Silver Glow's Journal

by Admiral Biscuit


12 After Ice Moon [Back in Equestria]

January 1 12 After Ice Moon

I was glad that we'd left the door open, 'cause when I woke up I saw that there were a couple of other ponies on the bed next to ours. I couldn't tell who it was just by looking, and there had been so many ponies all gathered together that I couldn't tell them from their scents, either, although if it had been somepony that I knew well I would have been.

I yawned and stretched out as much as I could without waking anypony else up and I didn't want to get out of bed right away, 'cause it was still just barely light outside.

So I tucked my head up against Gusty's withers and that made me a little bit heartsick, 'cause with her sleeping clothes on it was like snuggling up with a human sort of but it wasn't quite the same.

I wondered if she was going to keep on wearing clothes when she got back to Canterlot, or if she was going to slowly get out of the habit. Maybe she'd just stop bothering with her underwear after she'd been back a couple of weeks and then slowly go around less and less dressed. Or maybe not—it was gonna be winter in Equestria, too, so she might want to keep her clothes on until the springtime at least.

If it hadn't been rude, I would have asked her when she woke up.

I drifted a little bit off to sleep until I heard Aquamarine yawning and then I could feel the mattress move a little bit as she stretched out and then since she was up, I got up, too.

We were both curious so we took a look at our roommates. On the close side was a white earth pony with a blue and purple and pink mane that was really pretty even though it was kind of tangled up from sleeping, and then on her other side was a yellow earth pony with a blue mane and tail and she had a white diamond star on her face and I didn't remember seeing her last night and I would have 'cause stars and blazes and socks were really rare on mares although both me and Aquamarine had discovered that they weren't that rare on Earth horses.

Aquamarine thought that maybe they'd gotten back really late last night and so we ought to let them sleep. We could meet them at breakfast.

So we went into the shower and were happy to find out that there was proper pony shampoo and soap in there for us and they also had a hoof-pick hanging from the wall and in the cabinet were a bunch of brushes and combs which was really thoughtful of them 'cause I hadn't packed any of that in my saddlebags and Aquamarine hadn't either.

And we weren't sure how much hot water there was and so we decided that we'd take a cool shower since neither of us minded that much and that way there's be plenty of hot water for everypony else.

While we were drying off I was thinking about the ponies on the other side who were about to come through—I didn't think they'd started yet, but maybe they had. They wouldn't really know what to expect and so I told Aquamarine how I'd left a letter for whoever came after me and her ears fell and she said that she wished that she'd thought of that.

We couldn't decide if we should leave our room yet, or if we should stay a little while longer for when Cayenne woke up. So we went over and looked out the window, and it was still grey and overcast outside but it was getting light as the sun came up behind the clouds. And it was a strange thing to wonder, but I all of a sudden started thinking about what the weather would be like on the other side. It wasn't like taking a train or even an airplane where the weather changed as you went; when we went outside to get to our trains it could be completely different.

Aquamarine said that she was a little bit sad that she couldn't bring any plants with her back to Equestria, just because it wasn't safe. She said that humans had found out that some plants were invasive and they'd get away and take over everything and there were people at Michigan State who were trying to figure out the best ways to kill them because they competed with the native plants for food and water and sunlight. And she said that there were lots of them in Michigan like garlic mustard which didn't taste very good, and dame's rocket, which was kind of pretty and did taste good.

Well, we were still at the window when our roommates woke up and once they got out of bed they came over and introduced themselves. The white mare was named Gingerbread, and she came from a town called Tambelon, which was in the south part of Equestria, and the yellow mare with the star was from Grayvaile which was on the other side of the Sparkling Sea, and her name was Bubbles.

They'd both gone to school on the west coast, which was why they'd come in so late and I was kind of jealous of Bubbles, 'cause she'd gone to the Western Washington University which was practically on Puget Sound, and she said that the beach wasn't even a mile away from the university.

We would have liked to talk some more but gave them a chance to take their shower, and we decided that when they got done we'd wake up Cayenne and Gusty if they hadn't gotten up yet, 'cause they had to be ready when it was time to go back to Equestria.

So we waited until we heard the shower stop and then we both got up in bed and started nuzzling Gusty to wake her up, 'cause we thought that it would be best to wake up Cayenne last. And I guess Gusty hadn't been all that much asleep any more, 'cause she opened her eyes right away and then she stretched out and pushed the covers off of her.

The three of us had gotten Cayenne up by the time our new friends came out from the bathroom, and Bubbles had a ribbon tied around her dock. Gusty said that that was in fashion in Grayvaile but it looked kind of odd to me.

I think Cayenne had gotten all cried out yesterday but she was still pretty gloomy and also tired and we had to kind of push her into the shower, and I said that I'd go see if there was any coffee to help wake her up.

There were already a few ponies in the hall, and the table was filled with breakfast food and they had a nice selection of hays and fresh pasture grasses, along with some human foods like shredded wheat, and most importantly they had big urns of coffee and also a bunch of different kinds of tea, and all the mugs were hoof-friendly.

So I got a mug for Cayenne and then I thought that I should get one for Gusty, too, if she wanted it. Me and Aquamarine could get our own, and we were both awake enough that we probably didn't need it. I was starting to really look forward to being back home again and I wondered if maybe that was why they had us wait a little bit, so that we'd have time to get used to the idea that we were really going back.

Cayenne looked a little bit more alert when she came out of the shower, but her head was still down and her ears were drooping and the coffee didn't help with that, either.

She wanted to get back in bed and rest until it was time to go but we wouldn't let her, 'cause we didn't think that it was gonna be good for her and I thought that maybe she was thinking of trying to get out of the transfer center and she'd get in a lot of trouble if she did that, so we made her go to the dining room and Gusty got some food for her even though she said that she wasn't hungry.

And we sat down at our table with Gingerbread and Bubbles and we didn't talk about what we'd done on Earth at first, 'cause we thought that that might make Cayenne more depressed, and instead we talked about what we missed in Equestria and what we were looking forward to getting back to.

Gingerbread said that she didn't like how the weather just happened and even though she'd learned better, she still read the weather reports every morning and then they were usually wrong and after a while she'd started to see a bit of humor in it but at first it had really annoyed her, and it was going to be nice to see pegasuses up above moving clouds around.

Bubbles said she was gonna be happy with furniture that was pony-sized, 'cause it seemed like everything she wanted to get to was put up higher than she could easily reach and that it had been really frustrating to go shopping and have all the food that she wanted to eat being up on a shelf that was higher than she could get to and she'd tried standing on a shopping basket but that hadn't worked so well and she'd broken through one once.

Aquamarine was most looking forward to seeing her family again and just relaxing in Ponyville 'cause East Lansing was nice, but it was too busy for her. She said that she liked it when the town shut down for the night a couple of hours after dusk.

I was looking forward to spending the night on a cloud, which was something I hadn't been able to do on Earth. I had thought about using my rope to tie one to my balcony, but then I'd thought that it might dissolve in the middle of the night and dump me to the ground, and I didn't want that to happen. Or if it got free it could fly up and get hit by an airplane, which wouldn't have been good if I'd been sleeping on it.

Gusty said that she had bought a bunch of human plays and when she got back she was going to see if she could get ponies to perform one of them. She said that she thought that would be a good way to show what human culture was like, and she said that there had been some human plays before but nopony had really done them right, because they didn't quite understand what it was like to live on Earth.

And Cayenne said that she was gonna enjoy shopping at stores that had proper jewels instead of the sad little things that they had on Earth, and that kind of cheered her up a little bit. And she said that she was going to enjoy a proper hooficure, too, because she hadn't liked her farrier too much and when she went back to him to have him fix the shoe that she'd lost in Walt Disney World, she'd wanted to buck him in the face, 'cause she'd never lost a shoe in Equestria.

Aquamarine said that she had, 'cause sometimes they got caught under rocks and got loose, and then all of us were talking about grooming and the lack of human spas and how humans didn't like social bathing at all but then we found out that we'd all managed to convince at least one of our friends to try it.

So then we were thinking about what our human friends had gotten us to do and Cayenne said that hers had gotten her to try different kinds of meat and when I said that I had, too, Aquamarine said that didn't count 'cause I ate fish anyways but I'd tried bacon and that wasn't from a fish.

Gingerbread said that she'd had some turkey for Thanksgiving and it had been pretty good. And then she said that she was sorry and she hoped that I wasn't friends with any turkeys, and I wasn't. There were some wild turkeys that lived near Chonamare but they mostly stayed to themselves and they'd chase you off if you got in their territory, especially around mating season, and it was a good thing that they didn't fly very well.

By the end of breakfast, Cayenne was in a much better mood and she started to look around the room for the first time since we'd gotten there, and I was glad, 'cause I thought that we might have to drag her by her tail to get her to leave Earth.

We got our saddlebags on and made sure that we hadn't left anything in the room, 'cause it was almost time to go, and then we decided that everypony ought to go to the bathroom before we left just in case, and then we heard that maybe one of the Princesses was going to meet us on the other side so everypony had to make sure that they were well-groomed.

So there was a lot of talk about that and everypony was pretty excited. Aquamarine knew Princess Twilight of course, and most of the Canterlot Unicorns had met Princess Celestia and Princess Luna before or at least seen them. There weren't any crystal ponies to tell us about Princess Cadance and most of us didn't know too much about her but then we heard that there was a pony near the front of the line named Posey Pink whose sister knew Diamond Rose who had known Princess Cadance when she was a student at Canterlot Academy.

It didn't feel like we had to stand in line all that long before we were moving forward, and then I started to get a little bit nervous as I got closer and closer to the doorway and then all of a sudden I was the next one in line and then it was my turn and one moment I was on Earth and the next moment my coat and feathers bristled and I was back in Equestria and at first it didn't quite sink in but then I got a little giddy and I think I would have pranced around except as soon as I got outside the door, there was another lineup of ponies and Princess Twilight was at the head of it, greeting everypony as they went by.

When I got up to her she nuzzled my cheek and asked me a little bit about the friends I'd made on Earth, so I told her about Peggy and Aric and Meghan and said that there were lots and lots more but I didn't want to make everypony wait and she nuzzled my cheek and then told me that we could relax for a while because traveling between the worlds was kind of stressful and everypony reacted a little bit differently. And she said that there'd be a lunch and she was going to give a speech before we all got on trains and started our final journey home.

When I got into the next room which was a big open hall there were a lot more ponies in there than had been in the transfer center and I guess I hadn't really thought about it but I'd kind of noticed that there had been more ponies in line waiting to talk to Princess Twilight than I'd expected and that was because they had been in different countries that had their own transfer centers, and then I got to thinking that we were actually pretty lucky 'cause some other ponies must have had to leave in the middle of the night to get here.

And I heard a lot more foreign languages, and there were more ponies wearing clothes and there was a stallion that had a neat uniform on and a couple of mares that had really pretty wraparound dresses and I saw a couple who were napping on the chairs and I bet they'd come over in the middle of the night.

It took a while before the last of the line finally made it in, and it was pretty amazing looking at all of us all gathered together like that, 'cause we'd filled up the room and we didn't start to quiet down until Princess Twilight walked through the room and up to a little podium and she said that she had a few words that she wanted to share with us.

So she told us about how she'd hardly had any friends when she went to Ponyville and she hadn't really thought that she needed them, but it was only with the help of her friends that she was able to banish Nightmare Moon and she came to realize after that just how important friendship really was, and that her friend Sunset Shimmer had learned the same lesson, and then she said that the thing about friendships was that they'd challenge you and take you to unexpected places and she asked everypony to raise a hoof if their year on Earth had gone exactly how they expected, and nopony did, and she said that our friends teach us things and then we teach them things and we're all better for it.

She said that she wanted us to all try and remember what we'd been feeling and thinking right before we came through the first time, and then to ask ourselves if we were the same pony as we'd been a year ago, and I knew that I wasn't.

Then she told us that when we went back to our universities and colleges we might notice that they'd changed a little bit, too, because of the humans that had been there in our stead. And then she said that for most of us, there'd be a new human there now and we should do our best to help them feel welcome because we knew now what they'd given up to come here, and then she smiled and said that she probably hadn't had to tell us that, and that got a few laughs from everypony.

She looked down at the podium where I guess she'd put some notes so she didn't forget everything that she had to say, and she told us that the rest of our luggage would be at the train station for us and then she thanked us and all of us were cheering and stomping our hooves so loud that we didn't hear her at first when she said that there was food in the next room for us and we should probably eat before we went to the train station, and then she stepped away from the podium for a moment and kind of paused and came back and it got quiet and she said that just so we knew it was 12 days after Ice Moon, and I heard some ponies muttering in surprise.

I was surprised, 'cause I'd completely lost count on the Equestrian calendar.

Well, by now everypony was starting to think about getting home, plus most of us were gonna be on the train at least part of the way home with our friends, so we kind of all hurried through lunch and then when we were done we went out to the train station.

I don't know why I thought it would be the afternoon, 'cause it wasn't. I looked up in the sky real quick so that I could tell what time it was and for a moment I was really disoriented 'cause the stars were all different than they had been on Earth.

I wasn't as good at reading the stars as a sailorpony, but I could do it well enough and I saw that it was getting close to dawn. And it was funny, 'cause you could tell who'd come over from the night-side of Earth—they weren't stopping in confusion, because they'd expected it to be night. And I'd thought that Twilight looked a little tired, but I'd just assumed that was because she'd met a whole lot of ponies all at once and not because it was the middle of the night.

We had to figure out which train we wanted, so we all crowded around the timetables and then we said our goodbyes to Bubbles and Gingerbread, 'cause they were on a southbound train, and we were going north. And Bubbles was gonna have a really long trip, 'cause after she got to the coast, she was going to have to take a boat the rest of the way and that was another couple of days. There weren't any airplanes that you could take to just fly you right where you were going.

Then when we went out to the platforms the trains seemed really tiny and it was weird having to adjust to that, 'cause I'd always thought of them as being big and heavy and now I was thinking about how small it was and it almost looked like a toy, and the rails were too close together and we almost needed helpers to get us used to being ponies again.

There was a line of ponies getting on our train and we weren't in a hurry, so I brushed the snow off one of the benches with my wing and we all sat down and I got out the poem that Conrad had given me because now it seemed like the right time to read it.

It was called Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and everypony really liked it and thought that it was a good poem for today. Aquamarine said that she always liked overnight snowfalls and I didn't like them as much when I had to help make them 'cause it was dark and confusing and so we tried to put down snow during the day but every now and then we had to start a snowfall at night or it carried over, and it was pretty.

It took a while for everypony to get settled on the train and they wouldn't let us leave until everyone was accounted for, and there were ponies on the platform who were helping if somepony didn't know which train she was supposed to get on.

So the sky was light by the time the train finally pulled out of the station and it was really confusing to see the sun come up again for the second time in maybe ten hours—I couldn't really rely on my sense of time any more. And we chatted for a little while, then Cayenne fell asleep against Gusty and that was really cute. Aquamarine had her muzzle up against the window so that she could see all the familiar trees, and even though most of them were hibernating for the winter she still recognized them.

We had to make a couple of stops for water because some of the stations were too far apart for the train to make it to the next station, and when we stopped at one of the water tanks I happened to look out the window and saw a couple of railroad pegasuses pushing rainclouds over to the water tank to keep it filled up.

And I couldn't help but think that the Amtraks had been much nicer. They'd been bigger and faster and sleeker and didn't have to stop all the time to get more water. I bet they could have gone from one side of America all the way to the other without stopping if they'd wanted to.

We had a long station stop when the train got more fuel and that gave everypony a chance to get off the train and stretch out some and I got to fly around a little bit and it was strange but I felt like I could fly better than ever before, but I thought that I was just thinking that because I was tired. If anything, I ought to have been having trouble flying because I was out of practice at flying in Equestria, and it did feel strange.

But it was nice to have the winter air ruffling through my coat with no flight vest on, and I felt a lot lighter without my radio and camelback.

And it was really nice to see other pegasuses up in the air, too. They were a ways off, too far away to fly to and talk to, but that didn't really matter, because they were there, and I realized how much I'd missed having a flying partner whenever I wanted one. Even when I was at the university, which didn't have too many pegasuses, I could always find some weatherponies who were up in the air and wanted to have a quick race or just hang out on a cloud for a while.

I zipped back to the ground and I could have come in for a better landing I'm sure, but flying was still kind of feeling weird so I made a more cautious landing where there wasn't anypony standing around and I saw an enterprising stallion had set up a food cart, but I didn't have any bits, so I couldn't buy any food. Maybe they'd have some on the train, or else I'd just have to be hungry until I got to my stop.

I could see that they were finishing up with the train, 'cause the collier was pulling his wagon away from the locomotive, and the platform was starting to empty off as ponies got back in the train, so I got back aboard and found our seat and Cayenne was still asleep and I was getting kind of tired too.

So when the train started moving again, I asked Aquamarine if she minded if I stretched out on the bench and she said it was okay.

Aquamarine promised to wake me up before we got to my station, which was really nice of her. I was gonna be the first one off the train in our little group of friends.

Well, it turned out that she didn't have to because even though I'd probably been up a full day since it was light out my body insisted that it was daytime and so I only really napped a little bit and then I woke back up again and the train was stopped again because it needed more water.

And I was kinda hungry and I was sort of getting a bit of nervous anticipation in my stomach, too, 'cause what if my family had changed when I was gone? What if my mom had found another stallion that she liked and he'd never met me? Or my sister had gotten pregnant—she hadn't said anything about that in any of her letters but maybe she'd wanted to keep it a surprise.

I could be an aunt and not even know it yet.

And I got up and walked back and forth down the aisle, 'cause I wanted to be off the train; I wanted all this travel to be done with. I think it was 'cause I was still tired, but I couldn't remember how long it had been since I left Kalamazoo. Was it yesterday? Or the day before?

And then I thought about the new exchange pony and hopefully Meghan had found her already and given her the letter I'd written, or maybe it would be better if she had a day to settle in her own way before getting it, 'cause it would probably take a little bit of time before the newness of everything wore off some.

I had to force myself to sit back down on our bench and I kept fluffing my wings out 'cause I was getting impatient and Aquamarine nuzzled me which helped. And I looked out the window some but I wasn't really seeing what was going by, so it was a surprise when the train began to slow down and Aquamarine almost had to shake me out of my trance.

And I said my goodbyes to my friends and we all promised to keep in touch, and we gave each other big hugs and when the train stopped I got off and I could see up front that the baggagepony was unloading a couple of big crates that were mine—I guess that the fancy silver containers had to stay on Earth.

I waved at my friends one last time before I looked back on the platform and there was my family just like I'd remembered them, and I trotted over and hugged and nuzzled them all and there were tears in my sister's eyes 'cause she was so happy to see me again, and my mom said that I looked kind of skinny and wanted to know if they didn't have enough food on Earth.

And I had so much to show them and tell them about but first we had to get all of my things loaded onto a wagon and take it back to college, and there was a pony with a wagon there just for me which I hadn't expected at all. And he said that the dean had told him to take everything back to my dormitory, and he knew right where that was because a couple of days ago he'd been taking a human from the dormitory to the train station so that she could go back to her home.

So we decided that we'd go to the inn instead and I was glad that I didn't have to worry about my things.

It was a little bit different eating Equestrian food again and my stomach wasn't used to it at all but I guess that was kind of normal, and so even though I was hungry I didn't eat too much. And we sat and talked and I told them about some of my adventures and showed them the scar on my leg from when I fell down on the train, and I showed them the pilot's license I'd gotten and all the different places I'd been and how it was true that humans wore clothes almost all the time and that there were lots and lots of Taco Bells and people made movies of me, and there was a game called Quidditch that I was gonna teach ponies and I had books and books of poetry and human trains were so big that some of them had two stories, and I promised that it was all in photo albums and books that I'd brought back with me.

And they all found it hard to believe that humans really couldn't control the weather at all, but I swore it was true, and when my mom kept asking about that, my sister said that I'd been there and I ought to know.

We probably could have kept talking all night except that I was exhausted, and so we finally went upstairs to our room and my sister asked if I wanted to use the tub and I said that I was too tired right now and I'd probably drown myself, but in the morning we could have a nice flight together before breakfast and then relax in the tub a little bit.

She got in bed with me even though we hadn't shared a bed in a while and the last thing I thought before I fell asleep was how nice it was to be back with my family again.