Sail the Skies under a Moon of Crystal (ATTN: Elderflower)

[Blueblood]

What time was it?  The sky was just that color where you'd swear you were looking at the underside of a giant leaf of some ancient tree that held up the world, and the sun was a flowerbud on the twig-top that hadn't bloomed yet.  The branches caught the breeze and were fed from the roots which drew from Tartarus the life sap of the world of light, which seemed as paradoxical and profound as the fact that distance might strengthen the bond between friends...

 

 

Sky Sailing blinked, twitching his wing slightly so that his glide narrowly missed crashing into a weathervane.  He hadn't gotten enough sleep last night.  Or the night before.  Or, indeed, any night since the day he was born.  That would often leave his head in an imaginative fog all day, which was fine when he was trying to think up of new music and lyrics, and not too bad when working the routine of his day job, but it could be downright dangerous when on the wing!

 

Steering towards a flat patch of ground behind the main street of Ponyville, he slowly drifted down to the ground, removing a flight mask and goggles upon landing.  Humming to himself, he peered about the town, trying to locate the house where he knew his friend had moved to recently.  Sky walked along leisurely, the random notes transitioning into a tune, and later into a soft refrain:

"Flutter all through the night,

and we can pull the clouds around,

This Paper hanger skyline.

Summer smiled again,

And you can disappear,

But I'd rather be here..."

 

Not the most cohesive of choruses, but that was what you got when an insomniac wrote your lyrics.  At last, he found the door of the house of his friend, Crystal Moon.  It wasn't too early in the morning, but one could never tell if she was asleep.  Probably was, if she wasn't trying to meet a deadline.  Well, one way to find out; the pegasus trotted up and gave a soft knock on the door.

[Elderflower]

 

The last thing Bunny remembered was the smile on her editor’s face when he had come to collect her latest chapter of Sailor Mare. It was more than a little sadistic, glinting in her memory as she recalled nearly collapsing from exhaustion while handing it over. She had cut things very close this time, and had spent the last two days inking her pages non-stop in order to meet her deadline. Not even her narcolepsy had interrupted her thanks to her guzzling back coffee with too much sugar and one heck of a lot of sweets! She had inhaled just enough to keep herself perfectly buzzed and functional as an artist.

 

And while she had actually managed to stay on her hooves while her editor was over, afterwards was a whole different story since the sun had disappeared and the shut windows kept her living room quite stuffy and cozy in the darkness. With the stress of her deadline taken from her shoulders, the darkness lulling her to sleep, and exhaustion doing its best to pull her under, there was little Bunny could do to resist. So of course, true to her nature, the rainbow-maned mare had passed out right in the middle of cleaning up, falling on top of an uncorked bottle of dark, red ink.

She had slept like a rock all throughout the night, and could feel herself waking up when sunlight began to light up her cutely decorated house. Still, exhaustion kept her lying where she had blacked out, her body refusing to move for the time being even with the bottle she had fallen on making her very uncomfortable. All around her, light began to bring cheer to her plush animals, potted plants, and pale pink-and-white plaid decorations. It also began to reveal just how much of a whirlwind she had made of her living room! There was paper scattered everywhere: whole sheets, crumpled scraps, and stacks of research material had been strewn about the floor and low table where she worked. Brushes and empty pots of ink were mixed in with the mess, and the pile of plushes she buried herself in while she worked were all smothered in the chaos. Amidst all that mess was Bunny Moon, crumpled in a heap on the floor with a pool of dark, red liquid oozing out from her chest.

A knock had caused her door (which her editor had failed to close properly) to swing inward, sending a beam of sunlight to shine directly on the fallen artist. Even with her eyes closed it made her head hurt, and she groaned pathetically where she lay.

[Blueblood]

It took two raps from Sky's hooves before the door actually began to swing open; the stallion wasn't the physically forceful sort.

 

*click...Eeeeaarrrrnnn...*  

 

The pegasus paused on the doorstep as he listened to that creak, head tilted with the effort of recollection.  He was sure he'd heard that exact same sound before, but where?

 

Oh, right.  A nightmare.  And considering he usually never got more 2-3 hours of sleep a day, he always felt it to be particularly unfair when he got one of those dreams.  It put him off his music for a day, too.  How had it started?  There was path to the old house shadowed by the trees of a dark forest where the thing they said had happened, and the door just wouldn't open fast enough for him to see the whole scene, which was almost a mercy except that not knowing what happened was as terrifying as seeing the actual remnants of the event-

 

Sky blinked again.  But the dream wasn't going away.  No, he was still seeing it in front of him.  There was the room that looked like a tornado hit it, there was the expanding red puddle, the moan of pain from the mare he knew...

 

"BUNNY!"  Crying out her nickname as he stumbled forward into the room, Sky made an even bigger mess of the place, if that were possible.  He'd been carrying one of his instruments on his back, a keyboard, in case he was struck by inspiration or if his friend just wanted a song, but it was hard to run with one of those!  He tripped over one of the stuffed pushies, careened slowly into a stacked pile of papers, which fell on top of the keys making a discordant soundtrack to the horror show he couldn't escape, until he finally face-planted beside Crystal Moon, splashing the red ink everywhere.

 

"Ungh... Bunny... sorry... couldn't make it... what happened?"  He groaned, almost halfway to sobbing.  Sometimes, he had a hard time telling if he was awake or asleep, as the world seemed somewhat weird to him in both states... but he wasn't waking up, the picture wasn't breaking up...

[Elderflower]

Slowly, Bunny’s consciousness came back under her full control. Her body was still pretty tired - it always was this time of the month, since she was normally a heavy and frequent sleeper. When deadlines loomed, though, she felt the pressure and fought off sleep valiantly until her work was done. Her crash last night was much needed, but it had left her sore and very rebellious towards the idea of moving or getting up at all. That was why, even with a familiar voice calling to her, it took her a very long time to open her eyes.

When she finally did, she found herself just about face-to-face with Sky Sailing on the floor - and he was covered in red! The exact shade of red looked suspiciously like the very new and very expensive ink she had been in the middle of putting away last night…

The pieces of the puzzle came together and Bunny was hit with a wave of sadness, and with Sky near to sobbing right in front of her, well...there was no resisting the water works! Huge, wet globs began to pour from her lavender eyes and she cried alongside her friend.

“Sky!” she gasped, pulling the empty bottle out from under her before wiggling over to sob against her friend, “This ink was brand new and so ni-hi-hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.”

Of course, moving over towards her friend and crying on him just caused Bunny to make an even bigger mess of ink, but she wasn’t exactly in her right mind. She was groggy, sore, and more than a little loopy from sleeping for so long. And she was sad, darn it! Her precious red ink was all over the floor and the two ponies, turning her home into a crime scene for the worst kind of criminal offence: wasting good art supplies!

“I spilled the whole bottle,” the little mare wailed. And then it dawned on her.

What must this have all looked like from Sky Sailing’s perspective? To enter her house, finding it to be in complete disarray with her body collapsed in a pool of red. The more she woke up, the more she could make sense of things - and making sense of things meant realizing just how scared her friend must have been, which only made her cry harder!

“Y-you must have been so s-s-s-scared! I’m sorryyyyyyy!”

[Blueblood]

For several minutes, the dark room served an an echo chamber of sobs, with Sky Sailing crying because he thought Crystal Moon was hurt, Crystal crying because she'd saddened her friend, Sky crying because his friend was sad, and so on.  By this time, the red ink had so seeped over the both of them, that when Sky went to wipe the tears from his face, he left streaks of red running down his cheeks.  The look resembled nothing so much as a cosmetics salesmare who'd just been hit by a water balloon. 

 

The pegasus paused, to take a breath, and then looked down at himself, and over at the unicorn mare in the puddle of ink.  All of a sudden, the funny side of the business struck him, and he cracked up laughing.  "Oh, Bunny Moon, never change."  He offered a hoof to help her up, and a wing to dry her eyes.  This sort of thing would sometimes happen from time to time when they were foals, with one's narcolepsy or the other's insomnia bringing them both into odd situations.  Heck, they'd met when a half-asleep Sky had to be convinced that the rainbow-maned unicorn filly wasn't a figment of his imagination.  That had to have been a frustrating conversation for Crystal, but they could both laugh about it now.  Otherwise, they could hardly have been friends!

 

"Huh, this would make a rather disturbing album cover.  Or maybe a sweet one.  Tragedies of blood are only spills of ink, after all, from a pen that writes the world."  Not bad imagery for a song, either...  He blinked again, aware that the situation was still not an ideal one.  After all, good ink was as hard to come by as good recording equipment, and only slightly less expensive in the long run.  "Er, some of it's still wet.  Maybe we could collect the drops?"

[Elderflower]

Bunny sniffed and rubbed away her tears before stuttering her response, “I’ll never ch-change. How could I finish S-Sailor muh-muh-muh-Mare’s story if I ch-changed?”

After a few deep breaths she finally calmed down enough to start sighing, then took her time to wipe away Sky’s tears, too, frowning slightly in concentration. Once she was done she gave a confident little nod before finally getting up on her hooves, looking around at the red mess in dismay. It was such a nice ink...but Sky was right! It was make a pretty neat album cover...and she could design it!

“I could make that cover and I would really really love to,” she said in her usual flat tone before adding, “But there’s no point, is there? Unless somepony puts together an album…In the meantime, this ink needs to be cleaned up- it’s been exposed to the air too long, there’s no saving it.”

The short little mare bounced over to her kitchen, hiding the mischievous glint in her eye. She was impressed by her own cleverness, enough so that she wasn’t too sad about her ink any more! That foolish Sky Sailing was still working a crap job instead of making a living off of his real talent, and that was just silly! She was determined to show him the light and convince him to become a musician just like he was meant to do!

 

First things first, though. She quickly filled a bucket with soapy water in her kitchen, which was totally open and connected to her living room, just raised a little by two steps that ran the length of the large, open main space of the house. Who needed a dining room? Her kitchen and living room were just one large area that she could step into as soon as she opened her door! It was ideal!

 

She brought back the soapy water, then sponged herself and Sky clean before working on the carpeted floor. Thank the alicorns for gentle, magical soap that could remove any stain without a fuss!

“I guess I’ll have to find somepony with a knack for music to make the album,” she continued while she cleaned herself and her friend up. “But who? I’m so busy all the time, it’ll be hard to meet somepony new and convince them…”

Three, two, one…

Bunny Moon pinned Sky Sailing with flawlessly-executed puppy eyes, her lavender gaze wide, shining, and pleading. He was the one she wanted to make that album and her expression said it all!

[Blueblood]

“I’ll never ch-change. How could I finish S-Sailor muh-muh-muh-Mare’s story if I ch-changed?”

 

Sky had to admit, Bunny had a point there.  He'd followed his friend's stories from the very first one she got published; a lot of their aesthetic influenced his own songwriting.  Particularly Sailor Mare; the underlying idea that no trouble was insurmountable with love and a care for doing the right thing, as opposed to violence was an underlying conviction he shared, and it would come out in his songs.

 

Well, whenever anypony could comprehend what the lyrics were actually saying.  He wrote most of them at 3AM, and many made sense to nopony but himself.  He knew that on some level, and so was hesitant about putting his livelihood solely upon his music.

 

"I could make that cover and I would really really love to, but there’s no point, is there? Unless somepony puts together an album…In the meantime, this ink needs to be cleaned up- it’s been exposed to the air too long, there’s no saving it.”

 

Bunny's clever tactic sailed right over Sky's head, though to be fair, he was worried if the ink had splashed onto his keyboard, or into the more delicate magical mechanisms.  He'd spent long nights getting those to work, and it would be a shame if they sparked out now.  "Alright.  Hope you don't mind if I set up after; I've got a couple of new songs that I wanted to share with you while I was here."

 

As she went into the kitchen, he cleared a spot on the floor, and set the keyboard on it's stand.  There was a spot of ink, but a quick scale run confirmed that it played fine.  He sighed in relief as the unicorn mare returned to clean the rest of the ink up.  Thankfully, she only had to brush his hide; sometimes he wore shirts, particularly when performing, and the stain would have been tough to get out!

 

I guess I’ll have to find somepony with a knack for music to make the album,” she continued while she cleaned herself and her friend up. “But who? I’m so busy all the time, it’ll be hard to meet somepony new and convince them…”

 

Well, there it was.  The primed shot, loaded with dewy eyes and pleading expression.  The pegasus was hit point-blank and spiraled to the ground.  "Um... well... I've got some recording equipment at home.  I guess I could put together a vinyl LP for a short print run, or something."  He stammered, rubbing the back of his head.  "I mean... for the few who'd want it, I guess.  It'd be nice to have your work on it; I've always thought it was good."