May 17
He must have fallen asleep while he was reading, because the book was on the bed next to him and the light was still on. Or else he hadn't wanted to wake me up, which was really sweet of him.
The blankets were pushed down, so I stretched out my wing to keep him warm, and rubbed against his cheek then dozed for a little bit until he finally woke up. Then I rolled all the way on top of him and kissed him on the nose.
We ate breakfast at Nina's—I'm beginning to wonder if he knows how to cook. He has a stove, but nobody ever seems to use it. So I asked him, and he said that he knew how to cook but that there wasn't any food in the refrigerator, but if I didn't like Nina's we could go somewhere else next time, or he could get some food and we could make breakfast in the kitchen.
I thought that would be fun, so he promised we'd do that on Thursday. Although I had to admit I'd kind of miss Nina's, too; the waitress is really nice.
We went back to his house after breakfast and I told him that I was going to go for a trot around the neighborhood, and said he could come along if he wanted to, but he didn't.
I'd gotten about a block from his house, when it occurred to me that I could trot around at the nature center and that would be really nice. So even though I didn't have my flight clothes, I took off, keeping below the trees, and flew over there. The ridge trail was easy to spot, so I landed on it and then trotted off to the east.
That was really nice—a lot nicer than the roads. The dirt was a lot softer on my hooves, and I didn't have to watch out for cars, which sometimes go without seeing people or ponies on the sidewalks. And there were a lot more animals I saw, too: there was a small herd of deer grazing, and when I got close I saw their heads come up and they were sniffing at the air trying to figure out what I was.
I didn't want to bother them, but I guess it didn't matter what I wanted, because even though I slowed down, when I got too close they all ran off, their white tails flicking in the air.
Since they were galloping, I thought I might as well, too, so I raced down the trail all the way until it went into the woods and joined up with the other trails, then did the loop a second time, cantering along the ridge, and galloping along the base. That pretty much tired me out, so when I was back around to the place where I'd landed, I took off again and flew low back to campus.
It took a while to get all the lather off my coat, and by the time I was done with my shower, I was hungry again. Luckily, it was close enough to lunch time.
I got there before any of my friends, so I took my tray and set it down on the table where Leon and Cedric and Trevor liked to sit.
I had my back to the door and they must have seen me before they got their food, because I didn't wind up making a mess. Cedric came up behind me and poked me in the back—he can move really quietly for as big as he is—and I popped out my wings reflexively and twisted up and around out of my chair.
Leon was laughing his head off and Cedric said that the SG was sack-proof. Then he told me he was sorry for surprising me like that and I crossed my forelegs and glared at him and wouldn't accept his apology until he gave me a hug.
After that they went and got their food and I just sat there feeling kind of embarrassed by my reaction—but they'd surprised me. I should have heard them coming. I was paying too much attention to my salad, even though it wasn't going to go anywhere.
He said that he was sorry again when he sat down, and he set a familiar-looking vase of flowers on the table. I asked him if he had gotten that off the dessert table, and he said so what if he had. It was the thought that counted.
And they did look pretty in the center of the table. Even if they were fake.
Trevor told him that he was never going to win over a girl with fake flowers and that he ought to learn poetry, and Leon said he didn't know any poetry but he did know some limericks. Trevor said that counted as poetry, and we'd just read limericks in class last week. So Leon started saying that there was once a man from Nantucket, and Cedric held his hand over his mouth and said that he could not finish that limerick. He said it wasn't for pony ears.
I said that I didn't mind, but Cedric said that he minded and that was what mattered. It was kind of an odd thing for him to say.
So I said that maybe I'd ask Conrad, because he was really smart and knew all the poems, and Trevor just started laughing and said that he would probably recite it in class if someone asked.
Cedric said that from what he'd heard, Conrad was about a hundred years old, and Trevor said he couldn't be more than seventy, and had more wit than both of them put together.
Leon claimed that Cedric dragged down the average, and then by way of apology he took a flower out of the vase and handed it to Cedric.
Then after lunch was over, Cedric got up first and when he was walking out of the dining hall Leon whispered the rest of the limerick in my ear and I told him that I'd dated a stallion who could do that.
He just shook his head and said that blue girls were crazy and walked off to catch up to Cedric.
Conrad introduced us to T. S. Eliot today. He said that he was legally obligated to do so, because Mister Eliot had been such an important poet. Then he said that he’d start out with a poem about naming cats. He told us that T. S. Eliot knew a thing or two about cats; he’d even written a book which was sort of the basis for the Broadway Play Cats. That sorta made my ears perk up, ‘cause it was the kind of thing Gusty would like to know about.
It was kind of funny how after the poem was done, the class focused more on names than the actual poem. Most people have three or more names, which felt like a lot. Ponies usually only have two, or sometimes three. I guess maybe a unicorn’s House sometimes counts as a name, too.
Some people in class knew the meaning of their name, and others of them didn’t. Trevor said that he was named after his father, and he didn’t know what it meant. I said that I suppose when my Mom named me that was my everyday name, but then when I got my cutie mark, I also took a new name. And then everyone wanted to know what it was, and I said Moonglow, ‘cause I was born at night.
He had us read a poem about a Hippopotamus next, which was kind of weird. When we were first reading through it, I could tell it was making fun of the church, but I wasn’t sure how. And the class couldn’t reach an agreement, either. That’s one thing I really like about poems, how the author can paint a word-picture and then everyone else sees what they want in it.
We finished with a really short poem called Morning at the Window, which made me think of the noises of the campus in the morning. It started off pretty quiet but then you’d start to hear cars driving down the street and people coming in and out of the dorm. And some of the students who had spent time in big human cities thought it was still pretty accurate.
After we left class, I asked Trevor if he thought that Cedric might like the poem, and he thought he would, so I said maybe I’d read it at lunch next Thursday.
I had time before dinner to start organizing my notes for my essay, and then just a little bit of time left to start reading 2 Kings. I thought at first that Elisha was going to be a good man, but then he had bears maul boys who made fun of him for being bald, so I wasn’t sure any more.
I hadn't really noticed that lunch was leftovers, but it had been, and they had a nice dinner for us. It was French, Peggy said.
There was an egg pie called a quiche that was very good. They had two kinds, one that was vegetarian and one that had bacon in it. I took the vegetarian one but tried a small bite of Peggy's that had bacon and that was good, too. And I also had some fancy sliced potatoes that were pretty good, and all the rest of the special food was meat and long loaves of bread called baguettes. We took a whole one for the table and broke it apart and shared it, and that was nice.
I did a little bit of homework after dinner and then Peggy and I went down to Christine's room to watch the movie, and Peggy sat with me on the papasan.
I really liked the movie. The style was simple compared to all the other movies I'd seen, but it was beautiful. A lot of it really felt like Equestria, or maybe Equestria as it would be in a few years. And right at the end, I started to cry when Sheeta told Muska that the throne room was a tomb for them and I thought how brave she and Pazu were to stand up to him, and I thought that they'd died when they spoke the spell of destruction and the city began to collapse. But in the end it was okay; the tree saved them, and the simulacrum kept tending to the garden.
And maybe I was crying a little bit too because I couldn't spend as much time in the sky as I was used to, and I couldn't take my friends up there with me. They couldn't see what I saw, just drifting around on a cloud.
Still, I suppose it's better to have friends down on the ground than to be all alone up in the sky.