//------------------------------//
// Chapter 14: State of Mind 
// Story: Quantum Leap Forward 
// by Halira 
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Cheerilee sat in the corner as the Apple family slowly migrated into the kitchen, one by one. In a short period of time the kitchen had her, Ma Apple, Applebloom, Applejack, and Big Mac. Caramel had been found, and sent to spend the night with some friends, which the young colt didn't seem to have any objections to. All they were waiting on to begin was Bright Pear to arrive. Applejack said she found Strawberry flying overhead, and Strawberry had gone to fetch the young green stallion.

The bearer of honesty was giving Cheerilee suspicious glares on and off, and on more than one occasion Applebloom harshly scolded her older sister for doing it. Applejack would stop for a few minutes following each scolding, but they'd always resume again soon enough after. It made Cheerilee uncomfortable, and she had a feeling that the farm pony would not be so willing to accept even Luster Dawn's mistaken view of what was going on with Candy.

Bright Pear finally arrived after several minutes of dreadfully-silent waiting. He was flanked by a young pegasus mare with bright red fur and a long green mane that hung down to the ground in a single braid. Her cutie mark was a stylized sun with a strawberry in the middle of it. 

The young mare spoke up, looking embarrassed. "Sorry it took so long to find him. The overgrowth in the pear orchards is getting much better, but it's still pretty bad where he was trying to clear today. I didn't know if I was allowed to be here or if I would be intruding. I can go if you want." Bright Pear brought a leg around her and pulled her close, signaling his opinion, and the mare looked up at him with adoring eyes and snuggled closer to him.

Ma Apple gave the mare a warm smile. "No, stay. You've grown from the little filly that used to steal my pies from my windowsill to a wonderful partner for my son. You're family, even if it isn't official yet. I wanted to speak with you later tonight anyway, as adults, mare to mare."

Strawberry gave her potential future mother-in-law a hesitant look. "Not about anything bad, I hope."

"About somethin' Rainbow Dash brought to my attention," Ma replied, and smirked as Bright Pear stiffened up. "Don't worry, I'm just wanting to be sure a few things are being done, and maybe discuss the future. I think it is time to start talkin' about that. Bright, you can breathe, I'm not going to pluck your marefriend's wings."

Bright let out a long breath, and Strawberry stared up at him with one ear cocked to the side. "What did Rainbow Dash tell her?" Strawberry whispered.

Bright blushed. "She heard us in my room, doing… you know." Strawberry's face suddenly turned a much deeper shade of red, and she stared forward, refusing to look at anypony. Applejack guffawed to herself in the corner, apparently finding nothing objectionable about what the two had been caught at, but finding plenty of humor in their vexation. It wasn't as surprising as it would have been for Applejack in her own time, but it would be fairly hypocritical for the Applejack of this time to raise any sort of fuss about it. 

Ma Apple's expression got serious. "To business then. Today I found out that Candy is not lyin' to us."

"Hold just a gosh-durn second-" Applejack began, but was silenced by a fierce glare from the matriarch.

"Do not interrupt until I am done!" Ma yelled, and Applejack cringed back from what must have been an uncharacteristic show of anger from the mare. "As I was sayin', Candy isn't lyin'; she really believes that she is all these different ponies and creatures. It is not a game of pretend or her tryin' to duck out of things. There is somethin' wrong with her. Applebloom can maybe explain it better than me."

The pregnant mare blinked, seemingly not expecting to have to give her testimony so soon. "I ain't gotten a chance to look over her work yet, but Luster Dawn determined Candy has fourteen distinct echo resonances in her. Ain't nopony at the school ever seen anythin' like it. I counted, and counting her current one, and the time she said she had amnesia, that's fourteen since she got lost in the Everfree."

"So your’re saying we should believe her when she says she is Cheerilee?" Bright asked in confusion, giving Cheerilee a troubled glance. "Where's my sister then?"

"I'm sayin' that she has an echo of herself that's in charge of her head right now," Applebloom said slowly. "It's still her, but ain't her at the same time. It's like a whole other mind that her brain made. She ain't really Cheerilee, she just honest and truly thinks she is. Candy is still there, but her real mind is kind of pushed off to the side."

"She is?" Cheerilee blurted out. "She's still here? Asleep in her head?" That was something Luster hadn't mentioned. 

"Yes, you're still there," Applebloom replied. "There'd be nothin' to echo if you weren't. Trick is figurin' out how to wake ya up, and get these other minds ya've made to go away, and stop bein' made."

She wasn't even going to object that she wasn't a figment in response to that. She knew she wasn't a figment, but what Applebloom said was exactly what she wanted, which was for them to find a solution to where this would stop happening to Candy, and to get her out of the filly's head. If they could come up with that she didn't care if they believed she was real or not.

"It sounds like a load of malarkey," Applejack said. The farm pony was nothing if not predictable, at least.

Applebloom rounded on her sister. "Maybe ya don't trust Luster Dawn's opinion about the evidence, but are ya questionin' Starlight's, Sweetie's, and mine? Because we all listened and we all agree. Are ya sayin' I don't know enough about magic to not be able to have a good working knowledge of what I'm talkin' about?"

Applejack firmed up her expression. "Don't get your tail in a tizzy. I ain't sayin' you don't know more than most folk about magic. I'm right proud of you showin' everycreature that an earth pony can be as good at magic as some fancy unicorn." The farm pony paused and looked at Ma Apple. "Um, no offense."

Ma waved it off. "None taken."

Applejack turned back to her sister. "But you said it yerself, you ain't gotten to look at it yet. Maybe she jumped to conclusions and said them in a way that sounded real convincin'."

Applebloom was not fully mullified. "And ya think a personal student of Twilight's could go and make that kind of mistake? A pony that Twilight praised for how much she knew about magic when she brought her to us to better learn about friendship?"

Applejack looked like she would waver for a moment, then sat down in her seat and slumped. "I don't rightly know. I just know how I feel about it."

"Applejack… we know how upset you have been about what happened months ago, but can't you just let it go?" Ma pleaded. "This is your niece, my daughter, a pony that still may still want your approval. You weren't the only pony hurt, she was too."

"She should have thought about what she was doin' before she went and did it," Applejack growled. 

Cheerilee had enough. She was not going to let a pony, respected element bearer or not, treat a foal like this. "She is eight!" She yelled out, making everypony gape at her. She didn't care. "Do you think an average eight year old can really grasp what kind of hurt she did to you? Do you think she really understood? No! What she understood was a family member she loved and trusted was in a rage at her for reasons she didn't understand! She's not you or your siblings, she doesn't understand yet at her age about the loss of a loved one. That's a good thing, because somepony that age shouldn't have to. How dare you automatically assume she understands these things! You need to be patient with her, because she's a foal!"

The room was silent as Cheerilee labored to catch her breath. Applejack was staring at her like she had just grown two heads. The others weren't much different. The silence continued, broken only by her heavy breathing, until Rainbow Dash slunk into the room, wearing her captain's jacket and whistle still. "Um, what am I walking into?"

The pegasus's voice seemed to break the spell of silence everypony was under. Ma Apple looked down at Cheerilee with a her lips in a tight grimace. "If you believe you are Cheerilee at the moment, can I trust you to go to your room for the duration of this discussion?"

"I'm not apologizing for what I just said," she answered in a tight voice.

"I don't expect you to, and it needed to be said, so I'm not even mad," the matriarch replied. "This will just go smoother without you present. You contributed, and I thank you for that, but right now I need you to just go to your room and wait until we're ready for you. Can I trust you to do that, and not try to run off?"

She wasn't happy about it, but she nodded. "Yeah, I can do that. I'll stay there till you're ready for me." She paused briefly. "And I'm not a figment in Candy's mind, but I want to help her."

"You can help by behavin'," Ma said sternly. "I'll have your pa come get you shortly, and we'll talk about this more."

As she was walking out of the room she heard Strawberry whispering to Bright Pear. "If she's supposed to be Principal Cheerilee, I don't remember Principal Cheerilee ever getting that angry in all the times I got taken to her office as a foal, and that was a lot of times."

"Is anypony going to fill me in?" Rainbow asked as Cheerilee walked by her.

"Come sit down, Rainbow," Applejack said in a solemn voice. 

Cheerilee heard no more as the door closed behind her, and she made her way up to Candy's room.






Her first instinct when getting inside the room was to flop on the bed. She was tired, and that outburst, mixed with the fact she still hadn't eaten, just made the weariness all the worse. 

She didn't head to the bed, instead she started looking at the drawings again. A quick count of them gave her a count of thirteen, not counting the nightmare muffin. Thirteen individuals that had occupied Candy's body, and she was number fourteen in line. Would there be a fifteenth, sixteenth, and so on? She hoped not, and maybe now that the Apples understood that something was seriously wrong. Knowing that, hopefully it could come to an end. 

She wondered how Candy would draw her when the time came. Would she be a friendly, smiling pony, or would she be an angry one that had lost her temper? She didn't normally lose her temper, at least not like that. Was it the fact she was in the body of an emotionally volatile foal, or was this just getting to her that much? It was perhaps both. She definitely didn't like herself losing her temper like that, even if things needed to be said. Strawberry was right, that wasn't who she was.

She could probably find other ways to help Candy. The family was on a wrong track, thinking this was just a psychological problem when it was really magical in nature. She went to the desk and pulled the books over to her. The book about potions was a likely a dead end, and she shoved it aside. The book about magical afflictions was promising, but her previous glances in the book already showed she wouldn't be able to recognize it if she did read an entry describing what was happening. She shoved that to the side as well.

That left the book on paranormal creatures. Luster Dawn had noted that there were a lot of undocumented and little understood things in the Everfree, even to this day. Something had clearly happened in the Everfree and it might be that Candy encountered something there that did this to her. She flipped through a few pages and got a feel of how the large book read. Thankfully, it seemed to be a much easier read than the book about magical maladies. It documented the creature, gave a description of the creature, it's habitat, and its traits. It also described how rare the creature was, or if the creature was even confirmed to exist, believed extinct, or if it were just rumored or old mare's tales. There were occasionally drawings of creatures, though most entries didn’t have any. The ordering of entries seemed to start with the well-documented creatures and progressed through the book to more and more obscure things that existed only in stories told around campfires. It was long, encyclopedicly long; not something that she could finish in a single day of reading. 

Well, it wasn't like she had anything better to do as she waited. She turned to the first page, which had an entry on cockatrices, and began reading. 

Time stretched on, and she found herself enjoying the book. At least half of the earlier entries could almost be considered a survival guide to living near the Everfree Forest. She was familiar with many of these creatures mentioned so far, but the author gave details about them that she was completely unaware of to this point. The author also often included recountings of various ponies' encounters with the creatures, which read as short misadventures, and they added an entertainment value to the book that she hadn't been expecting. They also didn't devolve into scientific or magical jargon, which made what was written much more accessible to even a younger reader. She could imagine Candy would have no problems with understanding what was written here, and she idly mused about whether she should try to track this book down in her own time to add to suggested reading for her students-- if it had even been written yet 

She was deep into reading an entry about tatzelwurms (something not native to the Everfree, but she found herself reading about in interest despite that) when she heard the door open behind her. She looked behind her and saw Big Mac slowly walk into the room. She still had no idea how a stallion that big could be that quiet on his hooves. She made more noise just walking around on these floorboards than he did, and she wasn't even in a body that weighed a quarter as much as his. 

As she was getting up from her seat to leave, the big stallion gentle shut the door and sat down. "Candy, I have things I want to tell you," he said. 

She cocked an ear, a little surprised to hear him speak up. "Candy isn't here right now, Big Mac. I'm Cheerilee. Though I'm sure she would love to have you talk to her whenever she finally comes back."

He stared at her for a second. "Well, thing is Miss Cheerilee. I think my daughter is still right in front of me. She might not be able to answer me with you in the way, but I think she can still hear me. There's things that need to be said, important things. Are you goin' to deny me sayin' em?"

She couldn't actually say if the stallion was wrong or right about that. For all she knew, Candy was a spectator along for the ride for each and every one of those who were placed in her body. She hoped it wasn't true, because that would make the filly's situation that much more horrific for her. She couldn't even imagine…

She sat back down and her ears sagged as she closed her eyes. "Say what you need to say, Big Mac."

He took a deep breath before beginning, and she opened her eyes to watch him. "I wanted to let you know I love and care about you, and I'm sorry that I didn't listen as I should when you told me that this wasn't just a game of pretend. Fathers should listen when their foals try to tell them somethin' is wrong, and I messed up bad as a pa for that." 

He got up from his seat and walked over to look at the drawings. "Ponies think because I don't talk much, that I don't notice things. Understandin' what you're goin' through now, I can see things in ways I didn't before. All these ponies and creatures you've made yourself be, they were what you felt you needed right then and there."

She frowned. "What do you mean by that? Some of these ponies are horrible. I don't see where she needed them."

Big Mac turned open the book on magical maladies and glanced at the contents. "You were always such a smart filly. Not the type that would be content stayin' on the farm forever. Readin' all these books with words your ma and I can't even understand. Guessin' that's part of why you liked to pretend so much."

She scowled. "Yes, Candy is a smart filly. That doesn't answer the question I asked."

He looked up at the drawings again and pointed at the first, a unicorn clad in armor. "You was lost in the woods, scared, maybe you saw some monsters. That ain't something a filly can deal with, so you needed somepony else, and there weren't nopony there. So you let yourself be somepony who could be brave, fight the monsters, and be angry at the 'evil' earth ponies-- like your aunt that hurt your feelins."

She blinked; that actually sounded very well-reasoned. Big Mac wasn't done yet though. He pointed to a picture of a pegasus mare that looked like she was giving a sultry look. "You caught your brother and his marefriend doin' a very adult thing, changed the whole way you saw your brother. I ain't a fool, and I know you read adventure books that sometimes have characters like that. You had a hard time accepting things though, so you made yourself somepony that could easily accept what you saw."

He turned and pointed at the changeling. "You understand you have a problem, and you feel trapped in all these other ponies and creatures. You needed to be somecreature that changed who they were all the time, because you couldn't deal with it on your own."

She crouched down and shivered, these were all very insightful looks into what could be going on in Candy's mind. This was Big Mac's daughter, and if anypony knew her, it was him. It was unnerving to hear it, because it made her have to question things she didn't want to question.

Big Mac pointed at Sombra. "And you've been so angry that nopony believed you. More angry than you could express. You wanted to lash out because you're so angry, but that ain't you to be doin' that. So you made yourself somepony that could be cruel, where you couldn't be."

"And me?" She whispered quietly. 

He looked down at her. "You're normally so good at school, top of your age group, even better than a lot of the students about to graduate. But this year you missed a lot of school, and there was a chance you'd be held back. You needed somepony to help you with school, and who better than your old principal?"

He sat back down next to her. "We met with her at the end of last school year. She had nothin' but good things to say about how smart and gifted you are. She suggested even applying you to go to the school in Canterlot, sayin' they took some younger students, and she thought you might learn more there than what Ponyville had to offer you. You said you didn't want to leave your friends, and we didn't know who could watch over you there anyway. She smiled and said there were still lots of years to think about it." 

He took a deep breath and bent down low next to her. "And she never mentioned or hinted ever bein' stuck in your body. Didn't act funny at all. Don't you think that if you were really Cheerilee that Miss Cheerilee would have said somethin', anythin'?"

"I-I don't know," she said as she began tearing up. "I don't know why I wouldn't say something. I don't know why I took off at the start of the year. I just don't know."

He gave her a sad frown. "Well, maybe you don't think as much like Cheerilee as you thought." His expression softened. "I don't mean to upset you, but I want you to come back to us. We know you've got a problem now, and we want to make it better. Come down when you're ready, if you need a few minutes."

He left her alone in the room, and she wiped her eyes while feeling miserable. She knew who she was, he couldn't convince her otherwise. She didn't care how much what he said made sense. She might not understand what her present self was thinking either. None of those things changed the fact she was Cheerilee. 

She stared up at the drawings again, looking at them one by one. Wondering again what her drawing would look like. 

Her eyes stopped on the closet, and the drawing of the sinister muffin. There was no sound, but she could swear it was laughing at her.