//------------------------------// // Finish with a Flourish // Story: Sonnets by Twilight // by MrNumbers //------------------------------// Rarity walked side-by-side down Canterlot streets with a pony that wasn't the kind of pony she would see herself walking side-by-side with. "You're very charming, I must admit, but you're certainly not the kind of pony..." Rarity made a rolling gesture hoof, "I'd see myself with." Pony Joe smiled easily – though Rarity would call it rakishly, because that's a far more dashing word – "You don't normally go for gentleponies then?" Rarity was about to laugh along with him when the words caught her mind, like loose fabric snagging on a thorn. There was Blueblood, but he was... no, how about that horrid bore-- hrrm, if that's how she remembered him, that spoke volumes enough. "No." She whispered in surprise as the realization dawned on her. "I don't think I have, no. Don't you think, just once, I rather should?" Just that same, easy going, charmingly rakish smile from the pony walking beside her. Rarity didn't mind that one bit. She wondered if Twilight was having the same luck. Twilight stared at the address on the back of the donut receipt. She certainly hadn't written it, Pony Joe hadn't, Applejack couldn't have... which meant it had just magically appeared since she had gotten it. "Err, Twilight?" Applejack nudged her side, "You alright there?" "I... I have to go," Twilight called over he shoulder as she bolted, heading towards the address on the back of the receipt. There were... gaps in her memory, she realized. Memory spells were something she had practiced over the years, something that had saved her friends from Discord's Chaos magic, and she had come to learn what it had felt like to have your memories manipulated. It's like... It's like eactly what it is. There is no apt analogy or metaphor for what it feels like to search through your own head and feel parts of it missing and fragmented, damaged. It feels dirty and violating and abominable. And apparently this address could help. It led to an older building, near where Twilight used to stay outside of the palace, she thought. The door seemed familiar, achingly so, but Twilight couldn't place it. It was definitely the place she'd find answers. She knocked twice and listened to the flurry of activity behind the door, an unprepared rush. The door swung open, almost jerked off its hinges rather, by a frantic earth pony about Twilight's age age, with a treble clef for a cutie mark. It was the mare that had so enthralled, so enraptured her previously at the concert. "Twilight Sparkle," she breathed, frantic, clutching a bundle of sheet music to her chest, "I... I didn't expect you'd get here so soon. I thought I had more time!" "More time for what?" Octavia darted forward and pecked Twilight on the lips, before turning and spinning on the spot, heading further inside. The kiss lasted only a second, a second which left Twilight absolutely stunned, until Octavia thought better of it, turned, and kissed her a bit harder. That, she deemed, was far more worth it. And Twilight was just as good as she remembered. "I've spent years, years studying something a very, very clever pony did, trying to make sense of it, trying to work out how to compose it. They didn't make it easy for me, it was very complicated, but I think I've done it. I finally, finally think I've done it." She sounded frantic, like Twilight herself did after a very long night in the lab. She had the feeling the comparison was probably all-too-apt. Twilight followed her further into the room in a daze. It was a claustrophobic room, feeling at once too big and absurdly too small. It was brimming with music books and instruments, a small kitchen, a rather decadent looking bed off to one side... but mostly books and sheet music, filling shelves built into every wall of the almost cylindrical room. "Wow," Twilight breathed, at an utter loss for words. It felt... it felt like she wished the library could. She walked around in a daze, admiring all the research notes and endless compositions. She couldn't help but hum a few that caught her eye, feeling the hair on the back of her neck stand on end at a peculiar few. Glancing at the research notes, and what she could understand of them, this was a laboratory, of sorts, dedicated to the magic of music, and musical magic. No wonder she felt so at home here. "Celestia let me keep it," Octavia explained, as if Twilight should know exactly what she was talking about, "After... after, well, everything, she thought it was the least she could do." "It suits you," Twilight agreed, lips still tingling from the kiss, admiring the crafstmanship of the instruments on the back wall. "It looks like you were trying to do something amazing here." Octavia smiled wryly. "A very clever pony left a lot of her research notes behind when she forgot about this place. I've been trying to build on them ever since." Twilight stopped her meandering, turning and staring at the musician in stunned amazement. "How could a pony just forget about all this?" She looked back at the room with a newfound appreciation for it. "All this magic, and music, it's... it's amazing." Twilight looked back and saw Octavia had disappeared. There was the rustle of a bunch of papers being moved around, and she reappeared with a stack of napkins, yellowed slightly with age, detailing curious etchings and sketchings of improbable, impossible, memory re-arrangement magic. "You were asking how a pony could just forget about all of this? Well, Twilight, now you know." "That's the second time you've used my name, and I'm sure I've never told you it," Twilight muttered, her eyes never leaving the napkins and diagrams that Octavia had handed to her, "I'm starting to get the feeling this isn't purely hypothetic- argh!" Twilight clutched her head, throbbing pain consuming her, enveloping her. Octavia winced sympathetically. "Even after all this time," she said, rather miserably, "you're still not allowed to remember?" "Remember... remember what?" Twilight gasped out between floods of pain. Octavia scurried through the room to the back wall and unhooked a double-bass from it. Taking a seat in the centre of the room she began to play, long, slow, soothing tones, tones that eased and abated Twilight's pain. She played like that for a few minutes until the crashing, roaring waves of pain became less frequent, less tumultuous, trickling into little more than aggravating eddies. "I studied your notes," Octavia whispered, so quiet that Twilight wasn't sure she hadn't just imagined it, "on what you did that night. I think... It was hard, I will admit candidly, and there are surely a myriad of risks but... would you like to remember, Twilight? Remember me?" Another arc of pain, like a heated metal shard in her skull, lanced through Twilight's core, her being, and she screamed in pain. Octavia stopped playing, dropping the instrument, moving to rush to Twilight, but she was stopped with a gesture, even as one hoof remained plastered to the side of the unicorn's head. "Keep playing," she whimpered, "it helps, it helps oh so much, please don't stop, don't stop, please." She was babbling and she knew it, but she was far too far gone to care, now. "Just please keep playing." So Octavia did, and those long, slow, soothing notes returned. Finally, after another few minutes, Twilight managed to pull her hooves away from her skull, again a horribly unpleasant numbness, but far better than the alternative. "What are you playing, anyway? I've never heard this composition before." "In a way, you have," the musician sighed, still gracefully drawing bow across strings as she talked, eyes glued to the music sheet in front of her, "because, in a way, you wrote this. It's the musical equivalent of a memory spell." Twilight stared, mystified and horrified in equal measure, at the instrument and again at the beautiful pony playing it. "You're using earth pony magic to use unicorn spells," she breathed in amazement, "that's incredible." Then the second part of her brain caught up with her as she remembered what kinds of spell she was using. "Yes, before you bother asking, memory spells are incredibly dangerous. You, of all ponies, should know that very well." Octavia sighed, "And yet you don't." "I still don't understand," Twilight whimpered, now, rubbing her skull and feeling... stupid. She felt stupid and weak and forgetful and wrong. "Would you like to? Twilight, if you want to, you have to trust me. You have to trust me completely and utterly." "I don't even know you!" Twilight half shouted, clutching her head, feeling it was a lie, knowing it was a lie. "How could I trust you?" she asked, knowing she could, knowing she did, just not knowing why, not possibly knowing why. "Because you used to," Octavia cooed, softly, calmly, "because you used to trust me with your life, and I with yours." Twilight thought about it, the raging, screaming inferno in her head ripping her every-which-way, the low and calming music only doing so much for the storm now. It was hard to think, hard to think through the pain, hard to... hard to brain... easy to trust... she trusted this pony... "Yes! I trust you," she screamed, now, the room whirling around her, nauseating her, confusing her, reminding her. "I trust you completely." "Oh good," Octavia opined, almost wryly, "because if Celestia ever finds out about this, she'll quite probably murder me where I stand." "Wait, what?" Twilight had a chance to shout in panic before the music changed, no longer soothing, no longer calming, but now a din, a caucouphonous racquet, the room's resonance converting the roar of the instrument into a franatic and frenzied riot of mish-mashing sound. No melody was present, just a wall of discordant notes. No real rythmn could be spoken of, unless one listened very closely. Twilight felt like it was tearing her brain apart, shifting it, grabbing it by the shrapnel and pulling, tugging, twisting it, re-arranging parts long-ago hidden and buried. She remembered... she remembered a funeral... and a cafe... a jail cell? Yes, definitely a jail cell, but not for her, no... and the cafe, the cafe came after... then there was a picnic, and a kiss, oh yes, and music, so much music in so little time, so much progress. And it had all revolved around her. All of it, the common thread from the tapestry rewove itself to the frenetic, heavy notes of the double-bass, all painting a portrait of a long-forgotten, forcefully forgotten, beautiful musician mare. Of her. She was remembering her. Her first kiss... her second... her first time... oh, geeze, why'd she have to remember that? She itched, burned, wanting to scrub the memory from her brain, before remembering trying exactly that once before and then a brilliant, burning, howling, screaming whiteness from the attempt, and then, and then- Now. She remembered now, this room, this place, this mare. Twilight clutched her head, rocking herslf back and forth, as it all came back, all flooded back. The notes... the notes made her remember and the pain subsided, like ripping off a bandaid after slowly pulling and peeling at it. "Twilight?" Octavia whispered from the dias, placing the instrument down delicately and approaching the prone unicorn with just as much reverence, "How are you feeling?" Twilight just stayed curled up in a ball on the floor, rocking herself slowly, as she heard the gentle hooffalls approach. "Twilight?" the voice whispered, terrified, above her. Then, louder, "Please, tell me you remember something, anything!" Twilight's hoof shot up off the floor and gripped Octavia by the scruff of her neck, pulling her down into a deep and passionate kiss. Twilight's eyes were wide open, bright, as she broke the kiss, a thin strand of saliva still dangling between them, when she finally spoke. "I just remembered that I love you, just now." Octavia smiled, tears forming in her bloodshot eyes. "How could I ever forget?" "Ooh, that's nice." Chrysalis cooed. "When I return to my full strength, all of Equestria will- Glurk!" "Just keep eating the soup, Ms Queen." Fluttershy scolded as she pressed another spoonful into the scowling changeling's mouth, "I made sure to make it with plenty of love, just for you, but it only helps if you actually eat." "Feed. Changelings don't eat, we feed, so – Glurk!" "Why can't you be nice like Discord?" Fluttershy wondered to herself. "I do hope Twilight doesn't find out about this..." "What she wanted is irrelevant!" The queen declared. "Feed me!" "Oh... alright."