Her full name was Glissando Philarmonica Scratch, but she liked it when ponies called her Gliss. She loved her pancakes thin and she liked to sleep in. She despised canaries and couldn't stand the smell of melting rubber. She played the guitar, but then again, everypony in Los Pegasus played something, so it didn't make her special. She was a foal of two filly-foolers, conceived magically, but she wasn't the only one; so it didn't make her special either. She enrolled at Music faculty at sixteen, but there were other such exemptions, so, a prodigy in a city of prodigies, she was nothing special.

She lived with her mothers who argued and loved and she played her six guitars in turn, for, were she to be poor in her circumstances, she would actually be special; and she wasn't; and she studied music at a university which was dedicated solely to teaching arts. She had coffee in the morning and tea at night. She was sixteen but laughed like an adult and cried like a foal. In time, she would still be sixteen but would laugh like a foal and cry like an adult.

She was easily impressed; she was cement. She was fragile like glass. She toured the streets in a scarf and boots. She missed summer when she slipped on ice and she looked forward to winter on hot summer days. She sat grimly by the window on Hearth's Warming Eve and she never liked getting presents. She wasn't tighthooved but she didn't like parting with her golden bits. She loved her mothers dearly and she knew their marriage was on a brink. She held them together and she hated herself for being so unable. She caught snowflakes with her tongue and she was afraid to drink water from the tap.

She admired history and hated it deeply. She could never pick up foreign languages but wished she could speak them all. She pretended to be a professional guitarist and knew her faults by heart. She wanted to try out other arts but never succeeded.

She never liked tobacco smoke or alcohol but didn't mind trying either. She didn't mind drugs but was terrified of trying them. She knew her mothers lied to her and she loved them all the same. She knew everypony lied to everypony.

She was fine with her mothers' relationship and was afraid to admit that she was into males. She was proud to be an earth pony but envied unicorns for their magic. She was afraid of being deemed racist. She knew she was supposed to hate griffins but honestly didn't mind them.

She liked to pick up wet autumn leaves from the charcoal asphalt. She kept her guitar in a sack but had a couple cases. She hated university and wished she had a decent room of her own instead of a modified living room. She was just an ordinary sixteen-year-old foal, like so many post-war foals in Equestria, who never knew true oppression or criminality, and yet complained the loudest. She would become the voice of her generation, standing up against the war, and the police, and the criminal world. She would fail.

She would love a strange love and be loved back. She would hate deeply and receive honest hate. She would try to save her family. She would try to save her neighbours' family. She would try to save the city. She would try to save the world. She would try to save herself.

She would try to be herself - and surprisingly, she would succeed at this task. She would try to find friends - and she would succeed. She would try to find love - and she would succeed.

She succeeded and lost, much like everypony everywhere. In short, she was just a common teenage foal. But, maybe, it was just such a foal that the city needed.