Rhabdophobia

by Lunar Dust

Void

Chapter Three

The darkness was consuming, and the silence was utterly deafening. The cold, hard concrete floor was the only thing Octavia could feel; everything else was gone. An icy fear gripped her as she looked up and saw where they had fallen from; it was at least fifty feet high and the dim light was swallowed by the darkness before it even reached the floor. She tried to rise, but as she put her right front hoof down, a searing pain shot through the arm. She whimpered pitifully and collapsed under her weight. She groaned and tried to relax; her mind was clouded by a deep feeling of dread and the excruciating pain rippling through her body. Her heart was pounding like a drum and her thoughts flashed from one nightmare to another.

What if they don’t come looking for me?
What if I never get out?
What will happen to the concert?

The concert! Octavia winced and caressed her injured foreleg. She wouldn’t be performing tonight, it would seem. Oh, the humiliation of not showing up to a major concert in a city she’d never been before, the night she was to perform! She cringed at the thought - a professional musician like herself, tardy for a performance? What a ridiculous sentiment. She had worked so hard to be where she was now, and she was not about to let everything she’d worked for slip away! Rising to her hooves, albeit three of them taking the weight off of the injured one, she narrowed her eyes and looked around. All she could see was black.

Suddenly, there was a weak groan behind her.

“Vinyl, is that you?” She whipped around and spotted a darker outline on the ground by her side. A faint glow began to emanate off the object; a weak, blue light. Octavia recognised it immediately as remnants of unicorn magic.

“Oops.” Vinyl whispered, with a pathetic grin slapped forcefully upon her face. She rolled onto her back and her horn glowed a brighter blue. She looked around her and saw the face of the musician peering down at her with eyes that seemed colder than the concrete she lay on.

“Why would you do that? You could have gotten us killed!” Octavia shouted in Vinyl’s face with red-hot anger laced in her shrill voice. Vinyl lowered her gaze and stared at the floor, accidentally blinding Octavia’s eyes with her glowing horn. She shrieked in pain and rose to her two back hooves as she rubbed her eyes to get rid of the flecks of echoing light. “Why do you even have that thing on?”

“I’m sorry Octavia,” She whispered again, “I really didn’t mean to. I’m just bringing a little light in here, that’s all.”

“Turn that thing off. You unicorns don’t use your magic for anything good.” She rubbed her sore eyes and glared accusingly at the young white unicorn.

“What do you mean?” Vinyl asked, sickly sweetness dripping off her tone of voice like a honeybee in a hive. She’d grown up in Canterlot, amongst both unicorns and earth ponies, and the majority got along extremely well together. As far as she knew, she’d never met an earth pony with such a prejudice against her as a species. It was certainly very jarring to her, especially to meet a famous musician who acted this way.
“What is your problem with unicorns?” Her gravelly voice was piercing, ringing in Octavia’s ears.

“In my own experience,” Octavia sighed nonchalantly; staring at Vinyl’s wide, accusing eyes with an indignant glare of her own. “Unicorns have been nothing but trouble. My parents worked on an orange orchard on the outskirts of Manehattan when I was a filly; it wasn’t a high-paying job, but they managed.” Octavia sat back down on her haunches and pressed her ears to her skull in concern, recalling the memories of her early childhood.
“They were honest, hardworking ponies. Earth ponies, like me.” She pointed to her fluffed chest and ran her hoof through her mane in a feeble attempt to relax her frayed nerves.

“Go on.” Vinyl encouraged her with a gentle prod of her hooves; as long as Octavia kept talking, she wouldn't have the time to criticize her again.

“I was sent to work when I was a little filly, too, with my cousin. She looked like me, but we could all tell her passion lay with country music. She even wore a little cowboy hat.” Octavia laughed half-heartedly at the distant memory of her blue maned cousin, and sentiment clutched her heart. It ached with the burden, and she continued with a small crack in her voice.
“We even shared the same cutie mark, albeit hers fit better with the instrument of her choosing.” She recalled the fiddle her cousin would play with such vigour, and she always envied her carefree playing. “I never did work out why my cutie mark didn’t match up quite right.”
Vinyl patted her chin with her hoof, thinking. It was true; after all, the cello is predominantly written in the bass clef, but the pony sitting next to her sported a bright purple treble clef on her rump.

“Maybe it just means your gift lies with music in general?” She suggested. Octavia, lost in her own thoughts, didn’t acknowledge the unicorn, and instead continued her story.

“With her help, I earned enough from working the farm as a filly to buy my first instrument. I chose the cello, and it’s stuck with me ever since. It's how I got my cutie mark, you know; playing the brilliant instrument. The two of us would play some rather... interesting duets together.” Octavia chucked at the memory of a screeching fiddle and a deep, brash cello ringing together and driving everypony out of the house while the two practised together. Suddenly, her expression darkened and she lowered her ears before she continued on.
“But our lives changed when a group of unicorns came to our farm.” Octavia’s demeanour changed and she spat out the words angrily. “They took our jobs and left only two earth ponies on the farm. The only two with farming cutie marks. They used them to plant the oranges and just harvested all the trees by levitating them off!” Octavia cried out to Vinyl, and Vinyl instinctively raised a hoof to her face to defend herself. Octavia sighed, but no apology left her lips. Instead, she continued her story, describing how the two orange-laden earth ponies were exploited for their gift with the earth, and the unicorns raked in the profits and walked away, millions of bits richer. Oranges were a highly prized fruit for imports, and the unicorns that took over the farm milked it for all it was worth.

“Those poor ponies, their only reason for staying was their orange cutie marks.” Octavia whispered, sadly, “It was a sad sight for a young filly; these poor ponies pushed to their physical limits.”

“Those two orange-planting earth ponies must have been very poor.” Vinyl commented, and Octavia nodded vigorously.

“They were indeed. They have apple-farming relatives over in a distant town apparently, but had too many connections in Manehattan to leave. I hope the orange farmers are doing alright, now.” Octavia pensively raised a hoof to her muzzle. “I often walk past the old place, but I never see them around.”

“So, a bunch of business-minded unicorns stole your jobs and that’s why you don’t like us?” Vinyl asked cautiously, attempting to tip-toe around the issues of the mare in front of her.

“What? No, Vinyl, it’s not just that!” Octavia protested, spitting as she talked. “I moved away and everywhere, unicorns were using magic to do the stupidest things! Opening doors, moving things; other ponies use hooves, so why can’t they? It’s just unfair.”

“I see.” The unicorn in front of her muttered and rolled her eyes. “Look Octavia, you can tell me the truth.”

The grey pony looked back, startled at Vinyl's brashness, and her angry eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?” She growled, a vicious fire now growing in her belly. "Are you calling me a liar?"

“Why don’t you like magic?” She asked, gently making her way over to the shaky earth pony and placing a tender hoof on her shoulder.
“Is everything okay, Octavia?”

Octavia met Vinyl’s eyes as tears welled up in hers, and she fiercely blinked them away.

“Everything I told you was true, you insensitive horse!” She growled angrily, and she stomped her hooves, only for her injured hoof to buckle underneath her. She fell to the floor, and whimpered pitifully before recovering her composure. She sat up with her back arched in a dignified position and eyed the unicorn with a new suspicion.

"I never said you were lying." Vinyl spoke in a low voice.

"Oh."

-

The two sat in an awkward silence for what felt like a millennia to Vinyl Scratch. In her youth, she had been fascinated by the behaviour of other ponies - she found her passion by causing them to dance with reckless abandon, commanded only by her hooves and the records - but she was way over her head with the mare in front of her now. She decided to take a stab in the dark and approach Octavia Melody the only way she knew how; with brutal honesty.

“Octavia, we all have fears. Your actions… they feel like they were caused by somepony driven by fear.” Vinyl stated simply, cautiously approaching the injured earth pony further. She crinkled her muzzle as she saw the damaged hoof, bruised and bleeding from the fall.

“What do you know of fear? You’re a unicorn. You can face anything.” The grey pony whispered as she clutched her hoof and winced at the pain. Vinyl opened her mouth to disagree, but was stopped by the pleading look in Octavia’s eyes. Instead, she merely gestured at her to continue. After a long pause, Octavia finally spoke, breaking the eerie atmosphere.

“I’m afraid of magic.” She admitted. In a world run by magic, Octavia was terrified to admit it, but seemingly trapped down where they were, she felt a strange sense of intimacy with the rather eccentric unicorn before her. Relief rushed over the snow-white pony and she brushed some sweat from her brow.

“The first step is admitting it.” Vinyl grinned. “Let’s talk.”