By the Daysong

by MetaSkipper

Blue Thoughts

“Oh, Rarity, Ah love you!”

“Oh, I love you too, darling Applejack!” Hands grasped each other, and longing looks gazed into the other’s eyes.

“Pinkie Pie, I don’t sound a thing like that.” Applejack groaned, earning a snicker out of her impersonator. Sonata had a grin of her own.

Rarity was hardly any more pleased. “And Sonata, really? Applejack?”

Applejack shot Rarity a look. “What’s that supposed to mean, Rarity?”

“Oh, uh, well… What I meant was… you’re not my type?”

Sonata giggled. “Well, if Applejack isn’t your type… I’m sorry Applejack, but my one true love is Rainbow Dash!”

“No, Ah can’t go on without ya, Rarity! Don’t leave me!”

“Good heavens!” Rarity near fumed. “You wouldn’t catch me dead with Rainbow Dash!”

“Hey! I’ll have you know I wouldn’t be caught dead with you either!”

Applejack chuckled. “I only hope that if I ever fall in love with Rarity and she rejects me, that I take it with a bit more dignity then y’all are making me out to have.”

Fluttershy offered a smile. “If it makes you feel any better, I’d go out with you if you fell in love with me.”

Sunset Shimmer raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

Fluttershy’s smile replaced itself with a look of horror. “Oh, uhh, what I meant to say was…”

Applejack, for reasons unknown to Sonata, suddenly started acting up. “Oh, Fluttershy, you know Ah couldn’t date anyone with hair extensions! No, Rarity’s the one for me!”

“But, but Applejack! I… I wear false eyelashes!”

“No, say it ain’t so!” Applejack said, gripping Rarity’s shoulders. With a look of remorse, Rarity dramatically pulled the fake eyelashes away. Seemingly overcome, Applejack recoiled in mock horror.

“Mah whole life is a lie!” She cast about, eventually grabbing onto Sonata. “Hold me, Sonata, hold me!”

Wide-eyed, Sonata slowly moved to pull Applejack closer, eventually patting her with a near motherly touch. “There, there…”

A gasp nearly made her jump. “I can’t believe you, Sonata! I thought we had something special!” Pinkie grabbed Sonata’s face and turned it to face hers.

“Wait, what? But, but this is so sudden and I just met you! Well, not met-met, but got-to-know-you-met.”

Wiping a tear from her eye, Applejack smiled. “She’s just playing, sugarcube.”

“Oh.”

Breaking away from Sonata, Applejack gave a small snort. “Now look what y’all’ve done. You’ve got my nose running.”

The assembled girls shared a good natured laugh as Fluttershy passed a tissue. Sonata couldn’t remember the last time she’d partaken in something like this. Had she ever? Certainly not with her former companions. Sure, she’d been the target of affection and adoration; as a Siren, it was part of the job description and a matter of self-preservation. But this, this was different. They had made fun of each other, even made fun of her inability to read sarcasm and acting, but it hadn’t felt the same way when Adagio or Aria did it. What was this feeling, this sensation Sonata had around these girls?

A ringing doorbell shook her out of her inner thoughts. The girls ran for the dinner table, Sonata amongst them.

“I swear, you guys are worse than my favorite romcoms on TV,” Sunset said before taking another bite of pizza.

Rainbow Dash didn’t bother with waiting to finish chewing. “I don’t know how you watch that stuff, Sunset. It’s so cheesy and mushy.”

“Just like that pizza you’re giving us a wonderful view of, darling?” Rarity offered with a raised eyebrow and cringe of disgust. Turning away, her eyes fell on Sonata. “Well, look at you. Not even a full day we’ve been friends and it’s already like we’ve known you forever.”

“…Friends?”

Sonata suddenly found Rainbow Dash’s arm hung around her neck and shoulder. “Yeah, friends. Y’know, people you hang out with and stuff? Oh, and… sorry about earlier.”

“It’s okay.” Had Sonata ever had a true friend? For the many years she’d been with them, she’d thought her fellow Sirens were her friends, or the closest thing she’d ever have to them. She believed it through the years of shouting, blame, and animosity. But the way these girls treated her, the girls who had forever torn out her soul that night, they were the ones who made her feel this way. Was this… friendship? Sonata decided she liked how this felt. She smiled, and saw each girl smiling back at her.

Suddenly, Pinkie proclaimed, “I feel a song coming on! One, two, three! There was a time we were apart, but that’s behind us now.”

Catching on, Rainbow Dash joined in. “See how we’ve made a brand new start, and the future’s looking up, oh oh oh oh....”

Each of the girls joined in… except Sonata. If only she could join in! But without her voice, Sonata found herself relegated to watching and listening. As they sung, Sonata watched the little pony ears grow in and hair grow out, just like that night.

That night.

Memories flashed once again before her eyes. The same sinking feeling of her lost voice, her lost soul. The high of power, the crash of losing it. For a moment, just a moment, she’d been in touch with her inner old self, and it had been taken from her. The arguing and shouting after they ran off the stage. Had it all been a trick? A trap, set to capture her? Would she lose her hair? No… No! With a shriek, Sonata ran from the table, on the verge of bawling and clutching her shirt collar.

She ran. She didn’t know where she was running. She didn’t care. She just had to get away, away from everything. By luck or dumb fate, she came to the same bench she had slept on the night before.

She sat down. Was this her future, her fate? To be running from people her whole life? As a creature whose birth, whose purpose was born of feeding on hatred and creating affection, the concept of isolation was more than alien to her. But now it was staring her in the face, and she could run no more.

A stray thought entered her hear. She hadn’t stuck around for the whole song, but she had understood the general gist of it. It sung of union, friendship, things she found herself craving after that first tempting taste. It was opening, inviting, but above that, it was genuine. For a creature that had lived her life deceiving and generating false emotions, genuine affection was strange. It didn’t taste the same as the hatred that had sustained her. But she didn’t need that sustenance anymore. Her powers were gone, and with them, the physical need for anger. Oh, she still felt a hunger; her psyche and drive could not change overnight. But this genuine and real affection filled far more than the constructed adoration of the Old Songs.

But she couldn’t sing. This was not a matter of not knowing a song; she was physically impossible of carrying a tune. She could not partake in that song. Was she outside partaking in friendship as well?

No. She could sing. She had done it, that night. But could she do it again?

What had she sung about that night? A little duckling in a taco boat. She wracked her brain to remember that song, the notes she had carried that night. But her memory was fuzzy at best, taken that night by a strange cross of ecstasy and trance. Each note she sang could not match what she had sung that night. But something troubled her deeper. The sense of being possessed she had felt that night was gone. The, dare she say it, magic of her song that night simply wasn’t there.

Was that it, then? Her taste of song that night was a one-time thing, no closer to her reach than a waking dream. Had she been with her fellow sirens, they probably would have written off her experience as just that, a near hallucination not worth considering. But her fellow sirens were not at the front of her mind anymore. No, she had found a new set of people to follow. And even if that sensation was only a lie, in that moment, she decided to believe, to try.

She looked into the starts above and wondered. She was a ditz, a scatterbrain; to ponder was a part of her nature. She was taken to think about the strangest things in the strangest moments and make the strangest connections. Could she ever find that spark again? Sonata found that she thought best out loud. So she verbalized her train of thought. She verbalized it in song.

She had not even found a focal point to start her song. Out of her mouth came the greatest mysteries of the universe and the most inane thoughts of within. It was a train on a dead-set path with no rails at some times, and a train on rails with no set path at others. Why did she crave this newfound feeling? What was to become of her? What does duck taste like? Was she singing right now?

Wait.

Was she singing right now?

A theoretical bated breath later (Had her breath actually been bated, she would have stopped singing, after all.), it dawned on her that, yes, she was singing. And maybe, just maybe, if she could sing, perhaps she could partake in that song of friendship. All she had to do was to follow herself.

Her curiosity sated for the time being, she brought her song to a close, still in a happy state of shock, an open smile resting on her face.

“Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh! That was amaze-tacular!”

“I thought you couldn’t sing anymore.” Sonata turned to face Sunset Shimmer, face the assembled girls, with looks of shock and wonder upon their faces as they walked towards her.

“I… didn’t think so either.”

Fluttershy gave a small smile. “Well, it certainly was very nice.”

Rarity was a bit more enthusiastic about the situation. “Darling, that was wonderful!”

Rainbow Dash seemed less enthusiastic. “I hate to be that guy, but doesn’t this mean she might have her powers back?”

Rarity turned with a look of disappointment. “She’s clearly happy about this, can’t you at least give her her moment?”

Applejack put her arm around Rainbow’s shoulder. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Rainbow.”

Seemingly placated, Rainbow turned back to Sonata. “I have to agree. That was awesome!”

A suddenly far more morose than usual Pinkie pulled close. “Sorry about singing earlier. I… I forgot you couldn’t sing anymore. Friends are supposed to think about how other friends feel.”

Sonata’s eyes widened. “You… you think I’m your friend?”

“Of course, silly!” Pinkie beamed back. “Sure, we might have times where we don’t get along, but that doesn’t mean we stop being friends. Gosh, I sound like I belong on a children’s show, explaining this.” The girls allowed themselves to giggle at the absurdity of the statement.

“You want to come back, sugarcube?” Applejack offered her hand, but really much more than her hand.

“For realzies?”

“For realzies.”

A smile of approval later, the girls found themselves on the way back to Pinkie’s house. And the six, no, seven girls, found they couldn’t help but sing a song.

“Oh yeah, we’re better than ever ….”

Author's Note:

There are no lyrics in this chapter, merely italicized dialogue.

This chapter was rather fun to imagine. I'll confess, as a guy, I have very little idea about what girls talk about when they talk shop, but the scene at the start played out in my head in an amusing fashion, so I turned it to words. A bit more introspection a la Siren Night, but I felt that this was the best way to play out the scene.

An amusing change is how we went from "old songs" to "Old Songs." I blame SkycatcherEQ for that.

There are a few different directions to go from here. Sonata still hasn't managed to bump into Adagio and Aria since the start of this story, so we might look at that, or we might just jump into the Aria-self-discovery arc.

Comments

[Awesomo3000]

Words cannot describe how adorable this is! We love you, Sonata!

[Csquared08]

Talking Heads Syndrome definitely appears to be gone. Nice to see that improvement

[ColdGoldLazarus]

As a shipper with only the barest notions of self-control, I loved that opening bit.