December 31
I hadn't thought that I'd sleep all that well, but I did. And then when I woke up it was still dark out and I got out of bed and went to the window and there weren't any birds yet 'cause it was too early for them.
And I went and got back in bed and Meghan was awake, too. And she said that she'd hardly slept at all last night and I felt bad that I'd slept pretty well, and I said that we should go back to sleep but she said she wouldn't sleep any more tonight.
It wasn't long after that that Aric woke up and he didn't even bother looking at his portable telephone, he just leaned over and kissed me and said that he was going to miss me and I told him that I'd miss him, too, and pretty soon the three of us were all hugging and crying and I don't know how long that went on but we couldn't stay sad forever and we dried off our faces and Meghan went into the bathroom and got a washcloth and wiped off her face and then mine and Aric's, too, and said said that it wasn't forever, she wasn't going to let it be.
And then she started running her hand down my back and I kissed her and teased Aric with my wing at the same time and then I got up on top of him and I told him that I didn't want our last few hours together to be sad, and that I didn't think it was possible to be sad when we were having sex and he said that he didn't think so, either.
Even though our time was short, we had all the time in the world for just us three and for a while nothing else mattered. And then we had to rush a little bit, and Aric went into the kitchen and started making coffee, and Meghan turned on the shower, and we all washed each other off and then went and sat on the futon and Meghan groomed me and preened my wings—which I was really gonna miss, too—and I brushed Aric's hair and then Meghan's, when she was done preening my wings.
I ate the last of the hay for breakfast and had a cup of coffee, and then it was nearly time for Mister Salvatore to come and so I put on my saddlebags and I put the dreamcatchers in them so that I would have them with me, and also the poem that Conrad had given me and I still hadn't read because I didn't think it was quite the right time yet.
Mister Salvatore was right on time, and instead of Sienna, he had a white Econoline van like the one that I'd ridden out to Kalamazoo in. And he and Aric both carried boxes down from my apartment and put them in the back, and it didn't take too long before everything that I owned was in the back of the van.
And then me and Aric and Meghan all hugged and kissed and I could tell that both of them were holding back tears so I did, too, but a few leaked out anyways and it was really hard to take the last few steps into the van.
I was waving at them until after we turned onto Stadium Drive, and I was kinda sad that we weren't gonna go through downtown so that I could get one more look at it, but it was a lot closer to get to the 131 Highway going to the west.
And as he drove by the stores I kept thinking about all the places I hadn't ever gone and the things I hadn't done, and it was funny but that wasn't making me sad 'cause I think that I'd gone past that and now I was just kind of numb.
The radio was playing kind of softly and it was people talking and I couldn’t really focus on it at all so it kind of sounded like gibberish to me and I just stayed stretched out on my seat and tried to guess where we were but before too long all I knew was that we were on the 94 Highway and heading east and so I finally lifted my head up and tried to focus and I watched until we went under a bridge and then there was a sign that said we were at mile 93 which I remembered was just before Battle Creek.
I put my head back on the seat and let the van whisper its road lullaby to me and then the next time I stuck my head up was when we were slowing down to turn onto the 69 Highway and I took a deep breath and told myself that I needed to stop being so mopey 'cause I might make Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn sad and then it would be hard for them. So when Miss Cherilyn asked me if I was okay I said that I was just tired 'cause I hadn't gotten too much sleep last night and that was true but that wasn't why I felt so empty inside and I think that she knew I was lying to her because she asked if I wanted her to come in the back and sit with me and I nodded, so she got out of her seat and she had to kind of twist and duck to get between the front seats but she did and then she sat down right next to me and I put my head on her lap and I didn't talk for a while, then I asked her if it was hard for them, too, and she nodded and said that it didn't get easier, either, and it made it hard when they met the new pony the next day and I hadn't thought about that.
Mister Salvatore said that he was gonna miss me 'cause I was always fun and so high-spirited and that just watching me fly made him feel free even though he'd had to do a lot of paperwork to make it happen and I told him that I was sorry, and he said that he would have done it ten times over. He said that I knew when to follow the rules and when to bend them a little bit, and he said that I had really good instincts. And he said that he'd never had to bail me out of jail which was a plus.
We got off the 69 Highway and went on the 96 Highway for a little while, past the south part of Lansing, and when we went by a Chevrolet store called Shaheen there was a big 2500HD parked right on the grass by the highway so that you could see it and it looked just the same as the one that Mister Salvatore had admired in Walt Disney World and I saw that he looked at it, too.
Then we curved around the ramp to the 127 Highway and got right back off it at the next exit, and then we went past the horse pastures and there were a bunch of big draft horses in the first pasture and then once we got by the barn and the gate there was another herd of smaller horses that were mostly snacking out of long troughs that were in the field so I guess it was their lunchtime.
It wasn't pony lunchtime yet, or human lunchtime, and even if it had been I didn't really feel like eating anything, although when we turned into the parking lot at her apartment and were right next to a little restaurant and coffee shop my stomach started grumbling and then I thought that maybe I'd feel better if I had a little food in me. So while Mister Salvatore was calling Aquamarine to tell her that we were here, me and Miss Cherilyn went into the Biggby Coffee and we each got a muffin, and she bought a cup of coffee for Mister Salvatore to drink.
Cedric and Mister Barrow and Mister Salvatore helped carry Aquamarine's things downstairs and put them in the van, and then while Aquamarine was hugging Jenny goodbye, I held out my hoof so Cedric could bump it, but he shook his head and then picked me up off the ground and gave me a big hug and I nuzzled his cheek and told him to give Leon and Trevor a hug for me, too, and he promised that he would, and he said that I had to promise that I'd teach ponies Quidditch and I told him that he could count on it.
And then I went over and hugged Jenny, too, while Aquamarine said her goodbyes to Cedric.
Mister Salvatore and Mister Barrow flipped a coin to see who got to drive the van the rest of the way to the airport, and Miss Parker said that was such a guy thing to do, and I said that Aric never let anybody else drive Winston except for me and all I had to do was ask and Miss Cherilyn said I probably shouldn't tell Mister Salvatore that.
I thought that it was too late for him to get mad at me and she said that it was, but if he'd known that I knew how to drive a truck he'd be sad that he never got to take me on a Jeep adventure and if I had known I would have wanted to do that because it sounded like a lot of fun.
When Aquamarine was done nuzzling Cedric she got in the van and we ponies sat in the middle seat and the women rode in the back seat and the men were in front—Mister Barrow had won the coin toss so he was driving. And Mister Salvatore didn't seem unhappy about that.
The middle windows in the Econoline didn't roll down into the door like they did on most vehicles but they just hinged out a little bit at the bottom which didn't let too much air in but the opening was wide enough that when we went by the horse pastures, Aquamarine whinnied and the horses heard her and a couple of them whinnied back and she said that she felt a little better that she'd gotten to say goodbye to them, too.
Then we had to close the window 'cause Miss Cherilyn and Miss Parker were getting cold.
We got back on the 96 Highway and then followed it all the way to the 275 Highway, which went right to the airport, and when we got there we stopped the van right in front of the door for Delta and got all our boxes unloaded and then Mister Barrow had to go put the van away and he said that he'd meet us inside.
A porter helped out with all of our boxes, and we got to go to a special gate where there wasn't a line and we had to show the woman there our passports before she would give us the tickets for the airplane. And our helpers did, too, and that was something that I hadn't noticed that we had to do last time.
Then they got out special metal boxes and put our things in them and it seemed kind of complicated but both me and Aquamarine had a lot more than we had before we came over, so maybe that was why.
Our helpers each only had two bags and they were carrying them with them, and we got to wear our saddlebags and we could keep those on, too.
Then we went by a long line of people who were waiting to get the rest of the way inside the airport and they had to put their bags on a little belt and then go through a machine that sometimes beeped and we didn't have to do that. Our helpers just showed their wallets and a couple of men in blue shirts took us a different way instead.
Inside there were lots of stores on the ground floor and there was a big red train that ran by overhead to get you from one end of the building to the other and there were also moving floors that you could ride and we were going to go to a little lounge so that we could have a proper lunch, and it was called a SkyClub lounge and it was only for special people.
So we got to ride a moving floor which was just like the conveyor that bags went on, and when we got on it it carried us along and if you walked on it it was like trotting and I wondered what it would be like to gallop on it but it wasn't that long and if I didn't fly off of the end, I knew that I'd trip on the floor, so I stopped walking and stood there like a good pony.
The SkyClub Lounge was really nice even though it wasn't actually in the sky. There was a woman in a nice blue suit with a short skirt, and she was always smiling and offered us drinks if we wanted and I remembered that Gusty had said that chewing gum on the airplane helped and I didn't have any so I asked her if she did, and she nodded and she brought a little packet for both me and Aquamarine.
Neither of us thought it was a good idea to drink before we got on the airplane, so we just had veggie wraps, and Mister Barrow showed up after a little while and pretty soon it was time to go to our boarding area and wait to get on our airplane.
We were gonna ride the train, 'cause our airplane was gonna be at the end of the terminal. And the train didn't have a driver at all, so you could sit right in the very front and watch out the big windshield, and if we weren't kind of in a hurry it would have been fun to ride it back to the other end of the terminal, too.
Once we found our gate we went up to the little desk to check in, and then we had to wait until our airplane was ready before we could get onboard, but we got to go first 'cause we had first-class tickets.
And it was kind of fun to watch the people as they got in the airplane, but then I got distracted by a little card in the seat in front of me which told me about the airplane and what I should do if there was an emergency.
The gum was in little packages that weren't hoof-friendly at all, so Miss Parker opened it for us and we each took two pieces and it was super minty and I liked that.
People weren't getting on the airplane any more, but we had to wait to get clearance before we could leave and I knew that there were a lot of things that had to be checked, so I just kind of watched out the windows and listened to the noises that the airplane made and then I warned Aquamarine that I might forget and hit her with my wing and she said that I'd done that at Disney World, too.
The lights flickered for a moment and then it started to smell like smoke inside but that cleared up pretty quickly, and then the airplane started moving backwards and it turned away from the building and I knew it was driving down a taxiway to get to the runway.
It felt like we were driving forever, and every now and then we'd have to stop and when the airplane started moving again I thought that this was when we were going to take off, but we didn't. And I'd lost sight of the terminal and I knew what the signs meant that we passed, but I didn't have a map of the airport so I didn't know exactly where we were.
Our drive down the taxiway gave the stewardess time to tell us how to work all the safety equipment on the airplane, though, and they showed us where the exits were and how to put on our seat belts and how to use the oxygen masks if we had to.
And then we stopped again and the captain said that we were second in line for departure and that the weather in Washington DC was 41 and overcast, and that we'd be there in just a little bit under two hours.
We sat there for a couple of minutes and then the airplane moved forwards again and I was getting kind of nervous because I hadn't liked my last flight but then I'd flown a simulator and that had been fun, and I'd been in a couple of littler airplanes and that hadn't been too bad and maybe now that I knew more about it I was going to enjoy the airplane.
All of a sudden the engines sped up and I could feel the whole airplane shaking just a little bit and it started rolling forwards and going faster and faster and faster and then the nose came up and I could feel that the tail was still on the ground, and then a moment later it was off the ground and climbing really fast and I heard a couple of thumps under me which I knew were the landing gear being lifted up.
We went up so fast it made my ears hurt even though I was chewing gum, and I kept on shifting around in my seat as the airplane moved under me but I did remember to keep my wings in.
It was really neat to see Detroit from the air, 'cause it was so big and I bet Chicago was like that when you flew over it, too. I'd never gotten any higher than the top of the Sears Tower, so I hadn't gotten to see it all.
Then we went up into clouds and it got bumpy and the airplane started rocking as it went through the air currents and everything outside was just fog and when I looked back you could see a darker trail of it coming off the winglets and it was kind of like the airplane was a in a super-big wind tunnel.
And I knew that they were using all of their instruments to know where they were, and I thought about how I hadn't been allowed to fly into clouds 'cause they wouldn't have been able to see me and I never would have seen them, either. When we got close to the top and the clouds thinned out a little bit you could tell just how fast we were going by the way that the clouds blurred by the airplane.
When we got up to our cruising altitude which was 39,000 feet, we were allowed to get out of our seats and move around if we wanted to and we could also turn on our portable electronic devices but I didn't have any of those and neither did Aquamarine.
The stewardesses were preparing a little cart that had snack food and soda and beer and wine on it, and since we were in the front we got served first. And I decided that I would try a Moscow Mule, 'cause that sounded pretty good. Aquamarine got a glass of red wine, and we both agreed that we'd only have the one drink and no more.
I decided then that the airplane wasn't so bad after all. It wasn't that much noisier than Winston, and my ears had kind of adjusted to the pressure but they still kind of hurt. And it was kind of soothing to watch the clouds going by below, and I don't know if it was because I knew more about airplanes now that I knew what was happening, or if I'd just gotten used to human machines.
We talked about what we were going to do when we got back to Equestria, and I said that I was probably going to have to practice with clouds again 'cause I'd probably lost a lot of my skill and Aquamarine said that she was glad that she was still able to work with plants when she was on Earth, so she hadn't completely forgotten how.
And I wasn't totally out of practice, but I was probably going to mess up some scheduled weather. I bet I was gonna be better with feral storms, though.
Then since I was thinking about it, I turned around and asked Mister Salvatore if there was any way that I could get more camelbacks in Equestria and he said that he'd see what could be done. He said that they were still working on rules about imports and exports and technically if I was bringing them in by the dozens that would be smuggling and that was against the rules.
It didn't seem like that long before the captain told us that we were about to start our descent and that we needed to turn off our portable electronics and keep our seat belts on, and then we were closing in on the clouds again and it seemed like a really long time before we got to them and then all of a sudden little wisps were coming by the windows and then we were in the cloudtops and then we were all the way in them and we stayed in the clouds for a long time before we came back out the bottom and I could see how the clouds lit up when the lights on the airplane blinked, just like the little blinking light that I'd worn.
And we stayed in the clouds for so long that I was starting to wonder if we'd ever get out of them or maybe the plane had gone into a cloud-limbo and it was never going to land and we'd just fly on through the greyness forever, which was a kind of silly thought, 'cause I knew that clouds ended eventually. Either we'd go back over, under, or we'd get to the very front of the cloudbank and then we'd be in the clear.
I wasn't sure quite where we were when we got out of the clouds, and I didn't know what Washington DC looked like from the air, and it seemed like we were just flying over farmland and forests but maybe the airport was a little ways out of town. Kalamazoo Airport was kind of on the edge of town and so was Colorado Springs and Battle Creek so maybe that was where humans usually liked to put airports.
Then I started seeing more and more houses and buildings and a dirt mine and Aquamarine had crowded as far over in my seat as she could so that she could see the ground, too, and the airplane obliged her by making a big turn and it felt like we were banking too far—I never would have banked that far unless I was playing. But then I remembered that the airplane was going a lot faster than I could fly.
And as we got close to the ground it seemed to take a while before the airplane finally touched the ground with a loud screeching noise and then the engines screamed and I didn't think that something that big could stop so fast and I was glad that I was wearing my seat belt, or else I would have gone flying out of my seat.
We drove around to our gate and I remembered how it had looked when Gusty's airplane had arrived, so I could picture what was going on as it went into position and then I could hear people unfastening their seat belts even though the stewardesses hadn't said that we could yet.
And there was a thunk and the lights flickered again and I heard the engines turn off and then we were allowed to unfasten our seat belts and get our carry-on bags although me and Aquamarine were still wearing ours so we didn't have to do anything.
Our luggage was going to meet us at the transport center, so we didn't have to wait around for the rest of our things, and it was kind of a blur as we went through the airport and then outside to the parking area and there was a whole row of identical white Econoline vans and Mister Salvatore just picked the first one and the door was open and the keys were in it. And Aquamarine figured out that the row of vans had probably gone all the way to the walkway and now they were being taken back to the transport center one-by-one.
Me and Aquamarine were both starting to get eager to get back to Equestria, but we still looked out the window for a last look at Earth, 'cause we knew that we were going to be spending some time in there and neither of us was really looking forward to it. I don't know why they couldn't make it nice like the airport was. Maybe they hadn't had enough money, or there weren't enough travelers yet.
And I pointed to the Taco Bell that I'd seen on our first trip and Mister Salvatore said that we could stop so we did. And before we went in to get food I asked him if he was worried about us farting after we ate it and he said that it was only ten more minutes before we were at the transport center and after that we'd have some meetings with boring bureaucrats and he thought it might make the meeting more interesting or at least get over more quickly and Miss Cherilyn said that that was terrible.
But that didn't stop me and Aquamarine from enjoying our meal and reading the inspirational messages on the sauce packets. And then we got back in the Econoline and drove the rest of the way to the transport center and it was funny, 'cause I couldn't quite remember what it had looked like, but as soon as I saw it I knew it.
Mister Salvatore parked in the little fenced-in area and just like Aquamarine had thought, there were lots of other, identical Econoline vans already parked there who'd brought ponies that had already arrived.
We had to check in and I could keep my student identification card, but I had to give my Visa card and portable telephone back, and so did Aquamarine. And then we each had to have a little meeting where a man in a suit started asking me lots of questions and Mister Salvatore went there with me but Miss Cherilyn was off taking care of my luggage.
It was kind of like when we went to Canada and the border agents asked us lots of questions, but I didn't have to wear a number on my ear this time. And I was starting to feel pretty gassy from the burritos and I couldn't help myself and the man who was asking the questions pretended not to notice but I could tell that he did and I felt kind of bad but Mister Salvatore had a big smile on his face the whole time and he was enjoying it.
When I got done with the interview I met up with Miss Cherilyn so that I could go have a medical check and there were two doctors, and one was a unicorn and the other was a human. And they had a lot of questions for me, too, and I had to tell them that I'd had sex with Aric and Meghan just in case I had gotten some kind of disease that they could get, too. I thought that Cayenne was probably going to be in the room for a long time telling the doctors who all her partners had been.
And then I got to meet up with Mister Salvatore again and he said that there were some private rooms where we could be together if I wasn't ready yet, and there was also a big room where anypony could gather but humans weren't really supposed to be in there.
I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to them yet, so we went to one of the private rooms and they had some couches and a window that had a view of a courtyard that probably looked really pretty in the spring and summer but was just snowy and dead right now and Mister Salvatore opened the window a little bit so we could get some fresh air in the room, and we sat down on the couch together and I got out the dreamcatchers that I'd made and gave them to each of them and Mister Salvatore gave me the old altimeter I'd had to wear, and he said that he'd kept it for me and it was okay to take it to Equestria because it didn't have any electronics in it and he thought that I might like it to remember what flying on Earth was like.
And then the three of us just sat there and we didn't say anything because there wasn't anything more that we needed to say.
I finally knew that it was time, so I nuzzled Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn, and I got up and hugged both of them and went down the hall to the common room and I was fighting back tears all the way.
When I got there, the room was already crowded with ponies and there were some who were wearing lots of clothes like Gusty did and some of them were just wearing shirts which looked a little more normal. And I saw a couple of mares who had gotten their ears pierced and I saw some kind of familiar faces that I vaguely remembered from a year ago, and everypony was kind of in little clusters and there weren't any humans at all, and even the food table was at pony-height and that looked strange to me.
The signs in the room were in both English and Equestrian and I could hear ponies speaking both languages, and there were also a pair that were speaking something else that I didn't recognize.
I found Aquamarine pretty quick and her cheeks were kinda damp, too, and she said that she hadn't seen Cayenne or Gusty yet, and I hadn't either, and I said that I'd fly up and check, and so I did and a lot of ponies stared at me 'cause they had kind of forgotten about pegasuses I guess.
And while we were waiting for them, we found Sunrise Song, and said that we'd met her helpers in Los Angeles, but we'd never met her before, and she didn't know about us but did know about Gusty and said that she'd seen her in Orange is the New Black, and she was hoping to meet her so we promised that when she arrived we'd bring her over.
We found a pair of Earth ponies and talked to them for a while—one of them was from Vanhoover and the other lived in a little town that neither of us had heard of but it was near Dream Valley. We didn't feel bad for not knowing it, though, 'cause neither of them had ever heard of Chonamare.
And Cayenne came in first and she really looked pretty sad and so we went over to cheer her up and hugged her and nuzzled her and she just wanted to go lie in a corner, so she found a quiet spot and stretched out on the floor and said that the last few days had been really tough and she'd been late to the airport 'cause she hadn't gotten all the way packed yet and had to take a different airplane and it was good that there were a lot of them. And then she put her muzzle down and started crying and pretty soon some other mares came over to help cheer her up.
When Gusty came in she came over and nuzzled Cayenne, too, and we eventually got her back to her hooves and moving around and talking and she cheered up a little bit but you could still see that she was really sad and she got some food but didn't eat it and kept forgetting that she was holding a plate in her field and Gusty had to catch it a couple of times so she didn't make a mess on the floor and she finally took it away from Cayenne and set it out of the way.
I went and brought Sunrise Song over so that she could meet Gusty and it maybe wasn't the best of circumstances but the two of them did get to talk some, and me and Aquamarine led Cayenne away a little bit and let her sit on the floor and relax some more.
There were sleeping rooms for us to use and we were going to go through after breakfast, 'cause we had to wait for the inbound ponies to come in first and that would take a little while. And so we decided that we should find a room, 'cause we were hoping that Cayenne would be better after a night's sleep, so we led her down the hallway until we found a room that nopony was using and it had two big beds in it and we only needed one, so we left the door open so that if other ponies were looking for a place to sleep they could come in.
It was kind of like a hotel room except not as nice—the walls were the same big bricks as everything else, and the floor was tiles and Gusty said that she'd heard that the building had been an institution before it was a transfer center and maybe that was why it was like it was. But we had our own bathroom and the shower was kind of small which was too bad so only two of us at a time could fit in it.
Gusty had to change into her sleeping clothes, and then we got Cayenne into bed and the three of us groomed her and then we were all pretty exhausted so we all curled up with Cayenne in the middle.