//------------------------------//
// February 10 [Salon] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
//------------------------------//

 February 10

I didn't sleep very well—I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream where I was being chased by angry men who wanted to hurt me because I liked Aric, and when I first woke, not only was I disoriented, but I was tangled up in my blanket and thought I was trapped, so I rolled over and that only made it worse, then I fell out of bed.

Once I got untangled, I didn't want to get right back in bed, because I knew I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep; I'd just be lying there hyper-alert. I needed to walk it off (back at home I might have flown it off) before I could curl up and relax again.

So I pushed open the door, quietly, so I wouldn't wake up Peggy. The hallway lights are always on, and I had to blink away the brightness until my eyes adjusted.

I just walked up and down the halls for a while. It was kind of eerie; my hoofsteps echoed up and down the silent hallway. Normally, there were all sorts of noises that kind of covered them up, but the dorm was silent: everyone was asleep. Everyone but me.

Instead of going all the way to the ground floor, I pushed open the door to the outside walkway between wings. For some reason, it's called Pebble Beach. It's got a stone covering, so that's where the 'pebble' part comes from, but it's not very beachy. There isn't any water near it.

I sat on the walkway for a bit, looking at the sleeping campus. It wasn't totally empty; there were a couple people walking in front of Hoben Hall, and I saw a car drive up Academy Street, but there wasn't anybody near me.

For maybe ten minutes, I surveyed the campus, and then I yawned and fluttered my wings. The last of the nightmare was gone, and it was time I got back to bed.

When I got up again, I went for my usual morning trot, followed by a quick flight just around campus, then I got ready for class and went to breakfast.

We got our tests back in climate science class, and I got a B. That annoyed me; I thought the professor was being unfair. Just because I can't remember Latin doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing! I thought about coming in on Friday with a super-condensed tuft of cloud, and dropping it in his coffee cup when he wasn't looking. It'd freeze solid.

That would be mean, though. Besides, Cloud Climber was always whacking our hooves when we got them wrong in weather class. She said we'd never get proper weather jobs if we called clouds things like 'white fluffies' and 'grey gloomies.'

So that wasn't a very good start to the day, but at least I had John Locke's wisdom to cheer me up. He was so smart! I'd been a little concerned with Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes, thinking that maybe they'd somehow gotten philosophy wrong—or worse, maybe we ponies were doing it wrong. But now I saw that they had just had wrong philosophy and John Locke was fixing it.

The teacher discussed his ideas about the separation of powers, which she said were an important concept to the founders of America. I wasn't entirely convinced that was true, because while we do have councils and assemblies and mayors and so forth, that's just so that Princess Celestia doesn't have to do so much work. If we had to wait for her say-so on everything we did, nothing would ever get done, and she probably wouldn't even have time to raise the sun. But the humans didn't have anyone like that, so I guess it made sense for them.

Before Equestrian class, I ran into Peggy, and remembered I was supposed to ask her if she wanted to go to the SCA event this weekend.

She said that she couldn't, because it was Valentine's Day, and she had plans.

I didn't know what that was, so she explained it to me, and it sounded a lot like Hearts and Hooves Day.

I asked her if her plans were with her boyfriend, and she nodded. He'd rented a hotel room with a hot tub and she had bought new underwear from Victoria's Secret that she probably wouldn't be wearing for very long. She wanted to know if we had similar customs.

So I told her about Hearts and Hooves Day, which is a little bit later in the year to encourage foals. I told her it would be about a moon and a half after Winter Wrap-Up. We compared calendars, and decided that Hearts and Hooves Day would fall at the beginning of May. She told me that I ought to celebrate it with Aric, and I thought that was a fine idea. Something to look forward to!

Then I had to rush off to Equestrian class.

We pretended that we were going around trying to buy things from pony shops. That took a while; people in class weren't used to haggling over prices. There are a few big markets where you don't, but mostly you do. There is a certain art to it, and it was very difficult to explain, so we did a lot of practicing. It was important to get it right, 'cause otherwise you might insult the salespony, and also pay too much for what you got.

That reminded me that I still hadn't gotten my mane and tail trimmed, so I asked Meghan and Lisa and Becky where to go to do it, and Meghan said that her salon had a stylist who would love to do a pony's hair and we'd go right after class and be back in time for dinner, and she'd take care of everything for me.

She didn't have a car, but she said she could get one with Uber. I thought that was a person, but it turned out it was a thing her phone did. She pushed the screen some, and then said that we could watch on her telephone where the car was, and see a picture of the driver.

So we did—we sat in the lounge at the front of the dorm, and pretty soon a bright red car pulled into the parking lot, and we got in.

The driver looked a bit surprised to see me, but he didn't say anything, just tapped his map a couple of times and then drove us to the salon.

Well, she was right. I caused quite a scene when I came in, and pretty soon there were several of the girls fawning over me. They helped me up into this amazing chair that could rise up from the floor and recline back, and they gave me a special blanket that would keep stray hairs out of my coat.

I had to wait for the stylist; she was finishing with another woman, so while I was waiting, one of the younger girls washed my mane.

They were a little less certain what to do with my tail; they had to re-arrange a few things so that they could wash it. As clever as it was, the chair wasn't designed with ponies in mind.

Then the stylist came over and trimmed up my mane and tail—she said that she had horses, so she knew exactly what to do.

When they were finishing up, Meghan ordered another Uber, and then we all sat and chatted for a bit. The woman who had horses said that she knew how to trim hooves, too, but she didn't do that at the spa. She gave me a little card with her name (Maura, which is a very pretty name) and told me to call her whenever I wanted to make an appointment.

The nice thing about going to a salon is I always feel like a princess after all the pampering, and it just feels different to have my mane trimmed, even though it's pretty much the same as when I went in, only shorter. And it was good to know that there was someone in town who could trim my hooves if that needed to be done.

I got to dinner a bit late, but not too late. Sean wanted to know if I was ever going to watch any more Star Trek movies with him, and I said that I would, but only if we could watch them in Christine's room because I liked sitting on her papasan, and he said that was fine and asked what I was doing tonight.

I knew what I wanted to be doing, so I told him that I wasn't sure, and he said that he would be at her room all night, and I could stop by as long as it was before ten, or give them a call.

He wasn't home again. Sara was, though, and she said that he was working—he worked late several nights a week. She didn't know when he'd be back, either; she said that sometimes he came back at midnight and other times not until later—she didn't know exactly when, because she was usually in bed by midnight.

I thought about asking if I could just sleep in his bed, but thought that might be a bit too forward, and I also wasn't sure what Sara thought about us being together, so I flew back to campus and watched a short Star Trek episode with Sean and Christine. She told him again that he was cheating, that he didn't want to show me Star Trek V because that would be a huge disappointment, and he said it was just too late in the evening to watch a whole movie.

I didn't mind—I was comfy in the papasan, and watching the episode was a nice distraction for all the other things that had been going through my head.