The Cookies

When I got settled into my new home, a few blocks away from the bakery, Sugar, my new mom, didn't take long to explain the rules and expectations of the house. "You can stay out for as long as you want as long as your home before supper. Supper is at 8:00, and I expect no sweets after that, as long as it's not a special night. Also, we expect you to attend school and work in the dinner when you're not out with friends or in the middle of writing. We expect you to be on your best behavior around gets and us at all times. You have to have your manners in check too. We have seen your record that Ms. Velvet Clearing gave us and though we are surprised at its size, we understand that you have improved so we expect just that. Understand?" she explained. I blinked and stuttered an answer that resembled the word 'yes', but I am unsure that's what I actually said.

Despite everything Sugar said about manners and behavior, both Chocolate Chip and Sugar were amazingly lax parents. I assume it was mainly because I was already thirteen at the time and any impact they would have had on my emotional and intellectual growth would have been little, if any. I got to admit, it was fun working at the diner, sometimes I visit Canterlot and take a day where I work free for Pony Joe. It was a really great atmosphere and a lot of ponies were really polite when I served them. Plus, I got to use roller skates. Those who recognized me always wanted an autograph. Most of the time it was unprepared so I signed paper napkins at their tables.

School was okay too, it turned out that I was more popular with the older ponies, so starting school the only ponies who recognized my name was the principle, the my English teacher, and one of the Phys Ed teachers. Most of the schools in Canterlot are privet schools and range from kindergarten to eleven, when all ponies graduate and become adults. I was thirteen so I was in grade six when starting in the school. I did make friends with two unicorns named Heather and Honey Dew. Heather was a white unicorn with dark green eyes and messy lilac mane, her cutie mark was a bouquet of flowers and later became a wedding designer. Honey Dew was a golden yellow with teal eyes and light brown straight mane. Her cutie mark is a honey comb. Honey Dew, Heather, and I are still are really great friends of mine. We don't see each other very often anymore, but we're always sending letters.

How we met was kind of funny, really, it was my first day of school, and the teacher walked in late. Ms. Penelope was greeting the class excitedly, and the thing that every pony wanted to know was who I was, because they hadn't heard of me. "And class, I am excited to introduce you to our new class member. She is the youngest author we have ever seen, she has published several poems and stories, she has won two golden stickers, welcome Quill Bird!" she said. Excitedly, she clapped her hooves and I saw her being oblivious to the fact that no pony else clapped as well. After that awkward introduction, Ms. Penelope started talking about stanzas in poems and I doodle on my paper, not paying attention. When the bell rang for lunch, every pony put away all of their belongings and left the classroom. Ms. Penelope wishing us a good rest of the day.

I was heading to my locker, which just so happened to be across the hall, and was stopped By Heather and Honey Dew. "Hey there, new filly! How are you?" Heather asked, clearly the leader of the two of them.

"I'm fine, I was just heading to my locker," I explained, nonchalantly.

"So, you're some kind of 'famous author', huh? How come we never heard of you before?" Honey Dew persisted.

I rolled my eyes and said, "No pony said I was famous, generic bully one and generic bully two. And if you want me to 'kill myself' or 'stop trying so hard to be popular', then you should turn around and look at your cliched plots in the mirror because I am not affected and you should stop trying. Got that, generic bully one and two?"

They looked at me stunned and Heather responded with, "I will not take sass from the new filly who thinks she knows me! Get lost loser!"

"Look, I don't have time for these tropes right now, so let me just eat my lunch in peace and we'll all have a nice day," I explained, a little annoyed.

"Hang on, famous author, who told you that it's okay to come to a new school and act like you're superior than us?!" Honey Dew demanded.

"Girls, just stop. You're not intimidating, and you're not going to break me. I've written characters that have more dimension than your sorry plots. You maybe unicorns, but I don't think you'll use magic on me. Got that, generic bully one and two?" I said, getting mad. "See you tomorrow," I said, pushing past them.

We only had that one period together when we first met, and I was glad for it. Not because I was scared, but because I just didn't want to see their annoying faces for longer than I had to. A few weeks after that first exchange, they come up to me again. By then we all knew each other's names, so we could actually address the other in conversation. "Quill!" Heather shouted, catching up to me in the hallway, Honey Dew close behind. "We were just thinking about what you said to us, about us being generic and bullies," she explained.

"So? I'm busy. I need to ask my math teacher a few questions before he leaves for lunch," I explained, irritated that I was having a conversation with these two again.

"Wow, rude. We came to say that you were right, alright?" Honey Dew explained.

"Heather, Honey Dew, I got to go. you can have your reformation scene later, alright?" I said, sassy.

"No! We want to apologize! We felt intimidated, okay? We heard Ms. Penelope talk about your accomplishes and we got jealous about how much you've done with your skills already that we kind of tried to make you feel bad about yourself, but clearly that didn't work," Honey Dew explained.

"Girls. I know. I am busy, and I don't want to deal with you right now. You're cliched, over done, and repetitive to about all the other bullies in stories and real life. As I said, I need to catch Mr. Bisect before he leaves for lunch," I said. They look at me with wonderment.

"How do you keep doing that?" Heather asked. "We came up with that speech ourselves!" She explained further.

"Look. I've read a lot of books. I can name so many characters with the same goals as you two. 'bully some pony to make them feel inferior to you'. It's been done so many times," I said.

After that, we became friends. Our favorite hang out spot was the diner. We loved it there. I served them when ever I worked and made sure their meals were the best. They quickly became original and their own ponies after I became friends with them. I quickly learned, too, that they bullied a lot of the younger fouls, the twelve and eleven year old mostly, so I got them to be kinder and apologize to them. Over all, us three were and still are inseparable.

Sugar and Chocolate Chip were over joyed that I made friends so quickly and they soon made friends with Honey Dew's parents and Heather's parents. I remember every fall we'd all go on a trip to Baltimare for a few weeks. And Every winter we'd pick a special weekend and we'd all have hot cocoa in the diner when it was closed for the night. And every summer we'd all stay at Heather's cabin. I met her little brother Dragon Snap on the first summer there. He is several years younger than Heather and has a cutie mark in gardening. Every birthday was celebrated in a huge way! Once on my birthday, we had a scavenger hunt throughout the entire city of Canterlot and the prize was a huge party! And on Honey Dew's seventeenth birthday our parents bought us train tickets and we spent a week traveling Equestria. All our parents were pretty wealthy so we could do stuff like that.

Overall, life with the Cookies and my two best friends was awesome! So you can imagine my surprise when Heather's and Honey Dew's parents didn't allow them to talk to me anymore. Sugar asked them about it, and Honey Dew's mom, Sweet Tooth, explained that they didn't want her daughter to hang around a criminal. Heather's dad said the same thing. I was so confused, I wrote Velvet about it and the next week I got a letter replying, "I wouldn't know how those ponies would know about your record unless you, or your friends, told them. And since you mentioned that not even your friends knew, I have no explanation for it, I'm sorry, Quillian." My friends and I still spoke at school, we were all in pretty much the same classes then so unfortunately for their parents it was unavoidable.

We were all seventeen so we were all in our last year of school anyway. Soon after graduation Heather would be starting a bridal business, and Honey Dew would be employed into a cereal company and later she'd be the manager of a bakery in Manehattan. Anyway, long story short, our family vacations and birthdays together were halted pretty abruptly. Heather and Honey Dew would apologize for their parents' behavior, but I honestly didn't care, "Let them think what they want to think," I'd tell them, and soon enough, they stopped caring too. They'd sneak away to meet me at the diner and we'd walk hours around Canterlot. And if we got caught by one of their parents, they'd blame me for it. I admit, it did hurt seeing ponies I once trusted now discriminating me because of my background. I never let Sugar or Chocolate see me sad though, I always sent letters to Velvet explaining my situation. Some times, I was crying and the tears hit the paper as I wrote.

One time, she sends me a notebook and quill and ink with one sentence. "It's time you start writing again." So I did. I wrote about my pain, about my sadness, about the injustice, I wrote about all of it. Four poems came out of it, and I mailed it to my publishers right away. Within a month, those poems were out to the public. Sweet Tooth and Fruit Juice, Honey Dew's parents, came to the diner personally and called them, 'An attack on their family,' and they demanded them to be trashed. But since there was no physical evidence that the poems were specifically about them, no pony could do anything about it. Heather's dad, Sage, claimed the same thing a few weeks later, but still there was little evidence to prove that it was specifically about him.

Ms. Penelope ended up assigning one of them, "A Walk Down the Road of Hate", and analyze it. I, of course, didn't need to do it because I wrote it, but she did give me a different poem to analyze instead. That lunch I explained to my friends all the answers but told them to make the answers into their own words so that she didn't know that they cheated off the author. It felt as though I was more devious at seventeen than I was at thirteen. And the best part was, we all got away with it too.

And then, that evening, I was working in the diner when Chocolate walked up to me concerned. "Quill," he said. "Is there anything you're not telling us?" he asked.

I didn't know what he meant by that, "No," I responded, confused.

"Are you sure? About your old caretaker?" he asked again.

He lead me to the back room and continued. "Because I was going over the mail and saw a letter addressed to you from her," He explained.

"I - I'm sorry, Chocolate. It's just, I'm having a lot of insecurities right now, and I didn't want to inconvenience you and Sugar about it," I explained.

"Quill, even though we are not blood, we are still your parents. You can talk to us about anything and we wouldn't judge you," Chocolate explained.

"I know, Chocolate, but Velvet is the pony I always came to with my problems, when I wasn't getting in trouble, and it feels weird just trusting other ponies with my problems. You know?" I said, and he looked at me understandingly.

"I get it. When I was about ten, my parents had died in a factory accident, so I had to live with my uncle. The thing is though, that I had trusted my parents with everything, and when they were gone, I felt as though I had no one to talk to. But one day my uncle came up to me and said, 'moy mal'chik, I know that you are hurting, but what ever you need to say, say it to me. I am here for you.' I know it is not the exact same for you, but the offer still stands," Chocolate explained.

I looked at him, slightly surprised, slightly happy "You're an orphan too?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "But as I said, it isn't quite the same for you," He explained, smiling.

"Do you still miss them?" I asked, curious never knowing my parents.

"From time to time, but I always go to my uncle or Sugar if I need comfort. I suggest you come to me or Sugar as well, krasivaya," he said, and kissed me on the forehead.

He let me continue my shift without any other distractions and when my shift was done, I checked out, and walked home. Sugar and Chocolate were already there waiting for me. I then told them everything. About how Sweet Tooth, Fruit Juice, and Sage made me feel, how they banned Honey Dew and Heather from talking to me outside of school and how it really made me feel, how I was angry all the time and didn't know how to be happy again, and that the only thing I could do about it was write in the notebook Velvet gave me a few months previous.

It felt good to actually tell someone instead of just sending letters. I've found over the years that vocalizing problems is a better healing tool than just writing them down. Sugar and Chocolate hugged me for the first time in a long time that night, and it felt good. "We can deal with this, don't worry. You won't have to worry about them any more," Sugar said, and I still don't know what she said to Heather and Honey Dew's parents, but they let Heather and Honey Dew hang out with me outside of school again! A few years after that Heather told me that she discovered that their parents had hired a professional spy to dig up dirt on me. "They didn't trust you at all! Not even when we were that young!" she claimed. I was stunned. I told Honey Dew right away and she confronted her parents about it. They confessed to it as well. Honey Dew hasn't been in touch with her parents since.

"I couldn't believe it!" she told us. "They just admitted it! No avoiding anything! Just straight to the point!" she explained as we sat in her new apartment in Manehattan.

"Yeah, my Dad as well. It was so casual too, he said, 'hey remember when I told you not to talk to Quillian anymore?' and then he told me why!" Heather explained.

"Whatever. I'm over it. I just want to finish my tea and go meet Honey Dew's colt friend," I explained, sipping said tea.

"He's not my colt friend!" Honey Dew explained, she and Violet Sky started dating a month later.

So yeah, life with the Cookies was awesome. Too bad it had to end.

Author's Note

Before you ask, Chocolate Chip is Russian. Or at least the Equestrian version of Russian.