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// December 9 [Wandering] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
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December 9

I kept on waking up in the night and just looking around to make sure I was safe. In the sky you could fly away anywhere and hide easily if you had to but not as easily on the ground and for the first time I felt like my apartment was kind of confining. I could go out a window and fly away if I had to, but I couldn't leave Meghan and Aric behind.

But then I'd hear Mister Salvatore's radio talking quietly in the hallway outside, or Miss Cherilyn would shift in her seat, and that made me feel a lot safer. I even opened the door a little bit one time when it was quiet, and I could just see her leaning against the counter in the kitchen, keeping watch on the balcony in case the bad guy tried to get in there.

Meghan wasn't sleeping very well, either. She woke up a couple of times when I was awake, and I'm sure she'd woken up some times when I hadn't, too. And I really felt bad for Aric, 'cause he was in the other room and he didn't have a mattress or anypony sleeping with him and so he was probably pretty lonely. I could go to my window and fly to his and hopefully he'd open it but then Meghan would be alone 'cause she couldn't follow me.

When it was finally faintly light outside I finally got up 'cause I just couldn't sleep any more, and woke up Meghan, too, so that she wouldn't wake up to find me gone and get scared. And then the two of us went out into the living room and said good morning to Miss Cherilyn and I wanted to talk to her more but it wasn't smart to distract guards when they were doing their duty.

But then she asked me how I'd slept, and so I told her that I hadn't slept well at all and she said she was sorry for scaring us like that last night but Mister Salvatore had been worried about the tiny possibility that whoever had done it was on the run and might find himself here and think to escape by breaking into an apartment and if he was athletic enough he could get up to the third floor balcony, or else he could force his way into the building through the front door and then he could have found my apartment that way.

She said that it had worried both of them that it had happened so close in what was supposed to be a safe part of town, and that the police didn't have any idea who'd done it yet, or why.

And so I nuzzled her hip, and then Meghan asked if she wanted some breakfast, 'cause we'd been planning to make a quiche and we still could, and she thought that that sounded really good.

So me and Meghan got out the quiche ingredients and started making it. Meghan had to look at her portable telephone to get the recipe, 'cause she didn't know it from memory, and pretty soon we had a mixing bowl full of quiche ingredients.

After we'd poured it into the shells—we had enough for two whole quiches—there wasn't a lot to do while we waited for it to cook. We washed the dishes and then Meghan said that she was going to go wake Aric up and told me to guard the stove.

There wasn't much guarding to do, 'cause all the quiches had to do was sit there until the timer dinged, and then Meghan was gonna pull them out since I didn't have a hot pad that I could hold in my mouth, and I'd burn myself if I grabbed the tray with just my lips. So I asked Miss Cherilyn how dangerous Kalamazoo was, and she said that it was pretty safe, because even though there had been nineteen murders so far that was a higher than normal number because of the Uber driver and the man who had driven his truck over a bunch of bicyclists, and normally it was not so many. That still seemed like a lot to me, and she said that it was. Then she told me that Mister Salvatore would tell me if I asked that it was complicated and there were a lot of reasons but in her opinion the biggest factor was the number of guns and how there weren't enough effective regulations on them, and she said that she feared that now that there were lots more Republicans who had been elected that they'd try to weaken gun laws, because that was what the people who voted for them wanted them to do. And she said that she wished that some of the Senators had had to deal with the aftermath of a shooting and then maybe they'd think twice before trying to weaken the laws.

Then she sighed and said that it maybe wasn't a good thing to talk about first thing in the morning and she was just a little bit grumpy 'cause she'd been about to go to sleep when Mister Salvatore had called her and she hadn't had time to put on clothes.

I was kind of curious how he had had time and she said that she thought he might sleep in his clothes. Then she put her hand over her mouth and said that that had been a mean thing to say and it probably wasn't true.

I didn't think it was, 'cause both Meghan and Aric's clothes were pretty rumpled from them sleeping in them and Mister Salvatore's clothes always looked neat, even when he had to wake us up in the middle of the night so we could get on or off a train.

Aric went right into the bathroom and Meghan looked through the porthole and into the oven, which had a little light so that you could see the food better. And then she went into the living room and sat on the futon and watched the birds flying around the feeder. There weren't very many seeds left for them so I'd have to put more in today or else they'd go hungry, but since there was still some food left I wanted to wait until the flock had left, 'cause I didn't want to scare them off.

When the quiches were done they had to sit on the counter a little bit to cool them off so that we could eat them and that was kind of frustrating 'cause they smelled so good. Even Miss Cherilyn kept looking over at them and I could tell that she wanted a piece. We had plenty to share, and she deserved it after being up all night and making sure that we stayed safe.

Once it was cool, we all had some and after she'd eaten her piece she went out in the hallway and sent Mister Salvatore in so that he could have breakfast, and I noticed that despite having stayed up all night he still looked pretty alert.

He said that he'd been keeping in touch with the detectives on the case and it now appeared to have been a robbery gone wrong and they thought that the suspects had fled in a vehicle, although they weren't certain of that yet. And he said that now that it was daytime there wasn't as much risk as there had been last night but he still wanted to be cautious, and he said that maybe the best thing for us to do today was go somewhere and do something fun while things settled down here. And I thought that was a good idea, even though we'd been planning to watch Lord of the Rings today. We could do that later when it was safe.

So we had to decide where to go and Mister Salvatore thought that somewhere touristy with lots and lots of people would be good, and he said that there was a big Christmas store in Frankenmuth that might be fun to visit.

Aric didn't like that idea all that much, 'cause he thought that there would be too many people there who were all celebrating Christmas early, but he couldn't think of anyplace that was better. And he said that maybe we ought to just drive around and find something that looked interesting on our way and not have a plan at all.

Then I got to thinking that maybe I didn't really want to be cooped up in my apartment or in Winston today, and I thought I'd like to go somewhere that was outdoors where I could fly around some and stretch my wings, and play in the snow some. And Meghan said that wherever we went she was going to want a nap at some point today, 'cause she hadn't slept well last night.

Aric finally said that we could decide on the road but he wanted to go back to his house and get some clean clothes, and Meghan said that she did, too. So we all went down to Winston and Aric started it and then got out and swept off the windows and then scraped away at the ice that was under the snow, and Meghan helped him. And I felt a little bit better now that I was outside, 'cause I could look around for bad people and avoid them.

So we drove over to his house and went inside and decided that we might as well take a shower while we figured out where we wanted to go, but none of us really had any good ideas. And that helped us relax some although we were all still a bit sleepy and then Meghan said that maybe we ought to take a nap first. Aric said he wished that she'd thought of that before we'd taken the shower, 'cause I was all wet and it took me a while to dry off, especially with my winter coat, so I said that I'd stay above the covers so I wouldn't get them wet.

The two of them curled up in bed with Meghan in the middle and I squeezed in against the wall and she put her arm over my back.

It didn't take too long to fall asleep, 'cause Aric's room was familiar and safe, although I did think for a minute that maybe the bad guys might come here but it was just a passing thought and I put it out of my mind and closed my eyes and just focused on Meghan's arm around me and the sounds of her and Aric breathing and moving around a little bit as they got comfortable.

I could have told them that napping doesn't always work as well as a good night's sleep, and even though we were all tired I don't think we slept all that much. It was hard to be sure, 'cause the sun was blocked by the snowclouds that were still sprinkling a little bit of snow down, but I didn't feel all that much more rested when I woke back up.

I was dryer, though, so I guess I'd slept long enough that all the water on my back and sides had mostly evaporated. I was still damp on my belly and under my wings, 'cause that hadn't been able to evaporate.

Me moving around woke up Meghan and then Aric woke up, too, and we all decided that sleeping wasn't working but since the three of us were in bed together and all of us were naked that we might as well have some fun especially since we hadn't had a chance to last night or this morning, and then we all cuddled for a bit and then dozed back off for a little while.

When I woke up again I got out of bed and I sent a telegram to Mister Salvatore to see if they'd caught the bad guys yet and he said that they hadn't but they were working very hard to find them. And he said that he was talking to the Kalamazoo Police Department to see if he could get a patrol car to stay near my apartment which would help discourage any bad people from coming over there. He said that they were a bit reluctant because all their policemen were busy right now but he was sure that he could wear them down and get what he wanted.

Then he asked me if we'd decided to go somewhere and I told him that right now we were still at Aric's house but we were thinking of going to Taco Bell. That wasn't entirely true, 'cause I was probably the only one thinking it but I was sure that I could convince Meghan and Aric that it was the best place to have lunch.

And I did—they both agreed to it, and so after they got dressed we got back in Winston and drove off to Taco Bell, and we could have gotten the food in the truck but we decided to go inside instead.

While we were eating, Aric said that since we were already going west, we could go to South Haven, but the beach wasn't as fun when it was cold and snowy and neither of us really wanted to. We were having a hard time coming up with a plan although I guess if we spent long enough not having one than we wouldn't need one, 'cause the day would be over.

Aric said that we could go to Grand Rapids, and maybe there was something to do there and he looked at his portable telephone and then said that Donald Trump was having a rally there tonight and maybe we could go and protest and if we got arrested Mister Salvatore would bail us out. I thought that was a bad idea, and I said that Cayenne had gotten banned from anything political after she'd gotten arrested at a rally and I didn't want that to happen to me, especially because it would probably disappoint Mister Salvatore.

He said that if we weren't going to do that than we should go the opposite way and we could go to Schoolcraft and visit B & G Outlet which had lots of fun things that were cheap, and it was near the railroad tracks so if we heard a train we could flash it and if we got in trouble for that Mister Salvatore would bail us out.

Meghan said that that was a really dumb idea, and Aric said that he knew it was but she'd promised that if he did, she would, and she said that that was yesterday and she hadn't been serious.

He said that they'd never expect it in the wintertime and she admitted that that was probably true, but she wasn't going to stand in a parking lot and do it.

Aric said that there probably wouldn’t be any trains anyways.

So once we were done eating we got back in Winston and drove down to Schoolcraft, and I knew the way pretty well, 'cause of flying over it. And that was near where I'd gotten into a train for my ride, and it made my foreleg kinda itchy thinking about it.

The store didn't look like that much from outside, but once we got inside I could see why Aric liked it, 'cause they had all sorts of tools and he was really happy when I started asking him what they were and what they were for. Some of them I knew because they looked like the tools the wainwright had and some of them were like I'd used when I helped him fix Winston, but there were a lot more that I didn't know at all. He said that proper mechanics needed all of them, which seemed like it would be a really big investment to me. And he told me that a proper mechanic might have a hundred thousand dollars worth of tools, which was a lot. I was glad that I could just move around clouds with my hooves and wings.

They also had tarps and ropes and wheels and gloves and presses and vices and all sorts of things and he said that some of it was cheap Chinese junk and other stuff looked like things that they had gotten because it wouldn't sell anywhere else, and they even had some used things that you could buy cheaply like binders for papers and big cups that were called steins and were for beer. He said in Germany they had fancy lids and they were all painted like a fresco. I thought that the ones they had were really nice, though.

It wasn't the kind of store that I normally would have wanted to visit, but I was learning a lot from being there.

Aric had been wrong about the trains, too—while we were in the store, two of them had gone by, but he didn't rush out into the parking lot to go flash them, and Meghan didn't, either.

So I thought that maybe we weren't going to and he'd just been pulling Meghan's tail, until he was done looking around and explaining things to me and then he said that we ought to go find somewhere a little bit deserted and make a train engineer's day.

Meghan said that they'd be looking at him, too, and he said that maybe it would be a girl engineer and that was what she wanted to see.

She said it was cold outside and that any woman would only feel a little bit of pity and she said that she couldn't believe that she was thinking about doing this sober.

Then Aric said that was a good point and maybe the smart thing to do would be have dinner first and have a few drinks with dinner, and Meghan said it was going to take more than a few.

So we drove back to Kalamazoo and went to Olde Peninsula for dinner, 'cause it was really good and the beer was really good, too, and Meghan did have a few beers and so did I, but Aric only had one 'cause he had to drive us around afterwards. And then we got back in Winston and went to the parking lot that was by the bridge over the river and waited for a while but there weren't any trains and we got bored of waiting after a while, so Aric said that we'd go to another one of his favorite spots to see trains go by, which was on Cork Street.

There wasn't anyplace to park, so we had to just drive back and forth and wait for a train to come. And while we were circling around he told us about the time he'd had to stop there to wait for a train on a winter night that was a lot like tonight, and he said that he'd stopped his car which was a Buick Roadmaster that he had owned before Winston, and that when the train was crossing he'd seen an ambulance coming down the road and it had gotten to the tracks just when the train had finally passed and when it hit the rails it bounced all the snow off of it. And he'd jumped back in his car to see where it was going but by the time he got to the top of the hill it was gone and he'd never figured out where it went because the only thing there was the cemetery.

We didn't see or hear any trains there, either, and Aric was kind of disappointed and finally Meghan said that we might as well go home because she really had to pee and I did, too. I'd been thinking of just asking him to stop long enough for me to get out, 'cause there were lots of trees around that I could use, but if we were going home I could wait.

And we had to decide where to go home, and Aric said that if my helpers weren't still guarding my apartment he'd rather go there, but if they were he wanted to go to his house because he was a little bit nervous around them. I didn't think that he should be, 'cause they were so nice, and they wanted to make sure that I stayed safe.

So sent a telegram to Mister Salvatore and he said that starting tomorrow there would be a police car patrolling the complex and he was also having an alarm installed on the balcony door and the front door just in case, and it was something that he should have done sooner.

And then he said that he wanted me to stay at the hotel tonight and he would make arrangements to get me a room, so all I would have to do was go to the front door and ask for a key and they'd give it to me. So I told Aric and we went to the hotel and the man at the front desk was really nice and friendly and promised to get us anything that we needed.

Aric thought that maybe this was his way of apologizing, 'cause when we opened the door to the room it was really nice—it had a big bed in it and there was also a Jacuzzi bathtub and we were on the top floor which meant that we had a really good view of the city. Meghan said she thought it was one of the nicest rooms in the hotel besides the honeymoon suite, and all we were really missing was the mirrors on the ceiling and the heart-shaped bed.

Then Meghan told Aric how me and her had been planning to spend the day at the hotel during mid-terms but it hadn't worked out then but she was happy that it was working out now, even if it had kind of ruined our plans to watch Lord of the Rings.

So we filled up the Jacuzzi and it was big enough for all three of us, and we relaxed in it and had sex in it and then relaxed some more and used up all the towels drying off and Meghan also helped dry me off with the hairdryer that they had clipped to the wall, and then we relaxed on the bed for a little bit until Aric decided that it would be fun to have a pillow fight, and he was doing pretty well until the two of us ganged up on him and beat him into submission.

Then we all went to the window and looked out over Kalamazoo and watched the cars driving along below us and a few people who were out on the street and we also saw a long freight train passing by. Since none of us were wearing clothes, Meghan said that that counted as flashing the train, and Aric said that he didn't think that the engineer had seen us at all, but had to admit that he might have.

And then we all got in bed together and me and Meghan ganged up on Aric again, but he didn't mind at all, and it was really nice to have such a big bed that we didn't have to be careful not to fall out of it.