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?"
Life had to go on.