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// June 8 [Goodbyes] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
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June 8

It was weird waking up in my own apartment.  I guess I still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of it being mine yet.  It was different than the dorm, ‘cause that was a part of the school and I hadn’t gotten to choose but here I did get to pick.

I wondered if humans normally had that kind of enthusiasm when they moved into their homes?  Had Aric felt like that when he got his house?  Or was it different for them?  I’d never had any special attachment to temporary cloud-shelters that we sometimes built when we were out on patrols for a couple of days; maybe because there are so many apartments available humans don’t really think too much of them.

I thought that Meghan seemed pretty happy about the one she had, which I hadn’t seen yet.  Maybe today after we got done at the salon we could go look at it. She said that my apartment was homey, and I hoped hers was, too.

It was too much to stay in bed, so I got out of bed and put the covers back over Aric to keep him warm, then I went into the kitchen and used the faucet to fill a cup with water—that was really convenient—and then I went around the apartment, looking out all the windows and sniffing the air to see what kind of smells were around.  There was only one window that looked west which was in the kitchen, and that was kind of strange: there was another house like this one right across the driveway.  It was maybe five meters away, and it might be nice to chat with the neighbors without going outside.

In the back the windows looked over a gravel parking lot that had some grass growing at the edges.  There were three cars back there along with Winston and all of them looked pretty worn out.  One was a squashed-down van (that style is called a station wagon), and the other two were both sleeker looking cars like Cobalt.

To the east was an open lawn that was a lot greener and more inviting.  There was a brightly-colored building in the backyard that was for kids to play on, and around the edges there were little flower beds.  And in the front were the big windows that faced south and let lots of light in, but it wasn’t too bright because the tree shaded it.  I could imagine that in the wintertime when all the leaves were gone it would be nice and bright inside, and it always felt warmer when it was bright.

I went out on the balcony and thought about how nice it would be to put a bird feeder on the tree, up nice and high where I could look right at the birds and I bet that they would perch on the balcony railing, too, while they were waiting their turn.

I pushed the papasan chair over to the big window that looked out on the balcony and sat in it until I heard Aric waking up, then I got back in bed with him and he put his arm over my back and his head against my neck and fell asleep again for a little bit.

He was a little too tall for the futon, and I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten a bigger one but it had looked plenty large enough when I saw it.  When he rolled on his back and stretched out, his head was right up against one railing, and his feet were sticking under the other.

Even so, it was plenty big enough.

There were a lot of vegetables left over from last night—nobody had seemed too interested in eating them—so that was what I had, and Aric ate potato chips, which I thought were too oily and too salty for breakfast.  But he’d had a few drinks last night so maybe that would help.  I’d only had a couple of beers, because I kept moving around talking to all my friends and while it was pretty convenient for people to hold beer bottles in their hands while they were talking, it wasn’t so convenient for me.

I told him that I was going to have a morning flight, and then I was going to help Peggy pack up her stuff, and after that I had an appointment at the salon.  I said that since it was our last day together I wanted to stay with Peggy and he said that was okay.

I had to go back to my dorm room to get my flight gear, ‘cause I’d left it all there, but I flew out of the balcony door anyway and just kept low.  There was an electricity wire that ran right along the driveway next to the tree, and it would be easy to run into it by mistake.  People would be so much better off it they put them under the ground or something where they weren’t in my way. But the birds liked sitting on them and sometimes squirrels would run on them too, so I suppose they also did some good.

Peggy was still in bed when I went in the room, but she got up while I was getting dressed and hugged me and asked if I was ready to pack things up.  I said that I wasn’t but at least when the summer was over we’d be back together for another quarter.

She said that she had mixed feelings about leaving, too, and told me to have a safe flight.  I nuzzled her cheek and told her that I would, and then I went back out to Pebble Beach and found out that most of the area where I liked to fly was blocked off to me for a bit, because there was an air ambulance flying there.

South was available, though, so I went off that way, flying diagonally across the houses and streets until I got to Westnedge, and then I followed that south all the way to the 94 Highway, and I made a little loop around the office where Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn worked and I thought about landing and going in to surprise them but then I thought that maybe they would think that something was wrong if I showed up uninvited, so I made a big curve back north, and then flew in a straight line back to campus.

When I got back to the dorm I took my shower and then Peggy and I sat down on her bed and she had a beer and offered me one. I didn't want to take it because I thought I might spill it on her sheets—which were pretty clean—and she said it didn't matter if I did but we ought to have a toast to a good year together.

Then we just sat there, drinking in silence, and I think we were both considering how empty the room was going to look once we both packed up our things.

Lunch was kinda sad, too. Christine was leaving right after, because she had a friend who was giving her a ride to the airport so that she could fly back to New Orleans, and Sean was leaving later tonight, too. And I could see that the dining hall wasn't as full as it normally was for lunch, so a lot of people must have already left.

But it was also happy because Sean and Christine had gotten me a housewarming gift which she said they would have given to me last night but they hadn't planned on going right over. And then she picked up a bag that had been by her feet and inside was a waffle-maker. So I hugged both of them and kissed Christine on the cheek and Sean, too.

Me and Peggy spent most of the afternoon packing our things. I didn't have too much to pack, although I had more than when I'd arrived. It wasn't all going to fit in my saddlebags, 'cause I had books from class and poetry books and my calculator which I had hardly used for class, and of course my computer too.

By the time I was supposed to leave to go to the spa with Meghan, almost everything in the room had been put in boxes and bags. Peggy was pretty creative at packing all her stuff away, and it helped that she didn't have any textbooks anymore, because she'd sold them back to the bookstore. I was going to keep mine.

She still had a little more than she could fit into her suitcases, so she gave me a box of things for me to use if I wanted, like her unused shampoo and soap because she said that Cobalt was going to be pretty full and there wasn't much point in taking extra bottles back home with her.

I was glad that Aric was going to come over tomorrow and help me move, because it would be a lot quicker than me carrying a few things at a time.

I nuzzled Peggy and told her I'd be back, then went over to DeWaters to meet Meghan. She was coming down the stairs when I came in, and she said that she'd thought that I'd forgotten, and so I told her that I'd just been busy packing.

We got in the Uber-car and rode it to the spa. I told Meghan that I was going to spend the night with Peggy 'cause it was her last night and she seemed kind of disappointed so I said that we could spend the night together tomorrow in my new apartment if she didn't mind sleeping on a futon and she said that she didn't mind, and she got a little cheerier after that.

Maura gave me a good looking-over and brushed out my coat really well, and also trimmed my mane and tail while Meghan was getting her hair cut. And she'd also thought to have one of her friends come over who was a farrier, which she didn't have to do: I would have been happy to go to her friend's house.

Her friend was named Stefan and he smelled distractingly of horses, and I think he really liked Maura because I could see he'd tried to groom himself but he didn't seem to be all that good at it. And I saw the woman who was cutting Meghan's hair frown a little bit when he came in, but she didn't say anything.

Still, he was fascinated by me, and I could tell he didn't really know what to say because I think he spent a lot of his time working with the poor dumb Earth horses and maybe didn't feel all that comfortable being around one who could talk back, and so he couldn't decide how to treat me.

Once Meghan was done with her hair, we went into the back room and he had a big bag full of tools and most of them were the same as what I was used to. It took a bit of trial-and-error to find a good working position for both of us and he finally wound up sitting on the floor so that he could put my leg over his.

That wasn't the way I'd ever done it, but it was the way he was used to working.

He was happy that I kept the bottom of my hooves pretty clean; he said that he had to pick big clumps of shit out of normal hooves, then his face got red and he picked up his hoof knife and scraped a little bit around my frog (it's hard to get all the dirt out of there) and when he was satisfied he asked Meghan if I spent a lot of time on hard surfaces, and I said that I did a lot of walking on concrete and he kind of jumped because I think he forgot I could answer him.

But after that it went pretty well. He filed my hooves a little bit and made sure that they were even and trimmed my frog just a little—he wasn't sure how much he could do it without causing problems, and I wasn't sure either. It wasn't something I normally had to think about, 'cause the spa in town did it.

And I'd never gone this long without having my hooves filed, but the roads and sidewalks were really keeping them worn down.

He also filed down some of the chips so that there wouldn't be a sharp edge that might catch on something, and when he was done I stood up and walked around the room a little bit and it felt weird because he'd chosen a little bit of a different angle than I was used to, and it made my joints and muscles feel a bit weird, but it wasn’t anything unusual. In a couple days I'd be used to it.

I thanked him for helping, and he smiled and said it was his pleasure and he hadn't thought that he'd ever get to do hoof-work on an Equestrian pony.

Meghan and I had another Uber-Car take us back to Comensoli's, which is a little Italian restaurant on an island of land where all the roads and the railroad tracks come together. We both had Tortellini which are little round pastas with cheese inside, and sauce on top. Then when we were done with dinner Meghan took me to her apartment, which wasn't very far at all. It was a big house with a big porch and a lot of different doors in the front, and then when we got inside there were a couple more doors, and then a staircase that led to her room, which she said was a studio.

It was a lot like mine, but it was smaller and only had a kitchen and a bathroom and a main room. And one side didn't have any windows at all, which she said was because that was someone else's studio apartment.

I liked mine a little bit better because it had more windows and a balcony, but hers was pretty nice, too.

We walked back to campus together, and I went to her room for a little while to say goodbye to Lisa and Becky and I would have said goodbye to Amy, too, but she was already gone, and Meghan's room looked kind of empty with half the things missing and one of the beds without bedding.

I agreed to come and get her tomorrow and we'd go over to my apartment together and then I kissed her and went back to my room that wasn't going to be mine after lunch. We had our door open and Ruth and Rebekka came by and said their goodbyes, and Peggy made everyone White Russians and then a second for me because she said we might as well kill the bottle. Then we got in bed and it was really sad to think that this was going to be our last night together for a long time.

Even when the lights were out, we kept on talking about the things we'd done together and how much fun the year had been, and Peggy made me promise to come see her in Colorado and she said we'd go all sorts of fun places together, and I said that I would.