//------------------------------//
// The Morning Sonata, Part 3 
// Story: The Evening Sonata 
// by Daniel-Gleebits 
//------------------------------//

The Morning Sonata Pt3


Sunset didn’t know about anyone else, except Fluttershy naturally, but she felt distinctly awkward with the direction things were going. 
She and her friends were seated at the dinner table, which had to be added to in order to accommodate all nine of the individuals seated. Uncle Apple Strudel, declaring the more the merrier, sat at the head of the table dishing out fish soup to everyone. Ignoring Rainbow Dash sniffing the concoction suspiciously, he turned to give Adagio her portion.
“I didn’t know that you were friends with my great niece, Ballad” he said creakily to her. “Share a lot of interests by the looks of it.” He chuckled with a sound like an old vacuum cleaner. Adagio smiled tightly.
“Sure looks that way,” she said between gritted teeth.
“We’re really sorry to bother you on such short notice,” Applejack said.
“We really are,” Fluttershy added. “I know I’d be just so frustrated if it were me.”
“But Fluttershy, you let animals into your house every hour of the day and night,” Rainbow Dash pointed out.
“Well, yes, but who can say no to animals?”
“You invited a bear into your parent’s kitchen,” Rainbow Dash reminded her. Fluttershy blushed.
“Mom and dad were very understanding about that,” she mumbled, pulling at her fingers.
“We’re really grateful to ya for puttin’ us up,” Applejack continued. “It’ll just be till tomorrow when we can catch the bus back.”
“Nonsense,” Apple Strudel puffed through his thick beard and curved moustache. “You should stay the week. Don’t your winter holidays start on Monday?”
“Well, yes but-“ 
“Their parents all expect them back soon,” Adagio interrupted, eying them all balefully. Apple Strudel conceded the point, and informed them of where they’d be staying. His house was a large affair, formally an inn remade over the years into a farmhouse to accommodate the cotton trade, which itself had given way in more recent generations to the rise of the Apple family in the area. Consequently the place had many guest bedrooms usually used by visiting family members or farm hands working the seasons, and there were just enough rooms for two per room. Rainbow and Fluttershy agreed to pair one room, Rarity and Applejack reluctantly agreed to share another, whilst Pinkie grinned widely at Adagio to share a third. Adagio didn’t complain exactly, but certainly couldn’t have said to have been happy in the arrangements. 
“It makes sense since we’re already roommates,” Sonata said cheerfully, checking out the bounciness of her bed.
“They don’t have to be so aggravating about it though,” Sunset grumbled. Pinkie and Applejack’s faces could not have been any smugger at the moment of their all parting.
“What’s wrong?” Sonata asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just Pinkie being Pinkie and AJ being... well.” Sunset didn’t finish her thought.
“I like Pinkie,” Sonata giggled as she pulled on a pair of pyjamas. They were perhaps a size or two too small for her, and faded purple with little blue chick patterns. The shirt was too short to cover her stomach, and the trousers looked more like three quarter lengths. Sitting on her bed with her sketch pad in hand, she looked so at home Sunset almost asked her to turn the TV on.
“I feel kinda bad leaving Ada-... I mean, Ballad with Pinkie Pie though. She can be a little hyper.”
“Silly Shimmy,” Sonata snickered. “Hyper is Pinkie. And Pinkie is hyper. One cannot be separated from the other.”
“It’s too late in the day for movie quotes,” Sunset grinned.
“It’s never too late for my antics. Antics are what make the day worthwhile.”
“True.” Sunset sat on her own bed, pulling at her slightly too large striped pyjamas. “She did seem annoyed though,” Sunset added, returning to the subject.
“I don’t care,” Sonata said. Her voice was not well adjusted to being cold or disdainful, and so it came across as being petulant, but warning bells went off in Sunset’s mind. “If she wants to be left alone, we’ll just go tomorrow and that’s that, right?”
“Right,” Sunset answered uneasily. She daren’t press the subject further.





Sunset didn’t sleep easily. She never had been able to sleep in unfamiliar places. After rolling around in her bed for a while, listening to Sonata’s loud snoring, she got up to see if she could get some water or something down stairs. It was frightfully cold, since apparently the builders of the house didn’t seem to understand the principle of insulation, forcing Sunset to put her coat and shoes on.
Upon entering the kitchen, she heard a strange sound. Looking quietly around for the source of it, she came to the window and understood that it was coming from outside. She wouldn’t have gone out in the cold for most anything – it was really cold – but to her bewilderment, the sound was almost definitely somebody singing. She looked at the kitchen clock.
“One o’clock,” Sunset frowned. “Who would be...?”
As cold as the outside was, the wind had mercifully died away to nothing for the night, meaning that the trees were utterly silent, and the voice rang out distinctly on the air. Sunset felt herself drawn to it. It was beautiful singing, a sad sounding song, and it sounded faintly familiar, but strangely she also knew that she’d never heard anything like it before.
Walking briskly down a path between trees, she came to see a small hill under the moon, where a figure was standing, arms outstretched, emitting the strangely enticing music. Even from this distance, even with her appearance so radically altered, Sunset somehow knew instinctively that it was Adagio. Indeed, as she walked up behind her, standing a respectful few feet away and let her finish her song, Adagio herself didn’t seem too surprised by Sunset’s appearance either.
“You’re a bit of a snoop, aren’t you,” she said after a short pause.
“That was beautiful.”
“Thanks I guess.” Adagio looked around at her and sighed. “How did you know I was out here?”
“I heard you from the house.” Sunset jerked a thumb back.
“You don’t have to worry,” Adagio said, looking back up at the moon. “I can’t get my magic back, so there’s no danger.” Sunset didn’t respond at first, but then a question occurred to her.
“I thought your singing voices were all tied up in your pendants,” she said, coming to stand next to her. “Sonata couldn’t sing at all when I found her again.” 
Adagio smiled a little fondly. “No. Well if I’m honest, Sunset Shimmer, it’s taken a while for me to actually have a singing voice at all. We didn’t actually sing back then, you know. The sound was just a consequence of the spells we were casting.”
“I’m sorry?” Sunset asked, puzzled. Adagio regarded her for a moment.
“You were a unicorn in Equestria, right?” Sunset nodded. “Well, imagine you cast a spell there. Magic words and everything. By reciting the spell, you channel magic through your horn and create a desired consequence, usually with some kind of visual side-effect.”
“Okay,” Sunset said, following so far.
“It was the same with our magic. Singing was our magic words. It channelled our magic, and the beauty of our voices was a side-effect of the spell’s hypnotic power, like the flash from a teleportation. It wasn’t actually what our voices sounded like.”
“But your voice now,” Sunset said, slowly. “It’s, well... it’s beautiful.”
“You know what they say. One percent talent, ninety nine percent hard work,” Adagio shrugged. “I just like to sing. I enjoyed it even then. Even now when I can’t use my magic, I still think the songs are beautiful.”
“I suppose,” Sunset conceded, thinking of the one’s she’d heard during the battle of the bands affair.
“We know more songs than just the mind enslaving ones,” Adagio chuckled, apparently reading Sunset’s mind. In the laughter was a little of her old sneering arrogance, but it was a great deal less cold than it once was. “Star Swirl once told us, Even if I couldn’t use the spells themselves, they still make wonderful poetry.” She stared up at the moon as though lost in thought.
“Didn’t he banish you?” Sunset asked before she could stop herself. Her curiosity really could get the better of her sometimes.
“Yeah. But in earlier years, as a young unicorn in training, before Equestria was founded, well... the world was a wider place back then. Easier to create havoc too,” she added, reminiscently.
As before, Sunset was startled by how much Adagio had changed. She seemed older, more world weary, but also – there was no other way to say it – nice. She seemed nice. It was a little frightening to think of the old Adagio, and think how easy it would be to get to like the Adagio she had become.
“Hey err, Adagio? I mean, Ballad?”
“Hm?”
“Could I ask about... well, I understand if you don’t, but-“
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you privately about it anyway,” Adagio said, cutting across her babble.
“About what?” Sunset asked, confused.
“Sonata,” Adagio clarified. “How much did she tell you about what happened after that night?”
“After? Oh, you mean... yeah.”





Adagio was silent throughout the entire explanation, but after Sunset had finished, she sniffed and rubbed at her eyes a little, as though clearing sleep from them.
“Trust her to be completely oblivious,” she whispered, smiling fondly. To Sunset’s eye, it was a motherly sort of look.
“I don’t want to be rude, but,” she hesitated, and then plunged on. “Are you three sisters?”
“In a way,” Adagio said. “We’re not blood relatives if that’s what you mean. But we grew up together, loved each other, played together... grew into what we were together,” she finished, sadly. “Well, in fairness to them, they followed me into it all. I sometimes wonder what Sonata might have done if she hadn’t followed me.”
“What do you mean about her being oblivious?” Sunset asked.
“You found her homeless, you said?” Sunset nodded. “It shouldn’t have been that way. Without us, Aria and me, I’m positive that Sonata would have survived on her own.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you beat us, something happened to Aria and me. I couldn’t have explained it then, it was...” she seemed to search for the words. “I realised that it was pointless. In that moment when we ran off stage, or even when that blast hit us, I knew, somehow, that even if we had won, if we’d taken over the school, or even the world, it would have all ended up the same.”
“How so?” Sunset asked, intrigued.
“Do you think it would have ended there?” Adagio shrugged. “If not you and your friends, then someone else. We tried to control people, and that can’t last forever. And it dawned on me that I had wasted their lives. Theirs and mine. Sure, at first I thought only about myself, about how I had lost, about how I would be affected. But over those two weeks, I saw what I had done, and what I failed to do.”
Adagio took a deep breath, as though what she was saying was a little painful, and she wanted to say it all before she lost her nerve. “She was the least afraid. Sonata, I mean. I was afraid to try, and Aria was afraid to change. Sonata tried to get a job, and encouraged me to do the same. Aria bullied her out of it, and I couldn’t bring myself to act on Sonata’s advice. Aria was so afraid of the consequences of our magic being gone that she wouldn’t listen to Sonata, and took out her frustrations on her.” 
She looked Sunset full in the face, looking into her eyes with a tortured look. “I did nothing to stop any of it. I couldn’t bring myself to act until it was far too late. Sonata begged on the street when Aria was off trying and failing to do the same old thing. I honestly believe that we would have starved without Sonata. Long after it had gone too far, I confronted Aria about her behaviour, tried to pull her in line... but it was too late, as I say. Sonata was too afraid to speak, and Aria was too angry and scared to listen to me.”
“But why did you leave?” Sunset asked, her throat dry. Adagio took a little time to answer that question.
“Whether I was right or not, I believed it to be for the best. Aria was gone. The only thing holding Sonata back was me.”
Sunset could think of nothing to say. It was such a startling conclusion, and had had such profound consequences. She thought of Sonata now, lying in a strange bed in her too-small pyjamas. Peaceful and undisturbed. Then came an image of her on the roof, her magenta eyes full of despair. A broken body. A lonely tombstone. She shivered at what could have been.
At that moment it would have been easy for Sunset to be angry with Adagio, to resent her for her choices, to hate her for what she and Aria had driven Sonata almost to do. But she couldn’t. She knew in some part of herself that Adagio genuinely believed that she had acted for the best, and that she could not have foreseen the consequences she had had, and although that did not make her any less responsible, she knew that hating her would not make anything any better.
“She just wants to talk to you,” she said, earnestly. Adagio was silent for a moment, and then began to walk back, gesturing for Sunset to follow her. “She wants to know you still.”
“I’d like that too,” Adagio said quietly. “In these weeks away from the two of them, I’ve realised how much I miss them. But...”
“But what?”
“I can’t.”
Sunset waited for an explanation, but none came. “So that’s it?” she asked, feeling angry for the first time. “You just can’t? What kind of excuse it that?”
“It’s better for her.”
“Who are you to decide that?”
“I’m the one that failed her!” Adagio bellowed, spinning round. Sunset took an involuntary step back, recoiling slightly at the furious tears in Adagio’s eyes. “That’s who I am! You think you know what’s best for her? I led her for years down a spiralling path to nothing, and then when she needed me most, when both of them needed me to lead them somewhere, I... I couldn’t.” The fury ebbed as the rant came to an end, finishing in a resigned sort of sorrow. 
“Adagio... I... I didn’t mean to-“
“Don’t get me wrong, Sunset Shimmer,” Adagio sniffed. “I do want to see her again, and Aria if I can find her. But I... I can’t face her, either of them. Not yet.”
She hesitated a moment, and then went on. “In a way, I should thank you and your friends. If it weren’t for you, I would never have figured any of this out. When I face Sonata again, I want to be as fortunate as she is. A few friends, maybe, somewhere to live. A boyfriend.”
“Sonata has a boyfriend?” Sunset asked, startled. Adagio blinked.
“Um, not that I know of...” she eyed Sunset for a brief moment. “I thought that you two were...” Sunset went bright red, the cold air stinging her face.
“Why do people keep thinking that?” she asked of no one in particular, shuffling around in her clothes. She was so distracted she didn’t notice Adagio’s penetrating look.
“Sorry,” she said, cutting across Sunset’s discomfort. “I suppose I shouldn’t have assumed. Anyway, I’d just really appreciate it if you could convince Sonata to stop asking after me. Let her live her life until I get mine sorted out. She doesn’t deserve to carry my burden anymore.”





Sunset declined to go back to the house with her, and so watched Adagio walk away between the apple groves. Sunset was conflicted to say the least, and stood on the hill with her thoughts heavy in her head.
Her ideas on the matter eventually gave way to an understanding. Perhaps not an acceptance, for she still did not agree with Adagio’s decisions, and resented the damage she’d done either intentionally or unintentionally to Sonata, but she could at least understand the why. At least for the moment, Adagio was spurred on by remorse, and Sunset Shimmer perhaps of all people could understand where she was coming from. She felt unworthy, felt that she had to make amends. The only thing that Sunset disagreed with was how she intended to do it, because she knew how Sonata felt right now. But was it her place to tell Adagio how to go about her own path of redemption? She had not the least idea.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a distinct rustling from just behind her. One of the groves of trees beyond was lined intermittently by a series of hedges, boundaries between different fields, and perhaps in Apple Strudel’s old age had grown a little too large and overbearing. One of these hedges was rustling and shaking, rather as though a large creature was trying energetically to rip its way through. Sunset felt an instinctive need to turn and run, but found herself simply staring in trepidation, and when the urge to flee finally kicked in properly, the fearsome beast had already torn its way through the darkness.
“Oh!” said a familiar voice. “Um, hello?”
Sunset blinked, stared, and then blinked again, hard. “T-Trenderhoof?” 
It was him. Blonde hair liberally strewn with twigs and winter leaves and his coat dishevelled, he patted himself down and straightened his glasses. 
“Hi, um... good evening!”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning,” Sunset said suspiciously, quickly overcoming her shock.
“Yes,” Trenderhoof said confidently after a rather pregnant pause. “Yes it is.”
“What are you doing here?” 
“Just out for a stroll,” he said with a feeble assumption of airiness. Sunset narrowed her eyes.
“At two in the morning?” she said, her tone heavy with disbelief.
“Yes.”
“In Apple Strudel’s fields?”
“Y-y-yes,” he said, less certainly. Sunset glared at him, and he seemed to know he was rumbled. It hadn’t really been that difficult. He sighed.
“Okay,” he said, his tone changing. “Were you the one singing a little while ago?” Sunset’s eyebrows shot up.
“No,” she said, honestly. He exhaled.
“Okay. Thanks anyway.” He turned to leave.
“No, hang on,” Sunset jogged over to him. “You were looking for someone singing?”
“Yes. It’s actually why I’m staying in Whitetail. I like the outdoors you know, so I came out for my holidays, and the first night I arrived I heard this beautiful singing out in the fields.” He smiled reminiscently, apparently seeing something Sunset could not. She looked shrewdly at him.
“Why are you interested in who the singer is?” she asked.
“Oh, well,” he said, coming over somewhat bashful. “I’ve gone into talent scouting recently, and I just thought, maybe whoever it was might like to, you know...”
Sunset wasn’t quite satisfied with this answer. His responses and the way he was acting didn’t seem to be adding up. He was embarrassed about something.
“So you’ve never met the person singing?” she asked
“No,” he said. “Well, not met, exactly. I saw them once out in the woods. I followed the music and found someone singing out in the centre of a pond. They were illuminated by moonlight and-“ Sunset pursed her lips as he began a long and adoring commentary of the performance. “But as I made my way down to the pond, they stopped singing and were gone before I could find out who it was,” he finished eventually. Geez he talked a lot.
“So you’ve been looking out for whoever it is when you hear singing,” Sunset guessed.
“Yes,” he said, throwing an arm to his forehead. “I despair of finding them. Tis almost like some phantom tempts me with beautiful music, only to steal away my hopes and dreams.” He sighed dramatically. 
“Well, she’s not a phantom,” Sunset muttered too quietly for him to hear. Sunset might under other circumstances have been put off by the theatricality of his mannerisms. It couldn’t be clearer that the more his bashfulness ebbed away, the more exuberant he became. 
But an idea was coming to Sunset Shimmer. A familiar feeling of unease crept into her mind, but elicited something quite different in her heart. If her time with Sonata had taught her anything, it was that these sorts of ideas were things that she should explore.
Trenderhoof was sighing, his arms folded. Sunset fixed him with a twinkling eye.
“What if I told you I could take you to the singer?” she asked. His reaction was immediate and satisfactory. He turned to her as though she were the most beautiful object he’d ever beheld, his cheeks flushing in the moonlight.
“You could!” he cried, his hands shaking. “You know who it is?”
“Yes, but,” she said, raising a warning finger as he gave a whoop of triumph. “We have to talk first.”


- To be Continued