November 10
We'd stayed up too late last night and so everyone woke up a little bit later than we should have. Meghan said that she couldn't stay for too long because she had some things that she had to do before class, and she said that she could walk back herself if me and Aric wanted to have some fun, but I thought it would be better to include her and Aric said that he'd give her a ride, and she asked if he meant a ride to campus and he said that he would do that, too.
That was a nice way to start the morning, and then while they were getting dressed I went downstairs and started coffee for them, and for me, too, and even though Meghan was on a kind of tight schedule, we had five minutes to enjoy our coffee before Aric drove me and her back to campus.
I got in my flight gear and I couldn't decide if I should go to the Nature Center or go on a longer flight instead. There had never been anyone there who had given me any trouble, but I was still thinking about what Mister Salvatore had said, and I was safer in the air 'cause people couldn't get me when I was in the sky, and I thought it would be good to exercise my wings, anyways, so I had to pick a direction, too, and this time I was gonna fly into the sunrise, even if it meant I had to talk to the airplane directors in Battle Creek.
So I got permission to fly and I had to stay low until I got to Galesburg and then I was probably gonna have to go down in Augusta, too, but maybe not. I wouldn't know until I asked. And when I had my permission from the airplane directors, I also sent a telephone telegram to Mister Salvatore so he would know where I was going, too.
I took off and followed Main Street through town until I got to the railroad bridge, and then flew over the tracks and followed them east.
My watch said that I was at five hundred feet and that was a good altitude, because I was well clear of electrical wires but also lower than airplanes were supposed to go.
I was over Galesburg when I saw the sun poking above the distant horizon, and I glided along so that I could enjoy it. That also made it last a little bit longer, 'cause I was losing altitude while I glided, but I had enough to spend on a sunrise without being in any danger.
Then I climbed up a bit higher, cresting at a thousand feet, and then I thought that I'd call the Battle Creek airplane directors before I got too close, so I could plan what I wanted to do. And my watch was smart and knew what frequency they were on, and I called them and told them that I was following the railroad tracks, and they said that I could continue on my course but to hold my altitude until I was at the 194 Highway, and to let them know when I got close and they'd decide what to do with me then.
I wasn't quite sure how far I'd go before I crossed it, although I'd been over it before when I'd followed the 94 Highway to Battle Creek. And I was thinking that maybe when I got there I could follow it south to the 94 Highway and then follow that back to Kalamazoo, but I'd decide how I felt when I got there, 'cause it might be a longer way back.
There were some other airplanes talking, and so I listened carefully to find out where they were. Some of them wanted to land at the airport and so that meant that they might be crossing my path, so I'd have to keep a good watch.
I was getting close to the end of the runway when I heard them tell a FedEx airplane that it could fly, and those were big airplanes, so I looked down the runway and saw it lined up and pointing in my direction, and I watched it take off and at first it was kind of slow and then it started to get bigger and closer really fast and I thought for sure it was going to hit me, so I went into a panic dive, and I'd lost almost half my altitude when it roared over my head.
I think it looked closer than it was, just because it was so big and powerful, and I'd just started to climb again when its wake hit me and tumbled me in the air, and when I'd gotten level again I swore at it even though it couldn't hear me. And then I looked down the runway just to make sure that there weren't any more of them that wanted to take off before I started to climb again.
The 194 Highway was pretty obvious, and when I looked off to my right, I could see the 94 Highway as well, so I decided that I'd go back that way, and called the Battle Creek airplane directors to tell them.
And I didn't follow over it exactly, but made a big, broad curve over the highway that had me flying back west by the time I was over the 94 Highway.
It was kind of fun watching the cars and trucks go by underneath me, and I played the game again where I tried to see how long I could follow a particular one with my eyes before I lost clear sight of it.
From my altitude, I could see past the minor bends in the road, so I could keep track of them pretty far, and I'd usually wind up losing them when I looked around to see something on the ground or make sure that there weren't any other airplanes trying to sneak up on me or fly over my head and knock me out of the air.
And when I was looking down I saw a black car that was going east cross out of its lane without looking to see if there were any cars next to it, and the two of them bumped into each other, and then the black car turned too far and went sideways with a loud screeching of its tires.
The other cars around it, who had been paying better attention, darted around it to either side if they could or just stopped where they were at, and I wasn't sure who I should tell. I'd never tried using my portable telephone while I was flying, and I thought I'd probably drop it if I did, and I didn't think I should tell the airplane directors, either, because they had a lot of airplanes that they were directing and cars weren't their responsibility. And the people down there probably had portable telephones of their own and knew who they were supposed to call.
Traffic was slowing down in the east lanes faster than I was flying, so it was kind of odd to see the line of traffic in front of me stopping, and it took a while before I got past where it was slowing down and stopping, but by the time I got to Galesburg it was moving at the normal speed again.
I could see Morrow Lake off to my right, and when I got to the western end of it, where the dam was, I turned off the highway and took a straighter path back to campus, 'cause I was starting to get tired. At least all the water I drank while I was flying made me get lighter.
I remembered to call Dori when I was crossing towards Comstock, and just to be safe I dropped down to five hundred feet. And she said that there weren't any airplanes that were taking off any time soon, and I complained about the one that had flown over my head in Battle Creek and she asked if I wanted her to call them and yell at them, and I said that she probably shouldn't. I didn't think that they'd done it on purpose, and I'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
By the time I finally landed on the boardwalk, my wings were aching and my camelback was completely empty. I hadn't been as careful about conserving water as I had been when I flew across Lake Michigan, 'cause I hadn't really thought about how far I was flying, but I bet it had been almost fifty miles. And my winter coat growing in along with some missing feathers hadn't helped, either.
At least there was no one in the shower, so I could get right in and rinse myself off with cold water, and I only warmed it up a bit when I was ready to use soap, 'cause it worked better in warmer water. Humans don't have a lot of cold-water soap, 'cause they like to take warm showers, which are nice for relaxing muscles but don't help for cooling down.
I shook myself off and then went back to my room to brush my coat and preen my wings, and I had enough time to do a good job, then I put my Ogden Nash book and my astronomy book in my saddlebags and went to lunch.
Cedric was really looking forward to Aquamarine coming, and he told me that her helpers were bringing her because Jenny was busy for the weekend, and I thought that was really nice of them.
I asked if they thought that they were going to win, and Cedric said with Aquamarine watching he'd play his very best, and Leon said with me cheering them on, he would play his best, too, and that since they were the two greatest players on the football team, that was all it would take to win.
Trevor said that they were being too cocky, and Leon said that Albion had had a terrible season, and if they didn't win against them, then they might as well hang up their helmets and give up.
I got out my poetry book but Cedric held up his hand and said that I was bringing poetry to them and now it was their turn to do it for me, and he said that the two of them had chosen poems on their own that they liked, and they were going to read them for me.
So Leon read his poem first, and it was called A Psalm of Life, and at first it was kind of depressing but then it got a lot more hopeful, and Leon said that his father had a framed copy of the poem above his desk at work, because it had been his grandfather's favorite poem, and I thought that that was really nice that a poem could be passed down through generations like that.
And then Cedric said that he'd had picked one by Leonard Cohen, who he said had died just a couple of days ago. It was called The Ballad of the Absent Mare, and it was really sweet. He said that it was actually a song, and he wasn't sure if it counted, but I thought that it did, and I said that he should read it for Aquamarine because I thought she'd really like it, too.
Then I went around the table and I hugged Cedric first, and Leon said that when people saw they were going to think that the best players on the football team had turned into sissies, and then he leaned down and hugged me anyway.
Cedric walked with me to return my tray and dishes to the kitchen, and he offered to carry it, too, but I said that I would. And he said that maybe he was getting sentimental, but he was going to miss our poetry days and I said that I was going to, as well.
I beat Anna to class, and I sat down in my usual seat and I'd already gotten out my notebook and opened it to a blank page before she arrived.
Professor Miller reminded us again that we were going to meet to go to the Nature Center and look through telescopes, and then she told us more about how the universe was expanding and that it meant that in the past it was denser and hotter.
And she said that in theory you could find that out by looking at things that were very, very far away, because they should look different since it took so long for the light to get to us. And the first thing that they found that helped people figure it out were called quasars, which were supermassive black holes that were moving away very quickly.
She also told us how galaxies from then were different than now, and our telescopes had gotten good enough that humans could see them.
Professor Miller told us that we could figure out how old the universe was from what astronomers could see, and it could be measured like you could figure out how long you'd been in a train if you knew how fast it was going and how far it had gone, but she said that it also turned out that Hubble's Law described it, and it was about seventeen billion years old, and that humans had found stars that were between twelve and thirteen billion years old.
And then she told us that the end of the universe could be that it fell back in on itself, and that could only happen if it weighed enough and it turned out that it was really close to that weight, which was called the critical density.
So they had to measure what the average density was, and you could figure out how much mass it took to make a certain amount of light, or you could also measure orbits because that could give you the mass of it.
Neither of those calculations gave good answers, though, so astronomers started calling it dark matter, and she said that she was going to tell us more about that in our next class.
I was too tired to fly around even though it was a nice clear day, and so I read some more of my World War One book, even though I really didn't want to, 'cause I knew it would make me sad.
Germany knew that they would lose a war of attrition, so they used their submarines to blockade Britain, trying to starve them, and Germany told Mexico to go to war with America, but they didn't. Food was running out in Russia, and the Tsar fled, and then America decided to join the war, but the German blockade was working.
In the sky, the early airplanes were scouting around like pegasuses would, and other airplanes were trying to shoot them down, and the air war got so bad in one month it was called Bloody April, and that was also the same month that the German submarines were sinking seventeen ships a day.
French soldiers started to refuse to fight, but Greece decided to join the war. And the Russians gave up, too, and ships started to move in convoys with warships to keep them safe from submarines.
The German Chancellor considered a peace treaty, but the army said that he couldn't and kept on fighting. And Italy and Austria-Hungary fought the eleventh battle of Isonzo until everyone got tired, and I thought that they should have given up long before.
A bunch of countries who weren't fighting yet all declared war on Germany just because of the submarine attacks or because they thought that the Allies were going to win. And the British got Jerusalem, but the Italian front collapsed and Lenin took power in Russia and the United States hadn't sent anyone to fight yet, so it looked like the Allies might lose.
And then the British sent a whole battalion of tanks in and they made a big advance and then broke or were destroyed, and the Germans pushed them back.
Finland declared independence from Russia, and then Romania and Russia signed an armistice, which meant that they weren't going to fight anymore.
They were the smart ones, I thought, and anyone else who wanted to fight was dumb. I didn't understand how humans could be so clever about lots of things and so dumb about other stuff. They needed to think more about making friends, and if Princess Twilight had been there I think she would have taught them an important lesson. It was almost like they were repeating the mistakes we'd made so many years ago, when ponies almost destroyed themselves fighting between tribes.
People must have thought that they were doing the right thing even though it was kind of obvious looking back at it that they were being dumb, and would have been a lot further ahead if they'd just kept talking to each other instead of fighting. And not only were they dying in the fighting, but so many things were being built just to be destroyed on the battlefield, and that also seemed like a real waste of effort. Plus all the fields that were ruined and couldn't grow a crop any more, and homes that were destroyed, and as far as I could tell it hadn't really accomplished anything worthwhile.
I almost had forgotten that I was supposed to meet with Pastor Liz, and I was a little bit late but she wasn't mad at me. And when I told her that I'd gotten done with the whole Bible, she was really proud, and so we talked about what it all meant. She asked me if reading the Bible had answered my questions about who God was, and I said that I thought it mostly had.
I said that I thought He was kind of like Princess Celestia in a way, and that He had gone to live in heaven now instead of His house in Jerusalem, and now He didn’t come down to talk to people too much anymore, but sent angels instead.
Pastor Liz said that she didn’t know a whole lot about Princess Celestia, but that God wasn’t the same. She said that Princess Celestia was very much like a pony, but God wasn’t really like a human, even though the Bible said that He had created man in His own image.
And then I remembered what we’d learned in Astronomy about how the universe had more dimensions than we could see, and I asked her if she meant that God lived outside the universe that we knew and sometimes He had come down to Earth to talk to people but mostly He just watched from beyond, and she said that that was true.
And even Professor Miller had said that God could have made the Big Bang, and I said I wondered if He had gotten lonely with a big empty universe below Him, and that was why He had created humans and cared about them so much, and Pastor Liz said maybe it was.
I got to dinner really late because of my meeting, and almost everyone was gone from our table, except for Anna and Reese, and they weren't eating any more but they were just talking, and I didn't want to ask them to stay just for me, but they did. And Reese got out his notebook and showed me a character he had made for Pathfinder, which was like LARPing but you could do it while sitting at a table. And on the page next to it, there was a drawing of the character that Anna had made for him.
I didn't eat too much, because I had to go to cheerleading practice. And I kind of wasn't looking forward to it, because the uniform was too hot, but it would be worth it tomorrow when I got to cheer on the football team.
I'd looked at the weather, and it was supposed to be warm but windy, and hopefully the wind would help cool me off. And maybe I'd forget about the weather when I was out there, anyway, because I'd be doing something fun.
I had just a little bit of time before cheerleading practice, and I decided that instead of going back to my room I'd just relax on the quad a bit, and Reese and Anna went out with me and she got out her sketch pad even though it was dark out and started to draw, while he laid on his back in the grass and said that if there weren't all the lights in town he could probably see a million stars, and then he said that the college had been around for hundreds of years and there weren't street lights when it was first built, and he said that sometimes he tried to imagine what it had been like back then. He said that maybe the tree we were under was just a little sapling then, and now it towered over the quad.
I probably should have taken my flight gear with me, but I didn't want to put clothes back on after I got out of my cheerleading outfit, so I just walked down the quad to the gym, and I didn't see anybody suspicious.
We did our warmups, and then Sandra helped me get dressed again. The uniform smelled clean so she must have washed it after practice, 'cause most of it had been soaked through.
We went through all of our routines, and then they practiced throwing me some more, and we even decided that we'd even try a coordinated throw with two fliers, and that took a bit of practice to get the timing right, but I could just watch what the other girl—who was named Caroline—did and match her. It looked kind of funny, though, because she did the splits in the air and I couldn't do that, so even after we'd practiced it, Sandra decided that it looked kind of silly.
I was completely lathered by the time we were done, and as soon as I got into the locker room I asked Jessica to help me get undressed. And while she was helping me get my wings through the slits in my vest, I asked her if it was okay to get the uniform wet with water.
She said that they'd cheered in the rain, so it was probably okay, and I decided that tomorrow I was going to cool off in the shower before I took my uniform off, and then I'd get undressed and shower properly.
I just left my uniform draped over the bench and went to the showers, and I picked the one next to Caroline 'cause I'd seen that she wasn't so happy that I was gonna get thrown in the air. She probably thought that I was coming to take her place, and that wasn't true, but I could see why she'd think that.
So I made sure not to splash her with cold water because that would probably make her madder, and at first she didn't really want to talk but then she opened up a little bit after I told her how impressive it was what she could do with her body without being able to fly at all. I said that if I didn't have wings, I'd probably just crashland after I was thrown up, and even though I'd been flying all my life there was stuff she could do that I couldn't do.
And she told me how she thought it wasn't right that I just had come on the team like that and only attended practice for the last week and everyone was letting me have almost anything I wanted, and I didn't really understand all the work that went into being a good cheerleader, and I admitted that she was right, and I think she was surprised by that.
She said that I was too cute and too nice to stay mad at, and I nuzzled her hip which kind of surprised her because she was still in the shower and slippery with soap. And some of the bubbles went in my nose and made me sneeze.
I kept talking to her while she got dried off and got dressed, and we still weren't exactly friends, but she wasn't mad at me anymore.
When I left the gym, I took off for the Nature Center so I could look at stars. And since I didn't have any of my flight gear, I had to stay low and be careful in case there were helicopters flying around. I knew the route really well, and so I knew how high I had to be to clear all the trees and wires, and even though when I got closer to the Nature Center there were hardly any lights on the ground to guide me, I could see well enough to know where I was going, and I landed near the clearing and the cluster of telescopes.
It was perfectly clear outside, so I didn't have to fly up and shift clouds around, so I got to look through the big telescope at the nearby planets, and then we started to look at stars. And some of them that looked like stars from the ground really weren't. I got to see a galaxy called Andromeda, which was really pretty. And with the telescope you could also see that some stars were a different color than the rest, because they were burning at different temperatures.
There was one star called Betelgeuse, which was going to explode into a supernova someday, and people didn't know when for sure, and Professor Miller told me it was possible that it had already and we weren't aware of it, because it took the light over six hundred years to get to Earth. But she said that she thought it hadn't yet.
When my turn at the big telescope was over, she also pointed out a constellation which humans called Pegasus. I said that it didn't look like me at all, and she said that I just needed to use my imagination.
When we were done looking at stars, I could have flown back but I thought it was smarter to ride back in the van. She drove us up the hill and stopped near each dorm so that people who lived there could get out and not have to walk as far. And so I had a little cluster of astronomy students with me all the way to the door of Trowbridge, and it was only when we got inside that we split up and went our separate ways.
Peggy was looking at her computer when I got back, but she must have been almost ready for bed, because she was in her sleeping clothes already, and she told me that she'd been thinking of going to bed a little bit early but then she'd gotten on Facebook and she'd gotten sucked into all the different articles and what her friends were saying about the election. And she said that at least Colorado hadn't voted for Trump which made her feel a little bit better about it.
She said that she was looking forward to the football game and asked if I was ready for it and I said that I thought I was but we'd find out tomorrow. And then I told her how hot the uniform was and she laughed and said that that was the price I had to pay for being a cheerleader, and she was right. Even when I didn't like it, I had to obey the rules if I wanted to do things.