The Last-Minute Masterpiece

by Silent Whisper

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Usually, Octavia didn’t have very much to say about the weather.

That wasn’t to say that she didn’t enjoy it in its many forms. Some nights she’d stay up while the rain poured outside, after the last rumbles of thunder faded away. Those evenings she’d lie awake and listen in rapture as the rhapsody of raindrops beat a staccato against her roof to the tune of whatever melody she’d been practicing, or, what was becoming more commonly the case, whatever song Vinyl had gotten stuck in her head.

And she could certainly appreciate the days with a perfect partial cloud cover: just warm enough to make the shade feel pleasant, and neither too hot nor too chilly to distract from whatever she’d set out to do that day. Barring stressful days where she’d rush to the train station then onward to wherever she was set to perform, they were her favorite sort of days to spend with Vinyl.

It wasn’t that Octavia didn’t like weather, in general. She just didn’t feel the explicit need to discuss it much with other ponies. There were far more interesting things to bring to a conversation, and it was Octavia’s opinion that once the topic had devolved to postulating if it was going to be windy the next day, the true heart of the conversation had, in fact, long since sputtered out and died from neglect, and it was best to remove oneself from the corpse of the discussion before it started to smell.

Today, however, was different. Today, Octavia had a great many strong words about the weather, and it was all she could do to keep them to herself.

It wasn’t even the words themselves that she fought to hold back, for once. While most other ponies would be shocked at the vocabulary she was struggling to keep silent, Vinyl knew her better than most, and wasn’t the sort to question whether or not a proper mare from Upper Canterlot should even know what those swear words meant, let alone be able to string them together when her frustration levels grew too high.

Vinyl was very much a go-with-the-flow sort of marefriend, and that often suited Octavia just fine. It meant that, in private moments away from judgemental ears, she could truly speak her mind without fear of social or personal repercussions.

Unfortunately, there occasionally arose an odd situation where Octavia couldn’t tell Vinyl what she was thinking. Like today, when they were snowed in on Hearth’s Warming Eve because of the moon-sent blizzard.

… In retrospect, she considered as she stared out at the snow piled up nearly withers-height outside her window, perhaps it would benefit her to occasionally discuss the weather with other ponies. At the very least, a snowstorm would be less likely to ruin her plans.

Not that she’d had any perfect plans, but she’d had the vague notion of a brilliant idea forming in her head. Vinyl, after all, didn’t need more stuff. Neither of them truly did, in fact. Their house was already starting to feel crowded with knick-knacks lovingly tucked away in each available nook, and there were only so many more shelves their walls could support.

It was the price they’d paid for understanding each other’s interests (and a few odd finds besides), and it was only with a begrudging whisper of common sense that she’d acknowledged that Vinyl didn’t need - nay, didn’t deserve - some common gift. If it was going to take up more space, it would need to earn it. It had to be perfect, after all, to be worthy of Vinyl, even if Vinyl was the sort of mare who’d love anything that Octavia gifted her, simply because it came from somepony who loved her.

Octavia’s original plan had been to badger some of her more modernly-sensible coworkers with connections to get a few tickets for one of the Deadmare concerts that Vinyl had been talking nearly nonstop about. Perhaps she could make a romantic trip out of it, and they could visit a restaurant or spend the night in a hotel overlooking Canterlot Castle itself. Why, just getting out of Ponyville for a well-earned trip together would make a wonderful gift! The more she thought about it, the more it felt like it was coming together.

How dare the snow ruin that satisfaction? She doubted she could even get to the Friendship Express with enough time to spare to reach out to her orchestral friends and get back home, and that was assuming it was even able to run! If the train station had gotten the same amount of snowfall as their house did, she’d wager they’d simply close down for the night.

Of course… perhaps the snow wasn’t truly that bad! Perhaps it had simply drifted around their house, and the actual layer was a few measly inches thick near the train! Grinning, Octavia scooped up a scarf and raced to the front door. Why, it could even look far worse than it was, and she’d take plodding through ankle-deep snow over an impossibility any day of the year!

She struggled into her snow boots, giving hopeful glances at the doorknob as she pulled the laces taunt. If her friends didn’t have connections to that particular concert, perhaps she could ask around and see where else Deadmare was playing! Celestia herself couldn’t predict the whimsical nature of influential musician’s tour schedules, and Octavia was willing to bet that she could find some sort of information on the next big gig they’d booked. She had connections, and it would sort itself out when she got there.

Beaming, Octavia opened the door. The snow was up to her neck, and it paid no mind to the withering glares she gave it. That wasn’t particularly kind of it, being that high, but she reminded herself that it was, most likely, just a drift, and would slope off to something far more manageable just a few mere body lengths away.

Gingerly, she pressed a hoof against the snowdrift, calculating her initial steps. Her boots weren’t nearly long enough to protect her legs above the knee, but she reminded herself that she wouldn’t be cold for long. Soon, she’d be able to cozy up on the train to Canterlot, and this would all be an amusing anecdote to share with Vinyl later.

She stepped forward.

The snow, realizing that it now had space to move and the physics to make it happen, collapsed into the house, onto the doormat, and directly into Octavia’s other boots.

Her eye twitched as she examined the heap of slowly-melting slush, then the still-clearly-withers-high depths outside. No. No, she was not going to lose it. Not on the day before Hearth’s Warming. Not when Vinyl would come to see what she was so vigorously and creatively detailing in what agonizing manner the snow should be sent to a certain celestial body. She hadn’t quite determined which would be a better punishment, but if it weren’t for the spirit of Hearth’s Warming surprises, she’d have gone all-out.

She knocked the worst of the snow off the tops of her boots and cautiously stepped into the drift, sinking down to about knee length as she moved beyond the threshold of her home. She could try to wade through it, certainly. She might make it to the train station, if the snow sloped more to the ground than it looked. It, like Vinyl, could be deceptively deep at times, so logically it could also be shallower than it appeared to be, right?

A few more steps forward was all it took before her hooves begged her to reconsider. The snow at the bottom of her boots was beginning to melt, and a horrifying mental image of getting stuck outside and somehow freezing to the dreadfully peaceful landscape was enough to convince her to pause.

Perhaps she didn’t need to walk there herself! Maybe she could flag down a passing pegasus and-

She looked up. The skies churned with soft-looking clouds, and the few flakes that danced from them were the only things visible in the sky.

Ponyfeathers. She’d need to regroup and replan. Preferably indoors, where it was warm, and where she could remove her boots to dry her chilling hooves. She stumbled backwards, retracing her deep hoofprints as best as she could.

The cascaded snowbank in the entryway would have to go before she could close the door. For what must’ve been the millionth time, Octavia wished for a pair of wings, or a unicorn’s horn. It wasn’t horn envy or whatever else Amethyst Star insisted she had when she’d mentioned it (one of the many reasons she preferred conversations with Vinyl over that with others), but it was something philosophically similar, at least up to the point where said philosopher realized she’d reduced the mighty symbols of the other equine races to their relative values as snow shovels.

Octavia took a deep breath and reached for the broom and a dustpan. It’d be best to clean it up before Vinyl started to wonder why the temperature in their house had plummeted by a decent amount. With a flourish, she scooped up a dustpan of snow and tossed it out, far over where she’d managed to tread, and let her mind wander. Oh, why hadn’t she thought to get the tickets set up sooner than the day before she’d need to give them?

That question didn’t take too long to answer, at least. She’d been busy, and as weak of an excuse as that sounded, it was at least a decent part of the truth. Between finishing the last performances of the Canterlot Orchestra’s Hearth’s Warming Charity Concert and coordinating the rehearsals for the Grand Galloping Gala, she’d been practically buried in work.

Most ponies were busy over the holidays, true, but many of them weren’t providing the entertainment that the hardworking ponies used to relax over the most stressful time of the year. And after that, she’d needed to find inexpensive-yet-tasteful gifts for the other members of the orchestra (and, in turn, received far too many sample-sized bottles of cider and fancy sweets that looked more like a display piece than edible food, as was tradition), and then there was the matter of her parent’s gifts, and the rest of her family and the few she could truly call a close friend...

It’d make no sense to anypony else that she’d saved her marefriend’s gift for last, but there was a simple reason for that. Vinyl was, in theory at least, the easiest mare for her to shop for. She treasured any gift that Octavia put thought and care into (and, indeed, anything that Octavia saw that made her think of her), her interests were specific enough to understand yet broad enough to have some room for improvisation and surprises, and her policy on how much of something counted as a gift was refreshingly simple. If it came from her marefriend, Vinyl was sure to be happy.

Octavia knew this. It made her life easier, and made finding something for the least picky pony in her life a lower immediate priority than the moon-sent chaos of trying to find something that her parents both didn’t have yet and would actually find useful. However, it didn’t mean that Vinyl deserved just anything.

As she swept the last bits of snow into the dustpan and tossed it out over the drifts before giving the reconstructed heap of snow a few firm pats to make sure it held its shape, Octavia vowed she’d find something. The perfect gift was out there somewhere, she had no doubts, but she couldn’t get to it. By Celestia, though, she wouldn’t let that stop her.

If she couldn’t find the perfect gift out there, she’d figure out a way to find or make the perfect gift in here. Whatever that took, she’d be willing to do. Vinyl deserved nothing less.