December 13
I didn't want to leave, even though I was eager to see Florida and visit with my pony friends. And I was glad that I didn't have to get to the train station first thing in the morning: the train wouldn't come until after ten, and Aric said that he'd take me to the station.
But I was as little bit worried about staying in bed too late and then having to rush, even though I shouldn't have been. I just thought that today might be the day that we stayed in bed too late and then I'd miss my train.
I watched the morning birds for a little bit, and I had to remind myself to stop swishing my tail 'cause I was going to wake up Meghan and I didn't want to yet. It was barely light out, so there was still lots of time.
As soon as the sun had come up, though, I woke up Meghan and then Aric, so that we'd have plenty of time to have sex. And Aric said that he wasn't ready yet but that wasn't what his body was saying, but since he was being mean I turned around and started kissing Meghan and she didn't mind the attention.
She thought that I should get my toy, so I got out of bed and I had to do a little bit of looking to find it, 'cause it was in a box since I didn't have a dresser to put it in. And Aric pretended not to be looking at it but he was and he said that he couldn't compete with it.
I had to reassure him that it was a fun toy but it couldn't do anything on its own and that made him feel a little bit better. He didn't want to touch it, though, even when I said that he could. Meghan said that was because boys loved lesbians but the thought of doing anything that might seem even vaguely gay terrified them.
I told him that that was dumb and he might be missing out on a lot of fun, and then I stopped 'cause it isn't nice to tease someone because they don't want to do something, even if it seems silly to you. Like me not wanting to go in caves or Gusty not liking high places.
Me and Meghan used it and it was a lot of fun even if Aric wouldn't touch it. I think he worked a little bit harder to make us both happy, too, maybe 'cause he still kind of thought that we might replace him with a toy, even though we'd said that we wouldn't.
When we were done Meghan asked if I wanted to take it with me, and I said that I probably shouldn't, so I put it away and then we went into the shower to get cleaned up.
I wanted to know if they were going to watch my apartment when I was gone, and make sure that the birdfeeder stayed full, and Aric said that they would. He asked if I minded if they spent the night when I was gone, and I didn't mind at all, but I said that maybe I should ask Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn if it was okay with them. Because maybe they'd planned for somebody else to do it.
While we were still in the shower Meghan said that she wanted to go get the toy and she could hold it up next to Aric and we could decide who was bigger, but she didn't do it. And then he said that he should buy a fleshlight and then he could compare it to one of us, and after I learned what that was, I told him that Cayenne had had an artificial mount modeled after herself and he didn't believe me, so after we were done with the shower, he got out his portable telephone and started looking.
He said that now he was going to get pop-up ads for sex toys on his portable telephone and so he probably shouldn't look, but he did and he found it and they even had pictures of Cayenne lying on her back and exposing herself, and a short biography too. I read through that and it wasn't all true, but it was mostly true.
So Aric said that he should get one, and I thought that would be fun for him to have. And he said that I wasn't supposed to be agreeing with him; I was supposed to tell him how upset I'd be which was a very strange thing to say. I'd only be mad if he got one and wanted to spend all his time with it instead of with me or Meghan.
I sat down on the mattress so that Meghan could groom me and Aric sat down too and let me rest my head on his thigh while she was preening my wings and he was trying to distract me and it worked, and then Meghan said that I had just gotten out of the shower and I promised that I'd keep my coat clean, and I said that I could make breakfast so she could play with Aric after she was done with my wings. He asked if he got any say in the matter and me and Meghan both said no at the same time.
So I kept my promises, and when Meghan had finished grooming me, I went off to the kitchen to make breakfast. We should have bought more waffle mix when we were out, but we hadn't, so all I had was oatmeal and shredded wheat, and a couple of pieces of bread for toast. So I boiled some water and started a pot of coffee for all of us to share, and it didn't take too long for me to get it all ready, plus it mostly cooked itself without my help, so I got to watch Aric and Meghan.
I had to add a little bit more water to the pot, 'cause I didn't want to interrupt them. That still left us plenty of time to eat, though, and then we had a little bit of time to relax and for them to get dressed before it was time to go to the train station.
There was a bit of fresh snow on Winston but it wasn't very thick and Aric just brushed it off with his arm, and he asked me if I was sure that I had everything, so I looked through my saddlebags one more time and then said that I did. And then we went off to the train station and Sienna was already there so I got worried that I was late, especially 'cause the radio in Aric's truck didn't show the time but it did show the radio station which was 102.5, and I misread it as 10:25 which was when the train was supposed to arrive. And I almost jumped out of Winston before it stopped but Meghan looked at her portable telephone and said that we had plenty of time, and Aric said that the train was probably going to be late anyways.
So he parked Winston and the three of us walked in, and Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn were in the waiting room with their luggage around them, so Meghan and I sat down next to them and Aric kind of paced around the room and Mister Salvatore watched him while pretending not to, and so I was kind of hesitant to ask him if Aric and Meghan could stay at my apartment while I was on vacation, but I did, and he said that they could, that it was mine to use however I wanted.
Aric had been right, and the train was twenty minutes late. The station attendant announced when it was five minutes away, so we had time to get to the platform and Meghan and Aric went out with me and we had time for a hug before it arrived. And then we got onboard and I stopped in the doorway long enough to wave but I didn't want to wait too long 'cause the train was late and the conductor looked kind of impatient. Maybe it had had problems getting through the snow.
Mister Barrow and Miss Parker were on the train, too, and they'd taken a booth that had a table in the middle, and invited Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn to sit with them if Aquamarine and I wanted to ride together, and we did, so she got out of the booth and we went a little ways down the train car and found ourselves a pair of seats that were open. And we sat on the south side of the train even though that was kind of the more boring side, 'cause you didn't get to see Kalamazoo College. But we did get to go alongside the cars on Stadium Road, which was fun, 'cause we were faster than they were. And I pointed out the window when we went by about where my apartment was, although you couldn't see it from the tracks at all.
I was kinda distracted at first just because I kept looking at the familiar landmarks that the train went by on its way out of Kalamazoo, but after we'd crossed under the 94 Highway near Mattawan, I turned my attention back to Aquamarine and we had a lot of catching up to do. She told me about how she'd gone to Thanksgiving with Jenny and her family and they lived on a farm which was really nice, and Jenny was learning to be a blacksmith in her free time even though there wasn't much demand for human blacksmiths.
Aquamarine said that Jenny had a lot of friends who didn't go to college and they were mostly a lot of fun, too. She'd gotten to ride in a monster truck and she'd also gotten to play with Jenny's chickens and her cats. She had a lot of cats, Aquamarine said, to keep all the mice away, and during the summer she worked at a place that kept cats that had their blood taken in case other cats needed it. I thought she was making that up but she said that it was true; sometimes cats got hurt and you had to give them a blood transfusion, and it was just the same as it was for ponies.
And she'd also spent a lot of time with Cedric and she said that was a lot of fun too because he was so smart and thoughtful and they liked to sit on the couch together and read poetry which was really nice, and they also liked to exercise together, and Michigan State had a really nice exercise room that they could both use. She said that most of the machines weren't designed for a pony, but there was a treadmill that she could trot on, and there were also some benches with weights that she could use. She said that if she'd brought her harness from Equestria, she could have hooked it up to some of the machines to practice pulling, and she told me that they also had a really nice swimming pool that was inside like hotels had.
She had gotten an apartment that was a few miles away from her old one, so that she'd be closer to the greenhouses, and she said that when she moved out at the end of the year she was going to give all her plants to Doctor Krelborn because she knew that he'd take care of them. And I almost told her about his bonsai tree but then I remembered that he'd told me not to, 'cause she might make it grow too big.
I told her about everything I'd done and then when I'd finished she said that we were gonna have to tell it all over again when we met up with Cayenne, and that thought made us both laugh. I said that if I could work my portable telephone better, I could show her some of the movies that Meghan had put on YouTube, and we thought that Cayenne would be able to do that.
The highways have signs that let you know when you've gone into another state, but the train tracks don't, so you have to guess, and I'd never followed these tracks all the way to Indiana, so it wasn't until we stopped in Michigan City that we knew we were in Indiana.
And that was where the train started to go slow, 'cause there were so many other trains it had to get around, and since we were both kind of familiar with the route we just talked some more. We were both looking forward to going back home, but we were both gonna miss all our friends, and we were glad that we would have time back in Michigan before we had to go home.
Aquamarine said that she was going to spend Christmas at her apartment and Cedric was going to be with her, and I said that I didn't know for sure yet what I was going to do, so she said if I was lonely I could come to her apartment, which was really nice of her. I was a little worried that maybe both Meghan and Aric would want to have me at their house, and I couldn't be two places at once.
The train was almost an hour late when we finally got to Chicago, and a bunch of people were standing up and crowding in the aisles while it backed into its space. That was kind of silly of them, 'cause being impatient wouldn't make it go any faster, so they'd be better off sitting in their seats and being comfortable instead of trying to stay balanced as the train jerked to a halt.
We stayed where we were until everyone else had gotten off the train, and then we followed our helpers out and when we got upstairs, Miss Blaise and Mister Garvin were waiting for us along with Cayenne.
Even with our train arriving late, we had a lot of time before our next one so we were going to go shopping on the Magnificent Mile after we had a good lunch, 'cause Cayenne knew all the best stores. She told us that she'd gotten kicked out of a jewelry store after asking where their good diamonds were, 'cause all the ones that they had were small and overpriced and they'd been insulted by that.
Aquamarine asked if she'd slept through the class where we learned that big gems were really rare for humans 'cause they didn't have magic to make them and earth ponies to farm them and she said that she knew that but she'd expected something a little bit bigger especially for what they were charging. She said that they wanted almost two thousand dollars for a tiny little diamond on a silver chain. So then we both got curious about that 'cause neither of us had visited a jewelers on Earth, and we thought that maybe we could go into one that she hadn't been kicked out of.
Before we could go anywhere, though, we went to Burrito Beach for lunch. It wasn't very beach-y, but I didn't mind 'cause they had lots of kinds of burritos and quesadillas and we got plenty so we could all share and try some of almost everything. Me and Aquamarine got the black bean and goat cheese burrito mostly to ourselves, 'cause Cayenne took one bite of it and decided that it had too much cheese in it. I think she missed out, 'cause it was really good.
All of the Magnificent Mile was decorated for Christmas, and the stores had really big windows so that you could look inside, and it was fun to just look in even if it was a shop that we weren't too interested in—there were lots of stores that just sold clothes that were for humans, and we didn't go into any of them. And there was a store that sold Legos that had a big Lego display in their front window complete with a train going around.
We went into a store called I Love Chicago first, and it had lots of little gifts. I got some clicky pens that said Chicago on them and some postcards that had pictures of the Chicago skyscratchers and the lakefront and those were nice 'cause I could put some in a scrapbook maybe or send them to friends. And I was looking at shirts even though I didn't know anypony who would really want one when Aquamarine said that she'd found a snowglobe that had some of the skyscratchers in it so I went over and looked at that and I liked that a lot.
There were Christmas ornaments, too, and Aquamarine got one 'cause she could put it on a Hearth's Warming Tree next year.
After we'd bought that, we went to Giorgio Armani which mostly had clothes that didn't fit ponies, and Cayenne said that they also had really nice purses and handbags and me and Aquamarine couldn't really see what use one would be, 'cause saddlebags were more convenient and you could put more in them. Neither of us knew anypony who'd want one, either. But Cayenne did, and she found some that she really liked called Le Sac, but it was really expensive and they didn't want to barter at all. They said it was exclusive which was why it was so expensive and she was kind of frustrated by that and said that she was going to go somewhere else to get one there because they were a lot cheaper other places and she'd only wanted that one because the color matched her mane.
She stayed kind of grumpy until we went to Bloomingdale's and that was sort of overwhelming 'cause it was so big and they had almost everything that you could imagine. She got a handbag that complemented her coat nicely and was much cheaper than the one at Giorgio Armani, and she got some leg-warmers because her mother liked wearing them in the winter, and also a box of utensils for her father, so that he could brag about them every time he hosted a fancy dinner. And we all admired all the shiny cooking utensils but most of them wouldn't be very useful in Equestria 'cause they took electricity to run. They had a waffle-maker that was a lot nicer than the one I owned, and they even had a machine that made fresh bread for you and all you had to do was put dough in it. I found a really nice set of hair-clips that my sister would like for her mane.
Me and Aquamarine found some nice blankets that we really liked, 'cause they were made of polar fleece which was soft and warm and fluffy, so we bought a couple of those to give as gifts and we each also bought one for ourselves.
And then time was getting kind of short, so we left with our things and I'd been a little bit worried about buying a bunch of stuff because then we'd have to take it all with us, but Mister Garvin and Miss Blaise weren't going to Florida with us so they were going to keep it safe while we were gone.
We had enough time on our way back to the train station to stop in Trabert & Hoeffer, and Cayenne had been right; they wanted too much money for the little gems that they had. So we left there without buying anything. And then we went to a restaurant for dinner, 'cause we were going to get on the train too late to have dinner there.
It was called Coalfire and they cooked their pizzas over coal which I thought wouldn't be very good but Cayenne said that it was and the oven kept the fire below so the coal smell didn't get on the pizzas. She just had a salad anyway 'cause she thought she'd eaten too much for lunch and she didn't want the cheese that came on the pizza, so we got a couple to share with our helpers and it was really good and you couldn't really smell the coal at all.
When we got back to the station, we had to wait a little bit before we could get into the train, which gave us time to give the new things we'd bought to Mister Garvin and Miss Blaise, and then they got a little cart to carry all of Cayenne's bags to the train.
We had a room on the bottom with windows on both sides like we'd had when we went out west, which was nice because we could look out either side although the view wasn't quite as good as from the top of the train. Our helpers had a room upstairs that was called a suite 'cause it was two bedrooms that were attached to each other.
Since we'd gotten on early we had plenty of time to go to the Viewliner car and claim seats, but we didn't have anything to look at except the train shed and the people getting on the train, which got a little bit boring after a while so we just talked until we felt the train jolt and then it started to move out of the station and once it got out from the yard we could get a view of Chicago.
I was kind of used to leaving Chicago going east or west, but not going south, and so it was a different view as the train made its way out of the city, and for a while it turned almost due west and we got a kind of distant view of Chicago and the skyscratchers along the lakeshore, and then the train turned south again and we couldn't see them anymore.
There were lots of houses that we saw that were decorated for Christmas, and I bet that none of them had had a pegasus to help them. There was even one that had lights facing the tracks and a lighted sign that said 'Illinois Central.'
There wasn't as much snow out here as there was in Kalamazoo, and Aquamarine said that there hadn't been as much in East Lansing either, and I thought that she'd just gotten the tail end of the storm.
The sky was clear and the moon was full, so that was very pretty and I think we could have seen more stars but even though the lights in the Viewliner were turned down they were still pretty bright, and after a while we decided that we'd have a better view from our room, even though it was on the bottom and the windows didn't curve overhead.
So we went back to our car and then I wanted to go to the very back train car and look out that window for a little bit before we went downstairs, 'cause it was a fun view, so we walked all the way back there and took turns on our hind hooves watching out the back. The train was pulling some of the snow along with it, so we couldn't actually see all that far, but it was neat to see the back lights of the train shining in the snow, and when we went past roads you could watch as the cars that were waiting disappeared into the snowdust the train trailed along.
Then after we'd all had a turn looking, we went down to our room and got the conductor to come and fold down the bottom beds—we didn't need the top ones—and we all got on the mattress by the window and watched the world fly by.
Since we were lower to the ground, it looked a lot faster as we went by it, and we all jumped back in alarm as we went by a freight train that was on the other track, 'cause it was so close to us.
Cayenne got into her bags and brought out a bottle of Malibu that we could share—she said that she'd chosen it 'cause it was beachy—and we had a couple of drinks and talked a little bit more and me and Aquamarine were both kind of tired, so we cuddled up on the crosswise bed and Cayenne got out her folding computer so she could look at it for a little bit before she went to bed.