The town bell tower rang four times, signaling the end of the school day.
"Remember," Cheerilee said, "next week we're going over the history of Maretonia. Remember to read your books! There will be a quiz!"
Her little flowers groaned, mumbled, and filed out of the schoolhouse in a more or less orderly fashion.
"Don't forget!" she called after them again before the last one out closed the door.
She waited until they were all gone before she sat down and started going over the essays they'd finished over the last few weeks. Many of them were actually touching, remembering the life of a dear friend passed away.
None of them were disrespectful, though a few bordered on wandering off topic for the couple hundred words she'd asked them to write. That was understandable. Cheerilee herself didn't want to dwell on the events of that day more than she had to.
The minutes ticked by as she sat reading paper after paper, marking up mistake after mistake. She had to stop several times to re-read a particularly egregious mistake.
Or particularly bad quill-work. Like Sweetie Belle's.
"Oh, Sweetie. You normally have such good quill-work. Hasn't Rarity—" Cheerilee's breath caught as she understood the reason why Sweetie's was so much worse. "Oh..."
The words on the page blurred, becoming more legible. Except she didn't want them to be more legible. Written in Sweetie's essay was a story of heartache that Cheerilee herself had been ignoring.
"Where is it?" Cheerilee pulled open her armoire, almost the last place that she could have stashed it. She yanked clothes and hats and bows out by the cartful, then dug through them looking for the hat. The fedora she'd bought on a whim.
It wasn't there.
Cheerilee sat down heavily and leaned against her bed. The mess on her bedroom floor didn't bother her. Everywhere throughout her house it was the same. She could clean it up later.
What was important was finding that hat.
"Twilight gave it back to me after... she said that—" Shaking her head, Cheerilee backed away from what Twilight had said. It wasn't important right then. "I... took it home. I walked in the front door, set down my purse on the kitchen counter..." Then what?
The rest of that day had been a blur. Not solely because of tears, but also because their lives had all been turned upside down.
Small town life meant that when a death occurred, everypony was affected. From the smallest foal to the oldest crone. None had walked away from the funeral with dry eyes.
Some fared worse than others.
"Where is it?" Cheerilee struggled back to her hooves and drifted through the house, poking at piles of linens and blankets, at piles of sheets and pillows. She sifted through the hats in her hat closet again, but couldn't find the one she was looking for.
"Twilight... you gave it to me..." Cheerilee held a hoof to her muzzle.
Twilight had only been out of her library a few times since the funeral. She was retreating from the world and not even her friends could breach the shell she was constructing against the pain.
Cheerilee pushed aside the worry for her friend. She would... go there later. Maybe I can help. I haven't seen her since...
"But first, I need to find the hat..." Cheerilee shook her head and made another pass through her house. One door remained unopened.
"I... didn't put it in the icebox, did I?" Opening it up, Cheerilee sighed. "Why would I put it in the..." She opened the icebox... and stared inside. Just stared. "I..."
Why? She picked up the hat and was about to close the door again when she stopped.
She stared at a blue gem, a sapphire shard that must have fallen into her grocery bag when she'd bumped into him.
A piece of his birthday cupcake that he wouldn't eat. She left it in the icebox and closed the door.
It was cruel for the day to be as bright and sunshiny as it was. Cheerilee's heart felt heavy as she walked along the road to the cemetery.
Isn't it always raining in those sad stories? She wanted it to rain.
The world wasn't going to accommodate her. Life went on around her. Ponyville was bustling again, and ponies were going about their business as though not much had happened. A few stopped and looked at her, wearing the hat, as she walked down the road towards the cemetery.
Not many knew that she'd given it to Spike, but more would know by the end of the day.
Small town gossip... faster than a unicorn's teleport.
The town would move on, and so would Cheerilee. Life always continued for those left behind. That was the way of the world.
Cheerilee had to remind herself of that less and less... but sometimes it just hit her.
Especially when she saw the drawn shut curtains of the library. I really do have to go talk to her later. She... needs to open back up to the world.
"So that it can hurt her again?" Cheerilee sighed at herself. "Of course not... so that others can help her get over the hurt."
The cemetery was just as she remembered it. Quiet.
Birds chirped in the trees, bees buzzed about the flowers growing from pots and planters scattered about the grounds. The few ponies wandering the aisles of graves were quiet as well. It felt discourteous to be loud around the dead.
For Cheerilee, the cemetery was also a place of memories. Her mother and father were there, just past the row of germaniums cascading down the edge of a terraced planter, white as the whitewater of a swift river and just as beautiful. And the pony buried underneath them had been a rafter who had found his end in a boating accident.
Her great-uncle.
She turned aside from that path, and towards another. Underneath a spreading, ancient oak that looked as though it were a younger cousin to the gargantuan Golden Oaks library, a pony in a dark grey dress sat staring at a lone grave that had been coaxed out among the roots by earth pony magic.
Cheerilee had helped.
She could still remember the sorrow with which she asked the tree to shift its roots. She could still feel the sorrow all of her fellow earth ponies had poured into the pleading request of the ancient tree.
The offering of water by the pegasi and the special ceremonial raising of the sun by all of the town's unicorns instead of Celestia had been there as well, a part of a funeral that had lasted too long.
But Spike would have been happy to see the ponies of Ponyville working together to say goodbye.
He would have been happier to not say goodbye.
She shook her head, clearing it of the memories of that day. They wouldn't help her or help Rarity. Or Twilight...
"Hello, Rarity."
Rarity didn't look up. She continued to stare at the fire ruby set underneath Spike's name.
"I'm sure he's happy that..." Cheerilee couldn't think of a way to finish the sentence.
"I'm not." Rarity looked up, shaking her head. "I saw it in his eyes. He was terrified! My Spike..." Rarity pointed at the gem with a hoof. "I saw it as soon as he looked at the gem. He knew. I can still see that startled look in his eyes when I close mine."
She closed her eyes.
"Rarity, don't—"
"I want to," Rarity said calmly. "I want to see him. I see his smile too, you know. It's not all gloom and doom, Cheerilee. I promise you that." She smiled and opened her eyes. "Oh! That's the hat you gave him, isn't it?"
"It is." She reached a hoof up and drew it down to clutch to her chest. "I... I thought about it today, while reading Sweetie Belle's essay."
"He did look quite dashing, didn't he?" Rarity smiled and reach out to touch the hat. "It made him happy."
The unspoken other half of that statement hovered between them. For a little while.
Rarity's smile faded. "You didn't have to come all the way out here. Not just to see depressing old me. Surely you have happier things to do?"
"That's why I came." Cheerilee bent down and lifted the hat to settle it atop the rounded top of the stone. "I... want to go talk to Twilight, and you were close to Spike as well. Maybe..." Cheerilee smiled hopefully. "Maybe you and I could get her to come out of her library for a few minutes."
For a long moment, Cheerilee thought that she was going to decline. Then she smiled.
"Of course." Rarity reached out a hoof to straighten the hat on the top of the stone. "Spike wouldn't want her to mope about all day."
"He wouldn't want you to sit here all day either." Reaching out to her, Cheerilee touched Rarity's shoulder. "You can't let his death eat at you."
"Oh, I know, dear. It's just... what if he's lonely out here?" Rarity's smile wavered and slid from her lips. "What if—"
"No, he's not. We were all there to see him off into the next life," Cheerilee said, pointing a hoof at the patch of grass-covered earth surrounded by coiled up roots. "We were all a part of his life, and we were all there at its end."
Rarity's smile came back. "You're right."
"Come with me, Rarity. I need your help to talk to Twilight."
"Of course."
Cheerilee smiled and bowed her head for a moment to the grave, then waited for Rarity to say her goodbyes.
"I'll be back tomorrow, Spike."
"You don't have to go alone. If you want... I can come with you tomorrow. You don't have to keep beating yourself up, Rarity."
"I'm not 'beating myself up!'" Rarity snapped, then sighed and stepped away from the grave. "I was there. I saw the life go out of his eyes. I couldn't do anything to help him, not while falling." She shook her head. "I-I... could I have done anything?"
"It was his heart, Rarity," Cheerilee said. "His heart gave out, the doctor said. There wasn't much anypony could do. You couldn’t have stopped the shock he took." When Rarity only looked at her, she continued, "I don't really understand either. Nopony could have known that he would shrink again so quickly."
"I understand." Rarity shook her head. "It wasn't his heart that killed him." She looked back at the gem set in the gravestone as they walked away.
"It was beauty that killed the beast."
