December 7

It was dark out when I woke up and I could have stayed in bed but I didn't feel like it. I kind of thought that I was getting a little bit lazy now that I didn't have to go to classes anymore, and I was spending more time than I ought to in bed. And so I got out of bed and went to the window and looked out over the lake but there wasn't that much to see. The moon had set and aside from some light coming from the parking lot, it was pretty dark.

I thought about flying, but it'd be kind of lonely in the dark, and Meghan and Aric might worry if they woke up and I was gone.

So I went over to the tree and I had to do a little bit of hunting on the wall but I found the electricity outlet and stuck the cord in and that really made the room look a lot more cheerful.

I went back to the bed and sat down on it—I was facing the wrong way, so that I could see the tree. And I had my side up against Aric's back, and I probably could have gotten under the covers or pushed them aside a little bit or even woken them up but it was kinda early for people, so I just sat and watched the tree until it got light out.

Then I got back out of bed and went over to my desk and got out my journal and wrote in it until I heard Meghan start to move around a little bit, and when she did, Aric stopped snoring, so I knew he was probably gonna wake up soon, too.

I thought that I ought to get back in bed with them but before I could Meghan woke up enough to notice that I was gone and she was leaning on her elbow and looking over Aric's shoulder to see if I was there when I nuzzled her on the back and made her jump. And then she fell down on her back and pulled me into a hug and I kissed her on the tip of her nose, which made her laugh.

She poked me back with her finger and made me go cross-eyed, then she sat up and looked at the Christmas tree and I laid down next to her and put my head on her leg, so that she could scratch behind my ears, and we both admired the tree together.

Meghan finally told me that she had to get up and pee, and I admitted that I did too but I hadn't wanted to move and she said that she hadn't wanted to, either and so we sat a little bit longer before I took my head off her leg so that she could get up.

Aric was still asleep when we came out of the bathroom and I thought that we should start making breakfast 'cause maybe the smell would wake him up (and I was hungry, too). So we went in the kitchen and decided that we'd have waffles and an omelet again and this time I knew how the stove was supposed to work so I didn't need as much help with it.

Meghan said that tomorrow we ought to make a quiche but we'd have to get up a little bit early and we'd also have to get some supplies that we didn't have, like a pie crust. Or she said that we could get up even earlier and make one from scratch, but then we'd need a lot of supplies that we didn't have, but we could throw flour at each other which was fun. She said that I'd look really cute with a white blaze on my nose.

Then she asked if there were any ponies with blazes or socks or stars or any of the other markings that Earth horses had. And I said that there were some but it wasn't very common, and it was mostly stallions who had markings like that but I didn't know why. There weren't any who lived in our village but one time I'd seen a unicorn stallion called Gaffer who was sailing on a navy ship that had a white blaze on his muzzle and white socks and I'd been pretty young then so I thought it was because he was old but my mom said that some stallions were like that and he was kind of cute and she wished that my aunt was there to foalsit.

I let Meghan mix up the waffle batter 'cause it was easier for her to hold it in her hands and I stuck a hoof in and gave her a blaze on her nose and she couldn't do anything about it 'cause she was cradling the bowl with one hand and had the spoon in the other and I jumped back pretty quick. And she glared at me but she kept on mixing the batter and she didn't get me back until breakfast was all done and I'd set everything on the table and when I turned around she stuck an ice cube up under my tail.

Well, I yelped loud enough that Aric woke up and I'd just smacked Meghan with my wing so she was laughing while she was rubbing her thigh, and he just looked at us and asked what he'd missed and so I told him what Meghan had done. She said she hadn't meant for it to go in me, and then he started laughing which was kind of mean, but it was funny.

After we'd eaten breakfast we had to decide what to do for the day, and I said that I wanted to go flying and maybe get a snowcloud—there were a few flakes falling lazily down and I wanted to get one and play with it.

So we decided to drive out and find an open field so that they could watch. I knew that they probably weren't gonna see much because of the clouds but it would be nice to have them with me.

I got dressed in my flight gear and they got in their clothes and then we drove out along Stadium Drive until we'd crossed the railroad tracks and there were some fields there.

I called the airplane directors and got permission to go flying, and then I got out of Winston and kind of felt at the air for a moment before I took off. And then I went out over the fallow fields and started climbing up above the trees and I glanced down at my watch just so that I would know my position, 'cause I knew I was gonna lose the ground.

And I did. I wasn't even up to the cloud deck before all the flakes that were below me pretty much blocked out my sight of the ground. Air currents sort of blew it around and so sometimes I got glimpses of it, but while the flakes were still kinda sparse, when there were lots of them between me and the ground they mostly blocked it out.

I didn't go up to get the cloud right away, 'cause I was having fun just flying through it. I made little eddies in the snow and if I flew through fast enough, I'd sort of pull it along behind me and a bunch of flakes would stick to the front of my wings until I flexed them and then it would break off.

I made a couple of circles a little bit below the clouds and if anypony had asked, I would have told them that I was looking for the right cloud, but really I was just playing.

I did find a section of cloud that had rolled down from the rest of the cloud and it wasn't too hard to cut off. There wasn't a lot of snow in it, so I kind of put it off to the side while I gathered some more cloudstuff, and that turned out not working like I'd planned, 'cause it drifted off and I lost it. I thought that I knew where it was and then I went just a little bit further and when I went to come back it wasn't there any more. I probably wasn't in the right place, but I didn't know where the right place was, so I had to start over.

It turned out to be worth it, though, 'cause I found another bit of cloud that was even better, and I cut it out and then I pushed it with me while I gathered up some other small wisps to make it bigger, plus I was catching some more flakes on it and renewing it, too.

I made it stop snowing so it wouldn't run out—even with the little bit of extra I'd given it, there wasn't a whole lot of snow in it. If' I'd had to make a snowstorm on my own, I would have tried to hold the clouds over Lake Michigan a little bit longer, 'cause I bet the lake was still warm enough to be putting lots of moisture in the air that the clouds could drink.

But this cloud was just for play, and it was what I had to work with, so I finally figured that I'd gathered up enough pieces that it would last for a while, so I checked my watch again to figure out where Aric and Meghan were, and then I started bringing it down.

It would be nice if there was some way that I could make my watch find things that weren't airports, but it didn't do that. So I only got close, and I had to follow landmarks the rest of the way back. Luckily, Aric hadn't gone all that far from the railroad tracks, and so when I saw them I knew I had to go a little bit south still and also west, and then there was a little bit of a gap in the snow and I saw Winston, so I pushed the cloud over that way.

I didn't go right by the road, but stayed over the field. And Aric and Meghan came over, so I kept the cloud high enough that they couldn't touch it just in case it had some electricity in it. I hadn't really felt much but it was kind of deceptive when I was in the air, 'cause I'd match the sky so if it built up sort of slowly I might not notice it.

And then I sat on it for a little bit and then showed them how I could make it snow and then stop it again, and I could also sort of control the size of the flakes. It was a lot easier when you were up high, 'cause the distance the snow fell and what it fell through made a difference in how the snow came out, too. But it didn't really matter all that much, 'cause they were just amazed seeing it.

I played with it until it ran out of snow and it had made a kind of deep pile on the ground right under it. And then I got curious if I could refill the cloud—that was something that I'd never tried to do. Even back in Equestria, it wasn't something that I did very often, 'cause there were other pegasuses who made the clouds.

I couldn't do it here, because there wasn't any water to put in it. So we decided that we'd drive over to a lake and try it there, and Aric said that the closest one he knew that had public access was Wolf Lake.

So we got back in Winston and he drove until he got to Van Kal Street which was the county line, and we took that north and then went a little bit west on the 43 Road until we were at Wolf Lake. And when he got to the boat launch he asked Meghan if she wanted to go skinny-dipping in the lake again and she said that maybe if he would she would too but it was really a little cold for it and the hospital probably wouldn't let us share a bed while we were recovering from hypothermia.

I didn't think I'd get it, 'cause I'd gone swimming in the wintertime. It wasn't all that pleasant but I'd never had to go to the hospital afterwards, even when it had frozen my coat.

I told the airplane directors where I was and flew up again, and after I'd looked around a little bit I found the perfect bit of cloud and brought it down. There wasn't a lot of snow in it, but that was okay because that would actually make it go faster, since there wouldn't be as much to empty out. And I brought it down and when I got over the lake I jumped on the cloud until it started snowing heavily and it didn't take it too long at all before it had dumped out everything—just long enough to push it over Aric and Meghan and then back out over the lake.

Then I stopped it before it got so empty that it dissipated, and I brought it right down to the surface of the lake.

There was an art to putting water into a cloud, 'cause if you just tried to dip it in the water it'd melt into nothing, so you had to be really slow and careful getting it in. And I wasn't so good at it because I hadn't really practiced it since cloud class, so I was even slower and carefuler than an experienced weathermare would have been, but it was working.

At the rate I was going, it would be dark again before I'd refilled it all the way, so once I thought it had enough I lifted it up a little bit higher and then sort of felt around the cloud 'cause I didn't want it to just come back out as freezing rain, and that actually took a lot more work for me to get it to behave than I thought it would. Feral Earth clouds aren't nearly as cooperative as weather factory clouds.

My weather teacher would have failed me for the snow that fell back out of my cloud, but it was pretty good for my first attempt in years, especially since I was working with a wild cloud. It was snow, even if it was coming out almost melted and not in proper crystals. And after I'd stopped it and worked the water around in it a little bit more it got better, but it still wasn't right, and I felt kind of bad about it, but both Aric and Meghan thought that it was pretty amazing.

Meghan said that maybe we should make some movies where I was explaining to people how I made clouds and made them do what I wanted. And I wish she'd thought of that sooner, like maybe in the springtime, 'cause then I would have had a lot of things that I could have taught. Now that it was December, there weren't going to be that many different kinds of weather that I could play with, although I could probably make sort of unnatural clouds with some effort.

The one I had was starting to come apart, so I said that I was going to go up and get another one. And she said that this time she'd hold the GoPro, so I had to land to give it to her, and I made sure to spark off on a tree just in case. And I was glad that I had, 'cause I had picked up enough electricity to make a weak spark to the tree.

Then I went back up and I found another cloudling that felt like I could work it, so I cut it loose and brought it back down and went through the whole process again but this time I explained what I was doing every step of the way. And I think that helped some, 'cause I didn't get impatient when I was letting it make snowflakes, so they came out a lot better.

By the time I was done I was almost completely exhausted 'cause I'd used up so much of my magic on the clouds. And I forgot to spark off but the ground did that for me when I landed.

I was almost completely covered with snow and ice, and I thought that I ought to sit in the back on Winston so I didn't get the seat wet when I melted, but Aric and Meghan insisted that I should ride in the cab. And they brushed me off as much as they could and then I got in and instead of looking out the windows I put my head down on Meghan's lap and I dozed off until we got back home.

I was too tired to be hungry, and I just wanted to warm up a bit in the shower. And I was kind of cursing myself for getting so worn out, 'cause a year ago before I came to Earth I could have done a lot better—it wasn't just a lack of practice.

Maybe if I hadn't been cold and soaking wet I wouldn't have felt so bad, so I went right into the shower and then after I turned it on I thought that maybe a bath would be better, even though there was no way all three of us could fit into the bathtub.

Meghan said that I should, though, and she put some of the Mister Bubble in and that smelled really nice and made lots and lots of bubbles. And she had Aric go to K-Mart which was not too far from my apartment, because she said that I needed some soup to warm up and that was something that we should have gotten before.

She sat with me and we talked while I was sitting in the bath, and I let it warm me up. It wasn't as good as a hot tub, 'cause after a while the water had been in there for a while it started to get cold and I had to drain some out and refill it.

I stayed in probably longer than I should have but I felt a lot better when I got out and Aric had made soup and toast that was thick and dripping butter and while I was eating it he told me about a Boy Scout leader that he used to have called Jerry who sometimes made butter-fried bagels that he called Jerry Bagels and they were really good on cold days because of all the energy they had in them and if he'd thought about it he would have made them instead of the toast.

It was still snowing outside and it had started to come down a little bit thicker than before, and after I'd dried all the way off and was warm I decided that I wanted to go out and play in it some more. This time we didn't drive anywhere; we just stayed in the parking lot and played on the little islands that they had, and we threw snowballs at each other for a bit and then once we'd trampled up all the snow on one island we moved to another one, and then we started playing on the big snow-pile that was at the end of the parking lot. It was a lot denser, 'cause all the snow had been shoved there, but you could slide down it and climb back up it and I went back to my apartment and got my last Equestrian flag and planted it at the top but I didn't leave it there.

Then we went around behind the apartment houses and we all worked together to make a snowpony, and I thought it would be fun to make one on the roof but they couldn't have joined me if I had.

We had sandwiches and hot chocolate for dinner, and Aric said that he thought the hot chocolate would be better if it had brandy in it, but he didn't feel like going out to get any. And when we were done eating we all sat on the mattress on the floor and Meghan unfolded her computer and she turned it around so that we couldn't see what movie she was looking for, but she said that it was an important Christmas movie.

It was called A Christmas Story, and Meghan said that it was a part of her childhood. Ralphie really wanted a gun even though everyone said that he'd shoot his eye out, but he eventually got it anways. And when Flick got his tongue stuck to a pole I said that nopony in Chonamare had ever tried that 'cause we'd all heard that Blue Belle had done that when she was a filly and the only way to get it off was to have somepony else pee on it and everypony said that that was why she always had a sour expression but now that I thought about it I didn't know if anypony had ever actually asked her if that had really happened and it probably would have been just as easy to get some warm water from the tavern or even have a pegasus bring down a cloud and drop some rain on it to melt it off. Then Aric admitted that he'd gotten his tongue stuck to a pole once when he was in elementary school and he said that he thought probably almost every boy had. Meghan said that that was because boys were dumb and would do things just on a bet, and he said that that wasn't true.

She said that she bet that he couldn't write his name in the snow with pee and he said that he could and he'd prove it but before he got up she grabbed his arm and told him he could sit back down because he'd just proved her point.

Then Aric told me that you could get the leg as a Christmas ornament and that he'd even seen an actual leg-lamp for sale in a Think Geek catalog once. It was kind of ugly, though, so I didn't know why anybody would want it.

And I also thought that having Chinese food for a Christmas dinner would be pretty good, and Meghan said that maybe we should do that, since the movie made it sort of traditional.

When the movie was over, we were already in bed, and so Meghan closed her computer and then took the cups back to the kitchen and said that we could leave them until the morning. And then on her way back she plugged in the Christmas tree and we snuggled up on the mattress and they both took their time undressing.

I was kinda tired, 'cause I'd spent so much energy on the cloud today and I was wanting to just go to sleep, but then Meghan got up again and went back to the kitchen and brought back some ice like she said she was going to, and I hadn't expected something as dumb as little cubes of ice to heat things up so much, and I don't think that Aric had, either.

Next Chapter: December 8 [Again] Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 48 Minutes