#planet humans sol

[lovegiroke]

sneak peak for my next video on YouTube

First person who guess what this video will be based on will get a shoutout

btw a hint is that these will be a small part of the video that all

[vanadiumvalor]

A strip game with Sol that I ran on Twitter!

[kwicksowa]

☀️Solec🌎

Ikk I usually post Solarballs and stuf but Im also in different fandoms yk,

^_^

Ik ik they broke up and dont like each other but I like to think of the times when they were a thing

[evilevilevilnotevilevilagain]

Im SO UNWELL ABOUT THIS MAN(?)....

[space-blue]

The Acolyte Brendok Re-write

I went ahead and reworked the entire Brendok storyline to flesh out and improve on character development. This rewrite ends up to the same outcomes but is set to be one long episode or two back to back if need be, with a much deeper focus on our star POV character:

This rewrite is very long (5.3k words) so I'm putting it under a cut. If anything is confusing let me know. Some scenes are not fleshed out at all as they're intended to be mostly the way they are in the show.

Thanks to my friends Paula and Vincent who helped craft this plot.

Torbin POV — He's our focal POV character for Jedi sections.

Instead of picking moss for 7 weeks they have been on a hyperspace survey, hopping from blighted world to blighted world, exactly what they expected to find. Torbin makes a deprecating joke about how excited he is to sample new rocks.

They drop out of hyperspace and discover the lush green world of Brendok.

Cockpit scene with the Jedi arguing loudly, strong emotions : excitement, confusion, lots of back and forth with words we and Torbin don't understand, and some of the conversation made all the more confusing by Kelnacca's shyriiwook.

The audience gets to be educated about vergence alongside padawan Torbin. But clearly the Jedi aren't sure this is what it is, and the vergence is made to be a very mythical and improbable thing. Sol argues it must be one, and Indara says he's being far too hasty. 

> Establishing early the theme of Sol seeing what he wants to see in things and getting ahead of himself.

Torbin seems excited that they can finally report something significant and go home. 

Kelnacca laughs and says something. Torbin is crestfallen and asks "Really?"

Sol, fixed on the world with poorly veiled enthusiasm, says "Of course, we can't pass up such an opportunity. We have all the tools we need as well."

Indara agrees and says they will land and take samples. When Torbin gives her a wounded look, she smiles and says this is definitely the last world on this mission before going home, but they can't not investigate. 

They crash land or damage their ship in some way as they come down. They try to call for rescue and find their comms broken. They trigger their distress beacon and prepare to wait. Indara decides to deploy the team collecting samples and data to not waste their time, since they're here either way.

On that first night, Torbin has nightmares. We don't get in them but see him have tremors and kicking.

Montage of how tedious and boring the life is, collecting moss and not finding the clues they expect. They have a camp OUTSIDE their ship (like a campervan extending so they can process samples and cook on fire, etc.) Field biologist vibe, and the adult Jedi all give off that field tech nerd vibe enduring the elements to get stuff done. 

Torbin (who is shown rubbing his forehead on occasion and blinking at his samples/at the horizon) is complaining a lot about the feeling that this is pointless, and Sol—who is very excited for the possibilities of a vergence—keeps trying to uplift and reassure him, getting in the way of Indara's training. They have a chat about it like in the show, making it clear that Sol is overstepping, despite it being in good spirits.

Torbin goes and has another nightmare, this time we're in it with him. 

He's running through a forest, and spirit/demonic smoky figures are running around him, laughing, cackling. He's being hunted. The trees part before him, shining bright. He comes to a hard stop. When the brightness equalises, we see the vista before him is the coruscant skyline. 

Cut to his face, teary-eyed, quivering smile of relief.

An arrow shoots through his throat. He goes to fall to the ground—next cut, the thing that actually hits the ground is an animal, shot there with an arrow by the witches.

(It's a scene transition to daytime in the real world)

Osha POV

Mae and Osha are there, being taught how to hunt. Mother Koril makes them rehearse their lessons on how to poison their arrow tips, and what poison is used for what season, establishing their mentor/student relationship and the future poison name-drop. The witches hunt as a group, and we see them using the smoke power to get ahead of an animal or away from danger. It is shown to be positive and useful.

Mae uses the Force to freeze one of the animals Osha is supposed to shoot and she takes exception to that. She starts an argument between them over how to hunt, saying Mae always does stuff like that and to stop. She wants to prove herself alone. Mae doesn't get it: they are always together so they should hunt together. 

A scout crashes the end of the hunt by reporting the presence of intruders further in the forest. Koril is first curious and cautious, but the witch says they seem to be Jedi and Koril goes into panic mode and repatriates everybody home.

The girls bicker the whole way home and wonder what Jedi are like and how dangerous they really are, with the adults too busy hurrying to really mind them.

Their settlement is in a crater/mountain/old mine too, but many of the buildings are made out of local wood. Only the inner chambers and private quarters of the girls and mothers seem to be in the stone buildings. However, LOTS and LOTS of lush carpets and tapestries are everywhere within these areas. Despite the abandoned mine setting, things are warm and cushy. That will also be great fuel for fire later. It gives the witches a strong visual aesthetic. They clearly do a lot of crafts. Visual representations of the Thread abound, and lots of spirals and dot work.

It becomes very clear that the girls are the only children and treated as little princesses.

Koril goes to talk to Aniseya. She reveals the presence of Jedi on the world. Aniseya smiles at her and says 'I know.'

Start of an argument, Koril demanding, 'When were you going to tell me about this?'

Aniseya saying it's fine, she's just keeping an eye on them through the eyes of their weakest member (Torbin). They crashed down in a valley beyond the river and should pose no threat. There's only 4 of them and they seem to be scientists/researchers/academics. 

Koril remains angry and says they can't afford to take any risk as the ritual is fast approaching and they can't miss this chance to tie the girls to the coven.

Aniseya has strong words then, challenging Koril over how much she thinks she cares for the girls and asserting she would never endanger them and only thinks about what's best for them. 

Here is when the girls come running in, having changed, and Aniseya flips to good mom and feeds them treats. Insert some cute family time together. Here is a good moment to have Osha voice how scared she is of the coming ritual and further the bickering between the sisters. Osha can complain about how Mae got in the way of her hunt, that she won't let her do anything on her own and this isn't resolved when Aniseya interrupts the fight and makes them hold hands, just like in the show.

Torbin POV

It's morning and Sol and Torbin are eating rations in the sun, sitting on crates by the ship. 

Sol gives a sheepish look over his shoulder to the ship's entrance, but approaches Torbin asking him if he's OK. He heard him scream early this morning.

Torbin breaks and confesses to his nightmares (and maybe headaches, triggered from Aniseya taking glances through his eyes). He's distraught and Indara approaches, annoyed, thinking that Sol is overstepping again. Kelnacca is on her heels. She arrives in time to hear Torbin say he thinks they're not alone on this planet. He's seen them. He sees them in his dreams. Adds something cryptic like "they live in the mountain".

This should be shot almost like a horror film moment. 

The masters exchange looks, but can sense his unease and agree to go investigate. Sure enough, they find proof of habitation. 

Torbin looks relieved at the news: it wasn't him losing it. But he's extremely aloof and clearly torn between going to confront these people and ask for hospitality + broker peace, vs. keeping clear of them since his dreams are so ominous. Anyway it's clearly not his call to make and they are very low on resources + have only a distress beacon and hope to send a message to the order.

Emphasise that the knights are more hopeful and open and consider themselves welcome anywhere in the galaxy, highlighting how unusual Torbin's anxiety seems. He looks like he's overreacting as far as the jedi know.

They bang on the door and after an awkward wait, a woman comes out and asks what they want.

They explain they crashed and have low food and no comms, and hope to trade and send out a message/confirm they're being picked up.

The woman frees the way and invites them in.

The vibes are off the entire time, but more in an awkward or uncertain way. 

When they are allowed to step in and talk to the mothers, the witches at the door perform a small welcoming ritual, dabbing their foreheads with a dash of white paint. Something intrusive and unconventional. Indara and kelnacca care the least/are used to putting up with weird local stuff, while Sol seems a little put off or wary, and Torbin is outright uncomfortable with being touched.

They go inside, get to be shown around a bit. The witches are very standoffish. Kelnacca strikes off to inspect their craft and is curious about the spirals and chats to an artisan who speaks shyriiwook. Indara is focused on getting a message out. Aniseya insists on sending it themselves (to make sure they don't plot against them). Indara promises them safety though if they could help understand the planet it would be great.

Aniseya plays dumb about the vergence (IDK what you mean?) but says they can answer their questions. Sol starts asking, more and more questions about the planet and the witches (when they arrived, where they landed, was the mine operational when they arrived, etc) making them grow visibly uncomfortable, as it seems like he's asking to figure them out, rather than the planet. 

Meanwhile Osha and Mae are spying on them. Mae insist on going back to their room as they were ordered to stay out of the way. Osha distracts her. She says look at the mighty scary jedi. They're not so bad. Sol is smiling as he asks his questions, Indara laughs politely with someone. Kelnacca is now trading food. They aren't that scary and also... There's a boy.

The girls fixate on Torbin, who looks tweaky and uneasy. They nudge each other, comment on his curls and wonder what he's like. Osha spots his lightsaber and points to it. She decides to go have a closer look. Mae insists it's not safe and that they should go back to their room.

Osha goes and pspspshhhs Torbin. He spots them and follows them to a more secluded area. He makes fast friends and shows off his lightsaber when asked. He looks much more at ease seeing kids around. 

They start quizzing him with dozens of questions all at once. Mae and Osha have different interests (Osha asking about other kids and what life is like on Coruscant, Mae asking why he's carrying a weapon and can she see it, or something like this). 

Torbin, who is clearly good with younger kids, answers them and starts reminiscing about what he left at home. The temple, his classes, his friends... he seems increasingly homesick. Osha asks how many other children there are and is shocked when she learns there's hundreds of them, living equally all together.

The chat goes in the direction of Torbin being the one asking questions and the girls guard is down. They tell him about the ritual they're about to take part in. Maybe he likens it to a knighting and they clarify they will become the leaders of their coven. Torbin asks how come they can become leaders if they're kids still learning. The girls don't really have an answer, but maybe Mae says it has to do with how good they are with "pulling on the Thread". They reveal they are FS that way (maybe pulling Torbin's saber out of his hand with a victorious smirk, which would make Torbin freeze in realisation).

They are then caught. Torbin is dragged away and the girls are forced back into the building. He is made to swear to not speak of the girls to anyone. He does. He gives his word.

The Jedi go back to their ship and very quickly Torbin says they are force users. This immediately clicks for the Jedi. "ah so that's why the vibes were so off. They're witches." sort of realisation. 

When asked how he knew, Torbin hesitates but quickly reveals the girls' presence. He says they claimed they too can "pull on the thread", which the older jedi immediately understand to mean use the force. 

Sol shows interest and curiosity and some concern. Only two children? Twins? And why are witches hiding them? Again we get to hear more about the Jedi's relationship with force cults via dialogue between Torbin and the masters. They explain to him why some force cults are seen more negatively, and he has only heard of nightsisters.

Torbin is asked for details and mentions what the girls said about being part of a ritual and becoming the coven leaders.

Sol continues to worry and the POV shifts to him.

In the morning he goes to spy on the witches, climbing the side of the walls. 

At first he only sees normal life scenes, but then he follows a large group that makes its way to the pit to begin a ritual. They carry a very elderly witch. Then they head to fields set in terraces carved from the rock wall. There he witnesses with increasing distress a death ritual, in which the elderly witch, clearly at death's door but still alive, is levitated between chanting witches with black eyes. She dissipates into smoke.

We experience and see how incredibly wrong and disturbing this feels to Sol. Dune-style montage of his vision/sensation of this, to highlight that her passing into the force was not usual. This is not peaceful or light. Maybe he feels nauseous. Visible reaction. 

But then the plants in the fields experience a mad growth spurt (close ups of sprouting seeds, things rotting faster, soil shivering with worms and insects, buds exploding into flowers and seed). Would go with whoompy and base heavy, oppressive soundtrack. 

The witches come out of their trance delighted and go observe the results in the fields while Sol makes his shaky exit.

He goes back to Indara extremely concerned and insists on "rescuing" the girls. Torbin feels more guilty now that he spoke up at all. He just wants to leave and is against going to fetch the kids. Outvoted again. Indara accepts the risk seems great and they can use the Jedi looking for kids as an excuse to confront them about this.

Osha POV

The girls are still arguing as they prepare for the ritual. Talk with Aniseya. Very little needs to change. The ritual proceeds and is again interrupted. Make that ritual look a little spookier but remain visibly just as safe.

Torbin POV

We go back to the show's scene of a home invasion by the Jedi, interrupting the ritual for the girls. The girls are hidden but this time Indara says she knows there are children here. Koril glowers at Torbin who tries to make himself very small.

Dialogue remains similar. The girls are brought forward. Sol softens and mellows and clearly is smitten with them and tries to recruit them. Torbin blurts out the mark on Mae's forehead is new, which makes everyone tense up. 

Indara insists the children be tested. Osha wants to. Koril argues. Sol argues. The camera pans to Torbin instead and their voices fade out to a hum. His face is twitching. Voices around him accuse him of lying, breaking his word, and being spineless. Intruder, child snatcher, etc. He breaks, blinks, and whispers "I'm sorry", and the moment the word is out, his eyes instantly go black.

Scene proceeds as in the show. The witches promise to bring the girls in the morning for their tests.

Sol is vindicated and extra worried due to the way they treated Torbin. Unlike in the show though, Indara cannot ask for council guidance. She sticks to the rules and says Sol can't be for real, the girls are too old, the witches too weird, they won't let them go. Torbin may add they're here with their mom and it's fine and to please leave it.

As they walk to their two speeders, the celestial bodies overhead separate (the opportunity has passed and the ritual cannot resume)

Osha POV

Chat with their mom about the test with the Jedi the next morning. Girls arguing. Mae says there's no point as they're part of the coven now. Osha saying she isn't. Aniseya tells her that of course she's part of them, even if the ritual wasn't fully completed. She tries to reassure her, says she must lie. 

Osha whines and says she wants to show her progress and what Aniseya taught her. Aniseya explains that it would be dangerous and that the jedi have to know as little as possible about their true capabilities. Both girls ask why, as they still both think the Jedi were nice and don't seem like bad people.

Aniseya explains that the Jedi aren't bad as individual people and that maybe all of them here are very kind and good, but the order they belong to is enormous, wields power and controls it. It gets to decide who can use the Thread and in what way. Then she segways into a gentle and kid friendly explanation that many generations ago, their coven already had to flee a world to escape from the Jedi. She may say that they claim to be peaceful, but have gone to many wars against the Sith, and that you can't even call it a war when they wipe out a small coven.

The girls go to the ship and make their promise to lie.

We see Mae lie and tell worrisome things about becoming "one with all" to the masters like in the show.

Then Osha goes in. The same happens but she already knows about other kids and she simply asks what it was like for Sol and is shocked to hear they have babies too and that Sol was given pretty old at 4 yo. 

Once she's done with the test she's now not failing, we get to see her try more things. The remote and saber, a little spar with Torbin with sabers on low settings, push-feather with Indara. She's exhilarated and bright eyed and admits she wants to become a jedi. We SEE her be happy with them and ask questions she likes the answers to.

Indara is looking quite displeased with this. Torbin is very uncomfortable standing in the doorway, and Sol is smiling brightly and encouraging Osha, clearly bonding with her through the test.

When Osha steps out Mae already knows she must have told them the truth because she stayed in the ship for so long. 

We go back with the witches. Have same scene as in the show with osha deciding she wants to go, Aniseya promising to take her opinion into consideration, the witches being against it, and Aniseya choosing to let her go. 

ASIDE : 

The reason why the girls are so OP, must become leaders and the witches have no other kids (all relevant to the back and forth with Aniseya and should inform dialogue)

The coven uses group action. Most of the witches are fairly weak individually but can be powerful as a group working as one. The power of many. They rally behind powerful leaders. On their last world they were subject to attack, lost a lot of their children in particular, and their OP leader. Mother Aniseya/Koril were younger then, but the two next OP. They fled to Brendock in hiding, and discovering the vergence, Aniseya created the twins. Seeing their potential they were made as next leader. This would mean leading group rituals and protecting the Coven. They are only as powerful as their best witch, and Mae and Osha are like multipliers.

The witches don't make it sound like this is taboo, and more like Jedi would definitely take the girls away to study them and never return them. They can't afford this because of protection, they are not even done recovering from the damage of their last conflict.

Back to the story, with Mae furious. She is kicked out before Osha leaves the room. We now see her lock the doors and break the pad without anyone knowing, before she runs back into the building to get to Osha. 

Torbin POV

The Jedi rescue finally arrives at the crash site. It's just one man in a small ship. He's here to give them a ride back. Torbin wants to go now, Sol wants to stay. The blood test ping right then. 

The girls are suspicious to them immediately. Sol concludes they were born of the vergence. Indara suggests they might have been created from it, split somehow. She goes to use the new ship's comm to go as the council for guidance. 

They are all in their camping area, half packed up. The new jedi is watching them argue while sipping on his soup, looking confused. Indara comes back out saying the Council said NO. 

Osha is too old, and with her alone there's no proof they're the product of a vergence. They said they must come home, and will send another crew later on to mediate with the coven and investigate the matter.

Sol is distressed and says the girls are in danger. Mae is already marked. Osha outright said she wants to come. And if they bring back BOTH girls then the council will see they are a vergence and must be trained/studied. This is where he says he feels OSha is meant to be his padawan. 

Indara goes to protest, but Sol runs for a speeder to say he can negotiate with the witches.

 Indara yells for Torbin to follow him and stop him. (there's only two speeders and Torbin being lighter will be faster alone to catch up). She and Kelnacca run for the new ship telling the new guy that they'll be right back and please mind the camp. He looks very confused but resigned.

Torbin catches up to Sol outside the coven and begs him to stop. They can finally go home. They don't belong here. Sol ignores him and instructs him to shut off his mind so they don't get to him again and breaks in, Torbin on his heels.

Witches on high alert. Koril and Aniseya rush to the yard to confront the men.

Osha POV

Fight/argument with the girls in their room. They vent a lot of their usual criticism, push and pull over Osha's notebook, and in it Mae sees doodles of Torbin too (bit of a "turning Red" style acknowledgement that girls get crushes, but it also helps establish Osha as turned to other people and Mae perceiving this as a threat. 

Now Mae mocks Osha for having known Torbin for barely a day and she's already boy-sick.

Osha rips the book from her hand and goes to hit her with it. Mae reacts by pushing her with the force out of reflex. Osha doesn't block (as she didn't with their earlier training which still can happen when they come home from the hunt). She sends Osha flying across the room, hitting her head. She passes out and doesn't see the lamp breaking on the carpet, igniting it. 

Mae freezes, watching the carpet flare up. She tries to tamp it down, screaming Osha's name. She runs to her and tries to lift/drag/shake her but she's heavy and the fire is spreading. She rushes out screaming for help.

Torbin POV

The situation is heating up as Kelnacca and Indara arrive together. Sol has dropped the fact they should be taking both girls if they can and the witches are reacting like this is child snatching and straight up won't surrender Mae.

Indara tries to calm everyone. She's starting to make sense, and Aniseya goes to say something (maybe say she's OK to let Osha go), only for Mae's scream to be heard. She comes out screaming "Fire, fire!"

Sol yells "Osha!" Only for Mae to give him a weird look and say "Osha's trapped in the room!"

Sol blinks his surprise away. The witches turn on the jedi, many voices heard at once, asking what have you done!? Indara says "Nothing, we're all here, we just want to talk." 

The witches fire back they are lying/they have a new jedi/he must be here.

Torbin whips out his lightsaber right as the witches begin firing at him. 

All at the same moment or in very quick succession:

Koril goes for Indara and is deflected by Kelnacca

Aniseya goes to smoke rescue Mae, only for Sol to freak out at the sight of the smoke effect again and stab her. She still tells him "You could have taken Osha, she chose to go and I was going to let her".

Mae screams and rushes forward, falling over Aniseya. Indara leans over her and says they have to put down the fire, asking where Osha is. 

Koril attacks Sol.

Kelnacca and Torbin block arrows while Indara picks Mae up and asks to show her the way.

Osha POV

Osha wakes up alone in a room in flames. To her, she was left for dead and left to burn. She makes her escape as in the show. She can't get to the door due to flames. We hear screams and explosions as the whole place flames up. She makes her way through the tunnels.

Jedi POV

Cut back to Mae and Indara, discovering the room is empty. Indara is calling out for Osha, tries to sense her, says she's not here. Mae has already spotted the open pipe and darts away.

Cut to the Koril vs. Sol fight and Torbin blocking arrows. Things proceed as in the show, with Koril disappearing to smoke and the witches taking over Kelnacca, except Indara stops her efforts to contain the fire and find Osha when she hears Torbin scream. 

She winces in shared pain and rushes back out to see the end of the fight with Kelnacca. She intervenes again. This is way more visceral. We actively see depictions of her mental state. When the witches are cut off it's a thread snapping/strong sound design. Indara is shaken, mumbling an "oh no... I... I...' (clearly didn't intend to kill when she severed the bond)

There are still screams about the place as women try to escape the flames and smoke. Several explosions then.

Indara snaps at Sol "Find the girls!" before rushing to Torbin's side. Kelnacca is KO. Torbin is much more grievously injured. A sweating and visibly strained Indara takes a deep breath before trying to use force heal on him.

Sol POV

Sol, running inside to find the girls, stumbles on the witches all dead. Koril is WITH them, to highlight the fact she wasn't dissolving with the smoke effect, but teleporting, meaning Sol must have overreacted to this effect (and now he can guess what Aniseya most likely attempted and we know he knows).

He hears screams and follows them.

Instead of the girls being in a split gangway about to collapse just yelling each other's name, he finds Osha trapped outside the exit of her pipe system. She is still over the same drop, though it'd there is a lot more smoke that obscures the real depth of the shaft (and there's more coughing/strong impression things are burning all around).

Mae appears from the side and at a higher point (she's been tracing the path of the pipes trying to find where Osha would emerge and is getting to her now). She proceeds to move forward despite how dangerous the damage gangplank is, to try and reach Osha.

Sol yells for her to move back. He tries to find a clear pass, crying from the smoke in the air. Mae is saying she's sorry, she's also crying and saying "Mom's dead" to a horrified Osha who asks her "what did you do?!" 

Mae says "The Jedi came for you!" as an accusation. "I didn't—" and then the ramp drops a bit, they both scream. Sol yells for them to hang on and gets closer. 

Mae gets back up at the edge of the ramp and Osha grabs her hand and joins her. Their combined weight is too much. The ramp breaks and falls down over the pit. They hang on, screaming, and Sol grabs the entire ramp with the Force. 

He's crying, blinking, straining. Mae is slipping, her grip on Osha loosening. She has one hand on the ramp and one on Osha's top.

Sol slips in the Force and the ramp falls. Mae and Osha are shaken loose, but Sol grabs Osha with the Force, letting Mae fall (She was behind Osha, grabbing the back of her shirt, so she doesn't really see what's happening in the moment).

Things proceed as in the show, with heavier smoke and fire and Osha being dragged away from Aniseya not just because Sol doesn't want her to see the wound but also because there's real urgency in leaving. They run past the main door, where we can maybe see collapsed bodies. Sol runs to the weird black pit, on the edge of the settlement, the only place still clear of smoke. The music distorts around it, ominous. He looks around, desperate, passed out Osha in his arms. 

Light falls on him from above : the jedi ship, piloted by Indara.

Cut to the same scene as in the show with them in hyperspace, except they're not in their own ship but the much smaller rescue vessel. Kelnacca is passed out right next to Osha in a cramped room, and Torbin is sitting nearby, hugging himself, face swollen and eye shut by crusted blood. He's mumbling he's sorry again and again and Indara is actively soothing him/rubbing his back before the confrontation with Sol begins and she decides they have to cover this up.

Argument remains the same : Mae started a fire, everybody died, but we know the mom allowed Osha to be a Jedi, and she's the sole survivor. She also wanted to join, and though they can't exactly prove she was created by a vergence, they have blood samples and she can still be studied while she trains.

Osha screams and cries as Sol holds and hugs her. Camera cuts to Torbin. Pale faced, bloodied. He's finally still, his one good eye fixed dead ahead as we listen to Osha's wailing. 

Indara places a hand over his shoulder and whispers, 'It'll be all right. We're going home.'

Cut to Mae POV

Close up of her face, stone grey. Flakes of ash fall on her and coat her as the camera pans out. She's on her back on a lower gangplank in the shaft. She wakes up coughing, confused. 

She took a hard fall and is limping and hugging her arm, but she crawls to an exhaust port and emerges in the woods.

She's covered in soot and dried blood. Much, much dirtier than in the show. She turns back around : it's dawn, her coven is still burning/emitting a huge plume of smoke.

She looks around, the camera is far away, making her small and alone in the shot. She asks, in a trembling voice, "Oshie?"

Cut to black.

[2lurslinger2000]

Recently got back into soul eater so i created a solarballs au 4 it. Sol Eater

[lazykamix3]

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH YOU GAY PEOPLE GOD TOTALLY NOT ME INCLUDED 😒

ANYWAYS I LOVE THIS PERSONS OC 🩷🩷

WATCH THEIR VIDS I CREDIT THEM EVERY POST LOL

[jamlabs]

Drafting a solaxl comic about humanity persistence and the Voyager probe

[doodledrawsthings]

A Nine Sols AU of sorts... MAJOR 9 Sols Spoilers and AU context under the cut:

basically, hypothetical super secret third ending AU where Yi is both able to take out Eigong before she mutates the Fusang pinnacle and ALSO evacuates and helps the Apemen. Maybe he takes them back to Penglai, but I wanted to explore the Solarians living out their last days/months/years/whatever on the Pale Blue Planet living with the Humans as equals and helping them set up shop and survive.

[nasa]

9 Out-of-This-World Moments for Space Communications & Navigation in 2023

How do astronauts and spacecraft communicate with Earth?

By using relay satellites and giant antennas around the globe! These tools are crucial to NASA’s space communications networks: the Near Space Network and the Deep Space Network, which bring back science and exploration data every day.

It’s been a great year for our space communications and navigation community, who work to maintain the networks and enhance NASA’s capabilities. Keep scrolling to learn more about our top nine moments.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, on the company's 29th commercial resupply services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 8:28 p.m. EST.

1. In November, we launched a laser communications payload, known as ILLUMA-T, to the International Space Station. Now, ILLUMA-T and the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) are exchanging data and officially complete NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end laser relay system. Laser communications can send more data at once than traditional radio wave systems – think upgrading from dial-up to fiber optic internet. ILLUMA-T and LCRD are chatting at 1.2 gigabits per second (Gbps). At that rate, you could download an average movie in under a minute.

NASA’s InSight lander captured this selfie on Mars on April 24, 2022, the 1,211th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

2. Data analyzed in 2023 from NASA’s retired InSight Mars lander provided new details about how fast the Red Planet rotates and how much it wobbles. Scientists leveraged InSight’s advanced radio technology, upgrades to the Deep Space Network, and radio signals to determine that Mars’ spin rate is increasing, while making the most precise measurements ever of Mars’ rotation.

TBIRD is demonstrating a direct-to-Earth laser communications link from low Earth orbit to a ground station on Earth.

3. We set a new high record! The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload – also demonstrating laser communications like ILLUMA-T and LCRD – downlinked 4.8 terabytes of data at 200 Gbps in a single 5-minute pass. This is the highest data rate ever achieved by laser communications technology. To put it in perspective a single terabyte is the equivalent of about 500 hours of high-definition video.

A 34-meter (112-foot) wide antenna at Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex near Canberra, Australia.

4. This year we celebrated the Deep Space Network’s 60th anniversary. This international array of antennas located at three complexes in California, Spain, and Australia allow us to communicate with spacecraft at the Moon and beyond. Learn more about the Deep Space Network’s legacy and future advancements.

An illustration of the LunaNet architecture. LunaNet will bring internet-like services to the Moon.

5. We are bringing humans to the Moon with Artemis missions. During expeditions, astronauts exploring the surface are going to need internet-like capabilities to talk to mission control, understand their routes, and ensure overall safety. The space comm and nav group is working with international partners and commercial companies to develop LunaNet, and in 2023, the team released Draft LunaNet Specification Version 5, furthering development.

The High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking node launched to the International Space Station in November and will act as a high-speed path for data.

6. In addition to laser communications, ILLUMA-T on the International Space Station is also demonstrating high-rate delay/disruption tolerant networking (HDTN). The networking node is showcasing a high-speed data path and a store-and-forward technique. HDTN ensures data reaches its final destination and isn’t lost on its path due to a disruption or delay, which are frequent in the space environment.

The Communications Services Project (CSP) partners with commercial industry to provide networking options for future spaceflight missions.

7. The space comm and nav team is embracing the growing aerospace industry by partnering with commercial companies to provide multiple networking options for science and exploration missions. Throughout 2023, our commercialization groups engaged with over 110 companies through events, one-on-one meetings, forums, conferences, and more. Over the next decade, NASA plans to transition near-Earth services from government assets to commercial infrastructure.

Middle and high school students solve a coding experiment during NASA's Office of STEM Engagement App Development Challenge. 

8. Every year, NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement sponsors the App Development Challenge, wherein middle and high school students must solve a coding challenge. This year, student groups coded an application to visualize the Moon’s South Pole region and display information for navigating the Moon’s surface. Our space communications and navigation experts judged and interviewed students about their projects and the top teams visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston!

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars upward after liftoff at the pad at 3:27 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Aug. 26, from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida carrying NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 crew members to the International Space Station. Aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft are NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.

9. The Near Space Network supported 19 launches in 2023! Launches included Commercial Crew flights to the International Space Station, science mission launches like XRISM and the SuperBIT balloon, and many more. Once in orbit, these satellites use Near Space Network antennas and relays to send their critical data to Earth. In 2023, the Near Space Network provided over 10 million minutes of communications support to missions in space.

Here’s to another year connecting Earth and space.

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

[lovegiroke]

Winplantasy AU part 3: Sol

Yeah, because of the livestream, I retconned  a couple things, like originally how sol left the star council and founded the Solar System was going to be different along with instead of Alec and Lunas parents getting killed it will be their aunt/uncle while their parents would’ve already died before. As well as some other things I didn’t get to address but yeah.

While we’re at this I don’t really know how the rest of the stars are gonna be in the canon universe, my guess is that they can be either relatives to sol or college professors. But they are antagonists in this AU but not all of them I would say are evil.

I do have some ideas on what some of the star would be like (the Centari trio, Sirius A and B and Stephenson 2-18) and Phobos and Deimos designs, and I can show them if thats what all of you viewers want, but either way I won’t show them until all the planets in the au are revealed.

That all, I hope y’all like my sol design.

[carionto]

Humans really like space wildlife

As Humanity integrates itself within the Galactic Coalition ever further, trade and travel between Sol and neighboring member systems is growing at exponential rates. In particular, their interest in the native wildlife of other planets is the most widely expanding sector for tourism and commerce.

Even though it is also the most heavily regulated and restricted one, Humans, who typically display a desire to subvert the normal procedures to expedite any process they can, for this they are surprisingly willing and eager to fill in all the necessary paperwork and spend hours upon days making sure they follow and adhere to all the requirements to import some of these creatures.

While such level of determination is not uncommon for new member species who discover a certain non-native creature or something that to the respective natives is commonplace but for them is the pinnacle of exotic, the variety of requests made by Humans is nearly as great as the entire list of known fauna species. And the reasons listed on the forms are even more diverse:

"That's a unicorn! I've always dreamed of having a unicorn and you're telling me there's a dozen subspecies?! Yes, please!!!"

"After reviewing their behavior, this bear-sized fluff-ball is the perfect cat I've always wanted, but couldn't because of allergies. I'll treat them with love and care, my life is incomplete without this fella."

"Tiny. Elephant-duck. Want."

"Our company was looking for a mascot, and these six-legged spindly beaver-crabs are perfect. Here's our mission statement and prepared accommodations for a flock."

"They all said I hallucinated the lizard sasquatch when I was on that acid trip, but now I'll show 'em. It's real. I knew it all along!"

"Aww, these baby puppies are so adorable (referring to the four meter, 800kg Fanged Widowmaker of Abyss Valley predator). My kids were looking through your alien picture books and instantly fell in love with these ones."

And so on. At first we had to reject quite a few, mainly because half of them were deadly beasts from Deathworlds that are almost impossible to capture in the first place. Then the Human officials informed us that, while they will try to stop it from happening, if we don't make importing and adopting even the most dangerous animals in the known Galaxy reasonably possible for them with Human help and expertise in the field, some Humans will set up illegal smuggling rings to "fill the market gap" as they said. Historically, they explained, that causes more problems and expenses than just handling it through official channels.

Reluctantly we were persuaded and have set up a new organization to quell this, apparently, unquenchable Human pack bonding condition. Even if said pet can kill them. We think, as horrible as it may be, that for some that is part of the appeal. Even the ones that breathe out literal poison.

"We'll wear a mask around them. This wendigo-like one is too cute to not get belly rubs."

Said the OFFICIAL Human Representative of a monstrosity that can only be described as the living incarnation of countless teeth, fangs, claws, vivid seizure inducing iridescent feathers, and a body that extends from a inconspicuous ambush pose to a fully 8 meter tall six limbed nightmare machine of Death!

[forgottenthreads]

Alien Ambassador: so I've just been to Sol, met with the Humans, and we have a problem.

Alien politician: what sort of problem?

Ambassador: remember a while back we ran into that insectoid species?

Politician: yeah there were like what 60 million of them in delta P right, such a headache trying to negotiate voting rights for them, their population was out of control.... An order of magnitude more than any other race we've encountered, Wait there's not 60 million humans right?

Ambassador: um no... There's not 60 million humans

Politician: thank the stars, those humans are a mess, I heard what they did to their system, global warming, nuclear war, then Mars... Just crazy...

Ambassador: they passed 60 Million humans before the nuclear war, in fact they passed 600 Million humans before their nuclear war.... They had 6 Billion when their global warming was first identified

Politician: oh.... Oh no...

Ambassador: the insectoids had one mother laying eggs, about half the humans are mothers, they can double in population every 2-3 years if they want, though typically they double every 30 to 50 years

Politician: so that's ...

Ambassador: they're coming up on a trillion

Politician: ... A problem. Wait how does even two planets support that many of them?

Ambassador: well they don't just live on Earth, Luna, Venus and Mars anymore, someone had the idea to turn space debris into 'space stations' and farmland... They predict their system can support 10,000x the population before running out of easily accessible materials.

Politician: ... Well the fecal matter is certainly going to hit the circulation unit when the news gets out... They have no self control... Wait a second wasn't Venus that Acid world... What the... How are they living there?

Ambassador: I figured it was better not to ask.

Politician: I think I'd better get to work, please write up a full report for .... Everyone .... everyone will want to know... *Sigh* it's gonna be a long Decade.

[tanoraqui]

In Which Space Orcs are Men

[AO3] A "what if humans are space orcs" take on Dagor Dagorath. (Aka the prophecied apocalypse of Middle Earth. Scifi story accessible to non-LotR nerds!)

Elves weren't really supposed to leave Earth. That's what they told us—the Elves, that is, told people thousands of years ago, when Elves could still be found here and there. When I was born, elves were nearly as much a fairy tale as they’d been on Ancient Earth.

Elves weren't supposed to leave Earth, the Elves said in the fairy tales, and in a few old scraps of records scattered around known space. They literally weren't made for it. They could only do it if they brought Earth with them—Arda they called it, leaves or dirt, water or a rare bubble of air, perfectly preserved in a white crystal. There are tons of tales about Elves losing their lifeline jewels—their hearts, their silimirs—and roping people into epic quests to get them back before they—the Elf—faded to nothingness. 

Even the jewels weren't enough, though. That's why there are also stories about Elves who fell in love with a person or a place and stayed there until they faded, or Elves who charmed someone into following them back to Fairyland on Earth...because whatever they said, Elves didn't really live on Earth. Humans have maintained their home planet as a monitored nature reserve since like the 40th century, open only to vetted research teams and serious Human religious pilgrimages. The most confirmed accounts of Elves that exist are of their ships appearing out of nowhere, with no trace of any tech that would enable it, at random, always-changing points within 100 miles or so of Earth.

Nobody ever came back from trying to follow Elves home. Mostly Elves tried to dissuade people from trying. But there are always crazy and curious people—and Elves usually attracted those, because any Elf who left the home they were "made" for was usually crazy and curious themselves. 

Those were the stories I grew up with. There was a cave near the orphans' creche which was supposed to be haunted by a faded Elf. I didn't really believe it—like I said, the last confirmed Elf was last seen like 5,000 years ago, and not even on my planet. People have met two dozen new sentient races since then. We've discovered that reincarnation is probably real (just functionally untrackable), prompting the Pan-Religious Reform Wars. The last person to see a live Elf was still traveling via natural wormholes—they literally didn't know that you could loop pi.

.

When the Human natal sun started to turn really red, it wasn’t that big a deal at first. It’s a very important, very sad event for any species, but it happens to everyone eventually. It happened to the Hectort just after we invented interstellar flight. There were some unusual gravatic waves around Earth’s Sol, but nothing worth noting to anyone who didn’t already care for personal reasons.

Then the Elves sent us a message.

The local Parks Service picked it up, of course. I bet the Humans meant to hush it up at first—though the Centaurian government still won’t admit anything—but someone leaked it immediately on the intergalactic net. It should’ve only been famous as a joke of a hoax, but…

It was basically just a metal box with rudimentary fire-thrusters soldered on the sides. It contained two things. The first was a recording/replaying device so antiquated that the only way they got it working is that it was already playing on loop, and didn’t stop until someone disconnected it from its power source.

The message was in Ancient Bouban, which some folklorist soon announced is the latest language an Elf could know, since the last known Elf went back to “Arda.” The voice somehow sounded melodic to every species with a concept of music, from the screeching Vesarians to the deep-sea sub-sonic Thinkers, even when translated through cheap, staticky speakers. And to most species, the speaker was audibly distraught.

They said,

This is the final message from the Firstborn of Eru to the Secondborn, and everyone else. The Battle of Battles has come, and we…are losing. If there are any who remember the ancient love and loyalty which bound our peoples, if there are any heirs remaining of Thargalax the Magnificent, of Nine-Fingered Frodo, of the noble Houses of Haleth, Hador and Beor—

The speaker drew a sharp breath, there.

—by great oaths and greater friendship I bid you now to raise your swords and ride to our aid. Ride as swiftly as you can!

We will hold for another year. We will, they said determinedly. After that, it is unlikely that…

Another, shakier breath. A smile forced into a voice which would rather weep.

Fëanáro and Nienna believe there is a way to destroy the Straight Road. If we must, if it comes to it, we will do so, and trap the First Enemy here in this dying world with us. Though I don’t know about—

Hair-aristocrat! a more distant, slightly less perfectly melodious voice called, in a language so dead that they needed computers to decode it. The walls are falling, we need to go!

If you never hear from us again, and no sudden discord arises among you, you will know we succeeded, the first speaker said quickly. If otherwise…I am sorry. Either way, I bid you all only, remember us! Oh beautiful flames, remember us, as we have ever remembered y— 

There was a sudden screech of tearing metal, a defiant, musical battle-cry, and a jarring silence. Then the message restarted.

And that wasn’t even the strangest thing in the box. The strangest thing was the recorder’s power source, which was powering the whole tiny rocket mechanism as well. It was an Elf-jewel right out of a fairy tale, a fist-sized, translucent not-quite-diamond—but instead of rock or water or a much-loved scrap of plant, the only thing it held was light.

...Kind of. It isn’t normal light. It arguably isn’t light at all, as we know it—scientists now think it’s technically some sort of plasmoid aether, except it only acts like a plasmoid aether about half the time. 

It has no detectable source within the jewel. It fully illuminates whatever space it’s in, no matter how big. Its visible radiation is a frequency, the scientists say, that matches a hyper-accelerated version of what the universe must’ve sounded like in the split second after the Big Bang.

It makes people remember things, when they see it in person or sometimes even across a holo. Some remember a similar light in a strange traveler’s eyes. Others, dreamily enchanted valleys where spring never faded, or tall castles, bright swords, and stern and glorious lords and ladies. And some of us got hit with a whole lifetime of memories in one go: an identical gem on the brow of a sober forest king, friends who slipped through trees like shadows save for their merry laughter, an impossibly beautiful gold-haired maiden dancing in a glittering cavern...

(And all the pain and loss that came with them.)

And some people just remember the sight of a distant star—in another world, in another lifetime.

Reincarnation was provable but untraceable…until now. 

The Thinker ambassador on Astrolax Station 5 was the first to kick up a fuss. Most Thinkers never leave their home planet, they're too huge and aquatic. But like I said, there's always crazy and curious people. The ambassador started bellowing the second che heard the message, without even seeing the light, because, "I know him! My Wisdom! We must send aid!" That made some news, and random other people shared their own, less dramatic revelations, and soon a compilation swept the net with timestamps showing that most of them were organically independent, not just jumping on the bandwagon….

Even that might've gotten written off intergalactically. The Thinkers are big in reincarnationist circles, on account of how they claim that deep in their planetary ocean they can hear echoes of their past lives. But being mostly planet-bound means they're not really influential on a big political level. Or it would've sparked another surge of the Reform Wars, and everybody would've remembered the rock, but not the recording. Or there would’ve been a fight over this potentially infinite energy source (though that is so last giga-annum)….

But first it was shown in person to the current Director of the Admiralty of the Astral Alliance, President of the X-ee Empire and Matron of the House of S,sh, Ch’ees/i’i S,sh. I was actually there—I was Captain of her ceremonial Alliance guards, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage my career after Zanzibus. Very ceremonial, considering the X-eee have laser-proof shells and pincers and I have, what, opposable thumbs? Vestigial tusks?

I wasn’t paying attention at first, too busy being suddenly assaulted by all my own memories. So I missed the President freezing mid-step and gasping (in X-eee), “Mother.” I also missed her rising alarm call of an attempt to speak Ancient Elvish without an Elvish tongue or lips.

I sure didn’t miss her snap back to X-eee for a sharp call to attention, and everything that followed: the call to arms! The rousing of the Alliance! A tour of the galaxy, to find anyone and everyone else in whom the Light could awaken ancient memories! And for the love of X'eeh, why had nobody figured out how to get back to Fairyland with this thing yet, and every warship in the quadrant?!

If I believed in the One Behind, or in any other creator god or gods—I'm not saying I do, but if I did, if there really is something out there all-powerful and all-kind—then it'd be because out of every soul in the entire universe, the probably one in the best position to act on the Elves' message turned out to have, from a past life, two parents and a much-loved twin still in Fairyland. Like, that's insane, right?

I stayed with the Director's ceremonial guards for the whole tour, actually more than ceremonial for once—it was the weirdest mission of my life, and I've been on a lot of weird missions. Or supposedly routine missions that got weird (and usually disastrous). My friends joke that I'm cursed. S,sh requisitioned an Inquiry-class ship, so the science boffins could study the Light and jewel along the way, and we started wormholing at weft speed, hitting a new planet every week. Sometimes every day. In each major spaceport and ground-city, S,sh stood with the jewel on the highest available point and gave a recruitment speech for going to save the Elves and fight the oldest enemy of all reality. 

Honestly, it seemed a little redundant? The Astral Alliance was made for this sort of rescue mission (and for escorting trade convoys). But I was...if not happy, then sure as hell more self-certain with my ancient memories restored, and most people who joined up seemed to agree. It was mostly people who remembered, when exposed to the Light, who joined—so before long, we had a whole tag-along trail of mostly civilian ships, trying to get up to Alliance Fleet standard on the road in less than a year.

Three different religious sects tried to kill S,sh for "profaning the mysteries." Five others tried to steal the jewel because we were apparently appropriating a holy object. The boffins announced that, bar the can't-prove-a-negative possibility, the evidently sourceless Light should be counted as an infinite energy source, and at least seven different groups, ruthless financiers and sustainability idealists, immediately tried to steal it for that. And I still don't know what the rival thief-queens of Likkiliani were about, except that I got tied up upside-down from a palmdar tree for two hours trying to stop one, the other paid me 700 cron then threw me off a cliff, and in the end they recognized each other from past lives and just made out on worldwide live-holo before joining our growing fleet. 

It turned out they were the Director's past life's great-grandparents, and a Canid pop princess was her niece. The Thinker ambassador was some sort of ancestor, too. Crazy extended family. 

Most people who remember just remember the sight of a star in the sky. A buddy of mine from Fleet Academy remembered looking up at it as a Human sailor. The historians—and you’d better bet we picked up some Earther historians on this mission as well!—say this jewel or one like it was probably astrologically conflated with the planet Venus by early Humans.

(The more time I spent around the jewel, the Silmaril, the more I remembered, of my first life and more. Lifetime after lifetime with bad luck dogging my steps, killing loved ones in my arms, destroying cities I was supposed to save… One restless, haunted night, I met a Rigilic in the cafeteria who’d been awake with some of the same nightmares, who’d been my dead older sister once.)

The tour was cut short when word came from the Earth system that there was a black hole growing in the center of their reddening sun. 

No, the sun wasn’t compressing into a black hole millennia ahead of schedule—one had just spontaneously manifested within it, like it’d teleported in. No, not literally—that was impossible. We were pretty sure. No, the sun wasn’t falling into it…somehow. Yet. The black hole was only 17 quectometers wide, but it was growing at an erratic but unceasing rate. If their best estimation of the pattern held, it would consume the sun 2 months before the Elves’ deadline, and the Earth 4 to 950 minutes later.

We pulled back to Earth—well, to the dwarf planet Eros, on the edges of Earth’s star system. That’s where the nearest shipyard of any note was, and we were gathering the whole Astral Alliance. This is exactly the sort of thing the Alliance is for. 

I was released back to ship duty. Zanzibus was still a black mark on my record, as was Jorab, and really everything on the AAS Endeavor…and that thing in third year of Fleet Academy… But no matter how bad my curse, I was an experienced captain and one of the best pilots in the Alliance. For this, we needed all the best.

The boffins had pretty quickly mastered limited manipulation of the Light, using modified aetheric resonators, and every day they came up with something new for us to test. They focused the Light into a laser cannon like no one has seen before. They laced it through plasma shields until a fully shielded ship glowed like a distant star. They managed to nearly replicate the Silmaril’s crystalline structure, so they could make “copies” that shone like the original for first a few hours; then, with refinement, a full week…

The one thing they couldn’t pin down with any real confidence was how to get to Fairyland. The frequency of the Light resonated with large bodies of Earther saltwater in a particular way, and models suggested that if the Light source moved horizontally along the water within a certain range of distance and velocity, the resonance would create a wormhole-like ripple in space—but wormhole-like, was the key word, and models suggested. The closest anyone had seen to that spatial distortion was in a logbook of dubious veracity from the Delta Quadrant, four hundred years ago. Alteia, my Academy buddy who’d been a Human sailor, took the Silmaril in an M-wing on a series of highly monitored test flights above the Atlantic Ocean, and space did repeatedly start to hollow in front of bom—so bo had to stop every time, rather than risk vanishing with our single, maybe-one-way ticket.

Then Earth’s moon stopped shining in the sky. Its albedo just dropped nearly to zero, from one night to the next. There was nothing wrong that anyone could figure out—nothing with the orbit, nothing with the surface rock, nothing with the artificial atmosphere. Inhabitants reported feeling colder by several degrees, but no measuring equipment recorded anything.

The black hole slightly off-center in the middle of Sol was now 844.9 zeptometers, and growing more steadily.

We didn’t have time to keep testing. We needed to raise our swords and make our ride, even if we only got one shot at it.

I was given command, for seniority, skill, and because I was the one who managed to talk S,sh out of leading the fleet herself. (If my lives had taught me anything, it was the importance of having someone, anyone, ready to be emergency backup.) Ironically, I was back on the Endeavor, with most of my old crew—though we got permission to rename the ship, in honor of the mission. A lot of people did. Alteia was now commanding the AAS Elendil on my right flank, star-friend in Ancient Elvish. That Canid pop princess had taken over a hospital ship and renamed it Rivendell. An Earth Park Ranger, of all things, remembered being my dad—briefly—and he was leading the Rangers plus my Rigilic drinking buddy on the EPSS Elfsheen. 

We weren’t sure if any ship but the one with the Silmaril would get through. The fleet numbered in the hundreds in battleships alone, not counting scouts and scuttlers. Twelve races had sent ships on top of their typical Alliance Fleet tithe, and S,sh had brought about half the full force of the X-ee Empire. We all just locked tractor beams and hoped. 

I was piloting as well as captaining, with the Silmaril between my forehorns. It was held in place by about a dozen wires and other connectors to the ship, like an old-timey pilot’s headset. We took off in orbit around Earth, as close as possible to the surface—not very close, in warships of Class S and higher, but within range of the oceanic resonance. A Likkilianian thief-queen stood at my shoulder, ready to advise if anything “Musical” started to happen.

Think about what you’re trying to get to, and why, the boffins had advised, so I did—bright-eyed kings and dancing maidens; lost friends, families, cities, planets and all. The jewel got warmer against my skin and shone brighter with every pulse of the engine, brighter than we should’ve been able to see through.

The silver-gold Light twisted and diffused as space did around us. But there was no familiar rippling wormhole boundary—instead, spacetime thinned to a curtain like driving rain, like Vesarian silver-glass.

A ghost appeared next to me. She looked like the oldest, grumpiest writing teacher at the crèche, though I knew that was only in my head.

“There you are,” she said, impatient and relieved like I’d been hiding in the sandbox again, rather than coming to class on time. Her sewing scissors went snip snip snip as she darted them around my body—and a chain on my soul faded into guiding threads.

Before she’d even disappeared again, I punched the engine and blasted through the silver-glass curtain.

Fairy tales said there’d be a peerlessly beautiful land on the other side, green with eternal spring, full of endless light and laughter. They said there’d be sunlit shores and shimmering waves, with welcoming docks for sea-ships, sky-ships and space-ships all…

We flew into the worst battlefield I’d ever seen, in any lifetime. It was more desperately vicious than Jerusalem V at the height of the Reform Wars, more ruined than Glaurung’s wake, more desolate than Zanzibus after the nuclears fell.

Either a massive supercontinent or a small moon had been shattered, leaving nothing but a roiling debris field. The brand-new meteoroids ranged from pebbles to rocks the size of a small space station, and included space-frozen corpses, forests, and what might have once been city blocks.

I gave the helm back to my Pilot Officer—zer had, I can admit, slightly better reflexes for dodging debris—and focused on captaining.

Most of the life signs were clinging to the larger rocks. There shouldn’t have been atmosphere for them, but walls of thunderstorm wrapped around every shard with even a single life sign—wind and water desperately hand in hand to safeguard the last of the Elves. The only thing visible through the impossible storms was the Light of a second Silmaril, on a meteoroid shaped like half a broken eggshell.

A corpse lay at the epicenter of the explosion—what might’ve been a corpse, if it wasn’t also shattered. The broken pieces of a massive stone humanoid, taller than my ship if it’d stood beside her, still bleeding lava so hot that it burned even in frozen space. Another titan knelt at the shards of its head, a figure of towering bark and leaves, wailing with grief even worse than the end of the world. 

A slimmer tree-woman stood with one hand on her shoulder, comforting, and the other wielding a skyscraper-sized club spiked with incandescent wildflowers. Guarding her sister’s heartbreak, she fended off a swarm of bat-sized monsters with wings of darkness and whips of flame. 

Bat-sized relative to the gods of Elves and ancient Humans. About the size of an M-wing, in flight.

Countless more of the bat-things flung themselves at the storm-bubbles, like carnivores chasing the prey hidden inside. They were fended off by an equal army of creatures with wings of light and swords of lightning, led by a towering figure who seemed to dance from one bloody battle to the next.

The biggest battle by far was the farthest away, over where the sun had been. In this dimension of stories over science, Sol was another woman-shape, smaller than the others but burning just as brightly as her star. Also just as blood-red. The light was centered on a fist she kept clenched at her chest, and instead of containing the black hole, the unseeable thing that it was here surrounded her, striking at her with a thousand hungry jaws and grasping legs, and she had only a one-handed whip of a solar flare to fend it off—

But she didn’t fight alone. A warrior tore at the Darkness’s spidery limbs with his fists, image on the cameras flickering impossibly between every hero I’d ever heard of. A snarling figure bit at it with jagged teeth, gored it with horns, shredded it with claws and talons, and generally made every ancient prey-instinct in me scream. And a queen with a crown of stars, a shield like the night sky and a sword like a streaking comet, stood dauntlessly at the sun-holder’s side. 

With all that, and with the speed of even her most exhausted strikes, I thought the sun-holder could probably have gotten away if she’d tried. But I knew how a person fought when they weren’t willing to leave a friend, and a smaller, silver figure lay at her feet, unmoving and drained of light.

But even the battle for the sun wasn’t what grabbed my eye. No—all my attention, all my guiding threads of fate and the quick temper that always used to get me in trouble, before (and sometimes after) I learned to leash it in an Alliance uniform— All of that took me straight to the fight happening orthogonal to the stone giant’s corpse.

It was another one-versus-many. Morgoth, the First Enemy of Elves and Men— Master of Lies, Maker of Chains, Sonofabitch Curser of Bloodlines—towered over even his fellow gods. His shape changed constantly, sickeningly, but it was always black-armored with eyes like dying stars that hated you personally. His maul dripped with lava and every other kind of blood.

He fought against three great gray figures who moved as one. The tallest wielded a star-studded scythe with swift, efficient strokes, and wore the dark gray of corpse-shrouds. The shortest shimmered with more colors than even a Stamotapadon could dream of, and his weapon shifted likewise. The third was the clear, clean gray of skies after rain or tears run dry, and fought with only a shield—and hit harder with it than either of her brothers.

Around their heads darted the only Elves on the battlefield, in small fliers more like sea-ships than aircraft. But they moved fluidly, pestering the Dark Lord like flies, pricking his skin and threatening his burning eyes.

Until Morgoth swung his maul with a roar of fury that traveled even though soundless space. My ship and heart both shuddered. The gray gods all staggered back, and the Elves fell from the no-longer-sky—all but their leader, more fire than flesh, who wore the third Silmaril. Morgoth caught him in one massive black hand and with sharp claws plucked the jewel away, as easily as a ripe berry from a tree—

“All power to fore-cannon and fire,” I ordered—and the jewel on my brow shone bright again as several stored months’ worth of infinite Silmaril-Light slammed into Morgoth’s chest with all the force that the best scientists in the Astral Alliance could engineer. 

He stumbled. He dropped both the jewel and the elf-king (who’d been trying to bite him). The Lady of Mercy tossed her shield to catch them, staying low and out of sight—though she needn’t have bothered. The so-called “Lord of All” had already found his next enemy.

“All ships, move forward and join shields,” I ordered, and met his burning stare though the viewscreen. “Then broadcast me on all external frequencies.”

The wires on my forehead shimmered as we shifted Light-flow to the shields—and to my right, so did the Elendil, and to my left, the Cosmian Blade, and all around us the Minas Tirith, the Elfsheen, the Muse, the Rivendell, the Heart of Zanzi, the Longbottom Leaf… They were still soaring out of the silvery distortion behind me, tractor- and Silmaril-towed: sleek Rigilic eels-of-prey and Centaurian cruisers full of Humans eager to fight for their homeworld, Betan mine-ships and Canid X-M-wings and my own Hectoan starlighters, a full third of the X-ee navy with their X-eee–shaped six-engine dreadnoughts, and hundreds more. 

“This is Captain Pel Cinia, once Túrin Turambar, of the Astral Alliance ship Gurthang,” I said. My words were broadcast from every ship on every frequency in every language that the people of Arda might know, as the Fleet assembled from forty-plus different worlds flew into position. Our Light-infused shields blazed and locked together, until we formed a seamless wall right in the Enemy’s face, with the Elves and their other allies safely behind us.

I’ve never felt more proud to recite the most cliché line in the Fleet:

“We got your distress call. We’re here to help.”

[dimetrodone]

i would like to hear your thoughts on the "You see it's quite simple: if they call the earth Gaia, it's fantasy. If they call it Terra, that's sci-fi" tie into greek and roman mythology please

The reason Earth is called “Terra” in sci fi instead of Gaia is similar to why the sun and moon are called Sol and Luna in some work (and sometimes in real life), it matching the (typically) roman naming scheme of other planets in our solar system. Possibly it also it makes the earth sound more like one of numerous worlds and sound a bit less centralized, and also implies humans settled onto one standardized name for the planet.

I see “Gaia” less often, but it’s probably used more in fantasy since people associate the name more for the actual goddess, in a similar way we associate the greek names with the actual gods and the roman gods with astrological objects. Calling a planet “Gaia” evokes more of a living or mystical quality to it.

[marigold-hills]

day 10: making love | @wolfstarkinktober2024 | 3993 words

MINORS DNI - NSFW - EXPLICIT

(also: crying, spit as lube, touch-starved Sirius)

Also on AO3 here

****

The signal takes twelve years to reach Earth.

There are many colonies now. Some stay in close touch, sharing news, sharing commercial routes. They’re an extension of the life already thriving on the home planet; separated by distance but keeping trade and communication alive.

Not Proxima Centauri b.

Remus remembers reading about it when the colony was established. When Black Industries had revealed themselves to be little more than a cult and left Earth behind to start a new, pure human race.

There was nothing from them. Until now.

The colony has collapsed. Send help, the voice said, then twenty two seconds of static silence. Then: please. 

Chances are there is nobody there anymore. That’s what Head Command cited, when they ruled out the possibility of sending search and rescue. The message was sent twelve years ago, the admiral said, whoever sent it, they’re dead by now. 

But those twenty two seconds played on repeat in Remus’ head. He woke up hearing them, fell asleep replaying them. Then, one morning, the final word, the please, appeared in his dream, and he knew he had to do something.

He’s had some favours he’d scrounged up over the years. Things he never thought to cash in, because what for? He didn’t mind covering the odd shift or hiding the odd miscalculation that a higher-up missed. Sure, there was the time when Admiral Dumbledore came to him to fly someone out of the Sol system under the radar. Sure, Moody once did ask him for help derailing legislation through less than stellar means.

As it turned out, he’s had quite a few people he could press on, lean on, to make it happen. Nobody understood why he cared so much. He didn’t understand either.

But he was given a ship, and indefinite time off work (a sabbatical, they called it - like pilots ever had those). He went alone because that was the deal. Nobody is to know. This is a waste of resources and of taxpayer money.

Two weeks, it takes him to reach the exoplanet.

(Nothing, in comparison to twelve years.)

He doesn’t mind the solitude. Just him and his little ship, and all the stars in the sky. It’s a newer model, easier for a crew of one to manage than the older ones. The computer working the systems keeps getting smarter. Soon, Remus thinks, his job will be obsolete.

Proxima Centauri b is pretty from orbit. Vast oceans, swaths of green, sun-bathed clouds hiding it from view in the most picturesque way. Remus watches as the line of day-night moves across the surface of the planet, so, so slowly. He’s stalling - he’s here and now he’s stalling, because this is it. What if it was for nothing? What if the voice had been extinguished in all the years that passed?

He’s not to land unless he makes contact: a waste of fuel on an already wasteful journey. It’s a clear command and already he knows he’s going to break it, because he’s not come this far just to be waylaid by the colony’s malfunctioning communicator, or the owner of the voice not seeing his message. Because, if he’s there, why would he check it? After all those years? 

Still: there is flagrant disregard of orders, and there is covering one’s tracks, so Remus sends out the message.

Survivors of the Proxima Centauri b colony, come in. 

The little black text on the little green screen flickers with its own electrical life. 

No response comes and Remus tells himself you knew this would happen, it doesn’t mean anything. He sends the message again, and then again after a couple of hours. He has enough fuel to stay in orbit for a week and still get back to Earth with a safe amount spare.

He’s planned it like this: three messages, equal times apart, to show he tried it that way first. Then, short circuit the communicator - notoriously unreliable on the class of ship he’d been provided. Nobody can blame him for not trying. Nobody can blame him for finishing the mission in person.

What else was he to do, turn back?

He lands as near to the colony as the landscape allows. The compound is vast but the atmosphere is breathable. Remus has gotten used to the staleness of the recycled air he’s been in for a fortnight and this freshness is so welcome it makes him a little bit dizzy.

From the first look, it’s clear that the colony was abandoned - that something had happened. Remus’ footsteps echo against the white walls of the compound in an eerie quiet. He’s been to these places, these colonies, more times than he can count, but never once had he seen it empty.

It’s only the steady humming of power, running through the cables built into the floor, that gives him hope.

He comes across a doorway to an Aeroponics bay and this - this can’t be something that had cultivated itself. There must be someone here.

The plants have grown tall, their exposed roots well maintained - the air is moist, warm and hazy and Remus doesn’t think he sees an automatic water deployment system. Somebody must have just sprayed them. He touches the leaves of potato plants, gathering the moisture with his fingers because it’s a dual thing of life here - a sign and a gift.

There’s corn, and what he thinks is spinach, and strawberries. He shouldn’t be surprised - this was a large scale colony, with families and children. Of course they’d have things just for pleasure, even if it’s not the best use of the space.

The first time Remus sees him, it’s just a glimpse of a person walking through greenery. An afterimage of dark hair, of leisurely steps, of a strong, straight posture.

And then the man takes a few steps into the main aisle and turns around, and there he is.

It’s clear he’s been living by himself for too long. His hair hangs past his shoulders, unkempt but clean, a mess of black waves. There is a thinness to his frame, a suggestion of jutting elbows and sharp hipbones, clothes hanging on him like they were used to a larger body. Facial hair accentuating the edges of his cheeks, the set of his eyes.

Even like this, clearly malnourished, clearly not caring for his appearance, he’s beautiful.

They stand apart - two meters, maybe three. Remus still in his flight suit, the man in something soft and worn and comfortable. There’s the buzzing of electricity and the humming of the air purification unit and no other sounds, none at all.

Remus knows it’s him. He knows his silence as others would know his voice

And then: “You came,” and the voice, too, is familiar.

“I did.”

The man takes step after halted step, like walking on unfamiliar ground. He comes closer but not close. Remus understands.

“How long has it been?”

“Twelve years.”

An interface on one of the plant unit beeps and the man turns to it. “Huh,” he huffs out, a small sound almost like no sound at all.

He fiddles with the positioning of roots and presses buttons that make the beeping stop, then picks up an atomiser and sprays a fine mist over the plant. He has lovely hands, even if the fingers look a bit bony and the nails have been bitten down.

“What’s your name?” Remus asks because he’s wanted to know since the first time he heard the recording.

“Sirius,” the man speaks to the plant.

And Remus is a pilot. He knows the stars. He’s flown amongst them, used them as guides. He knows which one is the brightest in the winter sky and how to orient by it.

“Suits you.”

Sirius turns to him again, surprise written clear across his face. “You’re still here,” he says, then pauses. It’s the same pause Remus knows. “You didn’t go away.”

“No, I didn’t. I won’t.”

“No?”

“Not without you.”

More plants get sprayed, more roots adjusted. Sirius checks things on the interface displays along the aisle he stands in.

There is no need for him to maintain them anymore. Back on the ship Remus has enough food to last them both a month. He won’t tell Sirius that - he watches him care for the plants as if by muscle memory. They must be what kept him fed all the years he’s been alone.

He doesn’t move. Everything in the Aeroponics bay feels fragile and breakable, the air soft with mistwater, the silence held up by humming electricity. “Will you come with me?”

“Not today,” he walks out of the Aeroponics bay, doesn’t look back.

***

Proxima Centauri b is situated in a binary star system. The days are almost never ending, and the nights, when they happen, are so black that navigation becomes impossible.

The dual suns are larger than Remus has ever seen from any planet surface, the size of the Earth’s moon when it hangs full low over the horizon. They’re both red Dwarfs, giving out little heat. The sky is painted a dark maroon and the shadows are strange, multi-positioned. Everything looks one-dimensional. Flat, like a photograph. Rendered in tones of reds and greys, and deep, rich blacks.

Walking into the compound is like waking from a surrealist dream.

Sirius is in the Aeroponics bay again, tending to his plants. He doesn’t startle when he sees Remus.

“You came back,” he says after a long stretch of silence. He maintains eye contact this time, waits for the answer. 

“I said I wouldn’t leave.”

“There is a difference between not leaving and coming back.”

Remus wonders where the bodies of everyone who didn’t leave but didn’t come back are. Every other member of the colony of dozens. Did Sirius bury them, dug up the cold, hard ground? Is there a cemetery outside in the infertile red soil? Was it slow, gradual? Or did the colony collapse all at once, suddenly and quickly, until Sirius was all that was left?

“Come,” Sirius says, but doesn’t look if Remus follows.

There is a Mess Hall across from the corridor, with a small kitchen attached. Sirius gestures for Remus to sit. He does, choosing a chair closest to the kitchen and wonders if this is where Sirius would normally sit, or if he rotates his spot, or if Remus is the first to sit there in twelve years.

Sirius placed two bowls on the table, cream-of-potato soup and cornbread. “Eat,” he says, dipping the bread into the soup in lieu of a spoon.

“Thank you.”

Sirius drops the bread and looks at Remus and it’s clear that before he wasn’t, not really. Not at Remus, but through him, like he was an apparition or a hallucination or maybe not there at all. A trick of the light or a figure of mist.

The scrutiny verges on uncomfortable. Remus tries eating, tries to look natural - it would be so easy to spook Sirius here, one wrong move is one too many. Remus can’t afford to make a mistake, not when the eyes looking at him (into him) are so bright with life that simply wasn’t there before. He didn’t notice that Sirius was as flat as the horizon until he sparked up.

“This is very nice,” he says about the food.

And Sirius barks.

It’s a laugh, Remus supposes. An approximation of one. Sirius silences it and touches the hollow of his throat with unsure fingers. Remus wonders how long it’s been since he laughed.

“It tastes like shit,” he says. It’s the most animated he’s sounded since Remus found him. His fingers don’t move from over his trachea, as if he’s feeling the vibrations his voice creates there. “I ran out of salt years ago.” 

Everything they’re eating was grown by Sirius’ hands, then made into food by him too, and that annuls any complaints Remus could have had about the taste. He’s seen how SIrius is with his plants, delicate and caring, like they’re more than just something which provides him with nutrients. 

Did you speak to them? Remus wonders. Did they keep you company, the only other breathing things left here?

Once the food is gone, Sirius meanders away. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Remus says to his retreating back. Whether Sirius heard it or not is unclear - his steps don’t falter, he doesn’t turn back.

Not today.

***

There is an artificial day-night cycle on Remus’ little ship. Lights simulate the natural progression of the Earth’s sun to keep his circadian rhythm from deteriorating while he’s off planet.

(He dreams of silence.)

In the morning, Sirius is outside of the compound. The angles and edges of his face look softened in the strange reddish shadows. He doesn’t say you came back, doesn’t say anything. The way he watches Remus is unlike he’s ever been watched before: shrewd intent, no hesitation. Each step he takes towards him is like that, too.

Remus doesn’t move. Waits for Sirius to reach him. (He thinks he’ll always wait for Sirius to reach him.)

“Who are you?” Sirius finally asks as they’re face-to-face, less than an arms’ length apart, close enough to touch.

“Lieutenant Remus Lupin,” he answers in the simplest way he knows how. They both know that’s not what the question meant.

“Why are you here?”

“You know why,” Remus tells him. It’s not you sent a call for help and it’s not it was my duty. 

Surely, Sirius feels it too - maybe felt it before Remus got here; when the message made it to Earth or when Remus was played it for the first time, or when he downloaded it onto his personal drive and snuck it out of the lab. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. Surely, Sirius too must have dreamt of this moment when the silence gets filled with words, and the next one when it will be filled with sound. Just the two of them, where before Sirius was alone, reminding the air what it feels like to resonate.

Sirius takes the last step forward and brings his hand up, fingers trembling as, haltingly, he places it over Remus’ heart.

“We don’t have to,” Remus tells him, “we can wait.”

“I did my waiting.”

Sirius moves his hand up, along the zip of the flight suit, until he reaches Remus’ throat: a mirror of how he touched his own, fingertips light against the skin.

Remus speaks just so Sirius can feel his voice as it’s created. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

Sirius is conservative with his words, with the humming sounds he chooses to respond with. Everything from him is a bit rough - a voice unused in too long a time. Some words he overpronounces. Forgotten how they feel on his tongue, Remus guesses.

The hand on his throat stretches out, fingers splayed until they span the width of it, then slip around and into his hair. Sirius watches as if he isn’t the one doing it. As if it’s something that just happened, that was always going to happen. Inevitable. Written into the atoms that make up the both of them, aeons ago when they were still stardust caught in nebulae, strewn across the cosmos. Cyclically, with each universe beginning and each one ending, coming back to this moment - to this first touch.

Delicately, because Sirius should always be touched delicately, Remus takes hold of his wrist. Sirius’ breath hitches, then stops. It's divinity to touch him. 

Remus makes it gentle. Makes it safe. If he’s the first in twelve years to place marks of fingerprints on Sirius’ body, then he’ll make himself into something worth it.

It’s a wonder how seamless everything is. As if it isn’t new. Remus knows Sirius is going to kiss him before he does. There is no change in his demeanour but there is a shift in the silence, something else stirred through the determination. 

And then Sirius does. And Remus finds his home on Proxima Centauri.

It’s odd, that he didn’t realise a part of him was missing until he found it, but it’s so clear now, with Sirius’ lips against his own. There was a hole inside of him and now, with each second he is allowed this, each second he’s given this, that hole is filled.

Sirius is slow about it. Patient. If nothing else he must have learnt patience, surviving like this. Remus keeps it like this: soft touches as their lips come apart and come together. Warm, where Sirius is warm, the only source of heat on the surface of this cold planet, the only source of life.

Sirius leads him toward the compound and it’s like stepping into the ocean - the water welcoming its long-forgotten counterpart.

They walk through the corridor, past the Mess, past the Aeroponics Bay. There are more spaces there - Engineering and Storage and rooms Remus pays no mind, too engrossed in the way Sirius has weaved their fingers together to pull him along.

The bedroom they enter is sparse. Utilitarian. Somewhere Sirius shouldn’t belong in and yet, through circumstance, does. Remus thinks of his home back on Earth. Comfortable bed strewn with blankets, an old wood fireplace he’s had converted into plasma. Thinks of Sirius in his kitchen or on his little balcony or in his bed.

Then Sirius reaches for the zip of his flight suit, and Remus thinks of nothing at all.

“Don’t touch me softly,” Sirius asks when Remus runs careful fingers up his arms. “Touch me like you’re here.”

So he does: tightens his hold, puts his hand into Sirius’ hair, down the sharp bones of his face, across the harshness of his beard. Sirius’ eyes flutter open and shut, once, twice - on the third they’re red-rimmed and wet.

“I’m here.”

They kiss again and it’s harder this time. Purposeful. Remus walks them forward until the backs of Sirius’ knees hit the bed and he collapses onto it, still held as he wants to be held.

There are tattoos down Sirius’ sternum. Remus discovers them with his mouth as he pushes the soft shirt up and off and out of the way.

This is the first one: a soft, quiet whimper, laced with the tears that finally spill. It sounds both like pleasure and like pain. Remus coaxes more of them out of Sirius’ throat as he mouths across it. Feels the trembling under his skin as his body remembers how to make these sounds. Feels the skin heat as it remembers why. 

“I found you,” he says into Sirius’ ribs. “I knew you’d be here.”

Sirius doesn’t reciprocate. He lays stretched out on the bed; hands twisted into the pillow, one a fist he bites into. “Don’t hide,” Remus tells him, “let me hear you.”

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s alright. We'll find it.”

He licks down Sirius’ hipbone and the sound comes again. Louder, needier. More like a moan. He does it again, and again. Encore. One more time. For me, once more. Then: harder and Remus obliges, bites to bruise.

There is no teasing. There are hands in hair, pulling, and mouths tasting and then please Sirius says - please, the word that brought them together. 

Remus doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to resist giving in when Sirius asks like that. He pulls one of Sirius’ legs up, wraps it around himself to spread him open. Licks his own fingers until they’re soaked. Kisses Sirius through the first touches, apologetic. Forgive me for the pain. Sirius grabs at his shoulders, nails digging into the skin. He’s so impossibly tight, so wonderfully warm, and Remus knows when it turns from hurt and discomfort into something better. Sirius’ face doesn’t relax, but contorts into pleasure.

“I’ve forgotten,” he says in halted breaths.

Remus fucks him with two fingers, slow but hard. Kisses each moan straight from his mouth. Sirius clings onto him through it. “Please, Remus, more,” he uses the name for the first time. 

(Better than silence, the sound of the name ripped out of him mid-moan.)

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Remus doubles his efforts to make just his fingers good enough. They have nothing to help with the stretch.

“It won’t hurt,” Sirius uses the leg thrown over Remus’ hip to bring him closer. “Let me feel you. Let me have you.”

“You have me,” Remus tells him and means it in so many ways, “whatever happens here now, you have me.”

Something softens in Sirius’ expression. He pulls Remus in, fingers splayed across his jaw. Kisses him so slowly. The contrast - fingers hard where they bring Sirius pleasure but his lips soft and yielding and pliant - the contrast is almost enough to send Remus towards his own edge.

He’s not prepared when Sirius surges up and reverses them. Pushes Remus to the bed and straddles him. Rids them both of what clothes they have left on. Then, hand on Remus’ cock, his face turns mischievous and that? That is the look that suits him better than any other. “You’re so hard for me already,” he purrs. “I want to feel you everywhere, inside of me and outside.”

And who is Remus to deny him? No one. He’s no one, but a vessel for the things he feels for the man above him. Before he was empty and now, here, he’s overflowing.

I think I love you, he wants to say as Sirius lathers him up in spit. I think the stars have sent me you. 

The moment you laid eyes on me was the moment my existence began.

Sirius is careful about it, but inch by torturous inch he lowers himself down Remus’ cock. He’s warmer than the double suns keeping the planet alive. Remus could stay like this, surrounded by him, until the permaday ends.

And then Sirius sits. Arse flush to Remus’ hips. Throws his head back in pleasure, mouth agape and eyes closed as he feels it out.

“That’s it,” Remus tells him, voice tight and hands splayed on Sirius’ hips, grounding them both. “Take your time.”

Sirius, a contrarian, starts to move almost immediately. Minute rocks back and forth. Remus feels it as static electricity in his veins. He brings Sirius down, until he lays down on Remus and their lips can meet again, and Remus can bend his knees and drive himself further into Sirius, use the grip on his hips to bring him down closer on each thrust.

It’s maddening. Unlike anything. That he found it here could be proof of a higher power, had Remus not flown across the known galaxy. He always knew there was no space for such things in the sky. (He didn’t realise they were hiding here.)

Their movements grow erratic. The tears in Sirius’ eyes return and Remus wipes them off with his thumb. This gesture he allows himself to be soft, and Sirius turns his face into the palm of Remus’ hand, welcoming it.

“I’m so close,” Sirius says. The way he clenches over Remus a giveaway. Maybe a reward, but Remus doesn’t think he’s done anything in this life worthy of such a thing. 

Remus takes Sirius’ cock in hand, keeps his thrusts deep and steady. “That’s it,” he says, “come for me.”

Sirius moans into Remus’ mouth, loud and unashamed and this, this right there, is what makes Remus cum.

There is an eternity contained in the time they cling to one another. Remus runs his fingers up and down the lovely curve of Sirius’ back. All the ways left to discover you, he thinks, tracing vertebrae. All the time we’ll have, now we found each other.

***

In the two weeks they take to get back to Earth, silence becomes a thing of the past. Remus reminds Sirius what it’s like to be touched, and in return Sirius rewrites each sensation for him like it’s brand new. 

“Stay with me,” Remus asks before they land, and:

“Always,” Sirius replies.