In the Small Moments

by Pascoite

Arranged by Adagio Dazzle

“My treat this time,” Autumn says as she grabs the bill. Good thing she hasn’t pursued coming to my restaurant. I don’t want her there. Not yet, anyway. So here we are, meeting at the cafe, but in the morning, when it operates more as a diner. She still has that bandage on her nose.

And against my expectations, it’s gone pretty well today. Although we didn’t talk much while we ate, at least she was in a good mood. And we can talk now.

“Adagio tells you me you play guitar,” she continues. “How long you been playin’?”

I shrug as much as I can with my elbows already on the table. “Almost as far back as I can remember. Well… not guitar, exactly. I started on theorbo.”

“Theorbo? What’s that?”

Hence why I rarely bring it up. Though I was hoping our connection, whatever form it takes, would mean she already knew. No such luck. “Just… a kind of old-timey guitar. You don’t see them around much.” And then it occurs to me: “Wait, when did Adagio tell you? I thought you didn’t keep up with each other.”

“More nowadays,” she answers, waggling her hand. “We have a common interest in you.”

Well, that makes me feel better. I wonder what they say about me. Though the music—it’s not sitting right. “What kind of stuff did you sing with the Dazzlings? They always sounded like modern pop to me, but your voice seems suited for… I dunno. Some smoky jazz riffs or something. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard you sing. Would you mind?”

She starts to blush. “What, right here?”

“You’d be surprised how little people notice bursting into song in these parts.” Or join in, I might have added. Maybe that was just my personal preference speaking, but I do like jazz. And PostCrush.

With a surreptitious glance around, she begins to hum, and when nobody pays her any attention, she adds a few words. Yes, a rather bluesy take on an older song I’ve heard the Rainbooms play before. Quiet, but the further she gets into it, she lets her soul take over. She feels the words, the loss, the tough times, but then what else would the blues be about? No surprise the Rainbooms never liked that song.

She’s good, and she has that pack-a-day huskiness that creeps in when she digs for it, but thank goodness I’ve never seen her smoke. And the music: She has it. It’s in her. Maybe she could have been my mother.

“You ever consider doing the open mic night?” I ask as her voice tapers off, and it morphs into a chuckle.

“Nobody there wants to hear an old fart like me sing in a style they don’t care about.”

“But you sang pop with the Dazzlings. You could fake it.”

“There’s a difference between ‘hafta sing’ and ‘wanna sing.’”

I guess that was before her current job, then. I’d ask if she quit the band because she didn’t need the money anymore, or if they’d shown her the door after they’d fully recovered. But bringing up sore subjects is a bad idea. For how little I know her, I do know that she can turn downright fiery.

And against my better judgment, I’m starting to warm up to that fire. You can’t pick your family. But today has gone well. I’m glad I called her back. “And I’m happy you’re doing okay after I dropped you off at your place last week. I was beginning to wonder…”

“About that…” she says with a laugh. “Say, the local booze shop kinda has it in for me. Can I give you twenty dollars and have you grab me a bottle of vodka?”

And here we go…

“I’m kinda young. I don’t think they’d sell it to me.” Which isn’t exactly true. But what else can I say? I don’t want to get caught up in this shit. Anything bad comes of this, and I’d never get a liquor license. I could tell her that, but now I even less want to plant the seed of my restaurant in her mind.

“Alright, I’ll ask Dagi.”

Her again? I don’t see why they’re such good friends after all this time. Adagio doesn’t talk about Autumn at all, unless I bring her up. But can Adagio actually be this blind? Or do sirens have no concept of enabling an alcoholic?

Suddenly I don’t want to be here anymore. I’d made special arrangements to prep my place early so I could duck out for a quick lunch. But I have to get back, and I can’t tell her why. So I grab my phone and gawk at it as though a surprise text came in. “Crap, gotta take care of this. Sorry to run, and… thanks for lunch!” I say with a smile and wave.

She doesn’t get mad, waves in return. But as I round the corner and stop to catch my breath…

I feel like such an ass.

---

I can only think of one person who’d text me this early in the morning. The ding must have gone off when I was in the shower, so of course Autumn sent a couple more to ask if I was up yet. Nothing good can come of this.

So I open the messaging app, and… she wants me to go to the pharmacy for her? Hell no. What for?

I punch in her number, and it rings four times before she picks up, sounding awfully sleepy for someone who had urgent business with me not ten minutes ago. “What’s this about the drugstore?” I bark. I don’t care if it pisses her off. This shit has to stop.

“I got a prescription yesterday at the clinic, but they won’t give it to me. Some shit about not authorizing it for someone with DUIs. But what the fuck do they expect me to do? Just because I fucked up before means I can’t get a prescription? How fair is that? I’m just supposed to take the pain or something?”

I flip the speaker on and tune her out while I dry my hair. Funny, she didn’t run her mouth at the diner the other day. She usually talks nonstop.

“Hey! You there?” finally cuts through the noise, so I pick the phone back up.

“Look, I don’t know why they’d say that. I’ve never heard of it, but you think they’d really give it to me? Prescription painkillers? No way I can get that if my ID doesn’t match.”

“It’s worth a try. They might not ask.”

No way am I getting involved in this. “So let me get this straight. You want me to drive you to the pharmacy, but you’re going to stay out of sight, since they probably remember you, and then I’m supposed to fill a prescription that’s not mine?”

“Yeah, so you’ll do it?”

“What the fuck, Autumn? You know what kind of trouble I could get in for that? I hate to ask, but is that even a legit prescription?”

“What, you don’t trust me? I’ve gone out of my way to spend time with you, and I can’t get one tiny-ass favor?”

I rub a palm down my face and resist the strong urge to hit the tempting red icon and give myself some blessed silence. “No. Unless you give me a damn good reason why your story makes any sense at all, no. I’m not committing a crime for you.”

Several flame-laden breaths huff out, and I can imagine smoke rising from my phone. “Fine, just fuck off then. I thought you had my back. You were the one person I could count on. Y’know, Dagi told me you were all about some kind of friendship shit, and if this is how you show it, then no surprise all your so-called friends left you behind!”

The call cuts off. And I stand there gaping at the phone.

Damn it!

I see Rarity once every couple months at best. Who else? They all went to different colleges, got jobs. Yeah, we talk on the phone. And we get together when we can. But they see each other more than they see me.

Am I a failure?

Fuck, it’s even been months since I…

I hold in a sob, and I go to my bookshelf. Without my towel, probably giving anyone across the street a nice view, so I tug the blinds closed. And I get down the journal.

It might take her a week to notice it glowing. But I write anyway. Hasty, sloppy, ink smearing, but I ask her. I ask Twilight Sparkle, please, tell me I haven’t gone back to being the same monster who wouldn’t put herself out for anyone, who preferred to go without friends because she didn’t need them, and sorry for not writing earlier, of course waiting until I need something, since that’s the kind of shit I’ve become these days.

And I cry. I cry and shake and sit there as long as I can take the shivering, then finally put on something warm, get Ray out of his tank, and huddle on the couch with him on my shoulder, my knees gathered up against my face.

Twilight doesn’t answer.

---

“Am I a bad friend?” I ask Adagio as she swipes her tuna roll through the little dish of soy sauce. Look at me, reduced to asking her that.

She stares as if considering whether to recommend a psychiatrist to me. Maybe she should. “Uh… no.”

But the eyebrow stays up, inviting more. And of all people right now, she’s the one I can tell. “Autumn wanted me to fill a really suspicious prescription for her. Pretty sure it was fake. But she said some things…”

She sets her chopsticks down. “What things?”

I can only shake my head. “It just got me wondering. I don’t keep up with the girls that well anymore.” When I get home tonight, I’ll tear that page out of the journal before Twilight sees it. I don’t need to load my problems on her. “Something I’ve tossed around in my head from time to time, but I guess not much since I left Celestia’s school: if you could have the one thing you most wanted in life, how long would it make you happy?”

“Okay, cancel my earlier observation that humans were much more grim than ponies.”

“Sorry,” I say, wiping away tears with the back of my hand.

“Hey, hey, c’mon,” she replies. “Stop with that. C’mon. Hey, I know what cheers you up.” She covers my hand with one of hers and leans forward. “Can I?”

I don’t say yes, but I don’t say no either. She does give me a brief kiss, and then the humming starts, burgeoning into words. No greenery here except a few vases, so I close my eyes, imagine myself in the park, Adagio beside me on our bench. Lily of the valley, hydrangea, marigold, hyacinth, sprouting everywhere. No, no, not imagine. I don’t have to. Her magic pervades my thoughts, makes the spell happen there as well, across town, where my soul stays. We don’t need the bench. We lie down in the clover and watch the sky, growing sleepy in the morning warmth of spring, her song, that lullaby—I join in, sing along. Richer than ever before, so real.

Once or twice, I peek at her, in the true world, and she wears an immense grin. I agree. I wish this would never end. “You don’t know how much I need that these days,” I breathe out, my palm against her neck. Her skin—smooth, scaly, but warm and soft in the faint light from her jewel.

---

“You don’t ever bring the other sirens with you,” I say, glancing at Adagio from my cutting board.

She shrugs, mumbling, “They don’t like to go out much.”

“I just thought you were a tight-knit group or something.” It’s been three days now, and I never did tear that page out of the journal. But Twilight still hasn’t written back.

“We get along fine. Seriously, don’t worry about it,” she replies, poking her chopsticks at me.

Why am I worried about it? I guess Adagio deserves to have friends as much as anyone, and if not them, who else does she have? She wrinkles her brow at me, then her eyes wander over to my ears.

“Nice earrings,” she says. “Those new?”

I reach up to feel which ones I have on, and… yeah. “I can’t figure her out. Autumn got me those yesterday. Just because. And only a couple days after she chewed me out for… not helping her get drugs, I think?” My knife’s tip circles little curlicues in the air.

“I told you she was bipolar or something.”

That doesn’t exactly help.

And she puts her chopsticks down. “I can tell it’s still bugging you. Sonata, Aria. We’re friends. Maybe not the way you’re used to, but…” She sighs, sets her chin in a palm, the fingers flicking in front of her face. “Sirens are different. We don’t think about… anything the same way you do. I know how it looks to you, but we’re good. Really.”

That does help.

…And her plate’s empty. I thought she just stopped because she wanted to talk straight. Well, I can fix that. I walk around the counter to get her dishes, and—

Her dress. I remember her always wearing that… thing. I don’t even know what it’s called. Kind of a one-piece short jumper. Then ever since I encountered her at the cafe, she wore jeans and the same few concert t-shirts. But she has a dress on today. It’s crisp, white, flowing, swishing, even at her slight movements, and her bright acidic shock of hair glows like the sun against it. Elegant yet casual, sleeveless, high neck concealing her gem, the kind of thing she should be sporting while lazing about in a hammock during a commercial for some tropical resort.

Her grin softens. “You like it?”

“Yeah,” I say, nodding dumbly. I touch the earrings again.

“Those amber?”

“Yeah.”

I’ve let her dishes pile up; I can only get half of them in one arm, so I take a load back to the dishwasher, return to see her bright eyes watching me once more. “She drives you nuts, huh?”

What else can I do? She’s my mother. Or not. I don’t even know. I’m really not in a joking mood, but Adagio seems to need the levity more than I do. So I shake my fist. “A murrain on thee, Autumn Blaze!”

She immediately erupts in laughter, still sounding musical, the tinkling notes of her wind-chime voice ringing mirth in my ears. Only around her does the music spring to life in my head, a full symphony raging forward, holding back at just the right moments, and her theme underneath it all, unmoving, ostinato. “Ye olde speake again?”

“You’re the one who’s centuries old. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that before.”

“From centuries ago isn’t the same thing as centuries old.”

“Still.” I come around the counter again to get the rest of her dishes, and then I need to unlock the front door and open for the day.

But as I reach for the last stack of plates, she takes my wrist. “At least we have Past Crash in the modern world.”

“Yeah, it’d sound weird on theorbo.”

She doesn’t laugh. She purses her lips, gets a searching look in her eyes. “Can I?” she says.

I let my smile speak for me, and she presses her lips to me softly. No humming this time, but we don’t need it; we already have our own private world, right here, and the beauty—she’s beautiful, in her lovely dress, flowers or no. She curls an arm around my shoulders, pulls me closer, kisses me again, and I close my eyes, brush my fingertips across her cheek. Her other hand rests on my hip, then eases down and gives my ass a squeeze, her mouth sprouting a grin.

Through it all, I can hear the music anyway, her music.

“You’ve got customers,” she says, her silky voice swirling around my ears.

She’s right. Outside the fake paper sliding door, a silhouette checks its watch.

So I nod, take one step away, then hold her cheeks with both hands, plant one last hard, firm kiss on her until her humming bubbles up on its own.

“You don’t know how much you’ve helped me,” I whisper on my way to unlock the door.

---

This shit again?

It seems like once every couple weeks, Autumn’s sorry drunk ass calls me for a ride home, and being an idiot, I always do it. At least she can walk out under her own power today, so I don’t even bother going in to get her.

She lifts one leg over the motorcycle seat, wobbles, and nearly falls, but then does make it on a second try, leaning forward into my back and clinging to me. Really, she ought to know better than to wear a short skirt when she knows she might need me to drive her home.

“Tuck the back of your skirt under your ass,” I shout to her over the engine’s hum, “or it’ll fly up and air your undies to the world.”

Autumn only giggles incoherently as she jams my spare helmet on her head. Fine, let her thong get recorded on everyone’s dashcams. And we’re off, streetlamps flashing past while I grumble about having to be up in five hours. Each time I feel her sliding one way or the other, I have to stab an elbow behind me to keep her in place. Would it be easier if she fell off and I didn’t notice, left her far behind? Damn, I really have sunk back to my old ways, haven’t I? No wonder Twilight won’t answer me. She can’t bring herself to lie.

After so many times, I know the way to Autumn’s apartment, know where to park closest to her door, know which pocket has her keys. Good thing, ’cause she’s passed out.

I drag her off my bike, lift her arm over my shoulder, and walk her to the door, where I shove a hand into her left pocket—

“That tickles!” she snorts without opening her eyes, and she slaps my hand.

With a roll of my eyes, I get her to the bed, in the near-dark. I’ve never hung around long enough to see what she sleeps in, but I’ll spare her some horribly wrinkled clothes. Off come her shoes, then the skirt—huh, not a thong after all—and the tank top. Not dealing with the bra, but I’ll undo the clasp so the elastic doesn’t dig into her skin overnight. I’d say she’ll thank me in the morning, but she won’t.

The glow from the night light in the bathroom gives my hair a really orangey tint, and as I twirl a finger through it, Autumn’s eyes crack open.

“That you, Dagi?”

I just grunt.

“You got my money?”

Don’t tell me she’s trying to shake Adagio down, too. Except Adagio doesn’t seem the type to play along. She’d likely just tell Autumn to get the hell out.

“You’re a week behind,” she says, wincing as she holds a hand to her forehead. Hangover kicking in already?

If I didn’t want to take off right away, I might try to convince her to leave Adagio alone. But even if I did, she wouldn’t remember it. So I busy myself picking up a few stray pieces of clothing on the floor, though considering how much of a mess she is, Autumn actually keeps her place in pretty good order. But a wave of fatigue washes over me, and I don’t need to be driving in this condition. Better get home.

“See you later,” I say, waving the back of a hand toward her.

“C’mon,” she whines. “You told me you’d give me fifty dollars a week to pretend to be that girl’s mom.”

I whip my gaze over to her. She moans softly and rubs the heel of a hand against her temple. Is she dreaming? If so, it’s awfully on the nose. No, the booze loosened up her tongue. My back stiffens, my face goes white hot. I bite down on the urge to scream at her, but she’s not the one I want to punch. So many thoughts, whirlpooling around my head: Why? What did it get her? Did I actually mean something to her?

I felt like shit for months! And for what? So Adagio could… laugh at me? So she could watch me be… miserable…

Negative emotion. She needed to charge her amulet. I thought she’d changed, but she’s the same old Adagio Dazzle. No way I can sleep now, and tomorrow’s going to suck. That bitch had better never come to my restaurant again, or I’ll be sorely tempted to ruin one of my good knives on her.

Doing her… doing her siren thing? She’s killed a pony with that before, at least once. Did she intend to kill me?

I think I slam the door on my way out, but I don’t remember, don’t remember racing home, don’t remember falling into bed, don’t remember huddling up and wiping the tears on my sheets. And Twilight still hasn’t answered.

---

I know better than to chop veggies this hard with my good knives, but I can’t stop. How could I let myself be dragged into another one of Adagio’s con games? It’s just like her to pull this shit—

But everyone thought the same about me once, and it’s not fair to do the same to her, except I would have been right, which only pisses me off more, because that doesn’t justify it.

Damn it! She seemed so genuine. I guess the good con artists always do. I really thought she had changed.

She’s late. Good. I hope she doesn’t show up. I hope Autumn awoke in the middle of the night, realized she’d blabbed about it all, and called Adagio in a panic. At least Adagio could feed off those negative emotions instead.

I pound a fist on the counter, looking forward to a wonderful day of trying to appear cheerful to everyone while really wanting to hole up in the back room and cry. Of course right then there’s a tentative knock at the entrance. No mistaking the silhouette of that hair.

“Sunset?” Adagio calls. “You forgot to unlock the door.”

Quickly I stalk over and jerk the door open just enough to expose half my face. “Now how could that have slipped my mind?” I ask, my voice as saccharine and unctuous as I can get it.

She raises an eyebrow. “You okay?”

“You need to get the fuck out of here right now before I call security.”

Adagio laughs. She laughs. But as much as I want her to be showing her true stripes right now, she actually thinks I’m joking. “Wait, what?”

“Don’t you still owe Autumn some money?” I recognize that look. I must have had it on my own face more than once, when Princess Celestia was scolding me but I couldn’t figure out which thing she’d discovered. Only confess to the crime she’s got you on.

Does… does that mean there’s more? She has other schemes going on, and I’ve only found an edge piece of the puzzle?

“Money? For what?”

Good thing I left my knife at the counter. “I had to ferry her drunk ass home last night, and she thought I was you. She spewed everything. I know what you’re doing.”

Her eyes jolt wide open.

“Leave,” I bark as I shut the sliding door a little too hard and lock it again.

In the final glimpse I caught of her face, she looked like the soloist whose big moment is fast approaching but has completely lost her place in the music. She’s actually confused. “Didn’t you love the singing?” she says, her voice muffled by the barrier between us.

No way she’s really that stupid. “Stay the hell away from me!” I shout, returning to my spot behind the counter. For way too long, she lingers out there, thankfully not speaking to me, but then… her shadowy form wipes its eyes? And runs away?

I don’t want her gone, I can’t deal with her here, I need to start figuring out how to stop whatever her bigger plan is, and fuck, why does even thinking about her still flood my mind with music?

Today is going to suck.

Author's Note:

Sunset wearing amber earrings? Yeah, that's a reference to Ambergris, though they're not in the same continuity.

Coming next week, chapter 5.

Comments

[Pascoite]

Sorry it's a day late, but yesterday was crazy busy. I didn't get home until after 10.

[TheGJ90]

If this turns out to be a misunderstanding caused by a drunk, Sunset's got an apology to give.