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// October 18 [Relativities] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
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October 18

I woke up Aric by climbing on top of him and he said that I was eager this morning, and I told him that I'd get off if he didn't want to, and he kissed my muzzle and said that he did. And I laid on top of him for a little while after we'd finished and he ran his fingers along my wings and kissed me, and asked if I was going to go flying, and I told him that I was but we could snuggle a little bit more because it was hardly even light out yet, since the days were getting shorter.

I got dressed and then kissed Aric one more time before I went out his window. Instead of going straight for the bird feeder, I went up and landed on the roof and I waited until I saw him stick his head out the window and look around to see where I'd gone, but he didn't think to look straight up. And then when he pulled his head back in, I dove off the roof and got to the bird feeder and was happily chewing on sunflower seeds when he realized, but he hadn't thought to grab a sock, and I was back in the air before he had any ammunition. He didn't bother to throw, 'cause he knew I could dodge it.

So I stuck my tongue out at him and flew over top of his house, and then called the airplane directors to let them know that I was in the air. I probably should have said so before I actually started flying, but I was pretty low to the trees and I didn't see any airplanes around.

The grumpy man said that I could fly to the Nature Center, but to keep low, and so I skimmed over the trees and I took a more westerly course, and circled around one of the dirt mines, because their bucket tractor was driving around making a dirt pile and that was kind of fun to watch, even if I didn't know the purpose of it.

I waved at the tractor before I flew off, and then I continued on my way.

I landed next to the pond, 'cause it was pretty easy to find now that I knew where it was, and I didn't have to worry about scaring the deer off. I did make a bunch of frogs jump in, 'cause they're not so smart and think that anything that's bigger than them is a threat. They're too slimy and too quick to catch, anyway, although I've heard that some Prench ponies think they're a delicacy.

The duckweed on the pond was kinda tasty, and if it hadn't been against the rules I might have landed and had a little bit of it, but I guess that was another thing that the deer got to eat that I didn't.

I did one whole lap of the trail at a trot, then I picked up speed and cantered for a little bit. When I got close to the pond, I could hear lots of splashes as frogs jumped in, and I thought about slowing down and waiting once I got past the pond until I heard them croaking again and then galloping at them to flush them back into the water, but that would be kind of mean, so I didn't.

I slowed down when I got close to the tunnel, and this time instead of flying through it, I trotted through, and my hooves made weird echoes up and down the tunnel.

When I was on the other side, I went up to a short gallop, and when I got to the junction near my normal trail, I lifted off and climbed up to the tops of the trees, then went over them and flew above the railroad tracks.

A couple of the deer looked up at me, then they put their heads back down to their breakfast, and I turned my attention back forward, and followed the tracks until I was close to the 131 Bus Highway, and then I flew a direct route back to campus.

I landed on the boardwalk and went upstairs to my room and got undressed and made sure Peggy was awake, then I went off to the shower, and when I was done, I first took my flight vest downstairs to put it in the washing machine, because nobody got up early to do laundry.

I went back up to my room and preened my wings, and then scratched a couple of loose downy feathers off from the underside of my wings, along my barrel. Those ones were the most annoying when they grew back in, 'cause they'd kind of poke at me and I had to sort of push them back when I tucked my wings in.

Then I got my lab coat on and struggled with the buttons until Peggy finally decided to help me. And I'd almost had it, but it kept slipping out of my mouth at the very last second.

She also put my mane in a ponytail for me, and then I put my lab goggles and notebook and textbook into my saddlebags while she got the rest of the way dressed.

We went to breakfast together and the waffle-maker was still broken and there were no omelets, either, so I got some scrambled eggs and a bagel to share with Anna. Sean wasn't at the breakfast table, and Christine said that he was sleeping in. I offered to go to his room and knock on the window on my way to lab, but she said that now wasn't the right time and asked me if I knew what a Super Soaker was. I didn't, but I kind of got the idea from the name.

Christine said it wasn't as mean as putting his hand in a bowl of warm water so he'd pee the bed, and Peggy asked her if that actually worked. She said that there was only one way to find out.

Meghan said that when she was at Camp Kinawind, one of the girls in her cabin said she'd done it to a cabinmate the year before and it worked, but she'd never tried it herself. And Reese said he knew a guy who was in Boy Scouts who swore it worked, and pranked all the Tenderfeet like that at every summer camp.

I didn't think it would work on ponies, 'cause I couldn't imagine how getting my hoof wet would make me want to pee, and Peggy and Christine looked at each other and I could guess what they were planning on trying.

Since my flight vest was in the washing machine, I had to leave breakfast a little bit early so I could get it and I could have taken it back up to my room to air-dry, but I was feeling a little bit lazy, so I just put it in the dryer, and it would either be there when I got back or else somebody else who needed the dryer would put it on the table for me.

I went out the front door, 'cause that was closer to Dow, and I went down to the lab and set out my notebook and put my goggles on my forehead, then waited for Lisa to show up.

Our lab was about Gibbs Free Energy, and we had to do alchemy in a little calorimeter, and Lisa did a lot of the work because Professor Brown didn't think it would be safe for me to handle chemicals by mouth, which was disappointing. I didn't even get to stir our solutions, but I did get to record all the data.

After the lab was over, I went back to the dorm and got my flight vest out of the dryer, and then I had to walk up all the flights of stairs 'cause I couldn't fly with my lab coat on.

I don't know why but it was easier to get the buttons undone than it was to fasten them. Maybe it was because I'd only really practiced taking off Meghan and Aric's clothes and not putting them on. But it was a lot more fun to take them off.

Once I'd put away my clothes, I decided that I probably ought to wash my blanket, too, 'cause I hadn't done that in a while, so I took them all off the bed and went back down to the laundry room and luckily there was still an empty washing machine, so I put them in and tried not to get any laundry soap in my mouth when I added it in. And then I went back upstairs and started doing the lab calculations, and I'd finished most of them by lunchtime.

I flew down to the ground, and went in the back entrance which was kind of annoying because I had to use my plastic card to get in. And there weren't any dryers that were free anymore, but one of them had stopped so I took all the clothes out of it and piled them on the table, then put my blankets in, and I thought about trying to fold everything up but I wasn't very good at folding clothes and I'd probably do it wrong and ruin them.

Whoever owned them really liked Victoria's Secret, 'cause all the underwear and some of the shirts and pants said that on them. I didn't think it was much of a secret if you printed it on your clothes.

I trotted over to the dining hall and looked around to see what they'd had, but the bounty from the weekend had run out and nothing smelled all that appetizing. They had some more of the square fish, but I really didn't want to try them, so I just got a salad and thought about how next time I went to Meijer I was going to get a lot more anchovies, and I hoped that they'd have something better for dinner, and then I carried my tray over to Cedric and Leon and Trevor's table.

I told Leon that he was a really good dancer, and I hadn't expected that he would be. And he bowed his head and said that he'd taken dance lessons for years, and he even knew how to do ballet dancing. I thought Cedric was going to say something mean about that, but he just shrugged and said that you couldn't tackle a ballerina. Leon said that was true, that they were just like Weebles, and he thought it was part of the reason why he was so good as a wide receiver. He said that several football players had taken ballet to make them better, and he said that Cedric would benefit from it, too.

Cedric said the reason he didn't was that they didn't make ballet clothes in his size, and Leon told him that leotards were very stretchy, and once he tried one he'd want to wear it all the time.

Trevor found a poem for us, which was called Peter Simson's Farm, and he said that it reminded him of Aquamarine, and maybe Cedric could quote some of it to her next time he wrote her a letter. And so Cedric took the book and started reading the poem to us, and then he said it was kind of sad and melancholy in the end, and I thought no earth pony would stand for her farm to be destroyed by a bunch of pests. Not even a monster.

Before I went to Astronomy, I went back to the dorm and got my sheets, and I took them upstairs and made my bed.

Professor Miller started to teach us about relativity, which had both a special kind and a general kind. Special was for motion and general was for gravity. And in special relativity there was a special factor called gamma, and she gave us a formula for it, and it showed how you couldn't accelerate faster than the speed of light.

And she explained how when you stopped a photon of light, it disappeared because it didn't have any rest mass, and how when you went faster and faster, time slowed down but you had to go really, really fast for it to be noticeable.

So what it meant was that time and length didn't always stay the same, which some people had trouble believing, but it made sense to me. And someone asked her why the speed of light was what it was, and she said that was where physics turned into theology, because humans knew how it worked but not why it worked the way that it did.

There was magic that we didn't fully understand, so I didn't think humans should feel bad about not knowing everything.

At the end of class, she told us that she would be driving a van to the Nature Center tomorrow night so that we could look through the telescope and she said that it wasn't required but it was encouraged, and I really wanted to go so I hoped that Aric wouldn't be mad if I did, because it would probably mean I couldn't spend the night with him.

It was a really warm day, and when me and Anna walked across campus she noticed how many people were sitting out on the quad. She said that nice days in October were kind of rare, which I'd thought too, and she said that we ought to make the best of it, so she found a tree that hadn't been taken yet and got out her sketchbook, and I had to go to my room to get my Bible but I promised her that I'd be back.

And when I landed back next to her, she was really focused on her drawing, and I didn't think that she'd noticed me, but when she got done making a couple of lines, she reached out her hand and petted my mane a couple of times before she went back to her art.

I learned that Saul, who had been bad, got blinded by Jesus then healed by Him, and turned into a disciple, and Peter went and raised a woman from the dead, and then a centurion looked for him, and Peter baptized him. That made the other apostles angry, but Peter said that it was what God wanted, and then they understood.

Herod put Peter in prison, but an angel got Peter out of prison and then struck Herod and he fell down and got eaten by worms.

And the whole rest of Acts was mostly about all the places that Paul and his friends went and how more and more people were following them but also other people were angry with them and tried to get them in trouble, and it was kind of like an adventure story. So it turned out that I was the one who got lost in my work, 'cause when I'd finished up Acts, I closed my Bible and was surprised to see that she'd finished her drawing and started on another one.

When it was dinnertime, she showed me her drawings before she put them away—one of them was a dragon, and it looked pretty fierce, and the other one I didn't know and she said it was a Nixie, which is a human breezie. And since she had room, she said that she could carry my Bible for me, too, so I wouldn't have to take it back to my room.

I looked around, but there wasn't any good fish for dinner, either. So I decided to get pizza instead because they had some that smelled really good. And while I was getting a slice, Sean saw the pizzas and took four pieces for himself. And then he said that he was sad that I hadn't seen Star Trek yet, and my ears fell and I told him that I was sorry but I just couldn't seem to find the time.

So Sean mentioned it when we got to the table, and Christine said that we could watch it in her room sometime, but I didn't know when. I didn't like watching movies when it was still light outside. Maybe if we got back from our astronomy field trip early enough, I could watch it tomorrow night.

After dinner, I flew over to Aric's house so that I could tell him that I wasn't coming over Wednesday night because of the field trip but because I didn't have any classes on Friday I could come over on Thursday night and I asked him if he minded if Meghan came too, if she wanted to. And he said that would be all right.

I said that I was going to spend the night with her, and he told me to have fun, then we kissed and when I went to the front door he told me I wasn't going to fool him again by hiding on the roof to get sunflower seeds. I said we'd find out, and took off back for campus.

I flew up to Meghan's window and peeked inside, and she was sitting on her bed reading a book, so I knocked on the window and she turned around and saw me and opened the window and asked what I was doing outside and I said that I'd come in, so I flew around to the boardwalk and landed and went down the hallway to her room.

Since I'd gotten all my homework done, I could afford to be lazy, but she hadn't gotten hers done yet and she said that maybe she could do it in the morning after I went out flying, and I told her it was bad to wait until the last minute, and insisted that she keep reading her book until she was done, and I'd just stretch out on the bed next to her.

And she held her book with one hand and ran her other through my mane and along my back and it felt really good and I must have dozed off, because all of a sudden I felt her really shift around on the bed and I stuck my head back up and it was dark outside.

She said that she was done with her homework now and ready for bed, so she went to the bathroom and put on her sleeping clothes, and Amy turned on the bendy light on her desk and turned off the lights in the room.

Meghan got in bed next to the wall and I snuggled up next to her, and when she was sure that I was between her and Amy, and that the covers were over both of us, she pulled her shirt most of the way up, and I put my wing across her bare stomach, and rested my chin on her shoulder.