The Second Life of Moztrot

by CrackedInkWell

Chapter 7: Of Hangovers and Family Matters

Needless to say that the next morning I woke up with a cat’s yammering, splitting headache. Nearly immediately after I awoke all I felt was sick, groggy and tired beyond belief. Opening my eyes was out of the question as even the soft light behind my eyelids were stinging. However, the longer I lay there, the more I began to piece together that I was not in the same place I’d been last night. For one, the hard tile floor was replaced by cloudlike sheets and I was covered in a warm blanket. I don’t know how long I laid there until I was forced to roll out of bed and onto the floor.

The next thing I knew, I heard a door open, “Sir? Are you alright?” it was the sound of the butler that went over to my aching aid.

I groaned, “What happened?”

“It’s one in the afternoon,” he informed me. “You were found drunk out of your mind on the kitchen floor. So we had to drag you up to your room until you recovered from the hangover that you are now having.” I felt being lifted up from the floor and back onto the bed. “So at the moment, shall I ring up for some coffee or do you have your own hangover cure?”

I shook my head.

Thankfully the butler left me alone in peace, allowing me to open my eyes on my own terms. From there, I finally observed the room that I had awoken in. Much like the house, it was all too white. It made me wonder if the princess had a fetish for the color white. Everywhere in that glaring light from floor to ceiling, from the sheets to the curtains, all was drained of color.

From there I managed to sit up to find that the room had a writing desk with a cushion to sit on, a window that looked like it lead to a balcony, a standing mirror and, the only touch of color in the room, my red clothing neatly folded on the desk. Despite the realization of being naked, I had to use the toilet which forced me to walk into the nearby bathroom.

Sometime later I walked out of there and went over to the mirror to really get a good look at myself. My mane, that looked like it could blend in with the rest of the room, was a mess; there were dark bags under my eyes, and for the first in a long time, I felt exposed. It is not that ponies didn’t go walking around without clothing -- that was common from where I come from mind you -- but rather that I had been wearing clothes since I was five, trying to impressed ponies; after being clothed for so long going without them felt strange, if not off-putting. I confess that I had been wearing trousers for so long that at times I nearly forgot what my own cutie mark looked like. The mirror reminded me that it had all three musical clefs: treble, alto, and bass. This is the reason why I whinnied when I heard a knock on the door, “J-Just a minute!” I cried as I rushed to put on my trousers and my white shirt before the door opened to reveal the butler with a tray full of cups of coffee in his aura.

“Where would you like me to set this?” He inquired and I waved over to the desk in which he put the tray down.

Wilfred tried to pour my cup when I stopped him, “I can pour my own.”

He looked at me confused, “But sir, it’s part of my job.”

I sighed, “Look… Wilfred wasn’t it?” he nodded, “You must understand that having servants like you around is… it’s just weird for me.”

The charcoal black unicorn raised an eyebrow, “How so? Didn’t you have a maid at one point?”

“We did, yes. But even back then I told her to not see us as her masters but as a friend. You see, where I come from, there were ideas that were spreading around, questions about the role of master and slave, Princess and subject, Employer and Employee. That despite how some ponies may have a horn, a pair of wings or neither of them, we are still equal at birth. I mean, look at me; I’m living proof of that. My father had dragged my family from palace to palace, showing nobility that you don’t need to be born into a particular class or tribe to have talent. After all, I believe that ponies can rise up based on their own merit. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

He placed the coffee pot back onto the tray. “You really are a product of the Enlightenment Era. Although, are you sure you don’t want me to help since you’re obviously hung over.”

I waved it off as I poured my own cup. “I’ll be alright. Although I just wish I could do something about this headache.”

“Then let me fetch something to help with that,” he was about to turn to leave until he stopped. “Oh, Sunburst sent a notice saying that he wants to see you as soon as possible. He said something about finding something that is very important.”

“Just as long as I don’t run into any of those stuck up ponies from last night,” I scooped in some sugar and poured the cream in. “Let me try to recover first and write out the rest of the Requiem and I’ll be ready to see him. Did he say that he’s coming here, or am I going to him?”

“The latter, do you also want some lunch, being that it’s already the afternoon?”

I told him why not and he left, leaving me alone with my coffee to wake me up.

---

By three o’clock I was on a carriage, returning to Celestia’s palace and thankfully distancing myself from the neighborhood. I didn’t pay attention to the streets as I was finishing the Lacrimosa and moving onto the fugue joining it. My head was swarming with voices and strings where one overlapped the other like a tapestry. On my lap, the locket of my wife was open. From time to time I glanced down at her, at the very sight of those painted eyes, my own teared up. I found it necessary at the time to do so because I wanted the fugue to be about her. Even back then, I thought she would appreciate that as she did love fugues and what better way to honor her than with this?

However, that had to be cut short as the carriage rounded before the drawbridge. I had to put my grief away to enter. So over the bridge, across the courtyard, towards the front doors where two guards stood watch. Of these, I inquired about where Sunburst was. After being lead through the castle, I was shown into the Royal Library where Mr. Orange had stacks of books around him like a fortress of tomes.

“Glad you could come,” he said as he set a heavy looking book down. “I hope that I wasn’t interrupting anything.”

“Other than a hangover, you didn’t miss all that much. Is there a reason why you wanted to see me?”

“Uh yes,” he picked up a few books in his aura. “I finally found something that I think you might be interested in. Regarding what happened to your family.” He walked around the desk towards me. “And trust me, finding this wasn’t easy as there was little information to go off of. But I think I’ve managed to get a picture of what happened. So which one do you want to know first?”

“My wife, what happened to her?”

He levitated a small book towards his spectacles. “According to this, after you died, she went it her business to get pretty much everything you’d ever written published, as well as seeking out composers to finish some of your unfinished works as closely as possible. She managed to get a pension from Celestia and organized concerts to honor your memory. It slowly brought her and your children out of debt to the point where they became wealthy. So much so, that she managed to give your colts a proper education. Later on in her life, she married a diplomat who was both a writer and her leaseholder. They traveled around Equestria and beyond until they settled in your hometown. All that time, they both worked on your biography that was published in 824, two years after her second husband died. She was buried in that cemetery in Saltzburg in 842.”

At this point, I sat on my haunches, pondering what I just heard, “She was eighty when she died. And what of my boys?”

“Even trickier to find,” He told me as he held up several books, scanning from one to the next. “As far as I could find, both of them showed musical gifts with the piano, but Karl moved to Istaly. He began his apprenticeship with a trading firm in 797. He had planned to open a piano store but couldn’t because there wasn’t enough funding to do so. Later on, he moved to Milan in 805 and became a government official for the Equestrian financial administration, along with working in the accounting department in Milan. And he served as an official translator for Istallion for the Equestrian Court Chamber. At the same time, he frequently attended events that honored you up to the day he died in 858. In his will, he gave his house to the ponies of Milan, whose cemetery he was buried in. He never married and never had children.”

I shook my head, “He died at seventy-four. And my youngest?”

“Well… Unlike his brother, he learned to play both the piano and the violin… Oh, and he started to compose when he was thirteen. He became a music teacher and a performer, having moderate success. Apparently, he put on concerts that featured your music as well as his own, including your Requiem. By 838 he too had gone to your hometown and was appointed to become the music master of a theater. As a composer, however, he continuously criticized himself, underrated his own talent and felt his work was overshadowed by you. In fact, in Saltzberg cemetery, his tombstone reads: ‘May the name of his father be his epitaph, as his veneration for him was the essence of his life.’”

Out of everything I had heard up to that point that was the worst. My youngest underrated himself for composing and performing music? Have such talent go to waste would be unthinkable if my father were around. “When did he die?” I asked him.

The scholar looked at another book, “844.”

I did a quick calculation, “He lived up to be fifty-three?” My ears folded back, the weight of the truth was crushing me underneath. I turned to the one who had caused this, “Why did you take me?”

Suddenly the books had drifted to the floor, “Uh… what?”

“Why did you take me when they needed me? My sons could have been remembered as musicians, yet from what you just showed me, hardly anypony knows them at all. But no! You had to shove your flank in, and ripped me out!”

He stepped back; his ears folded backward, “I said I was sorry… I keep telling you, it was an accident – how was I supposed to know when I cast that spell that you would fall out of it?”

I snorted, “You could have…” but I trailed off, as I couldn’t find what exactly to accuse him of.

“Look, Mr. Moztrot,” Sunburst said as he adjusted his spectacles. “If I were in your horseshoes, if I’d been whisked away into the future with everypony I know and love buried and forgotten, I would be pretty angry too… and miss them… a lot.”

“Oh really? Tell me, did you ever lose anypony close to you?”

His face had turned from an apologetic look to that of melancholy. “Yeah… I do.” He rubbed his foreleg while adding, “I lost my mom five years ago.”

Hearing this cooled my temper. “Oh… my apologies, I didn’t know.”

Sunburst shook his head, “You had nothing to do with it. I was away when she passed, so just like you, I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to her. So while I can’t imagine to the fullest extent of what you’re going through right now, I do have only a piece of the puzzle, as it were. I went to these… sorry, I’m trying to phrase this as carefully as I can… I went to these doctors of the mind, and they gave me a technique to help me cope with my loss.”

I raise an eyebrow, “And that was?”

“Well, I was to write two separate letters. One in which I put down everything I wanted to say to her when she was alive. To tell her how I was doing and such. Then once that was done, I was to write another letter, this time from the point of view of my mother, with what I wanted to hear her say. Now, whether or not you want to do this is up to you. And if you do write those letters, you can do whatever you want with them. Keep them; destroy them, whatever you want to do in order to bring you closure.”

Admittingly, I did chuckle at this. “Truth be told, I have been doing that for the past week. My Requiem is nearly done, and I… I think I know what to do with it.”

“Really? What do you have in mind?”

“Well, once I finish it, I’ll organize a choir and orchestra; go first to Saltzberg to perform it for my wife and youngest child, then to Milan for my eldest.”

He blinked, “So, you’re really are planning on performing your completed Requiem at their graves?”

I nodded. “Indeed. And thank you for tell me.”

“It was my fault so I just couldn’t go back home until I did something to make it up.”

“You mean that you’re not from Canterlot?”

He shook his head as he started to pack, “No, I’m only here to visit. I’m going back to the Crystal Empire where Princess…” he trailed off when he saw my expression. “What?”

“I’m sorry but, where?”

Comments

[HB_DS2013]

Looks like Moztrot's not the only one thrown into the future...

[Dan]

derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/2/23/252285__safe_artist-colon-fedte_pinkie+pie_beautiful_bird_crystal+empire_crystal+palace_dialogue_earth+pony_female_mare_pinkie+being+pinkie_pony_scener.jpg

[Greenhorn]

Oooohhh! I can feel inspiration coming up next.

[DualKitsune]

Wait....he hasn't met Luna yet has he? Much less Twilight or Cadence....this will be fun.

[CrackedInkWell]

8397917
Not yet, at the moment I’m trying to make a situation where they do meet him and their reactions to one another.

[DualKitsune]

8398023
Oh, I do look forward to it. Especially since "everypony knows that Luna is an old mare's tale".