Seated
Ponies always say that everything has a story. The ponies who made it, those who’ve come and gone since its creation, they all mark chapters and pages, sometimes individual sentences, in its grand tale. Sometimes reading these stories is as simple as doing some research in your local library. Many ponies are more than interested in chronicling the history and events surrounding and pertaining to important places and things in their lives. People’s homes or heirlooms, places they’ve worked or built or designed themselves, the things they’ve seen. Historical monuments, especially. Evidence of grand adventures and landmark happenings. Items and locales where events so grand and inspiring took place, or items so important as to affect the lives of everypony around them, that it cannot be helped but to scribe the tales involved therein.
Other times, it’s not so easy. Most often because the token or building is so unimportant, or nondescript, as to have no lasting impression on the world it had been a part of before it was abandoned, demolished, or merely forgotten and wasted away. Many houses have simply been places for a pony to live while they work, or a roof to sleep under away from the rain. Many a decoration or accessory or article of clothing little more than something to simply be, with no story of its own.
Then there are the stories that hide themselves. Ponies refuse to talk about them. Nopony writes anything down, in a vain effort to forget that which has affected them, or in a valiant attempt to protect others from knowledge that could do them naught but ill. It’s these stories that we attribute to places or things we call evil, or haunted, or wrong. Where whispers of the past can be heard in dark corners or empty hallways years later. Flashes of images long unseen glimpses around corners, and, if you stay still long enough, right in the corner of your eye. You know the place. Where you look without turning your head. Because you’re too afraid to move.
Well, we say the stories hide themselves, disappear into the fog of time through obscurity, ignorance, or fear, but really, it’s us hiding them. Sometimes they do, in fact, fade away on their own. Others, and only a very few, we have to bury so deep that we run the risk of not being able to climb out of the hole ourselves. And they don’t stay buried. They unearth themselves. They follow, waiting for their story to be told.
Or to tell it themselves.
The only thing Cheerilee truly missed about being a schoolfilly was the bell. That cheerful ring at the end of class that told her she could go home and do what she wanted, without the constraints of four walls and a ticking clock. Now, as a teacher herself, that same bell was nothing more than a checkpoint in her day. Sure, the fillies would still run home, and she would have some peace and quiet to work in. It was still something to look forward to. For even if she did love all of her students, she couldn’t think of anypony who didn’t enjoy settling down at the end of the day and doing what they wanted.
But she didn’t get to do that, yet. The bell had well and truly rung, hours ago, yet she was still here, toiling away over a large pile of papers. It was the middle of October, still a couple weeks away yet from Nightmare Night, yet still late enough in the year for it to have been dark for a while now. Even if she did glance at the clock, which she had been doing, all it would remind her of was the time, and how little of it she would get to spend at home.
Her constraints weren’t that of a teacher and a bell, anymore. They were shackles made of ungraded papers and notes from parents and students that needed to be addressed. The ball and chain of responsibility and obligation, the very core values she’d bred in herself to get where she was in the world. True, a small-town teacher with a one-room schoolhouse wasn’t much to brag about, but she was doing what she always wanted to with her life. It was a life she’d asked for, and wouldn’t change.
‘Well,’ she thought to herself, looking over the slightly smaller stack of tests, her only remaining obstacle, ‘I wouldn’t change much, that’s for sure.’ She returned to her scribbling, glancing over the answers of one colt in the back row. 'Right, right, right, wrong, right... at least he pays attention. His muzzlewriting is atrocious, though. I should see if he might be a hoof- or wingwriter.' She finished grading his test, tracing a small smile inside a flower in the corner of his paper to show how happy she was with his grade.
Setting it aside, she took a look a the next paper in the stack. This one, she didn’t recognize. “Wallflower?” she read aloud. Somehow, the name was familiar. But she didn’t know it as any of her students. Glancing over the muzzlewriting, even it seemed somehow familiar. She checked the answers, curious, and decided to chalk it up to one of her students being a silly filly. The score was decent enough, but not so much as to warrant a little smile-flower. Just a passing grade in the corner would do. She set it aside, and went about finishing the stack of papers.
It was as the sound of paper rustling next to her settled that she registered another sound in the room. It was light, airy, almost as if she were just thinking about it and not actually hearing it. But it was a sound she recognized almost immediately, having heard it every day of her life for years. The pride and joy of her work, and her special talent. The sound of foals laughing.
It was enough to get her to look up from her desk, and cast her gaze about the room. Her eyes landed on the door, closed and locked, so she could safely assume nopony had snuck in. The room was small and bare enough that she could see all of it from where she sat, one of the big advantages of having a small schoolhouse. Continuing her wandering survey, she noticed an open window in the back of the room, by virtue of the wind rustling the curtains that adorned it. It didn’t take long for her to make the connection between far away laughing sounds and an open window. She glanced up at the clock, out of habit, and realized that, while it was plenty dark, it was still early enough for a brave colt or filly to run about in the woods for fun.
Satisfied with her observational and deductive skills, she took a moment to get up from her seat and close the window, lest the room get cold enough for her to get sick. It was Friday, and she wasn’t about to spend her weekend in bed. She took the opportunity crossing the room to investigate some of her student’s desks, looking in shelves and under chairs for trash or belongings left behind that she could set aside or take to them over the next day or two.
Satisfied with a cursory glance of the aisles, she reached the window, and lifted herself up onto her hind hooves to reach the top of the open portal. A cold breeze tickled her stomach as she leaned on the window, eliciting a small shiver. It almost caught her by surprise when the frame gave way enough for the window to slide closed rather much faster than she expected it to. She took a step back from the window to settle herself from the small burst of excitement. As her last hoof settled, however, the thought she heard an echo of steps behind her. The room wasn’t acoustic enough to echo, she knew, so she turned around, half out of curiosity and half because she was returning to the desk anyway. She saw nothing that hadn’t been there before.
Returning to her seat, the wood creaked with age as she pulled the chair out far enough to seat herself. ‘Did I push my chair in? I don’t remember.’ The squeak of wood on wood as she scooted up to her desk was an old and almost comforting sound to her, reminiscent of every class she’d ever sat in. She’d been in classes as a filly, as a young mare, as an adult, all her life up to now. All of the little nuances of the chairs, desks, and everyday inconsequentials were the soundtrack of her life. So she noticed, when others would not, when the creak of wood lasted a second longer than it should have. She looked under her chair, and saw nothing, save for the usual scraping on the floor, the build-up of dragging wooden feet on hardwood flooring time and time again.
Satisfied that her chair had not suddenly decided to defy physics right out from under her, she returned her attention to the steadily diminishing stack of tests that were her last barrier, her last unmounted obstacle on the track to a free weekend. It was then she noticed that familiar muzzlewriting again. The nostalgic scratchings she’d seen on the test from moments before. Except this time they were on the top corner of another student’s test. But they were more... refined. More mature, than the writing she’d seen earlier, and couldn’t place.
It was then she realized she was staring at her own muzzlewriting, on a test she’d just graded. Worry etched her face as she shuffled through the stack of completed tests, in an effort to find the mysterious paper and make a comparison. To no avail, though, as she only saw the works of her own students, all accounted for. ‘Wallflower, Wallflower. Why do I know that name?’ She let her head sink into her hooves as her elbows hit the table, closing her eyes in concentration. Like trying to remember a song title based on a lyric, she ran the name through every association she could think of. Whas it a student? A parent? Somepony she knew in town? Maybe it was a nickname...
”Wallflower! What are you doing?!”
Cheerilee’s head snapped up from her hooves, as she looked around. Her classmates were staring at her, a mix of exasperation and amusement on their faces. Some fillies hid their faces behind their hooves to keep from laughing.
Looking up, she saw her teacher looming over her, a ruler hanging menacingly in her magical aura as she glared down with impunity at the offending student.
Cheerilee grimaced. She’d been caught sleeping in class again. “I-I’m sorry miss Fairweather. I was just up all night doing homework-” SNAP. Her sentence was cut short by the rapping of the ruler on the edge of her desk, making her jump up from her seat. She landed back down, her butt slightly sore from the rough, flat wood of the chair.
“I highly doubt it. If you put even half as much work into your schooling as you claim, maybe I wouldn’t be tempted to take your tests in with me when I use the restroom! Now PAY ATTENTION!”
Back in the present, Cheerilee’s head snapped up, again. She scooted herself back vigorously from the desk, the chair threatening to teeter back and spill her from it. The wall behind her was close enough, however, that all she accomplished was crashing the back of her chair into it, and almost her head. The impact jarred her, still, and she took a moment to catch her breath.
She stared at the desk, trying to both piece together the mystery of the irregular test and shove the obvious conclusion out of her mind. Nopony in her class knew what her old nickname was, after all. It wasn’t likely that it could have been a prank. She thought about asking her students when they came back on Monday, but remembered that she couldn’t find the test when she went looking for it, and decided that there wasn’t any point in putting forth questions about a piece of paper that for all intents and purposes didn’t exist.
It was as she was staring at her desk, however, that she noticed something... odd. Something wrong, about the room. Which, given how much time she’d spent in this classroom over the last several years, should be easy for her to determine. So she pulled her full attention from her conundrums, and aimed it at the layout of the room.
Nothing seemed out of place. The desks and chairs were fine, undisturbed. The window stayed closed. Her desk hadn’t moved, nor the papers on it. The door was fine. She glanced at the clock, out of curiosity and a subtle feeling of urgency, and noticed that some time had passed. A few minutes, nothing unexpected. And the clock seemed fine, as well. She felt her attention waver as she stared at the monotonous ticking of the second hand, easily lost in the nigh-hypnotic pace of the seconds ticking by. Her mind wandered, ever so slightly, and she felt her eyes drift.
Then she saw it again. Something was different. Something that wasn’t supposed to be. Something extra. Her head snapped around to the room, and she quickly analyzed every nook and cranny, in a bid to pinpoint this disturbance of hers, whatever it was. But to no avail.
Then a thought struck her. The window was closed, but the curtains weren’t. What was to stop somepony from flashing a light through the window, even if on accident. She might only be catching glimpses of a flashlight in the woods as it shone through her window. So she stared intently at it. Just staring at the glass.
And slowly, it came into focus. Just beneath the window. A little off to the left. Her gaze didn’t waver from the glass, lest it disappear again. But slowly, surely, she could make out more of it.
A simple wooden chair. Old, almost decrepit, but still stable. The kind with the rigid back that made you sit up and pay attention unless you wanted to spend all afternoon with a back so achy you couldn’t walk. She knew it, even. Not just the design. The chair itself. That chair, she knew. Every inch of her knew. Her hooves, on legs not long enough to touch the ground in the tall seat. Her back, sore and achy and stiff from trying to sit correctly all day. Her neck, from craning back, leaning as far away from the teacher as she could.
”Wallflower, what have I told you?!” Fairweather’s voice echoed through the large room as if the pony were merely an illusion and the walls had learned to yell. Or she had taught them. If anypony could...
“I-I studied all night, Miss Fairweather! I swear! I was paying attention in class and everything!” Cheerilee’s voice seemed small, penniless, worth nothing in the face of her overseer.
“Why do I not believe you, little Wallflower?” the young filly cringed as the teacher spat out her nickname like a curse. She’d given it to her after her first week, having left the young maroon filly too scared to talk to her roommates, and thus coming to the conclusion that all she was good for was decorating the walls. “Could it be that you always lie to me? Could it be that I know you don’t study, or do your work, or pay attention? Or could it be that your scores are so low that you’d have to study just to make them high enough to count as a failing grade?!” The ruler snapped against her desk again, and Cheerilee jumped. She always jumped. She couldn’t help it.
The little filly began to cry. “I-I-I’m sorry Mi-mi-miss Fairweather. I s-swear I stu-st-studied!” she wailed between gasps and sobs.
Another smack on her table brought her attention. Not the ruler, this time. No, the sound was different. Cheerilee looked up to see a small piece of chalk laying innocently on her desk, small flecks of white on her paper from where it chipped from the impact. “Well, Wallflower, now you’ll be very sorry. Start writing!”
Cheerilee had been frozen in place, staring at the window, but not really staring at it. She’d been looking at the chair the whole time, memories of her own shool days flooding back like lungfulls of water while she drowned. It was only when a new sound intruded on her consciousness that she turned her attention away from the far wall.
It was the soft, sharp creak of chalk, behind her, to her left. She turned her head, slowly, waiting to see what she knew would already be there.
I will not disappoint my betters. I will not disappoint my betters. I will not disappoint my betters.
She was mouthing the words even as she watched them write themselves, some phantom hoof or muzzle guiding an invisible piece of chalk, leaving more-than visible white lines across the grass-green board. She stumbled out of her chair, backing herself against the wall as the board filled with words. Slowly, at first, as only one sentence wrote itself at a time. Then, one by one, more invisible hooves with more invisible chalks joined it, covering the board with line after line and word after word, until the air was filled with a cacaphony of scratching and tapping.
By the time the last line was written, Cheerilee was already back-to-the-wall, and halfway across the classroom. Her head lightly tapped something as she scooted, and she jumped, startled, only to notice that she’d reached the windowsill on this wall. She gave it a quick glance, eyes wide, as if expecting it to yell at her. When she returned her attention to the chalkboard, however, it was empty. Bare and clean like her students had left it.
”Wallflower!"
The yell wasn’t a flashback, this time. She could hear it. It wasn’t just in her thoughts, although it echoed around the room like a memory. Her head twitched in all directions, eyes flitting about as she searched for the source of the noise. Eventually, they landed on a feature in the back of the room.
The chair. It hadn’t moved. It was still sitting there, just waiting. Waiting for somepony to sit in it.
But she wouldn’t. Not in a million years. She’d put that chair, that classroom, so far behind her for so long that she wasn’t about to just forget everything about her that made her different from that scared little filly in the back of the classroom decades ago. So she took the most reasonable approach to the situation. She decided to leave.
Climbing to her hooves, taking a moment to steady herself, she decided to set her sights on something else. The door. Nothing about it had changed. She trotted towards it, determinedly, crossing the room in great, purposeful strides. Upon reaching it, she swiftly undid the lock, and threw the door open.
”You’re late AGAIN, Wallflower!” Fairweather screeched, looming over the filly who stood so small and meek in the doorway.
“Bu-but class doesn’t start for another few seconds...” Cheerilee mewled, trying to look up at her teacher and failing.
Fairweather arched an eyebrow and snarled. “Are you talking back to me, little girl?!”
“NO, Miss Fairweather!” she cried, hiding herself behind her hooves.
“I would think NOT. Little girls need to know their place, and right now yours is in your SEAT!” the teacher yelled, her voice crashing into the young pony as if she was in its way.
“B-but I can’t get around you, Miss Fairweather...”
“Excuse me?!”
“No... I didn’t mean it like that!” Cheerilee cried again, curled up on the floor so small you could miss her for looking straight ahead.
Jus then, the bell chimed. “Well, AS I was SAYING, little miss Wallflower,” Fairweather growled, taking the filly’s chin in her magical grip, and forcing her to look into the teacher face, alight with fury, “You are LATE!”
The last word echoed around the room, permeating the walls and shaking the glass windows in their frames. Cheerilee let the door out of her grip in shock, and it took its opportunity to slam shut in her face. “NO!” she cried out, her voice small and timid like it had been in her vision. Her hooves clambered over the handle and lock, but they gave none, unmoving, as if they were simply painted protrusions of a solid piece of wall. Even the cracks between the door and frame had taken on a painted, false appearance.
Cheerilee looked around the room, desperate for another way out. An escape from these flashbacks and taunting visions.
The window. She had to try. Running full on through the middle of the room, back to the windowsill she’d tapped her head against, she barreled towards her target. Chairs and desks flipped or tipped over as she simply shoved them out of the way, the little wooden things that they were. Her hooves gripped the window frame so tightly she thought they might break, as she pulled with all the muscle a grade-school teacher could muster. It gave, little by little, her eyes closed and face contorted in concentration.
She opened her eyes to look at the progress she’d made, to see if she could get a better grip or reposition herself to open the window faster. As she caught sight of her reflection, however, the face in the glass morphed, distorted. Soon, it was the spitting image of Miss Fairweather, growling and menacing as the day she first saw it.
”NO!” it bellowed, and the glass shattered in, peppering the teacher’s face with shards of window.
She cried out and fell back, and a small part of her was grateful she didn’t crash against a desk. Panicked, and in pain, she looked up from her position on the floor to the window that had assaulted her.
Where there was once glass and a frame, now was nothing more than an expanse of wall. Cheerilee cried out again, anguished, outraged at her chance at freedom so blatantly ripped from her, and she threw herself against the wall.
Again and again, her body and hooves hit the unmoving plaster and wood, banging futilely against what used to be a window, a way outside. What was now just another of four walls and a ceiling in a box she couldn’t walk out of.
She beat the wall until she couldn’t, anymore. The glass in her face and her hooves either knocked out, broken further, or driven into her skin; her muscles aching with effort and regret. So, barring the energy to do anything else, she simply lay against the wall and cried. The salt from her tears stung her face as they fell across the cuts in her cheeks and muzzle.
After a few moments, during which the only sounds were her racking sobs and the shuffling of her fur against the wall, a new noise introduced itself. Hoofsteps.
She glanced up, and saw that the room had emptied. All except for the chair, which st in the middle, now. The only feature left.
That, and Miss Fairweather. The authoritarian instructor stared down her muzzle at the crying, all-but-broken picture of a mare before her, scowling, like she always had.
"Little miss Wallflower, what have I told you about crying?” Fairweather asked. Her voice was steady, and carried across the room. Not loud, but projected.
Cheerilee sniffed, running a hoof across her muzzle. “I-it’s a sign of weakness, ma’am.”
“That’s right. And weak ponies get nowhere. So what do we do when we’re crying?”
The filly looked up from her spot against the wall. “We... we stop crying and work, because working ponies are strong ponies. And strong ponies don’t cry.”
Miss Fairweather gave her a nod, her expression stoic and commanding. “Exactly right. Now,” She walked over to Cheerilee’s desk, and pointed a hoof at the chair.
“Sit down.”
“Yes, Miss Fairweather.”
The fillies of the Ponyville Schoolhouse looked about themselves confusedly. Nopony recognized the mare at the front of the class today. It was Monday, and rumors were already starting up that Miss Cheerilee had gotten sick.
“Quiet down, fillies and foals,” said the mare at the front. Her voice was stern and steady, very different from the soft and joyful tones they were used to. “Miss Cheerilee is not feeling well, so I will be your substitute. My name is Miss Fairweather.”
