“I thought I told you to call me Tavi,” she giggled weakly.

“Why would I ever simplify the wonderful name of such a beautiful mare?” He leaned in to kiss her, squashing away any and all fear of the possible ramifications as he went to place his lips onto hers. She accepted the contact happily, her hands finding the sides of his face and clinging softly to it. She melted into it overtime, the two of them sidling closer together, hands upon the other’s backs, until they were against the armrest, Octavia cradled in Midnight’s arms. Neither of them were very coordinated, yet they guided each other, giving each other the right signals to their dance. When to tilt their heads. When to put more force in their liplock. When to accept a tongue that one would prod at the other’s teeth.

        They pulled away, a clean break, no cliché spittle rope between their lips. Midnight continued to lock eyes with Octavia, drowning in those luxurious oceans of wine. He was intoxicated off of her almost instantaneously. “I was right… it’s like kissing a cactus,” she chuckled.

“Hey,” he grumbled.

“But… it’s very warm. As though I were huddled next to a fireplace in the midst of Hearth’s Warming Eve.” She briefly kissed him again, lips interlocked. “More,” she moaned, brain bubbling with oxytocin from the pleasure of his actions. She became firmer in her kiss, wishing to engulf every inch of him. “More… more….”

They separated again after almost a minute of their oral embrace, breathing harder than before. Octavia rested her head on Midnight’s chest, making sure she was laying atop it with her left cheek. She listened to his heart beating powerfully, loudly against her ears, his bosom rising and falling in a soothing rhythm. It reminded her of ocean waves, the currents pushing her in and out. He was as warm as a furnace, radiating high doses of sleep-inducing heat.

“You… could come with me, you know,” suggested Midnight. “Horseattle is thirty minutes from here. You could come back to Canterlot to see all of your friends and family.”

Octavia lifted her head from its resting place. “Wait, you can’t possibly mean–”

        “I do. But, it’s all up to you. Whatever you wish, I welcome it.”

        She pondered his offer very seriously. She would be able to be with Midnight, not letting distance separate them. She could be able to expand her musical prowess further in Equestria.

Yet… she would be leaving her friends and family behind. She would abandon her position as first string cellist in the Canterlot Quartet. She’d be destroying what remained of her reputation… all of the memories she had made here. She would find it difficult to part with this city, in all of its glory, and the elegant rapture that caught her eye every time.

        But if the town found out she was dating Midnight, what did her reputation matter? They would turn on her like flowers towards the Sun. 

        “You… want me to live with you?” Octavia asked. Midnight nodded. “But… this is so sudden... I mean, I’m absolutely honored, don’t misunderstand!”

        “It’s okay, relax,” said Midnight, holding up a hand to request her silence. “I know it’s a huge step—astronomical, at that—so I understand if you don’t want to. Just know that… when you do, my door will always be open.”

        “You… you mean it?” Octavia asked, smiling at the kind gesture he was offering. He nodded once again. “I… I’d like to sleep on it, if that’s alright with you.”

        “Take all the time you need, ma douce déesse.” Midnight’s heart fluttered at her giggle as he pulled her closer to him. He looked out the window, only to find that it was still raining. “Do you want me to take you home?” He could feel her shaking her head in rejection to the idea.” Do you… want to just… stay here and cuddle?” He suggested, face searing again. She nodded.

Midnight slowly sat up and adjusted Octavia's sleeping body so that she could be carried in his arms princess-style when he stood up. She clung to his neck, head resting peacefully in the cozy cranny between his shoulder blade and collar bone. He walked cautiously upstairs, taking care not to ruin the moment by accidentally bumping her against a wall or a door threshold.

Midnight would take Octavia to his room. He would draw the covers of his bed back and lay her down as gently as anypony could. He would reduce himself into pajamas and sidle into bed with her. He would hold her the entire night, and she him, hooves intertwined. The lulling respite of raindrops would glide through their ears and bless them with the majesty of slumber they had been longing for for weeks. They would find each other’s loving company to be ethereal and eternal.

For in the dew of little things, their hearts would find their mornings, and be refreshed.




~The End~