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// October 4 [Transits] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
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October 4

I woke up early, and just listened to the birds chirping and Aric snoring for a little bit, and then I put my head down on his chest and that woke him up a little bit. He reached up and put his hand around my fetlock and then he sort of drifted off to sleep again, and so did I for a little bit, until I felt him moving around under me and so that woke me up and it was kind of unfair that it didn't wake him up, so I tickled him with my wing and when I felt him reaching for it, I stopped, and then when he'd relaxed a little bit I did it again, and finally he woke up and blinked at me and said that he'd had the weirdest dream that he was being attacked by birds. And I said that it was probably because he was hearing them all chirping outside, and he thought that was probably right. And then I kissed him and tickled his stomach with my wing again, and he looked at me and said that it was probably my fault.

He reached his hand down along my flank, and I swatted him with my tail but that didn't stop him, and pretty soon his hands were all over me, and I reminded him to turn off his alarm before it was too late, and while he was doing that, I rolled on my back to expose my belly to him, and he teased me for a little while before he got on top of me.

We snuggled for a little bit after, and then I asked if he'd be mad if I got a little flying in this morning before class, and he said that he didn't mind, as long as I wasn't mad thinking about how he might sleep for another couple of hours before actually getting up. So I pulled back the covers and looked at him and said that I'd think about it when I was in my physics lab.

I got my flight gear on and then flew out of Aric's bedroom window and to his bird feeder, and I kept an eye on his window but he waited until I'd put my head down to get a mouthful of sunflower seeds before he threw a balled-up sock at me, and he missed me but he caught the top of the bird feeder and rocked it back and forth.

So once I'd had my snack, I flew down and picked up his sock for him and flew it back up to his window, so he wouldn't have to go down and get it, and he leaned out the window a little bit so I kissed him before flying off.

There wasn't enough time before my thermodynamics lab to go to the Farmer's Market, but I was sure I had the hay-woman's telephone number somewhere, and I could call her so that she would know to have a haybale ready at the market for me on Thursday.

I kept low over the trees so that I wouldn't have to bother the airplane directors, and I circled over my old bird feeder once, just to see how many birds were still around it, and I scared off the sparrows again. But when I'd flown by and looked back, they were all flying back. Sparrows don't stay scared for too long.

I flew low over downtown, then I turned to follow the river towards the dam, although I wasn't going to get in enough flight time today to make it there and back again, 'cause I hadn't wanted to make Aric mad by leaving too early.

I went as far as Sprinkle Road, then I turned around and flew back towards home.

Peggy was just waking up when I got back to our room, and I asked her if she wanted to take the first shower, but she said I could because she needed time to wake all the way up.

She was in the bathroom waiting for the shower when I came out and I told her she could have just come in 'cause I wouldn’t have minded, and she laughed and then said that maybe we should have another shower party, which I thought would be a lot of fun. I wasn't sure if it would be okay, though, because Sean didn't live in the same place anymore, and so it might not be polite to just go use somebody else's shower when you weren't even visiting them. Peggy said that probably nobody would care.

I was trying to button my lab coat when Peggy came back from the shower, and she helped me. She said that maybe if humans still had fur and as much trouble with fasteners as I did, they'd still be going around naked.

I was kind of curious about that, because it was pretty useful to have a coat, and Peggy didn't know. She said that humans' ancestors had had coats like monkeys, but somewhere along the line they lost most of them, and she thought maybe it was because they'd lived somewhere warm and hadn't needed them.

While Peggy finished getting dressed, I got my saddlebags on and then Peggy put my mane back, and we went to breakfast together. The omelet cook was there today, and I got one, and also a couple of pieces of toast 'cause I was pretty hungry from all the food I hadn't eaten yesterday.

When I sat down, Christine asked me if I was playing doctor today, and I shook my head and said it was for my lab and I had to have somebody help me put it on because I couldn't work the buttons with my hooves, and there were a couple I couldn't get with my mouth, either. And then Anna said it must be kind of strange to have to have someone help you dress all the time, and Reese said that a lot of woman's fashion was like that back in the old days, and that's why women's buttons were on the opposite side as men's.

Sean wasn't there because he was sleeping in, so it wasn't as crowded for Anna and Reese, but it was kind of lonely without him. Christine said that he'd stayed up late because the new Star Trek movie had come out on Netflix at midnight, and he'd wanted to watch it even though he'd already seen it in the theater. She said that it was probably all he was going to talk about the rest of the day, and that he'd probably want me to watch it.

I couldn't tonight because I was going to Meghan's room. But I did want to see it—I thought another movie night at Christine's would be fun. We hadn't watched a movie together in a long time.

It's not fair that there's still so much that I want to do but never enough time.

We had special pistons to experiment with the Carnot cycle on our own, so that we could see it working on our own. And we got to do it a couple of times, so that we could make sure that we got good data points, because we were going to do a lot of calculating from them. And it was kind of complicated to set up and Lisa had to do a lot of it, just because my hooves weren't too good with really small plugs and wires. But I did get to put the heatpack in the microwave, and I was the only one in class who could take it out without gloves, because of my hooves, and that was a silly thing to be proud of, but it was something that nobody else could do.

Once everyone was done with their experiments, Professor Brown showed us a working heat engine that had two metal legs, and one of them went into hot water and the other into cold, and after a few minutes, it started spinning a fan, which was really neat to see.

Me and Lisa sat in the lounge and went over my notes on the experiment. It was kind of frustrating to have so much of the lab equipment not be hoof-friendly; maybe that was why unicorns were better at this kind of stuff. I don't think I'd want to take a whole bunch of physics classes and labs like Cayenne.

I suppose I was still learning by watching and taking notes, but I'd rather be doing.

On my way back to the dorm, I stopped by the library and I got a couple of funny looks because I still had my lab coat on and my goggles up on my forehead, but I didn't care.

The first thing I found was the World War I book that I had started reading, because maybe if I had it I'd be more likely to actually read it like I was gonna. And then I used the computer to try and find a book of poetry for lunch—something new that I hadn't read before.

Even with a pen in my mouth, I wasn't a very good typer. The computer had too many little buttons, and they weren't arranged in a sensible order.

I found a book of poems by Edward George Dyson that sounded interesting, and I kind of wanted to look through it before lunch but it was better for it to be a surprise. I'd always liked how Conrad had never let us know what we were going to read next.

When I was back in my room, I took off my saddlebags and lab coat and then scratched at the spot on my belly where the girth strap made the button dig in, then I started looking through the things from the apartment until I found the hay-woman's calling card, and when I talked to her she said that she would have a bale of last-cut mixed clover and alfalfa for me, which was about all that she had left.

I hoped that Peggy wouldn't be mad that it wouldn't all fit in the box, not until I'd eaten some of it.

Then I packed up my things for astronomy class and the poetry book for lunch and then I put my saddlebags back on but left them a little bit loose, and reminded myself to be careful because I didn't want them to slide off me.

Trevor had beaten me to the table, so after I'd picked my food I got out my poetry book and he started looking through it to see what looked interesting. And then Cedric and Leon arrived, and Leon let out a big groan when he saw the book but he didn't mean it.

Cedric thanked me again for telling him about the airshow and said that he'd had a real good time there. Leon said that they'd had to stay at a bad hotel, though, and I felt bad until Cedric said that Leon's idea of a crappy hotel was one that wasn't internationally known, and that had rooms which were smaller than a tennis court. Leon said that he needed space to stretch out.

He was kind of impressed with the booth we'd gotten to watch from, though, 'cause he said that private box seats were really expensive, and wondered who'd paid for it. I said that I didn't know—Mister Salvatore had made the arrangements, but I figured that the tornado team had already gotten permission to use it, and we just joined them later.

Then he said that he'd invited Aquamarine to come to the homecoming football game, which was in a couple of Fridays, and than said the day after there was a dance in Old Wells and it would be fun if I came, too. He said it was for everyone, not just football players.

Trevor gave the book to Leon, and he pointed to a poem, and Leon kind of scowled, but then he got a smile, and he started to read it. It was called A Friendly Game of Football, and even though it was about a different kind of football, he thought it was pretty funny, especially at the end.

There was just enough time for one more poem, and Trevor said that Leon could pick it, since he'd read that one, so he turned through the book until he found one he liked and he gave it to Cedric. And the poem was called Cleaning Up, and it was about sluicing for gold, but Leon said that he'd picked it just for the first line.

It would have been fun to stay and read some more poems, but I had to go to astronomy, so I took my book back and went to the Dow building and sat down next to Anna.

Professor Miller taught us that there was another way to find planets by transits, which is where a planet goes in front of its sun, and how it could be seen because when the planet crossed in front of its star it blocked a little bit of light. And she told us about the first one they'd proven that way, which they knew was there because of the Doppler method, but this was another kind of way of finding them or proving that they were there and the other measurements were correct.

But she said that didn't work on everything because you had to be exactly edge-on to the orbit of the planet you were looking for, and she said that there was a new satellite that was going to be launched soon which was going to be looking for that.

And she said that the exciting thing about that was that the radial velocity was really hard to measure, and took very special equipment, but that anybody with a decent telescope could find them, although it worked most efficiently when you could look at a lot of stars at once, and so they used the Hubble Space Telescope for that, and they predicted thirty but didn't find any, and so she explained how it turned out in star clusters (which was what they looked at) didn't usually have planets in regular orbits, because all the stars were so close together that they wrecked the orbits.

Everyone learned from their mistake, though, so next time they picked better stars and they found sixteen. And she showed us a picture of where it had looked, and there were so many stars! It was more stars than empty space, and I was hoping that maybe we'd get to look through a telescope and find that, because I'd never seen that many stars in one place before.

I couldn't help myself and when we got out of class, I looked up for stars but of course there were none to be seen since it was the middle of the day.

It was a nice afternoon and I didn't feel like being cooped up in my dorm room, so I unstrapped my saddlebags and sat on the grass under a tree, and did my astronomy homework there. This time there was hardly any wind at all, so I didn't have to worry about my homework blowing away.

I'd gotten to the third problem when I saw Anna walking across the quad and she saw me, too, so she came over and sat down next to me, with her back against the tree. And she had a big pad of paper for drawing, and she got out a pen and started making sketches, and when she'd finished each one she'd show them to me. They were all imaginary creatures called elves, which were slender and had pointy ears like Vulcans.

I left to go up to my room and get my Bible, then I came back and read Matthew, and after a while Reese showed up, too, and he sat down beside us and read his book.

I learned how Jesus went around and taught people wisdom, and how He healed the sick and cast out demons, which was really nice of Him. And He also even raised the dead, which I didn't think was a very smart thing to do. I'd heard stories about what happens to unicorns who try that.

And He got eight more disciples, and He taught them how to heal people, too, and how to teach people wisdom.

But the scribes and Pharisees didn't like that, and neither did Herod, who was a bad man, and they kept asking Jesus questions and hoping that He would say the wrong thing. And Matthew said that Jesus fed an entire crowd of people who had come to listen to Him speak, with only a few loaves of bread and a few fish and when they had all eaten there was more left over than when they'd started.

And more and more people followed Jesus, because of all the good things He was doing for them.

I could probably have finished Matthew, but Anna and Reese were packing their things away so that they could go to dinner, and I kinda didn't want to put my saddlebags back on, but I thought it would be a little bit rude to leave them to go to my room, so I wore them to dinner.

Just like Christine had predicted, Sean kept talking about how great the Star Trek movie had been, although not to the point that it was annoying. And he said that I needed to watch it, and so I said that I would but I didn't know when. He told me he could get it on Netflix whenever he wanted.

Peggy grumbled about her art class a little bit and said it was hard to believe that it was only Tuesday; it felt later than that. And everyone except for me agreed that the cooks couldn't make a proper meatloaf, but then they started arguing over whether a proper meatloaf had oats in it or if you should use catsup, and it sounded like one of those things that everybody had a different way to make, and maybe they were all right.

When I got back to my room, I was really glad to finally shed my saddlebags. They weren't fun to wear all day, although I had taken them off a couple of times. Some ponies had bags that were sort of like my camelback, and I'd tried one once but it got in the way of my wings, so it wasn't very practical.

So I brushed out my coat where the girth strap had been, and then I went down the hall to Meghan's room.

Amy was at her desk studying, and Meghan said that since it was a nice day we'd ought to go walking or something, and I thought that was a good plan. I hadn't gotten all that much exercise yesterday or today anyway. So she said goodbye to Amy and then we went out and walked through downtown, and all the way to Southerland Park, which was along the river across from the railroad yard, and then we took the people-bridge across the river, which was right next to a train bridge that didn't connect to any tracks, and she saw all the cement foundations with trees growing up through them and said that this had once been a paper mill, but it got torn down a long time ago. And she said that the soil under it was probably still kind of toxic and I should never eat any plants that grew in a place like this, because chemicals might have leached up into them.

We stayed on the trail until it got to the 96 Road and then turned around, and decided that we wanted to explore the foundations. We probably weren't supposed to, because there was a fence, but there was also a big hole in the fence. There really wasn't anything to see besides broken concrete and trees, but it was still fun, because there was always the chance that we would find something interesting.

And then when we were walking back I told her about the railroad bridge that went nowhere, and so she wanted to go over that, too. It was kind of scary for her because there were a couple of places where the crossties were missing, and she couldn’t just fly over them like I could. We both had to watch our footing, though, because we could slip between them and get hurt or get trapped.

There was just a big fence on the other side, and I flew up to look over it and it was another big yard full of broken cars.

Then we went back to the trail and crossed over the proper bridge, and went back through town again, and she wanted to stop at McDonald's which was right by the railroad tracks so that she could get something to drink, because she hadn't thought to bring her backpack with her. I was kind of thirsty, too, so we sat down and I had a milkshake, which was okay but it tasted a little bit wrong, sort of like the soft ice cream that the college has.

It was starting to get dark when we finally got back to campus, and Meghan said it was too bad that there weren't any rooms where we could have some alone time together.

I said that I could ask Peggy if we could use our room again, but Meghan thought that was kind of mean to kick her out like that. She thought it was nice if she offered, but that it wasn't polite to ask.

So we sat down under a tree, and just relaxed for a little while, until she said that she was getting a bit chilly, because all she had was a t-shirt.

So the two of us went back to her dorm, and since Amy was still studying we had to be quiet so that we wouldn't bother her.

Meghan said that we could watch a short movie on her computer before we went to bed, and she said that she had some earbuds and if I wore one and she wore the other, that wouldn't bother Amy. So she unfolded her computer, and while it was starting the two of us lay down side-by-side on our bellies, so that the earbuds could reach both of us.

We looked through all the choices that Netflix had to try and find something fun to watch. I saw the Star Trek movie listed as a new movie and I bet Sean would be mad if I watched it with Meghan.

Well, there were a whole lot of choices and it was really hard to decide on one, but we finally decided on Shrek. I thought Donkey was pretty silly most of the time, but every now and then he said something really smart, plus he was really loyal to Shrek. And Farquaad was a jerk, and deserved to be eaten by a dragon.

Meghan said that her favorite scene was when Princess Fiona fought all of Robin Hood's merry men, and that was pretty funny. Although if she was that good at fighting all along, I don't know why she didn't fight the dragon in the first place.

Meghan told me that fairy tales didn't work like that, and that she was cursed to be unable to leave the dragon until a prince rescued her, and I thought that was a silly curse, but I guess that she didn't have a choice.

My ear felt a little bit weird from having the earbud in it, so I kind of twitched it for a little while and Meghan thought that was really funny.

Amy was still studying—she was completely focused in the book she was reading and every now and then she'd mark something with a bright yellow marker. Meghan got out of bed to put her computer away and then asked Amy if it was okay to turn off the lights in the room, and she said it was.

Meghan went to the bathroom to put on her sleeping clothes, and then she got in bed next to the wall, and after she had turned on the alarm on her telephone I got in bed with her, and she curled up with her arm over my back and her head pressed against my cheek.