Tavi x VampScratch
Prologue
It’s a funny little thing death, ponies are so scared of it, well I am too, I would not be cowering under my sheets if I was not afraid of the immediate and extremely bloody death awaiting me outside my bedroom door otherwise, but I am starting to digress.
When I say the word death to most ponies they hear something of a final word, the cessation of life, the last thump of soil on the casket, a solemn prayer to Princess Temperance to look favourably upon the souls of our loved ones, memories that may never be relived or replaced.
I would be forced to agree, that is certainly one of death’s manifold forms.
However death can mean so much more, it is not just the loss of life but also the loss of possibilities, the loss of the rich and varied paths a pony may walk down as they live. In this way death is intrinsically mixed with life; we live as we die, and as we die we live
For example I died when I was twelve, the brash and confident me that wished to be a model strutting down the runways of Manhattan's great Fall Fashion Festivals died; the quiet and desperate me that tried oh so hard to be an artist putting alien landscapes and untold dreams onto canvas with brush and paint died; the small and distant me that held dreams of being an alchemical scientist with Stable prize* after Stable prize to my name.
All those me’s died when I discovered the cello and my destiny appeared before me in the tattered and beaten old instrument my parents bought for me as a distraction to the path they had laid before me, oh their faces when I first touched bow to string and thousands of me’s died in the outpouring of my soul upon that sweet muse.
To anypony else it sounded like the warblings of a dying cat, but to me it was the sweetest of siren songs.
I fear I am digressing again, the pounding on my door should be focusing my thoughts, not causing them to scatter like snapped strings.
Then as my life continued I died again and again. The me that would only ever amount to being a street busker died when I put the hours of effort and work into my cello pulling ahead of all my peers. The me that would have made her paltry living in lounge bars and seedy Las Pegasus dives died when I fought tooth and hoof for my position in the Royal Sister’s Orchestra. The me that was forced out of her position and killed herself in a fit of depression died when I pushed myself against the yoke and proved, without a shadow of a doubt that I, an Earth Pony in a Unicorn city, had earned my position.
And then, the me that had worked so hard, sacrificed so much, literally coated my strings and bow in blood and sweat and quiet tears, died in a nervous breakdown due to unforeseen circumstances that I do not wish to repeat here.
And then, the me that had always been alone, the me that was so focused on her cello, on her success, on her destiny died. She died a slow, cancerous death fighting against it all the while; even as she was surrounded by newly-made friends. The concert leader having sent her and I the both of us to Ponyville, a little town hiding in the Cantering foothills, sheltered in the shadows of Canterlot.
It was in that town that I found something I hadn’t had before, not in my family, not in my study and practice, not in my position and prestige. I found a mare who would be willing to live with me and die with me, our lives so deeply intertwined that when we died, we died together or not at all.
Of course the both of us died once more when I discovered the one secret she had actually chosen to keep from me.
I died when I discovered my marefriend was a vampire.
She died when she realised I had uncovered her secret.