Requiem for a Friend

by Math Spook

Chapter 3

My parents were both music teachers in Trottingham. I started playing violin and piano when I entered preschool. At that age, I thought they were entertaining toys. I first heard a cello a year later. I was with my father when he stopped by a music store for some reason or other. From the back of the store, I heard a beautiful sound. I followed it, transfixed, to a practice room, and peeked in.

The room had a keyboard on one side and a poster of Beethoofen on the other. Sitting on a chair in the middle was a student, school-aged and much older than me. She was warming up on a sonorous reddish-brown cello. I watched her bow stroke back and forth and her hoof slide up and down the hoofboard. The instrument shone like there was a spotlight on it, and the sound was deep, rich, husky, and silky all at once. It was gorgeous. I was in love.

When the student saw me, watching half hidden from behind the door frame, she stopped. “Hi,” she said.

“Wha’s dat?” I asked, hoof in my mouth like the overawed filly I was.

“This? It’s a cello,” said the student.

“Cello,” I murmured.

My father interrupted. “Sorry to bother you,” he told the student. “Octavia, it’s time to go.”

“I wanna cello,” I told him.

He didn’t think I was serious. When we got home, I tuned my violin down as low as I could and tried to hold it like a cello. The strings came loose, and the bridge fell off. My parents thought it was funny the first time. Before long, it wasn’t funny anymore. They rented me the tiniest cello they could find, and I thought it was the best toy ever.

When I entered school, I brought my cello for show-and-tell. My teacher asked if I wanted to play for the class. I think she expected me to play a note or two, or at best to scratch my way through a children’s song. After all, I hadn’t yet learned to read, neither letters nor music. But I enthusiastically burst into an etude I had learned by ear. When I finished, everypony clapped. They were impressed, but I didn’t understand why. I thought everypony played music the way I did.

My parents didn’t want me to tour as a child prodigy, but they did get me excellent lessons at the Trottingham Conservatory of Music. A few years later, at the same time the fillies and colts at school started swooning over each other, I decided I was a musician. I didn’t just want to be or plan to be a musician. I was. Music was the only thing that mattered to me. Not romance, not sports, not hobbies, not any of the things other ponies occupied themselves with. Music was my essence and my being. My life would be music and music alone, from that moment until I breathed my last.

My games with Vinyl, which were at first a trifling pastime, gradually became serious. We began to make music together, good and fun music that was somewhere between my classical style and her contemporary one. For a long time, our music lasted only as long as we played it. That changed after a long jam session one Tuesday. I had recently come back from a concert in Vanhoover and had a couple of weeks at home before my next performance. Vinyl had worked a late-night gig at a club in Canterlot over the weekend, but now she had nothing on her schedule until later in the week. That morning, soon after we woke, we started jamming and didn’t stop. We must have played for twelve hours straight, maybe more. When one of us needed a break, the other kept the music going. We spent most of the day toying with one melody in particular, trying out variations and developing it in different ways. By evening, we had made a breakthrough. The melody had become a song. I had never thought of myself as a composer, and Vinyl refused to describe herself as one, but we had written a song. Our song.

I like performing. I like the feeling of being on stage in front of a crowd and having them listen to me. I wanted to perform our song somewhere and somehow. Vinyl didn’t like that kind of attention. She was shy by nature, so even though we had a song, she didn’t want to perform it live. Besides, we had only one song, not a whole set. We compromised and recorded it instead. A week after we wrote it, she set up microphones for us in our home. To muffle the room’s echo, I hung blankets like tapestries. The final recording was quick. We made a few takes, and she set to work editing them together. I cooked us a celebratory lunch.

I wasn’t sure whether we would ever write a second song. My concert schedule made it impossible to spend many days jamming with Vinyl. Sometimes when I was free, her gig schedule meant she wasn’t. But when we both had a few hours, we would play. It was months before we had anything else decent, and months more before our second song was finished. The songs got easier after that. All that time, I knew she was writing her own music. While I didn’t know about her blistering pace, I knew she was faster alone than with me. I sometimes wondered why she took the time to write songs with me at all.

After we had an album’s worth of material, I coaxed her into performing it with me. I arranged for a casual performance at a pub in Ponyville. I told a few ponies about it, but we didn’t put any real effort into advertising. We had an audience of maybe forty ponies. Most of them were regular pub patrons who weren’t there for our performance. I wasn’t sure whether Jasmine Leaf would be there, but I felt pleased when I saw her in the audience.

The crowd loved us. After our set, Vinyl and I went to Sugarcube Corner and ordered doughnuts. We stayed for hours, sitting at a café table and giggling like fillies while we hummed little snatches of music to each other. We ate so many doughnuts that we both had stomachaches, and we left only because the bakery closed. As we staggered home, drunk on hot chocolate, we belted melodies from our songs at our unfortunate neighbors. We had a marvelous time.

That was two weeks before Vinyl died. It was our only live performance as a duo.

By the night of my performance with the Manehattan Philharmonic, my nerves were wrecked. I could have rivaled the meanest jokes about Twilight Sparkle, the kind that claim she has a nineteen part checklist for drinking a glass of water or that she had to read a five hundred page book to learn how to say, “Hello.” I walked onto the stage in a trance. I remember the audience clapping. After that, I must have I sat down and played.

Playing music transports me to a world where sounds and melodies and harmonies take on real and tangible existence. When I play, nothing else enters my mind. Not bright stage lights in my eyes, or the chill of a cavernous concert hall, or coughing from the audience. The only thing I’m aware of is the music.

I played the first movement with majesty and panache. Yet I was already looking ahead to the third movement, its recapitulation of the melody, and its long sad note, and I was frightened. The second movement, supposed to be calm and confident, came out wistful instead. Even though every note was how I had planned, the effect wasn’t what I wanted. By the time we began the third movement, I already knew what would happen. The long, sad note—the note that had bedeviled me so much—the note I had labored so diligently on—sounded worse than when I had practiced it, worse than during rehearsal, worse than I could have ever imagined it: dry, bland, dull, stony, apathetic, and lifeless.

The moment I was backstage, tears welled up in my eyes. I fought to keep them down as I took a curtain call. The audience kept cheering, and I wiped my eyes and took another curtain call, and another, and another. It seemed endless. The whole time, my throat clenched, my chest heaved, tears blurred my vision, and the long, sad note rang in my ears.

As quickly as I could, I put my cello away and strapped it to my back. I knew I was about to collapse into a blubbering heap, and I wanted to get away before it happened. But when I was just steps away from the exit, Joyful Noise caught me. He grinned. “That was wonderful,” he said. “Really terrific! How soon can we have you back?”

“Don’t mock me!” I screeched. His eyes went wide, and he shrank back. In shock, I covered my mouth with my hoof. I had just snapped at one of the most powerful figures in Equestrian music. If my career hadn’t been over before, it was now. I started to sob. “I was horrible! I’m completely incompetent and I don’t deserve to be on a stage!”

“Ms. Melody—” he began.

Two weeks of pain burst white-hot and savage from my lungs, tearing through my throat and surging into a scream of rage and helpless misery. “The only good thing about that performance was that she wasn’t there, so I couldn’t disappoint her!”

Before he could reply, I darted through the door. Outside, a crowd of audience members already hovered around the entrance, waiting to glimpse me up close. I barely had my nose through the door before they were shouting, thrusting their programs at me, and demanding autographs. The concert hall’s security guard tried to push them back, but they were mad with excitement. I tried to call out, “I’m sorry,” but my voice was so rough with anger and tears that it didn’t carry over the tumult of the terrible crowd. I shoved my way through and fled.

I fled from the crowd. I fled from the concert. I fled across glittering boulevards and through dim putrid alleys, losing my way as I tried to outrun the long sad note that had tormented me ever since Vinyl’s death and that I could hear even now in my ears.

I fled down an empty street lined with dark, sleepy houses and manicured front lawns. There was light in one of the houses, and I heard somepony playing a piano inside. “Shut up!” I screamed at the window. “Just shut up!” The piano stopped for a moment. Then it roared and the sad note lunged at me. I knew that I must be delirious, that the note could not have physical form and could not lunge, but I could feel it moving, reaching for me, and I panicked and fled again. “Shut up!” I screamed. The street was quiet except for my voice and the drumming of my hooves, but I kept screaming, “Shut up! Shut up!” I cut across busy streets, galloping wildly through traffic, trying to escape the phantasm, always screaming, “Shut up!” I screamed until my breath couldn’t keep pace with my galloping, screamed until my lungs burned, screamed until my voice turned hoarse and could do no more than chant in a scratchy whisper, “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” But the note still chased me, dissonant and unrelenting and ineluctable.

A shop window on a bustling sidewalk halted me. Its brightly lit sign promised, “all nite donuts.” A weird, gross compulsion seized me. I barged into the shop, and the warm, sweet smell of fresh doughnuts clogged my nostrils and fogged my mind. I shouted, “I need a dozen doughnuts right now!” Everypony in the shop froze and gaped at me. The young couple at the head of the line, a green earth pony stallion and a tan unicorn mare, cowered and backed away as I cut in front of them. I flung a hoofful of bits over the counter at a middle-aged yellow pegasus wearing a striped red and white apron and a white paper cap. He had already assembled a box for me. “I’ll take that one!” I smacked the glass display case with my hoof. “And that one! And that one!” Smack! Smack! The staff and customers were silent. The only sounds were my raspy voice, my hoof against the display case, the clicking of tongs, the crinkling of wax paper, and the note I couldn’t escape.

The pegasus tied the box shut. I grabbed the string in my teeth and galloped back to my hotel room, still pursued by the note. I set my cello in the corner and flung myself onto the bed with my box of doughnuts. I tried to tear the string, but when it slipped through my teeth, I ripped off a corner of the box instead. I jammed a sugar-glazed doughnut into my mouth. When I had chewed my first bite halfway, I opened my mouth wide and pushed the rest of the doughnut in with my hoof. Crumbs of glaze spilled from my mouth and scattered across the duvet cover, and sound of the note in my ears grew painfully loud. I grabbed a blueberry cake doughnut and pushed it in behind the glazed doughnut. It was more crumbly and less fluffy, and together, the two doughnuts made a thick wad of dough that I chewed with desperation.

Tears formed in my eyes as I swallowed the wad of dough and the thunderous note continued a fearsome crescendo. I hurled a chocolate glazed donut into my face, rammed it down my throat, and grabbed a jelly doughnut. The jelly leaked out of my mouth and collected in globs around my lips, and the lubrication helped me thrust the rest of the donut in. I gulped, swallowing both the doughnut and a whimper. When I grabbed a powdered sugar doughnut, a fine dusting of sugar floated into the air, caking on my hoof and mixing with the jelly around my mouth to make little lumps that fell on me and stuck in my coat. My sixth doughnut was filled with custard, and when I swallowed, my stomach heaved in protest at the heavy, sticky mass.

As I reached for a seventh doughnut, one with strawberry pink icing and rainbow sprinkles, the note became deafening. I clutched at my ears and shrieked with pain. I wanted to stifle my cries with the doughnut, but I was seeing double now, and when I tried to grab it, my hoof swiped at empty space. I took it in both hooves and raised it, shaking, to my lips. It slipped, landing frosting down on the bed and scattering sprinkles over the duvet cover. My hooves felt heavy and clumsy as I lifted the donut again. I chewed, but my jaw was numb and limp, and I was too weak to hold my mouth closed. Sloppy bits of chewed doughnut fell out, and as they did, I picked them up and inserted them back into my mouth. My stomach heaved again, and liquefied, half-digested donuts came out. I covered my mouth with my hooves and tried to swallow, but my stomach exploded, and I spewed vomit onto the bed. I crumpled from pain and nausea, landing on the box and in the pool of vomit.

I lay that way all night, too weak to move, and I descended, weeping, into an exhausted sleep of despair. In my dreams, Vinyl’s image visited me. She was a great distance away, but she was so vivid that I could distinguish every hair on her coat. Her skin was luminous, and its glow suffused the dream world with a thick radiance that seemed to press against my skin. Her eyes rested on me with an incandescent gaze at once piercing and gentle. Her mouth moved, but I could make out no sound, not from her nor from anything else. I reached out my hoof, hoping to touch her one final time, but the distance was too vast and her glow too dense, and I was unable to reach even a little way across it. I wanted her to reach back to me, so I called to her. Her mouth moved again, but I still could make out no sound. “I can’t hear you!” I called. “I want to hear you!” She didn’t move. I pleaded for her to come back to our cottage and back to me, but she remained where she was, gazing at me with an expression of tranquility and forgiveness, as I called, and called again, and called again.

I woke to a frightful stench. The morning sun was slowly warming the mixture of sugar, dough, and vomit that had dried on my flank. I groaned. When the sound of my voice died away, I realized that I was encapsulated in utter silence. I marveled at the silence while I soaked in the bath. I was used to having music in my head at all times. It had been there for as long as I could remember. Now there was nothing but the noise of the water sloshing in the tub as I scrubbed at the filth encrusting my coat.

The bath water got so dirty that I emptied it and took a shower. After that, I spent nearly a half hour brushing my coat and mane. There was still a disgusting mess on the bed, but there was little I could do about it. After I had packed my things, I scribbled a note for the cleaning staff that said, “Sorry,” and left them some extra bits. The whole time, not a single note of music entered my mind.

The pony behind the hotel’s front desk knew my name without being prompted. “Good morning, Ms. Melody. How was your stay?”

I wasn’t in a mood to talk, but she looked like she expected an answer. I said, “Fine,” hoping that if I sounded impatient, she’d leave me alone.

The clerk at the train station also knew my name. “How may I help you, Ms. Melody?” He sounded eager.

I kept my voice flat. “Ticket to Ponyville.”

“Right away, ma’am.” He was quick and seemed excited. I avoided his eyes and stared at the wall behind him.

I took a seat inside the station while I waited for the train. Before long, a pair of ponies seated on the opposite side of the station noticed me and started talking in a low voice. One of them, an azure mare a little older than me, kept looking back and forth between me and her newspaper. I heard her say, “I think that’s really her.”

Her companion, a lemon-colored stallion, turned all the way around in his seat to look at me. “That does look like a cello case,” he said. The mare kept watching me until their train arrived.

My train was too crowded for me to sit alone. I ended up next to an old stallion whose face was buried in the sports section of the newspaper. He got off a few stops later in Hoofboken and left his newspaper. When I was sure he was gone, I picked it up and opened it to the front page, hoping for something distracting like a lurid scandal. I had no such luck. Above the fold was boring local politics. I read only a couple of paragraphs before flipping the newspaper over.

Below the fold, a headline proclaimed, “Virtuoso Melody thrills, inspires with Beethoofen.” Next to it was a picture of me playing in front of Joyful Noise and the Manehattan Philharmonic. I hadn’t even realized there were photographers last night. I read the headline again, and my stomach lurched, but as I had skipped breakfast, nothing came out. I tossed the newspaper onto the empty seat next to me, but the picture, still visible, seemed to taunt me. I threw it into the next row of seats where I couldn’t see it. Then I realized I had to dry my eyes.

The rattle of the train was pleasant today. For most of the ride, it was the only thing I heard. My mind was completely empty of music as I watched Equestria roll by. There were so many ponies, so many families, so many little homes, all seeming so peaceful and content. I had always imagined that, when I was famous, I would buy a mansion. I hadn’t wanted a flat like my parents or a cozy cottage with a roommate. I had wanted something huge, ostentatious, even gaudy, and I had wanted it all for myself. But right now, I didn’t.

That evening, I opened the door to our cottage—my cottage, now—and froze in shock. All of Vinyl’s belongings had been removed. The framed albums Vinyl had hung on the walls; her speakers mounted from the rafters; her disco ball; her shelves of records; everything had vanished. In place of her keyboard and computer were bare floorboards.

After a whole day on a bumpy, boring train, I would normally have been excited to take out my cello and start playing. Instead, I looked for traces of Vinyl. Her dishes were missing from the kitchen cabinets. Her toiletries were gone from the bathroom. Her bed had been removed. Before my trip, seeing her belongings had reminded me of her passing, and those reminders had saddened me. Now the emptiness of our home did the same thing. I spent the rest of the evening sitting on the couch and staring blankly and uncomprehendingly at the desolation.

I wandered aimlessly through our house all the next morning, looking for signs of Vinyl, checking and re-checking rooms that I knew were empty. She had left behind only negative spaces, scratches on the floor near her chair and nicks in the paint on the wall. When I tried to distract myself by going outside, I found a letter in our mailbox. It was a sympathy card from Jasmine Leaf. I stuffed it back in the mailbox, went inside, and cried.

Late that morning, High Fidelity and Ivory Keys knocked on my door. They wanted to take me to lunch. I agreed. It would be a welcome distraction. I still hadn’t touched my cello. I hadn’t imagined even a single note since the concert.

They took me to Café Hay. While we waited for our menus, Ivory Keys asked me, “So how was Manehattan?”

I hesitated. I was supposed to be a rising star, and the concert was supposed to be my big breakthrough. I was tempted to lie, to tell them it had gone well and even that it was a great triumph. But my mouth opened on its own, without rational thought and as if by emotional instinct. “I’m through. I’ll never work again.”

While we ordered and waited for our food, I told them how I had struggled against the sad note. I told them about the disaster of the concert and my outburst at Joyful Noise. And I told them how much I had wished for Vinyl. “She was the best roommate,” I said.

High Fidelity and Ivory Keys shared a sidelong glance. High Fidelity said, “When we were packing, we found something. Something Vinyl left for you.” She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a box. It was short, rectangular, a little longer than it was wide, and gift-wrapped with shiny white and gray striped paper. It was tied with a purple ribbon and had a tag that said, “Happy birthday, Octavia!”

“What is it?” I asked. “My birthday isn’t for another month.”

“We don’t know anything about it,” said Ivory Keys. “Except that it was hidden and has your name on it.”

“Should I open it?”

“It’s yours now,” said High Fidelity. “It’s up to you.”

I took the ribbon in my mouth and pulled the knot loose. One fold at a time, I removed the wrapping paper, not tearing or even wrinkling it. The box was thin white cardboard and looked like it held a sweater. The lid seemed awkward to slide off, and it moved reluctantly. Only after it was off did I realize I had opened the box upside down.

Inside was a stack of music paper. The top sheet, which was only partially full, concluded with a sustained chord and a bold double bar line. It looked like a finale. I flipped the sheet over. I didn’t recognize the melody, but it tugged at my mind as if I should. I couldn’t figure out why Vinyl would give me sheet music. I already had editions of all the major cello works and most of the minor ones. I knew much better than she did what else I wanted, and she would have known that.

But as I read the next sheet, the notes began to rearrange themselves. They seemed to leave the page and float above it, drifting into patterns on the edge of my recognition. Their constituent ink percolated through the air, abandoning shape and forming a diffuse cloud that pulsated in a steady rhythm. From the cloud, I heard faint noises that rose and fell in time with the pulses. The cloud expanded and enveloped me, and the noises grew into sonorous choruses of voices and instruments. All around me were clear melodies and rich harmonies, and it was music, and I felt the music, and the music was around me and in me and a part of me. I could hear music again, and it was beautiful.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ivory Keys.

I wiped tears from my eyes and whispered, “I know what this is.” As I flipped the stack of music over, my heart pounded a beat into my ears, a beat that carried memories, a beat full of anticipation and excitement. The title page said, “Suite for Cello and Piano. By Octavia Melody and Vinyl Scratch. Arranged by Vinyl Scratch. Dedicated to Octavia Melody, my best friend.” I read the dedication a second time, then a third. “My best friend,” I whispered. I hugged the score to my chest, careful not to crumple it, and sniffled. “My best friend.”

“Are you okay?” asked High Fidelity.

I nodded and wiped my eyes again. “I’m going to miss her forever.” I put the score down and showed them the title page. I told them how we had come to write music together, about our recordings and our pub performance. “It was just for fun. For us. But this”—I laid my hoof on the precious score—“is for me. It’s our whole set, arranged so that I can perform it in even the stodgiest concert halls. I can’t imagine playing it with anypony but her. Not yet. But I think I could someday. I think that’s what she wanted. If that’s okay with you?”

Ivory Keys nodded. “We’ve decided to publish her music. We’ve written to some publishers, but we’re worried they’ll think it’s just a vanity project. If you started performing it, maybe they’d listen.”

Just then our food came. I put the score back in the box and stowed it where it wouldn’t be damaged. I munched pensively, my mind abuzz. I dabbed my mouth with my napkin and said, “She knew how much I like performing. She wouldn’t have given it to me if she hadn’t wanted it performed. So I have to. I have to perform it. For her. I’ll have to find a pianist. And somewhere to do the premiere. But I have a few connections now and—” A wonderful idea entered my mind. “Joyful Noise did ask how soon they could have me back. I need to write him an apology, anyway.” I thought of the sympathy card sitting in my mailbox. “Him and others.”

“Thank you,” said High Fidelity. Now she was tearing up, too. “Vinyl always said you were nice.”

I leaned over and hugged her. “It’s the least I can do for my best friend.”

That afternoon, I went to the cemetery. It was enclosed by a low wall of ancient stones worn smooth by tears. I entered, my cello on my back, through the great wrought iron gate that demarcated the limits of life. The air inside was slow, laden with the spirits of ponies lying at rest, and never disquieted by the acts of the living. The cemetery measured time in eons, in ponies buried and remembered and forgotten.

I walked up a dirt path worn smooth by generations of visitors. Pilgrimages like mine had begun long before I had been born and would continue long after. The oldest headstones I passed were crumbling and mossy, and most of their names and dates and inscriptions had been effaced by time. Here and there I recognized old Ponyville family names, like “Apple” on a rough-hewn fieldstone or “Rich” on a marble mausoleum. Each had been erected by family and friends not for the benefit of the pony buried beneath, a pony who could no longer see nor care about the marker, but as monuments to and declarations of the love still borne in the hearts of the living. Row after row, grave after grave, were epitaphs saying, “loving father,” “devoted mother,” and “dearest friend.”

The path guided me up a hill to a stout oak tree encrusted with decades of bark. Its gnarled old branches stretched over the cemetery like shields that repelled the cares and follies of the world. In its shade was a timeless rest, a final symphonic movement that extended into eternity and was marked with a solemn, “tacet.” There, lit by the fading yellow beams of the afternoon sun, was a fresh plot. At its head was a temporary marker, a white-painted board of pine wood that said in heavy, black capital letters, “Vinyl Scratch.” Before it was a slightly sunken rectangle of earth covered by fresh sod and a bouquet of flowers. There, in the ground, was my best friend.

I took out my cello and closed my eyes. I could hear Beethoofen’s cello concerto in my mind even before I started to play. When I reached the sad note in the third movement, it was perfect.

Comments

[fluffytailmofu]

This is a really beautiful story, and it's a pity it's getting so little attention. Maybe the lack of a period at the end of the shortform summary is contributing to that? I don't know for sure, but it's just a thought. But the writing within the story is polished and lacks any sort of grammatical issues, combined with an emotional storyline, so I hope it gets more views than what it has.

[TCC56]

Absolutely beautiful. Well done.

[Alden MacManx]

Bravo! Bravo!

(No, I won't call for an encore. It's wonderful as is.)

[Phoenix Heart 27]

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

[Math Spook]

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Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.

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And special thanks to you for catching that missing period. I spent so much time looking for mistakes in the story itself that that one was invisible to me. It's fixed now!

[Unimpressive Chaos Lord]

Marvelous, absolutely marvelous. On every single level, there's not a sentence that is bereft of passion and, most importantly, honesty. Two aspects in particular stood out to me as worthy of praise, in a work that is deserving of so much of it. The narrator, and the narration. For starters, the voice you have provided for Octavia is simply perfect. I never doubted for a second that someone else was speaking as I read, I even forgot that this story had been written by someone else. You blended in perfectly with her character, shown in what she knows and what she speaks. And that is what makes the story so convincing.

I have very little understanding of the technical aspects of music, I'm absolutely plebian when it comes to it in every way. However, I could sense the devotion of the character to her area of expertise. You showed how seriously she takes it, how much she loves it, but you weren't above making her crack jokes about it too, to show how her understanding transcends into humor. I can't help but feel that you do have a background in the artistry, or at least, that you know enough to fool an ignorant such as me into believing you do. In anyway, that speaks extremely well of you.

Stories about the death of a beloved character are always tricky for a number of reasons. They tend to fall on the traps melodrama sets up, the most common one being that the idea of a death suffices to present a tragedy. Especially when dealing with background ponies, whose personalities are fickle and hard to define. However, that was not a fault you could find here. I adore the way you portrayed both mares, with the added difficulty of characterizing Vinyl after having her die in the first few paragraphs. It was a daring bet, but it paid off extraordinarily well.

The story's structure is worth praising too, and it is all tied down to the psychological profile of its lead. Octavia as a main character and narrator is explored in a way that I believe I've only seen handled correctly at the hands of professional authors. The narration is characterization, and the character dictates what she narrates. You start of big with the inciting incident, the tragedy, the death. Other stories would have build up to it, perhaps having it at the end of the first chapter, even later. Having a character die and then working on their personality is bold, it's been done before but that does not take away from its difficulty. It also conditions severely Octavia's views, her presentation and everything that she says and does. We are inside her brain, and like a person who is recently affected by tragedy, her mind is scrambled. We are constantly being thrown from the past to the present, memories assault her ever single waking moment, but it is all connected so smoothly, so convincingly, that I do not see the puppeteer's strings behind the curtain, I see the actual psychological development of a person.

Octavia feels so real in this, I always end up questioning what she's expressing. You have a real knack for writing subtext. The way she constantly questions herself, derides her work despite what other ponies tell is is superb. I especially liked how you delved into the idea by having another character pointing out this dissonance. How she sees her relationship with Vinyl also leads to some extraordinary potential for interpretation. For example, why did Vinyl keep her music a secret from her best friend? Before we know that, if we are to listen to Octavia, it would be because she didn't see her as someone close enough for it. And we start suspecting that had Octavia tried harder to get close to her, she might have been worthy of it. But upon knowing how Vinyl felt about her, it becomes less clear, but still believable. It characterizes her as someone who had a deep passion for music that she could only keep to herself. It's a common theme of the secrets that we keep that might only be released after we die. I love it because it gives Vinyl more agency as a character and grants her independence from Octavia. One issue I have with a lot of death fics is that they tend to make either the deceased or the mourner into a satellite , but you avoided that pitrap.

A quick mention to the role of the Mane Six; their roles are small, but I appreciated their inclusion. I liked how they each collaborated in some way that felt fitting to them, and while some are given more attention than others, it feels like a natural development that pays off well. Octavia is leading her own life and the M6 are just background ponies, but significant enough for it.

Another minor note, I get the feeling that this story would be suitable for an E rating. There's no strong language, the imagery is pretty tame, and the only "adult" aspects to it are how realistic it is.

Finally, I really love the way you structured the story in regards to its climax. It would have been so easy to have Octavia have her catharsis at the concert, but you didn't go that route. The final note being in the cemetery is also a little clichéd, but it is well earned, thematically fitting and a great conclusion. Again, Octavia's psychological journey is entirely focused on her relationship with Vinyl, yes, through music, but it's still about them. I love the way you tied those two aspects together, and the reveal of their first and last public performance, and how that tied to the last song, it's just... amazing. Gotta be honest, you tugged at my heartstrings at the phrase your best friend. I had been holding on, but that one actually got me emotional. It was such an excellent payoff to Octavia's stubbornness. I also love how you avoided unnecessary drama. You relied on what the story offered and didn't try to squeeze more out if it than was needed, such as senseless fights at the funeral or even conflict between characters. It's all within Octavia, and that is just perfect, it keeps us focused and avoids detracting us from what is truly important.

All in all, I loved this fic. On both a technical and emotional level, it is outstanding. I didn't even mention how professional your narration was; precise, to the point, efficient, but sincere. It carried the essence of the story as well as it possibly could, and you really got the bottom of its well of potential, in my eyes. Same goes for the dialogue, it wasn't brilliant but it was believable and natural, which is so hard to get right that it's hard to understate. Either way, this was an amazing experience. I hope it gets more traction because your work here has been fantastic. You thought this was your best work, and without reading the rest of your writings I will agree because this seems hard to top. I won't discourage you from trying, by all means, keep aiming higher because your skill is way above average. Fantastic work, thank you so much for bringing it to my attention.

[Math Spook]

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I have to admit that when I asked you to review my fic, I was hoping for praise. But wow, that review was more effusive than I expected.

I do in fact know a few things about music, especially classical music. I'm not (and never have been) a professional musician; but I've learned a little music theory, and as a performer I'm a little better than average—though I'm not especially good, and I'd say I'm not even at the level of the fic's Fluttershy. Octavia and Vinyl are much better than me, of course, so getting all the musical terminology right did take some effort.

I realized pretty much from when I started writing that the story needed to be told out of order. The story is structured around Octavia's experience with the note. While Vinyl's death seems to set the fic in motion, the story actually starts with Octavia describing the note, and the very first action is her working on the concerto. The action concludes in the cemetery when she feels she has finally played the note right. In a way, the story is told chronologically: Octavia simply recounts to us her thoughts, moment by moment, from the morning of Vinyl's death until the afternoon in the cemetery. Of course, we as readers don't experience the story chronologically since her thoughts jump around in time.

I think an E rating for this fic would be defensible. I was conflicted. Two things made up my mind. One, you can't tag an E-rated fic with Death, and if you're not in the mood to read about death then you're not in the mood for this fic. Two, I asked myself, "Would I be comfortable reading this to a child?" And my answer was no. Putting aside the fact that the language is too sophisticated (fun fact: it contains only the fourth use of the word "ineluctable" on the whole site; this comment will be the fifth), I feel like it's too emotionally intense. There are great works of children's literature that talk about death, like Charlotte's Web, but this story dwells on grief and sadness in a way they don't. If some terrible parent reads MLP fanfic to their children before bed (and I really hope nobody does), then I hope they don't pick this story.

I am glad that the phrase "best friend" worked for you. One of my earliest ideas for the fic was for Octavia to not refer to Vinyl as her friend; when she finally does at the end I wanted it to be a big emotional moment. Early in the writing, I wasn't sure if I was going to pull it off. I'm no Shakespeare, or Dickens, or Tolstoy, or Hemingway, etc. But I think this story turned out okay.

[Unimpressive Chaos Lord]

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Good to get a bit more insight into your story's development. I get your reasoning and agree with it. And yeah, you might not be Tolstoy, but at the very least you're above plenty of published contemporary authors. So there's that.

[AltruistArtist]

There is so much I could commend about your ability to capture an experience of grief that is both ineffable and grounded. However, I feel it would be a disservice to the story to dissect what it already presents so honestly.

Rather, I want to express my appreciation for how you wrote Octavia and Vinyl, both as individuals and their relationship to one another. It’s very easy to tell a story about how they are connected by music — but you show it, and I loved that so dearly. Music is an abiding, textural element of both their lives in this story, and the way it is disturbed so fundamentally by Vinyl’s passing is devastating. Because while it is indeed true that Vinyl was Octavia’s best friend, she was also her equal when it came to their mutual identity as musicians. Not merely in technical skill, but also because the art they created together could only exist as a meeting of their unique identities.

This line from Chapter 3 was especially affecting:

I thought everypony played music the way I did.

Beyond Octavia’s exemplary skill on display here, I feel this is a really elegant way of expressing how integral music as a communicative art from is for her. This is much more obvious for Vinyl through her endearing mannerisms of singing her thoughts and moving through the world rhythmically, but doesn’t become as evident for Octavia until the end of the story is reached.

The throughline of Beethoofen’s concerto, and its final note, was beautifully woven throughout, from the lovely opening description to the closing line. I so appreciate how its presence echoes the experience of listening to a song, sustaining tension until it’s released alongside Octavia’s withheld emotions. Of course it never sounds sad enough until Octavia allows herself to acknowledge the presence Vinyl held in her life.

Beautifully written.