May 30
When Aquamarine got out of bed to go to the bathroom, that's what woke me up. Since she was on the very inside, she had to either go over or around, and even though she went around she moved the mattress a lot.
Meghan didn't wake up, though, although she shifted around in her sleep and flopped over on her back, which took up most of the room that Aquamarine had had. So when she was done in the bathroom, I took a turn and let her have my spot.
That meant when I was finished, I had to work my way in along the wall, but I didn't mind. It was a little tricky to get in without waking Meghan all the way up, but I did, claiming her breast as my pillow.
Both of us snoozed until Meghan woke up. I felt her moving around under me, and when I opened my eyes I was looking right at Aquamarine who had also figured out how nice a pillow Meghan could be.
So we didn't get up right away, because Meghan was so happy to have us cuddled up against her that she took turns scratching our ears and petting our manes.
It was really crowded in the shower with the three of us, and we sort of had to change around our routine a little bit, but Meghan didn't mind. She washed herself while me and Aquamarine washed each other, and once we were all clean she brushed out our manes and tails. Then I showed Aquamarine how to brush Meghan, which was basically the same as a pony except that she had to sit on the floor so we could reach.
We went to breakfast together and didn't have waffles because the waffle-maker had gotten broken again, but there was plenty of other food.
Since it was a really nice day again, Aquamarine wanted to walk to the parade, and I kind of did too but Aric was going to give us a ride, and I hadn't seen him all weekend. When I said that, though, Meghan said that she would send him a message of where to meet us, and she said that she didn't think he would mind if we met him there.
I thought she was probably right, so she took out her telephone and sent him a telegram, then we went down the hill and into town.
There were already all sorts of people lining up, but we were early enough that we got a pretty good spot, just past the hotel. Meghan told both of us what Memorial Day was about, and she said that we would be seeing veterans of various wars marching in the parade.
Parades weren't really a pegasus thing—although we occasionally had fly-bys—but Aquamarine was familiar with them. She said that they had parades for the Summer Wrap-Up festival and for the Summer Harvest and Autumn Harvest festivals as well.
We'd been there for maybe twenty minutes when Aric came walking up, followed by David and Angela. When he got close I got up on my hind hooves and kissed him, even though I probably shouldn't have with all the people around.
After that, it was a little awkward standing around while we waited for the parade to start. I think it would have been better if I had just been with Aric, and Aquamarine with Meghan, but it would have been rude to just leave Aquamarine.
I think Angela kind of figured out what was going on, because she pulled David between Aric and Meghan and kind of moved me and Aquamarine around to be in front of them. It probably wasn't the best arrangement, but it worked. Aric started talking to David, and Angela talked to Meghan, while Aquamarine and I talked to each other.
We heard the parade before we saw it. Off in the distance, I began to hear a band playing, and then I leaned my head out in the street and saw a pair of people carrying a sign come around a corner, and behind them were a group of people carrying flags, and then behind that was a band, and I couldn't see any further.
There were a lot of people leaning forward to see as the parade got close, but once it got by us, we just watched as everybody went past, and it was quite a sight to see.
After the first marching band passed, there was a big group of soldiers, all of them young. They were followed by a big red car that didn't have a roof, and there were two pretty girls in sparkly dresses sitting on the back, waving to the crowd.
Then there were a couple of floats, each one pulled by a shiny pickup truck. One of them had a bunch of kids throwing candy into the crowd.
Those were followed by a group of men wearing plaid skirts and playing a set of pipes that had a haunting banshee wail, and the veterans were behind them. Some of them were as young as the men in the very front had been, but others were much older. Their uniforms were more of a hodge-podge; the younger ones were wearing outfits like the men in the front, while others were wearing neat suits with ribbons on their breasts. And right behind them was a bright green semi-truck towing a flat trailer that had seats on it, and even older men sat on that, waving to the crowd.
They were followed by a bunch of children and teenagers wearing tan and khaki outfits, who had a sign that said Troop 292.
Men with funny hats in tiny little cars followed behind them, zipping all around the road. I thought one of those cars would be fun to have.
Another marching band came behind the cars, then more floats. There were a pair of wagons pulled by horses; one of them said 4-H, and the other one said FFA. Both Aquamarine and I whinnied a greeting to the horses, and they whinnied back.
At the very end of the floats were a whole line of firetrucks and ambulances, and their sirens were loud enough that both of us ponies pinned our ears back. And when the last one had passed, the parade was over, and people all around us started to walk away.
We went with Aric back to campus. Meghan came with us, and when we got to Winston we had to decide how we were all going to fit in, and we finally decided that the best way was for three of us to ride in the back and three in the front. So me and Aquamarine and Meghan would up being the ones in the back, which was a lot of fun. I could put my forelegs up on the railing and pretend that I was riding on a float.
When we got back to campus, we had to decide what our plans for the rest of the day were. I still wanted to see Conrad, which we could do after lunch. Plus Aquamarine wanted to talk to Brianna some more, so we planned to do that after meeting with Conrad, then we'd eat dinner on campus and later meet Aric at Durak.
He said that since he was here, he might as well eat lunch with us, and he moved Winston into a parking spot and invited David and Angela to join us.
We ate in the dark room, because Aric knew everyone who sat at that table a lot better (and it gave me a chance to introduce Aquamarine to a bunch of my Durak friends).
Lunch went long, because everyone wanted to talk to Aquamarine, and we were having so much fun that we probably could have stayed through until dinner.
The three of us went together back to the parking lot and he offered to give us a ride to Conrad's house, but it wasn't very far and me and Aquamarine both wanted to walk. But we followed him over to Winston anyway, so I could give him a goodbye kiss.
When he got to the truck, he picked a little white slip of paper off the windshield and said that Lynette was really on the ball today, then he crumpled it up and tossed it into the back of the truck. Then he leaned over so I could kiss him goodbye and we both waved as he drove out of the parking lot.
Conrad lived a couple of blocks away, and while we walked over there I told Aquamarine about him, and about poetry class. She sounded pretty interested, and so I recited a couple of short poems that we had learned, and I promised I could read her more when we got back to the dorm room if she wanted. I would have liked to memorize all the ones I liked, but that was a lot of poems and I wasn't too good at memorizing poems.
I wonder how Gusty had managed to memorize all her lines?
It didn't take too long before we got to his little white house with a white fence around it and a garage that was right up against the road. Aquamarine got distracted by his plants—there were grassy-looking bushes right up by the road, and flowers lining the brick walk up to his front door.
I pushed the bell and pretty soon he answered the door and welcomed us both inside. He shook hooves with me and Aquamarine and then led us into his library which had more books than I'd ever seen in any one place besides the college library. It was hard to believe one person could own so many books.
He left us in there while he went to fetch his wife. I liked her the moment I saw her; she was a full head shorter than him, but had the same lively look in her eyes. When he introduced us, Jean said how much Conrad had talked about me, which made me blush. Then she went away for a minute, only to come back in with a silver tray with tea and cookies on it.
There were enough chairs for all of us, although Conrad had to pull the one away from his desk.
He read her a couple of his favorite poems by e e cummings, and then he also read a poem called St. Francis Einstein of the Daffodils, which was by William Carlos Williams who we had not talked about in class. It was a kind of silly poem, but I liked it, and so did Aquamarine.
Then he said that he had a very special poem to read for her, and he took a sheet of notebook paper off his desk and read her my poem about the cloud, and he told her that I had written it.
Aquamarine didn't have any poetry that she'd written, but she knew some: she said that last year, a pegasus named Gypsum Prose had visited Ponyville, and she'd read some of her poems. One of them was called The Cutie.
She recited it first in Equestrian, 'cause that was the way she knew it, and then we translated it for him:
I wonder, I think, I try, I do!
A flash of inspiration, revelation.
A new path before me opens
A new future now unfolds
As if in a burst of light.
It now shows for all to see
That special thing that makes me... ME!
He wanted to know what it was about, so we explained to him about cutie marks and how we got them when we found something unique about ourselves that sets us apart from other ponies. And Jean thought it was a little strange that they'd just appear, but we both said that was what had happened to each of us, and that was what happened to everypony.
She said that there was one more poem she could remember perfectly, and that was called Writing:
A scratch in silence
A dance of pen on page
Thought given form, sometimes crudely.
Dream transcribed, a wish expressed
Story saved for generations
Poetry given life
Art Transcribed in medium
Alas, all for nothing if not shared
Or ignorance doth reign.
Conrad asked her why that poem had stuck with her, and she said it was because that winter she had tried her hoof at writing some poems, but she hadn't been very good at it. She said that she would get a little ways into it and just get stuck. He said that she ought not get discouraged, and just try again. Then he told her how Emily Dickinson had only published a few of her poems while she was alive, but after she had died, her sister had discovered all her unpublished poems and all of them were very good. He said that sometimes writers are afraid to publish because they don't see their own worth, but if they touch a life then they have done a good thing.
Then he asked if he could read a couple more poems for us.
She nodded, and so he first read her The Golden Boat, and then he said he had a very special poem that he couldn't read for the class. It was called The Sea, and he had written it himself.
When it was time for us to go, I hugged Conrad and his wife, and Aquamarine did, too.
Back on campus, Aquamarine wanted to go visit Brianna again, and we found her in her dorm room, doing her homework. However, she was happy to see both of us, and pretty soon we were out on campus, walking around and looking at all the plants. I was sure Brianna had seen them all before, but that didn't dampen her enthusiasm any. She took us around to all her favorite plants on campus, most of which had been planted intentionally. We ended our tour by fighting our way down the slope next to DeWaters, where she pointed out a scraggly marijuana plant that she figured some student had planted as a joke.
Aquamarine said that it didn't look very healthy, and Brianna told her that she was pretty sure that they needed more sun than it was getting down here. So Aquamarine wanted to dig it up and transplant it where it would do better, but Brianna said that was a bad idea, because they were illegal plants. Then Aquamarine asked if it was dangerous, and Brianna told her it wasn't; it was just illegal because the people who made laws were really stupid sometimes.
I could see that she was skeptical about it, but she agreed to leave it alone.
They had pizzas for dinner, and with the two of us together, we got to pick more slices than I would have alone, because humans don't like sharing their food.
Brianna ate at our table so she could talk to Aquamarine more, and when dinner was over, they exchanged addresses and promised to write each other, than Brianna gave Aquamarine a big hug and made her promise to send updates on her experiments.
We had a little time before Durak, so I said that there was one more thing I wanted to show her, and took her over to the big parking lot tower next to the hotel, and we went all the way up to the top and looked over the edge at the city around us. I said that it was the best view you could get without being able to fly or being in one of the skyscratchers that were around it. I hadn't really thought about it before, but I wondered if it was possible to get up to the top of one of them? The Willis Tower in Chicago had a floor where you could look out the windows, so maybe one of these would as well.
Of course, I didn't really need that, since I could fly high enough to see whatever I wanted. But it might be nice for next time Aquamarine visited.
We still got to the coffee shop early. The man at the counter who's called a barista recognized me of course, and I introduced Aquamarine to him and told her that the mint mocha with whipped cream was the best thing on the menu, so she ordered that, too, and we took it upstairs and the two of us pushed the tables together so that there would be enough room when everyone arrived.
Aric got there next, and pretty soon the rest of the group showed up, and we had to explain the rules to Aquamarine. I sat right next to her and looked at her cards and helped her out in the first game, which Keith said was cheating, but I didn't think so.
Then as the game played out, a third ace of spades showed up, and then everyone accused Keith of cheating—even though he hadn't gotten any of them—and he said that he didn't know what had gone wrong, and after the game was over everyone helped sort the two decks, but that was the only extra card that we found.
In the second game, Aquamarine had gotten a pretty good sense of how it worked, so I let her play on her own. She was a little more cautious than I was, but still good enough not to lose any times, although it was pretty close in the last game—she was the second-to-last to go out of cards, and she got lucky because she was able to dump two useless fives when Keith played a five of trump, and she went out of cards just before he did.
Everyone agreed that that had been a bad loss for Malcolm, because he only had trump cards left in his hand, but everyone else had had fewer cards left, and if he hadn't played cards that we could follow up on, he would have won. But he admitted he'd thought that all the fives were gone, and if he had known that there were still two of them in play, he wouldn't have played his hand out that way.
I would have liked to spend the night with Aric, but Aquamarine had to be on the train pretty early tomorrow morning, and it would be rude to make her sleep on the couch, or leave her alone in my dorm room just because I wanted some sex. So I had him drop us off at Trowbridge and he said that he could come tomorrow morning and take her to the train station, which I thought was really nice of him. And it kind of hurt to kiss him goodbye.
We curled up in my bed together and Peggy looked up from the book she was reading and said that we were the most adorable thing ever.