She popped the pills without a second thought.
At first, it seemed like nothing happened. Everything was as it had been before she had swallowed them down dry. The crowd was impossibly loud, but it was nowhere near as deafening as the music. The beat was strong enough to cause the floor to shake beneath her hooves. Strobe lights of an impossible variety of colors swung across the crowd like deadly laser beams, taking away their higher capacities, making them slaves to the beat that danced for the pleasure of the gods that surrounded them. It was dark, so dark that only silhouettes could be seen, that faces and bodies became a huge, shadowy mass, depth only a suggestion made by brightly colored glow-stick bracelets and necklaces that swung and spun with the feverish motions of those who wore them. It all made her feel a little bit sick to her stomach, all things considering. Motion sickness, most likely, as if she was on a ship in a storm.
She decided to go to the bar. There was light there. It was dim, but it was there. Ponies walked away with fruity-smelling drinks and complimentary glow-sticks, hitting the booths or the dance floor, enjoying the atmosphere. The barstools were older than the place itself, but they were still comfortable, genuine Griffonian leather still soft despite the cracks and duct-tape. She sat upon the stool on the furthest end of the bar from other ponies, and ordered herself an Appletini. A simple drink, Fruity, with a slight tinge of the bitter vodka deep within. It was her favorite thing to order in places like this. Not strong enough to make her vomit but just strong enough to destroy her inhibitions.
She started feeling it then. The knot in her stomach seemed to grow. Things started to get blurry. She tried to blink it away, but it wouldn’t leave. The corners of her vision began to shake with the beat, dotted lights appearing there like the stars one sees after a particularly hard coughing fit. She gave a start. It seemed to be starting out strong. Her sense of smell seemed to amplify. There was the woody scent of the countertop, which was slightly dulled by the glass that covered it. There were the tropical smells of the drinks that the bartender was attending to. Soon, she started to smell the ponies. The sweat. The saliva. The scents of varying degrees and types of excitement. She fidgeted in her barstool, and tried to act natural, even as her vision started to grow jittery, every movement of everything like those animations art students made with clay. It was certainly working fast.
Her drink appeared before her, and the smile of the bartender was only a suggestion of a blurred expression. She tried to match his smile, even though her face seemed like it was going numb in pulses with the beat. Her entire body was trembling to the sound now. As she looked down upon her drink, it seemed to glow golden-yellow. The cherry floating in it as a garnish seemed to beat like some kind of heart, but for whatever reason, it made the drink more appetizing. Her hoof clumsily reached for the glass, but it missed, knocking it over and spilling her drink all over the place. She let out a little gasp, setting the glass upright with her detached-seeming hooves, but the damage was done. The glowing drink and beating cherry slowly oozed over the counter, and she could hear the bartender’s sigh as if it was her own. His voice sounded as if it was coming from a tin can, the words distorted, and yet she could understand them, as if it was the nonsense language a child creates in their vast imagination. He took her glass, and started to make her another drink, but she didn’t want to stay for it. She wasn’t thirsty, even though her mouth was dry.
Shakily, she rose to her hooves, and looked out over the crowd again. The lights blurred together in a single, solid form, and she squinted, trying to see into the mass of colors. She began to taste them. Red tasted metallic, like copper. Yellows tasted gloriously bittersweet. Greens had the chill of mint and yet were slightly grassy. Whites were musky, pungent, a little bit chocolatey. Her head spun around, and her mouth opened and shut on instinct. She took deep, sucking breaths, trying to taste all of the lights, trying to get as many combinations of flavors as she could. Hues began to rise in her vision, subtle changes in the colors completely changing their flavors into impossible ones that she failed to describe when she tasted them, but were glorious all the same.
She began to wander into the crowd. They all tasted wonderful. They looked wonderful, too. Pegasi, with their wings spread like angels. Earth ponies, large, undefined shapes that moved like water. Unicorns, their horns aglow and sparkling, giving her even more of a buffet. She felt like a glutton. She was sucking down the tastes of colors as much as she could, trying to quell her twisting gut, trying to cure her thirst and hunger all at once. She could see their eyes. All the different shades. Magentas, reds, baby blues. Lime greens and charcoal greys. She felt sick, and yet she felt invincible all the same, and as she stumbled into pony after pony, she whispered words that meant sorry to her but must have seemed mumbled garbage to those she pushed against.
She was like a cat now. Her skin was on fire with sensation. Her hooves trembled with every incredible beat, like a stallion slamming against her hips with the tempo of the song. She grazed against ponies and tried to rub her back, her sides, her neck against their own. Most of the time, they reciprocated, and she could taste that sensation as well. Maybe this was what it was like to be a changeling, to be an emotivore of the highest degree, to get such a glorious feeling from how others interacted with you. Their voices were muddied, but the words were unimportant, the syllables constant and uncountable, the talking constant, so constant. She was seeing blue, seeing green, seeing yellow, seeing red, blue, green, yellow, red, blue green yellow red over and over again.
She briefly wondered how long this would last. She decided it wasn’t important. What was important was that if felt incredible, it tasted incredible, it looked incredible. All of these ponies, all of the heat of their bodies against hers, all of the trembles she felt amplified by their own as the music continued to blast over them like the impossibly tall waves of the ocean. She was hungry. She was thirsty. She was weak. But she was still strong, she was strong because she was feeding off of the vibes of everypony around her. They were bathed in glowing auras of light, and like bloom in a camera, these auras seemed to grow and blur into colors that she had never, ever imagined she would see.
The crowd cheered. She looked up at who they cheered for, and her mouth was filled with the most delicious tastes. There was the only pony there that she could see clearly. She wanted to taste her. She wanted to suck on her body like it was a lollipop, to taste her every taste, to feel her every feeling, to enjoy everything that pony was enjoying in that second. She liked being her, but she wanted to be everypony. Her body was still rubbing against ponies, but now she was trailing her tongue across everything that she could, hydrating herself on their sweat, occasionally meeting another tongue with her own, and wrapping her tongue around theirs for a brief moment as the crowd around her whooped and hollered. But these small things would not do. She needed the pony up there, on the stage, behind the booth, behind the altar. It occurred to her that she was in the presence of a god, and yet that did nothing to quell her behavior. The god wanted her to act this way. She wanted her to be happy.
Happy. She was happy. She was giddy beyond belief. Every lick and every rub was between her laughing fits, her unstoppable giggling. Her head felt as if it was made of air, and that feeling soon spread throughout her entire body. She felt love. She felt love from everywhere, and she wanted love from everywhere. She was babbling words that she didn’t even know she knew, in languages that had never existed until this wonderful moment. She was completely and utterly in ecstasy. But she wasn’t on Ecstasy. She’d had Ecstasy before, and it was nothing like this. It was nowhere near as good. It was nowhere near as incredible a sensation.
She would never have this sensation again. Her stomach twisted at the thought. No, she needed to have this forever. She needed to feel nothing but this for the rest of her life, for the rest of eternity. She couldn’t live without this. She suddenly felt very scared as the lights began to dim, and her path to the temple that held the god seemed to grow longer and longer with every step she took forward. No. No, this would not do. This would not do. This was scary. Why did she do this? Why did she want this? Her tongue began to swell in her mouth as horrible tastes began to fill it. Centipedes seemed to be crawling in her skin. Cuts and bruises felt like they were opening all over her body. She screamed, and hollered, and cried past her swollen tongue, pushing past ponies, running for the temple. This would not do. This would not do. This would not do. She needed to get to the temple. She needed to get there. She needed to feel good forever. She couldn’t feel like this for too long.
Every brush against a pony was now like sandpaper. Every lick now only left her tongue more dry. Every kiss only managed to make her more scared, to make her more agitated. She needed to feel good she needed to feel good and only the god could make her feel good only the god could make her feel good only the god the god the god the god the god the god she ran into the stage face-first and felt nothing, falling flat on her rear, falling back into the ponies behind her, and she tried to mumble an apology past her tongue but they only continued to grab, to touch, to feel, and she panicked, she screamed, she cried, she lashed out, and all that she could hear was laughter, laughter, endless laughter, the beat going backwards, the synths distorted, everything distorted, and they started to eat her, they started to rip and tear her flesh, and she screamed louder and louder.
There was a bright light then. The god stood before them, and the ponies let her go. She fell to the floor with a gasp and a sob. Why did she do this? Why did she subject herself to this kind of horror? Why was this happening to her? But she looked up, and saw the god, and the good feelings came rushing back to her, and she found the strength to rise to her feet. The god was talking, but she didn’t know what she was saying. The god was waving to the crowds, and they cheered for her, and she hopped down from the stage to join her flock, and stroked a hoof across her cheek. The god spoke the first clear words she had heard in over an hour, or over a week, or over a millenia, she didn’t know how long she had been feeling this way, but hearing clear words again made her feel good, even as her vision began to darken.
“Octavia? You okay?”
Everything went black. She had no dreams in her slumber.
She awoke with a splitting headache and blurred vision.
Octavia tried to rise up, but was pushed down again by a pair of hooves. She let out a little grunt, rubbing her temples, trying to open her crusted-over eyes, but to no avail. Octavia wiped away the crud that had accumulated over her eyelids, and slowly opened them. Light. The light was blinding, and she let out a pathetic little whimper as it assaulted her overworked retinas. There was another gasp, and suddenly, her vision went more dulled, went purple hued. Vinyl had put her sunglasses over Octavia’s eyes, and she let out a little hum of appreciation that she immediately regretted when the taste of bile came over her mouth.
Slowly, shakily, Octavia rose from the couch, letting out sore little groans. “Vinyl,” she mumbled. “What… What happened…”
There was no answer. Octavia remembered that Vinyl was mute from birth. It was a consequence of her mother’s troubled pregnancy.
Octavia felt as if she had to do something, but was aware that there wasn’t really anything sensible that she could do. She felt as if she hadn’t moved or spoken in three straight days. She rubbed her head, trying to remember her dreams, but only remembering the dream before the dream, the dream about ponies that were no longer there, no longer doing the things that they were doing. She was Octavia. She was powerful, yes, but right here, in this moment, with somepony staring at her, she was vulnerable.
“Vinyl,” she said, steadily. “I didn’t get drunk, did I?”
Vinyl shook her head.
“I got high. Yes, that’s it. I remember. I don’t remember what I took, but it was… Whoof.”
Octavia flopped back onto the couch, adjusting Vinyl’s sunglasses on her face. “Vinyl, that was certainly an experience. I don’t remember much of it, and yet I don’t think I can forget it.” She smiled, despite the throbbing pain in her head. “I suppose that’s another one for the lyric book?”
Vinyl laughed. As she was mute, it wasn’t much more than a rapid, panting exhalation, but Octavia knew it was a laugh. Her smile grew wider, and she opened her hooves, offering Vinyl a hug that was gladly given. Her body was warm against hers. It felt soft, pliable, and lovely, and Octavia figured that if she was to have any sensation forever, it would have to be this one. Quiet, together with the pony she cared for most, alone in an empty house with only each other for company. She liked this. She liked this more than anything she had felt the night before, any fleeting memory of strange sensation she had encountered.
“You know, Vinyl,” Octavia said. “I remember you speaking to me.”
Vinyl let out a quiet, breathless little giggle.
“I know. It didn’t actually happen. But I remember it happening. I’m very interested to hear about how your night went. Maybe, just maybe, it was as eye-opening, though maybe a little bit less drug-fueled.”
Vinyl shrugged. Octavia laughed again, squeezing Vinyl around the waist.
“You know, even after all of that, I’m glad we both came away from this a little happier. Maybe we even got to know one another a little bit better.”
Vinyl huffed.
“I’m sorry, that’s unfair to you. Your life isn’t always drugs and booze and beats.”
Vinyl giggled, raising a hoof and bumping it against Octavia’s nose, and she laughed, giving her another squeeze. She was hung over, she was sick, she was miserable physically, and yet she couldn’t have been a happier mare if she had tried. For even though she had made many mistakes, and even though last night wasn’t one of her best nights, at the very least she had a friend that understood, and knew how to make it all better.
“Next time,” Octavia said. “I’ll won’t try something as strong.”