In the Small Moments

by Pascoite

Music and Lyrics by Adagio Dazzle

I’m not sure of anything.

Rather than get together at my restaurant as Adagio suggested, I’d prefer the cafe, a more neutral ground. But my normal table is so dark that we might not be able to see each other well, and we couldn’t all face the stage at once, and should any of us really be paying attention to the people abusing the mic tonight? Not with how… monumental this feels to me.

I choose another table, out in the light, angled so we can all watch the unfortunate singer. And here I sit, for the fifth time already reminding myself to stop fidgeting that leg. I check my phone. No text from Adagio, and she’s ten minutes late. But that’s still normal, nothing to worry about. She’ll come, soon enough, just wait.

It doesn’t help that I’m on my third espresso, and I didn’t want to impose, making someone come here late at night, so at least it’s not so close to my bedtime that this’ll keep me up, but it’s definitely getting me jittery, not that the situation helps, and I think I feel my teeth vibrating, and—

I stop my leg from fidgeting again, just as Adagio comes through the door with…

The woman with Adagio is elegant, moving with the effortless strength of an ice skater’s stride, wearing her cool, flowy dress, hanging behind Adagio but perpetually peeking around her, eyes probing and bright, finally finding their mark. She grins at me.

Poking out from below the dress, a pair of ordinary flats with long socks, and she looks odd wearing white with how pale her skin is. Dark orange hair, and I’ve seen it a lot in anime, but I’ve never actually met someone with an adhesive bandage across the bridge of her nose. It almost looks like scales.

Adagio plops into her seat, leaving this woman standing there without any sort of preamble to build on, so I offer her my hand, and she takes it in both of hers. “Sunset Shimmer,” I say.

“Yeah, Adagio’s told me. I’m Autumn Blaze.”

“What has she told you?” Not too many people know about magic and Equestria, so I can’t just start blabbing about my life.

Autumn gives an easy shrug and slides into the chair across from me. “Just that you’re like a long-lost relative of mine, and some cousin or great aunt or something or other might have made it so that I was like a mother to you when you were young—” she leans in with the back of a hand shielding her mouth and stage whispers “—I don’t understand the first bit of it.” But she sits back up and brightens with a little jounce of her shoulders. “I figured why not, you can never have too many friends, right? Maybe if you’re trying to pack them in a car, I guess, but—y’know, the friends I do have always tell me I talk too much. Do I talk too much?”

She’s squinting over at Adagio now, so I suppose Autumn is speaking to her, but by now Adagio’s resting her chin on her arms, and she rolls her eyes at me.

“Ooh, is that espresso?” Autumn doesn’t even wait for an answer. “I’d love one. Hey! Hey, waiter guy! Can I get an espresso?”

“That’s about all I understand of it as well,” I cut in. “I never knew my mom, don’t even know her name, but Adagio says you were close to her.”

Autumn scowls at that, the bandage wrinkling. “But you don’t know who?”

I shake my head. “No, more like… you’re really similar to her. Like if I got to know you, I could get to know her.”

“So, like, you want my life story or something?”

She’s grinning as if she hopes I do. “Just… tell me about yourself. What you love, what you do. Where you come from.”

Her head bobs this way and that, already saying her entire existence probably deals in vagaries. “Lived here all my life, was an ordinary kid, until I got into all kinds of philosophy. Spent a year living in a zen temple under a vow of silence—” Adagio bursts into a laugh “—I know, right? I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got into the grunge scene as a singer and met Adagio’s band. As luck would have it, they needed some help on vocals because all three of them had some… what was it?”

“Chronic… throat… thing,” Adagio mumbles as she tugs her neckline up to cover the scarlet sheen there.

Autumn fans her hands out in some game show hostess move. “Tada! I sang with them for about half a year until they were doing better.” When the espresso lands in front of her, she snaps her eyes down. “Hey, can you Irish that up? Shot or two or… tell you what, just bring a glass of whiskey and I’ll dump the coffee in that.”

And she whirls back to me: “Hey, Adagio grabbed me on short notice and I didn’t bring my wallet. Can you cover me?”

That reminds me—I’d thought about applying for a liquor license so I could serve sake. Which led me to wonder if I’d careen down the path of needing to have mixed drinks in general, and would I need to hire a bartender or just learn myself.

The waiter comes back, and Autumn sloshes her little espresso cup over the chunk of ice, the dark brown making foggy curlicues through the gold. Actually, it kind of reminds me of her hair. And she downs it in three gulps.

Yeah, just sake. Or maybe not even that.

“So, what else you wanna know?” Autumn says.

“Just… well, not that you did it, but I always wondered: why would a mom give up her child?” I don’t know. She does seem like me in some ways. Brash. Flighty. Constantly on the verge of screwing up all the progress she’s made in life. Maybe I get that from her.

Funny, she’s a singer, but I haven’t had a single hint of music in my head since she showed up.

“Seriously, would you want this as a mother?” she asks, gesturing again, down her torso, as if indicating the bonus round’s prize. “Sometimes that’s doing the kid a favor.”

She’s pretty. Fiery. I could love and hate her all at once. She might be right, for all that it’s a stock answer.

“I don’t…” I take a deep breath. “Just think about it though. Yeah, I know it’s just hypothetical, and I’m not looking for reasons to get mad at you or argue. But what would make you give up a child?”

Autumn props her chin in her palm for a moment and chews on her fingertips, flinching this one and that one as if she’s playing a piano on the ivories of her teeth. “Could be a lot of things. Maybe I never wanted a kid? Maybe I’m some nobody, and I died, and who’d notice?” Her eyes flash toward me, then she starts again, less certain now: “That’s the less important question, right? More is whether I’d want to know how you were doing now, even if anonymously. Are you sure she didn’t?”

I’ve never thought about that before. And she’s right.

Then she leans back in her seat, finally listening to whoever’s on stage. “They’re pretty good,” she comments, followed by a short sneeze, so she grabs her purse and digs through it for a tissue. I can see her wallet in there.

“Hey, Adagio says you have a sushi restaurant? I should stop by there sometime.”

It’s true in both worlds: you can’t choose your family. I don’t know what to think, so we take in the rest of the set without talking, until I decide I really need to get home if I’m going to make opening time tomorrow, but Autumn’s fallen asleep herself.

Adagio rolls her eyes again, but she gives a muted smile and waves as I stifle a yawn and slip away. And I do pay for Autumn’s drinks as I pass the cashier.

---

“Did you like her?” Adagio asks.

As usual, I’m glad she always comes here early, before I have any other lunch customers. Hell, I only open this early in case someone needs to place a large to-go order for pickup later, or some shoppers want to look at the menu and plan to come back when they’re loaded down with bags.

I can only shrug. “I don’t know much about her yet. It’s probably… what does Twilight call it? Uhh… confirmation bias, yeah. But I think I can see how I take after her some.”

She smiles before biting into another salmon roll. “Remember, on the pony side, your mother might be someone different, if Autumn even exists there.”

“I should ask Twilight—pony Twilight—if she’s ever met an Autumn Blaze before.” I do still have the journal, though it can take her days to notice if I’ve written something, since it’s always hooked up to her portal machine now.

“Hey,” she says, and I notice I’ve been staring into space for a minute. “It didn’t… fuck anything up to meet her, did it? You seem a bit out of it.”

I wave the tip of my knife around. “Didn’t sleep too well, lots to think about. But nothing bad.”

“Would it help if I…?”

My knife lies softly on the counter, and I take in a slow breath, close my eyes. “Yeah, I think it would.”

And she sings. Not the lullaby, and given how I reacted to it last time, she must figure I’d get riled up again. But it doesn’t matter.

A sweet melody lilts out from her lips, and the little sprigs in their bud vases on the counter might be perking up, but in my mind, I’m on that same bench in the park with Adagio, fresh flowers springing to life all around me. I can feel their energy, so renewing!

“…Ivy, sing Ivery, my father left me an acre of land, and a bunch of green holly and Ivery…”

Mmm, another tune I know well. Quaint folk song from long ago. Not quite on a par with the lullaby in personal meaning, but I’ve still always had a fondness for it. I join in: “I plowed it with a ram’s horn…”

I remember reading about birds in biology class, years ago, that they could often make more than one sound at a time when singing. I’ve never heard the Dazzlings do that, but here, now, a whole symphony rings out, melody over a moving bass line, repeating, ever-present even as what flows above it constantly shifts. Could she always do that? Is it part of how her magic is changing?

Then it stops, the beautiful lightness fading from my body, and I take a minute before I open my eyes. When I do, I can’t read her expression, but she points toward the entrance, where the mechanic I like is here, holding one of the menu slips. He slides it in the box out front. “Thank you!” I call, and even I can hear the grogginess in my voice. “I’ll have your order delivered in half an hour!”

“I can drop it off when I go,” Adagio offers.

Nice of her. It’s close enough I usually take a couple of minutes to run it down there myself, but it’s safer if I don’t leave things unattended, including Ray. “Thanks, that’d help a lot.”

…And she taps me on the hand. “Sorry, did I zone out again?” I ask.

She nods, and her smile warms up a notch. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I don’t know what it is about your music, but it really does help make things peaceful. And how did you do the double voice?”

“Part of the new magic,” she confirms as she dabs her next bite in a wash of soy sauce.

So I was right. “I liked the ostinato.”

“The what?”

“As I recall someone saying,” I drawl, jabbing a finger toward her while I fluff up my hair to Adagio-esque volumes, “‘I’m a siren. I’m practically made of music.’”

And she lets out a small chuckle. “Touché. I do know music, but not always the technical lingo.”

I need to get started on that lunch order, so I lay out a few sheets of nori and load up the rice maker, then lightly salt my cutting board. “Same origin as the word ‘obstinate.’ Same meaning, too: a theme that’s stubborn and won’t go away, keeps repeating even though everything else around it might change.”

A noncommittal grunt serves as the perfect antithesis to what moments ago had been an utter mastery of sound.

“And it does help.”

Her smile sprouts anew, as much as any blossom in the park might, and I open my mouth to continue, one false start, then another, and: “Can I?”

Adagio freezes.

At once, her mind and her mouth clash between staying unreadable and broadcasting elation to whoever might see it, but she wrestles her body under control as quickly as she can, all of it except her eyes. They stare so intensely, daring me to say I was only kidding, gazing over a precious treasure, infinite curiosity channeled into a new puzzle.

“I… I’ve been eating sushi,” she says, barely above a whisper. “I’d be all fishy.”

Like that stopped her from asking me the first time. Why in the world would she suddenly lose all that self-confidence?

But I know better. That’s just what sirens do: look the part, if not feel it.

“Siren, fish, what’s the difference?”

She almost seems hurt. “We’re more closely related to reptiles.” Not sure if Ray would consider that a plus, but hey, maybe they’d get along.

I lean forward on my elbows and give her a gentle smile. “I didn’t mean to offend. Just to say that it doesn’t matter.”

Her previous grin returns. “You didn’t have to ask.”

“Yes I did.” I understand why she said that. But she needs to understand my answer, too. She has value; I don’t get to take her for granted. Something glows about her, the smile less sharp, more soft around the edges, more relaxed. And she nods.

I kiss her as lightly as she’s always kissed me, and I lose myself in it as much as I lost myself in her singing. Yet the nagging voice in the back of my brain keeps up its refrain: Am I doing the right thing? Am I starting something that I can’t follow through on? Am I being fair to either one of us?

The rice maker’s beeper goes off, and it shuts down.

She really has changed. I believe that. But I’ll be careful. I will.

I pull away, stay hovering close, watch her eyes for a second. Her mouth still seems like it might erupt into beams of sunlight at any moment, and yet the beginnings of tears well against her cheeks as her scarlet gem gleams through her shirt.

I return her grin, give her another quick peck on the lips, then the rice maker beeps at me again.

---

As I step into the shower and indulge in the hot water rolling over me, I finally let the questions that have been stewing in my head congeal. Is Adagio controlling me? I don’t think so. To what end? Besides, I’ve never known her to control people unless she used their own emotions against them. She doesn’t have anything negative to soak up from me, and she can’t use the teen angst from the cafe on me.

I keep circling back to that: what’s in it for her? The same thing that’s in it for me, I guess. And I don’t find anything wrong with that.

But I do know that I have to be careful. I would anyway, but especially with her, if I think this might ever turn into a relationship. And more to the point, why am I already jumping toward calling it that?

She did offer to let me use my geode on her…

I rinse out my mouth and spit the slightly rusty-tasting water toward the drain. A bit clouded, swirling around nothing. Kind of like my head these days. And I glance in the mirror just to make sure my eyes aren’t glowing red.

That isn’t fair to her. She’s been nice. I like her. I… I like her a lot.

With a groan, I rub my hand down my leg, and yeah, they need a shave. Rinse them off, take the shaving cream and lather one up, then get my razor and run stripes up through the foam, like plowing snow. And dammit, I always hit that little… mole, or whatever it is, on the outside of my thigh, of course it’s bleeding now, and I need to get a dermatologist to just take the stupid thing off.

Is that my phone?

I stumble around the shower curtain and nearly trip on the edge of the tub, but yeah, my phone’s ringing. Shaving cream drips in globs on the floor, and I at least swipe the water off my face with a towel before I answer it. “Hello?”

“Hey, is this… uh… Sun Girl? You know, Adagio’s friend?”

“Who is this?” Not a number I recognize.

“Autumn Blaze. Your kinda mom… person… thing. Remember?”

Adagio must have given her my number. “Yeah, I do. Listen, I’m in the middle of a shower right now. Can I call you back?”

“Oh, yeah, heh, I just… I’m surprised they let me stay this long, but I’m getting kicked out, and I don’t have a ride. I was wondering if you could pick me up.”

If Adagio needed to charge her amulet, now would be an ideal time. “I have to be at work in twenty minutes. Can’t Adagio get you?”

“They played some music festival the next town over last night. Haven’t got back yet, heh, not for a couple more days or I would have asked her first, but we don’t talk that much anymore, so I hate to impose on her, but hey, this would be a great time for us to talk, right?”

Funny, Adagio never told me she had plans to leave the city. “I drive a motorcycle. We wouldn’t be able to hear each other—wait, kicked out? Where are you?”

“Uhh, hang on…” Some door that really needs a spritz of oil swings open, and I hear the sounds of cars in the background. “Griffonstone Pub.”

Oh hell, that place? “Are you drunk?”

“No, no, I don’t ever get drunk, I can handle it.”

“It’s six in the morning, you’re just now calling me from a bar you got kicked out of, and you apparently go there enough that they let you sleep some of it off.”

“Look, don’t take an attitude with me! Are you coming or not?”

Damn it. She has to endure a heavy sigh first. “Fine. I can get there in ten. But don’t make a habit of this.”

She sounds happy, but whatever she says only comes through as garbled. So I hang up, do a rushed job of my other leg, complete with three or four nicks, and head out without washing my hair.

---

When I get there, I find Autumn sitting against a brick wall next to some trash cans. A pair of rough-looking guys loom over her.

“Hey, babe,” one says. “Why don’t you come back to my place? No reason for the party to end now, right?”

I rev my engine. “She’s coming with me.”

“Liking the sound of this even better,” his doughy friend chimes in.

“No. Her, me, alone.” I’d flip up my visor to let them see I’m not in the mood for any bullshit, but maybe I’ll look a little more intimidating this way.

“Aww, we can’t even watch?”

I found out years ago that some things don’t change across the portal. Pony strength in a human-shaped body has made more than one street thug regret his choices in life. Those two idiots, leering at me, and Autumn can’t even keep her head up, sporadically giggling. So I turn off the engine, pop my kickstand down, walk over, and whip my leg around, freshly shaven as it is. Not that they could tell through my jeans, but I kick one of the trash cans so hard I nearly put a hole in it.

“You getting the picture now?” I yell at them, and they stand stiffly before backing away and running off.

“Yeah!” Autumn shouts at the retreating forms, shaking her fist. “You don’t wanna fuck with us!”

“You’re not helping,” I say as I try to get her standing, and I lead her back to my bike, then shove my spare helmet on her. “Now, where are we going?”

She chuckles at some private joke. “Your place would be fine.”

“I said I had to go to work. And now I’m going to be late.” Not to mention I had to leave Ray behind.

“But Dagi said you… you own the place, so, like, you can’t ever be late, right? You set your own hours—”

“If I’m not ready to open when people want lunch, I don’t get any customers and I don’t earn any money. Now, I need to go to work, and I’m not letting someone I barely know have free rein over my apartment, so where’s yours?” Her face clouds immediately, and she flips her own visor down.

“I’m not a fucking child!” she barks. “If you can’t be cool about this, then fine, just fucking take me home. And don’t go narc on me.”

You can’t pick your family, I remind myself again. This has got to be some kind of test life has for me. Something I need to learn, something good that will come out of it. But for now, I grind my teeth and fight the urge to punch her. “And who would I do that to?”

She shrugs. “My boss. Or Dagi.”

“I don’t have the first clue where you work, and you said you don’t keep up with Adagio anymore, so why would she even care?”

Autumn glares at me. She gestures toward my bike with an unspoken “well?” So I climb on, and she sits behind me, leans in heavily. Thankfully, I don’t have to listen to her now, but she does point at each intersection, slumping harder into my back, until I finally pull up at an apartment building I’ve seen a few times before.

“Which one is it?” I ask, but she staggers off the seat, falls into the bushes, and goes motionless.

Perfect.

I rummage through her pocket, take out her wallet, and good thing her driver’s license has an address that seems to be current. Unless she changed units, but this is the right place. And I consider getting repaid for that booze-laden coffee she treated herself to the other night, but I stuff the wallet back in her pocket and dig around in the other, fishing out a set of keys.

With no small effort, I drag her down a few doors. Ground-floor unit, or I would have left her sitting in those bushes.

I really would have. And I also would have hated myself for it later, I realize as I mull over what Twilight and the other girls would think if they saw me now. Enabling a drunk, rationalizing it all because she’s family but not family, and shit, I wouldn’t even want to begin explaining it.

So with a growing chip on my shoulder, I roll Autumn onto her bed, leave the keys by her phone, and show up to work nearly an hour late, without any boss except me screaming that I’d better not fuck up like this again.

---

I pluck a couple of my guitar’s strings and give the tuning peg on one a slight twist. Then I stifle a yawn and rub the foggy feeling out of my eyes. “I didn’t know you were leaving town.” Dammit, three days later, and I can’t shake that tired feeling.

“Sorry, it was a last-minute decision,” Adagio replies as she peers around the park from our bench.

“That you told Autumn about and not me?”

For a split second, a jolt shoots across her face, but she gets it under control. “Sorry. I should have, but I didn’t know if you’d care.”

“I might wonder why you stopped coming to the restaurant and worry something had happened to you.” She turns, her full attention suddenly on me. At first, she seems lost, but something clicks in her head, and her expression warms. “It takes a while to get used to. I remember it well.”

She raises an eyebrow, tries to speak, closes her mouth again.

“Learning that people can actually give a shit about you,” I fill in for her. “It scared me at first, like I had to constantly earn it. But then it made me feel good.”

Her eyes start to wander, and I can see the gears turning. But she does hunch up her shoulders a tad and smile in nobody’s direction. “So, do you like her?”

“Don’t know yet. Maybe Tuesday was just a bad one for her, but man was it infuriating. I hope she doesn’t always act that way.”

She tests out a short hum, then coughs. “She’s definitely bipolar.”

“No shit. What else do you know about her?”

Once more, her full attention turns on me. “She only sang with us a few months. Good singer, seemed an okay chick, as long as you didn’t get on her bad side.”

I don’t even know where to start. Does she have a good side? “Her drinking problem can’t be anything new.”

Like swatting a gnat, or… finally, without Autumn nearby, I can get my head back into a musical architecture. She wafts her hand like a conductor corralling a brass section who’s not watching the tempo. “No, but it never got in the way of our shows. Long term, it probably would have been a deal-breaker.”

“You didn’t tell me anything beforehand.”

“I didn’t want you to judge her before you met her,” she replies. Fair point.

“So, what does she do for a job?” Please don’t let it be a teacher or a cop or anyone with special responsibility.

Her hand returns to directing an unruly row of trumpets. “Some office thing. Data entry, I think. I don’t know.”

I’d already given Adagio the whole rundown when she resumed her appearances at my sushi counter yesterday, but one thing I’d left out: “I called her the next morning to make sure she was still okay. But she didn’t pick up.”

“She’s fine,” Adagio says with all the lethargy of old news.

Funny, I used to have a hard time fitting these morning meetings into my schedule, but—I need to say this out loud. “It does help seeing you here. Now more than ever.”

“Good.” And she starts up humming again, no words, but gradually morphing into the lullaby I love, and I strum with her, adding a descant. My little countermelody, though I was never that good at playing the extreme high notes. That’s more a guitar thing than a theorbo thing.

I swear, her singing does enclose us in some kind of veil. Nobody outside it ever reacts as if they can see or hear us, our own private world. Shame the beauty that burgeons up from it doesn’t get much of an audience. I hope I can convince her to share it with more people someday, not shut them all out. Though for now, it does make a nice sanctuary.

Never before have I felt the stress melting off me so thoroughly, but it feels good, so good, same way it always does, same way I spent all yesterday anticipating. I would have expected to find it more relaxing when I only listen, but playing along with her works even better, adding my own voice—she’s moved on from the lullaby to something else, but it’s a simple enough melody that I can follow the chords and improvise.

Just as she said, way back in those early days in the cafe: we’d make a good improv group.

I owe it to her to keep my eyes open, see all the beauty sprouting around me, so I watch the blooms, take in the fragrance, look at her face…

She has such an angelic aspect to her, which I never would have thought I’d say. No words anymore, reverted to humming, but what a voice, like when her amulet hadn’t yet shattered, and then some. The music has its own pulse, an ebb and flow with her heart, taking every piece of my malaise with it as if it’s become my amulet, rendered powerless and fractured.

Her gem’s healing has become hers, and hers has become mine.

Adagio sees me staring, my voice gone silent, and smiles, almost a smirk, but not quite. In the sudden silence, the veil dissipates slowly, shred by shred, as I set my guitar in its case at my feet. She hums again, sporadically, just enough to keep the gray screen between us and the world. I find myself grinning stupidly, but when I see her begin to speak, the longing look in her eyes, I already know what she’ll say: “Can—?”

“Can I?” I cut in, like an antiphonal response, except not waiting for her theme to finish first, so in canon against itself, and—why does my mind get so flooded with music when Adagio is here?

An amused curl forms at the corner of her mouth, and she gets it now. She doesn’t tell me that it’s okay to assume, and it may yet develop that way, but for today, I owe her that respect.

So she leans over and waits: I got the question out first, so I make the move. I kiss that little curve of a smile, and her humming buzzes against my lips, keeping the few joggers oblivious in the dim daybreak.

She pulls away soon enough, to take a breath, but I keep her close, gathering an arm about her shoulders. I don’t want it to end.

“Can I?” I say more urgently, and she nods before I finish speaking, so I lightly brush my fingers over the back of her neck, through her hair, turn her sideways toward me with my other hand. She takes the invitation, swinging her legs up, across my lap, and putting her close arm around my back, the far one at my waist.

She did it so gently before, saying that was how she thought I’d like it, so I give her the same courtesy, press in, kiss her again and again.

All the beauty she’s made for me, but at the heart of it, she’s beautiful. She does take my head, as she must have wanted to for months now, and pulls it harder against her, still with her humming, still creating this universe where we don’t have to worry about anyone else.

Adagio finally breaks off, smiling weakly like someone humbled by a magnanimous gift. I lurch at her, but she holds a hand to my chest, pushing. “Don’t you have to get to work?”

I do, but seriously, fuck that.

Yet she shoves me again, gently. “We always have tomorrow. Don’t give up the things that are important to you.”

She’s right. And she shouldn’t have to be the one saying that. So I nod, get one lest peck in while her guard is down, and smile at her. She’s crying. Not the sad kind, though. I don’t need my geode to tell.

“And thank you,” she says, no longer singing as the color and sound and everything from the real world intrude.

Author's Note:

The other song that's new in this chapter is an old English folk song I've liked for some time called "An Acre of Land."

Coming next week, chapter 4.

Comments

[Ri2]

Summer Blaze (kirin), is there something you need to tell us?