May 12
When I got out of bed in the morning I looked at the birdfeeder again (which was now hung between two ropes) and kept my rump away from the bed, because Aric had already spent enough time under my tail.
Aric leaned up on his elbow and asked me if I was thinking of flying down there and taking some more of the seeds and I told him that maybe I was because he had deliberately tempted me by putting sunflower seeds in there and he said the birds loved them and I said so do ponies.
He thought that was really funny, and I asked him if he'd ever tried sunflower seeds before and he thought that was even funnier.
When he was done laughing he told me that you could buy bags of just sunflower seeds and you could get them with the shell on or off, whichever you preferred. So then I felt a little bit silly about taking them out of the birdfeeder.
I asked him if he'd put up the ropes to keep the squirrel out, and he said that he had, and I told him that it wasn't working. Squirrels are really clever.
He got up and stood beside me and watched the squirrel eating out of the birdfeeder and then he picked up a shoe and opened the window and threw the shoe at the squirrel which made it run off but it came back pretty quickly. Then he told me to go talk to the squirrel and tell it to leave and I said that I couldn't talk to them, I just knew what they were like.
I suppose I could have maybe tried to find a hawk and get it to follow me until it saw the squirrel but that would have been a lot of effort and probably wouldn't have worked anyway, unless I convinced the hawk to live on Aric's roof. And if I did, none of the other birds would want to use the feeder, so that really wasn't a good solution at all.
I said that he ought to just let the squirrels have what they want, or else put up a separate feeder for them so they leave the ones for the birds alone, and he said that he didn't really want to encourage them but unless he could find some way to hang the birdfeeder that they couldn't get at it he wasn't going to have much of a choice.
I just flew over Kalamazoo but I kept low, below the tops of the tall buildings, so that the airplane directors didn't have to worry about me. Dori was on the radio and she was as cheerful as always.
When I was back at my room, I checked my computer mailbox and I had gotten a letter from Mister Salvatore saying that I could take the test on Friday if I wanted to schedule it and that was going to be tight because there was a play but if I went right after Anthropology class, I could make it work. So I let him know and then I went to breakfast.
I spent the morning working on a couple more dreamcatchers and reading more of the Bible, and then at lunch both Cedric and Leon were doing last-minute studying for their class so they weren’t in the mood for any conversation, which was too bad.
But then right at the end of dinner Cedric leaned over and hugged me. He said it was for luck, and then I asked Leon if he wanted a hug for luck, too, and he pretended like he didn’t but he really did.
When I went outside after lunch I could feel the weather changing—there was a heavy, pregnant feel to the air, so I excused myself for a moment and flew up until I could see over all the trees and I could just make out some building clouds off in the distance, so I was a bit antsy when I went into class.
Conrad asked if anyone in the class still had exams coming up, and only two people raised their hands, so he said that he was going to introduce us to a slightly newer poet called Cate Marvin. He started off by reading us a poem called Landscape Without You, which I sort of didn’t understand because a lot of it was about new things that I haven’t grown up with like shingle roofs instead of thatch or shake. I guess they wear out and leak and have to be fixed, just like the seams on a ship. There was a protected sandy inlet not too far from town and sometimes sailors would run their boats aground at high tide and then rig ropes to pull it over on one side or the other as the tide went out and then they’d scrape barnacles off and fix the seams, and when the tide came back in, re-float their boat.
He had us read Flowers, Always next, which was about Miss Marvin looking for an Always and not finding one, and then she was sad because she understood that there never was an Always. I don’t think she should be sad, though—I think it’s better that there isn’t an Always. I think it’s better that it’s always a Sometimes.
Then he finished by having us read Dead Girl Gang Bang and that was not a very cheerful way to end the class.
Outside it was raining but not too much, and the wind was gusting worse than it had been, and kind of gusting and shifting around uncertainly and the sunlight was a little bit muted, so I knew that there would be more of a storm coming in pretty soon.
When I got back to my dorm room my telephone was blinking and there was a message from Mel saying that storms were predicted to come in and did I want to go out and observe them then there was another more recent message saying that they'd revised the forecast and that they might be here as soon as four or maybe sooner.
That didn't leave me with a lot of time to meet up with him, so I grabbed all my equipment really quickly and made sure to take my telephone too. I wouldn't be able to get out there in time by wing, so I begged Peggy to take me and she said that she hated driving in bad weather but she would just for me and I hugged her and then we hurried out to Cobalt.
I tried giving her directions but I wasn't very good at it and she finally took my telephone away from me when we were sitting at a light and tapped at the screen a little bit and pretty soon a woman's voice from my telephone was telling her where to go.
She got onto the 94 Highway and took it west until the Mattewan exit and neither of us saw him at first so we were going to go to a gas station and then we saw his truck in a parking lot right next to the highway. It was parked across several spaces so that the nose was pointed southwest which is where the storm was coming from.
Peggy had to help me put on my flight gear because it was really difficult inside Cobalt and then I got out and knocked on Mel's window and he rolled it down and gave me the latest update. The cab of his truck had a bunch of different radios inside and also a folding computer which was showing radar pictures.
He asked me if I wanted to go up and get a feel for the clouds and maybe see if I had a better view of any trouble spots and I told him that I would love to, so I radioed for clearance and got it after a minute or so, then I flew up and called to him on the CB radio to make sure that we had good contact with each other, then got more altitude until I was kind of in the thick of it.
This was what I was made for; this was what I loved. The wind was gusting around and rain was spitting down on me and off in the distance the clouds looked nasty and that was just the kind of thing that our weather team lived for. If the other mares had been with me, we would have flown out there and knocked down the storm, but they weren't. It was just me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I kept a running report of what I saw until the storm cells passed us by, and then the sky got a little bit lighter and the wind dropped down and the rain lightened and I could see and feel that the worst of it had passed us by but just to be sure I got permission to fly up higher and went right up into the clouds just a little bit then came back down.
There had been so much energy in the sky that my hooves sparked right before I landed and I got another little shock when I touched the door on Mel's truck but after that it was gone. He said I'd done a real good job and that made me proud. Maybe here on Earth I can't fight the storms like I could in Equestria but at least I can let people know that they're coming.
When I got back in Cobalt all soaking wet, Peggy hugged me and said that it had been a little scary on the ground to see the trees whipping back and forth and that for a while when it was really intense she had lost sight of me and she had been so relieved when the rain lightened up and she saw my blinking light again.
Then when we were driving back she asked me if that kind of thing was really what I did in Equestria, and I said that I got closer and my team helped to break up the storms and sometimes we also patrolled for ships in weather like that or worse and she just shook her head and concentrated on the road.
Of course I'd missed dinner, and so had Peggy, so I treated her to a meal at Steak 'n Shake and I told her I was sorry that I had gotten Cobalt's seat all wet. She said that was okay, she never rode on that side anyways.
I was still pretty damp when I went over to Meghan's, so she put a towel down on the bed for me and I told her all about my day and then she got curious about how it had been back in Equestria, so I started telling her about some of the storms I'd seen.
Pretty soon Lisa came over and she asked if we'd started the movie yet and Meghan said that I was talking about weather work and it was really interesting, so Lisa wound up sitting on the bed with me and I just naturally switched to Equestrian because it was a lot easier to describe that way. And it didn't take too long before they were talking in Equestrian, too.
I guess we were kind of louder than we should have been, because a little bit after that Becky came over and she said that she thought we were going to watch a movie, but I was in the middle of a story and at least wanted to finish that first, and then it wound up that I spent all evening talking about my weather team and life on the ocean and I don't think any of us were sorry that we didn't see the movie.
It was pretty late when Lisa and Becky finally went back to their room, and Meghan locked the door between their rooms and then got undressed except for her panties and then she got in bed with me. I snuggled up with my head on her breast and she petted my mane and then rested her hand on my shoulder and drifted off to sleep.
You'll have to click a second link for the last poem, due to it being mature.
This reminds me of a short interlude in El Goonish Shive.
There are only two answers when a pony asks you if you want a hug, and one of them is a lie.
Best roommate is best roommating again.
I wonder if the all-mare team is just a coincidence, or if weather ponies tend to be mares in general.
Typo report:
It's true. Everyone wants Silver Glow hugs.
....
...there's... there's actually....
Okay, poetry is feckin' weird.
I wonder how precise Celestial is. It could be that she & Luna vary a few minutes each day. If so it would be one more weird thing about the human world. You can depend on the sun & the moon being accurate to the second, but the weather is random.
Also, the events of the pilot. If she is under 20 & first contact was 10 years ago then she probably remembers the excitement of discovering humans but is a little too young to remember Nightmare Moon. Her parents undoubtedly remember, though.
She also had to study the Elements in school (unless Celestial ordered them kept secret) & knows about Fluttershy supposedly being able to talk to her animal friends.
Good thing she's that far north; imagine if she was down in Oklahoma City and saw a half-mile wide EF-5 tornado coming at her out of a storm like that...
You know your life is awesome when it is better then a movie.
Pretending like? Can you really say it like that?
7382754 Most likely, Silver is merely using mare by default, remember that aside from being a tribalist, she is also a sexist.
7382827 She'd be so happy and excited!
What can I say... I loved everything about this chapter! 10/10
Finally she got to talk at length about her life in Equestria. Life on earth must have seemed incredibly mundane to the girls at that moment; who gets the chance to hear first-hoof accounts of a life that in many ways sounds like something out of a history book but is the life the narrator has now? All magical high seas adventure with daring storm-fights and naval drama.
And the SG almost salivating when laying eyes on that storm front, rejoicing at how awful the weather is going to be in a few minutes. Perfect. She should have her GoPro with her, provided it can survive conditions like that. Guess not. That'd be something to show the boys, like that's real badass.
About the sparking hooves (great image btw): I know she's unshod, but do some pegasi in her team or in general wear specialist horseshoes?
7382760
Nah, it's like a revenant, but pregnant.
Horror.
7383194
How is zombie formed?
How girl get pragenant?
7383135 I second the GoPro idea. Someone should suggest it.
Nice. Silver gets to follow her passion, even on Earth. Also, I can't help but wonder if she might be able to hang the bird feeder from a cloud...
Probably not, but that may not keep Aric from suggesting it.
7382765
Indeed. I want a hug from Silver Glow.
I also want a hug (and then some) from Cayenne.
Who are you and what are you doing writing in Silver's journal?
pregnant
Double periods are never good.
Also, you misspelled Dead Girl Gang Bang in the author's note.
Dead Girl Gang bang was broken. At least the link was. All I got is a bio of her.
7383935
It's mature so Biscuit didn't link it directly. There's a tab for poems, then just expand the poem list.
If anyone ever figures out that Silver don't like unicorns, I hope they show her The Last Unicorn. Or make her read the book, I suppose, but watching movies is faster.
It has occurred to me that someone has to show Silver some Wallace & Gromit films. No particular reason, really, except that they are hilarious.
My personal favorites are A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers
Perhaps one day Silver can storm watch whilst having the go pro on her head. That would be interesting to film if there wasn't a risk of damaging the go pro.
7382754
The sad truth is that there is very little you can do to discourage squirrels. They're damned creative.
Just so.
I prefer the gender disparity, so mares is more likely than stallions, and the default pronouns for ponies are feminine. Odds are 75% of her weather team is female.
7382765
Yup, it's undeniable.
7382818
Yes, there is. And it's not the weirdest poem I've come across in research.
7382819
I assume that they have some kind of table or chart, but I also imagine that the ponies aren't as obsessed as we are about schedules. Except for Twilight, of course.
Yeah, to her Nightmare Moon would be a thing that had happened in the past. And she is old enough to remember first-contact with humans (although presumably at the time she didn't realize the full implications of it).
Celestia might have kept them secret (although I suppose now that they're gone, it's moot whether she does or not [unless she wants to keep it a secret that they're gone]) or it might have been something everypony knows about. I could see it going either way.
She might or might not know about Fluttershy specifically. Of all the Mane 6, I could see Fluttershy (and to a lesser extent, Applejack) not really wanting fame and notoriety. And I don't think any of them want to be known for their role as element bearers, but rather for their other talents.
7382827
Yeah . . . we do get tornados, but I think most of the big ones usually miss us. The Great Lakes--Lake Michigan, specifically--is really good at moderating our weather to an extent. Of course the down side is lake-effect snow.
7382840
You can. It's not exactly grammatically correct, though.
I tend to think that there's a wide gender split in Equestria, so using mare by default (which she does) is statistically correct 75% of the time or so.
As long as she wasn't in the path of it. Fun to watch; not so fun to be hit by.
7383135
That was one thing I most liked about listening to my Grandpa's stories: the world was so different when he was a boy.
It should survive; those things are pretty robust. Odds are if it killed the GoPro, it'd kill whoever was wearing it. There's actually a GoPro video on YouTube of a guy hitting a fire truck head on, and the GoPro lives (so did the guy, luckily).
My headcanon is that most pegasi don't like them, because that's a groundpony thing. If anything, they'd be more likely to wear hoof boots.
7383359
Short term, presumably; long term, how do you keep the cloud in place, and keep it from breaking up?
7383443
Who doesn't?
Who hasn't?
7383572
You can't have sex all the time.
7383935
What 7384073 said. I don't know if it's technically mature, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
7384196
The Equestrian Class had to translate passages from it (January 20), but she's never read the whole thing.
7384988
That's a good enough reason.
7387743
7382760
Fixed, thank you!
7383818
All fixed; thank you!
I blame Bronycon. Editing on four hours of sleep. . . .
7390139
That too, but it doesn't make her have less of a bias. She's been just as fast to make assumption on oy (and stallion) then on unicorn.
7383359
Wow, I was literally just about to comment with that idea. Great minds think alike, I suppose.
There's an Always right there.
Wait, but if there is an always, then the always is not always a Sometimes, which means it's not an always so there is always a sometimes, but that's an... My head hurts.
Go lie down, Pinkie.
... okay.
This makes me realise how shallow I am.
8124960
How so?
That was so beautifully written. Reminds me of something from an old movie, but I can't remember which one... this is gonna drive me crazy!
8300572
I can't say that I know what movie you're thinking of, but I was certainly channeling memories of watching storms roll in.
7383359
7396229
I actually thought this in the last chapter, including Biscuit's response (that you could probably perch it on a construction-grade cloud in Equestria but those don't and can't exist on Earth).
11004977
Speaking of which, if Equestria has a pandemic, do you think that the price of construction-grade clouds would skyrocket?
“Yeah, I was gonna build an extension on my cloudhome, but the cost of clouds these days . . . “