M. A. Larson Isn't Involved, I Swear!
“On Wings”
“Hey, Cheers, just writing to say thanks for the gift basket of chocolates you sent! Dusty and I are going to come back as giant balls of fur with hooved limbs once our honeymoon in Hoofalulu finishes up! Giant, well-tanned balls of fur, of course, but when the skies are cloudless as they’ve been since we’ve gotten here, you can’t escape being sun-bleached, can you?
Speaking of which, I meant to ask: have you let loose recently? Like, taken a break from teaching? At the wedding, Dusty told me you were looking like your life was one perpetual finals week on continual repeat. You’ve always been one to get yourself caught up in whatever work you need to get done, but I don’t need to have a special talent in teaching like you or Dusty to understand that’s not healthy for anypony. You’ve asked me not to bring up the subject of your love life, so I won’t – though really you always downplay the fact you’re quite attractive – but really, time off from work in any capacity is a commodity you dearly don’t appreciate as well. I mean, you work with children for Celestia’s sake, and from what you’ve said about one or two of your students, well…if I was in your horseshoes, I’d be demanding either a steep raise or higher administration figure to take action. Goodness knows I’ll probably be taking pointers from you on how to deal with kids in a few years. Even Dusty says she’s envious that your talent extends to working with kids, though in time I’ll bet she’ll claim the students in her university classes are kids in a completely different sense of the word.
Speaking of whom, she’s now motioning for me to finish up, saying something about wanting to go swimming in Pink Pearl Cove with me. Who am I to keep the wife waiting?
All the best, with love,
Silver”
Cheerilee finished reading the note, taking a heavy sigh when she finished. Two weeks ago, her brother Dr. Silver Sutures had married his longtime marefriend, Dusty Chalkboard, and together they had spent a honeymoon in tropical Hoofalulu full of happiness and love.
As the mulberry mare set the letter down on the dinner table in her small cottage, she looked absent mindedly out the window and into the distance, where the sun was already setting. She was happy for her brother: Dusty Chalkboard was a fantastic mare and as a history professor at the University of Manehattan, she and Cheerilee had a mutual understanding of the difficulties of life as a teacher.
And as earth ponies, mused the unmarried mare. One of the things that she’d always felt insecure about was being a proverbial black sheep in her family. Her mother, Swiftsprinter, was a pegasus and employed locally as part of Ponyville’s Search and Rescue team. Her father, Stronghold, was a proud unicorn who in his prime had been a lieutenant in the Royal Guard (which, incidentally, had been how he had met Swiftsprinter following a particularly embarrassing incident involving falling through thin ice). Silver was her older brother, taking after their father as being a unicorn and taking after their mother in his special talent being medical in nature like Swiftsprinter’s knack for triage.
And then there was her. She wasn’t like her mother, who even in her approach to old age was still fit enough to assist with search and rescue operations; or her father in being endowed with unicorn magic or even being exceptionally strong for a pony. She was a typical no-frills earth pony, who despite her best attempts to find better employment, was still stuck in the first job she’d managed to get after graduating with her masters in general education. She truly enjoyed her job, which was something most teachers around her age wouldn’t be able to honestly say; and while dealing with Diamond Tiara was a job in of itself, seeing the bright and smiling faces of her students five days a week made it all worthwhile. Though a fatter paycheck would be nice, too.
And a horn, thought Cheerilee, sighing once more. She knew half the reason she kept getting passed over for a teaching position at other schools, namely all the ones that were larger than old, one-room schoolhouses such as Canterlot University, was because more often than not there was always a unicorn applicant who came across as being more “engaging with the students” or “willing to spend extra time to help those struggling students” and got the job instead. Nevermind the fact I was valedictorian of my class – the same class as Shining Armor and Princess Cadence! Technically that means I’m smarter than two-fifths of the government!
But of course like all the majority teachers who managed to beat out Cheerilee for better jobs, Shining Armor and Princess Cadence had horns. And, to be fair, the future prince consort had won the national math championships in senior year. But that still didn’t negate the fact “Canter U” was a prestigious private school and for a Ponyville local like Cheerilee to have gotten in on a scholarship, much less be one of only a handful of earth ponies to attend the school period, at the very least that should have worked with her tenure to put her on even standing with a unicorn fresh out of grad school.
“Maybe Silver was right,” mused Cheerilee, getting up to see what was lying around that she could scrounge up into dinner. “I should step back from all this and take a breather.” As usual, she immediately ignored her own self-advice and after whipping up a quick pot of pasta alfredo, the young teacher feasted alone while grading tests. Mercifully, these were simple reading comprehension “fill-in-the-blank” quizzes with an included wordbank, so she didn’t need to worry about having to spend more time marking up tests (aside from trying to read the naturally terrible hoofwriting of colts and fillies who had yet to master cursive) and was even able to spend a blissful fifteen minutes of free time afterwards reading further into the most recent Daring Do novel.
But when she crawled back into bed, her mind wondered once again to the fact it seemed like she was in a dead-end situation being a teacher who, for all her intelligence and merits, appeared to keep getting overlooked in favor of her rivals who were more cranially endowed. I wonder what it would be like, to have been born a unicorn instead of an earth pony, she mused, before quickly falling asleep.
“Angel!” scolded Fluttershy, “Twilight set up this protective bubble around Discord for a reason!”
Somehow, someway, Discord and Angel had managed to escalate their mutual dislike for each other – or at least Angel had; Discord was always passive aggressive on the matter – and by means of which remained unclear, the bunny had actually carved a small opening into the bubble. Given how exhausted he was, she could only guess he’d been at it all night. She herself had only woken up minutes ago around three in the morning feeling thirsty and had been heading for the kitchen to prepare a glass of water when she’d heard what sounded like half a lion and half and eagle trying to fight off a sentient cottonball. What the scene ended up being was Angel evidently trying to pull Discord through the hole he’d made in the bubble.
“It probably should be mentioned I was in support of the whole ‘quarantine’ thing, myself,” said Discord from within his penetrated sanctum. “After all, I don’t want to get anypony like Fluttershy actually sick, now would I-aaah, ahhh, AHHHH~“
Fluttershy barely had enough time to yank the bunny to safety, diving out of the firing line of the sneezing dragonequis.
“CHOOOOOOOOOO!” finished Discord, sending a gale approaching Sarrau 1 in speed through the hole. As designed, the bubble immediately reacted by sealing itself off, undoing the damage by Angel, so aside from part of Fluttershy’s house looking like Rainbow had hit the point of pulling off a Sonic Rainboom in her living room, the potential disaster zone of a sick draconequus who wasn’t in total control of his own powers had been averted. “Ahahaha…*sniff* that was close, wasn’t it? Though, if it’s not too much to ask, I really could use a glass of water right now.”
It took all of Fluttershy’s willpower not to facehoof.
Weekends were what Cheerilee lived for, at least that’s how important they were to her for all the years she’d been teaching elementary in Ponyville. As a rather outgoing mare, she had found it best to do all her major shopping on these precious 48 hours where she wasn’t required to deal with part of the town’s population of children she was in charge of for the semester. Her desire to find better employment aside, she did truly love being an elementary teacher, but she’d really only taken the job years ago simply to have a cash flow to support herself while looking for something she wasn’t totally overqualified for. That, and while she loved all her students very much, it had started getting a little worrying when a specific trio of fillies decided to play matchmaker and effectively drugged both Cheerilee and local heartthrob Big Macintosh into almost getting married. Naturally, it wasn’t until after that ordeal that the instructor found herself starting to be naturally attracted to the handsome apple farmer. In fact, just the thought of nuzzling the giant, red monolith who seemed to possibly hold feelings of affection towards her as well made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
*POMF*
As Cheerilee recovered from the momentary shock of her bedcovers mysteriously being launched into the air, over her body, and landing in a heap on the ground in front of her, she noticed what looked like a small feather floating down. She reached out to grab it, bringing it closer to inspect. From the many times she’d picked up her mother’s feathers as a filly, Cheerilee knew it was a pegasus feather, more specifically the size suggested it was a secondary feather. But the color was not of her mother’s body color, but of Cheerilee’s own purplish hue.
Realization beginning to dawn on her, she slowly turned to look behind her. Sure enough, she had spontaneously grown a pair of pegasus wings in the middle of the night. Full, adult-sized, fully-plumed pegasus wings that looked as if she’d had them all her life.
“Huh? But…how? When? I don’t...BWUH!?” sputtered Cheerilee, her emotions scrambling between shock, confusion, curiosity, and denial. And then to top it all off, the last thing she remembered before going to bed last night was wondering what it would be like to be a unicorn.
“Maybe I should have wondered about being like my mom,” said the mare, not sure if she was an earth pony, pegasus, or some kind of halfbreed between the two. “Then that could have at least helped me get a different job!” She knew magic wouldn’t have been easy to pick up, but she had secretly prided herself on being a quick learner when it came to mental-related skills. But wings? They were an extra set of limbs she didn’t have the lifetime of experience in controlling every other winged pony had, save maybe Princess Twilight but at least she’d actually become another race of known pony. Cheerilee, on the other hand, was left straddling the divide between the ponies of the ground and the air with no idea where she belonged now.
In fact, the only thing she knew that the discovery of her wings had promised to send her entire beloved weekend down the drain. And unlike most other problems, getting hammered before noon via her secret hard cider stash wasn’t going to fix the fact she had 50% more limbs than she had twelve hours ago.
“Coming!” called out Twilight, wondering who would be calling this early at her door. It’s probably Pinkie or Rainbow she thought. They’re always eager to do something on an early Saturday morning. To her surprise, it was actually Cheerilee - a very nervous and uncomfortable looking Cheerilee, at that. “Oh, good morning, Cheerilee! Is everything alright?”
“You tell me, uh, your highness!” blurted Cheerilee, who then hurredly rushed into the library. Twilight immediately closed the door, knowing something was up.
“Did the Crusaders do something I need to know about? Like the time they drugged you and Big Mac?”
“I…I really don’t know!” Cheerilee exclaimed, now on the verge of hysterics. It was at that point Twilight noticed Cheerilee was wearing a green-colored frock, which was highly unusual given the most clothing Twilight could recall ever seeing the teacher wear was a vest during Winter Wrap Up. Even more unusual was the fact the frock looked like it wasn’t properly fitting over the pony wearing it, with odd bulges on either side of her body. “It’s just that you’re literally the only pony who can possibly tell me what’s going on!”
“Okay, okay! Look, Cheerilee, please calm down. Whatever is going on, unless it’s something on the level of Queen Chrysalis or Nightmare Moon having returned, or Celestia help us Applejack has turned into some kind of shapeshifting wolf monster or-“
“I guess ‘shapeshifting’ might be an appropriate term, given what happened,” warily replied the teacher. With some difficulty, she then proceeded to remove her frock, revealing the wings she had been hiding. “At least I can say I understand why all pegasi require slits in their clothes, because in no way was that old thing of mine comfortable. It was also really hot, probably because now I have two kinds of insulation.”
Twilight’s eyes were wide, but she didn’t let out a loud yelp or take a step back. “Wow, um…I totally can see how that is cause for alarm.”
“No offense, princess, but I am a pegasus for some reason and only found out this morning when I…well, that’s a matter I would prefer not going into detail about, frankly…” she blushed furiously, her wings naturally deciding to cause more trouble as a soft *pomf* gave all the physical details one would need to understand.
Fortunately, Twilight was still pretty socially awkward and completely mistook Cheerilee’s actions as purely being embarrassed about flexing her wings in bed for the first time. “Yeah, trying to use blankets with wings is difficult, that kind of thing happened to me for a long time after I got mine.”
“Oh, um, thanks for understanding, I guess?” Cheerilee was not quite sure how to respond to what she believed Twilight was implying, given the rather personal nature of those details. “But the point still stands that I’m not supposed to have wings, or maybe now I am and…oh, I don’t feel comfortable going out in public! How are ponies going to react to the local schoolmarm suddenly having a subspecies change?”
The princess raised an eyebrow in skepticism. “In all honesty, I think the town has gotten somewhat used to weirder things happening at random, at least ever since I moved into Ponyville.” Suddenly, Twilight’s eyes went wide with a possible realization. “Actually, there might be a simple reason for your, er, new additions.”
“What would that be?”
“You wouldn’t happen to have wandered through the Everfree Forest recently and passed through a patch of peculiar blue flowers recently, have you?”
Cheerilee shook her head. “The last time I was in the Everfree was when I was chaperoning kids for the Nightmare Night ritual last year.”
“Really? But I don’t remember seeing you with the group.”
The teacher chuckled. “Oh, please, I know you’re smarter than that, your highness-“
“Please, Twilight is fine, you visit the library often enough to have the right to drop honorifics. Between you asking me to give lectures now and then at the school and we’ve known each other for a few years now, you have just as much right as my friends to talk to me in a usual informal manner.” Twilight hoped that by reminding Cheerilee that they’d been good friends for a few years now would help the mare calm down.
“Er, okay then, prin-Twilight,” said Cheerilee, stumbling over her words. “Anyway, you didn’t see me because I was with a different group of kids that was supposed to go after your group. The small size helps with the scary atmosphere of the whole ritual and also to make sure none of the kids decide to go exploring on their own and end up encountering something really scary in the dark woods.”
“Ah, I was wondering why there were so few kids with me. But regardless, there is something that’s worth trying, though we’ll need to visit the spa.”
“T-the spa?” Cheerilee was not eager for more ponies to even get a glimpse of her wings. Or to put her frock back on as it was like a portable sauna with all the insulation. It would have been great for the winter weather, but as it was merely early spring, the need for such amount of heat was non-existent.
Twilight immediately understood her concerns, but gave a gentle smile. “Yeah, I know that feeling, too. Those first few weeks with these-“ the princess unfurled her own wings for emphasis, “- felt so weird just walking around with everypony to see. Combined with how I also apparently grew a few inches in height and an extra inch on my horn, trying to do anything at first was extremely awkward simply because I wasn’t familiar with my own body anymore. Having to do all that formal coronation stuff at the same time didn’t help matters. But really, all I could do is get used to the changes, and now it’s like I’ve always been this way.”
“Yes, but to be honest, Twilight, you at least knew the how and the whybehind the origin of your wings and that they were permanent. I don’t! Plus, you don’t have to worry about anypony spreading bad rumors about you, since speaking ill of a princess is one of the dumbest things anypony can do...but I’m just a schoolteacher that can’t get a better paying job! I have enough trouble with the fact higher institutions pass me over because they think earth ponies aren’t as stereotypically smart like a unicorn, or those few cases where somepony wants to know if I still dress like I did in the Neightes, but if rumors start going around that I was seen trying to be a pegasus for a few days, I don’t know if I could even keep my job here in Ponyville!”
“How on Earth would that-“
“It will sound like I tried to be a different kind of pony simply to try and improve my chances of employment. Combined with everything else, it sounds like a reputation of trying to lie my way into a better teaching position, and while that isn’t true in the least, without a way to explain being seen in public with wings I could have lost by that point is a surefire way to getting me banned from ever teaching again!”
“I doubt that’s the case, Cheerilee,” Twilight calmly replied. At this point the lavender alicorn figured that the other mare had been under a significant amount of self-imposed stress lately and this unexplained appearance of wings on her back was what was causing her to break down into hysterics. “Look, if it becomes a problem that the fact you temporarily had wings – if this is only temporary, of course – then let me know and I’ll back you up on it. Goodness knows this town already knows how bad things can get if everypony’s reputations get soiled by rumors, true or not.”
“Th-thanks, Twilight.”
“However,” continued the princess, “I still think you should go to the spa, though now for more than just seeing about how you might have gotten wings. And I don’t want you to wear your frock.”
“Wha?” gasped Cheerilee, her wings involuntarily popping open in concert with her emotions, “But I still don’t feel like I can go around looking like this in public!”
“That part,” impishly smirked Twilight, “can be skipped for the moment.” A bright flash from her horn then momentarily blinded Cheerilee, but when she regained her bearings she found the alicorn had taken her directly to the spa.
“Guess I can’t get out of this now, can I?” sighed Cheerilee.
“You’ll thank me later,” replied the princess, who then turned to speak with the spa’s receptionist. “Give Miss Cheerilee here the same thing Rarity has you give to Fluttershy, courtesy of the Crown.”
As odd as it seemed, the trip to the spa was probably made better by the fact she had an extra pair of limbs. While Twilight’s theory about how those wings magically sprouted overnight – that Cheerilee had somehow recently walked through a patch of Poison Joke flowers – turned out to be incorrect, the herbal bath nonetheless had been extremely soothing, and the massage…oh how it had been absolutely divine! Initially, upon learning the obvious fact half of her back had actually been altered as needed to accommodate the muscular additions for the wings, she’d freaked out yet again, but feeling those light and tender ministrations of the masseuse on her new flight muscles and points on her wings sent waves of relief that Cheerilee had no idea could be felt by anypony. Maybe I really should make more visits to the spa, mused the mare as she could feel the stress almost literally melt away, Silver always said I tend to be too tense and now I guess this proves he was right.
It was almost disappointing when the session was over, but all the same Cheerilee was glad she’d been somewhat forced into it all. She felt much more self-confident upon bidding Twilight farewell and aside from a few wary glances, nopony seemed to even notice Cheerilee now slightly resembled her mother a bit more than usual. While the lack of attention was almost depressing, given how much she’d been worrying about it, the purple pegasus knew this was the better alternative to her fears actually having come true. Her mind quickly slipped back into its usual Saturday afternoon routine not long after, during which she took care of all her shopping needs in town.
She would later regret spending all day in town without going back to Twilight and asking if there were any special considerations needed for pegasus ponies when it came to what they were naturally adapted to do. Granted, Cheerilee was not in any way a natural pegasus, where the line was drawn in how much she was a pony of the sky now in lieu of her original earth pony biology remained unknown, but aside from the occasional urge to try and hover in mid-air when idle there was nothing too serious.
Except after dinner, when she was preparing to go to bed. Normally, she didn’t have a problem dozing off, but aside from the expected issue of her wings involuntarily popping open and sending the bed covers into the air, there was something else that was wrong.
I don’t remember the bed being this uncomfortably firm, she realized. Along with the realization, Cheerilee also began to recall other things that Pegasi needed to live on the ground, things she hadn’t paid much attention to as a child. It had never occurred to her that the expensive “Super Turbo Cloudbed II EX Plus Alpha” her parents had bought years ago served a greater purpose than being the most comfortable luxury retail mattress on the market. But as she thought harder on it, her mother’s words about something involving medical insurance write-offs suddenly made more sense. Mom needed the cloudbed because she’s a pegasus, and pegasus ponies need to sleep on clouds.
Figuring that, because she was now a pegasus herself, it would be easy to just go out and grab some clouds, compress them into something resembling a mattress, and bring it inside so she could sleep. That plan lasted as long as it took her to exit her door and promptly try to take off into the evening sky. For all her flapping, she got about a foot off the ground before she realized she was a foot off the ground and held up by nothing but her own unsteady wings.
Stifling a scream, lest she be a bad neighbor and wake up the ponies snoozing in the homes around her, she carefully landed before dashing back inside her own home.
“Okay, not ready to try flying blind yet,” she panted, also now realizing that flying really wasn’t that easy for inexperienced pegasi. “Time for Plan B.”
“Oh, who could be calling at this time of night? Wondered Mrs. Cake, awoken by the knocking at the door to Sugarcube Corner.
“Don’t worry, I got it!” called out Pinkie, somehow not waking the sleeping Cake babies as she loudly bounced past the master bedroom. Her bright pink silhouette stood out even in the dimly lit storefront as she undid the lock and opened the door. “Oh, hi, Cheerilee!”
“Ah! Pinkie! Just the pony I was looking for!” replied the pony outside the bakery. Pinkie couldn’t help but notice that the usually upbeat teacher was unusually antsy, rocking from side to side as if extremely nervous, and for whatever reason was wearing a bathrobe. “Listen, I’ve heard that you have stashes of pretty much anything hidden around Ponyville, and, well, I was hoping that included-“
“Sorry,” immediately apologized Pinkie, “but I don’t have any Sweet Apple Acres reserve cider, if that’s what you want. Though given how late it is, plus the fact you’re in a bathrobe, why do you want hard alcohol?”
“Wh-what?!” Cheerilee was taken aback at the fact anypony would think she needed to get hammered at this time of night. The fact that she totally could get hammered anytime she wanted with her own secret stash of the frothy, liquefied bliss that was Apple Family cider notwithstanding. “How could you even-“
“You look like you need something to take the edge off your nerves, so given how you always manage to beat Rainbow Dash to get cider during cider season, I could only assume. I apologize if that’s not the case.”
“It’s not, if anything I most certainly do not need adult beverages right now!” reassured Cheerilee, knowing that she was likely going to need a few when she got home. “But what I do need is, erm, a cloudbed mattress.”
“A cloudbed? Like, the kind pegasi sleep on?”
The bathrobe-clad mare nodded. “Yes, I know it’s an odd request but-“ She didn’t get to finish her sentence as in a flash, Pinkie seemed to dash away in some direction – it was impossible to have seen just which direction it had been – only to instantly return with a cloudbed mattress. Just from looking at it, the teacher couldn’t help but wonder how Pinkie had known to have the perfect match for the bed it was going to be on without actually asking. It also was currently strapped down onto a wooden cart. “I guess you have a cloudbed mattress cart for cloudbed mattress cart emergencies, too?”
“Nah, it actually belongs to the Apple Family. They left it here by accident this morning from a delivery and I was going to return it tomorrow. But if you could do me a favor and return it to them in my place tomorrow, that would be great, and also save you a return trip to bringing the cart back here since it is kind of odd to see a pegasus wearing a bathrobe in the dead of night hauling around an empty cart.”
Cheerilee nervously chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it would be a strange-hold on, what did you say I was?”
“I said you were a pegasus wearing a bathrobe and-“ That’s when it dawned on Pinkie. “Wait, I thought you were an earth pony? Is that why you’re wearing a bathrobe? But you never wear any kind of covering when you come to the middle of town, so I should have noticed that you got wings like Twilight did and-“
“SHHHH!” hushed the pegasus. “Look, I…I don’t know how to explain it, but yes, somehow I am a pegasus now and frankly I want to keep it on the down low as much as possible. I’m still not that comfortable being a different kind of pony, and since the town is used to me being what I had been yesterday, a wingless teacher, surely you can understand how awkward this is, right?”
Pinkie nodded energetically. “Oh, yeah, I understand! In that case, feel free to keep the mattress as long as you need it, but if you could return it as soon as you can, I’d appreciate it. This one’s the only cloudbed I have as Gummy figured out where the other emergency cloudbed mattress was and…well, just don’t try to eat this one under the idea it’s actually cotton candy, between Gummy ruining the other one and then all the fallout still coming from the time Spike got large and wrecked Sugarcube Corner, my insurance companies aren’t too happy with me right now.”
“Of course, I’ll take good care of it, Pinkie, don’t worry!” thanked Cheerilee, though in the back of her head she was thankful herself that Pinkie apparently hadn’t become aware of how Spike’s “growth spurts” had in a way been her fault because she gave him that prop hat she’d been carrying around for…bah, I don’t remember, too tired. Indeed, the day had been stressful enough, even with the relief from the spa trip courtesy of the princess, and getting this cloud in her home and replacing her normal mattress with it was going to exhaust her. On the bright side, all she had to do tomorrow was return the cart to the Apples for Pinkie, and then she could relax at home to sort this pegasus thing out.
When Cheerilee woke up the next morning, about the only thing that felt even remotely home-like was the borrowed cloudbed mattress. If yesterday morning had rendered Cheerilee confused about how familiar she was with her own body, today’s morning turned her house into unfamiliar territory. Starting with her former mattress needing to be moved out of the doorway of the bathroom, which she’d slided to that position last night.
And then as she stood in the shower, letting the water run across her fur and feathers, she quickly realized she had, once again, failed to account for a new consideration of having new body structures with feathers: the need to preen. Unfortunately, while Cheerilee also knew there was some trick to doing feather maintenance quickly and easily, she herself only knew of the “removal by mouth” part, and spent the greater part of an hour after finishing her shower repeatedly biting at her feathers and more often than not just making herself feel little pricks of pain every time she tugged at feathers that were not ready to be shed. By the time she figured her wings were in a preened condition, it was almost lunchtime. It was lunchtime by the time she’d finished bandaging up her wings so that the little spots of bleeding – left from her pulling out feathers that had enough leeway for removal but not ready to actually be shed – wouldn’t be visible nor the way her wings were bandaged would sit uncomfortably when they were folded up.
When they are folded up, glumly thought Cheerilee, surveying the remains of what had been one of her potted plants. All it had taken was one good nudge from her wings flaring up randomly and now the space below the ledge contained a slightly damaged plant, shattered cheap pottery, and lots of dirt. Sighing, she quickly cleaned up the mess and had repotted the plant in a spare, cheap pottery pot she had lying around for such instances. Though usually her pots kept getting destroyed from town-wide threats like a horde of parasprites or a party of Pinkie Pies storming the streets in search of “fun” or whatever, not her inability to control parts of her own body.
That in turn brought up another problem. She couldn’t have the wings flare up in public. Yes, she’d gone with them exposed to the world to see yesterday, but she really hadn’t been thinking straight. The only answer to keeping her wings secured was to have some kind of body restraint. Unfortunately, the only thing she could find on hoof in her small cottage was a corset, the reasons for which she owned such a thing she neither could remember nor did she want to remember. But as uncomfortable as it was, not to mention awkward as it felt like an extra set of legs on her back were bound from moving, hiding her form under a simple raincloak only gave the slightest suggestion that she was hiding something under it in the form of small bumps on either side. Plus, for some reason she felt wearing a raincoat would come in handy; she just wasn’t sure why.
But the real test was to come after lunch, when Cheerilee remembered the cart needed to be given back to the Apples.
“Well, thank you kindly for bringin’ the cart back,” said Applejack, “though Ah don’t quite get why you’re doin’ it instead of Pinkie.”
“I needed to use it yesterday, so I told Pinkie I’d return it for her,” calmly replied Cheerilee.
“Really? What did ya need a heavy load cart for?”
“Oh, uh, I…I needed to, er, move a mattress! Yeah, you know how awkward it is to move those things without help, right?”
Applejack raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Why did you need ta move a mattress yesterday? By yerself?”
“It was, ah, last-minute emergency. My old mattress had a spring tear through the middle, kind of a nasty thing to find in your back if you were to sleep on it, right?”
“Ah, yeah, that’d be bad.” Applejack then seemed to realize Cheerilee was wearing a raincoat for some reason. “Say, what’s the raincoat for?”
“Oh, well, I just felt like it was going to rain today, that’s all. Really.”
“You sure?” asked the farmer. “The paper said the weather team wasn’t plannin’ on any kind of rain this week, but it is somewhat overcast. Kinda reminds me of what mah relatives over in Fillydelphia said it was like when mah newest little cousin Applecrisp was born. Wouldya believe he turned out to be a pegasus?”
“You don’t say,” replied the teacher, finding herself needing to start putting on more of that fake smile she’d developed over years of having to deal with kids and those maddening parents of theirs.
“Ah know, just ‘cuz he’s probably the only pegasus in the family don’t mean we don’t love him any less fer it. That would be dumb. But Ah also hope that he gets as lucky as Scootaloo in havin’ a big siblin’ figure as she does in Rainbow. It’s best when young pegasus ponies have older ones in their lives, y’know?”
Like my mother, mentally grumbled Cheerilee. “Uh, yeah, I guess. I must admit that Scootaloo really has been doing better in school ever since she and Rainbow bonded after that camping trip you, Rarity, and Rainbow took the Crusaders on some time back. But I can’t say I would know anything about being a pegasus because, you know, I’m not a pegasus. I’m an earth pony.”
Applejack looked critically at Cheerilee. “Uh, you okay, Cheerilee? You seem sorta on edge.”
“What? No, no, not at-“ Cheerilee couldn’t finish as at that moment she saw Big Mac walk out of the house and into the field. That big, red, sexy stallion…oh, how Cheerilee wanted to just rush over and kiss him something fierce. Only her teacher-related level of self control held her back. That, along with the alarming pressure she suddenly felt from the corset she was secretly wearing, as if something was distorting it. From pushing out on either side of her body. “Actually, yes, I’m expecting company and I’m running late so I’ll talk to you later then okay bye!”
Applejack blinked, not quite sure how to take the sudden change in Cheerilee’s behavior. Looking behind her and seeing her big brother though, she couldn’t help but shake her head in what she thought was understanding all the reasoning for Cheerilee’s sudden departure. “Ah guess the Crusaders were better at playin’ matchmaker than Ah thought…”
Cheerilee, on the other hoof, hadn’t stopped running until she’d thrown the deadbolt on her door. After which, she practically tore the coat and corset off, her wings needed release.
“OHHHHHHHHHHH~!” she exhaled, feeling the ecstasy of letting herself go. Oh Celestia did she feel shameless, these wings were making her do things she normally wasn’t of the disposition to even think about doing. But after catching her breath, she puffed out her chest in determination. She was not going to succumb to whatever was going on. She was an earth pony still, she just had to keep telling herself that. Along with wearing coverings. Damnit, my frock is still at Twilight’s. Better go get it.
After putting her corset and raincoat back on, Cheerilee glumly left her home to fetch her forgotten dress. Not long after, she started to feel the pitter-pattering of rain. Wow, it actually was going to rain today! But…how did I know?...
“Wow, Blossom, you were right about it going to rain!” suddenly came the voice of a pony Cheerilee recognized as Roseluck. As the teacher looked over towards the voice, she could see the earth pony quickly breaking down her flower stall while chatting with the white coated, green-and-pink haired pegasus.
“Yeah, it’s like I said earlier! Even though I’m not on the weather team, pegasi have a natural barometric sense for the weather! I’m guessing Dash and her crew forgot to tell the newspaper about the planned rainstorm today!”
Natural sense for the weather? Wondered Cheerilee, the idea of how she’d simply known to wear a raincoat coming back to haunt her. Fortunately, she was at the library, so she could quickly be in, grab her frock, and then be ou-
“SURPRISE!” shouted what sounded like half the town. The shock was so much that the corset failed, her wings strong enough to snap some of the strings and compressing both the corset and the raincoat forward, letting her wings snap open. Much to Cheerilee’s horror, Pinkie evidently had seen fit to tell the entire town of her condition, as if the large “Cheerilee’s Pegasus Party!” banner running through the middle of the library.
Guess I won’t need the frock as much, groaned the teacher. The secret was out, probably for the worse.
It didn’t matter what was a pony’s employment was: Mondays always sucked. And in Cheerilee’s case, it was a double whammy. Normally it was bad enough as she had to deal with a classroom full of kids who were none too happy that the weekend was over. But now she would have to deal with the inevitable, constant attempts by the kids to try and change the subject onto why she had spontaneously grown wings. After all, the whole damn town was talking about it and all Cheerilee could do was give a fake smile, why shouldn’t the kids who have known her for most of their lives ask as well? Much to that end, she didn’t even bother trying to cover her wings, all it would do is make it even more obvious and have people ask why she was trying to hide them. So, best not to cause herself unending amounts of trouble on top of what was guaranteed either way. And for the most part, none of her students seemed to even be interested in asking her about their teacher being physically a different subspecies. Initially.
“Miss Cheerilee, can you fly?” asked Scootaloo, right in the middle of the period set aside for Equestriani history.
“Scootaloo, that is very rude of you to interrupt me in the middle of class,” chastised Cheerilee.
“Yeah, just because Miss Cheerilee might not have enough experience to fly, she’s only had her wings for like, two days. She’s not a flightless chicken who has no excuse like yo-“
“Diamond Tiara!” barked Cheerilee, any attempt to even restrain her anger failing as her wings immediately flared up to make herself look larger and more intimidating. Normally, Cheerilee wasn’t known for her temper, especially to herself, so for her to fly off the handle so easily made a small part of her scared of herself. “That is unacceptable language to use to talk about a fellow classmate and especially given the fact that as an earth pony, you know nothing about pegasus wing development!"
Apple Bloom then interjected, "Well, pardon, Miss Cheerilee, but do you? Ah mean, y' just turned inta one just a few days ago!"
Cheerilee took a deep breath, trying to regain control of herself. “That is besides the point, Apple Bloom. I will not tolerate anypony talking ill of anypony else for any reason. Nopony deserves to be discriminated against in such a fashion, simply because of them being born as an earth pony, pegasus, or unicorn. If anypony here wishes to try making such comments again, they’d best be prepared to spend the rest of the week after school and have a letter written to their parents! Do all of you understand?”
“Yes, Miss Cheerilee!” the class answered as one, clearly slightly scared of how short the matron’s temper had become as a result of having grown wings. They didn’t know that Cheerilee was just as scared of herself as they were, too.
“I hope she doesn’t blame herself for this,” confessed Dusty Chalkboard, leaning into her husband’s side as they walked down the streets of Ponyville.
“Nah, I won’t let her,” answered Silver. “We were scheduled to come back to Equestria proper back on Wednesday, and today is Friday, so hopefully she’ll be able to realize this is a surprise visit.”
“For her sake, I hope she’s loosened up since the last we saw her.”
At that point, the couple had reached Cheerilee’s front door, where both of them couldn’t help but feel the sense that something wasn’t quite right. However, Silver immediately ignored it as he knocked on the door. Strangely, the sound of the locks being removed was slow, and the door only opened a crack, his younger sister barely peeking out of from behind.
“O-oh! Hey, big brother, I…I thought you and Dusty weren’t leaving Hoofalulu until…well, today.”
“Nah, we came back on Wednesday and thought we’d come visit you and then Mom and Dad before we went back to the daily grind in Manehattan. Is…everything okay?”
A sigh audibly came from the mare behind the door. “No, not exactly, this really is something of a bad time for me.”
Dusty knew that tone of voice – having been one to use it on occasion – and suspected an intervention was necessary. “Cheeri, let us in, maybe we can hel-“
“No, no, that’s quite alright!” blurted Cheerilee, who immediately moved the door a little closer as if preparing to close it. Dusty was going to have none of it, moving to push the door back into the house. She basically threw herself at it, expecting Cheerilee to put her all into resisting in intrusion, but to the earth pony’s shock there was only maybe half as much resistance as she thought there would be, causing her to bowl right into Cheerilee’s foyer.
Cheerilee squealed, fanning her wings over her face as if to hide, only afterwards to realize that her exact action revealed the thing she was trying to hide in the first place.
Needless to say, both Silver and Dusty were stunned. “Uh…sis? Why are you a pegasus?” asked the older brother.
Folding her wings back, the embarrassed teacher knew there was no point in being anything less than up front. “I wish I had an answer for you, Silver, but…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” repeated Dusty, picking herself up from the foyer floor. “How can you not know what caused you to turn into a different kind of pony?”
“Exactly that! I don’t know!” From the way Cheerilee shouted her answer, it was clear that she desperately wished for any kind of clue to what had happened. “All I can say is that I woke up last Saturday, after wondering what it was like to be a unicorn, only to find I’d grown wings instead, and this past week has been a steady descent into utter Tartarus! I mean, at least Mom knew what she needed when she moved from the cloud district of Los Pegasus down to live on terra firma, starting with the fact that pegasi can’t sleep on anything but stuff made from clouds!”
“Wait, that’s the reason our parents got that cloudbed mattress years ago?” asked Silver, realization finally dawning on him. “Because Mom needed it to simply get some shut-eye?”
Cheerilee nodded. “Yeah, I can only guess as much, since I had to borrow one from Pinkie Pie. And then my house has slowly become a wreck because I have wings that just hit everything…” As Dusty overheard, she’d already begun to survey the damage from the past week. In the small living room, what seemed to be Cheerilee’s old mattress was propped against the wall to cover what presumably had been the location of one of the windows. Two of the kitchenette table’s chairs were put off to the side, with the last remaining chair on the widest side of the table and everything on it set such that Dusty figured her sister-in-law needed to reach far to grab anything like napkins or salt, out of the range of where her wings could knock them down. A quick peek in the bathroom showed that its sole user apparently had a tendency to send water flying everywhere, based on where there were the beginnings of water stains on the walls where there normally shouldn’t have been.
The bedroom, in contrast to the rest of the house, appeared to be the one room in the house with the greatest presence of any kind of order. To the typical pony, it wouldn’t appear as such, given the bed covers being only partially still on the mattress, the slightly beat-up alarm clock laying face-down in front of the bedstand that – if the dust pattern was any indication – once had a bedside lamp. But Dusty had instead been immediately drawn to the piles of school work sitting on the bed. Like an oasis in a dry desert, it was a haven of order. Papers were neatly organized into two piles, presumably “graded” and “ungraded” as only one of the piles had papers marked up with a red pen. Glancing over to the dresser, Dusty also noted the additional papers stored under the scant few articles of clothing hanging above and the repurposed bedlamp now laying sideways on top of them all as a paperweight.
Then something else caught Dusty’s attention, something far more out of the ordinary than Cheerilee’s condition would even suggest. “Hey, Cheeri, why do you have two Winter Wrap-Up vests?”
“Oh, wait! I can explain!” blurted the flustered pegasus, quickly maneuvering hey way through her now somewhat booby-trapped house to her bedroom. “Normally, since I’m in charge of the young fillies and colts while school is in session, it was decided that I should be able to help supervise the children during Winter Wrap-Up as well. So, I have an animal team and a plant team vest, whichever one I wear depending on the activities the kids are doing.” Cheerilee then sighed. “Of course, now that I’m a pegasus, they’ll probably want me to cover weather team supervision, too, even though I still can’t even fly.”
“But you already have responsibilities for two groups already, you can’t possibly think they would expect you to agree to stretching you out further, do you?”
Cheerilee sighed deeply. “It doesn’t matter what they think; I know I would say yes anyway. Working with young ponies is what I do, especially the whole part where I’m teaching them. Besides, who am I to go against what everypony expects of me?”
“Hold on a second, here!” suddenly interrupted Silver. “The Cheerilee I know wouldn’t say that!”
“The Cheerilee you knew was an earth pony,” she countered, turning to face her brother. As their eyes met, he could see that his sister trying to handle being a different pony was only the surface of the problem. To that end, he knew what needed to be done. He immediately picked her up in his telekinesis, lighting up her body with a shiny, silver aura. “Hey, what are you doing?!”
“Staging an intervention, sis,” he replied, carrying her back into the small living room and putting her down on a couch. He then took the couch opposite, with Dusty instinctively knowing to sit next to him. “Cheeri…what’s really bothering you?
“What do you mean? Aside from all this dumb pegasus nonsense, I’m fine!”
“I beg to differ. You always write to me about how much you love your job, working to cram more stuff into their brains, but just now you treated it as if it’s something more akin to a burden and you have to enjoy that kind of stuff or at least pretend to.”
“Of course - I’m a teacher; that’s what is expected of me.”
“But you said your Cutie Mark reflects how your special talent, the thing you love doing, is to see every one of your students grow under your care and tutelage,” pointed out Dusty.
“Yes, that’s why I’m a teacher!” responded Cheerilee, a bit annoyed at how another fellow teacher seemed to question the obvious.
“So are you saying you are a teacher because that’s what you think is being told to you, or because you want to be a teacher?”
“What are you talking about? I love being a teacher, Silver just said that’s-“
“Silver has something else to say now, too,” interrupted Silver. “Cheeri, does any of this…’phase’ you’re going through have anything to do with how you think you keep getting overlooked for other teaching jobs simply because you’re not a unicorn?”
There was a long, long silence before Cheerilee could answer, and when she did she had to bow her head in shame. “When this whole mess started, it was right after I went to bed wondering how much easier it would be if I’d been born a unicorn like you, Silver. The next day I woke up as a pegasus and ever since it’s felt like I don’t know who I am or what anypony thinks I need to be doing, like I’m a piece out of place or something.”
Silver and Dusty sat in place, stunned. It was Dusty who worked up the ability to talk again first. “Cheerilee, I may not have known you for as long as your brother, but until now you’ve always struck me as a mare who knew what she was doing and what you wanted to do. I honestly can’t believe that same mare is now telling me she has no idea how to live her life anymore.”
“Well, I can, but only because it comes in light of what’s happened to her in the past week,” said Silver, turning to face his younger sister, affection in his eyes. “Cheeri, back when we were kids, you always said how you felt like the black sheep of the family, since Dad and I are unicorns and Mom is a pegasus, but you couldn’t do anything ‘special’ as you so liked to claim everypony else could. I’m guessing that’s still true?”
“Yeah,” answered Cheerilee. “You also would always tell me that it didn’t matter, that I was just as special. But let’s be honest: I’m no success story. Dad was in the guard, Mom’s still on call with Ponyville Search and Rescue, you’re a certified doctor, and you, Dusty,” Cheerilee turned to face her sister-in-law, “You’re a teacher at an accredited university! All I am is just a pony who excelled at school and managed to get herself stuck in a dead-end job teaching kids.”
“So…you’re stuck in a job you keep saying you love? Are we supposed to take it that you actually aren’t happy with being the teacher of Ponyville Elementary?”
“What? No, I do love it!” shouted an exasperated Cheerilee. “But it’s just that I’m still a mare in her prime, barely even close to her thirties! I know there has to be more to what my life will be then just making do on the small paycheck the town gives me, but everything I try never pans out!”
“That’s not true, sis,” Silver firmly stated. “I mean, for starters, when I always said you were just as special? Maybe I was wrong, maybe you’re more special than mom or dad or even me! Sure, I grinded through med school like any other doctor, but I’m no brainiac like you. I managed to skirt on by purely because I’m naturally good at medical spells. I didn’t go to Canterlot High, like you, all I did was end up following a similar path as mom and dad.”
“No, you didn’t. You’re a doctor, while they’re-“
“Cheerilee, don’t you see? Mom, Dad, and I all have special talents related to saving lives. Sure, they’re different means of doing it, but my future was pretty much set the moment I got my cutie mark. Plus, all our occupations rely upon what we were born with. Mom couldn’t do Search and Rescue if she couldn’t fly, and both Dad and I wouldn’t be able to do magic without our horns.
“But you? You don’t need to make sure some extra part of your body is always in top condition to do your job, the most important part of what you do is you yourself. The fact your special talent led you to teaching is something I consider far greater than how I can magically assemble a cast on a broken foreleg. That’s not to say I don’t take pride in my work, because I damn well do, but being possibly the most influential individual in a young pony’s life, on their educational path? A job like that requires a love of doing such work, a love that is totally you, Cheerilee.”
Dusty nodded, understanding her husband’s point. “It’s a thankless job, one that pays too little no matter what level of education you teach at, that much I know. But I think what’s happened to you, Cheerilee, is you’ve been doing it for so long, with so much effort and gusto, that you simply burned yourself out and want to do something different. The constant rejections for other teaching jobs has made you think all you can do is what other ponies expect of you, so your expectations are set by them and not you. Back when I saw you at the wedding, I mentioned to Silver that you looked like you’d gone through one too many finals weeks, but really I think you’d started to lose sight of who you were in your own self-image. This whole random ‘turning-into-a-pegasus’ thing just pushed you over the edge as you couldn’t identify with your own body, causing you to spiral out of control.” Dusty then got up and walked over to Cheerilee, taking the other pony’s hooves into her own. “You’ve been so caught up in making other ponies happy for your own perceived shortcomings, I fear you’ve ignored the fact you need to be the one in charge of making yourself happy, too. You’re already showing signs of early Cutie-Mark-Failure-Insanity-Syndrome, Cheerilee, even though you really aren’t losing sight of your special talent.”
Cheerilee said nothing, looking at the wide, worried eyes of Dusty, and then into the equally worried eyes of her brother. They were right. She’d been so caught up in obsessing over being what she wasn’t, as determined by ponies she didn’t even work for, that she’d let her whole life slip in an attempt to be what she never was.
“T-thank you,” she finally said with a smile, her eyes tearing up slightly. “I guess I did need some sense smacktalked into me, lest I actually end up doing something I’d regret and losing the job I do love in the process, along with myself.”
“Now that’s the sister I know!” replied Silver with his own smile. Everything was going to be okay after all.
It was a little past one AM in Ponyville and everypony in it was sound asleep when he arrived. He’d only been away for a day or two, but he’d only learned of what he’d accidentally done earlier that day.
“Normally, I wouldn’t even be bothered to do this of my own accord,” he muttered, “at least until Princess Twilight or one of the other royals bugged me enough about it.” As Discord materialized outside the small cottage, he peek inside the window to see its occupant. There, sleeping calmly for what must have been the first night of such restful slumber, was the local teacher. It had occurred to Discord only earlier to make sure that sneeze of his, exposed to the world no thanks to that annoying vermin Fluttershy kept as a pet – or more like pest in Discord’s opinion – hadn’t done anything too chaotic. Much to his chagrin, it had in fact turned an earth pony into a pegasus and made her life extremely stressful in the past week. Of course, while Discord always was game to screw around with reality to momentarily throw a pony’s life into a state of chaos, he had mellowed out ever since Fluttershy had helped “reform” him and as such driving an innocent mare to a near mid-life crisis by accident wasn’t really “him” anymore.
With a snap of his fingers, the bulges in Cheerilee’s blanket that had been her wings vanished, causing the covering to sag. “There, that should fix things right up,” he said, “plus, I do believe she was the teacher who led those three fillies to the garden and incidentally wake me up from my stone nap, so I guess I do owe her some thanks for that.” But then, by means only the spirit of chaos was privy to, he got an idea to manage some more mischief. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Cheerilee~” he quietly hummed as he slinked off.
Unhhhhh…Saturday already? Thought Cheerilee, forced into waking up as the rays of Celestia’s sun shone through her mirror and into her eyes. The alarm clock still lay dead to the world, having been forgotten to be set the previous night, but the extra sleep had done her some real good. Not as much as spending the afternoon with her brother and sister-in-law, who helped her come to terms with her wings, but if she was to be a pegasus from now on, she had accepted it as who she would be now. The more important thing on her mind was going to city hall and getting Mayor Mare to approve a considerable raise in her teacher’s salary.
Because if I can’t get a job elsewhere, mused Cheerilee as she dragged herself out of bed, then I should get paid more for doing what I love! That was then she realized that, by the same means she’d gained her wings, she had now lost them and had returned to being an earth pony. She was of two minds of the return; on the one hoof she was ecstatic as now she was playing by the rules she’d always known as an earth pony, and on the other she was somewhat annoyed at having to go through all that trouble of being a pegasus all of a sudden only for it to not matter in the least. Though now I can give Pinkie her cloudbed back.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. “Coming!” the mare called out, quickly making her way to the front entrance. She opened it and gasped.
“Figures your problem got resolved,” snarked the unicorn Dusty Chalkboard.
“Hopefully you can help with ours?” asked the earth pony Silver Sutures.
Cheerilee blinked, trying to formulate words to say in response to her siblings having swapped species. Then she noticed that Dusty’s horn was the same color as Silver’s coat. Which could only mean one force was responsible for both this new development and for her week as a pegasus.
“Yeah, I think I know who to talk to,” said Cheerilee, “just let me wash up and we’ll go talk to the princess about this. Feel free to make yourselves at home, like yesterday.” As she let her guests back into her home, she couldn’t help but chuckle internally. Leave it to Discord to show me that I don’t always need to live my life to any expectation, may it be anypony else’s or even mine. With that, she went and got ready for what probably would be an unpredictable day, the only thing she was fully certain of being who she was, body and soul, and for that she was perfectly happy.
Author's Note
I wanted to try my hand at writing a story that was much more in line with keeping in the show and wasn't part of any larger serial projects I'm working on currently. So I came up with this silly idea of Cheerilee gaining wings for no discernible reason and having to deal with being M.A. Larson'd. I hope you enjoyed reading just as much as I had fun writing it!
