Cheerilee struggled up from her threadbare recliner, cursed her aching knees, and worked her way to the window in fits and starts. The third time already this evening—once to let out the day’s hot air and a second time to shut it and keep out as much of that blasted music as possible. She couldn’t exactly sleep, anyway, not with all that humidity bottled up in here again.
So she wrestled with the sash and tugged it up, the cool air washing over her, and without that incessant thumping noise now. She leaned against the window frame, as much to breathe in the fresh scent from outdoors as to take a rest. The sun had just set, so it would only get better.
Better. She let out a sigh. What had gotten better lately? Or even in the last ten years? Better.
Honestly, she didn’t understand children anymore. Back when she taught her little flowers—
Back when she thought it actually made a difference. She used to smile a lot. Her precious flowers—she still thought of them that way, but what did they think of her? Maybe once every couple of months, an old student might say hello to her in the market or at the post office, but how many had ever come to visit?
None. Not one thought that Cheerilee had enough impact in her life that it’d occur to her to say so. Every year, a dozen new students in the door and a dozen old ones out, gone, moved on to bigger and better things. And left the past behind.
Anyway, back then, her students liked such cute songs, most of them, at least. Not this… whatever it was. She waved a hoof toward the concert hall in the distance. Part of Princess Twilight’s arts complex that she’d added to the castle years ago. Twilight really didn’t mind the castle being used for such a thing?
With a shrug, Cheerilee limped away to her chair and flopped into it. The old springs groaned at her almost as loud as her old bones did. And just as she got comfortable again, a knock sounded at the door. At this hour? Anypony who knew her should remember not to call past eight thirty, and here it was already quarter past—almost bedtime.
For a minute, she thought about keeping quiet and waiting for whoever it was to leave. She rolled her eyes. “Come in!” she called. “It’s open!”
The door creaked on rusty hinges, and Cheerliee strained her neck to see who’d pay her a visit, but she couldn’t see the entrance from her chair. She already knew that. Why’d she bother looking? Her apartment, after all—with her seat facing the picture window, the door was almost completely behind her.
“M-Miss Cheerilee?” a soft voice asked. The visitor only came one or two steps inside. Cheerilee couldn’t place the voice, maybe one of the neighbors.
“Please, sit down,” Cheerilee said, pointing toward the chair around the side of her coffee table. Somepony sitting there wouldn’t block her view of the sunset, just blending from green to a blue that disappeared into the night sky. The wispy clouds higher up still shone with streaks of pink and orange.
A few more steps, and then her guest balanced herself right on the edge of the seat, her forehooves gathered in her lap. At least Cheerilee assumed a “she” from the dainty posture, but she couldn’t exactly see very clearly just yet. So she reached for her glasses, perched them on her nose, and—
“Sweetie Belle!?”
Her visitor gave a one-sided smile and a small nod. The filly—no, not a filly anymore. She’d always be that little bundle of mischief to Cheerilee, that vessel of creative energy barely contained by good intentions and bad judgment. Always one of the bright lights in her class, for the few years she’d spent in it. And now look at her.
Not a filly. A mare, tall, elegant, with flowing curls in two tones, spilling down her neck, over her shoulders, embracing her as much as Cheerilee wanted to at first impulse, but… she’d never come to visit before, either. Just like all the rest. That last thought saved the tears blurring her vision from escaping.
Her half-smile bursting into a radiant grin, Sweetie Belle leaned forward and bounced on her cushion. “It’s wonderful to see you again, Miss Cheerilee!”
As if yanked by a rope, Cheerilee lurched forward and tried to stand. “Oh, where are my manners? Let me fetch you some tea.”
“Please, no. I don’t want to trouble you.”
Cheerilee had braced a foreleg to stand, but she felt a gentle touch on it.
“Please. I’ll get plenty to drink later anyway.” Sweetie Belle cocked her head and flattened her ears. “Just relax. Don’t overexert yourself.”
“I know what I can and can’t do,” Cheerilee muttered, but Sweetie Belle looked down at the rug and hunched her shoulders up. No need to browbeat her. “Um… so, how did you get over here so quickly? The concert just ended.”
Sweetie Belle finally settled back into her chair and fiddled with her hooves. “I deliberately scheduled the after-party for later. I wanted time to visit, but I knew I shouldn’t stop here too late.” She brushed her forelock aside, and an eyebrow raised when she bumped her headset—must have forgotten to take off her microphone after the show. She giggled, pulled it off, and held it in her lap.
“Yes, I normally go to bed about now,” Cheerilee said.
“I’m sorry.” Sweetie Belle shifted in her seat and turned toward the door. “I can come back another time…”
“No, no. I suppose this ‘after-party’ is going to keep me up anyway.”
“It’s indoors,” Sweetie Belle said, her voice cracking in that way Cheerilee had always loved. “You won’t hear a thing.”
With a nod, Cheerilee took a moment to rest her eyes. “Good.” Then she breathed in deeply, that lovely evening air. And… honeysuckle? This late in the season? No… perfume. Hadn’t she smelled that before? Yes, once long ago, Sweetie Belle had shown up for class absolutely drenched in it. Then the next day, with a more tasteful amount, and for the days and weeks and months that followed as well. She’d forgotten about it completely, including the letter of apology Sweetie Belle had brought in that second day, though obviously written in Rarity’s looping script.
“I’m glad to see you doing well.” Cheerilee smiled, for the first time today. She reached over to the side table, where her assorted bottles of medication sat, and corralled the nearest toward her. Over to the table’s edge, where she could scoop it up between her hooves and fidget with it while they talked. Chalk, test papers, an eraser, something… after so many years of rarely going empty-hooved, she’d find herself absentmindedly clutching at anything, just to feel…
Sweetie Belle’s eyes followed the bottle’s progress, and her mouth twitched into a frown. “I talk to Twilight whenever I come to town—”
Cheerilee slumped her shoulders, and Sweetie Belle held a hoof to her chest. “I didn’t mean…” She huffed a breath out her nose. “Look, I talked to Twilight earlier today. She told me she was worried about you, like you’ve seemed different lately.”
Twilight?
“I know you might have preferred somepony other than me,” Sweetie Belle said. She folded her forelegs and looked at her knees. “You never did like current pop music much, and now I’m…”
“Not at all!” Cheerilee pricked her ears forward and grinned. “I love my students, and I’m very proud of you.”
Sweetie Belle returned the smile, but she slouched even lower. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited before,” she said quietly. Her eyes flicked toward the medicine bottle in Cheerilee’s hooves again.
Yes, why now? And what did Twilight care? They didn’t exactly talk much, and it’d surprise her if the princess actually paid her any attention.
“I just thought you wouldn’t approve of what I’ve done with my life,” Sweetie Belle continued, her mouth in a taut, flat line.
“Of course I do!” Cheerilee nearly shouted, far more sharply than she meant to. “I may not like modern art, but I can still appreciate a good painter. Talent is talent.”
Sweetie Belle nodded and glanced out the window. “Miss Cheerilee… I have to admit I had another reason for coming here. I asked Twilight what she thought, and she didn’t know if you’d agree. I know you don’t teach anymore, but would you be willing to tutor? My daughter’s having some trouble with math, and we live just this side of Canterlot, so it wouldn’t take us long to get here, say two or three times a week, and…”
Tutoring? Cheerilee watched the last of the light illuminating the underside of the clouds dissipate into night. Just the moon now, tinting everything silver. Yeah, the sun had set on teaching long ago, too. Now, she only wanted a quiet retirement, plus her volunteer work at the library, which was no doubt where Twilight had seen her and gotten the impression—
She nearly spit out the bitter taste in her mouth. “What good would that do? Basic math, reading… anypony can do that. Anypony. You don’t need me.”
“Everypony can do that because of you.” Sweetie Belle’s mouth hung open, like she had more to say, but she only hung her head.
“I don’t know.” Cheerilee let out a sigh. “How useful is any of that, really? It’s more convenient to get all the children together in a group so you only need one teacher, I suppose, but any parent could do it.”
Her lips pursed, Sweetie Belle straightened up in her seat. “You remember that trick you taught us to figure out if you could divide a number by three? I use that all the time at the market, when I buy groceries for me, my husband, and my daughter.”
“You… do your own shopping?”
A gentle smile spread its roots across Sweetie Belle’s face. “We go as a family. I love Rarity, but she’s never been one for that kind of ‘togetherness’ thing. My parents, either—they often went travelling without me. I learned as much about family in your class as I did from them.”
Cheerilee stopped rolling the bottle between her hooves. “You did?”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “And—and th-the music! I knew, even back then, that you didn’t exactly like my choice in music. I loved Sapphire Shores at that age, but it bothered me how she talked down to her staff and had everything done for her. I promised myself that I’d never act like that, whether I was one of the crowd or a star.” She blushed. “And for some reason, I never saw that I should have been singing, even though it was staring me in the face, so I never really planned on the second one.”
Cheerilee chuckled to herself. That didn’t matter. Yeah, just about everypony had seen that, but no way would they ever steal the moment of discovery from her.
“Anyway, Scootaloo does my choreography, Apple Bloom builds my sets… my fans, co-workers—they’re all friends first. I learned that in your class, too. Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon—even though they come from rich, important families, they sat in the same desks and got the same attention as the rest of us. You were a great role model for that: treat everypony the same,” Sweetie Belle said, hugging her forelegs to herself.
She scooted forward in her chair, and a gleam shone in her eyes. “I learned how to keep a budget, plan healthy meals… how to make sure my daughter would learn the same things from me.”
Cheerilee frowned. No need to patronize her. She’d gotten quite enough of that in the past.
Sweetie Belle wrinkled her brow and reached for Cheerilee’s hoof, but she bumped the bottle and pulled her own hoof back. “In music school,” Sweetie Belle continued softly, “I learned proper singing technique. In high school, I learned chemistry and algebra. In your class, I learned how to learn those things, why they mattered, how they make me a better pony… how to be a better pony.”
For a moment, Cheerilee glanced down at her cutie mark. Her little flowers, and looking a bit faded these days. She did love her students. There used to be more to it—if she loved only them, she would have gotten a cutie mark in child care or something. Why teaching?
Over on the shelf, the small clock struck once. A half-hour, then—eight thirty. Bedtime, but…
Sweetie Belle rose to leave and hid her face, but not in time. Cheerilee had seen. “I should go. I know it’s getting late for you. I have my party, too—you’re invited, of course, but I doubt you’d enjoy it.”
Why was Sweetie Belle crying? She didn’t need to. She had nothing to be upset about—such a wonderful, respectable mare she’d become. And not because of her mostly absentee parents. Rarity, too, an admirable mare in her own right, but not necessarily a shining example of virtue. Self-absorbed at times, impervious to the reality that many ponies didn’t live as comfortably as she did. At least her heart was in the right place, but it took someone to focus that, to teach Sweetie Belle—
Cheerilee’s hooves shook. Teach her. She’d learned. She really had. And Cheerilee felt that tingle in her chest, the same one that used to happen when a student really understood. Even the very first time, when she’d explained something to a classmate, whose eyes lit up when she got it, and… those three flowers had appeared on Cheerilee’s flank.
Cheerilee fought back her own tears, but… still, why was Sweetie Belle crying? Halfway out of her seat, angled toward the door, her eyes fixed on the bottle in Cheerilee’s hooves.
“C-can I visit again tomorrow?” Sweetie Belle asked between sniffles. She’d turned back to Cheerilee, and her face was a mask about to crack. What had gotten her so worked up? The poor dear. Cheerilee followed her gaze, still locked on—
Cheerilee’s eyes shot wide open. Sleeping pills. She’d picked up the bottle of sleeping pills, labeled in large print so she could see it without her glasses. Sweetie Belle would have read it easily. Quickly, she shoved them back onto the table. “Oh, no! You must have thought—Sweetie Belle, don’t worry. I wasn’t going to—”
Sweetie Belle rushed over and hugged her tightly. She let out a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry! It’s just… Twilight said you’d been feeling down, and it didn’t seem like anypony could help, and then I saw those… things—” she flicked a hoof at the bottle lying on its side “—a-and…” She trembled and shook her head.
“Shh,” Cheerilee said, stroking Sweetie Belle’s mane. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
A few minutes of silence passed, and the clock ticked on, well past bedtime. Sweetie Belle’s heartbeat finally slowed, and her body steadied. She stood up, retrieved her headset from where she’d dropped it, and wiped the tear streaks from her face.
“Yes,” Cheerilee said with a slow nod, “I’d appreciate a visitor tomorrow.” She waited until Sweetie Belle made eye contact with her. “And please bring your daughter with you. I’d love to meet her, and if she feels comfortable here, I’ll dig up my old math textbook for the next time.”
“Thanks, Miss Cheerilee!” Sweetie Belle sniffled one last time. “Thanks for being such a great teacher and helping to make me who I am.”
She leaned in for another hug, let her smile carry the rest of what she had to say, and waved good-bye. “I’ll stop by tomorrow, then.” Sweetie Belle’s throat swelled with so many more words: apologies, explanations, reassurances. She didn’t need to.
“I know,” Cheerilee said. And they left it at that.
Alone again. But not so alone after all. Cheerilee opened her bottle of sleeping pills and shook out one. She almost skipped it altogether, just because it felt… off now, what Sweetie Belle had thought.
But she took her pill and relaxed into her chair, facing the picture window. The sun’s glow, just before dawn, would wake her in the morning.
