September 8
I woke up before Meghan and snuggled up against her until her alarm went off, then after she'd made it stop I stuck my head under the covers and when she asked what I was doing I said that I was looking at her bikini wax. It was kind of weird to see, it was like when somepony got a manecut or a new tail-style, it took a while to get used to and then after a few days you couldn't quite remember what they'd looked like before.
I'd just planned to look, but then Meghan reached under my tail and so I had to get her back, and we wound up ignoring her alarm the second time it went off, too. And then even she didn't want to and I didn't want her to, she had to get out of bed or else she would be late to work. She said that it probably wouldn't be bad if she didn't show up because tomorrow was her last day and they couldn't really fire her at this point but I reminded her that it was important to be there because other people depended on her being there and doing her job. Her friend who drove her to work would probably also be mad if she wasn't there at her house.
Meghan said that she'd still rather stay in bed with me, and I couldn't blame her for thinking that, so I kind of slid off the side of the bed and took all the blankets with me. And then Meghan had to get up not only because she was cold but also because I got stuck and she had to untangle me.
When she got the shower going I asked her if she wanted any breakfast and she said that would be nice, so I made oatmeal for both of us, and she had to eat it kind of quick (and I didn't finish mine) so that she wouldn't be late.
While we were walking to her apartment she told me that my toy had come in the mail and she had it her apartment and would bring it over tonight. And she asked if I would need any help moving into my dorm room this weekend, and I said that I was sure that Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn would help, or maybe Aric would if he was back. I didn't know when he was coming back, but surely it would be by Sunday night.
Her friend was already there when we got to her apartment, and before she got in the car she unlocked the front door and asked me if I would take her bag upstairs for her and then lock up before I left and I said that I would.
I nuzzled her thigh and she pet my head and said that she'd see me tonight after work. I put her bag upstairs and then locked the door and thought about what I wanted to do today. I needed to talk to Aric and find out when he was coming back to Kalamazoo. And I also had to see Pastor Liz and then I remembered that I was also going to go to fighting practice which meant I'd be home a little bit late and I should have told Meghan.
So when I got back home the first thing I did was send her a telephone telegram to let her know that I'd be late because of fight practice and she could come by and watch me if she wanted to. And then I sent one to Aric asking him when he was going to come back to Kalamazoo, and I knew that he might not reply right away because when I wasn't there he stayed up really late and woke up late too.
Then I finished my oatmeal which wasn't as good when it was cold, and put on my flight gear. I thought that I ought to fly around town and make sure that there wasn't anything new that I needed to know about, since I'd been gone for a while. And so that meant I'd have to stay kind of low so I didn't get in the way of any airplanes.
I didn't have to tell the airplane directors, but I called them anyway and Dori said that she'd missed me and asked where I was flying today and I said just over town, and that I would stay low. And she gave me clearance for under a thousand feet, so I went out to the balcony and dove off and then climbed up over my neighborhood.
I made a nice leisurely circle around town and it all looked pretty much the same as it had before. And when I got to the east side of town I remembered that the farmer's market was open today so I flew down there even though I didn't really need to get any food since there would be plenty in the dining hall once school started again.
But it was nice to greet everyone and one of the nice women gave me some carrots for free, and I also would have bought some blueberries except that I didn't have anything but the pocket on my flight vest to carry them.
It wasn't too far from the college so maybe I could fly there for some fresh fruit and vegetables for my dorm room, although I'd have to be smart and not buy too much or else it could go bad before I ate it.
When I took off again, I flew back over downtown and then looped around the hotel building just for fun. And then I went a little bit north so I could follow over the railroad tracks until they went by campus.
There were a few cars in the parking lot already, and also parked along the street. Even though I was going to miss all the free time I had to do fun stuff, I was really looking forward to classes starting again and living in the dorm with all my friends.
I flew low over the quad, but I didn't see anybody that I knew. And I thought about flying around some of the dorms and peeking through the windows to see if any of my friends were there but that would have been rude. So once I'd passed by Trowbridge, I climbed enough to be clear of the trees and then flew back home.
I had some leftover casserole for lunch and then I sat in the papasan and read Hosea. God told him to marry a woman and have children, and then told him what to name them. And then she left him for a while but God told him to take her back, even though she liked raisin cakes. And he told her not to be a prostitute any more.
And God was mad at the Israelites again because they hadn't followed his rules even though He had just helped them rebuild Jerusalem and He warned them to change their ways or else they would be punished.
It was all very confusing, because maybe this was near the end of the days that Daniel had seen or maybe this was something that happened before. I wish that the Bible had a calendar in it so that I would know.
I hadn't thought to check my portable telephone, and I guess I hadn't heard it chirping at me when I was flying but I had a couple of new telegrams—one from Meghan saying that she would go to the park to watch me, and one from Aric saying that he would be back home late Sunday night but he didn't know how late, so it was okay if I didn't want to come over.
My ears went up when I heard a squealing noise outside and I looked out the front window and there was a big yellow bus with flashing red lights out there, and Trinity got off of it and I wanted to wave to her but I didn't get the door open in time. And a little bit later another identical bus stopped in the same place and Lindy and Caleb got off that one, and this time I was out on the balcony and Lindy saw me and waved then she hit Caleb with her elbow and he looked up and waved at me, too.
I'd missed them, so I flew down off the balcony and hugged Lindy while Caleb went in to tell Trinity I was there, and I hugged her when she came out.
They wanted to have a snack and then go Pokemon hunting with me, so I waited on my balcony until they came back out of their house and we started going around the neighborhood, but they didn't find anything good. Still, it was a lot of fun to talk with them and spend the afternoon together, and Caleb thought it was really cool that I'd gotten to fly the Dreamliner. And they were sad that I was going to move away and they said that they would tell Jeff to have one more backyard barbeque tomorrow, even though he normally didn't after Labor Day, which had been Monday.
And they said that we ought to meet up during the week, too, and I thought I'd like that. I didn't know when yet because I didn't know what everyone's schedules were, but I said that I'd figure something out. And since I knew fall was coming and then winter I wanted to know if there would still be Pokemons in the winter and Caleb said that there would be, and maybe even new types that liked snow and cold.
They had to be home for dinner and I had to go to see Pastor Liz, so I gave Trinity a ponyback ride back to their house and then hugged her and Lindy and Caleb, too, but only after he looked to see if any of his other friends were watching.
I didn't have enough time to make a proper dinner and I wasn't sure if maybe we'd want to eat leftover casserole for dinner tonight so I didn't eat any of that. I still had lots of hay left even though it was getting a little bit stale, so that's what I had for a snack and then I got my glaive and flew off to see Pastor Liz.
She explained how the Old Testament especially wasn't arranged in the order that things had happened, but in what was called the Septuagint order, which was how the ancient Greeks had decided to organize it. And she said that it was based on the style of the book, and that they were called the narrative books, then the wisdom books, then the books of the prophets. And she said that Hosea had taken place before Ezekiel and Lamentations and Daniel and lots of other books. She said if I remembered King Ahaz, it had happened about ten years before him.
And then we talked about what Daniel's vision meant and she said that it wasn't all clear. She said that some of the events he talked about were historical and some weren't, and that there were things mentioned in it that were either bad translations or wrong on purpose, like King Darius the Mede, who had never existed. She said that in Hebrew, names were sometimes encoded in numbers, but that most scholars thought that those were actual days.
I wanted to know if they'd happened yet or if they were still going to, and she said that they had not, and nobody knew when they would. She reminded me that at the end of Daniel, he was told that no one could see the whole prophecy. And then she said that there were lots of people who sometimes thought that the world was going to end because they'd made some calculation based on the Bible or something else and they were always wrong. She said that one famous man named Harold Camping had made multiple predictions and had been wrong every time.
Then she asked me if I wanted to keep on meeting on Thursdays when school started again, and I said that I did, and I wanted to make sure that I'd finished the whole Bible by the time the winter quarter was over. She said that was ambitious of me but even if I didn't it was okay.
When I got to the park, Stellan and Karla were already there, practicing with each other, and Meghan was watching, so I went over and hugged her and then watched them, too.
After they'd finished, Stellan took off his helmet and asked if I was still interested in doing some hand-to-hand fighting with him and I said that I was.
He said that he'd decided that the best thing to do was put boxing gloves on my hooves, because he couldn't think of anything better. I felt really silly with them on my hooves and I couldn't walk right and the weight was really weird, too. But it was important to keep him safe, and he said that what he wanted me to do was describe what I was going to do and then try and do it in slow motion, and then he'd take a look and see if it was something that he thought we could do together or if it was too dangerous.
Well, it was a lot harder to do some things slowed down, but I knew that he wouldn't be mad if it didn't work quite right, so we did our best.
Bucking was the most obvious thing to start with and that's really good for when someone comes up behind you although most ponies wouldn't be that stupid. And he knew about that but figured out that if I was close enough to hit him he wouldn't have very much defense against it, and that that was something where the defense was to not get in a position where you were at risk.
And he didn't know that I could also box forward with my front hooves, which I showed him next. It was really hard to do when I was standing on two boxing gloves, and I couldn't put all that much force in it because I was afraid that I'd fall. But we practiced it anyway and he decided that he could probably step aside and use an arm block to protect himself.
I showed him some dives, too, 'cause those were really effective, since you could use all your momentum to add to the attack. You had to be careful not to hurt yourself, too, though. And that was a little bit easier to do, because I could fly in slow and then lash out with one of my legs in a mock-kick.
After we'd done that a little bit he put his helmet back on and said that if I wanted to, we could try some of it for real, but he thought there was a good chance that we were both going to wind up with bruises, and I said I was willing to try, so he put on boxing gloves too to help protect me and I flew up and dove at him a couple of times while he tried to figure out what the best block would be, and then I did it still kinda slow but faster than we had been and knocked him on his back.
So he said he hadn't gotten his arms up quick enough and we tried again, and I knocked him on his back again. And then he said that even if he managed to block me he'd probably still fall down and wanted to know how other ponies had defended against attacks like that.
I said that spears planted in the ground worked really well. Or unicorn shield spells.
So then we got to talking about tactics a little bit, 'cause he wanted to know how we could get by those, and I said dropping heavy things worked pretty well, or pushing in a fog so that they couldn't see and then dropping things on them. And the techniques were pretty useful to know anyway because a lot of monsters didn't have weapons besides their size and claws and teeth and if you had a few pegasi, you could usually drive them off, even if you couldn't actually hurt them.
He showed me a couple of his punches and I didn't really have a good defense against them, especially since he was bigger than me. If he hadn't been wearing armor, and we were fighting for real, I would have bitten him.
After we were done, we did a little bit of practice with padded weapons and then we both agreed to think some more on different ways that we might be able to defend ourselves in close combat. Even though it wasn't something that I thought I'd ever really need to know, I suppose it might work against a minotaur or something. All I'd learned about fighting them was not to get close enough that they could grab you, and if they did bite and kick and hope that you've got friends close by to help you.
Meghan and I walked back to my apartment, and I asked her if she'd had any dinner yet, and she said that she hadn't, and we both agreed that the rest of the leftover casserole would be our dessert, 'cause neither of us felt like making anything else. And I told her that tomorrow maybe Jeff was going to have one last barbeque for me, and that I was going to invite David and Angela, and I'd have to get something to share with them, so I could do that tomorrow. And also get some food for the weekend, too.
She said that she had most everything packed and her uncle was going to come and help her move Sunday afternoon, but we could still have a nice weekend together before that. And she said that she could help me pack on the weekend, if I needed any help, which was really nice of her.
After we'd eaten, she sat in my chair and I sat in her lap and we watched the movie of me and the tornado team, and it was strange reliving the experience like that and after I'd hit her with my wings a couple of times and almost fallen out of the chair when I tried to bank along with the movie she said that I was going to have to stand on the floor to watch it.
Then we took a shower together, 'cause I'd never taken one after my morning flight and I'd gotten lathered during the fight practice, too. And we stayed in there until there was no more hot water, and then dried each other off and just lay on bed together and relaxed.
She asked if I wanted to watch a movie, but I didn't feel like it, and she didn't either, 'cause I wanted to snuggle with her instead and I thought that a movie might be distracting.
I was almost asleep when I remembered that she was going to bring my stallion toy and so I asked her if she had, and she said that she did and it was in her bag. And she asked if I wanted to get it and it would have been fun but it was also really nice to just be resting with my head on her breast and her arm around my back and so I said that we'd have all weekend to play with it whenever we wanted to.