“Say…Octavia, for a homeless pony, you seem rather refined. Why are you living on the streets of all places?” Arpeggio inquired. She had been occasionally and awkwardly dialoguing with Octavia over the past two hours or so, and while it took awhile for her to warm up to the filly, she had eventually reached the point where she could look at her without internally cringing.
Octavia stared at Arpeggio for a moment. She was wordless. She didn’t want to drag others into her issues, regardless of whether they were her best friends, her sworn enemies, merely her accomplices, or ponies who only tolerated her because they had to do so. In her mind, they were only her issues to deal with, and she felt that dragging others into them was selfish and unladylike.
Eventually, she settled for the same response she gave Vinyl earlier: “I did not enjoy life at home, so I left,” she said, simply. ‘That would have to suffice.’
“So, let me get this straight. You did not like living there, so you decided living on the streets would be better?” ‘She has to be hiding something,’ Arpeggio mused. ‘Fillies do not simply run away from home because they do not like living there.’
“…Under the specific circumstances, yes; I say living on the streets is much preferred.”
‘Ah, yes. There is certainly something.’ Arpeggio raised an eyebrow. “And why is that?”
Vinyl stopped her mother from going any further. “Octy doesn’t wanna talk about it, Mom.”
“Yes. I am afraid that it is a personal thing, misses Scratch.”
For some reason, Arpeggio flinched when Octavia said that.
“…Well, alright then.”
‘Bless that Vinyl,’ Octavia thought.
A minute passed, then a couple of minutes, and then the fifth, sixth, and seventh all flew by soon after. The three ponies once again had run out of things to say, and thus they had returned to their average, casual, yet paradoxically awkward silence. It was within this set of moments that Octavia had decided that she had stayed long enough and had climbed to her four hooves to announce her leave.
“I believe I have taken up enough of your time, Vinyl, Arpeggio. Thank you for the hospitality,” she said. Just as she began walking towards the door, Vinyl reached out and placed a hoof atop her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks.
“Octy, stay the night.”
Octavia turned to face her friend. “Huh?”
“Stay the night,” Vinyl repeated. “It’s freezing cold out there. You’ll get hypothermia. I’d rather have you in here than in that stupid alleyway.”
Arpeggio interjected: “Vincenza, she is an absolute stranger! I will not have strangers spending the night! Letting her come inside was already a stretch!”
“Mother, she’s not a stranger.”
“Then what is she?!”
Vinyl’s scowled at her mother. “She’s a friend!” she yelled. She pulled her voice down to more…reasonable levels before continuing. “…She’s a friend, Mom.”
“You have known her for less than a month, Vincenza.”
Octavia winced at the blatant red herring.
Vinyl stamped a hoof into the flooring with a smack. “Friendship has nothing to do with time!”
“Oh? Then please, go ahead and elaborate upon how one becomes friends within the timeframe of a week.”
Vinyl stared at Arpeggio tautly, flatly, as if she had been sending a kind of non-verbal ‘Seriously?’ in her direction. “How we became friends doesn’t matter. She’s a friend.”
Arpeggio paused. She knew how stubborn her daughter could be about certain things. This seemed to be one of those cases, so, reluctantly, she admitted her defeat: “…I see. I suppose she can stay the night. However, if she exhibits even the slightest smidgen of peculiar conduct, she is being booted.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Octavia noted that she would have to be cautious around Arpeggio in regards to her behavior. She seemed to be a rather observant and critical mare, and she did not want to leave a negative first impression. She was Vinyl’s mother, after all. If she botched this up, she might never get a chance to see Vinyl Scratch again! She juddered at the idea of lost company but ultimately shook herself back into reality before her mind could dive deeper into the well of virtual loneliness that had pursued and enveloped her.
Octavia briefly nodded. “Yes. Thank you, Arpeggio.”
The rest of the night had gone by rather well and quickly for Octavia. After Vinyl’s somewhat brief argument with her mother, and several games of chess, checkers, and Monopony, she had dragged her excitedly into her room, mumbling something about not having a guest bedroom or something along those lines.
Octavia had already painted a mental picture of what Vinyl’s bedroom could’ve looked like, but that picture had been highly inaccurate when in comparison to the real thing—nearly everything she thought it would be was wrong. She had mused that Vinyl’s room would probably be very organized and clean, much like her actual person, but it had turned out that while there were no crumbs, spilled liquids, half-eaten pizzas, or anything foodstuff-like for that matter, the floor was littered in a highly chaotic but somehow organized collection of papers, books, pencils, and erasers and two or three seemingly unrelated articles of clothing.
Vinyl leaped onto her bed, belly first, sending a purple blanket flying as the mattress previously underneath absorbed her weight. She sighed and smiled as she let the muscles in her body relax. “Bed, sweet bed,” she said, causing Octavia to giggle in response to her antics.
Octavia could remember the last time she had lain on a bed. It had been a very pleasant experience, and comparably more enjoyable than sleeping on cold, hard pavement. She yawned.
“Getting tired, Octy?”
“Yes. Sorry, Vinyl, but I do not have much more ‘juice’ in me, as they say.”
“That’s fine, Tavs. I should probably get some rest too, actually.”
Vinyl leapt off the bed and returned the blanket, which had been lying on the floor, to its rightful place atop the mattress, then lifted a corner of the fabric and motioned her hoof inside. “After you, Madam.”
“…What?”
“Remember, we don’t have a guest bedroom, so you’ll be sleeping with me. Hope that doesn’t bug you too much.”
“Oh…um…thank you,” Octavia said. She crawled underneath the bedsheets, vanishing from sight for a moment before popping her head out from underneath the blanket and laid it atop a pillow.
Vinyl switched off the lights and crawled in next to her friend. “Night, Tavi,” she said.
“Goodnight, Vinyl.”