//------------------------------// // Date Ten - It's All Relative (Guest Chapter by Eakin) // Story: Cheerilee's Thousand // by xjuggernaughtx //------------------------------// Guest Chapter written by Eakin Cheerilee sashayed down the street humming a cheerful tune, skimpy blue evening dress swaying in time with her hips. At long last, things were beginning to look up. These last few months, and all the romantic disappointments they’d heaped on her, were in hindsight painful-but-necessary lessons in being more discerning. So when she’d seen the personal ad in the back of the newspaper that seemed too good to be true, her first instinct was to assume that’s just what it was. Still, she’d responded. Cautiously at first, with an anonymous letter sent through the paper’s editor. But then he’d written her back. He’d admitted up front, and with good humor, that he’d been trying to put his best hoof forward in the ad. He was a few years older (‘but only a few!’) than he had initially suggested, but then again Cheerilee was only in her ‘early twenties’ under an extremely generous interpretation of the word ‘early.’ Cheerilee had almost put the letter down when he’d also admitted that he was on a tail end of a marriage that wasn’t doing so well, and both he and his wife had come to a friendly agreement to try seeing other ponies. But if those were the only nasty surprises, and he was willing to be upfront with her about them, they weren’t necessarily deal breakers. Then she’d read the second half of the letter. Or more accurately, she’d read the third quarter of it, put it down to take a very long and very cold shower, then finally managed to get through the rest. Romantic without being eye-rollingly over the top. Suggestive and flirty without being crude. Well-written and eloquent without devolving into purple prose. Her trained teacher eye had read each paragraph three or four times (for proofreading purposes, of course) and hadn’t spotted one spelling or grammatical error. Even his penmanship was florid and refined. Maybe there was something to be said for more... experienced... stallions. But Cheerilee had been let down after good first impressions before, so she decided to exchange a few more letters before making up her mind. That way if he turned out to be a creep after all she could just stop writing and he’d never even find out who she was. A few more letters passed back and forth through that newspaper office as the two became pen pals. He was a perfect gentlecolt, and her jaw had dropped open when he’d mentioned seeing his daughter at the school, her school in fact. That had alarmed her. What if this stallion was the father of one of the fillies she taught? Silver Spoon’s mother and father had seemed a little terse with one another at the last parent-teacher conference she’d held, although at the time she’d attributed that to the lecture she’d been delivering about their daughter’s behavioral troubles. Cheerilee wrote half a letter asking who the filly was, but then crumpled it up and threw it away. She repeated the process three more times before forcing herself to step away from her writing desk and let the matter go. If it was a filly in her class, she didn’t trust herself not to treat her differently in the hopes of currying favor by proxy, or pressing them for personal details and giving the game away entirely. The question still gnawed at her, though, and at that point she made up her mind for certain; she was going to meet this pony. The last letter she wrote, after three glasses of red wine, laid out in no uncertain terms just how interested she was. She nearly collapsed into an embarrassed giggling fit as she laced every sentence with erotic innuendo, stopping just short of straight-up smut. She wanted him to know, in no uncertain terms, that she was a mare of the world. A mare who knew her way around in the bedroom and just what she wanted from him, should he care to charm her over dinner the following weekend at a cafe Cheerilee had always wanted to try, but was saving for a special occasion. He’d recognize her by the white lily she’d have pinned to her chest. She sent the letter and found herself repeatedly glancing out at the mailbox for the next three days, eagerly awaiting the mailmare and the news she might bring. After the third day without a reply, she began to doubt her decision. Had her letter been too risque? Had she stepped over the boundary of good taste and come across as some kind of slutty whorse? She turned the letter over and over in her head trying to remember the exact phrasing, the exact word choice, that she had used and if there might have been a better one she could have chosen instead. But on the fourth day her despair turned to excitement when she discovered a short note among the bills and junk mail she always received. When she tore it open, she was overjoyed to discover that, why yes, the stallion would be positively delighted to meet with her at the time and place she’d suggested. Just look over by the bar for the stallion with a rose sticking out of the pocket of his blazer. So she walked, right on time, down the street towards the cafe. She gave in to the temptation to give a little hop in the air and clap her back hooves together before she landed again. How long had it been since the last time she’d felt this optimistic? Stepping into the upscale cafe, she passed under the glorious crystal chandelier and turned her jacket over to the coat check. She took out the carefully-wrapped white lily she’d spent a half-hour picking out that morning, ignoring the flower vendor’s increasingly-obvious impatience as she went back and forth looking for the perfect flower for the perfect night. Pinning it to the strap of her gown, she stepped over to the bar to meet her date. The bar was crowded with stallions and mares laughing, flirting, and generally having a wonderful time together. She scanned the ponies for any sign of a rose, and then, at the other end of the bar, she spotted it. Their eyes met and they recognized one another at the same time, anticipation morphing into shock, and then horror. “Dad?”