Cheerilee, at college in Canterlot, wakes up in a very bad situation and realizes that her life is going wrong.
YOH 1497, three years Before Luna's Return: Cheerilee went off to get her higher education at Canterlot, certain that her fine mind and diligence would win her the world. But she found that her small-town naivete marked her out to certain Ponies as a victim, and she was too trusting. Now, she's woken under circumstances that make it obvious to her that she's sinking into the same alcoholism and debauchery that claimed her mother Strawberry and are claiming her sister Berryshine, and that unless she changes her life, she will not have a very happy one.
Cheerilee came slowly to consciousness lying on a rug.
It was a very filthy rug. It smelt of stale tobacco and beer and wine and cider and more dubious smokes and drinks.
And sex. Lots and sex: the exudations of mares and stallions, as if she had gone to sleep in a bordello. A particularly dingy and unhygenic bordello.
"Eww ..." Cheerilee said. Her voice was a gasp. Her throat felt raw and dehydrated, her tongue fuzzy. The sexual reek was so strong that it was as if she could taste it in her mouth, even though she was, wisely, making no attempt to flehmen.
Slowly and horribly, the realization came to her that the reason she could taste it in her mouth was because some of it really was in her mouth. But that's impossible, she thought desperately. I broke up with that cad! Anyway, none of this smells like him -- oh, no.
She opened her eyes very slowly, dreading what vision might reveal. Sunlight stabbed into her eyes and she whimpered, shut them as she suddenly became aware of a truly awesome headache. She squeezed her eyes tight shut again, clenched her teeth, lay there for an eternity until the pounding in her head subsided to mere pain, instead of red agony.
Then, very carefully, she opened her eyes again.
In some ways, what she saw was a relief. She wasn't in some sort of dungeon, captive to some mad orgiastic cult or wicked ring of slavers out of some lewd bit-dreadful. All four of her limbs were free, and when she wriggled experimentally, she did not appear to be bound in any fashion.
She was in an ordinary, mundane, cheap little common room, as might be found in the less-fashionable dormitories near Canterlot University. She was lying on the floor, in front of a sofa, from which she had evidently rolled or been pushed at some point in the process of what had to have been the second worst night of her life.
The room was full of Ponies.
All were about her age, or a bit younger: undergraduate students, mostly. They were sleeping in a variety of postures, ranging from the adorable to the hilarious to the repulsive, and combinations thereof. Some were hugging each other; some were alone; and some juxtaposed in positions which implied that they had fallen asleep during intimate congress.
Looking around (at the expense of her head pounding even more intensely), Cheerilee could not see any stallion who seemed to have been particularly associated with herself. That was a relief -- or worry, depending on how one looked at it. For the taste in her mouth -- and a certain soreness in her nether regions -- informed her that her own personal role in this night of debauchery had been far from chaste.
Oh, no, she thought frantically. No, no no! But the reality around her mocked her mental protestations. Just like my mother! She lashed herself with the thought. I'm just like my mother!
She remembered the nights, years after her father's death, when her mother Strawberry's drinking had gotten wholly out of control. When she started coming home in the early morning, stinking, just as Cheerilee herself stank right now. Cheerilee had been young then -- eleven or twelve -- innocent, but not so innocent that she hadn't understood at least some of the implications of what she was smelling on her mother.
She knew enough, even at twelve, that she might have guessed what was going on. Yet her usual intelligence had clearly deserted her in this matter -- probably, she reflected, because she had not wanted to believe the truth about Strawberry. And, for a long time, nopony told her. That, in a strange way, said something good about Ponyville -- in many communities, her mother's conduct would have been thrown in her face the moment that others noticed it.
She was thirteen when somepony finally told her.
It was one of her classmates, of course. Raisin Cake. Raisin was fourteen -- a year older than Cheerilee -- and already cynical and angry at the world. Raisin was the first cousin of Cheerilee's very good friend Cup Cake, but Cheerilee had never gotten along well with her. Though, as Cheerilee remembered, she had actually been trying to cheer up Raisin, which had somehow led to a screaming argument, wth Raisin ranting at her.
And Raisin had concluded:
"Don't give me that crap that things get better. Look at you! Your Dad's dead and your Mom's a whorse!"
The words hit young Cheerilee like a slap to the face.
The whole schoolyard fell silent. Ponies were not a violent species, but -- as with Humans -- to cast aspersions upon a mother's character was a particularly vile insult. Cheerilee, for all her niceness, was known to have a temper. And a mean right forehoof. The onlookers half-expected Cheerilee to hit Raisin.
Cheerilee did not hit Raisin Cake. She did not hit Raisin Cake because, while the red of rage was indeed flickering at the edge of her vision, she also felt a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, because what Raisin had just said made a certain dreadful sense, especially in the light of what she had already noticed.
So Cheerilee did not hit Raisin Cake. Instead she glared into the older filly's eyes, and Raisin flinched for a moment before that gaze.
And Cheerilee asked:
"Why do you call my mother a whorse?"
Raisin Cake blinked, staring at Cheerilee in evident surprise.
"What, you don't know?" Raisin asked. "Everypony knows!"
Cheerilee took a half-step forward, thrusting her muzzle almost into Raisin's own.
Raisin Cake involuntarily took a half-step back, ears lowered.
"Just what," Cheerilee asked, her voice icy-cold, "have you heard about my mother?"
"What do you know?" asked Cheerilee, stepping further forward. "Tell me!" As Cheerilee said this, she pressed remorselessly in, and Raisin Cake was forced to step back to avoid physical contact. At the last Raisin's hind legs stumbled; she sat down and shrank back before Cheerilee's cold wrath. Cheerilee's nose actually touched Raisin's, and the older filly flinched away, averting her gaze and -- in the process -- also baring her throat to Cheerilee.
"My mom's friend told my mom that she'd seen Strawberry Punch going to that seedy little bar northeast of town on the Saddle Lake Road -- I think it's called the Carrot and Stick or something like that -- and, uh, kissing stallions and going off with them, and other Ponies told my mom's friend Strawberry did this a lot and that she was a whorse and that's just what I heard!" With the completion of that statement, Raisin Cake squeezed her eyes shut and trembled, obviously not wanting to see whatever Cheerilee was about to do to her.
But Cheerilee simply looked up, and around at the circle of onlookers.
She knew them all, of course, and fairly well. One does when one attends a one-room schoolhouse. Several were her very good friends. Others were at least casual friends. Very few didn't like her, and until just now, she had assumed that none actually hated her. She was a popular filly, helpful and kind to others, and generally well appreciated for these virtues.
What struck her, though, beholding that circle of familiar faces, was that -- among those old enough to understand what was happening, there was plenty of discomfort. They clearly sympathized with the emotional pain they assumed she was feeling -- though in truth, Cheerilee was too numb to feel much of anything right now. But few of them looked surprised.
"How long?" Cheerilee asked softly, shifting her gaze from one to the next. "How long have you all known?"
Most averted their eyes in shame. A few mumbled apologies.
Cup Cake -- the best friend she had in Ponyville Primary, since Mare Ivory Scroll had gone off to Canterlot Secondary -- stepped cautiously forward. Her expression was troubled.
"Several months," Cup Cake said. "I think I found out -- um -- around four months ago, cause it was a little before Hearth's Warming, dontcha know?" Cup Cake's paternal family was from Whinneysota Province, and it could be heard in her voice.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Cheerilee asked her.
"Well, at first I wasn't sure. Then, when I knew it was prolly true -- cause I was hearing it from other Ponies -- I just didn't want to hurt you. I figured you'd be really sad to hear about it, and I didn't want to make you sad." She looked at her own hooves, then directly into Cheerilee's eyes. "I'm real sorry."
Cheerilee had calmed down a little, and she could see that what Cup said made a lot of sense. She also saw that her friends hadn't tried to keep the truth from her so that they could laugh at her behind her back, but rather that they had done so because they feared hurting her. She still wished they'd told her earlier, but now at least she knew that they were still really her friends.
She still didn't like Raisin Cake for the way in which Raisin had chosen to use the secret, but now Cheerilee couldn't hate her for the simple fact of the revelation. Raisin had, after all, ultimately told her the truth. And while Cheerilee greatly valued Kindness, she also very much valued Honesty.
Better to know than to just trot along ignorant of reality, even a painful reality, thought Cheerilee at thirteen. Truth is definitely better than innocence.
Cheerilee, at twenty-five now much farther from innocence than she might have wished, struggled to her hooves -- which proved a remarkably difficult feat for her, compared to her normally-healthy condition. As she did so, pain stabbed through her head, and nausea twisted her gut. She realized that she had to go to the bathroom, and staggered through the unfamiliar apartment to where she imagined might exist that facility.
Fuzzy memories were starting to return to her as the alcoholic haze began to dissipate -- enough to make her aware that the olfactory, gustatory and tactile information being conveyed to her by her senses were horribly and sadly quite correct in their implications. They were still just a series of disconnected experiences -- of her letting intimate things be done to her, and actively doing similar things herself, by and to complete strangers. The little she could remember made her devoutly hope to remember no more of it.
She would have hung her head in shame, were it not for the fact that every time she lowered her head her innards squirmed in a manner which very much implied that her acquaintance with her current stomach contents were to be more abbreviated than was her normal digestive wont. She thus decided that any head-hanging was an activity best avoided until she had actually attained her lavatory goal.
After a false turn and opening one wrong door, she finally reached the bathroom, only to find it occupied.
This was less of a problem than it might have been, as both of the occupants were asleep. There was a mare in the bathtub, which would be convenient when she woke up and smelled herself. And there was a small skinny stallion on the tiled floor right outside the bathtub, where he may perhaps have attained after dismounting the mare, judging by the extent to which they smelled of one another, but been unable to progress any further.
Normally, Cheerilee would have been quite disgusted by this situation, but it was impossible for her to adopt any attitude of moral or even hygienic superiority regarding their actions, given that she had already deduced that she had attained her sleeping-place on the rug due to a fairly-similar set of circumstances. Besides, at least the couple in the bathroom didn't smell like anyponies but one another. Cheerilee was pretty sure there had been multiple stallions in her case -- and probably at least one mare as well. None of whom had even been her friends.
If anything, she had behaved far more disgracefully than had the bathroom sleepers.
And Cheerilee really had to use the bathroom.
So Cheerilee simply stepped over the sleeping stallion and sat on the toilet, relieving herself with a grateful sigh. The relief lasted only a moment, because now the upper end of her digestive tract then clamored for attention. She got up quickly, twisted around, being careful not to step on the small stallion, and finally hung her head, though whether or not it was in shame, or purely for practical reasons, would have been an interesting philosophical question, of the sort that in another mood Cheerilee might have enjoyed examining.
Right now the only thing of concern to Cheerilee was her stomach contents, of which she promptly proceeded to rid herself, in the process demonstrating one of the more trivial superiorities of the Ponies over their Pre-Pony ancestors of some two million years ago, and one that had nothing directly to do with the more obvious one of their powerful sapient brains. It was, however, an advantage very personally important to Cheerilee at this moment.
Unlike a true equid, Cheerilee could vomit. And did so, quite noisily and completely.
Afterward, she felt a bit better. Her stomach ceased convulsing, the light stopped hurting her eyes so severely, her headache slightly lessened. She knew enough biochemistry to realize that she had dumped out toxins -- the alcohol and whatever else she had consumed -- and her whole body was relaxing from the previous stresses of having to process them. Her mind was not yet completely clear, but it was clearing.
Cheerilee's throat was sore from the passage of her vomitus, and she was suddenly very thirsty. She did not bother to go to the kitchen, not when there was a sink right before her. She turned on the tap and simply lapped the water directly from it with her long and dextrous tongue. She did this for a long while, then turned off the water and stepped back with a gasp.
She felt a lot better -- at least physically -- now.
Cheerilee quickly washed her face in the sink, soaped her body in the worst-smelling places, cleaned herself as best she could without actually using the tub, which was occupied by the mare half of the slumbering bathroom couple. Then she sniffed herself quickly, checking her work. It would not pass close muster, but now she no longer smelled as much like a poorly-kept whorehouse. She would, at least, no longer be ashamed to meet other Ponies on the street.
She went more gracefully back into the living room than she had left it, her steps now stronger and better-coordinated than before. Her memories, at least of the earlier part of the night, were clearing, and she located her saddlebags without difficulty. Nopony had been into them. These were college students having a wild party, not criminals or thieves. Most of them were probably good Ponies, most of the time. Better Ponies than herself, at any rate.
Most of them were younger than her, too -- they were undergraduates, eighteen to twenty-two years old. Most had probably not the reasons she had to know and fear the dissolution that could come to a Pony who took to heavy drinking. Most had not seen happen to members of their own families what Cheerilee had seen happen to her own mother.
They were behaving foolishly, but to them this was all new and exciting. Many of them knew nothing of how bad this could become. Compared to her, they were innocents.
She had no excuse for her folly, for she had seen this path long before -- when she was but thirteen.
It might have surprised somepony who did not know her well, but Cheerilee actually finished the rest of the day at school after that terrible schoolyard confrontation. But to Cheerilee, school had always been a place of achievement, acceptance, friendship -- and, for the last three and a half years, safe refuge from her mother's deepening madness. School was for sanity, for learning, for companionship. One bad experience did not change this stable rock that anchored her world.
Inevitably, the day ended, and Play Write dismissed her charges.
It was with regret that Cheerilee ended the school day and headed home. She knew that there was no way she could avoid a confrontation with her mother. Neither foolish nor naive -- she had been forced to grow up faster than did most fillies in late 15th-century Ponyville -- she had noticed the trend in her mother's behavior, and had been afraid for some months that Strawberry might sink further.
Nevertheless, the reality was still a shock to her. She was but thirteen, and this was her mother. She would have felt as if the secure basis of her life was falling out from under her -- had not that already happened to her, in that terrible year of 1481, when her father Falcon Punch died over the Everfree, murdered by the very Pony he was supposed to be escorting to Canterlot from Appleloosa. That was when her mother had gone mad. That was when Cheerilee had been forced to become the mother to little Berryshine -- and to their own mother, who had never been entirely sane from that moment on.
Cheerilee did not like this at all, but she had no choice. It was either cover for her mother -- do what she had to in order to maintain the illusion to the authorities that her mother was still sane, still able to be a mother -- or see her family broken. As she always would in her life, Cheerilee did what had to be done, took responsibility because somepony must.
When she got home, her mother Strawberry was just preparing for her day.
It had of recent years become Strawberry's habit to return home in the wee hours of the morning -- inevitably awakening Cheery with her drunken stumbling and bumbling about. Cheerilee would get up and help her mother to bed. Strawberry always reeked of alcohol and less pleasant odors at the time of these homecomings; when these were particularly bad, Cheery would bathe her.
When Strawberry came home, it wasn't so bad. Cheerilee simply did her duty, and then lay back down in her bed, to snatch what sleep she could in the remainder of the time she had before it was time to get up fo school. She was young and strong, so it was easy.
It was much worse when Strawberry didn't come home. Cheerilee was never sure where her mother went -- Strawberry would usually say that she had 'spent the night with a friend' -- but if asked, she would never be specific about just with which friend she had passed the time. Eventually, Cheery simply learned neither to ask nor to worry. She always came back the next day, and it was not as if she was much help to Cheerilee, in any case.
Cheerilee had, of course, been aware that her mother was lonely, after the death of her father. Intellectually, Cheery understood that widows often remarried, even though from her own highly-biased emotional perspective, nopony could ever even begin to replace her Daddy. But she could see -- though she did not in her childhood fully grasp the reasons -- that her mother seemed to desire other male companionship.
It had occurred to her, by the time that she turned ten, that her mother was looking for a new husband. By the time that she was eleven, she suspected that Strawberry was being none too choosy in her search, because Cheeilee could smell a lot of different stallions on her as time went by.
By the time she was twelve, Cheerilee had realized that Strawberry was being sexually-intimate to a considerable degree with most of these stallions, conduct which Cheery's own older friends, such as Mare Ivory Scroll, would rightly have scorned as immoral, had they known of it -- though, of course, Cheerilee was careful never to let them know. By thirteen, Cheerilee understood enough of the mechanics of sex to be aware that her mother was probably letting them mount her.
At each stage of Strawberry's descent into degradation -- or, as likely, Cheery's growing awareness of the depths of that degradation -- Cheerilee felt each new revelation as a kick to the guts; pain, followed by nausea and numbness. Each time, she learned something worse about what her mother was doing. Each time, she thought that this must, this time, surely be the worst; that the truth could not possibly become any darker.
Each time, her fond hopes had been dashed by the next revelation.
Cheerilee found it hard to imagine how things could get worse than her mother being a literal whorse.
But then, she hadn't seen how things could get worse all the other times. And yet, they had.
There was still one hope. Perhaps Raisin Cake was lying. Perhaps her own friends had believed lies. Or, perhaps, it was all some dreadful misunderstanding.
Surely, her own mother could not really be selling herself for money. She could not truly have fallen so far.
So, hoping that what she had heard was false, Cheerilee confronted her mother.
Strawberry had just come out of the shower. She smelled clean and fresh, of scented soap and healthy adult mare. Her reddish-pink coat glistened with the remnants of the water which she had not yet fully dried, her long purple mane was wrapped in a towel, and friendly rose-pink eyes blinked at Cheerilee. She smiled at the sight of her eldest daughter, and with that smile she looked even younger than her thirty years; as if she were only about twenty, and no more than Cheery's older sister.
"Oh, good!" Strawberry said brightly. "You're back from school. Did you have a nice day?"
Cheerilee was stricken by doubt and shame. Surely, she must be mistaken. This was her mother, who had loved her and Berryshine all their lives. This was no prostitute.
She wanted to make it up to her mother.
"Can we all have dinner together tonight?" Cheery asked. "As a family, like we used to? I could cook --" she began.
A shadow passed over Strawberry's face, and suddenly she seemed twenty no more. "I wish we could," her mother said. "It would be nice. But --" her face darkened further, and she seemed yet another decade older. "I have a dinner date, with --" she looked away, "-- some friends." She looked back at Cheery, and smiled, but it seemed a strained smile. "You can have dinner with Berryshine," she suggested. "Make something delicious. Invite your own friends over if you like. I think there's some food in the house --" She waved a hoof, weakly and vaguely.
There was, indeed, food. Cheerilee knew this, for the excellent reason that she had herself purchased the food -- using money left for her by Strawberry for this purpose. Her mother, increasingly, could no longer summon sufficient effort by day to do the shopping for her little family.
Falcon Lee Punch, her father, had died on a mission for the Night Watch. He had been a civilian courier at the time, but also a Guard Reserve officer, and thus they were paid death benefits from the Treasury. They lived -- tolerably -- on this income.
Cheerilee had never questioned this source of income; until recently, like most children, she had simply assumed that her mother's money was effectively unlimited for normal household purpses. Now, a horrid and ugly thought reared itself uninvited in Cheerilee's mind. Try though she might, she could not help but ask herself the question -- Where does she get all that money for drinking?
She was as yet still too innocent to consider that a pretty mare need never pay for her own drinks, which was just as well, for if she had understood that, she would have also understood just how a pretty and weak-willed mare ofen winds up paying. Especially if the mare is also an alcoholic.
"Sure," said Cheerilee. "I can make supper for my sister and I."
Her statement was grammatically correct, according to the best modern forms. Theis was something in which the young-adolescent mare could take pride, as the rest of her world threatened to crumble. I speak perfect Equestrian, she told herself. I'm educated.
Her world had not quite yet fallen apart, though. She had not yet told her mother what had happened, what Raisin Cake had said. She had not yet asked her mother the key question.
Yet.
Cheerilee, even as a child, had always found physics fascinating. And she was well aware of the principle of quantum uncertainity. Until an outcome was observed, the observer could not be sure which of the possibilities happened to be true in her Universe, and effectively the Universe itself did not decide, until some interaction revealed the truth. In a sense, until Cheerilee observed the outcome, it had not yet happened.
Until Cheerilee asked her mother if she was a whore, she had not yet observed the process; not yet collapsed the waveform. Until then, her mother was simultaneously a whore and not a whore.
Which left open the possibility that Strawberry was not a whore.
Cheerilee, very much, wanted that outcome. So she did not want to ask the question.
For Cheerilee, even at thirteen, was no fool. She could see how the hypothesis of her mother's whoredom would explain all Strawberry's strange behavior: the scent of unfamiliar stallions on her, and her mysterious extra income. There were other possible explanations, of course, but this seemed the most probable, especially given her mother's obvious reticence regarding what she did on her nights out.
It was probably true.
But Cheerilee very much did not want it to be true.
Cheerilee was a good girl, and proud of being a good girl. She had been an especially good girl for the four years since her Daddy had died, because only by being a good girl -- by taking responsibility for her irresponsible mother and her much younger sister -- could she hold her family together. If she failed to be good, Strawberry's collapse would become obvious to outsiders, and the courts would tear them apart.
Thirteen-year-old Cheerilee was in some ways innocent, but she was clear on the act central to being a whore: one let strange stallions mount oneself for money. This was not good: it was profoundly and terribly bad. If her mother had gone that bad, this meant it very unlikely that she would ever recover; that things could ever again be anywhere as they had been before Daddy had died.
To be honest with herself -- and Cheerilee much preferred honesty -- Strawberry had not been exactly a tower of strength in her daughters' lives even before her husband had made that last fatal flight over the Everfree. It had been Daddy who had been the source of strength in their family. Her mother had been, instead, a source of love and laughter, Cheerilee's model of marehood.
Since Daddy's death, Strawberry had stopped being those things. And now, it seemed, she would never be those things again.
Cheerilee did not want to find out that what was left of the mother she had known when she had been small had been a lie, was based on a false foundation. Her parents had been the center of her world: with Daddy dead, if her mother was a whore, what did that leave herself? What, then, was Cheerilee?
So, while her mother dressed, and did her hair and applied her makeup for her night out 'with a few friends,' Cheerilee tormented herself with the possibilities of what her mother was really planning, and yet dared not ask Strawberry about it. The pressure built up within the young mare, until -- when it was almost the last moment, when her mother was ready for her outing -- Cheerilee realized that if she did not ask now, she would not have the chance to ask again until sometime the next morning.
She could remain silent no more.
"Mother," she said, as Strawberry -- gorgeously but gaudily attired in a glittery scarlet dress with a translucent skirt and a feathered hat -- made for the front door, "there is something I must tell you. And ask you about."
Strawberry stopped, and regarded her elder daughter with somme annoyance. "Can't this wait? I don't want to be late for my engagement --"
"Beloved Mother," interrupted Cheerilee, speaking in the full formal mode. "This is both urgent, and short. Please, afford the honor of your attention to your Most Faithful Daughter."
That got Strawberry's attention.
"Why, sure," she said, laughing nervously. "I suppose I can spare a moment. Goodness, you said that as if you were at the Palace ..."
"Honored Mother," Cheerilee interrupted again. "I nearly got into a fight at school today."
"You?" asked Strawberry, her eyes widening in surprise. "Why, you've always been such a good girl!"
"Somepony cast an aspersion on your character."
A look of fear crossed Strawberry's face at this, her pupils briefly shrinking and her ears flicking back.
Cheerilee's heart sank. No, Mother, she thought in despair. Don't you know how well I can read you? Please, don't make this be true ...
"Who was it?" asked Strawberry, speaking very quickly.
"A classmate," replied Cheerilee. I won't be a tattletale. "What is important is what she said."
Strawberry cringed.
"She said that you have been going to the Carrot and Stick and letting strange stallions take you home," Cheerilee said, very levelly. "She called you a ... prostitute. Beloved Mother," she asked, gazing directly into Strawberry's rose-pink eyes. "Is this true?"
Her mother's eyes widened in shock. She whinnied, reared and took a step back, as if recoiling from some physical threat. Then she glared at Cheerilee, eyes flashing in anger, and she drew back a forehoof, plainly ready to strike her daughter.
Yes, Mother, the younger mare thought, feeling a strange joy. I've said something horrible about you -- unthinkably wrong, and of course it's untrue, it can't be true, not about you. I'm a bad filly; a terrible daughter, and I deserve to be punished for this. Hit me! Just hit me -- I'll take whatever beating you give me -- and then I'll say I'm sorry, and you'll forgive me, and tell me what's really going on, and then we can hug and make up, and put all this past us, and then things can be good again! Please, I so want things to be good again!
Her mother did not hit her.
Instead, she looked at Cheerilee, and Cheerilee looked back at her, ready to take her punishment, but not wanting to show her fear ...
... and her mother looked down first, her ears drooping in shame.
No ... thought Cheerilee. No ...
"You don't understand," her mother said, refusing to meet her gaze. "You're just a child, of course, you can't understand. What it's like. What I need. What I must do so that we all can live and be happy."
Please ... please stop. Cheerilee thought this, but of course she said nothing. She could say nothing. Speech was impossible.
"I have to have ... friends," Strawberry explained, looking up for a moment, then wincing and looking away. "I have to have friends, to stay sane, and to get help in supporting this family. In supporting you. That's just what Ponies do. What grown mares do. What mothers sometimes have to do. There's nothing wrong with having ... friends."
I'm not hearing this, Cheerilee told herself, This is not really happening. This is all just a terrible dream -- a nightmare -- and when I wake up it'll be morning and I'll get to go to school and Raisin won't say anything and this will never have happened ...
"There's nothing wrong with having friends," Strawberry repeated. "With having ..."
Strawberry started to cry, and what somehow made it worse was that she did not sob. Instead, the tears just began flowing down her face. She did this for a few seconds, then seemed to realize what was happening, and suddenly said "My face! I have to make up my face!" and ran off to the bathroom.
Cheerilee simply stood there. There was no point in moving. There was no point in doing anything. Four years ago, she had lost her Daddy. And now, she had lost the mother that she had always assumed she had: she was still alive, but she wasn't exactly the Pony she had always thought she was, and that was close to the same thing, wasn't it?
She didn't cry. It wasn't to preserve her makeup -- at thirteen, Cheerilee didn't yet wear any -- but rather because tears were pointless. Things were what they were, and she simply had to accept them. There was nothing else she could do but accept them.
After a while, Strawberry came out of the bathroom. Her makeup had been repaired, but she seemed far from all right. She looked at Cheerilee, standing there, and seemed as if she were about to say something, but when she looked at Cheerilee's expression, she cringed from something she saw in it.
"I'm going out," Strawberry said shortly, looking away from her daughter. "I don't think I'll be back for a while. Don't wait up for me."
"I won't."
It was a perfectly accurate statement, and if she delivered it tonelessly, her mother either didn't notice or didn't want to face up to the implications.
Strawberry left and closed the door.
Cheerilee stood for a long time alone in the living room, watching nothing in particular, her mind idling, producing no thoughts which she remembered, aside from Raisin Cake was right. I'm glad I didn't hit her. I wish i'd hit her. It would have done no good to hit her.
This made no logical sense, but Cheerilee was in a place where logical sense was irrelevant.
'Cheery ..." came a high-pitched voice.
Cheerilee ignored it.
"Cheery ..." the voice came again.
Cheerilee tried to ignore it, but she knew who it was.
It was her seven-year-old sister, Berryshine.
"Cheery," Berryshine said again, "I'm hungry. You gonna make dinner?"
I have to make dinner, Cheerilee thought. Berryshine's hungry, and someone has to make dinner, and I'm the one in charge.
She looked at her little sister. Berryshine seemed frightened. It occurred to Cheerilee that she might be scaring Berryshine by just standing there.
"Is somethin' wrong?" Berryshine asked her.
Cheerilee smiled. It took an effort at first, but looking at the small form of her sister, it became more easy, almost natural.
"Nothing's wrong," Cheerilee said. "I was just thinking."
"About what?"
"Big filly stuff." She smiled again at her sister. "You don't need to worry about it. Now, what would you like for dinner?"
Cheerilee retrieved her saddleags and walked out of the apartment.
Nopony tried to stop her: the door was unlocked. Nopony had forced or tricked her into this situation. It was all entirely her own fault. For what had happened last night, Cheerilee had nopony to blame but herself.
On the way out, some stallion called to her. "Great party!"
She glanced at him briefly, but neither recognized him, nor even really registered his appearance. She did not want to do either. She was afraid that she might recognize him, and then she would remember in what specfic way he had been a witness -- or, worse, a participant -- in her preceding debauchery.
Even more than she did not want anypony else to remember last night, she did not want to remember it either.
No, she corrected herself. I must remember it just enough that I never do anything of this sort ever again. I must never get drunk again. At least not in public, she amended. Never around any Ponies I can't completely trust.
Cheerilee went out the door and shut it behind her, closing it gently but decisively. That episode in her life was over and done with forever. She was determined to never be in such a situation in her future.
She walked down a short hall on a tattered old carpet. There were a few other doors, presumably of other apartments. Now, in the forenoon, there were few sounds coming from those doors. Their occupants were, Cheerilee would assume, already out and about their business.
Which means, Cheerilee realized as she reached the top of a stairwell, I can drink with nopony. I have no real friends now, here in Canterlot. Plenty of acquaintances, to be sure -- I've always been good at getting Ponies to like me -- but no real friends. Not the kind you can count on when you're in trouble --- or about to get yourself in trouble.
She paused at the top of the stairwell, one hoof slightly raised to begin her descent, and considered just why she had no real friends any more.
I had some friends in high school like that. Some in college, as well, until I fell too firmly into Tower's orbit. He didn't like me having other friends, unless they were mainly his friends, Ponies who hung on his every word and lived in hope of his approval and fear of his displeasure. He wanted things that way; it's easy to see, now. He wanted things that way the better to control me.
Tower Climber had been first her college professor, then (she had thought) her friend; her graduate studies mentor; her lover; the center of her existence for the last last three years. She had thought she would become his wife, as she had become his partner in the academic world.
Until just a few weeks ago, when he had absolutely refused to credit her for the work she was doing on his project, and she had asked him why, and they had that horrible late-night conversation in which it became very plain to Cheerilee that he never wanted her to have any career other than as his assistant; that the only things he valued her for was her ability to work for him, and to give him sexual pleasure: something like a useful combination of intern and whore.
He would never let her be a successful scholar; he would certainly never make her his wife. He was no real friend to her, and he did not love her. To him, she was nothing but an equine resource.
She saw this all clearly, and so she left him.
And in so doing, shattered her own planned graduate studies, leaving herself little to do in the immediate future but sit alone in her lodgings; alone because all the Ponies she knew well enough, now, that she would have even considered confiding her shameful situation were his friends. Most admired him and blamed her for dirsupting Tower's project; the few who might have sympathized with her were too afraid of incurring his hostility by taking her side, or not being seen to enthusiastically take his part in the quarrel.
She had found this out in the week right after the breakup. Ponies who had seemingly been friendly to her before had no time for her now. They made excuses not to speak with her, or steered the conversation away from Tower.
That was just how friendship went, in Canterlot.
She found herself alone.
And lone Ponies do not do well.
Where did all my old friends go? she wondered, as she began to descend the stairs.
Most of the ones from Canterlot Secondary School left after they graduated, to start careers all over Equestria. Canterlot Secondary was an elite school, for the continuing education of gifted or prosperous Ponies, what some Ponies were starting to call a "high school" in contrast with mere elementary schools such as Play Write's small schoolhouse back in Ponyville.
She had gone to CSS with one of her fillyhood best friends: Mare Ivory Scroll, who had gone back to Ponyville and gotten a job with the township; other friends had wound up going to colleges and universities all over the land, or positions in the government and military, scholarship and science. Her schoolmates had included an actual Alicorn Princess. They had all felt destined for great things.
Some of her schoolmates had even achieved them.
She trudged down flight after flight of stairs. The apartment in which she had passed the night was obviously on an upper floor, as she had known from the fact that she had started at the top of the stairwell; and it was a relatively tall building for its size, as she had suspected from her knowledge of construction in Canterlot.
Because of the limited ground area available in the mountainside capital, most buildings were multi-story, and even some fairly small residential one reared up four, five or six stories. Most structures in the City proper were centuries old; built long before the widespread use of electric motors, or even steam engines. Consequently, they lacked passenger lifts.
This, in turn, meant that upper-story apartments were cheap, save for certain garrets preferred by Pegasi. And this was clearly an older building, and one in poor maintenance, as was obvious from the grimy walls and rickety stairs -- more than once, Cheerilee heard a tread creak to her hoof, or even buckle alarmingly. The students who rented the apartment, possibly at a discount from the university, could afford it for just this reason: Cheerilee, who supported herself by tutoring, had similar lodgings, though solitary and much smaller.
The neighborhood probably wasn't the best, though being aboveground in Canterlot it would be far from a real slum. In Canterlot, the poorest of the poor dwelt in the subterranean parts of the city; usually in neighborhoods toward the front of the caverns that contained the heavy infrastructure, and often working at dirty and dangerous jobs maintaining such facilities as the water works and sewage systems. Thus, the poorest neighborhoods lay within the mountain; even these were relatively safe, compared to the worst parts of the Coastal Cities.
Cheerilee reached the bottom of the stairs. There she found another short entrance hall, this one featuring some battered side-tables with vases and wilted pink flowers within in a rather sad attempt at decoration: Cheerilee was reminded of her own Cutie Mark. There was another worn-out carpet lining the hall. In front was an anteroom with mailboxes set into the walls.
And then she was out the front door.
She was gratified to note, as she descended the short outside stairs to the street, that reality conformed well to her expectations. The building she had emerged from was of brick-faced stone, five stories high and fairly narrow, separated by a short alley from its neighbors. On various parts of the facade were eroded stone carvings: the style seemed to be that of the Century of Commerce, some two centuries or more past. It might have once been the fashionable town-house of some merchant family: the house, and the many similar houses lining the street, had clearly come down in the world.
They had fallen from their high hopes.
After learning the truth about her mother's night-time activities, Cheerilee deliberately avoided talking to her, or even thinking too much, about them. She knew now what was really going on, but she very much did not want to incorporate this into her own life.
Her life was about school: both the studies, and the warm regard of her schoolfellows. She returned to school the morning after her horrible discovery, to find to her pleasant surprise that nopony there seemed to think the less of her for what Strawberry might be doing. This was only because her classmates had really liked her to begin with, and she knew that.
It made her love them -- and school -- all the more.
No one mocked her for her ill fortune. She, in return, was nice and polite and helpful to everypony else, as was her wont. She was even nice to Raisin Cake -- though she still found it difficult to really like her.
The hardest one to face was her most special friend, the one she had always turned to when life tried to crush her. He had been there the first time her mother's drunkenness had seriously threatened her family. He had helped save little Berryshine when Strawberry had let her wander off, when the little filly had gotten lost in the Everfree. That was how they had first become friends, four years ago.
Since then their friendship had only grown, and deepened. She could sometimes forget that he was two years younger than her, between his size and his grave air of un-coltish maturity. She had come to rely on his gentle strength, look forward every day to seeing him. Recently, she had started to wish that he was at least her age, so that it might have been possible for him to be ...
... but that made what happened all so much worse. If any of the others secretly despised her for what her mother had done, it would be bad. If he came to despise her, a pillar of her world would fall.
She didn't have that many pillars left.
She was friendly toward him, as usual, but resolutely refused to bring up what she had discovered last night. He seemed perhaps a bit worried; unusually solicitious toward her. But he did not raise the subject himself. He had always been leery of prying; he knew a lot about her hopes and dreams, but that was because she liked to talk about them to him.
That was their normal way together. She talked, often at great length. And he listened, sometimes replying with a terse "Eeyup" or "Eenope."
She might have thought that he wasn't paying much attention, but those deep green eyes always paid close attention to her, and when she had talked a while, he often responded at greater length. His words were still sparse, but well-chosen and to the point.
He generally showed considerable insight: he always had, even when he had been a colt of merely seven. At eleven, he was wiser and more sensible than most of Mare Ivory's friends in their late teens. It was always a good idea to pay heed to his counsel.
She knew that Big Mac, while competent at schoolwork, would never be academically-brilliant: he was not well-oriented toward formal study. But he was extremely intelligent, perhaps the smartest Pony in her school, especially when it came to matters of wisdom. He was in his own ways a match for her; something too easy to forget when she was around Mare Ivory and her older friends, who thought of him as an overgrown little colt.
All the rest of that week, she could sense the heightened tension from him. He knew her well enough that he could see through her facade: he was also far too shy to query her on it where anypony else could hear their conversation. So, by simply ensuring that she was never completely alone with him, she managed to avoid having to tell him what had happened.
It couldn't last forever, if for no other reason that Cheerilee wanted his friendship, and she wasn't really being friends with him very much if she never got to really talk to him. She saw this, and so on the last school-day that week, she arranged for him to walk her home by way of White-Tail Park.
At first they just ambled down the lane together, enjoying each other's company as they hadn't been able to since Raisin had delivered that unwelcome information. Cheerilee didn't push the topic on Big Mac: she knew from experience that trying to make Mac talk would elicit only the most minimal replies.
They reached a quiet spot overlooking the Avalon. There they sat, side by side, watching the river roll on by toward the Motherwater to the southwest. It was a lazy late afternoon, and as they sat they leaned companionably against one another, Cheerilee enjoying the physical support from the warm living mountain at her side.
"I guess," Cheerilee began -- because somepony had to open the topic, and she knew from experience that if she waited for Mackie to do so, she might be waiting a long time -- "I guess I should tell you what happened with Raisin Cake, and why I've been kind of cranky to you this week."
"If'n you like," drawled Big Mac. "Ah'll listen."
From Mackie, this was an invitation.
"You know that Raisin Cake said something about my mother a few days ago?" Cheerilee asked him.
"Eeyup."
"Well," Cheerilee stared at her hooves, and his next to hers. Cheerilee was two years older than him, and not a small filly, but her hooves were tiny compared to those of her friend. "The things Raisin said were true."
Silence from him. For a while Cheerilee dared not raise her eyes to his face; when she did, she saw caring and concern there. No condemnation. Not even pity, which she almost feared more. This gave her courage to speak plain, watching his expression as she did so.
"She goes out and gets drunk, I guess at seedy little places like the Carrot and Stick. She meets stallions. I don't know if she has special coltfriends or she just looks for whoever will buy her drinks. I guess they pay her for doing it with them. So that's it. She's a prostitute."
Big Mac stood rock solid, his ears maybe drooping a bit, but unshaken by these relevations. Which made her wonder something.
"Did you already know about this, too?" she asked him. She wasn't sure how she would react if he told her that he had known all along.
"Ah ... heard things," Mackie replied. "Ah'm younger'n Mare Ivory's friends, but Ah hear what's said around me. And Ah'd heard stallions talking 'bout yore mother disrespectful-like. Ah didn't like what they was saying -- Ah wanted to do something 'bout it -- but Ah thought it was better to listen."
"What did you hear?" Cheerilee was worried what stallions might be saying.
"Well, these were just teamster Ponies, pickin' up produce from the Acres. And one of them mentioned a 'Strawberry' as a ... well, mare o' easy virtue. And Ah thought it might be yore mom, but she ain't the only mare named 'Strawberry' in Ponyville, and who knows if she lived in Ponyville. They did mention the Carrot n' Stick, though, so Ah thought it was prolly some filly who lived 'round here."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Cheerilee asked.
"Ah didn't know fer sure they was talking 'bout her. An' Ah didn't want to get you all upset if it weren't. Ah'm sorry -- mebbe Ah should have told you sooner." Now his ears were drooping, and it was his turn to look away.
"I don't know," said Cheerilee. "What if you'd been wrong? Then you would have gotten me worried over nothing. You had no way of being sure." She started to lean forward , meaning to press her cheek against his, then reconsidered. "Mackie?"
"Yes?"
"What do you think of me now?" she asked.
"Yore mah friend," he answered, and she could see nothing in his eyes but honesty.
"I mean," she looked down, feeling uncomfortable, "because of my mother."
"You ain't yore mother."
"But they say 'like mother like daughter,' and she drinks and parties and sleeps with strangers and ..."
"You don't do those things," said Mackie. He wrinkled his brow. "Well, Ah've drunk a little hard cider with you, but we didn't do nothing wrong. You ain't no bad Pony."
"But my mother --"
"Is yore mother," said Mac. "And you're you. And if she's bad, don't mean that you're bad. A Pony's sins is her own guilt, nopony else's." He reached out and very, very gently touched her shoulder with one massive hoof. "Yore a good filly, Cheery. You don't have to be like yore mother. You won't be like yore mother. Yore good."
And hearing that statement -- so obviously pure and heartfelt, full of confidence in her beyond what she felt in herself right that moment -- Cheerilee could no longer control herself. She flung hersef against him, lowering his head into his breast, and weeping with relief from the long tension of wondering whether or not her best and most loyal friend now despised her. She was incredibly happy to find out that he didn't.
Mac held her for a long time, letting her use his breast as a sort of combined pilow and towel, gently holding her in place with one raised foreleg.
Somehow the really sad moments of my life seem to end with Mackie hugging me, she thought. And then I feel better. I'm feeling a bit better right now.
I'm lucky to have a friend like Mackie.
Then she slowly pulled back from him, and he gently let her go.
And she was ready to face the future.
As her gaze rose from the rows of decaying townhouses, she could see the lovely white spires of Canterlot University towering over them from one direction; the majestic beauty of Mount Avalon rising in another; abruptly, she knew exactly where she was, and which way to walk to go home. She was free; she could put this episode of her life behind her.
But she was not entirely sure she could yet face the future. She had nopony to talk to, nopony she could trust with her shame over what she would done, and worse -- her fear that she would get drunk again in the future and do exactly the same thing. Nopony at all.
I wish I still had a friend like Mackie, she thought with a sudden ache deep within. I sure could use a friend like him right now.
Cheerilee made her way through the streets of Canterlot toward her lodgings.
She could have cut right over to the main avenue and, from there, quickly made it to her home street. She did not. Instead, she wandered, obeying some strange whim not to go home.
As long as she remained out, she was in a sort of intercalary time between the disaster of that drunken party and the routine problems -- now made far worse by her need to change pretty much all her plans in the wake of her breakup with Tower Climber -- of her ordinary life. She had been putting this last off for a while now, and she still hadn’t decided what to do next.
While she wandered, she need not decide. Briefly, she could imagine herself whole and free again, as she had been as a child and adolescent. As she had been at thirteen.
She had hardly thought herself free, then, and perhaps she had in truth been less free than most young Ponies. In addition to school and chores, she had been forced to take responsibility for all her own decisions, and many affecting Berryshine. The fact that she had been almost entirely independent of parental supervision -- Strawberry lacked both the desire, and, really, the capability to supervise her -- was less blessing than burden, for it meant that, if she forgot to do something vital, it would not get done.
School was pleasure, rather than chore. She was Play Write’s most prized student, and she was aware that her teacher wanted her to apply for a scholarship to a good secondary school.
Absent such a scholarship, she would simply end her formal education next year; probably, get a job working for the vinyards of one of her actively-farming Berry kin. Most of them knew and liked her; she had worked for some of them over summers and helped out at harvests; and more than one of them had suggested hiring her long-term after she finished school.
These were good offers by Ponyville standards. Cheery was a hard worker and used to the tasks. As a well-regarded and well-educated Berry, she would reasonably expect to in time advance into the business end of berry-growing and wine-making. She might have opportunities to deal on her own account, or even start her own vinyards. She might do quite well for herself.
It was potentially a good life. But Play Write thought that her prize student could do better. Periodically, she handed Cheerilee application papers for various scholarships. Generally, this involved filling out a form and writing an essay on some topic or another. Strawberry also had to sign them.
Writing the essays was easy. Cheerilee liked to write.
Getting Strawberry’s signature was harder. Always, her mother wanted to “go over” the paperwork, which usually meant squirrel it away somewhere and forget about it until it was past due. After one or two such disasters, Cheerilee simply started forging Strawberry’s signature for this, as she did for other purposes.
It was not as if Strawberry would remember what she had or not signed weeks or months later, anyway. Strawberry had trouble remembering where she’d been two days ago.
Despite the effort she put into them, all those scholarship applications seemed somewhat theoretical to Cheerilee, not really part of her normal life. It was all sort of a game she played with her teacher, because it was fun to imagine going to some really good high school, and the attention was flattering. She was thus very surprised when, early in 1486, Play Write took her aside to inform her -- the teacher’s voice bubbling with badly-suppressed excitement -- that Cheerilee had won a full scholarship to Canterlot Secondary.
Cheerilee had, of course, heard of Canterlot Secondary. It was one of the elite preparatory academies, readying the daughters and sons of well-off Canterlot families for their careers, or to go on to university.
The tuition was well beyond anything Cheerilee could have ever dreamed of affording with any income she could earn as a teenager. It was, simply, the single biggest breakthrough Cheery could ever have hoped for.
Play Write had helped her get this chance, but her help did not end with the scholarship approval. It soon became apparent that the genteel Fillydelphia Mane Line born school teacher was by some means well aware of Strawberry’s irresponsibility, and hence that any funds placed into the trembling hooves of Cheerilee’s mother might well simply vanish down that mare’s thirsty throat, in the form of more-than-commonly liquid assets.
It was Play Write who asked Cheerilee which of her Berry kin could best be trusted, then had a trust-fund contract drawn up with a lawyer.
Then, Play Write had a private interview with Strawberry.
What it was, exactly, that Play Write said to Cheerilee’s mother, Cheery was never to know in detail. Later, when she was older, she could make an educated guess. While an adult Equestrian mare could drink as much as she wished, and have sex with anypony and everypony who consented -- even, in the case of the latter, do so for money -- and in the process commit no crimes, nevertheless, an alcoholic prostitue might well be judged no fit guardian for minor children.
Even her own.
Cheerilee reasonably speculated that Play Write had, rather insistently, reminded Strawberry of these facts, and used her mother's subsequent awareness of the situation to induce her to agree -- or at least acquiesce -- to the teacher's plans. It occurred to Cheerilee -- both then, and even more so later -- that this conversation must have been extremely unpleasant for both of them, and that Play Write had gone far beyond her normal duties as her teacher, in pursuit of Cheerilee's own interests.
Whenever she thought of this, Cheerilee felt grateful. For, while Strawberry's decline had, so far, not directly harmed either Cheerilee or her little sister; there had been no assurance that this would have continued to be the case, as Strawberry fell further.
Cheerilee was especially glad for Berryshine. While Cheerilee was sure that she herself could deal with any trouble Strawberry brought home, she sometimes worried about her little sister. Strawberry could not be trusted to watch her, and at seven she was in some ways even more likely to wander off into trouble than she had been at three. And Cheerilee would not be able to take her to live with her at Canterlot.
In the end, Play Write, Strawberry and Cheerilee arranged to have Berryshine taken in by the Wineberrys -- relatives who owned a fair-sized farm northeast of Ponyville, and easily close enough to town for the filly to complete her education. The Wineberrys welcomed their young kin, and Berryshine's help in their vinyard would defray the cost of her upkeep.
Play Write had the lawyer draw up, a notary witness, and Strawberry sign the necessary papers. In this case, there could be no shortcuts through Cheerilee's forgery: Strawberry's consent, even if grudging, had to be both geniuine and beyond successful challenge. Berryshine's whole future might depend upon it.
Cheerilee's wanderings had now taken her to a small square, about midway between the run-down townhouse and her own quarters. In the center was a sungold statue -- well, Cheerilee amended, it couldn't really have been pure sungold, as that much pure sungold would have been almost impossible to afford or cast, even by the standards of the Realm; certainly for such a trivial purpose as a single public statue. The statue was that of a stylized sun.
The inspiration for this sun was obvious. It was in the form of the most famous Cutie Mark in all Equestria: the one borne by Princess Celestia herself. By chance or design -- and Cheerliee strongly suspected the latter -- none of the tall towers around the little plaza blocked the rays of the real Sun, which gleamed most marvelously off the sungold metal, the reflections playing about the entire place.
The stylized Sun was supported by, and rose over, a white marble base, cunningly composed of three equine figures, all young mares: an Earth Pony, a Unicorn and a Pegasus. Their expressions shone with enthusiasic idealism: friendly and innocent. There was something about them that Cheerilee found fascinating, though she found it difficult to fathom precisely why.
She glanced around the Plaza. Ponies were crossing it from one street to the next, but none seemed interested at the moment in lingering. There were three wide benches before the statue, none of them currently occupied.
Cheerilee chose the center bench and sat down.
Young Cheerilee had secured lodgings not in Canterlot proper, but in Cantergate, the town three miles along the road down from Canterlot, proper. Cantergate had started as a small fort, guarding the ground approach up to the Palace at Canterlot, which spread out in all its marble-white and moonsilver and sungold glory on a southeastern part of the same great outcropping on which was built Canterlot the City. Any attacker driving up the road from below would have to first carry Cantergate, then the Palace, before they could do harm to the Ponies of Canterlot the City.
This was more than a purely-theoretical situation. It had happened many times before: most recently, in the Year of Harmony 1449 -- a mere thirty-seven years before Cheerilee came to Canterlot Secondary School -- when the horrid Formless allies of the Southern Secessionists had assaulted Cantergate, bombarding it with Moonfire and trying to overrun its walls.
Cheerilee's own father, Falcon Punch, had been a seventeen year old ensign at the time of that battle, though she didn't know if he'd been in it -- most of the Guard had been deployed elsewhere, fighting the Secessionists along the Motherwater and Gulf Rivers. That was why Princess Celestia was forced to lead a combination of the few Guards on the scene and a hastily-mobilized civilian militia to throw them back. Cantergate had burned, and the defenders had taken severe losses before a relief force could reach them, but the Palace and City themselves had both survived unscathed.
Every schoolday, Cheerilee washed her face, quickly brushed her mane, grabbed some morsel of breakfast, and walked almost four miles to school. Some might have considered this routine burdensome; to the tough country filly, young and healthy and strong, it was no hardship.
She no longer had to care for Berryshine as well, nor clean up after Strawberry when she came home, and the lifting of these shackles meant that her life was filled with time and energy as never before. She fairly flew up and down the road to school, trotting or even cantering most of the way. This saved her precious bits -- only when feeling ill did she deign to take the train.
As she ran up the road, her mane streaming in the wind, passerby often smiled at her, and she felt beloved by all theworld. She almost always smiled back, sometimes playfully tossing her head by way of greeting. She especially smiled when she saw the brave Guardsponies, for her father had been one of them, and for those she had even greater warmth inn her heart. But mostly, she just loved everypony.
She was full of joy, because, for the first time in five years -- for the first time since the death of her father -- she was free.
Cheerilee had been realistic enough, even at fourteen, to know that there might be problems for her, as a not-so-rich country filly, fitting in at an elite school full of rich Canterlot Ponies. She had come resolved to endure whatever hazings awaited her, and establish herself as a respected member of society among the students.
Things went even better than she expected.
To begin with, her fillyhood friend Mare Ivory Scroll was coming to school with her. That helped a lot, both emotionally and socially. The Scrolls were an old Mount Avalon family -- not from Canterlot itself, but from Colton in the foothills, which was a singificant step up, both in terms of altitude and of society, from Ponyville. What was more, Mare Ivory already had friends at the school.
So it was that Cheerilee, instead of coming in to Canterlot Secondary School as a friendless, hopeless country mouse, came as the friend of somepony who already had friends there, and hennce had an introduction into at least one segment of CSS society.
It was not the best segment, of course. Neither Cheerilee, nor her new friends, were either wealthy or highborn. Few even qualified in the gentry.
They were, instead, decent and solid children of the middle classes; of that order of Pony who were leading their nation into this new Age of Invention: the future businessponies and engineers and educators and scientists. While by no means merely a lot of grinds, they for the most part seriously valued the many educational and professional opportunities that the school afforded them.
Cheerilee had fallen among Ponies especially inclined to appreciate herself.
With the social grace that came naturally to her, she took ample advantage of the situation. She charmed many of her classmates, and made herself quite useful to the studies of quite a few. She as not as brilliant a scholar in the setting of Canterlot as she had been in rustic Ponyville, but she was still an intelligent and hard-working young mare, and she was very willing to help others excel.
She might have run afoul of bullying, by those envious of her intellect or desirous of her services without being willing to pay her in the coin of friendship. But she was no soft and pampered town filly -- she was a tough country girl, and it took more than the upper-class urban imitations of bullies to intimidate her. Her wit and charisma confounded social snobs, while her strength and courage fended off more direct physical challenges. It soon became apparent that the filly from Ponyville was too tough to abuse, and aggressors sought easier targets.
So Cheerilee did well, in every sense of the word, at Canterlot Secondary School. She was of course forced to live frugally -- she was being suported from the same small trust fund which was paying her tuition, but this did not go far given the high cost of living in Canterlot. Play Write had warned her of the expenses; however, the filly was still astonished at the price of food and clothing on Mount Avalon, let alone in the City proper.
Cheerilee had half-resigned herself to a very ascetic experience in Canterlot, observing the life and luxury of the capital city from the outside, like some ragamuffin orphan filly with her snout pressed pathetically against the great glass-paned front window of an amply-stocked sweet stock, unable to afford even a morsel of the rich bounty stored within, when the solution to her problem became clear.
Some of her schoolmates were, as has been intimated, very rich. Some were very smart. However, sad as it may be to relate, those who were very rich and those who were very smart were not always the same students.
In short, some had bits, and some had brains. Cheerilee fell squarely into the latter category.
Which suggested an obvious trade.
So it was that, a couple of months after her arrival at Canterlot Secondary School, Cheerilee set up a small tutoring service.
She would not help anypony cheat -- that was her ironclad principle. But she was willing to devote her not inconsiderable skills to teach her students, so that they didn't have to cheat -- and she was better at this than were most of the teachers at Canterlot Secondary School. In the process, she earned the respect and sometimes the friendship of those clients.
The fees she asked for these services were high by her previous Ponyville experience of money; bargain-basement by the elevated standards of Canterlot. It was Mare Ivory who brought this fact home to her, and told her what to do about it: with misgivings, Cheerilee raised her rates.
She was surprised to discover that she acquired even more clients this way. In her then-naive understanding of economics, that should not have been possible: later, she realized that by her initially-low rates, she had been undervaluing her services, and hence failing to make her clients fully appreciate them.
Soon, she found herself flush with money, compared to her own simple wants and needs. She already had enough income from her trust fund to pay for tuition, lodgings and basic nutriton: now, she could afford some luxuries. Treats from food shops; books not entirely necessary for her courses; pretty clothing for parties. For, now that she had made the acquaintance of some of the richer and classier Ponies through her tutoring, she found herself invited to some of their social gatherings.
At first, she was terrified; afraid that she would make a fool of herself by some gross social gaffe or rustic crudity. She fled to Mare Ivory, and that worthy suggested that she bring her to the party to help advise her on proper behavior. (Later, she realized that nopony had invited Mare Ivory to any of these parties, but she did not begrudge her friend the use of her tutoring connections, especially given that Cheerilee had received her initial introductions to school society that same old friend).
She need not have been worried. She simply bought a nice frock, got her mane done, and went to the party. In addition to the host, several of the other attendees were her clients: they appreciated the help she had given them, and welcomed her warmly into their company. Cheerilee behaved with her usual charm and decorum, and had a wonderful time.
In consequence, she received many more invitations.
Cheerilee loved her first year at high school.
If there was a fly in this ointment, it lay in her separation from her Ponyville friends.
Mare Ivory was at school with her, to be sure, but she missed many she had left behind -- her little sister Berryshine, her best filly friend Cup Cake, and her benefactor Play Write. Her mother she sometimes worried about, but, perhaps shamefully, could not really bring herself to miss at all.
And, of course, there was one other Pony whose absence she felt. Her -- she did not know exactly by what term to think of him -- dear friend and confidante, Big Mac Apple.
Cheerilee missed Big Mac. Not so much when things were going well: then, she sailed smoothly on the seas of Life, adroitly trimming her sheets to the winds, navigating past the rocks and maelstroms on which clumsier Ponies might crash. Often, she guided those other Ponies away from those hazards, for it was in her nature to keenly feel the misfortunes of others.
But, when the voyage was past, and she once again safe in harbor, then she much wanted to rest berthed beside a trusted friend, one to whom she could tell her tales, and share peace of spirit. And in the past, this had been Big Mac.
And worse, when her adventures went poorly, and the world hurt her, and she needed repair and resupply, or still worse rescue -- then, she really needed a loyal friend. And, on a few occasions in the past, this had also been Big Mac.
She was not sure what she felt for him. Strong friendship, to be sure. But now, as she approached fifteen -- the age which had once been that of maturity in Old Equestria, and which still had strong connotations to Ponykind, she was becoming increasingly aware that there were other and more intimate possible relations.
She had Cycled, with increasing intensity, for the last four years, and learned to deal with the intense, frightening feelings her time roused in her. She dealt with them decently, with suppressors and, in private, self-stimulation. She very much did not wish to be wanton, as her mother had become.
She saw that some of the Ponies in her grade were already beginning to court: not the childish courtship of colts and fillies, but the more mature courtship of young stallions and mares who were well-aware that in a few years they would be old enough to get decent jobs, marry and start families of their own. Some of the students in higher grades were already betrothing, or "getting engaged," as the Canterlot Ponies called it.
In that context, the possibility of relieving her desires by means other than masturbation became increasingly plausible. She would not sleep around -- no, she was determined to be a good mare -- but she might be willing to permit serious liberties to a stallion she loved, even before marriage.
Needless to say, thoughts of such dalliances often occupied her mind during the times she spent alone in her bed, relieving herself of the pressures of her Cycles, lest she behave badly among actual stallions. And at those times, Big Mac sometimes figured in her fantasies.
Had Big Mac been her age, of her educational class, and lived in the same town as her, she knew what she might have done; what she probably would have done. Not given herself wholly to him, no, not yet, for she was a decent young mare.
But she would have gone out walking with him, and talking with him. And they would have found some semi-private place and leaned with him, and held it just that bit longer, so that he would have known that she was sweet on him. And the talk might have become increasingly affectionate, and if it led to hugging and kissing -- she would not have objected.
No, she would not have objected at all.
And the other things she imagined, when she lay alone in her bed during her Cycle, with her hoof or tail between her legs touching her most private places in the special manner that every young mare learns when she begins to Cycle -- well, in time, if he was good to her, she might do those things with him as well. She could control herself. She knew that. She was good.
And Big Mac had always been very good to her.
It always seemed simple -- so very simple -- when she touched herself. There were no problems, no issues of where they lived or how well they were educated, or even what they wanted to do with their lives. There was only Big Mac, as she remembered him, big and warm and loving, bringing her to wonderful new worlds of delight such as they never really had when they had been together as friends in their childhood together.
To her, childhood was past. It had started to end when her father had died and she had to be the parent Strawberry refused to be. But it had really ended when she went to Canterlot Secondary School. Now she was fifteen. And Mackie was thirteen.
And that was the real problem, might always be the real problem (to young Cheerilee, brilliant though she was, "always" still had the short time horizon of the adolescent mind). There was no way that a mare could go stepping out with a colt, a child two years younger than her.
So it was that, when she went home on her vacations, she did not do any of the romantic things, even the tamer things, that she had imagined doing with Big Mac. She was a very clear-headed young mare. That was fantasy -- perhaps a vaguely sinful fantasy, given that he was two years her junior. This was reality.
And in reality, it would be a terrible thing to do to her dear friend, the one who had helped her stay sane after her father's death, to seduce him and use him and then have to drop him when she found a real colt-friend. This would be true, even if she went no further than hugging and kissing, because she knew Mackie well enough to know that, to him, it would be serious. She knew that if she treated him like this, she would break his heart.
So her times back in Ponyville with Big Mac stayed mostly chaste, though she did of course walk with him and talk with him, sometimes in semi-private places. She was not entirely immune to the pleasure of being alone in the woods with an admittedly handsome and muscular and bright and friendly and entirely dear colt, for she was despite her best intentions still a rather young mare, and the hearts of young mares do beat a bit faster in such situations, even if they are geniuses who win scholarships to top secondary schools.
She could of course sense that Mackie wanted her, and as more than just a friend. This would have been obvious even were they not both Ponies, even if she could not, nestled close to him as they sat and leaned together alone in the woods, hear his own heart beat faster, smell his own arousal, with all her equine senses. She would have known this in any case, for she knew Big Mac better than she knew all but perhaps one or two of her other closest friends.
With another stallion ... colt, she reminded herself, only a colt ... things might have gotten more difficult. He would have pressed his suit, begun kissing and nibbling her, and she would have had to break away to avoid temptation. Certainly, she would have broken away.
Though at this point in her life, nopony had yet behaved this way with Cheerilee, because she had not met anypony save Big Mac about whom she seriously felt the temptation and thus put herself in a situation in which they might try to take such liberties, she knew the sort of things that went on. She was a sophisticated young mare, she told herself, nopony's fool.
But Big Mac was shy. Not normally all that shy with her, but that particular situation -- being with her and pereceiving her as a desirable young mare -- that situation made him shy again, shyer than he had ever been before with Cheerilee. Also, he deeply repected marehood, and he would never touch her in any way she had not previously accepted, without her clear invitation.
And she, amoral monster that she was, as she later told herself when she was free of the temptation of his sweet presence, she took full advantage of this shyness and respect. For when she was with him, she could not see him as a colt with a mare, but instead, she saw him as her stallion. And she could enjoy stepping out with her stallion, without having to do anything that would in all decency make her his mare for real.
And of course, she never went stepping out with Mackie when she was actually on her Cycle. If she did that, she greatly feared that they would both lose all self-control.
When others were around, they were but friends as they always were. Though her two other best friends, Ivory Scroll and Cup Cake, sometimes eyed her suspiciously, when she stated clearly that she and Mackie were no more than friends.
"It's nothing romantic," she told Cup Cake once. "No more than you with your friend Carrot Stalk."
"Um ... okay, sure, hon," replied Cup, looking embarrassed about something. "No more than me and Stalkie. Heh."
At the time, Cheerilee congratulated herself at the highly-successful deception she had practiced upon one of her best friends.
Another time, she had been walking in the woods with Big Mac, and they had perhaps leaned wordlessly against each other a bit too long, and she had perhaps let him hug her once too often, and experienced a brief wordless thrill when she pressed against his belly more tightly than usual, and felt his arousal against her own hide in a manner she never had done with anypony before ... and he kissed her.
Not on the lips, because she turned aside at the last moment, and received that kiss on her cheek. And she looked into his deep green eyes then, and she saw something in them that frightened her, because it was beyond friendship, beyond lust, it was love, and she felt her own soul responding to his call, and she couldn't, all her schoolfriends would laugh at her, if she started seriously dating a colt of thirteen.
She couldn't just ignore Mackie either, that would be too horribly cruel, so instead she smiled at him, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek also by way of return, "You're my best friend," she told Big Mac, and it was very true, but also deliberately incomplete.
Suddenly she felt that what she was doiing with him was very wrong. Not that she had come very close to sparking with him, but that she was stringing him along. Because no matter what she let him do, she could never be his mare. He just didn't fit into her new life, her new world.
What am I doing? she asked herself, dismayed. He's always been good to me, always been there for me, and I'm just going to use him for a thrill! No!!!
"This is wrong," she said aloud, and saw his face fall, his ears droop, and she wanted to explain to him what she really meant, but could see no way to do it that would not make him feel far worse. "I have to go. I just have to go."
She went, galloping away.
He did not try to stop her. He was, as always, respectful of her wishes.
Sometimes, later on, she wished he hadn't been quite so respectful of her.
For, by then, she knew she didn't deserve it. Had never really deserved it.
But that was much later. The rest of that summer, she and Big Mac continued to be friends, but not quite as close and before. He did not try to kiss her any more.
And then she went off again to school.
Cheerilee had another birthday. She turned sixteen.
She became even more popular at school. She still didn't have a steady colt-friend, but she started to accept invitations to school dances. She dressed more boldly, in extreme fashions of skirts and socks and leggings, hair teased out into huge mops, in the manner that was then coming into mode then.
The colts ... no, young stallions ... began to flock around her. And they often tried to lean her, and sometimes to hug her or kiss her. And sometimes she let them kiss her, though not very deeply.
But she was not very interested in the young stallions, and she did not want to think too much about why. Because, when she looked into their eyes, she did not see what she wanted.
They were mostly good stallions -- though once or twice she had to show an overly-fresh stallion how a Ponyville filly dealt with male presumption, and he went away with her hoof-mark on his cheek. Only once or twice. For they were mostly good stallions, and Cheerilee had a good reputation at that school.
But their eyes were the eyes of strangers, or at best casual friends. They were not deep green eyes, gazing at her with utter caring and devotion from a red, freckled face, huge and heavy-jawed, and oh so dear and familiar. They were not his eyes.
And she began to wonder if sixteen and fourteen was as big a gap in age as fifteen and thirteen, let alone fourteen and twelve. And she began to imagine that, perhaps, she might behave a bit differently toward Mackie the next summer.
Then everything changed.
For she met Cool Lines.
And for the first time in her life, or so she thought, she really fell in love.
