My name is Octavia Melody, and like Twilight, I too have a story I wish to tell.

I have my own sins to bear, and while the acts I've committed are no less horrifying and unforgivable than those of the one I called my closest friend, those acts and my own twisted disposition come from a much more personal place. I suppose you could say the darker aspects of my psyche were something I was destined to inherit from the beginning.

If you are unsure as to what I mean, then allow me to tell you a bit of my family and where they come from.

The first thing you must understand is that every member of my family, from immediate to extended, is a unicorn. The second is that the vast majority of those family members have been or are currently musicians of some repute. As such, the Melody family has become tremendously wealthy over the course of many generations.

I am the first earth pony to be born into the family and that is where the root of the problem lay. My family's hometown of Trottingham was a large but rather isolated town in the middle of the Griffish Isles east of Equestria, and much of the populace consisted of unicorn traditionalists.

For centuries the vast majority of the citizens of Trottingham held to the old fashioned belief that unicorns were the superior tribe. They believed themselves above earth ponies and pegasi, a belief that originated from the settlers that migrated to the Griffish Isles from the Old Capital of Unicornia long ago. Earth pony and pegasi travelers from the Equestrian mainland rarely visited for this reason, but the opposite was true for those originally from Trottingham.

To many Trottingham natives, Canterlot was a city of opportunity, and there were a great number that chose to move to Equestria to seek their fortune in the modern capital city. Supremacist notions aside, Trottingham was by no means a backwards town economically. In an effort to modernize the town, there was some trade with both Equestria and the Griffonian Kingdom, but generally Trottingham was fairly self sustaining and had been that way for ages.

I won't go into details because I myself do not know them, but through some clever decision making on the part of a previous mayor, and the approval of the council at the time, Trottingham had become an economically wealthy town almost on par with places like Manehattan or FIllydelphia, though still on a much smaller in scale due to the fact that it was a smaller town compared to the larger cities in Equestria.

Having said all this, it's important for you to understand that while Trottingham was culturally and economically rich, many of its citizens were wealthy backwards thinking unicorn supremacists. In this modern day and age there were occasionally some ponies that had traveled to Equestria and come back denouncing the old fashioned ways and views of the town, but not nearly enough to make much of a difference.

More often than not those ponies were shunned or treated with no more respect than an earth pony would receive. In the end, those ponies would move back to Equestria and the status quo would continue. Back during my great-grandmother's generation, my family had been among the Trottingham natives to move to the Equestrian capital of Canterlot.

The Melody family had already been well known in Equestria for producing some of the finest classical musicians in the world, and it wasn't long after they'd arrived before they made a name for themselves among the Canterlot nobility. On the surface, the Melody family had learned to tolerate the other pony tribes—more so out of necessity than anything—but in reality they very much held firm in their supremacist beliefs and still do to this day.

Now you can see how being born an earth pony in that kind of environment would be... problematic. I suppose I should be grateful that I wasn't born in Trottingham, but that hardly mattered given who I was born to.

I won't try to justify what Twilight and I have done, but I want you to know that, like Twilight, I am not well mentally. This however, originates not from some possible mysterious magical ailment, but rather from the sadistic mare that raised me as a tool instead of a daughter.

Thus we come to my mother, Septima Melody.

Whereas the rest of the Melody family had nothing but disdain for anypony who wasn't a unicorn or the Princess herself, Septima Melody looked down on everypony. It didn't matter if they were earth ponies, pegasi or other unicorns; to her, they were all worth less than the dirt beneath her hooves, and she wasn't shy about showing it.

The only pony she showed even a modicum of respect for was my father, and even then the love and tolerance between the two was as fragile as glass and just as transparent. My father was another unicorn whose family had moved from Trottingham to Canterlot, and the stallion carried the same prejudice and supremacist views of any other unicorn from that isolated town in the Griffish Isles.

My mother had gone back to Trottingham for a time when she was younger, and that was when she'd met my father, Capriccio. They both traveled back to Canterlot together and married after a few years, Capriccio taking the Melody family name in the process. Other than that Capriccio Melody is hardly worth mentioning.

Though I'd always wondered how he could fall for a mare like Septima Melody. Maybe it really was different back when they'd first met; maybe they really had loved each other deeply then, but by the time I was born, the love had become as brittle as dried leaves.

Still, while my father despised me as much as the rest of my family, he chose to ignore me altogether, unlike my mother. Septima was the real problem; that mare was the one who'd made me what I had eventually become, but I tell this tale to give what I feel is some much needed insight rather than to simply place blame.

Septima Melody was an exceptional musician—perhaps the most talented mare the Melody family had produced in several generations. With only a bit of practice, she could play just about any instrument with flawless precision and a great number of the songs she composed were received by the masses as nothing short of brilliant.

Naturally, all that prodigious talent combined with great wealth and the influence of the nobility made for a mare with bottomless pride and arrogance. Somehow, despite her horrendously haughty and sometimes downright cruel and vindictive disposition, the nobles still fawned over her. They fell over themselves to get in her good graces, did what they could to earn the closest seats during her concerts, and all the while she devoured the attention like a ravenous timberwolf.

For my mother, life in Canterlot was a paradise, but she wasn't without her enemies. There were other musicians—some other nobles, but mostly commoners who'd desperately struggled their way to fame only to have their dreams crushed underhoof by Septima Melody.

Sometimes they were in the way of some selfish ambition, sometimes it was because of some perceived slight against her, and sometimes it was because my mother simply didn't like the pony or found it amusing. Whatever her reasons, Septima had eventually become a monster in the eyes of many.

She had become somepony that needed to be brought down; somepony that needed to be taught a lesson in humility. My mother didn't see the consequences of her actions—didn't see the hole she'd dug for herself; she couldn't, completely wrapped up in her own world as she was. Like the villain in a play who thought themselves untouchable she was consumed by her own hubris, and just like that villain, that was her downfall; the end of her reign as one of the greastest musicians alive today.

In Canterlot, most ponies generally tend to trot everywhere on their own, unlike places like Baltimare or Manehattan where coaches were the most common way to travel around the city. In the wealthier districts of Canterlot however, it was a far more common practice to hire a personal coach, especially if said pony was traveling through the poorer or middle class districts.

My family was no different in this regard and my mother often took a personal coach whenever she traveled to and from a concert. It was on the way back from one of those concerts late one night that her life took a turn for the worst. She'd been playing with the rest of the Canterlot Philharmonic Orchestra at the Great Celestial Theatre, which was located near the south of what would be considered Canterlot's middle class district.

Naturally, Septima's performance was perfect and the show was a roaring success. After the show, my mother shook off her fans and separated herself from the rest of the crowd as she made her way back to her own personal carriage. Drunk off all the praise and adoration she'd received, the mare didn't realize the pony pulling her coach wasn't the one who'd taken her to the theatre.

Now, all of this was told to me by my mother herself and this part in particular was told during one of her episodes, so the details here get a bit murky in my memory. From what I can remember, the coachpony had somehow managed to make its way to an abandoned street in one of the seedier neighborhoods of the poorer district without my mother's notice.

Once she realized something was wrong, it was too late. She found herself ambushed by a group of thugs and was dragged off to some dark alley to be beaten mercilessly. Among the many injuries she'd presumably sustained, the worst by far was to her horn. The thugs had snapped her horn clean off and left her to stew in her own tears, bile and agony. The way mother tells it, I can only imagine how nightmarish an affair it must've been.

Looking back on it, I would've laughed if it weren't for the suspicions I had about my own conception.

Mother had always been strangely tight lipped when it came to that subject. Oh she and my father would talk for ages about how I should've never been born and how I was a blight on the otherwise perfect Melody family, but neither ever spoke of how or why I was different from the rest...

In any case, the only other thing I remember about what my mother told me was that she'd been left screaming for help for at least a few hours before the City Watch found her broken and weeping in that alleyway. It was a horrendous scandal that made its way into every paper in Canterlot and even a few in some of the other larger cities in Equestria.

I eventually found out that a few members of my family had paid quite a hefty sum of bits to certain important ponies to have the grittier details of the assault left unpublished. I never found out everything about what happened, but I'm certain it was for the benefit of the family as a whole.

As for what became of Septima...

Her horn grew back eventually, as all unicorn horns do, but until it healed, she was out of commission for several days and her musical skill suffered for it. Even after it healed, her flawless precision and razor sharp focus were never the same. She also suffered mentally from the event and refused to talk to anypony for several weeks after the incident.

She spoke again after a period of time, but it was clear she had changed... and not for the better. She began to have horribly violent episodes, she would occasionally mumble nonsensical things to herself when she thought she was alone. Over time the sudden rages and incoherent babbling lessened, but never completely disappeared even after I was born.

For the most part she seemed to revert back to her normal self, at least in the eye of the public. A few things had changed however, aside from the rages and babbling. She resumed writing compositions and while they were as beautifully written as they'd always been, she could no longer bring out the best in the music she played, and those who heard her play took notice.

Her popularity began to wane, but she still had just enough skill to remain a prominent figure in the society of classical musicians. Despite her reduced presence however, she'd become somewhat calmer overall—more sedate, more measured in her attitude towards others. If one paid close enough attention, one could still see the utter loathing and disgust she harbored for her fellow ponies, but she had become adept at hiding her vitriolic hate.

This was all before I was born of course, and it was only a few years after I'd been conceived that I learned the truth. It was only after my mother had gifted me my first cello that I saw the twisted creature Septima Melody had truly become behind closed doors.

The living nightmare my life would become began with my mother, her lessons, and that wonderful, damnable cello.

Author's Notes:

Wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to go this route and make these Octavia centric interludes, but the idea was already in my head and wouldn't go away so here we are. More interludes to come in the future.

Also, sorry for the out of order release, but this was the chapter I ended up finishing first. Everything will be back to normal once I finish the next chapter of The Ties that Bind.