• Published 25th Feb 2016
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Silver Glow's Journal - Admiral Biscuit



Silver Glow takes an opportunity to spend a year at an Earth college, where she'll learn about Earth culture and make new friends.

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June 21 [Caleb, Lindy, Trinity, and Jeff]

June 21

When I woke up, I nuzzled Meghan's chest and I hadn't meant to wake her up but I did, and I felt kind of bad for that.

But I guess she'd been about to get up anyway, 'cause her telephone alarm went off while she was petting my mane and she swore at her telephone then made the alarm stop and scratched me behind my ear.

She liked to actually get up the second time that her alarm sounded, so I knew that we had a few minutes to cuddle, and I thought that I'd be generous so I rolled off her and onto my side, since she liked holding me like that. I thought maybe she'd fall back asleep, but she didn't; she kept petting my ruff of fur and then poked me in the belly button and started snickering.

I couldn't really get back at her unless I smacked her with a wing, which would be really mean.

Even though I was expecting it, it still caught me kind of by surprise when the alarm went off again and Meghan had to kind of roll away to turn it off.

She let me have a turn in the bathroom first, then said that she was going to take her shower and asked if I wanted to join, but I was gonna go flying and get all sweaty, so it probably wasn't the best time to do it.

I said if she wanted company, though, I could watch, and she said that just sounded wrong. And she said that she couldn't really wait until I was done flying, 'cause she had to go to work, so we both agreed that we'd figure out some kind of arrangement, and then we kissed goodbye and I went out the door and took one more look to make sure that I knew which one it was.

If I'd been smarter, I would have worn my flight gear over to her house, but I hadn't, so my first stop was back at my apartment. I landed on the balcony and went inside to get my gear, then got permission from the grumpy man to stay low until I was over the 131 Highway, then I could fly as high as I wanted to as long as I stayed between the 43 Highway and the Kal-Haven Trail.

I said that I would do that, and took off.

I hadn't flown along the 43 Highway any further than Meijer, so I did that, picking up altitude when I was allowed to, and when I'd made a few circles off the weak thermal over the Meijer roof, I looked along the road and decided that I'd pick a good endpoint for my flight now.

There were mostly trees, which reminded me of being up north (and also reminded me about getting lost in the pine forest), but up ahead I could see a big clearing that was a golf course, and beyond that a bunch of small lakes that seemed like a good place to turn around.

Most of the lakes were on the wrong side of the highway, which was too bad because when I got close I could see fish swimming around in them and I thought it might be a good place to get a snack. Then I dove down because as long as I was below a few hundred feet I could fly outside of clearance, and I saw a sign that said it was a fish hatchery, which meant I probably wasn't supposed to eat fish from there.

I went out over the other lake, and saw some in there, too, and there were also some men in a little fishing boat, and I flew down to them and told them where the fish were and then circled over the fish until they came over to where I was.

Their stern-motor scared the fish off a little bit, but lots of fish are pretty dumb, and it wasn't too long after the men stopped their motor that the fish came back.

So I felt pretty good about helping them, and then I thought that rather than turn right around, I could fly north for a bit until I came to the Kal-Haven Trail, so I went over the woods and then I discovered that I was at the dirt road with the clearing where Aric and I had spent the night a couple of times.

I went there and landed and walked around in the tall grass for a bit, nibbling on some stems that had gone to seed, then I took off again and followed that road all the way back to town, dropping low as I went over the 131 Highway like I was supposed to.

I went by the three dirt mines, and then followed Douglas back to campus and it was only when I was passing over the cemetery that I remembered I didn't live on campus anymore, so I turned to go back to my apartment.

When I got inside, there was a shiny silver kettle on my desk, along with a note that explained how it worked. It was pretty simple—I put its tail into the electrical socket and then there was a button I could push to make it go on or off.

I took it to the kitchen and set it up on the counter, and decided that I would try it out tomorrow.

I took off my flight gear and hung it up and had a can of anchovies then took a quick shower. Meghan's tub had had a mat in it that made it not slippery, and this one didn't and it was kind of treacherous underhoof, so when I was done and had dried off I made a note on my list of things that I needed. I thought that it would be best to wait a week or so before getting them, because that way I wouldn't have to make a lot of trips to the store.

It was probably time to start thinking about what I wanted to do for the summer.

I'd gotten some mail, so I guess the mailperson knows that I moved—most of my mail had a yellow sticker on it with my new address and a note to inform the sender where I was living now. There wasn't anything from my friends, though, just some offers for more plastic money and television and a very brightly-colored piece of paper that said I might have already won a new Dodge Charger, which was a car. That one didn't have a Sassy, so I couldn't write back saying that they should give it to someone else.

I wrote letters to Aquamarine and Gusty and Cayenne, telling them about my trip and wishing that I'd had some pictures that I could include, and then I also made sure at the very bottom to tell them my new address so that they would know where to send a return letter.

Then I put them in envelopes and found out that I was out of stamps, and I didn't know where to get more of them, since the Mail Hut was probably closed until classes started again.

I got some vegetables for lunch out of the icebox, keeping an eye on the stove in case it tried to burn me again. I don't think it can unless I turn it on, though, and I had no plans of doing that again. I didn't know how to cook anything anyway.

I took my bowl of food out onto the balcony and ate under the tree, and when I was done I just sat on the boards and thought about what I could do. Probably it would be good to spend some time with Doctor Thomas Thompson, although I'd need a way to get to Grand Rapids, and a place to stay.

I still had my bucket list, and I ought to do something on that every weekend at least. And I should start as soon as possible, so that I didn't wind up not doing something because I ran out of weekends. It seemed like a long time now, but I'd noticed during the school year that weeks had a way of flying by.

When I washed and put away my lunch bowl, I remembered what Aric had said about Angela helping me cook, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to ask her that favor just yet, but that did make me remember that I ought to be sure the bird feeder at Aric's house was full of seed. Maybe he'd forgotten when he left.

So I flew over there, and it was half-empty, so I got out the bag of seeds and filled it right up to the top, then shook out some sunflower seeds to make sure it was still working like it was supposed to.

Just as I was turning away, a bold bluejay flew by and scolded me and I stuck my tongue out at him, but he probably didn't see, 'cause he was smart enough to not stick around since I was so much bigger than him.

I perched on the roof of the house for a bit, and when the bluejay came back and started eating I thought about flying down and scaring him off, but I didn't. And when he was full, some little birds came from a nearby tree and lined up on the feeder, happily pecking at the seeds.

I flew back diagonally to my apartment, and when I landed I heard noise in the backyard next door, and saw three children playing a game with bright plastic water-squirters, and so I flew down to introduce myself to them. The oldest one was a boy called Caleb, and he had two sisters who were named Lindy and Trinity.

Well, they were all happy to see me, especially Trinity, who thought I was adorable. Caleb said that my wings were pretty cool, and he was jealous that I let Trinity pet me first. Although he pretended not to be.

A man who said he was their father came out, and he kind of gave me a hard look, like he wasn't sure what I was, so I told him that I lived next door in the upstairs apartment, and pretty soon he got friendlier, I think because his kids were so happy. His name is Jeff.

They wanted to play with me, and Trinity got me a water-squirter and it wasn't something that I could really use at all but that didn't matter, because they had a lot of fun chasing me around anyway and it didn't bother me.

So we spent most of the afternoon playing and it made me feel like a foal again. And Jeff said that on Fridays he liked to have a cookout and invited the neighbors over and I'd be welcome to come, which I thought was really nice of him.

I brought my papasan chair outside and read the rest of Chronicles, which was mostly about bad kings who rejected God and suffered because of it, and good kings who did what He had told them, but even the good kings screwed up sometimes and made God mad. And they even lost His book of rules, but then they found it again and for a while they were good, but then they stopped following His rules again and finally Zedekiah made God so angry that He let the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem and the temple, too.

When I had finished I went back inside and put the Bible back on my bookshelf and pushed the papasan chair back inside too, then went for an evening flight just over my neighborhood. Not so high that I had to tell the airplane directors.

Then I got out my journal and went back to my bucket list and decided that I would call the man who had sold me my glaive and see if he wanted to meet me to spar, because that would be fun to do. And I had to kind of rummage around through my stuff because I couldn't remember where I'd put it, but I finally found it tucked into the book of dances that I'd also gotten (and I think that was from something else, because it had a different date and said Terpsichore at the Tower on the front).

He didn't answer and so I left a message, and then I got to thinking that he was from Battle Creek he'd said and all of a sudden I wasn't sure if Mister Salvatore or Miss Cherilyn would want to drive me there, so I thought that when he called back I could see if he would come out here.

Then I thought that there was probably somewhere closer that Aric and his friends had practiced. So I turned on my computer and used Facebook to send Aric a telegram.

I hadn't heard from either of them by the time I was ready for bed. I'd decided that I would plan to spend some of this week meeting more people, and then pretty soon after that I would be able to come up with a good plan for the summer.

When it was just me, it was as easy to leave the futon folded like a couch, because there was plenty of room for me on half of it. And I'd picked a good spot for it, 'cause the breeze through the windows blew right across me, which was really nice. It was almost like sleeping outside.

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