//------------------------------// // August 15 [Fire] // Story: Silver Glow's Journal // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------//  August 15 Meghan was not ready for her alarm this morning. As soon as it went off she blinked her eyes open said that her head hurt and that she really, really had to pee and ran off to the bathroom. I went over to my desk and got out my bottle of aspirin for her 'cause I figured she'd want that, too, and then I went into the kitchen to get her a glass of water. My head hurt a little bit as well, but I thought once I was up and flying I'd feel a lot better. I still drank some water then refilled the glass for her. We both kinda had to rush, 'cause she still had to walk home, and so I was thinking of everything that I could do to help her out. I made her drink the water and take the aspirin and then pushed her back into the the bathroom so she could take a shower, and then I put some pancakes in the oven to heat up, and then went into the living room and went through her bag and got out the last of her clean clothes and put all the dirty clothes in the bag for her. She got dressed and then sat on the floor to eat her pancakes while I brushed her hair and she said that she shouldn't have had so many Long Islands last night and she should have known better. I said that we just should have done it Saturday night so we'd have had Sunday to recover and that was the mistake we'd made. And she told me I was lucky to not have a day job. When we started to walk to her apartment, I sniffed at the air and said that it smelled like rain, and she said that she thought so, too. And she got her portable telephone out and looked at her weather report and said that they were calling for rain in the afternoon, but not thunderstorms which was nice. I didn't think that I had to patrol in rain, although when I got back to the apartment I was going to call Mel and find out. We got to her house a little early 'cause we'd rushed and I asked her how she was feeling and she said a lot better; her headache was almost gone and her stomach felt mostly normal again. She told me if I did have to go out in the storm to be careful, and I said that I would, and she rubbed my mane and I leaned up against her leg until her friend came to pick her up. I flew low back home, and did a wing-roll when I crossed Main Street, just because I could. I was already feeling pretty good about today. Even though it was getting cloudy off in the distance, it felt like a really good flying day. I got dressed and decided that I was going to go north today, and then I called up the airplane directors and told Dori where I wanted to fly and she said that it was okay, but reminded me to keep low until I got out of town, and I told her that I would. Right before I flew off I noticed that my birdfeeder was getting pretty low and I ought to refill it. I bet Aric's needed some more seeds, too, and I could have filled it on my way out of town but then I thought that I would do it on the way back, since Dori would be expecting me to be flying. I made a long, slow climb, checking my watch for my altitude. It was a little bit wrong, 'cause I'd forgotten to reset it this morning, so I reminded myself to assume I was a couple of hundred feet higher than I actually was, just to be safe. There was one field off to my left that had sort of an island in it and I had never figured out why. Each time I saw it I thought about asking Aquamarine if she had any guesses about what it was, but I never remembered to. Some ponies kept a little piece of land that meant something to them fallow, so maybe humans did, too. I didn't have any particular destination in mind today, and I decided I wanted to not fly too far, 'cause I was worried about tiring myself out in the morning and not being able to do storm patrol if I was needed, so I just flew along north, occasionally flying a little detour if something on the ground caught my eye. I'd gone far enough away from Kalamazoo that I could climb higher if I wanted to, but I was kind of happy where I was. The river was getting pretty close on my right, so I angled over that way, and I was looking down at it and thinking about maybe trying to catch a fish because while it was really convenient to have them in a can when I wanted them, they weren't as good as fresh. I know I was supposed to have my license with me, but there were lots of trees around the river and probably nobody would know if I just took one and besides the birds did and I bet they didn't have a license. I could see a blue heron down below me, soaring over the river and he was probably looking for lunch, too. I made a big circle, just to stay over him and see if he found anything. But I guess the fishing wasn't good where we were, 'cause instead of diving down to the river, he picked up some altitude, and just went a little bit further upriver and I didn't have my heart so set on a fresh fish that I wanted to follow him. Rather than keep turning in the same direction, I banked around the other way and just as I was straightening back out again I smelled a little bit of smoke. At first, I didn't think that much of it. Lots of people cooked food outside, so it wasn't that weird to be smelling it. But as I got a little bit closer to town, it didn't smell right to me. It didn't smell like a cooking fire; it was a little too sharp for that. And just after that I saw smoke coming up from behind a house, and my first instinct was to go up and grab a cloud. There were plenty of them around, and they were good clouds, heavy with moisture, and low, too. This wasn't a time to be neat, so I just tore a big piece loose and started pushing it down towards the ground. Then when I was flying down I remembered that we had been told if we saw something that was an emergency we were supposed to call 911 and let the professionals deal with it, but I couldn't use my portable telephone when I was flying and anyways I had the cloud already so it wouldn't slow me down too much to bring it down with me. As I got closer, I could see flames through the smoke. It was coming from the back of the house, and when I got my cloud around back I could see that there were flames coming out of a window. The cloud started to come apart as soon as I dragged it through the trees, and I shoved it really fast through the window before it broke up all the way, and a whole bunch of white smoke billowed out which meant that I'd at least gotten some of it, but it was pretty unlikely that I'd gotten all of it, and it would be really dangerous to try and go inside and see. So I galloped around front 'cause that was where houses had their numbers and then I got out my pocket telephone and called 911 and they wanted to know where the house was (which I should have thought of) and I said I didn't know the street yet but I could fly to the end where there was a sign and tell them. I had to put the telephone in my pocket before I could fly, but the nice lady waited until I got to the sign and read it for her. Then she asked me if anyone was in the house and I told her that I didn't know; I'd only shoved a cloud through the broken window but I hadn't checked, which I ought to have. So I galloped back and started banging on the front door hard enough to chip the paint off of it and nobody came out so either there was nobody in there or they had already been overcome by smoke. I kind of danced around on my hooves while I tried to think what I ought to do next. If there was someone inside and they couldn't get down on their own, I could carry them to the ground, but if there wasn't anyone in there I was wasting time I could be using getting another cloud to help fight the fire. Human streets are strangely deserted in the day sometimes. I think it's because they build their houses far away from where they work, so they're all gone during the day. Even though it might have been smarter to knock on doors and see if I could find someone to help, there might not have been anybody at all in any of the houses, so I took off again to get another cloud down. I was on my way back down with another bit of cloud when I heard the fire engines off in the distance, but they hadn't arrived yet by the time I got down in the backyard and pushed this cloud through the window. I could see more flames inside, through the smoke, but I'd got them back far enough that they weren't coming through the window anymore. Plus, the cloud that hadn't gotten in the house had dampened down the grass in the backyard and the side of the house too which meant it was less likely the fire would spread, which was important. I flew over the top of the house and landed on the sidewalk just as the fire engines started to arrive, and I told the first man who got out that the fire was in the back and I'd put a couple of clouds on it already and I could get some more if they needed them. Well, he was a little confused about what I meant, and so I just pointed up to the sky, and held out my wings and I'm not sure he understood even after that, but he asked me if I could wait off to the side and let them do their work. So I stood out of their way while they got out hoses and hooked them up to hydrants and while that was happening a couple of them went around back to see what they could, and another one of them started knocking on the door, but nobody answered. Another man came over and asked me if I knew if anyone was home, and I told him that nobody had come when I'd knocked on the door, and he asked me to wait, as well. And while I was waiting, I called Dori and told her that I was on the ground in Plainwell because there was a fire and I might be flying up to help get more clouds but probably not because it looked like they had lots of water. Well, pretty soon a couple of police cars showed up too and one of the police officers wanted to see my identification card and get a statement from me, so I told him how I'd smelled the fire first and then put a couple of clouds on it and called 911 like I was supposed to and he didn't believe me about the clouds, either. So I said that I could go up and get one, but he said that I should stay on the ground, and then he started asking me about all of my equipment. Why I had a radio and why I had a watch and I didn't like him too much. He asked if I could sit in his car while he talked to his supervisor and I was feeling a bit uneasy about him but I was supposed to do what police officers told me to, so I got in the back of his car and I thought that maybe he was going to ask me some more questions but he didn't; he just walked off which was really rude of him. So I watched out the window as the firefighters worked, and they had ladders up and someone on the roof chopping holes to let the smoke out, and there were hoses in through the front door which they'd smashed down, but I didn't see any flames coming out of the front of it so I guess that they were doing a good job. I'd been sitting there for a while and I was beginning to think that maybe the police officer had forgotten I was in his car. He could have been busy with other things, after all, so I tried to open the door and neither of the doors would open and there was a plastic wall between the front and the back that I couldn't get through. The window was open a little bit but I couldn't open it any further, because that switch didn't work, either. I was trapped, at least until he came back to let me out, and I didn't like that at all. But I didn't know what I should do about it. I think I could have bucked out a window and gotten out that way, except then he'd be mad that I'd broken his car, even though it was obviously already broken since the doors didn't open and the windows didn't go down. And I didn't want to distract him, because he must have been doing something important and that's why he forgot about me. There was a house on fire, after all, and that was more important a thing to worry about. My watch said that I sat inside the back of the police car for almost a quarter hour before a black Suburban with flashing lights inside its window showed up and Mister Salvatore got out only instead of wearing his nice jacket like he usually did he had on a bulky black vest that said FBI in big letters on it. And he was already shouty when he went past the police car that I was in, so I looked out the window to see where he was going and I lost sight of him around the fire truck. So I didn't see that Miss Cherilyn was there, too, until she opened the door and let me out and asked me if the police officer had taken any of my things. And I said that he hadn't; he'd just told me to sit in his car until he got back but his car was broken and I couldn't get out even when it was obvious he'd forgotten I was there. She told me I could get in the Suburban if I wanted or I could wait out here and I was happy being outside again so I told her that I thought I'd wait out here. And even over the sound of all the fire trucks and the firemen shouting things to each other, I could hear Mister Salvatore's voice and he didn't sound happy at all. He came storming back around the front of the fire truck and went back to the Suburban and opened the back door of it and came back with a big stack of papers and then he disappeared again and a minute later he came back without them and he had a big smile on his face and he asked me if I wanted to get ice cream. Mister Salvatore got a lot happier when he got to yell at people. We drove across the river to a place called Plainwell Ice Cream, and he bought us all ice cream sundaes. He told me that the police officer had detained me because I was a suspicious person and he thought that I'd started the fire. Well, that was a stupid thing to think—why would I have done that? And then he got a really big smile on his face and he said that he'd helpfully given the police officer state and federal arrest forms, plus a pony incident report and he'd told him that he wanted all of them faxed back to his office before he got there so that he could read them and ask followup questions and Miss Cherilyn said he was being mean and he said maybe he was but that the police officer hadn't followed protocol at all and maybe next time he'd think a little bit before he acted. She told him not to be too antagonistic, and he said that he was calm because you couldn't be angry when you had a tin roof sundae in front of you but he was still going to let him twist in the wind a little bit and if she wanted some fun he could arrange a conference call and they could flip a coin to see who got to be good cop and who got to be bad cop. He wanted me to tell him everything that had happened, so I told him, and he asked if the police officer had patted me down or checked my pockets or confiscated any of my things and I said that he hadn't. And he asked if I'd been put in handcuffs (which were what humans called hobbles) and I said that he hadn't done that either; he'd just asked me to sit in his car and forgotten about me there. Mister Salvatore said that was good; and he told me that I'd done the right things. He said that maybe pushing a cloud into the house hadn't been all that smart, but it hadn't hurt anything and maybe it had made the firefighter's job easier. And he said next time to call 911 first of all, even if it meant that I had to land, and he told me that he'd have to check with the FAA but he was pretty sure I could report an on-ground emergency over my radio without breaking any rules. I thanked him for the ice cream and thanked him and Miss Cherilyn for coming to get me out of the police car, and I said that I'd rather fly home if he didn't mind because being back in the sky would make me feel better. So he said that was okay, and I nuzzled him and Miss Cherilyn then told Dori I was flying again, and took off. I couldn't help but fly back over the house again, and all the fire trucks were gone so I guess they must have gotten the fire put out, which was good. It didn't look like it was too badly damaged, besides the holes they'd cut in the roof. Being in the open sky was a relief after I'd been in the police car, and I took my time flying back home. I ate a late lunch of leftover pancakes, and then I called Mel and asked him what he thought about the storms—it had already started to rain just a little bit, but I wasn't hearing any thunder yet, and I hadn't seen any bad clouds on my way home. He said that the weather radar was saying that it was going to get heavy in an hour or so, and that he'd been ready to call me, so I filled my camelback up again and got a can of anchovies in case I needed a quick snack and waited for him to arrive. We drove out to our usual spot and I flew around to get a look at the clouds and make sure that our radios were working, and then since it was still pretty light, I landed back at the truck. It turned into a long night for both of us. Heavy rain started to come down at dinnertime, so I flew up to get a feel for the clouds and they weren't thundery at all and the winds up high weren't too strong, but the clouds were just dumping out water, but that didn't last all that long and then it went back to light rain. We started a system where I'd fly up every hour and report on what I was seeing and feeling, and then come back down, and he showed me the radar on his computer and it was just a big blotch over the whole region with red spots and yellow spots here and there. The winds picked up a couple of times, and sometimes the rain came down hard for a while. When it got dark and there wasn't any sign of it letting up, I napped in his truck and sometimes he did, too. He went to the Speedway and got us some food and it wasn't very good but it was better than nothing. And the storm just kept on.