11) Let Them Talk
-Let Them Talk-
(Hugh Laurie)
For perhaps only the third time in her life, Octavia felt she'd provided a concert to be remembered. Certainly, the audience were talking about it. Nothing good, but they were talking. As she'd played, two hundred snooty eyebrows had been raised, and a great many of them had not yet deigned to descend to their rightful places; it was a stir, if nothing else. As the maestro tried desperately to manage the outrage of the patrons, she retreated backstage, as did most of the musicians (giving her dirty looks as they did).
"You're crazy," Vinyl greeted her coolly, although she was all but glowing. "I didn't think you'd wear them on stage."
Octavia raised her hoof self-consciously to the glasses, pushed them a little further up her nose. They kept slipping. Not surprisingly, given the nervous sweat she'd broken out into. Still, she couldn't help grinning; she wondered if this was how an athlete felt after winning a race.
"I didn't think you'd give them to me, in all honesty," she replied after a second's worth of thought. "How was the concert?"
"Worst I've ever seen. You were fantastic. Made the rest of the orchestra look like idiots," Vinyl smirked, and took a quick step forwards before she caught herself; a less reserved pony would have broken into a skip.
"Oho. I wondered why the audience were chattering so. Well, I've no doubt the maestro would like to have some words with me, so why don't we escape before he gets around to it?"
Giggling, she led the way, dodging adroitly between the dazed music hall staff who were trying to figure out what had gone so drastically wrong. Vinyl followed her hoofstep for hoofstep, never more than a quarter second behind her, until they finally burst from the softly lit building into the cool, fresh night air. Even from the side exit, they could hear the hum of voices declaiming 'that upstart pony in the purple glasses'; cautiously, they skirted around the building to the back, to lie low until the crowds had dispersed. Up above them, the stars were already peering out curiously from the blanket of the night sky.
There, Octavia gave herself over to a great, shuddering bout of laughter, the first she'd had in a long while. There wasn't much opportunity to laugh, in the bowstring-tight atmosphere of a struggling music hall. Wasn't much room to improvise, either; unity across the orchestra was paramount. She hadn't realised it, but she was sick of keying her own musical aspirations to those of everyone around her, of being afraid to experiment and grow faster than her friends.
She remembered, then, when she first held the cello, the way the golden sound escaped from it and enveloped her, comforted her in her hour of need. Her father had disappeared the week before; he'd been a wayward musician that charmed her mother's innocent tastes. Music, when she first found it, had been a comfort, a friend. Only later did it become work, effort, toil, a job.
Vinyl watched her, with a smile as opposed to a smirk. Every few seconds, she would take an agitated step forward, a nervous canter to the side, as if she might break into dance or song.
Eventually, her laughter broke, and Octavia wiped her her eyes with the back of her hoof. "Oh, Vinyl, you have gotten me into some trouble. However will I introduce you to my mother?"
"I could say the same to you," Vinyl said huskily, and sat down beside her.
"Oh? Why, am I not respectable enough to meet your parents?" Octavia teased gently.
"Other way around," Vinyl smirked, and let it drop. "You look like an idiot in those glasses."
"Like you didn't."
"Usually, people say I look scary without them. Red eyes, take warning," Vinyl replied, and Octavia could just hear the note of wistfulness there. The night breeze trickled down her back, and she realised how cold it was.
Quietly (and with not a little nervousness), she leaned closer to Vinyl, to her warmth. She was gratified when after a moment, Vinyl leaned back.
"I always wondered why you were so concerned about these," the earth pony said, and lifted the glasses up to rest on her forehead. "I really didn't think you'd give them to me."
"I wasn't going to. But I remembered," Vinyl sighed, and Octavia, pressed into her side, felt her deflate as she did. "When I left to stop distracting you, you came looking for me."
"Go on," Octavia urged when she felt her stop, sensed the words drying up on the tip of Vinyl's tongue.
"...To give my glasses away was a risk. But, I thought, maybe for you, it was worth it," the unicorn went, and if it weren't so very dark, Octavia could have sworn she saw the first little tinges of a blush. She pressed herself a little closer; Vinyl was warmer than she had expected her to be.
"About the 'lovers' thing," she began after a moment, and felt Vinyl rearranged herself nervously.
"I meant to say girlfriend. It came out wrong."
"I was thinking, that, well...That is to say...It might not be so bad. Give it a while, and we might see."
"You're blushing," Vinyl told her coolly. She was smiling.
"So are you!" Octavia pouted.
"And?"
Octavia sighed and shook her head. She didn't move away. When she was a filly, she hadn't even expected to date another mare, never mind one so exasperating. But all the best things in life- whether it was cooking, reading, or music- needed a little work, a little understanding. And, of course, to be played by ear once in a while. Life's boring when you can't deviate from the notes on the sheet.
"Octavia?" Vinyl said after a while.
"Yes?" she replied, and felt her eyelids droop. She was beginning to feel sleepy.
"I've never heard you laugh like that before. You sounded really...goofy," Vinyl said. "I really liked it."
"One of these days, Vinyl Scratch, I shall teach you how to give a compliment without sounding like a jerk, and you will thank me for it," she replied, and put her head on Vinyl's shoulder. "Just you wait."
"Hey, Octavia! Nice performance yesterday. Maestro wants to see you. Oh! And you brought your weird friend!" the security guard smiled.
"She's not weird, and she's not my friend," Octavia smiled.
"We're partners," Vinyl finished smokily, walking a few steps behind her. "But thanks. I was impressed with her, too."
He watched them go, and shrugged. He should've known.
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Tracking this
keeps getting better
This is still my favorite chapter thus far.
I had worried about Vinyl's train of thought. I mean, you don't wear purple party glasses on a classic concerto. But well, I guess, from all the bad things that could have happened, this was the less worst. So far. Really had me worried for Octavia on those first lines. And yay, more character development! This time with less sugar
This story has an absolutely wonderful style and feeling of progression. The way the characters have slowly revealed themselves over the course ofthe story so far has just been so... engaging. One of my favourite things i've read in a while and i'm exited to see where it leads.
566471
Everyone's so active here, it's incredible.
Same here, essentially. I don't get to leave- if I did, I'd come back and the notification box would've just exploded.
567021
567169
Thank goodness. I'm always afraid it gets worse from chapter to chapter, since I'm so much less confident once I start writing longer than 500 words.
567365
Aww. Now I have to make the next chapter even better, to try and manipulate your favourite into always being the most recent chapter.
567739
So far, indeed. I don't really plan the events of the next chapter until I'm writing it, so I'm in the dark from here on out, too. Yay for the sugarless character development, alright! Sooner or later, though, things will probably reach the point where I have to add all of the sugar, and I'm not sure I want to.
567742
Wow, really? I always feel like it's going nowhere, but then again, maybe that's just jaded eyes. Let's hope I can keep up that character development.
As always, thank you all very much for taking the time out to give feedback.
568255 so, it's all improvised on the go? Wow. Doesn't that bother you sometimes? Not having stuff planned up ahead?
Oh come on, you know you want the sugar... and even if you don't, we do, so you've got no choices on the matter
568255
Bwa ha ha! My evil scheme is working!
570102
I have such huge want for bamfglasses!Octavia to be the image for this story. SO MUCH.
...not gonna lie, I squee'd a little. (In my pants.)
Can has for cover art? Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?
568331
That isn't, of course, to say that I don't think about the stuff I write; I do, often a lot more deeply than even I realise at first. Can't count the number of times when I've just written by instinct, then someone asks a question about the themes, and despite the fact that I never conciously thought about it, the themes are all there and I know what they're all leading to. I think a lot of writers must get that, though.
I'm really bad at planning in pretty much every way, so even if I did plan, it wouldn't make any real difference.
I'm sure there'll be sugar enough in the end. I'm not the type to resist happy endings if they happen to fall that way.
570331
Feel free.
I guess I should probably give credit to the people who's vectors I used, though.
http://moongazeponies.deviantart.com/art/Octavia-208902524
http://capt-nemo.deviantart.com/art/Vinyl-Scratch-s-Glasses-Vector-210859823
570738
Woo! I don't even know what a vector is! I am literally so excited that if I didn't have a twenty-four hour sleep dep right now, I probably would not be able to get any sleep. Thank you~
570627 so you just, what, set on an idea and write until you reach the end?
571055
Well, standard process from inception of idea to writing of idea is:
1) Get idea. Think about it for the next couple of days when out on my walks. Almost get hit by bus. Get called suicidal by bus that almost ran me over. Go back to thinking about the idea five minutes later, get distracted, and step out in front of more traffic. Somehow, survive.
2) Go home, sit down at computer. Procrastinate for twelve hours. Watch Raocow for two of those hours, forget how to form a sentence that does not contain at least one non-sequitur. Drink two pots of tea. Eventually start writing.
3) Flounder around for the best part of the hour looking for a decent beginning. Either give up and go back to 1), or succeed, write the opening and go to 4).
4) Magic happens, and I wake up in front of a computer monitor four hours later having apparantly written something. Decide immediately that I hate it and that it's the worst thing I've ever written. Post it anyway.
5) Rinse and repeat.
Doesn't always work like that- I, like everyone, have those frustrating moments when you want to ram your forehead through your keyboard and telepathically inject your awesome story into its cold, hard circuits, because writing it isn't getting you anywhere. But yeah, that's generally what I do. I just use my instinct to find the break points for chapters, though. *shrug*
571121 Is it weird I read half of what you wrote on a heavy russian accent? Hmm
See, on my part, I need to plan ahead. Well, not exactly need, but I always feel more comfortable with more of the puzzle put together, and as soon as I have an idea I start producing more and more about it, so of course, I tend to go larger.
571381
...Oh, man. Don't get me started on accents. They are the source of one of the greatest mysteries of life, to me- why I've apparantly managed to end up with an accent from a class that I don't belong to and a city I've never been to. Then managed to cross that accent with one from a city all the way in the other direction. It boggles the mind. (Fragmented sentences naturally form a russian accent on internet. Shows great use of stereotyping, very good.)
I tend to get ideas as I go along, so that's just what works for me. I know a lot of people work better in a more structured fashion, but for me, the initial delay of planning just bogs me down so I never get started.
571476 Well, I'm from a spanish-speaking country, so english's my second language. I used to work on a bilingual job, and once met a man, I think he was from Australia. Anywho, he said my engilsh accent sounded like someone from Denmark. You can imagine my surprise.
And my greatest problem is that I'm always stalling the start til I have something big planned, so more often than not I'm just staring at a white piece of paper wondering what to do
573127
Well, I know that if you're not used to an accent, it's difficult to differentiate. Probably the biggest example of that is that most Americans can't tell the difference between Australian accents and British ones- which is a bit weird, seeing as we're literally half a globe away from our Aussie cousins. There's an American somewhere on the internet who thinks I sound exactly like Daniel Radcliffe. The mysteries continue to multply.
So long as I get the opening down, I'm fine. If I don't get the opening down, it just makes me want to scream. I don't have problems with wasting time with smaller plots in a fanfic though, since arguably all of my stuff has at least hints of slice of life in it.
571121
The life of a writer is a dangerous one indeed~
And Raocow xD
Well now you're just slightly more awesome
Anyway, love this chapter, and I'm glad they're getting bigger (the whole one hundred more words each chapter is pretty neat). I can only guess at the repercussions that Octavia will face--at least she has Vinyl.