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// October 13 [Kings] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
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 October 13

I woke up a little bit early and I was a bit sore from last night, but in a good way. And I snuggled up to Aric and kissed his chest and then put my head down on his chest and dozed for a little bit, until he started to wake up, and then I perked my ears back up and kissed my way down his belly and under the covers and that woke him all the way up.

He didn't let me finish, 'cause he said that it wasn't fair to have me do all the work, and he used his hands until I was really close, and then I finally got up on top of him and we tried to stretch it out as long as we could.

We stayed in bed a little while longer before going down to breakfast. Aric had oatmeal so we made that and I was kind of hoping that Angela would come upstairs and cook eggs for us, too, but she didn't. Still, it was nice to be by ourselves, too.

I helped him wash the dishes once we were done eating, and then he kissed me and said that it looked like a good day for flying, and to let him know what the plan for the weekend was. He said that he'd let people or ponies come here if they wanted, and maybe we could even have a party one night, which I thought would be fun.

I had to go upstairs to put on my flight gear, 'cause it was still in his room, and he helped me dress, and then I kissed him goodbye and flew out his window.

On my way through the yard, I stopped at the birdfeeder, because I think he'd be sad if I didn't. And I dodged the sock that he threw at me, and I tried to throw it back but I missed and I had to fly over to the house and pick it up, and then as I went by his window I just threw it in and kept climbing.

Since I had the rest of the morning free, I thought I'd go on a little bit longer flight than usual, but not too long so that I would have time to read Mark. So the best way to go for medium flights was west, because that got me out of the way of airplanes the quickest, and I decided that I'd go out towards Mattewan and then follow Stadium Drive on the way back and maybe stop at the Doughnut Mill to get a doughnut.

So I got permission from Dori, and I kept low until after I'd crossed the 131 Highway. I'd gone almost due west, just to get there quicker, and I turned a little bit to the south as I climbed. I couldn't see Mattewan yet, but once I got a little bit higher it would be really easy to follow the path of the 94 Highway and then I'd be able to see familiar landmarks.

I hadn't even gotten high enough to see Mattewan yet when I saw the railroad tracks, and those ran right by it, and I knew from following them before that they ran nearly straight all the way there, and it was a little bit lazier to follow them than to look for landmarks, but any smart mare knew that there were some landmarks that were almost permanent and others that were bad to follow because they could change easily. Railroad tracks did not change very easily, so it was okay to follow them.

And I might get to see an Amtrak whizzing past me and that was always fun.

I stayed just to the west of them, and after a little while I could see the red sign with the white S poking above the trees, so I angled off just a bit more to the west to line up with it, and when I got closer I thought that it was such a good landmark, that it deserved some love, so I started descending, keeping it directly in front of me, and when I got there I was just a little bit above it and it was not difficult at all to flare and land right on top.

The top of the sign was kind of narrow, so it wasn't the best place to stand, but if I kept my wings out a little bit for balance it wasn't bad at all, and it was a great place to look around, just the kind of place a bird might like, too.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to land on it—I knew I wasn't allowed to land on buildings off-campus without permission, but nobody had said anything about signs, so it was probably okay. Just the same, after I'd rested for a couple minutes, I took off again.

I picked up altitude over the 94 Highway, and then when it crossed the railroad tracks, I followed them instead, until they crossed Stadium Highway, and then I followed that.

Even if I hadn't had to descend before crossing the 131 Highway, I would have had to anyways to get my doughnut, so I dropped down and when I was close enough to spot the Doughnut Mill, I angled straight for it, and landed in their parking lot.

I thought it would be kind of greedy for me to just get a doughnut for myself, so I bought one for Peggy, too, and I had them put them into two different bags because the pockets on my camelback weren't big enough for both in one pocket without squishing them.

I was kinda hungry on the way back, just because I'd gotten the smell of fresh doughnuts in my nose and I knew that I had them in my camelback, and I kind of wanted to land and eat one but I resisted the urge. And I went back inside and up to our room.

I'd forgotten if Peggy got up early on Thursdays, and so I didn't know for sure if she'd be there or not. I felt like a bad roommate for not remembering.

She was, and she had gotten out of bed but not put on any of her daytime clothes or taken a shower yet. She was looking at her Facebook and was kind of surprised when I came in, and she said she was sorry for not wearing any pants.

I said I had doughnuts, and so she turned around and I gave her one, and they had gotten a little bit squished but tasted just fine.

She told me that the king of Thailand had died, and that was sad, even though I didn't know where Thailand was. She told me he had been the king for over seventy years, and I couldn't imagine what it would be like for him to suddenly be gone.

When we were done eating, she asked if I was going to go into the shower right away, and I said that I could wait for her if she needed to use it, but she said that I'd better because my coat was still pretty damp.

I said that it was drying off, and it didn't bother me, but she insisted that I go first, so I got my shampoo and conditioner and went into the bathroom, and I had to wait a little bit for Ruth to finish and then I went in. I tried to be quick, 'cause I felt bad that Peggy was waiting for me.

And when I got back to my room, she went in the shower while I groomed myself and preened my wings. I lost a couple of feathers on the other side, but not the one I'd nipped off for Aric.

I got my Bible and sat in the papasan chair and started reading it while Peggy was in the shower. Mark was a lot like Matthew, but much shorter. He just described what had happened in one or two paragraphs, which kind of made it easier to follow. And I learned that Jesus didn't always listen to His mother, who was worried that if He broke God's laws, they'd hurt Him, even though He had said that the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath. And it said that when He talked to lots of people, He used parables, but He explained it to his disciples so that they would understand exactly what He was saying.

And He told his disciples how it didn't matter what went in them but what came out of them, and said that that meant that the rules about what you could eat from the Old Testament didn't matter any more, and that if you stopped people from coming to Him, you would be better off drowning yourself with a millstone around your neck.

So it was mostly all the same as Matthew but a lot shorter, and it kind of made more sense, but I wasn't sure if that was because I knew from Matthew most of what happened, or if it was because it wasn't as detailed and easier to follow.

Me and Peggy walked to lunch together, even though I was going to be sitting with Leon and Cedric and Trevor. And when I got there everybody was kind of in a more lighthearted mood, 'cause for them and me mid-terms were over. So Leon and Cedric talked a little bit about the game, and Cedric said that Aquamarine and Jenny were planning on driving out after their classes on Friday, which should get them here in plenty of time for the game but they weren't really sure where Jenny could sleep, and so I said that she and Peggy had seemed to get along, so she could use my bed and I'd find somewhere else.

Cedric held out his fist and I bumped it with my hoof, and then Leon did too so he wouldn't feel left out.

Leon asked me if I'd heard about the king of Thailand dying, and I said that I had, 'cause Peggy had told me since she'd seen it on Facebook, and Cedric pointed to Leon and said that he listened to NPR in the morning, and Leon said that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone that because the brothers didn't listen to talk radio, and then Cedric said that he even had a membership, and a signed picture of Cokie Roberts and he said that it was Ophira Eisenberg, and he'd met her and her husband once.

And he told Cedric that if anybody else found out he'd probably be laughed off the football team, but I didn't see why if that was something he was interested in. Unless football players weren't supposed to know what a NPR was.

Trevor said that he'd seen a poem that was appropriate for the day when he was looking through the book before, and it was called The Old Whim Horse.

Cedric read through it and it was really sad. I thought about my great-grandmare and how even when she was too weak to get out of bed anymore, her ears perked whenever a storm rolled off the sea, and I saw Leon wiping his eyes. He said he'd gotten a little bit of dirt in them, but he wasn't fooling anyone, and when we got up to take our trays back, I gave him a hug.

Professor Miller told us more about black holes, and she said that astronomers think about the Ideal Gas Law in terms of density, which was something that Professor Brown hadn't taught us, but she also told us how the laws of thermodynamics said that things went from hot places to cold places and Professor Brown had said that.

And then she told us about how stars die when they run out of fuel, different things happen, and the human sun would turn into a very dense broken thing that had lost all of its electrons, and if it was bigger than our sun and died, it would turn into a black hole.

She told us more about how light couldn't get outside of it and reminded us of the formula for the escape velocity, and the edge of the black hole where the speed of light was equal to the escape velocity was called the event horizon. And she said that black holes were kind of holes in the universe.

It was kind of weird to wrap my head around, because things became strange inside the event horizon, and you could move through time just like you'd move through space, but she said that you couldn't get back out again.

And she started to teach us about relativity, and how time was the fourth dimension, and I wondered if she knew about unicorn spells that let you move through time, although usually bad things happened when ponies tried it.

She finished up by telling us that we'd be learning about special and general relativity next.

Me and Anna walked out of class together and I'd kind of felt that there was a lot in the class that I didn't know because ponies hadn't studied the sky as well as humans, but there was a lot she didn't know, either, so I guess at the end we were both equally confused, but in different ways.

When I got back to my room, I told Peggy that I'd told Cedric that Jenny could have my bed for the weekend, and I'd just find someplace else to sleep, and she said that was okay. And I also told her that Aric had said that we could have a party at his house, and she thought that sounded like fun, too, and wanted to know if he was coming to the football game, and I said that I thought he was. And she asked if I was going to the homecoming dance, and I said I would, and she said that she was going to try and hook up with someone for at least one night of fun, 'cause it had been too long.

So then I thought that maybe she'd want our room to herself, and she said that she'd rather go over to his room, 'cause that way she could get a better idea of who he was by what he had and it would give her a chance for second thoughts, but if she changed her mind she'd let me know and she was sure that Jenny would understand if we had to change plans a little bit.

When it was time, I went over to Stetson Chapel to talk to Pastor Liz.

We talked about Mark, and she said that scholars believed that it was the oldest gospel, and probably the most accurate. She said that nothing that was the same in Matthew and Luke didn't also appear in Mark, and she asked me what I thought about it so far.

And it was kind of hard to remember everything that I'd read before and where it was, but I thought that Jesus was making the rules simpler for people, and He was also doing lots of good things for them like healing them, but I was kind of wondering if I'd find out later that God was sort of mad at Jesus for telling people that they didn't have to follow all of His rules anymore. And she said that she didn't think that was the case because God wouldn't have sent Him if He hadn't been speaking for God, and I guess that was true.

I said that I also liked how Jesus kept telling people to do good things, that it wasn't enough to just make offerings at the temple any more, and she said that was one of the most important messages of Christianity and one that some people forgot.

After we were done talking, I went down the quad to fighting practice, and when we warmed up, Karla wanted to pair me with other people just for the fun of it, so I got to fight with Keith and also Seth, and they both had different styles. Keith was sometimes a little bit hesitant, and I thought that maybe if you knew that you could use it to your advantage, and get in while he was deciding if he wanted to commit or not. And Seth was kind of the opposite, he went straight in, and maybe you could use that, too, and fake him out with an attack and then get him when he responded to the wrong threat.

It was a lot harder to figure out when you had a lot of people or ponies fighting, because when they were all together they kind of had a group strategy and if you spent time trying to decide what anyone was likely to do, someone else would kill you. But when it was only two, you could figure it out, and I wondered if either of them were trying to decide my weaknesses when I fought. If they were smart, they were.

Then Karla said that she had a special surprise in the trunk of her car, and brought out a bunch of foam weapons and said that we could play with them and nobody would get hurt.

She underestimated us.

By the time we were done, most of the weapons had gotten broken, and we all had bruises. We'd stayed on our teams, at least, but it wasn't really clear who had won, if anybody had. And the weapons hadn't been up to the challenge. Karla said that was because they were meant for kids and while we might have acted like children, we were still stronger than her swords.

And we all felt kind of bad for breaking them, but she said we shouldn't, and she hoped that we'd all gotten the fight out of us, and de-stressed from our exams, and everyone nodded and said that it had been lots of fun and by next week most of the bruises would be healed.

I had a stiff wing from a hit to the side of the body, and Seth had gotten me in the backside hard enough to break his sword in two places. And I felt bad about bucking him in response, but he'd been wearing some of his armor, and he said that it hadn't hurt too much, and anyways it was kind of an instinctive response, and he shouldn't have been that close.

The best way to deal with my wing was to fly back to Trowbridge and see how well it worked. It was a little bit painful, but I could fly like that and it wasn’t the worst wing injury I'd had. I just had to remember to not trust it when I was too close to something to recover, and I'd be fine. And probably in a couple of days it would just be a little bit annoying, or I'd be used to it. I didn't think it was going to bother me as much as my leg had.

I hadn't done my lab work, and so I spent the rest of the evening figuring it out so that me and Lisa could go over it tomorrow, and then I stretched my wings a couple of times and got in bed and it took a little while for me to find a comfortable position, because I had a lot of other bruises, too, which I hadn't really noticed until I stretched out in bed.