While the most of the other students had opted to turn their letters in at various points during the week Scootaloo had decided to wait until after school on friday to hand hers in. She knew her plan was a long shot, and the first obstacle she would have to overcome was to convince Cheerilee to send her letter, without reading it. If Cheerilee did read her letter, her kindhearted teacher would offer to help, or at least try to make up for the lack of attention she received at home and Scootaloo didn’t want that. School and her friends were her only refuge from her home life, and the last thing she wanted was to be reminded how lonely she felt throughout the day.
They would mean well and do their best to keep it quiet, but ultimately every “How ya doin Scoots?” and “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?” would be colored with pity and Scootaloo didn’t need anyponies pity.
She considered trying to sneak the letter into the accepted pile but because Cheerilee only had one pile on her desk that seemed unlikely. She thought about just mailing the letter to Canterlot herself, but she couldn’t be sure the princesses would see it that way, it was far more likely it would get lost in an ever growing pile of fan mail. So without any better ideas and time growing short Scootaloo tentatively approached her teacher’s desk when school had let out on Friday, hoping to prevail upon Cheerilee’s well known sympathies.
“Here’s my letter to the Princesses Mrs. Cheerilee. Umm I know you said you’d pick the best ones to send, but I was kinda hoping that you could pass mine along without reading it.”
Cheerilee looked at Scootaloo quizzically. Her students knew better than to ask her to break the rules, but this was done in such an obvious way that Cheerilee doubted there was ill intent behind it. Surely a student wishing to game the system would come up with some sort of ploy, and this was an utterly guileless request. “Scootaloo, I can only send a few letters to the Princesses and it wouldn’t be fair to the other students if I chose yours without reading it. Can I ask why you don’t want me to read it?”
“It’s kinda personal, I wrote some things I don’t want anypony else to know,” Scootaloo said, her unease plainly evident.
Her instincts that this was not a student seeking to cheat her way to a prize confirmed Cheerilee decided to investigate further. “Oh I see. I’m not a princess, but if you’re having problems maybe I can help you?”
Scootaloo shook her head. “It’s okay Mrs. Cheerilee I understand, you have to be fair.” Scootaloo slowly took her letter in her teeth and began to trudge out of the classroom, her faint hopes dashed. As she watched the orange filly walk away Cheerilee was overcome with compassion. Her empathy for children was one of the reasons she became a teacher, and every instinct in her body was telling her that Scootaloo was seriously hurting.
She was doing fairly well in school, she wasn’t sullen or withdrawn and she didn’t come to class with bruises so Cheerilee doubted she was being abused. Besides she had met Dizzy, there was simply no way she was capable of hurting her daughter. Building trust is about small steps.
“Scootaloo wait,” she called out before the filly had a chance to open the door.
“Yeah?” Scootaloo looked back and dared to hope that Cheerilee might help her after all.
“I promise I won’t read your letter. If you’d like me to send it to the princesses I’ll do it, because I trust that you’re being honest with me. And I hope that if you ever did need anything you would trust me enough to let me try and help you.”
Scootaloo smiled a wide smile as hope was allowed to flourish in her mind once again. “I will Miss Cheerilee, thank you!”
Luna walked into the castle library expecting to find her sister and a small stack of letters. Her ears drooped when she found her sister sitting next to a small pile of them instead. “Looks like this will take longer than I thought dear sister.” In response Celestia levitated about half of the pile over to her sister, leaving the rest for herself.
They each read their stack of letters patiently and carefully but were overall not impressed with the reasons the school children of Equestria had for wanting to join their exclusive club. Even with the teachers weeding out roughly three fourths of the responses, most of the letters were not at all compelling.
The most common refrain was that a student wanted to be a member of the ruling family so that they could “help other ponies”, never mind that most of them failed to mention just how they would use their newfound power to “help” anyone. There were a few who did specify how they would help but failed to consider the long term implications of their actions. One colt noted that his Dad was always grumbling about taxes, so his plan was to get rid of them all together. Quite a few children wanted to ban homework or school, and one filly had a plan to give everyone free ice cream and candy.
Soon three piles began to form, one for the letters that Luna wanted Celestia to read, one for the letters that Celestia thought Luna should consider, and one for the outright rejections; the reject pile being considerably larger than the other two. Luna tended to favor the letters where the student admitted that at least some of the desire to be crowned was borne of a selfish motivation, while Celestia tended to favor the letters where students professed a willingness to learn more about what being a princess was really like. Neither Diarch was impressed by any of the letters attempting to flatter them with phrases like “I want to be a princess so I can be just like you.”
However, when Luna got to Scootaloo’s she felt a profound sense of sadness emanating from the piece of parchment, hers was certainly unique amongst the reading so far. She levitated the plea over to Celestia, “What do you think of this one Tia.”
Celestia read it carefully, her face betraying no emotion aside from a small pursing of her lips. “A touching letter, but I’m not sure this was meant to help a daughter connect with her mother.”
“Tia, a little filly is clearly hurting and is desperate enough to seek our help. That is reason enough to consider making her a princess, unless you’ve found a letter with a reason that is not ‘I wish to do whatever I want all day’.”
“Luna, unfortunate as it is, many fillies and colts wish to spend more time with their parents. We cannot make them all royalty. Furthermore I am skeptical that making Scootaloo a princess would help her in the manner she seeks.”
“Ignore that then. You know as well as I do that she is a kind hearted little filly, and she is desperately seeking some small measure of affection. Even if we can’t give her what she really wants we can give her that.”
While Celestia didn’t entirely agree that playing surrogate mother was the best course of action, she couldn’t deny that they had yet to find a letter with a more worthy reason. “Set it aside, and if we don’t find a better reason I shall reconsider.”