//------------------------------//
// Remembering Things 
// Story: The Things Tavi Says 
// by shortskirtsandexplosions 
//------------------------------//

	I am here.

And yet, I am not here.

The colors flow through me, illuminate me, set me on fire.

I've seen this assortment in my sleep.  I know it.  My arteries smell of it.

Am I planning?  Or am I playing?

I can't tell.  I'm asleep on my hooves, falling into place.

Maybe if I open my eyes...

I do so, and the colors multiply.  Streams of gold, blue, pink—all criss-crossing, swishing around, swimming like dolphins over a delirious sea of muzzles, manes, muzzles, manes.

It's the Sacramentoats underground, several sizzling cycles after a bass drop, and I am rocking everypony daring to breathe here.

It's a silly, psychotic thing—how simple it is to get into the motions of a DJ Session.  Every soul here is on the orgasmic cusp of sonic bliss.  Me?  I'm digesting last night's pizza.

A masterpiece is slightly less dazzling from the inside out, from deep within the opaque core of creative contemplation where all things are turned inside out and launched skyward via cannons of cocophany.  A magician is rarely ever duped by herself, and it's hard to taste one's own spice beyond the stale walls of familiarity.

Nevertheless, I pump forth, and the music pulses ever endlessly, perilously hanging us all on the edge of the coming movement, eager to squeal, eager to release these deathly bubbles forming in our bloodstream.  For a brief moment, I am part of the crowd, wading in it deep, a casual shark with a digital dorsal fin sticking out of the depths and hypnotizing.

Then bam.

I bait and switch. I throw in a sample that any pony within the house can instantly recognize—laugh, cheer, and chortle about—then collapse as the bass follows it with a machete, hacking up all branches so that the leftover rhythm's funneled down a microcosmic pinhole boring through everypony's brain stem.

It's all so very exciting, but it's not.

I've been here before.

I've yawned my way through grander epics of the ears.

What session is this, anyways?

Is it the second night?  The first?  The third?

I don't know.  I'm not sure I want to know.  The records spin and I'm standing still.  I know I love this music, but I'm starting to think that music is rather indifferent to me, raveling off into the cosmic yonder in blacker and blacker bands, far too swiftly for me to catch it.

There are times when I wonder where the creativity ends and the artifice begins.  What is righteous and what is riotous.  When I am expressing myself and when I am exposing myself.

I try to solace myself with the fact that—for all the noise that I share with the audience—I never share any of the silence.  Nopony hears the gasping lull between breaths, the miniscule mare hidden delicately between the palpitating beats of me.

She stands up high, somewhere lofty, lonely, and fraught with peril.  The world is full of rain, roads, and wild whinnying.  She looks out upon the malaise, her damaged eyes full of pain, fright, colors.  She can't understand—these chaotic streams that fill her, that pollute her, that have robbed her of the gift she once cherished, that once made her something more than she was.

And below looms waters, firmaments, dark and devouring.  Thirsting for her... thirsting for me.

And for a moment, I let go.  My hooves drift away, and I plunge forward into tomorrow, a darkness unrelenting, where all that waits for me is a whimper, melancholic with magenta.  An end after an end.

"Yo, V!"

I flash my eyes open, panting.  Sweating.  I jerk a look to my right.

Roadie Beau stands on the fringes of locked-lights.  I see half a dozen still faces staring up at me, at my booth.  Still bodies are not a good thing at a club.

A flood of amber spills out of his mouth.  "You okay?"

I shudder.  My ears twitch, and I realize that the walls are brimming with solid crimson bands.  The same beat has been repetitiously looping for a good two minutes.

"You gonna switch soon, or—?"

A magenta cloud leaks out.  I fling my hoof across the instruments like a playful pianist.  The track switches, and I cover for the sudden movement with a bass salvo, like a computer vomiting its innards out, then peppering the sinew with kindergarten glitter.

It appears to work.  A roar of golden cheers echoes from the crowd, then all is violet rain, collecting in purple puddles beneath us as I immediately sample the track that stole the hearts, brains, and ears of Baltimare.

"Heeeeeey!"  Beau hops in place, grabbing his mic again as he bounces towards the edge of the stage.  "Way to work it, girl!  Give 'em what they want, yeah!"

As he shouts uproariously through the speakers, boldly declaring the hit sequence that's now starting, I hunch closer towards my instruments, struggling to catch my breath.  My lungs expand and contract as I concentrate, nuzzling tight against the velvety currents of purple noise settling all around me, relaxing me, cherishing me... as she always does, whether she knows it or not...

Whether she knew it or not.

And by the time I'm ready for the next bass drop, the tears have already dried themselves.

Have I mention how much I love wearing shades?