//------------------------------// // Dysfluency // Story: Fifty Sheaves of Paper // by Amit //------------------------------// Cheerilee laid hunched over a little book. Her hooves flipped over the pages feverishly, looking now and then over her shoulder. A bit of sweat began to drip from her brow, and she wiped it off as slowly as she could, careful not to let any fall. There could be no evidence. Twilight wasn’t in, but she took pride in being paranoid—even if she knew that it wouldn't make any difference in the end. The page-turning began to slow as she concentrated on the words, each syllable more appealing as she went on. Her subvocalisations got quicker, her lips beginning to move along with her imagined voice. She didn’t even notice as her voice gained a few decibels. “Jay sweez uh-nay joo-ment grayn-dee,” she gasped out, stretching out the last phoneme as far as she could. The recitation was getting louder, out of control; her voice was uneven but bold, plowing past the words. By the time she realised that her subvocalisation had lost its prefix, she had stopped caring; it felt far too good to stop. “Jay-ai-may-rant man-gurh lay foin kwand eel ay powssay,” she moaned, savouring the words on her tongue, “eel ay luh-ayr trayz sayvowryux.” The sheer wrongness of the syllables bumped up against her ears, making her groan in terrified joy as her body shivered; the library filled with the sounds of her now-unrestrained shouts, resonating through the floorboards as she debased the language. She focused on the act as the words streamed from her muzzle loud enough to muffle the sound of an opening door; she knew that if anypony found out, she’d never teach again. As if to remind herself, she glanced back at the cover: Basic Lowlands Unicorn, First Edition. She imagined it was the textbook she had used as a filly herself—she knew it couldn’t be, but the thought made her shudder nonetheless—as she defiled the carefully-constructed pronunciation guides, shifting vowels, pronouncing silent letters, vocalising hiatuses. The terror of discovery filled her, but it only spurred her on. Thoughts of her pupils’ shocked reactions went through her head as she disregarded every diphthong in the book, every diacritic, every single bit of outdated orthography she could see, forcing her Canterlotian accent onto every word as obnoxiously as she’d ever told anypony not to. “Luh insignificance duh capitalis-mee ayst ay tell point kwuh-lawn pee-yoot vee-vruh—” The pressure mounted behind her tongue, the sounds forcing herself through her throat as she turned short, low gutturals into long, consistently high-pitched alveolars, crushing the beauty of the words under her tongue, every pretence to euphony shamelessly discarded as the syllables twisted around them like bad similes around concepts. “Saynz billey-tay-ge!” Her eyes slammed shut instinctively as she reached the heights of pleasure, unable to look any longer. She breathed in as deeply as she could as the flavour of the words slowly faded from her mouth; with a gentle sigh, she pushed her hooves away from the book. Then she started to worry. Quickly, she began convincing herself of her safety. Spike was off running an errand. Twilight had gone to get groceries. There was no one living close enough to hear her, and her voice wasn’t nearly loud enough to penetrate the tree’s thick lining. Twilight had promised that her reading wouldn’t be disturbed. The schoolteacher paused her train of logic and smirked. I wonder what she’d think if she saw me now. She shook her head and decided that there was no reason to worry. And then she opened her eyes. She saw the ceiling. “Whew,” she said, and stood up to see Twilight standing at the door, mouth wide open. They stared at each other for a while, only a couch between them. She closed her mouth and swallowed gently. “How long have you been standing there?” Twilight chewed upon her lower lip before replying. “Since you said you were a grown mare.” “Oh.” She looked a bit off to the side. “How much did you see?” “Nothing. The couch was in the way.” Twilight came a bit closer, coming up around the couch and looking down. Cheerilee suddenly felt considerably smaller. “I heard it, though.” She glanced at the open door, clearing her throat almost soundlessly. “All of it.” Cheerilee’s cough was subdued. “I guess there’re worse ways to end a career, huh?” “Not a lot,” Twilight said, kneeling a bit. “What’s this?” She glanced back at it. “Basic Lowlands Unicorn, First Edition.” “That’s a foal’s textbook.” Cheerilee’s cheeks flushed. “I know.” There was a moment of silence before the soft buzzing of magic took it and a book came down between them. The purple field spread it open, and it tilted so that she could see Twilight’s muzzle. She glanced down at the page before affixing her eyes upon hers. Then she spoke. “Luh joo-ment days mee-chaw avwayr pay-see danz lah pree.” Her tone was casual, but her gaze failed to waver. Cheerilee’s eyes widened. “You—you misgendered both of those nouns and you used the wrong tense.” Even in her darkest moments, even in the deepest depths of depravity, Cheerilee never even thought of touching grammar, never thought of touching the sentences themselves. And the mare before her had just done that as easily as if she’d swiped her hair. Twilight grinned. “I know.” She leaned close; the touch of her breath made her shudder. She had taught foals long enough to smell the scent of mispronunciation and of bad grammar; it was some sort of earth pony sense, a smell that she had before prosecuted without mercy. She breathed it in. And she loved it. “It looks like you’ve got a lot to learn, Miss Cheerilee.” In spite of herself, the schoolteacher whimpered.