July 28
The first thing I did after I got out of bed was turn on my computer so that I could check the weather report. It said that storms were coming in in the afternoon, and they sounded like they were pretty certain about that. So I thought that I'd probably postpone a long flight, in case I was needed.
So the next question was where to go instead.
I decided that I would fly along Main Street to the M-40 intersection, which is really easy to see because there is a flashing light to direct traffic there. It would be a little bit over twenty miles, I could stop at Meijer on my way back and get more cans of anchovies, and then I'd have plenty of energy left for the afternoon, if I needed it.
Plus, that would give me time to finish Isaiah before I met with Pastor Liz, as long as the storms held off anyway.
I filled up my camelback and got my flight clothes on and then I debated whether I should add my saddlebags overtop, in case I bought more than would fit in the camelback's pockets. I still had a little bit of beer left from last time and the bags of birdseed were new, and I couldn't think of anything else I needed.
Then I remembered I was getting overeager to fly, and hadn't even eaten breakfast yet.
It was too much bother to take all my gear back off, so I snacked on some of the hay and then called the airplane directors. Dori told me to keep low until I crossed the 131 Highway, and told me to have a good flight, and I thanked her and then took off.
I flew over Main Street until it went over the 131 Highway, and then I announced where I was on my radio and said that I was climbing to 5000 feet. Another pilot thanked me and said that he was at eight thousand southeast of Gobles and headed for the Kalamazoo airport. So that was someone to watch out for, and I decided I'd fly a little below 5000 feet, to be extra safe. But not too much, 'cause someone else could be planning to fly under me, like the stumpy airplanes in Battle Creek.
Out to the west, it was clear, but I could feel that the air was restless and changing, and so there probably was going to be a storm later on.
I'd just gone past the fish ponds, when I saw a few big birds circling off in the distance, and I knew that they must be buzzards, 'cause they looked kind of hawkish, but hawks didn't fly in groups. They were dropping down, which meant that they'd seen something.
Buzzards are important, but I don't like them all that much. They're big and ugly and they smell bad, and they're mean, too.
Just the same, I thought that I'd better see what they'd found.
I had to lose some altitude, so I said that I was descending and looked around to make sure that there weren't any airplanes around, and then I went down to a thousand feet. Buzzards have really good eyesight—better than a pony's.
They were all clustered around something kinda big, which was a little ways off the side of the road. I was close enough that I could smell it, but all I smelled was decay, and that didn't help.
I circled once and decided that it probably had been a deer. It was about the right size, and what I could see of it was the right color. I'd seen them by the side of the road before—Aric said that they were dumb and ran into the road in front of cars and I felt bad about that but there really wasn't anything I could do to change it. He said that the road commission usually came along and took them away and I didn't know what happened to them after that.
It was another reminder that humans had different feelings about animals than ponies did.
There was nothing I could do, so after checking for airplanes and telling any pilots who were listening what I was doing, I flew back up to five thousand feet and kept heading west.
Just past M-40, there was a big greenhouse but instead of being full of flowers it was full of cars. I dipped down a little bit to get a better look at it, just because it was so odd, and then I turned around and flew back east.
I was glad that I was listening to my radio, because I heard someone say that he was taking off from Newman's Airport. I didn't know where that was, but he sounded kinda close on the radio, so I kept alert and a couple of miles ahead of me I suddenly saw an airplane pop up from the trees, right alongside the road. He was going across my path, and well below me, but climbing pretty fast. So I kept a good eye on him, just to make sure that he didn't come in my direction.
He kept going north, though.
When I got closer, I saw the runway. It was a little ways back from the road and I don't think I would have noticed it if I hadn't been looking for it.
I landed at Meijer and went inside to get anchovies. The store was always pretty busy, and every time I came in I thought about just flying over all the displays to get where I wanted to go, but it's really rude and also against the rules.
They have a kind of machine that you can use instead of a cashier, and I had fewer than twelve cans of anchovies, so I was allowed to use it, but it seemed kind of complicated to me, so I just waited in line until it was my turn.
I didn't want to bother Dori, so I stayed low all the way back to my apartment, then got out of my gear and took a shower.
It was a little bit early for lunch, so I sat on my papasan and finished up Isaiah. After it got done saying all that God was going to do, it told how the King of Assyria had tried to attack Jerusalem, and God had struck down all his soldiers, because He had promised to protect Jerusalem.
Then He said how he was going to bring down Babylon and restore everything that had been ruined, and that Cyrus was going to help Him.
I remembered Cyrus being mentioned in another book I'd read recently. I think it was Ezra, and they said lots of good things about him.
So that made me think that maybe some of the chapters in the Bible weren't in order, or else they told the same story in a couple of different ways.
I took a break and ate lunch while I thought about it. I knew that the Hearth's Warming Pageant wasn't quite the same as what I learned when I got old enough to train for fighting, and then by then I was wise enough to know that there were some things that adults knew that foals didn't need to know or weren't ready to understand yet. So maybe the Bible was written like that—maybe sometimes something was written one way so that one group of people could understand it, and then another way so that wiser people could understand.
It was yet another question I had for Liz.
Isaiah ended with God saying all the good things He was going to do to the good, faithful people, and the bad things He was going to do to those who hadn't followed His rules. I was really curious if it had all happened already—surely it must have, because there was a lot more of the Bible I hadn't read yet.
It was getting cloudy outside, so I flew up and got a feel for the sky. Rain was coming for sure, and it felt like there would be a thunderstorm, but it was probably still a ways out.
I went to the National Weather Service and studied their maps for a little bit. I thought I'd have time to meet with Liz—which was especially important since I'd had to skip last week—as long as Mel would give me a ride out to our stormwatching spot. But I'd want to make sure that I had all my gear with me when I went to see her.
I sent Mel a telephone telegram and said that he should stop by Stetson Chapel and pick me up there if he went out before six.
I gathered everything up and put it in my saddlebags, then I relaxed on the papasan and watched the birds. They knew rain was coming; they were coming a bit earlier than usual, and they were less chatty.
Some of the weathermares got like that, too. Especially if it was a bad storm coming. I'd noticed that it was mostly the older mares; the ones who were my age liked to talk and do stuff until it was time to go out.
I decided that I'd leave a little bit early, so I put on my saddlebags and since I didn't want to disturb the birds, I went out the downstairs door instead of my balcony door.
Liz was happy to see me, and she was really proud that I'd gotten all the way through Isaiah already. I told her that some of the books had been pretty easy to read, like Song of Songs, and others like Ecclesiastes had been a bit harder to understand, and that I was a bit confused about the timeline of things.
She said that was a lot to break down, so she started by saying that humans now knew that the book of Isaiah was written by several authors over a period of centuries, which was part of the reason I was having trouble figuring it out. And she said that I had been right; that there were parts of it that were also talked about in other parts of the Bible, and that the conquering of Jerusalem and restoration had already happened historically.
Then she said that the Book of Isaiah also prophesied the arrival of Christ, and that didn't happen until long after it had been written.
So that settled some of my confusion, and we started to talk about Proverbs, since it made the most sense to talk about the books in the order I'd read them, even if that wasn't always the order that things had happened. And there wasn't a whole lot to talk about there, because we both agreed that it was good to be wise, and most of what Proverbs said made good sense.
Liz had suggested that I think of Ecclesiastes as a man asking questions on the journey of his life, and only reaching his wisdom towards the end. She said that rather than be absolute statements, he was deliberately asking provoking questions to make the reader think more deeply about things, because sometimes the simplest and easiest answer wasn't the right one.
That seemed to me like an odd way of doing things, but maybe that was how humans thought. My philosophy class had talked about a lot of philosophers who had contradicted other philosophers, and sometimes it seemed like the newer one was smarter and sometimes I don't think that they were as wise at all, and I told Liz that.
She laughed and said that the pursuit of truth is a lifelong journey and the only thing that can be known for certain is that a different person ends the journey than the one who begun it.
We'd just started to talk about Song of Songs when my telephone chirped at me and when I dug it out of my saddlebags, I saw it was Mel, and he said that he was on Academy Street.
I told Liz that I had to go and watch the weather, and she reminded me that I could call her anytime if I was having trouble figuring something out, and then gave me a hug.
It was already raining a little bit, and I could hear distant thunder. Mel said that on the map, it didn't look like anything bad was going to come for a little while. I wanted to be ready, though, so I got into my flight gear in his front seat, which wasn't easy at all. I left the camelback off, since I hadn't thought to fill it before I went to see Liz, and of course I didn't put my saddlebags back on.
He parked at our spot, and I got out of the truck and flew up and we checked our radios, and then I climbed up until I was at the base of the clouds.
There was thunder and lightning above me, mostly going through the clouds. And the rain was pretty light for half an hour or so, and then it picked up a little bit, and the clouds got more thundery.
I stayed up for a couple of hours, and it never got really intense. The rain didn't get too heavy, and the winds weren't bad, either, and once I'd seen that it was clearing in the west, I flew back down and sparked off on a tree, since streetlights didn't like it, then I shook myself off before getting into Mel's truck.
He told me that storms were forecast for tomorrow, too, in the morning, and I said that I'd be ready.
I had him drive me all the way to Meghan's apartment, and she came down pretty quickly when I rang the doorbell.
I gave an appreciative sniff at the door, and she said that what I was smelling was her homemade barley soup that was the perfect thing for a rainy day. She said that she thought I'd be out in the weather and might want something to warm me up so she'd left the pot simmering on the stove.
Well, I was starving, 'cause I hadn't eaten since lunch. I should have known better.
She helped me take off my flight gear and then I went right to the table and sat down, and she brought me a bowl of soup and then went to get a towel to drape over me, 'cause I was still pretty damp.
It had a kind of tangy kick to it which she said was Worcestershire Sauce, and said that she hoped that I didn't mind it, and I said that I liked it.
I had to force myself to take my time eating, 'cause I knew that I'd be sorry if I bolted my food. And when I'd finished my bowl she asked if I wanted another, and I did, but not right away.
So she left the pot on the stove and she dried me off and brushed my mane and tail out, and then I had the second bowl of soup.
I wanted to help her with dishes, but she told me that I deserved to relax, and that when she got done she'd preen my wings for me.
So I stretched out on the bed and relaxed until she came into the bedroom and she sat down on the bed and I held a wing up so she could scoot up against me and I could lay it out over her lap.
I leaned my head up against her side while she worked, and I was already pretty sleepy by the time she'd finished one wing: she was warm against me and my tummy was full of warm soup.
We switched sides so that she could do my other wing, and then I helped her get undressed. I tickled her butt with my wings and she said that I'd better not mess up my feathers after she'd just preened them.
I rolled over on my back and told her that I'd keep my wings in, and I mostly did.
Snrk…I think Silver Gloiw needs soime help with proifreading.
Whoah, calm down!
I've been thinking about this & IMO at least weather Pegasi (& maybe all Pegasi) have emergency training on
What To Do If Caught In a Tornado.
1 Fly with the wind
2 Exit to the rear
Tornadoes get their strength by a temperature difference between the inside and the outside (ICR which is warmer). Seems to me it would make sense to fight them by equalizing the temperatures.
Doing it the way they do on the show, IMO it would make more sense to work your way to the calm spot in the middle and stop from the inside out.
Anybody that knows what they are talking about have any ideas about this?
Where I grew up, there was a straight, flat road with a traffic signal that at night could be seen from seven miles away, give or take depending on the height of your vehicle.
My local highway department had a compost pile out back that they would stir dead animals into.
7604464
I highly suspect that Everyone caught in a tornado, has an exit in the rear.
Its when you start getting microbursts in the stormcells in the hurricane, that the last thing you even Think is, can it get any worse, cos thats when a side tunneler puts you through the Minigun.
Any conspiracynuts tried cross referencing which chapter Silver is reading with what the weather is like the day or so after?
There was a crackpot plan to build huge chimneys and form tornadoes inside them thus providing a method for equalizing temperature inversions with the side effect of producing clean energy.
I think the math showed that the chimneys would have to be miles tall.
Not cost effective as yet but it might be a method of preventing tornadoes in the future.
In a fantasy novel with a tween aged superhero she collapsed a tornado by flying several times through the bottom drawing in cool air.
Booster Spice reminded me of what I've read in disaster novels
For Pegasi the big dangers are probably
1 Trying to escape by flying against the wind. Unless you're Dash, the storm wind exceeds your best speed. It's like getting caught in a rip tide. Fly across not directly against if you can't fly over.
2 Microbursts are probably more dangerous than lightning. They can blow planes down hundreds of feet. The higher the safer -more time to recover.
Wait, Meijer has a rule that customers aren't allowed to fly inside the store?
Meghan: Best human or best human?
My god Meghan, do you want Silver to take you back to Equestria with her?
Whatever happened next, Meghan definitely earned it.
7604460
At least she didn't bring the glaive along to discuss theology this time.
7604601 Wasn't «no flying indoor» one of the FAA's rules?
7604522
Which one? That doesn't sound familiar, and I thought I had read most of the decent superhero pulp novels of the last decade or so. It's been harder to keep track of new ones since Amazon bungled their recommendations code, though. (I can see why they did, the storage hit of the way they used to do things must have been substantial.)
So stormy is Michigan in summer?
Also, this fic has reminded me how long the Bible is. I read it at least twice when I was a kid, but I really didn't remember that there were so many chapters before the new testament.
7604601
I don't think Meghan would have much problem with that . I wonder what career she's studying. but she WAS learning Equestrian.
Though, I still hope Silver, after coming back to Equestria, decides to move to Earth later. There tons of things a Pegasus could help humans with. Including, of course, weather. :)
Cyrus the Great was a really cool guy. Even the Jews thought so. And he was so modest, not like that pompous Ozymandias prick.
historvius.com/images/original/503-Pasargadae-E.jpg
It surprises me that Meijer did not blacklist Miss Silver Glow for drinking in public. They could loose their LiquorLicense for contributing to public drunkenness. If she drunkenly collides with a PassengerPlane, it could crash, killing hundreds.
The tree probably wasn't all that happy about being electrocuted either!
Another cute chapter.^^ Though, I do wonder how your other fics are goin'.:D
The first thing I thought when I saw it on google satellite view, was that it looked like those carry cases kids have for their diecast cars. I'm sure that lone white one by the bottom right is a Hot Wheels.
7604460
Maybe the cannery is in Brooklyn?
7604645
Why do you assume it's from the last decade?
It's from 2000.
Skye Sparkler by Kim Metzger
There are images in Google and Amazon.
7604627 The drone racers love flying indoors (parking garages, unused warehouses, etc.)
Perfect weather and out of the FAA's jurisdiction.
7605237
Shit, 2000 isn't in "the last decade" anymore. I feel old...
this chapter reminded me of Italian wedding soup I have not hade that in a few years now.
We don't have that restriction in California, although the automated ones are mostly used for shaker purchases anyway.
This is pretty much how I view the show. We're getting a toned down version meant for kids. Just because we don't see much conflict in the show doesn't mean it doesn't exist. After all, would a kids book about WWll go into detail about the Holocaust? That's the kind of conflict we're seeing. A nice, toned down version.
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7602332
BUT THEY WOULD COST EXTRA AND MORE !
I'm sorry, but you have shattered my suspension of disbelief with this chapter. I can accept a lot of things, but I cannot buy for a moment than an extradimensional magic horse was able to spell "Worcestershire Sauce" correctly on her first try.
...
Unless she read the bottle, I suppose. Silver does seem to have a photographic memory, given how long she seems to take between journal updates.
In all seriousness, very nice chapter all around. I especially enjoy the discussions with Liz.
7605609 Now that you mention it, the author missed the opportunity to call it Worst Chester Sauce.
Looking back on this story, yeah we did have a few storms here so I can imagine Silver being quite busy over the summer.
7604601
Yes. Yes she does.
7605283
That's how I feel when I think about the 90s.
So close Silver, so very close. You just need to reverse that a little.
Some of the more urban deer are more experienced. I've seen several instances when deer stopped and checked for traffic before crossing a street.
7607226
Woah.
7604460
It's her Brooklyn accent.
(Corrections made)
7604464
Probably the best thing to do would be fly up (to avoid debris) and perpendicular to the tornado if possible. While the base of the funnel moves around a lot, the top is only going to be coming forward at the speed of the wind that's pushing the cloud, I think (and that wind would also be affecting the pegasus, so it can be cancelled out of the equation).
If I had to guess, I'd think that the inside is colder, because of waterspouts. But that's just a guess--I don't know a whole lot about tornadoes besides that they will wreck your shit.
See, if you've got a sink that's making a whirlpool, you can break it up by running your hand in the water and turning it the other way, and if you keep doing it, the whirlpool will form in the other direction. I think that principle might work on tornadoes as well, although the amount of energy needed to do that might be unreasonable. I think in MLP-logic, though, it would work.
7604479
Not too far from where I live, the lights on top of the grain elevator can be seen from at least that far. IIRC, you could see the light on M-40 for two or three miles, maybe a bit more.
I would imagine that's what they do with them here, too, but I'm not absolutely certain. If the deer get kicked off the road a bit, the highway commission usually doesn't pick them up unless someone complains.
7604519
You ain't kidding.
The microbursts are the real bad news--at least you can usually see a tornado coming. That's one reason why Silver Glow tries to keep a good altitude during storms, so she can afford to lose some of it if a big downdraft gets her.
If there is a correlation, it's bigger than me, because I am literally using actual Kalamazoo weather history for the weather in the story, and reading through the Bible in order.
7604522
I'm in favor of it. What could possibly go wrong with miles-high chimneys that contain tornadoes?
I hope she was wearing eye protection at least. At the bottom is where the tornado demonstrates anything can be a lethal projectile if it's flung with sufficient velocity.
1.bp.blogspot.com/-an_P_8ar3dg/Te5dSEKFbKI/AAAAAAAAAok/PYqODxk7k-I/s1600/tornado+%25284%2529.jpg
tornadochaser.net/images/record.jpg
7604549
Those are my thoughts exactly. You can't outrun a tornado, but you can get out of its path, since they don't turn fast (especially not up at cloud level). And if you get hit with a microburst at low altitude, there'd better be something soft under you, because you're hitting it.
7604601
Not specifically, but Silver Glow would have learned that flying inside without permission is frowned upon on Earth.
Meghan is best human.
Of course she does!
That's in case the theological debate gets too heated.
7604627
No. No landing on buildings was, but the FAA doesn't care what she does when she's inside a building, since that's out of their jurisdiction.
7604715
Depends. We usually get a few good thunderstorms, although the intensity and number of them this last July was unusual. I'm using actual historical weather data for the story, and I can tell you that the month of July in Kalamazoo had over twice the average rainfall, and that the storm on the 30th set a new record for rainfall on that day.
Yeah, Silver's still got a ways to go. Hopefully she'll make it to the New Testament before school starts back up.
What Meghan would most like is some job in Equestria, at one of the human embassies.
For now (in story time) that's not a possibility; neither Earth nor Equestria want to allow permanent residency. Although there is a chance that if she does well with her flying and stormwatching, she could get a work visa.
7604875
Yeah, everything I've read about him says he was a pretty good dude.
7604913
I'm not sure that the store has any actual liability in this case. They can't prevent her from breaking the law, and I think that unless there's a pattern of her drinking in their parking lot, they're not likely to kick her out for doing it once.
7605010
Probably not. Maybe next time she flies around it, it'll hit her with a branch.
7605063
I've got two one-shots in editing, a third sketched out, a fourth that needs to be finished, and a fifth that I need to run an editing pass on before sending it to pre-readers, and once all that's done (end of October, hopefully), I'm going to pick back up on OPP.
7605233
It kind of does. I'm a little bit surprised that they haven't put some kind of opaque roof on it, because UV exposure isn't all that good for cars.
7605247
If it's still there, Kalamazoo has a closed GM assembly plant on Sprinkle Rd. When I lived in Kalamazoo, they were trying to find some businesses that wanted to move into the space, but it was too big for anyone.
Also, Lansing has an old movie theatre they've turned into a laser pistol range.
7605283
7605369
I'm not much of a soup guy, but every now and then a good pot of soup really hits the spot.
7605473
Meijer usually has eight "12 items or fewer" self-checkout lanes, and two "unlimited" self-checkout lanes (half at each end of the store). I hate them, because a good cashier is a lot faster than I am at scanning items, and the weight table gets confused a lot.
Yeah, that's kind of how I've seen it since I first started really thinking about the show.
7605609
I actually made the decision rather early on that she would spell things correctly, because I thought that if she didn't, it would be confusing and almost unreadable. I do agree, in some cases it's not realistic, but otherwise she'd be trying to spell every new word using Equestrian phonics.
There was a guy that I used to work with at a home for developmentally disabled adults, and he kept a journal, and when he needed to use a word he didn't know how to spell, he'd ask staff to spell it for him, and then write it down in his journal so that in the future he would know how to spell it. No reason Silver Glow couldn't do the same.
Thanks!
7605775
It wasn't a record-breaking month, but Kalamazoo got double the average rainfall in July.
7605716
What's funny is that I can't spell it or pronounce it properly.
7605857
Meghan would love that so much.
7606043
Ah, yes, those were good times. Seems like only yesterday we were all worried that Y2K would be the end of civilization as we know it.
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Man, the ones out here aren't that smart. A while back, I was driving home, and I saw two deer by the side of the road, so I slowed down and honked my horn at them and they took off into a field . . . then turned around and both of them ran into the side of my van.
7611786
I've always pronounced it "wer-CHEST-er-sher" and that's the correct way as far as I know.
7612891
7611786
Worcestershire sauce comes from Worcester (WUSS-ter), England. Shire (Shur) is the same as in New Hampshire. So it's WUSS-ter-shur.
7613596 i.ytimg.com/vi/GD6qtc2_AQA/maxresdefault.jpg
8019586
Equestrian viagra?
That'll just make it worse! Now instead of being a mare, he's stuck as a stallion with a massive, uncontrollable erection!
That's from Life is Strange. (I remember watching a playthough of it by an awesome youtube who's name I now forget )
I can totally see that being Silver though.
8019285
I mean Paris, France.
7612891 7613596
I just call it 'steak sauce,' because I'll be damned if I can pronounce it the same way twice.
8020768
But at least he got his gender back.
I might have to watch a playthrough of it. Right now I'm watching a playthrough of Undertale by someone who doesn't really know what he's doing.
"Both, motherfucker."
Pony walking in her sleep..... how do you keep finding new levels of adorable!?
Silver is a busy busy pony Meghan, she does not like just sitting around doing nothing.
Yup, mousey had lots of noms.
Also, like many, my first thought was 'smartphone' for her finding her way, but there are issues. And yeah, by the time she's ready to leave, her flight gear would be a full body covering of enough tech to but a Space Marine to shame.
She's such a good flyer, as in obeying the rules and being all polite and helpful to everyone. Good pony!
Not even someone with a literal birds eye view can figure out how the fuck a clover cross works and how to use it right.
So, an odd note about my brain, and the random shit that pops into it. After her mention of almsot being ready to fly to Chicago, I made a note 'Super Flying Pony!' (most notes are just little 'hey remeber to talk about this' things more then comprehesive thoughts.) But the moment I looked it over, the music to the 90's Mega Man cartoon booted up in my head and has been stuck there all day,
Super flying pony da da da Silver Glow!
Super flying pony da da da Silver Glow!
Flyyyyyyying to claaaaaim THE WORLD!
Again, very wise pony, clothes can get in the way of excersising and be nasty, but we have reasons. Like having certain... dangly bits it's better to have nice and held tight. Plus most work out clothing is designed to breath well and keep moisture away from your skin.
Silver... that little birdy was just trying to be helpful and clean all the seeds out of your main for you!
Silver, by now, I think you've gotten a good idea of 'what comes next' for anything in the Old Testament. "People screw up. God get's pissed, bad shit happens, people feel sorry, repeat."
Mister Salvatore contuined to be very smart human. Do not load the Pony Death Canon till you are about to drop her off.
3D glasses not made for pony faces. #ponyproblems
A pegasus with a rift is the best worst idea ever!
The dude not having flowin through a t-storm is a pretty solid assumption to make Silver.
But, she is smart pony and already shows a good grasp of being an effective leader of these silly humans, after all she's already master Maxim 63. "The Brass knows how to do it, by knowing who can do it."
"Why are there haybales here?"
"Because the taste good and there's not enough room for them in the kitchen, why else?"
Ask a stupid question.
You never know, maybe Peggy would be down for a 'rustic' look to the dorm.
Silver, yes, yes people would want to watch a movie of you doing anything. And I do mean ANYTHING! This also led to the thought of her just getting it rigged up to straight up live stream her whole day.
Fair enough reason to skip the leg days you were so sure about doing, Sidewalks not being good running spots for hooves #ponyproblems
Yeah, headmount not a good idea for EXTREME flying.
Yes, ys we have bath salts. Also, this then led to the thought of how much fun she would have with a Bath Bomb.
Why wouldn't EP's have strong necks Silver?
Just.. just... trying to picture her carrying this bag of seed...... all the
Awwww such a caring pony, feeling bad about not remembering someone name, even if she only met them once. Stupid human names being so nondiscriptive and harder to remember for pony!
And use what is already there to need the least modifying, and make it as secure as you can, very smart. Though I just can't take them saying 'brisket' seriously. I get it's a body part, but it's one of those that you never hear used unless it's a meat slice.
Smart Pone getting all ready for the next morning.
Well, Silver, he only promised not to destroy everything with another flood, still plenty of other options.
And she stumbles right into something that just would stir up one hell of a hornet's nest for some with her 'God should have wrote it directly' I'm with her, and she doens't take that to it's logical endpoint, but wow would that piss off some bible thumbers.
Anchovies are like her spinach.
Silly briby-pone, trying to fly on an empty tank.
Poor corpse nommy birds, being so not liked.
What happens to the road kill? Hot Dogs, or maybe dog food. Be glad it's not Ankh-Morpork.. then it really would end up as a 'sausage-ina-bun,"
Is flying in the store really against the rules? Have they really thought ahead to make that an actual rule?
I love the self checkouts! So upset the store I shop at removed those.
Yeah, Assyria tends to be a massive dick like that. Though they are nothing compared to the Aztecs. The Huns and Mongols are a pain, but actually kind of cool dudes, the other two, and Germany, just, massive dicks that make you eager for them to try declaring war on you. (Civ 5 counts as good historical data, right?)
DINGDINGDING! Silver wins the 'finally got it' award for thewerd ass way the bible is put together.
You'd think Silver would know about the "Ask questions to try and make you think about the answers' school of learning given how much Tia favors it.
But YAY! Liz is still awesome, and yes, hug that pony.
And then we have Meghan yet again proving what a thoroughly trained and obedient pony servitor she is, rushing to get the door, having hot food ready, offering preening, just, being a perfect little pet for her Mistress. And then Silver just rolling on her back as Meghan also shows what a good pleasure slave she is. Other ponies will be SO jealous of Silver when their own personal slaves take longer to break in.
Also, of course she loves... that sauce I am not even going to try to type out, it's not anchovies in it. Doens't it?
I can accept tey'd be very leery about doing that, but I'm sure special cases can very easily be made, like for Cedric and Aquamarine. That's the plus side of having autocratic, yet omni-benvolent rulers. If nothing else, they just need to talk to Cadance, and after five minutes around them her 'Princess of Love' sense would tell her all she needs to know to make sure those two can be together.
See, the really interesting thing, is that seems highly likely. For one, just look at how many mythologies, religions, folklore, etc... from that region all feature a massive flood of some kind happening. Even going all the way out to Celtic folklore has a tale about a time when it rained for months straight, and all the rivers and seas rose. Though in this case it stops short of a full on, cover all the land flood. Plus evidence of there having been some sort of massive flooding found pretty far inland around the Mediterranean, does seem to suggest there was actually a point where there was a massive flood in that whole region.
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She’s not used to the more sedentary lifestyle of the average Westerner. If it weren’t for all her friends being ground-bound, she’d probably spend all day flying around with pony friends.
It’s funny looking back on this because recently I’ve had a mouse get into my birdseed. Or possibly several, who knows?
That’s probably what the FAA wants (bonus if all the gear’s so heavy she can’t fly in it). Salvatore is probably more on the ‘why should she have to wear equipment at all’ end of things (except for a pegasus tracking device so he always knows where she is), and they’re working towards the middle.
Another story I’m working on, the ponies have custom-made nav-lights and radar reflectors so they’ll show up better, but instead of Silver’s ‘let’s just put this on you somewhere and see what happens’ pack list, it’s designed to be as lightweight and unobtrusive as possible.
We don’t really see it in the show, but there are probably all sorts of air rules that pegasi follow, especially if they’re around somewhere that has other aircraft.
Yeah, and throw in some of them being modified for the location that they’re in, and it gets even worse. The 131/196 interchange in Grand Rapids isn’t very intuitive from the air or the ground.
And that reminds me that at Trotcon, Present Perfect was playing a Mega Man reskin with ponies. He said it was pretty terrible, though (but there’s apparently a good on out there).
As the opener in Firefly goes, “you can’t take the sky from me.”
While they do have their advantages, I think it would be a hard sell to ponies on the dangly bits, since they have dangly bits, too, and get along just fine without pants (in fact, related to the discussion about shoes and feet toughing up, if people never wore clothes I bet some of the more sensitive bits would toughen up, too).
I know, right? Silver shouldn’t have chased him off.
That is pretty much the Old Testament.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
There’s a time and place for the Pony Death Cannon, and this is not the time or place.
Probably decent ones would stick there sort of okay (although not over the ears).
They could also tape them on.
On the downside, she’d probably wind up destroying half of Best Buy before they got it back off her. On the plus side, instant viral video.
Everything inside a proper thunderstorm is meant to wreck your shit. No sensible person would fly through one, especially not in a small plane.
That’s one of the most important things about being a good leader--knowing what to delegate, and knowing who to delegate it to.
Although to be fair, most houses on Earth don’t keep haybales around for snacking.
Honestly, as long as Silver isn’t tracking bits of hay everywhere, and Peggy isn’t allergic to the stuff, she probably wouldn’t mind too much.
That’s one thing that Silver doesn’t quite get. Anything with her flying, no matter what she’s doing or where she’s going, people will watch. Cooking, probably also yes. Multivariable Calculus homework, maybe not so much.
Also, all things considered, she probably spends more time grounded and less time flying than she would in Equestria.
Probably with a chin strap it would work out all right.
I’m not sure exactly what a bath bomb is. Maybe one day I’ll get one and try it out. (I do have an image of pulling the pin, counting to three, and then pitching it into the bath tub.)
Of course they would. But who thinks about that?
Speaking of strong necks--I can’t find this video any more, which is too bad, but it’s a smaller kid trying to get on a horse, and the two have worked out an arrangement--the horse puts its head down, the kid gets on there, and then the horse lifts its head so the kid can slide down its neck and get into position.
Hopefully at least one person saw her and took a picture or video of her walking down the street with a forty-pound bag of birdseed on her back.
I know, right? And so many humans use only one name, and a lot of them have that same one name, which makes it even harder to remember.
Depending on what diagram you consult, that part of a horse is the chest or the breast or the brisket. She’d have to have learned the English term for it, and that might be another thing where the translation guide doesn’t always have the best term (I could see translators having trouble with ‘breast’ because they’d associate that with ‘teat’)
Something she really should have been doing for a while, but she naturally keeps forgetting that Earth weather doesn’t cooperate like Equestrian weather.
Exactly! Even an ice age isn’t technically a flood.
It would certainly resolve a lot of theological issues if God came down and wrote a definitive edition of the Bible. And yeah, there would be a lot of people who were pissed off about that, because (for example) they couldn’t misquote passages or take them out of context to justify their bigotry.
Oh, who am I kidding, they’d keep doing that.
They are. And did I tell you that I found a picture of Fluttershy eating anchovies adorably?
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I know, right?
Let’s be honest, they’re ugly and smelly. Pretty damn cool, though.
I think here that they either just compost it, or take it off to the garbage dump. Not entirely sure, though.
I think that it’s considered rude in Equestria to fly around inside stores. Probably being in the air but following the normal paths is okay, but not taking a shortcut right to the back or something like that. As far as I know, it’s not against the rules on Earth, but she’s just sticking with her Equestrian instincts.
I hate them. A good clerk can scan my stuff way faster. I’ll use them when I only have a few items that aren’t weird or age-restricted, but for the most part, I’d rather use a real cashier.
I think that it probably makes sense from a Jewish perspective, and they’re the ones who got to decide how to put the OT together. Although I suppose a modern church could re-order the books chronologically if they wanted to.
Eh, that’s what they do in fancy unicorn schools. Weather ponies are more hooves-on, and for classes like math, there’s only one right answer.
That really does depend on the teacher. My best teachers were the ones that would just make us figure out things for ourselves.
Meghan is fully trained, it’s true. That might help her out when it comes time to go to Equestria, especially if she gets a chance to demonstrate her wing-preening skills.
Traditionally, yes. I’m not sure of all the popular brands in the US, but the Lea & Perrins stuff does.
Yeah, that’s very true. There’d be less movement on the Earth side when it came to things like that (especially in the current administration). One work-around that Celestia might be more than willing to do is a long temporary residency. Like Cedric can’t be a permanent resident, but she’s willing to grant him a hundred-year long visa.
The ancient Isrealites were in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which seems like prime ground for a flood. I think that they were there right on the tail end of the last Ice Age, which certainly could have changed the climate for them, caused flooding, and so forth. And yeah, I think that just about anywhere near the sea or rivers is going to have flooded in the past, and perhaps even in places where some flooding was expected in the springtime, there would occasionally be massive floods.
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I'm sure that Meghan is working on becoming as fluent as possible in Equestrian language. Employment at an embassy in Equestria is going to be one of the most sought after jobs in any government, though, so competition will be fierce! ( Would you rather get an embassy post in a lame place like London, when you could go to Equestria? ) However, as has been mentioned elsewhere, there's a good possibility of a job in Equestria at any spa, once she demonstrates the possibilities of fingers in massage.
So, probably, appeal to the Princesses would be the direction for SG and Meghan to follow, requesting their direct intervention in the immigration process. Ten years on, I'm sure there's a process and paperwork, both for exiting Earth and arriving in Equestria - any government, including Celestia's, would insist! Get the visa first, then travel to Canterlot... and make your pitch.
Of course, for the clop-fic, there's the possibility of SG leading Meghan into Day Court or Night Court or Princess Candace's Love Court on a leash, nude, saying, "And this is my pet human, Meghan! She followed me home! Can I keep her?"
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Nah, and less cloppy. She just has Meghan curl up in a large suitcase, and when stopped at the portal, say it's just this awesome new automatic wing preener she picked up.
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Oh, yeah, she totally is learning with a passion, all she can about the language and the culture (and you can bet that she was pressing the pony before Silver Glow for any information she could, and will continue to do so with the next pony). There are probably internships and temporary visas available for certain jobs, and you can bet that Meghan knows every one of them (and has probably been applying like crazy).
Yeah, there is a process in place, both for tourists and workers. The story never really gets into detail about that, since that’s not really Silver Glow’s focus, but it’s something that the ponies would insist on, as well as Earth governments.
She wouldn’t really need the leash, and I’m not sure how the ponies would react to that, honestly. I do think that Princess Cadance might be the one to sign off on a visa, though, at least in a case like this one.
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There are some other pegasi who would back Silver up on that, too.
This Liz reminds me of the Liz I know from recovery. She isn't an addict but her partner was, and she spent 40 years with him through his addiction and recovery (he passed away sober before I met her). She is incredibly kind and patient and so giving. Ironically, she's an atheist.