nightlogs | talking to ghosts

Who: Miggy & You??
What: Miguel stays behind to do dead honoring activities
Where: the Pole to start
When: Late October, Early November (Day of the Dead time)
Warnings/Notes: themes of mourning, though it can be lighthearted also

Miguel would be reluctantly absent during the action around Halloween. A strange enough decision, given his first instinct would be to throw himself into the fray as a distraction.

But as of late, he couldn’t hide that something was eating at him. The gloomy spell over his mood seemed more intense than months prior, burning away his patience and making short tempered remarks and the flashing of fangs more easy to let slip. He'd done okay keeping things somewhat under lock, but it was clear now something was definitely wrong.

And so, after some tense, but persuasive conversation just convincing enough to accept staying behind, Miguel finds himself idle on a quieter and lonelier Pole for a few days.

((prompts incoming - brackets or prose are fine))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So... it wasn't a weird turn of phrase? His eyebrow raises with the slowly dawning realization that Dan was not, in fact, joking. Well, Miguel isn't going to stand around while first grade science gets butchered right in front of him.

"With the caveat that some dimensions can be odd..." he adds. "The ones with gravity have stars at the center, with the planets orbiting. The Sun is the most massive object in our solar system, so it holds everything else in that system in place - more or less."

Perusing Dan. He doesn't seem like he comes from a dimension with different fundamental physical forces to their own. Oh.

"You've... never seen a chart?"

He reaches up to grab the poinsettias. Dan's never seen a chart, has he? Or been to a Planetarium? But he has access to the internet? This fact was taken so for granted that he's not sure what to make of it.

Edited 2023-12-24 15:28 (UTC)

"Planets and stars are different?" Dan wants to push back with no, moons orbit, not planets, but he has enough humility to understand when he's wrong about something everyone else takes as understood. He doesn't shift out of his casual, unthreatening demeanor, especially as he sees how Boba closes himself off against the wall. That this kid has been brutalized in the past is like a billboard over Boba's head.

"What kind of chart?" Dan thinks of maps of terrain, but he isn't sure how this relates to whether the sun orbits the Earth or vice versa. "Thank you for the gift of your armspan. I get leg cramps from having to go on tip-toe all the time."

It looks like Miguel's confused too. He isn't mad that Boba corrected Dan. He takes a hesitant step closer.

"Stars are mostly made of gases and have a large enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion. Planets are spherical collections of mass that orbit stars. They can't- any planet with a large enough mass to draw a star into its orbit would just collapse and become a star itself."

Boba shifts his weight as he thinks.

"This planet has a Type I atmosphere and standard gravity. There are twenty-four local hours in a day and seasonal changes depending on the planet's relative orbital position. The sun is a medium-sized dwarf star, right? So the habitable zone of this system would be around a hundred-fifty million kilometers..." he clears his throat. He got distracted by a tangent-- he needs to refocus.

"That is, if your sun orbited your planet and your planet isn't spinning on an axis, days and seasons would be the same thing. If your planet is spinning..." brow furrows and he huffs out a frustrated breath.

"Geo-centric models aren't wrong, you can still calculate stuff based on the relative position of objects to a planet, they're just way more complicated. It's a lot easier to calculate coordinates based on stars because stars don't move as much."

Boba only knows the calculations for helio-centric models off the top of his head. He would either have to start from scratch or work backward to map out celestial bodies based on their relative position to a planet, and it would take forever since he doesn't have any of the equipment that would usually run those calculations for him.

Miguel observes the interactions with the bushels of poinsettias sitting in the crooks of his arms.

Lucky had a good mind for machines, he had maintained a ship all his own after all. But they never broached this particular topic much in between. He makes a mental note to pencil out some time to take him to an observatory. He might like the field trip.

Recognizing that they were throwing a lot at Dan all at once, he adds:

“I can find a map of the solar system and we can look it over sometime. You might take a liking to astronomy.”

Curiosity about science can be quite infectious - and it generally tended to start with talk about the stars or dinosaurs or some other subject of interest.

"I..." Dan listens intently, but Boba loses him quickly, because Dan still understands gravity primarily as a downwards motion and not as a directional pull. He flushes slightly in embarrassment, but his manners remain intact. "I might could benefit from seeing a visual demonstration. I literally crawled out of a hole in the ground. I need to be caught up more than most folks."

"I do like astronomy already, you know. My stage name is Dan Sagittarius, even though I'm a Scorpio." He smiles. "You do much science, Lucky? You sound like you know what you're talking about. This guy here is all science, all the time."

He gestures with his nose to Miguel. "So no wonder y'all hit it off."

Boba straightens up and puffs his chest out.

"I'm a pilot," he says with pride. "I've been taking care of my ship for years."

That is, he was taking care of it. But now it's gone. The only home he had left.

He deflates a little. His eyes goes from Dan to the ground.

"I've been flying for my whole life," Boba adds more quietly. He lost some of his enthusiasm when he remembered what happened to the Slave I-- damaged by the jetiise before Aurra crashed it. He never got the chance to see the wreckage, he was detained right after.

Dan's mix-up with astrology gets a confused look from Miguel, but it eventually mellows into some quiet sympathy as Lucky loses the spirit in his voice. He isn't sure if navigating a ship like he used to would really be an option here.

"A starship is a bit beyond what can be slapped together with tech from this decade." he says. "But Lucky's chipped in quite a bit with the lab. Probably wouldn't have finished as quickly without the extra hand."

Which was... half-true. Lucky was very skilled, prodigiously by Nueva York standards. Miguel was happy to give him tasks whenever he wandered in, but he was still just a kid. So, the kid had plenty of free time to do whatever before Miguel would start to look for him to make sure he had eaten and hadn't gotten into too much trouble.

Dan tries to match Lucky's pride with warmth; he's good at walking that line that keeps encouragement from coming across as condescending. He can guess what gives Lucky pause, because Dan felt the same way when he ended up in the Wilderlands without his gun. He defined himself as a sharpshooter for so long that having that stripped away from him felt like getting the wind knocked out of him and not being able to catch it again for weeks.

"Yeah? You driven the sleigh yet?" He wags his eyebrows, catching that Miguel's trying to keep Lucky involved. "Or even gotten a chance to ride in it? It's a blast."

Dan loves the sleigh. It drives Bunny crazy. And it's the closest Dan's ever come to flying, as someone who's never ridden in a plane or chopper or anything of that nature.

talking to ghosts

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject