• Published 25th Feb 2016
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Silver Glow's Journal - Admiral Biscuit



Silver Glow takes an opportunity to spend a year at an Earth college, where she'll learn about Earth culture and make new friends.

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July 7 [Gull Lake]

July 7

I woke up in the middle of the night 'cause I heard someone open my door and then something thumped on the floor so I turned around to see what it was and promptly bumped my nose on the back of the futon.

So that gave me a moment to think, and I tried to decide if it was smarter to stick my head up over the futon and see what was happening, stay where I was and hope that nobody noticed I was there, or just charge in without thinking.

Well, I thought the first option was the best 'cause then I'd know if I should charge in or fly away. So I popped my head up real quick and saw that it was only Meghan, bent over to take her shoes off. She was facing away, so she didn't see me at all.

She was wearing the nice blouse we'd found at Goodwill and a grey-looking skirt (it was hard to be sure of the color 'cause it was dark) and her hair was up in a bun.

Meghan didn't notice I was looking until she'd unbuttoned her blouse most of the way and she let go for a minute to wave at me.

I couldn't help her undress, but I could help with the futon, so I got out and folded it down so that we'd both have room and she folded up her clothes and put them on my desk then got in bed with me.

She smelled kind of spicy, and it was most intense on her fingers. At first I couldn't figure out where I'd smelled that before, then I remembered the Buffalo Wings and then the Buffalo Wing Soup that they'd served us. And she'd said that she was going to a restaurant called Buffalo Wild Wings.

Meghan took the little band out of her hair and shook it down, then lay down next to me. She said that she hoped I didn't mind getting up a little early 'cause she'd have to go to her house to get dressed tomorrow 'cause she didn't have any clean clothes with her.

I asked her how her meeting was and she said it had been stupid and a complete waste of time and the only thing that made it marginally worthwhile was the free food, but she'd rather have been sitting in the hot tub with me instead. So I said that maybe it wouldn't rain tonight and we could do it after the spa.

Then I kissed her 'cause she still looked kind of stressed, and rolled on my side so she could snuggle me.


In the morning, her alarm went off too early and when she sat up she said she was glad she'd only had two beers, otherwise she'd really be hating today. Then she got up and started putting on her clothes from last night and when she was dressed she kissed me and said that she'd see me later tonight.

I was really glad that I'd given her a key.

I ate a light breakfast of vegetables, filled up my camelback and then put it on and my flight vest over it. Then I put a can of anchovies in my vest pocket and strapped on my radio and my altimeter so that I could get a couple of hours of flying in.

I thought I'd try something a little bit different today, and I went northeast after I got out of town. There was a main road that went off that way after getting across the river, and I thought I might follow it. I'd seen a big lake off in the distance when I was flying to Battle Creek, and I thought that this road might go there.

On my way out of town I passed by another Meijer. I thought about going inside just to visit, but then I would have had to drop back down and call the airplane directors to cancel the clearance they'd just given me and it seemed like a lot of work for everyone, so I just kept going.

Beyond Meijer, it started to turn into farmland along the road. There were a bunch of circle-fields and one that looked like it had been smooshed, and then after that most of the fields were rectangles. Humans really seemed to like making things into rectangles and squares—most of the roads were on a grid, and the few that ran diagonally or curved looked kind of out of place.

The road ran into a town called Richland and then must have turned into another road, but I didn't bother going low enough to read road signs. I could see the lake ahead of me, and the town and the single diagonal road that led back to Kalamazoo were more than enough to navigate by.

All around the lake were little houses right up on the shore, and most of them had docks with boats tied up to them.

I thought I'd do a lap of the lake before I started back, so I went into a bit of a dive when I started crossing over the water, and I wasn't much higher than a thousand feet when I got close to the other side.

That dive had given me lots of forward speed, and I bled some of it off in a turn, but I was still going pretty fast as I started along the east shore. Unfortunately, that speed doesn't last forever, but I still made it a third of the way up the lake before I had to start flapping again.

I followed the shoreline around and over the top. There was a little lake off to the northwest, kinda like a little hat for the big lake.

I was most of the way down the west side when I saw some fish flashing in the sunlight and I circled over them, trying to guess how deep they were and if it was worth trying to catch them. I couldn't see the bottom, and I knew that a lot of fish are smart enough to dive when they see a shadow coming overhead, so I didn't think I'd get any of them. Which was too bad, 'cause now that I had a fishing license, it was kind of a shame to not use it.

On the south end, there was a peninsula and right off the end of that was a small island which also had lots of houses on it with their docks pointing off into the water.

There were a few boats out in the middle of the lake and I didn't bother them, but then I saw one coming out from behind the peninsula so I flew down alongside it just for fun. One of the women in the back pointed at me and pretty soon everyone was looking at me so I waved and then made a sharp turn east to continue my circuit of the lake.

I heard the sound of the boat's motor change, and when I looked back, I saw that it had turned to follow me. If I'd been stuck on the ground it might have made me nervous to have it chasing me, but I knew that it couldn't fly, so I just minded my own business. Probably they were curious and just wanted to look at me.

Maybe they were making a movie of me and were going to put it on YouTube.

When I got back to the house that I'd marked on my flight in, I turned to cross over the lake and started to climb, as well. When I looked down, the boat was still there, keeping pace just a little bit behind me, so I flicked my tail at it.

It followed me all the way across the lake, but then it couldn't go any further and I could. I was high enough up that I could easily see Richland and the diagonal road, so I took a bit of a shortcut, flying a shallower diagonal alongside it until the road and I met up near Meijer.

I used my radio to tell the grumpy man that I was descending underneath his airspace and would not be back up in it, and he thanked me for that.

I did a steep dive at first and when I was down to two thousand feet I changed my angle to still be descending but not as fast. I could have made it all the way to the river if I didn't have to worry about airplanes, and had gone for the longest distance. But that was okay; I made it almost halfway.

One of the interesting things about Kalamazoo—and maybe this is true of all big human towns—is that all the roads sort of wind up meeting nearly in the middle of town, which means that there were a lot of landmarks I was pretty familiar with by now. Even the railroad tracks met up at the same place, just past where they'd put the train station.

I was really ready for a shower by the time I landed on my balcony. I hadn't eaten my anchovies after all, but my camelback was completely empty.

After a shower and lunch, I read a couple more Psalms and then I went to see Pastor Liz.

Liz said that Job was more like a play than an actual telling of events. She said that most people read it as trying to answer why bad things happened to good people, but that wasn't really what it was about at all. It was more about God's sovereignty, his power over things. And so at the end, we see that not only does God have all these other things that He has to care about, but He also cared enough about Job to come down and talk to him.

And when she said it that way it kind of made more sense to me. It was kind of like blaming Princess Celestia when things went wrong, when really she had a lot more to worry about than a leaking boat or a bad year for a farmer's rye crop. So I told Liz what I was thinking and she frowned and said that it wasn't quite the same unless Princess Celestia had created the world.

Well, I didn't think she had. She hadn't been around before Harmony, as far as I knew. But I guess I wasn't sure about that. I'd never heard anyone saying that she'd made the world, but I'd never heard anyone saying that she hadn't, either.

So then Liz said that the other moral to the chapter was that Job's friends had been bad because they hadn't trusted him and they'd kept trying to find out what he'd done to make God angry when he really hadn't done anything at all and that was why God had punished them at the end, and when I thought about it that made sense. I thought that maybe they could have questioned him once, and when he assured them that he hadn't done anything bad, than they should have stopped asking and helped him more, and Liz thought that was true, too.

Maybe if they had, all four of them could have had an audience with God instead of just Job, and maybe all of them would have been rewarded.

Liz thought that was true, and she said later on I was going to read about three friends who stuck together even when the king wanted to destroy them, and because they stuck together and kept their faith they were saved.

And then I told her that I had started Psalms, but I'd only gotten to the twenty-second so far, and I was really liking them.

She said that the Book of Psalms was a collection of hymns for praise or salvation and that I'd probably noticed the little notes at the top. I nodded, and then wanted to know if there was music for them.

Liz said that although it might be hard to believe, there was. Some of the ancient manuscripts from thousands of years ago still had the marks to show how they were supposed to be sung, but nobody was quite sure how to read them anymore, although there were people trying to figure it out.

Then she told me that there were YouTube videos of them being sung in ancient Hebrew and while it probably wasn't how they'd originally been sung they were very nice, and so she found one and played it for me, and it was really beautiful.

When we were done with our meeting, we hugged and then I went over to Meghan's. I had to wait outside for her 'cause I didn't have keys to her apartment, and although she'd thought my idea of a pegasus door was a good one, she said that the landlord wouldn't let her cut holes in the wall.

Once she was home and we were up in her apartment, she called for an Uber-car and then got changed into more comfortable clothes. We had a quick little snack and then the car took us to the salon.

Maura was really happy to see me again, and it was really nice to be at the salon 'cause everyone there was gossipy and once they were done talking about me being a TV weatherpony, they all started talking about people they knew who had been on TV or who knew someone who knew someone who had been on TV and so I told them about Gusty too and a couple of the girls watched the show and started talking about it and I got kinda confused because sometimes I couldn't tell if what they were saying had actually happened or if it was just in the TV show.

Maura also wanted to look at my hooves and my coat since I was there, and of course she spotted the burned spot on my foreleg right away. Enough of my coat had come back that it didn't look bare anymore, but it wasn't as long and thick as everything else. She wanted to know what had happened, so I told her about my stove, and she poked and prodded at it a bit before deciding that it seemed to be healing well.

Well, I thought it was too or else I would have seen a nurse.

She said that my hooves looked pretty good to her eye and asked if I was having any trouble with them at all, and I said that I wasn't. I'd been more careful about walking on sidewalks and roads and it was helping. I think the vacation with Aric had helped a lot, because I'd hardly walked on any pavement at all.

I paid for both of us—it was only fair; she'd paid before—and when we were about to leave Maura warned us to be careful because there was a severe thunderstorm watch; she'd just gotten a notification on her pocket telephone.

That meant I had to go on duty.

So I thanked her and Meghan had the Uber-Car take us back to my apartment and I called Mel on the radio and he said he'd come and get me, then I started putting on my gear. I made sure to fill up my camelback and Meghan helped me put it on and then my vest and my radios and my blinking light (we put new batteries in it to make sure it'd stay bright).

She told me that she'd be at my apartment when I got home and I told her that she didn't have to, 'cause I might be out late depending on the weather, but she insisted. And then she hugged me and told me to be safe, and I promised that I would.

It didn't take Mel that long to arrive, and I kissed Meghan on the lips then flew out my balcony door and down to Mel's truck, and as we pulled away I waved one more time at Meghan.

He drove out to our usual spot, and once he'd parked I flew up and did a quick circuit just to see what things looked like. There were big storms building off to the west, and it was mostly cloudy where we were—I found a hole that was big enough to go through and not have to worry about airplanes sneaking up on me—and then I remembered that I ought to tell the airplane directors where I was and what I was doing. Little airplanes couldn't fly in storms, but big airplanes still did.

Well, I made a couple of patrols and landed between them. Once when I was in the air, Mel went to the gas station and got me a Subway sandwich 'cause I hadn't had a proper dinner.

Nothing much happened before sunset. I spotted one storm off in the distance and kept an eye on it, but it went well south of us. And another one passed over but it was just rumbly and not producing anything yet, and it didn't feel like it would until it was a ways past Kalamazoo.

On his radar, stuff kept popping up and then going away again. The clouds were sort of unsure, but they could go either way and that's why I was up there. All the NOAA weatherpeople saw was blobs of color; they didn't get their hooves into the storm like I was.

I took a short nap on his seat between false alarms, until he shook me awake and said that I'd better get back up there because there was another cell coming.

It looked just like all the others had on the screen, but as soon as I looked through the windshield I could tell by all the lighting in it that this one was going to bring the rain, and when I opened the door I could feel it, so I went east and up, and I was maybe two thousand feet off the ground when the first downdraft sent me tumbling and once I got upright again it started to pour, and I had to shout into the radio to tell Mel what I was seeing.

Unlike the last storm, it was just this one big cell it turned out, but that one fought me with everything it had, from contrary winds to squalls of rain and even some hail mixed in. Whenever I got a little break, I yelled into the radio but I don't know if he heard me at all because I never heard him call back.

You could have wrung me out when I finally landed after it passed. I was as soggy as if I'd just fallen in the ocean and I was really glad for the warm cab of his truck when I climbed up inside. He angled the little vents in the dashboard so that three of them were pointing at me. When the next blob came on screen, I really didn't want to go back up but it was my duty, so I opened the door of the truck and took off again, expecting the worst.

Luckily, this one didn't have much fight to it, which was good 'casue I was worn out. Once I was sure that it wasn't going to get any worse before it passed Kalamazoo, I called Mel and he said that I might as well come down because there wasn't anything else on the radar that looked nasty.

I napped on the seat a little until he said that it was clearing up and we'd ought to get back home.

I hardly had the energy to fly back up to my balcony, and I was really glad to be home when I stepped inside.

Meghan was asleep in the papasan—I thought that maybe she'd been watching out the window for me which was really sweet. She hadn't gotten all the way undressed 'cause she was near the window and she'd probably intended to take the rest of her clothes off before getting into the futon with me.

But I thought it would be a shame to wake her up, so I slid under the cover she had on her lap and curled up on her legs and she didn't wake up and I think I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the papasan.

Author's Note:

Special thanks to Cynewulf for helping analyze Job

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