The theater sat in awe as the sound of a cello weaved throughout the hall. The notes rose and fell and meandered through the auditorium in scintillating waves, the haunting melody holding the audience captive. The spell of the notes persisted even to outside, where ponies passing by would stop for a moment until the notes faded away.
The cellist was not alone on stage. A small orchestra played behind her, including ten strings, five woodwinds, five brass instruments, a percussionist, and a piano. They played their own separate pieces, letting the notes of the cello guide them and lead them onward in addition to slowly weaving its way through their midst.
The cellist was a refined grey mare with a neatly brushed mane and wearing a pink bow tie. Four pieces of sheet music were arranged on a sheet in front of her, yet her eyes were closed and she paid little attention to them. Her bow rocked and swayed expertly back and forth across the cello’s strings – strapped and held in place neatly to her hoof – as she herself let the notes guide her playing. The note of a treble clef at her hip stood clearly out to the audience as she propped herself up on her back legs, using one hoof to steady the top of the cello.
It wasn’t long before the notes started to become faster. The members of the orchestra behind the cellist began to focus harder to keep time with the ever-increasing speed. The cellist’s eyes, despite being closed, took on a more concentrated look, squinting with increased determination as she steadily kept time. As the piece rose to a crescendo, the cellist’s hoof and bow blazed along the strings as though she hardly needed to put effort in it, the orchestra following her lead and keeping calm despite the piece's increasing frenzy.
The piece rose to a stunning pitch and vibrant thunder throughout the hall before ending in a sudden note that blasted the audience back in their seats before coming to a stop. After a few moments for the audience to recover, the cellist played again, starting quietly and from a simple, lighthearted tune, swelling gently to a peaceful rise before slowly lowering itself back down and ending on a long fading note, coinciding with the dimming of the lights as the piece came to its end.
The hall was silent for a time before it broke out into applause. The lights came back up and the mare and her companions in the orchestra gently bowed in place and waved to the audience. The conductor turned around and gave a bow himself and began thanking the audience for coming out that evening. After a moment, the curtains slowly dropped down and the lights dimmed to a more reasonable light.
The grey mare slowly backed down on to a third hoof as an assistant from behind the stage came to take a hold of her cello. She gently unstrapped the bow from her hoof and helped the assistant to carry it to a case hidden just off stage. The cello was gently lowered into the case with the help of a unicorn and the mare closed the case.
“Will you need any help this evening, Octavia?” came a voice from behind the mare.
The mare turned around to see a brown earth pony stallion with a silvery mane and bright green eyes. Octavia smiled. “Thank you, Frederic, but I think I’ll be okay.” She walked over to the stand where her sheet music stood.
“If you insist,” Frederic shrugged, following her and heading to a stand over by the piano. “I know sometimes that one white unicorn is around to help you and noticed she wasn’t here.”
Octavia sighed and scowled. “She was supposed to be. But I don’t think she’ll be here tonight.”
“Oh…” Frederic looked around awkwardly, his eyes darting around awkwardly. “I-I’m sorry to hear that. Um… are you sure you don’t need the help?”
“No, I’ll be alright,” the mare said, resigned. “I just have the cello. It’s not much.”
Frederic nodded and allowed himself a small smile. “Look, you need any help, you have my address. Send a note and I’ll be around.”
“Thanks.” Octavia smiled at him. “I just think I need a little time away.”
Frederic tapped his chin with a hoof and thought about it. “I’ve heard there’s houses for rent in Ponyville. Little one bedroom cottages for not a lot per month. Matter of fact, might even be cheaper than apartments here. You could go there. It’s only forty or so minutes by train.”
Octavia perked her ears. “I’ve heard of that place before… I suppose it might be worth a look.”
Frederic shrugged. “It’s just a suggestion. And it might even be good for your muse to have a little time away like a sabbatical.”
Octavia nodded and walked away.
Outside the door was a large crowd of ponies; as soon as they saw Octavia come through the doors, they swarmed her with cameras and notebooks and pencils and pens and caused a clamor around her. The piece had been hers, and all were waiting to talk with the one who created the sensational act. Octavia smiled and dealt with each pony one by one, taking pictures with some and signing autographs for almost everyone.
"Excellent piece, Miss Octavia!" said one.
"Wonderful, absolutely wonderful!" said another.
"Such command of sound!" said a third. "Truly an excellent composer as well as a first-rate cellist!"
"Thank you all," Octavia said, proudly but refined, graceful, and genuinely appreciative. "And thank you for coming out to watch, most of all. It's ponies like you, who come to our performances and show your appreciation, that really makes both this piece and our whole orchestra who we really are. We can't have it if it weren't for such fine patrons as yourselves."
A few minutes later, the crowds dispersed having obtained the necessary photographs, autographs, and sound-bites. Octavia walked along through the streets, her cello hooked to a small wheeled stand she pulled via a yoke around her neck. The cello came easily behind her and it didn’t take much effort to pull it along Canterlot’s cobblestone streets.
The sun had just set beyond the horizon and a full moon was shining peacefully down. The lights came up in the streets and provided a gentle glow that lit the streets as Octavia walked away from the theater and down towards a small apartment complex in one of Canterlot’s nice sections.
Octavia walked up to the apartment and unlocked the door with a single hoof. She entered into a small lobby and walked into a garishly-furnished living room with all sorts of neon colors. She quickly moved past it to her room, a simple affair with a black and white motif, the only allowances to vanity being a music stand decorated with her purple treble clef cutie mark and a cubist piece of primary colors separated by black bars and squares along with a favored record player in a brilliant bronze.
Octavia set the cello down in her room and quietly went off to the kitchen. She took out a wine glass with a long stem, knelt down to a small fridge, and pulled out and poured herself a glass of a fine red wine. She sipped it luxuriously as she sat at one of the simple chairs in the kitchen.
Octavia looked out to the living room. There was a plain beige couch and a black coffee table with a glass surface. Those were the only two allowances she had made to the room. The carpet had been dyed neon blue, two bean bags had been placed in a bright orange and green, a shelving unit had a different bright color for each shelf, the walls painted either yellow or blue so bright it actually made her shield her eyes in the daylight and made it impossible to sleep at night.
Not far away was the bathroom. The shower tile had been done in bright blue, the glass door had been done in two panels of orange and green, the towels were all electric blues and greens and pinks, and the light had a multicolored shade around it that spun whenever the light turned on, dazzling Octavia whenever she turned it on. Not far away, a room with an almost permanently closed door held much of the same thing.
Octavia looked at a rather conservative clock on the kitchen wall. Ten minutes after eight in the evening. Her roommate wouldn’t be home for another hour or so if she was doing her usual route. Octavia finished the wine in two large gulps and let some tea steep as she cued up a classical record in her room. She adjusted the pillows, returned for a steaming cup of tea, and sat down with a book on the bed, sipping quietly as she read in silence.
It was the first hour of silence Octavia had in the last thirty-six hours. Octavia liked light noise; the sound of a classical record in the background, of quiet conversations going on around her, of wind and trees and birds and crickets. She had taken a liking to a café not far away, and she went there often when her roommate was not at work. It was the sounds of life she was used to, not of raucous noise that haunted her sleep if it let her sleep at all.
But now she basked in the dull glow of the wine relaxing her and of the quiet sounds of Bach and Mozart and Beethooven. Strings and brass gently unspooled in the background, and the quiet sounds of paper flipping as she read through an autobiography of a famous violinist from the Manehattan Symphony Orchestra calmed her and soothed her mind.
The record ended punctually at nine-fifteen. Barely had Octavia noticed the record scratching and the white noise playing throughout the room when she heard the front door fling open and the sound of boisterous laughter explode through the house. A voice came through, not even muffled by the closed door to Octavia’s bedroom.
“Oh, yeah! That was awesome! Hey, Tavi doesn’t like me having too much company over, so why don’t we head over to Trance Rhythm’s place tomorrow? Oh yeah, I’m sure she won’t mind. Yeah, and I’ll make sure to bring that one record with me. Alright, later!”
The front door closed with a bang. Octavia could hear her roommate coming through the house towards her room, humming as she went. She opened the door and launched herself into the room.
The mare had a wild electric blue mane, a white coat, and an eighth note for a cutie mark. A pair of gaudy violet shades blocked her light pink eyes, and a smile was plastered on her face showing two rows of white teeth.
“Hey, Tavi! How’d the concert go?”
Octavia put her book aside and sighed. “It went fine, Vinyl.”
“Cool! Oh man, I had so much fun at the Trotting Mare club today.”
Octavia sighed again and rolled off the bed. “Listen, Vinyl, I want to have a talk with you about that.”
Vinyl Scratch leaned up against the doorway of the bedroom. “Sure. Whatever you want to talk about, I’m all ears.”
“Well… I was debuting a new solo piece today and a new orchestral piece. I… I thought I gave you a ticket so you could be there. And I heard you meeting about going over to Trance Rhythm’s place tomorrow. He’s a nice guy and all, but… are you even listening to me!?”
While Octavia had been talking, Vinyl had started bobbing her head and humming again. While her eyes were looking in Octavia’s direction, the mare had gotten the feeling she wasn’t actually looking at her.
Vinyl stopped bobbing her head. “What? Yeah, I was. You were saying… uh…” She brought a hoof to her head and started scratching it.
“I was saying Trance was…”
“Hold on, hold on! I’ll get it in a minute!”
“Vinyl, just listen to me for one second instead of going off on some rhythm in your head!” Octavia had actually started shouting for a moment. She took a deep breath and started again, only slightly calmer. “Vinyl, I thought you remembered I had reservations for tomorrow at that one place for dinner.”
Vinyl stared at her blankly for a moment. “…what restaurant?”
“I told you! La Jument Petite at seven-thirty!”
“Why did you make reservations for dinner somewhere?”
“It’s our one year anniversary!”
For once, Vinyl’s look became serious. “Quit shouting at me like I forgot. I know it’s our one year anniversary, Tavi.”
“Then why did you make plans at our door to go to Trance Rhythm’s place tomorrow?”
“I was going to invite you along! You’re cool with him, and he’s cool with you. We’d go over to his place, have a few drinks, dance a little while, and they’d treat us to dinner. Trance said he’d be cool with that.”
“Vinyl… I can’t stand that place.”
“What’s so bad about it?”
“I wanted to spend somewhere… quieter. My new piece debuted today to nice acclaim. I wanted to celebrate that with you and our anniversary… alone.”
“You hole yourself up in your room with your cello all the time. Why can’t you let loose and have a little fun every once in a while?”
“Vinyl, you know as much as I do that I think that music is noise,” Octavia said forcefully.
“And you know as much as I do I can’t stand a dress or a suit and tie,” Vinyl spat back. “I like your music, but I honestly don’t like going to such a formal place. The ponies there are all bores.”
“They are not bores! They are educated, they are well-read, they are well-versed in culture!”
“Yeah, sure. Do you realize how many times you have the exact same conversation over and over again?”
“Vinyl…" Octavia tried to refute, but could find nothing. She started again. "The ponies you hang out with are too wild. I could stand it every couple of months. But I can’t constantly hang out with you. And when you blow off my invitation to a concert to see my piece debut, you’ve got to understand that it kind of hurts me.”
“What about the time I released an album, huh? I asked you to come with me to the signing and the party for it, but I couldn’t do a damn thing to convince you otherwise.”
“Because I had a practice session! It’s how I make money; I couldn’t skip a practice.”
“You go to practice all the time lately,” Vinyl said, her voice now gaining a venomous undertone. “You could have skipped one and they would have been fine with that.”
“Look, I’m not like you. I can’t just pick and choose which days I work.”
“Yeah, but you can take one day off. You keep talking about how much I don't support you, so what about when you don't support me? Am I supposed to not get mad about that? And about the restaurant, the food there is not my thing.”
“It’s haute cuisine!”
“Tavi, that place is nasty and the portions are tiny. And frankly it could stand to have a little excitement. I mean, the band is nice, but they don’t have any zip or pizzazz, like a synth or a drum in the background.”
“I don’t know what you call ‘zip’, but if it means the colors in the living room and bathroom, I think you need to rethink your idea of a palette.”
“It’s popular! Or, if you want to think about it, it’s modern art!”
“Is modern art designed to be blinding to the eye and that bright? Who designed it; Colorblind?”
“Oh! And what about you, wino? What about your room and the kitchen that have almost no color at all? By Celestia, they’re boring like that old Charlie Horse Chaplain video you like!”
“At least my breath doesn’t smell like three shots of coconut rum every night!”
“At least my music doesn’t sometimes sound out of tune.”
Octavia slapped Vinyl hard across the face, the slap sounding like glass shattering and causing the room to go into silence. Vinyl looked at Octavia with a look of surprised anger, and Octavia was snorting and her nostrils were flaring.
“Get out of my room!” Octavia growled. “I pay my portion of the rent, and we agreed this was my room. Get out. Get out!”
Vinyl rubbed her cheek for a moment. It was bright red and a small welt had appeared on it. “Fine. I’ll… I’ll go to Trance’s place without you.” And she turned around and left, closing the door behind her.
For a while, Octavia did nothing. She just stared at the closed door and the astounding amount of silence that came from the other side of it. That was soon broken by the sound of a thudding bass vibrating throughout the house. It nearly knocked her off her hooves, and she finally was spurred to move to the bed to sit and think.
While she wanted to think about other things – the next pieces she would have to practice, the next concert coming up, potentially writing another piece – the thudding bass pushed all other thoughts out of her mind. Something that had been resting on her mind for a long time, and after that last argument was unavoidable.
She had not known what drew her to Vinyl Scratch one night one year ago. Octavia had been heading out from one of her concerts and stopped at a local café for dinner; Vinyl had been sitting down at the table next to her. They both ordered the same thing for dinner and drink. They talked for a little bit, and she had also been into music and had also studied musical theory. Vinyl had invited her to a club to go dancing, and for some reason she agreed, figuring that’s what she needed.
Even that first time, the atmosphere and the energy scared her. It was such a stark contrast from the theater she had been in only two hours before. Two hours… in two hours she had gone from an evening alone with Bach to standing in the middle of a crowded nightclub with strobe lights and pulsing music, the bass beating in time with her heart.
That first time, it had given her a thrill. It was inexplicable to her, how she loved classical music and yet this was giving her the same sensations as a new fugue or orchestral piece. The beating of the bass pulsed through her and she had danced with Vinyl for Celestia knows how long. And then there was a trip to the club’s bar, where she had something that tasted like mango and strawberry, and talking with other ponies in voices she could barely make out over the noise.
By the time she finally returned home, it was one in the morning and she was more exhausted than she ever had been. She collapsed on the bed and fell sound asleep and didn’t even wake until it was nearly noon. When she woke up, her heart was still racing, and she found herself intrigued by the strange unicorn. She had brought a spark into her life that she hadn’t had before.
For seven months, life was bliss. They went out to lunch once a week, then out to dinner, then saw a movie, then started staying the nights at each other’s house, talking about music and music theory. By month four Octavia and Vinyl had bought their apartment, and Vinyl’s spark of color and unique design were a refreshing pace. For three months, life was a whirlwind of parties and cafés and clubs and theaters that Octavia had once only dreamed of, now made possible by Vinyl’s large circle of friends. For seven months, they came to every event of Octavia’s and Octavia made the time to go to the clubs whenever Vinyl was deejay-ing.
But one evening at a club after seven months, Octavia looked at her martini glass filled with mint and rum and vodka and soda water and began to wonder what she was doing there. The pounding bass felt like it was going to shatter her to pieces, starting with her ears and her heart. She left the club and found she couldn’t hear anything for about three seconds. She had to head home early, a taste like that of vomit in her throat and a definite nausea in her stomach.
The next time she went to the theater, Vinyl didn’t come. They went out to dinner a few weeks later and got into a passive-aggressive argument. Octavia began to skip out on club nights, the pastel coloring began to blind her, and the bass began to be painful and drowned out her thoughts and practices. They got into a more heated argument around month nine, and afterwards conversations about music felt like retreads… and nothing else matched up. Vinyl stopped coming to the theater around month ten, and Octavia quit coming to the club shortly afterwards. Around month eleven, they had stopped going to dinner. The last month had seen Octavia arrange her schedule so that she and Vinyl occupied the apartment so few times during the day, only tolerating each other when necessary.
And now… no conversation they had could end without something being spat at each other. They had stopped even going to lunch or cafés; the latter became a retreat for Octavia. They were cordoned off to pretty much their own rooms. They shared a bathroom out of necessity, but otherwise they refused to be in a room when the other was in it.
One year… one year of her life. And the last eight months living with her. At first it had been a dream, a series of events Octavia saw with others yet never imagined with herself. And now… now it was all falling out of her hooves.
Octavia pushed her front hooves into her face, trying to shut out the memories from returning to her. But after a while, she was just pushing her eyes closed and trying not to cry.
Octavia opened her door as quietly as possible. The bathroom door was open and Vinyl’s bedroom door was closed with strobe lights coming out from the space between the door and the carpet. Octavia quickly grabbed a towel and ran for the bathroom, turned on the shower, and sat in the shower and let it drown out her sobs.
For just a moment, the bass stopped pounding. Then it started up again as though oblivious to her pain.