The Musicians Of Manehattan

by MxGoat

Prologue

At the edge of Manehattan, there is a wide stretching landscape with gentle hills and a chilly breeze that had once brought great promise and joy to the few folks who lived there.

It was a peaceful community: Farmers tilled and harvested their crops, sheared their sheep, and milked their cows. Those who could lift much weight carried the products of the farms to a marketplace where the merchants would sell it for a reasonable price and return a reasonable amount of pay to the farm laborers. Because of this, the community was happy and economically independent of the big businesses that occupied big cities—something that the residents still take pride in to this day. However, this was not what had brought the small community to the greatest of collective joys.

If there was one thing that this community once prided itself in the most, it was its musicians. Music brought the people together, made them smile, made them cry, and made them ready to take on a brand new day every day. As fond of music, as everypony was, many did not have enough time to invest in perfecting the art, or even pick up an instrument for that matter; they were busy farming to keep their family fed and maintain their land. Despite this, there were still ponies of these plains who dabbled in the arts.

Not many of them, however, were as beloved among the farmers for her music as Octavia once was.

When the residents saw her on stage, they always roared with abundant enthusiasm, cheer, and love. Her music touched their hearts more than anything, not because it played with their emotions but because it brought them the entertainment they so desperately craved for on a daily basis to supplement their mundane, farming-filled lives. When they heard the rubbing of bow against string, the often calm body of water that was the ocean of ponies became a very rippled sea, indeed. For it was her music they loved so much.

When a pony clip-clopped near the house of so great a mare, if the pony was lucky, he or she could hear the concentrated and artistically purposeful imprecise notes of the well-loved cello as the savant filly perfected her craft. Anypony lucky enough to have such an experience in his or her lifetime was considered enormously blessed.

Not all was well in the village, though. One day, this musician—this talent—this prodigy of a cellist—had vanished, taking with her the music that had once given so much joy and relief to the ponies of the plains beyond Manehattan. A long year had passed and still there was no trace of the musician anywhere. She seemed to have completely disappeared from the face of the planet, leaving behind little to no trace as to where she had gone, and no notes of comfort, reassurance, or explanation either. What had once been a busy, alive, and cheerful village disintegrated into a crippled, lifeless shell; a dreary, tired and detached Hoofington, whose residents’ hearts were crushed by betrayal and dissatisfaction.

With the disappearance of such a pony came the initial panic. Search parties were sent, only to return with nopony but an occasional cross-eyed mailmare in a bush, tree, or patch of flowers of somepony’s backyard garden. The frantic searching eventually ceased, leaving the Philharmonica and Melody families devastated and hopeless.

Author's Note:

It's here! It's here! Oh, the joy! It begins now!
This story is going to be my first seriously written piece of fiction in a long time.

Comments

[ZyferKazumi]

The start sounds great like an urban legend I just imagine like in lostnarrator's voice ^~^