August 18 [Lamentations]
August 18
As soon as I woke up, I started to snuggle against Meghan to wake her up before her alarm, and when she opened her eyes I nuzzled her cheek and wished her a good morning, and she said that every day she woke up next to me was a good morning, which was really sweet. So I kissed her and lay down on her breast so she could pet my mane and scratch behind my ears until her alarm went off for the second time and we had to get up.
After I’d gotten out breakfast I went back upstairs to get her clothes and I found a really nice grey dress that was kind of stretchy like a sock and looked like it could be worn all by itself, so I put that on the bed for her and then found a nice bra and matching panties for her because she liked it when her clothes matched.
Meghan didn’t like the dress that I set out for her. She said it was too short and rode up when she was sitting and then anyone could see her underwear and it was a shame because it was such a comfortable dress. And so she picked a different skirt and a blouse instead, and she had to wear a shirt under her blouse because it was kind of translucent and she thought that maybe someone would be able to see her bra.
When we were eating breakfast I asked her why she had clothes that she couldn’t wear to work and she said that her dress was nice to wear to parties, it just didn’t get along with the chairs at work.
Once her friend had picked her up, I was going to fly home but then as I was flying over the cemetery I changed my mind and turned around and flew towards the Nature Center instead, to give my wings a bit of a break. Especially since on Saturday I’d be flying all the way to Indiana.
I got there early enough that the deer were still out grazing in the pasture grasses, and so I landed as far away from them as I could to keep from spooking them. One of the does flicked her tail a couple of times like she wasn’t sure, then when none of the others bolted, she put her head back down and went back to her meal.
I trotted around the whole path once, slowing down when I came back to where the deer were, ‘cause I didn’t want to scare them. So I kept to a walk as I went past and around the south end of the trail, then when I got on the path that ran by the railroad tracks, I cantered all the way back around until I got towards the top of the path.
The deer were gone, so I broke into a gallop on the downside and went down and around until I was along the tracks again, then slowed to a canter as I got close to the north turn.
The second time I came around, I flew up and over the trees and tracks and then circled back around so that I could land on the riverbank. The land kinda dropped down steeply so there weren’t too many good spots, but I found a little muddy section of ground and landed there, then waded out into the water.
Rivers can be treacherous because all the silt and stuff they carry along makes it really hard to see the bottom even when it’s shallow and there are sometimes trees and stuff that will snag a hoof.
I got a little drink of water, too, then I carefully waded back to shore and flew back over the railroad tracks and landed back on the path again.
There were a lot of other trails in the nature center, and while this one was the best one for landing on and galloping around, I decided I wanted to walk around one to cool down some more, so I picked the riverfront trail.
I usually didn’t get to look at woods this closely—they were something that I usually saw from the sky or maybe a couple of trees together here and there around town, but not like this. And since I wasn’t with anyone else, I paid a little more attention to how the trees grew and the undergrowth that lived wherever enough light got through.
There were mushrooms growing in some of the shadiest, moistest spots and I knew that some mushrooms were really tasty and some of them were really toxic and I didn’t know how to tell them apart, so I didn’t touch them. Especially since there are some that can spit spores at you if you’re too close, and I’ve heard that there are some kinds that can grow on your hooves, too, and I didn’t want to get those.
This trail also went along the railroad tracks and they were mostly hidden by the trees but every now and then there was an open spot where you could see them and the river really clearly.
In one of those spots I found a patch of nettles and they smelled so good I leaned down and took a mouthful before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to eat the plants at the nature center, and so I looked around to see if anybody had noticed but there was no one else around. Maybe I could buy some at the farmer’s market—I hadn’t seen anybody selling them yet, though.
After I’d gone all the way around the river trail, I went back to the prairie path and cantered up to the top, then took off to fly back to my apartment. I decided that I’d just follow Westnedge Avenue into town, since it was a nice direct way to go.
When I got back to my apartment, I got in the shower and used up the last of my shampoo. I was almost out of conditioner, too, so I told myself that tomorrow morning I’d want to fly to Meijer and buy some more.
I had a nice salad for lunch, and when I looked at my haybales I started thinking that I wasn’t going to finish them before it was time to go back to school, and I hoped that Peggy wouldn't mind having them in the dorm room. I don’t think she would, since they smelled nice, and they didn’t take up a lot of space.
After I’d eaten, I sat down in the papasan with my Bible and picked up where I’d left off. I wasn't going to disappoint Pastor Liz again, and I had all afternoon to read.
Since it had been so long, I probably should have started back at the beginning of Jeremiah again, because it took me a little bit to remember what was happening. Besides that God was mad because His people weren’t doing what He’d told them to.
He told Jeremiah that He would punish the Israelites for seventy years because they had been bad, and let the Babylonians take over, but after that seventy years, He would give them back everything that they’d had before. And then He told Jeremiah to tell the people to change their ways and then He wouldn’t have to punish them, but the people were mad when he said that and wanted to kill Jeremiah because he had given them bad news. The elders said that it wasn’t his fault and he was just telling them what God had said.
Other men who claimed to be prophets didn’t tell the people what God had said, but instead they said what the people wanted to hear, and God found out and it made Him mad, so He said that He would punish anyone who made false prophecies.
And He promised again that after seventy years he would make a new covenant with the Israelites, because even after all the things He had done for them they still wouldn’t listen to Him and follow His rules.
Being a messenger for God wasn’t much of an honor, I don’t think, because Jeremiah kept on telling people what God said for him to tell them, and he got put in prison for a while, and then after that they put him in a well until he got rescued.
It didn’t help them, either; Babylon took Jerusalem just like God had said that they would. So instead of doing what they were told and keeping their city, they kept on misbehaving and lost it. And I think if I were Jeremiah I might have gloated a little bit, but he didn’t; he kept on doing what God told him to. And some of the people wanted to go back to Egypt, but God told them not to.
And he had Jeremiah take messages to all the other kingdoms warning them that God was going to conquer them later because they had false gods and false idols and were mean to His people.
It was still pretty early and Lamentations was not as long as Jeremiah, so I decided I would read that, too. It was pretty sad, though. I should have guessed from the name of the book. It was a poem about how their beautiful city now laid in ruins and how they had lost everything and were scattered all over begging for food and not even having water to drink, all because they had forsaken God so now He had forsaken them.
I put my Bible back away and went out for a little afternoon flight to clear my mind. I think that earth ponies would like reading Lamentations on a bitter winter day when all their fields were covered with snow and all the boats were dragged out of the water so that they didn’t get crushed in the ice and the breakers during winter storms.
And I think that maybe sometimes people in the Bible put a little too much value on their possessions and not as much as they should have on each other. Our cloud-town had been destroyed a few times in storms and we just gathered up as much as we could and then got more clouds and rebuilt it. But I guess if they’d put a whole lot of work into their city to make it really nice then it would be really sad if it was gone.
Well, I had more questions that I thought I had the answer to but maybe I was wrong, so when I got back to my apartment I got my glaive and then flew off to Stetson Chapel.
Liz offered me a cup of tea and we talked about my week and her week for a little bit and then when I’d finished my tea, we talked about the Bible. She explained how God’s love was kind of conditional and kind of unconditional, which was sort of hard to understand until she explained how it was kind of like a mother’s love. She asked me if I’d ever been punished for doing something bad and of course I had, because how else would I learn? And then she asked if Princess Celestia ever punished her subjects for disobeying her, and I said that she did, even though she was very kind and forgiving.
And Liz said that God was like that. He loved His people very much, but when they turned away from him He had to punish them so that they would learn their lesson before it was too late, and that made a lot of sense.
When I was a filly, a couple of my friends saw a big storm coming and they thought that they wanted to fly up into the cloud because it seemed really exciting to them, and they wanted me to come with them, and I did but we got caught by a pony on the weather team and my mom was furious when she found out and for the next moon I wasn’t allowed to go to market or the tavern and I had to be home by moonrise and I thought it was really unfair. But then when I got older and started working storms on the weather team I thought back to that cloud sometimes and how that was the kind of cloud that even experienced pegasuses sometimes fly into and don’t fly back out of again.
I didn’t tell her any of that, but I think she saw it in my eyes or maybe in the way that my ears drooped a little bit when I was thinking about it, because she said that at tough times you wonder if your parents really understand, if they really love you, or if they’ve forsaken you, and that’s what Lamentations was all about. The Israelites had realized that they’d been bad, and they understood that God was punishing them, but they weren’t sure if God was going to forgive them ever or if they’d broken His rules one too many times and He was done with them and was going to look for a new chosen people.
And maybe I was sometimes a little too hopeful, but I thought that since there was still a lot of the Bible yet to go that after they’d learned their lesson, God must have forgiven them like He’d promised He would.
So when we were done I thanked her and then I went off to practice fighting.
Karla changed things around a little bit, so I got to warm up with Stellan like I usually did, but then after that she wanted everyone to practice with different people, so I fought with Erik for a little bit and he wasn’t very good at defending against a polearm but if I messed up and let him get close to me I couldn’t defend myself. He was kind of reluctant to hit me, which I suppose if I’d been better I could have used to my advantage, but I couldn’t figure out how because he was far inside the reach of my weapon and I couldn’t back up fast enough to get away from him.
And then I also got to fight with another man named Micah, who had a quarterstaff which was like my glaive but without the blade so it wasn’t much of a thrusting weapon and he was really good and really quick. I hadn’t really considered how effective being able to strike with both ends of the weapon was, and I tried to copy his technique because I could use the butt end of my glaive too, if I knew how.
Mostly that meant that I dropped it a lot. But he was a good sport and wouldn’t press his attack after I’d dropped my weapon.
Then we cooled down by Stellan giving me a little demonstrating of how humans fought with their hands and feet. He said that there were a lot of different techniques and he didn’t know them all. And then he and Erik demonstrated fighting together and blocking because it was always good to know how to defend yourself against an attack.
I wanted to try, and he said that it would probably be dangerous if I did unless I had something to cover my hooves, ‘cause even without shoes they’d hurt a lot if I made contact, and I thought he was right but it was kind of disappointing. And so Stellan said that he’d think of something that he could put over my hooves to protect us and we’d try it then.
So when I flew home I was a little bit bruised and sore, but Stardancer had always said that if you weren’t hurting after a combat lesson than you hadn’t learned anything.
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Foals flying into a thundercloud was inspired in part by Cold in Gardez's Clouds Like Mountains.
, skydancer watch out Firefly.
So… are we going to get Adult Winged Ninja Pony?
*starts humming theme music*
Something tells me that with these combat maneuvers, Silver is learning very quickly.
How desolate sits the city that was so full of people.
The focus on material wealth I see two ways in Lamentations. The first--the death toll is so enormous that to do more than hint at it is too much to bear. Two--we often think of a city, which is a group, in terms of what has vecause generally it's a good measure of that community's health.
Very quiet around that nature trail, or is it one of those primarily morning, evening, and weekend dog walk type things in the area?
If Silver is taking so long to get through The Bible, I wonder how long it would take for her to get through some of the stories on this site. I wish I could remember what the largest Complete story is, not including FOE?
Hand to hoof, which is more dangerous in armour? Id have thought the hoof because of all the delicate pining and overlap scales for the fingers on the hand, even with the overall combat complexity possible with hands.
God as a disciplinarian does make sense, though there are times when one has to question His sense of proportion. As for the material focus, Silver has a point, but she also needs to remember that humans don't have the option of shoving clouds back together.
Meanwhile, I get the feeling that the makers would be thrilled to design hoof-compatible boxing gloves.
"...Besides that God was mad because His people weren’t doing what He’d told them to...."
Yeah, that's why he gave us children, so we'd know how he feels when we do that to him.
"...when I got back to my apartment I got my glaive and then flew off to Stetson Chapel..."
Now that's the kind of church to join. Oh, wait. She's going to sparring afterwards. Darn.
"...I wanted to try, and he said that it would probably be dangerous if I did unless I had something to cover my hooves,..."
Just remember for all of the 'Poor Defenseless Equestrians on Earth' people that a Royal Guard has enchanted steel armor over most of his weak spots and the equivalent of a five-pound sledgehammer at the end of each limb. And if that isn't enough, most of their strikes will be at waist-level or below, where it is exceedingly difficult to block.
SG needs boxing gloves.
No idea what this is supposed to be
7657349
Down. It was supposed to be down.
Staff fighting seems fun. I never got to try sparring with them though because my martial arts studio didn't have the right protective gear. Ran some forms and drills though but not too much. The studio don't really have enough space and the martial art I did was more focused on unarmed stuff.
7655031 PM me a link to it please when you upload it.
7656956
FoE isn't actually all that long compared to some of the works out there. The FoE spinoff, Project Horizons, is much, much longer. Then you have stories like Man of War and Diaries of a Madman.
I don't think she'd ever finish.
great taste !
quite the common theme in the bible ?
does this counts for paintball too ? ^^
I've determined (a few chapters ago) that this is:
Silver Glow's Journal: The Abridged Bible as Seen Through Pony Eyes*
*Non-Bible parts contain much cuteness, please see a doctor before reading if you have a history of heart trouble, high blood pressure, pregnant (or will become pregnant), back trouble, neck trouble, abdominal pain, recent surgury, or any other medical conditions that may be aggravated by reading about a cute pegasus pony.
7657585
Depending on how you measure things, the longest single coherent work on the site, that was labled complete a few months ago, consists of Ten books, Starting at over 400k words and ending over 1 million words. Per Book.
I suspect its Three times teh size of Austreoh saga currently, and since the hurricane hit, Skirts et al have been worringly quiet, trying to get back on their feet.
The Book of Daniel is my favorite part of the Bible (for obvious reasons).
Yeah, it sucked to be a conquered/occupied people, but Babylon and Israel (and the Medes and Persians) all benefited from the cultural contact.
And I always liked the various apocalyptic symbolism with the 1st person narrated visions in the second half and Nebuchadnezzar's dreams in the first.
7657008
When I read it, the thing that struck me besides his sense of proportion was that God's pedagogical methods really needed a lot of work. He just keeps trying so many of the same things over and over, and his pupils keep screwing up the same way.
7656844 Because Celestia is a proper noun and him is a pronoun.
Randomly forgot to capitalize the most commonly used personal pronoun.
All around a good chapter.
Is this a type of nettle that doesn't make you itch, or is the horse immune to that?
7659425
A succinct statement. My comment was brief, and rereading it, I regret that it came off as if I were conflating mental health and gun violence because the frank matter is that deaths by mass shootings, though horrific, are a small amount of overall gun deaths, most of which are suicides or homicides. Gun violence needs to be addressed through gun availability. The right to bear arms is important, but the right to bear arms without training in proper storage, without checks on guns built solely for the purpose of murder, that right infringes on so many other rights.
And I thought Liz didn't like analogies between Celestia and God.
7658873
I'm going to say the former, because Earth horses aren't immune either. They can get bad skin reactions from rolling in stinging nettles, not to mention eating them.
http://www.equinews.com/article/beware-stinging-nettle-horse-pastures
7658317
Correction made; thank you!
7662005
I'm not sure Celestia would like them much either. Given her idea of punishment usually tends more towards frowning at her subject and asking questions like...
"When was the last time I stood by while thousands of my subjects got slaughtered, and then deliberately withheld sufficient food and water from the survivors for three generations?"
"Oh. Huh. When you put it like that the comparison does kinda break down doesn't it?"
"Who's a silly pony? Oh, and Pastor Liz, do you like bananas?"
7656871
Was there an episode/movie where Skydancer got Firefly into trouble? I've only see A Very Minty Christmas so far. . . .
Also, I should change that since I also used Skydancer as one of the tornado ponies. Changed to Stardancer.
7656887
That's a show I'd watch!
Sorta related
7656943
Yeah, she's a quick learner. Having had combat training helps, of course--she's already got a lot of the basics down, it's just a new techniques for her.
7656944
It could also just be an allegory for all that was lost. It's interesting--and rather depressing--to think that not all that much has really changed in the Middle East over all these centuries.
7656956
Hit or miss, really. The trails weren't all that popular during the day when I was in Kalamazoo; the nature center was a little ways out of town and really only busy during the weekends.
Well, her journal's getting close to the length of the Bible . . . it would probably be a little bit easier for her if it was in chronological order.
Depends on the range. I mean, if you get close enough that a horse or pony can do a full kick on you, you're in trouble. I wouldn't want to go hand-to-hand with a pony, becuase it would be all to easy for them to kneecap me or get me in the groin. Probably if you can get in on the side and do a chokehold, you'll take a pony out, and I think a human could likely do short, effective punches better than a pony could do kicks up close. A leg sweep would be good, too, but it's hard to get a quadruped to go down reliably, and if you miss and the pony can stomp on whatever part of your anatomy's under her, you're also in trouble.
7657008
Yeah, this is true.
Or grazing when things get bad, either. And it's a lot harder for humans to fly off to new territory when their old territory is under attack, as well. I think an earth pony or a unicorn would understand the desolation more than Silver Glow does.
Oh yeah. That would be a fun project for them.
7657043
You know you're having good theological discussions when you bring a weapon.
Plus, of course, the unicorns have spells, while the pegasi can get you from above. I wouldn't underestimate an Equestrian pony, that's for sure.
7657154
She does. For all four hooves.
7657482
The space is a big issue. One of the routines we do for a show easily takes up all of a 28' stage, and even then it's tight. We've got to pull a couple moves in closer than we'd like for it. It's not the tightest I've ever done a stage fight in (that was a four-way sword fight on a 16' stage), but it's really too small for the choreography.
7657585
Heck, I was just looking at word counts and her own journal is going to be longer than the Bible. It's not going to be any Diaries of a Madman, though.
7657600
Certainly in the Old Testament. Although I'd have to look more carefully at the actual chronology, because just like there are four books in the New Testament that tell the story of Christ, there are multiple books that tell the story of the fall of Jerusalem, for example. So I'm honestly not sure how many times the city fell . . . that having been said, humans still aren't good at following rules.
Absolutely! Any physical sport, IMHO.
7657625
I'm risking my life bringing the story to y'all.
7657677
Has someone channeled the ghost of Robert Jordan?
It's been a rough summer for folks down in the southeast, that's for sure.
7657722
I'd guess that it's also the last book in the OT that casual Christians are actually familiar with, although I haven't gotten to the very end of the OT yet, so there might be something I know in Zephaniah, for example.
From what I've been reading, the Persians (Cyrus and Darius especially) were actually really cool.
Daniel's prophesies were just weird.
7658192
Explaining the rules to them hasn't worked, writing them on stone tablets hasn't worked, sending down His son to make a new covenant didn't quite work out . . . what options are left? Try again with the dolphins?
"Okay, guys, here's how it's gonna go. Humans screwed up one time too many, so I wiped them out and you're now in charge of the world. The only rule is don't eat the fruit of the tree of forbidden knowledge."
"Uh, dude, we don't eat fruit from trees."
"Good. Keep it up."
7658229
But you rarely see the pronoun Her capitalized when referring to Princess Celestia.
7658317
I blame Open Office for failing to automatically capitalize it.
7658718
7658873
No, it's the type of nettle that makes you itch, and horses aren't entirely immune to that. A lot of them like eating nettles anyway, apparently.
7659451
Certainly cutting back on availability would help, and perhaps also more education could as well. Also, for potential suicides, I would think that other resources directed towards suicide prevention in general could make a big difference.
It's interesting reading the comments, because most of us are willing to have a calm, rational discussion, unlike, say, on my Facebook feed. And good on you guys for that.
7662005
She does generally try to avoid them, but sometimes it's the best thing that she can think of.
It's possible that their mouths are less sensitive than other parts of their body? Because I found that article, too, and I also found several horse forums that said that horses did eat nettles (high in iron), and while some preferred them partially dried, other horses would just eat the plant as-is.
7679575
I don't think she would. I don't think she wants to be worshipped as some kind of horse goddess, because she knows she's not, and if something happens to her she wants her ponies to go on, not blunder around leaderless or just give up because their goddess has deserted them.
9331813
correction made, thank you!
And those categories probably have some overlap, which is the real tragedy.
Worth noting that every weapon, even punching, has this sort of minimum range where your only real option is to transition to grappling (moving forward is easier than moving back, so getting back into your effective range isn't realistic).
11095014
On the plus side, tastes amazing, vivid hallucinations, death isn’t the worst way to go.
I seem to remember that the Mythbusters tested the range of gun vs. knife and it was further than one might normally expect (I think about 30 feet/10 meters) , , , depending on the nature of the fight, either distance is your friend, or close-up is. I would expect that pegasi aren’t normally scrappers, and their normal instincts are to fly away and then if needed strike from above; they’re probably not normally close-up fighters and would avoid it whenever possible.
As contrasted with earth ponies, where getting into kicking range is basically digging yourself a grave.
Ah. Ah ha. Thanks for that, Admiral Cronenberg.
The natural food store I used to work at sold nettle in bulk for teas and such.
"Went".
11337287
I don't know that reference
I've heard of nettle tea, although I've never tried it.
Also correction make, thank you!