Post by Octavia on Mar 16, 2014 16:28:18 GMT -6
The days were growing short. To Octavia's right, the sun was settling down towards the horizon, orange hues meeting afternoon blues. The air moved like the breaths of deep sleep, still for a moment, then coming up just barely strong enough that, as she passed the splintering fence of an older home, she heard just a single soft note from the rod of a wind chime from its backyard. Somewhere in the distance, a lawnmower engine hummed. As she passed a yard, a sprinkler sounded out a continuous whisper, the water pattering against tousled hedges and the bark of a young & lone maple tree, a bit sprinkling as dark grey dots on the sidewalk in front of her. Apart from the passing of the occasional car, she was alone with the murmurs of a Saturday in Ponyville, the footsteps of her boots edging out the other little sounds with the dull pops of a metronome set low. She checked the time on her phone, the characters punctuated with delicate serifs: 5:12 PM. Buoyed to find she had been making a decent pace after all, she put the phone back in the pocket of her trousers, wiggled her shoulders a little to adjust the press of the chains of her cello case on them, and kept to her walk through the neighborhood. A few short blocks and bends in the street later, she followed the sidewalk right onto another street that went straight along towards the boulevard. As she walked, she could not help but look at the middle school as she passed along its galvanized fence, its facade of roughly-finished, brown-black bricks giving it a dated look. It looked so small to her compared to Canterlot High, but she vaguely remembered how big it seemed to her when she was just a 12-year-old girl with a new bookbag and no idea what to expect. As she passed the main building, her look settled on the second of the buildings with a silent sigh. It was the gym, but inside, the polished wood of the basketball court had been more a home to most of her memories of practicing with the school's modest orchestra after school than a place of sports. The memories seemed a little distant now, and even a little boring. Three years of hearing her playing echoing off the same steel walls and the same unoccupied bleachers was exciting at the time, but since then, she had made it to high school, had started playing in better ensembles, and she had met Lyra with her quirky buttons, easygoing smile, and always something to talk about such that Octavia often found herself distracted by whatever she might have been thinking about beforehand to join in the topic. The bus stop past the middle school was nice enough, especially for being just past a middle school, the thick pine-green paint of the canopy's posts weathering years of assaults by students' neon-colored gel pens with armored grace, though the plastic that held the latest ads had long been scratched up with so many crass words that they were virtually impossible to read among each other, and probably for the best. Octavia lowered her case against the bench and smoothed over the shoulders of her jacket. For tonight, she had chosen a nicer outfit, her fitted jacket black with subtle charcoal pinstripes, the lining a satiny lavender. To coordinate, and for the sake of looking more casual than she usually did, she chose a black blouse with pink stripes to accompany her bowtie. Nothing necessarily spectacular compared to the norm, but spectacle was hardly ever her style. She checked her phone again. "Ah, plenty of time." After sweeping aside any dirt that might have been on the bench, she took her seat with a straight posture, glancing in the direction of Lyra's apartment complex up the boulevard a little ways. Octavia didn't see her, but the bus was still fifteen minutes out. |