My Little Proletariat

Cherilee was Ponyville's only teacher. That was OK. She loved teaching children. Loved it. On a Thursday morning it was the sort of thing she'd repeat to herself, over and over, under her breath, so she didn't do anything she'd regret later.

So she wasn't particularly worried when Twilight Sparkle interrupted her class five minutes before she was supposed to let them out. She decided that she deserved five minutes of break time. It was that or alcohol again.

The kids were packing up and heading out, eager to enjoy the day. Twilight stood in the middle of the chaos, calmly looking around the room. Everpony knew, by now at least, that she was Princess Celestia's prize student. Everypony also knew that she didn't like being reminded of it, or at least, that she didn't like being reminded of it in the manner that most of Ponyville reminded her, that being excessive bowing and scraping and lots of "Yes Miss Sparkle" and "Of course, Miss Sparkle". So instead Cherilee stood nervously to one side, waiting to find out exactly what she was going to be called up on, quizzed about, or otherwise bothered into admitting.

"So, how many students do you have, Cherilee?" the unicorn asked finally, as the last of the students traipsed out.

"Twenty-seven, ma'am."

Twilight's eye twitched. "I'm just like everypony else," she said. "You don't have to call me ma'am."

"Of course not, ma'am."

Twilight sighed. She paced along one side of the classroom, browsing various colts' and fillies' attempts at artwork. In truth, she couldn't bear trying to make eye contact with the teacher, who was busy inspecting her forehooves and generally trying to look at meek and subservient as possible without actually prostrating herself. "So," she continued, "you teach...what, three classes?"

"Yes ma'am. Three lessons with each class per week."

"And you cover the whole town with that?"

"Of course, ma'am! Any filly or colt in the village without their cutie mark is welcome to sign up with us."

Twilight paused. "Without a cutie mark?"

"Well," Cherilee replied, "I guess you're allowed into school even when you have your cutie mark, but most families withdraw their children once they reach that age."

"Interesting..." said Twilight. Something was bothering her. She looked down.

A pair of eyes was looking up at her. They were attached to a pegasus.

"Scootaloo," Cherliee said, "run along now. Class is out early."

The pegasus ignored her. "You're Twilight Sparkle, aren't you?"

Twilight grinned. "That's me. You're Scootaloo?"

"You saved Ponyvile, didn't you?"

"Well, it wasn't just me," Twilight said. "I had the help of five other very special ponies, who all live here in Ponyville. Without them I couldn't have done any of it."

She'd lost the pegasus, who had a far-away look in her eyes. "I wish I'd get to save Ponyville," the filly said.

"Well, if you study hard, maybe one day you'll get to!" said Twilight. "Now, Cherilee and I need to discuss some things. Run along, I'll see you later."

"Yes ma'am!"

Cherilee watched her student trot out the door. Once she was out of earshot, the teacher turned to face Twilight. "Look," she said, "you know I'm a loyal subject of Celestia. I've done all she's asked me. Tell me what she requires, and I'll carry it out."

Silence. Outside, birds chirped. Twilight stood mouth half-open, trying to parse what the teacher had just said.

"I, uh," she began. "I didn't know you knew Celestia."

Cherilee blushed. "I didn't mean to imply familiarity! Of course I don't know her personally! I'm sure she's far too busy ruling Equestria to deal with one schoolteacher!"

"Look, I was here because I was talking with Rainbow Dash yesterday, and she said that no one here knew how to read. And I-"

"Ma'am, I try my best, honestly, I do, but I only know so much Equestrian myself, and-"

"Yes, well-"

"-get to read anything, and everyone always draws their children out once they have their cutie mark, they keep on saying-"

"That's nice, but-"

"-they need someone to work the farm or help mend shoes or-"

"Enough!"

Cherilee stopped talking, pawing the ground nervously. Twilight kept trying to catch her eye, but the teacher was busily inspecting everything in the room but her. She conteted herself with pacing up and down the classroom instead.

"All I wanted to say was that I'm concerned for the future of our foals when they can't read basic Equestrian by the time they leave school. I understand that you have difficulty with classes here, and frankly, I'm shocked that nothing has been done to remedy the fact that you're the only teacher in Ponyville. I'm sure Canterlot can spare the resources to bring somepony down here. In fact, I'll be informing Celestia of the problem as soon as I can."

"Oh, that really won't be-"

"Stop interrupting me when I'm fixing your problems. Now, as it turns out, Celestia has me currently employed at the Ponyville Library, althought given the state of the place I believe it's as a curator rather than a librarian. We have plenty of books, in both hoofscript and Equestrian, for the young foals to read." She smiled. "And if you want, I'm sure you can come along and I'll make sure we keep your Equestrian up to scratch."

"Oh." Cherilee looked up, smiling. "Thank you, ma'am."

"There is one condition, however."

"What would that be, ma'am?"

"Stop calling me ma'am. I'm just a regular pony."

"Of course, ma'- uh, Miss Sparkle."

Well, she thought, at least it was a start.

It was turning out to be a nice day. Later on it would probably get unbearably hot, bringing the entire village to its knees as mares and stallions alike took shelter in the shade, but right now it was merely a pleasant warmth.

There was a cloud over Twilight, however. She was still occupied with what Cherilee had said. Celestia had been giving Cherilee orders? Not personally, she'd said, but orders coming from Celestia. It was irregular, and more importantly, Celestia hadn't bothered to tell Twilight anything about it before stationing her here.

"Something is up," Twilight muttered to herself, "and I inted to get to the bottom of it!"

A bush squeaked.

Twilight stopped in her tracks. Birds chirped. Somewhere nearby, a cicada started its rhythmic whirr-whirr.

She shook her head. Bushes didn't squeak. She was just getting paranoid.

A twig snapped. Maybe she wasn't paranoid. Slowly, she turned to face the undergrowth. Now she thought about it, those bushes could hide a pony who wanted to watch the road. She crept, hoof-by-hoof, towards the offending plant-life.

Hold on. If they were watching the road, they already knew she was here. In which case, trying to creep up on them was silly.

She trotted towards the bush and peered around it. A yellow pegasus was hiding behind it, hooves covering her eyes. This one was called Fluttershy, Twilight recalled proudly. She was getting better with names.

"Good morning," she said cheerfully.

"G-good morning, Twilight," said Fluttershy, not removing her hooves from her eyes.

"Nice day, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Fluttershy.

"Usually I prefer the days leading up to Summer Sun - I think it's the humidity in the air or something. But now I come to think of it, if we had more days like this I could really get used to late summer as well."

Silence from the pegasus.

"You know, this'd be a whle heap easier if you just admitted you were spying on me and we could go from there."

Fluttershy started trembling.

"Look, at some point you'll get hungry, or need to go to the toilet or something. And I'm perfectly willing to wait until that happens, because as far as I can see, everypony I've talked to in the last day or so has been either high on something or has been hiding something from me, or possibly both, but we shouldn't judge Dash like that. So we can wait until you do something embarassing, or you can just break down and admit what you were doing here and we can proceed like rational creatures."

Fluttershy let our a squeak, but nothing else.

Twilight sighed. "OK, how about this. Where you spying on me? Nod for yes, shake for no."

She nodded.

"OK, great. Now we're getting somewhere. Were you spying on me for somepony else?"

Another nod.

"Dash?"

A shake.

"Rarity?"

A nod.

"You were spying on my for Rarity?"

A nod.

"Why would she want to spy on me? Is that why she was being so...well, weird, at Summer Sun last night?"

Without uncovering her eyes, Fluttershy mumbled, "...shesplanninga..."

Twilight leaned in. "She's what now?"

"She's....planning a party."

"A party? She asked you to spy on me because she's planning a party?"

The pegasus nodded.

"Why in the world would she want you to spy on me for a party? I thought she was the level-headed one!"

Silence.

"I'm not going to be able to get you to say anything else, am I?"

A shake of the head.

"Are you going to at least get up so we can walk down the road like regular ponies?"

Another shake.

"Well..uh...look." Twilight scratched her head. "I gotta go into town and deal with some things. So, I'm going to go now. And then I guess you can come out of hiding and continue doing whatever it is you were doing, OK?"

A nod.

"Well, uh, have a nice day!"

When she got back, Spike was awake. This was an improvement on when she left . She slammed the door to the library with her rear hoof (causing Spike to wince) and walked listlessly over to her study desk.

"Spike," she asked her servant, "why is everypony in this town crazy?"

"Maybe everyone is sane, and it's you who's gone crazy," the dragon replied. He had a hangover, and he'd be damned if anyone else got to enjoy the summer morning.

Twilight sighed, and rested her head on her desk. "Cherliee just treated me like I was going to throw her in prison for not knowing Equestrian, Fluttershy was spying on me for a party, Rainbow Dash was jumpy as all hell last night for no reason I can think of, and Rarity has been buddying up to me like she has a confession to make. Oh, and Spike, what does, "as we call them these days" mean?"

"Huh?"

"Last night, when Rarity was talking to me, she said something about earth ponies, and then said "as we call them these days.""

"Oh," said Spike. Then: "Ohhhhh."

"What? What?" Twilight perked up.

Spike scratched his head. "Well, how to put this," he started. "You know how Equestria is a wonderful utopia where earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns live in peace, harmony and equality?"

"Yes, yes, what about it?"

"You know how at one point it wasn't?"

"Well, yes," Twilight said. This was always uneasy territory for her. "But now we know that earth ponies are our brothers and sisters, and pegasi too! What we did back then were the acts of an uncivilised race, and we've more than made up for it now.'

"Well, yeah." Spike glanced around the room, looking at anything but the unicorn. "But at one point you kinda didn't know that." He finally focussed on his feet. "And you didn't call them earth ponies back then either."

"Are you seriously saying-" But Twilight paused. It did make sense, in a way. "Oh, this is just what I needed. First I end up stuck in Ponyville, then I have to research friendship, now one of these so-called "friends" is a horn supremecist!" She cleared the books off her desk and stood up.

"Well," Spike said, "at least Applejack and Pinkie Pie are acting normal, right?" He considered. "I mean, at least Applejack is acting normal, right?"

Twilight walked slowly to the stairs, somewhat mollified by Spike's words. "Yeah, at least Applejack...Applejack!"

"What?"

"I promised her I'd help out at Sweet Apple Acres this morning! I thought maybe I could find something worth writing to the Princess about for this friendship study thing she wants, so she doesn't just fail me on principle. And now I'm late!" Racing back down the stairs, she collected her saddlebags, dumped the remaining contents onto her desk, and put them on.

"Ohhhh, and on my first day as well! At this rate, Celestia will have me dropped before summer's even done! Oh, why couldn't I just have a normal study schedule like everypony else?" Pausing at the door, she turned back to Spike. "You'll be able to take care of yourself for the rest of the day?"

"I'll be fine, go on!" Spike shooed her out the door, then closed it behind her. He gave her a few minutes to leave, then checked at the window to make sure she was gone. Once he was sure he was alone, he wandered upstairs and collapsed into bed again. She wouldn't be back for a few hours at least, and that gave him time to recover from this viscious headache.