The rest of the break we had I thought was fairly boring, it being spent playing a class sized game of 'Duck Duck Goose'. Or rather, they played while I watched, seeing as I lacked any sense of coordination at that point. Everyone else besides Diamond Tiara and her friend participated, the two seeming content to talk to each other and occasionally glance at me angrily. It went on for a while before Miss Cheerilee finally returned from whatever it was she was taking care of.
"I'm sorry I was gone for so long everypony," she apologized to us. "I had something very important I needed to do. I trust that you were all well behaved while I was gone-"
"What did ya have ta do that was so important?" someone asked her curiously in a very thick country accent.
"Nothing that you need to be concerned about, Apple Bloom," the teacher answered as she made her way to the front of the room. “In any case, let’s get started on reading and writing. I’ll keep this portion of class a bit short to make sure we get out on time. If everypony could get out his and her notebook and pencil, please?”
I copied Scootaloo and used my nose to open my desk, finding nothing inside. That was to be expected though, considering I was supposed to be a new student in this dream. I looked up and watched as Miss Cheerilee used her mouth to take a notebook and pencil from her own desk and headed over to me.
“Here you are, Asher,” she told me kindly, setting the materials in front of me. “I know you told me that you’d only be here for today, but I thought I’d let you have a whole notebook just in case.”
I decided to ignore the implication of her words, knowing it would just make me nervous for no reason, especially considering this wasn’t real. Instead, I watched as she went back to the front of the class, turning and facing us to say, “We’ll keep our lesson easy and just have a writing prompt for today.”
With that, she used her mouth to pick up a piece of chalk and write something on the board, and said once she was finished, “I want you all to write a one-page story based on this sentence.”
I couldn’t help but feel my skin, my coat, prickle up and my mouth go dry at what was written on the chalkboard. Or rather, at what wasn’t written. I couldn’t make out the squiggles that were written in the place of letters. I didn’t understand what was going on; I’d watched her write numbers and math symbols on the board during the last lesson and could read them perfectly. Whatever she wrote on the board should have been just as understandable. The fact that it wasn't brought back the nervousness I'd been feeling the last few hours.
I realized that the nervousness I’d been feeling all morning could be much better described as a creeping sense of dread, and not knowing what was written on the board only added to it. I really didn't want this to be real. I didn't want to be this... animal. The thought of being an animal was extremely scary, to the point where I had to force my legs not to shake. I tried to keep myself calm, though, and pushed everything being an animal might mean out of my mind. I would deal with that when it came to that, if it came to that, which it wouldn't because this was just a dream.
“Lord, please just let this be a dream,” I whispered, nearly inaudible, closing my eyes as I did so. “Please, when the morning comes, let me wake up safely in my bed. I ask-”
“What are you whispering about?” the orange pegasus next to me interrupted curiously.
I opened my eyes again to see her staring intently at me. “Um, it’s nothing,” I told her, giving an embarrassed cough. “Can you tell me what the teacher wrote?” I asked quickly.
“You can’t read what Miss Cheerilee wrote?” I shook my head, and she started, “It says we have to start our story with-”
“Scootaloo,” the teacher called out flatly. “I hope there’s a good reason you’re whispering during class again.”
“I was just helping Asher with the assignment, Miss Cheerilee,” Scootaloo explained. “She said she couldn’t read what the board said.”
That was another thing that was really starting to bother me. I was getting intensely uncomfortable with the use of the word ‘she’ to refer to me. It made my skin prickle more, but I forced myself to ignore it as the teacher started to speak to me.
“Is that true, Asher?” she asked, seeming like she wanted to add more onto her question.
She watched me carefully as I debated my response. I had a feeling I knew what she was thinking. She didn’t look at me like I was in trouble, she looked at me like she was concerned about me. I worded my statement with the same care she watched me with, and told her, "Yes. I can’t read what the board says.”
She stared at me for a little while longer, and I felt myself blush as I looked down at my desk. “Can I get another drink of water, please?” I asked, my mouth feeling even drier.
“Yes, of course,” she told me, and waited expectantly as I went to the fountain for the second time that day. I was feeling very self-conscious as she watched me walk over and take another drink. I was hating how suspicious she was of me, and wished that she had someone else to put her attention on.
“Now,” she said as I made my way back to my seat, “For those of you in the back who can’t see what’s written, it says, ‘as I opened the door, you wouldn’t believe what I saw’. As I said, I want you all to write a one-page story based on this sentence. I’ll give you all about an hour to work on it, and then we’ll be done with class for today.”
Cheerilee tried to use lesson planning for the next day to distract herself from how inadequate of a solution she had for the filly. It wasn’t good, but it was the best she could come up with on extremely short notice. Of course, she might not have needed to do anything. Cheerilee might simply have been overreacting, and preferred to think so. However, despite what she hoped, she knew she had to prepare for the worst. For now, though, she tried to put the thought out of her head and focused on creating her lesson plan. Or, she tried at least. Thinking about tomorrow simply made her more concerned about what she should do and how she should handle Asher.
Eventually, to try and put those thoughts out of her head, the teacher got up from her desk and started to walk around the classroom to view the current progress of each student’s work. She went row by row, working her way front to back, taking a little while before getting to Asher. Unlike the other students, several of whom were already a quarter to halfway done as Cheerilee passed them by, she was sitting there staring at her pencil, her page notably blank, seeming like she had no idea what to do.
“Asher?” she asked. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
The teacher watched her flinch a tiny bit at her voice. “Yes. I’m fine,” she answered quietly without looking up. “I’m just thinking. I’m sorry.”
“You’re okay. I just hope I can see what you can come up with before you leave us.” Asher didn’t respond to that, and simply kept on staring at her pencil. The teacher waited silently next to her for a few seconds, seeing if she would start to write something. When she didn’t, Cheerilee started to speak again.
“You know, I’m sure if you wrote down the first sentence, you’d start to come up with something.”
“Um, I’m fine,” she responded shyly. “I- I’m sure I’ll think of something.” She gazed up at the teacher, and then quickly looked back down, slightly embarrassed. “I can’t write when people are watching me,” she added.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cheerilee smiled sweetly. “I’ll leave you alone now.”
The teacher walked on to see what the next few students had written, waiting a few minutes before glancing at the filly again. She didn’t know how she should feel as she watched her use her mouth to shakily copy down what was written on the board. It honestly looked like she’d never written anything in her whole life, seeing how slowly she was going and how she glanced back up at the board every few seconds in an effort to imitate what was written.
“Of course, it could just be that she’s not feeling well,” Cheelilee thought to herself. “She does seem a little sick. Besides, you remember what you thought about Scootaloo, right? You’re probably overreacting. You’re just concerned because she’s new.”
I didn’t even bother trying to write with the hoof I now possessed, opting instead to pick up the pencil with my mouth like most of the rest of the class had done. I tried to ignore the fact that Miss Cheerilee had also picked it up with her mouth when she gave it to me as I very carefully started to copy down what she wrote on the board. It took a few minutes for me to even figure out how to press down hard enough in the notebook to get something written, and even then, they were still only just dark enough for me to see. After that, I started to copy the words, the squiggles, she wrote on the board, but I wasn’t able to get more than three-quarters of the way through the sentence before Miss Cheerilee called the class’s attention again.
“Okay, class. I know we haven’t had much time to work on our stories, but it looks like it’s almost time for lunch. I’ll have you all finish up what you were writing tomorrow. For now though, you can all put your notebooks away and I’ll let you be dismissed.”
I’d never seen a group of kids leave a school so quickly. In the blink of an eye, there were only four of us left in the building, although I let it how quickly they left be a sign that this wasn't real. Although, it was weird to know that it was only lunchtime. It felt like a whole day had gone by in the span of a few hours. I decided to be ignorant and simply say it was because of the dream I was having as well.
“You should come and eat lunch with me and Sweetie Belle, Asher!” Scootaloo told me. “Then we can tell you more about cutie marks and stuff. I mean, if your parents don’t care.”
“I don’t think they’ll care,” I started, “but I’m not sure-”
“Oh, you should totally let us meet your parents!” Sweetie Belle got out in a high pitched voice. “I wanna see what they look like!”
“If it’s not a problem, I’d really like to meet them, too,” Miss Cheerilee told me, suddenly appearing next to us. She was once again wearing a smile, one that I’d come to know well in just a few hours. It was that same kind smile that let me clearly see how concerned she was despite her attempt to hide it.
“Um, I’m not sure if you can,” I told the three of them.
“Why not?” Miss Cheerilee pressed in a voice that blended curiosity, suspicion, and worry.
I'd never been so apprehensive in my whole life as I'd been in the last few hours since I got there. I decided that I needed to verbalize the reality of the situation. “Well, uh…” I started nervously.
"Yes?" Miss Cheerilee asked, tilting her head slightly.
I swallowed and said, “You won’t be able to because this is just a dream. This isn’t real, so...”
The three looked at me with expressions that asked me if I was being serious, the teacher herself raising an eyebrow. I looked back down at my desk and quickly said, “That- that was a joke.”