Not wanting to wake Octavia—she looked so peaceful that she just couldn’t bring herself to do it—Vinyl slid out of bed as quietly as she could and silently walked to the opened door, slipping into the grey hallway beyond. Passing through the passageway, she made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen.
She stepped towards a row of cabinets, opening them with a magic glow and obtaining from them a bowl, a spoon, and a box of cereal. Closing the cabinets and taking a carton of milk from the refrigerator, she sat down, across from her mother, at the dining room table and poured the milk and cereal into the bowl. Waiting no longer, she plunged her spoon into the mixture and then lifted it up to her muzzle and took a bite. It was sweet. She chewed and then swallowed.
“Morning.”
Arpeggio looked up from the newspaper previously in front of her, towards Vinyl, and said: “Oh…, good morning to you too, Vincenza.”
Vinyl nodded.
After ingesting several more spoonful’s of cereal, Vinyl deposited her now empty bowl near the kitchen sink and was about to tread out of the room when her mother snarled, sending the same newspaper that she’d been reading earlier smashing into the wooden planking of the dining room floor. When she saw the headline of the offending article, Vinyl galloped away. She was not going to be around to see Arpeggio explode like that again.
Back up the stairs and into the bathroom she went, her hooves loudly pounding against the ground underneath her, which, when combined with the angry shrieking of her mother, elicited a small moan from her bedroom. She reached for her toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste and began cleaning her teeth, spreading the unpleasant taste of the paste throughout her mouth, causing her to cringe. After around two minutes of this, she spat the toothpaste into the sink and lifted a paper towel to her mouth, removing any of the excess paste from her white fur and lips.
“Hello, Vinyl.”
Vinyl spun her head to see a ball of gray fluff staring directly at her with its purple eyes. She struggled not to laugh. Octavia’s mane and fur coat stood up in all directions, randomly knotting and forming the occasional kink.
“G-good morning, Octy! How was the sleep?”
Octavia grinned. “Oh, it was wonderful, Vinyl. I have not slept like that in ages.
“By the way, you seem to have a minor case of bed-head.”
“Hey, you should look at yourself some time,” Vinyl chuckled. “At this rate, I’ll have to give you a full-on grooming session.” She winked at her friend.
Octavia blushed and her tail tucked between her hind legs. “V-Vinyl!”
“Hey, hey, I’m just kidding, Tavi.”—Vinyl smirked—“…Unless you want me to.”
Self-grooming, for the typical earth-pony, has always been difficult. Without magic, it’s nearly impossible for one to brush his or her own back. Because of this, non-unicorns often seek out assistance from a friend or family member in regards to getting cleaned.
After a long moment of consideration, Octavia’s blush darkened. “…P-please.”
Vinyl stared at Octavia for a second before briefly nodding and lifting a brush out of a drawer underneath the bathroom sink. She then dragged the brush through Octavia’s charcoal-colored mane, undoing knots as she did so.
Octavia smiled gently. “Thank you, Vinyl.”
“Yep.”
After cleaning themselves up, the two ponies went back downstairs to be greeted with a far-more-mellow Arpeggio sitting on a leather couch, taking a sip of an alcoholic beverage, specifically hard apple cider, from a large, glass mug, of which she soon, afterwards, set down on the wooden coffee table in front of her.
Vinyl stared at her mother for a moment, then glared at the mug of cider on the table and slowly shook her head. She looked back up at Arpeggio. “Don’t drink too much, this time, okay, Ma?”
“Do not fret, Vincenza. I will be fine.”
“Whatever you say, Mom,” Vinyl said skeptically.
Arpeggio’s drinking habits have rarely ever been consistent, but one behavior, as Vinyl Scratch recalled, has been, for years and years, set in stone: She never drinks hard cider except in ‘special circumstances,’ this being one of those situations. Often, when Arpeggio would drink cider, though, she’d get incredibly drunk, sometimes to the point of near-delirium, and Vinyl would have to get her to a hospital somehow in case of alcohol poisoning.
Arpeggio released a modest hiccup before speaking again: “And you,”—she pointed at Octavia—“Octavia, be a good friend for my daughter. She’s always needed one.”
“…I promise, Arpeggio.”
Three hours had passed until, finally, Arpeggio drifted into a slumber. Over this time, Octavia did not have much time to contemplate about what Arpeggio had said earlier, but now that she was sleeping, she finally had a chance to do so—a chance that she took.
‘Be a good friend for my daughter.’
‘She’s always needed one.’
‘She’s always needed one.’
‘She’s always needed one.’
Octavia mulled. Was it possible that Vinyl had few friends or maybe even no friends at all? How could a pony so generous and so seemingly friendly have been…friendless? It seemed impossible! She decided to ask Vinyl about it later.
Soon, Vinyl burst down the stairs, droplets of water flying off of her sopping, white mane and coat and onto the walls, ceiling, and floor of the living room, illuminated, in mid-air, by a nearby lamp. She sat down on the couch and stared at Octavia directly in the eyes, her pupils shaking alongside their surrounding pools of red as if she already knew what she was thinking at the moment.
'Be a good friend for my daughter.'
“Excuse me Vinyl, but about what Arpeggio said…—”
“Not now, Octavia.”
Octavia blinked. “But—”
“Not now, …please,” Vinyl begged. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“…Okay,” she sighed.
The two stared at each other for a long moment, speechlessly, enveloped in a status of near-absolute awkwardness, of which could not be penetrated by anything but a diversion from it, and thus the change-of-topic technique was born, and it was—
Vinyl Scratch’s eyes darted from left to right before she finally asked: “So…wanna get a milkshake?”
Sitting on the tip of Octavia’s tongue, between her lips, was a long, plastic straw. At the end of this straw was a tall glass filled with sweet, pink, strawberry-flavored milkshake.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had a milkshake. ‘Was it five—maybe six years ago?’ she wondered. ‘Seven years, perhaps. It’s somewhere in that range.’ She decided that how long ago she last had a milkshake was irrelevant and focused on the sweet taste of the drink instead.
Across from her sat Vinyl Scratch. Unlike her, Vinyl was not savoring her drink, but rather gulping down her large chocolate malt from its metal bucket.
For a moment, Octavia stared in amusement, before bringing herself to remark: “Vinyl, you are going to give yourself a stomach-ache.”
“…Huh? …Oh. Octy, this is chocolate malt we’re talking about here! Chocolate malt! The stomach-ache is totally worth it! I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t like a good malt?”
“You will have less time to enjoy it, though, because you are too busy inhaling it to actually taste it.”
“But I do savor it, just a bit faster than you do.”
“You taste it for a split second and then it’s gone. How is that, in any way, savoring?”
“Jeez, I don’t know, Octavia. Maybe it’s magic?”
“Milkshakes and malt are not magical, Vinyl.”
“Blasphemy! Everyone run! Tavi’s a blasphemer!” Vinyl clowned, raising her hooves above her head and putting on an expression of mock horror. Donut Joe’s was almost entirely empty, aside from the two fillies, so Vinyl’s warnings were not heard by anypony in particular, other than Octavia, of course.
Octavia smirked. “Nothing is sacred. Not even chocolate malt.”
“Heresy!” Vinyl giggled.
The cellist simply shook her head. “…Vinyl?”
“Yeah?”
“You are insufferable.”
Vinyl grinned. “It’s what I do best, Tavi.”
Soon, the two fillies emerged from the empty Donut Joe’s, stomachs filled with milkshake, malt, and good vibes, and, not long after, were back in the comforts of Vinyl’s home, which, at the moment, housed a particular couch with a particular drunken, passed-out, pink-maned mare: Arpeggio. Towering high above the coffee table, right next to the glass mug from earlier, were three completely empty beer-bottles.
Vinyl’s right hoof met her face in what could only be seen as the pony-equivalent of a face-palm: a face-hoof. “I told you not to drink so much and you did it anyways,” she groaned. “Go figure.”
“Is she often like this?” Octavia asked.
Vinyl sighed and toddled up to her mother. “No; she’s usually pretty good about this. When she isn’t, though, things can get a little…out of hoof.” She placed a hoof on Arpeggio’s barrel and gently shook her awake. “C’mon, Ma. Let’s get you into bed.”
Arpeggio didn’t budge and instead weakly moaned as a form of slurred protest against the harsh injustices her daughter was threatening to bring upon her poor soul.
“Mom, couches aren’t meant to be slept on—especially not this one. Now, c’mon, it’s time to go to bed.”
Arpeggio slowly, groggily stood up, only to lazily sway back and forth from her dizziness as she struggled to move forward. Vinyl leaned up against her mother to support her, and with her help, Arpeggio gradually made her way to the steps.
“Hey, Tavia, go ahead and make yourself at home. I’ll be back down in a bit; I just gotta put Mom in bed, first,” Vinyl stated as she lead her mother up the stairs.
Octavia nodded. “Thank you, Vinyl.”
Vinyl and Arpeggio finished making their way up the staircase, leaving Octavia alone to roam the living room by herself.
Octavia looked back at the coffee table to notice a sheet of crumpled newspaper pinned underneath the glass mug and green beer-bottles from before. She read the title aloud to herself: “Svengallop Co. Makes a Comeback.” She raised an eyebrow curiously, sat herself down on the couch, and began to read.
The article was short and to the point: Some record label named Svengallop Co. had been struggling to get by, but then, recently, a new artist, somepony named Sapphire Shores, became huge, and the company profited from that. It mentioned a pony named Svengallop as well, but didn’t go much into who he actually was, so Octavia assumed that he was the one who owned the label.
Vinyl trotted back down the stairs and joined Octavia on the couch. “Hey, I’m back. What’re you up”—she noticed what Octavia was holding and stared at the paper for a moment before glancing back up to her friend—“…to?”
Octavia turned her head towards Vinyl to look her in the eyes and smile. “I am reading.”
Vinyl moved her gaze back to the paper, then towards Octavia, then back to the paper, and then back at Octavia.
“Vinyl, do you know who this Svengallop fellow is?”
Vinyl slowly nodded her head.
“Oh? What do you know about him?”
Vinyl sighed. “Alright, I’ll tell you about him. Just…please don’t tell Mom I said anything about this. She’d kill me.”
Octavia raised an eyebrow at that but agreed nonetheless. “Okay, I will not speak a word about this,” she promised.
“…Okay, …so, Svengallop’s my father.”
Octavia had certainly not expected a statement like that from Vinyl, but it wasn’t unbelievable, just unanticipated.
“Oh? What is he like?”
“Dunno. I’ve never met him before. Ma said he was lazy bum and always refused to get a job when he was living with her.”
“What happened?”
“She kicked him out. Something about being ‘sick of his shit’ or something like that.”
Octavia blinked. “Wow."
“Yeah.”