#distance between planets and stars

[9th-empress-suravi]

The Red Planet MARS 🔴|| Reddish Colour Surface|| The Brightest Object in Earth's Sky

Want to Watch the video of The Red Planet MARS 🔴

Go to my youtube channel @InfinityASTRONOMERICA

It's a New Youtube Channel so, Please Subscribe my channel.

About the Video:

Mars is the fourth planet and the furthest terrestrial planet from the Sun. The reddish color of its surface is due to finely grained iron(III) oxide dust in the soil, giving it the nickname "the Red Planet". Mars's radius is second smallest among the planets in the Solar System at 3,389.5 km (2,106 mi). The Martian dichotomy is visible on the surface: on average, the terrain on Mars's northern hemisphere is flatter and lower than its southern hemisphere. Mars has a thin atmosphere made primarily of carbon dioxide and two irregularly shaped natural satellites: Phobos and Deimos.

[tlaquetzqui]

In my SF I mention that one of the characters’ favorite songs is a C-pop song about being further from their lover than Altair is from Vega. Because Altair and Vega are only 14.65 light years apart, and e.g. if you’re on ξ Boötis, and your love is on Earth, you’re 22.03 light years from them.

Y’all need to understand, Wikipedia is your friend, for worldbuilding. Like, your best friend, take a bullet for you, best man at your wedding friend.

[bobcat-pie]

Spent almost an hour looking through twisted wonderland wiki galleries for globes because I'm not entirely sure that the world isn't flat. Didn't find any globes, but here's some orbs I found that exist to infuriate me. Particularly, the bottom two that might be glass but also might be globes but I can't tell because the world map has the new worst cartographic projection: Tilted Cropped Mercator

look at that compass rose. Why is it tilted. C'mon, I get that not all cultures necessarily have north pointing "up" on their oldass maps, but WHY is it TILTED.

I can half-understand the reason it's cropped, because Sage Island is so tiny you can see most of it if you stand somewhere high, so it'd get lost in a complete world map.

...And if they made Sage Island big enough to see on the world map, but had the map represent the entire world instead of being cropped, then players would assume that the world was small and complain that Yuu should be allowed to jump 9 feet in the air like John Carter on Mars.

(and I know that because I looked at the map explicitly to check if Yuu should be allowed to jump 9 feet in the air like John Carter on Mars. Then I tumbled down this whole rabbithole)

Northern parts of the coral sea get covered in ice during the winter, which could prove that Twisted Wonderland is round because this proves the existence of poles. It also proves that (at least the majority) of the map is in the northern hemisphere!

BUT, if that's the case, then Briar Valley would be notably cold, but instead it's known for its thick forests. So I believe that the northern part of the coral sea freezing over in the winter might be more of a result of magical phenomena (ancient curse) rather than the north pole pointing away from the sun...

Unless the ruler of Briar Valley is in charge of controlling its weather to keep it from being notably cold. Then yeah, the planet's round.

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

Kirk and spock are really the ideal will they won't they couple because they both have reasons for why they wouldn't confess (spock is embarrassed by his own feelings and kirk WOULD be the guy who goes 'it's not anyone's business but my own how I feel for mr spock' and also because he's captain he's not allowed) but they also have reasons for why they would be the first to confess (spock is very logical and would come forward with his feelings if he thought even for a second they were interfering with how he does his job and kirk is. Kirk.)

[comicaurora]

If you were a sci-fi writer, how would you solve the Fermi paradox? That being the discrepancy between evidence for alien life, versus the likelihood of their existence? (basically. If alien so likely, why we not see?) The Dead Space series has an amazing cosmic horror solution, but i'm curious what you're brain could come up with!

There's a lot of possibilities, some more interesting than others.

The speed of light and the distance between inhabited stars makes it prohibitively slow to detect, make contact with, or reach any star with alien life. It doesn't matter if we're not alone, our corner of Space Reachable Within A Human Lifetime is so comparatively small that we may as well be. We're all blindly wandering through an infinite desert, calling into the void. Space exploration is a long game, and on that timescale, even whole civilizations blink out very quickly. If we manage to catch a signal and follow it, we might find nothing on the other end but ruins - or an asteroid field where a planet's orbit used to be.

The universe is too young for us to find anyone else out there. We're the first. How will we shape the galaxy to make life better for those who come after us?

The life that formed on Earth is terrifyingly invasive. The atmosphere and ocean is choked with monocellular life, and its surface is coated with a mass of multicellular organisms finding new ways to devour one another. Even extinction events don't keep down the biomass for long. If life on other planets looks anything like us, the problem isn't going to be detecting it. It'll have gotten everywhere. The problem is going to be not immediately getting colonized and eaten alive by it. And if life on other planets DOESN'T look like us, our whole planet is probably a class 1 biohazard and contamination risk. Multicellular earth organisms contain microcosmic ecosystems that proliferate explosively when they die. If anything inside them can find ANYTHING to eat, it's over.

Life evolves frequently, but always in oceans. It is extremely rare for any alien life to leave that ocean and adapt to life on land. Without this step, the jump to space exploration - even space contemplation - becomes infinitely more unlikely.

Monocellular life is seeded on planets from an outside source and allowed to self-cultivate and grow until the biomass reaches a certain volume. Then the farmers return to harvest it.

There is not a single other species on our entire planet that humans can actually reliably communicate with. It takes tremendous amounts of training to make an animal capable of recognizing even a handful of words, and very few of them can use them. Humans can't even communicate with other humans with 100% clarity, even if they're using the same language. When we find alien life, if we even recognize it as anything resembling life as we know it, we have absolutely no way of communicating.

Space colonialism has been disallowed by the space geneva conventions due to massive past tragedies, parasitic exploitation of worlds and senseless loss of life. Human expeditionary efforts are being watched warily through targeting sights.

We've known about radio communication for less than 200 years. We haven't yet figured out the medium through which all advanced civilizations communicate.

Alien life exists in abundance, but the vast majority of it is extremely tiny. We wouldn't spot an anthill on a satellite photo, and none of their ships are large enough to survive passage through our atmosphere.

Earth's oxygen atmosphere is an anomaly, and our first and most enduring extinction event. The explosive proloferation of cyanobacteria and their oxygen photosynthesis irreparably altered the planet's prebiotic atmosphere and wiped out everything that couldn't handle the sudden massive increase in a highly reactive and flammable gas. Earth is considered highly toxic and unstable, though recently detected increases in methane and CO2 might signal that nature is finally beginning to heal.

[nasa]

Astronomers used three of NASA's Great Observatories to capture this multiwavelength image showing galaxy cluster IDCS J1426.5+3508. It includes X-rays recorded by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue, visible light observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in green, and infrared light from the Spitzer Space Telescope in red. This rare galaxy cluster has important implications for understanding how these megastructures formed and evolved early in the universe.

How Astronomers Time Travel

Let’s add another item to your travel bucket list: the early universe! You don’t need the type of time machine you see in sci-fi movies, and you don’t have to worry about getting trapped in the past. You don’t even need to leave the comfort of your home! All you need is a powerful space-based telescope.

But let’s start small and work our way up to the farthest reaches of space. We’ll explain how it all works along the way.

This animation illustrates how fast light travels between Earth and the Moon. The farther light has to travel, the more noticeable its speed limit becomes.

The speed of light is superfast, but it isn’t infinite. It travels at about 186,000 miles (300 million meters) per second. That means that it takes time for the light from any object to reach our eyes. The farther it is, the more time it takes.

You can see nearby things basically in real time because the light travel time isn’t long enough to make a difference. Even if an object is 100 miles (161 kilometers) away, it takes just 0.0005 seconds for light to travel that far. But on astronomical scales, the effects become noticeable.

This infographic shows how long it takes light to travel to different planets in our solar system.

Within our solar system, light’s speed limit means it can take a while to communicate back and forth between spacecraft and ground stations on Earth. We see the Moon, Sun, and planets as they were slightly in the past, but it's not usually far enough back to be scientifically interesting.

As we peer farther out into our galaxy, we use light-years to talk about distances. Smaller units like miles or kilometers would be too overwhelming and we’d lose a sense of their meaning. One light-year – the distance light travels in a year – is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). And that’s just a tiny baby step into the cosmos.

The Sun’s closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away. That means we see it as it was about four years ago. Betelgeuse, a more distant (and more volatile) stellar neighbor, is around 700 light-years away. Because of light’s lag time, astronomers don’t know for sure whether this supergiant star is still there! It may have already blasted itself apart in a supernova explosion – but it probably has another 10,000 years or more to go.

What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth.

The Carina Nebula clocks in at 7,500 light-years away, which means the light we receive from it today began its journey about 3,000 years before the pyramids of Giza in Egypt were built! Many new stars there have undoubtedly been born by now, but their light may not reach Earth for thousands of years.

An artist’s concept of our Milky Way galaxy, with rough locations for the Sun and Carina nebula marked.

If we zoom way out, you can see that 7,500 light-years away is still pretty much within our neighborhood. Let’s look further back in time…

This stunning image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 5643. Looking this good isn’t easy; 30 different exposures, for a total of nine hours of observation time, together with Hubble’s high resolution and clarity, were needed to produce an image of such exquisite detail and beauty.

Peering outside our Milky Way galaxy transports us much further into the past. The Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor, is about 2.5 million light-years away. And that’s still pretty close, as far as the universe goes. The image above shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is about 60 million light-years away! That means we see it as it was about 60 million years ago.

As telescopes look deeper into the universe, they capture snapshots in time from different cosmic eras. Astronomers can stitch those snapshots together to unravel things like galaxy evolution. The closest ones are more mature; we see them nearly as they truly are in the present day because their light doesn’t have to travel as far to reach us. We can’t rewind those galaxies (or our own), but we can get clues about how they likely developed. Looking at galaxies that are farther and farther away means seeing these star cities in ever earlier stages of development.

The farthest galaxies we can see are both old and young. They’re billions of years old now, and the light we receive from them is ancient since it took so long to traverse the cosmos. But since their light was emitted when the galaxies were young, it gives us a view of their infancy.

This animation is an artist’s concept of the big bang, with representations of the early universe and its expansion.

Comparing how fast objects at different distances are moving away opened up the biggest mystery in modern astronomy: cosmic acceleration. The universe was already expanding as a result of the big bang, but astronomers expected it to slow down over time. Instead, it’s speeding up!

The universe’s expansion makes it tricky to talk about the distances of the farthest objects. We often use lookback time, which is the amount of time it took for an object’s light to reach us. That’s simpler than using a literal distance, because an object that was 10 billion light-years away when it emitted the light we received from it would actually be more than 16 billion light-years away right now, due to the expansion of space. We can even see objects that are presently over 30 billion light-years from Earth, even though the universe is only about 14 billion years old.

This James Webb Space Telescope image shines with the light from galaxies that are more than 13.4 billion years old, dating back to less than 400 million years after the big bang.

Our James Webb Space Telescope has helped us time travel back more than 13.4 billion years, to when the universe was less than 400 million years old. When our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches in a few years, astronomers will pair its vast view of space with Webb’s zooming capabilities to study the early universe in better ways than ever before. And don’t worry – these telescopes will make plenty of pit stops along the way at other exciting cosmic destinations across space and time.

Learn more about the exciting science Roman will investigate on X and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[mindblowingscience]

Astronomers have discovered a new planetary oddball beyond the solar system that is as fluffy and light as cotton candy.  The extrasolar planet or "exoplanet" named WASP-193 b is around 1.5 times the width of Jupiter but has just over a tenth of the solar system gas giant's mass. This makes it the second-lightest planet in the exoplanet catalog, which contains over 5,400 entries. Only the Neptune-like world, Kepler 51 d, is lighter than WASP-193 b. Located around 1,200 light-years from Earth, WASP-193 b orbits its star at a distance of around 6.3 million miles, which is about 0.07 times the distance between Earth and the sun. That means it completes an orbit of its sun-like star, WASP-193, in just 6.2 Earth days.

Continue Reading.

[afewfantasies]

🗡️ꜰᴇʏᴅ'ꜱ ʙʟᴀᴅᴇ 🗡️ - I - Nightmares

MASTERLIST

ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 2.8K

ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: Feyd-Rautha X Reader

ᴘʟᴏᴛ: "Feyd-Rautha he's psychotic", at least thats what people say. Only, people forgot to add that your father's decided you were to marry. It's been over a decade and Feyd's committed to have the marriage and you with him as he ascends as heir and na-Baron of Geidi Prime.

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: abduction, masterbation, voyeurism

🗡️ꜰᴇʏᴅ'ꜱ ʙʟᴀᴅᴇ 🗡️

“Another one?” Your best friend and fellow Bene Gesserit sister asks as you wake in another cold sweat. Nodding you sit up in bed blinking through the darkness. Leia lights the lamp and a yellow glow shines into both of your faces. The first vision was a decade ago, you had been sleeping under the stars. Pale skin and a bald head. A large brute of a ban killed another. Then there was a boy clearly terrified but shaking with anger too. Black eyes, black teeth, pale skin, a temper. Year after year the visions became angrier, more psychopathic. Handing you materials Leia climbs into bed beside you and you begin your account of the vision.

“Will you tell the reverend mother?” She asks.

“Not yet” you confess ordering your thoughts and placing the coded message on the scroll. Leia watches in silence. This vision was in a black room probably on Geidi Prime. You were asleep on a larger black bed with four posts. You were asleep only to wake up to the black eyes looking down at you. He’d never spoken before but he’d said two words in the strangest grittiest words before. “You’re mine” unlike all the other dreams you felt him in the bed, felt the friction of him coming closer, felt his breath on your skin, the heat coming from his body.

“Are you alright?” Leia asks, handing me a glass of water.

“No” you confess as the two words haunt you. There’ve been all kinds of visions. Brutal murders, sick torture, murderous games with concubines, moments of tyrannical rage and now. Now he’d come for you. Stepping out of the bed you find solace in the coolness of the stone on your feet. Leia follows and you search your things for the herbs that dull your senses. It’s a necessity for sleep and reprieve. Since childhood you’d been careful not to share but as you’ve grown it’s only become clearer and clearer the subject of your dreams. He was tall, strong, angry, well off, psychotic and some would say handsome. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the na-Baron and your original betrothed.

“What is it?” Leia asks.

“He’s coming for me mother must teach me the way” you say against your training with fear and foreboding.

——-

Feyd’s earliest memories were of you, he’d been with his father on your home planet looking into your cradle. Your mother was beautiful and your father kind. You were peaceful and little and he’d held you in his arms. He felt protective and during the commitment ceremony he’d meant every word. As a second son your world was promised to him. Even as a child the differences between your two cultures were glaring to him. The freedom to play and be a child, the kindness of the people and you was something to look forward to. But then Rabanne had murdered his father, and his mother had been indifferent and after a few years it enraged him to no end. In a fit of anger he’d killed her. Even with all of his concubines he’d never felt as peaceful as he had with you in his arms as a child. He’d stopped a genocide in your home world looking for you only to find your mother’s kind eyes fearing for her life. He’d done right by sending her to a peaceful planet instead of taking her life. He learned you had been taken by the Bene Gesserit sisters which meant you could be anywhere. No matter where,  he intended to find you.His heart felt like a displaced magnet. Angrier still was the fact that he imagined you living a full life without him. Unbothered, not tortured by the distance as he was, happy and serene. Still he could not disclose his search to anyone in fear for your life. He would have to move carefully to keep his commitment to you.

 Another planet, stepping off the ship he’s given respect by the procession awaiting his arrival. His heart races; he knows your close. Sticking earplugs into his ears he applies the fasteners having his guards to the same. No one would use the voice on him today. He moves quickly spilling no blood. He can feel you. He’s getting warmer. He can feel it. Moving quickly he heads down into the belly of the academy moving quickly through the bunkers. His heart pulls as he passes an entryway stopping when he has a familiar sensation. Heart racing violently against his chest he stops Turing to face the steel door, he stops breathing allowing the violence of his heartbeat to reverberate through him like a war drum. Feyd-Rautha signals for his men to wait outside. Using the code scrambler he gets into the door. Hiding you hold your breath ducking down into the thick of your clothes, the sound of the alarms system’s failure are blaring. Fear racks through you as you try to keep calm remembering the Bene Gesserit mantras. Fear is the mind killer. The noise stops and you relax a little waiting for an announcement. Heavy boots hit the floor forcing you to freeze, the steps come closer stopping in front of the closet. Leis screeches and its muffled, trembling you contemplate your next move. The steps come closer and you see the door open, light filters in. You cover your mouth hoping for safety until a black eye meets yours.  Familiarity and horror paralyze you. Pale skin and a bald head. The face from your nightmares. Feed-Rautha Harkonnen. Pinching yourself you discover he’s finally free’d himself from your dreams and is now material. He steps in separating the close from around you leaving you crouched against the wall with no cover before sitting on your bed and watching you like he has all the time in the world.. His smirk is unsettling and it takes a moment before you stand feeling silly and all too vulnerable crouched in the deep closet.

“Get dressed” he croaks but you’re shaking like a leaf. Snarling he procures robes from the closet placing one over your head. The trembling intensifies. And he steps back feeling rejected. Leaving he has his men pack up your things and then there’s a barrage of people asking you all sorts of questions from what you like to wear and eat and do and it’s all so much. You’re loaded onto a Harkonnen ship and placed in a room alone. Looking through the window you gaze into space. When a few hours have passed you hear the door open and know it’s him before it closes. He takes a seat in his leather robes. You turn to face the man who moves like a snake. He’s more terrifying in person than in your dreams. His eyes watch your every move drinking you in. Parting his lips and showing his black teeth.

“Are you comfortable?” His words come as a surprise. It’s the thing you’ve least expected. It takes a moment before you nod, trying not to be rude as you look around the room.

“Yes, thank you” you respond.

“We are heading to my home world. I understand you have different needs. The Mentats are sourcing food and clothes if there’s anything you need let them know” he explains sanely.

“Ok” you respond, your hands begin to shake again. You sit on them trying to hide the true fear you feel. House Harkonnen is known for many atrocities. 

“I’m sorry” you apologize, terrified and embarrassed.

“Do you know who I am?” He asks.

“A Harkonnen” you confess and his snake-like eyes look displeased.

“Do you know who I am to you?” He asks, forcing you to frown.

“Nothing” you respond only to regret it instantly. Feyd-Rautha takes a breath inflating his chest as he trembles with rage, the paleness of his skin flushing as searing anger bubbles to the forefront. He stands stepping back from you in fear of hurting you.

“My father and yours promised us to each other” his fierce voice cracks as he struggles for control. His terrifying blackened teeth make your eyes shut. He’d done terrible things to people, slight and then slash that's how it went. He was one with his knives and happy to use them. You wait for life to end, your breath to hutch and everything to fade into darkness but it doesn't happen. You hear boots hit the floor three times. Bravery, curiosity? Perhaps it was so quick and painless that this is purgatory? You open your eyes and see Feyd has given you more distance. He’s recalled his anger and he stands stoic, fierce and regal.

“Do you not remember?” He asks because that day had been so monumental to him.

“I had heard heard whispers but …” you trail considering the realities and the odds. Your visions, how you’ve been in hiding. Out of all the things they call him; liar isn’t one of them.You consider the possibilities and it comes to you. Your heart begins to race, you feel stinging in your thumb, like a pinprick. A commitment ceremony was held. The realization is dizzying. “You wish to be married?” You ask and he nods. “To me?” You specify and he nods again. “But I’m nobody from an extinct world. I’m not even a high ranking member of my order” you declare in truth.

“No, you will be na-Baroness Harkonnen” Feyd says, taking a step in your direction. He watches you try to make sense of it. He’d never considered your reaction to being found, he hadn't expected fear or reluctance. He expected your inherent trust in him for you to cling to him for support and comfort as you once did, for you to relish his touch and be most comfortable in his arms.

“na-Baroness” you whisper, looking up at him. Pride fills Feyd at the sound of the words coming from your lips, utter perfection.

“My wife” he rasps and somehow your fear seems unfounded. “I made a vow that I do not intend to break” Feyd says recalling you in his arms as a babe. Your eyes looking up at him without fear in your swaddling helpless, innocent, true and his. A knock at the door causes him to withdraw, he turns standing in front of you. The guard tries looking around to you until Feyd stomps a foot. The man averts his gaze telling Feyd your landing is imminent. Nodding he straightens his gown as he stands tall. Feyd-Rautha holds out a hand. You take it with a deep breath and it seems to amuse him. The heat of him feels familiar. “There will be a crowd, I will send you along in a pod” 

“With who?” You ask standing with him.

“My men” he specifies and it's unsatisfactory. Grabbing your head dress you place it on your head and move forward that way. You hold his hand he secures yours warmly walking at your side. You keep up with him and as the door descends you start to tremble. He stands in front of you as you try to overcome your fear. His eyes are reassuring, his strong hands gripping yours in solidarity. There's no weakness in him. He’s all strength, cunning, volatility, rage and psychopathy. His eyes urge you to get a grip but the roar of the welcome party is unnerving. Your fathers reign ended to a crowd. Soldiers came and there was shouting, there was cheering and you had no time to say goodbye before your mother put you into an escape pod with a scroll. You arrived at an outer planet to find out your father had been beheaded. It’s why you hate crowds to this day.

“Not today” he whispers motioning for someone to come get you. The roaring is violent and you follow them into a pod lighting up at the sight of Leia. The two of you embrace each other warmly. In moments you’ve deemed each other okay. The guards watch the two of you closely. Sitting beside her you take a moment to check the beauty mark on the inside of your thumb. It had been there as long as you could remember. You should be terrified by your current predicament, inadequate training, no  preparation, playing a part of an unsanctioned plot of sisterhood, at the mercy of perhaps the galaxy’s most unbalanced man. But he’d been nothing but reasonable thus far outside of your abduction. 

The cheers from the people are thunderous, they celebrate his return with conviction. Once outside the pods you become acquainted with the sprawling palace halls. Uneasiness fills you and your hand clasps Leia’s for comfort, something your guards eyes settle on. Saying nothing you follow behind him seeing a Mentat among your escort. You’re brought into a grand hall with a stately black stone table. Fresh colourful food is on one side while rare organic meat is on another, the sight of the bloody dishes and iron rich aroma sickens you and Leia.

“I wish to retire, I am exhausted” you declare unable to sit. The silent guard turns to you nodding. He motions for a Mentat to guide you and Leia to your quarters. You're separated from her after a long hug. Your room is far grander than your quarters at the academy. It has a familiar quality of the ones from your home world. The colours are less sterile, the hues less grey. Pulling open the drawers you find lush vibrant fabrics, the sort of robes you remember your mother wearing before the fall of your house. It's a strange thing. Turning you lean against the dresser puzzled by the days events and not nearly as scared as you should be.

Finished and energized by his warm reception Feyd-Rautha heads to the dining hall. He waits against the door when he hears no chatter. Bracing himself for anything he pushes open the doors to find the room empty with the exception of the Mentat and a few guards charged with your care.

“She wished to retire” the Mentat explains.

“Did she eat?” Fey’d asks.

“No” The Mentat responds. Feyd’s mood sours, settling into a rage, if it were anyone else he would have dragged them back out of the room, placed a collar around her neck and forced her to do as he pleased but it wasn't anyone, it was you. 

“Set the table in my quarters” he demands heading into his rooms. Undressing he removes his armour until all he has on are slacks and a tunic. Feyd dismisses his staff sitting at the table and pressing a button. A screen emerges from the wall with a wide panoramic view of your quarters on display. He watches you as he eats, watches you let your hair down from the ornate style of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. He watches the sway of your hips as you go from room to room. He watches you admire the artwork that's been placed there. Feyd-Rautha watches you with pride and admiration, you weren't trying to run as far as he could see. He watches as you return to the sleeping chambers. He feels himself stiffen as he watches you undress, standing he drops the rare meat drawn to the screen with a crooked grin as you make your way to the cleansing chambers. The bounce of your breast, the softness of your skin, everything has him solid as stone. He watches you step in and the misting of water commence, the beads of water glisten on your skin, he zooms in to get a better view of you unguarded. The surprise in your expression as the automatic system goes through the washing ritual.

His thoughts are heinous and depraved, his need for dominance, ownership, acceptance and submission are more than he can take. Releasing his manhood from his plants he begins stroking it roughly. For the first time he doesn’t call his concubines to satisfy him. They would all fail miserably, no one but you would ever again, but this night he would have to do. He needed you so bad he felt desperate. Stroking himself faster he’s practically salivating as the chamber begins drying you, the way your hair blows, the surprise in your eyes, the suppleness of your skin. It takes everything in him to contain his hunger for you, control his passion, his need. He wanted to be inside you marking you, claiming you with his seed. Watching your expressions change as he takes you further and further into the pleasures of passion. You would be his wife soon enough. His hands would never leave your warm flesh. He would keep his manhood sheathed inside you training you well. Coming hard from his own fantasies Fed’s shallow breaths bring him to a stark realization. He would do anything to have you stop trembling at the sight of him, he’d try to be as patient as possible. He needed your submission, your acceptance of him, and he needed it to be real, to want to share his bed. Looking up at the screen he watches you dress in sheer bed robes. Climbing into the large bed he watches you find comfort in it. 

“You’re mine” he says to the screen as a promise.

🖤

Thank you so much for reading 🩶 let me know if you enjoyed, want to be added to the taglist or anything else on your mind 🩶 comment, like & reblog for more Feyd. xx

TAGS: @elf-punk @dvmb4ssbiatch @thegabbyh @fanfiction-addict22

[reidswhre]

spencer reid x fem!reader

warnings: it’s silly and fluff

a/n: this is the intro of episode 7 from season 3, i founded it so funny so i made this blurb.

“A popular theory among leading astrophysicists estimates that the hypermatter reactor would need about 10 to the 32nd joules of energy to destroy a planet the size of the Earth.” You didn’t exactly know what Reid was trying to explain to Morgan, but he looked cute.

Emily looked at you mockingly.

“Now, Lucas said it took 19 years to build the first Death Star, right?” Spencer looked at you.

“But if you look at The New Essential Chronology, there's a test bed prototype for a super laser that's been—” Morgan got up from his seat and headed toward Rossi’s new office.

“Where are you going?” Spencer asked Morgan, confused.

“Taking back the last five minutes of my life,” Morgan replied, and Reid made a face.

“I was listening to you.” You shrugged.

“I know you were, you always do.” He smiled at you.

“Don’t you want to know about this guy?” Morgan asked as he walked up the stairs.

“I do.” Emily quickly got up from her desk.

“I don’t! Are you kidding? No, no—This is dangerous.” You followed them.

You were starting to panic a little. Not for nothing, but this guy was pretty mysterious, and even though you might sound a bit like a people pleaser, you were dying to make a good impression on Rossi, and if he caught you snooping around his office, you two weren’t going to become friends anytime soon.

“I've got it all memorized. His books, his bio,” Spencer replied to Morgan.

“Yeah, books that sold over a million copies.”

“So?”

“That’s a million reasons not to come back, if you know what I’m saying.” Morgan explained to us.

I mean, of course, he was right. Why would a guy who had already ended his career years ago suddenly come back? He wasn’t going to do it out of kindness. But that wasn’t your problem.

“Huh!” Morgan exclaimed as he entered his office.

“Taupe walls. That’s a negative color.” Emily was analyzing it. “Cold. Distant. You know, emotionally, taupe is linked to loneliness and a desire to escape from the world.”

“I just figured the guy’s walls would be covered with plaques and commendations,” Morgan continued to Emily.

“Maybe he doesn't want to be reminded of past victories. It’s a new chapter for him.”

Spencer and you peeked into the office, you clinging to his arm.

“Whatever happened to the moratorium on intra-team profiling, guys?” Spencer asked the group.

“Come on, Reid. Team? I don’t think this guy knows the meaning of the word.”

“Probably not, but—We shouldn’t be here. What if he sees us?” You were quite scared.

“I don’t think he will, don’t worry.” Spencer took your hand, and you both entered the office.

“I found something. Looks like some type of religious art. Original maybe, definitely expensive.” Morgan showed us a painting in a frame.

You wrapped your arm around Spencer’s and leaned on his.

“It’s Renaissance art,” you replied to Morgan, looking at the painting in Spencer’s hand.

“If that’s original…” Spencer followed your lead.

“Is it?” Morgan asked.

“It’s kind of hard to tell, I mean, he’s into the classics,” you continued.

“What else?”

“Italian, strict Catholic upbringing, probably believes in redemption.” Spencer was pondering over the painting.

“I believe in a lot of things.” You heard a voice behind you, and it almost gave you a heart attack.

You lifted your head off Spencer’s arm, stepping away from him entirely. He gave you a puzzled look due to the distance.

“Catholic, yes. Italian American, 52 years old. Strict upbringing? Not so much.”

We shared awkward glances between us. This couldn’t be happening.

“Now the artwork? That’s 15th-century original, it costs more than my first house. And as for the wall color, it’s just a base coat, painters will come in and finish tomorrow.” He gave us an ironic smile.

You felt like you were about to die or something.

“Now, if you’re all finished, I think JJ and Hotch are ready for us,” he informed us. “Isn’t that how a team works?” This time he looked straight at Morgan.

You quickly ran out of there before the embarrassment swallowed you whole. Spencer followed right behind you.

“Hey! Wait for me.” You heard him behind you.

“Are you kidding me? I told you we shouldn’t have gone in! What a disgrace, I can’t believe it.” You turned to look at him. “What’s he going to think of me?”

“I don’t think he cares that much, really.” He took your hands in an attempt to calm you down.

“How could he not!? We snooped through his stuff! We profiled him! Oh, this is bad!”

Spencer laughed a little at you. “What are you laughing at!?” You frowned.

“I really don’t think it’s that deep, don’t worry.” He gave you a sincere look.

If you thought about it, it wasn’t that bad. He probably wouldn’t even mention it again, and it wasn’t like you did anything serious... at least you hoped so.

“You think so?” You looked back at him.

“Of course!” He smiled at you. “Come on, I’ll make you some coffee before we go to JJ and Hotch.” Spencer gave you a small kiss on the forehead, took your hand, and led you to the kitchen.

a/n: so this is how i was picturing Spencer and reader when they we’re watching the artwork.

so cute i’m dying!!

[quasi-normalcy]

Actually my concept for a Star Trek series would be something like:

It's 10,000 years in the future (or some big number, it's kind of arbitrary. It's a hell of a long time after anything we've seen, anyways)

The Federation and the Borg have long-since merged into a galaxy-spanning hyper civilization

Most sentient life in the galaxy is connected in a sort of utopian hivemind, but you can opt out. There are entire worlds that are just like...wilderness preserves for weird "throwback" types who value their individuality, unique cultures, etc.

The Civilization basically has a sort of collective midlife crisis and decides that it's stagnated; it hasn't really changed its technology or modes of living in thousands of years and it decides that cultural stasis is a sort of death (there's probably some kind of event to touch this off in the pilot)

Their solution is that they need to start exploring again to encounter new ideas, but all of the other galaxies are damn far away

But the Federation-Borg (Forg?) can't really operate over those distances, because they're out of direct contact with the rest of the hive and their units find this existentially terrifying

So they need to recruit a bunch of people from these weird throwback planets to go out and explore for them in a fleet (or in one really big ship with a bunch of, like, Enterprise-sized support craft)

Except these people have tensions because they all come from different sorts of cultural perserves. And some of them don't even think that they *should* be helping the Forg expand

The entire first season just shows their long, long journey through intergalactic space toward the Andromeda galaxy with just a few rare pit stops at isolated star systems all alone in the void

(Maybe, like...a haunted starship that has been floating in the night for half a billion years or something)

All of the aliens that they encounter are really weird and gnarly because this is outside the galaxy, so there should be no humanoids

They eventually get caught up in a bunch of shenanigans between rival gods and the like.

[scribs-dibs]

i'm an orange moon...

(reflecting the light of the sun)

major spoilers for 2.1, gn reader, it got a bit angsty i didn't meaaaan itttt, aventurine is touch starved and you Know how i feel about touchsta💥

wc; ~ 1.6k

“Aventurine,” the false lights of Penacony dance in your eyes when you look at him, and something sickening and foreign twists in his chest. “May I hold your hand?”

Aventurine knows how to be an actor. He does so easily— his carefully crafted mask is more familiar than his own face. He is a performer first and a person second, because there is not a time or place on this or any planet where he can afford to lose anything more. The pieces of himself are barely put together, what is left of him seems to seep like sand between his very fingers. His family, his planet, himself, torn to ruin. And yet it is said that fate smiles upon him. The fractured pieces of himself are a blessing. What a funny thing fate must be, if his hell is said to be a heaven.

The mask must never slip, not even once— his life is a stage, corpses weighing heavy on his back, grasping hands chaining his feet, screams tearing his eardrums to shreds, and yet he must walk it anyway. And Aventurine will, and he will do it without missing a step. For this is what it means for him to live, his every breath a sin.

Aventurine knows how to keep a poker face. He does so easily— his smile is trained never to meet his eyes, it doesn’t know how to, and his hypnotic eyes are always trained on his next opponent, never leaving or faltering. He can’t afford to look away, to see what could possibly come next— to see what could hurt him, next. Aventurine could control nothing in his life. He couldn’t control the Katicans as they laughed as they took his father, or his mother, or his sister, and he couldn’t control when his swine of a master forced him to murder his fellow slaves, either. But he can control who he gets close to. He can control who he lets in, who is allowed to see what he looks like when his walls finally crumble.

Which, of course, is no one.

So it comes easily when he pushes well-meaning gestures away, or refuses a favor with that soft, styrofoam smile and a laugh. It’s not just second-nature, no. It’s the only one he has left.

Aventurine knows he doesn’t deserve the sanctity of being loved. This fact comes to him easily– all who have dared to try have been disappointed, and all who had mattered to him are gone. He knows it well, he is far too many pieces, far too broken, far too much of a mess for someone to come to try and fix. And this is fine, because he doesn’t have the experience to even fantasize about what he is supposedly missing. The closest semblance to friends that he has may as well be rivers or oceans away, with the amount of distance he has put between them and himself.

So you. You are strange to him.

Aventurine does not know what the hell your deal is. He doesn’t know how you got so close. He doesn’t know why you bother.

“Aventurine,” the false lights of Penacony dance in your eyes when you look at him, and something sickening and foreign twists in his chest. “May I hold your hand?”

That gives him pause. For a moment, his lips part, and his brows threaten to furrow under the weight of his pure bafflement. But, as always, his mask slips back on easily, a kind smile slotted into place.

“Oh? Afraid of getting lost?”

You walk beside him on the streets of Golden Hour, taking in the sequins disguised as stars and the specially-manufactured cool night air. He can’t tell if you’re naive or just easily impressed.

“No,” you say with a shake of your head, “Maybe I just…felt like it.”

Aventurine does not change anything in his face. There isn’t so much as a slow bob of his Adam's apple as he swallows, or a look of conflict crossing his features. There is no hesitation in his face, his mask, at all. But even so, when you look at him, through him, your kind smile finds a way to become kinder, and the tenderness in your eyes somehow becomes more potent.

“We don’t have to,” you don’t look disappointed, or even expectant, at all, “We can keep walking. Just this is enough as it is.”

“Just this” is the oddly peaceful silence as the two of you walk together. Your presence is comparable to a sun he never got acquainted with— he’s used to the storms, to the rock and sand, to the unyielding weather he was forced to endure, but this is different. This is just a walk, and there’s no search for water while the taste of blood coats his tongue, or the threat of thunder or biting cold. It is just peace at its purest. He extends his hand.

“Far be it for me to argue. Be my guest.”

You light up immediately, elated. He's thankful for his shades— the brightness of you is blinding. And he isn't quite prepared for the feel of you. Even through his gloves he feels the warmth of your hands— it is everything he is not. His own are ruined; he was pried from his home, and forced to take a bloody, bloody climb back up to earn his own humanity again. Aventurine’s hands are ruined beyond repair— no amount of washing can cleanse them, but yours, yours are so different. They aren't fully soft, you have work and hardships of your own, but they are gentle. Taking your hand feels easy because there are no expectations or commands hidden in the grooves of your palms. There are no hidden weapons behind your back, there is nothing but the feeling of flesh against the dark smoothness of his glove, and for a moment, he almost finds himself staggering.

How long has it been, since he touched another with no expectations? To not force himself to be overly friendly, to not appease anyone for the sake of getting information, to just exist, with someone else's hand in his?

The last willing touch he remembers feeling came with his fingers dipped in blood, salty tears thick on his taste buds. This is different from that. This is worlds away from that.

And Aventurine does not know how to feel. He doesn't know how to arrange his mask in response. There is no light in his eyes, not anymore, at least, but for a moment they are so wide with shock that Golden Hour’s stars swirl in the mix of blue and purple— a complex, vulnerable galaxy. Aventurine does not know how to feel. And it bothers him.

The tips of your fingers slide from his palms to the tips of his own, raking tiny sparks across the fabric of his gloves. Your fingers are interlocked now, and his head is spinning. You're everywhere. Under his gloves, under his skin, everywhere, and it's troubling. Strangely, he doesn't want to let go. For a moment —one that is fleeting and miniscule, barely a blink of an eye— his mask softens, melting around symptoms of genuine comfort, but his wounded heart kicks in defiance. The mask clicks back into place when your gaze meets his again, a smooth, porcelain smile easily greets you. Just as it has been taught to.

(His hands are nice. You know he thinks differently, has been taught to think differently, but they are firm under your palms and quickly warm to your touch.)

“Shall we?”

Distantly, he is aware of the implications of holding hands on a busy city street, encircled by onlookers and gossiping figures— this is the behavior of lovers, friends, family, people who are much, much closer than the two of you are. But your touch is…pleasant. It could mean trouble for you, to be seen with him when so many people have him under such a careful watch, (He is never truly free of people's stares or of their suspicion, and this makes associating with him more than a hassle.) but you know this, and have yet to keep your distance. Experimentally, he flexes his fingers around yours. It's faint, and a gamble if nothing else, but you squeeze him back almost immediately.

Aventurine knows he is greedy. This is intertwined into his being almost as tightly as the hold of your hands. He knows that this is a rare, fleeting moment, one that he will never get to indulge in again —not when his plans to discover the truth of Penacony are sure to succeed— and he knows that he will long for it once it ends, the sweetness of it clinging to his teeth. But he wants it. He wants this singular moment of peace, of keeping the mask on but for once not needing to perform. The city is busy as ever, bustling crowds and cheerful chatter echo up into the walls of tall buildings. It would be nice, to continue your walk together like this, with your soft, sunny hand in his. It would satiate his greed, if only for a moment.

But Aventurine knows he is not worth your time.

“It's been lovely, really,” he almost slips— he almost winces when your face falls. You aren't as practiced as he is when it comes to keeping a poker face. “But I really must be going.” His hand slides out from underneath yours, but it is not as easy as he thought it’d be. The ghost of your touch already serves to haunt him. A few steps back, and your warmth still lingers.

“Take care out there, alright?” he says it with a tilt of his head, his best, practiced and perfect smile easing the tension from your shoulders. Performing again, this time for a private audience.

He only gets a few steps away before you call for him again.

Aventurine knows how to pretend not to hear and keep walking.

⋅��⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

rbs w/comments are appreciated!! <33

[9th-empress-suravi]

Hello Everyone,

This is *Infinity ASTRONOMERICA * and This Website is My Infinity Palace.

So, Welcome to my Infinity Knowledge Palace....,

"The Palace of Infinity ASTRONOMERICA."

. . .This Title is Related to Knowledge about Astrophysics & Astronomy.

I wish to assure you that astronomy and astrophysics are the most Interesting thing which will catch your attention.

So, Welcome to the Infinity Knowledge Palace of Celestial Empress.

Our Universe is vast. Sun is one amongst billions of stars situated in as many Galaxies. The distance between planets and stars are huge, and so their masses. The estimated age of the Sun is about 5 billion years, compare to the lifetime of a human being, which is less than 100 years in most cases. The distance and masses of Celestial objects are of fundamental interest in Astronomy. There are many Galaxies, Stars and Planets with many unknown Celestial object are wondering arround in This Vast universe.

We will know about them slowly in future with this Tag-Title, "The Palace of Infinity ASTRONOMERICA".

_Infinity ASTRONOMERICA 💫

[betweenstorms]

Part Eight of Where We Part (previous chapter) (masterlist) (first chapter) Childhood Friend!Simon x fem!Reader

Snow fell in thick, lazy flakes as you stepped off the bus, pulling your scarf up to your face to fend off the bite of the cold air.

Simon’s message had come so suddenly, a single line on your screen: I’m back. That was all it took, warming you more than any fire could. You were out the door before your mind had fully registered it, anticipation sweeping through you, carrying you down the stairs of your building, leaving your flat a dark, empty shell in the evening.

It didn’t matter that it was the dead of night.

You would’ve gone to him any night, any hour. You would’ve crossed any distance just to be near him.

Your heart raced with each step, beating faster than the snowflakes that drifted from the ink-stained sky. As you hurried down the street, snow crunching softly beneath your boots, the streetlights casted golden pools that glimmered on the fresh powder like scattered crystals. It was as if the world itself had dressed in crystallised anticipation for this reunion, wearing precious jewels, cloaked in silver and shadows.

You were almost at his building, your breath coming in puffy clouds of white, cheeks flushed and eyes as bright as the stars. The cold had painted your skin with winter’s blush, and your hair was windswept, tousled from your hurried journey, but you barely noticed. All that really mattered was the light in his window, that faint glow that told you he was there—

—waiting for you.

You rang his doorbell, almost out of breath. Before he could even answer, you whispered, “It’s me.”

There was no response, only the faint click of the door unlocking, welcoming you in with a warm embrace. You took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the elevator entirely, unable to waste another moment. With every step, the pulse of longing, of hope and fear, grew louder, until you felt it in your throat, a hum beneath your skin.

Since that night you’d sent him the message, confessing the love you’d held silent for so long, you’d dreamed of this, the chance to look into his eyes, to see if they held the same unspoken answer you’d always hoped for. God, those eyes—dark and mesmerising, holding worlds within them, as though he carried a universe in his silence.

You longed for them, for the soft gravity that pulled you close despite never really feeling the warmth of their orbit. It was an ache full of longing, this yearning to exist in his universe that you could only glimpse from afar, a place where the planets reflected in his gaze, a shooting star that felt like home, even though you’d never really set foot there.

When you reached his door, you paused for a heartbeat, steadying yourself, feeling the swell of your own breathing. Then you knocked, and he opened the door. His gaze immediately met yours, and in that instant, you felt every mile, every moment of silence, every whispered wish converge in the space between you.

The sight of him was almost too much, like a dream finally taking shape before you.

Simon Riley stood in the light of his flat, dressed in the simplest of clothes—a worn shirt, loose at the collar, and faded jeans that seemed to soften his sharp edges. His face was still, unreadable as ever, though his eyes held a quiet promise that caught you off guard, drawing you into him. It was like looking into the depths of a calm sea, pitch black and unfathomable, but with an undercurrent that promised there was so much more below the surface.

“Made it through the snow, then,” he hummed.

You smiled nervously, fidgeting with your fingers. “Would never let a bit of snow stop me.”

Your voice was soft, almost tentative. The words felt too small for the weight of this very moment, but they held a sincerity that seemed to resonate between you.

After a seemingly endless moment, Simon stepped aside, silently inviting you in.

You crossed the threshold, letting the warmth of his flat wrap around you. It felt comforting, like slipping into an old dress. You fumbled with your scarf and coat, casting them aside with clumsy fingers, your movements a touch too quick, too eager. Everything felt heightened, the ordinary taking on a new gravity, and you couldn’t help but feel as though you were seeing his place for the first time, taking in every small detail like it was something precious.

His space, with its muted colours and sparse furnishings, had always struck you as a reflection of him—a spot of quiet endurance, stripped down to essentials, nothing unnecessary, nothing to soften the edges. You’d teased him about this countless times, saying he could pitch a tent on the street and call it a day, that he needed a woman’s touch here, a little warmth, a little life. 

But tonight, as you looked around, you realised you wouldn’t change a single thing.

Every corner, every empty wall, every threadbare cushion felt distinctly, profoundly him, and that familiarity wrapped around you like a soft blanket. Here, in this bare simplicity, he was himself, and you felt the privilege of being allowed in.

You drifted into the living room, awkwardly resting your hands on the back of his grey sofa, your gaze roaming over the room as if you’d find answers tucked into the corners. You could feel his presence behind you, solid and grounding, yet somehow distant.

Unable to bear the silence any longer, you asked him, “What happened, Si?” Your voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but the question hung heavy in the air, thick with the weight of everything you needed to know.

You wanted to believe that his absence was just the nature of his work, that it was a necessity and not a choice, but part of you feared otherwise. Part of you feared that now, just when you had finally given voice to your love, he would vanish again, leaving you without the chance to know what lay hidden in his heart.

He didn’t answer at first, his gaze shifting away from you and his expression darkening as he drew a long, tired breath.

After a few painfully long seconds, he finally exhaled, his shoulders sagging as if he carried a weight you couldn’t see.

“Work,” he stated, his voice rough, laced with a weariness that seemed to go far deeper than the past few weeks. He ran a hand through his sandy blonde hair, a gesture you recognised as his way of grounding himself, of trying to find the right words. “Things got… messy.” His jaw tightened, and you knew, there was so much he wasn’t saying, layers of meaning buried in his words, like the murmur of a story beneath the surface of a still lake.

A lake that held a monster.

“How messy?” you asked, crossing your arms over your chest, trying to mask the tremor in your voice.

Simon mirrored your posture, leaning against the wall with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his worn jeans, tilting his head to observe you with a strange, clinical intensity that sent a shiver down your spine. His eyes seemed to hold a quiet calculation, as though he was gauging just how much truth you could bear, assessing the weight he might lay upon you without breaking you.

Seeing the look in his gaze, you straightened, pulling yourself up, a brave front in the face of his hesitation, though you felt your facade cracking. He must’ve seen it—the slight tremble in your stance, the way your fingers twisted together to keep them from shaking.

With a sigh, he looked away, his gaze dropping to the side table where a half-empty glass of whiskey sat, a faint reflection of the dim lamplight glinting in the amber liquid. 

You hadn’t noticed it until now.

At that moment, the message you’d sent him on New Year’s Eve, the confession of your love, felt impossibly insignificant and childish. Whatever you’d been waiting for, whatever words of love or promise you’d hoped for, seemed small in the shadow of the silence he wore like a second skin. You wondered if, amid everything he had faced in the past months, your feelings had become another burden for him, another layer of complexity he didn’t need.

Whatever had dragged him down into this quiet desolation felt much larger, much darker, and for the first time, you questioned whether you truly belonged in his world, whether he could let you in without burdening you with things he fought so hard to bury.

“Didn’t mean to leave you, love,” he murmured, the words barely audible, his gaze still fixed on some invisible point beyond you. The quiet roughness of his voice was like a brush of cold air, chilling and real, grounding you in a way you hadn’t expected. “Work went sideways.”

You shifted your weight, fingers finding your elbow in a nervous scratch.

“What d’you mean?”

He moved slowly, reaching for the glass of whisky, lifting it to his lips but pausing, as though the answer was nestled somewhere in its amber depths. He took a single, measured sip before setting it down again, exhaling heavily.

“One of my mates didn’t make it,” he murmured, his voice like sandpaper, rough and scraped thin by grief.

Your hands clenched unconsciously, fingers digging into your palms, leaving little half-moon imprints that stung. The thought of him losing someone again, of him carrying yet another loss on those already abandoned shoulders, twisted something painful in your chest. But you said nothing, sensing that he wasn’t finished.

“Happened right in front of me. Shot in the fuckin’ head. And the bastard who did it slipped away, just like that. Bloody vanished.”

His confession hit you like cold rain, each one soaking into you, settling with a heavy, aching permanence. So you looked at him, really looked at him, seeing the lines of exhaustion etched into his face, the hollowness lingering in his gaze. In his deep voice, you could almost feel the raw injustice, the senselessness.

“Went up to Scotland after,” he murmured, his voice thick, his gaze far away. “Took his ashes with the team. No family left that wanted anythin’ to do with it. Just us. So we scattered him there, in the hills.” He paused, his hand resting on the glass, his fingers tightening around it. “You’d have liked him. Right pain in the arse, but big heart. One of the fuckin’ best.”

“Oh, God,” you whispered, words catching in your throat, useless and small in the face of something so raw, so immediate, so irreversible. You felt the painful ache in his words as though they were your own, a dull throb that settled beneath your ribs, swelling and settling like a bruise you couldn’t see.

You opened your mouth, wanting to say something, anything, to reach across the impossible gulf between his grief and your presence, but each phrase you thought of felt inadequate and hollow. Somehow, the words felt too sharp, like fragments of glass too small to piece together as a whole.

What could you say that he hadn’t already heard a hundred times, that wouldn’t sound hollow in the wake of so much loss?

The last time he’d lost someone, you’d written him a letter. You’d written to him about the tragedy of childhood, about guilt, about family, about all the things you wished you could take back. Pages upon pages of words had come to you then, spilling out with a feverish need to comfort, to connect, as you lay in a bloody hospital bed, trying to capture everything you couldn’t say to him in person. Back then, every thought had felt vital, every line a confession of all you wished he could hear.

But here, standing in front of him, faced with the raw, unhealed wound of his sorrow, you felt adrift, unable to find even a single sentence that could touch the mere vastness of his agony. You wished you could say something to soothe him, to ease the suffering he bore, but every instinct told you that this grief was too sacred, too traumatic and too deeply embedded for anything you could say to lessen it.

So you did what you always did when you were lost—

—you started to ramble.

“You’re… you’re so fuckin’ strong, Simon. I mean it. To carry all this, to keep going. I can’t even imagine—” Your words caught in your throat, and you pressed on, fumbling, “Whatever you need, I’m here, yeah? Just say the word. I mean, if there’s anythin’ I can do—”

Before you could finish, he let out a sigh.

An all too familiar reaction, cutting through your words with that weary impatience you knew so well.

That sigh had always been enough to silence you, to bring you to a halt. He looked at you with a weariness so deep it felt almost like an accusation, as though your very presence exhausted him in some strange, bittersweet way. You could feel the anxious heat blooming under your skin, your palms damp with the tension that had knotted itself in your chest. You hugged yourself tighter, as though afraid that if you let go, you’d simply fall apart.

“Come here,” he murmured, voice low and rough.

The command was soft, but it held that same authority that was so unmistakably him. So you blinked, his order lingering in the air, settling into your skin like a brand. Your mind struggled to process the meaning behind his words, to make sense of the kind invitation hidden beneath his blunt command. His tone was gentle, almost tender, yet there was an unspoken weight to it, as though this was more than just an instruction—

—it was a surrender.

You felt like you were being given a choice, a step across a line you’d both danced around for years, but he’d left no room for uncertainty. The moment was his, and you felt the weight of it settle around you.

When you didn’t move, when the reality of his request rooted you to the spot, he let out a quiet grunt, a sound both frustrated and resigned, and stepped closer to you himself. The distance between you disappeared in an instant, and the air felt thicker, charged with something unnameable that made your skin burn.

You felt the warmth of him even before his hand reached out, his fingers grazing the fabric of your sweater before settling on your waist. The touch was light, almost hesitant, but there was a quiet conviction in the way his fingers curled around you, pulling you just a fraction closer.  He was so close now that you could feel the warmth radiating from his body, the quiet hum of his breath, steady and measured.

Leaning against the sofa, you had to tilt your head up to meet his gaze, your heart racing wildly as his eyes bore into yours, dark and unguarded.

You had never seen him like this.

The world narrowed, focused entirely on him, on the roughness of his calloused hand against your body and the way his gaze held yours like you were something precious, something he was trying desperately not to break. Your knees brushed against his, a subtle, almost shy touch that felt strangely intimate, like a promise you didn’t dare to speak. He loomed over you, a figure carved from all the resilience and sorrow he’d carried through his life, a force of gravity that drew you in even as he held back.

Your breath caught as he said, “This is why I’m here.”

The words sank in slowly, stirring a sense of nervousness, of realisation.

“Yeah, I know, but—” you replied, your voice trembling, almost inaudible. “I just… I didn’t know what you were going through. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have… I wouldn’t have made things harder for you. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologisin’,” he cut in, his hand tightening slightly on your waist, grounding you in the present, pulling you out of the spiral of guilt. “You’ve been doin’ that shit since we were kids. Fuckin’ annoying, y’know that?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I mean—”

You felt heat rise to your cheeks at his bluntness, the way he could strip you down to the very core with so few words, cutting through every layer of pretence.

His tone was rough, his words clipped, but the faintest hint of amusement softened his gaze, a glimmer in his eyes that betrayed the sharpness of his voice. There was no real anger there, no frustration, only a quiet, steady warmth that held you in place, disarmed you completely.

You looked up at him, utterly captivated, feeling the way his fingers pressed against you, warm and solid, a gentle weight that made your skin prickle with hurried anticipation. He was looking at you as though you were the centre of the universe, as though you were something irreplaceable, and in that moment, every doubt, every hesitation melted away.

The world around you dissolved, leaving only him, the unspoken emotions flickering in his gaze, the faint brush of his thumb along your side—a gesture so small, so quiet, but charged with something vast, something that held years of waiting, of missed moments, of unspoken words. Your poor heart thundered, a wild beat that matched the intensity in his eyes, the silent confession that seemed to hover between you, waiting, unspoken, in the air.

“Never been good at sayin’ things, not when they matter.”

His other hand rose, stalling for a second before brushing a strand of hair from your face. His touch was featherlight, a rare gentleness that felt almost out of place against the roughness of his hand, the hand of a soldier who had known only violence and destruction.

But here, with you, he softened, his fingers lingering just a heartbeat longer than necessary, as if he was memorising the feel of you, storing it away like a keepsake. The closeness between you was dizzying, each breath shared, each hurried heartbeat in tandem, and the weight of his confession was enough to make your knees tremble.

He scoffed, his gaze dropping, but he didn’t release his hold on you, not even a little bit. “I’m too much of a fuckin’ coward to say it right, to say what you deserve to hear. But all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy. That’s all I bloody want, alright? So I left. Left you to find some other bloke who could give you everythin’ I couldn’t.”

The words landed softly, almost lost in the stillness of the room, but they pierced you deeply, each syllable burrowing into your heart.

It was as if he was laying himself bare, offering you the fractured pieces of a man marred by grief and shadows, hoping you’d take them and see him not for what he had done, but for what he could be. The years of silence, all the glances and all the unspoken promises, all seemed to unravel in that single moment.

Simon Riley, the unbreakable, unshakable figure you’d known since childhood, stood before you now in this split second of the universe, open and exposed, offering you himself.

Your heart swelled at the sight and you felt yourself drawn even closer, like gravity binding you both together in a way that felt irreversible. You reached up, your hand steady despite the wild beat of your pulse, and let your thumb brush along his scarred lips, tracing the rough edges and feeling the warmth beneath.

“Y’know, I thought I knew what I wanted,” you whispered, each word carrying a weight you hadn’t known until this moment. “Thought I wanted a picture perfect life, the kind you dream about, that I had to meticulously fix everythin’ in my life to deserve happiness… but none of it means anythin’ if it doesn’t include you. Ever since we were kids… maybe I’ve loved you since then, without even knowin’.”

He let out a soft, almost bitter huff, a sound that was somehow both happy and sad. His gaze fell away, then he turned his head, just enough that his lips brushed the inside of your hand, a gesture so fleeting it could have been a mere accident. But it wasn’t.

You felt the warmth of his breath, the slight tremble in the touch, and it set something alight within you—a spark that had lain dormant, waiting, perhaps, for this very moment.

“You’ve got some daft ideas, love,” he murmured, voice thick with something unspoken, the quiet tremor of a man who’d spent too many years swallowing his own feelings. His words were meant to sound gruff, deflecting, yet the way he looked at you gave him away entirely, his gaze lingering on you as though he could see something he’d missed before.

His gaze lifted, and for a moment, he looked almost fragile, as though he didn’t quite believe he was worthy of your words, of your love. But then, something shifted in his eyes, a spark of hope flickering in the depths of his soul.

And just like that, he closed the last sliver of space between you, his lips finding yours in a kiss that was both gentle and desperate, a silent vow that spoke of all the words he couldn’t bring himself to say, a kiss that felt like both a promise and an apology for all the years spent apart, all the words unspoken. 

The kiss deepened, a slow, tender exchange that felt like a thousand promises wrapped into one. He tasted like whiskey, cigarettes and regret, like something raw and real that anchored you to him, his hand sliding up to tangle in your hair as he pulled you impossibly closer. You felt his heartbeat under your palm, steady and strong, and it felt like coming home after wandering for years, lost in a world that had never made sense without him. The warmth of his lips spread through you like the quiet promise of dawn breaking over a frozen landscape, melting away the distance that had once felt insurmountable.

“Fuck,” he murmured into your lips. “I’ve missed you.”

“Missed you too.”

And then he whispered, barely audible, a breath against your skin, “No more partin’.”

The words cut through you, raw and piercing, like an arrow finding its mark. You understood, in that moment, that this was where the distance ended, where all those unspoken goodbyes, all the quiet departures of the heart, finally came to rest. He was offering you something more precious than any words could capture—a life in which you wouldn’t have to watch him walk away again, in which the space between you would no longer be an endless, aching divide.

You leaned into him, feeling the truth of it settle in your bones, feeling the relief that washed over you, a warmth spreading through you that felt like homecoming.

In that moment, you understood that this was the place you had both been searching for, that all the roads had somehow led here, to him, to this quiet room, to the snow falling softly outside, to the words you’d both carried with you all this time, waiting for the right moment to be spoken.

Outside, the night stretched on, blanketed in white, the world a vast, unbroken silence. But here, in his arms, in the space where all words had faded, you knew that the search had finally ended.

And so, the chapter closed, not in the place you thought it would, but in a place neither of you could have ever imagined—a place without partings, without endings, a place where you could finally be whole together.

Thank you so much to everyone who followed this story and for all the incredible support and love along the way. I’m incredibly grateful to each of you who stuck with me until the very end, and I hope you’ll join me on my next project. I’m planning a new story that will focus on Simon, Johnny, and Reader, and of course, I’ll be continuing Skin of Thunder as well. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart!

[justlettheraincome]

I've met someone

"I've met someone" It was a notion, that Aziraphale had dreaded for a long time. There was a smile playing on Crowley's lips. Just the faintest notion of love hanging in the air. "You've met someone?", he repeatet. "Yes, lovely bloke", Crowley puttered on: "900 year old timelord, has seen the start of the universe and could actually name all of my stars…" There was a pain digging into Aziraphales heart. Crowley had met someone, someone who shared his ife experience. And his interests. Someone, who maybe wasn't so afraid of speed. Or his own feelings. Aziraphale felt the ground under his feet start to spin. "- anyways, I digress", Crowley finished the tangent. Taking a closer look at Aziraphale's face, he asked: "Are you alright?" "Yes, yes perfectly fine. Do go on my dear." Crowley shook his head slightly, as if to acknowledge that he didn't really believe Aziraphale. But his point seemed to be important to him, so he didn't dig further: "We talked about the problems of a nearly eternal life. And discovered that we had quite a lot in common." Aziraphale felt the ground sway again. He breathed in, softly. This was an important experience in Crowleys life. Even if he would have loved to be that guy instead of listening to Crowley going on and on about him, he owed Crowley the respect to listen to his feelings. "Including the regret of not saying something very important. And he doesn't have the chance to say it anymore. But I do. And I don't want to regret not saying it." What was Crowley going on about? Aziraphale had lost him somewhere on the way. Hadn't he just been explaining how great that guy was? "Right, okay, yes, so… We've known each other a long time. We've been on this planet for a long time. I mean, you and me. I could always rely on you. You could always rely on me. We're a team, a group. Group of the two of us. And we've spent our existence pretending that we aren't. I mean, the last few years, not really. And I would like to spend… The rest of eternity not pretending any more." With that sentence, Crowley seemed to deflate. Aziraphale needed a moment to register: "Not pretending anymore?" he repeated slowly. Crowley closed the distance between them. Yellow eyes pierced into sky-blue ones. He took another deep breath in: "Aziraphale…", there was just the tiniest bit of hesitation in his voice. A fear not yet fully overcome. "I love you."

[carionto]

Just needs a *little* more Sun

The Humans are searching for and cataloguing planets for potential colonization. It is an insanely long list and they've just started - they are willing to tolerate a lot. Like, partly shielded solar radiation, hostile weather patterns, changing tectonics, extreme temp-

right, Deathworlders. Nevermind.

Anyway, this list includes planets beyond what they should be able to tolerate by their own standards. As in, each planet lists how long a regular Human could survive with access only to food, water, and basic shelter. There are a lot of planets with the note: "One Standard Day or less". Most of them, not all for whatever reason, also have a note: "Terraforming efforts approved".

Interestingly, while the notes on suitability for Human survival go into granular detail, and offer extensive suggestions for measures on how to mitigate the negative and boost any positive aspects of any given analyzed planet. The terraforming bit is just that one sentence, and when we asked a Human colleague, they just shrugged and said:

"Case by case basis, there's a lot of different methods we wanna try out, and people will come up with new ones once they're actually at the planet, so it's impossible to preemptively detail what we're gonna do. It'll be fine, don't worry too much."

We decided to worry a bit and went to check out one of the planets. It had a single note in bold regarding the difficulties:

EXTREMELY LOW TEMPERATURES

When we arrived the Human station... was not in orbit of the planet, but instead quite a distance away just on the edge of the planet's gravitational influence and was technically orbiting the local star.

As we approached, we noticed a massive folded structure being constructed. It seemed very reflective, with another smaller structure that was mostly transparent. Confused, we inquired what this was about and if they had given up on terraforming the frozen planet.

"Ahh nah, dudes. We're making a big ol' lookin' glass and mirror ring. Keep it in, uhh, geo-orbit, or I guess solar orbit right between 'em. Gon' shine more Sun on that planet, warm it up natural like. More or less. My son came up with the idea while playin' with the other kids. Bet he'll be a proper science person one day."

[jayrockin]

The crest of the Bug Ferret Galactic Community, a intergovernmental organization that represents the of the vast majority of bug ferret polities and institutions in galactic politics.

The crest depicts the habitable tropics of the bug ferret homeworld, and the avatars of their planet (brown and white ferret with a teal band overhead) and their large moon (pink spotted ferret with an orange fungi) surrounded by a pink cloud representing their relationship as egg twins in Star Family mythology. The homeplanet is shown transferring life to their sibling, who is imagined as having been a stillborn that was returned from death by terraforming. The six other ferrets represent the inhabited celestial bodies of the local star system. There are some expanded forms of the BFGC crest that include avatars of more or all of the inhabited worlds in their territory, which can get ridiculously large. Bug ferrets can only see red through green on the visible light spectrum, meaning their blue gas giant and bodies of water are depicted as a dark, grayish green.

Like other ferret crests, it can be represented in any style between painted realism and a "Braille" form; simple grooves that are easier for touch identification in total darkness. Bug ferrets do not use flags to represent political factions— they are accustomed to windless underground tunnels and tend to have poorer long distance vision than other sophonts, making "legibility at a distance" unimportant to them.

PATREON | STORE | Runaway to the Stars