Adagio ma non troppo
Sometimes, running my own sushi restaurant really sucks.
I’m constantly reminded of how little night life I get to enjoy. Not that I’d ever give it up, but closing time can get pretty far in the rear-view mirror before all the cleaning is done, especially when I do most of it myself. At least my favorite cafe stays open late.
I slide into my normal booth in a shadowed corner, and the waiter brings me the usual cappuccino. He doesn’t need to ask. After midnight by now, but the same thinly clumped residue of disaffected teens sits around the room. I’ve earned the right to call them that: I used to be one.
The coffee lands on my table with a gentle smile from the waiter. He probably told me his name the first few times I came here, but surely I’d remember it after this long. At least his eyes say I’m an old friend, and if I asked, they’d say they wish they were a lot more.
All I can do is hold the warm mug in both hands, up to my face, and let the cinnamon spark each breath I take in. A single cup won’t keep me from sleeping tonight, and tomorrow is the one day a week I don’t have to get up so early.
Brick walls surround me with the remnants of decades-old posters and actual painted-on advertisements, but unlike most of the patrons here, this place is authentic. I bet it used to be a speakeasy back in the day, and even though it’s not allowed anymore, it feels like an atmosphere of cigarettes in those long, thin holders still pervades every tattered scrap of leather clinging for life to the banquettes, collecting in a haze around the iron beams overhead.
Whoever’s on stage sure has this type of crowd eating out of his hands. Check that: her hands, judging by the voice. Open mic night, and some thoroughly generic teen angst song comes pouring out of an acoustic guitar and a surprisingly talented set of lungs. I look up and…
Adagio Dazzle. Adagio fucking Dazzle.
My mug clunks hard against the table, and I fight that first wild animal instinct to run, but not from danger. At least not a danger to my life—more that it’ll awaken something inside me that I don’t want to become. She can’t see me here anyway, hidden from the lights. The quickest way to alert a predator is to move.
First sip, a little too hot, but it goes down anyway, warming me from the inside now, but the bitterness of that monster on stage seeps into it. The song’s changed, too. Not the incessant strumming through predictable chords, just an occasional accent of single notes, and the words, they’re becoming a bit slurred, mumbled. Enough reach my ears to get the sense of it. It’s in a minor key, yet it still grasps, looking up, ascending, hopeful. Some motif about budding trees, and for all that I’d normally ignore whatever songs come up on these nights…
I love music. It was my life, so long ago that nobody else even knows. Of course I can play guitar, and the Rainbooms all knew that, back before life sent us in different directions, but not the passion. Maybe I should have shared that with them, but it never seemed right, burdening them with what I care about, even though they’d almost certainly disagree.
When Princess Celestia plucked me to become her personal student, she hadn’t found me in an orphanage, rummaging through dumpsters in an alley smelling of urine, or swimming among a crowd of pockets to pick. I get the impression my friends all think that, but none of them have ever asked. Not that I did know my parents, but it’s not the same thing, and I let them assume: a stupid little game I play against nobody because I’m a head case. No, Princess Celestia recruited me from an opera school. I could already sing a mean aria, and I’d learned guitar… and theorbo, which always takes about five minutes to explain to someone what it even is, so I never bring it up.
Celestia enjoyed hearing me sing. She had a penchant for treating her students like her own children, at least until they got above elementary school age, yet when she’d come to tuck me in, I’d end up singing the lullaby to her, after she’d sung it to me enough for me to learn it. Every night, with her warm smile shining down on me as my eyelids got droopy. Hush, my darling, and don’t you fret…
Shit, I get lost in my memories sometimes. And here I am in my own secluded corner again, humming it to myself. I haven’t thought of that song in years.
Life always comes back to the chorus, the theme’s reprise. And it sounds like Adagio is winding her tune to a close as well. I really don’t appreciate the way her music leaves my skin feeling as if it’s buzzing, especially given what I’ve seen it can do. But her amulet broke long ago, and nobody else here is acting like her zombie minions. Maybe it’s just all that nostalgia washing over my head. I leave enough cash to cover my drink and a tip, and I shoot a glare at her, for all the good it does—she isn’t even looking at me.
All the way home, I can only think one thing: why does she have to invade every place that’s special to me?
I’d never seen Adagio here before, and I’ve frequented the place for years. It had to be a one-time thing. But of course, a week later, there she sits on stage again.
No light reaches my lugubrious corner, just the occasional muted glints off my jacket like the scattering of black keys across a keyboard. Adagio can’t see me here.
I want to mock her, ridicule how inept she suddenly became when her amulet shattered, exposing her con game to the world, but where would I be if people had done the same with me? And last week, after she made it through the obligatory fluff, pure soul flowed from her. How did she do that? Something is different about her, and for all that I’d love to banish her from my mind, my stupid inner busybody wants to know why.
Again, now, she innately senses when to keep her tone level and when to let a subtle vibrato flutter from her throat, when to linger a bit on the end of a phrasing and when to let the song’s momentum take over. She just… fundamentally understands something about the music.
Most people her age get preoccupied with distancing themselves from home, but her song feels like a plaintive call, a wish to belong again. Of course, her age is a complicated thing, according to what Twilight says. And Adagio has nobody but herself to blame for not belonging anywhere.
Kind of like me. The old me.
So I slump over my mug and breathe in the cinnamon with its little descant of chocolate. I’d get a refill, but then it’ll keep me up, and opening time comes awfully early.
Then another song starts, and its syncopated rhythm has me in mind of a courant, and—I let out a hard sigh. Why do I have to over-analyze everything? My mind is all stuck in centuries-old music, and I’d expect Adagio’s to be bound in the past, too, except her music doesn’t sound that way, so why should anything else about her be? If I didn’t hate Adagio’s guts, I’d simply ask her.
This song searches, yearns for something, striding upward. Not the tripe she normally sings, and her voice soars into her falsetto range, higher than I thought she could go. I have to… I have to take one hand and cover my eyes. It’s a tenderness I’ve never known from her, and were it anyone else, I might believe it. She’s never had a grain of truth to her.
It weighs me down that I do hate her. I wish I’d outgrown the tendency to. I thought I’d become a better person now. Maybe I’m not, maybe I never was. But thinking that way does a disservice to Twilight and the other girls, so I choke it down, change keys, transition over to a countermelody.
She deserves a chance, even though I gave her several already, and another song circles my ears, and it rings as a carillon bell in my head until I nearly nod off to the sweet lilt of it.
I can’t do this. I can’t like, can’t tolerate her, not after the total contempt and disregard she’s always shown for anyone but herself. My head swims, but I don’t see those colorful streams of magic swirling toward her, the ones carved into my memory from the Battle of the Bands. It’s not her, she doesn’t even have the gem anymore, but what if she found some new magic and I never warn anyone? I need to think about it. I need to think about it like Twilight would.
And the same as last week, I slip away and pay my bill unnoticed, my head clearing in the outside air. The sizzle of tires from the nearby highway can play me off the stage.
Thank goodness Adagio didn’t show up this week.
I sound like the biggest hypocrite. Where would I be if everyone else hadn’t given me one more chance than they wanted to? And now I’d deny her just that.
Whatever. She isn’t here. And some guy whose voice hasn’t quite finished changing is shrieking out a song about how he’s so alone and nobody understands him. The usual crap, but it gives me a good laugh. I need one.
Which of course only makes me feel bad. Belittling him won’t help anyone. Maybe I should stop coming here, at least on open mic night. I pull out my phone and look up the week’s weather.
As much as I’m not connecting with this music, it looks like I won’t connect with Rarity, either—first Tuesday of the month, when she often stops by my restaurant on her way to check her shop in town. But she won’t show if it rains.
Of all the girls, we have the hardest time coordinating schedules. I’ll serve her up something new, she’ll tell me about her travels, and I live vicariously. She’ll say everything’s delicious and wink at me. Always a flirt, that one, but never follows through.
I toss my phone on the table, run my fingers through my hair, and lean back against the bricks, with a flaking shred of poster for some ancient cola touted as a health tonic whispering in my ear.
My imagination runs again, this place full of girls in flapper dresses and men in seersucker suits, downing glasses of that cola cut with gin, and the symphony of their voices rises, settles, bursts with fanfare, staccato laughter, the recitative of music embedded in speech. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era, but none of those people would ever touch sushi.
I’ve let my eyes drift shut, but the act on stage has cycled to one with a softer voice, so they can stay closed. Then a swish of cloth pauses by my table. “Not yet,” I say with a flick of my wrist toward the mug. “I haven’t finished.”
But the table tilts slightly as the waiter sits on the bench across from me. So, will he finally ask? Honestly, I don’t know what I’d say if he did. “Hey,” he speaks up, just as I get my eyes open enough to see a mass of orange hair.
My faint grin falls faster than a pegasus stunned by a bolt of lightning. “I’ll be going now,” I spit, just short of involving actual spit.
She immediately frowns and creases her brow as though she’s forgotten something, and almost as an afterthought, she grabs my wrist before I can get halfway out of the booth. Well, not exactly grab—she holds it gently.
“I didn’t know you liked to listen to losers with approximate mustaches,” she says, angling her head toward the guy on stage, but the sneer lives in her voice only. I’ve seen that look before, usually on the first-year students, probing for effect like a mentalist in the hope they can impress the cool kids. Something’s changed. Even when I saw her at the PostCrush concert, after she’d lost her powers, she still had that Adagio confidence, but now she wears it as a mask.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t think…” She must finally see my glare telling her how many pieces of that hand she can pick up off the floor if she doesn’t let go now, since her eyes widen and she relaxes what little grip she’d managed. “Please.” What a very not-Adagio thing to say. She folds her arms in her lap and looks down at the bricks beside her.
The mask comes off. Why would she want me to see her as classic Adagio if she actually expects me to tolerate a conversation? But just as quickly, I understand: any other version would have reeked even more of insincerity. It gets her foot in the door.
Fine, I drop back onto the bench and prop my chin in my palm. I can’t help but notice a small grin of her own, and for all I want it to be some odious, self-satisfied smirk, it looks more like a little girl finally granted some trifle by an overly strict parent. The slightest breeze might dislodge it. I don’t know what this is, but it’s got my interest.
“Th-the last few times. You seemed to enjoy the music. It made me glad.” She’s waiting for an answer, but she won’t get one. “Didn’t you?” Still no. The pause stretches out uncomfortably long, as when the maestro doesn’t quite have the percussionists’ attention and the audience starts to wonder if something’s gone wrong. At least I hope it feels that way to her. That stupid opening line she gave me—what’s her game? Her heart wasn’t in it, and she should know it’d only piss me off. “Have… you been doing okay?”
She shrinks in her seat even further. “I won’t come here anymore,” Adagio says, her face hidden under all that hair.
Dammit. Now she’s the one halfway out of the booth. “No, stop.” I can barely keep that from sounding sarcastic, but she obeys. “That’s not fair to you. I can come on a different night or find somewhere else to go.”
Finally, her eyes appear from underneath the orange again. “Did you like them though?”
My sigh rasps harshly. “Why do you care? Why are you even talking to me?”
Her shoulders bob as if pulled by a puppeteer. “Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf?”
I laugh before I can think to do anything else, and a dry, mirthless one echoes from her throat, too, not the full, rich sound she had just a week ago. But the mediocre guy on stage is basking in the little drift of applause as he packs up his guitar, and Adagio’s eyes snap from the wall to the stage, only briefly pausing on me. “I’d better go,” she says. “I’m on next.”
Well, that gives me half an hour or so where she can’t talk to me. So I listen to one song, which I really enjoyed from two weeks ago, then stay for another I remember, another I don’t, and there goes that stirring again! Every one of them makes me feel like I’m on the verge of finding something but never quite there, a suspended chord that doesn’t resolve. She’s searching, through her music, same as I have all my life, some need she doesn’t understand. Then she finishes, wipes a thin sheen of sweat off her forehead, and grabs her guitar case from behind the curtain.
Turning over a new leaf? If she’d used that as her opening line, I wouldn’t have believed her at all. So a lame attempt at being her same old self and in a way I’d see right through and then swallow the second piece of bait instead. That’s a calculated move, whether she means it in earnest or is employing her legendary siren manipulation for some other reason. I can’t figure her out.
Again, I feel my body buzzing—I don’t know what else to call it—but not drained of energy like her magic used to do. Almost the opposite. And now I’m more sure than ever that she has some kind of magic going on, and I didn’t give it the Twilight treatment I promised myself I would. I didn’t think it through.
I leave before she can come back over here.
What the hell am I doing?
I feel like one of those women who always falls for: “Honest, babe, things will be different this time.” I need to keep an eye on her. She doesn’t have the other sirens helping her, and she’s not manipulating anyone, as far as I can tell, but I can’t see her purpose.
“Listen to this guy. He should take some time off ’til his balls drop,” Adagio says. Last week, she could barely get a word out without looking like she might cry, and now she breaks out the salty language as if we’re best friends? But it’s different this week: not testing the waters. She means it, but she doesn’t gloat as if she’s achieved some victory, and it doesn’t escape my notice that she kept it between us instead of making sure everyone at the nearby tables heard her insult. “Seriously, who needs another song about how nobody will date him? I bet he’s never actually asked anyone out.”
I do chuckle a little. “I kinda had the same thought the first time I heard him, but then I decided I didn’t want to be mean. I’ve done enough of that in my life.”
“It’s not hurting anyone if he doesn’t—” Her eyes rove up to mine, with a little grace note of something I’ve never seen in them before. “Alright. I won’t.” Easy to miss, but she squints, just a bit. She’s tiptoeing carefully around me, but the ‘why’ keeps out of my reach.
“Tell me,” I say. And she looks up again, that trill back in her eye as of a herding dog waiting for its signal to go do its job that it can’t discern from play. With the heel of my hand against my chin, I drum a couple of fingers on my lip for a moment, and still she hangs there, waiting, anticipating. “Why are you here? Why do you sit with me? What do you want?”
She looks like someone who’d finally found a distraction to take her mind off a dead pet only to have someone carry a cat past her. “Everyone assumes I want something from them. Used to be I did, so why would that change? I don’t blame you for thinking that,” she says.
Great, even if she doesn’t, now I’ll blame myself for going there.
“I’m sorry, that’s not—okay, go back one. Why me?” I ask. With any luck, her turn on stage will come around soon.
She shrugs. “You’re about the only person I know.”
“Really?” Adagio almost jumps. I didn’t meant to erupt that way, but she always had an air of mystery about her. That attracts followers. “You must work somewhere.”
Reaching into her breast pocket, she flashes a huge, forced smile, then produces a name tag with a bullseye on it. “Can I help you with something?”
For a few seconds, my mouth twitches. Is she joking or—? “Do you not like it there?”
“It’s fine,” she says, stuffing the tag back in her pocket, “but I don’t talk to anyone on the job. Just customers.”
“Your…” I circle a hand in the air. Are they sisters? “The other sirens…”
Another shrug. “They’re fine, but we kind of do our own thing.”
“But don’t you do concert tours together?”
“Oh yeah,” she replies with a snuff of laughter out her nose. “I forgot you saw us at that… what was it? Past Crash?”
“PostCrush,” I add, so quickly I almost interrupt her.
And the snuff turns into a full-bore giggle. “Fangirl much?”
I shoot her a glare, but I make sure to add a smile too—don’t want her taking it seriously. She hasn’t worn out her leeway yet. “Still, though…” She never really answered. “Why me?”
“Because I think we’re a lot alike.”
Not a hint of a grin from her—she isn’t making a joke. I don’t think she’s trying to piss me off either. I take a big breath, like the tuba player getting ready for his entrance.
“We are,” Adagio says. “We both came from a place where we just felt entitled to the magic around us, and then we both very abruptly learned that no, the world really doesn’t give a shit about us. So we thought we’d teach everyone a big, painful lesson.” A harsh sigh follows, the tail end of it even heading into whimper territory. “So we found ourselves in the pieces of broken…” She rolls her eyes up. “Bricks, I guess, for your case, or so I hear. Pieces of gem for me.”
Right, the amulets. “Wait, how can you sing, then?”
Adagio cuts her eyes sideways at me. “Well, you saw our autotune equipment at the Past Crash—”
“Now you’re just doing that on purpose.”
She smirks. “But we were growing out of the need for it by then anyway.”
I don’t like the sound of that…
For a moment, Adagio blushes and clutches at her shirt collar. Then she slumps forward a bit and undoes the top button of her shirt.
“Whoa, hey, I—” And a red glint catches my eye.
Right down between her collarbones, mostly hidden: a red gem. Badly formed, not all faceted like it used to be, but also not shattered. My body goes stiff. The only reason I took her at her word was that I thought she had no way to command magic anymore.
Then it dawns on me that I’m staring at her cleavage, so of course now my cheeks go uncomfortably warm. “How’d that happen?” I ask, way too rushed.
“If a sea snail breaks its shell, it generates another,” she answers, and for all I expect to see a triumphant grin on her, she seems lost. “I know what you’re going to ask, but go ahead.”
“What are you doing with that magic now?”
She lays her arms on the table and rests her chin on her fists. “I’m just tired of being angry all the time.”
“What are you doing with that magic now?”
“I sing.”
She invited the question, so why avoid it? “And some of what you sing is teen angst crap that’ll get everyone sad, which you presumably soak up in that,” I say, pointing at her jewel.
“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath. “I do, but I don’t use that for anything bad.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you to know what’s bad and what isn’t.”
She flinches as if I missed a note.
“What do you do with the magic?” Hell, at one time, who was I to say what was bad? “Every time you sing, I feel it. I thought it was just me, but—”
“Wait, you do?” Nothing about her smile screams ‘fake.’ She shakes her head. “I didn’t think anyone could. Maybe it’s because you’re sensitive to magic, or, hey, as a musician, you know how wonderful it is when someone just gets one of your songs, right?”
I still can’t tell, dammit. “What do you do with the magic?”
“I’ll show you sometime.” Then Adagio turns her head at the commotion on stage, and she slouches out of her seat at her namesake tempo. “Sorry. My turn.”
By now, it’s all stuff I’ve heard her play before. And it’s still good, definitely improved since the PostCrush concert. While it rings in my head as it has for weeks now, I don’t linger on it. Not on the music, anyway, but here I still sit as she walks off the stage, and her grin at seeing I haven’t left reminds me of how the girls all look when opening their thoughtful gifts from Rarity at Hearth’s Warming.
Adagio has grown, somehow—a lot of little things that add up. She gave me good answers, when I finally got her to answer, without any duplicity I could detect. Her demeanor softer, even her clothes, less showy: jeans that may as well be painted on but with a loose-fitting flowy blouse and a pair of tasteful boots. The only spikes are in her usual hairband.
If I didn’t know her, I might like her.
She sits back down, and her face no longer shows that ashy grayness, no doubt thanks to her amulet. One way or another, I’m following the script she wants me to, but I don’t see that this is heading anywhere bad. Not yet, and I do owe the world a few second chances. Despite myself, I can’t help feeling warm, but I need to keep an eye on her anyway. “Y’know, I own a small sushi restaurant at the mall. Why don’t you come by sometime?”
Her eyes sparkle even more, the rising sun glinting off wave crests. “C’mon, former sea creature? I thought you’d never ask. I love sushi!”
“Oh shit, this is good,” Adagio mumbles through a mouthful of salmon roll.
Funny, she looks less mysterious in the daylight. Still, that gem shines over the edge of the tank top she has on. Wait, it’s not on a chain? It’s… growing right on her skin? “You don’t mind if people see that?” And I realize I’m staring at her cleavage.
She peeks down at her chest. “Eh, it usually doesn’t show much, and most people don’t know what it is anyway. It hasn’t freaked anyone out, at least.”
“But I thought it was something you wore around your neck.”
Adagio runs a finger along it. “When it’s fully regrown, yeah, I’ll molt it and put it on a chain. I tried too early on the last one, while it was still cracked, and I should’ve known better. It can’t function on its own until it’s a perfect crystal. Gotta keep it attached for now.” Then she takes a swallow of tea. “So why did you come to this world anyway? Not really a place for a pony to hide out.”
“Well, I’d gotten delusions of grandeur, so I ran away here, thinking I could raise an army to go back and—” Now she’s staring.
“Damn, girl, we are the same!”
“Don’t remind me,” I mutter, but when she gives me a questioning glance, I wave her off. She isn’t wrong. For the second time in as many days, I find myself thinking that if I’d never met her before, we’d already be good friends.
She flaps her hand by her mouth after a bite with a lot of wasabi on it. “So, like… when you got here, did you find anyone you knew? Other than Celestia, of course. But… family?”
I shake my head and start spreading some more rice across a seaweed wrap. “I didn’t have any real friends, I guess aside from some of my classmates from opera school, but I hadn’t seen them in years at that point.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Opera school!? Wow, I didn’t realize you were more than a guitar thrasher.”
The past curls the corners of my mouth. “Eh, a lifetime ago. I’ll never stop loving music, but back then, I had no doubt I’d be a diva someday. Now…” The tip of my knife swishes around at the walls and ceiling. “I started here in high school, and when the old chef retired, I took over the lease from him. I’ve had fun.”
Adagio gives the room a once-over. “Small, but still, how do you run this place all by yourself?”
“I’ve hired on a college kid recently, and the former owner comes in to help out during dinner hours until I can get the new guy up to speed, or if I’m out sick.” I stick a thumb over my shoulder. “I only have to clean the kitchen area and tables. Mall management sees to the floors and windows, Rarity showed me what software she uses to track her business finances, and really, that thing is a miracle. Does it all for me.” I take a long breath and relax. It scared me at first, but everything’s finally starting to get comfortable. “Lunch hours aren’t that busy, so I just do those alone. If that changes, I’ll look into more help.”
“Well, opera school. No mystery why you can sing, then.”
“And play guitar.”
“Natch.”
“And theorbo.”
She nearly chokes on her tea. She falls into a coughing fit, and I shove a couple of extra napkins at her. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” she wheezes. “No fucking way! What a great instrument!”
“Wait, how would a siren know what a theorbo was?”
She starts ticking off a list with her fingers. “One, they exist here as well; two, I’m all about music; three, you do know how long ago Star Swirl banished us, right?”
My chopping pauses. “Oh, so you saw them back then?”
“Saw them? You know who Luthier van Dross was?”
And now the blade clatters down against the cutting board. “Stallion who invented the thing. Don’t tell me…”
“Who do you think told him to build it? ‘You’ve got a high-pitched lute, you’ve got a bass lute, smash that shit together!’”
If only to curtail her little cadenza, I raise an eyebrow. “In less colorful language, I’d guess.”
She shrugs. “Yeah. Plus I did the whole… siren thing…”
And another term I don’t like the sound of. At least it’s well in the past. “Siren thing?”
“You know… suck out his life energy, he died young.”
Good thing I haven’t picked the knife up again. “And you don’t see a problem with that?”
“Not like I can go back and change it. But no, not my finest hour.” She coughs one last time, and then she starts eyeing the unfinished roll in front of me. “So, didja meet your parents on this side?”
“Didn’t meet my parents on that side, so no, never had a need.”
“Huh.” She watches her tea swirl in her cup for a minute, and then she reprises her melody. “What about you? Find your double? I’ve seen both Twilights, so I guess everyone has one?”
I leave her hanging on a suspended chord until I finish getting this all scrolled up and sliced. “Nah, it’s a bit haphazard. There isn’t a copy of everyone. I can’t guarantee there isn’t another Sunset hiding under a rock somewhere, but in all the reasonable places for one to be, I’ve never found any.”
“You could probably track down who your parents were in Equestria, if you wanted to.”
“If I wanted to.”
I get everything arranged on her plate, every note perfect, every instrument tuned. And she takes a bite. “Mm, this is so good.”
“Thanks,” I say, flashing a grin.
“No, you don’t understand. I already told you.” Her jewel starts to glow, and… the skin on her neck turns to scales. I don’t feel that buzz to my skin, though, and my mind is clear. Just before I consider using my knife for something else—as a joke, mostly—the light fades. “Calm down,” she says, all mirth gone from her voice. “I told you, I don’t do anything bad with it now. Just reminding you, I’m originally from the ocean. Fish is my thing.”
I don’t quite put my knife down yet. “There are fish here, too.”
“But… they’re not Equestrian fish. At least not until they’re touched by Equestrian magic. It does a little something.” Another bite, down the hatch, and she positively beams. “I haven’t tasted anything like this in centuries.”
“Wait, how old are you?”
And she erupts into laughter, nearly choking again. “No, I mean… we got banished centuries ago, but to this place, this time. I’m not centuries old.”
“Oh…”
I thought the time would never come, but she’s finally had her fill. She takes the linen napkin out of her lap, dabs it at her mouth, and puts it on the counter. “Tell you what. I said I’d show you what I do with my magic now. Sometime. Well… how about on Saturday morning? Before you open?”
Yeah, she doesn’t have a clue. “I don’t think you realize how early I have to show up here to open for lunch.”
“Perfect. It’ll look best at sunrise.”
Just a minute ago, her voice brimmed with confidence. But now her eyes are blaring conflicting tones. Pleading almost, but her feather-wisp smile would wilt at the slightest touch. “Fine.”
The air in the park could have been creepy, under the right circumstances. Droplets of mist swirl around like phantasms, and the pre-dawn gray illuminates just enough to put me on my guard. Aside from the occasional jogger, nobody comes by here at this hour, but I’ve found an out-of-the-way place, a small enclosed area with a brick path looping around a copse of dogwoods, a fence encircling it all. I slouch on a bench, but I bump up against a dense hedgerow, and the dew congealed on it has my hair all wet now, so… great.
I guess I never set a specific time with Adagio. Six fifteen already. If she doesn’t show soon, I’ll have to leave. Even without her here, I feel my body on edge. I might find out what she’s trying to do. I might finally know.
Just as I try to brush some of the dampness from my head, here comes Adagio through the gap in the hedge, her hair a bolt of fire amid all the gloom. “Hey!” she says. Funny, I didn’t expect a chipper attitude. She seemed more a night owl. “You found my favorite spot! Go figure.” She eases herself onto the bench, at the far end from me, and leans forward to keep her mass of hair clear of the damp leaves behind her. “I see you found out the hard way.”
I just grunt a response, but when I look over again, she has her chin angled up and her eyes shut. She takes a deep sniff in through her nose, then exhales softly, her lips barely parting. And she hums a single note.
Something sparks, dances on the tips of the grass blades, among all the dogwoods, but before I can seek it out, it’s gone. A little flare of lightning, or—I must have imagined it. I don’t know why, but my heart falls. Like one time, at opera school. The conductor had us holding a chord and told everypony, do not sing the middle note, and his eyes said now was not the time to joke about anything. So we obeyed, and held it out, and he wouldn’t put his hoof down, strained it upwards, until we’d almost run out of breath. Then the middle note rang out, on its own, not from anypony’s mouth, just for an instant.
And it was over. The conductor grinned fiercely but said nothing. My classmates and I only looked at each other. Had it happened at all?
Somehow, I missed that she has her guitar case with her, but she’s shoved it under the bench. Still, she sits there motionless, a gargoyle blindly surveying its domain. If I saw it right, it’s the only blatant display of magic she’s shown yet. I hate to break the silence, but I’ve been wondering something. “Can—?”
She jumps.
“Sorry,” I say, but she smiles faintly and and glances over through slitted eyes. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Adagio waves a hand, conducting the leaves rippling in the breeze. “No, don’t worry about it. I just get in the zone here.”
“Zone?”
She nods, but then her eyes go distant, her lips poised to say something that never comes.
So I shrug. “Can Aria and Sonata sing again, too?” Adagio takes another breath and holds it. Didn’t she invite me here? “Um… and if they do, why are you a solo act?”
Finally, she parts her bangs and sits up straighter. “We still have our group stuff, but I like to do my own thing in my off hours.”
I check my watch again. If she’s just going to give me a bunch of non-answers, I might as well get to work. “You must have a lot of free time, given how much of it you spend at the cafe.” With a grin, I add, “Or at the sushi bar.” It is nice to have a customer that enthusiastic, plus it keeps her where I can see her.
“Yeah.”
A decidedly unhelpful response.
It’s one thing to hear the stockbrokers and lawyers bloviating about what deals they’ve closed over ahi rolls, but this girl has mastered the art of saying nothing. “So…”
“Sorry,” she whispers as her grin fades. “I know, I asked you here. I just needed to see how much was in the tank.”
I squint at her and open my mouth, but—
“Check this out.”
Another hum permeates the air, but it’s strange, resonant, with an almost metallic quality to it. That spark dances over the grass again, here, there, always in the corner of my eye, and then I notice: I can’t hear the crickets chirping anymore. I can’t hear the cars on the highway. I can’t hear the leaves rustling. The wind’s hiss is still there, but constant, pervasive, like the sky is holding its breath. My watch slows.
Each droplet in those swirls of morning fog hangs suspended, glistening in a werelight that shines from all around. In the stand of dogwoods, the buds straining toward the first warmth of spring unfold, spread their leaves, white blossoms opening up and showering points of light. And in between them, stalks nudge their way up from the soil, transform into blue, pink, yellow, purple. Hyacinth, daffodil, jonquil, lily of the valley, daisy. Behind me, the hedges erupt into japonica, azalea, and hydrangea, spilling over my shoulders and gracing our world with their perfume.
Sweet smells, the chill wind prickling at my arm. Everywhere, the dancing sparks dart, and I try to follow them, but it gets hard to move my head that fast, or… move it at all. No world around me, no world inside me, and I don’t think I’ve taken a breath for over a minute now, I don’t think I need to. It all has a life of its own, sustains me. If I reach out, I could rearrange the mist, and it would hang in place, precisely as I’d sculpted it.
And through it all, this crystalline melody—
My mouth hangs open, and I’m crying, but I don’t know why. “How are you doing this?” I rasp, my voice sibilant like the valve on an old radiator, but stifled, dead, the strength of it soaked into the void holding us away from everything. My own words sound muffled, and as I look around again, it’s not just the plants: dragonflies hover above the tips of each leafy tendril, ladybugs trundle up the stalks, butterflies of every color flit about. As I sit flexing my fingers, deciding whether to take one of the flowers, a blue butterfly perches on the end of my knee and flaps its wings once or twice.
She stops. And she peers out of the corner of her eye again, the knowing glance at an eavesdropper, but not an unwelcome one. The light starts to fade, the flowers grow dim. On her chest, scales revert to skin. “I don’t know.”
The spell broken, I find my full voice again. “How do you not know!?” Nearby, the crunch of gravel sounds, but we’re not completely back in the jogger’s world. He never notices.
Adagio gives me another one of her shrugs.
“That’s earth pony magic, except… why does it go away?”
She shakes her head, scratches a finger at her cheek as if it might bring back a memory. “It’s not any kind of plant magic. I don’t think so, at least. You’re right—it would stick around then.”
“So what is it?”
Once more, she hums, just enough to make the flowers’ brightness pulse. “Maybe it’s about beauty.”
Maybe so. I guess that would fit a siren. “But while it’s here, is it real? Or only an illusion?”
She leans forward and sags, a laborer pushing through the day’s final hour, but her voice churns again, a single lilac climbing into the space between us. And she picks it, holds it up to my lips, brushes the petals against my chin. “Real.”
“Just because I can feel it doesn’t mean it’s not an illusion.” But it smells real.
“I know how one looks, so I know how it looks to you, too. Unless you’re colorblind, I guess.” She chuckles, and with it, the flower wilts a little. “But I don’t know how one would smell or taste to you. Never tried it myself. So I couldn’t fool you there.”
I would take a taste, but… human taste buds are different. I found that out abruptly, not long after I came to this world. Grass tastes pretty awful now. And it doesn’t do human digestion any favors.
Adagio smirks at my frown, and the flower goes away, the distant trucks thunder by, the birds resume their arguments over territory. “If it is about beauty,” she says, then averts her eyes toward the ground where the lilac once bloomed, “it didn’t make you any more beautiful.” She closes her eyes momentarily, and I think I hear “as if it could” drifting languidly on the mist. But I don’t know what to make of it.
She showed me her magic. She could have kept me under her spell, I’m sure of it. But for what? I never felt compelled to do anything. If she wanted me, she had me, yet she let me go. She only showed me her magic.
Exactly as she promised.
“Why do you do this?” I understand that she’s changed since those years ago and Canterlot High, but she never cared about beauty, especially not for its own sake. Though it does shut her off in her own world for a little while, if ruling this diminutive realm means something to her. I keep watching, but her face stays carefully still. “And why just you? Have you shown the other sirens?”
“Yeah,” she replies, waving a hand. “But they don’t really care.” She looked so fresh before. Now she seems as though she hasn’t slept in days, her eyes dim and her hair tousled. “They can do it. I showed them how. But they got bored with it right away.”
Then she leans back, carefully keeping her wavy mane out of the dewy shrub’s grasp. “For me, I… Well, I always felt like art lives in the small moments.”
I don’t quite know what she means by that. But with her looking nearly comatose, and me needing to get to work, I stand halfway, and—
How much was in the tank. She… did all this for me? Or she knew she didn’t have enough accumulated to keep me under control and she was just testing? She can barely sit up, and she’s a dry leaf trembling in a blizzard’s gale. I don’t get it, and I… need to think about this. It was beautiful, and maybe it was a gift, and I hope it was a gift.
I stand the rest of the way, and I hate making excuses, so I take off my jacket and let my work uniform do the talking for me. But I do put a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you,” I say, looking her steadily in the eye for the first time ever, and one of those rarely genuine smiles forms on her lips. Tired, exhausted, but real.
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What’s “ma non troppo”?
11636039
It's explained in the author's note.
Where did you get the cover!?
11636490
It’s a cropped screenshot from an EqG short that preceded Sunset’s Backstage Pass called “Find the Magic.”
God this is amazing!
Next week? Next WEEK?! You drop this level of artistry and romance and then make us wait a week? Beautifully written. Adagio is adorable.(Adagable?) Was just going "aww" the entire time.
Small typo snuck in on you.
11636572
Whoa! I thought those pendants were completely shattered!
11636858
If you read the info about that short from the wiki, the writers were showing them more symbolically, not intending to mean that the amulets weren't shattered or could be repaired somehow. But they don't state that outright, and obviously I'm using headcanon that they can grow back, which I've written in a couple other stories.
11636822
Thanks for catching that!
Re your author's note: I guess Shirley Jackson has inspired a lot of people, hasn't she?
11636993
She probably has, and rightfully so. The first time I encountered that quote was a transcript from an interview of her, but she may have gotten it from somewhere else. I haven't bothered tracking down the original source to see if it's her. That was about a year ago, and since then, I've noticed that they sometimes use it on one of the XM radio classical stations.
This is absolutely phenomenal.
Loving Adagio here. Sunset is holding her own as well.
Very excited for more.
I always loved how you write the sirens. Each is so unique in every story of yours, and this one is no different. I'm drawn in by Adagio's embrace of an instant of beauty, and it feels so magical and intimate when she shares it with Sunset. Can't wait for more!
Well this is one of the prettiest things I've ever read. I absolutely adore it (as Adagio would want, I'm sure)!
The first person perspective adds a lot here, and your descriptions are just gorgeous.
Also, your Adagio reads a lot like another of my favorite characters from something else (Heather Chandler, specifically), which is a fun coincidence.