First Instrument
Once you learn what music sounds like, you’ll never stop hearing music. The next time you’re out on a walk, try listening for the music around you. In the heart of Applelacia, it’s the wind rushing through the trees. Out in Jackspur, it’s the chattering of chickens, crows, the occasional dog. In Hooveston, it’s the distant thunder of hoofbeats and voices.
After spitting one last breathful of venom into my face, Follow Spot slammed my front door for what we both knew would be the last time. I didn’t even hear the words; my own ragged breath and the pounding in my ears and my head drowned the words out. Then there came a sharp bang of wood on wood, followed by dense, cold, echoing silence.
Silence is pretty rare, actually. You can’t find silence just by walking around and keeping your ears open–you have to search for it.
Or you could have somepony slam it into your face.
I stared at the inside of my front door for a long few seconds, as if the grain of the wood could answer the questions I couldn't put into words. My ears were ringing, and blood was tingling under my cheeks and brow.
I thought about throwing that door open and running into the streets after Follow Spot, calling out his name like a damn idiot and begging him to come back to me. I also thought about throwing the door open to yell something along the lines of Fuck you, I never needed you, I hope the next girl gelds you in your sleep. That actually struck me as a good idea, and I almost went ahead with it, except that I had already been standing and thinking about it for a while, so it was too late anyway.
So I just turned around–turned my back on the stallion that I’d foolishly wasted a year of my life on–and tried to dry my eyes and act like a big pony as I headed towards the bedroom. I changed my mind about my destination before I got there, because I knew I would still be able to smell Follow Spot on the sheets. I veered off and headed for the kitchen table instead, which was currently covered with unopened mail.
Shuffling the mail between my hooves to arrange the heap into a series of stacked rectangles felt good. Examining each letter and making myself care about the contents was even better, especially because this was one of those days when there was nothing but horseshit in the mail. An invoice from Mr. Fridge the repairpony. A donation drive for the Westroad Foals’ Hospital. A few bits of junk mail printed with bold, important-sounding words like IMMEDIATE REPLY REQUIRED.
There was only one personally addressed letter. I didn’t recognize the name on the return address, but the intended recipient was “Cousin Fiddlesticks,” so there could be no doubt that the letter was going to contain an invitation to a potluck or a wedding or a funeral that would be crowded with wheezing old farts and yapping little foals.
I sighed as I put the unopened envelope down, setting it in its own category: marginally less impersonal crap. Then, having exhausted the appeal of the mail, I pulled away from the table and started for the hallway closet. There was something there that would help me more than a pillow to scream into or a pile of mail to shuffle through.
Next to the bathroom was a closet, and on the floor inside the closet was a bundle of black cloth, and beneath the heavy cloth was a hardwood carrying case, six spans long and four spans across. The curves of the treble clef on the cover were carved with razor precision, the edges still as sharp as if the carver had just blown the dust off his chisel yesterday. The wood was cool and smooth to the touch–the polish on the surface had stood the years well. Even the way the grooves on the handle fit between my teeth, and way the case’s weight swung when I walked towards the door, were as familiar as the embrace of an old shawl.
~~~~
Sunsets, like music, aren’t really all that special. Celestia gives us exactly one sunset every day, so if you miss one, you can always try to catch the next instead. Even out here in Oatshire Run, where summer evenings are so cloudless that the sunset paints the whole sky in gradients of orange and violet, folks don’t watch the sunset any more than they listen to the breeze. I’m just as guilty, of course–I may know how to listen to music, but I don’t take time out to watch sunsets.
The case opened with a clean click, its latch and hinges gliding as smoothly as ever. I lifted the lid away, and the black satin liner let off a faint hiss as it was exposed to the air for the first time in years. Golden sunlight flashed harshly against the glossy surface of the instrument cradled within: my first fiddle.
A fiddle, not a violin or a viola. A violin is what you play as part of a section, surrounded by identical instruments all standing at attention, with ranks of bows rising and falling in unison with yours. A fiddle is what you play while stomping your hooves on the only table left on the floor of a smoky bar after the rest of the furniture has been cleared away for a hoedown. I’ve never actually played as part of a section, thank Celestia. First off, my training is all wrong–any conductor would cringe at the way a real fiddler wields the bow like a saw, hacking at the strings like a drunken carpenter. Then there’s the fact that most conductors would throw me out for stomping around the nice hardwood stage and breaking into a solo.
I lifted my fiddle from its case without reverence or ceremony; the fiddle and I knew each other too well for such pleasantries, no matter how long it had been. Its weight melted into my body as I braced it against my shoulder, and the bow became part of my hoof, as if I had never put it down.
If only there were a way for us to forget our most precious memories. Memories rob us of experiences, because something remembered clearly is also something lost forever.
The sun was nearing the horizon and the trees were starting to whistle in the cool breeze rolling in from the lake. I saw a few passing ponies stop and look curiously up at me. I’m sure I struck a dramatic figure, at that–balanced upright on the roof of my house, fiddle raised and hat lowered, silhouetted against a gold-on-heather sunset. The wind pulled at my bandanna and mane, and I realized that I was smiling.
Smiling. Yeah. For all that the rest of this day had been all fucked-up, maybe there could still be some beauty in the world tonight.
With bow poised and hat angled to block out the setting sun, I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath before flowing into the first stroke.
~~~~
Feeling its small weight against my hoof and shoulder, smelling the lacquered wood for the first time, was a moment of electric intimacy that I still remember clearly. I angled my head and felt the smooth, cool wood against my cheek while the too-large pad dug into my jaw and collar. The bow was also too big for me, but in my hoof it was a magic wand, a medium through which I could interact with this new world that I was discovering.
“Very nice,” said my instructor’s distant voice. “Most fillies take a lot longer to learn how to hold a fiddle properly. Now, turn to the first page of the music book...”
I wasn’t listening. I was too busy exploring the thing’s body with the tip of my hoof, tracing delicately from head to base and then back again. At the time, I didn’t know what to call the curves and indents of the instrument’s body–I only knew that they were beautiful. The neat, flowing edges, the way the taut strings hovered low over the face, suspended by their ends, tightly controlled but free to hum.
The sound that came from the fiddle as I drew the bow across its strings was an unabashed wail of pure, dissonant glory. It sounded like the blare of a horn crossed with the yowl of an old tom defending its territory. The bow shuddered as it tasted the strings with tentative firmness, and the fiddle vibrated into my shoulder in return. I stretched the note out as long as I could, filling the room with raspy joy that felt like it was coming directly from my heart. When I reached the end of the bow, I started pushing back towards the other end, gliding across the strings haphazardly and drawing out another hoarse, keening cry.
Mrs. Tones ended the lesson early and sent me home to practice. I left in such a hurry that I forgot to thank her–all I could think about was the new world of music that I had just discoevered. Mrs. Tones didn’t even tell me that when I turned my back and trotted giddily out the door, I also flashed her a freshly earned pair of cutie marks: a blue treble clef on each haunch.
~~~~
There’s a reason everypony makes fun of Applelacia: Applelacia sucks. If somepony tells you that they grew up in Applelacia, then right after you crack a joke about sisters or cousins or something, you ask them what kind of farm they grew up on. If somepony tells you that they grew up in a small town in Applelacia, you tell them they’re lying, because there aren’t any towns in Applelacia, just slightly denser clusters of farms.
The kind of farm I grew up on was a wheat farm. Wheat is one hell of a business. Farming wheat is one part being in touch with nature, like what you’ve heard about earth pony farmers, and three parts operating heavy machinery. My dad could tear an automatic thresher down to a clanking pile of components in minutes, and then have the whole thing back together and running better than new by the time most ponies would be figuring out which screw to remove first. I learned a little from my dad, but seeing as my destiny was to be a musician, I don’t think anypony could blame me for not being very handy with a wrench.
Along with automatic threshers, the ponies who live in Applelacia have somehow invented a way to live way too damn close to each other no matter how many miles apart their farms are. I swear, aunties and uncles from the opposite end of the county managed to annoy my family by dropping by too often with huge smiles, gifts of pie and fruit, and breathlessly excited news about Aunt Whoever’s baby and Uncle Whatsisface’s in-laws. Entertaining all those aunties, uncles, and cousins could get exhausting, which tells you how prolific my family was–still is, actually–when it comes to aunties, uncles, and cousins. Still, no matter how much mom and dad complained about having to clean up for company, they always greeted Aunt Somethingorother with genuine smiles, and they always sent her off with a genuine “come back soon.”
Aunt Sugarplum was a perfect example of an Aunt Somethingorother. She was the kind of auntie who never failed to comment on how much bigger the little one had gotten. Every time she flounced in through the front door, she’d play out the entire act, sure as sunrise: cheek-pinching, baby-talking, obnoxiously sincere surprise at goodness me, she’s gotten so big!
I was fourteen when Aunt Sugarplum married into the Apple clan through a tremendously tall, blunt-faced, shaggy-fetlocked fella named Plowshares. After getting married, Aunt Sugarplum started showing up on an almost weekly basis to remind us that bringing in-laws to at least one Apple Family Reunion (the capitalization was audible) was a long-standing Apple Family Tradition. The next reunion, she told us time and time again, was being hosted right in the next county over, so it would be a perfect opportunity to bring everypony to meet their new family and oh the Apples were such lovely ponies and we were sure to like them, so we should hold the date and oh my goodness look at this little one she’s gotten so big!
So I had plenty of time to dread being dragged along to the reunion. As Aunt Sugarplum got more and more excited about the event, I stopped trying to find a way out of having to go, and instead started wishing that the stupid reunion would come sooner, so that I wouldn’t have to listen to Aunt Sugarplum talking about it any more.
~~~~
I’ve never really lived down the fact that I met Mahogany at a family reunion. Every time Mahogany comes up, my friends like to remind me of the fact that I grew up in Applelacia. I keep trying to tell them that it was his family reunion and not mine, but that’s never stopped any of my friends from teasing me.
The first thing I noticed about the reunion was the staggering number of Apples who had made it to the event. This was no ordinary family gathering–this was an inter-county farming convention! I had seen fairgrounds less crowded. At their worst, the reunion’s gathering-places were packed shoulder to shoulder with earth ponies laughing too loudly and giving off too much body heat.
Aunt Sugarplum took it upon herself to greet every single Apple who crossed our path, and of course that included introducing the rest of her entourage, especially her darling little niece Fiddles. My parents did nothing to help. If anything, they used me as a kind of decoy. The more the assembled Apple family fawned over me, the less hoofshakes and “pleased-to-meet-ya” exchanges my parents had to go through.
As for Mahogany, I like to think that I loved him before I saw his face.
My respite from the torture of being shown off to the Apple clan came in the form of music. Practically as soon as the melody tickled my ear, I made my escape by ducking behind a heavy-built yellow fellow and diving into the crowd, leaving my parents and Aunt Sugarplum in my wake. I tracked the sound of thumping and whistling like a dog tracking a scent, nudging my way through crowds, jumping bales of hay, even sliding under tables. Near the property's gate was a stage that looked like it had been hammered together at the last minute before immediately being trampled into oblivion by hundreds of muddy hooves. On that stage was a band, and at the head of that band was a fiddler.
The band’s music, what they played, what they did, was everything that I was afraid of not getting to do with my music. The fiddler danced and played in equal measure, sweeping his fretboard across the audience, pointing it towards a horizon made of music. He raised his head to lift his song to the skies, then bowed it down again to pour his sound and his heart out to the teeming herd gathered around the stage. I stomped and whooped to rival the loudest stallions in the crowd with my filly soprano, attracting a few smirks and approving nods from older cousins and uncles. I hardly noticed them–I only had eyes for the fiddler and his band.
Mahogany caught my eye mostly because they had him playing Applelacia’s unique idea of what constitutes “percussion instruments.” When I first started watching, he had a stick and a washboard. After that it was a xylophone, then an overturned metal bucket serving as a makeshift snare drum. By the time he moved on to the cowbell, I realized that I was starving. I’d been watching the band play for what might have been two solid hours.
In my defense, Mahogany was adorable–a wiry thing with a dark autumn coat, a thick wildfire mane, and watery evergreen eyes. The way he swayed to the music as he played, staring into the distance and nodding to the beat with a determined expression on his face, you would never guess that he had been volunteered for the position by his aunties.
Back then, though, I was much more interested in the fact that he was neither a yapping little foal nor a wheezing old fart. I waited patiently, despite my grumbling stomach, for the performance to end so that I could snag Mahogany for his company. I only had to wait through one more song of cowbell, and then the band took a bow, packed their instruments, and melted into the crowd to enjoy other parts of the reunion.
I ambushed Mahogany nearly as soon as his hooves came off of the dirty stage and onto the ground. I can’t remember exactly what I said. I remember telling him that I loved the music, and I remember seeing him go from beige to sunset with the first of many blushes I would get out of him. I also remember us laughing together about the fact that I had been dragged along. He said that he was jealous–I was only getting dragged along this once; Mahogany was doomed to be conscripted into the reunion’s band every time for the rest of his life.
We initially assumed that we were cousins, but as it turned out, Mahogany was actually Aunt Sugarplum’s new husband’s second cousin. So, technically, it would be more accurate for me to call Mahogany my “uncle,” despite the fact that he was younger than me.
Like I said: still haven’t lived it down.
I was as excited as anything to have Mahogany as a partner for the seven-legged race. We started off determined to show the other pairs who was boss, but we ended up falling so many times that we crossed the finish line with bruised haunches and scraped knees. I would move half a beat too slowly when he tried to push our pace to catch up with the other racers, or he would start with the wrong hoof after we picked ourselves up and got ready to move again, or sometimes it would be nothing at all–just him collapsing onto me, or me collapsing onto him, sending both of us crashing into the dirt in a heap of flailing limbs and exasperated huffs of breath.
They let the racers out of their hoof-ties after the race, but they might as well have left Mahogany and me tied together. We got ready to wander off, but practically before any of the kids had a chance to stretch out their freed legs, the lanky brown stallion who had been refereeing the race tried to usher the gathered fillies and foals off to some other group activity.
I wanted to bob for apples and help with apple fritters, but every time I urged Mahogany towards a cluster of Apple cousins gathered around an activity, he rolled his eyes and stayed aloof, watching me having fun and dismissing me with a wave of his hoof when I invited him to join in. I learned that every activity that was the Apple family’s idea of “fun” was a standing tradition dating back hundreds of years–in other words, Mahogany had seen it all, and was going to see it all a whole lot more times.
He wanted to get away from the adults and explore. I wanted to eat apple fritters, but I wanted to follow Mahogany on his little adventure more. So when a call went out to rustle up all the little’uns for a good fun time, Mahogany and I disappeared again, like bandits slipping away into a forest of Apple family legs and cutie marks.
I don’t think anypony actually told us that we would get in trouble if we got caught sneaking away from the main gathering places to poke around the host family’s property, but damn if it wasn’t fun to act like outlaws. We darted between hooves and ducked under tent flaps in order to evade the adults who might try to herd us into some horribly boring game meant to keep the little foals busy and out of everypony else’s way. We jumped fences, wove patterns between the legs of silos, even slipped into a barn door that had been left ajar so that we could climb into the loft.
Mahogany could never stay in once place for long–every time we discovered a new little nook or cranny, we only stayed for long enough to rest our legs before tearing off again on another little adventure. We ended up so far from the rest of the party that we couldn’t even hear the bustle of voices any more. That’s how we ended up getting left behind when the entire “fairground” emptied out, leaving behind only the truly decrepit old-timers fossilizing in their chairs.
I hear the event that we missed was a cart ride around the fields. Mahogany and I, meanwhile, were scrunched together in the shade behind a stack of hay bales. Neither of us knew that what we were doing was called “cuddling.” All I knew was that I liked sitting side by side and hoof over hoof with Mahogany. I liked the weight of his head against my shoulder, and I liked the way it felt to curl my foreleg around his back while his chest rose and fell with his deep, rhythmic breaths.
Nopony really expects their first kiss. Even for those who try their best to choreograph the perfect scene, the perfect moment, things never go exactly as planned. The first kiss is scary, forbidden even–the first kiss is the first step into a world of heat and desire that foals spend their lives hearing about but never understanding. Even an experienced kiss between lovers is an organic thing, a conversation in the language of love.
Mahogany thrust his head towards me and bumped me with the front of his muzzle, pinching my lips painfully against my teeth. I remember a split second of confusion at the sight of him lunging his face towards mine, and then I remember tensing up with a sharp intake of breath when our lips met. His hooves dropped to the ground, leaving him in an awkward stance with his neck jutting forward, extending his face towards mine. I remember his rapid, halting breath against my face, and I remember the soft pressure against my lips.
He pulled away after doing little more than touching his mouth to mine. I pulled him back towards me almost immediately, burying my face in his fur and holding him as tightly as I could so that I could feel the warmth of his body while I shivered from some unknowable something, some bizarre and terrifying feeling that I would someday learn to call love.
Mahogany and I missed the Traditional Apple Family Photo. When the adults finally found us in the shade of a stack of hay bales, laying side by side and staring up at the sky as we talked about nothing in particular, my parents weren’t mad–they were just pleased that I’d made a friend.
Aunt Sugarplum, on the other hand, was pretty upset. Fortunately, she ran out of huff and puff after only thirty minutes of telling me how ashamed she was that I missed the most important part of the whole day. For the rest of the cart ride home, she pouted in silence while I stared out the window, thinking about the little Apple cousin out there who had just given me my first kiss.
My parents suggested sending him a letter, so I did. Two days later, the mailpony brought a reply. I can't remember what the first couple of letters were like, but they turned into love letters real quick. We sent those love letters back and forth across the Applelacia-Jackspur county line with hardly an hour of delay between reading one and sticking a reply into the mailbox. I've still got a box full of those letters somewhere in the house. It's a big box.
Mahogany and I promised each other “forever” a hundred different ways; we swore sacred vows at least once a month. When sentiment ran out of words to use, our letters stopped being wistful and turned into a contest of juicy innuendos and wild superlatives. We needed each other, we burned for each other, we were sure that our lips would crack and crumble to dust from our attempts to kiss the night breeze and let it carry a token of love across the vast distance.
We turned our longing into a game and learned to laugh at ourselves as we wrote about things like building a house made of our wishes, then burning that house down with the way we burned for each other like raging bonfires in the dead of night. We laughed, and thanks to our laughter, we only occasionally realized how badly the longing hurt.
~~~~
The letters grew up as we did, and at their peak, they made it sound like Mahogany and I were separated by a distance wider than the sky from horizon to horizon. Or that we were cursed to never feel love’s embrace except when the stars formed a bridge between our hearts. Or–my personal favorite–that our bodies were trapped in a cruel prison of time and space, even though our souls could never be separated.
In reality, the county line was practically spitting distance from where I lived. Mahogany’s home “town” of Jackspur Hills was barely an hour away by train. There came a time, eventually, when Mahogany and I managed to see each other just about every weekend. That didn’t keep us from writing increasingly wistful metaphors into our letters, of course.
Funny thing about that–we made a game out of telling each other how badly we wanted to be together again, but when we were together, we had trouble figuring out what exactly what we had been dying to do together. When, inevitably, we couldn’t think of anything to do, we ended up “going for a walk,” which meant wandering around until we found a good place to stop and cuddle. And that was fine with us, because cuddling was usually what we had been dying to do together anyway.
Sometimes we didn’t even bother with the walk; if there weren’t any parents in the house, it meant a rare opportunity for a nap. I guess it’s sort of funny to consider napping something exciting to do, but we wanted to experience what it would be like to share a bed; to literally sleep together. Funny thing–that’s how I learned that falling asleep next to another living body takes practice. Mahogany and I would always cuddle up so close that his every breath would tickle my neck, and then I would disturb him if I shifted even the slightest amount. But it was worth it to be able to fall asleep wrapped in Mahogany’s warmth. I wanted to fall asleep with my face resting against his fur, and when I woke up, I wanted to be able to shift just a few inches towards him in order to kiss him awake.
~~~~
Low-burning sunlight fell through the bedroom window to lay across Mahogany’s neck and back in a stripe, turning his autumn coat into polished bronze and his wildfire mane into shimmering amber. Mahogany’s desk was covered with wood shavings from his last hour of work, and he was still too busy to make eye contact with me. I on the other hand, hadn’t taken my eyes off of Mahogany once. He played a halting tap, tap, tap with chisel and wood, pausing to lift his handiwork to the light and examine the results of every cut. Nothing distracted him and nothing made him rush–it was as if he had forgotten that I was there.
Mahogany ended his chisel’s steady staccato by blowing the dust off of his project with a loud huff. Then he finally looked up from his work and held it out for me to see.
“Sorry. I tried my best, but it didn’t come out like I wanted it to. I’ll sand it later.”
In his hooves was a wooden pony head, topped with a wooden hat and wearing a wooden bandana around where the neck would be. For some reason, I could see a quietly happy expression on the little wooden pony’s smooth, blank face. If there were any jagged edges that needed sanding on my tiny likeness, I didn’t notice them.
I wasn’t even looking at him–I was too fascinated by the gift he’d made for me–but when Mahogany spoke, I could hear that he still wasn’t smiling.
“One of these times I’ll make something really perfect. Something that’s, you know, just for you.”
My smile turned into a smirk. I slid closer to Mahogany as smoothly as I could manage, putting one hoof on the little wooden head and pushing it, along with the hoof holding it, back down onto the desk.
“Aww,” I said with a mocking lilt, “But you’re something perfect just for me.”
He blushed the same adorable blush that I knew he would.
I locked him into a kiss, and didn’t let him go until we were curled up in his bed together, face to face and hoof over hoof, wrapped in each other’s warmth. We kissed again, tangled ourselves into a horizontal embrace, and tried to fall asleep that way before his parents came home.
Mahogany really wasn’t satisfied with that little wooden pony head, no matter how much I told him I loved it. He kept trying and trying to make something perfect, and he ended up carving a lot of different things. I held on to a few of the things he carved for me for a long time.
~~~~
After a year and a half, I still wasn’t tired of counting the hairline ridges of Mahogany’s irises while trying to see into the depths of his pupils. Mahogany was starting to fill into a muscled frame befitting an Apple cousin, and his coltish face was starting to harden, but his coat was still soft, and I still liked listening to his deep, rhythmic breath.
“I love you, Fiddles,” he said in a chesty murmur. I lost sight of his eyes as he leaned forward to nuzzle me, but I felt his fluttering breath against my neck. I nuzzled back, an awkward motion when the two of us were crammed into a storage shed. We nearly bumped chests with each other even while braced against opposite walls.
“I love you too, Mahogany,” I whispered.
For a little while–hard to say how long–the only sounds in the air were the expectant heartbeats of a mare and a stallion, and the hesitant breathing of a filly and a colt.
Breathing. Both of us breathing, just breathing, neither of us with anything to say. We both knew what we wanted, and now it was just a matter of taking it. I felt both of our hearts pounding. I felt both of us trembling.
I was the one who made the first move. I scrunched my body backwards so that I could face him again, and then I kissed him. A sweet kiss at first–then I pressed forward and locked into a furious kiss that was like nothing I’d ever given him before. I wanted to breathe my soul into him, to pour my being into him with lips, tongue, and lungs until there was nothing left in me and he had all of both of us. I felt him explore the side of my face, then my neck with the tip of his hoof, tracing delicately from head to shoulder and then back again. I didn't know the name of the heat that lanced through my body from nose to groin at his touch. I only knew that it was beautiful, and that I wanted more.
Somewhere in the middle of that kiss, I decided that I was finished waiting. I pulled back, leaving Mahogany mouthing at empty space, then somehow managed to twist a full hundred eighty degrees in the tiny shed without knocking anything over. I backed towards Mahogany until my rear nearly touched his chest.
“Come on,” I panted, flashing him my cutie marks. “Come on...”
He finally understood when I flicked my tail at him, first to the left, then to the right, like a single sweep of a metronome. Before the second beat, he almost knocked me over with a botched attempt to mount me, a crookedly aimed lunge that ended with him trying to drag me down sideways. He let go of my midsection just in time to catch himself against the wall with his left forehoof instead of his face.
He managed to squeeze back into the same position as before, and this time, his jump landed his forelegs squarely on my sides. We both gasped as something of his brushed against something of mine.
“I love you,” he whispered, directly into my ear.
“Do it!” I whispered back.
I heard and felt Mahogany take a deep breath, like a singer about to belt the first note of a song.
Unlike a singer, he held that breath as he flowed into the first stroke.
He entered me.
It hurt.
I wanted more.
I sang a harsh, keening cry as his body tasted mine with tentative firmness, sliding into me and through me with a halting, broken rhythm. When he reached the end of my depth, he pulled back again, and I felt him glide agonizingly, wonderfully, across places on my body that had never been touched before. He shuddered love and fear into my ear while he pressed lust, flesh, and fire into my body.
The night went on long enough for both of us to learn our first lessons about how to touch and be touched. He slowed, accelerated, and rested unfettered by skill or expectations; I didn’t know if our game had any rules, and neither did he. Sometimes he touched me almost reverently, exploring my body with the innocence of a curious foal. Other times he plunged me without restraint, daring to loose his primal instincts upon both of our bodies. With breath, body, and soul, Mahogany showed me a new world that night, and I thanked him with an unabashed wail of pure, dissonant glory.
After that, the love letters we wrote to each other took on a different tone. Our little game of words ended, because Mahogany and I never again ran out of longing to send each other.
And that longing couldn't ever really be funny again.
If only there was a way for us to forget our most precious memories.
~~~~
I knew something was wrong when I came down from my room in the morning and saw a lanky, middle-aged unicorn sitting at the table. It wasn’t just his pointy head that made it easy to tell that he wasn’t a working pony. He had a powdery blue coat topped by a sunny yellow mane, and with those colors, every clod of dirt and puff of dust would’ve shown up on his fur like a stain on a white sheet. When I asked my parents what was going on, my mom backed away from the table and escorted me out the front door so that we could get an early start on the day’s work together.
When we came back in, my dad was still sitting at the table, staring at a pile of printed sheets of paper and the thin black pen resting on top. My mom ushered me up to my room.
I imagine most everypony knows what it sounds like when a mom needs to deliver bad news. It starts with caution, just a flicker of hesitation: “Fiddlesticks, honey...” and then comes the failure at nonchalance, far too calm and soothing to hide the danger: “Would you come downstairs for a minute?”
And finally she says what’s already obvious, with a falling pitch like a sigh of defeat. “There’s something we have to talk about.” The last word is in her low register, a semi-willing confession. She says it either with or without guilt; there’s no difference in the sound.
I assumed that there had been a death in the family. Instead, they told me something about collaboration, revolutionizing, conferences, a few other terms that meant nothing to me at the time. Then came the one word that actually did matter: Hooveston. In less than a month, they said, I was going to be whisked away to a strange city, leaving everything I had ever known a thousand miles behind.
I would’ve preferred a death in the family.
The first thing I did was back away from the kitchen table and run to my room. I slammed my bedroom door as hard as I could, locked it, and collapsed. I couldn’t even find it in myself to scream. The silence in my head was so powerful that it actually became painful. It was more than quiet in my room; It was empty and hostile and so full of despair that that the silence became more than just a lack of noise–it became the presence of an inescapable and evil nothing.
After a few minutes, I stopped shaking and started properly sobbing.
Eventually, I managed to write a letter to Mahogany. I’m pretty sure I actually hovered my face over that letter so that tears would fall onto it and make the ink bleed. I don’t know how much of that letter was even legible, but the message was clear enough.
I can’t remember how, or when, or if I managed to turn my anger and heartbreak into resignation. I think maybe I fought and sobbed in shifts right up until the last day. Yeah, I acted like a pouting little filly, but damn it, I felt like one. Just a little filly who was losing her hold on a beautiful dream, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
All the cute fantasies, all the dreamy plans for a dreamy future with Mahogany–suddenly they were all one big cruel joke. My memories became traps waiting in the corners of my mind to stab me in the heart. The more precious the memory, the more tempting it was to try to find solace in it. And, of course, the more I was tempted, the more painful it was when the trap sprung, making me realize that I was remembering something I would never experience again.
For the first time, thinking about Mahogany as I lay awake in bed made me feel sick to my stomach instead of warm and safe. A tiny, secret part of me wished that I had never met him, because now that I had met him, it would always be impossible for me to forget him.
There was enough time for four more letters, two in either direction. Those letters were different–instead of longing for each other, we wrote pages covered with solemn vows. Vows that we would keep sending letters, that we would wait until we could hold each other again no matter how long it took, that our love would never die no matter the distance, we swore all of those and a dozen other things over and over again, as if we could make the universe notice us and take pity on us if we just loved each other hard enough.
We also had time for one more visit. Both of our parents agreed to let me stay over at his family’s place through the night, and I would catch the train out of Jackspur in the morning. Mahogany’s parents left us alone pretty much the whole time, and didn’t object when we said we were going on a long walk.
They didn’t even act surprised when we came back in the small hours of the morning, covered with grass stains and bite marks. Eventually, we all learn that our parents aren’t idiots.
I remember the desperate, pleading way he kissed me, his lips and chest and forelegs trembling as if he were trying to use my warmth to save him from unbearable cold. I remember the cold dirt, and the soft grass, and the way the waning moon glared down from the black sky, and I remember how warm his tears were as he shuddered the truest love I had ever known into my neck. With my eyes squeezed shut, my mouth held wide open, muzzle tilted toward the hard white stars in a silent scream that ended up not being so silent after all, I felt his weight press down on me until it got hard to breathe and I remember how I didn’t care because I wanted to feel him, feel everything about him, his flesh and breath and soul being forced into me no matter how much it hurt. I wanted him to hurt me, fill me, and destroy me with every pulse of his body against mine until there was nothing left and he had all of us, because all that mattered was him, Mahogany, Mahogany, my beautiful Mahogany with watery eyes and fiery mane, Mahogany the little Apple cousin who had given me my first kiss in the shade of a stack of hay bales so long ago.
That was only two days before the train left for Hooveston. There wasn’t enough time for another letter.
~~~~
Any of you who likes to say that your first love dumped you without shedding a tear, you can stop saying that right now, because all that means is that you’ve never talked to someone who dumped their first love.
Mahogany and I sent letters back and forth between Jackspur and Hooveston for maybe half a year. That was long enough for the letters to go from tear-stained sorrow to sweet promises and words of comfort. Then, eventually, promises and comfort went back to superlatives and innuendos again. The love in those letters became a game of pretty words again, and this time it wasn’t funny. Actually, it was kind of boring. An obligation, not an urgent need.
If you think that any of that made it easier for me to write the letter that would end it all, then damn it, you've never been in love. It wasn’t just that I was breaking the poor boy’s heart, it was the fact that I had to do it with a letter. Years of sending love back and forth, pages and pages all full of hope and promises, and there I was writing the letter saying that it was all over, for both of us. Maybe I still loved Mahogany or maybe I didn't; I wasn't sure at the time and I'm still not. Still, watching the mailpony walk away with that letter was like watching Mahogany himself walk away into the distance, never to be seen again.
So, no, I didn't cry. But don't you dare tell me that I just threw him away because I was done with him, or that I didn't miss him, or that I didn't feel empty and sick to my stomach for a week afterward.
Mahogany didn’t send a letter back. Maybe he was too angry. Maybe he was too sad. Maybe he just didn’t want to beg.
~~~~
In the last letter I wrote to him, I swore to Mahogany that I wasn’t replacing him with another colt, and I wasn’t lying. What I was replacing Mahogany with was Hooveston.
Imagine spending your whole life wearing blinders and earplugs, and with cotton balls in your nose. Arriving at the Hooveston train station was like taking all that stuff off at the high point of a hoedown. With a fireworks show overhead. And maybe a tornado touching down nearby.
It took me years to figure out how to breathe while walking with a tight-packed crowd, on a paved sidewalk, in the shadows of buildings twice as big as the tallest barn I’d ever seen. I still wouldn’t say I’m “used to” it.
We lived in an apartment–another thing to get used to. I spent a lot of time out on the balcony, because it was a way to escape from the reality of living in a box. From the balcony, I could look out at the strange, artificial landscape and try to make it look like home. And, more importantly, I could play my fiddle out into the open air, letting every strum of pain and hope into the open air, like a fiddler’s music is supposed to do. I never did feel right letting my music blare against the walls of my tiny drywall bedroom.
Took all of two weeks before the old “cutie mark destiny” idea kicked in. Instead of a unicorn, this time it was a pegasus mare who knocked at the front door, and it was me and not my father that he was looking for.
That’s how I ended up playing my first show. You should’ve seen it. Gawky kid wearing a mud-crusted old hat and bandanna propped up on a stage in front of a room full of combed manes and unstained coats. The only way I even managed to start playing instead of bolting off stage left and not stopping until I got to the emergency exit was by tilting my hat down to block out everything but the neck of my fiddle. Even then, I could hear those hundreds, thousands, millions of ponies. I could hear them, and smell them, and feel the way their hundreds of bodies moved the air. To think that I once considered visits from Aunty and Uncle and Cousin to be too many ponies in too small a space.
Once I started playing, though, it all got a whole lot easier. I didn’t need to block out the audience any more, because all I needed was my music. A fiddler–a real fidder, not a violin player–is supposed to reach out to the audience, but just this once, I played for my fiddle alone, keeping my hat down and my eyes hidden while I pranced around the stage and let my music fly. At one point my hat fell off my head, but I didn’t even notice, because I was lost in the euphoria of letting the music fill me in a way I never had before.
When I finally finished playing and forced myself back into reality with one last slash at the strings, I found it in myself to look out at the audience, and what I saw made it so that I was never, ever afraid of Hooveston again.
Turns out Hooveston ponies know music too. They how to laugh, how to whoop, how to let the thump of a beat and the thrill of a melody move their hooves. The audience, everypony in the whole damn house, was on their hooves, and not to give me a standing ovation. They’d kicked their chairs aside and paired off into partners, mare and stallion, old and young, all of them full of life and full of music.
I got invited back over and over again, until eventually I didn’t want to go back because I had bigger and better shows to play at instead, with bigger and better audiences to ignite with my music. I made enough to get a place in a cute little neighborhood called Oatshire Run, which is maybe half an hour of solid galloping away from the heart of Hooveston. I still play shows in Hooveston, and I still visit my parents in that little apartment once in a while, and my dad is doing well for himself at all those conferences, doing his efficiency and revolutionizing and whatever else it is those Hooveston ponies wanted from him and his magic touch with machines.
Most fiddlers don’t keep playing the same fiddle from their first lesson until the day they die. Which is probably for the best, really, because for any musician, playing different instruments as the years go by is just as important as playing different songs. A friend gave me a new fiddle as a gift when I celebrated my birthday in Hooveston for the first time. A fine piece of work, she insisted. Hand-assembled by a craftspony who lived just down the street. Try it, she said. So much better than the rickety old thing that I had been hanging onto for so many years. Night and day difference. Try it.
I had been a natural born musician starting from the day I first picked up a bow–cutie mark and all–but in Hooveston I stopped being a natural and became a master. A big part of that was learning how to make each new instrument sing with its own voice, letting my body and soul flow through each glissando and staccato. I’m not the only musician I know who feels this way: all my string player friends (you’d be surprised how many of us there are) say that in the hands of a master, the bow may as well not exist. The bow isn’t a tool; it’s the body part that the musician uses to talk to the instrument, and the flow between my heart, my shoulder, and my fiddle is a conversation that everypony can hear, but only I can understand.
I still have my first fiddle, not because it’s some masterpiece, but simply because I was holding it when my cutie marks appeared, and that’s got to count for something. I still remember the electric moment of intimacy when I first felt its weight against my shoulder, and I remember the way the pad cut into my jaw because it was too big for me. Even though the old thing’s glossy surface is fossilized and the smell of laquered wood is long lost to age, every note that it plays carries a faint echo of the first note it ever played–the scratchy, dissonant wail of pure glory that the fiddle made when the bow first tasted its strings.
They say that you always remember your first time. What they really mean, though, is that you can never have another first time. Because, yeah, the more clearly you remember something, the more it’s lost to you forever.
~~~~
The last note from my fiddle echoed through the streets for a few moments, and then was gone. The melody was picked up by the hiss of the wind in the darkening post-twilight. It played a swaying motif, firm and constant so as to harmonize with my own panting breath. I realized that I was sweating, and that my forelegs were faintly burning from how frantically I’d been playing.
I lowered my head and let my bow hang limp at my side, but I still balanced the fiddle on my shoulder with my free hoof as I looked out from under the brim of my hat at the slowly darkening town. Beneath the thrumming legato of the wind, I could still hear it: a very old, lingering silence that could not be drowned out.
I wondered if the rutter who’d slammed the door on me earlier had heard me play. I envisioned him stopping in the middle of the street, then turning to look towards the roof of the house he’d stormed out of. He might see my silhouette, but he wouldn't understand the music that I played.
And then, before I could stop myself, I dared to imagine that Mahogany had heard me play. I imagined him wandering Jackspur Hills doing this or that–and then he’d stop as the breeze brought him, impossibly, the voice of a fiddle playing a song that he had been intimately familiar with once, so long ago. He’d look up, and my silhouette against the evening sky would somehow reach his evergreen eyes, and somehow he would see me here, fiddle raised and hat lowered...
And maybe he’d turn back to his mare and keep on leading her home. “It’s nothing,” he would say. “I just thought I heard something. A song that I used to like.”
Or maybe his breath would catch in his chest, and he’d drop whatever he was doing and start running towards where he’d heard an echo from his past, rushing to join in singing this song that had always been about him and him alone. He would run to my door and knock three times without a second thought, only then stopping to catch his breath. Then I would come to answer the door, and I would see Mahogany’s autumn coat and wildfire mane, and he’d look up at me with his eyes shining in the dying sunlight–evergreen eyes that still belonged to the blushing little colt from all those years ago. We would stare at each other through my open door for a few long moments, and then I would step aside to let him in, and...
The sun disappeared behind the horizon, and all was silent.
~~~~
The invitation on the kitchen table was still there, unopened, in its own little category. Even before opening it, I already knew what kind of event I was in for–one that would be crowded with wheezing old farts and yapping little foals. It helped that the first half of the sender's name was "Apple."
The return address was in Ponyville. I'd played there once before. Cute little town. Long way to travel, but it would be nice to see the place again.