The Last Dreams of Pony Island

by horizon

Leitmotif

Leitmotif

I must leave on the next boat, I think.

The first casualty of the Battle of Myinnkyun was my music,
torn from my bow and launched like an arrow,
and a fiddler's days are numbered
when his songs are no longer his own.

Two nights before she vanished,
in the common-house near the docks:
"Play!" cried Peridot, old eyes scowling,
calling a slow ballad of love long lost;
But the fire of the bottle was in Shooting Star,
and he levitated me two bits,
calling a march to stir the blood.

Peridot stayed my bow, declaring
that she would not see her taxes spent
on such an affront to melody,
so Hotspur trotted next to the guard
and hoofed me civilian bits for a march.

"I see how it is,"
Peridot told the nocturnes,
"the freaks stick together,"
and silence descended
as she paid me triple
to make the march
Iter Solis Invictus.

I must leave on the next boat, I think,
or be the musician who played
the song nopony wanted,
the musician whose fiddle
was in demand
to make the others suffer.

Shooting Star and Peridot
glared
at
each
other
for
the
length
of
the
tune.

Thank the stars for Potluck,
who next called Morag's Reel,
and for Littlemoth, stepping up to dance,
drawing the gazes of the room
like a lightning-bug upon a darkened stage,
golden eyes hiding among
flaring fans of leather wings
and the streaming arc of her mane,
until Dawn Patrol fluttered to her flame
and revelry retook the battleground,
pony and Nocturne whirling together.

I could not leave on the boat
the morning after Peridot vanished.
There was none.

Neither will there be music, I think,
until I fiddle the shanty
to fill the sails
with Myinnkyun at my back.

Comments

[Dubs Rewatcher]

Favorite chapter, easily

[Monarch Dodora]

And then it turns out the song Littlemoth dances to is an actual thing:

6442881

I found the livelier part of this goes quite well with that Scootaloo gif you have. (She doesn't quite keep up, but you can see she's trying!)

[horizon]

6454435
And you even linked the Wolfstone version! 10 Horizon points.

[horizon]

Adding a footnote, most of a decade later, because this is the scene that gets lodged in your brain like a fishbone in the throat and refuses to ever leave, and I was just talking about it elsewhere:

The reason that I love, specifically, Wolfstone's version (6454435) of, specifically, Morag's Reel as this chapter's leitmotif (ha ha) is how sparse and tense -- almost borderline funereal -- it starts out, with the fiddle and the piano near-on to fighting between upbeat and downbeat, the fiddle waging a lonely war to change the mood. Then after the fiddle's solo performance, the crowd starts joining in and revelry wins out.

At this point, eight years on, I couldn't tell you if that was specifically and explicitly the song I wrote this scene for, or whether it just wormed its way in along the way. But if it's not the inspiration, then it's got a strong claim to the title.