Sometimes we're not prepared for adversity. When it happens, sometimes we're caught short. We don't know exactly how to handle it when it comes up. Sometimes we don't know what to do when adversity takes over. I have advice for all of us. It sounds like what you're supposed to say when you have that kind of problem: "Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"

- Cannonball Adderley (slightly paraphrased)

The Sweetest Music

Chapter One

Puttin' on the Ritz

***

The snowstorm hadn't subsided.

Contrary to the weather forecast, snow was erupting from the grey clouds, rushing down in a whirlwind of white flakes, making Lyra shiver and cover her neck with a hoof. She'd lost her scarf on the way, and she knew better than to try to look for it in the middle of the fervent show of nature's blinding rage.

The mint pony trotted down the frost-bitten street, past the grimy lampposts and muddy windows, the wheat-soaked bars and perfume-spoilt hairdresser's', and the empty looks of occasional passerby; glares, curiosity, sadness, delight. The night was young, but Lyra liked to take her time before the performance. Especially given that it wasn't she who was to perform tonight. She could just sit back, toss a few drinks, and take in the music, the weeping howls of the guitar, the cries of the horns, the drum's chatter, the bass's sombre resonance, the piano's droplets of teary notes. And, honestly, who ever plays blues on a lyre?..

Lyra's chin and cheeks were assaulted with an especially violent, turbulent whirlwind of snow as she turned the corner and faced the uneasy storm muzzle-to-muzzle. The flakes cut at her face, rushing through, up the busy Canterlot street. And indeed, Canterlot downtown was unusually crowed for the night. Countless ponies, none of them familiar, trotted along the street: the club-goers in their classy suites and ties, and the musicians in white tuxedos, and the busy business ponies with grim looks that showed very well that they didn't want to have anything to do with nightlife and were just returning home from work, and the common passers-by who were in no mood to pay heed to anything going on around them, their eyes fixed on the ground beneath their hooves, and the strollers, and the buyers, and the sellers, and eveypony who could possibly come out at half to eleven.

Lyra breathed in the fresh scent of the snowy city. She liked Canterlot, in a way. It was... unique, to say the least. A yesterday for the tomorrow. A silence for the noise. A thesis to the antithesis. Or both. Or all of them, at once. Or something else entirely. One way or another, Canterlot was really something else, in the purest, absolute meaning.

However... Why did she feel so alien in this city of tall lights and muffled music? Why was the everpresent sense of loneliness her constant companion? Was it the city itself, or the way she chose to perceive it? Was there anything worth perceiving, after all? Maybe she was wrong, and Canterlot was a marvel itself. But now, more than often, she found herself thinking that it wasn't Canterlot she found appealing; at least not in the city sense. Substituting the city with murky blues bars, she had come to love the nightlife. Her Canterlot was the bars, and the booze, and the blues. It was the Canterlot of the Night, and it was not the same Canterlot that brought about so many - far more than eleven - kinds of loneliness.

But if there was one thing worth living here, in this angry and dismissive city - if there was one single thing that kept her going, in spite of everything - it was the music. Not just the blues, the music of aching soul, the soothing wail of the city's tenants, but the tune of the city itself: the rhythmic clip-clop of hooves stomping the wet asphalt into dust, the abrupt horns of the wind, the flutes of the sour breathing, the huffs, the talks, the whispers, the murmurs, the shouts, the giggles, the frowns, the mutters and the utters, and the gasps and the rasps, and the crooning, and the swooning - the bawdy symphony of the real Canterlot, the Canterlot behind the pictures in papers and the rusty facade of classical music and classical ponies.

Lyra lit up a cigarette as she stepped around the corner onto a painfully clean street, the Manehattan's Fifth of Canterlot, the elongated square, the rushing current of the forest river. The smoke evaporated in the air in a matter of mere seconds, mingling with the winter breeze, consumed by the dispassionately angry snowflakes, exchanging its usual how-do-you-dos with the night.

It was not quite the centre of Canterlot - or was it? - but it surely was its heart, with all the fancy shops and the giant clocktower molded in the zeitgeist of modernity, and the hotels with their everpresent lights and the ads with their everpresent lies, and the lampposts striking the snowflakes with righteous vigour, and the white, blue, yellow, green-ish moon with its smiling frown that seemed to be peeking at every passer-by, every snowflake, every minute molecule of the air.

Lyra strolled past all the shining glory of the street, puffing on her cigarette as the tobacco depleted by the seconds. The bar wasn't far - just a couple more minutes, right in the middle of the labyrinth formed by the peculiar buildings of Old Canterlot. Just to think that her own mother would suggest she accompany her to such a "lively place"! Heh, that's not the kinda place you'd take your mother to. Lyra smirked. Of course, her mother was concerned about the self-inflicted solitude that the lyrist relished in; but she did want to be alone. After all, she was still relatively young - Thirty-Years-Old was still a far-away land - and... And, well, the dates her mother had tried to set her up had gone bust. Because, clearly, stallions weren't quite to her liking.

Lyra slowly turned her head from side to side. Of course, they couldn't read minds, but... But you had to be cautious. Be careful. Be aware. No filly-fooling thoughts. Only a law-abiding smile. The mint mare gave such a smile to a nearby policepony. The pegasus stallion didn't return it.

Lyra turned round the corner, and stepped into the maze of old Canterlot buildings. She never admired such architecture, if only because it breathed antique - if stone could breathe. It wasn't the new Canterlot, constantly erecting upon the old city, following the example of Manehattan, which, by now, had been swirled away in an army of skyscapers and neon lights. Maybe she could just move to Manehattan, Lyra mused as she followed the narrow path. Maybe she just needed to move.

Canterlot itself wasn't the place she wanted to live in: it just wasn't what she could get a kick of, and, if she knew anything about life, it was the fact that if you weren't getting a kick out of something, you should just move. But not anypony can move away, right? she thought as she spotted the familiar old building. She could move away, of course: she had the money, and her mother would probably support her, but... Well, for one thing, she didn't want to leave her mother. For another thing, she wasn't sure that it'd be so different somewhere else - anywhere else. And...

Well, maybe there was one thing worth living here. Music. Not the kind of music played in concert halls or dinner parties, but the music of the bars - such bars as the one she had just approached. The kind of music that made her drink the night away and breathe in the scent of smoke and lean back and tap her hoof against the floor, despite the fact that she'd still have to get up at six and go to work, work that she didn't find interesting in the slightest but that her mother insisted that she do. And Lyra didn't want to upset her.

But this music wasn't really Canterlot's speciality, was it? The capital wasn't the only place where blues and this newborn 'jazz' flowed freely across and about the night. But there was no use thinking about it now. Now, Lyra wanted nothing more than to shoo all the grim thoughts away and just enjoy the night.

She sighed and knocked at the rusty metal door.