• Published 25th Feb 2016
  • 14,317 Views, 22,609 Comments

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.

  • ...
100
 22,609
 14,317

PreviousChapters Next
October 27 [I Said to Poetry]

October 27

I woke up when Aric was trying to get into bed, and I don't know if that was because I'd told myself to wake up when he came in or if it was because Meghan hadn't pushed herself all the way up against the wall and I'd kind of stuck my rump out in the middle of the bed, too, so he couldn't easily fit in. He smelled like dust and theatre electricity.

I didn't really wake all the way up, but enough that I kind of helped as he got into bed and pulled me up and over him some, and I stood on all fours long enough for him to slide right up against Meghan, and then I stretched out on his chest and he put one hand over my back and reached over for Meghan with his other, and I think I kissed him and then I closed my eyes again and fell back asleep.

When I woke up in the actual morning, I was still stretched out on his chest, and I remembered what Meghan had said on Monday, so I moved around a little bit to get myself into position and I was careful 'cause I wanted to not wake him up too early and spoil the surprise. And it was a little bit tricky to get everything lined up without him helping, but I did.

Even though I was moving really slow, I still woke Meghan up, so I leaned over and kissed her before focusing back on Aric. And he kept his eyes closed for longer than I thought he would, and then he finally blinked them open and I kissed him on the nose. And he said that he thought he had been having the best dream ever and I said that I was better than a dream.

Since he was awake, I could move a little bit faster, which was good 'cause I was close, and it turned out he was, too.

I snuggled on his chest for a little bit after, and both he and Meghan were petting me, and I thought about staying with him but I also wanted to fly, and I didn't want to have to make Meghan walk back to campus alone, either.

Meghan got out of bed and started getting dressed, but I stayed on top of him until she was ready to go, and then I kissed him one more time and then climbed out of bed, 'cause aside from my feathers being all ruffled, I was ready to go.

Meghan pulled the covers back up over him and kissed him and then the two of us walked downstairs and when we were out on the porch she bumped my hoof and said that she'd never noticed how cute I was when I was having sex. And I told her that I was cute all the time and she laughed and said it was true, then asked if I wanted my wings preened when we got back to campus, and I said that that would be nice if she had time, but she didn't have to.

She said that her backup plan for getting to Equestria could be wing-preener, and I said that I thought that the tornado ponies would also speak highly of her skilled hands. And then I asked if it would help her if we talked Equestrian the rest of the way home, and she said that it couldn't hurt.

It was kind of weird to switch languages, and I wondered how long it would take before English felt strange and Equestrian felt normal again.

Since she didn't want to wake up Amy and I didn't want to wake up Peggy, we sat on the floor in the lounge and she leaned her back up against one of the chairs, and I stretched out my wings on her lap one at a time and she straightened up all my feathers and I almost felt bad that they might get a little bit messed up when I flew.

I walked with her all the way back to her room and then I went up to mine and got ready to fly, and when I was out on the balcony and calling the airplane directors, I forgot for a moment that I should switch back to English and Dori was very confused but at least she knew it was me.

It was overcast and so I couldn’t fly as high as I wanted to, ‘cause I couldn’t go into the clouds. So I skimmed along at their base and I could feel that they didn’t have enough moisture in them to rain out, and even as I got further west, I still didn’t feel that there was much extra.

If I could have gone through them, I might have felt something different higher up, but I didn’t think I would. Usually if there’s a lot of extra energy up above, it comes down into the clouds below, although I’d heard of a few feral storms that had a front line that was made up of dull clouds that masked the big stormclouds that were trailing along behind and above them. Which was why it was so important to see both sides of the cloud, not just one.

I flew all the way out to Lawton, and landed in a park for a snack of anchovies. There were little play-houses with slides and swings and so before I left I went over there and flew up to the balcony on one of them and slid down the slide on my rump, then made a pretty sloppy landing and flew off before anybody could laugh at me.

Once I got close to the 131 Highway, I started descending and called Dori to tell her where I was, and then I followed Stadium all the way back.

I took off my flight gear and took a long shower and washed off my leg really well, then went back into my room and groomed myself and pulled out a loose primary, which was the one I’d broken before. So I was glad to see that one go, although I was gonna be a little bit off-balance until the other one fell out. I think this one had gotten a little bit loosened when I broke it, which is why it fell out first.

Then I got my books for Astronomy and also my poetry book, and I went to lunch and sat down with Leon and Cedric and Trevor, and I told them again that I was sorry for forgetting on Tuesday. I’d still had my mind on the weekend and the night before, but I didn’t tell them that.

And I told them how we were going to Madison to see Gusty’s play, and that I was going to meet with Aquamarine on Saturday morning, and he wanted to know when and if he could see her. I said that I didn’t know exactly but I could find out from Miss Cherilyn and that she would be happy to see him.

He said that he didn’t care if it was four AM, he’d be there.

Leon said that he wasn’t looking forward to playing Hope, because they were really good, and we were going to lose and he didn’t think he could take another loss on top of the last one, and Cedric said that he just needed to think positive thoughts, and he said that he was positive that they would lose.

Cedric said that Holland was a nice town, and Leon claimed that instead of chalk, they marked their football field with tulips. I thought that would look really pretty, but I guess you’ve have to have a few gardeners ready to replant after some of the plays.

While we were talking, Trevor had been looking through the book, and when we were done eating he gave it to Leon and had him read a poem called Every Morning, ‘cause it had ballet in it. And it was kind of a sad poem, and the one that he asked Cedric to read which was called Killers was also sad. And then he had me read one which was called I Said to Poetry, and I liked that one. Cedric said that Trevor shouldn’t have made me read it, though, ‘cause of the swear at the end, and I said that I was allowed to swear if I wanted to.

He said it just seemed wrong for a pony to swear, and he asked Leon if he thought the same, and Leon didn’t say anything, he was just kind of blankly looking ahead, and then he looked at me as if he hadn’t even heard Cedric and said that I’d said a bad word, and I stuck my tongue out at him.

I went across campus to Astronomy class and sat down next to Anna, and Professor Miller told us more about black holes. First were post-Newtonian gravitational effects, and not only were perturbed orbits part of it, but it could also bend light because light was attracted by gravity if there was enough of it. And she said that sometimes light went around an object on two or more sides, and that was called a gravitational lens. And a couple of years after Einstein figured it out, a British expedition went to Brazil to watch during an eclipse, and proved that Einstein’s theory was correct.

And gravity could shift light, too, just like moving objects did, and she gave us an equation for it. So that meant that both motion and gravity could change the color of light, and I wondered how the astronomers figured out which was which, and if something could be moving fast enough to blueshift and then be affected by enough gravity to redshift back to the color it had started out as.

I thought that it that was probably a good way to find black holes, but it turned out that it was more important than I’d thought, because it was the reason that light couldn’t get out—it didn’t pull the light back to it, but it redshifted the light so much that it just disappeared.

Then at the end of class she told us about gravitational waves, which were kind of like the wake of a boat, except that they moved at the speed of light. And the energy in them was extracted from the orbit of the object that made them, which made its orbit smaller, just like a boat’s wake was from it moving against the water, and that slowed it down some.

She said that we couldn’t see that in our Solar System, because it was such a small effect, but she said that we did see it in binary star systems and that was what we were going to talk about next.

When class was over, I flew across the quad and landed on the boardwalk and then I relaxed in my room and thought about what I wanted to be for Halloween, 'cause if me and Aric and Meghan were all going to get costumes we'd have to do it tomorrow. And then I remembered that he was doing tech week, and I didn't even know if he'd be free on Friday at all, or on Monday to go trick-or-treating, so I might have to come up with a different plan.

I nibbled on some hay and thought about it. I didn't think that I was going to find any costumes that were designed for humans that were very comfortable, but they sold accessories for the costumes, too, so I could get things like a clown wig without the rest of the clown suit if I wanted.

It was kind of hard to choose, because there had been so many choices at the Halloween store. I think it would have been easier if there hadn't been as many.

I suppose I could have just gone as myself; I probably would be the only pony in all of Kalamazoo trick-or-treating, but that felt really lazy.

Then I thought I could just wear my dress and maybe a little necklace or something and go as a princess. Or I could stick on a fake horn and be a unicorn. Maybe a golden bridle, too, if I could find one.

I was still thinking about it when Peggy came back, and she said that I should go as a snowboarder. I could wear some of her gear, even though I didn’t really when I snowboarded, and maybe my boots if that wouldn’t ruin them, and I thought that was a good idea. Especially since I didn’t think I was going to have much time to go shopping before Halloween.

Since I wasn’t going to have any time for dinner, I stuck my head in the closet and started snacking out of my haybox. And I ate enough that I’d be full.

Peggy said that most college students just ordered pizza or Chinese takeout instead of keeping a salad in their closet.

I knew about the pizza, but I didn't know that you could get Chinese food delivered to you and I thought that sounded pretty good, so I said that we should do that sometime. And Peggy said that she was going over to Christine’s after dinner and maybe if a bunch of us were hungry we could do it tonight.

I got my Bible and my fighting gear and went to the chapel and met Liz in her office. She was proud that I’d got all the way to Romans, but I felt like I should have gotten further. And before we started talking about it I asked her how her protest had gone and if she’d gotten arrested like Cayenne had, and she said that she didn’t although a lot of people had said bad things to her, and she had just ignored them.

She wanted to know what I thought about God’s new covenant, and I said that I liked it so far, and I thought it was a lot friendlier.

I said that it was interesting reading the same account of Jesus four different ways, and she said that scholars could tell what most interested the writer of each gospel, and that Mark was the oldest. She said that a lot of it had been passed down orally, and then written down later on, decades or centuries after Jesus had been crucified, although it was possible that there were earlier manuscripts that just hadn’t been found yet. And she said that even now there was some debate about some of the translations, which was something I understood, ‘casue sometimes it was hard to translate things. There were words in English for things that we didn’t have in Equestria, so I had to learn them all new, and Miss Chestnut had had a really hard time telling us exactly what the word meant. And there were also concepts that didn’t quite translate between the two languages, too.

Even though I’d learned English pretty well, I still had to ask people all the time how to say something or how to spell something, because that was confusing a lot, and I suppose when I’m back home I’m gonna have to give long, complicated explanations for some of the things I saw and did on Earth.

I asked Liz about why they’d left the old Law in the Bible even though Paul said that it wasn’t important anymore, and she explained how it was important historically, and she said that I wouldn’t take something out of my journal just because I knew something new and different now, which was a good point.

And then she said that different branches of Christianity had different thoughts on how important some of the old laws were, and even which books should be in the Bible, and some churches were more liberal and others were more conservative. But she said that I didn’t really have to worry about that too much.

So I wanted to know who was right, and she said that she thought I'd already read what Paul had to say about it, and then I remembered what he had said in Romans about different ways of practicing the faith, and so I told her that Paul had said not to put stumbling blocks in front of other people, and she nodded and said that was right. She said that everyone comes to God in a different way, and Paul had seen that and made sure to write it down, because it was so important.

When our time was over, I hugged her and then I got my glaive and went down the hill to the park to practice fighting.

Aric never showed up, ‘cause he was probably busy in the theatre. So I got to warm up by fighting with Stellan and Karla, and then she set out flags for another bridge battle that I couldn’t do, but then Stellan said that since we had an odd number of people he was going to step out of the group battle, too, and he’d keep practicing with me.

He wanted to try grappling, and he said that he was going to be really careful, especially since he’d seen the cut on my leg, and I agreed, but it turned out that I didn’t like it too much. I didn’t like the feeling of being grabbed onto or him pinning me, and it was really hard to not really struggle and maybe hurt him by mistake.

For me, there weren’t a lot of good ways to break free once he’d got ahold of me. If it had been for real, I could have done a weak strike with my forehooves, and maybe got him somewhere sensitive, and I could also bite, and so after we’d done it for a little bit he backed off ‘cause I think he could tell that it wasn’t working out like he’d planned.

Then he asked if we ever practiced anything like that, and I said that usually when something got you, it was gonna try and eat you, so you had to figure out ways to either outsmart it which worked sometimes, fool it into dropping you so you could fly or gallop away and hide, or else hurt it badly enough that it wanted to move on to some other prey. And I told him how I hadn’t been able to do the last one because I was afraid of hurting him.

So he said that he wanted to try it in really slow motion, and he said that he’d try and react like an actual human would, and I wasn’t really sure about how that was going to work. But we tried again and he got me in what he called a bear hug, and I could move my foreleg down enough that I could probably get him in the crotch, and I could also reach close enough to his face to bite, so I leaned in and opened my mouth and he let go pretty quick and said that he’d never noticed that I had fangs before. And I said that most pegasuses and most stallions of every tribe had them, and some other mares did, too, but a lot of them had them filed down ‘cause they didn’t look pretty but we pegasuses kept them for fishing and fighting. And I didn't know why people thought it was strange, anyway, 'cause they had canine teeth, too.

Then I guess that worried him a bit, because he put on some of his armor and we went back to sparring for the rest of class, which I liked better anyways.

Even though he tried not to, he did land one hit on my cut leg, and made it bleed a little bit, which was kind of annoying. Karla had a first-aid kit in her car and she wrapped it up in some gauze so I wouldn’t be dripping on people.

When fighting was over, everyone put away their weapons, and I went back up to the hill to our room, and Peggy was doing homework but I didn’t have to do any, and so I called Miss Cherilyn and found out when Aquamarine was supposed to come, and then I spent a little bit of time looking at the weather maps, and wrote out what I thought it was going to do for practice—I was starting to worry that when I went back to Equestria, I might be the worst weathermare ever—and then I turned off my computer and got out my journal and wrote in it for a while.

When Peggy was done with her homework, she asked if I wanted to do anything or just have an early night, and I said that I wasn’t against having an early night. But then she said that maybe before we went to bed, she could get out some of her snowboarding gear and see what fit, and so she went through her bag and found me a pair of goggles which wouldn’t really fit my eyes but I could wear up on my forehead. And in the bottom of the bag, she had a Salomon t-shirt that had some holes and she said she didn’t wear it any more and I should, ‘cause we could cut holes in it for my wings.

So I got all dressed up and even put on my hoof-boots, which were really clicky on the tile floor, and she said that I looked really good. It was kind of slippery wearing them, though, ‘cause the magnets didn’t grab on to the floor at all, and she said that we should put a few layers of duct tape over them and that would help.

She helped me get undressed and said that she would have to borrow a pair of scissors from someone to cut wing-holes in the shirt, and I set everything in front of my dresser so that I would know where it was on Halloween.

Author's Note:

I Said to Poetry

This was the only one I could find online; if anyone finds links to the other poems, put 'em in the comments.

PreviousChapters Next