//------------------------------// // September 12 [Fall Quarter Begins] // Story: Silver Glow's Journal // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// September 12 I didn't sleep all that well, and when I woke up I decided that I wanted to fly, because I was feeling kind of twitchy and eager and unfocused, like a filly on Hearth's Warming, and I didn't have my first class until ten anyway. It was a little strange to not hear the usual bird-chatter in the morning. So I looked out the window and it was a nice, clear day outside, and would be perfect for flying. So I went into the bathroom to fill up my camelback and then got dressed back in our room, trying to be quiet so that I wouldn't wake up Peggy. And I had a little snack out of the box of hay. It had been a lot more convenient to fly right off my balcony, and it felt strange to have to go away from the outside to get to the outside, but I knew that before too long I'd be used to it. And I went down one flight of stairs and then out onto the boardwalk, and I called up the airplane directors. I made sure to tell Dori that I was back at Kalamazoo College and not my apartment on Grove Street. And she gave me the usual instructions and I thought I'd go to the Nature Center, which meant I had to stay low anyway. I went off the boardwalk and gained speed flying down the hill and over the quad, and then picked up a little altitude before I crossed the brick road in front of Hoben, just in case there was a car coming. And then I started picking up more altitude as I cut diagonally across the eastern end of the cemetery and the neighborhood where Meghan used to live. My flight peaked just after I crossed the 131 bus Highway, and then I started to glide down towards the Nature Center. The deer were out in their usual little prairie, but they were really close to the treeline and I didn't see them as I came in, until I got over the trees and they saw me too, and I scared them off which made me feel bad. I hadn't meant to—I should have stayed higher and curved around towards the river, rather than chase them from breakfast. I wouldn't like it if I was sitting down eating my breakfast and a roc came into the dining hall. So I landed on the high point of the trail and took a couple of sips of water from my camelback, then pawed at the ground a little bit to get myself in the mood, and galloped down the incline and around the curve at the end, and I did the section of the trail that paralleled the river at a canter. I slowed to a trot on the upside, and after I'd crested the hill again I didn't gallop because I should have warmed my legs up a little bit before, but I'd just been too eager. I did a whole lap at an easy trot, which loosened all my muscles up and I galloped down the hill then cantered the rest of the way around, until I was at the very top again, and this time I just took off and aimed myself back towards Kalamazoo College. This time I decided I was going to try and do a slow climb, rather than climb and descend. So I kept my eyes mostly focused on the bell tower, which I could just see poking up above the trees. It was pretty much all uphill to get to it, and it occurred to me that a pegasus who was really good at gliding could probably launch herself from the top of the bell tower and glide all the way to the Nature Center. I did a descending turn to land back on the boardwalk, then let myself in and went upstairs to our room, but before I went in I poked my nose in the bathroom to see if anyone was in the shower. There wasn't, and as long as I didn't dally too much I could have a turn right away, so I went in our room just long enough to grab my shampoo and the nice blue towel I'd gotten from Sunny Haven, and then went back into the bathroom. It felt kind of strange to be getting undressed in the shower. I set all my flight gear on the little bench and then turned on the water and once it got nice and warm stepped in and rinsed myself off, and I was just washing my mane when someone came into the bathroom—even if you didn't hear the door open over the noise of the shower, you could feel how the air currents in the room suddenly changed. When I'd finished and shaken myself off, I had to figure out how to get all my flight gear back to my room and I didn't have my saddlebags to put it in, so I laid out my towel and made it into a makeshift sack. It was Kat, and she was sitting on the little bench outside, waiting for her turn in the shower. I would have said hello but my mouth was full, but I just nodded at her 'cause sometimes humans nod in greeting. Peggy was awake when I got back to our room, and she was still in her sleeping clothes but she'd brushed her hair already. And I said that Kat was in the shower right now, if she'd been thinking of taking one. She said she'd wait until after breakfast, because she didn't have an early class, and she said that she wanted to start the school year off right by going to breakfast in her sleeping clothes the very first day. So while I finished drying off and brushed my mane and tail, she put on a bra and shoes, and then we went to breakfast together. Their waffle-maker was broken already, but I still had mine back at the dorm. Mister Salvatore had asked me when we'd packed if I was allowed to have it and I didn't see why not. So I wasn't all that disappointed that it didn't work. And the person who made omelets wasn't there, either, and there was nothing on his table. I hope that he just had the day off. We sat down with Sean and Christine, and she wasn't very awake. Sean looked a little bit more alert, but maybe that was because he had an empty coffee cup on his plate and was drinking out of a second. She was eating her Fruit Loops and I would have been bouncing off the walls if I had that much sugar for breakfast. Everyone talked about their class schedules, and I found out that Sean and I had a class together in the afternoon, which was nice. And I told Sean about visiting the Air Force base that controlled the satellites and he thought that was really cool. He asked me if I'd heard about the Space-X rocket that had exploded on the launch pad a couple of weeks ago, and I hadn't. I also hadn't seen the new Star Trek movie that had been in the theaters, and that made him sad. He said that we'd have to find a way to get me to see it, and Christine said that maybe I'd decided that Star Wars was the better franchise after having all summer to think about it. But I told her that wasn't true, I'd just done other stuff and not really thought about it. I had a little free time after breakfast, so while Peggy was in the shower, I read Amos, which was the vision a shepherd had had two years before an earthquake. God said that He would punish all the nations around Israel, so I think that Amos had his visions before that happened. And he said how he was going to punish the Israelites for being bad, too, And when he showed Amos visions, Amos said that it was too much, and so God relented a little bit. He didn't have locusts eat the crops or destroy the land with fire. And then in the end He promised that after they had learned their lesson, He was going to build Jerusalem back up again. I knew from what Pastor Liz had told me that He had, but that must have happened after Amos. So God had told lots of prophets to warn everyone that if they didn't change their ways, He was going to punish them and nobody had listened to them. I left for class a little bit early, 'cause I didn't know where the classroom was. Since most of the buildings on campus were built on hillsides, sometimes it wasn't so obvious which floor was which, and I didn't want to be late for my class just because I didn't know where it was. So I went in through the front door and wandered around in the hallway until I'd gotten a sense of how the rooms were numbered, and after that it was really easy to find the room I wanted. It was already being used by a morning class, so I had to stand around and wait. And pretty soon other people started showing up, too, and started forming a line along the wall. Some people sat down to wait, and I kept looking for people who I was friends with, and finally I saw Lisa, who also ran the spotlight in the theatre. She was kind of surprised to see me there and asked if I was waiting for the next class and I said I was, and so she asked why I was taking it, and I told her that most of what made clouds work was thermal physics, and an understanding of atmospheric thermodynamics was essential for anypony who wanted to advance beyond being a cloud-pusher or a cloud-puncher. Lisa said that she'd never thought of it that way. The room was a little too big for the number of people in the class, and I wasn't sure where the best place to sit would be. Too close, and I'd be straining my neck to see everything on the markerboard, and too far away and I wouldn't be able to see it all. So I just followed Lisa and sat next to her, 'cause she probably knew the best place and it was good to sit close to a friend. Crystal Dawn was in the class, too, and when she saw me she sat on my other side. We'd all gotten comfortable in our seats when the professor showed up and he introduced himself as Professor Carnot Brown, and he said that if anybody called him Encyclopedia they'd lose points. I hadn't thought of calling him that, and now I would be sure not to. He told us what the class was going to be about, and gave everyone a copy of the course syllabus and the books that we'd need—I hadn't gotten them yet, but you weren't expected to have them on the first day anyway. I needed more notebooks, too, and I could get all that at the bookstore before lunch. Then he had us all introduce ourselves, 'cause he said that was more friendly than him reading off an attendance book. And once we'd done that, he asked who wanted to go down to the lab and set something on fire, and almost everybody raised their hand. He told us to bring our things with us, 'cause once we'd toured the lab he was going to set us free. And so we went downstairs and to a big room with lots of heavy tables that had strange faucets on them, along with normal sinks. And he showed us where all the safety equipment was, and he said that was the most important thing to know. He said that we could expect to have a lab every Tuesday, and he said that anyone who blew up the lab or broke physics would automatically fail their lab grade. And then someone asked him if he'd been lying about setting something on fire, and he went over to the front desk and opened the strange faucet and I could smell gas coming out almost immediately. Professor Brown squeezed a little metal tool that spit sparks, and it lit the gas and made a nice little flame, and he adjusted the knob a little bit to make it a different size, then he reached into the desk and got out a brown paper bag and he put it over the flame and pretty soon it started floating away, just like a hot air balloon. He said that was our first lesson, and tomorrow in lab if everybody was good he would teach us how to make a Cincinnati Fire Kite, as long as we promised to never ever launch one on campus. And then he told us that class was dismissed, and we should go buy our books now. So I went right to the bookstore, and it was nice because they sorted all the textbooks based on what the class was, so once you found your class you found your book, too. And since I was there, I bought all the rest of my books, too, and I got notebooks for all my classes and new clicky pens. Since Professor Brown had let us out early, I had plenty of time to go back to my dorm room and drop off my new school supplies before lunch, and I had time to write in my journal, too. I'd been so excited meeting everyone in the morning that I hadn't really noticed that Joe had never come back, 'cause he'd graduated and moved to Japan, and it was a little bit lonelier without him. I hadn't remembered to earlier, but I asked if anyone wanted to come see the football game on Friday, and Sean said he didn't know that we had a football team and Christine punched him in the shoulder. She said that they'd been playing for over a hundred years, and Sean asked if they'd won a game yet. I said that they'd won their first game this year, 'cause that's what Cedric had told me. He said that he hadn't been to a football game since he was in band in high school, so why not. And Peggy thought it would be fun, too, and so all of us decided to go but instead of riding in the bus we'd take Cobalt. Me and Sean went to math class together, and it was in Dewing. I was hoping that we'd have Professor Sir Doctor Banerjee again, but we didn't. It was a man with really curly dark hair and a beard, and he said that his name was Professor Pampena, and he hoped that we all loved math as much as he did. And he explained to all of us what vector calculus was about and told us how he graded and how important it was for us to show our work especially on tests. And he said that he didn't need to take attendance 'cause he kinda knew everyone in class already either because they'd had a class with him before or he knew them by reputation. I'd never had a class with him before, although I'd seen him around campus, so I guess he just knew me by reputation. I wondered if he'd had Peggy. We got out of class a little bit early and that meant that we had the whole afternoon free. And I wanted to fly over to Aric's house but I thought before I did I'd look around campus to see if he was in class, and I'm glad I did, because I saw Winston parked by the theatre building. I thought about surprising him by waiting in the back, but when I looked in there it was full of boxes and there wasn't enough room for me to fit. So I got in the front instead, 'cause he never locked Winston, and I stretched out on the seat and after a little while I got kinda bored so I closed my eyes and then I fell asleep and he wound up surprising me instead. Although I bet he was a little bit surprised when he saw me sleeping in Winston. We drove to his house and I spent the rest of the afternoon helping him unpack Winston. David said that we should all have pizza for dinner and Aric thought that was a good idea, and he ordered some from Papa John's, and I asked if we'd have time to go to Meijer and get birdseed before the pizza was ready. He said that we could make time, so we drove to Meijer and bought one big bag, and got the pizza on the way back. I hoped that nobody in the dining hall was missing me. When we were done with dinner, me and Aric went to Fourth Coast to play Durak, and I hadn't forgotten everything over the summer. I told everyone there about how I'd taught the tornado pegasuses to play the game, and then I had to tell about fighting the tornado, too, 'cause everyone wanted to hear about that. Aric said that I'd gotten busted for stealing a cloud in Indiana, and everyone thought that was really funny. And Keith said he hadn't done anything that exciting over the summer, just worked at a candy shop in Indianapolis. Aric said how come he'd just found out about that now, since he'd been in Lafayette all summer and the towns weren't even an hour apart. Malcolm told us about going to Pennsic Border War, and at first I thought that was bad but he said that it was a play-war, like the sparring I'd seen at Val Day, only bigger. Seth had spent the summer rock climbing, and Kenneth had toured castles in England and Scotland, and Alex had gone sailing a lot. So it sounded like everyone had had lots of fun. When we were done playing, Aric offered people a ride home, but everyone agreed it was a nice night out and they could walk, so me and him got back in Winston and I told him that I'd gotten to fly airplane simulators on my vacation and then asked if I could drive and he said no. But after he stopped at the corner of Academy and Dartmouth, he said that I could sit on his lap and steer the rest of the way home. I kept my head off to the side so that I wouldn't block his view, 'cause he had to know what to do with the pedals. And he drove kinda slow, but I didn't mind. When we got into the driveway he turned off Winston and then kissed me on the head and said that I'd done a good job. It was a little weird at first, 'cause we'd been apart for most of the summer, so we kind of had to work to remember what we each liked, and we were also both kinda fighting to get in our favorite positions which didn't work out all that well, and finally he let me pin him down and be on top, and afterwards I lay on his chest and put my head down right under his chin, and he ran his hands through my mane and scratched behind my ears.