Older Mares

Chapter FOUR: Pigtails and Bus Passes

Though Cheerilee was a mare of many social shortcomings, she prided herself on being an excellent roommate. During her college years, back when she shared a dorm suite with three other mares—all of them at least a decade her junior—Cheerilee had always taken great pains to be as courteous as possible to her suitemates, and especially her roommate: a bookish little darling named Tulip. She was always mindful of Tulip’s sleep schedule, and often took great pains to sidle about the dorm after returning from wild Tuesday night block parties—a feat she achieved even while very tipsy, or hallucinating on the party scene’s latest designer drug.

The dorm had been a sacred place. A place that demanded respect. All clothing was to be worn or put away, never left draped across the backs of chairs or sprawled out on beds. Lights were to be switched off while others were sleeping, and headphones inserted if one wished to use the radio while the other was studying. And, finally, no colts. Ever. And while Cheerilee had been guilty of breaking this rule numerous times, she never took a stiff sophomore cock between her legs while her roommate was in, or straddled a hunky water polo jock on a bed that wasn’t hers (because there was just no excuse for rudeness like that).

But nopony was perfect, and if Cheerilee was guilty of one infraction—one itty-bitty breach of the agreed upon social contract between mares sharing the same living space—it was this: she was powerless against the allure of toiletries and other bathroom sundries that didn’t belong to her. Soaps, shampoos, conditioners, lotions (mmm, especially lotions): all were fair game in the restrooms that Cheerilee shared with other mares.

Now, humble reader, before you judge this social irresponsibility too harshly and label Cheerilee a selfish miscreant, or worse, some kind of bath salt-pinching kleptomaniac, you should take a moment to understand the guilty mare’s situation. Cheerilee had “bad fur”: an embarrassing condition usually associated with equines of the striped variety. And while she could afford decent coat-care products, she had never belonged to that all-too-common appearance-conscious ilk who could justify parting with nine bits for a single twelve ounce bottle of lotion. Her products were cheap, and couldn’t even begin to subdue the knotted and dried out rebellion that was her fur.

It was strange, really. She had no qualms with shelling out landslides of cash for designer clothes that put her on par with her wealthy unicorn peers—those giants of academia who had grown fat and happy from textbook sales, government funded research grants, and every manner of general ass-kissery imaginable. Besides, clothing was inherently frivolous anyway. All money spent on scarves or boots or cute baby-tees was money wasted, so it made little difference whether one wasted a single bit or a hundred.

But lotion was different. Lotion was a necessity (at least it was too Cheerilee), and its producers, marketers and distributors had a moral obligation to sell their product at a fair price. It was perhaps to the tiniest of tiny gripes she had ever fixated on, but no less important than global climate change (a byproduct of Equestria's habit of irresponsibly tampering with natural weather patterns), or the discontinuation of Hoofstess snack cakes (a true national tragedy, if ever there was one). After all, how could a society expect to solve the big problems—poverty, national security, racial discrimination—when the cost of decent fur moisturizer was worth the same as an hour of minimum wage labor?

Tipsy from several swallows of her own self-righteousness, Cheerilee squirted a generous helping of cherry-almond scented “Sheek” onto the frog of her upturned forehoof. It was her roommate’s lotion, and though rubbing the cream into her dry fur racked her chest with pangs of guilt (mild as they were), the rich scent and deliberate, pseudo-hip misspelling of the word ‘chic’ had been too alluring to pass up.

Perched upright on the toilet seat, she coated her forelegs first, then gave the bottle another squirt and moved down to her barrel. She frowned as her hooves fondled the dollop of extra paunch that refused to melt off her underbelly, no matter how many hours of her life she sacrificed to the campus running track. Compulsive exercising had never been an aspect of Cheerilee’s life before moving to Canterlot, but with her good-looks and fast-fading youth at stake, she had found the motivation to lace up her best running shoes and hit the track at least once every other day. All things considered, it was hardly her worst compulsive habit.

More distress flooded her features when the journey down her belly culminated at her lap, where she was subjected to the demoralizing sight of two plump tubes of... Celestia’s ivory snatch, were those her thighs? She seemed to stumble upon them, as if surprised to find the fleshy mounds resting below her hips. They weren’t exactly fat, at least not according to her roommate, who insisted that Cheerilee still “curved in all the right places”. But they were thick enough to make the older mare long for her twenties, back when her hinds were tight, her ass shapely, and displaying either won her free drinks at night clubs, and forlorn mornings when she woke the following day in a stranger’s bed. Alone. Spooning with some dreamy young stallion, but alone.

Dislodging herself from the comfort of the toilet seat, and the discomfort of old memories, she found her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Her hip young friend Sheek had really taken the years off. Her coat shined with regained youth, her spirits too, and she beamed like the lovely twenty-something she would always be at heart. Puckering her lips, she winked and blew a kiss meant for the buffalo lesbian, wondering if Thirty-Something Cheerilee could still seduce a horny college student with same flare Twenty-Something Cheerilee was notorious for.

Her coat looked fuller now, healthier, but her mane still lacked a certain bounce, and her face seemed plain under the scrutinizing fluorescent lights. She had always believed in the illuminating powers that resided in all private bathrooms. Show her a mare that had never spent at least three hours sprucing in the solitude of a restroom, and Cheerilee would show you a soul who didn’t know herself. The restroom was a mare’s temple. It spoke to her, and right now, it was insisting that she wash her mane.

Still using her roommate’s products, she washed and conditioned her mane in the sink, then dried her hair and wrapped it in a towel—a trick she’d learned from one of her suitemates back at university. Next she pulled open a drawer under the sink and retrieved two cylindrical tubes: one full of black eyeshadow, the other of matching lipstick.

Makeup. Hmmm. What did she have to say about makeup…

While pondering the possible evils of blush, lipstick, concealer, hoof polish, eyeliner, hair dye (did hair dye count as make up?), her ears perked at the jingle of keys sliding into the front doorknob.

“LuNe! The mare tomb raider! Fiction narrator! Sword Art player hater…!”

She chuckled at the random rhymes blaring from her roommate’s headphones, which doubled as a miniature boom box when the speakers were turned outward. Lunar Landing—the newest album by underground rap sensation, The LuNe! (and yes, you do always have to write her name like that)—had become the unofficial theme song of Cheerilee’s apartment, and consequently, her life. She had yet to decide if she actually liked the album, or the wacky rap artist responsible for its creation, but, on a whole, it was… different. Sometimes in a very good way.

“…Superior Spider-mare Spider Slayer! The master masturbator! Oh it must be, Loony—lunar space invader…!”

Now Cheerilee’s roommate was singing along, her tongue wrapping around each nonsense rhyme with half the dexterity displayed by The LuNe!. She was an interesting character, this LuNe!—a lyrical enigma that also went by such colorful derivatives as “Loony”, “Loony Toony”, “Loony Tuesday”, and Cheerilee’s personal favorite, “The Lune in the Moon”.

Her style was markedly different from the average pop rapper. During her more serious songs, her voice resonated with the raspy vibe of a blues vocalist, lonely, soulful and jazzy in a way that could squeeze tears from the dried out ducts of even the most jaded of jaded individuals, be they hipsters, punks, goths, greasers, thugs… And during other songs—songs like the one presently blaring from the hallway—she sounded like a cartoon chipmunk playing harmonica after going to town on a helium canister.

Cheerilee had nicknamed the latter delivery style “Nonsense Mode”, and the point of it was apparently too see how many random rhymes she could spit out before using up her allotted sixteen bars. It didn’t always make sense, but if nothing else Cheerilee could sense and appreciate The LuNe!’s supreme love of the Equestrian language. Where most of other rappers were “hard” or “gangsta”, The LuNe! was a “tobacco-packing acrobat on the fast track to back-tracking back to her downtown flat”. And that was pretty fucking rad.

“I hope you’re not in here getting pretty with my shit again!”

Cheerilee jumped at the loud voice, then turned to find her roommate leaning against the door jam, striking a casual in pose in her grungy band-themed t-shirt and lumberjack-looking flannel. Both articles of clothing belonged to Cheerilee: her old weapons in the quasi-cold war on social terror. Only the headphones belonged to her roommate. Cheerilee had always preferred the less conspicuous ear-bud style headphones, because assuming that everypony within a ten mile radius would enjoy your music was just plain rude. And there was no excuse for rudeness.

At the transitional age of thirty-nine—officially too old to go club hopping with any semblance of dignity, but still young enough that her peculiarities were regarded as “weird” and not “eccentric,” not yet—Cheerilee’s roommate/best friend/older sister, Berry Punch, possessed the youngest soul in Canterlot. Maybe all of Equestria.

“Nah, I’m just playing,” she said from the doorway, her voice a whisper beneath the noisy music. “I don’t mind you using my stuff. It’s a fuck-ton of a lot better than the crap you’re always buying.” She joined Cheerilee at the sink, eyeing her sister’s reflection with impish curiosity. “Going out tonight?”

“Yeah,” said Cheerilee. “Downtown. I need to borrow some change for the bus.”

“Why don’t you just buy a bus pass?”

“I don’t need a pass. I don’t ride the bus often enough to justify having a pass.”

“But if you had a pass you wouldn’t have to scrounge for change all the time.”

“It’s not that big a deal. Plus with the new pass system you don’t even save any money. Buying a month pass costs exactly the same as just paying for each individual ride, so there’s no point in having one.”

“I think the point is that you wouldn’t have to scrounge for change.”

Cheerilee unwrapped her mane and tossed the towel aside. “Do I seriously need to stand here and explain to you why it’s cheaper if I just pay for each ride? Are we having that conversation right now?”

Berry turned her music down. “I’m just saying it wouldn’t kill you to get a bus pass.” She pulled open a drawer, retrieved a brush and began working it through on her mane. “And just so you know, you’re dead wrong as usual. Your way isn’t cheaper.”

“How do you figure?”

“It’s like this: say you have to ride the bus tonight but all you have is cash. So what do you do? You could stop at a liquor and by a bottle of water in order to break your big bills. Which works out fine, except now you’ve just spent a bit twenty-five on a bottle of water you didn’t even want—”

“Who says I didn’t want the water?”

“But I know you, Cheers, and I know you aren’t gonna buy that bottle of water. You’re gonna buy a bottle that Sparkling Zapp Apple sewage—”

“I’m gonna buy a can, sis. It comes in a can.”

“Okay, so you’re gonna buy a can of liquid garbage. And that can will cost a bit fifty, instead of the aforementioned bit twenty-five, am I right?”

“You are.”

“Of course I am.” Happy with her preening, Berry set the brush on the counter. “So now you’re out another twenty-five cents, and your bus ride that should have only cost you a bit fifty—that is the price of a bus ride nowadays, right? A bit fifty?”

“It is.”

“Of course it is. So now your bit fifty bus ride is three bits. You’ve doubled the fare. You understand that, Cheers? You’ve doubled it.”

Cheerilee pursed her painted lips in the mirror. “You done yet?”

“Give me a minute, I’m on a roll.” After squeezing a glob of liquid face soap on her hooves, Berry began washing her face, still talking as she splashed water on the counter. “So now your bus ride is twice as costly, right?” she said, her voice swimming through a jet of water to reach Cheerilee. “But wait, it gets deeper.”

“Of course it does.”

“Let’s say this habit persists—and it’s you were talking about, so I know it will. What happens next, you ask? Well, after pulling over to buy your crappy soft drinks every day before riding the bus, eventually your teeth start to rot, and you get fat and unhealthy. Now we both know your medical and dental plans are laughably terrible, so it’s pretty safe to say you won't be able to pay off any of the medical bills you're sure to acquire. And I know you, Cheers; you’re so image conscious that becoming that fat and ugly will send you plunging into a never ending miasma of depression.”

“I am not image conscious.”

“And once that happens you’ll start binging on ice cream and snack cakes. You’ll get even fatter, even uglier, even more depressed—and then one day I’ll come home from work and be mildly surprised to find lying in the bathtub with your throat slit.”

“You wouldn’t be surprised. I’d leave a note on the door.”

“Hmmm…” Berry paused to ponder this. “...that would be the polite thing to do. I’ll remember that when I’m planning my own suicide.”

“Just make sure you proofread your last words, please. I don’t want to stumble upon your hanged corpse in the yard after working all day and have to read your error-riddled suicide note.”

Berry chuckled. “Well that doesn’t matter much, ‘cause I’m positive you’ll kill yourself before I kill myself.”

“Because I’ll be fat and unhappy?”

“And broke.”

“And lacking a bus pass?”

“Exactly.”

Cheerilee took a moment to let her sister’s cockamamie logic sink in.

“So can I borrow the change or not?”

Berry chuckled, but her head shake was a dejected gesture. “I feel like you’re not grasping the lesson here.”

“There’s a lesson? And here I thought you only wrote for entertainment.”

Another chuckle. “Seriously, sis, not having a bus pass in a big city like Canterlot is irresponsible. What if you need to get somewhere quickly and you don’t have any bits on you? You should think about these things more. You know, actually make plans for once in your life.”

“I make plans. I was planning to ask you for bus money.”

For reasons Cheerilee didn’t readily understand, her sister suddenly broke into a hysterical laughing fit. Her body shook as she clutched the edge of the countertop, her face pointed down toward the sink. “You’re a fucking idiot!” she practically shouted between great gasping laughs. She teetered as though she might topple over, and the sight of her sent Cheerilee plunging into a laughing fit of her own. They leaned against one another for balance, clutching their stomachs and blinking away tears, their reflections cheek to cheek in the steam-smudged mirror.

Cheerilee B. Cheery and her sister Berry P. Cheery looked alike, but not in a traditional way. On a crowded downtown street they could be mistaken for twins, with their purple coats, similar builds and matching dimpled cheeks. But when apart from others and standing side by side, their differences exposed themselves. When it came to their coats, manes and cutie marks, Cheerilee was dark where Berry was light, and light where the older mare was dark. She wasn’t her older sister’s physical opposite, but her negative, her features inverted as if by some clever act of photo manipulation.

Only their eyes held a similar brightness, though at times Berry’s could span wide and twinkle with a brilliance normally reserved for stars. And during those always too-fleeting states of radiance, they didn’t merely reflect light—didn’t settle for playing that too simple game of catching and rebounding enjoyed by the whites and the irises of so many others.

Sometimes Berry’s gaze radiated its own light. Sometimes it really shined.

The sisters Cheery shared other marked differences, but the most noticeable—other than Berry’s starlight eyes—had to do with their varying levels of beauty. To put it plainly: Berry Punch was attractive, whereas Cheerilee was attractive for her age. The schoolteacher was the kind of mare who had been a catch during her younger years, and though her beauty had yet to wane completely, and likely never would, she was no longer the drop-dead gorgeous piece of ass she had been.

Berry, however, had a timeless face and a body to match. And unlike other older ponies who had managed to age gracefully, Berry was beautiful without looking younger than she was. The faint creases above, below and around her eyes told the whole story—thirty-nine and going on forty; no turning back now—but she wore her wrinkles with the same confidence that younger mares wore their baby-soft skin. Even the decades of late night jobs, mild drug abuse and hard drinking had failed to steal away her natural beauty.

It baffled Cheerilee. Impressed her. Made her seethe with the worst kind of envy.

She had always blamed her mother for this difference in looks. While she and her sister shared the same father—Dreary D. Cheery: a miserable scumbag of an earth stallion—they had each squirmed into this world via different wombs. In fact, they didn’t discover their sisterhood until six months after Berry scribbled her name on a hospital donor list. She had been on her death bed then, in desperate need of a new kidney and a portion of somepony’s healthy liver. Cheerilee had been that somepony, a perfect match. And the day they met with Berry’s doctor to discuss the details of the operation, one of the nurses popped into the room with two folders containing medical records, and the some astonishing news.

Cheerilee still remembered how Berry had laughed then. It was the same way she was laughing now: with all of herself. Lungs, heart, lips, teeth, muscle, fat, bones, sinews, nerves, pores, fur—everything. A full-body laugh, so loud and violent that the doctors had wondered if it was healthy.

Both mares had been floored by the news. Sisters. Living just two houses away at the time, and sisters. And to this day, though the addiction was still trying to kill her, Berry never quit drinking.

“The bottle helped me find my sister…” she once told her doctor, years after the surgery that saved, or perhaps merely prolonged her life. “...maybe someday it will help me find myself as well…”

“You working tonight?” said Berry, her laughing fit almost at an end. A few more snorting chuckles escaped her, and then she settled down enough to pull off her shirts, one after the other, and toss them aside. It was something she rarely did: toss things aside. Ambitions. Relationships. Habits. Mannerisms. Responsibilities. She was a hoarder of nouns—ponies, places, things, ideas—and was slow to part with any of the possessions that made up her collection.

“No, I’m not working tonight. I’m not a working mare, okay. It’s not a job.”

“Need a partner in crime? We could work the horny sisters angle again. The Not-Johns go nuts for that kind of stuff, remember last time?”

Cheerilee wrinkled her nose. “Fuck, no. That was perhaps the single most awkward moment of my life.”

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

“It was. You make the weirdest noises while getting pounded from behind.”

“Only from behind?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t make a habit of documenting your sex life.”

“Weird how? Was it like…” Berry paused and looked away, as if pondering something that required every ounce of her brain power. “…funny-weird or gross-weird?”

“Weird-weird. Foreign-art-house-indie-movie weird.”

“Subtitled or dubbed?”

“I can’t imagine that would make a difference.”

“Come on, subbed or dubbed?”

“So I owe Flocka a ton of money,” said Cheerilee, trying to shift the topic of this meandering conversation. “She’s gonna break my kneecaps if I don’t pay her off soon.”

“Donkish Art-house or Draconian animated? Draconimation? Is that how you say it?”

“Are we still talking about this?”

“I feel like I’m saying it wrong.”

Slightly irritated, Cheerilee removed a pair of froofy scrunchies from her makeup drawer and used them to pigtail her mane. While she was confident that Equestria's intelligentsia had yet to recognize the legitimacy of the word ‘froofy’ (adj. like or having to do with froof, esp. in reference to hair scrunchies), or the use of ‘pigtail’ as intransitive verb (ex. I came, I saw, I pigtailed), these two grammatical missteps were the only ways to describe the following.

One: the pom-pom like rings of fuzz presently choking her mane into the aforementioned ‘pigtails.’

And two: the act of applying said fuzzy rings to said mane.

Her pigtails didn’t exactly resemble the tails of any pigs, and coupled with the black lipstick and eye-shadow (not to mention those thirty-plus years of age smeared all her face), she looked outright absurd. But that was fine. The mask waiting for her in the bedroom closet would pull the entire look together.

“I hear you mention Flocka?” asked Berry. “Are you two still…?”

“Locked in an epic battle of wills for the future of lazy, recreational drug users?”

“Why do you hang out with that loser?”

“We don’t hang out. Our relationship is limited to strict business transactions. She sells jokes. I buy jokes.”

“And occasionally you go down on her.”

“Like I said: strictly business.”

“I told you I found us a new dealer.”

“That’s news to me,” said Cheerilee, practicing her ‘cute-and-innocent’ face in the mirror. She couldn’t decide how much she wanted to downplay her age tonight. “You found a new dealer?”

“Uh, yeah. I buy from the little Apple kid who lives at the edge of town.”

Cheerilee flashed a puzzled look.

“Apple kid. Brown mane. Adorable green eyes. Hangs out around the movie theater a lot.”

Still nothing. Her face was a blank slate.

“All of these things are things, Cheers. We covered this during last week’s sprucing session. I believe you asked me for bus money then, too.”

“I asked you for change. I have plenty of money—”

“—she said as Flocka swung a hefty sledgehammer, its head careening toward Cheerilee’s left kneecap.”

“Har. Har. You’re hilarious.”

“One of has to be.”

Cheerilee tousled her mane, then turned and blew her sister a kiss. “How do I look?” She added a wink for good measure.

“Like an asshole.”

“An asshole half my age?”

“Nope. Three-fourths at most.”

“I’ll take it.” She paused a moment to give her sister a once over, as if just now noticing that Berry had been sprucing this whole time. “So where the hay are you going tonight?"

A precious kind of smile canted Berry’s lips. “I, like any respectable mare my age, I'm going on a proper date with a strapping young stallion.”

“Young, huh?”

“Young at heart.”

“He’s not that unicorn creep is he? The one with the sweater vest who talks through his nose?”

“Upscale does not talk through his nose,” said Berry, defensive. “And no, I’m not seeing him anymore. Momma snagged herself a Guard.”

“Well that’s infinitely worse.”

“Sounds like somepony is jealous of my potentially stable and healthy relationship.”

“More like somepony is worried about staying out of prison. You realize I get high every other day and fraternize with criminals, don’t you? I can’t have a sister who’s in bed with the law. I have an image to uphold.”

Berry turned to face her sister, her eyes on their way to forming a serious expression, but… never… quite… getting… there…

“I don’t like you hanging out with those thugs, Cheers,” she said. “But I’m not Mom, I won’t tell you how to live your life. Just… be careful, okay.”

Cheerilee laughed away her sister’s almost-grave expression. “What’s with the drama all of a sudden? When am I ever not careful?”

“I could come with you, you know,” said Berry. “The date isn’t that important. We could work the streets together; maybe snag a couple of foreign hotties.” She nudged her sister’s shoulder, forcing an impish grin. “Come on, Cheers. I know how much you love, love, love foreigners.”

This was true. She did love, love, love them.

“Nah, you really shouldn’t. I don’t want Flocka and her goons to see you out there with me. They’re my problem, no reason all three of us should get our kneecaps broken.”

“Three?”

“Flocka, too. Something about her boss using her kneecaps to break my kneecaps.”

“What’s with her and kneecaps anyway?”

“I know right? It’s like an obsession.”

“Does she get all touchy with yours when you guys are together? Like, does she go nuts for those sexy purple kneecaps?”

Cheerilee thought a moment. “Holy fucking horse apples, she does! She always strokes them ever so gently while we pillow talk.”

“Fuck, Cheers," said Berry, alarmed. "You pillow talk with your dealer?”

“Look, just because she runs with a gang of sexually confused thugs doesn’t mean she isn’t sensitive.”

“Bloody, fucking sensitive, aye!” laughed Berry, mimicking Flocka’s accent.

“That’s right I’m sensitive you bleedin’ nancy, twat!” Cheerilee laughed back.

Both mares frolicked out into the hallway, sharing a laugh at Flocka’s expense. Yes, frolicked was definitely the right word. Neither she nor her sister had ever been terribly effeminate creatures—at least not in the ultra-girlish way of perky waitresses or high school prep-squad leaders—but something about this moment made them skip and titter with a surging of something that could only be called “female.”

Maybe it was all the makeup, or the way Cheerilee’s pigtails flounced in syncopation with her prance. She was spry for a mare her age—a gift from the Canter U jogging track, as well as the genes she’d inherited from dear old Dreary D. Cheery. The same genes lived in Berry as well, but she couldn’t frolic with even a fraction of her sister’s liveliness. She gave it her best shot though, cranking her player to the highest volume as she stopped halfway down the hall to dance to the musical stylings of the LuNe!.

Had somepony trotted down the hall just then—perhaps a mature, business-minded professional of some sort, dressed in a two-piece suit and a satin noose, his graying mane combed back, or maybe over, anxious to conceal the tells of his advanced and still advancing age… Yes, had somepony like that wandered down the hall, he would’ve stumbled upon a most peculiar sight—and a joyous one!: two mares in odd-looking makeup dancing to nonsensical music, shuffling and sliding and shaking their tails with all the verve of the teenage daughters they had never birthed, but were old enough to have mothered.

Berry opened a door at the end of the hall, and titters flooded into her bedroom. She flopped onto a bed that was big enough for two and folded both forelegs behind her head, lounging as though suspended in a hammock.

“What are we doing?” asked Cheerilee, still dancing like a goofball.

“What?” Berry couldn’t hear her sister over the music. She twisted the dial on her player, lowering the volume.

Giddy, Cheerilee hopped on the bed too, plopping down on her sister. “What are we doing?” she repeated, the questioned carring more weight this time.

“Living.” Berry shoved her sister’s chest with both forehooves, laughing, and Cheerilee shoved her back. They rough housed on the bed, their effeminate prancing giving way to the kind of boyish play each was more accustomed too.

“Stop it!” Berry laughed. She couldn’t seem to stop laughing. “You’re gonna smear your makeup!”

They toppled off the bed together, made up like dolls and tangled in each other’s limbs, panting, their lips close enough for a kiss.

“You gonna wear the costume tonight?” said Berry, grinning with mischief borrowed from her sister.

“Nah. It got torn to shreds the last time I went out. I had to get a new one.”

“You wearing the new one, then?”

“Uh… it’s kinda…”

“Wear it. I can’t wait to see you in it.”

“But you don’t even know what it looks like.”

“Which is why I want to see you in it.”

After a final smattering of titters, both Cheery siblings untangled themselves. Berry returned to the bed. Cheerilee made her way to the closet, swung open the door and began rifling through the clothing. She and her sister shared closet space, so the narrow cubbyhole was packed with everything from silky dresses by Hoity-Toity (Cheerilee’s clothes) to grungy, acid-washed denim jackets (also Cheerilee’s clothes, though she had essentially given them to her sister via an offbeat, hand-me-up transaction).

“Holy freaking horse apples!” said Berry, startling her sister. “Cheers, I almost forgot. On my way home I overhead these bratty looking pegasus teenyboppers talking about you on the bus. They said you gave some kind of speech during one of your classes. They looked kind of young to be college kids, though. They friends of yours?”

“Pegasus teenyboppers…?” Cheerilee felt a happy little tickle in her chest. The Subway Sentries. But how could they have heard about… “Yeah, I know those jokers. No idea where they heard that though.”

“Maybe you have stalkers. A whole gaggle of them.”

A memory flashed through Cheerilee's head. “Speaking of stalkers, this little buffalo lesbian I ran into after class mentioned something about my speech too.”

“Lesbian, huh?” Berry licked her lips, uncrossing and then re-crossing her hinds. “She cute?”

“Depends. You like twelve year olds?”

“I like lots of things. Keep talking.”

“She's built like the offspring of a malnourished circus elephant.”

“Hmmm… short and stocky. Keep talking.”

“Can I get that bus money now?”

“Keeping talking and we’ll see.”

Cheerilee abandoned the closet for a dresser drawer. Where the hay had she put that stupid costume? “Also: if you happen to have any joke stashed in here, I’m gonna need that too.”

“So what did you say during class?” Berry asked, sitting up on her elbows.

“Don’t know. I was really, really high. Me and Flocka smoked like chimneys all morning. I was fucking gone, only just came down a few hours ago.”

“You’ve got strangers talking about you in the street but have no idea why?”

“Not a clue.”

“Typical Cheerilee.”

“Ah, I’m sure it’s nothing. Probably just some bored joke-heads making up shit ‘cause they ran out of… Oh! Here’s that damn thing!” Cheerilee lifted a folded stack of spandex fabric from a drawer. It was black in some spots, purple and yellow in others. “Seriously though, the bus money,” she said, tossing the clothes across her back.

“Really, Cheers?”

“I need change.”

Berry pointed at the nightstand. “Third drawer from the top. There’s enough in there to pay for a bus pass.”

Cheerilee pulled the drawer open. “Thanks, sis.”

“You know it’s bound to catch up with you, Cheers—”

“You’re the best, sis—”

“Someday all that irresponsibility is gonna bite you in the ass like a rabid dog—”

“Love you, sis.”

“And what pony living in Equestria doesn’t have change, anyway? Our economy is predominantly coin based—”

Cheerilee pecked her puzzled sister on the cheek. “Bye, sis. Have fun on your date.” She started to leave, but Berry hopped down from the bed and hooked a fore around her shoulder.

“Promise me you won’t get your kneecaps broken,” she said. “If that little poser Flocka lays a hoof on you I’ll have to kidnap her, torture her for several months and then murder her in cold blood. Thing is, I’m kinda sleeping around with a Guard right now, so I doubt I’ll get away with mareslaughter, no matter how justifiable the killing was. And what does your big sister love?”

“She loves her freedom.” Cheerilee flashed a warm smile. “Relax, Berry. I promise that nothing will happen.” She paused. “And I’ll even buy the stupid bus pass.”

“Look at that,” said Berry, “it can learn after all. Now if only I could get you to stop fucking those stray dogs in the yard. The neighbors are starting to talk.”

“Let ‘em.” Cheerilee hugged her sister, pecking her cheek one more time before cantering out the door.