#it's already a long post lol

[pigeontheoneandonly]

Astronomy 101: Stellar Life Cycles

This is the first in a series of posts I plan to make explaining basic astronomy concepts.  I am not a professional astronomer, but I have a B.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics, experience performing professional astronomical research (primarily photometry), and a lifelong amateur interest in astronomy. I am committed to accuracy in these posts (though some simplification is necessary) and welcome questions/comments.

(Image source)

Nearly every aspect of a star’s evolution is governed by a single characteristic: the star’s mass.  Stellar masses are enormous, and so astronomers find it more convenient to measure them in solar masses (M☉, M being mass, and ☉ being the astronomical symbol for the sun, pronounced “M-sol”). 1 M☉ is equivalent to the sun’s mass; 2 M☉ is twice the sun’s mass; 0.5 M☉ is half the sun’s mass; and so on.  Our sun masses approximately two quintillion kilograms—that’s 30 zeroes!—so it’s easy to see why this convention makes comparisons between stars easier.  

Stars are composed primarily of hydrogen, with non-trivial amounts of helium (ex. our sun is about 74% hydrogen and 25% helium).  They fuse the elements within themselves to produce an outward pressure from radiation that balances the inward pressure imposed by their own gravity (gravity wants to collapse the star; radiation keeps this from happening).  The lowest stellar mass that can sustain a fusion reaction is theorized to be 0.08 M☉.  It’s not physically possible for a star to be smaller than this.  On the other end, the most massive stars range up to 250 M☉. (It should be noted that as the universe ages, stars are getting smaller; it is hypothesized that new stars cannot exceed 150 M☉.)

Stars are born from the gravitational collapse of giant molecular clouds (GMC), which are large, cold, and relatively dense pockets of interstellar gas.  It’s theorized that several mechanisms can trigger GMC collapse, including the shock wave from nearby supernovae, collisions with other clouds, or passing through the spiral arm of a galaxy (which is denser than other areas). These all disrupt the balance within the cloud.  As it collapses, it begins to fragment, forming individual stars.  One GMC will produce numerous protostars.  

The protostar phase lasts a relatively short time, about 500,000 years for stars the size of the sun. During this time, the protostar continues to accrete mass from the surrounding nebula (its own pocket of the GMC).  Gravitational collapse is countered by gas pressure and magnetic pressure rather than by nuclear fusion as the protostar grows.  Eventually, this is not sufficient and the protostar begins to collapse and enters a new phase: it reaches sufficient density to ignite nuclear fusion in its core, and becomes a proper star.

Initial fusion in the core fuses hydrogen into helium.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but the lower a star’s mass, the slower it burns through its fuel and the longer it remains in this phase of its life.  Massive stars are not only much hotter than small stars, but they need to produce more energy to stave off gravitational collapse. This causes them to burn through their supply of hydrogen very quickly.  Very low mass stars born early in our universe have not existed long enough to burn through their hydrogen supplies.  Models predict stars of 0.1 M☉ will take 6-12 TRILLION years to exhaust their hydrogen, and our universe is only 13.8 billion years old.  These stars are barely getting started.  These stars, known as red dwarfs, will never become red giants.  Instead, they will continuously mix their original hydrogen stores with their newly produced helium until the entire star is composed of helium, at which point fusion will shut down.  As they reach the end, they are predicted to become blue dwarfs, and then eventually white dwarfs.  No blue dwarfs presently exist because the universe is still young.

Stars more like our sun, ranging from 0.6 to 8 M☉, have lives more consistent with what many people are taught in high school science classes.  When these stars exhaust the hydrogen in their core, they still contain a large volume of hydrogen in their outer layers.  They enter the subgiant phase, where they fuse hydrogen in a shell surrounding the helium core, and the star begins to expand and cool.  This new helium adds to the volume of the core, the hydrogen-fusing shell moves outwards.  This phase lasts several million to two billion years, again with lower-mass stars spending longer in this phase.  

(You may have read that the sun will get hotter as it ages.  This is true, and it’s due to the fact that as the fraction of hydrogen in the core decreases, the core temperature and rate of fusion increase.  The sun will contract and become hotter as it approaches the subgiant phase.  It’s theorized that this will make the Earth uninhabitable in about one billion years.  However, the effects of plate tectonics and specifically the subduction of water from the oceans and the gradual slowing of tectonic activity is likely to play as large a role if not larger.)

This hydrogen-burning shell supports the star against gravitational collapse until the helium core grows too large.  The core will contract, and the outer layers will further expand and cool as the star becomes a red giant.  In the case of our sun, its radius will expand beyond the orbit of the Earth, in about six billion years.  Shell burning continues at an increasing rate, but the star is no longer in equilibrium, and the core continues to contract even as it increases in mass, until eventually the star begins fusing helium into carbon.  This can happen very suddenly for stars at the lower end of this mass range, or more gradually for more massive stars.  The growth of the star can also temporarily create new habitable zones, primarily for the moons of gas giants, lasting several hundred million years.

Stars in this mass range do not have sufficient mass to fuse carbon, and so when the helium is largely consumed in the core, the core begins to collapse, and this time, only a strange state of matter called electron degeneracy will stop it.  The Pauli Exclusion principle states that no two electrons can occupy identical states, and electron degeneracy occurs when a star has collapsed to the point that all the electrons of the star have been forced to occupy all the lowest-available energy states within the atomic structure of the star. The energy of the gravitational collapse is insufficient to overcome this electron pressure.  White dwarfs are very small and incomprehensibly dense; similar to the mass of the sun, they are similar in size to the Earth.  A teaspoon of white dwarf would weigh about 15 tons. Fusion has ceased, and the star is an inert ball of slowly cooling degenerate matter.

This is the end of the road for stars in this mass range, which is most of the stars that presently exist in the universe.  Very, very slowly, solo white dwarfs will continue to cool.  White dwarfs are predicted to outlast the lifespan of galaxies as structures in our universe.   They may still be extant when enough time has passed for proton decay to become a significant force and ultimately devour the white dwarf.  If proton decay takes significantly longer than predicted or turns out to not exist, the ultimate fate of a white dwarf is to be devoured by a black hole in the very, very, very far future of our universe when other forms of stars have all ceased to exist.  (The black hole era is predicted to begin 10^43 years after the Big Bang, but it’s dependent on a lot of poorly-understood factors.  Safe to say, this is not anything anyone needs to worry about.)

More massive stars have a more interesting if shorter life.  They blow through their hydrogen quickly, ranging from 1 billion years to as few as 10,000 years. (You can calculate here.)  As these stars enter their supergiant phase, they lose mass rapidly due to strong stellar winds.  These stars do possess enough mass for more complex fusion reactions, and will gradually develop shells fusing various elements, and finally in the core, ultimately producing iron via fusion.  All elements aside from hydrogen, some helium, and small amounts of lithium and beryllium are created by stellar nuclear fusion.  Iron, however, is special, because it is the lightest element on the periodic table that requires more energy to fuse than it produces through fusion. A star attempting to fuse iron is going into an energy deficit, rather than producing energy through radiation that can stave off gravitational collapse.  A star cannot fuse iron.  

The final days of such stars come on quickly.  The core turns to iron within a few hundred years, so rapidly that there is little change in the outward appearance of the star, which continues shell burning right up to the end.  Eventually, this iron core reaches the effective Chandrasekhar mass, a little larger than the mass of our sun, and the core can no longer support itself.  The core collapses.

It’s easy to say the star then explodes in a supernova, but the truth is more complicated.  A supernova is triggered by the release of gravitational potential energy from the core collapse.  If this is insufficient, instead the core becomes a neutron star or a black hole with very little fanfare.  Some supernovae (pair-instability supernova) do not leave behind any stellar remnant despite originating from supermassive stars.  Other supernovae do not involve supermassive stars, but white dwarfs in binary pairs accreting matter from their stellar companion.

The core collapse takes less than a quarter of a second.  Within a few hours, the shockwave reaches the surface of the star, which will brighten tremendously over the next few months.  At peak, supernovae can outshine their host galaxies.  Perhaps the most famous supernova, SN 1987A, was visible to the naked eye and wasn’t even located in our own galaxy, but in a satellite galaxy.  This shockwave is incredibly high-energy, to the point that it not only ejects outer material from the star, but ignites fusion reactions in that material. Here, we have an excess of energy, and nuclear fusion reactions that require more energy than they create are possible.  This is how all elements heavier than iron are created. 

The core becomes a neutron star or a black hole.  Which depends on a large number of variables, perhaps strangely only two of which are core mass and stellar mass.  A neutron star is similar to a white dwarf, in that it is composed of degenerate matter, but in this case electron degeneracy was not strong enough and it is held up by neutron degeneracy.   In this state, electrons have combined with protons to produce neutrons, leaving behind a highly dense star composed of nuclear matter. While a neutron star is again slightly more massive than our sun, it has a diameter of only about 20 kilometers. A teaspoon of neutron star weights approximately 4 billion tons.  Many neutron stars rotate rapidly, giving off jets of radiation from their poles. These stars are known as pulsars. The fate of neutron stars is similar to that of white dwarfs; they will eventually merge into black holes in the far distant future.  

Other stars become black holes. In this case, even neutron degeneracy cannot stave off gravitational collapse, and the core collapses into a singularity.  A singularity is a poorly-understood object where spacetime curvature becomes infinite. We can study singularities mathematically, but we can’t observe one, because it is hidden behind an event horizon—a boundary surrounding the black hole where gravity is too strong for even light to escape.  And if light can’t escape, we can’t observe anything inside the event horizon.  Our current understand of physics also breaks down here; our theories of gravity aren’t sufficient to fully understand singularities.  We can, however, study event horizons, accretion disks (matter falling into the black hole), and jets of particles and radiation some black holes exhibit.  This has given us a good understanding of the external properties and behavior of black holes, and we detect them based on these characteristics and the effects they have on other objects (ex. an orbiting companion star).  

So if everything eventually becomes part of a black hole, what happens to a black hole?  The answer is they evaporate through a process called Hawking radiation.  Essentially, according to quantum mechanics, space has a quality called vacuum energy that causes virtual particle pairs to continuously pop in and out of existence. The pair consists of one particle and one anti-particle, which annihilate each other and return the energy of their creation to the vacuum.  Therefore, no energy is created or destroyed.  However, every so often, one of these pairs pops into existence with one particle on the outer side of the event horizon, able to escape, and the other trapped inside the event horizon.  The virtual particle that escapes becomes a real particle, and that energy has to come from somewhere.  It takes it from the black hole.  Because mass and energy are functionally equivalent, this drains a tiny amount of mass from the black hole.  (Please note: this is a dramatic oversimplification, but gets the basic idea across.)  On long enough timelines, this will cause even the largest of black holes to evaporate. Unlike just about everything else involving stars, smaller black holes evaporate more quickly than large ones.  

[fellowship-of-the-doodles]

A little AU based on a dream I had recently in which the Fellowship teamed up with the Winnie the Pooh characters to escape a natural disaster, and when it was over they all moved into a house together with a massive stockpile of food :) Here's just a few of their interactions; I'll probably do more sketches of the AU if people are interested and if I feel inspired to (which I definitely have more ideas for it!) Anyway I just remember that they were all best buds in the dream and it was super cute so I wanted to do something with it <3

[bunnieswithknives]

OH MY GOD??? HAS IT SERIOUSLY BEEN A MONTH????? I am so sorry guys

Prev | Next

[itsaprosthetic]

we are so back

We are so back

[lucabyte]

So does anybody else ever think about how Loop felt the need to demonstrate that the party's deaths wouldn't have any effect on the loops. I know I do but that's besides the point. Anyway I don't think Loop actually needs to bathe, they just like to feel included.

[ew-selfish-art]

Dp x Dc AU: Danny and Tim are twins- And Vlad is the first to figure this out in his attempts to get DavlCo a new investor.

---

Tim was getting the creeps from this guy. It was as if the room got colder, the seconds got longer and the room's shadows moved to their own volition. He stared Tim down less like 'You punk kid' and more like 'You'll be mine' in a way that Tim didn't appreciate. At all.

The guy kept setting meetings up despite Tim's direct insistance that Wayne Enterprises would never touch DalvCo- not with a ten foot pole or for all the money in the world. Some how Tim's board of directors kept getting swindled by the guy and... therefore more meetings. More looks from this guy that made him want to crawl out of his skin.

Vlad asked him if he ever went by Timothy- Tim couldn't reply "that's not my name" fast enough. It apparently inspired the guy somehow. More meetings that Tim can't reject because of board members pop up.

It's been long determined that Jason doesn't get involved with Wayne Enterprises, but after the Uncle and a few other paid-actor solutions go up in flames- Tim decides to call up his older brother to act as a bodyguard and tell this guy to fuck off for the final time.

Jason apparently also gets the Heebee-jeebies from this asshole but his message is loud and clear to Vlad. There's a flash of green and then all of sudden it's just Tim and Jason in the room... Only Jason isn't acting like himself.

Putting it together- Tim reaches for his contingency F stash of Knock out gas and doses Jason. Vlad doesn't re-appear so Tim assumes that to mean that he'll be trapped in Jason's person until Jason wakes up.

Walking out of the meeting room with his bus of a brother over his shoulders- Tim quickly asks Tam to reach out to Vlad's Emergency contact. Surely there is someone in this man's company willing to explain what the fuck Vlad was trying to pull. Tim theoretically can keep Jason drugged asleep for a long time- surely that threat can get him somewhere.

The day drags on as Tim continues to keep Jason unconscious and eventually Tam lets him know that someone is here for Vlad. She says it with the addition of one of their codes- He mentally prepares himself for the worst and then... His doppleganger walks through the door? What the fuck?

Tim and Danny puzzle about one another for a little too long and Jason wakes up- Vlad pops out immediately. A shouting match between Danny and Vlad commences and...

"Man I knew our family had unresolved issues but seriously what the fuck has your clone dealing with?" Jason asks, as though he could watch this all day with pop corn.

"You made more clones?!" Danny screamed at Vlad who's only response is "Not this one! This one is actually polite!"

"Fuck you!" Tim and Danny reply in tandem.

[oh-gh0st]

shadowpeach fans i hope this finds you well 😁

[teaboot]

if ur a murderbot nerd now do u have any fun opinions abt it yet?

Oh my goddd you have no idea

I really, really, really like Murderbot because it comes at life with this perspective we don't often see that is very real among people who have already been through traumatic experiences, who developed skills and abilities to suvive that were once useful but no longer have context- that search that traumatized people go through to recalibrate and reorient ourselves in a world where we no longer really need those things to survive.

A bit personal here, but my own issues personally involved a lot of psychological abuse that made it difficult to trust my own perceptions of reality, and as a result I found I was very easy to lie to and manipulate.

To handle this, I became obsessive over writing things down, cataloging details and making notes of things as they happened- I'd carry recording devices and make audio recordings and stay up late at night to transcribe what they'd picked up, read those over and over again to reassure myself of things I wasn't certain about.

While doing this, there were others close to me that I felt responsible for, who I had to protect from others and protect myself from at the same time. Life was about two things: Evidence, and defusing threats

Over time, I learned to trust myself as my memories matched what had been recorded where their narrative didn't, but I never really kicked the habit. Like Murderbot, I had added something to my own programming that reassured me I was safe, that I was in control of myself, that I couldn't be mistaken or crazy or broken or used.

I'm only on book two, but already I see myself in Murderbot again. No spoilers here, but when I left home- left that dangerous context- I didn't need to repeat these patterns to survive anymore, but I still did, because I didn't know anything else anymore. It felt safe, comfortable, knowing knowing that the past couldn't repeat itself, because I'd written that flaw- blind trust in myself-  out of my programming and replaced it with something else.

Still, though, I'd become something specially suited to thrive in a very specific environment. Nothing else felt right like followinghigh-risk situations, like witnessing and watching and recording and knowing I had proof of the truth where others might not.

People took notice. I wound up in security by accident, but's an environment that I thrive in due to the same patterns and behaviours I originally developed when I had no other choice. I climbed the ladder pretty quickly, once supervisors caught on that my reports were the most accurate, most objective, most factual, detail-oriented and timely. I keep others and myself safe and prioritize public safety above all else, and I perform well under pressure

Now I'm in a position where I often wonder, do I enjoy this job, or is it just what I'm good at? I have a set of skills now, but do I have the option of choosing not to use them? What would I be, if not this? Could I be anything else? Can Murderbot be anything else?

It has a set of skills that set it apart, make it different, special. It does what it knows best. But is it free? Does it want to be? What does it want? Does it have to do what it was built to do? What if it didn't?

I know what I'm good for. The idea of deliberately leaving what I'm good for for something uncertain, that I might hate, that I might be useless at- the choice to give up what was so important to me for so long and become deliberately obsolete?

Let go of my entire purpose? The only thing I know, that I fit so well into but don't actually know if I enjoy? Now that I can choose? Now that enjoyment is a luxury I can afford to consider?

Yeah, that resonates.

I like the Murderbot series so far because it feels the way I feel: Like the most significant and formative part of my story, the part where I became what I am, has already happened

And now I have to just. Keep going

Into... what?

It feels absurd. Like a microwave giving up on reheating food and deciding to start a life around abstract dance.

So, uh. Yeah. It's really very wild to see this same philosophical-ish dilemma I've been digging over in the back of my mind and in therapy for the last forever laid out so plainly in a genuinely exciting and enjoyable story like this. I feel much less alone, and I... kind of really need to see how it resolves, I think.

So, uh. Yeah. Read Murderbot, I guess

[apparently-artless]

The greatest fight of the century… that never happened. (ᓀ ᓀ)

[damthosefandoms]

The clock is ticking in the kitchen. Ponyboy is out past curfew. With Dally. The door creaks open, and Darry stands up so fast he nearly falls over. Sodapop walks in, and if he wasn’t freaking out so badly about Pony, maybe Darry would’ve caught the look on his brother’s face.

“Oh, it’s just you.”

“Just me?” Soda says. His eyes are red and puffy. “Why’re you makin’ that face?”

“Pony ain’t back yet,” Darry mutters. “Close the door, you’ll let in bugs.”

Soda does, slowly. He walks over, kinda keeping his head down. Looking anywhere but at Darry.

“Normally I’d be worried too, but actually that kind of works out, ‘cause I have to tell you something I don’t want him to know about yet. I mean…”

He kicks at the throw rug with his foot. “I told him a little last night, but he prolly thinks I was just daydreamin’ and that’s for the best.”

Darry watches him carefully. Oh, so now he’s paying attention. 

“What’s goin’ on? You went out with Steve and the girls tonight, didn’t you? Did something happen?”

“I asked Sandy to marry me tonight.”

Darry laughs, a quick, sharp thing. It stings. He doesn’t get it. Ponyboy didn’t either, but he’s fourteen, only been fourteen for a month. He didn’t need to yet.

“You’re dreamin’ Sodapop. You might’ve dropped outta school this year, but you two are way too young for—”

“She’s pregnant.”

They stare at each other for a solid minute, the only sound the clock ticking in the background and the crickets outside. Just the two of them standing there processing the information.

Darry starts to raise a hand, to hold up a finger in a “wait a minute” kind of gesture, and he moves his mouth like he’s going to say something, but nothing comes out. Soda’s heart hurts in his chest and he tries not to start bawling right there in front of his big brother.

“Well, it don’t matter, anyway. Sandy doesn’t know if it’s mine or not. And if it is it still don’t matter ‘cause her folks are livid. They’re makin’ her move to Florida to live with her grandmother or somethin’, and she dumped me so I’ll never get to see her again, or the baby at all, and she’s leavin’ tomorrow afternoon, and if you could not lose your mind at me I’d really ‘preciate it ‘cause I feel like worse than garbage already.”

He really fights not to let the tears spill over, and granted he does a good job of not breaking down, but some do fall. Darry looks like he will blow any second now, but he just breathes in, breathes out, closes his eyes, and says in a very calculated and careful voice:

“Ponyboy went out with Dally and the gang tonight and he is not back yet. We will talk about this later when I know he is not dead.”

They do not get a chance to talk about it later, and they do not find out for a week if their baby brother is or isn’t dead.

edit: fic I wrote based off this post

[ruskatuskapuskasapuska]

Sord🗡️

(edit: I forgot to color aoba's headphones and the tiny yellow patch on his jacket, oop fixd)

[sygneth]

game of deduction

[lambmotifz]

i ♡ metaphors

[soothifying-sounds-asmr]

I was accepted to a paid video editing internship and a lot of the work is very reminiscent of what I used to do here. It makes me so happy to know that my silly little Tumblr blog gave me good practice :3 I hope everyone is doing well <3 Tell me what you're going to be for Halloween!

[lemondoddle]

what happens when you type into the computer (BOOK OF BILL SPOILERS)

HELLO THE WEBSITE HAS UPDATED and different things happen when you type things into the computer on the screen. if a character/word isnt relevant the computer gives a red X. so far i've found:

stanley: takes you to an ebay search for brass knuckles, entering his name repeatedly will take you to various grunkle-related eBay searches until you get to bill's wheel of shame with much more to click

mabel: adds stickers to the set. you can keep hitting enter until the the room has been "fully mabelized"

ford/sixer: a case file on ford's extra digits

soos: a long set of notes about how soos is doing running the mystery shack

dipper: a note presumably from bill to dipper "informing" him that he can decode messages by staring into the sun. if you enter his name multiple times bill urges you to keep looking with words of encouragement as each note becomes progressively blurry and splotched with black until the entire notecard turns black

bill: this youtube video (and no it's not a rickroll)

gideon: an audio recording plays of gideon humming/scatting to the tune of "we'll meet again", ending with a whispered message of "i love you, mabel"

wendy: a note pranking you with the the 👌 emoji

mcgucket/fiddleford: the cotton eye joe music video

pacifica: a warning note about the book of bill mabel made her write

robbie: chat messages between him and thompson as they prepare to summon bill (as mentioned in tbob) with an image of their encounter

tad strange: the computer plays clips of bread being sliced set to jazzy instrumentals. this enables the glowing red button on the computer to turn green to switch the bread videos on and off at will

blendin: a message appears on the screen reading "time agent lost and presumed incompetent"

weirdmagedon: a newspaper page from the gravity fall's gossiper utilising the "nevermind-all-that-" act and stating "nothing happened" that day

axolotl: text onscreen appears: "you ask alotl questions"

T.J. eckleburg: text onscreen appears: "never mention that name again"

cipher: links to a wikipedia page about triangles

blanchin: pulls up a youtube tutorial on how to blanche vegetables

triangle: one half of a parenthesis appears on the computer ")", will also pop up with "tri harder"

dippy fresh: links to this image

mystery shack: links to a google search for confusion hill

gravity falls: text appears onscreen reading "never heard of it"

portal: text appears onscreen reading "portal.exe has been deleted. i bet you could build one"

theraprism: a notice sign appears- "in case of (coded words) do not use elevators" with a graphic of a person and a cthulu like monster on stairs

blind eye: an eye chart utilising the same string of letters- "WKHBOOVHH" that gets smaller each line, paired with blocks of color- the cursor turns into a "zoom in" tool that actually just makes the page blurrier with each click

creepypasta/horror: an entry on the urban legend "the always garden"- a liminal space/backrooms style restaurant anomaly

alex hirsch: links to a google search for flannels

toby determined: links to a google search for restraining order

dorito/chip: a dorito slowly enlarges on the computer screen and then becomes a jumpscare of a toothy bill, who periodically screams for a bit before the video finishes

love/boyfriend/romance: pulls up the parody romance novel, clicking starts an audio recording of the book

death: text appears onscreen: "life's goth cousin"

book of bill: text appears onscreen: "hide it under shirt during pledge of allegiance"

life: text appears onscreen: "life: 72% complete. now loading: death"

baby/lalala: an ultrasound of a baby bill in a womb and a message congratulating you

pines: text appears onscreen: "a good family tree"

weird: a video of weird al yankovich appears on the screen, he's confused and shouts for bill to get him out of there

waddles: links to a pig adoption website

mickey/disney: text appears onscreen: "rat.gif censored for your protection"

ducktective: text appears onscreen reading "ducktective stars in 'love, quacktually', coming to 'oi, it's the cockney channel innit?' this fall"

mason: a note from dipper about ford teaching him anagrams, plus a coded message with that technique

tyrone/clone: a picture of the janky dipper clone with a message that he's yours now

matpat/game theory: a video of matpat and a conspiracy board, he turns to say "hello internet, you're on... you're own... good luck" as he holds the book of bill

skeleton: text appears onscreen: "the one with the sword! he found you!"

scary: pulls up a parody goosebumps book "spookemups", clicking on it starts an audio recording of neil cicierega reading a section

divorce: pulls up a logo for "o'sadley's'"

music: enables you to click the dial, clicking the dial plays loud static

math: bill recounting an encounter he had with plato

conspiracy: a video of charlie day in a tin foil hat rambling about the website's previous state, holding the book of bill

okay that's enough from me, there's SO MUCH MORE that I just can't keep up with!! Happy searching!

[thebramblewood]

The first meeting of the Vatore Book Club has commenced.

Previous / Next

Helena: Caleb, are you in here? [telepathically] Caleb?

[silence]

[under breath] Where are you? You promised you’d show me more today.

[picking up journal] Hmm. These definitely weren’t here before.

[begins reading]

May 25, 1918: Another night daymare. Same as all the others. Calloused hands squeezing my throat, phantom fists pummeling my stomach, shrill bursts of laughter assailing my ears, sky of taunting stars, blinding white moon, a monstrous form looming over me… Straud insists I should no longer be able to dream. One more bold-faced lie from a man who speaks arrogant, empty words just to hear his own voice - and endlessly, endlessly. I already tire of his dull speeches.

July 10, 1918: The days stretch eternal in this crumbling mansion. I am Straud’s prisoner, though he claims I am free to come and go as I please. Yet he prattles on with excuses as though he does me a favor by denying me. I’ll not be allowed off the grounds until I bend to his will, until I  have suitably mastered discipline. How I loathe that word! I’ll be sick if I hear it once more.

September 8th, 1918: Killed two men last night. Only meant to step out for fresh air but instead found drunken idiot humans stumbling unknowingly across town lines. Their thoughts came to me easily. (So the old man taught me something after all.) Vile and crude remarks on my body, naturally. My vision flashed white with rage, and my body convulsed as if to split in two. Their taste of their blood was exquisite. It’s a funny thing, though. I kept expecting the swell of remorse to arise, but it never did, even when my brother, drawn by the cacophony, flinched away at the sight of my monstrousness, truly frightened of me for the first time. Further reflection is required, but for now I must depart. Straud requires placating.

Helena: [thinking] This is Lilith’s diary?

[flips to final pages]

February 22, 1921: Caleb’s birthday tomorrow. If it passes, he will be 27. He will continue to outpace me in physical age. He will eventually die. I’ve promised it will not. All week, he has been nervously pacing and eerily silent, too afraid to ask the obvious question: Will I truly make him like me? I know how to do it, but thirst remains a constant presence in the back of my throat. I suppose I will take it up with Straud one last time, though he will respond as usual. He believes the gift should be offered only to those who have been deemed worthy. But he grows uncomfortable when I ask how he determined my worthiness. I know he saw me merely as an opportunity, a flimsy young girl in distress who could be easily remolded in his image. I disappoint him every day. We must be free of him soon.

-

Vlad, telepathically: I can still hear every thought that passes through your mind, girl. Your barricades are sloppily constructed. And, no, my position has not changed.