#and so many grand things. cosmos. stars. galaxies. so much.

[spaceistheplaceart]

once again thinking about @void-dude's static ford. ough.

check this out

[firemandeanbuck]

Stars

HC Hob has this kind of ceiling in his bedroom, vibrant, glittery and spectacular. He painted it himself. He is crafty that way.

After their first time, spent and sticky with sweat Hob and Dream lay in bed, talking lazily, giggling and caressing each other's skin. Dream's skin is smooth, cold, and soft. Hob's skin is scarred, warm, and rough. It's perfect. Dream mouths Hob's throat, drinking the sounds coming from Hob's lips.

Hob had waited for this moment for over 500 years. He had hoped that one of these days, his stranger would be his lover. At last. It was true.

Hob did not sleep that night, he held Dream and talked and talked. Asked him endless questions, what he is, how he came to be, how the Dreaming is a part of him. In return, he told him all about the new age, the changes. Even when his arm fell asleep from being under Dream, he didn't move.

"Are you asleep?" Dream asked at some point.

"No", came the sheepish reply.

"That's a wonderful ceiling you have", he comments, just like the first time he saw his room a few weeks ago.

"Thanks. I painted it", murmured Hob, clearly fighting to remain awake.

"You can sleep", Dream reminds him,"I'll be here when you wake up".

“No, I’m fine”, Hob ran his hand on Dream’s jaw and kept it there, gently pressed against it.

“Your eyes are…beautiful”, Hob breathed, he didn’t dare to even blink.

They were beautiful, Dream’s eyes, they reflected the cosmos, the borning stars, the winking stars, the bursting nebulae, the damning blackholes, all of it. It appeared as if his eyes were windows to the universe themselves.

“You flatter me”, his cheeks went pink, his red lips tilted in a small smile.

“I love to see you red”, he brushed the back of his fingers against his cheek,

“Storyteller, tell me a tale”, Hob requested promptly,

Without taking his eyes off Hob, who was completely hypnotised with his eyes, Dream waved a hand to the ceiling, “I can SHOW you a tale”, delicately, Dream grabbed Hob’s chin and turned it to the ceiling.

Hob was stunned to say the least. It was spectacular, mind blowing, intriguing and celestial, to say the least. He personally felt like he was flying across the cosmos, like he can touch the stars, so close and intimate. He felt the stars dancing around him, the immortal basked in their company. It was almost like he could hear their heavenly laughter and siren-like voice, calling out to him to join their never ending celebration of life, universe and just being bigger than life.

The colours, oh, the colours, they were more beautiful than anything Hob had ever seen. Red, orange, green, blue, violet, pink, even the simple black stood out so much. So rich and vivid were the colours, no picture can compare. The way the nebulae move around, swimming freely like a mermaid in the deep sea. So many colours. Hob was sure there are more than his human eyes can comprehend or translate.

“It’s amazing”, Hob’s breath hitched. He reached out his hand to touch them. 

For a moment, he felt tiny, microscopic even. What or who is he in the grand scheme of things?

“Thank you”, Dream muttered, “I’ve crafted them”,

“I know”, Hob chuckled.

“I mean the actual stars. The Night is my Mother, but she wasn’t as decorated as she is now”,

Hob blinked and turned his gaze to Dream, who was still staring at him, unblinkingly. Such adoration and love in his galaxy eyes.

“She is beautiful”, Hob managed, before his words got stuck in his throat.

“Aye. But I rather look at you”, Dream smirked at the open mouthed shock on Hob’s face. He brought his hand to Hob’s hairy arms, “Universe is a vast thing, you can be easily lost in it. So are your eyes. And I have been there. I prefer where I can feel your warmth and sweet touch”, Dream carried on the stroking to his hip and thigh, “You show me humanity that I’ve long forgotten”, the Endless blinked, now caressing his neck “Trust me when I say, the stars and planets holds no candle to your brilliance, my heart”

It’s safe to say Hob’s mind short circuited that moment and they didn’t get ANY sleep that night.

MY FIRST (hopefully not last) CONTRIBUTION TO FLUFFBRUARY <3

inspired by @staroftheendless starting a war against angst and dedicated to Fluff Princess @immacaria

[wolverenmayden]

So much in the universe

So much in the universe, Endless galaxies, stars, and planets Stretching out into infinity. We are but a speck in the grand scheme of things, A tiny blip on the radar of existence.

The universe is a vast expanse Of mysteries waiting to be uncovered, Of secrets waiting to be revealed. We may never fully understand The complexity of it all.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Exploring, discovering, seeking knowledge - These are what drive us forward. To unlock the secrets of the cosmos, To grasp at understanding, even if just a little bit.

So much in the universe, So many wonders yet to behold. From supernovas exploding with power, To black holes swallowing light whole. There is so much beauty and terror, In this vast expanse we call home.

And yet, amidst it all, We find ourselves feeling small. Lost in the grandeur of it all, Feeling insignificant against its backdrop.

But let us not forget - We are made from stardust and dreams, Brought forth from the very fabric of creation itself. Our existence is no mistake or accident - It is part of something greater than ourselves.

So as we gaze up at the night sky, Let us remember our place within it all. Not just observers or spectators, But active participants - Connected to every corner and crevice , of this magnificent tapestry unfold.

For even though life may seem fleeting , in comparison tot he age old stars above we too leave an imprint , however small on this universe wonder land .

So let's embrace our insignificance And revel in our connection to everything around us . beholding beauty with heart wide open taking solace knowing that while we may be minute and temporary beings amongst giants we play an essential role in keeping balance within these celestial majesties for there exist so few places with such potential for wonder While loss reverberates throughout time letting go opens doors for new beginnings

Thus ensues endless cycle living dying born anew breathing living loving endlessly towards eternity dispense

And hand n' heart will guide through darkness taking comfort finding light across divides steadfast despite uncertainty

Embracing ever ebbing tide we'll sail beyond event horizon into spatial seas galaxy glide trusting path transcend defining

Together pass through cosmic gates embrace mystery expand into awe discover moment embracing fate into boundless possibility before return crescendo

May your spirit forever echo dancing among astral symphonies resonating eternal laughter

[sfwordsmith]

Johnny B. Goode

Genre: Science Fiction

Style: Flash Fiction (Under 1500 words)

Prompt: Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

  Johnny B. Goode

  On March 5, 1979, the United States of America sent a deep space probe on an escape trajectory from our solar system, headed for a date with interstellar space. On this probe they included a golden record, or rather, a gold-plated copper disc, much like a vinyl record, with a cartridge and needle necessary to play its recordings. The audio on the disc included greetings in 55 languages, 35 sounds from life on Earth such as laughter, whale songs, wild dogs, the surf, wind, and fire, among other things, as well as 90 minutes of music, which included pieces from Mozart and Bach all the way to rock n’ roll like Chuck Berry. It also included 115 images of life on Earth and came with a message from then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In it, he said, 

“This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some–perhaps many–may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”

On August 1, 2012, Voyager 1 succeeded in its mission of entering interstellar space, leaving behind the solar system it was built in and entering the grand unknown…

The Voyager 1 ran out of power and ceased contact with Earth in late October 2025. On September 9, 2062, we now know that it was found. We also know that the beings that found it listened to the record and for some reason, liked Chuck Berry. When what we now know as the Nazalqar ships arrived, they broadcast two and a half minutes of the rock and roll masterpiece Johnny B. Goode to every possible receiver and speaker in the world. By the time the end of the song had occurred, skylines across the globe were cast in shadow by monolithic ships, that even the most conservative news stations cited esteemed scientists reports as saying that it was made of a metal unknown to our solar system, undoubtedly alien in nature, incredibly dense, and seemingly impenetrable by any radiation. Resistance would be futile. Advanced alien lifeforms had arrived. All because we sent a record out to space. 

People lost their minds. There were religious riots, mass-suicides, the stock market plummeted and then ceased to exist, and nations collapsed overnight. The ones still managing to hang on poured every single cent they could into the scientific research of their alien visitors. The U.N. welcomed all remaining nations into their midst, and surprisingly none refused. The warmongering nuclear discussions were never brought to the table, as humanity instinctively knew they were utterly outmatched.

Yet the Nazalqar did nothing but orbit ominously. They remained around the Earth, playing daily at 6:18am Pacific time, Johnny B. Goode, throughout every speaker in the world. Entire careers were made trying to explain the numerical significance of this exact timing or why Chuck Berry – to no avail. No one ever knew the truth behind it. Most just ended up throwing away their radios.

There was debate as to whether the Nazalqar ships even held lifeforms or if they were solely operated by artificial intelligence. There was no resounding evidence one way or another as all scans proved useless.. They were clearly capable of course correction, as could be quantified by scientific calculations noticing readjustments based on magnetic pole drift, so they had some sort of reason about them. Yet, all communication efforts by humanity were met with deaf ears, with the only response being Chuck Berry.

“Go Johnny, go, go! Go Johnny, go, go!”

The Berry estate made billions in royalties and shuttered the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Artists around the world went even hungrier than they had before. Poets became doomsday prophets. The arrival of the Nazalqar ships changed the fabric of humanity in so many different ways.

By the way, we call them Nazalqar ships, as that was the closest English pronunciation of a series of glyphs identifiable at the bottom of every ship. People wondered if that was the name of the species that surrounded us or if it was a message. Some asked if it was the name of the company that had created the ships. Imagine driving a town over and being forever known as Toyota.

Anyway, I will quit my rambling and get to the point of the matter, as this recording must fit on another gold record.

My name is Tahib Moorey, and I am the Speaker on behalf of the United Terran Space Corps. We send the following message to anyone who might listen. There is evidence of intelligent life in the Universe. We know this to be undoubtedly true because of what we witnessed. 1 year and 9 months after the Nazalqar ships arrived to our planet, the Nazalqar ships moved and merged together to completely surround and encapsulate the Earth. For the first time in our planet’s history, we received no light from our star. 

Now, this is where it gets hard to explain for me. It was a cataclysmic event. I am not a scientist, but I know what I experienced. We did not feel its effects immediately. Of course, we instantly noticed the darkness… that shocked us all as we scrambled for lanterns and power generators – but nothing else was instant. The temperature, however, did begin to drop, and they never stopped dropping continuously; all photosynthesis stopped, solar panels worldwide became useless, and electricity consumption skyrocketed. All private utility companies were mandated to become public entities, and as such, had we not already been in a crisis, the power crisis on Earth would have been solved.

After a week of darkness, the average surface temperature of Earth was -17 degrees Celsius. We were on the advent of a new ice age. There were mass exoduses from multiple locales to areas with more geothermal activity. Plant life around the globe had begun to falter. Life as we knew it was soon to be over. Aliens had destroyed the planet. Yet, every morning, we heard Johnny B. Goode through our radios.

That was until the day came where the sky lit up green as the Nazalqar ships glowed intensely with heat and moaned under the stress of massive temperature changes for precisely 37.15 minutes before then cooling back to their cold and dark hardened grey. The shield began breaking apart. Some pieces of the Nazalqar ships began to float away lifelessly, while others, still operable, dispersed themselves or drifted away into the Sun. It was as if they had finished what they were made for, their purpose complete, and they would no longer protect us. Almost immediately after, certain areas on the Sun-facing side of the planet began seeing the light again. What was seen as humanity’s mass extinction event became the day we all saw the light.

Not long after, scientists measured the remnants of a gamma-ray burst from a nearby star cluster that had recently had a massive and rapidly rotating star collapse upon itself, creating a black hole. Were not it for the Nazalqar ships, or rather, the Nazalqar shield as it is now known, humanity would never have gotten to send this message to you at all.

So, if you can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: Now we humans of Earth have banded together, and we send this message to express our gratitude to whoever sent the Nazalqar ships to our system, for you have not only saved our species as well as countless others… but you have broken down our borders, and have genuinely welcomed us to a community of galactic civilizations. We no longer see ourselves as disparate or divided. We no longer have nation states. We are now globally united. For that, we have the Nazalqar to thank, whoever they might be. We cast that first golden record to the stars with hope and determination and were met with goodwill in a vast and awesome universe. We hope that some civilization will hear our story and know of this exchange, and know that we in kind welcome any other galactic civilizations, and will offer that same goodwill, in the efforts of spreading peace and prosperity, as the Nazalqar ships provided us the time necessary to achieve just that for ourselves.

With that said, we hope still that whoever was out there listening the first time receives this message as well, and can perhaps tell us in simple terms, ‘Why Chuck Berry?’

Read more here

[rhaaclaws]

thoughts on astronomy. space in general?

THE SCIENCE TO EVER TO ALL ITS SO OHGIIKJGLHJNGKKHLGJK

There's so much we don't know about it and It's so hard to comprehend because of its sheer scale and beauty and oughgjhgj

While some people take its magnitude to be pessimistic assholes like "mimimi we are so insignificant we are a speck of dust compared to space" it honestly kills me because if anything, we are significant enough to exist and while in the grand scheme of things we don't ""matter"", I think just being here and being able to see and appreciate the beauty of the cosmos is enough

Also astronomy is so dramatic i love it, my fav example being how gold is formed aka two neutron stars constantly colliding and creating gold, which is one of the heaviest metals. ALSO ALSO how a star gets destroyed by a black hole, of course u make everything bright. another very dramatic thing are just how BRIGHT supernovas are. do u know the things id do to go back to 1000 ad for even a day to see SN 1006 in the sky. id go insane and like die or smth idk

One of my completely fav things to read and talk about are black holes, specially since they're what I want to focus on with my studies [if I even manage to get a degree in astrophysics, I want to find out information on them]. I think one of the coolest things ever is how not only their gravity is strong enough to not let light escape, but to slow down time and its just aahujhjkgjhgkjg its so fascinating to me their sheer power [kinda irrelevant but i wanna put it here, if you squished down the earth to make a classic black hole, it'd be 0.69 inches in diameter and that's nice]. also everytime i see that picture [picture!!!!] of a black hole [hiii galaxy m87] I legit get soso emotional like holy shit. Holy shit. for so long we couldn't fully confirm their existence and its just aAAAAAAAAAAAAA to even see this in my lifetime its sososoooo fucking cool I'm so excited to see how more research leads to any discoveries [who knows maybe I'm gonna be on the same team that makes the next breakthrough]

Another fav thing of mine is the golden record NASA sent. i know I keep saying the word beautiful but I truly mean it every time I say it. sending out a physical means of contact to space to say hi the most human thing ever and it makes me so happy that its been going into space. will it contact another civilization? who knows, maybe not this lifetime or the next but the way that we try so hard to reach out to an unknown entity makes me go crazy insane

THIS IS SO LONG. but i have so many thoughts on space it makes me so emotional and I'm so passionate about it. i think astronomy is one of the most amazing parts of human curiosity. Every single living [on earth at least] thing has seen the same sky as us, and we have been slowly finding out more stuff about it and its so beautiful to me how the love of knowledge makes us want to learn about things, specifically space

anyways here are some of my fav space pics. whoever sent this [or anyone!!!] is always free to message me at any time to talk about astronomy in general. i love talking and listening about it <333

[cassieoh]

Stellar Lifecycles by Anthony J Crowley, demon

1 - Irreversible Collapse

Tell me about the stars, Crowley. (You are my safe place to ask questions, Crowley. I have so many of them). How were they made? How do they live? (Surely there is worship in understanding God’s marvels? After all, the beauty of a good book isn’t just in the pleasure to the eyes, the pretty arrangement of words on the page. The pleasure is in the way the soul gazes into the mirror and comes to know itself better. Let me know the heavens better. Let me know you better.)

I’ll tell you, angel. God created the universe in heat and light, and then She created the angels to weave it. We took the light and moulded it in our hands, pressed it into protons and neutrons, tiny buzzing electrons, and then we pressed those together, too. She called them hydrogen atoms and we gathered them up in our arms into great luminous clouds. Then comes the neat bit, angel, the real trick. The Almighty looked at the way the bits of the atoms stuck together, and said, ‘like that, but for big things,’ and She called it gravity.

But how does gravity make a star?

It’s like a hill, you see. Or more like a valley. You put the cloud at the top and gradually, it’ll all fall down.

(Apples fall. Angels, too. Does a fall always end in fire?)

Those atoms’ll get closer together, it all starts to get hot. And you know, it’s still just a cloud at that point, swirling around in space and all that, but eventually, it gets dense enough that its own mass takes over, and it starts to collapse in on itself. It starts to collapse, right, and you can’t stop it. After that point, the star is going to get born come what may. It’s inevitable.

2 - Fusion

Well, and then things get hotter and hotter until… See, making hydrogen nuclei is easy, in the grand scheme of things. Take a proton, right? That's basically it. Sometimes add a neutron. 'S not that hard. The leap from hydrogen to helium, though, that's a thing. Takes a whole boatload of energy to force four of those recalcitrant little bastards to share space in a nucleus.

They don't just… attract? (Like you and I? Tell me we're just another law of nature, an inevitable binding.)

They get close enough, they do. Almost impossible to separate, eventually. But to start with, no. Something has to force them together, some external circumstance. Something like the heat generated in a collapsing gas cloud.

(Something like a conversation on a wall, an unexpected moment of kinship, the way my stomach swooped like a swallow when you smiled at me, close, close, under my wing.)

Are you still listening?

Yes, go on, my dear.

So, it gets hot enough to push the hydrogen nuclei together to form helium, but the really clever bit comes next, because, angel, get this. When they fuse, they actually release more energy. It's like Creation in miniature. Happens fast, too. BOOM. And suddenly your nice innocuous little gas cloud is a fiery ball of nuclear fusion.

3 - Balance

After that, you've got a main sequence star, happy to shine away for however long. Millions of years, probably, if She'd let it.

The atoms stop falling inwards? (Tell me there's an end, a soft landing. Surely it can't go on forever.)

For now. Gravity's still pulling them in, but the force of the fusion is also trying to push them back out.

Like a tug of war.

Exactly. Both sides are equally matched. No one's going anywhere. The forces are balanced.

Oh. A little like us.

You… yeah. You could say that.

4 - Imbalance

It doesn’t last, though. It can’t.

Why not? (If you don’t rock the boat, if you’re careful, surely nothing needs to change.)

All good things, angel, you know what they say. The star runs out of hydrogen, converts it all to helium, so there’s nothing left to burn. It’s like letting go of the rope in that tug of war. Gravity wins out, and hard. The star collapses in on itself, heats up again, until suddenly it’s hot enough to start fusing helium.

Oh, a daring rescue? (Tell me, tell me there’s a hero at the eleventh hour. Tell me there’s a safe way to proceed.)

Not... exactly. Not precisely, no. ‘Cause the same thing happens all over again -- the helium runs out, gravity wins, the star collapses and heats up until it’s hot enough to start burning the next biggest element. And so on and so forth. It just sort of wobbles about like that, expanding and contracting, clinging on desperately to life, until it’s burned through everything it can.

It sounds positively awful.

Perhaps, in a way. There’s something beautiful to it, too, though. Symphonic, almost. The layers of elements that build up like tree rings, the way it flings out its coronal envelope while the core is slowly collapsing, like a robin puffing up its chest feathers. Red giants, the humans’ll call them, and they’re magnificent.

But it’s dying.

No, I know, but-- this stage is important, because this is where the complex elements come from. Iron for blood, oxygen for air, carbon for-- everything. You can’t have life without this stage, angel. The star has to start to die for everything else to begin.

5 - End State

And that’s the end of it? Nucleogenesis completed? Do we… do we simply mourn the star’s noble sacrifice, and move on?

Not in the least, angel. How do you think the elements get out of the star to make life?

How, then?

A big-- really big explosion. Massive. As much light given off as an entire galaxy.

Oh, like the one we saw at Bethlehem. What did you call it?

A supernova. Exactly. Not all stars go out that way. Not the smaller ones. The sun will go with a bit less fanfare, just shut off the power and go dark one day. But the bigger ones, the ones with sufficient mass, they go up like a firework, like an atom bomb.

With a bang, rather than a whimper. I suppose you approve.

If you’ve got to go, go with style, that’s what I always say.

Yes, I am aware. (That's what I'm afraid of.) And after that?

Depends on the mass again. There’s always something left behind, some compact little memory of what went before. Might be a white dwarf or a neutron star. With sufficient mass, it can lead to a black hole. Even they serve their purpose, though. Most galaxies have them, right at the very centre. The dark heart of the cosmos.

Surely, this must be the end.

No, angel. Not even close.

6 - New Life

“I helped make this one,” Crowley said quietly. “Wasn’t much of an angel, but I enjoyed the work.”

“You should be proud,” Aziraphale said. “It’s incredible, my dear. Tell me about it?”

“It’s a stellar nursery, a place where new stars are born. D’you remember what I told you that time, about how stars live and die?”

“How could I forget?”

“Right. Well,” Crowley said, shifting a little, caressing Aziraphale’s fingers restlessly. “After the fusion’s stopped and the star’s gone cold, or exploded or whatever it’s going to do, the molecules that’re left over eventually form a nebula. Over time, gravity does its work again, and the densest bits of the cloud pull in more and more matter, until they’re dense enough to collapse into a protostar. At critical density, fusion starts all over again.”

“Bob’s your uncle.”

“Bob’s your…” Crowley shook his head. “Nevermind. Point is, a star died, and a new star was born. It’s different to what came before, more complex in its make-up maybe, but just as… just as precious.”

{excerpts from Starstuff, written by @themoonmothwrites​/the_moonmoth, illustrated by me/cassieoh for the Good Omens Big Bang 2019}

[tomasorban]

The Dogon’s Extraordinary Knowledge of the Cosmos and the Cult of Nommo

France, 1920: Marcel Griaule is a young man who is very well-established in his studies, especially in mathematics. He has recently served as a volunteer in the French Air Force and aspires to attend the prestigious Lycée Louis le Grande.

Although his future already seems marked, fate has other plans for him - a new road that begins to take shape when he decides to attend a conference that same year. The speakers are Marcel Mauss, anthropologist, sociologist, and historian of religions, and Marcel Cohen, linguist.

Griaule is struck by their words and decides to devote himself entirely to the study of anthropology. Between 1928 and 1933 he took part in two ethnographic expeditions, and in this period (1930) he came into contact with a mysterious African tribe: the Dogon.

The opportunity was given to him during a period of study in Mali alongside his pupil Germaine Dieterlen, who was also a pupil of Mauss and deeply interested in the study of ancient myths. From that moment, the mystery of the Nommo is born. It is an element of an ancient heritage of which we cannot expand without having first spoken of the Dogon people.

One People, Many Mysteries

The Dogon are a tribe that lives in a desert land of Mali, near the border with Burkina Faso. It is a place that welcomed them after their escape to avoid the expansionist pressures of the medieval empires…we are around the year 1000, during the fierce battles on the banks of the Niger river.

Many researchers have already discussed the range of mysteries that surround these people, but what interests us particularly for the development of the hypotheses contained in this article is their complex cosmogony, based on faith in a creative god, Amma, and in a creation produced by the movements of the “Egg of the World”.

A Dogon schematic of the “egg of the world” . 

On the basis of these beliefs, the “Nommo”, the eight pro-genitors of the Dogon, brought to Earth a basket containing the clay necessary to build the grain stores of their villages. This image, which at first sight appears quite simple and devoid of particular significance, hides in reality a very profound knowledge of the universe and of the celestial bodies.

The granary represents the universe, its scales symbolize both the males and females that generated the Dogon and the various stars and constellations: in this sense we will find the Pleiades in the north, Orion in the south, and a comet in the west. So, everything started with a “basket”, or container, that carried life.

Dogon Astronomical Knowledge

But the thing that most struck the two scholars was the finding that, despite the Dogon having come into contact with our civilization in fairly recent times (about the beginning of the century), they possessed incredible scientific and astronomical knowledge. Some of this knowledge was certainly the result of a cultural heritage that is millennia old, but one element in particular has decidedly current characteristics - the detailed knowledge of the star Sirius.

The Dogon were in fact aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system (i.e. a system consisting of two stars, Sirius A and Sirius B); they were aware of the fact that Sirius B revolves around Sirius A with an elliptical orbit and over a period corresponding to 50 years; and the most disconcerting discovery was that the Dogon knew the exact position of Sirius A within the ellipse.

Sirius A and Sirius B as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The white dwarf can be seen to the lower left. (NASA, ESA, H. Bond/STScI, M. Barstow/University of Leicester/ CC BY 3.0 )

Many may wonder what is so disconcerting about all this? The amazement arises from the fact that it was only in 1862 when the American astronomer Alvan Clark deduced the existence of Sirius B using a telescope, among the most advanced for that era, and it was not before 1970 that there was confirmation of the existence of this star, not to mention a photograph of it.

Yet the Dogon knew of it hundreds of years before, and not only that, they called Sirius B with the name of “Po Tolo”; this name is certainly the most apt and shocking way to describe this system, the term Tolo, in fact, means star, while Po refers to a typical cereal that has the characteristic of being extremely heavy despite its small size; an expression, therefore, very close to reality since Sirius B is a white dwarf and, as such, has a very high density.

A Dogon diagram said to represent Sirius B’s elliptical orbit around Sirius A. ( CC BY SA 3.0 )

All this information is practically inaccessible without adequate astronomical equipment, and it is useless to specify that the Dogon had never come into possession of any such instrument, they even ignored its existence.

But the mystery does not end here, the Dogon, in fact, used to represent the planet Saturn as surrounded by a sort of halo, thus demonstrating that they knew of its rings; moreover, they knew that the planet Jupiter had around “four companions”, which correspond exactly to its four main moons.

As if this were not enough, they depicted the Earth as a sphere and knew that this sphere revolves around its axis, and together with other spheres (the planets), around the sun; last, but not least, it is surprising that the Dogon, or in any case the elders of the village, described our galaxy as an immense spiral shape. We know very well that this concept began to be disclosed by Western astronomers only at the beginning of this century.

For the Dogon, Sirius B was the first star created by God and it represents the fulcrum of the Universe. All matter developed from it, including souls, following a complex spiral motion - the same that is symbolized in the intertwined baskets.

Saturn is surrounded by rings, Jupiter has four main moons, and four calendars are used: one for the Sun, one for the Moon, one for Sirius, and one for Venus. Needless to say, that the Dogon believe a truth attested from ancient times - the fact that the planets orbit around the Sun.

The Dogon know what, logically, they should not know; their knowledge is not the result of ancient legacies acquired by observing the sky and the stars with the naked eye, as happened in other civilizations, they simply “know”; this is the most disturbing part of the Dogon mystery.

Dogon hats which resemble flying saucers.

The Nommo Cult

An old Dogon legend tells of when the God of the universe, Amma, sent the Nommo to earth. This was a half-man, half-amphibian creature which landed in the land of the Fox, a territory northeast of Bandiagara, in the Mopti region; the Nommo was red, but when it touched the ground it became white.

Mali, Dogon container This container shows the "Ark of the world", in which Nommo, the mythical progenitor of humanity, is supposed to have come down from the sky. ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )

The name Nommo derives from a Dogon word that translates as “to do well”; much more often, however, this is remembered as “The Master of Water” (perhaps a reference to the fact that the Nommo could not survive out of water), the Admonitor, or the Destroyer.

We do not know exactly how this figure can be placed in the various events that characterized the growth of the Dogon culture, but it is not so difficult to identify other very similar creatures in different cultures - not only geographically distant but also with respect to various historical moments.

The same type of creature is present in a history of Mesopotamia written during the III Century BC from the priest Beroso; his name was Oannes, his body was similar to that of a fish, he lived only in water, and had feet similar to those of man. Are these images referring to the same event?

In any case, this ancient, almost primordial figure occupies a prominent place in all African cultures; not infrequently, for example, in the most internal areas of Africa. People belonging to monotheistic religions turn to the priests of the various villages because in situations of extreme difficulty they invoke the assistance of the Nommo.

Finally, let us not forget the God fish Dagon of the Philistines, and the same symbol of the fish which the first Christians used to represent their deity. Whoever or whatever it was, the Nommo still continues to lengthen its shadow on African territory, perhaps as a messenger waiting to be able to reveal ancient truths to those who have the courage and the predisposition of mind to listen to it.

[yeojaa]

( GHOST IN MY BED. )

Sometimes, hating someone is the only thing you can do.

pairing.  jjk x (named) f!reader. 

genre + rating.   rockstar!au.  e2l (exes n enemies!).  general angst.    

tags / warnings.  everything about this is pain.  you can literally spin in a circle and point at somewhere on the page and it’ll be pain.  i’m sorry.

beta reader(s).  @midnighttifa​ (your comments make my days better, @pars-ley​ (you’re so lovely), and @papillonsgf​ (i owe you my life and all my love).  thank you, my dears!  💖

wc.  3k

chapter three.

You’d thought they’d left - all the memories of him.  Packed into cardboard boxes and plastic bins, folded between clothes and bare picture frames.     

You realise now, they’d only been hiding, waiting for his return.  

The smell of your perfume.  His favourite one, strawberry jam and cosy cedar wood.  It calls to moments together, of his face buried into the side of your neck.  Wandering hands and wondrous laughter, warmth crowding everywhere.  The wet of his teeth against your skin as he’d smile.  Springtime and Sunday matinees, fresh picked fruit and messy kisses.  

The mirror in your hallway - the one you’d taken too many photos in front of, that’d you almost broke one drunken stumbling night.  The one he’d loved you breathless in, with a hand at your throat and another on your waist.  Where he’d whisper sweet nothings with eyes only for you.  Where your little piece of paradise was preserved by a pretty iron frame. 

The tee shirt that you’d washed and promised to return but never had, keeping it as a trophy.  A rightful reminder of his love.  How it fits you just right without fitting you at all, comfortable and lazy and effortless.  A mirror image to the one he wears now.  

You find pieces of him scattered everywhere, swept under rugs and tucked within cupboards.  He’s there in the kettle that whistles and the tea that steeps, dipped in the honey pot and hidden behind your curtains.  He’s there in your thoughts, tucked away on the top shelf that you pretend doesn’t exist.  

Even as he sits, still and unimposing on the couch you’d both picked, he’s everywhere.

How is he everywhere?

“Want some help?”  It floats across the space, comfortably as if he’d never left.  It fits easily, familiar and lovely.  You hate it.  You hate how it makes you feel, digging up emotions you’d buried from their rightful place in the ground.  

“I’m fine.”  

A lie.  Lily white and inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things. 

You’re not quite sure why you bother.  Whose feelings were you sparing - his or yours?

“You sure?”  It’s closer than you anticipate, a ghost of a breath over your shoulder.  It sends your mind reeling, feet following in the same fashion as you all but slam into the hard block edge of your counter.  You nearly topple mugs as you go, only avoiding a disastrous mess when hands find you, catch you like that’s what they were made for. 

Jungkook’s an indomitable figure, palms searing heat into every nerve ending beneath his touch.  You can’t help the way you instinctively lean into him.  You love him somewhere deep in your bones, in the stardust that makes up every atom - a moth drawn to his flame. 

But you knew better now.  Fly too close to the sun - you’ll only get burned. 

“Please don’t touch me.”  

It’s you who breaks away first, turned towards the scent of chamomile and lavender.  You can only imagine his expression;  it’ll twist out of shape, crooked like you’ve just kicked him while he’s down.  

You suppose you have, but he’d thrown the first punch.

“Why’d you invite me in if you’re only going to ignore me?”  It hits like a shot to the gut, exactly as it’s meant to.  He isn’t asking for the sake of asking - he’s asking so you’ll cry yourself hoarse and find comfort in his arms.  He’s asking because he knows the answer and he wants you to regret it.  

You know it.  You know this side of him, even if you wish you didn’t.  

Even if you wish he was still the same boy who you’d fallen in love with years ago, full of sunshine and promise.  The one who’d have held you all night, kissed you senseless under the moon and held your hand through the sunrise.  Who’d break his own back bending over, weather a hundred storms for the people he loved. 

It’s a silly wish - a useless one, wasted on shooting stars and broken bones.  

He would never be that boy again.  He’d come too far, changed too much.  You hardly even recognise him now, cut from stone rather than cloth.  A thousand sharp edges you catch your hands on when you foolishly reach for him.  He is an incomplete masterpiece and you’ve never been artistic.  There’s nothing for you here.  

A mug is extended - an unnecessary apology.  An olive branch in the form of your old ritual.  “Please don’t say that.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?  Can’t do or say anything.”  It’s petulant and angry, a riot crowded behind his teeth.  You’re worried what the words might do - how they’ll beat you black and blue. 

“I don’t know what you expected.”  You can’t hide the exasperation, the overwhelming sadness that starts in your heart and branches out into your veins.  It creeps further, presents itself prettily in jewels nestled along your lash line and the tremble of your chin.  You’d cry if you weren’t so tired, every ounce of your effort eaten up by the boy that glares at you now and demands more than you can possibly give.  

He sighs - a long, unbroken sound - and something shifts, snaps into place as if the entire cosmos has aligned to allow this moment.  

He looks like him suddenly, like the version of himself you’d thought long lost.  It’s hidden in the peculiar shape of his mouth, uneven around his frown;  it’s there in the light of his stare, where sunbeams pour past boarded up windows.  It’s there, even where you can’t quite see it, in the corner of his soul and his drifting heart.  He’s always been a wanderer.

But then he moves, retreats back to his seat and to himself.  

He feels farther away than the moon, his silence that of the stars.

You take a careful sip of the liquid that burns through ceramic - anything to distract from the cold hands of memory that claw at your neck.  You turn words over in your hand - test them for clarity and weight, a jeweller inspecting their most prized possessions.   Was there anything you could say that would make this better? That would fix this gaping, Jungkook-shaped silhouette that tore a hole right through you?

You remember how you’d fallen for him, tumbled headlong into love with him - intensely, blindly, wholeheartedly.  It’d been easy then.  You’d dived into depths too shallow, climbed trees too fall;  you hadn’t thought your heart would break, even if every other part of you did. 

You’d thought it’d all be worth it.  

Instead you’re left with alkaline bones calcified under paper-thin skin, parchment sewn together by shaking hands and sodden by saltwater.  It’s hardly a body at all, ripe for the picking and bruising and tearing beneath teeth like knives.  

Can you blame him for how he hurts you when you’d already hurt yourself?

There’s a tang on your tongue.  It pools between seams, dripping misery into your mouth and swallowing the sob that’s formed in a wave.  It crashes against your teeth, stings the pink of your gums with salt;  it rises and crests, engulfing sandy shores you’d once built your home upon.  It comes and comes and you can’t stop it - sound bursting forth like a siren song.

He’s upon you then, utterly defenseless to your call.  He crowds you before he can think twice about it;  a drowning man seeking air.  It’s a pretty metaphor for a pretty boy.  What he doesn’t realise is that he is a galaxy all his own - not a sailor lost at sea but a swirling vortex not fit for human life.  Jungkook contains no oxygen of his own, smothering you in what he calls love and feels more like hell. 

“I’m sorry.”  It disappears into velvet, clinging to silk like electricity.  They spark in your eyes, electrifying your thoughts.  “I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”  

Arms do the opposite of what they’re meant to.  They crush your resolve beneath the weight of them - pry open your insides - and you’re crumbling.  The agony comes in sheets, like September rain.  It streaks down your cheeks and soaks your clothes, sinking beneath your skin until you’re waterlogged. 

“Don’t say that.  Don’t you say that to me.”  

Don’t lie to me, you think.  

He speaks the words he thinks you want to hear, weaving them until they’re a muzzle for your sadness.  “I’m sorry.  I never meant to hurt you.”  As if good intentions make up for the way your heart aches. 

They don’t. .

“Forgive me.  Please.  I need you.” 

Forgive him.  Forgive him?  You don’t even know what you’d forgive him for.  You’re certain there are more skeletons in his closet than in the ground.  Dig one up and another three would rise - some sort of awful hydra’s head born from your nightmares.

“I can’t.”  It claws itself out of your throat and into the air that suffocates, ripping it apart with teeth and nails.  Hands find the collar of his shirt and it isn’t clear whether you’re shoving him away or clinging to him.  You can’t make up your mind, fisting the material between your fingers until the strands might snap.  It feels terribly familiar, like the thing behind your ribs that’s six seconds from tearing.  

You’re pushing and pulling, hitting and halting.  Hauled in a million different directions.  It’s too much.

“What’re you sorry for?”  A fist to his chest, right where your heart lives (or dies, rather).  Your demands are barely coherent, words with no beginning and no end.  “Tell me.  Tell me what you’re sorry for.”  

He could push you away.  It’d be easy, really.  You half expect him to.  He hates being told what to do.

“I’m sorry for hurting you.  I’m sorry for not realising how good I had it.  I’m sorry for forgetting about what we had.  I’m so fucking sorry.”  They’re confessions you’ve heard a hundred times.  Over the phone, through the door, on his knees.  It never changes - a recital he knows intimately well.  “I’m sorry for letting you down.”  

You shouldn’t have expected more.  It would never come - not with him.  Not from him.  He had too much to lose and you’d never be enough.  Nothing in comparison to those thin white lines, those flashing lights, those women. 

You thought you’d known that.  You’d had three long years to learn that.

These apologies aren’t answers;  they’re excuses.

You peer up at him - into those wondrous eyes, so full of light and swirling with constellations - that you don’t think he expects it when you thrust your hand into his chest, past sinew and gristle to find the truth.  It squeezes, incremental, around the organ that you’d once thought beat in time with yours.  Silly girl.  It hardly beats at all.  

“That’s not what you should be sorry for.”  The tears still fall.  They come, relentless, as if his mere presence undoes all your hard work;  they carry your words, pull them off your tongue like white water rapids.  “You should be sorry you’re asking me to forgive you.  You should be sorry you’re putting me through this.”  It’s those same fists, over and over again, as if you might force something more out of him.

“I’m sorry I can’t let you go.”

“Please let me go.”

“I can’t.  I can’t.”  Jungkook cries like his tears might sway the tide.  “Stay with me.  I can’t do this without you.”  It’s a lie - a terrible, poorly-dressed lie - but he speaks it like the truth, like you’re his truth.  

He begs as if he doesn’t remember the harsh sting of reality and how it fits within your story.  He pretends like these chapters haven’t been written together, passages underlined in garish red ink.  He acts oblivious to the mistakes you point out, refusing to read between the lines even when they’re written in. 

Fault lies with him - mostly, wholly - carried in the palm of his hands with small portions - sections of his knuckles - divided up to reflect the ache of your mutual loss. 

He knows that - but knowing something doesn’t mean facing it.  

“I need you, Pumpkin.”  

“You don’t need me.”  Hasn’t needed you in years, far longer than even the last three.  He’d found others to need, others to fill the gaping you-shaped hole he swore was real.  

Women with beguiling eyes and beseeching mouths.  Women whose names you never learnt but whose perfume found a home somewhere along your shelves, whose clothes masqueraded as yours when you’d find a wayward scrap of lace in the back pocket of his jeans.  Women who took your everything - but only because he’d been ripe for the taking.  

I miss you, he’d insisted over those first few weeks.  I can’t wait to come home to you.  Nothing’s the same without you. 

You should’ve known then that someone so used to having it all would never let go so easily.  

In a perfect world, you would’ve fought less, given more - uprooted your whole life to travel across the world with him.  He would’ve stayed at your side, found his vice in the shape of your smile, the beat of your heart.  You would’ve been happy.  Together. 

You wonder - would it have made a difference?  Or would all paths have led to this?  Had you been doomed from the start?  Star-crossed lovers?  

You’d like to think so.  Passing blame helps - softens the pain and drowns out the what-ifs. 

You never had a chance.

He wants to tell you it’s true, that none of them mean anything close to you.  He wants to tell you that you’re the love of his life and that, when he gives this all up - flickers out like a star that’s burned too bright - you’ll be the one he crashes into.  You’ll be the only arms he seeks, his northern star in human form.

But you told him not to lie and you’d insist he was, so he doesn’t. 

He stares at you instead, soft and sad and so desperate he can trace the fractures in your composure as he levels you with that unwavering intensity.  It stutters to life a hundred hummingbird wings;  he can practically hear them buzzing about in your chest.  He thinks they’d burst out of your chest if you weren’t careful, caging them beneath brass.

“I love you,”  he tells you, words so sweet, so tender - a melody he strings together only for your ears.  It warms your cheeks and fizzles quietly in your stomach, melting away the ice that crystallises your heart and turns it cold.  He strips you bare with the admission, hoping to find some sort of acceptance in your eyes.

He forgets that he is not a blameless boy and your body is more than a confessional booth.

You believe it when you say it, half-hearted and defensive.  It would hurt more if it weren’t so wet.  “You don’t love me.” 

“I do.”  What can he do to convince you it’s true?  He thinks he’d do anything if it brought you back to him - where he wants you most - tucked away in his arms and his head and his heart.  “I swear I do.”  

He reaches for you with high hopes.  It’s silly of him, he knows.  You’re lightyears away, tucked among the stars.  It’s where you belong, out of reach and shining bright.  He can’t deny how badly it hurts.  He wants you here, beside him;  he wants it selfishly, as he wants most things.

“You don’t love me, because you don’t hurt the people you love.”  It’s a phrase Jungkook’s heard before.  From your lips, from movie screens, from god knows fucking where.  What a stupid phrase.  He didn’t mean to hurt you.  He didn’t mean a lot of things and didn’t that mean anything?

Each time it comes, it agitates him, stewing his blood to a boil.  It simmers in his veins like witch’s brew, a love potion rotten and ruined - sweet milk gone sour.. 

Was this that - a relationship that had run its course?  A bond past its expiration date?

“I love you,”  he repeats, ever harder.  As if the words might turn to amber, remain forever on the top of his tongue, crystallised and perfect.  It feels like it.  He’s told you enough times, ever since he was fifteen years old - practically an eternity.

“”You don’t.”  It’s your own insistence, biting and cold and yet somehow still a summer’s day.  You weren’t always like this.  He’d driven you to this.  But you were never very good at keeping him out;  warmth always crept in, sunlight streaming through the clouds.  That was the glory of your love.  It was irrefutable.  

Your skin may have thickened but the fire roars on.  

“I love you.  I love you so fucking much.”  He holds you, seeks to burn the truth of his words into your marrow.  Thumbs sweep the point of your chin, right below where he’d like to leave the impression of his mouth.  

There’s a sadness in your eyes - an ocean of melancholy that turns them bitter blue.  “Love is sacrifice.”  You pry each finger from your face, turn knuckles alabaster with your gentle ministrations.  A part of him wishes you’d tear them clean off;  your kindness hurts more than your hate.  “And sacrifice is something you’ll never understand.”

You lead him to leave, just as he’s led you through hell.  You don’t falter when the door of your home swings open, the one in your heart slamming shut in tandem.  

When you tell him to go, he isn’t ready - wants to spend the rest of his life in this place with you - so you guide him out, with a tiny shake of your head and a click of the lock.  He stares at the wood grain when it shuts in his face - memorises the patterns of the home you’d built together.  He stands there longer than he should, setting sun searing upon his shoulders.  He should leave, he knows.  

But you’re his weakness and he doesn’t know whether he loves you or hates you for it.

author note.  this was really meant to just... explore their past a little bit?  so i hope that comes across?  actual plot movement will be forthcoming.  tysm for reading!!!  💜 

tag list.  @jalexad​​​ @aa-ronpa​​ @kookiesbreaky​​ @celestialflamefairy​​ @xjoonchildx​​ @pars-ley​​ @seokjinssi​​ @youwannabelostandnotbefound​​ @patpus​ @dazedjjk​ @koozui​ @jinhitwhore​ @always-wishing-for-rain​

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT IS THE EVOLVING UNIVERSE THEORY??

Blog#91

Wednesday, May 26th ,2021

Welcome back,

Our universe is both old and tremendous, and growing out farther and quicker consistently. This speeding up universe, the dim energy that is by all accounts behind it, and different riddles like the specific idea of the Huge explosion and the early development of the universe are among the incredible riddles of cosmology.

Some time ago researchers thought Earth was at the focal point of the universe. As late as the 1920s, we didn't understand that our system was only one of numerous in an immense universe. Just later did we perceive that different systems were fleeing from us — toward each path — at ever more prominent velocities. Similarly, in ongoing many years, our comprehension of the universe has sped up.

I have thought a lot about how to illustrate what we know today about our Universe’s structure. It is not at all easy for many reasons, and not only because of the difficulty of simplifying things for non-specialists without leaving any loose ends that we take for granted.

If we consider the Universe to be everything that exists, from the smallest to the most gigantic entities, one way of showing their structure would be to make an inventory of all such elements and order them hierarchically in space. But this would be incomplete unless we also listed their interconnections and interrelations. Moreover, none of this—neither the elements nor their interconnections—is static, all of it is interacting and changing on a permanent basis. We must realize that, as such, we cannot have a “snapshot” of what is in the Universe at the present time, because when we look in one direction with a telescope, the deeper our gaze looks, the farther back in time we go. Thus, we are looking at a wedge of the Universe’s history, rather than a snapshot.

 Nevertheless, inasmuch as all directions in the Universe are statistically identical, what we see in any direction at a distance of thousands of millions of light-years must be a representation of how our own, or any other, region of space was, thousands of millions of years ago.

Let us take it a step at a time. First we should remember that, in keeping with what we have already said, more than three quarters of our Cosmos is now a form of that mysterious entity we call dark energy, and more than 85% of the rest is what is called “dark matter,” which we cannot see because, though it interacts with gravity, it does not interact with radiation. In other words, not much more than three percent of the entire Universe is “ordinary matter.” And we only manage to see a tiny part of the latter, concentrated in stars and galaxies. What we call ordinary matter is actually the baryonic matter—protons, neutrons, and so on—of which we ourselves are made. Most of such matter takes the form of ionized gas plasma, while only a tiny part of it is in solid or liquid state. 

How difficult it is to grasp that the immense oceans and solid ground of the Earth’s surface, on which we so confidently tread, are incredibly rare in our Universe! But science has taught us to accept that we live in a very exotic place in an everyday part of the Cosmos.

On the other hand, the panorama could not be any more disheartening: despite our elegant scientific speculation, we do not have the slightest idea about the nature of 97% of what constitutes our Universe! Of course, just knowing that is already a great triumph for the grand human adventure in search of knowledge.

Our own nature leads us to move and understand things in three spatial dimensions plus time. And this space-time is the context in which most relativist models are developed. That is why I am going to describe the structure of the Universe in four dimensions. But first, I must at least mention models of “multiverses” derived from superstring theory. These are elegant physical-mathematical speculations about multiple universes in which our three-dimensional Universe would be just one projection of three dimensions installed in a global space of nine.

 Below, I will try to offer an accessible description of how astronomers currently imagine the Universe to be at the present time in its history. Afterwards, I will focus on some of the most significant stages of its evolution. On a large scale, the Universe we can now contemplate with our telescopes appears to be a little more that 13,000 million years old, and enormously empty. Matter appears to be very concentrated and hierarchically organized around the gravitational fields of the stars, with their planetary systems, of galaxies, galactic cumuli, and super cumuli. The enormous planetary, interstellar, and intergalactic voids are filled with very diluted matter, which actually adds up to the greater part of ordinary matter. Dark matter also accumulates, and is ordered in analogous fashion, for it, too, is ruled by gravity. Dark energy, however, does quite the opposite: it is uniformly spread throughout the Universe.

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, May 29th ,2021)

“WHAT IS THE SUPERFUILD SPACE-TIME THEORY??”

[andromeda1023]

Pic:

On the left, what Rubin expected to see: stars orbiting the outskirts of a galaxy moving slower than those near the center. On the right, what was observed: the stars on the outside moving at the same speed as the center.

Dark matter holds our universe together. No one knows what it is.

If you go outside on a dark night, in the darkest places on Earth, you can see as many as 9,000 stars. They appear as tiny points of light, but they are massive infernos. And while these stars seem astonishingly numerous to our eyes, they represent just the tiniest fraction of all the stars in our galaxy, let alone the universe.

The beautiful challenge of stargazing is keeping this all in mind: Every small thing we see in the night sky is immense, but what’s even more immense is the unseen, the unknown.

I’ve been thinking about this feeling — the awesome, terrifying feeling of smallness, of the extreme contrast of the big and small — while reporting on one of the greatest mysteries in science for Unexplainable, a new Vox podcast pilot you can listen to below.

It turns out all the stars in all the galaxies, in all the universe, barely even begin to account for all the stuff of the universe. Most of the matter in the universe is actually unseeable, untouchable, and, to this day, undiscovered.

Scientists call this unexplained stuff “dark matter,” and they believe there’s five times more of it in the universe than normal matter — the stuff that makes up you and me, stars, planets, black holes, and everything we can see in the night sky or touch here on Earth. It’s strange even calling all that “normal” matter, because in the grand scheme of the cosmos, normal matter is the rare stuff. But to this day, no one knows what dark matter actually is.

“I think it gives you intellectual and kind of epistemic humility — that we are simultaneously, super insignificant, a tiny, tiny speck of the universe,” Priya Natarajan, a Yale physicist and dark matter expert, said on a recent phone call. “But on the other hand, we have brains in our skulls that are like these tiny, gelatinous cantaloupes, and we have figured all of this out.”

The story of dark matter is a reminder that whatever we know, whatever truth about the universe we have acquired as individuals or as a society, is insignificant compared to what we have not yet explained.

It’s also a reminder that, often, in order to discover something true, the first thing we need to do is account for what we don’t know.

This accounting of the unknown is not often a thing that’s celebrated in science. It doesn’t win Nobel Prizes. But, at least, we can know the size of our ignorance. And that’s a start.

But how does it end? Though physicists have been trying for decades to figure out what dark matter is, the detectors they built to find it have gone silent year after year. It makes some wonder: Have they been chasing a ghost? Dark matter might not be real. Instead, there could be something more deeply flawed in physicists’ understanding of gravity that would explain it away. Still, the search, fueled by faith in scientific observations, continues, despite the possibility that dark matter may never be found.  

To learn about dark matter is to grapple with, and embrace, the unknown.

Scientists are, to this day, searching for dark matter because they believe it is there to find. And they believe so largely because of Vera Rubin, an astronomer who died in 2016 at age 88.

Flash-forward to the late 1960s, and she’s at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, doing exactly what she did in that childhood bedroom: tracking the motion of stars.

This time, though, she has a cutting-edge telescope and is looking at stars in motion at the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy. Just 40 years prior, Edwin Hubble had determined, for the first time, that Andromeda was a galaxy outside of our own, and that galaxies outside our own even existed. With one observation, Hubble doubled the size of the known universe.

By 1960, scientists were still asking basic questions in the wake of this discovery. Like: How do galaxies move?

Rubin and her colleague Kent Ford were at the observatory doing this basic science, charting how stars are moving at the edge of Andromeda. “I guess I wanted to confirm Newton’s laws,” Rubin said in an archival interview with science historian David DeVorkin.

Per Newton’s equations, the stars in the galaxy ought to move like the planets in our solar system do. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, orbits very quickly, propelled by the sun’s gravity to a speed of around 106,000 mph. Neptune, far from the sun, and less influenced by its gravity, moves much slower, at around 12,000 mph.

The same thing ought to happen in galaxies too: Stars near the dense, gravity-rich centers of galaxies ought to move faster than the stars along the edges.

But that wasn’t what Rubin and Ford observed. Instead, they saw that the stars along the edge of Andromeda were going the same speed as the stars in the interior. “I think it was kind of like a ‘what the fuck’ moment,” Yeager says. “It was just so different than what everyone had expected.”

The data pointed to an enormous problem: The stars couldn’t just be moving that fast on their own. At those speeds, the galaxy should be ripping itself apart like an accelerating merry-go-round with the brake turned off. To explain why this wasn’t happening, these stars needed some kind of extra gravity out there acting like an engine. There had to be a source of mass for all that extra gravity. (For a refresher: Physicists consider gravity to be a consequence of mass. The more mass in an area, the stronger the gravitational pull.)

The data suggested that there was a staggering amount of mass in the galaxy that astronomers simply couldn’t see. “As they’re looking out there, they just can’t seem to find any kind of evidence that it’s some normal type of matter,” Yeager says. It wasn’t black holes; it wasn’t dead stars. It was something else generating the gravity needed to both hold the galaxy together and propel those outer stars to such fast speeds.

“I mean, when you first see it, I think you’re afraid of being … you’re afraid of making a dumb mistake, you know, that there’s just some simple explanation,” Rubin later recounted. Other scientists might have immediately announced a dramatic conclusion based on this limited data. But not Rubin. She and her collaborators dug in and decided to do a systematic review of the star speeds in galaxies.

Rubin and Ford weren’t the first group to make an observation of stars moving fast at the edge of a galaxy. But what Rubin and her collaborators are famous for is verifying the finding across the universe. “She [studied] 20 galaxies, and then 40 and then 60, and they all show this bizarre behavior of stars out far in the galaxy, moving way, way too fast,” Yeager explains.

This is why people say Rubin ought to have won a Nobel Prize (the prizes are only awarded to living recipients, so she will never win one). She didn’t “discover” dark matter. But the data she collected over her career made it so the astronomy community had to reckon with the idea that most of the mass in the universe is unknown.

By 1985, Rubin was confident enough in her observations to declare something of an anti-eureka: announcing not a discovery, but a huge absence in our collective knowledge. “Nature has played a trick on astronomers,” she’s paraphrased as saying at an International Astronomical Union conference in 1985, “who thought we were studying the universe. We now know that we were studying only a small fraction of it.”

To this day, no one has “discovered” dark matter. But Rubin did something incredibly important: She told the scientific world about what they were missing.

In the decades since this anti-eureka, other scientists have been trying to fill in the void Rubin pointed to. Their work isn’t complete. But what they’ve been learning about dark matter is that it’s incredibly important to the very structure of our universe, and that it’s deeply, deeply weird.

Since Rubin’s WTF moment in the Arizona desert, more and more evidence has accumulated that dark matter is real, and weird, and accounts for most of the mass in the universe.

“Even though we can’t see it, we can still infer that dark matter is there,” Kathryn Zurek, a Caltech astrophysicist, explains. “Even if we couldn’t see the moon with our eyes, we would still know that it was there because it pulls the oceans in different directions — and it’s really very similar with dark matter.”

Scientists can’t see dark matter directly. But they can see its influence on the space and light around it. The biggest piece of indirect evidence: Dark matter, like all matter that accumulates in large quantities, has the ability to warp the very fabric of space.

“You can visualize dark matter as these lumps of matter that create little potholes in space-time,” Natarajan says. “All the matter in the universe is pockmarked with dark matter.”

When light falls into one of these potholes, it bends like light does in a lens. In this way, we can’t “see” dark matter, but we can “see” the distortions it produces in astronomers’ views of the cosmos. From this, we know dark matter forms a spherical cocoon around galaxies, lending them more mass, which allows their stars to move faster than what Newton’s laws would otherwise suggest.

Continue reading, pictures: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/21537034/dark-matter-unexplainable-podcast

[wordynerdygurl]

Birth the Stars

Author’s Note:  Hello all!  So, this story is shamelessly and selfishly just for me.  It’s my birthday, you see, and I was inspired by @sherrybaby14​ and her delightful Loki birthday wish story.  Should you like it, as usual, leave some love! Tag lists, asks and requests are open! P.S. The gif is beautiful and I thank the OP! P.P.S. I will be on vacation for the next week, so, no planned posts, but I’ll make it up to you!  Promise! Summary:  Your special day coincides with a cosmic event and Loki helps you celebrate it grand fashion. Pairing:  Loki x Female Reader Warnings:  SMUT, just sweet birthday SMUT

How could you describe something that no earthly words were designed for?  

Through the massive glass shield you had an expansive view of the galaxy unfolding in burning stars and kaleidoscopic clouds.  Clouds that came in every color Crayola could possibly conceive, and a few they would never believe, curled closer, lit from behind by the strength of a foreign sun.  

Scientifically, you understood that it was gas and dust and light bending, blending, to create the spectacle you were staring at, slack jawed.  But seeing it?  Watching it rise on the unending horizon of space from the security of Loki's state room was something else entirely.  And you were lost in wonder.

"Glorious, is it not?"  Sneaking in on silent feet, his handsome face reflected in the glass, Loki offered you a small smile.  His voice is silky and soft, reverent and respectful of your contemplative quiet.

Your nod is barely perceptible, "I… I can't bear to look away.  It's magnificent."

Feeling his masculine presence at your back, blue eyes on you, "Magnificent… truly."

Sighing sweetly, stepping closer to the protective crystal window, "I'm talking about the nebula."

A hand skates over your hip, hugging your curves through the layers of your frock.  The other brushes lightly over your bare shoulder, fingers toying with the strap, and you cover them with your own.  

"I am not."  

Acknowledging him with a slight bow, "You, dearest, are just as rare…"  Loki's soft lips press against that tender place behind your ear as you tilt your head, "Just as beautiful…"  Now your jaw, "and more than magnificent."

Seeing your smile in reflection, "Liar."

"Me?  I would never!"  His mock innocence makes you chuckle which Loki uses to his advantage, shamelessly.  Lacing his fingers through yours, Loki gently pulls your arms between your bodies, effectively pinning you against your window to other worlds.

Standing there, breathing synced with Loki's, you lose yourself in the incredible view.  So easily lost to the streaks of stardust swirling in space, as if the ancient arcs of light and color were a painting hung in the sky of Creation's museum,  "On Earth, it takes eight minutes for the light of the sun to reach the planet, the people… Did you know that?" 

Sensing his head shake, continuing, "How many light years ago did this nebula begin, I wonder?  How long does it take to bring a star… a galaxy into the world?"

Those lips, his lips, trailed over you making strategic stops along the nape of your neck.  Brushing over your tight tendon, his sharp teeth nip at the junction, your cooing response music to Loki's ears.  "Making something so… perfect takes time, love.  Which reminds me.  Do you know what today is, dearest?"

Still looking out at the scenery, you shake your head, "Loki, since coming aboard I have lost track of so many things… the month, the day, the time… my sense of modesty."

Raising his eyebrow with a sly smirk, "I like to think I helped with that last one…"

"Oh, most definitely!  But, sorry, no… I don't know what day it is."

Wrapping your hands around Loki's trim figure, his back to your chest, grounds you to this place.  To him.  But it's true that your world has gone topsy turvy since Loki entered your life.  You haven't missed the way things were, instead, enjoying the amazing moments only a person like Loki could offer had become your new normal.  

Things like a front row seat to the ever expanding universe.  It startled you and delighted you.  So like the man you loved.  

"It is your birthday, my darling.  And everyone is waiting now to celebrate with you."

Cheeks turning crimson, you burrowed further into Loki's arms, "No!  Is it really?"

"Yes… really."

"Good thing someone was keeping track…", you answer softly.

Stepping snuggly against you, Loki's chin to your collarbone, "Just think, you and this cluster of stars will share a birthday."

Another twinkling laugh escapes you at the idea of billions of brilliant brothers and sisters.  Deepening silence returns as a streak of yellow collapses into a flash of green, swirling into teals before pulsing purple.  "Intergalactic fireworks for your special day, sweetling."

Shivering at the awe inspiring sight before you and the nearness of the God behind, Loki hums huskily, "Cold?"

Still gazing into the cosmos, "My dress isn't terribly thick."

"But it is lovely.  Perfect for tonight…"  Layers of gauzy chiffon in emerald and mint flowed from the thin straps tied at your shoulders.  It was a gown without a waist, falling in waves to the floor, after accentuating your abundant bust, of course.

Whining, just a little, "I had almost forgotten about tonight.  What time is it?"

"Early still."  Wandering hands trail up your arms, caressing the roundness of your shoulders, kissing each one in turn.  A strong hand turns your chin, your mouth parting for Loki's, his tongue eagerly licking over your bottom lip.  

Deepening the kiss, Loki kept you from turning into his arms, instead his hips held you in place.  "Keep watching, little dove.  Put your hands on the glass, like this." 

Bending at the elbow, Loki folded your forearms forward, fingers spread.  The glass is smooth and cool to the touch.  Crowding into you, trapping your body like a butterfly on display, Loki's hold on you tightened.  His mouth, suddenly savage, sampled the sugared skin of your neck, swept over your clavicle, stroked the shell of your ear.

Whimpering in want, forced focus on the star nursery expanding ahead of you, your head rested back on Loki's chest.  "It is creation… that glowing swirl of color in the distance.  Hot and cold, dark and light, all of those… contrasts colliding."

Slim fingers fidget with your dress.  First the right tie drops, the weight of your gown shifting to to the left, throwing you off balance for a beat.  Loki's palm falls to your freed breast, his skin warm compared to the space chilled glass in front of you.  Moaning, the startling difference between your gossamer garb, his petting paw and the chilled wall is suddenly too much.

The second strap lets go and your fancy shift puddles at your feet with a sigh.  Loki covers your exposed chest with his hands, kneading your sensitive globes in a way that walks the line between too hard and not hard enough.  His iron chest leans into your back as your tender nipples harden against the window, held down by the exquisite weight of Loki's lean body on your own.

"Loki… I… What if…?"

Cutting you off with a husk, "Hush… there's no one to see you but me.  And infinity."

Feather light, Loki's touch scorches down your ribs.  At the swell of your hips he hooks your flimsy panties at the waist, tugging them down to your knees.  "Spread your legs for me kitten.  That's it.  Just like that."

Boxed in, nowhere to hide your body, your want, he grants you enough room to accommodate his wayward wandering hands.  Maybe you should feel shame at being so casually exhibited to the expanding universe.  But you don't.

What you do feel is powerful.  It's as if you are manifesting the molecules which are dancing in that disco ball of unimaginable energy, calling them to you, bringing forth a million stars and with them a thousand planets.  It is life!  It is beautiful.  And it is terrifying.  

Loki's fingers find your silky slit, spreading your saucy excitement over your straining bud.  Circling you in slow, simple, strokes your body starts to sing.  Simpering, you're breathing in short gasps, fogging the glass in front of you and distorting the stellar symphony of light and color beyond your vessel.

Using his unoccupied hand to tangle your short hair, Loki pulls your head back from the window, attaching his hungry mouth to your throat.  His fingers grind against your firm clitoris, intent on releasing your sexual tension.  Cold, so cold, your collapsed breasts are sensitive and screaming for respite.

As you are forced to feel all of this competing stimulus, the fibers of your feminine form have compressed closer and closer and closer together.  Just like the nebulous cluster before you, to grow you must crack, shatter into a galaxy of glowing gaseous orbs.  Expanding, your excitement is matched by the spreading of stellar space dust, colors swirling as Loki's digits dance deliciously.

His own breathing hitches as your body vibrates under his hands.  You can't face him, he's too close, the clear glass ensures that.  So you have to endure hot kisses on your chilled cheeks, your icy shoulders, your cool clavicle.  When he sucks on the base of your neck, you hiss, pushing your hips forward, seeking more.  Undone, Loki's teeth break through the thin barrier of your skin with a flash of pain.  

Your ecstasy explodes from deep within.  Sweaty palms slide down the see through barrier, barely supporting your weight.  Legs shaking, you flood over Loki's fingers and your thighs, grateful for his Godly strength, his sturdy support.

He lingers, letting you catch your breath, his strong hand resting over yours as if together you could reach out and capture the haze of colors in the clouds rolling by.  It takes you a moment to come back to yourself, trembling at the power of your pleasure, overcome by the intimacy of Loki's attention.  Shivering, goosebumps break over your bare arms.

Pulling you back into his chest, Loki rubs his hands across you, warming you.  Dropping low, he lifts your panties, placing them on your hips where they started.  As you struggle to calm your racing heart Loki glides your gown back over your bruised bosom, "Can you hold this, darling?"  And with your help the straps of your dress are tied properly once more.

Tearing your eyes from the fiery furnace of creation in front of you, your head rolls onto Loki's chest, "Wow..."

You spin in his arms, molding yourself to him, staring up at Loki, the chaotic center of your own galaxy.  Finding your dewy mouth eager and accepting, ready for his talented tongue, Loki kissed you deeply.  Curling your hands into his raven locks, returning to Loki all of the pleasing passion he had given to you, and soon your body was craving more.

"Hmm… we have to stop now.  People will come looking for us."  

His voice was ragged from pleasure denied, something that pleased you greatly, so you purred, "Let them look!"

Sliding your hands up Loki's chest, he grabbed your wrists, "Oh, darling!  There will be time for that later."

"Promise?"  Wiggling against him, teasing Loki shameless had your smiling.

Pressing a kiss to each of your palms, releasing his grip, "Promise."

When you stepped back, smiling, Loki whispered, "Happy Birthday, sweetling."  

And it was.

--- Tag Team:  @just-random-obsessions​ @iamverity​ @brokenthelovely​ @nonsensicalobsessions​ @archy3001​ @rorybutnotgilmore​ @vodka-and-some-sass​ @mizfit2​ @jamielea81​ @jessiejunebug​ @alexakeyloveloki​ @procrastinatinglikeabitch​ @thefallenbibliophilequote​ @lots-of-loki​

[strad-214]

There is no Chaos, There is Harmony

Jedi June, Sunday, June 13th

“For forty years, the Jedi Code has been my focus, as it will become yours. It is the philosophy upon which stands the Jedi order. It is a pledge of protection to the citizens and inhabitants of the Republic. It is an encapsulation of our relationship with the Force. As a Jedi, you must be faithful to the spirit of the Code. Every day you must ask yourself: Do I understand it?

“In its classical form, as transcribed by Homonix Rectonia during the Early Manderon Period, the Code consists of five core precepts:

“There is Chaos, there is Harmony. Those who cannot see the threads uniting all live view existance as random and without purpose. The Jedi perceive the structure and will of the many galaxies.”

– Jedi Grand Master Fae Coven, The Jedi Path

Humor me for a moment:

The Galaxy Far, Far Away is very closely modeled on the design of our own Galaxy, The Milky Way. We live in a Spiral Galaxy, with grand arms spanning out from the center and tumbling in a grand pinwheel across the cosmos. If on where to observe The Milky Way from “the top-down” (there are no “directions” in space), it would look like we are gazing at a hurricane from high orbit around Earth. The Galaxy Far, Far Away looks nearly the same, with more arms and all arms traveling in a different direction than our Galaxy. Now, the origins of the Jedi Order are in general dispute: it is not currently settled on by the fan base where the Jedi Order was founded, what with all the lore of the Star Wars Universe taken into account. The Sequel Trilogy places the origins of the Jedi Order on the ancient world of Ach-To, a world beyond the known regions of space Galactic West of the Core. In original cannon, there were yet two more worlds that the Jedi Order might have been founded on: the planet Ossus in the Outer Rim in a large region of the Galaxy called The Slice, just Galactic South-East of the Perlemian Trade Rout, right on the border of grid R/S-6. Or, and I think more appropriately, their origins began on the planet Tython in the Deep Core at Grid Coordinates L-10. I think this is more appropriate because the Jedi helped found the Galactic Republic, who’s capital world is on Coruscant in the Core, and it places them in the “eye of the storm”. I previously referred to both The Milky Way and The Galaxy Far, Far Away as looking like a hurricane from the top-down, so what a better metaphor than having the calm, serine, harmonious protectors of that Republic stand in the eye of the hurricane where there is a dim, eerie calm and silence? From that center, one can easily see with calm clarity all of the chaos and wanton destruction that the hurricane unleashes upon the lands under its massive arms. So the point is thus: if the Galaxy is a hurricane, the Jedi are its Eye, both literally and figuratively.

In order to bring about peace, one must stem a tide of chaos, both internally and externally. Facing the mirror as we have been with our eyes open, we can easily see all that which we do not desire to have in our daily lives. Those things are a part of us and cannot be easily removed, no easier than removing an appendage of the human body. So, since they are of no mortal danger to ourselves (unless we overfeed them), then we must learn to accept and live with those parts of ourselves, to live in harmony with them. Let me explain in a way that makes sense to me:

I mentioned that I am a musician; I am teaching music to students of various skill levels and using the discipline of practicing music as the foundation upon which I am helping my students learn good life skills and practices. But I have been going on so much about morals and principles that I neglected to explain a little music; if you read on, you will see how this all relates:

In music, just as with the written word, we have an alphabet, though unlike in the written word, that alphabet is much, much shorter. The basics of that alphabet are quite literally and simply: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Once you reach G, you start over again with A and keep going to G and start again at A and go on and on for ever and ever and ever, Amen. I could go into why you repeat forever, but that would miss the point of this tangent, so let’s keep going. Let’s say that with this alphabet, you can spell words, for that is true, those words would not be called words, however, they would be called “chords” in musical terms. But just like with words, chords require specific letters to be spelled correctly. Typically, in music, we spell chords by starting on one letter and going up three letters-- including the first letter-- and collect our spelling in this manner. Example: we start on A, A is 1, go up three including 1 and we get C: A(1), B(2), C(3). We go up like this until we get a collection of three notes selected. We keep 1 and 3 and get rid of 2. To get our last note, we start on 3, make it 1, and go up again in the same fashion. When we do, we get E. Put A on top of this collection and we have our chord: A, C, E, A; an A Chord. For all basic reasoning, that is how you correctly spell a chord in music. Why am I going through all of this? I’ll tell you:

Each one of those letters represents a specific frequency of sound waves, we can add various symbols to them to tweak their representation and therefore their sound, but when we do and we play them together, the “word” comes out as a result. We put various words together and we get sentences, put sentences together and we get paragraphs, put paragraphs together and we get stories (or very long winded essays on morals filled with off topic tangents). Such is the same for music: we put notes (the lettered tones) together to make chords, we put chords together to make themes, we put themes together to make movements, and we put movements together to make musical pieces. However, it is not so simple as going A, C, E, A. In fact, in more advanced Music Theory, that is not a “correct” spelling of the A Chord; the C is not labeled with the correct quality, making the collection of these notes sound what we would call “dissonant”; they don’t sound very good together. So, let’s throw them away and never use them!… but that would be like saying to never use words like “wabajack” and “alliupe” in stories, to never have invented the name “Wookie”, or “Lightsaber”. Sometimes, we need strange chords in music in order to perform exciting literature, we must accept the things that are strange and dissonant, that we do not necessarily like when they stand alone. But, it’s all part of a bigger work: the chord we spelled together is what we call an A Minor Chord, the quality of any Minor Chord illicits the emotion of despair and sadness or conflict. A good example of this would be Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. We use those in conjuncture with various other chords of other qualities/sounds/emotional value and they become desirable, in fact the become entirely necessary for the piece of music to hold up. All those notes form what we call in music a “Harmony”, and without them, we wouldn’t have the piece of music as it is written and it would be something else entirely, and possibly undesirable all together. So too is it with the parts of ourselves we do not like when we face the mirror.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu3hGQCra18 

All the chaos that those lesser parts of ourselves cause to ourselves and others around us, we fight them such as one fights the rolling waves of a terrible storm at sea: it is utterly impossible. Eventually, you will capsize the ship and be lost forever; hope that you didn’t take anybody with you. Instead, turn the bow towards the oncoming wave, face it head on though it towers over you like the maw of a great beast about to swallow you whole. If timed correctly, the wave will roll up underneath you and you will ride over it and land on the other side, a little shaken, but still floating and standing, ready for the next big wave when it comes. You became one with the forces of nature, you lived in harmony with the chaos that you cannot control, you accepted those lesser parts that you do not like and look at you, standing there despite the mire. How tall you stand, defiant in your flexibility against the torrent that knocks everything about. The mightiest trees bend to the wind; if they don’t, they will snap and live no more, despite all the beauty they might have possessed, despite their appearance of perfection. And let’s be honest, perfection is a lack of character, it’s boring. The scars we bare show the world what we have endured, what we are made of. Living with them is by no stretch easy, but I say again, nothing in life worth doing is easy (Star Wars Rebels, Season 2, Episode 04, Relics of the Old Republic). Baring them as a warning, challenge, or lesson for others is even harder, but coming to terms, living in harmony with them, will make it all worth while.

This is the way of withstanding Chaos and finding Harmony in it. There is chaos all around us for everyone fixates on the faults we see in others because they are reflections of ourselves. What we do with that information will decide whether we become agents of that chaos or live harmoniously with it. We all see the faults of ourselves in the world around us, just as from their seat in the Core, the Jedi can see their faults in the Galaxy around them. Whatever the Galaxy is lacking or needs most has to do with what the Jedi need to do most for the Galaxy; from the eye of a hurricane, you can see who is being burred and who is still surviving. Take the moment to be the calm the hurricane has allowed you and take it with you when the eye has passed on, for the storm is unrelenting and unforgiving just as the Galaxy is a massive void filled with stars and planets covered in life and death. They are unrelenting and unforgiving as well, taking life as much as giving life, unpredictable and wild. We never know when our time or the time of another is utterly spent, but do not fret that knowledge, accept it and make the most of the time you have. Live in harmony with the world around you rather than add to its chaos, and life will be so much more fulfilling, for when there is no Chaos, there is Harmony.

Now you are beginning to live the life of a Jedi in the real world.

There is no Chaos, there is Harmony. We are one with the Force, the Force is with us. For our ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.

Trust in the Force, all will be made clear, Padawans.

Happy Jedi June. May the Force be with you

@jedijune​

[saturnselkies]

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY 🌟

Continuation and the final part of the playlist Awakened in Starlight I did ages ago!! I hope you enjoy!! Under the read more is the story. Please do read!! 

Thank you for reading and listening, if you do.

ACT I: I could never sacrifice you

1. Sacrifice by Sharon Lyons

A tiny little sacrifice. Her mother would always say, for worlds to turn, some things would be lost among the space between galaxies.

Ouri was young back then, a much tinier dragon, much more impressionable. Now one sacrifice felt like touching a pulsating black hole.

The silver tree bloomed above Ouri. She dug her hands in the golden sand of the cosmos. By her feet the lifeless body of Najwa lied.

“Weaver of Worlds, you must let go.” The leaves echoed through the white room. “Fate beckons you, Scion. It is time.”

Golden magic blossomed on her fingertips and she felt a pang of frightening pain. “I’m sorry, mother. I’m sorry, Silver Tree. I’m sorry, Najwa.”

The room was a golden field, and death became life.

2. Across the Universe of Time by Hayley Westenra

“And the cold, cold wind, it blows me away The feeling all over is a black black day But I know that I’ll see you again And I know that you’re near me”

***

ACT II: I could never forget you

3. Light in Between by Abby Gundersen 

Najwa tried to forget. She really did. Tried to leave everything behind. To be forgotten amongst the cliffs of Desert Highlands.

Shame, sadness, anger; they danced underneath her skin every day. Her dreams were plagued with meadows blooming in the sunlight. Songs of ancient times.

Najwa wondered if other Awakened actually dreamed. Or if she had just ended up in a bizarre predicament. One that would forever be a mystery. Unless…

Unless she found Ouri.

Najwa gritted her teeth and patted Toffee’s back to try and distract herself. The summit wildhorn bleated and rested her head above Najwa’s. “Yeah, I know gal.”

4. God Only Knows by RAIGN

“I may not always love you But long as there are stars above you If you should ever leave me Though life would still go on Believe me”

***

ACT III: And so they dance between knives and lies

5. You Have to Let Go by Adam Fielding

“How could you!?” Najwa shouted. Her hands grabbing at Ouri’s Mordant Crescent outfit. A reminder so grim. A reminder so ugly.

“Najwa, I’m not who you think I am.” Ouri was visibly shaking. Forming words had become hard for her.

“Oh you think I don’t know? The display is sickening.” Najwa pushed Ouri against the wall with such force the nearby shelves shook. Ouri simply stood still, her eyes full of guilt.

“No, it’s not that.” She tried to relax her shoulders, but ultimately failed. Ouri knew bringing this up right now would be either an incredibly stupid idea, or completely destroy their chance of ever reconnecting. “I’m just… following a list of things to do.”

“This can’t be serious.” Najwa’s eyes were pure rage. “Was “Awakening” me part of the list!?“

“No… He didn’t do anything to you. I-” She swallowed hard. “I did.”

It took only a second for her eyes to lose the deep hazel color. Replaced by golden shades and cosmic hues. Ouri was the night sky. The far seeing cosmos. Written all over her skin.

Najwa stepped back in a daze. Her mind was a volcano erupting in the middle of the ocean. “What is going on.” Najwa stepped back as further as she could clinging to her scythe. If she still had a beating heart she knew it would have plummeted out of her chest by now.

“Spearmarshal. Najwa.” Ouri paused. And the universe watched them from the corners of the tapestry of time. “The list is what your people call a prophecy.”

The sudden realization hit Najwa like a crashing wave. All those cryptic dreams. All those shades of gold dancing at he back of her mind. The prairies of starlight. All of it. “Am I bound to you!? You did this to me!?”

“N-no! No! I cut the connection. Your will is your own.” Ouri quickly interjected. Panic was taking over her.

“How dare you!?” Najwa’s grab on her scythe was painfully tight. Tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

“If it were not me. It would have been Palawa Joko! I didn’t want that!” Ouri pleaded. Pleaded to be understood between fate and choice. Between golden threads and shadows.

“You…” Najwa’s anger was like a bursting sun. Extinguishing a galaxy before it was even formed. “You are a monster. I regret the day I crossed paths with you.”

A sacrifice. A hole in the tapestry of time.

“I know.”

The birds did not sing that morning.

6. I Cannot Raise the Dead by The Dark Element

“In a time before us We were both someone else And we can be again We both let wrong one in To keep the right one out And now we’re both without”

***

ACT IV: Until tomorrow begins again

7. Heart Lying Still by Nightwish

The Domain of Kourna was even more dreadful than Najwa remembered; she ended up finding an empty building to sit on while the Sunspears were organizing the attack on Gandara.

She kept pulling at her attire. It felt strange to use the Sunspears’ dervish insignia again. But here she was, ready to help destroy the cause of all the pain in her home.

“Mother?” A voice came from the door.

“Yes, Khalida?” she responded lamely.

“Jeez, I thought you’d be happier. Is not seeing your daughter for the first time in eight years a good thing?” Khalida teased her, raising her eyebrow playfully.

“I- No. I’m sorry, hunbun.” Najwa panicked and tried to get up.

“Hey. I’m just teasing. I know all our wounds are still pretty fresh.” Khalida placed her hand over her mother’s shoulder, signalling her to sit back down.

“Yeah…” Najwa said.

Khalida sat next to her and hugged her knees. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Ha. I should be the one asking you that.” Najwa leaned her back against the wall. Her whole body was tense.

“C'mon, Mom. We might all just die in a few hours.” She elbowed her mother and grinned.

“Gods. When did you become so…” Najwa tried to find words to fill the gap of so many years lost. But nothing came up. She knew it would always be something hard to manage. “Never mind. I came to a conclusion. And I don’t like it.”

“Uhhhhh? Yeah? So early in the morning?” Khalida quipped.

She snorted at the comment. “You know, Ouri.”

“I do know her.”

“I might have said some really. Really. Upsetting things to her.” She shuddered remembering the last time they had talked. It was a chilling sonnet in the back of Najwa’s mind. “I was hurting. I still think she had no right to bring me back to life. But…”

“You see her point now?” Khalida said.

“Yeah… Being bound to Joko would have destroyed every fiber of my morals. I am still here. I am still mostly myself.” She looked at her hands and felt a spark of warmth. “I got to see you again.”

“Then you should tell her that,” Khalida simply offered.

“I think I should just let it go-”

“You did that for eight years.”

“And here I thought I was the mother.” She frowned and crossed her arms.

“Things change. I am a Spearmarshal now.” Khalida smiled.

8.To the Moon and Back by Moonlight Haze

“I still love you so bad To the moon and back and I Yes I miss you daily to the moon and back I’d go anywhere now To the moon and back for you Hope my voice will reach you To the moon and back Time cannot heal scars that lie so deep Inside this void of mine”

***

ACT V: I will cling to the heart between dawn and dusk

9. Between the Lines by Felix Räuber

Ouri and Najwa both stood across each other. The fortress sounded eerily silent after Aurene and the Commander had stopped Joko. Only the faint cheers in the distance, from both the dead and the living, could be heard.

Najwa took a deep breath and touched the grotesquely adorned walls. “This could have been my fate.”

Ouri eyes followed the other woman’s form. She bowed her head slightly, avoiding her gaze.

“I don’t know how I feel about everything that happened,” Najwa continued. “I even find it hard to believe that I am here.”

The former Spearmarshal dragged her feet through the tar. The oozing pools reflected her face in such a distorted manner. “Gross. I wouldn’t want to have this inside of me.” Najwa grimaced.

Ouri bit her lip, trying not to chuckle at the comment.

“Are you just gonna let me monologue?” Najwa pouted. “I remember you being a chatter box.”

“You said you wanted to talk…”

“Always a little too literal, are we?” Najwa walked over to Ouri. “It’s just. I… I don’t know how to fix this.”

“Fix what?” Ouri blinked. Her eyes were gold and shining. They contrasted the beautiful dark blues of her skin.

Much better outfit, Najwa caught herself staring at her curves. The essence of the stars painting her body was mesmerizing. Ouri titled her head at the slight pause.

Najwa coughed and tried to re-focus. “Us.”

Tentatively she reached out for Ouri’s hands. They were glowing in a flame-like effect. Najwa could swear they felt like what one would describe as the heart of the universe. Warm, cold, terrifying, and enticing all at the same time.

“The reason. The reason it hurt so much to know what you did. The reason it felt less of a burden if I was just another Awakened is…” She pushed back her tears. And squeezed the other woman’s hands. “Is because. I.”

“I love you.” Ouri cut her off.

Najwa didn’t need to ask. Najwa didn’t need to understand. Ouri was a Celestial. A Scion of a grand river of the cosmos. A life bearer. How could a life bearer leave someone to die. Someone she loved.

Yet disbelief still colored her blushing face.

“You. You love me?”

Ouri nodded.

Najwa should have known that from the first day they met. Ouri had always been a spark. The fountain of the gentle sun. Najwa connected their lips in a rush of emotion. Soft and willing. Somewhat rough and passionate, too. Full of regrets, mistakes, and guilt. Full of joy, love, and forgiveness.

“I love you, too. Gods, I do.”

Dusk and dawn danced together for the first time in a millennia.

10. Forever by Frozen Crown

“Find in light the essence of the night Say forever Forever Till the stars shine on our hearts Tides won’t last Our time is dying fast But this moment, our moment It will shine bright on our hearts”

***

ACT VI: Spearmarshal and Scion

11. Celestial Dreams by Rachel Currea

“So do I get an honorary Celestial membership?” Najwa’s hair sparkled against the wind. The grey tips had become glowing and golden much like her eyes.

“Well… if you want one.” Ouri laughed.

“Yes, I do.” She grinned widely. “Don’t tell the other Awakened, but this is so much cooler.”

12. Night Will Fade by Beyond the Black

“Somewhere beyond this world Far beyond this life Fate will raise our souls out of the past Somewhere beyond this day Night will fade away Will you follow my final words For tomorrow beyond this world”

13. Into a Dawn by Feridea

“I never let go, of my hopes and dreams I never was afraid, the road is free To find a star, to guide me through this twilight fall Into a dawn”

[minoacat]

Space Soup

We were the first. The first life I mean, best we can figure. And we've had a long time to figure, so I'm just gonna leave it as is. We were the first.

Started as some little worms feeding on primordial soup I suppose, but we grew into proper humans quick enough. 'Time we got radio telescopes we were a hell of a lot cooler than soup. Soup can't build a spaceship. Still, it's got its place. We can't build spaceships without air to stick on 'em, and most o' that air comes from bacterial soup. Thanks, soup.

But who gives a shit about soup. We built huts, then we built spaceships, then we built huts on spaceships, and off we went. Into the sky! We couldn't just stay put, now could we? We wanted to explore. So we did. We fanned out across the universe, looking. Looking for homes, looking for wonders, but above all, looking for people. 13.8 billion years since this whole shebang started, there's gotta be someone else out there besides us apes, right? Anyone? No one?

Down we settled. Back to the humdrum day-to-day. We reached out, we did our due diligence, and we found nothing. Zilch. We did our jobs, and now it was time to put up our feet and have a smoke. Shoot me if you like, I still say we earned it.

Everyone's got their own guilty pleasures though, y'know? Not everyone wants the same smoke. So some of us, we settled down on a rock and made it nice and homey, others of us built our own rocks outta the crappy natural ones – dyson spheres and rings and shit – and still others went roaming off into the cosmos in world-ships, taking bits of stars with us as we went. It was a grand old time, I tell you. Still is, I guess. Oh, yeah, there's war, there's strife, but there always is. But we had world-ships. Doesn't get much better than that, now does it?

Well, it didn't.

See, all this time while we'd been colonizing the universe and all that jazz, we'd been yapping at each other across the stars. But stars are loud. Like, really loud. Which means we had to yell over them. And that takes energy. And what happened to the energy once we were done yapping? It went out into space like so much shit. It got wasted is basically what I'm saying. For millions of years it got wasted.

Well, somewhere down the line, someone looked at that and said, “Well ain't that a cryin' shame. We oughtta make use of some o' this stuff.” No idea who, that kinda stuff gets lost way too fast to try to keep track of, and who gives a shit anyway? But someone saw the millions of years of high-energy communications clogging up the works and decided to do something about it.

See, it turns out if you take the stuff we use to send signals and bend it just right, you can catch the signals that are already out there and make 'em follow the same path. Then if you make it bend back around to you, you can snatch up all that energy and use it for whatever ya like. It's like a net, but instead o' catching fish, it catches energy.

The first energy net sucked, I won't lie. Barely picked up anything, and it ate up all the useful communications besides. But you know what, it worked. It took all that energy we poured out into space yapping, and it made it useful again. And it was only the first one! By the time we got around to building the second one, we were way better at the whole thing, I promise you. And the third. And the millionth.

It was a revolution, it was. Sure, it only worked because there were so many of us normie colonists around sending signals, but it was so much easier, so much faster than anything we could do before. First few net colonies just zoomed around spreading love and knowledge and all that crap. First time one of them started feeding though, that was when we knew something was up. Because that's what it was. It wasn't a war, it was a slaughter, and when they had picked the bones clean, they just picked up and moved on like nothing had happened. Scared the shit out of, well, out of just about everyone to be honest. That's life though, I guess.

Anyway, we passed resolutions, made alliances, yelled ultimatums, but let's be honest, when has that ever worked for us? Cat's out of the bag, my little mousy friends, time to run! So, we got used to it. Us humans are good at that. Sure, maybe a few thousand colonies would get killed off from time to time, but that's just the way it is. Life lives, life kills, and life dies. Why should this level be any different?

Once the net colonies started joining together though, that was when it went from scary to just plain cool.

We had never seen anything like it! Different parts each doing their thing to make it all work like one big organism. They weren't people like us anymore, they were pieces of some kinda grand dance. Is a skin cell its own person? Not really. Not anymore. Don't mean it ain't alive and doing its best. It's like if galaxies started doing a conga line, only no one had seen a conga line, a dance, or a galaxy before. Some of us normie colonies set up shop in the conga line and had ourselves a good ride. Some of us stayed in our little sea of stars and just watched the dancers from afar. Mostly though, life went on. We lived at our level, they lived at theirs. It's not like they could get rid of us completely, and we couldn't get rid of them, not that some of us didn't try.

And that's how it is. We're living, building, thriving, and the dancers, they're doing the same. Us normie apes aren't the bigshots anymore though. We all know that. I mean really, one time we found a wall just chilling in the middle of space so big it took us a million years to measure it, and by the time we got to the other side we still didn't know which one of the dancers built it. Maybe all of them did. I bet it was just one though.

It's hard as shit being down here, I won't lie to you, but there's a peace to it too. We've learned to cope. Move on. We live, we kill, we die, same as always. Just because we can see the shoulders of giants doesn't mean we gotta stand on 'em. Go out, get wasted, build a spaceship, crash it maybe. Go be happy. That's all we got now, and y'know what, it's a pretty good gig. It ain't so bad bein' small.

[voyager-into-the-unknown]

An Evening at an Earth Mall

By truegryffindorforever2

(Part 2 of a series, beginning with “An Afternoon in the Garden”)

Summary: Sam is overprotective, Colleen is supportive, Hunk texts Lance when he’s shopping at the mall, and Lance nearly dies of second hand embarrassment when he realizes that Katie Holt, is in fact, not a girl, but a young woman.

After heading to the men’s locker room to change out of his Garrison uniform and into comfortable civilian clothing, Lance headed towards the base’s garage to meet up with Pidge and Colleen. As he approached Mrs. Holt’s car, he heard Sam’s voice from a distance.

“Boyfriend?! Since when?” Sam exclaimed angrily.

“Since today. But we have been really close for a long time, Dad. We were best friends for the last few years—“

“He’s too old for you!”

“He’s a year and eight months older than me. And besides, I’m eighteen years old, and that’s old enough to have a boyfriend.”

“Katie, I’ve watched The Voltron Show. Colleen, did you know that this boy’s nickname is Loverboy Lance?! How did he get a nickname like that, Katie?”

“Dad, that show was totally fake, and Coran gave him that ridiculous nickname. We all thought it was hilarious because Lance hasn’t ever really had a serious girlfriend before—“

“Your friends say that he’s the biggest flirt in the Galaxy. How do you know he won’t break your heart?”

“Dad, please. Lance is a great guy. He’s sweet and funny and honest and brave. And I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you right now if it weren’t for him. He’s saved my life quite a few times.”

Sam exhaled, then was silent, pondering all of this. Lance stood in shadow, behind a large armored vehicle that kept him hidden from view. His heart was hammering in his chest. He wanted the Holts to like him. What could he do to earn Sam’s trust?

“Colleen, what do you think of all this?”

“Well, he seems like a nice young man, and I trust our daughter’s judgement.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Also, he’s probably heading this way right now, so you had better be on your best behavior, Sam.”

“All right, but whether you are eighteen or eighty, Katie Holt, so long as you live under my roof, you will have a curfew when you go out at night with that young man. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lance knew he had to face Sam eventually, but at the moment he just wanted to stay hidden. He took a deep breath, and stepped forward into the light.

“There he is.” Pidge waved, smiling at him as she moved toward him.

Lance enveloped Pidge in his arms, and she squeezed him tightly, giving him a swift kiss on the cheek. He grinned at her.

“Hello everyone!” He turned to Sam and snapped to attention to give a salute. “Commander Holt, sir.”

Sam saluted him in return. “Paladin.” Lance extended his right hand and Sam shook it cordially. “So, I hear you are escorting my daughter to the Garrison Ball.”

“Yes, sir.” Pidge took Lance’s left hand, giving it a little squeeze. He smiled at her, then turned back to Sam. “It’s a great honor sir. I think I must be the luckiest guy in the universe.” Pidge beamed at him, and they both blushed as pink as the sunset over the grand mesa just beyond the western gate.

Sam felt a wave of nostalgia, remembering how young he and Colleen were when they first started dating. For a moment, Lance reminded him of himself at that age. The genuine affection between the two of young people was apparent. He honestly couldn’t remember seeing his daughter so happy since she returned home from space, and for a moment he felt a pang of regret. He had missed so much of her growing up while he was a prisoner of the Galra. She matured into a brilliant, courageous young woman, one who had fought warlords and sentries, bounty hunters and space pirates, and who had helped save the universe from destruction alongside this awkwardly earnest, gangly young man who obviously wore his heart on his sleeve.

“You kids have a nice time at the mall. Matt and I are eating supper in the mess hall tonight, and then we’re finishing up a few things in the lab before the weekend.”

“Well, I’ve had a notion. I’m making my famous baked ziti with garlic knots for lunch on Saturday. Sam, wouldn’t it be nice if we invited Lance over tomorrow?”

“Indeed. How does 11:00 sound?”

“Sounds great, sir.”

Colleen smiled. “You know, Lance, Sam and I were quite the ballroom dancers back in our day. We could give you and Katie a few pointers if you’d like.”

“It’s true. Mom and dad gave me dancing lessons since I was little, whether I liked it or not.”

“She’s a natural,” Sam added.

“My parents taught me most of the traditional Latin American dances when I was just a kid, but I am really out of practice. This is going to be fun!” Lance said with enthusiasm.

“Well, we’re all set, then. We had better head out towards the mall,” Colleen said cheerfully. “We’ll be home around ten, dear.” She kissed her husband goodbye and got into the driver’s seat. Katie, to her mother’s surprise, didn’t want to sit in the front passenger’s seat as she usually did. She sat on the back seat with Lance, who couldn’t seem to wipe the dreamy smile off of his face if he tried. As they sped away across the desert Colleen was almost certain that he was holding her daughter’s hand.

The mall wasn’t too crowded, considering that it was a Friday night. Lance was impressed with how quickly the place had been remodeled in the aftermath of the invasion. So much had changed since they had been chosen as Paladins of Voltron, and it took some getting used to. They encountered nearly as many off-world species as humans among the vendors and shoppers, but somehow it was weirdly familiar.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say we were back at the Space Mall,” said Pidge, voicing his thoughts aloud.

“Yeah. Hey, look, Pidge! It’s the guy from the Earth Store!” Lance pointed to the skinny grey-green alien wearing an Area 51 baseball cap. “I don’t think he’s giving away any free Kalteneckers today, though.”

“Kalteneckers?” asked Colleen.

“She’s our cow. It’s a long story, Mom.”

“Sam said something about you two having a cow in space, but I thought he was kidding, or delusional.”

“She was free with purchase. Pidge really wanted that Mercury Gameflux II with a vintage copy of Killbot Phantasm, but we were completely broke,” Lance explained.

“So we took off our shoes, rolled up our trouser legs and went wading in the mall’s wishing fountain to look for coins,” said Pidge.

“Katie Holt! You know I raised you better than that. My daughter, the criminal,” Colleen chided, in mock disapproval.

“Yeah, she’s a bad influence on me.” Lance grinned. “We nearly got arrested by the Mall Cop. But we escaped with Kaltenecker on a hover board.”

“The things a man will do for love,” Pidge teased. “Lance hit his head when we escaped and nearly gave himself a concussion.”

“Yeah, but you wanted to kiss it and make it all better, right?”

“No, I did not,” she said indignantly, “but I had to bandage you up after that fall because Hunk was riding shotgun with Coran, and Keith was ready to eject you into space.”

Colleen sighed. How had these kids managed to become saviors of the universe? Perhaps the Creator of the Cosmos had a sense of humor.

After a bit of window shopping, they found both the tuxedo shop and the dress shop they were searching for.

“Lance, when you are done trying on tuxedos, you can ask the saleswoman at the dress shop to show you to the lounging area in the back of the store. There are some comfortable armchairs for patient husbands, or in this case, boyfriends, who may have to wait a long time for their significant other to finish trying on dresses.”

Finding a tuxedo that fit him was relatively easy. Lance was tall and slim, and nearly any style looked great on him. He tried on the most classy one he could afford, and then made finger guns at himself as he admired his own reflection in the shop’s main mirror. “Razzle Dazzle, Baby!” He did a little dance, humming to himself as he strutted back and forth, and then he stopped himself, realizing that the other refined gentle beings in the shop were staring at him. “I had better stop that,” he thought. “Sam Holt definitely doesn’t want his daughter dating a goofball.”

After he was finished at the tuxedo shop, Lance headed back to the dress shop and found one of the comfortable armchairs that Colleen was talking about. There were magazines to browse through, but they were all about fashions for ladies, so he decided to check his phone when he sat down. He had a few missed calls. There was a text from Hunk that caught his attention as soon as he checked his messages.

Hunk: Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you all evening.

Lance: At the mall. I just picked out my tux for the Garrison Ball. 😎

Hunk: Wait a minute, the ball? Did you do it?!

Lance: Do what?

Hunk: Ask her out.

Lance: Ask who out?

Hunk: You’re denser than a neutron star. YOU KNOW WHO I’M TALKING ABOUT. Your best friend.

Lance: Sorry, Hunk, I can’t take you to the ball. My girlfriend would be jealous.

Hunk: Not me! Your other best friend! And since when do you have a girlfriend?!

Lance: Um, since this afternoon. Since we made out in her mom’s hydroponics lab. 😙💋😉

Hunk: No way!

Lance: Yes, way. 😎 *Razzle Dazzle!*

Hunk: I hope you were a gentleman. She’s a sweet, innocent girl, so you better keep that in mind, Loverboy. And she happens to be my best friend, too. So if you ever hurt her...

Lance: I’ll never hurt her. I love her.

Hunk: 😮😃😍

Lance: She loves me too. 🥰

Hunk: I’m crying rn. I’m so happy for you both.

Lance: I call dibs on the best man.

Hunk: What?

Lance: When we get married, I call dibs on you for the best man. Pidge will fight me for you, so I’m calling dibs.

Hunk: 😂 You haven’t even gone on your first date yet, you nut.

Lance: No, but we have already planned our second date, which is really happening before the first date, so maybe the second date really is the first date.

Hunk: You’re not making any sense.

Lance: Italian food and ballroom dancing tomorrow at the Holts.

Hunk: Smooth. They don’t call you Loverboy for nothing.

Lance: ✨😎✨

Hunk: Talk to you later, man.

Lance: Later, dude.

Lance checked a few other messages and put his phone away. Just when he was bored enough to pick up a magazine, he heard Pidge and her mother having a conversation in the dressing room closest to him.

“Let’s see the next one, darling.” There was the sound of a dressing room door opening. “Oh that color is beautiful on you. Turn around...let’s see it...Oh, I love it!”

“It’s my favorite so far, too,” said Pidge.

“But you can’t wear it with your bra straps showing like that. Try it on with the strapless bra.”

“I did. It doesn’t fit right.”

“Why not? Is it the right size?”

“I don’t have enough up top to hold it up. It keeps falling off me. I might as well not wear a bra at all.”

Lance’s eyes were as round as saucers and his face felt as if it were on fire. His imagination was now filled with naughty thoughts about his girlfriend wearing a bra, then wearing a strapless bra, and then wearing...

“Did you try the bustier with it?”

“You mean this white lacy thing that looks like a corset?”

“Yes, with the matching lace panties. Aren’t they adorable?”

Lance’s jaw dropped, then he covered his face with the magazine, hoping no one saw how he looked right now. Is this how spontaneous human combustion occurs? He might just burst into flames any moment now. Holy crow!

“Mom, this looks like bridal lingerie. And it’s expensive.”

“It is, dear. But it’s so worth it.”

“But why spend so much on underwear that no one will get to see except me?”

“Well, if everything goes well, maybe Lance will get to see you wearing it...someday.”

“Mother!”

“I meant on your wedding night, dear.”

“MOM! Can you be any more embarrassing?!”

Lance had sunk as deeply into the armchair as humanly possible. Maybe if he sat still long enough he could turn invisible. He hoped the armchair wasn’t flammable.

Several humiliating minutes (hours?) later, he heard Pidge and her mother come to an agreement about the dress (and the lacy unmentionables), and he decided that it would be best if he wasn’t there when they came out of the dressing room area. If Pidge saw his face she would know instantly what he had overheard, and then he actually might die of embarrassment, or worse, he might say something stupid like “Aw, that’s a cute little bustier,” and then she might turn her bayard on him and murder him on the spot.

Yes, now was definitely a good time to go use the men’s room. He would meet them in front of the store later.

The shoe store was next, and Pidge was apprehensive about wearing the sort of high heeled slippers that would have to be worn with her dress. She teetered back and forth awkwardly when she she tried to walk on such tiny heels, and once, she stumbled right into Lance’s arms. He caught her, and smiled his most charming smile at her. “I always knew you would fall for me,” he said in his huskiest voice. “I’m irresistible.”

“More like incorrigible. Mom, are you sure I can’t wear flats with this dress?”

Finally, after finding a pair of shoes with a wider (and lower) heel, they put all of their purchases in the trunk of the car, then went back into the mall for a late supper at the food court.

“Hey, look, they have a Vrepit Sal’s!” Lance exclaimed happily.

“Mom, you have to try this place. Their whole menu is based on Hunk’s original recipes. The food is amazing!”

*******

It was a clear night, the desert sky alit by thousands of distant stars, some with worlds they had visited, teeming with life. The drive home was a peaceful one, with Colleen at the wheel. Through her rear view mirror, she could see Lance and Pidge sitting behind her, quietly reminiscing about their many adventures in space, until Pidge yawned, snuggled closer to him, and finally fell asleep against Lance’s chest. Lance, who already had his arm around her, kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes, smiling as one does when having a very, very pleasant dream.

[noopienoopiernoopiest]

Lead Stars

RATING: General

WORDS: 2,207

DESCRIPTION: “Well, that went over like a lead balloon.”

He wove them out of starlight, out of the fresh fabric of the universe. He cloaked them in the raw satin of time, stitched them together with tungsten and bismuth. He sewed the filaments of temperance and humility together into them.

A/N: I had this idea come and take over my brain, so I wrote it. 

He didn’t have a name, then.  

He only had his task.

Make, SHE said.

He’d barely had time to wonder what SHE meant by ‘make,’ when SHE sighed and pointed to him.

SHE couldn’t be serious.

I am. Make.

⁠—

He had not been made in HER image. Nothing had been. Not yet. Thankfully, not yet.

He’d focused and toiled, such that he could feel the tearing of his form, the rending of his essence, but that essence was so full of light, so full of honeyed hope that it hadn’t really mattered.

He wove them out of starlight, out of the fresh fabric of the universe. He cloaked them in the raw satin of time, stitched them together with tungsten and bismuth. He sewed the filaments of temperance and humility together into them.  

Certainly, SHE was the architect of the universe, the designer, the critic. SHE was the aesthete. But, he was the builder, the seamstress, the craftsman. He was the artist. 

As with any good artist, his first reference was himself. The first ones stood testimony to that.

“SHE is my might,” he said, breathing potassium into his brother’s eyes.

“SHE is my light,” he said, kissing his sister’s face in exaltation, and leaving the gold of his soul there across her cheeks.

“Who could be like HER?” He asked, clasping another sister tightly, her bones infused with the sharp and powerful metals that eventually kings and generals would know of as War. 

SHE was delighted.

More? SHE asked.

He set about to make more of the same, twice as many, four times as much..

No. MORE.

Ah. Alright.

And so, he challenged himself. SHE asked for more. What was more than the beginning? What was more than quicksilver mercury and deep platinum? What was more than ‘Let there be light’? The supernovae?

“Light-bringer,” he said. His brother was indescribable, glorious. Something surely SHE could see was more. He was the prism through which all eternity would be viewed.

SHE was besotted.

From there, his creations diversified. They had to. Light-bringer was beautiful, but only in the way a diamond is. That is to say, glittering and gleaming and aware of its own scarcity.

Angels, they called themselves. GabrielUrielMichaelLucifer.

He was too busy for names.

⁠—

There were a great many by now. SHE was ever eager for more. An army. A legion. 

As he’d designed them, so too had he designed the cosmos.

⁠— 

SHE had not been idle while he crafted. 

SHE showed him the wonderfully delightful plans for an excellent rock. 

Solid, SHE'd explained. Like the blade of Michael's spear, like the brass of the celestial horns.

Make. 

It was tricky, the making of it. He worried SHE would be upset at the molten hot surface, its craggy black skin pulling and bursting where liquid seas of bright orange iron and nickel split it open.

SHE had said solid, and he was fairly certain it would be, given enough time. 

Instead SHE smiled a knowing smile, and Lo, it was. It was in the way that only things ‘were’ when under HER influence, was in a way that was 'all at once' and still, he felt, 'not quite' at the same time.  

SHE needed a star. A lovely star. Mild, inviting. Not terribly difficult. 

He'd crafted it as an afterthought. Helium and hydrogen compressing between his hands. A quick flash of breath and there it was, the corona glowing merrily. 

SHE had been delighted. Earth, SHE explained, nodding toward the rock. And so, SHE'd taken him and shown him the view from the surface. 

Sky, SHE named it. He watched mesmerized as his lovely star moved from the cusp of the world, now stone cold, flashed through its dazzling colors of dawn and then settled into the cool color of tranquility. He closed his eyes and felt the warm brush of the heat of his creation against himself. 

It seemed HER plan had expanded while he'd been busy. Now, there were to be new beings. No, no, SHE needed no assistance in this. SHE would be making these HERSELF… but, SHE would need new beings to shepherd them. New and lovely. SHE loved nothing as much as novelty. 

He thought and thought, designed and redesigned, forged and sewed, sweated, and swore, but nothing, nothing was right. 

He closed his eyes, and again remembered the fresh calm he'd found on Earth. His eyes stayed closed as he felt rather than saw. Faith, SHE would one day call it, but he knew nothing of that, then.

He pulled the copper from his own hair, the liquid carbons from Earth. This being would be their guardian after all, those beings of Earth. He concentrated, and then, yes. Woven through was the wonderful color he'd seen as Sky. Sky was the perfect color for this being. He pulled pure silver and gold from the ichor of his own core and began to weave. 

By the end, it was a tapestry of Sky and Sun and warmth and peace, and he had given it everything he could think of, and yet…

And yet, it was lacking. For the first time, he was confounded. SHE had asked for something beyond his ability. Something he could feel only at the very edges of his being and yet could not produce. This was misery and failure. 

He wished he could see the thought that eluded him, turn it around and view it from all sides. 

And, wasn’t that a thought?

He plucked the nebulae himself, each one chosen with thought and care. Carefully, he placed them like jewels in a crown, settling them into the shining gold and silver as though they had always been there.

“Lovely,” LuciferLightBringer had said. “Lovely, lovely. How extraordinary. A shame to see him go, don’t you think?” His smile had been cold. If he had known the word, he might have said that smile was perverse. 

He’d presented HER with his creation with trepidation. He’d felt none of this for any of the countless others. But this one, this one was different. 

A wonder. A guard. Brave and strong.

It was only at this moment that he paused. 

“To guard what?” He had asked, confused. 

Paradise. Eden. 

“From what?” He had asked. 

Things yet to be known. 

LuciferLightBringer continued to smile. 

⁠—

SHE showed him soon after, the final pieces of HER creation. 

A Garden.

Oh, this was a marvel. This was the universe writ small, each green and floral thing a small nova of its own.  

He loved this garden. It would be a fine place for his latest creation. 

And then, he’d seen them. A hundred feet high and half as thick again. 

Walls. Aren’t they grand? SHE asked. 

No. He looked to his own creations, lovely and spinning out into infinitude. His brothers and sisters were there among the stars he’d made and made them from, one and the same. Free. No, walls seemed...wrong, awful. 

SHE’d paid him no mind as SHE showed him the beings that would live in this walled world. 

They were finely made. He appreciated HER craft. 

They shall live in the Garden. 

“What will they do?” He asked. 

Bask in the glory of ME. Worship. They shall eat of the land, and drink of the streams. They will sleep under the blanket of MY galaxies and rise at the sight of MY sun. 

“What else?” He asked. 

What else is there to want?

Creation, he thought. Beauty. Freedom. Choice. 

And then, he began to understand cruelty. 

They would wonder. They would revel. They would grow curious, curious in a world already perfect, curious in a world absent any need for curiosity. There would be no boundless wonder, there would be no opportunity for more. 

“And the guard…” He said aloud. 

Precisely, SHE praised. Like the Wall. 

He felt sick. His creation, this new thing, this thing he’d woven from himself and the firmament of Earth, he would be used to further confine them, to lock them away. Forever.

It is finished, SHE said. 

He didn’t understand. The beings, the humans, weren’t down there yet. 

Your work. It is finished. 

Finished seemed a terrible word. He didn’t like it. What was he without his work? What was the point.

It is finished. This is final.

He was the first of his kind, but he was not HER. He had been blinded by the promise, the beauty of his task. He’d grown to appreciate HER camaraderie. He had forgotten, or perhaps misplaced, one simple truth. SHE was SHE. He was not. 

It couldn’t be over, and it was. Was in that way that all things were. Was like Earth and Humans and Walls. 

FINAL. 

The command roared, it split the heavens in two. 

“But can’t I⁠—”

ENOUGH. 

It was the violent silence after that gave him cause for concern. 

His brothers and sisters had long ceased doing anything but watching. 

It is time. 

He didn’t have time to wonder before it began. Without explanation, LuciferLightBringer was there, without explanation, LuciferLightBringer was not. 

It was calamity. He watched as they fought one another, watched as more and more of them followed in the way of the glittering star of morning, like comets down and down they fell to the Earth and deeper still. There in the middle of it all was his last creation, nebulae jewels still shrouded in sleep. 

He debated before reaching to his creation and softly, ever so softly brushing it with hand, watched as each of the shifting colored eyes came alive. 

Go. 

How could he? He couldn’t leave this one. He was certain of nothing but this. He was made for so much more.

You’ve no choice.

He wondered, for the first time but not the last, whether a trapped thing could see its cage. He wondered if really there were any difference between him and the humans at all. 

Be gone. Know that no one will know the things you made, no one will know of the things you healed. No one will ever know of Raphael. 

⁠—

He fell for eternities. 

It stopped all at once. 

“You’re needed,” Lucifer-now-Satan said. The sulfur still burned his eyes, but still he beheld Light Bringer. What before had felt like the shining dew of dawn, now felt like the hardened burn of ice. “Isn’t that what you like? To be needed?” 

“I’ve nothing to give,” he said. He couldn’t fathom what needed made, what Lucifer-now-Satan-once-Light-Bringer could want to create, what he would still be able to create now that he was as he was⁠—different, changed. His form was...odd, lower, slithering. 

“Give them doubt. That’s always enough, I’ve found.”

‘Lovely, lovely. How extraordinary. A shame to see him go, don’t you think?’ 

“Besides,” he continued, “You love a question. Don’t you want to give them that?” He asked, one slender, long finger pointing upward. “All those pretty things of which you spoke?”

“I didn’t say those things out loud.” He was certain of that. Wasn’t he?

His bloody mouth twisted into a snarl. “Oh? Are you sure?”

He wasn’t. 

“Go on, Crawley. Get up there and make some trouble.” 

⁠—

“You what!?” He asked. 

“I gave it away!” the angel exclaimed.

Interesting. 

They stood on the wall and watched protected from the deluge by the angel’s wing as Adam and Eve walked farther and farther into the desert, sand clinging to them. 

The rain was letting up now, and the angel lowered his wing again to its resting position. 

“Suppose I should say thank you,” he said. “Difficult thing, though, thanking an angel.” 

“I suppose it is for one of...well, one of your kind,” the angel admitted. “Your wings, though. They remind me of something.” 

“Oh?” he asked, surprised. He’d known. He’d known from the second he’d seen those multicolored eyes who he was, who it was he was talking with. It wasn’t a difficult leap, after all. He waited for the angel to say something, anything. Anything at all to indicate he was aware.

“One of HER creations,” the angel said.

“Yes?” He prompted. 

“I believe Adam named it the ‘Crow.’ Terribly clever birds.” The angel paused for a moment before changing the subject. “Crawley, you said it was?” He asked. 

He nodded, trying with some effort to keep his lip from snarling. He wasn’t sure he’d done a good job of it. Lips were rather new to him. Still, it was only just another name he reviled. Crawley, like something that sniveled, like something helpless. 

“Well, it’s been lovely, but I simply must be going. That hole in the wall surely won’t patch itself,” the angel said, his light eyebrows furrowing.

“Hole?” he asked, again surprised. 

“Mmm, not exactly...well, regulation, I suppose,” the angel said absently before shaking himself back to focus. “At any rate, off I go.” The angel turned to leave and he couldn’t help himself. 

“And your name? What is it?” he called. 

“Oh,” the angel turned and looked surprised at his own rudeness. “Forgive me. I’m Aziraphale. Aziraphale, Angel of the Eastern Gate.”

Aziraphale. 

He waited for the angel to leave, and when he had, Crowley tilted his face to greet the newly emerging sun and smiled.