//------------------------------// // The Panacea Appeal // Story: The Literary Appeal // by HiddenBrony //------------------------------// Cheerilee busied herself in the Library’s kitchen, her upbeat humming in harmony with the mid-morning sunlight that beamed through the window. Truly, she felt at the top of her game, ready to tackle anything the day might throw at her–and rightly, it would throw everything it could. Putting together a pair of daisy sandwiches, Cheerilee couldn’t help but start to bend her back legs a bit, hopping about and dancing to some imaginary tune. It wasn’t long at all before she was shaking what her momma gave her. “Who’s a silly pony~!” Cheerilee sang, a foalish smile on her face. Swinging about, Cheerilee started to lose herself in the old pony pop song, calling back to the old days of fast living and ridiculous hair of her youth. Abandoning the sandwiches on the table, Cheerilee went into full ‘break it down’ mode, her limbs shaking off their rust as the schoolteacher performed her celebratory dance in the solitude of the kitchen. Pulling off moves that would make Pinkie Pie jealous, Cheerilee swept her tail across the seats at the table set against the wall, dusting off the chairs as she continued to rock out. Despite the tragic loss of a few inches of her mane, it still flowed around her like a satin curtain. “Who is? You is–Twilight Sparkle!” Framed in the doorway, Twilight Sparkle stood stoically at the frozen Cheerilee in mid-breakdance. A long silence filled the air as Twilight’s eyes attempted to decode the situation, but the throbbing at the back of her head caused her to forget what just happened. “I have become death.” Already on her hooves, Cheerilee trotted over to Twilight, bolstering her marefriend and leading her to her seat. “Oh, you poor dear. You must have one terrible headache.” “I will burn down the countrysides and all will fear me.” Taking up the daisy sandwiches and placing one in front of Twilight, Cheerilee quickly set about gathering a strange amount of ingredients. Among them included garlic, onions, toothpaste, orange juice, ground up coffee beans, and half of a chocolate bar. It had to be half a chocolate bar. Not a chocolate bar cut in half, mind. It had to be one whose intention in life was to be eaten as it's other half had been some time ago. That loss of purpose, stolen from it, was the ingredient that the half a chocolate bar represented. In a pinch, watermelon rind would do. Gathering further ingredients, Cheerilee set to work. Over at the kitchen table, Twilight let her mane fall over her eyes as she slumped. Her voice was subdued, but with purpose. “I shall bring Canterlot to its end, and all shall know my pain.” Thankfully finding a blender with a Canterlot Cutlery branding, Cheerilee put all the foodstuffs in the gaping maw of the machine. With a tentative glance back at Twilight Sparkle, Cheerilee pressed the Food Hurricane setting on the blender and watched the green sludge start to form. Twilight released a groan as loud as the blender as the high pitched sound drove nails into her brain. “A pox! A pox on your house!” she decried. Cheerilee tittered her tongue, pouring the indeterminate, mildly liquid drink into a glass and sliding it over to Twilight. “Here Twilight, this’ll help with the hangover.” Begrudgingly, Twilight wrapped a hoof around the glass. “I’ll show you who’s going to be hung over this...” With an uncharismatic swig, Twilight downed the foul drink without taking time to appreciate the taste. With her slowed response, Twilight had already swallowed before realizing that what had hit her tongue was quite possibly the worst poison known to pony kind. The taste was not unlike that of the deepest depths of Tartarus, marinated in pools of acid. Beelzebub had officiated this swill as the one banned drink of all of existence, a fact that the Sisters and Discord had signed a blood treaty to never speak of it again. While her ancestors had no gag-reflex to speak of, it was this concoction that forced her great-and-then-some grandparents to develop one. Twilight’s magic reached out for a nearby napkin, wishing to remove the foul taste from her memory. In her haste, Twilight fumbled the napkin on the first swipe of her tongue, the paper slipping from her magical grip and sticking to the floor below. Eyes bulging, Twilight looked at her last salvation on the ground. Slowly, she turned to stare at Cheerilee. “Why? Why would you do this to me?” Her eyes were watering. Not from tears, but from some terrible spice that refused to let go of the back of her throat. “Mellow ou—” Cheerilee coughed. “I mean, calm down, Twilight,” she soothed, putting her hoof on Twilight’s back. At first, the student seemed to resist the touch. Yet, as Cheerilee started to rub the back of her neck, Twilight found herself unable to refuse the gesture. “It’s a recipe I learned from my moth— it’s an old family recipe for hangovers.” Twilight’s mind whirred back to reality, no longer slogged down by the alcohol-induced torture she had endured. “That’s a hangover?” she breathed. “Why would anypony want to drink ever if that’s what happens in the morning?” “So says the shameless mare.” Twilight suddenly ducked her head down so her mane would fall over her face. “M-my books said that copious amounts of alcohol would lead to not knowing what happened the previous night.” “You remember everything?” Twilight tried unsuccessfully to hide deeper into her mane. “In detail. At least until we got here. Then it’s all a blur—” It hadn’t really occurred to Twilight Sparkle until just now that she was currently sitting in her kitchen with Cheerilee. In the morning. After waking up from a date. Snapping her head up, she nearly took out Cheerilee. “Ohmygosh, we didn’t—!” Cheerilee furrowed her eyebrows, a slow dawning revealing over her face. However, once she grasped the question, her reaction was swift. “What? No! Twilight, please, I deserve a little more credit than that!” she said. “We got in pretty early, and Spike helped me up to your room.” Twilight mentally logged away that she hadn’t seen her little dragon assistant around anywhere this morning as something she’d have to check up on later. “So you took the extra bed, instead of going home,” Twilight concluded, her eyes narrowing. “Why?” Cheerilee chuckled, pouring a cup of coffee. “Because Spike doesn’t know how to deal with a drunken unicorn. The poor dear, he started looking up books in the library on it.” Returning to the table, Cheerilee took a sip of her black coffee and mused. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him all morning.” Twilight’s cheeks flared red as she averted her eyes from Cheerilee. She watched the doorway a moment, trying to guess where Spike had gone. More importantly though, she was trying to figure out the best way to avoid him. “Oh brother, I don’t know how I’m going to face him.” Cheerilee leaned on her hoof, wearing an expectant smile. “I don’t think he’s the one you have to worry about.” Twilight stared out the window at the ponies going about their daily tasks. It didn’t take long for her to recognize two stallions, a peach unicorn, and his midnight blue friend, walking down the street together. The same two from the restaurant, her increasingly sober mind reminded her. And they had ducked out before she got absolutely plastered. “I am never leaving my library again.” Cheerilee chuckled. “But then how will you ever visit your friends?” She knew Twilight was capable of sticking to any idea until its inevitable fruition if yesterday was any indication. “And I guess that means we’re done for dates, as well?” Twilight’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “I-I-I-I-No!” she nearly screamed. Cheerilee’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I’ll leave the library! I’ll do it right now! See?” With a spark of her horn, Twilight focused on the outside of the treehouse. Within seconds, she had disappeared in a flash of fuchsia magic and reappeared right outside her own window. “See! Outside! Now we can date again!” came her muffled voice. With a winking smile, Cheerilee returned to her cup of coffee, Twilight scrambling to explain to random passersby why she had just shouted her location after seemingly teleporting from nowhere.