Picking Up
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“From the sky to the river,
From the phone to the floor,
From the house to the doctor,
From the earth to the morgue.”
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What are you afraid of?
The phone sat across from her, next to an untouched bottle of whiskey and a shot glass.
Fiddlesticks frowned, staring blankly at the phone. The moonlight crept its way through her living room window, casting everything in a strange, whitish glow. Her eyelids drooped, but she fought hard to stay awake.
“Here we go,” she whispered, so softly she could barely hear it.
Even as she said the words, her body refused to move. She bit her lip and frowned as anxiety began to build in her chest. Fiddle stared at the phone, before gathering the courage to get off the couch. She walked across the room, her legs moving stiffly and oddly until she reached the phone. Her hooves pressed the buttons without her mind instructing them, and she raised the phone and pressed it to her ear.
It rang and it rang and it rang.
“Hello,” a voice said eventually. “You’ve reached Octavia Melody. I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message at the tone.”
Fiddlesticks closed her eyes and took a deep breath. At the sound of the beep, she started talking.
“Hey, sis. It’s me, Fiddle. I, uh… hope you’re doing alright. Been awhile, huh? Sorry for not calling sooner, but, uh… things have been kinda busy down here, y’know? Geez. Wish I wrote something down… Uh, anyways. I was waiting for you to call, but… y’know, you never did.”
Fiddle blinked a few times, shifting on her hooves. “Meant to call you sooner. I just… it’s been… crazy, y’know?”
She laughed nervously. Stop laughing, idiot. Your laugh is annoying. It’s only going to piss her off.
“Hey, I heard you got to visit Griffonstone with the orchestra? Never knew they had a taste for classical music, y’know? I know you always wanted to, uh, go there. Something about their instruments being different, right?”
You’re stalling. You don’t know what to say.
“Heh. Anyways, I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner. Been busy. I’ve been helping out at the orchard. They need all the ponies they can get, especially since, uh, drought season is coming around soon. It’s going to be… it’s going to be tough. But we’ll make it. Somehow. We always do. But, uh… I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”
Idiot. You said that already.
“I, uh… hope you’re doing well and everything. How’s that one mare you were telling me about? Your roommate? Uh… Vinyl something? If you got any stories about her, I’d love to hear ‘em… think we could all use some good news right about now.”
Why’d you word it like that?
The phone felt very heavy in her hoof, as if somepony had opened up the receiver and filled it with coins. “So, uh… things have been going alright down here. We’re… we’re making do.”
She doesn’t care about you, stop talking about yourself. That’s all you ever do anyways.
“But that isn’t why I called. Listen, Tavi… I’m sorry that I haven’t been around to visit lately. And… I want to say it’s because I’ve been busy, but… but I think we both know that isn’t true. It’s because… it’s because I didn’t think I could ever look dad in the eye again. I just… I didn’t think I could ever stand being in the same room with him anymore. He would just look at me in disappointment, and judge me… tell me I was a failure, that I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t take that. Because… because dammit, Tavi, I’m not you. I couldn’t live like that.”
Her body shuddered. She swiped at her eyes even though they were dry. No. Don’t break. “You, uh… you always found a way to get along with the worst of ponies. Even when that brat at school tried to shove you in a locker, you turned it around and befriended her by the year’s end. It amazed me. You just… you always saw the best in every pony.” Focus, her mind snapped at her.
“I wish I could have done that with dad. But… I hated how he held us close and smiled at us, so he could show all of his friends that we were one real, functioning family. Because we weren’t. He just wanted me to be him. Because he could only ever love himself. It was a joke. And I couldn’t take it.”
Fiddle fell silent after that, taking deep, steady breaths to calm down. She stared off into space, both at nothing and at everything, as scenes of her life flashed before her eyes. “And… and he’d try to wave it all off. By using ‘family’ as an excuse. As… as a justification for him treating us like absolute garbage. As a defense, so we couldn’t retaliate. ‘Because that’s not what family does,’ he said. And he’d say that all the time. Do your chores, because that’s what family does. When I call you, drop everything and come running, because that’s what family does. I got so damned tired of hearing that.”
She snorted in annoyance. There you go again. Complaining about the world is wrong and you’re right. How are you any better than him?
“He never treated me as a pony, Tavi. He just… he just looked at me, like my only purpose was to serve him. Why? Just because he’s my dad? That doesn’t mean I have to do every single thing he wants me to do. Like, I’m not going to go get a degree and become some pencil pusher just so I can make bits to pay for your retirement. That’s… that’s not what I want to do. It’s not who I want to be. He couldn’t understand that.”
Don’t break. Coward. Weakling. Idiot.
Fiddle frowned, the room spinning around her. “He couldn’t understand that,” she said again. “He… he never could.”
Her eyes fell to the floor. “But I think I figured it out now. I didn’t realize it then, but you really thought he loved us,” she said softly. “And… and I don’t think I can blame you for that. I wanted to believe that he loved us so badly, but when I saw everything he did, everything he was… I couldn’t do it. And I’m sorry for that, Tavi. But I... I just… I can’t...”
You’re shaking. Why are you shaking? She wanted to scream and yell in frustration. Instead, Fiddle took a deep breath and decided to just bite the bullet.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never called you back. I’m sorry that I left you like that, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you why. You’re my big sister. I should have realized you weren’t going to give up on me that easily. But… I was young, stupid, and angry. I still am.”
A fire rose in her chest as she spoke. It was seeping out from the bottle she shoved it in, the cork finally coming loose after all these years.
“And… and I know. I know that we haven’t talked since mom’s funeral, and I’m sorry. I know that isn’t what you wanted. I know that you just want us to be a family again. I know. I know all of this stuff, but…”
Her voice felt like a star through the sky, barreling down towards the earth. The cork fell away completely, but instead of an explosion, the feeling rushed out like water until it overtook her entire body.
“But I don’t know how to fix this.”
It was quiet in her house. Crickets chirped outside, their mating songs fading away into the desert sky faster than they had come. A cool evening breeze blew through her window, stopping just short of her body. The moon rose a bit higher into the sky, although nopony could actually tell.
“I’m sorry I didn’t go to dad’s funeral,” she said again. Her vision was blurry now, and she swiped at her eyes with the back of her hoof. Her head was light but her heart was heavy. The words tumbled out of her mouth faster than she could stop them. “I know it must have broken him to see that I wasn’t there. Auntie told me how disappointed he was when I didn’t visit him at the hospital before he passed. And I’m so, so sorry about everything I’ve done. I… I didn’t want it to end like this… and I figured this out a long time ago, and I… I couldn’t wait for you to call me again so I could explain this to you. But you never did.”
Her voice broke into a quiet sob.
“You never did. And that’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
Fiddle’s body shook heavily as tears fell down her cheeks. She stumbled through her words like a foal in the dark, desperately searching for light. “It’s my fault. It always is. It always will be. I’m the one that just disappeared without a trace, and you were the one who had to take the time to find me.”
Her inner voice was silent now. But she kept talking. The cork was gone now, and the words poured out, like whiskey to a glass, filling it to the brim.
“And I know it’s too late. I know that nothing I say is ever going to take back the past. I know… I know you’ll probably never talk to me again. But I miss you. I miss you now more than I ever have. I… I hope you do too.”
Fiddle fought to get herself under control again as she blinked back a second wave of tears. “...Celestia dammit. Tavi, I love you. I always have. And I always will. But… but I don’t care if you say you hate me. I… I don’t care if you say… if you say you don’t love me. Or if you don’t want me in your life. But… please, Tavi. Say something. Anything. Just… please.”
The crickets outside had gone quiet. It was getting late, and time wasn’t about to wait for her. “... I did a set yesterday at the bar. Put down my fiddle and picked up the microphone. Sang a song, for you and for mom and for dad. I cried while I sang,” Fiddle remarked. “I haven’t cried in a long time.”
Her body was still now. A few stray tears fell from her face and onto the floorboards.
“I, uh… I love you. And I miss you. So, uh, call me… please. And stay strong, Tavi. You’re strong, and I hope you know that. Stronger than me anyways.” She laughed again, although this time it sounded like a cry. “Call me soon. Or write me. Something. Anything. Please. I love you.”
Slowly, Fiddle lowered the phone back onto the table. She rubbed at her eyes again, feeling the dampness stain the back of her hoof. She fixed herself up and took a deep breath. She opened her eyes and stood up tall. Holding her breath, Fiddle shut her eyes again and tried to smile.
Then she broke. The dam broke and the tears fell out, free at last. Fiddle swiped her hoof forwards and the telephone, bottle, and glass flew through the air. She never heard them hit the ground. She bucked the table and it fell over. She turned around and hit the wall as hard as she could again and again until her hooves roared in pain.
Fiddle screamed. She screamed as loud as she could, not caring about who would hear her or what they would say. Then, Fiddle fell to the floor, exhausted and aching, and cried. She curled herself up into a ball and sobbed, because everything was wrong and it would never be right.
The phone lay nearby, its receiver knocked off of its base. The dial tone droned on and on, lost underneath her broken cries. The shot glass had shattered into pieces that littered the floor, like millions of tiny stars in the sky.
And the bottle lay in pieces, broken and ruined. The whiskey seeped out through the cracks and onto the ground, the alcohol flowing like a river as it spread across the floor; without a start, without an end, and without a sound.