Disclaimer: This licence isn't mine. The opinions express by the characters are not mine. I do not support nor encourage the illegal or dangerous acts or words present here. I can make a distinction between fiction and reality and I trust in my readership's ability in doing the same.

Chapter 41: Baby (Sitting) Blues

Life was so sweet in Strawberryland. Sun, friends, happiness, nothing else to do except enjoying daily the treasures offered by the world.

So, why was Blueberry Muffin so sad?

She had started to wonder if her desire of being a mother really came from her, or if she had done what she had felt her friends wanted her to do. She had started to wonder if she had made the right choice with Blueberry Pie. But any backsliding was possible now: her choice was in from of her, in flesh, and, one must recognize that, rather noisy.

For sure, a baby was at the right place in Strawberryland. It was supposed to embody at the same time cuteness, innocence and love of life. Well, Blueberry Muffin had always been ready to fight prejudices, but this time she was particularly well placed to explain why it was wrong. She could remember that her friends and her used to like babies when they were little girls, especially Strawberry Shortcake. Sometimes, they had even wondered how they would call their future children, how they would like them to look like, and what they would teach her. But Blueberry Muffin had not planned to have a baby so young, and, in top of that, with nothing to teach to her. And she had certainly not imagined how noisy, dirty and constraining babies were.

The most annoying thing was that no one believed it.

Blueberry Muffin had detected a change in her status at the Berrykins. During the first days, just after her delivery, they had helped her as much as possible, and the Princess Berrykin herself had encourage her to stay lying as much as possible (poor Blueberry ignored that it was due to Berrykin Bloom's fear of seeing her loosing other organs, as long as, he imagined, the tears in her flesh weren't fully healed). Then, when Blueberry Pie had been old enough to be shown around in her stroller, she had seen a new thing in their eyes when they saw them both. Admiration and respect. Berrykins lived in matriarchal communities because, being spirits of Nature and élan vital's protectors, the thing that lured the most their devotion was women, able to carry a foetus, to bring it to maturity, to put it into the world and to feed it until its weaning. "She's a mother", Berrykin Bloom said, and the little Berrykins had stayed speechless with wonder to see the person that had done what they couldn't do themselves. But Blueberry Muffin no longer knew if she wanted to be a mother.

"Strawberryland is the best place to raise a child", Strawberry Shortcake and Orange Blossom had told her. "This is the only place where no one would judge you, or your daughter; the only place where the only thing that matter is your inner beauty". According to Blueberry Muffin, Blueberry Pie's beauty was not only inner, but very deeply buried. She had hoped she would fall in love with her daughter as soon as she would see her, but… it hadn't really been the case. Each time she looked at her baby girl, each time she saw her brown stands, she remembered Huckleberry Pie, the boy who had hurt her so much, who had spoiled her life and, worst of all, who was simply unaware of it. During her pregnancy, Blueberry Muffin had gotten some information about the care that must be brought to a newborn; and, materially speaking, Blueberry Pie wanted for nothing: her mother fed her, changed her diapers, dressed her with clean clothes. But to Blueberry Muffin, it was quite a chore she did because no one would do it for her. When she had to prepare an umpteenth bottle for her daughter, Blueberry really wondered where were the dreams she had as a little girl, and if they had really been swatted by the cradle. Sometimes, Blueberry Muffin really wanted to flee from Strawberryland, especially when Blueberry Pie was crying again for an unknown reason. At that moments, she used to plug her ears and wait for her baby to fall asleep out of exhaustion. To Blueberry Muffin, Strawberryland had turn into a prison, and her ball was Blueberry Pie.

Orange Blossom had noticed Blueberry Muffin was not feeling well. Without even talking to her, she understood why: Blueberry Muffin had always been, with Plum Pudding, the most ambitious of them all. She was certainly perishing in her new and sudden role of stay-at-home mother. Maybe a part-time work in her Mart would be a breath of fresh her for her? Blueberry Muffin said yes. Her unwanted pregnancy had already been a huge humiliation for her. She desperately wanted to restore her image and show them she was not only good for whining. Angel Cake and Plum Pudding had already made her some remark about it.

-What are you complaining about? Angel Cake had said. "This was your fault. Now, you have a beautiful and healthy baby, so take care of her. She should not be punished because of you."

-I know you are sad; Plum Pudding had added. "But we all have to cross ordeals, just like I did with my accident, and do I let myself sink into desperation? No! How do you want to get better if you keep complaining about your lot in life?"

For economical reason, Blueberry Muffin could not afford for hiring a childminder. Strawberry Shortcake, of course, propose to look after little Blueberry Pie. How cute she was! It would remind her the time when Apple Dumplin' was still a quiet baby. But Orange Blossom had wondered if it was a good idea.

-Are you sure Blueberry Muffin is happy to be with Blueberry Pie? Strawberry had asked. "She never talks about her. When she has to take care of her, she almost does it with reluctance. Maybe she would need to spend some hours without her baby…"

-You are extremely nice Strawberry, but I think that all what Blueberry needs-I mean Blueberry Muffin needs, is to be given some time to… How can I put it? "tame" her baby.

-I don't understand.

-Blueberry Pie is an unwanted child, and Blueberry Muffin's pregnancy had been a great surprise for her. I think she still doesn't realize that this baby is hers, and that she had responsibility for her. I'm afraid she would feel like stripped of her motherhood if someone else takes care of her baby girl.

-But Blueberry knows I don't want to steal her baby!

-I know this. But I think that offering the big Blueberry this job while letting the little Blueberry be close to her is a good way to give her some holiday without breaking the link that binds them both.

Of course, Orange Blossom was well-intentioned. But to Blueberry Muffin, working in the Mart's bookshop was another occasion to contemplate her old friend's success while she was stuck between a cash register and a cradle. At least, her job gave her a good reason for ignoring Blueberry Pie's tears, saying she was too occupied to take care of her right now. Her little workmates, young Berrykins, were, on the contrary, quite fascinated by the baby. When Blueberry Muffin wasn't looking, they used their incredible springiness to climb over the cradle and look inside it with curiosity and excitation, sometimes to step on the blankets, but when Blueberry Pie started to twist and turn or to whine, they hurriedly came back down and tried to look innocent.

This was the reason for which Blueberry Muffin didn't dare to say how bad she was feeling. All her neighbors marveled in front of Blueberry Pie. Even when she was crying, the girls still found her "adorable" and tried to sooth her, by rocking her and nicely babbling at her. So, why was her own mother unable to feel this love for her? What was wrong with her? If it was so easy to take care of a baby, why was it so difficult to her?

While Blueberry Muffin was finding that the little girl she was in charge was of too invasive, Strawberry Shortcake was about to cross the opposite problem.

One day, an unknown phone number called her. When she picked up the phone, a voice told her that there was a big problem with Apple Dumplin' and that she had to come as fast as possible.

-Oh no, Strawberry thought. "Not again".

The nightmare was starting again.*

Once more, Strawberry Shortcake felt that her world was collapsing. When will it stop? She wondered. Once more, Strawberry had to left the Café. Once more, she had to drive until Apple Dumplin' school, dreading what she would discover.

Strawberry Shortcake had never been brave enough to do some research on the boarding school where Apple Dumplin' was boarding. The day she had been expelled, she was too depressed to do anything by herself; and Orange Blossom had generously done everything for the young girl. As she approached the building, Strawberry Shortcake realized it was a mistake. Orange Blossom was a leader at heart, and she wanted everything to be effective. Maybe this boarding school was promising to give Apple a good education and strict setting, but it was everything but welcoming. The building was square and made with grey concrete, with any ornaments except its rectangular windows, disposed at regular intervals, without curtains. The door seemed solid and well-locked, as much to prevent visitors from entering than to prevent the students from getting out. The playground was a large square of tarmac, bordered by a thin strip of lawn, but on which the building's greyness seemed to have bleed onto. Strawberry Shortcake immediately hated this place. She felt she would have been terribly unhappy if she had been forced to stay here, as a young girl. Poor Apple Dumplin'. She must have felt so abandoned.

Inside the building, the principal was waiting for Strawberry Shortcake. But this time, she wasn't alone. A police officer was waiting with her. At this view, Strawberry Shortcake felt shame overwhelm her. This time, if the police had been called, it was really serious. What had Apple done this time? Did she attempt again to vandalize her school? Had she wounded one of her classmates? And her, Strawberry Shortcake, was she risking something?

-Miss Shortcake? The principal said. "We have to talk. We'll be better in my office."

Like an automaton, Strawberry Shortcake followed them, her legs hardly supporting her. So many thoughts were jostling in her mind. She felt like if she was walking toward her own scaffold. It may be because she felt so ill at ease in this school. Grey linoleum on the floor, grey flaky paint on the walls, grey roof. The building seemed to be so dilapidated. It was hard to say if it was due to the lack of maintenance, or to the degradations made by the students. The rare ones they met looked like savage animals, mute, withdrawn, their eyes filled with anger.

Finally, they reached the principal's office. She quietly invited Strawberry Shortcake to sit down, while the police officer stayed stood, next to her office.

-As you may know, the principal started with a slow, resigned voice, "Our boarding school hosts the hopeless case, the children that refuse all kind of authority. Your sister Apple Dumplin' tried to make the rules, of course, but it was not yet too worrying; because we have got familiar with this scenario and I am sure we would have managed to subdue her if this… regrettable incident didn't happen."

Strawberry Shortcake froze on her chair, cold sweat running through her back. The moment had come, she thought. She would have to face her failure, once more.

-Which kind of incident? She asked with a weak, almost inaudible voice.

Will she announce her that Apple Dumplin' was a danger for her classmates and had to leave the school for their security? Was Apple going to be kick out from every place she would visit? Why did she do that? Why did she want to punish her?

-Your sister ran away last night, the police officer said. "We immediately spread her description in the whole city, but she hadn't been found yet."

Strawberry felt herself staggering, while her view was becoming blurred. No! She couldn't faint! She had to hear the rest!

-Her… evasion had been rather spectacular, the principal added. "The security camera showed that during the night, she had managed to open the window of her dormitory, to unscrew its bars with a coin, to slip out of it, to jump from window sill to window sill (let's remember she was at the third floor!) until the gutter, to use it as a knotted climbing rope to go down until the floor, to climb the surrounding walls, and all that with her full backpack!

If Strawberry Shortcake hadn't been in a such state of dejection, she would have smile. It was the spitting image of Apple Dumplin'! But for the moment, she was imagining her poor sister, left to her own device in a foreign city, in the middle of the night, with no one to talk with or to help her. This time, she could get herself into deep troubles. Maybe she was already in deep troubles?

-Our unit will make an investigation, the police officer promised. "We will do our best to find her, and we will pass you every advance we would make."

The only thing Strawberry was able to do was to laboriously stand up, leaning on the principal's desk, and to beg the officer with a quiet voice to do the impossible to find her sister, her poor little sister, she would give everything to know she was safe and sound, please, she would never forgive her if something happened to Apple Dumplin', she was so young, she wasn't fully conscious of what she did. Strawberry Shortcake knew she was certainly looking terribly pathetic, wobbling and imploring this man to help her, but she didn't care. She was ready to face any humiliation if it would help her to save Apple.

For the moment, the officer couldn't do anything for her. Nicely grabbing the young woman by the shoulder, he softly guided her to the exit. Strawberry Shortcake was too shaken by the new that she did not put up any resistance. Seeing that she was not in a condition to drive until Strawberryland, the principal called Orange Blossom who, after having entrusted her Mart to Blueberry Muffin and her faithful Berrykins, hurried to the boarding school to pick her up, and to soak up her tears.

In Strawberryland, Strawberry Shortcake's sadness had turned sacred, that is to say that no one dared to talk about it. At the beginning, most of the Strawberrylanders remembered the last time Apple Dumplin' had ran away, when she had been found in a squat,** and they all trusted she would be back in the Café, sheepish, badly-dressed, but back, in a few days. But the days had passed, and the investigation was still at a standstill. No one had seen her. Making her own investigation, Strawberry Shortcake had rushed to Mulberry Murmur's house, determined to force her to tell them where Apple was hiding. But in spite of her insolence, the young teenage was as disconcerted as them. The days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and Apple was still nowhere to be found. The official investigation stopped.

During this ordeals, Orange Blossom and Plum Pudding had been rather…severe with Angel Cake. With all that Strawberry Shortcake had to cross, would she force her to stay idle? Running this Café would help her taking her mind off. It was her passion, her reason to live. And the Café really needed a talented owner. It had declined so much when she was running it! All its regular customers had fled it. Angel Cake was furious, but Orange Blossom and Plum Pudding stayed inflexible: she must give her Café back to Strawberry. Even the Princess Berrykin put in her two cents. Angel Cake finally yielded, but it wasn't sufficient to sooth Strawberry.

-We will never see her again, Strawberry Shortcake said one day. She was no longer crying. Now, her eyes were always dry. One could say she was just resigned; but Strawberry was simply wondering who had written she would lose her sister, and if this person was really good. This sentence definitively close Apple Dumplin's chapter. Even though their credo was to never lose hope, the Strawberrylanders knew Strawberry was right, and talking about the disappearance of Apple would only revive painful memories.

The most pessimistic of them all were the Berrykins Bill and Bloom. Berrykin Bill, spending his life on construction sites, had sometimes witnessed, against his will, fatal accidents.

-If Apple Dumplin' had ran away on a whim, he said, "She would already be back home. I'm sure something more serious happened to her".

Berrykin Bill knew that any situation could take a disastrous turn. A Berrykin was a bit dreamy? The service of the scaffolding had been done too quickly? In a flash, any worker could fall down his platform. The moment before, he was thinking of the football match he would do, at the end of his day. The second after, he was lying on the floor, his neck broken, dead. It had happened more than once.

-She must be dead, he had finally said, when no one else was here to hear them.

-Our Mother Nature may be cruel, sometimes, Berrykin Bloom had added. "It had Its own laws. We can not understand Them, only suffer Them. Maybe It knows it is better this way."

-Maybe…

And they never broached this subject again.

Berrykins loved babies. Well, it would be more precise to say they loved the concept of babies, because they were the guarantee of their community's longevity. Otherwise, they were not good instructors, mainly because they did not pay much attention to children that were not yet part of the workforce. However, they had understood that this position was not viable, because leaving their babies without surveillance all day long drastically increase the risk of seeing them dying into tragic and avoidable accidents. The solution of all their problems was named Blueberry Muffin. She had herself a baby, so she must love babies, too, they thought. And, unlike them, she did not have to wear herself out with work at the orchards or at the Berry Work. And the babies were almost quiet when they were listening to her stories. One day, The Berrykin Princess came in person at the Mart to ask Orange Blossom to lay Blueberry Muffin off. She aimed her to be the official childminder of all the babies from the Berrykin Community of Strawberryland (except her daughters, who benefited from a private tutor), a new work that would give her a status of civil servant. Both Orange Blossom and Blueberry Muffin said yes. Who could say no to the Princess Berrykin?

From the next morning, Blueberry Muffin spent her days making activities with the babies Berrykins who were not yet old enough to go to school, in order to keep them occupied enough to not get too close to the Berry Work's grinders, to the lake, or to get lost in the forest. Her daughter, Blueberry Muffin, was always with them. For Blueberry Muffin, it was not berry inspiring; but being a preschool teacher was still better than being a checkout assistant. And now, she could tell she was helpful for her city. Another good point was that Blueberry Muffin could practice her favorite hobby: literature. When the children she was in charge of were too unruly, she only had to take a book out of her bag to see them stop what they were doing and gather around her. Baby Berrykins always showed a great interest in being read stories, because, Blueberry had understood it, it was the only way they had to discover new horizons, horizons that were more distant than the edges of the Berry Bitty City. In short, story time was the only activity during which they could stay focused for more than five consecutive minutes. When Blueberry had finished the chapter she was reading, and appeared to be putting her book away in her bag, the babies whined and protested until Blueberry Muffin, seeing she would not be able to make them do something else, let them hear the rest of the story. With a such schedule, Blueberry and her students devoured in a few weeks their library of children's books.

Then… the babies being still calling for new stories, Blueberry Muffin simply invented her own tales. And she realized it was beneficial for all of them. Every day, the babies Berrykins enjoyed, enthralled, a new and exclusive story, while she rediscovered the pleasure of being an author. She talked about princesses, monsters and knights living in distant lands, but whom personalities were rather close to the Strawberrylanders' ones. In her tales, Blueberry Muffin placed her dreams, her regrets, her vision of things, the way she wished the world was, the way the world was. She learnt how to analyze the babies' facial expressions in order to adapt her stories to their expectations, to invent new surprises when they seemed to be bored, to re-use the figures of speech and the themes they were attached to. The little Berrykins, seeing they were not chained by an official story, started themselves to wade in her tales, to purpose their own ideas about the way they could carry on the stories. Their intervention was always welcomed, especially when Blueberry Muffin was lacking inspiration. And she thought that their stories, the stories they had written together, deserved better than being only words on the air. They deserved to be preciously kept, to be found again, even some years later, by her former pupils, to make them able to share them to their own children. Every night, after her day of work, Blueberry Muffin did her best to remember the story of the day in every detail, and to carefully write them and save them on her computer.

One day, Orange Blossom asked her if the girls and she could read the Berrykins' work; and they all agree to say that their stories were truly valuable.

-I remember… Strawberry said, "You have already tried to published your own writing, right?"

-I did, Blueberry answered. "It was when I used to work with Huckle…"

She did not end her sentence. This name reminded her too many bad memories.

-I managed to published a short story in a magazine, once, she said instead.

-Why won't you try to publish all these stories, as a children's book, I mean? Strawberry purposed.

-Do you really think it could work?

-If you cannot write a worthy story, you can do it here?

The following day, Blueberry Muffin shared this project with the baby Berrykins, who all agreed with joy. They all imagined themselves turning rich and famous. But they all had to touch their tales up, to correct the potential contradictions and to improve the passages that they found too poor before sending their labor at its baptism of fire: the submission of their typescript to a publishing house. During this period, the baby Berrykins showed a seriousness and fastidiousness that let Blueberry Muffin stunned. On her word processing program, she faithfully added all the modifications they wanted to make.

The only personal point she put, maybe due to the social pressure, maybe due to her own guilt, was a dedication to her daughter.

To be continued…

*A/N: more information in the 38th chapter.

**A/N: more information in the 24th chapter.