Cheerilee's Garden(车厘子的花园）Part.3(7)

A minute or two passed, Cheerilee just mesmerised by the small flames as she waited, thinking of the fun she’d had with Snails earlier. The white filly slowly stopped crying, sniffling pathetically as she looked at Cheerilee with teary eyes, confused by the mare’s actions, but hopeful that this pause meant she was reconsidering keeping her there against her will.
“Please... Miss... If you l...let me go I’ll... I won’t...t-tell... anypony, I pro-promise!” she managed to say with a trembling lip, but again Cheerilee neglected to respond. Suddenly Sweetie Belle became aware of a panicked squeaking noise coming from somewhere in the room. The sound increased in intensity steadily, until it sounded like a great many rats were fearing for their life somewhere, even though that didn’t seem to make any sense... She had some trouble locating the source of the noise, until she suddenly realised it came from right underneath the table, from the thing Cheerilee was staring at but which she could not see.

As her teacher stepped closer to the table she mentally recoiled, but the mare simply leaned in and reached underneath the table itself, grabbing hold of a metal plate at the top of the cylinder with her teeth and pulling it out, removing the last barrier between the cylinder and the hole underneath Sweetie in doing so. The squeaking quickly escalated to unprecedented levels, but still Sweetie Belle couldn’t make head nor tail of it. What did rats have to do with a metal pl-