It was Faustmas night, at least in Ponyville’s time zone, and Lyra is about to come back to her house riiight... now.

“Okay...” she, like many others, had made a habit of talking to herself for the cameras, “Well, that was fun. I guess. I spent most of it self-loathing, but... okay, who am I foaling, this is the worst Faustmas of my life. Besides when my brother died, but I don’t need to go back to that....”

We’ll be back right after this short break.

There once was a man, his name was Fred! He lived in a very old red shed! He hiked through the wilderness and found a cane, a cane just lying there soaked and plain! He picked up the cane, and it had a message: “over in Equestria, do they have dressage?”. And he thought “Of course not, why would that be, but who can disprove it? Surely not me.”.

“Maybe lyring will make me feel better,” a doing nothing in the living room Lyra told herself. “It’s worth a shot.” She went to the bedroom and clopped—wait, that’s from something else I’m writing. She went to the bedroom and opened the chest at the foot of the bed, because that’s just the kind of pony Octavia was, opened the chest that contained her primary lyre, magicked it out of the soft dome-lined inside, and closed both chests. She sat on the bed and started randomly strumming, hoping she would eventually be inspired by one particular broooom and make it into a whole thing.

She spent literally a minute just doing that, then decided something else was in order. She wondered whether playing sad or happy music would let her deal with her emotions better, or if the music should not be overly emotional instead, which made her question if music-playing was even a good idea at all, then she wondered what piece of music didn’t show any kind of emotion anyway, and that sounds like a short summary, but that’s how quickly she went through it. She thought about the idea of playing already-written music for about a second then realised that would miss the point.

She even more briefly thought about making lyrics too, then remembered the lyrics she had previously written in her life. She put the lyre on the floor, laid down on the bed, and pulled a blanket over her entire body. “I made that,” she said. She wondered what it was about words, since when she saw a crappy drawing or Lego build or whatever, it was like “What charming effort! Keep on trying.”, but when she saw crappy things made of text, it was like “You’re a pathetic, incompetent, deluded somehow not killed by a fanmare moron.”.

“Okay, Lyra. Just get up and make some sad music. That’ll make you feel better.” She did all the things she did to get under the blanket in reverse down to the atom and began strumming the lyre a little less randomly. Broooom? No. Broooom. Maybe. Broooom. Ooh. Broooom? Okay, no, that sounds weird. The point is that she developed a slow, sad tune, although in China it would’ve been seen as calming, and it let her look at her problems from a cold, logical angle to effectively deal with them. Wait, it did the opposite.

“I love you, Octavia,” she said like she was never going to see her again. She hadn’t cried so much since that time she was born. “And I have something to say to you, too, Lyra. This isn’t helping. What’s the problem anyway? I know what I’m going to do. I should just calm down and have a normal night. Let’s see, what do I do besides music and things that are necessary for survival? Sweet shop... television... um... that’s it, really. Is my life really that monotonous? But aren’t most lives like that? Anyway, I need to get my mind off what I said. Maybe watching an obscure mediocre film will help.”

She turned to Netflix and, incredibly, actually managed to pick something. It’s pretty incredible to me, anyway. She chose a film which the transcriber can’t say because they don’t want her to give any free advertising, but it was so slightly bad that she fell asleep an hour into it. Here’s a Twidash conversation.

“And don’t use any magic or I’ll think about breaking up even more.”

“You’re never actually going to leave me.”

“I might sometime.”

Twilight would’ve went to the bed, but she was already there, so she could skip directly to the clopping Rainbow step. Rainbow closed her eyes because it felt right.

“Twilight,” Rainbow said in the “oh fuck” way, not the “stop” way.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,” the token earth pony of the Programme Productions headquarters said, “We get it, the writer’s horny. He’s always like that, nothing’s changed, so can we please move on?”

The next morning, Lyra woke up, on the couch as expected. What she didn’t expect was that all the walls had been painted pink. Luckily, this didn’t happen.

“Didn’t mean fall asleep couch,” Lyra said, her drowsiness allowing her to access extra brainpower and eliminate superfluous words from her sentences.

She got up and did morning things so boring that four suicides were reported. The reports all turned out to be hoaxes. Once she was done with that, she went to the kitchen and got herself some cereal made of soy and a milk-like beverage made from rice. Or maybe it was the other way round, it’s been so long. But what she should be using to give additional flavour to and/or soften her cereal is CAEB. Anyway, we all know this is just padding for the eventual arrival of Octavia, so as said Octavia would say, lezza go. Okay, she probably wouldn’t say that.

Octavia’s door got a right knocking.

“Maybe it’ll be Derpy Hooves,” Lyra wishfully thought. “Have to think positive. Ly.”

She went to the door and subsequently opened it. It was Octavia.

“Hello, Octavia.”

“Hello.”

“Come in.” She did.

“Was Faustmas all right for you?”

“Look...” Lyra closed the door, “I didn’t mean to call you that. You were right, we might end up needing the money to live and I was being overly sentimental. And I know, I just said it, but I’m sorry I said that. You did the right thing and—I’m already saying the same things again. What can I do to make it up to you?”

“A couple minutes after I left and I soaked it in and got over it, I realised that you were, in all likelihood, going to come to your senses and, whether or not you agreed with the decision, at least feel bad about calling me by a swear. You don’t have to do anything for me, all that’s important to me is that you realise what you did.”

“I know it was wrong, and I’m really sorry. I was mad and I was wrong and I can’t believe I said that to you and I feel really bad... I just... I’m sorry, okay?”

“I understand how you felt, and I would’ve loved to be with you on Faustmas too, but I had to do it. You were wrong and distressed and that was fine, but what you said....”

“Okay, we’re not getting anywhere. So how can I make it up to you?”

“Everypony does things that are dumb sometimes and it’s just an isolated incident, so I won’t hold a grudge. If it happens again, though, I might have to think less of you....”

“Well, it’ll never happen again, I promise. Are you sure I don’t have to do anything? Because I can’t just shake this off.”

“I won’t hold a grudge and I still love you. Just one thing, though.”

“Yes?”

“I hope this does something for your ‘perfection’ idea.”

“Yeah, um... I’ll look at that. Reconsider it. Not be ridiculous.”

“Good.”

Lyra’s face looked kind of red even though she had fur, because that’s just how sad she was.

“Do you need a hug?” Octavia said.

“Yes.”

They hugged embracingly. Except they didn’t even do that because they were quadrupeds.

“It’s worth repeating that I still love you,” Octavia said.

“But I’m a terrible pony.”

“You just lost your temper. This is the only time something like this has ever happened, and you know what you did, so get over it, all right?”

Lyra inhaled and exhaled. “All right.”

“Is there anything you planned to do with me or do you want to be alone?”

“Accept that you’re in control of the relationship because of what I just did, if we ever break up it’s obviously going to be you leaving me, the fact that you’re the one bringing most of the money even if I’m able to support myself with no rent and LCD food, and you’re way out of my league?”

“Lyra, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: we’re equals. I don’t want it to be one of those relationships. And do you seriously care about ‘leagues’?”

“No, I’m just being melodramatic. Because I love you and don’t want you to leave me. But if you feel like I’m not who you want, then don’t tell yourself... well... I’ve already said enough about that.”

“I love you, Lyra. Don’t worry about it.”

And so they watched a documentary about how evil Company is with their Product.

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