"You know the thing about planning?" Lyra asked.
"No, I don't know 'the thing' about planning," answered Octavia, forming air quotes with her hooves, "but your admirable lexicon never ceases to amaze me."
"Plans never work out," Lyra continued. "I came to Princess Luna's Academy for the Fine Arts with the plan to spend my time living - really, truly living - in this city. No rules, no watching eyes. Just me and my life. And you know what I ended up doing instead? Baking cookies and singing in parks and finding lost dogs and buying some random mare a new violin. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous!"
"But," said Lyra, sharping turning around to walk backwards alongside Octavia, "do you know what I wonder? Has this past month been living? Is this what it means to live?"
"You've been up late reading Neightzsche's writings on existentialism, haven't you?"
Lyra paused. "Touche, but that's not the point. The point is that everything I've done this month feels so mundane."
"If this month has been mundane, I'm terrified to learn what you call exciting," said Octavia.
"I'd like to learn that myself," said Lyra. "I mean, before I came to the academy, things were even worse. All that time I'd either study how to read or how to kiss-up to nobility. Not the most exciting thing in the world, to be honest."
Lyra sighed. "It's just that you read all those stories about boarding school being chock full of daring and dangerous escapades in the pitch-black of midnight as you race to overthrow the alien principal or to protect the student body from being mind-controlled or to do both while having an affair with your special somepony! And what am I doing? Drinking a soda while strolling down a lane."
"To be fair, it's quite good soda," said Octavia before taking another swig of lemon and lime.
"We have the entire afternoon before us, Octavia! If we were to go anywhere, anywhere at all, where would you go?"
Octavia craned her neck over the crowd to look towards the east. "There," she said, pointing to an ornate granite building spanning half a block. "I'd go there."
"Carneighie Hall?" asked Lyra, astonished.
Octavia nodded. "I've only been there once as a kid, but my Goddess, it was the most beautiful night I've ever experienced." Her violet eyes gained a misty, dreamy look. "All those ponies," she said softly, "with all their money and finery come together to sit down, put wealth and status behind, and just watch a performance they'll never be able to buy back again. Because we're all equal when the curtain rises to reveal our God, the conductor, and his legions of angels, the musicians. And the music swells and swells, and your eyes and ears open wide to fill up your entire self with the song. Everything else... it just fades away. Fades into peace. And then, even after you walk out of that hall, silence is never quite so empty anymore."
Octavia blinked, looked into Lyra's curious eyes, and blushed. "So yeah, it's a nice place," she mumbled.
"Carneighie Hall, eh?" said Lyra slowly, pensively, as if the name were a puzzling idea. "What time is it open?"
"Most evenings," answered Octavia, "though it takes hundreds of bits to get in. And even if we had the money," she continued quickly when Lyra reached for her saddlebag, "you have to reserve seats months in advance. All the shows for the rest of this year must be sold out."
"Not the show I know," said Lyra, a twinkle in her eye.
"Lyra," Octavia said warningly. "What is going on in that crazy head of yours?"
Lyra grinned and looked behind Octavia. "Did you get all that, Derpy?" she called.
"Aye aye, captain!" said Derpy, balancing a dozen soda cans in her hooves. "Selkie Attack 8.3?"
"Nah, let's do it like we did when we fought the ogres of Moor," said Lyra. "Bring me all the duct tape you can find, kid."
Octavia's face was plastered with terror.
"We're going to Carneighie Hall!"
"Why did the door have to be open?" asked Lyra for the tenth time as she paced around the now useless tower of soda cans. "It's never supposed to be open!" She angrily kicked a can, causing a little trickle of soda to fizzle out onto the pavement. "So much for my brilliant plan."
Octavia scrutinized the rusting maintenance door, partially obscured by to overgrown bushes. "It's disconcerting," she mused. "It's ominous. It's foreboding. Perhaps... perhaps it's a message. A message that says... that breaking into Celestia-damned Carneighie Hall is a terrible idea! Did that ever cross your mind?"
"Oh, I don't know," replied Lyra, "I have a great many ideas crossing my mind, crossing in every direction possible. Amazing what can happen if you obliterate the bright red signs that tell you what you can or can't think."
"Well here's a sign for you!" Octavia screeched, pointing to the name Carneighie Hall printed in gold on the building's front. Carneighie Hall is a respectable, well-established, culturally significant place! It has security ponies, it has guards--"
"It also has Derpy."
"What did you say?" breathed Octavia. Her eyes followed Lyra's hoof, pointing down the long dark hallway, where a clash, like a little pegasus bumping into a pipe, resonated. "Oh, hell no."
Lyra raised an eyebrow. "Yes, Octavia?"
"You know what I should have said when you asked me what I wanted to see the most? You, with broken bones in all four legs, lying in an emergency room."
"Not dead, though?" Lyra asked. "Octavia, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were growing soft in your old age."
The musician rolled her eyes.
"Come on," said Lyra, practically hopping in circles around her. "Deep down, somewhere, there has the be that thrill inside you. That sense of adventure that wants you to explore the unknown, to indulge in a little wrongdoing, to see the cliff you're teetering on and jump off. You feel it, don't you?"
"I feel that I want to actually be invited to this concert hall," replied Octavia, "and somehow, my gut is telling me that getting on the invite list is quite challenging when you're arrested for breaking and entering."
Lyra scrunched up her face. "Ew, you listen to your gut? What could your gut have anything to tell you other than indigestion?"
"Oh? And what do you listen to?" Octavia asked.
Lyra sprinted through the maintenance doorway. "I don't think," she shouted over her shoulder, "I just do."
"Could you please shut up for two seconds?"
Octavia stared, affronted. "I haven't said anything since we got here."
"No, but I can hear it," Lyra told her. "Those little gears running through your head, trying to make up a million excuses and cover stories you can deliver if we're found out. Would you just stop already? It's driving me mad, and trust me, you don't want to see a mad Lyra Heartstrings. That'd be like wanting to see an asteroid crash to Equus or see the universe be sucked into a black hole or see somepony throw up. Ugh, now that last one, that last one makes absolutely no sense."
Octavia shook her head. "Mad just does not cover you, Lyra, does it?"
"Nope! Never has, never will! Plenty of ponies are mad; the whole universe is mad, I'd say. Being mad along with them is so terribly boring, isn't it?"
Octavia sighed, and the two walked for a while in silence. "What... makes you so sure?" Octavia finally asked. "What makes you so sure that we won't be caught by anypony?"
"Absolutely nothing!" Lyra declared, putting an extra spring in her step.
The other mare spluttered. "You... you do know what will happen if we're caught?"
Lyra screeched to a halt. "No, Octavia, no I don't. So why don't you tell me? It must be really bad if you're panicking so much about it."
"We could be reported," Octavia said. "Breaking and entering a place like Carneighie Hall is a serious offense! We could have charges pressed, a fine to pay, maybe an expulsion from the academy, who knows?"
"Oh, how terrifying," Lyra mocked, waving her hooves in the air. "Petty law enforcement. Now, think about the advantages. If that's the worst to come out of the situation we're in, then what's the best?"
"The potential advantages do not outweigh the consequences--"
"Derpy!" Lyra shouted, her voice resounding across the grand auditorium.
"Look!" said Derpy from her place in front of the stage. "Front row seats!"
"You bet, kid!" Lyra hopped the railing to land in the seat right next to Derpy's. "Now," she said, looking her at Octavia standing in the doorway, "let's hear a performance by Canterlot's one and only Octavia Elizabeth Melody."
"Oh no!" said the musician, stumbling backwards. "Breaking into Carneighie Hall is one thing, but playing here? Actually playing here? Where so many famous musicians have come and gone, where many more famous ones have only dreamed of being? There are thousands of ponies more talented, more deserving, I can't!"
"Now, we could quibble over the matter of deserving for a thousand years," said Lyra, "but what fame really comes down to is the audience." She craned her neck back to see the rows of empty seats behind her. "And by the looks of things, you're being met with one hundred precent approval."
Slowly, like the sun rising over the mountains, Octavia's smile broke the surface.
"Now get backstage and find us something to play!" shouted Lyra.
It was a strange feeling that moved Octavia to race behind the blue velvet curtains, where an old, abandoned violin lay in a dust case tucked in a corner. Another feeling prompted her to swing open the case and carefully hold the instrument like china glass. Still another sent her tumbling, hurtling, falling onto that coveted stage, filled with the lights of the stars and the air of the gods and the little pounding heart of little Octavia.
Because in the end, what are feelings? These crazy impulses to the nervous system that send you running. These stores of emotional memories that are added to with each new neuron. These are the signs that tell us we are alive.
This is my dream, Octavia thought to herself as the first note vibrated into the concert hall. This has always been my dream. But dreams don't come true in this life. Which means you must be mad, Lyra Heartstrings. Absolutely, positively, barking mad. This whole month has been absolutely, positively, barking mad.
But I'm here. I'm playing in Carneighie Hall. This is what every musician dreams of. If such a place is dreamt of so often, does it even exist? Am I standing on wooden floorboards or the sparkling nothingness of the Dreamscape? I don't know. I can't see. I can't hear. I can't hear a thing. Octavia didn't know what song she was playing. She didn't even know the notes swirling in the air around her head.
Everything else... it just fades away. Fades into peace. And then, even after you walk out of that hall, silence is never quite so empty anymore.
Then suddenly, she heard applause. Not the applause of a concert hall filled to the brim with ponies. It was the applause of two ponies going wild, jumping and screaming and crying, to break the spell of silence.
It was the best five minutes of silence that Octavia had ever heard.
"So that's how you felt, Octy?" asked Derpy.
"Mm-hmm."
"So what happened after I left?"
Octavia tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, Lyra and I ran about the place some more. We found a silver-coated tuba tucked away, which Lyra insisted on playing louder than a roaring dragon. So of course, a security guard came rushing in. And let me tell you, it was the most terrifying moment of my life. Thumping heart, fur on end, everything. Like a glass had shattered, leaving me struggling to live without the rush of actually playing in Carneighie Hall. Carneighie Hall, I still can't believe it!" she squealed.
"So anyway, I'm standing there petrified like I've just had a nasty run-in with a cockatrice, and then Lyra strides up to him, all confident and Lyra-ish, and she says to him - right up front, I swear! She says, 'My name is Lyra Heartstrings, and I will send you two thousand bits from my family's account... No! Double it, make it four thousand! Well, then I suppose I should make such a sum in doubles, so a thousand doubles. Oh, what the hay, a thousand floats. That's right, I'll pay you a thousand floats to float your way along and out that door so my friend can keep having the time of her life.' And the guard just stands there in amazement, as was I. Then he shakes his head, smiles, and walks out the door! Honestly, I could have slapped that mare for being so blunt, but before I could get a word out, she tells me it was 'only because I can't very well study you while you're in prison, can I, evil demon alien changeling?' Isn't that such a Lyra thing to say?"
Derpy giggled. "Sounds like you've grown fond of her."
Octavia sighed and gazed up at the stars. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "You've seen me; I could never do the kinds of things she does every day, nor would I particularly want to. But once... just every once in a while... it's rather nice. It's rather nice indeed."
"You'd never have said that when we first met. Not in a million years."
"And here we are at the end. I can't believe this is the morning of November 30th, the last day of the month," said Octavia. "To be honest, I never thought I'd make it out alive. But of course, this month wasn't anything like I'd planned." The mare sighed and stretched out her back on the bench. "Do you remember when we first met," she asked, "and I was trying to convince you to stay out of our dorm room and sleep under the stars? Funny, how life circles back around."
"It is," said Derpy, watching a shooting star streak across the canopy of silver leaves in the Moonlit Grove. "You know, I can't believe there was ever a time when I was afraid of you, Octy. Thinking back on it now, it feels absurd."
Octavia sighed. "I hope you know now, Derpy, that I don't try to be scary or grouchy. Looking on the bright side of things... I just don't think I'd be able to do that earnestly. I'm far too cynical for that. But despite the... well, you know, the dark humor and the passive-aggressive death threats, I still enjoy this life. And I enjoy ponies like you very much."
Derpy took Octavia's hoof. "I know, silly Octy," she whispered. "You keep me and Lyra level-headed. You keep us from going insane. You keep us down-to-earth, where things are important. You... you have lots of good in you. Please don't ever think otherwise, 'kay?"
"Well, if somepony as good as you can say that about me, then who am I to disagree?" Octavia said with a laugh.
Derpy smiled and snuggled closer to Octavia's chest. "What..." she began, gazing up into the stars. "What will happen tomorrow, when we go to our proper dorm rooms?"
"I honestly don't know, Derpy," answered Octavia, "but don't think for a second that it'll be like this month never happened. Lyra will want to keep observing me, and I'll keep running to you for help. Same as usual, really. The only big difference is that you won't think a bear's trying to tear down the door each time Lyra snores."
Derpy laughed. "Alright, Octy."
"Good." She lightly tapped the pegasus on the nose. "Don't worry about it, okay, darling? What we should be worrying about," she said, jumping off the bench, "is where the hell we can find a taxi at three in the morning."
"Should we worry about homework, too?" Derpy teased as together they walked under the web of stars. "We finished our projects a bit messily, don't you think?"
"You know," Octavia said, "for once, I'll say to not. After all it's like your song. It's fine, Derpy. Everything's going to be fine."
After the two mares got home, and Octavia had already collapsed exhausted onto her bed, Derpy found a scroll laid on her pillow. When she opened it, a vial's worth of pink powder scattered into the air to form a shaky hologram, a hologram of none other than Derpy's sister.
"I have great news, sister!" said the hologram of Dinky. "The best news you've ever heard in your entire life!"
Derpy's blood went cold.